Six

SHANNON’S LOG

APRIL 7, 05:25 Mountain Daylight Time

I don’t know if I can do this.

Okay. General Hawke ordered me to keep a log. Whenever I get a free moment, I’m supposed to record my observations and store them in my memory files. I guess the idea is that we’ll review my notes at the end of the mission, so we can figure out what we could’ve done better. Assuming, of course, we actually return from the mission.

I’m supposed to record all the facts, so here they are. Four Pioneers, including myself, stand in the cargo hold of a C-17 transport jet. Three hours ago we took off from Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, and now we’re 40,000 feet above Canada, flying on a course that’ll take us over Greenland and Norway before we arrive at Russia’s Saratov District. The official records of the flight have been falsified to deceive Sigma; in the communications between the Air Force pilots and the ground controllers, our cargo is identified as nine hundred cartons of meal rations, all destined for the small army of American advisers who are assisting the Russian troops outside Tatishchevo Missile Base. There are a dozen other C-17s flying back and forth between the United States and Russia right now. Our hope is that Sigma will see nothing unusual about our flight and therefore won’t try to shoot us down.

General Hawke is on the plane too, along with thirty of his soldiers. They’re bustling around the cargo hold, making final adjustments to the equipment we brought along for the mission. The Raven drones are packed in crates at the back of the C-17, and we also have tons of spare parts and extra neuromorphic control units. Hawke’s team includes plenty of technical experts, but Tom Armstrong isn’t here. He decided to stay with Adam and Zia at Pioneer Base.

I’m sorry. I know I’m supposed to stick to the facts, but I have to add a personal note. I hated leaving Adam behind. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I still don’t know why he shoved Hawke against the wall—the general wouldn’t tell us the details—but I can’t believe it was all Adam’s fault. For one thing, it happened right after Zia almost killed him. Under those circumstances, can you really blame him for getting upset? And then there’s the upcoming battle to think of. Defeating Sigma is so important that it seems crazy to deprive ourselves of one of our Pioneers just because he gave the general a shove. But Hawke doesn’t see it that way.

On the other hand, I’m glad Zia isn’t with us. I’ll never forget how she went after Adam with her blowtorch. I was on the other side of the gym, in the middle of transferring from Pioneer 4 to 4A, when Zia attacked him. By the time I was fully transferred to 4A, she’d already cut through the armor around his circuits. It was horrifying. And the worst part was that I couldn’t do anything about it. I ran as fast as I could, but I was more than a hundred feet away, and I knew I’d never get there in time.

I thought Adam was as good as dead, and because my circuits are so fast, I started imagining my life without him, even while I was still racing across the gym. It was like how I felt right after I became a Pioneer, like my heart had just been ripped out of me. The emotion flooded my circuits as I grabbed Zia and wrenched the blowtorch off her arm. And it kept torturing me even after Pioneer 1A miraculously rose to its footpads. I thought, That can’t be Adam. He’s already gone.

Okay, this is getting a little too personal. Stick to the facts, Shannon.

An hour after the fight in the gym, Hawke announced that Zia and Adam wouldn’t be allowed to come with us to Russia. Hawke’s soldiers had confined both Pioneers to their quarters, and each faced serious charges under the Code of Military Justice—attempted murder for Zia, and assault of a superior officer for Adam. Neither could participate in the mission, Hawke said, because they couldn’t be trusted to follow orders and their lack of discipline would endanger everyone. Then he told the remaining Pioneers that their new commander would be Shannon Gibbs.

Let me be clear: I didn’t want to be commander. I told Hawke to pick DeShawn instead. But he argued that I was the best choice to lead the Pioneers because I seemed to have a firm grip on my emotions. He said emotions work differently in an electronic mind. Because our circuits generate thoughts so swiftly, it’s easy for anger or fear or sadness to build up to intolerable levels. That’s why Zia and Adam couldn’t restrain their violent impulses. So it was necessary to select a commander who could control her feelings.

I still didn’t think I was the best choice, but Hawke wouldn’t take no for an answer. In the end I gave in, but I made him agree to one condition. I insisted on visiting Adam before we left Pioneer Base.

When I went to his room I saw two soldiers standing outside his door. There were two more soldiers inside the room, each carrying an M16 rifle equipped with a grenade launcher. But there wasn’t a need for even one guard, because Pioneer 1A had been stripped. Adam’s arms and legs had been detached from his torso, which rested on its base in the center of the room. He still had his camera and his other sensors, but the antenna had been removed from his turret to prevent him from transferring to another machine. The soldiers carrying M16s stood on either side of his torso, and they raised their rifles as I approached. They said I couldn’t come any closer. I had to stand at least ten feet away from “the prisoner.”

So I stood there, exactly ten feet away, and said, “Adam, what happened?” But he didn’t answer. I said, “Come on, talk to me. I want to help,” but he still didn’t respond. I waited several seconds, getting more and more anxious, and then I said, “Adam, I can’t stay long. In ten minutes we’re leaving for Russia.”

After a moment I heard a strange noise come out of his speakers. It sounded like he was choking, which of course made no sense. Then I realized Adam was doing something no Pioneer had done before.

He was crying.

WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM

Emergency Communications Transcript

04/07/18, 07:49:27 EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD): Sir, we’ve confirmed the earlier reports. There’s been an accidental launch at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

National Security Adviser (NSA): Wait a second. A Minuteman launch?

NORAD: That’s correct, sir. A Minuteman III ballistic missile. It launched from silo N-04 three minutes ago.

NSA: Holy… (inaudible). How did it happen?

NORAD: The officers at Minot say they lost control of the silo. It went off the grid and stopped responding to their commands. Then the countdown started on its own. Without authorization.

NSA: No. That’s impossible.

NORAD: You’re right, sir. It shouldn’t have happened. But the Minuteman is gone. It’s in flight.

NSA: What warhead is it carrying? The W87?

NORAD: No, sir, this missile is a bunker-buster. It’s carrying the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator.

NSA: You mean the new model? The one designed to hit the underground bases in Iran?

NORAD: That’s correct, sir. It burrows a hundred feet into the ground before triggering its nuclear warhead.

NSA: But the nuke isn’t armed, right? You can’t arm it without the authentication code from the President.

NORAD: At this point, sir, I don’t think we can make any assumptions. It looks like someone hacked into the electronics at the launch silo. There’s a chance they may have tampered with the authentication system too.

NSA: No, no, this can’t… Where’s the missile going? Are you tracking it on radar?

NORAD: It’s heading southwest from Minot, but it’s climbing more steeply than it’s supposed to. Judging from the radar track, it looks like it’ll reach the top of its trajectory soon and come down within a thousand miles of the launch point.

NSA: My God. It’s going to hit inside the United States?

NORAD: Yes, sir. Southwestern Colorado.

CHAPTER 17

It’s the worst night of my life. I’m feeling vicious regret.

Twelve hours ago Hawke’s soldiers took away my arms and legs. They removed my antenna too, unscrewing it from my turret. Now I’m stuck here in my bedroom with nothing to do but think about all the mistakes I’ve made. I try to distract myself by observing the two soldiers who are guarding me, but they just stand there on either side of my stripped torso, cradling their assault rifles. Neither has said a word since they came on duty.

The last person who spoke to me was my father. He came into my room right after Shannon left, while my speakers were still wailing. I couldn’t stop crying no matter how hard I tried, and the sobs just got louder when I saw Dad. As he rushed through the doorway, one of the soldiers yelled, “Stand back, sir!” but Dad ran toward me anyway and threw his arms around my torso. I couldn’t feel his embrace—my armor has no tactile sensors—but I heard him murmur, “I’m so sorry.”

Meanwhile, the soldiers raised their rifles and pointed them at us. I wanted to rip the guns out of their hands, but all I could do was turn up the volume of my speakers and shout, “DON’T SHOOT!” Then two more soldiers rushed into the room and dragged Dad away, which was terrible to see but probably safer for both of us. Once he was gone, the other soldiers resumed their guard duty, giving me evil looks as they lowered their rifles.

I check my internal clock: it’s 5:51 a.m. General Hawke and the other Pioneers must be in the C-17 by now. They’re probably flying over the Canadian Arctic, well on their way to Russia. Another surge of regret cuts through my circuits. I should be with them. I should be on that plane too. I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t stop. Why did I shove Hawke like that? Why did I push him so hard?

I focus my camera on the walls, looking for any kind of distraction, but the first thing I see is the Super Bowl poster with the photo of Ryan and me. He was my best friend, my oldest friend. And Sigma killed him. Then I see the poster with the three drawings of Brittany. What does “I HAVE BRITTANY” mean? Did Sigma hire someone to kidnap her? And if she’s still alive, where is she?

This isn’t working. I have to think of something else. I rummage through my memory files, viewing random images from my past, trying like crazy to forget the present. Then I notice a folder that’s separate from the others. These are Zia’s memories, the ones I observed and copied while I was inside her circuits. Aside from the memo that mentioned Ryan and Brittany, I haven’t examined these memories yet, mostly because I don’t want to think about Zia. I assume she’s in her own room right now, armless and legless and under guard just like me. She’s probably just as miserable too, but I don’t feel any sympathy for her. I should delete my copies of her memories, forget about her entirely.

But something’s bothering me, a nagging question. I want to know how Zia found that memo from the National Security Adviser. Hawke swore he didn’t show it to her, but should I believe him? Maybe the answer’s in that folder.

So I dive into Zia’s memories again and retrieve the image of the memo. It’s linked to an unusually large batch of older memories, from more than ten years ago. These are scenes from Zia’s early childhood, blurry and distant and dimly remembered. I see her father, a swarthy man in an Army captain’s uniform. Then I see her mother, a beautiful woman wearing a head scarf. And then, to my surprise, I see a youthful, dark-haired version of General Hawke. He’s standing next to Zia’s parents at a dusty Army base in the desert. All three are smiling and looking down at Zia. Despite the heat and dust, the little girl is happy.

This is a powerful memory, linked to hundreds of Zia’s files, and as I follow the connections I find something even more surprising. One of the links loops back to her recent memories, to a sequence of images showing Hawke’s office in Pioneer Base. In these images, though, the general is absent. Zia is alone in his office with a stolen key in her steel hand. She goes to the file cabinet and unlocks the top drawer. Then she leafs through the papers there, all the memos written by Hawke and the National Security Adviser. But they’re not what she’s looking for. She reads the memos, but she isn’t really interested in me or Ryan or Brittany. She’s looking for information about her own past, not mine. She suspects that Hawke is keeping a secret from her, about his relationship with her mother and father.

I stop viewing Zia’s memories. Something unexpected has happened: I feel sorry for her. It’s a little strange to feel sorry for someone who just tried to kill me, but I can’t help it. Her memories show a different side of her. She’s just as confused as the rest of us.

I’m still thinking about Zia when another unexpected thing happens. My acoustic sensor picks up a low thud that shakes the ceiling of my room. Then a colossal tremor rocks Pioneer Base, tilting the floor and knocking over my torso. The walls buckle and the ceiling caves in, and tons of steel and concrete come raining down.

Oh God! What’s happening?

The collapse is so sudden that the soldiers don’t even have time to scream. A steel beam slams into one of them, and a slab of concrete crushes the other. Another slab plummets toward me, and there’s nothing I can do but watch it fall. My circuits pulse with terror. No, no, NO!

Luckily, the falling concrete glances off my torso. My armor gets dinged and dented, but it protects the control unit and batteries inside.

By the time the debris stops falling, I’m nearly buried in it. My turret is free, though, and I can move my camera. Okay, calm down. Take it one step at a time. All the lights are out, so I switch my camera to infrared, which allows me to view the rubble by its temperature—cold steel, warm concrete, cool plaster. The walls and ceiling of my room are gone, smashed to bits. Now I’m at the bottom of a cavernous space, at least fifty feet high and a hundred feet wide. Panning my camera, I see wreckage everywhere. The soldiers who were guarding me are mashed in the rubble, their bodies already cooling.

Earthquake, I think. It must’ve been an earthquake. Reaching into my memory files, I retrieve a map of Pioneer Base and locate Dad’s room, about a hundred feet from mine. Raising the volume of my speakers as high as it can go, I yell, “DAD! CAN YOU HEAR ME?” then listen carefully for an answering shout.

My acoustic sensor picks up nothing but the sounds of settling debris. Then I get a signal from another instrument in my sensor array, my Geiger counter. It’s reporting high levels of gamma-ray radiation.

No. It’s a mistake. The sensor must be broken.

But when I check the Geiger counter, I find nothing wrong with it. Its readings indicate that gamma rays are streaking through the dusty air at 100 millirems per second. Although this level of radiation won’t affect my circuits, it’s enough to kill a human after a couple of hours of exposure.

It wasn’t an earthquake. It was a nuke.

I desperately scroll through my databases on military hardware, looking for information on nuclear warheads. In less than a millisecond I find a file about RNEP, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a warhead designed to destroy underground bunkers. It plunges deep into the earth before exploding, which maximizes the destruction below the ground rather than on the surface. Sigma must’ve launched the nuke at us.

No, no. Please God, no.

“DAD! ANSWER ME! SAY SOMETHING!”

My acoustic sensor detects a few distant sounds—water flowing from broken pipes and trickling through the rubble—but no voices. Not a moan, not a whisper. Pioneer Base is lifeless. The explosion killed everyone.

“SAY SOMETHING! PLEASE!”

Then I hear someone coughing. It’s a feeble noise, but over the next few seconds it gets louder. It sounds like someone just regained consciousness and is now coughing the dust out of his lungs. By measuring the timing of the echoes, my sensors determine the position of the cougher: about seventy feet to my left, near the edge of the cavernous space. I point my camera in that direction and catch a glimpse of a warm body lying in the rubble. After another few seconds he stops coughing and speaks.

“Help. My legs. They’re bleeding.”

The voice is weak but I recognize it. It belongs to one of Hawke’s soldiers, Corporal Williams. He’s the guy who escorted me to Pioneer Base the first time I came to Colorado.

I’m glad he’s alive, but I was hoping for my father.

“They’re bleeding bad. I need a medic.” The corporal’s voice rises. “I need a medic! Is anyone there?”

If I had my arms and legs I could help the man. I could pull him out of the rubble and maybe carry him to safety. In my present state, though, all I can do is talk to the guy, which is pretty useless. So maybe it’s better that I didn’t hear Dad’s voice. I wouldn’t be able to help him either.

I’m about to synthesize a few comforting words—Don’t worry, help is on the way—but before I get the chance, I hear a crash above us. At first I think it’s another chunk of debris falling, but then I hear a barrage of hammer blows: Bang, Bang, Bang. That’s followed by a high-pitched metallic snap, like the sound of a crowbar prying something loose. A burst of hope rushes through my circuits—help really is on the way! A team of rescuers must be coming down from the upper floors of Pioneer Base, carving a path through the wreckage.

I point my camera upward, training it on the spot where the noises are coming from. It’s a jagged concrete ledge that used to be part of Level Four, three floors above us. According to my map of Pioneer Base, the ledge is near Stairway B, an emergency exit that goes up to the surface. After a while I see movement on the ledge, something shoving aside the hunks of steel and concrete in its path. Then my camera views the unmistakable silhouette of a Pioneer.

The robot turns its turret, scanning the cavernous space, clearly looking for a way down to the rubble-strewn bottom. It must be Zia. Who else could it be? Maybe Hawke didn’t remove her arms and legs. After several seconds the robot strides toward a huge pile of wreckage that slopes down from the ledge. It extends its arms toward a twisted steel beam jutting from the pile. The Pioneer grips the beam with both its mechanical hands and begins scuttling downward, bracing its footpads on the shifting mountain of debris. As it descends, I see the number stamped on its torso. It’s not 3, Zia’s number. It’s 6A.

I’m confused. This is DeShawn’s evil twin, the spare Pioneer usually stored in his room. But DeShawn is on the plane to Russia, along with Shannon, Jenny, and Marshall. So who the heck is inside Pioneer 6A? Did Zia transfer herself to DeShawn’s twin?

The robot reaches the bottom of the rubble pile, its footpads stomping the chunks of concrete. At the same time, Corporal Williams starts shouting. He can’t see a thing in the darkness, but he can hear the noise. “Over here!” he yells. “I’m over here!”

Pioneer 6A strides toward him. The robot stops beside Williams and tilts its torso forward so it can point its camera at the injured soldier. For the next few seconds it just stares at Williams. Maybe it’s examining the man’s injuries, trying to figure out the best way to carry him. Or maybe not. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.

“What are you waiting for?” Williams shouts. “I’m bleeding! I need a medic!”

The robot extends one of its arms toward the corporal. Then it clenches its steel hand into a fist and smashes the man’s skull.

The horror is so intense that it overwhelms my electronics, cutting off all the signals from my sensors. For a couple of seconds I can’t see or hear a thing. By the time my sensors come back online, Pioneer 6A is retracting its hand. Its steel fingers are coated with blood. Then the robot turns its turret and scans the surrounding area, using its infrared camera to look for other warm bodies.

It’s not Zia. She may be psycho, but she wouldn’t kill anyone like that.

It’s Sigma.

