Unstrung

by Kendra C. Highley

  This is no time to be picky. I follow Quinn into the hallway. “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a service entrance on the first floor. That’s the only door artificials are allowed to use.”

  He leads me to a new hall at the other corner of the house. From what I remember of the blueprints, we’re right above Maren’s lab. If I had two minutes, I could sweep in and search for the primer. But how do I ditch Quinn?

  I feel a pang in my stomach at the thought of leaving him behind. I shake my head. No more of that. I have a job to do. My overactive psyche will have to wait.

  “All clear. Come on,” he whispers, reaching for my hand to pull me along.

  I’m about to pry my hand from his when the sound of running feet comes from the elevator bay around the corner. Lots of feet. Quinn shoves me through a door—another stairwell. “Go! First floor, south side. Service entrance. I’ll find you!”

  I don’t have to be told twice. Men call to one another as I run down the stairs. Quinn’s voice rumbles among them, but no one comes after me.

  The corridor looks clear on the first floor. Something’s weird. This section of the house isn’t homey; it’s more industrial. Gray walls, steel doors with palm-scanning locks instead of doorknobs, a hard cement floor, the smell of a soldering iron. I smile. Labs don’t usually reside in carpeted halls—I’m in the right place.

  Like upstairs, two hallways branch off from the stairwell. None of the rooms are marked, either. Jole said her lab would be on the corner of the house. Well, I’m on the corner. I slip out of the stairwell. There’s a door directly across from me. This has to be it.

  The palm-scanner’s a problem, though. Jole gave me a tiny data-pad to get around such devices, but if I try to hack it, they’ll know where I am. I could still run, leave empty handed. But what’s the fun in that? I want my Harley; I’ll have to take the risk.

  I fish the data-pad out of my equipment pack and am in the process of hooking it up when a male voices shouts, “There she is!”

  Chapter Ten

  Caught between a Hall and a Fireplace

  I drop the data pad and run, six Bolts on my tail. The maze of corridors becomes a labyrinth that promises to trap me forever. The sound of Maren’s artificials follows me, loud boots echoing off the hard gray walls.

  “There!” one shouts as I round a corner. Another group of Bolts—more of the brown-haired guards—stand in a row at the end of this new hallway.

  Spinning on my heel, I take off, back the direction I came. Now the footsteps pound in front and behind. I slide to a stop in front of a shiny metal door. It’s as nondescript as the rest, but I’m out of ideas. In a last ditch effort, I press my palm against the indicator pad, watching in shock when the door whooshes open. The room is dark, but I don’t hesitate. I dive inside and the door closes behind me. Just in time, too. The shouts of the artificials come from right in front of my hiding place.

  “Where’d she go?” one asks.

  Another answers, “Ceiling maybe? She can’t open the doors, and she had climbing equipment. She might have crawled into the duct work again.”

  “Blue team, take the ducts. Red team, check the other wing,” Port says, his tone authoritative. “I’ll stay here and keep watch just in case she comes back this way.”

  Their footsteps fade and I sag against the door. Moving causes the light sensor to blink on, and I get a peek at my safe haven.

  Oh, shast. I think I’m in Maren’s office.

  The picture of her with the Governor on the back wall tells me I’m right. So does the fancy furniture. A huge desk fills the back of the room. Four monitors on the desktop flash and start up with the lights. Wall panels blink to life, and red dots stream across a blueprint map of the stronghold; based on the position of the dots, it’s a system monitoring the Bolts on patrol. Contrasting all the tech, there are plush, velvety armchairs crowded around a marble fireplace. I stare in disbelief. What a waste; I could feed myself for a year for what those antique chairs cost.

  A toilet flushes, a sound so common, it freezes me for a second…long enough for Maren to come in from a door at the back of the room. She’s much smaller in person, and her almond-shaped eyes are narrowed. Then she smiles of all things, and pulls a tiny dart pistol from the pocket of her silk bathrobe. I hit the deck.

  What is she doing here? Wait, better question—who carries a dart gun in her bathrobe?

