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“You’re
welcome,” she said. “I’m not sure what you’re
thanking me for, though.”

“You saved my
life,” he said. “I didn’t know what was happening.
I panicked. If not for you, I’d be dead.”

Chal shifted
uncomfortably in her seat.

“I was just
doing my job,” she said.

“I understand
now,” Alan said. “I knew before – I had the
knowledge – but now I truly understand.”

“That’s
good,” Chal said. He was still holding her hand firmly, as
though he was afraid she would stand up and leave at any moment.

“I have some
questions,” Alan said. “I wanted to talk with you because
I knew you would tell me the truth.” He looked at her
meaningfully, and she saw in his eyes a trust and a depth that he had
not possessed before. Before, he had looked at her as a child would
have, with an empty trust born of inexperience. This... this was
different.

“Go ahead,”
Chal said, not trusting herself to say any more.

“What is this
place?” Alan said.

“It’s a
government research facility,” Chal said. “Underground,
in Arizona.”

Alan blinked. “What
am I doing here?”

“You–”
Chal was at a loss for how to explain it. They had implanted a number
of neuronal structures, but they had omitted a history for Alan, Dr.
Fielding had told her. He thought, and she agreed, that any false
memory of the sort would eventually lead to a dangerous mental
contradiction. Now, though, she had to think of a way to tell him.

Alan pressed her
hand.

“It’s
okay,” he said. “I know there’s something different
about me.”

“Different?”
she echoed.

“Why else
would they have me here, why would they put me in a tank?” Alan
said. He looked concerned. “Am I sick?”

“No,”
Chal said.

“Am I
dangerous?” He sat forward in his chair.

Chal shook her head.
“No, not at all. You were created here.”

“Created?”
Alan leaned toward Chal. “I don’t understand.”

“Humans are...
born,” Chal said.

Alan laughed, and
the sound was entirely too normal. It was as though they were talking
in a café, not a scientific laboratory.

“Well, yes,
obviously,” he said. He noticed that she was not laughing with
him, and the smile dropped from his face. “So I was born here?”

“In a sense,”
Chal said. “You’re not a normal human.”

Alan bit his lower
lip. “Go on.”

“Your body was
grown independently,” Chal said. “Your brain was grown
later, guided by a digital core. We monitored your development until
it was time to wake you up and introduce you to the external world.”

“I don’t
understand,” Alan said. “So I’m not human?”

“You have a
human body,” Chal said. “Physically you’re all
human, except for certain parts of your brain.”

Alan blinked,
assimilating the new information. He seemed calm enough. Then he
looked down at the IV going into his wrist. He held his arm out to
Chal.

“Will you take
this out?” he asked.

Chal swallowed. “Why
do you want it out?” she asked.

“I don’t
want it in me,” Alan said. “I don’t want it in my
body. I want to leave.” He stood up from the chair, letting the
sheet fall from his naked body. His arm was still extended toward
Chal. “Help me.”

Chal’s lips
parted. His voice sounded so trusting, and she didn’t know what
to say.

“It’s
important that you get the rest you need, Alan. Your development is
still just beginning.”

“No,” he
said. “I would like to stay awake now.”

The IV began the
slow drip of the sedative just then, and he noticed the change out of
the corner of his eye. Leaning over, he snapped the IV line shut. The
machine sounded an alarm, a soft but insistent beeping. She was
amazed at how in control he was compared with his previous sessions.
He had grown already, she thought. Her work was done. He was a man,
with all of the emotions and sentience of a man.

He reached down and
pulled off the bandage, exposing the IV needle.

“I’ll
pull it out myself if I have to,” he said.

“No, I’ll
do it,” Chal said, making the decision quickly. Visions of the
first prototype bleeding and writhing on the floor raced across her
mind. She twisted the IV out expertly, pressing on the skin to stop
the bleeding after she had it removed.

“Thank you,”
Alan said. He didn’t seem to care that he was naked and
vulnerable. He stood like a warrior, ready for whatever came next.
Chal wondered if they had made him that way. Of course they had. They
had made him exactly the way he was.

