The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense (3 page)

Grimes drew his gun and
fired at the backseat. The bullet ripped past Luke’s shoulder and
buried itself in the seat.

Luke glanced at Grimes and
then threw himself from the car, vanishing underneath a passing
car.

“He jumped!” Grimes said. “I
don’t believe it. Pull over! He’s got to be heading for the trees
on the side of the road.”

The sirens on the police car
wailed as it sliced through traffic, forcing cars out of its
way.

Luke had moved impossibly
fast, sliding underneath rushing cars and barely ducking around
them. He jumped across the hood of the last car in his way and ran
into the trees on the side of the highway.

At the same time Strouds and
Grimes jumped out of their parked car and raced into the
trees.

“I see him!” Strouds
shouted, catching sight of Luke’s figure in front of them, running
through the trees.

“Bring him down!” Grimes
said. “Don’t kill him! We need him alive!”

“You’re forgetting that
thing can’t be killed, Grimes!” Strouds said.

He aimed his gun and
fired.

The bullet struck Luke in
the middle of his back. He fell to the ground.

Strouds and Grimes caught up
to him and stood over him.

“Not a good idea, robot,”
Strouds said.

“I’m an android,” Luke said.
“Not a robot.”

“You’re in a world of
trouble, that’s what you are,” Grimes said.

Chapter 6.

Mandelie stood outside the
laboratory late into the night, wrapped in a blanket and watching
with disbelieving eyes as forensics teams and endless police
officers walked in and out of the lab, carrying various items that
were now deemed “evidence.”

She paled when she saw one
of them holding a white laboratory jacket - her father’s - that was
streaked with blood. She turned her face away.

“Hey.” She felt a gentle tap
on her shoulder.

She turned and saw
Trista.

Grateful to see a familiar
face, Mandelie hugged her.

“I can’t believe it,” Trista
said. She wiped her eyes. “But when I heard about it, I came
straight here.”

“I don’t believe what
they’re saying to me,” Mandelie said. “They arrested
Luke.”

Trista shook her
head.

“You shouldn’t stay alone
tonight,” she said. “You can stay at my place if you
want.”

“Thanks,” Mandelie said, in
a shaking voice. “I think I will. I’ll go down to the police
station first thing in the morning. I need to find out more about
what happened from Luke.”

Strouds had been right when
he had said that the usual laws concerning criminals did not apply
to Luke. When they had arrived at the station Luke had been quickly
photographed and then taken to a small jail cell. Though there were
other inmates crowded into the rooms around him, he was put into
solitary.

Luke took in his
surroundings as the officer closed the door of his cell behind
him.

There was a single chair in
a corner and a hard bed with a thin sheet on top of it.

He sat down on the bed. His
shirt was torn in the back where the bullet had ripped through it.
The bullet had buried itself in one of his central nervous
consoles, making him unable to lie down.

He leaned against the wall
of the prison cell and closed his eyes.

“Make yourself at home,”
Trista said to Mandelie, as she let her into the small, but
comfortable apartment. “I’ll make you some soup. You can lie down
on the couch and I’ll bring you some blankets.”

“Thanks,” Mandelie
said.

She sat down on the worn
couch in Trista’s den and leaned against the pillows. A feeling of
exhaustion swept over her. She still could not confront the fact
that her dad was missing. Missing, presumed dead.

She reached into her bag and
took out her phone.

She typed a message into it
and sent it.

In his jail cell Luke
stirred when the communication console in his head alerted him to a
message. He closed his eyes and saw the message floating in front
of him.

“Luke, are you there? It’s
Mandelie.”

Luke pressed the inside of
his wrist and a hologram image of a keyboard appeared in front of
him.

“Yes,” he typed on the
keyboard. He sent the message.

“Are you
alright?”

“I am in solitary
confinement,” Luke responded. “I don’t know how long they will keep
me here.”

“Don’t let them know you can
communicate with me in this way. This is the only way I can know
how they’re treating you.”

“Yes, Miss Miles,” Luke
responded.

“I will try to see you
tomorrow morning,” Mandelie said.

The communication console in
Luke’s head blinked twice, signifying that the conversation was
ended.

Mandelie put her phone back
in her bag as Trista brought a cup of soup to her. She sat down
beside Mandelie on the couch.

“None of this makes any
sense,” Mandelie said in a low voice. “And I can’t go into the lab
either, to try to find clues for myself. It’s
barricaded.”

“There’s nothing you can do
right now but wait,” Trista said.

“And try to get Luke out,”
Mandelie said. “He’s not responsible for this. I know
it.”

Chapter 7.

Strouds and Grimes tapped on
the bars of Luke’s cell. Luke opened his eyes. He was still sitting
upright on his bed.

“Wakey, wakey,” Strouds
said. “You’re being transferred to maximum security in Barstow.
There’s a police van waiting outside for you.”

Luke said nothing as he
walked out of the cell and his hands were cuffed behind
him.

Strouds and Grimes led Luke
out of the police station. It was not even dawn. The air was
cold.

A black police van was
parked at the curb.

“The doors are layered with
steel,” Strouds said. “So don’t think of trying anything
funny.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,”
Luke said.

Strouds eyed him caustically
and then opened the door of the van. Luke got in.

Strouds got into the
driver’s seat and Grimes took the passenger seat.

“It’s about two hours’
drive,” Strouds said to Luke, as he turned on the ignition. “Make
yourself comfortable.”

