Renegade (28 page)

Rejection. Betrayal. Anguish.

Joy. Love. Belonging.

Hunter, asking me to run away with him . . .

This time, the pressure exploded, and a thin fissure raced through the confinement. Beneath the demanding swell of my caged emotions, begging to break free, I felt the barrier crack.

“Holland, are you ready to concede yet?”

Silence from the monitor.

That’s it. I’ve almost got it—whatever you’re doing, it’s working. Don’t stop. Good or bad, just keep it powerful.

His words awakened a startling realization. Not just love—pain. Not just joy—fear. In order to have the good, you had to also take the bad, because without the lows, the highs wouldn’t, couldn’t, exist. All emotions were crucial to living. All of them.

Wisps of Mom’s blond hair, matted with blood. “I don’t regret any of this.”

In the fire, panicking, searching for Mom and Dad in a black curtain of smoke.

Joy. Love. Belonging.

“Okay, then. Mila, fire.”

The pressure skyrocketed and the restraints splintered, just as my index finger twitched on the trigger. I saw Daniel’s eyes flutter closed, his mouth droop with sorrow. Waiting for the bullet to strike.

No!

My heart froze, and terror clawed down my spine. I was going to be too late.

Mom. Hunter.
Love.

Got it!
Lucas exclaimed.

Security breach detected,
flashed the red warning in my head.

Just as my finger pulled the trigger.

A
split-second rush of static in my head, like the roar of a river. An instant rise in pressure. Then, release, as the chip exploded.

I jerked my hand to the side, away from Daniel. The bullet whizzed past his ear.

It wasn’t until the feelings surged into the void, flooding me with a chaos of emotion, that I realized how much I’d missed them.

“How the—” Quinn began. She shook her head angrily. “Never mind. Auto-shutdown, activate.”

It took a second to dawn on me what was happening, and that second cost me. By the time I understood, it was too late to fight the incoming command.

Just before it happened, I thought I heard Lucas.
Mila? Are you okay?
But it was so faint—almost like a buzz. Then the buzzing grew, louder and louder . . . until a peaceful silence took it all away.

I was walking by the water, cotton candy sticky on my lips. My mom’s hand ruffled my hair, which was thick with the salty scent of the sea. “Someone’s going to need a bath tonight,” she teased.

I whirled to stick out my tongue, and thrust my pink-sugared hands forward as if to grab hers.

She squealed and tried to run, but my dad grabbed her from behind, laughing. “Get her, Sarah. You know how she loves to be sticky.”

I giggled as Mom tried to free her hands, but was distracted by someone yelling. A boy. He wasn’t yelling my name, but it seemed . . . familiar.

“Mila! Mila, can you hear me? Wake up!”

I turned back to Mom and Dad, but they were already fading. The voice grew more insistent. “Mila!”

Panic crackled through me. I wanted my parents! Who was this person, and why had he taken them away?

Mom? Dad? I tried to shout . . . but nothing came. My parents’ faces faded, faded, merged into one new face, a boy’s. It looked familiar somehow, at home on the slowly disappearing boardwalk. Light blue eyes . . .

The scene vanished, leaving behind a searing heat.

Why was it so hot?

I opened my eyes . . . to a harsh glare. The sun. But way too bright for Virginia Beach.

My shoulder . . . it ached.

Then I saw a face, a boy’s—but not the one from my memory. Everything came rushing back. I didn’t have a mom and dad. I wasn’t Sarah.

Except for one tiny piece of me.

“Lucas?” I tried, but the voice that I summoned sounded all wrong. Mine, but not mine. My human voice was gone, replaced by the dispassionate, robotic version that spoke in my head. My android voice.

Horror swam through my limbs, flooded my mouth. I flinched, or thought I did, but I felt . . . nothing. No movement at all. I tried to turn my head; it wouldn’t budge. Frantically, I attempted to wiggle my fingers and toes. Nothing. It was as if they were no longer under my control.

The last events came rushing back, and with it, a crushing pain in my shoulder. Oh, god. Quinn. Hunter. The things I’d said to him, when my emotions were contained. Holland . . . wait. Holland’s face was the last thing I remembered seeing. Was that when Quinn shorted me? But why? And what had happened to everyone else?

My body stiffened, as if bracing for a blow. Why couldn’t I remember? The clutch of dread in my chest grew stronger, but I forced myself to remain calm. Patient. Just because I felt apprehensive about my memory lapse didn’t mean anything terrible had happened. The information would return. I just needed a few minutes to recover from the shock.

