I frowned down at the leep drive on the bed and wondered aloud. “Why would it be fried when nothing else is?” And then I had it. “Shit, Zero must have placed a fail safe on it. The kind that triggers when anything happens that would compromise large-scale defense systems.”
“Like EMP’s,” said Daniel, figuring it out too. “Such as the kind that can be used to bypass the latest tech security structures at Vector Fifteen.”
I took a deep breath as we both digested that.
Then he said, “Are you sure you want me to do this, Angel?”
I looked up at him. There was definitely determination in his eyes, but I knew he was also afraid of crossing any lines with me that would make me uncomfortable. I understood his hesitance. Sharing thoughts was much easier between androids, much more prevalent, and sometimes much, much more personal. But I nodded. I was sure.
He gave me a small but proud smile. “Then, give me your hand.”
I frowned, tilting my head a little in confusion but offering him my hand anyway.
“Contact helps,” Daniel explained. “Even with humans.”
I wondered how he would know that, then remembered that he and Nicholas were old friends. He’d probably been Nick’s Guinea pig with the co-crest’s testing phase.
Daniel gently took my arm, pushed my sleeve up until it was at my elbow, then wrapped his hand around my forearm. He closed his eyes. His EED lit up and shimmered between colors, and the co-crest did the same.
I felt strange, light-headed. I closed my eyes too, grateful that I was already sitting on a bed because I felt like I might fall over. Behind my closed lids, scenes began to flash, but they were surface thoughts, surface memories, fractured and incomplete. If he wanted the entirety of the information I had to share, he was going to have to go where I stored those memories on an unconscious level. He would have to go deeper.
Where only Zero had ever been.
Goosebumps broke out along my skin when I felt Daniel’s mind give a little push. It was a physical and mental sensation, like a drug. A sense of euphoria that I’d only experienced under Zero’s influence came over me. Daniel delved deeper. Pushed harder.
My head fell back and the world began to slip away. Distantly, I felt my body being moved. I felt weightless, and relief flooded me when I realized I didn’t care anymore. Not about the real world. I was letting go, opening the door.
I was an open book.
Chapter Forty-Seven
When I came-to, Daniel was cradling me, my back to his chest, his arms wrapped tight around me. His eyes were still closed, and the sensor around his left eye was still working with the assimilation of knowledge. I stared up at him, taking the rare opportunity to study my hero up close and personal. He was just as perfect from inches away as he was from miles.
He slowly opened his own eyes to reveal they were glowing.
I couldn’t help the sound of surprise I made. My body went into shocked stillness. The only androids I had ever seen with eyes like that were Zero and Lucas. The two were so closely tied, it hadn’t surprised me – not as much as this.
Daniel gazed steadily down at me through aquamarine light, stark against the handsome lines of his face. I slowly sat up, and he released me, watching me in silence.
“Daniel?” I chanced, well aware that he could probably hear my heart tap-dancing. “Are… you okay?”
He blinked, frowning. And then he closed his eyes. I took the chance to slide away from him so I could stand beside the bed. I was still weak, but I wanted to be on my feet. Something felt different.
“Don’t.”
I froze in place, one booted foot touching the floor, the other still bent on the bed. His voice had come out tight, a command hard and cold. He’d never spoken to me that way before.
Daniel opened his eyes again. The glow was still there, but now it had lightened.
Platinum, I thought in mounting horror. Dread moved through me, thick as sludge. Oh, hell no….
Instinct kicked in, and I took a deep breath to call out. Daniel moved like lightning, rushing me to catch me off-guard. He was so fast. I barely had a chance to realize what was happening before he was behind me, one hand pressed firmly over my mouth, the other wrapped like a vice around my waist, trapping my arms to my sides.
This isn’t happening, I thought as tears stung my eyes. What had I done? I’d broken my rebel leader. No, no, no.
There was that word again. Goddamn useless word.
