“You two need to follow me.” The officer was still catching her breath. Neither the Reader nor Belle moved. “Now!”

There was another slight tilt of the head before the android spoke.

“We will remain behind. Please leave without us.”

Belle’s flabbergasted “What?” was echoed half a second later by the officer.

The uniformed woman looked confused. “No. I have orders to get you to safety, Reader. We need to move now.” As if to prove her point, another violent explosion rocked the room. Closer this time. A growing clamor mixed with automatic weapon fire resounded from the hallway.

The Reader remained eerily calm. “As I said, we will remain behind.”

Belle shifted from one foot to the other, unsure what to do. She inched toward the open door to get an idea of what was happening, only to be stopped by a raised AK47 pointing at her head, entering the testing chamber from the corridor.

The soldier holding the rifle took a quick sweep of the room before he lowered his gun.

“What’s going on? Why haven’t you moved?”

“He won’t come,” said the female officer. She pointed at Belle. “I think it’s her.”

The soldier targeted Belle again. “What did you do to him?”

She stumbled back with her arms raised. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Lower your weapons!”

Belle’s view followed the sound of the familiar voice. She saw only an inch of her brother’s blond hair appearing briefly from behind the door frame before all hell broke loose.

The soldier and the officer emptied their magazines, aiming at the doorframe. Belle felt the sharp sting of her eardrums rupturing from the intense noise of the gunfire blasting through the small chamber. She squeezed her eyes shut and screamed from pain and fear. Something cold and hard pushed her against the rear wall. When Belle dared to take a look, she stared at the black-suited shoulders of the Reader standing in front of her.

The muffled sound of shots being fired, intermingling with the onset of tinnitus, ebbed away when the government agents ran out of ammunition. Belle glanced from behind her humanoid shield.

She saw Connor inching around the doorframe, followed by his friends Mickey and Riker. They pointed their guns at the officer and the soldier, who laid down their weapons and raised their hands.

Belle’s brother spotted her cowering behind the Reader, and he aimed at the android. “Get away from her!”

Belle took a step toward him when she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. Before she could even react, the Reader lurched forward with lightning speed. Another round of shots was fired, this time coming from Mickey and Riker aiming at the humanoid.

The android shoved the government soldier to the ground, still under heavy fire from the two insurgents, and a small sidearm bounced off the concrete.

Belle didn’t even feel the bullet penetrating her flesh. Her legs just suddenly gave way, and she collapsed. The red stain on her beige business dress grew quickly.

“Cease fire!” Connor threw away his rifle and joined his sister on the floor.

“Belle.” His hands hovered above her body as if he was afraid that touching her would somehow make things worse. When he finally caressed her cheek, Belle didn’t feel it. She felt nothing at all.

“The projectile severed her spinal cord and punctured the abdominal aorta.” The Reader stood motionless next to the government soldier, whose head rested close to the shoulder at an unnatural angle. Its suit was riddled with bullet holes, revealing the scorched and dented alloy underneath. The female officer used the volatile situation and fled into the corridor.

“Shut up!” Mickey waved his rifle in front of the android, still aiming at it. “This is all your fault.”

“That it is not. As I was moving to intercept the soldier, one of your bullets ricocheted off my left upper hip at a 112.3 degree angle and …”

“I said shut up, or I will…”

“Enough!” Connor whirled around, revealing his tear-streaked face.

“Why?” Belle’s voice was barely a whisper. She tried to raise her arm to regain her brother’s attention, but it was too hard. As was breathing. She gathered her strength and managed to increase the volume a tiny bit. “Why come?”

Connor noticed her efforts and turned to his sister. “Don’t exert yourself.” He slipped off his jacket and pressed it onto the bloodstain.

He stroked her hair and let out a sharp breath. “Remember that hidden file on the memory chip we detected but couldn’t decipher? Well, Riker finally did it. Eliza’s memories were fake. There was no time to review it all, but it was clear the device included another set of memories. Memories of this one.” Connor pointed at the Reader.

Belle followed his gaze. She fixated on the android. “You knew.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Because it was I who gave Dr. Petrow those memories.”

“Which ones?” Mickey looked confused, but Connor quickly caught up.

The realization of how massively they had been screwed contorted his face. “She never worked on the Savior, did she?”

“No. Her task was to develop an external data retention device for selective memory storage compatible with a standard human neural interface and my systems.”

“The memory chip?”

“Yes.”

“To what end?”

“To consolidate professional memories and the respective knowledge necessary to rebuild the human civilization.”

Connor scratched his beard. “But that is why they selected all those top-notch experts for the generation ship in the first place. Why would they …?”

The Reader shook his head slightly, and Connor’s hand flew to his mouth.

“No. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t!”

“The Life Support Engineering Department didn’t deliver on its promises. The latest projections suggested an insufficient degree of self-sustainability and nutrition output for the planned number of occupants. Crew size had to be reduced without losing the comprehensive knowledge base needed for the project.”

It was quite obvious that the Reader’s expressionless delivery did nothing to ease Conor’s mind. Belle’s brother was furious.

