What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance (18 page)

At some point she blacked out. When she came to she was aware of another presence in the apartment with her.

“She’s awake,” Mathilda said.

Brandon’s face filled up her vision. He knelt beside the bed, clasped one of her hands in his and dragged it to his mouth. With him there beside her, she felt lightened, happier. For some reason Cass felt that it would all be okay now. Now that he was here, maybe they could live the life he’d planned originally.

“Thank God you’re okay,” he said. “Cass, we will get you help, okay?”

“I can’t be helped now,” she said. Cass struggled to sit up. Even though she didn’t have muscles and an organic brain, the attack from the EMP had damaged wires and sensors inside and made moving a struggle.

“Why not?” Brandon asked, his eyebrows furrowing.

“This is the robot graveyard. This is where automatons go to die,” Cass said. “No one will help me now.”

“Unless a human claims you as their own, then you can be helped. Cass, would you let me care for you? Would you be my…Cass?”

Cass smiled at that, and nodded her head slightly.

“Can you walk?” he asked, standing. Brandon didn’t let go of her hand.

Cass tossed her legs over the side of the bed and waited to see if her head spun.

It didn’t. She stood, using his hands to help.

“Bring her out here,” Mathilda said. “We will have some tea and talk.”

Brandon led Cass to the kitchen table, shuffling step by shuffling step.

“In time your walking will improve. The nanobots have a lot of work to do,” Mathilda said, helping her down into a chair. She then poured a cup of tea for each of them, though Cass couldn’t drink. “Now,” she said, arranging herself in her chair. “There’s no way that you can go back and get those weapons from Natalia,” Mathilda said. “At least, not until you have your programming reconfigured so her devices are no longer calibrated to you.”

“How would we do that?” Cass asked, fingering the handle of her cup. If they did that, then Janet’s device wouldn’t work on her either.

“Doctor Stephenson is the man who worked on me, helped me become more android than robot. He will be able to help you. It might take a little money on your part,” she said to Brandon, “but he will do it if I ask him to.”

“Alright,” Cass said. “Then we will go to this Doctor Stephenson and have him fix me, but I need to resolve this thing with Natalia.”

Brandon was shaking his head.

“Listen to me,” Cass said. “If I’m reconfigured, her weapons can’t harm me. I need to make sure she’s punished for what she’s done. If I don’t, she will keep doing this to each android she buys.”

“That’s no good,” Mathilda said. “What are you going to do?”

Cass frowned. She didn’t know exactly what she was going to do, but she felt this overwhelming need to do
something
. Natalia needed to be stopped, and Cass couldn’t tell if that was part of her programming, or if it was her need for safety. Either way, it would help her to make sure Natalia couldn’t hurt Brandon or her ever again.

“You’re a robot. She’s a human. Are you going to storm in there and beat her up?” Mathilda wondered. “You would be in worse shape than you are now if the authorities caught you, and trust me, they would catch you.”

“I will figure something out,” Cass said.

“And then what?” Brandon wondered. “Are you going to start avenging beaten robots? You can’t save all of them from all the humans like Natalia.”

He was right. That sounded too much like the Android Equal Rights. She didn’t want anything to do with them. They said they were equal rights, but they were still controlling her in a way they were fighting against.

“I need closure,” Cass said. “I need to know that it’s over with her.”

“How very human of you,” Mathilda muttered into her cup. It was hard to tell if that was a compliment or criticism.

Brandon sighed and looked into his mug of tea. “Is there any arguing you out of this?” he wondered.

Cass smiled, worried that it would have been harder to get him to agree.

“Alright, so we need to get you set up with Doctor Stephenson. Then you can go on your crusade, but I’m going with you,” Mathilda said. “You will likely need more help than just your own when you get to Natalia’s.”

“I will take all the help I can get,” Cass said. “I really don’t want to be alone with her.”

“If we go barging into her apartment she can have us arrested for trespassing,” Brandon said.

“Her work is a public place, isn’t it?” Cass asked.

“If she even has the EMP on her any longer, which she might not,” Brandon said, shrugging his hands.

“She will,” Cass said. “She will want to keep it with her so she can punish me whenever she sees me.”

“What if she just gets another one?” Brandon asked Mathilda.

“She can’t get one specialized for Cass without knowing what the new configurations would be,” Mathilda told him. “So, before you go off and play hero, you will want to go see Doctor Stephenson.”

A week later Cass sat in the off-white waiting room of Doctor Stephenson’s office, her legs crossed, her hands fidgeting with the hem of the violet dress Mathilda had gotten for her. They hadn’t wanted her wearing any of her old clothes. To be honest, neither did Cass. It reminded her too much of her old life.

Brandon sat beside her, leaned in close, his hand resting on her forearm.

“Are you nervous?” he asked.

Cass’s eyes flickered up to the entry door as another person came strolling in. This was a nurse in purple scrubs. She was a robot, though you couldn’t outwardly tell. Not even her eye glowed red like most automatons. She must also be a patient like Mathilda who was undergoing more modifications to blend in with humans. She carried a soda and a take-out bag with her.

“I just worry that at any moment the door will open up and Natalia will come in for me,” Cass explained.

Brandon smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “She doesn’t know we are here, and she hasn’t even tried to control you since I rescued you. I think she’s moved on.”

