Chapter 11 #2
“They got to him in time before he lost anything else,” another volunteer offers to me somberly as they close the lid and begin loading him into a large BioNex van. “I’m just glad he didn’t get damaged further in the cargo hold.”
Rage pours through my veins at the very thought of Nolan being cast among the luggage, jostled by turbulence, like he’s little more than a doll. I set my jaw. “They put him with the baggage?”
“New rules. Androids can’t ride passenger, and they certainly can’t ride home, like a fallen hero,” he replies. “I’m sorry.”
I can cause a fuss about that later. “I want to ride with him. Can I?”
The firefighters exchange glances before asking the driver. They wave me in. “Go ahead. But just one.”
I turn to Jessica, who takes my hands and squeezes them. “I’ll call you when I need to get picked up.”
“Okay.” Jessica pulls me into a hug. “Be careful.”
I crawl into the van with him and sit next to his box, opening the lid again and staring at Nolan’s hollow, blackened hands and the remnants of his fingers. I reach out and gently grasp one, gazing at him as we pull away.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “You kept everyone safe. You’re a hero, and they treat you like garbage. I’m so proud of you, Nolan.” Soot covers my finger, angering me further. They couldn’t even bother to wipe him off? “I don’t care if you don’t remember me. Just come back. Just come back.”
I speak to him quietly like that, knowing he’s destroyed.
There will be no recovering this body, and there may not be a way to recover him, but I don’t care.
After a short drive, we approach BioNex’s laboratories.
The van is let through a security checkpoint and a large pair of gates.
In the receiving area, the doors are opened, and a pair of young warehouse workers peer at me.
One of them pipes up, clearly not expecting someone to be riding with Nolan’s remains. “Sorry, but you’re not allowed in here—”
“You can get back to work. I’ll handle this.”
A woman strides through the warehouse from a pair of double doors, wearing a billowing lab coat and heels to where Nolan is being unloaded. She regards me with a shrewd, pointed stare.
“It seems my security gate is lacking. I wasn’t notified of anyone coming with Nolan. Who are you?”
“I’m his girlfriend,” I manage to say, suddenly feeling like I’m in the way. “Sorry. I just didn’t want to leave him alone when he’s like this.”
Her gaze softens. “I see.” She climbs into the back of the van, grimacing as she looks over what’s left of him.
I stare at the scientist quietly, wondering who she is as she fusses over Nolan’s body. Her curly black hair is tied up with a blue headscarf, and a pair of thick glasses rests on her nose. She’s not much taller than me.
At last, she remembers I’m there and looks up. “What’s your name?”
“Mia Bennett.” I hesitate, grasping the strap of my purse, trying to anchor myself. “Is there any way I could stay with him?”
“I’m Dr. Taylor. I’m one who made Nolan,” she replies. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you into the lab. But we have a break room for employees with windows to the lab. You can wait there.”
I’m so relieved she’s not going to throw me out, I have to keep myself from crying as I nod. “Thank you.”
“Victor!” she calls. “Let’s get to work.”
A man is already jogging toward us, his white eyes plain as day. He unloads the box from the van and pulls Nolan toward the doors.
He smiles. “He’ll be all right. Don’t worry.”
I follow them in, praying he’s right.
* * *
Rebuilding Nolan takes time.
Genevieve Taylor is an angel in a lab coat.
I’m grateful that she didn’t judge me or treat me with disdain when I explained my relationship with Nolan.
It felt strange, calling myself his girlfriend when we never established labels, and now I’m not sure we’ll have the opportunity.
But that’s who I am. It’s how I feel. If Nolan was here now with me, I hope he’d be delighted by my words.
Dr. Taylor grants me a guest pass that allows me to return to BioNex any time I want, so long as I check in at the front desk.
I return every day for three weeks.
For part of the day, I work at Cyber Street just long enough to film content and photograph inventory, then I bring my laptop to BioNex and work in the break room, where I can watch as the bionic engineers completely rebuild him from head to toe, pulling up holographic blueprints, everything that made him an original, remaking him piece by piece.
Genevieve, as Dr. Taylor insists I call her, is a busy woman. But her assistant, Victor—who happens to be the first android ever designed by BioNex—occasionally stops into the break room and offers me coffee or a pastry and asks how I’m doing.
“Won’t you get in trouble if you keep checking up on me and not working?” I ask him one day.
He just grins. “Not at all. Human care is my primary function.”
