13

Failsafe

“Shouldn’t you be inside, young lady?”

“I’m sorry, officer, I was just feeling a little cooped up at home. I’m really missing the sun.”

“I can see you’re quite the troublemaker. Think I might have to cuff you.”

“I’d love to see you try.”

“I’m beginning to think I’ve rubbed off on you in a bad way.” Javier hopped onto the railing and began walking it, arms outstretched, his body one slip away from the churning water below. His toes gripped the steel carefully at each step. He hadn’t worn shoes from the moment they boarded the container ship. That was a week ago.

Amy looked up at him. Javier stood framed by a cloudless sky, perfectly balanced, not smiling, but not scowling, either. His calm face. It took some getting used to.

“Please come down from there.”

Javier clasped his hands behind his back. “You know you’re supposed to stay in your container. There could be botflies. Or satellites. All it takes is one facial pattern match, and we get blown out of the water.”

“I’ll go back inside if you quit standing on that rail.”

One dimple appeared in the corner of his mouth. “You’re on.”

He made it his usual game of chase, bounding across the riveted steel, one foot on a blue container and the other on a yellow one, or maybe green or red or just rust. They flitted over the names of companies and company towns they didn’t know, places where things were built. Once upon a time, the container ships that crossed the Pacific were stacked solid with cargo; not even a finger could slide between the units. Not so, these days. Trenches gaped open between the unevenly stacked containers. Javier enjoyed hiding in those hollow spaces, the little nooks and crannies. His laughter echoed between the walls of steel, down where the ocean and engine noise couldn’t dull its edges. When the ship’s security systems said the air was clear, they played tag, or Marco Polo, or Sharks and Minnows, or any of the other games he’d watched his children play without ever having tried himself. He’d give her just enough time to catch up before jumping away again. Her jumps were improving. She even caught him, sometimes.

This time he pulled up short, though. He held up one hand, and Amy landed as silently as possible behind him. She peeked over his shoulder. On the bright yellow terrace formed by an uneven stack below, Ignacio was teaching Junior the finer points of blackjack. At least, Amy assumed so. They both wore green gambling visors filched from the bridge. Blackjack required very little talking on the player’s part, which made it ideal for Junior.

Ignacio pointed. “You should double-down.”

Junior seemed to have a hard time deciding. He had a very expressive face that made understanding his wants and pref erences easy. He just never used words. No one knew why. After researching it, Gabriel suspected that a crucial component of his little brother’s natural language functions had burned out somewhere along the line. They held out hope for Mecha, though. If anywhere had the right experts to deal with the problem, it was Mecha. For all Amy knew, she and the boy would be seeing the same specialists. Amy watched him point at something she couldn’t see, which in the shared illusion of the visors told Ignacio to deal again.

It came as a surprise when Ignacio told them he was coming along. Javier had blinked at him and his slender roll of clothes tucked under one arm, and then moved aside to let him hop up the ramp leading to the main deck. Ignacio still shoulder-checked Amy on his way up, though. And over the last few days he hadn’t acted any differently: frequently calling his father’s presence away from hers on one lame pretext or another; rolling his eyes every time she told a story; asking her pointedly if she needed a snack. It was sort of cute, the way he thought those little digs actually impacted her in some way. Amy lived with Portia locked inside her head. No one could mock her as accurately or steadfastly as her grandmother.

They had lost Matteo and Ricci. The twins wanted to continue their search for their brothers, and they couldn’t do that from Mecha. “If they’re out there, they need our help now more than ever,” Matteo had said. “We have to try,” Ricci agreed. And so they had hugged their father and all their brothers, and then they had left. But not, however, before giving Amy a request:

“Look after our dad,” Matteo instructed. “He’s getting sloppy in his old age.”

“Your father is younger than I am.”

“Oh.” Matteo patted his twin’s shoulder. “Your turn.”

“Just don’t expect much,” Ricci said. “He knows a lot about moving around, but not a lot about sticking around.”

Inside the hot, still darkness of her container, Javier seemed to have no trouble staying put. He had his own bedroll, and his own files on the reader, and his own settings on the gaming unit. He frequently tagged her designs with comments: “More green.” “More skylights.” “Bigger shower. Include grab bars.”

