Willful Machines (26 page)

Nico crawled closer and put his hand on top of mine. This time I didn't flinch. “So, you believe me?” Gremlin hopped from my shoulder to Nico's chest and made figure eights over his torso. “See? Gremlin trusts me.”

I gave him a sideways look.

“I told you, I didn't touch his programming.”

I dropped my head back against the rock wall. “I don't know, Nico. You've lied to me so many times already. From the very first moment I met you and you pretended you had no idea who I was. How much did you know about me then? Did you know I'd tried to kill myself?”

“I really didn't. Charlotte gave me a picture of you and told me you were John Fisher's son, and that was it. She thought it
would make our interactions more natural if I didn't know too much. And anyway, you pretended when we first met too. ‘The president's son? He's around here somewhere.' Remember?”

“That was different.”

He nodded. “You're right. I'm sorry. That was different.”

“But I guess if you'd wanted to kill me, you'd have done it by now.”

His hand tightened over mine. “I could never hurt you, Lee. I'm confused about a lot of things right now, but I'm not confused about that.”

“You think
you're
confused. For years I've agonized over being gay. Now it turns out that's the least of my problems. Imagine what my dad's going to say when he finds out I'm falling in love with a male
robot
.”

“ ‘Falling in love?' ”

I froze, bit my lip, shook my head. “Look, I don't even know what I'm feeling right now.” I grabbed his hand and turned it over, revealing his bandaged palm. “You're
not human
, Nico. Your body, it looks like mine, but on the inside it's completely different. Like when you eat food, what happens?”

“I can taste it going down. I have a rudimentary artificial digestive system to process and eliminate it.”

“But all that's for show, right? To make you seem more normal. You don't depend on the food you eat for fuel.”

“That's true.”

“And what about your”—I blushed and stared at the floor
while I stammered out the rest of the sentence—“other parts?”

“They work too. Except I can't father children, obviously.”

“And your breathing. And your heartbeat.” I remembered lying on our beach the night before with my cheek pressed against his chest, listening to the steady rhythm coming from within. “Simulated.”

Nico disengaged his hand from mine and pulled off his blazer. “Let me show you something,” he said. “Hold this.” He placed his tiepin in my hand. “But don't steal it this time.” He loosened his tie, pulled it over his head, and unbuttoned his shirt. Bit by bit, his chest appeared, the skin smooth and tan, the muscles perfectly formed—because someone had made them that way. When he'd undone all but the last couple of buttons, he took my other hand in both of his and drew it toward him. He pressed my palm against his hot skin. Gremlin scurried back and forth between the two of us, racing across my extended arm as if it were a bridge. I closed my eyes. After a second I felt it: the unvarying thump originating from his rib cage.

Then it vanished. Abruptly, as if he'd just pressed the stop button on his own heart—which must've been what he'd done. I started to pull my hand away, but his grip tightened, holding me there. He gave a small nod. My fingers relaxed. My eyes eased shut again.

That was when I noticed the thrumming: a low rumble, something I couldn't hear so much as feel, coming from deep
within Nico. Not the kind of rumble the waterfall at Inverness Prep made, though. This was more a purring than a smashing. The thrum had a rhythm of its own—steady, like the heartbeat that had just disappeared, but slower and more subtle.

I opened my eyes and jumped. I'd drifted closer to Nico as I'd listened, and now my face was just a few inches away from his. I didn't shy away, though. Neither did he.

“The way I feel about you,” he said. “That's not simulated.”

“How can you even say that, knowing those feelings must've been programmed into you?”

“I don't see how that makes them any less real.”

“Doesn't it bother you, though?”

He shook his head. “It just makes me want to say thank you to whoever programmed me this way.”

I dropped my forehead against his and shook my head from side to side. “I don't know, Nico. Maybe you're right. Stroud pushed my mom and dad together, and in the end it turned into something real. Maybe this isn't all that different. But what if you'd been programmed to have feelings for someone else, like—”

“Lee?” He took the back of my head in his hand. “Once again, you're wasting a perfect opportunity for a kiss.”

He tilted my head upward until our mouths connected. I wrapped my arms around him, and he held me tight too. Gremlin scurried off somewhere, maybe to give us some privacy. Nico's shirt still hung open, and as my chest pressed
against his, I could feel his thrumming through my whole body. All I could think about was how
alive
he felt.

Next to us on the floor, his puck chimed. “Low battery,” it murmured.

We drew apart. Nico glanced at it. “All that flying through the tunnels must've drained it.”

“Can't you give it a jump?”

He smirked and shook his head. “We should get back to business anyway. Charlotte knows we're down here. She must've sent machines to look for us. It'll take them a while, but they'll find us eventually.”

“So what do we do next?”

“I don't know. I hadn't gotten that far.”

“I guess we can't stay here trying to dodge Charlotte forever. But if we leave these caves, she'll pick up your signal again.”

“Yeah, that's a problem. She might detonate me right away. Or if she still doesn't want to risk hurting you, at the very least she'll be able to track our every move. We won't be safe for long.”

“What do you think she'll do if she catches up to us?”

“I don't know. Terminate me probably. Use a different robot to take you hostage and carry out her plan.”

“And this is the leader you trust so completely?”

“She wouldn't have a choice, Lee,” he retorted, the edge returning to his voice. “She's fighting for an important cause.”

“The cause.” I slumped back. “Right.”

From behind us came a small clatter. Both of us whirled
around. But it was only Gremlin nosing at some rocks on the floor.

