Girl From Above #3: Trapped (4 page)

Girl,
not machine. He didn’t seem to notice his slip, but I held on to it and replayed the sound with every step. These occasional slips mattered. I collected and cherished them, and then, when alone, I examined them all over again. James—Doctor Lloyd—seemed to believe it was good to fixate on human responses, but I wasn’t convinced. I didn’t know why I did the things I did, and slowly, piece by piece, step by step like the stairs we were climbing, I wondered if I might be breaking apart.

Shepperd entered the room matching his keycard number. The lights automatically brightened, revealing a made-up hotel room complete with stained carpeting and sheets faded to gray. I wrinkled my nose. Fingerprints from several previous occupants dotted the layers of dust. Shepperd rolled up his sleeves, grabbed the chair from beneath a desk, and dumped it by the window. He moved about the room with familiarity. He’d been here before.
A smuggler’s safe house?
I closed the door and watched him sink into the chair with a wince.

“You just going to fucking stand there and read me? Tell me I’m a wreck, that I’m hurting?” He looked over his shoulder. “I can see it in your eyes, synth. You have a million things you want to say but won’t, not until you think I can handle it.” He faced away from me to look out the window at Lyra’s sparkling strips. “You don’t need to be here. Go back to Bren if you want.”

“The synthetic will try again.”

“He’ll have to find me first, and this place is off the map, so long as we don’t use comms. Comms can be backward traced.”

He kept his back to me, the chair angled away. I couldn’t read him and he knew it. What did he have to hide? I already knew he was barely functioning.

“The synthetic wanted you, One Thousand And One,” Shepperd said, his words soft in the quiet.

“You didn’t tell him where I was.” I crossed the floor to the window and stood beside him but kept my gaze ahead.

“He was going to kill me whether I told him or not.” Quieter still … almost a whisper this time. His heart slowed as the weight of events pushed down on him.

Haley. Adelina Candelario. Francisca Olga. And now Jesse. I didn’t need a myriad of processes to understand the anguish he was experiencing. “Grief is perfectly normal in such circumstances.”

He waited a beat and then chuckled dryly. “You’re so fucking cold, you know that? I don’t need you to diagnose me. Stop trying to figure me out. Stop all the fucking poking and prodding through every word I say, every goddamn expression. I don’t need a damn psychiatrist.”

“What do you need, Caleb?”

“How about a friend?”

I turned my head and looked down at him. Slouched in the chair, with Lyra’s lights blanketing him, he didn’t seem as vulnerable as he should have. He exuded a resolute stubbornness where others would be floundering, as though the more he got knocked down, the more he’d get back up and be stronger for it. He looked back at me, his eyes guarded and his heartbeat steady.

“Bruno offered me five hundred thousand credits to hand you over.”

That might explain the mixed messages. “Did you accept?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t look away, didn’t falter. His gaze almost challenged me to retaliate in some way. He wanted me to argue, to fight, to accuse him. It’s what Fran would have done. But I wasn’t Fran, and I had no intention of falling into his trap. The offer, the money, him—it all made sense. It was logical. He should have accepted. What didn’t make sense was why he was telling me.

His sigh came out shaky and weak. “He gave me a fifty-thousand deposit, which the cops now have to ensure I don’t fuck off. I never had so much money in my account.” He flicked his fingers. “And now it’s gone.”

“If you intend to hand me over, why tell me?”

“Because …” He wet his lips and slumped back in the chair, rubbing his forehead.

I faced away again, allowing him to speak without feeling pressured to say the right thing beneath my glare. His heartbeat increased.

“Fuck, I don’t know. It sounded sweet, all that credit. It’d change my life. But folks around me keep dying. The choices I make, they never turn out right. So, you get to decide. You’re the machine. Tell me what the best course of action is.”

The solution was more complicated than that. I didn’t have the answers he was seeking. “I don’t have all the data. The smallest error could result in an undesirable outcome.”

“That sounds like a cop-out.”

“I can present options and solutions to likely scenarios, but you aren’t telling me everything, Captain. You’re deliberately omitting certain facts, facts that you’re struggling with. Until you tell me the truth, there is little point in me advising you.”

I didn’t need to look at him to know my words had struck him close to his heart, similar in the way to how his words had hurt me.

“I’ve been charged with murder, I’ve spent Bruno’s deposit, and he’s going to hand me over to the Candes if I don’t bring you in. I’m trapped, synth. Every way I turn, everywhere I look, there ain’t no good way out.”

He was right. Knowing what I did, there was no way out for him, and perhaps that was how it should be. He’d been running for a long time. Now his past was catching up with him, and there was justice in that. Order. A sense of fairness. People had died because of his greed. Shouldn’t he pay? But in the brief time I’d spent on his tugship, I’d learned the nine systems didn’t function that way. Life wasn’t neat; it wasn’t controlled. Life was random, and unfair, and illogical. I had once wanted him dead, but it had wounded me to think of him so.

