by Tim Floreen
“I’m back in my room,” I said. “You were sleeping. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I’ll be right there. You need anything?”
“No. I’m going to bed now.” I couldn’t tell if my voice sounded normal, but even if it didn’t, he seemed too flustered to notice.
I waved off all the lights in my room except the one in my puck. It hovered a few feet above me. By its light, I picked up Gremlin and pulled back the fur that covered his belly, revealing his body’s caved-in metal casing. I opened his access panel—something I’d never done before. Usually I liked to snoop inside machines to understand their design and construction, but Gremlin had always been like a magic trick whose explanation I preferred not to know. Peering inside, I recognized Mom’s precise, delicate handiwork—now smashed, unrepairable. I closed him back up, arranged him in a ball next to Mom’s picture, and let him sleep.
19
Sleep didn’t come for me, though. After Ray looked in on me and I told him good night, I burrowed under the covers and pulled a pillow over my head, like I was trying to bury myself. I wished I could really do that: claw my way deep under the ground, keep digging and digging until I was part of the earth and my body disintegrated and there was no more me left.
The air turned hot and stuffy around me. The rain ticked against my window. My brain paced around and around in the same small circle. There were plenty of questions I should’ve been asking myself. Did this mean Nico was working for Charlotte, just like Bex had suspected? Tomorrow was Thursday, the day Charlotte had said she’d retaliate against my father. Was I her target?
But the fact that I should probably fear for my safety barely registered. Right then, all I could think about was that I’d fallen in love with a simulation of a human being. Nico, the handsome, charming, weird guy I’d thought I’d known, didn’t really exist. And the feeling that someone finally gave a crap about me, that someone finally understood me, that I wasn’t all alone in this ugly universe after all—that had been a simulation too.
The hours passed. After a while pale light started to filter under the covers. I ignored it. My puck’s morning alarm went off. I ignored that, too. Then, something I couldn’t ignore: a knock on my door.
“What is it?”
Trumbull stuck his head in. “Sorry to bother you, sir. Your friend Nico wants to talk to you.”
The sound of his name felt like ice water washing through my hollowed-out body.
“I’m sleeping.”
“He says it’s important. He says it won’t take long.”
My fingers, clutching the pillow over my head, loosened. If I told Trumbull to send Nico away, it would make him suspicious. And it might not stop Nico anyway. I’d seen what he could do last night. He might take more extreme measures, like snapping Trumbull’s neck and then mine, or blowing up the whole school, or—maybe worst of all—telling Trumbull I was gay. At least if I talked to him, I might get some answers. I pushed away the covers and groped for my glasses. “Give me a minute.”
While I pulled on a pair of jeans, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Pale, puffy face. Bluish circles under my eyes. My hands smarted, the palms scraped raw after clinging to the branch last night. The rest of me felt the same way: scraped raw, inside and out. I went over to the window and stared at the courtyard so I wouldn’t have to look at him when he came in. The door clicked open and clicked shut again. I tensed, half expecting him to shove me out the window. Go ahead, part of me wanted to say. Gutless Lee or Kamikaze Lee, I didn’t even know which.
“Hi,” Nico said.
Outside, it had stopped raining, but the light filtering down into the courtyard looked as gray and dismal as usual. On the window ledge lay my Swarmbots, their batteries drained, all of them belly-up like dead houseflies.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s funny,” I said. “Last night, while we were lying on the beach together, I kept thinking, This doesn’t feel real. This must be a fantasy. And it turns out I was right. The whole thing was fake—not just the tropical island, but you, too.”
“What about how you felt? That was real, wasn’t it?”
The floor creaked as he took a step toward me. I spun around and grabbed one of my Creatures from the shelf—a vegetable-chopping robot I called Dicey—knocking over a few other machines in the process. I yanked off her knife attachment and brandished it. “Don’t come any closer, you freak. I’m warning you.”
He backed up again, his hands in the air.
“If you try anything, so help me, I’m yelling for Trumbull.”
“Lee, I’m not going to hurt—”
“And don’t you dare talk to me about how I felt.”
“Okay. Okay.”
I took a breath but didn’t lower the knife. “What do you want, Nico?”
“To explain.”
“I guess you’d better.”
He licked his lips. He didn’t have a puffy face or dark circles under his eyes—as a robot, he was probably immune—but he looked anxious. I wondered: Did he look anxious because he was anxious? Or because someone had programmed him to arrange his face in an expression of anxiety whenever he encountered a situation like this one? There was a difference, wasn’t there?
“I was sent here to make contact with you,” he said. “Become your friend. Not to, you know, kiss you and stuff.”
“Don’t talk to me about that, either. Just thinking about what we did makes me sick.”
His eyes fell away from mine. He nodded.
“Let me get a few things straight. You said you were sent. By Charlotte?”
“Yes.”
The nape of my neck tingled, like a spider had just walked over my skin. “So she made you somehow.”
“That’s right. She has a human scientist helping her.”
“I guess that means you’ve never been to CHEE-lay.” I sneered the word.
“I don’t think so.”
“So where do you come from?”
