MILA 2.0

by Debra Driza

  His hand lifted.

  I barely saw the Taser before the shock hit.

  Electricity exploded through my body. My torso, my limbs, everything erupted into convulsions. A barrage—wavering images—patches of black. My thoughts—slipping—

  And then I ———————————————————————————————

  Thirty-Five

  My eyes jerked open like someone had flipped a switch. The black void shifted into shrill static.

  First just that relentless buzz, filling my head. Then an occasional crackle as lights flashed behind my closed eyes.

  Reboot. The word flickered red through the static. A familiar voice—mine?—echoed the word, but it sounded distant. Distorted.

  A warm substance melded against every curve of my body. Locking me in place. The sensation sent an image flashing through my head, also distorted, too distorted to decipher.

  I pushed through the static, now deadened to a hum, to open my eyes. That tiny motion sent shock waves pulsing through my head. One, five, twenty times.

  The moment they ceased, panic set in. Those shock waves, I knew what they were—zaps of residual electricity trapped inside me.

  And now I knew where I was.

  The chamber, from earlier. The special machine Lucas had used to repair my injuries.

  The special machine Holland now planned to use to reprogram me into Three.

  Reprogram.

  Within my heartless body, a pulse slammed through my ears. No endocrine system to speak of, and yet adrenaline surged, demanding that my equally nonexistent muscles contract and propel me out of here. No lungs and yet mine were thick, heavy, too solid to suck down air.

  I fought off the panic, tried to banish it with logic. It wasn’t real. None of what I was feeling was real.

  A coldness originated in my core and spread outward, gathering strength as it poured through layer after layer, until it culminated in an icy sheet across my skin.

  I had to stop this. I had to stop this and assess.

  My surroundings. I’d focus on my surroundings. Search for a clue as to how I could free myself from this seemingly inescapable barrier. I scanned the area and saw nothing.

  No motion detected.

  Despite the hum of machines, this room was devoid of life. Free of human sounds. Empty.

  Was that how I’d feel once the procedure had been performed? A permanent silence inside me, where thoughts and feelings used to rush around like traffic on a busy street?

  Maybe it would be peaceful. Maybe not. I’d never know for sure, because the current version of me would cease to exist.

  No. No!

  I thrashed against the plastic, pushed with every bit of my power. The material remained resistant, didn’t yield even a fraction of a millimeter.

  Hopelessness sucked the energy out of me. According to Lucas, the only way out was via reprogramming the machine. An action that occurred from outside my impenetrable enclosure.

  Lucas. Lucas had Tasered me.

  As if the bitter taste of betrayal had summoned him, his voice echoed in my ears.

  Mila.

  My gaze darted around the room, but he wasn’t there. No one was.

  That’s when I realized his voice really was directly in my ears, like during the first test.

  And despite his betrayal, I couldn’t help the desperate whisper that escaped my lips. “Lucas?”

  Blink twice if you can hear me.

  I blinked.

  His relieved sigh rustled through my ears.

  I’m sorry about the Taser—I had to make sure Holland wouldn’t suspect me. We have to be quick. I used a minimal setting—enough to make you black out for Holland’s benefit, but not enough to mess up your functions for long. They should all be working soon, if not already. I’m going to get you and Dr. Laurent out of here. But you need to do what I say. Can you do that?

  Lucas was going to help me and Mom? Another blink.

  You’re going to have to make it look like a real escape. I’m going to be your hostage.

  Hostage? Something inside me rebelled, even as I realized the necessity of his words. Using Lucas as a hostage was the only way to ensure he didn’t get caught for helping us.

  Blink.

  First thing: you need to free yourself from the machine. If I help, they’ll be able to track my security code on the door. I don’t think they’re monitoring me, though. Not yet.

  Hopeless. This was totally hopeless. Didn’t Lucas realize that if I could free myself from this plastic cage, I would have by now?

  But Lucas must have a potential solution to my im-prisonment in mind. He was too methodical to bring it up otherwise. But what?

