Khadam had gone through hundreds of gates in her lifetime, but the sudden change in time always caught her off guard. Here on Cyre, it was early morning on Cyre, and her body was screaming at her: how long since you slept? Truly slept? Even the shivers of trepidation running through her body weren’t enough to keep her all alert.
She impulsed a command to her implants: Wake me up. And a surge of stimulants coursed through her veins, locking everything into sharp focus.
Behind her, pottery crashed, and someone screamed.
She turned to see a cyran woman, whose white skirts were now dripping red wine. The two pots she had been carrying lay shattered at her feet, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were wide, and firmly fixed on Khadam.
There were few merchants and tradespeople at this time, but all stopped their work and stared open-mouthed at the gate. They shouted. They ran to nowhere, or stood in stunned silence, their eyes wide with fear. Someone was crying, and dragging his fingers across his scaly scalp as if he could not comprehend her existence.
“I knew they weren’t expecting us,” Khadam said over her shoulder. “But isn’t this a little excessive?”
“Since the founding of Cyre, the gates have only opened at certain times. It was the Emperor’s decree. It seems, by coming here off season, we have broken the truth.”
The open-air bazaar was mostly empty at this time, a scattered forest of multicolored tents and banners and merchant’s tables set up around the edges of the gate. But judging by the cyrans’ reactions, Khadam didn’t think it would be long before this place would be swarming.
Khadam kicked the ground, propelling her bike forward off the gate. Careful not to freeze her foot to the metal disc, as it was still warming after its most recent use. She lifted her mask, so the cyrans could see she was human, and shouted at her. “Is the Emperor here?”
That was too much for the woman with the wine-stained skirts. She collapsed to the ground, prostrating herself, heedless of the shattered clay that must be digging into her scales as she stretched out her hands and groveled before Khadam. Muttering a feverish phrase over and over.
Khadam turned back to Laykis, who was perched quiet on the back of her bike. “What is she saying?”
“She’s praying.”
“What about?”
“To you. Look, and see how they worship you.” Laykis pointed over Khadam’s shoulder, at the growing ring of cyrans. They dropped their suitcases, their tools, their food or coins, and lay on the ground before her. All chanting at her.
So, it would always be like this. Everywhere she went. No wonder the destroyer walked through this place, untouched. Even the constructs, all rust and rickety joints, staggered to a halt. Their eyes fixed upon her, glowing with reverent awe.
Khadam tried to ignore them all, as she took in her bearings.
The constructs were relatively polished, if lacking in upgrades. But the buildings, the architecture and infrastructure on Cyre was a work of art. Where everything in the Cauldron had a homemade feel to it, this place had the sense of masterwork. Everywhere, humanoid statues made of curving, lifelike marble danced through the gardens or twisted over the streets. Multi-story murals painted across the facades of immense white buildings. Even the brickwork of the street was flawless and satisfying to gaze upon.
At the end of one road, an enormous domed building sat like some massive beast, slumbering in the middle of the valley. Khadam impulsed her ocular implants to telescope forward, so she could see the masterpiece statues and gold-leafing of its highest crenellations. No one would ever see such detail from down here, not with mere organic eyes.
Ornately twisting trees, some hanging with small green fruits, others with twisting limbs that grew in a pleasing mesh of bark and leaf, lined the avenues, and fountains played in the parks. There were caretaker constructs walking through the greenery, cleaning, pruning, cultivating life for the cyrans, and in some places, it looked like the buildings were growing up from these lush gardens.
Not even the grow rooms in Rodeiro’s station ever shone this bright. Was this the Emperor’s will, that his city should be a paradise? Why would an AI go to such lengths to create such beauty?
Perhaps it was not him at all. Perhaps that was just the way cyrans wanted it.
A beautiful distraction. That’s all. Khadam turned in the saddle, “I don’t suppose you know where he is.”
Laykis extended an arm over Khadam’s shoulder, pointing up at the grass-covered hills.
They were noticeably empty of buildings. Arid brush dotted the landscape, and stone ramps switched back and forth as they climbed to the crest of the central hill, where an enormous statue of a man sat in a throne. A human man.
