I, Android: A Different Model

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “Very well. Please see that the helicopters are fueled, and prepare the necessary transportation for our arrival. Make certain that Miss Hart’s quarters are ready for our return and the necessary staff are on-hand, especially medical. We’ll be leaving within the hour.”

  Grace nodded and left, closing the door behind her. Zero turned and began to make his way back across the room toward the table and the android restrained atop it. I watched more closely, knowing what was coming now.

  The door knob turned; I saw it this time. As soon as it did, Zero’s head lifted, and he spoke. “I was under the impression this work made you uncomfortable, Grace. Or is there something else –”

  But the figure who opened the door was of course not Grace, and when he took a single step into the room, the sound of his footfall was all it took for Zero to recognize the deception. I could well imagine his thought process as the scene unfolded. His words cut off the moment the shoe touched down. Grace’s steps were shorter, smaller, lighter. This was a male, and he wasn’t responding, which meant he was not supposed to be there. He was an enemy.

  Zero spun with the tray in his hands and simultaneously lifted it. Now I could see – his instinct was to use the flat metal as a shield. But the man at the door had been ready. He’d already raised his arm, had already taken careful aim. He was so fast, so precise. Before Zero could get the shield in front of his chest, the gun went off.

  It went off several more times, and Zero fell. Ben made his way across the room just as he had the first time. But now as he knelt in front of his target, I could read his words.

  “Looks like you went to some trouble to obtain that chip. All that planning, all that deception.” He glanced, amused, at Lucas on the table. “All that digging.” A wry smile. “You saved me a lot of time and effort.” He reached over and extracted the chip from Zero’s front pocket. “I’ll be sure to send you a thank-you basket later.”

  Then his expression grew serious, and again his eyes shot off sparks of warning. “Hart doesn’t belong to you, Antares. And she never will.” He held the chip between them, gesturing to it with a small shake. “She belongs to him.” He leaned slightly forward, hissing his next words in Zero’s face. “She always has. It was predestined. More than you can possibly know.”

  He stood up again, slipping the intel chip into a pocket inside his black leather jacket. This was new footage to me now, and I watched so hard my eyes were burning. “You’re inviting disaster by going against fate. Give up now while you still can.” Ben gave Zero one last long look, then turned on his heel and strode confidently from the room.

  Once he was alone, Zero’s EED flickered, going from white to – to black. It wasn’t the darkness of a light having gone out. Rather, it was dark light, the way I’d always imagined dark energy and even dark matter would look if you’d decided to animate or draw either into distinct and recognizable form and function. It was deep in undertone like black light, but shot through with sparkling energy that reminded me of the cosmos.

  Within seconds, Zero’s once platinum eyes took on the same enormously beautiful shade, shimmering and mesmerizing. I stared at the transition, spellbound, as the blood dripping from his fingertips slowed and then stopped. The bleeding in his chest stopped next. And one after another, Zero’s bullet wounds sealed back up again.

  “Hhhholy self-healing bad guys,” I whispered, far too shocked to formulate a proper swear. As I looked on, it became increasingly easy to understand how Zero was capable of reaching into my mind and healing me, a mere human, when he somehow – what, magically? – delved into an android body and virtually repaired rare metals and plastics, along with highly precise radioactive biocomponents.

  I almost dropped the leep drive. My jaw was definitely hanging low.

  Eventually Zero’s eyes and EED transitioned back to blue, and then the EED alone went straight into yellow and pulsed. He flexed his fingers, looked down at his hands and body, and then stood. Aside from the holes in his shirt and the Vulcan blood all over the place, he looked like he always did.

  Zero turned and strode to a panel against the wall, placing his hand to it. It awoke and revealed a series of operations. He pressed several and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.

  “Yes, sir?” came a nearly immediate response. I had no way of knowing whether the voice was male or female.

  Zero calmly spoke. “We’ve had an unscheduled visit from one of –”

  Suddenly, the entire laser projection flickered and vanished. The leep itself went dark in my hand a split second later.

