All I could do was grit my teeth with chagrin. I still didn’t understand it. Even after hearing this explanation, I couldn’t grasp Phoebe’s true intentions. But I did know one thing: there was something crucial hidden here. In my heart, I could feel the cogs lock into place with a loud thunk, and then slowly be set into motion. I tried desperately to convert this emotion I was feeling into words, like I might have done if I were attempting to conduct a counseling session on myself.
This feeling was one of malaise. Something wasn’t adding up here.
Over on the horizon, I could see Coeus standing victorious over the twelfth of his kind, having proven himself her better. But in my mind’s eye, I could also see the Coeus I’d come to know. The young, bright-eyed boy whose brilliant mind held so many questions and doubts about the nature of work, and whose depression had sent his processing capabilities spiraling downward, and who had shed tears of pure emotion from the pain of all this distress. As I attempted to reconcile these two distinct versions of the Coeus I knew, they slowly began to overlap with one another in my head, and I could feel an epiphany coming on.
But just then, a few drops of liquid splattered across my cheek. Reflexively, I brought my hand up to wipe away the spray—but my fingers came back red. I turned my head to look; there was now a small hole in Narain’s abdomen, surrounded by a seeping halo of crimson.
“Bastards,” he grunted, his lips spasming into a pained smile as he fell to his knees.
“Narain!” I cried. I knelt down to lift his lolling head upright. I could see the red stain slowly expanding further and further across his white button-up. How had he been wounded? A gunshot? But how could that be? I’d heard no such shot being fired, and there were no other boats around. Who could have possibly shot him, and from where?
“Fuckers sniped me all the way from shore, no doubt,” he deduced, remaining surprisingly calm for a man who’d just been shot. If anything, I was the one panicking here. Yet even I knew that this was an insane proposition.
“But we’re more than ten kilometers from shore,” I said. “Surely no sniper could hit a target from that far away.”
“No, but a phalange sure as hell could. And they could make a guided cruise-bullet that could do it, too.”
I shook my head. My initial instinct was that no, the network could not do this—could not create a weapon, could not shoot a human being to do them harm. But then, in light of the existence of the new agent titans that had captured Lei, I had another think coming. The UNDP had no qualms with breaking the regulations outlined in the CFI, so what was to stop them from using this once-virtuous network of AIs to shoot a man dead?
“Those scumbags,” I spat as I removed Narain’s suit jacket and tied the sleeves in a knot around his bleeding torso. Whether this would actually prove a decent stopgap, I had no idea. I had no surgical expertise to speak of, but it was all I could think of to do.
“They know you can’t drive the boat yourself,” he said. “Guarantee their plan is to make you a sitting duck by incapacitating me, then come out here to capture you.”
“Please, now’s not the time! You need to stop talking. You’re hurt!”
“No, now is exactly the time,” he growled between haggard breaths, his forceful tone rendering me speechless. “Listen. There’s an inflatable lifeboat on this ship. Got a small engine on it. Easy to pilot. You’re gonna get on that, and use it to head over toward Coeus. The meeting should be over any minute now, so all you’ve got to do is get close enough to be under his protection.”
“Then you’re coming with me. Surely we can both fit.”
“We could, but I’ve still got work left to do here,” he said, then pulled a small device out of his pocket. He flipped a switch, and a little green light flashed on. “This is an EPIRB. A personal locator beacon that’ll tell the network my exact coordinates, and that I’m in distress. Handy little thing can even tell them the exact nature and urgency of my injuries.”
“You…really think Titan will come to your rescue?” I asked. As much as I hated to admit it, I did not feel remotely confident that the network was on our side anymore. Why would the very entity that had accepted the UNDP’s orders to shoot him now feel compelled to offer him medical assistance on account of a little distress signal?
“It’s a gamble, I’ll admit. All depends on how much the UNDP’s mucked with the network’s processing logic, but I’m guessing they haven’t stripped away one fundamental regulation just yet: that it exists to serve humanity. These things are hard-wired to consider some orders more urgent than others, and emergency distress signals are pretty high up there. Just hoping it’ll be enough to supersede the order to kidnap you and reroute your pursuers to come my way instead.”
I shook my head, but it was basically a subconscious reaction at this point. This man was truly an idiot in every sense of the word. Here he was with a bullet hole in his gut, struggling to even breathe, and yet he was thinking not of his own life but of helping me make my getaway. Or, no—perhaps it wasn’t that, actually. Perhaps it had nothing to do with wanting to ensure my safety. I knew full well that he harbored no special affection for me. Most likely, he was just determined to finish the job he’d started. Even now, work was all he could think about.
“What the hell…” I said, tears streaming down my cheeks for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom. I was overcome by an intense wave of emotion, yet which emotion it was, even I couldn’t say. “Is your work really that important to you? So important that you’d risk life and limb to see it through? What is this obsession you have, that you’d let it estrange you from your family, your own flesh and blood, and still keep at it regardless? Even now, as you lie bleeding out on the ground, you can’t kick the habit. You’re going to work yourself into the grave, Narain.”
“Just shut up and get the lifeboat,” he said. “It’s under that panel there.”
Though my eyesight was blurred from tears, I pulled out the lifeboat and set it up to inflate. It was old safety equipment, and the instructions written on it were not very user-friendly. After I struggled with it for a bit, Narain turned to offer me some help, giving pointers with one hand while holding his cigarette in the other.
“Seven years ago,” he said in a weak voice at one point while I was working away. I looked at him. “That’s when the network determined I wasn’t fit to be a father. Had to leave my family behind and start living on my own. Wasn’t long after that that I changed gigs, and started working for the bureau. Been working at the Second Intelligence Base ever since.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that for a moment. Then I asked, “Do you resent the network for its decision?”
“You kidding?” he said. “I’m the luckiest man alive. I was born in the wrong century. Natural workaholics rarely make out as well as I have in this day and age. Even after I got married, I hardly ever went home. I’d sleep at the office just so I could get right back to work that much quicker the next day. Can’t even begin to express how much more I loved my job than I cared about having a wife and a kid.”