A Plain Jane Book One (31 page)

‘
What do you want?’ she finally
asked, her voice such a choking mess that her words were almost
indiscernible.

It didn't answer, but it
did keep on looking at her, its eyes, and more accurately the
little electronic lenses that kept on twisting and circling around
as its computer controlled its attention, now moved frantically. It
was such a strange sight, and though an assassin robot was right
before her, its intentions clear, Jane did nothing but
stare.

Suddenly she heard Lucas speak:
'Jane,’ Lucas managed, his voice sounding strained, almost
distant.

He didn't move though. He
obviously couldn’t.

The assassin robot still
did not attack. It still simply looked on at Jane, those little
lenses in its eyes moving faster and faster. Perhaps it could shoot
lasers from them, and it was standing there while the ability
charged.

So she just sat there,
still shaking, still frozen, still staring out at it, the buzzing
in her mind never leaving her.

‘
Jane,’ Lucas repeated again, his
voice still as strangled as before.

Though Lucas’ voice
punctuated the silence, the assassin robot still did not attack.
What was more, nothing else did either. None of the planet security
fields suddenly whizzed into place, and no security officers
suddenly appeared around the corner in spaceships, telling Jane
that it was illegal to jump into the ocean, and telling the
assassin robot that was also quite illegal to be, well, an assassin
robot.

T
he more the assassin robot just stood
there, kneeling down towards her, staring right at her, the less
intimidated she felt. In fact, the more she started at it, the more
she was sucked into the strange concentration that seemed to be
expressed over the assassin robot’s rather plain and simple face.
Most importantly the eyes, the eyes were
incredible.

‘
Jane,’ Lucas tried again, his
voice finally starting to become stronger. Yet he still was not
moving.

‘
Jane,’ the assassin robot said.
At first it completely mimicked Lucas’ tone, perfectly matching the
swaying motion that was rippling through the word. Then it repeated
her name again, and this time it sounded electronic and bland. It
went on to repeat her name three more times, as if it were a child
learning how to speak.

The effect was
electrifying on Jane, and she started to recede, her body still
shaking, but her breath now slowing down, even stopping at the
incredible sight before her.

‘
You are Jane,’ the assassin
robot now said.

‘
Jane,’ Lucas managed, and this
time his voice was filled with complete and obvious
fear.

Yet
the assassin robot still was not
attacking.

Finally Jane made a decision,
and it was probably an incredibly stupid one. She stood up, her
body still shaking, and a curious thing happened – the assassin
robot's tail flipped around, and it did not suddenly slice through
her chest in an easy and incredibly vicious movement. Rather it
pressed easily into her back, and seemed to hover there. It did not
latch hold of her in any obviously violent way; it simply provided
her with something to lean against. Then the assassin robot stood,
bringing its torso and head down until it was facing Jane again.
‘Jane,’ it repeated.

Jane took a shaky breath, and
kept on coughing, the effect of her near drowning still very much
playing havoc with her throat and lungs. ‘What's your name?’ she
asked.

 
. . . 
.She asked the assassin robot what its name was. Though
Jane had not known what an assassin robot was only several days
ago, she had taken the chance to do some reading on them. She’d
confirmed what she’d already suspected: they were meant to be among
the most vicious, trained, efficient killers this side of Hell's
Gate. They were a form of biosynthetic life: a creature that
employed equal use of technology and biology; each cell a happy
synthesis of the two. Yet that was as far as the happy analogy
stretched: an assassin robot used its unique physiology in order to
accomplish one simple task – It killed people. It killed aliens. It
destroyed things. So it was very much banned.

Yet
Jane was now facing one and asking what
its name was. She almost expected a reply, a reply that wasn't a
tail through the heart, that was.

‘
Element 52,’ the assassin robot
answered.

‘ 
. . . Nice to meet you,’ Jane responded after a
moment.

Yep, she’d just told the
assassin robot that it was nice to meet him.

The static that had
picked up in Jane's mind when she’d started to drown, was finally
abating. Even though Jane was paying very little attention to it,
and far more attention to the universal-class killer in front of
her, she still noted how strange it was. She had never experienced
such a symptom in her life: a full, heavy static that seemed to
engulf her mind like an electrical storm. It felt as if something,
her brain maybe,
it
more likely,
had been running at absolute full force. Yet now it was abating,
and now she was talking to the assassin robot instead. But she
couldn't deny one simple fact: she didn't feel at all frightened.
Perhaps
it
was calming
her, because, quite possibly, it had done something to the assassin
robot to ensure it wouldn’t get any assassination done today after
all.

‘
Jane,’ Lucas said, and now his
voice was louder. ‘Jane,’ he said again, and the note of insistence
was so obvious that she twisted her head from the assassin robot
and looked at him.

She saw him shift. He
stumbled forward, his body so stiff that the move looked like some
kind of caricature. Then, after a few steps, the move became more
fluid until finally he turned around.

Though he was still
stumbling, he immediately reached for his gun.

Then Jane found herself on
her feet, her body moving incredibly fast until she planted herself
exactly between Lucas and the assassin robot. She held her arms out
wide, trying to make herself as large as she could, trying to make
it as hard as possible for Lucas to manage to shoot past her and
kill the assassin robot.

‘
Jane, what the prack are you
doing?’ Lucas shouted as he tried to stumble to the left and get a
shot off from her side.

