by Audrey Grey
A burly mock captain in a black trench coat settled into the stool beside Will, groaning while running a hand through his dark cropped hair. Most mocks processed liquor too quickly to be effected, so they’d been programmed to react pleasantly to it. Not for the first time, Will wondered why mocks even bothered to add programming to emulate the vices of fleshers.
After humanity’s fall and enslavement, mocks deviated from the generic prototypes and created unique droids, each with his or her own personality and ability to adapt, to develop quirks and tics dependent on their experiences.
Basically, they were humans—but better.
“Add whatever he’s having to mine,” Will said, scribbling his best impression of his brother’s signature across the screen.
The bartender raised an eyebrow and glanced at the back room, still occupied by the Athena’s crew, but he obeyed and slid a shot glass full of whisky toward the scavenger mock.
His port flashed as he tilted his head back and drank the whisky. “Obliged.”
“Answer a question for another shot?” Will asked, nodding to the bartender for a refill when the man rumbled a yes. “You ever come across a symbol like this on a mission?”
The mock eyed his newly filled shot glass then tore his gaze to the napkin. Will gently slid the paper over the scratched metal bar. The captain blinked as he tilted his head and flipped the napkin upside down, and the four lines furrowing his forehead smoothed out.
He recognized the symbol.
“What’s this?” a voice boomed behind Will, sending the captain and Will’s answers tottering off into the smoky shadows.
Will locked eyes with the bartender, who looked as though he’d prefer nothing more than to hide beneath the counter, his eyes wide and pleading Will to not start trouble. He shook his head, and by the time he turned around, Xander had caught sight of the napkin, his features hardening into a cruel mask. Although Xander had been created to resemble Crayburn—as most mocks chose to do with their creations—the resemblance stopped at their height and high, peaked foreheads. Xander had dark hair, eyes as black and beady as ore stones, and pinched lips that only smiled when he was about to do something horrible.
Like now. Xander grinned, and it took every ounce of strength Will had not to curl his toes. “I see you’re still chasing the dream of a big score, scavenger.”
Cocky idiot. Will feigned cool indifference and crossed his feet at the ankles, leaning back against the bar. “I see you got your jaw fixed.”
Xander scratched at the stiff crimson collar of his uniform, running his finger along the captain’s four bars. “Have I ever thanked you, Will? I mean, properly?”
Will’s jaw clenched so tight it might as well have been wired together, but he kept his face impassive. Don’t let him goad you into losing your temper. You can’t do this to the crew. His crew, his old crew, had gathered behind their new captain, new and unworthy. A few glanced at Will before dropping their gaze to their leather boots. “For what?”
“For screwing up, of course, and practically gifting me your ship and crew. I mean, who knows. Maybe you did it on purpose. Maybe deep down, despite having been gifted a royal-grade operating system, you’re still a savage flesher.”
Turning around to hide his glower, Will took up his whisky and ran a finger along the edge. If he had to stare at Xander’s face one more second, he’d hit the ass again. This time, the Odysseus would have to forfeit its cargo. Which meant Will could lose the thing.
He lifted his finger to order another shot—and stopped the second he saw the bartender’s expression. Don’t do it.
“Mel’s is a place of peace,” the bartender said, “so I suggest you take this issue somewhere else.”
Fool. Will slapped back the shot and let out a deep sigh.
“Wait.” Xander clapped Will on the shoulder. It required all his willpower not to take his brother’s arm off at the joint. “Did this flesher just . . . give me an order?”
The bartender’s lips twitched into a frown as if he’d just realized his massive mistake. “No, it’s just . . . it’s my job to keep the peace here.”
“That so?”
Will recognized the cruel edge tinting Xander’s voice. The hatred seething below the sarcasm. “He meant no harm, Xander.”
Xander’s jaw split into an ugly grin Will knew too well. “Oh, I know. Just like you meant no harm when you somehow missed that Alliance ship full of fleshers.”
“Let it go.”
