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Another click, and the planes enlarged to fill my field of vision, like I’d fired up a pair of high-tech binoculars. The images grew and grew in size, until I could capture enough detail to place them.
F/A-18 military jets.
A 3-D schematic of the jets burst to life before me, rotating to show me all sides.
Red letters blinked behind my eyes:
Presently unarmed—drill mode likely
“Not sure,” I murmured, turning away in relief. But as the weight drained from my limbs, a heavy certainty filled my heart. The planes served as a forceful reminder that this carefree beach time with Hunter was coming to an end. No matter how hard I tried to push reality away, it kept sweeping back over me, as surely as the tide rolled in.
And like the rhythmic cycle of the tide, two names repeated themselves, over and over again.
Richard Grady. Sarah. Names that had slipped from Mom’s lips not long before she’d died. I was most confused by Sarah.
“You always were so brave, Sarah. So brave,” she’d said. But she’d been talking to me, looking at me. Why would she mistake me for this unknown Sarah?
Abruptly, I started in the direction of our motel. “Let’s go.”
I could tell Hunter was confused by my sudden urge to leave, but at the moment, I wasn’t up to explaining everything. I needed to get away, to return to the relative safety of the motel room.
As we walked, we passed an amusement park across the street, a motionless Ferris wheel towering in the sky. As if mocking me with all the normalcy I would never have. Hunter had once taken me to a carnival. In those brief moments, I’d caught a glimpse of a real life. What it might feel like to actually be human.
Maybe that was another reason why I’d called him. He always made me feel as though I was more than just some fancy gadget created in a lab.
After one last longing glance, I looked away. I couldn’t live in the past, but I also couldn’t have a future until I learned everything I needed to know about my past.
Richard Grady. This Sarah person. The other Milas.
Maybe once I knew everything, I would finally be free to create a real life. Maybe even one that included Hunter.
We continued down the boardwalk, though I could sense Hunter’s concern in the way he kept sneaking quick glances at my profile. To the east, the waves rumbled toward the sand, mingling with the excited squeals of the few scattered children. From Hunter’s brief conversation with the woman selling ice cream earlier, we knew the crowds had dwindled considerably since summer. But there were still plenty of tourists and locals out sightseeing and soaking up the sun.
My gaze caught on two men up ahead. I quickly dismissed them. Not fit enough. No weapons.
Too many people here for comfort. But at least we didn’t look conspicuous amid a sea of other pedestrians. Plus, Virginia Beach had seemed like the perfect spot—I had such great memories of this place.
Even if those memories were programmed rather than real.
“So, is everything okay? You seem pretty tense.”
“I’m fine. Just a little headache,” I said with a carefree wave of my hand, even though carefree had long ago fled my capabilities. A shriek jerked my head to the right, before I realized it was just a young girl, fleeing an older boy and his two handfuls of wet sand.
My hand closed around my emerald pendant while something flashed in the back of my head. A man, and a woman, dancing along the shoreline. Gulls shrieking overhead, the roar-crash of waves—
Memory banks compromised, defragment.
Image recall.
The flicker of memory, gone. No—more like, stolen.
I shuddered, and Hunter was there in a flash. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Maybe we should go back to the room—it’s going to be dark soon anyway. And we still need to talk.”
Talk. Right. I couldn’t tell you how much I was looking forward to that.
I mean, how did that conversation go, exactly? Thanks so much for coming and oh, by the way—I’m an android.
I must have stiffened, because Hunter sighed. “I’m here for you, okay? You have to know that.”
I allowed the unnecessary air to exit my nonhuman lungs in a huge exhalation. I peeked up at him, afraid of what I might find in his faded-denim eyes, but they were soft. Warm. Inviting.
Like he was just waiting for me to open up and let him in.
“Thank you.”
He lifted my hand and traced my knuckles with his thumb. Then he shrugged, a loose-limbed movement of his shoulders, and I was transported back to homeroom, where I’d seen him perform that motion for the first time.
Homeroom. I’d been in homeroom less than two weeks ago. Now, classrooms and blackboards and high school cafeterias seemed impossibly out of reach. Funny how torture and death could do that to you.
We rounded the final corner, to where the Sea Breeze Motel sat about half a block down. The lobby was tiny. Shabby, too, with faded green upholstered chairs and scarred wood floors. Rooms at the Sea Breeze came cheap for a reason—nothing looked to have been upgraded in decades. But at least it was clean.
The pulse of anxiety in my ears throbbed louder and louder the closer we came to the motel. Once we got to our room, I was supposed to magically conjure up a way to tell Hunter the truth. Right.
