The next few seconds were a blur.
He faced away from me, breathing in and out. Silver rings glimmered on his long fingers, no longer cold and impassive. His raven-black hair curled at the nape of his neck, ever so slightly wavy. Even with his back turned to me, he was devastatingly handsome.
The bank of computers sputtered with delayed effort, as if worn out from the process. The temperature in the room had warmed by several degrees. Again, the overhead lights flickered. It was all worth it, because now he was here.
“Hugo?” I stammered.
His body language had shifted even before I’d spoken. His knuckles tightened; his shoulders stiffened. Then he turned around to face me—he was the very picture of perfect.
“Marietta,” he said, in a deep, mellifluous voice. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
It was a bit unnerving to see Clyde’s frosty eyes staring out of someone else’s face. Especially while they gazed at me with such intensity.
It didn’t escape me that he’d used the wrong name for me either. It was probably because the schematics were from the Marietta Project. But I’d changed since my birth. I was a different person now.
“I’m Helga,” I told him.
Hugo shook his beautiful head. “No. I know who you are, Marietta. I know so much about you.”
He tapped the side of his head and smiled. There was something strange about his smile. His mouth twitched like it didn’t quite know what to do with itself. “I have you all in here.”
Penny had backed up from the surgical table. She stood by the far wall, watching us both, a clipboard braced over her chest like armor.
Slowly, almost leisurely, Hugo stood up from the table. He was exactly Clyde’s height and yet, somehow, in this form, he seemed much bigger. More imposing.
Maybe it was his style. So classic, with the black cable-knit sweater, the sleek dark trousers. His dark hair framed his chiseled face. Those blue eyes burned dark holes in me. “Batter my heart,” he whispered out of a twisted mouth.
He took a few steps toward me; instinctively, I took a few steps back.
“‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you …’” A lock of dark hair fell over his eyes. He could not seem to look away from me. “‘As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend …’”
His hand ran over my own. His chest rose and fell. And even through my trepidation, I felt my heart flutter. Hugo was really here. He was really alive.
“‘That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend … Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new,’” he finished softly.
It was a strange choice for a love poem. I didn’t want to be addressed as Marietta or God. I just wanted him to call me Helga. But that wasn’t a huge deal, considering how amazing it was that he was even here with me at all.
Hugo would learn in time. Everything worthwhile took time and patience. Hope bloomed in my chest. “I’m so happy to see you,” I told him, squeezing his hand.
But Hugo did not squeeze my hand back.
Penny cleared her throat.
“I haven’t run any performance tests yet,” she said. “Before Hugo goes anywhere, we’ve gotta make sure that there are no underlying issues.”
I could see us reflected in the mirrored glass door of the lab, matching pieces made for night. We were Downhillers through and through. I could squeeze him as hard as I wanted, and I knew he wouldn’t break.
I didn’t have to be careful around him. He didn’t have to be careful around me. We could be exactly as we were. We could romp and stomp across the city. Together forever.
“I know your thoughts,” he told me. His mouth trembled, a strange ripple like a seam undone. “They’re all in my head.”
His hands rubbed against my shoulders. Up and down. He was shaking so much, like he was cold. Or sick.
Each of his fingers filled me with an electric jolt. His mouth twisted once again, and then out spewed more words. “‘相顾无言, 惟有泪千行,” he said. “料得年年肠断处, 明月夜, 短松冈.’”
“I’m so sorry, but I don’t understand.” I shook my head. It seemed like the Mandarin modules had worked, but there was no way for me to decrypt the language on the spot. “Could you try that again?”
Hugo smiled. A mirthless smile. “Of course, Marietta.”
He stroked a lock of my hair. His fingers tugged hard, yanking against one of my tangled knots.
“Ouch,” I said, pulling away. There were now loose strands of my hair between his fingers. He was a bit rough. But surely, that could be worked out too.
“Let’s try another poem,” he said. He brushed his lips against my knuckles, a gesture closer to fealty than a lover’s kiss. His frozen-lake eyes stared into me, almost as if they were probing me.
“We should really consider some more tests,” Penny said from the corner.
“Who is that woman?” Hugo asked haughtily, tilting his head at her. He’d finally registered her presence. “Why do you associate with such creatures, Marietta?”
