Flawed

by Pauline C. Harris

  There was a long pause before Michael cautiously stepped forward, glowering at the boy who held the gun.

  “Stay low, below the windows,” he instructed. “And be absolutely quiet. If you make any noise, stand up, or try to get away, I’ll shoot you on the spot.”

  Michael went first, and we all crept slowly down the long corridor. Michael kept sending up frequent glances over his shoulder, and the boy kept his gun aimed at him the whole time.

  When we finally reached the end of the hallway where Beatrix was still standing, watching the girl, she glanced at him and I could see relief in her eyes. We stood up next to her, the boy watching Michael while Beatrix walked into the girl’s room.

  “Into the bathroom,” she said. The girl got up and quickly followed her orders. Beatrix closed the door behind her and turned to me. “Take Michael and get out. There’s a car outside, the other androids will take you there. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  I grabbed her arm. “You’re not going to shoot her, are you?”

  Beatrix shook her head. “No way, I wouldn’t really shoot anyone.” She said it so softly I wasn’t sure I had even heard it.

  I gave her one last glance and then left the room. We shuffled down the hallway, trying to be silent but run at the same time. I followed the androids and found that they had broken through a window and disabled the security cameras to get in. We crawled through the window and were soon in the parking lot sprinting toward Beatrix’s van. We all climbed in, and minutes later, we saw Beatrix emerge through the broken window.

  She hopped in the back seat, and the android at the wheel pulled away. Beatrix leaned her head against the headrest. Jessica smiled at me from the seats behind us, and I couldn’t help but smile back, knowing that we were finally free. A wave of giddiness swept over me, and I restrained a laugh.

  I couldn’t help but notice that Beatrix’s break-ins seemed much more successful than mine had ever been.

  I looked past Michael, who was situated in the middle of Beatrix and me. “What did you do?” I asked her.

  She gave a small laugh. “Shut the door and told her that if she opened it, I would shoot.” She shrugged. “Then I walked away as quietly as I could and ran to the van.”

  I laughed too. “That was what you came up with?”

  She shrugged. “The best I could do under such short notice.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Oh.” Beatrix sat up. “That reminds me.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a large metal cube. I stared at it.

  “What is that?” I asked her.

  “Magnet,” she replied, reaching for Michael’s wrist. He instinctively pulled away but after the android with the gun gave him a threatening look, he surrendered his arm.

  Beatrix held the magnet over his wrist for about ten seconds, and I watched her in awe. “What does that do?” I asked.

  “Deactivates the tracking device by removing all the stored data.” She put the magnet back in her pocket and looked at me. “Wouldn’t want the creators coming after us.”

  “What?” Michael asked, his eyes widening. They slowly narrowed to a defiant stare.

  I tried to ignore him. “So where exactly are we going?” I asked. I knew from what Beatrix had told me the last time we had met that all the flawed androids lived together, but I didn’t know where. I guessed that it had to be somewhere pretty isolated, since the androids who gained their personality back were hunted and killed for their imperfections.

  “It’s hard to explain, but we’ll be there in about thirty minutes or so,” she told me.

  I nodded then suddenly remembered the key in my pocket and my eyes widened. I reached in and pulled it out. “Beatrix?” I asked and she turned to me. “Did you send me this key?” I asked slowly, realizing that the timelines didn’t exactly add up. Why would she send a key and then come herself only minutes later?

  She leaned over and took it from me, turning it over a few times. She slowly shook her head. “No. Where did you get this?”

  “Someone dropped it into my cell right before you came,” I answered.

  She frowned.

  “It’s for the cells. I recognize it from when we’ve used them before.”

  “But who else would help you out?” Beatrix asked.

  I shrugged, more unnerved now than I had been before. If the flawed hadn’t sent me the key, who had?

