I, Android: A Different Model

by Heather Killough-Walden

  I looked from Jack to Nicholas and back again, and then the initial shock of it all wore off, and my feet were rushing forward. I slammed into Jack full-force and wrapped my arms around him, kissing him on the cheek. “My God, you’re okay – I had no idea if Zero was lying, or where you were being held or –”

  He chuckled a little, probably just a touch embarrassed by my outburst but mostly happy, and he hugged me back, warm and firm just like a dad would. “Hey, it’s okay kiddo. I’m good. But we need to skip town right now, ‘cuz Daniel and the others won’t be able to hold Zero and his men off for long.”

  “Where’s Lucas?” I asked, following them hastily out of the room to the elevator. “Last I saw, Matt was freeing him from those….” I couldn’t finish the sentence, but I didn’t have to.

  We reached the elevator wall, and just as I was attempting to formulate a plan that would have us climbing down the elevator cables in case the elevator was out of service, Nicholas gently pushed me aside, pried open the control panel, and began messing with its internal workings.

  I stepped back and let him work. This was his wheel house. I was fairly good at biomechanics, theoretical and applicable quantum physics, and in generally using my imagination to come up with new and even sometimes useful stuff. Nicholas on the other hand had always been good at screwing around with what was already there. Like cybernetic parts. And elevator controls.

  I took the opportunity to covertly look him over. He looked like he hadn’t aged a day. Well, maybe a day. But his blue-black hair had no gray, there were nearly no wrinkles marring his eyes or mouth, and his hands were as deft and dexterous as ever. His physique hadn’t changed either; tall, lean, strong, broad on the top, narrow at the waist.

  Nicholas Byron was the perfect specimen of man, and for that matter his brother was too… but for one thing. Nick was admittedly a pompous prick. And his brother Cole was an asshole.

  I still loved them both and I couldn’t have been happier to see Nick.

  “Lucas is safe,” said Sonia, getting my attention. “Charlotte was tending to him last check-in.”

  I nodded, swallowing past the mounting fear of the ticking clock. A speaker somewhere on Sonia’s body made a crackling sound, and Matt’s voice came through. “Lucas was bandaged and refueled on thorium, but he took off as soon as he could get his legs under him. I couldn’t stop him.” He paused and the radio crackled. “The rest of us are on the meet level and holding ground. I’m sorry, but I don’t have eyes or a twenty on Luke.”

  Right after Matt finished speaking, another voice cut through. “Heads up, everyone.” It was Daniel. Everyone went stiff at the sound of his voice. He seemed strained as if he were struggling. The sound of guns going off rattled furiously in the background. “Zero just made it past our line. He’s coming for Sam.”

  Nicholas trained his blue eyes on me just as the elevator doors slid open. “As proficient as ever at gaining unwanted attention, I see.”

  “If she has your attention, then it would seem so,” said Lucas matter-of-factly from where he stood just inside the elevator.

  I remained stunned where I was and gazed at him a moment as he turned his focus on me and treated me to that small, precious smile that somehow lit up his eyes. Both of his hands were wrapped securely with bandages, though they were stained green. His clothing was torn and stained as well, but all in all he was in one piece. Even his leg seemed to have been repaired. That was probably Diana’s doing. She was very good at putting pieces back together, and most likely he’d just slipped a socket, so to speak.

  “Damn it’s good to see you, son,” said Jack, pretty much speaking for us both as we finally climbed en masse into the elevator around Lucas. Jack pulled him into a firm hug before letting him go with a hard pat on the back. But I held back from the hug I desperately wanted to give him.

  I couldn’t forget everything I’d seen him go through because… because of me. It was because of me. Zero had used him as leverage against me. And suddenly… I was unsure.

  But if Lucas judged me at all for what he’d suffered, he made no indication of it whatsoever. In fact, his eyes had yet to leave mine, and his smile had yet to slip in the slightest. So, I took a deep breath and let myself smile back.