Despite my sound reasoning, a shudder wracked my body. 

There would be ample time later. Every single day.

“What . . . why can’t I move?” I said. Or at least, the smooth, digital version of my voice spoke.

Lucas shook his head. “Too many reboots in too short a time. It’s just going to take longer to get everything up and running. But don’t worry,” he said, hastily, “we will. I won’t leave you like this.”

I stared into his hazel eyes and saw nothing but determination. Confidence. No trace that he was lying. Lucas really believed he could fix me, and I believed in him. I studied him as best as I could. When I’d last seen him, he’d been bleeding, passed out. He looked none the worse for wear.

“This . . . has happened before. Without reboots. I’ve frozen up, for no reason. Called up memory fragments . . . of my mom. Of before.”

His head jerked up. “Before? You mean . . . before you were an android?”

At my nod, his eyes widened.
Wow
, he mouthed. He stared off into the distance for a moment, as if concentrating. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he finally said.

He leaned over my neck, holding some gadget that made a series of clicks. I saw his sandy hair, all mussed and lopsided as usual, and felt the first stirrings of genuine warmth I’d felt since . . .

Hunter’s face flashed through my mind, but his features were all contorted. A chill swept across my skin. Was the image real, or imagined? I shook off the image, determined to focus on the present. On what little I did know.

Lucas had rescued me, and for now, that had to be enough. I just hoped my memory would return. Soon.

Speaking of . . . “How did you get me away from Quinn and her men?”

Lucas’s head shot up, his eyes round with surprise. “Get you . . . ? Mila, I didn’t get you away. I mean, I was able to activate your tracer, and was on my way out to help . . . but then you moved. It took me two days to get to you, but I did.”

“Moved?”

Sweat drops balled on his forehead, and he reached up to wipe them away. His hand slid to his cheek, then his jaw, which he rubbed while gazing out into the distance. “I found you here. In the middle of the desert,” he said, sweeping his other arm wide. “They just . . . dumped you.”

Dumped you. Like an old TV that had stopped working.

But Lucas sounded less disgusted over their behavior than concerned.

He returned to his device, to the clicking. As I waited, a heavy weight settled in my chest. Something was off. Lucas was usually more irreverent, more awkward. Right now, he was neither of those things—just deadly serious.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. He flinched, and I knew I was right. He was hiding something. Maybe he was holding a grudge. He had plenty of reasons. “Holland didn’t find out about you helping us, did he?” My voice remained robotic, but rose in volume, which somehow managed to convey my rising concern. “Are you okay? Are you—”

“What? No!” Lucas said, looking alarmed at first. Then his expression softened, and he gazed down at me with an odd tenderness. “I’m fine, I promise.”

When he was satisfied I’d accepted his reassurance, he reached out, his hand hovering just above my cheek. “There’s, uh, hair. On your face. Do you mind . . . ?”

Now there was the awkward boy I remembered. “Go ahead.”

Gently, he pushed the strand back, tucked it behind my ear. His eyes were wary, uncertain.

“What is it?”

He sighed, glanced down at the device. “It’s just . . . I don’t get it. I don’t understand why they’d just . . . leave you out here. I’m trying to make sure they didn’t alter you in any way, or, I don’t know . . . steal something. That’s what I’m checking on right now.”

He went back to the device, moving down my arms and legs.

“Quinn messed with my circuitry. She could have done anything.”

“This will pick up anything unusual, but I still don’t understand why she would leave you out here. You were her vision.”

“Maybe she got pissed because we bypassed her emotion chip.”

He smiled. “Yeah, you didn’t turn out to be what they expected. But still it’s odd.”

He grew so quiet that I got antsy. “Anything?” I asked.

“Everything seems to check out so far. Now, I’m just going to insert this card into your neck port. I sort of . . . borrowed it from the lab before I left. It will run a systems check, make sure I didn’t miss anything. After that, we should have a better idea of when you’ll be able to move again.”

Systems check. Systems check. That reminded me—a lot of weird things had happened since I’d last seen Lucas. Maybe he had some kind of explanation.

I opened my mouth, but he was already brushing the hair away from my ear, exposing my port. The same one he’d introduced me to, back at the compound.

“This shouldn’t hurt at all,” he said, lifting the card, which was attached to the device in his hand by a thin cord. “You ready?” The skin around his eyes crinkled with worry, and I managed a tiny smile.

“Yes. Thank you. Thank you for everything. Without you . . .”

