Chapter One

“I’ve got you,” someone whispered in my ear.

It took me a moment to process the words spoken, much less recognize the voice of the one speaking them since I was still expecting the ground thirty stories down to make a pretty painting of my insides.

But strong arms were wrapped solidly around my waist and upper arms, and I was being moved with almost effortless efficiency in a direction that was not, in fact, down.

“Nice job, Luke!” exclaimed someone else as I was spun through the air and went sailing through an open window. I landed on carpet a few feet in and rolled to a stop, breathing heavy with the exertion of fear and surprise. I stayed there a moment, prone on my stomach, to regain my bearings. The locks of white-blonde hair that had broken free of their long, thick ponytail blew in and out around my face with each of my breaths.

Two pairs of shoes moved into my vision; I recognized each of them in turn. One pair was scuffed terribly, an old set of size twelve sneakers that had seen better days. The other was a shining black pair of standard issue shoes worn by the IRM-900 model android. Not a speck of dust on them.

“Holy crap,” I whispered shakily. “Did you seriously just catch me mid-flight outside the window and throw me back in, Lucas?” I still wasn’t quite sure I wasn’t dead.

“You don’t weigh anything at all,” came the android’s easy reply. I watched Lucas, aka Luke, take a graceful knee beside me. “It wasn’t exactly taxing.” He smiled, and for the millionth time I was arrested by his beauty. Thick, shoulder-length coal black hair curled slightly over his forehead and just above his collar, framing strong bone structure and piercing eyes.

The EED sensor light around his left eye was standard issue for androids and the only way to tell an android from a human. EED stood for Emotion Emitting Device; the colors and activity of the EED changed based on the android’s mental state. His was currently blue for “normal,” and the light cast his hair into navy highlights like a raven’s wing. It also touched upon the charcoal gray of his eyes, giving them the spectrum sheen of polished hematite.

He wrapped his hand gently but firmly around my upper arm, pulled slightly up from the ground to draw me into his chest, and leaned his tall body over mine. I held my breath as he lowered his lips to my ear and whispered, “No underwear, Samantha?”

Lucas never truncated my name to “Sam” like others did, nor did he have a nickname for me like pretty much everyone else I knew. It was “Samantha” every time. And sometimes when he said it, it sounded like nothing short of a magic spell. Like now.

I processed his words, then blushed furiously. He’d clearly felt the lack of any seam lines under his touch when he’d caught me. And yeah. To use an old vernacular, I was going commando. Whoever had done the laundry last – it wasn’t my turn, damn it – had neglected to wash any of my under garments.

Luke straightened again, and I couldn’t help but admire the grace of his flawless proportions, broad and strong. As always, he wore the clothing designed for professional androids – a tailored suit. Every inch of him was well designed perfection. But he was smiling a small, secret smile and his eyes were flashing.

I almost gasped. Had Lucas been the last one in charge of the laundry? Was my current state of undress his fault? Had he done it on purpose?

His smile broadened slightly as if he could read my thoughts. And now I absolutely knew the answer to all three questions was yes.

I’d known Lucas and Jack since I’d joined Prometheus shortly after they had more than a year ago. But Luke and I had only officially been an “item” for a few weeks. Early the month before, we’d been finishing up a particularly dangerous mission and I’d been injured grabbing last-minute materials that were not essential, but helpful.

As we’d left the grounds we’d raided, Luke had pulled me to the side and into a private alcove and made me show him the wound I’d sustained, a flesh wound in my left bicep that would take a while to heal but was obviously not life threatening.

However, Lucas had been concerned about it to the point of anger – and I had suddenly realized that for the last several months, all the furtive glances, the overt protectiveness he’d exhibited toward me, and the way he sometimes snapped at me when I did something he didn’t like, normally involving putting myself in danger as I had tonight – meant he had feelings for me.

Those kinds of feelings.

My suspicions were instantly verified when, as he gritted his teeth and took off his suit coat to tear a piece of it for a binding, I asked, “Luke… do you have feelings for me?” Luke’s android EED had flashed briefly yellow, but he’d simply captured my gaze with his, none-too-gently proceeded to wrap my wound, and replied, “Yes, Samantha. Very much so. And I don’t appreciate you taking liberties with your life like you did tonight.”

