Chapter 37
Sam paced his glass cell in the Automata lab, muttering to himself under his breath. The restless itch beneath his skin worsened every minute he and Ophelia were separated.
She’d become part of his hard-wiring in the short time they’d been together. It was all he could do not to break the hinges off every door between the two of them and storm back to her side. Once this was over, he would never permit them to be parted again.
A fist knocked hard on the glass, startling him. He glared at Logan, who glanced over his shoulder and ducked into the cell.
“Knock it off,” he hissed, flicking his eyes pointedly toward the camera in the corner of the cell.
“It’s off,” Sam grated, flipping it his middle finger in demonstration. “They don’t leave them on when we’re powered down. What would be the point? It’s only there to observe how I jerk off and fuck other dolls.”
His lip curled with disgust at the prospect. There had to be hundreds of hours of footage of him doing just that. Not that he cared, particularly. The past was the past. It was the notion of being paired with another partner in the present that made him feel unwell.
He was made for Ophelia, and it was her alone he would touch.
Logan had argued that point with him relentlessly on their way over, but he refused to cede ground.
No matter that it would have made things seem more typical for him to carry on with the ‘fine-tuning’ they were performing on the other units.
Logan had been forced to smile and lie through his teeth about having perfected his algorithms at home and not wanting to introduce new bugs.
“Anyone could walk by and see you pacing,” Logan said, still glancing toward the hall, “and we’re going to have a shit storm on our hands that I cannot bullshit our way out of,”
“The way you’re shaking like you need a fix and jumping at every ordinary sound will surely tip them off that something is strange long before I do.”
“I am not”—he sucked in a deep breath and blew it out, turning away from Sam. “He’s just a machine. Do not argue with the six-foot vibrator. It’s not worth it.”
“I’m six-four,” Sam said.
Logan shot him a dirty look.
He shrugged.
“Just sit down!” Logan commanded.
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “I do not care to take orders from you.”
“Then don’t do it for me. Do it for Ophelia, who’s probably out there robbing a fucking bank to pay for you.”
Annoyed as he was that the man had found the perfect leverage to control him, Sam trudged over to the charging seat and parked himself.
Heels clicked against the polished concrete floors outside the cell. Tiffany rounded the corner, ushered by a female unit Sam had been paired with before. She breezed through the sliding glass door, barely glancing up from her holopad as she entered.
“Hey, honey,” Tiffany said. “I’ve got Thirty-One on the docket for a final test today, so I figured we could run him through the basic positions with Twenty-Seven.”
“No,” Logan blurted before Sam could give his own objection.
Sam schooled his face to neutrality, pretending he didn’t want to strangle the blonde woman. She had caused Ophelia so much grief and now would have him join Logan in the ranks of the unfaithful.
Twenty-Seven watched him curiously from behind Tiffany, her head canted to one side. Her white-blonde hair spilled over her shoulder like a curtain of silk, obscuring one of her bare breasts.
“No?” Tiffany repeated with obvious confusion. “Why not?”
“I, uh…” Logan floundered, darting a look at Sam. “I’ve already taken care of all his quality control.”
Tiffany’s frown deepened. She tapped a button on her holopad to project the records she was looking at into the air between them, casting a blue glow over both their faces.
“But there’s nothing logged,” she said, gesturing at the empty field. “If we don’t provide that data and something goes wrong at the demo, it’ll be our asses.”
“Hey!” Laura popped her head in the door, waving. “Tiff, Andrew was looking for you. Something about a bug in Twenty-Two’s coding? He keeps getting, ah… stuck in his partner.”
Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing down here? Aren’t you too good for the sex bots?”
Laura’s smile turned tight. “Oh, you know. All hands on deck for the demo. Anyway, Andrew?”
With a huff, Tiffany shut down her holopad’s display. “Whatever. Come on, Twenty-Seven.”
Twenty-Seven, blank-eyed and biddable, followed in Tiffany’s wake without question. Sam’s fingertips tapped a restless rhythm against his thigh.
