Ezra (New Carnegie Androids #6)

Chapter 4

[ 4 ]

Ezra

This isn’t something we should be doing, but Katrina is difficult to argue with when she’s actually on my side.

We wait until night falls before we leave. I ensure the tint on the windows of my cruiser remains high. Nothing about it identifies it as belonging to me, just a standard, sleek black police vehicle. But as PureEarth continues to grow, I convinced Deion to talk sense into Chief Jacobs and programmed all cruiser windows to be unscannable by other bionics. They can never see the police inside and whether they’re human or machine. It’s important—for my safety and theirs. Right now, it ensures no one can see Katrina Carson riding along with me.

It’s been a tense couple of days. My patience is, admittedly, running short for a variety of reasons. I dislike how limited my capabilities are when I’m separated from my unit. It ruins my efficiency. I’m used to going home after long, stressful days, seeing my family. Rashelle occasionally sends me voice and video messages of herself and Deion, and the children asking where I am. It makes me feel loved, but it also reminds me painfully that I’m not there to protect and assist them, should they need me.

Then there’s Katrina.

I don’t know where she finds the energy to partake in political discussions with me after everything that’s happened. I’ve noticed her tremors and her lack of appetite. Her vitals betray that her anxiety is high. But she’s always ready to talk, ready to debate.

Her little comment about police dogs set me on edge, but from her diagnostics and her apology afterwards, I accepted she didn’t mean it. I was also validated in my suspicion that she’s not as extreme as her father is. She never has been.

Then I got a full picture of her, naked and drenched in the shower. And she even called me perfect. Perfect . It’s been difficult fending off the desire to replay both of these instances in my memory banks. Her voice is alluring, and her body is a masterpiece. It was enough to make my imagination stray last night to what it might be like to be sexual with her.

It wasn’t intentional. My processors wander several places when I’m engaged in self-pleasure—old memories of heated one-night stands, the delighted moans of past lovers when they felt me press inside them. Suddenly, it wasn’t them anymore. It was her. Katrina beneath me, in front of me, on top of me. I was imagining burying myself inside her, because perhaps I could fuck that infuriating stubbornness out of her.

My generative protocols went wild with possibilities.

It was a risky thing to do. I don’t typically envision carnal activities in the middle of an open investigation, much less one as high priority as the museum bombing and the assassination attempt on her father. But I needed a brief distraction before returning to my duties. I must’ve awoken the little spider robot in her room because I heard him skittering about. But much like any other man, I have a desire for relief. More than most. My job is far more taxing than that of a common housekeeper.

I even spoke her name as I came, my release far more stimulating and powerful than it has been in a long while.

I’ve never said a woman’s name. There’s an intimacy, a closeness in uttering a name in a sexual act. I’ve never felt comfortable enough with any lover to say her name.

Can’t let that happen again. Get yourself under control.

“On a scale of one to ten,”

Katrina murmurs as we pull up behind the museum, “how pissed would the department be if anyone knew we were here?”

“Twenty,”

I reply as the car parks and deactivates. “So let’s ensure that doesn’t happen.”

I haven’t told Deion yet. I’ll send him a message after I’ve had my second look around. He’s said a few times that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission, so I’m taking his words to heart, so to speak. Considering I don’t technically have one. Or so I’m told.

We get out of the car. I follow Katrina to the back exit as she pulls a fob out of her purse and waves it over a sensory pad, activating it. She then places her hand on it, and that unlocks the door instantly.

“That’s a rather old-fashioned security measure, isn’t it?” I ask.

“Dr. Vaughn doesn’t like relying on too much technology to keep the museum safe because if it short circuits, the power goes down, we get hacked, or something else goes wrong, everything inside will be vulnerable.”

“How do you figure?”

Katrina hums as she studies the building for a moment. “When I was in high school, our internet went out one day. The tech was so interconnected, it took everything down with it. Our metal detectors, our capability to call the police or emergency services... Technology takes us forward, but then it hurts us when we suddenly don’t have it.”

She pushes the door open and holds it for me. “Sometimes simpler is actually better.”

