Chapter 15
“What the fuck, Ladee?”
“I thought you could use a quick reminder of what you were doing,” the fox replied smartly. “I could have let things progress naturally.”
“No,” she grumbled. “Thanks for bringing me back to my senses. I don’t understand how that man affects me like he does. No one else ever has.”
“And that’s what bothers me,” her companion said.
“You think he’s doing something underhanded?” she asked, rising from the bed and stumbling out into the rest of her living quarters. She made sure the door was secure, then headed back to her room, pointedly ignoring the dirty dishes and remnants of the lovely meal they’d shared.
Well, it had been lovely until the lying started.
The conversation resumed when she re-entered the room. “In a word, yes,” Ladee replied. “I haven’t been able to determine the means of his influence. Maybe its chemical. Or some form of hypnosis.”
Dawn turned over his words. Could the mysterious Z really be using some unethical means to force her attraction to him? And if he was, would it be any worse than the alternative? That she truly was as attracted to him as it seemed, all on her own?
“I can’t deal,” she mumbled after a moment. Tumbling into bed and burying herself in the pillows, she continued. “Too much has happened today and I can’t process it all now. I’m going to bed. In the morning, we’ll have the DNA analysis to examine. Maybe it can give us more evidence to go on. But for now, I’m too tired for conjecture.
The robot nodded, then pulled himself up onto the bed, curling up in a circle by her feet. He wouldn’t sleep, not really, but he would go into a non-conscious state while he ran his series of daily diagnostic tests.
“Goodnight, Ladee,” she said through a yawn, then settled in.
“Goodnight, Dawn,” the fox replied, unexpectedly using her first name.
Just another random point to send the orderly stream of data that usually made up her life into chaos. And the confusion only continued as she slept. For hours, she tossed and turned, jumping from dream to dream, each more unsettling than the one before it.
The dream that broke her permanently from her slumber that night was steeped in symbolism. She’d been rolling along the floor of her laboratory, as if she were on some sort of motorized belt. “Come here, little girl,” said a deep voice, drawing her forward.
The voice belonged to Z, but he was an even bigger version of himself, so tall that he was a giant, making her feel like a small child. “You’re going to obey me,” he said, bending down and giving her a wink. “You have no choice.”
“Of course,” she said, feeling frozen. When he broke the eye contact and turned away, she could finally look at herself. She was smaller than usual, her limbs feeling jerky, her skin appearing almost artificial to her eyes.
Then she caught sight of the roller skates on her feet. “Fetch me all the technical specifications for your technology, little girl,” the giant’s voice ordered, and she wanted to hesitate but couldn’t. She was nothing more than an automaton, programmed to obey his every command. Dawn skated across the floor to the safe that held her specs and official patent grants.
She was programming in the passcode when she started awake, drenched in a cold sweat. “Motherfucker,” she muttered, her heart hammering against her ribcage. “I’m not a puppet.”
Dawn stumbled into the bathroom, indulging in a brief but steaming hot shower. She grabbed some clothes and pulled them on, realizing that Ladee was no longer resting on her bed. A glance at the clock revealed that it was barely past the wee hours of the morning. Presumably, their houseguest was still asleep in the storage room. She hoped they’d have enough time to go over the analysis before he showed his face.
Thinking about the handsome spy’s visage made her frown. She would have to work hard to block all thoughts of the asshole from her mind. Dawn couldn’t afford to let her guard down. It was obvious where that led. She had to resist as much as she could, lest she fall under whatever spell he was surreptitiously casting.
Ladee was already at his workbench, his little fingers punching at the console with an agitation she rarely saw.
“Good morning,” she said, crouching beside him. “What did the analysis reveal?”
“He’s not human,” Ladee stated, and Dawn felt the floor drop out from underneath her.
“Are you certain?” The male had all the same anatomy as a human, and she wasn’t aware of any species that were so close in biology.
“Yes. There are too many differences in his DNA structure.” The robot’s voice was strangely hollow.
“If he’s not human, then what is he?”
“That’s the sixty-four million credit question,” the robot said, meeting her gaze. “I have been searching for a DNA match in every database I have access to, and even some I had to hack my way into. I can’t find a match.”
Dawn’s thoughts raced along, trying hypotheses and discarding them as quickly as she could. “Is he a mutant? A human with a genetic mutation that separates him from the rest of his species?”
“I’d considered that,” the robot replied, “but I don’t believe that to be the case. I’m not sure how to put this as I’ve never seen anything like it, but it isn’t as if the data on his species didn’t exist. It’s more like it has been erased.”
