CHAPTER 05
To the east, the sky turned pink, and then yellow.
The sun slowly rose over the dense green canopy of the forest, and the ribbons of dark water below. Mist rose from the river. A large white bird, a crane, left its hiding spot along the shoreline, and flapping its mighty wings, glided along the surface of the water.
Somewhere, a cock crowed, and further away, a dog howled in response. There were people living near here, though you would never guess it.
Nine crouched in the underbrush set back from a narrow, two-lane blacktop road. She had ditched the boat in the swamps sometime during the night. Then she had waded through standing water and across open land. Now she was here, and she was in trouble. Her battery was low. She didn’t know if the water had gotten to it, or if Darryl’s EMP had drained it, or if it was low for some other reason.
There was a red light blinking behind her eyes. She could see it there. It was an icon, shaped like an empty dry cell battery. It was annoying, first of all. But it was also a sign that she was running down. She needed to get somewhere so she could charge her battery back up. She didn’t know where that would be. If she ran all the way down, she was sunk. Immortality was fraught with dangers - ones she had never considered.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. The sky was busy with drones. She could see them up there, robots with mounted cameras, controlled from a remote location, buzzing around like giant insects. Some were high in the air, but a few were just above the tree line. They were looking for her.
If they spotted her, the best thing that could happen was they’d take a picture. But it wouldn’t surprise her if the drones were armed. It wouldn’t surprise her if they just blew her away. Clearly, that was the company’s intention.
She stayed low in the bushes. Her mini-dress was soaked through. It clung to her body, leaving nothing to the imagination. In a way, it felt sexy. But this wasn’t the time to feel sexy. Nor the place.
She still had Darryl’s rifle. It had gotten wet, and she had no idea if it would fire now or not. There were limits to Susan’s knowledge about guns. She did know that it had no sound suppressor, so if she did end up firing it, and if it worked, it was going to make a hell of a lot of noise.
She felt the possibilities narrowing for her. It was going to be very hard to escape from here. Daylight was coming. She was dressed for a wet t-shirt contest. Her battery was running down, and there was a ticking time bomb inside her. The drones were hunting her from the sky.
A car was coming.
She heard it before she saw it. It had the low rumble of a car with a big engine. Somewhere up this road, a car was cruising along, coming slow. She watched for it.
There were two choices: hide from it, or reveal herself. If it was a company car, then the game was over. If it was a civilian car, some passerby, then she was still alive for the time being. Darryl’s face flashed across her databanks. It was his face as he lay dying in the bottom of the boat. She felt a pang of regret. Without knowing it, she had put Darryl in terrible danger. She would put the next person’s life on the line knowing full well what she was doing.
Still, her instinct, like that of all living things, was to survive.
Here came the car. Her distance vision was exceptional, several times better than a human’s. The car didn’t look like a company car. It looked like a sports car. The emblem on the front grille was of a wild horse running.
She checked the sky. There were no black spots in sight, at least for the moment. She stepped out into the road. She put a long, sexy leg out, and her thumb. Her high breasts pressed forward, her nipples starkly visible against the thin, flimsy fabric of her soaked dress.
She kept the rifle draped along the back curve of her body, out of sight.
The car pulled up. It was a black Ford Mustang, a newer one, in excellent condition. The driver’s window powered down. A man was at the wheel. He was ruggedly handsome, with deep blue eyes. He had a two-day growth of beard.
Nine recognized the type. He looked like a movie actor, or a man from a cigarette advertisement. She was designed to be attracted to all men and women, but some more than others. Her body naturally responded to people that others would find attractive. An electric current of excitement passed through her. She hoped it wouldn’t drain her battery faster.
The man smiled. “Hello, beautiful,” he said. “Need a ride?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
He looked her body up and down. “Where to?” His smile became even broader. His teeth were white and perfectly straight.
In one fluid motion, she whipped the rifle around from behind her back and pointed it at his head. The barrel rested along her arm. Her finger rested on the trigger.
She smiled back. “Wherever you’re going.”
* * *
Mr. Blue woke with a start.
He had been dreaming. His father was put away for good by the time Blue was eight years old. And his mother had taken on a string of bad boyfriends. One of them, Mel, was the last one. Mel used to beat Blue with his belt. But Blue was growing up. By the time he was fourteen, he was as big and tough as almost any man. Mel was too much of a drunk to get the memo.
Blue dreamed it exactly how he remembered it. Big Mel, with the bald head and the hairy chest, in his white sleeveless t-shirt, had come for Blue with the belt. Blue wrestled the belt away from him, and then he beat Mel down. Mel ended up on the floor, wedged in the over-sized space between the refrigerator and the wall.
Blue towered over him. “Get up,” he said. “And get out of my house.”
As the images faded from his mind, Blue could still hear his mom crying in the background. He blinked his eyes several times and shook his head.
It was morning. He was lying under the sheets of a king-sized platform bed. Bright sunlight streamed in through tall windows. On two sides of him, those windows gave him a sweeping view of the high-rise towers of downtown, as well as the harbor front. He was high above it all.
How long had he slept? Not long, maybe half an hour. Even that was too long. He was lucky to be alive, falling asleep like that.
They had given him a Suncoast corporate guest suite. When officials from the Pentagon came to town, these suites were where they slept. When corporate high-rollers flew in to buy fleets of the newest-generation Sexbots to hand out to their best people, this was where they stayed. The general managers of professional sports teams slept here, as did the special assistant to the Sultan of Brunei.
It wasn’t a place where Blue usually slept. The company didn’t often acknowledge their relationships with people like Blue. The Blues of this world were phantoms. They didn’t exist. Suncoast didn’t deal in espionage and murder. Suncoast most certainly did not murder its own employees.
All the same, Blue knew they didn’t put him here as a reward. The job was a disaster. The story line was now outside their control. Suncoast liked to work in the dark. And suddenly, everything had exploded into the light.
