Perfect
Authors: Pauline C. Harris
Tags: #android, #kidnapping, #high school, #mechanical, #plan, #perfect, #problems, #cyborg, #creators, #rebel, #dangerous, #young adult dystopian, #pauline c harris, #altering, #dystopain
Mechanical, Book Two
by Pauline C.
Harris
Published by
Fire and Ice
A Young Adult Imprint of Melange Books, LLC
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
Perfect, Copyright 2013 by Pauline C. Harris
ISBN: 978-1-61235-683-9
Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this
book are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America.
Cover Art by Caroline Andrus
PERFECT
PAULINE C. HARRIS
Drew now knows
the real mission her creators were trying to accomplish; create a
perfect world. In other words, taking people, eventually all of the
people on earth, and turning them into mechanically altered,
perfect, human beings. That is what Drew previously found out
happened to her.
But, although Drew, Jessica and Michael know
that they need to somehow stop the creators, Drew also knows that
she’s made another enemy along the way; one possibly even more
dangerous than the creators.
As Drew struggles to detach herself from the
people who “created” her and untangle the mess they’ve made, she
discovers that it might not be as easy as she thought, that she is
destined to play a larger role in this plan than she ever
intended.
For Grandma and Grandpa
Table of Contents
Prologue
Yvonne pressed
her ear against the hard, wooden door, quieting her breathing and
leaning in. She could hear the voices of the men inside—one was a
creator and the other was someone he had invited.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she heard the
stranger’s voice float out into the hall, incredulity lining every
word. The door hadn’t been shut completely so Yvonne gave it a
small push, revealing a tiny crack. She leaned down and stared
through, barely making out the two figures seated at the desk. The
man was facing away from her and although the creator’s chair was
facing her direction, he was so intent on the conversation that he
failed to notice her peering in.
The creator shook his head, a small frown
morphing his features cold. “What? You don’t like my proposition?”
he asked in mock surprise.
Yvonne’s keen eyesight caught the stranger’s
reflection in the glass front of a trophy case on the wall facing
him. The man, clothed in an expensive-looking suit and whom she
assumed was someone of importance, just stared at him. “You’re
proposition
? It’s insane. Literally.”
The meeting was no longer of low priority. It
was funny to see a man of such stature and composure gaping in such
an unattractive expression. Yvonne stifled her urge to smirk.
The creator frowned again, his eyebrows
furrowing. Yvonne knew that look. He had been expecting this. The
creator
knew
what this man’s reaction would be, but for some
reason, he had expected he’d be convincing. “It would be a better
place than it is now. Can’t you understand that?” He leaned forward
in his chair, his voice slightly strained.
Yvonne couldn’t help but roll her eyes,
wishing she could burst into the room and smack both of them. They
were both wrong. Stupidly wrong. No one had any idea what the
creators were doing. Not even the creators themselves. The androids
were the perfect ones.
Not
the creators.
And if it was perfection the creators were
looking for, they needed to step out of the way.
The man stiffened, and although his back was
to Yvonne, she could see the revulsion in his reflection. “No. I
don’t understand. I don’t even want to try.” His words were spit
out as if poisonous. Yvonne curled her lip, disgusted.
The creator suddenly smiled. A sickening
smile that seemed almost a grimace. “But we already have.” He
drummed his fingers slowly against the desk in front of him,
creating an eerily rhythmic beat.
The man was silent, his lips parted, watching
him. “What?”
The creator’s smile widened. “We’ve already
tried it. Yes, we have created perfect people. More than you would
think actually. Hundreds.” He looked like a proud parent, bragging
about his accomplishments in raising his children. “They’re all
perfect.”
There was a long, tense pause as his words
hung in the air, clutching both men and seeming to freeze them.
“And these people gave you their consent
to...perfect them?” the man asked warily. This caught Yvonne off
guard. Consent? She had never given consent. She had never
remembered a time when she
wasn’t
an android. She frowned
momentarily, realizing that it didn’t make sense, but then focused
back on the meeting. It didn’t matter.
The creator shrugged nonchalantly. “Not
necessarily.” His eyes glinted.
The man stood so quickly he knocked his chair
backward with a loud series of clatters. “You mean to tell me that
you took people against their will and
surgically altered
them?
” he almost yelled, his deep voice demanding not only an
answer, but an explanation as well.
His rage startled Yvonne. No, she didn’t want
more perfect people. The amount they had was enough.
She
was
enough. But she didn’t like the way the man’s voice changed to
horror and cracked with fear, the way his body stiffened at the
idea of them.
