I was about to tell him as much, when a sudden shriek of pain pierced the silence like a soul of the damned.
I jerked in surprise on the step and bumped into the wall beside me, my hands reaching out to brace it palms-down. My heart hammered painfully. Distorted as it was, I knew that voice.
“Lucas!” I screamed. I couldn’t help it. My mouth went dry, and my automatic response was to shove away from the wall next and attempt to make it down the stairs. Of course, Zero was a mere two steps down, and when I reached him, he simply blocked my path, his blue eyes nearly white, his lips smirking.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” I told him.
The bellow of agony came once more, and Zero’s lips twitched. “But you needn’t rush, Samantha. We’re on our way to meet with him right now. After all, that’s why I changed,” he said, gesturing to his impeccable, perfect attire. “I wouldn’t want you to confuse us for one another once we meet him.”
He turned and took a few steps, but then stopped and glanced back over his broad shoulder. “Then again, I highly doubt that will be an issue.” He grinned. “Not in IRM-900’s current state.”
From a distance, I heard someone begin to hyperventilate, but I couldn’t be bothered to try to calm her down, I had bigger fish to fry. I was having a hard enough time stumbling after the bastard android who’d imprisoned the man I loved. I had to concentrate very hard to neither fall off the side to the level three stories down or give Zero a hard shove to see if he would fall to his death instead.
The man I love. Yeah… not that I would ever tell Lucas that, my freaking-out brain babbled. But maybe I should! I thought. Life is short, and ours are probably going to be shorter than usual even, and who knows whether we even have a Prometheus to return to or if we will even get out of here to return to it, and seriously Sam you should just jump that step between the two of you, it’s a mere sixteen inches at most, and you can lean heavily to the left and strike him at the waist with your right shoulder and he’ll be forced to pivot, but there’s not enough room so he’ll go down –
A third scream pierced the hollow sounds of our shoes on the glass and my heart in my head, and I swallowed hard to keep the bile from making it past the midway point in my esophagus. No way in hell was I throwing up in front of IRM-1000.
Unless you throw up on him, my inner voice suggested gleefully. It was beginning to sound more and more like the Joker’s voice. That was worrisome. You could really mess up that pristine white jacket of his. That would show him!
Nah, just push him off. Better hurry though, because we’re getting too close to the bottom for it to do much damage. And – oh, never mind. We’re here.
Fuck, I thought suddenly and quite somberly. I’m not handling this well.
Zero moved away from the stairs ahead of me and turned to wait for me to take the final steps. I did, quelling my panic with all my might. My android captor’s gaze narrowed on me thoughtfully. I had no idea what he could be thinking. Surely he knew what this would all do to me. Surely it couldn’t have been much of a surprise. So why did he look so brooding?
The EED around his left eye shifted across the color spectrum from ice blue to yellow and flashed a few times. For a second, I thought I saw the rings of his wintery blue irises spinning. But it was probably my imagination, and the fact that my head was spinning instead.
I took the brief pause to focus on my breathing. But I knew in my heart that if I heard Lucas cry out in pain one more time, I was going to lose it. I didn’t know how I was going to lose it exactly, or even what “it” was. I just knew it would be lost. Like the Alamo.
Strangely enough, there were no more heart-rending shrieks or gut-wrenching sounds. All fell silent as Zero stepped closer to offer me his hand. “Given your current state, I would prefer to save this reunion for another time, Samantha. However, I don’t believe it would be in IRM-900’s best interest, and therefore neither in yours – nor mine.”
That bile crept right back up my throat. I prepared to let it loose all over Zero’s fancy attire.
But then he said, “So take my hand, and I will lend you any support you may need on the way.”
And instead of throwing up on him, I balled up my fist and punched him in the face.
I hadn’t even realized I was going to do it. I just did it. Which was probably why it was as much a surprise to Zero as it was to me. There’d been no warning for either of us.