He and Grimes laughed as the
van pulled away from the police station.

The maximum security prison
in Barstow was named Fort Conway. It housed nearly one thousand
inmates out in the blistering desert between Los Angeles and
Nevada. It was composed of two huge gray buildings where the prison
rooms were and a recreation yard for the inmates. The whole prison
was surrounded by miles of barbed wire fence.

The police van carrying Luke
parked in front of the fence. A prison guard and a police officer
were already waiting for them.

Strouds opened the door of
the van.

“This is the robot,” he
said.

“Android,” Luke
said.

“You need to put him in
solitary,” Strouds said. “If the other prisoners find out he’s a
robot, they’ll smash him to pieces.”

“Agreed,” the prison guard
said. “He’ll go in solitary.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Strouds
said. He and Grimes got back into the van and drove
away.

Luke did not look at the
other prisoners in the recreation yard as he was escorted past it.
He looked up at the high gray cement wall of the building in front
of him.

Within the building, he was
again quickly photographed and then taken up in an elevator to the
top floor of the prison. He was led down a corridor filled with
solitary jail cells for the worst of the criminals. There were at
least ten prison guards standing in the corridor, keeping an eye on
the inmates.

The prison guard stopped in
front of an empty cell and opened the door.

Luke stepped into the
prison. It was a bigger cell than the one at the police station,
but it had the same things in it. A hard bed and a chair in one
corner. There was no window.

He heard the door close and
lock behind him.

“You’ll be in this cell all
the time,” the prison guard said to him through the bars. “If you
need recreation, tell one of the guards and you’ll get fifteen
minutes of fresh air by yourself in the yard. Do you
eat?”

“It is not necessary for me
to eat to survive,” Luke said.

“Well, good for you,” the
guard said sarcastically. “Sleep well. Welcome to Max
Security.”

Mandelie awoke when dull
light flooded into Tricia’s apartment. She opened her eyes and
looked around her in confusion. Then the events of the previous
night came back to her in a sickening rush of memory.

She sat up and reached for
her phone.

A new message was blinking
on the screen. It was from Luke.

“I have been transferred to
Fort Conway. I am in maximum security. Please don’t risk yourself
on my part, Miss Miles.”

Mandelie bit her lip in
dismay.

“Tricia!”

Tricia stumbled out of her
bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“They’ve transferred Luke to
a maximum security prison,” Mandelie said. “How am I supposed to
get him out of there?”

Chapter 8.

The guards at Fort Conway
were accustomed to seeing the unusual on a daily basis, but the
sight of the long, shining black Rolls Royce that drove up to the
front gate of the prison was enough to cause most of them to stop
in their tracks.

The driver’s side door
opened and Damian Foster got out. He looked immaculate in a white
shirt and pants, as though he was visiting a golf club instead of a
maximum security prison. Carlie got out of the car gingerly,
dressed in a pale green sweater and pencil skirt, her iPad under
her arm. She looked disgusted as she tried to ignore the jeering
and whistling from the inmates in the recreation yard trying to get
her attention.

A guard walked up to
Damian.

“Can I help you,
sir?”

“You can,” Damian said,
without taking his sunglasses off. “I’d like to speak to one of
your inmates. His name is Luke.”

Luke was in a sleep state
when he heard someone hitting the bars of his prison. He jolted
awake and stood.

Damian Foster and Carlie
were standing in front of his cell. Damian had taken off his
sunglasses. He grinned widely at Luke.

“You get half an hour, sir,”
the guard said to Damian before leaving them.

“Hello, Luke,” Damian
said.

Luke said nothing. Carlie
was staring at him in awe.

“He’s something, isn’t he,
Carlie?” Damian asked her.

“He’s an actual android?”
Carlie said. “Not a real person?”

“He’s an android,” Damian
said. “A brilliantly-designed one. My old boss and mentor knew what
he was doing.”

“What are you doing here?”
Luke said.

“You don’t belong here,
Luke,” Damian said. “You belong at Adventis Technologies. You’re
priceless and they’ve got you in a prison in a soul-sucking
desert.”

Luke eyed him
inscrutably.

“I’m going to get you out of
here,” Damian said.

“Damian, he’s in a maximum
security holding cell,” Carlie hissed.

“Trust me, Carlie,” Damian
said. “I’ve got it all figured out.”

He walked to one of the
prison guards and began conversing with him in a low
voice.

Carlie stared at
Luke.

“You’re amazing, you know?”
she whispered. “He’s right. You shouldn’t stay here.”

Damian surreptitiously
passed the prison guard a small envelope. The guard pocked it
casually and nodded.

Damian returned to the jail
cell.

“It’s all taken care of,” he
said, with a smirk. “You’ll be out of here by nightfall,
Luke.”

Luke said
nothing.

Damian took a step close to
the bars.

“But you’ll need to promise
me something, Luke,” he said. “I’m your new boss now. You work for
Adventis Technologies. You answer to me, and me only. Got
it?”

Luke looked directly into
Damian’s eyes.

Damian held his hand out
through the bars. Luke did not move for a moment, and then he
grasped Damian’s hand.

He shook it, but the
strength in his grasp was enough to make Damian’s face pale for a
moment.

“Got it,” Luke
said.

“This is extremely risky,
Damian,” Carlie said in a low, tense voice, as she and Damian
waited in the Rolls Royce, which was parked near the prison but
hidden behind a long bus. “We’re breaking some major
laws.”