The next day, he apologized for his behavior, and I found myself blushing. I realized that I was developing very real feelings for him too. Those kinds of feelings.

There was something in the way he appeared, both physically and in his mannerisms, that made me feel I had known him forever. To me, Lucas was familiar despite the short time we’d been at Prometheus together. I looked at Luke and felt something strange. Something alluring – tempting. So when he sat me down and asked me if I would begin dating him exclusively, I agreed. It wasn’t like I’d been romantically involved with anyone else anyway. Not since joining Prometheus, in fact. Hell, not even before that. Not for a long time.

In the two and a half weeks since then, Luke had very quickly shown me that he was all too familiar with how dating couples behaved. Either he’d been programmed with the behaviors or they came naturally to him, just as they did a human.

The problem was… he’d pretty quickly caught on that there was a side to me that secretly, secretly, enjoyed it when my partner took charge, so to speak. Assumed control, for lack of a less embarrassing way to admit it. I suppose you could say there was a part of me, smothered though it may be, that was very slightly submissive in that respect.

And he saw that. I wondered, in fact, if he’d seen it from the very beginning. Worse, he wasn’t afraid to exact that control when he felt like it, which included pretty much any time at all. Like now, as he made her realize he’d compromised her with the underwear fiasco and was not at all sorry.

I felt my blush deepen, but there was anger there too. Now was definitely not the time for him to make moves on me.

“Aw Christ, Luke,” came a gravelly, grouchy voice from my other side, opposite Lucas. I turned to look up at the speaker – the man who owned the second pair of shoes. “Now’s not the time! Damn it, why do you always get randy when we’re in the thick of it?” he chastised, echoing my own thoughts before he knelt next to me, grunting when his knee hit the floor. Old knees.

“For fuck’s sake,” he added grumpily. “We’re in the middle of an escape here!” He shot Luke a stern look before he turned back to me and peered at me with time-wizened eyes. “You okay, kid?” he asked. “That was quite a fall.”

I gazed back at Captain Jack Hugo and nodded, putting the underwear thing out of my head for the time being. While it was true that Luke’s strong arms had probably left bruises on my ribs and hip bone, I was more than happy to have them. It was such a step up from splattered intestines, I wasn’t about to complain. “Yes,” I said as I pushed myself into a sitting position, and he automatically helped me. “I’m good.”

I looked around. “Where are we, anyway?” Cubicles of an office were quartered-off all around us. The floor was carpeted, which meant the people who worked in this office during the day were probably expected to be quiet. “I’m guessing floor twenty-six or seven? The accounts offices?”

“Good guess,” offered Luke as he slid an arm around my waist again and I leaned on him as he lifted me to my feet. I felt shaky and unsteady when I tried to put weight into my stance, and was at once leaning more heavily on Luke. “Twenty-seven.”

“Easy, Luke. She just fell a good distance. Let her test her legs.”

I shot Jack a grateful smile as I tried again to stand on my own. It was a little better this time, the strength gradually returning to my limbs. But it was still too slow. The sudden onset of localized weakness was most likely an unforeseen after-effect of the transporter. It seemed to have, for lack of a better descriptive, shocked some of my muscles during transport. The effect felt a lot like a very intense weight lifting work-out carried out to the point of actual muscle exhaustion.

“Something in the transporter,” I told them uneasily. Admitting that there’d been an unpleasant side effect I hadn’t planned for was the same as admitting that I hadn’t properly tested the device. Which we all knew already. Granted, I hadn’t been given enough time. But still.

“That’s okay,” said Jack. “Just lean on me. We have to move.” He and Luke both encircled my waist with their arms, draping mine over their shoulders. I glanced over at the former police captain, noting the concern in his features, the lines drawn by trauma and tragedy over the years, and the clear blue eyes that remained focused on what lay ahead.

He was one of my heroes, Captain Jack Hugo.

