I, Android: A Different Model

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Sonia went a little still and waited. I could tell she’d been waiting for this part. She was wondering where I’d place Lucas. She’d probably been wondering ever since she’d done whatever reading she had on the subject.

  “Jack is an alpha. He’s just… he’s not a little boy anymore. He’s had his wolf mate, so to speak, he’s had his pups – and lost them – and now he just wants to try to live the rest of his life with what friends and family he still has. He wants peace. Not sex.”

  Sonia was quiet, but she nodded solemnly. After a few beats she asked, “Does being a mature alpha make you an omega?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Jack will always be alpha.” I couldn’t see the bear of a man as anything else.

  “Okay. Now Lucas. For crying out loud, you’re really putting this off.”

  I sighed. She wasn’t wrong. But there was a reason for that. “I’m putting it off because Lucas isn’t just Lucas. It’s more complicated than that.” I closed my eyes, internally debating whether or not to tell Sonia the whole truth about IRM-900 and IRM-1000. “Sonia… do you like Lucas?”

  Sonia seemed very taken aback by that. She stared at me deadpan. “He’s my brother,” Sonia said firmly. “I would die for him.”

  By “brother,” she of course meant brother-in-arms. She was serious that she would die for him, too. Sonia was like that. She was hard. She was loyal. She was determined. And the members of Prometheus were as much her family and salvation as they had been mine.

  “Sometimes he gets under my skin,” she admitted with a shrug. “The way he seems to sometimes be cold, even emotionless – and then does a one-eighty and shows more humanity, if you will, than any of us – that’s irritating as hell,” she laughed, shaking her head.

  She was right. I, too, had noticed Luke’s spectrum shift between apathy and empathy and wondered at it.

  “But we’re all irritating in our own ways. He’s still my comrade, and I’ve got his back. And I know he has mine.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Then try to remember that when I tell you what I’m going to tell you.”

  Sonia had been sitting on the arm of the couch, but now she sank down into the cushions, sitting cross-legged. “What’s going on, girlfriend?” she asked, her expression concerned.

  I watched her for a second, feeling my throat go dry. Oh well, I thought. Here goes everything. “Come with me.”

  I got up and moved around the couch so I could make my way down the nearest hallway to one of the interrogation rooms of Prometheus. Sonia was right on my tail, clearly able to tell this was important. Maybe she had even scanned me and knew my heart was racing like mad.

  Once we were in the room, I shut the door and turned to face her. Oddly, we still had our beers. My gaze flicked to the table in the corner. Jonathan and Nathan’s ashes were still there.

  I closed my eyes, centered my thoughts, and said, “Lucas was created by Nick.”

  There was silence following my confession, so I opened my eyes to see how she was taking it. Her face was expressionless – but for her eyes. Which searched mine. For what, I didn’t know. Maybe evidence that I was joking.

  When none was forthcoming, Sonia went very still. I could see her entire body go stiff with tension. “What do you mean he was created by Nick?”

  “I mean….” How to put this? “More than a decade and a half ago, long before FutureGen was created, Nicholas Byron went into his lab and wrote the complete and dimensional schematics for two very special androids. They were meant to be the balancing opposites of one another, two sides of a coin. Or if you prefer, a wolf and a tiger.”

  “A what and a what, now?” she said, her brow furrowing.

  “Never mind. I’m telling you that Nicholas made two androids, one good and one bad. In essence.”

  “Aaaand… you’re telling me that one of these androids was Lucas?”

  I nodded slowly, knowing that she’d be quick on the tail of that realization with another.

  “Okay, I have to process that.” She looked away, swallowed hard, and then upended her beer, emptying the bottle. She set the bottle down on the metal table with a thunk, but kept her hand on the neck as she continued to stare into the distance – and process. And process.

  At long length, Sonia breathed in through her nose, then breathed out in a telling sigh. “Fuck. Zero is the other one, isn’t he.” It wasn’t a question. She had simply figured it out and was voicing the information aloud.