Zero’s head snapped cleanly to the side, but the rest of his body stayed perfectly still. He stood tall, strong, and utterly unaffected. I watched his EED switch between yellow and red a few times before settling once again into blue. And then it slipped further into white. He slowly turned back to face me, the expression on his handsome features serene but for his eyes, which were flashing with something I couldn’t interpret.
He cocked his head a little to the side, gestured to my hand, and in a calm and quiet voice asked, “Are you injured?”
I blinked, swaying a little on my feet. I glanced down at my hand. The knuckles were red and might bruise, but I was fairly sure I was fine. It wasn’t my first rodeo, after all. I’d been so suddenly enraged that I’d been completely tensed up, so there were no loose joints or errant parts to sprain or break.
Plus, androids may have been composed of metal and plastic on the inside, but their outer layers were varying degrees of silicon and protective coatings, constructed in a manner that gave those layers the feel and function of human muscle and flesh. It wasn’t as if I had punched a wall.
Well, not physically anyway. Figuratively, I might as well have. Because when I shook my head just once, Zero only gave me a genuinely pleased smile. “Good,” he said. “Then I hope you are feeling better.”
He turned and strode to a hallway that led off from the main room. I knew he wanted me to follow him, but I stood there and took in my surroundings instead. Whereas the upper levels, walkway, and staircase seemed to be built with androids in mind, the ground level was clearly designed with regard to human tastes.
Plush leather couches, coffee tables, side tables, floor lamps, a massive hearth with a fire crackling merrily from its depths, and even a fully loaded bar against one wall were the very image of refined human style and comfort.
But what I was looking for was a way out. We were deep underground here; there were no windows. Instead, tapestries lined the walls, vividly depicting scenes of autumn sunshine landscapes and other meaningless if pleasing subject matter. There was no way out from down here, at least not that I could see.
When I finally looked back at Zero, I found him waiting by the hall. His hands were down at his sides. His expression was enigmatic.
I glanced at his men – there were roughly half a dozen visible around me in the facility. Three were downstairs with us, and three were on the glass walkway three stories up. They were armed and they watched diligently. The walkway had not only been built with androids in mind, but with guards in mind.
In short, this was a military facility. A fort, even. Hell, it was a bastion.
I took a therapeutic breath and turned back to Zero, making my feet move so I could join him at the hallway junction. He nodded at me and continued down the hall. I followed closely on his heels and didn’t fail to notice how the three soldiers on the same level in turn followed directly behind me, caging me in.
The hall was long and undecorated, its walls hewn from the same dense limestone as the walls in the main area. Electric lights had been recessed neatly, giving off a glow that softened the edges of the hallway’s appearance. But the sound of our shoes on the stone beneath us was hollow and loud, and Zero’s decorating touch did nothing to tamp my fear as we approached a single door at the end of the hall.
Zero placed his hand against it.
The reader within the metal door must have been invisible, hidden within the metal as if the metal itself were a touch screen. A light scanned his palm, up then down, and a lock inside slid open with finality.
I found
myself swallowing very hard to make it past the growing lump. It was when I bumped into Zero’s soldier behind me that I realized I’d taken an involuntary step back. Zero cut his gaze to me, but said nothing.
I hugged myself.
The door slid open, recessing into the wall just as the main door had done upstairs. The technology in Zero’s home was beginning to remind me of Star Trek. But when Zero then reached back and took me by the elbow to pull me firmly into the room, what I found was anything but the utopian future of Roddenberry’s imagination.
Rather, it bore a striking resemblance to the basement nightmares of Stephen King. And it literally took my breath away.
Zero let me go when my legs gave out and I crashed to my knees. Twenty feet away, at the center of the room, a bright hanging lamp illuminated a single crude and uncomfortable table. Upon that table lay the android male I had admittedly lost my heart to. The android I would have given anything for. The android I had come to love.
In pieces.
His eyes were black from corner to corner, as if unfiltered thorium had built up behind them, thick and dark with depth. I knew he was blinded, but as though he could sense my presence in the room, he turned his head.
