Sparked (The Metal Bones Series Book 1) (23 page)

Chapter 32

Robots.

Robots.

Integral parts.
Each has a role to play.

Society.

Society.

Role to play.

Imperative.

“Imperative?”

Imperative.

Imperative. Robots. Imperative.

Chapter 33

I woke with a splintering headache. I groaned into my pillow.

My head felt like it was a spool of yarn that had been thrown all around the room, with knots and cords hanging everywhere.

My stomach rumbled, and I eyed the cold stew still sitting in the shoot in the wall. I licked my lips.

I scarfed everything down and my stomach purred, contented. I put the empty bowl in the shoot, watched as the cement door closed and listened to the swoosh as it shot off.

Technology.

Being used for its finest purposes.

I tapped on the wall where the shoot had been and pursed my lips as my fingers glided over the seamless slot. Whatever this place was, it had been well designed. From rooms full of doors to practically imaginary slots in cement walls.

Boots echoed in the corridor, and I darted back into my bunk and threw the covers over myself, pretending to be asleep.

Noises peeled off the walls, strumming in my ears. Footsteps echoed. Doors opened. Doors closed. Footsteps. Whispers. Locks. Clicks.

Once the sounds diminished, further down the hall, I slithered out and crept up between the bars of the metal door. Only more bars and doors in chipped pale-gray paint appeared through the slits. I cranked my neck and waited to see if heads would pop up.

Feet scattered further down. Boots thumped. Doors slammed. Whimpering. Doors opened.

I frowned, maneuvering my head to try and see further down the aisle. My hands tightened around the bars, and I almost whispered Dean’s name to see if he was still here.

Almost.

A distinctive pair of boots pounded against the floor ahead, hard and determined. I clamored back into my bunk and threw the covers over my body.

Click-clack, Click-clack.

Click. Clack.

Stop. Silence.

I pressed my lips together.

Squeak.

The lock unlatched for my cell and my heart raced in my chest.

“Put your hands behind your back,” the guard said.

My jaw locked, and the bruise between my shoulders throbbed, reminding me precisely how much pressure he applied last time I didn’t cooperate—or rather, last time I simply glared at him.

I sat up, and put my hands behind my back.

“So compliant.” The guard chuckled.

All I saw was the flash of Dean, and how quickly I was becoming like him.

The flubber stuff molded around my wrists and the guard made extra sure to haul me out of the cell, so my feet had to stumble to keep up.

I made sure my feet caught on each other and fell. I barely hit the ground before the guard hoisted me back up but this time, our pace was slower.

I lowered my head, letting my hair fall around my face, and smiled.

After we passed the guard station, I tried counting again.

Corridor. Corridor. Left, right, left, corridor, right . . . left.

I even tried repeating while adding to the count but it was useless. I’d have to add a new turn each time to keep the route fresh in my mind and even then that didn’t guarantee I was on the way out. It only guaranteed I was heading toward the room of doors, or in my case, the freezer.

We entered, the bright lights cast a radiance around the table, and my body shuddered as the guard deposited me on the chair. A warm liquid slid between my wrists and then the handcuffs dissolved, leaving me free. The figures in the shadows hissed and the guard walked away, dismissed.

“Vienna Avery,” Bacchart said, walking out of the darkness. His wavy black hair was slicked back.

He flung a file onto the table. It skidded to a stop in front of me. My picture was paper-clipped to the front of it.

I rubbed my wrists and sat back in the chair.

He waved his hand at the many doors. “I see you discovered just how fine our facilities are. Uniquely wonderful, aren’t they?”

He slinked behind me, his gaze creeping across my shoulders.

“What is this?”—he moved a cloth and a machine started behind me—“I’m shocked. Nothing to say?”

“I thought you were being rhetorical,” I deadpanned.

I heard him smile. “There you are. Back again. Would you mind moving your arms?”

Yes, actually I would.

But I moved my arms out of the way just enough so he could adjust a band around my waist and chest, and latched clips onto my fingertips. “Comfortable?”

Not in the least bit.

“Now.” He rubbed his hands together and opened my file. My name and birth information, in big bold letters, consumed the first page.

“Nice file,” I said.

He met my gaze and the corner of his mouth twitched up. “Now, where to start?” He slid his chair forward. “Why don’t we start at the beginning and then see where that leads us. What do you think?”

I raised my chin forward, trying to see what else he had exposed in there.

“Give a little,” he said, moving the folder out of my eyesight. “And take a little.”

