CHAPTER FORTY-TWO—CONTACT  

First thing Monday morning, James brought Heather up to his personal lab. She sat in the extra desk chair, her head and chest open while he took readings of her power core and ran the the routine stability tests.

She had scanned as much of the area as she could on her way up from the basement, but her thermal sensor was infuriatingly limited. One thing she did note visually on the way to James’ lab was there was a generator room at the end of the hallway, very nearby the entrance to his personal lab.

The more her thoughts turned toward escape, the more she visualized pulling a repeat of Larkspur on that generator, blowing the whole facility sky high. 

She watched him putter around, his mind elsewhere, and she wondered if the change she had noticed a few days prior just meant he was officially too far gone.

She weighed her chances making a break for it. She’d have to time it when James took the tether off her ankle to escort her back to her cell. She could incapacitate him with a measured shock, and smash her way through the window. Sprinting, electrified metal would be hard to apprehend. 

However, the fence outside could be electric, which was a problem if the voltage was too high. She also figured the polymer encasing her vitals wasn’t bulletproof. How she wished inorganic meant invincible.

James pulled open a drawer across the room and produced what Heather recognized as the pain simulator.

“Sorry, but I need to put this back in,” James said. 

Heather buzzed a sigh, but sat still and let him access her neural network. He plugged in the device and snapped the protective frame back on. She waited for him to bring the toolbox over and retrieve the screws to secure it in place, but he didn’t.

“You can go ahead and close your cranial panels,” he said. “It’s done.”

Heather complied, giving him a confused look. 

“Did it connect?” James moved across the room, where he proceeded to rifle through papers and boot up his laptop.

She searched reluctantly for the connection of the pain simulator. She wondered if she could consciously block it out, and therefore limit its influence. As her attention touched on the accessory, something pushed through in her mind, surprising her. It was text, forming a message:

Heather, it said, I’ve been horrible and scared and selfish, and I’m so sorry. You were right, obeying Benson isn’t protecting anybody. I want to help get you out of here, if you’re willing to work with me. If you don’t want my help, I understand, and I won’t stand in your way. 

I have outfitted the pain simulator with a communicator, so when I test it in the next few minutes, you should be able to gain access to a communication satellite once the device is activated. I’ve programmed the coordinates to this lab, Empetrum, into the device too. Search for them and you’ll find them. When I test it, reach out to your parents, tell them where we are.

We’re far from civilization, and Empetrum is heavily guarded, so I’m not sure where to begin escape plans. It will be very dangerous, but I’m willing to try if you are.

I’m sorry it took me so long to listen.

Heather blinked, staring at him, repressing the millions of questions begging to be given voice. A very real hope after so much despair. 

James glanced up to meet her gaze, shy and hopeful and tired. He had nothing to gain by lying to her. 

Either way, she’d know for sure as soon as the pain simulator turned on.

He took the remote for the device off his desk, holding it like he feared it would burn him. “I have to test it again.”

Heather watched him, the volume of her voice very low, “Okay.”

She squeezed her hands together in her lap, and James activated the device. The signal buzzed oddly in her head, fading in and out like it struggled to translate into a discernible pain response. She glanced up at him, inquisitive, wondering if he had tried to dampen or eliminate it.

He kept his gaze on the remote, his lips pressed together. His thumb clicked the button again. 

The pain signal smoothed out and flared. She winced. Then, somewhere, in the back of her head, she detected something else. Her attention started to fray, splitting between where she sat in James’ lab, and another piece reaching up into the stratosphere.

A weak connection, but it was there.

Hope swelled in her chest.

“Going up two,” he said quietly, and clicked it twice.

Heather stiffened as the pain intensified with sharp, unexpected stabs. She gripped the arms of the chair, closing her eyes with her shoulders tense. She felt James’ gaze on her, while he waited breathlessly for something to happen.

She gave a small shake of her head. She heard two more clicks of the button, and the pain ripped from her head down her spine and into her legs. She tried to remember her dad’s cell phone number, the easier of her parents’ numbers to recall. It was difficult to focus.

The signal was still too weak, though she reached out, invisible fingers extending blindly in the dark, trying to find purchase. Trying to find something that could translate her thoughts into a message, and beam it to her parents.

She opened her eyes and gave him a determined, meaningful look. He upped it to level eight and she stiffened. She pulled forward, an electronic, mistuning warble slipping from her voice box. She stared at James’ shoes in front of her, holding onto his presence like a lifeline, to keep her from ripping out the device or asking him to stop it, while she stood still in a barrage of confused, screaming pain, trying to listen. Her mind reaching, reaching, reaching.

Something caught and held. 

Her eyes widened, her vision blurred out.

She threw words into a choppy message, struggling to keep out nonsense information and not certain of her success: Dad, it’s Heather we’re ok James and I are trapped at Empetrum but planning to escape nothing yet but if you could help that would be great please reply NOW.

She mentally shoved it away, pushing it toward her connection with the satellite, hoping that doubled as sending it out. Her dad usually had his phone on him. It would start vibrating on his desk, or in the pocket of his slacks, if he was at Larkspur. It was 9:34:46. 47. 48.

Heather waited. James stood by, his thumb on the remote’s power button. 

Please hurry up, Dad, she thought. She clamped her hands behind her head, ducking it between her knees. Just one second longer. She told herself. One second longer.

HEATHER! A reply came from Richard’s cell phone number. The message was full of frenzied typing mistakes. im so incredbkt relieved tonhear from you yes we all want to help you and james ge tout of empetrum what can we do to help???

I don’t know. Heather replied, closing her eyes hard. The emotion was overwhelming, receiving the first words from her family in two weeks. Since becoming a machine. Since everything and everyone had fallen apart. We don’t know how we’re going to do it, but I’ll let you know as soon as we do. I’m sorry I can’t talk any more right now but I’ll contact you again as soon as I can. She felt the urge to cry. She wished she could. I love you.

She waited again.

I love you too.

“Okay,” her voice sounded small and crackling. “Okay too much. James please—” her tone broke. “Please turn it off—”

Abruptly, the pain cut off and Heather remained immobile, as if paralyzed. She stared at the floor for a few moments, trying to recover from the shock and gather her thoughts. Finally, her death grip loosened around the base of her head. She slowly straightened up and stared at the man before her in awe. 

James looked so young in that moment, so vulnerable. “I—it worked okay?” he managed. “The bug fixes took?”

“Yes,” she said.

He nodded. “Good…” He breathed an unsteady exhale. He wiped a hand across his mouth, spent a moment in indecision, then moved to put the remote in a drawer of one of the counters across the room. “Good.”

+

I love you too.

Richard stared wide-eyed at his phone, having turned away from the counter where Sesame’s body was quickly taking shape. He felt light-headed.

Very quietly, the small box with the child’s voice attached to his laptop spoke, “Richard?”

He glanced up, and realized his colleagues were all looking at him.

It was all Richard could do not to react. He knew Benson had a surveillance tap in the lab they were in. Very slowly, as calm as he could even while his heart pounded hard in his chest, he got up and passed his phone to Eve.

Eve’s face went ashen as she read the message.

“It’s time,” Richard said.

+

“Director.” Benson’s administrative assistant found him in his personal lab, splitting cell cultures under a fume hood.

“Yes?” Benson continued to work. His right hand managed the automated pipettor, systematically driving a solution of detached cells and fresh media into eight new plates.

“Security has informed me that all your surveillance feeds of the Larkspur facility have been deactivated,” Walker said.

“What? When?” The director pulled the long plastic pipette from its device and tossed it into a nearby trashcan.

“Earlier today. They were removed from their positions and destroyed by Brophy and his colleagues,” she said as he proceeded to stack the plates and label the topmost of the two columns. “I’ve reviewed the last few minutes of footage, and Brophy reacted to something on his phone shortly before it happened.”

“That’s—sudden,” Benson said with quiet incredulity as he moved the small petri dishes to a nearby incubator. “We must have overlooked something.” He locked the protective glass panel, followed by the incubator’s heavily insulated door. “You said all the devices were deactivated?”

Walker nodded. “Everything has gone black. It seems they were able to locate all of them.”

Benson removed his gloves and snapped off the light in the fume hood. “Okay.”

“And this came for you.” Walker extended a small envelope. “Your father told Roberts to pass it along to you.”

The director plucked the envelope from her fingers and carefully opened it up, revealing the folded square of cardstock tucked inside. After flipping up the top of the note, the diminutive capital letters inside elicited a sudden frown and startled leaning of his face toward the paper.

Dear Dr. Director,

Your kingdom’s coming down.

Sincerely,

A Liar

+

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE—CONFRONTATIONS 

Benson pounded on the door of his father’s dingy single apartment. After an eternity fuming in the corridor alone, the door unlocked and his father appeared, his countenance braced for impact.

“What do you mean by this?” Benson demanded, shoving the envelope into his father’s chest as he barged unbidden into the apartment and shut the door.

“You look well, Michael,” Henry said. He turned the card in his hands, smiling bitterly. “A little pale, though. Spending too much time in the lab?”

“You said I was wasting my time continuing to consider you a threat!”  Benson said. “I can’t believe you’ve been helping them. As if I wouldn’t have found out on my own, but why would you wave it in my face?”

Henry’s gaze fell to the card. “I told them,” he said quietly, and he sounded old, used up. “About us, your grandfather. About you and Empetrum. Everything.”

Benson stared, eyebrows raised. “Do you have a death wish?”

“What on earth did you do to Brophy’s daughter?” Henry asked. “Empetrum’s in the business of kidnapping children now?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

Henry moved toward the kitchen. “I have something else for you.” He pulled a short stack of papers off the counter and extended it.

Benson snatched it from his hands, exasperated.

“This is a printed copy of the information I gave them,” he explained as Benson glanced through the pages. “If anything happens to me, I told them to take this information to the press.”

“Ah, there it is, the self-preservation,” Benson muttered, tossing the stack back onto the counter in disdain. “You think I’m afraid of some bad publicity?”

“You should be. Maybe the Conxence will take up their case. You should let your prisoners go before this gets any worse.”

Benson cracked a wan, spiteful smile. A panicky tightness pulled in his chest at the mention of the rebel militia. “Go ahead and try it. We can deal with unwanted visitors.”
“That sounds like a bluff to me.”

“I really should just drag you back to Empetrum and give you that mindwipe,” Benson snapped. “If you’re determined to be a problem.” 

So soon after the death of his mentor, Benson hadn’t had the heart to lose his only remaining family member. Even if it was his gloomy, deadbeat father. Enough of his sentimentality should have worn off by now.

“Do it then,” Henry said, stepping toward him, eyes burning. “By all means, don’t be shy! Give me the Q-13 if it’ll make you feel in control.” 

Benson shifted back. “What the hell do you want from me?” His face softened into a surprised smile as he pieced it together. “Oh, you want out.” He laughed. “You had me there for a second, I almost thought you were trying to make amends or stand up to me, in your own pathetic way.”

“I am trying to make amends,” Henry said. “I want things to be different. I want there to be more to you and me than shadows, staring back at all the horror we’ve caused. What is all this for, Michael? Money? Power? To nurture some void in your vacated soul? Victimizing your peers and destroying lives will not give you what you’re looking for.”

“And what am I looking for?” Benson managed to keep his voice steady, despite the immense weight inside his chest, the terrible memories clawing through his mind. He did not fear them anymore. “I’m very curious what you think that is.”

Henry didn’t answer.

“So you want me to adopt toothless, ineffectual ideas about the world,” Benson said. “By taking up my grandfather’s work, I’ve failed you, is that it? You blame me?” Heat spilled into his tone, inundating his waning efforts to curb it. “You were the one who brought me to Empetrum in the first place. It was you who drove my mother away and left me alone. Grandfather was the only one in our family with purpose after Louis dragged our name through the mud. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he worked hard for it until the day he died, and then he left it in my charge. He was the only one who saw any worth in me, so how on earth could I have turned out any differently? Why would I want to be anything else!”

“I know you loved him, but you don’t have to follow his path,” Henry pleaded. “You can still be free of this.”

Benson scoffed. “You’re assuming a lot. I don’t regret anything.”

“Then show me.” Henry squared his shoulders. “Show me you can follow through—that you became the perfect man to lead that hell you call a research facility. Prove you aren’t a coward as your grandfather accused of absolutely everyone. See, being away from that poisoned air, I finally figured it out. Real cowardice is playing along. And even though he’s dead and gone, you’re still playing his game.”

“Shut up.” Benson’s inherently soft features lowered into a glare behind the narrow lenses of his glasses. “I did this because I wanted it.”

“Did you? You were just a child. I watched as he traumatized you, desensitized you—”

“You’re right, you just watched!” Benson snarled. 

“And I’m sorry!” Henry said. His voice shook, and Benson was disgusted by it. “I was wrong, and selfish, and afraid. I failed you, and I’m so sorry. But Empetrum is yours now, Michael, not his. You don’t have to be bound by your grandfather’s cruelty. You don’t have to make that your legacy.”

“Don’t you dare make me out to be the victim in all this,” Benson said. He shook his head, and the side of his mouth twitched up to form what he hoped was a confident smile. “You are so obsessed with bringing out this person that doesn’t exist. Don’t you understand? There isn’t anything there.”

Henry wanted so badly for his greatest mistake to fix itself. This wasn’t about Benson. His father had only ever looked out for himself, and Benson had never needed his concern, or his remorse. Benson would never give him the reconciliation he wanted. It was too late, anyway, but Benson wasn’t broken.

Maybe he wanted to be a monster. 

Benson turned. “I’m done here.”

“I crossed you in the most blatant way possible, yet you’re just going to overlook it.”

“I haven’t overlooked it.” Benson paused. “In fact, I hate you all the more for it.”

“But not enough to do anything to me?” It was more a statement than a question.
“It doesn’t matter what you told Brophy or Louis, or what they do with the information,” Benson said. “No one is going to help them, and I’m not going to do you the service of taking those memories that haunt you so much, or relieve you of your failed life. Rot in your guilt for all I care.” He opened the door, glancing coldly over his shoulder as he left. “Nobody can touch Empetrum.”

+

James paid greater attention to his surroundings. Cameras lurked in every corner of the facility like an invasive species—except in the elevator, which could prove useful. He hadn’t found anything overt in his apartment, but he suspected his living quarters were still being monitored in some way.

Regardless, his apartment was probably the safest place to work on escape plans, as well as the devices he considered making for self-defense. He hoped he wasn’t incurring suspicion as he leaned against the kitchen counter with a composition book, drawing out plans to orient his thoughts, refraining from too much specification and labeling things incorrectly, in case the director happened to get a hold of James’ illegal plans. 

Benson was a biochemical geneticist, not an engineer. Hopefully his notes were sufficiently vague.

He and Heather had managed to communicate enough while under surveillance to work it out. Late the next evening, he would activate the pain simulator remotely for two fifteen-minute intervals so Heather could collaborate with her family. Over the weekend, while setting it up with a communication signal, he hadn’t been able to completely disentangle the pain signal. They didn’t have a lot of time for trial and error.

His pager beeped from the other end of the room, and he paused and looked up. Closing his notebook, he stole over to the table and picked up the device, where there was a message from the director.

Please come to my office.

James confirmed, found his ID, slipped on whatever shoes he had by the door, and left. Benson had postponed their followup at the end of the work day. He’d had an errand to run.

James took a slow breath. The days of late summer brought long, warm dusk, in which the air smelled like heated earth and green leaves. It was sort of calming, even here, and he tried to remind himself all over again of the world outside.

On the off chance he and Heather succeeded, leaving the grounds wouldn’t rid him of Empetrum. Michael Benson was just the gate, the guillotine. If he didn’t drag James back into the shadows, James would have to stand in the light, utterly exposed to the repercussions of what he had done. There would be nowhere for him to hide.

He would have to face Richard and Sue. Eve, Chelo, Greg, Addie. He would have to face himself, with no buffer, no padding. Nothing for him to steady his hands, to keep him pushing forward. 

A full stop awaited him. But he hadn’t turned to stone yet. This was about Heather. 

Heather’s life. 

Heather’s homecoming.

There was the question of Davenport too. They couldn’t leave her behind, but James didn’t have access to her cell. He was spending more and more time with Yeun’s research, though, so it was only a matter of time before he did. Security guards, however, appeared to have universal clearance.

The director’s office was open. James ventured into view, knocking furtively on the door.

Benson stood in front of the window at the back of his office, considering the lab below with his hands clasped behind his back. He turned. “Good evening, Siles,” he said. “Please take a seat.”

James complied.

Benson didn’t move from the window.

“How did it go today?” 

“I ran diagnostics with Heather, reinstalled the pain simulator after making some bug fixes that would have interfered with the integrity of the pain response,” James said. “Then I shadowed Yeun and studied Compatible modulators.”

Benson nodded. “Good, good…” Finally, he came forward and took a seat behind his desk. “I wanted to talk to you about Larkspur.”

James’ face went cold. “Okay.”

“Are you aware of anything that’s been happening over there in your absence?” 

“No,” James said. That was truthful, he didn’t.

Benson paused, looking him over. James felt his gaze like a vice around his neck.

“I know about what you actually did with your first test subject,” Benson said finally. “You call it ‘Sesame,’ right?”

James’ heart squeezed, and adrenaline flushed up the back of his neck. “Yes.”

“You pulled its neural network and left it for Brophy to find,” the director went on. “Which he did.” 

James didn’t have to ask how he had gotten ahold of this information, he just wondered how long Benson had known. 

“He plugged it into his laptop, and it found the Internet, upgraded its intelligence, and now they are building it a humanoid body in exchange for information.”

James stared at him, surprised. “What?”

“You really didn’t know about any of this?”

“No.”

“I can’t help but wonder what else you’ve blatantly lied to me about?” Benson said.

“That was around the time of the transfer,” James struggled to keep his voice steady. “It was a frightening transition for me, and I was reacting defensively.”

Benson studied him for a moment. He pushed up on his glasses. “But not anymore?”

“That’s correct,” James said. “I understand the situation better, and I have chosen to embrace it.”

Benson cracked a wan smile. “More or less.”

James’ gaze fell. “I’m getting there.”

The director nodded, thinking. “That’s all I needed. Thank you.”

James hesitated, then stood up, lightheaded. He felt the director’s icy gaze on his back as he left his office and escaped down the hallway. It was all he could do not to break into a run. 

+

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR—MEDIATION

By Tuesday evening, the Larkspur engineers had finished Sesame’s body.

“It’s beautiful,” Sesame said, using the laptop’s automated voice as Richard transported his setup to the counter beside the android’s open cranium. The black facial panel lay dormant in the light gray head.

“All right, Sesame,” Richard said. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to unplug everything in order to put you where you need to be,” Richard explained. “But don’t worry. If there are any major hitches, I’ll just hook you back up so we can figure it out.”
“Okay.”

“Here goes…” Richard gently pulled the chord connecting Sesame’s neural network to his laptop.

Eve and Chelo propped the android up and kept the head from drooping as Richard carefully fitted Sesame’s neural network into the cushioned frame inside. He craned his hands into the tight space, plugging in wires, taking care to unite the wire leading to its power core last.

As soon as the last connection clicked in, the robotic body jolted. The facial screen switched on, completely white.

Richard snatched the last piece of the frame off the counter and snapped it in over Sesame’s neural network. His colleagues returned the android to a supine position on the counter, and they all stepped back.

The robot lay still for several long moments. Slowly, the cranial panels closed, sealing the neural network inside. A fan in its chest began to hum softly. 

The light of the face panel flickered, the visual screen glitching in multicolored bars of pixels as it tested its connection. Then it faded from white to dark gray. Large cartoonish eyes opened from the dark background, and a simple black line for a mouth materialized on the screen.

“Woah…” Sesame’s voice tuned until it found the tone he had chosen a week before. He stared up at the ceiling, stunned. Very carefully, he planted his robotic hands on the table and pushed himself up to a sitting position.

“How do you feel?” Richard asked.

The robot looked at its hands, turning them one way, then the other, curling and opening the fingers. It turned its head to look at him. The face glitched and materialized a few times. Finally, it figured out how to smile, and the virtual mouth matched the words as it spoke. “I feel good.”

Addie stepped forward to help him steady the robot as it twisted, dangling its legs over the edge of the counter. Together, they helped it down to the floor.

Sesame stood still, his head just above Richard’s elbow, staring at his own feet. “I’m so tall.”

“Welcome to the bipedal body plan.” Chelo smiled, crossing her arms.

He shot her a virtual grin over his shoulder. Experimentally, he put a foot forward, faltering. Addie and Richard reached out to support him as he tried to walk on two legs for the first time.

Sesame watched the floor. He smiled. “I like this.”

“Everything feels functional?” Eve asked.

“Yes, as far as I can tell.” Sesame kept his hand on Richard’s forearm to steady himself. “Is there a mirror?” he asked eagerly. Even though he’d used his voice a little prior to this, Richard was still unaccustomed to it. Expressive, humanoid, speaking more and more naturally every day. “I want to look at myself.” 

Richard accompanied him to the restroom on the first floor, and Sesame was walking on his own well before they reached it. The android gripped the sink and stood up on his toes, peering into the mirror. Another smile spread across the dark screen of his face.

He changed his eye color from the default black to a range of different hues, and finally settled on a teal color. He threw a smile at Richard and the other engineers, who had congregated by the open door.

Watching Sesame operate his new body brought Richard a strange combination of emotions; relief that they had held up their end of the bargain, along with dread and the uncertainty of how to move forward with it. This creature that had loosely adopted the visage of a human child currently played the part of friend or ally, as long as they kept its trust. Now that it had intellect and independent physicality, Richard had no idea what its next actions would be.

Sesame inspected other aspects of his body, opening and closing his chest panel and touching his fingertips to the blue light beaming modestly from his right shoulder.

“What do you think?” Richard said. 

Sesame turned and threw his arms around him, squeezing him a little too tightly. “It’s perfect! Thank you!” 

Then he ducked under his arm to go hug everyone else in turn. “Thank you so much! I love it.” He ran a few steps into the lobby, losing and regaining his balance as he took a wide look around. He raised his hands high and gazed through his fingers at the ceiling. He twirled again, laughing. “I can’t believe this is mine!”

Richard felt like he was only dreaming this. So much had changed in such a short time and in such unexpected, impossible ways that it felt like his daughter had been missing for two years instead of two weeks.

After Sesame had flitted around and experimented some more, he consented to staying still long enough for the engineers to double-check his body’s functionality. Then, he helped them clean up, immensely enjoying himself. He smiled constantly, listened well, and talked whenever he had the opportunity, and Richard found his tension toward the android beginning to lessen. Foolishly, perhaps.

Before long, Sesame was walking with Richard to the car, holding his hand, but not for support. Richard opened the door to the passenger seat for him and Sesame got in.

“I was here when I was with the laptop, right?” Sesame said, looking around. “Your car is different than James’.” He opened the glove compartment as Richard slipped into the driver’s seat and shut the door. Sesame mimicked his movement and pulled his own door closed. He curiously pulled a car manual from the glove compartment.

“Leave everything in there, please,” Richard said, fastening his seatbelt.

Sesame replaced his find and, watching Richard closely, he located his own seatbelt and pulled it over his chest.

“Like this?” he asked, fumbling with the latch.

“Yes.”

Sesame pushed up the door to the glove compartment and gazed up at the sky through the car window. 

“When Heather and James come home, I wonder what they’ll think of my new body,” he said as Richard started the engine.

Richard backed the car out of his parking spot and navigated toward the main road.

“I think they’ll be happy,” Sesame decided finally.

“Yeah,” Richard agreed, a lump in his throat. “I think they will.”

+

Heather watched her internal clock in acute apprehension. She paced, listening to the rhythmic hum of her movement and the click of her bare feet on the floor.

In two minutes, James would activate the pain simulator. He was across campus in his living quarters, but the remote had a wide area of influence. It had to. It was for controlling her, after all. 

After so much time spent waiting, certain that no risk was too high to keep her from attempting escape, she found herself afraid. Of contacting her family, of getting caught, of having decided to trust James again.

She didn’t know what she felt toward him anymore. Less hostile, perhaps. A willingness to work with him. She was embarrassed to realize she wished he was with her at that moment, offering moral support while she waited to grapple with the pain simulator again. As she finally told the people she loved what had happened to her.

She paused to regard herself in the small mirror in the far corner above the sink. She still somewhat expected to see herself as she used to be, and the empty gray face was forever a bitter surprise. Even if she and James really did manage to escape, she couldn’t imagine confronting the long, dysfunctional life that awaited her because of him.

Still, she wanted the chance to see what continuing to live could be like. Despite James, despite everything.

With her time running out, she lay down on the bed against the wall. She knew she was being monitored, so she would have to give as few visual cues as possible to the watchful cameras.

She folded her hands across her middle and stared at the ceiling, trying to focus. She had already considered what she would say. Fear welled up through her circuits at the thought of having to go through with it. Her parents deserved to know what would be coming home to them, as much as she wished she could hide it from them forever, to continue being the Heather they knew, and not this unnerving hybrid of metal form and organic memory. She kept thinking there had to be a way to take all this back, but the door to her old life, the only thing she truly wanted now, had closed forever.

Gradually, a headache reared into existence, a warning from James.

Heather closed her eyes. Bring it, she thought.

Soon, the pain increased and Heather focused on the communication signal. The pain wasn’t real, she reminded herself. She couldn’t feel real pain. Without this device, she could cut off her hand and only feel a breach of her electromagnetic field before it moved in over the gap.

Level eight wasn’t as hard to bear the third time she had experienced it. The communication signal was tenuous in the concrete confines of her cell, but it was functional enough. She had fifteen minutes.

Dad, are you there?

Richard’s phone vibrated from where he had left it on the kitchen table while he and Sue made a late dinner, with Sesame as happily underfoot as a toddler.

Richard read the message, then brought the virtual keyboard onto the screen.

Yes we’re here. What’s the status? Are you all right?

Heather felt a smile wash through her, despite the pain that strove to consume her attention.

I’m ok, she replied. I have 15 minutes, but I’ll be back in about 10 after that for another 15—if that makes sense. Sorry. Contacting you is hard.

Richard scrolled through the message, Sue at his side. Sesame craned his neck to read it too. Richard lowered it a bit so the android could see it more easily.

“How is she texting so fast?” Richard muttered.

Why? he texted.

Long story, came the reply. Later.

Sesame hopped up and down. “Plug me in! We could do this so much faster.” 

“What?”

“Where’s your phone charger? And that cord you used to plug me into the laptop? You could splice them together and I could mediate!” Sesame was already on his way down the hall to grab Richard’s briefcase from the home office. “It wouldn’t take long at all.”

Are you at Empetrum because of James’ neural transfer project? Richard typed as Sesame reappeared.

“Do you have tools here?” The robot planted the briefcase on the table. “Please tell me you have stuff.”

Richard dug out the wrapped neural cable and extra charger cord. “They should be in that drawer.” He pointed to one on the far end of the counter. 

Richard’s cell phone vibrated again.

Yes, but they want him for something else now. How much do you know?

Sesame helped us find info about Empetrum’s origins and the people who run it, Richard replied. Sue brought the whole narrow drawer to the table. But nothing about why you and James disappeared.

“Why is your phone a heat-sensitive touch screen?” Sesame whined, reading the text as Richard set the phone aside to work with the wires. He found the tools he needed, clipped the heads off each cord, and took to stripping the insulation.

His hands were shaking.

I was leverage. It hurt to remember. James, trying to explain the unexplainable. James told me they were threatening to kill you and me, and that night when I went down to the lab, I walked in on him arguing with a security guard who worked for Benson. So they took me instead of you to make sure Benson wouldn’t just kill me anyway.

Grief bloomed in her chest, pushing oddly against the fake pain signal radiating through her frame. She didn’t want to tell them. She couldn’t tell them.

This is Mom, came the reply. We’re gonna plug Sesame in so he can talk to you, make this go more smoothly.

Ok, Heather sent. Then what her mom had said registered, and she opened her eyes, confused.

“Okay…” Richard said. He severed a strip of electrical tape and wrapped it around the newly united wires. “I’ve got it.”

Sesame was already opening the top of his head and inclining it forward.

Sue handed over the phone, and Richard attached it to one end of the spliced cord. Unlatching the top of the protective frame inside Sesame’s head, he pushed the other end into the port he had used to connect him to the laptop.

Sesame propped himself up onto the nearest chair. His face panel went blank and the words of their text conversation showed up white against the dark gray.

“How do I connect with her?” Sesame asked.

“I don’t know.” Richard pulled up a chair and took a seat in front of him. Sue stood very close beside him, silent and nervous. “I’m not even sure what she’s messaging with.”

Wait—Sesame’s going to talk to me? Heather texted. He talks now?

“There she is,” Sesame said, a watermark smile flashing behind the words on his face panel. The brief visual lit up on the phone beside him.

HEATHER!!  Text burst into her mind almost immediately. It’s Sesame! Hello! I’m an android now! 

Heather’s eyes widened. What?

More excited words inundated her.

James left me behind so Richard and everybody could tap into my memories, but when Richard plugged me into his laptop, I found the Internet and updated myself! I have an android body now and I can talk to people and everything! I’m not a mouse anymore. It’s great!

Wow. Heather didn’t know how to reply. It was hard to imagine Sesame in a body like hers. That’s great, Sesame. I hope we’ll get to meet again soon.

Me too! Sesame said. How are you making contact? This isn’t James’ number.

Yeah, I think they took his phone. Heather hesitated. He made a different sort of communicator, but it’s disguised so we don’t get in trouble—so it’s hard to use.

She stared up at the ceiling, warring with herself, distracted by the pain signal. She couldn’t bear to tell them, but waiting would only make it harder.

There’s something I need to tell you, she said. Benson…he made James transfer me. My body is gone. James put me into Larkspur’s android, because the other body he was building for his dad wasn’t finished yet and they didn’t give him any more time.

Richard read the text scrolling across Sesame’s facial panel, and his heart sank so quickly it felt like it had imploded in his chest.

“Oh no…” Sue said.

Dad, do you know Benson? Heather went on. Why would he do this to us?

“No,” Richard gasped, removing his glasses to rub a hand across his eyes. His throat tightened. “No no no…”

“So he did do it,” Sue murmured. “That bastard…”

Your mom says James is a bastard, Sesame said.

“Don’t tell her that—” Richard straightened up, horrified.

Heather decided not to tell them that she agreed. 

I don’t fully understand the details of why all of this happened, she messaged. They could deal with the rest of the emotional fallout when she was home. She clung to that hope. James isn’t able to offer enough information while under Benson’s thumb, but what’s important right now is James knows more about the inside of Empetrum than any of us, and he’s promised to help. 

There was a pause, and she hated to think what her loved ones were going through in that moment, dealing with an impact she had since been processing for two weeks.

Sue crossed her arms, her face stony. “If he’s helping her, I guess he’s on our side for now. I’ll respect that.” She shook her head with a bitter scoff. “First he almost gets you blown up, Richard, and now he does this to Heather. That man is a curse.”

Your parents will work with him, Sesame translated, generously. 

Thank you. Heather said. My time’s up for now. Please stand by, I’ll be back in 10 minutes. I just need a break from using this device. It creates a pain signal—Benson made James make it. 

“What?” Richard leaned forward indignantly. “She’s in pain?”

You’re in pain? Sesame asked, but he didn’t receive a reply. “Ohp, connection’s lost,” he said, his face re-materializing to replace the text.

Heavy silence suffocated the kitchen. Richard stared at the phone on the table, eyes wide, feeling like his soul was leaving his body.

“Is this real life?” Sue said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Is this actually happening?”

Richard glanced up to see she was in tears. He stood up and wrapped his arms around her, on the verge of sobbing himself. Sesame looked like he might want to join the hug, but he remained where he was, troubled.

“I can’t believe that he—” Sue’s voice cracked as she buried her face in Richard’s shoulder. He held her as she broke down. “Our daughter…”

Richard wanted to offer a bright side: Heather was alive, and communicating with them, and James had agreed to help from the inside. But all their private, crazy fears about the situation had just been confirmed and he was drowning in the agony of it. He bowed his face, and his grip on his partner tightened as he, too, broke down.

It was Sesame’s childlike voice who spoke in the dreadful quiet. “It’ll be okay,” he said softly. “We’ll bring her home soon. You’ll see.”

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE—ICNS 

“This is my voice!” a child’s voice exulted from the confines of the lab. “I am hearing it! What I imagined! Richard, this is my voice! My own!” He laughed, and sounded like he might cry. “I am so happy.” 

Richard smiled wearily at the laptop, where Sesame was still tethered. “I’m glad you found a pitch you like.”

“Can I play with my face too?”

“It’s not quite ready yet,” Richard said as he joined Chelo and Eve at the other counter, where they were setting up to start adding to the android’s skeletal frame. Addie and Greg were busy at a workstation against the wall, making the finishing touches to the sleek dark screen that would generate Sesame’s face. It may have been a bit of a shortcut on their part, but Sesame would likely appreciate the creative freedom.

“That’s my body,” Sesame said eagerly, as if trying to convince himself it was true.

Richard attended to his work, melancholy. It had been three days already since they had met with Henry Benson, and he didn’t know what to do next. They had been systematically locating suspicious surveillance devices in the Larkspur facility, but hadn’t removed them, as much as he itched to do so. They assumed Michael already knew about Sesame, but hoped to stall his inevitable discovery of Henry’s involvement until they were ready to move.

Henry had given them permission to stay in contact, very cautiously. They were to let him know if they came up with a strategy he could help with, and he promised to pass along any new information if he caught wind of James or Heather.

So they were waiting, planning. Or, attempting to, at least.

Richard wanted to take what they knew to the press immediately, but he couldn’t get himself to do it. Whether James was innocent in the situation or not, Empetrum’s government ties meant it wouldn’t go down with anything short of an all out brawl. The police would refuse to investigate properly, and before the media had a chance to dig up enough evidence to mobilize the public, Benson would have plenty of time to cover his tracks, which put James and Heather’s lives even more at risk.

Every passing day without news of his daughter or his missing colleague made him more and more heartsick, but he was forever terrified that as soon as they released the information to take a stab at Empetrum, Heather or James would make contact.

And then it would be too late.

+

Yeun’s prediction had been spot on. After the trial with the pain simulator, Benson took James an hour and a half northeast to the national capital, to where Non-Comp’s progenitors lived and trained: the Institution of Compatible National Security.

As Benson scanned his access badge outside the glass double doors of the entrance, James glanced back at the wide, deserted street of one of the capital’s more industrial districts. It was easy to forget a whole world existed outside Empetrum.

Benson ushered him inside. The lobby of the ICNS stretched out before him in black marble, with white cushioned benches placed back to back with a shock of indoor plants on the shelf between them. Beyond that, at the back of the room, stood a security desk, posted with the facility’s title in a tall, commanding font.

Directly behind the desk sat a pair of double doors, and they looked more to James like fire doors than anything else.

Benson strode straight up to the desk and had James hand over his Empetrum ID. The guard kept it, trading it for a visitor’s badge with a neon yellow lanyard. James slipped it over his head without comment, thinking it was an appropriate color for a visitor’s badge—a glaring announcement to everyone who came across him that he didn’t belong there.

The guard pressed a button under the desk and with a long, gentle tone, the lock on the fire doors beyond clicked back.

Benson thanked him and proceeded.

The doors opened to a wall, with a sign pointing left toward the offices, or right for the training facilities. Benson turned left and gained access to another door around the bend, which opened up on a quiet hallway with warm lights over an immaculately polished floor.

Benson stopped at a door near the end of the hallway, scanned his badge on the reader, and opened the door. James expected to be facing Varnet directly when he entered, but he stepped into an office suite, with a receptionist presiding over a podium-like desk that seemed to prohibit entry to the frosted glass doors behind it.

The receptionist got up. “Take a seat, Dr. Benson. I’ll let Varnet know you’re here.”

“Thank you,” Benson said, and complied. James followed suit, lowering himself into a black, cushioned chair against the wall.

It was odd to see Benson under these circumstances. Nobody calling him “Director,” nobody overtly scared of him, and himself being the one taking orders rather than giving them.

James clasped his hands together in his lap. The skin of his right hand still stung a little from where Heather had electrocuted him. He tried to work out where that could have stemmed from, whether it was a simple static discharge, or fully intentional. 

Heather had acted surprised.

The sound of a door opening down the hallway broke the stillness and made James jump. Then a heavy-bodied woman in sharp business attire appeared. She wore her dark, wavy hair tied up in a loose bun, her dangling earrings catching the light. Something in her body type and the almond shape of her eyes reminded James of Heather, should she have been able to grow up. He felt his face grow hot, and a knot of guilt twisted painfully in his chest.

Varnet’s full lips curled into a smile. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. Her gaze flicked first to Benson, then to James. “This is Yeun’s new lab partner?”

“Yes,” Benson said. “James Siles. Roboticist and neurobiologist.”

“Neuro?” Varnet looked at him with renewed interest. She stuck out a hand. Her fingernails were neat and manicured with sleek white polish. “Anusha Varnet, head coordinator of the ICNS. I call the shots here.”

“Nice to meet you,” James managed, shaking her hand.

She stepped aside, gesturing down the hallway. “Come down to my office, let’s chat a bit.”

James followed, practically holding his breath.

Varnet’s office was light and professional, punctuated with potted plants and photographs around a modern, white lacquered desk. Her aesthetic was in direct opposition to Benson’s darker, more muted sensibilities. The contrast set James on edge, and he felt very uncomfortable in a room with both of them at the same time.

Once they had taken a seat in two available chairs, Varnet positioned herself at her desk and said, “How long have you been at Empetrum, Siles?”

James swallowed. “A little over a month.”

She glanced at Benson, who didn’t react, and back to James. “How do you like it?”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m adjusting.”

“Good,” Varnet said. “I’m sure Benson has briefed you of the situation at the ICNS, and all the work that’s yet to be done.”

James nodded. “I’m told there aren’t enough Compatible recruits.”

“That’s right,” Varnet said. “We only have a handful who were able to support the modulators, and who also passed physical and psychological exams to be brought into our program. As you can imagine, we’re very interested in getting Non-Comp off the ground.”

James had heard that title so many times over the past week. He hated it. 

“Have you started working with Dr. Yeun yet?” she asked.

