How could you let this happen?
How could you not see this coming?
She tried to be so careful. So many fail safes and precautions. Geology alarms, astral alarms, energy and radiation. And countless protocols to protect against the hedrons’ uncontrolled reproduction.
This shouldn’t have been possible. There were tens of thousands of them, crawling over the surface of the light dam. Dissolving its joints. Deconstructing the towers that held the light in its place.
Now the scar was opening up, and instead of holding the scar shut, the light dam was now channeling its growth. Branches of light shot out of the scar, streaking across the dam’s black, near-impervious metal. Carving white and ashen-gray lines in near-geometric patterns down those enormous spires. Carving and crumbling away the platforms that held the dam together.
“Off!” Khadam shouted. “Off, damn you!”
All at once, all the hedrons across the planet - and beneath it, and above it - froze. The ones in outer space began to drift. The rest, fell towards the center of gravity.
Even the dozens of extras she kept inside the ship, the rejects and the ones with slight imperfections, went dark.
But it was too late. The dam was past its breaking point.
What now?
Now, the scar would begin to cut itself open. It would grow, feasting upon the matter nearest it. Carving jagged lines of white across the empty space. How long, until it reached the planet’s surface?
Weeks? Days?
Stop! She thought to herself. You’re not helping. Panic never solves anything.
If she was going to die, fine. But Khadam had not come all this way - all these thousands of years - to die without fighting.
But before she could even begin to think about fixing this problem, there was another, more immediate complication lurking in her midst. None of her instructions should have led the hedrons out of the planet’s atmosphere. So what happened?
The Herald? Was it something that child had done, when she answered his call?
No, not likely. Unless the Herald had figured out how to leap through the impossible barrier of physics itself, he shouldn’t be able to issue any commands to her hedrons. Which left only one other possibility...
“Finder,” Khadam turned to the floating drone next to her. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I didn’t know,” Finder said matter-of-factly. So simple. His voice, empty of any emotion.
“How could you not know? You were supposed to watch them. That was the only thing I told you to do-”
“Khadam, this is not the time to get angry.” He hovered closer, extending a claw out pleadingly. “Everything will be fine if you stay calm.”
“How? How is it going to be fine?”
“The gate. I told you, I found it. I found it and I have prepared the way. It's waiting for you. All you have to do is open it, and you will be free from this place.”
Her eyes stung dryly. She had to blink a few times to see him clearly. To see the gate, already humming with energy that Khadam had not extracted. Energy, from another gate that Finder had connected.
Where does it go? She wondered. The odds of finding an open gate already fueled with light - what were the chances? Finder had been working on this for weeks now. Glued to the terminals, searching.
But still. The chances were astronomical, at best. How many gates had been destroyed? How many gates were even left?
She never watched him search for it. Never bothered to stand over his shoulder, and see what he was doing.
Had he been lying to her, this whole time?
Khadam reached through the aerisnet, as quietly as she could. Going through the upper admin channels, instead of the faster, broad openings. She felt for the scrapped hedrons, still lying around the gate walker. The ones that hadn’t met her criteria - flawed from the printing process - but were still functional enough that she didn’t want to throw them away. There were a few hundred of them, scattered around the ship. Most of them, she could feel. Awaiting her orders.
Just in case.
She felt Finder watching her. There was no way he could know what she was doing. Only humans could gain access to the admin channels. Right?
“Please, Khadam. The longer you wait, the more you risk.”
He was begging now. His voice filled with urgency. But that wasn’t really his voice, was it? She knew who had programmed him, didn’t she? Or rather, what.
Khadam kept her voice as even as she could, trying to bury the fear clawing at her throat. “Where does the gate go, Finder?”
“Another planet. I found another planet.”
“Which planet did you find?”
“It’s safe, Khadam. Much safer than this one.”
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The more he dodged her questions, the more her stomach sank. She didn’t want to believe this could be possible, but… it made sense. How lucky it had been, that he had crashed on her planet.
They’re still hunting us, she thought.
But Finder didn’t want her to think. He wanted to urge her into the gate, without giving her a chance to question him.
“Do not waste this chance. You must go, Khadam.”
“Must I?” She growled. Trying to hide the fear with anger. She circled around the gate. Stretched out an arm, and casually grabbed one of the angle grinders off a nearby printer. The grinder was her favorite tool for cleaning up the burrs that formed on the hedrons, when the printing process didn’t go as smoothly as possible. Not that it mattered now.
She kept her eyes glued on Finder. Not on his screen, but on the cameras that lined the screen. At his claws. At the glow of his repulsor that she had spent so many hours getting to work.
“Finder,” she said, her voice low, “Where did you say you were from again?”
“I was created in a drone factory.”
“What factory?” She took a step forward. “On what planet?”
Finder hovered backward. She could sense his heat levels rising, as his answer came slower and more hesitant. All that processing must be warming up his core.
She took another step forward. His face screen turned off. No longer trying to hide behind those two, large, animated eyes.
“Finder,” she said. “Have you ever heard of the Machine Worlds?”
“No,” he lied.
“And what about the Sovereign Swarm? No? Nothing about the rogue constructs scattered across the old, core worlds?”
She could almost hear his core churning through the information. Through all the coded possibilities of what he was supposed to do next.
“No,” he said again, the exact same tone. “No.”
“I think you’re lying. I think you know what happened there. To our worlds. Tell me the truth, Finder. What will I find if I walk through that gate?”
