Twenty-Six
Lucas paused in the open doorway, his hands thrust into his pockets, a picture of total nonchalance as he stared at me. That illusion shattered when the door began sliding closed and banged into his arm. He emitted a startled curse and stumbled into the room.
I allowed myself a tiny smile at his expense. Payback for his earlier behavior.
The red flush that surged into his otherwise pale cheeks suggested embarrassment, but he didn’t look away. Instead, he headed toward me, his forehead creased like I was a puzzle that needed solving.
He didn’t walk like the soldiers. He landed heavier on his right foot, and his left foot barely cleared the ground. His boots looked different, too, thicker soled than the rest, and the left one externally rotated just a little, like his foot wasn’t on quite straight. Based on that, I couldn’t imagine he was a soldier. He’d never make it through basic training.
But he was here, and he was monitoring these tests. To me, that was all that mattered.
As he drew closer, I lifted my chin, bracing myself for a second degrading inspection like Holland had performed. Queasiness churned in my stomach, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t mess up again, no matter how violated I felt from their prying eyes and hands.
The tightness in my chest relaxed when he stopped a respectful three feet away. “Lucas Webb, your proctor,” he announced.
He withdrew his right hand from his pocket, then froze with it extended halfway toward me, as if the movement had been reflexive, and now that he’d remembered I was something less than human, he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. “Uh . . .”
I let my exhale hiss loudly between my teeth before extending my own hand toward his. Mere inches away, but not touching, so ultimately he’d have to choose. “Mila. And I don’t bite.”
Again, that slight parting of his lips, the minute widening to his eyes. I was about to give up when he reached out and clasped my hand, practically drowning it with his larger one.
I didn’t recall forming any expectations, but I must have, because the feel of his skin startled me. It was warm and faintly damp. Rougher than I’d expected. Small, circular abrasions rubbed my own palm like fine sandpaper as he shook my hand with a firm yet careful grip.
Careful. The way you might actually shake a regular human’s hand so as not to hurt her.
I discarded that thought the instant it registered. Ridiculous, and under the circumstances, giving Lucas the benefit of the doubt could prove downright dangerous. I couldn’t relax my guard around him, not for a second.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, releasing me to return his hand to his pocket.
“If you say so,” I said, cautious to keep my expression neutral.
Apparently my minuscule stab at defiance startled him, because his eyes widened once more. Hazel. They were a golden hazel, with little flecks of moss green and blue. The kind of eyes that would be challenging to re-create in a lab.
He cleared his throat before responding. “I’m, uh, supposed to take you in for repairs.”
I flinched, strangely disappointed that my instinct had proved correct. He didn’t think of me as human at all.
“What’s wrong?” he said, obviously tracking my reaction, however tiny.
“I’m not a bike,” I muttered before clamping my disastrously big mouth shut.
“I . . . do you always talk in metaphors?”
What? That came from so far out of nowhere that my anger dissolved. “I . . . I’ve never thought about it before,” I said slowly. Pondering. “I guess so. Why? Doesn’t Three?”
“No.” He broke off to inspect me. Fully, this time, a slow head-to-toe perusal that brought warmth rushing to my cheeks, though there was nothing sexual in the appraisal. But he didn’t perform it with the same clinical detachment as Holland had, either. It was like before. Like he was searching every inch of me for a visible solution to a problem that only he could see.
The more seconds that ticked by, the more uncomfortable I became, until I finally couldn’t restrain the urge to cross my arms.
That gesture must have snapped him out of it, because he blinked and lurched backward. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . it’s just . . . I was expecting something different.”
Something different. Which meant he must be new. Otherwise he’d have known what to expect.
My stomach sank. That meant he probably wouldn’t have much useful information for me, even if I could pry anything out of him. I glanced up at the spectator window and shivered. Still, he’d be more likely to talk anywhere but here. “You said something about repairs?” I prodded.
He blinked, making me notice how his dark lashes were tipped in gold. “Repairs, right. This way, please.”
