Page 93 of Alliance
His lip lifted in a snarl that he worked hard to repress, shaking out the violent reaction. "Yes, she was one of the dolls at the Conrad. But she has living code. She's aperson,Vin. C'mon, please." He hung his head. "Please. I can't—"Live without him.
His mother's tired and broke voice gave him chills, remembering when his tadau fell to the rot.
Vin hauled him up and he winced. "Alright. Girls secure somewhere?"
Fásach nodded as Vin reset his rotary cuff with a sickening crack that made him yelp.
"Good. Let's go."
Sizzle breathed in the air, clicked his teeth together, then led them into the dense foliage.
?
Roav and Jharim barreled through the underbrush, swift and efficient. They jumped small palms and downed trees like hurdles, leapt with a burst of charge across pitfalls and ditches left by rotted, softened tree roots, following Roav's locator.
Following it to the burst of light brown skin crossing a patrol path and disappearing into the ferns.
She was right in front of them. This panting, gasping human that lookedexactlylike the doll he'd cobbled together for Councilwoman Guei's schemes. When she looked back though, her eyes were wide and intelligent. She pushed her speed and didn't look back again.
"Halt!" Jharim bellowed, imbuing his voice with authority. But the doll paid no heed, actually gaining ground on them, stretching the distance.
It was a futile exercise. Her charge was depleting abnormally fast, followed by a wake of acidic, sulfuric odors that suggested she was badly overheating. There were other thingsabout her that were strange. Critical system interruptions. Data halos that scattered as they burst through them, showing ignored update notifications and transmissions. He located her parumauxi swarm, which was holding back from live repairs, instead pushing her to run.
To runawayfrom the colony.
"Jharim," he called as they closed in. His partner withdrew the baton from his forearm and aimed it at her legs. He calculated his aim to perfection, and the doll tripped on the bar with a gasp of pain. Her ankle, knee, and cheek cracked as she fell to the ground.
He and Jharim both reduced speed to a stalking gait, but his partner picked up the baton with intent, snapping it to its full length. As he raised it above his head, she turned and shuffled back, terrified tears leaving tracks in the dirt on her face.
But she didn't ask for him to stop.
Jharim whipped his baton towards her head.
And Roav stopped him with a firm grip on his wrist. "Wait—"
A snarling yiwreni buck burst from the trees with an amber flash of fur, aiming his fully fanged jaws at Jharim's arm. The bogs split apart in shock, but neither had prepared their protocols for a confrontation with a yiwren. A venandi, yes. A bilong, yes. But not a buck in rut. His agility outmatched theirs as the balls of his feet hit the ground cover and he twisted over himself, backing Jharim against a tree. Saliva dripped from his teeth as his jaws echoed,thunk, thunk, thunk,aiming to sever Jharim's spine and rip out his throat.
Jharim's arms whirred in protest, an equal match for the yiwren's strength, and all Roav heard was the sound of Guei's auto-garrote.
"No!' he yelled.
"Please don't hurt him," the doll trembled, holding onto the roots of a tree so hard that her body quaked. Her feet propelled her backwards, but her grip stayed strong. "I said don't hurt him!" Bloody oil oozed from her nose and filled the waterline of her eyes.
It took effort for Roav to turn away from his partner. To trust that he could take care of himself, as decrepit as he was inside. He knelt next to the doll, a Roz-02 by the looks of it. She shook her head, those oily, bloody tears racing along the divot of her nostrils, pooling in a mess along the seam of her mouth.
"Take him to the col1o0n0ny. Leav3e mee-e-e-e-e. D-d-do000n't let 01101101 01100101 see-e-e-e-e Imani."
Roav realized what she was doing a split second too late, lunging for her bare arm. He yelled and grabbed her shoulder to mitigate the massive bolt of electricity that drained her battery, but even a moderate jolt would have been enough to short out her systems.
"I love-love-love—" And then her eyes glazed over, staring at the yiwren.
?
Fásach stumbled, the howling tempest of his symphony raging to a bloody shriek. He fell to the ground thinking it was up and the trees were sideways, unable to see clearly, but to know with unerring certainty that Roz was—
She was—
The biognostic he'd had in his claws decked him, and he hit the ground with a resounding crack, pain rolling through him in waves.
