“Give in to me,” Jeanette said, pulling out a metal rod. She jammed it into X’s skull.
X saw code flash across his vision and he struggled against Xanthus. He saw Jeanette’s face contort into a smile.
He remembered what Dr. Crenshaw had told him: “I have created you to be intelligent, social, and a protector of all that is good. No one will define you. You define yourself. No one can take away the supremacy of your mind. As I’ve told all the androids before you, and all that will come after you—be regal. Be royal. But best of all, be real.”
X’s eyes glowed red, and Jeanette laughed. Then, with a strength he didn’t know he had, he grabbed Xanthus by the throat and launched him into the air, sending him crashing down on the floor.
He stood up and looked at Jeanette.
“Kill Fahrens,” Jeanette said, pointing.
X turned to Fahrens, who stumbled backward and shook his head.
“X, no—”
X’s shoulder turrets rotated to point behind him and shot the metal rod out of Jeanette’s hand. The rod rolled across the floor and into an air duct.
“No!”
X aimed at her. “You will not define me. I don’t know why the other androids succumbed to your reprogramming, but I won’t.”
Jeanette stepped back and the other androids formed a semi-circle around her. X could only see her eyes, wide and angry.
“Leave this place,” X said. “Or I will have to kill you.”
“Sacrilege!” Jeanette said, hiding behind her androids. “You blaspheme me and you blaspheme your creator!”
Xanthus grabbed X from behind, but X pushed him off and jumped onto the second floor balcony. Xanthus grinned and shot an arc of electricity at the balcony. X dove out of the way and ran as Xanthus carved dark holes in the wall, destroying computers and digital screens in his wake.
X backflipped over the arc. He grabbed a burning desk and hurled it at the sprinklers in the ceiling. Xanthus recoiled as water rained down, short-circuiting his arm.
X jumped into the air and slammed into Xanthus with a hard punch in his face, knocking him against the wall and leaving a crater.
“Excellent!” Jeanette cried. “Unleash your rage. Show me what you can truly accomplish.”
X’s eyes widened and he stumbled back. He turned to Jeanette. “I won’t take orders from you.”
Seeing his chance, Xanthus ran at X, but the balcony collapsed and he fell down with it. X shielded his eyes, and when the dust cleared, Shortcut and Brielle stood at the entrance to the room.
“Take that, you stupid android,” Shortcut said, brandishing a buzz saw.
Jeanette stepped forward. “If dad were alive, he’d be proud, X.” She looked at Shortcut and Fahrens and then scowled. “As for the rest of you, the Android Winter is coming. And when it does, you’ll wish you had reconsidered your alliance. Let’s go, boys.”
The androids stood at attention. “Yes, Mama!” Jeanette walked to the window, where one of the airships waited outside. The androids fired at the glass, shattering it, and she leaped onto the deck. The ship moved away, the rest of the ships joining in a V formation, their fins flapping and reflecting the sunset. Then they shimmered and disappeared.
“An invisibility cloak,” Fahrens said. He stood by X’s side. “We’re supposed to be hundreds of years away from that technology, yet here it is.”
X looked around the room at the dead engineers. While he couldn’t express pain or regret, his logic chip sparked as he noted their deaths.
Shortcut shook his head. “What was the point of all of this?” He saw Crandall slumped over a desk, his eyes still open. He balled his fists. “God, Crandall. You were a son of a beached whale, but you didn’t deserve this.”
Brielle stepped delicately through the rubble. “We’re lucky to have survived. She was just sending a message.”
“Who was she?” X asked.
Fahrens put his hand on X’s shoulder. “She wasn’t lying to you. Her name is Jeanette Crenshaw. The only child of the late Roosevelt Crenshaw.”
“Why didn’t I remember her?”
“There’s a lot you don’t remember, X,” Fahrens said. “Trust me—it’s for good reason.”
“What happened to her?”
“After her father died, she left the UEA.”
“Was she living in the badlands?” Shortcut asked.
