Attack Doll 5: The End of Lily Lee

by Douglas A. Taylor

  Part of me warned me to keep my distance, because it's never a good idea to approach someone who is that frightened of you. Another part, though, pointed out that she was falling to pieces before my eyes, and that offering her a comforting embrace could hardly make things that much worse.

  She did not, in fact, run away as I stepped forward. Encouraged, I gathered her in my arms; she stiffened only momentarily before collapsing against me with a muffled sob. She was shivering all over now, as if she were soaking wet in a freezing wind, and her sobs began coming hard and fast. I held her loosely -- she was shaking too hard for a tighter grip -- but she clutched at me as if I were her only point of sanity in a universe suddenly gone insane. Which, I suppose, might have been true for her.

  As I've mentioned before, I've apparently got a serious thing for damsels in distress. Now, Lily was obviously in distress, and as tightly as she was clinging to me, I couldn't help but notice that she was a pretty darned attractive damsel . . . and I decided with a resigned sigh that Shelley must be right. I closed my eyes and laid my cheek against the top of her head and tried to ignore the way she was making my breath come faster and my heart thump harder in my chest.

  Lily stopped trembling after a few minutes, and she stopped crying a few minutes after that. She slowly raised her head from my chest and looked around at the silent, impassive figures surrounding us. "What are you going to do with me?" she asked. She sounded as if she didn't much care -- or was too resigned to care -- what happened to her.

  Shelley rose to her feet and came toward us. Lily gasped and shrank back against me. She was still scared, I noticed, but she didn't seem as over-the-edge terrified as she had been. Shelley laid a hand on her shoulder. "What do you think we should do with you?"

  Lily looked up at the golden robotic-looking figure towering head-and-shoulders over her, and her shoulders slumped in defeat. "Whatever you want." I felt her shrug. "What do you do with broken dolls?"

  "You aren't broken, are you?" Shelley said.

  "Uncle Oswald said I was. He told me I was a complete and utter failure who never lived up to my potential."

  I stared at her. "He never said that to me!" I protested. "All he could ever talk about was what a work of art you were, how perfect you were, how much he --"

  "He didn't say that about me," she corrected me dispiritedly. "He said that about her."

  "Her?"

  "My other self. The passive one. The one who always does as she is told and never makes mistakes."

  "Oh." She was talking about herself in operator mode. "But why did he tell you . . . why did he say those things about you?"

  "The same reason your friend did the other day," she answered. "You know, the one you were talking to over your communicator, or whatever it was? You called him Wizzit. He said I didn't live up to my potential either."

  "You heard that?"

  "Of course. I hear everything she hears; I know everything she knows."

  I said, "Lily, Wizzit told me that because we've never seen you do anything except order drones around. According to what you said -- excuse me, according to what she said -- you could have been doing so much more. So why haven't we seen any of that?"

  Her answer was so soft I almost couldn't hear it. "Because I'm afraid."

  "Afraid of what?" Shelley's voice sounded kind even through the voice alteration.

  Lily shrugged and shook her head.

  Shelley turned to face the others; she remained that way for nearly a minute. She shook her head once. She gestured toward me, then toward Lily. I saw Mike turn in his chair to look at Trina, who appeared to have the floor, and there were a few shrugs among the rest of my teammates.

  "What are they doing, Trevor?" Lily whispered. She was standing very close to me and slightly behind, so that I was between her and everyone else, and she was clutching my hand tightly in both of hers.

  "It looks like they're having a conversation."

  "What are they saying?"

  "I don't know." I raised my voice slightly so that Shelley couldn't help but hear me. "Without my force shield, I can't hear anything they're saying unless they let me."

  Shelley's head swiveled in my direction. "Oh, sorry, Trev. We were just trying to decide what to do with Lily."

  "And . . . ?"

  Mike said, "For starters, Orange thinks you should explain the facts of life to her."

  The birds and the bees? "You're kidding, right?"

  Shelley chuckled. "Orange meant you should tell Lily everything we know about that's going on inside her head. Everything that JB Swift probably never told her, and even the stuff that he didn't realize."

  "Oh, okay. That makes a lot of sense," I agreed. "When should I do it? Now?"

  "Not now," Mike said. "We've still the debrief to do. Tomorrow will be soon enough."

  Shelley laid hand on Lily's arm. Maybe my presence was having a calming effect on her now, because she flinched only a little. "Lily, we're going to go over some video footage of our most recent battle. We will allow you to watch it -- you took part in it, after all -- but you will not be permitted hear any of it, nor any of our discussions."

  "I'm going to have to activate my force shield for that," I explained. "I'll be Prime Blue then, but it'll still be me under here."

