Freaks Under Fire

by Maree Anderson

  At least, it hadn’t been so bad once his mom had gotten over her initial freak-out that, a) there was a rogue cyborg on the loose, and b) immediately after giving birth she’d been drugged by aforementioned cyborg… who’d then snatched Danny.

  Of course, it helped Jay’s case immensely that everyone now understood she hadn’t hesitated to sacrifice herself for Danny. And that Tyler’s dad had been concerned enough for Jay’s welfare to demand to see her injuries—“Right here, right now, no excuses, Jay!”—to confirm for himself they were healing properly. Tyler wasn’t ashamed to admit he’d been just the slightest bit pleased by his mom and sister’s horror at the still healing wounds. He got the feeling that what could have befallen Jay had Sixer not exploited a command loophole to further his own agenda, had been driven home.

  Bottom line? His mother might come across like a hardass, but she was a fair person at heart. And now she couldn’t overlook that her husband had been through hell, that Jay had done her utmost to protect the Davidson family at huge cost to herself, and that both had good reasons for keeping secrets.

  In the end, Tyler’s dad got off with a mini-lecture about how destructive secrets could be. Tyler got a watered down version that still made him cringe. Jay got another hug for being smart enough to insist those secrets finally be revealed. And it seemed like the uneasy truce between his mom and Jay had morphed into a true peace.

  Tyler was simply relieved as all hell his mom didn’t blame Jay for being the catalyst that had brought Sixer into their lives. She seemed to finally accept that Jay was as much a victim of circumstance as her husband had once been—and Sixer, for that matter. Though that last was much harder to swallow, and Tyler wouldn’t want to be Sixer if he was unlucky enough to come face to face with Marissa Caroline Davidson any time soon. Knowing his mom, she would take him apart with her bare hands and stomp all his cybernetic parts to itty bitty pieces.

  Tyler watched Jay lean forward to fondle the pup’s ears and then shoo him away when he tried to gnaw on the laces of her sneakers, and wondered how she could be so calm about the implications of that photo. In hindsight, Tyler had to admit the chances of Jay having a cybernetic twin somewhere out there had been pretty high. Jay was a Gamma unit. It was only commonsense to presume that Alpha and Beta units would have come before her—and that they would have been defective in some significant way that had necessitated the creation of subsequent units. But this irrefutable evidence of another cyborg that looked like Jay blew Tyler’s mind.

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one.

  “Are you sure it’s not you, Jay?” Caro asked, squinting at the photo. “I mean, you before you were, uh, perfected.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What about fingerprints?”

  “No fingerprints on the photo or the envelope. Handwriting on the back of the photo matches that on the envelope. Generic blue ballpoint used both times.”

  “Besides, fingerprints only help if they’re on file somewhere, right?”

  “Correct.”

  Caro passed the photo back to her dad, who stared at it through narrowed eyes as though willing it to reveal its secrets. “Any ideas where this photo could have been taken?” he finally asked. “Or, more importantly for now, who left it for you?”

  “What if it was Sixer? What if he’s baiting you again?” His mother had gone sheet-white, but Tyler suspected it was a symptom born of fury rather than fear.

  “It wasn’t Sixer,” Jay said.

  “How do you know for sure?” his mother asked.

  Tyler knew from his mom’s tone that no way was she letting Jay get away with what, to her mind, was an unsubstantiated statement of fact.

  Jay must have come to the same conclusion. “Sixer exudes a particular odor, which is what alerted me to his presence in the first place,” she explained. “I detected it on the note he left for me when he drugged you and took Daniel. There is no such odor detectable on this photo, nor on the envelope. Too, based on Sixer’s previous actions, there is a high probability he would use knowledge of the Beta unit’s whereabouts as leverage to extract something he believed he needed from me. It is my belief that he would not be bothered with such cat and mouse games: He would simply contact me and be done with it.”

  The bottom dropped out of Tyler’s stomach. “You really think he’ll contact you again?”

