“At least it would have been my life,” Daniel snarled back. He was edging sideway, using one arm to keep me behind him.
Robert stunned the other Mechanical and joined us, Sarah stepping up on the other side.
“Your bodyguards are broken,” Daniel said dismissively. “I’d suggest you run back to your lab and try to figure out how to fix them. My friends and I will be going on our way, and unless you want to keep losing your machines, I suggest you stop sending them to follow me. I won’t be coming back to the lab. Not now, not ever.”
Kendall sneered at him, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t think he was foolish enough to take his chances against three Mechanicals. I expected him to run and flee. He didn’t, though he did take a few steps backwards. He ignored Daniel and focused on me instead.
“I will tell your parents that I saw you. I’m sure they’ll be pleased to know that you’re safe. Though I doubt they’ll be too impressed with the company you’re keeping.” He finally looked back towards Daniel. “I hope you realise that should you let anything happen to her this world won’t be big enough for you to hide from her parents’ revenge.”
I shivered as Kendall slipped away into the trees.
Twelve
The forest seemed oddly quiet after that, we found ourselves avoiding each other’s eyes as we left the clearing far behind us. The encounter with his maker left Daniel edgy and uncomfortable. I could tell by the set of his shoulders as he strode ahead of me that he was deep in thought.
I found myself thinking a lot myself. The connection between myself and Daniel went back to before we’d ever met. We had been ‘designed’ by the same person. He may have been more machine than I was, but neither of us was fully human. We both had metal in our blood. Was that why I had always felt such a connection to the Mechanicals? Before I’d ever even known they were human. Because, at the very truth of it, I was a Mechanical too. Part machine, part human.
Behind me Robert and Sarah spoke quietly, but eventually Sarah raised her voice to call out to me, startling me out of my thoughts.
“You still need to fix me, you know.”
I glanced back over my shoulder at her. “I will. I promise.”
“When?” She pressed. There was an edge to her voice – something as close to fear as a Mechanical could express.
“Once it’s safe,” Daniel replied for me, glancing around at the forest. “We can’t keep stopping.”
“We can’t keep going indefinitely either,” Sarah snapped back quickly. “Or at least, she can’t.”
“I can keep going for now at least,” I cut in before Daniel could respond. I didn’t want to seem weak, especially not in front of Sarah in particular. Her Mechanical perfection made me edgy. Even with her failing parts she was still faster, stronger and probably smarter than I was. Which in turn made me angry at myself. I didn’t want to be like other humans, seeing the Mechanicals as a constant threat.
Sarah sneered at me, but didn’t say anything. But she did pick up the pace, moving past us and forcing me to half jog to keep up.
When Daniel opened his mouth to tell her to slow down I shook my head at him and he fell silent, but the look on his face was questioning. There was no way to explain to him how showing weakness was such a human thing.
It was full dark when we finally stopped, and my legs were burning with exhaustion. I wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep, but I forced myself to keep going until we’d gathered some wood and built up a fire in the centre of a small clearing.
Daniel and Robert disappeared into the trees to hunt for something for me to eat and I was looking forward to relaxing for a few minutes and letting the warmth of the fire ease the tightness in my muscles. But no sooner had I sat down than Sarah dropped gracefully to the ground beside me and swept her long hair to one side.
“All right. Fix me then.”
I stared at her in horror. I was so tired that I could barely even see straight, let alone think coherently enough to start coding.
She clucked her tongue. “What are you waiting for? For my programming to corrupt as badly as Robert’s?”
“Seriously?” I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Sarah, I can’t fix your programming right now. I’m tired and hungry, and it’ll take me all night. It’s going to have to wait.”
She glowered at me. “You like having a hold over me, don’t you? Just like Daniel. Does it make you feel better? Having power over us, just like the rest of you useless humans?”
“What? No.” I hesitated. “What do you mean, ‘just like Daniel’?”