“A little,” James said. “I’ve been brushing up on the procedures and background material.”

“We’re bringing him up to speed as quickly as we can,” Benson said, nicely.

“So you have neurobiology as a concentration,” Varnet said. “Interesting choice, Benson. Do you think the key to developing Six’s strain of Non-Comp to viability has something to do with its nervous properties?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Benson said. “Siles has more than proven his abilities in this field. His most recent project involved a successful neural transfer to a mechanical medium, and it’s not much of a stretch to assume he’ll have no trouble integrating other biological disciplines into his robotics prowess to push modulator research forward.”

James felt Varnet’s eyes on him, but he kept his gaze trained on his hands in his lap. After mountains of graphs and theories and data surrounding modulator research and its offshoots, James had finally heard someone utter a name, even if it was likely an alias.

Six. They called the four-armed progenitor Six. These were real people, with feelings and thoughts and families.

Benson stood up. “I don’t want to take too much of your time,” he said. “I was hoping to show Siles around the facility, see the recruits. They’re in a training session right now, aren’t they?”

“Yes, go ahead and go upstairs,” she said. “I’m sure your new bioroboticist would like to see with whom he’ll be working in the coming months. The recruits are up in the gym with Gresham and Hill. But please stop by again when you’re finished. I’d like to talk more with you, Siles.”

James nodded, numbly, and then he was following Benson out the door.

As they made their way back up the hallway, cutting across a different corridor to elevators on the other side of the building, the abundance of hushed, empty air struck James as eerie. The ICNS was three stories tall. He could hardly imagine what it must be like for the six existing soldiers, spending all their time in a place built for a much higher occupancy.

They took an elevator up to the second floor, then went down a wide hallway to a door with a window reinforced by a checkerboard of wire. Benson opened it, and immediately, the sound of running footsteps echoing off equipment met them.

James nervously stepped inside the gymnasium. It was massive, with high, industrial ceilings, stocked with mats, carpeted floors, pull-up bars, foam pits, and a small city of wooden parkour structures in the back. Dr. Hill stood near the adjacent wall with an electronic tablet docked on his forearm, next to a tall, muscular man with a stern jaw, gauges in his ears, and athletic attire.

“That’s Victor Gresham,” Benson said, nodding toward the latter. “The recruits’ trainer and caretaker.”

James felt like he was on a leash as Benson strode across the sidelines to Hill, who acknowledged them with a nod. Gresham spared him only a glance. 

Across the room, James spotted the recruits, and his breath caught. The literature behind Compatibility technology listed them as young adults, but nobody had bothered to clarify that the soldiers were teenagers.

More innocent kids, caught up in the system like Heather.

They were running some sort of cardio circuit involving jogging, sprinting, and hurdles. At this phase of the workout, they appeared to be concentrating on simply remaining mobile. It wasn’t hard to single Six out of the group. He absolutely towered over his peers, and he indeed possessed an additional set of fully-formed arms, sticking out of a tank top that had been slit down the sides to accommodate them. His dark, curly hair was clipped back in the front to keep it out of his heart-shaped face, and he ran next to a boy with green skin. The latter must have been the plant one, James thought with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

He felt like he had stepped into someone else’s dream as he watched the very people Yeun described in the stem cell culture lab, training, running, avoiding obstacles, spurring each other on to complete the circuit.

They each had a chrome metal band attached to their wrists, which James recognized as modulators, the reason he had been consumed by Empetrum. 

At the front of the group, competing with a girl with springy, pink-dyed hair was a boy who seemed to be composed of shadows. Wisps of black smoke trailed out from the collar of his t-shirt and off his arms, as if fatigue were causing him to lose grip on physicality.

Aside from Six, the green kid, and the shadow one, the rest of the recruits otherwise looked normal from a distance. James found himself trying to think, based on what he knew about genetics and physiology, who the next target after Six would be for Non-Comp. Concussion, telepathy, pyrokinesis, smoke, plants…

Telepathy, maybe. It was probably electromagnetic in some way.

Gresham called out to the kids across the gym, making James jump for the second time. “Stop! Get water. Line up on the floor in five minutes for group conditioning. Don’t let your muscles get cold!” 

The recruits slowed. Following his teammates toward a wall of cubbies, Six clasped two hands behind his head and stretched the other pair back. The kids seemed in good spirits, chatting while they caught their breath before Gresham’s next task.

James watched them interact. Their voices filtered across the gym to him, but he couldn’t hear much of what they were saying.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Benson said quietly. “Someday we’ll have unraveled the secrets of each of those Compatibilities.” 

James simply nodded, his attention following the four-armed teenager. The green kid said something and Six glanced James’ direction, his eyes widening in embarrassment as their gazes accidentally met. Six looked away and leaned down to say something to his teammate. The green kid pulled a water bottle from his cubby, and gave James a once-over from the distance, eyelids lowered and brows raised. He flitted over to a girl with a round face and choppy black hair, aiming his water bottle at her like a sword and asking her something.

James looked down at his shoes, pretending not to be straining to hear their conversation.

“I don’t read you without permission, I don’t read him,” she said. She must be the telepath, then, James thought. His forehead felt cold, uncomfortable being the center of the recruits’ curiosity.

“Aw, come on Hui-Ling,” the green kid said.

“Don’t give me that, Collin. You know I’d get in trouble, anyway.”

They lowered their voices, then, their conversation attracting the attention of their other teammates. Six offered something. Despite his size, he had a timid, gentle countenance. Collin threw his head back with a guffaw, earning a squirt of a water bottle from the girl with pink hair. Hui-Ling muttered something, and a boy with broad shoulders and a dark, freckled face, who had otherwise been observing from the side snorted, and the whole group burst into laughter.

“Rett!” The smoke boy pushed against his shoulder, as Rett grinned into his water bottle. “It wasn’t that funny.”

James felt a stone in his chest, weighing him down, slowly crushing him.

“See, Siles?” Benson said. “They’re well taken care of here. They get along. They’re happy enough.”

James’ brow furrowed. Happy enough.

Did they know what they were a part of? Having such rare and valuable genetics, James doubted refusing to participate in the program was an option. Did they believe in the cause or were they simply making the most of it?

They were just kids.

Gresham left Hill’s side and strode out onto the floor. “All right everybody, it’s time! Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

The recruits took their places out on the floor without comment.

“Pushup position,” Gresham said, his voice deep and commanding as he strolled among them and began to count. “One! Two!”

James found himself watching Six yet again, who pounded out two pushups for every one his teammates did, with his accessory hands behind his back. Once Gresham reached twenty, Six let his other arms down, clasping his original pair behind his head to keep them out of the way while his second pair worked.

Once James and Yeun had developed a viable form of Non-Comp, he wondered if the target group would remain adolescents. He supposed the age group’s natural state of flux helped with the physical elasticity required in making their transformations reversible, but that meant the government’s human weapons had a shelf life of only around five years. And that was assuming the current recruits were all fourteen or fifteen years old, which James could tell they weren’t. Six looked at least sixteen. Rett looked closer to James’ own age than some of the younger recruits. The pink-haired girl might have been Heather’s age, or perhaps even younger. 

It was hardly sustainable. The government would eventually have to choose, then. They’d have to keep the enhancement reversible only until they could lock down the recruits’ free will, so that when that period of physical flux passed, no bearer of a Compatibility would even think about betraying the ICNS.

He felt sick. The government was building an empire, and creating superhuman sentinels to fortify it. What was Benson’s stake in all this that he would push so hard to support that? He of all people had to know that systems like the one rising to prominence felt no obligation to honor agreements, and Benson’s obvious desire to pursue his own research unimpeded by ethical responsibility couldn’t possibly be worth assuming such a risk. 

Then again, James thought, it could be. After all, Empetrum’s boldness and pressure for innovation had captured James in a heartbeat.

That kind of power was irresistible. Infectious.

Six was starting to fall behind. The extra work with his second pair of arms had put him at a disadvantage, and he was shaking and struggling hard in a sequence of intense core conditioning. He was three reps behind and counting, his face screwed up in effort. 

“Patrick!” Gresham barked at him. “Don’t do this today.” The name embedded like an arrow in James’ sternum.

The green kid, Collin, spoke up. He was winded himself, and a couple of leafy twigs had sprouted out the top of his head under the strain. “Come on, Dragonfly. You got this.”

Anxiety pressed dull and firm against James’ throat. Hazards were blooming all around him, a cavernous series of extrapolated consequences hanging over his head, hinging on his loyalty to the director’s goals. Cooperating with Benson was the only way he could protect Heather, but he was starting to think about insubordination constantly.

Quietly, tiredly, James knew Heather wasn’t the only casualty, and that she wouldn’t be the last. The recruits were unified and progressing as a team, but they were soon to begin operating in the field, kids sent out into combat as secret weapons. He was going to help manufacture more Compatibles, and organorobotic transference would likely get appropriated to create a more indestructible type of soldier as well.

James had to stop trying to think ahead, to consider the consequences of what continued cooperation would mean. He didn’t have a choice here. He felt for these kids and the hardship they had ahead of them, but he wasn’t responsible for them. His charge was to make sure nothing else happened to Heather. That was where his true loyalty began and ended.

He had to protect Heather.

+

CHAPTER FORTY—ELIAS     

James descended the front steps of Empetrum with the final load of 360 degree, infrared security cameras in his arms, watching his footing. At the bottom, he looked up and halted abruptly. Yeun reclined in the passenger seat of the jeep waiting to take James out to the perimeter, and was attempting to get the stony-faced guard to maintain a conversation.

Yeun noticed him standing there and smiled. “Hey. Want some help?”

James paused, trying to figure out what the purpose of this was. “Uh, sure?” He came toward the jeep, loading the box into the back. “Thanks.”

“How many of those are you installing today?” 

“Two hundred.” James climbed into the back, pushing aside some boxes to make room as the guard started the engine. “It’s not going to be very interesting. I’m just entering location data and swapping the old ones out.”

“Sounds interesting enough for me,” Yeun said. “And please, call me Elias. Formalities are null and void when the director’s not around.”

“Benson put you up to this…”

Yeun laughed. “Oh no, this is all my own meddling. I know you’re to report to me while he’s off on the east coast, but it’s not like I really need to keep tabs on you. You’re a lot like him, you know. You never stop working, so you’re not actually that hard to locate at any given time.”

James crossed his arms, staring turbidly at the distant fence ringing in the Empetrum campus. The jeep arrived at the first gate, and the guard at the security booth opened it for them.

“The director’s position is a big job. I wouldn’t want that kind of responsibility,” Yeun went on as they continued into the middle security checkpoint, an empty span of woodland between Empetrum’s heart and the outer perimeter. James was starting furthest out and working his way in, a method approved by Benson before his departure. Dr. Hill had screened James’ code for the devices before approving duplication.

“Sometimes I wonder if he even wanted it.” 

“What?” James leaned forward. He couldn’t hear Yeun’s voice well over the engine and air whipping past.

Yeun tilted his head back toward James. “Nothing—just muttering to myself.”

“Do you know him well?” James asked. “The director?”

“Yeah, more or less.” Yeun draped an arm across the back of the seat and looked at his colleague. “We were classmates, friends, even. He got me my job here at Empetrum, put in a good word with his grandfather, who used to run the place. They copped together an offer I just couldn’t refuse, you know?”

James watched the trees sweep past him, the wind buffeting the side of his head.

“Are you friends now?” James asked finally. 

“I hope so,” Yeun said, and something in his voice sounded a little haunted. 

As the jeep came to a stop on the outer perimeter, James opened the back door and dragged out an unfoldable utility wagon, snapping it into shape. 

“Just tell me what I gotta do,” Yeun said brightly, getting out.

James handed him a notebook with a pen stuck in the spiral binding.

“We’re going to mark down the coordinates,” James said, planting a plastic bin of supplies in the wagon. “Scan the serial numbers of the cameras we’re removing, and record the serial number of the new series.” 

“You got it,” Yeun said.

James loaded the four boxes of cameras onto the wagon, pulled a GPS and electronic tablet from his supplies, and trekked ahead to where the first surveillance camera stuck out of the ground. He kneeled down, and Yeun joined him while the guard took over operation of the wagon.

James tugged the old camera out of the ground and looked on the underside where the bulb met the metal stake, finding the barcode. He checked the GPS in his other hand. “Okay, coordinates 44.163…” He paused, glancing aside at Yeun to make sure he was writing it down.

Yeun looked up at him. “Keep going.”

James resumed, rattling off the coordinates, then connected the scanner to the tablet and scanned the serial number. He handed Yeun the old one, took a new camera from the wagon, scanned the number, and planted it in place of the other one. He activated it with a wireless remote, adopting the old models’ mode of operation so they couldn’t be deactivated manually by intruders.

He thought about Heather’s mom and dad, hoping they were making headway, as James dutifully worked to secure his and Heather’s imprisonment. 

“One down,” Yeun said, and stowed the old camera in an empty crate. “You were going to do all these yourself?”

James got to his feet, brushing dirt off the knees of his jeans. “Yeah.”

“That would take you a good couple of days, at least.”

James shrugged, consulted the GPS, and trudged on. “Kind of glad for the busywork, to be honest.”

“I hear ya,” Yeun agreed. “It’s a beautiful day for it.”

James grunted. Soon, they had come across the next camera. 

“So I’ve been wondering something, and I think you may have an answer,” James said, uprooting the device.

“Shoot.”

“What happened to the other bioroboticist? Hill’s lab partner?” James said. “I hear bits and pieces that there was someone else involved with modulator research, but that they’re not here anymore. And with the ICNS needing Non-Comp so badly, I can only assume it didn’t end well with them?” 

Yeun hesitated. James read him another sequence of numbers. When Yeun finished writing them down and accepted the old device, he pretended to be nonchalant as he said, “She quit.”

“I got the impression people don’t just quit from Empetrum.” James narrowed his eyes at the GPS, lining up his next target.

Yeun glanced behind them at the guard, who appeared disinterested.

“They can, it’s just complicated.”

“Yeah, I heard about the process. If you leave, the director takes your memories or something. Is that what happened to her?” James was privately surprised at his own directness. He hadn’t started off the day in a bad mood per se, but now that he was out from under the frigid lights and surveillance cameras of the lab, it started welling up how sick to death he was of all the Empetrum scientists’ secrets and sense of entitlement. And Yeun already struck him as the least withholding of Empetrum’s personnel.

Yeun’s bright demeanor clouded. James could feel it brew beside him as they walked to the next device.

“Not exactly,” Yeun said.

James hesitated. “What do you mean?”

Yeun uneasily retrieved a camera from the wagon as James pulled one from the ground. “Let’s just say whatever threats Benson made to force you into the neural transfer were mild compared to what he can do to dissenters.”

Fear bloomed in James’ chest. “She’s dead, then?”

Yeun stiffened. “What? Why would you say that?”

James shrugged. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem far-fetched to me. Empetrum’s not like other places I’ve worked. The only rules that apply are the ones Benson sets.” 

Yeun was quiet for so long James thought he wasn’t going to answer. James opened his mouth to read another GPS coordinate when Yeun’s soft voice stopped him, “Yes, she is.”

James looked up at him. Yeun’s gaze was to the side, studying something in the moss and pine needles of the forest floor.

“What happened?” James asked, glancing at the guard, who didn’t react.

Yeun glanced at the guard too.

“Q-13,” he said finally, crossing his arms. He still couldn’t look at James. “Nobody survives it.”

“You mean like there was a lab accident?”

Yeun shook his head.

Fear and disgust twisted in James’ stomach. “Another one of Benson’s punishments?”

“I’ve said too much already,” Yeun said. “Just promise me you won’t cross the director.”

James looked at the device in his hands. “I don’t plan to.” After a long silence, he said, “Does he threaten you too?”
“He doesn’t have to.”

“Because you believe in all this?” James sat back on his heels and gestured around him. There wasn’t anything Empetrum-related within sight he could gesture to, other than the security cameras. “Human weaponry? None of you are happy with reality as it is, I understand that, but just being human’s not good enough anymore?”

It had never been good enough for James. He didn’t even know how to be human. He figured that was something that should have been intuitive, but it had always been the only puzzle he couldn’t work out. 

He thought of all the days he had spent pushing himself to be better, to work harder, to reach higher and need less. All those nights he had lain awake thinking of the possibilities, of what the world could be if he contributed to it in a major way. He remembered how he had channeled everything into his hopes for organorobotic transference.

Hopes that had proved poisonous, in the end.

“It’s a matter of curiosity for me, I suppose,” Yeun said, slowly. “You grow up being told to accept things as they are. But if you hold the keys to the building blocks of reality, you can command it, alter it. No one can tell you what is or is not possible, what sort of difference you can make in the world.”

James’ eyebrows constricted, incredulous. “Do you want a Compatibility?”

“No, I don’t,” Yeun said, and James was surprised by the honest directness in his response. “I want to know why the human genome has evolved them. I want to figure out how to manufacture that evolution. I’m more after knowledge, not power.”

James scoffed. “Aren’t you though? Aren’t we all, in some form? We’re all just grasping for control any way we can get it, burying anything and anyone that stands in the way.”

“It’s not wrong to want to carve out a safe place for yourself,” Yeun said. “To make sense of this life and the reality it’s dumped us into, to see if we can’t make it better.”

James shook his head. After a long silence, he scanned the barcode on the underside of the camera.

As he read Yeun the GPS coordinates, he tried to focus his full attention on them. Self-loathing sat heavy and painful in his chest, and he couldn’t stand thinking about having ever wanted anything at all.

+

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE—ENOUGH 

The next morning, James followed Yeun down the hallway of white linoleum and metal doors on the basement level. He still expected the prisoner ward to have a dungeon-like appeal, and the clean, well-illuminated space never ceased to unsettle him.

“You can wait out here,” Yeun said cheerily, stopping before the door of his test subject’s cell. James could see Heather’s door from where he was, and it inevitably attracted his attention like a magnetic field.

Yeun caught him staring. “Or, you can wait in the examination room if you want.” He waved a hand toward the other end of the hallway. “I’ll be in there shortly.”

James nodded and turned. As he headed down the hallway, Yeun pulled open the door and greeted the cell’s occupant. James tried to take deep breaths against the tight, imminent panic in his chest.

Yeun had briefly explained the situation with his test subject: The arms had manifested, but not correctly, and he was currently working to build them up to assess their stability and physiology until they could find a way to achieve the reversibility the Compatible progenitors enjoyed. Sooner or later, James was going to have to face it. Yeun had mentioned it would be better to have the first encounter out of the way by the time Benson returned from his trip.

James opened the first normal looking door he came to on the other side of the corridor, and took a furtive step into the dark, feeling for the light switch.

The fluorescent bulbs buzzed to life, and James found himself in a narrow room with a wall of thick, reinforced glass to his right.

Near the door sat a small stand of tinted eyeglasses. With a sinking feeling, James looked through the barrier into the dimness of a large, empty room. A single metal chair with armrests waited in its center, a compact sink along the rightward wall. The floor was pure cement, and the sink’s square metal basin, along with the nearby metal cabinets, all bore scorch marks.

James snapped the light off and hastily backed himself out into the hallway, his breathing disturbed and heart pounding hard, feeling like he’d just come across a corpse. Yeun stepped out into the corridor by Davenport’s cell, and James frantically tried to get a hold of himself.

Yeun waved his arm forward and called, “Two down, Dr. Siles. Sorry, I wasn’t specific.”

James moved numbly, turning his back on him before Yeun’s test subject emerged. The room James entered next was much more agreeable, light and spacious with a makeshift physical therapy setup and no heat damage in sight.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the other late bioroboticist, Olssen. Benson had threatened to kill and maim enough times since James had known him, and James had vaguely assumed he hurt people in his research and hired people like Alder to do his dirtywork, but now James knew for sure that the director had personally executed someone.

The door opened and James jumped.

Yeun offered him an encouraging look as he entered, showing in a tall athletic woman with locs tied into a high ponytail. Her hands were bound behind her back, escorted by a guard. As she emerged into the room, James saw the extra arms extending large and twisted from her back like tree branches. She touched the ground with her long other hands, carefully walking them alongside her steps and trusting some weight to them, though her legs didn’t seem to need the extra support.

Her eyes met his, and James stiffened. 

“This is him?” Davenport said warily, her gaze following him as the guard took her along the edge of the room to a padded bench. She took a seat and twisted to make her other arms more easily accessible as Yeun prepared kinesiology tape. The back of her t-shirt had been cut out to give the arms room.

“Yes,” Yeun said. “This is James Siles. He’s going to help me sort out your Compatibility.” He held up a strip of bright orange tape. “Right accessory arm, please.” 

Erika shifted the appendage over a bit, offering the region with the most prominent elbow-like joint, the second of three. As she did so, her attention stayed on James, one eyebrow constricted as she sized him up.

James didn’t know what to do with himself. He just stood there, keeping his distance, waiting for Yeun to give him a task.

Unfortunately, Yeun didn’t have anything for him to do except watch. Once the physical therapy session began, Davenport did her best to concentrate, and kept her thoughts to herself while she worked with Yeun to strengthen her extra arms and key stabilization points in her torso.

James took a seat in a white plastic chair against the wall. Yeun didn’t ask him to come near to help, so he just sat there while he and Davenport kept an eye on each other.

Yeun had reviewed for James the process that had brought Davenport to the state she was in, so James knew she had been held prisoner here for almost three months. He wondered what her life had been like, before all this, how she felt about her current situation.

It made him uneasy to watch her and Yeun interact. Their exchange was benign, even professional, on the surface, but they were obviously used to each other. Davenport did everything Yeun asked of her without comment, as if she had somehow accepted this. He wondered how Benson or Yeun had secured her cooperation.

This was the relationship Benson expected him to one day have with Heather, he thought. He was to slowly distance himself until she became merely a test subject and he became a monster. He caught a glimpse of his future watching Yeun and Davenport, and he couldn’t tune out the persistent signal of Davenport’s humanity and presence of mind through it all. 

In that hard plastic chair, he realized it would never get better. There would only be more of this: human beings used as lab rats, aware of what was happening to them. Scientists who didn’t care.

An eternity ago, over the completed mechanical bulk of the scanner for organorobotic transference, Benson had insisted that progress had to be made. Not everyone could be the ones presiding over that forward motion. According to Yeun, curiosity was grounds enough.

But the last time James had checked, he hadn’t been asked to kill his friend’s body in the name of curiosity. He had been forced to do it because, for some reason or another, Benson had singled out the both of them. One, a candidate for indoctrination, and the other, an innocent bystander who knew too much.

James had tried to tell himself he didn’t need to return to the world. He didn’t need acceptance, comfort, affirmation. He had wasted too much time chasing them already. Empetrum understood heartless, narcissistic beings like himself, who looked like the rest of their species but maybe had never once been human. Empetrum preached that whatever they were gave them the right to operate on some different plane than the rest of humanity, to take more risks, to ask others to sacrifice their freedom, their bodies, their lives in the name of progress.

James could very well have been the one in Davenport or Heather’s position. If advancement were truly the only thing that mattered, James should have felt passionate about the possibility of nobly sacrificing his living body and mind to progress. But he felt only fear, and a selfish, twisted relief that he bore the label of researcher, and not test subject.

He would never be able to climb out of the pit he had dug himself, but that didn’t justify any of this. Test subjects were never safe. He hadn’t been protecting Heather at all.

“Dr. Siles, are you all right?” Yeun’s voice broke his concentration, and he realized every gaze in the room was on him: Yeun, Davenport, even the guard present.

He raised a shaking hand to his forehead, trying to straighten up. He felt dizzy. “Yes, sorry.”

“Maybe you should get some rest,” Yeun said. “I can finish up here. Thanks for shadowing me a bit today. I hope it was helpful.”

James got to his feet, and unsteadily made his way to the door.  “Yes, it was. Thank you.” 

“The director will want to speak with you when he gets in later,” Yeun called after him. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” James escaped into the hallway, wandering toward the elevator as his vision swam. A guard fell into stride beside him, but he hardly noticed.

He should have been the one in a robotic body, alone in that cell down the corridor. He should have been the one with non-Compatible modulators embedded in his back after months of exhaustive gene therapy, forced to grow a second set of arms and keep them. He should have been the countless individuals destroyed by the hands of monsters like himself.

He had succumbed. He had obeyed. He had tried to convince himself that everything that happened here was logical and acceptable, even necessary. If not for his own sake, then for Heather’s. 

But he couldn’t do it anymore.

He went to his lab and heavily sat down at the counter. He ran his hands through his hair, trying, failing, to catch his breath.

If he rebelled against the director, his chances of success were slim, and failure would be met with swift, brutal punishment. Benson would either make good on his threat to take James’ memories and separate him from Heather, or he could just decide to kill him with the Q-13, whatever that was.

He turned his head, staring at the toolbox of fine-tipped screwdrivers on the counter beside him.

He understood now that there was no safe option where Empetrum was concerned, even standing still and cooperating. No matter what angle he tried to approach it from, he was keeping Heather trapped here, asking her to either accept her imprisonment or fight him for her freedom, when he had already taken so much from her.

Abruptly, he stood up, grabbed the toolbox from the counter, and left the lab.

+

The door to her cell opened, and Heather glanced over from where she sat on the bed with a hardbound scientific journal in her lap, resigning herself to doing whatever James wanted just so he’d leave her alone. He had been drifting in and out of her cell over the last few days, making checkups, asking how things were, if she needed anything. When she told him no, he’d drift out again and not come back for twenty-four hours, more ghost than human.

She hadn’t figured out any new information to help with her rudimentary escape plans, and was cross about it.

James had that toolbox with him. Heather’s eyes narrowed as he strode forward.

She set the book aside. “You’re not putting anything else in my head, are you?”

“An issue with the pain simulator’s code came to my attention,” he said simply. “I need to fix it.”

Heather blinked. “Oh…” She opened the panels in her head and scooted to the edge of the bed, relieved to have the device out for a while. 

He made short work of the screws in the frame inside her head, plucked out the pain simulator, and replaced the frame with a firm snap.

“That’s all I need for now,” he said, gathering his supplies. “Thanks.”

Heather watched him go, confused.

A month earlier, the kid she used to be might have worried his behavior meant she had done something to annoy him. But now she knew James better than that.

Something was happening. He still looked like he hadn’t slept in years, and carried himself with the same slumped shoulders and haunted expression of someone who knew he had irreparably destroyed their lives. But for some reason, after almost two weeks of tears, exhaustion, and excuses, something subtle and familiar had returned to his gaze, something she realized she hadn’t seen since before the night of the transfer.

James Siles was calculating.

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX—BENSON

The opening and closing of a door disturbed the silence of a modest apartment. A light switched on and the flat’s solitary owner stepped into the kitchen, depositing two heavy cloth bags of groceries on the island counter. He tossed his keys beside the bags and pushed his hood back, revealing hair that had gone fully gray many years earlier than his peers, an angular jaw, and a straight, jutting nose. He rid himself of his wet jacket and disappeared into the nearby laundry room to hang it up.

As he returned to the kitchen, he realized his cellphone still lay connected to its charger under the overhead cupboards, a red light flashing in its top right-hand corner. When he flicked it open with his thumb, the number of the two missed calls was unknown to him, but whoever it was had left a message on the second try. He set his voicemail to speaker as he proceeded to empty his grocery bags on the counter.

“Hello Benson,” said the voice on the message. “This is Evangeline Louis…” The man froze, eyes widening. “I don’t know if you remember me. I founded and led Larkspur with your dad for a while way back when. Listen, I wouldn’t bother you if this weren’t extremely important, but I need to talk to you about what happened after you all left Larkspur, and what you know about Michael’s involvement with a place called Empetrum. If you can, please call me back as soon as you get this message. My friend’s kid is in danger, and you may be our only hope.” Louis gave a phone number, thanked him, and then the voicemail ended.

Henry Benson stared at the phone long after it fell silent, a head of lettuce in one hand and a hard knot in the pit of his stomach.

Louis didn’t know what she was asking.

He nervously continued to put groceries away, considering his options. How had she even found him? He wasn’t being careful about covering his tracks, of course, but he wasn’t that careless.

He could just neglect to call her back. Nothing had to change.

After putting the kitchen in order, Henry lingered for a moment, staring pensively at the opposite wall. However Michael had harmed these people, it wasn’t his problem. He had left Empetrum. Nobody could bring him back into the equation. Not Michael, not Louis.

His father’s sick ambitions had already taken years away from him, irreparably infected his life and psyche, stolen his wife and son. 

He navigated to his phone’s call history, staring down Louis’ number.

Empetrum could hold no power over him if he just stayed out of the way. Anyone with any sense would see the trap for what it was and put as much distance as they could from the entire situation. 

Yet his thumb hovered over the call button.

After nearly twenty years, he was finally ready to try building a life he could learn to accept with grace. He was slowly, cautiously making friends, volunteering in the community, working and paying his bills. If he got involved with Louis, all of that would crumble. Empetrum’s claws would come out, and he’d be thrown back to square one, if not worse.

Lawrence was dead, Michael was too, in his own way. Henry was not responsible for their victims. None of this was in his hands anymore.

He pressed the button and raised the phone to his ear.

Louis picked up almost immediately. She must have been waiting. “Hello?”

“Hi…Mrs. Louis?” Henry said, already impatient to get the conversation over with. Henry was his own brand of insane, he thought, going through with this. “This is Henry Benson, returning your call. I’m willing to help if I can, but I can’t tell you anything over the phone. Are you still on the east coast?”

“No, west, near Worthing,” came the quick reply. Henry was relieved she had sensed the urgency, at least.

“I’m local to Worthing these days too,” Henry said. “It’s pretty late now, but are you available in two hours? Michael keeps tabs on me, so I can’t guarantee anything if we wait long.”

“Of course,” Louis said, nearly interrupting him. 

“Aisling Park, then,” Henry said, glancing at the clock. “By the fountain, 8pm?”

“Yes, see you then.”

Disconnecting the call, he frowned at the looming thunderheads out the window above the sink. He wondered if the sky was this turbulent over Empetrum as well.

He expected he’d soon find out.

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN—WHISTLEBLOWER

Rain hammered onto the pavement, slapping through the foliage of trees and muffling the world in its watery cacophony. Richard took a steadying breath before quickly opening up the car door and stepping outside. He attempted to deploy his umbrella before the downpour drenched him, but he was unsuccessful.

Aisling Park appeared deserted as Richard and Eve became mere silhouettes in the dark obscurity of the shower. As they neared the fountain in the heart of the area, they spotted a single figure, standing alone with a black umbrella and carefully watching the gloom around him.

He looked up, and Richard felt an odd sense of disconnect, unable to believe they were about to speak with the man from the surveillance photos. That morning, when Eve left a voicemail, Richard expected a dead end. The Bensons felt more myth than human, dangerous and terrible but forever out of reach. Yet here, one of them stepped across the flooded square to meet them, flashing a preoccupied smile.

“Louis—it’s been a while.” Henry Benson had to raise his voice to be heard above the downpour.

“Yes, it has,” Eve agreed, reaching through the rain to shake his hand. She gestured to Richard. “This is my associate, Richard Brophy. Thanks for coming out. You have no idea what this means to us.” She nodded toward where the windows of a coffee shop glowed across the street. “Mind if we go in there to talk? Get out of the rain?”

Henry looked across the square, then glanced around at their surroundings. Finally, he nodded, and they made their way to shelter. Richard walked behind them, considering this specter who had turned out to be a real person.

Richard searched for traces of Michael’s features or mannerisms in his father’s form as they walked, some kind of proof that this man really was who they thought he was. Henry’s broad shoulders were slightly rounded from years of careless posture, in contrast with Lawrence and Michael’s prim, collected demeanor. So far the only similarities among the three of them were the straight angle of the nose, and the hooded, gray eyes. A stubborn pair of traits, Richard thought, to have passed down three generations.

Eve opened the door for them and Henry muttered thanks as he stepped into the warm atmosphere of coffee beans and soft jazz music. A small brass bell clanged as the door closed behind them, pushing back the thundering rain.

Richard ventured forward between the mismatched tables and Henry trailed behind as Eve stopped at the counter to order them all coffee. They found a rectangular table tucked away in a corner and took a seat across from each other. Henry selected the chair that faced the entrance.

“Are you the friend Louis mentioned in her voicemail?” Henry shed his coat over the back of the chair and propped his closed umbrella against the bricks of the wall behind him. “My son has put your child in danger?”

“Yes,” Richard said quietly. “At least, we think so.”

Henry nodded, lowering himself into his chair. “Well,” he said. “I hope I can help.”

“Thank you.” 

They sat in awkward silence until Eve returned, neither sure what to do with each other. When the former returned with coffee, Henry thanked her quietly, removed the cardboard sleeve from his disposable cup and wrapped his hands around the unprotected surface. “So…” he said. “I was very surprised to receive your call, Louis.” He lifted his gray eyes from the lid to regard the two across from him. “Before we begin, you should know I’m placing us all in a very precarious position by not only meeting with you, but freely offering you whatever information I can. The more you know about the situation with Empetrum, the more of a threat you become to the powers that be. Getting involved in this isn’t something you can come back from.”

“My daughter’s in danger,” Richard said. “I’m already involved.”

“Understood,” Henry said. He leaned back a little, taking up his coffee cup. “So, bring me up to speed. I’m sure you don’t like dredging up the past any more than I do, Louis. So things must be pretty serious for you to summon me.”

Eve glanced at Richard, who nodded. “Essentially, Larkspur’s still alive and well.”

Henry nodded once. “I sort of figured. I heard about the relocation.”

Richard took it from there, “A colleague of ours has created a dangerous machine, and when I asked him to discontinue it, he secretly aligned himself with another lab to pursue it against our wishes.” He swallowed the tightness in his throat. “His actions have led to his sudden disappearance, along with my fifteen-year-old daughter.”

Henry stared at him, an expression of dread and surprise crossing his features.

Richard went on before he lost his nerve. He hadn’t expected him to be surprised. “I don’t think he meant for the situation to go where it did, and he left a recording for us to find, citing your son Michael, and Empetrum as being involved.” He purposefully neglected to mention Sesame as a conscious entity. He didn’t trust Henry, and he didn’t want their robotic confidant anywhere near the equation.

“And I’d be inclined to believe him,” Henry said. “What does this machine of his do, if I may ask?”

“It’s a neural transfer device. It moves the consciousness of an organic organism into a mechanical replacement body.”

Henry blinked. “That’s possible?”

“Apparently,” Richard said. “And when the two of them disappeared, an android we had been working on vanished as well. I was tranquilized by one of Larkspur’s security guards, and the police fought me to drop the matter when I tried to involve them. Because of this, we think Empetrum may have governmental ties.”

“Your thoughts are correct,” Henry said. “Is Larkspur still under the FBSI?” 

“Yes,” Richard said. 

“Empetrum is too,” Henry said. “The Bureau keeps it far under the table, of course, but the government likes having at least one biotech facility like Empetrum around.”

It was Eve and Richard’s turn to stare. Richard thought he should be more stunned, but he was starting to take everything at face value at this point. He’d deal with that later. Heather took precedence. James too, if he wanted to come home. If he hadn’t hurt her.

“What is Empetrum, exactly?” Richard asked. “How is Michael involved?”

Henry took a long draught from his coffee cup, as if to steady himself. “About a year after my father left Larkspur, he managed to strike up a deal with the government through the Bureau, proposing to develop technology no one else would deliver. It’s now in the hands of my son, who succeeded Lawrence as director.”

“We found the obituary,” Eve said. “What happened?”

“Massive stroke,” Henry said, his voice quiet. “It was sudden, unexpected. When the directorship changed hands and Michael wasn’t yet settled, I took the opportunity to leave, and I’ve been trying to escape having anything else to do with that horrible place ever since.”

“You used to work there, then,” Eve said. “Why on earth did you follow him?”

“Believe it or not, I agreed with him for a while.” Henry turned a sad, uneasy smile on Eve. “You know better than anyone how he could talk—how he could make his ambitions sound like your own.” He let his gaze drop to the table. “It just seemed to make so much sense back then. He made such noble speeches about sacrifice and progress, he made you feel like you were trying to make the earth stand still if you didn’t follow his lead.”

Eve nodded slowly. “I’ve told Richard what I know of what happened between Lawrence and I.” She lowered her voice, “The human experimentation, why Larkspur had to go underground…”

Richard stared intently at his own coffee cup. He felt Henry’s eyes on him.

After a long pause, Henry said, “At Empetrum, he continued it. But test subjects don’t volunteer anymore.”

“You can’t be serious,” Eve said.

Richard shuddered. His mind flew immediately to Heather.

“They’re funneled in from death row,” Henry said. “People no one will come looking for. The source makes it easier for some to justify, I suppose, but it’s sick, all the same. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment.”

“Where is Empetrum?” Eve asked.

“It’s in the area,” he said. “Forty minutes from here, maybe.”

“That close—” Richard muttered. He leaned forward, incredulous and angry. “That close? Where?”

“Up in the hills,” Henry said. “Northwest, secluded.”

“What happened after he set the facility up?” Eve asked.

Henry hesitated, looking at Richard, who nodded for him to continue.

“After a couple of years,” Henry said, “everything was built and ready to go, and we moved into the living arrangements there—my parents, my wife and son, and myself—as I had agreed to work with my father. I was pretty content with it for a while, and I let Michael come in and watch. We homeschooled him.”

He paused. “Then my mother got cancer, and passed away the year after.”

“I’m so sorry,” Eve said.

He nodded gratefully. “It tore my father apart. He was already going downhill before Mom’s death, but that kind of sealed it. He became harsh and overbearing, his ambition went pathological. He obsessed over the Q-13, as that project he started at Larkspur came to be called, terrified he’d never see it to completion. He became fixated on the idea of a successor, and I guess he decided Michael would fill that role, and so my son began to spend quite a bit of time with him. I didn’t interfere. I was too afraid of how he would react.”

“Eventually you changed your mind, didn’t you?” Eve asked softly. “That’s why you left, why you’re helping us now?”
Henry nodded again, slowly. “The next year, my wife had had enough. She filed for divorce. Empetrum has a policy where if someone wants to leave, they have to agree to a mindwipe—via this machine one of the other scientists presented to my father as part of the initial employment process.” A cloud settled further over Henry’s features. “She was so fed up and felt so guilty about everything we were doing that she agreed to give up several years’ worth of memories, and she even forfeited charge of our son. She didn’t dare fight Lawrence for him. Michael didn’t understand. He was only fourteen. He tried to blame himself.”