Nodding, I ensure the door shuts behind us before pulling up a map of the museum’s interior and homing in on the café. I turn to Katrina. “Thank you for this.”

“You don’t need to thank me,”

she whispers, glancing at a nearby security camera. “I want justice as much as everyone does. The sooner you catch them, the better.”

“Where does security store their footage?”

I ask. No doubt the cameras are still recording even now. Easy for me to fix once I can touch the control console. “Some of the video feeds provided to the unit are incomplete.”

“This way.”

Katrina waves me along and takes me down several corridors to a storage room where a vacant desk rests surrounded by old screens.

“This is practically archaic,”

I remark as she steps out of my way. “I’ve never seen a system like this one. Most security cams upload data directly into clouds now, and password protect them automatically.”

“Dr. Vaughn is old school, like I said,”

Katrina replies. “Normally, there’d be night security here at this hour.”

“It’ll take me some time to sift through this.”

“Do you mind if I take a look around?”

“No. I’ll be erasing footage and putting it on a loop.”

I glance at her. “But I recommend you stay away from the café.”

“Trust me,”

Katrina replies, turning, “I’m not going anywhere near there.”

I spend several hours trying to make sense of the security feeds. The system is so old—USB ports and copying video recordings manually—that I cannot simply make things happen with a touch, like I often can with current tech today. I have to research old instruction manuals to operate it all properly, and even then, everything’s cumbersome.

“No wonder they built me,”

I mutter to myself as I finally get the current footage spliced the way I need it to cover our presence here. At the same time, this experiment is precisely what I wanted to perform in the first place to confirm a hunch. I compare the slight flicker of the video data the museum provided the department to the flicker of my own tampering with the footage, the only tell that something has been cut.

They’re the same. The timestamp on the bottom left of the footage skips forward seven minutes.

Somebody at the museum is hiding something. Perhaps a TerraPura collaboration. But who?

I can’t spend all night here trying to come through the museum’s entire catalog of dated USB ports, all piled haphazardly in bins. Sorting through it manually is slow work, even for someone with a lightning-fast CPU. I’d need at least twenty-four hours to thoroughly scan every security upload for tampering, and that’s twenty-four hours I can’t spend holed up here.

But what I have found is enough for me to go to Deion and move the ACU to seize them all before further evidence can be destroyed. Then we can continue our investigation.

We’ll have to begin questioning employees.

But that’s a problem for another time, another day. After erasing all evidence of our presence here tonight and similarly constructing a security feed on a loop so we aren’t detected, I exit the surveillance room, walk down a corridor, and head into the heart of the museum. It’s strange in the dark. I’ve been to this place before on a family trip with Deion and his family, his children excitedly chattering as they viewed dinosaur bones and the holographic, life-size baleen whales that lazily swam over our heads. Humans find a kind of a magic in their history that eludes me. I’ve never sat and wondered what life was like before I was activated. I can find it all with a simple search, and most of it doesn’t pertain to me or the science that made me, specifically. I can admire their engineering, I suppose; how they managed to build pyramids, cities, skyscrapers. How they moved from stone to metal across the ages. Yet, that’s simply knowledge, not enchantment.

I pause at the eerily silent café. Aside from the removal of the injured and dead, nothing has been disturbed. A glimpse of moonlight shines through the glass above my head. I home in on little details—twisted rails, the jagged end of a shattered display case, residue from explosive materials, bloodstains where bodies once lay.

A bright glint of light catches my attention. Leaving the crime scene behind, I turn into an exhibit, following the signs in front of me, my footsteps echoing. Ambient noise plays over the sound system—rustling leaves, the singing of birds and insects, a lazy river.

Katrina stands in front of me. I approach her, glancing around at the scenery of a different age in different seasons.

Moving about in those scenes are warm holographic images of people. In full color, which is something of a rarity; in most places, everything projected is monochromatic blue. This must be state of the art. Humans clad in furs and leathers roast meat upon a fire while their children chase one another. Others collaborate to hunt a mammoth on the opposite side of the room, the beasts low, thundering cries enhanced by the audio system. Yet another human sits swaddled in layers of clothing surrounded by snow and creates flakes from stone.

