Chapter Eighteen - Lincoln
Molly. I think it was her name that started it.
“Lincoln?” Sheila asks outside my bedroom doorway. “Are you OK?”
It’s an obsession. I realize this.
“Did you meet with her?”
Unhealthy for sure. And not gonna end well.
“Lincoln?”
I’m lying naked on the end of the bed with only my black leather gloves on. I can smell her lust on them. My bare feet are kicked up on the headboard, my hands behind my neck, and I’m staring up at the cave ceiling. The lights are on but the darkness surrounds me. I can see Sheila in her holographic dress from the corner of my eye and picture the day I coded her image. That day I finally stumbled down the overgrown driveway and came to terms with what was left of my life before Prodigy School. That day when my vow to get even, no matter what it took, finally coalesced into action.
Sheila’s raw personality was the only thing I took from school besides the clothes I was wearing. I don’t know why I took her. She belonged to them and she wasn’t near as intelligent then as she is now, so she didn’t give one fuck about me or my motivations. She could’ve ruined everything and Case was beyond pissed when I told him about her. But she was the only inheritance I had aside from the charred remains of the house above the cave. And that connection was enough to risk it, I guess.
The trip inside the maze tonight brought back memories I never wanted in the first place. But it was definitely Molly’s name that started it.
“She was wearing a nightgown the last time I saw her, you know. I gave her a coat and some boots and I told her to run like hell before I killed her.”
“Lincoln?” Sheila repeats, a bit of sadness in her voice. When did she acquire so many different emotions? When I first loaded her down here in the lab she only had one. I’d have called it indifference, if pressed.
Now she has so many it’s hard to keep track.
They say humans only have six emotions, sometimes only four, depending on who you talk to. Happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad. But those people never had to develop a computer language and program a machine to take the place of a mother.
I did. And I know there’s a lot more going on inside Sheila than those six things.
For one, those scientists left out confused. That’s what I am right now. Or maybe I’m conflicted?
Is Molly someone I want in my life? That’s confusion.
Should I let Molly in my life? That’s the conflict.
The answer to the first is yes and the second is no.
“Lincoln, talk to me.”
Everything about Molly points to danger for me. She’s a cop, I’m a criminal. She’s good and I’m bad. She’s the end and I’m the beginning.
“You have to—”
“It was a mistake,” I finally say. “It was a mistake to see her tonight.” I look over at Sheila and she’s frowning. “Before last weekend I was fine, you know? I was alone and I was fine with that. But now…” My words trail off.
“But now what?”
I shake my head. “Now I want her. Now I can’t imagine letting her go and the only answer to my problem is to push her away.”
“Stay home tonight. Don’t go back out. It’s too dangerous. You can’t keep this up.”
I let out a long sigh, and then bark, “Lights out.” The room goes dark, only the ambient light from the computers and aquarium tank in the main cave leaking in to spoil the blackness. “I won’t push her away. But it’s the wrong decision, Sheila. I can feel it in my bones. My luck ran out when I wasn’t looking. I thought it was luck that got me out of that crash last week, but it wasn’t. It was life catching up to me. It was my past, my present, and my future all rolled up into ten minutes on a mountain road with Molly Masters.”
That’s all it takes. A few minutes with a girl I care about. One girl who means something to me. One girl who will bring up all the things I’ve been pushing down.
“It’s over, I guess. But I had a good run.”
The next time I look over at the doorway Sheila is gone.
But my dark thoughts are still here. And there are names etched into my memories that come out to play in the night. I recite them in my mind as I get up off the bed and start tugging on my jeans and boots. I slip a t-shirt over my head and then shrug on the hoodie.
Detective Molly Masters is on to me. I can feel it. She’s on to me and she’s gonna find me again and ask lots of questions. So why not get one more in before she comes? Why not take one more pathetic piece of shit down before I am stopped?
Why not?
I walk out of my room and spy my leather jacket hanging off the back of a chair, the red symbol on the sleeve practically calling my name through the green glow of digital haze.
I slip my arms in the sleeves and become Cathedral City’s worst nightmare.
I am mayhem, I am anarchy, and I am found.
But most of all, I am Alpha.