The Bionics
Alicia Michaels
The Bionics Series
Part 1
The Bionics
Copyright 2012 by Alicia Michaels
Cover art by Larry J. Stephens (Imagine Images Photography and Graphic Design)
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any manner whatsoever. Please respect the work of this author by not copying or reproducing their work.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or people living or dead is coincidental.
Dedicated To:Daddy. If it weren’t for you sitting me down in front of the Star Wars movies growing up, I might not have been enough of a nerd to come up with this story. Sorry I could never get into Star Trek.
Special thanks to my wonderful Beta readers:
Carly Fall
Autumn Nauling
Paperdolls
Tamara Beard
R.K. Ryals
One
Blythe Sol and Dax Janner
Dallas, Texas
August 15, 4010
4:00 a.m.
I am awakened by my internal alarm system and all I want is to ignore it. I want to turn it off and roll over and go back to sleep, burrow beneath my thin, scratchy blanket and ignore the world outside of the house I have taken shelter in.
Unfortunately, my internal alarm doesn’t work that way and won’t shut the hell up until I’m on my feet with my eyes open. I have the feeling that my alarm—which should only be heard by me—has also awakened Dog. I’m wondering if it emits one of those high-pitched screeches that only canines can hear. The furry bastard is licking my face with his hot tongue before I’ve even finished rubbing the sleep from my eye. I pet him on the head absently and stand, stretching the fatigue out of my human limbs.
I still haven’t gotten used to reconciling my human half with the robotic additions gifted to me by the Science and Technology Department of the Restoration Project. It’s especially jarring first thing in the morning; half of my body takes longer to wake up than the rest. Eventually, I am able to stand and give Dog a proper ‘good morning’. The wiry mutt looks up at me expectantly, his tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth and his tail swishing from side to side until I go over to my pack and fish out a few strips of beef jerky. I still don’t know what breed he is. Medium sized with ginger-colored fur, he looks to be a mix of Irish terrier and God-knows-what. He reminds me a lot of myself, a mishmash of different things: black, white, girl, robot. We’re both a conundrum.
Dog leaps up onto his hind legs and spins in a circle for the treat, bringing a smile to my face as he always does. I have very few reasons to smile these days. It’s the only reason I keep the fur ball around, despite the fact that my situation isn’t exactly ideal for keeping a pet.
I hear the muted mumbling of the television from the next room and I know that Dax is awake and watching the news. I also smell food, which means he’s making breakfast. I rifle through my pack until I find a clean shirt and replace it with the one I slept in. I’ve only brought one pair of pants with me, so I’m glad they’re my most comfortable brown suede. I pull on a pair of heavy wool socks and my boots before reaching for my jacket. It’s heavy with all the odds and ends I keep in the many pockets lining the front, but it’s warm and functional.
I grab the small pouch containing my toiletry items and walk into the bathroom, mentally thanking Dax for letting me take the big bedroom. While the house has been cleared of all furniture—with the exception of a beat up couch in the living room and the bed I slept in last night—the power and water still run, as well as the heat. I fill my hands with water from the faucet and splash it over the dirty mirror, using the sleeve of my jacket to wipe a clean spot big enough for me to see myself. I open the bag and take my time with the essential grooming: brush my teeth, splash my face with water, and comb my shoulder-length, dark brown hair into a ponytail. Once that’s done, I brace my hands on the sink and stare at myself in the mirror.
I keep looking for that girl who had dreams of joining the Army and the ranks of the Military Police, of riding around on one of those sleek hover bikes and pinning one of their gleaming, silver badges to my shirt. At only nineteen years-old, I have lost most of my optimism; that girl is gone and I am now the antithesis of everything she once believed in. Sure, I look the same: caramel-colored skin halfway between my mother’s black and father’s white, brown eyes, a beauty spot just beneath my left eye. Yet, everything about me has changed and it has absolutely nothing to do with the Restoration Project’s accessories. With a sigh, I reach into the bag for my contact lens case. It stings like a bitch on contact and will hurt for hours after I put it in.
The single, glass lens protects my bionic eye from the police scanners, which are capable of detecting hardware like mine, and keeps me safe while I’m walking the streets with Dax. There is no protection for my robotic arm, except for the polyurethane glove the Professor constructed for me to wear over it. It looks like my other hand and seals over the skin right above my elbow, where the titanium and gadgetry end and I begin. It repels water, is heat and cold resistant and, more importantly, keeps me looking like the other ‘normies’.
After a minute or two, the excruciating pain in my left eye socket fades to an annoying throb. While the actual eyeball doesn’t hurt, the lids do, as well as the nerves attached to the damn thing, and I hate wearing the thick, glass lens. By lunchtime it’ll be an irritating itch and by the time I’m ready to take it off, I’ll have gotten used to it. I slip my digital watch on and grab my bag before returning to the master bedroom, throwing it into my pack. I roll my blanket up and slide that in there as well.
4:20 a.m. Better get a move on.
