Cryo-Man (Cryo-Man series, #1) (16 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

             
I stare at him a long time, stare at his still chest and unblinking eyes. The side of his body where he’d been shot is completely soaked through with blood but it’s hard to tell if that was the reason he died or the severe beating he apparently took. Either way, I feel awful for not being here to protect him. My hands unclench and the cans slip from my grasp, rolling across the floor until they stop in the puddle of his blood. Seeing my pathetic bounty from hours spent on the surface makes me even more devastated that I didn’t listen to E about staying.

             
I feel alone, more so than I have in my life, though that’s impossible to say with certainty because I don’t
remember
the rest of my life. I’m unsure whether my sorrow has more to do with E’s death or the fact that I’ll never get back my memories. This realization consumes me with a whole new level of guilt. My mind inevitably returns to the boy from my dream, a boy whom I will forever remember from only a moment of my life. This in turn makes me think of the boy from the apartment building, makes me wish I’d figured out a way to stop him from going off on his own.

             
I sit down on the floor, not because I’m tired but because I have no idea what else to do. I slam my hand into the floor, cracking the concrete, and watch the dented cans roll a few more inches.

             
“How’d this happen to you?” I ask E. I hope that hearing my voice will snap me to action but the robotic tone only makes me feel worse.

             
I’m so focused on E and the blood and the cans that it’s a long time before I look anywhere else in the room. When I do, my eyes move beyond all the fancy holographic machinery and stop on the safe in the corner. Now would be the time to yank off the door but I don’t need to; it’s already wide open. Even from across the room, I see that the handle is specked with blood and a few tiny drops lead from the corner to E’s final resting – or sitting – place.

             
“Is that why you were killed?” I ask E.

             
I stand and cross the room to the safe, though I can already see it’s empty. Did the other hybrid kill E for whatever was inside? When I get closer, I realize there’s still one small thing in the shadows at the back of the safe. I reach inside and pull out a small square of glossy paper, turning it over to reveal a photograph. But before I wonder what’s so important about a photo that it needed to be locked away, I see
who
the picture is of. All other questions fade away.

             
The man in the photo doesn’t have bluish-tinted skin, doesn’t have patchy hair, doesn’t have wires connected to the back of his skull and doesn’t have a glass dome protecting his head. The man is smiling, handsome, probably thinking of his wife or young son. The man is me.

             
When the shock of seeing myself wears off, confusion sets in about why my  picture was in the safe in the first place. I recall the folders outside each patient’s cryo-chamber, remember that they all had similar photos in their files. I turn back to E’s dead body and wish he were still alive to answer one question.

             
“You told me my file was destroyed. Only this remained?” I wonder aloud. “Why did you hide it?”

             
E’s blank eyes seem to stare beyond me. I take a step closer to him and my pounding footsteps cause his inert body to shift slightly in the chair. I rush to catch him before he can slump to the floor but his body stops moving. Something sticks out between the side of the chair and E. I also notice a pen still clutched in his hand. I try to walk lighter as I approach but his body shifts more to reveal a manila folder pinned next to his body. Careful not to disturb E, I slowly remove the folder, the outside of which is covered with blood and badly scribbled handwriting. I barely make out the words of the short, simple message.

I’M SORRY FOR KEEPING THIS FROM YOU

The folder trembles in my hand. Now that I’m about to learn who I am – the one thing I’ve wanted most since being thawed – I hesitate to open the folder.

“He was afraid you’d remember your past,” says a voice behind me.

I spin around and drop the folder, freeing my hands for action. Papers detailing my life scatter across the floor but I don’t care. I crouch slightly, ready to spring into action. Looming large in the doorway is another massive assassin bot with a human head attached. I immediately think of the hybrid from the surface but this is not a man. The head belongs to an older woman, her face wrinkled, her hair gray and stringy. I remain on edge, ready to defend myself should she become aggressive.

“Don’t be afraid,” she says, holding her hands out peacefully. Her tone of voice is mechanical yet soft, much less harsh than mine. Though it’s odd to see
any
human head atop a robot’s body, it seems even more peculiar to see an older woman.

“I’m not afraid,” I say, not exactly the truth but the only thing I can think to say.

The woman stares at me for several long seconds. She seems to be trying to figure something out; I try to figure out what to say from here. Her eyes blink and she looks away from me. She frowns as she looks at E.

“He was afraid that reading about your past would help you remember who you were; he thought it would make you want to leave him,” she says. “He felt awful about hiding the truth from you. He planned to tell you everything once you came back. You were very special to him.”

For a moment, I relax and turn back to E. But the old woman continues into the room so I brace myself for attack, refusing to let her lull me into a false sense of security. I’m not going to be fooled by her grandmotherly exterior and feigned concern. She keeps her distance when she sees I’m nervous.

“I wouldn’t have left him, you know,” I say. “Even if I did remember who I was.”

“You can’t say that for certain.”

I take offense to her judging my character. “I wouldn’t have turned my back on him, I wouldn’t have abandoned him. He saved my life; he
gave
me life.”

She nods, knowingly. “I didn’t mean to question you. E thought you were a good human and I don’t disagree. While he may have given you life, parents do the same for their children all the time and there always comes a day when they have to let them go.”

