What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance (19 page)

“Not precisely. It’s a synthetic brain, built in a lab, not taken from anyone. We would need to install all of her memories and personality traits into it and stuff, but we could certainly put a brain into her. Unfortunately, repairing the cells will only put a bandage on the damage. The cells have already started to leak, which means they will only continue damaging the mechanical brain.”

“So I could feel, and I could smell, and I could taste?” Cass asked.

Doctor Stephenson smiled. “Yes, you’d be a ‘real boy’.”

Cass huffed out a laugh. She couldn’t help it. Everything she’d wanted, and somehow Natalia had given it to her in the process of trying to take it all away.

“I take that as a yes?” Doctor Stephenson said.

“Yes!” Brandon told him. “Yes, we will do it!”

“Now, it will take a couple months to build the brain, and we will need you to come here from time to time so we can copy your systems to the brain. Once it’s installed it will take several months for you to learn to use it, so you better plan for that.”

“Of course!” Cass said, nodding.

“For now, I’d like you to spend the night here after I fix your cells. I want to be sure that you’re okay before I release you.” Doctor Stephenson smiled at her. “How does that sound?”

“Great,” she said. She couldn’t stop smiling.

“Alright, I will have Sara come back in and get you ready for the repairs. It will be a quick procedure. After that we will show you to a room for you to spend the night.” He turned to Brandon. “You’re more than welcome to stay with her, if that will help calm her?”

“Thank you,” Brandon said.

The doctor left.

“So what do you think about that?” Brandon said.

“What do
you
think about it?” Cass asked, gripping his hands tight.

“I think it’s the first time that I’ve seen you smile without fear shadowing your joy, so I like it.”

“It will make me nearly human, and away from Natalia forever,” Cass said. “Free from programming and control.”

Brandon was nodding. “You know that I don’t need this, right? Don’t do this for me.”

“Pfft, I’m totally doing this for me!” Cass said.

They both laughed.

“We should lay off the Natalia thing for now,” Brandon said. “Until we know for sure that you’re okay.”

Cass was shaking her head.

“Cass, you’re free from her. Can’t you just leave her in the past and move forward?”

“I can’t really explain it,” Cass said. “I have to know that she’s stopped. I have to know that she can’t do this to anyone else. If we bring this to light, maybe stricter regulations will be put on ownership?” Cass shook her head. “I’m not doing this because of the programming. Or at least I don’t think I am. I’m doing this to know that we are
both
safe from her.”

Brandon sighed, and then frowned.

“Besides, you will be there. Mathilda will be there. We will be in public. Nothing will happen to me,” Cass said. “My programming will be different, her EMP won’t affect me.”

“I don’t like it,” Brandon said. “Your cells are already damaged. You heard him, this is just a bandage. If something goes wrong, she could kill you.”

“Kill,” Cass said. “Can you kill an automaton?” she wondered.

“Don’t be foolish, of course you can,” he said.

She smiled. “Before long I will be more like a human anyway. I better start learning to care more for my wellbeing.”

“Does that mean we are going to leave her alone?” he asked.

Cass frowned.

Before they could discuss it further Sara came in with a gown. “Alright, I hear someone is getting fixed up and re-programmed?”

“That would be me,” Cass said with a smile.

“We will need to turn you off for this procedure, so your friend will have to say goodbye now,” Sara said. “He can rejoin you in recovery.”

Brandon kissed her hand and stood to leave.

“Wait,” Cass said, pulling him to her. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Listen, you will be fine, I will see you shortly,” Brandon said.

The door closed behind him. Sara watched him go, and then smiled at Cass.

“Well, with Doctor Stephenson helping you, your relationships with humans will hopefully only deepen. Alright, now here we go.”

Sara opened the hatch on her side, and darkness intruded on the moment.

“Jack is dead?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” the man said. “What did you gain from all of this anyway?”

“You weren’t hired to ask questions, just to make sure the machine did what I paid you for her to do.”

The man didn’t say anything more. He tampered with something at Cass’s side for a moment, and then he was gone. A door closed somewhere to her right.

“Cass,” Janet said, leaning down. “I’m sorry to have done this to you.”

“Jack was one of many standing in the way of your rights,” the woman said. “Sure, he loved you and Olivia, but he never truly saw either of you as equal. We need that equality. You will help us get that.”

Janet was silent for a moment.

“Now you will leave your family and go to another. I’m sorry for the hardship you will endure there, but when you are done with this human, you will be a powerful voice for our equal rights.”

What did she mean? What had Cass done?

Her vision wavered and suddenly she wasn’t staring up at the light swinging above her head any longer. Instead, she was standing before the open door between the garage of her old home and the kitchen.

Her hands shivered. She knew what she had to do now. She knew what had to happen. The reason for her programming. The same reason she’d been sealing up the windows for the last couple weeks when everyone was gone for the day.

To make sure no one escaped.

Again, she was outside the kitchen, in the garage, but this time she was closing the door behind her. The fire she’d created ate away at the interior of the house. Voices rose up in terror, in fear.

