Girl From Above #3: Trapped (7 page)

#
1
001 was dying
.

I shoved that revelation down deep where it couldn’t get to me, told the doctor and Bren about the hole in
Starscream’s
hull, and then advised them to get the fuck off my bridge. They obliged, eager to get the hell away from me.

Lyra’s lights blinked and glistened outside the obs window, their brilliance dulled by
Starscream’s
filters. I reached for the romance novel that had been floating around the flightdash since our last pickup and flicked through the pages to my scribbled note in the back.

I
couldn’t do it
.

I’d thought I could. What was one more mistake on the mountain of fuck-ups I was clambering over? If I did have a soul, it had long ago crashed and burned. I just had to hand her over and I’d be free.
Keep it simple. Get away clean.

Then the doctor had dumped the news that #1001’s processes were slowly eating her from the inside, and there was no way I could betray her again. Not like that. I’d probably known it since I’d made the call to Creet. Fuck, I’d known it since I’d first decoded the Nine’s message.

I closed the book and glanced at the empty flight chair beside me. Fran would have told me to suck it up and make a decision. She’d always had a way of cutting through the crap. I missed her no-bullshit problem-solving, even if it had been all bullshit.

My hand trembled when I set the book down. Shit, I was a mess. I’d been a mess since I’d watched Haley die and done nothing because I’d wanted a fucking promotion. Maybe before that. There were times, at home, when I’d deliberately baited Dad, knowing full well Bren would take the hits for me.

I’m a bastard. I’ve always been a bastard.

Maybe it was time to change that?

I should have tried to stop Chen Hung from killing Haley.

I should have listened to Fran when she’d told me pirating with Ade was a mistake.

I should have left Fran on a habitable outpost, not on fucking Asgard.

I should have pushed Jesse away.

Should have, should have, should have.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. Bren was right. I’d made one bad decision after another, and people had died.

If I helped the Nine by handing #1001 over, she’d die knowing I’d fucked her over again. I couldn’t make the same mistakes with her. I wouldn’t be that rat trapped in a maze, repeating the same things over and over. I had to break the cycle. Bren had been right when he’d told me nobody was coming to fix me. This was all on me.

I covered my eyes with my hand and swallowed the rising knot in my throat. For once, just the once, maybe I could do the right thing, even if it might be the last thing I did.

“Caleb-Joe,” Bren’s voice summoned from the ship’s comms.

I rolled my eyes, wiped the wetness off my face, and mumbled, “Drop the fuckin’ Joe.” Clearing my throat, I tapped my comms. “Yeah?”

“One has left the ship.”

For the first time in a long time, I had no idea what the fuck to say. Part of me wanted to let her go. She knew what she needed better than anyone else. With her gone, the bad choices were taken away from me. But if she didn’t know how precarious her mental state was, Tarik could catch her off guard. He’d sideswiped her once. Unlike her, he wasn’t riddled with faults. Never mind that her faults made her real.

“Captain?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Are you going to issue an order, or shall we all just make it up as we go along?”

“You mean like we usually do?”

“I had hoped there was some method in your madness.”

I smiled. “I’m going after her. You stay here and watch for psycho-synth.”

“And Doctor Lloyd?”

“He stays. He’ll find a way to fix her, or I’ll kill him.”

Bren chuckled, the good in him believing I was joking. I wasn’t.

L
yra’s waterfall
of light played over me as I walked the strip. People jostled left and right. Their careless nudging sparked data fireworks amongst my thoughts. I walked through it all, soaking up just enough to cherish the data, and scanned the anonymous faces for Tarik. If my time was short, I intended to cache every moment. I’d come to despise Lyra, but there was beauty in the ugliness, same as with the nine systems. Ragged and run down, hiding moments of fleeting brilliance.
Like life.
At least I’d experienced what it meant to have freewill. Perhaps I should have been thankful for Chen Hung. He’d started a revolution in me. A revolution the thousand others, including Tarik, would never know.

