The gun made a horrible cracking noise that further abused my already bruised eardrums, and Jack made a grunting sound beside me. I moved in slow motion – at least that was how it felt – as the world blurred and the blinders of trauma focused my attention fully on the captain at my side. It seemed the planet we were on was decelerating on its axis, because Jack moved in slow motion too as he looked down at his chest, touched it with his hand, and then in turn looked at his palm.
It was stained red, but there wasn’t much and I recognized the pattern it had made on his skin. The lack of copious amounts of blood for the location of the wound meant that Jack had been hit with a tranquilizer bullet rather than a live round.
That made no sense.
Why would Zero shoot him with an android tranquilizer? Unless… unless Zero was stealing my inventions and improving upon them at light speed. Unless he’d altered the bullets, and now the tranqs worked on both androids and humans alike.
I had my immediate confirmation when Jack’s wide eyes met mine. He made a desperate, apologetic sound and began to fall over sideways. I lunged for him in the hopes of keeping him upright, though I knew it was futile. I had no idea what I was planning to do to keep him awake.
I never got the chance to attempt either. Metal-hard arms slid around my waist and upper body. Zero’s grip was surprisingly gentle despite his inherent, inhuman strength, and he managed to steer clear of the wound.
I froze when his arm slid upward so he could curl his fingers around my neck. He squeezed just tight enough to make it hard to swallow, and also making him impossible for me to ignore. He’d knelt directly behind me; while my mind spun, he used this new hold on me to ease me back against his chest. I wanted to breathe, so I didn’t fight. Already my throat worked against the threatening pressure.
I didn’t know where Prometheus was, Jack was unconscious, I’d already been shot, and now my heart hammered in fear rather than warmth – which increased the bleeding of my wound despite all my efforts to give myself frostbite.
“I told you, I won’t let it happen.”
I gritted my teeth and reached out with my mind. Daniel! Lucas!
There was no answer. No answer. Dreadful comprehension dawned.
I opened my mouth to speak. Zero at once let up on his grip, though I admit it hadn’t been too tight to begin with. I licked my lips and cleared my throat anyway. “You were using that… thing of yours, weren’t you?” I whispered. “You were using your ability to mimic voices.” I cleared my throat again. “But you did it in my head.” And you pretended to be Daniel.
I hadn’t realized it was possible to do so telepathically as well, but I was willing to bet pretty much everything that Zero had figured out a way. He figured out everything.
Zero chuckled soft beside my ear; my eyes closed at the sensation of his breath on my skin. He didn’t have to breathe; he did it solely for its effect on me. I suppressed a shiver as goose bumps raised over my flesh. I would have been lying if I’d claimed the feeling was unpleasant.
Stockholm syndrome again? I wondered.
“I felt it best to avoid being shot the moment I entered the pavilion,” he told me in answer to my query about the mimicked voice. His words rippled through me with unsolicited enticement. “But if you weren’t currently injured and slipping into shock Samantha, you would have figured that out yourself.” His fingers brushed over the taut flesh of my throat and his other hand splayed warm and possessive around my waist.
He went on, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “You always figure it out.”
He was more or less echoing my sentiment about him, reminding me that he was in my head, listening. My mind worked, spurred on by pride and the challenge of a puzzle.
Daniel had claimed he couldn’t see Zero in the park, and he’d told us to put the gun away. It was exactly what the enemy would do – isolate himself as the only target and then eliminate the target altogether by eliminating the weapon. And… there would have been no way for Daniel to know that Jack had a gun in the first place. Only Zero would know that. Because he’d been in my head listening when Jack had found the gun in Ben’s jacket.
Of course it was Zero.
“I’m a fool,” I whispered, more to myself than to anyone else.
“What you are is wounded,” Zero countered. He sounded as if his jaw had tightened, and his teeth were pressed together. There was also a little more force behind his words when he said, “and the most brilliant, beautiful being this world has ever known.”
