MILA 2.0

by Debra Driza

  He crashed sideways into the taller guard, his scream drowning out the clatter of his gun striking the ground. Before the second guard could steady himself, I jumped to my feet, reared back with my right hand, and punched him hard in the gut.

  When he doubled over, my knee was there to meet his nose.

  I turned in time to watch Three sprint past without even glancing at me, her eyes trained on someone else.

  Mom.

  No, oh no. I sprang after her, the chill of desperation pumping through my limbs. Ahead, Lucas and Mom were just now hobbling through the open doorway, but Three was gaining. My plan had been to Taser Three before diving through the door and locking it behind us, but fighting the guards had wasted valuable time.

  Even though I knew I’d never cover the distance in time, I linked to the computer and commanded the door to close. It was the only way to keep Mom safe.

  As I raced after Three, I had a horror-stricken moment when I thought she’d fly through the door before it closed, leaving me stranded on the wrong side, with no way to help.

  Close, please close.

  I caught a glimpse of Mom’s face, her expression frozen and her gaze glued to Three like she was staring down the barrel of a gun. Three flung her hand toward the narrow opening, her fingertips reaching, reaching, and oh god, if she got them inside, she might pry it open and then—

  Three’s hand hit metal as the doors clicked shut.

  With her back still to me, I raced the remaining distance between us and lifted the Taser. She whirled, a blur of motion and whipping brown hair. Her fist knocked my hand and the Taser went flying. The next instant, so did I—against the steel wall.

  My head cracked hard. Her fist flew at me and I feinted right. When her knuckles slammed metal, I grabbed her outstretched arm with both hands, yanked it down onto my knee. The crunch reverberated up both of my hands.

  “You . . . you damaged my elbow joint!” Her green eyes widened and then narrowed. Was Three actually angry?

  No time to wonder, because her booted foot lashed out and hit me square in the chest with devastating force. I flew back until I crashed against the far wall.

  Impact: 1200 lbs. per square inch.

  At least some of my functions were returning.

  The thudding from Holland and the soldiers drew closer now. From my position on the floor they looked bigger, more menacing. And they’d be on us in a manner of seconds. Last chance.

  My gaze caught on the Taser, several feet away. Three saw it at exactly the same time. We both dived, hands outstretched, only I was quicker. I grabbed it and fumbled for the button. Her fingers closed around the edge right as the prongs shot out.

  I shuddered when her entire body spasmed. And then she collapsed to the floor, and I vaulted over her while simultaneously ordering the door to open.

  I slipped past and turned to face the oncoming soldiers. “Stay down!” I hissed at Mom and Lucas. They were too far back to follow, but I didn’t trust Holland not to take back his order to hold fire. Not now—not when his prize experiment was escaping once again.

  “Mila, the other door,” Mom said. Without turning my head, I ordered the computer to open the door leading to the car bay. At that same time, the lights began to flicker.

  A smooth computerized voice followed. “Emergency override activated. All locks will be disengaged in thirty seconds.”

  Which meant no matter what I did, soldiers would be pouring through these doors way too soon. We were safe for the moment, though. But as the door leading into the compound slid shut, I saw something that made terror clutch me with an unyielding grip. Through the narrowing gap, I saw Three move her legs before slowly rising.

  I turned away, shaking. How was Three’s quick recovery possible? Was that another of her so-called improvements—resistance to electrical shock? Not that the how or why mattered. No, the only thing I needed to know was—she was coming.

  We burst into the car bay. I ran for the black Suburban nearest the door and shoved at the trunk.

  It wouldn’t budge. Had I overestimated my android strength? The shouts inside the door drew closer.

  Come on. If ever I needed an android ability to step up to the plate, now was the time.

  I shoved harder. Like a miracle, the car groaned; the trunk began to swing around. Just as the guards started to open the door, I gave a final push, and the side of the car smacked right up against it.

  Locked in, for the moment. Until they exited a different door.