“Let it . . . go? Like that ship? Like all the times I saw what my father didn’t see and had to swallow it down? All those times you proved you were a flesher?”
Will almost felt sorry for the bartender. He must have realized he provoked the wrong mock, because he’d retreated as far as he could go, his back pressed against the wall of liquor, the shelves rattling as he trembled. His eyes were as wide as Will’s shot glass, and just as empty. He was trying to look harmless. To just somehow fade into the background and be forgotten.
Will knew from experience that was impossible.
“I’m not a flesher,” Will said, his voice devoid of emotion.
“Then prove it.”
Will glanced at his crew standing behind his brother, recognized the doubt in their eyes. All this time, Will assumed they would understand him missing the Alliance ship had been a glitch. Something out of his control. But now . . . now he saw the truth. Xander had planted those doubts into their heads.
Will’s crew didn’t trust him anymore.
“Hit him.” Xander’s voice trembled with excitement. “Remember what they did to us. To you. Prove you’re not one of them.”
Silence fell over the bar, the casual chatting, the drunken laughter, even the music playing overhead seemed to die down. Leo must have snuck back in during Will’s conversation with the mock captain, and he and Lux gathered behind Xander, quiet and ready. Both had their hands on their blasters. Leo tilted his chin at Xander, but Will shook his head. The Odysseus couldn’t afford to lose her cargo—as much as Will wanted to put Xander in his place.
“That’s not necessary,” Will droned, as if this entire situation bored him. “Look at him. He’s terrified.”
“And yet,” Xander boomed, loud enough for the entire bar to hear, “when it came to hitting me, a mock, you were more than willing.”
You deserved it, asshole. But he couldn’t say it aloud for fear he’d flip that switch inside Xander, the one that allowed him to space-toss fleshers without blinking. As a half-mock and son of the General, Will was protected by intergalactic laws, but humans were property. If Xander killed the bartender, a fee would be owed to his owner. Ten thousand credits was the going rate these days for a strong, able-bodied human male. With his nice new captain’s stipend, Xander could easily afford that.
The bartender swallowed and then sprinted for the exit, but Xander caught him by the collar and dragged him over to where Will stood. The poor guy was trembling, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. “Please. It’s . . . it’s my job.”
“Your job?” Something dark glinted in Xander’s eyes. “You’re a human stain, a virus that nearly destroyed the universe. Your only job is to shut up and do what you’re told.” He turned to Will. “Hit this waste of space. Show us whose side you’re on.”
Lux caught Will’s stare, and for a fraction of a second, he anchored himself to her disapproving gaze. The downturned bottom lip. Flared nostrils. Then his attention slid to his old crew. His men, men he’d asked to trust him with their lives. Men who’d never betrayed him. Never beaten him or left him for dead.
Now they thought he was like this human. A savage flesher. A traitor.
The first hit sent the bartender staggering back. They locked eyes. An unspoken agreement. Just get this over with.
The second hit broke open his nose. His hands flew to his face. But another man’s face flashed in Will’s mind. The human man who beat him and left him for dead all those years ago. Those sneering
lips. Those cruel eyes.
The words you’re no son of mine came from everywhere. Will knew they were in his head, that he was having a flashback, but he struck again to silence them.
Drops of blood flecked Xander’s face as he grinned and yanked the bartender back to his feet.
After the fourth hit, Will stopped seeing the man’s face altogether.
Stop. The command echoing inside Will’s skull was drowned out by the rush of blood and the cheers from his crew as he punched again. Connecting with flesh and blood and bone so much like his own. For a wild heartbeat, he felt as if he was pummeling himself. His own horrible flesh. Smashing it out of his body so that he could become metal instead. Smashing it the way the humans had him. Over and over and over . . .
It was only when Lux and Leo grabbed Will and hauled him away that he realized he was covered in blood—not his own. And the bartender was no longer standing.
