Perfect (7 page)

I nearly jumped as I noticed the woman follow
us in. My legs ached to run, but I knew it would look suspicious if
we did. I could feel the blood pulsing in my ears and my back was
stinging. I tried to regulate my breathing and focused my attention
on a decoratively colored pen.

As she walked toward us, I edged toward the
exit. I saw now that she wasn’t trying to disguise her purpose for
coming in and was walking straight toward us, a determined look on
her face. I gave Jessica a little push toward the door and we
hurried out.

Once on the pavement outside, we started to
walk faster. “Wait!” I heard the woman’s voice call. “I’m not going
to hurt you,” she cried.

I slowed a bit and turned to look back at
her. She was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, tightly
clutching her purse and coat, her eyes pleading. “I just want to
talk to you.” Her voice sounded kind and made her seem sincere, but
so had the creators, I tersely reminded myself.

I stopped walking and watched her, my hands
clenched so tightly together I was afraid I might draw blood. She
started slowly coming toward me until she was only a few feet away.
I resisted the urge to turn and run, although why, I wasn’t sure.
She could be a creator. She could be anybody. Why wasn’t I
terrified? Why wasn’t I running? She stood there for a moment,
studying my face as if trying to find some flaw. She looked
directly into my eyes and only then did I realize that the shade of
blue matched my own.

“You’re mechanical,” she stated.

Chapter Nine

I took a step
backward. Jessica and Michael stood perfectly still behind me. The
woman held out her hand. “Wait,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt
you. Or tell anyone,” she promised.

I watched her closely. “How did you know?” I
finally asked.

She looked at me for a moment, as if
deciphering something in her mind then her gaze dropped to the
ground. “I used to work for the creators,” she said slowly.

“Used to?” I repeated, ready to run at any
second. My heart was hammering and I wanted nothing more than to
run as fast as I could down the street. But for some reason, my
feet kept me there.

She nodded. “I stopped after I realized that
what we were doing was wrong, although it took me awhile,” she
confessed with a small bark of humorless laughter. She looked up
again, studying me intently with her eyes. I wasn’t sure what it
was about them that unnerved me, but I couldn’t look away. She
opened her mouth hesitantly then closed it again. She pursed her
lips together before speaking. “Are they still doing it?” she asked
quickly.

I nodded.

She sighed. “I hoped they would’ve stopped,”
she admitted sadly.

I didn’t reply, but kept watching her.

She studied my face again. “You’re name is
Drew, isn’t it?” she asked, although I had the feeling she knew
exactly who I was. I wasn’t sure how, but the way she stared at me
told me she knew more than she was letting on. She must’ve noticed
my worried and surprised expression because she added quickly, “I
remember you.”

I gave her a puzzled expression. I didn’t
remember this woman, so how could she have remembered me? Alarm
trickled through me, although still not enough to make me run.

“You were one of the first perfected.”

“One of the first?” I repeated.

She nodded slowly. “You and a few others.”
Her expression changed to grief as she looked up at me and I
noticed, in surprise, that I saw tears in her eyes. They started to
trickle slowly down her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “There’s
nothing more I can really say. I knew what I was doing, and there’s
no excuse for it. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t.” Her
voice choked.

I watched, expressionless. “Why did you do
it?” I couldn’t help but ask. Any other time I would have spared
this woman’s feelings, but something inside of me wanted
desperately to know.

She looked up and her blue eyes held mine for
so long that I almost took a step back. “I thought, along with the
others, that we could make a perfect world,” she said sadly, but
her tone didn’t really convince me. “But after awhile I realized
that it wasn’t possible. There will always be corruption. Making
someone a robot doesn’t make them perfect.”

We stood there in silence as her last words
rang through the air.

“Why are you here?” I asked her, feeling as
if this meeting wasn’t just coincidental.

She paused for a moment. “I’ve been looking
for you. To...” She shook her head and stared miserably at the
ground. “Glen,” she said and looked back up at me, her eyes filled
with determination. “He’s not who you think he is.”