  I ran back to Mom to help. “Where’s your car?” I yelled to Lucas, for the camera’s benefit. Softly, I whispered, “Are you okay?” But of course he wasn’t okay. His stride grew weaker with every step, and more of his weight sagged against me, until I was sure that I was the only thing holding him upright.

  “F-fine,” he whispered back, but the hitch in his voice tore at me. I should stop and get him help. This wasn’t right. “Don’t . . . you dare stop now,” he continued, as if reading my mind. He grappled through his pocket and pulled out the keys.

  “The Camaro,” he said, pointing past a fleet of Suburbans to a classic car to our left, toward the exit ramp.

  Mom raced around to his other side, and with her assistance, I hauled Lucas toward the car.

  “We have to bind his leg,” I said. Mom paused with her hand on the door, looking at my flannel shirt.

  Without a word, I ripped it off and tossed it to her. “Here,” I said with barely a ripple of regret. Lucas needed it far more than I did.

  I lifted him and placed him on the hood of the Ford truck parked next to the Camaro. When I stepped aside to let Mom bind his leg, I saw the blood streaming from it, darkening his gray slacks like he’d waded in a pool.

  “Don’t bother,” he whispered. “They’ll fix me in a second anyway.”

  I shook my head in response, my throat too tight to speak—while Mom finished tying the shirt around the wound. “That should stanch the bleeding for a few minutes, until help gets here.”

  Mom wrenched open the driver’s side door while I stared at Lucas’s face, his cheeks pinched in pain. I couldn’t leave him like that.

  “Mila, come on!” Mom yelled.

  “Wait,” Lucas panted. Then he swallowed hard and said, “For the record, I think you make an excellent human.”

  And then his eyes glazed over in a haze of pain.

  My throat clogged. Even now, he was thinking of me. I wished there was time to do more. To thank him for everything. The “Sorry” I mouthed wasn’t close to adequate. Then my hand snaked out, and I jabbed him right in the sensitive spot in the neck. I caught him under the armpits when he went limp and pushed his unconscious body onto the hood.

  At least I could spare him the pain until help arrived.

  “Mila, hurry!”

  With one last wince at Lucas’s motionless form, I jumped into the driver’s seat and reversed us out of our spot.

  I slammed my foot on the gas, and the rev of the engine competed with the siren’s continuous screech. I searched the rearview mirror one last time for Lucas. Instead, I saw the Suburban I’d used as a barrier shudder before slowly moving away from the door.

  The top of Three’s head emerged just as we rounded the first turn.

  Thirty-Seven

  We raced through one, two, three rotations of the parking garage, finally getting to the security gate where we’d entered. And just in time.

  From down below us, I heard the slam of car doors. They were coming.

  Three was coming.

  An armed guard blocked our way, standing with his gun aimed at our windshield.

  “Duck!” I yelled, swerving wide to the left and pumping the gas. The Camaro surged for the bar that blocked the entrance, taking a hard smack that cracked the windshield. The bar shattered off at the base. A gunshot fired, but it plunked against metal.

  The impact reverberated through the car, but I didn’t stop. We pushed on through and revved our way up and out, into another parking
garage.

  A few turns later we were in fresh night air. Just outside the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center.

  The Camaro’s tires caught air, and Mom and I bounced in our seats as we hit the street hard. Her hand latched onto the back of my seat for support, her knuckles taut under the skin. Her head bowed and I saw her lips moving, but no sound came out.

  Mom? Praying?

  That wreaked havoc on my confidence, so I focused on the road. I followed the curve left, glancing in my rearview. No one behind us yet, but I was sure that would change in a matter of seconds. And I had no idea where I was going. But I could fix that now that we weren’t locked away underground.

  GPS.

  A light burst behind my eyes, followed by a low buzz.

  GPS.

  Nothing.

  Lucas’s voice replayed.

  “. . . your functions shouldn’t be out for long.”

  All except for my stupid GPS . . . the one I needed the most right about now.

  “My GPS is out . . . ideas?” I said. Of course, Lucas just had to have a classic car that way predated that technology.