Why wasn’t there an android program to facilitate the important stuff?
The motel room mirror was still fogged with steam from my shower. I rubbed a small, blurry opening in the cloudy white and my face stared back at me. I lifted my hand, turned it this way and that, then traced my knuckles with my thumb. The way Hunter had earlier. I rubbed a bigger circle, my skin glistening under the harsh light. I looked up and down my figure, trying to see myself through Hunter’s eyes. I looked real enough—skin, muscle, curves—but would I feel real to him?
That thought made my face grow hot. My gaze floated upward and I was surprised to see a hint of pink blooming in my cheeks. We’d never even kissed. Why was I thinking of him touching me?
As I shoved the mortifying thoughts from my head and lifted the brush to my short, platinum blond hair—which I’d dyed from black just after Hunter arrived—my hand trembled. Another motel room, another mirror. My long, brown hair floating to the floor, while Mom stood behind me, her blue eyes worried.
I turned away and finished drying off with the skimpy motel towel. I slipped into a pair of navy sweatpants with a big “I
Virginia Beach” on the butt—classy—and a plain white tank. Even less couture than my cozy flannel jammies from home, but hey, what could you expect for $8 on the clearance rack? I couldn’t afford to squander the money Lucas had given me on fancy clothes.
Lucas. I winced, like I did every time my thoughts turned to the guy who’d been injured helping me escape from General Holland’s secret SMART Ops compound. Lucas, the nerdy proctor of my insane tests—the budding scientist with a heart of gold. Thanks to him, I not only had my life, such as it is, but I also didn’t have to strut around in an outfit I’d bought off a homeless woman in D.C. That shirt had been covered in stains that refused to yield—at least not to the tiny packets of detergent provided by the coin dispenser downstairs.
I caught another glimpse of myself in the mirror and grimaced. Procrastination, thy name is Mila. After sticking out my tongue at my bedraggled reflection, I reached for the door and opened it with what I hoped was a confident smile. Time to face Hunter and his questions. Time to face the truth. I had this.
Or not. I barreled forward, only to feel my resolve fizzle when I caught sight of his lanky form, sprawled across the bed by the window.
“Ahem.”
He bolted upright; as if the state of Virginia had just broadcasted that motel-room reclining was illegal. He snagged the remote from between folds of the crumpled comforter and turned down the volume, then scooted to the edge of the bed. Very proper, with his feet on the ground and hands in his lap.
O-kay. I sat opposite him, combing my fingers through my wet hair to give myself something to do. The quiet thickened, so I distracted myself by counting red circles on the curtains—fifty-two.
He looked at me before quickly averting his eyes. “I forgot to tell you, I like your new haircut,” he finally blurted to the remote in his hands.
“Thanks.” No need to tell him I was on version two already since the last time we’d met.
At least not yet.
The bed creaked like an old floorboard when he shifted his weight. His gaze skimmed me again, taking in my bare shoulders, dampened from where my hair dripped down, and then his eyes dropped to his lap again. He cleared his throat and that tiny “ahem” crackled between us.
I crossed my arms, his unease making me all too aware of the fact that I was in a motel room with a boy, not a chaperone or parent in sight, and oh by the way, we were going to spend the night together.
For the second time in under two minutes, heat crawled up my cheeks. Not spend the night, spend the night. But still. When I’d called Hunter and begged him to come help me, the potential for extreme awkwardness hadn’t really been front and center in my mind. I’d been consumed with grief and panic. Thoughts of Hunter had gotten me through some of the darkest moments—before my mother died in my arms. Then thoughts weren’t enough. I needed someone I could trust. Even though we’d only known each other for a few weeks, the way Hunter looked at me as though I were important, as though I mattered … it made me feel safe. There was no one else I could call.
Hunter started tapping a drumbeat on his thigh—a nervous habit I’d noticed when I’d first met him—and even though his nearness made my artificial nerve endings fire and my synthetic heartbeat quicken, I felt the tension between us like a concrete wall.
Oh, wow. This was going so well.
“Is it just me, or is this cohabitating thing kind of weird?”
“Not just you,” I replied in a rush. So fast that his lips lifted into that familiar, quirky smile. Something sizzled down my spine, once more making me want things that could never be mine. Things I could have if I were more than a bundle of circuits and transmitters. Things like a normal life.
Things I could maybe have if I chose not to follow through on Mom’s dying words.
We faced each other across the short gap between the beds, our knees close to touching.