“That’s Penny. She’s the Cog Lab assistant. Without her you wouldn’t exist, Hugo.”
“We won’t be needing her services anymore. I’m here, and now everything is perfect.”
“Technically,” Penny interjected. “There are still lots of tests left to run.”
Hugo scoffed, his eyes flashing. “You can see me, can you not? Do you think someone of my caliber needs your little tests?’”
To her credit, Penny didn’t back down. “I made you, kiddo. I’d say yeah, you need the tests.”
I could almost see the wheels turning in my beloved’s head as he worked out the vernacular. When I’d woken on the steel table, it’d taken a moment to get my bearings too. This was a brand-new world for him, after all.
“I’m not a kiddo,” Hugo said, drawing himself up to his full height. He towered over Penny, practically dwarfed her. But she didn’t bat an eye.
Hugo had an almost overwhelming physical presence. He had Clyde’s bone structure, tempered by the other attributes I’d cherry-picked for him. He had a romantic perspective and a deep, musical voice. He was graceful yet powerful, and his emotions rolled off him in waves.
And right now, that emotion was very clearly anger.
I could feel it in the air, spreading and crackling. One little nudge, and it would all catch fire. Even Penny had started to falter, realizing that something in him had shifted.
“I’m perfect,” he said coolly. “Don’t you think so?”
“Of course,” Penny said hurriedly. “You’re doing great.”
Hugo turned to me. “What do you think, Marietta? Don’t you think I am just perfect?”
“Helga,” I reminded him. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something inside Hugo was wrong. Something wasn’t working.
Hugo didn’t seem to like my response very much. His eyes flashed again, his mouth twisting into a snarl. A growl escaped from his lips, low and guttural.
“What’s all this stuff?” Hugo said, looking at the jars of preserved organs along the walls with evident distaste. “We don’t need it anymore.”
Before anyone could stop him, he reached out and tipped one of the jars over. The glass shattered against the floor. Yellow liquid leaked from it, slow and viscous. Hugo calmly stepped on it with the heel of his boot, grounding whatever organ it’d once been into a thoroughly unrecognizable blob.
“Wait,” I protested.
Hugo’s face immediately relaxed; the heavy storm cloud had lifted. He spun me off my feet in a grand, romantic circle.
“My darling Marietta,” he murmured. “How I am so utterly devoted to you!”
I could still hear a very slight hissing sound coming from him—like a knob that hadn’t been twisted all the way shut. “Maybe the tests aren’t such a bad idea,” I hedged.
Penny had scampered over to the Cog side of the lab. She watched him with a wary expression. I caught a twitch in Hugo’s face—a sharp, sudden break from his romantic disposition—but then his mouth turned upward into a magnanimous smile.
He walked around the laboratory with his hands outstretched, bearing the countenance of a king presiding over a kingdom. “No more hiding, Marietta. No more tests. No more fear.”
Maybe Penny did have a little tweaking to do.
“Together forever,” he told me.
That part was nice, at least. “Together forever,” I agreed.
“I want to see the stars!” The fervent words burst from him, rapid-fire. Underneath them, the slow hiss chorused in dark harmony. There was a misplaced node somewhere inside Hugo’s Cog. A misplaced part, somewhere inside his body. I knew in my heart that there was something deeply wrong with my true love.
Hugo staggered forward, his magnificent face contorted with effort. He knocked jars from the walls while Penny flinched.
“‘O miserable mankind, to what fall,’” he began, with a fervent look in his eyes. “‘Degraded, to what wretched state reserved!’”
Wasted organs were strewn on the laboratory floor. Hugo paid them no mind and continued his oration. He stepped over glass, oblivious and exultant, the hissing inside him only loudening, widening.
His face was grim and triumphant as he looked at me. He took one step and then one more. Then he went down, crashing against the floor, into those long shards of broken glass. He spasmed as though electrocuted, while those beautiful blue eyes rolled back in his head. “‘Better end here unborn,’” he finished the poem with a wide, wide smile.
His hand reached up toward me, trembling with misplaced energy. “Oh, Marietta,” he whispered. “How I loathe you so.”
“Love, you mean?” I stammered.
“Loathe,” he hissed quietly. “I’m sick of knowing your Cog, your simple girlish mind. I’m sick of poetry and Mandarin. I shall hate you until I’m dead, and even after I’m dead, I’ll hate you from the grave.”