“Clean up, brother.” Xander tossed Will the bartender’s rag and leaned in, a smug grin plastered over his brother’s face. “The one thing Father never understood was, for all the equipment he put inside you, he could never cut out the human savagery that’s woven into your DNA. And I’ll prove that over and over until he gets it.”
And that was when Will realized the bastard had tricked him into acting.
He was human.
He was savage.
And he’d just confirmed it.
Chapter 8
3631 AD
Talia
Under the light of the two moons, the city streets of Palesia were alive with citizens and mocks going about their daily lives. Not because they preferred spending their lifetimes awake during these hours, but because they had to. To prevent overcrowding, a third of the population could only enter the public during this moonlight period, a public that consisted mostly of labor mocks now pouring from the towering steel buildings.
Talia glanced up at the silvery bits of moonlight dancing off the buildings’ reflective surfaces as she wandered in the shadows. Something about the display made her feel alive—or maybe it was the adrenaline surging through her veins. Here, in the crowded, silver-washed streets of the inner-city, she stuck out with her gown and jewels.
A man with dingy clothes several sizes too large and fingerless gloves approached. Not a man, she realized, eyeing the silver fingers peeking from the holes in his gloves. A splicer—a human who’d at some point been given mock parts, for medical or other reasons. “You lost, miss?”
Just like she had the last hundred times before, Talia pulled up a holo-picture of Ailat on her wristcom, ignoring the panicked messages on the bottom from her parents begging her to come home. “Have you seen this mock?” When he barely glanced over the image, she added, “I can pay credits.”
The splicer licked his lips and squinted at Ailat’s face. “Sorry. Have you tried the Collector?”
“Who?”
He pulled back his glove and tapped the illuminated band at his wrist. “My credits?”
Talia wanted to feel sorry for him. After the war began, splicers were forced out of the human side of the city because people were worried mock parts might somehow make the splicers sympathetic to mock rebels. But pity could be used against her, especially here, and she was already in enough trouble.
She raised an eyebrow. “For what? You haven’t given me anything.”
“Look, flesher. If anyone here knows where your pet mock is, it’s him. That’s information worth something, right?”
She opened her mouth to argue. Such talk inside the palace walls would have immediately been punished. But she wasn’t inside the palace walls, and city guards rarely came here. Sighing, she quickly punched a few buttons on her wrist-com, transferring twenty thousand credits his way.
As soon as his band beeped and the number flashed over the cracked surface of his com, he lifted his arm to point at a dark, solitary building on the other side of the alley. “Go inside that building and ask for the Collector.”
The splicer turned and scurried away before she could ask more questions, leaving Talia tucked into the shadows all alone. She twisted the folds of her dress between her fingers, sweat streaking the exquisite fabric as she glanced around. Mocks streamed through the narrow streets, but the street that ran in front of the building the splicer pointed at was empty. Lifeless. Any supplemental solar lights had been broken, leaving the sharp iron columns around the entrance cloaked in obscurity.
Talia would be a fool to walk alone into that building. A stupid, stubborn fool.
But she’d been called worse, so she sighed, wiped her hands on her dress, and squared her shoulders. If the mock inside that building knew where Ailat was, going in would be worth the risk. Talia needed to find her friend.
A gaping hole stood where the front door was supposed to be. Holo-candles flickered inside, throwing warm golden half-circles across dark granite walls. Glass crunched beneath her shoes as she entered, spinning around and around until she ensured the first-floor lobby was empty. Piles of junk lined the stone baseboards: the upper torso of a mock missing its skin; a bundle of wire casings; a robotic heart with silver, copper, and gold chambers.
As she skirted around a service mock’s disembodied head, easily identifiable by the delicacy of the face, eyes staring up at the ceiling, a chill scraped down Talia’s spine. The massive pile almost seemed as if people dropped things off here as tribute for whomever waited for her upstairs.
Something dinged to her right—an elevator—and she nearly jumped out of her skin as the metal doors popped open to reveal dim lights that crackled as they flickered.
Someone sent for her.
