MILA 2.0: Redemption (2 page)

We walked toward the jacket. Tim might be grumpy in the mornings and drink from a flask with disturbing regularity, but he was the reason we had a roof over our heads right now. Except for Lucas, supposedly no one else knew about his retreat up here, deep in the thick of unspoiled Bitterroot land. He’d stepped up to the plate when his brother asked for a big favor, and he didn’t even know me. For now, I’d gladly deal with Tim’s foul humor if it meant distracting myself from the uneasiness that something—or someone—lurked over my shoulder.

Because that feeling never really went away, not for good. It lingered, haunting me like one of Sarah’s memories, like the sound of my name on my mother’s lips. Like the vision of Hunter’s eyes, staring back at me with hope.

Hope could probably survive on this mountain forever, and maybe I could too. But this bomb inside me, it changed everything. No matter where I went, there was really no such thing as a “safe” place. Safety was just an illusion. Because no matter how well I hid or how fast I ran, I couldn’t outrun myself.

Even so, I couldn’t help but wonder if I should just slip away quietly into the night. Then the only casualty would be me, right? Not a perfect ending, but better than leaving a path of destruction in my wake.

A jolt of determination pushed back against those thoughts, urging me to fight. Reminding me that I still had so many questions. I knew Holland had already created multiple Milas. Both of my “sisters” had been destroyed, but what if there were more androids, and Holland had subjected them to exactly the same horrors as me? When I boiled everything down to the simplest form, not knowing Holland’s master plan was even more terrifying than the bomb inside my gut. What exactly was he after?

Was it possible that Tim knew? I’d caught a flash of anger between him and Lucas when they were together, but I didn’t know why. Things had been so overwhelming and chaotic when Lucas and I had first arrived that I hadn’t wanted to pump him for information. But I knew that the longer it took to get my memory back and figure out the inner workings of the bomb, the more time our enemy had to regroup.

I needed more information. The sooner, the better.

“You’re wondering how Holland knew my brother, aren’t you?” Lucas said matter-of-factly as he picked up the jacket without bothering to put it on. I trailed him over to a woodpile. A hatchet leaned against the logs.

Specifically, I was wondering why Holland had called Tim a chickenshit back in DC, but I wasn’t about to say that out loud. “Oh. My. God. While we were out in the desert, did you plant a thought-reading chip in my head?”

Lucas responded with a half smile and a quick shrug. He picked up the hatchet, widened his stance, and took a swing. A log cracked, but didn’t split completely. He grunted and repeated the motion until the wood separated into two halves.

“Don’t need one. Sometimes, you’re an open book. Maybe it’s a glitch in your subterfuge software.”

I snorted. “Or maybe you’re a glitch.”

His eyes widened, and then he laughed. “But I see that teen-girl programming remains intact.”

I stopped short of an eye roll, because, really, no sense in proving him right. “Tim?” I prodded.

“Tim. Right.” The smile faded, and his grip tightened on the handle. He hoisted the hatchet over his shoulder, inhaled, and then let it fly again.

Thwack!

The blade hit the log a bit off center, but the blade still dug in, sending wood chips flying.

“So, obviously, you caught that Holland is my relative. Uncle. My mom was his sister.”

The hatchet lifted again, then lowered.

Thwack.

Air whooshed from my lungs. Yes, I guess I’d figured that much out, but to hear him say it aloud. . . . That he was related by blood to Holland. It was almost unfathomable.

He rested the ax on the dirt, blade down, brushing at the sweat that already beaded on his forehead. I noticed his center of gravity was more off than usual; he was favoring his bad leg. The way he accepted that less-than-perfect part of himself was something I’d admired from the first time I’d met him.

“You want me to take over?”

Without hesitation, he extended the hatchet to me. “You kidding? I was hoping you’d offer three swings ago. Not exactly my forte,” he said, with no trace of embarrassment.

I accepted the tool, and lined up to swing.

Arc: 150 degrees.

Velocity: 90 mph.

Metal hit wood with precision and force, cleaving the log into two perfect halves.

Lucas whistled. “From now on, you’re in charge of firewood.”

Worked for me. Since angst was in my repertoire of android emotions, bludgeoning the wood provided a satisfying outlet. Even though I’d enjoyed Lucas’s company
a great deal over the last week and a half, I couldn’t imagine living up here permanently without going stir-crazy. Between Holland and the V.O., I’d experienced more than enough confinement in my short lifetime.

