Kai wrapped me up in his arms and locked his mouth on mine. “Missed…you,” he sputtered between kisses.
“I missed you too,” I eked out when he finally allowed me to come up for air.
Kai had kept himself busy while I was gone. He’d fashioned a bed from a piece of rock jutting out from the wall, and chairs from boulders. A mattress formed from a soft cradle of sand lay on top of the rock, and old clothes were masterfully bundled into pillows. I knew he did all of this for me. After all, he didn’t need to sit, sleep or eat. Kai leaned me back on the bed. The sand was unexpectedly cozy. He crawled in behind me. As much as I hungered for him, he hungered for information. I forgot he’d sat alone in this cave while I dealt with the outside world.
“Tell me absolutely everything,” he said, drawing me into a spooning position.
I told him in detail of how they arrested me, my doubts about Brynn, the confrontation with my parents and suspicion of the connection between the police and The Consortium. He listened patiently and drew me in even closer. The tension of the day escaped in the form of tears. Kai didn’t say anything, holding me and stroking my hair.
After a while the blubbering stopped, replaced by that strange post-cry breathing stutter. Kai took my shoulders gently and guided me from lying on my right side in our spooning position to lying on my left side facing him. He wiped the tears from my eyes and kissed me, gentle and comforting at first but more passionate when I responded.
Kai broke the kiss and, after throwing me a cheeky grin, shimmied down the sand and stood at the end of the makeshift bed. As he had done many times before, Kai performed for me. I had told him once how much pleasure I derived from watching him undress. Since then, the show had grown better and better each time until in its perfection, he made me so wet my panties clung to me.
Inch by excruciating inch he peeled off his tight silver T-shirt, revealing the eight ab muscles two at a time. He stopped below his pecs, teasing me and drawing my attention upward to his sexy half smile. Kai’s eyes, usually bright and cheerful, were now hooded and heavy with desire.
“Oh come on,” I chastised him, “I don’t have the energy for this. It’s been a long day.”
Kai smiled and pulled the shirt the rest of the way over his head, mussing his perfect coif.
Normally I would wait for him to do the honors of undressing me, but it seemed during his show I had been reflexively shedding the unwanted barrier between us myself. By the time he discarded his final sock, I was naked, kicking my panties off the bed and grabbing at the air between us like that would pull him closer.
“Playing hard to get, are you?” Kai laughed, climbing on top of me. His mouth found mine, and the familiar warmth spread through me as he kissed me hard and deep.
He nipped and licked his way down to my torso. I closed my eyes and focused my whole consciousness on his touch.
“What’s this?” His voice dragged me from my ecstasy-induced stupor.
“What’s what?”
“Right here.” He pointed to a red patch on my stomach.
“I don’t know. I must be allergic to something.” I grabbed at him, trying to get back to where we were.
“There’s another one.” He rolled me over, and I let out an exasperated sigh.
“So I have a rash, so what?”
“This isn’t a normal rash, Dar. Look at this.” He shoved the back of my hand in front of my face, and I saw what he meant. This wasn’t like any rash I’d ever had. There were small blisters encircled with a white patch which itself was surrounded by a deep red.
“Motherfuckers! Get dressed!” I rolled over underneath Kai and shoved him off me.
“What is it?”
“They knew I would figure out a way to hide your tracking device, so they used me to find you.”
“What are you talking about?” Kai asked as he stepped into his pants, doing exactly as I said, never questioning that I knew what I was talking about.
“The damn jumpsuit they made me put on.” My voice shook with the anger. “They laced it with something. Probably a carbon isotope. They wouldn’t want to risk radiation poisoning.”
“English, please, for those of us who weren’t programmed for science.”
“Isotopes, when they decay, let off a radiation that can be tracked, like leaving breadcrumbs for a trail.”
We were both dressed, and Kai led us down the passage to the entrance of the tunnel. To me it was pitch black, but he was equipped with night vision. That was a lot of foresight for the engineers who created him.