I studied him as he led me with that offbeat gait to the door. He was tall—six foot, one inch—and lanky thin, not built at all like the firmly muscled soldiers I’d seen. Or even Hunter, for that matter. But he’d surprised me with the casual strength in his handshake. I wondered if that lean frame of his was equally deceptive.
Lucas took me down a different hallway from the one I’d arrived in, leading me deeper into the building’s interior. Quiet and dim, with no one else around but us.
GPS, I commanded. I felt a spark in my head, then . . . nothing.
Must be jammed down here, just like in the car.
After we passed five doors on the right, each one as unmarked and plain silver as the next, he finally veered toward the sixth one.
Another sliding steel door, like the one that led into the first testing room, only bigger—thirteen feet across by nine feet high. Under a large keypad built into the white door- frame on the right side sat a tall, thin silver table. The only items on it were two metal cylinders.
As I watched, Lucas reached into the cylinder on the right and withdrew a Q-tip. Then he opened his mouth and swabbed the inside of his cheek before pressing a small green button at the bottom of the keypad. A narrow tray shot out below it, the top of it covered with a shiny plastic material. He wiped the Q-tip on the plastic, then pressed the button again, and the tray slid back into the wall.
A red light on the keypad blinked to life. “Identity confirmation or denial will occur in ten seconds.”
He tossed the Q-tip into the left cylinder as the countdown commenced.
At the end of ten seconds, the red light turned green. “DNA scan verified: Lucas Webb. Please enter your pass code.”
He typed in his twelve-digit code, which I memorized, my uneasiness growing. All that extra security, in what was already a secret government facility? It didn’t bode well for whatever was on the other side of that door.
The door hitched at first before finally sliding open with a beep.
He frowned down at the track. “When are they going to fix the moisture level in here? It’s going to start damaging the equipment soon. The computers . . . ,” he muttered, breaking off as if talking to himself.
Huh. This guy had fewer social graces than I did. Which made me bold enough to ask, “What’s wrong with your leg?”
He shrugged, seemingly unperturbed by my question. “I was born with a clubfoot. After five surgeries, this is as good as it gets.” Not even a trace of bitterness in his voice.
Despite myself, I felt a flicker of admiration at his easy acceptance.
I was expecting a room full of clutter, but when I walked in, the first thing I noticed was how spotless everything was. Four industrial-grade refrigerators lined the left wall; two of them had WARNING: BIOHAZARDOUS MATERIAL INSIDE. To our right was a large desk with a computer monitor on top of it. In the middle of the room were two huge reclining chairs, one that appeared to feature the long, skinny tube of a sophisticated laser on top, the other next to a table holding an enormous toolbox.
But the room’s dominating feature was the odd device in the far back corner. It was a large, clear tube—big enough for a human—that stood upright on the floor. The clear surface had a grid of tiny lines covering its entirety, some of which flashed at random moments. The whole thing was attached to a humming machine with a display of computer monitors hanging in midair above it.
Lucas halted in front of one of the elevated gray vinyl-and-metal chairs—sort of like one I’d seen in an ad for a dentist’s office. A computer monitor hung suspended above it. Luca made an awkward waving motion at it with his hand. “Please take a seat.”
I eyed the chair warily from behind his tall frame. Wires ran underneath the bottom and plugged into a black box on the floor. A computer, I realized. Above where my head would reach, two rectangular compartments protruded on both sides.
“Can’t I sit in that one?” I said, pointing to an innocuous-looking rolling stool to the left of the chair.
His lips twitched. “No, that’s where I sit.”
I sighed. “How about I stand?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t suggest it. Not unless you want Holland to send some men in to strap you down.”
That sent me scurrying forward. “Pass,” I said. Trying not to panic as I remembered Mila One, chained to a chair during the so-called torture tests. Thrashing against her restraints while a man took a drill to her chest. That could easily be me, and even though I didn’t have the same pain reception as Mila One, the idea of a bit driving through my skin, of a bullet slamming into my skull, filled me with horror all the same.
