by Zile Elliven
Being pressed against the hard lines of his body was making it hard to think. Aeyli squirmed and twisted until he relaxed his hold enough to allow her to face him. “I’m sorry. I feel like every time you’re happy, I ask you a question that makes you unhappy again.
“It’s okay. You’re the first person in a long time to care enough to ask me anything about myself.”
The urge to protect him struck her like a rock to the gut. “I want to help you.”
A sad smile appeared on his face. “You’ve already done enough. There is no need for you to do more.” He ran a hand down her arm and squeezed her hand.
“You saved my life. Several times. Even if I hated you I would want to help.” Anger surged up prickly and hot, and her hand clenched around his. “They had no right to do this to you. No one should have to go through what you have, it’s sick! Don’t norms have laws to protect people from something like this?”
“Laws don’t apply to the Company. Too many important people are in power today because of us. Because of them.” He corrected himself.
Aeyli threw her arms around him. “They are never getting you back,” she promised. The sudden movement of the hug forced her to break away and hold her throbbing head until the pain settled down.
“They are never getting me back,” he repeated dully.
Her heart twisted at the tone in his voice, and she moved her hands away from her eyes so she could see his face. What she saw there made her gasp. “Fourteen, what’s happened? Did I say something wrong?”
He said nothing, his face empty of expression
“Fourteen, answer me!” She waved her hand in front of his face, but his eyes didn’t track the movement.
“I need more information to comply,” Fourteen stated, his eyes staring straight ahead.
“Is this a joke?”
“I need more information to comply.”
Unwilling to believe Fourteen would be the kind of person to take such a horrible joke so far, Aeyli panicked. She jumped off the bed and then, after realizing she had no plan, sat back down on the edge of the bed and twined and tangled her fingers together uselessly.
What was wrong with Fourteen? One minute they were wrestling around on the bed, and the next they were baring their souls. Now Fourteen was a lifeless doll sitting at attention at the head of the bed. Had asking him such personal questions broken him in some way? Or was it something else?
What had she been saying when it happened? She had told him the Company was never getting him back, and the Fourteen she knew just went away and became a cold shell.
Cold.
That was what he had said it felt like when he wasn’t touching her. Fourteen hadn’t been acting funny until she had taken her hand away from his. Could it be that? She took his hand in hers and waited, willing her magic into his body, but she saw no change to his lifeless features.
She had to be missing something. Fourteen had been more than this strange automaton when they had first met. He said he needed more information to comply. Maybe the answers to this problem lay inside Fourteen himself.
“Fourteen, what are you doing right now?” She squeezed his fingers until it hurt her.
“Awaiting orders.”
“From who?”
“My handler.”
His handler? Fourteen told her his handlers had been killed. Did he have another one she didn’t know about? “Who is your handler?”
“You.”
Shock almost made her drop his hand. “Me? How can . . . Do you mean . . . What?!”
Fourteen didn’t respond, remaining passive.
Aeyli thought she sensed an increase in the flow of magic between their entwined hands. Hoping her magic was doing something helpful, she tried to think past her surprise enough to ask a coherent question. “As your handler, what do I need to know?”
Fourteen reached into a zippered pocket on his jacket, pulled out a white piece of plastic, and placed it in her hand.
Its smooth surface felt cool to the touch. “What is it?” She rolled it around in her hand, she’d never seen anything like it before, but it looked like it could be computerish. Electronics weren’t terribly compatible with magic, so she’d had zero interaction with computers until her escape.
“My operating system.”
Aeyli felt like crying. Someone had taken this enigmatic, sexy man and reduced him to little more than a robot. The injustice of it choked her, and anger surged though her. Pink fire flared in her veins and poured through her hand into his. Gripping him as tightly as she could, she bowed her head over their hands and concentrated on a single thought. Give him back to me!
After an eternity, she felt Fourteen’s warm hand on her head, and she sat up. “Are . . . are you back now?” She peered intently at his serious face, no longer lifeless, but full of concern and bemusement.
“I think so.” Fourteen wiped a tear off her cheek, and to her chagrin, she realized she had cried all over their joined hands.
“What just happened?” she asked simply.
Fourteen blinked as if he were still coming back online. “The . . . conditioning is still there.” He tapped the side of his head and sighed. “I was afraid something like this might happen. I might have my memories are back, but they programmed me like a goddamned machine. It’s been softened by you, but it’s still in there.”
“How could you have anticipated this? Have you, um, imprinted on other people before?” Aeyli tried to stay calm, but inwardly she was freaking out. If she could become his handler so easily, what if it happened with some random person? Before she could get completely lost imagining what she would do if Fourteen imprinted on a cashier at the gas station, he interrupted.
“No. This is new. What I meant was, after you ordered me to sleep last night, I’m not surprised by it. I would have mentioned it, but I was . . . ah, otherwise occupied up until now.”
Aeyli’s cheeks turned pink at the reminder of what they had been occupied with. “Wait, I ordered you to sleep? That’s why you passed out on me? I just thought you were exhausted.”
