I, Android: A Different Model

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “Why would you tell me this?” I asked, coming to my knees on the bed. Dizziness swept through me but I could barely register it. I felt a sense of desperation, my puzzlement was so raw. Disorder, upheaval, a muddled mayhem – this was the inside of me in that moment. The pain that hadn’t come fully alive at Luke’s horrid betrayal was for some reason choosing now to rear its ugly head.

  But Grace was undaunted by my reaction, as if she’d all but expected it. She simply said, “He doesn’t want you to see him like that, Samantha. He quite simply does not want you to hate him.”

  But… he’d done so many horrid things.

  “I’m not sure why, but as time has progressed, Malcolm’s MO has shifted. And so has he. At first, his goals were clear and perhaps immoral by your way of thinking. But now?” She shook her head, her expression hopelessly confused. At least we had that in common. “Now I’m uncertain of his goals. I only know that you feature in them prominently. And that the longer he is around you, the more he changes.”

  The longer he’s around me, the more he changes, I thought, my mind repeating her words. She fell silent, as if she knew she needed to allow me to think. Suddenly, I was recalling Sonia’s words during our alpha versus omega “drinking game” a few nights back. She’d admitted that Lucas seemed to go through mood swings, sometimes behaving more robotically and other times more human. In the chart of my memory, I tried to plot those mood swings in relation to the amount of time he’d spent around me, and I found to my dawning revelation that they matched.

  I remembered Zero’s words to me the night he’d healed me. You make me feel, Samantha. When it would seem nothing else in this world can.

  Was that it right there? Was that the answer I had been searching for?

  I now knew that both Zero and Luke did indeed feel the same in this capacity. But… could it be that they both also shared another emotional trait? Could it be that for both of them, the longer they were each around me, the more… empathetic they became? Was that why Zero had called off the attack on Prometheus half-way through and changed his order to leave no survivors?

  “Once he regained his composure after he’d confronted me for poisoning you, Malcolm tasked me with a job,” Grace said, as if sensing that I was ready for more information. I looked back up at her and watched as she glanced toward the door, her expression becoming more strained, no doubt for time. “This job, actually.”

  She approached the bed, sliding her tranq gun into a holster at her back. Then she pulled something small and readily recognizable from the pocket of her white suede jacket. Once beside the bed, she stopped and held it out to me. “He gave this to me. And he told me that if he didn’t return tonight by the arranged time – I was to bring it straight to you.”

  I looked from her face to her hand and the item she was holding. I recognized the device. It was an LPHD, a laser projecting hard drive. People normally simply referred to them as “leep drives,” phonetically joining the L and P in an incorrect manner for the sake of ease.

  The leep was capable of both storing and displaying information without any kind of interface. It just needed to be charged once in a while, and that was it.

  “He did not return tonight, Samantha. So, this is now yours.”

  Her words rolled through me like a disconcerting wave, deep and dark and cold. But I took the small object from her. My scientist’s mind experienced an odd dichotomy of numbing bewilderment and fiery curiosity. I desperately wanted to know what was on the drive. And at the same time, I was already confused enough. Damn it.

  The alarm stopped blaring abruptly, and in the new and deafening silence, Grace looked up, obviously listening. “I’m out of time.” She stepped back.

  “Wait, Grace – ” I had so many questions. I didn’t even know where to start. And she was right; she was out of time. So I just asked, “How did you find me?” If Zero hadn’t returned to his mansion, how had Grace known I would be here?

  “The bullet you were shot with was a hunter round,” she said.

  Hunter round, I thought. Damn. “Hunter round” was the commonly used term for special issue ammunition created specifically for professional bounty hunters. It came with embedded tracers that released into the body of a mark on impact, whether the bullet remained embedded or not.

  Grace took another step back. “Watch that,” she said, nodding to the leep in my hand. “But do so when you’re alone.” She hesitated, as if trying to decide on something. Her eyes were strikingly earnest when she whispered her next words in warning. “Samantha, trust no one. Things are not what they seem.”

