Girl of Flesh and Metal

by Alicia Ellis

  He sat on the bed and tapped the space beside him. “How are you?”

  I slumped down next to him. “Couldn’t be better.” I wanted to make a joke to lighten the mood, but all my usual quick words skittered away from me. At least, I didn’t have to explain why I was here. Liv had done that when she called him to set this up.

  Hunter draped an arm around me and squeezed. Instinctively, I laid my head on his shoulder.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

  “Liv told you everything.”

  “Did she?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I dropped my gaze to the array of blues on the carpet.

  “You haven’t looked me in the eye since you walked in this house. That’s not the face of someone who’s fresh out of secrets.”

  “I’ve had a long day. That’s all.” When I met his green eyes, I saw his skepticism. He knew when I was full of shit, and he was calling me on it. I raised a hand to stop him from contradicting me. “Okay, I’m lying.”

  I told him the whole story. Almost all of it—from waking up in Debbie’s bedroom, to finding Jackson outside her house, to pummeling the detectives earlier today. I left out nothing but the look on Debbie’s dead face as she stared up at me.

  To Hunter’s credit, he listened in complete silence.

  “So I’m basically screwed,” I finished.

  “All this negativity.” He swiped at the air with both hands, as if to remove my negative thoughts from it. “Let’s do something.” He jumped up from the bed and pulled me to my feet. “I’ve spent too much of my life sitting down, and I’m not going to do it right now.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “We go to CyberCorp, right now, and demand that Dr. Fisher or her assistants work on you. Even if they’ve heard about your arrest warrant, they wouldn’t dare turn you in. They’d lose their jobs.”

  “It’s seven at night. Their office is closed.”

  “The Model One rollout happens in three days. You think anyone there cares about normal business hours?”

  With each word he spoke, a drop of my despair turned into nervous anticipation. “They’re going to refuse to see me, or the police are going to catch us on the way there.”

  “You hate CyberCorp. That’s the last place they’ll expect you to go.”

  My head spun when I took a step toward the door, and Hunter caught me under my arm. “Whoa. You okay?”

  “My head hurts a little.”

  “You need your meds.” He patted down my jacket pockets. “Where are they?”

  I stuffed both hands in my pockets, but came up empty. Then I remembered the bag I’d packed and hadn’t had a chance to grab when the cops showed up. “Shit. I left them at home.”

  “Any chance the pain will go away on its own?”

  I shook my head. “It’s just going to get worse.” Within an hour, it would get so bad that I would think my head might explode into teeny bits of brain and skull.

  “They’ll have some kind of painkillers at CyberCorp, right?”

  “I’d have to get them straight from Dr. Fisher, since they’re prescription meds, but she hasn’t had time for me ever since she decided I was healthy enough for Ron and Simon to take over. We’re not going to be able to drag her away from the Model Ones tonight. We have to stop by my house for the meds.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “It’s a terrible idea, but the alternative is to continue feeling like rats are chewing through my brain matter.”

  That brought a sympathetic smile to his face. “We don’t want that.”

  “Maybe I should just turn myself in,” I said.

  “No way. We’re going to CyberCorp.”

  “I should warn you. There may be nothing they can do for me. They can’t shut down my AI without killing me or turning me into a vegetable—at least not yet.”

  Hunter held up a hand to stop me. “What’s the alternative? You turn yourself in, and maybe—if you’re lucky—you end up in prison or a mental institution for the rest of your life? No. Let’s give it until tomorrow to think of something else. Something that doesn’t involve you being locked up for crimes you may or may not have wanted to commit.”

  “Is there really a chance I didn’t want to? The arm doesn’t think for me. It just reacts to my thoughts.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “But you—” He stopped when a shooting pain caused me to grip my head in both hands. “Maybe we should continue this when you’re not hurting. We’re going CyberCorp. We can get your meds from your doctor there.”

  “I think I’m going to . . .” My head pulsed. The pain hit me so hard that I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Hunter grabbed my shoulders. “That’s it. We’re going.”

  “I’m going to—”

  This time, the doorbell cut me off. Hunter and I both froze, and silence filled the room. The only sound was the rhythmic pulsing of my head.

  Hunter peeked out the window. “It’s some boy. Tall, dark hair. I don’t know him.”

  “Lena!” a familiar voice shouted from outside. “I know you’re in there.”

  “Jackson,” I murmured.

  “Your ex?”

  I should have taken his calls. I couldn’t deal with this right now, not when my head felt like it would split in two—on top of everything else.

  “Lena!” Jackson called again.

  I tried to move to the window, but the ache in my skull rose anew. The world tilted toward me, rocked beneath my feet. Hunter caught me and kept me from falling over. He led me back to the bed and sat me down.

  I slapped his hands away. “Get out of here!” I shouted.

  The noise of my words exploded through my brain, and I screamed. He reached for me again, and I slapped at him a second time.

  “Go.” I strained to get the words out as the room blurred around me. The pain was too much. “I’m going to pass out.” Horrible things happened when I slept, and I didn’t want them happening to Hunter.

  “Should I call Dr. Fisher?” His voice sounded far away, but I still felt him hovering nearby. “What should I do?”