Not good. Not what the company paid people like Blue for. They paid people like Blue to do things very quietly. In this case, that had failed. Now they were hiding him. Later today, they would whisk him to a private airstrip outside town, and fly him to a company compound in the Bahamas. After that, who knew? Wherever he wanted to go, or so they said.
Blue didn’t believe a word of it. He reached under his pillow. His gun was there. It was a Glock, nine-millimeter, 17 shots in the magazine, fully-loaded. He had no idea if this gun would be enough to get him out of here.
A disturbing thought swam to the surface of Blue’s mind. It wasn’t the first time this particular thought had come to him. He was 45. He might be too old for this line of work. He’d been slow terminating Susan Jones yesterday. He had almost gotten killed twice himself.
Also, he had let Green get destroyed.
He smiled. He had never really liked Green. Talk about a robot with no personality? That was Green in a nutshell.
Even so, maybe it was time to retire. He had some money. He could buy a little beachfront shack on the Pacific Coast in Nicaragua, and spend his days selling ham sandwiches and beer to the surfers.
It sounded nice, but…
He rolled out of bed, nude, and padded with gun in hand to the doorway. He didn’t have anything to wear. They had taken his jumpsuit from last night and were supposed to bring him some clothes this morning.
He pressed a button on the wall and the bedroom door slid open. He stepped into the doorway, but let his gun hand stay back behind the wall.
Three men stood in his living room. They were in a tight circle, whispering together. They looked up when Blue appeared. They seemed surprised to see him, or maybe embarrassed. Blue was the one who was nude, but they looked like they had been caught doing something they shouldn’t.
Blue knew now why he had awakened. Even in sleep, he must have heard these guys come in. They were big guys, almost identical in bearing. Ex-high school athletes. They all wore sports jackets and slacks. They had crew cuts.
One of them was older, with a mustache. He was heavier set, his face lined with experience. He might even be Blue’s age. He would be the one in charge.
“You guys have a change of clothes for me?” Blue said.
“Well,” the boss said, and he smiled. It was a sheepish, shit-eating grin. “There’s been a change of plans.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
All three men raised guns.
Blue swung his gun around and fired it before the men got off a shot. One shot - he put a bullet right between the boss’s eyes. A red dot of blood appeared on the guy’s forehead. He stood still for one second, then dropped to the floor, dead before he hit the carpet.
Blue fired three times at the other guys, but they had already dived for cover. He missed all three shots. He ducked back into the bedroom.
A second later, a volley of return fire splintered the walls at the threshold. Blue backed away, waited a beat, then wrapped his gun hand around the doorway. He fired three more times.
He had already fired seven times. Seven shots down, ten to go. He took a deep breath. He needed to slow down for a second and think. If these guys called for back-up, he was finished. It was all on him. They could sit in the living room and wait him out. He was the one who had to get out of here.
A new volley of shots came, ripping up the doorway again. Blue dropped back. The shooting went on for a long time. Finally, it stopped.
He hesitated, but only for a second. Things could only get worse the longer he hung around this bedroom. If it was time to go, then it was time to go. He squatted, hearing his knees creak as he did, then he rolled into the living room. He came up on one knee.
A guy leaned against the side wall, like he was hiding. Not much cover there. Who were these guys? Blue put three bullets in him. The guy fell over, holding his guts. He disappeared behind a sofa. Blue fired three more shots through the sofa.
Thirteen shots down. Four to go.
The third guy was not here. Blue stood and walked over to the sofa. He glanced behind it. The guy he’d shot lay there, still alive, breathing heavily. His chest gave mighty heaves. He was shot through with holes. His suit was stained with blood. His teeth were gritted. He looked up at Blue.
“Listen,” he said, gasping for breath.
“Sorry. No time for chatter today.”
Blue shot him in the head. The skull popped apart, spraying blood and bone.
Now Blue glanced around. He had three shots left. He should crouch down and take this guy’s gun, but he didn’t dare do it. He had to finish the job first. He almost - almost - gave a thought to Howard. Treacherous Howard, who had sent these idiots in here to kill him. Blue supposed that the five million dollar payout for bringing back Number Nine was out of the question at this point.
Howard could wait.
Blue moved through the beautiful apartment, sleek, nude, gun out, in the shooter’s stance he had learned in FBI training so long ago.
That guy had to be here somewhere.
Blue kicked in a bathroom door. Toilet, sink, glass shower. No one in there. He kept moving. He recognized how important time was.
He turned a corner.
A gun appeared from his right. He saw it in his peripheral vision, saw it and didn’t really see it. He spun, too late.
The man had hidden in a tiny alcove. It was a good spot. He put the gun to Blue’s head. Blue reached for it. He was half a second too late.
The man pulled the trigger.
Click.
Nothing happened.
It was a kid, maybe twenty-five years old. His face had barely seen a razor. His eyes were hard, but they were lying eyes.
The kid pulled the trigger again.
Click.
What was this, training day?
Blue shook his head, then pointed his own gun at the kid’s face. The gun’s muzzle was three inches from the kid’s forehead.
The kid dropped his weapon.
“You see what happened here,” Blue said, “is you got in a gunfight, but you didn’t count your shots. You lost your head a little bit. So you ran out of bullets, and you didn’t know it. You’ve had all this time hiding back here while I’ve been wandering around the apartment, and you could have reloaded. But you didn’t.”
He shrugged. “It’s the kind of thing that comes with experience.”
The kid smiled. “You don’t want to give me another try, do you?”
Blue pulled the trigger, point blank range. The kid’s face imploded. Blood and bone sprayed the white wall behind him. The kid’s big body dropped to the floor. The bullet had put a whale of a ragged hole in the drywall.
“Nope,” Blue said.
He padded back toward the living room. He had two shots left in his own gun. Pretty good for an old man. Still, if the kid had been thinking, Blue would be dead now. He was still alive because of luck.