Dog is sitting beside the door on his haunches, waiting patiently for me to open it. As soon as I do, he’s rushing to the living room to greet Dax, who is sitting on the couch in front of the television. The sleek sofa is the only piece of furniture left in the room. The remnants of the family that once occupied it are scattered across the floor. Broken photo frames, forgotten children’s toys, and articles of clothing tell the story of a family recently terrorized by the government and Military Police. The television is working just fine, though, even if it isn’t one of those sensory stimulating models they have in those big cities that are still standing. Those babies have picture so colorful and sound so realistic that you’d swear the actors of your favorite shows were right there in your living room. You can smell what the TV chefs are cooking and the fabric softener in commercials full of smiling people and soft towels. I step over a broken vase and dodge a disembodied baby doll head, dodging the debris scattered around the room like landmines until I reach the kitchen.
Dax has, in his usual fashion, made the most of what we found when coming upon this house the night before. He’s located and cleaned a few pans, plates, cups and utensils and raided the fridge.
“Fresh eggs?” I ask as I dig into the pan he’s left on the stove. The eggs are still warm and are mixed with bits of Dax’s rationed beef jerky. “Potatoes?” I scoop some of those onto my plate too and eye the orange concoction in a glass pitcher on the counter with awe. “Is this real orange juice?”
“The house couldn’t have been vacant for more than a few days before we showed up,” Dax said from where he sat on the couch, glued to the news. “The expiration date on that orange juice was for a week from now. And the potatoes aren’t real, but the eggs are, so eat up.”
We fall into silence again as I sink down onto the s
ofa beside him, sitting my orange juice glass on the floor between my feet. I dig into my eggs and groan aloud with ecstasy. It’s been months since I’ve eaten real eggs. Food that isn’t biologically engineered is hard to come by, which tells me this family had money. However, their wealth obviously wasn’t enough to save them from what happened here before we arrived. Despite the beef jerky, which is an odd mix with the eggs, I wolf my breakfast down pretty quickly, content to let Dax finish watching the broadcast in peace.
Silence between Dax and me is comfortable, which is good because I’m not much for talking unless I have something to talk about. Dax knows this about me and understands that my silence isn’t always a bad thing. After I’m done eating, I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He is leaning back comfortably, his long legs spread with Dog resting between them. His smooth, brown skin is offset by dark, midnight black hair buzzed close to his head and twinkling brown eyes. Dax is a great, hulking beast of a man, broad in all the places that count, but as warm and charming as they come. He and I are the same age—though he’ll reach his twentieth birthday a few months before me—and I always wonder what our lives would be like if we’d met before the nuclear blasts four years ago that hit many of the major cities in North America and changed our lives forever. Would we have ever met? Would we be friends?
I often tease him that if he didn’t have titanium ribs and a set of robotic legs, he could be on one of those electronic billboards in the city, posing in his underwear. Dax always laughs at me, but I think it’s true. Then I think of what a shame it is that guys like Dax can’t be models. They can’t be anything but dead or in hiding.
Him finding me three years ago was one of the best things that ever happened to me, because it saved my life—he saved my life. He turns to me and smiles and I smile back. Besides Dog, he’s the only one that can make me do that.
“Ready, Blythe?” he asks, reaching for the remote and turning off the television at the height of President Drummond’s speech. The image of our brown-haired, blue-eyed national leader disappears and I am relieved to be free of his deceptive gaze. “I think I’ve had enough of that asshole to last me all week. How ‘bout you?”
I snort as I stand and sling my pack over my shoulders. “I don’t know why you watch that garbage. All they do is fill the airwaves with his messages and his voice. If you’re not careful, you’ll become one of his mindless drones. You’re already part robot, so you’re halfway there.”
Dax laughs and stands, pulling on his blue-jean, fur-lined jacket. I always joke that it makes him look like one of those old-fashioned pilots they have photos of in the museums. He pulls a skull cap over his dark hair and I dig mine out before stuffing my ponytail in it and covering my ears. I have gotten used to bundling up every morning before starting out. Ever since the war, the burning out of the ozone layer and our nation’s pitiful attempts at constructing a synthetic replacement that left our planet in even worse shape, the weather is unpredictable. While August used to be the hottest month of the year in the state of Texas, today we will more than likely find ourselves tramping through snow.
“What do you think, Blythe,” Dax asks as we leave the house, Dog trailing obediently behind us, “keep or burn?”
I stare up at the smooth, white exterior of the house with its round windows and clear, glass roof. It’s a beautiful house—this is one of the few areas in the state not affected by nuclear war—but too conspicuous for us to use as a hideout in the future, so I tell Dax we should burn it. If the M.P.s should come back looking for more of our kind, our fingerprints and hair fibers will be everywhere. We can’t leave any hint of our presence in this house or neighborhood and since we can’t use it as a hideout, we’ll burn this beautiful place to the ground.
He finds a gas can in the garage and goes back inside. Dog and I stand on the brown, withered grass and wait for Dax to come out. By the time we set off on our way, the house is lighting up from the inside with orange flame, soon to be no more than a pile of smoldering ash. We really kick it into high gear then, putting as much distance between us and the house as possible before the M.P.s are alerted of our presence and show up.
