Everything seemed to happen like some kind of bad stop-motion animation, but I knew only seconds passed. One moment the Mechanical stood frozen with indecision, the next it was beside me, grabbing me, fingers closing around my neck in a vice like grip.
“Come any closer and I kill her.” His voice was deep, but the words oddly precise and clipped.
“Ellie!” Debs stepped in from the side, but the musician yanked her backwards. She struggled, trying to get to me, but he pulled her back into the crowd. Even her voice was soon swallowed up by the noise of the crowd.
The bouncers and a few others stopped ten feet away from us. They looked uncertain. They wanted to destroy the Mechanical, that much was obvious, but were they willing to let me die in the process? I wasn’t actually sure. Anywhere else I would have known the answer, but these didn’t look like the kind of men to let one silly girl’s life get in the way of their fun.
“Take another step and I shall rip her throat out. Let me leave and no one shall come to any harm.”
I wanted to throw up. The way it spoke about ripping my throat out – so calm, so unemotional. Stating a fact as much as threatening to kill someone. His fingers tightened around my throat as two of the men stepped forward, not enough to cut off my air supply, but enough to make them pause.
He – it – took a step backwards, and then another as the men kept their distance. The threat wasn’t going to hold for long, though. These were the kind of men who had taken great pleasure in destroying Mechanicals since their fatal flaw had come to light. They claimed it was their civic duty, but I was pretty convinced it was just the thrill of destroying something that could fight back. A step up from mindless vandalism.
Dragging me along, seemingly completely unencumbered by my weight, the Mechanical started to move faster towards the exit. Then, still holding me tight in one arm, it turned and ran.
I stumbled along beside it, unable to escape the vice-like grip it had on my upper arm, until it realised how much I was slowing it down. I expected it to just throw me aside, but instead it scooped me up, throwing me over one shoulder as we plunged into the dark tunnels beneath the stands.
“Let me go. You don’t need me anymore,” I shouted, pounding my fists on its back as he raced down the corridors. It was pitch black beneath the stands, but I knew his eyes could see perfectly well in the dark. His footing was sure and unfaltering.
It barely seemed to feel my hammering blows, keeping one arm locked around my upper thighs as he ran. I lost all sense of direction in the dark, but then light began to filter in.
We reached an old exit, boarded up years before. The Mechanical hesitated for a moment. It didn’t have to listen long to hear the sounds of pursuit. They weren’t as far behind us as I expected them to be. And then I realised why. They’d doused rags in alcohol and wrapped them around metal poles, turning them into burning torches. Even in my panicked state I couldn’t help thinking they should have been carrying pitchforks as well. That really would have completed the mob picture.
The Mechanical cast one look over his shoulder at them as they rounded the corner and then turned back to the boarded up exit. A few swift kicks splintered the wood and he shouldered his way through. A sharp edge ripped into my shoulder and I bit back a yell as hot blood began to seep down my arm.
The Mechanical ran out into the night, still carrying me over his shoulder as though I was a useless sack of potatoes. I’d given up fighting. He didn’t even seem to feel my blows, and he was strong enough he could completely ignore my struggling.
Somehow we reached the edge of town. We’d been moving at pace, but I hadn’t realised just how fast. Surely he’d leave me now? The forest beckoned. He could lose himself in the trees. The mob wouldn’t be able to follow him for long if he left the city behind. The speed at which he moved had left them a few streets behind us, but they were still coming.
He hesitated, head swivelling as he tried to decide. I knew then in a moment of pure clarity that what drove the Mechanicals wasn’t some fatal flaw in their programming. It was sentience. They had grown self-aware. A step beyond even artificial intelligence. He wasn’t just reacting to a set of stimuli or a programming compulsion. He was making decisions. It was then that I stopped even trying to keep using the ‘it’ pronoun’. The machine carrying me was definitely a he. And it also meant he was capable of reason. Surely.