She tried to sneer, an expression that looked strange on her barely mobile silicone skin. “Come on now, little human. You must have some kind of hold over him. Why else would he have kept you with him all this time? Does he have some flaw you promised to fix? But only if he helped you?”
“No. No. Nothing like that. We’re – friends.”
Her snort of derision made my cheeks burn scarlet. “Friends? A human and a Mechanical? You are delusional.”
My hands clenched into fists in my lap. “I am not – you – you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her smirk was no more convincing than her sneer. “You think that, what? He cares about you? That you are more than just some semi-useful piece of human scum? He’s. Not. Human. Don’t you get that? You and he are two different species, from two completely different worlds.”
“You’re – you’re human. You might have been – changed – but you’re still – “
“No. I am definitely not human. Human scientists made sure of that. Daniel might think that somehow humans and Mechanicals can co-exist peacefully, but I am not nearly so naïve.”
I looked up into her silicone face. Her lips were pulled back into something as close to a sneer as she was able to get. She glanced away in the direction Daniel had gone, and then before I could react her hand was around my throat.
She lifted me until my toes dangled a foot from the ground. I scrabbled at her fingers desperately, but they were like an iron vice around my neck. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl.
“See how easily I could kill you? Broken though I am? And there are hundreds of us. Thousands. The humans won’t stop until we are all destroyed. So what choice does that leave us? It’s us or you.”
My nails dug into her silicone skin, but she didn’t even feel it. “If you kill me, I can’t help you,” I gasped finally.
She snorted and flung me to the ground. I groaned and rolled over, but she stepped up to me. “True enough. But remember that if you don’t help me, and soon, I will kill you. And the best part about all this programming in my head, I won’t feel a single jot of remorse when I do.”
I scrambled away from her across the grass, back towards the fire. For the first time in my life I felt real fear when it came to a Mechanical. Had I been naïve? To think that all Mechanicals were like Daniel? I’d seen the same stories as everyone else, but I had always told myself that the Mechanicals must have been provoked, that they were defending themselves. But now I was second guessing myself. What if Sarah was right, and this was simply the start of an all-out war. Us verses them.
Sarah ignored me after that, leaving me to those jumbled thoughts. She didn’t press the issue of me fixing her, but I knew it wouldn’t be long. I, meanwhile, kept my ears open and my eyes peeled for Daniel and Robert.
Despite my vigilance I still jumped when Daniel ghosted silently out of the trees behind me. Something wet and scaly dangled from one hand.
“A fish?” I asked as he hunkered down beside me at the fires edge.
“We found a stream. Do you like fish?”
I’d never tried it, but my stomach was hollow enough to eat anything. I could have stomached the offal stew my mother made when even we couldn’t afford any more meat in a month. I nodded at Daniel and he offered me a rare smile.
The smell of the fish as it roasted on a spit over the fire made my stomach rumble even more, and when Daniel final
ly gave it to me I wolfed it down, nearly burning my mouth in the progress. After I’d eaten I wanted nothing more than to sleep. For about a week if possible. But Sarah’s eyes watched me from across the fire, the flickering broken circuits in the left iris making her even more intimidating.
When I walked over to her with my tablet in hand she smiled grimly and pulled back her hair without a word.
His eyes were locked on me across the fire. I could feel them burning into me. I wanted to go to him, to feel the warmth of his body close to mine. We hadn’t kissed since that first time, but we both seemed to find any excuse to be close to each other, sitting shoulder to shoulder whenever we could, mere millimetres between our skin. I knew I took comfort from his closeness, and it seemed he felt the same. The bond that bound us together seemed to just get stronger every day.
I shifted my gaze from the tablet in front of me and met his glittering eyes. A tiny smile quirked his lips and I found myself automatically smiling in response.
“Hey! Are you working or daydreaming?”
My eyes snapped back to where Sarah sat in front of me, her malfunctioning eyes narrowed in a scowl. She glanced down at the tablet in my lap. “Aren’t you supposed to be coding?”