I rolled that last word around in my head. Lifetime. Did the fact that I clung to such words mean I still hadn’t accepted my not-quite-human reality? I didn’t think so. It was just—my reality wasn’t exactly black-and-white. A big part of my history enmeshed with Sarah’s, and she happened to be a real, live human girl.

I’d spent a long time in the beginning fighting to be one thing or the other: human or android. That had been an exercise in futility.

I was human. I was android. I was neither. I was both. In the long run, what difference did the label make? I was simply . . . me.

Air whistled when I swung the hatchet again.

“Tim is six years older than me. For a long time growing up, he was the golden child. First in his class, star on the soccer team. When I was younger, he was my hero. I wanted to be just like him.”

Lucas’s voice sounded wistful. I paused, studying his expression. Nostalgic, I finally decided.

“And then what?” I said, when he continued to gaze right through me. I choked down a sudden knot of envy for those good memories he was clearly reliving.

I’d give anything to have an actual childhood to look back on. But at least I had fragments of Sarah’s, and that was something.

He busied himself lining up the next chunk of wood for me. “He started to fall apart in college. The usual story—smart, sheltered kid from a smallish town gets a taste of freedom and goes wild.”

He stepped away, giving me space to swing.

“Except—our family life, it wasn’t exactly the white-picket-fence affair that my parents would have others believe. My dad could be harsh. I don’t know, maybe it’s because my mom grew up with a brother like Holland—maybe that’s just what she was used to. Dad really zeroed in on my brother in a way that he didn’t on me. For that, I’ll be forever grateful. I’m not saying he’s directly responsible for Tim getting involved in drugs, because we always have choices, right? But my brother didn’t really learn healthy ways to cope, either.”

Choices. We always had choices. How many times had I made the wrong ones in the past? Most recently, I’d allowed Quinn to suppress my emotions . . . or at least, I’d given her permission. Now there was a gap where crucial memories should reside.

I shivered, the shadows in my mind stirring again. Things would improve once Lucas restored the missing pieces. At least then maybe I’d know what had happened to Hunter
and his parents. Not to mention Daniel, the man who’d fathered and raised Sarah, and helped my “mother,” Nicole, and Holland to create me.

“So, he got into drugs in college?”

“Yeah, only, my parents didn’t know it at the time. None of us did. He hid it well, but his grades started slipping. Of course, my dad didn’t think to ask why or if anything was wrong. All he did was worry about how it would reflect on him, having a less-than-perfect son. So he told Tim he’d cut his funding off for good unless he enrolled in the military and got his act together.”

He paused again, so I halved another log. Overhead, the sun sank in the sky, and the air grew steadily colder.

“I’m guessing that didn’t work out so well for him? Holland mentioned helping with a dishonorable discharge.”

Lucas shrugged helplessly. “We still don’t know exactly what happened, just that Tim went MIA from the army, and Holland covered for him. But Tim was never the same again. He’s . . . broken.”

Broken? I wasn’t sure that was the word I’d use. But Tim did seem jumpy. He startled easily, like the time when I’d entered the kitchen without him knowing. He’d whirled so fast, he’d tripped and dropped a glass. Sometimes he studied me when he thought I wasn’t looking. Pulse and blood pressure analysis made it clear that I made him uncomfortable. Was it because he was always drunk?
Or was there something else?

I’d learned never to discount any hint of suspicion, however small. Even though Tim seemed more likely to pass out standing up than do anything to endanger me, he was still on my radar as someone to watch.

I continued to hack wood until we had a sizable pile, watching Lucas out of my peripheral vision. There were only two people I trusted in this world. One of them was right next to me, and the other I hoped was on his way back to California, driving down the Pacific Coast Highway toward the home that he loved, where he could be happy again . . . and free.

Lucas bent to place the halved pieces on the makeshift carrier—a plastic sled attached to a rope—and I helped. Then, we dragged the wood toward the cabin.

As we walked, something occurred to me. “If Holland is your uncle, why do you address him so formally?” I searched my memory and no, not once had I heard Lucas call him anything other than General Holland or Sir.

Lucas snorted. “Are you kidding? Do you think he’s the kind of guy who’d be okay going by Uncle? Please. He’s all about the power, always has been. What’s the point of being a general if you can’t lord it over people?”

I nodded. That fit in with everything I knew about Holland. He was power hungry, and he wanted complete control. To him, image was everything, and if you
threatened that image, well . . . the consequences could be disastrous.

