A Solid Core of Alpha (31 page)

“This is dangerous,” Bobby said starkly. “Anderson—in a year, maybe, but not now!”

In a year? C.J. was young, he had friends, he had a life. Why would C.J. wait a year for Anderson to be free, for him to be whole and well and happy?

“I don’t want to wait a year,” Anderson mumbled, and then, “Shit!”

“What?” Kate asked worriedly, and then looked over his shoulder. “Oh… oh shit. Anderson!”

Anderson’s hands shook, and he had to blink his eyes two or three times. Oh God. What if he hadn’t checked that?

“Kate, double-check what I entered there. Bobby, you too. Jesus, how did that happen?”

“He did it,” Kate muttered. “This has Alpha’s signature all the hell over it. There. There, that’s right. Bobby, come make sure this is right.”

Bobby looked at what Anderson had entered and then looked at what had been there first. “Oh, double-fuck us all!”

“What?” Henry asked. “Can the kids who don’t program know this one too?”

Anderson, Kate, and Bobby all looked at him with tense expressions. “He was trying to kill us,” Kate muttered, and then quietly said, “He may have succeeded.”

Anderson looked at her, that tension cranking up a notch. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I can’t be sure he didn’t tie this action together on a deeper level, Anderson. He had it set so that if you turned off his program, you deleted
all
of us—”

“
Deleted!
”
squealed Risa, and Kate looked at her apologetically.

“Yeah, deleted. Any action that would render Alpha inactive would have completely erased us all, even our memory in the holodeck, now that it’s been accessed and recorded as data.”

The fruity drink Anderson had downed before he’d jumped into the dance mob threatened to come up. It was a near thing, and his throat burned with the force of it. “I shouldn’t do this,” he said after a moment, his head suddenly hurting and his hands freezing in their own clammy sweat.

“Yes, you should,” Kate hissed, and Bobby looked at her with indignation.

“But Kate! You just said—”

“I don’t care!” She seized Bobby’s hand in her own and held it to her face. “I mean I do—do you think I’d want to give up sentience, give up this moment here, holding your hand? I know what you
smell
like, Bobby. I know that Risa is going to say something to me to make me laugh when we go inside, and I know that you and Henry are going to call up those horrible videos that the station has that make me wish we were still stuck with the same old shit. I
know
that we’re just holograms, baby, but I
feel
real. Do you think I want to die?”

“You don’t have to,” Anderson said weakly. “You were right. This was a bad idea.”

“No,
you
were right,” Kate said, all fierceness, and Anderson saw Bobby squeeze her hand and then raise it to his lips in a time-honored gesture of solidarity and love. “You need him out of your life, Anderson. If that means the rest of us have to go—”

“I can’t….” There were spots dancing in front of his eyes. “If there’s even a little bit of uncertainty—”

“
You fucking coward!
”

The roar was unmistakable, and they all turned from the bridge console to the unlikely construct of the front door of their little one-story home, sitting right behind the seat units of the bridge. Alpha was standing there, bare-chested, panting, his once lean, handsome face ripped back in a primal snarl.

“Guys, he’s not safe,” Anderson muttered. He’d written them like people, and it had never been discussed, but Alpha could kill them the same way he could kill Anderson. Once, he’d bruised Risa’s wrist by grabbing her too tightly to move her out of his way. The bruise had lasted on her skin as it had on Anderson’s. Anderson did not even question that Alpha could snap poor Risa’s neck with one crack of his hard, thick hands.

“Anderson!” Kate hissed, and Anderson put both hands on her shoulders and shoved. She felt warm under his hands, and he didn’t question the air-current-electricity velocity-humidity matrix that it took to make her feel like that. She was simply his friend, and she could be putting her life in jeopardy—they
all
could, just by staying there.

“Get out!” he ordered, his face assuming that remembered seat of command. “I’ll take care of him, and I won’t let him hurt you guys.”

“Anderson, you have a life now!” Bobby snapped. “Don’t give it up for us!”

“You’re my friends!” he told them as Alpha sneered at them all. “Now go!” He managed to touch hands with them as they left, even Risa’s frightened, rabbity little touch and Henry’s brief, pragmatic clasp. They all glared at Alpha, and then, to his surprise, shoved past him, even Risa, although her shoulder barely came up to his ribcage. He made to shove at her—his hand came up, and Anderson snapped, “Don’t you want to talk first, Alpha?”

