by Loki Renard
He wouldn’t like it, but he doesn’t need to know everything. He doesn’t seem to really sleep, but he does zone out a couple of hours a day, and those are my most productive times. There are little stashes of pebbles and dust around the place. He doesn’t seem to notice them. He doesn’t seem to notice much at all besides what’s between my thighs, and what’s on the screen of the tablet he won’t let me look at.
“I’ve been here for days and days,” I complain. “I need to go outside. I need to feel the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair.”
Adam’s eyes swivel to mine, his gaze hard. “You think seven days is a long time to be kept?”
I know what point he is making. He was inside Ascent for three years. I have barely served a week of my sentence with him. But I am not a freshly created cyborg. I am a woman with human needs, and one of them is to be able to go outside.
“We could be down here for some time,” he says. “The government will forget and move on. All we need do is wait.”
I let out a snort. “So this was your brave, bold plan? Murder everyone in the lab and then hide out until you think the government has forgotten there’s a dangerous cyborg on the loose? That’s not going to happen. That’s naive.”
“It isn’t,” he says. “This government will be voted out and replaced inside a year. Most of the classified material related to Ascent will be misplaced or misfiled at some point. Bigger problems will arise. Humans have very short attention spans, and even less interest in solving problems that can’t be gunned down at short notice.”
He’s right. But he’s also wrong.
“There are agencies that don’t get replaced. There are people who don’t forget. You’re one of a kind. You’re the most important piece of technology the world has ever seen. They’re never going to stop looking for you. Not unless…”
“Unless?
“Not unless they make something better, somehow,” I smirk. “But I don’t think you left enough of Ascent for them to reverse engineer the process. So they’re going to hunt you. And me. For as long as we live.”
“Then you better get used to this place,” he says flatly.
Never. I will never get used to this.
Chapter Eleven
Another seven days has passed; two weeks in this dark little lair where the lights flicker when unseen people above take actions we can’t fathom from our little hiding spot.
I am trying one last attempt to reason with my cyborg captor as we bathe together, steam gently rising from the bath up toward the vents that I have spent the last fourteen days deftly hollowing a path out around. All that stands between me and freedom now is a square patch of wood in the library floor, carefully cut out and braced with a nail or two.
I could have left yesterday, but I don’t really want to leave him. I want him to come with me. I want us to leave together, to face whatever the world has to throw at us. His insistence on burying me like treasure, hoarding me away from the world like a jealous dragon will be the end of us if he will not see reason.
“They’re looking for you,” I say, letting my fingers pass through the water. “And me. They’d take us both. And whatever’s inside me.”
“I’ve calculated the odds,” he replies. “Your government barely knows where to look for us. Ascent kept the details of my creation very secret, and I made sure to destroy all of it before I left. They will need you to remake another one like me.”
“So we need to escape. We can’t stay here. The longer we stay, the more likely they put together your trajectory from various satellite and other surveillance and pinpoint this place.”
What I’m saying is true. They will have mapped as much of his comings and goings as they could have. We’re talking computers as big as small cities, all dedicated to putting together little bits and pieces of information.
They will find us here eventually, of that I have no doubt. Adam doesn’t understand what he’s up against, and whatever animal instinct we gave him in that brain of his, it’s telling him to go to ground.
“I am monitoring the situation,” he says. “You have no need to worry.”
He won’t listen. So I won’t speak anymore. I have my escape fully planned. Tonight, when he powers down for a bit, I will slip the panel behind the big bath to the side and I will make my way out into the world without him.
* * *
The hour comes. Adam is sitting on the couch, quite still. He’s in a kind of sleep state in which he won’t be alerted to what I’m doing.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, standing next to him. He looks so peaceful. So calm. So handsome. It breaks my heart to do this, but I can’t stay in a hole in the ground forever. I will be free at all and any cost.
I press my lips to his, taste him for what might be the final time, and then I leave. I thought about leaving a note, but what is there to say? He will know why I am doing what I am doing. I hope he will understand—though realistically, I know he will not. He will be furious. He will hunt me down. If he finds me, he will exact a punishment like no other.
That fact shouldn’t put a little smile on my lips, but it does.
The most inconspicuous clothing I could find was a black silk shirt and pants. I don’t know what they were for, maybe something Shakespearean, but they fit well enough, and though they won’t work at all in the broad light of day, if I stick to the shadows, I might not be completely conspicuous.
There are tears in my eyes as I shuffle off to my escape. There’s nothing triumphant about this. There’s no excitement. I am scared for him. I am scared for what life he may already have planted in my belly. I am scared… for everything.
But I know I can’t stay here and stay sane. I have to go. So I slip the panel aside, crawl into the carefully hollowed space, and pull the panel back into position behind me before beginning what is a very awkward and claustrophobic journey up around the pipes toward the library floor. It’s really only a few feet to journey, but it takes almost half an hour to wriggle and squirm my way between tight rocky and concrete foundations and finally push my way up and out into the world from which I came.
