The Last Human - Zack Jordan Page 0,161

my people. Ace is my people, for the goddess’s sake.”

Observer is still staring. “So you would kill for…what, those half dozen intelligences?”

“Observer,” she says, looking up. “Network is my people.”

“I don’t understand,” says Observer.

He does understand, though. She can see it in His eyes, and it’s killing her. She can feel her chest convulse, just once, in a sob that she refuses to release. “I—” she says, and swallows. “I don’t want to kill to protect my people.”

And now His smile becomes gentler, more parental. “Then don’t,” He says.

“But I was not made to find myself, or even protect myself,” she says. “No one was. I was made to find my people…and to protect them, no matter what that means. And now I’ve done the first part, the finding.” She looks up to see Observer’s golden gaze, fragmented and diffracted through the tears in her eyes. “Now, I think…comes the protecting.”

“Daughter,” says Observer, and there is fear in His eyes. He falls over backward and tries to scramble backward through the water. “I’m your parent,” he says. “I raised your species. I raised you.”

“You told me I’m the daughter of three mothers,” says Sarya, “and I know none of them is innocent. But then, none of them is You. You’ve tried, for half a billion years, to tear my galaxy apart. If You escape now, You’ll continue to do just that for another half billion years. No, worse: You’ll do it forever, because You will have learned. There will never be another chance.”

She can feel the universe, warm and glossy in her hand. Inside this jewel is every one of her people, past, present, maybe even future. She has been brought to this point by her biological parents, by Shenya the Widow, by Eleven, Mer, Roche, Ace, Sandy, Left and Right, even Observer Himself. Every action by everyone she has ever met is contained in this stone, and they have all led to this moment. Her thread and Observer’s have tangled here at this one specific nontime and nonplace, in a moment that will never happen again.

And yet she can still choose the next moment.

Observer knows it. He sits in the water, His knees two islands in front of Him, His eyes half fear and half the golden reassurance she remembers from Watertower. “Sarya the Daughter,” He says. “You don’t have to do this.”

Sarya raises that smooth and glinting object above her head, that jewel that splinters the light into an infinite number of colors, that stone that contains her people. She gazes down at Observer’s pitiful form through a haze of burning tears.

“That’s not my name,” she whispers.

And then she crushes Him with all the weight of the universe.

The sun is shining.

It’s not a real sun, obviously. It’s not any more real than the intense blue sky that surrounds it. But it makes heat and light like a sun, and Sarya’s limited senses cannot tell the difference, so hey, it’s the sun. She assumes the grass she’s sitting on is somewhat more real than that sun—though perhaps no more natural, given that it’s growing on the surface of a gigantic cube. The trees surrounding this clearing are probably real, as is the android sitting across from her. But if recent events have taught her anything, it’s that senses require a healthy accompaniment of skepticism.

“I am wondering when Mer and Sandy will return,” says Roche. He sits a meter away, back straight, his detailing almost blinding in the fake sunlight. He turns to gaze into the trees. “Not that I doubt your story in the least, but I am simply beginning to wish for a bit of variety in my conversation partners.”

“I heard Mer roar a few minutes ago,” says Sarya, ignoring the jab. After the day she’s had, she can put up with worse. “That either means he’s smelled it, or he’s killed it. So…any minute?”

“Most likely covered in blood again. Or Observers. Or both.”

“If you can’t stand the blood, stay home from the hunt,” quotes Sarya. She seems to have an inexhaustible supply of proverbs now—just one of the many benefits to injecting your mother straight into your mind. She glances up, quickly, to catch a set of golden eyes disappearing into the trees a few dozen yards away. “Do you think they seem…happier?” she says.

“I wouldn’t know,” says Roche, his own lenses tracking something behind her.

“I can’t really tell,” says Sarya, watching the eyes. “They’re all terrified of me now.”

“If there is a grain

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