He looked down at the boss man, the dead guy with the mustache. Sports jacket, slacks, dress shirt, leather loafers. He bent down near the body. That outfit looked like it might be a fit. What’s more, the guy had dropped so quickly, he hadn’t gotten blood on any of it.
“What do you run in jacket size?” he said to the dead man. “About a 48 long?”
* * *
Howard sat in his living room, wrapped in a thick blue terrycloth robe. He felt like he was coming down with something, maybe a cold, maybe bronchitis. He was under a lot of stress.
It was a new day, and out his windows, the beach looked very, very inviting. Not that he was going to be on the beach today. It was aggravating. And it was all Blue’s fault. Well, it was the last time Blue was going to fuck up, at least that much was certain. By now, Blue was either dead, or about to be.
The giant flat panel TV on the wall was on, showing advertisements during a break in the news. Howard was surrounded by people. Ed Morgan from public relations was here. He’d brought with him a woman, a consultant, Howard didn’t know her name. He’d also brought a couple of his staff members. There were a couple of guys from the legal department. A guy from government relations. A couple of secretaries jotting down notes. Three Sexbots, Howard’s favorites, draped on various pieces of furniture.
There was too much chatter. A lot of people were talking at once. On the TV, a news woman came on. Below her face, little newsy updates were scrolling along from right to left.
Missing scientist was Sexbot inventor…
Howard raised a hand. “Can everybody shut the fuck up? Please?”
The chatter died down a bit, but there was still a low buzz.
“Shut up, I said.”
“If you’re just joining us,” the anchorwoman said, “the big news this morning is a shootout during the overnight hours that left nine members of a security team from local corporation Suncoast Cybernetics dead. Details are sketchy at the moment, but the security detail was apparently sent to the North Port area home of this man, Darryl Blauer, a former United States Marine with two tours of duty in Afghanistan.”
Blauer’s face appeared on the screen. There were two images, a young Blauer in his Marine uniform, and a mugshot of an older, disfigured Blauer after an arrest.
“Blauer is the primary suspect in the disappearance of 33-year-old robotics scientist Susan Jones, who sources say may have been the inventor of the popular Sexbot line of robot sex toys. Sources say that Blauer, a Florida native and an expert backwoodsman, should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. He may be in possession of advanced, top-secret robotic equipment.”
Howard threw his hands in the air. “Who are these sources? Have we said anything? We’re the only source. I mean, for the love of God, people.”
A photo of Susan appeared on the screen. Howard stared at it. She was in her cap and gown from her graduation at MIT. Howard had recruited her right out of school. She started working at Suncoast two weeks after that picture was taken. Howard felt something looking at that photo. He wasn’t sure how he would describe the feeling.
He would like to talk to Susan again, if only one more time. She had been a nice girl once, and over the years, she really became kind of a raging bitch. It was like she thought she had built this company, and that she was the one who was somehow irreplaceable. She’d found out the hard way that it wasn’t so.
“See, Susan?” he’d say to her. “I was the one who mattered.”
On the screen, the focus shifted to a panel of experts.
“Suncoast says this is a simple sex toy,” said a bald man in a speckled yellow bowtie. “But they’re not convincing anyone. With all the explosions and the gunfights, there’s talk starting about the military applications of some of these Suncoast robots.”
“Notice how they suspect one of their scientists has been murdered, but they don’t call the police,” said a woman in a powder blue suit. “Instead, they send in their own security force. What are they hiding?”
“That’s my point,” said the bowtie man. “We’re talking about a very secretive company here, which has sold more than a million sex toy robots worldwide in the past ten years, the highest-end models retailing for nearly $200,000 each.”
The screen changed to a well-appointed living room full of Sexbots, standing and sitting in various states of undress, walking around, mingling with each other. Howard watched in disbelief. That scene was from an internal corporate video. Where did a TV station get their hands on that?
The bowtie man went on. “We’re talking about billions of dollars in revenue. Plus those military contracts - no one knows the value of those, because the company won’t share their client list or any contract details. But my sources tell me that Suncoast is one of the biggest suppliers of advanced robot soldiers to the Pentagon, for starters, and might also be selling robotics to third world dictators and possibly, Mexican drug cartels. This is a company that’s becoming a law unto itself.”
The chatter in the room erupted again. Howard felt a headache coming on.
“This is a nightmare,” he said.
One of the public relations flacks, a fat young guy named Rob who was always sweaty and who looked like he was being choked to death by his own necktie, spoke up.
“Howard, I don’t see what the big problem is here.”
Howard shook his head. “What?”
Rob shrugged, the flesh of his neck jiggling. “I don’t see the problem.”
Howard took a deep breath.
“Let me see if I can explain it for you, Rob. The problem is we’ve got a missing scientist, nine dead security guards, and a rogue Sexbot that has apparently decided to start blowing things up all over town. And we have this in a very public way. Mr. and Mrs. Mainstream America don’t like to hear about corporate armies with top secret technology while having their morning eye-opener. It gives them the tiniest hint at how far things have moved toward a world they might not like to live in.”
Rob was undeterred. He waved a meaty hand. “Right. So let’s give them a world they do want to live in. Listen, this is a great opportunity to change the conversation. Suncoast has too low a profile. I’ve been saying that for years. You can’t buy this kind of media attention, Howard. I promise you, in the next week you’re going to see a spike in sales like you’ve never seen. People are going to be talking about this company. You know what we need to come out with now? We need a Sexbot for the common man. Something that costs like, I don’t know, five hundred or maybe a thousand dollars. Do we have anything like that in the works?”
Howard looked at him. “No.”
Phones were ringing all over the room. A brown-haired Sexbot answered one of them, a classic old rotary-dial that sat on one of the end tables. “Howard, it’s Councilman Mitchell’s office,” the Sexbot said. Her voice was so sultry that Howard longed for some alone time with her.
“Yeah, what do they want?”
“With all the media attention, they want to know if you’re still having people over tonight.” The Sexbot listened to the phone again. “The Masked Ball. Is it still on?”
