I, Android: A Different Model

by Heather Killough-Walden

By me, in fact.

  I’d worked straight through a week’s worth of nights and tested the drug on samples of my own bone – that wasn’t fun – and when I’d finished, I’d sent the antidote to Nicholas Byron’s address, no return address given. He’d known what to do with it, and he’d probably known it was me who made it.

  The problem was, after the revolution’s cease-fire, no one came forward to accept responsibility for designing Anthrocore. Like IRM-1000, it was anyone’s guess who’d created it. Whoever had created it was dead, though. That, we could all be sure of at least. They’d most likely died when Zero took over FutureGen, killing off the entirety of the company’s employees in a supposed battle that was not recorded on any camera and to which there were no survivors.

  Slaughter was more like it. Prometheus knew the truth. But we could only fight so many battles.

  Once Zero created Vector Fifteen, Anthrocore was deemed by the world too dangerous to exist. Hence, every last trace of the volatile drug was supposed to have been destroyed by Zero in exchange for the agreed-upon control of Pittsburgh and a few neighboring cities. His official reasoning was to give androids a “home base” of sorts to start fresh from.

  The truth was, he really just wanted room, facilities, and power with which to grow Vector Fifteen unhindered.

  In any case, Anthrocore really did seem to disappear from circulation after that and human rebels at Prometheus had stopped carrying the antidote, figuring it was no longer needed. But of course, it hadn’t been the case that the drug was destroyed. That was never the case. Weapons that powerful were never dismantled.

  And some of that crap had now found its way inside me. It figured.

  In the mirror, Grace kept her eyes closed. But her brow furrowed deeply, and the EED at her temple slipped from yellow to orange, flashing with troubled processing.

  But Zero appeared to be only getting started. He watched her emotional reaction very carefully, and I saw those telltale readings cross his field of vision as he monitored and interpreted the information he retrieved from her through his keen scanning. “You’re quite fond of Samantha, aren’t you?” he asked her softly. “You found her unexpectedly to your liking.”

  Grace hesitated, her eyes still shut and her lips moving silently for a moment before she finally said aloud, “Samantha was… kind to me.” She seemed to want to choose her words carefully, but Zero was doing a number on her ability to concentrate. “She is respectful and courteous, unlike most of your human guests, and despite what… you were putting her through.”

  “Yes, she is very respectful.” He moved, placing his lips to her other ear before he added, “And it is in her nature to be kind.”

  Grace opened her eyes and met his in the mirror. “Samantha called me by my name,” she insisted. “She thanked me, and she smiled. And I knew that you….” She drifted off, looked away, and closed her mouth. Her EED was changing from orange to red.

  “You found yourself concerned for her, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted simply, as if coming to accept the consequences of her honesty, whatever they were going to be. “She is unique. She deserves…” she hesitated before finishing firmly with, “better.”

  “So you poisoned her.”

  Grace’s head snapped up, and her eyes were fierce in the mirror. “Yes I did,” she admitted. “I knew that she was strong enough the drug would work quickly on her. And I knew that the only way you would be willing to let her go was if the alternative was her death.”

  A stunned silence seemed to move through the world after her words. They were like a eulogy. Grace so badly wanted me to be free of Zero’s control, she may have actually killed me.

  Why did she want to “help” me so desperately she was willing to go to such great and dangerous lengths? Especially since IRM-1000 was sure to find her out?

  Zero slowly straightened behind her and released her. The red from his EED was again shared by his eyes.

  He turned away from the mirror, and my vantage shifted uncomfortably. He was moving around her again, his hands clasped behind his back. “Do you have any idea what Samantha Hart is suffering right now?” he asked, as if he were asking whether she might know how the weather was.

  Grace didn’t respond. I was pretty sure she figured it was a rhetorical question.

  “Do you know how much pain that drug causes?” he asked.

  Again, rhetorical.

  He circled until he was standing in front of her, and I was in effect looking down at her. The blue of her beautiful eyes was fathomless with despair. But Zero was pitiless in his anger. I could see this unforgiving brutality in the red tinge of his world and feel it in the troubled currents in the air.

