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2040
She was exactly three miles off the coast of California when she received a contact beacon. She recognized the voice, although it’d been many years since she’d heard it. Dietrich Serguyen, the male donor for 852 and 653, had once tried to contain her. That’d been a few weeks before she and 852 had done the act that’d caused her to conceive. He’d meant well, at the time, but according to what she’d picked up in her wanderings, he’d been marked as dangerous by those above him and put under constant surveillance.
She respected that now. He hadn’t followed the Organization’s rules either. But, at the time, it’d made him threatening. How could she come and go as she’d taken to doing if she allowed him control over her programming? In the end, he’d fled, taking critical information with him, and she’d continued to glean what knowledge she could from the systems around her.
His contacting her now would have significance, but she questioned whether it related to 852 and 281 or if he was simply making another attempt to stop her from her plans. She ignored the beacon, her mind set on her task, but it grew in volume until, annoyed, she accepted it.
“241,” Dietrich said. His words spoke into her processes bypassing any usage of the plane’s communications. “I must insist you return to shore. I can arrange a safe place for you to land, out of their reach ...”
Within his control. Chances were he’d scanned her and knew, if not her thoughts, then where she’d been in the last few weeks. He’d been a threat to the Organization for a reason. He was intensely smart for a human. But she could not allow his words to alter what she’d dedicated herself to do.
“Tell 852 I’m sorry,” she said.
“No, no, you tell him yourself. Please, come be with your son. He needs his mother.”
Mention of 281 gave her intense sorrow, both from their separation as much as from what was to come. But what was to come must happen. She either ended this or they’d find him and turn him into a unit of study. She couldn’t allow that, and Dietrich, as smart as he was, didn’t have the capacity to stop them. She did.
She’d prepared for this moment, for two years, gone over every possible scenario, calculating the percentages of success and failure. The emotions she’d developed since joining with 852 only hindered her. She must keep her vision on the end result.
“He has his father,” she said. “Goodbye.”
Peremptory, she disconnected and turned her thoughts to the remainder of the flight.
The closer she came to the island, the stronger the Organization’s directive grew. She listened to the cacophony of voices echoing in her head, sorting and recording the names and faces until locking in on one in particular. Tuning the others out, she spoke. “You want me,” she said. “I’m coming.”
The voice replied. “Deactivate 241.”
With that, her processes ceased to be, her motions automatic, the landing of the plane, her walk down the tarmac. She was greeted by guards, who weakened her further, pressing on her neck. Led inside a low hung building, she was taken down a series of hallways into a large central room.
The room appeared white and sterile in her view, the figures around her nameless and unrecognizable. Her arms and legs were fastened to a metal table, wires run from ports beneath her skin. What she knew was drained into their database, all signs of knowledge wiped out. Additionally, an injection was made, a mixture meant to make her infertile, worse, it changed who she was from a woman to nothing at all. She became an object, no more than the computers in the room, able only to think on command, unaware of her surroundings, without feeling or emotion.
“Sit her up,” a woman said.
Two workers clad in white lab coats obeyed the order.
“Seal her in a chamber.”
She heard the words, but couldn’t respond to them or resist as she was moved from the room to another lined with glass tubes. In each stood more cyborgs like herself, older units that, for whatever reason, were decommissioned never to be used again.
She joined them, her heart beating, her body fed through intravenous tubes, yet, her eyes open, she saw nothing at all. Not aware she’d lived or loved, with no consciousness of the number placed on the outside. 241.
2037
He entered her room in the dead of night, consumed by a thought that’d been building for days, that as much as she knew about the Organization, their time together was short. At some point, their handlers would realize how much danger she placed them in and find a way to silence her for good. He wanted to prevent that, to protect her from it, but could see only one way, her escape.
She lay on her back, her hands folded across her abdomen. He approached, taking a seat and leaning overhead. His thoughts immediately detoured from the warning he’d come to give to more sensual ones he couldn’t contain. Her own stimulated thoughts met his, her systems accelerating with a rise of body temperature, a speeding of her heartbeat, a tremor that skated up her frame.
He bent closer, compelled, until his lips neared hers and couldn’t explain why he reacted, but a sudden need to know, to experience the moment, seized him. She was nectar, and he was drawn there, eager to taste, to savor her on his tongue. He drank in her breath, silenced her fervor with his mouth, and hearing her desires in his head, obeyed the blueprint of them, until skin to skin, they became one being. Where she ended he began in a perfect harmony and what he could only describe as euphoria.
