I sprinted through the front door and crash-landed in Pumpkin’s front seat. “Manual operation!” I screamed, but of course, the car had a few words to say about that.

“Manual operation disabled by local authorities,” it reminded me. “If you wish to dispute—”

“I don’t care!” I punched the main screen. It popped out of place but remained intact. “Shift to manual mode!”

“Manual operation disabled by—”

I roared and got out of the car. There was no way I could beat the security bot home. Not at government regulated speed. It had too much of a head start. But what could I do? There had to be some way—any way—to stop this from happening!

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Call Mia!” I demanded. 

It gave a ring, but the voice that answered wasn’t hers. “We’re sorry,” it said. “The number you’ve dialed isn’t available. Please check your connection.”

“What? Then call Selena.”

“We’re sorry. The number you’ve dialed isn’t available. Please check your connection.”

A tiny line of text ran across the top of my screen. No Service, it read over and over again.

And then it hit me. I flipped the phone in my palm. On the backside was the letter G, shaped to look like a human profile on one side and a gear on the other. Genesis Robotics.

It shut off my phone? Could a security bot do that? I didn’t think so. But until recently, I didn’t think a security bot was capable of shooting someone, either.

Commander Lucas Von. That was it. He was the answer. The entire reason the security bot was on its way to my house was to find him. No. Not to find him. To kill him. So, if Commander Lucas Von was dead, it would have no reason to keep hunting him. My family would be safe.

The muddy ground sank under my shoes on my way up the hill, and my knee collided with the dirt to catch me from falling more than once. I climbed right back up every time. It was a three-hour drive from the lake house to the townhouse. Three hours before everything I knew and loved would be at risk. I had to make things right before then. I couldn’t afford to slow down.

I found the gun exactly where I left it. Being soaked in the rain might have affected its ability to fire, but it didn’t matter. I’d kill him with my bare hands if I had to. 

My hands? Right. I’d forgotten about them. They should have been in screaming pain with all I was putting them through, but if they were, I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything over the fear. The panic. The anger. Perfect. I’d need my hands to drag his body to the nearest police station. Let them put out a notice that he’d been killed. Let the security bot get word and turn around.

I blinked and was back in the car, the gun resting beside me in the passenger seat. I gave the order to head back down the road and left, toward the city, but how far had I driven before kicking him out? Where was the hill I told him to climb? Did he climb it? How far could he have gotten if he was still hobbling down the road?

I pressed my foot against the floor of the car, willing it to go faster. It crawled along at the speed limit, showing no sign of the urgency pulsing through me, until, finally, I passed a familiar spot.

“Pull over!”

I sprinted at full speed down the road in search of a man with a walking stick. The road showed no sign of footprints, but that didn’t mean anything. The rain could have easily washed them away. So, I turned my head upward, scanning the horizon instead. Any of the hills surrounding me could have been the one where I sent Commander Lucas Von. But he was a smart man, wasn’t he? He’d choose the best spot for himself regardless of what I’d said. So which would he pick? Could it be a simple matter of the tallest hill? That one stood another couple of miles down the road. Conversely, the one across the street had the most trees. Trees would provide decent cover for a man who wanted to hide. 

No sense in trying to read his mind. I’d check every hill. He couldn’t have gotten far. Dwelling would only waste more time.

The smell of wet pine permeated every molecule of air. The branches thinned the torrent of rain. Still, I charged through the woods, gun in hand, tearing through any obstacle that dared stand in my path. But despite my determination, it took longer to hunt him down than I would have liked. Soon, my rage gave way to desperation. I nearly collapsed under the growing weight of my frustration when my ears picked up a sound—the distinct snapping of a tarp in the wind.

I followed it around trees, over fallen logs, and between massive boulders. Commander Lucas Von would have needed an easier way to get there on his one good leg, but I didn’t care about finding that. All I cared about was the blue tarp.

It stood out like a rose in a patch of daisies.

