Despite the situation, Jack shot back, “I told you to go before we left Prometheus!”
“And I did!” I insisted as Zero took me through the roof door and into the stairwell beyond. “But then I drank that stupid sweet tea you bought me at that Thai place!” I called back through the broken opening. “It was thirty ounces!”
“Bring them,” instructed Zero without stopping, as if Jack and I were not conversing. His android army followed his orders at once. I glanced back to see the soldiers dragging a struggling captain and IRM-900 along behind us. Jack swore as usual, but Luke was stoically fuming, his EED perma-red.
I stumbled a little as we hit the first landing. Zero caught and righted me without effort. We continued on our hurried way, and I knew what Lucas most likely knew. “Things are about to get ugly,” I whispered, not meaning to say the words out loud, but somehow unable to stop them.
“You said it,” agreed Jack. “Like Sunday morning.”
Chapter Four
Luke, Jack, and I were separated immediately upon entering the lower levels of Vector Fifteen’s west building. Jack’s guards took him in one direction, and Luke’s guards dragged him silently in another.
The captain was anything but silent, however. He swore up an impressive storm as he was man-handled down a long hallway. “Don’t you glorified mannequins lay a plastic finger on either one of them! Do you hear me? Let me go, you sack of silicon shit – Sam! I’ll find you! Just do what Zero says, Sammy! Don’t piss him off!” His voice grew distant as they hurried him away.
“Where are you taking them?” I demanded, still in Zero’s grasp. All the self defense moves I’d been taught by my friends flew from my mind in my renewed and amplified state of fear. Besides, they would have been useless now. If Lucas couldn’t defeat the IRM-1000, then I couldn’t either. “What will you do with them?!” I yelled.
If Zero had answers to my questions, he’d clearly decided not to share them with me. He led me to an elevator without uttering a word. Once both my companions were no longer in the vicinity, IRM-1000 used his free hand to call the elevator.
I tugged at his grip on me and craned my neck to peer down the hall long hall where Jack had been taken. It went on forever, leading to darkness. Lucas was probably at more of a risk for torture in this place than Jack was, but Jack was human and less able to take it. “Please! Tell me what you’re going to do to them! You promised you would keep them alive!”
The elevator arrived, the doors dinged open, and Zero began to step inside. I struggled wildly now, digging in my feet and slamming my free hand in a fist against Zero’s forearm in an attempt to make him let go.
He simply stopped in his tracks, shot me a slightly bemused expression over his broad shoulder, and easily adjusted his grip from my hand to my wrist before using that grip to pull me inside after him. He maneuvered me close to his body, and the elevator doors shut in front of us.
My hand hurt where he’d held me earlier. In fact, my other hand was hurting too…. I looked down at my free hand in confusion, but saw nothing. Maybe it was having sympathy pains for the other one? Was that a thing?
I glanced sidelong at Zero. He was watching me with a contemplative expression.
But my fear wouldn’t let up. My chest was too tight, and hard anxiety was sending stars into my vision, making his image literally sparkle in my eyes.
With my wrist still in his grasp, I doubled over at the waist, feeling a panic attack coming on. “Please…” I began again but softly, hoping he would at least relent in the face of desperate politeness. “What will you do to Captain Hugo?” I was getting downright dizzy.
At last I felt Zero turn fully toward me, though his hold on my arm didn’t let up an iota. I looked up from my bent position. His icy eyes captured mine and held them while his EED flickered and shifted a very, very light blue, and the elevator started its climb. I freed my gaze from his to watch the numbers on the elevator’s level display get bigger rather than smaller.
My heart sank further. We were going right back up the way we’d come. If anyone did come to rescue us, they would never think to search for me on a level higher than the one I’d last been seen on. We’d all come down from the roof and been separated on the third floor. Daniel would search down from there, not up.
Which was no doubt why Zero had done things the way he had. He was throwing possible interlopers off his track, and off mine. He was smart. Terrifyingly so.
