I shook my head. “I told you, it was fried. He couldn’t watch it, so I told him to use the co-crest and take the intel from my mind.”
Nick’s eyebrow shot up. “That was clever and quick thinking.”
No! Didn’t he see, it was just the opposite? It was compulsive and now we were screwed! I shook my head, but felt too miserable to put much outward strength behind it. “No. I think Zero was counting on that,” I said miserably. “I think he was counting on everything, in fact. From the fight at the park that would lead to us coming here to you setting off the pulse. Everything.”
Everything.
I closed my eyes, resting my head back against the wall.
We’d failed to realize the enormity of Zero’s chess-playing potential. I couldn’t even see the whole board, that’s how lost I was.
How far back did his plan go? How much of Ben’s betrayal of Zero had been real, for instance? Was it all an act for the video? Ben had shot him. But he’d healed himself right as if he’d been ready for it. Now I knew how he’d managed to miraculously recover after Jack had unloaded his gun into him in the hall of his mansion too. But that was another confounding thing. Why would Zero want me to know that he could heal himself? Why would he have me see how he did it? Wouldn’t he realize that knowledge might give me and Prometheus a tactical advantage?
I had no idea, none whatsoever, how much IRM-1000 knew, who he was manipulating, or what he was planning for his next move. Hell, I didn’t even know what exactly it was he wanted.
And now Zero had taken key members of our rebellion off the board and placed us in check. My teeth clenched so hard together they hurt when I thought of Daniel in the cell behind me. Our king was trapped. It was such a power move, I was almost too impressed to be adequately scared.
Sam, thank you.
My eyes flew open. It was Daniel again.
Daniel, I’m so sorry!
Hush and listen, he commanded. Thank you for following my orders. It’s imperative that you keep me in here. Whatever is in me…. It would do anything to get…. He faded out for a few seconds, but it felt like he did so on purpose, unable to bring himself to finish the sentence. You’re in danger around me, Sam. Don’t ever come here alone. Another pause. I won’t let him have you, Sam. And I won’t let him hurt any of you. I swear it.
Fuck, I’m sorry, I repeated. Even my inner voice sounded as if it were holding back a sob. I just didn’t know what else to say – and I was sorry with all my heart.
Don’t be, he said. In my head, he laughed softly. I got to learn some pretty interesting things about you, Angel. His tone was playful, even a little darkly playful. Things I fully plan on remembering in detail.
His last words left me wondering how much of them was influenced by him, and how much was Zero. Either way, I knew I was blushing where I sat against that wall in the basement with the world falling apart around us, and that was just stupid. So I mentally kicked myself some more.
Hey, cut it out. I mean it, Daniel’s voice cut in, firm now. All hint of teasing gone. You’re the one with the bruised ribs.
That was true. I could already feel them seizing up from the bruises forming and the swelling. Daniel was very strong, and he’d been very determined. If I hadn’t flexed hard just before impact, I’d have been rendered unconscious for sure.
You did good, Angel. By the way, I order you to let Byron take a look at those ribs. He paused briefly, then added. Either Byron will do.
That was probably true too. Both brothers were good at dealing with physical trauma. One had the experience to deal with body damage due to schooling, and the other had the experience necessary due to, well… experience.
But don’t let the lieutenant get your shirt off when you’re anywhere near a bed. Or alone. Definitely not both. His voice trailed off again. Now instead of a blush, I felt more stupid dampness on my cheeks. His mental voice had sounded strained.
I left the tears where they were this time and focused inward.
I guess this new century didn’t come with a new hope after all, I told him, recalling his toast on Christmas Day. This isn’t episode four at all. It’s episode five. I was talking about Star Wars, and I knew he would understand that. The rebels have been beaten down, the rogue leader’s been compromised… our numbers are few and divided, I summed up. And I don’t know where to go from here Daniel.
“That’s easy Angel,” said Daniel, out loud.
My head whipped around to look at the glass door of Daniel’s cell. A familiar pair of boots stepped into view just behind it. My eyes shot upward now. Double-ringed irises of vivid blue and green stared down at me. They were as luminous and mesmerizing as always – but they were no longer glowing. More importantly, he was smiling.