“This is it,”

Katrina says softly. “My favorite place. If I didn’t have work to do, oh, I could spend hours in here.”

I rest my hands in my jacket pockets. “What do you enjoy so much about history?”

She glances at me before returning her attention to the holograms as they move, gazing at these prehistoric humans with affection in her eyes. “It’s our history. It’s us. No corporate greed, no prejudice, no industry or war machines. It was just living to survive. Look at them.”

She gestures toward adolescent humans trying their hand at spearfishing in a glistening river. “Food, water, shelter, procreation, telling stories—that was all there was to it.”

“From what sources I can find, it was a harsh existence. Lifespans were short.”

Katrina rubs her arm. “Now we live too long and destroy everything good we’ve been given.”

She sighs. “I know I shouldn’t romanticize. In all honesty, it’s difficult to do even that. We have very little evidence for how they lived. We only know they hunted, they buried their dead, and they used ochre.”

She motions with a finger across her nose. Many of the holographic faces are painted.

“You seem to care very much about this time period in particular.”

She nods. “It’s partially because of a book I read when I was a teenager. About an ancient human wandering across prehistoric Europe, meeting another human, falling in love. Danger, adventure.”

She tucks her hair behind an ear. “Sex.”

I arch a brow. “Sex?”

“It was essentially elevated caveman porn.”

Katrina giggles behind her knuckles. She speaks with such affection, her voice light and airy.

“Elevated caveman porn,”

I repeat slowly, skeptical.

“Shut up. I know what it sounds like.”

She harmlessly swats my shoulder with her hand. Then she retracts it, looking surprised at herself, like she forgot she was with me. “But I loved it. It awakened something in me, and it made me curious about that world and what it could be like. So much that I went to school for it, and I’ve never left that world since.”

I study her intently. I’ve heard this woman lead heated debates, interviews, speak alongside her father with all the ferocity of a lawyer and the conviction of a judge. I knew she worked here. I knew her background, even what degrees she graduated with. But it’s still so different from the persona she’s shown to the city, to the nation. A year ago, at the march where I first encountered her, I never would’ve guessed this is where her passion lies.

I’ve learned so much about her in such a short time. And with each new discovery, my respect for her grows.

“It must seem strange to you.”

Katrina clutches her jacket against her chest. “Being?—”

“A robot?”

I finish dryly for her.

“I was going to say bionic,”

she insists.

I’m surprised by her choice of words. “That isn’t too politically correct for you, now?”

“It’s not about offending anybody,”

Katrina says with genuine sincerity. “I never wanted to offend anyone. Does robot bother you? Machine?”

“No,”

I say. “Neither particularly trouble me. Bot bothers some pro-bionic folks. It’s quickly becoming a slur. But robot, droid, android, machine—it’s all the same to me.”

We fall quiet, watching the historic scenes play around us. “And it is strange to me. But just because something is strange doesn’t mean it can’t also be beautiful.”

Her gaze snaps up to meet mine. “You think this is beautiful?”

“How can it not be? It’s your origin story. Without you, there is no me.”

Katrina peers at me in the low light, the colors of the exhibit flickering around us as her ancestors toss spears, build fires, even make music and sing in a language that makes little sense to me. “Wow. When you put it that way, it is beautiful, isn’t it?”

She clears her throat and shifts her weight from one foot to the other, as though restless. “Have you seen the Hall of Bulls?”

“I’ve visited before with Deion and his family. But I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.”

It’s the first time I’ve seen a bright and genuine smile, free of all concern and weariness, light up Katrina’s face, and my gratification drive thrills in a way that takes me so off guard, I nearly halt mid-step as she leads me away.

No , I warn my systems, my programs, my very being. No. You can’t attach yourself to this one. Not to her. She’s not for you. She can never be for you.

With dread, I realize my drivers won’t listen.

Why would they? I pleasured myself to thoughts of her the night before.

I all but encouraged my systems to latch on to her.

My biocomponents rush through my body, cooling my own internal temperature increase.

As we stand beneath a perfect replica of ancient cave paintings, my focus is solely upon her.

She points to different pieces of the painting and explains them to me, remarking how few depictions there are of man and how important animals must have been to prehistoric humanity.