I flopped back in my chair.

He sighed. “Oh, Vienna. Why must you make everything so difficult?”

I could have laughed. How was
I
making anything difficult?

His finger scaled my file. “Is your middle name Tisha?”

I looked at the row of doors. Was mine the third or fourth one?

“I’ll ask this one more time. Either way, I’m getting an answer,” he said.

“You already know the answer,” I said and heard needles whizzing behind me.

“We’ll try one more time, Vienna. Do you attend the University of Pennsylvania?”

My fingers clenched, and I felt the clips pinching against them. “You know that I do. Or at least did.”

“Are you an art history major?”

“Everything has changed,” I whispered. I glanced back at the fourth door.

“Okay, then.
Were
you an art history major?”

I crossed my arms. His onyx hair shone, reflecting all the light in the room, as if not even the light particles wanted to touch him.

“I don’t understand. What is this supposed to be helping with? You apparently know everything about me so what could you possibly want me for?” I leaned close and focused into his eyes. “Just tell me already.”

“Oh . . .” He brightened and noted something in the back of the file. “Your first real emotion today. Please elaborate. Please share.”

I laughed. “All my emotions have been real today, and every day, even the I’m-sick-of-you emotion.”

“Vienna.” He sighed and closed my file. “This is really your last shot.”

I exhaled and the band tightened around my chest. “Tell me what you want from me.”

“Vienna.” He folded his hands over my picture. “It’s so much more complex than that. So much bigger than you could even understand. Things are changing. Times are changing. It’s a new era.”

“Get it over with. You’re giving me some stupid sob story when
you’ve
thrust me into a freaking nightmare and now you expect me to change my mind about you. You think I’m going to sympathize? With you?”

He sighed. “Very well. I asked you nicely.” He picked up my file and flipped through the pages. “This . . . yes. Yes, I think will be the one. You have four cousins?” He looked up, and I felt my stomach drop. “You have
four
first cousins.”

Ho-ly-crap.

“Their names are Sydney, Joel . . .” He paused and gauged my expression. I heard the needles whizzing behind me. “London and Lester?”

I blazed into his black eyes. “Screw. You.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And your parents—”

“Leave them out of this.” I hissed, my hands slapping down on the table. “You’re deplorable. You really are. How low do you have to sink to try and wave this in my face?”

“Your dad is an only child—”

“What do you want from me?” I screeched.

“Your sole surviving grandmother was diagnosed with severe Alzheimer’s and—”

“Enough!” I flew up. The cords pulled and the machine tumbled down, cracking and spitting pieces everywhere.

“Guards! Guards!” he hollered.

Don’t you dare touch them.

I flipped the table between us across the room, red burning my vision, and sauntered toward him.

My family. They are mine.

“Vienna, you must understand,” he said, backing away from me, “this is all protocol. This is only for your good. For everyone’s—”

I snatched my file out of his puny hands, clips snapping from my fingers. “Don’t ever talk about my family. Again.” I tore the file into pieces, letting them fall at his feet.

I heard the guards rushing in.

I leaned into his dark and empty eyes. “This project is only for
your
good. Just yours. No one else’s. You’re only lying to yourself if—”

The guards bulldozed me to the floor, wrestling my hands behind my back.

I glared up at Bacchart.

I will destroy you.

I will rip you apart, piece by piece.

Piece by piece.

The guards yanked me up and I didn’t fight, just focused—completely—on Bacchart.

Icy air snaked around my feet.

Piece by piece, I will find you.

Bacchart sat there, watching me with awe in his great big black eyes.

“Screw you,” I hissed as they slammed the door in my face. “Screw. You.”

I sank onto the floor and drew my legs into my chest.

Screw you all.

I pulled my hair out from my ponytail and let it fall around my neck. The cold air slithered its way under my clothing and settled against my skin, allowing tremors to fill my body.

They found my weak spot. All of them.

I buried my face between my knees.

Now, they knew. My family.

My teeth knocked against each other, blending in with the sound of the generator. I rubbed the sides of my arms.

My head hung.

They knew.

And I shouldn’t have been surprised. I shouldn’t have.

The cold seeped its way through my skin, puckering and pulling at every piece of my body.

Alec.

Flashes of him flooded my mind, flashes of him doing sweet, pure, and selfless things: drying my hair with graceful, delicate hands, buying the entire box of my favorite snack, staying with me through the pain of my period, tearing a robot apart . . . for me, concealing me high in a tree . . . helping me escape from all this.