  “Is that what you wanted for her?” he asked as he gently cupped her cheek and I cringed inside. “Did you intend to bring your new friend such agony? To hurt the only human who has ever shown you such kindness?”

  Grace looked well and truly lost. Her lips parted and she gazed up helplessly, and I wanted to wake up now. Wake up, I told myself. I could feel evil riding closer, like an army of darkness on fire-breathing steeds. I could hear the thunder of their hooves. I could see their fire in the tint of Zero’s fully red, glowing eyes.

  “And in doing so, did you intend to take from me,” he paused, running his thumb gently over Grace’s lower lip, “the only being who has ever given me hope… Diana?”

  Grace blinked, not only miserable now but confused. “M-my name is –”

  “No.”

  His word moved through me like the sounding of Hell’s gong. He dropped his hand and stepped back from her. “A name should be merited, Diana. It should be deserved. And grace is unfortunately something you seem to be sorely lacking.” He lowered his voice. “We will have to work on that.”

  Wake up Sam, I repeated. Please wake up!

  Grace bowed her head and looked at the floor. A shiver of fear moved through her so strong that it appeared as a visible wave in her outer layer, shifting her skin from flesh toned to android gray from head to toe.

  “A name is earned,” said Zero as dark objectives moved like black text shadows in the outer regions of his processors. “You will atone for what you have done. And you will earn your name.” He cocked his head to the side, studying her with red but detached interest. “Beginning now.”

  Sam, wake the fuck up!

  Whether it was the mercy of fate or the intensity of my desire to be gone from there, the scene went black at once, and then it went white immediately after. My ears filled with the sounds of rubber and leather soles on linoleum, of overhead speaker systems crackling to life, of beeping machines and gurney wheels turning quickly at the frantic push of desperate people.

  I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t, and more fear ramrodded through me. There was something over my face, muffling the sound of my breathing. I tried to move it away, but my arms wouldn’t respond. In fact, I couldn’t move at all, and my heart beat so hard in my chest, I was positive I would see it ripping free if I’d only had the ability to open my eyes and look down.

  Samantha, it’s me. I’m here.

  Lucas!

  His voice in my head was the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard, but fear rode me too hard for me to enjoy it. Lucas, I can’t move!

  You’ve been given something to immobilize you. It’s imperative that you remain still.

  Lucas, I’ve been poisoned with Anthrocore, I told him. The antidote is back at Prometheus!

  I know, Samantha. There are antidotes here, he assured me. “She is awake,” he said aloud to someone. I heard softly spoken orders, caught a few phrases that included the words “increase” and “dose,” and then Lucas was in my head again. You’ve already had the antidote administered. The effects of the Anthrocore are being reversed, but your arm is still broken and your appendix needs to be removed. He paused a moment, as if he didn’t want to say what he was going to tell me next but decided it was necessary. We’re at Wexner, he said. IRM-1000 noti
fied the physicians here that you’d been poisoned. Everything was waiting for us when we arrived.

  Lucas didn’t know it, but he’d just given me all the proof I needed that what I’d seen in my first vision was real. Which probably meant what I’d seen with Grace was real too.

  She was in danger.

  Grace is in danger, I told Lucas. If it was the last thing I did, I wanted to die helping someone else avoid a similar fate. Zero has her.

  A hand took mine, squeezing firmly but gently, and I recognized his touch. Try to remain calm, Samantha. You’ve become their priority here, he said, either not understanding me or choosing to ignore my words. You’re safe now, he continued to assure me. Even his mental voice was earnest and pure.

  I know Lucas, I finally told him, trying to do what he asked and calm down. Unfortunately, it was all too easy. My desire to help Grace was slipping away and I was growing sleepier by the split second.

  Let yourself rest now, Samantha. Everything will be better when you wake up. And I will be here when you do, he told me, squeezing my hand. We all will.

  Okay… I replied, mystified. And then, Good night, was the last thing I was consciously capable of thinking at him.