Leaving Chal to sit
in indecision, Alan walked around the perimeter of the room, stopping
at the door. He eyed the keypad warily.

“You can’t
leave,” Chal said.

“You could
open this,” Alan said. It wasn’t a question.

“They’ll
stop you,” Chal said. She was terrified that the assistants
were waiting outside with their syringes. “Please don’t.”

Alan paused. “Why
are you doing this to me?”

Tears leapt to
Chal’s eyes. “I’m not.”

Alan came over to
her.

“I know you’re
not lying, Chal,” he said. He reached out and touched her
cheek, and she was embarrassed to have to blink away the tears in her
eyes.

“Why am I
here?” he repeated. “Why did they create me?”

Chal shook her head,
willing herself to be steady. “You’re a prototype.”

“A prototype
for what?”

“For the
military. For war.” There, she had said it. Lieutenant Johnner
be damned. If he was going to send these creations to fight in some
remote country against their own kind, they deserved to know about
it.

“War?”
he said. He moved his hand down, resting it on her shoulder. She
looked at his eyes and saw that he was lost in thought, brain signals
racing from synapse to synapse. He opened his mouth to speak, but he
was trembling.

“Alan?”
Chal asked.

“I feel
dizzy,” Alan said. He cleared his throat. “I think I do
need some rest.” He went to take a step toward the chair, and
stumbled. Chal caught him by the arm and eased him down into a
sitting position. It was too much, it had been too much for him.
Physically, at least, he was fine. But mentally, he was fatigued.

Chal had seen this
before, in her rats. When placed in a maze that was too difficult for
them, they would start out quick, chasing through dead end after dead
end. After just a few minutes without progress, though, they would
slow down and fall into a state that was near-comatose. It was part
of the neuronal accelerated development. Humans needed sleep to
develop, and so did biological substrates.

Alan leaned back in
the chair, his eyes half-closed.

“Help me,”
he said to Chal, but he was already falling asleep. “Please.”

Chal held his hand
as he fought sleep, his limbs moving in slight jerks. It took longer
than it had with the sedative, but finally his chest was rising and
falling smoothly. She sat there a while longer, watching him rest.
She wondered if he was going to be able to process so much new
information at once, especially the self-knowledge that he was, in
fact, not quite human.

She wondered if he
was dreaming.

***

Chal went to the
substrate lab. She had come to find this room calming, with the
animals scurrying about in their cages, the octopi coming out of the
coral and waving their tentacles in hopes of food. It was a marked
change from the rest of the lab with its sterile surfaces, everything
dead or digitized.

Walking through the
door, she passed by the mice. They were chattering to each other and
stopped as she went past them. She paused, looking down. Were these
mice already intelligent? Were they possessed of consciousness as she
was, or was it something altogether different? She put her fingers on
the cage and bent down. The mice scuttled over each other, scraping
over the wood shavings and twitching their whiskers. She realized as
she bent over that she was utterly exhausted.

It had been hours
since she last slept, and the excitement of the sessions had kept her
going for longer than her body should have been able to accept. This
was always how she had done it – her success in large part due
to her unwavering focus and determination to finish a project once it
had begun. When she had been in school, it had been her friends and
roommates who had to tear her away from her work to eat, to rest.

Here there was
nobody to give her that respite, and she had not taken the care
necessary to give it to herself. She leaned forward, her forehead
pressing against the glass, and every nerve of hers seemed to sigh
with cool relief. Sleep. She needed to sleep.

“...almost
ready.”

She heard a
muttering from the corner of the lab and realized with a start that
there was somebody else there. The metal door in the back corner of
the lab was ajar. The room with the bodies.

Chal stood up and
walked slowly toward the door, then stopped in her tracks as she
heard whose voice it was. Curiosity propelled her forward.

“She’s
done fine,” Dr. Fielding said from inside the room. Chal
strained to hear him, vaguely uneasy that she was listening to
something she ought not to listen to. They must have been talking
about her. There was no other woman underground, anyway.

