CHAPTER 1
“This won’t hurt. It just looks like it does.” The technician held my metal arm out to one side and flicked on the laser.
Two weeks after removing all unauthorized data from my artificial intelligence, CyberCorp—otherwise known as my parents—had granted me the skin I wanted. Then it took only twelve minutes to custom cut a skin sheet and fit fingernails to the fingers. It felt like a lifetime.
“Almost done,” the tech said.
I willed my feet to stop their nervous taps beneath my chair.
Mounted from the ceiling, the laser emitted a red light as the tech guided it down my arm. Its heat warmed my face. When he reached my fingertips, the bright light went off, immediately cooling the room and my nerves.
The tech released me. “Well?” He shifted in his seat before setting his hands down in his lap. “Are you happy?”
When I flexed both hands, they bent in unison. Matching light-brown fingers, wrists, elbows. The new one was perfect—except for being artificially intelligent. “It’s good.”
“I followed all your parents’ instructions exactly.” He reached for the laser. “But we can redo it if you want.”
“It’s great. Thank you.”
His shoulders relaxed. “You’re good to go unless there’s anything else I can do for you.”
I hopped to my feet. The skin moved with me as if it had always been there.
That meant I could get out of here. I could run to the elevator and out the front doors while waving both middle fingers in farewell to CyberCorp Tower.
But then I’d be all over the news again, and I’d never hear the end of it from my mother. So instead, I thanked him again and left at a reasonable pace.
“Lena, how are you?”
I jumped when the voice assaulted me from the side as soon as I stepped into the hallway.
Dr. Athena Fisher fell into step on my left. Her blond hair was pulled into a bun with a pen sticking out of it, and her long legs moved more slowly than mine to match my pace. “Everything go okay?”
“I have skin.” My tone was flat. I stepped onto the moving walkway that stretched down the middle of the hallway.
“And that’s what you wanted.”
What I wanted was my original arm back, but this would do—as long as I could keep people from hacking into it to make me sleepwalk and strangle my friends. “Yes,” was all I said though. “That’s what I wanted.”
“Good.” She beamed. “You have a second chance—a new start that not a lot of people with injuries like yours would get.” She was keeping up fine even off the automated walkway. Still, she stepped onto it next to me and squeezed in close so we fit side by side. “And you and I have a second chance to become friends.”
Once upon a time, the doctor wanted nothing to do with me, preferring to spend her time perfecting the Model One androids. But life-threatening situations tended to bond people.
As we reached the set of three elevators and stepped off the walkway, I waved my left wrist in front of a small black plate on the wall. A soft beep confirmed the scanner read my ID chip.
“You had them install your chip.” It was a statement with a question behind it.
I turned to meet her eyes. “I need to know where I am at all times.” It would be a ridiculous thing to say for most people. But for a deadly sleepwalker, it made perfect sense.
With the chip embedded in my arm, I could use a chip-tracking application to make sure I stayed in bed when I was supposed to. The alternative of not knowing where I was—that was worse.
Technology wasn’t the only devil. Humanity was full of monsters too.
Dr. Fisher nodded, but her gaze went over my head. I could tell she’d gone to the dark place. I went there myself when I thought about what happened. It was better not to think about it, but for better or worse, thoughts were one thing CyberCorp had not yet developed a machine to control.
“I needed it to—” I started.
A too-familiar sound of metal clomping against tile issued behind me, and I whirled, every muscle in my body winding up to spring. A Model One had just stepped into the hall. Its humanoid shape was designed to look like us, but its metal form reflected the white lights shining down from the ceiling. Red eyes stared straight ahead.
An automatic door opened on the opposite side of the hallway, and the android’s metal feet clanged as it stepped through. The door hissed shut behind it.
“You were saying?” Dr. Fisher asked.
“It just made sense.” I kept my focus down the hall, just in case that thing came back out. The elevator door next to us closed, and I hadn’t even noticed it had opened. I waved my wrist to call another one.
“I wanted to apologize for how I treated you and thank you for saving me after that android went crazy when . . .” Broad-shouldered and six feet tall in flat shoes, Dr. Fisher tended to intimidate on first meetings. But now, uncertainty pinched her features. She licked her lips as she reached for more words.
“It’s nothing. We’re good.” The elevator opened again, and I got in. One step closer to leaving CyberCorp Tower.
After a pause, Dr. Fisher stepped inside too. “It wasn’t your fault that you needed help, and Ron . . . you saved me and—”
“I have a lot to account for.” To the elevator, I added, “Lobby.” Then I raised my hands, palms out. “Whether I meant to or not, these hands killed three people. One life is a start, but that’s all it is.”
“Speaking as someone whose life you saved, I think it’s plenty.” She placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Give yourself a break. No good can come from dwelling on past actions that you had no control over.”
The elevator doors slid open, and I slipped out from under her grasp and into the lobby. Dr. Fisher’s footsteps followed me, slower than mine but eating up more space with each step.
In the afternoon sun that streamed through a wall of windows, the white-and-silver tile floor of the lobby shone as if it had just been cleaned. I hurried across the tiles to the single elevator that would take me down to the VIP parking garage.
Around me, people stood in small clusters around invisible displays that I couldn’t see. The displays were virtual, presenting CyberCorp’s most exciting new tech as virtual objects on top of the real world.
I didn’t have the networked contact lenses needed to see them. Technically, the chip in my head was capable of displaying virtual objects to me, but I’d made them turn that feature off.
Movement in the corner of my vision made me turn my head, and my gaze locked on a dark-skinned man with closely cropped hair and a straight back. Detective Johnson.
I stopped.
Dr. Fisher stepped on my heel.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” She followed that with a string of profuse apologies that I blocked out.
The detective stood next to another man and a small kid, facing what I assumed was a virtual display. But while the dad and kid were smiling and waving their arms to interact with whatever they were seeing, the detective watched me.
His arms stayed folded over his chest. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth pressed into a tight line. He wasn’t wearing the chest holster he’d worn the last time I saw him, but the bulk near his hip told me he was still carrying a gun.
“You know him?” Dr. Fisher asked.
“Detective Johnson. He’s one of the detectives who tried to arrest me.” I cringed. “I slammed him pretty hard in the shin.”
“Your arm was reacting in a moment of stress, thanks in part to all the data Ron loaded onto you.” She paused. “He looks pissed. Maybe I should talk to him.”
Before I could answer, she was striding in that direction, and the detective’s attention switched from me to the large blonde woman. He dropped his arms to his sides and stood up straighter, although he wasn’t much taller than she was.
I hurried for the garage elevator. When I peeked over my shoulder, Dr. Fisher was gesturing wildly while Johnson watched me.
But he didn’t make a move to follow. Crisis averted.
For now.
CHAPTER 2
In the VIP garage under CyberCorp Tower, Olivia and Claire waited on opposite sides of my car. Modern vehicles tended to look like bullets with sleek, uninterrupted curves. Mine was not one of those.
As far as I was concerned, though, my cherry-red sedan found its beauty in its lack of high-tech features. No automated doors that slid upward. No rotating front seats. And most importantly, no auto-drive.
