Cryostorm (25 page)

To mate. Have babies with. Produce little genetic mutant rug rats. My stomach clenched. Had Nate really ever loved me? Ever wanted me for me? Or was it all orchestrated by The Center?

Crackling sounded, and I yanked my gaze from the floor. A guy was kicking or hammering through my ice wall in front of the partially opened door. I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. Of anything at the moment.

Made for me? Really? I didn’t get it.

I stood and went to Nate. He was still attached to the wall by my ice and didn’t seem to be fighting it.

“Nate?”

Blank eyes stared back at me.

“Are you in there? My Nate?”

“I’m here,” he said, but his eyes remained fixed.

“Yeah. You’re here all right. Tell me something, why aren’t you attacking me?”

“We’re home now. Safe. Now we can be together forever.” Nate reached for me, but the ice encasing his waist, shoulders, and upper arms prevented him from connecting with me.

“But you hurt me before. Why would you do that if you love me?” I remembered all too clearly his fist pounding my face, foot kicking my gut, and my bones breaking beneath his grip.

“You were fighting me. Fighting my mission. I needed to render you unconscious to get you home safe and sound. I didn’t enjoy hurting you, but I had to in order to get you to safety.”

“I’m not safe here.” I shook my head. “You know that. Deep down you know that, Nate. You’re not safe here, either.”

He cocked his head to the side. Could any of this be sinking through his computer chip riddled mind? Sinking into My Nate? Computers were about logic. Maybe I—

“There we go,” Bev’s voice carried through my thinking.

I wished I had paid more attention in computer class in high school. Weren’t there some things called If-Then commands? Programming or something?

I turned to face the mad scientist. Of course she carried a clipboard.

“You’re very powerful, Mandy.”

“Amanda.”

“Right. Well,
Amanda
, this is an interesting development, isn’t it?” She smiled. Her turf green eyes flashed, but a chill zipped through me at the evil radiating from her. “Here we’ve been after you all this time, thinking you were this amazing creation. When all along, Nate, here, was right under our noses, and we didn’t even know it.”

I stepped in front of him. Despite the possibility that his feelings for me were manufactured by The Center, I knew mine were real, and my instinct was to protect him. She was pissing me off, too. Talking about him like he was some piece of science that she wanted to figure out.

“How is coming here part of his mission if he’s Property of The Center?”

“Technically, The Center contracted us to procure you. So we’re one with it—well, sort of—so this is as good a place as The Center down in Florida.” She put her fingers to her mouth. “Oh, oops. I gave away its main location.” Her thin lips curled up into a smile.

“I can tell you’re heartbroken. What gives?”

“The Center is worthless. They were hell-bent on snuffing you guys out. Wiping all evidence of everything off the face of the earth. But you are too valuable to be doing anything hasty like that.” She shook her head. “Idiots.”

“And…”

“Well, let’s just say we’re disbanding that division. Some of Nate’s creators are on their way here, as we speak.”

“Disbanding…so, you’re killing off and destroying The Center.”

“Those who are willing to join our cause are more than welcome to come.” She smiled. “Well, not everyone willing to join, but a select few.” Her gaze shifted past me. “Mainly the ones involved in making him.”

Nate met Bev’s stare, and I grabbed his hand. That drew a look from him. For a second, I swore I saw My Nate flash through the haze of Robot Nate. God, the struggle he must be going through in his mind.

“So, how’s it feel to have someone made only for you?”

“Why? How?”

“I know your puny brain won’t be able to digest the science part of it, but I can sum it up in a cliff’s notes version if you like.” She hugged the clipboard to her chest.

“Bitch,” I whispered.

“Keep it up and you’ll have a needle in your neck before you can even think to ice down.” She smiled. “Hungry? I could bring you love birds some food. Strawberries and chocolate maybe?” She laughed.

“You’re so funny.” I turned on the cool, chilling the room. No icing my skin over or anything, just letting her know she was walking a fine rope. She had no clue how quickly I could ice down now. It’d been a while since I was in custody. I was stronger. More controlled. “Talk.”