My mind conjured up an image of Holland’s sun-worn face, complete with lifeless gray eyes, and my teeth clenched. Precisely why I’d have to leave this mountain eventually.

I swooped down and grabbed a log, calculating just how much pressure I’d need to use in order to reduce it to a crumble of dust. The lingering image of Holland’s face unleashed a cascade of pain and anguish, then a wave of blind rage. For a moment, there was a flicker of memory.
My fingers clutched something cold and metal; a scream almost brought me to my knees.
But before I could capture the flickers in a complete picture, the memory was gone.

I looked down at my hands, which were now covered in brown ash. Bits of splintered wood piled at my feet. Lucas kicked the debris away without so much as a raised brow, like he’d seen me crush a log a million times before.

Lucas was different from anyone I knew.

In his case, different was a good thing.

W
hen Lucas opened the door to the cabin, a gust of heat hit us like a wall. I recoiled, my mind sucked back into the past once again. I’d barely saved my mom from the fire Holland had engineered back in his underground lab, and then there were the wisps of Sarah’s memory. Another fire, blazing through a house in the suburbs.
Billowing smoke, hungry flames. My dad’s frantic voice.
A different girl, with a different past . . . whose history lived on in me.

“Mila? You okay?”

I blinked, and the inferno disappeared. Only a small, cheerful fire blazed in the stone fireplace.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just . . . fires. They make me a little twitchy sometimes.”

Lucas shot me a sympathetic look. “Understandable.”

Tim turned from the small stove, where a large stockpot steamed, filling the cabin with the aroma of beef stew. As he stirred, I noticed his hands trembled a little on the spoon. He looked us over briefly and shook his head.

“You two must have a death wish. No flashlights or anything? Once the sun goes down, you can’t see shit.”

As usual, his hair was unbrushed, his jaw obscured by a scraggly beard, flecked with what appeared to be the remnants of breakfast. His faded jeans and gray flannel were the same he’d worn the last two days. Suddenly, I was glad for the aroma of the stew.

His bloodshot gaze zeroed in on Lucas. “And where’s your gun? How many times have I got to tell you? There are plenty of natural predators ’round here. I know, you don’t shoot living creatures,” he said, when Lucas started to protest, “but you might change your mind if push comes to shove. At the very least, you could fire a warning shot to scare them away. Mountain lions and bears don’t much like the sound or smell of gunfire.”

“Hey, I’m eating your nonvegetarian meals without complaining, aren’t I?” Lucas responded. Tim stared him down and Lucas sighed. “Fine. I’ll take a gun. But one of you two had best show me how to use it, so I don’t shoot off my good foot.”

Tim, apparently satisfied, turned back to the stew. “Don’t
know how you escaped hunting weekends with Dad, anyway.” That came out as a mumble; I wasn’t even sure he intended us to hear.

Lucas shrugged. “Oh, that was easy. He didn’t want to risk being bogged down by his special needs,” he said matter-of-factly. Then, his lips curved into a wicked smile. “That, and the fact that I endlessly printed up anti-hunting articles off the internet and left them all around the house, in his car . . . taped to the deer heads. I’m pretty sure he was disgusted by my lack of manliness.”

Tim grunted, muttering a few words under his breath. Not loudly enough for Lucas to catch them, but loud enough for me.

“Better than the alternative.”

I felt a ripple of sympathy for Tim. Hard to believe how very differently the two brothers had turned out. Suddenly, I was even more thankful for Lucas’s solid presence beside me.

We piled the wood by the fireplace before settling into the dated but comfy stuffed chairs. A faint scent of cinnamon and vanilla lingered in the faded brown fabric.

I noticed Lucas winced a little as he adjusted his position.

“Your leg?” I asked.

“It’s healed up fine. Just gets a little stiff sometimes.”

I bowed my head, guilt gnawing at me, but then it snapped back up when I heard Lucas say my name.

“Stop worrying, Mila. No regrets,” he whispered.

Lucas had taken a bullet back at Holland’s lab in a last-ditch effort to buy Mom and me time to escape. He’d risked his life for us, even though he had no reason to. From day one, nothing about me seemed to faze him.

He stood. “I need to check on something. Be right back.”

I watched him retreat to the first doorway on the left, where he slept in a room on a tiny twin bed that was surrounded by loads of his computer equipment. I could hear the humming, even from outside.