Liv stood on the driver’s side with her face tilted upward and away from Claire. She’d given up the cropped blue hairstyle, and today, she had it plaited into two long cornrows that extended halfway down her back.
Claire stood on the other side of the vehicle, both hands on top of it, shooting a glare so sharp it threatened to slice Liv in two. She towered several inches above the other girl, and her short dark hair showed off cheekbones so defined they could cut.
“You waited?” I said. “I told you I’d call when I got done.”
“We were leaving—” Liv started, her voice loud and abrupt.
“She wouldn’t stop arguing with me.” Claire jabbed a finger in Liv’s direction.
My attention jumped back and forth between them. “You couldn’t drive and argue?”
“You don’t have auto-drive,” Claire said. “That makes it harder.”
“To drive and argue?”
“I told her to drive,” Claire continued.
Liv spun on her. “You don’t tell me what to do!”
“I see.” I waved my left hand at the back door of the car, and the locks clicked on all four doors. “You’ve been out here arguing for twenty minutes.” I pulled it open and gestured for Liv to get inside. Then I opened the driver’s side and dropped into my seat before beckoning Claire inside as well.
Claire opened the passenger door and ducked in beside me.
“I’m not a chauffeur,” Liv said, still standing outside behind my seat.
I tapped the steering wheel. Sensing my ID chip, the lights on the dashboard lit as the car started in complete silence. More modern electric vehicles had an artificial hum added by the manufacturers to warn pedestrians. But since my model was introduced early in the era of electrics, its engine ran in silence.
“Are we going or what?” I shouted.
Liv finally got in.
I backed out of the parking space and directed the car to the exit. At the edge of the garage, a metal gate rolled to the side as we approached, and I drove into the Thursday afternoon sun.
After a minute of silence, Claire shifted to face me. “Which boy do you like?”
“Excuse me?” I braked at a red light. My gaze flicked from the road to Claire and then to Liv in the rearview mirror. Liv leaned forward in her seat. I returned my attention to the road.
“Jackson has basically been your boyfriend since you were six,” Claire said.
“That’s . . . not true. I’ve just known him that long.”
“I said basically.”
“How often is someone’s first love also their true love, though?” Liv said, nodding with each word, as though what she was saying should be obvious.
“Not often?”
“Like never.”
“My parents have been a couple since they were fifteen,” Claire said. “They always talk about loyalty being what kept them together. You have to give people second chances when they’ve had your back forever.”
“You don’t just keep people around because they’ve been around,” Liv said. “People change and grow apart. You have to know who you can trust right now, not when you were six.”
“What is this about?” I asked.
“Jackson!” Claire said.
At the same time, Liv shouted, “Hunter!”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can’t leave him on the hook like this,” Liv said. “He’s a great guy. He was your shoulder to cry on right after the accident.”
“If we’re getting technical, I don’t think I ever cried on his—”
“He listened to all your rants about Jackson and the sleep-walking.”
“Well, he—”
“But you were wrong about Jackson never listening to you and about him expecting you to run CyberCorp,” Claire cut in.
“Can y’all just stop?” I shouted.
In front of us, the traffic light turned green, and I rotated the wheel toward my house. Both girls continued to stare at me, Claire from beside me and Liv in the rearview mirror.
“It’s only been a couple months since I lost an entire arm and had it replaced with a robot. And—”
“It looks great, by the way,” Claire said, but she clamped her mouth shut when I glared at her.
“Someone hacked into my brain and forced me to kill people—and I may or may not have contributed to that by hating CyberCorp and the Model Ones to begin with.”
“You didn’t,” they said in unison.
“I was an easy target, though, because of how I felt. Either way, believe it or not, deciding which boy I like better is not at the top of my priority list. Mostly, I’m just trying to stay upright.”
Claire turned toward the front of the vehicle and mumbled something I couldn’t hear. Liv muffled a giggle and then slapped her on the shoulder.
“Glad y’all are getting along at my expense.”
I turned the car into a posh area of town where shops lined both sides of the street. As per architectural regulation in this neighborhood, the building facades sported white-toned stone that matched sidewalks so bright they might have just been poured. Flowering trees marked the walkways on the street side.
“Hold on.” Claire tapped the back of her ear to activate her micro-comm, a small device that sat right behind it. “Yeah?” Her gaze went blank as she listened to someone on the other end of the connection. “I really can’t right now.” She stole a quick glance at me. “Because I don’t want to.”
“Is everything okay?” I whispered.
Claire shifted away from me. “Fine. Give me ten minutes.” She tapped her ear again.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I’m sorry. I still want to hang out, but I have to do something for my parents first. Drop me home?”
“You can’t,” Liv said. “We have the . . . thing.”
“What thing?” I asked. When no one answered, I asked, “Are you coming by when you’re done?”
“Definitely.” She turned in her seat to look at Liv. “I’ll be there.”
“What’s going on?” My friends were the least subtle people on the planet.
“Lena’s car,” Claire said, her tone overly cheerful, “navigate to Claire’s house.”
“Navigating,” came the reply through the speakers in a low feminine voice. A map appeared on the screen of the dashboard to redirect me.
“I know where you live.” I pointed at the steering wheel with one hand. “And I’m driving manually. The car doesn’t need to know the way.”
“Right.” She raised her voice. “Lena’s car, end navigation.” She lowered it again. “I don’t know why you don’t just use auto-drive.”
“How long will you be?” I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I had been looking forward to a return to ordinary life. Or at least an imitation of it. Three friends hanging out after school seemed like a perfect start.
“Less than an hour—probably only half that. I promise.”
I took the next right and circled back the way we came. Five minutes later, we pulled into a tree-lined neighborhood with sidewalks that curved lazily up both sides of the street. Claire’s neighborhood fancied itself high-end traditional. Each house had its own character—one light yellow, the next blue, then gray, then pale green. But manicured trees and bushes fronted each one, not a single leaf out of place.
I eased the car to a stop at the end of Claire’s driveway.
“I’ll see you at your place. I won’t be long.” She stepped out, slammed my door, and ran to her front porch.
Liv opened her door as well and switched to the passenger side.
As we took off back the way we came, Liv crossed her arms over her chest. “She just bailed on us.”
“You don’t even like her.”
“I don’t dislike her. But that’s not the point. We had a plan. You don’t bail on plans.”
I fixed my face into a false smile because, as disappointed as I was, it was important that Claire and Liv be friends. My dance card wasn’t exactly overflowing these days, thanks to three murders and having broken up with Jackson. In their own ways, these two had stuck with me, and they were going to love each other if it killed all of us.
“She’ll be right back,” I said, my tone so bright that Liv narrowed her eyes at me.
“What do you think that was all about?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. Girlfriend stuff maybe. I haven’t seen Brianna lately. I hope they’re okay.”
Liv smirked. “Oh, she has problems in her relationship, so she has to meddle in yours.”
I stared at her until she took my point.
“I’m not meddling. You’re already with Hunter. I’m not the one trying to blow up your thing to relive ancient relationship history.”
“I am not with Hunter.”
“So Jacks—”
“I’m not with anyone. I lost my arm, had someone control me in my sleep, and then killed three people. I’m . . . on hiatus.” I slowed the car as we approached our next turn.
