Chapter Two

My mind reeled as we drew closer to the top levels and the final landing that would lead to the roof of the building. As we ran and Lucas took carefully aimed pot shots at the androids behind us, I tried desperately to mentally work out the kinks in my invention so we would stand the slightest chance of surviving this ordeal.

The original plan had been for us to reach the west end Vector Fifteen office building and split up. I would head directly to the roof of the building while Lucas and Jack made it to the records room. There, Lucas would erase all evidence of my existence, and more importantly my creations, from Vector Fifteen’s records. Meanwhile, on the roof I would set up and prepare the four transport beacons so we could get the hell out of Dodge before Zero’s soldiers found and apprehended us.

The transport beacons were another of my inventions. They were meant to be used in conjunction with paired technology. For androids, the paired technology would be the crescent circuit board EED sensors around their left eyes. “EED” stood for Emotion Emitting Diode. Every android possessed one of these, and always around the left eye. To me, it looked a little like someone had taken a long, narrow circuit board and evenly and perfectly bent it so that it curved like a quarter-moon around the left eye. They honestly reminded me of the ocular implants Seven of Nine wore on the nineteen-nineties show, Star Trek Voyager. Except the EED’s were beautiful, intricate, and always glowing.

The EED’s would light up with basic colors that were intended to reflect what the android was “feeling,” since facial expressions were sometimes slight or lacking entirely. Blue was stable or normal, yellow was a state of processing something unexpected, red was designed to represent volatile emotions such as passion or anger. Despite this clever and telling display, many humans still refused to believe androids were capable of feeling.

In any case, as far as the transporter was concerned, humans didn’t have EED’s, so they would have to carry the accompanying technology somewhere on their person and within reach of the beacons. The two devices would send information back and forth to each other.

To make a long story short, anyone standing inside the area of effect created by the beacons would cease to exist in one section of space and time, and begin to exist in another.

I’d started this project a decade earlier by experimenting with simple data transfer technology. Then I’d delved into the biomechanical aspects of data by studying the pathways of the neurons of the human brain and comparing them to android information transfer. After ten years of research and development on my own dime – I’d created my own transportation prototype.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work. Not for “living” biological tissue, anyway.

Since I’d made it to the roof of Vector Fifteen’s building before Jack and Lucas, I’d been able to give the device a trial run. Just in case. Scenes from the vintage film, The Fly kept haunting my thoughts, and I really didn’t want to end up with antennae or with my organs on the outside of my body.

But in theory, nothing should have gone wrong. I’d tested it a plethora of times on everything from laptops to leather journals to bowls of cereal – yes, I’d been tired that morning. I’d never had any issues.

Yet something had gone wrong this time, and when I’d rematerialized, I’d wound up a mere thirty feet away from the beacons, directly above open air just outside the roof wall. I had experienced a brief but powerful sickening moment of severe realization just before I began my high velocity plummet.

And then the descent was halted a mere three stories down by Luke’s strong arms catching me. I still had no idea how he’d managed that. Regardless, I really, really did not want to try it again. Why would it work a second time if it hadn’t worked the first time? What had gone wrong, anyway?

“Fucking stairs,” swore Jack. “I’m going to find and kill whoever invented stairs.”

My mind spun and dove and swam through the possibilities, fighting desperately to work out the kinks of what could possibly have happened to knock my transported body off-course. When I’d tried the transports out in the basement of Prometheus, it had worked every time, though I’d only attempted the transport with inanimate objects and nothing yet alive, so I still considered the invention in its testing phase.

Maybe that’s it, I thought with a sinking gut. Maybe it’s because I’m alive. Animate. Maybe it’s going to send all three of us right off that roof again, only this time there won’t be anyone to catch us. Lucas might survive – maybe – but Jack and I will become cement graffiti.

With that lovely thought accompanying my every step, I followed Jack and Lucas onto the landing at the top of the last flight of stairs, and watched Lucas shove through the metal door leading to the rooftop. We ran through after him and Lucas hastily spun and slammed the metal door shut – so hard that it bent in the frame, lodging it tight. He then twisted the door handle to the breaking point, buying us some time by locking Zero’s army on the other side.