  I leaned back against the seat and stared out the window. I almost leaned my head against Michael’s shoulder but then I caught myself and remembered that I could no longer do that. Part of me was overly relieved that we were finally free, but the other part was still upset about Michael. I sneaked a glance at him beside me and saw him sitting there looking uncomfortable. I desperately wanted to explain everything to him, and I desperately wanted him to understand, to remember. I thought about all the times he had looked at me with those dark brown eyes sparkling and his mouth turning upward into a smile. Those memories hurt to remember when I looked at the Michael he was now. I didn’t understand how he could have forgotten me, and then I wondered how I had been when I had first been changed. What had I been like? Who had I forgotten?

  “Drew!” I heard Beatrix call my name, yanking me out of my daydreams, and I turned just in time to see Michael lunging at my door, which I saw, too late, was unlocked. I reached out to block his way, but it did no good. He pushed right through me, threw the door open and before I knew it, he had jumped out, pushing me along with him as we flew toward the hard pavement.

  Chapter Three

  I tried to remember; in the split second of time when we were falling, how fast the car had been going when Michael had ungraciously thrown both of us out. I remembered the speed of the trees zipping past the windows and guessed, with some help from the highway location, that we had been going pretty fast.

  My prediction rang true when we hit the pavement alarmingly hard and started rolling. I hadn’t had time to untangle myself from Michael after he had shoved us out, so we went spinning together across the road. We came to a stop in the ditch along the highway and then I felt the full extent of pain from hitting the pavement. My shoulder throbbed as if something had broken, and my leg stung as if it had been scraped. I had never had this much pain so evenly dispersed across my whole body.

  Just then, I realized that Michael wasn’t Michael anymore and that he would most likely jump up and start running anytime now. I reached out and grabbed his wrist in a firm hold, and he looked over at me.

  “You think that’s going to stop me?” he spat, sitting up.

  I sat up too and grabbed his other wrist. “Michael, listen,” I said, knowing that he was probably as strong as I was, or stronger, so physical force wasn’t going to be a major factor in keeping him there. My shoulder screamed in protest and I winced, but tried to ignore it. “You have to know who I am,” I said slowly. “Please.” I looked into his eyes, looking for a sign of recognition but found nothing.

  “Let go of me, or I’ll break your neck,” he snarled, and I was taken aback by his words. And his tone. So calmly robotic.

  Tears sprang to the corners of my eyes, but I angrily blinked them away. “You wouldn’t,” I said, but I wasn’t convinced.

  He yanked his arms away, but I held on firmly. That was when he lunged for my throat. I tried to hold back his arms, but he had momentum on his side. I felt his fingers slide around my neck, this time, not brushing hair away so he could kiss me, but to suffocate and break it. I panicked, realizing this was one of the first times anyone had beaten me with physical force. I shoved at him, but I couldn’t stop the flow of thoughts screaming at me. This is Michael, this is Michael.

  “Michael,” I tried saying. “You don’t want to do this.” My shoulder seared with pain as I fell hard against the ground, and my throat was starting to ache.

  “You are flawed,” he said evenly, and the lack of emotion in his eyes terrified me. My vision was starting to get blurry, and his fingers were clasping tighter a
nd tighter around my neck. “Michael!” I tried to scream.

  That was when I heard noise and shouts and suddenly Michael’s hands had unclasped and I was crouching, bent over, gasping for air. When I looked up, I saw three of the androids had grabbed Michael and were holding him firmly a few feet away from me.

  I refused to let myself look up into Michael’s eyes. I refused to let myself be hurt more than I already was. The van was parked about twenty feet away, and Jessica was standing half way between it and us, staring at Michael in shock and horror. I could see tears in her eyes as she stared at her brother accusingly.

  Beatrix leaned over to help me up, and I flinched when my shoulder throbbed. We headed back to the car, the other androids pulling Michael along. We passed Jessica on the way, and she stared up at Michael with a look of disgust, her eyes staring at him reproachfully.

  “How could you do that?” she whispered to him. “You loved her.” Her voice was hard and filled with hurt. I couldn’t help but wince at the past tense used in the word love.

