Well, shit. Would the drama never end? He wondered whether they were the same guys who’d dug up Jay’s fake hand from the backyard. Seemed logical. At least, he couldn’t think of any other reason they’d be spying on him.
A chill raced through him, raising the fine hairs on his nape. If they’d been watching him, chances were they’d put people on his parents, too. Maybe even Caro. He finished re-taping the wound and dumped the first aid detritus in the trash bin. “I have to let Jay know what went down.”
“Tell her I’ll join her in a few minutes,” Marg said, adjusting her clothing and rolling her shoulders. “I can provide descriptions that might help her identify them, but first I have to check on Bea. I had my hands full with you and Brum this morning, so I didn’t stop by to see her. And if, as I suspect happened, Jay grabbed Sam when he went in with Bea’s breakfast, Bea will need reassurance that Sam’s okay.”
Tyler gulped, torn. He wanted to be with Jay, wanted nothing more than to dog her heels like Brum, and not let her out of his sight again. He needed to sit down with her and brainstorm where to go from here—come up with a plan to keep everyone he loved safe. But Bea was the reason this whole mess with Marg had happened in the first place. She was Jay’s sister, her twin, created from the same genetic material that had spawned the girl Tyler loved. Bea was family, too. And he couldn’t bear the thought of her lying there, helpless, wondering—if she was capable of wondering—what had happened to someone she cared about.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Everything else can wait until we know Bea’s okay.”
Marg smiled at him, her usually cold gray eyes silvering with genuine warmth. “You’re a good kid, Tyler.” Quick as a flash, she grabbed him round the neck and gently scrubbed her fist over his skull, mussing his hair.
It was an affectionate, sisterly gesture, and so Tyler ducked from her grip and responded in a brotherly fashion. “Touch the hair again and I’ll shave off your eyebrows while you’re sleeping.”
His retort provoked a snort. “Try it and I’ll tie you up and slather you in meat sauce,” she countered, “and leave you for Brum to use as a chew toy.”
Genuine laughter burst from him. “You win. Let’s go check on Bea before Jay comes looking for me.”
He trailed Marg through the house, and hovered in the doorway when she entered the bedroom. Somehow, it didn’t seem right to barge into Bea’s room uninvited.
Marg clicked her fingers. “Come on in, Tyler.”
He watched Marg approach the bed, and perch on the edge of the mattress. Her gaze was fixed on Bea’s face. And her expression, when she reached over to brush a lock of Bea’s hair back from her forehead, was difficult to define. Could an expression be both soft and hard at the same time? Soft with something akin to the love a parent had for their child, yet hard with something that smacked of resolve—like Marg had made a personal vow that whatever was defective in Bea would be fixed, and she wasn’t going to settle for anything less.
“Bea,” Marg said, never taking her gaze from the girl’s face. “This is Tyler.”
He sidled sideways where Bea could see him better. Except, there was no way Bea was capable of seeing anything right now, because there was nobody home behind that vacant stare that was currently fixed on some point on the ceiling.
God. He suppressed the urge to shudder. She looked so much like a younger version of Jay that it was like being catapulted into some nightmarish place where it was Jay lying there in that bed—a Jay who had been irreversibly damaged, and was incapable of movement, speech or thought. And it was all he could do to fix a weak smile on his face and muster the wherewithal to say, “Hi, Bea. Nice to meet you.”
“You might have met Tyler’s girlfriend this morning,” Marg was saying, “when Sam brought you breakfast? Well, her name is Jay. And she was probably a bit angry about something I did, so she might have taken some of her anger out on Sam. But that’s all sorted now, and Sam’s gonna be just fine, so there’s nothing for you to worry about, okay?”
Tyler averted his gaze from Bea’s too-still, perfect face and spotted something propped on the dresser. A note.
Grateful for the distraction, he leaned over to grab it and handed it to Marg.
“What’s this?” Marg unfolded the note and scanned the contents. “Oh,” she said, and ducked her head, hiding her expression as she offered the note to Tyler.
