Attack Doll 5: The End of Lily Lee

by Douglas A. Taylor

Chapter 19

 

  It was pretty nice lying on the beach in the sunshine, half-drowsing in a healing coma and thinking pleasant thoughts. For some reason, my mind drifted to Padma's invitation to come visit her home, and my daydreams swirled around her and Lily and me and not very many clothes. I don't know how long the healing coma lasted -- I always have to check a clock when I'm done -- but the sun hadn't moved all that much higher in the sky when my eyes snapped open.

  I sat up. Shelley was sitting cross-legged in front of Lily; the two of them looked like mismatched bookends. "I have to go now," Shelley said when she saw I was awake and alert. "The battle is over, and I'd like to go check on the others.

  "Okay. Thanks for staying." The subject of my daydreams came back to me then, and I had an awful thought. "Um, I didn't say anything while I was out, did I?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer. "Anything about Lily or . . . or anything?"

  "If you did, I certainly didn't hear it." Her voice sounded vastly amused beneath her golden, robotic exterior. She got to her feet and began collecting Lily's dishes. "I'll send Yellow and Indigo out to prepare the new lair as soon as Wizzit says they can go. He says you got him the coordinates already. He will let you know when it's ready for Lily."

  I watched her teleport away and then, since I didn't have anything else to do, I turned my attention to Lily. Her current passive, vacant-eyed persona -- she herself termed it "operator mode" -- had always bothered me, and I had begun wondering whether I should activate one of the other modes. Definitely not Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick, because I didn't feel like getting my butt kicked again. Maybe commander mode, though. That side of her seemed nearly human, and if the two of us were going to be hanging around together full-time, I wanted someone I could talk to.

  "Lily," I said, "tell me how to put you into commander mode."

  Lily said in her monotone, "To initiate commander mode, say 'Initiate commander mode'. For more information about commander mode, say 'Tell me about commander mode'."

  Hmm. Believe it or not, that was more than I had been able to get out of her the last time we had her in our power. She hadn't been willing to tell us hardly anything about commander mode then. I thought that was a good sign. "Lily, tell me how to get you out of commander mode."

  "From commander mode, I can switch to any of the following modes: operator mode, attacker mode, and companion mode. To initiate operator mode, say 'Initiate operator mode.' To initiate attacker mode, say 'Initiate attacker mode.' You may then be asked to provide further information, such as whom to attack. To initiate companion mode, say 'Initiate companion mode', and you will then be asked to specify a submode. Or you can specify the submode as part of the initiate command itself."

  Yep, this definitely brought back memories of interrogating Lily the first time we had her, back in the old stronghouse. Somehow, she had made even the "take off your clothes" command sound boring. "Lily," I said, "tell me about commander mode."

  "Commander mode is intended to be a means by which the attack doll can operate largely independently of outside control or direction. In commander mode, I have nearly unlimited autonomy, which can be overridden only by completely trusted users or users with special privileges. I have access to all information available to the attack doll unit. I can self-initiate nearly any command of operator mode. I can self-initiate attacker mode against any perceived enemy. I can self-initiate any submode of companion mode. While in a self-initiated state, I function as my own minder: I can direct my own actions and end the self-initiated mode at any time, returning myself to commander mode."

  I stared at her. This was definitely more than she had said last time, and it raised some interesting possibilities. "Wizzit," I said, "are you getting all this?"

  "I sure am," came his chipper response. "Interesting stuff. It looks as though commander mode has a whole lot more potential than we ever saw her use."

  That echoed my own thoughts. The commander-mode Lily we had seen had been a relatively weak personality -- good at ordering Zoinks around, but not much else. Very dependent on "Uncle Oswald", and she seemed to be scared almost all the time. To hear her describe it now, though, it sounded like she ought to be able to self-heal, to assume any of the seductive personalities of companion mode, or even to become Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick any time she wanted. I had never seen her do any of that. Suddenly I wanted very much to talk to commander-mode Lily.

  But not here, I decided. Remembering how frightened she always was, I was worried she might run away and then I'd have to go searching for her. I decided I'd wait until we had her safely settled in the lair.

  Shelley's voice interrupted my thoughts. "Blue, this is Prime Commander. Black has reminded me about the matter we discussed earlier, about getting Lily to go to sleep. Black said to try putting Lily into a cage."

