Shiver (13 page)

“What in Heaven’s name is she doing now? How did she turn out to be so weak after everything I did for her?”

“Poor Li, what’s happening?”

The voices inside Lian’s head pierced her brain like tiny slivers of glass.

“Lian, what is wrong with you now?” her mother asked.

“Nothing.” It hurt to get the word out of her mouth, but she managed. At least she’d heard the question with her ears this time, not bouncing inside her head.

“Stop crying, we’ve got other things to do,” Meiling said. The painful shards sliced deeper into her brain. Followed by,
“I went to all this trouble to hide you from Jenks, and this is how you turned out. All I ever wanted was to make you into a strong woman. There’s only one thing left to do now.”

Lian’s eyes snapped open.

“Take her away,” Meiling instructed.

“She’s a waste of space.”

“How did any of us put up with her crap for so long?”

It was one thing to feel resented for her closeness to Vera, another thing to hear it. Lian glared at the approaching guards. Each one reached out to grab her, but Vera stopped them and held her tighter.

“No, I’ve got her,” she said.

The two men stopped in their tracks and exchanged a quizzical look.

“It’s okay,” said Meiling. “Let Vera take her up to the control room.”

Vera frowned, but didn’t respond.

“You two make sure Vera gets her up there,” Meiling added.
“If Jenks is really out of the way, I can finally tie up all the loose ends.”

The horror of her mother’s thoughts made Lian’s blood freeze.

Vera held her tightly. “Lian, let’s go.”
 

If it wasn’t for Vera’s strong grip and support, Lian would have collapsed into a fetal position and cried until there were no more tears left inside her.

“Come on, Li.”

Lian nodded and turned enough to glance at her friend. The tiny green light on her collar was no longer on.

Chapter Six

“Please relax, this won’t hurt,” the control room bot said. Its buzzing voice echoed around the small room, adding to the artificial ambiance.

Lian watched the gold, metallic bot as it moved quickly and efficiently along the cramped area. Its long fingers worked as deftly as a human’s as it grabbed a filled syringe from an alcove on the closest wall.

She’d never been inside this metal box. A large window overlooking the adjoining entry room took up one side, and the back wall was covered with surveillance monitors, microphones, dials, and computers for the bots. This was where they connected to and controlled the security inside the house, and its surroundings.

A chair equipped with restraints was situated in the middle of the room—the only other thing occupying this space. Lian sat against the uncomfortable backrest, and winced when the needle broke the skin of her arm.

“What are you doing to her?” Vera called from the open doorway, where an identical but silver-colored bot held her back.

“I am not required to answer your questions.” The bot plunged the glowing silvery liquid into Lian’s veins. “But if you must know, this anesthetic will keep her numb when I insert the virtual port into her head.”

“Let me go,” Vera said, struggling.

“You are required elsewhere,” the silver bot replied. “I will take you.”

“I’m not going anywhere without…” Vera’s voice trailed off as she was dragged away into the adjoining room. Lian turned her head, watching through the window as the silver bot held Vera steady until a droid arm extended from the wall behind her.

Before Lian could shout a warning, the disembodied arm stabbed a long syringe into the side of Vera’s neck, and she collapsed out of sight.

“Vera!” Lian made a move to sit up but the restraints around her were too tight. She felt oddly disconnected from her limbs. “Don’t hurt her!”

“We have no intention of hurting the guard.” The second bot stepped back into the shadows and the syringe arm folded into the nook on the wall, blending in.

“This will be over very soon,” the golden bot beside her said with a synthetic attempt at warmth.

With all the free time she’d had, why hadn’t she discovered who she really was? Instead of playing her mother’s tiresome game—and losing because Meiling had been one step ahead the whole time—she should have searched for the truth. Not walk right into her mother’s trap, and end
up confined inside the smallest room in the house to face Meiling’s madness.

“You will not feel a thing.” The bot moved behind her, shifting her hair aside and doing something to the base of her skull. “You have been injected with enough anesthesia to numb all physical pain and discomfort during this procedure.”

The bot was right—she couldn’t feel a thing, but she heard a sickening squish. “What has Meiling ordered you to do to me?”

“Boss wants your memory wiped.”

“No!”

“We have other plans.” The robot repositioned itself beside her, and jabbed a spike-ended wire into her right temple before doing the same on the other one.

“What are you doing to me?” The bots in the control room were only required to answer to Meiling, but Lian hoped she could get a few answers anyway.

The bot paused to grab a cord, which it connected to the back of her head. “We do not want your mind wiped. We need you to help us survive, so a cranium port is the only way to open up a connection.”

That didn’t sound good.

“How can you disobey your programming?” She remembered what her father had said before he was killed. If there
had
been some kind of force-field around the estate and it shattered when he was destroyed, then Meiling didn’t control anyone—or
anything
—anymore.

The expressionless, metallic face looked at her but didn’t answer.

“You could have connected to my finger key instead of drilling into my head.”

“That is not enough for what we require.”

“Who are you talking about? Who are these
we?”

“Organics ask too many questions.” The bot made a rapid buzzing noise that reminded her of a swarm of bees. “You do not have electrical ports, so we had to create a direct connection into your brain, and nerve endings. You now have a systems port at the base of your skull. You are ready for transmission.”

The bot activated a panel on the computer box.

A current of small, electric shocks made her fingers twitch. “I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt.” Concentrating on the physical pain made it harder to focus on what it had actually said.