  Jay opened her mouth, paused to reconsider what she’d been about to say, and then answered, “Yes,” with such calm surety that Tyler had to struggle to beat back the wave of panic that weakened his knees and threatened to tip him on his ass. “Jesus,” he whispered, realizing how stupid he’d been to assume Sixer would leave Jay be.

  “It’s to be expected.” Tyler’s dad scratched the stubble on his chin. “Jay’s the only one Sixer knows who’s like him. Of course he’s going to contact her sooner or later—if only in the hope she can give him a purpose and help him find his place in the world.”

  Wow. That was deep.

  Caro caught Tyler’s eye, and in the strange way of twins who shared a deep connection, he knew his sister was thinking the same thing. Intellectually, they both knew their dad’s five-year absence had changed him. But at times—like now—it was a little shocking to be directly confronted by evidence of those changes.

  “Now I know what to expect, I can handle Sixer,” Jay said. “He caught me unawares—hence the reason he could so easily exploit my vulnerabilities. Next time I will be better prepared.”

  “If he lays a hand on Danny again, I don’t care what he is, I’ll take him apart.” His mom sounded so fierce and implacably determined that Tyler shivered.

  “If he touches that child again I will render him immobile, and give you step-by-step instructions on how to dismember him,” Jay said. “And then I will crush his components to dust, and obliterate every particle that remains of him from this earth.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Caro interjected. “Guy’s a loose unit.”

  Tyler attempted to hide how freaked out he was at the prospect of confronting Evan Caine’s cyborg again by snorting. “Loose unit. Yeah, that’s one way of describing him.”

  “I have not given up on Sixer entirely,” Jay said. “However, what he will ultimately become, and whether he proves too dangerous to allow complete autonomy, still remains to be seen.”

  “You have a containment plan,” Tyler’s dad said, clicking his fingers at the inquisitive pup to draw his attention from Jay’s shoelaces.

  “I have been experimenting with various projectiles along a similar vein to those used to disable me. Before long I will have developed projectiles that are far more efficient than those Sixer used on me.”

  Tyler’s dad nodded tersely. “Any weapon that takes two shots to disable, and three to fully immobilize the target, should be considered a last resort. Relying on it, or having it as the only weapon in your arsenal, is a ticket to your own funeral.”

  “Agreed.”

  Tyler darted a gaze at his mom and inwardly winced. His dad had slotted seamlessly into his old life, and was back teaching computer science. He’d, frankly, always been a bit of a nerd and old habits died hard. Now he sounded like a total badass: harder, more capable, ruthless—someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. Talk about smack you upside the head with a total world-view shift.

  Tyler’s mother shifted Danny from the crook of her left arm to the right, and flexed her shoulder joint.

  “I can hold him for you if you’re getting tired,” Jay offered.

  “If you’re sure?”

  Jay’s smile was the merest bit lopsided but it was only really noticeable if you knew her intimately, like Tyler did. “I’m sure,” she said, and held out her arms for the sleepy infant.

  It was a start. A real good one considering his mom had shot down Caro’s earlier offer to put Danny in his cot. Not that anyone could blame his mom for not wanting to let Danny out of her sight even for a moment.

  Tyler watched the soft smile curve Jay’s li
ps as Danny yawned, snuffled, and settled back to sleep in her arms. And felt a glimmer of hope that the pain of never having a child of her own would be lessened somewhat by access to his baby brother.

  “So, let’s recap.” Tyler’s dad scrubbed his face and blinked twice, scrunching and relaxing his facial muscles as though shedding fatigue and stress by strength of will alone. “There’s a Beta unit somewhere out there, but we have no idea where. We don’t know whether she’s compos mentis or the cybernetic equivalent of comatose. Nor do we know who’s caring for her. Some unidentified party with a hidden agenda has seen fit to make Jay aware of the Beta unit’s existence via the photo. The same, or possibly a different unidentified party, also with a hidden agenda, is now in possession of Jay’s decoy cybernetic hand. And at some stage, Jay expects a visit from a rogue cyborg whose agenda we can’t even begin to fathom. I’d say we’re pretty much screwed until someone clues us in.”

