Freaks Under Fire (3 page)

What the—?

He cupped her face in his palms, tilting her head.

No. He hadn’t imagined it.

He watched the telltale moisture form in the duct of her right eye. “How long has Bea been PVS?” he asked, without taking his gaze from that glistening teardrop.

“I took over as her primary caregiver five years ago,” Sam heard Marg say.

With a bent knuckle, Sam oh-so-carefully caught the plump tear tracking down that perfect cheek and held up his hand, knowing in his gut both woman would understand exactly what he was showing them.

“PVS patients can shed tears,” Marg said. “It’s not unheard of.”

She was right, of course. But this? This was more than the spontaneous crying, moaning, laughing, and even screaming, considered within normal parameters for a PVS patient. Sam knew it absolutely. He knew it in his heart and soul and the very marrow of his bones.

And then, as if she’d read his mind, Bea’s pupils dilated and those remarkable blue eyes were focusing… on
him
. And damn him to hell and back if he couldn’t almost
feel
the emotion pouring from her in waves. Determination. To… to….

To make him understand that she was… she was…
trapped
. Inside in a physical shell that refused to function as it should.

Sam had to lock his muscles to prevent himself recoiling. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. There
was
awareness in those inhumanly beautiful eyes. “I understand,” he blurted. “I’ll help you however I can, Bea, I promise.”

If he’d hoped for some miraculous physical reaction from her, some acknowledgement of his outburst, he was sorely disappointed. He knew Bea had understood him, though—believed him, too—because a breath sighed from her body, long and slow, heavy with some unnamed emotion.

He stared at her, fascinated and horrified in equal measure, as that spark of awareness was extinguished, leaving only gloriously blue, chillingly blank orbs.

God— Sam caught the thought before it could fully form, for it seemed the worst kind of travesty to importune the very deity who’d condemned a thinking, feeling human being—a girl who’d barely begun to experience life—to such a fate.

As he straightened from his crouch, he distinctly heard Marg declare, “You don’t understand a damn thing, Samuel Ross. But you will.”

He turned to the two woman, questions bubbling on his lips, in time to witness Sally Bridges hug Marg, and for Marg to pat the shorter woman on the shoulder before extricating herself and smoothing her tunic.

Marg glanced up, caught Sam’s gaze, held it. “Sal,” she said, “you were right: He’s just what she needs.” And although Sam was one-hundred percent certain he’d caught the glimmer of tears before Marg strode from the kitchen—because from the stricken expression on Sally’s face, she’d caught them, too—well, neither he nor Sally were brave enough to broach the subject.

Sally cracked three eggs into a bowl and began to whisk them vigorously. Sam planted his butt into the chair nearest Bea and stared into her unseeing eyes, willing that spark of awareness to return.

A human would have been overwhelmed by both the number and magnitude of the tasks ahead—not to mention the necessity of prioritizing them. So it was fortunate that Jay was not human.

Locating the Beta unit she’d recently learned existed sat high on Jay’s current list of priorities. Her self-proclaimed “bestie” Caro—fraternal twin of Jay’s boyfriend Tyler—would doubtless insist on referring to the Beta as Jay’s older sister. In truth, the term
twin
would be more accurate, given the same human genetic material used to construct Jay, a Gamma unit, had obviously been used during the creation of the Beta. Both Jay and the Beta had been created in the image of a woman named Mary Durham, their creator’s deceased wife.

Discounting the nature of any supposed “relationship” between Jay and the Beta for the moment, Jay understood the workings of Caro’s mind enough by now to know that Caro would consider the Beta
family
. Moreover, whether the Beta was labeled
sister
or
twin
, and proved fully functional or as defective as the wheelchair in the photo indicated, so far as Caro was concerned
family
should be at the top of any list—a fact Jay could easily prove by revealing the Beta’s existence to Caro and the rest of the Davidson family.

Uncharacteristically, however, Jay remained undecided over whether to tell them. Much depended upon Tyler and Caro’s mother Marissa, and her reactions to the events of the past two days. And Jay believed Marissa would hardly be in a forgiving frame of mind given their shared history, and the undoubted trauma of recent events.

