The Silver Six

by C. A. Gray

  Larissa nodded, mopping her hair out of her brow. “Yep.”

  “Everyone all in one piece?” I asked, pulling back to inspect Larissa more closely.

  She heaved a sigh before saying again, “Yep. No thanks to me,” she added with a grimace. “I’m sure Francis and Alex will tell you aaaall about it in the morning.”

  I hugged her again, this time in sympathy. “Get some rest.”

  “Everyone else?” she asked just before retreating. “Liam, Nilesh, Rob?”

  I nodded. “All here, and with their intended targets. We’re either all really good, or they’re not looking for us as hard as we think they are.”

  “Oh no,” Larissa murmured ominously. “They are. Or they are now, anyway.”

  She slipped down the hallway before I could reply to this.

  I’m not sure if I slept the rest of the night. If I did, it was in fits and spurts, the way consciousness bleeds into dreams and back out again without clear distinction.

  I passed the dining room table on the way to the kitchen the next morning, having established myself as the resident cook. There I saw Alex for the first time. I could tell even though she was sitting that she was tall, well-muscled and perfectly proportioned, with long dark hair like a shimmering curtain, enormous blue eyes, and skin that almost seemed to glow with an inner radiance. Her beauty seemed unnatural, like an airbrushed supermodel who had just stepped right out of a holograph advertisement. She was, of course, surrounded by an admiring semi-circle of men: Rick, Nilesh, Giovanni, Andy, and even Mack watched her with wide, rapt eyes as she told her story while Francis sat so close that she was practically in his lap. Both her eyes and hands frequently strayed to him as she gushed about his brilliance.

  “…I’ve never seen anyone think on his feet as fast as Francis does,” she purred. “It was, frankly, erotic.”

  It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud from shock. To my surprise, none of the men around them laughed; if anything, Nilesh, Rick, and even Andy seemed to gaze at her with all the more untamed desire. As for Francis, his face remained impassive and he made eye contact with no one—far be it for him to intentionally show emotion. But his body belied him: he literally puffed out his chest and raised his chin.

  Something about her isn’t right, I thought, narrowing my eyes. Aside from finding Francis erotic, I meant, which was not right in and of itself.

  Mom and Dr. Yin stood a bit aloof, arms crossed, but they too listened to her story. Mom glanced in my direction, and I saw from her expression that she was thinking the same thing. Only Larissa approached me.

  I didn’t see Liam or Val anywhere, but tried not to think about that.

  Larissa gestured to the semi-circle and said, a little dryly, “You can listen to her gripping narrative version, or I can summarize it for you. Which would you like?”

  I raised my eyebrows at her in amusement. “Why Larissa, I think that’s the unfriendliest thing I’ve ever heard you say!”

  She colored. “Sorry. Does it show?”

  I smiled at her and looped my arm through hers reassuringly. “Don’t worry, I’d rather hear your version than hers any day. I can start breakfast while you tell me.”

  “Oh, Liam and Val are already taking care of that,” Larissa waved me toward the compound door. “I really like Val, by the way, she seems like a sweetheart. Do you want to take a cart out to the nearest cave instead?”

  Another pang. So Liam was teaching Val to cook now, huh? Or maybe he doesn’t need to teach her, maybe she’s already a master chef like him. Well, they were together for three years, of course she would be—he'd have had plenty of time to teach her then. I bet they used to cook together all the time…

  “Becca?”

  “Sorry,” I forced a smile. “Sure. The cave. Let’s go.”

  The wind while riding in the golf carts was too loud for talking, but it was only about a five minute ride. When we got out into the cave with smooth walls and suffused with gentle light, Larissa said, “You just crawl through here, it’s around the corner, and…”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. It was the golden hour of the morning: the sun had just risen, bathing the vast empty plains about a hundred feet below in its gentle light after the last streaks of pink had faded away. I shivered, wishing I’d taken an extra coat with me, but there was almost no breeze.

  Larissa plopped down on the edge, her feet dangling over the precipice, and sighed. I crept up beside her cautiously, not being a fan of heights.