Her words make me think of my lone memory, think about how giving my little boy the cell phone was essentially my way of letting him go. Under different circumstances, the thought might make me break down and cry. But when I see the old woman watching me intently – as if studying me – my sadness erupts into a burst of anger that courses down my metallic limbs.

“Who
are
you? Where did you come from?” I snap. “Did you do this to E?”

The woman’s soft expression hardens. Though her skin is also tinted blue like mine, an angry shade of red overtakes it for a moment. Her kind eyes suddenly pierce my dome so sharply I’m afraid her glare could shatter glass.

“For the record, my name is…” she says, stopping before the end, apparently deep in thought. “My name is… well, that doesn’t matter.”

In that one moment of confusion, I no longer fear her, no longer think she’s responsible for E’s death. I know exactly the sort of confusion she’s going through and it instantly makes me feel a bond with her.

“You can’t remember?” I ask.

She continues to stare daggers at me for several seconds before she looks down and shakes her head.

“Neither can I,” I say. “I only have one memory of who I used to be. In it, I was called Daddy so that’s what you can call me.”

“At least for now,” she says and motions to the papers strewn about the floor.

I’m excited to read the papers on the floor and slowly begin to gather them together, trying not to look too closely and see snippets of information. I’d prefer to put them in order and read everything at once.

“In that case, to make things easier, you can call me Mom,” the woman says. I’m sure this refers to
her
final memory but I don’t pry. “And of course I
didn’t
do that to E. He also gave me back my life.”

“Then what happened to him?” I ask.

Mom explains how E knew he was dying, something he sensed even before I left to search for supplies.

“He wasn’t sure how long you’d take to get back but didn’t think he’d survive that long,” she says. “He was in a hurry to save the last few people he could before his end came. I was the first person he selected. Once he revived me and explained how I became a robot, he told me how upsetting it was that it took until his dying moments to perfect the process of fusing humans with robots. I still can’t believe I’ve ended up like this.” She stops and holds out her arms. I recognize the look of awe and disgust on her face; I’m sure it’s the same expression I wore a few days ago. “I lived a long life before my death. I didn’t know what to expect from being cryonically frozen but I never expected
this
.”

“Why would E decide to save you since you’re so…” I start to ask before realizing how insensitive the question is.

“So
old
?” she finishes with a smile.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… I just…”

“You really have a way with the ladies,” she says.

“I just assumed E would choose stronger people, that’s all,” I say, not sure if that’s any less offensive.

“You wouldn’t be challenging me to a fight, would you?” she asks, though the smile remains on her face. “I’m plenty strong; in fact, E said my robot model is more advanced than yours. I might be older but my mind was never affected by illness… maybe a little forgetfulness at the end. E thought I’d be good support for you after he was gone.”

“But why
you
?”

The woman called Mom makes an odd movement; it takes me a moment to recognize it as a shrug.

“You never said how he died,” I say. “How he got so beat up.”

She tells me that E’s time was running short and he wanted to save one more person even as his health quickly faded. E barely had time to explain what she’d become and how the world changed before taking her into the cryonics room. E already knew who he intended to save and needed Mom to climb a ladder to retrieve the body from one of the uppermost cryo-chambers.

“He chose a man that was once a soldier, one of the final people the Institute ever froze after the Robot Wars began,” she says. “Though E didn’t have time to get into specific details, he stressed how harsh the world had become, how alike the robots and humans were in their cruelty. E hoped a former soldier would be able to protect you and me once he was gone. Is it
really
as bad out there as he said?” 

             
I think of the rubble-strewn surface, the electrical pulse gun that nearly destroyed me, the robots that killed humans mercilessly, the explosion – and then implosion – at the apartment building. The old woman’s skepticism is one I shared before I first left the facility, skepticism completely wiped away in a matter of minutes once I got outside. To answer her question, I merely nod.

             
“E’s hands weren’t very steady when I watched him connect wires into the soldier’s brain,” she says. “He spoke about needing to connect the man’s long-term memory so he’d recall all of his combat skills.”

             
A blast of jealousy blooms within me, anger toward E that quickly abates as soon as I glance back to his dead body.

             
“E was certain he knew where to connect the wires but his hands shook so much that he clipped another part of the soldier’s brain,” she continues. “He knew he messed up right away, knew he nicked part of the brain that deals with aggression. He considered severing power to the soldier’s brain and trying to revive another person but wasn’t sure he’d live long enough. Instead, he sent me to hide away as a precaution; he must’ve known something bad might happen.”

             
“You let him be beaten to death?” I ask, appalled.

             
“I did what E told me to do,” she snaps. “And it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I heard the commotion from the operating room, I heard E’s pained grunting. He told me to hide at the back of the cryonics room but I stood just inside the door. I watched E limp down the hallway, watched him somehow fight his way into this room, even as the soldier followed him to continue the assault. Now I understand what was so important for him to get in here. Believe me, I wanted to help but that’s not what E wanted.”

             
“You should’ve ignored his orders,” I say, shaking my head. It’s too late to save E – no amount of arguing can change the past – but I can’t stop from pushing the argument, whether the woman means well or not. “You should’ve helped him. I
needed
E alive, you have no idea how important that was.”

             
She looks hurt by my words. I can tell she already feels guilty – a feeling I’m more than familiar with – but I ignore that connection I feel with her and don’t try to alleviate her blame. Her pained expression doesn’t last very long, the fire quickly returning to her eyes.