  “Yes.”

  She turned to me, pinning me with a hard look. “Sam. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this before now?”

  “I –”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Nicholas Byron is the entire reason behind the existence of IRM-1000? The goddamn bastard who killed my lover and several of my best friends? The dictator who is the sole cause of this revolution going on as long as it has? The madman who will stop at nothing until he finally gets his hands on you?!”

  Her voice had become louder with each sentence, her words cut harsher, her tone more acerbic. But I remained calm. I’d expected this.

  Until that last part. The part about Zero stopping at nothing to obtain me. I have to admit that it threw me. It hit too close to home considering the questions that had been on my mind so much of late.

  I felt myself tremble a little and hated it. So I rolled back my shoulders, put my bottle gently down on the table, and straightened again. In the calmest voice I could manage I said, “Because of the way you’re reacting right now. And because… Nick is also the reason behind Lucas. Remember?”

  I paused, allowing her to digest some more. Then I added, “And he’s the reason behind you, Sonia.” I looked away from her, gesturing in the general direction of Prometheus beyond the interrogation room door. “And Daniel and Matt and Shawn and Charlotte and all the others. My friends. My family.”

  I waited as Sonia stared at me. I waited.

  And I waited some more.

  At long last, she opened her mouth as if to say something, but then stopped, closed her mouth again, and turned her gaze to the cold metal table. She still hadn’t let go of the bottle, and I half feared she would smash it against the polished steel just to watch it shatter. Then I would have to repair her hand – and whatever damage was caused to either of us by flying shards of glass.

  It was possible she realized this, because she slowly slid her hand away from the neck of the bottle and dropped her arms to her sides. But she still wouldn’t look at me.

  I was beginning to feel very much like the pariah, so to fill the guilty silence, I said, “To answer your initial question, Zero and Lucas were designed at the same time by Nick. They were conceived and drawn up as equal halves, if not identical halves. So since Zero is an alpha in every single sense of the word… Lucas is as well. But you can see now why it wasn’t an easy question to answer.”

  She didn’t move. I wondered if she understood. “They’re both alpha. They’re just programmed with different ideals.”

  Sonia finally looked up, and her eyes were wide when she did. She shook her head in bewilderment. “Yeah, you could say that. One is programmed as a serial killer who wants to take over the fucking world.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “But lucky for us, the other seems effectively programmed to stop him.”

  “Maybe,” Sonia shot right back at me with a hiss. “Who knows, though? Huh?” She turned in place, agitated to the point of not being able to stay still. “There isn’t anyone at Prometheus who hasn’t noticed how similar those two are. And now I know why!” She put her hands on her face as if to block out the world.

  But then she dropped them again and spun on me. “And what the fuck does that mean, Sam? What does it really mean? What if Luke is just as goddamn dangerous as Zero? What if he goes off one day and just… I don’t know? Betrays us horribly somehow? Kills one of us? What if one of those bizarre mood swings of his takes a dark turn? And it’s all because he’s… Jesus, he’s all but a carbon copy of our wors
t enemy!”

  I blinked at her, wide-eyed and silent, my mind spinning and my stomach in horrid knots. Her words, their accusations and meaning, moved through me like a rake in the grass. They hurt. They hurt because she had a point. And I knew I’d already unconsciously wondered all of the same things.

  Sonia ran a hard hand through her long hair, fisting it at the back of her skull. “God! This is all Byron’s fault!”

  No… it isn’t.

  But I wasn’t going to say that out loud. Given the way she was reacting to what I’d already told her, I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit to her that Nick had created the two androids in the first place because of me. Or rather because of his jealousy due to me. Sonia was livid enough.

  And besides, when it came down to it nobody had made Nicholas storm off to his lab that night to create a power hungry alpha male android. No one had made him include coding with traits like “brutal” and “ruthless” in his programming. Nick may have been a young man, but he was his own man. He made his own decisions, just like the rest of us. How far could the buck really be passed in any blame game?

