Did that make him evil? No. It made him a rogue. But it also made him dangerous. It made him someone that shouldn’t be toyed with. And it made him not at all right for me.
Just as Nick had said.
Which made me even angrier.
“I’ve already told you why,” Nicholas iterated, almost growling his response. “But for your sake, I’ll say it again. He isn’t right for you because he’s dangerous. And you know it.”
Yes, I did. Damn it.
“There’s a darkness to him that should not be toyed with, Sam.”
“But there’s also a light in him,” I said, nodding to the viewscreen as if to tie the very loud and not-very-private argument into today’s philosophy lesson. “Why are you so focused on one side of the coin, Nick? Cole has never betrayed me. Not in seven years. Like you, he’s always been there for me. Always.”
But Nicholas shook his head slowly. “Some coins have only one side, Sam. The other has been scraped off by genetics or circumstance. You would do well to remember that.”
“No matter how scraped or scarred it is, Nick, that side is there. Maybe it needs tending to. Maybe it needs to be restored. But it’s there. There are no two-dimensional coins. Not in anything but pixel RPG’s that is.”
Nicholas slowly breathed in, gritted his teeth, and looked like he wanted to say something else – but couldn’t. I watched the muscle twitch in his jaw… before I realized, at last, the silence in the room.
I pulled my gaze from his and looked around. All eyes were on us.
With great trepidation, I slowly swiveled my gaze to the teacher at the front of the classroom, expecting immediate detention, or at the very least, a scowl and a bad attendance grade for that day. But what I found instead was Morrison grinning broadly.
Proudly, even.
He was leaning against the far edge of the view screen wall with his arms crossed over his chest, smiling from ear to ear. I stared at him with a furrowed brow. And when he realized the argument must have been over for the time being, he straightened from the wall and uncrossed his arms to make his way to stand in front of the desks where Nick and I sat.
He placed one palm on each and leaned down, looking from one of us to the other. “Well class, I do believe we’ve found our project volunteers for the subject of spiritual duality.” His grin grew wolfish. “What do you all think?”
A virtual roar went up from the students in the classroom, some of them even applauding.
Morrison chuckled. I blanched in embarrassment.
But Nicholas remained the same. His eyes still on me and still burning dry ice. His teeth still clenched. The matter clearly far from finished as far as he was concerned.
“Very well, it’s settled,” said Morrison. “You two will partner for this lesson. You have one week to fully explore the duality of the animal spirit, both human and non-human.” His expression became perhaps a little too knowing when he said, in a nearly sneaky manner, “I expect you to be thorough. You will present your conclusions on Monday. And remember how much of your grade this represents.”
He stood up and winked at me.
Now at least I knew he wasn’t mad. But I also knew that the philosophy professor was well aware of my feelings for Nicholas. He was brilliant, so I wasn’t surprised. Just humiliated.
Did he know by any chance how Nicholas felt about me?
Maybe he did. And maybe I could have asked him. But I wouldn’t. Not ever.
I pulled my note pad and handwriter out of my bag and began taking notes, copying much of what was on the board just to be able to do something. Morrison left our desks and faced the class to begin the lecture. Within seconds, the vibrant energy of the teacher’s lecture methods managed to pull everyone’s attention away from me and Nick.
And still… I felt Nicholas beside me, restrained but perilous.
Like a surprise sub-zero cold front in July.
Chapter One
“I’ve got you,” someone whispered in my ear.
It took me a moment to process the words spoken, much less recognize the voice of the one speaking them since I was still expecting the ground thirty stories down to make a pretty painting of my insides.
But strong arms were wrapped solidly around my waist and upper arms, and I was being moved with almost effortless efficiency in a direction that was not, in fact, down.
“Nice job, Luke!” exclaimed someone else as I was spun through the air and went sailing through an open window. I landed on carpet a few feet in and rolled to a stop, breathing heavy with the exertion of fear and surprise. I stayed there a moment, prone on my stomach, to regain my bearings. The locks of white-blonde hair that had broken free of their long, thick ponytail blew in and out around my face with each of my breaths.
