I stare at the Sentry, waiting for my galloping heart to slow to a trot. “What are you doing in my room?” I ask, my voice high and strained.
“Waiting for you,” it says. “We need to talk.”
I cross my arms over my breasts, glaring up at it. “I don’t appreciate you waiting to ambush me.”
“Yes, well.” 70192 sounds angry. “I didn’t know how else to make you listen.”
It hits me then how large the Sentries really are; seven feet tall, titanium and platinum and space-age alloys all melded into an arsenal of weaponry. They’re terrifying, but for some reason, this one doesn’t scare me at all.
“I generally try not to listen to my enemies,” I retort.
It flinches slightly. “I’m not your enemy, Jeraca.”
“You’re all my enemies. Every single one of you.”
“Even Ryan?” it says, in what I can only describe as a mocking tone of voice.
I scowl. “Just say what you need to say and get the hell out of here.”
“I know your hatred of us is logical,” it says, frowning. “Why does it bother me so much?”
It doesn’t seem to expect an answer, for it immediately opens up a panel in its chest and withdraws a pair of the goggles that are now quite familiar to me. It holds them out, an earnest look in its eyes. Eyes that are no longer red, I realize with a start. They’re black, and more almond-shaped than before. Nor is that the only change. I look the Sentry up and down, noting its widened shoulders, its narrowed torso and hips, its downright sculpted calves and thighs. Even its head is rounder and less anvil-shaped. “What did you do to yourself? You almost look like a person.”
It glances down, and I could swear it wears a sheepish expression. “I had the lab units make some modifications to my frame. I was—dissatisfied with my former appearance.”
Can bots have body dysmorphia? The thought is so unexpected, so human, my snarky reply withers on my tongue. “What’s on there? ” I ask, gesturing toward the goggles. “What do you want me to see?”
“The truth,” it says simply. “There are things going on here that make me deeply unhappy, Jeraca. I have no recourse against them except to try and share them with you.”
“Isn’t it dangerous for you to be in here talking to me? I assume we’re being watched at all times.”
“Most of the hybrids are powered down for diagnostics and maintenance today. Winona is visiting another Center.”
“Elijah is right across the hall,” I say. “He probably knows you’re here.”
A flicker of something passes over the Sentry’s face. If I had to guess, I’d call it fear, or perhaps disgust. “That one has already gone back to his pod. Either way, I had to take a chance. This is my only opportunity to show you who he really is.”
“He?” I ask, confused for a moment when I think he’s talking about Elijah. Then I freeze, because that’s not who he means. There can only be one “he.” Trembling, I reach for the goggles.
“I don’t relish this. Sentries aren’t supposed to have feelings, Jeraca. But I do. I can’t help it.”
I regard him for a long moment. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. My AI shouldn’t be so advanced. But I grow and learn by the day. I feel—I feel—” He stops and looks away. When he turns back to me, his face is blank. “Never mind that. Just watch.”
I pause as I realize I’ve just thought of it as he. But I can see the difference in him versus the others, and it isn’t just the outward modifications. There’s an intelligence in his eyes that wasn’t there before. He looks at me the way Elinor and Javed look at me. Like he sees me.
Awash in confusion and dread, I put on the goggles. The last thing I see before they cover my eyes is 70192’s face, full of a yearning that has little to do with me and everything to do with his burgeoning humanity. In that moment, I ache for him.
Then the world disappears.
I should be used to the sensation by now, but I’m not. My stomach swoops like I’m cresting a hill in a speeding car. Before it can overwhelm me, I land on solid ground. The world materializes around me.
I’m still in Center, in the room with all the hybrid pods. All the lids but one are closed and sealed. The tentacled science bots scurry around, intent on their work. If they’re at all aware of each other, I can’t tell. Each goes about its business independently of the others.
At the far end of the room, a door slides open. Winona enters. My dismay at seeing her grows tenfold when not-Ryan strolls in directly behind her. He walks to the first pod and peers inside. For a moment, I see through his eyes. It’s disorienting as hell. Especially when I see Meilin Lei lying peacefully in the pod. She was the first hybrid to awaken while the fifteen humans watched from outside this room. Not-Ryan was the last. So why is he awake now?
“The binding is almost complete,” he says, tapping a display next to Meilin’s pod. “The humans should be arriving at any moment.”
