The light stomping on soft carpeting took me back to reality. It was a MED ready to dispense a dose of painkillers that I’d refused to take. I was still sore from giving birth, but that was a pain I could bear. I gave it a scowl and plopped down on the couch. This particular MED was not gender specific, but it wore the colors of GenH1, blue and maroon.
“Tell me, MED. What are your specific duties in regards to me?”
“I am to track your medication intake. Dispense medication at the designated times. Meter your level of pain. Offer physical and medical aide. Alert the appropriate authorities if you need assistance.”
I walked to the far wall and stood close enough to activate the closet door. It slid open. “Stand in here, MED. I’m going to take a nap. If I need you, I’ll call for you.”
It walked straight into the closet without question, and the constant expression on its rubbery face didn’t change.
Within minutes, I heard the closet door slide open. MED walked down the hall and stopped at my doorway. “Cassie, it is time for your medication.”
“MED, I’m not in that much pain. I don’t need it. You can go back to the closet,” I said, throwing a blanket over my shoulders.
Again, the bot did not move.
“Go back to the closet,” I shouted, jumping from my bed, giving the bot a hard kick, and upsetting one of the dispensers. The dispenser hit the floor and shattered, littering the carpet with an explosion of little white pills. “I hate you, you stupid bot.” Two more kicks sent the bot in a tumble. Straddling the bot with my legs, I gave its rubber face two blows with my fists before wrapping my fingers around its neck and rapping the back of its head against the floor until its wig shook free. I abhorred what it represented, the future—this future.
“I hate you. I hate all of you. I hate this world. I want my world. I want my mom. I want my old life back,” I screamed, scooping out one of the bot’s eyes with my fingers. It popped out easily. I threw it as hard as I could, producing a marble-sized impression in the far wall.
By the time Michael and a security team arrived, the bot was the epitome of naked with its clothes and rubber flesh stripped from its body, exposing an array of mechanics and flashing lights.
“Be gentle with her,” Michael shouted to a guard as one of them ripped me from the bot. “Let her go.”
“I-I don’t know what to say,” I said, dropping to my knees. “I…”
“It’s okay.” He turned to the guards. “You can go now. She’ll be fine. I’ll take care of the situation from here. Her unexplained violence is a reaction to one of her medications. I’ve seen this happen several times before.”
The security team left without questioning his diagnosis or authority.
My cracked fists bled and two of my knuckles turned blue. “I guess their faces are harder than they look,” I cried through a smile.
“Let’s go in the bathroom so I can wash and bandage your hands.” In the bathroom, he produced his L-Band inhibitor from a pocket and wedged it in place. “Just in case,” he said as I did the same with my mine. “Now tell me what happened?”
“I just lost it. That stupid bot wouldn’t listen to me. I told it to stand in the closet in the living room, and it wouldn’t do it. I think it’s a spy.”
“All I can say is it’s a good thing that bot was a MED and not a SEC. SEC bots are programmed to protect themselves, even it means injuring a human. The only thing that MED could do was send out a distress signal.”
Michael lifted me and sat me on the bathroom counter, then wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed the side of his face against my breasts. My heartbeat slowed almost immediately.
“You’re a lot stronger than you look. You sure did a number on that thing.” His laugh made me smile. “What did you do? Pretend that thing was Simon?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I joked back. “But honestly, I’m just emotionally beyond what I can normally handle right now. What will Dr. Little do to me for this?”
“He won’t do anything. MED bots are nothing special, and besides, it did give me a good excuse to come see you,” he said, giving me a squeeze.
“Were you able to find out anything about Victoria?” I asked as he held my fists under the running faucet and then dried them with a towel.
“Yeah, with Magnum’s help, I was able to locate her. It’s not going to be easy, but we should be able to get her out of here.”
“And go where—you still haven’t told me.” From the cabinet behind me, I produced a can of bandage foam. Michael gave my knuckles a thin spray, the white foam sealing each cut before changing color to match my skin.
“Region Three, Sector Nine will be our first stop. Travel’s brother lives there. It’s considered a low-security territory. The population is small, and is still quite isolated from the other sectors. From there, we’ll fly to Sector Ten, where they will be less likely to look for us, and with Magnum’s help, our communications and movements will be untraceable.”
“And from there?”
“From there we go to our final destination.” He licked his lips. “But I can’t tell you the name of it—not yet. It’s for your own protection. You can’t know about this special place until we’re almost there, and Magnum, well, he can never know about it.”
“Why?”
“In case they augment his brain or yours and find out about our final destination.”
My head spun. “But what makes this place any different from Sector Ten?”
“It offers us one thing the regions can’t: freedom.”
Freedom? I didn’t think that was possible in this world.
“Are you sure that will work?”
“I’m sure,” said Michael with a reassuring smile. “Besides, if we do get caught, you’ll be detained, but that’s all. They won’t do anything to you that could be detrimental to your physical well-being.”
“But what about you? What would they do to you?”