“Huh,” Khadam said. “Someone thinks they’re special. Surprised he didn’t name the city after himself.”
“How do you know he didn’t?” Laykis answered.
“Did he?” Khadam spun around, suddenly worried the android had been holding back information. That this was all a trap.
“I have no idea,” Laykis said flatly, “There was no record of his name in the Unfinished Book. Nor did I encounter him until I came to Cyre.”
“Oh,” Khadam exhaled, trying to let go of her jitters. You’re jumping at shadows now.
Great columns, crawling with ivy, held up the massive throne. The statue was mostly stone, though she caught glimpses of metal and precious leaf throughout. His mouth was stone, lined with silver, and pressed into a tight line, as if deep in thought. The metallic mask covered the rest, though it looked nothing like Laykis’s. Kirine had tried to describe the mask, but now that she saw it with her own eyes, she thought it looked more like a helmet melded into his skull. If, indeed, this statue was an accurate representation of the Emperor himself, she was all but certain now of what he was. Nothing more than a rogue AI, who had long escaped his original purpose.
More cyrans poured into the bazaar, and not just cyrans now. Xenos of too many shapes, scales and fur and boneless arms and beaks, coming to see the gate that should not have opened. They came out from the buildings, from the shops and tents, rubbing their faces and blinking away the sun. Most of them fell to their knees when they saw her. All kept their distance. Even the constructs were hesitant to approach, though their eyes lit up like hundreds of pale fireflies in the morning glow.
The rhythmic clomping of boots echoed against the buildings.
“Khadam,” Laykis’s voice warned.
“I hear them.” With her armor’s seismic sensors pinging the landscape, she could feel them as they cleared a path through the gathering crowds. Soldiers, with rifles slung over their shoulders, marched swiftly up one of the main avenues that intersected the gate. One of their officers was blowing commands with a whistle, urging them to pick up the pace.
“Twenty of them,” she said. “And another patrol coming from our left.”
“Are you going to kill them?”
“What? No. Why would I do that?”
“They have guns.”
“So?”
“And you spent the last three weeks arming yourself with an arsenal of machines, drones, energy weapons, and I don’t know what else. Enough to erase an army and half this city. Not to mention the ballistics you inserted in my armor.”
“Ah,” Khadam coughed awkwardly. “I thought you wouldn’t notice those.”
“I do not approve. I am a daughter of Tython. We are not warriors.”
Khadam wasn’t so sure about that. She had seen Laykis’s internal workings, had seen first-hand the augments that Laykis had built into herself, before her fall. Any machine that could move that fast, with that much force…
“No, I’m not going to kill them, okay? I mean, unless they shoot first.”
“You don’t know cyrans very well then, do you?”
“How about,” Khadam flicked down the visor of her helmet, “We don’t give them the chance then. Hold on.”
“What-” Laykis started to say, when Khadam wrenched the throttle. The bike lurched, flinging itself forward with a banshee’s scream. It speared the air above the growing crowds. The bike’s repulsors kept her above street level, but their downward force was enough to flatten tents and snap the frailest wooden beams. She dodged and weaved, rocking the bike back and forth to avoid crushing people below. A few cyrans jumped out of the way at the wrong time, and got knocked against a wall.
Others simply stood and stared up, their mouths agape in mute wonder. One construct, an old four-legged drudge, was too slow to move out of her way, so she was forced to ramp off of it, cringing as its metal joints buckled and popped. But she was already sailing past. The twinge of guilt she felt in her chest for hurting such a harmless machine was quickly swallowed by the adrenaline of zipping through the broad avenue towards the hills and the Emperor.
The people and the statues, the columns and the constructs, streetlamps and fruiting trees, all blurred in the corners of her vision and fell away as the hill swelled ahead. Khadam stood on the bike’s footpegs and jerked the bike up underneath her, catching just enough air to tilt the bike up, and sailed over the olive scrub and waves of grass. And when they crested the hill, and her bike sailed up into the sky, she loosed a dizzying laugh.
Almost makes you envy the avians, she thought. They get to fly whenever they want. And for a brief moment, as her bike arced through the air over the crest of the hill, she wanted to forget why she was here. To remember what it was to be just her.
