Perfect State Page 6

  “Don’t change the magic. Just make it work here.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible; I’d have to change the laws of the entire State. But maybe . . .”

  “What?”

  The machine’s steps rattled my teeth; I could make out its head over the top of a nearby building, those red eyes glowing in the rain.

  “Well,” Sophie said, “all of the code notations that explain how you make your magic work are still there, attached to you. It’s all tied to your State. There’s some kind of intrinsic power source, I assume?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You can’t change the magic . . . but can you rewrite the source of its power? Make something in this world capable of fueling my Lancing?”

  “Hmm . . . clever. Yes, maybe. Give me a moment.”

  The wind started to pick up, the rain turning from a mist to a light shower. My shirt was already plastered to my body, my hair and beard sodden.

  The thing emerged upon us, rounding the building nearby, shaving stone from its side.

  “Just a moment . . .” Sophie repeated.

  “We’re running out of moments, Sophie!”

  “Working . . . working quickly as I can . . .” she said. “Oh, this is going to be a patchwork job. Electricity. Maybe I can use electricity as a substitute for your aurora thing. . . .”

  “Sophie!” I said. The machine stepped onto our abandoned vehicle with one large foot, crushing it. The rain grew stronger, pelting us.

  “There!” Sophie said.

  The tingling washed through me, colder than the rain. It left me awake, excited, changed. It had worked. I could feel that it had worked.

  Sophie groaned, and her hand slipped from mine. She slumped toward the ground, but I grabbed her and heaved her onto my shoulder, then ran down the street through the increasingly terrible rain, trying to get some distance between us and the robot.

  “Unhand me,” Sophie muttered, dazed. “I’m not some damsel from your barbarian lands. . . .”

  I reached a sheltered alleyway out of the robot’s sight, and set her down inside. She was limp, her eyes drooping. “I’m not . . .” she said. “I don’t need to be saved, I . . .”

  “Think of it this way,” I said. “Your inner feminist must be going insane at the idea of being rescued.”

  “You’re not rescuing me. I rescued you . . . with the magic . . . and . . .” She took a deep breath. “I’ll wait here.”

  “Wise choice,” I said, glancing back out toward the street. I could hear the robot’s crunching steps, feel it rattling the windows nearby. I took a deep breath, then strode out onto the street again.

  The robot had stooped down and was picking up a vehicle in one enormous hand. It looked back toward me, its red eyes blazing in the rainy night, then hefted the vehicle as if to throw it.

  I smiled, heart racing like it hadn’t in centuries, and entered Lancesight.

  Energy hung all around me. The ground was alive with it; it pulsed in buildings and from lights. I drew it in, which caused an odd crackling sound. Flooded with strength, I rewove the air to lift me into the sky and form a barrier to protect me.

  Nothing happened.

  “Aw, hell,” Sophie said from behind.

  The robot threw the vehicle—I could see everything outlined in power within Lancesight—and I cursed, throwing myself to the side. I rolled on the wet ground as the vehicle smashed to the street nearby, skidding on the stones.

  That left me alive, but dazed on the ground. I shook my head, still in Lancesight, and glanced toward Sophie in the alleyway nearby. She crouched there, one hand on the wall, and to my eyes she was a blazing source of energy.

  Wait, that wasn’t right. Why was she glowing?

  “The hack slipped, emperor man!” she shouted over the sound of the pelting rain. “I accidentally rewired you to draw upon heat rather than electricity.”

  Lords! I shook my head and found my feet. Ahead, the robot approached me, not far away now. I could hear the rain smacking against its metal. I drew in more energy, and I could see that Sophie was right. In Lancesight, I could sense the individual atoms in everything around me. As I drew in strength, they slowed, then stilled. Taking a step caused ice to crack at my foot.

  The hack hadn’t worked, and not just in the way she indicated. Every time I tried to use the energy, nothing happened. I could draw it in, but then it just evaporated from me—not even heating the air—and vanished.

  The fabric of the State rebelled against me using these powers. That meant no rewriting the air to protect me. No creating lightning to strike down the robot. No magic at all.

  The robot was close now, looming overhead, a cold—almost invisible—form to my eyes. As it stepped, it casually slammed a hand to the side, smashing a wall and the people hiding inside.

  “It didn’t work!” Sophie called. “We need to go, now.”