“Does Hunter know that?”
I jerked the wheel too far. Liv stared at me as I straightened up and set my car in the right traffic lane. “I’ll tell him next time we talk.”
Outside, the city rolled past my window. We’d gone to CyberCorp right after school, but now, rush hour was picking up. Cars packed the road on both sides, and the occasional drone whizzed overhead carrying packages and messages across the city.
Since it was February and the days were short, the sun crept below the horizon, streaking the sky in yellows and oranges. Digital billboards flashed to life on the sides of buildings and mounted on stands to tower high above.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Liv said.
“I know.” We drove past a building whose side sported a billboard showing me, a light-skinned biracial black girl with untameable dark curls, wearing a pair of red platform heels. The digital version of me skipped across the building in a way that I definitely would not if I wore anything that high. The real me would have face-planted on step two.
“Lena?”
I recited the mantra I’d been telling myself—and everyone else had been telling me—for the past two weeks. “I know it wasn’t my fault.”
It sounded more robotic than my arm. My fault or not, Debbie was still dead. And Kevin. And Harmony. Debbie’s face remained a grotesque image seared in my memory.
Maybe I hadn’t chosen to kill them, but I’d allowed it to happen. I’d refused to let my car take me home on auto-drive the night of my accident. I was fiddling with the controls instead of watching the road, and it cost me my arm. After the arm, I didn’t work hard enough to discover the source of my sleepwalking and to stay awake when I suspected myself.
Ron programmed my AI to kill, but I opened all the doors and windows and invited him in.
This was on me.
“Lena?”
Somehow, I’d stopped at a light, and it was now green. I eased my foot onto the accelerator and put the car back in motion.
We rode in comfortable silence for half the remaining ride home before I put her on the spot. “What’s the deal with Ron?”
Liv’s body went rigid.
“You don’t have to talk about it.” I held my breath because, yes, she did have to talk about.
She stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her left knee started a steady bounce. “He made bail.”
“What!” My foot fell too hard on the accelerator, and I had to will myself to ease off so I wouldn’t ram the car in front of us.
Liv kept her attention on the road, even though I was the one driving. Her knee picked up speed like she was winding up for takeoff.
I softened my tone. “Who paid it? He’s not exactly rolling in money.”
“We always suspected he had a backer, right? Someone else provided the equipment he used. Outside of CyberCorp, he didn’t have access to a machine powerful enough to hack the EyeNet to send you the data that made you do what you did. Inside CyberCorp, it would have been too risky since everything is logged.”
“Everything except my arm.” For privacy and because my arm wasn’t exactly part of their standard manufacturing chain, my parents and doctors had stored its log only on the chip embedded at the base of my skull. Lucky for Ron, though, he was on my team and had access to everything he needed. “He contacted you?”
“Do we have to talk about this?” Liv’s voice was high-pitched with more than a hint of whine. But one glance at my face—which was as neutral as I could make it—and she continued in a mutter. “He called me.”
“He’s allowed a phone?”
“He said he dug up an old one. Just a standard smartphone. He can’t have anything high-tech. Definitely no computers. But his counsel insisted he be allowed a low-tech phone to facilitate his defense.”
“His defense!” Again, I had to calm myself with long breaths. “What defense could he possibly have?” I kept my tone low even though my nerves were stretched so thin and tight they’d snap at any minute.
She shrugged.
My hand-screen buzzed from the inside of my jacket. I stopped at a light and extracted it to check the new notification. It said Philip Pollock was streaming live audio.
Liv peeked at my hand and wrinkled her nose. “You’re still listening to him? I thought you were over that.”
“If you mean I no longer think tech is the source of all our problems—yes. But in the wrong hands . . . people died, and I still think Pollock was the money behind Ron.”
“Have they found him?”
“He’s long gone—more proof that he’s guilty. I keep hoping he’ll give something about his location away when he broadcasts. The police can’t get a warrant to track his ID chip because there’s no real evidence. It’s just speculation.”
Since my hand-screen was already paired with my vehicle, Pollock’s voice burst through the car speakers as I streamed the audio.
“They are so threatened by me—by our movement against their machines—that they have conspired to bring me down. Make no mistake: they don’t want you to hear the truth.”
“Can you tell where he is?” I leaned toward the speakers, trying to pick out any distinctive background noise. There was a slight static, but that was normal in his broadcasts.
The audio volume dipped as my car detected conversation.
“I can’t—” Liv started.
“Shh. I need to hear this.”
The audio rose again. “They prefer you smiling and nodding and integrating each new piece of technology into your lives so they can know you better, track you better. Your lives are not your own. They belong to CyberCorp . . .”
Even when I closed my eyes and strained my ears, nothing in the background noise gave any hints about where he might be. This was hopeless.
“You’re not still into him, right?” I asked Liv. “Ron, I mean.” The audio volume dipped again, but Pollock continued his rant.
Liv didn’t answer.
“Please tell me you’re not.”
“I’m not.” Her mouth stayed open as if there were more to say.
I held my breath and waited for her to speak on her own terms.
“I feel sorry for him.” Her words tumbled out into the open in a rush now. “All of this was because of what CyberCorp did to his family. His father just died. He already lost his mother. You and I have these perfect families with two parents and siblings, and everyone loves each other.”
I couldn’t argue with that. My parents betrayed me by replacing my arm, but they did it because they thought it was their best option at the time. That was more than a lot of people had. “A rough life is not an excuse for murder.”
She chewed her lower lip. “I know that.”
After a few seconds without talking, the audio volume increased automatically again, and by now Pollock was on a roll.
“You may think these machines are good for humanity. They’re convenient. They make life easier. Perhaps. But with each new product launch, they grip more tightly onto your lives. With each new product, you lose touch with other people. You make a phone call instead of visiting. Then you text instead of calling . . . Soon, you will just have a Model One stand in for the people you love. Eventually, there will be no point in loving at all. Your entire life will be automated without human contact.”
His voice struck a discordant note right in my chest, sending my entire body vibrating off-key. I used to hang on this man’s every word. He believed his teachings, and so had I. I still did in a lot of ways. But his existence was too convenient—too aligned with everything that happened.
He was the perfect backer for Ron. Moneyed. Passionate. Driven.
We couldn’t pin any of it on him. There were no contact records between him and Ron, and of course he had an alibi for every murder. Why wouldn’t he, since I’d been the unwitting assassin?
As Pollock’s voice rose in passion and volume, my fists clenched, and my teeth ground together.
“Lena?” Liv was staring at me, her face close to mine, her brows pinched together.
“Sorry, what?”
She tipped her head toward the windshield, and somehow, I’d managed to get us to my house. One hand still gripped the steering wheel, but I’d stopped the car at the end of the long driveway.
“Oh.”
She jabbed a finger down at my left hand, which held my hand-screen. The point right under my thumb was bent, and I was clutching it like it was a lifeline.
“Crap.” I pulled the two halves of the hand-screen apart, and the center screen snapped together into a larger display like it was designed to. Good, not broken. I closed it and set it on top of my dashboard.
Pollock’s voice stopped abruptly, but soft static continued to come through the speakers.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, before the static stopped.