Jack had once been the proud father of two children, twins. They’d grown up strong and proud, and both Trevor and Poppy Hugo had followed in their father’s footsteps, joining the force in their twenties. Unfortunately, both had also been killed in the line of duty. Shortly thereafter, Jack’s wife Nancy passed away, most likely of a broken heart.

According to friends, when Lucas and Jack first met, it was in a seedy bar where the former police captain had been in the process of drinking himself toward courage. Back then, Jack had become a hollow remnant of himself, and when he pulled a bottle of sleeping pills out of his jacket pocket and began adding them to what was left of his whiskey, Lucas intervened.

I had no idea what Luke had been doing in that dank and dangerous bar that night because he didn’t know either. Apparently that very same night, a massive fight broke out on the streets in Pittsburgh, and both men rushed to try to stop it. In the process, Luke was damaged. When Jack brought him to Prometheus and he was restored, he had no memory of what he’d been doing – or even who he was – before that night. ***

As for Jack, it was clear enough what he was doing in the bar. And I never brought it up. I figured if the man wanted to talk about it, that was his prerogative. Otherwise, it was in the past, and that was where it belonged.

That was more than a year ago. In the time since then, they’d both joined Prometheus and the world had changed. And so had Jack Hugo.

The three of us made our relatively quick and quiet way to the office’s door. As we moved, the strength returned to my legs, the transporter’s effects wearing off with fortunate speed. Jack held his gun down at his side, and Luke’s eyes scanned the corners, walls, and office windows for things like cameras and moving objects – other people or androids. For my part, I felt a little worthless just then. I gingerly touched my stomach and side because I may have been regaining strength, but I was also already feeling the effects of being caught by a pair of metal and plastic arms after thirty feet of building momentum.

I glanced over my shoulder at the window Jack and Luke had shattered in order to save me. How Lucas had been standing on that ledge and leaning far enough out to catch me in the first place was beyond me. How he’d known I would fall in exactly that place at exactly that time was also beyond me. But his protection was something I was getting used to, and that I was grateful for.

“We managed to wipe any evidence of you and your work from Vector Fifteen’s files on the west side,” said Jack as we pushed through the office door and entered the hall beyond. “If Daniel was able to carry out the mission on his end, we should be in the clear, Sam.” He glanced back at me as he pushed the button for the elevator and we turned and made our way to the stairs.

It had been my idea during a past mission to call for the elevator and then take the stairs as a diversion. Now we did it out of habit.

The fact that Jack had no idea whether Daniel had succeeded in his part of the objective meant Daniel hadn’t contacted him. “No news is good news,” I said. Radio silence had been agreed upon for the duration of the mission.

“Or it means Daniel and his team have been eliminated and are therefore incapable of making contact,” said Lucas helpfully.

“Jesus Luke,” groaned Jack with a shake of his head as we took the stairs down.

I could have sworn I detected a note of sarcasm when Luke said it, and I knew he didn’t actually believe what he was saying. Instead, he was joking, trying to lighten the tension.

He was doing that thing he sometimes did when we’d all been working very closely for a prolonged amount of time. For some reason, Luke would shift from possessing the calm and calculated but sometimes cold behavior of an android to displaying the human idiosyncrasies – even sarcasm, and as previously displayed, lust – of a human. I didn’t know why he did this, but after a year of it, I was used to it.

We took the stairs down two at a time. I was fit for a human, but as an android Lucas was a lot better at descending the stairs than I was, and of course I was better at it than Jack. So Luke and I slowed down a bit to allow him to keep up. I wondered if it was frustrating for Lucas to have to hold himself back the way he always did for us. If so, he was gracious enough to not let it show.

Just as we reached level seventeen, the metal door from the landing to the offices beyond crashed outward into the stairwell. Jack skidded to a stop and backpedaled. Lucas was instantly in front of both of us. “Stay behind me!” he commanded.

The men who shouldered through the bottleneck opening were absolutely identical to one another, as if popped out by some massive baby-making machine with a single DNA sequence to go on. They all had black hair, light skin, and were dressed in black fatigues. There were dozens of them beyond that opening, and I knew there were more where they came from. There was a never-ending supply of these particular soldiers, in fact.