  One thing was for sure, though. “Use your words” was not at all an effective, or even smart deterrent when dealing with Nick’s destructive potential. He may have been a black belt in countless martial arts, but for all intents and purposes, it was what he wrote down that was capable of starting a revolution.

  I looked at Sonia and she looked at me. Then she looked away again – to peer at the canister in the corner. She sat down hard. The room grew very, very quiet once more.

  It stayed that way for the length of several long, calming minutes. I waited until she finally sat back in her chair, indicating a more relaxed mood, before I licked my lips and said, “Sonia….” But I stopped when I realized I’d been about to voice the question that I’d wanted to ask since the night of the attack. I’d been afraid to ask anyone what happened. It was obvious no one wanted to share.

  But Sonia regarded me in that studying silence androids sometimes assumed. And when I didn’t say anything further, she stood back up, closed the distance between us, and reached down to take my hand. “Hey,” she said, giving it a hard squeeze. “I’m not angry with you. You know that, right? You trusted me enough to tell me this, and honestly Sam, I’m honored you did. And in that light, I want you to know that you can always tell me anything. Always.” She let go of my hand and put her palms on my shoulders to squeeze gently. “So go ahead and spit it out. What else do you need to say?”

  “It isn’t what I need to say,” I told her nervously. “It’s what I want to ask.”

  She tilted her head to one side, regarding me with renewed curiosity. “Okay,” she said, slowly dropping her hands from my shoulders and giving me a nod. “Shoot.”

  I took a deep breath. “What exactly happened the night of the attack on Prometheus?” I glanced in the corner. Jonathan’s ashes seemed to be watching and listening. That night came back to me in fuzzy, chopped-up images. Zero gripping my wrist and pulling me against him, his gun being raised and leveled, the trigger pulled. Saxon going down.

  I closed my eyes as the fuzzy images cleared too quickly and joined together to become entire scenes. I remembered that I had screamed. There was the sound of helicopter blades… and then there was a field of snow. Stairs with no railing. A long hallway. And then there was Vulcan blood, Luke’s blood. Because he’d been torn to pieces.

  “From the way your body chemistry is going haywire right now, I wager that night wasn’t any easier to handle from your end than it was from ours,” said Sonia softly, drawing my attention back to her. Her expression was devoutly concerned. “And on our end, it was chaos.”

  I took a deep breath and walked to the nearest chair, sitting down abruptly. I had to; my legs were shaking too much.

  I highly doubted this was what Sonia had in mind when she’d proposed a drinking game, or what Daniel had in mind when he’d told everyone to take a breather and enjoy themselves for the night. He was a good leader and he knew his “troops” needed to keep their spirits up, especially when things seemed their most dire.

  But this was something I needed to do. And in that way it was therapeutic.

  “Please tell me,” I said. “I need to know what went down. Tell me how Jonathan died.”

  Sonia took a deep breath of her own, a ritual of preparation before facing something daunting. Then she moved to the chair across from mine, pulled it out, and asked, “You sure?”

  I nodded.

  She turned the chair around until it was rear facing so she could sit and drape her arms over the chair’s back the way Cole always did. She’d never done that before, so I was guessing she’d spent some time with him recently and was picking up habits. Androids tended to do that. Always learning, always reprogramming.

  “Fine. Lilith told us all we should talk about it with each other anyway.”

  I almost smiled. That was Lilith.

  “We were in the kitchens and you had just left with Lucas – or rather, Zero – when Jonathan and Nathan arrived. Daniel got the call letting us know they were waiting outside the entrance. Daniel sent someone to let them in, and over the radio Jonathan asked Daniel if he’d shown you the painting yet. Daniel said he had, and Jonathan was disappointed because he’d wanted to be there for the reveal. But you know Jonathan. He never let things get him down too much.”

  Now I did smile. And the smile hurt because, that was true.

  “But Daniel still felt bad.”

