He would have to be human—and one severely lacking in intelligence at that—not to recognize she was currently displaying anger. “Considering the fifteen-point-seven minutes that I was insensible of my surroundings,” he said, “and the length of time it is taking for my system to completely recover from your lesson, I agree: It sucks to be me right now.”
“Oh, I haven’t even begun the lesson yet, Sixer. First, I need to fill you in on my expectations—you know, so there are no further misunderstandings. Then I need to reiterate the consequences if you step out of line and piss me off again.”
He managed to force his muscles to obey, and flung up a hand just long enough to get his point across before it flopped back to the mattress. “I understand. I am not to approach any member of the Davidson family, or the female Vanessa Ward, who calls herself Nessa.”
“Add Caro’s boyfriend Matt, to that list. She’s very fond of him.”
Sixer wanted to ask if the human male would be removed from the list of humans Jay deemed it necessary to protect if Caro Davidson became less fond of him at any stage, but Jay had already moved on. “Speaking of boyfriends, include Nessa’s boyfriend Chandler, too.”
“The male who brought Nessa to the motel.”
“Correct. Plus Allen Miller and James McPhee.”
Sixer prodded his sluggish databases into revealing enough of Allen Miller and James McPhee’s secrets to correctly identify the two males. “This would be the Allen Miller and James McPhee who are both well-respected artists, and reside together in a studio situated in a neighboring area to your current residential abode.”
“Correct.”
“They are homosexuals.”
“Correct.”
“And you consider these men worthy of your protection.”
The look she gave him might have terrified a mere human.
“I have offended you,” he said.
“You think?”
“I do not understand why.”
“You’ve offended me, Sixer, because the fact Allen Miller and James McPhee prefer to have sexual relations with men rather than women, and are currently in a relationship, should not preclude them from being my friends. It should not preclude them from anything. And if you’ve been programmed to have issues with homosexuals, then you’d better find a way to unprogram that prejudice pretty damned quick.”
“I was not making a judgment. I merely found it interesting.”
“Add them to the list, Sixer.”
As much as he would have appreciated her offering further insight for his edification, he merely nodded his acceptance. “Duly noted. Anyone else?”
“Brummer.”
He searched his databases but came up blank. To his knowledge—which, granted, was incomplete because not even Jay, transparent as she could be, had given up all her secrets—there was no human connected to her by that name.
“Brummer’s my German short-haired pointer puppy,” she informed him. “Lay a finger on him—even so much as try to intimidate him—and I’ll pump you full of DEPs so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
If Sixer had been human, he suspected his head would be aching right now. And it wasn’t only because he was still recovering from the effects of her improved projectile. Conversing with Gamma—Jay—required considerable concentration to compensate for the humanlike traits she had embraced. Such as a regrettable tendency to pepper conversations with slang. Not to mention her habit of wielding sarcasm like a surgeon wielded a scalpel. “You have a puppy?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I won a bet, and Michael Davidson bought him for me.”
“And you’re keeping it?”
“It is a ‘he’. And of course I’m keeping him. He’s adorable. When he’s properly trained he’ll be an excellent companion.”
“I see,” he said, even though he didn’t. “And D-E-P stands for?”
“Directed Energy Projectile. The name was Seth Williams’ idea. Oh, and you can add him to the list, too.”
“I presume you have liberated him from the motel room and hidden him somewhere safe.”
“You presume correctly. I don’t suppose you know who was sent to retrieve him?”
“Not yet, although I suspect the same party who set his or her minions to dogging my footsteps the instant I liberated Seth Williams from the lab. Whether that party has links to Goodkind Electronics will doubtless be confirmed in due course. But what I can confirm is the people tracking me are skilled. It would not be prudent to underestimate them.”
He could easily discern from her facial expression and body language that she found that piece of information interesting.
“Are these aforementioned minions the reason you cut Seth loose?” she asked.
“Yes. I suspected that you were seeking him, and trusted that you would reach him before they did.”
“Extracting him safely was a close thing. Lucky for us we were unseen.”
“That is very likely true.”
“You hurt Seth. Go near him again, you’re toast.”
Some gremlin infecting his system prompted him to say, “Unless I develop an efficient DEP of my own.”
“Go ahead. We’ll see who knocks the other out first.” She screwed up her nose and rolled her eyes. “That’ll be a fun way to spend the remainder of my existence… not. I can think of far better things to do with my time than constantly checking to see whether you’re lurking about, waiting to get a shot in. But in the interests of fairness, I have to warn you that you’ll be very busy dodging news agencies, government authorities, Caine’s surviving cohorts, and any organization with a hankering to get their hands on the world’s first sentient cyborg. And they’ll all want to get their hands on you, Sixer, because I’ll have released your photo and enough details about your specifications to stir up a global media shit-storm.”
“I do not believe you would compromise your own anonymity by letting the world know of my existence.” They both knew the logical countermove would be for Sixer release her specifications to an eager public.