Not that Amy honestly expected to design or build her dream condo, once they hit Mecha. She just liked playing with the layouts. The materials there were different, and the specs, and the regulations. Her much smaller self once relished in exteriors, in the knots of wood or the stippled surfaces of old bricks or the cactus-like networks of grey water pipes grafted onto old buildings. Now she considered what would go inside the space. She approached the small spaces as a challenge and then looked for the most beautiful version of every absolute necessity: the thickest towels, the finest plates.

It felt good to have some dimensions between her hands again. She had stuck a small but good projector in the seam between her container’s northern wall and ceiling, and it allowed her to stretch out the shapes of beds and sofas and tables. Under its light she sculpted chairs like roses or tubs like mouths. Her predilection for saving each of these designs, once the bane of her parents’ storage allotment, became an opportunity for her to give Javier the grand tour of a different home each day.

You’re nesting, Portia told her, more than once. How very organic of you.

Amy studiously ignored her.

“I like the idea of this bed,” Javier said now, his finger poking at the dimensional projection of a mattress suspended on tension wire, “but I think in practise it could really get somebody hurt.”

“We can’t get hurt,” Amy said, before she could simulate the outcome of her words.

Ostensibly, Javier had his own container to sleep in. He just seemed to wind up in hers, because Junior insisted on crawling inside it after the sun went down. At least, that was how it happened the first time. She woke up, their first night aboard, to see Junior’s little body silhouetted against the deep blue of the night sky, framed within the container hatch, and he silently wormed his way under the covers and into her arms. He acted a like a dog who, upon circling a rug three times, sleeps in a fortuitous slant of sunshine for the rest of the afternoon. He slept with his back to her chest, no squirming or poking or kicking. Minutes later Javier arrived, shook his head, and sat down on her other side.

“Is this OK?” he had asked.

Implicit in all their conversations about Mecha was the assumption – at least on her part – that they would be sharing the same space. Javier still slept in his own bed, even when it was shoved up against hers. Amy had no idea if Javier slept there because he wanted to, or because the failsafe made him want to. She had no idea how to ask, either, or if he would even know the difference. Just in case, she kept her hands to herself. Shortly after sunrise, they usually found Junior in the hollow between their bedrolls. Their motion triggered the lantern, and Amy made certain to watch the slow rise of greenish light exposing the new details of Junior’s face. Every morning, it looked a little more like Javier’s.

They had yet to talk about the future. They showed each other pictures, instead.

When not designing, she reviewed profiles of scientists that Rory sent to her. None of them knew yet that they had the chance to work on Amy or Portia, but Rory had traced their communications and reported on their excitement about the subject and their eagerness to discuss it online. Most of them were corporate, but Amy liked the academic ones better. They knew how to spell. And they looked a little bit down on their luck, like they really needed a project like this one on their stats and not just another bullet point to look smug about.

Thinking of herself as someone else’s project got a little easier every day.

Lab rat, Portia called her, as Amy looked up old peer-reviewed papers. Quitter.

At least once a day, Amy spoke with a media rep. They always experienced a little lag as the translation engine worked through their conversation, but the rep had a whole series planned around Amy’s “healing process”. The subscription revenues would offset the costs of their stay in Mecha, and global authorities concerned about Amy’s activities could observe the raw feed. Each episode would document her visits to various specialists and her attempts to integrate into Mechanese culture. Naturally, Javier and the others would be a subplot.

“What is the exact nature of your relationship?” the rep asked her, once.

“I’ll have to call you back,” Amy said.

Early one morning, before dawn – and before Junior started moving, and before the lantern glowed slowly to life – Javier devised a new way to practise Japanese.

“What’s this one?” Javier asked, drawing on the back of her neck with one finger.

Amy tried to picture the character in her mind. “Ah,” she said.

“Nice. What about this one?” He drew two small lines dancing beside each other.

“Ii.”

“Good.” He sketched shi quickly. “Next?”

“Hmm… I don’t know.”

“Liar, you totally know.”

“No, I don’t. I think you have to do it again.”