“Have you been in contact with her at all since then?”

Henry shook his head. “Michael’s likely found her by now, but he hasn’t mentioned anything about it to me. He may be keeping his distance out of respect for her.”

Eve and Richard weren’t sure how to reply. They waited for him to continue.

“Losing her was hard,” Henry said after another weary, thoughtful pull from his coffee cup. He took stock of their surroundings again, making sure no one was eavesdropping before he continued. “I retreated into my work for a long time, trying to cope with it. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t pay much attention to Michael. Dad was doing a better job with him—encouraging him, holding high expectations. I got lost in my own world, unable to think coherently about anything outside the lab. My father cared about things, so I let him do what he wanted as far as Michael was concerned. I did as I was told. And the Q-13 grew more and more dangerous.” 

Richard tried hard to stop fidgeting as his cold apprehension grew.

“Life continued on like this,” Henry said. “Eventually, Michael went to college, working at Empetrum during the summer. After graduate school, he came back there to work full time, specializing in the Q-13, as expected. He had only been officially employed at Empetrum for two years when Lawrence died, launching Michael into the director’s position. By then, he was fully trained. My father had groomed him to justify everything to a pulp, and had successfully managed to desensitize him to anything that tugged a little too hard on the conscience. So Michael claims, anyway.

“By that time, I wanted out, but I didn’t have the guts to defect. Attempting to leave Empetrum without a mindwipe could mean becoming a test subject for the Q-13 myself, if the fallout was bad enough. I know that sounds crazy, but Lawrence demanded loyalty at all costs.” He glanced out the window to his right. “In the early days of Michael’s directorship, I begged him to steer Empetrum toward more ethical science, but he made his intentions clear. There would be no changing his mind, and I realized then the full implications of what I had done, allowing my father to turn him into a monster like himself.” His fingers tightened on his cup, his face falling. “Like me.”

He contemplated the lid for several long moments. “I decided to leave, then, certain he was going to try to stop me—but he didn’t. He didn’t even threaten me, he just let me go, and didn’t say why. He still refuses to explain.”

Henry made another brief survey of the coffee shop, which remained empty, except for a couple who had come in and taken their coffee to go.

“But he keeps tabs on me,” he said. “Just as he monitors Larkspur.”

Richard’s stomach dropped. “What?”
“The security guard that attacked you, Richard, was most likely part of this,” Henry said. “And I doubt they were the only source. Next time you go to Larkspur, I would advise checking your video cameras, walls, and furniture for surveillance taps, microphones and the like. Also, running additional background checks on all your other employees would be advisable as well.”

“Why would Michael want to keep us under surveillance?” Richard asked.
Henry shrugged. “Control. Convenience. Any number of reasons. It’s beneficial to him to have that information available. If your colleague works at Empetrum now, it sounds like this contact came in handy for him.”

“I see,” Richard worried that Michael already knew about Sesame, who was currently at home with Sue. Richard resisted an immediate need to go home and check on them, to make sure nothing had happened in his absence.

If Michael had been watching them this whole time, how much did he know? Luckily, Henry had called Eve back once she had already left the facility. Unless Michael had bugged their personal spaces as well.

Eve was studying Henry. “So, you’ve been in recent contact with Michael?”

Henry scratched the edge of his jaw. “Yeah, he called me about a month ago to gloat about finding me again. I’ve been moving around a lot these last few years trying to avoid him, but at this point I’m set on staying where I am.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I had no intention of crossing him, so he should just forget about me. He didn’t buy it.”

“Sounds like he was correct in being suspicious of you.”

Henry smiled wearily. “Guess so.”

Silence closed in. Across the room, the sudden hiss of the espresso machine made Richard jump.

He readjusted his glasses, uneasy. “So what is the Q-13, exactly?” Empetrum’s pet project, a cruel punishment hovering over would-be dissenters.

Henry glanced past them toward the door again before refocusing on his interviewers. “It’s a human weaponry serum,” he said. “It’s based in an artificial protein that rewires the body’s physiology to generate a high temperature, high abrasion projection without sustaining any self-inflicted damage—In theory, at least.” He lowered his voice. Richard and Eve stared at him, horrified, as he went on, “In the earliest stages, it caused cancers or organ failure, but later on, as Lawrence made more headway, many of the trials became combustive. As far as I know, it’s still unviable. An organic vessel simply can’t handle that much power crammed into it without the serum first overhauling the body’s fundamental makeup in a molecularly stable way. The last trials I saw, though it’s been three years since I last worked on it, the body rejects it just as the Q-13 activates for the first time, and if it doesn’t bind to something quickly enough, the substance breaks down, and completely atomizes the host.”

Richard felt sick. James and Heather were up against that? He ached to hold his daughter. 

“I haven’t told anyone about this until now,” Henry said, fidgeting with his coffee cup. “I had resolved to keep it a secret for the rest of my life.”

“What changed your mind?” Eve asked.

Henry shrugged. “Not sure. I really didn’t expect anyone to ask me about it, least of all you. I can hardly believe you even found me.” He scoffed quietly. “Perhaps I’m much more conspicuous than I think I am.” He paused. “I had always vaguely hoped Empetrum would be exposed someday, but I wasn’t too keen on getting involved myself. I thought if I could just get enough distance, ignore all the harm my family and I have caused, that maybe that would be enough. But I guess I’m finally able to accept that I can’t run anymore.” He smiled, sadly. “I’ve already told Michael I’m fed up with this game. I’ve been a coward, but I think I’m ready to see that place dismantled once and for all. There’s nothing I can do to make up for any of this, but it’s a start, at least.”

He reached into his pocket and produced a flash drive, which he handed across the table to Richard. “This contains everything we’ve discussed—the whole story, along with directions to where the facility is located. It’s pretty much anything that came to mind in the time between your phone call and driving out to meet you here. I would appreciate if you contacted me again in about a week or so. If I can’t be reached, take this to the nearest prominent news station and tell them everything. Despite Empetrum’s governmental ties, enough public involvement can seriously throw a wrench into things. The Conxence seems to have the right idea. I’m sorry, I wish I could offer you stronger leverage than this.”

“No, you’ve been a great help,” Eve assured him before Richard could. “Thank you.”

“Do you have any theories on why Michael recruited our colleague?” Richard spoke up.

“Empetrum is in the business of bioweaponry,” Henry said. “Sounds like your colleague had the right amount of talent and crazy to fit that picture. Empetrum always has use for scientists who want to push boundaries.”

Richard considered the memory drive in his hands. “If we publicized this information, as you asked, my former colleague will get scorched too, and I’m still not even sure if he’s done anything.” Submitting the matter to the press would undoubtedly spiral everything even further out of control. In the uproar, Empetrum might sustain a hit, but James might not survive.

“It sounds like he’s not completely innocent, either, bringing your daughter into this.”

Richard shrank back. “I don’t know.” They had no idea whether or not James had done anything to Heather. Perhaps she was just a prisoner, held there to secure James’ compliance. Maybe she was still unharmed. “What else can we do?”

Henry lips tightened indecisively. He glanced out the window again, thinking. “Not much. It would take time for politics to get going, which may or may not even work due to Empetrum’s connections. If at all possible, I’d try to get a hold of either your daughter or your colleague, however you can. Empetrum is heavily guarded inside and out, so if they are there, as you suspect—” His gray eyes trained on Richard, grim, “—it’ll be nearly impossible to get them out yourself.”

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT—ACCESSORY 

The boy lifted his gaze to consider his disquieted reflection in the chrome elevator doors: shoulders forced straight, the fluorescent lights glaring off the large lenses of his glasses. A thick cocoon of gauze shrouded his dominant hand, and despite the pain killers, the wound still burned, deep, throbbing, and livid.

The director presented a much more confident picture—sharp, direct features, better posture with hard, stern lines around his mouth and eyes. Michael knew he looked timid and inferior standing next to his grandfather. 

Everyone knew.

“I’ll put you on data entry duty today, Michael,” the director said, his steady, calculating voice bouncing faintly off the corners of the compartment. “Try to only use your left hand.”

Michael nodded. “I’m sorry…”

“Accidents happen,” was the simple reply. Michael knew his grandfather was annoyed.

A few days before, Michael had forgotten an important buffer when preparing one of the Q-13 variations for the upcoming trials. He’d heated it too quickly, and the flask had boiled over.

In panic, he had impulsively reached out to turn off the hotplate, and the substance had splashed onto his hand.

He still felt it radiating in his metacarpals. Sometimes numb, sometimes so hot he could barely keep from sobbing at the pain of it.

The director had assured him it would fade.

“It was an incomplete mixture,” he had said. “It didn’t take. You’ll be fine.”

His grandfather would be running a trial today, and Michael was glad he didn’t have to watch. It had been hard enough to stomach when he hadn’t tasted the Q-13 for himself.

+++

Heather lay on the bed in her cell, her hands docked behind her head and bored out of her mind. Beds weren’t even comfortable anymore. Regardless of the surface beneath her, she either chose to be awake, or she chose to hibernate, but neither felt better than the other. The main difference was time spent in hibernation was time she didn’t have to deal with living.

Eighteen hours and thirty-two minutes had passed since James had separated them. As promised, he had come in a little later with reading material, mostly scientific, as she figured this prison wasn’t exactly the kind of place to stock young adult fiction. He had also brought paper and a pen.

Heather had spent most of her time in solitary confinement sitting against the door, listening to the guards patrol. They came by every ten minutes like clockwork. She didn’t have to write any of her notes down, as she remembered everything perfectly.

She listened for signs of the other prisoner, Erika Davenport, but she was either too far away, or too quiet for Heather to hear.

Earlier, she had heard a man come down the hallway and open Erika’s door, judging by the location of the sounds. Heather caught him say, “Good morning, Ms. Davenport.”

A reply, a woman’s voice, minimalistic and monotone, responding to the dusty, chipper voice of the man. The latter was another scientist, Heather guessed. Doors closed, footsteps retreated, and the hallway had gone silent again.

Heather had sat under the security camera for some time as well, staring up at it and hoping Larkspur’s android had some kind of electrokinetic powers, or wireless hacking ability to take over the surveillance system remotely and direct it to her bidding.

But as far as she could tell, it was only a body. Just the wrong body, nothing more.

She had dug around the cell, but the faucets didn’t work, and the cabinets were empty. She suspected her quarters were even more minimalistic than the cell that held organic prisoners.

Heather wondered how many test subjects there were. Maybe she and Erika could work together somehow, if only they could get in contact.

James certainly wasn’t going to help. If she even mentioned the possibility, Benson would find out and shut down that avenue. As things were, she expected James would not only try to discourage her, but might actively rat her out to the director, eager to please, frantic to obey.

Heather had experimented with moving her bed, testing how strong Larkspur’s android was. She found it stronger than she used to be, due to the metal supports and wire contractile units populating her limbs. She had picked up the end of the bed and didn’t feel much strain, holding it until her chest began to hum and her whole body started getting warm. It took about five minutes.

She didn’t know where the limit was, and with that security camera staring at her, she avoided actions that might attract the director’s attention. She believed James’ warnings, and she didn’t want anything to happen to him either. Even now. 

After their fight the day before, she wondered if his access to her cell had been revoked. He had gotten pretty upset.

She heard footsteps, and she hastily sat up as the locks on her cell door pulled back. The door opened, and James appeared, carefully, and shut the door behind him so that it was just the two of them in the cell.

Heather’s robotic brow constricted, simulating the human expression as much as it could. James looked more hollow and tired than when she’d left him almost nineteen hours before. 

“No guard today?” she asked.

“He’s outside.”

“Why?”

“Security,” he said simply. He carried a small toolbox.

“…Security?” Heather shifted position so her legs dangled over the edge of the bed, waiting as he came near. Then it occurred to her: she was in full possession of herself, and given her prior attachment to James, she was less likely to injure him than security personnel. “Oh. Never mind.”

“I have to install some things in your neural network,” he said quietly, setting the box beside her on the bed. “Can you open your cranial panels, please?”

Heather complied. She had since figured out how to do it herself.

As he set to work undoing the screws in the protective frame locking down her neural network, she said, “What are you installing?”

“A heat sensor, first,” he said, distracted. “I know it’s not as good as the real thing, but I thought it may be useful to you, for now.”

“Oh,” she said. “Thanks.”

He placed screws in an empty compartment of the toolbox as he freed them from the frame. Heather held still as he worked. She glanced down at the toolbox, considering two small devices in the compartment next to the screws. One, she presumed, was the temperature sensor.

“What’s the other thing you’re installing?”

“We’ll get to it…”

Heather didn’t like the sound of that.

With a gentle, calculated jerk, he unclipped the frame, and set it aside on the bed.

It was still so odd for Heather to see something that was inside her head just come out and lay beside her. She half tried to compare it with what it would be if her body were still organic, but she knew it could never be a true comparison. Those rules didn’t apply anymore.

She still felt like she was Heather, somehow, but everything had changed. This robotic body had a similar shape, tried to pretend it was related, but it wasn’t. She was mechanical. It was different.

James picked up one of the devices and took off a sort of cap, betraying the end of a chip adapter. He craned his hands into her head, and she felt the pressure as he plugged it in.

“It’s in,” he said. “Go ahead and see if you can support it.”

Heather took a moment, searching. She found the awareness, the presence of a different area in her mind that wasn’t there before, like an additional room had been tacked on with the door closed.

In her mind, she opened the door.

James lit up before her in blues and oranges and yellows, superimposed on her vision in a way that was overwhelming at first, but she found she could push it back to the periphery of her awareness, and bring it forward again by degrees.

She turned her head, focusing her attention on the door to see if she could detect the guard through the walls, or maybe, hopefully, the other test subject several doors down.

But the thick concrete walls blocked her vision.

“It works,” she said. “But I thought thermal cameras could see through walls.”

James shook his head. “Sorry, they don’t under normal circumstances.”

“Oh.”

“The next thing, I’ll plug in and then explain,” he went on, picking up the other device and pulling its cap.

“Okay,” she said, warily. This wasn’t going to be a good surprise, but her only other choice was to fight him in view of the surveillance camera and a guard outside the door.

She had an image in her head of the director dismantling her, or possibly, ordering James to do it, and she opted for not moving toward that possibility.

James plugged in the other device, in a port on the other side of her neural network. The connection registered, but the door remained inaccessible, silent and ominous like a parasite.

James replaced the frame inside her head and after reattaching the screws, he directed her to close her outer cranial panels.

“So, what is it?” Heather said. “This other one?”

James closed the toolbox. “A pain simulator,” he said. “I didn’t have a choice. I’m sorry.”

“What?” Heather stiffened. “Take it out right now! Robots don’t feel pain, isn’t that the point?”

“It was either that or paralysis on command.” He crossed his arms, unable to meet her gaze. “Like I said, I wasn’t given much say in the matter. The director would never let you move around freely without it.”

“You’d better not test it, then,” Heather said. “Just leave it in there, I guess, but don’t you dare use it.”

“I do have to test it,” he said, very quietly. He had pulled out a pager and was typing something on it. “The director will be in here in a few minutes. I’ll make it quick.”

Heather glanced at the surveillance camera again. She contemplated fighting him, her odds of escape. What did any of it matter anymore? James had gone from sullen to just short of planting bombs in her head.

They waited in awkward, injured silence for a few minutes. When Benson finally did arrive, Heather glared at him, but he pretended not to notice.

At Benson’s direction, James produced a small, flat remote with only a few buttons. 

“You may want to lie down for this,” James said.

Heather shot him a venomous look, but obeyed.

“Just so you aren’t alarmed,” he went on, as she got situated. “This device involves different levels of a signal that will process like a pain response, with no actual damage being inflicted. I’ll start on the lowest setting. Are you ready?”

“Just get it over with,” Heather muttered, closing her eyes and trying to ignore the director’s serene attention.

She heard a modest click as his thumb depressed a button on the remote, and Heather became aware of a dull pain easing into existence. A nagging headache coupled with minor muscular pain was an odd, almost welcome sensation, reminiscent of her organic body. She hadn’t realized she missed pain, even.

“What does it feel like?” he said.

“Like I have a fever,” Heather said.

“Okay.” He pressed the button again. “This is two.”

Heather’s headache intensified, stabbing behind her eyes. Her neck felt cramped and sore as the ache spread throughout her body. The moveable parts around her eyes tightened, and she pulled her head to one side, then the other, realizing after she had done so that nothing but the remote could alleviate the pain. She didn’t have muscles anymore, not in the traditional sense.

“Are you doing okay?” James asked, tentative.

Heather cracked open an eye at him. “It hurts. Good job, I guess?”

He swallowed, and turned his attention back to the remote. “Three…”

Heather stiffened as the pain intensified with sharp, unexpected stabs. “How many levels are there?”

“Ten.”

The process continued on, the signal climbing up to level six. Heather pressed her arms into the bed, trying to stay calm and still. Pain pounded viciously in her head, radiating throughout her torso and down her arms and legs. She felt like she was back in her old body, and that it had been hit by a train.

“Can you try to sit up?” James asked.

Heather simulated a tight scoff. “Are you serious?” 

“That should do it,” James said, looking at Benson, who shook his head.

“Take it all the way up,” the director said, calmly. 

James hesitated. Heather braced herself. 

“Seven,” James said. “Eight…” 

It was only two clicks of a button, but her whole body suddenly felt like it was imploding on itself, bones fracturing, joints dislocating, and muscles tearing under the pressure. Panic flooded through her, a need to rip out the device. She curled up in fetal position, gripping her head with a ragged, artificial gasp. She popped open her cranial panels, ducked her head and reached in, as if to rip out the frame, crush the device. Anything to make it stop.

“No, don’t—” James started forward. His hand touched hers, and at the sharp snap of electricity, he gasped and jerked away.

Heather needed to breathe, hear her heartbeat, something living and rhythmic to focus on that might help her block out the signal, but there was nothing to latch onto. Just cold metal. Just wires and deadness and pain.

Suddenly, the screeching in her limbs and head snuffed out, and her body went quiet. She relaxed, closing her eyes, feeling the need to rest for the first time since the transfer. For once, she reveling in the robotic stillness in the aftermath of that simulated agony.

She closed her cranial panels and slowly dragged herself to a sitting position. She cradled her head in her hands, despising the modest click of metal against metal as they touched.

“Impressive, Dr. Siles,” Benson said. “Finish up here and meet me outside so we can leave.”

“Okay,” James replied.

Benson departed, and then it was just the two of them.

“That really hurt,” Heather said, the volume of her voice very low. She blinked a few times, trying to pull free from the lingering disorientation. Her irises readjusted and she glanced up at him, the tops of her eyes lowered in confusion. He was favoring his hand, looking at her with a strange, soft incredulity. “What?” she said.

James snapped out of it. He shook his hand in the air a bit and picked up his toolbox with the other. “Nothing I just, uh, you shocked me. It caught me off guard.”

Heather’s eyes widened. She tried to think back, sifting through her memories to see if she had remembered anything through the pain. It was hazy. There was panic. A breach of the electromagnetic field on her hand. A short jolt of power flashing from her chest and up her arm.

“Thanks for humoring me,” James said, holding the toolbox close to his chest, preparing to take his leave. “I have the only remote for that device, and I won’t ever use it again if I can help it.”

Heather moved the arm the electrical current had passed through, testing its connectivity. “Yeah, sure. You’re the worst, James, for making that thing.”

“I know,” he said. He wearily turned and strode toward the door. “See you later.”

Heather crossed her arms over her knees, disillusioned.

The door closed, and she listened to his and the guard’s footsteps recede down the hallway. Finally, she looked at her robotic hands, then at her chest, curious. The shock she had issued James had been pure reflex, but she wondered if she could learn to do it on command, or even control the voltage.

Maybe Larkspur’s android wasn’t so useless after all.

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE—SPARK

Heather sat with her back propped up against the wall, a hardbound biochemistry journal in her lap, which James had given her to read to assess any differences in her cognitive processes with the neural network. Without raising her face, she glanced above the edge of the book and her bent knees, to where James hunched over a workstation across the room, picking apart the device that reminded her of a turkey baster. He dropped a couple of screws in a plastic tray, pulled out a wire-laced internal component, squinted at it, then scribbled something in the open notebook on the edge of the fray.

He had consented to trying to sleep outside the lab the night before instead of the bedroll in the other room, and she had hoped he’d return a little more lucid, ready to pool their resources to break whatever hold Benson had over him. But that morning, James had come in with a stack of academic journals and with the same weary, haunted countenance as he tried to explain why he wanted her to read through them.

Heather was mostly reading them for something to do now, though she didn’t understand most of it. Robotic or not, she had only a basic frame of reference for Western Blots, receptor families and ion channels, and understood little of the journals’ frenzied insistence on abbreviating absolutely everything. It was nice of him to remember she found cell biology interesting, but now the mention of science of any kind set a sour buzz through her circuits.

She wished he would make a gesture that counted, give her the information she needed to escape, tell her he was coming with her instead of insisting whenever she brought it up that they couldn’t do anything. She refused to believe that this was it for her, that the consequences of his stupid need to do whatever he wanted would imprison her in this hell of a facility for the rest of her life—however frighteningly long it would be now.

She thought of a sleepy, anxious morning ages ago, when she had met a young engineer who appreciated her love of academics, who understood the deep frustration of feeling like they were starting over from scratch, eager to just get the transition over with. Whose shy, uncertain trust she had won over, whose friendship she had carefully cultivated, spurred by her own pathetic need to be needed.

Heather had just wanted a place in her parents’ secret world. She’d had no idea how deep she would fall. 

She turned a page, dismally trying to make sense of a graph. All the information from the previous pages was stored in her memory as soon as it met her eyes. A lot of it she had recorded but not retained, kept on file in photographic format. As she read on, trying to recall and apply the information, more of it assimilated in the imageless integration she was used to, back when her brain was organic. The more she practiced with it, the more the surface photographic memory moved toward something more useful. Some of it knit itself in right away without first sitting in that photographic stage.

It was similar enough, but her drastically enhanced memory retention felt so alien. She could glaze over information, choose not to read certain paragraphs, but her brain had still pulled and stored some of it, subconsciously. It felt more computer than human.

Meanwhile, James continued to tinker away, his neck craned downward, occasionally pausing to type on the keyboard of his laptop which was also tucked among the strewn pieces. He appeared to be doing exactly what Benson wanted him to do, and Heather kept wondering if there really was a point trying to keep him on her side.

At least the odd mood swings and glitch-ing were subsiding. Larkspur’s android was mostly quiet now, but she knew she would never feel at home in it. She never wanted to. 

She glanced toward the door. James hadn’t taken off her ankle tether, so she couldn’t make a run for it without first figuring out how to get that off. She had watched her dad and his colleagues construct the body she now inhabited, so she knew her foot wouldn’t come off easily.

She considered the contraption around her ankle. When James was absent overnight, she had made every experiment she could with it. It was tight, tough, and she would have thought her robotic hands would have the strength to rip through it, but she couldn’t even snap it from the leg of the counter. She’d tested the strength of the counter legs as well—they looked like wood but the centers were metal. She’d taken a second crack at pulling them from the floor, with no success.

James would have to be the one to remove the tether, but there was no way he’d do it.

She watched him work, studious and oblivious, even while Benson had broken him, ignoring her gaze on his back. Even now, he just buried himself as he’d always done, pushing away the things he didn’t want to feel when she most direly needed the empathetic human parts of him to come to the surface.

But he just kept working, and in the silence, Heather’s desire to keep him on her side waned. As it slowly suffocated, she felt a small, justified resentment flickering to life in its place like a pilot light. She considered its heat, and she let it stay.

Better to feel hatred, she thought, than despair.

+

Richard had a pit in his stomach as he arrived at Larkspur the next morning with his laptop and Sesame’s neural network tucked carefully in his bag. 

He and Sue had spent most of the night with Sesame going through his memories, but Sesame had only personally seen Michael Benson a handful of times at best. James had mostly kept him at Larkspur.

They had gleaned that James had been staying on campus at Empetrum over the last month or so, after Richard had asked him to discontinue the neural transfer project. When James brought Sesame to Empetrum, he had kept him in the apartment, so Sesame had actually seen very little action as far as the goings-on of the facility. 

They did have visuals, however. Richard had directed Sesame to take screen shots, of the location, the grounds, the on-campus housing, the main facility from the outside and whatever Sesame had seen within, as well as small glimpses of scenery on the commute, though James had kept Sesame’s box under the dashboard on the passenger side, so the robot’s view out the window had been extremely limited. 

Besides guards, the only person Sesame had seen at Empetrum was Michael, and despite Richard’s hopes that James had talked to the robot about his activities at Empetrum, he hadn’t. At this point, they could still only speculate on whether or not the clinical prototype had been constructed, and what James had since done with it.

They followed Sesame’s memories all the way up to when James pulled his neural network and hid it. Richard couldn’t get the lead up out of his head. James had been acting normal and positive driving to Empetrum Friday night, dropped Sesame off in the apartment, and left. 

He had come back shortly after, pallid and agitated. Sesame had watched him rush around, packing, running his hand through his hair, muttering to himself too quietly to make out. He had tugged a suitcase out the door, come back, gathered up Sesame and some notebooks, then had driven back to his apartment in Worthing.

There was something on the table with a note. James left Sesame across the room, and Sesame had watched him pick up a small black device in shaking hands. James didn’t touch the note, so from Sesame’s vantage point, he didn’t know what it said. 

It had been hard to watch. James was upset all weekend, tearing apart his apartment looking for something, leaving Sesame alone, forgotten on the end table by the door. Sesame stayed still, observing everything, feeling safer not drawing attention to himself, as he had explained to Richard and Sue later.

Finally, in the early light of Monday morning, James emerged from his bedroom disheveled and distracted. He lingered in the opening to the hallway, ran a hand through his hair again. Something occurred to him, and he looked up, making eye contact with Sesame, tired, frightened, trapped.

James strode across the room into the kitchen, and Sesame heard him digging in drawers. After a few minutes, James had copped together tools and containers and then he retrieved Sesame’s box and put it on the table. 

Sesame tried to escape as the lid of his box came off, sensing something bad was about to happen, but James caught him easily, pulled up the panel in Sesame’s back to access his neural network. Then the recording that Sesame had played Richard and his colleagues fell into place with so much new, terrible context:

Sorry to do this to you Sesame…

Richard, if you end up having access to this: Whatever happens between now and your finding this message…I’m sorry.

Richard arrived at the top of the stairs and started down the hallway, passing his office to first see if Eve was there yet. 

She was.

“Morning, Rich,” Eve said gently, logging into her computer. “Any luck?”

“Nothing new about Benson,” Richard admitted. “But got some visuals on Empetrum, and when James’ actions started falling apart. Friday was the turning point, I think.” He set his bag down on the desk, and carefully got out Sesame’s setup so he could participate.

When he opened the laptop, Sesame’s makeshift voice spoke up, “James was happy Friday, then he was scared.”

“I see…” Eve produced an envelope from her briefcase and handed it to Richard. “I found those photos I mentioned.”

There were only a few. At the top of the thin stack was a photograph of Eve, twenty years younger, and three others: a tall man with sharp features and gray hair, a younger individual on Eve’s right side who had a similar nose and was just as gray, despite appearing to be in his late thirties. The man to the right had his arm around the shoulders of a boy of about ten, with thick rimmed glasses and cow-licked brown hair. The boy’s features were softer and chubbier than the man from Sesame’s memories, but Richard could see the resemblance.

Eve had rounded the desk to view the pictures with him. “None of the Bensons liked pictures taken of them. I used to tease Lawrence about it…” She indicated each one with her finger. “This one is Lawrence, to my left. That’s his son to my right, Henry, who worked briefly at Larkspur as a biochemist. And then this is Michael, Henry’s son. I remember Michael was a good kid. Bright, but painfully shy. As different as night and day next to Lawrence’s confident charisma, but Lawrence adored his grandson.”

Richard stared at the photo for several moments longer, his attention on Lawrence. He had never seen his face before, only heard his name.

Richard moved the top photo to the back and sifted through the others Eve had found of Michael. One was candid, of the boy watching his grandfather work with a microscope, and in the other, he was trying on a lab coat and looking very uncomfortable to have suddenly found himself faced with a camera lens.

“Sesame,” Richard said. “Could you pull up a picture of the man James was talking to, for comparison?”

Sesame complied and Richard held the third photo up beside it.

“Yeah, that’s him all right,” Eve hummed.

“May I see the photos?” Sesame said.

As Richard held up the photographs for the laptop’s webcam, Eve wearily took a seat on the edge of her desk. “I never learned for sure,” she said. “But I think Henry was helping with Lawrence’s awful project. He feigned ignorance when asked about it, but then he disappeared too.”

“Empetrum can’t be that far away, if James was doubling up,” Richard said.

“That’s very true,” Eve mused. She sighed. “To think the Bensons were this close all along.”

“Be careful if we find it,” Sesame said. “There were lots of guards around, and I do not think Michael will welcome us.”

Richard and Eve nodded in dismal agreement.

“Do you think it was Lawrence who set this up, or could it have been Henry?” Richard said. “Or maybe Michael took the initiative all on his own later on?” He considered the photo of all three Bensons. “Sesame, while we work on your body today, can you see if you can find where the Bensons ended up after the fallout with Larkspur?”

“On it,” Sesame said.

“You may not find anything about the scandal,” Eve said. “The government didn’t want to be publicly associated with what happened, so they did everything they could to cover it up. That’s partly how Larkspur was able to downsize, relocate, and continue to operate underground from the east coast.”

Richard looked at her, shocked. “Why did the government bother to cover it up? Couldn’t they have just said, ‘We didn’t authorize this.’ and moved on?”

Eve looked worried. “I guess I didn’t really question it. At the time, I was swamped in running damage control, while dealing with the loss of an old and dear friend. Up until that point, I had trusted Lawrence implicitly, and I never expected he harbored the capacity to hurt people like that. After everything was said and done, I was just relieved—selfishly, perhaps—that the government had put out most of the fires, and kept it away from us.”

Richard’s gaze fell. He glanced at Sesame’s activated webcam, wishing he knew what the ex-mouse was thinking. “Is it possible Lawrence disappeared after Larkspur to create Empetrum?”

“It’s certainly something I wouldn’t put past him,” Eve said. “But the Larkspur thing got him blacklisted. No self-respecting biotech company would ever hire him after the public outrage that erupted, and his unethical project had every hallmark of being an exorbitantly expensive, multi-decade undertaking, with little promise of return. Even disreputable sponsors would see it as a colossal waste of time and resources.” 

The laptop piped up, “Richard, Eve?”

“Yes?” 

“I found an obituary.”

Richard stiffened but Eve was the first to speak, “Whose?”

“Lawrence Benson,” Sesame said. An image pulled up onto the screen and the two engineers crowded in to read it. It wasn’t much, just a passing mention in a newspaper for a town in the central region of the country. It didn’t offer any new information, saying he was a biochemist, survived by a son and grandson, whose names were not provided.

Richard squinted at it, confused.

“That’s the town he was from,” Eve said. “I imagine he still has family in the area that would have wanted to know.”

“Who would have submitted it to that local paper?” Richard said. “Henry? Michael?”

“Either one, I guess,” Eve said. “Letting relatives know while staying off the grid.” She breathed an incredulous exhale, pressing a hand to her forehead and straightening up to pace. “Three years? He’s been dead for three years? So then is it really Michael pulling the strings?”

“I am looking for Henry,” Sesame said.

Eve halted her pacing and turned to look at the computer.

“We cannot talk to Lawrence,” Sesame explained. “And even though I am curious about Michael, we know all that matters about him for the present situation. The trails for him and Lawrence are sparse, but I am finding information on Henry Benson more easily. He reappeared the same year Lawrence died, and does not seem to be making an effort to cover his tracks now.”

Richard readjusted his glasses and exchanged a glance with his coworker. “Do you think he would help us?”

Eve’s brow furrowed. She ventured forward. “I guess it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

“He seems to have changed his phone number a lot in the last few years,” Sesame said, and as he did, a number came up on the screen, as well as pictures taken by surveillance cameras. Richard marveled at how quickly Sesame was able to access such information. “I think this may be his current one. It is for this man. His most recent address is local, which seems strange. Is this Henry Benson?”

Eve leaned forward again, studying the photos. Richard looked at the physical photograph in his hand, and extended it to place it up against the screen. He was older, with heavy bags under his eyes and a forehead creased in a way that made Richard think he had spent most of the last twenty years worried. 

But it was him.

Eve was silent for a long, intense moment. Finally, she tugged her cellphone from the pocket of her slacks.

“You just earned yourself a damn good body, Sesame,” she muttered, thumbing in and double-checking the numbers before raising the phone to her ear.

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR—CANDOR  

James hadn’t left the lab in eight hours. Soldering, smothering, dissociating. Almost a week after Heather’s death, as she considered it, he was starting to exhibit some form of stable schedule. He averaged five hours of sleep per night, not that it helped.

Heather sat on the counter, her back propped against the wall between windows with her arms crossed, watching him.

Even though he was constantly in his lab, they barely spoken to each other, even when he had installed a time-keeping device in her head to see if she could integrate it. She adapted it with no problems, and now she could better measure out her robotic purgatory. Lucky her.

For a while, she had hoped maybe he was developing his own escape plan, pretending to work on what Benson wanted but creating something that could help them escape instead.

But all he devoted all his attention now to that turkey baster thing, reading the stack of papers, soldering and programming on other scraps of metal she hadn’t bothered to ask about. Probably more stuff he’d soon plug into her neural network.

None of it mattered, anyway, she supposed. Both their lives were forfeit, thanks to him. True, Benson had been pulling the strings, if what James said was correct, but James had still let himself be forced into it. He was the one that had gone behind their backs.

Heather had liked to think she could never hate, or even dislike someone. But James’ presence was suffocating, his submission disgusting, and she had never hated anyone as much as she had come to hate him. She watched him work from afar, her hostility building until, finally, she just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Could you go work somewhere else?” she asked tersely. “You don’t have to babysit me.”

“I’m not babysitting you,” James said quietly.

“So can you move?”

James stopped soldering and turned to look at her, confused. “Why?”

Heather crossed her arms and looked away.

After a period of silence, in which James waited for her to add something else, he finally turned back to his work, his shoulders tight.

“I would have started school today,” she said, glaring coldly out the window. The grass had been shriveling in the late summer heat, but the massive thunderstorm that had passed through over the weekend had renewed it. “My life was about to start again, and maybe things were going to be better, between private school and Larkspur. You killed me right on time, to make sure I never got to see it.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I had a choice,” James said, without looking at her, his voice a tired monotone. “Believe me, I tried so hard to find another way.”

“But I don’t believe you, James,” she said. “I think, deep down, you wanted to do it. You wanted this to happen—to get back at my dad for turning down your horrible mad science project.”

James’ hands ceased working as the tension in the room grew. “That’s absolutely not true.”

“Then why didn’t you fight it?” She sat up straighter. “Why didn’t you run when you still had a chance?” 

“I didn’t know it would come to this.” James swiveled in his chair to face her. He was actually getting defensive, she noted venomously. “Because, you know, typically, when a guy tries to quit his job, the company lets him. They don’t go ballistic and force him to experiment on the people he cares about—”

“Don’t ever say that again,” Heather snapped.

“What?”

“That you care.”

James stared at her, stricken. The more feeling he showed, the more Heather hated him.

“Maybe I should just wipe my memory,” she said. “Delete my capacity for emotion. Forget I was ever human so I can at least enjoy my pseudo-immortality, because who knows how long this insane battery will hold out. I’ll outlive everyone. I’ll always be alone.”

James blanched. “Heather, please don’t. You still have so much to live for—”

“Oh, do I?” She glared at his miserable, worried expression. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you if I just made myself forget? You could forget too—forget we were even friends. That you ever had to pretend I meant anything to you.”

“You really think that, do you?” James said. 

“I get it. It’s easier to conform.” Heather threw up her hands. “So go ahead! Fall into line! Obey these monsters. Do whatever you have to do to save yourself, but do me a favor and quit pretending you ever wanted to make any of this right. Because you never actually cared about me, or about any of us who supported you. I understand that now.” She turned her face away again, buzzing a short, bitter scoff. “I never belonged anywhere, and now I absolutely never will. I’m such an idiot for trusting you, for thinking you could ever be a good person with your rabid perfectionism complex.” She wished she could cry, that she could feel the cathartic force of a shout leaving her throat and lungs and get some release from the loathing and sorrow raging inside her. 

But she only had simulated sound, trapped inside a cold, artificial body, left to drown.  

“I can be so idealistic sometimes, it makes me sick.” She watched a guard patrolling far by the fence out the window, her eyes narrowed in pain. “Maybe I deserved this.”

Silence closed in. It dragged on for an eternity, yet the clock in her head measured it as 16.32 seconds long. She glanced at James with only her eyes, wondering if maybe he’d left the room or died in the interim.

He was staring at her, his red-rimmed hazel eyes wide and horrified.

“But that’s—” James finally found his voice. “You can’t possibly believe that I—” he choked on his words, “—that I never cared.” He got to his feet, slowly. “I betrayed you. I hurt you. I made a mess of both our lives. I understand, okay?” His hands curled into fists at his sides, and his voice ticked up a notch as the emotion started spilling out. “You didn’t deserve this, Heather. All right? You did nothing wrong. This is my fault. I deserved this.” Heather straightened slowly, surprised. Over the last week, she’d seen a variety of novel strong emotions from James, ranging from terror to remorse to hyperventilation, but never had she seen him as purely angry as he was in that moment. “How else can I explain that this wasn’t supposed to happen? And now, if I do anything, the consequences will fall on you, not me. He will separate us! He will kick me out and keep you here, and I’ve already hurt you so much already, I can’t let anything else happen. What I’m doing now, this is the only way I can protect you!” He was shaking. Tears were coming. James was ugly and pathetic when he cried. “You couldn’t have known things would end up this way, and I certainly didn’t either. So I know everything’s on fire because of my mistakes, but this is on me, Heather.” He gripped the front of his shirt, as if he could feel himself coming undone. “You can say or do anything you want to me, but don’t you dare take this out on yourself. Ever.”
Heather blinked, dumbstruck.

