A Plain Jane Book One (32 page)

In fact, it simply stood
behind Jane, and whenever Jane moved, it moved too, but not in a
way that suggested it now wanted to kill her; it just let her
always keep herself between it and Lucas.

It was using her as
protection.

Lucas slammed his teeth
down, not caring that it sent an unpleasant jolt all the way
through his jaw.

It seemed a lot of things
used Jane.

‘
Get out of the way,’ he snapped
again, knowing that it wouldn't work, but needing to speak out loud
anyway. Plus, even if the implant wasn't going to listen, at least
Jane, the real Jane, could hear him.

‘
Lucas,’ she replied, but she
didn't say anything else, maybe she didn't have anything to add, or
perhaps the implant would only let her repeat his name.

He set his jaw even
firmer.

‘
Lucas,’ the assassin robot,
Element 52, as it apparently called itself, now repeated his name.
While the electronic voice had a detached edge, Lucas could swear
it still sounded interested. According to all the files that Lucas
had ever read on assassin robots, they could not talk. Fair enough
they could growl, scream, yelp, and make any kind of frightening
sound they wanted in order to scare their prey, but they could not
speak. Perhaps it was because the original designers had decided
that such a feature wasn’t needed, and would simply take up
processing power and room that should be devoted to far more lethal
skills and abilities. Or perhaps it was because assassin robots
never had anything interesting to say: having single-track minds,
as it were. Yet this one spoke.

‘
Lucas,’ Element 52 repeated
again. ‘We must leave, Lucas Stone, something is coming,’ its voice
pitched up and down with every word, giving the impression that it
was surprised and worried. ‘We must leave; it will try to hack us
again,’ he added.

Jane started to walk
backwards towards it, her arms still held out wide, and her eyes
still completely pressed shut.

‘
Jane, don't do it. I have
this under control. Honestly, don't do it,’ he begged, knowing that
the implant was now not only exerting control over Jane, but
obviously threatening to finally take her away from him. He
couldn’t let that happen. ‘
Jane
.’

‘
Suggest you come; more
susceptible to hack on surface,’ Element 52 said, its voice still
pitching up and down, ‘plus, we need you.’

Lucas didn't move, and he
certainly didn't put his gun down, shrug his shoulders, and go with
the assassin robot because it told him that it needed
him.

He just kept his gun
raised and tried to think.

‘
Running out of time,’ the
assassin robot said, its voice still pitching up and down, and
giving it, despite its reputation, a far more human countenance, as
if it were in fact genuinely frightened about what would happen
next.

‘
Lucas,’ Jane managed. Once again
she didn't say anything more, just his name.

He gritted his teeth, and
he made his decision. He rolled to the left, attempting to get a
clear line of sight of the creature. Yet the second he did was the
second Jane moved. It was also the second that his armor stopped:
once again the exact same force that had come over him moments
before, re-exerted control. Lucas faltered, stumbling forward, but
it was too late: Jane had turned around and jumped in the ocean. A
second later the assassin robot followed. But not after actually
taking a moment to shake its head at Lucas, as if it were somehow
disappointed in him.

T
hen the two of them were gone. There was
no choking or blustering, no thrashing around as if Jane were
drowning, and Lucas knew that now the implant had full control over
her body it was probably swimming with the efficiency of an
underwater jet ship.

He tried to gain control
of his armor again, but he couldn’t. He pleaded with his body to
move, but it wouldn’t. He simply stumbled down until his knees met
the ground, until his palms landed either side of them, his head
becoming so heavy that it now dropped between his
shoulders.

‘
Jane,’ he managed to say before
he lost complete control over his armor.

T
hen Lucas stopped, or his armor stopped.
He couldn't move. Hands and knees on the ground, face directed at
nothing but the path, the great Lucas Stone could no longer put up
a fight.

Jane

She was swimming,
actually swimming, and certainly not drowning. She didn't have
control over her body, she knew that
it
was once again doing whatever it needed to get her out of
trouble. Though she was screaming in her mind with everything she
had to go back to Lucas, it wasn’t letting her. Instead she was
swimming down, apparently with no need for air, the black shape of
Element 52 close to her left, the compulsion to drown herself all
but a distant, distant memory.

They swam down for untold
minutes until they finally reached the very bottom of the seafloor.
Jane didn't know a great deal about oceans, but she did understand
that under this much water there should be considerable pressure.
Pressure of the kind that a soft fleshed, unsupported body should
not be able to withstand. Oh, and there was a pressing little fact
that she didn't seem to need air anymore.

T
he static was back. Oh boy was the static
back. It was absolutely ringing in her head. In fact, it was such
an overpowering sensation that she was having trouble focusing on
the fact she was now swimming unaided, all the way to the bottom of
the ocean floor, even though she couldn't actually
swim.

She just wanted it to
stop. She needed it to go away.

Finally she saw a black
hatch on the seafloor before her through the shadowy, murky depths
of the water.

Element 52 darted forward,
its tail latching around some kind of handle, until it pulled back
and a door opened.

Jane swam
forward.

The static was now
everywhere. It was all she could hear and it was all she could
see.

She was no longer aware of
where she was going or what she was doing, she was only aware of
the static.

Jane blanked out. The
static took over.

Chapter 20

Lucas Stone

He didn't know how long he
knelt there, body hunched over, armor forcing him to remain
completely still. He tried everything, everything in order to get
it to move. He ran every single command he could think of,
attempting to use every emergency protocol that he’d ever been
taught in order to turn the armor off. None of that worked. He
could not regain even a miniscule amount of control.

