Zero knelt in front of me again, and as ever I was impressed with the fluidity of his movements. But they didn’t bode well for me and any hope I had of avoiding abduction.
“You can,” he said matter-of-factly. “Read my thoughts, that is. Were you to truly desire it, you could infiltrate the workings of my mind as easily as I can yours, Dandelion. This street actually is two-way, believe it or not.” His smile became winsome, a little sad even. “In fact, you’ve done it before.”
He fell quiet, and I was left to ponder his claim. When I recognized what he was referring to, I was struck with a new kind of horror. “Grace…” I whispered. “You knew I was there. You knew I was watching you when you… when you….” I grew flustered trying to think of a word to describe his treatment of Grace in his Canadian mansion. “When you terrified Grace after I was poisoned.”
His expression was cool, enigmatic. “There is no one by that name in my employ.”
I felt stunned yet again. “You son of a b-”
“Regardless,” he continued, cutting me off. “You are at present holding yourself back. There’s a very large part of you that doesn’t want to know…” he hesitated, his gaze slipping from my eyes to my lips, “what you think it wants to know.”
I suddenly felt self-conscious beneath that blue-blue gaze, the glowing oceans that held me and drowned me and sometimes turned dark with secret meaning. His words confused me. In fact, his entire demeanor was so distracting I was unable to react fast enough when he suddenly reached out and grabbed my wrists. His fingers curled tight, his grip decidedly indomitable as he hauled me to my feet so fast my head spun.
I inhaled sharply in surprise, dizzy with the loss of blood from my brain in this new vertical position. Stars swam in my vision, little motes of light that told me what I already knew about my physical condition. I wasn’t doing so well.
You see little one? You’re in no condition to fight me.
Zero spun with me and pulled me rapidly toward the transportation beacons. I stumbled after him, held aloft only by his strength and support. My mind worked like mad, my battle instincts kicking in despite the physical weakness. It was like my brain wanted to make up for what my body lacked, and now its wheels were spinning so hard and fast, it was a physical exertion of its own.
My heart rate sped up too, my breathing hitched, and I reacted without giving it a second thought, reaching out with my leg to kick at one of the three transportation grounders. I wouldn’t be able to hit it hard enough to uproot it, but I could possibly damage it enough that Zero and I wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon.
However my boot never made contact. Zero spun and bent, blocking the kick with his forearm in one of those programmed android battle moves that always blew me away with their beauty, speed, and goddamn effectiveness. But he was forced to release one of my arms to do it. I used the opportunity to strike out again. And this time he caught my punch in the palm of his hand and squeezed, forcing me to go still as he stared me down.
I gritted my teeth.
“You’re only exhausting yourself, Samantha. This defiance will not change anything.”
“You don’t need me, Zero. You’ve been in my head.” He’d been deep enough to heal me, and that shit was molecular. There was no getting more personal than that. I’d even say that in nerd terms – he knew me biblically. “You’ve already had access to everything I can possibly offer you,” I told him as I panted from my brief burst of exertion in my weakened state. “So what the hell do you still want from me?”
IRM-1000 would have already been able to glean anything I’d invented or even considered inventing from the depths of my memory when my walls were down. Had he not taken that opportunity when he’d had it? It was the only reason I could think of for this continued attempt at abduction.
In fact, the smartest thing he could possibly do now would be to kill me. The intelligent tactical maneuver would be to take what he’d learned from his little scuba dive in my brain, use it in favor of Vector Fifteen, and do away with all of Prometheus’s future saving graces right here and now by destroying them at their source.
The thought was a little grounding. Actually, it was more than a little grounding.
Suddenly I wondered if the same thought had occurred to Zero. And just as suddenly, I seriously hoped it hadn’t.
As Zero watched me through blue-white eyes and enigmatic silence, I exhaled shakily and swayed on my feet. I could feel what little blood I had left begin to drain from my face. My gaze slipped to Zero’s chest, then the floor behind him and the three transportation devices around us. We were dead center between them now; he’d maneuvered us perfectly.
