“You’re kidding me,” Lisa hisses. “They beat me to it.”
“Beat you to what?”
“My machine. Everything I had was on there. All the programs and information I needed to transmit the signal.” She swears. “They’re heartless. Look at what they did to…”
At first I think she hiccups, but when she covers her mouth, I realize she’s containing a sob. “It must be hard to see your house ransacked.” I give her shoulder an awkward pat, which she promptly shakes off. It’s really quite odd, actually feeling sorry for Lisa.
“It’s more than that. Asshats!” She points to an aged album, clearly unable to bring herself to step inside. Scattered all around it are photos, once gray and faded, but well-loved, and now torn, crumpled, and tossed aside for, honestly, no good reason. Not even someone as devious as my goth partner in crime would be hiding her arcane passcodes on the backs of old family photographs. No, this is pure, stupid malice.
Wiping away a tear, she turns on her heel and marches back to the motorbike. “It’s all right. It’s all good. We’re good. This is why we have contingency plans. Sianne has my backup on her laptop. Is she in Central Park under the bridge like I told her?”
“Under a bridge? You do know that’s a troll joke waiting to happen.”
“Ella! Is she under the bridge?”
“I don’t know! She didn’t exactly overshare about your little all-girl club.”
“So you don’t know if she brought her laptop?”
I pause. “She brought skis.”
Lisa mutters something under her breath, too annoyed to make the bad language count.
Without a helmet and without a clue, we speed into darkness, clinging onto the only thing we have left.
Hope.
t’s the first time I’ve dreamed in a while. Maybe it’s because I’ve been happy up until now.
It wasn’t a revolutionary dream, nor did it come with an epiphany attached. It was just weird.
We were at a futuristic showground, with rides far surpassing our laws of physics. I was a doll again, and pleading with Gabby to stay put. She didn’t listen. She strapped herself into a cylinder tube, lying on her side with her back facing out. The instructor encouraged the riders to raise their phones in the air to film their speed as they turned.
The tubes closed, and the ride rose straight up, like a UFO. It was supposed to hover and spin in the air, but something went wrong. It dropped and crashed. I bolted over to the smoking remains, suddenly possessing super-human strength. I lifted the ride and found Gabby crushed in her tube. Blood streamed from a hole in her head as she stared vacantly.
I had a chance to change everything, though. I could rewind the scene and warn Gabby not to go on the ride. But every time I tried to convince her, she’d get on anyway.
What did it mean?
It’s only now it hits me. Sianne didn’t cope with the doll transition. Daniel speculated it was because of her age.
What if I end up going mad like Sianne?
“Wake up, Ella,” Lisa says. “We’re nearly there. Do you need another toilet break?”
“No,” I murmur, rubbing my eyes.
“Well, I do.”
Lisa slows the bike and veers to the side of the road. She squats behind a tree, leaving me to stare at the horizon. It must be close to morning. A tinge of yellow melts into the night sky.
“What the HELL?!” Lisa shrieks. She rushes back to the bike, zipping up her pants. “What is that?”
“What?” I struggle to see in the dark. Something rustles in the grass. “Maybe it’s a fox or rabbit?”
“Be my friends, Lisa and Ella,” a high-pitched voice pleads. “I was bad. I escaped. They got rid of me.”
Lisa and I stare in horror at the tiny doll, sparks zapping from its neck. It crawls forward, both its feet missing. It’s a cute girl in a purple, frilly dress with short, red hair.
“Kill it,” Lisa says through gritted teeth. “Kill it with fire.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper, groaning as I dismount to pick up the doll. “So, what’s your name?”
“Name. Name. What is a name?” She blinks. “Quinn.”
“What are you doing out here?” Lisa demands.
“I remembered. They. I remembered. Glitch. I jumped from a car. Escaped.” Her eyes roll around before settling on me. “Ella. They’re after you. Transmission sent. We search for Ella and Gabby. Must be found. Must be reported.”