I looked back over at my captor. He was still watching me, apparently waiting for me to come to my conclusions before speaking, because then he said, “Jack Hugo is human and not entirely in peak condition. Frankly, he would not survive the ministrations of my men for long. And as killing him would serve little purpose, my intentions where Hugo is concerned are to leave him alone. For now.”
I braced my free hand on my knee and closed my eyes in relief. Zero had no reason to lie to me. So at least Jack was safe. But… what about Luke?
And there it went again, my waywardly speeding pulse, right back up to a skyrocket pace.
“And Lucas?” I choked out, even when I knew I shouldn’t have asked.
“IRM-900 is my collateral,” Zero told me, moving his fingers with surprising tenderness along the inside of my wrist so that I was reminded of his hold over me – in so many ways. His sudden gentleness felt all too much like Luke’s. Which was probably the point. “He is my insurance,” Zero iterated. “Because you are stubborn.”
Crap and shit, I thought.
Panic was an obstinate thing. It pulled the trigger on its crazy gun even when you knew it was about to shoot and you were trying to be reasonable and talk it down. And that was what it did to me then in that elevator, as I thought of Lucas in the hands of Zero’s men and at the mercy of Zero’s cruel whims. My palms began to ache for some reason, perhaps a precursor to the tingling fingers and toes I would soon experience, though this was admittedly a new sensation.
“Please attempt to slow your breathing, Samantha,” Zero instructed coolly. “Your heart rate is severely elevated, and your blood is being deprived of carbon dioxide. Your chances of soon experiencing hyperventilation are at eighty-six percent.”
“Oh my Christ,” I breathed raggedly, shaking my head and gritting my teeth as I continued to brace myself against my knee. Zero was exhibiting every trait that had ever made humans hate androids, and he was doing so with expert poise: measured calm, calculated apathy, and cold lack of pity so extreme, it was not only infuriating but confusing. I tried to give a sudden yank to get out of his grip, but he seemed to anticipate the movement, and his hand was a vice around me. “I hate you so much right now!”
Zero leaned over me, his body so much taller and broader than mine, it was as if someone were laying a shadowy blanket over me. When his lips were beside my ear, I forced myself to keep my head forward and not look at him. He lowered his voice until his accented words inflected dangerously. “If necessary Samantha, I will inject you with a sedative to prevent syncope and spare your precious brain cells.”
My breathing hitched. He delivered the threat with the cool composure of someone engaged in the most casual conversation, but its effect on me was anything but casual. Did he know about my phobia of needles?
I didn’t have to consider it long before I knew the answer. Of course he does, I thought. He’d possessed my files for a while after all, and as the most powerful android to date, he could probably read them and retain their information so fast it would make my head spin. Plus, anyone with any brain cells at all knew that sedatives killed a lot more of them than fainting.
He was messing with me. Pure and simple.
I finally turned my head to look at him, stared into the perfect face that was mere inches from mine, and shot him my best go-to-android-hell look. He acknowledged it with a raised brow and that all-too beautiful, frustrating smile. Then he straightened to his impressive height again and said, “Or you can simply try counting slowly to control your breathing, as I sugg
ested. It’s your choice. What do you want, Samantha?”
“I want you to leave Lucas alone,” I seethed. It was true. I would do anything to protect him.
The elevator continued to climb, and Zero looked down at me a long while, his EED switching between blue and yellow before he finally said, “IRM-900’s wellbeing is in your hands. Cooperate fully, and I see no reason he need come to further harm.”
I processed that. “Wait – further harm?”
The elevator slowed and came to a full stop, so my exclamation went unrecognized. I glanced at the floor number. We were right back up where we’d started at the top of Vector Fifteen’s west side building. Only this time we were on the second-to-last floor instead of the rooftop. The doors opened, and Zero led me out by my tightly grasped wrist.
We entered a short hallway that ended abruptly at a second door. This was a metal door, and it looked thick. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it was no thinner than a foot in depth. Zero’s EED flickered from blue to green – a color I hadn’t yet seen on a sensor – and there was an internal clicking sound. He’d opened the door telepathically. That meant he and the building were linked.
