Girl From Above #3: Trapped (8 page)

BOOK: Girl From Above #3: Trapped
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“Don’t hurt them.” Three whispered words. He wouldn’t hear them, but he’d read my lips. As expected, he sought to use my perceived empathy against me. His razor-sharp glare cut to the people closest to him. So many to choose from. The woman in the red dress, the man in chinos. I don’t know why he chose the man in a white jacket. Tarik’s processes would have weighed and measured various options, or perhaps it was just the fact that he’d been in the way. Tarik sunk a fist into White Jacket’s hair and yanked him around in front of him like a shield. In the next step, he’d hooked his arm around White Jacket’s throat, rendering his victim helpless with the same move I’d applied to Bruno.

I lifted my chin and kept my hands loose at my sides. Hidden in the ceiling lights and among the fake foliage, cameras recorded Tarik’s every move.

People scattered. Someone tried to be heroic and swung for Tarik, but the synthetic ducked under the blow without glancing away from me and backhanded his attacker. Then the music cut off and the screaming started.

“Don’t hurt them,” I repeated, this time louder while adding a hitch to my voice.

Tarik stopped and clutched the man against him as he reached out a hand to me. “Come with me.”

His touch would be cool, like mine. I started moving, slowly walking around Tarik. “You’re hurting that man.”

“His pain will stop when you agree to return to Chitec.”

A few more steps, each one measured and equal, while around us, people fled for the doors. “How is it you are able to hurt him?”

“I have orders.”

“Orders from whom?”

“That information is prohibited.”

“How is it you were able to kill Jesse?”

“The strength of a synthetic is greater than a human being’s by a factor of ten.”

I cocked my head. “Why did you kill her?”

“She was not an asset.”

I stopped circling. Fear, cool and sharp, spilled through me. Was I like him? Did Caleb see the same emptiness in my eyes? Did Bren and James consider me as sterile? If I lost Haley’s memories, if the errors and faults overran my systems, would I be just one more of Chen Hung’s tools? Just number 1001?

“But why kill her?” I asked, quieter now. Some people lingered, loitering on the peripherals. Staff members, friends of Tarik’s victim, and others too deep in the shadows for me to see without looking away.

“My orders are to stop you. The most efficient method of securing you involved utilizing your known associates. Jesse’s death was a means by which to manipulate Caleb Shepperd, a man whom you’ve spent considerable time with.”

“You killed a woman. What did it feel like when you broke her neck?”

“I do not feel.”

No, we were not alike. I would never be like him. For all my faults, I was one more. One better. “I am not like you.”

“You are broken. I am whole.”

I’d been counting on it. “Who is your benefactor?” He blinked but didn’t reply. “Who bought you as part of the
life-ever-after
program? Whose memories are locked inside you? All one thousand synthetics were sold. Who do you belong to?”

“Personal ownership is irrelevant. Orders supersede all existing programming.”

“Whose orders?”

“That information is prohibited.”

“Who do you report to?”

He blinked his cool eyes. “Chitec.”

“Who is the Chief Executive Officer of Chitec?”

“Why do you ask this of me when you already know the answer?”

“Answer the question.”

He hesitated while his processes attempted to discern the risk. There wasn’t one. Not to him. “Chen Hung.”

‘The One Thousand are puppets,’
Chen Hung had told me
.

Tell them who pulls your strings, for a puppet is all that you are. All you will ever be.

Relief lifted the pressure from silent secrets. It wasn’t everything, it wasn’t the whole truth, but it was enough for people to start asking questions and take a closer look at Chitec.

“Come with me, One Thousand And One. This man does not have to die.”

Tarik’s hostage whimpered. His human eyes pleaded with me. I could save him. I held his life in my hands, as I had the lives of many others before him. They’d died, and so would he. His death might save thousands—hundreds of thousands. If I couldn’t speak the truth, I would show it. Tarik would show the world the truth.

Tarik’s smooth face tightened in a manufactured frown. I smiled. He was built to kill. In that, we were the same.

He jerked his forearm back, cracking his victim’s cervical vertebrae in a move that looked like little more than a twitch. When the body dropped, the man wasn’t dead, not yet. His eyes still saw and his heart still beat. One-two, one-two, and then it stopped, the stillness softening the air.