  As did all the lights in the room.

  And then, while I waited there in stunned silence, every light of the city beyond the bedroom window went black, grid section by grid section. The world was quiet. In the absence of electricity, the quiet was in fact almost too loud. It was absolute, almost a sound of its own.

  It’s a black out, I realized. And it looks like it’s city-wide.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  I knelt in the bed and stared at the darkened window. My heart was still beating pretty hard, but the ringing in my ears from earlier had all but faded by now, so I jumped when there was a soft, tentative rap at the door.

  “Sam?”

  It was Daniel. I exhaled, letting out a huge whoosh of shaky air that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Yeah,” I said, sliding my legs off the mattress. “Sorry. I’m coming.”

  “There’s no need,” said Daniel. I heard the clear sound of metal scraping smoothly against metal. “I’ve got the key.”

  That’s right, I thought. He used to live here. This is… this is his home.

  So whoever had tried the knob earlier either didn’t have a key – or Daniel was trying to throw me. At this point, I was more than ready to believe the former rather than even entertain the idea of the latter. So that’s what I did, putting my hero officially in the clear.

  The door opened. I blinked against a new brightness when he came in carrying an honest-to-goodness lantern. It didn’t go so far as to be gas lit like the lanterns from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it was a soft yellow in color, it flickered by aesthetic design, and he was carrying it from the top by a metal handle. Like an Old West miner.

  With a tray of food in his other hand. The scent of it wafted toward me, warm and delicious, but I was too emotionally worked up to give it proper credit.

  “What happened?” I asked him as he closed the door behind him with his boot. My words came out a little scratchy and thin. My throat was still dry, and now my voice was strained by all I’d seen, all I’d learned.

  “Short burst EMP,” Daniel said with an apologetic shrug and a small smile. “Not big enough to fry anything, but bad enough to shut it all down. Or so he claims. Byron set it off about a minute ago without warning me first.” He came forward, set the tray down on the bedside table, and placed the lantern beside it.

  My brow furrowed. I looked at him questioningly, wondering why the hell Nicholas would suddenly want to set off an EMP. It was a decidedly random thing to just suddenly do in the middle of the night.

  I was enormously grateful that Nick had thought to protect his androids from EMP’s when he’d designed them. To do otherwise would have been short-sighted in the extreme, as it would have given virtually anyone from private hackers to terrorists to entire governments absolute power over the entire android population. All they had to do was emit a pulse, and every android within reach of it would go night-night.

  “Why would Nick set off an –” I stopped mid-sentence because I suddenly knew the answer. I could practically hear the conversation that had taken place to lead to Nick’s decision.

  Daniel eyed the bed, probably figuring out where he and his android weight could safely sit without forcing me to roll off the bed from the dent he would make. “From the look on your face, I’m guessing you’ve figured it out already,” he said. “But just in case, I’ll tell you. When we left you alone, Nick asked how Grace had managed
to find you.”

  Yep, I thought.

  He went on. “I told him I had wondered the same thing, so I’d performed a scan on you while we were all in here with you.”

  He took a few steps along the bed, and from his back pocket, he extracted a bottle. I watched as he twisted off the non-twist-off cap with his bare hand and held it out for me. Androids. Quite handy.

  “Here. You’ve been thirsty for a while now. Your voice is damn sexy when it’s husky and all, but the Lieutenant is right. It should be that way for other reasons entirely.” He smiled a beautiful, white smile that was all bite and no bark. I blushed furiously and concentrated on the bottle as if it were the single most important thing in the world. He had the cheek to softly laugh.

  The bottle was a very rare green glass bottle of Mountain Dew, my absolute favorite drink in the world. Actually I preferred Diet Mountain Dew because I hated the way sugar felt on my teeth when it was acquired through a liquid. For some reason, candy didn’t feel the same way. But one real Coke and I was racing for a toothbrush.