Two pairs of shoes moved into my vision; I recognized each of them in turn. One pair was scuffed terribly, an old set of size twelve sneakers that had seen better days. The other was a shining black pair of standard issue shoes worn by the IRM-900 model android. Not a speck of dust on them.
“Holy crap,” I whispered shakily. “Did you seriously just catch me mid-flight outside the window and throw me back in, Lucas?” I still wasn’t quite sure I wasn’t dead.
“You don’t weigh anything at all,” came the android’s easy reply. I watched Lucas, aka Luke, take a graceful knee beside me. “It wasn’t exactly taxing.” He smiled, and for the millionth time I was arrested by his beauty. Thick, shoulder-length coal black hair curled slightly over his forehead and just above his collar, framing strong bone structure and piercing eyes.
The EED sensor light around his left eye was standard issue for androids and the only way to tell an android from a human. EED stood for Emotion Emitting Device; the colors and activity of the EED changed based on the android’s mental state. His was currently blue for “normal,” and the light cast his hair into navy highlights like a raven’s wing. It also touched upon the charcoal gray of his eyes, giving them the spectrum sheen of polished hematite.
He wrapped his hand gently but firmly around my upper arm, pulled slightly up from the ground to draw me into his chest, and leaned his tall body over mine. I held my breath as he lowered his lips to my ear and whispered, “No underwear, Samantha?”
Lucas never truncated my name to “Sam” like others did, nor did he have a nickname for me like pretty much everyone else I knew. It was “Samantha” every time. And sometimes when he said it, it sounded like nothing short of a magic spell. Like now.
I processed his words, then blushed furiously. He’d clearly felt the lack of any seam lines under his touch when he’d caught me. And yeah. To use an old vernacular, I was going commando. Whoever had done the laundry last – it wasn’t my turn, damn it – had neglected to wash any of my under garments.
Luke straightened again, and I couldn’t help but admire the grace of his flawless proportions, broad and strong. As always, he wore the clothing designed for professional androids – a tailored suit. Every inch of him was well designed perfection. But he was smiling a small, secret smile and his eyes were flashing.
I almost gasped. Had Lucas been the last one in charge of the laundry? Was my current state of undress his fault? Had he done it on purpose?
His smile broadened slightly as if he could read my thoughts. And now I absolutely knew the answer to all three questions was yes.
I’d known Lucas and Jack since I’d joined Prometheus shortly after they had more than a year ago. But Luke and I had only officially been an “item” for a few weeks. Early the month before, we’d been finishing up a particularly dangerous mission and I’d been injured grabbing last-minute materials that were not essential, but helpful.
As we’d left the grounds we’d raided, Luke had pulled me to the side and into a private alcove and made me show him the wound I’d sustained, a flesh wound in my left bicep that would take a while to heal but was obviously not life threatening.
However, Lucas had been concerned about it to the point of anger �
�� and I had suddenly realized that for the last several months, all the furtive glances, the overt protectiveness he’d exhibited toward me, and the way he sometimes snapped at me when I did something he didn’t like, normally involving putting myself in danger as I had tonight – meant he had feelings for me.
Those kinds of feelings.
My suspicions were instantly verified when, as he gritted his teeth and took off his suit coat to tear a piece of it for a binding, I asked, “Luke… do you have feelings for me?” Luke’s android EED had flashed briefly yellow, but he’d simply captured my gaze with his, none-too-gently proceeded to wrap my wound, and replied, “Yes, Samantha. Very much so. And I don’t appreciate you taking liberties with your life like you did tonight.”
The next day, he apologized for his behavior, and I found myself blushing. I realized that I was developing very real feelings for him too. Those kinds of feelings.