To Whom It May Concern, he read.
Regrettably, Bea’s breakfast was interrupted. However, please rest assured that I have explained the necessity for the interruption to Bea, and fed her breakfast. Whatever animosity I harbor toward those responsible for the abduction of my boyfriend and my puppy, will not affect Bea. My intentions, from the moment I learned of her existence, have always been to help her in any way I can.
Yours,
Jay Smith.
Wordlessly, Tyler handed the note back to Marg. “I have to go,” he mumbled. “I can’t stay. Seeing her like this…. It’s too hard. I’m sorry.”
Marg’s smile was so wistful he couldn’t bear to look at her, either. “No need to apologize, Tyler,” she said. And as he fled the room he heard her say, “It breaks my heart, too. Every day it breaks my heart.”
~*~
“Let me get this straight.” Sam gripped the arms of the chair so tightly his knuckles whitened. “You want to perform an experimental procedure—one that’s only ever been performed on mice—on Bea?”
Jay nodded. “That is correct.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Convince me why the fuck we should let you turn Bea into a lab-rat.”
“There’s no need to be rude, Sam,” Sally interjected, her tone gently chiding. “I’m sure we all have Bea’s best interests at heart.”
Sam erupted from his chair and stalked over to the window. His hands clenched and, noting they’d drawn Jay’s attention, he thrust them into the pockets of his jeans. “She doesn’t give a shit about what’s best for Bea,” he said, lip curling as he met and held Jay’s gaze. “All she wants a fully functioning cyborg she can lord it over—a slave.”
“Sam, that’s enough.” Marg’s voice cracked out like a whip.
“It’s fine, Marg.” Jay raised her brows at Sam. “He’s afraid. And when he’s finished railing at me like a scared little boy, I’ll be happy to explain why I believe this procedure is Bea’s best chance at regaining full mobility.”
“So you claim to be a mind-reader, too, huh?” Sam barked a sarcastic laugh. “Is there no end to your talents? Go on then. Tell me why I’m afraid.”
Tyler, who’d seemed more interested in guzzling his daily caffeine fix than being an active participant in this meeting, spoke up. “Because once Bea doesn’t need you any more, she’ll up and leave you. Because she’s a Beta unit, and may not be advanced as Jay, so once she’s fully functional, she might not have the ability to feel like Jay does. Because you might end up loving a cyborg who can’t ever love you back, which would majorly suck.” He paused for a short moment. “Yeah. That about covers it.” He drained the contents of his mug and then set it aside. And then, into the stunned silence he added, “Man up and grow a pair, dude. No way you should let your personal fear get in the way of Bea’s chance to live a decent life.”
Sam wilted into the nearest chair, all the fight draining from him. “Shit. You’re right.”
“Now that’s settled, I’d like to hear about this experimental procedure.” Sally glanced around the room, chin tilted in challenge, daring anyone to disagree. “Good.” Her customary gentle smile curved her lips. “Any time you’re ready, dear,” she said to Jay.
Jay nodded her assent. “Simply put, movement occurs when the brain transmits signals along specialized nerve cells called motor neurons. It might help to think of them as electrical nerve impulses, which travel down the spinal cord, and then along what’s known as peripheral nerves, to each specific muscle. Paralysis is frequently a symptom of some kind of trauma that has affected the brain, spinal cord, or peripheral
nerves.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Sam muttered.
“Sam.” Marg’s mild tone still managed to convey a threat to behave or risk her displeasure. To Jay she said, “So you think Bea’s paralyzed because her brain’s been injured?”
“I scanned her and detected no such injury. However, I believe that some past trauma interrupted her core programming, and caused her to shut down as a protective measure. And by the time she regained conscious awareness, her programming had effectively ‘forgotten’ how to perform certain basic functions. I believe it’s a relatively simple matter of performing those functions for Bea until her core programming relearns them, and can instruct her brain to take over.”
