The End of Days

III. Adolescence

"It's true, isn't it?"

Cassandra spun around. Nessa never came into her workshop. It was too sterile, too mechanical. Besides, the mechanist had gone to great lengths to discourage a visit now that she had Aeson, Helle, and Dyeus effectively hiding in her space. Cassandra had expanded it and created living spaces where concealment might have been possible, but Nessa knew the layout. She would sense the change. Granted, her fellow mechanists were gone at the moment, off to Aeson's workshop to retrieve a last few measurements from a sufficiently thin piece of existence. Their study of Void and its applications was coming along nicely. "Nessa, what are you doing here?"

The dark-skinned woman was quiet for a moment before saying, "You lied to me about what you were working on."

Behind the mechanist, Dyeus stepped out. "Mother, who is this?" he asked in his resonant voice.

Cassandra's blood ran cold when she saw the expression on her lover's face harden. "That thing is your creation, what you've been hiding for all this time. Cass, we built a garden in heaven and you would risk its utter destruction for the sake of academic curiosity," Nessa said. Her voice had a tone that Cassandra had never heard before: betrayal.

 "Nessa, please, it's not like that. Dyeus is no danger to anyone," Cassandra said as she set down the piece of crystal she'd been examining. She started to move towards Nessa, but her lover took a step backwards and shook her head.

For a moment, her lover was silent, her expression somewhere between anger, fear, and sorrow. Nessa was fighting back tears. "They were right," she said finally. "You're not who I thought you were."

The air beside Nessa wavered and then three men stepped through, all of them wearing the blue sash of the Authority. Cassandra stepped back, placing herself between them and Dyeus. "Please don't do this," she said, the burn of tears in her eyes. "We're not hurting anything or anyone."

"You have knowingly defied the prohibition on constructing unshackled artificial intelligence," the leader of the three men said. He was tall and handsome, but his piercing blue eyes were cold.

"He's a child," Cassandra said. Despite her otherwise gentle nature, she was steeling herself to defend her creation. She felt Dyeus's hands on her arms, steadying her from behind.

"Let them heal you, Cass," Nessa pleaded. "It's the only way."

The mechanist shook her head. "This is who I am," she said sorrowfully. "Dyeus is my life's work. I can't lose him."

"You'll lose me if you don't," Nessa said quietly.

Cassandra felt her heart break. "Don't make me choose between you," she begged.

"Come with us, Cassandra." One of the Authorities outstretched a hand. The effect was immediate, tugs at the threads of existence that made up Cassandra's mind. She could feel her desire to run or fight fading. It would be so much easier to just give in. They just wanted to keep the world a safer place. Had she really been thinking when she'd―

There was a deafening crack of thunder when Dyeus hurled a lightning bolt at the man with an outstretched hand. Cassandra flinched back, blind and scorched from how close it had been to her body. Suddenly, there was screaming. Cassandra felt herself swept off the ground. Her vision cleared almost automatically in her mechanical eye, focusing immediately at the charred body of the man who had reached out to her. He was on the ground, motionless. She could not feel his essence anymore.

He was dead.

"We need to go, Mother!" Dyeus said as he carried her deeper into the workshop at a run. "Open a doorway!"