Silence filled the car where Pollock’s voice had been, and my blood pressure dived back to a semi-normal level.
Liv tapped my shoulder. “You’re spacing out a lot these days.”
“I’m fine.”
Mine was the only home sitting at the end of this cul-de-sac, since my parents bought up two lots on each side of us to ensure privacy and security. A sidewalk split off toward the top of the driveway and led up to a pair of doors that extended at least two people high. The solid-wood entry was stained deep red, contrasting with the white facade and wrought-iron accents.
Today, cars blocked the garage where I usually parked. They filled the driveway from the top of the small slope on which my house stood, all the way down to the street. I’d parked just behind an oversized black sport utility vehicle that was shaped like most other cars here but with one large back door in addition to the usual two side ones.
“I didn’t realize my mom had an event tonight,” I told Liv. “We can go to your place instead.”
“This is good.” Liv popped her door open and stepped out before I could put the car into reverse.
She beckoned for me to join her, so I opened my door and stepped onto the driveway.
She came around the car and gave me a quick hug. “Can we try to enjoy ourselves?” Then she spun and walked to the front door, with me hurrying behind her.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s a party. Try to relax.”
I hadn’t relaxed in months, and I doubted I would start now. Still, I followed Liv up the driveway and into the house for whatever torture my mother had planned.
CHAPTER 3
A loud bang sounded as I stepped into the two-story foyer. I grabbed the back of Liv’s shirt and flung her behind me.
My arms were up in front of me, hands balled into fists, before I registered the crowd of people standing in the large foyer and even spilling into the sitting room beyond.
“Surprise!” Balloons released from hands. A plastic-and-helium wave of purple, metallic white, and gold floated upward to slide across the wrought-iron chandelier and dance on the thirty-foot ceiling above.
The decorator would have a hell of a time fetching those down later.
In the middle of it all, my mother stood in a pair of black pencil-leg pants that stopped at the ankle to frame bright-pink pumps with pointed toes. Her silky mauve blouse contrasted against her dark skin, adding a touch of softness to the businesslike look. Today, she’d worked product into her hair, and it poofed around her head in tight, kinky curls.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s a party, honey.” My mother hurried toward me, her brow tight with concern. Before I could tell her I was fine and just startled, she was past me and pulling Liv to her feet. “Lena, you have to be more careful.”
“I’m so sorry.” I grabbed Liv’s other arm and helped to haul her up. “I still don’t know my own strength.”
My mother’s attention flitted across our crowd of guests. There were about thirty of them, wearing a mix of expectant looks and concerned frowns. Through a too-tight smile, she whispered, “Do we need to reevaluate your strength variables?”
“I’m fine,” I told her, my face holding a smile so carefully manufactured that I hoped it matched hers. Louder, I added to everyone. “What’s going on? I mean, this is amazing but . . . What is it?”
“It’s a skin party,” a familiar voice called. “A celebration of skin.” At the sound of his voice, delicious tingles inched up my spine and settled at the base of my neck until I shook them away. I scanned the crowd until I found him. Hunter.
Today, a plain black shirt hugged his lean muscle—the physical therapy was treating him well. His hair fell a touch too long across his forehead, and by now, I had to assume he cut it that way on purpose. It worked. The dark color brought out the light-green flecks in his mostly brown eyes.
My breath caught, and I physically worked to get it moving again. “Hey. I didn’t know you’d be here.”
What a stupid thing to say about a surprise party. When had I turned into a rambling idiot, and where was my off switch?
In my peripheral vision, my mother wrapped an arm around Liv’s shoulders. “It’s good to see you. Your shirt is torn, dear.”
“It’s—what?” Liv looked down at her collar, and it was indeed split down the middle, just low enough to show cleavage. “Aw.” She fingered the tear. “I liked this one.”
“Oh no!” I said, my voice way more dramatic than intended. “Let’s get you something else to wear.” I grasped her wrist and tried to drag her in the direction of our curved staircase—anything to get away from this “party.”
I’d been here two minutes, and so far, I’d thrown my friend to the ground and embarrassed myself in front of a cute boy I was already conflicted about.
Our housekeeper and nanny, Marcy, appeared out of nowhere and pulled Liv from my grip before embracing her in a tight hug. Today, Marcy’s white-blond hair was pulled back into a dignified French twist held in place with a matching white plastic comb. Her sixty-year-old face was just beginning to show age lines around the mouth and eyes, where it scrunched most when she smiled.
Liv’s expression brightened by a hundred watts. “Ms. Marcy!” Although she and I first became friends back in middle school, we went on a long hiatus for the past few years. She hadn’t seen Marcy since freshman year. Liv had two amazing dads, but Marcy was the one she’d gone to about things like bras and first periods.
“I missed you too, dear. Let’s go upstairs and find something of Lena’s for you to wear.” To me, she added in a whisper, “It’s just a party. This, too, shall pass.”
She missed the pleading in my eyes that begged for her to take me with her. I really needed to work on my telepathy.
Liv and Marcy chatted excitedly with animated faces as they walked side by side up the stairs—leaving me stranded in this sea of staring people.
My mother’s smile was impenetrable—a veritable weapon of war. “Let’s all give Lena a moment to recover,” she called in a voice both loud and sweet. Two sharp claps had everyone following her out of the foyer and into the space past the staircase.
We called it a sitting room, but it was more like a miniature ballroom. The ivory tile of the floor gleamed as if freshly waxed. Hanging from the high-domed ceiling, the large wrought-iron chandelier was turned on today. Each of its three overlapping circles gave off a ring of white light. Combined with the rays streaming in from a circular skylight above, it created a halo around the room.
For the festivities, our furniture had been replaced with high-top cocktail tables covered in white cloths with just enough metallic threads to catch the light. A long table spanned the far wall, and at one end, plates entirely too small for food sat next to silver forks.
A server appeared out of nowhere and offered me a tray of drinks in champagne flutes. He pointed at the three clustered on one side. “Sparkling cider, Miss Hayes.”
I started to reach for a glass on the other side. He chuckled and ducked away before I could grasp a flute of actual champagne.
When everyone else was safely out of earshot, my mother turned back toward me. Her tone softened. “How did it go?”
“It’s fine.” I held my left arm behind me, angled away from her. We would not be making any more changes to it except on my say-so.
She searched my face. “Please don’t keep things from me, Lena. I thought I’d proven to you that, despite my many imperfections, all I want is for you to be alive and well.”
“And happy?”
“That was implied. Speaking of which . . .” She grasped my wrist before I could get away. “Your father and I think it’s time we gave you more responsibility. Someday, we hope you’ll be a partner at CyberCorp, so it’s important that we start now with garnering one another’s trust.”
I narrowed my eyes.
She tipped back her head and laughed. When she stopped, the edges of her mouth still danced upward. “Don’t be so suspicious. Your father and I understand that we had some responsibility in what happened, and we want you to feel you can talk to us without judgment. In return, we will trust you to make good decisions and not to hide things or lie to us.”
“And more responsibility means what?”
“For starters, we’ll be away for the long holiday weekend, starting tomorrow. It’s Presidents’ Day, and officially, the company will be closed. Marcy will be here, but we expect you’ll take care of your sister as much as needed.”
