Mila 2.0: Renegade

I should have been panicked, or ready to attack at the slightest provocation. The way I’d felt when Mom and I were on the run. Today was no different from the day we tried to cross the border into Canada, or get on a plane to secretly fly out of the country.

But on the first leg of what Hunter dubbed “The Bio Daddy Road Trip,” all I could feel was relaxed. Ridiculously relaxed, given the circumstances.

Hunter insisted on taking the first turn at the wheel, and as he steered, we talked. Or rather, he talked, clearly a not-so-subtle but considerate attempt to keep my mind off my traumatic personal life. He talked about his manga collection, San Diego, the friends he’d left behind, more manga. How much he missed the ocean but not the traffic. How he hoped that he could take me with him to visit someday.

“You’d love it there. We could go to the beach, stay late, and have a bonfire. Then the next morning, we could drive up to the mountains and go for a hike. My friend’s dad has a cabin in Big Bear, so we could stay for free. It would be amazing,” he said with a sigh.

“Especially if we could read some manga while we were there,” I teased. “Seriously, though, it sounds amazing.”

And it did. Once I found Grady and put together the broken pieces of my past, then I had … nothing. No plans, no family, no idea of what my future would be like—only that I’d be constantly looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Even so, the fact that Hunter liked me enough to include me in his visions of the future … it meant everything to me.

I leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek before sliding back into my seat.

“Just because?” Hunter asked. With a sudden boyish grin, his fingers traced over the spot. So endearing that I was tempted to kiss him again.

“Just because,” I said.

Over the next few hours, I still kept a careful eye on the cars around us, and performed quick scans whenever we stopped. But that never seemed to prevent me from enjoying myself. Like when we pulled over for an impromptu Slurpee—

Me: “Why is there a tiny shovel on the end of the straw?”

Hunter: “What, they don’t have Slurpees in Philly? There’s always a tiny shovel on the end of the straw.”

Me: “So you don’t know either.”

Hunter: “Just drink your Slurpee.”

—or flicked water at each other while Hunter washed the bugs off the Jeep’s windshield. Times like these, I could almost forget the reason we were on the trip in the first place.

To pass the time, we played a game where we took turns naming animals in alphabetical order. As it turned out, Hunter liked to take a little creative license.

“Hare,” I said.

“Icky bird.”

I folded my arms. “You’re making that up.”

He shrugged, his face a picture of innocence. “Am not. They’re indigenous to Tibet, and they were named for the sound they make during mating rituals. Icky, icky, icky.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Oh, no. I don’t kid about icky birds.”

“You could have just said ‘iguana,’ you know.”

“But then the icky bird would have felt slighted.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll let that one slide. We wouldn’t want to offend such a prestigious Tibetan avian species.”

He turned to grin at me. “Now you’re getting it.”

By the end of the game, we’d both done more laughing and fabricating than anything else.

“Wow, I haven’t played that since I was a kid,” Hunter said, once we’d finally settled down.

“Did your parents teach you?”

A pause. “No, my friends’ parents did on the way to soccer meets.” A lengthier pause, and then, “do you ever wish you had a brother? Or a sister?”

I stole a glance at his profile while he drove, but his eyes remained intent on the road.

Images flashed in my head. My face, only not mine, staring me down right before we had to race through an obstacle course designed by a madman. Her quizzical expression when I tried to talk about Mom. Her insistence that we were sisters of sorts. Sisters who competed to see if one would have her entire existence erased, with the push of a few buttons.

A chill wrapped around me like a night breeze. “No,” I said. “Not really. Why? Do you?”

A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw, a stiffness echoed in the way his shoulders squared against the seat back and the curl of his fingers on the wheel. He waited a tick, then deflated. “Yeah, I do. Mainly just to have someone to talk to at home. My parents come and go a lot, and they’re … well, let’s just say they’re all over the place with their attention. One minute they’re all in my business like I’m ten or something, but the other fifty-nine, they act like I’m forty and don’t need anything from them. Sometimes I pretend that I have a brother, and we make fun of how weird they are while we hole up in my room and watch really shitty TV.”

The tiny lump that had started forming in my throat grew in thickness, but I swallowed it away. I’d give anything to have Hunter’s dysfunctional little family.

At least he knew them. At least they were alive.

“Do you ever feel like that? Like you just wish you could rewrite history, somehow, to make it play out more in your favor?”

