The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense

by Marling Sloan

  “Did Damian Foster offer to buy Luke from you?”

  Dr. Miles hesitated.

  “I don’t know how you heard about it, but he did,” he said. “I turned him down. Luke’s not going anywhere, and certainly not to that two-faced money scrounger.”

  “Good,” Mandelie said.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dr. Miles said. “I’m going to the lab early in the morning.”

  “I’m going back to my place in an hour, but I’ll stop by the lab tomorrow night,” Mandelie said. “I’m spending all day on the water tomorrow. Gotta practice if I’m going to compete in that beginner’s surfing competition.”

  “You’ll blow them out of the water,” Dr. Miles said. “Pun intended.”

  The blazing sun beat down on Mandelie’s bare shoulders as she floated in the water a few hundred feet from the beach. Not far from her a few other swimmers and surfers were splashing around.

  She leaned her arms on her surfboard for a break. She blew saltwater off her face.

  An inflated ball landed in the water close to her. She heard someone shout, “Sorry! Can you throw it back please?”

  Mandelie picked up the ball and threw it. She was caught unaware by the wave that rose up behind her and crashed down on her.

  She was pushed down into the water by the force of it. She spun and turned, her lungs burning as she inhaled seawater. It felt as though a giant hand was holding her underwater and refusing to let her go.

  “Alicia!” Seven year old Mandelie Miles huddled against the side of the fishing boat in her life jacket, watching with frightened eyes as her father leaned over the side of the boat as it pitched and rolled in the storm. He was stretching his hand out to something bobbing in the water.

  “I’ve almost got you! Take my hand!”

  Mandelie kicked to the surface, gasping and spluttering. She looked around with wide, panicked eyes. She saw her surfboard, bobbing a short distance from her, and swam towards it.

  The sound of laughter and cheers from the nearby swimmers shook her senses. She climbed onto her surfboard and began paddling back towards the beach.

  Behind her the sun was setting in a sky splashed orange and red.

  Detective Jack Strouds of Malibu P.D. was cruising down Pacific Coast Highway in his police car, another detective named Detective Grimes sitting in the passenger seat, when the call came on the police radio.

  “Cruiser 9196 to address 473 Bluff Drive, please. Building is named Argonaut Laboratories.”

  “Argonaut Laboratories?” Strouds said, with a frown. “Is that the wacky little establishment where all sorts of weird experiments go on?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Grimes said. “Never been called there before though.”

  “Let’s go see what’s going on,” Strouds said.

  Strouds pressed down on the accelerator and sliced through the traffic.

  Chapter 5.

  After feeling her hands and feet scrape sand, Mandelie waded thankfully up to the beach. She wiped her face with her towel and slipped off her wetsuit, pulling a shirt and shorts over her bathing suit. Then she walked to her car.

  Mandelie was humming along to a favorite song on the radio when she caught sight of the barricade of police cars lined up in front of the laboratory. The entrance gate was rolled back.

  Several police officers were pacing back and forth in front of the gate, talking on their phones and to each other.

  Mandelie stopped the car. She got out and ran towards the police.

  “What happened?”

  “Stop right there,” one of them said sternly. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Mandelie Miles,” Mandelie said. “My dad is Dr. Jason Miles. He owns this lab.”

  She fell silent when she saw Luke being escorted out of the lab by two police officers. His hands were cuffed behind him. His head was lowered.

  “Luke!” Mandelie shouted.

  She tried to run towards him, but was held back by one of the officers.

  Detective Strouds and Detective Grimes led Luke towards a waiting police car.

  “Wait! You can’t do this!” Mandelie said. “Why are you arresting him?”

  The officer holding her arm coughed.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, miss, but your father is missing,” he said. “There are copious amounts of his blood inside the building. We’re taking the … robot into custody under suspicion of murder.”

  “That’s impossible,” Mandelie breathed. She watched with stunned eyes as Detective Strouds pushed Luke into the backseat of the car. “Luke wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all my father.”

  She pulled her arm out of the officer’s grasp and ran towards the car.

  “What are you going to do with him?” she said tersely to Strouds.

  “Er,” Strouds said. “The normal laws don’t seem to apply to him, so we’re going to hold him at the police station until a decision is made about what to do with him.”

  “Miss Miles!” Luke said.

  Mandelie met his eyes.

  “Don’t risk yourself on my account,” Luke said. He shook his head.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke said. “I swear I don’t know.”

  Strouds closed the door on Luke’s face.

  Mandelie turned to the burly detective.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she said. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  “We’ll hold him in a cell,” Strouds said. “But I can’t make you any promises.”

  Mandelie watched, white-faced, as the two detectives got into the car and it drove away.

  Luke sat silently and motionlessly in the back seat of the police car as Strouds and Grimes conversed loudly enough in the front.

  “Killer robots,” Strouds said disgustedly. “I thought we’d find a lot of strange things in that lab, but this takes the cake.”

  “You have to admit, they did a good job making the guy,” Grimes said, looking in the rearview mirror at Luke. “If I passed him on the street I wouldn’t give him a second glance.

