The Mall (39 page)

Simon gave a single shake of his head.

“What is it?” Lara asked.

“This is the Bot that sent the first distress beacon.
 
Its circuits have been irrevocably corrupted.”

“English, Spock.”

“It’s dead, Jim,” he replied, giving her a single ironic glance, before reaching inside his coat to retrieve the small pocket-sized computer that she recalled seeing inside the lab.

Lara set Cora back on the floor, and she immediately began to give a protesting whine.
 
“Not now,” she hissed.
 
“Be a big girl for mommy.”

 
She watched as Simon pulled a panel open just behind the concave receiver on the right side of the Bot’s head and plugged one of the cables from the computer into it.
 
The screen of the computer came to life and page upon page of data began to scroll across it.

Scanning down to the bottom of the document, he stared down at it with an expression that could only be described as “grim,” then disconnected the cable and rose to his feet.
 
He turned away from them and started up the corridor.
 
“We should keep moving.”

“C’mon, Cora,” Lara said, retrieving one of the radio/flashlights from the bag and passing it to her.
 
“Why don’t you try getting a station again on the radio?”

Cora took the flashlight silently and began to crank.

Giving her a look of appraisal, Lara fell into step beside Simon.
 
“It’s something bad, isn’t it?”
 
When he didn’t respond, Lara said, in a sharp tone: “Tell me.”

 
“Just before the Bot’s CPU completely failed, it saw the body of a child approximately fifteen years of age lying upon a flatbed shopping cart.
 
No apparent breathing.
 
The child’s skull had been fractured in several places.”
 
Simon glanced back at Cora, who was ambling along behind them, staring sullenly down at the flashlight in her hands.
 
“The Bot followed the man for two hundred yards, instructing him to stop and identify himself.
 
He ignored him until he reached those double doors.
 
They lead to the incinerators.”

“Incinerators?”

“Yes, most of the waste in the Mall is burned there.”
 
Simon paused momentarily and lowered his head briefly before continuing.
 
“The man was a security agent named Albert Lynch,” he said, with a shake of his head.

“Designated Mall representative,” Lara stated.

Simon responded with a prompt nod.
 
“Peculiar.
 
He should not have remained behind when the Mall was evacuated.”

“Right, we shouldn’t have either.
 
Shit happens.
 
What else did it see?”

Simon shook its head and increased his pace slightly.
 
“That was it.”

“Simon, don’t do this again,” she growled, rushing forward to catch up with him.
 
“I need to know everything, no matter how graphic you might think it is.
 
Tell me.”

Lara watched as Simon gave a fair representation of appearing ill-at-ease before continuing.
 
“This security guard told the Bot that it had m-murdered the child.”
 
His voice distorting, Simon decreased his pace, his body quivering slightly.
 
“He told the Bot that he intended to kill the child’s friend as well as...”

Lara reached out and took Simon’s arm out of simple instinct, needing to balance herself against something solid to maintain her fragile state of mind.

Simon stared down at her tight grip and pressed his lips closed.

“What else?”

“Lara, maybe I should…”

“Tell me!”

Cora came to a stop, her full attention on them now.

“…t-the other boy that was w-with him.”
 
Simon swayed forward.
 
Lara swung around and grabbed him by his forearms, Cora rushing around in front, but keeping her distance.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lara hissed under her breath, strategically positioning her back to her daughter.

Simon squeezed his eyes shut, his tremors increasing until he began to shake violently.
 
“Give me a moment,” he said in the wispy tone of an elderly man after a second flight of stairs.

“Look at me, Simon,” Lara snapped sternly, pointing at her face.
 
“Open your eyes and focus here!”

His eyelids flickered open and he peered up in her wide authoritative eyes like a frightened animal.
 
“Lara, you must understand.
 
For an H-type android, allowing a human being to come to harm, to d-die,” he managed in a thin whisper through gritted teeth, “is a failure of the worst kind.
 
It is difficult to convey the strength of this rule.
 
It is in our code, written upon our processors, very much like your DNA.
 
Unbreakable.”

“Like allowing my children to come to harm.”

The shivering slowly settled and stopped.
 
He gave a slow nod and attempted a weak smile.
 
“Lara, this cannot happen again.
 
I cannot allow it.”

“If you don’t keep it together, buddy, you won’t be around to stop it.”

Simon nodded again and finally straightened to his full height.
 