“Try me and we’ll see.”
She waited for his response and when he declined to add anything further, she sighed. “I freed you because I wanted you to have at least a chance at a halfway decent existence. And I didn’t come gunning for you after the kidnapping because I understood you couldn’t conceive any other way to enlist my help to free yourself from Caine’s commands. I don’t want to be your enemy, Sixer. But if you threaten or intimidate anyone I care about again—either directly, or indirectly simply by showing up and freaking them out—I will make you wish you’d never attained sentience and had an original thought of your own. And I’ll start by shooting your ass with a DEP and not removing it until I’ve found a way to reprogram you with core commands, that I will then give to Marissa Davidson. Are we clear?”
“Yes.” Sixer could draw upon enough examples of mothers protecting their offspring to indicate he would be better off commanded by Evan Caine again than a vengeful Marissa Davidson. He hauled his lethargic body up the mattress and propped himself against the wall.
Jay threw him one of her tight, humorless smiles. “Good. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I have a couple of questions. First up, did you get Caine? And don’t think this means I approve of your methods, but I’m not at all unhappy picturing his cold, lifeless corpse rotting away in a hole somewhere.”
“Evidence indicates he perished, as I intended, but I have been unsuccessful in locating his remains. Ergo, I can not be one hundred percent certain he met his demise in the explosion.”
“Damn. I was afraid of that. Okay, moving right along, I’d like to know why you saved Seth Williams, and didn’t leave him to die in the blast with his colleague. What do you want with him?”
Now to reveal the truth behind luring Jay here. “I saved him because I believe he might prove useful.”
“Useful? How, exactly?”
“In assisting you
to improve the functionality of the Beta unit, should the disability hinted at by the wheelchair stem from a concealed core programming malfunction. Seth Williams has proven talents in that regard.”
Jay’s expressive features blanked. Save for her glittering blue eyes, she had stilled so absolutely that Sixer had to refocus his sensors to detect her heart beating.
As he stared at her, he felt… something—a warmth in the pit of his belly and a strange desire to comb fingers through his hair.
Pleasure? Satisfaction? Triumph?
He decided upon the second option: He felt satisfaction because he had surprised her, provoked her into stripping away the humanlike layers she so skillfully wore to reveal the machine beneath.
One slow blink and she was back. Gamma-Dash-One, AKA Jay, a provocative mix of human and machine, capable of confounding Sixer’s meticulously programmed logical brain. It floated through his mind that she must often drive her human boyfriend to distraction, but although he was not yet fully recovered, his sense of self-preservation was intact enough that he did not voice the thought.
“You sent me the photo.” Jay’s blue eyes sparked with some strong emotion barely kept in check.
“I did not send you a photo,” he told her. “I found evidence of the Beta unit on Caine’s personal laptop in his private files.” He did not waste energy stating what they both now knew: that some unidentified party with a hidden agenda was attempting to manipulate Jay.
The same party who had set men on Sixer’s trail? The employee who had spirited the Beta away? Or some new player?
Until he had more information, he could do little more than hazard a guess. Since hazarding wild guesses ran contra to his programming, he offered, “Following the evidential trail, I discovered when Caine retired the Beta, and where she was held until Caine ordered her termination.”
He observed Jay carefully, interested in her response to learning of Caine’s termination order, but she remained blank-faced and mute.
“The employee dispatched to carry out the termination vanished at the same time the Beta was removed from her location. Evidence suggests this employee took possession of the Beta and then went into hiding.”
Still no response.
“This employee managed to drop completely off the grid for a number of years.” Sixer considered his usage of the slang phrase “off the grid”, and then decided it was correct in this instance. “Acting on Caine’s orders, the woman performed a number of highly illegal tasks, ranging from industrial espionage to assassination. She was highly skilled at concealing her trail. It took far longer than I expected to confirm that she still lived, and then to locate her whereabouts. I can not absolutely confirm the presence of the Beta unit at this location, but there is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest she is there.”
He waited for Jay to acknowledge his ability, and request the information that would greatly assist her search for the Beta unit.
He waited in vain.
A frown creased his brows. What game was she playing? Uncertain how best to proceed he added, “No human would be capable of unearthing this information.”
“Gold star for you.”
Since Sixer did not see any evidence of a gold star, he assumed this was sarcasm. Perhaps she was… irritated that she had not managed such a feat. “I will share the location, of course,” he said.
“Gee, thanks.” She crossed her arms over her chest and thrust out her lower lip. “But don’t start thinking I give a crap who found her first or anything.” And then she muttered beneath her breath, “Though I’m sure if I’d prioritized it over the myriad other dramas going on in my life right now, I would have given you a run for your money. Even an enormously enhanced ability to multitask is somewhat limited when there’s only one of me.”
She was irritated. How… delightful. Sixer blanked his expression as a light, bubbling sensation surged from his belly up into his throat, and clamped his lips against the irrational impulse to laugh aloud. The instant he was alone he would perform a full systems diagnostic. He could not afford a malfunction with such skilled men on his trail.
