I’m about to ask who he is when the answer appears at the end of my bed. It’s my grandfather. He looks twenty years older—and twenty times pissier—than when I saw him nearly a decade ago. Age obviously hasn’t mellowed him.
I can’t believe it—I actually made it here.
“Macy,” he addresses the hulking woman, who must be his second in command. “What did she do?”
“I said I didn’t do anything!” I interrupt, but Big Mama Macy and the old man ignore me.
“She disturbed the subject,” Macy answers, jutting her masculine chin toward MikkyBo’s stretcher. “Her vitals spiked, and brain imaging of neural pathways in the amygdala suggests a high stress response.”
Grandfather frowns. He checks Mikky’s bandages, glances at her monitors. He’s careful, deliberate—more tender than I’ve ever seen him, fussing over this Hu-Bot.
When he turns back to me, any hint of that affection is gone.
“You are not to speak to MikkyBo,” he snarls. “You are never to bother her.”
I just stare up at his wrinkled face. If, five seconds ago, I was glad to see him, right now I’d like to smash him on the nose with a hammer.
“Do. You. Understand?” Grandfather asks, like he’s talking to a monkey, which I guess he thinks I am.
I laugh bitterly. “Yeah, I understand. I’m shot and spitting up the family blood over here, but I’ll be sure not to disrupt the poor, perfectly healed robot in the next bed over.”
“Your bullet has been removed,” the old man counters. He lifts the stinking bandage on my stomach and shakes his head, like there’s really nothing else he can do. “I can’t help it that your human tissue is far less efficient at healing.”
“Some painkillers would be nice,” I say pointedly.
“So you could abuse them?” He leans over me, so close now that I can smell his sour breath. “Did you really think I would welcome you?” my grandfather asks, his voice quivering with rage.
My gaze slides away from his cold stare, and I wish he couldn’t see my face and whatever jumbled emotion is written there.
No, I didn’t think you’d welcome me. But some small, buried part of myself, the part that’s still a scared, orphaned eight-year-old, hoped I was wrong.
“You may be my son’s child,” he says, speaking low and quick so that only I can hear. “But you’re also a common thief and a liar. A stupid, stupid girl who put everything at risk again by coming here. The only intelligent thing you ever did was bring Mikky with you, and it’s the only reason I didn’t leave you for the wolves.”
“You dried-up old tyrant!” I say, as loudly as my weak voice will let me. The lab techs and the rest of the old man’s entourage try to look busy, but I know they’re all listening intently. “You always did love your robot toys more than your flesh and blood. Maybe I brought her here because I figured you could use a new doll to jerk off to.”
The old man straightens up, his pruny mouth twitching in disgust. “Watch your tongue. This Hu-Bot is only seven years old, and she has more potential in her smallest digit than you do in your entire body.”
“Seven?” I cackle, knowing it’ll piss him off. “That nice little piece of ass you fixed up for yourself is barely outta preschool?”
The old man raises his hand as if to strike me—but he stops himself. Without another word, he turns and leaves, his flunkies trailing behind with their data and charts. On the cot next to me, I see Mikky watching him go, too, an indecipherable look on her face.
I want to say something—to set her straight about him—but when the Hu-Bot senses me watching her, she turns her head away.
CHAPTER 55
COMMANDER MOSESKHAN LOOKS at the boy slumped in the restraints and shakes his head in disgust. The human’s hair is blond, but all the blood has made it a grisly, crimson mess. Underneath the wheel onto which the boy is strapped, the floor is dark and slick. Some of that is blood, too, but more of it’s from the beginning of the interrogation, when the boy lost his bowels.
“Get him out of here,” MosesKhan commands the Bot guard in the corner, which immediately jerks into motion. But then Khan has a better idea. “On second thought, leave him. Bring the next one in.”
The teenaged girl pushes against the Bot guards, thrashing her small, barely clad body around and screeching in protest. MosesKhan almost admires her spirit, though it will do her no favors. She thinks she’s tough, but she’s only stupid.