“You don’t … you don’t mean that,” I protested.
“I never asked to be born,” he said. His smile was dreamy and malignant. His gaze had grown quite cloudy. “I wish you were dead. I wish she were dead. And yet it’s I who is fated to die.”
He fell utterly silent. I could see the whites of his eyes. He wasn’t moving.
“Help him,” I screamed at Penny. Why did she just stand there?
I rushed Hugo back to the surgical table, willing there to be a heartbeat. But he was cold and still.
Penny rushed over while pulling on a new pair of blue gloves. She grabbed a defibrillator from the wall. She was taking too long. Why was she so fucking slow?
Penny pressed the clamps against his chest—120 joules.
Hugo didn’t move.
200 joules.
Hugo didn’t move, but the overhead lights did, now flickering wildly.
“He needs more energy,” I said.
Penny wasn’t listening. She sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Helga. It’s no use.”
“You need to try harder.”
How could she just stand there? Why wasn’t she helping?
Hugo’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, purple and swollen. It flopped horribly when I took over the defibrillator. 200 joules. How come the damn thing didn’t go any higher than that?
I pressed the clamps against his chest, sobbing.
“Wake up,” I commanded him.
Hugo wasn’t listening.
“You’ve got to start over,” I told Penny. “Start from the inside, and then you’ll figure out what’s wrong. He must come back. He just has to.”
Penny grimaced. “He’s not coming back without a heartbeat.”
“So that’s it? After all this work?”
“We could try again someday. Different heart, different body.
And definitely a different Cog.”
“But this one’s Hugo!”
“He’ll go fast; bodies don’t last long at room temperature.” Penny said firmly. “We could put him in the freezer … but the organs will continue to fail. I think there were too many updates to his Cog for this to work. Either that, or too many broken bones from the car accident. I’m really sorry, Helga.”
I scanned the room. But if there was a heart to be found, it wouldn’t be in here. “I’ll go to the transplant room,” I said quickly. “No problem. Or I’ll find the freshest corpse in the Institute. There has to be a way.”
“I’m sorry,” Penny said. I hated the look in her eyes. “It’s too late.”
“Then I’ll get a different body,” I shrieked. “I don’t care! I’ll … I’ll kill anyone I have to. I’ll—”
“You won’t kill anyone,” Penny said, exasperated. “Come on, Helga.”
I’d already come so far. Hugo was dead, and if I waited any longer, he definitely wasn’t coming back at all. The rot was bound to set in soon.
“Who says I won’t?” I asked her quietly.
Hugo had been alive only moments ago. My intense labor of love—all those days of hoping and dreaming and long hours of work—had come to this. Hugo was dead. My one chance at a happily ever after was gone.
“You wouldn’t kill anyone,” Penny echoed, crossing her arms.
I took a step toward her. “Are you so sure about that, Penny?”
“Yes,” she snapped, rolling her eyes. “Jesus Christ, Helga. You even left the flying cockroach that wandered into my living room alone. You named it Barry.”
“Maybe I just didn’t want to get my shoes dirty,” I muttered. “They were new platforms.”
Hugo lay on the operating table, waiting for true love to resurrect him. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t let him down. I could get him new organs. I could change his Cog.
“We’ll try again another day,” Penny pleaded. “I promise.”
I knew she was lying to me. We had no more days left for this project because the Institute was a terrible place and Father was a terrible man. And I didn’t want a different body to get attached to, anyways. I just wanted Hugo back. I wanted to fix him so desperately.
Could he really hate me that much? After all I’d done to create him?
Very gently, I put his tongue back into his mouth. Very unfortunately, it lolled right back out.
It was a shame that couldn’t be helped at all.
I kissed the top of Hugo’s cold forehead, stroking his beautiful dark hair and ignoring the slug-like protrusion from his mouth. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you soon.”
“Where are you going?” Penny was visibly alarmed.
I ignored her and ran out the door. I pressed the service elevator button and got in as she rushed after me, but I could tell she wouldn’t make it. The only person who could’ve kept pace with me was dead now. The doors closed on Penny’s panicked face.
Hate me? How could Hugo hate me, after all I’d done for him? It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t just end like this. I refused to accept it.