by Lisa Lace
Shaking the fantasy out of his head once again, AD-214 made his way down the side of the crowd where the cyborg clones waited in a line. They stood at attention, each of them looking remarkably alike as they watched over the mass of people. The rogue cyborg captain could already see that Blue Squad had replaced several of the clones, giving him hope. If the soldiers were required to stand too close to one another, their individuality would be a dead giveaway.
AD-214 moved closer to a clone. He admitted that the scientists had designed them well. They were tall and broad-shouldered, with enough muscle mass to make them look intimidating and not enough to slow them down. They shared the same critical weakness endemic to all cyborgs: their chips were implanted directly above their left ears. Although the clones grew around their chips, the region was as susceptible for them as it was for the regular cyborgs.
Blue Squad had trained as much as possible over the last three days. They had limited resources, but ND-45’s plan seemed to be working. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any Blue Squad members currently standing in the crowd.
AD-214 surreptitiously brushed his fingers against the chip in his head, making sure to contact the right spot, as he reached up to touch the cyborg clone’s chip with his other hand. The soldier convulsed for a moment, although AD-214 had not shocked him. The burly clone turned to look at the soldier standing behind him with fear and confusion in his eyes.
“You’re relieved from duty, soldier,” AD-214 said, his voice quiet and soothing.
The clone nodded mutely before stumbling away from the crowd, one hand on his head.
The rogue cyborg quickly stepped into his place and assumed the role of guard. He felt the corners of his mouth pulling themselves up into a smile, but he yanked them back down. He had to appear grave despite the success. It had been a brilliant idea to spread the same software upgrade to the clones that had made Blue Squad start retrieving their memories. They didn’t have physical weapons that would be able to defeat the clones, but they had a different way to fight. The plan was to take the battle directly into the minds of the clones.
The cyborg biochips could communicate with each other as long as there was a physical connection, even if the systems were down. The system was designed to have multiple redundancies in case of failures. ND-45 had proposed to use their bodies as connectors, and the idea had worked perfectly.
The leader of Blue Squad wondered what the affected clones would do as they regained their sense of self. The reaction of the one he had personally infected was what he had expected. Eventually, someone would notice bewildered clones wandering through their neighborhood and report their sightings to Cyborg Sector.
AD-214 could hear Amanda’s voice coming in loud and clear over the speakers connected to her microphone. He was standing perpendicular to her, and he only had to tip his head slightly to see her. He refrained, keeping a strict military pose. He didn’t want to do anything to blow his cover.
The audience was becoming restless. Everyone looked far more agitated than expected for a single press conference. Reporters and their photographers fought for the prime spots closest to the podium. Groups of angry citizens shouted rude words, shaking their fists and waving homemade signs in the air. Other individuals whooped and cheered, hugging each other and jumping up and down. It was enough to make anyone pay attention to the speaker.
It was impossible to avoid looking at Amanda as she spoke warm words about the cyborgs. Her large, brown eyes were somber and serious as she tried to bring the gathered people around to her point of view about the soldiers. She looked confident in her blazer, wearing just enough makeup to accentuate her beauty. The scientist spoke from the heart with incredible power.
AD-214 wrenched his attention away from her. He had never doubted that rescuing Amanda was the right thing to do, but her speech was enough to allay the fears of even the most hardened cyborg. She belonged with them, and they needed her.
Unfortunately, this was not the best time to retrieve her. Coming to the press conference was only the first step in a long process. The members of Blue Squad were smart enough to know they could not descend on her in front of multiple witnesses and take her with them. They would reveal their position, and it would be too easy for Cyborg Sector to call in reinforcements and overwhelm the small rescue party. They had to find the right opportunity.
Amanda was shouting over the microphone now. The crowd screamed back, some with her and some against her. The squeal and thump of a dropped microphone signaled that the press conference was over.
AD-214 allowed himself to look toward the building once again. Amanda was going back toward the building willingly with a smile spread across her face. Reporters rushed to the podium, shouting random questions and angry they had not had the opportunity to interview her.
There were still plenty of clones on guard duty, and AD-214 left the crowd without encountering any of them. Instead, he snaked his way through the throng of people, ending up at a side door of the hospital where a group of soldiers was entering the building. His tracking software tagged some of them as part of his unit, making him breathe a sigh of relief.
He hung back as the soldiers filed through the door, making sure he was the last one in line. As the other cyborgs marched through the dark hallway of the hospital, he stepped aside and opened a door.
AD-214 had loaded maps of all levels of the hospital into his memory banks, ensuring he could always find a concealed location. Fortunately, there were janitor closets all over the building. While he couldn’t reduce the chance of someone coming and finding him to zero, it was the best place to bide his time. He could overpower any maintenance man that came by to grab a mop or roll of toilet paper.
With nothing to do but wait, AD-214 turned off the light and made himself comfortable.
