I noticed one drawing in particular. The clearly robotic hand in a red circle with a cross through it. I’d seen the same ones all over my city too. I’d seen it in red sharpie on the back of my seat on the bus. An early protest against the Mechanicals. The Government hadn’t taken any notice though, and despite all the warnings the worst had happened.
“We can get in round the side,” Daniel said, keeping his eyes averted from the blood red graffiti. “We just have to get over the wall.”
The wall he was referring to so offhandedly was more than 10 foot high, and in far better condition than the building it was protecting. It might have been a piece of cake for a Mechanical, but there was no way I was getting over it.
Without warning, and as if he was reading my mind, Daniel crouched and wrapped his arms around my thighs, hoisting me into the air.
He boosted me upwards and I flailed around until I managed to get my arms over the top of the wall, dragging myself up until I could swing a leg over. I straddled the wall and hissed down at him.
“A little warning next time.”
With barely any effort, he jumped and caught the top of the wall, pulling himself up until we sat facing each other. He might have looked a little contrite, but it was hard to tell in the dark.
“I’ll go first. Just drop down and I’ll catch you.”
He slipped off the wall and down into the dark courtyard below. With the lack of street lights around I could barely see him. For a moment, fear took hold. I was trusting him so much, and yet, I barely knew him. I’d thrown my lot in with his, and now we were more tightly bound together than ever. If I went through with hacking into the programming for two Mechanicals I really would be giving up on any chance of ever going home. I would become as much of an outlaw as he was. The government had always had strict laws about ‘tampering’ with Mechs. Understandably now, as anyone doing that kind of hacking would be bound to uncover some uncomfortable truths.
“Ellie?” Daniel’s voice hissed up through the dark.
I closed my eyes and swung my legs over the edge. Strong arms caught me at the bottom, knocking the breath out of me, even as he gently lowered me to the ground. I bent at the waist, hands on my knees, letting the blast of adrenaline subside. Falling in the dark had been more of a rush than I’d realised.
It was so dark in the small courtyard I could barely make out Daniel’s face. He stood less than two feet away from me, but all I could see was the flickering of the circuit boards in his irises. His fingers closed around mine.
“I’ll lead, you follow. I can see well enough.”
I tried my best, but even with Daniel tugging me along behind him I still knocked into things. Glass bottles and tin cans skittered away across the cement as I kicked them, and I nearly fell as my feet tangled in a pile of rags.
Daniel kept me upright, keeping a firm grip on my fingers. I wondered if he was as aware of the electricity crackling between us as I was? If he did then he was better at hiding it that me.
We finally reached a door where the boarding had been pulled away at the bottom, creating a small crawl space just large enough to squeeze through.
“Ladies first,” Daniel murmured in my ear.
I thought about what might be on the other side of that door, not even counting the Mechanicals. The building had been abandoned for a long time and rats were a common problem in most cities. I hated rats.
“I think this time we can skip the chivalry.” I muttered something about rats under my breath, forgetting for a moment about his enhanced hearing.
Daniel’s teeth flashed for a moment in the dark as he smiled. “If it helps, I can see just how many rats there are watching us right now in this courtyard.”
I thought about hitting him, but instead I just plunged through the gap, scraping my shoulders on the wood in my haste. Inside it was darker than the bottom of a well. I couldn’t see even an inch in front of my face. My eyes might adjust, but I wasn’t counting on it. There had to be even the tiniest amount of light for that to happen.
The wood creaked behind me and the air moved as Daniel stepped up behind me. With his hands on my shoulders he guided me forward, keeping me from walking into walls. Ahead of us the faintest light gleamed around the edge of a door, just enough that I began to make out shapes in the darkness.
Once we were stood in front of the door Daniel reached out over my shoulder and rapped on it gently. The tiny sounds of movement from within the room stopped, and I found myself holding my breath.
An eye peered through the crack. It took me a moment to realise what was wrong with it. Only half the circuit boards were working. The others seemed to flicker on and off. The eye lingered on me for a moment and then flicked up to Daniel.
“You’re back?” The voice was cracked and scratchy, but definitely female.
“I – we – want to help.”
The door opened a little wider and I got my first look at these new Mechanicals. The second, the male, was slumped by a boarded up window, barely even glancing up at us as we entered the room. But the woman was more alert and she somewhat reluctantly put down the crowbar she’d been holding. I eyed it nervously, even as she set it against the wall.
“You want to help?” she didn’t wait for Daniel to answer. Her eyes fixed on me. “But you’re human.”
“She knows the truth,” Daniel said, brushing past me to crouch beside the man. “What happened to him?”
The woman shrugged. “Something blew. A circuit I guess. He started twitching, and then he ended up like this. Pretty much since you left.”
Skirting around the woman I joined Daniel by the window.
“You know what’s wrong with him, don’t you?”
He glanced up at me and shrugged. “I have my suspicions. A type of fail safe. A lot of the older – models – have been having issues.” He looked back down. “Can you help Robert?”