  “Run.”

  32

  A shout woke me from unconsciousness. I held a knife in my left hand in a dark room. I loosened my grip, and it clattered to the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to know. But I’d seen enough in that brief moment, even in the darkness.

  I was in someone’s kitchen—with a knife.

  I couldn’t stand here all night with my eyes closed. There could be someone here who needed help—someone I’d stabbed. More than anything, I wanted to crawl back into the dark nothingness of sleep, but that was a dangerous place for me.

  It was dangerous for everyone, as I’d proven three times already.

  “Lena?” Hunter’s voice interrupted my swirl of thoughts.

  My eyes popped open. Only a few feet in front of me, he sat on the ground, breathless and red-faced. The ripped shoulder of his shirt fell around his upper arm. A bright-red mark marred his right cheekbone. It had already begun to swell. Worst of all, he cradled his right arm to his chest, and blood flowed from a large gash in it. The knife lay on the ground between us.

  “Oh, my God. Did I . . .” I pointed at his bleeding wound.

  “I tried to stop you from leaving.” He grabbed the knife and pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s just say that didn’t go well. We need to do something about this. Now.”

  The kitchen table seemed so far away. I wobbled toward it, but my legs collapsed under me. Hunter grabbed me around the waist and led me to a chair.

  “Rest for a second.”

  “I shouldn’t sit down . . . My head still . . .” But I sat anyway. My body became heavier by the second. My head dipped low.

  “I’ll be right back.” He padded away on bare feet. “Do not fall asleep again,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  Aloud, I count
ed upward by threes to keep myself conscious. “Three, six, nine, twelve . . .” The pounding in my head hadn’t lessened much during my little nap. “Sixty, sixty-three, sixty-six . . .”

  He came back with a gray hooded sweatshirt. He set the knife down on the counter to pull the sweatshirt over my head and flip the hood up. “Let’s go.”

  I couldn’t stay awake through this pain. I willed my body to stand and move toward the door. But the fog in my head was expanding, blocking out the kitchen. Blocking out Hunter. Blocking out . . . everything.

  Hunter stared at me, eyes wide and pleading. “Lena. Lena, look at me. I need you to stay awake.”

  Focus. I couldn’t focus. Pain seared inside my forehead. A small voice in my head screamed at me to stay awake. It was important, but my mind was too cloudy to remember why. My eyelids were too heavy.

  No. No. No.

  Hunter was shouting, his voice loud and high-pitched. The sound pierced my eardrums and drilled into my skull.

  Glass shattered somewhere in the next room. An instant later, Jackson barreled into the kitchen. He didn’t slow and hit me hard in the chest. Air burst from my lungs, and my back screamed in agony as Jackson took me down to the floor.

  I woke up screaming. The left side of my face felt like it had been hit with a bat, and my back was little better. But worse were the dreams.

  I’d dreamed I killed Hunter and Jackson. I’d beaten them to death with my arm, hit them over and over again until their faces looked like twisted bits of flesh.

  “Lena, Lena, shh.” At the sound of Jackson’s voice, I jerked my face toward him and tried to focus on my surroundings.

  My head felt clearer. I sat on the floor of Jackson’s car, in the empty space between the two rows of seats, slumped against the side of the vehicle. Jackson occupied the driver’s seat, rotated to face me, while Hunter sat in the backseat.

  I grimaced at Hunter’s face. It didn’t look quite as bad as Adam Pollock’s, but the right side was bright red with a scary looking cut across the chin. Rags were wrapped around his right forearm and left leg, and blood seeped through in both places.

  I tried to reach for him, but cringed as rough fibers rubbed against my wrist behind my back. “You tied my hands?”

  “You have a bionic arm,” Hunter said dryly. “We were protecting ourselves.”

  “It won’t hold me,” I said.

  “Maybe not, but it’ll slow you down if you lose it again.”

  “Probably a good idea.”

  Jackson sat with his arms folded across his chest, his expression grim. Unlike Hunter, Jackson looked pristine, which made sense given his newfound invincibility—in his own words. “I gave you some of my pain meds. Does your head feel better?”

  “Much. Thank you. It’s nice to not feel like my brain is trying to leap from my skull.” I turned back to Hunter. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “It’s not your fault. You—”

  Jackson cut him off. “We’re on our way to CyberCorp. I called ahead and told them you attacked Hunter, that you’ve been violent ever since you got the arm, and that we think it’s their technology’s fault. Simon said he’ll see you. We’re going to get this fixed.” He pointed at the side of my face. “Does that hurt?”

  I raised my shoulder toward my jaw to test its tenderness, but Jackson grabbed my bicep to stop me.

  “That’s just going to make it worse,” he said. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

  “You hit me?”

  “Twice, but not hard. I heard him shouting from outside. It was either that”—he pointed at my face—“or let you kill him.” He glared across the vehicle at Hunter, and by the look on Jackson’s face, I suspected he was having second thoughts about his choice.

  “Thank you?”

  “Any time, babe.” He laughed. “I guess my upgrades came in handy, huh?”

  I ignored the question.

  “No thanks from you?” he asked, raising a brow at Hunter.