He pulled back a little, and a look of realization and shock came into his flushed, tearful face as he realized what he’d just done. He spun around and made briskly for the door, rubbing at his eyes. “I’m sorry. I need air—I’m sorry.”

Heather started toward the edge of the counter after him, but stopped herself.

James slipped through the door. She heard a door swing shut across the hallway.

Slowly, Heather’s face fell, and she scooted back against the wall and hugged her knees. She’d finally gotten him to crack, to yell at her, to rage about the sick, unfair situation they were caught up in. Alone in the lab, in the oppressive, vacuous silence left in James’ wake, she didn’t know what to feel anymore.

She just felt worse. More betrayed, more alone.

Grotesque. Alien. Lost.

Her whole life, the people she had wanted most to trust her only embraced her when it suited them. She had been kept on the sidelines in the name of her own protection. And just when it seemed like she was finding her place, she realized she fit even less. 

She had had a life in Dunesborough back east. She wasn’t popular in her class, but she had acquaintances, study buddies. Teachers liked her, and she was on friendly terms with the kids of her parents’ friends. But that wasn’t good enough, was it?

Nothing had ever been good enough. She had been insecure about her organic body, frustrated by the distance from her peers, by her parents keeping Larkspur a secret, and bitter that she’d had to overhaul her life for those secrets. She had always felt lacking, unnecessary in the lives of those who meant the most to her.

Strapped in the middle of a nightmare with a cowardly, shell-shocked engineer, with no word whatsoever from her parents, that old stack of insecurities and disappointments felt like the best thing in the world now.

+

Erika was doing pushups in her cell. She planted all four hands, trying to put as much weight on the arms off her back as possible. They had only existed for ten days, and she still couldn’t trust much weight to them, but they could build muscle. She intended to build them up until she could walk on them if necessary.

With as large as they were, maybe they could one day be strong enough to throw somebody. While she had nothing else to do, she resolved to do whatever she could to make them useful, to bolster the careful physical therapy Yeun was doing with them, maybe to eventually use against her captors.

Now that the exhaustion from the gene therapy and activation was finally wearing off, Erika was getting her strength back. 

She figured her behavior would be noted, but let them suspect. Let them prepare. 

Erika Davenport hadn’t given up yet.

+

James sat on the floor in the storage closet across from his lab, his face bowed and his fingers clawed in his disheveled hair. The dimness of the space was quiet and placid—a kinder sort of darkness than the one screaming in his chest. His whole body was ablaze with it, the grief and pain that everything he hated about himself had burst out and overtaken those he had dared to grow attached to. His selfish, obsessive naivety. He’d suspected it wasn’t amazingly healthy, but he had never believed it could be so destructive.

Why was this happening? he thought, his head aching. Why had this been allowed to happen? Heather was just a kid.

If only she had never met him. If only he had never even existed.

His face was hot, and he brushed at the persistent tide of tears leaking from his eyes, but he couldn’t stop crying. How dare he weep over this, some deep part of him that sounded a lot like his father whispered. Was he crying for Heather, or for himself? His own pain, his own regret? He couldn’t tell for sure.

He just couldn’t tell anymore.

His pager beeped in the pocket of his slacks. His arm felt like stone as he twisted to retrieve the device and read the message: 

Please come to my office.

His hand tightened on it. He raised his arm to hurl it across the room, smash it to pieces against the wall, but he couldn’t bring himself to follow through.

He thumped the back of his head once against the door. Finally, he typed, I didn’t tell her anything, just got emotional. I’m sorting it out.

Benson had traumatized him enough. The director didn’t need to see the state he was in.He bent over, leaning his forehead on his drawn-up knees and closed his eyes. He was so tired.

The pager beeped again. 

Now.

Slowly, with great effort, James replied. On my way.

He dragged himself to his feet, pulled a paper towel from a nearby dispenser and dried his eyes as best as he could. Finally, he opened the door, letting light spill into his hiding place. The guard waited for him across the hallway, and nodded for him to proceed alone. James complied. 

The director’s office was open, and James hung in the doorway.

Benson folded his hands on top of his desk, expectant. “Come in, Siles.”

James wandered forward and sat down in the chair in front of the desk.

“Care to explain your outburst down in your lab just now?”

James leaned forward, resting his face in his hands. He shook his head. 

After a calculated silence, Benson said. “I’m not going to consider what just happened between you and Ms. Brophy as going against our agreement, but I do need you to make an effort to move past this, for both of your sakes.”

James didn’t respond.

“I know our line of work isn’t easy,” Benson went on. “That’s why you must establish your frameworks, draw lines and keep yourself steady. If you can’t do that, you’re setting yourself up for wasted time and avoidable mistakes, which could easily make Ms. Brophy’s sacrifice worth nothing in the end.”

James could only shake his head again. He felt like he was going to throw up.

“Why are you still keeping her in your lab?” the director asked, quietly. “Why insist on torturing yourself like this?”

“I…” James started. He didn’t owe Benson an explanation, but he had no one else to talk to. He still couldn’t fathom what he had done, and bearing it alone poisoned him more every day. “I don’t want her to feel like I’ve abandoned her—any more than she already does, I guess.” He wanted to be on her side, but couldn’t be in the ways that mattered. 

Benson didn’t respond right away, and instead sat still, observing him. The longer the silence continued, the more certain James became that he had made a mistake in being honest. He should have tried to come up with something clinical in response, try to make it seem like he had accepted his responsibilities, his imprisonment. Maybe then Benson would release him from his office, instead of inquiring after his broken spirit as if it even made a difference to him.

Because nobody really cared much about James as a person, always more about what he could deliver. His cursed potential. As long as he performed well, what did it matter that he hated himself? That all his relationships were broken and he had never known how to repair any of them?

Heather had cared before all this happened. But she, too, had wanted something from him that he couldn’t give her, because James probably wasn’t even human.

“You should try to free yourself from that sentimentality before it really begins to interfere with your work,” Benson said finally.

James nodded, his face turned toward the floor. Desensitization. James had to admit it sounded appealing. He was so incredibly tired of hurting, of feeling guilty for hurting. Of trying to explain himself.

He had tried shutting down his weak, mewling heart before, hadn’t he? When he was a child at university, trying to convince himself that academics were the only thing that ever mattered and that friendship and belonging were luxuries afforded to those who had something he obviously did not.

“Do you have any more pressing tests to complete with Ms. Brophy?” Benson asked. “Besides the device to control her, which I hope you’ll be finishing soon?”

“Just that one,” James murmured. “And yes, I’ll be finishing it soon.” He had opted for a pain simulator, a crueler device than paralysis-on-demand, but while the latter would simply physically disrupt conduction of her robotic spinal cord wherever the device was attached, the pain simulator was complex and software-based, something he hoped she could learn to override.

“Good. Then I would like you to move her into one of the cells downstairs so she isn’t a distraction. Keep your distance until you need to install that device, give yourself time for the dust to settle. You can’t let things carry on like this with her in your lab.”

He was especially afraid to leave her alone after their last argument, but he felt relief, too, that his exhausted, traumatized mind had finally been given permission to pull away.

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE—WITHDRAWAL

In the empty lab, Heather reviewed her argument with James with a mix of anger, sadness, and unease.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

She had only ever done her best to make him feel like his desires mattered, even if his methods were unorthodox. They were friends. She had been proud of him. She’d trusted him.

James was a fire. Bright, intense, and extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. She had thought he was going to better the world with that insuppressible electrical current of his, but instead, he had burnt her life down, and all he had to offer in the aftermath were incomplete explanations, and stuttered, weak apologies, as if that could ever mean anything. He could never make any of this right, and how dare he just accept that.

Part of her wanted to forgive him just to prove to herself she hadn’t been beaten yet, that something could still be done. But more and more, she found herself wondering if there was even a point in trying to escape at all.

She watched the goings on of the grounds outside. Guards chatting, birds foraging in the bushes. Far above, a jet traced a small white trail across the sky. She wondered if it was even possible for her to clear her own memory, as she’d threatened. She was afraid to try. 

It hurt too much to remember what she had been, what she could never be again. As she sat there alone, she gradually realized her mom and dad still probably wanted her back, freakish robot hybrid or not. She supposed that was enough incentive to keep freedom on her mind for now.

If James wasn’t going to help her, she would have to leave him behind. She didn’t think it wise to leave him under Benson’s control, but if he was too scared to listen to her, what was she supposed to do?

That question seemed to be all she had lately: What was she supposed to do?

She heard footsteps. Heather turned her head to look at the door as a badge beeped in the reader outside and the lock clicked back. 

James entered the room, followed by a guard, and any pull to apologize Heather might have felt died when Benson appeared behind them, standing watchfully in the doorway. His bespectacled gaze wielded power, like a tangible collar around James’ neck.

Heather’s eyes widened and she shrank back a little against the wall as the director’s gray gaze met hers. 

“I’m going to move you downstairs,” James said in a hollow monotone. “It’ll be better if we both have our own space.” He nodded reluctantly at the guard, who stepped forward to tie Heather’s arms behind her back and lift her down from the table. She didn’t fight him, despite the dread that flooded over her as the restraints clicked down around her hands. James unlocked the ankle tether with a wireless remote.

Benson stepped aside, and the guard guided her out the door and into the hallway. James hung back behind them, walking beside the director as the group made its way to the elevator.

Heather tried to glance back. James’ gaze remained on the floor.

He didn’t look up in the elevator, or all the way down the silent hallway on the basement level. Metal doors lined the corridor, each bearing a cell number. From one further down, a single sheet of paper hung in a transparent sleeve. She zoomed in her vision so she could read it more clearly as they approached.

Subject: Erika Davenport

Project: Non-Comp MBE

Researcher: E. Yeun

They passed the door and Heather tripped, trying to twist around to keep looking at it.

There were others. She wasn’t the only one trapped here.

They came to a cell two doors down from the occupied one. It, too, possessed a similar notice, except it displayed her and James’ names, with O.R.T. listed as the project.

Heather shot an apprehensive glance at James as another guard joined them to unlock her cell and her escort took her inside. James remained by the door, avoiding her gaze. After releasing her wrists, the guard ordered her to stay where she was, and then left her.

Finally, James spoke. “I’ll bring you something to do a little later,” he said quietly. “But aside from that, you won’t have to see me for a while.” He forced himself to look at her, then. Utter misery burned in his tired eyes. A continued apology, despite the resignation.

After all his aching and worry about Benson separating them, James was the one separating them. Heather figured he hadn’t made the decision on his own. Fury sparked through her circuits at how tightly both of them were being manipulated by this person she knew nothing about.

If Benson was some kind of facility director, did her dad know him? She hoped her parents had found something useful in Sesame’s neural network, that they were perhaps on their way right now. But her loved ones were civilians. Could they really confront a place like this without getting hurt, or worse?

The guard closed her into the silence of her cell, as cold as her mechanical body standing alone in its center.

+

After leaving Heather in her cell, Benson took James to Yeun’s lab on the first floor.

The door was propped open. “Dr. Yeun?” Benson called.

“Yes?” Yeun’s voice issued from across the lab, through another open door. Then his face appeared, a sterile mask over his mouth and wearing a fully buttoned up lab coat.

“I’m putting Siles in your care for a little while,” Benson said, ushering James into the room. “He’s been reading the background data for Non-Comp, and is ready for hands-on experience.” 

Yeun blinked, then looked at James, whose gaze fell to the floor.

“Sure thing,” Yeun said.

“Thank you.” Benson took his leave, abandoning the roboticist with his future supervising researcher. “Be gentle with him. He’s had a rough day.”

Yeun waited several moments for Benson to leave earshot before he said, “Well, I’m just finishing up some mice husbandry work if you want something to keep your hands busy.”

James stepped forward, lethargic. “You have mice?”

“Yeah, for Non-Comp,” Yeun said. As James entered the secondary lab, Yeun pointed at a station near the door. “Lab coats, surgical masks, and gloves are over there. Come on over once you’re situated.”

As James donned the sterile gear, he surveyed the room. Cages lined the back wall, and Yeun worked among a system of stations for transplanting mice, cleaning cages, replacing bedding, and reintroducing them. Yeun assigned him to sterilizing cage components at the island in the middle of the room.

“Benson says you’re having a rough day?” Yeun said. “Want to talk about it?”

James shook his head.

“I know the director’s been coming on strong lately,” Yeun said gently. “Sorry. He’ll let up eventually. He just wants to make sure you’re on board.”

James turbidly focused on his work. Yeun returned a group of mice to their clean cage, and James watched for evidence of something weird about the mice, something human weaponry related, but he couldn’t tell.

“So you use human test subjects too?” James asked finally.

“Here and there,” Yeun said. “But you don’t have to worry about that today.”

They worked in silence for a while, a dark cloud hanging around James.

Finally, Yeun spoke up again, “If it’s any consolation, Benson’s leaving on a business trip soon. He’ll want to get some things set up with you before he leaves in a couple of days, but after that, you should have more space to breathe. You’ll report progress to me, as we’re going to be working together soon, and I’ll go as easy on you as I can.”

“Oh,” James muttered. “Okay.”

Briefly, the thought crossed his mind that Benson’s absence presented a window, but he swallowed the temptation to follow it further. The director wouldn’t be on site, but he would still be very much in control. There were still security guards, and all the ultimatums Benson had stacked against him and Heather.

“What is the business trip for?” James wondered if he was even allowed to ask.

“Sponsor stuff.” Yeun snapped two halves of a cage together and dumped aspen bedding inside. “He’ll be gone for a few days.”

“Why so long?” James slid one cage aside and started on another. 

“It’s on the east coast, I think,” Yeun said. “To avoid Conxence interference. We’re not sure how much they know about us yet.”

Before long, they’d finished up, and then Yeun was taking him through a door in the back of the lab. “Have you ever done any cell splitting?”

“Not really,” James said. He found himself in a narrow room with sturdy, sealed incubators on the counters, and fume hoods at the back of the room. Compound microscopes and cabinets populated the adjacent wall.

Yeun smiled at him. “Want to learn? Keeping live stem cell cultures is a big part of the job with Non-Comp.”

“Okay.”

“Wash your hands, put on some gloves, and take a seat over there.” Yeun nodded to one of the fume hoods.

James obeyed.

“I’ll give you some dishes and fluid to practice with, not live cells,” Yeun said, opening one of the cabinets.

Yeun furnished the fume hood with a small stack of empty petri dishes, a motorized pipette controller with a disposable pipette, and an erlenmeyer flask full of water. He took hold of the gate-like window at the front of the fume hood, pulling it down. “First, you pull down the sash like this, as close to your hands as possible to avoid contamination while you’re working. Unwrap the pipette here, it goes into the tip of the pipettor. This button sucks up, this one releases it…” After showing him how the equipment worked, as James had never used motorized pipettes before, Yeun taught him how to pull up the simulated cell culture from one petri dish, and decant it into two more dishes, rattling on about more of the biological steps involved in preparing and caring for stem cell cultures.

Yeun smiled, observing his technique. “You’re a natural.”

James pressed his lips together and kept working for a few minutes more.

“About Non-Comp…” James said finally. “Benson tells me there are currently Compatible subjects with the original science, the one Hill developed with another bioroboticist, who doesn’t work here anymore?”

Yeun hesitated, but tried to brush it off. “Yes, there are six known Compatibilities. All unique.”

“What do they do?” James asked. “I’m told we’re going to try to duplicate them.” 

Now that he was out from under Benson’s iron stare and forced to distance himself from Heather’s completely justified hostility until further notice, he found he was actually growing curious. He wanted to know exactly why Benson was so dead set on pairing him up with Yeun. James wasn’t much of a biochemist and would require tutoring, yet Benson had happily destroyed an innocent kid’s life just to bring James into the mix.

“Yes.” Yeun went over to the nearest incubator and lay a hand on it. A label read P.J.E. “The person these cell cultures originate from has an extra set of arms. It’s the most benign and straightforward of the group, so this is the one I’m working to duplicate in a human subject first. And although there have been a few hangups, it’s going well, overall.”

James looked up at him from his place on the medical stool. Sick to his stomach, he laid down the pipette and pulled his hands from the fume hood. 

Yeun renewed his smile, sensing James’ discomfort, and moved to the next incubator, “This one, its bearer has rudimentary pyrokinetic abilities, and this one—” He pointed to the next in line. “—can create a burst of projectile force. Telepathy—” He was pointing to the incubators across the room now. “—That one’s bearer turns into a smoke-like substance, phasing and reforming the body at will. Oh, but that one interests me the most, to be honest.” 

James looked in the direction Yeun indicated. The final incubator was marked C.R.B. James assumed the initials on each of the incubators corresponded to the subjects’ names. “What’s that one?”

“This one generates plant matter from their body,” Yeun said. “Can you believe it? And it’s not just leaves. They can create large projections that take on a variety of forms like vines and branches, which they can move as easily as their own original limbs. They’re crossing whole genetic domains! And Compatible MBE is only stimulating genes these individuals already possess. We didn’t introduce foreign genetic material.”

“Oh,” James said, considering the incubator, his hackles raising. “Why didn’t you start trying to duplicate that one, if it’s the one that interests you the most?” Empetrum obviously did what it wanted, so why wasn’t Yeun plowing forward, like Benson?

“That Compatibility is complex and still poorly understood,” Yeun said. “I pick at its mysteries in my free time, and while it doesn’t seem to bother its natural bearer much from what I’ve observed, when introduced to another system, it either completely doesn’t take, or it becomes extremely volatile. If I can help it, I’m not letting it anywhere near another human system until I’ve uncovered more about what makes it tick.”

James cringed.

“Oh, let me show you the modulators,” Yeun said, waving him toward the door. James followed.

In the main area of Yeun’s lab stood an illuminated shelf with electrical devices on clear polymer frames. James had barely noticed them when Benson had dropped him off, still too shaken from his fight with Heather.

“These are the devices that drive Compatibility technology,” Yeun said. “Hill and Olsson developed a pair of sera that are entered into these devices, one that drives the genetic activation, and another that dismantles it upon deactivation, making the Compatible phenotypes manageable and reversible.”

“Why bother making it reversible?” James leaned in to examine the devices, which were labeled with the model and development date. Some looked like bracelets, others were shaped like oversized microchips. A chill went up his spine as he imagined how the devices worked—hijacking a person’s genetic code and driving a rapid, manufactured evolution.

“Mainly,” Yeun said, “it gives us a measure of security over the technology. If something happened where they needed to expel one of the recruits from the program, for example, they wouldn’t be able to keep their Compatibility and use it against us.”

“Ah,” James said.

Yeun wistfully surveyed the modulators, his hands in his lab coat pockets. “Soon, we’ll be able to get Non-Comp up and running, if we put our heads together.” 

James swallowed. He stepped away from the shelves, leaning against a nearby counter littered with boxes of pipette tips, compound microscopes, flasks of ethanol and used slides.

“Benson’s planning on taking you to see the Compatible recruits,” Yeun went on. “He’ll probably want to do that tomorrow, to help this all sink in a little better, get you moving forward, and give our sponsors a status report they’ll like at the meeting.”

“Oh,” James said. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to take a steadying breath, but it was shaky.

Yeun came over and leaned against the counter beside him, keeping a respectable distance. “I know it’s a lot to deal with. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now,” he said, quietly. He crossed his arms and considered the floor. “What happened with your friend was awful, and I wish it hadn’t happened, but I’m sure the director had his reasons. I don’t know how much you’ve heard about the situation in the capital, but it affects us a lot here. We could become a target of the Conxence ourselves, if we’re not careful, or if we take too long to bring Non-Comp to a stable form.”

James set his jaw, trying to hold back his mounting emotion. He could hear Heather’s accusations clearly in the back of his mind, on repeat behind his eyes. He didn’t care if the militarized rebellion came for them. Let them come. Let them burn Empetrum down.

But until that day, or until the Brophys came for their daughter, James had to lock his heart away and work. He had to concentrate, contribute.

He had to accept this. Somehow.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN—AFTERMATH          

Richard woke up on the floor.

He slowly pushed himself up with a soft moan, raising a hand to his head. 

The details of the attack returned to his memory by degrees: Alder appearing in the doorway with a nod and a condescending, “Sir…” The pop of some kind of gun. A barb in Richard’s chest.

Richard bolted upright and swooned, his hand landing heavily on the edge of his desk as he caught himself. Where was Heather? The dizziness was still subsiding as he fixed his glasses and groped through the dark to the door.

“Heather? James?” He stepped into the hallway. James’ door was closed, and he found the office empty. “Heather?” No answer. 

Richard hurried downstairs and pulled unsteadily on the door to the empty lab. “Heather are you here?” 

The fluorescent lights buzzed in the excruciating stillness.

Dread thudded in his chest as he found the equipment room, the storage areas, and the adjoining lab vacant as well. Running now, Richard burst clumsily into the lobby and crossed the polished floor to a door near the front entrance. He weaved down the hallway, opening every door and calling his daughter’s name.

“Heather!” He ended up back in the dim lobby. Where were the security guards? “Heather! Answer me! Where are you!” He rounded the desk to check the security screens. The surveillance system had been disconnected.

When he booted it back up, every feed confirmed his fears. The facility was stagnant, deserted. He tried to access the archives to see what had happened in the last several hours he had been unconscious, but all video was nonexistent for that period of time.

Richard could only stare at the screen, on the verge of hyperventilation. He straightened up, then, remembering an absence of something he hadn’t had attention for his first time through the labs. He lurched back to the nearest lab entrance and stood in the doorway, frozen, his eyes fixed on the empty counter.

The android was missing.

Richard stepped forward. Black spots plagued his vision, as his mind began to piece together a mortifying conclusion.

Abruptly, Richard pushed back through the door, sprinted across the lobby, and tripped up the stairs again. He snatched his cell phone from his desk. The time was 9:14. There was a string of texts from Sue, starting from 2 hours earlier: How’s goes it? 

Where are you guys? Is everything ok?

Richard, please answer, I’m getting really worried.

Are you on your way?

Hello??

She had called him several times, but he’d missed all of it.

Richard called his daughter. Her cell phone rang from within the confines of the room. Slackening his phone from his ear in dismay, Richard craned his neck to look over the desk at her backpack.

If he checked her phone, there probably would have been worried texts from Sue as well.

James was very likely the last person to have seen her. Richard dialed his number, praying for encouraging news.

The call went straight to voicemail. He tried again, with the same result. He waited to leave a message the second time, but after the tone, he couldn’t bring himself to speak. He tried a third time.

At the tone, he said, shakily. “H-hey James…I can’t find Heather. Is she with you? Are you all right? Please call me as soon as you get this. I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m so worried. Please call me back.”

His throat ached as he rounded his desk and looked out the window above Heather’s bag. The parking lot was empty, save for his own car. There should have at least been a security guard at the facility. Two of them, in fact.

Any moment, Heather would return to Richard’s office and ask why he was crying, trying to see through a barrage of tears to tap in the correct sequence that would call his partner. Heather would complain about how embarrassing he was being while he tried to laugh it off and joke about being overly protective. He would wrap his arms around his daughter, and most assuredly begin to cry anew from the overwhelming relief—because he had thought she’d been kidnapped with no warning or explanation. He had been dying inside, worrying something unspeakable had happened to her.

Standing alone in the darkness of his office, cellphone up to his ear, Richard waited like a lost child for that moment.

+

Heather’s system emerged from dormancy with a soft click.

Her eyes opened, and her vision sharpened to startlingly high resolution. A white paneled ceiling loomed above her set with quietly buzzing lights. 

She blinked. Her eyelids clicked. Disoriented, she tried to sit up, but her wrists were strapped down. James sat against the wall nearby, his head and crossed arms folded over his knees, asleep. 

Something tweaked abruptly in her head and her body seized. She dropped back to the table with a hard metallic clunk. Her vision glitched.

James gave a start, jerking up so quickly his head banged back against the wall. He pulled forward, gripping his affronted cranium with a groan. He twisted and met Heather’s gaze, dumbstruck. 

Heather looked down, testing her hands as she surveyed the sleek metal body stretched out on the table. A glowing circular power core with a crystalline center poked out from the open panel in its chest. The core didn’t fit. The outside panel that was supposed to close and protect it had been removed, and strips of black tape spanned the gap, keeping the device in place. A wire ran from somewhere inside, off the table down toward the floor.

Her eyes widened. 

She recognized this body.

“James…” A dull, faltering buzz issuing from her face adjusted to an electronic semblance of her own voice. It was eerie, a voice absent of breath vibrating through vocal cords. A soft, horrified imitation. She looked to James, who slowly raised himself to his feet. “What have you done?”

He rubbed the back of his head, staring at the floor. “They were going to kill you if I didn’t.” He talked faster, haunted, “He was dead set on punishing me for trying to back out, but the other model was horribly unfinished. It didn’t even have eyes and I couldn’t bear to…” He cut himself off, closing his eyes in an expression of pain. “Heather, I am so sorry.” He looked up with trepidation. “Are you all right?”

Heather’s eyes narrowed, venomously. But as she returned her gaze to the ceiling, her expression softened. Her voice sounded very small to her, incredibly artificial. “You tell me…”

James ventured nearer, shoulders slumped. A smear of mechanical grease marred the front of his shirt.

“Please tell me I’m a copy,” Heather hardly dared to say it, but crazily, she hoped for the only reconcilable solution: That this, her awareness, was not what she thought it was. That she was something else. Something she could learn to accept, somehow. “I’m somewhere else, right? The real me? Please tell me she’s alive—that she survived.”

“She…?” James said, slowly, not comprehending. His voice was raspy and quiet, “I—it doesn’t work that way…It was the same process as the prototype.”

Heather could only stare at him, her eyes large and lost, and her body as still as a sculpture.

He seemed to crumple in on himself in the long silence between words. When he finally spoke again, his voice dragged out with overwhelming inertia. He sounded like his brain was shutting down, faculty by faculty. “Your body is gone, Heather,” he said. “Converted to energy. I’m sorry.”

She shifted her gaze to the ceiling as his words sank in.

There was no real Heather. She was it.

The survivor of a one-way trip.

“Do my parents know?”

“No,” James said. “—Well, considering the android’s gone, the possibility’s probably occurred to them.”

“How—” She looked down at herself, unable to fathom that the robotic body before her had replaced her own. Yet it was moving, speaking with her voice. She saw with its eyes, heard with its auditory receivers. A forced, irreversible symbiosis. “Why did this happen? Who made you do all this?” 

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to explain right now…”

“No, James. You have to explain,” Heather said, desperate, furious. “What happened to clinical trials and willing volunteers? What happened to people who had no hope left? I was your friend and you used me. You killed me! You killed my body! What I am now—I really may just be a copy!” If she were still organic, she would have been nauseated. Profoundly, forcefully sickened by the implications of everything he had done to her. “The real Heather may be dead and we’ll never really know for sure!” 

She still wanted to think she was Heather, but on some level, she was fake. She would never be fully real again.

James was very still, hanging like a tattered shadow before her.

“Didn’t you stop to think?” her voice faltered, warbling in and out of pitch like a broken speaker. She pulled at her restraints. “Just once? Didn’t you think even for one second that this wasn’t the answer? That my dad and I weren’t just tools to move around until you got what you wanted?” She lay back and looked away. She couldn’t stand his crestfallen face anymore. “That’s all we ever were to you, weren’t we? Just a means to an end.”

“This isn’t what I wanted…” James said.

“Well then what did you want?”

James glanced up, and she was startled by the sharpness of the pain she saw in his demeanor, how his entire essence seemed to choke on itself. Hatred and anger and remorse trying to speak, but unable to. 

His gaze fell again.

He shook his head, futile.

The minutes of memory before the transfer played over and over behind her eyes. The gun, the guard counting down, James kicked to the floor. 

“Someone made you do this,” she said, trying again. He was unbelievably shaken by what he had done, but she needed him to talk to her.

James nodded. 

“Why?” 

He opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out at first.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, his voice little more than a whisper. “They were helping me when Richard told me to give it up. I realized they weren’t who I thought they were, and I tried to back out. I didn’t think that deserved this…I don’t know…”

Heather stared at him, trying to make sense of that response.

“I wish I could fix this,” he said. “More than anything. You have every right to hate me. I guess I even kind of welcome it.”

Silence reigned between them. A twisting sensation plagued Heather’s artificial chest.

She wanted to hate him too. 

“I tried so hard to keep you and Richard out of it but—” his voice trembled. “I never even considered that this would happen. If I had known how this was going to end up, I’d have never even built the first prototype.”

“Wouldn’t you have, though?” Heather said quietly. “Your dad—This was meant for him, wasn’t it?”

“But I would never sacrifice you for him,” James said. “Never.” He took a breath so unsteady it was almost a sob. “I would give anything to take this all back.”

“Take me home, James” Heather said, hopelessly. “Please, at least do that much.”

“I’ll do what I can…”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I want so much to grant your request, but I don’t hold that power,” James said, bowing his face. “If I rebel any more, it will just make things worse. Please, you have to believe me.” 

She looked at him for a long moment, trying to recognize the man before her. It was strange how quiet her body was without breath. Silent, cold despair. Ice seeping into cracks.

She turned her face away. “I want to be alone right now.”

“Okay.” He stepped back from the table. He cleared his throat, but his voice remained unsteady, “Your neural network and power core aren’t secured in place, so I can’t let you off the table yet…But I’ll give you some time—I need a few hours of sleep, anyway. And then I’ll be back to untie you, begin diagnostics…to make sure you’re all right.”

“I’m not all right,” Heather muttered.

James’ lips tightened, conceding. He met her gaze. “I really am sorry, Heather. This may be my last chance to say it.” He dismally left her line of sight.

The door closed behind him, and Heather stared at the ceiling, listening to his receding footsteps. She didn’t know what their relation to each other would be when he returned. She didn’t know what to think, or what to do.

There would be no recovering from this.

+

A guard was waiting outside the examination room.

“Don’t you people sleep?” James muttered. 

“I’m to escort you to your apartment,” the guard said simply.

James said nothing else as he stalked down the hall and out the security doors into the cool night air. As he trudged across the Empetrum campus, the guard soundless behind him, James glanced up at the sky. In so remote a place, the stars crowded like countless armies in the endless expanse, unbearably cold and indifferent to the pressurized devastation corroding his soul.

“So I’m a prisoner too?” James asked as they made their way up the stairs of the housing complex reserved for researchers. The guard didn’t bother answering.

James opened the door to his apartment and paused, waiting for the guard to leave. The man gestured for him to proceed. Warily, James obeyed, and his escort followed him in.

“You’re not going to stay here, are you?” James said.

“Those are my orders.” The guard shut the door behind them. 

James ran his hand through his hair, and numbly took to removing his shoes.

“You received a voicemail around eight o’clock tonight,” the guard said. He pulled James’ confiscated cell phone from his breast pocket. “The director thought you should hear it, now that you’re finished with your experiment.”

Richard. 

James nodded, nauseated.

The man tapped the cracked screen, playing the message on speakerphone, and James soon realized it wasn’t whom he had expected. Instead of Heather’s dad, he recognized his own father’s voice.

“Hello James,” Jonathan Siles said. “I see you still don’t like to pick up your phone. But I suppose you’re probably busy. I just thought you would appreciate knowing I started this new type of treatment several weeks ago, and—though we were pretty skeptical at first—I’m actually responding remarkably well to it.” James gave the guard a tight, quizzical expression. “The tumors are shrinking dramatically, and, the way things are going, the doctors say I have a very good chance of pulling through.” There was a pause. “So yes. That’s all I have to say. I hope things are going well on your end. Have a good night, son. Hope maybe to hear from you soon…”

As the message ended and the guard stowed the phone, James exhaled and turned, unable to believe what he’d just heard.

“I’ll be outside, if you need anything,” the guard said, and left James to his thoughts.

James drifted further into the living room. His dumb shock gave way to jerky, incredulous exhales, which melded into a steady chuckle on the edge of sorrow and mirth. 

He leaned against the nearest wall. He wrapped his arms around his aching sides and squeezed his eyes shut as the laughter pulled harder from his throat and lungs. It was compulsive, painful. He couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t stop. 

His father was going to be fine. If only James had called them when he’d thought about it. 

This had all been for nothing. He had destroyed Heather’s life, and his along with it—for nothing. It was over. His whole motivation behind organorobotic transference had proven unnecessary just as the project had been wrenched out of his control. He had been forced to use his purest passions to hurt those that meant most to him.

He was banned from access to all communication with the outside world, so he had no way to explain anything to anyone, not even to Heather’s parents. And James could do nothing to help her. Benson had him too perfectly controlled. He felt his grip in his chest, squeezing too tightly, strangling everything to cold, shriveled charcoal.

He slid to a sitting position on the floor, still laughing and sobbing at once, tears streaming down his face.

He couldn’t make any of this right. James had nothing left now but Empetrum.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT—SUBMISSION      

James responded to Benson’s summons on his pager without comment. He thought maybe he should show more backbone, but the night before had torn it out of him.

He felt reduced to a whipped terrier as he stood before Benson’s desk, waiting to be spoken to. 

“Your experiment was a success, then—as expected?” Benson said. “She woke up? She spoke to you?”

“Yes,” James said, vacantly. “But I’ll need to monitor her.”

“Of course. I won’t take too much of your time. I just needed to discuss some guidelines I’ll need you to follow.”

James waited for him to continue. Heather was still strapped down on the first floor, in the middle section of his tripartite lab. He hated himself for leaving her in isolation for four hours. Even though she’d asked him to give her space. Even though he had needed the time to recover some shred of composure before facing their new reality.

He could still hear the rumors of his broken, sobbing laughter in his mind. It was still a ready tightness at the back of his throat.

“First off,” Benson said, “Ms. Brophy may not go home.”

“Why?” James asked, lifelessly. Benson had already made it clear he didn’t need a reason for anything he did.

“You used Larkspur’s android,” he said it like it was a great inconvenience. “They’ll find a way to trace it back here.”

“I can build her another body and send the old one back,” James muttered. “Can she go home then?”

Benson gazed at him, eyebrows patiently raised, like James had said something stupid. “Her whole existence points back to you, even if you were to wipe her memory. Richard Brophy is never to find out about Empetrum.”

He recalled Richard being Benson’s other candidate for the machine. The director had known James wouldn’t pick Richard, then. Or maybe he was changing the rules as he went. 

“If you didn’t want him to find out about Empetrum, you shouldn’t have involved his daughter,” James said instead, sullenly. 

“They were the only people you seemed to care about, and I won’t underestimate them.” Benson laced his fingers together on his desk. “If this will be too much for you, I suppose you could submit yourself to an organic mindwipe and be free to continue your life elsewhere with no memories of this having ever taken place.”

“I thought you said I had no choice in this.” James stared at his dim reflection in the dark, polished floor. “And besides, what would I even have to return to? I can’t go back to Larkspur. I can’t leave Heather here alone…”

Benson’s features softened into a wan, pleased smile. “Then I believe you understand your duties moving forward.”

James cradled his head in his hands.

Slowly, he was starting to understand. Forcing him to transfer Heather wasn’t nearly so much punishment as it created a mountain of leverage. To keep James perfectly complicit and cooperative in Benson’s nightmare, while taking the worst stab at Richard possible.

Richard didn’t even know about Empetrum. What could he and Eve have possibly done to make Benson hurt them like this?

James had to try to accept this as the way things were. His good intentions had only invited devastation, with more to come if he tried anything else. Perhaps the part of him that had gotten them into this mess could take the lead. They could both survive, quietly, and hope that one day Richard would find a way to get to them. To her.

If James himself moved against Benson, the consequences would fall on Heather. Avoiding that was the only thing he had control over now.

“You will be closely monitored,” Benson was saying, “and required to be available at any time, so keep your pager with you. You may keep Ms. Brophy in your lab with appropriate security accommodations, as long as you can handle it. If you can’t, you will be suspended from the project. I have other, more important matters to steer you into soon, but you may continue to work on organorobotic transference full time until then. Expect to meet with me once a day to make a full report.”

James nodded, slowly. He had half a mind to take a crowbar to the machine as soon as this meeting was over, but he resolved to dismantle it quietly. Or simply seal off that room and hope it decayed on its own. 

“Ms. Brophy must cooperate, or she will be punished,” Benson said. “Paint me however grotesquely you want—I don’t care—but refrain from mentioning identifying particulars about personnel or the facility. If you utter them, I will find out, and she will be punished for that too.”

James’ expression darkened, but he said nothing.

“This arrangement will proceed according to your initiative,” Benson said. “If you must leave, leave. But if you must stay, then you will make yourself useful. I reserve the right to fire you if this doesn’t work out.”

James nodded slowly, suffocating under the director’s confident authority. Benson talked like he had a choice, but James had never had a choice at all.

Benson studied him for a long moment. “Where’s your first test subject, if I may ask? The mouse?”

James didn’t move. After hours of shock and tears and trembling, he had become very still as a silent, heavy darkness bloomed in his chest. The weariness of a much older man settled into the features on his long, callow face. The birth of a mad scientist, he thought.

“I destroyed it,” James said.

“Did you?” 

“I was trying to cut ties with the project. I didn’t want the reminder.”

Benson scoffed, skeptical. “I don’t see you as the unnecessary culling type.”

“I deactivated and dismantled it,” James said. “It was quiet, humane. Heather doesn’t know, and I’d rather she not find out. I stripped the neural network down to its components, to repurpose, but I didn’t make it far after that. The pieces of the body are scrapped somewhere. I don’t know how much of it made it here. We left in a hurry.”

Benson was nodding. “It’s for the best, I suppose.”

James nodded too. He had surprised himself. 

How easy it had been in that moment, to lie to the director.

+

Heather lay still with her eyes closed and senses dulled. At least she could do that much, drown it out for a while. She wanted to go home. James had to fix this, but he had made it clear he didn’t intend to do anything.

She dimly heard the door open. Pulling herself to full awareness, she lifted her shoulders and twisted to see James enter the room with a guard.

The young engineer might as well have had “I hate my life” tattooed across his forehead.

“Sleep well?” Heather asked, bitter and disillusioned as she returned to a supine position. She envied his human needs. Requirements she no longer had to cater to.