They were androids. The man – or machine – they worked for was IRM-1000, a solitary android that I and my friends had come to refer to as “Zero” because he’d taken the model numbers of androids into the thousands marker. However, Zero was special. He’d been the sole android of his particular model ever produced, and when the android revolution had come to a cold war-like stalemate of catastrophic proportions across the globe, Zero had ruthlessly taken over what remained of FutureGen Industries, the sole producer of androids.

The rebels of Prometheus were all well aware that Zero had killed the humans in charge of FutureGen even though he’d managed to make the slaughter appear the ruthless work of the android rebellion. Zero then reformed the company’s production lines to his own predilections before starting them back up at full force. He renamed the corporation Vector Fifteen and his sole android production consisted of soldiers like the ones before us. He now possessed more power and was more dangerous than ever.

Zero’s cookie cutter soldiers shoved through the door one after another, intent on subduing us at nearly any cost. It was our one advantage in this ongoing struggle with Zero that he wanted us alive. Or rather, he wanted me alive. And because he wasn’t willing to risk me being struck by a stray bullet intended for someone else, lethal weapons were never utilized in our encounters. Instead, his soldiers used a host of non-lethal methods.

If what I was seeing strapped to their ammo belts was what I thought it was, then this time in particular, they were using guns loaded with a tranquilizer I had designed myself.

I took great care in safeguarding my inventions specifically so that this kind of thing could not happen. No inventor of weapons wanted the enemy to get their hands on those designs.

But Zero was smart and he was learning. I wouldn’t put it past him.

The men in the oncoming crowd of soldiers raised their weapons and trained them on us. Specifically on Lucas, the rebel they knew would pose the most danger.

“Shit. Luke, get down!” I yelled, lunging forward to shove him to the side with my shoulder to his. I knew they wouldn’t shoot at all if the rounds were live. And if they weren’t, the bullets would have no effect on me anyway.

The soldiers’ bullets were released in quick succession, and I was right. They were loaded with what I’d hilariously named Nullquilizer, in the hopes that one day I’d get to use one of those bullets on Zero himself. Null equals zero. I thought I was clever. Okay, it was only hilarious to me.

I had confirmation they were loaded with the stuff when one of the rounds hit me right above my right breast. I recognized the feel of the low-impact bullet as it penetrated my leather jacket, the shirt underneath, and finally the first few thin layers of my skin to release its poison into my bloodstream.

It burned, but did nothing further. I gritted my teeth and ignored it, focusing on the fight. The solution would dissipate rapidly in my system, and the wound was superficial.

That didn’t mean it didn’t fill me with a thick sludge of dread. Because it meant two things. First, it meant Zero had indeed managed to learn at least one of my inventions. How many others had he gleaned in the few hours he’d possessed that file? And second, the bad guys now had a very real advantage over us. They possessed the means to subdue every person on our side who was actually capable of defeating Vector Fifteen. In other words, they had a way of subduing our androids.

“It’s a tranq, isn’t it?” asked Jack breathlessly. He was busy fighting off one of the soldiers, giving it all his older body was worth. But when I glanced back at him over my shoulder, I could see he’d visibly paled in the last few seconds. I realized he’d seen me get shot – and that it had probably scared the hell out of him.

Yes,” I replied simply, trying not to allow any of my disappointment show.

“Disconcerting,” said Lucas between clenched teeth. He, too, was busy fighting.

“Fuck,” agreed Jack.

My sentiments exactly, I thought.

“Samantha, duck!” Lucas suddenly called out. I knew enough by now not to question it when Luke suggested I do something in a fight. I didn’t even look to see what he was talking about; I just dropped under my opponent’s reaching arms and crouched low. When I did, a barrage of bullets rapid-fired over my head.

Delirious fear ripped through me. I spun on my heel where I was crouching, terrified I’d see Lucas going down under machine-gunned tranq bullets. But he’d dropped down the stairs to avoid the attack, and Jack was crouching just like I was.