“I’m always here for Allie. That’s not new.”
She licked her lips. “Also, moving forward, we will never track your ID chip without permission.”
“Okay . . .” I waited for more because a promise not to violate my privacy didn’t amount to much either.
“We will never control or track your car or other devices that are yours.”
“Thank you.”
“And you’ll have nearly the same access to CyberCorp Tower as your father and I do. After all, you will be a partial owner come your twenty-fifth birthday, so you might as well get used to the responsibilities that come with that.”
“Seriously?” I took a step backward. “You mean I don’t have to check in at reception anymore?”
“You do not.”
“I can go up to see the Model Ones on the seventieth floor whenever I want?”
“I’m not sure why you’d want to, but yes, if you like.”
“I can see the new inventions on the draft floors?”
“Of course.”
“And . . .” I searched my mind for what else I might want to do. “I can eat lunch in your office with my feet on the desk?”
Her lips curled. “Please do not.”
“Can I streak through the hallways?”
Her eyes widened.
“How about just the lobby?”
She dropped her head and covered her face with one hand.
“I’ll take that as a maybe.”
The kitchen door opened to my right, and a line of servers stepped through and headed to the long table on the far wall. Each carried a metal tray of food. One by one, they set their trays down and spun on their heels like soldiers before marching back to the kitchen.
“When did you do this?” I asked my mother.
I’d been in school all day and gone to CyberCorp Tower to get my skin right afterward. My parents left the house before I did in the mornings and returned much later. They’d been working even longer hours lately due to the Model One launch.
She kissed me on the cheek. “I will always find time for my babies.” She started to turn away but stopped mid-movement. “I almost forgot. I need to introduce you to someone.”
Hunter caught my attention from across the room. Now, he sat in a window seat in the corner, sipping from a glass of soda. He kept glancing toward the front door, and I could empathize a hundred percent with the desire to escape one of my mother’s parties.
“Can you give me three minutes, and then we can do the whole social thing?”
My mom nodded and then whirled away, a beaming smile on her face as she went to greet her guests.
I recognized most people here as acquaintances from school and—I was guessing—their parents. My guidance counselor sipped a glass of champagne while intensely nodding while a parent spoke.
Upward of twenty people filled our sitting room right now, and I didn’t have nearly that many real friends. My mother’s events were like that—it wouldn’t be a party without network opportunities.
I took a step in Hunter’s direction and realized he was the only one of my close friends here. Claire had said she would catch up. Liv was upstairs. Melody wasn’t talking to me at the moment—not that I blamed her. And Jackson . . .
I fished my hand-screen from my jacket pocket and placed a call. The line rang once, twice, three times. I was just about to end the call when it connected.
“Hey.” Jackson’s voice was low and quick. “What’s up?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“My mom’s having this party.” What was my point? “And you’re not here.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t even know why I’d called him. To ask him to come? To ask him why he hadn’t? My mom must have invited him—the fact that we broke up would never stop her from bowing to social niceties, and Jackson’s family’s old money meant he got invitations everywhere.
“I didn’t think you’d want me there. Do you?”
“I . . .” My breath was short, and so was my capacity for words apparently. “I just thought you would be.”
“Give me ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Can’t wait to see you.” The call disconnected, leaving my mouth hanging agape on a dead line.
As I slipped my hand-screen back in my pocket, my mother caught my eye and beckoned with one finger. Next to her stood a girl about my age with olive skin and dark hair that fell to her shoulder blades in luxurious waves.
“This is Nina Ortiz.”
Nina stuck out a hand with long fingers that looked like they belonged playing piano. The move was so natural that it made it seem totally normal for teenagers to shake hands. So I did.
“Nina’s family moved here five months ago. Hanover didn’t have space for her in your class at the time, but we’ve made room. She’ll start next week.”
“There are three months left in the school year.”
“And then Nina will be a Hanover graduate, with all the privileges that come with that diploma.”
Nina flashed me a smile of mauve lips around perfectly aligned white teeth. Nina might be a lovely person, but introducing her to everyone in the room was not at the top of my want-to-do list right now.
I faced my mom fully. “Can we not do this right now?”
Her lips pressed together, and I could see her brain cogs turning, trying to decide whether to spoil the mood. She smiled, but her eyes were dead. “Why don’t you and Nina”—she placed a hand on the girl’s back and pushed her toward me—“go greet your guests.”
Obediently, I fixed my best business smile on my face and led Nina away.
I steered her in the direction opposite Hunter, offering him a wave and a shrug as I jerked my head toward the new girl. I’d much rather be talking to him, but if I led Nina over there, my mother would come right over and drag us away.
Hunter and I needed to have a real conversation anyway, not one in a room full of people I half knew.
I needed to tell him that everything had changed now—that I wasn’t the girl who was angry about the new arm but still in possession a whole soul. Now, I was the broken girl, the one who woke up over corpses.
That was not what he signed on for.
Luckily, Nina was everything I wasn’t, and she carried the conversation with a tall boy and his mother whose names I couldn’t recall. I’d seen him at sporting events, so likely, the boy went to a high school in the same athletic league as mine.
With Nina occupied and my mother busying herself with straightening food trays into perfect alignment, I escaped to Hunter’s corner of the room. He looked up from his soda when I approached, and his face cracked into that perfectly imperfect smile with one side higher than the other.
“Hey.” His voice was low and gruff, like liquid chocolate.
“Hey.”
He pulled me into a warm hug that smelled like springtime soap. For a split second, I remembered what it felt like to have little problems—like an English essay that required an all-nighter. Little problems like my parents tracking my location. Little problems like CyberCorp hospital and physical therapy. And Hunter—there to make it all better.
Unfortunately, my little problems had grown legs and arms and sharp teeth.
The sort that made you wonder if you were the person you thought you were. The sort that changed you. The sort that broke you.
I stepped back from his embrace and straightened up.
“I called you this morning. I wanted to wish you luck.” He gestured toward the room. “And warn you.”
I laughed and held out my metal arm, now fully encased in skin the same light brown as the rest of me. “Mission accomplished.” I gestured toward the room. “And I wouldn’t have been able to escape anyway.”
He laughed. “Your mom is a force of nature. How did she even get my number?”
I pointed at his knee, which CyberCorp had rebuilt. “She’s got your records.” My smile fell away after a few seconds, leaving silence in the space between us.
“So . . .” His gaze flitted around and landed back on my face. “I was thinking—”
My jacket pocket vibrated, and I fished my hand-screen out, expecting to see Jackson’s name on the display. Instead, a message from Claire popped up. “Claire’s on her way.” I shifted my attention back to him. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“We should hang out.” He pointed back and forth between the two of us. “It’s been weeks since we’ve been alone, and I thought we could catch up.” His volume petered out toward the end, and I had to lean in to hear him.
“We should definitely talk. How about tomorrow after school?”
“I was thinking Sunday.”
Now that we were making plans, I needed to have this conversation sooner rather than later. I didn’t want to wait two extra days. “Friday would be better, please.”
“That’s great then. I’ll pick you up here at six.”
“Perfect.”
The doorbell rang, and I bolted for it, realizing almost to the door that I was nearly running and had left Hunter at the mercy of party pleasantries.