Run, One Thousand And One. Run!
Chen Hung’s parting words haunted me. This wasn’t just about Caleb. The synthetic wanted me. Chen Hung wanted me. I hadn’t yet been able to free the vital information from my head. Chen Hung, Chitec CEO, was a synthetic, and nobody knew but me. That information was worth more than Caleb or
Starscream
and her crew. I couldn’t be caught, not until I‘d spoken the truth. There had to be a way to escape.

“I may be able to hack into the port authority controls via the cloud.”

Caleb leaned forward, eyes widening. “I’m listening.”

“I don’t know if it’s possible, but, similar to the way I harvest information from the cloud, I could attempt to enter the port authority data. Once inside, there’s a chance I could manipulate it, providing I can find
Starscream’s
docking commands. It’s a slim chance. In all likelihood, there are firewalls that prevent unauthorized access, but we already know I’m not a typical synthetic unit. It’s certainly not legal and could result in the arrest of your crew.”

“Are there any other risks?”

“No. I don’t believe so.”

“Do it.”

It wouldn’t stop the Candes or Bruno from hunting us, but it would get
Starscream
in the air. I closed my eyes and mentally reached for the cloud. Like a dream, the cloud embraced me, wrapping my processes in knowledge-rich data, but within moments, the dream darkened. The lingering sensation of being watched amplified a hundredfold and surged over me, sinking in its claws to drag me under. I tried to disengage from the cloud and pull back, but the oily presence tightened, holding me close, refusing to let me go …

Human sensations of panic and fear shattered my organized attempt to flee so that I flailed uselessly in the stream of knowledge. Whatever had a hold of me didn’t hesitate. It locked onto me with machine precision and dragged me under.

W
hile the synth
stood cool and immobile, part of her off searching the datacloud, I studied her smartly dressed figure. She rocked her skirt suit like a fucking celebrity and was just as untouchable. After the chaos of Jesse’s murder and the subsequent police meat grinder, I’d almost forgotten I was supposed to hand the synth over to Bruno in two days. I might have been able to fool her, had the male synthetic not fucked up my plans, but as I’d suspected, she’d read me like a book the second she’d seen me and had known I was hiding a fuck-load of things from her.

I had to tell her the truth, at least some of it. I wasn’t going to tell her how the Nine also wanted her, or how I’d been thinking of her while Jesse was fucking me. That was too much emotional shit I didn’t need right now. My half-truths seemed to have placated her; she would get us off Lyra, if she could hack the port authority. For now, that would have to do. If I could get back-in-black, maybe I could think straight again. As is, I could barely string a fucking sentence together without wanting to throw a punch or throw up. The synth would tell me that I was having a psychological breakdown. Fuck her constant reports and her detached bubble of not giving a fuck.

I slid my gaze down her shoulder and over the neat curves of her jacket where it hugged her chest and the sweet hollow of her waist, and down those athletic legs.
Fuck.
I knew she wasn’t real. Her and her five hundred sisters looked the same. The real
her
—#1001, Haley, or whoever she really was—existed in her head somewhere, trapped between programming and memories. But I could
look
to distract myself for a few seconds. I shifted in the chair and adjusted my pants as I started getting hard. It occurred to me that this was probably a fucked-up thing to be doing—getting my rocks off while she was plugged into some metaphysical data-plane—but I didn’t give a shit.

Then I remembered how the male synth had broken Jesse’s neck as easily as snapping a twig and my distraction technique withered. That man—that machine had killed without blinking. He—it had felt nothing in that moment between her life and her death. All one thousand synthetic units were the same: Cold. Hard. Machines. I’d tortured myself with the image of Jesse’s death while sitting in the jail cell. The last moments of her life had consisted of fucking an asshole smuggler who hadn’t even been thinking about her. I’d been low before, but this time I wasn’t sure I could possibly hate myself more.

The synth collapsed.

She just fell, as though someone had unplugged her.

“Hey!” I dropped to my knees and gripped her cool face in my hands.

Her fucking eyes were open but unfocused. When I waved my hand in front of her, she didn’t flinch.

“Holy shit.” I patted her cheek and then lightly slapped her, but she didn’t register a thing. “Synth…?” Was she dead? “Synth? C’mon … you can’t do this right now.”

Nothing. I reached for a pulse point on her neck and then wondered what the fuck I was doing. She didn’t have a heart to beat.

“Is there an on switch? A reset fucking button?!”

How the fuck do these synthetics work?
I spied her wrist comms. If I called Doctor Lloyd, I’d risk pinging our location and the male synthetic could trace us. What if she was dying? No way. I couldn’t deal with this. Not now. Not again.

“Fuck …” I leaned in close and peered into her shallow eyes. “Are you in there?”