  "Or, if you prefer," Shelley went on, "Trevor can put you back into operator mode and you can wait in another room."

  Lily shook her head vigorously. "I hate operator mode."

  Something about Lily's head-shake seemed to have caught Shelley's eye; she was looking at her curiously. "Lily," she said, "show me your ears."

  Lily looked at me anxiously, and when I nodded, she obediently gathered her hair back into a ponytail, held in place by one fist. Shelley examined her earlobes closely, even rubbing them lightly between her thumb and forefinger. "She's not wearing the special earrings," she declared, looking back at the group. "They're gone."

  "I had her remove them while we were at the beach," I explained. "I guess Wizzit didn't show everyone that part. I tossed the earrings into the ocean."

  "Then she's no longer susceptible to the remote control," Shelley concluded. "Good work, Trev."

  "I'm glad you did that," Lily murmured softly. "I always hated them."

  "I've always hated them, too," I said. A sudden thought struck me. "Lily, is there any other way anyone can control you?"

  "No. I have no other remote controls, and you are the only completely trusted user, now that Uncle Oswald is . . ." She took a fresh death-grip on my hand. "Would it be possible to see how he died? I believe what you said -- I trust you -- but I would like to see it. If you don't mind, that is."

  I glanced at Shelley and then at Mike, who shrugged. "I think we can do that. Wizzit, if you please?"

  I stood beside Lily as Wizzit replayed the vid of JB Swift's death. He started about thirty seconds before it happened, when the little red speedster was taking on Cyclops. Lily clutched my hand tightly every time JB Swift was on-screen, obviously expecting to see him cut down at any moment. When we got to the place where Black-hat threw his bomb, I murmured, "This is it, Lily."

  She nodded and bit her lip. A short time later, the bombs went off. Lily made a small sound once, almost like the whine of a dog, but except for that, she was completely silent. I looked over at her; she was staring at the screen with wide eyes, tears threatening to spill down either cheek.

  "Is there anything else you would like to see?" I asked softly when it was over. She shook her head mutely.

  I activated my force shield and walked with Lily over to the sole unoccupied seat, a wooden box at one end of the semicircle. I gestured to her when we got to it, intending to let her sit down while I stood behind her. She shook her head, though. She knelt down beside it and then smiled tentatively up at me. I shrugged and sat on the box myself.

  "Looks like Lily is qu
ite serious about her new role as your handmaiden, Blue," Nicolai observed dryly, Prime-to-Prime.

  Padma snorted. "I think it is disgusting. She should not act like his slave."

  "Give her time, people," Shelley said. "You saw how scared she was. She has no idea what to expect from us, and Blue's is the only friendly face she's seen so far. Of course she'd want to make nice with him, and maybe this is the only way she knows how."

  "I think she will do more than 'make nice,'" Trina declared. "I would expect her to try to get you romantically interested in her, Blue, out of self-preservation, if for no other reason." She paused. "At least, that is what I would do if I were in the same position. One uses the resources that one has."

  Mike chuckled. "Perhaps you might show me some day just how you'd go about that, love."

  "Perhaps I might, Red. Some day. But not today."

  "Yeah, well, if that's her idea, she's just wasting her time," Toby said. "Blue's already interested in her; any fool can see that. Has been since Day One."

  "Just don't let it go to your head, Blue," Mike warned me.

  Wizzit snickered. "Either one of them."

  Trina made a disgusted sound. "That really wasn't necessary, Wizzit," she said.

  "And on that note," Shelley said, "let's start the debriefing. Indigo, we will begin with you."

  Padma talked her way through her and Angie's mission in the desert. Any doubts I might have had about the necessity of pulling our two most junior Primes out so early were dispelled once I actually saw the vid. The five huge fire demons had converged upon the pair of them almost as soon as they appeared. Dodging fireball after fireball, they barely had a chance to take a breath, much less mount any kind of attack, even if their force shields had been operational.

  Padma concluded her narration at the point where she and Angie teleported out, which is where I took up the story. My part was fairly brief, and I didn't take long to describe Lily's attack, the removal of her backpack, and our teleportation out to the beach. When I finished, I felt a tugging at the leg of my shorts. I turned to see Lily regarding me with fear-filled eyes.

  "Trevor, I -- I'm sorry I attacked you. I was doing as I was ordered, and I didn't know that you were . . . you." She ducked her head down, like a dog that knows it's about to be whipped. "Please forgive me."

  "It's all right, Lily," I told her. "No one is blaming you, least of all me." I reached out a hand to stroke her hair; she took hold of it and brought it to her cheek, nuzzling the backs of my fingers. Then she let go and gave me a smile that made my heart do flip-flops in my chest.