Tim went to the food cooler and unwrapped a packet of cheese, sniffed it, then shrugged and dumped the contents onto a plate. “Don’t take it personal. He always was socially awkward,” he said in an overly loud voice, and without a hint of irony.

“I heard that!” Lucas called out from around the corner.

“Whatever,” Tim said with a smirk. When he caught me watching him, his jaw tightened and he slunk back over to the stove.

I turned my back and reclined in the chair. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled, his forlorn cry ringing through the still night air. An answering call yipped from the opposite direction and a sudden chill crept up my arms.

“They’re on the trail of something,” Tim mused from the kitchen, almost wistfully.

I pulled a blanket over myself and huddled under it,
trying not to think of my own set of predators.

Tim spoke again, over the sound of silverware clanging into metal camping bowls. “I’m no good at conversations.”

Was that an olive branch? Or something else? “That’s okay. I’m not either.”

“Not true. You and Lucas talk nonstop.” He said it casually, but the sounds from the kitchen had silenced.

“Do we?”

Tim didn’t know why I was here, actually. In fact, Tim had specifically requested to be spared the details. He was bright enough to realize we were probably hiding and neck-deep in trouble, but he’d made it clear that he wanted no part of it. The less Tim knew, the safer he was, and that was fine with me. He might not make the best company, but he was still Lucas’s brother. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. Especially not because of me.

The clanging started up again. “It’s kind of annoying. How close you guys are,” he said. “He and I were never like that.”

Close. The word rattled around in my head and caused me to shift in the chair. Was that the right word to describe Lucas and me? Yes, we’d been through a lot together, and he was someone I could count on in this ugly mess I called a life. But admitting that out loud seemed wrong, somehow. Like by admitting that Lucas and I were close, I was betraying Hunter, who’d given up so much to be with me.

If only I could contact him. Hear his voice again. Know that he was okay.

Tim cleared his throat with a rough cough. “Grub’s almost ready. Go fetch Boy Genius.”

“Sure,” I said. Even though it had been more command than request. His tone reminded me, suddenly, of Holland’s.

I stood and made my way toward Lucas’s room, knocking on the door with an “It’s me.”

“Come in.”

I entered and smiled at the sight that greeted me. Lucas had stuffed a lot of equipment into a tiny space. Two open laptops gleamed on top of his desk, while off to the side were three desktop computers, stacked in precarious towers. A full-size monitor fought for space with the laptops, while another one sprawled on the floor near Lucas’s feet. Several fancy routers shimmered with green and blue lights, their silver casings lit by the glow of the desk lamp.

Lucas’s fingers flew over keys, his eyes roving over the content that popped up on the monitors.

Code, mainly, I realized as I read over his shoulder. Mostly hacked. One IP address in particular caught my eye and I flinched.

He was deep in an attempt to infiltrate SMART Ops—Holland’s brainchild. The organization responsible for making me.

“What are you up to?”

“Just following a hunch,” he replied.

“Need any help?” I asked, even though I knew how Lucas would respond. He was afraid if I hacked into any covert network using my android functions, I might tip someone off to our whereabouts. He’d cautioned me against using so much as my GPS. For now, anything that could leave behind even a whiff of my IP address was banned . . . until he could figure out a way to cloak my information and keep me from detection.

Lucas continued to bite his lip, ignoring me for a second as he scanned more information. His body practically hummed with intensity in the chair. I smiled when I saw the hair on the right side of his head standing straight up, the result of his fingers raking through when he was deep in thought.

Tim might have meant “Boy Genius” as a dig, but I found nothing insulting about it. Lucas, in his quiet, brainy way, was a force to be reckoned with.

“No, not tonight. I just need to . . . crap!”

A page he’d been looking at vanished. His shoulders slumped for an instant before squaring again. “Oh, no, you don’t . . .” he muttered. The tapping resumed.

While I was thankful for all that he was doing on my behalf, I couldn’t have felt more helpless if I tried. Here I was, this miracle of technology, yet all I could do was twiddle my thumbs and contemplate the universe and my
unbelievable, potentially destructive role in it. I hated feeling sorry for myself, but my emotions once again had free rein since Quinn’s program had been reversed.

Which was usually a relief. Just not so much at this exact moment.

“Well, dinner’s ready,” I said. “Smells like rabbit. Maybe we can strain the meat out and just leave the fur clumps—that still counts as vegetarian, right?”