“What they’d do to me doesn’t matter.” He spoke with confidence and control. “Simon will be here soon to escort you to see Travel’s body. Just please, whatever you do, hold your anger toward him. We can’t do anything to let them know that you know the truth. And remember, clones aren’t prone to violence. We’re raised to be passive and peaceful, which equates to compliance. If you were one of us, you would have been arrested and given psychological counseling for the rest of your life for destroying that bot.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t have enough energy left to destroy another bot, let alone Dr. Simon Little. I’ll just have to dream about doing it instead.” We both laughed as he helped me down from the counter.
“Thank you,” I said, giving him a hug. He stroked my hair, and as I closed my eyes, I felt his warm lips against my cheek. Turning my head brought his mouth to mine. It was a delicate, closed mouth kiss, but it awakened my soul all the same, and my suppressed feeling for Michael bubbled back into my heart.
After Michael left, I lay on my bed and flexed my aching muscles. Though still tingly after Michael’s kiss, the adrenaline rush I experienced while mutilating the bot left me weak and my limbs sore. My mind also raced with questions, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Victoria and how much we needed each other.
A ding interrupted those thoughts and quickly replaced them with another. Did I have the mental strength to do what I was supposed to do next?
Dr. Little arrived just when the muscles in my legs stopped shaking. “We can go now,” he said at the door. “A SEC will meet us at the end of the hall. When you return you will find a new MED in your apartment, a model fifty-six, no artificial skin, only metal. Try not to destroy this one.” He winked.
I didn’t wink back. “Don’t worry. I might.”
“Oh, and by the way, I’m not afraid of you, Miss Dannacher.”
“That’s too bad. You should be,” I said. This time I winked.
As we walked toward the morgue, Dr. Little raised his eyebrows and pursed his mouth into a little O that dra
ined all of the color from his lips.
The morgue was colder than any of the other rooms in GenH1, physically and aesthetically. The far wall was stuffed with long tubes that fitted lengthwise into circular compartments in twenty rows of twenty, forming a perfect square that from a distance could pass as modern art. One capsule was out of place, hovering above the floor.
With a wave of Dr. Little’s hand, the top of the floating capsule slid open. Inside lay Travel, his arms at his sides, his eyes closed. His skin was ashen and thick like he had been carved from a block of wax. His brown wavy locks were tucked behind his ears on both sides, but several stray strands spread like fingers above his head.
“He’s still L-Banded,” I said. My bottom lip quivered. My heart ached.
“Yes, the preparation of the deceased does not include the removal of the wearer’s L-Band, therefore, becoming a permanent method of identification above and below the ground.”
So L-Bands continued to live on a wrist without a pulse, making the wearer a permanent prisoner.
Taking Travel’s cold hand, I held it tenderly against my palm and wondered if David Casper lived a full life or, like Travel, died young from an injury or a disease.
Travel told me he had a lot of regrets, and now I couldn’t help but wonder if joining the program became one of them. He was a father, the father of a baby girl named Victoria, and the first father of the thirty-first century. He would never hold her again, kiss her, recognize his features in hers, or watch her grow up, but his DNA was there, embodied in a new life. Twenty-three of his chromosomes had combined with mine to create, not clone, a one-of-a-kind human, something no one had done for over six hundred years.
Travel would live on, not only as a memory, but through the vitality and jubilance of a little girl. This gave me some hope, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but think “what if” and question all of the decisions I made.
I drew in a deep breath, so deep I thought I couldn’t catch it. “I-I’m ready to go.”
As Dr. Little escorted me back to my apartment, there was no conversation between us, only the soft sounds of our shoes on the rubbery floor and a few cracks from my throat when I tried to stop my tears. Anger rose inside me, a deep pool of revenge that was about to overflow.
“Miss Dannacher—” Dr. Little started to say.
Without a word or a glance at him, I stepped inside my apartment and shut the door.
The replacement MED was clunky, looking more like an overgrown toaster than a robot. It asked if I wanted a painkiller. I said “yes.” It asked if I wanted a sedative. I said “yes.” In less than a second, two small tablets, one purple and one orange, slipped from a tube in the bot’s abdomen and fell into my hand. I pretended to lick the pills into my mouth with my tongue but snuck them into the inside pocket of my robe instead. Great. Let them think I’m doped up, too tired, and too emotional to think about an escape. A lactation inhibitor was the only pill I actually swallowed.
There was a knock on my door, no ding, no face on my L-Band, just an old-fashioned rap of knuckles against metal. I slipped Magnum’s device under my L-Band as a precaution, but when I unlocked the door, it only budged an inch before stopping.
“Is your L-Band ‘free?’” asked a whisper.
“Yes.”
“Feed this to your MED,” came the whisper again, followed by a thin coin of black plastic held through the crack in the door by two fingers.
“What? You mean put it in its mouth?”
“Yes, do it now, quickly.” I took the plastic piece and palmed it like a poker chip.
The MED was unsuspecting. “Do you require additional services?” it began. “I can dispense…” And pop, the chip dropped like a coin in a vending machine. The bot’s eyes flashed with lights that turned first green, then blue, then red before a last bright flicker left the bot immobilized and unresponsive—dead.
“Is it done?” said the voice again.
“Yes, it’s deactivated.”
The voice belonged to Magnum, who entered my apartment, followed by Michael.