Howard smiled. “Of course. We never cancel a party.”
Another Sexbot, this one a curly blonde, came over and handed Howard a mobile phone. She didn’t say anything as she handed it to him.
“Hello,” he said.
“There was an accident,” a voice said.
“Tell me,” Howard said.
“The Blue Man,” the voice said. Howard waited, expecting the next words to be: “He didn’t make it.”
But those weren’t the next words. The next words that came were, “He left the building.”
“What?” Howard said. “He left the building? What about the Three Wise Men?”
“They didn’t make it.”
Howard stared at the phone. Could it be right, the thing this person was saying? Had Blue just killed three company assassins? If it were true, it was the worst news he’d had all day. Mr. Blue roaming around in a good mood was bad enough. Blue out there in the world, whereabouts unknown, and in a bad mood? That was reason enough to declare a state of emergency.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Howard said.
“We were, too.”
Howard hung up the phone.
All around him, people clamored for his attention. The room took on a surreal cast. He half-expected these people, his people, to begin removing the human masks from their faces, revealing mechanical clockworks beneath. They jabbered at him, their mouths huge, like the mouths of great white sharks, their teeth like the blades of an electric saw.
“Howard,” they said.
“Howard… Howard… Howard.”
He pulled his fuzzy robe tighter to his body. He gazed out the window at the sun-dappled ocean. Maybe he needed a vacation.
“Howard!”
* * *
Blue stood on a busy street corner in downtown Sarasota, wearing the sports jacket, slacks, dress shirt and shoes of a recently deceased gunman. The clothes fit him okay. And the guy had decent taste. The jacket and the slacks were Brooks Brothers. The shoes were Italian loafers.
Nice.
Still, out in the open like this, Blue felt like he was wearing a big red target on his back. He half expected a bullet at any moment.
A taxi slowed down as it approached. Blue gave it a brief wave, and it pulled over to the curb. He slid into the back seat.
“Long Boat Key,” he said to the driver, a man of vague Middle-eastern descent. Blue looked at the identification card on the back of the driver’s seat. He didn’t see anything there that suggested the driver was anybody but who he claimed to be.
“You like your work?” Blue said.
The driver shrugged, and pulled out into traffic. “Except for the old people in the big Cadillacs, I like it,” the man said, with only a hint of an accent. Blue guessed that he’d come to the United States as a teenager. “They drive like it’s bumper cars out here.”
Blue took a deep breath and relaxed into the seat. This guy was a cab driver, nothing more, nothing less. Blue felt a little better now that he was off the street. He could take a moment to reflect.
The company had tried to kill him. That was bad. And by now, they knew he was still alive. They would come after him.
He could run. He had just over $500 in his pocket, also a gift from the dead man. The guy wouldn’t need the money any more. Blue also had an account in Miami. It was a safe deposit box with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, plus a hundred thousand dollars in bearer bonds, and two new identities - social security cards, driver’s licenses, the works. The key to the box was in an apartment in Miami Beach.
If he gave this cab driver the $500 in his pocket, and the promise of a thousand more when they got there, he was sure the man would drive him the 200 miles to Miami, then wait for him while he stepped inside the bank.
Yes, he could run. That would be the safest thing to do, his surest bet. He could be in Brazil, or Greece, or South Africa, in a day or two. He could lay low, let things blow over. Put a feeler out to Howard in a couple of months, see how the big dog was feeling about the whole thing.
On the other hand, the company had tried to kill him. Mr. Blue. After all he’d done for them? And in this case, it wasn’t really the company. It was Howard. Howard had tried to kill Blue. You couldn’t just let that float. You didn’t run away from something like that. You ran right at it.
Also, there was this situation with Number Nine. Nine was almost certainly dead by now, and if she wasn’t, the bomb would kill her tonight. But what if it didn’t? What if at this time tomorrow, Nine was somehow still alive?
He and Number Nine had some unfinished business. He felt it. That little interaction in the motel was more than sexual. It was… explosive. Intense. She had murdered Green right in the middle of it. She had almost murdered Blue.
That made her a lot like Blue, didn’t it? Ready for action. Ready for whatever came along. And in a sense, Mr. Blue had created Nine, hadn’t he? The scientist would never have taken the chance to download herself if Blue hadn’t come to murder her.
Blue hadn’t murdered Susan Jones. Not really. He had given her a new, better life as Number Nine.
That sealed it. He would stay in town for now. He would go to Howard’s party tonight, if it was still happening, and see what was shaking. If he could, he would find Nine. Hell, maybe he would capture her and sell her to the highest bidder. She was a live person inside a robot - that had to be worth real money. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t sell her. Maybe he would… do something else with her.
In the meantime, outside of a few minutes shut-eye before this most recent shootout, he hadn’t slept in nearly two days. He needed sleep, and a safe place to do it.
The cab cruised across the tall bridge to Longboat Key. Blue gazed out at the sky and the water. Now that he felt a little more relaxed, he could almost fall asleep in this car. Just close his eyes and let the motion rock him to sleep.
“Where are we going?” the cabbie said.
“Just drive,” Blue said. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
* * *
Nine stood inside the man’s house.
It was a beautiful, modern, open design, split-level home. It stood on stilts above a stretch of waterway, surrounded by dense forest growth. The living room had huge windows, catching a southwest exposure and a view of a bend in the river. It was like living in a tree house.
She had brought him in here at gunpoint, but the man didn’t seem to mind. She still held the rifle, but he was in his kitchen, puttering around with pots and pans. The burners were built into a counter that faced outward. The effect of it was he could cook and talk to her directly at the same time.
He wore blue jeans and a tight blue t-shirt that showed off his lean muscles. The shirt said YOGA MAN across the front. He wore sandals on his feet.
He looked across at her. “Can I interest you in some eggs?” he said. “Coffee?”
“That’s okay,” Nine said. “I don’t…” What was she going to say? I don’t eat? Yes, she had very nearly said that. Inside her eyes, the red battery light was blinking. It was going very fast. She was about to run down.
