Half Life (Russell's Attic Book 2)

by SL Huang

  Liliana had her knees drawn up in front of her and her head buried in her arms, the ringlets Pilar had been so jealous of tumbling over her knees. Her shoulders shook ever so slightly. Other than her and the scattered toys, the playroom was empty—no bed, no clothes, not even a door to a toilet.

  I closed the distance to the glass wall without being conscious of it, a small polymer pry bar clenched in my hands. One of the large panes was a glass door; I wedged the pry bar into its metal frame next to the lock and threw my whole weight against it. The door burst open with a crack and a screech.

  Liliana’s head jerked up, and she quailed away from me, her brown eyes wide and wet with tears.

  I forcibly curtailed my angry dash, stumbling to a stop and putting away the pry bar to raise my hands ever so slightly. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, my voice scratching as I tried to squeeze the rage out of it. I wasn’t sure I succeeded. “I’m here to take you home. Okay? Your dad sent me.”

  “I want my dad,” she said.

  Something about her voice sounded odd, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. I stepped carefully closer until I was in front of her and reached out a hand. “Can you get up? Are you okay?”

  She grasped my hand and pulled herself upright, unfolding from the floor with symmetric grace. Her fingers were cool and even on mine.

  Too cool. Too even.

  “Jesus Christ.” I snatched my hand back from her and recoiled away. “What are you?”

  Liliana started to cry.

  CHAPTER 15

  HER HICCUPPING sobs struck me as wrong the same way her voice had, and I realized why now: the sounds were even, patterned, a layering of too few repeated sinusoids.

  Not organic. Not human.

  Jesus Christ.

  And yet…I was standing in front of a crying child. As much as half my senses were telling me this wasn’t real, the other half were screaming that I was seeing a terrified little girl in trouble who was locked in a laboratory sobbing her heart out.

  I don’t like it when people lock little girls in laboratories. Even fake little girls.

  I squatted down so I was at eye level with her. I left my hands on my knees; the thought of touching her again unnerved me. “Hey, kid.” I made my voice as even and unthreatening as I could. “Hey. Can we try that again?”

  She raised her tear-streaked face to mine. Her bone structure was completely symmetrical. It meant she was an adorable girl, and also freaked me the hell out. I swallowed.

  “My name is Cas,” I said.

  “Hi, Cas,” she said. “My name is Liliana.”

  I pushed aside the uncanny mathematics and concentrated on the child. “I know. I work for your dad. He sent me to find you.”

  “I want my dad,” she said again.

  The cadence was exactly the same as when she’d said it before. My breath caught. “I, uh, I bet you do. We can go and find him together. Do you want to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t we go do that, then?” I stood back up, forcing myself to hold out a hand.

  She didn’t move. “You said ‘what are you.’” Her eyes were wide and fearful, her voice reedy and plaintive and not real. “What does that mean?”

  What, indeed? Noah Warren had a lot of questions to answer. My brain flipped through all the possible responses I could give to a question like that, and in the end, I couldn’t get away from the fact that I had a five-year-old child giving me moon eyes. “It’s just, uh, you’re a little different,” I floundered. “Special. Has your dad told you that?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I was surprised, that’s all. Hey, why don’t we go find your dad now?”

  “Okay.” She reached out for my hand. I succeeded in not flinching.

  I led her through the glass door and out of the playroom. My eyes kept tracking back to watch her movement with the same fascination most people reserved for train wrecks and car crashes.

  “Cas?” ventured Checker over the earpiece. “Is everything all right? What’s going on?”

  “Later,” I said. I detached my hand from Liliana’s and started pulling the memory cards from the cameras in front of the glass.

  Liliana trailed after me, looking bereft. “No, I want to find him now. Please. I want my dad.”

  It took me a moment to follow what she meant. “Uh—we are. I promise. I was, I was talking to a friend of mine. It’s an earpiece.” I waved at my ear as I yanked the last card from the portable cameras. “Checker, are there building security cams in here?”