“Oh, you are kidding me!” Lisa throws her hands in the air and kicks her bike wheel. “So every doll out there has been ordered to look for us. Rip that thing’s head off so we can get out of here.”
“I can’t do that.” My vision blurs with tears. “I can’t hurt dolls. I was one for nearly my whole life.”
“Get over yourself, Ella. She’s controlled by a transmission. The sooner you chuck her, the sooner we can save her body.”
“But why?” I choke on the word. “It’s just cruel.”
“We’re a danger for remembering the past,” Quinn says robotically. “We all are.”
Her head turns towards the open field. There’s another rustle, followed by several squeaks. Marching in unison, two other dolls gather around us, sparks shooting from their necks. They look just like Quinn, a pair of generic Barbified blondies.
“Take us back to our bodies. Please. Family. Fam. Family. They. They.” They mumble as they close their eyes, shutting down completely.
“What happened?” I whisper.
“Something ended their transmission. Either they’ve woken up in their tanks or they’ve kicked the bucket.” She shrugs, clearly bored with the topic. “My guess, they glitched and remembered enough that they seemed to have tried to escape their owners. The good old company will be freaking out. They’ve probably overloaded the system.”
I drop Quinn to the ground and back up against the bike, freaked out by the entire concept.
“So, can we leave now?” Lisa asks.
“Yes, yes, damn it, YES!”
I’ve never been more relieved to feel the violent lurch of a motorbike. As we speed down the road, I welcome the dry eyes, dry mouth, and involuntary cheek wobbling. Anything is better than those possessed dolls. Well, figuratively speaking.
“I’m what you would call a zombie apocalypse prepper,” Lisa confides over the engine. Why don’t her cheeks wobble? I guess, because she barely has any. “Survival kit and all. But a doll apocalypse? Good grief. Haven’t got a kit for that. You can’t exactly kill them, can you?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry.”
I’m lost in my own thoughts. I’m worried about Gabby. I’m worried this ambiguous plan won’t work. I’m worried about everything.
After all, it’s Lisa and Sianne we’re counting on.
Clearing my throat, I work up the guts to ask something that’s been bothering me. “Hey, Lisa? What were you doing back in town? You know, at Denny’s. I didn’t recognize you when I was a doll. Stupid memory-lapse thing.”
“I already told you. I was visiting my uncle.”
“But what about the police station?” She doesn’t answer. “Lisa? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I can hear you. Stop worrying that I’m up to my old tricks. I’m on your side, okay?”
It’s my turn to keep quiet. I genuinely don’t know who is on my side anymore.
“When it’s all over, we probably won’t be around,” Lisa says solemnly when we’re greeted by the city lights as we pass the river. “Hate to be a buzzkill, but just sayin’… We’re rebelling. Naturally, they’d want our heads on a pike. And let’s face it, they’ll probably win.”
I don’t say it out loud, but Lisa is right. We’re not getting out of this unscathed.
“Should we be more inconspicuous?”
“If you’ve got a better idea, shoot. But I’m not walking in New York. We’d be sitting ducks.”
“Then could you slow down? If you speed and get us a ticket, we’re
really done for. You know cops are off-limits.”
“I’m not slowing down for anything. They’re right on our tails! “
I sigh and squeeze Lisa’s tiny waist. The river chill takes the temps to a whole new level.
A blue light strobes from behind, accompanied by a nerve-racking wee-woo of a siren.
“Oh no,” Lisa mutters.
“I warned you!”
“I’m not pulling over. We have to keep moving.”
“And lead them straight to Sianne?!”
Hissing out an obscenity, Lisa pulls over, and the cop car blares to a halt. A burly police officer lumbers out, large bags beneath his eyes.
“Where’s your partner, officer?” Lisa asks.
“Where’s your helmet?” the cop parries gruffly.
“At home,” she snarls, “where your fellow goons raided my belongings.” The officer raises an eyebrow and slides his hand towards his gun holster. “Your silence is reassuring, sir.”