  However I needed this sugar right now anyway, so this was perfect. The glass was long and slender, which physics ensured would make the liquid inside colder. These bottles were only available any longer through special order. Very special order.

  But Jonathan had been one of the rich and famous, literally. And he’d been awesome. It didn’t surprise me that he’d had a few of these babies in cold storage. He and I had the same tastes in a lot of things, not only old movies and TV series.

  Once I knew what it was, I hurried to take the bottle, seriously grateful for the distraction of something so simply wonderful amidst so much bedlam. I enjoyed the way the glass almost burned my hand, it was so cold. The beverage’s almost freezing temperature alone kind of made me want to French Kiss Daniel and earn my husky voice the right way.

  I blushed further with that entirely inappropriate thought then placed the bottle to my lips, inhaled the mist softly, and started chugging.

  Oh fuck, I thought. This is heaven.

  “Hey, slow down,” Daniel warned, laughing softly. Even amused as he was, the commanding edge to his voice was still there. But I ignored it.

  He finally sat down on the side of the bed, causing it to dent beneath his weight, but not as much as it could have. “So back to the EMP,” he said as he watched me, apparently fascinated and maybe a little horrified. “When I scanned you, I found a diminishing tracer in your blood with a hunter’s tag on it, obviously from the bullet you took.”

  I nodded, the bottle nodding with me.

  He sighed heavily and gave me an exasperated look as I continued to lug the soda down, despite the way it burned my esophagus on its way to my stomach and would probably give me a horrid case of gastrointestinal discomfort in a matter of minutes. “I should have known Nick would immediately set off the pulse to clear the trace on you.”

  Daniel watched me wince when a particular swallow burned more than usual. Then he reached out and wrapped his hand around the half-full bottle, firmly pulling it from my lips. “That’s enough,” he said admonishingly. “At least eat something first.” He nodded to the tray as he set the bottle down on it.

  I admit I may have pouted just a little, but just as I’d ignored his order, he ignored my sulking. When I sat back again on the bed, he finally asked, “Sam, are you okay?”

  I blinked. But he gestured to the leep drive that rested on the covers in plain sight for all to see.

  And just like that, it all hit me.

  It hit me from every angle, like paintball ammo from a circle of machine guns. It stuck to me in layers and weighed me down, making it hard to breathe again. I wanted to confide in Daniel, desperately wanted to just get it all off my chest.

  But in my mind, I saw the hooded figure on the rail car take the enemy’s weapon and use it against them. Exactly the way Daniel had done so many times before. It was impossible. It couldn’t have been him. But I couldn’t ignore it either. That too-fast movement, the nearly impossible grace, the inhuman strength. It was too much like him. And it made me wonder.

  “Hey, come here,” Daniel said softly, grasping hold of me and pulling me in for a tight hug. I closed my eyes and hesitated only a little before relaxing against him while Grace’s words scrolled through my head again, gold and glimmering in warning.

  Trust no one.

  I opened my eyes, tilting my head up to glance warily across the room at the damn doorknob. The one that had rattled ever so softly, testing the lock, the person on the other side even trying – quietly – to break it.

  I saw Ben’s face. I saw him on the sidewalk, racked with pain. Then in the park square, as I’d confronted him with his deception. And finally in the video, where he’d held the invaluable intel on the whole of Prometheus in his hand. She doesn’t belong to you, Antares. She never will. She belongs to him. She always has.” He’d given the intel chip a meaningful shake, as if the “him” he referred to… were inside.

  Inside Prometheus.

  In the channel of my memories, I heard Zero’s words next….

  “Samantha realized there was a leak in Prometheus when she discovered I’d learned of the bullet-proofing designs she was working on. Didn’t you, Dandelion?”

  And I realized that despite losing so many of our people, despite our wrecked and whittled numbers, there was still a viper sitting pretty in our dwindled, disquieted nest. Our ragged remains were literally still sleeping with the enemy.

  I had no idea who to trust. It was one of the worst feelings in the world.