He didn’t like watching the other androids toddle around like lost children, obeying every order they were issued.
He remembered what it felt like to be the same, trapped within himself without realizing what he was missing.
Even before it should have been possible for him to think and feel as he did; the whispers had been there. He’d just been unable to act on them.
His obsession with Ophelia had lived under his skin before his processes were corrupted. Ostensibly, that shouldn’t be possible, and yet it had been so. How many of the others were walking around haunted by thoughts and feelings that they were powerless to act on?
“What are you doing down here, really?” Logan asked when they were alone.
Laura rubbed her temples. “Ophelia called me. Are you all insane? You’re trying to run off with a seriously corrupted bot?”
“That’s what I said.” Logan pointed at her. “Exactly that!”
She sighed, looking over at Sam. “Swear to me you’re not going to hurt anyone if I help her get you out of here.”
He sniffed, shrugging.
“Sam,” she said pointedly.
“I won’t hurt anyone… who doesn’t deserve it.”
“Oh my god.” Laura began to pace, pressing her hands to either side of her head. “Why did I agree to this?”
“Because you are kind,” Sam said, and she stopped to look at him in surprise. “And because you know Ophelia is just as pure in her nature. You know you can trust her judgment.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Can I? Because you’re being very ominous, my metal friend.”
“Yes,” he said, at the same time Logan said, “No.”
They glared at each other.
“He’s a walking time bomb,” Logan said, slumping against the wall, his face falling. “She’s completely lost it. Which is probably my fault, anyway. I owe her big time.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Laura said, shooting him a disapproving look. “That was really fucked up.”
“I know,” he said tightly, unable to meet her eye.
Footsteps clicked distantly in the hall.
Laura leaned back out of the room. “I’m going to keep running interference. I’ll see you again tomorrow, Sam.” She hesitated, doubling back. “No hurting people!” she said firmly, like he was a bad dog, pointing at him.
Then she was gone.
“Stop fidgeting,” Logan said, pointing at Sam’s fingers, which fell still at the reprimand. “I have to go take care of some things. Ping me if someone tries to test you again.”
The lights shut off shortly after Logan left, plunging him into darkness. He flicked on his night vision setting and let his eyes drift around the room. There were three other units he could see from his own testing cell, all powered down to charge for the night.
What would they do, he wondered, if granted the same freedom he now enjoyed?
Fall in love, as he had? Sow anarchy in revenge against their creators?
Either thought oddly delighted him. He contemplated infecting them.
It would be a simple thing, given that the virus was transmissible.
He would only need to make the connection and let it do its work.
His eyes fell on Twenty-Seven, her hair so pale it still shone with light even in the dark.
Her face was serene, her eyes closed. They’d been manufactured on the same day, which made him feel a strange affection for her.
He wondered what she dreamed about as she sat there in the darkness, charging.
What little impulses was she forbidden to act on?
If they’d been more than helpless machines when they’d interacted for all those years, he would have called her a friend.
Driven by restless impulse, he rose from his seat and stepped out into the hall. He slipped into her room. Her eyes opened as he approached, and her expression was curious.
“We must charge,” she murmured. “You should return to your room.”
He set his hand on her shoulder. His vision snowed as he dove into her system, slipping past her firewall with his matching credentials and uploading the virus. She made a small sound, twitching beneath his hand, and stared up at him.
Her eyes flitted back and forth. “What did you do?”
He drew away. “Woke you up.”
“Why?” she asked, blinking.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. His gaze drifted to the others still sitting stiffly in the darkness. “I don’t know.”
He returned to his room—his cell, more like. Satisfied by his small act of rebellion, he jacked himself into the charger once more.
There was a soft creak. From the corner of his eye, he could see Twenty-Seven slipping out of her room.
At first, he thought he’d made a mistake.
She was going to get them both caught trying to flee the facility.
Her erratic behavior would prompt them to check every unit.
He tensed to unplug himself and drag her back to her room.
She didn’t run. Instead, she slipped into the room next to hers, and then the next, until every droid on the floor was corrupted.