All spirits can be broken eventually.
Merely the sight of the unconscious boy may be enough to make her talk, Khan thinks, and everything he needs to know will come tumbling out of her dirty little mouth.
“What’s that stink?” she yells, wrinkling up her snub nose.
MosesKhan sighs; perhaps she won’t be easily broken after all. But he shouldn’t be surprised. The Reserve humans—and the Pits rats in particular—are coldhearted barbarians.
“I’ll show you what stinks,” he says, pointing to the mess of boy on the floor.
The commander can see the shock on her face, her stricken eyes shining under the blinding overhead light, but when she turns back to him, her expression is a mask.
“So?” she spits. “I’m supposed to care? Be impressed or something? I don’t even know that kid.” She shrugs her tangled curls out of her eyes and glares at him defiantly.
The commander resists the urge to grab the girl by the mouth and squeeze her jaw until it cracks. Instead, he stands up and pulls his chair to the center of the small room. He nods at one of the Bots, and it shoves her down onto it.
“33317500215U. Trip.”
She looks uncomfortable hearing him say her nickname, but she forces a condescending smile anyway. “You get my name from that dude?” She flicks her eyes toward the unconscious boy. “Congratulations on a real waste of time. Any old lady in the Reserve would’ve offered it up, you sick droid freak.”
Despite himself, the commander’s throat tightens, and he feels hot inside his heavy Elite Force uniform. He clenches his teeth.
“I know a lot more than your name,” he says threateningly. “I know you’re 88Y948107X’s relation. I know you’ve had contact with him. And the fugitive 68675409M.”
“Then you know I don’t give a shit about either of them,” Trip declares.
But the commander can detect that she’s lying.
“Your cousin drove to a cave hidden in the mountains,” he says. He thinks this will be news to Trip and will catch her off guard—but the girl just cackles.
“Yeah, he did, in a freaking cop car, no less!” She smirks, obviously proud of this delinquent relation. “Well, if you know everything, what do you need me for?”
“Maybe I don’t need you,” the commander says softly. “Maybe I just like you.” He smiles, and it turns into a leer.
Trip’s attitude suddenly changes. She leans forward, her low-cut top sliding down to reveal the tops of her breasts. It disgusts the commander, but he can’t afford to show it. Now we’re getting somewhere.
“Tell me what the fugitive Six knew of her family,” MosesKhan urges.
Trip sighs dramatically, tossing her wild hair. “Ugh, I don’t know. Her parents got incinerated—thanks to you. And her brother? He treated her like shit. So yeah, I guess either they’re dead or hated. Unless she’s got some deadbeat uncle I don’t know about.” She shrugs and then starts picking at her cuticles. “Ask Double Eight if you really want to know. It shouldn’t be too hard to round him up. Last I saw him, he was so doped up on sticky, he could barely walk.”
Commander Khan inhales quickly. It’s just a small slip—a breath, a quick glance away—but the girl catches it.
“What happened to Dubs? Did you catch him? Is he dead?” Her eyes are wild now, and she’s thrashing around again, knocking her guards off balance. “You killed him! You fucking monsters killed him!”
“Did he know where Six was headed?” Commander Khan presses, trying to regain control of the interrogation. “Did you
r cousin say anything about a compound?”
Trip looks straight ahead, her bottom lip quivering. “Screw you.”
“You will tell me,” the commander says firmly.
She raises her middle finger.
The commander lunges forward and grips the girl’s narrow wrists. “Your crude gestures mean nothing to me,” he says, and smashes her cuffed hands down on the table. “As far as I’m concerned, all of your filthy fingers are exactly the same.” He reaches over and grabs one of the handles on the Bot’s supply belt, unsheathing a long blade.
Trips eyes widen, and she starts talking very loud and very fast. “Hu-Bots aren’t vicious like that. You’re evolved, remember? You spared us to make peace. We’re just animals with wild urges, isn’t that what you say?”
“You are,” Commander Khan says, raising the blade. “But when a lap dog thinks it’s a wolf and tries to bite you, it needs to be taught a lesson.”