  People. I could see them easily now, even hidden in rooms, as they were pockets of severe heat in this frigid, rain-slicked land. People huddled on the street. The woman with her daughter had run from the robot, but had fallen to the ground nearby. The child was tugging on her mother’s arm, screaming in terror.

  Real people, with emotions, families, loves. And now me. With no safety net. I felt helpless. For the first time in decades, I felt helpless.

  It was incredible.

  I walked through the rain toward the robot.

  “Kai!” Sophie screamed at me.

  I raised my hands and drew in energy. It evaporated.

  The rain started falling harder.

  There was a wave of rain when the robot first appeared, I thought. This storm is a reaction to the hacks. Besk said that this State never has more than a drizzle.

  I drew in more heat. The storm grew even worse. Lightning crackled above. Thunder boomed, louder than the robot’s footsteps. The machine was only yards away now.

  The atoms in the ground beneath me stilled, and I had to rip my way out of shoes that had frozen solid. The cold didn’t affect my skin much. That was part of the magic that, apparently, stayed with me. I had an insulation against most of the effects of my Lancing.

  The robot slammed its hand down to crush me.

  My mental boosts kicked in. I was able to judge where the hand was going to fall, then stepped out of the way. The hand smashed ice and the stone beneath, then it swept toward me.

  I let the hand seize me in a cold steel grip.

  “I have you!” a voice boomed above. The same voice I’d heard in that Border State all those years ago, buzzing, metallic. “I finally have you! I can crush you with my fingers, child! You will know what it is to insult Melhi.”

  The rain grew harder, and I drew in more strength.

  “You can’t draw this robot’s heat away, foolish man,” Melhi said with a laugh.

  Indeed, I could see its core—hidden far within layers of insulated metal, and I wasn’t able to draw that heat, despite trying. I didn’t care. I drove the storm to greater strength. Rain fell like knives, freezing before it hit me, lashing my skin.

  My healing boosts kicked in, and stayed just barely ahead of the ice flaying my skin. I drew in so much that the atoms in the air itself stilled, and the gasses liquefied. The air became a strange steam, hissing as it boiled back into gas almost immediately.

  “. . . part of me that rebels against . . . will go forward . . . not . . . their puppet . . .”

  I couldn’t hear Melhi’s words. The storm had grown too loud, the beating of ice and rain on the robot’s body like stones on pieces of tin. Rain like an ocean wave crashing upon us. Thunder, lightning, the sky ripping, the fabric of this State crumbling.

  I drew it in, feasted upon it. This was a music I’d never known. The robot squeezed, but something was wrong with the hand, and the pressure wasn’t as great as it should have been. I smiled, then reached to the hand holding me. Then I drew the heat from the robot’s outer layer. The metal was an excellent conductor; I pulled the heat into me like sippin
g water from a straw.

  For a moment, all I knew was the increasing power of the storm. Like God’s own rage, screaming at me for breaking the rules of reality.

  The robot began to crack. It wasn’t the cold, it was the water. Water that seeped into joints, then froze. More water followed, which also froze, expanding. The joints strained, then splintered.

  The entire robot came crumbling apart, dropping in a thunderous crash.

  I hit hard. Pain shook me, and my Lancesight evaporated.

  I opened my eyes to find myself lying amid the wreckage of the machine. The rain started to slow, and I let go of any energy I’d held. The landscape nearby—broken buildings, fractured street—was covered in a thick layer of ice. I breathed in gasps of too-cold air. My clothing was in tatters. The cloth had frozen to me, then shattered like glass.

  I pulled myself free of the wreckage, and left a disturbing amount of skin frozen to the robot’s hand. Fortunately, my healing boosts were working well enough to grow my skin back.

  I turned on the broken beast, smiling broadly. I had won. Won where a victory hadn’t been set out for me, won on a battlefield the Wode hadn’t created. Here, no algorithm was pushing me along.

  I felt more alive than I ever had. I’d found something real. It was like . . . like I’d just come awake for the first time.

  Sophie stood at the edge of the frozen ground. Lords, she was beautiful. I’d never realized how much I’d wanted to know someone real, someone truly alive. Someone who hadn’t been created just for me, someone who had a life outside of mine. It was sexy as hell.

  Sophie smiled deeply at me, then took the small gun from her handbag, placed it to her head, and pulled the trigger.

  My mental boosts triggered at the explosion. I could see with perfect clarity as the blood sprayed out the side of her head, ribbons of scarlet like her dress. I watched it happen in slowed time, the pieces of my new life dying as her eyes faded.

