Chapter 13 #2
He looked back at her.
“Just run,” she whispered. “Get help.”
The other guy tutted. “Waste of good chrome, those moral guardrails they put on bots.” He shrugged. “Let’s grab them both. He’s gotta be worth some bands.”
When he reached for Ophelia, Sam moved faster than would have been possible for a human man.
He wrapped his hand around the throat of the man, whose mouth fell open in a silent scream. His bionic eyes tracked back and forth so rapidly they were a blur. The glass lenses cracked loudly as electricity arced from his temples.
“What the fuck!” the other man yelled, reaching behind his back.
Sam yanked the guy’s hand back into sight. The borg with the broken eyes hit the ground in a heap as Sam released him, groaning and writhing.
“Get off me, bro!” The other cyborg shouted, trying to wrench his hand free. “What the fuck are you—”
His metal teeth clacked together with a loud sound as his jaw locked up.
“You talk too much.” Sam’s eyes glowed faintly blue. “For the sake of your fellow man, I bid you to be silent.”
The guy began to seize.
She pressed a hand over her mouth, horrified as his mechanical eyes rolled back. He fell to the ground, jerking violently as all his cyberware seemed to go haywire.
All she could do was gape at Sam. The look he was giving her was inscrutable.
“Yo, what the fuck!” someone shouted from the far end of the alley. “You’re dead, motherfucker!”
Ophelia grabbed Sam’s hand and ran.
Gustav gave her a knowing look as he pulled the door open for them. Her face burned as they stepped inside; she knew Gustav would forever be aware that she’d been cavorting with a pleasure android.
The elevator opened with a pleasant ding and a burst of stale air. She got on with wooden legs, staring at Sam from the corner of her eye.
“How did you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
Was he playing dumb?
“You hurt them,” she said in a wavering voice. “You’re not supposed to be able to do that.”
“Did I? Are you certain?” That poker face was impossible to decipher. “I merely interrupted their operating software. Their organic components will face no lasting damage.”
“Their organic components.” Her brow furrowed. “What is that, like a loophole? Are you finding ways around your moral guardrail?”
The thought was chilling. If he could find a way around the directive that kept him from hurting others, what else could he do?
“No,” he said, meeting her gaze steadily. “I am not capable of exploiting loopholes. I am a robot.”
Why didn’t she believe that?
“I cannot carry out the directive of my primary user if you are injured or dead,” he said in a perfunctory way. “You were in danger, thus I was compelled to protect you.”
She bit her bottom lip, scrutinizing him. Was that really all it was?
Why did the thought of him saving her only as a matter of practicality disappoint her?
“Thank you,” she muttered.
“You needn’t thank me for protecting you.”
Of course not. It wasn’t like he cared about her.
She looked away. “Right.”
“I will never let any harm come to you, Ophelia.”
She took a surprised breath, looking back up at him. There was an intensity in his eyes that she was sure she wasn’t imagining.
When they stepped off the elevator on her floor, her stomach plunged all the way back to the lobby.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Her mother straightened as their eyes met, her manicured brows knitting.
“There you are.” Her French-tipped nails clutched at her designer bag. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”
As per usual, her mother was the picture of beauty and health.
Her dyed blond hair was perfectly blown out: silky, straight, and falling to her mid-back.
Tasteful, high-quality basics hugged her hourglass figure.
She was all the things that Ophelia could not manage to be, mousy and slight and shy as she was.
They may have shared neuroses, but that was all they had in common.
“I’m fine,” Ophelia said with exasperation, dragging her feet. “I’m sorry, my phone died. There’s been… a lot going on.”
Her mother’s mouth flattened. “So I heard.” Her blue gaze drifted past Ophelia to Sam. “Is that an android? What on earth are you doing with that?”
“Um, Logan is working on him at home. Trying to sort out some problems he couldn’t in the lab.”
Her mother arched a brow. Ophelia had a feeling her mother knew exactly what kind of ‘problems’ someone would take a sex android home to ‘work out.’ Ophelia’s face flushed miserably.
“Anyway, I’m fine, as you can see,” Ophelia blurted. “I’m sorry to make you come out, but there’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure you’re busy. It was nice to see you.” She darted in for a quick, one-armed hug and turned to unlock her door.
Her mother, naturally, followed her inside.
“Just a moment,” her mother bit out, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s not very nice of you to brush me off when I came all the way down here.”
Ophelia sighed, stepping sidelong to let Sam into the apartment.
He pulled the door shut behind himself, giving her mother a look that she couldn’t interpret.
Wordlessly, he removed his shoes and walked past them with his bag full of supplies, presumably to fix the door he’d so thoughtlessly broken.
“What do you need?” Ophelia asked, cutting straight to the point.
Her mother’s face twisted with anger. “Don’t be rude.”
“I’m not trying to be rude! I know you’re here for something, so you may as well just ask, so we can get it sorted out. Please, it’s been a long week.”
Her mother huffed, toeing off her shoes and wandering into the apartment.
She slid a finger along the counter that separated the kitchen and the living space, rubbing it over her thumb as though detecting invisible dust. She peered down the hall where Sam was kneeling, fiddling with the metal latch for the door.
He’d pushed his sleeves back, and the synthetic muscles beneath his freckled skin were flexing rhythmically as he screwed something into place.
“He looks expensive,” her mother said in a musing tone.
“That’s because he is.”