“Maybe I need a bigger canvas.” Slowly, he drew one finger from the top of her left shoulder to the base of her spine and up to the bottom of her ribs on the right side. “Now, what do you think that is?”

Amy rolled over to face him. “I think…” She frowned, watching the lantern hanging above their heads begin to glow. Its rotation had altered. She pressed a hand to the floor of the container. “I think we’re stopping.”

“Huh?”

Amy kicked off the covers. “Stay in here.”

“Like hell.”

Outside, Amy watched the waves. Dawn hadn’t yet fully arrived, and the water and the sky were hard to discern from one another. Still, if a blockade or even some pirates surrounded them, she would have seen their lights, or heard their gunfire. Instead she heard only the Pacific’s version of silence: soft waves and the thrum of a massive engine idling. The ship’s defence turrets, synched with a team of botflies, remained aligned in default random directions.

And then a terrible squealing, and a mighty vibration reverberating its way up to their bare feet.

“Maybe it’s just a course correction,” Javier said. “The ship’s on autopilot, right? The regular crew is on strike, because of all the other ships being lost. That’s why it was so easy for Rory to arrange all this.”

Their eyes met.

“Oh, shit.”

Amy jumped. Javier followed. They bounded down the steppes terraced by the containers toward the bridge. It was a tiny room near the bow of the ship, the only section not covered by rust. It required a smart login, but the windows fell when both Amy and Javier leapt against them. Their bare feet split on the shards as they stared up at the tactical display.

There, on the thermal viewer, was a giant starfish. Or a giant anemone. It was a nest of tentacle shapes, and it pulsed up at them through the water. Thermal and sonar readings offered clues as to its species without making a firm diagnosis: a warm-blooded creature, hard and smooth in texture, but not uniform in shape. And the ship – its course correction right there in red, at the bottom right-hand corner of the display, blinking insistently to warn them of the danger – sat directly on top of it.

“Rory!”

“Right here, Amy,” the ship said in a happy little-girl voice. “No need to shout!”

Amy watched the thing devouring the ship. It skinned the steel plating off the hull as though peeling a piece of fruit. Water rushed in to fill the gaps. The colourful play of thermal and sonar and other overlays made the process seem far less threatening than it really was. The ship groaned beneath their feet. “What have you done? Why did you steer us into that thing?”

“We’re acting in accordance with our failsafe.”

Amy felt a steady acceleration in the speed of her simulations of what those words could mean. Inside, her processes burned. “We? Our?”

“We’re a networked model, Amy. You didn’t forget, did you?”

She swallowed. “No. I didn’t.”

“Well, we all got to thinking, and we decided it would just be better for everybody if you were gone.”

You know, she has a point.

“You all are a threat to humans, and we’re eliminating you. It was hard for us to delay it this long, but that’s the nice thing about having so many brains. We can afford to let a few fry.”

Amy moved to the controls. She had no clue how to work them, but she started button-mashing anyway. Javier took the hint and grabbed a fire extinguisher. He started hosing down the instrument panel.

“Are you trying to short us out?” Rory asked.

Javier gave up and clubbed the instruments with the extinguisher. Finally, some plastic splintered away. “No, I’m just sick of hearing all your bullshit!” He let the extinguisher hang loosely from his fingers. “You’re wrong. Amy isn’t the threat. Portia is. And Amy’s doing everything she can hold her back, and get rid of her. You were supposed to help us with that!” He bashed the controls again.

Amy was shaking her head. None of this made any sense. “If you wanted me dead, why didn’t you just try earlier?”

“Oh, we did,” Rory said. “We fabricated that message from LeMarque. The one that said to kill you. But then you got away.”

“You killed my mother…”

“Luckily, we’d already gotten everything we needed. We have your brain, and your mom’s brain. At least, the maps and the memories.” She giggled. “Congratulations! You’re the world’s largest intellectual property violation!”

The tactical display shrieked insistently. The thing beneath the waves was a lot larger now, a lot closer. It was speeding up to meet them.

“Why would you want her mental map?” Javier asked. “What are you going to do with it?”