I shot to my feet so fast I almost tripped over Nicholas, who stood as well, concern etching his features until he saw Daniel.
“Daniel!” I cried as I hit the glass like a hockey player, splaying my hands across it. He laughed softly. Tightly, but softly.
He raised his chin and addressed his friends and soldiers where they had gathered in the hall outside his cell. A dozen and a half members of Prometheus had managed to fit there, all eyes trained on their leader.
“I don’t know how much time I have before I lose control again,” he told us all, his charismatic voice carrying over us like music. “So everyone listen carefully.”
As one, the androids of Prometheus took a step closer, their stances tall, their backs straight. Daniel’s gaze met that of each of his rebels one after the other. “We’ve taken a blow. I’ll grant you that. But you and I know we’ve come back from worse,” he said.
And I would be damned if he didn’t absolutely sound like he meant that. But I couldn’t personally think of anything worse than this. We still had a traitor in our midst, for Christ’s sake. Someone in that hall right then was planning, scheming, hiding an extra chess queen up a proverbial sleeve.
“We have a job, and we’re not going to let this stop us. It’s always darkest before the dawn,” Daniel continued with a small smile. He looked back down at me so I would know he’d meant that for me especially.
Then he leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “I want you to keep me in here until you or Nicholas can find a way to neutralize whatever this is in me, Sam.” His brow furrowed in earnest. “Promise me.”
But… I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t promise him anything right then. I had never been more unsure in my life.
So he glanced up at Nicholas, and when he did he disconnected the co-crest from his neck and took it to the touch screen panel on his side of the cell wall. The panel was there to operate the cell’s lights and temperature, to operate the slot used to transfer food and water to and from the cell’s occupants, and it could be used to send a guard a simple alert to let him or her know it was time to talk.
Daniel touched a few “buttons” on the screen, and a tray slowly opened outward toward him from the wall to his right. I could just barely see from my vantage point that he placed the co-crest in the tray, tapped a few more controls on the screen, and the tray folded back up again.
It opened on our side, revealing the co-crest. Nick took the device and pocketed it before moving back to the glass to stand eye level with the first android he had ever produced. Daniel met his gaze and held it. A silence passed between them, brief but meaningful.
“Do I have your word?” Daniel asked Nick softly. Seriously. Personally – as old friends.
I saw a muscle flex in Nick’s jaw. He nodded, just once. “You do.”
I clenched my fists where they were pressed against the glass. I had never felt so helpless. “Daniel…,” I shook my head when my eyes began to burn. “Damn it, you said, ‘That’s easy.’” My voice had turned harsh, almost a hiss. Anger was moving through me now, and it was better than misery. It was more fueling. It gave me strength rather than sapping it away. I held on to it and looked up into Daniel’s eyes. “But you lied, Daniel. Because it’s th
e goddamn Empire that wins in this episode. Did you forget that? You’re the one who told me that in any fight, there’s always a last punch, a final blow….” My voice trailed into a bewildered whisper. “The one there’s no coming back from.”
But Daniel looked at me enigmatically, the emotion in his eyes intense but sincere. He leaned in a little more, and to me alone he said, “Sam.” He smiled, shaking his head. “If this is episode five, then our next step really is easy. It is clear.” He gave a small laugh. “And it’s golden. Think about it.” His smile became a meaningful grin as he said, “Our next step is episode six.”
Episode six, I thought, my anger picking up and blowing away just as quickly as it had come. In its place was that hope once more.
Because Star Wars Episode Six was The Return of the Jedi.
The one where everything turned around and was right again.
Epilogue
I was alone in an old parking garage, the kind they’d had in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A long construct of concrete and rebar, it was either abandoned long ago or in the stages of slow repair, littered with rubble and plastic bag debris. Those too, were strange. I hadn’t seen a plastic bag in a long time.