I tugged my tablet and the connectors out of my pack. “I can try. But I can’t promise anything.” I handed Daniel the cable. “Can you – plug him in?” Now I knew that Robert, like Daniel and all the other Mechanicals, had once been human it felt somehow invasive to plug into the circuitry that ran through so much of his body. But I couldn’t access the programming remotely. It had been a safety feature like the law. Another way of stopping people messing with the Mechs, like the law.
Daniel complied and minutes later the programming started scrolling down my screen. It was complex. More complex than I’d expected, but not beyond my skill level. Or at least, I hoped it wasn’t. I shuddered at the thought that I had once had big dreams of joining the teams who built and designed the Mechanicals.
Daniel opened his mouth to speak, but I shushed him with an upraised hand, never taking my eyes off the code on the screen. He sat back, but I could still feel his eyes on me. I did my best to ignore him, and the woman hovering behind my left shoulder.
It didn’t take long to find the flaw. Daniel was right. It had been built right into the code. A fail safe that would take over if a Mechanical didn’t report for regular upgrades. An early attempt to prevent the very rebellion now taking place.
“Can you fix it?” Daniel asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
I shook my head. “Not really. It’s embedded, deep into the main code. But I can delete the code itself. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about your core processing to know what effect that might have.” I looked up and met his earnest gaze. “You said you broke your programming, overrode it. But you must still have some functioning, in order to run the non-organic parts of your system. If I delete too much of his programming, will he just shut down?”
Behind me the woman snorted. “Better shut down than back in the hands of the government.”
Was that true? I looked up at Daniel, trying to gage his feelings on the matter, but his expression was as impassive as ever. Would Daniel rather be dead than controlled by the Government that had created him? For just a moment I put myself in their place. What woul
d I chose?
Not death. The little voice inside me was honest, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I couldn’t deny it though. I’d been close to death before. I’d stared it in the face and I never wanted to do that again. Back then the choice hadn’t been mine. My parents had chosen to remove my faulty human heart and replace it with a mechanical one, because they’d known it was the only thing that would save me. But in doing so they’d turned me into something else. Something other. I’d never been normal after that. Did my mechanical heart compare to slavery though? To what had been done to the Mechs? Not even close. Surely, though, there had to be another way. A way for me to remove the Government’s hold on Robert and his female companion without shutting them down permanently. Without killing them.
Fingers flying over my tablet I began peeling back the layers of code, digging deeper and deeper into the complex programming that turned a human into a Mechanical. Along the way I discovered just how much the scientists who created the Mechanicals had done. The chips implanted into the brain essentially circumvented most of the brain’s usual activity, bypassing almost all but the most basic of subconscious activity. And in some cases, it even overrode that. But at the same time those chips took advantage of the huge processing capability of the human brain. Turning something that made us, us, into little more than an organic super computer.
I’d been right though, as much as I hated to admit it. If I simply deleted the code Robert would shut down completely. He would keep breathing, and his heart would keep beating, but everything else would stop. I’d need to be a neurosurgeon to reverse what had been done to him, not a robotics nerd.
Time passed and I could sense Daniel getting anxious. We needed to be out of the city by sunrise, or we’d risk being caught. I tried my best to ignore him, I couldn’t rush or I’d be sure to miss something.
“Got it.”
Daniel jolted forward, caught off guard by my sudden exclamation.
“What? What is it?” He scooted across the floor to peer over my shoulder at the scrolling code. After a moment he shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“Right at the basic level. A tiny piece of code.” I froze the screen and pointed. To a lot of people it would have been just a random string of numbers and letters, but programming code was my second language.
“I still don’t get it.”
“It’s the base code. If I can change that, then I can change anything. I can rewrite everything.”
“Then do it,” the woman snapped. “What are you waiting for?”
“It’s going to take me hours. Maybe even longer. I need more time.”
Daniel shook his head. “We don’t have time. Coming back into the city at all was a risk. We can’t stay here.”
I looked up at the woman. “You need to come with us.”
“No. Like I told him, we can’t risk it. If we get caught out there – “
“You won’t get caught. I swear – “ I frowned. “What’s your name?”
She looked startled. “I never really had one. I had a code. S45-48. But he called me Sarah.” She jutted her chin out towards the prone form of Robert, and I realised that they hadn’t just banded together for protection. It went deeper than that.
“Sarah.” I reached out and touched her arm. She was an older model than Daniel, they’d replaced her real skin with a rubbery silicone. I forced myself not to flinch at the strange feeling. “Sarah, I promise, I want to help you and Robert. But if Daniel stays he’ll lead people right to this building. To all of us. Your only choice is to come with us. You can carry him, right?” I asked Daniel over my shoulder.
He nodded, already stooping to throw Robert over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
I looked back at Sarah, a pitiful sight with her broken irises and yellowing silicone skin. “Come with us.”
For a Mechanical incapable of showing much emotion, Sarah looked pained with indecision. She opened and shut her mouth, but it was Robert that made her decision for her, choosing that moment to let out a low groan. Whatever bond existed between them was strong enough. She wouldn’t leave him.