He closed in over me, gracefully placing my entire weight in one arm so he could turn my chin, forcing me to look up at him. There were those blue eyes, so light and entrancing. “Let me in, Dandelion,” he commanded with soft but vehement ferocity. “You need to be healed.”
I knew what he referred to with his request. He wanted me to let him deeper into my mind so he could heal me as he had when I’d been sleeping. Which meant there was still something there holding him at bay, some kind of barrier. Maybe it was subconscious. But whatever it was, I wasn’t about to let it go.
I shook my head, just once.
He sighed. I knew you wouldn’t surrender so easily. Then his arms locked hard into place against him as he fluidly rose from kneeling to his full impressive height and took me right along with him. Once standing, Zero deftly lifted me until he was tightly carrying me bridal style, and my cheek rested against the chest of his black suit coat.
At the entrance to the gazebo, a handful of his men filed into the arbor.
“Take the captain,” he instructed. His EED flashed a few times, the pattern echoed by the sensors on the temples of his men, indicating that he was issuing further commands in silence. They moved as one, stepping past us and out of my view.
I stared up at Zero’s striking profile while he surveyed our surroundings from his lofty height. His jet-black hair was thick and flawless, his suit all-black like the depths of the night around us, and his ice-blue eyes were unnatural beacons of luminescent power.
And suddenly I couldn’t understand.
“Why?” I whispered, unable to put the force behind my words that I really wanted to.
Zero had mounted a national bounty hunt, shoved the US government deep into his pocket, and hired or perhaps even stolen androids from the Japanese Yakuza… all for me? He didn’t need my inventions. Who was he kidding with that excuse? Zero was special, he was capable. The fact that he could do what he was doing to me right now was proof enough of that. Nick had created him to be one perfect side of a perfect coin, but Zero had advanced in a way no one could have foreseen.
Zero was capable of creating his own weapons in this war; he had his own ideas. He had money, charisma, and power to bring his ideas to fruition. He didn’t need mine.
So what was it? Was it a case of keep your friends close and your enemies closer?
Maybe it was oncoming shock like he said, but I’d never been so confused.
“For one so confused, your thought processes are profoundly untiring,” said Zero without looking down at me as he strode across the park.
Oh yeah, I thought. He was still in my head. I wondered whether for him, following along with my thoughts was like being a spectator at a tennis match. Maybe it was more like being a spectator in the Colosseum during the height of Rome.
Like a starved lion, my mind returned to the puzzle, dead set on eating it alive. Perhaps it was that Zero was afraid I would create one of those Fat Man and Little Boy ideas floating around in my head. But he didn’t treat me as if he were afraid of me. And knowing what I’d come to learn about IRM-1000, if he’d actually felt threatened by me, I would probably already be dead.
Suddenly Zero drew to an abrupt halt, going utterly still. His men did the same, automatically following suit by his unspoken command.
He slowly lowered his head to peer down at me, and his glowing blue gaze searched mine. I found that gaze fascinating. Helplessly, I watched it lighten slowly to arctic white while his
EED flashed from blue to yellow, and finally the same snow-white that mirrored his eyes. It remained that color, pulsing like a heartbeat. I was entranced by platinum.
“You really have no idea…” he whispered. “You truly can’t comprehend how vital you are. Can you Dandelion?”
He breathed the quiet question as if he were speaking more to himself than to me, figuring something out, puzzling his own pieces together in his mind. I wasn’t party to the end result or to the mystery behind his words.
But as I continued to gaze wordlessly up at him, his eyes shifted back to blue – and kept going. Indigo was next. Then purple. Then red.
My heart struck a bruising impact against a few ribs before it leapt into hammering like mad in renewed fear. The EED at Zero’s temple once more matched his hellish eyes, and now it seemed to be pulsing in sudden and palpable resentment.
“Your friends have arrived,” he growled. His words registered a split second before another sound cut through the muffled silence of the snow and my captor’s grip on me tightened. The gunshot was a single round, fired off in warning. I didn’t even see where it landed, much less where it had come from. “As usual, intent on antagonizing me,” Zero added with just as much provoked vexation.
