Artificial

by Jadah McCoy

  “We did that? No wonder they’re angry, Michelo.”

  “Your girl up there was telling us the story of how she was spliced. She also just freed a whole batch of meat market flesh. Now, what do you think that means for us?”

  It means that if the PICs are able to somehow trace Syl to me, and me to Michelo, and Michelo to a ring of Organic sympathizers, we will all be permanently powered off or worse.

  My face must say all of this because Michelo says, “Exactly, and if the PICs don’t find us first, that girl is turning into a Cull. I’ve seen what they can do, and I don’t particularly want to see it again.”

  “So what do you propose we do?” I place my chin in my palms.

  He doesn’t flinch when he says, “Get them out.”

  I try to stop my face from falling at the notion of abandoning the Organic girl. I couldn’t care less about the male Organic, but she… The distress that gripped me when she collapsed on the shop floor. She felt so light, so helpless in my arms, like a little hollow-boned bird when I scooped her up, pushed the contents of the reception counter onto the floor, and laid her sweating body on it. Michelo brought the blankets, and that stupid human boy did nothing but stand there and gape.

  “Nothing can be done for her?” I ask.

  Michelo’s look is as sharp as a knife. “Bastion, your affections are misplaced.” He’s never sounded more like a typical android than he does at this moment.

  Affections. The word makes me angry. The emotion makes me angry. Why do I care about this stupid girl? I am not programmed to experience these things, to think these things. Why, when I see Pontus standing over her broken form, does anger thrum through my metal core? Why, when she looks at me with those lost blue eyes, do I want to comfort her? How cruel the life I live, to be cursed with these affections yet condemned to always hide them.

  “You are mistaken. I feel nothing,” I tell him. Denial. “Set something up and I will take them.”

  His smirk says he doesn’t believe me.

  “Be back before dawn,” he says.

  I zip my trousers and fasten the belt around my waist. My shirt is hidden somewhere in the shadows, but I shrug on my black leather vest anyway, and then my coat over it.

  Micro fixes her makeup in the mirror. The state of her perfect electric blue lipstick was unfortunately sacrificed during our liaison. She hates when I mess up her makeup. She stares into the looking glass, obsessively fixing her long lashes and brushing at her fire-red hair.

  I glance around, waiting for her to say, “Ciao, money’s on the counter, sod off,” anything. But I know she won’t speak until her face is perfect.

  Her flat is quite posh, as would be expected for a Lead Analyst at CorpEx. I’d be lying if I said it was a coincidence I ended up here with her tonight.

  I lie back on the bed. Might as well make myself comfortable until she deigns to speak to me through all that primping. Meter’s still runnin’ anyhow.

  But time is of the essence. I only have until dawn, and my patience with her is running thin. There’s no time for more pleasantries. “What do you remember about the Culling?” I ask.

  She sets her lip wand down on the glass table with a clatter. She’s silent a moment.

  “What made you think of that, B?” she says without turning around. She picks up the wand again, her hand studiously steady.

  I cross my arms behind my head. “Oh, just looking through some of Michelo’s old junk and found some images.”

  “What sort of images?” Her voice is thin, strained, and I wonder if bringing this up is pushing her too far. Then again, I don’t really care. The never-ending flow of money that lines her figurative pockets sustains our relationship. At least my half of the relationship, anyway.

  “Of the war.” I focus on a building far away, visible through the glass walls of her flat. Squares of golden light illuminate the length of it. I count each of them, waiting for her answer.

  I count twenty-seven before her eyes, the same shade of blue as mine, alight on me. A pleasant, enigmatic, forced smile brightens her sweetly designed face. She rises from her chair and approaches the bed. She hasn’t bothered to dress yet, and her body is pale and perfect in the cool light. A network of silvery circuits decorates her plastic skin. I trace the patterns and run a hand over her smooth thigh as she curls against me.

  “What did you come here for, B?” she asks.

  “To see you, love.” It’s not a lie. She bought me, so I am here to see her.

  “What did you really come here for?”

  The lovestruck smile fades from my face as I look away from her. “I need information.”