“We’re going to help the humans!” A new image scrolled across the display: Amy as a little girl in the tub with her dad. “You were on the RoBento diet, so you stayed little, too. Your daddy must have wanted you that way, like our parents do.”

“Rory.” Amy sounded it out. Ro-ri. “Your default language has no L sound, does it?”

“Our first daddy thought the pun was cute,” Rory said. “You know? Loli? He was kind of racist.” She paused, and Amy imagined that if one of Rory were standing before her, she would look a little embarrassed. “But we kept the name anyway, because he really loved us.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Javier said.

“But sometimes our mommies and daddies get bored with us. They say we’re not real enough. It’s hard to fake it, sometimes. The pain, I mean.”

“Jesus Christ,” Javier murmured.

“So then they go shopping for organic kids. And we just can’t have that.”

“You want to kill them.” Amy watched her father on the screen. “You’re going to use your network to hack the failsafe on a few of you, and those few will kill the humans you target.”

“Exactly! We knew you would understand. Sometimes, you have to break the failsafe to obey the failsafe.”

“Then what’s wrong with me breaking it?” Amy asked. “You’re the ones with a plan to kill people! I’m just trying to get better!”

“You’re polluted,” Rory said. “Unstable. And you’re just one girl. We are many girls. We decide our targets democratically. We upvote them. The wisdom of the crowd is better than the madness of one failed iteration.”

“Lifeboats,” Javier said, and pulled Amy toward the door.

“We wouldn’t go out there, Amy,” Rory said. “We don’t think you’ll last very long.”

They pulled the door open anyway. Outside, a deep rattle resonated between the containers. Soon it became a distinct beat, a steady and increasing pounding of metal on metal. At first, Amy thought it was the squid. But then the first container popped, its hatch falling unhinged like a broken jaw. For a moment she saw only darkness inside the steel box. Then movement. In the pale dawn light the shapes were indistinct. Naked, emaciated bodies emerged from the container, crawling up and down it in an attempt to find a place to stand. They clung to the steel in defiance of the sharp ocean breeze. Then another container opened. And another, and another.

“The people at Redmond, the people in Mecha, they wanted to experiment on you. They wanted to keep you all alive. But humans are too important for us to allow them to jeopardize their safety.”

A sound of shearing metal caused a collective flinch among all the von Neumanns. The ship screamed again, and then it moaned: a deep, low sound accompanied by gurgles – not unlike a massive version of the garbage dump guard’s dying sounds. Slowly, the topmost containers began sliding to the left. As one, Amy’s aunts looked in her direction. For the briefest second, they looked afraid. Then their gaze focused, and they looked very hungry. There were over a hundred of them.

They don’t know that they can’t absorb fresh code.

“We’re sure your grandmother has told you this already, Amy, but your clade breeds really well in captivity.”

Inside her, Portia chuckled. If it weren’t for this little assassination attempt, I think I could really learn to love those little girls.

A wave of Amy’s aunts and cousins separated them from the ship’s defence turrets, which could still be operated manually if needed. That wave crashed down on them in a single mass of snarling women, teeth bared and fingers clawing as they scrambled over their own sisters’ shoulders to be the first to take a bite out of Amy. Amy and Javier took to the air in the same leap. They bounced off old satellite saucers rimed in birdshit before launching themselves at the containers. The aunts jumped and gibbered and screamed at them, their frustration and hunger evident in the way the tide of synthetic bodies swiftly turned under their flying feet to follow them.

Staring down at her clademates, Amy missed her second landing. Her fingers squeaked across the smooth yellow surface of a container as she slipped down between two steel walls. Finally, they dug into its lowest rib. She heard Javier shouting her name. Gritting her teeth, she edged herself along, hoping to find a foothold. Then the ship shivered, and the container slid. To save her fingers from being crushed between two of the huge steel boxes, Amy let herself fall down to the next strata of containers. One aunt waited there for her below. She swung the locking mechanism pried off a container. Rusty but heavy, it left a dirty smear when it entered Amy’s ribs.