  Luke looked down at the heavy chains on his wrist cuffs. He lifted them and broke them cleanly with an effortless twist. Then he kicked the passenger door open.

  “What the hell!” Strouds shouted, swerving the car hard to the left.

  “He’s trying to get away!” Grimes said.

  Luke was leaning out of the police car as it weaved dangerously and as the fast-moving traffic in the next lane tore past him. Horns blasted into his face as alarmed drivers caught sight of him. He seemed to be timing the movement of the cars, waiting for the right moment to jump.

  Grimes drew his gun and fired at the backseat. The bullet ripped past Luke’s shoulder and buried itself in the seat.

  Luke glanced at Grimes and then threw himself from the car, vanishing underneath a passing car.

  “He jumped!” Grimes said. “I don’t believe it. Pull over! He’s got to be heading for the trees on the side of the road.”

  The sirens on the police car wailed as it sliced through traffic, forcing cars out of its way.

  Luke had moved impossibly fast, sliding underneath rushing cars and barely ducking around them. He jumped across the hood of the last car in his way and ran into the trees on the side of the highway.

  At the same time Strouds and Grimes jumped out of their parked car and raced into the trees.

  “I see him!” Strouds shouted, catching sight of Luke’s figure in front of them, running through the trees.

  “Bring him down!” Grimes said. “Don’t kill him! We need him alive!”

  “You’re forgetting that thing can’t be killed, Grimes!” Strouds said.

  He aimed his gun and fired.

  The bullet struck Luke in the middle of his back. He fell to the ground.

  Strouds and Grimes caught up to him and stood over him.

  “Not a good idea, robot,” Strouds said.

  “I’m an android,” Luke said. “Not a robot.”

>   “You’re in a world of trouble, that’s what you are,” Grimes said.

  Chapter 6.

  Mandelie stood outside the laboratory late into the night, wrapped in a blanket and watching with disbelieving eyes as forensics teams and endless police officers walked in and out of the lab, carrying various items that were now deemed “evidence.”

  She paled when she saw one of them holding a white laboratory jacket - her father’s - that was streaked with blood. She turned her face away.

  “Hey.” She felt a gentle tap on her shoulder.

  She turned and saw Trista.

  Grateful to see a familiar face, Mandelie hugged her.

  “I can’t believe it,” Trista said. She wiped her eyes. “But when I heard about it, I came straight here.”

  “I don’t believe what they’re saying to me,” Mandelie said. “They arrested Luke.”

  Trista shook her head.

  “You shouldn’t stay alone tonight,” she said. “You can stay at my place if you want.”

  “Thanks,” Mandelie said, in a shaking voice. “I think I will. I’ll go down to the police station first thing in the morning. I need to find out more about what happened from Luke.”

  Strouds had been right when he had said that the usual laws concerning criminals did not apply to Luke. When they had arrived at the station Luke had been quickly photographed and then taken to a small jail cell. Though there were other inmates crowded into the rooms around him, he was put into solitary.

  Luke took in his surroundings as the officer closed the door of his cell behind him.

  There was a single chair in a corner and a hard bed with a thin sheet on top of it.

  He sat down on the bed. His shirt was torn in the back where the bullet had ripped through it. The bullet had buried itself in one of his central nervous consoles, making him unable to lie down.

  He leaned against the wall of the prison cell and closed his eyes.

  “Make yourself at home,” Trista said to Mandelie, as she let her into the small, but comfortable apartment. “I’ll make you some soup. You can lie down on the couch and I’ll bring you some blankets.”

  “Thanks,” Mandelie said.

  She sat down on the worn couch in Trista’s den and leaned against the pillows. A feeling of exhaustion swept over her. She still could not confront the fact that her dad was missing. Missing, presumed dead.

  She reached into her bag and took out her phone.

  She typed a message into it and sent it.

  In his jail cell Luke stirred when the communication console in his head alerted him to a message. He closed his eyes and saw the message floating in front of him.

  “Luke, are you there? It’s Mandelie.”

  Luke pressed the inside of his wrist and a hologram image of a keyboard appeared in front of him.

  “Yes,” he typed on the keyboard. He sent the message.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I am in solitary confinement,” Luke responded. “I don’t know how long they will keep me here.”

  “Don’t let them know you can communicate with me in this way. This is the only way I can know how they’re treating you.”

  “Yes, Miss Miles,” Luke responded.

  “I will try to see you tomorrow morning,” Mandelie said.

  The communication console in Luke’s head blinked twice, signifying that the conversation was ended.

  Mandelie put her phone back in her bag as Trista brought a cup of soup to her. She sat down beside Mandelie on the couch.

  “None of this makes any sense,” Mandelie said in a low voice. “And I can’t go into the lab either, to try to find clues for myself. It’s barricaded.”

  “There’s nothing you can do right now but wait,” Trista said.

  “And try to get Luke out,” Mandelie said. “He’s not responsible for this. I know it.”

