The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense (12 page)

He accessed his navigation
system and searched a map of Los Angeles until he found the bridge
that he had seen on the television. He pressed down on the
accelerator, cutting through lanes of traffic crowding the
streets.

When he arrived at the
bridge, he braked his bike beneath it and looked around. The water
that passed beneath the bridge was soiled and dark. He could not
see a sign of Brigite anywhere.

Luke closed his eyes and
changed his visual settings so that he could magnify everything in
his sight. He scanned the bridge and the river once
more.

Then he saw a flash of
bright blue, beneath the dark water.

Without hesitating he jumped
into the water, sinking beneath the surface. Long, monstrous fish
bumped into him. He swam to the bottom of the river and looked
around.

He saw Brigite floating
motionlessly, her leg trapped beneath a rock. Her face looked
sightlessly up at the surface of the water.

Luke swam towards her and
freed her from the rock. He held her securely and swam to the
surface. He dragged her onto the bank of the river.

Brigite’s bikini was sodden,
her body drenched. Her eyes were wide open and unseeing.

Luke placed his hand on her
arm and scanned her internal mechanisms. He found an area of her
body that controlled her nervous system and jolted it with a burst
of electric heat from his own current.

Brigite’s mouth opened and
she gasped for air. She stared up at him.

“You – you came,” she said.
“I thought I was a goner.”

“Come on,” Luke said,
helping her to sit up. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Damian’s going to know
you’re missing if we don’t go back to the Adventis building,”
Brigite said into Luke’s ear, as they sped down the streets on his
motorcycle, with her sitting behind him, her arms around his
waist.

“I know,” Luke said. “And
half of these human police are looking for me. We might get caught
if we don’t go back to Adventis, but I’m trying to see if we have
any other options.”

Brigite leaned her head
against his back.

“Why don’t we go to the
factory?” she said.

“What’s the factory?” Luke
said.

“You don’t think they keep
all of the androids in the Adventis building, do you?” Brigite
said. “They’re all stored in a warehouse outside of Los
Angeles.”

“Alright,” Luke said. “Tell
me how to get there.”

Damian leaned against the
backseat of his limousine as it drove out of Los Angeles. His tie
was untied and his hair was disheveled.

Carlie sat across from him,
looking shaken.

“What a day,” Damian said in
disgust. “What a day.”

Carlie said
nothing.

“It’s going to get better,
Carlie,” Damian said. “Soon as I get those Super Soldiers off my
hands. We’ll be rich. I don’t care if the rest of the country
destroys all of the other androids.”

“Sometimes I can’t believe
the words that come out of your mouth, Damian,” Carlie
said.

She stared out of the
window.

Luke and Brigite rode the
motorcycle slowly and as quietly as possible down a long, dusty
road that led down a hill to a huge set of warehouses. The
warehouses were sold gray buildings that looked deserted, except
for a few security guards walking around them.

Luke braked his bike behind
a dried out tree. He and Brigite looked down at the
warehouses.

“This is the factory?” Luke
said.

“This is the factory,”
Brigite said.

Luke ducked down behind the
tree, pushing Brigite down as well, when a long black limousine
suddenly drove past them, heading towards the
warehouses.

“That’s Mr. Fosters’s car,”
Brigite said.

They watched as the car
stopped in front of the warehouses. Damian and Carlie got
out.

They looked around,
seemingly waiting for something or someone.

Luke looked over his
shoulder and saw a line of huge cargo trucks coming down the road.
They were led by a sleek black Range Rover.

The Range Rover and the
trucks stopped next to Damian’s car. A group of men in business
suits got out of the Range Rover.

Damian walked to them and
said something to them. Then he turned to the
warehouses.

One of them opened its huge
doors and an army of Super Soldier androids came walking out, an
endless line of them.

Luke magnified his vision
and saw that Captain Mercenare was leading the army of
soldiers.

“Mercenare’s there,” he
said. “I see him.”

Damian shook the hand of one
of the men in business suits. Then he fell as Captain Mercenare
took his gun and shot him in the back.

Carlie’s screams ripped
through the air.

The Super Soldiers ran past
Damian and jumped into the back of the trucks. The men in business
suits got into their car as well. The trucks and the Range Rover
roared back up the dusty road.

Four security guards came
running out from the warehouses and gathered around Damian. Carlie
was still screaming.

“What do we do?” Brigite
said.

“We can’t stay here,” Luke
said. “The Super Soldiers have turned on Adventis. We need to go
back and warn the others.”

He got back on his
motorcycle. Brigite jumped on the seat behind him.

Chapter 30.

Carlie felt as though she
was in a trance as she sat in the backseat of the
limousine.

A security guard from the
warehouse leaned inside the car.

“You alright, Miss
Wesler?”

Carlie managed to
nod.

“Is Damian
alright?”

“He’s still alive,” the
guard said. “They’re taking him to the hospital now.”

Luke and Brigite raced down
the streets of Los Angeles, Brigite’s blue hair streaming behind
her. She hung on to Luke tightly.

Luke accessed his
communication console. He dialed a number and placed a
call.

He heard a voice speak on
the other end.

“Lina Calders.”

“It’s Luke,” Luke
said.

“Luke, where are
you?”

“Damian’s been shot by
Mercenare. Someone came and took all the Super Soldiers away in
huge trucks. Whatever deal Damian was working on, it fell apart.
The Super Soldiers might be coming for Adventis, all the people and
all the androids.”

