Adya pulls her long hair into a ponytail and waits outside the briefing room, per Val’s instructions. As much as she enjoys the breaks from combat training, “shadowing” a briefing feels more like listening to a lecture for an exam that’s never coming. The walls are thick enough to keep any sights and sounds from coming in or out, but it doesn’t matter; someone has left the door cracked open.
“Rest assured, Mr. President, we have no shortage of agents capable of completing her training,” General Morales says.
“It’s not your agents I doubt,” President Armstrong’s voice says from the speakers, “it’s her. When the bionicists in Kolkata said that they were sending me their science experiment, I couldn’t believe that it would be as an agent.”
“With all due respect, Mr. President, the ACA also has a mind transfer program. She is one of our own.”
“Our mind transfer patients receive combat-built bodies. Miss Prisham is far from combat ready. Each organization across the globe is free to spend their resources on what they will. I just don’t see the purpose of pouring millions of dollars into a girl who has only recently begun to show potential.”
The General hesitates. “I understand, sir. But her will matters more to me than her bionics.”
“See to it that she finishes her training, then, with or without a mentor. Assign a new one if you have to.”
The connection ends and the door opens. Val nods for Adya to come inside. The silence between them doesn’t have time to get awkward before the General speaks up again, but they both heard every word that President Armstrong said. Crowded around the front of the room where a screen takes up most of the wall are five agents, all unfamiliar to her. Their looks all land on her for a few seconds too long for her liking, but the feeling of wandering eyes became second nature a long time ago.
“We’ve gotten calls about repeated break-ins in this apartment complex,” General Morales says, pointing to the map behind her. “We’re not sure of the suspect’s motive since they don’t favor one apartment over another. All five families reported unfamiliar video cameras hung up in stairwells, the same cars coming and going during the night, and locks suddenly becoming loose. We have, however, noticed that the lobby cameras are turned off during certain hours of the week.”
“Each day of the week, the cameras are missing footage during a different hour. Corresponding with each of those days is some sort of utility issue; the AC goes out, the hot water won’t turn on, someone’s alarm starts going off, and so on. There’s two different week-long patterns of this. It was a hell of a headache for me to sort through, but we’ve concluded that they should be off at three o’clock today. That’s when we’ll jump in,” Val says.
Blinking, colored dots move over an aerial photo of the complex. The red team will remain on standby two blocks away as the green team enters and turns off the water heater for the entire building. With any luck, the landlord will call for maintenance, which has a fifty-fifty chance of being one of the suspects. One last agent will pose as a civilian in order to scout the area and get a close look at the suspect, should they make a run for it.
“Red team, you’ll be one person short,” the General adds. “Without Agent Anastasio, one of you will have to be our civilian. It’ll make things a little more difficult if these guys send us on a wild goose chase.”
Adya can’t help but drift back and forth between the General’s briefing and President Armstrong’s comments. Girl. Science experiment. Meeting him a month ago was just an act of diplomacy; evidently, he could care less about her.
“I’ll do it. I’ll take Nate’s place,” Adya says. She gestures broadly to her black jeans and red sweatshirt. “I’m already dressed for the part.”
A few chuckles from around the room, including from General Morales. She shakes her head. “You’re too much of a spectacle to play a civilian and you’re far from ready.”
Val leans back against the wall and raises her hand. “Maybe a spectacle is what we need. One of the families has a daughter who recently received a bionic arm. It might be a reach, but she could be their target. If we can get our suspect to draw the rest of their honchos out because they know that Adya’s there, we might be able to get them all in one go. Worst case scenario, we scare these guys away and they find a new complex to break into.”
Not exactly what I had in mind, but okay, Adya thinks.
“Should anything happen, you will have to take the fall for this, Lieutenant Rivera,” the General says.
“I’ll take that risk, General.”
Val raises an eyebrow in Adya’s direction with the slightest suggestion of a grin on her face. Enough to reassure her, but also keep her focused. If Val runs missions the way that she trains Adya, this shouldn’t be a problem. She hopes.
“I didn’t know you were a lieutenant,” Adya mentions, stretching the band of the wrist comm over her hand. “What does that mean?”
“Agents work in every sector, lieutenants lead operations, generals oversee the entire sector, and commanders oversee everything,” Val explains. “I only got promoted a couple months ago. Wasn’t expecting it, to be honest.” She pats Adya on the shoulder and promises to give her a lecture on the chain of command later. For now, her only job is to lean on the hood of a stranger's car and look busy, relaying what she sees and hears to the red and green teams. Seems easy enough. Her first mission, and she’s wearing a sweatshirt with bleach stains and skinny jeans that she’s had since she was sixteen.
A white van swerves into the lot, producing a man in a jumpsuit who pulls a toolkit from his passenger seat. He rubs a hand against his five o’clock shadow and kicks the door shut with his heel. His gaze snags on Adya quickly but can’t refuse a double take.
“You live here?” he asks before he slips through the front door of the complex.
“Tell him you’re here often,” Val insists in Adya’s ear.
“Practically,” she answers. “I have a friend living here. She’s chronically late, so I do a lot of waiting.”
“You must be new, then. I just moved out a few months ago.”
Adya forces a smile. “I’m probably the one who took over your lease, then. Sure is a small world.”
He focuses on her once again, then on the car. Before he disappears behind the front doors, he mutters, “Yeah. Small world.”
“Let’s hope he calls some friends and it’s an offer they can’t refuse,” mentions Val.
“No doubt it’s the child he’s after. I am very familiar with the look he gave me.”
Admittedly, Adya isn’t fond of being used as bait. She keeps her focus on the young girl mentioned during the briefing-- someone like her, becoming a spectacle, a target, because of her bionics.
