9
“It really wasn’t a hard sell,” Ethan explained, barely watching the roadway as they raced along a dark interstate at speeds that would have been terrifying if not for the fact that he was essentially a humanoid supercomputer and theoretically incapable of making mistakes. Years ago, Davey had witnessed Ethan answer his cell phone and have a five-minute conversation while continuing to read the Lee Child thriller he’d picked up an hour earlier. Not only was his brain able to perform true multitasking, but his ability to do so was limitless.
“What Mason Drekker wants more than anything else is to be immortal,” Ethan said. “He knows Global Cures never destroyed the synthetic body his soul failed to bond to. I promised to steal it, and then convinced him that I could guarantee the transmutation would work on the next trial.”
Davey shook her head in disbelief. “First of all, how could you make such a promise when we don’t understand how the tethering process works? And even if we could do it, Drekker is too dangerous to be given what he wants. He could hurt too many people.”
Ethan nodded. “It’s true that Drekker is dangerous. He’s a powerful adversary, and in his current state, he’s impossible to truly defeat. But bonding him to a machine would make him like me. That’s something I know how to fight. That’s something I can win against.” He paused and watched Davey thoughtfully. In his solemn stare, she saw traces of fear. “I don’t know how else to protect you,” he finished quietly.
Seeing him like that stirred feelings of angst deep within her. “Ethan, if you betray Global Cures in this way, there’s no telling what they will do to you,” she reasoned in a low and anxious voice.
He squeezed her leg lightly, and a smile whispered at his lips. “Let’s get Hogan out of danger first, and then we can worry about me.”
Davey shook her head. There were far too many variables, and she had just as many questions. “How are we going to complete the transmutation? Do you think Hogan can somehow do this?”
Ethan grimaced. “Not a chance. Not after he almost killed me,” he muttered.
“Hey!” Hogan exclaimed from the backseat. “I said I was sorry!”
Pressing his lips into a thin line, Ethan rounded his shoulders. “Sorry, kiddo,” he said, embarrassment flashing across his expression as he glanced in the rearview mirror. “You really did great back there. I was asking a lot of you, and you handled it like a champ.”
Hurt feelings repaired, Hogan smiled. “Thanks.”
“So, how are we going to complete the transmutation?” Davey asked again.
“It’s easier if I show you. Please, just wait a little longer.”
“Okay,” she agreed, at the same time deciding to move on to her next question. “Tell me about Seth, then. Hogan said he was told to bring Seth back. Is he talking about Seth Eleazer? Because you are Seth, so that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Trust me, Davey. I’ll explain everything as soon as I can. Help me secure the synthetic body for Drekker first.” Hitting the accelerator, Ethan sent the Charger roaring off the exit, dropping the transmission into third gear as he braked just enough to whip the muscle car into a left turn through the intersection.
Damming the slew of questions perched at the tip of her tongue, Davey resigned to trust Ethan until the time was right. He had never given her a reason not to. When they pulled up to the gated entrance of Global Cures, she handed over her badge card without a word. Ethan swiped the ID and the automated barricade lifted, but after driving clear of it, he coasted the car to a halt.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to sequentially interrupt the security cameras’ feed. They won’t see us coming.”
“Why bother? You swiped my card, so there’s an official record of me being here.”
Shifting gears, Ethan began pulling forward. “No. I reprogrammed the card to read as Dr. Travis Kane’s signature.”
Davey’s mouth dropped. “What? Why would you do that?”
“To buy us time. Global Cures will eventually trace what happens tonight back to you, but hopefully not before we get Drekker what he wants. I’ll do everything I can to stall them until then.”
“But what about Travis? Ethan, I can’t do this him. He already has enough reason to hate me.”
“I’ll make sure his name gets cleared.”
“Promise me.”
“Travis’ reputation will suffer no permanent harm.”
She let out a resigned sigh. “Okay.”
“Understand that there will be consequences for this, Davey. I’m going to hack into the mainframe, and give us access to The Alchemy Initiative. They’re probably not going to be in a forgiving mood after we steal that body, so if you go along with this, there’s no turning back.”
