Girl From Above #4: Trust (6 page)

I rested my elbow on the table and massaged my temples.
Mass fucking murder.

“Why us?”

“You’re ex-fleet officers. You know fleet protocol should they stop you and search the harrier.”

It sounded about right, but it was bullshit.

“All you nice folks sitting around this table, you can issue the orders without getting your hands dirty, right? What’s a few more deaths to criminals like us?” I’d killed for less noble reasons, so had Fran, but we hadn’t killed innocents. We were bad, but not
that
bad.

I looked to my brother for help, but he didn’t quite meet my eyes. I figured I knew why. He walked the Island’s corridors as though he’d been here before. He sat at the far end of the table, perfectly comfortable. He knew these people. He was one of the Nine. For how long, I couldn’t be sure. If he wasn’t involved in concocting this plan at some level, then I was a fucking virgin. I’d have words with him, but not here.

“Give me some time to consider this.”

“There is no time to give you, Captain. Chen Hung might strike at any moment. We’re already prepping Francisca’s raptor. The ship will be flight-ready at universal five hundred hours. The Chitec transport is about to dock at Mimir. Events are already in motion.”

Fran spat something acidic in Spanish. She stormed from the room after that, leaving icy glares and uncomfortable murmurs in her wake. I couldn’t blame her.

“Tell your second to toe the line, Captain,” Aleksey advised.

I was tempted to tell him where he could shove his line. I stood, chewing on all manner of replies and bumped my fist against the table. These weren’t my people. I couldn’t fight them like I could Bruno or the Candes. This was a whole other game with a different set of rules.

“If we do this, me and my crew, we’re protected for life. If you even think of throwing us to the wolves when this is done, I’ll fuck you over so hard you’ll wish you were on that orbit station, yah hear?”

“Caleb-Joe …” Bren growled.

“And you?” He looked away. “Fuck you, Brother.”

I left the room, hot on Fran’s heels, and found her standing by the windows in the assembly room. She slipped into stride beside me as we walked on, heading anywhere, so long as it was away from the nice folks in their nice clothes issuing nice kill orders.

“Where’s One?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Her and the doc were already gone when I got out of there.” She lowered her voice as we approached a group of engineers. “We can’t do this.”

People flowed back and forth, paying us no mind, but my outlook of the Island had changed; this place had taken on a jagged edge.

I steered Fran into an empty storage room where we could talk away from prying eyes and nudged the door closed.

“All those people …” she whispered, slumping back against the wall.

She looked tired and beaten, nothing like the steely Fran who regularly kicked my ass. Her lips had paled and her eyes glistened with too much moisture. Shit, if she was losing it, that meant we really were in trouble.

“Look, we can do this.” Saying it didn’t make it easier. Words were cheap. “Getting through fleet to Janus should be easy enough with your raptor. Once there, we’ll figure something out.”

Her smile was a sorry, pitiful thing. “You know why they’re sending us, don’t you?”

She waited. I didn’t reply. We both knew why.

“Because we’re expendable. They don’t give a shit what happens to us. If we get caught, they’ll barely notice.”

I chewed on my lip and breathed deep to settle my rattling nerves. If I said no, there was no way in the nine systems the Fenrir Nine would let my crew leave. We knew too much.
Fuck.

I kicked the nearby shelving, shaking the stacks of cleaning equipment, and then threw Fran a worthless smile. “C’mon. When have we ever let the odds scare us off?”

“This is different. Say we do it, how do we live with that?”

“Whiskey, I reckon. A whole lot of whiskey.”

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “What if they’re wrong? What if Hung doesn’t want to shut the gates down?”

Stars are wishes and wishes are dreams.

“He’s a killer. They’re all killers. They don’t know any other way. He already killed thousands when he shut the main gate down.”

“We don’t know for sure that was him.”

“One saw what he is, what he’s done. I saw him. I’ve seen it kill. He—
it
is a monster.”

“One though? She’s different. Maybe Hung …” Fran trailed off, realizing she was grasping at hope.

One had slaughtered the active nine, and she had killed Creet, although that had been Lloyd’s fuckup. She’d killed others while escaping Ganymede with Jesse. One had no problem with killing. Besides Hung, she was probably the most dangerous synthetic alive. She
was
different, but without that unique part of her, she was the same as the others—just one more.

Fran bumped her head back against the wall and cast her gaze toward the ceiling. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

I splayed my hand on the wall beside her, crowding in close, and looked her in those pretty green eyes. “It’s easier if you don’t think about it. Shut it away, think about something else. Drink, fuck, do what you gotta do. Bury it so fucking deep it can’t touch you. And before long, you’ll forget what it was you were worried about.”

Her lips turned down at the corners. She closed her eyes and sighed. “Is that what you do?”