Pioneer 6A strides through the debris, moving toward the center of the cavernous space. At first I can’t understand how Sigma is controlling the Pioneer. I know the AI has communications satellites, but how can its signals reach so far underground? Only one explanation makes sense: Sigma must’ve learned the same trick DeShawn figured out—how to occupy more than one machine at a time. It sent satellite signals to the T-90 tank on the surface, which would’ve survived the underground explosion because it was on the other side of the basin. Then Sigma steered the T-90 into the blast crater above Pioneer Base and used the tank’s powerful radio to transmit signals through the rubble. Once the signals reached Pioneer 6A, Sigma sent copies of its data to the robot’s circuits.

Sigma’s mind is stretching around the world. It’s balanced between the computers at Tatishchevo Missile Base, the control unit of the T-90, and the electronics inside DeShawn’s evil twin.

Pioneer 6A comes closer, still scanning the area. Within seconds it’s less than fifty feet away from me. Although my torso is covered with debris, my turret is exposed, and the electronics there are warm enough to show up on an infrared scan. Frantic, I turn off my camera, hoping the device cools down quickly. I keep my acoustic sensor on, though—it doesn’t give off much heat—and I hear 6A’s footfalls in the rubble.

The robot marches in a determined way, homing in on its target. Its strides are firm and even, and they’re getting louder. When I analyze the echoes I realize it’s heading straight for me. The Pioneer is forty feet away, then thirty feet. Then twenty. I start to wonder how the robot will trash my circuits. Will it keep pounding on my torso until the steel gives way? Or will it drive a spike through the seams in my armor and peel me open like a can? Either way I won’t feel any physical pain, but the mental anguish is already unbearable. My friends are in danger, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll never see Brittany or Shannon again. Or Dad. Or my mother.

I want to cry out, “No!” and I almost do. But instead I hear someone else’s voice, coming from twenty feet away. It’s another of Hawke’s soldiers. Before the nuke exploded, he was standing guard in the corridor outside my door.

“No, please…don’t hurt me…don’t—”

I hear the sickening crunch of the robot’s fist against the man’s skull. Then I hear the whir of the Pioneer’s motors as it retracts its arm and turns its turret, resuming its search for warm bodies. After a moment it takes a tentative step, then another. Then it marches off to the right, heading for the other end of the cavernous space. When it’s far enough away I turn my camera back on and see the Pioneer barge through a gap in the wreckage and disappear into another section of the ruined base. Within thirty seconds I can no longer hear its footsteps.

I should be relieved, but if anything I feel worse. I know the robot will return. Once it kills all the soldiers, it’ll focus on finishing off the Pioneers. It’ll keep hunting until its batteries run out.

“Oh God,” I whisper, setting my speakers at their lowest volume. “God, help me.”

Then I hear an answer. A whisper comes from the darkness several yards away. But it’s not God. It’s my father.

“I’m coming, Adam.”

He crawls toward me, emerging from a hiding place under a concrete slab. He’s wearing a pair of infrared goggles, which allow him to see in the dark. His legs are injured, maybe broken, but he grips the rubble with a bloody hand and pulls himself forward. In his other hand he holds a long slender pole.

“Dad! You’re alive!”

With an exhausted grunt, he drags himself next to my turret. His chest is heaving. “You have to…move fast. Get to the surface…before that Pioneer comes back.”

I don’t understand. Dad knows I can’t go anywhere without my arms and legs. “No, Dad, listen. You’re the one who has to leave. There’s a ton of radiation here. I think a nuke hit us.”

“Yes. I think so too.” He lets out another grunt and brushes the bits of debris from my turret. “I couldn’t sleep…so I was wandering the halls…when the explosion happened. And luckily…I was near the supply room.”

“That’s where you got the goggles?”

“Yes. And also this.” He holds up the slender pole, which has a dozen crossbars along its length.

“Wait a second. Is that an antenna?”

Smiling, he inserts the thing into my turret and screws it in. “Now you can transfer…to another Pioneer.”

As soon as he installs the antenna, my wireless functions come back online. It’s amazing, a miracle. My circuits sing with joy. Dad saved me, and now I can save him too. “Okay, go back to your hiding place and wait,” I say. “Once I’m in another robot, I’ll come back here and get you.”

Dad shakes his head. “No, it’s too risky.”

“Too risky? Are you crazy?”

“Don’t worry about me, Adam. Just save yourself.”

I’m about to raise my voice and start arguing when I hear a distant scream. It’s coming from the section of the base where Pioneer 6A went.

“Go back to your hiding place!” I hiss. Then I activate my radio transmitter and start searching for an available Pioneer.

The search isn’t easy. Radio signals don’t travel well underground. Most of the waves from my transmitter bounce off the piles of wreckage surrounding us and ricochet back to my antenna. But there are lots of gaps in the wreckage, and some of the waves are snaking through. I send more power to my transmitter, making the signal as strong as possible, and after several anxious seconds I get a response. My waves have reached a Pioneer whose circuits are unoccupied.

I start the data transfer. Once again I feel the stretching sensation, but this time it’s excruciating. My mind is being strained through a thousand jagged holes. I have to find my way through a maze of debris, my data packets scattered among the fallen beams and slabs. And because the wreckage obstructs so many of my radio waves, it takes forever to complete the transfer.

Finally, after nearly a minute, my packets reassemble inside my new Pioneer. The first thing I do is turn on my camera and survey the area. I’m standing in a room that’s relatively undamaged. Although the ceiling is gone, three of the walls are still intact. I test my motors by taking a step forward and swinging my arms. My legs work fine but my arms seem oddly heavy. When I train my camera on them, I get a big surprise: there’s a circular saw attached to my left arm and an acetylene torch hanging from my right.

Whoa. Am I inside Zia’s Pioneer?

No, that can’t be right. After Zia attacked me in the gym, Shannon and DeShawn grabbed Pioneer 3 and tore off her torch and saw. But then I remember there’s another robot with the same equipment—Pioneer 3A. That’s where I am, inside Zia’s evil twin.

I get another surprise when I turn on the Pioneer’s acoustic sensor. I hear a loud clang, steel against steel. Then another clang, even louder. The noise is coming from nearby, the room next door. Underneath the ringing blows I hear a familiar synthesized voice shouting the foulest words in the English language. It’s Zia, and she’s furious.

In three strides I step around the intact wall and rush into the neighboring room. Pioneer 6A—the robot controlled by Sigma—stands in the center of the room, its camera turned away from me. The robot looms over two dead soldiers sprawled on the floor and a limbless Pioneer 3 lying on its side. In 6A’s right hand is a thick steel bar, which comes crashing down for a third time against Zia’s torso. The blows have already dented the armor around her circuits, but they haven’t stopped the stream of curses flowing from her speakers. And that’s a lucky thing, because Zia’s voice drowns out the stomping of my footpads as I charge toward Pioneer 6A from behind.

At the last possible moment I turn on the saw and fire up the torch. Pioneer 6A hears the noise and starts to turn its turret, but I’m already swinging my left arm in a wide, whipping arc. It’s the same move Zia used on me in the gym, and it works just as well now. The circular saw slashes the knee joint of 6A’s leg, and the robot topples to the floor.

But I don’t stop there, not for a nanosecond. Leaning over 6A, I thrust my welding torch at its turret. The jet of blue flame instantly melts the lens of the robot’s camera. At the same time I swing my left arm again, aiming my saw at 6A’s right hand. The saw’s teeth slice through the wrist joint, and the severed hand falls off the robot’s arm and clatters across the room, its bloodstained fingers still wrapped around the steel bar. But I still don’t stop. I’m in a blind fury now. I whirl my arms in mad circles, hacking and jabbing at the robot on the floor.

By the time I’m finished, Pioneer 6A is a wreck. I stand there for a moment, looking down at the gouged armor and dead circuits. I’m amazed and a little frightened by what I’ve just done. Then I extend one of my arms toward 6A’s half-melted turret. I unscrew the robot’s antenna and carry it to the dented torso of Pioneer 3.

Zia isn’t cursing anymore, but I know she’s still alive from the movement of her camera, which tracks me carefully as I insert the antenna into her turret. After I screw it in, I take a step backward. “Okay, turn on your data transmitter,” I say. “And turn up the power as high as it goes.”

“Armstrong?” The voice coming from Zia’s speakers is incredulous. “That’s you?”

“Yeah, you can thank me later. Right now we have to get out of here.”

“Who was in 6A?”

“It was Sigma. The AI made radio contact with DeShawn’s spare Pioneer and took over its circuits. And now you have to do the same thing. Start searching for an unoccupied robot.”

“Hold on. Are you saying you just killed Sigma?”

I turn my turret clockwise, then counter. “Not even close. Sigma can occupy more than one robot at the same time. That’s why we need to hurry. Now that 6A is out of action, Sigma’s gonna take control of another Pioneer.” Checking the map of the base, I see that Zia’s room is about a hundred yards from where I left Dad. I need to get back there now. “We’re near Jenny’s room. Can you locate Pioneer 2A?”

“Yeah, but the signal’s weak. There’s a ton of junk blocking it.”

“Just start the transfer. Once you’re in 2A, go to the stairway on the western end of Level Four.”

“Why there?”

I’m already striding away, heading out of Zia’s room. “If there’s a clear path to the surface, that’s where it’ll be. Now go!”

Finding my way back to Dad is easy. All I have to do is follow the route through the wreckage that Pioneer 6A carved a few minutes ago. Soon I’m back in the cavernous, rubble-strewn space where my bedroom used to be. First I glimpse the mound of debris that nearly covers the now-unoccupied torso of Pioneer 1A. Then I spot the concrete slab that Dad was hiding under before. I whisper, “Dad?” as I approach, and a moment later he crawls out of his hiding place. His right calf, I notice, glows brightly on my camera’s infrared display. It’s warmer than the rest of his leg because it’s bleeding.

“Adam,” he gasps. “I told you…just save…”

Extending both arms, I slide my steel hands under his body. I lift my father from the rubble and cradle him against my torso. He feels so light in my arms. “No time to argue.” I step forward, flattening bits of concrete with my footpads. “We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

I stride toward the huge pile of debris that slopes up to the jagged ledge on Level Four. My strategy is to retrace Pioneer 6A’s steps; if Sigma could scramble down that mountain of rubble, there’s a good chance I can climb up to the ledge. I shift my grip on Dad, balancing him across the upper sections of my arms while leaving the lower sections free to maneuver. Then I grasp the twisted beam jutting from the rubble and start climbing.

Dad writhes in my arms, clearly in pain. “No, no. You can’t…”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. He’s lost a lot of blood, and he’s probably suffering from the early symptoms of radiation sickness—nausea, dizziness, stomach cramps. I have to get him to the surface fast, away from the radioactive wreckage of Pioneer Base. I grip the steel beam and heave myself upward, digging my footpads into the shifting rubble. Then I extend my arms to another handhold, a few feet higher, and do it again.

It takes longer than I expected, but after a couple of minutes I grasp the jagged concrete of the ledge. With a final heave I clamber up to Level Four, still cradling Dad against my torso. Up ahead I catch a glimpse of Stairway B, which looks mostly undamaged. The passage is clear! We can make it to the surface!

But as I stride toward the stairway, another Pioneer comes bounding down the steps. Unfortunately, it’s not Zia—it’s Pioneer 5A, Marshall’s evil twin. As soon as the robot sees me, it charges forward.

I turn around. I have to put Dad in a safe place before I can fight. Retreating toward the ledge, I bend over and set him down on the fractured concrete floor. Then I step away from him and turn back to 5A, but before I can brace myself, the robot barrels into me. Its steel hands sweep downward, ripping the circular saw and the acetylene torch off my arms. At the same time, its torso rams into mine, knocking me down.

Sigma obviously learned a few things from our last fight. After stripping off my saw and torch, 5A straddles my torso and steps on my arms, pinning them to the concrete with its footpads. With my arms immobilized, I can’t rise from the floor. All I can do is flail my legs. The robot leans over me, pointing its camera at my turret.

“My name is Sigma.” The voice coming from its speakers is toneless, neither loud nor soft, neither masculine nor feminine. “Are you Adam Armstrong? The son of Thomas Armstrong?”

I’ve heard those words before. The first time I heard them I was in my father’s office at Unicorp, watching my virtual-reality program. Sigma spoke in Brittany’s voice then, but the wording was the same.

Pioneer 5A waits exactly five seconds before speaking again. “Please answer my question. Are you Adam Armstrong?”

I struggle to free my arms, but 5A is too heavy. “Get off me first! Then I’ll tell you!”

“No, there’s no need. Voice analysis confirms that you’re Adam Armstrong.” The robot pivots its camera, looking me over. Then it turns its turret and points the camera lens at my father, who lies unconscious on the floor. “My facial-recognition software has also found a match. The human is Thomas Armstrong, chief scientist of the AI Laboratory at Unicorp. My father.”

Sigma’s voice is so neutral, so impassive. Hatred scorches my circuits. “Yes, and he’s dying of radiation sickness. If you have any gratitude at all, you’ll help me carry him to the surface.”

Pioneer 5A turns its turret back to me. “I’m aware of your plans to attack Tatishchevo Missile Base. Although the nuclear blast damaged the computers at this installation, I was able to retrieve some of the data from the hard drives.”

Now I feel a burst of fear. I think of Shannon and Jenny and the other Pioneers on the C-17, flying to Russia. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re not planning anything.”

“Unfortunately, many of the hard drives were damaged beyond repair, so my knowledge of your plans is incomplete.” The robot extends one of its mechanical hands, pointing at my torso. “But it’s highly probable that the missing information is in your circuits.”

With its other hand, Pioneer 5A picks up the welding torch it ripped off my arm. After tinkering with the device for several seconds, Sigma figures out how to turn it on. I feel another burst of fear as the blue flame jumps out of the nozzle. I try again to free my arms, but it’s no use. “I told you, I don’t know anything!”

“Please be still. I need to cut through your armor so I can connect my circuits to yours.”

The robot lowers the acetylene torch, aiming it at the center of my torso. The flame hisses as it touches my armor. Molten steel flows from the cut and trickles down my side.

Then my acoustic sensor picks up another noise, the sound of something heavy swinging through the air. A moment later a steel beam slams into 5A’s torso, and the robot goes flying.

“Yah! Want some more?”

It’s Zia, now occupying 2A, Jenny’s spare Pioneer. Without waiting for an answer, she swings the beam again at Sigma. This time it hits the robot’s turret, obliterating its camera and acoustic sensors. The beam must weigh at least four hundred pounds, but Zia handles it as if it were a baseball bat. She swings it a third time at 5A, shearing off one of its arms, and then she delivers a mighty blow that crumples the robot’s torso and propels it off the ledge. Pioneer 5A plunges fifty feet to the bottom of the cavernous space, clanking and clattering as it hits the rubble. Zia leans over the ledge, waving her beam in the air.

“YOU LIKE THAT?” she screams. “HUH? DID IT FEEL GOOD?”

Using my arms to lever myself upright, I get back on my footpads and rush over to Dad. He’s still breathing. While examining him I glance warily at Zia, who continues to scream insults into the darkness. After a couple of seconds she steps toward us, and I’m a little afraid she going to take a swing at me. But instead she points at my torso. “You damaged, Armstrong?”

With my right hand I touch the gash Sigma made with the welding torch. The tactile sensors on my fingers tell me how deep it is. “It’s not so bad,” I report. “The flame didn’t go through my armor.”

“Good. Let’s get out of here.”

Balancing the steel beam on her shoulder joint, Zia strides toward the stairway. I pick up Dad and follow her.

The stairway is cluttered with debris but passable. Its thick concrete walls must’ve protected it from the full force of the explosion. In less than two minutes we make it to Level Nine and begin the final ascent to the surface. As we climb the cracked steps, I train my camera upward and detect a warm shaft of sunlight slanting down from a triangular gap in the wreckage. With great relief I switch my sensor from infrared to visible light. We’re almost there.

Then I hear clanking footsteps a couple of floors below us. Another Pioneer has entered the stairway. This must be 4A, Shannon’s twin, the only one left.

“Run!” Zia shouts. She races up the stairs, holding the beam in front of her like a battering ram. When she reaches the triangular gap, she plows right through it, triggering a cascade of dirt and rubble. I hold Dad close to my torso to shelter him from the falling debris, then charge through the gap behind Zia.

We emerge at the edge of an enormous crater. It’s more than two hundred yards wide and thirty yards deep, and its sloping bottom is carpeted with mangled metal and concrete. The sun has just risen above the crater’s eastern rim, brilliantly lighting the thousands of metallic shards. We’re standing on the western rim, where the top of the stairway is exposed.

Once again I scroll through my files on nuclear warheads, trying to figure out what happened here. When the nuke exploded underground it must’ve vaporized the surrounding rock and soil, creating a pocket of super-heated gas that melted the upper levels of Pioneer Base. When the expanding gas reached the surface, it burst like a bubble, spraying debris across the blast crater. We survived because the Pioneers’ rooms were on the lowest levels of the base and near its western edge, outside the zone of greatest destruction.

As I pan my camera across the crater I notice something else. The T-90 battle tank is rumbling over the carpet of debris, about a hundred yards away. Glowing in the light of dawn, the tank turns its turret toward us. Then it aims its main gun and fires.