Davey didn’t even hesitate. “I’m ready to do whatever it takes.”
“Okay then.” He put the car in park and turned to Hogan. “Stay here and keep the doors locked.”
As soon as Hogan opened his mouth to protest, Davey shook her head. “Don’t argue.”
He grumbled an oath, making Davey roll her eyes in exasperation. Maybe, she silently admitted, I need to stop swearing around the kid so much.
Following Ethan into Global Cures where he moved through the winding, confusing, and starkly decorated hallways with confidence, Davey did her best not to slow him down. Every now and then, he would take her arm and gently force her to stop. After a slight delay, they would move forward again. Boarding an elevator in a section of the building Davey hadn’t known existed, they descended to a subterranean level that was shrouded in even more mystery. It was there—behind the glass walls of tanks filled with rust-colored liquid where iridescent bubbles shimmered into existence—that Davey finally laid eyes on The Alchemy Initiative.
Two figures were barely visible within the murky substance, each stored separately in identical tanks and floating with the lazy motion of ocean buoys. One was definitely male in appearance. The other was just as obviously female. An eerie silence filled the chamber and Davey noticed for the first time how cold it was.
She breathed in wonder. “Ethan, is this where you were created?”
“No, Davey. I was the first,” he answered in a voice heavy with regret. “My origins were not so peaceful.”
Making a sympathetic noise, Davey smiled sadly as she drifted closer to the tanks. Ethan had suffered enough for three lifetimes. She pressed one hand against the glass and noticed it was warm. An odd sort of peace settled over her. “Are they aware?” she asked.
“Yes and no.” Ethan moved to a control panel, swiped the badge card, and began entering a series of commands. “Right now, the artificial intelligence implanted within these machines has been put into a state of hibernation. If either unit was activated, it could function, but not as intended. Don’t let the angelic appearances fool you, Davey. Without human souls to guide them, these automatons are extremely dangerous.”
“Well that explains all of the security measures.” She pressed her face closer to the glass, seeking a more detailed look at the androids. “What’s this substance they’re suspended in?”
“Amniotic fluid.”
“Oh.” Davey promptly stepped away from the tanks.
Ethan laughed. “It’s synthetic of course. These two have a body composition that is more of an organic nature than mine, so they must be preserved in a nutrient bath to prevent unnecessary compromise.”
“Right.” Folding her arms, she went and stood next to him. “So, what do we do now?”
“Drain the enclosure and steal the body.” After making a few more selections on the touch screen, Ethan abandoned the display to manipulate levers across the console. Still looking down, he chuckled softly. “Releasing the male was harder than I anticipated,” he mumbled. “For a minute there, Drekker was about to have his very own pair of tits to fondle on a daily basis.”
As the levels of amniotic fluid began to rapidly decline in the tank with the male automaton inside, the significance of Ethan’s words hit home. Frozen in place, Davey didn’t dare move a muscle as she decided what to do next. For a long time, neither of them moved or spoke. Even the humor had evaporated from Ethan’s face. That odd feeling she’d gotten about him earlier didn’t seem so insignificant now, especially under the current circumstances. Something was different about him.
Slowly, Ethan turned to Davey. His grey eyes were pleading. “It’s okay. Try not to freak out.”
“Too late,” she squeaked.
“Davey, I swear to you. It’s me.”
“Then why don’t you sound like you?” She took a small step backward, attempting to discreetly estimate the distance to the door. If she had to run, there was no doubt Ethan would overtake her in seconds, but maybe she could activate the fire alarm. “You’ve been different ever since you and Hogan came back from the other realm.”
“That’s probably true.”
“Tell me why.”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
“Try,” she insisted. The thought crossed her mind to pull the fire alarm and alert security to their presence, but Davey wrestled with uncertainty. Sure, he seemed different, but not entirely unlike himself. If Drekker had somehow overtaken Ethan’s body, then he’d done an excellent job pretending to be the real thing.