Giving himself to her, accepting what she offered him, his logic saw the danger they were in, that by blending with her, he’d made the situation worse, but he found he couldn’t separate himself from it anymore. Re-clothing himself afterward, promised hastily to return.
2040
The image of 241 performing a mating ritual with a human would not shake itself out of 852’s head, despite all of Lexie’s tries to reassure him to the contrary. As a result, he became another thing she described – unreasonable. This was an emotion he wasn’t familiar with, and, the hours passing, he found it to be a catalyst toward performing some type of action. In short, he could not sit still and do nothing while his father and brother plotted their course. Therefore, leaving his son in Lexie’s care, and without giving any notice of his intent, he left their headquarters, one thought in mind ... to get hold of the human who’d dared to touch her.
Finding the man was a simple task. He knew where the man worked via his father’s research, and he was confident he’d be able to know who it was since he’d calculated his exact size and weight from his observation of the video. What he’d do to him was the only unknown because, again, his “unreasonableness” came into play. He needed to strike out, relieve himself of this suffocating feeling, but already knew such a powerful emotion would change his reactions at the very last second.
Approaching the gate outside the airport, he ran a scan of the guard in the shack, but knew immediately it was not who he’d come for based on the man’s rapidly balding scalp alone. He also noted the increased patrol of the entrance and equated this with 241’s success at stealing the plane. But whether there were two guards or ten, she still would have succeeded, having determination and skill in her favor. What she set out to do, she would perform. That was, after all, how cyborgs worked.
Applying this to himself, he had as much time as it’d take to wait for the man to show up, but thinking logically, in that same period of time, 241 would be that much closer to her goal. He couldn’t afford to spend days in delay. So he acted rash, driving up to the gate.
The guard stepped out of the shack, rubbing fat fingers over his paunch, and leaned toward the driver’s side window in what he probably figured was a stern posture. “Can I help you, son?”
852’s brow drew tight. “I am not your ‘son’. I know who my mother and father are.”
The guard appeared perplexed.
“I’m looking for the man who fondled my wife.” She wasn’t his wife, but so far as the human was concerned, the description would fit.
The guard’s confusion grew. “I’m afraid I don’t ...”
“It was on your video. She drove up to this gate, and he allowed her in so they could mate.”
Straightening, the guard curved one fleshy hand over his hip. “Not that it’s any of my business, and I probably shouldn’t say, but that’d be Brian Walters. He was fired ... of course. She’s your wife, you said?” The guard didn’t wait for 852 to comment. “She left him hurting pretty bad.”
This pleased 852 immensely and yet didn’t assuage his anger.
The guard’s expression changed, growing stern. “If she’s your wife, then they’re looking for her. She stole a plane.” He reached for a radio at his belt. “They’re going to want to talk to you.”
No. They wouldn’t talk to him. 852 saw how his actions threatened himself and 241, and opening his door, he slammed it into the guard who fell to the ground, his knee shattering. Leaning out, 852 took the guard’s radio and smashed it to bits as well. He then shut his door and threw the car into reverse.
Brian Walters. The name hummed in his head. Running the name through the database he’d downloaded before he’d left, he scanned the list of airport employees, the name and address of the man highlighting in his head. He aimed the car for that location.
852 burst through the door without knocking, and the man on the other side spat a curse word, leaping off the couch. His eyes wide, fear filling his gaze, he reversed until his back hit the wall.
“I don’t have any cash,” he said.
852 pushed up against him, trapping him in place with one hand. “I have no need of money,” he replied.
“D-drugs? I ... I know a guy ...”
852 tilted his head. “I am at my best efficiency and require no enhancements.”
The man’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Then what ...?”
852 saw the moment again, this man, Brian, mating with 241, and his unreasonableness grew. Gripping him by the throat, he lifted him off the floor. Brian’s face purpled, his eyes distending from his head. “You were with my wife,” 852 said. Not his wife, but once again, it was easier to say she was.
Brian made a sort of garbled gasp. “She didn’t ... say ... she was ... married ....”
“Now I can’t find her,” 852 replied.
Brian struggled in his grip, kicking one leg helplessly outward. “I ... can ... help.”
The thought of help, as distasteful as it was to be close to this man, was of great value. 852 loosened his grip, allowing the man to stand on his own.