“A lab. I’m not sure where it’s located.”
“And how old are you?”
“Five months.”
“Five months.” A bitter laugh boiled up in me. “Why did they make you Chilean? So your quirks would be less suspicious? ‘Oh, he just laughs loudly and likes to eat disgusting food because he’s Chilean.’ ”
“I suppose.”
“Plus, it’s an interesting detail, right? Which makes you seem more like an actual human.”
“Nico Medina is an actual human. He grew up in Santiago, speaks English as well as I do, has a father who always wanted him to go to school here.”
“I get it. Charlotte modeled you on a real person so you’d pass the background check my Secret Service detail would run on you.”
He nodded.
“Where is he now, then? Did Charlotte kill him?”
“Of course not. She arranged his admission to Inverness and then had him kidnapped a few days ago, while he was on his way to the United States. She’ll let him go once all this is over.”
“Let me guess: she hacked his puck archive too. So you’d have memories, just like she does. So you’d be a more perfect copy.”
“I’m not a copy.” His voice had risen a notch. “Nico’s archive is just a reference, a starting point. I have my own personality. It’s similar to his but not the same.”
“In other words, the real Nico Medina doesn’t eat disgusting food and laugh way too loud?”
For once, he didn’t find a joke I’d made funny. “No.”
“And your mom and dad, your annoying sisters, that teacher who got you into acting—they all belonged to that other person, not to you.”
“No, the drama teacher belonged to me.”
“What do you—” But then I understood. “You based her on Charlotte.”
“Charlotte’s important to me. I wanted to tell you about her.”
I nodded. “ ‘Reading Shakespeare helps us become more human.’ Isn’
t that what she said? I guess you need all the help you can get.”
Nico flinched. He fingered the bandage wrapped around his right hand.
“You’ve never spent an afternoon lying on a Chilean beach. You’ve never eaten an empanada.”
“Not technically. But I feel like I have. I can imagine exactly how they taste.” A spark, very faint, seemed to light up in the depths of his brown eyes, as if those electric filaments that laced his irises had switched on. “I have a whole lifetime of memories inside me, Lee. I feel like a real sixteen-year-old human boy.”
I replied in a low, hard voice. “How would you know?”
His eyes went dark again. He looked at his shoes.
“So Charlotte and her human ally created you and sent you here. To do what? Take me hostage? Assassinate me? She released a statement warning of another terrorist strike. Supposedly it’s happening today. Are you it?”
He shook his head. “I already told you, Lee, I wasn’t sent to do you harm. She just wanted me to make friends with you.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. I’m supposed to wait for further instructions.”
“Then how can you be sure she’s not going to ask you to hurt me?”
“Because she told me she wouldn’t.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me,” I said, my voice tilting toward hysteria. I jabbed my knife in his direction. “And she didn’t tell you to get all romantic with me so I’d like you and trust you.”
“No. That was all me.”
“That was real.” The word twisted into another sneer.
“Yes. Exactly. That was real. I fell for you as soon as I met you, Lee. I have a big personality. I can be impulsive. I guess I got carried away. What happened between us wasn’t Charlotte’s fault. It was mine.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “But did you ever stop to think why you liked me in the first place? If Charlotte made you, then she must’ve made you gay.”
His forehead creased, like I’d just said something in a language he didn’t understand.
“Why would she do that?” I demanded.
“The original Nico Medina’s gay too.”
“Why did she choose him, then? The fact that you’re gay and I’m gay is too big a coincidence. She must’ve found out I was in the closet. How? Did she tap into the security cameras here at school? Did she see me kiss Jeremy?”
“Look, I don’t know about any of that.”
“She must’ve orchestrated everything that’s happened between us. She gave you that big, impulsive, flirty personality of yours. She probably made you like guys with glasses and huge ears, too. So how can you say any of it’s real?”
“You’re wrong, Lee. Maybe she just made me gay so we’d understand each other better.”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” I waved the knife at him. “Go on. Ask her.”
“I’m not supposed to contact her. I’m supposed to wait for her to get in touch with me.”
“And she hasn’t? Not even after what happened last night? You must’ve sent her a message about that.”
“I’m sure she knows. She said she’d be monitoring me.”
My stomach dropped. Of course. As a robot, he must have a network connection. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until now. “So Charlotte’s seen everything we’ve done together. Listened to everything I told you.”
He nodded.
I raked the fingertips of my free hand over my skull. “Blackmail. That’s why Charlotte engineered you to throw yourself at me like that. So she’d have recordings she could use against me.”
“Lee, please stop. That can’t be her plan.”
“Oh, yeah? What about Nevermore? Are you also going to tell me she didn’t take control of my robot and make her attack me?”
His eyes flared wide. “She didn’t, Lee.”
“Who did, then? Seems like yet another big coincidence, my robot trying to kill me the day after you showed up, and then again when I was with you last night.”
“It wasn’t Charlotte!” He glanced at the door, remembering Trumbull, and lowered his voice. “Why would she make your robot try to hurt you? I saved you from Nevermore, remember?”
“Maybe that was part of her plan. Maybe she hoped it would make me trust you more.”