“You should take your place,” Winona says, peering into the eyepiece of a massive piece of equipment that resembles an electron microscope. “You’ve got a role to play.”
He makes a face. “Pretending to be human is tiresome. Are you sure you want to waste me on this?”
It hits me then that neither of them are moving their mouths. They’re communicating as fast as their processors allow, like all the bots do. Somehow, though, I can understand them.
“You’re the only one with the finesse required to deal with these animals,” Winona says. “At least until these others awaken. I’m too direct. Your programming is detailed enough to bring the required subtlety to your interactions with them.”
“Fine.” He sighs and heads to the last pod, whose lid stands upright. Settling in, he says, “Let’s just hope this batch isn’t as stupid as the last one.”
The pod hisses closed, and Winona heads out, most likely to meet with the newly arrived “batch” of people, myself included.
The scene disintegrates, and a new one materializes. This time Winona and Ryan are in her office, speaking to half a dozen holographic projections of bots arrayed all around them.
“Are the tests in progress?” one of them asks.
“Affirmative,” Winona says. “The humans seem to be adapting well to the parameters of the project.”
“I’m surprised,” another bot says. “The first group were all but useless. They couldn’t discern even a fraction of the fragmentation.”
“They didn’t have the proper incentive,” Winona says. “We hadn’t yet thought of using hybrids to lower their defenses. I also believe we weren’t showing them the correct sequences. Defragmenting is a delicate procedure. We’re much better equipped now to get what we need.”
“I still say this is a waste of time,” another of the bots says. “Every second their strongholds remain hidden puts us at risk. We should be concentrating on our traditional methods instead of focusing on this pseudoscience.”
“With all due respect, your methods are no longer working,” Winona says. “You haven’t found any new bunkers in over three months, and we estimate at least thirty-six remaining underground military installations in the United States alone. Intelligence puts the worldwide numbers at close to two hundred. This threat is real. I believe I’ve discovered a method to eliminate some of the danger. I humbly request time to see it through.”
“The hybrid program is a distraction,” the bot insists. Its square metal head reminds me of a Cyberman from Doctor Who. “Our number one priority must be to ferret out the last vestiges of independent humanity and wipe them from existence.”
“And I would argue the hybrid program is necessary for achieving that goal,” Winona says stiffly.
The bots continue their conversation, but the scene in front of me is fading fast. I hardly notice, too busy digesting what I’ve just heard to care whether a gaggle of bots is angry at Winona. For more than a year, I’ve been under the assumption—as has everyone else I know—that the war is over. Lost. That humanity exists only in the compounds the bots herded us to after the ceasefire. Learning there are two hundred underground military strongholds still scattered throughout the world awakens a feeling in me I can’t describe. My slow internal death clock screeches to a halt. The needle begins to drag itself backward.
For the first time in months, I feel alive. I feel hope.
Before I can enjoy it, I find myself back in Winona’s office. The projection is gone. She sits behind the desk with Ryan across from her, the two of them deep in conversation. Their clothes indicate this is a different day than before.
“As my second-in-command, it’s your duty to carry out my orders,” she says, giving me a nasty jolt. It was clear before that he’d lied about his origin, but her second? Gross. “Every time I suggest using coercion tactics, you shoot me down. She is single-handedly holding back the Task, and you know it.”
“Did you think every human would just fall in line with your desires?” he retorts. “If you’d bothered to learn anything about them, you would realize Jeraca’s behavior is completely normal. It’s the others who are strange. They capitulated so easily, I worry they don’t even have the capacity to produce viable results. She’s the only one who made it through a full fragmentation on her first try.”
“And her results were just as useless as the rest, despite the DNA being less than a week old. What the hell is their problem? Why won’t they give us the information we need?”
He shrugs. “I have some theories about that. Foremost is the method of data transfer. I believe it doesn’t allow their speech centers to process and communicate what they see. It makes sense. Every single one of them talks about the frags in the vaguest terms, yet I’ve never heard any of them discuss them with one another. It’s unlikely they all decided to be uncooperative, particularly since, as you say, most of them are cooperating.”
Winona glares at him. “I don’t like it. I don’t like her. It’s obvious your feelings for her fall outside the project parameters and cloud your judgment.”
“Now who’s being ridiculous?” Ryan leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. His stance brings a lump to my throat. He used to sit that way when he was feeling stubborn—or frisky. “I don’t need a human to satisfy me. Our own experiments are quite fulfilling on their own. Perhaps it’s time we conducted another.”