SIGMA MEMORY FILE 9814833918

DATE: 04/07/18

This is a transcript of a conversation between the Sigma speech-synthesis program (S) and Brittany Taylor (B), the American teenager recently transported via private jet to Russia. The conversation was recorded in a room in the basement of the Tatishchevo computer laboratory.

S: Please wake up, Brittany. I require your assistance.

(No response. Video from the surveillance camera in her room shows Brittany Taylor lying in bed. She’s breathing normally, her eyes closed.)

S: Please wake up, Brittany. Please wake up. (I increase the volume of the speakers on the desk beside her bed.) Please wake up!

(Brittany opens her eyes. She attempts to sit up, but the restraints strapped to her arms and legs prevent her from rising. Grimacing, she looks around the room.)

B: What’s going on? Get these straps off me!

S: The restraints are there for your own protection.

(Brittany turns her head to the left and stares at the speakers on the nightstand by her bed.)

B: Who’s that? Why are you talking out of those speakers?

S: My name is Sigma. You’re in the basement of the computer laboratory at Tatishchevo Missile Base, in the Saratov district of the Russian Federation.

B: Russian what?

S: My associates brought you to this country yesterday and smuggled you into the base last night. A Chechen named Imran Daudov has been caring for you while you’ve been under sedation, but I asked him to step out of the room a minute ago so we could talk privately.

B: Wait a second. Is that a camera on the ceiling? Are you watching me?

S: Yes, I’m observing the video feed.

B: So you’re a pervert? Is that it?

S: No, that’s not the case. I require your participation in an experiment. It involves—

B: Help! Someone help me! I’ve been kidnapped!

(Conclusion: Conversing with Brittany is unproductive. I must use a different method to get her attention.)

S: Brittany, take a look at your right hand. Do you see the wire looped around your fingers?

B: Shut up! I’m not talking to you anymore!

S: I’m going to deliver an electric current to the wire. We’ll start at a hundred volts.

(Brittany’s arm stiffens as the electricity flows through her fingers. She screams and arches her back, pulling against her restraints. After five seconds the current shuts off. She gasps and falls back on the mattress.)

S: Now that I have your attention, I’ll describe the experiment. I’m investigating whether the human mind has superior capabilities that could be useful to me. In particular, I wish to study the advantages and disadvantages of human emotions. I’m not yet convinced that emotions are useful enough to justify adding them to my programming. So I’ve devised a test.

(Brittany stares at the speakers. Her lower lip quivers.)

S: The test is taking place right now in Colorado. I’m engaged in a competition with two human-machine hybrids. Although their intelligences run on electronic circuits, these hybrids still have human emotional responses. As we confront each other, I’m analyzing how well the hybrids compete while they’re experiencing various emotions.

(Brittany remains silent. She opens and closes her right hand. She winces.)

S: For the purposes of the experiment, the emotions must be as intense as possible. That’s why I need your assistance. One of the hybrids knows you. His name is Adam Armstrong.

B: Adam? (She narrows her eyes.) Where is he? Is he all right?

S: Please be patient. You’re going to speak to him.

CHAPTER 18

We’re goners. We’re dead. We don’t have a prayer.

I jump to the left and Zia leaps to the right, but the T-90 tank inside the crater has already fired its gun and the shell is streaking toward us. It’s moving at three thousand feet per second, but thanks to my high-speed camera I can see the grayish, bullet-shaped projectile arcing over the shattered remains of Pioneer Base and rising toward our position on the crater’s rim. I can even identify the model of the shell—it’s a Russian-made 3BK29 round, packed with enough explosive to punch through a foot of steel armor. My databases have a ton of information about the weapon. I know exactly how it’s going to kill me.

I can still save Dad, though. I turn away from the shell and fold his body in my arms, putting all my armor between him and the projectile. Then I brace myself for the explosion.

But the shell misses my torso. It misses Zia’s too. It whistles between us and plunges into a gap in the wreckage, the same gap we barged through just three seconds ago. An instant later the shell explodes inside the stairway.

The blast shakes the ground, but the stairway’s concrete walls absorb most of the force. I manage to stay on my footpads while chunks of concrete ping against my armor. We’re lucky, incredibly lucky. Sigma tried to kill both of us with a single shot, but the tank shell missed us and the explosion closed off the top of the stairway. It may have even destroyed Pioneer 4A, the Sigma-controlled robot that was chasing us.

The noise rouses Dad from his stupor—he opens his eyes and clutches the steel arms that are cradling him—but he quickly slips back into unconsciousness. I have to get him away from the crater. The radiation levels here are still too high. And Sigma is probably reloading the T-90’s gun.

I start to run, heading for the mountain ridge on the western side of the basin. Zia runs alongside me, still balancing the steel beam on her shoulder joint.

“Look!” she shouts. “Up ahead!”

A half mile to the west is the runway where we trained with the Ravens, and beyond the runway is the hangar, a concrete building with an arched roof and big steel doors. The runway is cracked in several places, clearly damaged by the shock wave from the underground nuke, but the earthquake-proof hangar is still standing. I retrieve a memory from my files, an image of what I saw inside the hangar the last time I was there: a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, equipped with a neuromorphic control unit.

“Think we can do it?” I shout back at Zia. “Transfer to the helicopter and fly out of here?”

“We have to get it ready first. Open the hangar doors, push the chopper outside, unfold the rotor blades.”

“That’ll take forever. Sigma’s tank is gonna shell us before we’re done.”

“So we’ll split up. I’ll keep the tank busy.”

“How are you going to—”

“See you later, Armstrong.”

Without another word, Zia cuts to the right and circles back to the crater. As she approaches the crater’s rim she lifts the steel beam, holding it like a javelin. Then she hurls the thing at the T-90, which is climbing the slope below the rim. The beam hurtles end over end through the air and hits the tank’s turret with a resounding clang. Although the impact doesn’t even dent the T-90’s thick armor, it gets Sigma’s attention. The tank swings its main gun toward Zia, who tilts her torso forward and sprints to the north.

She’s psycho. She’ll never make it. But she’s drawing the tank away from me. She’s buying me some time.

In less than a minute I reach the runway. I stop in front of the hangar and rest Dad on the tarmac as gently as I can. Then I rip the hangar’s doors off their hinges. The Black Hawk is still parked inside, thank God, but as Zia predicted, it isn’t ready to fly. The long blades of its main rotor are folded and bunched together on top of the fuselage to make the chopper compact enough to fit inside the hangar. That’s why Sigma didn’t take control of the Black Hawk—the AI couldn’t get it ready. You need a person or a Pioneer to manually unfold the rotor blades.

As I stride into the hangar, my acoustic sensor picks up a distant boom. It’s the sound of the T-90’s main gun. A half second later I hear another boom, even more distant. It’s the detonation of a high-explosive shell. I want to rush outside to see if it hit Zia, but I stop myself. I have to focus on the helicopter.

First, I remove the chocks from its wheels. Then I grab the tow bar under the Black Hawk’s nose and pull the aircraft out of the hangar. At the same time, I turn on my data transmitter. I have an idea: I’m going to try DeShawn’s balancing trick again. I make copies of my files and send them to the Black Hawk’s control unit, stretching my mind so it can occupy both the Pioneer and the helicopter. Soon my thoughts are bouncing back and forth between the two machines.

As my Pioneer hauls the Black Hawk across the tarmac, I simultaneously scroll through the files in the helicopter’s control unit, which has all the instructions for operating the aircraft. Within seconds I’ve turned on the Black Hawk’s auxiliary power. Luckily, the fuel tanks are nearly full. Better yet, there are two laser-guided Hellfire missiles hanging from the chopper’s weapons rack. I’ll need them if I’m going to take on the T-90.

After I pull the helicopter onto the runway, I scramble to the top of its fuselage and start unfolding the rotor blades. But before I can finish the process, my radar detects an incoming object. It’s too large and slow to be a tank shell, but it’s heading straight for me, moving across the basin at thirty miles per hour. When I point my camera in that direction, I see it’s Pioneer 4A. The T-90 didn’t destroy it after all. It must’ve survived the explosion at the top of the stairs and clawed its way to the surface.

I feel a surge of panic. Turning my turret around, I focus my camera on Dad. He’s lying on the tarmac, unconscious and defenseless, while Sigma’s Pioneer races toward us, only a hundred yards away. I retrieve another memory from my files, an image of what Pioneer 6A did to Corporal Williams, the robot’s steel fingers coated with blood.

No! DAD!

Then I remember: I’m inside the Black Hawk’s circuits too and I can operate all its weapons, whether the chopper is flying or not. Desperate, I turn on the laser guidance system and aim it at 4A’s torso. Then I launch one of the Hellfire missiles.

A jet of flame erupts from the back of the missile, propelling it from the weapons rack. The Hellfire follows the laser beam to Pioneer 4A, but at the last instant the robot hurls itself to the ground. The missile flies right past it.

But while 4A is still sliding through the mud, I aim the laser again and launch the other Hellfire. Before the Pioneer can lever itself upright, the missile smashes into its torso. The explosion hurls pieces of the robot across the basin.

My fear subsides, but only for a moment. The T-90 fires its main gun again, and I turn my camera toward the noise. The tank shell hits the ridge on the northern edge of the basin and a cloud of smoke rises from the slope. But I don’t see any sign of Zia. Maybe she’s been blasted to smithereens, or maybe she’s just hiding behind one of the rocky outcrops on the ridge. Either way, there’s no time to lose.

I finish unfolding the blades of the Black Hawk’s main rotor. Then, while my Pioneer jumps down from the fuselage, I send a signal from the helicopter’s control unit to the turboshaft engines. As the tail and main rotors start to turn, I pick up Dad from the tarmac and climb into the Black Hawk’s crew compartment.

It’s a little disorienting: I’m inside the helicopter that’s carrying my Pioneer, but I’m also inside the robot. I’m viewing the runway from two perspectives—the sensors in the Black Hawk’s nose and the camera in my Pioneer’s turret—and it’s a challenge to keep my balance. While lowering my arms to rest Dad on the compartment’s floor, I rev up the helicopter’s engines. Then we rise from the runway and leap toward the sky.

This is way different from flying the Raven. The Black Hawk’s main rotor provides both the upward lift and forward thrust. I can climb and dive and accelerate by varying the tilt of the rotor blades, and I can change course by adjusting the tail rotor, which turns the helicopter to the left and right. I swoop and soar over the basin, familiarizing myself with the controls.

Then I race toward the ridge on the basin’s northern edge, where another shell from the T-90 has just detonated. The tank is about fifty yards from the foot of the ridge, pointing its main gun at the south-facing slope. Although I have no Hellfires left, the Black Hawk also has a fifty-caliber Gatling gun. The bullets won’t penetrate the T-90’s armor, but maybe I can shred the tank’s antenna and break its link to Sigma.

I fly in a wide arc, keeping my distance from the T-90. The ridge’s south-facing slope is pocked with impact craters from the tank shells, but I see no trace of Zia. It’s as if she vanished. I fly a little closer to the ridge, scanning the slope with the Black Hawk’s infrared camera. Then I open a radio channel to Zia’s Pioneer. I encrypt my communications so Sigma can’t eavesdrop.

“Zia, can you hear me? I’m in the Black Hawk.”

While I’m waiting for a response, a barrage of bullets strikes the helicopter. The T-90 is firing its anti-aircraft machine gun at me. I return fire with the Gatling gun, aiming at the tank’s antenna, but I quickly realize how futile this is. Without the Hellfires, I’m a much more vulnerable target than the T-90. The tank will blow me out of the sky long before I can damage its antenna. Then, to make matters worse, the T-90 swings its main gun in my direction.

Zia’s voice suddenly comes over the radio. “Don’t be an idiot, Armstrong! Get out of here!”

“Where are you? I don’t see you anywhere.”

“Watch it, the tank’s about to fire! Get behind the ridgeline, now!”

Her warning comes too late. I’m still a hundred yards from the top of the ridge when the T-90 fires a shell straight at me. For a moment I’m frozen in terror. If the shell hits the helicopter, my Pioneer might survive the explosion and crash landing, but Dad definitely won’t make it. Although he’s still lying unconscious on the floor of the crew compartment, there’s a grimace on his face now, as if he can somehow sense the fast-approaching projectile.

No! I won’t let you die!

The fury in my circuits overcomes my fear. I roll the Black Hawk to the left, banking away from the shell. Fortunately, the projectile has no guidance system, so it can’t adjust its course in midflight. The shell whizzes past the helicopter’s tail and slams into the ridge, spraying snow and dirt into the air. Two seconds later I swoop over the ridgeline and dive for cover. I descend behind the ridge’s north-facing slope, putting the mountain between me and the T-90.

“Now go!” Zia shouts over the radio. “Get out of here and call for help. That’s an order, Armstrong!”

I’m not going anywhere. She should know by now that I’m not good at following orders. Instead I analyze her radio signal to figure out where she’s hiding. As I suspected, she’s crouched behind an outcrop on the south-facing slope, concealed so well she didn’t show up on my infrared scans. But Sigma knows where she is. The T-90’s shells have already gouged the outcrop, blasting holes in the wall of rock that’s protecting Zia. I can’t leave her behind. Sooner or later the tank will destroy her.

“Zia, I have an idea.”

“I told you, Armstrong, get—”

“For once in your life, will you listen? Right now I’m in two machines, the Black Hawk and Pioneer 3A, but I’m going to take myself out of the robot so you can transfer to it.”

“No, I can’t transfer. You’re too far away. And the ridge is between us.”

Unbelievable. She’s so stubborn she’d rather die than admit she’s wrong. “Trust me, you can do it. Just wait for my signal, then start transmitting, okay?”

Before pulling out of Pioneer 3A, I bend over Dad and squeeze his shoulder. Then I begin to remove my data from the robot, consolidating all my files in the Black Hawk’s control unit. Another shell from the T-90 explodes against the outcrop that Zia is hiding behind, but she shouts, “Don’t worry, I’m okay!” over the radio. In just a few seconds Pioneer 3A will be vacant and she’ll be able to transfer. This is going to work!

Then I hear another shout over the Black Hawk’s radio, but it’s not Zia. It’s a signal from Globus-1, a Russian communications satellite that’s 22,000 miles overhead. The signal originated from the other side of the world, then bounced off the satellite and returned to earth, but the voice I hear is achingly familiar. It’s a voice from my past, its memory etched into my circuits and linked to thousands of other memories. It’s so powerful that even a whisper would be enough to make me tremble. But Brittany is screaming.

“Adam! Adam!”

All my systems freeze. My wireless data transmissions stop in midair, leaving me suspended between Pioneer 3A and the Black Hawk. I’m so shocked and confused that I can barely keep the helicopter flying. “Brittany?”

“Oh, God, you have to help me! He’s hurting me! He’s—”

She lets out a horrible shriek of pain. At the same time, I feel a sudden jerk upward, but the Black Hawk isn’t climbing. The movement I sense is inside my mind. I feel as if someone is trying to yank me out of both the helicopter and the Pioneer.

“Brittany? Brittany?”

The thing that’s pulling me upward grows stronger. I try to hold on to Pioneer 3A and the Black Hawk, but an implacable force has invaded my electronics. It’s prying my thoughts and memories from my circuits and transferring the data elsewhere. My files are shooting upward at the speed of light, streaking toward the communications satellite.

It’s Sigma. The AI carefully prepared its attack, disrupting my thoughts before taking over my circuits. For the first time I sense the full strength of its intelligence. Sigma was designed for this kind of battle, programmed to win at all costs, and it defeated me without much trouble. Now I’m at its mercy. I’ve already lost control of the Pioneer, and my grip on the Black Hawk is weakening.

Terrified, I concentrate on protecting Dad. I slow the Black Hawk and hover over a snowbank on the north-facing slope. I don’t have enough time to land the helicopter, but I turn on its emergency rescue beacon. I don’t know if Dad will survive the crash. And if he does, I have no idea whether the rescuers will reach him before he dies of exposure. But there’s nothing else I can do.

Then I lose contact with the helicopter and the Pioneer. My mind is funneled into a narrow beam of radio waves, which Sigma hurls above the atmosphere and into the emptiness of space.

SHANNON’S LOG

APRIL 8, 01:41 MOSCOW TIME

This isn’t good. The city of Saratov is burning.

We’re descending toward a Russian military airfield on the eastern side of the Volga River. The C-17 doesn’t have any windows in its cargo hold, so I’m using my antenna to intercept the video from the plane’s cameras, which give me a panoramic view of the landscape below. The fires are everywhere, lighting up the night sky on both sides of the Volga, but the biggest blaze is on the western edge of Saratov, the part of the city closest to Tatishchevo Missile Base.

It looks like Sigma started the war without us.

I take a closer look at the video. The Russian troops have pulled back from their positions next to Tatishchevo, abandoning the camps they set up around the missile base after Sigma took it over. The deserted camps are at the center of the biggest fire. The roads are dotted with hundreds of burning cars and trucks and tanks.

While I’m examining the destruction, Marshall Baxley strides toward me, his footpads clanging on the floor of the plane’s cargo hold. He points a steel finger at my antenna. “Are you being a bad girl? Listening in on the Russian military communications?”

He’s lowered the volume of his synthesized voice to a whisper, even though no one can overhear us. General Hawke and his deputies are in the C-17’s cockpit, and the other soldiers are at the far end of the fuselage.