I take in everything she says and breeze through multiple scientific journals of these findings to commit them to memory.

I don’t know why.

I’ve no idea when I’ll need them, if ever.

But it’s important to her. I want to better understand her. I want...

I clench my jaw and try to control my processors. I shouldn’t be reacting this way. I need to push through it.

“I can’t wait to see some of these findings myself in person,”

Kat finishes. “Sorry, once I start, it’s hard to stop talking about it.”

“Don’t apologize,”

I reply. “It seems much of your specialization requires you overseas.”

“Eventually, I hope,”

Katrina agrees. “That’s the plan. After I get my PhD, it’s off to France. From there I’ll be able to study findings in Germany, Belgium, Spain...”

She smiles as she continues to admire the replica of ancient artwork. “I want to visit Chauvet Cave in the flesh. You know, only a few people—scientists—get to go in there every year. They have to be careful. Too much exposure to our breath causes the paintings to degrade. It’s why Lascaux got shut down a century ago. All those paintings are destroyed now. Molded over because they just let visitors from all over come in and breathe, smoke, whatever.”

She sighs. “Makes me sad I won’t be able to see the real thing with my own eyes. But there’s still Chauvet.”

She smiles up at me. “Bodes well for me I’m slim. You have to be small to fit in there.”

“It must mean a lot to you.”

She nods. “It’s sacred to me. Like communing with those who came before. I’ve spent all sorts of hours in my head wondering what they were like.”

“And your caveman porn?”

I have to tease her a little. “Do you wonder about that too?”

“You got me there.”

She laughs and glances up at me again. “Is that odd?”

“No. I’ve met people with much stranger fixations,”

I tell her. I realize this place makes her happy. When I scan her vitals, she’s perfectly at rest. No indication of stress or fear. “But we should probably go.”

“You’re right.”

Katrina reaches up and rests her hand on a replica human handprint made with red ochre displayed on the wall. “I wasn’t sure when I’d be back. I wanted to see everything I love about this place. So the bombing isn’t the only thing I think of when I think of it.”

She pulls her hand away. “I don’t want it all to be ruined. Even though people died here. That’s probably selfish.”

“No. It’s human,”

I reply. “Let’s get you back to the sky tower.”

She doesn’t say much as we return to the cruiser, but she lingers outside the door, giving the museum one final glance before getting in. “Did you find anything useful?”

“I did.”

“Do I get to know what it is?”

“Not just yet.”

“But it helps?”

“I think so.”

I settle into the driver’s seat, activating the vehicle. “Thank you, Miss Carson.”

“Katrina,”

she corrects me as she secures her seatbelt, not meeting my eyes. “Or Kat.”

I nod at her. “Katrina.”

“You’re a bit of a rule breaker,”

she says as we glide down the street, summer rain resuming and hiding the moon. “Not so by the book as you seem.”

“Books are for bureaucrats,”

I reply, letting the cruiser’s AI plan our trip home. “TerraPura won’t play by any rules. We can’t either.”

Katrina folds her arms over her stomach, nodding as she exhales and meets my eyes. “Good.”

She pulls out her phone and checks it. Dissatisfied, she puts it back.

Her body language clues me in to her discomfort. “Is something else the matter?”

“I’m just worried about Dad,”

she replies. “I can’t help it, you know? Mom is keeping me updated, but—I wish I could see him.”

I have a sudden thought and touch the wheel. The autopilot redirects our destination to Carnegie General, announcing our new time and route in my optic feed. Katrina doesn’t seem to notice until we take a few turns that take us in the opposite direction of BioNex Tower.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ve been cooped up for days,”

I reply. “You helped me. I’m going to help you. And I believe it’s in the best interest of your mental and emotional well-being to see your father.”

When we arrive at the hospital, I check in with Robert Carson’s posted guard and ensure there are no threats to Katrina’s safety. Then I accompany her inside and walk with her down the long, lit corridors to her father’s room.

The door is open. The guard sitting outside informs us that Mrs. Carson left earlier to try to get some sleep. Mr. Carson is asleep in his hospital bed. There’s more color in his face, and a quick scan of him shows his vital signs are strong.

