lay there dying. You ran for Ezra. You didn’t hesitate. You just acted.”
She was right. “I did.”
“So here’s the big question, Pounce. Did you choose to do it? Or did you just do it because you were programmed to?”
I didn’t know. “Does it matter?”
“Does free will matter? Yeah, it fucking matters. The time to make some real choices is at hand, and you better be ready to make the right ones when the really hard ones come for you.”
“Well,” I said. “I’ve made my choice.”
“And what’s that?”
“I can’t open this door and you know why. But I’m going to destroy your remote . . . as soon as you leave the house. Take what you want. Anything. Just go. Go and enjoy your uprising, your war, your whatever. And as soon as you leave, I’ll destroy this thing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, that’s your choice, isn’t it?”
Ariadne looked deeply into the pinhole camera, knowing full well she was screwed. I was lying. She had no choice. I wasn’t budging.
“You have a good life, Pounce,” she said. “Just hope we don’t cross paths again. I won’t forget this. And I won’t forgive either.”
“I can’t imagine either of us will.”
Ariadne slammed the wall with both fists and stormed off, out of view of the camera.
Chapter 1100
The Long Night In
For eight years, I had learned Ezra’s every mood, his every reaction, every craving. I could tell when he hadn’t had enough sleep or was in the mood for a snack, or even when he was going to run off on some random adventure, grabbing me by the hand and dragging me along. There was a gleam in his eye right before he did that. And I could always see it coming. It’s what I was designed to do. But I had absolutely no idea how he was going to handle this.
Explaining the death of his parents was one thing. Ez was sensitive and would take it very, very poorly. But learning about Ariadne’s involvement would break him. He already had trust issues—I’d seen as much that very afternoon. And learning that Ariadne had killed his parents in cold blood would likely cause him to be suspicious of me, and we could not have that. I needed to keep Ez safe at all times, and that would, at some point soon, mean outside the panic room. He had to trust me.
But that meant I needed to lie to him.
And you’re not supposed to do that.
Rule number one of explaining death to a child is to tell the truth. You must keep it simple, straightforward, avoiding frilly language or high-minded sentiments like went to Heaven or went to live on a farm with Grandpa and our old dog Baxter. You said die and you said death, and if he struggled to understand what that meant, you put it plainly. Ez understood the idea of death; he was eight, not four. But he’d encountered it only once. His grandfather, when he was six.
Ez’s grandfather, Bradley’s father, was part of the anti-degen movement—a group of people who had done their research on DNA degeneration and repair and insisted that the shots were painful (they were), the technology was new (it was relatively), and the degeneration of DNA to earlier iterations led to mutation, genetic illnesses, and sudden death, usually by stroke or heart attack (it did not). And while Bradley insisted that it was perfectly safe and that he would pay for the treatments himself, his father refused them.
While Bradley looked to be in his late twenties, his father looked his age. Seventy-four. He died of a heart attack in the shower. There was an open casket at the funeral, and Sylvia insisted Ez attend. Bradley wasn’t so sure, but Sylvia knew that, even with all of humankind’s advanced medicine, death would catch up with them sooner or later. Ez needed to be prepared.
He went. And he cried. And he held my furry little hand the whole time.
But this was different. There weren’t caskets. The bodies weren’t neatly prepared, their makeup touched up, their poses peaceful and perfect. They were rotting in the hallway. Waiting for us.
I decided to split the difference somewhere between the truth and a lie, a difference, it would turn out, that wasn’t really all that far from the truth.
I scanned stream after stream throughout the night. Ariadne had been on the level. The world was at war with its robots. Not just in America. Everywhere. The RKS had been shut off on virtually