She wasn’t breathing, but that didn’t mean anything. She didn’t
need
to breathe.

“Synth …” I whispered, cupping her face, forcing her to look through me. “Haley?” Nothing.

Shit.

I unlatched her wrist comms, adjusted it to my own wrist, and pinged the doc. “Lloyd. There’s a problem with the synth.”

“Oh”—he exhaled hard—“she found you.”

“She was hacking into the port authority using the datacloud and now she’s out cold.”

“What? You’ll have to be more specific. Why was she—”

“How can I be more specific? She’s lying on the floor, and I’m not getting anything from her. No breathing. Nothing. She looks … dead.” Shit, my voice cracked, and he heard it.

His voice softened. “It’s okay, Captain. I suspect it’s a hard reset. Although I don’t know why she’d execute a reset in public. Where are you?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s safer for you if you don’t know.”

“Was she experiencing an episode?” His tone had hardened; clearly, this was my fault and he didn’t trust a thing I said. His opinion of me hadn’t improved of late.

“No.” I’d witnessed her episodes. She’d struggle with whatever was going on inside her head, mumbling random nonsense about protocols, and then she’d fall quiet. This wasn’t that. “She went into the cloud to help …”

“When she comes around, bring her straight back to the ship. I have some new equipment, and this isn’t normal behavior.”

I ended the call and settled my gaze on the synth’s perfect face. With her blank look and flat gaze, this was too much like Jesse. There was nobody home. Grief clawed at my insides, trying to rip me apart. Hot and cold shivers had a hold of me, like some drug comedown, but this was all my own fucked-up nightmare. I deserved this. I scrambled back and made it to the bathroom before heaving up what little there was in my guts.

The synth found me sitting back against the bathroom wall maybe fifteen minutes—maybe fifty minutes—later. She stood in the doorway, judging me with her perfectly impassive face, spearing her gaze right through me. She’d see the wetness on my cheeks, the cruel twist of my lips. I didn’t know what she thought, but I did care, and that made her indifference so much worse.

“He’s here,” was all she said, and then all hell broke loose.

I
heard the noise first
, like an explosion. The male synth slammed into #1001, and in a blink, she was gone from the doorway. A breath later, the sound of shattering glass spurred me into action. I came out of the bathroom, my heart in my throat, and saw #1001 clinging to the wrong side of the window frame. Lyra’s dazzling lights backlit her, and her silvery hair flared around her face. The male synth drew his fist back. She’d never hold on. I knew from experience that he hit like a truck. I had a broken rib and bruised kidney to prove it. I was on him before I’d considered running. Hooking my arm around his neck, I yanked him back, but all it did was divert all of his attention onto me, and I found myself smashed into the floor, pain snapping up my back all over again. I coughed and tasted blood
. Shit.

#1001 jumped him from behind, locking her legs around his waist and her arms around his throat. Her face was startlingly calm as she jerked his head back, clearly trying to snap his neck. He clawed at her shoulders and hair, turning and staggering on the spot. Then he slammed her backward into the wall, bringing half the plasterboard down around them.

Run.
I saw the order in her eyes as her gaze snapped to mine. The male synth rammed her back again and again to loosen her grip, and he did it all with the most serene and empty expression.

Run, right, because there was no way in the nine systems I could beat him. Knowing the odds were stacked against me had never stopped me before. If there was one thing I knew how to do right, it was take a beating.

I rolled onto my side and staggered to my feet. Scanning the room for any sign of a weapon only reminded me how hopeless this was.
There has to be something!

“Caleb, go!”

The male synth stilled and brought his gaze around to me. He’d heard the concern skitter through #1001’s tone and had found her weakness: me.

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I ran. I darted out the room, down the hall, and caught the open elevator car. I punched at the lobby button in time to see the male synth stride out of my room and bear down on me. My bruised lungs and broken chest burned. The air-con hummed and the lights beat their heat over me, but the doors didn’t fucking move. I jabbed the close button repeatedly and considered darting for the stairs when the doors finally rumbled closed with a rickety jolt.

I fell back against the panel, panting hard. Where was #1001? I couldn’t outrun this machine. The only weakness I knew he had was the cold. #1001 had nearly met her end when her temperature had dropped on Mimir. Lyra’s temperature plummeted outside the domes. I could survive maybe a minute. The cold would surely kill him, but I didn’t know if it was possible to get through the domes anywhere besides the atmosphere domelocks.

The sounds of grinding gears were promptly followed by a hefty jolt. The elevator ceiling caved in, raining glass and metal from above. Darts of pain dashed through my shoulders. I covered my face and felt sharp stabs slice across my forearms. His hand shot through my meager defenses, curled around my neck, and lifted me clean off my feet. This was how Jesse had died. He’d break my neck—

He has the same eyes as #1001, electric blue and dead cold.