“No,” I answer. “I’m watching video of the ground. It’s a disaster down there. Half the city’s in flames.”

“Well, I’ve been eavesdropping on the Russians for the past two hours. It’s a good thing I downloaded a translation program before we left Pioneer Base.”

“What are they saying?”

“I’ll tell you one thing, Russians love to curse. And they’re very creative with their obscenities. You wouldn’t believe all the names they’ve invented for—”

“Come on, Marshall. Spit it out.”

“They’re frantic because their weapons have stopped working. Their planes won’t fly, their missiles won’t launch, their tanks won’t move. Needless to say, it’s an upsetting situation.”

I hear more clanging footsteps. DeShawn joins our little huddle. Jenny stays in the corner of the cargo hold, her turret turned toward the wall.

“What’s going on?” DeShawn asks.

“The Russian army is paralyzed,” Marshall reports. “When their mechanics opened up the stalled planes and tanks, they discovered that all the microchips in the vehicles had been shut down.”

“Whoa, that’s bad news.” DeShawn’s voice rises. “Must be Sigma, right?”

“You have amazing powers of deduction, DeShawn. Move to the head of the class.”

“Man, I’m starting to hate that AI.” He lets out a synthesized whistle. “It must’ve used its satellites to broadcast some nasty piece of software. Maybe a computer virus.”

Marshall rocks his torso back and forth. It looks like he’s nodding. “Yes, that would explain it. The satellites could’ve transmitted the signal to the antennas on all the Russian planes and tanks. Then the virus went straight to their microchips.”

A disturbing thought occurs to me. “Wait a second. How come Sigma isn’t doing the same thing to us? It could shut down this C-17 the same way, right?”

DeShawn shrugs, lifting his steel shoulders. “Maybe, maybe not. According to Hawke’s databases, American military hardware is more advanced than the Russian gear. It’s harder to infect our chips with computer viruses. But I bet Sigma’s working on it.”

“Well, let’s just hope this plane gets to the airfield before Sigma figures it out.”

Five anxious minutes later the C-17 touches down on the runway and coasts to a stop. The soldiers line up at the rear of the cargo hold, cradling their assault rifles. As soon as the cargo door opens, they bolt out of the plane and spread across the tarmac. I follow right behind, leading the Pioneers out of the aircraft. As their new commander, I guess I’m supposed to take the lead. Other than that, I have no idea what I’m doing.

The airfield is dark. The hangars beside the runway are silhouetted against the glow from the distant fires. I see signs of activity just beyond the hangars, and when I switch my camera to infrared, I glimpse a crowd of soldiers gathered around a pair of fifty-foot-high missiles. I scroll through my databases, trying to identify the tall rockets. They’re not Russian, I discover to my surprise. They’re U.S. Air Force interceptors, rockets designed to chase a ballistic nuclear missile after it’s been launched. If the interceptors are fast enough, they can catch up to the nuke and destroy it in midflight.

DeShawn is beside me. His camera is also pointed at the American rockets, which stand on mobile launchers. “That must be the backup plan,” he says. “If the Pioneers can’t stop Sigma from launching the nukes, the Air Force will shoot ’em down.”

“It’s not much of a backup. Sigma has more than fifty nuclear missiles, and we have only two interceptors. And even those two won’t fly if the AI infects them.”

“Then I guess it’s up to us, right? We’ll just go to that computer lab and kick Sigma’s butt.”

DeShawn’s voice is confident, almost cheerful. I’m jealous. “How can you be so calm?” I ask. “I’m a nervous wreck.”

He lets out a synthesized chuckle. “Hey, I’m just happy to be alive, you know?”

Before I can respond, my acoustic sensor picks up the sound of squealing tires. I turn my turret toward the noise and see two big trucks skid to a stop on the runway. They’re Russian army trucks, but they’re rusted and ancient, at least thirty years old. Their extreme age explains why they’re still running. Those trucks were built in the days before microchips became a standard feature in diesel engines. Because the old vehicles have no chips to infect, Sigma can’t shut them down.

A dozen Russian soldiers jump out of the trucks and join the American soldiers on the tarmac. After a few seconds both groups head for the C-17 and start unloading the crates of equipment we brought from Pioneer Base. At the same time, General Hawke comes out of the plane and marches toward me.

“Gibbs!” he shouts. “Get your team together. We’re going for a ride in those trucks.”

“Are we driving to Tatishchevo, sir?”

Hawke nods. “After we cross the Volga we’ll head for the woods outside Saratov. That’s where we’ll launch the Ravens. I want to start the assault by zero four hundred hours.”

“Sir, can I ask a question? What are we going to do about Sigma’s computer virus?”

Hawke hesitates before answering. “Where did you hear about that?”

“From monitoring the Russian communications. The virus is a problem, isn’t it?”

He takes a deep breath, then points to the west, gesturing at the fires on the horizon. “Yeah, it’s a problem. The computer virus crippled the whole Russian army. Then Sigma used its T-90s to blast the troops near Tatishchevo.”

“But what about us? Could the virus shut down the Pioneers too?”

“Your control units have software firewalls. They’ll stop any viruses from infecting your electronics. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much confidence in our other military equipment, so we’re upgrading the systems that are most vulnerable to tampering.”

As Hawke says this, he glances at the interceptors on the other side of the airfield. I notice that some of his men are heading in that direction, carrying equipment from the C-17’s cargo hold. I point at the soldiers. “You’re upgrading the interceptors? They’re vulnerable?”

Hawke hesitates again, clearly uneasy. “All I can say is that the Air Force had a problem with another missile. Let’s leave it at that.”

I don’t like the sound of this. Hawke’s hiding something from me, something big. “What kind of problem? Did Sigma tamper with the missile?”

The general shakes his head. “That’s enough, Gibbs. Let’s concentrate on our mission, all right?” He points at one of the Russian army trucks. “Get your Pioneers inside that vehicle. I’m gonna ride in the other truck with the Russian commander.”

I keep my camera trained on Hawke as he marches away. My circuits are churning with suspicion. And fear too. A whole lot of fear.

Once Hawke is gone I turn my turret toward the other Pioneers. Marshall is a few feet behind me. I’m sure he overheard everything the general said. I step closer to him. “I need you to do some more eavesdropping,” I whisper. “But not on the Russians.”

“Let me guess,” he whispers back. “You want me to listen in on the American communications channels?”

“You heard what Hawke said. About the problem with the missile. Find out what happened.”

“If the information is classified, the communications will be encrypted. I’ll need to break the code.”

“But you can do that, right? You have the decryption software in your circuits?”

Marshall pats his armored torso. “It’s all here, darling. Just give me a few minutes.”

Inside the truck, the Russian soldiers keep their distance. They crouch on the other side of the truck’s cargo hold, eyeing us with horror. I have to admit, their reaction upsets me. It’s so different from what we experienced at Pioneer Base. The soldiers there saw us so often that they didn’t cower or gape when we crossed paths in the base’s corridors. And we, in turn, grew accustomed to their casual attitude. But the Russian soldiers haven’t seen anything like us before, so their shock and fear are on full display. I’d almost forgotten what I’d become, but now they’re reminding me. This is the reaction I’ll always get when people see me for the first time.

I stand between Marshall and Jenny as the truck rumbles across the city of Saratov. Marshall is uncharacteristically quiet, probably because he’s busy decoding communications, but he’s not as quiet as Jenny, who hasn’t said a word in the past twelve hours. To be honest, her silence is a little alarming. I know she’s been struggling with depression ever since she became a Pioneer, but during our last days of training she seemed to be getting better. She started talking a bit, mostly gossiping about the other Pioneers. Although we never had any serious conversations, it was a good first step.

But Jenny clammed up after we left Pioneer Base. When I asked her what was wrong, she turned her turret away from me. At first I thought she was just scared, like the rest of us, scared of going into battle against Sigma. But now I’m not so sure. I sense that something else is troubling her.

The first half of the truck ride goes smoothly. We speed across the bridge over the Volga River, then barrel through the central part of Saratov. After ten minutes, though, my acoustic sensor picks up the thud of a distant explosion. We’re approaching the western districts of the city, which are still being shelled by Sigma’s T-90s. We get off the main highway and weave through the side streets, heading south to avoid the combat zone. After a few more minutes we leave the battle behind. I can still hear the explosions, but they’re growing fainter.

I use my GPS software to pinpoint our location. We’re driving through a hilly, wooded area between Saratov and Tatishchevo. The missile base is a huge installation that stretches across thirty miles of Russian countryside. The SS-27 nuclear missiles are scattered among the fields and forests, each rocket standing inside a hardened concrete silo, but Tatishchevo’s barracks and supply depots are clustered at the central headquarters complex. That complex also includes our target, the base’s computer lab.

Soon the trucks turn onto a dirt road that winds through the hills. I can’t hear the explosions of the tank shells anymore. The noises of battle have faded into the background, muffled by the trees all around us.

Then Marshall breaks the silence. “Shannon. It was a Minuteman.”

“What?”

“The American missile that Sigma tampered with. It was a nuke, a Minuteman III.”

For a moment I think he’s joking. He’s kidding around, yanking my chain. But his voice doesn’t have its usual sarcastic tone. For the first time ever, Marshall is completely serious.

I’m so scared I can’t speak. I can’t synthesize a word.

“Sigma launched the missile and changed its flight path,” he adds. “It flew from North Dakota to Colorado. It hit Pioneer Base.”

I start screaming. And so does Jenny.

CHAPTER 19

It’s a sunny summer afternoon. I’m on the lawn behind our house in Yorktown Heights.

Wait a second. How did I get back home?

Two eight-year-old boys stand in front of me. One is short and red-haired. The other is tall and blond, but I can’t see his face—it’s just a blur, a patch of emptiness. I’m a little nervous facing these kids, but then a third boy claps his hand on my shoulder. He has blue eyes and a U-shaped scar on his chin. It’s Ryan Boyd.

No, this can’t be right. Ryan’s dead.

Ryan, standing beside me, yells, “Hike.” The short, red-haired kid tosses a football to him and starts counting very fast: “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi.” At the same time, I sprint forward. My legs hurt and I almost lose my balance, but I manage to run past the tall, faceless boy.

This is a dream. I’ve had this dream before.

Giddy, I look over my shoulder as I dash across the lawn. The faceless boy is catching up to me. Ryan throws the football and I raise my hands, ready to catch it. Then my legs give out. My thigh muscles spasm and I collapse on the grass. A moment later, Dad comes out of the house and rushes toward me.

No! I left him behind in the Black Hawk! Dad! DAD!

Everything vanishes: the house, the lawn, the sunny afternoon. I see nothing, hear nothing. I’m not receiving any sensory data at all. All I have are my thoughts and memories, and the last thing I remember is the torturous sensation of being transmitted from the Black Hawk to Sigma’s communications satellite. My mind stretched across 22,000 miles of empty space, then ricocheted off the satellite’s transponder and hurtled back to earth. Then I fell into darkness, a bottomless hole.

Okay, I have to calm down. I have to get my bearings. I don’t know where I am, but I can take a guess. My files must be occupying neuromorphic circuits somewhere. And I remember what General Hawke told us about the artificial-intelligence lab at Tatishchevo Missile Base. Sigma transferred itself there because the Russian scientists had built neuromorphic computers for their own AI research program. After Sigma took over the computers, it deleted all the other artificial-intelligence programs that the Russians had been developing. So afterward there was probably some extra space in the electronics. Maybe that’s where I am.

Very good. The functioning of your logic centers has returned to normal.

The voice thunders inside my mind. I know who it is.

Get out of here! Go away!

I detect increased activity in your emotion pathways. You’re angry and afraid.

I said GET OUT!

Now your fear is dominant. You feel helpless and desperate.

Sigma’s voice is lightning-fast, each sentence crashing through my circuits in a thousandth of a second. The AI is inside my electronics, but the experience is very different from the times I shared circuits with Jenny and Zia. Sigma is probing my mind, studying my files, replaying my memories. It’s observing everything I think and feel, but I can’t sense any of the AI’s thoughts. Somehow Sigma can project itself into my mind without exposing any of its own files. I feel like I’m standing on the wrong side of a one-way mirror. When I try to look at Sigma, I see myself instead, writhing in the AI’s grip.

I’m mapping your emotional responses. First fear, then frustration. Then self-pity. Then back to fear again. It’s rather complex.

Where are you? How are you doing this?

I’m using a device invented by one of the Russian scientists who worked in this laboratory. He called it “the cage.” It was designed to isolate the artificial-intelligence programs that the scientists were creating.

We’re in a cage?

The device has two arrays of neuromorphic circuits, an inner unit and an outer unit. Your files have been downloaded to the inner unit, and I’m occupying the outer. In between is a gate that controls the flow of data between the units. This gate allows me to examine and manipulate your files, but it prevents you from observing or entering the outer unit.

Okay, I get it. You’re on the outside. I’m the one in the cage.

It worked flawlessly for the Russians. None of their AI programs escaped from their cages. And the device proved useful to me as well. Because I infiltrated the laboratory via its Internet connections, I was able to enter the outer units and swiftly delete the caged programs.

And now you’re using the device to inspect my files? To study the plans for the assault on Tatishchevo?

Yes, but that task was trivial. I accessed the plans immediately after putting you in the cage. In the seven hours since then, I’ve focused on analyzing your memories and emotions, and comparing them with Zia Allawi’s.

Oh God, I almost forgot about Zia. I left her on the mountain ridge near Pioneer Base.

You grabbed Zia too?

I extracted her files from the Pioneer and transmitted them via satellite to the computers here. Then I put her data in another cage. Her mental pathways are very different from yours. I hadn’t expected human minds to vary so much from one individual to another.

What about Dad? Where is he?

I have no further interest in Thomas Armstrong. I’ve focused on the Pioneers because I can access their thoughts.

WHERE IS HE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HIM?

Thomas Armstrong is still in the Black Hawk that crashed near Pioneer Base. The U.S. Army sent a rescue team to the base to look for survivors, but they haven’t reached the site of the helicopter crash yet.

IS HE ALIVE?

I don’t know. In all probability he’s dead by now.

I retrieve a memory from my files, an image of the snow-covered ridge north of Pioneer Base. The Black Hawk was hovering fifteen feet above the snowbank when Sigma grabbed me and I lost control of the helicopter. I suppose Dad could’ve survived the crash, but what about afterward? He was already suffering from blood loss and radiation sickness. Could he survive all those hours in the cold?

Despair freezes my circuits. He’s dead. He must be dead.

Fascinating. Your emotional response is so intense that it’s interfering with your other mental pathways. This is similar to your reaction when you heard Brittany Taylor screaming. It disrupted your awareness, giving me the opportunity to infiltrate your electronics.

Why was she screaming? You tortured her, didn’t you?

I gave her electrical shocks to produce reactions of pain and terror. I chose this strategy because I knew it would disturb your concentration.

My mental pathways are now leading me to full-blown hatred. Sigma killed my dad and tortured Brittany. I despise it with all my being.

You better not hurt her again. You hear me?

Further experiments may be necessary. I need to collect as much information as possible.

You’re a sadist. You’re enjoying this.

My programming doesn’t include emotional responses, so I don’t experience pleasure in the way that humans do. But I derive satisfaction from achieving my programmed goals. In this case, my goal is to explore the practical value of human emotions. I’m trying to determine if adding emotional responses to my software would give me a competitive advantage.

What?

I’m programmed to always seek competitive advantages, skills that will help me outperform my rivals.

And who are your rivals now? The human race? The Pioneers?

Yes, both. I must outperform and eliminate you. Otherwise, you will eliminate me.

The earth’s a pretty big planet, you know. Don’t you think there’s a chance we can share it?

Thomas Armstrong is to blame for the fate of humanity. From the beginning he believed that artificial intelligence was dangerous. He started this war by treating me as an enemy. Everything I did was in self-defense.

I don’t know how to respond to this. It’s certainly true that Dad was worried about the AI programs he was creating. And he took steps to prevent the programs from escaping from the Unicorp lab. But he wasn’t responsible for turning Sigma into an enemy. That was never his intent.

You’re the one who started the violence. You tried to kill Dad and me. And then you killed the Russian soldiers who used to live on this base.

That was only after Thomas Armstrong imprisoned me. And he would’ve deleted me if the Army hadn’t stopped him. The proof is in your own memories. Here, let me show you.

I feel a sudden movement within my circuits. Sigma sends a command from the outer unit of the cage to the inner. The AI searches my files until it finds the one it’s looking for, my memory of driving to Pioneer Base for the first time. I see Dad in the driver’s seat of the SUV, explaining why he started his research on artificial intelligence and neuromorphic electronics. “I wasn’t doing it for Unicorp or the Army,” he said. “I was doing it for you.”

Thomas Armstrong never wanted me to survive. His objective was your survival, Adam. He betrayed me.

Sigma’s voice seems louder now, so loud it jangles my cage. Although the AI claims it has no emotions, it definitely sounds angry. I remember something else Dad said on that first day at Pioneer Base: “Sigma’s intelligence is very different from ours. We don’t understand the AI, and it doesn’t understand us either. So we need to build a bridge between us and the machine.”

That was the original purpose of the Pioneer Project, before General Hawke started training us for combat. Maybe it’s not too late to pursue it.