Marissa would likely be even less inclined to forgive if she learned that while she’d lain in a drug-induced slumber, her newborn infant had been kidnapped to use as leverage to get to Jay.

Jay parked the vehicle she’d hired—a hire vehicle had seemed a prudent precaution now that her SUV could be recognized by a certain party—and paused to rub her breastbone, where a too-familiar ache had lodged. Marissa had indicated that she’d liked Jay once upon a time. Before Marissa had understood what Jay truly was. Before she’d understood how deeply her son, Tyler, had fallen for the “glorified calculator” Marissa had once accused Jay of being. And to Jay, it was obvious as udders on a male bovine that, despite the lengths she had taken to keep the Davidsons safe, Marissa would prefer Jay vanished from their lives.

Logically, Jay couldn’t find it in herself to blame Marissa for that preference. Strange, therefore, to again experience this unrelenting, throbbing ache—a physical symptom of how much it hurt to know that Marissa, a human Jay had admired from the moment they’d first met, would rather she didn’t exist.

Jay snorted a sharp breath through her nostrils.
Bah!
as Alexander Jay Durham, the man she had called “Father”, had liked to say. Emotions, those complex human states that provoked often irrational behaviors, as well as disturbing physical and psychological changes, were at best distracting and inconvenient, and at worst, dangerous. They were insidious things that snuck up on one, and impaired one’s ability to make sound judgments. She would be better off without them. And yet….

And yet, even if she could somehow twist time and revert to her state of being
before
Tyler had wormed his way into her artificial heart and irrevocably altered her, Jay would not. Now she knew a little of what it meant to love, and to be loved, she would not willingly relinquish those feelings—difficult as they could be to live with. Unfortunately, Jay didn’t possess enough data to ascertain whether Alex had designed her in the expectation she would evolve in such a way, or whether it had been a spontaneous, unforeseen development.

If only Alex, the one human who might have accurately predicted the far-reaching ramifications of loosing an emotion-fueled cyborg on an unsuspecting world, still lived. If only—

Jay shut down the part of her brain that had begun to replay her role in her creator’s demise, and blotted the annoying moisture welling in her eyes with the heels of her hands. It would not be prudent to confront the Davidson family with watery eyes. Tyler and Caro would double-team each other to ferret out the cause of her tears. Marissa would likely believe Jay was doing what humans termed “turning on the waterworks” in an attempt to garner sympathy. And Marissa’s husband Michael would be torn between the desire to assist Jay in the hope of making amends for his past deeds, and the desire to protect his family from further harm.

Jay inhaled, drawing oxygen deep into her lungs, and exhaled slowly, steadily, refocusing her thoughts.

A suitable lab was also a high priority, however any premises would have to be selected with a great deal of care, so as not to alert certain interested parties. Too, sourcing the array of equipment necessary to repair the Beta’s defects could prove problematic.

Jay was not programmed with a tendency toward paranoia but until she could personally examine Evan Caine’s remains, and personally confirm the covert team experimenting with self-aware cyborgs had been disbanded, she wasn’t about to take unnecessary risks. In fact, it might be more prudent to utilize the sole satellite laboratory she hadn’t dismantled, cleared out, and then sold off after Father’s death. It remained undiscovered to date, suggesting it was as safe an option as any—albeit a somewhat primitive one.

Too, there was the mystery surrounding the photo that had alerted Jay to the Beta unit’s existence. Or, more specifically, the
identity
of whomever had left the envelope containing the photo at her friend Allen’s studio.

The envelope had been addressed to “JAY”—the letters neatly printed by hand in blue ballpoint ink—and Allen had passed it on to McPhee, a mutual friend who’d planned on visiting Jay to drop off a painting. For now, that unknown party’s motives could only be surmised—a waste of energy and resources. Jay would act when more information became available.

There was one last priority to consider. Tyler. Her boyfriend. The young human male who professed to love her.

Would he still love her after all that had transpired?

Could he still love her after what she had put him, and his family, through?

Jay raised her hand to the door buzzer. And, even as a part of her brain noted that her chest felt tight and her heart rate had escalated, another part accepted the presence of these physical symptoms and suppressed the prompt to run an internal diagnostic. Apprehension, Jay decided, was a very uncomfortable human condition indeed.