Shadows covered the concrete surface beneath my boots, long enough that I knew night was fast approaching. It was quiet all around me. And beyond the open-air concrete wall, fog obliterated parts of the skyline. I was several floors up, from the looks of things. But what I could see of the city was unrecognizable. It was not Pittsburgh.
I turned a slow circle and noticed several things at once. One, I had my phone to my ear. Or, at least I thought it was a phone. It was a flat-screen device, rudimentary in design, but placed to my ear. So… a phone.
Two, it was autumn. A smattering of dried leaves and a smashed pumpkin in a far darkened corner of the empty building tipped me off to the season.
Three, I was dressed for a mission from head to toe, complete with bullet-proof leather jacket, combat boots, and the universally dimensional haptic gloves I’d designed. UDH’s.
Wait…. The what? I looked down at my attire. I have a bullet-proof leather jacket? It was sweet, too. Purple. Rare color. Wait, since when? Haptic gloves? I turned my non-phone hand over to look at the gloves. They were black, snug and soft, like simulated lambskin gloves. Except they were driving gloves. Which no longer existed. What the hell – and Universal? What the heck does Universally Dimensional Haptic mean? Did it mean they could work on anything? Not only a surface, but virtual interfaces as well? UDH.
The scientist in me mused happily along as my brain contorted itself into dizzying disarray like a squishy Rubik’s Cube.
And that’s another thing I haven’t seen anywhere but in antique shops. What’s with the time travel?
I stopped in place and lowered my “phone” from my ear to glance down at it. No one was talking to me through it anyway. Maybe it wasn’t a phone.
I peered down at the phone’s smooth interface. I didn’t recognize the image that seemed to be marking its home screen. It was a photograph of some of the members of Prometheus. We were all standing around a bronze statue of a dog and a man who were fondly greeting each other. The dog was of the Akito breed, if I wasn’t mistaken, and the statue appeared to be located in some kind of park or campus. Prometheus members posed playfully around the human part of the statue like loyal canines, tongues out, bodies bent, smiling like dummies.
I almost smiled too, but… this was all too strange. I couldn’t remember ever having taken this picture. Or even seeing this statue. And yet, the scene felt almost painfully familiar.
I frowned in contemplation before I slipped the phone into my jacket pocket and made my way to the garage’s open wall. My footsteps sounded hollow when I moved. I couldn’t remember… anything. Not since going to sleep in Jonathan’s house the night after everything had gone to shit. I didn’t even remember waking up the next day.
I couldn’t remember traveling anywhere out of state, much less since we’d confined Daniel in the basement cell. I couldn’t remember how I’d arrived fully dressed in this parking garage. I couldn’t remember ever having owned a bullet-proof leather jacket, much less UDH gloves. Whatever those were.
Good idea, though….
But given all we had just gone through with Ben, Jack and Lucas betraying us and given that all three of them, along with Zero, were still AWOL and Daniel was currently behind bars, I knew this would never happen. This right here would never happen. The fact that I was alone, outside of Prometheus, apparently unarmed and without a single android or armed human companion for backup anywhere in sight was the dead giveaway.
This was not only not Pittsburgh, it also was also not real.
This was a dream.
I took a deep breath, drawing in the clean and cool feel of fog, and let it out slowly. “Okay, so I’m lucid dreaming again.” Unless it was a vision… through someone else’s eyes.
Regardless of the strange environment, I recognized this could be a possibility, so I pulled he phone back out of my pocket and stared at the smooth screen. It acted as a mirror, reflecting my own visage back at me.
Not a vision through someone else’s eyes. Just a dream.
The phone suddenly jumped in my hand, vibrating strongly. A beat later, the screen came to life and ACDC’s Thunderstruck rang out through some invisible speaker somewhere. I calmed my breathing and read the screen. It was an incoming call from “Unknown.”
I had no idea how to answer it, so I just took a guess and, with a glance down at the haptic gloves, I touched the incoming call tab on the screen. The screen blinked open, and I put the phone to my ear.
A voice spoke harshly, quickly, desperately. The connection was horrible, however, and there was so much static, I could not recognize the speaker’s voice. I was barely able to make out the words he rapidly spoke.
