The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense (26 page)

“Madrick?” Damian said in
disbelief.

Streams of electricity shot
out from the vest and struck Damian. He cried out and fell from his
wheelchair, landing prone on the ground.

The bolts of electricity
shot through him, until they stopped and Damian was struggling in
pain.

“What … what did you do with
Carlie?” he managed to say.

“I told you Frontier was
going to make something the world had never seen before,” Madrick
said. “What do you think? Beats your sad little circus, doesn’t
it?”

More streams of electricity
hit Damian.

Gustaf was standing watch
over Mandelie, Jake, and Dr. Miles, lying face down in front of
him. Elena appeared, half-carrying, half-dragging Carlie’s limp
body.

She threw her down on the
ground as well.

Damian was gasping for
breath as he lay on ground, unable to even move.

“What do you want?” he
said.

“I want you to realize that
if you’re playing against me, you never win,” Madrick said. “And my
engineer – the man who designed this brilliant android – wants
Luke.”

“Luke?” Damian
said.

“He wants to disassemble
that android and find out what exactly makes him so special,”
Madrick said. “I promised he would have that opportunity. So
where’s Luke?”

“I don’t know where he is,”
Damian said.

He was engulfed in more
streams of electricity.

“That’s not what I want to
hear,” Madrick said.

Chapter 25.

Luke and Brigite were
standing behind the circus tent, concealed by its heavy material.
Luke was watching Gustaf.

Brigite gasped when she saw
the private box overlooking the arena glow bright with streams of
electricity.

“What’s happening up
there?”

Luke took her hand and
pressed something into it. It was a gun he had taken from one of
the police androids.

“There’s no real bullets in
it,” he said. “Only blanks. But can you use it?”

“I’m sure I can,” Brigite
said.

“Good,” Luke said. “I need
you to create a diversion.”

Madrick was not getting any
answers out of Damian. So he shattered the glass window of the
viewing box and hauled Damian towards it.

“Take a look,” he
said.

Gustaf was holding Carlie,
his arm flat against her neck. Her eyes were wide open and she was
fighting his grasp.

“Tell me where Luke is,”
Madrick said. “Or else he’s going to break her neck.”

Damian swallowed.

Brigite had crawled up one
of the poles securing the tent to the ground, making her way up
nimbly despite her towering heels. She climbed onto the tent
canvas, which was still flashing different colors, and slid down
its smooth incline to the other side of it, stopping her fall by
grabbing onto one of the poles on the other side. She leaned
against it and looked down at the scene below her, holding the
gun.

Gustaf pressed his arm
tighter against Carlie’s neck and prepared to snap it.

Brigite ducked from behind
the pole and began shooting at Gustaf. The noises startled Gustaf
and he dropped Carlie.

On the ground, Mandelie,
Jake, and Dr. Miles covered their heads with their arms, thinking
the sounds were real gunfire.

Gustaf spun around as he
looked for the source of the noise.

“What is going on down
there?” Madrick said. He threw Damian to the ground and jumped out
of the window, falling through the air until he landed on top of
the tent. The tent began to collapse. Brigite jumped off of it and
rolled several times after she hit the ground.

Damian began crawling across
the floor towards his wheelchair. But his body was too weakened and
he lost consciousness after a moment.

Gustaf felt something crash
into him with tremendous force. He slid across the ground and
looked up at Luke.

“You,” he said. “I’ve waited
my whole life for this.”

“Is that supposed to mean
something to me?” Luke said. Gustaf got to his feet and struck Luke
in the face. Luke was stunned for a moment, and then he grabbed
Gustaf’s arm, breaking it with a twist. Electricity hissed around
Luke’s hand, burning his flesh.

Brigite was lying flat
behind the crumpled tent, watching Madrick as he looked for her.
She crawled to one of the destroyed Super Soldiers and pulled
something from his belt. A grenade.

Then she burst out from her
hiding place. Madrick caught sight of her and charged at
her.

Brigite threw the grenade,
which landed in front of Madrick and exploded. Though it was not a
real grenade, it still produced a huge cloud of smoke and sparks
which reacted against the electricity surging through Madrick’s
body and erupted into flames.

Unbothered by the flames,
Madrick stepped over them and looked around. But Brigite was
nowhere to be seen. She had crawled to another Super Soldier and
taken another grenade.

She threw that one. It
exploded near Madrick but did not stop him.

“I see you,” Madrick said,
catching sight of something blue. “I’m going to tear that pretty
blue head off your shoulders.”

“I don’t think so,” Jake
said.

He appeared behind Madrick
and threw a bucket of ice over him. The ice melted into Madrick’s
frame and drenched the electrical vest he was wearing. In a second,
the android exploded in a shower of metal and skin.

Jake pulled Brigite to her
feet.

“So, can you forgive me
already?” he said.

“Almost,” Brigite said. “But
not quite.”

Madrick removed his viewing
field from his face. He cursed.

“We should go,” he said to
Gustaf, who was still wearing his own viewing field.

“No,” Gustaf said. “I’m not
leaving without the android.”

The fire had spread to where
Luke and Gustaf were locked in combat. It blazed up in a flaming
wall around them both, keeping the others from getting to
them.

“I understand you better
than they ever will,” Gustaf said. “I can make you into the most
powerful android in the world.”

He kicked Luke in the
stomach. Luke fell and nearly staggered into the fire. He steadied
himself at the last second.

“It’s humans like you who
enrage me,” Luke said. “Humans who think they can use androids for
their own purposes. You think you are powerful in your disguise.
But I can see your weakness.”

