The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense (4 page)

“It’s all worth it,” Damian
said. “Luke is going to help us perfect our robotic technology,
Carlie. He’s going to make Adventis the biggest name in the
world.”

“If you say so,” Carlie
muttered. She smoothed down her skirt and stared down at her
iPad.

Damian placed his hand on
her knee.

“Want to … kill some time
while we’re waiting?”

Carlie reddened.

“It’s hotter than an oven
here. I’m all sweaty.”

“Then let’s get you out of
those clothes,” Damian said, pulling her to him.

“It’s time for your
recreation in the yard,” the prison guard said, knocking on the
bars of Luke’s cell.

“I didn’t ask for recreation
time,” Luke said.

“Trust me,” the guard said.
“It’s time for your recreation.”

Without questioning further,
Luke followed the guard down the corridor and into the elevator.
Once they emerged from the prison building he took a deep breath.
The hot, dusty desert air felt almost refreshing to him.

The recreation yard was
empty. A bright moon shone in the sky.

The guard walked across the
yard, Luke following him. He took out some keys and opened a small
door in the thick wall of the yard.

“Get going,” he said. “And
you’ll find a car waiting for you behind a bus.”

Luke ducked through the
door. He walked through the wall and emerged on the other side of
it.

Hardly believing he was
free, he looked around. He saw the long bus and ran towards it, his
feet making hardly any sound on the sand.

He saw the Rolls Royce and
walked up to it.

The driver’s side window
rolled down.

“What did I tell you, Luke?”
Damian said. “Get in.”

Luke opened the door of the
Rolls Royce and sat on the gleaming upholstered backseat. The air
conditioned car was a relief to him.

“Where are we going?” he
said, as the car drove away from the prison.

“To the Adventis building,”
Damian said. “It’s your new home. I’ve got a room all set up for
you. Top of the line amenities.”

Chapter 9.

“What do you think?” Damian
said.

He watched in satisfaction
as Luke took in the huge, opulent room on the sixty first floor of
the Adventis building. There was thick white carpet on the ground.
The walls were decked with huge sweeping windows. A full kitchen
and bar stood on one side of the room and a white couch, four
poster bed, and a flat screen television on the wall stood on the
other side.

“It’s a magnificent room,”
Luke said.

“It’s yours,” Damian said.
“Tomorrow morning I’ll show you everything Adventis is working
on.”

Luke walked towards the
towering floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out of them at the
glittering lights of the city.

“I’ll leave you to enjoy
your new digs,” Damian said. “Good night.”

He left the room.

Carlie remained in her spot,
looking at Luke who was still looking out of the windows. Sensing
he was not alone, Luke turned.

Carlie walked up to
him.

“You’re … you’re
fascinating,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here.” She stood close
enough to him that her knees almost brushed his.

She looked up into his face
expectantly.

Luke’s expression was
unreadable.

“You should go with him,” he
said.

Carlie’s face fell. She
swallowed. She turned and left the room quickly.

Luke sat down on the white
sofa. He closed his eyes. The communication console in his head
activated itself.

He pressed the inside of his
wrist. The hologram keyboard appeared in front of him. He began
typing a message.

“Miss Miles, are you
there?”

He sent the message. In a
few moments a message came back to him.

“Where are you?”

Luke hesitated before he
sent his response.

“I am at
Adventis.”

There was a long moment, and
then a single-worded message came to him.

“Oh.”

“Damian Foster struck a deal
with me. He arranged for my escape from the prison in exchange for
my help with the technology Adventis is working on.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe,”
Mandelie said. “Damian won’t do anything to harm you. He knows
you’re priceless.”

“I will try to see you as
soon as I can,” Luke responded.

“Okay,” Mandelie said. “The
police aren’t making any progress on finding what happened to my
dad. And they’re losing their minds trying to track you down. They
still won’t let me into the lab either. Try to lay low for the next
few days, if you can.”

“Understood,” Luke said.
“Take care, Miss Miles.”

“You too. Good luck. Stay in
touch.”

Luke closed his eyes as his
communication console blinked twice. Without opening his eyes he
accessed his memory storage and found an image file of Mandelie.
The image was recent, taken in high resolution and startlingly
clear. She was standing in front of him, a smile in her eyes. She
had not known he had taken her photograph with his visual camera
while they had been talking in the parking lot.

He looked at the photograph
for a moment before he closed the file and drifted into a sleep
state.

Chapter 10.

“Good morning,
Luke.”

The voice roused Luke from
his sleep state. He looked around his new opulent room but saw no
one. Then he saw that the voice was coming from the TV, where a
video recording of Damian was playing. Damian was sitting behind
his desk in his office, looking refreshed and arrogant in a white
shirt and dark green jacket.

“It’s 8:54 a.m., if your
digital reading hasn’t already told you so,” Damian said, looking
at his Rolex. “We have a full day ahead of us.”

Luke heard the door of his
room open. A tall girl in a black and white maid’s uniform entered,
pushing a silver cart of breakfast platters and carrying a plastic
garment bag over her arm. She had short blond hair that looked
suspiciously like a wig and a blandly polite face devoid of
make-up.

“This is Miranda, your
personal attendant. She is on call for you twenty four seven. She
is responsible for your clothing needs, your housekeeping, and all
of your culinary desires. Adventis employs four international chefs
with broad-ranging menus.”