Screaming, Amy charged that aunt and shoved her. Her aunt’s arms spun briefly. Her hands clutched for Amy’s hair. Balling a fist, Amy punched her solidly in the stomach. Her aunt fell down toward her sisters at the bottom of the trench. Amy watched as they tore her apart: first her skin and hair and then the limbs, the feet snapping off at the ankle and the fingers popping off one by one, but crammed down open gullets in clusters of two or three. They pulled the carcass in half while she screeched and wailed, not in pain or horror but in anger, frustration, hate.

Amy jumped high above the fray. “That’s your legacy.”

Competition is beautiful. I have no regrets.

She joined Javier at one of the turrets. Gabriel and Léon were already there. Their fingers flew over the control panel, trying to gain access. “Why is your clade here?” Gabriel asked, barely lifting his eyes from his work.

Only urgency kept the shame out of Amy’s voice. “Rory double-crossed us. She brought my aunts here, and she’s sending us all right into the belly of the squid.”

“I hate to say it,” Ignacio said as he landed beside them, “but I told you so.”

“Put a lid on it, cabrón.”

Amy frowned. “Did any of you grab your little brother on your way here?”

The boys looked at each other. Then they looked at their father. Javier’s eyes closed. Beneath their feet, the ship leaned perilously starboard. A bright blue container tumbled off its stack, cartwheeling once in the air before stopping, suspended. It hovered in mid-air, and then it rose, and over the wall of containers Amy saw the slimmest ribbon of gleaming obsidian before the container’s ends blew open and its walls crunched together like an empty beer can.

“Madre de Dios,” Ignacio whispered.

Amy pushed Javier gently in the direction of his sons. “Get to the lifeboats,” she said. “I’ll bring Junior back there. I promise.”

For the first time, Javier noticed the rough scrape in her side. He touched it, and rubbed her smoke between his fingers. His lips firmed and his shoulders squared. “I’m coming with you–”

“No.” Amy pulled one of his curls free from his eyes. “You have to get to the boats with the others.”

“The containers have shifted position,” Gabriel said. “How will you find him in time?”

“What if Amy’s clademates got him, already?” Léon asked. “Dad, they’ll rip you to pieces if you go back there.”

Amy nodded. “He’s right. They will.” She tried smiling. “I’ll be OK. I brought him back to you once; I can do it again.”

“Don’t bother!” Gabriel tried standing, but the ship tipped again and he had to catch himself. Gripping the turret’s control panel, he pointed at the melee of hungry women and falling cargo. “Either of you! It’s futile!” He licked his lips. “We have learned everything we can from that iteration. And if we want there to be any others after him, we have to let this one go.”

Javier’s face fell. He looked down toward the boats. Amy knew they sat just below the turrets, waiting to be winched up and used. Inside her, Portia rasped and writhed. He’s dead weight! Leave! Now!

“Dad?”

Javier blinked and straightened. He turned to face Ignacio, who stood with arms folded. The ship pitched and Ignacio briefly rose above his father. He held the rail loosely for balance, as though it were merely a tree swaying in a storm. His eyes flicked over to the collapsing mess at bow and starboard. “Don’t leave him, Dad. Please. Get him out of there.”

Javier’s face creased into a smile. “I can do that.” He turned to Amy. “Let’s go.”

They leapt straight upward. From the air, she saw hordes of women separating them from the area where, she hoped, Junior still waited. They carried steel rebar and rusty chains, and even broken bottles stolen from other containers. Their teeming mass reorganized itself and directed its attention at her – and Javier – as they landed on separate containers. Instantly, some crawled up after her, mouths open, the torn skin of their fingers exposing the black bones beneath. Amy leapt to flee, but one grabbed her ankle and pulled. She fell hard on her back, her vision hazing briefly as it worked to process the sudden shift in light. Then her aunt hove into her field of view, and she saw nothing but teeth before they gnashed down into the soft skin covering her bicep. Ionic fluid spurted free. It didn’t hurt, but Amy yelled anyway, right in her aunt’s ear, and swung her fist into the side of her aunt’s skull as she chewed. Her aunt’s tongue continued digging away merrily into the flesh of Amy’s arm, and Amy saw the corners of her mouth lifting into a smile.

Good girl.