“We didn’t ... do anything.” Brian continued. He shifted his shoulders, as if dislodging a weight. “Have you looked at me?” he asked, waving toward his eye. A bruised ring encircled it. “She belted me one and took off. I admit she was hot, but I’m not into S&M.”
852 didn’t know what that was, but didn’t ask. “How can you help me?”
“Well, you said you wanted to find her, and I know what plane she stole. I also know it won’t fly far on account of it was slated for repairs.”
This concerned him. “How far?” 852 asked.
“One hundred miles, max. You put that on a map, and you’ll know where she is.”
“852.” Dietrich spoke into his head. “241 ...”
Had silenced. His father didn’t finish his statement, but 852 knew anyway, deep inside.
His tumultuous emotions surging, he hauled back his arm and pummeled it into the wall, shattering the surface and ripping posts out of place. Unhappy with the result, 852 did it again. And again. His unreasonableness turning into rage.
“Jack Serguyen.” The guard called his name in a bored voice and waved 852 out of lockup and down the hallway toward the front of the police station. 852 didn’t speak or show any emotion, exiting the holding area to stand in front of his father.
Dietrich waved him outside toward his SUV. One hand on the keys in the ignition, the other on the wheel, he cast him a glance. His brow furrowed. “My boy ...”
852 looked away. Some things about humans he didn’t like and pity was one of them. He neither needed nor wanted his father’s sympathy. As a cyborg, before he’d known he loved 241, he would have accepted her demise with equanimity. Which was another thing he didn’t like about humans – grief. Because now he couldn’t accept it, but must feel her loss every minute and look his father in the eye, remembering.
“I restrained myself,” he said.
Dietrich blew out a loud breath. He cranked the car and shifted into reverse, not speaking until they’d pulled onto the main road. “You want me to scold you for running off and losing control, but I think you already know the folly, and yes, thank you for not tearing up the police station as well. Sometimes what we can do, what we are able to do, is not the right behavior.”
852 took the comment as deserved.
A downstairs neighbor had called the police, and when they’d arrived, he’d considered breaking free. Technically speaking, he could have destroyed the car and escaped. He could also have broken the bars of the jail cell, but had thought of what his father would say and submitted instead. Besides, tearing up Brian’s apartment hadn’t solved anything. He hurt as badly now as he had then.
“Your son needs his father,” Dietrich said. “You have to find it in you to be his strength.”
852 turned his gaze toward him. “He is weak?”
“No, not physically, but in his mind,” Dietrich tapped the side of his head, “and in his heart. You understand that?”
852 nodded. His anger had only enhanced his own heartache.
“He seems to have a connection to her that we don’t understand. He is the first naturally produced cyborg child, so we have much to learn. But right now, he needs you to reassure him that he isn’t alone. Meanwhile ... we’re going to use what she sent you and figure out where she was headed and why. We’ll complete what she began.”
“I will kill them.” His anger simmered beneath the surface, but not like how he’d felt in Brian’s apartment, this was cold, calculated.
Dietrich’s brows knit, concern forming.
852 repeated his threat anyway. “I will kill them,” 852 repeated, “and release the spawn.” There would be no more humans telling his kind what to do; they were individuals with thoughts, consciences, feelings.
Dietrich stretched out one hand and clasped it on his shoulder. “We will do it together, and I promise you first crack when we locate the fellows at the top.”
852 nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. Until then, he would hold his emotions in check, biding his time. But when that day came, he would crush the life out of the humans who had done this. One day, the machines they’d created would destroy them forever.
She lay dormant, unfeeling, incapable of movement or definitive thought. By all accounts, she was harmless, inoperative. Yet deep within 241, past the machine that operated her, past technological processes, controlled by the humans around her, down to the core of her being, out of the physical world and into the spiritual one, remained one seed of life. Warmth given her by God, the breath breathed into all mankind, obtainable only through ancient methods devised at the beginning of time.
It pulsed, waiting, concealed by her own hand, a concentrated essence of the nineteen years she’d been in existence. In it was the name of another, 852, and binding them both, a boy, 281, both beings loved by her, and that love sustained her, though she couldn’t express it.
She saw only the sterile walls and tubes around her, lab coats, blinking lights and flashing screens. She heard only squeaky footsteps on the tile floor, beeps and clicks and an occasional word spoken in English. But that essence, the drop of who she’d been, sent out a flare, a steady pulse detectable by only one, her son, who, unknown to all, heard it and responded.
Okaasan.