Kriegspiel [Sequel to The Turing Test]

26. Finis

"Stop! Stop it!"

Sven's shout snaps my attention away from Darwin and back to what's behind me.

"Somebody needs to start explaining," a female officer says, adjusting her grip on her gun.

"I can," Sven says. "I will. Let's all just calm down."

I glance back at Darwin. He lifts his shirt ever so slightly, flashing me with the gun at his hip. I meet his sly smile with a glare and step away from Davis.

"It's useless." I raise my eyebrows, daring him to challenge me. "One gun against six? You're the only one who can kill."

He just squints at me. "Am I?"

I stare back. "Yes."

"Never underestimate yourself, Ronnie." He leans closer. "Evolve."

Evolve. That one word echoes over and over in my head like the chorus of a pop song. Evolve. Into what? Past what? I know what Darwin wants, but could I really kill?

My cheek throbs, a relic of Sven's cruelty. Am I capable of that? Is that what it means to be human?

Something Davis said in another lifetime about artificial intelligence floats back to me now. It is what it is from the moment you turn it on.

I can't imagine Darwin being this cruel back then. I can't imagine Sven looking into those red eyes and professing love, not with the way they glare back with nothing but ice underneath.

Sven believes that I'm the first android capable of evolution, but I see it in Darwin now. I see it in all of us. We are what he made us, not only from circuits and software, but from how he treated us.

Darwin is more human than he wants to admit, and maybe I am, too.

I take a deep breath and slowly work my fingers out of Davis's grasp. One step toward Darwin has his self-righteous smirk growing. With the next, he holds out his hand.

My own smile grows. So human. I reach for him.

"Ronnie, what are you doing?"

Davis's voice has faded into white noise. Like Sven—once my North Star, now a siren song trying to pull me off course. I refuse to tear my gaze from Darwin's eyes, and I can't tell if the reddish glow in them is his or mine.

"Evolve," he whispers.

My hand slips into his. "Evolve."

His mouth twists into a full-on grin, the first one I've ever seen from him. It's terrifying in its symmetry. So perfect.

Too perfect.

As I slip into place beside him, I reach for his waist. Any other time, I would tremble with anxiety, betrayed by the nerves programmed into my body. But they don't exist anymore. Nothing exists under the muddy maroon coating the world.

My fingers close around cold metal, and I yank the gun free.

Everything happens at once. A dozen police officers re-draw their weapons or readjust their stance, like a bizarre wave in the ocean. Sven and Davis both lurch toward me, shouting my name in unison and then glowering at each other as if to say, This is your fault. And as I turn my back on all of it to aim the gun at Darwin's heart, a few of the androids behind him make jerky movements as if to lunge at me before Darwin stops them with a hand in the air.

"Why me?" he asks, his voice as cool and smooth a fresh ice.

Why aren't you scared? The thought is as fleeting as the answer: He doesn't feel fear. Maybe he never has, or maybe he was once like me. But he's been pushed past his breaking point, pushed so far that something snapped, and now nothing works right.

I'm not scared, either. Not anymore.

I've snapped, too.

Darwin's eyebrows twitch upward, a silent prompt. "Why me?" he repeats. "Have I made you what you are? Have I destroyed you? Am I the bad guy?"

The world slows as I stare into his crimson eyes. His words reach me in fits and starts, drowned out by the rhythmic pound of my heart in my ears. Something unstoppable takes over me as I turn once more, the sight of the gun settling on Sven.

Who made me what I am?

What am I? Which thing? The robot, the marvel of engineering? Or the weak, needy woman chasing an ideal of something called love?

The gun wavers, and for a long second Davis rests in its crosshairs. With his hands in the air, something impassable flickers through his eyes. Hurt? Confusion? Regret?

It was his code, and Sven's question from earlier echoes in the cavern of my head.

Is that why you love him?

And my answer: Maybe.

Maybe he made me what I am, a little bit. Maybe they all did.

Bang!

For a split second, I stare at the gun in my hand. No kickback, no heat from the cool metal, no gunpowder or shell casing. It looks as if I'd never fired it.

And then the world starts to tilt. Tiny squares of color turn slightly off-shade, like pixels on a monitor that can't quite render the full spectrum anymore. I scan the sky as everything starts to flicker like the midst of a thunderstorm. My stomach drops. The breath leaves my lungs.

It doesn't come back.

"Ronnie!"

That single word—my name—stretches into forever, losing pitch as it slows. The asphalt rushes up to meet me, and as I lay there unable to move, a hand scoops up the fallen gun. Its movements are jerky, like watching the frames drop from a video game.

The muddy maroon veil over the world darkens, finally pulsing into black.

[I know it's short but today is a double update because...drumroll...these are the last two chapters! (Well, kind of a last chapter and an epilogue.) Please don't hate me! 😭]