Single Wired Female (Wired for Love Book 2) (2 page)

She whirled to see if he had followed her and this proved to be a mistake. He grabbed her throat and held her up, then placed a cold, battery-shaped object beneath her chin. The object sent a slight jolt through her body and the world went black almost instantly. It wasn’t the same blackness that she experienced during sleep. This blackness felt permanent and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. She probed for a memory to see if she could access it but even that was no longer accessible to her.

She’d finally been caught after so many years of hiding and living amongst the humans. She processed the man that had gotten to her but there was nothing familiar about him. She pushed her mind back to her escape from the store. She had passed by many people on the street but none of them had shown any interest in her.

There was the park beneath the bridge and the strange man who had called her Judith. He had frightened her with the way he looked, and he did seem different from the other homeless people that lived down there. He wasn’t homeless, she surmised, and he must have picked up on the fact that she was a synthetic person.

If he was with a government agency, what was his plan?
she wondered.
Am I to be broken down and reassembled as a sex worker?

She thought on this for a time but it soon became increasingly difficult to focus.
That won’t work; I’m not meant for that,
she thought.
Experiencing life is what I was built to do.
This thought weighed heavily on her as she remembered her creator’s final words:

“Never let them catch you, Trish, never let them take you away.”

She felt like a failure, a foolish failure. All of his efforts to keep her safe had been thrown away with her carelessness. He had big dreams for her before he passed, and she had learned his plans and intended to follow them through. She was to be a beacon of light for artificial life forms and she—with all of her experience, love, and human qualities—would eventually create more androids like herself.

Brad Barkley had seen the world as an ugly place. A hell for those who lacked the looks that were deemed “normal” and a nightmare for the impoverished and under-privileged. With synthetic people built to be void of judgment, he saw a way to fix these human issues.

Tricia began to have a hard time putting thoughts together and the blackness grew thicker as her ability to process anything diminished.
This is it
, she thought.
It’s finally happening. I’m about to be disassembled and reprogrammed
.

Bonnie O’Neal woke up to the sounds of sirens and fingers adjusting something on her throat. She couldn’t open her eyes but she could hear the noises all around her, and she knew that she was on the street.

She felt around and her fingers found cushion; it was the smooth texture of bed linen and a number of tubes were running along it to ... suddenly hands, soft but firm, took hold of her exploratory hands and placed them back to her sides. She wanted to panic, to scream for her eyesight to return, but then someone was whispering, “Just relax.”

From the sounds and movement that followed next, she surmised that she was being flown somewhere. She felt the pressure of bandages on her face and she couldn’t feel her legs. It was taking everything within her not to panic but then she made to scream out and all the noise went silent and the feeling disappeared. A few moments later the noises returned and she was lying in a hospital bed, watching men and women come in and out of her room.

There was no transition. Why was there no transition?
she thought and screamed inwardly at the entire situation. It was as if she had woken up on a roller coaster that was going off the rails. She wanted control—no, she needed control—but nothing was making sense and—

“How did I get here?” she asked a muscular young nurse with a crop of black hair and kind brown eyes.

“Morning, Bonnie,” he said with a smile, and kept on with his duties as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Are you going to answer me? I need to know. How did I get here? Where is—” she trailed off for a second when she realized that her boyfriend’s name would not come to her, no matter how hard she tried. Did she really have a boyfriend or was it just a guy she was dating? These details were missing and she knew that something was wrong.

The man saw her struggling and stopped to watch her. “Bonnie, you ask us the same question every morning,” he said. “You’re recovering and I know that it’s hard, but you ask us the same questions day in and day out.” He laughed nervously as she stared at him in disbelief. “You ready for your breakfast?” he asked with the same genuine yet sarcastic smile that he hadn’t lost the entire time they had been talking.

“Sure,” Bonnie said reluctantly as she watched him go over to a large silver cabinet on the wall. He punched in some codes to select her food, and then the door opened up to a stack of boxes. She felt stronger and was able to move her legs, but she noticed that she was tethered to the bed with tubes. She couldn’t remember anything, not the nurse or the room. Her last memory was of being blind and the uncomfortable ride to the hospital.

“So, nurse—”

“It’s Peter,” he replied, then stopped what he was doing to look at her.

“Sorry, Peter, I’m a little disoriented this morning. Can you tell me why I’m here? All I remember is going to bed and then waking up inside of an ambulance with bandages on my face.”