  “Not that I can see. It’s a black hole from my end.”

  “Good.” I forced myself to take Liliana’s hand again and moved to the door, looking at my watch. I’d scheduled in some extra time here, but I was still almost two and a half minutes behind. “Are we clear outside the door?”

  “Almost…now you are.”

  The guards’ circuits were still right on schedule, then, at least to within a few seconds. I ran our route through my head on the revised timetable. Best if we waited here for another sixty-five seconds.

  “Liliana,” I said thoughtfully. “How fast can you run?”

  “Pretty fast,” she said.

  I crouched and took her by the shoulders. “This is very important. How fast exactly?”

  She hesitated. “Four point two three meters per second.”

  “Good girl,” I said, even as something in me shivered. “Take off your shoes.”

  She obediently undid the patent leather straps; I slipped the shoes into my purse along with my own.

  “When we go out this door, I need you to stay right next to me, okay? Don’t say anything, make as little noise as you can, and run right next to me. This is very important. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I understand.”

  I had to take her word for it. If she didn’t comprehend me, telling her again wouldn’t make a difference, I had a feeling. “Okay. Ready?”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Checker. Have you zapped the cameras in the hallways ahead of us yet?”

  “All set.”

  I took a deep breath, counted down, and opened the door.

  We ran. The dash was a halting one, stopping and starting for the guard timing and to wait for Checker, but we made good time, and within minutes we crouched against the wall of the westernmost building in the complex. On the other side of that wall was my car, less than forty feet away.

  I pulled out my shoes to squeeze back into them, and gave Liliana hers as well. I watched her sit and buckle them. She wasn’t out of breath, despite the running.

  “There’s going to be a bang,” I whispered to her. “I need you not to make any sound when it happens. After the bang there will be a hole in this wall. There’s a car parked ten point eight meters away outside, a black sedan. We’re going to run through the hole and get into the car. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  I took out some C-4 again, placed it carefully, and then herded Liliana behind a metal desk across the room. “Remember,” I whispered. “Don’t make any noise. Just run when I run. Now cover your ears.”

  I didn’t know if the directive was necessary, but it couldn’t hurt. She squeezed her hands over her ears, ducked her head, and closed her eyes.

  I pushed the detonator.

  The explosion was much bigger this time, thundering through the room, vibrating through my skull. People would hear it, but that was all right.

  I grabbed Liliana’s hand and we plunged toward the wall. The cloud of dust made it almost impossible to see, but I knew where we were going, and we stumbled forward, tripping on chunks of debris. My eyes watered and I pressed the sleeve of my other arm against my nose and mouth, trying to breathe. The distant ringing deep inside my ears made all of my senses feel muffled.

  Liliana lost her balance and almost fell; I pulled her back up.

  We lurched out onto the grass on the other side, into the dark, quiet shadow of the
building and the cool night air. It wouldn’t be quiet for long. I tugged on Liliana’s hand and we broke for the car at exactly four point two three meters per second.

  “Get in,” I barked at her as we hit the passenger side. She obediently opened the door and climbed in. I leapt and slid across the hood on the fabric of Pilar’s skirt to land on the asphalt on the other side; I made it into the driver’s side so fast that I slammed the door at the same time Liliana closed hers. Before the dust had started settling from the explosion, we peeled out, back to the street, and away.

  I drove at exactly three miles per hour above the speed limit on a circuitous route back toward the freeway.

  “Checker,” I said.

  “I’m here. Everything okay? You made it, right? They’re crawling like an anthill.”

  “Yeah, we’re good. Do you have access to Arkacite’s research data?”

  “Sure, absolutely—by which I mean I could; I have to break into those areas in particular, but I can. Up till now I’ve only been focusing on what we needed for tonight. Do you want—I assume there’s something I should be looking for?”

  “Just get all of it,” I said.

  “Okay. Uh—what you said in there—what’s going on?”