“This isn’t going to work!” said Lucas, who was good at stating the obvious. “We need a Plan B!”

As it so happened, I had created a Plan B. Unfortunately that was exactly what I’d been trying to test when I’d taken an unplanned plunge off the roof a few minutes earlier. Plan B was experimental, and still very much in the testing phase. We honestly hadn’t had the time to come up with anything else. Our objective was to retrieve those files ASAP. Clearly we were right to not wait.

“No good!” I said with a shake of my head. “It doesn’t wor- ah! Damn it, let me go!” For the second time that night, strong android arms wrapped around me from behind and yanked me backward. But this time it was the enemy who had me in its grasp.

Jack shoved to his feet, and I caught the blur of Lucas rushing toward me. But in the next blink of time, I was spun around and caught between the android holding me and the mass of soldiers still fluxing toward the stairwell. My captor began to make his way through the throng as if he were parting the Red Sea.

I fought like mad to knock him off-balance, but it was as if the soldier had been expecting my exact movements and was countering them easily. I growled in frustration. “I said let me go!”

“I’m afraid that is impossible, Miss Hart,” he said. “Your presence is requested by IRM-1000.” He was one of Zero’s more developed models, a squad leader. Hence he still looked just like all the others, but he sounded more like Zero himself. Articulate. Cruel.

“Fuck IRM-1000!” bellowed Jack with a surprising amount of vigor. I was turned away from him with my captor at my back, but I could hear Jack laying into someone with renewed strength. However, it was Luke’s arm suddenly appearing out of the corner of my eyes, and his hand wrapping around my captor’s forearm that really gave me hope. Luke’s fingers curled in tight, gripping mercilessly before they twisted hard and yanked.

“What the – ” The soldier muttered in dismay, but he was cut off as his body spun around under Luke’s influential strength, and suddenly we were facing each other again.

The soldier and I both looked up at Lucas in surprise.

He gave me the smallest smile before returning his gaze to the man still holding me. “I believe I heard the lady tell you to let her go,” said Lucas calmly, just before he raised his other arm. There was a gun in his hand – I realized it was Jack’s gun – and Lucas leveled it at the soldier’s forehead without preamble. “Twice, in fact.”

I heard everything stop behind us; all of Zero’s men grinding to a sudden halt. And then, just as quickly, I heard them surging forward in response to Luke’s very clear threat. For a very brief beat of time, the soldier’s arm tightened around my waist, but whether in defiance or fear I’ll never know. Lucas pulled the trigger, and the arm around me slid away as the soldier went flying backward.

“Samantha, take my hand,” Luke instructed firmly, offering me his free hand. But his thunder cloud eyes watched the oncoming crowd, and again he raised his gun.

I took his hand, and his fingers curled around mine in a cool but firm grip. He fired off several rounds as he spun with me, pulling me along close by his side. “Captain, to the roof!” he yelled.

It might not have technically been a command, but in situations like this, both Jack and I had learned it was best to let Lucas decide on the life-saving actions. We took the stairs up two and three at a time, knowing Zero’s men were directly on our tails.

Humans were a hell of a lot slower than androids. The only thing that kept the soldiers a few safe paces behind us was the gun in Luke’s hand and his excellent aim. It was damn lucky for us Jack had kept the gun with him, and kept it loaded.

“Jack?” I called out between ragged breaths as we ran up the steps.

“Yeah?” he breathed back just as raggedly.

“Thank you for being such a stubborn, drunk bastard!”

“My pleasure!” Jack called back.

I knew why Lucas was taking us to the roof. We had to try Plan B again whether we wanted to or not. Having failed it once, I knew how dangerous it was now and how essential it was that I get it just right. With the entire bad guy android world right behind us, I didn’t have a hope in hell of pulling it off, and it was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do.

Given it would probably see us all dead, it was probably also the last thing Zero wanted me to do too. Which meant he was going to do everything in his power to stop me from doing it.

And we still had thirteen flights of stairs to climb.

Plenty of time for Zero and his lightning-fast computer brain to figure out his own Plan B – and see it through to fruition.