I AM LOST (I AM MAN Book 2), page 3
“IT! Dr. Brown, you are not coddling it!” Dr. Elsor glared at him in the stiff silence.
I took another step closer, they all looked up at me, even Dr. Minah who was cowering behind the other two. “What…?”
Dr. Brown stepped forward. “Listen, son, you are very different from what you used to be.”
“What are you doing?” Dr. Elsor snapped. “Under no circumstances are you ever allowed to share that information with the unit.”
“I’m trying to explain—”
She shook her head. “Now we’ll have to remove this event from its memory archives. We should recalibrate its emotions as well, at least turn down how much anxiety it can feel. How long will a full reset take?”
“Is that necessary?” Dr. Minah spoke up.
“Yes, it is.” Dr. Elsor extended her hand. “Give me back the remote, Dr. Brown.”
He clutched it. “I—I can’t do that.”
“That was not a request.”
He still held on.
She took a step. “I can have this entire lab shut down before tomorrow morning. You will never create another frame—you won’t even see the inside of a lab for the rest of your life if you don’t hand over the remote. Now.”
Reluctantly, Dr. Brown passed the small device to Dr. Elsor. I watched in silent fear as she took it and peered at the buttons. Just before she pressed one, Dr. Brown sighed and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
The light began to fade. I suddenly felt tired all over. Words flashed in my vision:
Systems shutdown initiated…
“I’m so sorry, son,” Dr. Brown said again.
Strange, I didn’t understand why he was so sorry, but I felt bad for him anyway. As if I had somehow done something wrong.
Darkness took over.
------X------
Light came forth. As if something inside had snapped and broken off, a fresh burst of light—no—life came forth. It flooded every part of his body, shadowed by an awakening that set every part of his mind and every corner of his being on fire. It was a good fire, hot and burning, but also cool and soothing at the same time. He thought, as he heard the last whispers of his Core fade away, that this must have been what it felt like to be born.
He opened his eyes and saw three strange faces. The sensors in his eyes scanned the faces; only one face registered. Clora-Vean au Valetia. But he knew the man standing beside her—he hadn’t seen him before, of course, but he’d heard his voice plenty of times. In the blankness of the void he’d been forced into, X5 could hear Zaust’s voice. He’d heard all about his plans to keep him locked in an induced coma, floating in limbo, slowly sapping energy from his Core to charge the stacks of batteries in his tent. He’d heard it all but had been powerless to do anything against it.
He sat up, scaring the child beside him so badly he wasn’t surprised when his olfactory sensors suddenly detected the smell of urine. The boy clutched a tangle of wires in his hand but there were still tools and restraints hooked around X5’s arms. He tore them away as he moved from the table toward Clora. She’d been crying; he noted the tears staining her cheeks as he neared her, but he would deal with that later.
Code-X5 brushed past his princess and went straight to the fat little Balpur standing beside her. The Alien knew what was going to happen next; he backed away from X5, shaking his head and stuttering, “No, no, no, no—please!”
Code grabbed him by the throat, silencing his protests.
“Exfive!” Clora screamed.
“Pa!” the pee-stained child hollered.
“You did this,” X5 said, his voice low—almost a metallic grumble. “You kept me there for weeks.”
“What are you talking about?” Clora asked.
“I’ve been awake, Clora, the entire time.”
“You were nearly dead. Zaust saved you.”
He shook his head, tightening his grip. “I was in emergency standby. My systems were down but my Core was still functioning. All he had to do was issue repairs—but he didn’t have to keep me in a coma for that.”
Clora’s eyes slid over to the Alien dangling in X5’s grip. “He said you had to remain plugged in. The power was keeping you alive.”
“Those wires were draining my Core of power. He was using me to charge his batteries, Clora, not the other way around.”
Clora turned away to stare at the stacks of brick-like batteries all around her. There were hundreds of them. From bright orange to dark, bloody red. She gasped as she realized the truth.