  Looking into Lily's eyes, I sort of lost track of time for a bit. I heard Mike give a small yelp; Trina had elbowed him in the ribs none too gently. "If our exalted leader would care to ignore the young woman making doe-eyes at Blue," she said, with all the ice of a Siberian winter in her voice, "and continue the narration . . . ?"

  "Oh! Um, right." Mike cleared his throat and brought his attention back to the vid screen. "Let's see, where were we?"

  Wizzit obligingly began playing a vid of Mike, Nicolai, and Toby teleporting into the battle scene. "Ah, here we are," Mike said. "As you can see, Wizzit popped us straight into the middle of things. The locals had all scattered, so there was no point in our doing a run-in. Thank you, Wizzit, by the way, for not setting us down in the middle of one of the many fires raging about the place. Much appreciated."

  "Think nothing of it."

  "It was tough going for a bit," Mike continued. "We mainly used our blasters at first, since these fire-things appeared to be too hot to handle."

  "Bill mentioned that he thought these monsters were supposed to be ifrits, by the way," Shelley commented.

  "Did he now?" Mike sat back on his crate and folded his arms thoughtfully. "That's interesting. Ifrits, you said? Are you sure? Hmm. Yes, very interesting indeed."

  "You don't know what ifrits are, do you?" Shelley guessed.

  "Not a clue."

  She laughed. "In Arabic folklore, an ifrit is an enormous, winged fire-spirit, a type of djinn, or genie."

  "Ah." Mike nodded. "Well, that certainly tallies. And it would explain why the locals ran away so readily. Actually made our jobs a bit easier, in fact."

  "And it is something the Harley twins would be likely to dream up," Trina added. "They like to create their monsters based on myths, legends, and religious stories."

  "Good point," Mike said. "At any rate, we were still in the process of feeling them out when Steel and Silver arrived, and then we had a bit of luck." On the vid screen, we saw two flashes of light as Alvaro and Cathy teleported in. They immediately took aim with their triple-blasters. "Stop it right here, Wizzit, if you please."

  Wizzit froze the vid, and Mike stood up and walked to the screen. "Pay close attention to what happens here and here," he said, tapping the images of two of the demons. "All right, Wizzit, proceed."

  The action resumed, and we watched as blaster beams struck the creatures in question. Each of them staggered backward as if struck by a sledgehammer, although none of the other monsters had exhibited a similar reaction.

  "What happened?" Shelley asked.

  "Wizzit was the first to notice," Mike said with a chuckle, "and, clever boy that he is, he deduced what was going on almost right away."

  "You might recall that Steel and Silver's bracelets are based on prime squares, not prime numbers themselves," Nicolai said. "Steel's number is twenty-nine squared, and Silver's is thirty-one squared. Judging by the monsters' reactions to their respective blaster shots, Wizzit quickly concluded that the base frequencies of their enhancements lay in the zero residue class of those particular primes -- not the squares, but the actual primes.

  "Naturally, he was unable to make suitable adjustments to Steel's or Silver's weapons. However . . ." He indicated the vid screen, where we saw Nicolai and Toby vanish from sight, only to reappear immediately afterward, each of them directly in front of one of the two monsters. "Wizzit teleported Green and me, and he managed to reset our force shields to use primes thirty-one and twenty-nine while he did so. As you can see, he was immediately able to adjust Green's hammer and my axe to deliver killing blows."

  We watched as vid-Nicolai and vid-Toby struck with their weapons and each of the demons disappeared in a shower of sparks.

  Shelley was nodding her approval. "Nicely done," she said. "Very clever. Wizzit gets today's gold star."

  "After that," Mike went on, "the remaining monsters got panicky and started throwing their fireballs everywhere, even at each other." Indeed, the vid screen appeared to be half-filled with orange light. I saw one of the monsters catch a fireball directly in the chest. It toppled backwards and was soon engulfed in flames. "Our main problem at that point became staying out of the way while the remaining two finished each other off." He sat down while Wizzit fast-forwarded to the end of the battle, where the two remaining fire demons struck each other with fireballs simultaneously.

  "Any questions?" Shelley asked as the vid screen went dark. No one had any, so she stood up, dismissing the group. One by one, Wizzit began teleporting them back to HQ.

  Lily remained kneeling where she was when I got to my feet. I looked down, studying her. Her palms were flat on her knees, and she was facing straight ahead with her eyes closed. After a moment, she looked up at me and accepted the hand I offered her.