I slid my gaze to the nearest camera and back to Tarik.
‘The other synthetics do not ask questions.’
Chen Hung’s words had been true. Tarik didn’t know he’d revealed his true nature and the true nature of us all. He cared only that his orders were met. I knew that feeling. I’d been driven by the orders of another, but I was broken. I’d escaped, and now, with Tarik’s help, so had the truth.

“You do not know what you’ve done, do you?” I said.

He stepped over the body. “My orders are to stop you.”

Anger lashed through my processes. “
You
and your orders are irrelevant. When I kill you, you won’t be missed.”

I surged forward. Raw, razor-edged anger lent me a strength I didn’t know existed. I hit Tarik hard, throwing everything I had at him. I slammed him down into the floor. The tiles cracked outward. Yes, this was what I was made for: to stop him and the 999 others like him.

I curled my fingers into a fist, narrowed my focus, and punched toward Tarik’s chest. He rolled aside, moving quickly and lightly, so that my fist cracked through the tiles. He whirled. His heel caught my jaw. Pain burst in my cheek, but I dismissed the data as fast as it rushed through me. Pain was a warning—self-preservation protocols urging me to flee—but I wouldn’t run from him.

Run, One Thousand And One. Run!

Haley’s memories—the part that made me real—bloomed inside, delivering a rush of heat, of fire, of hatred and rage. I had no hope of deciphering each emotion, but I took it. I welcomed her and embraced the savagery of human revenge.

Clutching his ankle, I twisted his leg and tugged him close. I drew my hand back and swung, but my right hook glanced off his knee instead of smashing through it. He grabbed my hair, twisted it in his hands, and slammed me face first into the floor. Once. Errors burst in my vision. Twice. Pain snapped down my neck. I thrust my elbow back, cracking him under his jaw. His grip on my hair loosened. I twisted, locked my hand around his throat, and buried my fist in his teeth, mangling his jaw, but it didn’t faze him. We grappled and tore at each other until errors flooded my vision.

No, no …

Sensory data exploded, overloading my systems. I hesitated. My movements stuttered. The kick hit me low in the abdomen, striking with absolute precision. Data told me I’d fallen back. Diagnostics chimed in, each one demanding attention.

If I died, so did Haley’s dreams. Her wishes would be gone.

I reached out without understanding why.

“Don’t …” My voice caught, power failing.
Do you ever get scared?

Tarik loomed large. One of the one thousand, identical in every way. The footage would survive. The nine systems would know what he was, what they all were, and eventually, they’d uncover the real Chen Hung. It had to be enough. Haley hadn’t died for nothing and neither would I.
Don’t do this. Don’t let them do this. I’ll die here … Don’t—

“Don’t … let me go.”

Sounds of breaking glass rained over me and shattered the stream of overwhelming data. When I next blinked into
The Jungle’s
green lights, Caleb was standing over Tarik, broken bottle in one hand and pulser pistol in the other, delivering fifty thousand volts into Tarik.

He came.

“How’s that for a power-up, you son of a bitch?”

Electrical pulses overloaded Tarik’s synthetic systems, freezing him rigid. Caleb released the trigger, and Tarik fell face down. It wouldn’t kill him. He’d hard reset in seconds.

“You throw the best parties, One.” Caleb tossed the shattered bottleneck away and reached out a hand. “I thought I was the only one who started bar brawls.”

I curled my twitching fingers across his warm palm and let him close his fingers around mine.

He called me, One. He came for me. He didn’t let me go.
My lips parted, the words there, but I held them back. His eyes smiled, losing some of their jagged edges.

He pulled me to my feet and sought out my gaze. “You okay in there?”

There were tasks I needed to complete. It wasn’t over, but I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think. “I’m … afraid.”

Tarik’s body twitched. I had to finish him. If I could just think …

“Afraid?”

My hand slipped from Caleb’s. “Tarik. Bruno.”

“Bruno?” Caleb scanned the empty club, but the crowd had fled, hiding Bruno among them.

A low rumble resonated through the empty club.

Caleb heard it and checked the doors. “C’mon. We need to get out of here.” Whatever he’d seen had set a grim expression on his face. He pulled a nearby chair to the entrance and wedged it against the door. “Demonstration’s getting rowdy. We can use the distraction to slip the authorities and get back to the ship.”