There was something in the way he appeared, both physically and in his mannerisms, that made me feel I had known him forever. To me, Lucas was familiar despite the short time we’d been at Prometheus together. I looked at Luke and felt something strange. Something alluring – tempting. So when he sat me down and asked me if I would begin dating him exclusively, I agreed. It wasn’t like I’d been romantically involved with anyone else anyway. Not since joining Prometheus, in fact. Hell, not even before that. Not for a long time.
In the two and a half weeks since then, Luke had very quickly shown me that he was all too familiar with how dating couples behaved. Either he’d been programmed with the behaviors or they came naturally to him, just as they did a human.
The problem was… he’d pretty quickly caught on that there was a side to me that secretly, secretly, enjoyed it when my partner took charge, so to speak. Assumed control, for lack of a less embarrassing way to admit it. I suppose you could say there was a part of me, smothered though it may be, that was very slightly submissive in that respect.
And he saw that. I wondered, in fact, if he’d seen it from the very beginning. Worse, he wasn’t afraid to exact that control when he felt like it, which included pretty much any time at all. Like now, as he made her realize he’d compromised her with the underwear fiasco and was not at all sorry.
I felt my blush deepen, but there was anger there too. Now was definitely not the time for him to make moves on me.
“Aw Christ, Luke,” came a gravelly, grouchy voice from my other side, opposite Lucas. I turned to look up at the speaker – the man who owned the second pair of shoes. “Now’s not the time! Damn it, why do you always get randy when we’re in the thick of it?” he chastised, echoing my own thoughts before he knelt next to me, grunting when his knee hit the floor. Old knees.
“For fuck’s sake,” he added grumpily. “We’re in the middle of an escape here!” He shot Luke a stern look before he turned back to me and peered at me with time-wizened eyes. “You okay, kid?” he asked. “That was quite a fall.”
I gazed back at Captain Jack Hugo and nodded, putting the underwear thing out of my head for the time being. While it was true that Luke’s strong arms had probably left bruises on my ribs and hip bone, I was more than happy to have them. It was such a step up from splattered intestines, I wasn’t about to complain. “Yes,” I said as I pushed myself into a sitting position, and he automatically helped me. “I’m good.”
I looked around. “Where are we, anyway?” Cubicles of an office were quartered-off all around us. The floor was carpeted, which meant the people who worked in this office during the day were probably expected to be quiet. “I’m guessing floor twenty-six or seven? The accounts offices?”
“Good guess,” offered Luke as he slid an arm around my waist again and I leaned on him as he lifted me to my feet. I felt shaky and unsteady when I tried to put weight into my stance, and was at once leaning more heavily on Luke. “Twenty-seven.”
“Easy, Luke. She just fell a good distance. Let her test her legs.”
I shot Jack a grateful smile as I tried again to stand on my own. It was a little better this time, the strength gradually returning to my limbs. But it was still too slow. The sudden onset of localized weakness was most likely an unforeseen after-effect of the transporter. It seemed to have, for lack of a better descriptive, shocked some of my muscles during transport. The effect felt a lot like a very intense weight lifting work-out carried out to the point of actual muscle exhaustion.
“Something in the transporter,” I told them uneasily. Admitting that there’d been an unpleasant side effect I hadn’t planned for was the same as admitting that I hadn’t properly tested the device. Which we all knew already. Granted, I hadn’t been given enough time. But still.
“That’s okay,” said Jack. “Just lean on me. We have to move.” He and Luke both encircled my waist with their arms, draping mine over their shoulders. I glanced over at the former police captain, noting the concern in his features, the lines drawn by trauma and tragedy over the years, and the clear blue eyes that remained focused on what lay ahead.
He was one of my heroes, Captain Jack Hugo.
Jack had once been the proud father of two children, twins. They’d grown up strong and proud, and both Trevor and Poppy Hugo had followed in their father’s footsteps, joining the force in their twenties. Unfortunately, both had also been killed in the line of duty. Shortly thereafter, Jack’s wife Nancy passed away, most likely of a broken heart.