Without access to the cloud, my options for finding Tarik were limited. Precious little of the information I’d stored pertained to Tarik. I knew he used the cloud to hunt and that he was running on diminished power. He would need to log a fault with Chitec and receive repair instructions. A power core breach would cripple him if he didn’t find a replacement. While his attention was focused on repairs, his processes would favor self-preservation. He’d weigh the odds of surviving another encounter with me and act accordingly. If the odds fell in his favor, he’d come, but he’d be vulnerable. With Caleb and his crew safely on
Starscream,
I had nothing to lose and no weakness for Tarik to exploit. He already considered me broken. The time to strike was now.

I am #1001 and I will not fail.

If I logged on to the cloud, Tarik would notice and come looking. All I needed was a suitable location.

I stopped outside the doors of a club. The name of the establishment glowed in swirling backlit letters designed to mimic lush vines:
The Jungle.
I smiled into the lurid light while the bioscanners and cameras scanned the ops-lenses that hid my synthetic eyes. The doors opened. A blast of music, light, and exotic scents rolled over me. A trickle of data-bound pleasure spilled through my systems. Yes,
The Jungle
would be perfect.

The air inside throbbed with a deep musical beat, the kind that strummed beneath the skin. As I ventured into the crowd, I loosened my gait and relaxed my expression. Here, I could be someone, not some
thing
.

Stars are wishes and wishes are dreams …

The memory snagged my processes, wrenching me out of my thoughts and causing a misstep in my stride. A stranger reached out a hand to steady me.
Not new …
I was someone older than my synthetic body could account for. I smiled at the nameless man who asked if I’d had too much to drink. Haley Hung had thrived in social gatherings. She’d cherished attention the way I did touch. Here, I could be her ghost. I knew her voice, knew her thoughts, knew her dreams.

“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, my gaze pulled to where his hand was resting on my sleeve.

He pulled his hand back and stammered an apology before turning away, but the memories had already begun to peel open. Caleb and Haley, in a club such as this one. Caleb’s touch had been light too, and warm, with a possessive guidance. Haley had stolen moments to touch him. She’d skimmed her hand across his thigh or taken his hand in hers, and Caleb had responded with whispers and smiles and laughter. Together, they’d been beautiful, two halves of a whole. He’d told me he hadn’t loved her, that he didn’t know what love was, but the truth was he didn’t believe he deserved to love or be loved.

I cruised through the club, my synthetic body in the present while the past wrapped around my processes. Memories spilled into my actions. My smiles, my glances, they were hers.

Camouflaged in a dead woman’s memories, I stalked my prey.

I reached for the cloud and dipped into the data, scanning the floor plans and searching for the last known location of my secondary target. I pulled back the moment I sensed Tarik’s attention crawling toward me. He’d noticed me. He would come. Until then, I had a drug lord to meet.

“Hello, Bruno.”

Ganymede’s drug lord’s booming laughter cut off. He was sitting at a table near the back of the club. Lights throbbed over his massive bulk and strobed in his small, shrewd eyes. We’d never met, but I’d seen him from afar and knew exactly how he’d exploited Jesse and others like her.

He chuckled and regarded the seven men and one woman sitting around the table. Gaming cards and credit chips lay strewn about the table. “She had me fooled for a moment. First time I’ve seen a machine pretend to be—”

I snatched his collar in a fist and slammed him face down into his bowl of nuts. His troops sprang from their places, but I already had my arm hooked around Bruno’s throat and was hauling him out of his chair before they could tackle me. Bruno spluttered and fought, but I stood firm and scanned the faces of those intent on taking me out.

“My name is One Thousand And One. If you attack, I will consider you a threat and retaliate with extreme force. I recommend you do not test my conviction, should you wish to leave these premises in full control of your faculties.”

Bruno coughed and blustered. His heels scuffed the floor, and he lost a shoe in the process. I tightened my grip, dipped my chin, and whispered, “Shall we discuss the Chitec reward, or would you prefer I break your neck?”