I yanked it open without checking the live video from our doorbell camera. On the other side stood Detective Johnson.
“Miss Hayes.” His voice was all southern drawl, and like earlier, he was dressed casually in a black T-shirt and blue jeans. The impression was different from how I remembered him from a couple weeks back—in a suit, his back straight, and accent minimized. This version of him came off as less controlled.
“What can I do for you, Detective Johnson?”
“It’s Jermaine or Mr. Johnson while I’m on suspension.” He stepped forward with a slight limp, favoring his right leg. I’d hit him in that leg the last time we met.
“What’s this?” Hunter appeared behind me.
“Suspension?” I sidestepped in front of Hunter to block him from the conversation. I didn’t need to drag him into another of my problems. He’d been my go-to for venting over the last few weeks, and he deserved a break.
“That’s right. When they took my badge, they said something about harassing the city’s most important benefactors.” He gestured toward me. “I assume that means your family. Having a party?” Despite the casual words, the question under the question hung in the air.
Three people dead, and I was having a party?
“My mother is.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized that didn’t look any better. After all, I may have been the weapon, but the real perpetrator was a CyberCorp employee who manipulated a CyberCorp product.
He moved closer.
I swung the door toward its frame, leaving it open only a foot. I might be just a high school kid, but my family had multiple teams of lawyers, some of whom had been around since I was in diapers. I knew my rights. “Can I help you?”
He craned his neck to see deeper into the house. “Seems an odd time to celebrate.”
I pushed the door to shut it.
It caught on his foot. He reached a hand through the remaining crack and held out a card with his name and contact information.
“Why would I want that?”
“You’re just a kid. Maybe you want an easy way out of something bigger happening inside your parents’ company. I take confessions.” He shook the card at me. “Take it and I’ll leave.”
I snatched it from his hand and immediately crumpled it into a ball.
He withdrew his foot, and I slammed the door closed.
CHAPTER 4
“You can’t just slam the door in cops’ faces.” Hunter stared at me, mouth agape.
“Not multiple cops,” I said. “Just the one.”
Liv bounded down the stairs in a scoop-necked fuchsia top that looked amazing next to her brown skin. She stopped and looked back and forth between the two of us. “What?”
“Lena just slammed the door on a cop.”
“Former cop.”
“Did he have a warrant?”
“Nope.” I gestured toward the closed door. “Hence, the door.”
“Works for me. What did he want?”
“He’s very upset that I hurt his leg and got him suspended. Now, he wants to make sure I’m brought to justice or something. It’s all very cliché.”
Hunter tried to reach around me for the door, but I blocked his path.
“Not a good idea.”
The humor drained from Liv’s face. “Did you tell your parents? Your mother was just here.” She spun and searched the space.
“No!” I shouted. Luckily, all the other guests were too far away and too involved in their conversations to notice. “I don’t want a hundred lawyers making this go away. I just . . . want it to go away on its own.”
“Honey, I don’t think it’s going to work that way.” Her voice had turned soothing, like how I’d imagine she’d sound if trying to reason with a crazy person.
“I prefer to live in complete denial.”
To Hunter, she said, “Can you give us a minute? Girl talk.”
He rolled his eyes and then retreated back to his corner. On the way, he grabbed a glass of soda from a server with a drink tray.
Liv started to speak again, but I cut her off before any words made it out.
“If Detective Johnson is still hanging around in a few days, I’ll tell someone. I promise. I want to handle my own problems from now on. CyberCorp hasn’t exactly fixed things for me lately.”
“Your parents are not CyberCorp.”
“That’s an arguable point.” I checked my hand-screen again. No new messages. It had been over fifteen minutes since Jackson said he was coming, and it wasn’t like him to be unreliable. Cocky and needy and hard-headed—yes. Unreliable—no. “Give me a second.” I held up a finger toward Liv and shifted slightly so I wouldn’t be staring right at her.
I placed the call, and it rang on the other end. Liv scooted closer to try to see my hand-screen, but I rotated to put her on my other side.
At the fourth ring, I disconnected with a growl.
Liv made a show of scanning the room. Hunter was here. Melody and I weren’t exactly tight these days. That left two people I could be calling. “Tell me you’re calling Claire.”
“She’s on her way.”
“So you weren’t calling her just now?”
“He’s not picking up. He should be here by now.”
“Lena!”
I peeked over Liv’s shoulder to find everyone engaged in mingling. Nina’s popularity had shot off like a nuclear-powered rocket, and she was now surrounded by two teenage boys I vaguely knew and an older woman, all of whom were leaning toward her as if she were magnetic.
Of everyone in the room, only Hunter stared this way. I waved at him.
Liv shot a glance that way and then back to me. “I wanted to talk to you about something else.” She lowered her voice. “Did he ask you out?”
“We broke up.”
“Hunter.” She tilted her head in that direction.
“We’re going out tomorrow, but it’s not a date. Just some alone time to talk.”
“Not Sunday?”
I tucked my hand-screen away and finally looked her in the eye, sighing loudly and purposely because I didn’t need to be drilled about my love life—or lack thereof. “Something wrong with Friday?”
“You do know that Sunday is Valentine’s Day?”
I cursed. “Are you kidding me? That’s why he asked to go out then?”
“And you suggested tomorrow.”
“And now he thinks I’m going out of my way to avoid spending Valentine’s with him.”
“Are you?”
“No . . . not specifically.”
“Then what specifically?”
“I’m not in a good place for him.”
“What place are you in?”
“I don’t even know, and that’s kind of the point. I can’t commit to anything until the world starts making sense again.” I inhaled a long breath. “So it’s probably a good thing we’re meeting up tomorrow instead. I don’t want to give him the wrong impression.”
“You don’t want to give him the wrong impression . . . and so you agreed to a date?”
“I agreed to some alone time to talk and hang out.”
“You think that’s what he meant?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Liv. Once again, I handled something badly. It’s kind of what I do n—” The weight that lived in my chest pressed down harder. I gasped and let out a short, shallow breath before sucking in another long one. The room wobbled.
Liv’s hand was on my shoulder. “Breathe.” She took in an audible breath and then released it, gesturing for me to do the same. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that would upset you so much. Breathe, Lena.”
The weight lessened, and after a few seconds, the room stood still.
“You don’t have to make any decisions right now. Your mental health comes first.”
My hand-screen vibrated against my waist. I ripped it from my jacket and answered without checking the display. “Hello? Jackson?”
No response.
“Hello?” I checked the display—a number my hand-screen didn’t recognize.
“Who is this?” The line disconnected, and I lowered the device.
“What was that?” Liv asked.
“Unknown number.” I shook my hand-screen at her. “Jackson said he would be here by now, and he’s not answering.”
“So what?”
“So I should go over there.” My chest was tight with nerves. Maybe because of Detective Johnson or maybe because Jackson had never not called me back in all my years of knowing him—even post-breakup. But an alarm in the back of my head was banging like a gong.
Liv shot a glance across the room at Hunter and then back at me.
I couldn’t leave him at the mercy of one of my mother’s events, so I beckoned him over. The two of them followed me out. I hurried toward my car. My feet itched for a full-on sprint while my head knew I might be overreacting.