We turned to take the first few steps toward the place I’d left the transport beacons –

And stopped in our tracks.

There between us and the four waiting beacons was IRM-1000 himself. He was as impeccable as ever in his white suit and his perfect hair. His face was expressionless, and his eyes were cold. But anyone who imagined Zero as unfeeling would have been mistaken. What I doubted even IRM-1000 himself was aware of was that for a being to desire power and victory, he had to experience desire in the first place. And I figured desire was an emotion.

I imagined that if the bastard’s face wasn’t a perfectly controlled mask of calm right now, the expression it would wear would be somewhere between pleased as punch and more than a little impatient.

“Yet another of your magnificent creations, Samantha,” said Zero as he took a calm step to the side and turned to glance over his shoulder at the transport beacons behind him. He faced us again, and his eyes met mine. “I look forward to hearing how it works.”

“No problem,” I said enthusiastically, unable to keep myself from imagining him plummeting thirty stories to his death. “Step right inside and I’ll activate it for you.”

Jack chuckled, and I caught the slightest hint of Luke’s upturned lips. But IRM-1000 simply tilted his head to the side and narrowed his gaze. “You have a lot of spirit, Samantha. Breaking that spirit will be arduous. For you, not for me.”

“Don’t speak her name,” said Lucas icily. “In fact, don’t even think it.”

I glanced at him. His EED was burning like mad, red as the fires of Hell.

“Does it upset you, Lucas?” Zero asked in a condescending and unruffled tone. “Does it disturb you that her name sounds the same coming from my lips as it does from yours?”

While Zero for some reason had been programmed with a British accent and sounded like a typical sexy but dark supervillain, Luke had no such accent. However, now that he said it, I realized it was true that their tones and inflections were identical. In fact, if they’d begun to sing, which nullified accents altogether, I wouldn’t have been able to tell the two voices apart.

But Zero wasn’t finished. “Does it bother you that all I have to do is this – ” He snapped his fingers, and the “skin” of his appearance transformed, shifting the color of his clothing from the photo-negative white on black that it had been to the black on white of Luke’s uniform. “And she might very well mistake me for you?”

Zero was a special model of android. None of us at Prometheus could quite figure out how, but he possessed several capabilities other androids did not. One of those was the ability to transform his outer appearance as he saw fit, with seemingly nothing more than a thought. He couldn’t change his facial features or hair color or height and build, but his clothing could apparently become anything he desired. And right now, he desired to look even more like Lucas than usual.

Dread moved through me, thick and cold. I could practically feel Luke’s rage building beside me. The EED around his eye was as troubled as ever, and now it was even flashing.

“Not in a million years would I mistake you for him,” I told Zero quickly, hoping to diffuse the situation.

“Yeah,” said Jack, who was no doubt thinking along the same desperate lines as I was. “You’re not nearly awkward enough for that.”

“Jack!” I cried, “not helping!”

“Sorry,” Jack ground out with a sidelong glance at the android he’d more or less adopted as his son, “But you are awkward as hell, kid.”

I hadn’t thought this would help the situation, but a quick glance at Luke’s profile proved otherwise. The intricate circuit board half-moon at his temple stopped flashing and faded into orange. I felt relief flood me, so I didn’t stop there. “Plus, Nanuk would probably rip your heart out Zero, but the worst he would do to Lucas is kiss him so much it fried his circuits.” Nanuk was Luke and Jack’s dog, an oversized all-white, long-haired mastiff. They’d adopted him together when they’d joined Prometheus, but it was pretty clear Nanuk considered Jack his master and Luke his best friend, or even his brother.

Getting wet would never fry Luke’s circuits; I’d made sure of that by creating a sealer for all of Prometheus’s androids. But it did make for good conversation.