  “He had good reason for showing me,” I told her. “I think he wanted to reassure me of my place in Prometheus.”

  Sonia slowly nodded. “Nathan actually told him Daniel probably had good reason. Then there was radio silence. But a few seconds later, Lilith came into the kitchens looking panicked. She said something was wrong. But she couldn’t tell us exactly what.” Sonia touched her forehead, her EED lighting up bright red for a split second before it settled into a pulsing yellow. “And then we heard gunshots.”

  I closed my eyes. Saxon.

  “Right after that, there was scrambling. Daniel had made sure we were all trained for this kind of breach, so we knew what to do, but he still walked us through it, maintaining constant communication with everyone from Prometheus. We met up as planned in the armored section of the gym.”

  The gym was the general term for the large sports and fitness area that had been reinforced with defenses that would help in the unlikely case of a foothold situation. Whenever possible, the children were relegated to that area so that if something did go down, they would be the first protected.

  “Fortunately most of the kids were already there. But not all of them… and a few other Prometheus members were late, including Lex and Charlotte. Daniel sent out a roll call commanding everyone to report in. Erica, Ruby, and Finn didn’t respond, but Charlotte responded just as she and Lex burst into the gym together and Zero’s men simultaneously surrounded us.”

  Sonia stopped and stared off into space. I imagined in her head she was reliving the events of that night. She went on as if describing the scenes of a movie. “We laid down cover until they were behind the barriers with us. Lex was holding Mayvis and Zackary. They were unconscious, but showed no signs of damage. Charlotte later told us that when May and Zack weren’t in the gym, she and Lex had gone looking for them only to find Zero’s men in the process of abducting them.” Sonia’s eyes grew wide. “I have no idea why. And when the fight was over, none of us could figure out what was wrong with the kids. Lilith just put her hands on them and shook her head, saying they were just… gone.”

  She broke off. Her expression became pained. “We lost touch with Jonathan and Nathan right away. Zero must have scrambled the signal. It was Erica who’d been sent to let them in. We found them later just outside the facility. From what we could piece together, they’d been shot at with tranqs. But in the attack, Jonathan’s heart gave out. We think Nathan saw him go down and decided to fight back, along with Erica,
and then Ruby. You know those two… they never fought half-way. It cost Ruby an arm and Erica her life. They all took tranq bullets, and then they took real ones when the tranq didn’t work fast enough and it probably got too violent for Zero’s men to handle. Nathan sustained a head injury; the concussion killed him.” Her voice was tight, her throat obviously constricted with emotion.

  I gave her a moment to push through the pain.

  “When Daniel first sent out his call, Jack showed up in the gym looking like death warmed over and armed with his police issue handgun. Nanuk was with him, but we were shocked that neither Lucas nor you were. The only people we couldn’t communicate with were the humans in Prometheus. Jack and Daniel both immediately asked if anyone had seen either of you. No one had.”

  Now she looked back up at me. “I admit we feared the worst. We thought maybe those first few shots….” Sonia softly snorted, a memory apparently breaking through the melancholy of the rest of her mental film like comic relief. “I’m telling you, Jack lost his goddamn mind.”

  The interrogation room filled with the silent sound of memories and their echoes. I handed Sonia my beer, which was still nearly completely full. She glanced at it, smiled gratefully, and took it, downing most of the container.

  The thing about androids and sustenance was that they didn’t have to eat or drink just like they didn’t have to sleep. But they could. Nick had considered it important that androids be capable of “socializing” with humans, and it seemed one of humanity’s favorite ways to socialize was to imbibe. So a special program and filtration system had been implemented. The program was a simple “if-then” sequence that allowed an android to feel inebriated when alcohol was detected in the system. And the filtration protected said system from any detrimental effects of the alcohol, burning it off as odorless fumes one to two hours after the android had finished imbibing.

  As a result, androids liked drinking as much as humans did. And just like humans, there were some that didn’t drink at all. One such android knocked on the door at that exact moment. I would recognize his knock anywhere.