Miranda flashed Luke a
plastic smile. Her blue eyes were pale and shallow. She began
setting platters of food on the table in front of him. There were
dishes of French toast, fruit and pudding, muffins and cookies, and
a full pitcher of fresh orange juice.

“Enjoy your continental
breakfast prepared by our chefs,” Damian said. “When you’ve
finished, come up to my office.”

There was a click and the
live video recording disappeared.

Luke eyed Miranda as she
began pouring him a full glass of juice.

“You’re an android,” he
said.

“Yes,” Miranda said, without
stopping her pouring. “I am an Adventis Model 671, from the
Fantastic Domestics line. Would you like some butter and syrup on
your French toast, sir?”

Without waiting for him to
answer she took butter and syrup from her cart and began applying
it to the French toast.

Luke suddenly caught her
wrist. He held it in his hand in a strong grip which began
generating heat. He scanned the inside of her arm quickly with his
internal sensors, gauging the wires and circuits within
it.

Miranda did not seem
surprised at all. She simply waited placidly until Luke had
finished his scan and released her wrist.

“Do you have questions about
my mechanisms, sir?” she said.

Luke shook his
head.

“They are easy to
understand,” he said. His comment did not seem to be a
compliment.

“If you don’t mind me saying
outright, sir, I can tell that you are a far superior model to me,”
Miranda said. There was a trace of awe in her voice.

“I’m not a model for
anything,” Luke said. “There’s only one of me.”

Miranda simply smiled. She
laid the plastic garment bag beside him on the white
couch.

“Your new clothes,” she
said. “They were altered by Mr. Foster’s personal tailor. And new
shoes.”

She produced a shoebox from
the bottom of the cart and set it by his feet.

“I will go now. If you need
anything, just pick up the phone and dial six.”

She turned and pushed her
cart out through the door.

Luke took only a small sip
of the orange juice. He ignored the food and opened the plastic
garment bag.

He pulled out a
stunningly-made silk suit with a pale blue dress shirt and dark
blue satin tie. The shoes were made of Italian leather and in his
correct size.

“Adventis has got him?”
Trista said. She was sitting with Mandelie in the kitchen of her
apartment, both of them drinking strong coffee and looking tired
and pale from a lack of sleep and hours of panic after Mandelie had
gotten the news that Luke had vanished from Fort Conway.

“They’ve got him,” Mandelie
said. She shook her head.

“Between a maximum security
prison and Adventis Technologies, Adventis is the lesser of the two
evils. At least Damian knows how valuable Luke is and won’t do
anything to harm him.”

“That sly slimeball,” Trista
said. “He’s got some kind of evil plan in the works, and now Luke’s
a part of it.”

Chapter 11.

“How was your breakfast?”
Damian said, without getting up from his high-backed chair behind
his desk as Luke walked into his office.

“Good,” Luke said. He had
not tasted any of it.

Damian eyed Luke’s new
attire. Carlie, sitting in a chair beside him, seemed enraptured.
She reddened, coughed, and looked down at her iPad.

“I see we got your correct
size,” Damian said. “Those clothes make you look like a lifelong
executive at Adventis, Luke. Really nice.”

“Thank you,” Luke
said.

“Please sit,” Damian
said.

Luke sat in one of the
modern black molded chairs in front of the desk.

“We’re going to start with a
tour of the building, Luke. Not all of it - that would take years.
Just the most important parts. What did you think of
Miranda?”

“She’s … adequate,” Luke
said.

Damian nodded.

“That’s exactly right. She’s
adequate, and that’s all. But I want her, and all of the other ones
in her model line, to be brilliant. I want them to be magnificent.
I want them, in short, to be like you, Luke. That’s why you’re
here.”

He grinned.

“For
inspiration.”

Luke said
nothing.

“You’re going to help me
take Adventis Technologies to the next level, Luke,” Damian said.
“With your mind and my leadership, we’re going to be unstoppable.
We’ll create products the world has never seen before. How does
that sound? I won’t hold you to the agreement we made in Fort
Conway. You were desperate, I know. That prison wasn’t a worthy
setting for any corporate transaction. But now we’re in the right
kind of setting. I want you to be a part of Adventis, a vital
part.”

“What will I receive in
exchange?” Luke said.

“Money,” Damian said. “Lots
of it. A title. A permanent residence here in the building. Your
own car. Lots and lots of perks, Luke.”

“What if I … decline your
offer?” Luke said.

Damian shrugged.

“There’s lots of police cars
patrolling the city right now, Luke, looking for you. But right now
you’re here, safe as anything behind the walls of my building. To
be entirely frank, my position has secured me a lot of friends in
the police force, Luke. But if you aren’t a part of Adventis, then
I really don’t have a reason to help you out anymore. They’ve still
got a room for you at Fort Conway.”

Luke’s eyes revealed
nothing.

“Your new title will be my
Director of New Technologies,” Damian said. “Do you
accept?”

Chapter 12.

“I wanted the inside of
Adventis to feel like a city into itself,” Damian said, as he,
Carlie, and Luke walked down a long, sweeping hallway past hundreds
of Adventis employees. “We’ve got a huge recreation division, with
a tennis court, swimming pool, and racket ball courts, for
employees to use whenever they want to unwind. We’ve got a state of
the art dining room. And even an in-house theater that plays new
releases. We use it for company presentations
sometimes.”

Luke half-paid attention to
him while scanning the faces of the Adventis employees around them.
He detected a few androids among them, dressed in identical bright
blue shirts that read “Adventis Technologies” on the front, and
jeans.