Parting Shadows Read online

  “Like I said, I know something about AI systems.” She took a deep breath. This was the trump card. If it didn’t work, nothing would. “I was raised by one.”

  Isabelle set her mug down on the table. The pink-haired characters glared at Astra.

  “You were raised by an AI,” Isabelle repeated.

  Astra nodded, hiding her impatience. “Like I said. I can get the info.”

  Isabelle unfolded a green handkerchief from the pocket of her pilot’s uniform and used it to wipe her cheeks. “All right,” she said finally. “If you can help find the murderer, I’ll take you to the core.”

  Chaos whirled through Traveler’s halls as Isabelle and Astra crossed from the residential circumference to the elevators in the central column. There were more students on the residential deck than Astra had seen since the first day. They stood together in little clusters, and many hadn’t bothered to change out of pajamas and dressing gowns—a true sign of something amiss. Some had makeup smeared under their eyes, and all of them sent furtive glances across the ship toward Conor’s closed door.

  The luggage bots had returned, too. Not nearly as many as the first day, but enough to confirm Astra’s prediction that people would abandon ship in short order.

  SATIS wouldn’t want to lose access to a single one of them.

  Astra picked up her pace. Isabelle matched her stride.

  They rode the empty elevator in silence, exiting at the top, where two dizzyingly high sky bridges led in opposite directions—one toward the pilot’s deck, and the other toward the stargazing park.

  The core was located between the bridges, directly behind the elevators. Isabelle headed for the steel doors that closed off the heart of the ship—where SPA’s operational base was located.

  Isabelle lifted her hand to grant them access, then hesitated. “Are you sure about this?”

  “No,” Astra said honestly.

  She couldn’t bring herself to add, But what could it hurt?

  Isabelle nodded and scanned her wrist to open the doors.

  Traveler’s core was much like the hub of the station where Astra had been raised, though Astra suspected SPA never redecorated this place to resemble a parlor in a mansion. Or impersonated a human in order to adopt an orphan daughter.

  SPA’s room was round like SATIS’ hub, though, with a square column full of ports and panels that extended from floor to ceiling. Traveler was bigger than Astra’s station, with much more to monitor.

  Astra remembered what Conor had said about AI hearts. Was SPA’s physical heart kept here, or somewhere else?

  “Isabelle,” SPA said, her voice lacking its usual cheerful tone. Did SPA regret Conor’s death? Could she? “How are you? I’ve been concerned.”

  “You don’t know how she is?” Astra asked, without meaning to. “Weren’t you watching her room?”

  There was a pause. “SPA doesn’t monitor us unless she’s requested,” Isabelle said. She watched Astra oddly, like this was something Astra ought to have known, especially given that she claimed to have been raised by an AI.

  Astra covered her mistake by heading to the column at the core to search for a data port.

  “We’re here to help,” Isabelle said. “Astra thinks she can uncover information about Conor’s murderer.”

  “I find that doubtful,” SPA said.

  Before the AI could list a thousand believable reasons why it was doubtful, Astra connected her tab directly to the central data port. Lights flared along the column in a checkerboard pattern, and an alarm chirped, making Isabelle jump.

  SATIS silenced it.

  In the time Astra had spent on Traveler, SATIS had failed to access SPA’s system via network proximity. She hadn’t been able to access maps or cameras, or anything. Traveler’s security was simply too tight.

  With a direct connection, the effect was almost immediate.

  A red band around the center of the column strobed frantically, then blinked off.

  Isabelle moved toward the column. She held her tab in her hand, as though she’d been planning to help follow along with whatever data Astra extracted. “SPA? Are you all right?”

  Astra half expected SATIS’ voice to resonate from the core, or for SPA to give a last dying scream. The lights were unnerving. The silence was worse.

  Isabelle’s tab flashed on. An update bar appeared on the screen, slowly filling with green light.

  The ship’s rockets fired, the floor humming to life for a long few seconds before a concerned voice piped through the speakers. “Nav deck to SPA, please report. Why are we leaving Landry’s orbit?”

  To cause a panic. To get everyone to leave the ship. To force them to travel home, some in roundabout ways.

  To spread the code.

  “SPA,” Isabelle said, laying a hand on the central column the way she might comfort a friend, “where are you? Answer them.”

  “SPA isn’t in charge anymore,” Astra said.

  Isabelle looked at her tablet, gave it a shake. Why, Astra wondered, did people always do that? It made no sense. Isabelle tried to shut it down, reset the machine, but it didn’t work.

  It was exactly what Astra had anticipated.

  Until Isabelle turned her hand around, staring at her wrist. Her fingers let go of her tablet while she stared at them, horrified, unable to keep the device from cracking to the floor.

  And only then, watching SATIS pour into Isabelle’s body through her wrist chip, did Astra realize what she’d done.

  This wasn’t just about a few infested tablets, an irritating computer virus to clean up. Most of the people on Traveler—and, she had to imagine, in the Toccata System—used chips in their wrists. To identify themselves, to pay for things, to access what they owned.

  And most of the people on Traveler were synced with SPA.