  Um . . .

  His reticence, especially given the urgency of the matter, didn’t bode well. What was I missing?

  There was no way to break out, no way to solicit help from the outside. No, I had to make this thing open from the inside. I shoved against the walls. Nothing. The material was too strong.

  Counterpressure: 2000 lbs. per square inch.

  Way too strong.

  Despair erupted in my mind, overpowering my logic, hope, everything. There was no escape if Lucas couldn’t get in and I couldn’t get out. No escape.

  No escape. But wait . . . Lucas knew that. He knew the parameters of the machine better than I did. He couldn’t expect me to break through physically, which meant . . . I had to break through mentally.

  Lucas confirmed my conclusion a moment later.

  You’re going to have to communicate with the machine.

  The acrylic tube absorbed the earthquake of tremors that erupted inside me.

  Communicate with the machine. On a machine-to-machine level. Like we were one and the same.

  A silent scream built in my head. No escape meant Holland cracking open my skull, extracting my brain, and replacing it with a new one, turning me into an exact replica of Three. A true machine. And now Lucas was telling me that to escape, I’d have to turn into a machine anyway.

  You already have the permissions—I enabled them the first time you went in, just in case. You need to open your ports.

  Open my ports—he made it sound so easy.

  I didn’t even know what that meant exactly.

  Still, I had to try.

  I scurried through my mind, searching for the command until I found it.

  Open ports.

  At first I felt nothing. Not a hint of electricity, nor of a green glimmer. It was more gradual. Like a slowly building roar that wasn’t there one second and was the next. A roar that slithered into me and vice versa. A presence all around me, one that I could reach out and touch. Only I didn’t have to move my hands.

  I’d been terrified it would feel stark, empty. Desolate. Like a wasteland. It didn’t. While the presence wasn’t quite alive, it didn’t really feel dead, either. More like an all-encompassing energy.

  The code glimmered into being—inside my head or not, I wasn’t sure at this point. But it was everywhere. An endless stream of letters, symbols, numbers.

  For once, I knew exactly what to do. I reached out tentatively with my mind, feeling the code sifting by like sand pouring between fingers. From the stream, the characters slowly shifted to re-create my command.

  Override lock.

  A hesitation; a shimmer in my head. And then a door slammed shut.

  Verify user.

  Frustration roared through me like a massive wave. I couldn’t verify the user, because I wasn’t supposed to be there. If only I could talk to Lucas. But no. Lucas’s permissions had gotten me a connection to the machine in the first place. The rest I had to figure out on my own.

  Determination uncoiled within me, spreading and spreading until every last cell burned with conviction. No matter how big my attempts to hide from my true nature, it still existed. I was a machine, and a powerful one.

  This inferior specimen would not deny me.

  This time the command
burst from me like an explosion.

  Override lock!

  A minuscule hesitation, one that cracked my confidence. And then I felt a shift in the energy, a change in the roar. The door whooshed open.

  Five seconds later, I was free.

  By the time I got to the door, forcing the code to cede to my demands was simple. A quick override, and the door beeped.

  Metal parted, and I saw Lucas. Standing with his hands in his hair, his hazel eyes wide and stunned. He didn’t talk, just stared in that dazed manner before reaching into his pocket to pull out the Taser and push it into my hand.

  Lucas started loping down the corridor, but I froze, my eyes on the video camera at the end of the hall.

  He shook his head. “I’ve got them on a loop for now, but we have to hurry. It won’t take the men on security duty that long to figure it out.”

  My fingers curled around the Taser as I followed Lucas. I didn’t hear any guards, but even a single mistake at this juncture would mean show over.

  Ten feet ahead, another corridor bisected our path. Lucas veered toward the left, and I followed. Flattening himself to the wall, he inched his way toward the opening.

  “Do you hear anything?” he whispered.

  I closed my eyes, focused. From the opposite direction I heard the murmur of voices, a man and a woman. Then canned laughter. A TV, probably from the guards’ station.