  Something whizzes over my head and strikes the wood paneling on the wall with a thump. I roll, trying to get to my feet. Maren’s laughing. Another dart just misses my shoulder. She only has three shots with a gun that small. If I can dodge the last one, maybe I can rush her. I can’t lie—beating her head against that expensive wooden desk would give me a lot of satisfaction.

  I manage to get my feet under me. Maren nodes in approval. “Excellent reflexes. Impressive.”

  A compliment? Startled, I pause and Maren aims for my chest. I dodge right; the sight on the dart gun follows me. I’m about to feint left and dive back to the floor when the office door slides open. Quinn bursts into the room.

  That distraction is just enough. The last dart goes wide, driving into the wall three feet from my right arm.

  “Quinn,” Maren says, her voice low and smooth. “Please restrain our guest.”

  “What the hell, lady?” I ask, backing away from Quinn. “Do you always shoot at guests?”

  “Well, you’re hardly a guest considering you broke in.” Maren nods to Quinn. “Be careful. She’s nearly as fast as you are, and utterly wild.”

  I tense up, ready to dodge Quinn. Where I’ll go is a mystery to me, but I have no intention of going down easy.

  “All we want to do is ask you some questions. About where you’ve been, the company you keep…that sort of thing. Be cooperative and this won’t hurt a bit. Fight and it might hurt a lot,” Maren says, the words deadly sweet.

  “Screw you and the hover you rode in on,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Fine, then. Quinn, if you will.”

  Quinn gives me this conflicted look. I don’t know how, but I recognize his expression. He’s torn between two bad ideas, and hasn’t decided where he’ll come down. Instinctively, I hold out my hand. Quinn blinks, breaking eye contact, and I get ready to fight.

  Instead, he runs at Maren and body slams her.

  Maren struggles against him, freeing one arm. She’s holding some kind of black box. When she presses a button on it, Quinn screams, clapping his hands to his head. Rapid flashes of red on the wall catch my eye. All of the dots are converging on one spot—this room.

  Quinn writhes in agony on the floor. Maren shoves him off of her and gets to her feet, an ugly look on her face. She stalks toward me. “This nonsense stops now.”

  I back up. I need to run, but the sight of Quinn in pain keeps me rooted. He isn’t screaming anymore. Instead, his body is wracked with convulsions. Something deep inside me twists, telling me I have to fix this.

  “What are you doing to him?” I ask, edging toward the marble fireplace. There’s a metal poker in a stand at its edge. If I keep Maren angry and talking, I might be able to grab it.

  “Reminding him of his manners.” She smiles cruelly, her teeth too white to be real.

  I back against the wall next to the fireplace, hiding the stand behind my body. Wrapping my fingers around the poker’s handle, I say, “With just that stupid box?”

  Maren’s eyes go wide, like I’ve surprised her, but she laughs. “You don’t remember?”

  The red dots on the wall are getting closer—the artificials will be here any minute. I free the poker from the stand. “Remember what?”

  She gives me a calculating look. “Didn’t you wonder how you could open that door?”

  I almost drop the poker. How did I open it?

  “Ah, I see you’re wondering.”

  Quinn moans; the convulsions have stopped. If I’m going to do this, I need to hit her now. “Not really.”

  My
shoulder twitches.

  “You’re lying!” Maren sounds delighted.

  “No I’m not. I couldn’t care less what game you’re playing.”

  My shoulder twitches again.

  “Yes, you do.” Her smile is smug. “Trust me, I know.”

  That scares me, but I’m afraid to ask why she knows my tell. Maren comes closer, standing so her body brushes mine. I shudder as she runs a cool hand across my cheek. “I know more about you than you think.”

  She sinks her fingernails into my flesh. Her touch breaks something inside of me. Rage like I’ve never known moves my hand. I swing the poker with my full strength, bringing it crashing against Maren’s side. She cries out and stumbles backward. Men shout to one another in the hallway. Out of time, I punch Maren in the jaw as hard as I can. My fingers explode with pain as she collapses.