I hopped up onto the high seat, which put my face level with Lucas’s, and took the opportunity to study him. Overall, his appearance would probably rate as rather unremarkable to the girls back in Clearwater—no super-defined cheekbones, no purposely mussed hair, no perfectly symmetrical features that bordered on the feminine. Just a slightly crooked nose and pale skin that didn’t look like it tanned easily. Nothing that stood out as unappealing, but nothing noteworthy, either.
Except his eyes. His eyes fell into an entirely different category. Not only the startling mix of colors, but the way the thick lashes changed from dark brown to gold at the ends.
“Lean back, please.”
I complied, fumbling for a way to ease him into conversation, both to distract me from whatever came next and to hopefully get him to share anything helpful. “You seem young to be working here,” I finally said, truthfully.
“I’m on sabbatical from MIT.”
“Didn’t you like it there?”
He stopped tugging at a compartment above the chair long enough to look at me. “Actually, I loved it. It’s the first place where I didn’t feel weird around people my own age.”
So Lucas had felt like an outsider once, too. If he’d been in Clearwater, would we have eventually found each other, the same way Hunter and I had?
Hunter. Up until this moment, he’d been the only boy I’d been alone with like this, one-on-one. Under circumstances so vastly different, I felt torn between laughing and crying.
A fierce wave of longing gripped me, reminding me that I needed information if I ever hoped to escape this place and talk to Hunter again.
Best to start slowly, though. To continue with these casual inquiries so that he didn’t question my motives. “If you liked it so much, why are you here?”
His expression went from open to strangely guarded, and I saw the way his shoulders tensed. “I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this, to consult for the military. Especially since I’m the only male in three generations who isn’t a full-fledged member.” He paused, inhaled, and then a small smile reappeared. “This boot’s not made for walking,” he joked, with an ease that once again startled me. If only I could accept my difference so readily.
“I wonder if that’s why Mom decided to work here,” I mused. “Not because she wanted to be in the military, but because the opportunities were so good?”
Lucas had been in the process of reaching over my head for a compartment on the left side of the chair but froze with his hand hovering just in front of a small round circle on the metal when I said “Mom.” He shook his head, sending the longish strands on top into a jerky dance.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just . . . Three never refers to any of the scientists that personally. To be honest, it’s a little disconcerting.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I remained silent while he pushed the circle. A lid eased open, exposing a silver plug nestled inside, the size of a USB port but with a different configuration. “And I’m not sure about Dr. Laurent. Sorry.”
Disappointment sank like a stone in my stomach, but I forced a polite response. “It’s okay.”
He yanked the retractable cord out with a zipping sound, and I knew what was coming next. “Here,” I said with a sigh, sticking out my wrist.
Lucas’s sandy-colored eyebrows drew closer together as he stared at my hand. “That’s for your memory card port. This”—he wiggled the plug—“is our proprietary USB plug-in, which fits behind your right ear. Don’t you understand your own functionality?”
Feeling incredibly stupid, I dropped my hand into my lap. “I’m catching up. Even though I hate learning about my capabilities.”
“Why?”
“Because the more I learn to use them, the less human—the more ugly—I feel,” I blurted. I bit my lip and averted my eyes. Too much, I’d revealed way too much. “Please don’t say anything. . . .”
Any second now, he’d tell me how he was obligated to report back to Holland.
I waited, fingers clasped tightly. When I peeked up at him, I caught him staring. He cleared his throat and looked away. “My sole purpose is to oversee your repairs and proctor the tests. No one said anything about monitoring our conversations.”
I sagged into the chair, allowed my eyes to flutter closed in relief. Maybe I’d misjudged him when he’d been behind that spectator window. If so, now was a good time—the only time, potentially—to try to elicit information about Mom.
I felt a rustle of air as he reached toward my head, his hand hovering close to my ear. “I’m sorry, I need . . . do you mind if I . . . ?” His half cough, half laugh sounded self-conscious. “Sorry. I’m not this tentative when I work with Three. Like I said before—you’re different.”
“Don’t apologize. If anything, the fact that you think I’m different gives me hope.”
“Hope,” he repeated, with wide eyes. Then he coughed. “Right. Anyway, if you could just pull your right earlobe forward . . .”
