25 Detroit 9.15.2038
Clara
I don't expect Dannie from Cyber Control to call me. She surprises me by doing it anyway.
"Hello?" I answer the unknown number on my phone. I'm pulling on a pair of socks, mismatched because I can't find a matching pair anywhere in my house, perched precariously on the edge of my bed.
"Hello? This is Dannie Malcom. From Cyber Control?"
I nearly fall off the bed in surprise. "Dannie! Yes, of course. Thank you so much for calling me. My name's Clara Weber. I work for Detroit Today as I said in my note. God, are you okay? What happened…it was terrible."
"I'm okay," Dannie says in her soft voice. "It was terrible. Are you writing about Cyber Control?"
"Yeah, or at least I'm trying to. I have some leads, but nothing with a credible source. I'd really like to interview you. You could be completely anonymous. I'm not here to put your job at risk."
"We're probably all on our way out anyway," Dannie says, not sounding too sad about it.
"Can I ask why you work there?" I ask, furrowing my brow. I slide my feet into boots and shrug on a sweater. Fall is coming on quickly, and the air already has a bite to it. The trees outside are gaining an orange glow, and it won't be long until they start to fall.
"I…I thought I could help androids, but it turns out Cyber Control has no intention of respecting android rights. Surprise, surprise. I only stayed there because it seemed better than turning a blind eye."
"Can we meet in person?" I ask. I'm already excited that my article didn't dry up completely. "Maybe you could still help androids."
"How about John's Coffee downtown?" she asks.
"Noon?"
She confirms, and I hang up. I've been biding my time since I infiltrated Cyber Control, obsessively learning anything and everything I can about the company and David Downs. The company is in serious financial trouble as I suspected. There are rumors of someone skimming off the company's funds, but nothing is confirmed. There's plenty of supposition out there, but I'm determined to become the first to find solid evidence.
Dannie is already waiting when I show up at John's Coffee. She sits like a pixie in her chair, hunched over a cup of coffee. I sit down across from her. I managed to get the LED off my head with some soap, warm water, and persuasive expletives. There's still a faint red ring on my temple, but I'm hoping no one looks too closely.
"Thanks so much for meeting me," I tell her, setting my notepad and pen on the table.
"You look different without the android stuff," Dannie says, peering at me through her glasses.
"Heh, yeah. I'm still kind of new to the investigative reporting, so I haven't learned common sense yet."
"No, what you did was so brave," she says, laying her hands flat on the table. "God, I was so scared, but you stood right up to him." I notice she says 'him' and not 'it.' That wins her some big points with me. Connor is slowly learning, but he tends to revert back to 'it' unless I'm aggressively giving the android a different pronoun.
"I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I thought I could stop him, but it's not like anyone was going to give him a fair trial."
We both sigh, and Dannie stares into her coffee. "So what can I tell you?" she says finally, bringing her brown eyes up to mine.
I fold my hands in front of me. "Let's talk about David Downs's experiments."
…
My article runs the very next day. Dannie not only gave me a full interview on David's experiments and the seedier aspects of Cyber Control, she also gave me photographic evidence and stats. She assured me she was planning on quitting, so it didn't matter if they figured out who leaked. I wasn't so sure, but I was careful not to incriminate her in my article. She hadn't been the only one helping David with his experiments, so she wouldn't be singled out.
I'd already written up an article on the deviant. I don't mention that I'm the eyewitness, but we're definitely the only paper with such detailed information. Horowitz has practically adopted me now, thrilled with my successes while Tony grumbles about me putting myself on the front lines. I know he's proud of me too, but he warns me to slow down. I don't want to slow down though. I don't ever want to stopper this rush I feel when I'm working on a new story.
My dad calls to tell me how proud he is of my articles. Mom is in the background giving her support. I haven't heard anything from my brother, but things have been tense since the accident. I wish time had resolved that, brought us closer together again, but it doesn't seem to work that way. My sister-in-law texts me to tell me she read my articles and says we should do dinner soon. I send off my usual response of, "Sure. Just name the time." We both know I'll have some excuse the next time she texts.
I'm riding this high, and I refuse to acknowledge that every high has to crash.
…
My crash comes in the form of a black car and two strong men with guns. I'm leaving the office late, reviewing what I've got for a new story, when the men step out to meet me. I can see my car in the distance, a blue beacon in the dim parking garage.
"Can I help you?" I ask, holding my keys a little tighter, thumb circling the panic button.
"Clara Weber?" one of the men asks.
I don't so much as blink. "Nope. Wrong girl." I try to move past them, but one of them reaches out a hand to grip my arm. "Take your hand off of me," I tell him steadily.
"You've upset some people," the man tells me. His eyes are hidden behind shades, and I think of how cliché they are. It might be my last thought, but it's true.
"That sucks. Maybe they should get over it." I mean, if I have to go out, I'm going to go out with my smart mouth getting in its last few words.
"We know Dannie gave you the interview. If you don't come with us, she's as good as dead."
My stomach sinks. That's not good. Dannie was not supposed to get hurt. I'd texted her to make sure she was all right the next few days after the article ran, and she assured me she was.
"Maybe Cyber Control shouldn't have played dirty," I tell the man.
"Get in the car." He shoves me, and I move to press the panic button on my keys. The car blares to life, but the keys are wrested from my hands a moment later. The alarm stops, and he tosses my keys under the car. I watch them skid across the cement. He grabs my phone and pockets it before I can even have a say in the matter.