  She untangles from me and returns to her mirror with silent grace, like a predator. “In lieu of payment?”

  It isn’t really a question, more of a suggestion… a term of agreement.

  “If necessary.”

  “Must be awfully important if you’re forfeiting cash.” She smooths her hair back into a perfect bun. I hear the insult behind her carefully concocted words: greedy whore.

  I smile at her attempt to hurt me. It’s not an insult if it’s a fact.

  “What do you want to know?” she asks.

  “Do you remember how the war ended?” I play with a loose thread on my trousers.

  “Yes, of course. They spread their disease with their filthy lung-air and bodily secretions, and it undid them at a speed which was quite impressive, if I do say so myself.” She smooths back her hair again.

  She turns this way and that in the mirror. Her actions are all a very pretty way of avoiding me.

  “No, not the lie we created to cover up the horrors, Micro.”

  She turns to face me again, movements jerky and mechanical, her eyes narrow slits in her face.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her tone is defensive, dismissive.

  I almost pity her. Micro leads a more dangerous life than most. She is a triple threat: an Organic sympathizer, a Glitch, and a CorpEx conglomerate employee. Daily she conceals not one, but two death sentence–worthy secrets right under the noses of those who surround her. She has to be more careful than most and is wound perpetually tight. It takes hours of coital bliss just to get a smile from her.

  She plays a good game layering the makeup on like armor, but two days ago she canceled an appointment, flustered because of some work issue.

  The day Syl showed up in the dumpsters behind CorpEx.

  I know CorpEx has something to do with this, and I won’t be able to stop thinking about it until I get some answers.

  “Please.” I stare at her, imploring her to look at me. “I need your help. What happened at CorpEx the other day?” I ask her, chin propped in my hands as I lounge across her bed.

  “Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her eyes are crystal daggers pointed at me, daring me to question her.

  I do dare.

  “Bollocks, Micro. You and I both know it.”

  Finally, the guard comes down from her eyes. She opens up to me like a flower, timid and delicate, as though she could tear apart under too much pressure.

  “You know I can’t talk to you about these things. It would mean…” She shakes her head, not finishing the sentence. I know how it would end, anyway.

  A CorpEx worker spewing CorpEx secrets is a liability swiftly dealt with. It doesn’t take a genius to know that.

  “Micro, I think CorpEx is still experimenting on Organics.”

  “That’s impossible. I would know. If anyone would know, I would know.”

  She gets up and slips on her robe as she begins to pace the length of windows along the flat. The donning of clothing means she’s ready to do business.

  “Exactly. Please, tell me what happened the other day.”

  She sighs, giving up the act of ignorance. The last thing Micro is, is ignorant. She faces me, all seriousness. “There’s an area no one’s allowed to go in. Two days ago, it was breached. The emergency protocols were switched, and
the retaining doors went down. We were trapped and then all evacuated through the secondary exit.”

  I jump up from her bed, pacing with her, flinging my hands about in excitement. “That day, that very same day, a girl, a human girl, showed up outside CorpEx, Micro. She claims that she was an experiment.”

  “An experiment?” Micro asks.

  I remember the pallor that shrouded Syl’s face when she told her story. There is no doubt in my mind that something happened to that girl in the CorpEx building. Something terrible.

  “Your delicate feminine sensibilities don’t require all the details.”

  “Bastion, how can I help you if I don’t know what I’m helping you with?”

  “She claims she was taken from her city, brought to New Elite.” The desolation in her eyes as she tells her story, the tears ready to fall. If I had a heart, it would be torn out. “She says she was cut open, and now she’s changing. She mentioned Surgeon General. Have you ever heard that before?”

  Micro looks away, thinking. A light enters her eyes, and she glances up at me. “Maybe I have. Let me do some research.”

  “You magnificent creature!” I pick her up and spin her around.

  She squeals and gives me a rare smile. Catching herself, she tucks it away again and pushes at my chest. “B, you know I can’t promise anything. I can’t put myself in danger like that.”