Reminding me of all the overwhelmingly good parts of him . . . that I conveniently found a way to forget.

“Oh Alec,” I whimpered. “I’m sorry. I’m so-so sorry.”

I rocked back and forth on my heels.

“I forgive you, Alec.”

For the person you were. For the person you used to be. For the things you did that you can no longer take back.

There is so much good in you, just waiting to break free. I’m glad you’re finally starting to see that. And I’m sorry I forgot to see it. I’m sorry I forgot to see it.

My heart exploded with warmth and joy and music, singing at the top of its lungs
. His smile, his laugh, his voice, his smell, his
—I closed my eyes—
his everything.

I allowed the images to fill my mind.

“Your mistakes are in the past. All of them. Just as mine are. You went against everything for me. Against everything. Knowing you could lose me anyways.”

I settled onto the ground, my body curled up into a bundle of frost. I slipped my hand in my pocket and felt the remnants of the leaf. I scooped it between my fingertips. “Come find me,” I whispered. “Come save me.”

Chapter 34

Robots.

Robots.

Robots?

Family.

Robots?

Family.

Safe. Orderly.

Tools.

Accommodating.

Accommodating?

“How?”

Essential.

Each in their . . .

Unique.

For you.

For. You.

Chapter 35

My head pounded in my tiny little skull.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

I burrowed into the sheets.

The bunk was warm. So warm. I shivered.

The slot clicked and stew sat in the wall.

The scent floated through me, and I dug my nose into the pillow and nausea rose in my stomach.

Pound-pound-pound.

The rapid pacing of footsteps echoed along the walls, scurrying back and forth. I nestled further into my bunk as the sounds continued. Door closing.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

Door opening. Scurry. Scurry. Door closing. Door opening. The noise lulled me and eased the drumming in my head: the constant shifting, the constant motion, the constant sounds of life existing beyond these walls.

Scurry. Scurry.
Click.

My eyes drifted up to a guard standing in my doorway. My jaw hardened and instantly the drumming pounded louder in my head.

Pound-dum. Pound-dum. Pound-dum.

“Hands behind you.” He smiled. His teeth were yellow and his cologne of smoke followed him in.

His particular boot print still bruised my back, and I put my hands behind me. The goo formed handcuffs around my wrists.

“I think I miss you more the other way.” He chuckled and jerked me out.

Twenty cells. Cor
—

We stopped after the passageway of cells. “But aren’t you—”

He shoved me into a room and relocked my handcuffs in front of me. “You have twenty minutes.” He shut the door in my face.

As the lights kicked on, I stared at the shower and sink adjacent to me.

It took me all of ten minutes trying to maneuver around the area with my hands cuffed.

Five minutes after I turned off the water, halfway clean and much happier, the door swung open and he propelled me back down the cells again.

I felt eyes on me, heating a way along my back and a strange familiarity settled in my stomach.

“Paula?” I whispered and turned to catch someone being hustled into the bathroom and a wisp of blond hair.

My heart fell. Not Paula.

He hauled me into the cell and removed my handcuffs. “Next time.” The guard’s smoke-infused breath grew close to my ear. “Next time, I promise, you’ll get your lovely arctic chill.”

The door shut, and I eased onto the bed. Next time.

I glared at the door,
Next time you can bite me
.

I sank back onto the sheets and listened to the sounds of feet and scurrying and doors and I drifted off to asleep.

Only to wake to a much different type of sound, the sound of rubber soles striking against the cement floor, steady and determined.

And I just knew, they were coming. For me.

“Vienna Avery.”

My hands clanged as my handcuffs hit the metal of the chair.

“Or more precisely.” Bacchart smiled. “Vienna Tisha Avery. You see, I’m quite excited. I think I’ve made a breakthrough with your case.”

I cocked my head. Was that supposed to impress me or scare me?

“Well, you don’t seem too excited.”

I stared down at my reprinted file in his hands, picture and all. So much for shredding it.

“You see, observation and testing are two entirely different things.” He set my file on the table. “One can hypothesize a specific result, Result A, based on the facts rendered at the time of the trial, while the other can actually prove an entirely different result, Result B. And this result is completely unfounded based on the data. This is why I have an extra kick to my smile today.”

I stared into his onyx black eyes and for a moment I thought I saw a genuine rush of excitement.

“Now.” He pulled out a notepad. “Where to begin.”

He gestured, and a guard stepped forward and wound the cord around my stomach and chest. The guard then attached the black clips to my fingers.

