Abel thinks of Noemi lying on her biobed, nearly delirious with fever, Cobweb tracing white lines on her skin. “Yes,” he says to Riko. “I can. Let’s move on.”
She furrows her brow, clearly aware she’s troubled him in some way. However, she says nothing, for which he’s grateful. Maybe tact has more utility than he’d realized.
Once they’ve secured this door, Riko pushes open another in a corner to reveal something far less dramatic: a bathroom, or what was once a bathroom before it turned upside down. As he looks at the ceiling, he says, “Relieving wastes may prove to be… a challenge.”
Coming up behind him to take a peek, Riko groans. “Shit.”
“I wouldn’t.”
A faint creaking farther down the corridor compels Abel to focus his hearing on that area. Two more creaks and he’s certain. He straightens and gestures at Riko, who takes another moment to realize what he’s already determined: Someone is walking toward them.
The other Remedy members are far behind. This person is approaching from ahead.
It could be another Remedy patrol, Abel surmises from Riko’s reaction, which is wary but not panicked. He follows her lead, keeping hold of his weapon but not yet aiming it.
The footsteps enter human aural range, and Riko’s dark eyes widen. However, the proximity of this unknown intruder is less disquieting to Abel than the arrhythmic steps; this person isn’t walking through the corridor as much as stumbling through it. A sound-wave analysis indicates that this individual is barefoot and extremely small, possibly even a child.
Not an attacker, then. More likely a passenger injured and dazed from the crash. But even a small adult, if injured, dazed, and afraid, might fire if startled. Abel remains on alert.
A figure appears in the doorway, silhouetted by the dull orange emergency light. The individual is male-presenting, approximately one hundred fifteen centimeters in height, with childish body proportions, pale skin, and long hair, unclothed. Abel’s analysis stops short when he recognizes the scent in the air. The smell is one he remembers vividly from the first moments of his life—the oddly sweet odor of mech generation fluid.
When the figure takes another step forward, emerging from shadow, Abel sees a small boy holding what appears to be a severed mech hand, as if it were a plaything. Mansfield has indeed begun making child mechs. The boy mech’s features are ill-formed, incomplete. This one wasn’t finished yet. How can he be awake?
“I’m lost,” the mech says. In his voice Abel hears emotions he’s never heard from another mech, even himself—terror, misery, and confusion. “I don’t know where we are.”
“We’re on a ship called the Osiris.” Abel keeps his tone even and calm. He’s aware of Riko gaping at the two of them, but she says nothing. “Can you tell me your model designation?”
“I don’t know what that is.” The mech curls into one corner and flops down, just like the exhausted child he appears to be. He hugs the severed hand to his chest.
“Your name,” Abel says gently. “What is your name?”
“I’m Simon Michael Shearer,” the mech announces automatically, as though called upon in school. His fear and disorientation remain strong. “Why are there things in my head? There are thoughts in there I didn’t think.”
Shearer. Gillian’s surname is now Shearer. She lost a child some months ago. The information filters through Abel’s mind, combines with his knowledge of Mansfield’s obsession with immortality and his and Gillian’s hopes for organic mechs, and delivers a conclusion that radically changes the situation: This can only be Gillian’s son, Mansfield’s grandson. Simon, not Burton Mansfield, is the first individual to have his consciousness resurrected in a mech body.
Abel is looking at the only other mech in the entire galaxy who possesses a soul. Every other day of his existence, Abel has been totally unique—and he knows better than most that to be unique is, in some sense, to be alone.
He’s not alone any longer.
Empathy floods his emotional capacities, and he holds out one hand. “It’s all right,” he says gently. “You’ve changed, Simon. It takes a while to get used to changes. But I can help you.”
Simon trembles, afraid even to hope. “Can you get all the weird thoughts out of my head?”
That must be how his childish mind interprets data input. How different is a human brain from a mech one? What feelings are the same, and which have changed? Abel longs to know the answer to these questions, but Simon is not yet in any condition to answer. “I can’t remove them,” Abel says, “but I can help you understand them. Focus them.”
“But I want them gone!” Simon shoves himself up to his feet. He’s on the verge of tears. Abel takes another step toward him, only for Simon to skitter backward, stumbling on his chubby, childish legs. “Make them stop!”
“I would if I could.” Abel can do nothing for this child but exist alongside him. At least Simon will never endure what Abel endured; he will never be alone.
“You said you could help!” Simon shouts, and he lifts the hand up, as if to throw it at Abel. It wouldn’t be much of a projectile, but it’s the only weapon the little boy has.
“Watch it!” Riko gets between Simon and Abel, even though protection seems unnecessary. “Just calm down, and—”
Simon shoves Riko, hard. Harder than any human child could. She flies across the room, hitting the wall solidly before slumping down semiconscious.
At the sight of what he’s done, Simon makes an anguished cry that