My arm bruises where I'm dragged and shoved into the back of the black car. The doors lock automatically, and I'm trapped. Shit. Shit shit shit. This cannot be happening, but it is. This isn't the kind of adrenaline rush I like. This is much too real, much more frightening than my experiences before. God, how could I be so stupid? Did I really expect these articles would have no repercussions? I got caught up in the glory of having my name printed under the byline on the front page, in Horowitz's praise, in the power of having people read my words. Tony warned me, but I didn't listen. I never listen.
We keep driving until we hit what looks to be an abandoned warehouse. Detroit is filled with abandoned buildings these days so I have no way of guessing where we are. I'm roughly dragged from the car and inside, through rusted doors into darkness. As my eyes begin to adjust, I take in my surroundings. Bodies line the walls, some standing, some in pieces. Androids. I recognize a few of them from the videos I watched. One has a perfect hole in the center of his forehead. Another a gunshot wound. These are David's failed experiments. It's horrifying.
I'm pushed to the floor, and I hear a whimper. Dannie sits with her knees pulled into her chest. "Dannie! Are you all right?" I ask her.
Her eyes are huge in the dark, and I notice one of the lenses on her glasses is cracked. She nods, a tear escaping her eye.
"I am so so sorry," I tell her. "I didn't mean to get you into trouble over this."
"It's not your fault. I turned in my two weeks, and they just knew it was me."
"Have they said what they plan to do to us?" I ask, watching the two men. They're conversing. Then one pulls out a phone and makes a call.
"Nothing good."
"Hey, boss. We've got the girls. Yeah, yeah, no one saw us." The man who first grabbed me has taken off his sunglasses to reveal brown eyes and thick eyebrows. His nose is bent like it's been broken a few times. I'd like to break it myself if he'd give me a chance. "Relax, boss. No one will make the connection. All right. See you in a few." He hangs up.
"Hang tight," he tells us. "Boss is coming to talk to you."
"Who exactly is the boss these days?" I ask. David is dead and though there are several men with equal shares in the company, there is still a 60% share that I can't find any name behind. It was David's portion until he sold it very recently.
No one bothers to answer me. The men move off to smoke outside, and I stand to survey our surroundings.
"There's no other way out," Dannie tells me. "I already checked."
"How long have you been in here?" I ask.
"Twelve hours," Dannie says. "They broke into my apartment."
I study the androids, wondering if any of them could be activated again. I have no idea what parts are damaged or what they would even need in order to reactivate. I wish Connor were here. I wish I had a way to contact him, but I haven't seen him since the day I watched the android shoot himself at Cyber Control. I need a panic button on my phone. Not that that would help right now.
I find an android that is missing its head. The torso appears to be undamaged though the cords and tubes jutting from its neck are mangled. A head lies a few feet away. I pick it up and study it for damage.
"What are you doing?" Dannie asks me, standing.
"Trying to reactivate one of these guys," I tell her like I know anything about what I'm doing.
"You can do that?" she asks.
I turn back to her. "You probably can. You worked with them."
She shakes her head at once. "Software development. I had nothing to do with building them."
"Well, I'm going to give it a try." I hold the head over the neck, noting which wires go where. The wires aren't live, but I take care touching them, winding the smaller ones together so the ends still meet. The head hits haphazardly when I'm finished, all the wires and tubes meeting with their other ends, but nothing happens.
"I don't really know what I expected to happen," I say, kneeling with a sigh.
"Maybe it needs a spark like Frankenstein's monster," Dannie suggests.
We search the room but come up with nothing that would create an electrical current. "Maybe the pump regulator needs a reboot," Dannie says.
I kneel in front of the android again and put my hand over its bare torso where the pump regulator should be. The panel isn't easy to find, but eventually I'm able to slide back a panel of its torso. I reach in and pull the pump out. I feel sick holding it in my hand and hastily reinsert it.
The android's LED flashes to life. Red then yellow then blue. I close the panel.
"It worked." Dannie crouches next to me.
The wires in the neck spark to life, exposed like veins. The head sits at a macabre angle, too high for the neck. The android's eyes open, near black in the semi-darkness.
"Can you hear me?" I ask.
"I can hear you." His voice comes out robotic, but he looks right at me. "We need your help," I tell it. "Do you remember what happened to you?"
"I—" He hesitates, LED turning to yellow, then red. It stays red this time. "I remember."
"The men who did this to you are here. They're going to hurt us." David, Cyber Control, his strong arms. It's all the same. "Can you get a message to another android?" I have no idea if that will work, but the android doesn't look like it's going to be functioning at full capacity any time soon. Contacting Connor is the only way he can help us now.
"I can. I need its model number."
"Oh." Connor's model number. I remember it had a 3 in it. Maybe a one. "Let me think a moment." We don't have a moment, so I think as hard as I can. I washed his android jacket that has the numbers on it just the other week. "313-248-317," I pull from the darkest recesses of my memory. "Tell him Clara needs help and give him this location."
The android's eyes flicker, blinking rapidly as its LED glows yellow. I don't get a chance to ask if it worked because the doors burst open, and the two guards enter the room. There's a third man with them, and I recognize him at once. We've never met, but I've seen his file. And he's seen me. Kissing Connor outside his house. It's Lazarus Benjamin, and he looks like he wants to murder us.