“So, they put these isotopes on your jumpsuit when you were in jail. Now they will be able to track us?” Kai asked when we reached the open air.
“Exactly, and we probably don’t have a lot of time. The alpha radiation will start to degrade and they’ll lose their chance, so I’m assuming they’re not too far behind us.”
“Which way should we go?” Kai asked.
“Away from that.” I pointed to the light off in the distance.
We started running across the empty expanse, the light chasing us right back toward the city. In the darkness, I stumbled on the uneven ground. Kai picked me up without missing a beat, and we continued our forward motion away from the light, which grew bigger at an alarming rate.
“What’s that?” I pointed to our right. Off in the distance was yet another light, and this one was moving even faster.
Kai jogged to the right. We were now on a diagonal from the first light and being chased by the second. My heart pounded out of my chest. Kai ran with such power and speed that each time his foot hit the ground, it knocked the wind out of me.
I couldn’t help but think of him as heroic as he charged forward, the two lights closing in on us. Which one would get to us first and what fate waited in that light? It was going to be close. The two lights were on a collision course, and we were going to be ground zero.
“Get in!” a voice screamed to us from a tram as one of the blinding lights overtook us.
“What should we do?” Kai asked, still running, his voice steady. I guess they didn’t program him for out of breath.
“I don’t know.” I glanced around frantically for an out, practically twisting my head off.
The tram overtook us and, in a blur of dust, slid around forty-five degrees and stopped in front of us.
Kai leapfrogged over the moving vehicle and kept running.
The tram started moving again toward us, fast. The other light, which I had almost forgotten about, was now gaining on us too.
“Get in!” a familiar voice commanded as the first tram caught up with us again.
This time I recognized the voice. “Stop!” I yelled, and Kai obeyed with such a sudden break, my heart surged into my throat. The tram shot past us, screeching to a halt a few meters away. The passenger hatch swung up.
“Go,” I commanded. The other tram was seconds away.
Kai moved so fast everything blurred. One moment we were outside, the next we were in the tram and he was pulling the hatch closed.
“Here, you’ll need this. It’s a lead-lined coat from the lab. It took me a while, but I figured out what they were doing.”
I took the jacket from Brynn. “You always were the smart one. You better move it—they’re gaining on us.”
“Mom always did say I drove too fast.” Brynn punched the accelerator and the tram jolted forward. If Kai hadn’t been holding on to me, I would have flown through the front.
I scanned behind us to check on our pursuer’s progress.
“Don’t worry about them,” Brynn quipped. “My engine is about three generations ahead of theirs.”
“You never did like to buy anything off the rack.”
Kai’s face contorted in confusion as he transferred his gaze between Brynn and me.
“It’s okay. She’s on our side.” I turned to Brynn. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Let’s get you somewhere safe where we can talk. I’ve been doing some digging, and yo
u’ll never believe what I found out.”
Chapter Five
“You’ll need this too.” Brynn took one hand off the controls and reached into a compartment between the seats. She handed me a laser screwdriver and a handheld infopad.
I fumbled with the handheld. It was less than a centimeter thin but weighed much more than I expected. The model was one I had never seen before. The exterior was metallic and cold to the touch, instead of the usual nonconducting polymer. On the screen was a schematic of Kai’s body. A blue dot differentiated the tracking device from the rest of his anatomy.
“Take off your shirt,” I commanded. As usual, Kai obeyed. At the beginning, he used to do everything I told him to, because that’s what he was programmed to do. Now trust overrode his programming.
I showed him the schematic, and Kai nodded his understanding.
“Are you sure this won’t hurt you?”
“I wasn’t programmed to experience pain.”
“Yeah—well, you weren’t supposed to feel love either.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Brynn interjected. “If it hurts, there’s some anesthetic in the medkit.”
“Just start slow and we’ll see how it goes.” Kai’s lips curved into enough of a smile to reassure me.