New shiny cords and new shiny clips, I noticed.

I smiled.

“Is your name Vienna?”

Why ever would it not be?

He grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes. Were you born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?”

Screw you.

“Another yes. Your father? Was he born in Philadelphia?”

My head snapped up.

“No,” he said. “How about South Carolina then?”

Stop.

“And your mother?”

Stop!

“Where is your mother from?”

“Enough,” I hissed, “you have me now. What more could you possibly want?”

“Oh, but you see,” he said, pouting, “I don’t have you. Not in the way I want you to be.”

“And which way is that? You trying to mold me into something you want? Trying to control me until I’m something that meets your specifications?”

“Vienna.” He sighed. “This isn’t about trying to mold people to fit a certain way. It’s about unity. About people coming together and standing together. We are only as strong as our weakest link. Only as powerful as the support people give us. Together is the only way to accomplish greatness. Once your eyes are opened, I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Of course. Just the way Dean understood, the way he was there but wasn’t, the way he saw but didn’t see, like the way Paula understood as they carried her screaming from our cell. Just”—I leaned closer—“the way they understood? Right?”

“Vienna!” His face turned puffy and red. “That’s not at all what this is about. It’s about the betterment of a nation, of a country.”

I laughed. “And this is the way to get there? An innocent citizen handcuffed to a chair and tied up to a lie detector machine. Brilliant,” I said. “Simply wonderful.”

“We have to move forward, as a whole. No one left behind—”

“Right. And how many of us have you taken? How many people did you snatch from their homes, from their lives? You call that moving forward? You call that legal? ‘The new dawn’?” I said, quoting President Mezzerette’s words. “The new horizon?”

His face blanched. “Laws have been proven to hold us back. They keep us from our true potential. Always back and forth, never getting anywhere, ideas created and destroyed in the same sentence. And before you know it, years go by and nothing is accomplished. Nothing put into effect. It’s a flawed system at its best. And its flaw is so foundational, it’s impossible to correct.

“But that doesn’t make this right,” I whispered. “It doesn’t make any of this right. First you say people won’t move forward and you refuse to leave them behind, and now it’s laws that are the problem, not allowing us to move forward. Don’t you see? It will never end.”

“It will end.” His eyes puffed out from his face. “It will end. You will see. We will make it right.”

“Right.” I looked away. “As you are making this right.”

“It is right!” His face exploded in rage. “I am making everything better. We are trying to fix everything that’s wrong with the world. We are making it a better place!” He sprung up and slammed his fist on the table. “You will see. Everything will be so much better.”

“So much more controlled, you mean.”

“That’s what life is!” He picked up my file. “Laws are for control, police are for control, everything about your life is about control! Every single person in this nation is controlled, in one way, or another. That is how society lives. That is how society functions. You want better. You think you know better? How’s this for better?” He took a moment to trace his fingers through the pages. “Your mother . . .”

“Don’t.” Anger boiled in my veins.

“Your mother—”

“Stop,” I snarled.

“Has two siblings?”

“Leave her alone.” My fists clanked against the chair, the handcuffs constraining me. “Leave them out of this.”

“And does your mother have one sister.”

“Enough,” I roared.

“One sister that no one discusses? That no one acknowledges? That no one cares about.”

“Stop!” I screamed.

A pounding drummed in my head, thundering, harder and harder.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

“You worry your mom will do the same thing to you? Abandon you? Discard you as she did her sister? That your mom will no longer—”

“Stop it,” I screamed.

Boom.

“Vienna!”
Mom wailed deep within me.
“Vienna! Listen to me!”

Her shrill voice pierced straight through me, straight through my inner depths, straight through my partition, lighting my head on fire, blazing through my body, and blackening my vision.

Blackening everything.

Darkness.

Blackness.

All around.

Mom.

Chip . . . chip . . . crack.

My partition.

My partition.

Images deluged my mind: Faces, voices, laughter, crying, wishes, hopes. Spinning. Spinning all around. Spinning up. Spinning down.

Vienna?

Vienna.

Vi-enna where are you?

Vienna . . .

My name dissipated, echoing along the halls. Down. Down-down. Down.

I turned, and turned, and turned.

Mom?

Robots.

Robots?

Hard. Cold. Steel.

Robots.

Integral.

Integral?

Integral.

Effectual.

Effectual?

Imperative.

Him . . .

Yes.

Wh-Why?

What?

Why yes?

Him . . .

Green.