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“I,” said Gilbert Nightray, “am not babysitting the AI you found in an abandoned lab.”
Break pouted at him. “Aw, but Raven, you’re really the best fit—”
“No.”
“We found a little girl, too,” said Sharon.
“No. I don’t deal with children.”
“Her only friend is the AI,” said Break. “Surely you know what it’s like to be all alone with only one friend?”
Gilbert turned away. “That,” he said shortly, “is exactly why I don’t deal with children.”
Oz Vessalius’s corpse had been found in a parking garage in the city closest to his family’s country home, with a stab wound in his chest (didn’t kill him), signs of a severe beating (didn’t kill him), the top part of his skull and also his entire brain missing ( definitely killed him, even though the autopsy claimed it didn’t), and evidence of having starved to death, a week and a half after he’d gone missing. Gilbert had been fourteen and heartbroken and sick for that week and a half, after stumbling home (to the Vessalius’s house—not his home anymore, not ever again after either, but…still. Home.) covered in drying blood with a dagger falling out of his fingertips.
Oz had still been alive, then.
Oscar Vessalius had brought him inside and cleaned him up and put the dagger away and went to get Oz— Oz isn’t home Gil had said dully—Oscar asked what trouble his nephew had dragged Gilbert into this time—Gil had said—
And anyway, it was classified as a hit-and-run and Gilbert hadn’t spoken to any member of the Vessalius family since, not even Ada, who, at eight, hadn’t been involved in getting the murder charges dropped and hadn’t known why Gilbert stopped coming over, why her brother had died, who had killed him.
To be fair, nobody else knew the why or who for Oz’s death either, but nearly everyone thought Gilbert had done it. Oscar had given him the benefit of the doubt, enough to give him an alibi for when Oz disappeared, enough to keep him in his house for the week and a half before Oz’s body was found.
Gilbert thought that the goodwill had dried up by the time of the funeral, but by then, he was already long gone, shaking in the Nightray’s house as the adoption paperwork came through too fast to be strictly legal.
After all, what self-respecting Nightray wouldn’t want to adopt the boy who had killed a Vessalius and gotten off scot-free?
Gilbert ended up in the server room of the creepy abandoned lab anyway. There was a young girl inside who appeared to be around twelve years old, maybe thirteen if he stretched his imagination, sitting on a worn and broken desk chair and holding a worn stuffed rabbit that was attached with thick wires both to the large collection of server banks and to a jar containing a whole actual human brain.
“Who are you?” the girl demanded, her hands tightening on the rabbit.
“I’m Raven,” Gilbert said shortly. “I’m going to be keeping an eye on you and the AI until my bosses get things a bit more sorted.”
“I don’t think that’s a real name,” said a young boy’s voice from one of the speakers, and—Gilbert jumped, and then froze, because—because maybe it had been ten years since he’d heard that particular voice. Maybe he’d cried for a week when he’d realized he could no longer hear it in his head. But it was a voice he would know anywhere, dead or deaf or drugged or standing in a dusty server room with a little girl and her fucked up toy.
The girl giggled. Gilbert considered all those horror movies Break had forced him to watch, because Break thought it was funny when he got so scared he cried.
“Fuck this shit I’m out,” he said to the room at large.
“Pussy,” said the girl.
“Aw, don’t be like that!” said the speaker that sounded like Oz. “Sorry for saying your fake name sounds fake. It’s very cool! If you like fake names.”
“You’re the AI,” Gilbert said.
The speaker (the AI) (not Oz not Oz not Oz not Oz ) (Oz died 10 years ago) giggled. “Yep! Sort of, I think. It’s complicated. That brain’s from when I was in a flesh body, you know?”
“What the fucking shit,” said Gilbert.
“He wasn’t in there long, don’t worry,” the girl said, patting her stuffed rabbit. When her fingers came off of it, Gilbert could see thin copper plugs on the ends that slid in and out of the rabbit without a sound.
“Was so,” said the speaker.
“Were not! It was only fifteen years!”
Gilbert blinked. “You cannot be older than thirteen,” he said.
The girl bared her teeth in what wasn’t a smile. “My sister had to die,” she said. “She didn’t want me to. Oz might be the first AI—”
(“Hi,” said the speaker, “that’s me, I’m Oz.”)
“—but I’m the first person to be made into a computer.”
“That’s impossible,” Gilbert said faintly. A human brain in a jar—an AI named Oz, that sounded like Oz—no. Impossible. Oz was dead. It was impossible.
“There’s a brain in a jar that my best friend the world’s first AI is keeping as a memory of happier days or whatever,” said the girl, “and you think the fact that I’m a human turned into a computer is impossible?”
Gilbert paused, opened his mouth, closed it again. Right. Okay. He could guess at why they’d think he thought the girl’s situation was more unbelievable than Oz’s. Right. “This has been a long day,” he said instead. “I’m a hitman, not a babysitter.”
“Ooh, have you killed anyone?” asked the AI. Not Oz. It wasn’t Oz. It couldn’t be Oz.
“That is literally my job.” Gilbert paused, bit his lip. “What can you tell me about your time as a human?”
The girl scowled. “It’s boring.”
“It isn’t!” said the AI. “Okay, so I was named Oz Vessalius, and I grew up as a human—like, I thought I was one and everything—for fifteen years. The first ten were kind of iffy…you know. Not human, lots of trauma I didn’t know, my dad hates—hated me, which I knew, and then I learned more about, when he literally fucking had me half-killed, which was fun, but…well, when I was ten I met Gil—Gilbert, my best friend—so after that, every day was fun! Gil’s the best, really.”