  Chapter 7.

  Strouds and Grimes tapped on the bars of Luke’s cell. Luke opened his eyes. He was still sitting upright on his bed.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Strouds said. “You’re being transferred to maximum security in Barstow. There’s a police van waiting outside for you.”

  Luke said nothing as he walked out of the cell and his hands were cuffed behind him.

  Strouds and Grimes led Luke out of the police station. It was not even dawn. The air was cold.

  A black police van was parked at the curb.

  “The doors are layered with steel,” Strouds said. “So don’t think of trying anything funny.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Luke said.

  Strouds eyed him caustically and then opened the door of the van. Luke got in.

  Strouds got into the driver’s seat and Grimes took the passenger seat.

  “It’s about two hours’ drive,” Strouds said to Luke, as he turned on the ignition. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  He and Grimes laughed as the van pulled away from the police station.

  The maximum security prison in Barstow was named Fort Conway. It housed nearly one thousand inmates out in the blistering desert between Los Angeles and Nevada. It was composed of two huge gray buildings where the prison rooms were and a recreation yard for the inmates. The whole prison was surrounded by miles of barbed wire fence.

  The police van carrying Luke parked in front of the fence. A prison guard and a police officer were already waiting for them.

  Strouds opened the door of the van.

  “This is the robot,” he said.

  “Android,” Luke said.

  “You need to put him in solitary,” Strouds said. “If the other prisoners find out he’s a robot, they’ll smash him to pieces.”

  “Agreed,” the prison guard said. “He’ll go in solitary.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Strouds said. He and Grimes got back into the van and drove away.

  Luke did not look at the other prisoners in the recreation yard as he was escorted past it. He looked up at the high gray cement wall of the building in front of him.

  Within the building, he was again quickly photographed and then taken up in an elevator to the top floor of the prison. He was led down a corridor filled with solitary jail cells for the worst of the criminals. There were at least ten prison guards standing in the corridor, keeping an eye on the inmates.

  The prison guard stopped in front of an empty cell and opened the door.

  Luke stepped into the prison. It was a bigger cell than the one at the police station, but it had the same things in it. A hard bed and a chair in one corner. There was no window.

  He heard the door close and lock behind him.

  “You’ll be in this cell all the time,” the prison guard said to him through the bars. “If you need recreation, tell one of the guards and you’ll get fifteen minutes of fresh air by yourself in the yard. Do you eat?”

  “It is not necessary for me to eat to survive,” Luke said.

  “Well, good for you,” the guard said sarcastically. “Sleep well. Welcome to Max Security.”

  Mandelie awoke when dull light flooded into Tricia’s apartment. She opened her eyes and looked around her in confusion. Then the events of the previous night came back to her in a sickening rush of memory.

  She sat up and reached for her phone.

  A new message was blinking on the screen. It was from Luke.

  “I have been transferred to Fort Conway. I am in maximum security. Please don’t risk yourself on my part, Miss Miles.”

  Mandelie bit her lip in dismay.

  “Tricia!”

  Tricia stumbled out of her bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They’ve transferred Luke to a maximum security prison,” Mandelie said. “How am I supposed to get him out of there?”

  Chapter 8.

  The guards at Fort Conway were accustomed to seeing the unusual on a daily basis, but the sight of the long, shining black Rolls Royce that drove up to the front gate of the prison was enough to c
ause most of them to stop in their tracks.

  The driver’s side door opened and Damian Foster got out. He looked immaculate in a white shirt and pants, as though he was visiting a golf club instead of a maximum security prison. Carlie got out of the car gingerly, dressed in a pale green sweater and pencil skirt, her iPad under her arm. She looked disgusted as she tried to ignore the jeering and whistling from the inmates in the recreation yard trying to get her attention.

  A guard walked up to Damian.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “You can,” Damian said, without taking his sunglasses off. “I’d like to speak to one of your inmates. His name is Luke.”

  Luke was in a sleep state when he heard someone hitting the bars of his prison. He jolted awake and stood.

  Damian Foster and Carlie were standing in front of his cell. Damian had taken off his sunglasses. He grinned widely at Luke.

  “You get half an hour, sir,” the guard said to Damian before leaving them.

  “Hello, Luke,” Damian said.

  Luke said nothing. Carlie was staring at him in awe.

  “He’s something, isn’t he, Carlie?” Damian asked her.

  “He’s an actual android?” Carlie said. “Not a real person?”

  “He’s an android,” Damian said. “A brilliantly-designed one. My old boss and mentor knew what he was doing.”

  “What are you doing here?” Luke said.

  “You don’t belong here, Luke,” Damian said. “You belong at Adventis Technologies. You’re priceless and they’ve got you in a prison in a soul-sucking desert.”

  Luke eyed him inscrutably.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” Damian said.

  “Damian, he’s in a maximum security holding cell,” Carlie hissed.

  “Trust me, Carlie,” Damian said. “I’ve got it all figured out.”

  He walked to one of the prison guards and began conversing with him in a low voice.