by Adams, M. L.
“It wasn’t,” I answered quickly, realizing her fear. An MRI or CT scan would reveal my cybernetic augments. “Just some handheld scanner thing. They use it to check for concussions. It must have picked up my brain implant.”
Megan let out a deep breath. “What did you tell them?”
I shrugged. “That I had a vision upgrade. Just like half the kids in school.”
“They believed you?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t they?”
The truth was, the medics and football coaches could have figured out I was lying. CyberLife didn’t sell any visual augments that didn’t have a small black data port on the temple of either eye. Thankfully, they didn’t dig deeper. And neither did Megan.
“They kicked you off the team for that?” she asked.
“Because I didn’t disclose it earlier, my name wasn’t on the registry.”
“They have a registry?”
“Yeah. Ever since those kids got caught cheating with the hacked eye augments, they require every student with any kind of prosthetic or cybernetic augment to register before joining a school-sanctioned activity.”
“Sounds pretty Orwellian,” she said.
I nodded, careful not to take the bait. Megan could argue for hours about privacy and the government’s handling of cybernetic augments. There were rumors of a national registry, something that really pressed her buttons. Right now, I just needed to get to class.
Megan sat next to me on the table and put her arm around my shoulder. “Ben, those augments your classmates have—eyes, hands, whatever—are toys compared to yours. We sell them at the mall. I know it’s hard not being able to tell your friends. And I know you’ve always wanted to play football. But that NDA exists for a good reason. It’s not only to protect CyberLife, but to protect you as well.”
I sighed and stared down at the floor. When I made the decision to join the team, I justified it with all sorts of reasons.
I’ve been through hell. I deserve to be a regular teenager.
Football has been my dream since I was two.
All my friends get to do whatever they want, why can’t I?
Now, however, the magnitude of that single decision pressed down on my shoulders like a ton of steel. If surviving cancer had taught me one thing, it was perspective. I may not have everything I want, but at least I’m alive.
“I’m sorry, Megan,” I said. “It was a stupid thing to do.”
“It’s okay, knucklehead,” she replied, reaching out and messing my hair. “But if you do it again, that cold hands trick will be the least of your worries. I’ll program your brain so you automatically drool any time you’re around Katherine Nickel.”
We shared a laugh before she turned and eyed her laptop. “This update is taking longer than I thought,” she said. “No way it’s going to finish before you need to leave.”
“No problem,” I said. After three plus hours, I was ready to get out of there. “We can finish next Monday.”
“I’m out of town rest of this week and next.”
“Oh right, forgot. Another tech then?”
She shook her head. “You know I don’t trust anyone else to mess around with my favorite teenage cyborg. Besides . . .”
Suddenly, her voice was drowned out as a loud siren pierced the air.
3
I covered my ears and scanned the room for the source of the noise. Above the lab’s only exit, a red light flashed in unison with the siren. I turned to Megan and yelled, “Fire alarm?”
She ignored me.
After hurriedly typing a series of commands on her laptop and disconnecting the cable from my knee, she slammed the lid shut and ran across the room to her workstation. With one hand, she tossed papers and notebooks into her bag. With the other, she grabbed my pants and shirt from a nearby chair and tossed them in my direction. “Get dressed,” she yelled over the alarm.
I didn’t protest. If it was a fire alarm, the last thing I wanted was to stand around the parking lot in my underwear. I rolled my synthetic skin back into place and quickly dressed. As I finished with my shoes, Megan ran back and grabbed me by the arm.
“We have to leave. Now.”
She half-dragged me through the lab’s double doors, and we sped down a long, empty hallway. Every twenty feet, a strobe light flashed. To my relief, the audible alarms rang in the rooms only, and not in the confined space of the hallway. At a T-junction, we turned left and raced to the elevator door. As we approached, a light above the door flashed on. Megan abruptly stopped, whirled around, and pulled me in the opposite direction.
“Megan, the elevator is that way,” I called, glancing over my shoulder.
Instead of a reply, she squeezed my arm tight and pulled harder. We stopped at a blue metal door with a sign that read STAIRS. Right, I thought. In case of fire, use the stairs.
She pushed the door open, stopped on the small landing, and motioned for me to remain quiet. Still holding the door partially open, I heard the elevator chime from down the hall. Then the loud stomping of boots. I peered out and was surprised to see two black-clad CyberLife guards running down the corridor, assault rifles at the ready. Before I could tell Megan, she yanked my arm and ran up the stairs.
After four flights, we stopped at the main floor landing. Megan headed straight for the door and suddenly froze. I noticed a half-second late and bumped into her. She turned and scowled. “Quiet,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
She pulled me to the side, away from the small, square, glass window in the door. The sounds of heavy boots flew past. Somewhere below, a door slammed shut. More boots hit the stairs.
The entire situation grew stranger by the minute. I had been in plenty of fire drills on the CyberLife research campus and even one at school. The first rule was always, stay calm and head to the nearest exit. We didn’t seem to be doing either.
“Megan . . .” I said.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. “And stay close.”