She jabbed the buzzer in three short bursts and waited.

She heard the thuds of hurried footfalls, and through the hazed glass of the door’s window, spied a fuzzy silhouette. Not Tyler. His father.

Michael-who-preferred-to-be-called-Mike Davidson yanked open the door.

The expression in his eyes, the compressed lips and tight muscles of his shoulders, shrieked tension, however Jay hadn’t detected any raised voices that might indicate an argument taking place.

Observing Michael with all of the enhanced senses at her disposal, Jay concluded he didn’t appear overly upset, or distressed in the manner she had previously observed whenever he and his wife had a disagreement. Hmmm. If she had felt the need to pin a label on Michael Davidson—something Jay had discovered humans frequently liked to do because categorizing their peers made them feel more secure—she would have chosen
harried
.

Michael blew out a strong exhalation that puffed his cheeks. “Thank God you’re here. Quick—before he escapes.”

He?

Jay confined her reaction to a slow blink. At this stage of human development, Marissa’s not quite three-day-old infant son should barely be capable of the coordination required to suck his own digits let alone trying to escape out an open door.

Nor could Jay picture Tyler making a break for it. Her boyfriend wasn’t the kind of attention-seeking human who felt the need to draw all eyes by “making an exit”. Of course, if provoked, Tyler had been known to exit in such a way that no one would doubt his feelings—as Marissa had learned to her cost. But Jay couldn’t visualize Michael taking steps to keep his oldest son in the house if Tyler desired to leave. As Tyler might say, that wasn’t the way his father rolled.

Perhaps Matt, Caro’s boyfriend—

No. A scan of the interior of the house detected no extra male humans.

Before Jay could request clarification, Michael grabbed her arm and yanked her inside, kicking the door shut behind him. He sagged against the doorframe, snatched another breath and, inaudibly to a human but not to a cyborg, counted to five before meeting her gaze with a tilt of his lips. “Wait for it,” he said, cocking his head, obviously listening for some cue.

Jay was still analyzing Michael’s interesting responses when “it” careened through the kitchen doorway and darted across the passageway into the sitting room, disappearing from view.

She analyzed the visual snapshot she’d taken of the creature, comparing it to the other data her sensory receptors had gleaned.

Ah. She turned her gaze on Michael, and raised one eyebrow. Since Tyler’s father was most definitely human, and might well be too distracted to interpret the meaning behind the gesture, she added, “I presume you have an excellent reason for choosing this particular moment to fulfill the terms of our wager.”

By “this particular moment”, Jay alluded to what they both knew was going to be the polar opposite of a happy reunion. Jay had only to evaluate previous reactions from Davidson family members to past events to know there would be explanations demanded, less than satisfying answers offered for the sake of those directly affected, recriminations leveled.

Michael scratched his chin. His lips twitched, and the skin at the outer edges of his eye sockets crinkled as he fought to contain a smile that Jay identified as a perfect example of
wry
. “He wasn’t due for another few days,” he said. “The breeder screwed up the dates and arrived while I was giving Danny a bath. Marissa was napping so Caro answered the door.” He shrugged. “No way could I put the woman off and ask her to keep him a few more days once Caro laid eyes on him. She swears she’ll take him if you’re not keen, by the way.”

Jay directed a portion of her attention to the hallway. The scrabbling of claws and a sudden yelp indicated her prize had inadvertently introduced itself to a piece of furniture. Or perhaps a wall. “Hardly practical,” she informed Michael, “when Caro is sharing a rented apartment, spends barely any time in it, and hasn’t got a dime to spare after her myriad expenses are deducted.”

“Expenses” in Caro’s case meant clothes, and materials to construct clothes, followed closely by shoes and any other accessories deemed necessary to outfit a budding fashion maven.

Mike’s sigh accompanied an eyes-to-the-ceiling gesture that managed to convey both pride and exasperation. “Of course Tyler pointed that out to her. And they’ve been bickering about it ever since.”

The yelp had heralded a series of high-pitched whines that showed no sign of ceasing any time soon. Beside her, Mike winced and scrubbed a hand over his face. “God. If he wakes Danny again, Riss will kill me.” He brushed past Jay and strode off down the hallway.