He’d draped it over a fallen log and pinned down the sides with rocks to create a makeshift tent. His leg stuck out of the front opening, the rest of him tucked inside, probably plugging away at the radio.

I crouched in front of him and our eyes met.

“What? You?” he said. “What are you—”

I thrust the gun into his face, the barrel staring directly between his eyes, and flicked the safety off.

But then, I hesitated.

Commander Lucas Von didn’t. He gripped my open burns and dug his fingers in, instantly waking the dormant pain. With a twist I was certain crushed more than a few of my wrist’s components, he turned over my hand and stole the pistol out of it. I fumbled to grab it back, and in doing so, the trigger caught in my fingers. A bullet fired through the tarp and into the trees. The sound bit into my eardrums, and I couldn’t help but flinch.

He took advantage and twisted my arm again, freeing the gun completely. The next thing I knew, I was on my back in the dirt, him on top of me. His fist struck my jaw, then my nose. If either had been made of bone, he might have broken them both.

It was my turn to look down the barrel. Commander Lucas Von aligned his gun-wielding arm with my forehead and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happened. I’d only loaded the gun with the bullet I needed for myself, and we’d just fired it at an unsuspecting squirrel. I slapped the barrel out of my face, pushed him off, and got up—a feat I doubted would’ve been as easy if both of his legs were working. Without his crutches, he couldn’t so much as get on his knees, but that didn’t stop him from puffing out his chest and pushing his soggy sleeves up his forearms like he was about to hit me again. 

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked with an alarming amount of authority for a man in the dirt. “Are you crazy?”

“That security bot we saw, it’s after my family,” I spat. “Thanks to you.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” I kicked a patch of pine needles at him. “It found my address, and it’s on its way there right now. To my house. Where my human sisters live.”

“Shit.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “How long before it gets there?”

“Like two hours.” At least he cared when human children were involved. Not as heartless as I made him out to be, but still a dick. He tossed the gun to the side and reached for his crutches.

“How far are we from the nearest Genesis facility?” he asked.

I backed up as he got closer. I had to remind myself that I was the one who wanted to kill him, not the other way around. “We’re right outside of Dempsey. It’s about twenty minutes away.”

“Genesis Headquarters. That’s the last place I want to be. It’s probably crawling with armed bots.” He eyed my injured hands or rather, I suspected, the gears inside of them. “You can probably relate to the feeling. I got the impression you’re against being recycled.”

“You going to get to the point sometime today?”

He spoke in segments like he was thinking out loud. “If we go there, I might be able to shut down the bot remotely. It won’t be easy. We’ll have to sneak in. I’m not really in a great state for sneaking. If we get caught, they might kill us both. Two hours is pretty tight, but it’s the fastest way to stop it before it gets there.”

I stepped forward and my lip curled into a snarl. “Or I could just kill you.”

“If you could, you would have already.”

Was that true? Why couldn’t I? There was a time when I would have blamed it on the Mama in me, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. Was it possible I had a safeguard in my brain preventing me from killing humans? Some kind of stop-gap to keep me from becoming too much of a threat? A twinge of pain simulated in my abdomen. Everything I did, everything I was, all came down to programming. I was only software in convincing human-shaped hardware.

Fake blood dripped from my nose to my shirt. “You’d be putting yourself in danger.” I hated how pathetic I sounded. “Why help me?”

He laughed. “I’d love to say it’s because you helped me, but to be completely honest with you, it’ll be easier to contact my command from their facility. That radio is shit.” The tarp hissed as he pulled it from the log.

“Why should I trust you? How do I know you’re not leading me there for the recall?”

“Said the kid who just tried to murder me.” He tucked the radio into the tarp, followed by the empty gun, and shoved the bundle into my gym bag. “You going to help or what?”

“I guess there isn’t time to do a pros and cons list.” I sighed and packed the rest of the gear. With it in my hand, and Commander Lucas Von on my back, I made steady progress to the road. The fob in my pocket brought the car to me, and we loaded up as we had before—me in the front, him in the back.