  The boost ended. Sophie’s corpse collapsed.

  I stumbled toward her and there, written in the ice, I found words. Imprinted, as if chiseled by a workman.

  I TOLD YOU MY NEW ROBOT WOULD BE WONDERFUL. I WORKED LONG TO PERFECT SOPHIE. I AM PLEASED THAT SHE CAPTURED YOUR HEART. YOUR DEBT IS PAID.

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” Besk said. “But she was not real. I noticed it, but Melhi cut me from the system. That woman was just like the emissary we met in the Border State—a fabrication controlled from afar, only this time created to be indistinguishable from a human being.”

  I said nothing, standing beside my window, looking out over my city. My study felt too warm. Too friendly. A lie.

  “I’m having trouble getting any answers from the Wode,” Besk continued. “I . . . I don’t know how he knew which woman we would pick.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “He intercepted the information detailing the one we had picked, kept it from reaching the actual woman, and sent a replacement.”

  “Ah, of course.” Besk’s voice was sterile, as always.

  “Were any of them real?” I asked softly. “The people I saved? Or was everything in that State Melhi’s creation?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Everything I talked about with her . . . everything she said . . . it was all fake.

  I knew nothing. I didn’t even know what to feel.

  Besk left me in my study. He obviously had no idea what to do; he’d been hovering since my return. The warmed wine sat on the table beside my hearth, untouched.

  I paced, feeling angry, betrayed, hollow.

  Finally, I picked up the Wode Scroll and wrote out a simple request. Who are the Liveborn in the ten jars to either side of me? I would like their names and the identifiers of their States.

  I waited. Eventually, a reply came, letters appearing on the stone face as if written in ink.

  We apologize for the trauma you have been put through. Melhi will be disciplined. We do not know how she hacked that State; it should not have been possible. You are released from propagation duty, per a unanimous judgment. You may return to your rule.

  I stared at the slate for a few moments, then wrote again. What are the names and State identifiers of the Liveborn in the ten jars closest to my own? I would like to contact them.

  A long pause. Finally, the names came.

  It was time to stop living my life in isolation.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With every project, there are many hands working behind the scenes. Everyone involved deserves thanks.

  I would like to thank my writing group, Here There Be Dragons: Emily Sanderson, Peter & Karen Ahlstrom, Ben & Danielle Olsen, Alan Layton, Kaylynn ZoBell, Eric Patten, and Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson. Isaac St€wart is responsible for the look of the finished product. The Ineffable Peter Ahlstrom did his usual marvelous editing job. J.P. Targete adapted his striking artwork to better fit this story.

  Community proofreaders for this volume include Alice Arneson, Aaron Biggs, Jakob Remick, Corby Campbell, Kelly Neumann, Megan Kanne, Maren Menke, Bob Kluttz, Lyndsey Luther, Kalyani Poluri, Rahul Pantula, Aaron Ford, Ruchita Dhawan, Gary Singer, and Bart Butler. Thank you for all of your input!

  Brandon Sanderson

  ALSO BY BRANDON SANDERSON

  Novelettes

  Firstborn

  Defending Elysium

  Novellas

  The Emperor’s Soul

  Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

  Sixth of the Dusk

  Perfect State

  Novels

  Elantris

  Warbreaker

  The Rithmatist

  The Stormlight Archive

  The Way of Kings

  Words of Radiance

  The Reckoners

  Steelheart

  Mitosis: A Reckoners Story

  Firefight

  Mistborn

  Mistborn: The Final Empire

  The Well of Ascension

  The Hero of Ages

  The Alloy of Law

  Legion

  Legion

  Legion: Skin Deep

  The Evil Librarians

  Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

  Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones

  Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

  Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens

  Infinity Blade

  Infinity Blade: Awakening

  Infinity Blade: Redemption

  The Wheel of Time, with Robert Jordan

  The Gathering Storm

  Towers of Midnight

  A Memory of Light

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  PERFECT STATE

  Copyright © 2015 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art copyright © 2015 by J.P. Targete

  Cover design and art direction by Isaac Stewart

  Electronic book design by Peter Ahlstrom

  A Dragonsteel Entertainment Book

  Published by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC

  American Fork, UT

  BrandonSanderson.com

  ISBN 978-1-938570-09-4

  First electronic edition: April 2015

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ALSO BY BRANDON SANDERSON

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

 

 

 
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