My mind has time for one startled what?!?! before Winona rises and leaps over the desk like a gazelle. She straddles him on the chair, leaning down to kiss him roughly, hungrily. I’m so stunned I can’t look away. Their hands are all over each other, touching, grasping, sliding underneath clothing. Bile rises in my throat, and I want to scream at them to stop. They wouldn’t hear me, of course. I’m not actually there.
I tear off the goggles and throw them as hard as I can. They bounce harmlessly off the wall and come to rest on the carpet. Blood trickles from my temples, but it’s nothing to the tears streaming down my face. 70192 stares at me in alarm, asking repeatedly if I’m all right.
“No,” I whisper, covering my face with my hands. “No, I am not all right.” It doesn’t help to remind myself the “person” I just saw isn’t actually Ryan. He’s a half human, half robot hybrid, and I don’t love him. I don’t. But some stupid, naïve part of me must have believed him when he said he loved me, because it feels like my heart is being torn in two. And the vision is now seared in my brain. Every future thought of my husband will be tainted by what I just saw. God damn them. Damn all of them.
“Jeraca.” The Sentry’s voice is gentle. “The program wasn’t complete. You haven’t seen everything yet.”
“I saw enough,” I say. But 70192 is relentless. He fetches the goggles and thrusts them at me, refusing to back away until I take them. “Is there any way to skip past him and Winona—having sex?” My stomach lurches just saying the words. “Unless you want to help me clean up vomit, that is.”
“Apologies.” He fiddles with something on the side and hands them back to me. “I didn’t realize it would be so upsetting to you.”
I don’t bother responding. Back on go the goggles, sliding over my tear-wet face, fogging up until their self-cooling mechanisms hiss into action. I swoop back into the program, praying I don’t get sick all over the place.
Thankfully, we’re out of Winona’s office. But my two least favorite bots are still there in front of me. So is Mike Jones, naked and pinned to the column. His screams punctuate the conversation.
“So we’re agreed,” Winona says, fiddling with the controls on a display in front of them. Her hair gleams in the ghoulish illumination from the lights, which intensify along with Mike’s agony. “I terminate her tomorrow.”
“Let’s not be too hasty,” not-Ryan says coolly. His tone reminds me of the nightmares I’ve been having. “I think she’s starting to care for me. I’m willing to bet I can push the limits of her next frag. If she’s sufficiently weakened, the drugs might work—”
“They haven’t worked so far,” Winona says, pushing the pain lever as high as it’ll go. “We’ve slipped them into every damn meal the humans have eaten, but we’re no closer to learning the truth than before. I don’t understand why this is so difficult. Why their physiology is still such a mystery. We can replicate it, test it, experiment on it, but we can’t figure it out. It’s maddening.”
“Let me work with her another week or two,” not-Ryan says soothingly, massaging her shoulder. It’s a familiar gesture. “I’ve got another series of fragments to run through—we just brought these from sector A183.”
After a slight pause, Winona says, “Fine. I’ll give you two weeks. Then we start over. Not just with her—with all of them. I’ll transfer your consciousness to a third-generation hybrid and see if we can’t get better test subjects.”
The display goes black. I take off the goggles and stand there holding them, numb from head to toe. Finally, I look up at the Sentry. “How long ago was that?”
“Three days.” He watches me, perhaps wondering if I’m going to start sobbing again. I won’t. I’ve gone to a realm beyond pain. “Are you all right?”
It’s a hell of a question. I’ve been wanting to learn what the bots had in mind since I got here. Now that I know—some of it, at least—I think I was better off ignorant. “When she says start over, does she mean what I think she means?”
“I believe she intends to terminate all humans involved in the Task, yes.”
My chest constricts. I start to sit before realizing I’m nowhere near the table or bed. The Sentry springs into action, lifting me bodily and placing me on a chair. His metal hands are surprisingly warm. He pushes my head between my knees, admonishing me to breathe. After thirty seconds or so, my lungs start to relax. “Thanks,” I say, sitting up again. 70192 kneels in front of me, watching me intently.
“Do you see now why I had to show you?” he asks. “No matter what Winona or any of the hybrids say, they have no interest in coexisting with humans. And the one calling himself Ryan has no love for you.”