Jumping to his feet, he almost yelled. “And Eliza was in on this?”

“No,” the android continued in the same monotone. “But she ultimately learned of the plan and opposed it. When her superiors noticed she was leaning toward supporting your Underground, they decided she was a security risk. They tasked me with altering her memories.”

Connor shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why did they let her keep the chip? And the memories of her old life?”

“As I already explained to your sister, the human mind isn’t an archive. Manipulating memories is a complex procedure. Dr. Petrow had been working on the technology relentlessly for months. Impressions of such intensity and recency can not simply be erased or replaced.”

Riker’s husky voice filled the room for the first time. “But you did erase her memories. She didn’t remember you. She would have told us.”

“Yes, I believe she would have. That is why we … adjusted her old memories, taking the most prominent impressions, like the chip development, and embedded them in a new context that served our needs.”

The low wailing of the intruder alert suddenly stopped. Mickey inched toward the open door and peeked into the barely lit corridor.

“Movement down the hall. We’ve gotta go.”

Belle’s brother fell back on his knees and prepared to pick her up.

“She will not survive the transport.” The Reader’s voice was as calm as ever.

Connor’s was the opposite. “I’m not leaving her behind.”

Riker looked at the floor. “Connor, man…”

“No!”

“I will carry her.”

All heads turned to the Reader.

“I have superior strength and stamina, and I know how to hold her to minimize further internal damage. You were planning to take me with you, were you not? Is this not why you are here?”

“Yeah, but not powered on, you freak.” Mickey looked almost disgusted.

A loud bang coming from the hallway drew his attention away from the android. The instant Mickey stuck his head out into the corridor, heavy gunfire roared through the chamber.

“Shit.” The insurgent returned fire immediately, and Riker joined his friend.

The Reader slid to the left side of the room and touched the wall. A part of the smooth surface receded to the back, revealing an opening with a small metal cage.

“This way.”

“What is that?” Connor shouted over the thundering fusillade.

The android crouched next to Belle and her brother. “Your way out.”

The Underground leader glanced at the hole in the wall with a frown.

“Smells like a trap, man,” Mickey bellowed in between salvos.

“It is an emergency lift my creators had built in. Only a handful of people know…”

A sharp yell coming from Riker interrupted the humanoid mid-sentence. The rebel stumbled to the ground and dragged himself back from the open door. Blood seeped through the gear on the right side of his upper torso.

“Riker!” Connor jumped to join his friend on the floor.

The Reader leaned over Belle and stopped short of her ear. “May I carry you?”

Belle nodded. She had been watching the situation unfold with an eerie detachment. The blood loss was tearing her down, her mind’s lack of agility matching that of her body.

With a swift motion, the android picked her up and moved to the opening in the wall.

Connor seemed to hesitate for a second, but then he turned to Mickey, who was still firing bullets down the hall. “Let’s go!”

“Connor, …”

“We don’t have a choice.”

Connor started dragging Riker toward the metal cage. The injured insurgent screamed in pain.

“The lift has a limited capacity and weight restrictions. It won’t fit all of us.” The Reader shifted his gaze from Belle’s brother to his friend.

“Leave me,” Riker groaned, “I will buy you some time.”

“We can’t just …”

“Go!” Riker grabbed Connor’s arm. “No matter how,” he looked at the android and back to his friends, “you take that bloody ship, and you tear that fucking rock apart. You hear me?”

The torment of the inevitable decision was etched into the leader’s face. “We will.” He nodded vigorously. “We will, brother!”

Connor joined his sister and the Reader, who had already stepped into the cage.

Mickey emptied his magazine into the hallway, quickly reloaded and gave the gun to Riker with a solemn nod. Rushing to the opening in the wall, he squeezed into the cab.

“I swear to God, if this is a trap…”

The Reader entered a code into a small display attached to the metal grid, and the lift started to move upwards. “It is not. I thought it would be evident by now that I intend to support you in your endeavors.”

“You’d better.”

Another round of gunshots coming from the room below sounded through the narrow shaft as the cage crawled to the top. Mickey shut his eyes, and Connor’s head dropped to his chest with a deep sigh.

Belle fought to stay conscious. She studied the android’s face with half-closed lids.

“The real memories. You hid them on the chip,” she whispered when the shots fell silent.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I hoped she might find them one day and use them to achieve her goal. It was the only way I could aid her without arousing suspicion.”

“But why …” Belle wanted to ask more questions, but she didn’t have enough strength left to utter a sound.

Connor grabbed her hand and took over for her. “Why help her? And us? Isn’t that against your programming or something?”

“On the contrary. My primary task is to ensure the survival of the human civilization. The path chosen by those in power will not achieve that objective. A civilization comprises more than just the sum of its memories. Science and knowledge are important. But so are the arts, culture, and connections. The feeling of belonging.”

Belle looked up. As the dim light coming from the top of the shaft slowly grew brighter, darkness was closing in on her. And yet, for the first time since she had found out about Earth’s impending doom, Belle felt a sliver of hope. Not just because far more than only a couple hundred humans might live to see another day—but because humanity itself might survive after all.