“Even since before I met you, Davey, it’s always felt like I was missing a big part of myself. There were unexplainable gaps in my memories, especially from my human life. Well, I have all of those memories now. Hogan gave them back to me.”
“Okay,” Davey said and exhaled a relieved sigh. “That makes sense.” It was a common theory in psychology that memories are what shape identity. If Ethan had just gotten a lifetime of human experiences downloaded into his brain, it should be expected to cause changes in him. With that line of thinking, Davey started to relax, but the tightness in Ethan’s face stopped her.
“Hogan put me—all of me—into one body,” he continued nervously. “Davey, do you understand what I’m telling you?”
She licked her lips. “Maybe,” she whispered.
“Ethan was me—is me—but an incomplete version. Seth is also me. He was the part that hadn’t crossed over from the other side. It was like my soul was split into two separate pieces. One half returned to this human world, while the second half remained behind in the other realm.”
Davey shook her head, struggling to realign the blurring lines between science and science fiction. She opened her mouth but closed it again without speaking. Startled by a blaring alarm from the console, Davey jumped about a foot into the air. Ethan quickly silenced the alert and stretched out his hand as if dealing with a frightened mare that could bolt at any moment. “We’re kind of on a time constraint here, so I’m going to grab the gurney from the corner. Take as much time as you need to figure all of this out, but you’ve got to do it while we move, okay?”
She nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”
Ethan pursed his lips but said nothing further on the matter, only speaking to give her instructions as they worked together to free the male. As Ethan lifted the hybrid from the tank, Davey concentrated on keeping her gaze above navel-level on the stark naked and generously endowed humanoid. Her mind was already racing at one hundred miles per hour, theorizing the metaphysical, counting the laws they were breaking, and thinking about the fact that she would likely be unemployed in the next twenty-four hours. If this shell was to become Agent Mason Drekker, the last thing she wanted was to have an image of that maniac’s penis stamped onto her brain.
Ethan draped a thin sheet over the android, concealing it from head to toe and Davey blushed. Thank god, she thought, because she had been losing the battle.
Her hand was resting atop the gurney when Ethan’s closed over it. A jolt of energy passed between them, intense enough to make her hiss. Swiftly withdrawing from her touch, Ethan stared at his hand curiously. “So, that’s still happening,” he mused softly.
“Yeah,” Davey agreed, rubbing the patch of skin that still tingled and buzzed as if her very cells had been rewired. “Does this newly amalgamated version of you have any ideas as to why?”
“It only happens whenever I’m thinking about having sex with you at the exact moment that we touch.”
Speechless, Davey gaped at Ethan as if he had just flown in on a spaceship. Then the bastard started to laugh. “Sorry,” he said. “Bad joke. I honestly don’t know why that happens to us.” Giving the gurney a little push, he began wheeling the android across the room. “Get the door, will ya?”
She hurried forward to grant his request while trying not to stare at Ethan like he was from another planet. But it was hard. This new version of him was really going to take some getting used to.
“Should I call you Seth now?” Davey wondered aloud.
“No,” Ethan said quickly. “I’m going by Captain Amazing now.”
Davey barked a short laugh and immediately clamped both hands over her mouth. Mortified, she looked at Ethan. So much for stealth.
Considering her from over his shoulder, he grinned slyly. “I don’t know if you noticed or not, but this is supposed to be a secret mission,” he said with a wink, completely unfazed by her outburst.
Kicking herself mentally, she followed Ethan down the twisting corridors and was extra careful to pay attention to his signals as he guided them through camera blind spots and avoided several guards who were in the middle of completing midnight rounds. Nearing the entrance, they were about to step out into the main atrium when Ethan suddenly stopped.
“Wait,” he whispered tensely.
Davey flattened herself against the wall and gave him a questioning look.
“Don’t worry. He’s too far away to hear us, but one of the guards has returned to his post early. We can’t get past him without being seen.”
“I knew this was too easy.”
“Easy?” Ethan repeated with a note of incredulity.
She shrugged sheepishly. “You make it look easy.”
“Right,” he muttered. “I don’t plan on killing anyone tonight, so I need you to go and distract him.”