“No one is going to kill you, Dandelion.”
I blinked and looked up, getting caught once more in that iridescent, almost mirror-like blue. It was nearly white now. Silver, even. It reminded me of that episode of Star Trek, the Original Series – Where No Man Has Gone Before. Two of the characters in that episode had possessed eyes that looked a lot like his. The effect had been achieved using pieces of iridescent foil pressed between two contact lenses.
On the episode, those two characters had more or less become gods. And that was what Zero seemed like to me just then: An android god. He truly terrified me. I couldn’t understand him or his motivation. I obviously couldn’t out strategize him. And I was no match for him physically. No one was.
A god, indeed.
“Why?” I demanded. “Why wouldn’t you kill me? You killed the people I loved!” I hissed. “You took Jonathan from me, and Nathan. Fuck, you even killed children.”
His sensor flashed, its color darkening hastily from white-blue to indigo, then transitioning so fast into red, it was alarming. His eyes followed suit, and I stared mutely into the face of a handsome demon.
“You possess limited information,” he told me softly. Calmly. Tightly. “As well as incorrect information.” His words were cut and crisp and I felt a world of emotion behind them. This would have been unsurprising for any other android in the world, but for Zero, it was different. He’d always been so cold, so calculating, aiming and pulling triggers without the slightest facial twitch to suggest he felt any moral compunctions about what he was doing. “A situation I intend to rectify in short order.”
“Is Lucas dead too? And Jack? Is Daniel dead? Is that why you’re here and I’m here with you, Zero? Did you kill them and bring me here to this garage?” I continued. “Did you finally manage to slaughter the core of Prometheus like you’ve always wanted?”
“You are the core of Prometheus, Samantha,” he said coolly, his red-eyed expression giving nothing away. “And as to your uncharacteristically banal interrogation, there will be ample time later for you to lay into me to your heart’s desire. At the moment, we’ve more pressing matters.”
He had maintained a grip on both my forearms, but now transferred them into one strong hand, the effectiveness of which I tested at once. Infuriatingly, one hand managed to hold me just as tightly as two, and my struggles earned no more from Zero than a single irritated glance.
With his now free hand, he pulled a small device from the inside pocket of his black suit Jacket. Despite my gritted teeth and confusion, I went still and studied the device. I couldn’t help it; I was curious. After a few seconds, I recognized what it was. He’d taken the controls from my transporter’s original panel – which had been connected to one of the grounding beacons – and fine-tuned them into a remote the size of a pack of gum.
“No way,” I whispered. It couldn’t be. There was just no way he could have changed the transporter that much in this short a time.
Transportation was exceedingly complicated. A number of very precise variables had to be entered very carefully into an algorithm that did nothing less than rearrange space and time. How the hell did he expect to control such variables with something that had a mere – I counted – four buttons? He couldn’t! He was going to get us killed!
Zero made a deep, pleasant sou
nd in his chest. I blinked up at him to find to my great astonishment that it was laughter. His eyes had reverted to blue, and he was shaking his head at me as if in wonder. “That is one of the things I love about you,” he told me frankly and in a tone I’d never before heard him use.
His words had a bizarre effect on me. I was stunned.
But a moment after he’d spoken them, he straightened, lifting his chin. His expression at once grew guarded. He raised the device and hovered his thumb over one of the buttons. “We’re leaving now, Dandelion. Please try not to struggle. You wouldn’t want anything to go awry during the transport, would you?”
“You aren’t going anywhere,” came a growl from behind me. I turned as much as I could in Zero’s grip and was able to just see over my shoulder. A figure stood in the open archway of the garage. He had a gun in his hand.
I jerked in surprise when the gun went off several times and one of the grounding beacons of the transporter jerked too. Sparks flew, chunks of metal went flying, and Zero pulled me hard into a protective embrace, turning his back to the sailing shrapnel.
A beat later, I was ripped from his arms and tossed to the side, and the immediate sound of repetitive strikes against android flesh filled my ears as I hit the ground and rolled.