“Adya, if I were you, I wouldn’t wanna be out there if more guys show up. I’m up on the third floor. Come meet me.”
Shortly after, two sedans pull into a parking space on the far side of the lot. A younger man steps out of one and comes around the complex, but the other doesn’t leave their vehicle.
“I think I’m a little too late,” Adya says. She makes it two steps into the lobby when a blood-curdling scream echoes from the courtyard inside, followed by two gunshots.
She presses herself against the wall. “What was that?”
“Warning shots. Nobody’s hurt… yet,” Val says, tension in her voice. “Stay where you are.”
Through the double glass doors that open up to the middle of the complex, Adya sees a handful of residents scatter. Some sprint to the far side alone, others carry small children to safety with their heads tucked tightly into their shoulders. But only one child stands alone in the middle, pointing up to the second floor; and her silvery right arm makes her hard to miss.
Almost automatically, Adya throws herself through the glass doors and shoves right through to the courtyard. She trips over the bushes, managing to roll into the fall and break it. The girl wails and continues reaching up to the second floor when Adya wraps an arm around her.
“Cadet, I told you to stay where you were!” Val shouts with her hands up. The man in the jumpsuit alternates between pointing his pistol at the agent in front of him, and the woman locked in his grasp.
Once she returns to negotiating with the suspect, Adya scoops up the girl and brings her down the corridor, setting her on the stairs at the end. She continues to cry for her mother. Oh, boy. A month of training didn’t prepare me for this, she thinks.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” she says. “Everything’s gonna be okay. What’s your name?”
No response besides her cries and unintelligible muttering.
“Here, look.” Adya reaches her arms up and retracts the synthetic skin, leaving a network of sturdy cables and metal exposed from her fingers to her elbows. “I’m just like you. You don’t have to worry.”
The girl quiets down and cranes her neck to look at Adya’s hands. She traces a finger over the details in the titanium before looking over her own hand.
“I’m Adya. What’s your name?”
“Diana,” she mutters.
“I like your arm, Diana. It looks a lot like mine. They don’t usually look like this, but sometimes I think it’d be cooler if they did.”
“My friends at school call me a robot,” she says, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt and fighting the tears.
Adya sits down on the step beside Diana. More shouts from the courtyard, but no more shots. That’s a good sign. “What if I told you that you are talking to a real robot?” she asks. Her companion offers a confused, curious glance. “I don’t have a brain. Or lungs, or a stomach, or a heart, or anything. I’m made of metal from head to toe, just like my arms.”
The gears start to turn in her head. “Then how do you breathe or eat or talk?”
“I don’t have to breathe or eat. I get all my energy from electricity. My brain is like a little computer that knows how to make my body move. It also can make me feel things-- happiness, sadness, fear, excitement, and so on.”
“So you’re like a person, but you don’t have any organs?”
“Do you want me to use the big words?” Diana nods. “My brain is a complex neural network built to inhabit and operate a body while still processing sensations like touch, sight, smell, and sound. The stimuli is converted into signals compatible with a digital framework, thus being able to simulate the organic process of human sensory organs.”
Diana giggles. “That is a lot of words.”
“Too many words. I don’t know how they expect me to remember them all.”
“Do people know you’re a robot?”
Adya sighs. “Usually. I’m… kind of the first robot. I got hurt when I was a teenager, so some scientists turned my brain into a computer. That means that a lot of other scientists want to learn about me.”
I cannot believe I am telling all of this to a seven year-old, Adya thinks. But the fact of the matter is, she’s distracted and the chaos from around the corner seems to be slowing to a stop. Whatever works, works.
“The point is, when your friends call you a robot, here’s what you tell them,” she continues with her head cocked up and her shoulders widened in a superhero stance. “‘Yeah, I am a robot. And I made a friend, and she’s a robot too! And she’s gonna do really great things for people like you and me!’”
The second part is more of a wish than anything else, but it’s all the same to Diana. She giggles and latches her palms onto Adya’s arm. She ruffles her hair around, careful not to get it caught on any jagged bits of her hand.
A car swerves around the corner and comes to a screeching halt just outside the open walkway that leads into the courtyard. Adya tucks Diana into the crook of her neck when she peers out into the lot. Her gaze leans a little too far forward and meets the eyes of the man who entered the building right before she did.
Two whirring shots sweep down the corridor, followed by two strained grunts and bodies collapsing to the concrete. From the other end, Val keeps a film grip on her pistol before slipping it back into its holster against her hip. Adya’s grip on her new friend loosens.
“They won’t be waking up anytime soon,” she says, nudging one in the side. His chest rises and falls slowly. “Certainly won’t be walking free anytime sooner.”
Diana stumbles out from the stairwell and runs past Val to her mother. She locks her arms around her daughter, unable to stop herself from sobbing into her shoulder. She mutters a few, gentle ‘thank-you’s.
Val eyes her cadet with stiff eyes. “That wasn’t smart,” she says.
“I know,” Adya says, looking at her feet, “but she would’ve stood there and watched her mom struggle. I can’t just let--”
“I never said it wasn’t the right decision.”
A black truck comes to a stop in the lot and the two green team agents file out, pulling the two additional suspects into the truck. In front of the lobby, Val climbs into the driver’s seat of her own car with Adya not far behind.
“I guess you’re my cadet now. I don’t know if I can be just like Nate, but I’ll make sure you become an agent. For his sake. I have one rule I want you to follow, though.”
“What’s that?” Adya asks.
Her lips turn up into half a smile and she elbows Adya, their metal arms clinking together with an echo. “Sometimes, following orders means breaking them a little.”
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