Sometimes, people didn’t return calls. They got caught up in other things.
But unfortunately, my life wasn’t that lucky these days. I’d already almost lost Jackson in a car accident.
Just as I reached my car, Claire’s sleek black vehicle pulled up behind it. She stepped out and waited as we hurried toward her.
I spun my finger at her to indicate she needed to turn around. “We’re leaving.”
“Why? What did I miss?”
“The cops were here—for starters,” Liv said.
“The cops?”
“Just one cop.” I tossed Johnson’s card at her since I still had it in my hand. She caught it and uncrumpled it.
Liv shook her head. “You keep saying that like it makes things better.”
“Jermaine Johnson?” Claire asked, reading from the card. She turned it over to see the blank back. The card had no logos, nothing official about it. Just his name and contact information. “This doesn’t look very official.”
“He’s on suspension. I’ll explain later.” I yanked my car door open. “Right now, I’m worried about Jackson.”
“Is he okay?” Claire asked, already moving back toward the door of her own vehicle.
“I have a bad feeling. That’s all.”
“Is that where we’re going?” Hunter asked. He’d stopped behind me, and now he took two steps backward. “I’m out.”
Liv shot me a wide-eyed glare, but I ignored it. I didn’t have time to massage Hunter’s ego right now. I jabbed my finger at her and then at my car. “You coming?”
She glanced back and forth between Hunter and me. “Please get in the car,” she said to him as she climbed into the passenger seat.
He stared at her for a few seconds before reaching for the back door and getting in behind her.
Jackson’s house was less than a ten-minute drive away, and for once, I wished I had auto-drive. My hands trembled on the steering while. Twice, Liv had to shout at me to get me to stop at red lights before accidentally blowing through them.
Despite being so close by, Jackson’s neighborhood and mine were like different worlds. My parents were the new kind of rich, the contemporary kind that left their suit jackets open and opted not to wear ties. Jackson’s money was older.
Houses near mine featured large blocks of white stone with black accents in straight lines while Jackson’s was the picture of old money. The homes here took up acre-sized lots, and most sat back from the road with long driveways lined by landscaped trees or bushes.
There were no sidewalks, sending a clear message of exclusivity. This was not a place for visitors to take a stroll.
I wasn’t sure whether all of that made it more pretentious than mine or less.
Jackson’s house had a facade of whitewashed brick. Pendant lights hung from a steepled awning over the front door. A tall iron fence kept the world out, and on it perched a telltale white box that housed a chip scanner.
The scanner recognized me, and the gate swung open as my car approached, with Claire’s right behind me.
We bounced as the car hit the cobblestone driveway without slowing down. It forked in one direction toward the eight-car garage. We veered the other way toward the main entrance. The heavy oak door held an oversized metal door knocker that was entirely for show.
“Lena?” Liv’s nails dug into her leg as I kept up a steady speed.
I jammed my foot on the brake and stopped a few feet from the house. A second later, I was out and running for the door. Liv stayed close behind me. Like the gate, the tall oak door unlocked when it detected me, and I pushed it open.
“Jackson!” I shouted.
All the lights were off. In my house, the rooms brightened automatically when someone was present. But here, Mr. and Mrs. Watts liked to feel in control.
“Lights,” I said, and they came on overhead.
They illuminated the marble floor of the three-story foyer. Crystals of the chandelier overhead shone as the light hit them. Two levels of balconies rose overhead, one for the second floor and another for the third. Gold-tinted iron railings fronted each balcony.
“Jackson!” Liv shouted, her tone steadier than mine.
“His room is up there.” I pointed to the top balcony that marked the third floor and aimed my next shout in that direction. “Jacks!” A note of panic creeped into my voice, and it fueled the roil of energy in my gut.
Liv opened her mouth again. “Jacks—”
I shushed her and strained for any sounds. There was nothing except the faint hum of electricity.
A shout cut through the silence from above, followed by a thud. I ran for the stairs.
CHAPTER 5
I took the steps two at a time. At the landing between the second and third floors, I didn’t pause for a breath and bounded up the next flight. Liv stayed close on my heels. Her footsteps pounded after mine.
“Jackson!”
His room was the only one on the third floor, a large suite accessed by a door at the top of the stairs. The door now hung on a single hinge. Inside, steady grunts were followed by loud clanks that sounded like metal hitting something solid.
A silver android had Jackson pinned to the ground. Each time it punched, Jackson grunted and dodged his head to one side. Each fist whizzed past an ear and slammed into the hardwood floor.
Its red eyes glowed, emotionless, inhuman.
“Shit!” I lunged toward them and yanked the robot off him with my left hand.
It stumbled backward. While I had it off guard, I wrapped my arm around its neck and yanked it down to my height.
Jackson didn’t miss a beat. He jumped to his feet and slammed his fist into the thing’s gut. He wrenched out its battery cell, and the android slumped in my grasp.
I released it and let it slide to the floor. It landed with a clang and a clunk.
Its red eyes, now dark, stared up at us.
Jackson slumped to the ground beside it, his chest heaving and his breath thin. A purple bruise covered most of the left side of his face. His upper lip had split, revealing shining metal underneath.
“What just happened?” Liv asked. She stood outside the broken door, eyes wide as she glanced back and forth between the downed android and Jackson.
Hunter reached the landing behind her and surveyed the room.
“The Model Ones,” I said, enunciating each word, “are dangerous.”
“It’s hard to disagree at the moment,” Jackson said between pants. His tone held more humor than I could muster.
I offered Jackson my left hand and hauled him to his feet. “What happened?”
He turned a full circle to scan the space from the busted door to the disabled android to the brand-new cracks in the hardwood floor. “I heard it coming up the stairs, fast. Running. It sounds different from my parents.” He pointed at his feet. “Metal.”
I waved my hand to move the story along.
“I shouted through the door that it should go away. My parents have it doing chores and stuff, but I didn’t need its help with anything right then.”
“What about Kim?” Claire stepped around Hunter and into the room.
Kim was their housekeeper.
Jackson shrugged. “Not here.”
Claire walked a circle around the Model One, shuddered, and then returned to the doorway.
I gritted my teeth because this was one of the problems with Model Ones—they replaced humans—and they were dangerous. Poor Kim, who’d enjoyed a job here for the past two years, was probably trying to figure out how to feed her kids.
“Does she have kids?” I asked.
“No, why?”
“Forget it. So then what?”
“It knocked the door off the hinges, which is such a waste because it was unlocked.” He paused, as if I was meant to laugh.
I didn’t.
“It froze at first after it got through the door. I thought it was busted, so I got closer, and the damn thing sucker-punched me.”
“Why?” Liv asked.
“Who knows? We fought for maybe a minute or two before you guys got here.”
The bruise on his cheek was already fading into its usual tan, and his split lip was in the process of knitting itself up. Fleshy strands reached out from one side of the cut and grabbed the other side, pulling itself together like a zipper.
“Maybe it was jealous that I’m higher tech than it.” He grinned, revealing perfectly white teeth—half of which had been built by CyberCorp.
Liv’s lip curled, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off Jackson’s face.
