“Anton,” she says. “Did you tell Anton where we were?”
“Not yet. But he knows you’re in this town,” he says.
“Is he alone?” Sydney asks. “Or did he bring a Guardian with him?”
“I believe he’s alone,” Mr. Goodwin answers.
The girls and I look at each other. We have to get out of here.
Mr. Goodwin smiles at Brynn. “You must be the caregiver,” he says, pointing at her. In quick succession, he points at Marcella, Sydney, and then me. “The educator, the companion, the rebel.”
“What are you talking about?” Marcella asks.
“Your models,” he says. “There are only six base programs. You’re missing the seductress and the doll.”
He sounds like he’s being helpful, but instead, Brynn’s eyes begin to fill with tears.
Program types.
Adrian watches Brynn’s reaction, and she jumps to her feet. “I can’t take this,” she says, beginning to pace the room. “If any of this is true,why?” She spins toward her dad, her expression a mix of anger and hurt. “Why would you pay to create AI girls? What the fuck, Dad!”
He swallows hard, lowering his eyes. “After your mother died, your real mother, I was lonely. I turned to money—making it,investing it.” He stops. “When I brought Claire home five years ago, you really took to her. And soon, I saw that you were great friends. That you loved each other. And then it was too late. I couldn’t bear you losing another person, so even after she and I couldn’t work—”
“Yeah, because you’re clearly a fucking psycho!” she shouts at him.
He flinches back but presses his lips together in understanding. “I knew you’d need her, Adrian,” he says. “That’s why I didn’t decommission her, even when it was clear that she was faulty.”
Adrian stares at him, her lip beginning to quiver. Quickly, she turns to me. Her eyes examine me, looking for some sign that I’m not human. But there’s nothing she can perceive. Her chest heaves with breaths, and she pulls off her glasses to wipe her eyes before replacing them.
“What did they do to you?” she asks me. “At the academy or whatever. What did they do to you there?”
And this is the hard part. We don’t have time to go into all the details, but there’s enough to tell her the basics of the abuse, the intentions, the aftermath. Adrian openly cries when I tell her about impulse control therapy, about the Guardian’s threats and physical violence. I tell her about Imogene, broken and bruised by a man who bought her as his wife.
“We feel,” I tell Adrian, putting my hand over my heart. “We feel all of it. We’re not just machines. We have hearts and organs and flesh. We love,” I whisper, looking sideways at the girls. Sydney’s eyes glisten as she smiles.
“But the corporation created us to replace the girls in society who they couldn’t control,” I say. “I don’t know their grand plan yet, and maybe your dad doesn’t either.” I turn to him. “But I have no idea how you can claim to love Claire and then pay money for the school to torture us. Did you have any idea what they were doing?”
“I …” He doesn’t want to answer honestly; I can see it in his eyes. “You are … machines.”
“But not Claire, right?” I ask. “She’syourmachine, so she’s the only one you care about.”
He nods, and I realize that’s the way, the way of selfish people. They want to control everyone else, but when it’s them, they want their own rules.
I hear Marcella’s knuckles crack when she makes a fist.
“What about me?” Adrian asks her father. She hitches in a breath and turns to him. “Did you know what I was going through at Ridgeview?”
He seems shocked by the question. “What do you mean?”
“I suffered at that school,” she says. “The way some of the boys would harass me—are you okay withthat?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Adrian,” he says.
“Or you chose not to know,” she says. “For years, they’ve grabbed me, sexually harassed me, bullied me. All without consequence. And here you are, paying to make girls that they can abuse in the same way. Paying to create a society where it’s the norm.”
“You have to understand,” her father says. “This academy was a financial decision, and—”
“And?” she repeats. “You think money excuses any of this? Well, guess what, it appears you don’t have any more fucking money!” She motions toward us. “This was never about money. This was control.”