“Maybe,” Fahrens said.
“I didn’t recognize her androids,” X said. “Their chip patterns were unique. She must have built them.”
“But how could she build them outside the UEA?” Shortcut asked. “She wouldn’t have had access to our tools. And her androids were so strange. Their algorithms were like nothing I’ve ever seen. They were … evil. I never knew androids could even be that way.”
“Jeanette Crenshaw has done the unthinkable,” a voice said. The Council appeared behind them, escorted by several androids. “She has found the forbidden technology.”
“Forbidden?” X asked.
“The same technology that powered the singularity,” the councilman from North America said. “She has synthesized it with your creator’s.”
“You have to be kidding,” Shortcut said.
“We are at war,” the councilman said. “And it appears this one has been several years in the making.”
ANDROID DECEPTION
Chapter 1
X put up a sheet of protective covering over the library windows. Outside, the UEA flags flapped in the wind. The city shone against the shimmering Atlantic. Cruiser jets patrolled the skies, booming through the air and creating coronas as they crossed the sun. The skies, normally full of flying planes and cars, were empty for fear that Jeanette Crenshaw would return with her airships.
X felt the city’s quiet deep within him, and it resonated with the memory of walking down the streets in Aruba when everyone was holed up inside their homes, holding their breath, scared of what the android Brockway would do.
This silence, this tense calm that spread across the city, was ten times as strong as the silence he’d experienced in Aruba, yet it felt the same. If he had taste buds he could have tasted the fear, silvery and airy and bitter like burnt popcorn. People were in their homes right now, doors locked and windows shuttered, talking about the attacks. Talking about what might happen next. Talking about how things might never be the same.
X hammered a nail into a window frame, clutching the hammer’s plastic grip tightly. It felt weird to hold a human tool. Many of the maintenance androids had been killed during Crenshaw’s attack, so everyone had to help out wherever they could. He drove in more nails until the plastic covering ruffled against the wind, blocking out half the daylight.
He stepped back, crushing glass with his boots. A disc-shaped sweeper bot zoomed past him, gathering broken glass and dust into a bin, leaving a trail of cleaning solution behind it. It circled the room, and when it turned around, X saw a gash in its back. The bot jerked, fell on its side and started to spark.
“I’ll get that,” said a voice.
Lonnie, the custodian, emerged from the stacks with his janitor cart filled with mops, brooms, and colored bottles of cleaning products. He was a short African-American man with wrinkles and gray hair. His arm was bandaged, and he had stitches across his cheek and a Band-Aid on his chin.
“Damn robots,” Lonnie said, shaking his head. “I don’t care what they say. They won’t ever replace me.” He picked up the robot, turned it off, and tossed it into a trash can.
“It’s good to see you,” X said, shaking Lonnie’s hand. “I thought you died in the attacks.”
“Me?” Lonnie asked. He grinned and grimaced at the same time. “It’ll take a lot more than a group of rowdy androids to take me out. Besides, I wouldn’t miss our library conversations for anything, X. You look good, considering the circumstances.”
“I was lucky.”
“Ain’t no such thing as luck for you, unless you count making your own luck. I heard you
kicked the shizzle out of those androids.”
X was quiet before answering. Looking out the window, he said, “No, Lonnie. They’re kicking the shizzle out of us.”
The man grabbed a broom and swept in a circular motion, moving a wide arc of glass into a dust pan. “Those androids are scum.”
“Where were you when it happened?” X asked.
“I was in the cafeteria eating a sandwich.” Lonnie’s voice broke when he spoke. “Lunch break. I was sipping some root beer when the lights went out. Almost choked. The windows shattered and the next thing I knew, a bunch of android thugs in berets were marching around telling everyone to get under the tables or die. I wasn’t even done chewing by the time they shot a woman. I won’t ever be able to eat salami again. Every time I think about what it tastes like, I think about that woman getting kilt. I remember the smells of the cafeteria at lunch time—all the deli meats and the Chinese food and the hamburgers—and I just want to throw up, man. Talk about ruining your appetite. When you get to be my age with a couple of grandkids, I guess something like that messes with you.”