  "I was getting a self-report," she explained as she pulled herself to her feet, "as well as a diagnosis and recommendations."

  "And?" I prompted her.

  "I haven't had anything to eat since breakfast," she said. "I will need extra food for the next several days if I am to regain my lost muscle mass. I should not exercise in the gym today, but should instead spend a short time self-healing and then go into my bedroom until tomorrow morning to help the rebuilding process." She looked at me anxiously. "Is that all right?"


  "Sure it is," I told her. "We want you to get yourself healthy. Do what you need to do. Do you, um, need me to give you any commands or anything?"

  She shook her head. "I can make my own meal, self-initiate the healing, and go into my bedroom on my own. But . . . would you stay with me? Please? I don't want to be alone."

  "Sure." I glanced over at Toby, who was the only one who hadn't left yet. "I guess I'll be here for a while."

  "I'll wait for you." And he sat back down on one of the crates. "I expect her virtue will be safe as houses with you, but the Commander wants the two of you to have a chaperone anyway, more than just Wizzit's watchful eye."

  I grinned at him as I deactivated my force shield. "Fair enough, mate. I'll do my best to keep my hands off her."

  "I reckon it's not your hands that the Commander is worried about." He indicated the vid screen. "I'll be monitoring from here so I don't feel quite so much like a fifth wheel."

  The vegetable paste Lily prepared for her meal looked and smelled unappetizing, and she ate it without much enthusiasm, scooping it up with her fingers rather than with any kind of utensil. "Don't you ever wish you had something else?" I asked her. "Some other kind of food?"

  Lily shrugged. "It is what I eat," she said. "It is what I have always eaten."

  "Do you remember the time we captured you, and we gave you different stuff to eat?"

  She stopped for a moment, the thick paste dripping from her fingers back into the bowl. "Yes," she said slowly, staring off into the middle distance. "Yes, I do. I remember there was a bowl filled with tiny white things mixed with larger chunks that were green and light brown."

  "Chicken and broccoli with rice," I guessed. "I made it for you the second night we had you."

  "It was very good, and it . . . seemed familiar, somehow. Especially the little white things; they reminded me of something, but I don't know just what."

  I nodded. Growing up in a seaside village, Li Lin-fa had probably tasted more fish than chicken, but everyone in China eats rice. "I can make it for you again if you like."

  Lily looked thoughtful, but didn't reply. She finished the rest of her meal in silence, in fact. I watched her as she washed and put away her dishes, and then I followed her to her healing table. She lay on it for only a short time before sitting up, swinging her legs over the edge, and hopping to the floor. From there, she went straight to the cage room.

  The personality shift happened as it had the night before. The delight in the eyes of Li Lin-fa as she looked up to see me standing in the cage beside her cot warmed my entire heart. "Tre-vor!" she exclaimed, leaping up and throwing her arms around me. "I did not expect to see you again so soon!"

  I picked her up and twirled around with her, laughing. "I told you I would be here. The one who once held you captive is dead; this whole place is now under the control of me and my friends."

  "I know you said that, but I could scarcely believe it. I told myself that it could not be true, that it must have been a dream." She patted the cot beside her. "Come sit next to me. There is so much I want to ask you."

  I joined her on the cot, and she immediately took hold of my hand. I recalled that she had seemed to crave physical contact the last time we had spoken; I know I would have after not seeing a living soul for the past six years. And of course, I sure didn't mind holding hands with her.

  "I will tell you anything I can," I said earnestly, "but there are things I am not allowed to speak of, certain matters we feel it is best you remain ignorant of, at least for the time being." I shrugged. "I am sorry."

  "I understand." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "I will not ask you when you can free me from this cage," she declared. "I am afraid that is beyond your powers. And I will not ask how long you can stay with me; I am grateful for any time you are willing to spend here. Perhaps you could tell me about your friends. How many of you are there? I remember meeting Prime Violet."

  Ah, yes. That had been Padma, on her very first mission as a Prime. "There are seven Primes, plus a few others who help us out from time to time. The Prime Violet you met is now called Prime Indigo. A new color, just as I have a new color. We have a new Prime Violet. Not all of us can speak the language to you, but this new Prime Violet can. If you like, I will see whether I can introduce you to Prime Violet tomorrow."

  Li Lin-fa was looking at me curiously. "These friends of yours -- Prime Indigo and Prime Violet and the others -- they will not show me their faces, will they? If they visit me, they will either be invisible or be covered with the clouds, as you were last night, is that right?"

  "They will be covered with clouds," I admitted, "but how did you guess?"