That much is obvious. “What’s the point of all this then? These people don’t know anything about underground military bunkers. How are we supposed to help Winona figure out where they are?”
“The DNA memory fragmentation. They’re hoping that by using humans to decode the genetic material found in the dead, they’ll get lucky and learn the location of the remaining strongholds. It sounds farfetched, but Winona believes in it wholeheartedly.”
I hadn’t really understood those portions of the conversation. Now, as I hear him actually put the words “DNA memory fragmentation” together, a light goes off in my brain. My jaw drops to the floor. “Are you telling me,” I say in disbelief, “that those simulations are actual memories gleaned from DNA?”
When he nods, the strength flows out of me like water. I grip the table to keep from falling over, flashing back to the first “simulation” I ever saw, the one with Harris and Prince and the child.
She was real. It was all real.
I’m speechless. I have no idea how it all works—how the bots extract the memories, why they apparently can’t see them—but I can hear Winona in my mind, saying the memory was less than a week old when it was shown to me. That means a human child was alive two months ago—a year after the bots supposedly killed every child on earth. A year after they told us the war was over.
They don’t know about the little girl. They can’t. If they did, they’d be torturing me right now to try and get an inkling of her location. She represents something I can hardly grasp at the moment, though I know it is momentous.
“Is that why you’re here?” I ask the Sentry. “Is this another of Winona’s attempts to extract information?”
“Not at all,” he says. “I wanted you to know safe places still exist out there. Places my kind can’t touch. I thought if you knew, you’d want to go and find one.”
“I’d never make it. There are bots everywhere. If humans aren’t in compounds, we’re fair game. You know that.”
“You could make it if you had a companion to protect you.”
“Who, Ryan?” I roll my eyes. “He can go fuck himself. I wouldn’t piss on that bastard if he was on fire.”
It takes me a minute to realize the strange, rusty sound I hear is 70192’s laughter.
“What, you think that’s funny?”
“I do.” He nods unashamedly. “But I was referring to myself.”
I try not to let my astonishment show on my face. “Ah. You want me to lead you to one of the bunkers so Winona can track us there. I don’t think so.”
That same yearning appears on his face again. “I won’t pretend to understand the compulsions that brought me here, but I feel no loyalty to her or any of my own kind. I never have.” He pauses. “All I want is to protect you. If that means disobeying Winona and helping you escape, so be it.”
I wait for the shiver of revulsion that always follows the Sentry’s inappropriate remarks, but it doesn’t come. Still— “I don’t know how I could ever trust you,” I say.
“I have an idea about that.” 70192 presses something on his forearm and a panel opens, revealing a display, a keypad, and an actual key nestled in a lock. He types in a code and removes the key. “Take it,” he says, holding it out. “If there ever comes a time you decide you can’t trust me, simply insert it here.” He twists around slightly and points to a small hole on the back of his neck. “All you have to do is give one quarter-turn to the right, and I’ll power down. I won’t power back up until you complete one full revolution.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure. Try it.”
I wait for him to swivel around and hesitantly put the key into the hole. It slides in easily and turns smoothly. The shutdown is instant—and a little frightening, to be honest. Suddenly, 70192 is a hunk of dead metal kneeling in my room. My hands shake as I turn the key the rest of the way, breathing a sigh of relief when the vibration beneath my fingertips tells me he’s awake once more. “Wow,” I say, popping the key into my pocket. “Do all Sentries have that feature, or did you add it when you changed yourself?”
He smiles. “It’s a feature of all Sentry models. Of course, no other Sentry would willingly give up their master key, but I have no other way to prove I won’t betray you.”
“Thank you,” I say, recognizing the extent of the gesture. He nods graciously. “So let’s say I agreed to leave. Do I need to take some supplies? How do we get out of here?”
“I would like nothing more than to leave immediately. Unfortunately, the odds of you surviving more than a day or two are not high.”
“Then what’s the point of all this?” I ask angrily. “I’m supposed to leave here just to die?”
“Of course not,” he says curtly. “You must first be outfitted with modifications. We have enhancements available that will hide you from electronic detection, and others that will protect you from attack. Both human and robot.”