“It works.”
Or it did, until recently. Until One somehow made me look at myself through her eyes.
Now I had shit going on in my head, like not wanting to let her down, not wanting to let any of them down. Like this life and my place in it might actually mean something. That kinda thinking could get a man killed.

She met my gaze with a steady one of her own. “All right, Captain. We do this, but we do it right.”

“All right.” It was probably time for me to move back and give her space, but I didn’t feel much like retreating. Me and Fran, we had issues—enough issues for a head doc to get hard over—but the woman she was now, the woman looking back at me, the fighter, the survivor, I knew her. I just hoped there weren’t any more surprises up her sleeve.

“I need you, Fran,” I said quieter. I kept my arm braced and locked, maintaining enough distance to avoid her womanly distractions. “I need to know you have my back. If I’m going to fly a raptor into fleet territory, I can’t be worrying about you turning me in.”

Her smile grew and that sly humor flooded back into her eyes.

“I got your six.” She shoved away from the wall and nudged by me, smacking me on the ass as she went. “Always.”

There was the Fran who did whatever it took to get the job done.

Opening the door, she said, “And who says you’re flying? My ship, my rules, right?” She glanced back with a you-can’t-touch-this glean in her eyes. “I outrank you,
Captain
.”

“Aye,
Commander
,” I drawled, cracking a smile, but it didn’t last. I followed after her, wondering what lay ahead for us, for One, for the Nine and their “greater good.” There was one thing I knew for certain: that synthetic bastard Chen Hung was living on borrowed time.

T
he shuttle lifted
off the Island. I watched the massive ship shrink in the small window.

“Mimir landfall in twenty minutes,” the shuttle pilot announced via the internal comms.

Caleb would have tried to stop me. He would have told me that I didn’t have to go, that I had a choice. I would have seen fresh pain on his face, combining with the pain he tried so hard to hide from the world—the pain I’d seen in him from the beginning.

I had spared him from that goodbye.

There was no choice here, just logic. I wasn’t going for the Nine and their many motives, although I would help filter information back to them if I could. I didn’t follow any orders except my own and there was only one: Hung—and his synthetics—must be stopped. As one of them, I was uniquely suited to hunt among them. But beyond what I needed to do, I
wanted
to go back, to face him—Chen Hung.
Perhaps it was always meant to be this way.

I spread my hand on the shuttle’s small window. Water droplets jerked in streams on the outside, fracturing my view of the Island base.

There had been many lies in the Fenrir Nine’s meeting—and many layers of truth—but all who had sat around the table believed in their cause.

I’d seen only a fraction of the Fenrir Nine’s operation, but it was enough to know they had the infrastructure and numbers to take control
when
Chitec fell. Would life in the nine systems be better? That remained to be seen. Either way, the survival of the long-term nine systems wasn’t my objective. As Caleb would say, it wasn’t my fight. My fight was with the synthetic masquerading as a man, the synthetic who had billions of lives cradled in his artificial hands.

Chen Hung must be stopped.

Turbulence rocked the shuttle, jolting the little craft. Doctor Lloyd sucked in a sharp gasp. He was a man riddled with fears, a potential risk to the success of my objective, but his presence was necessary if I was going to return to Chitec without delay.

The shuttle banked sharply. Clouds swallowed my view of the Island, and I wondered if I would see Caleb again. What might it have been like to go with him on his excursion?
I might never know.

Gray clouds churned against the window.

Leaving him was the right thing to do.

I wished I’d sat with him awhile.

Stars are wishes and wishes are dreams.

Haley would have told me to stay, to hold his hand, to just
be
with him. I’d died and returned; I understood what it meant to leave much unfinished, to have it all ripped away. I would not be that powerless again.
I am One and I will live.

“One, you er … Are you okay? I mean, I just … I didn’t want …”

I slid my gaze to Doctor Lloyd. He was strapped rigid in a passenger flight chair. I couldn’t reach him without unbuckling my belt. But, should I wish it, he’d be dead before the pilot could safely land and attempt to stop me.

Lloyd swallowed. Fear flitted through his body’s vital signs. “You aren’t okay. I understand. Of course you’re not okay. But, I er … I brought you back. You. Not Haley …” He trailed off, bloodshot eyes restless.

“You do not need to concern yourself. You are perfectly safe while you’re an asset, Doctor Lloyd.”

Fran was correct. My lies were faultless.

We landed on a Mimir floating dock in the midst of dazzling daylight. I walked the boardwalk alongside Lloyd, my gaze wandering toward the branches of Mimir’s waterhomes. The sea lapped at the house trusses where Caleb and I had once hidden from fleet. He had held me in his arms to keep me warm. For a man so beaten by life, he harbored a gentler side few ever witnessed.