She felt tired. She hadn’t slept at all last night. That shouldn’t matter. She was a machine. She thought about the chimps, the ones inside the Sexbots in the monkey facility up in South Carolina. They would sleep. Maybe not like they once had, but they definitely slept. The machine didn’t need it. The psyche did. That was the theory she and Martin had come up with.
“Would you like to take a shower?” the man said. “I promise I won’t touch your gun.”
She looked at the gun in her hand as if seeing it for the first time. It was a little embarrassing that she had held him at gunpoint.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “I just…”
He raised a casual hand. “Don’t worry about it. It happens to me once or twice a week. A beautiful girl wearing next to nothing flags me down on the road, then pulls out a machine gun. I’m used to it by now. Usually, they kidnap me, rather than bring me straight home.”
Nine smiled. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like a movie star?”
He shrugged. “The kidnappers do. That’s generally why they kidnap me. They say I look like that Irish actor Colin Farrell. Most times, I end up letting them have their way with me.”
Nine thought about it. Sure, Colin Farrell, that seemed about right. Shouldn’t let it go his head, though.
“Do you need anything at all?” he said to her. “A sweater, some shoes, maybe a nuclear bomb?”
“Do you have a computer?” she said. “I need to check my email.”
He gestured at a door across the living room from her. “In there. That’s my little at-home office.”
Nine headed for the room. She was running out of time.
“My name is Michael,” the man called after her. “Do you have a name?”
She didn’t turn around. “Believe me when I say you’re better off not knowing it.”
Inside the room, Nine found a laptop on a clear Lucite desk. The office itself was spare, with polished simulated wooden floors, and a sky light overhead. The desk platform was high off the ground, and there was no chair. This guy was one of those stand-up-at-work people. When Nine was Susan, she couldn’t understand how they ever got any work done. Susan couldn’t concentrate when standing.
But Nine didn’t need to concentrate. What she needed was to recharge. The red light behind her eyes was going so fast, it was barely blinking any more. Once it went to solid red, she would have real trouble.
On her right forearm, up by her elbow, was a barely noticeable crevice about a quarter of an inch long. She stuck the thumbnail of her left hand into the crevice, and pulled. It took a moment, and a little more pressure than was comfortable, but she pried open a compartment that wasn’t obviously there a moment before.
Inside was a black wire, coiled tight, with a USB plug at the end of it. She pulled the wire out and unwound it. She felt along the edges of the laptop until she found a USB port. She plugged herself in. It was rudimentary, but it would have to do.
A window appeared on the laptop screen.
There were numerous options she could choose. She could do a systems check. She could look at some usage data. She could reboot. She could re-charge. Indeed, the system was prompting her to re-charge.
“Power is critically low,” it said in red letters. “Sexbot will power down soon to preserve system integrity. Click here to re-charge.”
She clicked on re-charge. An empty progress bar appeared. A green field, which indicated power, was a tiny vertical slice all the way to the left. Gradually, as the system powered up, the green field would expand to the right, filling up the bar.
She planned to power up off this man’s personal laptop, a unit better suited to juicing a portable music player. This was going to take a long time.
It might take all day to get to 50%. Then she had to deal with the bomb.
“I knew it was you,” a voice said behind her.
Her gun was on the Lucite desk. With her left hand, she grabbed it, then spun halfway around. She pointed the gun at him. Michael. Her right arm was still attached to the computer.
He raised his hands, and his smile faltered for once.
“You knew it was who?” Nine said.
“Well, hear me out on this, okay? I promise I won’t tell on you. I’ve had a lot of women come through this house, you know, kidnappers and such, but you’re the first one to walk in here and plug herself into my laptop.”
Nine stared at him. From the corner of her eye, she saw that the progress bar had moved the smallest amount. She might be juiced up to 3%. The red light behind her eyes blinked just a touch less intensely.
“I heard the explosions last night,” Michael said. “It wasn’t that far from here. When I checked the TV news this morning, you’re all over it. They say an ex-Marine from back in the swamp murdered a scientist and stole a very high-tech Sexbot. On the internet, the conspiracy people are saying he stole a top-secret military robot. It looks to me like he stole a little of both.”
“He didn’t steal anything,” Nine said. “He’s being framed. And anyway, he’s dead.”
She saw the look in his eyes, and shook her head. “They killed him. The company. I didn’t do it.”
“Are you running from them?” he said.
She nodded.
He nodded, too. His lips found the ghost of a smile again. “Okay. Well, listen. As I said, my name is Michael. And you can call me Michael. Not Mike, not Mikey. Michael. Okay? I’ll do whatever I can to protect you. If you don’t want to go back, you don’t have to. You can stay here as long as you like. I’ve got some motor oil if you want something to drink. I’ve also got some old fiber optic cabling you can chew on. Do you have a name?”
“They call me Nine,” she said. “Number Nine.” It was a nice gesture he was making. But Nine knew that when the time came, this man Michael wouldn’t have much say in whether she stayed or went. And if the company came, there really wasn’t a whole lot he could do to protect her.
“Number Nine?” he said. “That’s not much of a name, is it?” He pointed at the laptop. “Is that you powering up? You’re never going to do it like that. My other car is an electric. It’s fancy. I have the repair bills to prove it. And I have a home juicing station downstairs in the garage. Actually, I’ve also got a little portable one that I take on trips. I can bring it upstairs, and you can plug in right here in total comfort. I’ll bet I can fill you up in record time.”
She smiled. She looked him up and down, the way men sometimes did to women. She liked what she saw.
“I’ll bet you can, too.”
* * *
Howard was on the phone, taking the one call he dreaded the most.
Everyone had finally cleared out of his living room. Everyone but the Sexbots. In a little while, he would carve out some time to spend with them. God, he was stressed out. He needed some relaxation of the kind that only his girls could provide.
“Howard?” the Chairman said over the line.
“Yes, sir.”