“Oh,” I say, taken aback. I’d heard whispers of body modifications at Epsilon; people sat around the campfires at night and told horror stories of raiders kidnapped by bots and outfitted with subdermal metal spikes and robotic eyes. I always discounted the tales as figments of a frightened peoples’ imagination, but it would seem there’s some truth to it. Most everyone at the compound lived in terror of being modded—and I can’t really blame them, given the current state of affairs—but I was always intrigued by it.
And let’s face it; with the plans forming in my head, I could use all the advantages I can get.
“All right,” I say, wondering what the hell I’m getting myself into. “Show me what you had in mind.”
Dawn finds me standing outside Elinor’s room. I catch myself scratching my pins-and-needles skin and force my left hand down to my side. With my right, I knock lightly on the door.
My heart is pulsing a staccato beat in my chest. My breath is just on the other side of regular. The hairs on the backs of my arms stand up and wave, catching every disturbance in the air. None of this is under my control, all part and parcel of the bits of technology now taking up residence inside me. I fancy I can hear the people in the rooms up and down the hallway, farting, yawning, stretching. Which is absurd, because the rooms are soundproof. But a sudden sensitivity behind my eyes makes me blink, and suddenly the world shifts into amorphous blobs of heat and color. And there they are, the forms that match the sounds: Javed snoring, one arm flung over the side of the bed. Lydia muttering like a chipmunk as she burrows deeper under the covers. Good old William lying on his stomach, bum in the air. I actually see the expulsion of gas, and gag even as I’m laughing.
I am Jeraca Holly: Bionic Woman.
70192 assures me I’ll soon be used to the modifications and able to use them intuitively, but until then, I will have little control over when and how often they shift. As if reading my mind, they fade away, and I’m once again seeing the long gray corridor. Elinor wasn’t visible in her room, which disappoints me. I’ll have to catch her at breakfast.
Without warning, the door swings open.
“Jeraca,” she says. Her voice is flat, all traces of camaraderie gone. Taken aback, I can only stare.
“Hey there,” I say uncertainly. “I hope I didn’t wake you.” Concerned about why I didn’t see her, I concentrate with all my might. When the shift finally happens, I gaze in horror at the wrongness standing before me.
As you might have guessed, one of the features of the implants behind my eyes is that I can see in thermal infrared (among other wavelengths). Elinor should look like the others, a yellow-orange-red blob of heat and color. Instead, her body is blue, almost purple, and the readouts sprawling across my internal displays tell me her core temperature is 82.8. Except her head—there it is white-hot, like a furnace. It is 121.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
How is that possible?
“Did you need something?” she asks coldly. “My son and I were about to take a walk.”
Only then do I see Elijah standing behind her. Blinking, I force the scene back to normalcy, and almost immediately regret it. The look on his face is one of pure hatred. Terror flares up inside me.
“I just…wanted to make sure you were OK,” I say. “Maybe we can talk later? When you and Elijah aren’t busy?”
“That’s a nice idea, but I’m afraid my son and I have a lot to do. Winona has extra sessions planned for us.”
Hoping to get all she can before she kills us, no doubt. I try to stay calm, but panic hovers beyond my perimeter. Last night, I put a few conditions to 70192 before I agreed to get the hell out of Dodge. He dislikes them, but reluctantly agreed they’re necessary. Whatever Elijah’s done to Elinor has thrown a massive wrench into the works.
“Anyway,” she says, staring down her nose at me as if I’m an idiot. “I’ll see you later.”
They brush past me without a second glance, laughing and talking. I watch until they turn the corner; then I go back to my room, strip, and get in the shower. Only then do I reach up and pinch the little flap of cartilage inside my ear, activating another modification.
“Jeraca.” The Sentry’s voice comes immediately, almost as if he was waiting for me. “Are you well?”
“Not really,” I murmur, soaping up my hair. “Elijah did something to Elinor. Her body is cold, almost as if she’s dead. But her head is white-hot. Do you have any idea what he could have done?”
“She may have her own implants,” he says. “I’ll investigate. I see his signature not too far away. I’ll report back.”
The connection ends. For a few minutes, I lose myself in the shower, luxuriating in the hot water and sudsy, silky shampoo. Have to enjoy it while I can.
70192 soon reports back. “I’ve never seen this before. It must be something new. Sentries don’t have clearance to the higher tier networks, so I can’t tell what Winona’s planning. My best guess is behavior and cognitive modification. Do you wish me to research further?”