  Lucas moved fast, stepping forward to grab me. He pulled me hard into his arms, grasping me tight in his own firm hug. “I’ve got you,” he whispered in my ear, repeating what he’d told me earlier, when he’d caught me during my transporter fall.

  I closed my eyes, tucked my face into his broad chest and thought, Yes, you do.

  Chapter Six

  As the elevator descended, those of us doing the rescuing quickly provided those of us being rescued with loaded weapons. Sonia gave me several. I managed to hide my smile at her over-protectiveness. It amused me, but I definitely didn’t mind it. Especially since if I called her on it, she would probably just smirk and tell me I needed all the help I could get. And she wouldn’t be wrong.

  The plan was for all teams to make it to level seventeen. There, Shawn and his crew would have used military grade grapnels to set up zip lines from the deck on level seventeen to the same level of the nearest building, which happened to be an abandoned twenty-story apartment complex.

  Most buildings in this section of Pittsburgh were abandoned. It had been the poor part of the city to begin with, but when the human evacuation took place after the revolution, those people in the lower income brackets who were brave enough to return to the city simply took up illegal residence in the abandoned, wealthier homes on the other side of town.

  These edifices here were slowly either falling to ruin – or being claimed and architecturally re-scaped by Vector Fifteen. Aside from the main Vector Fifteen west building that we were in, Zero’s empire boasted four other large multi-level facilities on the west end, and eleven multi-level facilities on the east end. His property grew with his power.

  Other than to go over combat techniques, exiting order, and other essential briefing, none of us spoke in the elevator on the way down. Nicholas maintained a steady rhythm of control over the mechanics of the elevator’s control panel, and lights inside blinked furiously. It was clear from those and from the alarm that continued to blare throughout the building that Zero was fighting hard with him to win back control of the elevator.

  I had no idea how Nicholas had come to be here. In the short silence afforded me before the elevator stopped on level seventeen, I had just enough time to be mystified by the entire rescue. Not only had they known where I was, successfully freed Lucas and Jack and come with back-up thorium, they’d brought along Lex for his needed strength, and even Nicholas Byron.

  Without Nicholas, I wasn’t sure we’d have made it. Zero had mental control over everything inside these walls. Nicholas was probably the only one capable of negating that.

  The doors slid open and we filed out onto the level in military fashion, each taking our places as shield, look-out, or leader. This floor had been designed with visitors in mind, hence the balcony. It was also the reason for the pristine and expensive marble flooring, the various screens displaying Zero’s newest models, and the enormous fountain at the center of the circular level. Crystal clear water formed a rainbow in the air where it misted from several stories up to cascade into nearly nothing several stories down. It was only precise and genius planning that prevented the marble floor from becoming slick with the fountain’s mist.

  As we moved, the floor beneath our feet did however light up, and a calm female voice greeted welcomed us to Vector Fifteen.

  Nicholas shot me a look that all but said “Vector Fifteen” wasn’t the name he’d programmed it to use, and the lot of us beat a hasty retreat to level seventeen’s conference room. The door was of course locked. Zero had everything on lock down throughout the enormous construction.

  Lucas looked over at Nicholas as Nick prepared to yank the cover off the panel and hack yet another door. Luke’s gray eyes narrowed just a touch. He stepped to t
he wall, brushing Nicholas aside. Then he raised his hand as if to place his palm to the control panel.

  I moved fast, yanking his arm back down before it could make contact.

  He turned a surprised and questioning look on me. “This will be faster, Samantha.”

  But I shook my head. “Don’t touch it. Trust me.” Then I turned to the others. “In fact, no android should attempt to hack anything in this building. It’s all linked to IRM-1000. If you can get into his system, then it’s possible for him to get into you.”

  The androids around me looked at each other with wide eyes. Lucas slowly lowered his arm.

  Byron smirked as he got back to work. “That’s my girl,” he muttered under his breath. “Saving the world from itself as usual.”

  I felt Luke’s arm stiffen under my touch, but when I glanced back up at his face, his expression was enigmatic. It was only his yellow EED that hinted he might be feeling something other than what he allowed to show on his stoic face.