I reached across the seat and rested my hand lightly on his cheek. He leaned into my palm, and my heart swelled. “Every day,” I whispered. “I wish I could change the past, every single day.”

His eyes met mine, and something flared between us. My heart catapulted in my chest, while suddenly I became aware of how close his thigh was to mine, and of his scent, and the thrum of his pulse beneath my fingers, speeding up its pace.

I let my hand fall away, coughed to clear my confusion. Car. Driving. Not crashing, really important. “None of us gets to decide where we come from, but we can choose where we go from there.”

I wasn’t sure where the words had originated, but once I uttered them, they felt right. I couldn’t allow the circumstances of my creation to drag me down. Nothing could change that. But that didn’t mean my entire life was predetermined. I had choices, beyond what Holland envisioned for me.

And I’d be damned if I let him steal my life from me, like he had Mom’s.

“You think so?” he said, his lower lip caught between his teeth.

“I do. I also think that your parents suck, if they don’t realize what an amazing person you are.” He didn’t say anything, but the right side of his mouth turned up. “And, for the record—I’m always available to watch bad TV. In fact, hold that thought …”

I rummaged through my bag, pulling out the pen and paper I’d taken from the motel. I scribbled on the top sheet, tore it off, and handed it over. “Here you go.”

He unfolded it on the steering wheel and read, his smile turning into a full-fledged chuckle.

I owe you one entire day of room holing-up and all the shitty-TV watching your alphabet-game-cheating brain can handle.

Mila

“So I might get another day with you, huh?”

I stared at the stretch of road ahead through the windshield and beyond, avoiding the traveled road in the rearview mirror. “I’m thinking about it.”

Later, we switched positions. I could tell Hunter was getting tired as the sun lowered in the sky, because he talked less and instead zoned out to whatever song was playing on the radio, his eyelids slowly lowering. Finally, the steady hum of the tires must have lulled him, because his eyes closed and his face turned soft with sleep.

As I stared at the long, monotonous road ahead, I quickly realized that I didn’t like it when Hunter slept. It left me with too much time alone with my thoughts.

Way too much time. Enough time for me to replay images from the past that I’d happily erase from my memory for good.

Android parts, everywhere. Me, wading through piles of discarded arms and legs and other bits of machinery masquerading as human, their skin dry and lifeless under my hands. Flames, roaring in my ears, red-orange waves licking the floor by Mom’s bound feet—and the impact my shoulder made when I hit the glass separating us. Lucas’s body, crumpling when I struck him in the kidney with my fist—even though it was the last thing I’d wanted to do.

All part of Holland’s sick, sadistic tests. All for nothing when he ordered me terminated anyway.

Remembered terror tore through my body—the horror of not knowing what was happening to Mom while I was locked away in the tiny, barren cell in Holland’s compound … and the never-ending heart stab of realizing that now, she was gone. Was that pain ever—ever—going to go away?

Mom had told me I was brave, only she had called me Sarah. A part of me was so determined to figure out who this mystery girl was, and the other part didn’t want to know. What I knew now was horrifying enough.

As the tires rolled on and Hunter slept, I played our escape scene, over and over again. What could I have done differently? If I’d taken a different route through D.C.? Not made that desperate, wrong-way turn on the Kutz Bridge?

The road blurred before me and I took a vicious swipe at my eyes.

If you want to help me, you know what you can do? Live.

Mom’s voice, already losing strength then but filled with a surprising ferocity.

Live.

I straightened in the seat, pushed my shoulders back. Everything Mom had done had been for me. To give me a chance to really live—in whatever capacity that meant.

I wasn’t about to let her down.

I pushed the button on the door, and the window whirred. The fresh air whipped me in the face, full of damp earth and, yes, some smoky car exhaust, but mostly the slightly sweet decay of leaves falling from trees. Crisp—chillier than I’d expected.

Ambient temperature: 49.5 degrees F.

Instead of refreshing me, though, my body stiffened as Holland’s wrinkled, smug face swam in my mind, accompanied by the scream of bullets. The explosive shatter of glass.

In my head, I saw flames licking high, but this time he was the one bound to a chair. His sun-weathered face glistened as the heat drew closer, panic lightening his steel-gray eyes. His fear was a palpable thing, every bit as alive as the artery pulsing in his throat, and a strange sweetness swept through me.