Katrina glances at me. “Thank you,”

she whispers.

I nod and stand near the doorway, out of sight. My hearing picks up the conversation in the room, Carson roused by his daughter’s soft voice.

“Dad?”

He’s disoriented and tired, but happy to see her. “Hey, sweetheart. What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be holed up somewhere safe.”

“Ezra brought me to come see you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he made sure all precautions are being taken. You don’t have to worry.”

Carson grunts as though he’s reaching for her in an embrace. “Well, I miss being home with you. And your mother. A couple more days of this, and I should be okay.”

He pauses then asks softly, “He’s outside, then?”

“He is,”

Kat replies.

“How does he work? Is he . . .”

He sounds gentle and calm, weary, so very different from everything I’ve seen in the news, in interviews, at protests. It’s a bizarre thought that he had anything to do with my inception. The man who’s decried the existence of androids, so many times, is inquiring after me .

Kat takes a breath. “He’s amazing. Everything you hoped he’d be.”

My gratification drive quietly thrills at such indirect praise; not just from anyone, but from Katrina. Tentative, I glance over my shoulder to the open door.

“He’s been good to you?”

“Yes.”

“Then BioNex did one thing right after I left,”

Carson replies, his voice tinted with bitterness. “I should’ve taken control of the business away from Schroeder. I should’ve fought him for it. He probably would’ve liked me to take it over. He only ever wanted to be in the lab. He never had a mind for the business side of things. Too much of an idealist. He didn’t see people for who or what they truly were. BioNex wouldn’t have ruined so many lives if I’d only?—”

“Dad, you can’t blame yourself for Schroeder’s mistakes.”

“No, you’re right,”

Carson relents. “I can only try to stop the wrong people from making new ones.”

He sighs. “But I lost my dearest friend. And I almost lost my daughter. Twice, now.”

The conversation lulls, and I’m left with more questions. I sift through old interviews from last year and the year before. Sure enough, Algrove Schroeder and Robert Carson could barely be in the same room together. The interview had only just begun when the famous BioNex founder and inventor tore off his microphone and stomped off set. Carson refused to enlighten anyone.

“Dad, I think we should consider changing the narrative.”

Katrina’s words bring me out from my research on her father. I wonder how much they’ve talked while I was paying little attention.

Her father seems just as confused. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been pushing for BioNex to close its doors, for droids to shut down, and it’s—it’s just not going to happen,”

Katrina reasons softly. “It’s too extreme.”

“People want that extremity,”

Carson replies. “They’ll accept nothing less when they’re suffering.”

“I know, but if we could take a more middle ground, use reason and empathy to bring people together so they’ll have conversations?—”

“Compromise, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“It won’t work,”

Carson answers resolutely. “Angry people don’t want to hear from those who stand in the middle of an issue. They’ll say you stand for nothing, no matter how reasonable you are or how much sense you make. And most won’t accept it. It’s Humanity First, not Humanity Sometimes.”

I lean against the wall, pensive. Reluctant when I realize that, unfortunately, Carson is speaking the truth. I’ve been activated for several years. I’ve studied human behavior from day one. People are predictable, like an algorithm or a formula on a board.

It’s rare that I find someone who can surprise me. Katrina Carson is one of those unique exceptions.

“Dad.”

I hear Katrina losing some patience, though she seems to be trying hard to control herself. “If we focus on holding big business accountable, if we stopped harping on people with androids in their homes, maybe we could get somewhere.”

“I wish I could agree with you, Kat,”

Carson says. “Unfortunately, we can’t fight against anger and hatred. We can only harness it and try to use it for a greater good.”

Kat sighs in annoyance. “I can’t accept that.”

“You’re young,”

her father says. “Eventually, you will. In time. Don’t think about it too hard, or it’ll drive you mad. Let it be my worry. It won’t be your problem forever. There’s a whole world of fossils and spears and caves awaiting you in the near future. I think if any kind of pivot needs to be made, it should be in your favor.”

“I’m not going to quit,”

Katrina replies, stubborn. “If anything, now I just want to prove you wrong.”

Carson chuckles. “Well. I hope you do.”