T
he more he remained immobile, the further
Jane got away from him. No,
ran
away from him.

Who knew where she was by
now? Still in the company of the assassin robot no doubt. And who
knew what it would do to her?

Lucas’ arms were tired,
his shoulders aching from fatigue. His body was in such an awkward
position, but he could not move it in order to alleviate any of the
strain. He couldn't even use his com-line to make a call, to try to
find some help. No, all he could do was remain exactly as he was,
almost soldered to the spot.

I
nside his armor at least he could move his
face and his mouth. He repeated her name over and over again, swore
at himself, swore at his armor. None of it helped of course; he
could rail and shout all he wanted, but the armor was far more
powerful than Lucas was.

He wasn't aware of how
much time had passed, but as it wound on, his body growing more
fatigued as he resigned himself to the fact Jane was now too far
away for him to catch up, he considered doing something he’d never
had recourse to do in the past. He considered giving up. After all,
there was nothing he could do. He had tried everything, and
everything had failed. So now there was only one more option: stop
trying.

Lucas fought with the
demon of surrender for countless more minutes, until finally he
just closed his eyes, clutched his teeth together, and tried one
last time to get his armor to move.

There was a sound behind
him.

Lucas moved. No, Lucas
absolutely snapped up. All agility and control back, he punched to
his feet so quickly that he jumped into the air almost half a
meter.

The sound from behind, the
footsteps, finally neared, and a person suddenly dashed in front of
him. ‘Are you all right, security officer?’ the person
asked.

Lucas stumbled backwards,
breathing heavily, moving his arms up and down as he clutched his
hands into fists. Then he turned his palms towards his face and
stared at them, or stared at the armor.

‘
Security Officer,’ the person
repeated, ‘can I assist you in any way?’

Lucas stared at his hands
for a few more precious seconds, wondering if they would suddenly
stop working again, and then finally looked up.

There was an Endurian
before him. A very elegant, tall, red-skinned race that resembled
humans, but had two stunted horns coming from their head and a pair
of relatively inoperative wings tucked neatly at their back. This
Endurian was dressed in a tunic that suggested he worked for the
Galactic Senate.

‘
Are you okay, security officer?’
he asked again.

Lucas managed a nod. ‘We
have . . . there's a situation. There is an assassin
robot on this planet. We need to contact planet-wide security now
and alert them. We need to redirect all scanners in order to root
out its bio signature,’ Lucas was aware he was panting, that he was
trying to cram his words all out at once, but he didn't stop
himself. He was just happy that he had some kind of control over
his armor again. He even set his helmet to transparent, satisfied
that it obeyed his every command.

T
he Endurian suddenly blinked quickly as no
doubt he recognized that the security officer before him was none
other than Lucas Stone.

‘
You are here,’ the man said,
voice now a whisper, ‘but where is your friend?’

‘
Sorry?’ Lucas asked quickly,
even shaking his head. ‘The security—’

‘
I understand, Mr. Stone, and I
will make the calls immediately.
However . . . ’ his eyes darted back and forth,
looking all the way over the path as if he were checking for
something. ‘I was expecting there to be someone else with you.
Director Karta said—’

‘
You're the contact,’ Lucas said
through a hasty breath. ‘An assassin robot has got her.’

‘
The assassin robot didn't kill
her on the spot?’ The Endurian asked so quickly Lucas had to wait
for his brain to catch up.

‘
No,’ Lucas kept on trying to
catch his breath. ‘She . . . I don't think it is
going to kill her yet. But we need to get to her as soon as we
can.’

The Endurian paled and just for
a moment a flicker of anger seemed to dance between his eyes, but
as soon as it occurred it stopped. Then he simply shook his head.
‘What horrible news. We must make the relevant security calls at
once. Quickly, come inside.’

The Endurian gestured
towards the massive building before them.

Lucas followed.

Jane

She woke up.

She had been
asleep.

Or something like
that.

I
t was the first time Jane could remember
that her consciousness had ever been interrupted for so long; the
incident at Central Shipyards when she’d been stunned hadn't drawn
on as long as this. It was such a strange, strange feeling to
adjust to. She had no experience with it; she didn’t sleep, and
she’d certainly never swum to the depths of the ocean only to black
out due to lack of oxygen.

I
t was the weirdest of sensations. It felt
like a part of her was missing; that her memory had been edited,
that her awareness had been snapped off for a couple of
hours.

Yet
now she was awake. More importantly, she
was not alone.

She was in some kind of
chamber, and it appeared to be made of rock, like a cave. The stone
was crafted and molded here and there, a doorway to her left, a
semblance of a ceiling above her.

There was also something,
or someone, right in front of her.

She narrowed her eyes, her
vision blurry.

‘
Thank the gods of Hoya, you are
awake,’ whatever creature was in front of her clutched a hand to
its chest.

T
he more Jane stared at it, the more her
vision started to correct itself, and she finally realized it was a
Hoya. The same elegant, blue, tailed race to which Mandy
belonged.

Yet
unlike Mandy, this Hoya was neither
ignoring Jane for being boring, nor draping itself over her
shoulders as it waited for something exciting to happen to her. Oh
no, it was just standing right in front of her, its wide, beautiful
blue eyes open as far as they could be, as it stared down at Jane
with clear wonder.