“When The Center discovered Sarah had a child, they went deeper into research mode. Scientists started mixing Nate’s concoction in hopes of you coming into powers like Sarah’s or comparable. Stronger maybe. Genetics is somewhat of a mystery, still. So they weren’t sure what you’d become, if anything.”

“Yawn.” I squeezed Nate’s hand and called my ice in from his body.

Bev straightened, her eyes focused on him. “But they took a chance you would, considering how powerful your mother was.”

“So, I have my soulmate. What next? Start popping out babies here at Science Central for you to study? Slice and dice them to see what they’re made of?” Nate’s hand tightened around mine. “I mean, that’s what you’re going to do to me, right? And Georgia. Once you get your hands on her. Sarah’s kids, strongest ever, we could make a great army.”

“Army? Well, I don’t know about that, but we could find out so many things. The meaning of life and how to prolong it. Creation. Finding the cure for cancer. Any list of things.”

I huffed. “Yeah, right. You guys do honorable things with your studies. I might not have the highest IQ but I’m not as dumb as a rock, you know. How’d they do this to Nate?”

“He was implanted with a computer chip that interfaced with his brain early on in his development. On a synaptic level.” She smiled. “It grew with him from what it looks like. We had to x-ray him twice to find it, and without the records we got on him, I wouldn’t have known where to look to see it. High tech stuff they’ve shoved in there.”

How much of this was resonating with My Nate? Did he know what was happening? He had to know some because he’d fought through it. Ran away when he was hurting me, plus he wasn’t attacking me now so he had to have some control over it.

“So what happens now? You keep us locked in here?”

“Up to you.” She stepped back. “We have a nice facility. We could give you nice living quarters if you allow us to study you and Nate. It could be fairly comfortable for you.”

“Not a fan of white, though,” I said.

Bev ticked her head to the side. “Attitude needs work. My sister said you were feisty.”

“I can tell you’re heartbroken over her death. Zach’s devastated. So is his dad. You ruined their lives.”

“No.
You
did. Your choices caused her death. And yes, I’m quite upset about it. I would have enjoyed seeing you die, until I found out your connection to Nate. Well, not connection, but your role in his existence.”

Nate stepped forward. “You will not hurt what is mine.”

Although it was Robot Nate speaking, I still heard My Nate in there. Deep down. It was his voice. The end of a tranq gun pointed through the open door.

“Interesting,” Bev whispered. “I’ll give you two time to… well, whatever.”

She backed toward the door. She must have been in her early forties, but she acted like a cross between Jasmine with her surly attitude, and an old psycho-mad-scientist.

I was going to enjoy freezing her once I got out of here.

Chapter 36

I
moved to the door that just clicked shut and ran my hand down its smooth, metal surface. The handle didn’t budge. I cupped my hand to the two-way window, but of course, I couldn’t see.

As to not show them my increasing frustration level, I waved...with my middle finger.

I trailed along the rest of the wall, looking at every angle. The ceiling, walls, floor. Everywhere. Only one little vent in the center of the ceiling.

Everything
was white. Why was that, anyway? Did it serve some purpose other than to annoy the hell out of me? I already had frequent nightmares about people in white and had just started getting over them during the past few months.

Now this.

“What are you looking for?” Nate asked.

I glanced at the window, then stomped over there. “Need a little privacy.” I yanked the white curtains over the peep show window. I knew they’d probably be able to hear us, though.

“Amanda?” Robo Nate said.

It was so weird to hear him call me Amanda. It was formal. He’d been calling me Mandy since day one when I’d met him at that party. There’s a short list of people who could call me Mandy and he’d not made it at the time. But I never had the nerve to correct him. Guess it was foreshadowing at its best.

Now all I craved was to hear My Nate call me Mandy. Not this Robo Nate calling me Amanda in his stiff, formal voice.

My heart sagged at the thought that he’d been programmed to like me back then. Maybe even ran into me on purpose to make contact.

Had everything been false with Nate?

I shook my head. No. It wasn’t like that. He was normal Nate back then. Right up until I’d said
I love you, Nate
. Those four words had to trigger the programming.
Please let it be true.

