by Debra Driza
“I need to head back out to the drugstore and grab some supplies.”
I stood back up. “I’ll go with you.”
Mom gave a firm shake of her head. “No, you stay here. There’s something I need you to look at.” She rummaged through her purse, pulling out a clear plastic square case, less than two inches long per side. Inside was a flat blue square with a gold computer chip embedded inside.
She popped the top and then upended the card into her palm, the contrast between the deep blue and her pale skin startling. I noticed the mishmash of tiny lines in her skin, threading out from the longer indents. Signs of aging. Something my palm would never do.
“I know you weren’t ready to listen in the car, but it’s crucial you know who we’re running from. I managed to accrue some information before I left, and it’s on this memory card.”
I stared at the square as the back of my neck prickled. Why would she give me that when we didn’t have a computer? That didn’t make any sense, and yet, in a terrifying glimmer of realization, I was afraid it did. “Please tell me you stashed a laptop in the suitcase that I don’t know about.”
Mom’s teeth sank into her bottom lip while her fingers worried the nosepiece of her glasses. “Mila,” she said quietly. Nothing else, but her tone told me all I needed to know.
The laugh I tried to force came out garbled, and I felt cold, so cold, like that memory card had banished every bit of warmth from the room. “Right. I’m the computer.” Not only that, but somewhere on—no, in. In!—my body, I had a slot for that card. An electrical portal.
How was that even possible? How could you have a port for a memory card in your body and not know about it?
I couldn’t look at Mom, couldn’t bear to see the phony sympathy on her face. And it had to be phony, corrupt, because after all, she was the one who’d created me. She didn’t get to make such a repulsive freak of nature and then feel bad about it afterward; that wasn’t how it worked. So I focused on the blue card and asked the question burning through my mind instead.
“Where is it?”
She reached forward and clasped my right hand between her slender fingers. The urge to yank my arm out of her grasp was strong, but I resisted, let her tug until it stretched between us like an unwilling bridge. Then she rotated my wrist until my palm faced the ceiling.
She slid a finger along the crease of my wrist. “Here, where it’s hidden from view.”
Even after she pointed it out, I couldn’t see it at first. My finger traced her path and found only skin.
“Pull the skin toward your elbow.”
Sure enough, when my thumb pressed the skin the way she’d instructed, it appeared. A perfect straight line, like a paper cut. A thin slot. Just the right size for the card.
I stared at the slot, my wrist, my entire arm, like they belonged to someone else. Like they were completely alien entities.
Mom had forbidden computers while, all this time, I’d been walking around Clearwater with a memory card slot. In. My. Wrist.
When Mom released my hand, I didn’t move. I held my hand in that same outstretched position, as far away from me as possible.
Regrettably, she took that as a sign of interest. “There are two ways to assimilate the card’s data. The fastest way is internally—inside your head. But we also created a feature where you could project the data into the environment. Mainly for our benefit, so it’d be easily accessible in the field. I think that’s also going to be the best way for you.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to know, and yet, in a sick way, I did. After all, this was my wrist we were talking about. That, and my ability to project data out into the atmosphere.
Whatever that meant.
“Because you’ve become accustomed to processing things more like a human, so analyzing that type of data internally might be overwhelming. For now, anyway.”
She extended the blue square to me. “Would you like to try?”
Funny how the sight of an inanimate object could trigger such revulsion. I wanted to smash the chip under my heel and flush the remnants down the toilet until they were long gone, too far away to hurt me.
But that wouldn’t change anything.
Besides, Mom was right: I needed to learn about this SMART Ops, which I could do in one of two ways. And even though the idea of inserting a memory card into my arm terrified me, it seemed less risky than listening to Mom and chancing another one of her bombshells.
“Not until you leave.”
A flicker of hurt crossed her face, which led to a corresponding pang in my own chest, followed by a spark of anger. “Would you drop the mom act already? We both know it’s fake.”
She exhaled sharply. “You don’t . . .” She closed her eyes and stepped away. When she opened them again, her expression was carefully composed. “Fine. Just . . . the command to view the data externally is ‘Project.’”
“What, so I just say that word and presto, data comes flying out?” I was having a hard time picturing any of this. I didn’t want to picture any of this. Right now, all I wanted to do was dive under that dirty comforter, scrunch into a ball, and hide until all of the crazy reality that was my life went away. Major android fail, that’s what Kaylee would say.
If Kaylee weren’t hundreds of miles away and didn’t hate me right now.
Oh, and if she knew I was an android.
Mom held out the card, which I accepted with a steady hand, fighting off a shudder at its sleek, plastic, lifeless feel. The last thing I needed was for Mom to change her mind and insist on staying.
I must have faked it pretty well, because she shouldered her purse and headed for the door. “Just remember—try not to fight it, and if the card is overloading you somehow, eject. And don’t leave this room. Understand?”
She hesitated with one hand on the doorknob, as if giving me a chance to change my mind and invite her to stay. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even look at her, the sight of that familiar heart-shaped face, those pale-blue eyes, made me long for a life I could never have.
The gentle click of the door closing signaled her defeat.