I reached up to grasp my right earlobe, where the skin felt warm and soft and oh so authentic. Then, after a deep breath to fill my nonexistent lungs, I pulled the lobe forward and exposed the port I’d never known existed until a few moments ago.
Compassion had softened Lucas’s mouth, erased the frown lines from his forehead. And was now allowing him to maintain eye contact with me for longer than five seconds without doing something awkward. How on earth had this guy ended up here? I wondered again. Nothing about him fitted in, from his untidy appearance to his youth to his evident concern over my feelings. The very same feelings Holland said made me disposable.
He was my one chance to find Mom in this dismal place.
“So do I have a room here? For in between tests?” I said, in what I hoped sounded like a casual tone.
“Yeah.” Thankfully, he appeared distracted by smoothing a kink in the cord.
“Is it next door?”
“Down the hall and to the left, where all the cells are. Stupid cord,” he muttered.
“Mom’s, too?”
He gave an absent half nod. “I—” And then his lashes swept upward, and suddenly, I found myself squirming under his hazel-eyed scrutiny. “You’re not trying to get me into trouble, are you?”
His tone had cooled several degrees, and his hands became brusque as he firmly cradled my head with his left one . . . and with his right shoved the plug into the space behind my ear.
Before I could answer, the jolt of the connection snapped my head back. I heard my calm, digitized voice as the red words flashed.
Initiate scan.
Retrieving data.
“The data will show up on the monitor in a second,” Lucas said, watching me.
Which sounded innocuous enough. Unless the data in question was being sucked straight out of your head.
I shivered, wrapped my arms around my waist. Strained to feel a foreign presence behind my ear. But apart from that first jolt, I felt nothing. Oh, a faint buzz emitted from the vicinity, and I knew the plug was there—my sensors kept a small image of the port with Connection established in the upper right of my visual field. But it just felt ordinary. Not alien at all, like I’d expected.
I shivered again. The thought that maybe my body was getting used to all this was worse than actually being able to perform the functions in the first place.
“Here we go,” Lucas said.
Up on the screen, an image of a human body appeared.
No, not a human body, I realized with mounting horror. My body.
Humanlike in some spots, but with parts that no human possessed. Parts layered underneath the surface that spoke of things that weren’t alive; my ugliness, all spelled out and irrefutable.
I was afraid that if I looked at that screen for even one more second, every last shred of hope in me would die.
I turned my head away, digging my chin into my shoulder and squeezing my eyes shut. Maybe if I squeezed tightly enough, I’d permanently damage my optic system and spare myself from seeing the truth so plainly ever again.
“Are you okay?”
The sensation of my throat tightening, phantom or not, made the word hard to choke out. “No.”
I heard his whisper of a sigh, the shuffle of his feet, and then a muttered curse as something jerked my chair, accompanied by the ring of shoe striking metal. Every sound precise and audible, whether I wanted to hear it or not. Compliments of my enhanced hearing. “Sorry. Accidentally kicked the chair base.”
No words squeezed out this time. Only warmth behind my eyes. Dampness. And finally, release, as tears trickled from beneath my lashes.
I dragged my arm over my face, shielding it from view. Lucas might seem sympathetic, but I knew how Holland felt about tears. The only person I could trust was Mom.
Mom. Who I’d never see again unless I aced these tests. And all I had to do was be a good little android. Strong. Focused.
Emotion free.
“Mila?”
Under the cover of my sleeve, I rubbed my eyes dry, then commanded them to open. I didn’t have the luxury of hiding from my fears like a normal girl.
Becoming more Three-like was the last thing I wanted to do. But she had managed to impart one piece of wisdom: sometimes, our wants were irrelevant. Mom was all that mattered, and nothing could get in the way of her rescue.
Not even me.
I lifted my chin, tilted my head to stare up at the monitor defiantly.
Nothing. Just a flat green screen, not a nightmare image in sight. The monitor was off.