  I run to Quinn, still carrying the poker in case I need it. His eyes are open, swimming with tears. “Button, under the desktop, right side. Push it.”

  Not taking time to question him, I find the button and punch it with my thumb. The red dots on the wall freeze in place, then slowly begin dispersing in different directions. “What’d I just do?”

  “Called off the red alert and reset their task protocol. The teams are going back to normal duties. Low-end artificials have rigid instructions, so they’re easy to redirect.” Quinn sits up, wincing. “Gears, that pain switch packs a punch.”

  “What about Port?” I ask. “He wouldn’t have any protocols.”

  “I hit him over the head and shoved him in a closet,” Quinn says. “He won’t come around for a while.”

  I put his arm over my shoulder. “Think you can walk? We need to get out of here before she wakes up.”

  He stands on shaking legs. “I can manage.”

  But for how long? “That pain switch thing—what’s its range?”

  “About a hundred meters. If we can get out of the building, Maren can’t activate it.” He gives me a tired smile. “It’s more for self-defense, in case one of us throws a circuit and goes crazy.”

  “Or decides to rebel?”

  “That too.”

  “Can I remove it?”

  “No.” Quinn touches the back of his neck. “It’s wired into my upper spinal column. If anyone tries to remove it, it’ll self-destruct and I’ll die.”

  “Ouch,” I say. Then I have a worse thought. “Can she track you with it?” It’d be just my luck if my new friend has a satellite beacon embedded in his body somewhere.

  Quinn shakes his head. “She can’t track any of the high-functioning artificials. Trackers mess up the electronic signals in our brains—frequency issue. Most of the others have some kind of mind-control built in instead, running off the pain switch platform.”

  “But not you?”

  “They wanted to see what I could do if I was given some free will.” He gives me a sidelong glance. “I bet they’re rethinking that decision right about now.”

  Quinn sneaks me down several hallways to the service entrance at the back of Maren’s kitchen. He gasps for breath as we jog and his face is streaked with sweat and tears.

  “I don’t understand…you’re not human. How are you crying?” I ask.

  “I have a nervous system and tear ducts and sweat glands along with organic skin like a regular human’s. I feel pain.” He flashes me an angry look. “Just the same as you.”

  That shuts me up.

  Quinn leads me swiftly across the grounds to a wrought-iron gate more fitting for a medieval castle than Maren’s house. It lets out onto a driveway where deliveries must come in. At the end of the drive, a road runs down to the lakeside.

  We find shelter behind a bar that has been shut down for years. Dumpsters guard either end of the weathered building, and the concrete is slimy with wastewater and mold. Scanning the landmarks around the lake, I use the skyscrapers to get my bearings. The old subway station is half a mile to the west. When I take off running, Quinn limps along behind. I’ll have to do something about that eventually, but it’s better that we both put distance between us and Maren for now.

  I trek along the old lakeside docks then through alleys until I reach the subway stop. Quinn follows me down to the platform. My bike’s right where Turpin promised. If I redline the engine, I might have a prayer of getting home before the cops receive a distress call from Maren.

  “Any room for me?” Quinn asks.

  “We’re parting ways.”

  “Lexa, listen. We need to talk about—”

  “Look, I appreciate your help in there, but I just saved your life, so we’re even.” I jam my helmet on my head.

  “You can’t leave,” he growls. “I just found you!”

  He puts a hand on my arm. Electricity tingles through my skin at his touch and it takes all my willpower to shake him off. “It’s safer for us to separate.”

  As I pull away and drive down the empty tracks, I glance in my side mirror. Quinn’s head is bowed; he looks utterly lost. I try to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach.

  I kick the bike in gear so I don’t have to look back anymore.

  Chapter Eleven

  On My Own

  I burst into Turpin’s office and he jumps. “Lexa, what are you doing here?”

  “What? I live here!”

  He stands, holding a stunner, green light on. “Not anymore.”

  My body goes cold. He’s pointing an armed stunner at my chest. I’d take Maren with her dart gun any day over this. “What’s going on?”

  “You first,” he says. “What happened to you tonight?”