“It wasn’t an ambulance, it was an emergency pop and lift. You were shot up pretty badly and in critical condition. You poor thing, you’ve got a few lapses in your memory,” he said.

So he thought that I was asking the same questions as a game?
she wondered, then asked, “How long will I be in here?”

“Not sure but it shouldn’t be long. The doctors are doing everything they can to make sure of that,” he said.

He handed her a box and she opened it, revealing a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and a packet of orange juice. She asked about leaving and was told that it would be soon. She was then treated to television and the gift of the remote.

“Ooooh, thank you!” she remarked sarcastically when Peter reminded her that there were over 100 programs she could choose from. He winked at her with a smirk when she said this, and she could tell that he found her amusing. When he was gone she found that she missed him; she was all by herself with the powder blue walls and stark white ceiling to keep her company.

Looking around the hospital room, Bonnie tried to get an idea of what had happened to her. She couldn’t remember much of anything. She knew that she was a senior director with Eras Innovations, but she had been let go and was doing contractual work for them.
So it’s my short-term memory that is shot,
she thought,
but where’s my childhood, my years as a young woman? I can’t remember that, either
.

She was a divorcee, which was something she remembered. A legal battle and a lot of money invested in lawyers had rewarded her with the house, the car, and the majority of their assets. Ronald, the man she had called husband for over a decade, had disappeared after the divorce but now she wondered if it was he that caused her to be in this situation.

Could it have been Ronald who had attacked her? It would make sense given the nasty fights they used to have. The legal battle had broken him and she had learned that he was homeless. She had intended to reach out to him, to help in some sort of way. The wounds from the divorce and their personal attacks had scabbed over and healed in time. She didn’t see him as the type to attempt to kill her but she couldn’t rule anything out.

But what if it was a random, senseless attack from a stranger? A part of her hoped that it was. She stared at the television whilst pondering this over but settled on the fact that the police would know.
The bandages were on my face
, she thought and looked over at a mirror to see if anything was different. It was still the face she knew, minus makeup, and everything was where it should be. As if worried that what she saw was an illusion, she reached up and felt her cheeks.

She gave the rest of her body a similar inspection, and though she couldn’t find the places where the bullets had struck, she encountered some discomfort when she moved her shoulders. What good had it served her to buy a gun? Whomever it was that shot her up had not given her any time to reach for it to defend herself.

She didn’t know how long she had been under or which hospital this was. She hadn’t even changed the television from the original channel it was on. She simply stared up at it as if she was watching, but she was looking past it into the ether of her mind.

When she had pulled together enough scattered thoughts to admit that she couldn’t remember the attack, she gave up on the effort and took some time to look around her room. There was a large silver panel on the wall behind her and above it was a readout of words and symbols that she couldn’t understand. The panel had a number of tubes running into her arms, and the whole thing made her feel like part of the machine.

From what she could see she was in a standard hospital room set up to be both comfortable and practical. There was a cushy, brown chair and another silver panel across from her. This she knew to be a refrigerator, since Peter had taken her food from it. An old, flat-paneled television descended from the ceiling and images of protests in another part of the world were being broadcast. The walls were a faded, chalky blue and the sole window exposed a large bank building where cars zoomed by every minute or so.

On the bedside table to her right was a tiny mirror, and she reached for it to take a closer look at herself. She was a mess, her brown hair combed poorly—probably by one of the nurses that didn’t know what he was doing. There were dark patches underneath her eyes and her blue irises had the appearance of eggs on a negative piece of film. She moved the mirror around, looking for scars, but the doctors had done a good job of concealing them.

She looked through the window and there was a corner of the sun peeking from the left side of the building. Bonnie didn’t know how much time had passed as she considered her situation but when a knock at the door brought her out of her stupor, her heart began to beat rapidly.

A police officer with a badge on his belt opened the door slowly. He had dark hair, fashioned in spikes like a teenager, but his five-o-clock shadow and bloodshot eyes revealed an adult’s life of little sleep.

“Mrs. O’Neal,” he said when their eyes met.

“Miss O’Neal,” she corrected him. “How may I help you, officer?”

“I’m Sal Minstretta, lead detective on your case. Looks like you’re making good progress in your recovery. How are they treating you in here? You getting enough to eat? That nurse I just ran into on the way in here…I wouldn’t trust that guy to get my mail,” he joked.

