The Bionics (The Bionics Series Part 1)

The Bionics

Alicia Michaels

The Bionics Series

Part 1

The Bionics

Copyright 2012 by
Alicia Michaels

Cover art by Larry J. Stephens (Imagine Images Photography and Graphic Design)

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any manner whatsoever. Please respect the work of this author by not copying or reproducing their work.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or people living or dead is coincidental.

Daddy.
If it weren’t for you sitting me down in front of the Star Wars movies growing up, I might not have been enough of a nerd to come up with this story. Sorry I could never get into Star Trek.

Special thanks to my wonderful Beta readers:

Carly
Fall

Autumn
Nauling

Paperdolls

Tamara Beard

R.K.
Ryals

One

Blythe Sol and
Dax
Janner

Dallas, Texas

August
15, 4010

4:00
a.m.

I am awakened by my internal alarm system and
all
I want is to ignore it. I want to turn it off and
roll over and go back to sleep,
burrow beneath my thin, scratchy blanket and ignore the world outside of the house I have taken shelter in.

Unfortunately, my inter
nal alarm doesn’t work that way
and won’t shut the hell up until I’m on my feet with my eyes open. I have the feeling that my alarm—which should only be heard by me—has also awakened Dog.
I’m wondering if it emits one of those high-
pitched screeches that only canines
can hear.
The furry bastard is licking my face with his hot tongue before
I’ve even finished rubbing the sleep
from my eye
. I pet him on the head absently and stand, stretching the fatigue out of my human limbs.

I still haven’t gotten used to reconciling my human half with the robotic additions gifted to me by the Science and Technology
Department of the Restoration
Project
. It’s especially jarring first thing in the
morning;
half of my body takes l
onger to wake up than the rest. Eventually, I am able to stand and give Dog a proper ‘good morning’. The wiry mutt looks up at me expectantly, his tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth
and his tail swishing from side to side
until I go over to my pack and fish out a few strips of beef jerky.
I still don’t know what breed he is. Medium sized with ginger-colored fur, he looks to be a mix of Irish terrier and God
-
knows
-
what. He reminds me a lot of myself,
a mishmash of different things:
black, white, girl,
robot
. We’re both a conundrum.

Dog leaps up onto his hind legs and spins in a circle for the treat, bringing a smile to my face as he always does.
I have very few reasons to smile these days.
It’s the only reason I keep the fur ball around, despite the fact that my situation isn’t exactly ideal for keeping a pet.

I hear the
muted mumbling of the television
from the next room and I know that
Dax
is awake and watching the news. I also smell
food
,
which means he’s making breakfast. I rifle through my pack until I find a clean shirt and replace it with the one I slept
in
. I’ve only brought one pair of pants with me, so I’m glad they’re my most comfortable brown suede. I pull on a pair of heavy wool socks and my boots before reaching for my jacket
. It’s heavy with all the odds and ends I keep in the many pockets lining the front, but it’s warm and functional.

I
grab the small pouch containing my toiletry items and walk into the
bathroom, mentally thanking
D
ax
for letting me take the
big
bedroom. While the house ha
s been cleared of all furniture—with the exception of a beat up couch in the living room and the bed I slept in last night—
the power and water still run, as well as the heat. I fill my hands with water from the faucet and splash it over the dirty mirror, using the sleeve of my jacket to wipe a clean spot big enough for me to see
myself
. I open the bag and take my time with the essential grooming: brush my teeth, splash my face w
ith water, and comb my shoulder-
length,
dark
brown hair into a ponytail.
Once that’s done, I brace my hands on the sink and stare at myself in the mirror.

I keep looking for that girl who had dreams of joining the Army and the ranks of the Military Police, of riding around on one of those sleek hover bikes and pinning
one of their
gleaming, silver badge
s
to
my shirt.
At only nineteen years-old, I have lost most of my optimism;
that girl is gone
and I am now the antithesis of everything she once believed in. Sure, I look the same
:
caramel-colored skin halfway between my mother’s black and father’s white, brown eyes,
a
beauty spot just beneath my left eye. Yet
,
everything about me has changed and it has absolutely nothing to do with the Restoration Project’s accessories. With a sigh, I reach into the bag for my contact lens case.
It stings like a bitch on contact and will hurt for hours after I put it in.

