“My name is MikkyBo,” she repeats. She glares at me, her eyes blazing azure fire. “I was the top of my class in neural replication. I received four years of intensive training in combat, counterintelligence, tactical communications, explosives, systems management—”
I break in. “So you can better enslave humans—”
“—and I have a father, and a brother, and a little sister.” Her voice breaks, but she doesn’t stop. She spits the words at me like daggers. “We’re not all the same. We’re not replaceable.”
“Neither were my parents.” I seethe.
For a long moment, we just stare at each other angrily. I’m listening for the crunch of tires on the road or the chop of a helicopter above—sounds that will save her and doom me. Right now, though, all I hear is the icy wind slashing through the trees.
“Stop pulling my hair,” Mikky eventually says. There’s resentment in her voice, but defeat, too.
I untangle the long blue-black knots from between my fingers and clumsily try to smooth it around her face.
“Now place me in the vehicle,” the Hu-Bot directs.
I open the door, and the alarm starts up again: “INTRUDER! INTRUDER!”
I set Mikky’s head in the backseat. “Turn it off,” I yell, hurriedly shoving her torso and parts in the back as the alarm shrieks our location to every spy cam and slipstream in the entire domain of the Central Capital City.
The Hu-Bot detective hesitates for another second. Then she flicks her eyes upward and says quietly, “Systems, dissolve.”
CHAPTER 51
DON’T THINK ABOUT who—or what—is chasing you. Don’t think about the deep shit that awaits you. Just focus on the road.
Too bad it’s so overgrown, I can barely see it. But still we climb, and the wind roars louder and the snow begins to fall.
“Watch it!” the Hu-Bot head says from the backseat as I list too far to the right. The drop on that side is straight down.
“I’m trying,” I snap, yanking the wheel as the tires skid. “Your cruiser’s shit on the ice. I would’ve thought the great and noble premier would pull out all the stops for his Elite Force.”
“Central Command has responsibilities for a much larger cause,” Mikky says. “It cannot concern itself with maintaining individual machines.”
I glance back at her, unsure what the quiver in her voice means. She’s staring straight ahead, propped on a heap of my old, wet clothes so that she can see over the dashboard. After a few seconds of silence, she shifts her gaze, looking up at me out of the corner of her eyes.
“You’re really going to take me there?” she asks meekly. “To a place where I can be repaired?”
“I said I would, didn’t I?” I say with more than a touch of annoyance. The truth is, until that moment, that little bit of vulnerability in her voice, I’d still been planning to ditch her.
But what if I do help her? It’ll go against an unwritten law that dates back to the Great War, and it will probably be the biggest mistake of my life.
“I don’t even know if I can remember the way,” I mutter.
I can keep following this road, but when it ends, can I find the path that I last saw as a terrified eight-year-old? A path that’s old, unused, and buried by snow? And then can I make my way down it, carrying a busted-up Hu-Bot?
Right now, I’m so weak, I don’t know if I could carry my own weight, let alone hers.
“What’s wrong?” the Hu-Bot asks sharply.
I must’ve been swerving again. I blink quickly as the road goes in and out of focus.
“I’m probably dying, is what’s wrong,” I snap. I hate the self-pity I hear in my voice, but the pain is overwhelming. I’m feverish and sweating, dizzy from blood loss.
Mikky’s eyes widen. “But you have to get us there!”
Nice. Real sensitive.
“Talk to me!” she says brightly. “Tell me a story.”
Right… I don’t feel like chatting. We’re not besties, head.
“It’ll help you stay conscious,” the Hu-Bot insists.
Maybe it will. At this point, there aren’t a whole lot of other options.
“Um…”
Seconds pass. The tires slide on the ice. Snow falls. My head spins.
What the hell do you say to a Hu-Bot?