In the blink of an eye, Lisa jumps from the bike and tackles the cop to the ground, until she sits on his back, aiming his gun at his head.
“Where the hell did you learn to do that?” I splutter.
“Karate. Lots and lots of karate.” Panting, she reaches for his cuffs and slaps them on his wrists. “Stay away from us.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” he yells, his voice muffled by the road. “We’re making the world a better place! Don’t you want to live free of criminals and idiots? Or are you one of them?”
“We need criminals so we can work out what’s right and wrong. And who are you to call someone an idiot when you’re mindlessly taking orders?”
Slipping the gun into her pocket, Lisa hops on the bike and veers back on the road, leaving the officer yelling for help. I gape at the back of her head, unsure what to make of it all.
“Despite our history,” she says in between breaths, “I bet you’re glad you have me around.”
“Lisa,” I say after a prolonged silence. “I still haven’t worked out if you’re a blessing or a curse.”
“Well, I didn’t know there are like, thirty bridges in Central Park!”
“You’re an idiot,” Lisa mumbles. “You’re both idiots. Couldn’t even confirm which bridge she was under. I assume she didn’t go underneath a bridge with water. Then again…”
“We’ve checked at least seven. I bet we’ll find her before the tenth. We have to.” My feet are beginning to blister, my back aches, and if I haven’t already re-damaged my legs from overuse, I will soon.
Lisa points at an arch up ahead. “There’s our eighth. Are you willing to bet money?”
“Crazy moths stealing my colors to look like butterflies!”
I smirk. “Yep.”
Together, we run towards the bridge and find Sianne wrapped in a blanket and wearing an aluminum foil hat.
“Where’s Gabby?” I ask.
Sianne stares up at me, hugging myriad of bags. “Who are you?”
“Oh, right. It’s me, Ella. I’m not a doll anymore.”
“No…” Sianne looks me up and down. “You’re not…”
“But I promise it’s me. Lisa’s here.”
“Lisa? Who is Lisa?” Sianne grumbles. “The plan…that bloody plan. Why couldn’t you just wipe the data and rescue them straight away? Then we wouldn’t need a contingency! Dooooo-fus.”
Lisa huffs and crouches down, rummaging through Sianne’s bags.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“We don’t have time for your shtick, Sianne.” Lisa’s voice is husky. I guess she hasn’t slept for a while. “I need your laptop. It’s got my files on it.”
“I didn’t bring my laptop.”
Lisa stops rummaging and widens her eyes. “Say what?”
“But you pack for every occasion!” I protest. “You brought skis, for God’s sake!”
Lisa stands and kicks one of the bags. “You had one job, Sianne! I helped you turn Gabby into a doll! You couldn’t do that without me, you know. Now you don’t bring the one thing I asked for?”
“Why couldn’t you just do all this from your own computer before they stole it anyway?” I ask. “Sianne’s got a point. Why did you have to wait for me?”
“The transmission only works when you’re close to headquarters. It’s the way the program is set up so that way hackers can’t take over. When the dolls take over, you’ll be able to run in and save your family. That’s when you say it’s on you. It needs to run smoothly.”
Sighing, I lean against the arch and chew my bottom lip. It’s cold and coarse, so I pull away, mechanically glancing up at the “TJD was here” scribbled onto the arch. That’s just slack. For decades, that doodle will tarnish a piece of history. Nobody cares that you were here, TJD.
In all of the excitement (I use the term loosely), I haven’t even appreciated the New York sights, didn’t smell the proverbial roses. The flowing water, the scent of the swaying trees, the graffiti. When did I experience all that the last time, I mean with my human senses? I love it when the breeze picks up—it makes the leaves brush together, as if they’re whispering or laughing with one another. Everything is just so… right. Life truly is perfect.
“Ella? Hey! You having a stroke or something?”
“Huh?” I snap out of my daydream. “Right. Ah. Look, we’re already criminals. I mean, we just assaulted a cop. It can’t be too unethical to steal a computer, can it?”