The single, glass lens protects my bionic eye from the police scanners
, which are capable of detecting hardware like mine,
and keeps me safe while I’m
walking the streets with
Dax
. There is no protection for my robotic arm, except for the polyurethane glove the
Professor
constructed for me to wear over it. It looks like my other hand and seals over the skin right above my elbow, where the titanium an
d gadgetry end and I begin. It repels water
,
is heat and cold resistant
and
,
more importantly, keeps me looking like the
other
‘
normies
’
.

After a minute or two, the excruciating pain in my
left
eye
socket
fades to an annoying throb.
While the actual eyeball doesn’t hurt, the lids do
, as well as the nerves attached to the damn thing,
and I hate wearing the thick, glass lens.
By luncht
ime it’ll be an irritating itch
and by the time I’m ready to take it off, I’ll have gotten used to it. I slip my
digital
watch on and grab my bag before returning to the master bedroom, throwing it into my pack. I roll my blanket up and slide that in there as well.

4:20 a.m
.
B
etter
get a move on.

Dog is
sitting
beside the door on his haunches, waiting patiently for me to open
it
. As soon as I do, he’s rushing to the living room to greet
Dax
, who is si
tting on the couch in front of
the television.
The sleek sofa is the only piece of furniture left in the room. The remnants of the family that once occupied
it
are scattered across the floor. Broken photo frames, forgotten children’s toys, and articles of clothing tell the story of a family recently terrorized by the
government and
Military Police.
The television is working just fine
,
though, even if it isn’t one of those
sensory stimulating
models they have in those big
cities that are still standing. Those babies have picture so colorful and sound so realistic that you’d swear the actors of your favorite shows were right there in your living room.
You can smell what the TV chefs are cooking and the fabric softener in commercials full of smiling people and soft towels.
I step over a broken va
se and dodge a disembodied baby
doll head,
dodging the
debris scattered around the
room
like landmines until I reach the kitchen.

Dax
has, in his usual fashion, made the most of what we found when coming upon this house the night before. He’s located and cleaned
a
few pans
, plates, cups and utensils
and raided the fridge.

“Fresh eggs?”
I ask as I dig into the pan he’s left on the stove. The eggs are still warm and are mixed with bits of
Dax’s
rationed beef jerky.
“Potatoes?”
I scoop some of those onto my plate too and eye the orange concoction in a glass pitcher on the counter with awe. “Is this real orange juice?”

“The
house couldn’t have been vacant for more than a few days before we showed up,”
Dax
said from where he sat on the couch, glued to the news. “The expiration date on that orange juice was for a week from now.
And the potatoes aren’t real, but the eggs are
,
so eat up.
”

We fall into silence again as I sink down onto the sofa beside him, sitting my orange juice glass on
the floor between my feet
. I dig into my eggs and groan aloud with ecstasy. It’s been
months since I’ve eaten real eggs.
Food that isn’t biologically engineered is hard to come by, which tells me this family ha
d
money. However, their wealth obviously wasn’t enough to save them from what happened here before we arrived.
Despite the beef jerky, which is an odd mix
with the eggs, I wolf my breakfast
down pretty
quickly,
content to let
Dax
finish watching the broadcast in peace.

Silence between
Dax
and me is comfortable, which is good because I’m not much for talking unless I have something to talk about.
Dax
knows this about me and understands that
my
silence isn’t always a bad thing. After I’m done eating, I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He is
leaning back comfortably
, his long legs spread with Dog resting between them. His smooth,
brown skin
is offset by dark, midnight black hair
buzzed close to his head
and twinkling brown eyes.
Dax
is a great, hulking beast of a man, broad in all the places that count, but as warm and charming as they come.
He and I are the same age
—though he’ll reach his twentieth birthday a few months before me
—
and
I always wonder what our lives would be like if we’d met before the nuclear blasts
four years ago
that hit m
any
of the major cities in North America and changed our lives forever. Would we have ever met? Would we be friends?