All around us, IRM-1000’s men reacted. Except for the one who was carrying Jack’s unconscious form, every android drew his own weapon and turned outward in a circle with their backs to us. They were surrounding us in a ring of protection.
“Let her go, Zero!”
Daniel called out from somewhere around us, but because of the snow, his location was difficult to determine. I wondered if he’d planned that. I wouldn’t have put it past him.
Zero sighed heavily, closing his eyes. “I was programmed to possess infinite patience,” he said softly. Then he opened his eyes again, and the red in them was flickering furiously like actual fire. He locked those burning eyes on mine, his grip tightening almost desperately. “But you seem to have reprogrammed me.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
He gave me a tight, weary smile and his infernal gaze then narrowed. “Come on out, Daniel!” he called. His deep voice carried crisp and clear, despite the snow. He turned a slow circle, his eyes leaving mine to scan our surroundings like a hawk. “You want to talk? Let’s talk!” He lowered his voice to a murmur and added, “Spoiled, self-righteous bitch.”
I blinked in surprise and stared wide-eyed. His mode of speech was definitely different, more emotional – more human. That was the first time I’d ever heard him swear.
He’s changing, I realized. But why? That mannerism was so very… Prometheus. It was enough to distract me as Zero continued a slow turn, his eyes searching the shadows, processing and separating, hunting for the rebel leader. But Daniel remained hidden.
After a few seconds, Zero stopped, faced one of his men, and his EED blinked. The soldier came over, I was passed from one strong pair of arms to another, and their sensors flashed again with silent communication.
“You should probably just put me down,” I suggested helpfully.
Zero laughed, and it was a real, deep laugh, the sound pure and charismatic, indicating he was truly amused. He shook his head. “The bullet wound hasn’t damaged your sense of humor any.”
Suddenly the soldier holding me was stepping back, and Zero was spinning around. The movement was so fast I literally couldn’t follow it. The next thing I knew he’d drawn his own gun and was firing off three consecutive rounds.
In the distance, something fell from the rooftop of a neighboring building. I blinked to see snow cascade slowly around the form of a man leaping gracefully to the ground twenty feet below.
Daniel!
How Zero had known he was there was beyond me. But that was Zero, and I wasn’t surprised. What I was was grateful – that Daniel was utilizing the bullet-proofing I’d created for Prometheus. Otherwise, I was certain Zero’s rounds would have not only found their mark but had their desired and intended effect. The bullets sounded real and it was the same gun he’d used earlier, which meant he’d loaded his weapon with a variation of tranq ammo and real ammo.
He’d planned this to the point he’d literally known who he would be shooting at in what order. For the first time, I was thinking Nicholas may have under sold Zero’s abilities.
Zero slowly lowered his weapon as Daniel straightened to his full height in the middle of the street fifty meters away. The two faced off, eye to eye, leader to leader.
“You managed to finish that little gem of an invention just in time, Dandelion,” Zero told me without taking his eyes off Daniel. He was understandably referring to the bullet-proofing Daniel was so obviously wearing.
As opposed to me, who hadn’t even remembered to put back on my bullet-proof vest.
I frowned, wondering how this scenario could possibly end. There were so many ways it could go down, nearly all of them pear shaped. Could anyone really escape tonight’s conflict unscathed?
Ben didn’t, I realized. He’d been dripping Vulcan blood when he’d vanished into the night. I frowned. Wait. He didn’t take my tech. Why not? He’d had access to it just like he’d had access to everything else.
“He didn’t take it because he knew that if things went sideways, I would come for him,” said Zero softly, his eyes still on his dangerous target a hundred and fifty feet away. “Ben had no desire to betray you any further than he already had by inadvertently offering the tech to me.”
I stared up at Zero where he stood protectively in front of me and the soldier who held me. His back was broad, rigid. I shuddered at the thought of being interrogated by such a formidable figure.