  Bewildered, I say, “I fell inside the duct. It made a ton of noise and the Bolts came running. I managed to elude them for a while until I ended up in Maren’s office.” I point my finger at him, angry now. “She was home. Home! You promised she was gone and security would be light, but there were Bolts everywhere!”

  The blood leaves Turpin’s face. “You saw Maren? How’d you get away?”

  “I knocked her out with a fireplace poker and ran like hell. I guess she woke up, huh?”

  “You think?” He steadies his hand; the stunner’s green light blinds me. “You’ve been all over the security feeds. Cops and Bolts are tearing the city apart looking for you. They’ve already put a bounty on your head.” Turpin backs a few steps away. “Lexa, you have to go.”

  “Why?” The adrenaline from my escape wears off, and I stumble to a chair. “I got away—they don’t know for sure I’m here. I could just lie low, hide—”

  “It’s more than that.” Turpin sounds nervous. “I’ve been looking into the light that paralyzed you the other night, when you stole the first chip.”

  I wonder where he’s going with this. “Did you find out what the security system is?”

  He won’t look at me. “One of my dealers checked in while you were gone and told me some things.” Turpin pauses to take a long breath. “It’s a detector for high-end artificials. Apparently my scanner can’t catch anything newer than a K500 because Maren managed to bring the K600s up to regular human body temperature. Earlier models usually clock in at ninety-four degrees—dead giveaway. No wonder she kept that advance a secret.”

  My head spins and that old-fashioned word “swoon” inexplicably comes to mind. I pull myself together enough to say, “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not true. It’s not!”

  He sags into his chair like an old man, never lowering the stunner pointed at my heart. “No matter what we all thought, you’re not human. You never were.”

  The fears I had in the subway tunnel resurface, refusing to run and hide. Why else would both Quinn and Maren know me if I didn’t come from Precipice. No…no, no, no. My breath comes fast and shallow. “But…I eat, I sleep. I…I grew up, for Skies’ sake. What Bolt grows?”

  “The K800s,” Turpin says.

  I feel like I’ve been slammed against a brick wall. “They haven’t even been built yet!”

  Turpin sits up straighter, giving me
a look of such revulsion that I feel it in my spine. “We don’t know that. Maybe you’re a prototype. It’d certainly explain how you showed up on my doorstep at age ten with no memories.”

  “I’m human! Everything about me is human! I don’t believe it!” I don’t. How can he say this to me? How can he just turn on my like this?

  “Lexa, have you ever been sick?” he asks softly.

  “What?” I comb my memories for any cold or flu. Oh, Stars… “No.”

  “Artificials don’t get sick. They’re built with all kinds of safeguards against illness—part of being engineered. On top of that, every cut or bruise you’ve gotten healed really fast. I can’t believe I didn’t put it all together.”

  “Maybe I’m just healthy,” I say, leaning forward. I want to punch something, and keeping calm is taking every bit of control I have. Lashing out would only prove his point, so I force my voice to stay steady. “You keep me locked up in here most of the time, so where would I catch a cold?”

  “True….but there is one way to know for sure. You’ve never been off the Exeprin long enough to um…” He shifts uncomfortably. “To um…”

  “Get my period?” I ask.

  Turpin’s cheeks flush, but he nods.

  “No—I never stopped taking it after you gave it to me those first few months. I’ve been working this whole time. I need the boost to keep me off the stims.”

  “Maybe you should quit taking it,” he says, “to see what happens.”

  “What’s going to happen?” I ask. But I don’t want to know. Not really.

  “You’ll never start your cycle. Your creators figured out how to mimic most body systems…but the last thing they want are Bolts that can reproduce.”

  I can’t lie to myself anymore. This isn’t a dream, not a joke. I’m a monster. An abomination. Something that shouldn’t even be alive.

  I struggle against a wave of tears, pissed that I even want to cry. But in the last ten minutes, Turpin has not only taken away my humanity—he’s taken away my babies, too. Is this why I never wondered about kissing a boy? Because my body knows I can’t become a mother? Because my hormones never really worked in the first place?