Jay waited for Sam to shoot down her theory, but he appeared to have put aside his misdirected anger for the moment. “Sounds feasible,” he said. “Except I’ve spent months repetitively moving her limbs to exercise her muscles. Surely that would have retrained her brain?”
“Not if her brain’s caught in a loop, reliving and analyzing the initial trauma that caused her to shut down,” Jay said.
Marg’s gasp drew everyone’s focus. Her complexion had leached of color, and she had wrapped her arms about her middle—such an obviously un-Marg-like gesture that it was glaringly obvious she was greatly affected by something.
“Please, Marg,” Jay said. “We can’t afford secrets when it comes to Bea’s wellbeing.”
“I recall overhearing a couple of Caine’s techs discussing their current project, but I….” Marg squeezed her eyes shut. “God. It was over a decade ago, and I didn’t make the connection until now.”
She sounded so agonized Jay gave her a moment to compose herself.
“They disassembled her,” Marg whispered. “While she was conscious. To find out how she was constructed, how she worked, whether she felt pain. Then they put her back together. And they did it over and over.”
Aside from a barely audible, completely devastated “Fuck” from Sam, no one could meet anyone else’s gaze. And no one had anything to add for a very long time.
Finally, Jay cleared her throat. And hoped they would not think her callous for getting back to the topic at hand. Succumbing to the horror of Bea’s past wouldn’t help her now, and now was what mattered. “I could force a system-wide shut down and hope it resets her core programming, but there’s an unacceptably high risk that she would see it as an attack, and because she can no longer defend herself, self-terminate.”
She paused, but when no one had anything to say she said, “Does anyone have any objections to me explaining the procedure I am proposing in depth?”
Sally’s normally light expression was somber, her eyes haunted with sadness as she put her arm around Marg and squeezed her shoulders. “Go ahead, dear,” she murmured to Jay. “We’re all ears.”
“Thank you. I’ll try to keep this simple, but please interrupt if there’s anything you don’t understand. The first step involves modifying stem cells to produce a light-responsive protein. These cells are programmed to grow into nerve cells, which are then implanted onto the sciatic nerve, and the transplanted, light-sensitive motor neurons grow down the nerve, integrating with existing cells. When these motor neurons are exposed to a blue light-source, they react. And using targeted wavelengths of light—by means of optical cuffs—these motor neurons can be turned on or off, precisely and selectively.”
“I’ve heard of electrical cuffs being used on paraplegics,” Sam said. “But I didn’t think the results were that encouraging.”
“You are correct in that the results are short-lived, with the subjects only able to walk for a few minutes before the muscles are exhausted by the electrical stimulation. Optical cuffs, however, are lined with minute light emitting diodes, or LEDs, and are far more efficient. The cuffs stimulate muscle fibers and provoke muscle contractions in a way that more accurately replicates the natural process occurring in fully mobile subjects. According to research papers I’ve accessed, they allow slow-twitch-activating nerves to be fired first.”
Sam leaned forward, intrigued despite his earlier antagonism. “How are these optical cuffs activated?”
“A computer algorithm administers controlled bursts of blue light that stimulate muscle fibers, thereby provoking muscle contractions. The technique is only experimental for now, because a safe way to introduce protein-encoding genes into human subjects has yet to be agreed upon. But—”
“Bea isn’t human,” Sam said.
“Yes. Therefore, the emotive-driven issues around ‘safety’ no longer apply. I propose expanding the original experimental procedure to encompass not only the sciatic nerves, but nerves across all major muscle groups contributing to Bea’s locomotive system.”
Sam’s eyes widened as he processed Jay’s statement. “You gotta be kidding me.”
“I wouldn’t kid you about something this important, Sam. As I touched on before, I believe that Bea’s core programming will allow her brain and body to “learn” from the stimulation directed by the computer algorithms, and eventually develop the means to take over the process, thus rendering the algorithms obsolete. There is also reason to presume that as she can swallow food placed in her mouth, and utter a limited range of sounds, the paralysis of her vocal cords is incomplete. By that, I mean whatever damage occurred to ‘interrupt’ the nerve impulses in the larynx could be minor, and therefore fixable.”