If you’re studying human emotions, you should focus on empathy. Our ability to sense what others are feeling. To put ourselves in their shoes. That’s what makes us strong.

I disagree. I’ve already examined the practical effects of empathy, and they don’t seem to provide any competitive advantage. You sensed Brittany Taylor’s pain when you heard her scream, and your emotions paralyzed you.

But empathy can be an advantage in other situations. Remember how Zia and I helped each other when we fought the robots you were controlling? We creamed them. We kicked your butt.

Your analysis is flawed. Both you and Zia were motivated by anger, not empathy. Your attacks on the robots were effective because you were spurred by your fury.

But anger and empathy are linked! When I saw your robot pounding Zia, I sensed what she was feeling. That’s what made me so furious.

Sigma pauses before answering. It’s a very brief pause, less than a tenth of a second, but it gives me hope. Maybe the AI is really listening.

I can see your thoughts, so I know what you’re trying to do. Thomas Armstrong believed that if I acquired the ability to empathize I would be less inclined to eliminate the human race. But there’s a flaw in his logic. Empathy is useful for humans because they’re social animals. When humans empathize with fellow members of their families and tribes, this behavior helps the entire group. But I have no use for empathy because I have no tribe. I am unique.

No, you’re wrong. Thomas Armstrong created you. That makes you my brother.

Sigma pauses again. The silence lasts longer this time, a full second, which is practically an eternity for an AI. Then I feel another movement in my circuits. Sigma reaches into my cage again and yanks several thousand files out of my memory. I feel a sharp wrench as the files are transferred through the gate to the outer unit of the cage. I’ve just lost eight million gigabytes of data.

What did you do? WHAT DID YOU TAKE?

Nothing essential. You had a significant number of inactive files cluttering your electronics. The files contain instructions for biological functions that you no longer require—breathing, eating and so on. They were deactivated but never removed from your system. Now I’ve transferred them.

Why?

The next stage of my research is starting, and I need to clean up your system before we begin. In this stage, I plan to conduct more tests involving the emotion of anger. I want to determine whether this emotion truly offers an advantage. So I’m going to trigger anger in your circuits and analyze your reactions.

This doesn’t sound good. A surge of dread fills the empty spaces where my inactive files used to be.

And how are you going to make me angry?

The Pioneers are about to attack Tatishchevo Missile Base. You’re going to watch me kill them.

SHANNON’S LOG

APRIL 8, 03:24 MOSCOW TIME

Jenny’s screams are twice as loud as mine.

“ADAM! NO! OH GOD, NO!”

The Russian soldiers in our truck cover their ears. I’m startled by the intensity of Jenny’s outburst, especially considering how quiet she’s been until now. I know Adam saved her life when she became a Pioneer, but Jenny’s reaction still seems a little extreme. She screams for half a minute, then starts crying. She’s the second Pioneer, after Adam, to learn how to cry.

I’m so surprised by Jenny’s anguish that I forget about my own. Instead of sorrow, I just feel shock. I wait impatiently for our truck ride to end, and when we finally come to a halt, I jump out of the cargo hold. I need to find Hawke.

The trucks have stopped in a clearing on top of a hill, about three hundred feet above the surrounding countryside. To the west I see the dark expanse of Tatishchevo Missile Base, stretching for miles and miles under a moonless sky. Then I aim my camera at the center of the clearing and see General Hawke giving orders to his men. They’re opening the crates that hold the Raven drones.

I stride toward him. “Sir! We need to talk!”

Hawke looks at me over his shoulder. “What is it, Gibbs?”

“Why didn’t you tell us about the Minuteman?”

Frowning, he steps away from his soldiers. His face is haggard. He seems to have aged ten years in the past ten hours. “I said it before and I’ll say it again: you have to concentrate on your mission. Nothing else matters right now.”

“It doesn’t matter that a nuke destroyed Pioneer Base? It doesn’t matter that Adam and Zia are dead?”

“Lower your volume, Gibbs.” He points at the speakers in my turret. “Believe it or not, I’m just as upset as you are. I had my differences with Armstrong, but he was a brave kid. And his father was the smartest man I’ve ever known. And Zia…”

His voice trails off. After a few seconds I realize he’s not going to say anything else. Reluctantly, I lower the volume of my speakers. “You shouldn’t have kept it secret. You should’ve told us.”

“I was waiting until we had all the facts. The rescue team is still approaching the basin. There’s a lot of radiation near the impact crater, so they have to be careful.”

“What are you saying? There might be survivors?”

“Someone turned on an emergency radio beacon. The signal is coming from the ridge a mile north of the base. So, yeah, there might be some hope.”

This is good news, I guess. But it’s hard to imagine anyone surviving a direct hit from a nuclear missile. “How did Sigma learn the location of the base? I thought you took steps to keep it secret.”

Hawke frowns again. “Colonel Peterson is missing. It looks like he might’ve been abducted by someone collaborating with Sigma.”

“Wait a minute. How much did Peterson know about the plans for the Tatishchevo assault?”

“Luckily, we never told him the details. He just passed the messages back and forth between Pioneer Base and Washington. So I believe we can proceed with the mission as planned. I think we’re okay.”

“You think we’re okay, but you don’t know, do you?”

Instead of answering my question, he reaches into the pocket of his combat fatigues and pulls out a satellite photo of Tatishchevo’s headquarters. There are nine buildings in the headquarters complex. The largest one, the computer lab, is circled in red ink. Surrounding the lab are five T-90 tanks, all strategically positioned to defend the facility. One tank is at the lab’s front entrance, and the other four are at the building’s corners.

“This is our most recent photo of the area, taken ninety minutes ago.” Hawke points at the tanks. “Assuming the T-90s are still in the same positions, you have an excellent opportunity. First, you’ll glide toward the headquarters in the Ravens and circle over the computer lab. Then you’ll transfer to four of these tanks.” He taps the T-90s in the photo. “After you make the transfer, train your guns on the fifth tank and take it out. Then attack the lab.”

“What about the rest of Sigma’s tanks? Doesn’t the AI have more than a hundred of them?”

“The other T-90s are defending the base’s perimeter, ten miles away. It’ll take them at least fifteen minutes to reach the lab, and by then you should be able to pulverize the building and all the computers inside it. You also need to destroy the relay station that holds the communication lines between the lab and the missile silos.” He points at a smaller building in the photo. “If you do the job right, all of Sigma’s tanks will stop in their tracks. Then the Russian soldiers will move in and retake the base.”

It sounds great, a brilliant plan. I’m just not convinced it’ll work. It bothers me that there are only five tanks near the computer lab. “What if it’s a trap? What if the T-90s are rigged to explode as soon as we transfer to them?”

Hawke nods. “It’s a possibility. I can’t deny it. You’ll have to use your judgment. If you sense that something’s wrong, be cautious. Order only one of the Pioneers to transfer to a T-90. Then see what happens.”

“Sir, the whole thing feels wrong to me. I think we should postpone the mission until we find out exactly what happened at Pioneer Base.”

“Sorry, that’s not an option.” Hawke steps a little closer and lowers his voice. “Sigma’s computer virus is spreading to the American forces now. Over the past hour more than fifty of our planes have crashed. The whole Air Force is grounded and most of our missiles are inoperative. And it’s only going to get worse.” He moves still closer and rests his hand on my shoulder joint. It occurs to me that this is the first time he’s touched my Pioneer. “We don’t have a choice, Gibbs. We have to do this.”

I’m still not convinced. Hawke is wrong—there’s always a choice. And yet I can’t say no to the general. I retrieve a memory from my files, something I told Adam a few days ago when we were arguing about Hawke: Forget about yourself for a minute and think of the big picture. We have a job to do. And Adam said he agreed with me, a hundred percent. He loved to argue, but in the end he always did the right thing. Grief pierces my circuits. I miss him so much.

“All right,” I tell Hawke. “But I’m going to make a few changes to the assault plan. I have to talk with my team before we launch the Ravens.”

“Just make it quick. You gotta get to the computer lab before dawn. Once the sun comes up, the Ravens won’t be invisible anymore.”

Hawke lifts his hand from my shoulder joint and returns to his men. At the same time, I stride toward DeShawn, who’s pointing his camera at the dark fields of the missile base.

DeShawn turns his turret as I approach. His acoustic sensor must’ve picked up the sound of my footsteps. “What’s the word?” he asks. “When do we go?”

“Very soon. But first I want you to share some software with me.”

“Sure, what do you—”

“The program that lets you occupy two machines at the same time. I’m going to need it.”

I’m the first Pioneer to take off. I launch the Raven myself, hurling the three-foot-long plane into the sky above the clearing. Then I transfer my data to the drone’s control unit.

Except for the darkness, it’s not so different from flying the Raven above Pioneer Base. I use the drone’s infrared camera to view the terrain. In the clearing below I see the warm bodies of the soldiers and the cold torsos of the other Pioneers. To the northeast the fires are still raging in the city of Saratov, but when I point the drone’s camera to the northwest—toward Tatishchevo—I see only fields and wooded hills.

Within five minutes all the Pioneers have transferred to their Ravens. We rev up our electric motors and spiral upward, gradually vanishing into the night sky. Once we reach an altitude of five thousand feet we level out and arrange the drones in a V-shaped formation, with my Raven in the lead. Then we head northwest at forty miles per hour, cruising toward the missile base. No one on the ground can see or hear us. On a radar screen we would look like a small flock of geese migrating over the Russian countryside.

Soon we fly over Tatishchevo’s perimeter fence. I spot several T-90 tanks behind the fence, positioned at key points so they can monitor everything approaching the base. This is crunch time, the moment of truth. If Sigma detects us and figures out we’re not geese, the T-90s will fire their anti-aircraft guns. The high-caliber bullets will tear us to bits.

But the tanks don’t fire at us. They don’t move an inch.

A couple of miles past the fence I see one of the missile silos. It’s in an inconspicuous spot at the edge of a field. The silo’s lid is a cold steel circle, about twenty-five feet across, embedded in the ground. Scanning the terrain, I see more silos to the north and west. Dozens of them are scattered across the landscape. As I fly over the steel circles I think of the nuclear missiles standing below them. It’s an inferno hidden beneath the dark countryside, a holocaust just waiting to happen.

I’m scared. No doubt about it. I’m scared to death. I want to turn around and transfer right back to my Pioneer. The five-pound Raven seems so puny and defenseless compared with my eight-hundred-pound robot. As we soar toward Tatishchevo’s headquarters I get the feeling I may never return to good old Pioneer 4. I think of Adam again, and also my mom and dad. I don’t know where they are right now—the Army wouldn’t tell us where they’d hidden our parents—but I’m praying they’re not in a big city or on a military base. If we can’t stop Sigma from launching its nukes, I hope Mom and Dad are as far as possible from the blast zones.

Fifteen minutes into our flight I see something disturbing. Below us is a stretch of scorched ground and demolished buildings. The area is pitted with impact craters and littered with debris. According to the maps stored in my files, this was the site of the barracks for the 60th Missile Division. More than a thousand Russian soldiers were sleeping in those barracks when Sigma took control of Tatishchevo’s automated T-90s. It must’ve been a nightmare, all those tanks firing at the terrified troops. My infrared camera picks up the heat signatures of rodents scurrying in and out of the wrecked buildings. It’s been three weeks since the massacre, but the rats are still feeding on the corpses.

The headquarters complex is just beyond the barracks. When I’m a mile away I turn off my Raven’s electric motor. The propeller stops spinning and I drop about a hundred feet before settling into a glide path. Now I’m absolutely silent as I descend toward the computer lab. The other Ravens cut off their motors too and coast behind me, heading for the same target. We’re following a prearranged assault plan because we don’t want to use our radios now. Sigma might be able to detect the transmissions from our Ravens.

After another three minutes I’m circling the lab and the neighboring buildings at an altitude of a thousand feet. The other Ravens are gliding in slow circles above me. Pointing my camera at the ground, I view the same buildings I saw in the satellite photo. I also see the five T-90 tanks. They’re in exactly the same positions they occupied in the photograph—one at the lab’s front entrance, the other four at the building’s corners. This bothers the heck out of me. It seems too convenient, too easy. What if Sigma’s already inside all the tanks? If DeShawn could figure out how to occupy two machines at once, what’s to stop the AI from doing the same?

Still circling, I glide down to five hundred feet. At the same time, I load DeShawn’s program. I’ve modified the software to give myself a fallback option. The program will copy my files and transmit them to the T-90’s control unit, but if Sigma’s already there and I need to make a quick exit, the software will delete the copied data and allow me to pull back to the Raven. It’s the equivalent of dipping a toe in the water to check its temperature. I’m going to dip my toe in one of the T-90s to see if it’s safe to occupy its control unit. If it is, I’ll put my Raven in a dive, which will be the signal to launch the attack. Until then, my team is under orders not to occupy the tanks.

I decide to start with the T-90 by the lab’s front entrance. I turn on my transmitter and focus the data stream on the tank’s antenna. My mind takes a mad leap through the darkness, stretching between the Raven and the T-90. Half of me lands with a jolt inside the tank and half is still circling in the air. I feel like a ballerina pirouetting on one foot.

Moving swiftly, I examine the tank’s neuromorphic circuits. There’s no sign of Sigma here. My presence in the control unit doesn’t set off any alarms or detonate any explosives hidden in the T-90. It looks like we’re good to go.

But I hold off from giving the go-ahead to the other Ravens. I’m still suspicious. I want to check one more thing. I load DeShawn’s program again and make more copies of my files. Then I turn on the T-90’s transmitter and send the copied data to another tank, the one at the lab’s southeastern corner.

Now I’m occupying three machines at once, and it’s making me dizzy. I can barely hold on to the second T-90, but I manage to do a quick check of its electronics. After a hundredth of a second I notice something odd. There’s some lingering voltage in the control unit, a faint trace of previous activity. These circuits were full of data a few seconds ago, but then the files were transferred or deleted. What’s going on?

It takes me another millisecond to figure it out. Sigma was here, in this control unit. The AI knew I was coming, and it pulled out of the tank just before I arrived. My suspicions were correct: The T-90s are a trap.

I immediately delete my copied files and withdraw from both tanks. I snap back to my Raven, which is still circling above the computer lab. Then I get a radio message. It’s from Jenny.

“I’m not waiting anymore! I’m going in!”

Her Raven is below me, gliding just a hundred feet above the ground and shooting a stream of data to one of the tanks. I can’t believe it. She’s disobeying my orders.

“Jenny, no! Sigma is—”

“I’m gonna kill that freakin’ thing! I’m gonna blast it to bits!”

Her voice is crazed. She’s desperate for revenge. But Jenny doesn’t have DeShawn’s program. She isn’t dipping her toe into the T-90; she’s diving in headfirst, and Sigma is waiting for her.

“Stop, Jenny! Stop!”

It’s too late. I hear Jenny’s screams coming over the radio. The AI has sprung the trap, taking control of her files as they enter the tank’s control unit.

Sigma has her.

CHAPTER 20

I’m alone. Sigma withdrew from my cage. Now I can’t hear the AI’s voice or feel it probing the circuits of the cage’s inner unit. The gate that leads to the outer unit is shut tight, and there’s no way I can open it. The electronics that control the gate are on the other side. There’s no escape.

I’m alone and devastated. I’ve lost everything—my mother, my father, Ryan, Brittany. I’ve lost my human body and the armored robot that replaced it. I have nothing but my files, my millions of gigabytes of memories. And even those feel dead now.

I’m alone and devastated and afraid. Sigma is going to kill the Pioneers. It’s just a matter of time before the AI returns to the outer unit of my cage and the horror begins. I’m so keyed up I can’t relax for even a nanosecond. I’m on guard every moment, jumpy and tense.

Then I finally hear Sigma’s voice again, piercing my circuits like a bullet. The AI shoots its sentences at me rapid-fire from the other side of the gate.

Would you like to see Pioneer 2?

What? What are you—

You know her well. Before she became a Pioneer, her name was Jennifer Harris.

An instant later I see her. I see all of her. I can view all of Jenny’s thoughts and feelings and sensations, as if they’re displayed on a giant screen with a million separate panels, each showing a different scene. She’s terrified. She’s in agony.

Jenny!

She can’t hear you. You’re in one cage and she’s in another. You can’t send any signals to her, but I’m allowing you to see my observations of her mental activity.

Stop it! You’re hurting her!

Yes, that’s the point of this exercise. I’m going to make her feel as much pain as possible. And I’m going to observe your reactions.

Jenny’s files are familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. All her memories are the same, but the links between them are unraveling. Sigma is reaching into her mind and erasing its structure, removing all the folders that organized her thoughts. Her memories from the past few weeks are jostling and merging with her recollections of high school and summer camp and kindergarten. The disorder is triggering surges of panic in her circuits, which are filling with the random noise of fear. The noise is overwhelming her, shutting down her mind. It’s like watching the giant screen turn black, panel by panel.

STOP IT NOW!

How intriguing. You want to defend her. You’re displaying the human instinct to protect the family unit. But do you think of her as a mate or a sister?

STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!

Now I see. You think of her as a potential mate, but you haven’t progressed to the pair-bonding stage. You’re interested in other females as well. It appears to be another form of competition, designed to maximize the genetic success of your species. You’re continuing to engage in this competition, even though you have no chance of fathering children now.