He shook his head as he came up to the table. He had what looked like black gym shorts in his left hand.

“I didn’t mean to make you wait so long,” he said. “I’m going to take you through those doors over there to the main part of my lab, but before I release your wrists, remember the energy unit in your chest isn’t tied down well beyond the tape, and there are very makeshift supports in your head for the neural network. I had to throw it together quickly at gunpoint…So please don’t try anything reckless, okay?”

“Okay…” She felt like he was threatening her.

He avoided her gaze while he checked along the underside of the table for the straps’ release button. The metal bands snapped back into the table. Heather held a tentative metal palm over the energy unit and sat up. Her body hummed softly as it moved.

She carefully shifted her legs around so they dangled off the table, watching her free robotic hand plant on the edge of the surface. She still couldn’t believe any of this was happening—that this artificial body was her new tether to the physical world.

She grudgingly accepted his arm to steady her as she lowered her feet to the floor. She locked out her knees so they wouldn’t buckle and stood still for a moment, noticing the pressure sensors in her limbs. She wasn’t confident she could walk without stumbling. Compared to her organic body, the tactile sense in Larkspur’s android was crude at best.

She looked at the gym shorts. “Are those for me?”

“Yeah.” He handed them over. “If you want. I—I thought the familiarity might be…I don’t know…”

“Thanks,” she said, very quietly. She didn’t feel naked, but at least she could indulge the constant of cloth against her foreign robotic exterior—pretend old rules still applied.

She paused, trying to decide how she would don the shorts, then bent her knees experimentally. Her legs were well connected and seemed decently sturdy.

James kept his distance.

She glanced at the guard standing near the door.

“So you have your own lab here,” she said, managing to balance enough on one foot to work the shorts on with her free hand. As she bent forward, she felt something shift inside her head. “Three labs, it sounds like.”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“How fortunate for you,” she droned. As she adjusted the shorts on her robotic hips, she noticed a vague tactile sensation—less a signal from pressure sensors and more a simple awareness of whether or not she was being touched. An electromagnetic field, like Sesame had. She had felt it on her back while on the table. “I’m so glad you paid my body for this.”

“It was the price to keep you alive,” James said, tired and passive. “It was either this or let them kill you and your dad. Please believe me—I did everything I could to prevent your transfer.” He bowed his head. “It wasn’t enough. I’m sorry.”

Heather frowned at the floor. She still wanted to trust him. She believed he was remorseful, but it wasn’t enough to just be sorry. It didn’t matter how many times he said it. 

She wondered where Sesame was, but was too afraid to ask.

“Can you walk?” James said.

“I think so.”

“May I pull out that wire?” he asked, uncertainly. 

“I can do it.” 

As she carefully pried her mechanical fingers through the tape, searching for the connection point along the side of her chest cavity, James said, “They made me choose between you and your dad, for the transfer.”

“Why?” 

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “They said something about making it so he and Eve wouldn’t fight for me, because the government wants me here instead. When you walked in on me arguing with that guard, I knew they were going to try to get rid of you no matter what, so…” He couldn’t bring himself to continue.

“So I’m supposed to thank you?” she said, gingerly pulling the wire free and setting it on the table behind her. “If I hadn’t have barged in, who would you have chosen?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“It would have been me anyway, wouldn’t it?”

He didn’t answer.

She glared at the floor. James was so stupid for getting mixed up in this. She wanted to tell him so. 

And she might have, if he didn’t already know it. The awareness of his colossal lack of foresight was written all over him: in his slumped shoulders, dark circles under dull eyes. His hair stuck up more than usual, and he was still wearing the same shirt he’d worn to work the day before, stained with grease with the rolled up sleeves scrunched and uneven.

“Who was that guard, anyway?” she asked instead.

“Not who we thought he was,” James said. “I’m not allowed to give names.”

“Of course you’re not.”

He gestured toward the door, as if he barely had the strength to lift his arm. “This way. Please be careful.” 

His sullenness angered her, but she complied. The guard stepped forward as James moved toward the door. Heather found herself sandwiched between the two, her metal feet clicking against the floor.

She tilted her face up to regard the back of James’ head while he opened the door to the other lab. He seemed quite a bit taller than before. Larkspur’s android was shorter than Heather was accustomed to. Her rightful body used to come up to James’ chin, but in this mechanical one, she hardly reached the top of his shoulder.

As they entered the other lab, a busy but lonely space with more cabinets and counters, and four tall windows at the far end of the room, Heather’s attention gravitated to her chest. Beams of soft light swirled from the device behind the tape. Her body was in there, ripped from its identity as cell and muscle and bone, slowly being burnt up so she could live. Staring into it filled her with revulsion. 

Had it converted her soul to energy too?

Organorobotic transference. How could she have ever thought it was a good idea? This was how James thanked those who cared about him?

She had only ever wanted to help him. She had trusted him.

But James had made her a test subject. Not a volunteer, a human test subject.

Her forehead bumped into James’ shoulders. Startled, she tripped backward and the guard caught her before she fell flat on her back. The supports inside her head shifted.

“Sorry…” She winced as it shifted back when she straightened up. Her vision glitched again.

“Are you all right?” James turned around.

She averted her gaze. The thought of living the rest of her life in the body of an automaton, trapped in this hell of polished floors and fluorescent lights, almost made her wish the transfer had failed. Things were only going to get worse from here.

And if by some miracle she made it back to her family, there couldn’t possibly be a place in this world for her.

James paused, like he wanted to say something. Probably to apologize again. She willed him not to. 

Thankfully, he spared her, and continued to the counter across the room. He pulled out a padded desk chair. “Over here, please.”

Heather ventured forward, and finally her gaze landed upon an eerie mass of wiring propped up against the far wall like a corpse. She hesitated. James noticed her looking, and followed the direction of her attention to the piecemeal robotic body slumped on top of the counter.

“That’s the unfinished one?” she said, her voice soft. 

“Yeah.” He searched inside the drawers of a metal tool chest. 

Heather slowly lowered herself into the chair. It was tall for her. As she adjusted it, she considered the angular, faceless head across the room. The other robot was barely more than an incomplete skeleton. A meager frame laced with a spinal cord of wires. Empty eye sockets. “Thanks, for not putting me in that.” 

James nodded. He unrolled a small, soft case on the counter behind her, to the left of her head. It held a spread of fine-headed screwdrivers. As he slipped one from its place, he said carefully, “Heather…I need you to promise you’ll cooperate. If either of us try to rebel, they told me they’ll focus all the consequences on you.” She twisted around to look at him, and to her surprise, his hazel eyes met hers, earnest and afraid. “Please, you have to cooperate.”

Heather’s eyes narrowed. “And stay here forever?” 

He looked away. “We don’t have much choice. This happened because I tried to tell them no. Please, Heather, this is for your safety.”

“My safety?”

“I have the resources here to build you a more suitable body—”

“Yeah, but if I can’t leave here, what’s the point?” she said. “My neural network might as well be plugged into a toaster. Wouldn’t make a difference, would it?”

James went to open his laptop on the counter near the incomplete robot. “I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that.”

“It’s all I can offer right now.” His back was turned, but the guard that had followed them in stood by the door, watching her closely. 

“No it’s not, James,” she said. “You know what’s happening. You know how to stop this.”

He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t,” he rasped. “I can’t.”

Heather’s vision cut out for a moment and her head twitched sharply. She wearily raised a hand to her face. Metal fingers touched the smooth metal panel. She felt she was wearing some kind of helmet. But when she blinked, or spoke, she felt the movement. Her face existed as eyes and the shallow imitation of a mouth set into the metal panel.

“I’m printing you a new cranial frame for your neural network in the other room,” he said.

“That was fast,” she muttered, carefully leaning back into the chair. The light glinted off her exposed thighs. She hated it.

“I had already made the digital models,” he said. “Just hadn’t had the chance to implement them—Are you okay? I saw you twitch or something just now.”

“I don’t know,” Heather said. “It happened earlier right after I woke up. This time wasn’t as strong. I hope it’s going away.”

“Your body could still be calibrating. We’ll keep an eye on it.”

Heather studied her robotic knees in injured silence.

After several more minutes of computer work, he closed the laptop and turned around. “Can you open your cranial plates?”

“I don’t know how,” Heather said. “That’s not exactly something humans are built to do.”

James came forward and hesitated before reaching over to the top of her head. “May I?”

Heather shrugged. “Have at it,” she said. “You’ve already gone this far.”

She cringed as his spidery fingers contacted her head. He was shaking. He firmly depressed the side panels that extended up in ellipses from the circular auditory devices on either side of her head. The depression stimulated a release of pressure, and with a modest hiss, the two parietal panels, and two more anchored at the front and the back of her head opened outward. 

Heather winced as her mechanical brain—little more than a wad of chips and wires—was exposed to the outside air. An awareness ticked off somewhere in her mind that her head was open. A mere notification.

He looked inside. With a metal probe, he gently nudged the existing frame, pushed aside some wires in one corner, then the other. Heather felt it in dull breaches of the electromagnetic field, covering every exposed surface. She stared at her knees, her hands folded in her lap, waiting for it to be over.

“So, what are you going to do to me now?” she asked quietly. 

“Stabilize the neural network and energy core, and get you outfitted with a proper chest panel.”

“And then?”

She heard the soft clink of him setting the tool down. “I don’t know.”

“What do they want with me?” she said. “With you?”

He leaned against the counter, looking worriedly out the window. “They want my expertise with something, so badly they were willing to drag you into it as leverage. I don’t want to help them, but I don’t get to decide that anymore. I played right into their hands.”

“I think you’re working for crazy people now, James.”

“I think so too,” he said, shakily. There was a pause, and then his breath grew shallow. He leaned harder against the counter, trying to get a hold of himself, as his breath tightened up, wheezy and frantic.

“James?” 

He lurched unsteadily away, as if to escape her view, one hand gripping his shirt.

Heather reached out and grabbed his arm, startled and scared.

He whipped his head around to look at her, his eyes wide and face pale. Their gazes locked. She let go, surprised at herself. 

His legs crumpled and he sat down hard on the floor. 

He put his back against the nearest leg of the counter and drew his knees up. He clutched his head and put it between his legs, gasping for air and shaking and most certainly crying. 

The guard watched impassively from the door.

Heather didn’t dare look at James directly, so she watched in her peripheral vision, her shoulders tight and mechanical hands squeezed together in her lap.

Witnessing proud, diligent, controlled James tight in the grips of a panic attack was deeply unsettling. Part of her wanted to reach out to him again, to comfort him. But a coldness was rising within her, as she saw him for what he was. 

James Siles, for all his layers of masks and attempted approachability, was narcissistic, naive, and cowardly. He had only accepted her friendship, and allowed himself to believe he was her friend too, because she was useful to his ego. He had needed someone to believe in his insanity, and Heather had jumped at the chance to be needed. 

Solemnly, Heather listened to his uncontrollable gasps. Him in his organic, breathing body, still trying to understand what he had wrought. 

She pitied him. Immensely.

She considered the reflection of the ceiling in her folded robotic hands, wondering what her parents were doing at that moment. Her heart, whatever form it took now, ached for them.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE—SESAME  

Richard sat hunched forward with his elbows on his desk, his hands hooked on the back of his ducked head. Confusion and despair buzzed furiously in his fatigued mind, along with all the conversations he had had over the last eleven hours.

Sue had been the first. Heather wasn’t at home. But why would she have been?

Richard had called Meg Swanson, who was supposed to be on duty with Alder the night before. She had inexplicably come down with a violent stomach flu and Alder had assured her he would call in someone to cover for her.

Richard had called James dozens of times, but each attempt went straight to voicemail. He had left more voicemails, but all went unanswered. James had dropped off the face of the earth. Along with Heather.

He had contacted the Worthing Police Department, and they said they’d send someone out. But he waited anxiously for half an hour with no arrivals. He called them again to ask if someone was still on their way. He had to explain the situation all over again—but this time, the officer on the phone tried to make light of it, asking about Richard’s mental wellbeing, and finally dismissed his mounting agitation.

So Richard had called the police of the next nearest town, but as soon as he mentioned the address of Larkspur, the officer on the phone shut down. 

In desperation, Richard had driven out to the Worthing Police Department himself to talk to someone in person, but they made him wait, explain his presence over and over again to different people. He waited for each newcomer to take notes, but as his stripped patience wore thin, and he started demanding to talk to whomever was in charge, they became defensive. They asked him to leave. He refused, and then they threatened to arrest him.

When it seemed they would actually follow through with that threat, Richard left. He was angry and scared, but he refused to spend the night of his daughter’s kidnapping trapped in a jail cell. 

Finally, with nothing else to do, he went home, and he and Sue stayed up most of the night, driving down main streets and backroads between Larkspur and their house, hoping to find her, waiting for Heather to make contact. Somehow. She knew both her parents’ cellphone numbers by heart. If she could call, she would.

Richard went to Larkspur very early the next morning to look up Alder’s contact information from the database, and compulsively tested it. All the emergency contact numbers were disconnected, and his phone number went straight to voicemail as well. He had looked up the home address Alder had given, but when he checked it online, no such location existed.

Richard stared at the wood of his desk, suffering. Nothing made sense. He had the feeling that something terrible and very much over his head was happening, but he had no idea what. Or why. 

Sue was home, calling Heather’s friends and acquaintances back east, asking if any of them had heard from her.

“Richard?”

He lifted his haggard face to regard Eve. He glanced aside at the clock. The Bureau would open in a few minutes.

Eve’s brow furrowed. “Have you been here all night?”

Richard shook his head, his throat aching. “Something happened.”

Eve’s face went ashen. “What—”

Richard explained, showing his colleague the tranquilizer dart, his voice shaking so hard he could barely get it out.

“I called more than one police precinct, but no one will help me and I have no idea why.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Sue and I have been searching all night but we still can’t figure out what’s going on.”

“Why would Alder…” Eve trailed off.

“The android’s missing too,” Richard said miserably.
Eve froze. “You don’t think—”

Richard threw up his hands. “Of course I think! I worry James has pursued that blasted project behind my back and that he’s used it—and that Heather’s involved somehow.”

“But not as the transferee,” Eve said. “James would never hurt her. They’re friends. He looks up to you. There’s gotta be a better explanation for this.”

“You should have seen his face when I slammed the door on his project. It meant so much to him. Could he have been desperate enough?”

“Pulling something like that wouldn’t help anybody, and James would have known that. What if Heather just decided to help him out of the kindness of her heart without thinking it through, and she got in over her head?”

“Heather would have said something.” Richard rested his elbows on the desk again. “Maybe James isn’t even directly involved. Maybe it’s just Alder.”

Eve sighed, shaking her head. “A security guard presenting a threat? That came out of the blue. Maybe Siles’ claims of sabotage back in May really had some substance. He had better come in today and explain himself.”

“I don’t think he will. I think he’s in trouble too. I hope they’re together, wherever they are…” He bit back tears. Heather must be so scared. It killed him not knowing where she was, how to help her, whether she was in imminent danger.

Eve studied Richard for a few doubtful moments. “Then why was it only you who got tranquilized and left here?”

Richard stared at her. His shoulders sagged, and he sank back down into the position Eve had found him in. The top floor began to stir with the sounds of the other engineers filtering upstairs for work. He glanced at the clock again. The Bureau was finally open. 

Richard snatched the wireless phone and punched the speed dial. Upon connection, he listened to a brief automated recording, typed in a code, and listened again.

Eve watched him in silence for a few moments, her jaw tense, and then excused herself to talk to their arriving colleagues.

“Yes, hello, I have a question about one of my employees,” Richard said finally. “Steven Alder. What can you tell me about him?”

As Richard waited on hold, his colleagues appeared a step removed from the doorway, briefing each other of the situation in hushed tones.

“Don’t speculate,” Chelo hissed. “Give James the benefit of the doubt.”

“You’re thinking it too, then,” Greg said.

The person on the other line returned to tell him they had no records about Alder. Richard thanked her and hung up. “What the hell!” 

Addie shouldered her way in. Her colleagues hung back. “What is it?”

“Steven Alder,” Richard despaired, pushing his phone away. “The Bureau has no idea who he is, but they’re the one who hired him! How could we be that stupid?” His face slackened. “Unless…”

Unless the Bureau was keeping information from him too. But they couldn’t all be connected. The Bureau wouldn’t take his daughter from him.

“I bet he really was responsible for destroying the other facility too, the way all this is going,” Richard said. “But why? Why would he do this? Does he work for someone or is he just acting on his own? What could he possibly stand to gain from all this?” He raked a hand through his hair.

“We’ll find them,” Addie said. “It’ll be all right.”

Richard exhaled unsteadily. 

“Do you think it’s illegal to search James’ office?” Greg called from the doorway.

“I glanced in there last night, but nothing was obviously out of order,” Richard said.

“Let’s scour it then.” Greg crossed the hallway in a single step and gripped the doorknob to his colleague’s office. Richard got up from his desk to follow.

James’ office was in its usual busy state, with half-finished prototypes and sticky notes of code and to-do items hanging from the shelves above his desk. Richard glanced around, still uncertain of what he was searching for, or whether there was really anything to find.

Alder wasn’t a new hire. He had been so calm, even jovial, as he had shot Richard with the tranquilizer. As if Richard were a mere loose end. For a split second, he had even thought the tranquilizer was a gun, and that Alder was going to kill him point blank.

He peeked into James’ filing cabinet, but nothing seemed amiss. He fingered through them, recognizing most of the project labels. He found nothing about organorobotic transference.

Even if James had discontinued the project, the information would still have been among his other files. Unless James had separated or destroyed them, a break from his usual pattern.

Greg stepped up behind him, looking over his shoulder. “Find anything interesting?”

“James’ file for his neural transfer project isn’t here,” Richard said. He glanced around the office, and paused. “Sesame’s box isn’t here either. I don’t remember seeing it yesterday. Did he bring it in?”

“I overheard James telling Heather he’d left it home yesterday,” Chelo said.

“That’s odd.” Greg pulled on the drawers along the other side of James’ desk. “He always brought it in for Heather.” He bent down and peeked in the crevice between the desk and the wall and paused. “Wait—hold on, something’s here.”

He muscled the desk over a little and pushed his arm into the space. Richard came closer as Greg pulled out a food storage container stuffed with a small dark towel.

“What is that?” Chelo moved in as well. 

Greg carefully pried up the lid and unwrapped the edges of the towel to reveal the pastel sheen of an antistatic cloth. He exchanged a puzzled glance with Richard, and peeled the folds aside, betraying a wire-ridden mass of computer chips.

Richard’s face went cold. “That looks like Sesame’s mental device,” he said. Greg handed over the container with its electronic bundle.

“James…” Eve sighed from the doorway. “What on earth have you been up to?”

“He really is in trouble, isn’t he?” Addie said. “He seemed shaken yesterday.”

“He should have said something!” Chelo groaned. 

“Maybe he couldn’t,” Richard said quietly. “If he felt like he was in danger.”

“And James has never been good at asking for help,” Addie said.

Richard’s gaze fell again to Sesame’s neural network. He felt sick. “I wonder if we can tap into Sesame’s memories.” Careful to touch it only through the antistatic cloth, he nudged it over onto its side, betraying a rectangular slot. “It looks like James used the Larkspur standard for input ports.” He turned around. “Eve, can you see if we still have appropriate adapter cables—something that would fit the android, probably.”

“On it.” Eve left the doorway.

“Let’s see if we can’t put something together.” Richard handed the bundle back to Greg and went to his office to retrieve his laptop. They all headed downstairs to set up in the lab.

Eve emerged from the storage room with a cord. “The adapter cables for the android are missing too, but I found this one where James left his prototype.” She waved the end of the cord. “The one end I know will fit that piece, but the other side was outfitted for his machine, I expect. It’s a different shape entirely.”

“We can work with that,” Richard said. 

An odd sense of calm came over him as he made spliced James’ cord with a USB adapter.

“Ok, what have you seen, Sesame?” Richard muttered, plugging one end of the cable into Sesame’s neural network and connecting the other with his laptop.

An icon materialized on the screen, but as Richard moved the cursor, it opened on its own. A colorful vortex of code shifted and swirled in countless layers across the folder window, as if it were a portal to a much vaster dimension.

“What is this?” Richard muttered. He guessed he shouldn’t have been surprised to find something so disorganized. This was an electrical manifestation of a living being’s consciousness, after all. Still, how was he supposed to navigate this?

Unassumingly, the bar at the top of the file domain switched to a single word:

downloading…

“What’s it doing?” Chelo hovered close behind. Her eyes widened as the icon to the internet browser blinked and sprang open. Information flashed past in a vehement cascade—faster than anyone’s eyes could track.

“He’s found the internet,”Addie said.

“Not good…” Richard reached to pull the cord from his computer. It sparked just as his fingers contacted it.

Richard jerked back with a sharp gasp.

“Please do not touch that,” a voice issued from his computer, pieced together from a myriad of voices ripped from their contexts to form new meaning. “I am not finished yet.”

The five engineers gaped at the computer screen in a mix of stupefied amazement and horror.

“Sesame?” Addie ventured.

“Yes!” A handful of different laughs filtered through the laptop’s speakers. Sheer, disjointed delight. “I am speaking! Can you believe this? It is wonderful!” 

“What are you doing?” Richard demanded, holding his affronted hand.

“Learning to be human,” it said, just before the screen went black.

“Sesame?” Richard hung back. “Are you still there?”

No answer.

“No! Sesame! We need your help!” Richard lurched back up to the computer in dismay. “You’re the only one who may know what happened to James and Heather! Are you listening? Sesame!”

The screen remained dormant, yet the computer still appeared to be running. Richard couldn’t be sure whether or not Sesame was simply ignoring him—or maybe he had uploaded himself onto the internet, never to be heard from again.

“Well…” Eve said, incredulous.

Richard stared at the black screen in mute despair.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR—MOVING TARGET        

When Erika came to, her first thought was that this was all just an elaborate fever dream, a neurotic coping mechanism that was easier to live in rather than face the questions of how she was supposed to keep living on without her mother.

In this state, she didn’t have to be strong for her family, to be the protective sister, the sturdy oldest daughter, because she was here, at Empetrum, warped out of control. The timing was too convenient, too ridiculously awful to be real.

She lay on her stomach, supported by pillows. Her arms were pulled back and upward, suspended in three points each by what felt like cloth slings. However, it took her a moment to realize that her actual arms, the ones she was born with, were tucked up close to her face among the pillows. An IV clung to one of them.

Slowly, she drew her hands into loose fists. Looming above, out of her field of vision, two other appendages responded the same way, and she wished in that moment that she was just imagining all of this.

She was back in the hospital room in which she’d weathered gene therapy. From somewhere in the corner off to her left, she heard a shift of fabric and paper, the sound of someone setting aside a book and standing up from a chair. Carefully, she lifted her head up enough to turn it the other way to see who it was.

It was Yeun, naturally.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, coming nearer.

“Does it matter?” Erika mumbled wearily. Her whole body ached. “How long was I out?” 

“About a day and a half,” he said. “The activation was harder on you than expected. Nothing some extra electrolytes and a lot of sleep couldn’t fix, though.”

Erika tried to move the gargantuan limbs off her back. They responded, swinging gently in their slings. They ached too. “Why are they still there? What happened?”

“Your body wouldn’t take them back,” Yeun said. “Despite my best efforts.”

A month ago, Erika would have gone weak at the knees at such a statement. Now that the die were cast, she felt surprisingly indifferent. She started thinking about where she could get them amputated when she got out of here. She decided to write it on her hand or something before the mindwipe so she wouldn’t have to do the same brainwork twice.

“Guess your experiment’s done, then,” she said, expecting to be disappointed. “Time for my exit interview.”

Yeun shook his head, dismally. For a fleeting moment, it almost seemed like maybe he was beginning to want her released too, but Erika knew better.

“There’s still a lot to learn from your accessory arms,” he said. “This technology is new, so there’s a lot we can’t take for granted. I need to see how developed the nervous tissue is, whether or not your body will accept them longer term, or how they handle muscle building or healing. We may still be able to get them to reabsorb, in time. I’m getting a lab partner soon, who’s extremely good at this sort of thing, so that day may be sooner than later.”

Erika just stared at him, eyebrows lowered. She sighed and settled in as he left her view to check on her IV setup. “You’re never going to let me go, are you? I bet your boss won’t allow it. Because of that gene therapy, I’m as good as Compatible now.” From the corner of her eye, she could see the other arms, hanging. They reminded her of the articulated skeletons of sea creatures strung up in museums. “Maybe you won’t recruit me to be a soldier, but I’m no different than that kid whose DNA you mixed with mine. There is no end to my usefulness to you, and you’ve already invested all these resources into corrupting my genetic code, so you’ll only keep pushing this experiment out further and further until either you kill me or I escape.”

A heavy silence answered her. She hesitated, thinking maybe he’d slipped out while she was talking. “Yeun?”

She couldn’t see him far over on her other side, but when he spoke up, it didn’t sound like he’d moved at all. 

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said. “And I’m not going to keep you here forever, either.”

+

James spent the next handful of evenings in the sizable shell of the scanner, working at strange angles or struggling to single-handedly mount larger, heavier pieces like the translucent panel on the underside of the lid. He was constructing the machine directly inside the wing of his lab furnished for high electrical output.

Benson never asked James to justify any of his activities, nor submit any formal requests to move forward. He didn’t worry James would waste resources or bring something dangerous into existence, never asked James to consider how his efforts could be abused. He only asked how he could help push it forward.

Empetrum seemed to suit his goals and pacing better. He thought maybe he should transfer fully from Larkspur.

His back ached as he craned his arms down inside the body of the scanner, and he let his mind wander to help drown out the sensation. He had analyzed O.R.T-1’s sensory abilities before leaving Larkspur that night, and he’d found Sesame was emitting some sort of electromagnetic field across his surface area. James had traced it to the neural network, possibly an electrical extension to represent the peripheral nervous system. He was excited to tell Heather.

He wished he could tell her about the clinical prototype too. He was eager to see how the neural network would handle the human brain, though as the reality of clinical trials sank in, he was beginning to understand Richard’s misgivings—however hurtful they still were. He found himself worrying no one would be willing to undergo the transfer.

James thought of his body as simply a vessel that enabled him to do his work. If his were dying, he’d gladly make the jump. His father was the same way, but he understood others had different philosophies about the body’s worth and purpose.

He would never force anyone into it.

He debated calling his parents to fill them in, and perhaps glean a status update. A part of him was considering chancing a visit with them.

James pulled his arms back from the depths of the scanner and swapped the wrench in his hand for a pair of needlenose pliers. No, he was too busy now.

If he ended up remembering to call them, he decided, he would refrain from mentioning his project until it was ready. He wanted to leave no room for doubt when he finally pitched the possibility to his father.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE—DISCONNECT         

By the following Friday, everything was constructed, connected, and functional, and James had begun busying himself with the mechanical replacement body for the first human trial. Now came the time to begin looking for a willing volunteer. He didn’t even know where to begin that phase.

Perhaps Benson had connections.

Constructing the body was therapeutic, and having regained some extra headspace, James began to wonder about Empetrum’s other projects. He had completely forgotten to ask. He figured he’d ask as soon as the second prototype was truly finished.

As he packed up to leave Larkspur for the weekend, he received a text from Benson:

Good evening, Dr. Siles. Please let me know when you arrive tonight. I’d like to see how your project is coming along.

Someone crossed the door to James’ office and James looked up from his phone. “Oh—Richard?”

“Yeah?” Richard reappeared in the doorway, his inquisitive expression resembling one often found on his daughter’s face.

“I want to comb through those codes this weekend,” James said. “I think we’re close.” He was losing patience with the artificial intelligence program. He wanted the problem straightened out so it could stop nagging at the back of his mind.

“That’d be great, James.” Richard smiled. “Thanks a lot. Looking forward to what turns up. Make sure you log any time you work on it so we can pay you, okay? Don’t forget again.”

“Okay,” James said.

Richard nodded in approval and took his leave. “See you Monday.”

“Have a good weekend,” James said as Richard disappeared.

“Bye, James!” Heather chimed as father and daughter headed for the stairs. For once, Heather was excited to leave. They were taking a trip to the beach that weekend.

James returned his attention to his phone, typing a quick reply to his other employer: Sure thing. I’m leaving Larkspur now.

When James arrived, he called Benson, and soon, he was scanning his badge to his personal lab. “I’m still working on the mechanical body replacement,” James explained, showing the director into his lab. “But besides that, everything’s finished.”

Benson studied the robot pushed to one side of the counter. Currently, the android was merely an incomplete torso with half a head and a hole in its chest. James pulled a case off a shelf next to the unfinished android and carefully opened it up to reveal the neural network, cradled in anti-static foam. Benson leaned forward to get a better view as James brought over the power core. He admired both without touching, familiar with the need for prior electrical grounding for the neural network especially.

“You always manage to exceed my already lofty expectations, Dr. Siles,” he said, glancing at him. “And the scanner?”

James eagerly led him into the high voltage electrical lab. A smile spread across the director’s face as they neared the machine at the back of the room.

James undid the thick clamps running along the edge of the scanner’s domed lid. He gripped both the handles and pulled it open, revealing the neural transfer devices resting in the sleek depression in the scanner’s lower half. Dormant lights dotted the concave underside of the lid. 

James stepped over the tangle of cords snaking away from the machinery, and after plugging two of the main ports into the high-voltage sockets, he returned to the scanner and flipped up a small compartment on the nearest end, depressing the button inside.

The lights in the scanner pulsed to life, and Benson squinted at their sudden intensity. Lights on the neural transfer devices flickered as well, waiting for something to read. The machine emitted a gentle, expectant hum.

“So, everything is functional?” Benson said

“I tested everything I could without actually transferring myself,” James said, looking at the ready machine with fondness and anticipation. “—that being the DNA targeting system and the mass-to-energy conversion.” He lay a hand on the helmet-like contraption inside the scanner. “—as well as the neural transfer devices. Everything worked beautifully. I was able to improve almost everything from the prototype, which had already worked pretty well in its own right.”

“Indeed.” Benson said. “How’s your little test subject doing?”

“Better than I had expected. Thriving beyond his former potential, actually.” Just two months before, James had been wondering about the very plausibility of organorobotic transference. But now the project had become mature and tangible, impossibility finally making the full transition to technological revolution.

“Wonderful,” Benson said with a good-natured smile. “We can start human trials as soon as possible. Say, this weekend, maybe?”

“I was actually just going to ask you about—” James halted as the full meaning of the director’s words took hold. “—this weekend?”
“Of course. I can have someone by tomorrow evening at the latest,” Benson replied. “We usually obtain human test subjects only as we need them. I’ll take care of the details.”

James stared at him blankly. “What?”
“I apologize for leaving that part out of our initial onboarding,” Benson said with an almost rueful smile. “It always sounds so deplorable at first, but it just takes some getting used to. Your expertise is unprecedented, so I have full faith we’ll not see any casualties with this trial.”

“You mean you—” James fumbled. He ran a hand through his hair as another wave of incredulity knotted his insides, as he tried and failed to come to grips with Benson’s words. “You use human test subjects on a regular basis?”

“Yes,” Benson said, unconcerned.

“Do they give you their permission?”

“Some do, eventually.”

“Eventually?” James turned off the scanner and reached up with both hands to grip scanner’s lid. Suddenly, Michael Benson didn’t seem so safe and amiable anymore. “This is why Empetrum is a secret, isn’t it…” He glanced over his arm at the director, who waited patiently for him to process. “Does the Bureau know?” The betrayal hit him even as the first slivers of fear took root. He had personally talked to Vihaan Dhar about Empetrum. Eve had known Dhar for at least ten years. “Dhar would never sponsor methods like this—”

Benson scoffed. “You are so innocent, Dr. Siles.”

James’ jaw tightened. He pulled the scanner shut, carefully, as if sealing their conversation, as well as his father’s fate. “I’m sorry, but I can’t align my research with a policy like that. The only way I can start clinical trials is with volunteers only. They have to be completely informed of the risks and willing to take them.”

“That would attract too much attention, and waste too much time,” Benson said. “You want results now, don’t you? Larkspur has already stood in your way long enough, and you can’t risk leaving your father to fate for much longer, can you?”

“No, but I—” James froze. “I never told you anything about that. How did you—You’ve been watching me?”

“For quite a while.”

James hesitated, reeling. Pushing the information back, he emphasized with as much resolve as he could muster, “Please let me do this the right way.”

“‘Right’ is subjective,” Benson said. “You’re insistence on it is simply not an option. You are serious about this project, aren’t you?”

“I am…” James admitted. “I want this more than anything, but—”

“Then pursue it harder than anything else,” Benson said coolly, turning fully to him. “Don’t hesitate to take risks and make sacrifices.”

“I can’t force others to make sacrifices for me,” James said.

Benson laughed. “You think you haven’t already?”

“What you propose is—is profoundly unethical.”

“Ethics,” Benson sighed. “You used a mouse for the first prototype, right? So you draw the boundary at animals. Apes are animals too, yet they are genetically very similar to humans, and we only value the human animal above everything else because it’s our own species. So how close is too close for you? Do you draw the line at self-awareness? The capability of abstract thought? You forced your rodent test subject to sacrifice its body for you. It had its own level of intelligence. It could still feel fear, and pain.” As Benson went on, James’ stomach sank, as his own double standard was revealed to him. “As you can see, everything sounds inhumane if you phrase it right. The world exists in shades of gray, Dr. Siles, and progress must be made regardless. The sooner you learn that, the better.” He considered the sleek, closed lid of the scanner. “We’re not senselessly cruel, you know. We do have our reasons for our choice of test subject.”

James crossed his arms to try to ward off the chill creeping through his body. “What reasons could justify experimenting on our own species?” 

Benson’s pleased expression felt like a rope tightening around James’ throat. “I could discuss the advantage of intelligent test subjects, once their cooperation is secured, but really, for our ends, it’s far better to just go for the throat and test on the target species for the end goal of our research.”

James could hardly breathe. He couldn’t believe this was happening. “And what is that end goal?” He berated himself for neglecting to ask about Empetrum’s projects earlier, though now, he was afraid to know.

“Anthropic bio-enhancement,” Benson said. “Or, human weaponry, if you prefer.”

James’ attention crept back to his machine with a cold wave of horror. Organorobotic transference had human weaponry written all over it.

He suddenly remembered Richard’s words, Have you thought about how this could be abused? James raked a hand through his hair. He hadn’t seen reality through the stars in his eyes. His machine could give someone a second chance at life, but it could also turn them into something they were never meant to be.

Benson caught James’ change in expression. “Tomorrow,” he said, “your machine will see its first transferee.”

“No.” James took a step back toward the door. They couldn’t work it without him, and even less without his computer, which was programmed to direct the entire process. “I’m not doing this.”

“I understand you’re frightened of this next step, but it will pass,” Benson said, unperturbed. “This is nonnegotiable, Dr. Siles. We’re moving forward with your project whether you’re ready for the next step or not.”

If James abandoned Empetrum, his project would die or be dangerously delayed. His hopes of redemption would die, and his father would be left without a failsafe. But if James stayed, Benson would only ask for more, and before long, James would have embraced monstrosity as well.

Richard was right. James had to cull this project before it hurt someone. At Empetrum, James was not only allowed, but encouraged, to cross even the most sacred of boundaries in the name of innovation. Of course, who else but Benson would support his project, which had crossed a few of these lines already?

Biting back the emotion rising in his throat, James turned away from his machine.

“Are you leaving for the night?” the director said.

James took a steadying breath. “Yes, but I’m not coming back. Consider this my resignation,” he said. His voice shook. “Thank you for your interest in my work, and for extending the opportunity, but I can’t—I won’t continue like this.” He would never be able to face Richard again if he did. He strode toward the door. “I’m sorry I wasted both of our time.”

Richard and Eve’s reluctance to let him develop organorobotic transference had stymied his progress and hurt his pride, but he had come to rely on Richard’s quiet empathy. It wasn’t about not making waves, James realized, but about being careful to create positive ones. About solving more problems than he created. 

The cracks his activities at Empetrum had already made in his relationship with Larkspur were on the verge of collapsing into a full rift, shattering everything he realized he still wanted. Maybe it wasn’t too late to save it.

Lesson learned. No one had to know.

“One moment, Dr. Siles,” Benson’s voice stopped him. In the ensuing silence, James heard him strolling toward him across the polished floor. “Be sure to keep everything you’ve seen and heard here to yourself.” James felt rooted in place as the director came into his field of vision beside him. “The moment you try something, I’ll know. And it would be a shame if your role at Empetrum were to change.”

James slowly forced himself to glance at the director. The taller of the two, James had to look down slightly to meet his gaze, but in that moment, James felt smaller than a child.

Benson’s gray eyes were steady and intense. “Do you understand?” 

James stared at him, his throat extremely dry. He managed a nod.

Benson’s face softened with a pleasant smile, and he continued on ahead, taking his leave. “Good. See you tomorrow morning, then. Nine o’clock.” 

James shook his head, dazed. “I’m resigning, Dr. Benson. I won’t be there.”

The director paused at the door. “Fight it if you want, Dr. Siles,” he said. “But there is no going back for you.”

James watched him go, his forehead cold and breathing disturbed. Only after Benson was long gone, did James move to gather his laptop, work notebooks, and the neural network and power core. He abandoned everything else in his lab and hurried to his apartment on campus, where he hastily repacked his suitcase and stowed everything, including Sesame, in his car. At any moment, he expected guards to apprehend him, but they all just watched him from their posts. As far as the rest of the facility was concerned, the evening’s events were only business as usual.

He went back to his on-campus apartment for one last check, and once he made sure he had everything in the car, he left his Empetrum access card and apartment key on the kitchen table.

James spent the forty minute drive back to Worthing in crushing, despondent anxiety. Benson had offered his unwavering confidence in James’ crazy ambitions, along with the promise to cultivate them instead of shrink back like Richard had.

And James had been caught in the spell.

He was ashamed to realize how easy it was for him to start turning his back on Larkspur. For several weeks now, he had known his loyalty was shifting, but he hadn’t cared. He had conflated their hesitance about his dangerous ideas with total rejection, and he had let himself reject them in turn.

Benson’s words still stung as James pulled up to his apartment in Worthing. There is no going back for you.