“All right.” She nodded, resolute. “Let’s get out of this city.”
Ten
I had never felt so exposed and edgy as I did in the early hours of that morning as we crept through the dark city streets. We were hardly inconspicuous, with Daniel carrying a limp body over his shoulder, and a half functioning Mechanical who could never pass as human.
Against all odds we made it to the suburbs without being seen, and then it was only a matter of making a run for the forest.
I expected we would stop as soon as we were within the safety of the trees, but Daniel insisted we keep going. He didn’t seemed winded carrying Robert, but I could tell he was nervous, glancing back over his shoulder, watching the forest around us with a sharp eye.
“What’s wrong? We need to stop.” I huffed eventually. It was midday and we hadn’t stopped, not even for a short break. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep going.
Daniel hesitated, glancing back at me. “Yes, all right.” He lowered Robert to the ground, propping him against a tree. “But only for a moment. I don’t think my trackers can be that far behind us.”
I sunk down onto a fallen log. My feet were aching, and my head felt fuzzy from lack of sleep. The last week I’d barely slept more than a couple of hours straight. I was used to a good, solid eight hours in a comfortable bed. My new lifestyle was catching up with me.
As Sarah crossed over to check on Robert, Daniel crouched down beside me.
“Are you all right?” He reached out his hand but stopped his fingers millimetres from my shoulder. His fingertips twitched.
“I will be. I’m just exhausted. How far do we need to go before we’ll be safe?”
The look in Daniel’s eyes chilled me far more than the cool breeze.
“Will we ever be safe?” I asked, interpreting the pained expression when he didn’t reply.
“I don’t know. I like to think that the refuge would be safe. But if I’m honest, I don’t see how it could be. They can track us anywhere.”
“Not there.”
Sarah’s voice was soft but Daniel and I both turned towards her. She crouched down beside Robert, her fingers stroking his hair back from his face, but her eyes were fixed on us.
“What do you mean? When I spoke to you the other night you said you didn’t know anything about it.”
She dismissed that with a wave of one hand. “I lied. My programming doesn’t prevent that. I hoped – I hoped you wouldn’t go.”
“You thought that if you were vague enough about it I would chose to stay in relative safety with you and Robert instead?”
“Something like that.” She sighed theatrically. “But yes, I’ve heard a few things over the last few years. About the Sanctuary, and the Mechanicals that built it. They were the best, the strongest of the first generation. The whole camp is surrounded by a magnetic field. It plays havoc with the tracking devices. That’s the only reason it’s survived this long.”
I glanced towards Daniel, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. If Sarah had held back this little gem of information, what else was she keeping from us?
“That’s all I know, honest,” she said, catching the expressions on our faces. “Look, Robert and I have been hiding out for a long time. And you’re not the first to come asking questions about the Sanctuary. And you know as well as I do that not every Mech wants freedom.”
Daniel barely paid any attention to her, his eyes fixed on the dark, shadowy forest behind us. “We can’t stay here much longer.”
“I need to work on Robert’s programming. I can’t do that constantly on the run.” I glanced over my shoulder at the slumped figure, and Sarah standing watch over him. “We need to find somewhere safe to stop. For longer than just a few minutes.”
“Not yet,” Daniel replied. “We need to get some more distance between us and the city.�
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We walked for the rest of the day, barely stopping even to catch our breath. A few times we had to make wide detours when roads cut through the forest ahead of us. Even though it was rare for people to travel Daniel didn’t want to take any chances. I thought he was being over cautious, but then I didn’t have nearly as much to fear as he did.
It occurred to me that I really didn’t know much about his life before that night at the stadium. How long had he been on the run? How long had he lived with the fear of being caught and reprogrammed? There wasn’t time to ask him, but I filed away the question for further thought.
Only once did we hear the distant purr of a ground car and we began to relax until the whine of a ‘copter sounded far above the trees.
Daniel’s head shot up, his eyes scanning the thick tree canopy.
“They can’t see us,” I said, following his gaze. “Not through all that.”
He didn’t reply for a moment and I knew he was listening to the receding ‘copter, waiting until it was far out of range. “They have instrumentation. A lot of it. It may have been nothing, but if it was a Government ‘copter they could have seen us easily.”
“So what do you suggest?” I was dreading him telling me we just had to keep running. I wasn’t sure how much more my legs could take. Every part of my body ached.
When Daniel agreed we needed to stop for the night my relief was palpable. It was getting dark rapidly beneath the trees, and whilst he and the others had perfect night vision I didn’t. Trying to get me to move through the forest at night would be far more of a hindrance than a help.
There was no lucky cottage this time, instead we made do with a small clearing where a close thicket of trees acted as a windbreaker. Daniel left me with Robert and took Sarah to find firewood. I could hear her complaining the whole time, muttering about how they didn’t need food or heat, and how she hated having to cater to the needs of a fragile human.
Metal in the Blood (The Mechanicals Book 1) Page 9