Lucas was so focused on his work that he barely noticed my lame joke. “Okay, be there in a minute.”

“Actually, I think I’m going to wind down upstairs,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, it’s been a while since my last sleep cycle. Probably should catch up. Tell Tim my stomach is bothering me again, okay?”

It wasn’t a lie. My stomach was definitely bothering me, in the sense that the gut-esque portion of my anatomy felt like it was churning away.

“Will do. Good night,” he said with an absent wave.

I closed the door behind me and climbed the stairs to my tiny room in the loft. The twin bed was squished up next to a shabby pine chest of drawers. Stark wooden beams crisscrossed overhead, and a real fur rug took up most of the bare floor. Every time my bare feet touched the soft hair, I couldn’t help but wonder how the animal had died. Had the
animal known it was being hunted, and run for its life? Or had the hunter startled it? Caught it by surprise?

I hopped onto the bed, vowing to shove the rug in the closet come morning. We’d been here for over a week, and while the respite was desperately needed, I knew from experience just how quickly the peace and calm here could vanish.

Images flickered behind my eyes, remnants of the last scene I remembered from Quinn’s.

The examination table.

Quinn’s auburn hair flashing as she readied her instruments.

Me, feeling utterly overwhelmed. Agreeing to allow her to hack into my programming and alter my emotions.

And then, emptiness. No matter how many times I replayed my memory, the time period between this moment and the desert was a total blank. I didn’t know what concerned me more—the dark, missing hours in my past or the dark possibilities awaiting me in the future?

I shivered and wrapped the blanket more tightly around me, hoping that Lucas would go back into his room after dinner and finish the program that might restore the lost data. Visions of Hunter flashed through my head again, and even though I tried to convince myself that he was fine—his parents were with him, after all—the chill refused to fade.

God, I missed him.

I curled into a ball to warm myself, even though I knew the attempt would fail.

My chills, they didn’t originate from the environment.

My chills came from fear.

“Mila? You up and about in there?”

Lucas’s soft rap at the door early the next morning was accompanied by a whisper.

“No. I went to Disneyland. I’ll be back tomorrow,” I whispered back.

The door creaked open, and Lucas’s face popped into the crack. His clothing and hair looked tousled, like he’d just rolled out of bed, but that was pretty much how he always looked. Shadows under his eyes hinted at a late night, but his wide smile looked excited.

“Sorry it’s so early, but I wanted to do this while Tim was outside, messing around with that broken trap.”

He patted his pocket and bounced lightly on his feet. “Can you come to my room?”

I followed him downstairs and through the narrow doorway to his cramped living space. Three empty cups, a crumpled bag of pretzels, and a discarded plate perched on top of his computer tower. A glance at his bed showed the comforter was still folded, and his charger remained discarded on his pillow, in the same spot as last night.

Someone had pulled an all-nighter.

Lucas motioned me into the desk chair. I settled on the
edge and stared up at him, daring to hope. Did all that excitement mean he’d come through on the data-restoring program?

He fiddled with whatever was in his pocket again, noted my curiosity, and removed his hand. “Oh, that’s for in a few minutes. But first . . . let’s jump-start that memory of yours.”

He extended a cord to me, complete with a USB port at one end. “My memory?” I breathed.

“No guarantees it’s going to work right away,” Lucas cautioned, watching my face fall. “But if it doesn’t, I think it will only take a few tweaks, at most.”

A phantom pain twinged in my neck, just under my ear, as if I could still feel the burn from the last time I’d plugged in. I stared at the cord, but instead of reaching for it, my hands fisted.

Lucas noted the small motion. “This one shouldn’t hurt,” he said softly.

“And what about . . . that?” I nodded down toward my stomach. “Is there any chance new programming could set it off or something?”

“No, this software is localized. It will only affect your peripheral neurological area, not your central nervous system,” he explained. He didn’t rush me, though, or try to force the cord into my hand. Instead, he waited. Patient as always.

Eventually, my fingers curled around the metal end as I
willed my frantic pulse to subside.

It would be okay. Whatever Quinn had erased. I could handle it.

Drawing strength from Lucas’s steady presence, I gathered my courage. I used my free hand to push aside the skin just under my ear and reveal the slot. Without giving myself a chance to back down, I plugged the device in.

Hot electricity rushed and crackled from my neck all the way to my brain.

Program LuRecoverM 587$ detected. Run program?

“Go ahead and run the program when you detect it,” Lucas said.