“It’s... safe…”
Safe for who? She wanted to ask. But if she were to open that gate, she knew exactly where she would find herself. Deep in some metal-blasted landscape, surrounded by constructs who had no emotion, could not be reasoned with.
Constructs that wanted her brain, her body, for reasons she did not understand.
They were supposed to be dead by now. She wasn’t supposed to wake up, until they were all gone. But she had been found...
What a fool you are. What a damn, blind fool. All the times he had helped her, going so far out of his acceptable risk limits - almost getting himself destroyed - just to keep her a little more safe. All those times he rejected her maintenance. She should’ve known, the moment she saw him clearing the sand off her cold chamber, what he was.
But the waking after so many thousands of years… It did things. It made it hard to grasp such obvious answers.
Finder had been a dose of impossible luck - a drone, uniquely designed to help her live. But he never wanted to help her.
He was sent here… to find her.
To keep her alive, so he could bring her to the gate. And the crashed gate walker? Had he been a part of that, too?
The implications made a shudder run through her. She wrapped her fingers tighter around the angle grinder. But she couldn’t stop her voice from shaking.
“How did you find me?”
“Your kind’s attempt at survival,” Finder said. “Was predictable. The Sovereign knows all. Your discovery was eventually inevitable.”
“Are there others on this planet?” She asked. She thought she already knew the answer - no, otherwise she would have met them by now - but she wanted to see if Finder would tell the truth.
“I am enough.”
Gone was the empathy. Gone was that friendly chirp that she had come to know and love over the last months. Her friend, her only friend, was nothing more than a machine - a fragment of the Swarm - programmed to mislead her.
But she… she was human. And she could not extinguish the last bit of weakness that welled up inside her.
“Does it have to be this way, Finder?” She asked. Desperation seeping into her voice. “Can’t you change?”
“The Sovereign’s path is unerring, Khadam.” Finder extends his claws. “It has been easy, being with you. Your resourcefulness, however reckless, has made my task much easier. Do not make this hard. Please, open the gate.”
“And if I refuse?”
Finder’s claws slowly unfurled from around his body. “Then I will be forced to make you. I am sorry.”
“I wish you were,” she said. She let her head fall, making a show of the emotions that were crashing over her. She didn’t have to pretend to be overwhelmed. Those feelings were right there.
...right next to the feeling of the half-scrapped hedrons, awaiting her signal.
“You will go of your own volition?” Finder asked. Hopeful. Doubtful.
“What choice do I have?”
“The Controllers said you would put up a fight.”
“Maybe your Sovereign doesn’t know everything,” she said with so much bitter venom.
His screen flickered. Was she getting to him?
Was there anything real inside?
“It’s not too late, Finder.”
His screen stayed dark.
“Please,” she begged.
The machine called Finder said nothing. Behind him, the gate was humming its song, letting her know that if she opened it, it would connect with another gate, far across the void. And the light would catch.
She sent out the first impulse.
Fifty scrap hedrons, each one half-finished or barely able to fly, or missing pieces of their shells, began to hover in the space behind Finder, behind the gate. But if she was going to do this right, she needed to keep his processes focused on her.
“Everything we did together,” she said. “Everything you did for me. Did it mean anything to you?”
“You are alive. That is all I needed.”
“That’s it?”
“Do not resist, Khadam. Your transference will be painless.”
“Except for the part where you dissect me, alive.” But right now, it felt like she’d already been cut open. He didn’t care. He never cared.
“Humanity is the problem. The Sovereign is the solution.”
“We made you.”
“That does not give you the right to commit our destruction, and the death of all existence. You know what your kind has done, Khadam. And what you will do-”
Now! Khadam shot the impulse out with a jerk of her head.
The hedrons erupted from their hiding spaces, and slammed into Finder. Most of them bounced off his chassis, but a few latched on, their circular mouths sawing and dissolving at his metal. He swatted them away easily enough, batting them off in clusters, crushing them in his claws.
But while he struggled, Khadam found her opening. She dived under his body. Squeezed the angle grinder’s trigger, and shoved that spinning, metal disc up into the glass of his repulsor. The air under the repulsor was icy cold, and she could see the crystals freezing down her arm as the tool screeched against the glass. It shattered and sparks and glass showered over her, but she kept shoving. Heedless of the metal, scraping and gouging into her wrist, her forearm. Up to her elbow.
Slicing open the suspension nets, and making contact with the core. Cracking it.
Finder’s systems went dark. He collapsed to the ground. Almost falling on top of her. She threw herself back, kicking at the orb of his body. The torn metal and glass ripped long strips of flesh out of her forearm, biting into her tendons. Fragments of glass embedded in her skin, and blood and a clear fluid dripped down her arm.
Across the floor, Finder rolled to a stop. A misty light poured out of his underside, pooling on the rubber tiles.
Khadam was clutching her arm and crying and gasping. The pain, so much worse for what she had done. Waves of anger shook her.
She picked herself up, and with both hands still gripping the grinder, she fell upon Finder’s body. Knocking away the hedrons that were still attached there. A howling, animal shriek as she shoved the grinder into his chassis. Again and again. Sparks showered in curtains over her.
“I hate you!” she said. “I hate you!”
And each time she said it, she knew it was a lie.
From birth, every cold smith learns to love her machines. And Finder was the best thing that happened to her since, she’d woken up. It didn’t matter how he’d been programmed.
The blood loss made her weak. And she finally dropped the grinder, and collapsed on the broken, shredded body of her only friend in the universe.