A muscle ticced in Sam’s jaw, as though he didn’t like being spoken about as though he wasn’t in the room. But that wasn’t possible. The AI programming of androids didn’t allow them to get annoyed.
Still, the illusion of it tugged at her.
Her mother walked up to him, squatting next to him as she inspected him like he was a statue at the National Gallery of Art. His shoulders tensed, but he didn’t acknowledge her, even when she reached out and brushed one of his loose curls out of his eyes.
“God, they really make them beautiful, don’t they?” Her mother trailed a finger over his high cheekbone. “I wish I could afford one. I do get lonely, sometimes.” She tossed her hair, looking back over her shoulder at Ophelia. “What’s he like in bed?”
“Mom!” Disgust roiled in Ophelia’s gut at the mere thought of discussing her sex life with her mother.
“If you’re too prudish to tell me, you could always lend him to me for the night.” Her mother’s tone was teasing, but her eyes were glinting with genuine desire.
Sam rose to his feet so fast that it startled her mother, sending her careening back onto her butt on the floor with a gasp. He ignored her completely, cracking open a tub of wood putty.
“Looks like his coding needs some serious work,” her mother griped, pushing back up to her feet.
She dusted herself off, looking down at her hands with disgust. “Isn’t it called artificial intelligence?
Seems a bit stupid to me.” She meandered into the kitchen, where she washed her hands once, patted them dry, and then began washing them again.
Casting a wicked grin back at Ophelia, she added, “Though I guess they didn’t make him to be clever, after all. ”
“He’s not stupid,” Ophelia said heatedly, standing in the opening to the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest. “He just…” Doesn’t like you, she thought. God, she was really anthropomorphizing the machine. “He’s not stupid,” she repeated.
Her mother held her hands up in surrender. “Whatever you say, sweetie.”
Ophelia massaged the throbbing ache growing at her temple. “Mom, please just tell me what you need.”
Her mother turned to face her, leaning one hip against the counter. “I need you to talk to your father for me.”
All the breath left Ophelia’s lungs at once. “What? Why?”
“The cost of living is going up, and the alimony isn’t cutting it anymore,” her mother said haughtily, tipping her nose up. “I don’t want to get another legal battle with the man, so I was hoping you’d be thoughtful enough to go make an appeal to him for me.”
Because you know you’d lose, Ophelia thought bitterly. “Why don’t you just downsize?”
Her mother lived in a palatial apartment in a beautifully restored historical building, which meant she paid nearly three times what Ophelia did in rent.
Her mother looked at her like she was stupid. “If I can’t afford the rent, I certainly can’t afford the expense of moving.”
So, get a job.
The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she bit down on them.
Her mother had never worked, not once, and she wasn’t all that good with money.
Theirs had been a life of feast and famine.
Her father’s alimony check would come in, and her mother would drag her out clothes shopping, and they’d get brunch every day for a week.
Then the money would dry up, and Ophelia would be eating cereal and Eggos for most of her meals until the next windfall came through.
Clearly, things weren’t much better since she’d moved out.
“Dad doesn’t even like me,” she whined, feeling thirteen again. “It’s just going to tick him off if I show up at his office and ask him to send you more money.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your father loves you. He’ll listen to you.”
Ophelia gawked at her. It was her mother who had told her time and again over her life how little her father cared for her, how he’d never wanted children, how having her—a noble act on behalf of her mother—had ruined their marriage forever.
Now, she was suggesting that her father would dote on her so much that he’d merrily sign a check for her to ferry back to her mother.
“He will not,” Ophelia said.
Tears welled in her mother’s eyes, and as they fell, they carried little sooty particles of her mascara with them.
Ophelia’s chest tightened painfully. God, she couldn’t stand it when her mother cried.
For all her life, she’d been the only one there to catch those tears, to soothe her mother when her breakdowns went nuclear.
One of her earliest memories was of her mother locked in a closet with a kitchen knife, sobbing and telling her that she was sorry, but mommy was going to kill herself. Ophelia had been four.
Through the lens of time, she now understood that her parents had had a fight, and her father hadn’t responded at all to her mother’s escalations in distress.
It wasn’t until Ophelia had gone to him sobbing and begging for help that he’d sighed and stood from his recliner, wandering over to ask her mother to calm down with a glass of scotch in his hand.
The memory still dug under her skin. It hadn’t been the last time her mother had threatened suicide. If she pushed this hard enough, Ophelia knew she might threaten it even now, standing in her kitchen.
Ophelia dug her fingers into the fabric of her shirt, grabbing at it as though she was seizing her runaway heart.
“Fine,” she said, the word sticking in her throat. “Fine. I’ll go. Just please calm down.”
Her mother’s tears dried up quickly as she smiled. She fished a tissue from her purse and dabbed at the dark track marks on her cheeks. “Thank you, sweetie. You’re such a good girl.”
She stepped forward and threw her arms around Ophelia, enveloping her in a cloud of expensive perfume. She patted her mother’s back awkwardly, forlorn.
“Well,” her mother said, stepping back. “You just let me know what he says, okay?”
Her eyes darted sidelong at Sam, who stood in the doorway with the screwdriver in his hand, no longer working on anything at all. A shadow fell across his dark eyes, inscrutable.
Her mother shuddered, and Ophelia didn’t blame her.
“I guess I’ll… take off,” her mother said distractedly, frowning at the towering android. “You be safe, honey.”
With that, she was out the door, leaving Ophelia with an impossible task.