The rage nestled away in a dim corner of my mind roared its approval. I’d give him fire. I’d give him everything he deserved, everything—

“Mila, look out!”

Hunter’s shout startled me, and I just reacted. I slammed on the brakes, which resisted, then gave with a sudden jerk—at the same time Hunter threw his hand out, trying to grab the steering wheel. The Jeep careened wildly to the left.

Car approaching, 12 ft.: Collision possible.

Adjust right.

I yanked the wheel to the right, overcorrecting in my panic, straight for a line of orange pylons. Construction zone. The Jeep’s front right wheel smacked one of them, and the crunch reverberated through the interior. The steering wheel jerked under my hands as the tires crunched across the debris scattered over the restricted shoulder.

I hit the brakes. No resistance at all.

Another pylon kicked up and cracked against the hood before it went flying, and in desperation, I swerved back to the left. Which plunged us directly toward a parked construction vehicle.

My heart plummeted to the floorboard at the same time my android instincts took over.

Obstacle, 3 ft.: Veer 5 degrees to the right.

Straighten.

Veer 10 degrees to the left.

Pump brakes.

I hit the brake pedal repeatedly. Nothing. The brakes wouldn’t catch, wouldn’t stop the car. Meanwhile, the Jeep kept rocketing forward. From my peripheral vision, I caught a glimpse of Hunter’s pale face. His arm was extended across my chest in a vain effort to protect me.

Collision imminent, 11 ft.

I tapped the brakes again. Again, no sign of resistance.

8 ft.

The Jeep bucked as an explosion like a shotgun blast was emitted from under the passenger side. Blowout.

In desperation, I pumped the brakes once more. The car jerked, then jolted to a stop. I stared at the back door of the massive truck on the other side of the windshield, the two bumpers so close they could have been kissing.

Obstacle, 3 in. ahead.

Three inches. We’d missed crashing by three freaking inches.

I let my head fall forward onto the steering wheel while Hunter drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “That was …” He trailed off.

“Yeah.”

Then I shot upright and turned to him, anger suddenly short-circuiting the relief. “What were you thinking, yelling at me like that?”

His jaw hung open, reflecting the dazed expression in his eyes. “The lights …,” he finally blurted. “You were driving without the headlights on.”

No lights. My night vision had initiated, and I hadn’t even noticed. The lines behind my human self and the machine were blurring, faster than I could have ever imagined. I guess the truth wouldn’t be denied.

My hands trembled, while at the same time, a steady stream of power burned through my limbs. Power that had once felt like a burden, but was starting to feel like an absolute necessity.

Holland’s face flashed again, but this time the fire licked at his toes. I could almost smell the acrid char of smoke, feel the heat singe my own skin, and the sensation sent a shiver through me.

Overhead, clouds cloaked the moon like a shroud, and in the distance, a solitary star glittered, barely lighting the dark night canvas. The rolling green hills on either side of us were devoid of businesses, of houses. Of streetlights.

I could only imagine how dark it looked without the lights on. Impossibly dark.

I kept my mouth shut and shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Waiting.

Hunter peered out the windshield, forehead all furrowed in puzzlement. He muttered under his breath. “How the hell …” Then, with an angry shake of his head, his voice grew louder. “You could have killed us.”

No, I couldn’t have. But that wasn’t something I could share. No, really, we were never in any danger, because I’ve got this great night vision built into my head.

“But I didn’t,” I said. Because I felt like I had to say something. I hoped he’d leave it at that. I also hoped he couldn’t hear the thump-thump-thump pounding in my ears.

He rubbed the back of his neck, shook his head. “That’s the thing. How? How did you not kill us?”

It was a good question, really. One that deserved an equally good answer.

Under the unrelenting weight of his stare, my hands tightened on the wheel. The interior of the car suddenly felt way too small.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good answer to give him. But as the clouds eased away from the moon, providing a little bit of illumination, I gave it my best shot. “I have really good vision, and my eyes must have adjusted as the darkness crept in.”

What an understatement.

“I might buy that if you were some sort of supernatural being, but there are no streetlights out here. None at all.”

“There’s the moon and stars … and it’s just not all that dark. I was distracted, thinking about meeting my father. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a heart attack.”

“I’m not looking for an apology.” He opened the door, got out, and trudged around to my door. When he tried to open it, he discovered it was locked.