  Ahead of us . . . I heard nothing. Just the faint buzz of the lights and the hiss-and-sigh rhythm of Lucas’s breathing.

  “Clear.”

  Despite my reassurances, he poked his head around the corner and looked both ways before hurrying down the path to the left. This hall was narrower than the last, and darker, with only tiny dots of emergency lighting flickering along the wall. My vision brightened instantly, but Lucas would have to manage on familiarity.

  He pulled up short in front of a narrow gray door on the left and began the DNA pass-code ritual.

  I rushed to the door, stood so close that my nose almost touched the smooth surface, curled my fingers into my legs to resist the urge to try to rip it open myself. Mom’s room, this had to be Mom’s room.

  Every tenth of a second Lucas took to key in his numbers felt like torture. Finally the beep sounded, followed by the click. I shoved my way inside before the door had opened even halfway, its unhurried glide much too slow.

  I rushed straight for the unmoving figure on the bed. “Mom?” I whispered.

  In a flash, Mom rolled away from the wall and sat up. “Mila?” She fumbled for the glasses on the tiny, rickety table.

  “Yes.”

  She bolted to her feet. In the next instant, my face was mashed against Mom’s shoulder as she yanked me into a hug, squeezing with every bit of strength her thin arms could muster.

  I allowed myself one, two, three seconds to bask in her warmth, in the flash flood of relief that made me sway. She was still whole. Alive, and exactly how I remembered her.

  After one more brief squeeze, I gently untangled myself. “Save your strength.”

  I stepped to the side, revealing Lucas, who stood guard at the door. “Wait, what’s going on?” she said.

  “Lucas is helping us get out of here. Now.”

  Surprise widened her eyes. “I don’t understand, how—” She shook her head, as if in a daze. “Can we do it?”

  “We’re out of options.”

  As usual, Mom’s uncanny power to maintain calm under extraordinary circumstances amazed me. “Right. Let’s go.”

  She swept for the door, leaving me to follow. “The south halls? No one uses those much.”

  Lucas nodded. “That was my plan,” he said, and he turned to lead the way.

  But not before I saw Mom grab his upper arm and lean in close to his ear. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  And not before I caught the red bloom in his cheeks.

  Then Mom darted down the hall and Lucas loped after her. I curled my fingers around the Taser and followed.

  We headed in a direction opposite the way we’d come, and eventually the hall ended in a left turn. We were only three steps into it before Lucas cursed softly.

  “What?”

  He nodded up at the far corner. “The cameras, they’re moving. Either the loop stopped functioning, or . . . they figured it out.”

  We all froze, watching the camera make its sweep up our hall and then down the adjacent hall.

  “So they’ve seen us?”

  Lucas shook his head. “Not necessarily. It just depends how closely someone is monitoring that particular camera at the moment. The Vita Obscura mole has made them more vigilant than ever, but if we hurry, we just might make it. . . .”

  We picked up our pace, jogging down the halls at just short of a run, trying to balance the need for stealth with the need for speed. Lucas’s bad foot was more noticeable now, but he never once mentioned it.

  Mom led the way as we made another left turn, followed by a quick right. “This pops out right near the guards’ station. If they’re distracted by the monitors, we may be able to sneak by.”

  As I was nodding my agreement, a whir of overhead motion caught my eye. The camera. It had shifted to the left, so that the circular lens now pointed directly at us.

  I waited a heartbeat, to see if the camera would continue moving on its regular sweeping path, but it didn’t. It stayed steady and focused, and for a split second, it was almost like I could feel Holland’s cold gray eyes on me.

  “Run!” I said, and Mom and Lucas didn’t hesitate. Still, we made it only a few steps before the siren screamed overhead.

  Thirty-Six

  With our plan to sneak out in shambles, the three of us bolted down the hall, heading right toward the newly alerted guards.