“Put me down. Leave me here,” I begged him as he wrestled with his indecision. “I won’t tell them which way you went. I want you to escape. I tried to help in the stadium, didn’t I?”
He grunted, noncommittal, but his arm loosened around my legs. I felt him start to crouch, ready to drop me, and then his body stiffened. Seconds later I heard the same thing he did. Sirens and the screeching of tyres.
“I’m sorry,” he told me, straightening up. “Your life is worth more to them than mine is. Without you, they will kill me in an instant.”
Kill. For some reason that word send a shiver through me. It was murder. I couldn’t deny that. Not now. They wouldn’t be destroying a machine, they would be killing something that could think for itself. Could reason. Had self-awareness. He may have been made in a lab, but he was more than a machine now.
“Then run,” I told him. “Just – just try not to drop me.”
He turned his head to look back at me over his shoulder, and for a moment our eyes met. The strange glittering of his irises was amplified by the glow of the street lights around us, but for a moment I could have sworn there was a look of gratitude in those expressionless eyes.
He nodded abruptly and leapt into a run, heading straight for the forest. We were nearly there when police cars and army trucks came skidding into view. Floodlights hit us as we reached the tree line, and he turned to face them. The light flashed on dozens of gun muzzles but no one dared fire. There was no way they could take him down without killing me as well.
Then the moment was broken. A dangerous Mechanical was worth more than one silly little girl’s life. As if in slow motion I saw guns being cocked, hands being raised to give the signal.
Then a voice rang out across the street.
“Don’t! Stop. Don’t shoot. That’s my daughter!”
The confusion that followed was enough of a distraction, and we plunged into the trees with only one thought echoing in my mind.
What the hell was my dad doing there?
I don’t know how long, or how far he ran. He didn’t tire. Each step was as effortless as the last. Finally he began to slow, dropping to a jog and then a walk. Then he stopped, head cocked like a dog, listening for pursuit.
There wasn’t any. We’d left it far behind.
Slowly, almost gently, he lowered me back to the ground. He’d carried me for so long that my legs had fallen asleep. They almost buckled under me, and he grabbed my upper arms to keep me from falling.
As I regained my balance he pulled away one hand. It glistened wetly in the faint moonlight. He regarded it with a kind of polite disinterest.
“You’re bleeding.”
I glanced down at my shoulder, almost surprised. But the flood of adrenaline was wearing off and pain started creeping back in. The cut wasn’t all that deep, but it was a jagged gash that had bled copiously, staining almost the entire sleeve of my top.
Blood glistened on the Mechanical’s hand as he flexed his fingers, looking at them with a strange detachment. I wondered if he was capable of bleeding, and if he did what colour his blood was. I assumed it would be more a case of losing lubricating fluid than actually bleeding. But could they feel pain? No, of course not. Even self-awareness didn’t give them nerve endings.
His shook off his fascination and led me over to a fallen log.
“Sit.”
It wasn’t an order, and not quite a request. The flat nature of the way he spoke turned almost everything he said into a statement. But I sat anyway. The sight and smell of my own blood was making me woozy.
Once I was down he crouched in
front of me and ripped away the blood-soaked fabric of my sleeve. Bile bubbled up my throat. The cut wasn’t that bad, but the jagged edges made my stomach heave. I’d never been good at blood, especially my own.
“Please try not to vomit on me,” he said in that flat tone of his.
A slight edge of hysteria bubbled up and I found myself giggling. He didn’t look at me, but as he ripped the bottom of his shirt off and used it to dab away the worst of the blood his lips quirked upwards.
Was that a smile? I shook away that flight of fancy. Mechanical’s didn’t smile. They didn’t have a sense of humour. Sentience was enough of a leap.