I bit back a snide reply. She really wasn’t worth it. I just needed to fix her programming and maybe she would back off.
Gentle fingers curled around my shoulder and I jumped. Daniel stood over me. The look he was giving Sarah was anything but friendly.
“I think it’s time Ellie took a break. She’s been working on you for hours.”
Sarah’s lips pulled back in something close to a snarl, but Daniel’s hands creaked as he clenched them into fists and she kept her mouth shut.
She ripped the cable out of the back of her neck and all but threw it at me.
I kept my eyes fixed on the tablet screen until she had stomped across the clearing to sit beside Robert and then I looked up at Daniel. He smiled gently.
“You looked like you could use a break.”
I nodded gratefully. Truthfully, all my muscles were stiff and frozen from sitting on the ground for so long, and a nagging little pain had started up between my eyes. I needed caffeine. Coffee and soda had fuelled most of my normal coding sessions.
Daniel held out his hand to me. “Come take a walk. Stretch your legs a little.”
My fingers closed around his and he drew me to my feet. Pins and needles in my legs made me stagger and Daniel caught me, holding me against him until I could find my balance. He’d been sat close to the fire and his skins and clothes felt beautifully warm to my cold stiff fingers. I was almost sad when he eased me backwards, taking my hands off his chest and folding one into his own.
Giving me a gentle tug he turned towards the tree line. I let him lead me between the trees until the light of the fire faded behind us and only the silvery light of the moon trickled through the canopy over head to guide us.
I relied on his superior night vision as well, comforted by the strength of his fingers around mine. I trusted he wouldn’t lead me into a tree or a ditch.
For a long while we just walked, and I had the feeling we were cutting a wide circle around our campsite. I knew Daniel wouldn’t want to get too far from the others, just in case.
We’d been walking for about ten minutes when we came to a fallen tree blocking the natural trail. Rather than going around it, Daniel led me over to it, using his free hand to brush away loose bark and fallen leaves.
“We can sit for a bit if you’d like.”
His eyes glittered in the dark, standing out in the dark shadows of his face.
As I looked for something to step on to help me up onto the trunk he caught me around the waist and lifted me easily, setting me in a natural fork between the old trunk and a broken off branch.
“Thanks,” I murmured, settling back with my feet dangling.
His teeth flashed in a grin as he pulled himself up beside me. Nerves bubbled up inside me. I realised then that we’d not really been alone together since that moment in the city, when he’d kissed me. I couldn’t quite decide if I wanted him to do it again or not. The heat in the pit of my stomach said yes, but the logical side of my brain didn’t want to make life even more complicated than it already was.
He cleared his throat. A very human affection.
“I’m sorry about Sarah.”
I shrugged. “I understand her frustration. After seeing what happened to Robert – I can appreciate that she’s afraid.” I paused. “Will the same thing –“ I stopped and started again. “Do you have a failsafe?”
Daniel was quiet for a long moment and I turned to look at him. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.
“Sorry. That’s probably kind of personal. Like asking someone if they have an illness or something.”
He shook his head. “It’s ok. I don’t mind. It’s just – easy to forget what I am when I’m with you. The honest answer is – I don’t know. Not the same as Sarah and Robert for sure. After all, I am a much later – model. But I don’t believe for one second that Kendall was foolish enough to make one without some kind of off switch.”
I shivered. The idea of someone being able to just end Daniel, to switch him off like he was just a tablet or a screen made me feel sick to my stomach. Instead I thought about Kendall, and our encounter with him in the woods.
“You’re special though – to Kendall I mean.”
Again he was quiet for a long time, but then he nodded. “I suppose special is one way to put it. I am his greatest success. Or so he always told me when I was growing up.”
Without thinking about it I edged closer to him. He felt me move and his fingers found mine, closing around them almost unconsciously.