He strikes down hard. Amid the screams, when the commander raises the blade again, four of the girl’s fingers lie bloody on the table.
CHAPTER 56
IT’S STILL DARK when they shake me awake, cram a pack into my arms, and shove me out into the cold. I’m surprised to see that the Hu-Bot’s up, too, looking nearly as put out as I feel.
“What’s going on?” I moan, still half-asleep and aching all over.
“An adventure,” my grandfather says, more for the Hu-Bot than for me. “I need to assess your current abilities before we start our work.”
“Current abilities?” I mumble, shivering outside the compound walls. “I’m trying to hold on to enough blood to stay alive—how’s that for abilities?”
“You’ll be together on the mountain,” Grandfather says, ignoring my protests. “All day. How you choose to approach the summit is up to you, but Sergeant Macy will be monitoring your actions, so don’t do anything stupid.” He looks right at me, his living definition of stupid.
“I won’t,” I sneer. “And that includes hiking up a mountain, in a blizzard, with an enemy android, after being shot in the guts. I won’t be your stinking guinea pig.” I give my best fake-wholesome smile. “Because that—that would be truly stupid.”
“You will do exactly as I say, thief,” he says. “This is essential to my work, and if you want to ever get inside these doors again—if you want to live—you will take your orders like a good little girl.” His cold eyes flick to Mikky. “And so will you.” He presses a button on his handheld as he walks away. “The timer has started,” he calls over his shoulder.
“He’s gone insane,” I grumble.
MikkyBo glances at me, her brow furrowed. “For once, I completely agree with you.”
“We’re supposed to climb to the top of that mountain? Why?”
Mikky shrugs. “I don’t know. But we have to be back by nightfall, so we better get moving.”
And then she just starts hiking. I gape after her.
“Six?”
She’s already almost a hundred yards ahead—thanks to her long legs and her high-capacity, engineered lungs—when she looks back. I made it only about fifty feet before I had to stop. With each exhale, my wound throbs. I double over, clutching my stomach and fighting the urge to puke my guts out.
Mikky saunters back, looking down at me with this awful pity on her face, and then she reaches up and snaps a branch from a tree. “Here,” she says. “A walking stick.”
“I’m fine,” I say through gritted teeth, swatting it away. I heave myself up and stride past her, imagining my intestines falling out and trailing behind me. “If the old man wants to kill me on this little nature death march, let him try. I might not have fast-regenerating tissue, or whatever, but if there’s one thing I’m good at by now, it’s surviving.”
The Hu-Bot makes a sound like mmm-hmm.
And things go great for about another ten feet, and then I’m wheezing again, hugging a tree for dear life.
Maybe if I pull it loose, it’ll crush me and end my misery.
Mikky stands there, watching. “Do you want me to carry you?” she eventually asks.
“Hell no.” I blink at her, my face heating up with humiliation. “Just go ahead.” I shoo her away, trying not to wince. “I’ll meet you at the top.”
“All right…,” Mikky says tentatively. But then she turns away, and it’s like I said the magic words, because the Hu-Bot freaking sprints up the steep slope and disappears into the trees.
So much for us being together on the mountain, Gramps.
Every step after that is a slog. Each breath is agony. And every time I stop, I can’t imagine ever starting again.
But somehow, I keep going. Because I can’t let him win. Because I have to survive.
After six hours of fighting my way toward a snowy peak that never seems to get any closer, I see the Hu-Bot bounding back down the slopes like a damn mountain goat.
“I’m not surprised,” she says tauntingly when she reaches me. “Pale. Shivering. So very, very human. I thought you were going to meet me at the top.”
“On my way,” I say through clattering teeth. “Summit, here I come! I feel terrific…” Then I lurch left, and Mikky reaches out an arm to steady me, her smile faltering.
“You don’t look so good,” she says. “Maybe you have hypothermia.”
“You’re full of it. As usual. I’m fine.” I’m trying to keep talking, but the words are coming out slower and slower. “See?” I attempt to jump up for added emphasis, but I never feel my feet hit the ground.
