The Bionics

by Alicia Michaels

Twenty-one

  Gage Bronson and Blythe Sol

  Rejects Underground Hideout

  Washington D.C.

  August 18, 4010

  8:00 pm

  By the time Blythe returns, I’ve been at it for hours and have a stack of sketches at my side. When the door opens and she appears, the pencil drops from my fingers and I can feel the toll my long session has taken on my hand and wrist. I flex my fingers, wincing as I realize that I’d completely lost myself in my art as a way of outrunning the demons nipping at my heels and reminding me of things I’d rather forget. Like Tamryn, who I know is somewhere in this underground hole with me, close enough for me to have heard her laugh again.

  “Hey,” she says, holding her bionic arm up and flexing the fingers. “Good as new.”

  I nod and smile. “I’m glad.”

  “You should see the shop,” she says as she comes into the room and closes the door before taking the seat on the other side of the table. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “They show you a selection of retractable knives for your arm?” I ask sarcastically.

  Blythe smiles. “Knives, guns, grenade launchers… you name it. I could turn myself into a one-woman army if I wanted to.” Her smile fades and she sighs. “That’s what scares me about these people. They’re outfitting themselves for war, Gage. Not everyone out there thinks like the President does. Most are just scared to stand up to the government. They don’t deserve the wrath of the Rejects.”

  “We’ll stop them,” I say, trying to sound reassuring. Really, I’m not sure that we can. “The Resistance is large and growing every day. We can do it.”

  “Not if the Professor doesn’t stand down on his whole ‘peaceful revolution’ bit. It’s not helping us to keep running every time things get hairy.”

  She has a point. “So tell him what you saw today. He has to believe you; this has been brewing for a long time.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll show him. I snapped a few pictures while I was in there. I don’t think they noticed.” At my confused look, she points to her left eye and smiles.

  “Damn, is there anything that eye can’t do?”

  She shoots me a knowing glance. “It can’t show me what you’re thinking,” she says, her voice low. “Or why you had such a strong reaction to that girl out there earlier. When you saw her, your heart rate spiked like crazy and your breathing sped up. And now you’re drawing pictures of her.”

  I follow her gaze down to the sketch on top of my stack, a close up of Tamryn’s face split down the middle by a jagged line. On one side of that line is the Tamryn I remember, the fresh-faced, dewy, wide-eyed innocent. On the other is the black eye-shadow wearing, titanium leg-baring girl with dark streaks in her hair and tortured eyes. The difference is startling. I look back up at Blythe and see uncertainty in her expression.

  “I know I don’t have a right to ask when… I mean, there’s Dax and all but…” She trails off and looks down. I can’t help but smile.

  She’s jealous.

  “Hey,” I say, reaching for her hand. “Of course you have a right to ask. I know all about you and Dax, so it’s unfair to leave you in the dark about Tamryn.”

  She nods and takes a deep breath. I guess she’s bracing herself to hear that Tamryn is a long lost wife or that I’m still in love with her. I tell her the God’s honest truth—the whole truth—for the first time since we met.

  “Tamryn and I were high school sweethearts,” I begin. “We grew up together and one day, it just clicked. Everyone—our family and friends—just knew we would get married someday. After I went to law school, of course. It was always expected for me to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  I shrug. “It was, but it wasn’t. I mean, I cared about Tamryn but our relationship was practical and comfortable. There wasn’t a lot of heat or passion. I never wanted her the way…” I trail off and Blythe’s sharp intake of breath tells me she knows what I was about to say. So I just lay it out there. My eyes meet hers and even though my gaze is not my own right now, I know she can see past it to what lies inside. She believes me, I know she does, when I say, “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything or anyone as badly as I want you.”

  She swallows and I can hear it in the silence of the room. Her hands shake as she folds them on the table. She remains silent but I can see the war happening in her mind. Me versus Dax. The stranger versus the best friend. The spontaneous choice versus the expected, safe choice. This can’t be easy for her.

  “Anyway, things changed after the blasts.”

  And then I tell her all of it. About Tamryn getting hurt and about me talking her into registering for the Healing Hands initiative. I tell her about my guilt when Tamryn cried to me about feeling like a freak. I tell her about losing Tamryn when the government started targeting Bionics. I tell her everything I can without revealing the one final truth I’m not ready for her to know yet. I know if she finds out—learns the one last thing I am withholding—it will change everything and she will hate me. When I’m done, she is staring at the drawing of Tamryn silently, her face impassive. Not for the first time since we met, I find myself wondering just what she’s thinking. Finally, she looks up at me.

  “It’s not your fault, what happened to her.” Her statement catches me off guard. “That’s what this picture is about, right?” she asks when I don’t respond. “I’m not an artsy person, but I can see your perception here. Both sides of Tamryn; who she was and who she’s become. The line down the middle represents you.”

  I smile. “Pretty close. The line down the middle of her face isn’t just me. It’s everything… everything that’s happened to her, to all of us. Hey, you’re artsier than you think—most people don’t have an eye like yours.”

  She shrugs. “Just telling you what I see.” She continues flipping through them and I clear my throat as she stops on the last one, which is actually the first thing I drew when I picked up the pencils. It’s a picture of her in profile, the swell of her lips a beautiful temptation on a perfectly sculpted face. The shading of her cheekbones and brow are damn near perfect. The eye is void of all emotion because it is the bionic one I’ve drawn and, like the sketch of Agata I made not too long ago, it showcases the machinery inside of her head. Blythe traces the wires I’ve drawn running through her head and latching on to her optic nerve. She smiles. “This is amazing, Gage.” She then fingers the symbol I’ve drawn on the corner of the page and frowns. “What’s this?”