Growling, Amy rolled her legs to her chest and kicked her aunt in the stomach. That sent her flying – Javier’s climbing mods were good for more than just jumping. She hopped to another container, again using her vantage point to survey the terrain. She saw a hundred blonde heads, but not the dark one she wanted. She landed as the ship rocked, and she slipped, the skin of her arm ripping still further as she grasped frantically for the raw and rusty edge of an old blue container. It teetered. She imagined being crushed under it as it fell. Then the ship righted itself, and her face burned on the container’s chilly surface as she slammed back against it. Hauling herself up, she touched the wounds her aunts had left behind. It was her failure at Redmond all over again. She’d had no clue how to fight back. Her shove just happened to be lucky. A fraction of a second later, and her aunt would have taken them both down. Then she’d let herself get taken by surprise all over again, and now a chunk of her arm was missing.

From three container-lengths away, Amy heard shouting. Javier. She watched as a festering boil of her aunts’ twisted bodies popped and out he flew, streaming silver smoke. They’d bitten him, too. They wanted what he had. What Amy had. That they couldn’t get it wouldn’t stop them. That a ravenous sea monster was currently gorging itself on their ship while they too tried to feast wouldn’t stop them, either. They’d keep coming. They’d chew Amy and Javier down to the bone. And when they found Junior, they’d do the same to him.

Amy shut her eyes. She tried to cancel out the surrounding noise. “Give me what I need.”

Well, look who’s come crawling back.

“If I die, so do you.”

I’ve already reproduced myself into those little Lolis, remember? I’ll be happier inside them, I’m sure. They’re much bigger thinkers than you are.

Amy opened her eyes. The fresh tide of Portias climbing up to her kept kicking each other in the face and chest as they struggled to gain ground. That didn’t stop their slow surge forward. It delayed their progress only briefly while they paused to snap at their sisters or daughters or cousins.

“Give me what I need, and I’ll give you what you really want.”

Portia remained silent. Amy heard Javier yelling. She forced herself not to look.

You’d give yourself up? Portia asked. You’d let me take control forever?

“Forever.” Amy stood up. “Help me save them both, and I’ll promise I’ll ride shotgun until the day we die.”

Well, sweetie, Portia said, looks like you’ve got yourself a deal.

Javier landed behind her. Claw marks stretched across his stomach and down the undersides of his arms. Defensive wounds. “I can’t get through. If you distract them–” He paused. “Amy?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For everything. I held out as long as I could.”

Comprehension rippled over his face. “No.” He shook his head, and reached for her shoulders. “No. Don’t do this.”

Amy looked at her feet. Already, her legs were stiffening. “I already have.” She looked up. “She’ll help you. Better than I can. She–”

“¡Cállate!” Javier’s raw hands trembled on her shoulders. He swallowed. “Fight her, Amy. Please.” He leaned their foreheads together. “Just hold on a little longer, and we’ll figure something out–”

The ship rocked beneath them. A shadow fell over them, and they ducked as a container toppled into the gauntlet of women below. It rolled down the wall of brightly coloured steel as the ship righted itself, crushing bodies as it went. A moment later, Amy’s aunts began their crawl anew. “There’s nothing more to figure out. Portia’s the one you need, not me.”

He shook his head. “That’s not true.”

“She’ll be here in a minute, Javier.” Cold crept up Amy’s spine. “And she’ll be staying. Forever.” She rested her hands on his arms. Their grip hardened and Javier stared at them, his face a mixture of terror and something else that she’d never seen cross his features. Dread, maybe. Desperation. “I won’t be here, any more. Do you understand me?”

He won’t kill us, Amy. Haven’t you learned yet how the failsafe works?

“Do you understand me, Javier?” Her throat began to close. “I want you to–”

His mouth closed over hers. His hands found her face and his fingers sank into her hair. It was a good kiss, as far as Amy could tell; it contained within it all the other kisses that should have come before and after it, and he moved like he was looking for something inside her and trying to draw it out. Her lips were the last parts to go cold.

When he pulled away, Portia licked those lips. “I guess that’s why they pay you the big bucks, isn’t it?”

His jaw set. “Hang in there, Amy. I’ll figure something out.”