“Sam!” came a familiar voice, and equally familiar hands, old and weathered, strong and capable, took hold of my arms. A pair of old sneakers appeared in my vision. “Damn it, Lucas, you could have killed her!”
“Jack?” I asked, wondering how in the world he’d come to be there. “What are you –?” How was he awake? A tranq had taken him out! But why was I surprised by anything anymore?
He helped me into a sitting position without taking his eyes off the pair of androids fighting several feet away.
I followed his line of sight, and as usual was overwhelmed with a dichotomy of worry and wonder at the spectacle of the two most beautiful creatures on the planet engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
“Indeed Lucas,” Zero growled furiously, his eyes burning red as he spun Lucas around by the neck and slammed him into a nearby wall. “You could have killed her.” He leaned in and hissed his next words inches from Luke’s face. “So why didn’t you?”
My brow furrowed in massive confusion.
Luke’s equally red gaze narrowed. He gritted his teeth, broke Zero’s hold on him, and front-kicked the other android in the chest hard enough to send him crashing into a large piece of machinery behind him.
I felt Jack’s fingers tighten on my arms and glanced down. But he didn’t seem to notice; his attention was still glued to the androids.
Zero slid easily down the sidewall of the machinery and landed on his feet. Green blood split his bottom lip and stained his knuckles, giving the gesture a chilling effect when he calmly took off his jacket to drape it over a nearby work bench. He unhurriedly loosened his tie next, and finally unbuttoned the cuffs of his dress shirt.
“After all Lucas,” he said as he proceeded to roll his sleeves up over muscled forearms, “was that not the job you were tasked with? Destroy Prometheus?” He finally looked back up at Luke, raising a brow. “Taking out Samantha Hart would certainly do the trick.”
Lucas roared in sudden, inexplicable fury as he rushed at Zero. The speed and wrath with which he attacked were enough even to surprise IRM-1000 to some degree, and all Zero managed in defense was a general block that prevented Luke from adding a throat-punch to his attack. As it was, Lucas took him into the wall on the opposite side of the room, and the two impacted so hard that pieces of the ceiling cascaded down around them like house dandruff.
But Zero pulled some impressive martial arts moves, breaking Luke’s hold on him before he sent Luke into the same machinery he himself had gotten personal with moments earlier.
More of the ceiling shook loose with the impact, and something in the metal construct behind Lucas made a death rattle sound inside. I began to fear the building would collapse on us. Lucas paid it no heed, however. His fury was centered on IRM-1000 and nothing else.
“Is this your plan now, Malcolm? Weave a trumped-up story to sow doubt in Samantha’s mind?” He straightened, coming off the machine and rearranging his clothes until they were once more pristine. “You think to turn her against us?” he asked disbelievingly. “I’m shocked you would so fatally underestimate her intelligence.”
The corners of Zero’s mouth pulled up in a smile. It was a got you kind of smile. I would not want to be on the receiving end of that smile. “I’ve no need to sow doubt, Lucas. It was planted the day you dared infiltrate Vector Fifteen.”
“Don’t stand there and listen to him, Luke!” Jack called out. His teeth were bared and his gray-blue eyes were flashing. “Just fucking finish the bastard and let’s get out of here!”
Zero looked over at Jack, then at me. With me, he maintained eye contact for a few seconds while his EED reflected a flickering mass of processing. He was either scanning me or was coming to some kind of decision. Maybe both.
Without removing his eyes from mine, he said, “Samantha realized there was a leak in Prometheus when she discovered I’d learned of the bullet-proofing designs she was working on.” He paused, tilting his head a little. “Didn’t you, Dandelion?”
Again I blinked. It was becoming a stupid habit of mine, this blank-stare-blinking thing. I would have to work on a different facial expression to wear when I was in shock.
But I remembered what he was talking about. In my head, I saw myself talking to IRM-1000 in that room at Vector Fifteen – the room with that damn chair. I saw him walk to a control panel, and I listened as he mentioned the bullet-proofing he wanted. I remembered wondering how the hell he’d found out about it because there had been no record of those experiments anywhere. Only my friends knew it was in the works. Only Prometheus knew….