“I was, but I shouldn’t have fallen over like that. Now that you’re my handler, you’re going to have to be careful when you tell me to do something.”
His casual acceptance of the situation had Aeyli flabbergasted. “That’s all you have to say? Doesn’t it bother you that an eighteen-year-old girl you just met can literally tell you what to do?”
Fourteen lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Better you than the Colonel. I trust you, you’ve saved my life, remember?” An emotion she couldn’t identify filled his eyes, and he looked away. “Unless, you don’t want to.”
“Of course I don’t want to! What kind of person do you think I am?” Frantically, she tried to shove the plastic object back into his hand. “Take it, I don’t want it. I don’t want to control anyone.” I don’t want to control you.
Fourteen’s shoulders dropped a fraction. He pulled back, avoiding the device she offered. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m not permitted to take it back.” His eyes were on the wall, his posture rigid.
The Company had done this to him—she wanted to burn the whole damn operation to the ground. She hugged him again, wanting to wipe away everything they had done to him. Suddenly a terrible thought occurred to her. “Do you have to hug me whether or not you want to?”
He hesitated before responding. “If you initiate it, yes.”
Her arms flew away from him so suddenly her elbow popped in protest. “Tell me, okay? You have to tell me if you don’t want me to touch you.” She felt sick and backed away, giving him space. How could she have thought that he wanted her earlier? For all she knew, her magic had combined with his conditioning to turn him into her slave. No wonder he had gotten so friendly with her at the seaside. When he had gotten angry at her it was probably the last vestiges of his personality fighting to break free.
Her breath caught in her throat. What if, when she was touching him, he had no choice but to do whateve
r her hormones told him to? Aeyli climbed off the bed and put her hands behind her back. The chance that her magic was imprisoning him, rather than liberating him, made her think he’d be happier behind his cold walls rather than be subject to her whims, no matter what he said. Of course he’d tell her what she wanted to hear. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, okay?”
He nodded, his face cold and still.
Aeyli was torn. She wanted to go to him and free him from his mental prison. But she had no idea if she was actually helping him or just imposing her own desires on him. What she wanted was to give him as much free will as she could, but she had no idea how to do that.
“What do you need right now, Fourteen?” That should be safe enough.
“I need to shower and eat.” The blankness that she had once found so refreshing was nearly unbearable. Especially now that she had seen a different side of him.
“If you show me where you keep your food, I’ll make us something while you go shower. We’ll talk more about this handler issue while we eat, okay?” She kept her voice light and tried not to show her distress.
He nodded curtly. “You’ll find what I have for food on that shelf.” Fourteen pointed to a wall that held an old, rusty sink and a battered set of shelves. One shelf had boxes, cans, and pouches; the other held several chipped dishes, a saucepan, and a hotplate.
“Okay, I’ll come up with something good, you’ll see.”
A slow blink was her only response.
When he began stripping off his jacket, Aeyli blushed and turned toward the shelf, busying herself with making food. She heard it hit the bed with a loud thud. “What are you carrying in that thing, bricks?” Macaroni and cheese wouldn’t work without butter or milk, so she discarded that as an option.
“It’s armored. It’s lighter and more flexible than anything else you’ll find out there with more than three times the stopping power.” A hint of excitement colored his words, and he sounded more like himself. Maybe he didn’t need her magic after all. “It’s also undetectable by body scans or metal detectors. I can go anywhere in it, and no one notices unless I tell them about it.”
“Is this standard issue from the Company?” The canned peaches were a possibility, but they were going to need more than that if they weren’t going to starve to death.
A rustling sound came from behind her. “No one else has anything like it. I’m the only one.”
She was standing on tiptoe looking for more options on the back of the shelf when she heard what sounded like the rest of his clothes hitting the bed. Apparently body modesty was not something the Company worried about. “Are the rest of your clothes—” her voice squeaked on the last word and she cleared her throat—“armored as well?”
“My pants are to a lesser degree, but only my jacket has plates in it. I left them out of the pants. It inhibits movement too much.”
“You made it yourself?”
“It’s a hobby.” His tone was so deadpan, she couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not.
“What makes it so special?” Something about his armor was bugging her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.
“During a mission deep in the desert, I was pinned down by a group that had more RPGs than sense. I had taken cover behind a formation of rocks, but they were small and didn’t give much protection, barely more than a foot thick. I didn’t expect them to hold up, but they did. They took dozens of hits before my partner showed up to lay down cover fire. I looked at the rocks after we had cleaned up, and they looked as though nothing had happened. Not even a scorch mark to show for the beating they took. I took some of the smaller pieces back to Storage with me.”
“Storage?”
“It’s the place they keep us when we are off-duty or injured. I don’t usually like to spend much time there—I’d rather be in the field—but it has the resources I need to indulge my hobby.”
“Ooookay.” It didn’t sound even the smallest bit okay. If Fourteen would rather go out and get shot at then stay in Storage, it probably wasn’t a very nice place to be.