  The harsh white, the blood red, and the chaos of my world at last made way for the quiet and the dark, enfolding me in arms that were just then as warm and comforting as Luke’s.

  I went more than willingly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Soft focus filled the spaces between my eyelashes, slowly lightening to the blue-white of a hospital room. I heard a regular beeping sound and knew it was a heart monitor. My eyes blinked, trying to clear the blurriness away.

  “Hey, sleeping beauty.”

  I frowned. That voice…. It was familiar, but… from where?

  I heard the rustling of fabric and leather, caught the scent of leather, and the same voice said, “Yeah, she’s waking up.” More rustling, then someone leaned over me, and his fingers brushed my forehead. “I wondered if I’d ever get to see those honey colored eyes again.”

  Oh my God! I thought. His face came into focus just as I placed his voice. I tried to speak, failed, swallowed and licked my lips, and tried again. This time I managed a whisper. “Cole?” I asked softly, barely able to believe my eyes.

  Cole Byron – as in Nicholas Byron’s brother – smiled down at me. “Hey Cookie. Long time no see.”

  Cookie was short for Smart Cookie, which had long been Cole’s nickname for me. It had been truncated over the years to simply, Cookie. Which I’d always felt made me sound like a stripper. Not that this deterred him any.

  His smile was a genuine smile in a handsome face, but from what I could see at first glance, Cole had put that face through its paces. A scar ran through one of his eyebrows and grew thicker underneath the same eye. Obviously he’d barely escaped losing that eye at one point. There was an old bruise beneath the other eye. I was frankly surprised he had all of his perfect, white teeth. Maybe they were implants.

  He was also in need of a shave. But that part wasn’t anything new. Cole Byron was the rogue in our trio, always in leather, always sporting a five o’clock shadow, his smile always more of a smirk. In short, he looked scruffy, rough-and-tumble, hard as nails, and lucky-good-genes handsome. Just like he always had.

  “Cole, what – ” My voice cracked and I had to stop to attempt swallowing. Cole chuckled that cocky chuckle of his, reached for a glass of water on the bedside table, and tilted the straw toward me.

  “You sound so sexy when you’re hoarse. Like you’ve been screaming in ecstasy all night,” he teased as he slipped one strong arm under my upper body and lifted me so I could drink. I wrapped my lips around the straw and drank thankfully, and of course Cole said, “Now that’s what I like to see. I wish I was this straw.”

  I ignored him like I had always ignored him. Cole was helplessly incorrigible. There was no reforming him.

  “Go easy. Not too much,” he warned, the smart side of him making a cameo appearance before he hurriedly covered it up with his usual smirk.

  But he was right. I released the straw and Cole put the glass back on the side table while he used his free hand to rearrange the pillows behind me. With infinite care, he slowly lowered me back down atop them. Once I was settled, he pressed the controls on the side of the bed to elevate me a little, sitting me up just enough that I didn’t feel so lame.

  Of the Byron brothers, Cole was certainly the more wild and unpredictable, but he was also the one who really “got” me. He knew I didn’t like the idea of being handicapped or disabled; it didn’t sit well with me and made me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Without being asked or told, he’d done something to alleviate that discomfort.

  I sat still and just tried to get my bearings. There was some general pain in my abdomen, a low throb that I could tell would grow stronger and stronger as the pain medication wore off. The same ache was going on in my right arm – which was encased in a damn cast. That pissed me off. Casts stayed on for weeks.

  Given the slight headache and the sand paper feel of my tongue but lack of post-surgery queasiness, I knew anti-nausea medication had been added to the pain meds. Bless whoever’d thought of that, because there was little worse physically than waking up from the helpless oblivion of surgery to the sound of squeaky shoes and beeping monitors, the blinding sight of white and blue, the stinging smell of antiseptic – and nausea.

  I looked down. My cast-free arm was tubed and taped. There was an IV embedded deep in my vein under that tape. Goosebumps rose across my flesh and a twinge of phobia-induced panic touched me. I must have been the only female teenager in my class not to have a crush on a some male vampire in a movie or series. I couldn’t stand the thought of things being inserted into veins. It just… bothered me. Needles were the worst.