  As usual, I attempted to diffuse things. I addressed Sonia. “Sonia, can you contact Daniel to warn him too?”

  She nodded, closed her eyes, and placed her fingers to the half-moon at her temple.

  I didn’t ask Lucas to do it on the off chance Zero had done something to him that would already make him susceptible to control should Lucas attempt a mental link with any other android. There had been a period of time after Lucas was dragged away by Zero’s soldier and before the screen came on in the systems room when Lucas had been out of my sight.

  Zero might have done anything at all to him during that time. I had to be careful. Especially since my gut-gripping fear now was that Zero would somehow expand his control from the entirety of the building… to every android inside its walls.

  Including Prometheus.

  I wasn’t going to share that fear with everyone though. There was no point in needlessly frightening them if there was nothing we could do about it. I just had to get my friends out of there as soon as inhumanly possible.

  The door to the conference room slid open, but jammed half-way. Then suddenly it slid the remaining way, sparking dangerously from inside the tracks as if it couldn’t be trusted. I watched it warily, as did Jack and Nicholas. But Lex stepped forward, placed his thick arm against the door’s tracks, and nodded for us to get inside.

  We didn’t have to be told twice. The lot of us ran in full throttle, and once we were in, we turned left to the full length of the ballroom-sized facility. Daniel was already half-way across it, headed in our direction. He was smiling, clearly pleased to see us and most likely equally pleased the mission had thus far gone the way it was planned.

  Against the far wall was an enormous floor-to-ceiling window, and part of it had been blown to smithereens. The explosion, I thought. That must have been what I’d felt earlier. “You blew it open,” I shouted.

  “They had to,” said Sonia. “The windows are shatter-proof otherwise, and the doors were locked. We set the charge to go off in conjunction with others around the building to throw Zero off our scent.”

  The windows really were normally shatter-proof…. But they weren’t when Lucas and Jack had made it through the window on level twenty-seven. My brow furrowed. How exactly had Zero gotten word to Lucas and Jack that I was there at that time?

  I filed the question away as Daniel approached. In moments like this, when I saw my GhandiBuddhaJesus tall and capable, beautiful-eyed and gifted with that very human smile, I understood well why he was the leader of Prometheus.

  Daniel Montgomery was the first android to publicly make a stand against the rules and regulations governing the unfair treatment of androids. In a mall on a busy day, in an act of protest that would go down in history books as the beginning of the android civil war, the six-foot-three android stepped between an android “owner” and the sentient “machine” that human was beating to a Vulcan-green pulp.

  Daniel had already been unique; the only android of his model ever created, alone in his striking appearance. His skin was mocha colored and smooth, his hair was thick, dark brown approaching black. Like most androids, he was broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, but something in this particular android’s stature gave him a charisma rare in anyone, android or otherwise. Most distinguishing of all however, were undoubtedly his eyes.

  Singular in design, just like the rest of him, they were the only android eyes possessing dual rings in each iris. The outer ring was green. The inner was blue. Both were vivid and piercing, and that momentous day in that now infamous mall, those beautiful eyes made national news. His face and name were broadcasted far and wide as Daniel successfully defended and saved the android victim from its abusive owner and several of the owner’s brutish companions. In that moment, the world seemed to stop and stare at the sudden display of android forbearance, and especially at the remarkable machine-made-man who’d displayed it.

  Even I had been watching that day. It felt like fate, because I almost never watched live feeds. But that afternoon, I switched one on and left it running as I worked on my latest invention – a hand-held infrared spectrum scan adjusted to successfully disinfect wounds. The news of Daniel’s stand felt like a bitter sweet spear through my soul. I realized it was what I’d been waiting for.

  It was the beginning of a revolution.

  Daniel reached us, joined by another android member of Prometheus, Matt, a light-brown haired demolitions android. “Sam!” Daniel exclaimed, pulling me into his arms for a tight hug. I hugged back and tried to suppress the little thrill I got from being personally known by my hero, much less hugged by him. “Are you hurt?” he asked before pulling back to look me over.