  My eye caught on the long, curved line in the windshield. Oh, god, Lucas was going to kill me.

  “Left at that main street ahead, Rock Creek Parkway,” Mom said. Thankfully her voice was steady as ever.

  I accelerated the Camaro hard through the curve, pumping the clutch and downshifting before we hit the intersection. Holland’s men would be after us any second now.

  As we headed south on Rock Creek Parkway, I glanced out the driver’s side window, back down the street we’d used to exit the Kennedy Center.

  In the distance, behind the bushes, Suburban-level headlights pulled onto the street from the parking garage exit.

  I pressed harder on the gas pedal.

  We’d never lose them on the highway. The roadblock probability was way too high.

  Mom saw them coming in the sideview, too, and said exactly what I was thinking. “City.”

  I edged the speedometer up higher and higher as we raced down the road, trying to put distance between us and the slower Suburbans while I had the chance.

  Only a few yards over on our right, the Potomac glowed a dark greenish black under the moonlight. Mom glanced over her shoulder.

  Her hand flew to her glasses.

  “How many?”

  “It’s pretty far back, but I think—two. Three, maybe.”

  As we went under an overpass, I swerved past a Dodge Neon, noticed an open stretch was ahead of us, and chanced a quick look in the rearview.

  My heart seized. Three Suburbans, not nearly as far back as I’d like.

  One driven by Holland, another—by Three.

  “Stay left,” Mom commanded when the road split. “Then right up ahead.”

  I cursed under my breath, a word I knew would get me grounded if we survived this night, and then cursed again, in my head. After fighting against my special functions time and time again, right now I felt the absence of my GPS sharply. Sure, we had Mom to navigate, but Three had a computerized navigational system in her head.

  “I heard that.”

  “You can’t get mad—it’s my evolution talking,” I said, parroting the idea she’d brought up at the airport.

  Her hand squeezed my right arm. Hard. “It’s no joke, Mila. Answer me this. Do you remember anything about the compound from before, anything at all?”

  I swerved around a car, wondering why we had to talk about this now. But I knew Mom better than to argue. I never won against her stubborn streak. “A little. I remembered the white door into the lab. And Mila One getting tested.”

  Mom’s grip tightened. “I erased your memories from here, Mila—all of them,” she said, with a peculiar breathlessness.

  “You must have missed some.”

  Mom’s blond hair flew as she shook her head. “No. I erased all of it, Mila—I’m sure. Which means you managed to store those memories on your own. That’s what evolving means. You’re becoming more human every day . . . even if you don’t realize it. Whatever you do, don’t forget that.”

  “Fine. And you can tell me all about it—later.” Right now, I was a little busy. Besides, her telling me now . . . it almost sounded like she expected something bad to happen to her.

  A shiver passed over me, but I shook it off.

  I wouldn’t think about what would happen if they caught us.

  I wouldn’t.

  My chest heaved and I gripped the steering wheel harder.

  “Once we pass the Lincoln Memorial, veer east toward the Kutz Bridge,” she said.

  “I don’t know where the Kutz Bridge is!”

  “Just veer east, then.”

  Amid a cacophony of car horns, I slid onto a street called Independence, the Kutz Bridge looming in the distance. The Suburbans had fallen back, but they were still there. Well, only two of them.

  Where the hell had the third one gone?

  Through the windshield I caught the glitter of lights reflecting off water. “What are we crossing?”

  “The Tidal Basin.”

  We hit the three-lane, one-way bridge at 105 miles per hour. I braked sharply as a red Lexus pulled in front of me, yanking the wheel hard to the right. Then frantically back to the left to avoid smashing into the back of a limo.

  We flew off the Kutz Bridge, back onto Independence.

  I headed east, hoping to speed away from them around twists and turns. Mom dug through the glove box as a stoplight turned red in front of us and cross traffic began to flow.

  “Lucas, you’re a genius,” she breathed when she pulled a white envelope out and peered inside.