  Hunter mumbled something unintelligible that could have been a thanks.

  “No problem, man,” Jackson said, his voice much louder and smugger than necessary. “I did it for Lena. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she hurt anyone else, and she doesn’t deserve that.” More quietly, he added, “She’s a good person.”

  The words hung in the air too long, buoyed by their wrongness.

  “How did you know I’d be at Hunter’s?” I asked, just to fill up the space with something else. Anything else.

  “You weren’t home or answering your phone, and I was worried.” Jackson’s tone held a note of accusation. “I called Olivia, and she was super cagey. Then I called Claire. She said you won’t return her calls either. She also said you seemed pretty chummy with this new guy and I should check him out.” He gestured toward Hunter. “So here we are.”

  “I needed space.”

  “And look where that got us.” He pointed at the right side of Hunter’s face, which was still an angry shade of red.

  “I was handling it,” Hunter growled.

  “Really?” Jackson pointedly scanned Hunter’s injuries, an edge of his mouth pulling upward.

  Hunter jumped up so quickly he banged his head against the ceiling. I shot him a pleading look, and he settled back in his seat, glaring across at Jackson.

  When we arrived at CyberCorp, Dr. Fisher, Ron, and Simon met us at the driveway roundabout. They were my last hope to undo whatever was happening to me.

  33

  Fisher and her assistants ushered the three of us upstairs to a large room. A vid-screen covered one wall, and small piles of parts were scattered over the floor. An unidentifiable device sat in the middle of the room, its wires and circuit boards exposed.

  Simon moved the device to a corner and dragged a chair into its old spot. Fisher untied my hands and cut off my shirt sleeve over the robotic arm, while Ron plugged me up to the nearest hand-screen.

  My data flooded the hand-screen as well as the huge vid-screen on the wall. Having my arm’s code scroll across the giant display felt a little like being flayed open for the world to view my insides. Instinctively, I crossed my arms over my chest to cover myself.

  Simon escorted Hunter and Jackson from the room. When he returned a moment later without them, I raised a questioning brow.

  “One of our colleagues is patching up Hunter’s wounds and checking Jackson for injuries,” Simon said. “They’ll be back.”

  Ron poked and prodded my arm, checking and rechecking the joints and the connection to my shoulder. I cringed as he moved down to my spine. Now that my last dose of pain meds was dwindling, my back felt the result of that impact with the floor after Jackson hit me.

  Dr. Fisher examined the odd lines of data Ron and Simon had discovered the day before.

  “Where the hell did all this come from?” she asked. “The arm’s been up and running for only a few weeks. This has to be a year’s worth of data.”

  “Can’t you read it?” I flinched as Ron touched my back again.

  “Of course, we can read it,” Fisher snapped. “But there’s just so much of it.”

  “I noticed.” I screeched as Ron prodded the base of my neck, near where the chip was embedded.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m done. All the connections look okay from the outside.”

  “We can’t be sure unless we open her up though,” Simon said to him, “and we may need to do that anyway if she’s having a problem with impulse control. We’d need to troubleshoot the hardware.”

  I was definitely having a problem with impulse control. “Do it. I’ve got nothing left to lose.”

  “You have your life to lose,” Ron said. “The chip is in your brain, and now it’s adapted. We take a risk every time we tamper with it.”

  I looked to Simon, who shrugged. I guessed that meant he agreed.

  “I can’t go around attacking people all the time. Rip the thing out, and I’ll take my chances.” If I died, then at least
Harmony and Kevin and Debbie would have some company.

  “Let’s leave that as a last resort,” Fisher said, gaze still locked on the data displayed on the oversized vid-screen.

  “It looks like the chip received some files every night over the past week or so.” Simon pointed at a collection of file names scattered throughout the data. “You mind if I look at these?”

  “Help yourself.” Fisher touched something on the hand-screen. The larger display split into two halves, both showing the same information.

  Fisher took control of the left-hand side, continuing to scroll through the data. Simon approached the right side of the giant screen and touched one of the file names.

  A video filled the right side of the display. I gasped as the images played. It was a series of three-second clips, each one displaying someone strangling someone else. A man choking a woman on the ground in a dark alley. A man pressing a smaller person against the wall, hands clenched around his neck. Clip after clip of strangulations.

  Fisher’s side of the screen stopped scrolling, and she stared open-mouthed at the gruesome images. “What the . . .”

  Simon shut down the video and touched a different file name. Half of the display filled with images of headline after headline proclaiming that some murder or other had gone unsolved. The next video he selected contained clips of anti-tech speeches, including audio:

  “Another small business closed its doors today, thanks to CyberCorp . . .”

  “It is inevitable that artificial intelligence, if allowed to grow unchecked, will displace humanity . . .”

  “Human interaction has decreased four percent over the past year . . .”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “This is what you’ve been feeding my head while I sleep? Is this why I ki—” I started to say killed three people, but then realized I hadn’t told them that yet. “Is this why I’ve been so violent?”

  “We’re not feeding you anything,” Simon said. “I have no idea where this came from, but it would definitely increase your level of aggression—especially toward CyberCorp personnel.”