  “I’ll get this part out of the way fast because I don’t like to relive it,” she said. “Francis figured out where Alex would be hiding, basically by assuming she thought like him. She was still on the prison grounds. He said we’d have to sneak in pretending to be robots ourselves, so we injured a few of the warden bots, and pretended to be their replacements. We knew it would be a hard sell because almost no warden bots look humanoid, but Francis told them we were part of an experiment, because preliminary data shows that humanoid wardens decrease rebellious behavior among human inmates. He quoted research and everything, even though he made it all up on the spot. They didn’t even bother to check, they just believed him and let us in.” She sighed again. “Francis is so good at pretending to be a robot.”

  I smirked, pretending to be shocked. “No.”

  “And I screwed it all up,” she confessed, missing my sarcasm. “Warden bots aren’t supposed to have personalities or emotions, because why would they? But I got nervous, and started giggling, and…” I groaned, and Larissa said with chagrin, “I know. We had to run for it, but we found the laundromat and hid in a big pile of dirty laundry for about two hours. Once the coast was clear, we disabled the alarm to the door we needed and snuck out to the shack off property where Francis had guessed Alex would be. He was right of course. It took him about ten minutes to win her trust. We stayed there until after dark, managed to sneak back to the car and… here we are.”

  “Glad you made it back safely,” was the only thing I could think of to say. I winced for her, though. How humiliating.

  “Thanks,” she gave me a weak smile. “Alex told us her story on the way back here last night to keep us awake—the same one she’s regaling all those eager men with now. You already know the part about her falsifying her medical records to get her A.E. chip removed, and that the neurosurgeon bot didn't buy it. They captured her, and put her in the prison where we were. She actually got her hands on a tiny little carving knife and cut out her own chip, while she was still in there!”

  “I know, Francis said that from her file,” I murmured, “but how is that possible? She’d have died of infection at the very least…”

  “She would have if she were fully human, yes,” Larissa agreed, and let this sink in for a minute. When it did, I turned to her in horror.

  “No.”

  “Yes,” she confirmed, and then amended, “I mean, well, depends what you’re thinking. She’s not a bot like the Silver Six or anything.”

  “Thank goodness!” I exclaimed, “then what do you mean?”

  “She was born a human, but she’s an experimental cyborg now—human, but with machine parts. Her cells are self-regenerating—not like ours are, though, I mean with nanobot technology. So… she basically can’t age.”

  My mouth hung open. “I don’t understand.” Then I thought of what Giovanni had told us the day before: human prisoners rendered as test subjects for the space program, turned into cyborgs to determine what changes were necessary to help humans survive in space. “She was turned into a test subject? When? Why?”

  “The first time they captured her,” Larissa told me. “I’m not sure how the ‘powers that be’ decide who gets executed and who gets used for research, but I guess she drew the short stick, or the long stick, or however you want to look at it. She says when they decided she was a threat (because of Francis’s locus), instead of killing her, they enrolled her in a Plethorus-funded human immortality rese
arch program. There are two main schools of thought about how to do that, and they’re working on both: one that just tries to upload the human mind into a ‘data cloud’ so that it can live forever without a body, and another that attempts to allow the body itself to live forever by eliminating human illnesses and aging via nanobots. She said they overhauled her GI tract too, so she can eat acid now like the Silver Six can, but she can also still eat real food. Of course she’d die if you shot her like anybody else, so that’s the down side.” Larissa gave a humorless little laugh. “Not one hundred percent immortal. But if the bullet didn’t kill her on impact, she’d still recover super quick.”

  Our feet fell on the golden dirt path, releasing little tufts of dust in unison. “So is that why she’s so…” I groped for words before I finally settled on, “perfect?”

  “I mean, some of that was probably there to begin with, but a lot of it, yeah.”

  “Wow,” I murmured. “Were there any side effects of the surgery? I mean, physical problems, personality changes…?”

  Larissa shrugged. “She didn’t mention any. But I didn’t ask, either.”