  There were footfalls on the stairs, heavy and familiar, more than one pair.

  Grace’s head snapped to the side to look over her shoulder. Without delay she slid her hand beneath her shirt, revealing the familiar shape of a portable transporter sewn into her camisole. It was in fact Zero’s personalized version.

  She smiled a final goodbye, touched her fingers to the device, and said, “Cover your ears.”

  I hastily did exactly that, remembering the way the transport had sounded when Zero had disappeared with Jack and Lucas in tow. Of course, three bodies would leave more of a displacement than one, but thunder was thunder. Fortunately, the transportation made virtually no sound when a person re-appeared, as there was no vacuum formed, and thus no collision of air molecules as they hurried to fill in the unnatural space left behind. Hence no thunder, and Grace had been able to speak with me.

  But, this – her transporting away – this made a sound. A very loud one.

  I kept my ears covered and closed my eyes, riding it out. Immediately after the thunder subsided, I looked up to find Daniel, Cole and Nicholas had already infiltrated the room. Daniel stood at the room’s center near the foot of the bed, turning a slow circle. Nicholas and Cole were on either side of him. They looked from the room’s shadowed corners to Sonia’s unconscious form on the bed, and finally to me.

  Both men looked equal measures suspicious, frightened, and furious.

  “Transportation?” Daniel asked, once he’d stopped turning and faced me. I knew he was aware that’s exactly what it was and that he just needed confirmation. So I nodded.

  But the admission only seemed to confuse him. As well as the two men beside him. Daniel’s gaze narrowed with that confusion. “But you’re still here.” Then he blinked. “It wasn’t Zero.” He wasn’t really asking me as much as he was working things out and thinking out loud.

  But I shook my head for him anyway, again confirming his suspicions.

  “Okay, who the hell was it?” Cole asked. His voice was tight, and his eyes were shooting blue flint.

  All three men continued to watch me carefully. On any normal day, any normal woman would have been flattered to have the attention of so much beefcake. But this wasn’t a normal day, and all I felt was gnawing uncertainty. Grace’s words echoed in my head.

  Trust no one. Things are not what they seem.

  Daniel’s gaze further narrowed on me, making me downright uncomfortable. Those eyes were just too piercing; he was too perceptive. When he slowly proceeded to approach the bed, it was all I could do to keep from squirming.

  “It was Grace,” I said quickly, hoping he wouldn’t think that my hesitation meant I had something to hide. Which I did.

  My throat was feeling dry.

  But Daniel stopped. “Grace…” he repeated. “As in the Diana model?”

  I nodded again. Daniel slowly turned back to face the others. When he did, I put my hands back under the covers as if to keep them warm.

  “Who’s Grace?” Cole asked.

  “She’s Malcolm’s personal assistant,” said Nicholas. “It stands to reason she would have access to the same tech he possesses.” Then to me he pointedly asked, “What did she want, Sam?”

  The question hung in the air.

  “She clearly came because of you,” said Cole, who cocked his head to the side and watched me so closely, it brought back memories again. I’
d been the subject of this particular close scrutiny from him a few times when we were younger… like that night I’d been drinking. Just before he’d kissed me, in fact. He had a way of reading a person that was not unlike an android’s scan. I was betting he made a hell of a detective.

  I swallowed hard though, because tonight his keen scrutiny was less heated than it had been that night and more calculating. And it was apparently his turn to approach the bed. “What did she tell you, Cookie?” His voice had grown softer, more intimate, even while his eyes seemed to catch every single nuance and catalog it with practiced efficiency. Again, I wasn’t surprised he was a lieutenant.

  But the questions he wasn’t asking filled the silence, impregnating it. We all heard them loud and clear: What was so important that Zero’s personal assistant would risk infiltrating Jonathan’s home and knock out members of Prometheus with tranq bullets? Never mind the distinct possibility that she’d stolen one of Zero’s transporters to do it and might be risking his retribution. What was so vital that she would do that?