My hand shook when I lifted the laser.
“A small cut here will do the trick.” He pointed to a spot under his left pec. “There should be a contact to open the panel you’re trying to reach.”
With the laser end of the instrument, I made a small incision. No blood flowed out, but Kai did make a sound I’d never heard before, something between a moan and a growl.
“Are you okay?”
“So that’s what pain is—interesting.”
I read his expression. He was still calm and stoic. The reassuring smile still plastered to his face telling me the pain wasn’t too horrible. With a cringe, I stuck my finger in the gap to search around for the contact. His inside wasn’t the same consistency as the outside. Whatever gave his flesh warmth must have been in his skin, because the layers beneath were cool. There was an odd texture to the tissue under his skin, like a dry jelly. I pushed farther into the viscous and found something hard, cool and metal. I turned the device around and pushed the button on the top to set the polarity, according to the specifications on the handheld.
The moment the screwdriver touched the contact, his entire left breast lifted with a faint ripping sound, almost like the Velcro we played with at the history museum.
I pulled the screwdriver out and let it fall to the floor. “I’m so sorry. Does that feel as nasty as it looks?”
“Don’t worry, Darra. It’s bit peculiar, but nothing unpleasant.” He reached down and grabbed the screwdriver from the floor, handing the small instrument to me. “You need to finish what you started.”
“Okay, but you’ll tell me if I hurt you.”
“Probably not—it needs to be done. They’re still following us.”
I looked back to see the lights of the second tram.
“And they’re gaining on us,” Brynn added.
I inhaled a lungful of courage and, with as much cold determination as I could muster, used the laser to cut a swath of breast tissue. The incision revealed a pea-sized titanium sphere with a blinking green light. “Got it,” I cried out in triumph.
Again I forced my finger through the gelatinous material which served as Kai’s muscle. I touched the transponder at the end of my finger. “Are you sure this doesn’t hurt?” I asked, projecting my own discomfort as I forced a second finger through his breast tissue.
“No. I have no sensation.”
“Just get it out already!” Brynn shouted. “They’re right on top of us, and there’s no point in me losing them if that thing is still in the tram.”
“Fine.” With a decisive shove, I broke through the membrane. With the other finger, I grasped the transponder. There was a horrible sucking sound as I pulled my hand out of his chest.
“Are you happy now?” I held the transponder out with disgust.
Brynn grabbed the small sphere from my hand. She opened the roof air screen and threw the small orb out into the night.
The tram jerked, and both Kai and I were shoved against the wall. Brynn sported an almost gleeful smile on her face as we took off toward the city center. We were traveling at speeds I didn’t think were possible for this model tram. She was a brilliant engineer.
“You made some modifications, didn’t you?”
Her face lit up. “I increased the torque by adjusting the maradime modulator. Then I made a small change to the…”
“Never mind. I won’t understand anyway. I’m glad your parents paid for those extra brains.” I looked behind us. “And we’re already out of sight of the—I’m not sure, were they Consortium or police?”
“You still think there’s a difference?” Brynn answered wryly.
I glanced over at Kai, who had remained silent during this whole conversation. “Oh shit, I’m sorry,” I sputtered when I realized how I had left him.
“For what?” he asked, as if it were a common occurrence to be stuffed into a two-person tram with me on his lap, his shirt off and part of his flesh detached and hanging.
I searched frantically for the medkit, all thoughts of my conversation with Brynn flying out the air shield.
“Where’s the medkit?” I screeched.
“It’s here.” Brynn reached under her seat and pulled out the red plastic box with the white plus sign on the top.
“What do you need it for?” Kai asked.
“To patch you up.”
“All you need to do is touch the contact again.”
Duh, that made sense. It was like I had taken stupid pills tonight. Maybe it was all the stress, but I was not acting like myself. I picked up the screwdriver and tapped the magnetic end to the contact in Kai’s chest. The skin crawled up like a living creature and reattached itself. Within moments Kai’s chest was healed and scar-free. There was no evidence of the procedure in his flesh.