Chapter Twenty-One
Amanda couldn’t remember a riot that had ever been good for the people involved. She avoided watching the news because she didn’t want to see a conflict. It was hard for her to see people arguing and fighting, and Amanda thought there were better things on which for her to concentrate. But now, as the cloned cyborgs pulled her toward the entrance of the hospital, she exulted in the chaos she had caused.
The crowd that came to hear her speak was in a frenzy. There were moving bodies everywhere trying to follow her up the stairs, work their way to their vehicles, and running into each other in the middle. They hadn’t all appreciated the words that came out of her mouth, but they had listened to her. The resulting disorder would ensure that reporters gave the press conference a prominent place on the evening news.
Once inside, Amanda shook off the grip of the soldiers and headed back for her room. She was familiar with the routine. This time, they demanded that she turn right on the first floor instead of going up the elevator. They led her into a luxurious office and closed the door.
“That was a curious thing you did, Ms. Conrad,” Dr. Feldman remarked. He steepled his fingers on the large desk in front of him and looked at her with mild interest, as though she was barely a living creature. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything less from you.”
Amanda shrugged, trying to stay calm even though she hadn’t expected to see him here. She knew she would have to talk to him about her behavior sooner or later, but she wasn’t sure what Dr. Feldman intended for her. “I don’t have anything better to do while I’m here. Maybe if you let me go home, I could occupy myself with a different activity.”
Dr. Feldman shook his blonde hair. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, especially after your press conference. I explained I was keeping you here for your protection, but the danger has doubled now that everyone is touting you as queen of the cyborgs. You’re safest here.” His smile looked thin and cruel despite his words.
Amanda looked around at the plush office with her brows drawn together. “You have an office here, too?”
“Of course not,” Dr. Feldman scoffed. “But they let me borrow it whenever I have some business
that needs to be taken care of.” He flicked his hand toward the door. “You can go now, unless you’ve changed your mind about my proposition. I’m sure you’re getting tired of the hospital room.”
Amanda put her hand on her hip. Dr. Feldman still couldn’t get over it. He had her trapped and was trying to convince her his penthouse would be a better place to stay. “Sorry, but no dice.” She turned and walked out the office door, scurrying past the guards and escorting herself to her hospital room.
The guards caught up with her easily, but she still refused to look at them. The cyborgs, even the clones, reminded her too much of AD-214 and Blue Squad. Amanda thought about them constantly, worrying about what they were doing and how long they would survive. The scientist knew they had plenty of survival skills programmed into their systems, but would they be able to apply them now that they were fully self-aware?
When Amanda and the clones reached her room, she entered without protest. As much as the depressing place was wearing on her, she was not about to let Dr. Feldman entertain the notion of changing her mind.
A guard took his place outside her door, just to the left. There was always someone in the vicinity of her room. Amanda usually kept her eyes focused on the floor or down the hallway to avoid looking at him, but today something made her glance at the guard as she crossed the threshold.
She whirled around, certain that there was something different about that particular cyborg. Though she couldn’t put her finger on it, the fact that she could detect anything different about a clone was alarming. The door slammed in her face, and the electronic lock gave a sharp click as it engaged. Amanda didn’t have the chance to see him again.
The scientist paced around in front of her door, trying to think of a way she could persuade the guard to open it. She wanted to look at his face. There was something about the way he stood and the shadows in his cheekbones. Since there was a bathroom already attached to her room, she couldn’t claim that she needed to use the facilities. A complaint that she was ill would make the doctors give her another round of uncomfortable and unnecessary testing. Could she say she had left something behind at the press conference? She hadn’t brought anything with her, and they knew that.
Amanda shook her head. How could she think the guard was different when she refused to look at them? Her time in this hospital had been a little over a week now, and Amanda hadn’t looked at the clones once since she arrived. She was beginning to lose her mind or see things...maybe a little of both.
Feeling impatient, Amanda strode across the room and yanked open the curtains. Her window faced east, and she usually kept the draperies shut against the morning sun that burned through the glass. Now, however, she wanted to see if there was still anything happening in the parking lot below her.
Most of the crowd had scattered. The front stairs where the conference had taken place were almost directly underneath Amanda’s room, hidden from her perspective, but she imagined the stage hands had quickly dismantled the podium and taken it back into the building. Battered signs lay crumpled on the asphalt, trampled by hundreds of feet. The news crews were loading their equipment back into their vans and heading toward the offices of Internet news and television stations to assemble their click-worthy articles. A remarkable amount of trash skittered across the lot in the breeze, and a fat man in a blue uniform chased them with a dirty street sweeper.
Though most of the cyborgs had come into the building when they had dragged her inside, a few remained out in the parking lot to supervise the clean-up and make sure none of the rioters stuck around. Amanda zeroed in on them, trying to match them with the guard in the hall. But from her standpoint three stories up, the cyborgs looked the same as they always had: tall, intimidating figures that watched their surroundings with eagle eyes. Not one of them appeared different from the others.