I refocused my attention on his bright-blue eyes, which were still all Jackson. The same ones I’d stared into on a very regular basis since we were small. Most of the rest of him had been upgraded, but I could always find him in the eyes. “Be serious, please. This isn’t a joke.”
“And it’s impossible,” Liv said. “Isn’t it? The Model Ones are learning machines, but they’re pre-programmed to learn specific tasks. Those don’t include . . .” She gestured toward the entire room. “Right?” She looked to me for confirmation.
“They’re programmed for self-defense.” Jackson felt his still-healing lip, as if checking its progress.
“Did you attack it?” Hunter asked. He stepped through the door and into the room. “Or did you attack someone else? Who was it defending?”
“Were you listening at all?” Jackson glanced over at Hunter, irritation painting his features.
“To your bullshit story, yeah, I heard it. It doesn’t make sense.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“I’m just saying the facts don’t add up.”
“Can we not fight?” Claire said, stepping between the boys, who had been steadily inching closer to each other—and definitely not for a hug.
“Maybe the truth is something in between,” Liv said. She paused, and I could tell she was searching for a way to lower the temperature. “Maybe Jackson’s upgrades prompted it.”
Jackson tilted his head to the side. “It saw me as a threat?”
“I guess that’s possible,” Hunter said.
“Or,” I said, “the Model Ones are dangerous and unpredictable. The only thing predictable about them is that, if you give a machine the ability to think but don’t give it human empathy, it goes off the rails.” I gestured toward the android still crumpled on the floor. “Like so.”
Jackson waved a dismissive hand. “Liv’s explanation makes sense though.” He grinned, loving the idea of being the apex predator in the room, even above a human-sized robot. “And either way, no harm, no foul.”
“I guess so.” Liv’s expression looked a lot more doubtful than her tone.
As if to make his point about the lack of harm, Jackson’s lip was now fully healed. The bruise was long gone. His face was once again pristine.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.” Still, it wouldn’t hurt to dig a little deeper. “Can you help me roll it onto its stomach? I want to check the log.”
Jackson helped me roll the Model One over, and I popped the back cover to check the display underneath. I frowned when it didn’t light up.
Jackson swept up the battery cell from the floor and waved it in front of me.
Right. I couldn’t read its log if the android was dead.
“Can you power it?” I asked him.
“The charging plate is downstairs, but it has to stand on top of it.”
I grimaced at the android, with its stomach open and metal guts falling out. “Can it stand?”
“I probably have a power cord we can use instead. More importantly, you want to turn that thing back on?”
I thought about it for a second and then grasped the android’s right leg and yanked, twisting as I did. With a screech of metal that scratched against my eardrums, the leg tore free. I kept pulling until all the cables that connected it internally to the torso popped loose.
Jackson grabbed the other leg and did the same while I worked on an arm. As we dismembered the robot, Liv pressed her teeth together.
“It’s not alive,” I told her as I gripped the arm and yanked. The last of my words were drowned out by the screech of metal and the sound of the other arm clanking against the hardwood where Jackson tossed it.
She cringed again.
Jackson went to his desk and opened the bottom drawer, which was full of all kinds of controllers and cables—mostly for game systems he’d acquired and discarded over the years. He began rifling through its contents.
Farther into the room, a king-size bed sat on a low, black wooden platform. Although Jackson’s parents preferred a traditional look, Jackson was all clean lines and contemporary, and his parents let him decorate his own room. Or technically, they let him work with their interior designer.
The pale blue wall behind the bed contrasted with the charcoal paint on the other walls. Over the bed, a modern black chandelier hung, composed of three black circles, growing smaller in a way that formed a triangle pointing to the center of his giant bed. A dark-gray comforter was folded down at the head to reveal ice-blue sheets.
“Hey.” Hunter brushed up against me, his shoulder touching mine. “How are you?”
I breathed in deeply and let air stream out through my mouth. “I’m good. He’s okay, so nothing to worry about?” I intoned my voice upward at the end like a question, and when I turned to Hunter, he nodded although his brow remained knitted.
Jackson closed the drawer he was searching and spun a circle before locking onto his closed closet door. He opened it and disappeared into the cavern where he stored his clothes.
“Got it!” Jackson shouted from the depths within and emerged with a long black cable raised above his head.
I grabbed one end and checked the plug. It was a standard CyberCorp power cable. “Is this going to work?”
“Let’s see.” He plugged it into the wall and then searched the back of the android before flipping up a small plastic cover and revealing a matching outlet for the other end. “Good old CyberCorp is still using the same power cords for every device.”
Both he and I knelt next to it while Claire, Hunter, and Liv retreated to the doorway.
The android hummed to life. Its eye lights glowed, casting red onto the floor it faced. They flickered a couple times, and the robot’s midsection sizzled and sparked. Jackson and I both leaned backward, wound up to spring and run away if this went wrong.
The android’s midsection issued a series of clicks, and then the eyes went out. But a second later, they bloomed to life again, and the display on its back flickered on.
“Malfunction,” it said as the slit acting as its mouth opened and closed. The torso rocked as if trying to move and stand, but its legs lay several feet away. “Malfunction.”
Its eyelids clicked closed and then open. A stamp in the metal of its skull identified this particular android as M1A312.
“A312,” I said.
Its head rotated toward me, and the torso rocked back and forth on the floor again.
“Stop moving.”
“Not authorized,” it said in an electronic voice.
I gestured toward Jackson.
“Don’t move, Theo,” he said, and the android froze.
“You named it?”
He shrugged. “You know how my parents are.”
I leaned forward toward the display on the android’s back. Lines of information filled the screen, and several rectangles acted as touch buttons at the bottom. And at the top—the version date. Before I could read anything, the display flickered.
The word REVERTING filled the screen for less than a second.
And then again, the text and touch buttons were back.
I blinked and pointed.
“What?” Jackson leaned over me. “This one is running software from a week and a half ago. That’s after they fixed the EyeNet bug that caused . . .” He gestured toward me but didn’t voice it. “Right?”
“That should be a good version. But did you see that a second ago—the reverting thing?”
“The what thing?”
I jabbed a finger at the display. “The screen cleared for an second, and the word reverting popped up, and then all of this came back.”
He scratched his chin. “Are you sure?”
Liv inched her way closer and stared down at the android before sliding back to her spot by the door.
“No one else saw that?” I scanned the faces of my friends, but all of them looked as blank as Jackson’s.
“If it reverted to an older version of its software—that doesn’t even make sense. The newest version would be the best version. Why would it go back?”
“Malfunction,” the android said again in its eerie electronic voice.
“Maybe because you guys tore off its arms and legs,” Claire offered.
“Good point.” Jackson held up one of the android’s arms and waved it in my face. Its metal cables swung beneath it. They clacked against each other with each swing, as if to make his point. “It’s not exactly in peak condition. Not everything is a conspiracy.”
“It’s just malfunctioning, Lena.” Liv placed her arm on my shoulder as I continued to glare at the android’s display. “That’s why it attacked Jackson in the first place. It doesn’t mean anything.”
No one said it, but we all knew she meant it didn’t mean someone had hacked this android the way I was hacked.
As far I was concerned, though, the Model Ones couldn’t be trusted.