  “I’m not sure, really,” I say honestly as I glance at the little cog I doodled on the bottom of the page. It is round like a gear, with long spokes jutting out from the center like the rays of the sun. One side is like a typical, indented gear, the other smooth as if it’s been polished. “I was drawing you and thinking about how you are everything the Resistance embodies,” I say, watching as she traces the little cog with her fingertip, studying it closely. “To me the smooth side represents the humanity in you, the part of you that was in the before. The side that looks more like a gear represents what’s inside, the changes.”

  “It’s the Resistance,” she says with a radiant smile as she looks up at me. The smile fades a bit and her eyes widen. “Umm, Gage…”

  It’s the only warning I have before a blinding pain grips me, taking me to my knees. The chair clatters to the floor beside me and Blythe is beside me instantly, chanting my name over and over as I thrash on the floor, my teeth gritted and my body jerking spasmodically. My eyes find the clock and I realize that twenty-four hours have passed since I was injected with the serum containing Jack Knightly’s DNA and now I’m transforming back into myself. Somewhere out there, Dax is undergoing the same torture.

  My teeth scrape together and I fight not to grind them as bones pop in and out of place and realign. Skin and muscle tear apart and reform, changing me from the inside out as Jack Knightly’s DNA is stripped from mine. Blythe holds me as best she can, prob
ably trying to keep me from bashing my head on the floor, but I just can’t be still. Now I know why they strapped us to tables when we first underwent the transformation.

  When it’s over, the pain is gone instantly, but I’m still pretty shaken. Blythe rolls me onto my back, taking my head into her lap as her face appears in my line of sight. Her lips are quirked into a soft smile.

  “Hi,” she says gently. “Nice to see you again.”

  The way she’s looking at me… I’ve been wanting her to look at me like that all day. The recognition in her eyes wasn’t there when she looked into the eyes of Jack Knightly. I’ve never been more grateful to be myself than I am at this moment. My hand comes up to cup her cheek, my thumb tracing circles against her skin. She closes her eyes and nestles against my palm, turning her face inward to place a kiss there. A shudder wracks my body at the contact.

  Her eyes meet mine again. “Everything is so uncertain,” she says as her fingers run through my hair. My scalp tingles and the sensation is rapidly coursing over the rest of my body. I bite back a groan as she continues the soothing act. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hell, we could both be dead by tonight. We could have easily been killed this morning.”

  I’m not sure where she’s going with this, so I just stare up at her. “Yes,” I say.

  “It makes you wonder… if you were to die today, could you say you went without regrets?”

  “Oh, I’d have plenty of them,” I answer. “Regrets for not standing up to my father sooner in life, for not being there when Tamryn needed me, for failing Agata and leaving her all alone in the world… for not ever having known you in the way I want to.”

  At that last bit, her eyes grow wide with fear, like they do any time someone mentions love or commitment around her. Blythe is afraid, whether she wants to admit it or not. And while I think Dax’s feelings scare her, I know mine are a far greater threat. Dax is comfortable and familiar and I am virtually a stranger. A stranger she can’t stop staring at because she’s drawn to me the same way I’m drawn to her. A stranger who has the potential to smash her heart into smithereens… or love her beyond all reason. I know which of those guys I want to be, but I know in the end I may end up the first guy, the one who hurts her. As badly as she’s been hurt before, I can’t stand the thought of doing it again. But then, something in me just won’t leave it alone.

  One last kiss, I tell myself, as I grasp the ponytail at the nape of her neck and pull her down toward me. One last moment of weakness before I tell her I’m bowing out and that Dax is the better man. Because even if he isn’t, he hasn’t lied to her about his past. He isn’t keeping a part of himself from her because he’s afraid it will ruin everything. Unlike me, he is not a coward.

  But then our lips touch and I know this won’t be the last time, because kissing Blythe is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s beautiful, painful, sweet, and terrifying all at once, like diving off a cliff. I know I can never willingly let go of this feeling. Electricity arcs between us as she settles herself over me, our chests mashing together as I wrap my free arm around her. Our breathing is heavy, filling the air between our lips with promises and desire as our tongues touch. The feeling is too much for me and I groan out loud, the sound bouncing and echoing from the walls and mingling with her own strangled cry. She trembles in my arms and I know that it’s affecting her too, this feeling of being out of control but unable to stop.

  I pull back for a second, my hands resting on her waist, my fingers curling and bunching the fabric of her shirt. My eyes ask for permission and she nods. It’s all I need to strip her t-shirt off over her head, revealing a plain white bra. For some reason, the nondescript garment gets me even more jacked up and I touch her, cupping her and squeezing, filling my palms with swollen flesh. And then we’re kissing again—dueling tongues, heated breath, and low, throaty groans. At some point, my shirt joins hers on the floor and flesh is against flesh, as I roll to switch our positions, my hips cradled by hers as I press her to the floor.

  Before I lose myself in her completely, I pull back, propping myself up on my elbows and staring down at her. She makes a seductive picture with her lips swollen from my kisses, eyelids heavy and lowered over chocolate eyes, hair disheveled and framing her face. Her eyes are wide, and I see fear and uncertainty there along with desire and need. She is waging an inner war and I am watching it happen in her dark gaze.

  “Blythe.” I only say one word, but it’s loaded. She knows what I’m doing as well as I do. As much as I want this—want her—I won’t take it. I want her to give it to me and I need to know that she’s sure.

  Her hands come up to the back of my head and she pulls me down toward her, my name a sigh on her lips as she flexes her hips against mine in a gesture of surrender.

  “Gage.”

  With that breathless whisper, I am hers completely. And I hope with all my might that she is mine. Because as I free her from the last layers of clothing separating us, it seems as if, even for this one moment, Blythe has chosen me.