  For a second, I saw a ghost of confusion flicker across Michael’s face, but soon it was gone, and I wondered if it had ever been there at all. We piled into the van once again, only this time Michael was sitting between the two male androids with pistols.

  I sat in the seats behind him next to Jessica and leaned my head against the window. My heart was still racing and so was my mind. Had Michael really just tried to kill me? The thought sent my mind into a whirlwind. Michael would never try to kill me. Or at least the old Michael wouldn’t. He had risked his life for me. I held back the lump in my throat and the tears that came to my eyes and busied myself with watching the scenery pass by the window.

  Half an hour seemed to fly by, and soon we were pulling onto a small dirt road which led to an encampment hidden in the woods. I looked around in awe at the various tents and equipment lying around. There were two buildings, the size of average homes, and around them about twenty tents were clustered. People were milling around, and I was surprised to learn that there were so many flawed androids.

  The van came to a stop next to four others parked outside the building. We all hopped out, Michael accompanied and held on to by two of the androids.

  Beatrix glanced at Michael and the androids that were holding him. Then she looked back to me. She pursed her lips. “Drew, Michael will need to be held in an area where he can’t get away. In taking him here, we can’t risk letting him get away and telling the creators where we are.” She was watching me cautiously.

  I looked at her. “Where?”

  She looked uncomfortable. “There’s a basement inside one of the houses, and since we’ve been here, we’ve created android-proof cells.”

  I started to open my mouth but Beatrix cut me off.

  “He’ll be comfortable with a bed and chairs and things he wants, but Drew, you have to understand I can’t risk the lives of all these people ... just for Michael.”

  I looked at her for a long moment before admitting to myself that she was right. This was no longer the nice, reasonable Michael he had once been. This was the raging, perfected Michael who had, only thirty minutes ago, tried to strangle me. “Okay,” I said quietly.

  “Thank you,” Beatrix said and mumbled something to the other androids, who then started to take Michael away.

  Jessica walked up to stand beside me, but no words were said.

  “Guys,” Beatrix said in a lighter tone, a smile on her face. “I want you to meet some of the people here.”

  I smiled back, and Jessica and I followed her across the large clearing to the massive array of tents. She lifted the corner of one and ducked inside. We followed.

  “Cassandra,” I heard Beatrix call. Once we were inside, I saw a tall blonde girl standing up from a chair by the table where she had apparently been working on something. Her hair was long, and she had bangs which she hastily brushed out of her eyes. “Cass, this is Drew and Jessica,” she said, pointing to each of us. “Guys, this is Cassandra.”

  She smiled at us, her light blue eyes sparkling. “Nice to meet you guys,” she said.

  “I had no idea there were so many of us,” I told her. “It’s a big relief to find you all,” I told her truthfully.

  Cassandra laughed and her nose crinkled as she did so. “Yeah, there are quite a few of us.” She brushed her bangs out of her eyes again, then grabbed an elastic band and pulled back the longer pieces into a ponytail.

  “Cassandra is the head of all the techie stuff,” Beatrix explained with a laugh. “She’s the one who came up with the magnet trick.”

  I looked around the room and saw it was littered with pieces of ... well, anything. I had no idea what most of those things were. They looked like disassembled parts of radios or TVs. Cassandra had been working on some pile of scraps when we had come in, splayed out on the table where she had been sitting.

  “Working on a way to duplicate this heater. Winter’s coming, and we need a ton of them. And they are so expensive,” she said knowingly.

  “So far she’s made three,” Beatrix said with a smile.

  Just then, someone entered the room, and Beatrix turned to greet them. “Marian!” she exclaimed. “You gotta meet Drew and Jessica.”

  I stiffened when I heard the name, even before I saw her face. I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t want to face her, but I did anyway. When I looked at her, she seemed the same. The same long brown hair and soft brown eyes.

  Her dark eyebrows knitted together when she saw me and she blinked. “Drew,” she stated.

  I waited, breathless. She hated me. She had to hate me. After what I had done to her, I couldn’t blame her. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut and forget, but the memories came flooding back. Back to the time when I had wanted nothing more than to be the perfect android. When I would do anything for the creators. Like capture poor Marian, the flawed runaway, and drag her back to the Institution.