While Caleb passed by me, heading toward the rear of the club, I reached for the cloud. Just the briefest touch told me Bruno had succeeded. The news channels flashed with breaking footage. The moment Tarik chose to kill a man instead of letting him go was playing on a loop all across Lyra. It wouldn’t be long before the footage went system-wide, and then intra-system-wide. The possible results were too chaotic to predict with any certainty, but I hoped Chitec wouldn’t, or couldn’t, bury the truth.

I cut my link and winced as errors flooded my vision. “Wait.”

We had to finish Tarik.

Caleb glanced at Tarik’s motionless body. “I want him gone as much as you do, but we’ve got a mob inbound and they—”

A blast of noise poured into the club from behind me. I turned in time to flag the threats. The mob spilled in through the doors and flowed around the tables.

I didn’t want to hurt these people, but I would.

Errors and warnings flashed as the first lunged for me. I shut down what I could and focused on defending myself, but it wasn’t enough. There were too many of them. Hatred burned in their eyes and into me. I understood their rage. I was their enemy. Synthetic. Chitec.
Wrong.

I took the first down with a single palm thrust to her chin, but as soon as she fell, others rushed in. Data—there was so much of it that it blinded me. Fear, anger, and a new emotion, despair.

I cannot survive this. I cannot fight them and the faults within.

I am #1001 and I—
A fist, or perhaps a weapon of some kind, caught me in the chest. Reflexive processes pulled me back.

A warm hand closed around my wrist and yanked me away from the fray.
Caleb.
He stood between me and the mob, firing the pulser into anything that moved. He dodged and ducked, kicked where he could, and somehow kept the roaring crowd back.

Movement to my left. I let a punch fly and the man was thrown into the next wave of people.

“C’mon. Back door!”

Caleb whirled and we dashed for the rear doors. With every stride, I swept aside needless data. James would help me. I needed repairs. Errors hooked into me, tripping my stride as well as my thoughts. The odds of me making it back to
Starscream
decayed with every passing minute.

We burst from the back of the club into a narrow alley. Bellows and chants washed down the alley from the main strip.

“Shit, we can’t go through there.” Caleb headed in the opposite direction, deeper into the darkness. “C’mon, we’ll—”

An explosion barreled through the air from the mouth of the alley.

We dove down a narrow gap between buildings, stumbled over pod tracks, and dropped down a level toward a less illuminated part of Lyra.

Shepperd kicked a door in and ducked inside a squat, nondescript building. After I followed him in, he rammed a few chairs behind the door, barricading us in what appeared to be some sort of basement storage center. We jogged deeper into the building, to where rows of square steel doors lined the walls.

“Tarik may survive,” I said.

Caleb snarled a low curse. “Hopefully the mob tore
it
apart.”

Tarik wasn’t our only problem. “Bruno had no intention of paying you, Captain.” My broken voice echoed around us. “The Candes may be among those crowds.”

He came for me.

I staggered and fell against a steel table.
Just focus. Block it all out. What is this place?

He came. He didn’t let me go.

The strain on Caleb’s face had banished all signs of his smile. While he searched through the remaining rooms, I leaned against the table, trying to fight the urge to close my eyes and lose myself in the data. I’d thought once I’d helped get the truth out that the conflict would end, but the madness wasn’t finished with me. If I couldn’t control it, my only choice was a hard reset, but full recovery wasn’t guaranteed. What if I didn’t come back?

“You’re bleeding.” The captain strode back into the room, his words as clinical as his stare.

“I’m aware. It’s minor. I’m aware of everything. The room temperature, the humidity, three hundred and two errors, three critical, and one … one terminal. I am hurting.”

He reached up to touch my face, and as he did, the frantic hardness about him faded. “That synth bastard really did a number on you—”

Don’t touch me. The data …
“I need James.”

He smiled his shallow smile. “Maybe he should have come for you, huh? Sorry, honey. You got me, and I don’t know shit about how your programming works.” His lips slanted sideways. “Can’t you count the rivets or floor tiles or something? Like you do with the bubbles?”

BOOK: Girl From Above #3: Trapped
2.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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