  I cast Larissa a sympathetic glance as we turned back toward the compound. “How are she and Francis getting along?”

  She grimaced. “He’s probably eating out of her hand as we speak. Along with every other man in there.” She paused and added, “Who is Andy, by the way?”

  “A guy from home,” I told her evasively. “I actually have two other friends coming soon too.”

  “Wow. It’s gonna be a full house,” she observed.

  We went back inside just as Liam and Val set the table with a heaping stack of buttermilk pancakes. Liam glanced up at me as I came in, and held my eyes for a second but said nothing. The memory of his hug the morning before made my cheeks grow warm. He dropped his gaze first, announcing that everyone could serve themselves at will.

  “Good morning, Rebecca,” Val breathed, smiling at me. Her cheeks were rosy as well—she was happy about something. I probably didn’t want to know what. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Sure,” I lied, trying to smile back. “Morning.”

  “You’re welcome,” Francis told me without preamble as I took a seat at the table. I looked at him, puzzled, and he went on, “For saving your life?” I glanced at Mom, who shrugged at me in equal bewilderment, and Francis burst out, exasperated, “With the LED glasses that protected your identity, as they clearly did, or you wouldn’t be sitting here right now! I swear, the slowness of ordinary people positively astounds me sometimes.” He said the last sentence under his breath, but loudly enough that everyone could hear it.

  “Oh!” I’d completely forgotten about the glasses in everything that had happened since. “Now it all makes sense! When I showed up at my ransacked house, the only reason why the perpetrators didn’t nab me right then must have been because of the glasses! Totally threw them off, they had no idea who I was. Liam,” I glanced at him, and he gave me an amused smile, “that hovercraft rescue was completely unnecessary, I’m sorry to tell you, because I had LED glasses.”

  “I don’t appreciate the sarcasm,” Francis muttered.

  “What were you doing, wearing those glasses while pretending to be a robot?” I asked Francis.

  He rolled his eyes. “No, obviously not, we disabled the prison camera feed from the labyrinth before we ever arrived. What kind of a stupid question is that?”

  I ignored this, smiling at Alex as I reached my hand across to shake hers. “Hi, we haven’t formally met. I’m Rebecca.”

  Alex smiled at me, delicately resting her fingers on top of mine, as if I were a peasant expected to kiss her hand.

  “Alessandra, but please, call me Alex.” I can’t explain how, but even this simple introduction had gravitas. My drama professor would say she ‘held the space.’ Her hand rested over mine across the table for a second, as I was unsure what to do with it, since a normal handshake was apparently out of the question.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said finally, shaking the bestowed hand once anyway with an awkward smile.

  Alex turned away from me and back to Nilesh then, resuming whatever she’d been saying before the interruption. Nilesh looked only too pleased to have her full attention, even though she still sat possessively close to Francis. I had the impression that Alex was the sort of woman who didn’t have women friends.

  I cleared my throat, turning back to Francis, gesturing to Giovanni. “So did Giovanni tell you? We’re building a VMI, and you’re going to be our test subject.”

  Francis arched an eyebrow. “Why? It’s not as if you can rewire your own brains to mimic mine, even if you could understand how it worked.”

  Liam gave a short guffaw, and I exchanged an amused look with him before explaining to Francis, “That wasn’t exactly the goal. You’re essentially a high functioning sociopath—no offense—”

  “None taken.”

  “—which we figure makes your brain closer to those of the Silver Six than to the rest of ours. So we want to study you to give us insight into them. Everyone else here will act as a control.”

  “Wait a minute, though, he’s not the closest to them anymore!” Giovanni cut in, pointing at Alex. “We have an actual cyborg now. She should be our test subject!”

  Alex stopped talking to Nilesh, and her perfect rosette mouth fell open in disgust. “I’m sorry. Test subject?”

  Francis leaned across Alex as if to shield her, laying one hand protectively on her arm as he glared from Giovanni to me. “She’s been a test subject quite enough. For them. She’s not going to be part of any of your experiments here. I won’t allow it.”

