Titanium (Bionics) Read online

  Blythe’s smile is sad, as if she wants to believe me but can’t quite stretch her imagination that far. Hell, at this point I’m having a hard time believing myself. I don’t stand a chance going it alone but I’ll be hard pressed to find someone willing to help me go in on such an insane mission. Still holding Blythe’s gaze, I yank my comm. device from my belt and call Jenica’s line.

  “Janner, this is Swan, go ahead,” she says clearly from the other end.

  “Swan, please tell me you’ve got some good news. We just watched the report about Olivia and we could use some cheering up right now.”

  “Hang tight, Janner, I’m on my way back to you now. We’ve just finished unloading and directing the refugees from Memphis to their assigned quarters. Bronson and the rest of Team Bravo have arrived safely from Stonehead, including the little girl. You already know about McNabb. Expect me in the next two to three hours and keep an eye out for the M.P.s. What is your status?”

  “We’re packed up and ready to go. No problems so far, although it worries me that the M.P.s have been so quiet. No sight or sound of any of them, but we’re on our guard. Oh, and when we get home and settled, remind me to tell you about these loons they call the Rejects. You aren’t going to like it one bit.”

  “Great,” she says sarcastically. “I’m excited to meet them already.”

  “Well, they’re still here and they’re a warm bunch. I’ll stay in contact with you over the next few hours and let you know if anything suspicious pops up. So far, all clear.”

  “Roger that. I’m on my way. Over and out.”

  I jam my comm. device back in its place on my belt.

  “Why don’t you two try to get some sleep?” Laura offers, placing her hands on both our shoulders. “I’ll take over the security detail until you get the call that they’re nearby.”

  Normally I wouldn’t leave my job up to someone else, but Laura has given me every reason to trust her. And I’m tired as a dog and Blythe looks like she’s ready to pass out. A few hours of sleep would be nice.

  “That would be good, thanks.”

  “Here, we’ll put you up in one of the empty rooms. Each room has two cots.”

  Blythe and I follow Laura up to the second level, where she finds an empty room and ushers us inside. Aside from the debris left over from someone’s hasty packing job, the room is clean enough and the sheets look freshly washed. Once we’re alone again, I turn to Blythe, who is staring blankly at the wall.

  “Blythe, look—”

  She cuts me off with a palm to the face. All I can think as my cheek starts to sting and my eye tears up, is that I’m grateful she used her human hand.

  “What the hell, B?”

  “That was for earlier!” she says, pointing an accusing finger at me.

  “For kissing you or for stopping?” I asked with a smirk.

  My question only enrages her further. “For getting mad at me for telling you the truth about yourself. I call ‘em like I see ‘em, Dax, and your behavior earlier only proves my point. I’m not one of your little whores; you can’t hit me and quit me like you did Olivia and all those others!”

  “No,” I murmur, gripping her shoulders—gently this time—and pulling her in toward me. Her scent overwhelms me again—she smells like a green, open field, the likes of which I haven’t seen or smelled since the nukes took out Central Park. “You’re not like the others. And I have never kissed anyone the way I kissed you today because I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone that way before you.”

  That shut her up. She swallows noisily and blinks, her eyes narrowing as if she is trying to figure out the truth from my gaze. It’s the first time, other than our moment in the control room, that she’s ever held my gaze this long with such honesty and intensity.

  “W-why?” she finally asks after awhile. “Why are you waiting until now to say this to me?”

  “Because you are always so guarded, B. And you’re my friend … my best friend. I couldn’t risk losing you by freaking you out, even though I’ve felt this way about you since … damn, I don’t even know when. It just happened.”

  “You wouldn’t risk our friendship before, but you will now. That wouldn’t have anything to do with Gage, would it?”

  Shit. She’s got me there. Yeah, so maybe the blond hero’s coming on the scene put the fear of losing Blythe in me. I never had any competition or risk of losing her before him. Her smirk is mocking.

  “That’s what I thought,” she accuses, turning her back on me. “You don’t want me, Dax, you’re afraid that Gage will compromise your position in my life and maybe you’re a bit jealous. You think you want me because someone else does. You’ll get over it.”

  “There you go again,” I say with a snort. “Turning a blind eye to what’s right in front of you. Yeah, I might have felt threatened to walk in on you and Gage dry humping—” she scoffs at me, but I call them like I see them too. “—but that doesn’t make what I feel for you any more real.”

  “And what exactly do you feel? Lust?”

  “If that’s what you think, after all we’ve been through together, then you’re blinder than I thought. Ironic for a girl with a robotic eye. You’re capable of seeing through just about every layer of the human anatomy, except for the one that really counts. I feel sorry for you.”

  And as I plop down on my cot and turn my back on her, I realize how true that statement is. I do feel sorry for her. She had everything and lost it in the blink of an eye. Now, she’s so messed up, she can’t remember how to love anyone. At least not how they deserve. I’ve always known deep down, that even if Blythe ever gave me her heart, I’d only get a piece of it.

  “Oh, by the way,” I add, turning to glare at her over my shoulder. “In case you need it spelled out all the way, I was trying to tell you that I fucking love you.”