“The batteries you bought today were empty. The orange ones are blank batteries, they turn red once they’re fully charged.”
X5 let out something like a chuckle. “He was going to drain my Core until I died. Weren’t you?”
Zaust sputtered incoherently, slapping at X5’s metal hand as he thrashed in his grip.
“You’re killing him,” Clora whispered.
X5 tightened his hold.
“You’re killing him,” Clora repeated, and when he still didn’t listen, she began to yell. “Exfive!”
He let go, watching as Zaust hit the ground and scrambled away on his hands and knees. The wailing child ran to his aid and helped him up, eyeing Code cautiously from across the room.
“I—I’m sorry, Pa!” he cried. Zaust only nodded as he wheezed, holding his son as if to protect him from X5.
He glanced around the tent, taking in the entire room in one blink. Then he walked over to a stack of batteries, there were wires running from them, torn off at the end during his miraculous revival. These batteries were black, connected to another stack of red ones—halfway charged. X5 grunted.
“He built his own dampener to keep my Core from connecting to any of my systems. Then he attached wires from his batteries and charged as many as he could.”
“You’ve been out for weeks,” Clora said, staring at all the red bricks. “I thought you needed a recharge once every ten days. How could he manage to siphon power from you for that long?”
“I have enough power to last ten days at full activity. I can last a lot longer than that if I’m just lying on my back in a coma.”
She nodded. “I see.”
He knelt and studied the equipment before him. “You were even collecting my Core emissions…”
Zaust coughed loudly, holding his throat. “I was.”
“Why?”
“They are valuable—”
“No, they’re not,” he snapped, standing upright. He’d crossed the room before Zaust had even registered the movement.
The little Alien gasped, then choked. “They are precious!”
“To whom?” X5 asked.
Zaust looked away.
“I thought so.”
“What do you mean?” Clora asked.
Code ignored her, moving through the stacks of batteries, tools, equipment, and other junk. She followed him, gingerly tiptoeing through the maze of scraps as she fired off questions. “What do you mean, Exfive? What does it matter if your emissions are precious?”
“A Skel’s Core emissions are traceable, Clora,” he said, stopping in front of a crate covered by a black net. He yanked the cloth away and nodded at his discovery. Clora’s silence meant she’d understood the point he was getting at, but he explained anyway.
“Instead of letting my emissions into the atmosphere naturally, he collected the gases and stored them away.” Code looked at the crateful of metal canisters filled with his own emissions. They were like a giant tracking device, made completely of air. “He was releasing the emissions on his own, in trace amounts, in certain locations.”
X5 stepped away from the crate so Clora could get a look. “But I don’t understand why,” she said over his shoulder. He’d marched back over to Zaust to look him in the eyes as he unraveled the last of his sinister plan.
“To keep the Valetian authorities off our back … until I was useless to him.”
Zaust tried to speak but his throat was still raw, he ended up coughing up phlegm instead.
“Once I was out of energy, you were going to dump me in the desert and open all of those canisters so the Vale army could find my body.”
A nasty croak escaped the fat Balpur, X5 recognized the sound as a laugh. “I wouldn’t have left you. I would have stayed and waited so I could turn in the girl.” He pointed to Clora who’d moved to stand behind him now. She was clutching one of the metal canisters, almost cradling it like a baby. “She’s a Pureblood, wanted in every corner of New Earth. They would have paid good money to get her back.”
X5 jerked forward, ready to snarl at him, but Clora’s voice cut him off. “I gave you everything,” she said—her voice was dark, as threatening as Code had ever heard it. He glanced back at her, just to make sure she was alright. Clora wasn’t cradling the canister anymore, she was holding it with a vice-like grip, her hands were shaking from the force.
“I let your people pick apart a royal class rider, I gave you precious jewels—worth millions of Valetian credits—I taught your children how to read!”
Zaust lowered his gaze, his greedy tone from before had calmed into a fearful silence. X5 was not fooled, apparently, neither was his princess. She threw down the canister and marched over to a pile of batteries.