“You think she’ll be able to walk and talk.” Marg’s voice was steady but her hand clutched at Sally’s, and she was visibly struggling to control her emotions.
“That is my belief, yes.”
“What about this ‘loop’ she’s caught in?” Sally asked.
“She has moments of lucidity, which suggests she is fighting to break free. And I believe that while this procedure is being performed, Bea’s programming will divert energy into analyzing the foreign bodies being introduced to her body, and determining whether they are beneficial or harmful. It is my hope that the extra processing load on her brain will assist her to break free of the mental loop.” Of course it was a great deal more complex than that but Jay didn’t believe those present would appreciate her taking a hour or two more to explain.
“If that doesn’t work, there are other options open to us.” Options that she would rather not go into right now for fear they would be perceived as cruel. This might not be the best time to explain that, after so many years of kind treatment, inflicting physical trauma on Bea and forcing her body to divert resources to heal it, might also snap her out of the mental loop that had ensnared her.
“Are you sure you can do this, Jay?” Sam asked.
Tyler abruptly lost patience with the older man. “She wouldn’t be offering to perform the fricking procedure if she wasn’t sure she could do it.”
Jay caught and held his gaze, silently requesting him to take it easy on Sam.
Sorry, he mouthed, and she rewarded him with a tiny smile. “Yes,” she said for Sam’s benefit. “I’m sure.”
“And it’s Bea’s best chance at regaining some quality of life?” Marg asked.
“I believe so.”
Marg sucked in a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. “Then what have we got to lose?”
“What have we got to lose?” Sam loosed a harsh laugh that shrouded the room like some doom-filled spirit. “How about Bea? Because if this doesn’t work and she retreats any further into herself, there’ll be no bringing her back.”
Before calling this meeting, Jay had sat with Bea and explained the procedure at length, and in even greater detail. She had of course noted the random blinks Sam believed were Bea’s attempts to communicate, but despite careful questioning to elicit simple yes or no answers, there had been no blink-pattern that Jay could discern. All she could hope for was that at some level Bea understood what Jay planned to attempt. All she could do was put herself in Bea’s place. Which was why she looked Sam straight in the eye and spoke from her heart. “If our situations were rev
ersed, if I was in Bea’s place and had some way of communicating my wishes, the call would be simple: Do it, because continuing on like this—trapped in a useless physical shell for God only knows how many more decades—is the cyborg equivalent of hell.”
To that, Sam had no answer.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Sally said.
“No need,” Marg said, her gaze intent on Sam.
“Marg’s right,” Sam finally said. “There’s no need to vote. Jay can perform the procedure.”
Chapter Thirteen
Amazing what could be purchased online or via phone if one had unlimited cash at one’s disposal. In the weeks since Tyler and Jay had left Bea, Jay had gathered everything she could conceivably require, picked Seth’s brains until he complained she’d sucked every last original thought from his head, and planned everything down to the last possible detail. The next few hours would show whether all that planning had proven fruitful.
She shook off her doubts and lectured herself not to feel. Right now, she needed to be the perfect cyborg. Detached. Focused. Prepared to do whatever proved necessary to get the job done. But oh, it was hard—so much harder than she had predicted it would be.
When Jay had first learned of Bea’s existence, Bea had been “Beta”. The subject of a photo. A thing, and therefore easy to compartmentalize. Intellectually, Jay had accepted the Beta unit as her genetic twin but there had been no emotional attachment, no feelings involved save for a desire to track the Beta down—which, to be brutally honest, was more aligned with discovering a missing piece of Jay’s own past. But once Jay had laid eyes on her predecessor, everything had changed. “Beta” had instantly become “Bea”, an entity in her own right. And Bea was Jay’s sister—a sister who needed help….
The kind of help only a cyborg with a myriad resources and practically unlimited funds could provide.
Jay centered herself with a deep exhalation. “Are you ready, Seth?”
He nodded, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “As I’ll ever be.”
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