  I blinked, a little taken aback. “We’re not talking about surgery! Just VMI imaging…”

  “No,” Francis growled at me.

  “I’m afraid that’s not your call,” Mom interjected to Francis coolly. “Rebecca will run the experiments. Everyone else here will submit to study.”

  Dr. Yin murmured to Mom, “Technically, all human studies require informed consent for ethical reasons—”

  “In academia, perhaps, but circumstances here are quite different,” Mom told her, and she might as well have added, “and that’s final.” Dr. Yin set her jaw, glaring at her plate rather than at Mom as if she were a scolded teenager.

  Giovanni cleared his throat as if to cut the tension, and said to me, “We can access the Commune after breakfast to get the plans to build the VMI if you like.”

  “Can I help?” Liam asked. “I’d like to have a project. I’ll go crazy otherwise.”

  “You’ve always been like that,” Val murmured to him fondly, a timid hand patting his forearm. “Busy, busy, all the time!”

  “Sure,” I told Liam, pretending I hadn’t heard Val. “You’ll be a lot more helpful than I will, I’m sure.”

  “Ah yes,” said Giovanni, “I understand you’re the son of Liam Kelly of General Specs, is that right?” Liam nodded, and Giovanni prodded, “Weren't you head of operations at one point?”

  “I was. To my shame,” Liam admitted.

  “You want to talk about shame, my friend?” Giovanni murmured rhetorically. “We all carry our demons. But of all of us, you’re the most qualified here to assemble any sort of machinery. I’ll leave you two to it, then.”

  “I was head of operations, I didn’t do the physical assembly myself,” Liam corrected, holding up his hands. Then he glanced at me with a half smile. “Just want you to keep your expectations reasonable.”

  “You can do anything. We all know that,” Val murmured to him, her eyes shining.

  Liam looked a little embarrassed, shifting in his seat and clearing his throat.

  “Oh wow,” Francis said with a smirk, glancing from Val and Liam to me. I glared at him, willing him to say nothing more. I knew from his expression that he understood my meaning, because he lifted his chin a little, glorying in his upper hand, and defiantly added, “This is gonna be entertain
ing.”

  Chapter 15

  After breakfast, Mom, Mack, Giovanni, and Dr. Yin went upstairs with apparent purpose. Alex looped her arm through Francis’s and asked him for a tour of the compound, glancing around even as Francis readily agreed, as if eager for a greater audience. She spotted Andy, and lowered her lashes at him.

  “You can come too, if you like,” she said, her voice low and sultry.

  Andy probably had been admiring Alex’s beauty and magnetism—honestly I could hardly blame him—but he seemed flustered by the invitation. He glanced back at me questioningly, as if it were my decision. I shrugged at him.

  “Don’t look at me. Do what you want.”

  Liam, who had been helping Val clear dishes before she assured him sweetly that she could do it alone, appeared behind me during this exchange.

  “He thinks you have him on a leash, apparently,” he observed to me.

  I rolled my eyes. “Andy just likes to get permission, for whatever he wants to do, from whoever happens to be around at the time.”

  Liam didn’t comment on this, but his expression bespoke judgment. He moved toward the stairs, with a head gesture for me to follow.

  Once we reached the basement, I suddenly felt a bit uncomfortable. We were alone for the first time since he’d rescued me in Casa Linda. I probably needed to go ahead and clear the air.

  “Liam, wait a second…” I reached out and touched his arm, and he stopped halfway to the netscreens, turning back to face me. “I… I’m… sorry,” I finally spit it out. “For all the mess yesterday, and making you come after me…”

  His expression softened. “You didn’t make me do anything.”

  I caught the allusion to Andy and smirked a little.

  “Apology accepted,” he said abruptly, and crossed the room, settling in front of a netscreen. I felt a little let down, but followed him, sitting in the chair at the netscreen beside his.

  He pulled up the black coding screen and typed in commands in a language that wasn’t English—I thought at first that it was some kind of programming language, but I watched the cursor blink for a second before answering code returned. Then I wondered if it was some kind of secret Renegade passphrase.