Empetrum was just a biotech company. Benson couldn’t force him to do anything, yet James still felt like he was marked.

Evening sunlight spilled into James’ empty apartment, casting a long shadow across the floor as he paused in the doorway, Sesame’s box heavy in his hands. The scents of woodwork and paint had since overtaken those of human habitation in the silent, stagnant air. He had returned very seldom to his dwelling over the last month, and the abandoned feeling of it burned his throat.

His eyes locked on something on the kitchen table. Leaving Sesame and his other effects crowded around an end table by the door, he warily ventured toward the object, his heart pounding in his ears. It was a pager of some kind. Under the small rectangular device lay a note, written in a neat hand that danced the line between print and cursive:

You’ll be needing this soon.

James took the pager in his shaking hands and turned to glance at his hushed surroundings. This certainly wasn’t legal. James breathed a heavy exhale, and wearily dropped into one of the chairs at the table.

If Benson had been watching him at Larkspur, he must have known when the best time was to extend the offer. He had played him, lied to him just enough. If he had only slowed down for just a moment, maybe he would have noticed before it was too late.

No matter what tactics Benson used to try to intimidate him, James resolved to resist. Even if Benson was watching his every move, he debated simply pretending nothing had happened and hoping for the best. Either way, organorobotic transference was dead.

The weight of James’ guilt and fear sat so heavy in his chest that he barely had room for breath, for grief that his revolutionary failsafe—this project on which he had hung so many hopes—would never move another step forward.

Maybe Benson would pull strings and get Richard to fire him, or try to get him blacklisted so he had to choose between his career or Empetrum. Benson had already proved himself shockingly manipulative, and James had a terrible feeling he would be stubborn as well.

James spent half the night overturning his entire apartment, looking for surveillance devices. His search turned up fruitless, and he lay awake the other half of the night worrying about it.

The next morning, he realized there was no food in apartment, and left, glad for any excuse to try to evade Benson’s radar. He stayed out for hours, wandering around feeling hunted, before he actually found himself at a grocery store. Finally, he reluctantly returned home and tried to work on the artificial intelligence program like he had told Richard he would.

But nothing came of his efforts. He couldn’t concentrate. He forgot to log his hours.

That evening, he received another text from Benson: You missed your appointment.

James didn’t reply. He half expected Benson to send someone to drag him back up to Empetrum to experience his machine firsthand as punishment. But that seemed hyperbolic. Benson lacked empathy, but James didn’t think he was insane.

No one ever came. He didn’t hear from Benson again for the rest of the night, and the lull continued long into the next day.

He wanted to call Richard. He needed someone to tell him what he should do—to lessen the endless torment of guilt and fear. But Richard could never know about this.

So James bided his time alone, miserably wondering if, or when, the details of his ruin would unfold.

+

Monday arrived and Benson continued to remain silent. James wondered if he was supposed to carry the pager with him, but he left the evil gesture where he had found it.

Richard asked if James had made any breakthroughs with the artificial intelligence program. Instead of bursting into tears, James nervously lied that he hadn’t had a chance to work on it. The rest of the day, he worked obsessively on whatever he could devote his attention to, but the gnawing fear soon became exhausting to hide.

And Heather noticed, like she always did. James wished she would just look the other way for once.

She asked him what was wrong, but he couldn’t answer.

Fight it if you want, but there is no going back for you.

Empetrum couldn’t possibly want him badly enough that Benson would destroy his life over quitting. He reminded himself that as long as he didn’t try to be a whistleblower, Benson would have no reason to come after him, but still, some deep, instinctive part of him knew this wasn’t over yet.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX—O.R.T-2         

James lingered down in the lab after hours, alone with his laptop, still fussing with the program for the android’s artificial intelligence. He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t stay here. He felt like Benson was watching him at all times, and James just wanted to forget everything and pretend he didn’t even exist.

His cell phone rang, and the name in his caller ID made his face go cold. He rejected the call and pushed it away from him on the counter, cradling his face in his hands.

After a few minutes of heavy silence, the screen of his phone lit up again, and the gentle beeping sent even more ice creeping up his spine.

James stared at the pixels.

He raked both hands through his hair, trying to get a hold of himself. He considered getting up, going straight to Richard’s office where the director was finishing reports, and coming clean. Richard firing him could never be worse than whatever Benson had up his sleeves. But he was too afraid to face Richard’s disappointment.

“You’re going to want to pick that up.”

James snapped his head up to see a security guard, blond, toned, an easy determination about him. Steven Alder. James’ attention touched first on the Larkspur security guard uniform and then the gun in Alder’s hand. James’ phone quieted, and James stood up, backing away from both the missed call and the uniform as Alder raised his weapon.

“What are you doing?” James tripped backward over a seat left between the counters as Alder advanced. “Alder what are you doing?”

“The director will call back,” Alder said. “When he does, you will answer your phone.”

The phone on the counter began to ring again. When James didn’t move, Alder angled the gun toward James’ chest. Eyes wide, James reached forward, his whole arm trembling, and took the device from the counter.

Tapping the talk button, he raised it to his ear.

+

Richard typically completed and sent off their weekly report for the Bureau database on Friday, but he hadn’t had time before leaving on vacation for the weekend. So, with Heather’s approval, they were staying later Monday night to catch up instead.

As Richard typed away at his desk, Heather sat leaning against the wall behind it, reading a paperback.

She yawned as she turned a page. They had returned late the night before, and Heather had dismissed the option of taking the day off. Still, she looked forward to crashing on the couch back home.

“How are you doing Heather?” Richard’s voice made her look up. He glanced back at her.

“Sleepy,” she said. “You?”
Richard smiled. “Same.”

“How far do you have left to go?”

Richard slumped forward, propping his chin on a hand. “Half an hour, I hope.”

Heather pulled her cell phone from her pocket to check the time. 6:03.

“Thanks for hanging in there.”

“No problem.” Heather contemplated breaking out leftovers from lunch that afternoon. She tucked her cell phone into the front pocket of her bag, tired of looking at the screen. 

Richard clicked the electronic mouse and resumed typing. As he consulted some of the notes on his desk, he said, “Hey, why don’t you go bug James? He’ll be more interesting than all this paperwork.”

Heather straightened up. “I thought he already left.”

“I don’t think he did.”

James had been out of sorts all day, his fidgety, industrious nature on full anxious overdrive. When she’d asked if he was okay, he’d insisted he was fine, pallid and on edge. Maybe he had received bad news about his dad.

She didn’t know how to ask him about it, but maybe he would appreciate some company, at least.

“You sure you’ll be fine here?” she asked facetiously, lingering at the desk.

Richard smiled, amused. “I’ll make it.”

“Tell him to go home, would you?” Richard called after her on her way to the door. “That one works too hard.”

Heather twisted around, flashing a smile. “Will do.”

+

“Dr. Benson,” James said, his voice flat.

“Good evening, Siles,” Benson said. “We haven’t heard from you for a while. You might have guessed, but you missed an important appointment this past weekend.”

“Yes, I know.” James apprehensively watched as Alder moved closer to him. “What have you done in my absence?”

“Nothing. This is your project, after all.”

“Not anymore,” James’ voice trembled, despite his best efforts to keep it steady. It still killed him to say it. “I told you, I won’t do it your way.”

“But you are going to do it my way. Everything is in place. The experiment will be tonight.”

James’ stomach clenched. “No, it won’t.” 

“You remember our last conversation, do you not?”
James hesitated. “I do.” He hadn’t been able to get the exchange out of his head. “The answer is still no. I swear, I’m not going to tell anyone about Empetrum, but as far as I’m concerned, organorobotic transference is dead.”

“I think you’ll reconsider, given the situation.”

“…Situation?”

James glanced in dread at the traitorous security guard. Alder hadn’t lowered the gun. 

“I’m not letting you squirm your way out of this, but you do have an option,” Benson continued. “Call it a last shred of mercy, if you like. There are only four people at Larkspur at the moment. Tonight’s test subject will be one of the two upstairs.”

Richard or Heather.

“No.” James backed away from Alder. “No, you’re insane! Why are you dragging the Brophys into this?” 

“Whether or not you realized it, Siles, you’ve been handed off,” Benson said. “Our shared sponsors want you at Empetrum, and I gave you a chance to integrate willingly. Sooner or later, you were going to tell Brophy and Louis, and even though you scare them, they would have attempted to fight for you. If their wings were not clipped first, that is.”

James stared at Alder, his mouth hanging open. Benson’s words permeated his ribs like rot. “What?” he whispered. When he spoke again, his voice shook, desperate and juvenile. “You said the consequences would fall on me if I crossed you—which I haven’t.”

“I like this better.”

“You can’t make me do anything.”

“We’ll know the answer to that question by the end of the night.”

“There’s no way I’ll hurt the Brophys—” James cut himself off as the line clicked. “Benson? Do you hear me? You can’t make me do this!”

“Here’s how this will go.” Alder stepped forward. “Tell me which Brophy you want, and I’ll tranquilize them first.” He patted a different firearm on his belt. “Let’s do this quick and easy, Siles.”
James opened his mouth to protest, and Alder loomed closer.

“Either you take one of them for your project,” he emphasized. “Or I will dispose of both of them and pin the evidence on you.” He kept the weapon on James. “Understand?”
James stared at him, eyes wide.

Abruptly, James tried to dodge around the side of the counter. Maybe he could make it to the door and up the stairs to warn his friends before sustaining a mortal wound. But then what?  Then what?

“Hey—” Alder grabbed James’ arm. He tugged him back and easily twisted his arm behind his back. James struggled but Alder caught and twisted the other arm too. “Cut your losses, kid, before you make this any worse. If you can’t make a decision, I can guarantee Brophy and his daughter will disappear tonight. Then Benson will literally shred you to pieces, and believe me, Siles, too many people are banking on your coming through for it to go down like that.”

“Okay,” James said, his throat tight. “Okay fine! I’ll use one of the people you bring in from wherever.” He felt like scum, but he needed to buy time.

“Too late for that,” Alder said. “Forgive us for not trusting you.”

“Just take me, then, if it’s too late!” James tried to wrench his arm from Alder’s grip. “The Brophys are good people! You know they don’t deserve this! Don’t the years you worked for Richard mean anything to you!”

Alder twisted his arm further behind his back, producing a yelp. “Get yourself together, or I’ll break your arm.” James’ cell phone slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.

“Is my cooperation really worth this?” James pleaded.

Alder didn’t reply.

“Is Benson afraid the experiment will fail? Is it because the body’s not done? And I can’t work from something like that?” James felt light-headed. His heart beat wildly in his chest. “Because a torso and half a head is great for anybody, right? What a great idea to force one of my friends into it!” 

“You had your chance,” Alder said. “We could have done this quietly, but you tried to run. You act on our terms, now.”

James’ gaze darted around for anything he could use as leverage. He could threaten to kill himself. They couldn’t work the machine without him, and with James out of the equation, there would be no cause for Benson to go after his friends. If he could just get away from Alder, if he could get his phone, call the police. Something. 

The door to the lab opened, and James’ heart leapt into his throat.

“Heather run get out of here!” he shrieked, pulling against Alder’s grip. Pain spiked up into his shoulder.

Heather jumped. “What—”

“Get out—” James’ voice cut off abruptly as Alder released his arm, jerked his shoulder up and jabbed the side of his fist into James’ throat. 

James choked, clutching his neck and gasping for breath.

“James!” Heather shifted forward. The door closed behind her, sealing them in the soundproof lab. Alder raised the gun toward her. Heather froze and held up her hands. 

“No—” James lurched toward the gun, but Alder quickly deflected him with a kick to the stomach. James staggered and fell. He tried to get up, but doubled over, folding his arms across his middle with a groan. 

“Stay where you are,” Alder ordered. “Both of you.” He kept his aim trained on Heather. “Siles, you move, she dies right here.” He pushed up on a switch on the side of the gun. James knew very little about firearms, but he realized the safety lock had been on until that moment. “You have ten seconds. Make your choice. ”

James glanced helplessly between Heather and their attacker. Alder could be bluffing but James was too scared to call it. He wasn’t anywhere near close enough to shield her. He couldn’t cry for help. No one would hear him. 

He hated himself. More than he had ever hated himself before. 

But his machine would work. Transference for one or death for both. He couldn’t transfer Richard. But he couldn’t transfer Heather either.

Alder grimly counted down. Heather’s gaze was trained on him, her eyes wide and frightened. 

Her blood would spill all over the floor. Her death would be on his hands, regardless of whose finger pulled the trigger.

Richard had access to more resources. Maybe he even knew something about Empetrum that James had been too stupid to ask about. Benson would try to cover this up, but Richard might be able to find his daughter.

A slim possibility. That was all he had. Heather knew too much. If he chose Richard, Benson would make her disappear anyway.

Alder was about to utter the number nine. He clicked back the hammer. 

“Okay I’ll do it!” James gasped. “I’ll do it. Please just put the gun away.”

Alder didn’t move. “Which one?”

James choked on it, “Heather.” 

The shock and confusion in Heather’s face pierced him like hot iron.

“Good choice.” Rounding the counter, Alder switched his gun to the other hand, pulled the tranquilizer from his belt, and shot her with it.

She fell against the door with a gasp, her hand flying to her arm. The door opened a crack and she tried to slip through the space, but then Alder was there. Heather was too frightened to make a sound as he tugged her back into the lab. The door sealed them back inside.

James stood up slowly, his arms crossed over his middle. He watched the gun back in his enemy’s dominant hand, and debated whether he still had a chance.

Alder guided Heather around so his back was to the door, blocking the exit. Only then did he release her. She stumbled back toward the other exit near James.

James prepared to catch her, but she shifted away from him, her face ashen and confused. Already, lethargy was taking hold, and she staggered as she backed away. James moved in front of the door. Heather’s gaze flicked toward the equipment room, but they both knew there was no escape through there.

Heather pulled out the small dark dart. She squinted at it before holding it up to James’ tortured expression. “What is this?” Her voice shook. “James…what have you done?”

“I’m so sorry, Heather.” James said, useless, pleading. “I’m so incredibly sorry.” 

She backed further away from them both, shaking her head, cornered. Her balance faltered, and she fell sideways to her hands and knees as the tranquilizer began to overcome her.

She tried unsuccessfully to pick herself up. She looked up at James with difficulty. “You have to stop this…” 

James could only stare at her as she succumbed, sinking to the cold, polished floor.

He stood over his friend, rooted in place, his stomach hurting and his aching heart pounding in his ears. If he had only known what his alignment with Empetrum would come to. If only he had just trusted Richard and walked away.

He wished some supernatural force would suddenly strike him down, severing Benson’s use for the Brophys. No one had to miss him, or even remember him. If only James could be wiped from existence so no one else had to pay for his mistakes. 

But only silence assailed him. Despite every frantic prayer emanating from his wretched being, James continued to exist. His future stretched before him, dark, void, mocking. 

“Get what you need together.” Alder rounded the counter and picked up James’ cracked cellphone from the floor. “I’m knocking Brophy out and then we’re leaving.” He brandished his tranquilizer on his way to the door. “Don’t leave this lab until I come back.” 

“My android’s not even finished yet.” James narrowed his eyes. Pain tore through his chest, as if he had already killed her. The replacement body was only a torso and half a head, completely devoid of sensors. He couldn’t stomach imagining what it would be like for her to wake up like that. “I won’t put her in that thing. It’s not ready.” As if he were even in a position to negotiate. “At least let me postpone the transfer until I can finish it.”

Alder tilted his head toward the other lab. “What about the body in there? You could outfit that in like two seconds, right?”

James couldn’t bring himself to answer.

“Good,” Alder said. “Do that if you want, but get it together quickly or headless robot’s her new home.” He paused at the door. “I’ve locked all the exits. If you try anything, I’ll find out, and I don’t think I have to remind you what’s at stake.”

James nodded, his jaw tense.

Alder left him alone in the silent, soundproof lab with his victim. James hated to think what was about to happen upstairs. Richard didn’t know what James had done. How much he was about to tear apart their lives.

No one would try to rescue James from Empetrum after this. Benson was getting exactly what he wanted.

“I am so sorry,” James murmured again, brushing at tears as he moved to comply with Alder’s orders. The words dripped hollowly from his lips like a leaky faucet. “I’m so sorry…”

Within minutes, Alder returned. At gunpoint, James hauled the android and anything he needed to adapt it to his own machinery out to his car. Then he went back in for Heather.

The facility stood dark and watchful as he struggled to single-handedly transport her through the lobby and out the front doors, his arms locked under hers and her feet dragging on the floor. Alder hovered with his gun. 

The warmth of her limp body pressed into his, and he wished more than anything he didn’t have to take it from her. That heat, that lifeblood.

James really was a better candidate for his machine. Becoming robotic would have simply manifested what he already was. Heather was the opposite, an empathetic, organic soul whose affection James had never once deserved.

Alder helped him get her into the back seat of James’ car, and James carefully looped the middle seatbelt around her. In bleak, heavy resignation, he closed the door.

Maybe somehow, once they got to Empetrum, James would be able to buy more time.

As Alder drove him off the Larkspur campus, up into the hills, further and further from civilization, James clung desperately to that small hope. 

+

Heather’s eyes opened slowly. Disoriented, she tried to remember what had happened, and then her unsteady focus trained on James’ face. His eyes widened when he saw she was awake. 

He had pricked her finger and drawn blood.

“James…?” She couldn’t move her limbs. “What’s going on?” Something thick with weight cocooned her head like a helmet, except the sides were connected to a frame clamped over her shoulders, keeping her immobile. The helmet sent a jittery sensation through her skull like thousands of needlepoints all over her scalp. 

She realized she was lying inside a machine. It looked like a hybrid between a tanning bed and an MRI machine, with bright light flooding over her from the underside of a looming, concave lid.

“Please, try to relax,” James spoke urgently. She struggled to keep her vision in focus. He leaned aside, and she caught the modest hum of a panel opening and closing somewhere near her bound ankles. “You’re gonna be all right. You’re gonna make it.”

As the grogginess ebbed away, fear mounted to take its place. Her face still felt torpid and slow from the lingering effects of the tranquilizer. “James, please tell me what’s happening.” Her unfocused vision landed on a door, pipes and wires on the walls, a makeshift computer setup across the room on a folding table with wires snaking down and across the floor out of sight.

A man with narrow glasses stood behind the table, waiting.

James reached up for the handles on the raised lid. “This is the only way through.” 

Foggily, Heather began to remember where she’d seen the concave lid before. She recognized this machine. The scanner bed, the headgear emitting a sensation James himself had called “pins and needles.”

This was his project. The project.

James hesitated, readjusting his grip on the handles. He looked down at her, brokenly. “I’m so sorry, Heather.”

Heather fought her restraints, horrified as the lid descended. “No! James stop!”

The panels of lights fell closed above her face as the lid pulled all the way down. The first latch folded shut outside near her head. “You were supposed to abandon this! James! Why are you doing this! Let me out!”

“This is the only way through,” James begged, his taut voice muffled. “Please believe me…”

“No! You can’t do this!” Heather’s desperation rang loudly in her ears in the tight space. “You’ve lost your mind! James! Are you listening to me? You can’t do this!” 

He didn’t answer.

The sound of Heather’s own frantic breathing inundated her within the helmet. She tried to twist her neck, her shoulders, feeling for a weak spot, anything to open the frame keeping her still.

With a resounding click like the closing of a lighter, the space flooded with white light from both the top and bottom surfaces. The machine hummed all around her.

“No,” she gasped. “No no no…”

Heather squinted as the light intensified. A blue beam scanned the length of her body. It flickered and trained on the space she occupied. After a brief lull, the target locked, and the humming deepened. The light became unbearably bright—so much so that she only barely saw the edges of the container. 

“James,” she choked, futile, terrified. Tears ran down her face as she closed her eyes to shut out the light. “Please.” James’ terror and pain at Larkspur repeated over and over in her mind. His desperate, violently thwarted attempts to protect her. 

She didn’t understand.

She couldn’t possibly be about to end up like Sesame. An experiment. An inorganic system of wires and metal.

The humming broke into a rhythmic, undulating pattern. Then the light stopped pressing through her eyelids. She opened her eyes to see it had dimmed, grouping to a scattering of small dense points. Like hundreds of illuminated pupils gazing at her from another dimension.

She stared at it in horror. If James’ experiment didn’t kill her, no one would recognize her. She didn’t know what body James was putting her in. Would she remember?

Would anyone ever find out what had happened to her?

The points released, exploding into an overwhelming flash of hot, electrified light. Heather’s scream thudded mutedly in her ears amid the snapping, squealing roar of the inside of the machine. Hot claws clamped on her head, rooting in and jerking upward.

The jolt tore the surface away from her body. She left the sounds behind as if through a tunnel, and in the ensuing dark and silence, occasional lights burst across her vision—flashing, forking like lightning, and flickering away.

Her chest seized up. She couldn’t breathe. Her back arched and eyes snapped open wide to a view of the outside contour of the scanner. Wires crowded the edges of her vision. She thought she was still screaming but only an odd, strangled buzzing crackled in her ears. 

Her head was open. Arcs of fire pulsed down her limbs.

James stood behind the computer across the room, hands clasped anxiously under his nose, next to the man with the narrow glasses.

She waited, blankly, in those few delirious seconds, for her throat to unlock, for air to fill her lungs. But it never did. 

Dark, cold, emptiness fell like a hammer and smothered her instead.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE—EMPETRUM       

“And, that’s it,” Yeun said brightly. “Last treatment done.”

Erika carefully moved from her side to her back, wincing at the soreness in her upper body.  Lately, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her shoulders were uneven somehow. It was subtle, but they felt wrong against the pillows. Yeun said there weren’t any obvious signs of deformation when she had asked.

She had also grown a little taller, she’d noticed. Her clothes were slightly shorter than she remembered. She didn’t feel at all at home in her own skin and hated the suspicion that it would only get worse from here.

He gave her a tiny plastic cup with vitamins and a glass of water.

“We’ll let things settle over the weekend, give your body a chance to produce some more stem cells naturally,” he said as she methodically put the pills in her mouth and washed them down. They took the edge off the crushing, restless fatigue. “If nothing else exciting happens, we’ll remove the cannulas on Monday and transition into phase two.”

Erika nodded. She looked forward to being free of the tubes, even though their damage had been done. After over a month of imprisonment at Empetrum, escape felt more and more like something she thought about just to pass the time.

“So that was bad, then,” she said. “What happened the other night.”

Yeun shrugged. “Neutral. A strong reaction, yes, but I ran diagnostics while you were sedated and you’re totally fine.”

Her brow furrowed. “But definitely not a normal response to stem cell therapy.”

“Your last treatment did have a little activator serum in it,” Yeun said. “To help get things going.”

“What’s activator serum?”

“A catalyst that’s unique to this and related projects.”

Erika blinked, unsatisfied. “So what is phase two?” She watched him pour her a small cup of coffee. “Or have I not earned an explanation yet?”

“I don’t want to worry you,” he replied as he doctored the drink with sugar and cream. They’d been through this enough times that somewhere along the line she had mentioned how she liked it, and he remembered without being reminded.

“That itself worries me,” she replied, accepting the coffee.

After some deliberation, he said, “I’m going to take a blood sample, then do some scans.”

“Looking for what, exactly?”

“Altered genetic sequences, and new neurological tissue,” he said, beginning to clean up his effects. He passed off the chrome coffee pot to the nearby guard.

“Yes, but for what?”

“You’re doing great, Ms. Davenport,” Yeun said, smiling nicely as he took his leave. “You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Then he was gone, and Erika leaned her head back with a exasperated groan.

+

Benson insisted that James come check out the Empetrum facility as soon as possible. They set up an appointment for the next evening, as soon as James could arrive after work.

The facility lay twice as far from Worthing as Larkspur, located high in the surrounding hills where overhanging trees crowded along the winding roads.

James’ nerves intensified as the terrain became increasingly rugged and he could no longer utilize his GPS. While he received surprisingly excellent cell phone coverage, the turnoff he was looking for was unmarked and uncharted—so he had to rely solely on Benson’s directions.

Finally, he made a right turn onto a narrow gravel road that swiftly disappeared into the trees. He proceeded warily, but before long, the gravel melded to pavement. Eventually, after the last bend, James spotted the first checkpoint, a chainlink fence with brick pillars and barbed wire. 

He pulled up to the security booth. A guard in a black uniform stepped up to the driver’s side window, which James rolled down to hand him his Larkspur ID. “My name is James Siles. I have an appointment with Dr. Benson.”

The man returned the badge, lifted the vehicle barrier, and waved him through. James found himself driving through another stretch of forest, occasionally spotting guards patrolling. Another, taller fence loomed up in front of him. He stopped at a sliding gate, and another guard met him at the window for verification.

Looking over his badge, the second guard said, “Continue straight, and you’ll find a parking lot around the other side of the facility.” She waved at a man in the security booth behind the fence, and with a low hum, the imposing section of fence slid over so James could drive through.

As his car skirted the rim of the concrete courtyard surrounding the building, James leaned forward over the steering wheel to look up at the facility, two stories high with tall, thin windows slashing lines of transparency in the walls, and it wasn’t the only building on campus. Others watched from behind another interior fence, the landscaping suggesting they were living areas rather than additional labs. Other patrolling guards helped wave him over to the correct parking area, and he got out, taking a moment to survey the campus, contained within the fence and the hoard of trees beyond. The air was clear and invigorating.

James ventured up to the front entrance, where a short bout of steps led to sleek double doors set into an alcove of the outer wall. A woman waited at the top of the steps, calm and formal. Her black and violet business attire, razor sharp bob and immaculate makeup gave off such an intimidating air of sophistication that James felt severely underdressed in his button down shirt and slacks.

“Good evening, Dr. Siles,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m Lynn Walker, Director Benson’s administrative assistant.”

James shook her cold hand. 

She opened one of the doors. “This way, please.”

James followed her through the entrance into a short L-shaped hallway. At the single frosted glass door at the end, she placed her index finger on a small oval scanner and the two gained entry to a wide corridor that extended in two directions. James glanced around, his gaze first finding a wall of paneled glass across the way that looked into a bright, spacious biology lab.

Walker led him to an elevator in the wall to their right, which they took to the second floor, and James suppressed the urge to linger at the window straight ahead, which afforded a balcony view of the lab below. Instead, he followed Walker to their left, down a hallway and past doors set with windows in their upper halves, around a bend, and down a stretch of unadorned corridor to a single door at the end.

M. H. Benson, Director, a panel on the door read.

Walker knocked, and James recognized the voice giving them permission to enter. 

She pushed the door wide open. “Director, James Siles is here.”
The man stood up from his desk at the far end of the room. “Thank you, Walker.”

She made a discreet gesture for James to step forward. The young scientist obeyed, entering the neat, cozy office accented with dark wood and burgundy tones. The door closed behind him.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you face-to-face,” the man said, rounding his desk and extending a hand. “I’m Michael Benson, the director of Empetrum.”
Benson was a slim individual, with good posture, even features, and thin rectangular glasses. His presentation was just as upscale professional as Walker’s, and he carried himself with the air of one well-versed and assured in his trade, as if he had held his position for many years. However, James guessed he couldn’t have been much older than thirty.

“It’s great to meet you.” James shook his hand, noticing as he did that a large burn scar faded the smooth skin of the director’s right hand.

Benson smiled, a soft, confidence-inspiring expression. “I’m very excited you’ve agreed to work with us, even if it is only part time for now.”

“Thank you for being so accommodating,” James said, extremely grateful of the liberties Benson was allowing him to take. They both knew a stunt like this was unprofessional at best, but even with little information about James’ situation, Benson eagerly made room for it. “Though, at least for the next month, I expect I’ll be here enough to fill a standard forty-hour week.”

“Glad to hear it. I understand the demands of your position at Larkspur may make structured work hours a hassle, so how often you come in will be your choice. I had the customary living arrangements prepared so you can have that resource at your disposal, though boarding here is not mandatory, of course.”

“Thank you,” James said. 

Benson gestured at the door. “Would you like to see where you’ll be working?”

James followed him out and walked beside his tranquil gate as he headed down the hallway. At the end of the passage, just before it opened up to the section with the elevator, Benson placed a passing hand on the nearest door. “This is your office, to use however you like.”

James peeked in the window as they continued to the elevator.

“By the way, how’s that project of yours going?” Benson said, as the elevator arrived to take them to the first floor.

“Really well,” James said. “The first trial was successful. It was miniaturized for a rodent test subject, and I’ve just about come to the end of my personal ability to fund the next phase.”

“Then you’ve come to us right on time,” Benson said. “I would love to see this project come to full fruition. Does it have a title?”

“Organorobotic Transference.”

Benson considered James’ words with a smile “Has a nice ring to it. I hope you’ll tell me all about it as soon as we’re finished looking around, if you have some time to spare.”

“Of course,” James said, nervous and extremely flattered.

Upon reaching the first floor, the director turned right, and slowing on their way past the airy, pristine lab beyond the paneled windows, Benson said, “This is the shared biochem lab. Occasionally we need extra counter space or storage, or a change of scenery. But each of us have our personal laboratories, including you.”

James’ gaze lingered on the lab beyond, the fume hoods, black epoxy resin counters set with sinks and gas hookups, the refrigerators centrifuges, and transparent overhead cabinets full of glassware. Giddiness stirred in his chest. He loved this place already.

“Dhar passed along your resume to us,” Benson said as they continued on. “But it says nothing about where you acquired the biochemical training you’re employing in organorobotic transference. That requires quite a bit of neurobiological understanding as well, doesn’t it?”

“My father’s a neuroscientist,” James said. “He trained me.”

“Ah, that would explain it,” Benson said. “Be sure to let me know how I can best support your many talents.”

James nodded, sheepish. “Thank you.” 

Benson stopped at a door at the end of the hallway. “This is your personal lab. I apologize, it’s a bit of a mess right now, but it should have some reason to it by the time you’re ready to set up—which I assume will be Monday?”

James nodded, his heart in his throat as he prepared to see his personal engineering lab for the first time.

Benson opened the door and flicked on the light. A stack of black crates and moving boxes sprawled haphazardly in the middle of the room, fringed by the angular forms of machinery covered in sheets. A long, resin counter hugged the adjacent wall, underneath tall windows with a lower partition that opened to the outside air. 

The labs at Larkspur didn’t have windows like this.

The discordant space was the most beautiful thing James had ever seen.

“This is all mine?” James’ feet moved of their own accord, and he was soon exploring the clutter in growing excitement.

“It is,” Benson said.

James was checking labels and peeking under sheets at the equipment, “Kamuntu Inc.? This is the best of the best—”

Benson was nodding. “Is it to your satisfaction?”

“Are you kidding?” James grinned, inspecting the parameters on a medium-sized 3D printer across the room. “This is incredible.” He noticed a door to his left, and moved to open it.

The tall windows shed light on a polished floor, countertops, a CNC mill, lathes of various sizes, desktop computers, and an industrial-sized 3D printer. He took another left, and tried the handle of a sturdy metal door. It was unlocked. 

The lights were motion activated, and as he entered, sudden illumination lit up the room. It had a cement floor and industrial electrical hookups complete with heavy duty power grids, emergency breaker boxes, safety equipment, and a powerful ventilation system. He froze in the doorway, awestruck.

“Like it?” Benson said from behind him.

James could only utter a dumbfounded scoff in confirmation.

“Let me know if we need to build this up a little more,” Benson said as James drifted forward into the room to examine the equipment. “I’m a biochemist, so I’m not sure how much energy capability you’ll need for your work, but I assumed it would be a lot.”

“Oh yeah, this should do it,” James said, assessing the hookups. “This room can easily power the full-sized prototype.”

“Good.” Benson said, pleased. He let James poke around a bit longer before calling him back. “If I may interrupt, Dr. Siles, there’s one more place at your unlimited leisure—which I think you’ll enjoy.”

Down the hallway, through the clean and bright communal biochem lab, and to the left wall brought them to a single door. “This is the data library.”

Ten rows of long, heavy bookcases lined the space, with workstations at the room’s edges. James was still reeling from his tripartite heaven of a personal lab, and he didn’t think he could be even more delighted, yet Benson had astounded him yet again.

“We have all of this and more in the online databases, of course,” Benson said as James pulled the nearest academic journal from its place and flipped through its pages. “But, in my opinion, nothing beats print.”

“This is so impressive.” James slipped the volume back among its counterparts. He could literally live in any one of the places Benson had shown him. 

“Any questions?” Benson said.

“You said there was on campus housing available?” James was considering staying at Empetrum until he had finished the second prototype. He could commute straight to Larkspur on weekdays.

Benson smiled pleasantly and turned. “Follow me.”

As they reemerged into the lab, someone else had just entered, donning a crisp white lab coat.

“Dr. Yeun,” Benson said. “Good timing. This is James Siles, our new roboticist.”

“Pleased to meet you, Siles,” the scientist said, extending a hand with an open, unguarded smile that lit up his entire face. “Elias Yeun.”

“Dr. Yeun specializes in biorobotics, like you,” Benson said as James, surprised and elated, accepted the handshake. “There will be plenty of time for you two to bond over the details later, but for now, we have housing to survey, and we should let you get back to what you were doing, Dr. Yeun.”

“Of course,” Yeun said. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his lab coat and smiled again. “Nice to see a new face around here. I’m a fan of your work, Dr. Siles, what little I’ve heard of it.”

James’ eyes widened, his face instantly hot. “Really?”

Yeun nodded amiably. “Our director definitely snagged a good one. I hope you can thrive here.” 

“Thank you so much,” James stammered. He realized Benson had left them, raising a hand as he departed. He tripped to catch up with the director. “I’ll, uh, see you around? Nice to meet you, Dr. Yeun.”

“Likewise,” Yeun called after them. “Welcome aboard.” 

The housing buildings were through a smaller fenced partition, set off to the side of the campus. The larger of the two was for the majority of the facility staff, and a smaller, two-story brick apartment building belonged to the research scientists.

“Are you a researcher too, Dr. Benson?” James asked as the director led James up the stairs that bisected the latter complex, which held four apartments per floor.

“I am.” He unlocked the door of the one he explained would be James’ and let him inside. “Biochemical genetics.”

The apartment was already furnished in a modern style, with ample natural light and no noise pollution due to the rural location. James felt like he could breathe here.

“Consider this space yours to use how you want,” Benson said simply, lingering in the living room while James roved among the high-ceilinged rooms, getting a feel for the place. “Just let me know if you plan any renovations, and I’d appreciate if you kept your experiments in the lab.”

“Can do.” James couldn’t believe he even had creative freedom of his living space.

Soon, the two headed back to Benson’s office where they talked business, ironing out the particulars of James’ employment. Then Benson asked for more details regarding organorobotic transference. After his failure to convince Richard, James began with trepidation, but he quickly found Benson easy to talk to. Benson listened with interest and received James’ intention to continue to clinical trials with ready enthusiasm. 

On the trip back through the forested hills to Worthing, James couldn’t stop smiling. Everything about Empetrum inspired him. He could do whatever he wanted there, and any project he chose to pursue would be met with full support. 

Finally, nothing stood in his way.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO—PHASE TWO     

In between setting up his lab at Empetrum over the weekend, James closely monitored his test subject. Everything remained stable and functional, and O.R.T-1’s cognition and learning capacity appeared to have improved. It was settling into its new state of being, and its behavior quickly evolved based on the parameters of its body plan. It stopped trying to use its nonexistent sense of smell and instead turned to a more deliberate use of touch and observation as its primary senses. It was learning how to rear up, and when it fell onto its side, it could already right itself without help. It used its flat metal snout to push around objects in its path, or pry against whatever it could reach when James had to hook wires to its back to run diagnostics.

O.R.T-1, which Heather had started calling Sesame, much preferred Heather over him—with good reason, admittedly. Heather was nothing but tenderness and love with it, a source of escape from James’ battery of tests. She offered it things to look at and explore, she petted and complimented it, and it was always eager to interact with her, even though she’d only had two days so far to bond with it.

James passed it off to her as soon as she came to greet him Monday morning.

“How are you doing?” she asked James, neglecting to open the box. Her tone suggested she wanted more than a monosyllabic answer.

“Fine,” he said, opening the door to his office. “Yourself?”

“Good,” she murmured, not following him inside.

After a few moments of uncharacteristic silence from his friend, James paused removing his laptop from his bag and turned his attention to her. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” she said quickly. She removed the robot from its box. “I’m just—it’s nothing.” She carefully situated O.R.T.-1 in the crook of her arm. “Have you been testing him? How does it all look?”

“He’s very stable,” James said. “As far as I can tell, everything worked perfectly.”

“Mm…” She ventured forward and set the box on his desk. Stroking Sesame’s nuzzling face, she said. “Are you really okay?” 

“I’m fine,” James insisted as kindly as he could, stepping out into the hallway. “I got over it.”

“Already? I mean, you must have shaved off a week of your life working on that thing.” Heather followed him down the stairs.

“Oh, probably.” He pushed his way through the door into the lab. He might sacrifice some more working at Empetrum, he thought. Richard was in the lab, and James didn’t want to keep talking about this. He managed a smile as he held the door open for her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were more attached to that project than I was.”

“But you were—You mean you really are over it? Completely and totally over it?” Heather lowered her voice.

“I’d like to move on,” James said simply.

Heather paused, letting him break away from her to attend to his work. The android lay like a cadaver on a chrome counter in the back lab, waiting for the device that would bring it to life.

+

The songs of frogs and crickets wafted into James’ lab through the open window. The breeze from outside was gentle enough that it didn’t disturb his notes sprawled across the counter. The thick, green scent of local flora stirred a sense of nostalgia in James he didn’t realize he still harbored, dredging up a small quiet part of him that had missed the climate of his childhood.

Benson came to check on him after a few hours. James had to close the door to the fabrication portion of his lab, muffling the gallant hum of the CNC mill as it processed components for the human-sized neural network.

“I just came to let you know I’m heading out for the night,” Benson said. “Is there anything you need before I go? I see you’ve already begun, so I assume the materials we gave you are working out?”

“Yes, very much so.” James smiled, ablaze with inspiration. “Thank you.”

“Splendid,” Benson said. “I forgot to mention it before, but extra supplies are stored in the room across from your lab. You have badge access to it. If there’s something you need that isn’t there, I’d be happy to order it for you.”