  Four years ago…

  The sounds of the city of New York were the same on that day as they’d always been. Gleaming, silver buildings stretch up toward the sky miles away, and against the horizon, the Statue of Liberty—a structure thousands of years old—still stands as a proud monument, a symbol of freedom. The heat is particularly stifling today, one of the rare occasions when the weather actually matches the season we are in. Tomorrow, there are reports of possible snow. We can all thank the government goons and their experiments with environmental weapons and lack of care for the environment for that.

  I wouldn’t normally be caught dead outside in this weather, but this deal has to go down today. I need the money, but more than that I need to unload the merchandise. I shudder to think what the M.P.s would do to me if they caught me with it. Probably turn me over to one of those government agencies that makes you disappear forever. They won’t have to work their powers of persuasion on me for long; I’ll sing like a canary in a heartbeat. I could care less about the people that employ me, or the fact that their synthetic drugs are more potent than the cocaine and heroin currently approved by the FDA and sold at drugstores all over the nation. What we’re doing isn’t exactly illegal, but everyone in this business knows that the manufacturers of the now legal drugs don’t like outsiders stepping on their turf. The fact that they’ve got street kids like me selling their stuff for less money and a better high pisses them off.

  So like I said, I need to get rid of the merchandise burning a hole through my pocket.

  I’m scanning the street, watching for a man in a black leather jacket with a shaved head, the only description of the guy I’m supposed to be meeting I have to go on. M.P.s are on every corner, their guns trained to stun, their gleaming fiberglass helmets keeping their identities safe from the rest of us as they scan the crowd for signs of trouble. Hookers work the street freely, and I chuckle as I remember learning in high school US History that their sex peddling was once illegal. I can’t imagine today’s M.P.s wasting their time hauling in a bunch of pros. This country’s got bigger problems than half naked girls selling themselves on the street. Though, it does turn my stom
ach to recognize some of the girls as chicks I knew in school. Not that I’m in a position to judge.

  I live in a rat hole, am addicted to the product I’m selling—though I’ll never admit it to anybody—and I’ll do just about anything for a quick buck. I’ve done more deals in back alleys than most of the prostitutes passing me by on the street. I am reminded briefly of my mother and how disappointed she would be in me if she were still living. Her presence in my life was the only thing that kept me from losing myself in the streets and now that she’s gone, I don’t give a damn about anyone or anything. There is no one else to care about, or to care about me.

  When I spot the guy I’m waiting for, I snap back to attention, forgetting about everything else except for making the deal and collecting the money—twenty percent of which is my cut for delivering. The flashing sign across the street from me says it’s okay to ‘Walk’ and as I step into the street with about ten other people looking to cross the street, I am not expecting the sidewalk to fall to pieces beneath my feet, or the deafening sound of honking horns, screeching tires, scraping metal, and falling buildings that follows. I am not expecting the Mack truck that has fishtailed trying to avoid hitting the pedestrians in the street—one of which happens to be me—to pin me to the ground for several days. Even if I wanted to run, there’s nowhere to go with cars smashed together and twisted around each other in the street. There’s nothing to do but try to brace for the impact…

  When I awaken, it is to the gnawing sensation of withdrawal in my gut. I don’t know how long I’ve been out, or where I am. My only clues are bright, white fluorescent lights, the smells of antiseptic solution and blood, and the occasional blurred figures in lab coats. The need for heroin is strong, and as I thrash about on what I assume is a hospital bed, nurses have to strap me down to keep me from hurting myself. The morphine they give me is nowhere near high enough a dose; my body is used to much, much more and it’s not happy to be deprived.

  I cycle from states of anger and rage, to those so pitiful a newborn baby could probably have kicked my ass. When I do sleep my dreams are a hellish mixture between past and present. I see my mother, who was a waitress at a diner around the corner from the apartment she raised me in. Her mocha skin glistens in the sun and her short, neat afro is the perfect complement to a heart-shaped face. Her plump lips are painted red, because no matter where my mother went, she liked to dress like it was a special occasion, and despite having been on her feet all day, her pumps are three inches high with a metallic sparkle. In the dreams, she spots me walking toward her and smiles, her perfect, white teeth flashing from between those red lips like a beacon that draws me to her. As I run to her, arms outstretched, I am stopped every time by a speeding Mack truck. It crushes me from the waist down and I am lying beneath it for days, unable to die because somehow, miraculously, the thousands of pounds of crushed steel trapping my body is preventing me from bleeding out completely.

  I get flashes, things I think are memories, like the cries and moans of people around me, the wailing of babies and helpless children, as well as the resulting violence that ensued due to looting and riots after the blasts. I have seen all of the news reports about the chaos that engulfed the country after the explosions, and even though I was there for it all, I remember very little. Though, there is the face of a girl in my mind constantly, a brunette with a dirt-streaked face who was trapped beneath the same truck. I can remember holding her hand when I was conscious on that first day, watching as blood poured from her nose and ears. Even as I watched her bleed to death right in front of me, I looked her in her hazel eyes and lied to her.

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” I said. “Someone will come. They will save us.”