Fight me, Angel. His voice, sounding from far, far away, both whispered and commanded in my mind, echoing with desperation. Please… stop me….
Outside, in the physical world, he said nothing. But the arm he had around my waist slid upward threateningly, and I recognized the move when he wrapped that thick arm around my throat and squeezed. It wouldn’t kill me, but it would knock me out fast.
Already I was seeing spots.
I couldn’t take a breath. All I had to work with was what I’d previously pulled into my lungs. Fortunately, Daniel had taught us specific defensive techniques for situations just like this. In the back of my pounding, frantic mind, I wondered if that was why he’d chosen this move to begin with. I wondered if he’d managed to maintain that much control in the face of whatever had taken him over.
I acted without further thought. It was paramount to an effective attack.
Normally an attacker would place his non-strangling arm at the back of his victim’s head to help cut off circulation faster. But Daniel had been forced to silence me first. Which meant he was not guarding his face.
I lifted my legs, using Daniel’s body behind me for balance and support, slammed my boots down on the bed and the bedside table at the same time, and used that advantage to slam the back of my head into his nose.
His grip loosened only very slightly. But it was enough for me to scream.
I didn’t bother forming any kind of name or word; I simply put every ounce of my strength behind a bellow that I pulled from deep inside me. It rang out clear and loud, so loud that I hurt my own ears.
Daniel cut it short by roughly grabbing hold of me once more. He spun with me, and I had just enough time to flex my abdominals before he slammed me up against the thick bed post, aiming with precise expertise so the post struck my solar plexus, knocking the wind from me.
I would have doubled over had he not been holding me up. I almost moaned in misery when he prepared to do it again, clearly intent on knocking me out even if it meant breaking a few ribs. But I experienced a flash of hope when I heard the sudden sound of running footfalls on the staircase, heavy and fast. Then in the hall. The alarm went up next, blaring like an archangel’s trumpet.
Relief flooded me until Daniel strode to the space behind the door, still holding and silencing me, and waited for the company he knew we’d soon have. He’d learned his lesson the first time and kept one strong leg wrapped around both of mine, preventing me from kicking out. There was nothing I could do but make a tiny mewling sound to warn whoever was coming through the door when it flew open.
Daniel caught the door with his boot, shoved it hard in the other direction, and it struck my would-be savior before I had a chance to see who it even was. Then he was moving again, his inhuman mind mapping out and strategizing his next attack with the speed and precision of the world’s most dangerous machine.
I was moved from one arm to the other, my vision blurring behind tears and pain as his grip changed, quick and efficient, and now his fingers curled threateningly around my throat. Out of the hazy corner of my eye, I watched the members of Prometheus pile strategically through the door.
It had been Shawn who was knocked backward. But he was passed by others one after another, as they took formation, each android or human in turn dealing with the jolting blow of seeing Daniel as he was now.
I knew what they were thinking. What they were witnessing made no sense. This couldn’t be happening. That wasn’t Daniel. It had to be someone else, a different android. I coul
d see the confusion on their faces and the rapid blinking of their orange and red EED’s. But they fought on like the soldiers they were, stunned or not. Matt. Lex. Even Sonia had woken up and come running. Behind them were the shadows of others, but again things happened too fast for me to follow.
All the while, Daniel’s hand remained around my neck, squeezing just hard enough to control me, just hard enough to limit my air, not hard enough to kill me. He could have so easily. A twist of the wrist. A blurred snapping of the neck. It would have all been over so fast.
I reminded myself of that as he faced off, cold and ruthless, against his best friends.
No one shot at him; no one wanted to hurt him. I would have reminded them that he was protected by the bullet proofing, but I couldn’t speak. So they fought hand-to-hand, each attempting to take their leader down, and each failing. I saw them hit the floor one after another, twisted arms, Vulcan blood, and dislocated biocomponents all evidence of his superior combat abilities. Until finally, a shot rang out through the night, breaking through the pandemonium and disarray.