I watched her confusion. “I know,” I began to
say, but she was shaking her head.

“He only wants to use you, he always
did.”

“Yes, I know what he’s like,” I told her. “He
wants me dead.”

The woman’s head snapped up, her eyes
blinking with shock. “What?” she whispered.

I frowned, utterly unsettled. “He wants me
dead,” I repeated.

She shook her head. “But, he said—” She
stopped abruptly. “You’re much braver than I was.” She studied me
with those bright blue eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she told me, and
before I could stop her, she walked away, pulling her coat over her
shoulders and disappearing into the crowded street.

* * * *

We headed back to our room in silence,
thinking about what the woman had said. There wasn’t much
discussion the rest of the day. For the first time since leaving, I
actually missed the Institution. Not the kidnapping, the lies, but
the security. It was the closest place I’d ever had to a home. I
had felt safe there.

We ambled into the room and Michael sat on
the bed, flipping on the TV. The news was blaring about some
senator doing crazy things and ridiculous news stories about
attention-getters and achievers. I lay down on the bed and looked
up at the ceiling, searching for shapes.

Michael flipped the channel to some movie
that was playing, but after a few seconds he changed it again.

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the
noise. Sleeping would be an easy way to escape this insanity, if
only for a few minutes. I suddenly wondered if I slept a lot before
I was perfected. When I would actually need sleep. The thought was
so strange to me I almost giggled.

I could hear the news reporter talking and I
tried to ignore it, but I felt someone suddenly shake my shoulder
and I opened my eyes. “Drew!” It was Jessica’s voice. The urgency
in her tone made my eyes instantly open and I sat up.

“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?” But her
attention was riveted to the television and I heard the news
reporter pronounce a few names that were all too familiar.

I swiveled around to stare at the screen.
Michael sat frozen, watching the news clip. I stared for a second,
seeing the faces of Michael and Jessica smiling back at me—school
photos by the looks of them. We studied the reporter, mesmerized
with eerie fascination as he explained where Jessica and Michael
were last seen and how long they had been missing. It was unnerving
to see them on television when they both sat beside me. Slowly
Jessica turned to face me.

“I guess the creators aren’t the only ones
looking for us,” she said slowly.

I nodded, acknowledging that it only added to
our problems. Of course I should have expected this, but it hadn’t
even crossed my mind. Their parents had to be worried sick. But if
the police found Michael and Jessica, the creators would catch up
with them even quicker. Not to mention that they’d find me as well
and I’d be shipped right back to the Institution. Soon, Michael and
Jessica’s photos disappeared from the screen and the news went on
about something else. I leaned back against the pillows and closed
my eyes, trying not to think about how everything seemed to be
crashing down on us at once.

Chapter Ten

The lights were dim
as Michael and I stood in the elevator while it swiftly passed
floors, and reached the bottom with a mechanical beep. The doors
slid open and we walked out into the hotel lobby.

Jessica was upstairs taking a nap and Michael
and I had decided to get some lunch. We were enveloped with sudden
noises and chatter as we entered the hotel restaurant and quickly
ordered our food.

“I feel awful about how your parents must
feel,” I told him as we sat at our table.

His brow furrowed as he shrugged. “Yeah, I
feel bad too. I wish I could let them know we’re okay, but I know
they’d want to get into the middle of it and that wouldn’t be good
for them.” He looked up from his lap and his eyes met mine. “What
about your parents?” he asked suddenly, taking me by surprise.
I
don’t have parents
, I was just about to say, but then stopped.
I didn’t think I did. Or at least, if I did, I had no idea who they
were or if they were looking for me. But now that I thought about
it, if I had been human once, that meant I
had
to have had
parents.

“I don’t know.” I stumbled quickly over the
words. This topic was so foreign to me. Even the word parent
sounded strange on my lips, like something from another language, a
different world. “At the Institution we were told we had no
parents. Well, actually it kind of went without saying. We were
told we had been created by them, so I guess we just assumed we
didn’t have parents.”