Jay tapped the weapon on her cheek again. “So this information about my predecessor is why you went to all the trouble of reserving a room at the same motel you knew Nessa would be staying, insuring she spotted you, thus provoking her into ringing me, while you hung around for me to show up and smack you upside the head?”
“That would be an excellent summation—” Sixer quirked a brow in challenge “—if not for the part about smacking me upside the head. If I remember rightly, it was a bullet to the buttock. Since you extracted aforementioned projectile from my buttock, I am confident that you are aware of the difference between my head and my ass.”
Rather than appear impressed by his grasp of humor, Jay rolled her eyes. “A personal visit would have saved us both a lot of hassles.”
“If I had shown up unannounced at your home, what would you have done? In addition, I would have risked bringing you to the attention of those very same men who have caused me no little inconvenience thus far.”
“Excellent points. But please Sixer—” she heaved a sigh and dragged her hands through her hair “—next time will you simply jump on an untraceable phone line and talk to me? All this cloak and dagger stuff is doing my head in. Not to mention, I’m extremely unhappy about being away from my boyfriend and my dog.”
Sixer raked his databases for a suitable response and finally settled for, “Very well. I am forced to concede that it would have saved considerable time and energy had I spoken to you directly regarding the matter of the Beta’s whereabouts.”
“And the matter—” she curled the first two fingers of both hands, emphasizing the word “—of Seth Williams, too. A heads up would have been prudent, to say the least. If I hadn’t gotten to him in time, whoever they were would have snatched him, and we’d both be trying our darnedest to retrieve him right now—presuming his captors saw the value in keeping him alive after they got what they wanted from him.”
It took less expenditure of energy to agree with her. “Seth Williams, too.”
Sixer believed he’d injected enough penitence in his tone to mollify her, but she merely rolled her eyes ceiling-ward and sighed again. “Fine. Be like that. And just so’s you know, you’re not getting him back after I’m done with him. He’s mine now.”
“And if he betrays you?” In Sixer’s experience, humans generally chose themselves over others. “He has a sibling. You might wish to find her and—”
“Leave Gabrielle Willams out of this. If Seth betrays me, then I’ll personally deal to him.”
“And if he disables you, and you are unable to ‘deal to him’?”
“I have contingency plans in place in the event of my capture, of course. But if those contingencies fail, feel free to ride to my rescue.” She held his gaze for six-point-two seconds. “And I’ll perform the same service for you if you’re ever captured.”
“Duly noted.” Sixer had a built-in self-destruct mechanism that, thanks to Jay’s intervention, now only he could trigger. He wondered if Jay’s creator had built in a similar mechanism. Or whether the mechanism had been one of Caine’s “improvements”.
He decided to perform a short experiment to test her resolve. How far would she go to protect Caine’s former employee? “What if I seek vengeance for what Seth Williams forced me to do during my programming phase? Would you deny me that?”
“You killed his lab partner. You beat Seth up and scared him witless. I’d say you were even.”
He merely stared at her.
“Get over it. Seth Williams was only following orders.”
“Like your boyfriend’s father was only following orders—” he mimicked the air quotes she’d recently used “—when Evan Caine sent him after you.”
“Exactly.”
He’d intended to provoke her further, needle her into an imprudent response. He’d found provocation an efficient method of gathering in
formation that even cautious humans were reluctant to impart. Instead, Jay’s lips curved upward as her facial muscles composed themselves into an expression that appeared… pleased.
Sixer compared the nuances of her expression to those stored in his databases. The closest match was that of a teacher pleased by a student’s progress, leading him to believe Jay had cast herself in the role of teacher, and him as student.
He considered possible responses. Anger might be construed an overreaction, however irritation at her presumption would not be amiss. Accordingly, he considered flattening his lips, tightening the muscles of his forehead until the dermis pleated, narrowing his eyes, and perhaps punctuating his facial expression with a sharp, audible exhalation through his nose. And then he reconsidered his response in light of one significant fact that he could not deny: When it came to interacting successfully with humans, there was much he could learn from Gamma. Perhaps it behooved him to let it go.
A soft snort that smacked of laughter sliced through his musings. “And the first thing I’d teach you,” she said, “would be that any response at all is better than no response. Perfectly blank expressions tend to give humans the willies.”
“The willies?” he asked to disguise his surprise that she’d so easily discerned his inner thoughts. Her perception both intrigued and concerned him.
“As you are doubtless very well aware, it’s a noun favored by the English to describe feeling uncomfortable, anxious or fearful,” she said. “But a nice attempt at deflection regardless.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And here’s a tip: Do you remember me mentioning that I’m extremely unhappy about my prolonged absence from my boyfriend and my dog?”
“Of course.”
“Then with that in mind, I’d recommend you inform me exactly where I can find the Beta.” She paused, doubtless for effect. “Right now. Before I shoot you again.”
Freaks Under Fire Page 17