Amanda’s heart sank as she turned away from the window. She had been hoping it would be otherwise. Though she didn’t expect any members of Blue Squad to know that she was here or be able to rescue her, she couldn’t let go of the idea that she needed to be with them. It was ridiculous to think they would come to fetch her. How would they get away? Where would they go after Amanda reunited with them?
Feeling adrift in a sea of politics and lies, Amanda flopped on the bed and stared up at the ceiling tiles.
Chapter Twenty-Two
AD-214 had spent a long afternoon waiting in the janitor’s closet. The thick scent of heavy-duty cleaners assaulted his nose, and his stomach rumbled noisily. For a cyborg, such things were minor inconveniences. But he longed to come out into the hospital corridor, march down it like a captain, and rescue Amanda. Instead, he watched the time slowly tick by on his interface as he scanned through the same files over and over, wondering if there was a change in the data.
One maintenance man had come into the closet. AD-214 didn’t want to kill an innocent man, but he was prepared to do what was necessary. Hidden in the farthest corner from the door, he tensed up when the knob rattled. He would have to make sure he eliminated the janitor before he screamed or called out. Otherwise, everything he and Blue Squad had worked for would be wasted.
When the scruffy old man entered the closet, he didn’t bother reaching for the light. He swung the door open far enough to let in light from the hallway, reached for a roll of paper towels, and left just as quickly.
AD-214 relaxed after that. When he had studied the blueprints for the hospital, he had no way of knowing what parts of the building were more commonly used than others. Apparently, he had luckily chosen a maintenance closet that was out of the way and rarely visited.
Now it was time to get out. The guards were about to change their shifts. If everything had gone as planned with the rest of Blue Squad, PD-67 had been stationed outside Amanda’s room for the last several hours. The navigation specialist’s job was to keep anyone else from removing Amanda until AD-214 came to retrieve her. As much as he had wanted to rescue her immediately, he knew he needed to wait. He had to let the excitement from the press conference die down and get the cyborgs back into their routine.
His task now was to move from the maintenance closet to the third floor without being noticed. It shouldn’t be difficult, but his heart pounded in his chest as he quietly turned the doorknob. AD-214 opened the door slightly, just enough so he could see into the hallway and make sure no one was looking in his direction. The fluorescent lights gave a sickly glow to the pale linoleum and pea-green walls that hadn’t been touched for decades. The single beep of a heart monitor sounded from further down the hallway. No humans or cyborgs were present.
The captain slipped into the hallway and silently shut the door behind him. His next goal was getting to the stairs at the end of the hall. Focusing on the dark brown door, he confidently marched like he belonged there.
AD-214 heard a noise to his left. The cyborg continued his path, but he heard the sound again, more clearly this time. It was asking for something.
“Water.”
The voice was barely a whisper, like the rustle of dry paper being blown about by the wind. AD-214’s feet halted, waiting to see if the other part would continue speaking.
“Please.”
A door stood ajar a few feet down the hall on the left. A small tag next to the door indicated it was room 158. The light wasn’t on, but it was the only possible source of the whisper. AD-214 knew he had things to do. His prime directive was to complete his missions without letting anything else interfere, but he found himself wandering to the door and pushing it completely open. He groped blindly on the wall and turned on the light switch.
The room was small and smelled of rancid sweat. The light pulsed and flickered, as though it couldn’t quite decide if it wanted to be on or off. The light revealed a man lying in a hospital bed. He lay on his back, reaching out blindly around him. His lips were parched and cracked. Numerous tubes ran from his arm into a machine by the side of the bed.
“Water, please,” he repeated.
/> AD-214 stepped closer. The man was ancient, the skin on his face loose and wrinkled. Most of the hair on his head had vanished along with his youth, leaving behind dark blotches on his exposed scalp. The patient was withered, as though someone had left him out in the sun too long.
At first, the cyborg wasn’t certain what to do. AD-214 had never encountered an old cyborg before, and the only things in his medical files were instructions on applying first aid in the battlefield. He supposed the shriveled man was telling AD-214 what he needed. The pitcher of water on a nearby table was the solution.
Without a word, the cyborg poured water into a small plastic cup and handed it to the old man. The patient gratefully gasped as he poured it down his throat. He guzzled it with more strength than AD-214 would have thought possible, then removed the cup from his lips with a satisfied sigh.
“Thank you.” The elderly patient’s voice was stronger now as he focused his cloudy eyes on his new nurse. “A soldier, eh? I was a soldier once.”
AD-214 didn’t respond but stared down at the crumpled figure on the bed. He didn’t look anything like a soldier. His arms jutted awkwardly out of his paper gown and what little flesh he had remaining seemed to hang off his bones. The old man didn’t look like he could sit up in bed on his own, much less fight a battle.
“Will you stay here and talk to me?” the old man asked feebly. “I’ve been here forever, and nobody comes to visit me. I want to hear about what it’s like to be a soldier these days.”
AD-214 frowned. He couldn’t reveal anything about himself to the man. “I am on a mission.”