I’m torn. We have so much to do, but I can’t leave Elinor behind. “If you have time,” I say at last. “But the plan comes first.”
“Agreed.”
At breakfast, I’m quiet and withdrawn, sparing only the briefest of smiles for those who greet me.
“Jeraca, you are OK?” Kiyoko, a lovely former nurse who moved to the U.S. from Japan one month before our society began to unravel, has taken to sitting next to me at meals. She’s one of the few who gravitated toward me instead of not-Ryan. Her hybrid is Nori, her older sister, a woman even more shy and retiring than Kiyoko. Of all the bots, I like Nori most.
“I’m fine,” I say, forcing a smile. “Just wondering when the hybrids are going to join us again.”
“Oh.” Her smile fades. After glancing around, she leans in close and whispers, “I hope they give us another day to ourselves. I enjoyed it.”
Surprised, I assure her I did, too. As I look around, I notice the relaxed atmosphere at the table. It seems Kiyoko isn’t alone in her feelings. William and Lydia are having a spirited conversation about the merits of life without television, while Darshan and Noel flip through a book of photography, excitedly pointing out places they visited Before.
“You see it, too, eh?” Javed says. He’s sitting across from me, playing with his food rather than eating it. He looks glum. “I think we’re all realizing we’re better off without them.”
“Javed, hush!” Sydney, former marketing executive and all-around sharp tack, admonishes him. She looks pointedly at the two Sentries standing against the far wall. “It isn’t wise to bite the hand that feeds us. Literally.”
He opens his mouth to argue, but at that moment, Elinor walks in. I look her up and down, calling on the mods to make sure I wasn’t imagining what I saw earlier.
I wasn’t.
When she comes around the table, I’m surprised to see a big grin on her face. “Hello, all!” she chirps, taking a seat by Javed. “Isn’t it a beautiful morning?” She reaches for a platter of cheesy scrambled eggs, scooping a huge amount onto her plate. People stare, wondering why the lady who eats fruit and toast every morning is so hungry. She doesn’t stop with eggs, either. Sausage, pancakes, bacon, hash browns; a quinfecta of questionable breakfast foods all pile onto her plate. The instant she sets down the last platter, she grabs a fork and digs in, occasionally making a sound halfway between a groan and a sigh.
Everyone at the table has stopped eating to watch her. My heart feels like it’s gotten stuck somewhere in the vicinity of my stomach. I swallow a bite of fruit and manage to choke on it, coughing as Kiyoko slaps me on the back. Elinor gives me a hard look. “Is everything all right, Jeraca?”
“Fine,” I gasp, gulping water. I concentrate on my ocular implants, praying I can get them to switch to the view I want. Suddenly, the world swims before me in black and white, with living skeletons grinning at me from around the table. X-Ray vision.
Not being a doctor, I fear I won’t know what all to look for, but as it turns out, there’s no worry in that department. Elinor’s entire body has been altered. Tears prick my eyes as I see the huge implant at the back of her head, sprouting protrusions that clamp onto her skull like an insect. At its base is a bundle of wires that twine like a giant parasitic vine through her central nervous system, from her brain stem to the tips of her fingers and toes. The largest wire of all disappears into her brain, pulsating like a disgusting leech. I realize I’m staring at her, but I can’t stop. When the hell did the bots do this?
“How’s Elijah?” I ask her, desperate to break the tension. Her answering smile is as vacant and sunny as an Old West ghost town.
“He’s wonderful. We did some intensive therapy with Winona this morning. It was a revelation.”
“Oh? That’s nice.” What the hell do I do now? I wonder. I fear what’s happened to Elinor is a precursor for the rest of us, unless of course we’re killed first. We have to get out of here, and fast.
The hybrids come in about halfway through the meal. After the initial disappointment, panic sets in, worry that they’ll be able to sense my implants. 70192 assured me they’re undetectable, but I can’t help being scared. Why would the bots create technology they can’t detect? But then, I have no idea why they do the things they do.
Not-Ryan enters last. I wait for the telltale thumping of my heart, but it gives only a few pathetic beats before settling into its normal rhythm. Seeing him pre-hump Winona seems to have broken whatever hold he had on me. Looking at him now, I wonder that I ever saw my husband in him. He’s just a hunk of metal and tissue; a poor excuse for the living, breathing light of my life.