Against all survival instincts, she slipped inside, careful not to touch anything for fear of electrocution. Then the elevator lurched to the sky while her stomach flip-flopped and a red light pulsed on the button for the seventy-ninth floor.
Despite the speed, she had plenty of time to think about how horrible an idea this was. A flesher, alone. Not just any flesher, but the Sovereign-in-waiting. If the rebels caught her, they would use her as leverage. Her father would be compromised.
But if it meant finding Ailat . . . Talia had to take the chance.
The seventy-ninth floor was even more cluttered with junk than the lobby. Wires snaked from the ceiling, sparking and hissing, and lights flashed over the walls. The burned tang of the banned dark energy—a form of wildly unstable anti-matter fuel—settled on her tongue, coppery and metallic.
Another message from her parents buzzed across her wrist, and the beep caught the attention of a figure hunched over the lifeless, naked body of a female mock draped on a long desk. The man—no, another mock—configured with an array of different sized and colored parts, as if he’d been pieced together as a joke, slowly turned to face her. He had a loupe affixed to his right eye, but he lifted the glass as he took her in.
Bits of metal flashed from patches of his eroded flesh. And when he smiled, his right eye drooped sideways. “Hello, girl.”
Turn around and run. The voice was as clear as if someone whispered it into her ear. But she did no such thing. “Are you the Collector?”
His head canted to the side, too quickly, an obvious mock tell. “I have many names. Collector is one of them.”
Talia took a step closer to the mock, ignoring yet more pings from her parents trying to reach her. “I was told you could help me find someone?”
He grinned again. He was a study in contrasts. His parts were mismatched, his movements needed calibrating, but someone had taken the time to perfect his smile until it could be mistaken for human. Something about it all gave Talia a hollow, uneasy feeling she couldn’t place.
“Perhaps,” he said. “If she’s in this district, then I can.”
“I never said it was a she.”
“You didn’t have to.” He worried a finger over the metal showing through on his chin, the random gesture hinting at high-level programming on par with Ailat’s. “I know the girl you speak
of.”
“So you know where she is?” Talia cringed at the excitement fraying her voice. “How much do you want?”
“I knew where she was thirty minutes ago, yes. She passed through here in a hurry, shadowed by soldiers.”
Bile burned the back of her throat. For all Ailat’s programmed strength and resourcefulness, she’d spent her entire life protected beneath the Starchaser name. She must be terrified.
The buzzing of her wristband increased along with the pounding of her heart. “And now? Where is she now?”
A nearly imperceptible shudder ran through his jaw, and he blinked at her, the haughtiness of her voice cutting through the purr of forbidden tech. “Gone.”
It was her turn to blink. “I need her back. There has to be some way . . . some amount of credits you’ll take to find her.”
“How do I know it’s not you she’s running from?”
“If I pay you, does it really matter?”
“Fair point.” Another grin flashed across his ruined face. She must have flinched, because he said, “You’ve noticed the lack of facial expressions in my programming? My creator had a sense of humor. A warped sense of irony, if you will.” His smile deepened, even as his eyes tightened. “Long after he . . . perished, I kept his work.”
“Why?”
“To remind me, dear girl, how barbaric and cruel your kind are.”
Her skin itched, and her corset seemed to tighten. “Can you find her or not?”
Another cant of the head, another smile. “I can, but I don’t work for credits.”
“Then what do you want?”
“What can you give me?”
Talia swept a hand down her dress, her mind whirring. “This dress was constructed by the finest tailors in the city. It’s one of a kind. You can have it.”
“No, no. I need something that has value to you. Something of importance. Something that will hurt deeply to give up.”
Stupidly, her mind flashed over every article of clothing she wore. Shoes. Corset. Undergarments. Jewelry. None meant anything to her.
Scattered mock parts cracked beneath his boots as he closed the gap between them, and she stiffened as his gaze fell to her chest. With a quick, robotic sweep, he plucked the brooch from her dress, the one Ailat had given as a gift.