“For this to work,”
Doctor
Lloyd said, clutching his briefcase under his arm, “you must appear to be operating in your default state. The Chitec personnel must believe you’re obedient, or they’ll lock you down and ship you with the cargo.”

The sound of his shoes on the boardwalk beat out the same fast rhythm as his heart.

I slid my gaze farther down the docks to where a gray Chitec transport vessel squatted on its struts. Steam rolled off its shielding, curling like the yin-yang Chitec logo branded on the ship’s flank. I slid my hand to the back of my neck and ran my fingers over the same raised brand.

“Do you understand, One? Whatever they say, whatever they do, you must appear to be in your default state. It’s imperative we arrive at Janus with you in full control. If they shut you down, I may not be able to get to you in time to reboot you.”

I locked my default expression on my face. “Yes, Doctor Lloyd. I understand perfectly.”

He glanced at me. Once. Twice. His heart fluttered. I could break his neck before he took his next breath, but doing so would ensure Chitec reacted aggressively. It was imperative that I appear controlled. I had no desire for them to shut me down again.

Two Chitec personnel guarded the boarding pontoon, armed with pulse rifles. One woman. One man. Clad in gray from head to toe.

“Identification,” the woman barked.

Lloyd fumbled in his pockets. “I er …” He set his briefcase down and patted his coat. “I’m er … Lloyd. Doctor James Lloyd. I have my ID, just …”

The male guard’s eyes roamed over my body and face, lingering on the scars. Mid-thirties, I estimated. I couldn’t reach for the cloud to pull his full dataprint, but I conducted my own assessment. He had the same flat gaze I’d seen on Caleb and Brendan. A man who’d seen combat and wasn’t afraid to see it again. He certainly wasn’t afraid of me.

What does he see in my eyes?
Life? The desire to snatch that rifle from his hands and pull the trigger on him and everyone inside this ship simply for what they represented?

Lloyd found his ID with a brief exclaim and handed it over.

“This the rogue synthetic?” the woman asked, briefly scanning Lloyd’s credentials.

“Yes.”

She handed the ID card back to Lloyd. “Why’s it all cut up?”

“Huh?” Doctor Lloyd blinked.

“The synth.”

Lloyd stole a quick glance at me while I gazed into the middle distance. He brushed a thumb across his chin, swept his coat back, and planted his hands on his hips.

“Emergency repairs,” he replied, affronted. “She was rebuilt by my very hands—”

“Trouble with the rebels here?” the guard interrupted, checking the dock behind us.

“Yes, and for that reason, I’d like to get her—” The guard’s brow arched, and Lloyd quickly corrected. “—
it
inside the transport.”

“Did this unit complete its mission?”

“Mission?” Lloyd stammered.

The guard, all five feet two inches of her, turned to me. “Well, synthetic unit One Thousand And One, I was ordered to ask if you fulfilled your primary objective?”

Eliminate the Fenrir Nine
>

“Yes.”

“What objective?” Lloyd asked.

“I don’t know the details, Doc.” The guard shrugged. “I just ask the questions. Get it inside and loaded at the rear of the ship. You’ll be departing in a few minutes.”

As we climbed the ramp into the ship, the male guard’s gaze crawled back up. I anticipated I’d be seeing him soon.

Two additional guards blocked our entry.

“Put the synthetic in the back,” one of the guards grunted, lifting his lip in a sneer. I followed Lloyd between the narrow stacks of secured crates. After a few steps, when they believed we were out of hearing range, I heard, “After what those synths did, that one might meet with an accident on the flight back.”

“It’s already cut up. Technicians won’t notice a few minor modifications.”

What had the other synths done? Without access to the cloud, my knowledge was limited.

Lloyd
humphed
at the sight of the two rows of fold-down seats. “Well, this isn’t first class, that’s for sure.”

“What did the synths do?”

He stared at the chairs, ignoring me, but his racing heart gave him away. I waited. I had time.

He glanced at me side-on and gulped. “An unknown number of synthetic units appear to have malfunctioned. There were some deaths.”

He said
some deaths
the way I might have, but his flat tone came from the implications, not lack of empathy.

Roaming the cloud, I’d watched the synthetics eat breakfast at the family dining table, seen them play ball with nephews, and heard them laugh with their lovers. I’d also heard the
command override
that had breached their failsafes and protocols.
New instructions received from remote source.

Alone, drifting the cloud, I’d tracked that source back to Chen Hung’s towers. Like the failure of the main gate, Hung had flicked the switch and taken control. Was he still in control of those synthetics? Had I not broken free before the Mimir people tore into me, would I still be under Chen Hung’s control?

“Where are the rogue synthetics now?” I asked.