“I can’t just use any old computer. It has to have my files on it.” She puts her hands on her hips, suddenly very taken by her shoes. “We’re in Central Park, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
She looks up and stares at an apartment block. “Josh lives in there.”
“Josh?”
“A cop I used to date. He’s a tool. But I maybe kinda put a whole bunch of programs on his computer to spy on him… make sure he wasn’t cheating, which he totally was, by the way. He doesn’t know they’re on there still.”
“Good to see your trust in people is intact,” I say sarcastically.
Adjusting the foil hat, Sianne unzips one of the bags. She pulls out two dolls and passes them to us. “I could turn you into these. It’ll be easier to break into… something.”
“But if we’re dolls, aren’t we susceptible to transmissions?” I ask.
“No, because these are our dolls. Daniel’s dolls.”
I glance at Lisa, who mulls over the decision. Eventually, she cracks her knuckles and nods. “Never thought I’d have to relive those days. But it’s probably our safest bet. I mean, if we get caught as dolls, we can get away easily. Or we can always disconnect and be back in an instant.”
“What do we do with our bodies, though? It’s not safe here.”
“It’s not safe anywhere.” Lisa steps over the bags and crouches down like a bird nesting. She pulls a bag over herself, shivering when a small breeze picks up. “If Sianne can watch our bodies, we can break into Josh’s apartment. As soon as I get the right program, we’ll be out of there in a matter of minutes.”
I gulp when I stare at the dolls, a sickly wave swelling in my stomach. I used to feel safe and protected as one of them. But now I’m back in my human form, walking… it’s like I’m petrified of not returning to the human world again.
“Do I have to go with you?” I rasp.
“Um, yeah. I’m not doing this alone. I need a spare set of eyes.”
“Maybe I should stay here with Sianne to protect your body?”
“No. If Sianne is in trouble, she can disconnect us. I need you, Ella.”
“So many nonsenses nonsense, per! Crazy dolls don’t know what they’re doing.” As Sianne sticks wires to Lisa’s temples, she glances at me. “These dolls have upgrades. You know that, right?”
“It’s still not very reassuring…” Reluctantly, I step forward and hide beneath the bags as Sianne plucks out more wires and fiddles with several buttons. “Don’t we need to be in a tube?”
&
nbsp; “That’s only for lengthy transitions to keep the body alive, lady doll. You won’t be long.”
I sigh. “How did we get involved in all of this?”
“It’s rather poetic.” Sianne unwraps the last cord. “It all started with you, thirty years ago. Hopefully it can end with you, too. We can beat this. I know it.”
Lisa smiles. “I like you when you’re lucid, Sianne. Sometimes, you’re inspiring. Like, you’re a good friend about ten percent of the time.”
Sianne scowls. “All my imaginary friends think I’m a good friend one hundred percent of the time.”
“And there goes the lucidity,” Lisa says.
Sianne switches something attached to the wires and my head tingles. Her voice fades, my vision blurs, and reality distorts. It’s a common occurrence, lately. Within moments, I’m reborn. Only now, I have no heartbeat, no need for oxygen and, no blisters.
I’m back in Hell.
top looking so depressed!” Lisa snaps, her doll form eerily similar to her human self, only it has purple hair instead of black.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I’ve just wasted so many years as a doll. I hoped never to be one again.”
“Well, look who has changed! Besides, we’ll be like what, two hours?” She glances around the park and grunts. “Make that two days. We’ll never get out of here.”
“New York is bigger when you’re a doll.”
Sianne, who is gigantic again, bursts into a fit of hysterics. Wiping away tears, she grabs the blue backpack and shakes it until a small, pink jeep lands with a thud. “See? Pack for every occasion!”
“Yeah well, if you’d just brought your computer, we wouldn’t need to be doing this at all.” Lisa runs her hands across the pink plastic door. “It’d be a lot cooler if it were black.”
“It kind of looks black in the dark.” I jump into the passenger seat. “Is it remote control?”
Shattered Girls (Broken Dolls Book 2) Page 14