“I have a sister, too,” I say finally, breaking the silence. “And a brother.” I take a deep breath. “My sister was my best friend. My brother was a bully, though, even when we were little.” My chest tightens as I remember Ricky holding me down, his knees shoved between my shoulder blades. I’d cut up one of his shirts to make a puppet, and he was pissed.
“We have observed this,” the Hu-Bot says calmly. “Violence starts in humans from a very young age.”
“It’s not like that all the time,” I say, feeling defensive of my species in general, and my brother in particular, even though I know both are pretty much shit. “We also know how to have fun, which you Hu-Bots seem to really hate. When my brother and sister and I would fight, my mom used to make us hold hands and sing her favorite songs. We’d just stand there, belting out these goofy tunes, even though we were all totally tone deaf.”
I look at the Hu-Bot, grinning helplessly at the memory. She actually smiles back.
“And then—I’m sure you’ll think this is all sinful or whatever—but then my parents would start to dance.”
I can picture them so perfectly. Mom starting to shake her hips. A tilt of the head and a cock of the eyebrow. Dad, usually so serious, unable to resist joining in. Spinning her around, doing silly, lame moves that made us kids go wild.
“By the end I’d be laughing so hard, I couldn’t breathe. And my stomach would be killing me.” I shake my head in disbelief. “Kind of like now. But now is a lot less fun.”
“You should slow down.” Mikky’s voice spikes with alarm.
“It’s kind of hilarious, though.” Suddenly I’m laughing. Giggling like a maniac and choking on the bile that’s coming up in my throat. “Isn’t it just hilarious?”
“Watch out!” she shouts. “Six!”
And right before we go over the cliff, I think what a goddamn shame it is that the last thing I’m going to hear before I die is a Hu-Bot yelling my name—a new name my own family never even heard.
CHAPTER 52
“DON’T MOVE. JUST pretend like you’re asleep.”
“I can’t. It hurts. It hurts really, really bad. I want my mom. Where’s my mom?”
“You gotta stop crying.”
“It’s just—all these people. The smell. I can’t breathe. What did they…? What if they…”
“Pretend like all those people are asleep, too.”
But my friend Kathleen knew as well as I did that they weren’t asleep. Some of them still had their eyes open. Some were missing arms, and some were so burned up, they didn’t even look like people.
They were people, though. Humans. Thousands and thousands of humans, each and every one of them murdered by the robot army.
Kathleen and I had been outside during the initial attacks on the houses. We stayed alive because we knew the best hide-and-seek spots and because, at six and eight years old, we were small.
Small enough to burrow down into a pile of corpses and not be seen.
We didn’t mean to come here. We were trying to get to the school, because we thought we’d be safe there. But when we arrived, there was no school—just a big hole in the ground where our classrooms had been.
A hole that the robots, with their awkward, jerky motions, were filling with bodies.
It wasn’t a good hiding place—not like our tree fort or the forest near the creek—but we didn’t know where else to go, and Kathleen was getting scared and woozy. We saw how the robots shot at the uppermost bodies before they added the next layer of corpses. We made sure to scootch down real deep. With so many corpses pushing down on us, we could barely breathe.
Pretend they’re asleep. Just pretend they’re aslee
p.
“We only have to wait here a little longer,” I kept whispering. “Then it’ll be over.”
Kathleen’s arm was burned, though, from when she went into her house after the boom, looking for her parents. The wound was raw, oozing blood and pus, and she was making these hiccupping, gagging noises. I didn’t know if the sounds were because of her arm, or because of what she found inside her house, or because of where we were now.
I didn’t know about my own parents yet, but I was too scared to cry. Too scared to make any sound but a whisper.
“My grandpa will help us,” I assured Kathleen. “He’ll make it better. He knows the president.”
“What if the president’s dead?” Kathleen asked miserably. “What if they’re all dead?”
All sounded too big. All sounded like something I couldn’t imagine.
“Shh. Do you hear that? Someone’s coming.”
“Wake up! Sarah Jean Coughlin, wake up!”