“Listen to me, Sam, you have to get out of there!”
I frowned. I turned a circle. I was alone. So I pursed my lips, and in the spirit of a weird dream, I tried to ask the speaker what he was talking about. “What are you-”
“Damn it Sam, it was …! All along, all this time - all of it was ….”
The static was growing now, stealing some of the speaker’s words. The most important ones.
“I couldn’t see it before because…. but….” He trailed off, then came back with clarity to hiss, “Christ how could I have been so stupid?”
I shook my head and ran my hand through my hair. This was getting me nowhere. “Slow down and speak clearly. You’re literally not making any sense.”
The speaker made a disgusted sound, a helpless sound. “Of course you would think that! You can’t imagine a betrayal that deep! But think about it Samantha! …the only one who could have accessed everything the enemy knew! It makes sense!”
Unfortunately, nothing made sense just then. But if I thought about it very quickly and put it into some kind of order in my head and ignored the strangeness of the dream, I could imagine that the speaker was revealing the identity of someone important. Like a traitor, for instance.
“Wait, please, you have to tell me again –”
“Really?!” The speaker shouted incongruously on the other end, but his voice was becoming even more distant to me. “Sam, you’re in danger! ……… you all along! Jesus, and now you’re alone with ….. you’re weak from back-to-back missions that I would just bet …., and I’d wager you’re also unarmed!”
He was right about me being unarmed. But this dream was officially the worst tease in history. My heart was beating fast now because I was certain it was trying to tell me the identity of Prometheus’s leak. I just knew it.
I ran another hard hand through my hair, and fisted it in frustration this time. “Wait! Just say the name! Just the name again!” But I was feeling sluggish even as I begged. I could feel the dream slipping up into consciousness around the edges, like it was melting upward. I felt it coming to an end.
“Sam, … has you right where ….. you. Get the fuck out of there right now -”
Right before I woke up, an arm came around me and a hand wrapped around the phone in my grasp. I had just enough time to experience a sharp spike of adrenaline and notice the edge of a black leather jacket sleeve.
And then I was blinking awake in bed. My head hurt, and I experienced a brief moment of uncomfortable, queasy uncertainty because I didn’t know where I was. I stayed absolutely still as my heart pounded in my ears. I listened and tried to see through the darkness. But it was empty, unfamiliar darkness.
So I took a chance and softly said, “Lights on.”
Slowly, voice-response lighting, soft and yellow, rose to a low level illumination above deep cherry-wood bookshelves. I took another few, stark seconds to think.
And then I saw the Jonathan Montgomery painting on one wall and remembered. It all came back to me with the sensation of something heavy and cold settling in my gut.
I was in one of the upstairs bedrooms in Jonathan’s mansion. Sonia was in the adjoining room with Charlotte and Mabel. Lex and Shawn were in the hall just outside the door, standing guard. Everyone was on high alert.
Nicholas Byron was in the mansion’s studio, rapidly turning it into a make-shift lab. Cole Byron was pulling strings behind the scenes to get reinstated with the Ohio Police Department so he could work things for Prometheus from the inside. And Matt and a number of other Prometheus members were taking turns keeping watch down in the large finished basement area because our wise and brave leader was currently compromised by IRM-1000’s cleverly laid trap. Daniel’s thoughts, his actions, his mind, his very being were not currently his own.
I glanced at the large armchair across the room. It was plush in cushioning, designed for comfort, but right now very empty. I wondered if Daniel had often rested in it while watching over Jonathan back in the day.
And then I felt the sting of tears threaten, because Lucas was not sitting in that armchair. I’d grown so accustomed to having him watch over me while I slept. The space around me had never felt more empty. As I stared at the chair, I felt for the pendant I still wore around my neck, the precious gold Millennium Falcon Luke had given to me for Christmas. Nicholas had already taken it upon himself to scan the pendant for possible tracking devices. Of course there were none. Not that I could blame him for wondering.
I, Android: A Different Model Page 49
