are part of a whole, and he has broken from that whole. He was twisted by who he was, but he is not that creature anymore. If he has had the courage to break free from them, we should celebrate that, not denounce it.”
“No one breaks free,” another of the Ilari snapped, and the anger there was palpable. “It’s obvious that this is some kind of trick. They tried to trick us before. They broke through our shields. They murdered our people. They destroyed our world. This thing was a part of that, they both were! We should destroy it before it harms us further.”
Kevin could hear the emotion coming through there, completely different from the way the Hive had been. They would have made decisions purely rationally, while this… this felt more real somehow.
“Do you wish to speak for yourselves?” General s’Lara said, looking over to him and Ro.
Kevin knew that he ought to, but he wasn’t sure what to say. The guilt he felt still seemed as though it flowed over everything, burying any words. He knew he had to try, but the truth was that he didn’t want to try right then.
“I don’t want to speak for myself,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t deserve it, and the truth… I’m dying anyway. It doesn’t matter what you do to me, so long as the others are safe.” It almost came as a shock to hear himself saying it, but it was the truth. It was more important that Ro and Chloe were safe than that he was. “I helped to destroy a world. I don’t deserve… I don’t deserve anything, but Ro broke free from the Hive. That should count for something.”
Ro shook his head. “I am… I am scared, I admit that, but I will not run from what I have done. I have committed horror upon horror. I have done evil things. Once I was Purest, but now, I am not even that. I am impure. It is Kevin you should save. We made him one of us against his will. He had no choice.”
“There is always a choice!” the man who had spoken against Ro called out from somewhere in the back of the room.
Kevin didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed that Chloe did, though, because she shouted above the rest of it, looking straight at the man who had spoken.
“You think Kevin chose to be taken over by aliens?” she demanded, in a tone that would have been enough to make most people take a step back. “You think he was in control? They made him say yes to hurting me in all kinds of ways, and even so, I don’t blame him, because it wasn’t him. It was him without any emotions, without any compassion. And if you don’t have compassion, you’re no better than the Hive!”
She took a moment to look around at the aliens, and for a moment Kevin thought she might be done, but then she kept going, jabbing her finger at the people around them.
“You’re all standing there making decisions about us, but you haven’t even tried to understand us. Kevin… he’s been across our country trying to save our world. He’s gone into space because he was trying to stop the Hive. They only took him because he was trying to stop them. As for Ro, he’s fought back against everything he has ever known. He’s a sign that the control of the Hive can be broken, and you want to… what, kill him? You’ll have to kill me if you want to do that!”
She stood there glaring at them, and General s’Lara held up a hand for silence.
“I will not speak on this,” she said. “My own thoughts are too conflicted. Logic demands one thing, emotion another. Yet I would ask, are we beings of pure logic? Are we like them? I don’t know. It is time for us to divide.”
She bowed her head, and above them, Kevin saw dancing lights buzz around as AIs talked and debated, presumably balancing the feelings of the Ilari with the needs of logic. To Kevin, they looked like swarms of angry bees moving around, shifting and splitting, then recombining in different combinations as the debate between them went on.
From down where he stood, Kevin couldn’t begin to work out exactly which way the debate was going. He could catch snippets of it if he tried, but there were so many different fragments that even he couldn’t begin to work out which way it was going.
Finally, something seemed to be happening. Kevin had the sense of the AIs shifting, moving into stacks, forming into groups as they made their decisions. Two blocks, one red and one blue, appeared on the surface around the edge of the room. The groups seemed close; so close that Kevin couldn’t count them, and couldn’t begin to guess which one was larger. He could see some AIs still buzzing around, reviewing the facts or discussing them with those they were connected with. Slowly, though, the count settled, and the groups stabilized.
Even then, Kevin couldn’t guess at what the outcome was.
CHAPTER TWO
Kevin watched out of one of the ship’s windows as space passed by in a blur, stretched and bent to let the ship pass through by the power of its shields. He, Ro, and Chloe sat together in a room that was open and airy and almost empty. To his surprise, General s’Lara was there too.
Kevin flashed back, recalling General s’Lara’s hand on his shoulder, after the trial.
“We have made our decision. It seems… it seems that you will all be permitted to stay among us. You will be taken to our outpost world, and together, we will seek a way to stop the Hive. I just hope that we can find a way to do it.”
Kevin could not believe how close they had come to death. He snapped out of it and looked around.
“Don’t you need to… I don’t know,” he said, “be in charge of the ship?”
“As if my ship would let me tell it what to do,” she said. “We work with our AIs. We do not enslave them. That is Hive thinking.”
“Kevin and Ro aren’t the Hive,” Chloe said, hotly, maybe a little too hotly.
“I never said they were,” General s’Lara said. She seemed to be watching Kevin and Ro carefully though.
Kevin thought he understood. “You’re trying to learn more about the Hive, aren’t you?”
The general hesitated, listening in that way that said she was in communication with her AI again.
“Yes,” she admitted. “You and Purest… sorry, Ro here have been a part of it. You’ve had access to everything that it is. You can help us to understand it better. You might actually be able to help us beat them.”
“I’m not sure they can be beaten,” Ro said. “I’m sorry. I feel… hopeless.”
“But you managed to break free,” General s’Lara said.
“With Chloe’s help,” Ro replied.
Kevin nodded. Without Chloe, none of them would have been able to escape.
“I still want to know as much as you can tell us,” the general said. “What is it like being a part of the Hive?”
Kevin wasn’t sure that he had the words to explain it. Even so, he wanted to try. “It’s like… there’s this web of connections, and every one is a living thing. It’s being a part of something bigger, and feeling that nothing matters but that whole.”
“It’s beautiful,” Ro added. “But we have no way to feel that beauty. We feel nothing. No conscience, no happiness. The Hive is everything.”
“Well, that