Heart pounding, I moved toward him. He sat perfectly still on the edge of the bed watching me with wide, glazed eyes. My Nate had always watched everything with wonder, absorbing each experience as if putting it in his memory catalogue in that genius brain of his.

He had the same face, skin, hair, body, even the same smell, but it wasn’t
my
Nate. My brain cramped at the thought.

I knelt in front of him, clasped my hands around his, and rested them on his thighs. “So what’s supposed to happen now?”

“We will be together forever.” He smiled.

I leaned close to him. “Can you whisper your answers to me? People are listening here.”

He nodded.

“Together forever, here? At GenCorp, held captive?” I whispered. “I don’t want that.”

“You don’t want to be with me?” His jaw clenched. “But we are made for one another. This was planned.”

I inched closer, my body parting his legs.

He wove his arms around my waist. “I remember this from the hotel in Minnesota. We can be together now.” He pressed his lips to mine.

“Nate. Slow.”

He quirked his head to the side. What did he think? That I was going to crawl on his lap like I did with My Nate back in Minnesota?

“You want to please me, right?” I asked. “That’s what mates do for one another.”

He nodded.

“You want me to be happy?”

He nodded again. His fingers combed through my hair with such a gentle touch I had to fight from leaning into it. It was My Nate touching me, yet it wasn’t. I could only hope to play on the programmed part of Robo Nate. Rules. He obviously followed rules. To the point of hurting me, even.

“I love you, Nate.
My
Nate. Can I talk with him? Are you in there?”

“I don’t understand.” Robo Nate leaned forward and brushed his lips across my forehead. “You are mine.”

Boy, he liked saying that. “So, you remember what’s happened between us before? Everything since we first met?”

“Yes.” He suckled my earlobe. “And you like this.”

Oh boy. This Robo Nate sure did remember… “Then you remember how much Nate and I hate this place. These people.”

“I do, but you’re wrong. We’re here for a reason. To be together and bring forth a new kind of human.”

I swallowed hard on that one. New kind of human? I’d thought of it before, when Nate and I had gotten hot and heavy. What would our kids be like? Strong, frosty tendencies, and wicked smart? Super fast? Or none of the above.

“But I’m not happy here, Nate. I want to leave this place.”

“You will get used to it. I must look out for us. For you.”

“Like choking me into unconsciousness to bring me here? My Nate would never want that to happen.”

“I regret having to use force with you. Nate is very angry with me for doing that, but it was needed. You were fighting me.” He pulled me flush against him.

My mutinous body flamed into action when it made contact with his.
Traitor.
Here we were in a white, sterile room at freaking GenCorp. No way was my first time having sex going to be here. And with Robo Nate in command. I had to stop this, yet his mouth against mine felt so good. He even knew how to kiss me like My Nate did.

So not fair.

He moaned, and his hands darted up the back of my hospital issued garb. At least it wasn’t paper-thin. It might have ripped at how fast he moved his hands. No, this place sprung for the real cloth-like scrubs and white slippers with grip bottoms.

Jerks.

“Slower. Too fast.”

His kiss intensified. Guess he wasn’t listening just then.

“I’m not ready,” I whispered. “Please, Nate. I—”

“I know how to get you ready.” He reached for my pants.

“No. Wait.” I grabbed his hand.

“I know you like this. I can sense your arousal.”

Who couldn’t? I was breathing heavy, and my lips tingled—along with other body parts. My body was acting on its own, and I was having trouble reining her in.

“But I want you to stop. I’m not ready to have sex.”

“You’re fertile now.” He smiled. “Tomorrow is your best day, though.”

“Okay, that’s just gross.” I shook my head. “You know my cycle?”

He nodded. “I’ve been counting even though Nate has not.”

So he’d been gathering information this whole time? Almost like a subconscious, but now it was in control. I really wanted to puke right now. This wasn’t my Nate, except it was.

“So, since the words ‘I love you’ triggered you into existence, will the words ‘I hate you’ shut you off?”

“My program runs through completion.”

“Which is…”

“Conception and birth.” His hands skimmed up my shoulders, and he cupped my neck.

Sure, his speech was more formal than My Nate’s, and his eye had a flare of red, but his hands were warm and gentle.