I followed her into the hallway. Sneaking around a secure CyberLife building wasn’t exactly new to me. I had, on numerous occasions while living on the research campus, done the same thing. It was one of my favorite ways to pass the time. But never had I done it with a CyberLife employee. Especially not one like Megan, who had always been a stickler for the rules, and even carried my NDA around in her bag.
We stopped in front of a locked door. Above the lock, there was a small, gray pad with a red LED on it. Megan pulled a lanyard out of her lab coat and pressed an ID card against the pad. The red LED turned green, and the door clicked open. I followed her through and shut the door behind me.
In sharp contrast to the “lab” in the basement, the room we entered was the typical CyberLife laboratory—gleaming white walls, white tile floor, and stainless steel furniture. We weaved around various metal tables full of high-tech equipment until we reached another door on the far side of the room.
After a short pause to catch our breath, Megan stood and used her hands to smooth out her lab coat. She pushed strands of stray blond hair behind her ears, turned to me, and smiled.
“Okay, ready?”
I shrugged, still not sure what I should be ready for. Or what in the hell we were doing.
“Just act normal if you see anyone,” she said. “Let me do the talking.”
With another swipe of her card, she opened the door. We stepped out into the cool morning air and onto a concrete path. After taking a moment to get my bearings, I instinctively turned left toward the main gate and the visitor parking lot. Megan went right. I jogged a few steps to catch up.
“Megan, what’s going on?” I finally asked.
“Sorry for the excitement,” she said. “I just had to get you out of there or you’d never make your exam. If we’d gone through the main building security station, they wouldn’t have let you leave.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Fire drill. Until the head count is finished,
no one leaves.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I replied, not convinced. It seemed like an awful lot of effort just to make a midterm exam on time.
“So, about your system update,” she said, changing the subject. “I need to finish that.”
“When you get back?”
“You know me, Ben. I’ll go crazy on vacation knowing I left something unfinished.”
I laughed. A few months after we’d met, Megan had gone home to Ohio for the holidays. She called, texted and emailed me a hundred times to make sure everything was okay.
“Maybe you could come over after school,” she said. “Probably won’t take more than an hour or two.”
Returning to CyberLife after school was the last thing I wanted to do. Even if it meant seeing Megan. I needed to study for my Tuesday midterms and, if I failed to avoid the football team during the day, tend to a few bruises. “Sure, why not,” I replied half-heartedly.
“Great. I’ll text you my address.”
Confused, I stopped and looked at her. “Your . . . address?”
She grinned. “Sure. But don’t be all weird about it. I’m not hitting on you.”
“Uh, hitting on me . . . what . . . Megan,” I said, fumbling my words.
Real smooth, Ben.
She punched me lightly on the shoulder. “Just teasing. I’ll order a pizza. It’ll be fun.”
A million questions formed in my mind, including how she could justify connecting to my system at home after just giving me her NDA speech. But in the end, it didn’t matter. Megan could invite me over for a root canal and I’d still be happy about it.
“Okay,” I said with a shrug, trying to act like it was no big deal. In my chest, my heart pounded. “I could be there around four.”
“Great, it’s a date,” she said.
We walked for a half-minute in silence before Megan spoke again. “Hey, this Katherine Nickel isn’t going to be jealous, is she?”
I groaned. “No.”
“She pretty?”
“Very.”
“That didn’t take long, Benjamin,” she said. “You’ve only been in school for two months.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So when’s the date?”
“Probably never.”
“But you said . . .”
“Was supposed to be Saturday night,” I replied. “The homecoming dance.”
After a pause, Megan said, “Ah, because of the game?”
“Yeah. Bad for her reputation I guess.”
Megan gently rubbed my back as we walked. “Sorry to hear that, Benjamin. Her loss though, right?”
I shrugged. Katherine had no shortage of guys lining up to date her. She probably had a new date to the dance ten seconds after she dumped me, I thought.
It wasn’t until we rounded the back corner of the CyberLife headquarters building that I realized where we were headed. Twenty yards away was the rear pedestrian gate, guarded by a man wearing black body armor. Over his shoulder, I could see the gate was closed and locked down.
Before I could warn Megan, she called to the guard, “Hey, Scott!”
“Hi, Ms. Reynolds,” the guard replied as we walked up. “What are you doing back here? This gate is closed.”
She nodded in my direction. “We were outside experimenting with some changes to his system. When the alarm went off, we couldn’t get back into the building. Ben needs to leave, so we came here.”
“Unfortunately,” Scott said. “I can’t let him leave.”
Megan tilted her head, smiled, and tucked a loose strand of hair over her ear. “Oh, come on, Scott. He’s got an exam in like twenty minutes. You don’t want him to fail math class, do you?”
I’d seen Megan turn on the charm many times over the years—head tilt and hair tuck being her best move. It never failed.
This time included.
The guard glanced at me. I shrugged, doing my best to play along.
“All right, Megan, he can go,” the guard said. “But I’ll have to manually scan him. This gate’s automated system isn’t online yet today.” He nodded in the direction of the walk-through scanning station built into the brick wall.
“No problem,” I said.
