She leans back with a satisfied “Ah… I liked that one.”
“Man,” Quentin says, rubbing the back of his neck. “My brain hurts. I need some sleep and maybe even a hot shower. Let’s save this for the morning. Right now we’re just going to make ourselves crazy.”
“You’re right,” Jackson says, blowing out a heavy breath. “Who knows? Maybe this is all a dream.”
“Nightmare,” Annalise corrects, picking at her fingernail.
“Nightmare,” Jackson repeats. He gets up from the chair, but when he nearly falls over trying to grab our bags, Quentin jumps up to help him.
“I’m gonna go get him settled,” Quentin says, and he asks Jackson for his key card. Jackson hands it over as Quentin hikes both bags over one shoulder. As they start to walk out, I tell Jackson that I’ll be over shortly.
After the door closes behind them, I turn and find Annalise eager to talk.
“What if Quentin is right?” she asks. “What if it was Valentine? She may have been looking for us or trying to help us. Doesn’t mean she was programmed to kill or anything.”
“Help us?” I ask. “Annalise, we don’t want any of the girls to just murder people. Not when they don’t have to.”
“And you know his death wasn’t necessary?” she asks. “Casey wasn’t some helpless old man, Mena. He regularly called his son a fuckup, possibly killed a wife or two, and invested in a corporation that created and sold girls. What if he tried to hurt Valentine?And you know what, what if he didn’t?” she adds. “Do you really want to protect these men?”
“I’m not protecting them,” I say. “We’ll take them down. It just doesn’t have to be six feet under.”
“And you get to decide who lives or dies?” she asks. “Tell me, do they have to actively be murdering us or can we stop them before they pull our plugs?”
“Annalise,” I say, reaching to take her hand, “I don’t want to fight. Please, not now.”
She waits a beat before apologizing. She grips my hand and sighs heavily. “If Valentineismurdering people,” she concedes, “then yes, we’ll have to rein her back in. But look on the bright side: If she did this, it means that she’s awake. She’ll find us.”
I press my lips into a smile, placating her. Annalise leans to rest her head on my shoulder, telling me how much she missed me. But I’m still thinking about Valentine.
She’ll find us,I repeat in my head, wondering if maybe that’s something to be afraid of.
10
Annalise and I talk a bit longer, wishing we could call the girls to update them on everything. But neither of us have our phones, and it’s likely that the other girls have ditched theirs by now too. We could call them from the hotel, but that seems risky—a paper trail between us in a hotel database. It’s better to wait until morning when we can get fresh phones and check our emails for what might be their updated numbers.
Annalise changes out of her tracksuit into an oversized Rockies T-shirt and boxers, which I assume are Quentin’s. When she catches me noticing them, she shrugs. “They make boy clothes so much more comfortable than girl clothes,” she says. “Even their underwear. It’s completely unfair.”
I laugh when she models the outfit for me before jumping into the bed.
“What a mess humans make of things,” she says, combing through her hair with her fingers. “I’m not placing all the blameon the townspeople, but if they would have stood up sooner, maybe they could have stopped the corporation. They could have stopped whatever happened to them.”
“What if they were threatened?” I ask. Annalise turns to me.
“We were threatened every day of our existence, but when we knew better, we fought back. Odds were against us; they still are. But we certainly wouldn’t stand by and watch others, even humans, be abused. If the people in town knew we were AI, and I’m not convinced they did, that still doesn’t excuse their inaction.”
“They weren’t the ones hurting us, though,” I say, although I understand Annalise’s point. I just don’t like to put such a fine tip on it.
“Negligently letting us die is just as bad, Mena. They’re culpable. They were inactive witnesses to our abuse. So forgive me if I’m not crying over them having to leave their antique shops or hardware stores behind. Maybe next time they’ll be better.”
Annalise yawns, her eyes glassy with sleep. One eye green, one brown, and a scar across her cheek that has faded to a pale pink. Annalise had the chance to fix these injuries—erase the scar—but she says it’s a part of her, and honestly, I can barely remember what she looked like before it. What we all looked like, perfect and pristine, before fleeing the academy.
“Do you think Demmy Casey was looking to replace me in Jackson’s life with another girl?” I ask, the thought troubling me.
“Not really, but it seems like something a man like him would do,” she replies. “So it’s not totally out of the question, I guess.”
“What, just… substitute another body?”
“A warm body,” she says, pointing out the difference. “Listen, Jackson is nothing like his father. Jackson is not like the professors or the boys at Ridgeview,” she adds. “Not every man is bad, and anyone who’ll claim that we’re only seeing the worst in them is ignoring the good ones. We have Quentin and Jackson right here—good ones. Why only focus on horrible men, making the good ones outliers? Humans have been doing it for too long. This society needs to expect—no, demand—more good ones. Identify withthem. If one guy is accused of a crime, they cry witch hunt. How about instead they side with the other good men instead of trying to protect the bad ones? Want to know why?”