  I cut my eyes sideways at Liliana. She sat in the passenger seat, legs dangling, her hands folded in her lap. She’d buckled her seatbelt. “I’m headed to you—I’ll explain everything when I get there. I’m hanging up now; I have to call Noah Warren.”

  Warren didn’t pick up—again—I strongly suspected he was dodging my calls because I’d started mentioning he owed me money. I left a terse voicemail message telling him we had Liliana, giving him Miri’s address, and instructing him to leave his cell phone behind and make sure he wasn’t followed. We might have to consider the apartment burned anyway and go set up elsewhere after tonight, despite any upgraded security—I’d do a risk assessment later—but right now I was going to need Checker’s eyes on this.

  Liliana was perfectly quiet the whole way back to Miri’s. I found parking down the block from the apartment complex and got out into the silence of a three o’clock in the morning street. When I walked around and opened Liliana’s door, she undid her seatbelt and climbed down next to me without prompting.

  “Hey, are you okay?” I asked her belatedly.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Is my dad here?”

  “He will be,” I assured her. “Come on.” I took her hand again—it was becoming easier—and we walked down the block together, buzzed in at Miri’s apartment building, and picked our way across the dark courtyard. I tried to stop looking down at her as we walked, but my eyes kept creeping back.

  Checker was waiting at the door; I’d barely raised a hand to knock when he pulled it open. Behind him the apartment had been cleaned up somewhat, with the Arkacite printouts in stacks to one side and the rest of the flat as cluttered as when I’d first seen it.

  “Here she is,” I said, ushering Liliana through the door ahead of me. The sentence felt inane, but I had no idea how to say the important part. “Liliana, this is Checker.”

  “Hi, Checker,” she said, sticking out a hand. “My name is Liliana.”

  He grinned at her seriousness. “Hi, Liliana. Nice to meet you.”

  The white cat bounded up and paused, its nose testing the air near Liliana’s ankles. Whatever it smelled, it decided it didn’t care. It butted up against her and then dashed a few feet away and looked back, begging to play.

  “Kitty!” she cried, running to pet it. The brown tabby lurked, zipping back and forth with its attention on the girl—or whatever she was—like it was thinking about pouncing on her. I wondered what they smelled.

  I moved past her, crossing the room to sit down on the couch while I tried to decide what to do. The tabby apparently gave up its suspicions and deigned to take part in the attention, demanding to have its ears scratched. Liliana cooed.

  “Noah Warren’s here,” said Checker, joining me and holding up a tablet. Right, the security cams. Checker’s eyes followed mine to Liliana. “Cute kid, isn’t she?”

  “No. She isn’t.” Now that we’d safely escaped, I couldn’t stop watching her. Her fine motor control was off, but consistently off, like a screw needed to be tightened.

  Checker smacked me in the arm. “What are you talking about? She’s adorable! Cas Russell, you have no heart.”

  Wow, this was a conversation one didn’t have every day. “No, I don’t mean she isn’t cute. She isn’t a kid.”

  “Oh-kay.” I could almost hear him trying to process that. “Then what is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re scaring me a little.”

  “She…” I scrubbed a hand through the air in front of me, as if I could clear my vision of the errant mathematics. “She’s all wrong.”

  “Hey. Hey.” Checker’s hand was on my shoulder; he tugged insistently until I turned to face him. “What’s going on?”

  A thudding knock came at Miri’s door, and a muffled voice called, “You got her? Is Liliana there?”

  Noah Warren. Who had a hell of a lot of questions to answer. I marched over and dragged the door open; Warren pushed through with eyes only for his daughter and tried to run straight to her.

  I stopped him with a hand to his chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” he said distractedly.

  “Daddy!” Liliana cried, and ran up to wrap her arms around his legs. Noah Warren crouched and enfolded her in an embrace so tight and close I thought he would never let her go, and gazed up at us with an expression that challenged us to judge him.