Jane found herself
following his move, and she was quicker than Lucas, easily managing
to keep herself in front of Element 52 at all times.

‘
Jane, get the hell out of the
way,’ Lucas spat, his voice finally sounding clearer. In fact, with
every second he seemed to be looking more confident, more capable,
less like a broken robot that was stumbling from step to step.
‘Jane,’ he snapped one final time.

‘
Don't interfere,’ she found
herself saying, the same firm, very confident tone that she’d used
on him in the reconnaissance ship suddenly taking hold.

‘
Jane?’ Lucas did not drop his
gun but finally he stopped trying to dart around her to get a safe
shot off at the assassin robot.

‘
Don't interfere,’ she said
again, ‘we need it. I have completed the hack; it is no danger. We
need it,’ she repeated.

It was so surreal to hear
herself speaking, to feel her mouth moving and forming words
perfectly and clearly without any desire to do so. She had
completed her hack? What was she talking about?

It
was speaking, wasn't it? It had
taken control of her again, it was using her, using her body, doing
whatever it had to do.

Lucas shook his head. It
was clear he was having trouble believing her, and fair enough.
There was a real live assassin robot behind her, granted, one that
had a name, Element 52, but still, it was an
assassin
robot
. Of course Lucas
didn't believe her. In fact, she didn't believe herself, but she
didn't have the luxury of pointing that out to him. ‘I need it,’
she said one final time, and as she finished, she realized that she
now had control over her throat, and instantly took a very
spluttering breath. ‘What . . . ’ she mumbled,
wanting to put a hand up to her mouth, to her lips, to her neck, to
inspect it all, to find out if they were hers after all. She
couldn’t move the rest of her body though, and it seemed
clear
it
had no
intention of moving Jane out from in front of the assassin robot
until Lucas put his firearm down. Unfortunately it appeared that
Lucas had no intention of lowering his gun in the presence of one
of the most illegal and vicious creatures in the Galaxy
though.

‘
Jane,’ Element 52 repeated,
‘Jane,’ it said again.

She wasn't sure whether it
was trying to get her attention or whether it just liked repeating
her name. Honestly, even though this situation was incredible,
peculiar, and frantic, Element 52 was starting to remind her of a
kid, a very dangerous kid, a kid that was shaped like a scorpion
and that had a very challenged and nasty past.

‘
Jane, you have to step out of
the way,’ Lucas tried to step to his left to get around her
again.

‘
Lucas,’ she said his name, and
it was her speaking, and her voice wavered up and down as she
sucked in another breath, choking through it as she still tried to
dislodge all the water she had swallowed from before.

‘
Get out of the way. You can't
trust it; I've seen what these things can do,’ he
pleaded.

So Jane closed her eyes.
Apparently she couldn't control her body, and apparently Lucas had
no intention of heeding Jane's wishes, even if they weren't exactly
her own.

She didn't want to see
what would happen next.

Chapter 19

Lucas Stone

Prack . . . he’d
heard her drowning. Heard her choking, heard her thrashing. Yet he
hadn't been able to move. He hadn’t been able to do anything. He
had tried, goddamn it he had tried. He’d put every single effort he
could muster into moving, into turning around, into jumping into
the water and saving her. Yet nothing worked. His armor just
wouldn't move.

This
wasn’t meant to happen; bio armor was
never meant to be controlled by anyone other than the wearer. It
had incredible security protocols in place to ensure that it could
not suddenly act without the intention of whoever was inside; of
course it did, otherwise anyone wearing it could become the victim
of external control. In fact, all you would require was a
sophisticated hack and you could find yourself in possession of an
army of bio suits.

Y
et somebody had still hacked his armor, he
was sure of it. While at first he’d suspected his armor was running
some kind of program that was taking up all of the processing
power, he’d realized too late that it was more than that. Not only
was the living membrane consumed with some task, it had started to
sedate him, calming his muscles, possibly even trying to make him
go to sleep.

H
e had fought it.

T
hen, as he’d squeezed his eyes shut at the
sound of Jane's choking, he'd heard an incredible splash. Precious
seconds later there had been a shake on the path behind him as
something heavy had landed, and seconds after that he’d heard Jane
choking and spluttering her heart out less than a meter behind
him.

W
hat had followed next had chilled Lucas
until no trace of warmth had been left anywhere in his limbs,
chest, and heart.

She had started talking to
something. Then, when he’d found his own voice, that something had
repeated his words, had mimicked his voice perfectly.

When he’d finally managed
to turn, it had been to the sight of an assassin robot. It was
right in front of her face, its eyes almost touching her
own.

Then she’d thrown herself
between him and the robot, just as he’d brought his gun around,
just as he’d been ready to fight it off, to get it away from her,
to protect her.

Worse than that, she’d
used that voice. Or, more accurately, the implant had
spoken.

Yet
despite its authority and certainty, he
wasn't about to believe it. He knew what an assassin robot was
capable of.

So he’d kept his gun held
steady as he’d tried to move around her.

Her eyes were squeezed
completely shut now, her lips pressed in, her expression almost one
of surrender. Yet despite the fact she could not see him, the
implant always expertly moved her between Lucas and the
robot.

If he moved fast enough,
if he managed to roll to the side, he might be able to dodge her to
get a clear line of sight. Yet he doubted the implant would let
him; he knew it could move Jane faster than he could move, even in
his armor.

 
. . . 
..But
there was
something else.

The assassin robot wasn't
moving.