  She stared at me for a long moment and then her expression softened. “I’m glad you’re here,” she finally said.

  I blinked, surprised. She was glad? After what had happened between us?

  She must have noticed my surprise because she laughed slightly. “I’m glad you’re here because that means you must be flawed. You’re not a mindless android anymore.” It sounded like it should have been an insult but by her tone of voice and the expression on her face, I knew it hadn’t been intended that way.

  I smiled back, relieved. “I’m sorry,” I started.

  She held up her hand. “Don’t. You don’t need to be.”

  I smiled. I didn’t need to say anything else.

  Beatrix smiled a puzzled smile beside us. “Well,” she said, “you guys want to see where you’re going to be sleeping?”

  Jessica shrugged. “Sure.”

  We followed Beatrix out of the tent. “I hope you guys don’t mind, but you’ll be sleeping in a tent,” she told us with an apologetic smile.

  “Oh no, that’s totally fine,” I reassured her. After days spent in a cold, hard cell, a tent would be more than welcome.

  “At least you guys will have it to yourselves,” she added. We walked across the clearing to the cluster of tents and weaved our way around them.

  “Oh, by the way, Drew, I assumed you’d need rest after being at the Institution, but there’s a recreation room in the first building where all the androids usually hang out at night,” she explained.

  “Hey, Bee!” a voice called, and we turned to see a tall blond boy jogging our way. He glanced briefly at Jessica and smiled. “Bee, who’re your friends?” he asked, not taking his eyes off Jessica.

  She smiled shyly back and gave me a funny look. I tried to hide my smile.

  Beatrix grinned. “Drew and Jessica. We got them out of the Institution. They’re going to be staying here.”

  “Cool.” He smiled. “I’m Kyle.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jessica said.

  “Yeah,” I echoed.

  “I’m just
showing them their tent,” Beatrix explained, beckoning for us to keep walking. We shuffled after her, noticing Kyle following as well.

  “So you barely missed getting perfected?” he asked Jessica, and she nodded.

  “Close call. They’re getting just about everyone now,” he said, and I noticed that he, once, had been perfected.

  “What about you?” he asked, looking over at me.

  I gave a small humorless laugh. “Long story,” I said with a shake of my head.

  He gave a knowing sigh. “Yeah, I know what you mean. The creators pretty much screw everything up. None of our lives are simple anymore.” He said it lightheartedly, but there was animosity hidden in his words. We were quiet as we walked on.

  I noticed as we passed tent after tent and I saw people roaming around, that most of them were teenagers, like us. I saw basically no adults; in fact, the oldest people I had seen seemed to be about nineteen or twenty. I asked Beatrix about this, and she shrugged. “Teenagers were always their first target,” she reminded me. “Easier to control.” The thought that the only clear thinking people around seemed to be children scared me a little.

  Beatrix soon came to a small tent, opening it up for us and ushering us inside. It was tall enough for us to stand, and inside sat two cots on opposite walls. There were tons of blankets piled on each bed and a pillow for each of us. Even though it was small and impersonal, I was giddy with the relief of how much better it was to be out and away from the Institution.

  “It gets pretty cold at night, so you’re gonna want all those blankets,” Beatrix told us.

  “Thanks,” I replied. “And thanks again for getting us out of there.” The statement sounded lame compared to my overflowing gratitude toward the flawed, but Beatrix seemed to understand because she smiled knowingly.

  “No problem.”

  * * * *

  Later, when Jessica and I had gone to bed, I lay awake, staring up at the tent’s roof, watching the light from the stars twinkle through the fabric. I was exhausted and I knew my body needed to recharge, but somehow I couldn’t fall asleep. I had been held at the Institution where I had not slept once, been stressed beyond belief, and was almost strangled recently by the boy I loved. My body and mind were completely drained. My eyelids were beginning to droop, but my brain just wouldn’t turn off.