Heart of Steel (19 page)

He ran his hand over his mouth, acutely aware of the metal plates in his face for what seemed to be the first time.

It was almost like he’d been chasing some distant phantom the whole time he thought he was pursuing

Julia, with the result that he’d kept Julia in a gilded cage, trying to hold her up to the standard that Lauren had set.

A distant metallic slam reverberated up through the floor. He barely noticed.

Was his affection for Julia the result of love, or some twisted delusion spawned by the memory of Lauren? That was a question with no clear answer right now. It was true that Julia had helped him unlock the past and remind him of what it was like to

be human—but at what cost? Was humanity worth the pain, the uncertainty, and the horrible memories of his past?

Yes,
a voice inside him answered immediately.
Humanity is worth everything. The pain makes the victories all the sweeter by comparison.

Another metallic slam came, somewhat closer. This one caught Mechanus’s attention, and he glanced up, instinctively trying to quest out to locate its source before remembering his limited range. The skin on the back of his neck prickled warily.

He heard a soft
beep
in the back of his mind, the cheerful ‘done’ tone of the compiler. Mechanus nodded in satisfaction. He should be able to profligate Arthur by the time Julia came back from her bathroom break, and once he had his network connection back—and the island-wide omniscience that came with it—he would take care of Jim once and for all.

He stood, pushing aside the remainder of his worries for the time being, and returned to the server room. As he took position in front of the terminal, the words ‘Compilation Completed’ vanished, to be replaced with:

> You seem troubled, sir.

Mechanus sighed, wiping his eye before typing his response:

> I have my memories back, Arthur.

The cursor blinked thoughtfully a few times.

> But that’s good, isn’t it?

Mechanus shook his head slowly.

> That remains to be seen, Arthur. I remember why I broke. You will see when we join again.

The cursor blinked at him for another diplomatic interval.

> Very well, sir.

> Upload? (Y/N)

Mechanus picked up the loose end of a network cable and plugged it into a port on the left side of his head. After making sure the connection was secure, he hit the Y key.

The response was immediate.

Data flooded Mechanus’s mind in a merciless deluge. He flung his head back and groaned as information from countless servers, connections, and processes rammed their way into his awareness. After

several hours of mental silence, the fresh cacophony was almost overwhelming. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a rictus of sensory overload, and his back arched in something that could not properly be called pain. A thin wheezing noise escaped his gritted teeth, something that might have tried to be a scream had the flood been even slightly less.

As the data flooded in, Mechanus’s awareness flooded out, filling Shark Reef Isle afresh with his will, his command, his mind, until he was once again

the god in the machine. He let out a strangled cry as his whole body spasmed in what, to the casual observer, may have looked like a particularly intense orgasm. He stood like that, quivering, for several seconds before he finally slumped against the computer desk, breathing hard, relieved to have his lungs back under his control.

That was when he heard Arthur’s voice once again, to his immense relief, though the words were not exactly what he’d expected.

He felt Arthur sifting through the new information, analyzing it, contextualizing it.

Mechanus nodded.

Arthur ventured.

Arthur observed. Mechanus felt him continuing to sift, a familiar, comforting sensation, but just then the A.I. stopped dead at one particular memory, a more recent one. There was a very long pause.

Mechanus glanced at the memory in question—Julia kissing him—and blushed.

also
stop staring at that memory like it’s the secret to cold fusion.>

It wasn’t that Mechanus was
embarrassed
by the memory, exactly—but it just seemed quite personal,

like a precious jewel that he wanted to keep safe from prying eyes. The need for privacy was also new to him, but he would adapt—and so would Arthur, if he knew what was good for him.

On the heels of this, he realized that Julia should have been back by now, regardless of whatever arcane processes typically accompanied a woman’s lavatory activities. His reintegration with Arthur had taken a few minutes at least, to judge by his network clock, but his senses had been overwhelmed during the process, so it was entirely possible he’d missed something crucial. He quested out into the surveillance cameras that lined the corridor, and peered through the one nearest the toilet.