I wasn’t surprised. It made sense that when he’d rebuilt the company, he would make those kinds of upgrade changes.
With his free hand, he reached out and grasped the door’s undecorated bar-shaped handle. He twisted it and pulled, swinging the door open toward us. I was right; it was almost a foot thick.
Darkness greeted beyond the doorway.
“After you.”
At last he released my wrist, and I rubbed it automatically, wanting to stave off the bruising I knew would show up and worry Lucas. If I ever saw him again.
“Where am I?” I asked as I cautiously stepped inside.
Lights slowly glowed to life like adjustable lamps rising to their full wattage. I moved further into what I could now see was a roughly fifty-by-fifty room nearly devoid of decoration. It was the perfect temperature inside, as it was throughout all of Vector Fifteen.
The room reminded me of a room you’d see in a Tron movie, a combination of black, gray, and blue. A myriad of screens and panels lined the walls. Near one side and facing a particularly large screen was a single metal chair connected to the floor and upholstered in padded leather. On the right side of the chair was a swinging tray possessing a keyboard and hand scanner.
I didn’t fail to notice the metal restraints built into the arm rests and legs. They too were padded in leather, for whatever that was worth. But most worrisome of all was the simply made twin-size bed against the opposite wall. It possessed a single pillow, white sheets, and a thick white comforter. They were crisp and new, and the bed had been made so that not a single wrinkle marred its aesthetic. I glanced up at the mandroid behind me in his impeccable white suit. Obviously, I thought. Not a wrinkle.
Zero waited just inside the doorway as if aware that I needed to take in my surroundings before he again entered my personal space. When I turned back to face him fully, I asked, “I’m guessing the chair is for me?”
“As is the bed.”
I glanced nervously at the bed. “I’m not even vaguely sleepy.”
He had the grace to laugh, and in that singular moment he looked more like Lucas than ever, despite the glowing blue eyes. His pull on me just then was unsettling, and my throat went dry.
He tilted his head to the side, studying me carefully. Scanning me, I thought. It was now not only unsettling but embarrassing – because Zero would be aware of my reaction to him.
“Perhaps you are not somnolent at the moment,” he said softly, stepping further into the room. The door swung gently closed behind him, and I heard it latch. “But you will be.”
I chose to ignore the white-wash of dread that rolled through me like an ocean wave at that, and focused on something else instead. Like the obvious. “You knew I was coming here all along. You prepared this room for me.”
His easy, confident smile said it all. But as if I needed further confirmation he said, “You as good as ensured your stay at Vector Fifteen when you opted to infiltrate my facility and destroy your file, Samantha. Where is one to turn when the only copy of something valuable has been terminated?”
“The original,” I replied automatically. “What exactly is it you want from me?”
Now Zero grew deadly serious. The EED by his eye flickered a myriad of colors, some of which I again hadn’t seen on an EED before. A few of the colors reflected in the extraordinary irises of his eyes, until finally both sensor light and eye color settled on a blue so light, it was nearly white.
He took a step in my direction that echoed in the chambers of my mind. Then he said, “What do I want?” He gave a small laugh that rapidly slipped away with his next step closer. “I want everything, Samantha.” The room was quiet in the wake of his statement. But for the pounding of my heart. “I wish to own all that makes you… you.” He clasped his hands behind his back and paced further into the room toward me and the scary chair. “You have a more amazing mind than even you are aware of.” More EED flickering. “And enclosed in such an exquisite form.” His eyes trailed across my face.
I swallowed hard, but it didn’t go down all the way. It got caught on that damn lump that had formed. I almost coughed, barely managing to remain quiet and still, my eyes glued anxiously to his.
He continued. “I want every new project you are working on, for starters. Such as the solution capable of providing an android with bullet-proof skin.” He stopped and pinned me with an all-knowing gaze that froze me to my toes. “I know that you’ve already given it to one of your companions and that it successfully transformed his outer tissue layers into something impermeable for a limited period of time.”