The creator met the man’s eyes, glaring. “I
need you to support my idea,” he said calmly, his eyes ice cold.
“You’re in a high position and your support would make a huge
difference.” Each word was chosen carefully, spoken carefully. An
explanation and possibly a threat.
“I would never support such a thing,” the man
spat back at him. “In fact, I should have you arrested for what
you’ve done.” His eyes were blazing and he reached for something in
his coat pocket. But before his fingers had even dusted the object,
the creator sprang from his seat, shot toward him and hit him over
the head.
The man crumpled instantly to the ground and
the creator smiled down at the metal that was now exposed from a
cut within his own skin.
Yvonne glared through the door, knowing what
the creator was going to do. She knew they would stop at nothing to
perfect the whole word—to make everyone the same. And that would
leave her useless. Mundane. She gritted her teeth.
“If you won’t support me,” the creator said,
glaring down at the unmoving body on the floor, malice lining his
voice. “Then we’ll have to make you perfect, too.”
Chapter One
My mouth was dry as
we trudged through the forest, our footsteps muffled by the thick
underbrush. The summer air around us was hot and merciless. My
palms were sweaty and I held them clenched at my sides, slightly
trembling. I could feel my rapid pulse beneath my fingertips,
fluttering wildly. Although it showed how scared I was, it reminded
me of how alive I was. Truly alive. Human.
Yvonne walked ahead of me, my tracking
device, her leverage, clasped tightly between her slender fingers,
blinking. I hadn’t known until only minutes earlier that I even had
one. It must have been injected into me without my knowledge. And
now Yvonne had the device to locate me. It wasn’t all that
surprising she had found some way to manipulate our creators into
giving it to her. She was very persuasive. Apparently they trusted
her with much more than they had ever trusted me. She gripped it as
if she would never let go. The information she would gladly give
over to my creators if I refused to do what she asked. Another wave
of frustration washed over me at the realization. If the creators
had my tracking device, they’d find me and I’d be dead within days.
There really was no choice for me but to do whatever she wanted.
However insane it might be. And knowing Yvonne, whatever she had in
mind had to be extravagant or at the very least, dangerous.
Miraculously, only a few hours prior I had
escaped from the Institution where I had been created, after I had
helped certain innocent people escape from becoming perfected, or
in other words, turned into mindless, expressionless androids. But
I wasn’t sure if “created” was the right word to describe my
existence. Altered? Changed? Perfected.
I had been human before becoming an android.
I had only now just found that out. But apparently my creators were
planning on making a perfect world, meaning all perfect people, if
perfect meant robots without memories or emotions. And I was
getting in their way. I was the one who had rebelled against them,
helping people they captured to escape.
And Yvonne could turn me in to them any
minute. What would they do to me? Before they had told me they
would just turn me off, like any other piece of electronic
equipment. And that was terrifying in itself. But now, a scarier
thought arose.
If I had been human before, then I partly
still was. And what did
turn off
mean now? My blood ran
cold. The thought floated into my mind, causing my breath to catch
in my throat. They would kill me.
I sighed. All I wanted was to rid myself of
the ties to my creators, but for some reason I always ended up
sinking myself deeper into their chaos. I knew it was wrong—every
bit of it. And I couldn’t let myself be their puppet on their road
to power. The creators wanted me to be their compliant little
android, Yvonne wanted me to help her overthrow them for her own
greedy benefit, and all I wanted was to get away from all of it.
But I couldn’t. The creators wanted me dead and Yvonne was using
that like a chess piece, maneuvering me wherever she wanted.
My best friend, Jessica, who had
unfortunately gotten herself all tangled up in my mess, glanced in
my direction, shooting me a worried, frightened look, and I
remembered that she had just been witness to probably the strangest
thing she had ever seen in her life. No, scratch that. Not
probably
the strangest thing,
most definitely
the
strangest thing. She had just been told, by me, that I was an
android. Her newfound friend from school was a robot. And now she
had seen Yvonne, the backstabbing, traitorous android that I had
grown up with, who had just told me that I
did
have a soul,
and that I
had
been a human. In fact, all the androids had
been human once. Talk about a culture shock.
She and her twin brother, Michael, who was
also trudging alongside me, had escaped with me after school when
the creators had come barging through the doors in search of me.
Jessica had been on their list to be perfected and since I couldn’t
just stand by and let that happen, we were forced to run, only to
be found by Yvonne. I wasn’t sure which was better.
All I knew was that I had to keep them safe.
This was all my fault and I couldn’t let them pay for it. Not to
mention that they were the only ones who’d ever really cared about
me. Even after finding out what I was, they were there—still my
friends.