Chapter 6

Richard Castle was a conundrum.

He was hot and cold. Intrigued by the rise of the machines, the resistance and time travel one second, the next he would lose his focus, staring at her as if she were a monster. Or worse, he would gaze at her, the slightest of smiles on his face, and she would have to fight the urge to raise her voice at him.

"I'm not her," she wanted to remind him. "I'm not Beckett, and you're not in love with me. You need to wait for your happy ending."

Houghton stayed silent as she handed him the explosives, biting her tongue and willing him to follow her lead. Blowing this building up was nothing she hadn't done a dozen times before, but the stakes were higher tonight. Before, it had been 2018, and 2020. Before, the resistance had been a mere blip on their radar. Before, she'd been one of the bad guys.

Before, as she had threaded wires, and hit the switches she needed to activate, she hadn't had the very human she was charged to protect beside her.

And never before had she had a partner in crime with whom she was being less than honest.

She inhaled then exhaled, the unnecessary oxygen failing to run through her veins; where Richard Castle was flesh and blood, she was wire and metal. Where Richard Castle was emotion, taut and on edge, she could only afford to be logic, follow her programming.

Still, something niggled, and she realized she was yet again running through Beckett's memory bank, looking for a solution, though how Beckett could help her now, she didn't know.

No matter how often Beckett had told Castle to stay in the car, tried to shield him, right from their first case together, Castle had always found himself in too deep. She grinned at the memory of Rick's face as he'd realized Russian Beckett was saving him, her smile only deepening as she relived Beckett's memory of relief once she knew Castle was safe.

In spite of the memories, there were no answers to be found. She needed to protect Castle, needed to keep him in the moment. She needed him to believe that the most important people in his life were safe, and so rocking the already precariously balanced boat was out of the question. He needed to believe that once this building had been blown sky high he would return to his ordinary life because if he knew he would be leaving both Alexis and Beckett tomorrow, he would never agree.

He needed to believe that he would remain in 2011, that time would keep ticking in the methodical way he had known his whole life. Certainly she wished he could stay; bringing the very person she'd committed to protect into the line of danger seemed foolhardy.

"Ready," Castle announced, with a nod toward the building, and she set her mouth in a firm line, holding her own C4 up to demonstrate that she, too, was ready.

First this. It was three in the morning in July 2011 right now. It was time. Tomorrow they would deal with the future; tonight they needed to take the first step to ensure the right future would be there when they arrived.

"Holy…"

Houghton sped away and he craned his head, unable to take his eyes off the building; one second it was there, an old and only partially used office space. The next, it was alight, the shudder rocking their car even from the distance they'd already gained.

"Shit."

Beside him, in the glow of the orange flames, Houghton smiled, her expression genuinely warm, enchantingly human, in fact. "We did it," she said, a hint - if he wasn't mistaken - of relief in her voice.

"You didn't think we would?" he asked as he considered for the first time that perhaps the machine beside him wasn't as infallible as she'd led him to believe.

"Of course I knew I could do it," she protested. "I was just worried you would screw it up."

"Then why bring me?" he asked, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

"Two birds, one stone," she told him, the idiom rolling off her tongue as if English was her mother tongue rather than whatever base programming language was at the core of her being. "I have to protect you. Keeping you with me is smart."

She shrugged, shifting in her seat and reaching down to pull a phone from her pocket, her eyes still trained on the road as she scrolled through the contact list, selecting a name and holding the cell to her ear.

"You're meant to put it on speaker if you're driving," he told her, and she screwed her face up at him before the call connected.

"It's done," she said, ignoring him as she concentrated on the phone.

He strained to hear the voice on the other end but he could only hear a faint murmur. Houghton, too, spoke softly but what he caught was meaningless without context as she punctuated the conversation with yes and no, and, tomorrow and lay low.

"Who was that?" he demanded when she ended the call, and she smiled.

"A friend."

"A friend? You mean… another robot?"

"Does it matter?" She sighed. "Honestly, Castle, you need to just go with the flow. It's going to be okay."

"Okay? Okay?!" The adrenalin was fading now, leaving a throbbing headache and exhaustion in its wake. Sirens broke the quiet of the pre-dawn hour, and the dam broke as he snapped. "Nothing about this is okay! You kidnapped me from my party last night, and you're talking to robots, and we blew up a building! What about this is okay?!"

"Breathe."

She reached out across the console, her hand light against his thigh, and he swallowed as he relaxed into her touch. Beckett. Except, she wasn't. The warmth on his leg was nonetheless welcome and he shook his head. This was so fucked up; gaining comfort from Beckett's mirror while the woman he loved recovered upstate… alone.

Kate. I love you, Kate.

Fuck.

He pushed Houghton's hand away, clearing his throat as he did so. He needed to focus. He needed to get his head in the game so that he could get out of this, go back to his daughter, his mother. His life. And Kate. He had to stay strong for her. Houghton hadn't been explicit, but she'd said he was important, and that Beckett was important, and frankly, if the resistance had gone to the effort of programming a copy of Beckett with her memories, she must be.

A chill ran down his spine as something occurred to him, and as he mulled it over, he knew it to be true. Even if what she said was correct - that she was on his side, part of the resistance - at some point, probably when she was made, she'd been one of the bad guys.

"How do I know I can trust you?" he asked, and she glanced over at him, amusement playing on her features. "And who gave you Beckett's memories?" he asked, pushing further, and she hesitated. "Was that before you were one of the good guys?"

She lifted a hand from the wheel, waving his question away. "You'd be dead if you couldn't trust me," she supplied, her voice deadpan, and he shuddered. Yeah. That was comforting. Not.

"Shit," he swore, struggling to find a safer topic. "Wait, why do you use cell phones, anyway?"

"Why do we use cell phones?" Houghton chuckled. "Why wouldn't we?"

"Oh, I don't know. Probably because your technology is so much more advanced than ours. Why would you use phones if you can just time travel?"

This time Houghton broke into peals of laughter, and Castle grimaced. "We might be able to time travel, but there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Phones exist, we use them." She shrugged. "You might want to think twice about installing Siri on your phone at the end of the year, though."

"Sirry? What?"

She shook her head. "Work with me, Castle, and we'll figure it out, I promise."

He sat up, straightening his back as best he could as he trained his gaze on Houghton. "Okay. You want me in this? I'm in. But if I'm in, that means you need to tell me things. I can't have your back if I don't know what's going on, and we need to work together, as a team."

Houghton glanced over at him, a smile lighting up her face. "We do make a pretty good team."

"So tell me what I need to know. Tell me who you were talking to."

She sighed, reaching out again and patting his leg quickly, before withdrawing her hand, replacing it on the wheel and making a perfect ten and two.

"We have a new priority. I was talking to… someone from the resistance. Someone who came back at the same time I did."

"Another… machine?" Castle guessed.

She nodded. "Someone else came back with us. Two someones, actually. Or, somethings." She jerked her thumb back, indicating the rear of the car. "Him, for one."

"So who else?" Castle asked, a heavy feeling settling in his stomach as something occurred to him. "No."

"Yes," Houghton said. "You. But not you. The other you. And he's not like me. We have some new information. He does have your memories, but he hasn't been reprogrammed by the resistance. He's going after Beckett."

A/N: Bwahahaha. I mean. Oops? LOL. Thanks for reading, and thanks Kylie and Jamie for your betaing! x