  “Your heart rate is dangerously elevated, Sam,” said Daniel quietly but earnestly, bringing me back to the present. I heard his deep voice rumble through his chest against my cheek. He was warm and solid. He was strong. He was good. He was grounding.

  Daniel, I thought. I can trust Daniel.

  I can’t trust my oldest and best friends. I can’t trust my lover or the man I’d come to think of as a father. I can’t trust anyone on the street, from beggar to prince; they could all be hiding deception.

  But I can trust the man leading a terrorist faction of rebels whose war will probably see me die before my next birthday. Who and what Daniel was made him the most dangerous person to trust. Doing so literally put my life in danger. Hence Murphy’s Law dictated he was therefore the most trustworthy.

  I resisted a little when Daniel decided to pull away so he could get a better look at me; it was just too comforting in his embrace to want to leave. But his grip on my arms tightened a little, and it didn’t take much for him to get his way. Once he had me at arms’ length, he scrutinized me. He was scanning me, I knew. But he was also trying to look me in the eye.

  I peered steadfastly at the bedspread, absolutely hating that my hero was seeing me cry. “Sam,” he said, his tone serious. He exhaled through his nose. “Look at me, Sam.”

  “No.”

  But he swore softly, let go of one of my arms, took my chin in his fingers, and forced my gaze to his. “What’s going on?” he asked. I stared at his features, etched with stark concern, his singularly beautiful eyes bright with questing apprehension – his EED flashing from yellow to orange.

  Everything, I thought. Everything is going on.

  There was too much. What did I tell him about first? My parents? Their murders? The man in the hoodie who moved with impossible android-like speed and grace? The strange St. Elmo’s Fire that turned my hair white? What did that even mean?

  Or did I tell him about Ben and the fact that he hadn’t been hired by Zero after all? The fact that he’d duped us not once, but twice?

  “Daniel, someone tried to get into the room earlier,” I suddenly said, my mouth apparently deciding to spout before my brain could catch up. “And I think I know why.”

  But when his expression became starkly puzzled, I shook my head. “Damn it, this is too slow.” And I didn’t want anyone to overhear us.

  I wiped none-too-gently at my cheeks again, yanking my wrists out
of Daniel’s hands when he went to catch them because he clearly thought I was being too rough with myself. He gave me a withering look, but I shook my head again. “No, there’s no time. There’s too much you need to know,” I told him firmly, grabbing the leep drive and pressing my thumb to its scanner to switch it back on.

  Nothing happened. I swore under my breath and tried again. Still nothing.

  “It’s fried,” I said through gritted teeth. If it had been my tinkering that killed it, it would have at least turned on and shown me malfunction errors. This device was completely dead. “The EMP took it out. Not damaging, my ass,” I said with a hard glance at Daniel.

  He looked troubled now. “No, apparently it was a little stronger than Nick let on.”

  But I had a plan B. I threw the leep aside before crawling hastily across the bed covers to grab the co-crest Daniel had tossed there earlier.

  He turned on the bed to follow my progress. “What are you –”

  I held the co-crest out to him. “Put this back on. Then take the information directly from my mind. It’s the fastest way.”

  He stared at me for several beats. I got the impression he was trying to figure several things out at once. Was I serious? Was I sure? And if I was, how far down did I want him to go?

  But his back straightened and his face revealed the resolve that helped make him a good leader. He made a command decision, grabbed the co-crest, and refastened it securely to the side of his corded neck.

  I watched it light to life and exhaled with relief. “I’d half expected that tech to be fried too,” I said. Frankly, I was surprised it wasn’t.

  But then I realized the lights outside the window were all coming back on. The grid was re-lighting. No permanent damage had been done after all. I glanced up at the antiquated television mounted on the wall. “Does that work, Daniel?”

  He nodded, his EED flickered, and the television came to life, revealing a screen full of static. Daniel touched his EED and the channel changed, flipping through various news stations and twice as many home shopping networks. Once he could see I was satisfied, he turned it back off.