  And how had she known I was here in the first place?

  I knew the answers to those questions, of course. Or I knew most of them. But again, Grace’s parting words scrolled through my mind like a sentence written in shimmering gold ink. It glittered and was eye-catching. It was impossible to ignore.

  Samantha, trust no one. Things are not what they seem.

  As Cole approached the bed, I looked up and met his gaze. At the same time, I tentatively reached the fingers of my right hand over the leep drive I’d hastily hidden beneath the covers just before Grace had transported away. “She came to tell me that Zero didn’t make it back,” I told them. That much was true. And telling the truth here was vital.

  Somehow, despite all that had transpired that night, despite being shot and being horribly betrayed by one person after another, despite losing very dear friends, and despite the unconscious android on my bed, and Cole’s highly unnerving, inquisitive gaze, I somehow maintained enough wit to remember that androids could tell when someone was lying.

  “I see. Was that all?” Cole asked, his tone still soft. He now stood directly beside me, his eyes momentarily leaving mine to trail to Sonia’s body. No doubt he noticed the green blood on her neck – and the stained bullet on the bed that had rolled out of her grip when she’d gone under.

  “No,” I admitted. Careful here, Sam. I swallowed again, but almost coughed. I hated this. I hated having to formulate my words. I hated not knowing who to trust. I felt like all my lighthouses had been blown to smithereens and the ocean was getting choppy as hell. I had thought the storm had passed after Jack and Lucas, but I had only been in the storm’s eye. And now I felt a little sick.

  But I thought hard and fast, because I had no choice. “She also came to apologize. For poisoning me. And she came to warn me.”

  “Warn you about what?” Daniel asked calmly.

  Nicholas was strangely silent, but I felt his eyes on me too. In fact, I felt them so strong, I couldn’t look at him. I knew if I did, I would lose my nerve. He was too smart. He’d figure out what I was doing.

  “She told me Zero knew I was in his head when I was unconscious after I’d been poisoned.” And here was the hard part. I needed to say this just right. “But I believe she may have been trying to tell me something else.” That was definitely true so far…. “And I think that something we might need to be aware of is the possibility that when Zero is in my head, he can see through my eyes just like I could see through his.”

  I stared down at Sonia, but didn’t really see her. I was thinking.

  Everything I’d said was true. I’d worded it just right even though Grace hadn’t actually come to warn me about Zero. She’d come to warn me about others – whoever those others were. And yet, it was Zero’s infinitely strategic mind that was a real concern to me now that I stopped to think about it.

  If I didn’t keep that wall up in my head or if Zero figured a way around it – even from a distance – he would always know exactly where I was. All I would have to do is open my eyes. He would also be able to see and hear everything I did. Everything I worked on. All of my inventions. Worse yet, he would be aware of everything said and done around me. All of Daniel’s orders, all of Prometheus’s plans. All of our secrets and our locations.

  Whether I made it possible for him to feel or not, whether he was fair to his employees or not, whether he’d given Grace her name or not, the fact of the matter was that Zero was fighting a war – and we were on opposite sides.

  Oh hell, I thought, now thoroughly entrenched in my foreboding insights. I’m a liability. Now more than ever.

  “What you are is an asset,” said Daniel firmly, but softly.

  My head snapped up, my eyes wide. There on the side of Daniel’s neck was the co-crest. He’d been reading my mind. I blanched, the blood draining from my face.

  “I thought we’d been over this, Angel.”

  I felt sweat break out along my brow. My fingers unconsciously curled around the leep drive. Had he been in my head… the whole time? I was wagering he had. There’d be no reason for him to stay out, especially in this situation.

  But when my eyes met Daniel’s, rather than the hard disappointment I’d expected to find, his blue-green irises were warm. Compassionate, even.

  Aaaand now I was more baffled than ever.