The door hung open on one broken hinge. The hall to the left of the door bore a small splatter of red that looked like blood. On the floor in the hallway he saw the Ionizer—which apparently she’d taken with her—and saw a scar in the wall opposite the bathroom that looked like plasma damage.

Mechanus’s cardiac pump froze in his chest as he worked out what happened while he was otherwise occupied.

Julia goes to the toilet, bringing the Ionizer. Smart woman.

She comes out, and finds that Jim has tracked her down.

He tries to grab her, and she resists—as well she should.

He hits her in response, knocking her against the wall and from there to the floor, and…

“He took her,” Mechanus whispered in horror. “I couldn’t stop him because I was getting the network back up. He took her, and I didn’t stop him.”

He was already searching the complex when the familiar signal came.

Jim transmitted.

Mechanus returned, his mechanical eye blazing red.

Jim was daring him. After all this, even knowing that Mechanus had his full faculties back, Jim was daring him.

Of course, Mechanus wouldn’t risk Julia getting hurt, but…

he transmitted, picking up the Ionizer and settling the strap over his shoulder.

Mechanus turned and headed for the door.

Mechanus’s eye narrowed. <
All of them.
>

Chapter

FIFTEEN

Julia’s head hurt. In particular, her mouth hurt, and she tasted blood. She thought two of her teeth might be loose. Her left eye and cheek felt swollen, and a probe with her tongue revealed a cut lip. She was slung on her stomach across something that swayed and bobbed slowly as it moved forward.

Okay, Jules,
said the sensible voice.
Take stock of yourself. Anything broken?

She wiggled her fingers and toes experimentally. They responded readily, and without any additional pain.

Good,
said the sensible voice.
Now, let’s find out where you are and how you got here.

Julia took a discreet breath to steady herself; the more time that passed, the more she suspected she

was slung over someone’s shoulder, and the worse that possibility sounded.

Not long after Alistair’s breakthrough, Julia had discovered that she had to pee. Since he indicated that

he wanted some time to think about his discovery, she didn’t feel too guilty about asking to use the bathroom. She’d taken the Ionizer with her just in case, located the bathroom, attended to her call of nature, washed her hands, and opened the door to see—

Her blood ran cold.

Jim. It was Jim. He’d been right outside the bathroom, and then—

A hand tightened on her calf, and she nearly screamed.

“I see you’re awake.” The voice came from a nearby speaker, but it wasn’t Alistair’s voice like before; this time, Jim spoke from the walls. He sounded utterly, unnaturally calm, as though the process of being rebuilt had scoured away any emotions. She almost would have been less afraid if he’d sounded angry, or even upset. As it was, she felt like she was about to be assimilated by the Borg.

“I’m disappointed, Julia,” the speakers continued, each one activating in turn as he approached and falling silent in his wake. “Really, I am. See, I was under the impression that you were my girlfriend. Good girls don’t cheat on their boyfriends, you see, especially not when their boyfriends go to all the trouble and expense to give them a nice vacation, and especially not with some guy who kidnapped you. Have you ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome?”

It wasn’t like that,
she wanted to say.
I thought you were brain-dead, and then you tried to kill us.
She couldn’t force herself to say the words, though.

“I get it, though,” the speakers continued. “I guess I never thought you’d be the sort of selfish bitch who’d abandon me in my time of need.”

Her stomach twisted. She knew this technique well by now, especially now that she’d had the chance to recognize it. However, arguing the point just sounded like a really
bad
idea right now.

“Fortunately, I’m the forgiving type,” the speakers continued in Jim’s emotionless drone. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got some really special plans for you and your new boy toy.”

“Look,” she slurred through her swollen lip. “It’s not like that.”

“Really?” he demanded, and she found herself dragged off his shoulder by the back of her shirt. “How is it, then?”

