Unstrung

by Kendra C. Highley

  From his voice and demeanor, it’s clear he’s a high-functioning model. And I feel like I’ve met him before. “Do I know you?”

  He shakes his head, looking afraid. “Why would you know me?”

  Cameras mounted in the corners of the hall swivel our direction. I nod slowly. “Sorry, my mistake.”

  “Fourteen said you were hungry and had some issues with the room.” The artificial comes inside my cell. When he sees the puddle, he raises an eyebrow. “That’s no leak.”

  The little quirk to his mouth lets me know he finds my manmade flood more funny than annoying. That surprises me. “You caught me.”

  “I’ll send for a mop. Anything else?”

  Is this someone I can trust? His sense of humor is something, anyway. “Are there any cameras in here?”

  His hand drifts to the nightstick he wears on his belt. Maren must not trust the help with stunners or dart guns. “No. Why do you ask?”

  I’m in enough trouble that taking a risk can’t hurt. “I know you, don’t I?”

  His shoulders slump. “Yes. I’m Twenty-Eight, but you always called me Adam.” A little smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “You and Quinn gave all of us names.”

  Nothing about his story triggers a memory, but he seems sincere. “Adam, is there any chance you can help me?”

  He points to the back of his neck. “Not with the new security protocols in place. I’m getting a headache just for talking to you. If I tried to help, I’d be totally incapacitated.”

  The pain switch works even when they disobey in secret now? And I thought the shoulder twitch was bad. “I guess that’s a no?”

  Adam pats my arm awkwardly, like he’s not used to giving affection. “I’m sorry.”

  As he stands to go, his whole body goes stiff and his limbs jerk. I watch in horror as his eyes roll back in his head. Oh, Gears, did our conversation set off the pain switch? “Are you okay?”

  Adam reaches out to grab the doorframe. His eyelids flutter shut and he takes a few slow, measured breaths. When he opens his eyes, he gives me the strangest look—like he’s seeing me for the first time. “I’m fine. You need to wait here. Someone will come for you.”

  But no one comes for a good half-hour, and when the door unlocks again. Piers smirks down at me. Not the person I’d hoped Adam was sending for me. I must’ve winced, because his smile widens. “I have a surprise for you.”

  I cross my arms, putting up a brave front when all I feel is a sinking dread. “May I go to the bathroom first? I’d hate to pee all over your shoes if the talks get rough.”

  His smirk changes to a scowl. “I’ll take my chances. Move.”

  Fourteen is waiting for me. His fingers dig into my upper arm as he marches me back to the interrogation room. Except we don’t stop there—he keeps going to a room at the end of the hall, near the stairwell I used to get to Maren’s office during the break in. Piers sweeps around us and keys the lock open.

  An operating table takes up the middle of the room. A strong light hangs over it. Trays full of strange, shiny objects cover counters that wrap around the side and back walls. A blond man in a white coat stands in the corner, bent over one of the trays.

  This can’t be good.

  “So,” I say, hoping for bravado and managing helpless panic, “what’s this place?”

  Piers leans in close, so close I can smell the coffee on his breath. “This is the place where we fix bad puppets. Because even with your superior brain function and specialized skills, that’s what you are. It’s time to remind you who’s pulling the strings.”

  The man in the white coat turns to face us. My gut rolls over and I start to struggle. “No, no, no…”

  Fourteen shoves me forward and forces me onto the table. My head slides into an indentation and there’s a hole where my neck fits. He and Piers fasten a strap across my chest, then my legs. My hands are trapped against my sides and the light above is blinding until the white-coated man bends over me and blocks it out. His smile tells me how much he’s enjoying my fear.

  “How nice to see you again, Ms. Pate,” Mr. Drummond says. “I guess my secret’s out.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” I try to calm down, but I can taste bile creeping up my throat.

  “Oh, just a little upgrade. It won’t hurt much, I promise.”

  “You’re fitting me with a pain switch and you tell me it won’t hurt much?” I shout. “How about I install one in your neck so you can see how it feels!”

  Piers makes an impatient noise. “I don’t have time for this, Tod. She has information I need, so get busy.”