“How?”
“Show him your boobs.”
“Very funny,” Davey said, folding her arms. “How much time do you need?”
“Thirty seconds. But you have to go now. If I loop the feed from these cameras any longer, the upstairs guard who is presently monitoring them might get suspicious.”
“Shit. Okay.” Lifting the bottom of her shirt, she knotted it above her belly button, high enough to bare her toned and tanned mid-drift. Thirty seconds. You can do this. No problem. Davey squared her shoulders. “Change my badge clearance,” she said and marched into the open.
“To what?” she heard Ethan hiss but couldn’t answer because she had already entered the security guard’s line of sight. Mentally crossing her fingers, she hoped Ethan could work that little detail out on his own.
As expected, the guard gave Davey an appreciative and thorough once-over as she approached. He looked to be around her age, was on the short side of average in height, and had attractive, boyish features. Flirting with him would be easy. She didn’t even have to fake it. Adding some extra sway to her hips, she flashed the guard an inviting smile.
His eyebrows shot up about two inches. “Good evening…miss,” he said with the slightest hint of a Boston accent.
“Good evening,” Davey replied sweetly.
Pausing next to the kiosk that housed a recessed barcode scanner, she fumbled around for a few seconds, pretending to have trouble finding her I.D. Glancing up at the guard through lowered lashes, she tossed her hair and gave a self-deprecating eyeroll. Then Davey slowly pulled the identification card from between her breasts. The guard cleared his throat, his boots scuffing against the floor as he shifted positions. With her thumb covering the last quarter-inch of barcode, she scanned the badge. The monitor above the kiosk promptly flashed red and sounded a muted alarm, indicating an unsuccessful reading. “RECORD NOT FOUND” was displayed in bold, black letters. Repeating the process for a second and third time, Davey made a frustrated sound.
“Having some trouble, miss?”
Rounding her shoulders in defeat, she turned to him and pouted. “This always happens. I’m just an intern here, so even my badge is second-rate. The darn thing never scans right.”
“Oh yeah?” He looked around and after a beat of hesitation, left the doorway. Davey’s heart did a little celebratory leap. “Let me see that,” he said, reaching for the I.D card. She happily handed it over and slid past him, forcing him to change positions in order to have access to the kiosk, putting his back to the exit. “Let’s see here,” he mumbled, taking a moment to polish the badge against his shirtsleeve before attempting another scan. Of course, without her thumb partially obstructing the barcode, it worked on the first try. “These scanners are sometimes a little cranky,” he said and handed the badge back to her.
Behind him, Ethan had crept to the doorway, carrying over his shoulder what was obviously a body wrapped in a white sheet. Davey reached for her I.D card, intentionally making contact with the guard’s fingers and hanging on for much longer than necessary. “Thank you,” she said. Tilting her head to the side, she smiled coyly and bit her lip.
A deep red blush spread across his cheeks. “You are most welcome.”
When the exit door opened and shut, a light gust of wind ruffled her hair, and Davey prayed she was enough of a distraction to keep the guard from noticing. She cleared her throat. “My supervisor sends me out here after hours to babysit the samples of a new project we’re working on. Now I’ll know to look for you when I need help again.”
Nodding eagerly, the guard smiled. “Yeah…anytime.”
“Okay,” Davey said, backing away from him. “Goodnight then.”
“Goodnight.”
Outside, it took every ounce of control she had to walk normally across the parking lot, knowing she was still in clear view of the guard through the glass doors and paneling. But as soon as she turned the corner, Davey broke into a triumphant jog. Reaching the car, she quickly hopped inside. Hogan leaned between the front seats, eyes wide with envy and excitement as he gave her a high five. “This is so cool!” he exclaimed.
“Trust me,” Davey said between labored breaths. “It really isn’t.”
Ethan contemplated her with amusement and maybe a hint of jealousy. “That was way longer than thirty seconds. Did you stay and make out with him?”
“Yeah,” she answered, securing her seatbelt with a resounding click. “He wanted to see my boobs.”
Ethan chuckled. “Touché.”