“I’m not weak,” Gustaf said.
He struck out at Luke.

Luke stepped out of his
way.

“This is who I am,” Gustaf
said. “I knew I was always meant to be more than human.”

“And less than android,”
Luke said.

He picked up the grenade
Brigite had thrown to him, through the flames. He grabbed Gustaf
and stuffed the grenade inside his exposed frame.

He ducked to the ground as
the android blew up.

Gustaf removed his viewing
field. His face was blank but showed his disgust.

“Now it is time to go,” he
said.

He and Madrick ran
stealthily from the arena.

Luke burst through the fire
and joined Mandelie, Brigite, Jake, and Dr. Miles.

Mandelie hugged
him.

“Where’s Damian?” Dr. Miles
said.

“Carlie’s with him,”
Mandelie said. “Let’s go.”

The five of them raced up
towards the private box. Inside it Carlie was kneeling beside
Damian’s body.

Luke dropped down beside
her. He picked up Damian’s hand and felt for a pulse.

“He’s still alive,” he said.
“He’s still alive.”

Epilogue

Damian lay in his hospital
bed, his face white and his eyes closed. Carlie sat beside him,
holding his hand. The machines all around him beeped
continuously.

Damian stirred. He opened
his eyes, with an effort.

“I feel terrible,” he said.
“I feel like I’m dead.”

“You’re pretty close to it,”
Carlie said. “But you’ll survive.”

Damian looked down at her
hand. Carlie reddened and pulled it away.

“They won’t be able to prove
anything against Madrick,” she said, in a brisk voice.

“No, they won’t,” Damian
said. “They’ll put on the blame on Adventis. They’ll say it was one
of our androids that tore everything apart.”

He sighed and closed his
eyes again.

“That’s just the way it
goes.”

“We came close, Damian,”
Carlie said. “At least nobody was killed. Only the androids were
destroyed.”

“Only,” Damian said. “Yeah.
It’s only the beginning. You’d better get ready, Carlie. There’s a
war coming.”

PART III

The Princess of
Anarchy

Chapter 1.

Mandelie Miles listened to
the beeping signal that disconnected her attempt to contact Luke’s
communication console for the sixth time in two days.

She put her phone down with
a puzzled look and let herself back into Argonaut
Laboratories.

Jake and Brigite were
lounging behind the reception desk in the front room. Jake wore his
usual casual shirt and shorts, his dreadlocks flowing over his
shoulders. Brigite stood behind his chair, her bright blue wig
shining and her figure amply displayed in her midriff-baring tank
top and skirt.

Both of their gazes were
fixed on Luke’s computer screen.

“What are you guys looking
at?” Mandelie said.

“It’s this new camera the
zoo installed in their koala exhibit,” Jake said, without taking
his eyes from the screen. “It’s hypnotic.”

“Hypnotic,” Brigite
repeated.

“Have you seen Luke lately,
Brigite? Or heard from him?” Mandelie said.

“Luke?” Brigite said. “I
haven’t seen him.”

“Me neither,” Mandelie said.
“I’ve been trying to contact him but I keep getting disconnected. I
hope nothing’s wrong.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, Mands,”
Jake said. “Oh, look! That koala just rolled over. Oh, he’s
sleeping again.”

Mandelie left the two of
them and went down the hallway and into one of the lab’s experiment
rooms.

Her father Dr. Jason Miles
and his assistant Trista were gathered around a table, where a
shiny black circular plate was resting. Dr. Miles was carefully
prodding the plate with a long gleaming tool.

“It’s reacting,” he said to
Trista.

“What is that?” Mandelie
said, looking down at the plate.

“It’s something that I hope
will make a few things right,” Dr. Miles said.

“What do you mean?” Mandelie
said.

“I’ve been working on this
plate for the past month, using the same concepts and theories I
used to design Luke,” Dr. Miles said. “It’s for Damian Foster. The
plate is meant to be affixed to his spine. It will generate an
electric current that will revitalize his legs and hopefully make
him able to walk again.”

Mandelie was
stunned.

“Are you sure it’s going to
work?” she said.

“There’s only one way to
find out,” Trista said. “I’ve called his assistant Carlie. She’s
going to bring Damian over here tonight. I told her not to get his
hopes up though. It may not work.”

“The plate’s been reacting
well though,” Dr. Miles said. “It’s fully activated and it’s
generating a strong surge. We’ll have to see.”

Carlie pushed Damian in his
wheelchair down the long curved sidewalk towards the driveway of
his villa, where his Rolls Royce was parked and waiting for
him.

Damian looked his usual
strikingly handsome self in a striped shirt and jeans, a scarf
bundled around his neck. But his face was wary and guarded. His
green eyes flashed under his long dark brown hair.

“I’m not expecting
anything,” he said to Carlie. “I’ve seen every surgeon in the world
and none of them think I’ll ever be able to get out of this
wheelchair. I don’t think Jason Miles has a chance of changing
anything.”

“We’ll see,” Carlie said,
not willing to go any further than that.

The chauffeur opened the
passenger door for Damian and he and Carlie helped Damian inside.
Carlie folded up Damian’s wheelchair and put it in the trunk of the
car.

“You haven’t been able to
get in touch with Luke? That’s weird,” Trista said.

She and Mandelie were
standing in the break room of the laboratory, drinking cups of
coffee.

“It is weird,” Mandelie
said. “And a little unsettling.”

“When was the last time you
saw him?” Trista said.

“He was at my apartment a
couple of days ago, and spent the night. Nothing seemed different,”
Mandlie said. “In the morning he left and said he’d see me at the
lab. I haven’t seen him since then.”