“You lived with him?”
Daniel shook his head again. “No. I lived at the lab. There was a - a dorm I suppose you could call it. Twenty beds, I remember that. When I was very young all the beds were full. But over the years they emptied one by one.” He turned his glittering eyes on me. “You have to understand. For every Mechanical like me, like Sarah and Robert, who survived the transformation, there are dozens who do not. Those whose bodies are too weak to accept the implants.”
I stayed quiet, but my other hand found our entwined fingers on the bark, stroking over his knuckles. Now he was talking about his past he didn’t seem able to stop. The words tumbled out, and I almost wondered if he had forgotten I was there.
“Most Mechanicals are adults. Runaways and the dregs of society. Those who won’t be missed.”
The church,” I said, gasping as my close escape suddenly made sense. “It was – it was just a front. He was handing people over to Genesis.”
Daniel nodded. “I realised when I saw a Genesis logo on one of the Mechanicals who was trying to take you. Tom questioned us closely, as I’m sure he did everyone that passed through there, looking for anyone who wouldn’t be missed.”
He paused and cleared his throat again. “Anyway, Kendall had an idea that working on children would be easier. Growing with implants. Adding piece by piece over the course of years. As I said, there were twenty of us to begin with. Ten boys and ten girls. I think I was about four when the first of the girls died. Though I didn’t know it at the time. An alarm went off in the night and the technicians came and took her away. She never came back. But it became routine over the years. Some implant would be rejected, or a piece of programming would fail. But puberty was the worst. Six of us in one year. Something to do with how our bodies were changing too quickly for them to keep up.
“In the end, only three of us survived into adulthood. The point at which they considered us fully grown. Two boys and one girl. Luke, Eve and me.”
His voice had stayed so steady when talking about the others dying, but when I looked up at his face, even in the dark I could see the pain etched there. They had been family to him. The only family he had ever known.
“What happened to Luke and Eve?” I asked quietly, though
I dreaded the answer.
Daniel shrugged. But there was nothing casual about it. It was tight and pained.
“I don’t know. Still at the lab – I hope. They are safest there.”
“Safe there? In the lab?”
Daniel snorted. “They are precious to Kendall. He will make sure no harm comes to them in the lab. Which is more than I can say for what would await them outside. With the mobs and the hatred.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I had seen the mobs in action. Seen them rip Mechanicals to pieces. If it hadn’t been for me it would have happened to Daniel.
“So, what about you? How did you get out of the lab?”
Again Daniel went very still. I guessed all my questions were making him uncomfortable. But I was desperately curious none the less. Since that night in the stadium my life had become entwined with his in a way I couldn’t explain, and yet I knew so little really, about him and how he’d come to be there.
“They let me out.”
I frowned into the darkness. That didn’t seem to fit with anything else he’d said. “Let you? I don’t –.”
“Kendall’s dream was a Mechanical who could pass for human. Indistinguishable from real humans. I was as close as he could get to achieving that dream. My eyes were the only thing. He left them intentionally. Even he doesn’t want to run the risk of us hiding in plain sight amongst you. But he wanted to test how well I could blend in. They drove me out from the lab. Dropped me off in the middle of the city. I was programmed to return. Like some kind of high tech homing pigeon. It was the only purpose I had. Find my way back to the lab without being noticed by the humans.” He smirked into the shadows. “It wasn’t that hard, as long as I kept my head down. But then I saw the people heading into the stadium.” His voice trailed off and he smiled down at me.
“I saw you going into the stadium.”
“Me?”
He nodded. “My hearing is a lot better than most humans. Better than most Mechs. My audio implants are impressive. I can hear heartbeats. It’s supposed to be part of my special abilities. I can tell when humans are nervous, or anxious by their heartbeats and change my behaviour accordingly. But when you brushed past me I didn’t hear a heartbeat – “
Metal in the Blood (The Mechanicals Book 1) Page 11