  “No, I’m good,” I assured him.

  But he held me by my arms, and his green-blue eyes looked me over from head to toe before he nodded and turned to Lucas. “Patched up?”

  Lucas nodded, and the two grasped hands, or rather forearms, in what I’d come to think of as a sort of medieval-like android handshake between close friends. Then Daniel turned and gave a respectful nod to Jack. Jack nodded back.

  “We’re out of time,” said Daniel. “Everyone head to the deck and make use of the zip lines.”

  Matt put one arm under Jack’s and helped him move fast across the room to the waiting set-up. Now that I could see Jack walk a good distance, I noticed the limp. He was favoring his left leg; he’d been injured.

  Bastards, I thought.

  Fresh air coiled inward from the outside and spread through the large room. At some point during our incarceration, it had grown cold enough outside to begin snowing and I could see flakes of white swirling at the broken windows.

  Behind us, Lex turned to the metal door and started to pull the sliding partition back out. I realized he was planning to block the entrance behind us. Lucas and Daniel joined Lex, and while Lex grasped the metal from inside the track with his fingers, the other two used their body weight and strength to slide it back shut.

  It was arduous, but as I prepared to try to help, Nicholas grabbed my hand firmly and began pulling me across the floor toward the open windows. “Come on Sam. We need to get you the hell out of here.”

  “Wait!” I told him, pulling back a little. “I’m not leaving without Luc –”

  But half-way across the ballroom sized conference center, Nicholas stopped in his tracks and spun on me, holding my hand tighter than ever. He drew close and whispered, fast and furious. “Damn it, Samantha, don’t you see what really happened here?”

  I yanked my hand out of his and stared at him a second. Meanwhile, in the background, I could hear the loud thudding of Lex slamming his shoulder into the door to lodge it firmly into place. “What are you talking about?”

  Nick’s blue eyes grew intense as he leaned in closer. “You think strapping you to a chair and having you talk for hours on end was only about your inventions? For Christ’s sake Sammy, use your brilliant mind! What was IRM-1000 really doing all that time? Think about it.” His heated whisper became wrat
hful. He never did have patience enough for suffering fools.

  So I did what he instructed and I thought about it. And reality dawned on me even as he nodded grimly and began to point it all out. “That’s it. You’re getting it now, aren’t you?” He bared his teeth. He was livid. No, it was worse than that; he was afraid.

  He gestured to my throat and asked, “What is in the sound of your voice?” He lifted my hand where he held it tight. “What’s in the touch of your palm on a scanner?” He lowered my hand and waved impatiently at the air. “What’s in the fucking air that you breathe, Sammy? What was he really collecting?”

  And I knew. Bioreadings.

  The word echoed in my mind like a resounding gong. But I refused to satisfy him by saying it aloud. I hated it when he behaved like this. And besides, I was too stunned to speak, and I’m sure it showed. I could feel the blood leaving my head.

  His eyes moved over my face, and suddenly something softened in his stark blue gaze. “Listen. I saw that room Sam, inside and out.” That was true. He’d seen it from the inside when he’d hacked the chair’s manacles, and from the outside when he’d stepped into the room and surveyed the damage.

  He continued solemnly in his irate whisper. “It was set up for you specifically, and it was done so meticulously – methodically.” He shook his head. “Why settle for the product when you can own the factory? IRM-1000 isn’t after your inventions, Sam. He’s after you.”

  He didn’t wait for me to respond to his revelation. Instead, he spun and yanked me after him again at full speed. I didn’t struggle this time; I just tried to keep up. He was right. I needed to get out of Vector Fifteen.

  Fear drove me hard and chased me harder as I joined the group at the other end of the room. There were four lines set up. Shawn put a hand on my back, urging me closer so I could get hooked up. I felt Lucas still behind me, and that frazzled my nerves, but again I didn’t argue.