I waited. Stared at the card and waited until I heard the rumble of the Tahoe’s engine fade. I pinched the card between my left thumb and ring finger, stifling the urge to fling it across the room. I held my breath and brought the blue square closer and closer to my wrist, until it was only a whisper away from touching, then almost choked on a burst of panic. How could I do this? How could I force this tiny slip of plastic into my flesh, when everything inside me screamed in revulsion?
I closed my eyes, steeled myself. I opened them a false heartbeat later and, before I could chicken out, bent my wrist back, exposed the tiny slot, and pushed.
The card slid inside smoothly, without a hint of resistance. Like my own body had betrayed me.
At first, all I felt was a light pressure, under the crease of my wrist.
Input: Accepted.
Then, in a lightninglike snap, the pressure erupted into a jolt that crackled up my arm.
When it reached my neck, I panicked. This couldn’t be happening.
The energy rushed my head like a swarm of glowing bees, and I pushed against it, desperate not to let the glowing mass in. The effort was dizzying, draining, and a second later, my legs buckled. I collapsed onto the bed, and that tiny distraction weakened my defenses just enough. With a final push, the energy buzzed into my brain.
I felt something give, felt a portal open. And then the data began flowing in.
Virus scan complete.
Copying data.
Scan metadata.
The words blinked behind my eyes, their eerie red flash echoed by my own dispassionate voice. The room swayed, and my fingers dug into the scratchy comforter as if that could stop the horror from unraveling inside my skull. But of course it didn’t work. Data continued streaming in as unstructured strands of letters and symbols, none of which made any sense.
All of this t
ook place in a flash, but I could see every detail. One by one, the nonsensical patterns rearranged themselves into sentences. Images. Information I could finally comprehend.
ATTN: General Holland
CLASSIFIED
Re: MILA PROJECT
Your request for more funds has been approved. As usual, all details of this transaction and the MILA project are to remain top secret, available to SMART Ops only. We’re both aware that some of the higher-ups are far too shortsighted to support this research, and I doubt the American public is ready either.
In the future, I expect you to clear any failures with me before terminating them. I’m being generous with diverting funds, but that won’t last forever.
Signed,
XXXX XXXXX
My head. I was opening documents in my head. The me I knew, the human me, couldn’t quite comprehend that these events were unfolding, but that obviously didn’t matter. Mom might have erased the memories of my true nature, but that didn’t mean my true nature stopped existing. My true android nature.
My horror mingled with a sick fascination, just as the information pulsed into my head at a higher speed. And then chaos erupted.
Suddenly, everything streamed ten, twenty times faster, blurring past in an unintelligible rush. Endless amounts of data, simultaneously demanding to be copied, scanned, analyzed, sequenced.
The faster the strands streamed, the more they jumbled together—photos spliced with random symbols, diagrams melding into meaningless arrangements of letters, all entwining into a giant mess. Like a ball of tangled yarn that kept growing and growing and growing, filling my head until I couldn’t see, couldn’t focus, until my consciousness dwindled to a single, panicked thought:
Get it out.
I dropped my head into my hands, trying to stop the irregular pulsing rhythm, the skull-cracking pressure of the expanding data web.
Overload.
The word glared like a big red confirmation. My human and android parts, in agreement for once.
I had to get this mess out somehow, force the information somewhere else. Someplace where I could see it correctly.
The command to view the data externally is “Project.”
I spoke the word inside my head.
Project.
The word fizzled and vanished while the pulsing grew stronger.
PROJECT!
This time, the word didn’t vanish. Instinctively I reached out to grasp it, fumbling my way through data streams and feeling unbelievably awkward. Right when I thought it was going to slip away, I wrapped my mind around it.
PROJECT.
Current sizzled. I felt a swoosh as data rushed in the opposite direction. In rapid succession, four green walls flickered into existence around me, enclosing me in a glowing square that sliced right through the bed and motel carpet.
Tiny blinking green icons filled them.
I shook my head but nothing changed. The green box remained, shimmering, its effervescence an unnerving contrast to the motel room’s dingy orange and brown. The icons remained in place as well.
Too much. After everything else tonight, this was just too much.
I jumped off the bed with a crash of battered springs, backed away from the surreal glow. The blinking green icons followed.
I fought off the image, willed it away. Tried to deny what my own eyes were showing me, an effort that weakened me, made my legs quiver as they threatened to collapse once more.
No escape. There was no escape. No escape except . . .
Eject.
At the same time I thought the word, I pushed hard on the slot beneath my wrist.
One blink, and my whole environment cleared: my mind, the room, everything.
Everything except my wrist. The upper half of the card poked through my skin like a chunk of blue shrapnel. I shuddered at the visual, yanked it out, and chucked the thing at the dresser. Mom would have to tell me about SMART Ops if she wanted me to know more, because I was never sticking that thing in my arm again.
I paced the room in a futile attempt to settle. But when I looked at my arms, my hands, my legs, I no longer saw the limbs of a normal teenager. All I pictured was a human-shaped container. A machine, built for holding sequences of raw data.