Daniel’s grip on me faltered, but not enough for me to break free. When I dug my fingers into his wrist and tried to twist it away, his boot kicked the backs of my legs and I went down. He followed me, re-establishing his choke hold and using the drop for low shots at his opponents, sliding in underneath their guard.
But the sea of androids in front of him was parting. And a second shot followed the first. Then a third and fourth. At that point, his hand around my throat flagged, sliding away as his strength and focus were momentarily impaired. Sound was receding, ringing out to a distance in the wake of the un-silenced shooting. When the sound receded, so did my sense of grounding. The scene became dreamlike to me. Otherworldly and impossible.
A sixth, seventh, and eighth bullet slammed into Daniel’s outer silicone layers. Whoever had fired wasn’t messing around. They knew Daniel was protected, and only a fire blast of ammo was going to slow him down right now.
What remained in the gun’s chamber was released in quick succession, striking the rebel leader so hard and fast, I lost count. Terror had bloomed to gardens in my mind. I wondered how much damage Daniel’s bullet-proofing could take, especially at close range. I did more than worry, actually. I ached with fear, literally throbbed with it all throughout my chest. This was my hero. This was all I had left in the world. This rebellion. This leader.
At last Daniel fell to his knees. I watched him fall in slow motion, heard his knees hit like thunder. Just as slowly, I looked up through the parted sea of androids to see Nicholas standing just beyond the room’s threshold, his arm raised and steady, his gun smoking, his eyes the color of arctic ice.
I exhaled. I heard it like an echo in a chamber.
Nick’s gaze left Daniel and swiveled at once to me, rooting me beneath its icy resolution. There was nothing I could think of doing or saying. So I just stared back at him as time ground back to normal like a manipulated video suddenly set free to play at its normal speed once again.
Nicholas lowered his gun arm and stepped into the room. Sonia nudged me when she dropped to her knees beside Daniel, cupping his face. I looked at his chest, his legs and arms. His eyes were closed, but there was no green staining his clothing. He was unconscious, but from the superficial look of his wounds, I knew it would be temporary. He’d been forced to shut down under impact damage, the way a human often blacked out after being shot while wearing a Kevlar vest. But nothing had pierced the armor of his skin.
Hurry, Sam…. I startled when Daniel’s voice sounded in my head again. Lock me up while you can.
I jolted out of my temporarily useless stupor and turned to face the others. “Quick, help me get him to the basement. There’s a holding cell there!” I bent beside Sonia to drape one of Daniel’s arms over my shoulders, and she hurried to his other side to do the same. More androids came forward, helping us to lift him. We quickly carried him from the room. Once out in the hall, I let the androids take over and led them down the stairs.
Jonathan Montgomery’s famous mansion was artistically balanced between the old and the new, with Jonathan’s personal touches everywhere. It was comprised of three levels – the ground, the second floor, and the basement. The second floor consisted of guest bedrooms, Jonathan’s old master before he’d been forced to move downstairs to make getting around easier, and a library.
The first and main floor was where the kitchen was, along with the dining room, a study, an entertaining room, and a separate extension that had purely been built for Jonathan to work his art. That was where he composed music, painted, and had played many a game of chess with Daniel. They’d even played the multi-level Star Trek chess, of which he owned an original prop.
The basement, in my opinion, was the nicest level of Jonathan’s home. It was controlled for temperature and humidity. It was where Jonathan both stored and made wine. It also comprised a lux tasting room, replete with thick carpeting, fine art, a fully stocked bar made of polished petrified redwood, and comfortable but expensive furniture upholstered in leather.
In the main room of the basement, his own wine aged in oak barrels all along one wall. A quick press and scan of Daniel’s limp palm against a panel lock beside this row of barrels saw the entire thing sliding smoothly to the side on rails you would not otherwise know were there.
Behind the row had been hidden a final extension to the basement. This was where we’d sometimes kept prisoners of Prometheus – when we couldn’t make it back to Prometheus itself, or Jonathan had simply been closer and we’d needed to regroup and get medical attention, or the prisoner was one Daniel didn’t trust in our midst.