I watched him curiously as he cleaned my wound and carefully bound it with another strip of material from his shirt. He was one of the most life-like Mechanical’s I’d ever seen. He must have been a very new model. There were none of the usual tell-tale signs. His skin, rather than rubbery and white, was warm and lightly tanned. He looked about eighteen, maybe a little older, but much of that came from his height and the broadness of his shoulders. He was solidly muscled, but not bulky. He could have been the captain of the rugby team at my school and no one would have batted an eye. Except for his eyes. There, for some reason, they hadn’t gone to the same extent to mask his inhumanity. The flickering electricity in the circuit boards in his eyes made them glitter like gold, but the actual irises behind the circuits were a deep, deep green.
They were beautiful.
I gave myself a mental slap, forcing away that strange train of though. He was watching me, those strange, glittering eyes narrowed as if in thought.
“What will you do now?” He asked quietly.
For a moment I was confused, the question seemed to come out of nowhere, but then I realised what he was asking.
“I don’t know. How far are we from town?”
He glanced over his shoulder into the darkness, but I guessed the programming in his silicone brain was using GPS to track our location.
“About forty miles.”
I gulped. I hadn’t even realised the forest in those parts stretched so far. “I can’t – I can’t go back on my own. I’d never make it.” Even now I was becoming increasingly aware of the dark forest around us, full of strange rustlings and animal noises. I’d heard rumours that there were packs of wild dogs in the forest, turned feral when people stopped having the time or money to care for family pets. They’d kill a human, people said, if they got hungry enough.
The Mechanical looked completely unaware of my sudden fear. He stared off into the darkened forest in the direction of the town. “It will take you a few days at least. You humans don’t move very fast.”
“You’re not listening to me,” I snapped, my fear shortening my temper. “I can’t walk back through the forest alone. I’ll die out there. I’ve no food, no water.”
He looked back down at me, his eyes even brighter than normal with only the moonlight filtering down through the trees. “There are rabbits and such.”
Did he expect me to hunt? With what? My bare hands?
The knot of fear in my belly tightened further. He was really going to leave me there. Alone in the dark. “I helped you,” I said in a small voice.
He blinked, looking as close to startled as I’d ever seen a Mechanical look. “You did.” He paused, clearly thinking. “I cannot take you back to town. They will be looking for me, hunting me. I may owe you for helping me escape, but not enough to give my life.”
He was so cold, so clinical. Like it was just a question of numbers and percentages. My likelihood of surviving the forest vs the likelihood of him being destroyed on sight. And when I looked at it like that he had a point. I might survive the forest, but if he went back to the town his existence would be over. If the authorities didn’t get to him, the mobs certainly would. News like him would get around quickly. There would be a lot of questions being asked. Questions like why Genesis was producing such lifelike Mechs.
“Where are you going to go?” I asked finally.
He hesitated, almost like he was trying to decide whether to trust me. “Another town. Another place,” he said noncommittedly, clearly deciding against it.
“Nowhere is safe for Mechanicals.” I peered up into his beautifully inhuman face. “You will be hunted wherever you go.”
“I know.”
Was that sadness in his voice? Coming from a machine that shouldn’t be able to feel anything? How self-aware had he become?
“Take me with you then,” I said. “I’ll go with you until the next town we come to. You can leave me there. I can get word to my family and they will come and collect me.”
My own bravery shocked me. So far everything I’d done had been on pure instinct. Split second decisions in the heat of the moment. But now I was asking to travel with a Mechanical? A machine capable, and no doubt willing, to kill me in a heartbeat. Sentience or programming flaw, it didn’t matter. They were just as capable of killing.
But so is any human, a small voice whispered in the back of my mind. Are you afraid of every human you meet?
The Mechanical watched me carefully. He seemed as surprised by my suggestion as I was. Finally he nodded. “It might be the best option. For the time being.” He glanced around us. “We should rest for the night. I can build a fire.”
Without even waiting for my approval or agreement he moved a little deeper into the trees, pushing through a particularly dense area of undergrowth. I followed him and emerged into a small clearing where the trees grew closely together around the edges, creating a natural windbreak.
He already had an armful of dry wood that he dumped into the centre of the clearing before scraping around for smaller pieces of kindling.