  Drummond snorts and produces a roll of white medical tape to secure my head to the headrest. I jerk against the tape, but it holds me in place. The table starts rising. When I’m even with Piers’s belly, it begins to rotate, tipping me over to face the floor. My body rests against the straps, but they’re so tight that my back is pressed firmly against the table even upside down. I squirm as much as I can until a needle pricks my upper arm near the spot where Caldwell jabbed me earlier. The floor tiles swim before my eyes.

  So tired. No more fighting, just want to sleep….sleep….sleep…sleep… Seven, two, three-three, six, fourteen. Seven, two, three-three, six, fourteen. Seven, two, three-three, six, fourteen.

  “She going into suspension mode,” Drummond says from far away. “This will only take a moment.”

  A small tool buzzes to life. Deep in my brain, a tiny thought is screaming at me, telling me to kick and bite. The rest of my body is like lead and my brain rolls with numbers that seem to come from nowhere. A blade nicks the back of my neck and all I can do is stare at the floor tiles.

  The tiny thought screams louder and louder, like it’s outside my body. Then the table shudders and there are crashes and bangs all around me. A man falls onto the floor, his arm in my line of sight. More shouting.

  The table rotates. Adam stands over me, speaking like he’s underwater. “Wake up!”

  Another male artificial, also garbled, says, “Suspension…have to reverse.”

  More clatters, more bangs, then Adam forces my mouth open. A tablet dissolves on my tongue.

  I never thought I’d be so glad to get stimmed.

  The drug goes to work instantly, bringing my body back to life. My first breath is a great gasp that ends with a loud cry. I fight my restraints, pulling so hard they cut into my skin.

  Adam slaps my left cheek. “Settle down! You’re back now, you’re back.”

  Everything snaps into focus. Drummond is lying in a pool of blood, and his skull looks…dented. Fourteen sits with his back to the wall, staring into space. His eyes are completely dead and his head is cocked at a weird angle.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Adam shrugs. “I turned Fourteen off.” He nods to the other man. “Mark bashed Drummond’s skull in.”

  “We’re still in trouble, though,” Mark says. He’s a stocky artificial with sandy hair and pebble-colored eyes. “Piers got away. We need to round up the others and get going before he comes back with reinforcements.”

  “Wait!” I look between them. “Adam, you said you couldn’t help me. What happened to your pain switch?”

  “I don’t know what you did,” he says, working to loosen my straps, “but fifteen minutes ago we all started hearing a voice in our head, some guy named Jole. He told us the security program had been lifted and that he was looking for you.”

  “That’s when you had that little seizure in my cell.” I can’t believe it—Jole and Quinn cracked the protocols.

  “Exactly. It happened to all of the higher-end models, and we’re leaving while we still can.”

  I roll from the chair. I’m a little dizzy from whatever Drummond did to me, but the stims make me feel alive. “I need to find Turpin. Do you know where they’re keeping him?”

  “We don’t have time to find a prisoner,” Mark says.

  “Just tell me where he is,” I say. “You don’t have
to come with me.”

  Adam nods and leads me into the hall. We’ve made it five steps when the lights go out. Red emergency lamps flash and a siren starts wailing.

  “Turpin’s cell was three down from yours,” Adam yells over the alarm. “I’ll—”

  He stops midsentence, jerking hard. With a gurgle, he falls to his knees. A dart tip sticks through the front of his shirt, driven through his back by a powerful gun. He touches my hand before collapsing in a heap. Piers, standing at the end of the hall, aims his gun at me. Mark pulls me out of the way, and the dart grazes his thigh.

  “Door at the end of the hall, on your right!” he yells. “Run!”

  Feeling sick about leaving them behind, I race down the hall. Men shout and I glance over my shoulder. Piers is wrestling with Mark, who’s landing blow after blow to Piers’s midsection. Since he has things well in hand, I skid to a halt in front of the last room and peek through the window. A man lies on the bed inside, but I can’t tell if it’s Turpin and I can’t get inside to find out because there’s a palm scanner locking the door.