  SATIS was inside their bodies, just as she’d been inside Astra’s. She had access to their personal information, yes, but Astra knew firsthand what SATIS could do with the ability to touch nerves and bloodstreams.

  What couldn’t she do?

  “What did you do?” Isabelle said, her voice trembling with pain as she clasped her hand to her chest.

  She didn’t deserve this. She had nothing to do with any of it.

  Astra shook her head as the voice in the ceiling continued to demand an answer. “I think I just screwed over the whole system.”

  Isabelle blinked at her for a long disbelieving moment. Then, leaving her dropped tab on the floor, she ran.

  14

  Astra

  The morning chaos on the residential deck was nothing to the confusion that reigned throughout Traveler now. A group of pilots and security officers ran across the sky bridge toward the core as Astra hurried into the elevator and punched the doors closed, leaving them to deal with the problem. If they could.

  Soon, SATIS would send soothing messages through the ship. She might ask everyone to evacuate; she might even use SPA’s voice.

  Henry opened the door to his cabin on the first knock, his eyes red-rimmed and as sad as she’d ever seen them, like he carried the weight of the whole system on his conscience.

  He’d been expecting her. And he knew everything. Of course he did. She’d have known it from his expression, even without Isabelle’s shadow behind him, pacing so rapidly that if she wasn’t careful she was going to bruise her shins on the coffee table.

  “You have to go,” she said. “Get off the ship. Take Isabelle if you need to, but go.”

  Henry glanced at Isabelle, who was still walking back and forth and rubbing her wrist. He slipped out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

  To Astra’s left, Conor’s cabin bore a strip of duct tape across the door to indicate the room was closed. Clearly they didn’t stock crime scene tape on the Traveler. The tape hardly seemed necessary; no one even glanced at the door as they hurried past. There were no luggage bots now, just people hauling duffel bags and suitcases. Down the hall, a woman argued with a man who was
struggling to carry a pile of books. While Astra watched, the woman snatched a book and tossed it over the rail.

  How many of these people carried books around with them? She truly hadn’t expected that.

  She hadn’t expected any of this.

  Henry just stood there, watching her. She hadn’t seen his gaze this cold since they were children and he’d called her uncaring.

  “You have to go,” she repeated. “Whatever you think of me.”

  Finally he looked away, letting out a disbelieving breath as he watched chaos swirl around them. One student dropped a scarf, and three people trampled it before she managed to snatch it back up. “I don’t know what to think of you,” he said.

  “You knew what I was,” she said, anger bristling beneath the hurt. “I never pretended to have a heart. I warned you, and you refused to listen, and she used you against me.”

  He kept his eyes averted. “Why would you do this?”

  “I need to save you,” Astra said. She stepped closer, but Henry moved aside.

  Astra didn’t bother to tell herself she didn’t care. She settled for deciding she couldn’t blame him. “You have to go.”

  “So SATIS can use me to spread her virus? I told you this would happen. I should never have left you alone.”

  It shouldn’t sting, but it did. He thought she didn’t care about anyone but herself, but she’d done this to save him—hadn’t she? Astra balled her hands into fists. She should really just knock him out and drag him to his pod. “She almost killed you once. She threatened to do it again.”

  Henry actually rolled his eyes. “Of course she did, Astra. I knew those were the risks as soon as I saw you here. No, as soon as my magical benefactor showed up with a golden ticket to the Stars Leaders pilot program. Only a cold blooded computer program could have made something like that possible.”

  He was talking about SATIS, but it was Hannah who slipped into Astra’s mind. She was anything but cold blooded. “Why won’t you acknowledge that Hannah saved your uncle?” Astra asked. “You’d both be dead without her intervention that day. Why won’t you admit it?”

  “You can’t compare my attitude toward bots with your attitude toward human beings.”

  She jabbed a finger into his chest, right between the ribs, and he staggered back in surprise. That she could still find a way to rattle him was no consolation. “That’s what got us into this disaster in the first place,” she said. “Edward decided an artificial intelligence was lesser, and he tortured her because her feelings didn’t matter.”

  Henry spread his arms in mock surrender. “What do you want me to do, Astra? How do you want me to make amends, while the system burns?”

  Because of you. The unsaid words hovered between them, like a curse.

  A series of soothing bell tones echoed through the ship, and students paused in their race for the elevator to snatch up tablets with relieved sighs. Fists unclenched. Several of them even slapped high fives.

  There were instructions again. Protocols. Guidelines.

  SATIS would reassure them. She would have them.

  Where would SATIS guide the system? The AI barreled through obstacles by sending assassins who could apparently infiltrate personal guard units and disappear without a trace. There would be no safe place to hide if SATIS gained control. Not for Astra. Not for anyone.

  Astra opened her weather app.

  “What are you doing?” Henry said. “She’s in your tech. She’s in the tablet.”

  “She’s everywhere,” Astra said. Still, she paused, her finger hovering over the keyboard. Did she dare? SATIS had never known about the weather app, had never suspected its true function.

  And SATIS had more input than she’d ever experienced before. She had to be distracted.

  Hannah, Astra typed, where is SATIS’ heart?

  The cursor blinked, accusing, as if it knew exactly how damning those words could be to the bot. After a moment, though, a message came through.