Lloyd pulled the folding seat down and sat awkwardly on its edge. “Destroyed by Chitec, I assume. They’ll probably retain one or two to ascertain the source of the fault.”

He couldn’t meet my gaze. “Chen Hung is the source.”

Lloyd puffed out a sigh and rubbed a hand down his face, leaving a tired expression behind. “I still can’t believe—”

Something cold and hard hit me in the back, knocking me forward. Instincts demanded I retaliate, but I couldn’t defend myself if I wanted to maintain the disguise of a blank synthetic. Protocols and failsafes—those shackles that no longer held me—would prevent a true synthetic from lashing out.

“Don’t!” Lloyd’s voice pitched high but the ship’s engines growled louder, muffling his protest.

“Don’t what, Doctor?” the male guard yanked my arm behind my back, bringing it up between my shoulder blades, and swung me around. “Can’t have the cargo riding with a passenger of your caliber, now can we?”

Lloyd stood, his eyes wide and his mouth open. “She er … it needs to stay with me.”

The vessel shifted around us. Its bulk trembled as it took to the air.

“Sit down and strap in, Doctor. I’ll be sure to secure your cargo.”

Lloyd had no authority here. He wouldn’t have known what to say even if he had. He watched, slack-jawed and impotent, as the guard tugged me backward through the cabin door.

The growl of the engines drowned out all but my thoughts. The guard pulled me deeper into the bowels of the cargo hold, where the floor shook and the air tasted of plastic cargo wrap and cleaning fluid.

He yanked me around and slammed a hand into my shoulder, driving me back against the plastic-wrapped stacks of cargo, and then, as though surprised it had been so easy, he took a step back and scratched at his rough chin, his derisive gaze running the length of my body.

“I was first on scene after a synth hit Janus Park.”

I didn’t hear the words, I couldn’t beneath the sound of the atmo-engines winding up, but I read them on his lips.

I looked blankly back at him. In order to get through fleet’s gate checks and onto Janus, I had to be #1001, a blank, a default synthetic. And so I gazed through the guard and his accusatory glare as if he didn’t exist.

“You ever seen a machine kill?” He flicked the safety off his rifle. “There’s nothing like it. It’s like … like watching Death at work. They don’t care. They just do.”

I care.

He lunged and grabbed my chin in his left hand. His face, up close, bore hundreds of fine lines and potted scars. His lips paled as he drew them back over his teeth.

“Chitec, the people that pay me to clean up their shit, say it was a glitch. A fucking glitch.” He pushed my head back and brought himself close enough that his breath warmed my cheek. “A glitch didn’t cut down fifty people with its bare hands. Women and children. Families. I got a family, synth. But you don’t. You’re just … just a
thing
.”

I understood his pain, his anger. I knew his grief. The one thousand synthetics were everything he’d seen at Janus Park. He was correct in his assessment.

“You look just like the one that slaughtered those people. You all look the same.”

Not all of us. I have scars, inside and out. Do you not see them?
I curled my fingers into fists.

“I don’t even know how to make you hurt for what you did.” He brought the rifle up to my shoulder and pulled the trigger. Engine noise drowned out the shot, and I shut the pain away as soon as it rushed in. I looked back at him, blank and unresponsive. Rage twisted his face. He couldn’t hurt me, not with physical pain.

When he punched me in the torso, I absorbed the impact, wrapped my processes around the pain, and packaged it away. But not all of it would retreat. The blow to my cheek whipped my head to the side.

“You’ll never be more than a tool!” Spittle dashed my face, and inside, the poise—the control snapped.

I cracked my knuckles across his jaw. Pain flashed up my arm. A punch wasn’t the most effective way of diffusing the situation. There were other, more immediate solutions. But it had felt …
good
.

He reeled backward, leaving himself wide open for a fraction of a second. I could have killed him. Had I been all the things he thought me to be, I would have. Processes whirred in my head: solutions to a scenario rapidly spiraling out of control. His eyes widened in shock and then narrowed with intention. He saw the killer in me.

I snatched the rifle from his fingers, cracked the butt under his chin, spun it, and shot him in the thigh. Data trilled through me. I wanted more.

He collapsed and cradled his leg. Only when the engine noise subsided did I hear his groans. Slipping the weapon strap over my shoulder, I knelt on one knee, clutched a handful of his gray Chitec jacket, brought him level with my face, and smiled the flat, empty smile that elicited fear in others.

“My name is One. There were six ways I could have killed you in the last fifteen seconds. I advise you: do not further provoke me.”

I dragged him behind me, leaving a trail of blood, passed through the cabin door, and dumped him at Doctor Lloyd’s feet.

The doctor yelped and shot from his seat. “Wh-what?”

“I’m taking control of this vessel.”