As we walk, I reach into one of my many pockets and pull out a pair of gloves. They don’t offer much protection from the cold, but I wear them anyway because they’re better than nothing. It’s a beautiful morning, even if the sun hasn’t come up yet. A few stars remain in the sky, and that pretty mix of pale blue, orange, and pink has just started to spill out over the horizon.
It is now 5:00 a.m.
We’re making good time, although I dread going back to headquarters empty-handed. Coming back with even one refugee would be worth it, but at this point it seems like too much to hope for. We’ve been in Dallas for five days now, combing various neighborhoods for signs of life or people in hiding.
“Do you think there’s anyone left in this neighborhood?” I ask Dax as we walk. I am keeping a sharp eye on our surroundings, counting on my bionic eye to give me readings on any nearby signs of life. It’s picking up the body heat signatures of me, Dax, Dog, and a rabbit hopping past us across the street, but nothing else. It’s got our environment’s temperature read at thirty degrees and is telling me that there is a seventy-five percent chance of sleet and freezing rain tonight.
Dax shrugs. He is looking for signs of life too, even though he knows I’m more likely to spot them first. “I doubt it,” he says. “Looks like we got the short end of the stick this mission.”
I nod in agreement but don’t say anything else. With the house in that condition and still standing, it was more than likely an arrest had been made. Some poor soul had been imprisoned before we had a chance to get there and save them. Now, there was no telling what President Drummond has given his puppets at the Restoration Project leave to do to people like us. I shudder at the thought.
“We can’t change what happened at that house,” Dax says, and I know he’s sensed the direction of my thoughts. He knows that I tend to take these things personally. “We save the people we can, Blythe,” he reminds me, repeating the age-old mantra of the Professor. I know he is right, but I still can’t help it. Seeing that house go up in flames reminds me of another time I stood outside a burning house, barely making it out alive. That was the last night I ever laid eyes on my family.
I never will again.
“There are plenty of houses down this street to check,” I say, quickly changing the subject. “Hopefully I’ll get a readout and we don’t have to go back to Jenica empty-handed.”
Really, I don’t give a flying fuck about Jenica but I need an excuse to voice my desperation at needing to find someone … anyone.
Dax glances at his watch. “We have a few hours before the hovercraft makes its rounds. Let’s get moving.”
***
By noon I am discouraged, cranky, hungry and ready to go back to headquarters. Not a soul exists in this abandoned neighborhood. Either Jenica’s intel was wrong, or the people we’ve come to find are long gone, probably incarcerated or dead.
We’re standing on the corner of what was once a busy intersection, in front of a row of hollowed-out storefronts. We’ve walked for hours toward the rendezvous point; a section of town long since abandoned for the newer, more modern houses, offices and shopping centers. Soon, bulldozers will take out what remains here and gleaming, towering white buildings will replace the ones we stand in front of now. I lean against a storefront window beside Dax, watching Dog run around in circles and try to catch the snowflakes that started falling about an hour ago. He’s an ugly little mutt, but he’s mine. Well, ours. Dog is just as much Dax’s as he is mine. I glance at my watch just as the humming sound of the hovercraft reaches my ears.
“On time as always,” Dax says with a snort. “Do you think she schedules and times her bathroom breaks?”
I cut Dax a look out of the corner of my eye. “Jenica? Yeah, I could see that. Urination scheduled for five o’clock p.m.”
Dax’s
guffaws become full-fledged laughs as the large, oblong shadow of the hovercraft blots out the meager light of the sun. I picture Jenica in the cockpit with her black, waist-length, bone-straight ponytail and sharp features. Dax and I have a running joke going about that ponytail. We are both of the opinion that it holds her face up. No way are her eyes really that narrow and sharp, or her cheekbones so well-defined. Technically, this only applies to half of her face, as the other half is made of titanium, but still.
The hovercraft lowers over us and the hatch opens, releasing the ladder for us to climb in. Our pilot and team leader, Jenica Swan, is waiting, along with the six other members of our crew. Her starched, black uniform is spotless as usual, not a crease out of place or a speck of lint to be found. I don’t think she’s got a single split end in that sleek ponytail.
Dax and I slide into our seats in the front row, directly behind Jenica, and buckle our harnesses. One look over my shoulder reveals our crew and the bedraggled group of refugees they’ve found. I nod in greeting to the crewmembers and try to smile encouragingly at the dozen or so people they rescued. I know what they’re feeling, and realize that many of them have been through what I’ve been through. My eyes lock with a girl no older than me, with smooth, cocoa-colored skin. Her eyes are dark and wide and her hands are shaking. I don’t see any machinery so I wonder if she has bionic organs of some kind. There are others there too, family members of those with more obvious hardware, but this girl is alone and something tells me she’s one of us. Then I wonder if she’s lost her family like I have, since none of the other rescued people have her dark skin or luscious features.
I want to encourage her, to tell her that I know where she’s been and that we’re here to help; she’s safe now. But none of those words come and I turn away from her, closing my eyes against her pain. It is too much for me and reminds me of things I’d rather forget.
The Bionics (The Bionics Series Part 1) Page 1