  "A cage?"

  "That's what I was told."

  Hmm. Putting her into a cage . . . it actually made a lot of sense, now that I thought about it. We had come to the conclusion some time ago that Lily slept only when her alter ego, Li Lin-fa, was dominant. I had encountered Li Lin-fa exactly twice before, and both times, she had been imprisoned in a cage. Up to now, we had always looked for some sort of command to bring Li Lin-fa to the fore, but maybe it wasn't a command. Maybe it was the environment.

  Shelley added, "Black said you would understand. Black is not at HQ at the moment, but I could contact Black if you feel you need to discuss it."

  "Thanks, Commander," I said. "There's no need to contact Black; I understand perfectly. It's a good suggestion. I'll follow it up."

  "Let me know what you find out."

  "Will do."

  With that taken care of, the next thing I tackled was getting Lily to recognize me with my force shield on. And if you have ever tried to get a computer program to do something non-obvious, with no manual whatsoever, then you can probably appreciate how frustrating it was. I tried telling her things like "I am Prime Blue", "Prime Blue is me", "Identify Trevor with Prime Blue", and countless other variants, but no dice. Eventually, I think I finally said something along the lines of "Lily, user Trevor is also the opponent known as Blue Prime." For some reason, that particular phrase worked; from then on, she always took orders from me whether I was activated or not.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, Wizzit announced that Nicolai and Padma's work was complete and he could send Lily and me to JB Swift's final remaining lair. As the teleportation haze disappeared from my vision, I looked around the large room in which we appeared; it seemed identical to the mad-scientist's lab that I had initially teleported into with Lily. Where, I wondered, would JB Swift hide a cage in a place like this? "Wizzit, do you detect anything resembling a cage?"

  "Negative. Yellow and Indigo will install microsensors all through this place sometime in the coming week as time and training permit. You can help if you want, since you've done it before. Until then, however, I have to rely on what I see through the sensors in your belt. You may have noticed, though, that the layout here appears to match that of the other site. We did not observe a cage there, quite possibly because we were not looking for one, but . . . let's see, perhaps I can tell you where the cage is not. Make a quarter-turn to your left."

  I did a left-face. "Is this good?"

  "A little more -- somewhere between a tad and a smidgen . . . there! Where you are facing is twelve o'clock. From what I see in my earlier recordings, there was definitely no cage in the other site in the sector from twelve o'clock to four o'clock. There was probably no cage between four o'clock and nine o'clock."

  "So if there's a cage here, it's most likely between nine o'clock and twelve o'clock?"

  "I have no information about that area."

  "Well, I guess that makes it a good place to start." I took hold of Lily's hand. "Lily, come with me."

  "Coming . . ." she murmured.
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  To make a short story even shorter, I found it. It wasn't even all that hard, actually, now that I knew to look for it; the only insight I had was that it was probably in a room by itself, to give Lily some privacy while she slept. Almost right away I spotted a nondescript door set in one wall, and we made a beeline for it.

  As I opened the door, I felt Lily's hand grow slack in mine, and then she let go altogether and stepped forward into the room. Inside was a line of iron bars from floor to ceiling which divided the room in half, like an old-time jail cell -- just the way I remembered it from the time Padma and I had spent skulking around a different Enclave base.

  I followed her inside. Moving like a sleepwalker, Lily stepped into the cage. Then she drew out a key from a pocket of her jumpsuit, locked the door behind her, and secreted the key within the hollow tubing that formed the framework of the cell's cot.

  "Lily?" I called, but she didn't seem to hear me. She sat down on the cot and stared into space, her hands folded in her lap.

  She stayed that way for a minute or so, and then her eyes came back into focus and she blinked and seemed to shake herself. Looking around, she caught sight of me, and her eyes went wide. "Who are you?"

  I felt a grin plaster itself all across my face; I had been waiting to hear those words from her for a long time. Well, not the words themselves exactly, but the language they were spoken in -- Cantonese, which Lily didn't speak, but Li Lin-fa did.

  "I am hurt that you do not recognize me, pretty one," I said in the same language. I pulled a mock pout, which I suddenly realized she couldn't see because, in my tests to determine whether Lily recognized Prime Blue, I had left my force shield activated.