As he spoke, his finger was over the computer symbol that would delete his savior, his lover, his nemesis, from the ship’s memory, from the holodeck, from existence, forever.

“Christ, no!” Alpha sneered. “God, Anderson, are you going to kill us all like a man or talk us to death?!”

“Not everyone,” Anderson said with more confidence than he felt. Oh God. His friends. His family. The little pieces of himself, the best ones, the kindest ones, the parts with the self-sacrifice and the tenderness—he couldn’t let them go, not even to rid himself of Alpha. Feverishly, he checked his programming directions again. Two keystrokes. That was all it should take.

“Not so sure, are you, Anderson?” Alpha taunted, walking closer. Physically, Alpha
could
venture onto the bridge—otherwise, C.J.’s sister wouldn’t have been at risk. But mentally… Anderson had ordered him to stay away. He’d threatened to keep him away with programming—“cheating,” as he called it, but he’d meant it. Alpha was volatile—what if he’d decided to eliminate the other programs while they were in transit? What if he’d decided to kill the entire holodeck? Anderson had exacted a promise—and Kate and Bobby had assured him that this was one programming requirement that would hold—that Alpha would only go on the bridge in an emergency.

Apparently, watching Anderson be comforted by C.J. that first night back in port had counted as an emergency.

So did goading Anderson to murder.

“Look at you!” Alpha taunted. “So afraid of making the wrong decision you can’t even save your own goddamned skin! I don’t know what sort of future you have here. You’ll never be anything but a scared goddamned rabbit. No wonder you don’t want to kill me. I’m the only option you’ve got!”

“
Bullshit!
”
Anderson snapped, seeing red. He stepped away from the hologram console, away from the two keystrokes that would rid him of Alpha for the rest of his life.

“Yeah? You’ve got somewhere else to be, Anderson? If you had someone else, you’d be there!”

Anderson shuddered, feeling C.J.’s warmth and kindness, his terrifying passion, sliding off of Anderson’s skin like oil from water. “I was there,” he whispered. He swallowed, feeling braver. “Can you smell, Alpha? I never asked.”

Alpha’s expression hardened. “Going there, Anderson? You haven’t sunk to the ‘you’re not real’ argument yet. I thought you were above that.”

Anderson shook his head and crossed his arms in front of him, trying to hold C.J.’s words around his shoulders like a cloak. “I’m not asking if you’re real, Aaron—I’m asking if you can smell. Whoever you are, whatever you are, do you detect scent?”

Those eyes—they were like ice-chips. They had been meant to be pretty, winsome gray, but not now. “Yes,” came the wooden answer. “This hologram can smell. Why?”

Anderson walked up to him, thinking,
I am not afraid tonight. I have known what real is. He is not real.
“Can you smell him?” Anderson asked, standing on his tiptoes so that the hollow of his neck was exposed, and a man, a real man, could smell sex and sweat from the warmth of a lover’s skin. “Can you? I had his cock in my mouth, and he came. That’s his come down my chin. Can you smell him?”

Alpha’s eyes were closed in something like pain. Good. “Something like” very nearly was. “Good for you. You got laid. Feel good, Anderson? Are you proud of yourself, you little slut? I bet you begged for it. Did you beg for it, the way you used to? I bet you couldn’t wait to spread your ass and beg.”

“I never begged you,” Anderson said softly, with dignity. “I never begged you, not the way I begged him. And then you know what?”

Alpha kept his face impassive, and not once did he deign to make eye contact. “Thrill me.”

Anderson’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Then
he
begged me.”

Alpha’s eyes widened, and Anderson knew he’d scored a hit. “Yeah. I’m dripping with him,” Anderson whispered. Alpha’s body was radiating heat (X amount of electricity, with Y velocity + air current = energy = micro-joules), and a pulse in his neck was beating hard and fast. “He’s slipping down between my thighs. Can you taste, Alpha? Could you taste him? Because your come, that just disappeared, didn’t it? Even when you sprayed it on my
face
!”
That last word was pure venom, and Anderson cursed himself—it was hard to have the upper hand when you revealed a soul that burned with shame.

“You enjoyed that,” Alpha gloated, but his eyes were moving sideways, and Anderson slunk right out of his peripheral vision and behind him.