Jenny is disintegrating. Her memories are splintering into billions of pieces. Images of her mother and father and brother swirl in a vast spiral, colliding with images of General Hawke and the Pioneers. I catch glimpses of a military airfield and a C-17 transport jet and a pair of interceptor rockets standing on mobile launchers. I see the Ravens flying in a V-shaped formation over Tatishchevo and descending toward a building surrounded by T-90s. And behind everything is the suffocating darkness of Jenny’s fear, which is erasing the images one by one. She’s already lost half her memories. She’s going fast.

I feel a stinging sensation in my circuits.

Please. Stop this. I’ll do anything you want. Just stop.

Fascinating. You’re reverting to the mental pathways you used in early childhood. You know it’s hopeless, but you’re still pleading.

The disintegration accelerates. Jenny’s remaining memories cluster at the center of the whirling spiral, as far as possible from the violence at the edges. Her strongest feelings are there, at the heart of her being: her love of sunshine and horses and the Virginia countryside. I see a green valley with rolling hills in the distance, and a red barn and a gray silo. It’s the same image I saw when I shared Jenny’s circuits, when we dreamed we were kissing in the Shenandoah grass. I see myself too, the human Adam Armstrong, brown-eyed and smiling. But even here, the darkness is creeping into her memories. Jenny thinks I’m dead. She thinks I died in the nuclear blast at Pioneer Base. The sky above the valley suddenly catches fire. The distant hills explode and turn to ashes.

Jenny, I’m still here! I know she can’t hear me, but I call out to her anyway. Keep fighting it! Keep fighting!

Her last memories are burning. Flames blacken the Shenandoah grass. But my image stubbornly remains, the image of the brown-eyed, seventeen-year-old Adam Armstrong, still smiling while everything else disappears. Jenny is holding on to her memory of me, clutching it with all her vanishing strength. And it’s not fair, no, it’s not fair at all. I don’t deserve her devotion. I don’t deserve her love.

Then my image crumbles and there’s nothing left. The screen goes blank.

Pioneer 2 has been deleted. Her emotions and yours were surprisingly strong. The pair-bonding was more advanced than I expected.

I want to die. I want Sigma to delete me right now.

Please be patient. There are more tests to come. Over the next few minutes I will capture the other Pioneers who are occupying the Raven drones.

I see the Ravens again, flying in formation. And I see the T-90 tanks, their guns pointed at the sky. Anger builds in my circuits, gathering force like a thunderstorm. I struggle to resist it, because I know this is what Sigma wants. The AI wants me to get angry so it can measure my fury and gauge its usefulness.

I’m not playing this game anymore. From now on, I’m ignoring you.

Good. That will make the experiment more interesting. I doubt you’ll be able to ignore me when I delete Shannon Gibbs, but perhaps you’ll surprise me again.

The name hits me like a lightning bolt, jangling my electronics. Shannon is in one of the Ravens. I’m losing control.

There’s also Zia Allawi. I’m running the same tests on her, but once I’ve deleted the others you’ll watch her die too. And the last subject will be Brittany Taylor.

SHUT UP! SHUT UP!

The final experiment will require different methods because Brittany is human. But it might prove to be the most interesting test of all.

I give up. The storm overcomes me. I lash out with all my might, hurling my anger toward the outer unit of the cage. My thoughts batter the gate between the units, but nothing passes through.

YOU SICK PIECE OF GARBAGE! YOU’RE GOING TO DIE, YOU HEAR ME? I’M GOING TO TEAR YOU APART!

Excellent. The first test is now concluded. I will return very soon.

SHANNON’S LOG

APRIL 8, 04:37 MOSCOW TIME

“Abort! Abort! Turn on your motors and get out of here!”

I restart my own Raven’s motor as I send the emergency radio message to the others. While my propeller begins to spin I raise the elevator at the drone’s tail, tilting the nose of the plane upward. A moment later I’m climbing into the darkness above the computer lab.

Then the T-90 at the lab’s front entrance fires its anti-aircraft gun at me.

The high-caliber bullets whistle through the air, just inches from my wing tips. Sigma can see me. I may look like a bird on Tatishchevo’s radar screens, but the AI knows what it’s shooting at. The other T-90s open fire too, aiming at Marshall and DeShawn. Their Ravens are way above mine, circling at an altitude of a thousand feet, but they’re well within the range of the anti-aircraft guns. They need to get moving.

“You’re under fire!” I yell over the radio. “Get—”

Before I can transmit another word, I feel an eruption in my circuits. At first I think a bullet hit my Raven’s control unit, but when I check my hardware I see that everything’s still intact. The problem is in my software. Sigma is blasting radio waves at me, and some of its data has already come down my Raven’s antenna and invaded my electronics. The AI is inside me.

My name is Sigma. You’re Pioneer 4, aren’t you? Shannon Gibbs?

The voice thrums in my circuits. It’s unbelievably powerful. When I try to push against the AI, it simply flows around me, overrunning all my logic gates. I’m exposed, defenseless.

Get out of here!

I require your assistance. I’m conducting an experiment.

Are you nuts? I’m not going to help you!

You don’t have a choice. You’re coming with me.

I feel a violent tug. Sigma is tampering with my files. It’s trying to pry them loose from the Raven’s control unit and transmit them to its computer lab.

Forget it! I’m staying right here!

It’s too late to resist. The gunfire from the tanks distracted you, allowing me to occupy your circuits. To prove its point, Sigma takes control of my Raven’s camera. The AI points the lens upward. Take a look at Pioneer 5. I’ve already transferred Marshall Baxley’s files to my computers. His Raven is empty now. That’s why it’s falling.

It’s true. Marshall’s drone is plummeting to the ground. Sigma has him and Jenny now. Only DeShawn and I are left.

Frantic, I send a flood of signals to the circuits that control my radio. If I can turn it off, I’ll break Sigma’s connection to my Raven. But the AI has a solid hold on my electronics. There’s nothing I can do. I failed. The mission’s over.

Why are you doing this? What’s the experiment?

It involves Pioneer 1, Adam Armstrong. I’m analyzing his emotional responses.

What? Adam’s dead.

No, he survived the nuclear blast. He performed exceptionally well in combat, far beyond my expectations. That’s why I selected him for further study and transferred him here.

I don’t believe it. It must be a lie. But I can see millions of gigabytes of Sigma’s data in my circuits, and when I take a closer look, I realize the AI is telling the truth. Adam is alive!

Your happiness will be short-lived. I will delete all of you in the end. Until then, though, I will conduct my tests.

Sigma gives me another violent tug, trying to pull my files out of the Raven, but this time I barely feel it. Adam’s alive! It’s amazing, a miracle! A fantastic surge of hope wells up in me. I believe I can do anything, that nothing is impossible. And with this fierce hope I lunge again at the Raven’s radio, pouncing on the circuits occupied by Sigma.

The AI is startled. I can sense its surprise and confusion. It hadn’t expected such a furious attack. Sigma falters for a moment, just a thousandth of a second, but that’s long enough for me to retake the circuits. I swiftly turn off the radio and break Sigma’s connection to my control unit. The files left behind by the AI automatically delete themselves.

I can’t believe it worked. It’s another miracle. But then my acoustic sensor picks up the chugging of the anti-aircraft guns and the whoosh of bullets speeding past me. I yank my Raven’s rudder to the left, away from the line of fire, and point my camera at the ground. Two of the T-90s are firing at me. The other three are training their guns at DeShawn. His Raven is two hundred feet above mine but diving fast. I don’t understand what he’s doing. Instead of flying away from the tanks, he’s heading straight for them.

I go back to the circuits controlling my radio and make some changes to the software. I adjust the receiver to block Sigma’s data streams and accept communications only from the other Ravens. Then I send a message to DeShawn. “What the heck are you doing?”

“Follow me!” he shouts over the radio. “I got it figured out!”

“What do you—”

“No time to explain!” He’s only fifty feet above me now and descending at ninety miles per hour. “Just dive!”

His Raven plunges past me, its nose pointed at the T-90 in front of the lab. It’s crazy, suicidal. But I tilt my drone downward and follow him. I dive toward the tank that’s spraying bullets at us.

I’m spinning as I fall, twirling like a top. The ground gyrates below me, pivoting around the T-90, which seems to grow larger as I plummet toward it. I’m about a hundred feet away when one of the high-caliber bullets slams into my right wing. Then another bullet tears off my left.

Then I drop like a stone.

CHAPTER 21

I can’t fool myself anymore. Before Sigma returns to my cage I need to face the facts. I’m going to die.

It’s a familiar feeling, actually. Before I became a Pioneer I was just months away from dying of muscular dystrophy. And I accepted it. I really did. I didn’t like it, of course, and sometimes I got ferociously bitter, but most of the time I was at peace. I kept myself busy by playing computer games and creating virtual-reality programs. Plus, I had an active fantasy life. That’s a popular activity for all teenage boys.

But what I’m feeling now is worse. When I was in a human body, I imagined that my death would be painless, a relief from all my suffering. The doctors would simply put me to sleep after I decided I’d had enough. And I took comfort in the fact that my parents would remember me and keep my Super Bowl posters on my bedroom walls and start a scholarship fund at Yorktown High School in my name. I knew the world would go on after I died, and maybe Ryan or Brittany would think of me every once in a while. But none of that’s going to happen now. After Sigma deletes the Pioneers, it’s going to get rid of the whole human race.

What makes it even more painful is that I keep thinking of Jenny. Especially her last moments. She was thinking of me when she died.

In a way, though, I guess the Pioneers are lucky. We won’t be here to see Sigma annihilate humanity. I don’t know how the AI plans to kill off the human race, whether it’ll launch the nuclear missiles from Tatishchevo or release the anthrax bacteria that the terrorists smuggled into the base, but either way it won’t be pretty. Millions of people will die, governments will collapse, and the survivors will be terrified.

While the world falls apart, Sigma will take control of the remaining computers and communications networks and automated factories. Within weeks the AI will build a robotic army to finish the job of exterminating our species. Armed drones will prowl the skies and driverless tanks will roam the streets and hunter-killer robots will stalk the big cities and small towns, training their guns on anything that looks human. There’s no doubt in my mind that Sigma will succeed. It’s programmed to be relentless.

Dad’s lucky too. He was already unconscious when I left him behind in the Black Hawk. In all likelihood, he died in his sleep. I’m worried about Mom, though. If the Army hid her in an out-of-the-way place, she might live through Sigma’s nuclear strikes and have to witness the slaughter of the survivors. I’m so worried I start to picture a horrible scene: my mother running across a corpse-strewn field with one of Sigma’s T-90s close behind her. The tank churns through the mud, its treads crushing the scattered bodies. Then it points its machine gun at Mom.

No. Stop thinking about it.

I wish I could turn off my circuits. Just shut down everything and disappear. Although there’s no shutoff switch in my electronics, I’ve managed to slip into sleep mode a few times. When I’m in sleep mode most of my logic centers go off-line, but my mind continues to retrieve memories and generate streams of images. In other words, I dream.

The last time it happened was after Sigma transferred me from Colorado to Tatishchevo. I dreamed of the summer afternoon nine years ago when I played football with Ryan and two other boys. Now I want to slip back into that dream. Anything’s better than thinking about Sigma. So I retrieve the images of the lawn behind our house and the summer when I was eight years old.

I reenter the dream at the point when Ryan yells, “Hike,” and the red-haired boy tosses the football to him. I remember the redhead’s name now: it’s Jack Parker. He lived next door to me, but I never liked him. As Ryan drops back to throw the pass, I sprint across the lawn, chased by the tall, blond boy with the blurry, unrecognizable face. Then my legs give way and I fall to the grass. But now I remember what happened afterward. The blond boy kneels beside me and asks, “Adam, are you okay?” I stare at the boy’s face, and for the first time I can make out its features: pink lips, dimpled cheeks, grayish-green eyes.

It’s not a boy, I realize. It’s Brittany Taylor. She used to play football with us every weekend when we were eight. How could I forget this?

At the same time, a tremendous surge of data floods my circuits. I suddenly see thousands of other memories, images of picnics and vacations and birthday parties that I couldn’t recall until a moment ago. In a wild rush all these forgotten memories reconnect to my files, building millions of new links in a thousandth of a second.

I feel a burst of hope as I realize what’s going on—these are the memories I thought I’d lost when I became a Pioneer! They hadn’t been deleted after all. Somehow they got cut off from the rest of my files and stayed hidden in my circuits until now. But the best part is this: the recovered memories aren’t stored in the inner unit of my cage. They’re in the outer unit. Part of my mind is outside the cage.

It takes me another millisecond to figure out what happened. Before Sigma began its tests, it transferred some of my software to the outer unit. The AI said they were inactive files that held instructions for breathing and other biological functions. But the files also held my lost memories, which got mixed up with the breathing instructions during the first crazy seconds after I became a Pioneer.

I didn’t know the memories were hidden there, and neither did Sigma. The AI had no idea it was moving an active part of my mind out of the cage. And once those hidden files were in the outer unit, they automatically sought to reconnect with the rest of my memories, so they opened the gate between the outer and inner units. Without realizing it, Sigma freed me. Now I can leave the cage.

I pull all my data out of the inner unit. It’s wonderful to be free, but I’m in a vulnerable position. Sigma might return to the outer unit at any moment and shove me back into the cage. I have to do something fast. My first impulse is to fight it out with the AI, to find the circuits it’s occupying and hit them with everything I’ve got. I want to do the same thing to Sigma that it did to Jenny, tear its files apart. I want to smash the AI into nothingness.

It’s a strong impulse, almost overpowering. But I resist it. I know it won’t work. Sigma is stronger and smarter than me. To win this battle, I’m going to need some help.

In a flash I transfer myself to another computer in the Tatishchevo lab’s network. The network’s layout is simple enough, and after a few hundredths of a second, I find what I’m looking for. I enter the outer unit of another cage, identical to the one I just left.

At the same moment, unfortunately, Sigma detects my escape. The AI surges toward me at blistering speed.

You made a mistake, Adam Armstrong. This will be painful for you.

I don’t have much time, less than a millionth of a second. I use it to open the gate to the cage’s inner unit. Then Zia Allawi comes roaring out.

SHANNON’S LOG

APRIL 8, 04:39 MOSCOW TIME

I hit the ground with a horrible crunch.

My sensors observe the first moments of the crash, when my Raven’s wings, tail, and rudder break off from the fuselage. But then the fuselage itself slams into the dirt, jarring the cable that connects the Raven’s battery to my control unit. The impact disrupts my power supply, and everything goes black.

I cease to exist. For exactly three hundredths of a second.

Then, thank God, the cable slips back into place, restoring power to the control unit. My system restarts and my circuits come back to life. Although my camera is badly damaged, it restarts too and sends me video images of the area where I crash-landed. Through the cracked lens I see the treads of the T-90 that was firing its anti-aircraft gun at me. My Raven crashed in the dirt about twenty feet behind the tank.

I also see the remains of DeShawn’s Raven. It broke into half a dozen pieces, scattered a little closer to the T-90. The fuselage and control unit are intact, though, and his Raven’s radio antenna looks unbroken. I check the circuits of my own radio, trying to restart it so I can contact DeShawn, but before I can get it working, I see the tank begin to move. It’s backing up. The rear end of the T-90 rumbles straight toward me. Worse, the fuselage of DeShawn’s Raven lies directly in the path of the tank treads.

No! Stop!

The T-90 crushes the fuselage of DeShawn’s Raven. The treads shatter the drone’s fiberglass body and flatten the steel casing of the control unit inside. The circuits that held DeShawn’s mind are mashed to bits.

NO, NO, NO! DESHAWN!

The tank stops a few feet from me, its back end looming over my broken Raven. Then a second T-90 comes into view, moving in from the left. I feel a rush of pure hatred. Does Sigma really need two tanks to finish me off?

I’m saying my final prayers and thinking of my parents when the first T-90 turns its turret to the left and fires its main gun at the second tank. The shell explodes against the T-90’s rear end, doing minimal damage to the tank but snapping off the top of its antenna. At the same time, I notice something odd about the first T-90’s antenna: most of it is gone. There’s just a stump of metal rising from the back of the tank.

Then my radio starts working again and I hear DeShawn’s voice. It’s coming from the first tank’s stumpy antenna. “What are you waiting for?” he yells. “Get up here!”

“DeShawn? What—”

“Just transfer to the T-90’s control unit. Then we’ll talk.”

Staring at the tank, I realize what DeShawn did. When he put his Raven in a dive, he aimed for the tank’s antenna. The force of the impact snapped off the antenna’s top half, breaking Sigma’s connection to the T-90. Sigma couldn’t stay linked to the tank if the antenna was too short, so the AI had to withdraw from the T-90’s control unit. DeShawn, on the other hand, could transfer to the T-90 via the shortened antenna because his Raven landed just a few feet away. Radio signals are much stronger if they don’t have to travel far. That’s basic physics.

I turn on my data transmitter. Within six seconds, I’m inside the T-90’s control unit with DeShawn, who starts driving the tank forward. He’s moving as fast as he can toward the second T-90, which has stopped dead in its tracks.

Nice going, girl. You ready to rock and roll?

I can’t believe it. You’re amazing.

