ASSESS THE SITUATION.
Even in the hardest, most surprising situations, that combination of training and instincts always surfaced, whispering like a ghost in the back of my mind.
You’re not human. Don’t react like one. That was my father, or rather a perfect reproduction of his voice in my head, lecturing me. Don’t freeze up, don’t hesitate. Use what makes you different. Analyze, weigh the odds against your objective, and take action.
The room was torn apart, tables tossed aside, broken glass, laptops shattered and spread across the ground. Power cords and wires still snapped and hissed from where they’d been torn apart.
And in the center of the room, Dr. Jacobs knelt on the ground, a GTX guard at his feet. Jacobs’s hands were bloodied, pressed as they were to the guard’s leg wound in an attempt at first aid, but my creator appeared otherwise unharmed.
Disappointment spiraled through me, followed immediately by a hot rush of fury. He was alive. So many others were dead because of him, even if not directly by his hand. I’d been so hoping to find him under one of those sheets in the hall. The loss of that possibility, along with the discovery of him in here pretending to be a human being with feelings as he attended to the guard, opened up a well of despair and desperate hatred so deep I could feel it coring out the center of me, obliterating some essential piece of myself.
“107,” Dr. Jacobs said with relief, as if I were one to be greeted with such calmness, such lack of fear. As if I were such a knowable, controllable quantity that he didn’t have to worry.
The lights overhead flashed and jumped in response to the power growing in and around me, but I clamped down on it, much to the howling rage of my human side. I couldn’t afford to lose control here. We were all balanced on a line thinner than a human hair. No, a line thinner and finer than my own hair.
Because not two feet away from Dr. Jacobs was Dr. Laughlin, blood spattered across the pristine white of his lab coat. The last Laughlin Integrated guard was dead at his feet, and Laughlin was holding one of the guard’s sidearms, aiming directly at Ford’s head.
I wasn’t surprised to find her here; I’d gotten that much from the first policeman’s thoughts, the one guarding the elevator. He couldn’t figure out how I’d gotten out of the conference room without anyone noticing.
But I hadn’t expected to find her in this state.
Ford stood perfectly still, swaying perhaps a little but making no move to run away or duck. Her left arm hung useless at her side, her white shirt dark with blood.
But her right hand was raised against Laughlin.
I could see the tendons in Laughlin’s hand and neck standing out with his efforts to pull the trigger, but there was no movement and certainly no bullet being fired.
Ford had him tight. Which did not explain why she hadn’t pulled the gun away from him already or simply stopped his heart. I could try to take the gun from him, but I didn’t want to upset whatever delicate balance she had established. If we slipped up for even a microsecond, the gun would go off, and Ford was standing far too close.
The air in the room was thick with anticipation, like the moments before a big thunderstorm.
“Ford?” I asked cautiously, trying to concentrate without losing my temper or my hold on the seven full-grown angry men in the hallway outside. Otherwise they’d be barging in here within seconds, and that seemed like a very, very bad idea.
“The humans,” Ford said, her voice strained. “The ones outside.”
“They’re still out there,” I said. “I’m holding them.”
“Let go of them and take the doors,” she said, a fine tremor running through her whole body.
“Oh, think very carefully who you want to take direction from, 107,” Laughlin said, his smile all teeth.
“She’s not yours to command,” Dr. Jacobs said indignantly from his position on the floor. It seemed as though he would raise a hand to gesture at Laughlin, but the abortive move of his shoulder muscles indicated that he’d thought better and decided to stay still. Or maybe he had no choice.
All the better.
A light burst overhead, raining down glass and sparks, and he hunched his shoulders against it. “I’m not yours to command either,” I said, pushing hate into the words.