Jack took up the reins, turning to me as if to exclude Zero from that conversation altogether. “You know, I’ve always wondered about that? Like, how does rain not fry android circuits?” I knew he wasn’t actually curious and was only trying to get further under Zero’s skin. Jack really hated him. But I obliged anyway.

“It’s an interesting and rather in-depth concept,” I told him, playing right along. “See, there’s this silicon layer just under the surf-”

“Enough.”

We stopped talking and turned to Zero, whose own EED was now glowing red, and whose clothing had returned to its normal white on black. He narrowed his gaze dangerously and the door behind us resounded with a warning bang.

The androids on the other side were trying to get through. And by the sound of things, it wouldn’t be long before they succeeded.

“Samantha,” said Zero, speaking directly to me. “Make no mistake. I will have what I desire of you before the week is out. You put on a brave face,” Zero told me softly. He smiled again, another cold and confident play of expression. “And I understand why.” He glanced pointedly at Jack and Lucas. “But I suspect you know I speak the truth more than you let on.”

The door gave another, louder thud behind us, followed by a cracking sound.

“As if she’d ever give in to a scumbag piece of scrap metal like you,” growled Jack. He moved to take a step toward Zero, but Lucas stopped him by taking the step first and blocking Jack’s progress. He shook his head once at Jack, a warning to stay back. His EED sensor was now a solid yellow, but on the orange side of yellow rather than the blue.

I turned and stared the IRM-1000 down. “It’s no idle threat when I tell you I would readily die before I willingly allowed you to get your hands on any more of my inventions,” I told him frankly.

Zero shook his head at me as if in wonder. “Oh, I’m sure it’s no idle threat. I’m well aware of your fondness for jumping off buildings.” He retained his smile and waited for us to mentally catch up.

“Jumping off buildings?” Jack asked.

“He means the transport malfunction,” I said, quickly putting two and two together.

Zero chuckled softly, lacing his hands together behind his back to pace a few steps forward. “How else do you suppose Lucas was able to get through level twenty-seven in time to save you?”

It hit me then. The building’s upper level rooms had been empty, free of guards. Not only that, the windows in these office buildings were normally shatter-proof. In fact, they were even bullet-proof. But Jack and Lucas had made it to floor twenty-seven unhindered and broken right through one of those windows so that Lucas could catch me when I fell. As if they’d known ahead of time, and the way had been cleared.

Zero not only mentally controlled the androids on the other side of that door – he controlled the entire building. As if hard-wired into it on a molecular level.

“Samantha needs you on floor twenty-seven,” muttered Jack.

I frowned. “What?”

“It was the message we received,” explained Luke without taking his eyes off the enemy. “It came through on the channel for Prometheus, but was tagged from an unknown sender. “The message instructed us to break the window. So I did. And then I looked up to find you falling toward me.”

So that was how he knew. “But that means….”

“It was you,” Lucas told Zero, giving voice to what I’d just figured out. “You were the one who sent the message. You saw her here. And you knew the device was malfunctioning.”

“Of course it was me,” said Zero with a nonchalant shrug of his perfect shoulders. “I was not in the position at the time to save her myself. But you were close, and messages travel at light speed.” He smiled. “I can’t have my prize flame snuffed out before she’s even begun to burn her brightest.”

The door behind us gave one final loud battering boom behind us, the cracking sound became one of splintering wood and shattering cement – and we spun around in time to watch the entirety of Zero’s army file onto the rooftop, tranq guns in hand, EED’s blazing red.

“There now,” said a voice at my ear. I jumped and spun back around to find Zero directly in front of me, less than an inch away. His chest touched my chest in the most intimate of places.

Whether it bothered Lucas or not how identical he was to Zero, it definitely bothered me. As I stared up into his familiar face but cold blue eyes, I was overwhelmed with dichotomous emotions. I was afraid. But… I was something else too.

As that dichotomy scrambled my senses and laid waste to my ability to figure out an escape plan, Zero easily grasped both of my wrists with his strong hands and whispered, “Now we’re getting somewhere, Samantha.”