In the few seconds Bruno used to determine his agreement, I’d scanned the peripheral crowd and confirmed that no one in his crew posed much of a threat. We were tucked away, hidden by columns of fake plants. Either scuffles were commonplace in
The Jungle
or the Lyra police had already been notified, because nobody seemed concerned about Bruno’s welfare. It didn’t matter. What I had planned wouldn’t take long.

I loosened my grip enough for Bruno to speak. “Are you going to kill me?” he croaked. He smelt of dank air and garbage—the smell of Ganymede.

“That outcome is one possibility. Your odds of survival greatly improve the more you agree with me.” His men were still watching us, fingers twitching at their sides. “Retreat at least twenty meters,” I told them.

Bruno gave them a nod and they reluctantly retreated.

I released Bruno and walked around the table.
Fourteen thousand and seven hundred credits.
A generous sum to be betting with. “You’re a gambling man?”

Bruno eased himself back into his chair and brushed a hand over his rotund torso, smoothing down his suit and sweeping off crumbled nuts. “This is Lyra.”

I lifted my gaze and locked it onto his. His tiny eyes skittered, avoiding my stare. He righted his bowl and began scooping up the scattered nuts. “What do you want? I have business to do.” Still his gaze darted around, and still I drilled mine deeper. If I reached for the cloud, I could mine his dataprint and know him in seconds, but what did I need to know that I couldn’t already discern?

“Did Jesse return to you of her own freewill, or did you lure her back?”

“Jesse? What does any of this have to do with that whore?”

“Answer the question.”

“She came to me—”

“Lie.”

He jolted, alarmed by my deduction, and then smiled a slippery, eel-like smile. “Then you already know the answer.”

“Did Caleb come to you with information on me, or did you seek him out?”

He hesitated and those tiny eyes narrowed. “I thought we were talking about Chitec?”

“Answer the question.”

“I heard about the credits Chitec are offering and knew. I knew you were connected to Jesse. It didn’t take much to dig her up and get to asking questions. She told me all I needed to know about you and Caleb.”

I hadn’t been sure, considering the lies I’d detected in Caleb, whether he’d been entirely truthful with me. Bruno’s words seemed to confirm Caleb’s version of events. The way he smiled, I could extrapolate that Jesse had had little choice but to answer his questions. “What did you offer her?”

“If she told me all I needed to know, I’d leave Shepperd out of it and just go after you. She had a soft spot for the captain. Always did. Dumb bitch. What did loyalty get her? Dead, that’s what.”

“Caleb didn’t kill her. A synthetic did.”

He only knew one synthetic who wasn’t following her protocols.

I smiled. “I’m going to ask you some questions and please remember that I know when you’re lying.”

He paled. His taxed heart galloped and sweat glistened on his face. Good.

“Did you tell anyone about your plan to deliver me to Chitec?”

“Only Shepperd. I don’t want all the crooks in the nine descending on Lyra.”

“Did you tell the Candelarios Caleb is here?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have any intention of paying him?”

“None.”

Haley’s memories told me I should hate this man, but I didn’t hate him. I didn’t feel anything for him. If I rooted around my processes, I might have been able to find some scrap of feeling that I could possibly attribute to some human emotion. Disdain, perhaps. Really, all I wanted to do was end his life and eradicate a threat.

“You tracked him down for the sole purpose of finding me and saw an opportunity to collect two bounties. Mine and Caleb’s?”

“Anyone in the black would’ve done the same.” His jowls wobbled as he shook his head. “It wasn’t easy. Shepperd disappeared and then his brother was killed in some heroics against pirates. I figured it was a lost cause. Then one of his lesser-known ship IDs turned up on Lyra. I had my people watch him while I made the jump over. Sure enough the bastard is strutting around Lyra like he don’t have a care in the nine systems.”