“No!” Cass screamed, coming up out of the darkness of her dreams. Brandon jumped and came to her side, rubbing his tired eyes and blinking back sleep. “No,” Cass moaned, slumping down to the bed. A machine beeped beside her.

“What is it?” Brandon asked. “Cass, what’s wrong?”

Cass could only shake her head. That terrible woman. Her insides felt like knots, remembering what she’d done. For the first time since she could remember, Cass truly wished she could put a memory behind her. She wished she could
un-
remember something.

She shook her head. “Just a nightmare,” she said, gripping his hand tightly. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “We can’t turn Natalia into the police.”

“Thank God. I don’t want you going anywhere near her. I have you safe now, and the doctor said that you’re fragile right now, she could do so much damage to you,” Brandon said.

“No, she has to pay, but the cops likely won’t believe me anyway.” Cass looked up into Brandon’s eyes. Desperation tightened his lids. His lips hardened into a line.

“What do you have in mind?”

It had taken several days for Brandon to agree that Cass was well enough to confront Natalia.

Now she stood outside the small office building, staring up at its five floors. Brandon stood beside her, his hand held loosely in her own. Mathilda was behind her. She wasn’t precisely sure what the old automaton was going to do for them, but it was nice having her along.

The building was an old one made of red brick. The dismal sun shown gray against the sparkling windows. Overhead hover cars whirred about, but none parked on the building, there wasn’t space above. The roof of the building had been converted to a garden in an effort to clean the air.

“We aren’t going to accomplish anything just standing here,” Mathilda said.

Brandon knew the way. He lead them through a side door and into a pretty non-descript hallway with white walls and cream carpeting. The five floors housed various offices, but the top floor was dedicated to In Style magazine. The magazine Natalia’s father owned. The magazine Natalia worked for.

They boarded the elevator and Cass closed her eyes as Brandon entered their destination.

The elevator hissed up through the floors of the building. Cass rested against the wall of the lift, her hands clasped tightly over her chest. She was all abuzz with circuits and impulses. Her brain, as it were, seemed to jump with each soft ding indicating a new floor overcome.

She didn’t appear nervous, but she thought that’s what she would be if she could be such a thing. Natalia had been her captor for so long, to think that it was all going to end today. It wasn’t something she could fully comprehend.

“Nervous?” Brandon asked, putting his arm around her.

“Just a little,” Cass said.

“Don’t worry now,” Mathilda said to her. “There’s not a thing she can do to you.” The old robot had dressed more conservatively today. She still wore a head wrap, but it was black, as was the rest of her outfit. It fit in with the posh building.

“We’re almost there,” Brandon said. “I know right where her office is. We will go in there and search for the device.”

“Where will we even look?” Cass asked. The lift dinged for the fifth floor, and the doors whooshed open. Brandon steered her out the doors and into a dimly lit white hallway. It ran straight ahead before branching off in three different directions. At the end of the hall straight ahead was a desk with a pretty brunette receptionist.

“She has a compartment in her desk where she keeps stuff she doesn’t want people to know about. It’s hidden. I’ve seen her open it when she didn’t think I was looking. It will most definitely be in there.”

Mathilda trailed behind them, down the carpeted corridor. The walls were hung with large banners of models in all their glory. Some of them wore illuminated cyborg parts. Cosmetic surgery had taken a strange turn some years back when robotics became more esteemed. Now the rich and famous had new ways to accessorize, and more things they could lose other than wrinkles, love handles, and unsightly noses. At least they had more control over how perfect their legs were, or their arms. It was a perfection that regular cosmetic surgery couldn’t touch.

Cass stared at one model who had her leg removed and replaced with a crystal leg equipped with red lighting so her leg glowed whenever she put weight on it. In the picture she was poised on that leg that shown wickedly against the black backdrop and her black chain-mail wedding dress.

Robots trying to be human and humans trying to be robots. Go figure.

“This way,” Brandon said.

Cass followed him down the left hand hallway. The walls here were a rich cherry wood. The offices were all equipped with tall windows that looked out on to the hallways of the fifth floor. Most of the doors were closed, and some of them had blinds drawn down tight for privacy.

Despite where she was, Cass was already starting to feel more at peace. There was something about all that dark wood surrounding her, and the muted lights, that made her feel less tense.

“Here,” Brandon said, standing outside the door to one office.

It was surprisingly small, not something Cass would have imagined Natalia would work in. Especially since her father was the CEO of the magazine. Despite being small, it was decorated lavishly with flowers and lavender drapes and accessories.

“Mathilda, will you keep watch?” Cass asked.

The older robot nodded and took up a spot beside the door.

They entered the room. Cass didn’t want to go behind the desk. For some reason, despite having her programs reconfigured, she thought of Natalia as her owner still, or at least someone she should respect. For that reason, she didn’t want to go behind the desk.

“Don’t worry,” Brandon said. “I will look for it.”

He slipped around behind the desk and pulled her chair out. It amused Cass that no matter how many years they had gone through and how many technological advances that had been made, that people still used things like desks and chairs. There was little need for them now, most of the computers were
inside
people.