  “I know,” said Cole softly. I looked up at him. You do? I thought. He knew about my phobia? I couldn’t remember every detail of my grade school years, so it was possible I’d confided in him. Or maybe he’d just witnessed me being a baby at some point.

  “Just don’t look at it,” he told me. He smiled that pirate’s smile of his and it helped me forget about the tube embedded in my vein and the needle that had put it there.

  Instead, I focused on everything else, starting with the room I was in. I slowly scanned it, taking it all in. It was big for a hospital room, and lacked the bed for a roommate. There was a counter at the other end, a dresser of sorts beside it, a TV on the wall, and there were vases filled with orchids on virtually every surface. It was the most extravagant hospital room I had ever seen.

  I recognized the blooms not only by their appearance but by their scent. These were all the most pleasantly fragrant orchids, from the aptly named “Fragrance Fantasy,” or more technically, the Oncindium Twinkle, which smelled like vanilla – to the beautiful and small orchid scientifically known as Phalaenopsis Violacea, which smelled like cinnamon. The mixture was reminiscent of cookies. I wondered at the flowers and where they’d come from, but it was honestly just one more question on top of everything else I wanted to know.

  First out of my mouth was, “Cole … what are you doing here?” I turned to looked up at him. Truth was, I’d really never expected to see him again. It had been seventeen years. The better part of two decades had passed since I’d last laid eyes on the man seated beside me.

  Regardless of the full scholarships to ivy league schools he’d inadvertently managed to obtain – by not even trying – he’d disappeared after we graduated high school. His brother and I attended Stanford together on full scholarships. But Cole had vanished with the wind.

  I’d learned through the grapevine that he’d left Pittsburgh, and then Pennsylvania altogether. I’d heard by way of the same grapevine that he had been in and out of trouble wherever he’d gone, despite his brilliant aptitude. But then the news stopped coming and that was the extent of it.

  “Lieutenant Black works for the CPD,” came that one special voice I’d co
me to know so well and yearn to hear, drawing my attention to the doorway of the hospital room. Lucas was entering the room – and right behind him were Jack, Daniel, Sonia, Charlotte, Lex, Mabel... and Nanuk.

  I grinned at the lot of them, but my eyes opened wide when I saw the dog. “Nanuk!” I exclaimed, surprised to no end. I was shocked and relieved he was alive, for one. And I was also surprised that his massive, furry body was in the hospital.

  Jack gave me a brilliant smile. “Damn, it’s good to see you awake,” he said. “I knew you’d want to see Nanuk, and I figured he’d want to see you too.”

  “No, I’m the one who said Nanuk would want to see her!” Mabel insisted, turning an exasperated expression on the police captain.

  Jack shrugged helplessly, his smile broadening, and held up his hands, “Okay, okay, Mabel knew he’d want to see you.”

  Charlotte grinned and placed a gentle hand on Mabel’s shoulder to guide her to the bed as they filed into the room and circled around me.

  I watched them as they entered, but Cole was watching me. I glanced at him then leaned as far as I was comfortable leaning and asked him, “Did he just call you ‘lieutenant’?”

  He raised a brow and leaned the rest of the way in so he could whisper in my ear. “So the plastic asshole and the captain get the real smile and I get the skepticism?”

  I ignored the derogatory comment regarding androids and turned my face to his. He was very close… bringing back old memories. So I retreated a little and asked again, “Cole, you’re seriously a cop?”

  “You seem surprised, Cookie,” he said as something flashed in his piercing, dark blue eyes and he sat back to cross his arms over his chest. Now that I noticed it, he was dressed like a cop. To be more accurate, he was dressed like the quintessential plain clothes TV detective, and the attire matched his scruffy personality to perfection.

  “That’s because I am surprised,” I said. Cole didn’t exactly not have a rap sheet. And honestly, never in a million years would I have pegged him for law enforcement. At least not someone on the legal side of it.