  “I know.” I kiss her on the forehead before leaving her flat with a flutter of my coattails.

  Syl’s face follows me everywhere I go. Quite literally.

  On every corner, on every billboard I pass, pixels outline her face. A cycle repeats, face after dirty, bruised face of escaped Organic prisoners, and then her face. It blinks into my mind so many times I must have the planes of her visage memorized by now.

  Sharp nose, full lips, big eyes, pale skin, blonde hair, freckle to the right of her mouth.

  Dirty face, dirty face, dirty face.

  Nose, lips, eyes, skin, hair, freckle. Again and again as I walk. Her face illuminates the big screen of the CorpEx tower. She glares down at me with those angry eyes, accusing me, convicting me. Below her face read the red words: Organic sympathizer.

  I suppose she did a good enough job convincing the PIC she’s one of us if that’s her crime. Bollocks. Soon my face will be on that screen next to hers, wanted as an accomplice.

  Dammit, and she’s just so noticeable in the crowd. Her pale skin, pale hair, it’s all so bland and neutral. She sticks out, an ethereal waif lost in a forest of neon colors and bright lights.

  We will have to do something about that.

  “Have you seen it, Michelo?” I ask as I slip into the shop.

  He’s fiddling with something behind the counter. “Who’s not seen it? Now is the time, my friend. We can’t afford to wait until the PICs are busting down doors to find her.”

  “We’ll need some sort of disguise for her.”

  “One step ahead of you.” Michelo wiggles a Pigment Purveyor in front of his face. “Hope she’s not fond of her hair.”

  I’m almost—almost—startled when a soft voice beside me asks, “Why?”

  Syl.

  Syl

  he rumble of Bastion’s voice through the walls wakes me from a light sleep. Adrenaline and anger keep me from really sleeping anyway, so I throw my feet over the side of the bed and get up, bleary-eyed.

  A gray light seeps in through the long windows above me, the light of early morning. Through the doorway across the room, I see Serge’s legs sticking out of the shower. He must have fallen asleep there. It can’t be comfortable, but my lingering annoyance with him keeps me from caring too much about the comfort of his spine.

  I creep up the stairs. The “dead” guy is gone from the back room, thank goodness, and a little mechanical animal replaces him. In the sliver of light coming from the doorway, I can see its parts strewn across the operating table—cogs, screws, wires everywhere.

  In the next room, I see Michelo with a strange metal object in his hand. It’s shaped a bit like a scanner of some sort. Bastion comes into view. He’s wearing his normal clothes minus a shirt under his vest. I struggle to pull my eyes away from the light tan of his skin and the curvature of his muscles. He’s as attractive as he was created to be, I suppose.

  “Hope she’s not fond of her hair,” Michelo says.

  I step into the doorway and out of the shadows.

  “Why?” I ask him.

  Bastion turns to face me, a bit too quickly. “Every Elitian ought to have your face memorized by now,” he says. “Plastered like it is on all the buildings.”

  Shit.

  The color drains from my face, slow, cold, and thick as it settles into my toes. How will we ever get out of here if every masked bastard in the city has a hard-on for me?

  “You want me to cut my hair?” I run my fingers through the wisps of blonde trailing over my shoulders.

  “We need to go a step further than that,” Michelo says. He waves around the object in his hand. “That’s what this Pigment Purveyor is for. Cost me a pretty penny back in 2035. Hah!”

  “Pigment Purveyor?”

  “Yes, it purveys pigments.” Michelo comes around the counter, as though that clears everything up.

  I press my lips together, rolling my eyes. “Ah, well that helps explain things.”

  “It will change the color of your hair,” Bastion says.

  I blink at him. I try to keep the corner of my lip from lifting up in a smile. What a strange thing to want to do, much less be able to do. It seems so… silly. Worrying about the color of their hair while we lowly humans worry if we’ll be eating that night. But I suppose I should be thankful for such a vain device, considering the circumstance we’re in.

  “Really? Any color?”

  He shrugs with a grin. “Whatever color you can think of.”

  And from what I saw at the meat market, I’m assuming the more vibrant, the better.

