A Plain Jane Book One (33 page)

‘
Jane,’ Element 52 said. ‘Jane,’
it repeated in a strange and unique voice.

She turned her head to see
that it was standing at the other side of the room, in the doorway,
looking at her.

R
ather than ask where exactly she was and
what exactly had happened, one word and one word alone jumped into
her mind. ‘Lucas?’ she asked immediately. Twisting her head this
way and that in order to see where he was.

‘
Lucas?’ she said a little
louder, hoping that he was simply in whatever corridor lay beyond
the door.

No reply.

‘
Lucas did not come,’ Element 52
replied, ‘he chose . . . not to,’ it said, voice
sounding neutral.

Suddenly Jane remembered.
She remembered Lucas trying to duck behind her, trying to shoot
Element 52. She also remembered that Lucas had then stumbled,
falling to the ground, and that then Jane, her body controlled
by
it
, had simply
turned around and jumped into the water.

Then she remembered the
static.

Jane clutched a hand to
her head, closed her eyes, and tried to recall, even though the
memory was disturbing, just how incredible that sensation had
felt.

‘
The Assister has currently been
disabled; it has used too much energy in fending off the external
attack on its processor, in hacking Element 52, and in bringing you
here, and must now regenerate,’ the Hoyan said quickly, its eyes
still perfectly wide as it stared down at her. ‘You will be safe
here, Pala,’ it added with a nod.

Jane opened her eyes. ‘Pala?’
she asked. ‘My name is Jane.’

‘
Nevertheless, you are Pala,’ the
Hoyan repeated with a low bow.

Over the years, Jane had
learned enough about Mandy to realize that her race absolutely
loved any kind of game, especially word games. So while Jane did
not know what Pala meant, she doubted it was important. Perhaps it
was Hoyan for monkey, jacket, cheese, or metallic gangway. It
wouldn't matter. What did matter was that Lucas was not here. What
did matter was that the very last time she’d seen him, he’d
stumbled to the ground.

‘
Is Lucas okay?’ she asked out
loud, not knowing whether anyone would know the answer, but asking
desperately nonetheless.

‘
The biosynthetic membrane of his
armor was momentarily overcome by an external hack,’ Element 52
replied, ‘the same hack that forced you to jump in the ocean.
Though the Assister fended it off eventually, his armor is less
advanced.’

‘
What?’ Jane put a hand up to her
head, trying to push past the pain and confusion, and then finally
took a steadying breath.

‘
Come now, Pala, you have to get
up,’ the Hoya helped her forward, using its tail to gently press
into her back as it pushed her to stand.

‘
But what about Lucas? I need to
go and find Lucas,’ she repeated almost in a daze.

‘
Too late,’ Element 52 shook his
head, ‘has been contacted by Krill.’

Jane blinked back through the
steady headache that was now growing in her head, but managed to
force her eyes open and stared at Element 52. ‘What do you mean?
Krill? Isn't that some kind of fish or algae? Don't whales eat
that?’ she was aware that her question was quite stupid, but she
didn't exactly have the brain cells to think of something
smarter.

‘
Krill is secret Galactic-wide
organization that is being masterminded by Darq—’

Jane waited for the pain.
She waited for the absolutely horrible, fiendish stabbing pain that
she knew should accompany that word. Darq was the name of the
species that had attacked her in Research Lab Two, the name of the
species that Specimen 14 belonged to. She knew she was not allowed
to think about that. She knew that the implant would act in any way
possible to stop her from even entertaining the thought of thinking
about that.

 
. . . 
. Soon she realized she had thought about the
implant.

No pain.

She opened her eyes
warily.

‘
You must give the Assister time
to rest,’ the Hoyan said as he kept on trying to push her up, onto
her feet, and get her moving. ‘But we have no time. We must get you
off this planet. There are Krill here, we must move, they will try
to contact the Darq, or they will try to kill you themselves. We
must move,’ the Hoyan now pushed her through the door.

Element 52 snapped easily
to the side, and then began to walk behind her. Jane got the
distinct impression that it now shadowed her footsteps like a
bodyguard or a faithful dog.

‘
But Lucas,’ she tried again, ‘we
can't leave without him.’

‘
He made his decision,’ the Hoyan
said, a note of detachment in his voice. ‘Unfortunate. We could
have used him. But now that is in the past, and we must act, and
you must move. We must get you off this planet as soon as possible.
Before they send anything after you.’

‘
What are you talking about? Why?
And what do you mean Lucas made up his mind?’ Jane asked, trying to
slow down, but not being able to as the Hoyan kept on pushing her
in the back.

‘
There will be time to discuss
this later. But now we must act.’ The Hoyan did not once stop
pushing forward.

Jane finally acted herself. She
dug her feet into the ground, and she resisted every single push.
‘No. I am not going another step until you tell me what is going
on.’

‘
Jane, it is dangerous here. They
have turned on the planetary-wide sensors and it will not be long
until they can scan down to this depth,’ Element 52 replied. ‘So we
must move. I can inform you as we walk.’ He now talked in
fully-formed and intelligent sentences, and it was obvious that his
sophisticated system was adapting to the task quickly; whereas only
hours before he’d been talking in baby sentences and just repeating
her name, he'd probably be reciting sonnets off balconies by
tomorrow.

Element 52 paused, looking
right at Jane, clearly waiting for her to hold up her part of the
bargain. When Jane took several steps forward, keeping her eyes
locked on the assassin robot as she did, it gave a brief
nod.

‘
Lucas Stone attempted to act
against you—’ Element 52 began.

‘
No, he didn't,’ she snapped
passionately.

‘
He attempted to shoot me,
despite your orders,’ Element 52 clarified.