“What? I don’t
understand.”

Luke tensed when he heard
the unmistakable sound of a police siren behind him.

“Lock down the building,
Lina. Do what you have to do to keep everyone inside of it safe.
I’ll talk to you in a little while. Bye.”

He closed his communication
console and glanced over his shoulder at the police car that was
flashing its sirens behind them.

“Hold on,” Luke said to
Brigite. He pressed down on the gas pedal and his motorcycle roared
far ahead of the police car.

The officer inside the car
picked up his walkie talkie.

“I’ve got an ATF on a
motorcycle on Beverly Street and Marcourt. Over.”

He floored the acceleration
on the police car and sped after Luke and Brigite.

Luke crouched low over the
motorcycle. He swerved it away from the street and cut down a
narrow residential road. The police car squealed its brakes as it
followed them.

“Are you going to try to
outrun him?” Brigite said. Her voice was disbelieving.

“Yes,” Luke said.

The police car was beginning
to close the distance behind them, until Luke veered the bike
sharply onto the driveway of a small house. They crashed through
the backyard fence of the house and raced through the yard, leaving
several crushed children’s toys in their wake.

The motorcycle crashed
through the back fence and raced up into a hill of trees. Luke felt
branches lashing against his helmet and Brigite leaned her face
against his back to avoid them.

They tore out from the trees
and onto a highway filled with racing cars. Horns blasted the air.
Brigite gasped when she saw a truck racing down on them. Luke
swerved the motorcycle underneath the truck, he and Brigite almost
lying flat as they flew across the ground and emerged on the other
side of the truck.

Luke got the motorcycle
upright and they sped down the lane of traffic.

“Maybe we got away,” Brigite
said.

At that moment they heard
sirens behind them. Brigite turned and saw three police cars as
well as four officers on motorcycles slicing through the traffic to
get to them.

“Four cops on motorcycles,
Luke!”

“I see them,” Luke said,
without turning around.

He increased their speed.
Their motorcycle jumped up onto the car in front of them, a van,
and raced across its roof, throwing its occupants into a panic. The
four police motorcycles separated into two on each side of the
lane. Between them Luke’s motorcycle was roaring across the roofs
of the cars in the lane, jumping from one car to the next. Finally
it crashed to the ground again, landing upright and tore through
the traffic, Luke keeping his foot on the gas. The police
motorcycles were drawing closer to them.

Luke accessed his navigation
system and quickly put in a search request.

“Address for Trista Barge’s
residence.”

The search ran and an
address flashed on his navigation screen.

“We’re getting off the
highway,” Luke said to Brigite. “Right now.”

“There’s no exit here,”
Brigite said.

She held onto Luke’s back
tightly as their motorcycle swerved around cars. They sped to the
concrete wall of the highway and jumped over it, dropping nearly
twenty feet to the ground below.

Somehow they landed upright
and Luke did not stop. The motorcycle raced down the grassy hill on
the side of the highway, until they reached a street where there
was no police car waiting for them.

“Where are we going now?”
Brigite said.

“Someplace safe,” Luke said.
“For androids.”

Chapter 31.

Lina paced the floor in
Damian’s office, unsure of what the make of Luke’s urgent message.
She looked out of the window and saw that everything looked the
same outside of the Adventis building. Police cars, reporters,
protestors.

She picked up her phone and
called Damian. She only got a voicemail message. Then she tried
calling Carlie.

Carlie picked up.

“Hello?”

“Carlie, I just got a weird
message from Luke,” Lina said. “He said Damian’s been shot. What’s
going on?”

“He has been shot, but I
don’t know why and I don’t know how Luke found out,” Carlie said.
“I’m on my way to the hospital.”

“Unbelievable,” Lina said.
“Are we in any danger here at the building?”

Carlie hesitated.

“Try to send everyone home,
if you can,” she said. “I’ll make sure the police stay at the
building, just in case.”

Mandelie, Trista, and Jake
were gathered in her den, watching the television screen tensely as
news reports of violence against androids and protests at the
Adventis building continued to flow in an unceasing
barrage.

Mandelie did not hear the
doorbell ring but Jake did. He got up and went to the door and
opened it.

He stared in amazement at
Luke and Brigite, standing in front of him.

“Luke?”

“Hello, Jake,” Luke
said.

“Oh, man, am I glad to see
you!” Jake said, with a grin. He grabbed Luke and hugged him
fiercely.

Mandelie joined Jake at the
door as Luke was introducing Brigite.

“This is Brigite. She’s an
Adventis android.”

“Oh,” Jake said, blushing
bright red. “Oh. Um. Wow. Nice to meet you.”

Luke looked over Jake’s
shoulder and met Mandelie’s eyes.

Mandelie ran to him and
threw her arms around him.

“It’s really you,” she said.
“I can’t believe it.”

Luke looked down at her
face. He turned away with difficulty when Trista pounced on him and
hugged him as well.

“Good to have you back with
us, Luke.”

She ushered Luke and Brigite
into the den of her apartment.

Brigite looked around.
Mandelie seemed a little bit lost for words at the sight of the
female X-droid in her skimpy red bikini and bright blue
wig.

“I’ll get you both something
to drink,” she said. “Then you can tell us everything.”

She went into the kitchen
and opened the refrigerator. She took out two sodas, closed the
door, and jumped when she nearly backed into Luke.

Luke took the soda cans from
her.