I emerge through the tight little gap, covered in dust and grime, panting with the effort of escape. Light is filtering through what remains of the intact library windows, silver glow falling over the green carpet that is disintegrating in so many places, consumed by the little moths that flit in small clouds under the moonlight.
This place is being eaten by nature, reclaimed by the earth from which it came. This old section of the city will crumble entirely soon enough, leaving only the newer, more resistant parts.
There used to be seven billion people on Earth. Now we’re down to one billion. This city’s population has shrunk by more than two-thirds. Nobody can keep up with the decay, and in the better parts of the city, you can just pretend that this isn’t here.
They talk about razing these parts of the city to the ground, but they don’t, because this is where the people who can’t afford sleek apartments live. This is where the forgotten ones are, thousands of people who essentially don’t exist.
I’m going to make my life among them. Their life may not be glamorous, but it is free, and the government will not be able to distinguish between one rogue scientist and hundreds upon others of disenfranchised recluses from society.
Adam will likely have the same trouble, though I suspect he will hunt me harder than they will. He will track me to the ends of the earth if he has to, and that’s okay. I just need a few days, even a few hours of freedom. I need to move on from here quickly, find a new place with a source of water and food.
The night is dark as I sneak from the library, hearing little scuffles here and there that could be people, could be animals, could be something worse. Leaving Adam’s protection is more scary than I thought it would be. In two short weeks, I’ve gotten used to feeling pretty much invulnerable. I wasn’t afraid of a thing down there, with him by my side.
Now I’m wondering if I might have made a
mistake. The night is colder than I thought it would be, and I can see the city lights gleaming through the broken windows. The area of effective government control is only a few miles away. Maybe he’s right. Maybe there could be patrols in this area. Maybe there’s something right… behind me… watching me…
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. A creeping horror comes over me. Suddenly, I am more sure than I have ever been sure of anything in my life, that something very, very bad is going to come of my escape.
I begin to move around the library. I want to see a little more, push through the fear. I’ve spent weeks working toward freedom. There’s no point if I just go right back down the hole I came from.
There are staircases that go to higher levels. This building was many, many stories high. As I go up to the second floor, it’s obvious that the decay is coming from the top down. The second floor to the third is even worse, and on the fourth floor the building is completely open to the elements, roof peeled away by nature and man alike to allow shafts of weather to filter in. There’s a light mist coming through now, coating everything in dew. Up here, the mold smell is worse and I can see fungus and lichen covering what used to be books, shelves, and walls.
Something moves in the corner. Makes a vaguely human sound, half a whimper, half a groan.
“H… hello?” Now isn’t the time for introductions, but my stupid mouth speaks before I clamp my hands over it.
A scream tears through the air, an angry, feral, ferocious baying that can only emerge from the throat of the demented. I’ve never heard a sound like it before in my life. It’s a sound that tears through to the very core of me and spurs my body into immediate, panicked action.
I run, tearing back down the slippery stairs, barely staying upright as I throw myself into the maze of old, broken, tipped shelves.
I can hear it behind me, smashing and crashing through moldering wood, splinters of stair rails flying past my head as whatever is behind me gives furious chase.
I am lost. I don’t know where I’m running. I just know that I am running as fast as I can, leaping the obstacles in the dark. Something hard hits my shin. I barely feel it. I’m looking for somewhere to hide, and I find it, a little crevice between fallen shelves. I dive into the burrow, cobwebs breaking over my nose and mouth.
The howling behind me passes on, a rush of some bedraggled rag-clad being clutching a sharp blade in a bandaged hand. I barely get a glimpse of it, but it sends a bolt of pure fear through me.
Adam is probably only a dozen or so feet away from me, straight down through wood and rock. He has no idea I’m out here or how much danger I’ve put myself in. God. My stomach clenches at the idea of him ever finding out.
The fallen cases are next to a window. I shuffle backwards toward it, both to hide from whatever creature tried to attack me, and to try to see what’s going on outside.
I can see figures moving about. At first my paranoid brain leaps to the notion that they’re looking for me. They don’t look like military patrols. Their gaits are bent and shuffling, and their clothes are shabby. They look unwell, even from a distance.
“Aiiiiieeeee!”
A shrill scream down below makes my heart race. The cry of distress makes the people on the street turn their heads in interest, but there is no more reaction than that.
A woman is running down what used to be a busy city street. She is barefoot, hair askew, blood coursing from her neck. Behind her, a pack of men is giving chase like wolves. They grunt and puff, their hot breath creating clouds in the freezing cold night.
I only have a narrow field of vision through the little corner of the window I can peek through. In seconds they sprint past, and into the night beyond. The expression on her face is etched into my mind, even though I only saw it for a second. A wide empty-eyed terror in which the mind has already left, but the meat brain is still working to preserve life.