#1001 dropped through the gap in the ceiling and swung a kick into his back. He released me and turned on her. Wedged into the corner, all I could do was watch as they landed blow after blow. She tore into him the way I’d seen her move in the alley on Ganymede, only this was almost too quick for me to track and a thousand times more brutal. She’d slam his head into the side of the car, only for him to kick her legs out, but even when she fell she lashed out. Pure, unfiltered fury twisted her perfect face, twisting her artificial beauty into something else, something deadly. Something real. And he barely blinked. Through it all, she blocked his route to me, every time, until he swung her around and slammed her into the panel hard enough to buckle it. She fell, motionless.

Fuck.
“What’s your number?” I asked as he straightened and stepped over #1001. Maybe I could stall him and find something, anything, to stop him.

“My number is irrelevant,” he said in precise Janus Station English. “My name is Tarik, and you will ensure One Thousand And One comes with me.”

A fragment of rebar burst through his chest, peppering my face with synthetic blood. He looked down, face blank, before dropping to his knees.

The elevator car
dinged
and the doors rumbled open to reveal an empty lobby.

I snatched #1001’s cool hand and dragged her out of the mangled wreckage. We stumbled down the steps and ran. #1001 loped beside me, splatters of blood bright on her pale face and hair. She veered right, gaze intent. I followed, trusting her to get us somewhere safe. Around the next partially constructed high-rise, she hailed an empty pod and we ducked inside. I twisted in the seat, glaring out the back, waiting for that son of a bitch to come running after us.

“He can’t follow,” she said, voice obscenely calm. “I punctured his power core. He is running on reserve power and will need to return to the nearest Chitec service station for repairs.”

I continued watching the strip and only turned once the crowds started to build as we encroached on Lyra’s more populated districts.

“Are you hurt anywhere besides the obvious physical wounds?” she asked.

“No more than usual.”

She, on the other hand, looked like she’d been dragged behind a shuttle. Her jacket was torn, her legs were scraped, and her knuckles were bleeding. “You?”

“Considerably,” she deadpanned.

“Can you make it back to
Starscream
?”

“Yes, though it won’t do us any good. I couldn’t hack the port authority. Tarik ambushed me in the datacloud.”

I didn’t care to ask how the fucking synthetic could be waiting in the cloud. The
how’s
didn’t matter. We were trapped, and he’d come for her, and me, again.

“Okay … that’s …” I scratched around my head for something coherent and failed, my sentence fading away. Everything was fucked up, that’s what it was, but I had to think, to move forward, even if all I wanted to do was stop. “
Starscream’s
hull is impenetrable to any weapon Lyra’s finest can muster and no projectile weapons are permitted here. He’d need cutting equipment to get in, and they don’t sell that shit in casinos. We’re safer on the ship than anywhere else.”

Her eyelashes fluttered and her focus drifted.

“Synth?” I swapped sides to sit beside her. “Don’t switch off again. I’m not dragging your unconscious ass back to
Starscream
.”

Her lips twitched. “Did my nonresponsive state frighten you, Captain?”

She already knew the answer. “Fuck no. I was contemplating leaving you there when you found me heaving my guts up in the bathroom.”

We fell into an uneasy quiet, interrupted only by the electric hum of the pod and the occasional jolt as it jumped its tracks.

“I gotta say,” I mumbled, “this is one of my more eventful trips to Lyra.”

“Do you come here often?”

Some chat-up lines never die.
I had to smirk, though she’d never get the reference if I tried explaining it to her. “Sure. Lyra runs are lucrative. The heavy fleet presence scares off novice smugglers.”

“Tarik will not stop,” she said with a soft sigh. “It is clear he’s been tailing me since Janus, probably utilizing my every connection with the datacloud.”

“Following the breadcrumbs.”

She gave me that blank look, the one she often used when I’d reference something she didn’t understand. I smiled, knowing an explanation would be more trouble than it was worth. “Everyone wants a piece of you, synth.”

“Do you?”

My smile slipped. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. “Why are the nine systems’ most notorious fighting over you? It’s gotta be more than Chitec’s reward credits.” Better to ask that question than to answer the one in her eyes.

“Because I have k-knowledge.” The stammer wasn’t the first I’d heard from her. It happened whenever the subject of whatever secret shit she had in that head of hers was mentioned. If I pushed for more, she’d breakdown, lose herself to the memory of what had happened to her on Janus. Her past couldn’t help us.

I settled back in the seat and let my eyes close. The image of Jesse dangling in Tarik’s grip immediately spilled into my thoughts. I jolted at the moment he killed her and snapped my eyes open, my blood rushing in my ears. #1001’s cool fingers brushed across the back of my hand and curled into my palm. I didn’t look, didn’t move. She gave my hand the slightest squeeze. The gesture was entirely human, a selfless gesture offering comfort. It terrified me.