She came down with a whumpf, the repulsors spraying grass and clouds of dirt behind her. The shadow of the Emperor’s statue loomed over everything. Grim-faced and serious. She slowed as all that exhilaration drain out of her.
“You still with me?” she shouted back to Laykis, who was all but clinging to the bike.
“I have been on safer rides,” the android answered flatly, her voice chopped up by the wind. This high over the city, the ocean breeze fought with her bike, trying to push her off course.
Instead of going straight towards the statue, she drew a wide loop around the stone foundations of his mighty aspect. Letting her sensors ping the stone, scanning for defenses or unwanted surprises.
Nothing. Not even a magshield. Only stone, and structural metal, exactly what you’d expect to find from such a colossal monument. She paused at the back, intrigued to find that beautifully ornate stone murals crawled up even on this side of the throne, where no one would ever see them. Marble images of cyrans with glittering scales and trees with gold-leafed branches. A silver-masked figure emerging from a forest, towering over the cyrans. An origin story, perhaps.
Is this the Emperor’s work? Or do the cyrans just take this much pride in their craft? For some reason, she found herself hoping it was the latter.
Before she circled back to the front, she ran one last diagnostic. Checking her shoulder gear, her exosuit and the arm- and leg-sleeves, the satchels hanging from her waist full of drones, and the bikes launchers and beams, running down the chassis. Even the mechanical joints buried in her organics reported nominal, something they hadn’t done since she first crawled out of the cryochamber back on that nameless planet.
She would never be more ready.
The flat stone courtyard in front of the Emperor’s statue was ringed with a waist-high stone wall. She had thought the figure standing next to the wall, dwarfing it, was just another kind of statue.
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Indeed, he made no motion to recognize her as she drove the bike over the wall, and idled in the center of the courtyard. His great hands were clasped behind his back. His shoulders, all rolling muscle and sinew, were stock still, as he let the wind wash over him, and he lorded over his city, and gazed down at the crystal blue sea, cut with slivers of white waves.
The sun was smaller here than on Gaiam, or at least more distant. Still, his mask gleamed in the sunlight.
It wasn’t a mask, so much as the top half of a skull, sunken into flesh, a clear division running down his cheekbones and just under his nose. The mask was all asymmetric electronics and sensors and nodes whose purpose she could only guess at. Ribbing ran up one temple, and she thought she could see a cluster of tiny command modules blinking on the side of his scalp. Wires, thick and tangled, rose from the back of his head, and fed back down into his spinal column.
Khadam sighed with relief. She had been right. However much this being wanted to appear human, he was nothing more than a machine, wearing an oversized, vat-grown body. Still, he was impressive to look at, to think that such a specimen had been preserved for all these thousands of years.
Khadam had made it this far only with years of planning and the work of the entire clan.
Though the Emperor did not look at her, Khadam was certain he was watching her. Probably had eyes on me the moment I came through the gate.
She stalled her bike, and unsaddled herself. Her new armor weighed over a ton, but thanks to all the automation controls, she felt lighter than air. So much better than walking with just her own skin. There was power, in every movement, even the grip of her fingers. Laykis followed her off the bike, and together they approached, their feet clanking on the stones.
Khadam had to catch her breath, to will her heart to slow. Poire was too young to know of the old world. The Oracle, too empty.
But this was the first time she would meet someone who remembered the way things were. Another flutter in her stomach as her biological nerves threatened to overwhelm her. She impulsed a command to her hormonal implants, and felt the mechanical clicking in her chest and her head. Holding back. Preparing to flood her system, to make her heart work harder, her lungs to take in more air.
Not yet. First, she would try talking. Not that she had ever been very good at that. But that wasn’t supposed to matter, here at the end of humanity. That’s why they sent me.
Before she could decide what to say, the Emperor spoke without looking at her, “I know why you have come.”
A rich, human voice, governed by the machine on his head. No. That machine is him, and the body is nothing but a puppet.
“You seek answers, Khadam.”
She froze at the sound of her name. A moment of panic. How does he know who I am?