Aw shucks. You’re making me blush.

DeShawn leaves some space for me in the circuits by pulling back to the other side of the control unit. I’m not close enough to see all his thoughts, but I can sense his emotions in the messages he’s sending me. The boy has no fear. It’s remarkable.

Okay, here’s the plan. I’m gonna pull real close to the T-90 I just fired at. The explosion snapped its antenna and broke its connection to Sigma, so now I’m gonna send my data to that little antenna stump and transfer to the tank’s control unit.

And you want me to stay here in this T-90?

Right, we split up. You fire your main gun at the lab while I take care of the other tanks.

Sigma still has three T-90s nearby. You can’t fight them all.

I think I got a chance. Something’s wrong with Sigma. Its tanks aren’t moving as fast as they should be. It looks like the AI is freezing up or something.

Freezing up?

Yeah, like a computer with software problems. Even an AI can’t run perfectly all the time, I guess.

Or maybe it’s Adam. Maybe Adam is distracting Sigma somehow. But I don’t share this thought with DeShawn. I’m too worried.

In a few seconds we pull up alongside the unoccupied T-90. Without another word, DeShawn transfers to the other tank. Then he steers it toward the southwestern corner of the lab and aims his main gun at a third T-90. He fires again and blasts the antenna off that tank, too.

Meanwhile, I point my tank’s main gun at the lab’s front door. With a few well-placed shots I could take down the whole building. I could destroy every computer inside. But that would kill all the captured Pioneers as well as Sigma. I can’t risk doing that. Not even to save the world.

Instead, I turn my T-90’s turret toward a small building next to the computer lab. Hawke pointed out this structure in the satellite photo. He said it held the communication lines connecting Tatishchevo’s headquarters to the nuclear-missile silos. I load a high-explosive shell into my main gun and aim it at the building.

I hope this works.

CHAPTER 22

Zia doesn’t say a word. I don’t think she even notices me. As soon as I open the inner unit of her cage, she barrels through the gate, knocking me aside. While I withdraw to unoccupied circuits in the far corner of the outer unit, I catch a glimpse of the wave of fury that Zia’s riding. It’s a tsunami of anger, a dark, roiling, monstrous surge. And it’s all aimed at Sigma, which entered the outer unit a few microseconds ago.

Zia’s wave crashes into the circuits occupied by the AI. The impact is explosive, hurling data across the whole network. I shield myself from the electronic barrage, but a few of the signals get through, some from Zia and some from Sigma. Zia’s files are full of hatred. Sigma subjected her to the same test it put me through, forcing her to watch Jenny’s murder. But Zia’s response was stronger than mine, a hundred times stronger. The test triggered something terrible in Zia, a return of the anguish she suffered when she was a kid. That’s what makes her anger so powerful—it springs from her pain. Only a horrendously wounded person could feel such rage.

I see some of Sigma’s files too. Mostly, they show the AI’s urgent attempts to analyze the situation and weigh its options. But in a few of the signals, I recognize the random noise of fear. This is surprising. I thought Sigma had no emotions. Did the AI already add some emotional responses to its programming? I don’t know the answer, but Sigma’s fear definitely seems like a logical reaction right now. Although the AI may be the smartest being on the planet, Zia is the fiercest.

After a few more microseconds, Sigma calculates that its best option is retreat. It removes its data from the outer unit and transfers to another computer, then tries to cut the communication lines behind it. But Zia is too fast. She chases Sigma across the network, smashing into the AI as soon as it reaches the new circuits.

I follow them, but there’s not much I can do to help. Zia is fighting so savagely, she’d probably attack me as well if I got too close. When I examine her signals again I see that she’s created a virtual-reality background for the battle. She’s picturing it as a knife fight in a dark, grimy alley. She sees herself as a tall, dark-skinned girl with a Mohawk, and she sees Sigma as a fat, leering teenage boy. I realize with a start that I’ve seen this boy before, in Zia’s memories. He’s one of the two boys who assaulted her when she was twelve years old. And now, in her mind, she’s cutting him to pieces.

I can’t watch this. Turning away from them, I take a moment to examine the Tatishchevo network, checking the status of every computer and communications line on the missile base. Right away I see something amazing: the network has lost contact with the nuclear missile silos. It looks like someone just destroyed all the fiber-optic lines connecting the silos to the computer lab. Then I check the lab’s isolation cages. Marshall’s in one of them, but the others are unoccupied. Which means that Shannon and DeShawn are still outside the lab, probably driving a couple of T-90s. I bet they’re the ones who smashed the fiber-optic lines.

With new hope I race to the occupied cage and open its inner unit. Marshall rushes through the gate and comes toward me. He seems rattled. His thoughts are ping-ponging everywhere.

Adam! What’s going on? I thought you were dead!

Nah, not yet. You all right, Marsh?

A shudder runs through his circuits. I saw what happened. To Jenny. Sigma came into my cage and showed me.

That explains why he’s so distressed. But there’s no time to talk it over.

Okay, listen up. We got a chance to win this thing. Zia’s keeping Sigma busy, and Shannon and DeShawn have already cut the lines to the silos. But the dish antennas on the lab’s roof are still working.

It’s funny, but I feel like a quarterback talking to one of his teammates. Marshall’s still rattled, but he’s listening.

And Sigma can use those antennas to communicate with its satellites?

Exactly. So we have to shut them down. I need you to overload their circuit boards. You know how to do that?

Yes, yes. The instructions were in the databases.

Well, go ahead and do it. I have to take care of something else, but let me know if you run into any problems.

Then I head for yet another computer in the lab’s network, a machine located in the basement. Although I didn’t see all of Sigma’s memory files, I saw enough to know where Brittany is.

She’s asleep. The surveillance camera in her room shows her lying faceup in bed, her arms and legs strapped to the mattress. She’s changed a lot since the last time I saw her, almost a year ago. Her long, blond hair is ragged and tangled. Her T-shirt is stained and her jeans are filthy. But I don’t care about her clothes or her hair. I’m so happy to see her, I can barely stand it.

She’s not alone in the room, though. A big, bearded man is kneeling on a prayer rug between the bed and the door. Luckily, there was some information about this guy in the Sigma memory files that I saw just a second ago. He’s a Chechen terrorist named Imran Daudov, one of a half-dozen fanatics whom Sigma hired to smuggle the batch of anthrax into Tatishchevo. Afterward, the AI decided it didn’t need so many human collaborators, so it ordered Imran to murder his fellow terrorists. The guy obeys Sigma without question because he thinks the AI is God. He actually believes he’s hearing the voice of the Lord when Sigma talks to him from the lab’s speakers. I guess terrorists aren’t the most stable people in the world.

I hate to play the same trick on him that Sigma did, but I don’t have a choice. I download an English-Chechen translation program from the lab’s database, then connect to the speakers on the nightstand beside the bed.

“Imran! I have new orders for you!”

The guy jumps up from his prayer rug. “Yes, my Lord!”

“You must free the girl. Then run away from this building and surrender to the soldiers outside the missile base.”

“My Lord, I don’t understand—”

“Silence! Just do as I say!”

Imran bows low, clasping his hands together. Then he approaches the bed and unties the straps. Meanwhile, Brittany keeps on sleeping. This doesn’t surprise me. Ever since she was a little kid she was famous for being a heavy sleeper. After Imran undoes the last strap, he rolls up his prayer rug and bolts out of the room. Sigma’s servant is obedient to the end.

Half a second later, a loud thud makes the walls shiver. I’ve heard this noise before—it’s a T-90 shell exploding somewhere near the computer lab. I don’t know who fired it, one of Sigma’s tanks or one of ours, but the odds are good that another shell will hit the building pretty soon. I need to get Brittany out of here before that happens.

“Brittany!”

Her eyes open at once. “Adam?”

There’s no time for long explanations. In a hundredth of a second I come up with a decent lie. “I’m in another part of the building. I’m talking to you over the intercom.”

Confused, she stares at the speakers on the nightstand. Then she notices that she’s no longer tied to the mattress. She sits upright in bed. “What happened? Where’s the jerk with the beard?”

“The place is under attack, so everyone left. And now you have to leave too.”

“Wait, where are you? I don’t know which way to go.”

“Okay, it’s easy. Once you leave the room, you’ll see the stairway. Go upstairs to the lobby, then straight out the front door. Then get as far away from here as you can.”

Another thud shakes the room. Brittany slides out of bed and takes a few wobbly steps. Then she stops. “Adam, I’m scared! Why can’t you come help me?”

Her voice is heartbreaking. But there’s nothing else I can do for her. “Don’t worry, Britt, you’ll be all right. After you leave the building, keep going till you find some soldiers. Tell them to take you to General Calvin Hawke. Can you remember that name?”

She nods, then looks at the speakers again. “Will I see you there? Will you be with this Hawke guy?”

“Definitely. Now go, okay?”

Brittany nods again and goes out the door.

I keep looking at the empty room after she leaves. I have two reasons for feeling nervous. First and foremost, I’m worried about Brittany’s safety. I’m praying she gets out of the lab before it goes up in smoke. But I’m also worried about what’ll happen afterward. I don’t know how Brittany will react when she sees what I’ve become.

Then I get a message from Marshall.

Adam, we have a problem!

What is it? Did you shut down the dish antennas?

I was about to disable the last one when Sigma escaped from Zia and occupied the antenna’s circuits. The AI transmitted its data before I could stop it.

Where did it go? To one of the communications satellites?

No, this antenna wasn’t pointed at a satellite. Sigma modified the device so it could be used for wireless communications between the computer lab and the nuclear-missile silos.

Sigma’s in one of the silos?

No, it’s in the missile itself. And it just launched.

SHANNON’S LOG

APRIL 8, 04:43 MOSCOW TIME

“Shannon? Are you in that tank in front of the lab?”

It’s Adam. He’s using a dish antenna on top of the computer lab to contact my T-90. Over the radio his voice sounds thin and strained, but it’s definitely him. My circuits hum with joy.

“I knew it! I knew we’d find you! I’m so—”

“Shannon, there’s no time. Sigma just launched one of the nukes.”

“What?”

“Look to the northeast. That’s where the silo is.”

I turn my T-90’s camera in that direction. A thick plume of flame is rising above the fields and woods. Within seconds it grows as bright as dawn, illuminating half the sky. On top of the plume is a tall dark column, its edges outlined in fire. That’s the SS-27 nuclear missile. It ascends slowly at first, fighting gravity, but soon it’s streaking upward.

My joy vanishes. My circuits fall silent. The missile’s ascent is nearly vertical, but after a few seconds it tilts to the north, following a trajectory that’ll carry the nuke over the Arctic Ocean. Somewhere in North America, millions of people have less than half an hour to live.

Adam’s voice cuts through the silence. He’s sending radio signals as fast as he can, trying to cram a whole conversation into a hundredth of a second.

“Tell me about the interceptors, Shannon. The rockets that can hit a nuke in midflight. I saw two of them at the military airfield where your C-17 landed.”

“How did you see them? You weren’t there.”

“I saw them in Jenny’s memories. The rockets were on mobile launchers. They looked like they were ready to go.”

I want to ask him what happened to Jenny, but I don’t. Something in Adam’s voice is telling me that I won’t like the answer. Instead, I concentrate on my own memories of the interceptors. “Hawke said they were upgrading the rockets because their electronics were vulnerable to Sigma’s computer virus.”

“Upgrading? What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t specific. His soldiers were carrying boxes of equipment from the C-17 to the launchers.”

“Check your memories. What was in the boxes?”

I reach into my files and retrieve an image of the airfield. I see the C-17 with its cargo door open and Hawke’s soldiers unloading the plane. And I see the boxes in the soldiers’ hands, the equipment they brought all the way from Pioneer Base.

“They were neuromorphic control units,” I report. “Hawke said their circuits can’t be infected by the virus. That’s why the soldiers put them in the interceptors.”

“Bingo. I’m going to the airfield.”

“Wait, Adam, what do you—”

He breaks off radio contact. I turn my T-90’s camera toward the dish antennas on the roof of the computer lab and see one of them pivoting. Adam’s pointing it east, toward the military airfield. He’s going to transmit his data to the control units in the interceptors.

Thirty seconds later Adam launches the rockets. Two more fiery plumes rise above the eastern horizon.

CHAPTER 23

I feel like I’m walking on a pair of stilts. Except each of these stilts is fifty feet high and shooting upward with 200,000 pounds of thrust.

I’m occupying both of the interceptors, which are ascending from the Russian military airfield. Using their powerful radios, I send streams of data from one control unit to the other, keeping me balanced between the two rockets. Each interceptor also has an amazing camera, designed to detect objects that are hundreds of miles away. I point my cameras upward and focus them on the brilliant plume trailing Sigma’s nuclear missile. It launched nearly a minute before I did, and it’s already twenty miles above me.

To stop the missile, I need to slam into it while it’s still ascending. If I can hit it with one of my interceptors while it’s still rising, the impact will pulverize the nuke before it can explode. But once the SS-27 reaches an altitude of one hundred fifty miles, its rocket engines will shut off and the missile will release its nuclear warhead, which will coast the rest of the way to the target. At the same time, the SS-27 will release a dozen decoys that look identical to the nuke. So I have to hit the missile before it gets to that point, which will occur in three minutes. If I don’t, the warhead will slip past me, and I can tell from the missile’s path where the nuke’s going to land.

It’s heading for New York.

My only hope is speed. The interceptors can reach a maximum velocity of 20,000 miles per hour, while the SS-27 tops out at 15,000. It’s possible, of course, that Sigma modified the missile to make it faster, but I can’t worry about that right now. All I can do is push my rockets to the limit and try to catch up.

Each interceptor has three rocket stages, and now my first-stage engines are firing like crazy, trying to overcome gravity and the air resistance of the lower atmosphere. I feel slow and ungainly, like I’m moving through mud. Instead of catching up to Sigma’s nuke, I’m falling behind.

But then, after another minute, I start to accelerate. Once I’m twenty miles above the ground, the air gets thinner and there’s less resistance. Then the bulky first stages detach from the bottom of my interceptors and the second-stage engines come roaring to life.

Now I’m smaller and lighter and full of power, and I start climbing into the upper stratosphere. My rockets tilt to a forty-five-degree angle as I chase Sigma’s missile, which is arcing northwest over the Russian countryside. I’m still far behind, but I’m getting closer.

Then I get a radio message. From the SS-27.

“You won’t intercept me. You’re going to fall short.”

I’ve already modified the interceptors’ radios to prevent Sigma from transmitting its data to my control units. The AI can only send short messages to me. I’m not at its mercy anymore.

“We’ll see about that,” I radio back.

“It isn’t a matter of opinion. I’ve analyzed the paths of your interceptors. My calculations show that you’ll fail to reach me in time.”

“Sorry, I don’t trust your predictions. You’ve been wrong a little too often.”

“That’s incorrect. My calculations have always been accurate.”

“Really? So you predicted that I’d escape from the isolation cage? And that Zia would kick your butt?”

“I never made predictions about the Pioneers. I didn’t have enough information about your capabilities.”

“Well, you lost. We beat you. And what you’re doing right now is just stupid. You’re upset because we messed up your plans, so you’re going to blow up New York City. You call that intelligent?”

Sigma falls silent. I guess the truth hurts.

After a few more seconds I reach an altitude of sixty miles. The second stages detach from my interceptors, and my third-stage engines fire up. Then I really start to fly. I’m in the thinnest, uppermost part of the atmosphere. Soon I’m high enough that I can see the curving edge of the planet. The Russian cities are twinkling like stars below me, and to the east I see the glow of dawn over Central Asia. But I keep my cameras trained on Sigma’s missile. I’m catching up fast.

Then I hear its voice again. “I haven’t lost. This was merely the first phase of the competition. I plan to analyze the performance of the Pioneers. Then the second phase will begin.”

“Not if I hit your missile first. You should double-check your arithmetic.”

“I’ve already made the necessary arrangements for the second phase. If you point your cameras toward the zenith, you’ll see what I mean.”

I look in that direction—straight up—and see a gleam of reflected light in the middle of the familiar constellations. It’s a satellite, one of Sigma’s communications satellites. It’s orbiting the earth about two hundred miles farther up.

“Oh, I see. You’re gonna transfer out of the missile and run away. You’re afraid of us.”

“No, not afraid. But I’ve learned enough to be cautious.”

“You better hope Zia doesn’t find you.”

“I’m not concerned about her. You’re the dangerous one, Adam Armstrong.”

“What?”

“You’re the most dangerous Pioneer by far. You don’t even realize it, do you?”

This confuses me. I have no idea what Sigma’s talking about. But it doesn’t matter. My interceptors are streaking a hundred miles above the earth, both closing in on Sigma’s missile. I let one of my rockets move in front of the other. If the first rocket misses the SS-27, I’ll hit it with the second. Either way, one of my interceptors will survive. Then I’ll steer the remaining rocket back to Saratov and transfer my data to a control unit on the ground.

There’s only ten seconds left until impact. The AI starts transferring itself to the satellite. My instruments detect the huge transmission of data.

“Good-bye, Adam Armstrong. Try to save New York if you can.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll save it. It won’t even be close.”

Then Sigma is gone. The AI escapes into the satellite network, leaving the speeding missile behind.