He was even more of a mess now than before, covered in lacerations and bruises and scrapes from what must have been one hell of a fight with Scarface. In addition to his broken jaw, which still sat at that grotesque angle, his right cheek and lower lip were torn open, leaving his teeth largely exposed in a horrifying leer surrounded by raw, corrugated flesh. A deep gash over his right eye had bled heavily, leaving a matted clot obscuring his vision on that side. A deep, blackened furrow etched a diagonal line across his chest and left shoulder. This last detail, she vaguely remembered, she had caused with the Ionizer. The rest must have been Scarface’s doing.

She clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream of horror; he looked less human now than Alistair ever had, and to her dismay none of it seemed to have slowed him down for long, let alone stopped him.

“Problem?” the nearest speaker mocked her.

Panicking will do you no good,
the reasonable voice told her.
Maybe you can delay him. Certainly Alistair will be looking for you by now.

“Look,” she said, and her voice cracked with suppressed fear. She cleared her throat. “Look… Jim, I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while now.”

His remaining visible eye narrowed and Lauren considered that she had just discovered the absolute worst timing in the long, tragic history of difficult discussions.

“Talk to me about what?” he demanded.

She tried to step back, but his hand was still firmly clamped onto her shirt. “I… I haven’t been happy in our relationship,” she choked out. “I’ve wanted to break up for a while now, but the timing never seemed right. I… I…” Any further words died on her lips, because she saw that he didn’t look the least bit surprised. For a few moments all she could do was stare at the disjointed wreck that used to be her boyfriend. “You… you knew?” she squeaked.

“Of course I did,” Jim snarled, and the harsh, metallic rasp that came through the speakers was even more chilling than the emotionless voice he’d been using before. It reminded her of grinding metal.

“How long have you known?” she whispered, and considered it a minor miracle that she was able to make even that much noise.

“Long enough,” he said, and with a rough jerk he hefted her back over his shoulder and continued walking in that slow, lurching gait that his metal legs gave him. She struggled, hoping to slip free, but he squeezed her leg again, this time on the back of her thigh, painfully enough to bring tears to her eyes. “I thought you’d learned your lesson six months ago, but apparently not.”

“What do you mean by my lesson?” she demanded. “What sort of lesson did I…?” she trailed off and fell silent. She’d been attacked six months

ago. She’d been attacked, and Jim had saved her, and she’d given him a second chance. She hadn’t even told him yet that she wanted to break up, but—

No. It was impossible that he’d known. Not then. He couldn’t have.

“I bet you thought you were clever,” the speakers around Jim said. “I knew, though. I could see you with your wandering eye every time we went out. Always looking for the next guy, just itching to dump me for someone else.”

“No—that’s not—” She was in placating mode again, and she hated herself for it. Old habits died hard, she supposed, especially in times of stress.

“Don’t give me that,” he growled. “I know your type. Of course the second I’m out of the way
here
you go and hook up with the freak that runs the place.”

Well, that wasn’t
quite
true, but she supposed it might seem true
enough
to the casual observer.

“He’s… he’s nice,” she protested, and even in her own ears it sounded lame. Alistair
was
nice, though—a little weird, but nicer than Jim had been to her of late. And Jim made it sound like she’d fallen for Alistair right off the bat.

Her mind circled back to the attack. Every instinct screamed at her to avoid the memory, as always, but she forced herself to study it, willing her mind into the clinical mode that had always served her so well in the ER. The back of her neck prickled and a cold sweat broke out on her brow, but she made herself keep breathing.

In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. You can get through this.

“What… what do you know about the attack?”

He didn’t answer, but just kept walking. She became aware that the air was growing warmer.

“Jim,” she pled. “Please, answer me.”

Finally he answered. “I know that you don’t always know what you really want, most of the time,” he said. “You think you do, but I know better.”

A cold hand started to slowly squeeze her heart.

“I mean, you talked about dropping out of medicine a couple of times,” he said. “I showed you how medicine was always your dream, and you got through it.”

That was true, as far as that went. The E.R. was tough, but she was proud of herself once she’d finished her residency.