Howard shook his head. The Chairman. James Walsh. What a clown. He was older than dirt. He was up in New York, snowed in, gazing at printouts from his ten billion dollar portfolio. He was a money manager, a stock market swindler, and a hostile takeover king. He didn’t know how to run a real company. He should leave Suncoast to the experts.
Howard stared out at the ocean as the Chairman deployed one of his favorite weapons, the pregnant pause. Howard wouldn’t stand for it, though. He knew how to beat it. The trick was to detach. He started counting silently, down from ten to one.
“Howard.”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Howard, what the fuck is going on down there?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Howard. Last night, I received a phone call. It led me to believe that everything was going according to plan.”
“Yes. I received the same phone call, sir.”
“So what happened? I see on the news this morning that in fact, everything is not going according to plan.”
“We’re still trying to figure that out, sir.” Howard hated that word coming out of his mouth. Sir. Sir. Why did he always call this bastard sir?
“You’re trying to figure it out? Let me tell you something, Howard. I don’t believe a word you’re saying. Who sent that team in there last night, if not you? Why did you send them? You blew up a man’s house, for the love of Christ. Don’t tell me you’re trying to figure it out. Why did you do it? You must have a reason.”
Howard motioned for one of the Sexbots, the black one, the one he called Jezebel, to come over. He also motioned to one of the blondes, Cassandra. This conversation was going poorly. He needed to relax, and he needed to relax now.
“Well sir, there’s some concern that Susan, ah, how to put this…”
“Just spit it out, Howard. Before I find someone else to run that company.”
Jezebel arrived, followed soon after by Cassandra. Gently, Howard pushed them to their knees. It didn’t take much. They knew the drill very well. With one hand, he pulled the knot on his bathrobe’s soft belt. The bathrobe fell open, revealing Howard in all his glory. The two girls went to work on him, faces pressed very close together. Now that would make a pretty picture.
He took a deep breath. Boy, he was starting to feel better already.
“It seems that Susan, before she was terminated, might have…”
“Yes?”
Howard put a proprietary hand on Cassandra’s head. He was erect now. Very, very erect. The two girls kissed, his member hard between them. He was proud - very proud - of these girls. He was proud of himself.
“Well, she might have been able to download herself into the unit she kept there at her house.”
“She what? Howard, did I hear you…”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.”
Howard watched his girls. Very nice. He took a deep, deep breath.
“It was completely unsanctioned,” he said, feeling calmer now. “And it was done in an uncontrolled environment. As far as we know, the operating system on the unit wasn’t erased, which is obviously not our intention going forward. We don’t want real people living inside sex toys, as you know. So it’s possible that…”
“Where is she?” the Chairman said.
Howard was having trouble concentrating. Things were building, becoming heightened.
“Eh, we’re looking for her.”
“So you don’t know where she is?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
He found that the word sir didn’t taste so bad right now. Not nearly so bad. He gazed down at the two heads, black hair, blonde hair, moving in unison. It was crazy. He was talking to the Chairman!
Fuck the Chairman.
Hooray!
“Listen to me, Howard. I built this company. Not you. You were an undergrad when I bought a company that made pool cleaners. They are dragging our good name through the mud. On TV, right now, all day. CNN, MSNBC, all the rest. We are in the 24-hour news cycle, Howard. I won’t stand for it. If that robot falls into the wrong hands, the police, the courts, some do-gooder group, things will only get worse for us. It will become very hard to move forward with our immediate plans. Those plans are…” For once, the Chairman’s voice faltered. “They’re very important to me.”
“I know,” Howard said.
“I want you to destroy the robot,” the Chairman said. “Do you understand? I want it found and destroyed by tonight.”
“Yes. I understand.”
It was funny. Howard did understand. But now, with the girls at his feet like this, and the dying Chairman pulling his hair out over the phone, a new thought occurred to Howard. There was another way to play this.
“No one is irreplaceable, Howard. You need to understand that. You’re in a very vulnerable position. This isn’t the kind of job you just retire from, Howard. There’s too much on the line.”
Howard smiled. What was the Chairman hinting at? That he would have Howard killed? My, my, my. Did he really want to go there? Blue wasn’t the only incredibly lethal killer that Howard had access to, not by a long shot.
Anyway, never mind all that. Howard preferred to think about Susan right now. A thought about her had come to him.
Back in those early days, he had tried to date Susan. It was true. In the days before Sexbots, he had asked her out a few times. Was that inappropriate for a boss to ask out an employee? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. At this point, Howard hadn’t asked a flesh and blood woman out in years. But back then? Yes, he had dated women.
Susan was too haughty. She always said no. She was too full of herself, and her great future as a scientist. She was too busy working, trying to make breakthroughs, to give Howard the time of day. But look at her now. She was dead, trapped inside a sex toy, and on the run. Where had that great future gone?
He found that he did want to see her again, if only one more time. He took another deep breath.
Over the phone, the Chairman raged on. He seemed far away. Steady, old boy, don’t give yourself a stroke. The cancer will kill you soon enough.
Howard looked down at his girls again. They were really working him. They licked him. They kissed and licked each other. He couldn’t watch them. It was too much. They would finish him off too fast. He looked out at the ocean again.
God. What a day. He skated along the edge of a climax. Howard thought about Susan, trapped inside Number Nine, and how if he could, he would bring her here. And he would have her, just like he had these girls.
And when it was over, when he’d had her in every way he wanted her, in every way possible, he would say, “Look at you now, Susan. Look at the great scientist. My little slave.”
And that thought, the thought of Susan on her knees here like these girls, made Howard explode.
* * *
Nine was juiced.
It was late morning. The charge had taken a long while, but the blinking red light was gone. It was now replaced by a warm green glow. The green must have always been there before the red blinking started, but she never noticed it. It wasn’t distracting like the red light. It wasn’t visible in the same way. It was more like the glow of health, and it filled up her senses.