  “Shast!” What I wouldn’t give for one of Jole’s data pads. I look around for something to break the lock. Nothing. Think! How do I get the boss out of here?

  Grunts echo behind me, then footsteps start my direction. I spin to ward off Piers, but he’s crumpled on the floor down the hall, unconscious. It’s Mark coming my way. “Jole keeps saying they have transport for you on the roof.” He slaps his hand onto the pad and the door slides open. “I’m supposed to help rally everyone else to the evac point.”

  He turns to leave and I grab his arm. “Wait! Thank you.”

  “Thank me once we’re outside.” He gives me a tired nod before running up the stairs.

  I duck into Turpin’s cell. It feels like my brain is rattling in my skull from the wail of the blasted alarm but it doesn’t seem to be affecting the boss. His face is covered in bruises and he barely moves when I stand by his bed. They’ve wrapped his hands in bandages, but I can tell from the purplish fingertips sticking out that he’s badly hurt.

  “Come on, boss,” I say, working my arm gently under his shoulders. “You need to sit up for me.”

  He lets out a groan as I force him upright. “Lexa? What are you doing here?”

  “Long story and we don’t have the time. We have to go. Think you can stand?”

  “Do my best.”

  Turpin wobbles as I half-walk, half-drag him into the hall. It’s slow going; he’s leaning on me with most of his weight. I could probably carry him, but there’s no way I can take him up the stairs. The elevator is at the other end of the hall. We’ll just have to go that way and pray Maren’s people don’t have the same idea. We step over Piers on our way. He doesn’t stir.

  I press the up arrow and we wait as the light flickers on 2, then 1, then B. With a ding, the doors open. I pull Turpin inside and push the button marked “roof access.” The elevator grinds its way up at a maddening pace. “Come on, come on!”

  “It’ll get there,” Turpin says. His face has turned an ugly pasty color. Maybe the elevator will eventually reach the roof, but will my boss make it that far?

  When the doors open, a beautiful sunny afternoon awaits. Voices shout below, mixed with screams. I help Turpin out of the elevator and prop him up against one of the metal air ducts. He closes his eyes, his face turned up to the sun.

  I leave him a moment to see what’s going on. Scores of K600s, along with some K500s, are gathered along the back wall of Maren’s compound. Some have on chef’s whites, others wear maintenance or housekeeping uniforms. A few are security guards. My heart jumps a little; Quinn’s herding artificials into service vehicles. Each time one fills up, another quickly takes its place. As they leave, the vehicles go in different directions. Smart—splitting up will make it harder for Maren’s people to catch all of them.

  I want to call to Quinn, to tell him we made it out okay, but he’s busy. Someone else shouts my name, though, and I look up. Jole waves madly from a two-seat hover cart with an attached truck bed. He brings the little craft lower and sets down on the roof. The first thing he does is give me a big hug. The second is to smirk. “Pretty good escape, huh?”

  “Yes. Now let’s get out of here!”

  He nods and limps over to Turpin. Between the two of us, we manage to carry the boss to the hover cart and load him into the bed. He moans when we fold his arms over his chest and his body goes slack. I check his pulse—still beating.

  “He fainted,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  Jole climbs into his seat and starts the engine. Then he startles and his eyes go wide; I spin around to see what’s scared him.

  Piers, with blood running from his temple, bursts onto the roof from the stairway door. He’s carrying that wicked dart gun he used to kill Adam.

  “Go!” I shout.

  Jole shakes his head, but I’m already running away from the hover cart, keeping my body between the vehicle and Piers’s gun. Swearing, Jole engages the throttle and the little craft lifts into the air, but he’s too late. Piers aims over my head and shoots out the cart’s propulsion mechanism. Jole gives me a terrified glance, fighting the controls. The cart wobbles, regains balance, wobbles again, then slowly falls away from the building.

  “No!” I run for the edge of the roof, reaching out for him, but he’s already out of reach. I watch in horror as the cart spins away and drops.

  There’s a moment of terrible silence, then a crash somewhere near the service entrance to the estate. There’s a cry of pain, cut short as a plume of black smoke wafts into the air.