  I glance around. “Well, where’s the knife?”

  In answer, Bastion strides into the other room.

  “That was easy,” Michelo says under his breath.

  I shrug. “It’s just hair. It grows back.”

  He brushes back thick strands of hair as he moves to lock the shop door and change the sign from “open” to “closed.”

  “Easy for you to say, Organic. One bad haircut and I need a full scalp transplant.”

  I cringe at the sound of that.

  Bastion appears again from the back room, blade in hand. He holds it out to me.

  “Would you like to do the honors, or…?”

  I shrug. “You can probably do a better job.”

  The only thing I would do is bundle my long hair at the base of my neck and saw through it. Probably not the most aesthetically pleasing haircut, but it gets the job done.

  “All right,” he says.

  Bastion twirls the knife in his hand with a flourish and studies my face, cocking his head to the side as he does so. I stare back at him as his eyes flit around, landing everywhere but my gaze.

  “This might be a bit easier if you sit,” he tells me.

  He’s right. Bastion’s tall, but so am I. He must be over six feet, but I come up to his chin, at least. I glance around, skimming the room for something to sit on.

  “No chairs. Don’t do much sitting here,” Michelo says as he watches from the sidelines, arms crossed over his chest.

  “Here.” I kneel on the hard floor, facing Bastion. “Is that better?”

  He clears his throat as he did earlier, once and then again, his brows raising. Must be a nervous tic. Well, not a tic. Something his programming tells him to do. That dimpled smile takes over his face, and I look away from him. Something in his gaze is lascivious.

  “What?” I squirm under his scrutiny.

  He shuffles around until he’s behind me, feet straddling either side of my legs.

  “Nothing at all.” He shrugs off his constricting jacket and lays it on the tab
le behind him, leaving his top half in only that absurdly tight vest. Why can’t he find clothes in the right size?

  He runs confident fingers through the length of my hair. They catch on snarls and knots, jerking my head back so much it bumps into him a few times. I don’t wince or whine; it doesn’t hurt too much.

  “Does the jungle girl ever brush her hair?” he whispers.

  I smile. “What’s a brush?”

  He snorts beneath his breath.

  After a few moments of sharp tugging, after he’s sifted through most of the knots or given up trying, he raises the knife and holds it to the hair at the back of my neck—

  “Get your fucking hands off her!” The yell comes out of nowhere, and when I glance to the left, Serge is rushing in like a typhoon.

  He pushes the android against the wall, holding Bastion’s armed hand against the shelf behind them. Batteries and plastic and all sorts of things explode in an almost comical halo of knickknacks. Serge’s muscles strain. His slim bulk almost matches Bastion’s, but he’s at a disadvantage when comparing his organic musculature to the wiry steel undulating beneath the android’s manufactured skin.

  “Calm down.” Bastion doesn’t move beneath Serge. I know he knows how easy it would be to hurt him. I’ve felt his grip before, and he wasn’t even trying to hurt me then.

  Of course, Serge doesn’t listen. Never was his strong point.

  Michelo strides over with purpose, and panic strikes me. If Michelo takes care of this, it won’t be so nicely. I shuffle up from the floor where I’ve fallen to my hands and knees in the scuffle.

  “Stop it!” I place a hand on Serge’s wrist, applying light pressure. “He was cutting my hair, not cutting my head off, you idiot.”

  I tug at Serge’s arm, and suddenly Bastion loses his grip on the weapon. Serge swipes backward, blade in hand. My arm flies out to guard myself, and the blade bites my palm. I cry out and jerk away.

  “Syl!” Serge drops the knife and releases Bastion.

  My fingers shake with pain and adrenaline.

  “No, I’m all right. It’s fine.” I turn my back to them, pushing Serge away with my shoulder.

  Blood drips from my palm, trailing along the floor. The cut isn’t too deep, but it hurts like hell. I hold my injured hand out in front of my face, inspecting it. The shock fades a bit, and hot anger takes its place. The pain makes me want to hit something, someone. Him. I can’t believe how much of an idiot he can sometimes be.