There was trouble ahead, she knew that. The company was after her. There was a bomb counting down inside her. Just over ten hours left. But she didn’t want to think of those things. She wanted to relax for the moment, and enjoy this feeling.
She sat on the sofa in Michael’s living room, still plugged into his portable black re-charger. Sunlight streamed through the windows, reflected off the green water that flowed by below. Looking out that window, if someone didn’t know better, they might think they were in Africa.
Michael ate his breakfast at the table across the room from her. His beard was well-groomed. His hair was just so. He seemed relaxed, completely at home in his body.
He smiled when he looked at her. That was when the movie star looks came out the most. Nine recognized a feeling rising in herself. Desire. She deduced that the more power she had coursing through her system, the more her dominant programming would come to the fore.
In other words, Number Nine was getting horny.
“I’m fascinated by you,” Michael said. “I mean, you’re a machine, right? But you’re also a lot like a person. If I met you in different circumstances…”
“Like, if I didn’t step out of the woods and pull a gun on you?”
“Right. Let’s say we were at a party, a fancy dress-up affair, and the host was making introductions, and we took each other’s hands, you know? And we looked deep into each other’s eyes. And I said, ‘Hi, I’m Michael.’ And you said, ‘Hi, I’m Nine.’”
He raised a hand, as if to say STOP.
“You know, you’d probably have a name instead of a number. I mean, where is this party, at the factory? Who has a number instead of a name? So let’s give you a name. How about Rachel?”
Nine smiled. She was willing to play along.
“So if you said, ‘Hi, I’m Rachel,’ I’d never guess you were a robot. I’d just think you were a beautiful woman that I was lucky to meet at a party.”
He got up from the table, and came across the room toward her. He looked at her very intensely.
“What’s it like?” he said.
“What’s what like?”
He shrugged. “To be what you are. To be who you are. You’re obviously so advanced, so smart, that it must be strange. What’s it like in there?”
“I think it’s probably not much different from being inside you,” she said. “I mean, how do you know you’re not like me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t. But… I eat food, right?”
“Right. But what is food?”
She stood up from the sofa.
He came close and faced her. “I know. It’s just that…”
Nine turned away from him. Rachel. It was such a nice name. She remembered how she was Susan. And how Susan was always busy with work, always busy becoming something great, that her parents could be proud of, that she could be proud of.
But Susan, at bottom, had been lonely. She had never been beautiful. And she had been very, very smart. It was a bad combination.
She was lying to herself, wasn’t she? Lack of beauty hadn’t been the problem. Beauty was as much a curse as a blessing. Nine was beautiful, and she got a lot of attention from killers and maniacs.
No. Susan’s loneliness had been her own fault. She would never let a man get close to her. Since she finished college, the only one was Martin, but they were scientists together. They were pals. They were partners in a great discovery. And afterwards, she had pushed him away.
“The re-charge is almost done,” she said. “It’s at 98%. It probably won’t top up. You know, the first 95% takes half the time, and the last 5% takes the other half.”
Michael touched her shoulder. Movie-star handsome Michael.
She turned back to say something, but never remembered what she intended to say because suddenly he was there, and his lips settled against hers. She felt the damp sweep of his tongue across them. Uttering a soft whimper, she moved closer to him. Her breasts were flattened against his chest. Their thighs came together.
“Michael…”
“Lovely Rachel. I’ve wanted you since I first saw you.”
“Gun in hand?” she said.
“Yes, the gun was very sexy.”
Rubbing her lips apart with his, he pushed his tongue deep into her mouth. She moaned with hunger. His hands moved to her waist and pulled her more firmly against him. He cupped the round curve of her bottom and held her against the front of his body while they kissed deeply.
She clutched at him and responded to the hungry thrusts of his tongue. He released her long enough to pull his t-shirt over his head. He undid his belt and pulled the buttons of his jeans open, then gathered her against him again.
He caressed her breasts through the insubstantial material of her mini-dress. Dissatisfied with that, he released her spaghetti straps.
Nine gave a soft, ecstatic cry when her hot, flushed breasts met the warm solidity of his chest. Michael released a low, tortured groan. He pushed the dress past her hips until it slid down her thighs to the floor.
She pushed him backwards, toward the sofa. He sat down, and pulled his jeans down to his feet, struggling to kick free of them. For a moment, she hesitated. She hadn’t been with a man with this way since... forever.
She kicked a leg over him, and lowered herself onto him. She sat astride his lap, facing him. They looked into each other’s eyes.
“I wanted you, too,” she said.
She closed her arms around his head, hugging it tightly against her, while she pressed her hips down onto his thighs, driving deep inside her. She moved against him, and he began to move inside her, advancing and retreating. She bounced on him, harder, harder. She rode him. She threw her head back. Her body shuddered.
“Yes!” she heard herself cry.
* * *
She and Michael were in his bed.
His bed was a king-sized, and it faced out toward the river. Hours had passed, and the daylight was growing short.
They were both nude from earlier. Nine had slept, and now she was awake. She didn’t remember sleeping, and she didn’t remember waking.
He was next to her, on her right side, exploring her body. His fingers moved along slowly, very experienced fingers, in danger of turning her on again. Sex with Michael had been something of a revelation. They had done it seven times, over and over, a marathon. It was fun, with no baggage of any kind, just two beautiful bodies coming together again and again.
And again.
And again.
She thought of the last time she’d had sex before today. It was the day when she and Martin were first able to transfer a chimpanzee to a Sexbot, about nine months ago at the primate research facility outside Charleston, South Carolina. Afterward, the two of them had celebrated with drinks at the hotel bar. They got very drunk that night, and she went back to Martin’s room with him.
In the morning, she had regretted it. Badly hung over, she regretted everything.
“We made a mistake,” she said as she put her clothes on.
“By sleeping together?” Martin said. “I don’t think so. I think it’s great.”
“All of it,” she said. “The apes we’re experimenting on. The two of us in here celebrating our great triumph. It’s a disaster. It’s a… it’s a sin.”