  By the time they show up with cranes to sift through the wreckage, it is too late for her and by then I know I’m going to die too. More than that, I want to die as I know that nothing can possibly exist from my hips down. I am mangled beyond repair and I’d rather die than live the rest of my life as half a man.

  When the withdrawal finally begins to fade, I am able to pick up on the conversations happening around me as doctors and people wearing government badges come and go. I realize that I’ve undergone several surgeries and that these people are actually attempting to put me back together. Seeing as how I am too weak to lift my head, I have no way of inspecting their handiwork. I honestly have no idea if I’d even want to.

  Eventually, a man I’ve never met before comes to visit. He sits beside my hospital bed wearing a worried expression, despite the many cuts and contusions across his face and the sling holding his arm against his body. As he gazes down at me and cries, I know without having to ask that this man is the father I never knew.

  I ask him why he is here now, when he didn’t think twice about abandoning my mother nearly twenty years ago. He tells me that the blasts caused him to realize that he’d lost everyone he ever loved in the world. His parents, his siblings … all dead. In a mad search for anyone he could call his own, he found me bleeding to death in a city hospital. That’s when he gives me the news that changes my life forever.

  To save me he signed me up for the Healing Hands Initiative, a branch of the new government project created by then Senator Christopher Drummond called The Restoration. This man would soon become the president that terrorizes people like me.

  He tells me about the titanium bones they’ve created to replace my ribs, part of my spine, pelvis, legs and feet, as well as the never-before-used machinery that will enhance me in ways previously never thought possible. He says that it was the only way to save me from being a cripple for the rest of my life, or even possibly dying. I ask him how he could dare to make decisions about my life without consulting me, as if he knows anything about me other than the fact that we share DNA. What the fuck does he want me to do, give him a hug and call him daddy?

  He says that he just wanted to know that he hadn’t lost everyone. I tell him to get the hell out of my room and not to come back. I haven’t seen him since …

  Two years have passed and I am finally accustomed to my new life as a sideshow freak. After months of physical therapy, I now know how to use my prosthetic limbs as if I were born with them. With clothes on, no one even knows that I’m different, yet I know that I can’t get too comfortable. Not all of the Bionics are able to hide, and the climate is slowly changing when it comes to people’s attitudes about us. President Drummond won his election in the year 4006 by a landslide, effectively gaining his status as America’s savior. His rhetoric against the Bionics begins after a man with a bionic arm was recorded robbing a fueling station outside of Las Vegas. With every day that passes, the hatred and fear spread more and more, and I know it’s only a matter of time before the government starts rounding us up and performing mass executions. As we’ve all legally registered for the program, they now know who each and every one of us are and where we live and work. We are no longer safe.

  I’ve given up my life as a drug dealer; being sober feels better than anything I’ve felt in a long time. The pay I earn hauling furniture for a moving company is barely enough to keep food in my belly and pay to rent my room in a boarding house, but it’s an honest life. Almost dying has taught me the value of living.

  One day, I am approached by a woman named Jenica Swan. All she can tell me is that she works for the government; her exact profession is privileged information. She’s come to warn me, she says, about the firestorm headed our way. Soon, not even she will be safe in her government job and we will all have to go into hiding. She gives me Professor Neville Hinkley’s card and tells me that when the government starts cracking down on the Bionics, they will go after those with a criminal past first. That means I’m in deep shit.

  I carry the Professor’s card around in my pocket for days, torn between calling him to see what he wants with me and tearing it to shreds and throwing it down a gutter. After awhile I shove the card deep into my wallet and forget about it. After all, Professor Hinkley was the ri
ngleader of the Healing Hands initiative; I have no reason to trust him. I never think of him again until the M.P.s come crashing through my front door, guns set to kill.

  As I run for my life, I pray to God that I don’t blow some kind of gasket in my machinery. I’ve never run so fast in my life. Weeks of traveling and hiding in the most obscure places while scrounging and—to my shame, stealing—in order to eat and survive find me on the outskirts of Atlanta. An old friend of mine knew of a monorail operator who would smuggle Bionics in the middle of the night for a fee. After promising to pay him back when I’m able, I boarded the train on my friend’s dime, surrounded by a rag tag bunch of outcasts, many of whom looked as scared and uncertain about their futures as I did.

  Would we even survive the night? For all I knew, the M.P.s were waiting at the end of the line to cart us all off to Stonehead. The maximum security prison, formerly home to America’s most dangerous convicts, has been cleared out to make room for Bionics with criminal pasts. In some areas, there are rumors that the M.P.s are targeting non-criminal Bionics, and even showing brute force toward those family members harboring them.

  Naturally, people were fighting back, but no one ever wanted to hear about the desperation of those poor souls backed into a corner by the trigger-happy Military Police. All anyone ever saw were the news reports, which filled the airwaves with images of Bionics acting violently toward M.P.s. No one seemed to care that we acted in self-defense. All they could see was that people with robotic limbs and organs were capable of things other humans were not. They saw us as weapons, and feared that we would turn on them. The proposals calling for the immediate arrest and disassembly of all Bionics were coming from all sides of the political spectrum, and President Drummond’s rhetoric was growing more and more inflammatory.