  “Your daughter’s a robot,” I said.

  CHAPTER 16

  WE SAT around Miri’s table, Warren and Checker and I. Warren had settled Liliana down in the corner playing with the cats again. By all appearances they continued to delight her.

  “Are you serious? She’s a robot?” Checker demanded of me, completely ignoring Warren. “This is—I can’t—that’s amazing. She passes the Turing test, at least to a certain point. The natural language processing—”

  “Don’t call her that.” Warren had gone as stiff as he had back in the coffee shop when he’d hired me. He stared straight ahead as he spoke, not looking at either of us.

  “Call her what?” said Checker.

  “That word. Please.”

  “What, ‘robot’?” I said. “Jesus, it’s not a value judgment.”

  “You tell me that once you see her cry,” said Warren.

  “This is why Arkacite wants her,” Checker said slowly. “Your wife—she invented her, didn’t she? She’s—she’s your wife’s work product; that’s why you’re suing them.”

  Warren lowered his head in something that might have been a nod.

  An avaricious smile was growing on Checker’s face, and his gaze strayed over to Liliana as if he wanted to go over and start running tests on her at that very moment. “This is so cool.”

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t care if your daughter’s a—I don’t care what she is. But I don’t like it when people lie to me.”

  A muscle in Warren’s face twitched. “Would you have helped me if I’d told you?” When I didn’t answer, he continued, “She’s my daughter. It shouldn’t mean anything. And she—she shouldn’t have to deal with people seeing her as—how would you feel, if it was you?”

  “She can feel?” asked Checker with interest. “I know you said she can cry, but being able to shed tears is different from being able to feel for real. How do you even measure something like that?”

  “Stop,” said Warren. “Please.”

  I took pity on him. Liliana was still his kid, even if she…wasn’t. “Can it,” I said to Checker. “Warren, like I said, I don’t care. I’ve gotten back a lot worse for people who lied to me a lot more, okay? Just don’t do it again.”

  He nodded.

  “As long as I get my fee, I’m good,” I said. “I don’t judge.” Considering how
often I worked for arms dealers and gangsters, stomping on a sad man with a slightly delusional parent-child relationship didn’t seem worth it. “Speaking of which, we need to talk payment. And we have to figure out where you’re going to go from here. Legally, Liliana belongs to Arkacite, so from where I’m sitting, it looks like you two have to run somewhere they can’t find you.”

  Warren raised his head to fasten his expression on mine, the first sign of animation he’d shown in our little conference. “Can you help us do that?”

  “Well, yeah, as long as you can pay me.”

  “I—okay. I—I’ll find a way.”

  Great. I wasn’t exactly surprised by the response after learning about his eviction, but I hated complications. “I hope you understand I’ll have to keep custody of Liliana until you can. She’s really the only thing of any value you’ve got.”

  He took a breath. “You’ll take good care of her?”

  “Sure,” I said. Checker’s eager eyes had strayed over to her again; I reached under the table and smacked him. “She doesn’t need to eat or, well, anything else, does she? Is there anything I should know about her?”

  “She has a special drink, but she only needs some every few months. But—take good care of her, and play with her, and—she needs love. That’s what she needs.”

  “What about power?” asked Checker.

  “Power?” repeated Warren.

  “Well, yeah. She must need to recharge, right?”

  “No,” said Warren. “I don’t think so.”

  “Really?” Checker’s eyes lit up even more. “I’d love to know what kind of—”

  “Anything else?” I cut in over him. “Does she sleep?”

  “Yes,” Warren answered.

  “Does it serve a purpose, or does she just close her eyes and go inactive for a while so she seems more human?” asked Checker.

  I smacked him in the arm again, this time not bothering to hide it. And people say I’m the insensitive one. “We’ll take care of her,” I told Warren. “But not for too long, you get it? If you can’t come up with the money, I’ll have to take her back to Arkacite. That’s just how it works.”