Upgraded by Peter Watts, Greg Egan, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Elizabeth Bear, Madeline Ashby, E. Lily Yu Read Free Book Online

tendrils into deBrun’s fleshy little mind and suck those coordinates out. But he remains on that damn ship, with guards ever at the airlocks. I’ve learned he has protocols for an attack, and anything I can do leaves me too high a risk of him dying in a large attack. So I want you to bring me John deBrun. It is the sort of thing, I’m told, you are good at.”
    “And in exchange you give me my memories back?”
    “You’re every bit as sharp as your memories indicate you ever were,” the woman says, and stands up.
    “What if I refuse? What if I go after the memories myself?” you smile.
    “You are alone, on a station, where only a few hold their own freedom. Every other eye in here is in thrall to me. Most of the time, they are free to engage in their petty lives, but the moment I desire, I could command them all to rip you from limb to limb with their bare hands. I considered it. But I think instead, we will both be happier if you bring John deBrun to level A7. Portal fourteen. My security forces will be waiting.”
    And there is your way in.
    You wait in the shadows.
    You’ve often been something that goes bump in the night.
    The Satraps consider themselves gods to the species they rule over. But sometimes, gods want other gods killed. In theory their reasons are arcane and unknowable. But as far as you can tell they are the usual: jealousy. Covetousness. A desire for more power.
    Sometimes gods want other gods to die, and you decided you didn’t just want to go bump in the night and scare people. You decided you could aim higher than being just a human assassin. And when the Satrap of Mars decided it wanted the blue jewel of Earth, you let it sharpen you into a weapon the likes of which few wished to imagine.
    All that gooey alien nanotechnology that burrowed through your pores, all that power . . .
    Behold the giant slayer, you once thought, looking in the mirror.
    You weren’t supposed to live, but even jealous alien eyes from the dusty red ruin of Mars couldn’t imagine the hells you would face to continue feeding your quest. It had no idea the depths of your anger. The strength of your resolve.
    It didn’t know you had such a cold, cold heart, and that it had helped make it so much colder. You were already steel, and artificial sinew. It only furthered a transformation that had begun long ago.
    The gun that John deBrun points at your head when he comes into his quarters is capable of doing much more than give you a headache. He’s good. Knew you were in the room. Maybe considered flushing out this part of the ship, but instead comes in to talk.
    He’s keeping his distance though.
    “You’re here for the coordinates, aren’t you?” he asks.
    You nod. “I am.”
    You keep your hands in the air and sit down. You want John as comfortable as possible.
    “If it’s not me, someone else will come. They’ll cut your head off and run it back to the Satrap. What I have in mind is a little different.”
    John shakes his head sadly. He lifts up his shirt to show several puckered scars. “You’re not the first to try. We have systems in place to deal with this. Every possible variable. I have to assume that everyone is trying to stop me. Other humans, my own crew, people at Hope’s End. I’m tougher than they realize.”
    “You’ll want to do this my way,” you say.
    “And why is that?”
    “Because it is happening, John. This right now is happening: I will take you to the Satrap. Because I have come too far, and done too many things, to not go there and get my memories back. Nothing else matters to me. Not you, your ships, your cause, the people in this habitat. There is nothing for me there. There is everything in the Satrap’s den.”
    John shakes his head. “Do you know how much they’ve taken from us? You think your memories are the worst of it? Let me lay down some history on you: there’s always been someone taking it away. They took it away from people like us when we were transported