“I experimented with the pieces using sound and heat and managed to melt them down enough to work with. It took a long time, but I was able to combine the ore with graphene to make an incredibly resilient, lightweight material. It’s saved my life more times than I can count.” Pride was clear in his tone. Aeyli felt easier about her hands-off decision. If he was getting his personality back so quickly, he didn’t need her.
Fishing around on the top shelf, her hand had closed around something she could only see the edge of. With a little tugging, she got it off the shelf without knocking everything else over. She examined her prize and was puzzled—it was a flat-ish brown bag with the letters MRE printed on the front. She turned around to ask him about it and then kept on turning until she had made a full circle—she had forgotten he was sans clothing. Her eyebrows were almost to her hairline as she processed the visual information that had been presented to her.
Her mind stuttered as she pondered how it was possible for anyone to be so fit. Her hands slowed as she bounced between the perfection she had glimpsed and the scars she had seen peppering the landscape of his body. She grabbed bowls she didn’t need and put them in places they didn’t belong. As her thoughts flashed from the large scar that puckered the left side of his torso to the perfection of his abs, dinner preparation ground to a complete halt. How anyone could be so covered in scars and still be alive was beyond her understanding. It made his hobby of perfecting his armor less amusing and more a grim necessity.
The sound of a door opening had her head turning involuntarily, and she saw him vanish down the stairs. She imagined him walking naked down the stairs and through the massive warehouse all the way to the tiny bathroom to take a shower and barely resisted the urge to sneak over to the door and watch.
Instead she forced herself to turn back to her mystery package. The label claimed that there was an entire meal right in the bag—beef stew if the label could be believed. She opened it up and discovered several smaller packages: hot sauce, jelly, pretzels, a brownie, peanut butter, among other things. Further inspection showed there to be utensils inside as well. She couldn’t believe how much had fit into such a small space and instantly wanted a dozen for her backpack. When she read the instructions claiming they could be eaten cold or thrown in boiling water, she was determined to get some for herself. Fourteen was a genius.
She put a pan of water on the hotplate and found another package labeled Beef and Black Beans. At this point, she didn’t care what the food in the bags tasted like, she was hungry enough to eat the packaging itself. Somewhere along the way from being a spoiled princess to a desperate runaway, she had stopped being picky about everything. All she wanted now was enough to survive.
When the water began to bubble, she put the two entrees in the pot and turned down the heat so it wouldn’t boil over.
While she was waiting for the food to heat up she explored the room. The brick walls were bare, save for the shelves containing essentials. Other than the desk and the bed, the only other furniture was a large chest of weapons she had seen Fourteen rifle though when packing his bag. She was intelligent enough to know snooping through it was likely to get her a missing hand or a hole in the foot for her trouble, so she left it alone.
She sat down on the bed and noticed a hum of energy singing against her posterior. Scooting over, she pulled Fourteen’s jacket out from under her and examined it. There was no reason she couldn’t try to figure out the mystery it presented while she waited for the water to boil. Her fingers tingled as she explored the leather. In some areas, the tingling grew stronger. Fourteen had said there were plates in his jacket. It was possible the mystery rock was the source of the hum of magic she felt resonate through his clothes, which meant . . .
The door opened, and Fourteen entered the room in a towel.
“Put these on right now!” She shoved his jacket and pants at him, struggling with
the weight as her still tender feet protested their current activity.
“I’m not naked, I’m wearing briefs underneath.” Bewildered, he dropped the towel and accepted the bundle. “By your reaction earlier I assumed it would make you feel more comfortable—”
“Just do it!” A quick survey of the room had her hobbling over to the hot plate and turning off the heat. Being scalded while running wasn’t her idea of fun, so she abandoned the contents of the pot and grabbed all the packets that came with it. Then she grabbed her bag and stuffed the packets and a few other nonperishables inside. “I don’t know how much time we have, so this will have to tide you over until we find somewhere safe.” She shoved a brownie at Fourteen and stuffed the other one into her own mouth, nearly swallowing it whole in her haste.
Fourteen treated his in similar fashion, if more gracefully, and was mostly dressed before Aeyli was done. His jacket hung open, and she hoped that would be enough. When she was finished packing, Aeyli saw him hefting a very large gun from the chest.
“What happened?” He slung his equipment bag over one shoulder and began the complicated process of fastening his armor. His eyes were as turbulent as the storm from their shared dream.
She threw a pack of crackers at his chest, and he caught it without pausing in his task or looking up. “I’ll explain once we are on the road, we have to go, now.” She pounded toward the door leading to the stairs when Fourteen’s phone chimed.
“Multiple breaches. We have incoming.”
She stopped so quickly she slammed into the doorframe. “Where?”
Fourteen pulled her away from the door. “Every window, every door. They have us surrounded.”
“What do we do?”
His face had taken on a feral quality, and his eyes flashed like lightning. “We hope whatever is shielding us holds out long enough for us to break through their defenses.” Fourteen’s full mouth tipped up at the corners slightly. Was he enjoying this?
She needed more to go on than hope. “How did you feel when you were naked?” There were faint shouts coming from downstairs.