My mind reeled.
Okay… all of that was true. But how in the name of the android gods he knew about it was beyond me. I had taken extra precautious with the last group of projects I’d begun and I hadn’t even written them down! I’d kept them all in my head! Once I’d learned Vector Fifteen had a file on me and all my past inventions, I’d decided that no recorded experiments were better than stolen recorded experiments.
So now I was not only terrified, I was absolutely befuddled. “How the hell do you know about that?” I demanded. There was only one logical way, of course. There was a leak at Prometheus.
But Zero was nonplussed. “I have my sources.”
That all but confirmed it and left me with a very sour taste on my tongue. Now I was angry as well as scared. “You know what? Screw your sources,” I finally hissed. It seemed my panic attack was taking the form of the latter portion of the term panic attack rather than the former, and I was slipping into attack mode. “I don’t give a fuck how you learned about the Droider All, I will never in a million years give you the formula!”
Zero blinked. “Droider-All?”
Now I blinked, and my attack-mode went stale. “Um, yeah… Droider-All? You know, like Armor All for cars. It’s an old brand. But this is for androids, so I just moved the words around a little and –” I stopped talking, my jaw snapped shut, and my brow furrowed with sudden immense irritation. “Ugh! It doesn’t matter! You can’t fucking have it!”
Zero’s expression settled into the most terrifying one I’d seen on him yet: absolutely calm conviction.
“I have you, Samantha Hart,” he said with zero emotional inflection. “Hence, I will have it. As I will have everything else you have to give. What you require is incentive.” He moved just as calmly to the nearest control panel and placed his hand on one of many scanners lining the walls. I watched the circuit board workings of his EED flash several different colors. “It seems I was correct with regards to your stubborn streak.”
He straightened again and all the screens flashed to life at once. Every one of them showed the same image. It was a live feed of Lucas. To my supreme horror, he was fastened to the floor of his cell in the most grotesque manner – each hand “nailed” to its surface by t
he blade of a knife thrust through his palm. He’d been spread-eagled, pinned like a beautiful insect, and abandoned in this condition. The room was empty but for him.
I could see that he was still conscious. His EED flashed and hung bright red, and his head turned from one side to the other as he no doubt looked at his crucified appendages and wondered how to free himself without destroying his parts entirely. I knew what he must have been thinking: Pull his hands free now, and he would still be faced with a locked cell. And as he searched unsuccessfully for an escape from it, he would bleed to death.
Nausea roiled in my gut. Thorium was gathering in puddles beneath Luke’s arms, and he’d clearly been tortured prior to his obscene pinning, as his chin and chest were both also covered in blotches of emerald-hued blood. His legs were free, but his left leg was twisted at an odd angle, clearly damaged.
“Oh God,” I whispered, moving toward the big screen while wondering if I was about to vomit all over its console. “No… Lucas….”
I vaguely heard Zero’s shoes approaching behind me.
“You… son of a bitch….” I whispered shakily. “You said you would keep them alive.”
“I did,” he said simply. “And I have. But the deal is as ever contingent upon your cooperation.” He paused for emphasis. “Which I knew I would not immediately possess.”
My heart caved inward in that moment, like it was digging a hole through the rest of my chest. I felt my legs shaking, and I could see that my arms were doing the same where they were braced on the computer’s console.
Zero’s strong arm slid around my lower back. I couldn’t even tense against the intimate contact; I felt too weak just then, drained entirely of both will and energy. So I didn’t fight when he bent, slid his other arm behind my knees, and picked me up.
He carried me to the chair at the center of the room. There he sat me down on the plush leather, and in a manner most unsettling, he tranquilly and gently locked the metal restraints around my wrists and ankles. Without a word, he then swung the tray inward, and I found that the palm scanner on it was made to fit directly beneath my right hand.
I, Android: A Different Model Page 5