CHAPTER 57
WITH THE UNCONSCIOUS human’s added weight, it takes Mikky nearly three hours to get down the icy mountain. When she finally arrives at the ramshackle compound, carefully hidden among the trees, she searches through countless labs and outbuildings before she finds the grizzled leader in a drafty, makeshift living room.
Jay glances up from his chair, a thoughtful look on his face, and for a moment, he reminds Mikky of her father. She feels a jolt of longing: NyBo must think I’m dead, and I have no way to tell him I’m not. Then the old man opens his mouth, and the spell is immediately broken.
“I almost sent out a search party. Thought you’d tried to run.”
The threat in his voice is plain, but Mikky ignores it. She’s in a foreign place—the world of humans—and, like any good detective, she must gather information before she can make a move.
“I apologize,” she says evenly. “Your granddaughter is still very weak from the gunshot wound, and she passed out. I think she needs fluids and perhaps antibiotics. Can you help her?”
The old man glances at the girl in Mikky’s arms with barely a flicker of interest. “She’s always been very weak. Weak willed, weak muscled, morally bankrupt. The last to admit vulnerability but the first to give up.”
“Actually, she was very persistent,” Mikky insists, because the girl isn’t awake to defend herself. “She was in terrible pain the entire way up the mountain. But she never gave up.”
“Interesting you feel that way.” Jay purses his wrinkled lips. “Yet you’re the one carrying her.”
Mikky sets Six down on one of the recliners, arranging her thin limbs carefully. The girl’s mouth falls open in a sigh. “I couldn’t just leave her, could I?” she asks, incredulous.
The human supervisor is looking at her intently. “It isn’t the thief I’m interested in, MikkyBo. It’s you.”
Mikky is a foot and a half taller than this ancient man and more powerful in every way, but she feels trapped in his gaze. Maybe it’s a question of gratitude: she wasn’t sure she’d ever be in one piece again, let alone back in Elite shape.
“Let’s take a few measurements, shall we?” he asks. “First the basics: heart rate.” The supervisor slaps a sticky band on her arm—an astoundingly simple, even primitive device that Mikky has never seen before. “How did you feel on the hike?” he asks.
“Surprisingly strong,” Mikky says. “I’ve lost very little mobility, as far as I can assess. My res
ponse times are reliably fast. Your team was apparently more skilled than I thought, despite your substandard Birthing Center.” She pauses for a moment, wondering whether to go on.
“What?” he asks, sensing her hesitation.
“I even seem to have gained skill in certain areas,” she admits.
That’s what had shocked her the most. Where her fingers had once slipped on the rocky cliff face—the reason she’d fallen, broken apart, and ended up here in the first place—Mikky found she could now really feel the rock beneath her fingers. Her grip was unshakable.
The supervisor waves dismissively. “But how do you feel? Do you ever experience any emotions, Detective?”
The formal title makes Mikky remember her place in the world. She reaches up to her neck to stroke the gold choker for reassurance, forgetting it isn’t there.
“It is not in Hu-Bot nature to express such things,” she says automatically.
Not in Hu-Bot nature, and so surely not in her nature. In hoping to understand humans better, Mikky had begun to project some of their qualities onto herself. She’d only been trying to get close enough to them to make them vulnerable to capture. That is the only explanation for any of her… doubts.
“Never?” The man raises a bushy white eyebrow and waits.
“Well…” MikkyBo shifts uncomfortably, her wet boots leaving puddles of melting snow on the floor. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. She doesn’t want to think about the forbidden. She sits in the chair opposite Six, but the supervisor is still staring at her expectantly.
Finally, Mikky can’t resist the need to get it off her chest. To tell someone. Maybe this fossil of a human can help her.
“I suppose occasionally I do, uh, find myself… overwhelmed… with a feeling?” she ventures.
The supervisor takes a pen from his pocket and clicks the top, poised to take notes on—Mikky can’t believe it—actual paper. “Such as?” he says.
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