“S-Sammmmantha?”
My name hung in the silence and mingled like wet paint with the black that was invading my soul.
Chapter Eleven
It seemed difficult for Lucas to make even that simple movement and speak that single word, and when he did his voice was broken, mechanical, and the word was slurred. In so far as androids could slur their speech.
His right arm was intact, but his left had been completely removed, and from the looks of the jagged separations in the hardware underneath, it had been amputated violently. His legs were still for the most part attached, but a massive hole in his midsection revealed the inner workings of his body from his abdomen to his upper left thigh. Inside that opening, pieces of his physiology had been removed – again, with intensely sadistic deliberation.
There was a metal bar laying against the table, approximately five feet long, two inches thick, and covered in Vulcan blood. My guess was that this was what had been used to… separate the android portions that made Lucas whole. In my head, I reconstructed the scene, watching the outline of an android shove the metal bar through Luke’s shoulder and wrench violently. As Lucas screamed in my head, the bar was pressed further and further at an angle, until parts popped inside and separated, and the “skin” that made him look human turned gray and tore open.
I watched as the same thing was then done to his torso, resulting in the ferocious abstraction of piece after piece, bit after bit – whatever they could remove without shutting his system down for good. Everything non-vital… that’s what they had focused on. All the better to keep him awake for the experience.
It was all yet more proof that androids were alive. Only something alive could mirror the demonic brutality of humanity to such insane perfection.
Now I knew why I’d heard Lucas cry out.
Now I knew.
Suddenly, I was scrambling to the side on my hands and knees just before retching with a violence of my own. I cleaned out the contents of my stomach, what little there was. Then I moved a few feet away from the mess and shakily sat back, sinking into my knees. I let my head fall back on my shoulders and closed my eyes.
I breathed. I breathed some more.
When I finally felt like nothing else was going to come up, I lowered my head and opened my eyes. Somehow Zero had come to stand in front of me.
Those who claimed androids were incapable of feeling pain were uneducated with regards to android anatomy. While it was possible for the “nerve center” of an android to be manipulated so that it no longer registered what was happening to his or her body, it took an expert in android physiology to disconnect these sensors. Otherwise, an android was absolutely and vitally aware of what was transpiring with its body. Good and bad.
“I have instructed my men to switch off his ability to feel pain for the time being,” said Zero. His shoes echoed as he moved to my side. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. But he took a knee directly beside me, close enough that when he spoke into my ear I felt his words brush my skin. “But I can switch it back on at any time, Samantha. What happens to Lucas from this moment on depends entirely on you.”
“S-Sam?” Lucas called quietly. His voice was slightly less mechanical the second time, but more desperate. “Is that you?” He didn’t normally call me “Sam.” With him, it was usually Samantha. The fact that he’d truncated my name spoke volumes.
I summoned my courage and watched Zero closely as I said loud and clear, “I’m here, Lucas. It’s me.”
Lucas closed his blackened eyes as if in relief. “Are you okay, Sam?” he asked next, his tone desperately concerned.
Jesus, I thought. Jesus fucking Christ.
“Yes,” I assured him quickly. “I’m absolutely fine, Lucas.” I continued to watch IRM-1000, and he continued to watch me. “Zero wants me unharmed, remember?”
“Yes,” said Lucas. “But you… shouldnnnn’t be here.” His voice was glitching. He attempted to move on the table, and the men who had been waiting on the sidelines in the room stepped forward, surrounding him. There were half a dozen, easy.
As if sensing their return, Lucas stopped moving and turned his head to the side. I knew he was looking for me, desperately wanting to see me. So I spoke up again. “It’s okay, Lucas. I don’t want you to fight, okay? I’m going to get you out of this.”
Zero whispered, “Are you, now?”
I turned to face him; our lips were an inch apart. “Yes,” I whispered back firmly. “I am.”
Zero smiled broadly. “I’m glad to hear it.”