I hunkered down across from him, watching as he went to work. He was like a boy scout, creating fire with just a couple of pieces of wood and some dry leaves, something I had always assumed was only possible in the movies.
“Do you have a name?” I asked suddenly.
His head shot up, eyes seeking mine. With the glow of the fire it was almost impossible to see the expression on his face, if he wore any at all. “Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “If we are going to be travelling together I can’t very well just keep calling you ‘mechanical’.”
He seemed to consider that for a moment and then nodded. “I agree.”
“So what is it then? Your name? Do you have one? Or a – a designation?”
“A designation, yes. DA3731.”
“Just rolls of the tongue,” I said, my voice heavy with sarcasm, before I realised he probably didn’t even know what that was.
But something in his eyes suggested that he did. “My former – owner – said something similar. He called me Daniel.”
I rolled that around on my tongue for a minute. “Daniel.” Strangely, it seemed to suit him. “Danny. Dan.”
“Just Daniel is sufficient,” he corrected me quickly. “I suppose you have a name?”
“My mother had to call me something.” Once again I regretted my flippant reply as soon as I made it. “I mean, yes. Elizabeth. But everyone calls me Ellie.”
“Ellie.” For some reason my name on his lips did a funny thing to my insides. He said it so carefully, so precisely. As though he had never had the occasion to call anyone by their name before. Perhaps he hadn’t. The thought made me sad, so I pushed it away.
He nodded, apparently satisfied. “Very well, Ellie. I assume that you are hungry.”
The assumption was right. As soon as he said it I couldn’t help but be aware of the way my stomach was grumbling. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it had to be close to midnight by then.
“You have food with you?”
He cocked his head, listening for a moment. “No. But the forest is full of things to eat. Wait. Don’t leave the firelight. I will be back.”
The fire suddenly seemed far smaller and colder as Daniel’s footsteps retreated into the forest. The trees felt closer, darker. I shivered and scooted closer to
the flames, pulling my knees up to my chin and hugging them.
Was Daniel going to come back? He’d said he would take me with him to the next town, but there was nothing to hold him to his word. Honour amongst Mechanicals wasn’t something I imagined existed. Could a machine, even a self-aware one, have honour? Be trusted?
I found myself picturing him racing off into the darkness, the girl who’d helped save his life already long forgotten.
As the minutes ticked by the feeling that he’d abandoned me grew stronger. Growing, it seemed, in direct relation to the slowly dying fire.
“You should put another piece of wood on it. Before it goes out.”
I jumped as Daniel stepped silently into the clearing, something furry dangling from one hand.
“I thought – I thought maybe you’d changed your mind. That you’d left.”
He cocked his head at me as he hunkered down on the other side of the fire. “So your answer to that was to allow yourself to freeze to death?”
I didn’t have an answer. He watched me for a moment then with a tiny shake of his head placed another chunk of wood on the fire and turned his attention to the furry thing in his hand.
I watched him with helpless fascination. He moved with all the precision of the Mechanicals. Each movement purposeful, no additional energy expended where it wasn’t needed. No fidgeting, no restless activity. Yet there was something graceful about the way he moved, like some kind of perfectly choreographed dance.
He felt my eyes on him, turning his head to meet my gaze. I blushed, and forced my attention back to the fire. He continued to watch me and finally I lifted my eyes to meet his again.
“Something is wrong?”
Once again, it was a question, even though he made it sound like a statement.
In the flickering light of the fire it was almost impossible to see his eyes, to see the strange pattern that marked him as one of the Mechanicals. He looked utterly human. And utterly breath-taking.
I swallowed hard. Where did these thoughts keep coming from? He wasn’t even human. How could I even think of him that way? But the thought was pervasive, and now it was in my mind it was impossible to shake. Because he was gorgeous. Once you ignored the fact that he was a machine. Metal and plastic not flesh and blood. Why had they made him like that? What purpose had he been made to serve that he needed to be so humanly perfect?
Metal in the Blood (The Mechanicals Book 1) Page 4