  “Jole!” I scream.

  Piers turns the gun on me, but I’m too enraged to care. I run at that bastard like a bull charging a matador. Piers laughs and fires. The dart catches me in the right side, burying itself to the tail in my flesh. I don’t stop. Piers aims for my head, pulls the trigger.

  Nothing—he’s out of darts.

  Looking frantic, he backs up to the edge of the roof and throws the gun at me. It glances off my shoulder. He has no time to come up with anything else, because I tackle him around the middle. Piers teeters on the edge of the roof and the force of the blow, intensified by my anger and the stims, is enough to carry us both over the side.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine:

  Free Fall

  Piers screams as we fall thirty feet onto the bushes in Maren’s garden. The impact drives the dart further into my side and knocks the breath out of my lungs. I roll off of Piers, gasping like a land-bound fish. He doesn’t make a move to finish me off, lying utterly still. Once I manage to inhale some oxygen, I prod him with my foot. Piers’s head wobbles, then turns toward me.

  His lifeless eyes stare into the distance and a trickle of blood flows from the corner of his mouth into the bushes. I drag myself closer. Blood pools on his chest; Piers landed on the short, decorative metal border that surrounds the garden and it impaled him. It’s pure luck that I landed away from those spikes. The dart hurts bad enough.

  I try to stand, but I’m too weak so I drag my body through the bushes to the service driveway. Maybe I can catch a ride with the last of artificials. Staying hidden in case Maren’s men are searching the grounds, I peer around the corner of the house.

  Bodies, both Bolt and human, litter the lawn. A hovercraft starts up near the gate. I pull myself to my feet, using the wall for support and catch a glimpse of Mark driving away in the last service vehicle, a crowd of artificials packed inside with him. I limp into the open, waving, but he doesn’t see me and they’re gone.

  Exhausted, I lie down on the ground. My wound throbs. So does my head. The late afternoon sun shines on me, warm and bright, while blood seeps into the grass, leaking from the hole in my side. I drift along in a daze; the plants take on surreal hues. Will the police be here soon? Where’s Maren? I find that I don’t really care. Soon I’ll be out of blood and it won’t matter.

  “Lexa!” a hoarse voice calls.

  My eyes flutter open.
I must be hearing things. Dying people hear things.

  “Lexa!” Quinn says again.

  Is it real? I groan and hold up one arm. Grass swishes as Quinn runs across the lawn. He drops to his knees and runs his hands over my head and shoulders, slowing when he reaches my side. “We have to get you out of here.”

  “Too tired,” I mumble.

  “You’ll have to be tired later,” he says. “I’m going to help you stand.”

  I drape an arm around his shoulders and the next few seconds are pure agony as he helps me to my feet. I gasp, “Far enough.”

  Quinn holds me steady. “My car’s at the end of the alley. We can make it that far. Promise.”

  I take a few shallow breaths. Even those hurt. “You…have a car?”

  “No, dummy.” His voice is tender, but worried, too. “I stole the car.”

  “You learn…fast.” A fit of coughing overtakes me and my legs turn to jelly.

  “We have to get out of here before the police arrive. Maren’s on her way, too. Mark heard it over the security feed. Stay with me a little longer.”

  It’s so hard. Everything aches and my limbs won’t work right. Quinn gives up and sweeps me into his arms.

  “You’re…hurting me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I fight to stay conscious. “Liar.”

  “No, I am sorry. I’m just not going to put you down.”

  Every beat of my heart spills more blood and I want to tell him something before I die. Before it’s too late to say he’s earned my trust. I’m trying hard to form the words when someone shouts from the other end of the alley. The words freeze on my lips.

  “Lexa!” A metallic “cling clang” follows the shout. I know I should recognize the sound, but I can’t make sense of it, even as the person yells, “Quinn, wait!”

  Quinn doesn’t slow down. “She’s hurt pretty badly. You need to hurry!”

  He sets me on the pavement and opens the passenger door of the hover car that’s now ours. The footsteps keep coming even as Quinn puts me in my seat. He runs around to the driver’s side before the person catches up. I force my eyes to open.