  “Gosh, that sums it up very nicely, Michael,” Jay said, her tone oozing so much fake admiration that Tyler’s dad barked a laugh.

  The pup took that as his cue to yip back, provoking reluctant smiles all round.

  “So, where the hell do we go from here?” Tyler asked.

  “Language,” Jay chided, patting Danny’s back for emphasis.

  “Sorry.”

  Tyler’s mom surprised them all—well, the humans anyway—with her input. “I think Jay’s first port of call should be to talk with Allen, and then visit the café out front of his studio to quiz the regulars. One of them might have spotted the person who left the envelope at Allen’s studio. It’s somewhere to start,” she said defensively, noting Caro’s gaping mouth. “Unless you have a better idea?”

  “It’s an excellent suggestion,” Jay said. “And I promise to keep you informed if any further information comes to light. However, my first priority is to negate any potential threat that Sixer might present. His thought processes are too dissimilar to mine for me to be confident of predicting his actions. I need to make it clear that he is to stay away from you all or there will be dire consequences.”

  “I presume you’re gonna do a disappearing act, then.” Caro’s snippy tone made it obvious she wasn’t happy about the prospect. “When?”

  “Soon. I have to do this, Caro. Sixer is too unpredictable.”

  “I don’t like it,” Caro announced, and her sentiment was echoed by her parents. Tyler remained silent but only because Jay hadn’t yet indicated he wouldn’t be accompanying her.

  As though sensing his thoughts, Jay looked him straight in the eye and said, “You need to go about your usual routine to allay the suspicions of anyone monitoring you. Once they realize I’ve gone, they’ll likely focus their attention on finding me. I can’t risk you being used against me, Tyler. I need to do this alone.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but the words died in his throat. Shit. She was right. He was a weakness that Sixer wouldn’t hesitate to exploit. “I know,” he finally said. “I don’t have to be thrilled about it though.”

  “Smart decision, son.”

  Tyler thought his dad sounded as relieved as his mom looked right now. And Caro, too. All the tension had drained from their faces. And yeah, it gave him warm fuzzies to know they were worried about him, but the person they needed to be worried for was Jay.

  No one said anything for a long moment. And then the puppy broke the awkward silence by scrambling from the bench seat onto the table, and burying his nose in the last piece of chocolate cake.

  “Hey, that was mine!” Caro grabbed the pup and held him up to her face to scold him. “Chocolate’s supposed to be real bad for dogs,” she cooed to the pup. “Oh yes it is!’

  “He’ll be fine,” Jay assured her, soothing Danny, who’d startled at Caro’s shout and was now whimpering fretfully.

  “Hey, I know what you can call him,” Caro said.

  Jay continued gently jiggling the baby and merely arched one eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Choccie. You know, short for ‘Chocolate’.”

  “Over my lifeless body,” Jay told her, taking the pup and tucking it under her spare arm.

  Caro’s answering grin was pure evil. “Then you’d better come up with a name real quick. Like, before something you don’t approve of sticks.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  “So?”

  Tyler snickered. Jay should know by now Caro wasn’t gonna let this go.

  “So, what?” Jay asked, feigning confusion.

  “What are you gonna name him?”

  Jay smiled serenely at her best friend. “When I think of a suitable name, you’ll be the third to know.”

  Tyler compressed his lips so he didn’t ruin the moment by laughing. Wait for it….

  Caro’s pout was right on cue. “Seriously? The third?”

  “The third,” Jay said, firmly. “After the pup and Tyler.”

  “I guess I can live with that.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Jay said. “And if you’re very lucky, I’ll even pick a name you can pronounce.”

  Caro stuck out her tongue—her default response whenever she couldn’t come up with a witty rejoinder—and it was all so normal that Tyler forced himself to fully relax and enjoy the moment.