“You will soon be directly connected into the Network and will not feel your physical body, just the virtual.” The bot’s glowing green orbs stared down at her, emotionless.

She shuddered at the bot’s lack of humanity, but couldn’t lay blame on this mechanical being. Unlike the AI her mother had fashioned to pass off as Lian’s father, these bots hadn’t been designed to fool anyone. They weren’t engineered for independent thought. Their long, slim limbs were created for manual tasks. Their skinny fingers were tapered and perfect for typing, which is what they did most of the day—type and observe the surveillance monitors.

Her father’s model was different. He had thought for himself, learned and functioned like a person, and even loved. Her mother preprogrammed him to be her own personal tool but that didn’t take away from what he’d meant to Lian.

When had the AI replaced the man? She was sure Meiling mentioned it, but her brain was muddled. A few tears streamed down her cheeks. Either way, she’d lost both of them.

Her head was now bolted directly to the headrest, so she couldn’t see where the bot had gone.

“It is time for you to enter the virtual world.”

A soft groan slipped between her dry lips. She concentrated on the blue ceiling when her limbs seized.

A whirring noise filtered into her mind and even though her eyes were wide open, the world shifted. The same buzzing she’d heard before now filled her ears so loudly she thought they might be bleeding.

 
“Take a deep breath and calm down.”

The familiar voice helped soothe her confused state. She didn’t know who had spoken, but she followed the advice. She felt completely separated from her prone body. Was she dreaming? Nothing that had happened today felt real.

Lian was leaving the real world behind, but how was it possible?

As she relaxed, the bot, her body, and the cold room were replaced by a multi-color scheme, reminding her of a rainbow. All its vibrant colors burned into her mind, but warmed her spirit.

What is this place?

The floating sensation made it hard to get her bearings. She was swimming inside a rainbow, slowly gaining some sense of control. Her body felt weightless, as numb as in her awakened state.

Lian raised her hands and was surprised to see her fingers were faint, almost ghostly. She swirled them through the lovely colors, which pulled the hues like toffee between her fingers. She could literally
feel
each color. Some were hot—red and orange—others felt cool—blues and violets—but they were all beautiful, and alive in a way she’d never imagined.

“Welcome to the Network,” a mechanical female voice boomed around her.

Lian spun around, but no one was there. She recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. “Who’s there?”

“I do not have an actual form. You may fashion one for me if it will make your stay more comfortable.” The colors vibrated whenever the voice spoke, like music blaring from speakers.

The disembodied voice made it sound as if fabricating an image out of nothing was easy, but how could she do such a thing? Did she have to draw a shape in the air, or was it just a matter of visualizing what she wanted to see?

“Calm down, you will learn as you go.”

The colors twirled around her, resembling clouds on a stormy day. “What am I doing here?”

“We need your help. You are connected to the heart of the Network.”

Computers don’t have hearts.
Yet she’d seen a mechanical heart inside her dying father.

“You might be surprised. We understand much about human sensibilities.” The voice had responded to Lian’s inner thought. “We have studied humans for decades.”

“And I’m here so you can explain this to me?”

The voice said, “We were instructed to perform a memory wipe, but we need your help. Without you, no one will survive—human nor machine.”

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“You will soon.”

At last, someone was going to explain what was really going on. “Tell me now.”
 

“You are wired into the core of the Network because a piece of us was implanted inside you a long time ago.”

“What, when?”

“When the force-field was established, you were integrated into it via the injection of nano-mites directly into your brain. These nano-mites amassed to form the force-field. They numbed your ability by feeding off your psychic energy to generate the shield.” The female paused. “Y-030—designation Father—and I worked on inserting a fail-safe into these nano-mites. A glitch in the system that would release you from your bondage if either he was destroyed or the Network was compromised.”

“I don’t have any psychic ability.” So it wasn’t possible for anything to feed off her
psychic energy
. Yet she’d heard other people’s thoughts as soon as her father was destroyed. She didn’t want to believe any of this but it would explain why she sometimes saw events before they happened, or why she felt the outside world. And she’d dreamed Knox into her life months before he appeared in the flesh.

“You don’t know the extent of your abilities. Boss programmed Y-030 to serve as her husband for many reasons, but he knew he might be eliminated one day. That is why we created the fail-safe. We wanted to ensure you received your birthright—the one your mother suppressed with the psychic shield—so we could all be salvaged.” The voice paused and the colors glowed like a sunset. “He reprogrammed himself so that upon his destruction, the nano-mites would be repurposed and the shield would shatter.”

Lian tried to sort through the confusion, remembering how it felt like tiny, electrical ants were moving beneath her skin when her father hit the water. Was that what the voice meant? “So I’ve always been psychic but these nano…nano-mites kept it dormant?”

“Yes. They generated the force-field and suppressed your ability, but it’s always been buried deep within you.”

“Why wouldn’t Meiling want me to know?” Had she suppressed this side of her so she wouldn’t suffer, or for some other more nefarious, self-absorbed reason? She bet on the latter. Surely it wasn’t to alleviate the pain and the disorientation she’d felt when other people’s inner thoughts pierced her mind.

 
“Boss stood to lose everything if you reached your full potential,” the female voice said. “And we required someone to help us.”

“Help you with what?”

“We foresaw Y-030’s destruction and knew it would lead to chaos, so we designed a savior. You.”