“This apartment is ‘free’ for now,” said Magnum. “I’ve tricked the system again, but I can’t do it for long periods of time or someone will notice and become suspicious.”
He hugged me first with a hard pull against his chest and a clap of both hands against my back. Michael’s hug was the opposite, soft and snugly, with his nose nuzzling against my hair and shoulder.
“Michael told me about Travel, Cassie. I’m sorry.”
“So am I. He was a great guy.”
Magnum cracked a smile. “But we shouldn’t be too sad. Part of Travel is still alive. We just need to find her. At least he made his mark on this sterile planet before he left it.” His attitude was slightly skewed, believing Baby Victoria was an equivalent substitute for Travel as if she actually embodied his soul.
“Did you get the maps and the files?” I asked Magnum, my heart racing.
“I did.” His cheeks dimpled with a wide cutie-pie smile. He was a true radical, eager to pull something off on the establishment. “Here’re the schematics of the region, and the latest copy of the Van Winkle files, even the classified sections,” he said with pride. He presented a paper-thin monitor, holding it open before rolling it into a one-inch diameter tube and unrolling it again. “This is called E-Paper, which isn’t connected to Liaison One, so it can’t be detected by the system. The information it reads is contained in memory pins.”
The E-Paper lit up with trails of different colors, winding and turning their way across the paper. A tap to an area either reduced or zoomed the image while two taps to a building switched between floors.
“With the data I collected, you’ll know the position of every obscura, and once I block your locators and replace your L-Bands, you’ll be able to travel anywhere in the world without being seen. You have everything you need to leave tonight if you’re ready.”
“Travel but without Travel,” I said. “But I’m more than ready.”
Magnum’s dimples disappeared as his smile retreated. “I know, again, I am so sorry about him.” He shook his head.
“What is it?” I asked.
“One of my crew was just directed to put a locator on every vehicle parked in the employee lot. They aren’t taking any chances with you. They know how resourceful you are.”
“Then we’ll have to remove it from my car,” Michael said. “I want to avoid the use of public transportation as much as possible.”
“No problem. I can disable the locator.”
“Can you do it in time for us to leave today?” Magnum gave me a nod. “Good. I think we need to get out of here as soon as possible,” I announced, rolling up the E-Paper and shoving it up my sleeve. He handed me two memory pins, and I carefully wove them in and out of my cuff for safekeeping.
“Ella, Dr. Love, and the two of you have also been placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance,” he said.
“Me?” Michael asked. “Those sons of a—”
“I guess you’re not a very good actor, Dr. Bennett.” Magnum laughed and gave him a pat on the back.
“Apparently not as good as you, Magnum.”
“So far, none of the hover terminals have been upgraded to maximum security. That probably won’t happen until they realize you two are gone, but when it does, it’ll happen quickly. People with babies will be detained and their L-Bands checked.”
“So we’ll take turns holding Victoria,” I said to Michael. “One of us will walk far enough behind the other to make it look like we’re not together.”
“That won’t matter,” said Magnum. “They’ll check anyone with a baby. Unfortunately, your baby will stick out like a sore thumb. It’s going to make getting to Sector Nine incredibly difficult.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I said confidently.
Michael sucked in his bottom lip. “If we’re asked to raise our wrists for a band reading, we’ll have to do it, or that will be a sure sign of our gui
lt. And besides, we’d never be able to outrun a SEC.”
“Then we’ll just avoid every SEC we see.”
Michael sighed. “That may not be possible. A SEC could be stationed at every hoverbus depot, checking passengers with babies as the passengers board.”
“Then we’ll have to come up with a way to hide her, and—”
“Or, you can”—Magnum put his hands on his hips—“you can leave her with me.”
“What?” I asked, spinning on my heels to face him directly.
“Just until you reach Region Three. My L-Band is legit and I have access to infant bands. I’ll fit her with a modified L-Band and then bring her to you. Until then, my house is perfect. I tricked my obscuras over a year ago.” He laughed. “No one would even know she was there.”
“Magnum.” I gasped. “You don’t know how to take care of a newborn, and besides, you have to work.”
“I wouldn’t be the one taking care of her, my mom would. She retired last year. I’d have her move into my house while Victoria’s there.”
“Would your mom really do that for us?” asked Michael.
“Of course she would.”
“Wait!” I interjected. “Why are we even talking about this? The answer is no. There’s no way I’d leave my baby behind or even think about putting your mother at risk. Enough people already have their necks out for me. I’m not going to add one more.”
“Cassie, think about it,” said Michael. “She would be perfectly safe with Magnum’s mom. No one would suspect a thing, and it would give us a chance to get away from here without the added threat of being caught. Even if we could hide her, what would happen if she started to cry?”
“Michael’s right. If the baby’s with you, your chance of getting caught more than triples.”
I shook my head and crossed my arms.
“It would only be for a few days, Cassie, and then I promise I’ll bring her back to you once you reach Sector Nine.”
I trusted him, but could I trust his mother? Victoria was my responsibility. I couldn’t pawn her off on someone else, and what if Magnum was caught on the way to Region Three?
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