  Mom and I kept our pace even with Lucas’s. He was surprisingly swift, but I could tell the speed was uncomfortable, based on his heightened limp. Still, he didn’t complain, and I stayed one step behind him, knowing I needed to make this look real, because I was sure our entire run was being recorded. I didn’t say anything. I just shoved the Taser into the small of his back and urged him forward.

  We burst into the wide corridor that led to the car bay with Lucas just a step ahead of me, the guards’ station directly on our right. Two guards gestured wildly with raised guns.

  “Behind me,” I hissed to Mom. Pushing to my tiptoes, I flung my right arm around Lucas’s throat. The Taser now indented the skin just over his jugular.

  “BACK OFF!” I shouted at the guards. Both had dropped into a shooting stance, trying to aim at me. “Back off or I fry him!”

  The taller guard’s gaze flicked to his partner. “We’re under orders.” His voice wavered, but he didn’t lower the gun.

  A burst of completely inappropriate laughter rushed up my throat, one that turned into a small, choked cry. Orders. Of course. Holland didn’t care what kind of casualties he incurred, so long as it prevented Mom and me from escaping. So much for his heartfelt speech about saving lives.

  I felt Lucas tense under my arm, felt his pulse race. “Please,” Lucas said. “She’ll do it, I know she will.”

  I flinched. After that second test, I didn’t know if he was acting or if he actually believed I’d shock him.

  The guards shifted uneasily but held their ground.

  Any minute more soldiers would appear. Even now, I heard a set of booted feet pounding concrete in the distance. Time was running out.

  Mom’s voice rang out behind me. “So you’re going to shoot a hostage in cold blood?” she said, jabbing me in the back. Taking her hint, I urged Lucas forward. The footsteps grew louder.

  “You realize bullets won’t stop her, right?” Mom continued. “If you shoot, she’ll take both of you down. Didn’t you hear what she did to Holland?”

  I think the serene Three-like smile I summoned to my lips was what did it—that smile made them believe. They lowered their guns.

  Good thing they couldn’t feel the tremor in my Taser hand, o
r know how wrong it felt to hold it to Lucas’s neck. They had no idea that I’d never, ever let anyone force me to kill. Or torture someone again, just to test my reactions. I wouldn’t become a monster.

  I wouldn’t become a Holland.

  I pushed Lucas forward again. One step, two steps. That’s as far as we made it before the shorter guard uncovered the weakness in our plan. The moment he had a clear shot, he raised his gun and aimed at Mom. “Let him go or I shoot Dr. Laurent.”

  Lucas and I froze in unison. The guard’s cheeks were pale, and a sweat droplet trickled down his cheek. Yet his gun hand was all too steady.

  He would do it. He would pull the trigger and shoot, and everything up to this point would be for nothing.

  “My other side, now!”

  It all happened at once. Mom slid to my left and the gun exploded. Lucas jerked backward into my chest.

  I looked down, stunned at the blood just starting to stream from his left thigh.

  His good leg.

  Guilt cracked me like a lightning bolt.

  “Just go,” Lucas rasped through gritted teeth.

  But we couldn’t. As the tall guard screamed at his partner, the pounding behind us closed in. I turned my head, and what I saw made my remaining confidence crumble. Three raced toward us—less than twenty feet away, and gaining rapidly.

  “Two, stop Two!” From way off in the distance, Holland’s order barreled down the hallway.

  Ahead of me the steel door gleamed, marking our path to freedom; so close but not close enough. We weren’t going to make it in time.

  “Get him to the door—hurry,” I snapped as I transferred Lucas’s weight to Mom. I cut her off when she opened her mouth to argue. “Do it!”

  While Lucas draped his arm around Mom’s neck and they stumbled forward, I focused on the locking mechanism, linked with the computer, and overrode the code. The door beeped and was starting to slide open when I whirled and ran straight at Three.

  The original two guards reached me first. I dropped to the floor, barely dodging the bullet that whizzed over my head. Faster than they could aim again, I rolled, pulled back the Taser, and wham! smashed the device against the shorter guard’s knee.