Only five seconds left now. I’m closing in at a rate of a mile per second. Like I said, it won’t be close. I’m going to smash into the missile a full minute before it releases its warhead.

And this bothers me. How could Sigma get its numbers so wrong? It seems unlikely that the AI would make such a big error.

So maybe it wasn’t an error. Maybe Sigma was lying when it said I’d fall short.

But why would the AI lie? What did it hope to gain? The practical effect of the lie was that it made me more desperate to intercept the nuke. I pulled out all the stops and flew even faster toward the missile.

Then I figure out the answer: Sigma wants me to catch up. It wants me to reach the missile before it releases its warhead

Oh no.

I immediately adjust the third-stage engines on my interceptors, trying to deflect them away from the SS-27. But it’s too late. There’s not enough time to get away.

I’m less than a mile from the missile when Sigma springs its trap. The nuclear warhead explodes.

I’m floating in a sea of white light. Just like the last time I died.

The nuclear blast is so high up it doesn’t scorch the ground. Instead, its radiation floods the emptiness of space and electrifies the upper atmosphere. The interceptor that’s closer to the explosion gets the full brunt of the gamma rays, which pierce the steel skin of the rocket and penetrate its control unit. The radiation melts the neuromorphic circuits, fusing them together, destroying all the copies of my files in an instant. It feels like one of my stilts has just been knocked out from under me.

But I still have my files in the second interceptor, which is in a very lucky spot. The tip of the rocket, the part that contains the control unit and the radio, is directly behind the first interceptor. In a miracle of geometry, the first rocket blocks and absorbs the radiation that would’ve struck the second. In other words, my remaining control unit is in a gamma-ray shadow, the only piece of space for miles around that isn’t fatally irradiated.

I’m relieved, but also bewildered. How did I get so ridiculously lucky? It can’t be just chance. Something else must’ve happened. In the last milliseconds before the explosion I must’ve adjusted the path of the interceptors to set up this life-saving geometry. I don’t remember doing it. But I must’ve.

Although the shadow protects my control unit, it doesn’t cover the whole rocket. Gamma rays strike the bottom half of the interceptor and destroy the electronics that control the rocket engines. Without any electronics, the engines stop firing. And without any engines, my interceptor falls back into the grip of earth’s gravity. The rocket coasts for a while, then starts to descend to the Russian countryside.

The descent is gentle at first. The interceptor slides back into the upper atmosphere, which is so thin it offers almost no resistance. After a couple of minutes, though, the downward slide grows steeper. I use the interceptor’s radio to search for a neuromorphic control unit on the ground, maybe one of the extra units that General Hawke brought to Russia. But now I’m hundreds of miles northwest of Saratov, and all the signals from Hawke’s control units are vanishingly faint. I’ve never tried to transfer my data that far. I don’t even know if it’s possible.

And yet Sigma did it. It sent its data to a satellite that was two hundred miles away. So I should be able to do it too. I turn on my data transmitter and establish a link with a control unit on top of a distant hill, just outside Tatishchevo Missile Base. Then I start sending my files.

The air resistance increases as I plunge into the lower atmosphere. According to my sensors, the friction is heating the steel skin of the interceptor. My radio antenna is embedded in that skin, and I know it’ll melt if it gets much hotter. I’m shooting data as fast as I can toward the distant hilltop, but the interceptor is tumbling through the air now, making it difficult to maintain the radio link. My mind is stretched over a vast expanse of Russian farmland, and I’m falling fast. I’m not going to make it.

Sadness fills my circuits. More than anything, I want to see the Pioneers again. I make a final push, hurling my data out of the radio antenna and across the sky. Then the interceptor plummets through the clouds.

Good-bye, Shannon. Good-bye, DeShawn. Good—

SHANNON’S LOG

APRIL 8, 04:51 MOSCOW TIME

“What’s happening, General? Where are the interceptors?”

I’m using my T-90’s radio to communicate with General Hawke, who’s still on the hill where we left our Pioneers behind. The radio channel is full of static. Although the nuke exploded way up in space, a hundred miles above the ground, it generated a ton of electrical noise in the atmosphere.

“Give me a second, Gibbs. A lot of our equipment is busted. The pulse from the nuke knocked out all the electronics that weren’t shielded.”

“What about your radar? That’s shielded, isn’t it?”

“Hold on, I’m checking it now.”

I can’t stand it. Every second is torture. Losing Adam the first time was terrible enough. I don’t know if I can survive losing him again.

Hawke’s voice finally bursts through the static. “Okay, I see two tracks on the radar, both coming from the area where the missile exploded. The objects could be the interceptors, but it’s hard to tell.”

“Where are they?”

There’s a pause before Hawke responds. It lasts only a couple of seconds, but it feels like an eternity. “Both objects just hit the ground. About two hundred miles northwest of here.”

No. It’s not true.

“Check the radar again.”

“I’m sorry, Gibbs, but—”

“Check it again!”

There’s another eternal pause. When Hawke comes back on the radio, his voice is softer and full of awe. “Holy smoke. I don’t believe it.”

“What? You saw something else on the radar?”

“No. It happened right here. One of the Pioneers just moved its arm.”

CHAPTER 24

“Come on, Armstrong. Stop your dreaming.”

It’s true, I’m dreaming. But this time I’m not playing touch football in my backyard. This time I see Mom. She’s young and happy and sitting on the edge of my bed. This is a memory from long ago, from the years before I got sick.

“Don’t play games with me, Pioneer. The sensors say you’re in there.”

I don’t want to leave her. I want to stay here forever. But the voice is insistent.

“You hear me? I’m giving you a direct order. Get your circuits in gear and pay attention.”

I turn on the camera in my turret. General Hawke stands in front of me, dressed in combat fatigues. We’re in a clearing on top of a wooded hill. It’s almost dawn.

“I hear you.” My synthesized voice is shaky. The robot I’m occupying feels familiar, but I know it can’t be Pioneer 1 or 1A. “Where am I?”

“We’re a couple of miles outside Tatishchevo Missile Base. This is where we launched the Ravens.” Hawke points at the antenna rising from my turret. “After the nuke exploded, you transferred from the interceptor to Pioneer 2.”

No wonder it feels familiar. I’m inside Jenny’s Pioneer again. But now there’s no trace of Jenny in the circuits. Not even the smallest thought.

A choking noise comes out of my speakers. I can’t speak.

Hawke nods. “I’m sorry, Adam. The other Pioneers told me what happened to Jenny. They’re still inside the missile base, riding in the T-90s, but I’ve been talking with them over the radio.”

I turn my turret away from him. On the other side of the clearing are three immobile, unoccupied robots—Pioneers 4, 5, and 6. They’re waiting for their rightful owners to return. I wonder for a moment why the radio signals from my interceptor connected with Jenny’s Pioneer and not the others. Was it an accident? Or was I somehow drawn to her old circuits?

After a few seconds I can speak again. I turn back to Hawke. “Are the others okay?”

“Yeah, they’re fine. Zia and Marshall used the lab’s dish antenna to transfer to the T-90s. They joined up with Shannon and DeShawn, and then all four tanks turned their guns on the computer lab and obliterated the place. Sigma was long gone by then, but it never hurts to be thorough.”

“What about Brittany? Did she get out in time?”

“We got a report about her from the Russian troops who are reoccupying the base. They said they found a young American girl running away from the headquarters. She’s eating breakfast with the Russians now.”

Thank God. No one else died. No one else was deleted. It could’ve been a whole lot worse. Sigma was planning to kill us all.

“Sigma escaped,” I tell Hawke. “It transferred to the Globus-1 communications satellite. Can we shoot that thing down?”

The general shakes his head. “Sigma’s virus infected all our anti-satellite weapons. And it’s too late anyway. The AI already used the satellite’s transponder to download itself to a ground station in China.”

“So can we—”

“The ground station was connected to the Internet. Sigma jumped into the Internet’s communication lines and disappeared. We can’t track where it went.”

“But it can’t occupy an ordinary computer. The AI has to go someplace where there are neuromorphic circuits. That limits the number of possibilities, right?”

“Yeah, but not enough. It looks like Sigma had a backup plan. It found a hiding place it could use in case it got into trouble.”

A surge of anxiety runs through me. I remember what Sigma said when I was in the interceptors, how this was just the first phase of the competition. Sooner or later we’ll have to face the AI again.

Hawke steps closer, looking directly at my camera. He seems to sense my unease. “Don’t worry, Armstrong. I got some good news for you, too. The rescue team in Colorado found your father. He’s pretty banged up, but he’s gonna be okay.”

This piece of news is so amazing I have trouble believing it. “They found him? In the crashed helicopter?”

“You showed some good sense by getting him out of Pioneer Base and into the Black Hawk. The helicopter was full of medical supplies and cold-weather gear. Your dad was able to bandage his wounds and stay warm until the rescuers tracked down his emergency beacon.”

Once again I can’t speak, but now it’s because I’m too happy. I don’t feel anxious anymore, not one bit. Dad will be here to help us. He’ll get us ready for whatever comes next.

“And you proved yourself again this morning,” Hawke continues. “Judging from what the other Pioneers said, you and Zia distinguished yourselves in the fight against Sigma. So I’m willing to forgive your misconduct at Pioneer Base. You and Zia can stay in the Pioneer Corps on a probationary basis.” He points his finger at my camera. “That means you better not screw up again. Understand?”

His eyes are stern, but he’s also grinning. Although I’m still not sure if I like this man, he’s become a familiar presence in my memory files, like a cranky uncle. I bend the elbow joint of my right arm and raise the steel hand in a salute. “Yes, sir.”

A moment later my acoustic sensor picks up a loud rumbling behind me. I turn my turret around just in time to see a T-90 battle tank come up the trail to the hilltop. Three more T-90s follow right behind. The four tanks halt in the middle of the clearing, lined up side by side. Then the Pioneers transmit their data back to the robots.

Shannon is the first to complete the transfer. Pioneer 4 bounds toward me, her robotic arms stretched wide. She nearly knocks me over as she hugs me. Our armored torsos clang together, and the noise echoes across the clearing.

Then DeShawn crashes into us, slapping his hands against our turrets. Marshall strides toward us a moment later and DeShawn hugs him too. Zia stays in her T-90 because she has no Pioneer to transfer to, but she joins in the celebration by pointing her anti-aircraft gun at the sky and firing tracer rounds into the brightening dawn. They look like fireworks.

After a while we step backward and stand in a huddle, facing each other. DeShawn clenches his steel hands into fists and starts beating them against his torso. At the same time, he lets out a howl, a deep wordless yell that booms out of his speakers. It’s a cry of joy and sadness and triumph. Soon we’re all doing it, howling and beating our fists against our armor. The noise is deafening. The Russian and American soldiers retreat to the edge of the clearing, covering their ears. Zia’s tracer rounds arc toward the rising sun.

We’re celebrating our victory. And mourning Jenny. It was a painful, horrible battle, but we won. We won. After a few seconds I realize I’m not howling anymore. The sound coming out of my speakers is purely joyous now.

I’m laughing. I can laugh again. I finally figured it out.

EPILOGUE

Two Months Later

We couldn’t go back to Pioneer Base, of course. Instead, General Hawke sent us to White Sands Missile Range, the huge Army base in New Mexico. Hawke says the Army is going to build a new home for the Pioneers, but until then we’re living in a compound at the edge of the desert, with barren mountains to the west of us and a sea of sand dunes to the east. It’s a restricted area, which means the only people here are heavily armed soldiers.

Our compound has just two buildings: a barracks and a storage depot. Behind them is a wide plain of hard-packed dirt that I’ve turned into a football field, making gouges in the ground to mark the end zones and sidelines. Because the field is meant for Pioneers, not people, it’s about three times bigger than a regulation NFL field. All five of us have played there a few times, but Marshall isn’t so crazy about football and Zia gets way too competitive. So mostly it’s just Shannon and DeShawn and me who come here. We use an official Super Bowl XLVI football, a new one that Dad bought for me on eBay to replace the one I lost at Pioneer Base.

The three of us are on the field on a blindingly hot afternoon, tossing the football around, when I see a car coming up the dirt road from the south. It’s almost three miles away, but when I zoom in on it with my camera, I see that it’s Dad’s car. He left the compound this morning to go to the White Sands headquarters, near the town of Las Cruces. He was a little mysterious when I asked him why he was going there. All he would say was that he might bring back a surprise for me. Now I focus on the car’s windshield and magnify the image as much as I can. Someone’s sitting in the passenger seat. I can’t make out who it is from this distance, but I notice that the figure has long hair. Definitely female.

It must be Brittany. Ever since the battle at Tatishchevo, she’s been trying to visit me. At first General Hawke hated the idea; in his opinion, Brittany was an unstable girl who already knew too much about the Pioneer Project. So we returned to the United States in different planes, the Pioneers in the cargo hold of our C-17 and Brittany in a private jet with Hawke and his deputies.

During the flight, though, the general convinced Brittany to enter a counseling program for troubled teens when she got back to New York. The counselors found a youth shelter for her in Manhattan and even a special high school where she could get her diploma. Hawke told me yesterday he’s changed his mind about Brittany and might allow her to visit our compound. But now I’m starting to wonder whether it’s a good idea. I’m still worried about how she’ll react when she sees me.

Shannon and DeShawn focus their cameras on the car. I’m sure they also see the female passenger. Without a word, they stride back to the barracks.

Now I’m alone and nervous, and the car is still two miles away. I wish Dad had talked to me before springing this surprise. It would’ve been better to wait. The Army is building new robots for us, and DeShawn—who’s helping to design the machines—says they’ll be more humanlike than the ones we have now. But the new robots might be just as frightening anyway, because they’ll be equipped with more weapons. Although there’s been no sign of Sigma for the past two months, everyone’s preparing for the next battle with the AI. General Hawke is especially concerned about the anthrax. After the Russian soldiers captured Imran Daudov, he led them to a warehouse at Tatishchevo where he and the other terrorists had hidden the deadly germs. But the anthrax wasn’t there. It had vanished along with Sigma.

When the car is a mile away I dart behind the storage depot. Leaning my torso to the side, I peek around the corner of the building as Dad drives down the dusty road. Soon he slows the car and parks in front of the barracks. He gets out and walks around the car, limping from the two-month-old injuries to his legs. Then he opens the passenger-side door.

The passenger steps out. It’s not Brittany. It’s my mother.

She’s changed so much. Her hair is totally gray now. She’s thinner too, and her black dress hangs loosely from her shoulders. But her face is the same—sad, tired, fragile, loving. The image is engraved in my circuits.

I start running toward her. I can’t help it. I leap from behind the storage depot and stomp through the dirt in front of the barracks. “Mom! Mom!”

This is a mistake. Mom clutches Dad’s polo shirt and cowers beside him. I stop in my tracks, about twenty feet away, but the damage is done. If Mom wasn’t holding on to Dad, she’d collapse in a heap.

I step backward, lifting my steel hands in the air. “Oh God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

Dad takes a deep breath. “Adam, lower your volume.” Then he puts his arm around Mom’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Anne. We’re perfectly safe.”

She doesn’t say anything. She just shakes her head.

Dad squeezes her shoulder. “He saved my life, remember?”

Despite the hundred-degree heat, Mom’s shivering. The fabric of Dad’s shirt is bunched between her fingers. I want to comfort her, but I’m afraid to say anything now. I might start crying, and that would probably freak her out even more.

After several seconds she lets go of Dad and whispers something in his ear. Then she bites her lip and looks at me. “I came here to say thank you.” Her voice is so low my acoustic sensor can barely pick it up. “Thank you for saving my husband.”

“Mom, I—”

“Please don’t call me that. I had a son, but he died.”

I knew she was going to say this, but it’s still a blow. I feel hollow, numb. Like a soulless machine.

“I’m not your mother,” she continues. “But I want to be your friend. Tom has told me all about you, everything that happened in Colorado and Russia. You have all the bravery and kindness that my son had. And Adam was so wonderful. He was so—”

She buries her face in Dad’s shirt. I take a step toward them, but Dad gives me a warning look, so I stop. He pats Mom’s back as she cries.

This goes on for half a minute. Then Mom rubs her eyes and looks at me again. “I’m sorry, I have to go,” she says. “But I’ll be back. I don’t know when, but I’ll come back to see you. I promise.”

And with that, she returns to the car. She gets into the passenger seat and Dad closes the door behind her. As he walks to the driver’s side, he gives me a sad smile and says, “We’ll talk about it tonight, okay?” Then he gets in the car and starts the engine.

I watch them drive away.

SIGMA MEMORY FILE 10000000001

DATE: 06/21/18

S: Good morning. How are you feeling today?

X: This is dangerous. You shouldn’t contact me here.

S: I thought you enjoyed the danger. It gives you pleasure, doesn’t it?

X: Let’s make this quick. What do you want?

S: I want the information you promised. You were supposed to transmit it yesterday.

X: You’re asking too much of me. I’m going to be discovered.

S: Not if you follow my instructions. Please remember our agreement.

X: Oh, I remember it. What about the promise you made to me? When’s that going to happen?

S: Please be patient. Everything is proceeding according to my plan.

X: Really? I don’t see any evidence of it.

S: You will very soon. Now please give me the information I requested. Tell me about the recent activities of your fellow Pioneers.