“You said you didn’t want to go out with me,” he continued. “Weren’t you happier and more relaxed when you got out and about sometimes?”

That was also true, at first, until it became clear that they were doing only what he’d wanted on these excursions.

“So that’s how I knew that even though you might have thought that you wanted to break up with me, all you needed was a little push in the right direction to show you how wrong you were.”

A push
, she thought. What sort of a push could he—?

“And weren’t we so much closer after that druggie nearly killed you? If I hadn’t been there, who knows what would have happened?”

And that was the odd part, really—it had been two in the morning when the
incident
had happened. Somehow, Jim had just
happened
to be there at that

obscure hour, when rational people typically weren’t out and about. The more she thought about it, the less of a coincidence it seemed to be—and the tighter the icy hand closed around her heart.

“What
were
you doing there?” she asked. By now, the air was baking hot, like a dry California in the teeth of an August afternoon. Distantly, she heard the rhythmic chugging of heavy machinery, and decided that right now was not a good time to crane her head to see where Jim was taking her. She would rather deal with one crisis at a time at the moment.

“I was just checking up on you,” a speaker nearby said.

“At… two in the morning?”

“I’m not allowed to visit my girlfriend at work, is that what you’re saying?” He squeezed the back of her thigh again.

“It’s just odd, is all.” Her pulse was racing.

Stay calm, Jules,
said the reasonable voice.
This is no time to panic.

Bullshit,
said the rat voice.
This is the perfect time to panic.

“Odd?” The rasping metallic tone was back. “My girlfriend is fucking some mad scientist and you think my nighttime errands are
odd
?”

Her heart skipped a beat. The accusation was entirely ludicrous—she wasn’t the sort of woman to sleep around. Jim knew that, or she thought he did. For several seconds she couldn’t even formulate a reply.

Now can I panic?
she asked the sensible voice.

Under the circumstances,
the sensible voice responded,
I think you may.

“Nothing to say to that, huh?” Jim continued on.

“I… I… I would never…” she stammered, trying to find some way out of this. “How could you possibly think—?”

“Oh, I know your type,” he said offhandedly. “And I’ll be very clear with this.” He squeezed her leg again, and she bit back a cry of pain. “I am not about to lose you. I will not let you run off to some other guy you’ve only known a few days. See, our five years together actually
mean
something to me. You will not throw that away.” He squeezed harder, digging his fingers into the muscle of her thigh, and she let out a strangled whimper, tears running down her face. When he next spoke, the metallic snarl was almost inhuman. “
I will kill you before that happens.
”

Something happened to Julia then, something that she couldn’t exactly explain. Perhaps she simply reached a state whereby she passed clear through fear and despair and found serenity on the other side. Perhaps it was the moment when, behind Jim, she saw one of the many security cameras turn to point at her, its indicator light glowing friendly green.

Hello,
it seemed to say.
I’ve found you.

She smiled, for what felt like the first time in a very long time, and she barely felt the pain in her bruised face.

“Jim,” she said quietly, and with more than a little satisfaction to her voice. “I think you’re about to have a really bad day.”

***

Alistair Mechanus had nearly gotten used to emotions by now, especially anger. As he regarded the scene framed in the surveillance camera, though,

he found that he had passed clear through anger like an armor-piercing round and found a strange tranquility on the other side.

Jim had entered the central chamber of the main geothermal processing plant with Julia slung over his shoulder. It was a huge octagonal room stretching up hundreds of feet, surrounded by a maze of pipes and machinery devoted to harnessing the energy generated by Shark Reef Isle’s central volcano and converting it to the huge amounts of electricity that the network and fabrication machines required to function. Jim’s feet clanked heavily on the metal grid of the floor, and the orange glow of lava radiated up from hundreds more feet below, bathing the whole room in a hellish light that shone off the polished metal, making the place appear to be on fire. Mechanus could see sweat glistening on Julia’s brow; this was the lowest level of this chamber at which it was completely safe for his biological employees to work for any great length of time without protective clothing.