I brought my fist to my mouth. I couldn’t get caught up in this way of thinking. If I did, I’d lose whatever tenuous claim on humanity I had left. A teenager; I needed to believe that part of me was that normal teenager still. But how?
If only Hunter were here, with his lopsided bangs and lopsided smile and his flutter-inducing touch that said there was more to me than what they’d created in the lab. But he was back in Clearwater, and I was here. Still, his voice. If I could just hear his voice.
My gaze fell on the white rectangle Mom had dropped on the dresser. A moment later, the room key was clenched in my hand, and I was out the door.
Sixteen
I made sure the lock engaged before heading toward the pitted parking lot. Across the street, the twenty-four-hour sign on the All Nite mini-mart attached to the gas station blinked. The parking lot and streets were quiet, except for the freeway noise from three-quarters of a mile away. Still, I wondered if I was making a mistake. What if the men from SMART Ops had somehow found us again and were out here, watching me?
I hesitated, just as red words flared in my head.
Visual scan: Activated.
I froze next to a maroon sedan, trying to push away the images that zoomed through my mind. The models, makes, and colors of all the cars in the parking lot. Their license-plate numbers. Close-ups of the bedraggled garlic bushes that surrounded the perimeter, the lone oak tree. The viscous spill of brown liquid on the asphalt to the left of our room.
No human threat detected.
My hands shook, so I shoved them into my pockets and fought back the dizzying swell of disgust. I could hate the functions all I wanted, but I couldn’t argue that this one was useful. It would be a waste not to make the most of it.
But as I hurried across the parking lot and into the street, I realized I missed the darkness. While night vision was handy, having the dark ripped away from me without choice felt like just another piece of humanity had been stolen.
The red twenty-four-hour sign on the door blinked and emitted an intermittent buzz. I kept my head low while walking through the door but took in everything. Despite the ratty exterior, the inside of the store was spotless. Five aisles of snacks and sundries were neatly arranged in the middle of the small enclosure, with a gleaming silver soft- drink dispenser in the back left corner and a refrigerated section on the right. But I wasn’t here for food.
A middle-aged woman—DANA, her name tag read—flashed me a lipstick-stained smile before returning to a gossip magazine behind the counter. She didn’t seem especially interested in me. Unfortunately, the young male security guard filling his coffee cup in the back did. He smiled and waved a friendly greeting, but all I could think about was whether or not the gun I saw strapped to his waist was loaded.
Before I knew it, my eyes zeroed in on the weapon. Inside my head, a beep sounded. Then the image enlarged behind my eyes, rotated in a three-hundred-sixty-degree turn.
While the gun twirled, the red words declared:
Sig Sauer P229, 9mm.
I whirled from the guard, averting my face, pretending to inspect the candy section while grasping the shelf to steady myself.
My panicked gaze fell on a package of Starbursts. The sight reminded me of Hunter’s Jeep, of how he made me feel so very real and vulnerable. The simple memory of his hand, reached across the scattered candy to curve around mine, was enough. No matter how silly it sounded, those feelings I experienced with Hunter made me feel like anything was possible, like I didn’t have to turn into a machine.
Overcoming my inertia, I grabbed the candy and carried it to the counter. I could sense the security guard’s stare but didn’t look his way.
No need to worry yet. More than likely, they’d had a
high rate of crime in the area, and this was all just an exercise to prevent any shoplifting. But I didn’t know enough about the SMART Ops and how they operated to be one hundred percent comfortable with that assessment. Plus any attention at this point was bad.
I caught the slightest sounds he made, even over the pop song that played a way-too-jaunty tune. The slight creak of his knee when he shifted his weight. A raspy noise, like he was scratching the stubble on his chin.
I needed to get out of here. Now.
“Can I have one of those precharged disposable cell phones, too?” I said in a low voice, pointing to the display behind the cashier’s bushy brown hair.
The woman clicked her tongue. “Oh, no, hon, did your smartphone die? Everyone thinks they’re so amazing, but give me something basic and reliable any day.”
I let my hair shield my face and gave a small smile, but didn’t comment. The less memorable our interaction, the better. The register beeped. After I paid, I thanked her and scooped up the plastic bag to leave. The security guard’s gaze rested on me from ten feet away.
As I walked toward the door, I just knew the security guard would follow.
I entered the deserted night, the distant rush of cars and the hum of the neon sign the only noise. The word VACANCY across the street glowed like a beacon, but I ignored it and made a right turn instead. Toward the empty stretch of road ahead. If this guy wanted to follow me, I wasn’t about to lead him to Mom.
One, two, three more steps down the cracked sidewalk. He followed. Maybe he was just coming outside for a smoke. Maybe—
I whirled just as his hand reached to tap me on the shoulder.
“Oh!” he said, jumping back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was—I was just wondering . . .”
My fingers tightened on the plastic bag reflexively.
“. . . if you’re from around here, maybe you’d like to go grab a cup of coffee sometime?”
I blinked. A cup of coffee? This guy was asking me on a date? My fingers relaxed at the same time I felt warmth spread through my cheeks.