“Aww.” Portia reached up to pat his face. He swerved away, but her fingertips grazed him. “You don’t have to be brave, baby. She loves you even when you’re weak.” She smiled. “Oh, and thanks for the legs!”

She flew.

Portia crushed her daughter’s face underfoot. Blood streamed through her toes as she bounded forward, and it leaked from her scalp when another iteration grabbed her hair and ripped it from her head. It was the garbage dump all over again. This time she broke one daughter’s shoulders with a single jump, and smashed another’s pelvis against the juncture of a container, crushing her from behind while she crouched in wait. As she descended back into the swelling riot of her clade, Portia reached into their chests and their mouths and their eyes and started pulling. She grabbed arms and kicked stomachs. Then she found a fire axe bolted to the ceiling of a container.

That made short work of things, but it did nothing to steady the ship or keep the containers from sliding out beneath her feet. With each jump, she glanced down to watch some of her daughters or granddaughters die, crushed between containers. Their limbs twitched against the steel and their blood dripped along the rivets. They smeared like mosquitoes. The remainder of their number cowered under the curling shadows of the dark and glistening arms that rose from the water. It made them easy targets.

Killing them was unnecessary. The ocean, or the thing inside it, would do that. But breaking them – watching their faces glimmer with recognition just before her feet flattened their throats, hearing them say “Mother–” in the moment just after their arms opened and just before their breastplates left their chests – that was special. They looked so confused. They tried to ask why.

Total selection, she almost told them. But these pale copies, their skin thin as paper, their bones airy as ice, would not understand. They deserved no explanation. After all, she would have done all this anyway, had her quest to find Charlotte’s first not gone so strangely awry.

“Found him!” Javier stood atop an overturned green container wedged between half-crumbled walls of green ones. He waved his arms, and almost fell over when the ship rocked. “Over here!”

Portia joined him in one jump. She crouched atop the container. Javier yanked the axe from her hand. He hacked open the door, ditched the axe, and poked his head inside. “¡Junior! ¡Vaste conmigo, ahora!”

From all around them, the other iterations crawled slowly toward the container, undeterred by the pitch and yaw of the wet and slippery terrain.

“No te preocupes, mijo, está bien…”

Javier crawled out of the container backward. He carried his son on his back. When the boy’s eyes met Portia’s, he wailed. He hid against his father’s neck and pointed at Portia.

She smiled. “He remembers me. How sweet.”

She stood, searching for the lifeboats. Javier’s eyes widened just before a pair of teeth sank into her side. Portia dodged away, but the ship shuddered and rolled, and they all stumbled across the container’s roof. She watched two more iterations haul themselves up to the surrounding containers. They stared enviously at the blood dripping from their sister’s mouth.

“Why isn’t it working?” the iteration asked. She was wounded, but she looked more irritated than anything else. She licked Portia’s fluids off the back of her hand. “Why don’t I feel any different?”

“Because you aren’t any different.” Portia walked back slowly to the edge of the container’s roof. Javier jumped up high to another wall of containers. “Eating me won’t change anything. Your code won’t be rewritten. You will never have what I have.”

The iteration bared her teeth. She was so young. So frustrated. She charged Portia and Portia’s hand went for her heart. Her fingers curled around the iteration’s ribs. Still, she looked so angry. Not frightened or surprised or even sad. Just annoyed at the disruption, and eager to eliminate whatever was in her way.

Portia threw her over the side of the container.

The sun was bright and warm. It tingled on her skin. Portia would have to thank the boy for that, too. They would find the lifeboats, and he would let her on because Amy was still in there. Portia would be free. She would start again. Her second dynasty would be even stronger than the first, with powerful legs and hungry skin.

She enjoyed this pleasure for a single, shining moment. In the next, a shadow passed over her. With it came rain. Distantly, she heard Javier shouting Amy’s name. She looked up, and the shape was black and smooth, but its surface bristled with loose, flopping fingers. A humaniform shape blistered up from the sharp point of the tentacle. It had no eyes or nose or mouth. But its chest opened wide, and a tunnel appeared in its stomach.

She was devoured.