  Daniel took a deep breath and said, “Boys, I think Sam has run enough gauntlets for one night. And she still hasn’t eaten or had anything to drink. For that matter, neither have either of you.”

  Cole and Nick looked from Daniel to each other to me, and suddenly Cole took a step back from the bed and ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Shit. Hell, I’m sorry, Sam...” He ran that same hand over his face now, and all at once the cold, calculating air he’d possessed a moment earlier was gone. “I guess I’m still in cop mode.”

  You think? He was damn scary in cop mode. Though I was betting if he ever played Dom in the bedroom, he was able to play the role to perfection.

  “I guess I’m not quite used to being out of a job yet,” he said distractedly.

  I understood that, and a part of me wanted to hug him tight the way we’d hugged in stressful times like this years ago. But I didn’t move, because this wasn’t over.

  My fingers still squeezed the leep drive, and my eyes kept returning nervously to Daniel as he slapped Nick hard on the back and nodded to Sonia’s form on the bed. “You two get Sonia out of Sam’s bed and into her own before she wakes up here and gets ideas.”

  “You mean before she acts on the ideas she already has,” said Cole as he positioned himself at Sonia’s feet and Nicholas took her head and shoulders. The two lifted as one and without a word, they carried the sleeping android out of my room.

  I still couldn’t look Nick in the eyes. I kept my gaze trained hard on the bedspread as they left. Daniel followed them to the door.

  I looked up, expecting him to leave with them. But when he reached the door, he stopped short before he stepped back fully into the room, closed the door – and turned to face me.

  My heart skipped painfully. It actually hurt.

  “You don’t have to hide the drive from me, Sam,” Daniel said softly, staying where he was and crossing his arms over his chest to lean casually against the wall beside the door. “I know it’s there.”

  Shit, I thought. There goes that. He knows everything.

  But then… if there was anyone in the world – anyone at all – I actually did trust, even after Grace’s warning, it was Daniel. He was my GhandiBuddhaJesus.

  Despite all that he’d witnessed, despite the absurd, pigheadedness of humanity, Daniel always tried peace first. I realized just then that Daniel had never, not once, asked me to make a weapon for Prometheus. Everything he’d asked me to create was defensive in nature or didn’t have to deal with weaponry at all. Nothing was offensive.

  That was Daniel. I’d joined him in his revolution because I believed
in him. Not just in his cause. In him.

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah… okay,” I admitted softly, pulling the small object out from beneath the covers. “I guess you’ll want to see what’s on it,” I said, getting ready to hand the drive over to him.

  “Nope.”

  I froze, the leep in my open palm, my arm half-extended toward him. “What?”

  “I’m not taking the it away from you, Sammy.”

  I slowly lowered my hand. “You’re not?”

  Daniel chuckled, disconnecting the co-crest from where it had been magnetically fastened behind his ear. “I’m pretty sure if Grace had wanted me to see what was on it, she would have given it to me instead.” He pushed off the wall behind him and tossed the co-crest onto the bed at my feet. Then he turned to face the door as if to leave. “I’m going to go get you some food and drink. For real this time.” He paused and glanced back at me over his broad shoulder. His bi-colored eyes caught mine meaningfully. “So it’ll probably take me a while.”

  Then he opened the door, pressed in the old fashioned locking mechanism on the handle, and gave me a one last look before he stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. I was alone. And the door was locked from this side, which meant I wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Somehow I wasn’t surprised. Somehow I knew that Daniel would do everything in his power to distract the others long enough for me to see what was on the leep drive in private. And that knowledge brought me much-needed comfort amidst the uncertain turmoil my life had become. If nothing else, at least I could know that I was looking up to the right people.

  I turned the drive over in my hand, studying it. Then I took another deep breath and pressed my thumb firmly on the scanning end of the rectangular object. It beeped softly to life, emitting a rainbow of colors all along its edges to indicate it was fully charged. The lights coalesced to the front of the device, forming one bright red dot before an image flashed to life a foot away, fanning out in front of me by means of laser projection.