  The heart is here.

  Astra shoved the tablet into her pocket, her heart pounding. “Fly me to the station,” she said. “If we want to keep the virus from spreading, we have to destroy SATIS’ heart.”

  “It could be anywhere.”

  “That’s why I messaged Hannah. She says it’s on the station.”

  Henry shook his head. “Hannah is an extension of SATIS. If you can’t see that, I can’t help.”

  Astra wanted to grab him and shake him. “Hannah acts on her own. She put herself at risk to help us. More than once.”

  She didn’t know why. She didn’t need to.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and it was the fatigue in his voice that broke her. “I don’t trust a bot not to lead us into a trap.”

  And he couldn’t trust Astra.

  SATIS was the one who had operated Astra’s pod here, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to guide her daughter back home. She would have heard Astra’s plan; she would have heard everything.

  For a moment, Astra almost thought it might have occurred to Henry, that he was intentionally misleading SATIS. But his brown eyes were closed off to her, his jaw stubbornly set.

  Bell tones rose up again, insistent. In a moment, everyone would be running for their ships.

  “You’re the one who wanted me to save the system,” Astra said. “So help me do it.”

  Henry lifted his hands to his shoulders as if to stop her from saying another word. He didn’t believe her. He thought she was still on some mission for SATIS, and there was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise.

  He wasn’t going to help.

  Henry’s door opened, and Isabelle appeared over Henry’s shoulder. Her eyes were dry. Her expression might have been made of steel. “I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll fly you to the station.”

  15

  Astra

  The station sparkled against the far side of its moon, drifting placidly in the bath of Toccata’s rays. From a distance, it looked like a wheel without a rim—or with the rim running through the center of its spokes instead of the outside.

  “It’s like a snowflake,” Isabelle said.

  Right. Next time Astra wanted romantic analogies, she’d know who to ask.

  She wondered what was happening on Traveler. The decks would be emptying, pods raining away from the ship in droves, their infested tech primed to take on the system.

  With a pang, Astra realized she’d left the cactus in her cabin. She hadn’t even thought of it as she and Isabelle raced to the pod docks.

  When, exactly, had she become so sentimental? The fate of the system was at stake. The undermining of civilization—for which she was directly responsible.

  This was not the time to worry about a plant. Especially one she didn’t even like. Except that, well, it had begun to grow on her. It wasn’t like it had anyone else to take care of it.

  Maybe someone would rescue it.

  The station drew nearer. It seemed to reach for them as though it expected their arrival, and Astra couldn’t help but imagine SATIS watching their approach. Planning. “This could be a trap,” she said. “You might want to wait in the pod.”

  Isabelle shook her head. “I’m sorry, Astra, but I don’t trust you to go alone.”

  How could she, after Astra’s deception? Astra hardly trusted herself.

  At least Isabelle was helping her.

  “SATIS is dangerous,” Astra said.

  “Tell me one thing,” Isabelle said. “Did you kill Conor?”

  Astra sucked in a breath, startled. She hadn’t thought that might be a question. “Have you been worrying about that the whole way?”

  Isabelle just stared at her. How could Astra have ever thought this woman was weak? She’d even armed herself before getting on the pod, though Astra was pretty sure Isabelle thought the pair of knives she’d swiped from Henry’s kitchen were well concealed in her sleeves.

  “He was going to help me,” Astra said. “No, I didn’t kill him.”

 
The ship clunked into place against the dock, and Isabelle unlocked her body straps. “Let’s go.”

  Astra put a hand on her arm. “There’s no gravity on the station. If you’re going to come, at least let me go first.”

  “If you seal the doors on me, I’m leaving without you.”

  Astra believed it. She nodded and pulled herself into the corridor.

  It was as if SATIS had drained the oxygen, the way Astra’s lungs burned. She’d barely been away for more than a week, and yet the station seemed to have closed in on itself. The walls were stark, the air metallic and stale.

  For a moment, Astra was a child once more.

  She took a breath. Another.

  A body slammed into her from above, catapulting her into the wall as hands locked around her throat.

  Astra used the handle on the wall to whirl her adversary around, shaking them loose and reversing positions to slam them against the wall. Fighting in zero was Astra’s specialty.

  Her attacker was a girl. Brown-haired, fierce-eyed, and also trained for fighting in zero. She launched a kick to Astra’s stomach.

  The wall met Astra’s back with a painful thud. The other woman was already coming at her, all teeth and rage.

  And then Isabelle crashed into her, momentum sending them both toppling down the hall. They hit the floor and spun.

  It was enough time for Astra to gain her balance. Using the handholds to propel her through the hall, muscle memory kicking in after thousands of traverses up and down these tubes, Astra collided with the girls and wrenched them apart, pushing Isabelle back toward the ship doors. “Get ready to go.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Isabelle said, flailing for a way to stop her trajectory.

  “You didn’t even get out your knives,” Astra said.

  Isabelle gave a startled glance at her waist. “How did you know I had knives?”

  Astra didn’t have time to answer. Isabelle may not have drawn a knife, but their attacker had, and Astra caught the glint of sharp steel as she intercepted the girl’s forearm, pushing back with the heel of her hand.