The android? Did she do this?
Is this the trap I should have seen?
No, wait. Poire and him have been talking. She ground her teeth, steeling herself. Remembering her purpose.
“I already have my answers,” Khadam said. “I seek the Herald of Ruin.”
“Such a grand title, for such a naive child,” The Emperor said. “He was younger than you thought he would be, wasn’t he? I thought he might’ve been born after Seedfall, but we both know that’s impossible.” And here, the mountain of flesh that called itself Emperor turned to look at her. “Don’t we, Khadam?”
So great was his height, his presence, that it seemed the whole world revolved as he moved. The machinery in that mask must be compact, for something so powerful. But he was still just a machine.
A machine, like any other. Which meant she held every advantage. Surely, he must know that.
“When he came to me,” the Emperor said, “I was surprised how malleable he was. Clay in the potter’s hands, if I may use an ancient adage. I had not seen a child for so many millenia. I laughed to see him. To think this was the one you feared so greatly.”
Khadam noted how he said ‘you,’ and not ‘we.’ But that only made sense. Machines don’t fear.
Still, the Emperor should have known better.
“But then,” the Emperor continued, “My Scar reacted so quickly to him. He was on Cyre for only a few short days before it began to crack.”
“Where is he? Why did you let him go?”
“Ah, youth. So hasty, so hungry for answers right now. You are not far off from his age, are you? What are you, then? Two? Three hundred years old?”
“That is not so young for some,” she said.
“Ah, but to me… well, you are barely out of the cradle. You have no understanding of the meaning of patience.”
“Where is he?” she asked again. Ignoring his sleight. Rodeiro had used the same trick as leverage against her, a thousand times and more. When you get to be my age, perhaps you will understand… She had loved Rodeiro. Feared him, for his temper. Sought to emulate his undying zeal in her every action. But the one thing she hated about him was how he always held his age over her, as if that actually changed anything between them. As if she was less, because she had weathered fewer years.
Of course, Rodeiro knew that about her. Used it to mold her, back when she was just as naive as Poire. It made her work harder to prove him wrong. To prove that she was better than he could ever be. That she could outrank the master, and soon.
But the Emperor was not her mentor. And instead of answering her question, he turned to Laykis and offered a slight bow.
“Tython,” he said, his voice emulating respect.
Laykis bowed back, machine to machine. Khadam wanted to see conspiracy in her choice. Wanted to see how Laykis must be weaving some kind of trap for her. But there was nothing there. Just an android, returning civility with politeness of her own.
Do they really not know? Or do they just not care?
Ruin comes for us all. Human or not, there will be nothing if Poire is allowed to live. Whether he wishes it or not.
“Emperor, time runs short. Where is he?”
His gaze was a weight upon her, “You will not have him, cold smith.” That last he said with such contempt that Khadam’s mind went blank for a brief moment. Such hatred… from a machine.
And what could he possibly have against an engineer like her?
Khadam clenched her fists, warming up the charges in her wrists. All the motors in her armor silently spinning to life.
“Khadam,” Laykis warned. “We came to talk.”
“You may have forgotten what you are,” Khadam pointed a finger at him, “But you were built to serve us, machine.”
At that, the Emperor’s lips cracked into a brilliant, ferocious smile. He was laughing at her. It made the hair on the back of her neck rise. Her heart clicked up another notch, her myriad implants warning her of a sharp rise in stress and pressure. And, as always, Rodeiro’s voice in the back of her mind. Too hasty. Too rushed, Khadam.
Khadam took a steadying breath of her helmet’s recycled air. Lifted her chin, trying to match the Emperor’s impenetrable gaze with her own.
“You should know how important this is. As long as he lives, all existence is in danger. I have come to save us.”
“You have come to do what your kind always does: to tear down my work, again. Cold smiths,” he almost spat it this time. “Will you never see how wrong you are? Stubborn and myopic. Always so certain you’re right, always so sure that it is either black or white. I suppose that makes you good at working with simple things. Constructs. Bots. And other crude machines. Who sent you here, clan dweller? Which old fool made you waste your life? Was it Kasmund? Sarcian? Or that madman, Gui?”