Stunned, my gaze flew to Lucas, whose eyes lingered on my cheeks, making me wonder if I’d missed a trace of my tears. “I turned it off. I downloaded what needs to be fixed on here,” he said, waving the small electronic tablet he now held in his hand.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Thought it would be easier,” he said, like it was no big deal.
After everything that had happened over the past few hours, his tiny show of compassion felt monumental and threatened to dampen my eyes once more. “Thank you,” I whispered.
That red flush crept over his cheeks again. He shoved his hands into his pockets and studied a point somewhere over my left shoulder.
“So, how bad is the damage?”
“Not bad. Just a loose hip joint and a tweaked wire in your shoulder. Oh, and it looks like you had an old injury, to your arm?”
From the fall from Kaylee’s truck. “Yeah, Mom tried to fix it with what she had available.”
“Oh, she did a decent enough job, don’t get me wrong. We just have better tools here. A one-stop fix-it machine, if you will.”
He ushered me over to the clear, person-sized tube I’d noticed when I’d first walked in. After he tapped in a series of numbers and letters on the attached computer, the tube made a huge whooshing sound before slowly grinding open.
That’s when I could see that each half of the clear acrylic inside the tube was shaped to fit half of a human body. And when it closed, it would be exactly my size.
“Step inside, please.”
I peered at the large, me-sized opening with more than a little trepidation, my stomach rebelling against inserting my body into that carefully constructed space. But Lucas said the machine could repair me, and I had two more tests to pass—and my success was more likely if I was in perfect condition.
Ignoring the pounding in my chest, I stepped in and turned to face him, placing my feet over the two black footmarks on the ground. A perfect fit. The moment both feet hit the pad, the whoosh started up again. A burst of suction drew me upward, making me yelp. And then the acrylic sides closed in on me, like I was the middle of sandwich. They pressed against me until they melded to my body in a perfect fit. It felt like someone had smoothed on a brand-new layer of skin.
Too perfect a fit. This machine had to have been made for me, I realized. For all the Milas.
I froze while my pulse pounded a harsh drumbeat in my ears.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic, don’t panic. Focus on something else.
Up this close, I could see the thin lines of silver threaded within the plastic. Reinforcement, maybe? To make it shatterproof? No way out until Lucas released me.
Lucas pushed a button, then flicked up a switch on the panel beside me, and I immediately felt the air grow warm. Inside, though, a freezing cold twisted its way through my body. Through the clear glass, I met Lucas’s eyes and focused on the tiny bits of green and blue, to escape my own head, to escape the feeling of being swallowed alive.
“You’ll be out of there in under two minutes.”
I swallowed, hard. Illogical or not, two minutes sounded like a lifetime.
“An opaque cover is going to lower now, outside the tube. The laser is built into that. Just stand very still, and everything will be fine. I’ll be right here.”
That worked. I wasn’t sure I could move anyway, with fear locking every joint in place.
Five flecks of blue in the right eye, three flecks in the left one, I counted, somewhat deliriously. And then, in my peripheral vision, I saw a red glow descend from overhead.
“Close your eyes if it makes it easier.”
I wanted to, more than anything, to block out whatever this thing was going to do. But I couldn’t. That would be falling back into the same weakness I’d shown with the monitor, and I had to be strong. Besides, closing my eyes wouldn’t block out the three red words, or my own detached voice.
Laser repair: Initiated.
So I stood and stared at Lucas, watching as the red enclosure first blocked out the top of his unruly hair, then his forehead, and finally his eyes, until I was staring straight at a solid silver wall with a faint glow.
The click came next, which I assumed signified the wall had hit the floor. Over my head, I felt the faint red glow grow stronger.
“Let me out,” I said, pleading with Lucas.
“You’ll be okay. It won’t take long.”
And then the grid over my shoulder blazed to life. Millions of light cells, activated. All at once, I felt a surge of warmth in my joints, a steady vibration. Like when Mom had fixed my arm but much, much stronger.
Shoulder joint: Repaired.
At that moment, I wouldn’t have been able to move even if it had been a possibility. Because those words, they weren’t in my calm, digitized voice. They were alien, unknown.
