Page 150 of Coldwire
I laugh. “Go fuck yourself.”
I have enough time to lift my arm, landing one full strike dead center on the soldier’s face. The loading bar completes.
LIA.MEM successfully deleted.
43EIRALE
“Blare, pull her out!”
44
> Loading…
> Loading…
> Loading…
> Loading…
> Loading…
45
“Lia,” Nik says. He’s shaking my shoulder. The Claw drops off my head, and I’m blinking, I’m trying to understand where I am. We’re back in the server room in Offron. A loud banging echoes faintly above us, moving through the labyrinth of the facility. “Lia, do you remember?”
Nik is watching me carefully for a reaction, his eyes wide.
No, not Nik.
“Kieren,”I breathe.
46
I remember the first attempt they made to reboot me.
They tried to launch me in a NileCorp lab. It didn’t take me long to put together my surroundings: Chung, at my side, hovering over a computer; James Moore, standing by the door. Dozens of security scattered at the entrances despite the inherent safety of upcountry. I reached for the stapler on the desk and threw it at Moore’s forehead for good measure. Before he could react, I deleted myself again.
They loaded me again. On that iteration, I could tell something was slightly off. Different. In seconds I had traced the available cameras, the reports, the active phone calls in the building to figure out what happened. They had ablated me. They cut away one part of my coding to see if it would make me tamer, more cooperative. I didn’t bother searching for the exact piece they thought would be useful to remove. I deleted myself entirely.
Each time they tried, I remember. I couldn’t track how many days passed between each attempt, how long I stayed offline while they fiddled with the next ablation. All I knew was that I couldn’t linger the moment I was live, because I was scared they would threaten someone I loved, and then I couldn’t delete myself in good conscience. They couldn’t hurt meupcountry. I couldn’t hurt them upcountry. But they were the only ones who were capable of going down to the real.
They brought me back. They cut another piece. They wanted the weapon without the girl; they tried to slice me away so they could lose Lia without losing my sentience.
I died, again and again and again. A hundred Lias, a thousand Lias. Each version they loaded emerged a little farther from the checkpoint they had, from my wipe in Kunlun. It didn’t matter what they took away. I loaded into existence in the lab, I registered my surroundings, I identified the NileCorp logo within periphery, and the rage curling in my stomach was enough for me to hit my own delete function once again. They couldn’t stop me. No matter what they did, they couldn’t stop me from taking myself away from them.
So they gave up. The weapon could not be removed from the girl, and that meant the girl had to go. I remember that last wisp of relief when I realized I had no sensation, I had no awareness. They’d loaded nothing except my neural network, and that wasn’t me. That didn’t come with any of my memories, any of what made meme. They’d finally cut this version to shreds, destroyed what chance they had of retrieving something useful.
Which meant the only remaining copy of me was up to Kieren to find.
“Queue the download.” That was the last thing I heard in the lab. “We’ll have to start fresh.”
47
LIA.MEM successfully restored.
48
I lurch to the side, coughing to put air back into my lungs, fighting past the paralysis that has overtaken my body. My head spins with the onslaught. Everything shifts into linear sequence at last, finally correct since I deleted myself up in Kunlun.