‘
Lucas doesn't take orders from
me,’ she pointed out quickly, still walking forward, but still
staring at Element 52, making sure her expression was terse,
irritated, and yet quite resolute. ‘He was doing whatever he
thought was best—’

‘
I am now integral to your
safety; in hacking and rewriting my systems and subroutines, the
Assister has enabled me to track your bio sensors; I will be able
to locate and assist you no matter the distance between us,’
Element 52 responded easily. ‘In threatening me, Lucas threatened
you. In threatening you, he can no longer be trusted—’

‘
I trust him,’ she almost ground
to a halt again.

‘
We have to keep on moving,’ the
Hoyan hissed, though the hiss was not angry, it was just nervous
and quick.

Begrudgingly she kept on
moving.

‘
I trust Lucas,’ she
repeated.

‘
Perhaps, but we cannot trust him
completely,’ the Hoyan interjected. ‘He doesn't know what is going
on here, he is Galactic Force trained, he is not Paran; he has no
business interfering with this. He was useful in getting you off
Earth, but—’

‘
I trust
Lucas
,’ she said, voice
now entirely terse. ‘And he wasn't just instrumental in getting me
off Earth; if it weren’t for him, I wouldn't be alive. Now you tell
me, both of you, what is going on.’ She stopped, crossed her arms,
took a step away from the both of them, and stared warily their
way.

‘
Pala, please, ‘the Hoyan begged,
‘we don't have time.’

Jane did not uncross her
arms.

‘
Jane is determined,’ Element 52
pointed out quite insightfully.

‘
You are absolutely right I am
determined, I want to go and find Lucas, and I want to find him
now. I don't care if we don't have time to get off this planet; I
am not leaving without him.’

The Hoyan shot a sideways look
at Element 52. ‘The Assister can no longer assist, it must
re-energize.’

‘
Excuse me?’ Jane narrowed her
eyes. She was going to get what she wanted: she wasn't going to
leave until she got Lucas. That was a fact.

‘
Jane, I repeat to you that
we must leave now. Please understand that with so many Krill
informants, it will not be long until the Darq finds this planet,
and finds you. It will not be possible to defeat it; in fact, it
will be unlikely that you will be able to run from it again. I was
sent to Earth by the Krill in the first place, in order to break
the Darq out of containment. I have also been programmed by Krill
agents to sense out Paran technology and to obtain or eliminate it.
I sensed you on those grounds, I followed through with the impulse
to eliminate you. Yet your Assister fought back, enabling Lucas
Stone to defeat me before it could complete its hack on me.
However, the Krill still had full access to my systems: they
learned of your whereabouts and your existence on that night, and
the Darq learned from them not long after. I was sent to this
planet to finish what I started and attempt to eliminate you, but
the Assister intervened in full this time. It has completely
destroyed the external operating procedure of the Krill; they can
no longer control me. It has also reprogrammed my base matrix,
introducing moral subroutines. I am no longer a threat to you.
However, the Krill know that you are here, and had full access to
my operations and sensor logs up until the Assister completed its
hack; they will use this information to identify your whereabouts
and track you down. And they
will
kill you. We must get off the planet before they are
capable of enacting this plan,’ Element 52 kept on flashing its
tail around as it spoke, as if it were gesticulating. Yet one thing
was clear, Element 52 might technically be an assassin robot, but
he probably wasn't your regular, run-of-the-mill, universal killer
any more. Her Assister had done something to him, given him morals,
or something like it – changed him from the inside out. That or
assassins were getting very chatty these days.

‘
I'm not going to—’ Jane began.
Despite the fact everything Element 52 had just told her was
startling, she still had to follow through with her first and
foremost priority: Lucas. She couldn't leave without
him.

‘
I am sorry, Pala, but you leave
me with no choice.’ The Hoyan said.

In another moment Jane
felt something press up against her neck, then she blacked out. For
only the third time in her entire life, she lost
consciousness.

Lucas Stone

He was sitting on a chair
in the Endurian's office, even though the very last thing he wanted
to do was sit down. What he wanted to do was run outside, jump into
the water, and swim down until he could find her. Hell, he would
swim all over the damn water planet until he could finally reach
her.

Y
et he was still sitting
there.

Waiting, waiting for the
Endurian to make his calls, to ensure the correct security
protocols were now in place. While it was taking longer than Lucas
would have liked, and longer than Lucas would have suspected, he
didn't interrupt.

Eventually the Endurian looked
up, blinking its perfectly black eyes at him. ‘All of the measures
are now in place,’ he said simply.

Lucas snapped up to his feet.
‘I will go and—’

The Endurian gestured for him
to sit down. ‘Please, Mr. Stone, take a seat.’

Lucas resisted the urge to
point out that it wasn't Mr., and that Lucas had a rank and was
hardly a civilian, but he just pressed his lips together and
waited.

‘
I assure you, all correct
security procedures are now in place, and your friend will be
found. And she will be found quickly. Trust me, there is no point
in rushing out to join the hunt; it will be over in moments,’ the
Endurian blinked heavily.

Lucas narrowed his eyes at the
move; as far as he knew, Endurians didn't blink. ‘Look, I'm not
just going to sit—’ he began.

‘
Of course not, Mr. Stone, I
expect you have many, many questions. I will answer them. Shall we
start with who Jane is?’

Lucas stilled in his
chair. Though moments before he’d been bouncing his legs up and
down, he now stopped, even his breath stilled in his
chest.

‘
She is Paran, I can certainly
confirm that,’ the Endurian answered, blinking again.

‘
I thought you were meant to be
Paran too? The Director said—’

The Endurian put up a hand. ‘I
will tell you a secret, Mr. Stone, a secret about us Parans. Ever
since the fall of our great empire, we have deliberately weeded out
all of our racial characteristics.’