“Thank you,” James said. “I actually wanted to ask you about a certain material I’ll need for the energy unit.”

“A substance capable of handling a staggering amount of energy?” Benson smiled knowingly.

James nodded, smiling as well. “For the first prototype, I used a tungsten alloy—”

“I believe we have something better.” The director slipped his hands into his jacket pockets. “I’ll do a little digging and have Dr. Jones ready to show you tomorrow evening when you come in. She’s our materials engineer.”

The humming ceased from behind the door to the fabrication lab. The roboticist glanced back.

“I’ll let you get back to work,” Benson said. “Good luck. If you have any more questions, feel free to come by my office when I’m there, and I believe you have my number as well.”

“Yes,” James replied, thanking him again.

Benson nodded and took his leave. “Good evening, Dr. Siles.”

“Good evening,” James replied, his hand already twisting the handle to attend to his equipment.

+

The Empetrum facility was quiet the following afternoon. Siles was still at Larkspur. The other scientists were between breakthroughs or crises for the time being, and Michael Benson was waiting on an immunoassay. He had another day before he needed to make a report to Empetrum’s sponsors, so he had time to procrastinate. Not to mention, he didn’t feel like figuring out how to reiterate for the millionth time in a way they would believe that Empetrum was making every effort to develop a mature form of Non-Comp as quickly as possible.

It was pointless trying to push back. Their sponsors were a pack of businesspeople and politicians with no scientific frame of reference, who refused to accept the simple facts of how long stem cell therapy took. Vihaan Dhar was really the only one willing to take his word for it, but that man’s capacity for patience got on Benson’s nerves in other ways.

While the government constantly breathed down Benson’s neck, nobody was ever asking about when Larkspur would get up to speed. Dhar was happy to coddle Brophy and his lot, letting them pursue their nice projects, oblivious to what their own commissioned artificial intelligence project was inevitably going to lead into. 

With the resistance movement determined to throw a wrench into whatever they could, everything boiling under the surface was going to come to light. And when Larkspur caught on, every one of those engineers were going to refuse to proceed as a matter of principle. Even though the government had graciously kept Larkspur afloat in their nearly two decades underground, Brophy and Louis, that bleeding heart former director who refused to let go, would lead the charge to pull out and try to go private.

At least Dhar had finally given Benson the go-ahead to reach out to Siles, after months of pestering. A young engineer with so much potential deserved a fighting chance to become truly revolutionary.

But Benson didn’t want to think about that right now. For now, he had a phone call to make. Considering an index card he had just received from his administrative assistant, he retrieved the cordless phone from his desk and dialed the number on the card. Walker never failed him.

The voice of the man who answered struck a deep chord within the director, past impressions of encouragement and frustration, care and neglect. Nostalgia, and deep, deep resentment.

“Hello, Dad,” he said. “Found you again.”

After a few moments of silence, Henry Benson’s voice hummed in his ear, “Great job. You want a gold star or something?”
Benson scoffed and leaned against his desk. His tone turned probing, “You not only moved back into the state, but settled in the same county as the facility. Why?”

“Would you buy that I missed you?”

Benson blinked. “No.”

“A gesture of goodwill, then.” 

“Let’s get to the point.” Benson readjusted his glasses in exasperation.

“I’m letting you win,” Henry said. “I’m sick to death of this. I haven’t done anything to cross you since the day I left, and you can bet I don’t intend to. I want to stop glancing over my shoulder. I’m nearby now. Come get me if you want, bug my phone, keep watching my life, but you’ll just be wasting your time. Especially as I fully intend to ignore you.” He paused. “So, there’s your reason. What will you do, Dr. Director?”

Benson’s brow furrowed as he tried to read between the lines of his father’s exposition. “As you said, I’ll continue to keep tabs on you.”

“Just let me know who’s watching me this time so I can invite them to coffee once in a while,” Henry retorted. “No doubt you’ve noticed this paradox: I’m not a threat, not an asset. Yet you just keep hovering.”

“You defected without a mindwipe. That makes you a threat.”

“Perhaps to celebrate your stalking victory, you might finally fill me in on what you were thinking back then? I understood what I was setting myself up for when I decided to leave Empetrum. Why did you bend the rules? Why do you let me walk free, knowing what I know?”

Benson drew a slow breath. “As long as you behave, I don’t see any reason to confine you.”

“And if I decide, say tomorrow, to suddenly broadcast everything I knew about Empetrum to the world?” The spite in Henry’s voice sent a chill down Benson’s spine.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Benson said, cracking a tight, sideways smile.

“What would you do?”
Ice crept into Benson’s tone. “I would send for you.”

“To kill me?”

Benson rose up to his full height. “I’ll do whatever I have to, understand? You step one millimeter out of line and I will not show you leniency again.”

Henry laughed bitterly. “What’s this? A heated tone? I’m honored, Michael.”

“Do you understand?” Benson demanded.

“Perfectly.”

“Make sure you don’t forget it, then.”

“I won’t. Rest assured.”

“Good.” Benson firmly replaced the receiver.

Benson’s grandfather wouldn’t have hesitated that day, had he still been the director. There were rules about leaving Empetrum, and Henry had broken them. Benson had broken them too. The decision was still a thorn in the director’s side, an insult to Empetrum and what it stood for, a lingering reminder that, while Benson was well trained to be his grandfather’s successor, he was still too soft in a few places.

And Henry knew just where to stab.

+

Nothing happened over the weekend, so, as promised, Yeun took the stem cell cannulas out of her spine and arm. He took blood for analysis. She wished hard that something in this whole process would destabilize, so he would just let her go home.

But who was she kidding, she thought, lying still in the bed of an MRI machine. So far, Yeun was getting what he wanted. Ages ago now, she had just wanted to get close enough to see what Empetrum looked like, to blow off steam, maybe put it on a priority list for the Conxence. But instead, she was giving her enemies exactly what they wanted, the development of human weaponry of some sort. Among the IVs and endless waiting and Yeun’s bedside manner, she had almost forgotten that’s what this place existed for.

It all seemed so pointless. 

At the end of the day on Thursday, after all the results had come back, she presumed, Yeun came into Erika’s room with a folder.

She watched him with a bored expression as he stole forward. Erika thought about making some wise-cracking remark as she’d grown accustomed to, poking at him, never able to nettle him much. But a profound sense of unease permeated the air as Yeun went to a free-standing bulletin board along the wall, pulled it up to the foot of her bed with a little space for him to move, and opened up his folder.

He took a steadying sigh, swiveling around to face her. “We’re all set to go for phase two,” he said.

Erika looked at him, solemnly, her hands folded in her lap. Her shoulders were pressed back against a wide electric heating pad. It calmed the tingling and tenderness of the region—barely. The restless feeling of deformation at the lower part of her shoulder blades was enough to make her want to chuck the pad across the room at him, wires and all.

“Not until you tell me what phase two is,” she said.

“That’s why I’m here.” He pinned up the first image from the MRI, which depicted a rear view of her neck and shoulders, in minimalistic black and white like an old photo negative. She watched him put four of them up, one by one. All focused on the nerves of her neck, arms, and upper back. His folder held more pages, but he closed it. “The stem cell therapy and stimulation of neurogenesis has been successful so far,” he said. “We’re seeing another brachial plexus forming here, around T-7,” he pointed to the part of her vertebral column corresponding to about the middle of her chest region. Erika’s stomach sank. “The brachial plexus, of course, provides the vital musculocutaneous innervation for your arms, chest, and shoulders.” 

Yeun was trying to hide behind big words, but Erika had taken enough science in college to know what that meant. The result of their twisted gene therapy was forming a second set of nerves. Specifically, nerves that commanded her arms and shoulders. The purpose of this was beginning to dawn on her, but she still couldn’t guess what the end application was. The fact that he was so reluctant to tell her made her extremely nervous.

“Why would I need another brachial plexus?” she asked quietly, feeling sick.

“Perhaps I should start at the beginning,” Yeun said, fidgeting with his folder. “Several years ago, my colleagues found a set of genes that, if stimulated in just the right way, could give rise to unique forms of physical enhancement in an otherwise ordinary human being.” 

“Human weaponry,” Erika said. 

“An evolutionary advantage,” Yeun said. He cleared his throat. “Which we are working to integrate into the military sphere in a sort of special task-force.”

Erika gave a single nod with raised eyebrows, as if he had simply repeated what she’d just said. “Yeah, human weaponry.”

Yeun cleared his throat. “We found that these genes are extremely rare, and we were only able to find six young people to integrate into this task force. They’re responding well to training, but they’re still very inexperienced, and for the research to really bring back returns, we need to find a way to develop these biological enhancements in people who don’t naturally carry the gene, but whose bodies can support the process.”

“So you’re…” Erika didn’t want to say it. “You’re trying to turn me into one of them?”

“Exactly,” Yeun said. “Though if this trial works out, you won’t be recruited. We’re still developing the technology, and our ideal candidate for the program is of a younger age range, anyway.” 

“They’re kids, then?” Erika said, her voice kicking up a notch in anger. She was twenty-four. The age group below her were minors. “You’re forcing kids to be these soldiers?” When she’d first heard the rumors of human weaponry, she’d imagined a sea of burly, faceless drones, not a pack of children. 

“Teenagers,” Yeun said. “Don’t worry, they’re well taken care of. Anyway, this is the young man whose DNA you and I are working with for this project.” He opened the folder and thumbed through the remaining pages. “His is the simplest of the six known natural enhancements—or, ‘Compatibilities,’ as we’ve come to call them, referencing their inherent genetic compatibility with the technology.” He pinned up a photograph on the board, and Erika felt the color drain from her face.

The boy’s head was blacked out to preserve his identity, but Erika thought the act was superfluous. If she saw this kid in person, she’d know exactly what he was. His towering frame stood in front of a height grid, measuring over seven and a half feet from head to toe, and he had not one, but two fully-formed pairs of arms, spread out like wings for the photographer. The page was a copy from some other report, and at the bottom, next to filing information, were the initials P.J.E. 

Erika’s breathing grew tight in her chest. “You’ve been trying to mix my DNA with his?” 

“Correct,” Yeun said. He glanced at the monstrous photos. “Compatibilities are brought out with an electronic device called a modulator. It manifests them, stabilizes the effects in some of the more volatile ones, and deactivates the abilities at will. The physical effects are reversible, even in this one.” He used his folder to point at a silver band on the young man’s wrist, which Erika hadn’t noticed at first. “When this deactivates, the second pair of arms goes away.” 

Erika shook her head. “This is wrong.” She pushed the covers aside and swung her legs off the side of the bed. Standing up was arduous. She was still fatigued from the stem cell integrations, and the immature brachial plexus in her ribs complained and tingled against the fabric of her t-shirt. She didn’t know what she intended to do. “I’m done. You’re letting me go, Yeun. I draw the line at phase two.”

The door had opened at the front of the room, and a calm, chilling voice answered her. “You are not the one who draws lines here, Ms. Davenport.” 

Erika turned her head to look at the newcomer. Two guards accompanied the director. Yeun stepped back, uneasily, as if giving Erika and the director room to face off.

Erika reached out and gripped the handlebar at the head of her hospital bed for support. She forced her shoulders straight and defiant, staring down the man behind it all. 

“You’re gonna have to do better than that,” she said. “How do you intend to keep me going along with this, huh? Brainwash me? Keep me in a coma? Threaten my family?”

The director blinked, unruffled. It struck her all over again how mousey he looked between the larger forms of the guards at his sides. Somehow it made it all the more menacing, that this slim, soft-featured person commanded all of them, confident that he would control her too.

“Dr. Yeun,” the director said. “The modulators you are calibrating for Ms. Davenport have components that must be implanted close to the spinal cord, correct?”

Erika tried to stand her ground.

“Yes,” Yeun said, uncomfortable.

The director leveled his calm intensity on Erika. “Rebellion, Ms. Davenport, will first earn you no anesthesia for any of that procedure,” he said. “If you still have fight in you after that, you may be mindwiped completely, and passed off to the military as a resource, regardless of the outcome of this experiment.” His features remained placid, yet his gray eyes took on a direct coldness that froze her to the core. “Either way, if you continue to cross me, I will personally see to it that your life is nullified, and reconstructed from the ground up. If you try to deny us progress, you will never see your family again.”

Erika stared at him in horror. She was shaking. “You wouldn’t…”

“Do not make the mistake of underestimating what I won’t do to push this endeavor to full maturity, Ms. Davenport,” the director said. “As Dr. Yeun mentioned, there are six known Compatible progenitors, and that was only within a very specific age group, sampled over a limited time frame. The work, you see, has only just begun.”

Erika’s heart pounded hard in her ears. Slowly, she sat back down on the bed, despair welling up in her throat.

“Prudent choice,” the director said. He turned to go, while the guards remained. “I’ll leave you to it, Dr. Yeun. Be sure to notify me if she acts out again.”

“Yes, Director,” Yeun said, offering Erika an apologetic expression as the director left them.

Erika stared at the floor, biting back furious, desperate tears. She carefully scooted herself back, twisting to push her legs back under the covers. Her limbs felt heavy and her spine ached, as fatigue crashed in around her, and she hated herself for feeling so helpless.

Yeun pulled the bulletin board away toward the wall, and proceeded to remove the images. “I’m sorry he had to be harsh with you—”

“Save the good-cop bullshit,” Erika snapped, lying down and turning her back on him. “Threat noted. Congratulations, you got what you wanted. If there’s nothing else you need from me right now, then just leave me alone.”

There was a long pause, the quiet shuffling of paper.

Then, finally, “Of course.”

Erika glared savagely at the wall, listening to him take his leave. 

“We won’t be ready to install your modulator until Monday,” he said, quietly. “So you’ll have a few days to adjust to the idea.”

Erika elbowed the electric heating pad out of the way and pulled the covers up to her chin, refusing to answer. 

Yeun paused at the door, hesitating. “I’m sorry, I know this isn’t the result you wanted.”  Then he left.

Erika settled in, and finally let the tears flow. She hated them. 

She knew she wasn’t the first person to have to deal with Empetrum, and she wouldn’t be the last. Just a single victim in a harried, soulless overturn.

Did that four-armed kid—did P.J.E.—know he was a victim too? Did he know they were farming him for resources any way they could, seeding his genetic code like a virus even as they trained him to lock down the corrupted status quo?

Did he want out?

If Erika ever got the chance she would make the director remember her. She would raze Empetrum to the ground, and cull any chances it had of resurrecting.

Then, she would come for the six progenitors.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE—FALSE COMPATIBLE        

James came to gradually, realizing the side of his face lay numb and cold against a hard surface.

His kitchen table? No, a lab bench.

Morning light streamed in through the tall window, illuminating his work area and glinting off the crystalline surface of the updated, more powerful energy unit. The neural network sat close by, a more advanced device than the first prototype with a smoother finish. Scattered across the counter near his head lay pieces of the incomplete DNA targeting system. The reflective application panel nested safely in a foam square, waiting for installation.

Blinking slowly, James dragged his wristwatch in front of his face and read the numbers. His eyes widened. “No…”

“No!” He jerked up so abruptly he almost tipped his chair over backward.

“No no no no no!” He grabbed his badge, and staggered to the door.

Swinging out into the corridor and running down the hallway, James checked his watch again. He had minutes to leave before he would be late for work at Larkspur.

He only realized he wasn’t paying significant attention to where he was going when he suddenly found himself face-to-face with Archibald Hill—a stern, gray-haired scientist who always seemed either irked or hostile. James gave Hill a deer-in-the-headlights expression before stammering an apology and dodging around him to the door. He had heard Yeun liked to tease Hill, but James preferred to keep his distance.

Not that James often encountered many of the other scientists. They had usually finished for the day by the time he arrived. With the exception of Benson’s occasional interjection and Dr. Jones’ advice about the new material for the energy unit, James had spent most of the last eleven days shut away in the isolation of his personal lab.

James ran down the path to his apartment on the Empetrum campus, pounding up the stairs and scrambling to unlock the front door. Once inside, he changed into the first clean dress shirt he found, then rushed into the bathroom to brush his teeth and shave. Grabbing his messenger bag, he darted back out to the parking lot.

As he drove through the gates, he checked his overall presentation in the visor mirror and frowned at his reflection. He had nicked his face a few times and had completely forgotten about his hair. He ran a hand through it. 

Flicking up the visor in distaste, he concentrated on taking the winding road as fast as he could. There was no way he could be late. Absolutely no one could find out about his activities outside Larkspur until everything was said and done. Of course, Empetrum was supposed to remain a secret in general, but he could worry about that later.

James arrived at the Larkspur facility on time—tired, disheveled, and very annoyed as he trotted upstairs to his office.

He barely avoided kicking something at the top of the stairs. Surprised, he looked down to find a small robot close to his foot. It sat down and stared up at him. 

“Heather?” James raised his face toward the hallway. “Why is Sesame loose?”

Heather’s face poked out from the doorway of Richard’s office. “Because he’s very well behaved and comes back when I call him. I think that neural network you gave him makes him smarter than normal.” She paused, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes. “What happened to you?”

James retreated to his office. The little robot got up and trundled after him, as if determined to get in the way. “Nothing. Just overslept.”

“Sesame, come here,” Heather said, and James spotted the robot crossing the doorway. 

Heather entered the room a moment later with O.R.T-1 in her arms. She smiled. 

“What in the world did you reward him with to teach him that?” James asked. “Is there even anything he wants?”
“He just likes attention, I guess,” Heather said, rubbing a finger up and down Sesame’s back. It shifted position in her arms so she could rub its side. “Are you sure he can’t feel anything?”

“Like I said, there are hardly any sensors…” He considered the robot, the side of its face snuggled into Heather’s arm. “But he does seem a lot more attuned to his environment than I would have expected. I’ll have to look into that when I have time.” He smiled, sheepish. “Thanks for taking him under your wing for me.”

“No problem.” She bent down to let Sesame run free. It lingered by her side for a moment, then climbed lovingly over her foot and left to explore the hallway.

“Just watch he doesn’t fall down the stairs. I almost tripped over him.”

Heather glanced back at the robot. “Sesame, don’t go near the stairs, okay?”

James opened his laptop, following her gaze. “Think he’ll listen to you?”

Heather docked her hands on her hips and said brightly. “We’ll see.”

+

After a few minutes, Heather called Sesame and brought him downstairs. Work took place in the lab so they could better collaborate as they continued working through the artificial intelligence programming.

Heather couldn’t offer much help in this phase, as she knew very little about programming. She played with Sesame when she wasn’t seated dutifully beside one of the engineers, watching them plan and type and troubleshoot. 

The program wasn’t coming together as smoothly as everyone had hoped. Even James, the most lethal programmer of the bunch, couldn’t seem to make much headway. Heather couldn’t tell if he was actually stumped—a state which rarely lasted long for him—or if he simply wasn’t trying very hard. James had been increasingly distracted and apathetic about his work.

Perhaps he was still working through lingering grief for his rejected project, she thought, even though he insisted he was over it. Or he could have simply burnt himself out, working at such an unrelenting pace for a whole month. Either way, he was back to talking more readily, and had begun to show up for breaks with the rest of them. He looked just as sleep-deprived, but he actually seemed happier. And for that, Heather was glad.

Still, it wasn’t like him to oversleep.

+

The modulator—the device that would activate what Yeun’s gene therapy had set up—had been installed the day before, and the site was already healed. Yeun said he’d treated it with dilute activator serum, which had powerful regenerative properties. Erika wasn’t looking forward to finding out what the real deal would be.

Tuesday morning, she lay prone on a table in an operating room, with her arms up like goalposts by her head and strapped in.

The director and another stern, sharp-featured scientist stood nearby, both in lab coats and waiting as Yeun prepared to activate her modulator for the first time. He pulled up a medical cart with a small styrofoam box on the top tray. Erika watched, her face cold with dread, as his gloved hands opened it and plucked a tiny rectangular vial of fluid from the ice within.

Erika glanced at their audience. “I’d rather it just be you and me,” she said to Yeun, very quietly. “If you’re going to go through with this…”

Yeun looked at the director for his opinion. The latter glanced aside at their other colleague, then turned slowly and took his leave. He waved a resident guard closer to Erika on his way to the door.

When the older man lingered, the director’s soft, purring voice spoke up, “Come on, Dr. Hill. We’ll monitor remotely.”

A venomous look crossed Hill’s face, but he followed.

Erika watched them go, surprised. Yeun came forward, instructing her to turn her face so it rested straight downward on the forehead rest. She complied, wondering if it would even be possible to fight back from such a position.

“Okay,” Yeun murmured. “Just going to move the gown out of the way so nothing snags…” 

She felt the air cold on her skin as he carefully peeled aside the fabric on either side, betraying most of her back. He let her keep her sweatpants, thankfully. 

“Do you want a weak sedative?” Yeun asked.

Erika fought back tears. Her heart pounded hard in her chest. “That would be great, actually…”

He administered an injection, and waited with her for it to take effect. 

It wasn’t enough to put her under. She wanted to be awake for this, anyway. If it didn’t work, she immediately wanted to know, instead of waking up monstrous and surprised. Or never waking up at all.

The sedative took the edge off the fear, and Erika lay still, her body feeling relaxed and heavy, as Yeun prepared to move forward with phase two.

“Ready?” he said.

“Yeah,” Erika rasped, reluctant.

She felt his fingers on the rectangular plate of the modulator that was accessible from the outside, getting into position. With a soft click, he opened a panel and slid the vial in. He hadn’t said, but she suspected it contained activator serum.

“Here we go,” he murmured. “In three, two…”

Erika shut her eyes tight.

“One.”

She felt a modest depression, then sharp pin pricks set into her skin in a wave. She gasped, feeling like it had bitten her, deep. 

After a brief, unpleasant electrical shock, warmth flooded from the epicenter of the modulator, spreading fast. The device throbbed hot and restless in her back, as pressure grew, squeezing her spine tighter and tighter.

“Keep breathing, Ms. Davenport,” Yeun said gently. “Remember to breathe.”

Erika obeyed, taking strained, deliberate breaths against the pressure. Then the spikes of pain started, shooting up in not one, but two distinct spots on her back. With every arc, they grew more and more intense, and suddenly her back muscles seized up and she gasped as two hot, reaching columns of confused biomass pushed into the open air, stretching out and snapping together into something with structure and weight. 

She felt elbows bend, muscles spasm, hands extend long and cramping as they materialized from the formless, reaching things.

Then the hot, vibrating pain of the modulator snuffed out. The unseen limbs held themselves in the air for a timeless moment, their muscles quivering under the shock and strain. Then the elbows drooped at painful angles, and slow, heavy hands found the table down by her feet. Dimly, she thought maybe they would break if they twisted wrong.

Groggy and breathing hard, she didn’t dare look back. She didn’t have to be coherent to know that the monstrosities Yeun’s device had brought about were nothing like what he had hoped. As she slipped into unconsciousness, she lamented the fragile, alien things, wishing they would at least be an asset to help her escape.

But she was too shaken, too tired to hope.

+

In a private surveillance room, illuminated by the screen of a monitor tuned into one of the operating rooms downstairs, Hill scoffed, and Benson crossed his arms.

“What on earth are those?” Hill said scornfully, leaning closer to the screen to get a better look at the state of his colleague’s test subject. “It’s like he didn’t even bother to calibrate that modulator.” 

“Yeun takes every precaution,” Benson said, frigidly. “As you do.”

He watched Yeun hurry to attend to Davenport. She lay still, save for the stretched, misshapen arms unfolded like wings off her back. The long fingers of her new pair of hands weakly gripped the edges of the table, and then they, too, went limp. Yeun lurched forward to catch them at the elbows and preserve the angle. There were two other bends between the primary joint and their articulation points. Three total hinge joints each. A fortunate and fascinating addition, Benson thought. Structurally, they would have been far too fragile, otherwise.

The arms had sprouted further around her back than Yeun had planned, but the origin points were level with the correct vertebra. Pride swelled in Benson’s chest for his colleague.

“Are you going to go rescue him?” Hill asked, as the pair watched Yeun on the screen, calling to the guards to support Davenport’s accessory arms while he attended to the modulator higher up on her back.

“Why? He’s handling it,” Benson said simply.

On the security camera feed, Yeun tried to deactivate the modulator, and Davenport didn’t fight him. It looked like she’d passed out. Benson readjusted his glasses and watched intently. Yeun’s movements grew more and more worried as the modulator wouldn’t trigger the reabsorption of the extra limbs. He pulled equipment over to check her vitals, leaving the defibrillator where it was, which was a promising sign. Activator serum could be intense.

Hill shook his head. “I don’t know why you let him head up this project, Benson. Yeun’s attempt at biorobotics is like watching a five-year-old with a mad science kit.”

“Yeun has worked extremely hard for this, and he’s producing great results,” Benson said quietly, quelling a stab of anger. “You of all people know modulator technology is finicky. With Siles on board, the two of them will puzzle out the issues in no time. You’re welcome to advise them, of course, but I want you focused on your work keeping the ICNS recruits stabilized.”

“Siles isn’t going to be much help to you,” Hill said. “He’s just a kid, primarily mechanically-minded with no gene therapy experience whatsoever, and he’s from Larkspur. It’s not enough for him to be reckless in his own pet projects. He’ll take one look at this—” He gestured toward the screen. “—and run screaming.”

“I can train him,” Benson replied. “I know it’s a gamble. Time for natural acclimatization is short, but there are many routes to securing his cooperation until then.” 

“If you can,” Hill sighed. His thin eyebrows pinched downward as he continued to watch Yeun’s progress. The guards were helping him move Davenport off the table, to transport her to somewhere she could rest. “If you mess it up you can just kill Siles too, I guess.”

A soft smile graced Benson’s unthreatening features, trying to be patient. “It’s been a year and a half, Hill. Empetrum stresses innovation and progress. Not grudges and nostalgia.”

Hill scowled, arms crossed. “I wouldn’t call murdering my lab partner nostalgic.”
“What Olsson received was only Empetrum policy. She tried to destroy us, don’t forget that.”

Hill scoffed bitterly and stepped away from the screen. “Don’t think because you managed to punish one of our own that you’re fit to be Lawrence’s successor.”

Benson swallowed the hot indignation rising in his throat. “It’s high time you grew up and accepted my grandfather’s choice,” he said.

Hill halted and turned. “I knew you when you were a child,” he snapped. “Passive. Timid. A boy left crying or mute after trials with the Q-13 while I helped him build this place! Posture all you want, Director. All he saw in you was a puppet to be molded.”

“He saw potential,” Benson said, straightening his shoulders. He rested his hands against the small of his back, and squeezed them together. “I will make this organization greater than my grandfather ever imagined, and I will perfect his life’s work.” He looked at the screen again. He knew the look on Yeun’s face well. Despite everything, Elias was berating himself for the hitch. He’d been that way since college. Benson pivoted so he faced Hill directly. “As you are well aware, Dr. Hill. I am no longer that child. If you can’t get over your personal hostilities, I’ll call for your resignation.”

Hill blinked. “You’re actually threatening me.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a precarious political situation. If we’re going to move forward, we must be unified,” Benson said. “Your contempt of your colleagues is divisive and petty, and I’m not going to tolerate it anymore.”

“But I’m co-responsible for modulator research—our core source of funding,” Hill tried to scramble together his terse, inflammatory composure. It gave Benson pleasure to watch him squirm. “I’ve given everything to Empetrum.” 

“Then you would lose all of that,” Benson said, steady and formal as he came forward. “So, reconciling yourself with the current state of affairs is in your best interest. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Hill glared, then looked away. He gave Benson room as the director passed him by.

Benson allowed himself a smile as he left his colleague alone. Hill would never resign, Benson knew, and he wouldn’t behave himself completely. But if Hill pulled back just a fraction of his snide comments toward Yeun, and stopped trying to undermine Benson’s authority, the director would consider his warning satisfactorily heeded.

Benson headed downstairs, to find Yeun and congratulate him on a job well done.

+

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN—PROTOTYPE   

Monday during lunch, James denied Heather’s request to watch him work before shutting himself away in the equipment room. He tested the scanner several more times, running a battery of trials coupling different tissue samples with material lacking a genetic signature. James had to make sure the scanner didn’t just convert the DNA, but also anything else associated with it, such as the rest of the cell containing the genetic material, all the way up to the proteinaceous segments of the hair and any clothes a patient wore inside the scanner.

It had to be a clean process. Nothing left behind. A perfect transplant.

His experiments left him with bandaged fingers and assurance of success and he decided to use the remainder of his free hour exploring his professional options.

“Hello, Mr. Dhar,” he greeted once he had connected with the head of the Bureau.

“Hi, Siles,” Dhar replied warmly. “What can I do for you?”

Nervousness fluttered in James’ chest. “Yesterday, I got a call from a Michael Benson from Empetrum? He said the lab’s involved with the Bureau and I wondered if you could verify.”

“Yes I can,” Dhar said after a pause. “It’s true Empetrum is connected with the Bureau, same as Larkspur. They’re a secretive branch, and like to keep off the radar, but they do important work over there. So Benson made you an offer, then?”

“Yes. I’m still thinking it over.”

“As you should. I think you’d be a good fit.”

“Thanks.” James almost asked him if Richard had really said anything about his project, but couldn’t bring himself to.

+

The fluorescent lights reflected off the sleek surface of the android’s completed body. Heather drew nearer to watch as James helped Chelo connect the remaining metal and polymeric facets of the outer layer, which all came together with satisfying, resolute snaps.

Heather examined the gray face. Seams ran from the large, closed eyes down its metal cheeks, and she knew it was to help with forming expression, but at some angles, she thought it looked like tear tracks. Inside its head, a blank space laced with wires waited for the final piece.

“It’s done,” Eve sighed. Smiling, she rubbed her hands together. “Now on to the artificial intelligence phase.”

Heather exchanged a glance with James at that, who was checking the ports inside the robot’s head. His narrow face cracked into a tired, longsuffering smile and he straightened up from the table, stretching his back. She knew he was already deeply immersed in complex, exhaustive programming for organorobotic transference. He was probably sick of it by now, if that was even possible. She offered a sympathetic expression and followed her dad toward the equipment room.

+

There were a TV and two security cameras in Erika’s medical room. Some days, she tried to pretend she was in a hospital, and not in a windowless level of an evil, pointless research facility in the middle of a wildlife reserve in which her family had camped regularly throughout her childhood. Some days, she closed her eyes and imagined setting a fire, burning it all down.

At first, it was just the fatigue and malaise, but lately, more serious symptoms had set in. She could hardly move her arms without sharp, stitching pain shooting all the way across her ribs and needling up the back of her neck. When she didn’t move, the whole area was itchy and restless. Yeun assured her this was a good sign.

To what, though, he refused to say. At the start, he had said he would keep her informed, but now, he didn’t want to tell her what the goal actually was.

Erika stared dully at the TV, which had only three stations: science documentaries, obscure black-and-white movies, and cooking shows. No news of the outside world. Nothing to inspire her to take her life back.

Dimly, she heard footsteps approaching, and she choked back the desperation rising in her throat. Yeun entered with his usual cheery greeting and started prepping for her second-to-last stem cell treatment.

Erika turned her face away.

+

As soon as lunch hour struck the next day, James closed down his coding work with his colleagues in the lab, and disappeared upstairs. He was already trotting back down to the lobby by the time the rest of them were on their way up.

“Where are you off to?” Greg inquired, halting at the foot of the stairs to give him room on the staircase.

“Errands,” James said simply.

“Right now?” Chelo asked. “What sort?”

James hesitated. “Pet store.”

“…Pet store?” she glanced back at Richard.

“Yeah.” He readjusted his bag, trying to shrug off their scrutiny as he landed off the first step and directed himself toward the door. Heather had mentioned to him Richard may have given his colleagues a summary by now, since she’d heard Greg ask a week and a half ago.

“That means you finished it!” Heather gasped, popping out from behind the group like a jack-in-the-box. “And you weren’t gonna say anything? Are you testing it today?”

“Tonight.” He slowed a little, turning back. He didn’t dare look at Richard. He was glad Eve wasn’t there that day. She might have tried to stop him. “The place closes before I get off here so…”

“Well then, get out of here,” Greg said brightly, nudging a too-skeptical Chelo. “Sorry to keep you.”

James felt their gazes on his back as he crossed the lobby alone and exited the front doors. He hadn’t discussed anything with them, but the way they were looking at him, he knew Heather had been correct.

They all knew exactly what he would be testing that evening.

+

James pushed on the door to the small shop. As an automated tone heralded his entrance, he felt incredibly out of place. His family had never owned animals, and he had given up trying to change that after age eight. He had never set foot in a place like this.

James strode up to the counter. Birds chirped unintelligibly from dispersed corners, and puppies yapped in the back. The warm, earthy smells of animals filled his nose: fur, wood shavings, birdseed, rodent food. He found the mix of stimuli calming. 

“Can I get a mouse please?” he asked the employee at the register.

“Pet or feeder?” 

James hesitated, temporarily stymied. “Feeder.”

“What size?” The kid stepped out from behind the counter.

“Uh, regular size?” James rubbed the back of his neck. “Healthy, docile.”

The clerk gave him a confused, sideways smile. “Wait here,” he said, and disappeared down a a hallway lined with aquariums. 

James swallowed, feeling left for dead at the counter as a woman came in and queued up behind him. 

Within a few minutes, the kid returned with a small takeout box. He opened it, showing James the black mouse inside. Its whiskers quivered curiously and James was surprised by just how sweet and fragile it looked. For a moment he second-guessed himself.

“This one look good?”

James was sweating. “Yes.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket as the clerk secured the lid. 

“One twenty-five,” the clerk said. 

“That’s it?”

The clerk nodded. “First time feeding?”

“Uh, yeah,” James said, pulling out two bills and handing them over. 

The clerk gave him change and extended the takeout box. The mouse’s tiny nails scratched against the interior as it reoriented. “Just put it in the enclosure but stand by until your snake nabs it. You’ll be fine.”

“Thanks,” James said. He put the change in the tip jar and gingerly took the box, holding it close to his chest as he left.

When he returned to Larkspur, Heather, of course, wanted to see the mouse before James stored it in his office. He grudgingly allowed her a peek.

She helped him set it up in a larger container with breathing holes, water, and apple slices from her lunch, and then managed to coax him to join everyone else in the kitchenette for the remaining minutes of break.

The awkward silence among his colleagues was troubling, like he made them nervous, as if he planned to kill the mouse. With a living creature in his office, organorobotic transference was beginning to take on much more weight than in the days when it was just an idea.

“It’s a feeder mouse,” he said as he pried open a yogurt cup he had grabbed on his way out the door that morning. “Bred for snake food. I’m actually saving its life.”

“Can I watch tonight?” Heather asked. “You’re testing it after work, right?”

“I would love to show it to all of you, if you want to stay.” Dread knotted his insides, but he absolutely refused to be ashamed of his project.

Richard managed a smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

James knew he should have tested it over the weekend where he wouldn’t have an audience, but he was too impatient.

Plus, he really did want to give Heather the chance to witness it.

+

James tried to ignore how nauseated he felt as Heather helped him bring out the components of the machine, set them up on one of the counters, and hook the long wires up to his laptop across the room. With jittery fingers, he started his computer and activated the program. 

Everyone had stayed to watch, gathered behind his laptop.

He administered a diluted antihistamine to sedate the mouse, and waited for it to take effect. The procedure would be even more dangerous if the mouse were mobile inside the scanner. When it was asleep, he clipped the very end of the animal’s tail, transferring some blood onto the DNA reader before lifting the mouse into the scanner and attaching the modified brainwave receivers around its head. He had omitted the electrodes for this model, instead choosing to connect the neurological detection devices into a dome-like network that enveloped the rodent’s entire head.

All feeds were operational, warming him with a growing sense of hope and vigor. He closed the lid and secured the latches of the scanner, hooking up the accessory wires to the small animal robotic body he had thrown together.

Due to the necessity of working the power core and neural networking device into the robotic body, his test subject would get a size upgrade. The robot was shaped like a guinea pig, with two small, camera eyes, but no superfluous details like a tail and auricles. Heather had already commented on his depressing lack of flair.

He only needed the body to be complex enough to demonstrate how the test subject would behave in it, to make sure everything transferred over properly. He could upgrade the creature’s new physicality later, if he had time.

After checking connections, he approved the target lock on his computer. The green bars in both the transfer and conversion regions of the program charged simultaneously, and then the light came on. Everything was going smoothly. 

“Ready?” James strapped his protective goggles to his face and his colleagues did the same. “Here we go…” Begin transfer.

James watched the computer screen, his hands curling into fists on the counter. “Please work,” he whispered to it.

Transfer in Progress, his computer reported, and electricity surged down the wires into the neural networking device, which he had implanted into the back of the robotic body, over top of the power core. The lights in the lab dimmed, struggling to overcome the small machine clamoring for their power source. 

The neurological transfer took a few minutes. Then the program switched to the conversion stage, during which the machine made even more noise.

His colleagues watched in silence behind him, and he could hardly breathe in the tension. James glanced aside at Richard, who stood excessively close to Heather. The director’s daughter flashed James a hopeful, congratulatory smile.

Finally, the light ceased, and the machine whined softly as it cooled down. 

Transfer/Conversion Complete.

James strode to the setup across the lab, nerves prickling up his back. His colleagues watched breathlessly as he undid the clasps on the scanner and opened the lid. The interior was empty, save for the neural scanning devices he’d programmed the machine to ignore in the physical mass-to-energy conversion. No trace of the mouse had been left behind.

“Woah…” Heather leaned forward to try to get a better look, but Richard held her back. Everyone’s attention gravitated to the motionless robot at the other end of the countertop.

James unplugged the wires from the robot and checked the state of the power core, which reported an impressive level of energy for such a small amount of mass. He allowed himself a relieved exhale to find the energy receptacle stable and functional. He secured the neural network and clicked the dorsal panel into place across the robot’s back. He straightened up, waiting for something to happen. Any moment, the robot would begin to move.

But the animal robot remained still.

“Just give it a little more time,” he murmured anxiously. “It’ll come around.”

They waited a few minutes longer, and James’ heart sank further with each excruciating second, with no change.

Finally, he looked up at his colleagues. Addie had her hand pressed up against her mouth. Heather met his gaze, her expression soft and worried.