He shook his head. “But there is no without me, so there’s no sense in thinking about it.” His free hand went to his collar, rolling it in a way that had grown familiar to me, even in our brief time together. He was anxious about something.

“What?”

“It’s just . . . hang on.” Oh so gently, he inserted the card into my neck. A tentative smile formed on his lips, which grew in magnitude, lending a softness to his usually angular face. He gazed down at me, and though his eyes were pretty with their green and gold flecks, it was his inner beauty that lighted them. “It’s going to sound really lame, but I’m just so glad—”

Inside my neck, a spark of awareness, a surge of electricity. A sunburst of hot pain. I jerked, my face twisting, and I couldn’t help but cry out, just a little.

“Mila, what the . . . what’s wrong?”

Through hazy eyes, I watched Lucas punch frantically at buttons as the heat surged into my fingers, my toes. Screamed through my brain like someone had lit every last neuron on fire.

Dimly, I realized that it shouldn’t hurt. The underlying sensations were exactly what I’d experienced every other time a card or USB or any type of digital device had been plugged into one of my ports. So why the pain now?

“Jesus. Hang on, I’m going to figure this out. I just . . . wow, look at that. I can’t even . . . but that’s a good thing . . .”

Suddenly, my arms twitched, and with a heavy, sweeping rush of energy, I could move them again. And my head. And legs.

“Hey, I can move.” I frowned, feeling a strange sensation on my abdomen. I lifted my shirt partway, revealing a long incision. “Looks like someone tried to steal a kidney—bet they were disappointed,” I joked.

But I shut up when I saw Lucas’s face. Despite the last words he’d uttered, the color had drained from his cheeks, leaving him paler than usual, and his hands trembled. His mouth opened and closed, his throat clenched as he swallowed, then his mouth opened again.

“No. No, no, that can’t be . . . damn it!” Lucas’s words were choppy, choked.

In my head, a red light flashed.

But despite that seemingly good news, Lucas bowed his head before me. And then he shocked me by completely abandoning his usual calm and collected self by viciously slamming the device to the ground. Sand flew up, the tiny particles spraying like water.

I pushed to a kneel and reached for his shoulder, feeling his sharp flinch as my fingers landed. But he didn’t pull away. Instead, he took an audibly deep breath and forced his head up.

And his incredible, sweet, compassionate eyes glittered with moisture.

“Just tell me,” I whispered, as sharp talons of dread dug into my back.

“I . . . ,” he started, shuddered, then tried again. “Do you want the good news, or the bad news first?”

“Good news.” If only because he looked like he could use some.

He drew in a deep breath. “So, you remember that body scan we did, back in D.C.?”

At my sigh of impatience—did he think I could possibly forget?—he continued. “Well, things have changed since then.”

“What things?”

“The good news . . . the good news is that some of your live cells appear to be regenerating.”

Regenerating. Which meant—

“That explains the newfound pain. You’re becoming more human.”

More. Human. Everything I’d ever wanted . . . coming true. It felt like too much to believe and yet, deep inside me, a spark fired to life.

But I couldn’t let it flare too brightly yet. “And the bad?” Though surely, surely it couldn’t compare to the good. Lucas had to be overreacting—

“Well, Holland must have rigged the scan, too. He wanted to hide something.”

He paused, closed his eyes—as if drawing strength. When he opened them again, he reached forward, taking my shoulders in his hands.

“I know why the V.O. ditched you. Holland . . . Holland hid a bomb inside you.”

Around us, there was nothing—just mounds of sand and the whisper of the intermittent breeze, and in the distance, a few stray cacti. Lucas was talking, but for once, I couldn’t focus. All I could see were Quinn’s and Samuel’s faces, frowning at something that showed up on my abdominal scan. All I could hear was that one word, beating a terrifying drum in my soul.

Bomb. Bomb.

Bomb.

“There’s more. The V.O. must have primed it, somehow. The slightest provocation could set it off now.”

I could feel a heart that wasn’t really there, a pulse that didn’t really exist. But somewhere, inside my body, an actual bomb ticked away, and I couldn’t feel that.

“How long?” I whispered, not wanting to know and needing to know, all at the same time. “How long do I have, once it’s set to go off?”

Lucas looked at me helplessly. “Two hours.”

Two hours.

Lucas grabbed my hand, and I clung to it, fighting back the mounting despair. All this time, I’d been searching for the truth, when really, I should have known.

The most important truths were the truths I held inside me. Other truths could be manipulated, distorted. In some cases, even memories lied.

But the truth in my heart was pure. Real. And right now, it was telling me one thing.

I didn’t want to die.