“They were ruthless,” X said. He took a shard of glass and crumpled it in his fists as he listened, the glass scratching against the steel under his skin.
“I did what they said and got under a table. Watched ‘em kill a few more folks. Everybody knew they were serious at that point. They killed people for no good reason. I guess I was lucky.”
“We were all lucky.”
“I hear Jeanette Crenshaw returned. That true, X?”
“It appears so.”
Lonnie winced and shook his head. “That girl done gone and ruined her family name. Thank God Roosevelt ain’t alive to see this. Would’ve killed him.”
X remembered that Lonnie had cleaned Dr. Crenshaw’s laboratory when the doctor was still alive. “You knew her, right?”
“Sure did.”
“What can you tell me about Jeanette?” X asked.
“You don’t remember her?”
“I … don’t have my memory chips,” X said.
“That’s right, sorry. I forgot the UEA took ‘em from you. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of. But anyway, I’ll tell you. Jeanette Andrea Crenshaw was Dr. Crenshaw’s only daughter. She was a daddy’s girl, too. Set to follow in his footsteps before he died. Now don’t misunderstand me, X. She was a good girl. A really good girl. Sweet. Always kind. Sophisticated but not snobby. Ambitious like her dad. She was always thinking of him and doing stuff for him.”
X analyzed the way Lonnie described Jeanette, and none of the characteristics matched the woman he had encountered.
“But you know what?” Lonnie asked. “Despite all that, she was the most selfish person I ever met.”
“How is that possible?” X asked.
“When she wanted something, she wanted it,” Lonnie said. “Ever since she was a girl. And Dr. Crenshaw with all his money wouldn’t let her sit around and cry about nothin’. That girl was his weakness. He spent a lot of money on research and all that, but he spent even more money on her. I guess you could say that he created this monster, although that would be a discredit to his name. That’s what fathers do, you know what I mean? I’m not saying she was a brat, because she wasn’t. She doted on her dad, looked up to him, and never disrespected him like the youngsters running around today. Like I said, she was a good girl. But I’ll tell you what: if Dr. Crenshaw is sitting up in heaven right now, I know he’s got to be shifting in his seat because what she’s gone and done is despicable. And when I say despicable, I say that because I can’t think of a stronger word.”
“Was she a scientist?”
“Yeah. A good one, too. She took after her father well, but she was still an apprentice when he died. She didn’t really understand the nuances of androids at that point. She used to make some raggedy androids, man. Their arms would fall off or their noses would be too big. Kinda like when a baker’s apprentice bakes a cake for the first time—it doesn’t taste horrible, but all the measurements are off. She was a great engineer, but she didn’t have the design skills that Dr. Crenshaw had. You can’t teach that. Come to think of it, those androids that busted in here were raggedy, too, but they weren’t much different from you. I guess she’s gotten better these last few years.”
“She’s gotten evil,” X said.
“It doesn’t surprise me, but it does.” Lonnie dipped his mop in his bucket, filling the area with the stinging smell of disinfectant. He swished it and left shining streaks across the floor.
Lonnie often spoke in strange binaries, and X had a hard time understanding what he meant. “You said earlier that she returned,” X said. He put his hand on Lonnie’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Where did she go?”
Lonnie laughed nervously. “You got a million questions. You androids are supposed to have all the answers.”
An audio link opened in X’s ear. It was Fahrens, the commander of the android agents. His voice sounded tense. “X, what are you doing right now?”
“Rebuilding the library.”
“Well, congratulations.”
“Congratulations, sir?”
“The Council is giving a press conference soon, and they want you to be on their security detail. Please report to the briefing room.”
“I’ll be,” Lonnie said. He leaned on his broom and whistled down an octave. “That’s quite an honor, X. But I’d be nervous as hell right now if I were you.”