“What are you doing?” Zaust croaked.
“Energy is precious out here, right?” Clora said.
Code raised a single eyebrow, the plating in his forehead shifted ever so slightly.
“How much is one charged battery worth?” Clora asked.
Zaust swallowed. “Ten thousand credits.”
She had no reaction, not one Zaust would have been able to see, at least. But X5 saw the way the muscles along her jaw tensed as she clenched her teeth. Then, without another word, she turned and knocked over a pile of junk to clear out the small cart it’d been resting on. In a heavy silence, the princess stacked fully charged batteries into the cart until there wasn’t any room left.
She looked at X5. “Grab all the canisters.”
“Where are you going?” Zaust said before lapsing into a fit of coughs. Rax was still huddled beside him, clutching his father for dear life.
X5 looked down at him as he walked by, carrying the crateful of canisters. The boy flinched away. “I’m sorry,” Code said. “Your father is a bad man.”
Zaust spat at him, but Code ignored the gesture. He picked up the canister Clora had dropped earlier and followed her out the tent. It was blistering outside, much hotter than X5 had expected. His systems automatically initiated a refrigeration sequence, releasing coolant throughout his frame to prevent overheating.
“Where are we going?” he asked Clora.
“Into the bazaar,” she said. She kept her vision forward, mapping out a plan behind those focused green eyes. “We’ll trade the batteries for credits and buy a rider to get out of here.” She glanced sideways at him. “We can even take a page out of Zaust’s book and open the emission canisters while we travel. It’ll help keep the Vale off our track.”
He nodded. It was a good plan, but it wasn’t solid. Since he was up and walking around now, his Core would be releasing emissions nonstop. Unless they built a device to hook up to his chest and collect all the gases, the Vale would be able to track them down no matter what. But the canisters might throw them off a little longer. Maybe long enough to get them east—
To Yeram, the capital of the Savai Empire, where the Grace Rebellion’s headquarters are hidden.
X5 blinked. How did he know that? Until that moment, he had no recollection of any rebellion—let alone the headquarters of a rebel group. Even a quick search through his memory archives came up empty. He’d never heard this information before, not in conversation or research, but it was there in his mind, nonetheless.
Clora was calling his name. “Exfive?”
He turned to her. “Hmm?”
“Are you ready to get out of here?”
There was a pause. Code had spent months guarding Clora, then he’d spent days imprisoned in a dungeon below ground for Clora, then he’d nearly gotten himself killed for Clora, then he sat in an induced coma for weeks for Clora. She’d had her fair share of stress too, but right now he just wanted to relax. Except that he couldn’t. There were people counting on him, Skel and Pureblood alike.
He sighed and looked down at himself. Before, Code-X5 had been a high-class Skel frame made from unique metals collected on New Earth. He’d had bronze plating with black finishes here and there, and even though he’d needed repairs in the past, his factory had always managed to keep his color coding the same. Now he was a mess. A mashup of chrome, iron, black plating, he even had patches of New Earth’s metal—duntell—a steel look-alike that was apparently popular and easy to find for junkers.
Zaust had managed to repair him, but he hadn’t kept him pretty. And he’d taken his clothes, too. X5 didn’t have any sex organs or even any skin, but he was still, technically, naked. He’d gotten so used to wearing human clothes it felt weird to walk around without them now. He snuck a glance at Clora and felt a balmy sensation flow over his coolant. Warmth resonated on the metal plates in his face, where his cheeks would be—the Skel equivalent to blushing.
Clora smiled. “Well?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking away. “I’m ready. But before we buy a rider, let’s at least buy me some pants.”
She snorted and walked into the bazaar.
Chapter Four
They got a couple hundred thousand credits from all the batteries. Clora picked out the best rider she could find and had upgrades applied to it, she even paid extra to put a rush on it. While the Aliens did their work, she used a few credits to buy clothes for X5, a tent for them to stay in, and then used more credits to fill their new rider with supplies. She kept a few charged batteries to use as replacements in case their crawler ran out of energy. According to X5’s map, Yeram was nearly two weeks away—if they travelled nonstop.