This couldn’t be Oz. Oz wouldn’t have forgiven him. Oz couldn’t have still loved him, as he lay dying. It was impossible.
“Tell me more,” Gilbert said quietly.
And Oz did, regaling him with tales from their shared childhood, and stories about Ada as a baby, and his voice was—it was the same, it was Oz, this was real.
The girl’s name was Alice, he learned.
Oz thought Alice hung the moon and the stars and the sun.
Alice didn’t remember much about her time as a human, or who had run the labs—she remembered her sister and she remembered Oz, who, she said, was hers, but she knew little else, about the building or world outside this little server room.
Oz told Gilbert more about their shared time together, this time sticking with details that could be proven, details that could be used to identify him as the actual Oz Vessalius.
Alice mentioned that there might be a body, for Oz or someone else, somewhere in the facility, and Gilbert thought that maybe this was better than stumbling on his dead childhood best friend floating in a tank somewhere when exploring the facility. Horror movie. Horror movie, horror movie, horror movie…
At least Gilbert was the one talking to Oz, now, at least Gilbert was the one earning his trust.
Oz said that he was worried about Gil, his best friend, that he hoped he was okay, that he was scared for him.
Oz asked Gilbert (“Raven,” he called him) if he knew if Gil was okay.
“We found the body of Oz in a tank,” Xerxes Break told Oscar Vessalius over FaceTime.
Oscar frowned. “How’s Gilbert handling it?” he asked.
Break smirked. “He doesn’t know,” he said. “We sent him to babysit the AI and the creepy computer girl as soon as Oz was found. We’re planning on breaking it to him gentl—”
The door to the server room burst open, and Gilbert Nightray stumbled out, eyes wide and wild, the creepy girl under one arm and a jar containing a real live actual human brain in the other.
“Call Oscar Vessalius,” he said, voice shaking. “Call Oscar Vessalius now.”
Break and Oscar met eyes on the phone.
“I’m in the middle of a call right now,” Break said smoothly. “Why do you—”
“Who is it?” Gilbert demanded. “Can they contact U—Duke Vessalius?”
Oscar’s face winced, slightly; Break knew that the falling out between Gilbert and the Vessalius family had been painful for all involved, and orchestrated mainly by Xai Vessalius and Bernard Nightray, though Break had gotten his own fingers in the pie once Oscar had realized the depth of his brother’s betrayal.
“It’s my ex,” Break said with a smirk, since everyone involved knew from experience that Gilbert wouldn’t speak anywhere near as freely if he knew that Oscar Vessalius himself was listening. Gilbert still thought that Oscar thought that Gilbert had killed Oz.
Oscar knew that his brother had killed his nephew, but for some reason—family loyalty, or grief, or an inability to find the correct words—he’d never shared that information with anyone, except Break, who already knew, and, by extension, Sharon and Reim.
For a moment, the wild look in Gilbert’s eyes receded, somewhat. “Your ex?!” he spluttered. “Don’t—don’t talk to your ex! That’s a horrible idea!”
“Our breakup was the opposite of amicable,” Break continued, smirking.
“Wow, loser,” scoffed the girl. Someone giggled from a speaker in the rabbit she was holding—the AI, maybe?”
“Anyway, he can make sure that Oscar gets the information.” Break kicked his feet up on the table and flipped the camera so that the duke could see Gilbert, in all his panicky, bloodstained glory. “What’s up?”
“Oz—Oz Vessalius is alive,” Gilbert said. He was shaking, but holding the girl and the brain steady. “He’s the AI in this place. And the brain in this jar! It’s his actual real live human brain!”
Gilbert was definitely about to have a breakdown. If Oscar wasn’t on FaceTime with Break right now, Break would definitely have started taking bets on how long it took Gilbert to become a shaking mess on the floor.
However, Oscar definitely would have cut Break’s funding for that, and though their little cell ran more on Rainsworth money than Vessalius money, the Vessalius money was still helpful to have. Oscar still saw Gilbert as one of the sons he’d never had.
“Hi,” said the speaker in the rabbit. “Raven didn’t say how anyone in my family was doing. Are they okay? I’ve been missing for a few months, right? They’re probably so worried…You said Uncle Oscar is doing alright, right? If you’re contacting him? What about Ada? What about Gil ?”
Gilbert flinched bodily.
“You mean the kid you left for dead?” groused the girl.
“I…” Oz’s voice somehow sounded guilty, a little hurt, despite the fact that he was a computer. “I didn’t mean to, I was stabbed and then I didn’t realize they were taking me and not him until it was too late. He’s probably okay!”
Gilbert looked like he was about to burst into tears. Oscar had one hand over his mouth.
“He’s fine,” said Break, smirking at the nearest camera as if to say I know something you don’t know. “Raven, I’m guessing you want to assume responsibility for these children?”
Gilbert nodded, swift and sharp and raw. Technically, Break should have sent Oz and the girl on to Oscar. Legally, he should.
Oscar nodded as well. “Keep them together,” he said. “They both need it.”
“Excellent,” Break said cheerily, hanging up on Oscar Vessalius and somersaulting over the table to roll to his feet. “Let’s get the AI kid in a body and everything else set up.”
Gilbert nodded. Gilbert didn’t, to Break’s surprise, drop to the floor and sob. Gilbert offered to let the girl walk—she considered it, but decided not to, threatening to bite him if he dropped her—and followed Break to the room with Oz’s new body in it.