Two hours and four minutes and seven seconds.
Recalculating.
Fifty-eight seconds.
Recalculating.
Two days and four hours and thirty-two seconds—
D09 sat drumming his fingers on the pilot chair’s armrest, space passing by in a blur of stars and nebulae. He kept a counter running in the back of his computing, constantly recalculating the time until he would no longer function. He had first begun the calculations when they had visited the mechanic on Iliad, who told him about his damaged memory core, but the countdown was not logical. It sped up. It slowed.
But it never gave him enough time to figure out how to say good-bye.
Perhaps it would be best if he were smashed instead—the slang for destroying a Metal’s memory core. Not murdered, or killed, but smashed like a child’s plaything. Metals had been useful during the Plague in keeping those infected quarantined from the rest of the kingdom, but now that the threat was no longer an issue, they were not needed.
Perhaps that was all Metals were supposed to be—impermanent tools. Means to an end.
On a star map pulled up on the cockpit monitor, a white dot moved toward the third and farthest planet in the kingdom, Cerces. It was his duty to watch the cockpit while Jax slept.
Nights were quiet. They gave him time to mend temperamental fuses in the ship or find ways to lock E0S in service closets.
Where was the troublesome robot, anyway?
He keyed up the video feeds to look when footsteps echoed down the corridor, activating his motion sensors. He shifted in his chair. No one should be awake.
The captain stepped into the cockpit. “Any news since the video feed from the Grand Duchess?”
“No, sir. There has been no sign of the Royal Captain or the Messiers on the radars or comm-links,” he relayed. “There are only two freighters and a passenger ship in our immediate vicinity, but they are not a threat.”
“ETA to Palavar?”
“An hour and forty-seven minutes.”
She spun the communications chair around and sat, draping one leg over the other, propping her chin up in her hand. “I don’t like it, metalhead. It’s too quiet.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is.”
Sighing, the captain shook her head. “You’re usually so much better at keeping her out of trouble.”
“Forgive me,” he replied, bowing his head. “Accompanying Ana to Nevaeh was a mistake. But I . . .”
The weight of the memory in the garden, the kiss, the promise . . . made him hesitate. He looked at his hands, at the wires glowing between the plates.
“I could not let her go alone,” he finally said. It was the best answer he could find.
“Ah.”
“I do not understand why. I am endangering the crew even now. I am a liability. After the Tsarina, I will leave. I do not want to put Ana at risk—”
“That won’t be necessary,” replied the captain, her curls turning red. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“But what if these glitches are impairing my judgment?”
“I don’t think it’s the glitches doing that.” She stood and kissed him on his metallic forehead, leaving a bloodred lipstick print, and retired back to her quarters.
He turned back around to face the starshield, and caught his reflection, a red lipstick print on his forehead. He rubbed it off. He wanted to tell her that she was mistaken. That it must be the glitches. A virus—malware corrupting his judgment. Something deep inside murmured to him. It was an echo he could not place—even though he had run numerous virus scans over the years—a piece of code from before the Dossier.
From before the captain found him and Ana in an escape pod.
But those memories had been damaged; the data was gone. Gone as though it—and whatever he was before—had never existed, and only this echo remained. Calling. Beckoning. Like a voice through a long and narrow tunnel. He knew he had been something before, but he was not programmed to be curious, to care.
Or to be afraid of what he used to be.
Yet the echo remained, beating like the cadence of a heart.
On the starshield, a blip pinged the Dossier. A second long. He turned back to the starshield, but the radar did not receive the signal again. An anomaly? He slid out the control panel to investigate—
Someone knocked on the doorway to the cockpit.
He glanced over his shoulder as Jax ducked in. “Evening, metalhead,” the young man greeted. “How’s the night been?”
D09 turned his moonlit eyes back to the starshield. “Something just pinged us.”
“That’s not good.”
“It only happened once.”
Jax frowned and leaned on the back of the pilot chair, squinting up at the starshield’s readings. “Are you sure?”
D09 gave him a blank look.
“Right, of course you’re sure. Well, let’s not worry about it. It was probably a glitch. I’ll take it from here,” he added, motioning for Di to get up.
He did, and the Solani fell over the armrest into the seat with a sigh.
“Ah, home. You know what would be better? If you could keep the seat warm for me, too. Literally warm.”
“I am sorry I do not have heaters installed in my rear,” he replied, and left the cockpit as Jax cackled gleefully.
The rest of the crew were still asleep in the quarters. Riggs muttered in his sleep, but it was almost inaudible under Lenda’s snoring. He made his way down to the engine room to run diagnostics on the solar core before they arrived. It kept him busy, so he did not concentrate on the recalculations in the back of his head.
Seven minutes and fifty-three seconds—
Recalculating.
Two minutes—
Three hours and—
As he made his way down the stairs, a shadow moved in the open skysailer. It looked like legs sticking up out of the backseat. He recognized them, went over to the sailer instead, and peered inside.
Ana lounged across the backseat, legs sticking up over the headrest, as she read through the newsfeed on a holo-pad. The blue glow paled her face and hardened the lines on her puckered cheek. She glanced up when she saw him.
“Oh, hi, Di.”
“Why are you awake?”
She shrugged and righted herself in the backseat. “Couldn’t sleep. I guess we’re almost there.”
“Almost.” He climbed into the backseat with her—and felt something akin to a jolt. A jerk in the back of his code.
A glitch.
Two hours and thirty-seven minutes . . . , the counter read.
Another jolt. Numbers skewing.
Twenty seconds . . .
Ana turned off her holo-pad. “I have a question.”
“I may have an answer.”
She pulled her braid over her shoulder, beginning to unravel it with her fingers. “Do you think if—when—we repair your memory core, you’ll remember who we were? Before the Dossier?”
He shook his head. “I do not know.”
“Do you think . . .” She hestiated. Her fingers snagged on a knot, and she gave up. “Do you think you’ll remember who I was? Who I am?”
In reply, he took her hair out of her hands and began to braid it for her, meticulous and patient. “I know who you are,” he said. “You are Ana of the Dossier. You are everything you need to be.”
She smiled at that and closed her eyes. “Stop brownnosing.”
“I do not have a nose, so that would be impossible,” he replied, knowing it would make her laugh—and it did. She laughed, light and melodic, her entire body shaking with it.
He knew her better than he knew his own circuits and wires. They had been a team for as long as he could recall. He had never been without her, and she never without him—and even when they were apart he thought of her, as though a piece of her had been written into his code.
But did a piece of him run through her as well? Organic things were different. They operated on thoughts and feelings. They made rash decisions. They evolved—they changed. He never would. When he expired, would Ana change too, slowly, until he no longer lived in her thoughts?
At the edge of his consciousness, he could feel the glitch spiking, like when the starshield lost reception. He tried to sequester the code. Trap it.
Two minutes and—
Thirty-one seconds—
His fingers slowed. “Ana?”
She turned her golden eyes to his, curious. “What is it?”
Another spike of code seared through his programming. White noise.
He thought of what Jax had said about good-byes. Perhaps he could say it now. Find the right words. He opened his mouth to try when Jax’s voice rang out over the intercom. “We have committed a heinous deed and are now in one of the kingdom’s no-fly zones. Add it to your résumés, children. Destination ahead, fifteen minutes and steady. Everyone, report to the cockpit. Let’s board this lost ship.”
Ana sat up and turned off her holo-pad. “Let’s go, Di—you ready?”
Two minutes and thirty-eight—
Nine hours and three—
He nodded. He still had time. “Yes.”