“Okay,” I said. “Let's think.”

The two of us sat side by side with our cheeks resting on our fists. I went through the options in my head. If I left the cave on my own, Charlotte wouldn't be able to track my movements or blow up Nico. Then I could get help. But who could I tell without risking Nico's safety? Not Dad. Not Stroud. Not one of my Armed Babysitters. That left only one person.

“Dr. Singh,” I said. “Do you have any idea if she's working with Charlotte?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“The day you first got here, when you were doing your handstand and it looked like the wind might knock you over, she grabbed my wrist and said, ‘Just let him fall.' ”

“Seriously?”

“Maybe she said it because she's in on Charlotte's plot. Maybe she was afraid you'd hurt me. Maybe she was having second thoughts.”

“Maybe.” His eyebrows knitted, he scooped up Gremlin and stroked his orange fur.

“Today I tried asking her about it. She wouldn't say a word, but I could tell she was holding something back and it was eating her up inside. I'll bet if she knows you and I are working together now, trying to resolve the situation peacefully, she'll want to help.”

He screwed up his mouth doubtfully.

“It's just a feeling I have, Nico. I think we can trust her.”

“The ‘just let him fall' comment notwithstanding.” He shook his head and set Gremlin on my shoulder. “Still, I suppose it's our best option.”

“But that still leaves you. You can't carry me around and hope Charlotte doesn't blow us both up forever.”

“I know.”

“You have to stay here, Nico.”

He shot to his feet and paced the room some more. “No way. You're not going out there alone.”

“I'll be careful,” I said, rising too. “I'll wear a disguise, keep away from people. I already know how to sneak into Inverness. No one will know I'm back.”

“It won't be that simple. The son of the president was just abducted, remember? They'll have the whole place on red alert. Secret Service everywhere. And Charlotte will be looking for you too. I don't know how many robots she can control at once, but it might be a lot. I can't just stay down here while you're up there risking your life.” He turned to me, his eyes incandescent in the puck's low light. “Look, now that I'm off the network, there might be a way to get this bomb out of me once and for all. But I'll need your help.”

I
f I'd stopped right then to think about how fast everything had changed between Nico and me, my brain probably would've spun around inside my skull like a gyroscope. But I didn't. Instead, I said, “Just tell me what to do. Where's the bomb located?”

He tapped his sternum. “Right here. Embedded next to my central power supply.”

“What about your transmitter? Can we disable that, too, so Charlotte won't be able to track you when you leave here?”

He shook his head. “It's too tightly integrated into my other systems.”

I eyed his muscly bare chest, which was now making me sweat in a whole new way. “Is this going to be dangerous?”

“A little, I think.”

“How can a bomb be a little dangerous? Either it blows up or it doesn't.”

Again he flashed a low-wattage version of the Nico Medina grin. “Good point.”

I loosened my tie and yanked at my collar. “Are we going to need tools?”

He rummaged in his trouser pocket. “I have a pocketknife. That should be all we need.” At some silent command from him, his puck bobbed up from its resting place, flipped over, and hovered above our heads. Nico spread himself out on the floor. His puck's light blazed down on him like a lamp in an operating room. He unbuttoned his shirt the rest of the way. His fingers probed the smooth, firm skin of his torso.

“How do we get in there?” I knelt down next to him. “You don't have an access panel or something, do you?”

“I wish.” He unfolded the knife. Prickles raced down my spine. “Can you grab my blazer and prop it under my head?” he asked.

I folded the blazer into a bundle while he traced his blade down the center of his chest, plotting its course.
What a waste
, I thought.
That perfect body.
Then I instantly felt like a jerk for thinking such a shallow thought.

“Okay,” he said. “Here we go.” The tip of his knife pressed against a point just below his collarbone, dimpling the skin. He stopped. “I just wish you didn't have to see this.”

I attempted a nonchalant shrug. “I'm a robotics nerd, remember? I love this stuff. A little blood's no big deal.” (A total lie. My head already felt like it was filled with helium and tied
to my body by a string, and his blade hadn't even penetrated his flesh yet.)

“I didn't mean it that way. I wish you didn't have to see
me
. On the inside. What I really look like.”

“Nico, I'm willing to bet you don't look nearly as gross on the inside as I do.”

Another joke of mine he failed to laugh at. “But you look human.”

My eyes dropped away from his. I nodded.

His puck chimed again. “Very low battery.”

“No more stalling,” Nico said. “We probably have only a few minutes of light left.”

The thought of plunging back into that suffocating darkness only intensified the dizzy, floaty feeling in my head. Where Nico had pressed the tip of his knife against his flesh a moment ago, a single dark red bead of blood had welled up. He returned his blade to that spot. On my shoulder, Gremlin released a nervous whine. I found Nico's free hand with mine and squeezed.

As he pressed, the sphere of blood swelled and swelled until it collapsed into a trickle that raced across his chest. He drew the blade along the narrow groove that ran down the center of his torso.

“Does it hurt?” I asked. “Can you feel pain?”

He grunted, which pretty much answered my question. I squeezed his hand again. I thought of Stroud telling his thighbone-ectomy story and then ranting that kids today had
it easy by comparison. The next time I saw him, I'd have to ask him if he'd ever had to perform open-heart surgery on himself.

The incision left a smooth seam behind it, with tendrils of blood spilling out and hurrying down on either side. I had to blink my eyes hard and take deep, slow breaths to keep from retching. I didn't look away, though.