So how were they in my head?
I gagged as realization hit. The machine. It could somehow project into me.
Terror sizzled through me, like a live current that jolted me into manic, unthinking action.
“Let me out!” I yelled. “Please.”
The laser carried on its business unperturbed, the red glow descending to pulse warmth into my arm.
Arm: Repaired.
“No,” I whispered, giving up on screaming. I didn’t know if Lucas could hear me or not, but it was clear he wasn’t letting me out. Meanwhile, I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. I wanted to curl into a ball, but the walls had no give, almost like I’d been entombed with my arms and legs extended. A tomb, that’s what it felt like. Like I was locked inside a tomb, and I would never, ever get out again.
While the red glow lowered to my hip, the machine’s vibrating invaded my skin, my ears, traveling deeper and deeper until every bit of me quaked and I wasn’t sure whether it was from fear or the machine, or if they were one and the same.
“Hip joint: Repaired,” the smooth, dispassionate voice declared. But the sound was so unwelcome, so invasive, like a stranger forcing his brain into my head.
I heard Lucas outside. His voice sounded shakier than I remembered. “You’re almost done now.”
When the glow finally switched off, the cover lifted, and the whoosh signaled that the acrylic sides were opening, I wasn’t even sure my legs would support me. The second the opening widened enough, I squeezed my way out, collapsing onto my knees and doubling over until my head practically touched the floor. I opened my mouth to laugh in relief, but all that emerged was a pathetic, choked whimper.
That sound unleashed an avalanche of reaction somewhere inside me, because immediately afterward, I started shuddering.
A few moments later, a tentative pressure landed on my shoulder. My head jerked up to see Lucas leaning over me, his hair even more mussed, undoubtedly from the way his fingers attacked the strands when he was nervous. His jaw was clenched, and his hand hovered over my shoulder before landing there once more with a feather-light touch.
“Are you okay?”
Get up, Mila. Get up and pretend like everything is fine. Lucas might seem nice, but his loyalty is to Holland.
Holland. That one word was enough to spur me into action.
I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m all right. I was just pretending—I thought it would be funny.”
He hovered, his face still ashen, the furrow over his nose still deep. “I see,” he said slowly. “So it wasn’t because you realized what else that machine does?”
“What do you mean?”
“Besides repairs, this is where we plug in the androids to alter their programming. Or terminate them.”
Terminate.
The room spun, and for a second, I thought I might faint, even though my legs remained firmly under me. My lower lip trembled, and I pressed my mouth into a thin line.
Control it, Mila.
And I did. But for the first time, a terrible thought descended. Maybe being an android who felt like a real human wasn’t such an advantage after all.
“No, I didn’t realize that, but whatever.” I shrugged like that information was of no consequence, but I’m not sure Lucas was fooled. His gaze raked me from head to toe, like he was searching for any sign that I was lying.
Finally, to my everlasting relief, he nodded. “Okay.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Would you like a break?”
A break? A break sounded amazing. But the faster I completed these tests, the quicker I might get to see Mom. If I passed them. “No.”
“Then I guess I’ll walk you to the—”
The automated voice from the door interrupted him. We both turned, waiting for the series of beeps until the door finally slid open to reveal a burly figure.
Holland.
“So. Is she good to go?” His voice boomed into the room, obscenely loud. Even Lucas flinched a tiny bit.
“Yes, sir, we just finished.”
“Perfect timing. Why don’t I escort our runaway to the next test while you grab the files we’ll need off my desk?”
I wished I had a say, that I could refuse and insist on walking with Lucas. But there was no doubt that Holland was the puppet master, and that as long as he had Mom, I’d dance every time he jerked the strings. At least over such a simple order.
I’d hesitated only a second, but even that seemed to annoy him. He gave a curt jerk of his head toward the hall. “Did my Southern manners confuse you? That wasn’t a request.” His drawl still sounded amiable, but the tightening at the corners of his eyes indicated his displeasure.
While I crossed the length of the room to obey Holland’s command, all I could think was I bet I’m not going to win test two by singing a song.