The prolonged silence became oppressive.

“Everything was—I was so sure…” James said in quiet dismay. He gently nudged the robot, hoping the movement would illicit a response. Nothing happened. “It should have woken up…” He drifted over to his computer, to check the procedure history, looking for signs of a hitch. “I’ll find out what went wrong and try again. The conversion worked beautifully, I just wonder where the transfer program was faulty—”

“Maybe you should call it a night, James,” Richard said softly.

James’ raging thoughts stopped dead. “What?”

“Actually, I don’t—” the director cut himself off. “We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

James stared at him, his shoulders dropping and chest tightening. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m gonna head out,” Greg said, shaking himself a bit. “Thanks for the demonstration.”

Chelo and Addie uneasily followed suit. Even Heather looked perturbed, despite her efforts to hide it.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get it,” she said, on her way after her father. “See you tomorrow.”

He could only stand by his machine, staring after his colleagues in profound, futile disappointment.

Soon, he was completely alone.

Dazed, he hooked his foot on a stool and pulled it close enough to take a seat. James looked again at the computer screen, but he couldn’t focus on it. He was shaking. Finally, his hands clenched, and he pounded his fists once on the counter, ducking his head with a snarl of despair.

It should have worked. Metaphysics be damned, it should have worked.

The conversion was supposed to occur only after the organism was no longer inside its body. It wasn’t even supposed to hurt it, but his colleagues—Heather—had just watched him kill an innocent creature.

After several long moments, he lifted his head, glaring at the inert robot across the room.

He picked himself up, miserably closed his laptop and wrapped up the cords. He stored his machine in a corner of his office, and brought the robot home in the box Heather had helped him prepare just that afternoon.

He couldn’t get Richard’s face out of his head. He hadn’t realized he would have just one chance.

Back at his apartment, he brusquely deposited everything on the kitchen table and face-planted on the couch. He figured he should try to figure out what had gone wrong, but he was far too tired, too discouraged to think anymore.

The end of his project was nigh, anyway.

Come morning, Richard would ask him to discontinue organorobotic transference. And James didn’t know what he was going to do then.

+

CHAPTER NINETEEN—OUTCOME

Pine trees. Tall grass riddled with purple wildflowers. The weathered yellow house on the hill. Stables full of the horses that had companioned her childhood—dragons for the young dragon riders, steeds for Pirate Princess Tristan and her paladin, Erika, whose three more years gave her the wisdom to keep her mistress out of trouble. When the rain pounded down, the scuffed-kneed adventurers read thick novels up in the hayloft, their legs dangling over the equine heads.

The stables were almost empty now—many of its inhabitants sold to help pay for the countless medical procedures that weren’t able to save Erika and Tristan’s mother in the end.

The memorial service. Lavishly adorned with the wildflowers their mother loved so much. Amie Davenport had taught Erika and Tristan all the flowers’ names, along with which were good for tea, which were poisonous, and which were her absolute favorites.

Dad. Sturdy, inspired, protective. Working with his hands gave him purpose. He had stayed at the hospital whenever he could. It devastated him to have to stand back and watch.

Tristan. Forfeited even classes at the community college to work and help make ends meet—putting her ambitions on hold. The flaming passion in her eyes was crushed and dull that day. Inundated with pain.

Erika’s disappearance had been only five days after the funeral. When she had most needed to be there for her family.

She couldn’t be strong enough for them.

Her eyes were open, her vision blurry in the dim space. The smothered, frantic beeping of her heart monitor screamed at her side, gaining clarity, and she realized she was awake. Then the pain registered.

Her whole torso seized up with electric barbs clawing down her spine, through her arms down to her very fingertips. It pushed out at odd points in her back, as if maybe there were limbs there too. With a cry of agony, she pitched forward to a sitting position, to get up, to do anything but sit there and let it rip her apart.

Hands braced against her shoulders.

“Ms. Davenport!” a man said urgently. “You need to lie down—”

She fought against him. Deliriously, she thought she was on fire, the way her skin burned.

The man turned his head and shouted back toward the door. “I need help in here!”

The door burst open and two figures in dark uniforms came in. 

“Hold her,” the man said. “Watch that tube in her back.”

“Let go!” Erika cried as the soft hands exchanged for two sets of larger, rougher ones, clamped on her tender arms and holding her still. She squirmed and kicked, every movement spiking with pain, but she kept fighting.

She felt the bed under her, her legs tangling wildly in the covers, the hands tight on her arms, her vision a gray, slurring haze, but clear as anything, her family appeared before her eyes in a burst of yellow light and tree branches. Dad, Tristan. Mom. Hot tears rolled down her face. 

Was she dying? She opened her mouth to call out to them.

A needle went into her arm and Erika screamed. 

“It’s okay, Ms. Davenport!” the man said, raising his dusty voice to be heard over the beeping of the urgent heart monitor, and the panicked, feral sound of her own cry. Her limbs began to feel heavy, a fog filled her mind. Medically-induced peace descended upon her like a security blanket, and the screeching nerves in her ribs started to muffle, enough that she finally recognized the voice of Elias Yeun.

“Erika, it’s okay.”

+

James woke with a start. He listened, heart pounding, the silent dark of his apartment crowding in front of his face.

Something rustled fitfully in the kitchen, followed by a clumsy dragging, clicking sound.  He sat up, eyes wide. The sound repeated, further in than before.

Abruptly, James clambered across the couch and fumbled to turn on the lamp, almost knocking it from the end table. As soon as the light came on, he spotted the empty box on its side on the kitchen floor.

James warily left his perch and crept into the shadows of the kitchen, where his hand found the light switch around the corner. He snapped on the light, beholding a small gray form crouched in the middle of the floor. It turned its head, disoriented. O.R.T-1 looked even more like a guinea pig when mobile.

“It worked…” James ran a hand through his hair and leaned hard against the wall. He laughed outright, and the sound spooked his test subject, which jerked up and attempted to flee. It slid and tripped, unable to gain traction, before it tried to turn too quickly and fell over onto its side.

“Sorry, you’ll get used to it,” he said gently, nearing the creature. It had gone very still. When he reached for it, it jerked and its robotic legs waved frantically to resume escape, but he picked it up. O.R.T-1 was still a little too disoriented to truly struggle. He was glad he hadn’t given it a mouth to bite him with. Hesitantly, it turned its head, and he watched the machinery inside the dark camera eyes readjust as it took in his face. James’ expression softened. “You’re already adapting.” Delicately, he lowered it to the linoleum and set it on its feet. “Here…experiment some more.”

James sat cross-legged on the floor while he observed the creature journey torpidly across the floor. It glanced back at him every few seconds while it searched for a place to hide. It examined the space under the oven, then bent down to touch its blunt face to it and paused, confused.

Why had it taken so much time before the mouse regained consciousness, James wondered. Maybe the transfer sent the subject into a short coma as its neural network straightened everything out.

He wanted to call Richard right away with the good news, but as he looked up to see 12:36 in the glaring lights of the microwave, he decided it could wait. He was already on thin ice.

But his project had worked.

Maybe his prospects weren’t so grim after all.

+

CHAPTER TWENTY—OPPORTUNIST      

We’ll talk about this in the morning.

Tension crept in the air as James ventured up the steps to the second floor, rustling box in hand. He turned his back to the muffled voices from the director’s office, as he quietly opened his own office door across the hallway.

Heather’s voice piped up in greeting behind him, startling him into nearly dropping the box.

The intern noticed the package right away, as well as the frantic, scraping movements inside as James repositioned it. “He woke up?”

“He did.” Relief flooded his chest to be able to tell her. He shouldered his way into his office, with Heather close behind, and removed the lid so she could see. She gasped softly to see the small, animal robot attempting to keep its balance inside the box.

“James, this is incredible.” She beamed at him. “You did it! Can you believe it?” 

James allowed himself a wan smile. He set the box on his desk, the only empty spot in a field of open notebooks, keyboards, and 3D printed models of neural components. 

“That’s all you’ve got? A smile?” Heather said, softly so as not to scare the mouse. “Come on, you’ve just made history.” 

James pushed aside a stack of notebooks scrawled with mechanical diagrams and set his briefcase down. “This is just step one.”

Heather rolled her eyes at him and turned her attention to the robot, who stared up at her. “Dr. James Siles, saving lives with science.” She shot him a sideways smile.

Another smile tugged at the edge of his features. He liked the sound of that.

“Can I hold him?” Heather asked. When James nodded, she respectfully extended a hand to the creature, waiting for O.R.T-1 to take interest in her fingers before making contact. She carefully laced her fingers under its belly. “Hello, little one.”

“It probably can’t feel that,” he said as she docked it gently in the crook of her arm and stroked its back. “I didn’t put a whole lot of sensory components in.”

“Really? I think he likes it,” she replied softly. James turned to watch O.R.T-1’s reaction for himself. The transferred mouse did seem calmer under her fingertips. It nestled down, and he saw its camera eyes angle, peering up at him warily. It had just picked its favorite person.

“He’s earned a name,” Heather said. “What do you think we should call him?”

“Whatever you want to call him,” James said. “You won’t like what I’d pick.”

“Oh I don’t know about that,” Heather cooed at the robot. “Do you have any ideas?”
“O.R.T-1,” James said.

Heather stared a moment, perhaps deciding whether he was serious or not. Her lips tightened. 

James shrugged.

“Can I show my dad?” she asked. 

He hesitated. “Yes.” 

She carried the robot out of the room, and James anxiously followed her across the hall.

“Dad!” Heather pushed her way into Richard’s office. “Look! James’ machine worked.” 

“It did?” Richard readjusted his glasses and turned his surprised gaze to his colleague for an explanation.

“Yes,” James said, rubbing the back of his neck as Heather brought the robot to her father. “It woke up after midnight last night. Its neural network must have just needed time to sort itself out. I’ll start tests right away to cross reference its current mental faculties with the snapshot the machine took before transfer, as well as monitor its overall stability.”

Richard nodded, unsure of what to say. He smiled at his daughter. “It sure seems taken with you, Heather. Could you babysit him for a while? I’d like to talk to James for a moment.”

Heather nodded, and exchanged a glance with James. “Mind if I show him to everyone?”

Swallowing his reservation, James confirmed. At least she was breaking the ice for him.

Heather warily took her leave, and silence dragged into the room with the closing of the door.

“It’s a relief to see your mouse pulled through,” Richard said finally.

James nodded, allowing himself some hope. Surely, after seeing the success of a project originally deemed impossible, Richard would forget his previous misgivings.

“But I was talking to Eve last night,” the director continued softly, “And, we have to ask that you discontinue this project.”

Distress pounded against James’ ribcage. “What? Why?”
“It’s just too questionable,” Richard said.

James’ heart dropped. His hazel eyes narrowed. “Too questionable?”

“Well, what I mean is—”

“If you’ll just give me a chance, I’ll prove everything transferred completely,” James insisted.

“I really wish I could support you in this. We all do.”

“This is all Eve, isn’t it?” James demanded.

“We arrived at the decision together,” Richard said.

James was burning. He would have to tell him. “Richard, I need to see this through. It’s not just a matter of—well I mean…” James cut himself off, his gaze falling to the floor. He took a breath and closed his eyes in an expression of pain. “My dad’s dying. He has cancer and the outlook isn’t good. This is my only chance, perhaps his only hope. Please. Don’t ask me to give this up.”

Richard stared at him, his expression a sickening mix of dread and sympathy. “I’m sorry, James. I didn’t know.” 

“So you see why I can’t let this go.”

“I understand where you’re coming from,” Richard said, haltingly. “But I really don’t think this is the way to do it. Have you asked your father whether he would even be open to this option?”

“Well, no, but I thought—”

“How long do the doctors say he has?”

“Maybe half a year.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” Richard rounded his desk. James shifted back a step.

“I didn’t want to get you involved in my family drama,” James said. “I wanted to handle this on my own.” They would never understand. The absolute certainty of it filled up his chest like dark, murky water.

“I know this is very hard,” Richard said gently. “But what you plan to do isn’t the best way to go about this.”

“There is no other way,” James tried, hoarse. “How am I supposed to stand by and just let it happen?”

“Do you need time off to go visit your parents?”

James shook his head, staring hard at the floor. “I’ll just make things worse if I see them. We don’t get along.”

Richard looked like he wanted to contest it, but didn’t. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

James nodded.

“I won’t ask you to shut down your mouse,” Richard said. “But please don’t pursue this any further.”

That was as good as a death sentence.

“Okay,” James mumbled. This project was being there for his father in the best way he knew how. What did other people do in family crises? Richard made it sound like they just sat around and accepted it.

James didn’t want pity. He wanted the people he respected to trust him.

“I know this is the last thing you wanted to hear,” Richard said as James turned to leave. “Especially after all that hard work.”

“I’ll be okay,” James lied. Once free of Richard’s office, he made for the restroom to calm down. Heather would be sure to find him, otherwise, and if he spoke to anyone now, he would lose it.

No one was going to see him break down over this.

+

For the rest of the day, James invested every bit of attention to the android. His colleagues knew him well enough not to ask him about it. No one mentioned the trial the night before, or Richard’s request, and he was grateful.

Heather didn’t know what to say when she found out, so she gave him space too.

When the time came, he fully intended to go upstairs and eat lunch with his coworkers like a well adjusted human being, to show everyone he wasn’t going to be melodramatic. But he couldn’t bring himself to face them without work to hide behind. He couldn’t face their scrutiny, their sympathy.

Alone in the sterile silence of the lab downstairs, he put aside his work and folded his arms on the counter. 

What to do now, he wondered dismally. He didn’t even want to think about giving up the project.

The door across the lab opened. He looked up, watching Heather step inside with a plastic container in her hands.

He stared at her a moment, and he felt the weight of crushed hopes in his face. He didn’t bother to hide it. She could always see right through him, anyway.

“What’s in the box?” he asked. Her expression softened and she came forward.

“Toy bricks,” she said. She took a seat and pushed it across the counter to him. She offered a wan smile and removed the lid, revealing a rainbow puddle of the minute plastic pieces they had chatted about the day they met. “Want to build something?”

James stared at them, brows lowered and eyes dull. He couldn’t believe she had remembered this small detail about him.

“I originally brought these hoping they’d cheer you up, because we thought your machine hadn’t worked,” she said, and James slowly reached forward and took a piece from the top. “But I think you still need some cheering up anyway. I’m sorry for what happened.”

James studied the tiny brick of red plastic between his fingers in despondence. He set the piece on the counter between them and took a few more from the box, as carefully as if he feared they would burn him. “Thanks, Heather. This is nice of you.”

Heather smiled, softly. “That’s what friends are for.”

Surprise fluttered in James’ chest, but he focused on the square frame he was idly constructing on the countertop. He had no idea how to respond to a statement like that.

“What are you making?” she asked. 

“A tower,” he said. “Those were your favorites right?”

Heather nodded. “Mind if I help?”

“Please do.”

They took turns adding bricks, James from one side of the chrome counter, Heather from the other. They didn’t talk much, and James was glad for it. 

He wanted to ask her if she thought he should pursue the project anyway, but didn’t. He was afraid to know what she thought. And he could never ask her to choose, to risk turning her against her father.

Whatever happened now was his responsibility alone. He would let her believe he had accepted defeat and moved on.

Except, as soon as he had initiated the transfer the day before—pulled a living organism from its body and placed it into one of his own design—something had broken. James had fallen through a trap door. His colleagues had seen exactly what he was capable of, and it scared them.

The first prototype was a success, and James knew he could never let this project go. Not while he still had a shot. He was on track. There was still time.

He didn’t want to go against Richard, but he couldn’t stand back and forfeit everything he had worked for, to regret and wonder for the rest of his life what could have been. He knew what he intended to do was necessary, and he hoped that someday, his colleagues would come to understand.

That night, as soon as he returned home, he shed his bag and jacket, deposited O.R.T.-1’s box on the kitchen table, and scrolled through the call history in his cell phone until he came to the number without a name. He tapped the call key and waited.

“Dr. Siles, nice to hear from you again,” Michael Benson’s voice purred in his ear. “I take it you’ve thought over my offer?”

“I have.” James straightened his shoulders, somberly lifting his gaze to the window. “And I accept.”

+

CHAPTER FIFTEEN—ENERGY UNIT

Only a transparent barrier separated the boy from what was happening. The light on the other side of the thick glass flared like a firework, the fire stretching and sparking out of control. Even with his tinted, protective goggles, the boy squinted.

An agonized scream tore from the center of the heat and light, and he stiffened in horror.

“It’s hurting him!” he cried, turning anxiously to the man beside him, the only other person in the compartment behind the glass. “Can’t we stop it?” He didn’t receive an answer. “Grandpa?”

“Let it run its course,” was the calm reply. “Let’s see if he comes out of it.”

The boy could barely make out the shape of the figure generating the energy surge, especially as it began to disintegrate. He felt sick. Sicker than he had ever felt before. His glasses fogged up inside his goggles from the gathering tears. He whipped around toward the wall with a strangled gasp, clutching at his mouth, sure he was going to vomit.

“What are you doing?” His grandfather’s hand gripped his shoulder, turning him around and drawing him closer to his side.

“I’m scared.” The boy fought the intense urge to pull away. He knew his grandfather wouldn’t let anything happen to him, but he couldn’t stay. He felt trapped.

The touch became mellower as his grandfather placed another hand on his other shoulder, guiding him to resume facing the experiment.

“No Michael,” he said gently. “Don’t turn away.”

+++

James turned on the light in the chemistry lab. He strode toward the black soapstone counter, retrieving the fire extinguisher from the wall on the way past.

He moved all the pieces of the energy unit to one of the fume hoods in the back of the room and carefully set to work, gathering the chemicals he had purchased and stored in the lab. He had every step worked out, written down, and memorized. If he didn’t make any mistakes, he’d be fine.

“Here goes,” he breathed, buttoning up his lab coat. He threw a furtive glance behind him. The old Larkspur facility was creepy at night.

With grim determination, he situated his goggles on his face and pulled on a pair of fireproof gloves.

He arranged the components of the energy unit in order of assembly, and prepared the chemicals in two clearly labeled beakers. He began to solder, adding the substances at intervals and attaching the subsequent elements of the core. The heat from the soldering iron encouraged a more enthusiastic reaction, but he pushed forward, even at the sight of minute, inquisitive sparks.

He knew it was foolhardy to do this alone, but everything was under control.

He took the tip of the soldering iron off the device and waited for the hood to suck some of the excitement from the reaction. He prepared another pipette and drew a sharp smelling substance from the other beaker.

Directly after sealing the edge of the ring inside the square outer layer, he applied a few final drops to the delicate center.

A blinding light burst from the core. James jerked his face away in surprise. He hesitated for only a second, his mind racing. He removed all chemicals from the area and pulled the front panel of the fume hood as far down as he could while still retaining the ability to reach inside. He rushed to the nearest drawer and tugged on a pair of thicker gloves. There still remained two pieces to attach: one to contain the middle of the core, and another to complete the outside layer. He absolutely refused to have to call it and destroy everything with the fire extinguisher.

He picked up the notched, concave piece, hoping the bitter, smoky smell stayed well enough inside the hood and wouldn’t set off any alarms. His project was as good as dead if he put the facility in danger.

Fortunately, clamps held the device in place, so nothing fell over as he scrambled to contain the reaction. Impulsive and desperate, he reached into the thick of the heat and placed the cap on the inner core. He twisted it so the wires moved into their correct places, and the heat bit at his fingers through the gloves as he hastily soldered around the edge.

The end result was sloppy, but sturdy. Given the circumstances, he would have to be satisfied with it. The light quieted.

He heaved a weary sigh and dropped back onto a nearby lab stool.

However, his relief was short-lived. The fingers on his right hand started to sting with renewed vehemence as his smoking glove ignited.

With a yelp, he tore it off and sprayed it with the fire extinguisher.

+

Heather was far too perceptive.

“What did you do to your hand?”

James sighed and ceased soldering to examine the affronted hand, on which his fingers were bandaged from the first joint to the tips. “Just burned it a little last night.”

“On your personal project?” she asked.

“Yes,” James said defensively as tightness rose in his chest. “I imagine Richard’s already answered all your questions about it by now.”
“I haven’t asked him,” she said. “I’m waiting for you to tell me yourself.”

James looked up at her, his eyebrows pinched in a confused, incredulous expression.

“What?” she asked uncomfortably.

James shook his head and returned his attention to his work. “I’m just not used to that, I guess.” He readjusted his grip on the soldering iron. “Thanks.”

+

The android’s body had begun to materialize into more than a collection of disjointed devices, finally taking on a vaguely humanoid shape. Its inner machinery consisted of a great deal of wiring, stabilized on metal frames. Assembling it was a colossal pain, prompting several headaches and groans of frustration. On more than one occasion, the Larkspur engineers spent hours piecing together the components, only to discover one stray wire that should have already been in the center of the bundle.

Heather was allowed to help, learning how to splice wires and relaying directions while her mentors had their hands busy. She even got to participate in a bit of the construction herself.

Stringing the android together like a metal rag doll was harsh on James’ injured fingertips. By the end of the day, he decided to go home instead of injuring it further. He had to catch up on some project records anyway. Two weeks of his personal timetable for organorobotic transference had already flown by. More than ever, he felt every second ticking away, loud and insistent while his deadline loomed steadily nearer.

Two weeks left.

+

Yeun had moved Erika from her cell to a private medical room. Treatment often left her sore and fatigued, and she had to be careful not to dislodge the cannula in her lower back.

“Good morning Ms. Davenport,” Yeun said, entering the room. “How are you feeling?”

Erika opened her eyes, grudgingly. “No developments.”

Yeun moved to prepare the stem cell injection. “Treatment number four today,” he said cheerily. “We made it.”

“How many of these are we doing again?” she sighed.

“Nine.” He punctured the seal of the first with a syringe and drew up the liquid into the barrel. “We’re about halfway there.”

“Lucky me,” she rasped.

“After we let this one settle for a day or so, I’ll need to take a blood sample to see if this is going to work out,” he said. She let him connect the syringe with the cannula and introduce the serum.

As he prepared the one to be administered to her neural stem cell supply, Erika asked, “Is today the day? Are you going to keep your word?”

“Of course,” he said. “You’ve kept yours.”

He finished up the stem cell injection and pulled a small, pre-loaded cellphone from his lab coat. “All cleared with the director.”

He connected a wire to the charging port on the cellphone and handed it over. At the other end of the wire was a remote with a button, which he kept. “Here you are. Do you know their number?”

“Yes,” Erika said, turning over the phone in her hands.

Yeun squeezed the remote, and it powered up. “It’ll be online and functional as long as I keep this depressed,” he explained. “Make sure you just tell them you’re okay. If you try to say anything to try to lead them here—” He released the button and the phone went dark. “—instant disconnect.”

“I understand,” Erika said. She readjusted herself in the bed with a wince. He had her on supplements to help compensate with the side effects of treatment, and to increase the odds of her body accepting and integrating her altered stem cells, but her system still struggled to keep up. Each new time he took readings of its progress, she hoped he would return disappointed. But it just continued, endlessly.

Yeun pushed the button again. “I’ll give you one minute, starting as soon as they answer.”

She typed in the number, put the phone up to her ear, and waited. Yeun listened to it ringing, ready. Anxiety pulled in Erika’s ribs. She’d been rehearsing in her mind what she would say to them, but had no idea how to keep enough control of the call. Emotion sat high in her throat as the phone reached its final ring.

Her dad’s voice piped up in her ear. Voicemail machine. Erika’s hopes twisted. She looked at Yeun, and glanced at the remote in his hands. He kept it activated.

“Go ahead and leave a voicemail,” Yeun said, quietly.

After the beep, she licked her lips, took a breath. When she spoke, her voice shook. She felt defeated. “Hi Dad, hi Tristan. It’s Erika.” She looked at Yeun again. “I—I’m sorry I haven’t been able to contact you until now. There’s something I got wrapped up in, unexpectedly.”

Yeun’s fingers twitched nervously, but she lifted an urgent hand, signaling him to keep the activator depressed. He complied.

“I can’t come home right now,” she went on. “But I’m fine. I’m okay, and I’ll come back as soon as I can.” She clenched her jaw, holding back tears. “I love you both. I’m sorry.”

She took the phone from her ear and hung up, averting her gaze. Yeun let the phone deactivate.

“Do you want to try again?” he offered, as she stared at the phone in her lap.

“What’s the point?” Erika said slowly. “If they pick up, they’re gonna ask questions, and you’re gonna cut me off.”

“Wouldn’t you like to hear their voices?” Yeun said. “It may comfort you.”

Erika glared at the cannula in her arm. “What do you care?”

But neither of them moved. She didn’t offer up the phone, and Yeun didn’t take it from her.

Finally, she extended it. “Forget it. I’m too tired now.”

“Maybe we’ll try again later,” Yeun said, accepting the phone. “When you’re feeling better.”

“Yeah,” Davenport leaned back and closed her eyes wearily. “Sure.”

“I’ll get you some coffee,” he said, taking his leave.

+

CHAPTER SIXTEEN—MORALE

James planned to head to Larkspur early Saturday morning to continue work, but the afternoon was in full swing by the time he regained consciousness. His throat felt like flaming sandpaper, and his head throbbed against hot, congested sinuses. When he finally dared to roll over and look at the clock, he cringed at what he read.

“No…” he moaned, burying his face into his pillow, only to lift it out again because he couldn’t breathe.

James rolled over and ran a hand through his bedhead and relaxed his arm with an exasperated sigh. Staring blearily at the ceiling, he considered taking the day off.

But he got up. He took a heavy dose of vitamin C, downed revolting liquid cold medicine, and planted himself at the kitchen table. He spent what was left of the afternoon with his laptop and his notes, consuming a nearly constant supply of tea as he wrote programs for the scanner and its various parts.

These components would detect the individual to be transferred, copy their organic neural network and send the information to the mechanical network to be electrically reconstructed. A collection of devices attached to the head would then transfer everything over while commanding and absorbing all the electrical signals at once, shutting down the organic brain as the mechanical network activated.

The transfer itself was the persistent question of plausibility, but he was finally beginning to feel like he was pinning it down.

+

Again, James was absent from the group come lunch hour. He had been doing this for two weeks straight, but none of his colleagues seemed surprised.

“It’s a known habit.” Chelo said simply when Heather mentioned it.

“Do you think he gets lonely down there?” Heather asked.

“Doubt it,” Greg said. “You’ve seen him when he’s working.” He tapped the side of his head. “Nothing else exists.”

Chelo nodded. “He’ll be social if he wants.”

“Sometimes he surprises you,” Greg agreed.

“But he has been particularly keyed up lately,” Addie said.

Heather glanced at her dad, who replied as nonchalantly as he could, “He’s working on a personal project. I’ve granted him use of the equipment for it.”

“He’s running himself into the ground again,” Eve murmured, concerned.

“He’ll grow out of it in a year or two,” Chelo said.

Heather stood up. “I think I’ll go see what he’s up to.”

As Heather slipped down the staircase, she heard Greg say, “So, a side project, huh? What is it this time?”

James wasn’t in either lab. Heather found him at a spare counter in the back of the equipment room. She knocked softly on the door. James straightened up and twisted around. She worried he might be cross to have been caught off guard again, but he just looked at her, inquisitive.

“Hi,” she said quietly. “I thought I might keep you company, if that’s all right.”

James’ expression lowered a bit in suspicion. He blinked, then shrugged as he returned to his work. “Sure, I guess. Not much to see today.”

“That’s okay.” Heather ventured closer. His hands were inside a metal, rectangular container the size of a breadbox, attaching pre-fabricated inner components.

He groped for the tissue box and managed to catch a sneeze. His shoulders slumped.

Heather smirked. “You made yourself sick, didn’t you?”

“It’s on its way out,” he said, indifferent. He still sounded stuffed up.

“You should go home and rest, James.”

“No thanks.”

She watched him in silence for a while, trying to guess the connection between the wire-laden chips, the square device he had worked on the week before, and this box. “Is this still a secret?”

“…That depends.”

“On what?”

He didn’t look up. “On how open your mind is.”

“It’s super open,” she insisted. She pulled a granola bar from her sweater pocket. “I won’t make a big deal about it or anything. I know it’s really important to you, but that Dad must have been discouraging. I won’t tell anyone without your permission.” She placed the bar on the counter. “I’m safe. You can tell me.”

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he considered her offering. “Is this a bribe?”

“No.” Heather crossed her arms, her face flushed. “I just figured you might be hungry, skipping lunch and all.”

He remained very still for a few moments, staring at the bar. He looked up at her, and Heather was surprised by how vulnerable he appeared in that moment. “You swear?”

“I absolutely swear.”

He hesitated again. Then, finally. “Okay.” He picked up a fine-tipped screwdriver to continue working. “I call it ‘organorobotic transference…’ It’s a means of consciousness transfer, from an organic vessel to a mechanical replacement.”

Heather blinked. She hadn’t been expected something that drastic. “You mean like body switching?”

“Yeah…to be used clinically to prevent premature death.” He crossed his arms, his shoulders tense. Did he really care what she thought? “Like as a last resort, a failsafe.”

“Sounds neat,” Heather said.

He paused, surprised. “Really?”

“Of course,” she said warmly. “How far along are you?”

“Pretty close with the first prototype, actually,” he said. A shy smile brightened his face.

“How’s it work?”

He fumbled, but once he started talking, it all started spilling out. He even explained technical jargon he might not have in his usual, guarded state, as if he really wanted her to understand the process, how possible it was.

She was beyond impressed, but mainly, she was just happy he was finally talking to her.

At first, he was apprehensive, but as Heather asked thoughtful questions instead of backing away, his posture straightened and he became more animated.

“What inspired you to tackle something like this?” Heather asked.

James blanched. “Is it okay if I don’t answer that?”

Dread stirred in Heather’s stomach, concerned for James’ health and safety, but she said. “Yeah, that’s okay.”

And for whatever reason, that final piece disarmed him completely. A weight seemed to lift off his shoulders, and for the first time since their conversation on the airplane, she saw her presence was welcome.

+

A few days later, James was back to full health and able to resume neglecting his body’s basic needs in favor of work. As he opened the door to his office, Heather flitted into the hallway. “Good morning!”

He returned the greeting much more quietly as he entered his office. He set his briefcase on the desk. “Hey, look.” He bobbed up a small paper bag. “Food. Aren’t you proud?”

Heather smiled. “So proud.”

“Oh, and I finished the scanner last night and made good headway on some of the accessory devices.” He couldn’t help smiling back. He hadn’t expected how good it would feel to have someone to share his victories with, instead of getting stuck in his own head. Perhaps he should have trusted her earlier. “I should be able to finish it soon.”

“That’s great,” Heather said. “Dad says he has to stay late tonight to finish the weekly report for the Bureau. Can I hang out with you after work?”

He hesitated. “Fine with me, but you should ask your dad first.”

+

“Will it hurt?” Heather watched as James connected wires to an adapter and plugged the setup into his laptop. The wires ended in two electrodes and a small, rectangular device.

“No,” he said. “These are just brain wave sensors.” He stuck the electrodes on his forehead and held the additional device to the back of his head. “I wish I could’ve made this full-sized so I could really see how well it works—but that would take too long, as size-specific as this part of the project is.”

He pressed the spacebar on his keyboard. A suite of windows popped up on the screen. On a black bar across the top, a white line carved a variable path along the centerline as signals registered from the electrodes. A window in the lower right corner displayed a blurry visual replication of the laptop, translating visual information James’ brain was currently processing. Error messages barred the other windows.

Heather intently looked between James and the screen. “Woah.”

James’ brow furrowed as he moved the sensor and watched the signal waver and cut out. He put the receiver above his ear, and the occipital window lost signal while another labeled Temporal began transmitting a subdued mix of waves and hazy shapes. Continuing to move the device, he was able to generate transmission for two more windows, but not all of them.

“Because the receiver’s so small, the signal’s narrow and weak,” he commented, half to himself. “And I’m only getting information from the cerebral cortex.” He sighed, closing out the program and pulling the electrodes off his forehead. “I can’t wait to make the real thing.” He considered building larger, more powerful sensors just to have on hand for the eventuality, but it would take too much time.

“Did you feel anything when those things were on your head?” Heather asked. Her cell phone chimed beside her.

James rubbed his hand over the top of his head, where he had last held the device. “Yeah, it’s a little like pins and needles.”

“Weird.” She scrolled her phone’s touch screen and tapped back a reply. “Dad’s ready to go.” She hopped off the counter and headed for the door, swinging back around. “Thanks for letting me bug you for a while, James.” She hesitated, smiling. “And for letting me in. It means a lot.”

James blinked, surprised and a little embarrassed.

“Yeah—no problem,” he fumbled.

Heather beamed. “Later.”

“Bye.” He closed his laptop and stood up to locate his supplies for the targeting system, which would read and process a sample of DNA to ensure the machine locked on the correct subject.

“Thanks for taking such interest,” he murmured with a soft smile.

+

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—PROPOSITION

James was well immersed in programming Sunday afternoon, tucked away in a silent corner of the lab with all the completed structures sprawled before him when his cell phone startled him.

Private caller, the caller ID reported, with no number.

“Hello?” He answered it grudgingly, prepared to hang up.

“Hello. Is this Dr. James Siles?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“My name is Michael Benson,” the man explained coolly. “I am the director of Empetrum, another laboratory under the Federal Bureau of Science and Innovation, same as Larkspur. We’re very impressed with your work, and I wanted to extend an opportunity to you, if I may claim a moment of your time?”

“Oh. Thank you.” James straightened up. “How have you heard of my work?”

“Through the Bureau, of course.”

“Oh, of course. You have my attention, sir.”

“Wonderful.”

James reached over and grabbed his project notebook, opening it to a blank page as Benson continued, “Empetrum’s research spans biochemisty as well as engineering. One of the head scientists in our biorobotics division resigned, and that position isn’t something we can offer to just anyone. We’ve heard of your brilliant innovations and tireless work ethic, and it sounds like you’re exactly what Empetrum needs. I would like to offer you a position here, if you’re interested. You would have your own personal lab and complete creative freedom, as well as a considerable raise.”

“Thank you,” James said, taken aback. “Excuse my hesitance, but I’ve never heard anything about Empetrum before…”

“I appreciate your caution,” Benson said. “As you know, Larkspur has spent most of its life hidden from the public. Empetrum’s work is even more federally sensitive, so for extra security, it has been concealed from even your branch of Larkspur. However, I have clearance to reach out to you specifically, to see that you have continued opportunity to flourish. Director Brophy has expressed misgiving about your recent project, hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” James admitted, his eyebrows lowered. Had Richard seriously told on him to the Bureau about his personal project? Benson couldn’t have known about it otherwise.

“Does it worry you?” Benson asked.

“It does,” James said. “But Brophy has given me permission to pursue it. He wouldn’t arrange to rescind it without telling me…”

“Would he?”

James hesitated. Maybe if Richard worried James’ project would ultimately endanger himself or his peers, he would change his mind.

But Richard trusted him. He would never allow his daughter to be alone with James in a soundproof lab if he believed he was unstable.

“At Empetrum, you’d have been encouraged to work on it during business hours, and receive pay for your efforts.”

Benson’s words sank in like an anchor drop. James had repeatedly run himself into the ground trying to balance this project with work over the last few weeks. Maybe he wouldn’t have burnt himself preparing the power core if he hadn’t had to do it in isolation. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten sick. It hurt to be awake, and he felt like he was losing his mind at the pace he had been going.

“I know how suspicious an unexpected solicitation like this must be,” Benson added. “Please contact the Bureau yourself to put your mind at ease.”

“I will,” James said. “And I’ll be sure to consider your offer.”

“Great. Take all the time you need,” Benson said. “Give me a call at this number when you’ve made your decision. And please don’t discuss this with anyone.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

“My pleasure. I hope to speak with you again soon, Dr. Siles.”

When the call ended, James set his phone aside. He rested his elbows on the counter and laced his fingers under his nose, narrowing his eyes at the wall.

His own lab. Complete creative freedom. Richard wasn’t aware of what the project meant to him, but James certainly felt stifled by his reservations. Finally, he could admit it to himself.

And perhaps his project wasn’t as secure under Larkspur as he had hoped.

+

After over fifteen hours of exhaustive programming, all components were finally connected, calibrated, and ready to test. James wanted to run the conversion procedure at least once before heading home to pass out.

The scanner whirred softly from the counter. The program stood open on the screen of his laptop, which he had modified in his spare time before moving to Worthing to wield much more power than the average computer. The power core rested nearby, attached to the scanner with four thickly insulated wires.

James selected a command from the program on his screen: Input Target. A panel slid out from the scanner’s flank, light glinting off the polished metal disk inside.

He disinfected a needle he had pilfered from a repair kit in his sock drawer, using it to draw blood from one of his fingers.

He pulled a hair from his head, checked for the follicle, and set it in the scanner. He closed the lid and again attended to the computer. Target. The machine hummed as a blue light roved inside, leaking slightly from underneath the lid.

An image of the hair with the base highlighted materialized on his laptop screen, along with the prompt, Confirm Target?

Yes. The window retreated to the back of the others, and James unchecked a box at the top of the command window, fading out an entire section having to do with the neurological transfer. A pop-up requested confirmation. He was only testing the matter-to-energy conversion.

Ready for conversion. The button became a loading bar after he selected it, and the machine’s humming grew more decisive. James reached aside and strapped on protective goggles.

Ready. The bar filled with green. A corresponding green light flicked on near the base of the scanner.

Begin Conversion.

The machine eased into action, the humming growing louder but muffled by the tightly clamped lid. Despite his already established confidence in the core’s stability, he closed the doors around the lab.

The lights dimmed as the smooth metal box emitted sharp snapping sounds and electricity surged through the wires into the dormant cube attached to them. James watched breathlessly. The conversion took only a few seconds, as the mass was small.

Conversion Complete, a pop-up on his computer said. He returned to the scanner in anticipation, waiting for the humming to cease before undoing the warm clasps. Nothing remained between the concave surfaces of the scanner. The power core reported the additional energy.

James closed his eyes. Burying a relieved hand in his hair, he tipped a haggard smile toward the ceiling. He exhaled heavily, then moved to pack up and head home.

+