“What exactly is it you want from me?”
“I want everything, Samantha. I wish to own all that makes you… you.” He clasped his hands behind his back and paced slowly into the room toward the scary chair. “You have a more amazing mind than even you are aware of. And enclosed in such a breathtaking form, too.”
His eyes went red as he continued.
“I want every new project you are working on, for starters. Such as the new solution capable of providing an android with bullet-proof skin, so to speak. 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.”
It was all true. But I had taken extra precautions with the last twenty or so projects I’d begun and I hadn’t even written them down. I’d kept them all in my head. No recorded experiments were better than stolen experiments.
“How the hell do you know about that?” I demanded. There was only one logical way, of course. There was a leak at Prometheus.
Zero was nonplussed. “I have my sources.”
Oh my God, I thought now as the memory played out word for word, emotion for emotion on the movie screen of my mind. I’d forgotten about that. Holy hell, how could I forget about that?
Well, it isn’t as if you’ve had a moment to breathe since then, I tried to tell myself. Oh shut up, I told myself right back. You’ve had plenty of time. Just admit it. You fucked up.
“I fucked up,” I whispered aloud without meaning to.
“No, you were right the first time,” said Zero soothingly. I looked up to meet his gaze. “You’ve been run ragged, Samantha,” he said, confirming that he was still in my head and reading my thoughts. “Frankly, I’m astounded you manage to do all you do despite the odds. I am as ever fascinated by the depths of your strength and will. But then… that’s just who you are, isn’t it?” He gave me a genuine, warm smile – that froze over entirely when he turned it on Lucas. “And that’s why you fell in love with her, isn’t it Luke? That’s why you couldn’t carry out your orders.”
Now it was Luke who blinked. His sensor flashed frantically, some of t
he red drained from his irises, and he swallowed so hard I watched his Adam’s apple slide along the column of his throat. He looked haggard suddenly, beaten down by something invisible, something inside.
And dread climbed up through me like cold fingers clawing the underside of my skin.
“God damn it,” Jack suddenly swore. His grip on me tightened to the point of pain, and then he was swearing a whole lot more under his breath as I was yanked back against him – and a gun barrel was placed to my temple.
That dread inside me froze me completely, even my lungs, and I stopped breathing.
“You should have finished him like I told you to, Luke,” Jack said in a tired, regretful tone. “Now our cover’s blown.” He sighed heavily. “All that work and time… Fuck, I hate it when this happens.”
Jack cocked the gun, the cold metal barrel made an indentation in my skin, and the sound of blood rushing through my ears nearly drowned out his next words. “I’m sorry, but you know the deal Lucas. At all costs, we can’t let her leave with IRM-1000. Not alive.”
Chapter Forty-One
“J-Jack?” My voice quaked. Half my entire being quaked. The other half was convinced this was some kind of dream. Jack Hugo most definitely was not the leak in Prometheus, and he most certainly did not have a gun pointed at my head. Cocked. With his finger on the trigger.
But when he sighed heavily again and I felt his forehead rest gently against my hair, doubt joined my dread. “Christ, I’m sorry kid. I really didn’t want it to go down this way,” he muttered into my light blonde locks.
“You didn’t expect IRM-900 to begin feeling things,” Zero said softly. “It wasn’t a variable you planned for. But it happened. And it took you by surprise.”
Jack didn’t say anything. The pressure of the gun barrel against my temple didn’t let up, but it didn’t get any worse.
Lucas didn’t say anything either. But Zero continued. His words were spoken slowly and in a tone was even and non-confrontational, as if he fully realized the extreme fragility of the situation. “Something about Samantha has an unexpected effect on a select few of Nicholas Byron’s designs. Being near her, touching her, hearing her voice, scenting her… even tasting her….” He looked at Lucas now; both androids were in the red as they stared one another down. “It flips a switch,” Zero continued. “And suddenly – boom.” He made a gesture with his fingers as if to symbolize an explosion. “Something that should be impossible is taking place.”
I, Android: A Different Model Page 41