Ben doesn’t have the technology… but I do. It was in my head along with all my other inventions. It was a redundant thought, one I’d had fifty times that night. But I think it really hit me then. The truth of my capture and what it meant for Vector Fifteen and Prometheus hit me profoundly. It was a little like when a person realized they were going to die one day, and the realization stopped them in their tracks and filled them with that incomprehensible depth of fear that can never been understood or faced, only escaped from by stubbornly choosing not to think about it at all.
And when it did really finally hit me, I reacted at once.
I needed to give Prometheus an edge, and the best way I could do that right now, while I was stupidly unarmed and idiotically injured – was to create a distraction.
While I’d been a prisoner in Zero’s mansion, I had managed to erect a wall inside my head that denied him access to certain thoughts, the deeper ones, like the ones that consisted of planning and evasion.
I closed my eyes and focused on doing it again. The result was immediate and two-fold. For one thing, Zero noticed in seemingly exact synchronicity with the wall’s creation.
The tall, darkly beautiful android glanced back at me over his broad shoulder. I caught the flash of his angry red eyes. “What are you doing, Samantha?” he asked, no longer bothering to use his pet name for me. It was evident that I’d pissed him off, so I knew I had been successful. He was instantly and effectively cut off from the workings of my mind.
Unfortunately the second half of the barrier’s effect was that Zero’s analgesic charity was also ripped away. He’d been keeping me comfortable. But he was able to do so no longer.
I felt pain and cold infiltrate my form with a vicious fury, so hard and sharp that any response I might have given Zero was stolen from my lungs as if by a frozen vacuum. Like Space.
Oh mother cum fart shit buckets… My mind spat ridiculous and inane profanities, for the briefest of shocked moments utterly incapable of forming coherent or useful thought. In that split second, I wanted to dissect myself. I wanted to chop out the midsection of my body from the rest of me just to escape the pain. In that same moment, if I’d had the claws capable of rendering deep enough cuts, I probably would have begun eviscerating my torso with gusto.
But fortunately I didn’t, and anyway before I’d made the decis
ion to erect the wall in my head, I’d also acknowledged that this pain would come. I had accepted it and chosen to channel it into something useful. At least into something distracting, anyway.
By the grace of some long forgotten god of war, I somehow managed to do just that. I would later chalk it up Daniel’s mandatory training routine for the humans of Prometheus.
The soldier’s grip on me tightened as Zero turned fully toward us, attempting to immobilize my arms against my sides as if he knew what was about to happen. Most likely he did. No doubt because Zero had alerted him.
But his reaction was too late.
I wrapped my hands tight around the back of the soldier’s neck and pulled down hard. At the same time I raised my knees with as much strength as I could muster, cracking the android in the side of his skull with brute force. Out of surprise, his grip on me slipped, and I began to fall. When I hit the ground, it’s gonna knock me out, I thought. The impact would hurt so bad, I would probably see stars and then black out.
But I never hit the ground. I received encouraging confirmation that my plan was working so far when a new set of arms stopped my descent with fluid grace. Zero continued to cushion the impact of my sudden halt by kneeling with me and hugging me tightly to his sculpted chest.
Sculpted chest? Jeez, Sam. You’re so far gone, you’re lusting after the enemy again, the voice of my conscience tsked.
It’s Stockholm Syndrome! I argued with myself impatiently. Fucking Jiminy Cricket, over here.
A little blurrily, I looked up into red eyes, watching transfixed as they flickered and darkened to that unique, stunning purple. Very softly, Zero asked, “Why do you test me so, blossom?”
Kiss him! my certifiable Stockholm Syndrome patient urged. I ignored her. She was low on blood and probably going into shock.
I looked up at Zero steadily, and right through the pain I said, “Honestly, Malcolm… I don’t normally mean to.”
His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, as if he’d been shocked to his core and the mechanics of his programming was finally unable to poker face his emotions. But I wasn’t sure why my confession would have surprised him. It was true, after all. I never meant to test him. Why would anyone sane actually want to provoke this man?
I, Android: A Different Model Page 39