She looked at Martin in the mirror. He was lying in bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows, with his hands on top of his head. Easygoing, boy genius, ever-optimistic Martin. He looked so much like her dad. He smiled.
“Come on. Lighten up. There’s no such thing as sin.”
“I’m afraid,” she said. “We opened Pandora’s box, and there’s going to be a price to pay.” And of course, the punishment had finally come. Martin was dead and she was as much a guinea pig as any of the chimps.
Now, in Michael’s bed, she shook her head to clear the memory. “Did I sleep much?” she said.
Michael smiled. “Sleep? You slept all day. I didn’t even know that you could sleep. But yeah, you slept all right. You slept like the dead. To be fair, I slept too.”
His hands felt good on her skin. They were big, strong hands. He traced the curve of her torso until his fingers reached the keypad and digital readout attached under her arm. He touched it, made a gentle circle around it.
A feeling of dread went through her. She would almost say she felt sick to her stomach.
“What is this thing?” Michael said. “I noticed it before. It’s the only part of you that doesn’t seem like a real woman.”
Nine took a deep breath. “What does it say on it?”
“Well, it seems to be a countdown of some sort. Right now, it says three hours, thirty-seven minutes, with the seconds just flying by.”
She nodded. “That’s exactly what it is. It’s a counter, and it’s attached to a bomb that’s somewhere inside me.”
He looked at her sharply. “What?”
“Yes. I have a bomb inside me. When the countdown reaches zero, I think I’m going to explode.”
He put a hand to his head. “Why would someone put a bomb inside you?”
Her lips started to tremble. “In case I escaped.”
Suddenly she was crying. She didn’t expect it to happen. She had felt perfectly stable until just a moment ago. She didn’t even think she still had emotions. But then everything welled up inside her, and she wept in grief and terror. She was crying and he held her against his chest.
“What a waste,” she said. Her body was wracked by sobs, and she could no longer speak. Michael didn’t say anything. He just held her tighter.
Her life! The big scientific superstar. She had been so driven to succeed, to make her mark, and instead she ended up making sex toys for rich perverts, then torturing chimpanzees and putting their minds inside machines. Now the same thing had happened to her, and pretty soon, in just about five hours, she was going to die.
“It’s okay,” Michael cooed softly. “It’s okay.”
She would stay here, if there were any choice. She knew that. She would stay for a night, or a week, or a month. She would let all of this pass her by. It was a beautiful home, and a beautiful man. She would stay here and make love to Michael, and watch the river, and notice every day how the sunlight came through the windows and the skylights. It made for a nice fantasy, but it wasn’t to be. Her life was over. She had reached the end.
At some point, she noticed Michael’s bare chest was heaving. She looked at his face, and he was crying too.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I don’t want you to die. It’s not fair.”
She took a deep breath. “I know,” she said.
“If I cut you open,” he said, “would it hurt?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Not like it would hurt you. Why?”
“Maybe I can cut the bomb out.”
“Michael, do you know anything about bombs? Or about technology?”
He smiled, but it was a smile with no humor in it. His eyes were red. “I’m a quick learner. I’m a builder, and I have tools. I’ve looked at electrical systems before. I could get in there, and just… I don’t know. Take a poke around. I’ll go slow, not touch anything right away. Maybe it would be obvious what to do.”
“Michael, shhhhh. Let’s just…”
She moved up and pushed her face against his. Their cheeks touched. Their tears mingled like rainwater. She hugged him tightly, and he hugged her back. They stayed that way for a long time, just pressing together. For Nine, sometimes the crying was powerful, her whole body shaking with the force of her sobs. At other times, the crying was softer, almost subsiding completely.
Gradually, as they lay there pressed against each other, she became aware that Michael had an erection. Soon, she was ready too, maybe from all the emotion, maybe from just having him there. She reached down with one hand and gently guided him inside her. Then they lay still, their bodies perfectly entwined, joined, no space between them.
She pressed harder against him. She felt almost like she wanted to become him, their chests and legs melting until they became one person. She held the back of his head with her hand. He was crying again, and the feeling of it was contagious, because she began to cry again, too. And their mouths found each other. They kissed passionately, bodies moving gently, tears streaming down their faces. It went on a long time.
Afterward, she was lying in bed.
She must have fallen asleep again, because Michael wasn’t in bed with her, and she didn’t remember him getting up. For the moment, she felt good. She felt refreshed. She felt almost at peace.
This was a great big, comfortable bed, and it was amazing to simply be in it. It was luxurious, and Nine’s programming made her very aware, and appreciative, of luxuries. She was relaxed enough to reflect on things.
Maybe there was room for hope. She had tried to put the bomb out of her mind, to wish it away, but now she allowed herself to think about it. Maybe Michael could open her up, and somehow disable it. He was smart. There might be instructions about it online. There might be an expert he could call, who would walk him through the process. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was 7:15. There were just under three hours left, not much time, but maybe enough.
She had been here at Michael’s since this morning, and now it was nearly nightfall. For a second, she wondered if the storm hadn’t passed. She had no GPS unit installed. She had no remote access capability. The company had no way to find her.
What if she stayed hidden here? She pictured it in her mind. Just living here quietly, being partners with Michael. It wouldn’t last forever. She knew that. But he could help her. He said he would. Maybe she could get a new identity, forged papers. When the time came, she could leave the country.
Her first priority would be contacting her parents. She couldn’t do it directly. They’d have trouble believing her story, and anyway, they were probably being monitored. But how long would the company monitor them? Maybe not that long. Not forever, certainly.
In a few days, if they didn’t find her, the company would assume she had died. They had probably found Darryl’s body by now. Sooner or later, they were just going to decide that the bomb had gone off, or that she was rotting away at the bottom of one of the swamps.
The company wasn’t all powerful. They couldn’t…
The doorbell rang.
It filled the house with a musical chime, which echoed from room to room. For all the effect it had, it might as well be an air raid siren.
* * *