Michael nodded. “But you must have,” he
concluded.

I nodded back, thinking about how strange
this new idea was. I had never thought about parents before, but
suddenly this topic seemed so much more important than it used to
be.

Throughout the rest of the meal we sat there
talking about the situation we were presently in, the direness of
it all. We talked about Yvonne and the creators—something I had
been afraid to even mention. But with Michael, it seemed natural to
talk about anything. He was open-minded and from the way he
behaved, I knew he would never ditch me because of these problems.
I never wanted to put Michael and Jessica in the face of danger,
but the thought that he would never leave comforted me.

After lunch we got up and just started
walking. I didn’t feel like leaving the hotel. It was raining
outside, so we just wandered through the gift shop and then toward
the elevator.

“Hey, they have a pool,” Michael observed as
we passed the glass door to a large open room with a pool and hot
tub. We stopped and peered inside, the glass cool under my
fingertips. Michael opened the door and we walked in. “We should go
swimming while we’re here,” he suggested.

I laughed. “Doesn’t that seem strange,
though? We’re hiding out from people who want to practically kill
us, and you want to go swimming?”

He shrugged, like it wasn’t that out of the
ordinary, and maybe it wasn’t.

All of a sudden he leaned over into the pool,
and with a large sweep of his hand, splashed me with water. I
gasped, taking a step backward and looked down at my wet clothes.
Glancing up, I saw Michael grinning at me mischievously.

I ran over to the side of the pool and kicked
water at him. He laughed and started splashing me back. “Hey!” I
cried, laughing. “I was only getting you back. Stop it!”

But it didn’t do any good, because he kept
splashing me. I ran a few feet away from the pool and sent him a
look of mock anger. He didn’t even look half as wet as I did. He
laughed and the sound sent my heart beating faster.

I leaned over and tried to ring some water
out of my soaking wet T-shirt, but before I had even realized it,
Michael had snuck up on me and dumped a cupped handful of water
over my head. I let out a small little shriek as the cold liquid
trickled down my neck and back, sending shivers down my spine.
“Michael!” I cried with a laugh, shoving him away from me, but it
was too late before I remembered where, exactly, I was standing.
Michael stumbled backward and would have been fine, if there wasn’t
a large pool of water two feet behind him. I covered my mouth and
watched as he fell backward into the pool with a huge splash and
disappeared underneath the curling waves.

He came up a few seconds later, soaking wet
and gasping, little rings of water floating in a circle away from
him. He wiped his hair away from his forehead and rubbed his eyes,
looking completely shocked and discombobulated.

I tried to hold back my laughter as Michael
shot me an annoyed look, but I could detect the amusement in his
eyes. “I guess you win,” he said with a laugh.

I laughed, too, as he slowly climbed from the
pool, his clothes completely soaked through and dripping. I stayed
by the pool, nearly dying from laughter as Michael stood there,
hands on his hips, smiling at me with mild annoyance. His hair was
plastered to his forehead, sticking up in all different directions,
and his clothes were darker and baggier with the weight.

“You’re all wet.” I giggled.

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah.”

I laughed again. He was giving me a funny
look, by accident I noticed that I could see right through his
soaking wet T-shirt. I turned my head, feeling my face grow hot,
but still smiling.

“You wanna hug?” he asked, holding out his
arms, a smile on his face.

I surveyed his soaking wet clothes and shook
my head. “Nope.” I laughed. “Any other time, but not now.”

But he walked toward me, anyway, his wet
shoes squeaking across the tiled floor.

I jumped away. “No, I’ll get all wet,” I
protested.

He grinned. “That’s the point.”

I turned and ran away to the other side of
the pool. Michael chased me, but I easily got to the door and ran
into the hallway before he even got close. I stood there waiting
for him to follow, but after a few seconds I looked back through
the window and frowned. I didn’t see him anywhere. I looked to both
sides of the window, but still didn’t see him. There was no other
door except this one and I noticed there were no windows
either.