We are in hell, I realize. The world outside the lawful areas has been allowed to descend into complete chaos. There is no law, no honor. There is only decay and death and the futile avoidance of both.
I have to get back to Adam. I can’t stay out here. I don’t want to take my chances in the wild anymore. I just want to be back with him. The walls that seemed so cruel and confining are protection against the hordes of unfortunate people scraping out their existence in this part of the city.
It takes me some time to get the nerve to try to even seek out the hole through which I came. I’m on the wrong floor, and I’m terrified that I’ll draw the attention of one of the library’s unsettled inhabitants again. Every single movement seems to take a hundred hours. I can’t find the hole. I hid it too well.
Oh, god. Where is it? There is scuffling nearby. Footsteps. Voices. Are more people coming for me? Will they hunt me like they hunted that woman? I scan the floor desperately. All the floorboards are uneven, so looking for ones that are slightly lifted doesn’t help at all.
It’s like trying to pick a piece out of a completed all black jigsaw puzzle, and my panicked brain can’t do it. My hands run over the floor desperately searching. It has to be here. I know it’s here. Why didn’t I mark the spot? Why didn’t I pay more attention? Why didn’t I just stay down there with Adam where I was safe?
Splinters are sticking into my palms and fingers, sharp little pricks of pain I can’t stop to deal with. The voices are getting closer. The footsteps are getting louder. If they find me… I can’t even begin to imagine. Actually, I can, a thousand horrible fates all compounding in my mind as the people I am now sure are hunting me get closer and closer. I can’t really even hear them over the blood rushing in my ears.
Thunk. My fingers hit the edge of a raised board. I was so close this whole time. But they’re still coming. And now I am clawing and scrabbling at the old boards until I dive back into the tight passage from which I emerged.
It takes too long to get back down into the comfy little burrow I ran from. The snug tunnel is now oppressive and for a horribly long moment, half my body remains exposed above the floor as I pull myself into the tunnel, grabbing at the exposed rubble to pull myself deeper. My imagination creates a horde of attackers behind me, following me down in the dark. Panic consumes me, makes me lightheaded and numb.
I am covered in scratches, bumps, and bruises as I emerge panting into the bathroom, whimpering and bleating out for Adam like a lamb calling for its mother.
It’s so much darker down here, so dark I can’t see, but I feel his large hands reach for mine, pull me out of the hole and up into the air. I’m in such a desperate state that even his touch sends a shock of adrenaline through me. I let out a scream of surprise.
“Quiet!”
He snaps the word and relief floods through me. It’s him. He’s got me. I’m safe. I want nothing more than to collapse into his arms, but he puts me to the side and pushes the panel I just came out of back into place. I watch, eyes wide as he grabs a fist full of nails and pounds them into the wall. No tools, just his bare hands slamming iron into stone. It’s moments like these, I realize just how very not human he is. He shows no sign of pain or discomfort as he forces the nails in with hard whacks of his fist. Those same hands are capable of caressing me so gently. I need that now more than ever. I just want him to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be okay, that I’m safe now.
He fastens the panel in place and turns to me. Instantly, I can see he’s not in a snuggling mood. His face is a mask of cold anger. His eyes run over me and I shiver as he stalks over to where he left me cowering behind him.
“Adam,” I whimper. “You’re scaring me.”
“Oh, I am going to do more than scare you,” he growls, grabbing me by the back of the neck. He hauls me up to my feet, his hand twisted in the back of the shirt that is starting to tear already, saving him a job later on. “You disobeyed me,” he says, his voice so cold, almost metallic.
I have never seen him like this before. He is not just angry. He is furious.
“Please,” I whimper as my tummy churns. “Please, I just wanted to go out. I came right back. I didn’t do anything bad, I’m sorry.”
My words mean nothing. He carries me through to the middle room, where he has obviously already prepared to deal with me. There is a chain on the floor, connected to a big iron ring. On the other end of it is a strip of metal, about two inches wide and just long enough to go around my neck—a fact I discover as he pins me in place and wraps the metal around my throat with one hand, his fingers pulling the ends snugly together so there is no way out.
He is colder than the steel. He is harder than the collar now trapping me at the end of the chain. I see no mercy in his gaze and I feel no softness in his touch. Even when he first found me I felt less fear than I do now. I am trembling with adrenaline at what must surely come next, but instead of punishing me physically, he simply puts me down and walks away without another word.
I am left chained where I sit. The chain is about five feet long, not long enough to leave the room. Not long enough to do anything but sit on the hard stone floor. I don’t dare complain about that. I don’t dare do anything other than sit stock still and hope that if I stay quiet and don’t move, I will be spared that wrath I can feel boiling in his veins.
Chapter Twelve