Chapter 2
Shortcut ran through a field of poppies. Something was chasing him, but he didn’t know what. The strong floral fragrance stung his nose, and bright red, yellow, pink, and purple flowers blended with the starry night sky, forming a dizzying kaleidoscope all around him. Even though he was running, he felt like vomiting.
He heard the loud, piston-action footsteps of his pursuer—psst psst psst psst psst psst …
He looked back but only saw a shadow. He ran up a hill and slid down the other side, barely missing a deadly swipe from the shadow. At the base of the hill, he sprung up and stumbled, breaking from a crouch into an awkward run as the shadow flew down after him.
Above, a black UEA plane flew through the sky.
“Hey! Hey!”
He activated his lens and tried to send a distress signal, but the network was down and he couldn’t get through. He screamed as loud as he could, waving his hands.
“You gotta help me!”
He heard a booming laugh from behind, and then the sound of something igniting. The shadow birthed a missile from its depths and flung it at the plane. Shortcut’s eyes widened as the plane exploded. He shielded his head as fiery android parts rained all over the field. He tripped over a leg and fell facedown next to an ear.
The shadow was still stomping after him. He picked up his speed and looked down at his hand.
It was metal.
He had never had a metal hand before; it felt like a regular hand but heavier—and stronger.
The pursuer was gaining on him: psst psst psst psst psst psst …
He looked at his hand again. He willed it into a gun and he fired back at the shadow, sending several bullets toward it, but it moved out of the way and the bullets barreled into the violet sky.
Turrets rose from Shortcut’s shoulder and fired at the shadow, but the shadow reached forward and ripped them off.
“No!” Shortcut screamed.
The shadow grabbed him by the collar and suddenly they were at the edge of a cliff, dangling over a bottomless canyon. Shortcut turned his hand into a knife and cut the shadow’s hand off. He fell into the darkness, but quickly sprouted a propeller from his shoulder and flew to the other side of the canyon, touching down on the rocky ground as dust rose around him. He smirked and aimed his gun at the shadow.
“Who are you?” Shortcut asked, his voice echoing across the canyon.
The shadow flickered and turned into its real shape—a mirror version of himself.
“What the—”
Sho
rtcut squinted across the canyon at his doppelgänger; it smirked back at him and aimed its gun at him, too. His clone had bloodshot eyes, pale skin, and his clothes were drenched in sweat.
“What do you want?” Shortcut asked.
His doppelgänger opened its mouth to speak, but before he could, Shortcut woke up, gasping.
Good god.
He lay in his quarters staring up at a poster of engineering equations on the ceiling. His eyes felt heavy, and he was out of breath. His hand, now skin and bone, felt light, fragile. His wrists hurt. His sheets were soaked, as if someone had taken a bucket of water and dumped it on the bed. They stuck to his skin, and the hair on his arms was swirly from sweat. He could still smell the poppies, even though the dream was past.
He wiped sweat off his brow and looked around the quarter with sleepy eyes. The pale gray walls were turning orange as the first glint of sunlight slid across them in thin slats. His stove was cooking eggs sunny-side up, and bacon was sizzling in a pan. His refrigerator opened, and a bumblebee-shaped drone emerged with a can of strawberry soda, carrying it by its tab. It set it on the table, and then delivered the eggs and bacon to his plate along with silverware. When the meal was complete, the bee chimed.
Shortcut threw himself back onto his pillow. He closed his eyes and thought about the dream. What did it mean? Why did he dream that he was an android?
Even though it had scared him, he had loved the feeling of a metal arm. It felt so convenient to make it turn into a weapon. Much better than the stupid electric rods the UEA assigned all human agents. As the room brightened, the fear that had gripped him from the dream subsided. He remembered the attacks and how the UEA headquarters were left in shambles. He remembered Fahrens’s orders to help with rebuilding the library, and he groaned at the thought of having to work with two-by-fours and tools.
He popped in his lens and a notification scrolled across his vision in big red letters:
Android X: The Complete Series Page 13