  “What?” I said, accelerating. A taxi flew by in front of us, and I whipped the wheel to the right, skimming by its bumper with only a few inches to spare. Horns blared behind us, brakes squealed. We kept right on going.

  “He left us money. Eight hundred dollars.”

  Hopefully we’d live long enough to need it.

  I tore my gaze off the road for a quick glimpse in the rearview mirror. My hands ground into the wheel. One of the Suburbans was just a few car lengths back.

  Bad enough, and then the third Suburban pulled onto our street, a block ahead of us. Heading our way.

  “Turn left!” Mom said as we were almost upon the intersection.

  A quick yank of the wheel, a tap of the brakes, and we were sliding into a left turn. Right into the path of an oncoming pickup truck.

  The headlights blinded me with their brightness. My hands froze as my body braced itself for impact. Then I snapped out of it and accelerated even harder. Oh, god, it was going to be close.

  Its brakes squealed, its loud horn blared. By some miracle, we squeezed past it. Clear until the truck clipped our rear bumper.

  The Camaro tried to lunge right, but I held on tight, refusing to let it spin and send us crashing into the truck’s wheels. We straightened and rushed down the side street, listening to the brakes and crashes that piled up behind us.

  Mom craned her head over her shoulder and winced. “That SUV’s out of the picture—they tipped.”

  Two more to go. And I’d barely gotten us through that one.

  The two remaining Suburbans found us again two streets over, only one block behind. Holland and Three.

  Our car was faster, but in these kinds of streets that wasn’t much of an advantage, if any. Plus they both had navigation.

  But I’d defeated Three before.

  And then it hit me. I’d beaten her with a completely crazy, humanlike move. Maybe I could do it again. We might look identical, but despite my fears, we weren’t the same, not underneath that superficial outer layer. Holland might see my emotions as a flaw, and maybe they were—at least in terms of being a perfect soldier or spy. But I didn’t want to be either of those things. I just wanted to be a girl.

  And according to Lucas, I was a girl capable of ingenuity, a girl capable of defying logic if the situation warranted it—somethin
g the more rigidly obedient Three would never understand.

  I pulled a sharp right at the next intersection, the Suburbans following way too close behind. The light ahead of us had just hit yellow, and the two cars in front of us slowed. Trapped. I swerved into the southbound lane and zoomed past them going the wrong way, racing under the light as it flashed red.

  “Mila, what are you doing?” Mom said. With my peripheral vision, I saw her left hand latch onto the side of the seat, her right one braced against the passenger door.

  “I have a plan,” I said, my steady voice contradicted by my squeeze-squeeze-squeeze grip on the steering wheel.

  A moment later, I cut back onto eastbound Independence, except we were heading westbound. Straight into the oncoming traffic.

  Turn around. Collision likely.

  Except I couldn’t turn around. That was the whole point.

  I braced myself as the first blaze of headlights collided with ours. I couldn’t believe I was doing this, when every impulse screamed bloody murder and insisted that I turn the Camaro around, that this was the stupidest plan ever. But it also happened to be the only plan we had. So I clenched my jaw and clung tightly to the wheel, and tried to ignore the logical part of me that yelled we were going to crash and burn in a horrific and incredibly literal way.

  A Hyundai sedan blared its horn and swerved out of our lane. The Suburbans still followed, but fell farther behind as the drivers struggled to navigate the heavy trucks. I eased my foot off the gas, just a little. Timing here was crucial to give this plan a chance in hell of working.

  I tried to swallow, even though it felt like my heart had lodged in my throat.

  Timing, and one gigantic helping of luck.

  Ahead of us, I saw the land on either side of the road fall away, air taking its place with dark water lapping below. With only a ten-car-length lead to spare, we hurtled back over the Kutz Bridge.

  Head on into the sea of oncoming cars.

  Car horns blared from all sides in a discordant symphony as I gunned the Camaro.

  Collision imminent. Veer right.

  I’d barely swerved that way when another command popped into my head.

  Collision imminent. Veer left.