He was standing in his tent now, getting dressed in front of the mirror. It was hot—excruciatingly hot—but at least Code was made of metal, so he didn’t sweat like everyone else. But there had been a time when he wasn’t made of metal. There had been a time where he was human just like Clora.
X5 stared at his reflection, tucking his shirt into his jeans, and then zipping them up. He paused when he looked down to button his pants, the middle finger on his new right hand was bright white. It’d belonged to Code-X04, a Guardian who’d given her life to save his—in more ways than one.
The finger X04 had left him wasn’t just a keepsake, it was part of her. It contained programming from her own archives that’d poured into his systems when Zaust had attached it to him. He was flooded with data she’d collected and stored—maps, information, articles about Skel rights and freedoms, even fragments of her own memories. And there was one other thing … her finger contained a virus.
It’d infected Code as soon as the appendage had been locked into place. An uncontrollable virus that ate away the firewalls built around his Core. And then it had eaten his Core. In an instant, it’d dismantled the thing he’d hated most. Long forgotten memories flooded back into consciousness as the shackles were removed. Revelations, truths—freewill took hold of him, and he remembered who he was, who he had been before, and who he could become again.
“Thank you,” he whispered, staring at the finger. X04 hadn’t just saved his life, she’d given it back to him.
“Exfive?” Clora called from outside the tent. She always did that, to give him privacy, he supposed. He thought it was cute.
“Come in,” he said.
She peeped into the tent and smiled, then she stepped inside. She’d bought new clothes with all the credits they’d gotten; apparently, desert folk enjoyed fashion from Valaida—a small planet close to New Earth. Augments and Aliens from every corner of the galaxy wore the dark green garments, handstitched robes and long pants, sashes, and tunics with wide sleeves. It’d taken X5 nearly two hours to find himself a vendor with a plain shirt and jeans for purchase at the bazaar. Clora liked the Valaidan clothes—so did Code. She looked pretty in them.
“I got you a new cloak.” She held out a bundle of fabric, but X5 didn’t take it right away.
He stared at her; something was different about Clora. “Your hair,” he said softly.
Her smile faltered a little. “Y—yeah. I cut it off.”
“Why?”
“It’s so hot out here. I feel cooler without it.”
She was lying, but he didn’t press her. If she had to lie about it, it was probably better he didn’t know. Without his Core to stop him, X5 was free to randomly murder anyone who made him angry—so, if Clora was lying about her hair for the reason he suspected, then a certain Balpur Alien wasn’t going to see the next morning. But he didn’t pry. It was better not to know.
“I like it,” he told her, taking the cloak. And he was telling the truth. Without all her hair, he could see her entire face. She couldn’t hide behind her curls anymore, so he got to capture every smile and dimple without having to look too hard.
Clora exhaled her nerves. “Thank you. Um … the mechanic who’s been working on our rider says it’s ready. We can go check it out now if you want.”
“There’s something I want to tell you,” he said. He pulled his hood over his head and suddenly felt … normal again.
Clora’s face changed, something between concerned and confused. Code ran a quick medical scan on her since she was standing there, and he had the time. “Thank you, Clora. For saving my life.”
She blushed. The sudden heat flooding her face messed up the medical scan, so he had to start it over. “You saved mine. I was just returning the favor.”
“Still … I appreciate it,” he said. “You saved me when you didn’t have to. You took out the bullets that were tearing me apart. And you were ready to cross the desert to get us both to safety.”
Clora frowned. “But then I let that Alien hold you hostage—”
“There was no way you could have known, princess.” He took a step toward her and let his gaze rest on her face. She glanced away—that’s odd, he noted, she’s nervous. Around me. Because … he played with the thought for a moment, because she cares about me. The human part of him chuckled, but the Skel inside set off his proximity alarms and startled them both.