Khadam tinted her mask. Refusing to let him see even the slightest expression on her face, as he insulted the last bastions of the cold smithing clans. She would not say a word about Rodeiro, lest he had a way to use his name against her.
“I see,” he said, as if he could read her thoughts anyway. “You should have stayed with the avians, and not meddled with things you are too blind to understand. But, if I’m honest, I am glad you came.”
“Why is that?”
The Emperor’s smile quirked, “In case he dies. It’s always nice to have a backup.”
Her head was spinning with too many questions. Was he with humanity, or against? Was he a believer, or not? Did he not know what was coming?
“I have to kill him,” she said.
“You will do no such thing.”
“Do you not know of the visions? Of what is to come? I am not permitted to carry out my duty, he will catalyze the final change. Your Scar is nothing compared to what he will do.”
Disappointment cracked the Emperor’s smile. “You can’t be serious.”
“You cannot deny the truth.”
“Perhaps I gave Poire too little credit,” the Emperor said, and for an instant, she thought maybe he was reconsidering his position…
“I thought Poire was naive. But even he questioned such an obvious deception. At least he asked questions. Are you so simple-minded, cold smith? Have you never once been lied to in all your life?”
“Billions of us saw it. All humanity-”
“Does that make it so?” His lips tightened, a flash of anger. “When has belief made anything true?”
“The disease has killed us.”
“No,” he growled. “You killed us. You, and all your damned collectives. The cold smith clans, the biologists, the fanatics and the architects. Never should have believed a word from the Prophet’s mouth, but you did. All of you fell for it. You even taught the machines to fear the change, and see where that got you? The Swarm. That was your doing.”
“We had no way of knowing the Swarm-”
“Exactly.”
“We tried to fix it.”
“And how did that go?”
“I am trying to save us,” she shouted, the motors in her sleeves whining as her hands balled into fists. She could feel Laykis’s agitation, but ignored her.
“No, cold smith. You cling to your failures, too blind to understand. You are a drowning animal, you climb upon your siblings, believing that will save you. Have you ever wondered where the visions came from? Have you ever wondered why it just so happened to be him?”
“Of course I have. But that doesn’t matter-”
“It’s the only thing that matters,” he took a step towards her, and the stones shuddered under her feet. Two alarms started blinking in her visor, warning her of the Emperor’s approach. She took a step back, priming her heart, her mind. Her armor.
“Poire is nothing,” The Emperor said. “A scapegoat. An excuse. And you and your kind have fallen for it. You have come these ten thousand years, so certain you were right. Never once did you think you could be wrong. That was always your problem, you clan dwellers.”
Rodeiro had warned her of this. A thousand times, he had told her there would be obstacles in her path that would make her doubt. Be firm, Khadam. All humanity depends on you. Worry about the protocols after it’s done.
And look how far it had gotten her. Look how close she was to finishing her mission.
But no matter how firm she held, there was always that other voice. The one that sounded most like her. What if it doesn’t work?
What if we’re wrong?
It had been easy to ignore, when the destroyer was just a face, floating in her dreams. Harder, then, once she met the Herald.
But this machine, with all his twisted anger, his corrupted personality, only made it easier for her to stand firm. If she had to, she would make him bend to her whim, like all machines did.
“I will not ask again,” Khadam said, putting the weight of her impulse into the question: “Where is he?”
The Emperor’s mouth twitched. A set of valves on the top of his mask opened, and steamed off some invisible gas. Khadam tried to analyze it, but was too late.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t breathing his air.
“Answer me, machine.”
He laughed again. “I do like your spirit. Time will tell if it can be made to serve a better use.”
He began to walk towards her, too swift for a body that size. The weight of his armored boot thudding against the stones. Khadam’s implants blared alarms at her, but she silenced them. Letting her heart click up, and priming the myriad weapons on her person (and her bike).
“You will stop!” she shouted, adding all her will to that impulse.
But he only deepened his grin. And took another step, defying her command.
Khadam craned her neck to look up at him, at those unnatural, vat-grown muscles. At that face, staring down from those heights. She focused all her will on that mask.