According to friends, when Lucas and Jack first met, it was in a seedy bar where the former police captain had been in the process of drinking himself toward courage. Back then, Jack had become a hollow remnant of himself, and when he pulled a bottle of sleeping pills out of his jacket pocket and began adding them to what was left of his whiskey, Lucas intervened.
I had no idea what Luke had been doing in that dank and dangerous bar that night because he didn’t know either. Apparently that very same night, a massive fight broke out on the streets in Pittsburgh, and both men rushed to try to stop it. In the process, Luke was damaged. When Jack brought him to Prometheus and he was restored, he had no memory of what he’d been doing – or even who he was – before that night. ***
As for Jack, it was clear enough what he was doing in the bar. And I never brought it up. I figured if the man wanted to talk about it, that was his prerogative. Otherwise, it was in the past, and that was where it belonged.
That was more than a year ago. In the time since then, they’d both joined Prometheus and the world had changed. And so had Jack Hugo.
The three of us made our relatively quick and quiet way to the office’s door. As we moved, the strength returned to my legs, the transporter’s effects wearing off with fortunate speed. Jack held his gun down at his side, and Luke’s eyes scanned the corners, walls, and office windows for things like cameras and moving objects – other people or androids. For my part, I felt a little worthless just then. I gingerly touched my stomach and side because I may have been regaining strength, but I was also already feeling the effects of being caught by a pair of metal and plastic arms after thirty feet of building momentum.
I glanced over my shoulder at the window Jack and Luke had shattered in order to save me. How Lucas had been standing on that ledge and leaning far enough out to catch me in the first place was beyond me. How he’d known I would fall in exactly that place at exactly that time was also beyond me. But his protection was something I was getting used to, and that I was grateful for.
“We managed to wipe any evidence of you and your work from Vector Fifteen’s files on the west side,” said Jack as we pushed through the office door and entered the hall beyond. “If Daniel was able to carry out the mission on his end, we should be in the clear, Sam.” He glanced back at me as he pushed the button for the elevator and we turned and made our way to the stairs.
It had been my idea during a past mission to call for the elevator and then take the stairs as a diversion. Now we did it out of habit.
The fact that Jack had no idea whether Daniel h
ad succeeded in his part of the objective meant Daniel hadn’t contacted him. “No news is good news,” I said. Radio silence had been agreed upon for the duration of the mission.
“Or it means Daniel and his team have been eliminated and are therefore incapable of making contact,” said Lucas helpfully.
“Jesus Luke,” groaned Jack with a shake of his head as we took the stairs down.
I could have sworn I detected a note of sarcasm when Luke said it, and I knew he didn’t actually believe what he was saying. Instead, he was joking, trying to lighten the tension.
He was doing that thing he sometimes did when we’d all been working very closely for a prolonged amount of time. For some reason, Luke would shift from possessing the calm and calculated but sometimes cold behavior of an android to displaying the human idiosyncrasies – even sarcasm, and as previously displayed, lust – of a human. I didn’t know why he did this, but after a year of it, I was used to it.
We took the stairs down two at a time. I was fit for a human, but as an android Lucas was a lot better at descending the stairs than I was, and of course I was better at it than Jack. So Luke and I slowed down a bit to allow him to keep up. I wondered if it was frustrating for Lucas to have to hold himself back the way he always did for us. If so, he was gracious enough to not let it show.
Just as we reached level seventeen, the metal door from the landing to the offices beyond crashed outward into the stairwell. Jack skidded to a stop and backpedaled. Lucas was instantly in front of both of us. “Stay behind me!” he commanded.
The men who shouldered through the bottleneck opening were absolutely identical to one another, as if popped out by some massive baby-making machine with a single DNA sequence to go on. They all had black hair, light skin, and were dressed in black fatigues. There were dozens of them beyond that opening, and I knew there were more where they came from. There was a never-ending supply of these particular soldiers, in fact.
I, Android: A Different Model Page 2