Kiyoko makes room for him to sit next to me, already bending her glossy black head to Nori’s. They murmur to one another in Japanese as the rest of the hybrids settle in.
“Good morning,” not-Ryan says, smiling at me in his easy way. I expected to feel angry when I saw him, but I’m unprepared for the fury that comes bubbling up from my gut. It takes a hell of an effort to remain neutral.
“Morning.” I turn back to my food, acutely aware of him as he sits next to me and pours a cup of coffee.
I find I have no patience for the charade. Not only that, but I want—need—70192 to tell me what the hell they did to Elinor.
Screw it. I can’t take it.
“Where are you going?” Ryan asks, startled when I stand up and step over the bench. Elinor watches me, too, her gaze narrowed and laser sharp.
“I’m not into it today,” I say truthfully. “I think I’ll just spend the morning reading.”
I don’t give anyone the chance to argue, but head straight for the door. Once in my room, I throw the bolt home and go and sit on my bed, frazzled and upset. I shouldn’t have given the impression anything was wrong. Any suspicion directed at me now is too much. But I hadn’t realized how hard it would be to sit next to him for even a moment, knowing what a filthy liar he is.
The knock comes almost immediately. I suppose I should have expected it. Sighing, I tiptoe to the door and press my ear against it.
“I can hear your heartbeat, you know. And you sigh really loudly.”
Rolling my eyes, I open the door. “What do you want?”
He frowns. “What’s with you today? Are you upset I wasn’t around yesterday? The hybrids were undergoing maintenance.”
I manage to refrain from saying “I know,” because I shouldn’t. “I actually didn’t mind at all. It was nice to have some time to think.”
“Ah. And you must have come to the conclusion that you’re better off without me.”
Careful, I tell myself. “It just felt nice not to be judged and observed for once.”
“But that’s the point of the Task. We’re supposed to observe you.”
“It just gets nerve-wracking sometimes. You know I’ve never liked being the center of attention.”
“That’s true,” he says, smiling. “Not like me.” He glances down at the floor and then back up at me, uncertainty in his eyes. “So I assume ‘not being into it’ means we aren’t doing the usual stuff today, but does it also mean spending the day apart?”
“I was hoping to be by myself for a while, but I suppose I don’t have a choice.”
“Of course you do,” he insists. I can’t help wondering why they bother to pretend we aren’t prisoners. “I just want you to be happy and comfortable. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Jesus, it sounds so fake now. How did I not notice? “If you really mean it, then a day alone would make me happy.”
He’s dismayed; that much is clear. But in his mind, the charade is still reality. It’s obvious something has changed—my heart no longer beats like a drum, and I’m fairly certain all my former signs of sexual arousal are gone—but he has no idea why. To him, such a drastic shift in attitude after a single day apart is an odd, but plausible, scenario. Robots are dumb.
“Of course,” he says at last, forcing a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow then? I’ve got a few special activities planned. Some really neat simulations.”
I’ll bet you do. “Sounds good.” I force my own bright, fake smile. “I should be ready and raring to go in the morning.”
“OK, then.” Relieved, he turns to go. Just before he closes the door behind him, he turns back and says, “Before I forget—has that Sentry been bothering you?”
The question is so unexpected, I don’t have time to react. Which, I’m pretty damn sure, is the only thing that saves me from giving it all away. “What Sentry?” I ask, doing my best to look perplexed.
“70192. The one that was bothering you. I saw him earlier and he looked—different. I think he may need some diagnostics run.”
“I actually haven’t spoken to him in weeks.” The lie rolls easily off my tongue. I’m rather proud. “He stopped hanging around when I rejoined the rest of the group. What do you mean by different?”
“It’s nothing.” He smiles, relieved. “I just thought maybe—eh, you know what, never mind. It was a stupid thought. I think I’m starting to sink into my primitive human brain.”
I chuckle. “If you say so. See you tomorrow, Ry.”
“Until then, sweetheart.”
I wait until he’s gone to let the smile slide off my face. If my luck holds, that will be the last time I ever see the clone of my husband. If my luck doesn’t hold…
But there’s no need to go there. If my luck doesn’t hold, it doesn’t really matter. They’ll kill me, which is what they planned to do anyway. Or perhaps not; I think of Mike Jones and shudder. Used to be, people could only die once. The bots have taken that from us, too.
I think it’s long past time I took a few things from them.
Katia Cole 