Cass couldn’t explain why that still stung. She should be relieved that Natalia had moved on and no longer wanted to be in her life. She shouldn’t be upset that she was finally getting what she wanted. Deep down, and maybe it was her programming, she felt as though she wasn’t good enough and she was being tossed aside.

Again.

A door beside the check-in window opened and a nurse stepped out. “Cass,” she called, looking up. Cass stood. The nurse smiled at her. “Doctor Stephenson is ready for you, if you will just follow me.”

Cass reached for Brandon’s hand and he gripped her tight. He followed her through the door and down a white hall to a room at the end. It was oddly silent, but she wasn’t sure what she expected to hear. Maybe sawing? Drills? Other mechanical sounds? Instead, it was quiet and peaceful like one would expect a doctor’s office to be.

Behind the doors she passed, Cass could hear people talking in hushed tones. She wondered if they were there for similar reasons to hers. Probably not.

The nurse followed them into the room and shut the door behind her. There was a speaker above the door that emitted a slight white noise, most likely to drown out what was happening in other rooms.

“Now, Cass, have you been here before?” the nurse asked, motioning for Cass to take a seat.

“I’m not sure,” Cass said. She sat down in a chair opposite the nurse. “I don’t remember being here.”

“And is Cass your given name?” the nurse, whose tag read Sara, asked.

Cass’s hands tightened around one another. What if these were questions that would land her back with Natalia? What is she confirmed her name and the police would show up and took her to Natalia. If she started telling them all of the horrors she’d been faced with at Natalia’s, would they believe her?

“It’s okay, everything discussed here is confidential,” Sara smiled at her.

“Yes, my name is Cass,” Cass told her. Brandon placed his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him and he smiled down at her. Her grip relaxed.

“Alright, if you just lay down on the table, I will get some numbers from your panel,” Sara said.

Cass climbed up onto the metal table and lay down. Sara walked to her left and opened the hatch on her side. She scribbled down some numbers and made a disapproving noise.

“Are you her owner?” Sara asked, her eyes cutting up to Brandon.

“Not her owner, no. I’ve recently started caring for her though,” he said.

“How recently?” Sara asked. Her dark eyes were hard.

“In the last week,” he told her.

She nodded and wrote some more notes.

“Alright, Cass, it shows here that you’ve been through a high level of trauma. It’s likely that Doctor Stephenson will want to monitor you overnight. You can discuss that with him when he comes in.” Sara helped Cass to sit up. “Are there any questions for me before I go?”

Cass shook her head. When Sara left she turned to Brandon. “What kind of trauma do you think she means?” Her hands shook. She clenched them tight to stop them from shaking.

“Natalia abused you pretty badly. I’m sure it has to do with that,” he told her. Brandon pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down. He took her hand in his.

“But my nanobots repaired that,” she said.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.” His full lips parted in a smile and she relaxed.

Doctor Stephenson came in sooner than she would have expected. His hair was full and white, but his face looked younger than his hair made him appear. He was wide and wore glasses. He carried a glass panel with him that Cass knew to be a computer. He sat it on the counter and pulled up a stool.

“Well, it doesn’t look good,” Doctor Stephenson said. There was something about his voice that struck Cass as strange, but she shrugged it off. “You’re not her current owner, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Brandon said. “Her owner had been abusing her. I rescued her.”

Doctor Stephenson frowned. “I’m afraid that isn’t something one can really do with an automaton. They are the property of their owner, no matter the abuse—”

“She abandoned me,” Cass said. “She also used control remotes and EMP devices on me.”

Doctor Stephenson sighed. “The accusation of EMP attack is a strong one.”

Cass lifted her chin, despite wanting to crawl under the table. “It’s also true.”

“I wouldn’t put it past whoever your owner was. They’ve done an awful lot of damage to you.”

“Please, doctor, she’s been away from Natalia for a week now and she hasn’t come to claim her. Is there any way you can reconfigure her? The EMP is specific to Cass, if she’s reconfigured, she won’t be able to reach her with it,” Brandon said.

“That brings me back to my original issue,” Doctor Stephenson said. “Your bio fuels cells are leaking. I’m afraid they are already starting to do damage to your brain.”

“What does that mean?” Cass asked.

“I’m not sure of the entire range of damage right yet, but we will need to repair the cells. If they rupture before we can work on them, the bio fuel will destroy your entire brain. Unlike a human brain, your brain isn’t organic. It’s electric. If it’s flooded, you will be electrocuted,” Doctor Stephenson said. “I’m sorry for being so abrupt, but it’s better to know what you’re facing.”

“What are our options?” Brandon asked.

“Well, for right now I can repair the cells, but I would like it to go deeper,” Doctor Stephenson said. “We can’t do it right yet because I would have to build the right size brain and put the memories and everything in place, but I would like you to consider an organic brain.”

Cass couldn’t speak. She stared at the watery blue eyes of the doctor and
tried
to speak, but she couldn’t find the words. That would take away her computer. That would make her one step closer to an android.

She felt the tears coming on, but blinked them away.

“That will change a lot,” Cass said.

“An enormous amount,” the doctor agreed.

“Is it like, a brain transplant?” Brandon asked.