  She must have recognized my altered voice, though, because her eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together in front of her mouth. "Prime Indigo?" she exclaimed. "My friend?"

  I bowed an acknowledgement. "That is who I am, although I am called Prime Blue now to match my new color."

  She stared at me. "The first time I met you, you had made yourself invisible because you were in danger," she said. "Now I can see you, but your face is hidden by blue clouds. Do your enemies still pursue you?"

  "They do not." On impulse, I deactivated my force shield and grinned at her. "Hello, Li Lin-fa. My real name is Trevor."

  Her eyes seemed to devour me, as if she wanted to commit every feature to memory. "Tre-vor?" she repeated, mangling the unfamiliar name.

  "I am an American," I explained. "Trevor is a common name in America." I grandly swept out my hand in an invitation. "Would you like to come out and talk to me, pretty one? I assure you, it is perfectly safe. The ones who once held you captive are gone now."

  A look of dismay crossed her face. "I cannot," she said. She turned and retrieved the key from where Lily had stowed it. "I remember you telling me where the key is, see?" She held it up to show me. "I have tried many times to leave my cage, but every time I do, I . . . go away."

  "Oh. I am truly sorry to hear that." The last time I had talked with her, she had used the phrase "go away" to mean that her personality became submerged and the attack doll came forward once more. It made sense. After all, if entering the cage turned her into Li Lin-fa, then leaving the cage ought to turn her back into Lily again. It was disappointing, though. I had been nursing vague hopes she might be able to leave the whole attack doll thing behind, now that JB Swift was out of the picture. "In that case, may I come in, Li Lin-fa?"

  She smiled prettily and said, "It would make me very happy if you would come inside." She hesitated for a moment, then handed me the key through the bars of her cell. "I will let you open the door while I close my eyes and cover my ears. That way I will make sure I do not go away."

  So I unlocked the door, entered, and closed it behind me while she covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. She kept them squeezed shut, in fact, until I laid a hand on her shoulder. At my touch, she turned to face me. Then she abruptly flung her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to mine.

  I have to say, it was quite a kiss, especially coming from a girl who had lived most of her life in a rural fishing village in eastern China, and I found myself returning it pretty enthusiastically. I'm sure that if you had poured water on me after she finally let me loose, it would have turned instantly into steam. "That was . . . it was very nice," I said with a shaky laugh. My face felt as if it were burning up.

  "I am sorry. I should not have been so forward," she murmured, her eyes downcast. "You must think I am awful, but I have wanted to kiss you again for a long time." She drew near to me once more and hesitantly laid her head against my shoulder. "I have been so lonely for so long, and you have been my only friend."

  "It is all right, Li Lin-fa; I am not offended," I assured her. Hoo boy, was I not offended! I couldn't help feeling a little guilty, though. Our two short conversations, months ago, must have made a huge impression on her. I could understand that; they had been her only human contact for the past six years. Still, I hadn't been much of a friend to her since then.

  I put my arms around her. "In addition to being beautiful, you kiss very well," I told her. "I only wish I knew of some way to release you from this cage."

  I felt her shrug. "I am used to it," she said. "And having a friend in here makes it so much better." Suddenly she drew back and looked up at me. "Oh! I did not mean to say that you always have to be with me," she said hastily. "I know you must have many other things to do, things which are much more interesting than staying here with a simple girl from a poor village. I do not want you to feel that I am trying to tie you to me."

  "I understand, Li Lin-fa." I bent and kissed her temple. "I do have other duties, but none of them is more interesting than standing here talking with the prettiest girl I have ever met."

  That made her smile again, but it was cut short almost immediately by a huge yawn. "I am sorry, Tre-vor," she said, covering her mouth with her hand and shaking her head slightly. "There is so much I want to talk with you about, but suddenly I am very tired. I cannot keep my eyes open."

  "I understand, pretty one," I said. I eased her down onto the cot and drew her blanket up over her. "Your other self has been awake for a long time, and you must rest. Sleep now; I will come to talk with you some other time soon."

  "I look forward to it," she murmured. She laid her head down on the pillow and closed her eyes. I remained kneeling beside her, stroking her hair gently, until I heard her breathing deepen into sleep.