“The prototype
seems stable enough,” Fielding said. His voice was louder, and
Chal stayed where she was, breathing shallowly. Perhaps he was
talking with Lieutenant Johnner.

“He’s
displayed a remarkable degree of emotional connection. There’s
definitely value here.” Dr. Fielding coughed, then waited.

“No, she won’t
be a problem. Have you got someone waiting for us on the outside?”

Chal’s eyes
widened. It couldn’t be.

“The earlier
the better. It needs to be woken up at regular intervals. If it takes
too long to extricate, there could be problems.”

Chal backed away,
trying to be silent. What she had heard wasn’t possible. It was
downright treason. Dr. Fielding wanted to take Alan. Her heart was
pounding, and she bumped into a shelf, knocking down an empty box.
She gasped.

Dr. Fielding’s
voice stopped, and she cast about in her mind for an idea as she
heard the footsteps come closer to the doorway.

“Hello?”
she said. “Dr. Fielding, are you in here? Dr.–”

She forced herself
to walk bravely around the corner of the shelves, meeting Dr.
Fielding at the opening. He was frowning.

“Dr. Fielding,
I’ve been looking for you,” she said, not bothering to
let him speak. Her heart was racing and she was trying hard not to
let her true emotions show. If she stopped talking, she was sure that
her lips would begin to tremble with fear. “We need to talk
about the last session. I think it’s necessary to let Alan rest
for longer before the next questioning, because of his
self-awareness, but I wanted to check with you first.” She
paused, waiting to see if he would believe her.

Dr. Fielding’s
eyes narrowed, and Chal put her hand in her pocket. The serum was
there, a comfort in the small glass vial, and she breathed a bit more
easily. She met Dr. Fielding’s gaze head on, and did not waver.

“If you think
it’s alright, I’d like to keep him sedated for an extra
two hours,” she said, blinking calmly. God, her eyelids felt
like they were made of lead.

“That’s
fine,” Dr. Fielding said, sweeping her concerns away along with
his. “If you don’t mind, I’m busy at the moment.”
He motioned impatiently into the room with the bodies.

“Do you need
any help?” Chal asked.

Dr. Fielding shook
his head. “You’ve been a great help already,” he
said, and smiled coldly at her.

“It’s
impressive, isn’t it?” Chal asked. She might have been
pressing her luck, but didn’t want to give the impression that
she was in a hurry to leave. She fought the urge to yawn. “How
far he’s come.”

“Quite
impressive,” Dr. Fielding said, but his mind was elsewhere.

“Well, I’ll
be in my quarters if you need me,” Chal said, and turned on her
heel. Her fingers cradled the vial of serum as she walked through the
door and down the hall.

Dr. Fielding was
going to steal Alan.

Chal sat down on the
edge of her bed. Her mind was fuzzy. She felt helpless to do
anything. Lieutenant Johnner was gone, and she didn’t know how
to get a hold of him. What would she tell him if she did? That there
was some vague plot to take Alan from the laboratory?

She leaned back
against the wall, closing her eyes to think.

Think, Chal,
think.

Her exhaustion was
too much, and the adrenaline of her sudden discovery was soon wearing
off. The thoughts in her mind began to sliver off into tangents and
run in circles around each other, and her chin nodded down to her
chest. Her mind fought to stay awake, to think of a solution, but her
body was completely spent. She was like a rat caught in a maze, and
she had no idea where she was running, just that she needed to get
out. Just before she lost consciousness and sank into sleep, one
thought ran through her mind.

I must save him.

***

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When Chal woke up,
the world was moving. A rumbling noise, like the shaking of windows
before a space shuttle takeoff, permeated the air. At first she
thought the laboratory was under attack, but it was only a
half-second before she realized what was happening.

It was an
earthquake.

Alan.

He was the first
thing that came to her mind, and as she pushed herself upright in bed
her thoughts raced a million miles an hour. Was he in danger? Then
she remembered what she had learned in the past few hours, and she
was at her feet instantly, her body flooded with adrenaline.