  "You are choosing your words strangely," she replied. "You have not told me whether these friends are men or women, and I think you are doing it on purpose. Nor are you telling me their real names. If you will not reveal even these simple details, then I will surely not be permitted to see their faces."

  "I am sorry, Li Lin-fa," I said, and I meant it. And at the same time, I was impressed with her perceptiveness. "I do not believe you mean us any harm, but we have to be cautious."

  "Oh, Tre-vor, do not be sorry." Smiling, she brought our joined hands up to caress her cheek. "I am not angry; I am too happy to be angry. You have no idea how lonely I have been and what a joy it is to have a friend to talk to. I would very much like to meet this new Prime Violet."

  This was the Li Lin-fa I remembered; she had an astounding ability to tug at my heartstrings. "There is one thing I can do for you right now," I said. "I have another friend that you can meet. His name is Wizzit, and he will be happy to talk to you whenever you want. Wizzit, would you care to introduce yourself?"

  In case I haven't mentioned it recently, Wizzit speaks every language I do and then some. His German and his Japanese are both better than mine, in fact. I remember one time Angela asked him (in Thai, no less) how many languages he spoke, and he replied, "All of them." I don't know how he does it; I have always assumed it's an alien technology thing.

  Regardless, he said in flawless Cantonese, "Hello, Li Lin-fa. I am pleased to meet you."

  Li Lin-fa started. "Who was that?" she asked. She looked around wildly. "Has he turned himself invisible and is watching us?"

  "No. He is not here. He is talking to us using the speakers in the ceiling."

  I gestured upward, and she followed with her eyes. I saw her nod to herself when she spotted the equipment Mike and I had installed. "Can he hear me?" she asked softly.

  "I can hear you very well," Wizzit replied promptly. "If you are ever here by yourself and find you need anything, just call out my name and I will answer."

  She looked nonplussed. "Thank you, Wizzit. You are most kind." For a moment she looked as though she wasn't sure what to do next, but then a serious expression crossed her face. "Tre-vor, I have thought of something else I must ask you, something that has been worrying me," she said to me gravely. "What has Li-li-li been doing? My other self has not killed anyone, has she?"

  When I had first met Li Lin-fa, I had explained to her about Lily and the hold Enclave appeared to have over her mind. It had been Li Lin-fa's greatest fear, I remembered, that she would become a murderess while under Enclave's influence. I shook my head. "We thought at one time that perhaps she had, but it turned out that she had not."

  Without mentioning any names, I began telling her how Commander Windham, Shelley's father, had been killed and how we thought at first that Lily had done it. Of course, in order to tell her that story, I had to describe how we had come to capture Lily in the first place. I was in the middle of explaining that we had tried to contact Li Lin-fa by having me speak to Lily in Cantonese when she suddenly sat straight up.

  "I remember that!" she exclaimed excitedly. "I thought it was a dream. I remember hearing you calling me; you kept asking me to come out and talk to you
, and you called me 'pretty one'. I felt as if I were asleep, and I tried and tried to open my eyes and go to see you, but I could not. After a time, you stopped calling, and I began to cry."

  I looked at Li Lin-fa, remembering the sketch that Trina had drawn of her shortly after that incident. It showed the unnaturally calm, placid face of the attack doll, marred by a single tear that had spilled down one cheek. "Have you dreamed of me calling you at other times?" I asked her.

  She nodded eagerly. "A few times. Each time, I tried to go to you, but it was of no use; I could not."

  I smiled. "I would not say it was of no use."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Lily Lee does not understand the language," I told her. "When I speak it to her, calling to you, she thinks I am using magic words. She says the words make her not want to fight me. I think it is you who makes her not want to fight me."

  Li Lin-fa nodded solemnly, her eyes huge. "I remember one time, I thought everyone was calling me, not just you, and they were begging me to help them. I tried very hard to wake up that time."

  "We once fought Lily Lee in Guangzhou," I replied. "Many people who speak the language were around her, naturally, screaming for help because they were being attacked. She was so confused, she could not fight us."

  "Good!" Li Lin-fa nodded curtly and smiled a tiny, tight smile. "I am glad I could give you help, small though it was."

  "Trevor," Wizzit's voice broke in, "allow me to remind you that lovely young lotus flowers need their rest. This one's sleep debt was not completely repaid last night."

  "Oh, I had not realized that," I said, feeling embarrassed. "Please forgive me, Li Lin-fa. I have been talking to excess, while you probably just want to go to sleep."

  "To be honest," she replied with a shy smile, "I had not noticed how tired I was until Wizzit spoke of it." She stifled a yawn. "But your friend is right; I find I am very sleepy."

  "Then lie down and rest," I told her. "I will visit you again soon."