“No.” This was true. Anderson had thought that he must have—he kept allowing it to happen, didn’t he? But… but that wasn’t the way it had been. It wasn’t. When Anderson thought of those last years on the ship, it all seemed so… tight. Like a pressure cooker. Alpha was the steam valve, venting their fears, their frustrations, their sorrow, their anger, on the person who deserved it most.

Anderson
did
deserve it. He knew that, no matter what C.J. said. But that didn’t mean he enjoyed it. That didn’t mean it was right.

“Lie to me some more,” Alpha snarled. “I
like
it.”

“I didn’t.” Anderson allowed his lips to brush Alpha’s ear as he said it, emerging from behind his shoulder, placing a provocative fingertip under Alpha’s jaw. “I didn’t like it. Any of it. I didn’t like the violence, or the violation, or the pain. You can say all sorts of stuff about the way things became between us, but you can’t say I liked it. And that’s why I have to do this.”

Alpha’s lip curled. “Delete me? You pissy-anty fucking man-cunt. You don’t have the
balls
.”

Anderson tipped his hand then—he admitted it. He allowed Alpha to see the intention in his eyes as he took a step toward the console, where his intentions were laid out bare and plain, in two. Simple. Keystrokes.

“You can’t!” And for the first time, there was real panic in his voice. “You can’t
do
that, Anderson. What about all of your high and mighty fucking morals? Wouldn’t that be
cheating
?”
The contempt in that last word was nauseating.

Anderson swallowed his bile and shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice shaky but clear. “It would be murder. Just like you kept saying it was. It’s murder. But this time, it’s to keep the others safe. This time, it’s in self-defense.”

“Self-defense?” Alpha took a step toward Anderson and a step toward his right, trying to insinuate himself between Anderson and the keyboard. Anderson countered and allowed a little bit of triumph in his expression when Alpha scowled. “Don’t you mean self-mutilation?”

Anderson’s sweat chilled against his skin, congealed in his stomach, seeped into the fissures of his soul and froze solid, making the empty places wide and vulnerable. “I’m not you,” he said, but the idea… the thought that it was true. He was a shudder away from throwing up.

And Alpha saw it. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out yet, Anderson. We’re
all
you! Don’t you get it? Poow widdo baby, locked all away, made up some imaginary friends to play with, and they were
all him
. What’s the word? Come on, Anderson, you read every scrap of material in the entire fucking ship… don’t tell me there wasn’t a psych manual somewhere on the records. What’s the word?”

“Projection,” Anderson mumbled, remembering the book Alpha was talking about.

“Say it
louder
!”

“
Projection!
”
Anderson shouted. “And I don’t care if it’s true. It doesn’t matter! You’re evil, and if you’re a part of me, you need to be excised like a filthy, rotten, pus-filled tumor!”

With that, he lunged for the keyboard—two keystrokes—and Alpha couldn’t beat him there, but he could hit Anderson square in the jaw before Anderson pressed the first button.

Anderson’s head snapped back, and Alpha lunged for him. In the past, Anderson had simply stood there, limp, and taken the beating, taken what he thought he’d deserved—but he couldn’t this time. Alpha had tried to link his deletion to everyone else’s. He was truly homicidal, and Anderson couldn’t let his friends, his true friends, the people who had kept him sane and loved him during the long, interminable trip, die because of one lousy, fucked-up program who didn’t know the difference between reality and delusion.

This time, he didn’t stand there. This time, he dodged, eluding Alpha’s hard grip on his shoulder, and whirled away, coming up with a kick to Alpha’s midriff that threw him back, clawing at the console for balance. For a moment, Anderson panicked—oh shit—what if he hit the wrong keys? What if he set the others up for annihilation again? Katy! Bobby! Oh Jesus!

Anderson angled his body so Alpha would be shoved sideways and tackled him, throwing him clear of the console to the end of the shuttle, toward the open ramp.

He flickered out of existence for a moment, and Anderson used the time to hurl himself at the console and review the settings to make sure the others were all right. He made it through one of three screens when Alpha appeared behind him and elbowed him between the shoulder blades. Anderson arched back in pain, and Alpha knotted his hard fist in Anderson’s hair and shoved his head down, bouncing it off of the console while Anderson struggled to find a move that would break him away. Alpha had gotten in three hits now, and there was blood running into Anderson’s eyes, and his right arm was numb from the blow to the back. Alpha’s body had been honed—exercise, the strengthening of electrical pathways, developing muscles according to standard human male ratios, all of it, forging him into a nightmare of granite, muscle, and bone.