I open my eyes to see the cracked dashboard console just inches from my face. I’m slumped forward against the steering wheel, and the hood of the car is pointing straight down the mountain.
Looks like the only reason we didn’t plunge all the way to the bottom is that the cruiser got stuck between a boulder and a tree. Black smoke billows up from the engine.
“Oops,” I whisper. I’m too weak to move.
“Happy now, Sarah?” a male voice suddenly asks from behind me—close behind me.
“Dubs?” I gasp. In my pain and delirium, I imagine that he’s come back to life.
A snort of disgust follows this question. “You mean your drug-addicted, delinquent accomplice? You left him behind, did you? Well, I’m sure the Hu-Bots have worked him over by now.”
“I didn’t leave him,” I protest. “I would never leave him.”
Not while he was alive, anyway.
Remembering the image of my friend collapsing to the ground, I whimper, then wince as pain stabs my side. “Am I going to die, too?” I whisper.
“I would expect so,” comes the reply. “At this point, it’s the best thing you could do for yourself.”
And I finally recognize the voice for its cold cruelty. “Grandfather,” I say, my shock giving me the strength to turn my head and face him.
I told you, Kathleen, I think, my head still spinning toward the dream. I told you he’d come.
“Don’t call me that,” he snaps. “I’m not your family. Your pitiful, thieving life bears no relationship to mine. And, on top of that, you nearly destroyed the cargo, which is much more valuable than you could ever hope to be.”
Before I can answer, I hear the side door open and close, and the old man is gone.
The cargo?
“Mikky,” I call.
There’s no answer, though, and when I manage to slide toward the passenger seat, I see that the head is nowhere to be found.
I start to wonder if I only imagined my grandfather sitting in the stolen car.
I start to wonder if maybe I’m already dead.
CHAPTER 53
WHEN MIKKYBO REGAINS consciousness, her head is clamped in metal vises, and her body is bound to a metal table by thick leather straps. Humans surround her, wearing unsterile paper gowns and archaic surgical masks. Although she can’t turn her head to look, Mikky’s pretty certain she’s the only Hu-Bot for miles.
She has made a grave mistake.
She’d expected unconventional repairs when she went with the fugitive—but there’s no sign of the soothing, warm pools where Hu-Bots are formed and, if need be, resurfaced. Where are the vast 3-D printers, or the soul-data selection screens, like those she’d perused with her parents before KatBo was created? Was this even an actual Birthing Center?
Something else concerns her, too: she can’t feel the gold collar at her neck anymore. The mark of her Elite status, which she’d been explicitly forbidden to remove.
A woman walks over to her, looking down at a clipboard, her pale skull showing through thin, orange hair.
“Where’s my Elite collar?” Mikky asks her.
The woman shrugs without looking up. “Destroyed.”
Mikky is furious. “That was a badge of honor, bestowed upon me by Commander Khan himself as a measure of his confidence!”
“It was also a tracker.” The woman’s close-set eyes sparkle with amusement. “Didn’t think you were getting in here with that, did you?”
Mikky glares at her in helpless rage. Not only is she in an ancient, filthy laboratory, but no one has any idea where she is.
“What are you doing to me?” she asks, her anxiety spiking as another human female begins cutting off what’s left of her uniform. “Back away immediately! Humans, bow down!”
The woman laughs. “Oh, honey, that line doesn’t work around here.”
And she and her compatriots go right along with their work, sticking Mikky with IVs and swabbing her with a cold liquid that stings her nostrils.
As a dark-skinned young man goes to work, stitching her head back onto her torso, Mikky tries to focus her energy on a joy rush—perhaps a body massage or a bowl of ice cream.
But she keeps feeling the needle tug against the bioskin at her neck. She can’t concentrate enough to leave her present. And the vulgar humans—they just keep talking.
“The craftsmanship is amazing,” a masked woman murmurs while taking measurements of Mikky’s arm. “Look at the detail in this polymer skeleton.”