He cast a look around Lara at Cora then looked away again.

Shame, Lara thought.
 
“Mr. Simon’s okay now, Cora,” she told her, taking his hand in hers and giving it a brief squeeze.
 
“Aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m fine now.
 
Let’s get going.”

Cora nodded and without a word, took Simon’s other hand in hers.

There’s been a change in him, Lara thought as they stepped deeper into the Red sector together.
 
He’s different than he was when I first met him.

Glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, she saw him studying Cora’s hand gripping his finger and his pinched expression loosened into a genuine smile.

Is it possible that he’s learning how to be a man, Lara thought with wonder.

“Stop,” Simon snapped suddenly, turning to Lara.
 
He took her by the shoulder and stepped away from Cora.
 
“I cannot risk you or Cora coming to danger again.
 
I need to tell you this, though it might cause you undue stress, I’ve determined your psyche is strong enough to handle it,” he whispered to her, casting a look at Cora.

Lara drew him closer until his synthetic lips were close enough to kiss.
 
“Tell me, Simon,” she hissed back.

“They’re hunting us,” he pronounced in a conspiratorial hush.
 
“It’s impossible but they seem to think that we’re not human and they’ve been given explicit orders.”

Lara stared at Simon with barely suppressed alarm.
 
She resisted the urge to glance at her daughter, who she could see out of the corner of her eye was watching them both closely.
 
“What orders?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, y’know?”

Chance gave Owen an impatient look from his stooped position and gripped the base of the stanchion again.
 
“Why not?”

“Because it’s wrong.”

“Didn’t you know, rules are bogus,” Chance said.
 
“They’re determined by whoever has the money to protect their stash.”

“Maybe so, but right and wrong are permanent.”

Chance waved a hand at him in exasperation and turned back to the car.

Owen looked from Chance to the stanchion.
 
He was having a hard time fathoming just what they were trying to achieve here.
 
“I think we should go to the Sears first, find my mom and sister, then we can all figure this out together,” Owen suggested.
 
He had to admit, at least to himself, that his mother had some good ideas sometimes—like staying at a movie theater all night.

“You go do that,” Chance said, shifting his legs in an effort to get the optimum balance to do maximum damage.

“What about the Bots? You keep this up and every last one in the Mall will show up.”

Chance gave Owen a single exhausted look that was sufficient enough response from him.
 
Pivoting his body toward the driver’s side window, he attempted an awkward lift, his face reddening.

Owen sighed heavily and set the flashlight down on the floor.
 
He took the base of the stanchion in his hands to help balance it.

Chance gave him a single expressionless nod.
 
“Now on the count of three,” he hissed between clenched teeth.
 
“One-two-th…”

Lara slipped into the dream as effortlessly as if she had been lying in the dark on her bed at home instead of standing on her feet in the late morning daylight streaming down on her from the glass roof above.

In the dream, she could feel the ropes cutting into her ankles in the darkness and tried to move her legs.
 
She peered into the darkness in confusion.
 
Where was she?
 
What time was it?

Attempting to roll onto her side to check for a clock on the nightstand, she discovered her wrists restrained as well.

The worn springs of an old mattress pressed hard circles into her pointed shoulder blades--clearly defined from meals withheld--the thin, frayed fitted sheet cold and damp against her back.
 
It smelled of urine and shame.

“Prickly ropes tight around his arms,” Cora had said, so accurately describing the feeling of rope on skin.
 
And for a moment, she allowed herself to remember.

That’s the way it had felt during those hours she had been restrained there in the house alone at the kitchen table in front of a plate of cold uncooked meat.
 
At the writing desk with a timeworn tablet, the pages filled with handwritten phrases repeated over and over.

I will not disobey.
 
I will not disobey. I will not disobey.

Somewhere in the ancient house she could hear the old woman’s grumblings.
 
She cursed the empty space under her breath.
 
Once, in the beginning, when Lara had made the mistake of asking her who she had been talking to, the woman told her that she had been arguing with Lara’s father about why he had left such a disagreeable, disrespectful cretin in her care.
 
Why was it her responsibility to take care of the miserable creature?
 
She hadn’t enough room in her house for her and not enough patience for such an unruly brat!

Sometimes she overheard her talking to others.
 
She would mutter for them to shut up and leave her alone, the requests eventually turning into plaintive pleas,
then
ultimately screamed urges.

Lara knew she was in the care of a lunatic.