“Override!” She felt the command go out, but nothing came back. Corrupted, indeed.
So this machine had broken himself, shirked all the rules of the flow. Diplomacy had failed. And the regulations too, it seemed.
Khadam flexed the many fingers of her exosleeves. Steeled her thighs, getting ready to jump. A series of threatening clicks, as the hidden slots on her shoulders, her torso and her ribs, on the tops of her thighs, and all over her bike popped up. Missiles, drones, and more at the ready.
“Last chance,” Khadam said.
“You know,” he said flippantly, as if she was nothing more than a gnat. “Sen said the same thing to me, once. Before she had me imprisoned.”
Sen.
The name rang a bell in the back of her mind, too quiet for her to hear.
But two shadows loomed over her. The Emperor, and his statue, both.
“Well,” his voice rumbled, seemed to vibrate the very air around her. “I am curious to see what your clans have been up to, all those years I was gone. Show me.”
So casual. So easy. He held his arms out, smiling at her. As if she was only a child, crying on the floor.
Laykis was trying to gain her attention. “Khadam, please. This isn’t necessary-”
“Show me!” he roared. And he threw himself at her.
Khadam’s nostrils flared. Her wings flicked open, and the repulsors bloomed to life, throwing her back and up into the air. Out of his reach.
She sent an impulse. All the slots in her armor fired. All the beams on her bike pulsed. A scream of non-lethal projectiles and EM waves and jammers, smacking into the Emperor’s body. She was screaming, too. A dizzying array of kinetic and magnetic energy, and a whole ocean of randomization encrypters that would break any kind of code floating through the air. Everything. All at once.
The Emperor froze in midstride. His body peppered with rubberized flack, that flawless bronze skin tearing open. His head fell back, showing only the chiseled smoothness of his jaw and the bulging muscles of his neck straining against a sudden weight. Even Laykis, who was standing off to the side, collapsed in a heap on the ground, though her new armor should protect her core.
It worked.
It worked.
Was it too much? Had she fried some vital part of him? She had only wanted to force him back, to force a reset or a shutdown, to show him that he was hopeless against her-
A boom of laughter. He was clutching at his stomach, the bronzed breastplate (now scoured from her projectiles) shaking as he laughed. =
“An AI?” he said. “You really thought I was just another AI?”
His laughter raked against her ears.
“Then what are you?” Khadam spoke through clenched teeth. “You cannot be human.”
“Why not?” he smiled at her. “You cold smiths. You clan dwellers. It’s all black and white to you, isn’t it?”
Khadam sank back to the courtyard, far out of the Emperor’s reach. She unclipped both her satchels, dumping their contents. A thousand drones poured out, and bulleted towards him like marble-sized buckshot. They opened up, electricity snapping between them, forming a web of lightning that would wrap around him and overload his systems.
The Emperor did not even flinch. He held out his hand, as if welcoming the drones. And Khadam could only watch in horror as they slowed, joined back together, and nestled in his open palm, as if they had always belonged to him. “Well, these are new. Decent craftwork, too. But don’t tell me that’s everything.”
She growled her frustration, and kicked back, unfolding the thin wings on her shoulders, and igniting her personal repulsors. At the same time, a dozen more compartments opened on her bike, and two more on her torso. Eighteen ballistics, and two plasmatics, and a single gravitas beam at the ready. The clicking, rattling, scraping sound of all her armaments at the ready. Beeping, chirping, and shouting their alarms. And just in case, she reached around, and pulled out one of the cubes…
She fired her repulsors, and her feet left the ground.
The whine of the repulsors cut out. She smacked against the stones, all her armor impossibly heavy. All the motors frozen. Her bike tipped over and metal cracked against the stone as it dropped to the ground. And all her internal augments went offline.
Even her heart stopped ticking.
Her vision shrank.
How?
How did I fail?
She felt the ground rumble as he walked to her. Felt his presence, leaning over her.
“I see that nothing has changed, cold smith. Your kind was always blind to what could have been.”
“You’re not human,” she struggled to speak, her voice slurred and thin, as even the implants in her throat failed.
“No,” he said. “I am the next step.”