If we ever caught up with Ben, this was where he would be held. Or probably someone in Prometheus would just kill him.
We weren’t savages, despite what the media would have people believe. So this cell wasn’t a simple four by four space with a hard floor and no other features but loneliness to speak of. That was what a human-owned cell looked like, not ours.
This was a ten by ten room with an extra thick mattress that was both comfortable for humans but sturdy enough for the extra weight of an android. The bed had a box-springs, composed of plastic springs that could not be broken or sharpened. The bed was complete. It was also clothed in freshly laundered sheets, blankets, and a pillow with a pillow case. The floor was covered in thick rugs for cushioning, there was a sink against the wall specially outfitted without any long pipes or sharp bits that could be used as weapons if torn out of. As far as I was concerned, best of all was the smaller alcove off the cell that had the decency to curve off to the side. It was the bathroom, also devoid of make-shift weaponry.
There was a window in here too, way high up at the very top of the cell. It was very small, only a thin portion of the room having been built close enough to the first level to break ground for lighting. But because it wrapped around the top of the entire cell, there was plenty of light.
Matt and Shawn placed Daniel inside the cell on the bed and stepped back outside. Then Matt stood before the scanner that would slide the shatter-proof glass closed and lock Daniel in. But he stared down at the scanner helplessly before looking up at Sonia and shrugging. Sonia glanced from him to Daniel, whose fingers were now twitching. He was coming back around.
In urgent desperation, Sonia looked at me. “Sam, you’re the only one left.”
I tried to understand what she meant by that. But I had an awful lot crowding my brain, so I was slow in comprehending. My face must have expressed this because she went on.
“You’re the only remaining member of Prometheus who can lock a door in this house,” she told me. “Or unlock it, for that matter.”
My eyes closed of their own volition. I couldn’t help it. That single sentence brought home so much pain. It meant Jonathan, Nathan and Daniel had trusted me enough to enter my biodata into the home’s system. And it reminded me that Jonathan and Nathan were gone, and that Daniel was out of commission.
I shook my head at the dire vulnerability and rather awe-inspiring bad luck Prometheus now faced, but I also opened my eyes and made my way to the scanner. I placed my palm atop it.
The screen beeped to life, color and light sliding over my skin. The six-inch thick “glass” door slid firmly shut. A mechanical lock slipped into place somewhere in the thick stone wall, fastening at several junctures around the door frame.
My head felt heavy. Jonathan. Nathan. Erica. The Eddies. Finn. The children. Jack.
Lucas.
My hand slid off the scanner and my arm fell to my side.
And now Daniel.
I turned around, fell back against the wall to the side of the cell’s door, and slid to the ground, my knees bent before me.
It’s my fault. Something happened to him when he went into my mind. “Zero planned this all along,” I said softly. “He did something to the leep drive he had Grace give me.”
I heard leather soles on carved stone striding slowly through the androids, who moved aside to let their owner pass until he stood in front of me. I looked up to meet eyes the color of long forgotten glaciers. Somehow they were warmer than they had any right to be at that color. Nick knelt in front of me until we were at eye level. “What leep drive, Sam?” he asked gently.
“It’s upstairs. On the bedspread,” I told him numbly, evenly. “Your EMP fried it.” There was no emotion left within me to inflect with. “It contained video footage. And that footage had answers,” I summed up, still numb and monotone. “And more questions.” I broke eye contact with Nick to stare at the rough-hewn ground as I hugged my knees to my chest. “I thought it was important that Daniel see it.”
My mind swore softly. I hated myself for not recognizing this trap sooner.
Nick frowned, his much more genius mind working a million miles a minute. “But you believe Zero placed something in its coding, something resembling a virus. Something transmittable.” He paused, coming to conclusions. “Then… Daniel viewed it too?”
I, Android: A Different Model Page 48
