Page 70 of Alliance
How had this turned to rot so quickly?
Just as the knife descended again, the blizzard gusts battered them headfirst against the tower. Gilladh’s head smashed into the cold, gunmetal siding with a crunch as Fásach bashed his thickened horns against it on instinct, as if fighting another buck for territory. The shilpakaar beneath him went limp, turning completely upside down, a stream of coppery green blood gushing out into the wind.
Fásach struggled, grasping for the ropes to keep himself from slipping off. His claws made it difficult to grip their thin diameter, but he managed, digging their points into his own palm.
He centered himself on Gil’s hips, catching his breath, staring in terrible awe at the dead operator. Their tendrils twitched, the top of their head several inches closer to their neck than it should have been.
Fásach looked up at Roz, still strapped to the ladder and limp, a trail of red crystallizing all the way down to her ankles. He took Gil’s bandolier of supplies and pulled on their rope, swinging himself closer to the ladder.
And once he was back to the perilous safety of the rungs, he swung Gilladh’s body over Svargapan Samudr’s mosaic of sea ice and cut them free.
.
23
01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101001 01101110 011001—
The echo jolted Roav from sentinel mode and his optics began recording once more. The air was still and heavy, the lights reduced to a minimal glow from their recess in the brig’s stone ceiling. Roka Lokurian slept in the center of his cell on the floor, a pillow draped over his eyes while his remaining mandible vibrated in slumber.
Roav tested the joints of his fingers, curling one slowly, then the next.
The transmission had said,I'm comin—
He searched for that binary ping again to no avail, hoping for an answer to whatever it was. Unease tightened his joints as he cast a wide net, focused on evading the colony's security system as he sent out his own feeler transmissions.
"Roav," Jharim called, sitting up from his recline against the rough wall.
He returned to himself with a blink of light in his lenses and got to his feet.
"Another?" the older bog asked. Roav nodded, glancing uneasily at the Roz-01 doll.
"The signature was familiar but—"
"Not."
Roav vented stale air from his thoracic cavity as he stood. "Correct." Jharim didn't finish his sentence this time, though Roav knew his partner would never utter this particular deduction. "It feels...human."
Predictably, Jharim scoffed, leaning back once more. "Impossible."
Roav bristled regardless. "It's true."
They stared off, Jharim's hands dangling off his bent knees. "I will humor your analysis. Tell me why."
"Every doll has used the same phrase to orient themselves." He put his fingers up in a curve, a very human gesture he knew would appeal to Jharim. "Seeking entry coordinates."
"But this one didn't?"
Roav dropped his hands. "It said, 'I'm coming.'" Jharim's stony expression opened in surprise, and Roav latched onto it. "And the rate was increased, as if—"
"The doll was rushed."
"Or excited," Roav concurred.“It had personality.”
Jharim got to his feet. His core processor whirred as he stretched his joints, lubricating them with motor oil. He switched to quantum speech, one lens focused on Roav as he spoke while the others twisted and slid about his head, examining the bars that held them captive.
We need to escape our cell.
Roav joined him with a sense of purpose. Jharim was right. They could no longer abide by the authority of the arms master and maintain the ruse that they were abiding by the laws of Unity.