  He was in the backyard with his family and his girlfriend. Everyone was together, everyone was getting along, and for now, everyone was safe. He counted his blessings, because one thing he’d learned since meeting Jay, was to count ’em while you could. You never knew when some megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur would set you in his crosshairs. Or when some rogue cyborg was gonna try messing with your girlfriend.

  Chapter Five

  The three-day interlude at the Davidson family home had turned out a great deal more pleasant than Jay had anticipated. Tensions had escalated again the first evening, when the subject of sleeping arrangements had been broached, however Tyler had quickly smoothed over the awkwardness, announcing he would sleep downstairs on one of the couches rather than share his old room with Jay. He’d claimed he didn’t like disturbing her when he couldn’t sleep. And, rather than consider the reality that a cyborg didn’t require sleep, and would hardly be disturbed by a human pacing the floors—as Tyler tended to do when in the throes of composing a new piece of music—Marissa had simply lamented that her son’s insomniac ways hadn’t improved any.

  Jay admitted to taking what she’d later identified as mild offence at Tyler’s clumsy signals for her to remain silent and let him do the talking, and at the time had countered with a firm statement that she would be quite comfortable “sleeping” on the couch. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t been tempted to explain that although she did not require sleep, if she felt any requirement to mimic the state at least she wouldn’t suffer any discomfort lying on one of the Davidson family’s well-used, somewhat saggy couches, that were hardly optimal sleeping surfaces. But she hadn’t given in to the temptation because she saw no reason to exacerbate a potentially fraught situation.

  Tyler shouldn’t have felt compelled to prompt her not to tromp all over Marissa’s desire to continue treating her like any other human purporting to be her son’s girlfriend. Jay again considered discussing the matter with him, but ultimately deemed it prudent to let it go. It was her problem, not Tyler’s, that it was becoming increasingly more challenging to suppress her human side and be the cyborg that was immune to hurt feelings.

  Detecting potential social minefields, however, was becoming a little easier. As was navigating them without attracting too much unwanted attention—although Jay could still find herself floundering, despite blink-of-an-eye access to extensive information on any subject. Parent/child dynamics was one such constant source of both confusion and fascination. Take, for example, a son sleeping in the same room as his girlfriend. To a parent, “sleeping” in the same room appeared to be synonymous with their son and his girlfriend having sex under their roof. And to a parent, it frequently appeared perfectly reasonable to in
sist on separate rooms in an effort to prevent such an act from taking place—surely an illogical reaction if the parent already knew that their son and his girlfriend were sharing an abode and presumably having intercourse.

  So far as Jay could determine, the reasoning was along the lines of “my house, my rules”—even if such rules wouldn’t prevent one party from sneaking into the other’s bed if either the son or girlfriend felt the risks of being caught worth the reward.

  In the end, no one had slept on the couch because Caro had insisted on what she’d called “a mini sleepover” in her old room. Jay wiggled her sparkly-purple-painted toenails—one of the many rituals Caro had forced her to undergo. Others had included the application of mudpacks, manicures and pedicures, makeup sessions, gorging on Caro’s chocolate stash, raiding the freezer for ice cream, and whispering long into the night until Caro couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer and fell asleep. Jay would even go so far as to admit she’d enjoyed these rituals. And yes, she had felt pride in Caro’s envy of the steady hands that allowed Jay to achieve a perfect “cat’s-eye” with liquid eyeliner first time, every time.

  She adjusted the parameters of the current search, her fingers keying in the new data too fast for the human eye to follow. Simultaneously, she replayed a particularly satisfying interlude between herself and Tyler at 2:15 am on the second night, compiled a list of items she needed to order for her puppy, and planned a week’s worth of frozen meals to cover her impending absence. Tyler was a competent cook, but often neglected to eat properly when she wasn’t around.

  Hmmm. Perhaps scheduling regular reminders on his mobile phone would assist his memory?

  Perfect. That was exactly the kind of action a human girlfriend might take—the kind of thing that a young male might complain about to his friends, while being secretly pleased his girlfriend cared whether or not he ate regularly.

  Then again…. Perhaps such reminders would simply irritate him.