I looked away abruptly, unable to hold his gaze any longer. I realized my body was trembling and my teeth were clenched so tightly together, I wasn’t sure I could separate them to talk anymore anyway.
But Zero grasped my chin firmly between his thumb and fingers and forced me to face him once more. “So here’s how this is going to go,” he told me. He reminded me in that moment of Lucas with a suspect in the interrogation room. Luke was Prometheus’s chief interrogator. Something in his programming made him most suited to it, so Daniel let him do it. No one lasted long against him, and he never had to lift a finger.
Like Luke, Zero wasn’t yelling or even speaking loudly. He was simply being firm, unrelenting, and absolutely cold. His EED flickered from that impossible white to yellow and back again, and his ice-blue eyes tore into me without mercy as he continued.
“Each time you obey me, I will have a part of IRM-900 repaired. Every time you defy me, another piece will be removed. And as you surmised, it will not be done gently.” He paused for emphasis, no doubt noticing the more violent tremors now moving through my small frame.
“Keep me pleased and I will be certain Luke’s pain receptors remain dormant.” His eyes narrowed, and his gaze darkened in warning as his EED turned red. “However, push any more of my buttons, Samantha, and I promise you IRM-900 will not only wish he had never been created – he will wish he had never met you.”
I moaned softly. It just slipped out; I couldn’t stop it. The thought was too awful.
Zero’s expression instantly grew more tender, and his grip on my chin loosened slightly. “Do we have an understanding, little flower?”
I pried my teeth apart, shocked at how my breath came shakily from between my lips. “Y-yesss,” I stammered, hugging myself hard. The trembling was becoming unbearable. Something was moving through me, something uncontrollable and highly unpleasant.
You can fix him, I told myself. Even if everything goes pear shaped, you know you can fix Lucas. Lilith can help. You fixed worse than this with Saxon.
Saxon….
Everything came crashing in on me then: Prometheus. Jack. Saxon. Lucas.
The tears I’d refused to allow Zero to see earlier finally escaped their prison and streamed down my f
lushed cheeks. I couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t escape the hell that had become my existence long enough to figure anything out.
“Shhhh,” said Zero softly. I was unable to see his expression through the blur of my tears, but I felt his hand slide from my chin to cup my cheek, and his thumb brushed against its wetness to wipe the tears away. Then he was pulling me firmly into his arms.
May all the gods help me, I couldn’t even resist him. What I’d seen, what was waiting there a mere twenty feet from my kneeling form, it was too much and I was too sensitive, too weak.
Zero had won yet another hand, and he seemed to know it all too well when he brushed his fingers through my hair and laid my head on his shoulder. “That’s it. Let it go. You’ve been through an ordeal. I’m frankly impressed you held out this long.”
Don’t you dare, Sam, I threatened myself. Don’t do it. Don’t you dare start sobbing! Don’t you dare let him comfort you! He’s the reason you’re in this shit! He’s the goddamn devil!
“P-please,” I begged. “I’ll give you anything. Just… don’t hurt him anymore.”
Zero took my face in his hands and pulled slightly away so he could look down at me. “Anything, Samantha?” he asked, his tone very, very serious.
Devil.
But I didn’t care. I’d have made a deal with Lucifer himself just then. Two deals. A baker’s dozen.
“Y-yes,” I said resolutely, despite the trembling.
Zero’s EED turned blood red, pulsed that way for a moment, then slipped back to yellow, then green, then blue, and finally white, passing through the entire spectrum before jumping right back up to blood red and staying there.
He lifted his chin slightly – and his blue eyes suddenly went as red as his sensor. “Then we have a deal, Dandelion.”
Chapter Twelve
It was like moving through a dream when Zero picked me up and carried me back out of Luke’s cell. While my eyes were open, my vision was mottled by tears, and the sound of shoes on the stone floor was distant, muffled by my own wracked breathing and the chaos state of my mind. So I closed them and let time pass without discretion.
I, Android: A Different Model Page 11