“Remarkable,” the man fussing with her neck agrees. “This is the best model I’ve ever seen.”
Model? MikkyBo thinks. I’m not a model—I’m an individual. A person.
But of course, she knows she is the best they’ve ever seen. She’s Elite, and these ignorant, tinkering humans are going to ruin her!
“Who is your commander?” she asks suddenly. “I demand to speak to him right now.”
“Do you, now?” The woman with the clipboard laughs, exposing her square, horselike teeth.
Unlike the others, she isn’t wearing a mask, and Mikky shudders to think of all the bacteria she must be spewing into the air. Humans’ mouths are among the dirtiest things in the world.
“Jay!” the horsey woman shouts across the room. “Her Highness here wants to talk to you!”
“Sergeant Macy,” a man calls back gruffly, “did I not specifically instruct you to keep her quiet?”
His voice isn’t loud, but the harsh tone of it makes the woman’s face redden. Sweat appears above her lip.
“Anesthesia! Get going!” Sergeant Macy barks, and the other humans working on Mikky rush to follow her orders.
The man called Jay walks toward MikkyBo’s table. He’s slightly built, of medium height, but he carries himself with the rigid confidence of a soldier. When he gets near enough for Mikky to see him clearly, she gasps at his heavily lined face and close-cropped white hair. The man is old—much older than most humans in the City or on the Reserve.
“Print a new polymer humerus for the break,” he orders.
It’s clear by his staff’s reaction that they are in awe of him. And possibly afraid of him.
Even chained up and helpless, MikkyBo is not scared. “What you’re doing here,” she says, “tinkering… with Hu-Bot parts—this is sacrilege.”
The old man merely regards her carefully while a dark-skinned man wearing glasses approaches her with a mask. They’re going to knock her out.
Her words come faster. “The creation of life is a complicated science. We are far more intelligent than you could ever dream of being. Repairing me is not a task for some amateur lab technician in the market for a Hu-Bot slave!”
The old man smirks now, and, though his hair is thinning and some of his teeth are missing, his eyes are as bright and intense as her own. “I’m so happy to hear you say that, my dear. I couldn’t possibly agree more.” He reaches out and touches her cheek, and she flinches. “I’m going to take excellent care of you,” he whispers.
Then the mask comes do
wn, covering her nose and mouth.
“Lights out,” she hears him whisper. And that’s exactly what happens.
CHAPTER 54
MY EYES ARE open, but I must still be dreaming. Because lying next to me is a girl—a beautiful, angel-faced girl with long legs and thick, dark hair that half obscures her face. No one on the Reserve ever looked so clean, so perfect. No one in the City ever did, either, for that matter. So where the hell am I? And who the hell is this chick?
Her eyes are closed, and she’s smiling this coy little smile.
I try to roll over so I can see her better, and that’s when I realize my arms and legs are tied to the bed. “Hey!” I yell. “What’s happening?”
The girl’s eyes flip open, the smile disappears, and she starts screaming.
“Whoa, calm down—” I start to protest, but then I’m overtaken by a coughing fit. As each excruciating hack contracts in my gut, the things around me start to come into focus. I see the gurneys, the monitors, and the smooth scar around the girl’s—no, the Hu-Bot’s—throat, and whoa, am I awake now!
“Help! Someone!” the Hu-Bot yells as I start to choke on my own blood.
Three lab rats in blue scrubs rush in, but instead of checking to make sure I’m not dying, they tighten my restraints! Then they proceed to coo reassuringly over the Hu-Bot.
MikkyBo.
“What do you know, they put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” I quip, once the coughing stops.
A mean-looking tank of a woman in khaki narrows her slightly crossed, slightly pink eyes at me. “He said you’d be trouble.” She barks at the guy pulling on my arm straps, “Tighter!”
“I didn’t do anything!” I protest. “I just woke up. Don’t ask me why the skin job freaked.”