“How about we make a pledge?” he asked. “I’ll start. I, Hunter Lowe, solemnly swear to stay in my own bed, except in case of emergencies. Or if you’re snoring really loud—then I can come over and elbow you. Or, you know, if you invite me over—just to watch TV or something,” he tacked on hastily, when my eyes widened. “Wow, I never realized that you had a gutter mind. Tsk.” He shook his head.
“Whatever.” I grinned back, then remembered my exact thoughts in the bathroom and tried not to cringe in embarrassment. “And I pledge to stay in my own bed, unless you make more terrible jokes like that. In which case I’m going to clobber you with your own pillow.”
“You drive a hard bargain, but deal. And now that the horribly awkward moment is over, are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”
His smile didn’t waver, but that was because he was totally clueless. The truth was sure to slap that smile right off his face. I’d had a difficult time believing it. I still hadn’t accepted it. How could I expect him to?
I bunched my hands into the comforter, rough from multiple washings, and squeezed. I could do this. I could do this. I could—
The words congealed in my throat. I swallowed hard.
“I promise not to judge,” he said.
So many things about him got to me: The softness of his voice. The way he leaned toward me, as if his life hung on my every word. The slowness of his hand sliding down my hair. The way he twirled several errant strands around his finger.
My eyes fluttered shut. There was something about his sincerity, and how it mingled with the sparks his touch ignited, that filled a tiny bit of the void inside me. I couldn’t lose that, and being honest with him might lead to him walking out the door without ever looking back.
I know this is going to sound crazy …
What would I do without him to remind me that a part of me, at least, was alive?
You see, the thing is …
And what if he left and told someone what I really was?
The secret I’ve been hiding all along …
I opened my mouth to tell him the truth, but my backup story came pouring out instead. “Mom and I got in a huge argument …,” I started, then faltered.
Was I really doing this? Lying, to the one person I had left in the world?
“Because you were moving to Germany, right?”
The attentive tilt of his head encouraged me to continue, but I was momentarily blindsided. I remembered the frantic phone call I’d made to Hunter from the airport in Canada, before Mom and I were snagged by Holland’s men. I’d told him I was leaving Clearwater, and that was probably the last time I’d told him the truth.
I willed myself again to set things right with him, but failed.
“No, she … she told me I was adopted.”
It was selfish of me to lie. Utterly, unforgivably selfish. I couldn’t deny that.
But then I thought of the day Mom handed me that iPod. The day a power-hungry general’s drawl changed my life forever and ripped away my very identity. Simply by telling me the truth, he’d erased my entire life, stolen my parents, and blasted my hope. Truth—was it really that great? Because in my experience, it was a taker. It took away all that was good, leaving behind pain and fear and an endless funnel of betrayal.
“She just dropped that on you, out of nowhere? So the guy who you thought was your father, the one who just died …?”
“Not my real dad.”
“Wow. That’s … wow.”
I bit my lip and averted my gaze, my stomach clenching, revolting against my betrayal of Mom’s memory. Yes, she’d programmed me with false memories of a father who didn’t exist, but as a way of protecting me. And it had worked. While I’d known sadness before that day in the barn, I hadn’t really known despair.
So perhaps keeping Hunter in the dark right now was actually less cruel?
“I’m sorry, Mila. That must be really tough.”
Even though I was trying to convince myself that I was somehow doing Hunter a favor, his sympathy was just too much. I rose and strode over to the window—there was no way I could look him in the eye right now. I stared outside while my fingers curled around the worn wooden sill.
Crunch.
Crap, too hard. I eased up immediately, but not before new jagged lines branched out into the already faded white paint. Hopefully Hunter wouldn’t notice.
“So, what now? Did she tell you anything about them?”
When I didn’t answer right away, he added, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
I felt like such a fraud, even when I was silent. Justifications for lying kept filing through my mind, like someone shuffling a deck of cards. For instance, if Hunter was going to stay with me, then I had to have a valid reason for hunting down Richard Grady. And him knowing the truth about me could possibly put us both in danger—if he remained unaware of the situation, I could have more control.
But the guilt building inside me made me doubt I could keep up this charade for more than a day.
I just needed to work my way up to breaking the news.
Tomorrow. I’d tell him tomorrow.
“No, it’s fine. That’s what this trip is all about. She gave me a name, Richard Grady. But that’s it. She’s refusing to help me find him, or give me any other clues whatsoever. She got incredibly pissed when I told her I’d look for him all on my own.”
“When you called, you said your mom was … gone.”
