Antibody (EBOOK)

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“RYDER, I AM EXPERIENCING a possible system malfunction,” Pax said. “I need an objective observer to aid in assessment.”

Pax had to stoop to look through the door of the converted attic bedroom in the old farmhouse. Inside, it was almost completely dark. Only his enhanced cyborg senses allowed him to make out movement in the bed. Ryder stirred from where she had obviously been asleep moments before, wrapped in her new lover’s arms.

“Pax?” she murmured, her voice raspy from her prolonged expression of delayed grief the previous day. “Just a minute…”

Another figure rolled over and a bedside lamp flipped on, illuminating her bedmate’s groggy features. Temple blinked a few times, clearly trying to engage his brain after the unexpected awakening. “Is this an ‘all hands on deck’ kind of problem or a ‘don’t worry, this will just take a few minutes’ kind of problem?” the human asked.

“There is no immediate danger to the people in this house,” Pax told him. “Ryder, I would not disturb you so soon after the memorial ceremony—”

She cut him off. “Don’t, Pax.” He snapped his mouth closed and averted his eyes politely as she grabbed a pair of trousers, pulling them on. “If there’s a problem, I don’t want anyone else here trying to play doctor for you. That’s my job. And prophets know I don’t want you attempting to self-diagnose, either. Come on. Let’s go somewhere with better lighting.”

“Want me to tag along, you two?” Temple asked around a yawn.

Ryder hesitated for a bare moment. “Yeah… if you don’t mind.”

“Course I don’t,” Temple said, and rummaged for a shirt.

In the part of his brain that wasn’t preoccupied with the impossible distress call he’d received a few minutes ago, Pax was gratified to observe Ryder’s small—and uncharacteristic—act of reaching out. For too long, she had rebuffed all attempts by her friends to breach the protective walls with which she surrounded herself. While the change had clearly been a painful one for her, Pax thought it would almost certainly be healthier for her psyche in the long run.

When the pair was ready, he switched on the LED nestled amongst the implants at his left temple, using it to light the way down the cramped staircase leading to the main floor. The house was quiet, its timbers creaking as the temperature outside cooled more quickly than the temperature inside. Ryder indicated that they should enter the kitchen, where she turned on the overhead light.

She looked pale, her features drawn with the combination of recent injury and long-denied grief. Nevertheless, her movements were brusque and commanding as she gestured them to the table that dominated the center of the room. He followed the pair’s example and sat in one of the mismatched chairs, not because standing was a problem for him, but because he knew sitting would help put the others at ease. Temple, in particular, had seemed uncomfortable in his proximity since their somewhat unfortunate first meeting.

Self-indulgently, Pax spent a moment trying to recall what it had been like not to inspire terror in strangers by his very presence, and failed.

Ryder scrubbed a hand over her face, as if to rub away her exhaustion. “All right, Pax. Give me details. What are your symptoms?”

“I have experienced an occurrence which I know to be impossible,” Pax explained. “Either the present incident is not real, or my memory of the past is not accurate.”

Ryder mulled that over for a moment. Temple frowned.

“Can cyborgs experience hallucinations?” he asked, a bit warily.

The medic shrugged her uninjured shoulder. “Pax’s brain is a tangle of organic synapses and nanobot-constructed tech,” she said. “In some ways, it’s a delicate system. It’s certainly possible, but I suspect there are additional possibilities that may become apparent on further inspection. Now, what are the two contradictory facts?”

Pax cocked his head. “I received a unique internal distress call originating from one of my batch siblings twelve-point-three minutes ago. It lasted for thirty seconds and then discontinued.”

Ryder nodded. “And what’s the problem with that?”

“I watched my batch siblings march into the decommissioning chamber seven years, two months, and eleven days ago. I watched as unit D-8 was vaporized. Yet this was D-8’s embedded distress beacon. Both things cannot be true.”

Temple blinked. “They… made you watch your fellow cyborgs being killed?”

Ryder’s mouth twisted in displeasure, and if Pax could have felt regret, he would have regretted bringing up a subject he knew she found upsetting.

“Cyborgs have a distinct sell-by date, generally speaking,” she said, her unhappiness coming through in her tone.

Temple’s brows drew together in confusion.

“Early experimentation revealed that after a certain period of time, cyborg brains become unpredictable,” Pax explained, “and therefore either useless or dangerous to our military handlers.”

Ryder grunted. “To get around the problem, the military started ‘decommissioning’ them well before their expected failure date.”

The human went a bit gray beneath his dark skin. “And by ‘decommissioning,’ you mean…?”

“Vaporizing,” Pax confirmed.

Temple stared at him for a beat, his head shaking minutely back and forth as he sought words. “How in the hell did our society end up here?” he asked eventually. “How did our world… get like this?”

“Incrementally, and through effective use of psychological conditioning and propaganda,” Pax replied without hesitation. “The organic brain is easily shaped, given enough time and resources.”

The human sitting across from him pinched the bridge of his nose as if trying to root out a headache. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “Shit. Isn’t that the truth? Okay, so—next question. And I apologize ahead of time for the bluntness. But, if the rest of your cyborg batch reached its sell-by date, and your handlers made you watch while they were vaped, then how are you still here?”

Pax affected a shrug. “My systems failed early. I regained free will, but I was cognizant of the realities of being a cyborg. I had no wish to face immediate termination, or to know that my system failure had condemned my batch-siblings to early termination as a precaution. So I hid it.”

Ryder’s face grew hard, and again, he would have felt regret. He’d never determined if her reaction to the next part of the story was because she was angry with him for his actions—well, more accurately, for his inaction—or because she was angry on his behalf. He had considered asking her to clarify on a few occasions, but it did not appear to be a subject she cared to discuss if it was at all avoidable.

“I often pondered ways to save myself and my siblings from being decommissioned,” he said instead. “But they would not have understood my desire to continue on after being ordered into the vaporization chamber, and I did not wish to be parted from them.”

Ryder shifted, and her voice was tight. “They were your family.”

Again, it might have been accusation or commiseration. He did not ask. “Yes,” he agreed. “They were.”