He also sends updates to my phone when he’s too busy to say hello, helping Genevieve reshape Nolan. She’s a woman possessed; almost a mad scientist, with how ceaseless she is. I can tell she’s passionate about her craft.
We’re working on his circuitry today.
Today, we’re attaching his limbs.
His new exoskeleton is being welded as we speak.
I’ve learned more android terms than I ever thought I would as I visit BioNex each day. I text Apollo with the news while he remains in California, and I keep Jessica up to date as well whenever I go home. That’s been our routine, for the past three weeks.
“How is our hero today?” she asks when I come home on a late Saturday afternoon, just before dinnertime. She’s got the tiniest little baby bump, only now starting to protrude and easily hidden beneath her T-shirt. She’s setting the table and I quickly start pitching in too.
“Today they were fixing his exoskeleton,” I reply. “They haven’t added his synthetics yet, but I think that step will come soon.”
Jessica peers at me, confused. “Synthetics?”
“His hair and skin. Things like that.”
“Oh! Got it.”
At dinner time, we all sit down and get ready to enjoy Jessica’s cooking.
While Laolao’s food is unmatched, she’s out today, having fun at a ceramics class and enjoying time at the park with her friends.
When the door opens, all of us stop. The briefest glimmer of hope catches me by the chest, wishing it could be somehow be him.
But I’m all the more surprised—and still relieved—when Apollo walks in carrying two duffel bags and tosses them to the ground with a thud, his eyes on Jessica.
She’s instantly on her feet. I watch with a teary smile as she runs to him, and he catches her. They exchange a kiss just before the kids run to him too. I wish it could be me and Nolan, and that hurtful longing that’s always in the back of my mind, sometimes sharp, sometimes dull, returns.
“You didn’t call me!” Jessica scolds.
“Wanted to surprise you,” Apollo replies. I’m the last to go hug him, mostly just to give him some space to hug and kiss his kids. “Mia.” He embraces me tightly. “How’s Nolan today?”
“As good as he can be.” I don’t know how else to answer that question. He’s not here with us when he should be. And I can’t rest until he is.
“She’s been going to see him every day,” Jessica remarks.
“You don’t have to go there every day, you know,” Apollo offers with some concern. “Don’t torture yourself.”
“No, I need to. If the situation was reversed, and I was in a hospital bed somewhere, Nolan would be with me every day,” I answer.
“I know he would.” And part of me hopes that somehow, he can sense me when I’m at that lab.
It makes no sense, of course. He’s not asleep or in a coma.
Wishing won’t make it true. “It’s the only thing that feels right. ”
After we shovel dinner into our mouths, we go outside to the backyard, enjoying the autumn weather. Apollo chases his kids around. I sit near Jessica on a few patio chairs.
“When will we tell him?” I ask. “If we wait anymore I might actually internally combust.”
“Not yet,” Jessica says with a little wink. She leans back and sighs. “Not until Nolan comes home.”
Nobody can look at us and say bionics are merely a machine and nothing else. All our lives are on hold until Nolan returns. If he can truly return.
And if it can’t happen, if Nolan being able to remember me is just a desperate lie I’ve been telling myself this entire time, I don’t know what I’ll do.
* * *
I wake the next morning to a message from Dr. Taylor.
He’s awake. Hurry over.
I fall out of bed, scrambling for any clothes within my reach. “Apollo!” I shout. “Apollo, he’s up!”
Apollo flings open his bedroom door in nothing but his boxers, looking around in groggy confusion. “He’s up?”
“Nolan’s awake.”
It finally registers. He rushes to get dressed, nearly tripping and falling over himself. I pull socks over my feet and practically slide down the stairs to grab my brother’s car keys. I’m halfway to the garage before he’s caught up to me, snatching them out of my hands.
“Don’t even think about it.”
We jump into the car. Once we’re on the highway, Apollo floors it. Even though it’s barely seven a.m., I’m wide awake, peering at the New Carnegie skyline bathed in the colors of dawn.
I steel myself for what I know is coming.
Apollo told me, and Dr. Taylor and Victor all but confirmed it.
There’s nothing on playback of me in Nolan’s memory banks that were last uploaded onto the servers.
Not even when we first met at Cyber Street.
Apollo said it was like someone spliced the footage, and it cut off the moment he went through the door.
I’m touched he protected memories of me so ardently—but God, I wish he hadn’t felt the need to. I wish he could’ve just had the promise of privacy. If he didn’t have handlers, if he wasn’t owned by the fire department, this wouldn’t be a problem in the first place.