“We’re here,” Brynn announced, as we pulled between two totally dark pods. The tram rested under some sort of enclosure.
“You know this isn’t going to hide us from them.” I was always good at stating the obvious.
“Dar, you honestly do need to give me a bit more credit. I can assure you we are quite invisible. There’s a scrambler built into the wall to hide the tracker on the tram. The outer surface is covered with a polymer I designed to absorb light and reflect sensors.”
“Damn, I always forget how smart you are. Maybe it’s because you’re always dating those bimbos.”
Brynn gazed from me to Kai and back to me again. She had a strange look on her face, as if she was stifling something. She shook it off.
“Let’s get inside,” she barked. “Once we’re inside, don’t speak until I’ve swept for bugs. I don’t think they know about this place, but we can’t be too careful.”
“Who are they?”
“Shush,” Brynn shot back at me. “I told you I’ll explain everything.”
Kai remained silent. He observed the interaction between Brynn and I. Judging by his facial expressions, he was regarding us with one part curiosity and one part amusement.
Brynn’s modifications restricted the size of the tram bay. We needed to squeeze sideways through the narrow opening. I wasn’t sure Kai was even going to fit. He was much larger than either of us.
“Illuminate, fifty percent,” Brynn ordered, and the lights obeyed.
The pod was bigger than average and furnished with the most expensive materials. There was even a table made of real wood from topside. You could tell the hydroponic wood from topside wood because of the texture. Something about the hydroponics left the trees with a subtle grain and very few rings.
“Scan,” Brynn commanded. A small robot lying dormant in the corner sprang to life. The mechanical creature raised a clamp-shaped hand, which held some sort of electronic device that loo
ked suspiciously like a PMP, a personal music player. With a whoosh of speed, the small machine was off, covering every inch of the pod. When it finished it came to a screeching halt in front of Brynn.
“Clean,” the robot said in a somewhat childlike electronic voice.
“Thanks, Max.” Brynn patted the meter-high metal box with arms, and the bot withdrew to the corner where it had come from.
“Everyone have a seat at the table. I’ll pour us some wine. Do you drink?” Brynn addressed Kai.
“Yes, please.”
Brynn punched a code into the food dispenser. The bell rang. She pulled out a tray with a bottle and three glasses and placed them on the table.
“I think this will help to calm our nerves a bit. It’s the good stuff. Be careful, though—this table is worth a fortune.”
“Whose house is this?” I inquired.
“Friends of my parents. They’re on my ideal vacation. Relaxing at Shangri-La, lying in springs heated by the earth’s core, playing tennis and eating themselves into a stupor. They won’t be back for a couple of weeks.” For a brief moment, a dreamy look fell over her face. She jerked back to reality and poured wine for us both, like any ordinary get-together.
I was about to start in on the questioning when Brynn snapped her fingers and hurried out of the room. She returned a few seconds later holding a jumpsuit. She handed the clothing to Kai. “This is a jumpsuit for a maintenance droid. You should blend in.” She avoided making eye contact with him, though I did see her steal a quick glance at his bare chest.
With his usual lack of modesty, Kai stripped right there in the kitchen and put on the jumpsuit. Brynn turned a dark crimson and quickly turned away from the sight. I’m not sure why she was embarrassed, since she had already held his penis in her hands.
“You can turn around now,” I said when Kai finished zipping up the jumpsuit.
“It just surprised me, that’s all.” Brynn straightened the bottom of her blazer and composed herself before sitting down at the table with us.
In all the excitement, she must not have thought about changing her hair color back to green. It was still honey blonde. I had forgotten how beautiful she was, especially with the leftover blush still visible on her cheeks. A flash from the time she and I were a couple swept through my mind. The intensity of the memory jarred me.
When Good Toys Go Bad Page 4