The rear exit, like every exit at the CyberLife headquarters, was protected by a sophisticated scanning system designed to check for data storage devices. Merrick was fanatical about data security, to the point where he didn’t allow unauthorized storage devices to enter or exit the building. I’d been scanned more times than I could count.
Scott pulled a small, handheld scanner off his belt and approached. After running it over my front and back, he said. “All right, he’s good.”
The guard stepped back into the small guardhouse. The gate swung open.
“Four o’clock?” Megan whispered to me.
“Sounds good,” I replied. “See you then.”
I walked through the exit and began to jog toward the main visitor parking lot. Three minutes later, as I climbed into my Jeep and started it up, I noticed something odd about the front of the building. There weren’t any employees standing around waiting to be let back in.
And there definitely weren’t any fire trucks.
4
That afternoon, I stared at the tiny digital clock on my iPad and willed it to tick faster. I needed the school day to end, and not just because it meant I’d get to see Megan.
Even with her help escaping the CyberLife headquarters, I’d still been ten minutes late for my first exam of the week. On top of that, the school rumor mill was already in overdrive from the past weekend’s events. Rumors of Katherine ditching me, and the football team’s desire to kick my ass, flowed freely. On Friday before the game, every other person in the hallway gave me a high five. Now, all I got were conspiratorial whispers and the occasional “jerk” comment.
With a deep sigh, I flipped through my history e-book and stopped on a random page. At the front of the room, Mrs. Bradley droned on about the Battle of Stirling in 1297. She alternated between reading facts from her printed version of the e-book and writing on the chalkboard (yes, the chalkboard—the only one still used in the entire school, maybe the planet). I tuned her out and focused on the one thing I couldn’t keep my mind off of: Megan.
Other than a chance meeting at a coffee shop a few weeks before, I’d never seen her outside of CyberLife. She seemed to spend all of her time at work. I was looking forward to getting to know a different side of her. I’d known Megan for a couple of years—since she’d been assigned to be my cybernetic systems tech. We’d hit it off from day one. Conversation was easy between us and we spent most of our long hours together laughing and teasing each other. Over time, my feelings for her grew . . . complicated.
My mind wandered back to the conversation we’d had earlier in the day. Even though she’d been angry and somewhat unsympathetic to my side of things, it felt good to open up to her. For years after my first surgery, hiding the truth had been the fun part. I pretended to be a superhero, ready to covertly save the day like Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne. Now, in high school, the game wasn’t fun anymore. I was just lying, plain and simple. To my coaches, teachers, friends, girlfriends and everyone else.
Perspective, Ben, I reminded myself. It’s all about perspective.
I looked around the room and counted classmates with cybernetic augments. Fourteen total. Half the class. Most were corrective eye augments, easily identified by a small metallic connection port on the left or right temple. One girl, Claire, had a cybernetic hand. Officially, she was injured in a car accident. But the rumor was that she voluntarily had her hand removed to become an elite piano player. I didn’t know which was true, but there was no denying she was really good at playing the piano.
I stared at Claire’s silver and black metallic hand and felt a pang of jealousy that she didn’t need to cover it. No need to lie to her friends or anyone else. I smiled at the thought, which ended up being a really bad idea.
“Mr. Raine
, since you seem so happy this afternoon,” a voice boomed from across the room. “Can you tell me in what year William Wallace died?”
I locked eyes with a frowning Mrs. Bradley, my history teacher. She was tall and thin and wore an old purple cardigan sweater. Her gray hair was up in a bun, and a pair of metal-rimmed glasses dangled on the end of her long nose.
“Um . . . yeah . . . sure,” I said. Sitting up straight, I glanced around the room, hoping for a little help. Unfortunately, the only student even looking my way was Holly Brennan, resident history nerd and teacher’s pet. Everyone else had his or her eyes glued to a desk.
Next to me, my friend Mason Parker was trying to stifle a laugh. I glared at him and shook my head, knowing he had no idea when Wallace died either.
“Take your time, Mr. Raine,” said Bradley. “We have all afternoon.”
The class groaned.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. For a split second, I wondered if someone was trying to bail me out, if only to get class dismissed on time. But that idea quickly faded. Nobody was dumb enough to risk getting caught with a phone in Mrs. Bradley’s class. Especially not to bail out public enemy number one.
Several classmates whispered for me to hurry up. I didn’t know the answer, of course. I also didn’t think it was fair that my multi-billion-dollar cybernetic brain couldn’t be programmed to recall useless history facts. Or for that matter, access the Internet so I could look them up. I made a mental note to ask Megan about it when I saw her in twenty minutes.
Deciding a wild guess was likely worse than keeping my mouth shut, I looked at Mrs. Bradley and shrugged my shoulders. Her eyes narrowed as she slowly shook her head. To nobody’s surprise, and everybody’s relief, she called on Holly next.
“1305,” answered Holly, a triumphant smile on her face.
“That’s correct, Ms. Brennan,” Bradley replied.
Before she could call on another victim, the bell rang three times, signaling the end of the school day. Like everyone else in class, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. My lips curled into a huge smile as I read the message from Megan.