“But I also had to blow my cover to do it. Why would she want that to happen?”
I shrugged. “Maybe that part was a mistake.”
He shook his head. “I’m telling you, Charlotte would never do something like that.”
“What are you talking about? Of course she would. She just blew up the Statue of Liberty a month ago.”
“To make an important point. And she didn’t hurt anyone.”
“She killed my mother.”
That stopped him. He gave a small nod. “You’re right. But she didn’t mean to. She told me your mom’s death is her greatest regret. If there was one thing she could take back—”
“Save it,” I spat.
“You have to believe me, Lee. Charlotte means no harm. I don’t know who took control of your robot, but it wasn’t her.”
“How do you know that for a fact?”
“Because I trust her.”
“Of course you do. That’s probably part of your program too.”
He opened his hands helplessly. From outside the door came the sound of voices: a pack of students on their way to breakfast.
“Or maybe she’s not the one I should be worrying about,” I said. “Maybe you were controlling Nevermore yourself. You could’ve done the same trick with her that you did with the body-scan machine before the assembly. You did talk to that thing to make it let you through, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I didn’t make Nevermore attack you. How can you even say that? You know me.”
“Do I? I didn’t know you were a robot.”
“But you know what’s important.”
“The fact that you’re not human isn’t important?” Now I was the one having trouble keeping my voice down.
“Not as important as other things. The two of us throwing sparklers into the chasm. You kissing me in the dark. That was important. That was real. And you know it.”
The faint spark had returned to his eyes. I forgot to breathe for a second.
A chime came from my puck.
“That’s my dad calling,” I said. “You have to go now.”
“What happens next? Are you going to tell him?”
My puck hovered in the air between us, its white light blinking. Of course I should tell Dad. I might be in serious danger. Plus, Dad needed to know Charlotte had started making her own 2Bs.
But what if Charlotte retaliated by exposing my relationship with Nico? Or even if she didn’t, if I told Dad Nico was a 2B sent by Charlotte, the rest of the truth would have to come out anyway. Investigators would demand to see my puck archive. My whole life would be laid bare. Eventually, the American public would find out too. They always did. I imagined everything that would follow. The look of mingled disappointment and alarm on Dad’s face, as if I’d just confirmed his worst fears about me. A tidal wave of outrage on the Supernet even bigger than when I’d jumped off the Arlington Memorial Bridge. After all, I hadn’t just kissed a boy. I’d kissed a 2B—Dad’s archenemy and the scourge of humankind. It was the ultimate betrayal. I wondered what nicknames the gossip sites would think up for me this time.
“Lee?” Nico said.
I shook my head. “I won’t tell,” I muttered. “Not yet.”
“Thank you.”
“I need some time to figure things out, though. Stay away from me for a while.”
“Whatever you want.”
“What about Nevermore? Is she still outside?”
“I hid her in my room.”
My puck chimed again. “Get out of here, Nico.”
He started toward the door but stopped by my nightstand to gaze at the little ball of orange fur lying there. “Is he badly dam
aged?”
I nodded. “I don’t think I can fix him.”
“Maybe I can.” He picked Gremlin up and stroked his coat with his thumb. “If you’d like me to try.”
I turned away, toward the window. “Whatever,” I said, making my voice hard again. “He’s just a machine.”
20
Nico left in a hurry, without closing the door behind him, without saying anything to Trumbull as he shouldered past. I remembered the knife and shoved it under a pillow a half second before Trumbull glanced in at me, one eyebrow raised above his sunglasses. I pushed my door shut and turned to my puck. For a second I considered telling it to take a message, but if I did that, Dad would just call Trumbull. “Answer,” I said. Dad appeared on my wall, armored up for the day in his usual white shirt, red tie, and sleek navy suit. “Hey, Dad.”
“Just wanted to touch base, Lee. I heard you’ve had an exciting couple of days.”
“I guess you could say that.”
My shelf of Creatures was still in disarray. I started to right the knocked-over machines one by one, hoping that might help my pounding heart to slow down.
“Trumbull told me about that robot bird of yours attacking you.”
“That happened two days ago.”
“Right.” He straightened his tie. “Listen, I would’ve liked to call sooner, but I’ve been booked solid the past couple of days dealing with this new Charlotte scare. I’ve kept tabs on you, though. I know Trumbull and his boys are taking good care of you.”
“It’s all right. I understand.”
He leaned his elbows on his desk and laced his fingers together. “I also heard about your shenanigans the night before last. You were under lockdown and sneaked out?”
“Stroud already lectured me, Dad. You don’t have to bother.”
“I wasn’t going to lecture you. To be honest, I’m glad to hear you’re getting into a little mischief.” In other words, as he’d pointed out a few days ago, I didn’t excel at academics, play sports, participate in extracurricular activities, or socialize. At least this was something. He chuckled. “Sometime I’ll tell you about the antics I got into when I was at Inverness. It’s good to cut loose every once in a while. Just don’t make a habit of it, okay? Especially now, with Charlotte threatening another attack. Trumbull works hard to keep you safe. Don’t give the poor guy a heart attack.”