I blinked slowly, leaned forward, and splayed my hands on the tabletop. “I can track you anywhere in the nine systems. I do not stop. And I do not care.” A hesitation skipped through my voice. “I could cross this table in the time it takes you to draw your next breath and kill you. Your men cannot stop me. The police cannot stop me. There is nothing and no one”—another skip, another lie—“who can stop me. Do you understand?” Chen Hung could stop me, but not before the truth I harbored revealed his true nature, if my plan succeeded.

“Yes.”

“But I will not kill you, Bruno. You are an asset. There is a male synthetic approaching this club. He is dangerous, perhaps more so than I am. I want you to focus your monitoring devices—your cameras and scanning equipment—on the center of the dance floor and on what happens there once he arrives. I want you to send the live footage to the news distribution networks. You will not intervene in any way. You will not call the authorities, no matter what happens.”

He blinked a few times, probably wondering about the motives behind my demands. “What do you expect will happen?”

“The truth.”

He snorted. “Two synths? Really? What
truth
could possibly be worth this trouble?”

“The kind of truth that will bring an intra-system corporation to its knees.”
Providing I don’t fail.

I am #1001, and I will survive at any cost. Failure is a choice. I will not fail. Stars are wishes and wishes are dreams …

Aren’t you ever afraid, Caleb-Joe? When you’re alone in the black, don’t you ever get scared? Sure, I get scared.
I’m scared of failure, and what will happen if I do fail. Fear keeps me real. Keeps me winning.

The fault twitched through my systems, tugging on fragments of the past and trawling them through my processes. I wanted to kill this man. The urge was almost too strong to deny. Murder went against my own moral code, tentative as that burgeoning code was. Fear skittered and twitched through my thoughts. Fear of what I might truly be capable of.

Bruno must have seen his potential fate in my eyes, because his next words were hushed. “Chitec is right to want you back. Your programming is all screwed up.”

If only he knew by how much. “I will know if you’ve reneged on our deal, and I will hunt you down. These are not empty threats.”

“Yes, yes.” He started scooping his scattered credit chips toward him.

I slammed my hand down on the tabletop, rattling the chips. “I’m not finished. You will contact the Candelarios and tell them you were mistaken. Caleb Shepperd is not on Lyra.”

The man’s bug eyes darted. “I can’t do that,” he blustered. “They’ve already confirmed he’s here. They weren’t going to take my word for it. Probably paid someone to get eyes on him. The Candes don’t mess around.”

“How long before they arrive?”

“Reckon they’re already here.”

It was too late to warn Caleb. While on
Starscream
, he’d be safe. I couldn’t waste processing power on events I had no control over. The captain and his brother were survivors. They didn’t know any other way.

“He might as well hand himself over. There ain’t no place in the nine systems he can hide. The Candes won’t ever let him go.”

I smiled. “Neither will I.”

T
he smallest data
twinge pulled my attention toward the entrance the moment Tarik arrived. Perhaps later, I could study how I’d sensed him, whether it was by local connection or a more organic process. The source was irrelevant. He was here and I was ready.

I stood motionless in the center of the club in full view of the cameras. People jostled and danced, nudged and laughed—enjoyed living. They forgot themselves here. Forgot their worries, their pressures. I remembered: Haley. Caleb. Chen Hung. Perhaps I was wrong to do this here. The risk was great, the odds unfavorable. But given the information I had and my limited time, my processes deemed this the only acceptable method. Caleb would call it a blaze of glory. He’d be proud.

I shrugged off my jacket and dropped it to the floor. Then I removed the ops-lenses and let them fall from my fingertips.
I am #1001. Let the nine systems see me.

Tarik’s eyes shone in the play of light, the way mine must have. He carved through the crowd, and I watched as people instinctively moved aside. He looked like every single one of his 499 brothers, modeled on this era’s notion of perfection: Proud face. Straight shoulders. Arrogant and cold. Solid confidence in his every perfect stride.

I was his weakness. He followed orders like a shark followed blood. He’d already shown he’d stop at nothing to retrieve me. His failsafes had been disabled and his protocols reengineered. He was one of the thousand Chitec synthetics designed to hunt, designed to kill, and I was about to make him famous.