“I couldn’t tell you, my memory’s shot, but I’ve been treated royally today,” Bonnie said.

“Beautiful. That is what I wanted to hear, but let me not waste too much of your time. Look, I know that it is really messed up that I am here at all, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Yeah, I get it, I’ll help as much as I can, but I will warn you that my memory isn’t the best right now.”

“It’s okay, Miss O’Neal, just try your best,” Sal said and then looked around as if noticing for the first time that he had been standing in the doorway. He crossed the room in quick, panther-like steps and came up next to her bed.

He extended a hairy paw and she shook it quickly before pulling her hand back below the covers. He moved the chair to the side of her bed, pulled out a black box, and then placed it near her feet. He then produced something that looked like a pen and twisted it until a tiny blue light appeared at the top. He used the pen to prod at the space in front of Bonnie and wherever he poked an image was projected from the black box.

“Well, that’s a neat trick,” Bonnie said with delight, and Sal looked down at her and winked.

Several prods later and a total of five photographs stood suspended in front of her. Next to them he drew a square and a video appeared with the picture paused and ready to play.

“Alright, here’s what we got, Miss O’Neal—”

“Call me Bonnie, Sal. it’s only fair since I refuse to call you Mr. Minstretta or Detective,” she said.

“Okay, Bonnie, here’s what we got. These photos came from the surveillance cameras that monitor the neighborhood you live in. This particular one shows someone approaching your house and the drone followed him in order to see if he was up to no good. Now the odd thing is that when it got near your intruder it seemed to have shorted out or something. Expensive piece of machinery so it kept the feed. One time for modern robotics, right? Now tell me, can you recognize the guy from any of the shots?”

“Well it’s a little difficult since its dark and his back is turned on all of them,” Bonnie began.

“Yeah, but If you look at photo number three there, where he’s looking off to the side. Does he seem familiar in any way?”

“That’s my ex-husband, Ronald,” she said after a while, shaking her head as she felt her lips mouthing the words. The divorce had been brutal and he had every right to hate her, but to shoot her up inside of the home that they had built together? She didn’t know what to think.

“So what’s the video?” she asked suddenly and Sal seemed to grow darker when she did.

“Go ahead and play it,” he said rather gruffly, with an accent that she couldn’t place.

Bonnie lifted her small hand, extending her forefinger, and prodded the air where the video was. It began to play a scene from outside of her house and she recognized the area immediately. A cab floated in, settling near the curb, and a man and a woman stepped out. Their features were hard to make out since it was so dark but everything about him reminded her of Ronald. The man ushered the woman along as they approached the house. Then the feed stopped suddenly and the scene was frozen.

“Your shooter had a female accomplice by the looks of it, Bonnie. Ronald, your ex-husband, does he have a girlfriend or anyone that would have cause to do harm to you?” Sal asked.

“We haven’t spoken since the week after our divorce was final. If there was a chick out there to help him cook this up, I wouldn’t have the slightest clue who she is,” Bonnie said.

“Okay, thank you, Bonnie. You’ve been a tremendous help,” Sal said.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“Well, now you speed along your recovery and get better. As for me and Mr. Ronald, we’re gonna have ourselves a little chat, as soon as we can bring him in.”

When Minstretta left the room, Bonnie was in shock. She had known that Ronald blamed her for his life falling apart, but murder was not his style. It would be the last thing that he’d ever resort to. The Ronald she knew wouldn’t kill a bug.

She adjusted her body to face the window and watched the wide variety of cars that were floating by. They looked like a school of mechanical fish, masterfully zipping around one another whilst staying together, restricted by the invisible barriers of the upper highway.

Memories came to her of days in the past where she would impatiently activate the “running late” automation on her car. Now she wanted to be out there, flying above the busy city and looking out at her fellow commuters making their way to their jobs. It made her realize how much of her actual life she had taken for granted before the shooting. She had been a spoiled little girl in a woman’s body, with little patience for other people and tunnel vision for her bottom line.

Maybe this was the reason why she could only remember the work-related areas of her past. Perhaps the social areas were all so fuzzy because they didn’t exist. She had been a working machine with a failed marriage, a large bank account, and no people skills. If she were honest with herself, this was what she was. Who would care if a creature like her died? A tear trickled down the corner of her nose and she closed her eyes to sleep.