Debra Driza - Mila 2.0 - Renegade

“Oh, you’re in for it now,” he mock-growled, jumping to his feet with that same lithe grace I remembered. With his low-slung board shorts and his wet hair glistening in waves around his neck, he looked like a beach bum. My gaze skimmed his bare chest and I swallowed. Make that god. Beach god.

I backed away down the shore and he raced toward me, kicking up water at my legs. We exchanged splashes, laughing like toddlers, and then he grabbed my hand and pretended to drag me toward the oncoming waves. He stopped before we went too deep, and we stood there together, allowing the foamy white ocean to swirl over our ankles.

The water, the sun beating down, the drag of the tide. All of it flitted through my mind, reminding me of … something. Before I knew what I was doing, I was spinning in a circle, twirling with my arms outstretched. Feeling the wet sand squish between my toes.

Twirling, in the sand. Another niggle. A pinch, in a corner of my mind.

I remembered this joy, this gladness.

The next instant, it was gone.

I felt a tug at my hair, and opened my eyes. Hunter’s face was only a few inches away. I inhaled salt and sweat, sandalwood and a hint of sunscreen. “Don’t worry about looking too cool or anything,” he teased. But his wink suggested approval of my beach antics.

He stepped closer, until our toes touched beneath a tiny hill of sand. The instant shock of awareness intensified when he bent forward, his breath tickling my ear, triggering my heart to pound harder. A slow, steady warmth traveled through my body, from my head to my arms, all the way down to my tingling toes. I yearned for his nearness in a way that I longed for nothing else. Maybe that was the reason I’d called him. Grief and fear had nearly dragged me under, and in the past, Hunter had been one of my only sources of comfort.

“Sorry,” I said, struggling to keep my tone light.

“Don’t be. You’re just … you.”

I turned my head, gazing off into the distance. Just me? And who might that be?

In a stroke of irony that thankfully only I could see, red words blinked to life in my head, accompanied by an all-too-familiar digitized voice. My voice.

Apparently the universe’s way of reminding me of exactly who—no, what —I was.

Threat detected: 4.52 mi.

I froze. Four and a half miles? What the—

Two jets, due west.

I whirled, searching the air for a sign of them.

“What are you looking at?” Hunter asked, cupping a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun.

There.

“Jets.”

“There’s a huge naval base in Virginia Beach, isn’t there? Cool.”

Not cool. Not cool at all. My hands tightened as images from the past deluged me, with crystal-clear precision. Suburbans, men with guns. An airplane filled with soldiers, transporting Mom and me to a secret compound. Tiny, barren holding cells. The salt-and-pepper hair of General Holland, and the smug satisfaction that oozed from him when he issued the order to have me terminated.

Mom. Bleeding out after being shot on Holland’s command. By one of Holland’s men.

The gasp-clench of loss wrenched my chest and almost doubled me over, reminding me that Mom was gone. Dead. Murdered by a madman under the guise of defending his country.

I’d never see her smile at me again. Never hear her voice. Never tell her that I loved her.

“I wonder what kind they are?” he said, snapping me out of the dark place.

I didn’t answer, because just then, something moved within my eyes. I actually felt my pupils contract. A thin layer slid open, accompanied by a subtle clicking that only I could hear.

Zoom: Activated.

Another click, and the planes enlarged to fill my field of vision, like I’d fired up a pair of high-tech binoculars. The images grew and grew in size, until I could capture enough detail to place them.

F/A-18 military jets.

A 3-D schematic of the jets burst to life before me, rotating to show me all sides.

Red letters blinked behind my eyes:

Presently unarmed—drill mode likely

“Not sure,” I murmured, turning away in relief. But as the weight drained from my limbs, a heavy certainty filled my heart. The planes served as a forceful reminder that this carefree beach time with Hunter was coming to an end. No matter how hard I tried to push reality away, it kept sweeping back over me, as surely as the tide rolled in.

And like the rhythmic cycle of the tide, two names repeated themselves, over and over again.

Richard Grady. Sarah. Names that had slipped from Mom’s lips not long before she’d died. I was most confused by Sarah.

“You always were so brave, Sarah. So brave,” she’d said. But she’d been talking to me, looking at me. Why would she mistake me for this unknown Sarah?

Abruptly, I started in the direction of our motel. “Let’s go.”

I could tell Hunter was confused by my sudden urge to leave, but at the moment, I wasn’t up to explaining everything. I needed to get away, to return to the relative safety of the motel room.

As we walked, we passed an amusement park across the street, a motionless Ferris wheel towering in the sky. As if mocking me with all the normalcy I would never have. Hunter had once taken me to a carnival. In those brief moments, I’d caught a glimpse of a real life . What it might feel like to actually be human.

Maybe that was another reason why I’d called him. He always made me feel as though I was more than just some fancy gadget created in a lab.

After one last longing glance, I looked away. I couldn’t live in the past, but I also couldn’t have a future until I learned everything I needed to know about my past.

Richard Grady. This Sarah person. The other Milas.

Maybe once I knew everything, I would finally be free to create a real life. Maybe even one that included Hunter.

We continued down the boardwalk, though I could sense Hunter’s concern in the way he kept sneaking quick glances at my profile. To the east, the waves rumbled toward the sand, mingling with the excited squeals of the few scattered children. From Hunter’s brief conversation with the woman selling ice cream earlier, we knew the crowds had dwindled considerably since summer. But there were still plenty of tourists and locals out sightseeing and soaking up the sun.

My gaze caught on two men up ahead. I quickly dismissed them. Not fit enough. No weapons.

Too many people here for comfort. But at least we didn’t look conspicuous amid a sea of other pedestrians. Plus, Virginia Beach had seemed like the perfect spot—I had such great memories of this place.

Even if those memories were programmed rather than real.

“So, is everything okay? You seem pretty tense.”

“I’m fine. Just a little headache,” I said with a carefree wave of my hand, even though carefree had long ago fled my capabilities. A shriek jerked my head to the right, before I realized it was just a young girl, fleeing an older boy and his two handfuls of wet sand.

My hand closed around my emerald pendant while something flashed in the back of my head. A man, and a woman, dancing along the shoreline. Gulls shrieking overhead, the roar-crash of waves—

Memory banks compromised, defragment.

Image recall.

The flicker of memory, gone. No—more like, stolen.

I shuddered, and Hunter was there in a flash. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Maybe we should go back to the room—it’s going to be dark soon anyway. And we still need to talk.”

Talk. Right. I couldn’t tell you how much I was looking forward to that.

I mean, how did that conversation go, exactly? Thanks so much for coming and oh, by the way—I’m an android.

I must have stiffened, because Hunter sighed. “I’m here for you, okay? You have to know that.”