Page 30 of Protector

It’s startling to think of her as a child. An innocent. Startling and unwelcome.

He moves around her room, checking the closet, air vents, light fixtures—any place a foreign object might be hidden. Nothing shows up until a floorboard squeaks under his weight. Frowning, he pushes the rug covering it out of the way with a foot and crouches to investigate.

The edges of the board are ever so slightly worn, suggesting frequent disturbance. When he pries it up, it comes easily.

Years of dust covers the items filling the cavity below.

AX2 brushes his fingers over them, and chuffs through his nose at the uncovered treasure.

Glass marbles; a number of sticks; a rock with a hole through it. A diary decorated with horses and protected by a flimsy lock. A tarnished silver pendant in the shape of a heart; several cut-out pictures of a young man that look like they come from multiple magazines; a folded piece of paper from a “Steve” with terrible penmanship, asking if she wants to be his girlfriend. The checkbox labeled “no” has been ticked, but the note is still safely tucked away among every little trinket the girl who grew up in this room deemed important enough to keep hidden.

AX2 thumbs an old coin that looks like it spent some time buried in soil before it made it to this hidey-hole. How can this be who she was? How can a girl who saw value in a rock with a hole, who kept a diary adorned with horses, have grown up and become someone who implants microchips into men’s brains and tortures them into obedience?

He eyes the diary again, hesitating for a moment before he plucks it from the dust and shoves it into a pocket in his cargo pants.

FOURTEEN

ADDIE

I haven’t slept in my old room in months. Usually when I visit my parents, I make a point to drive home to my own apartment, despite my mom’s frequent pleading with me to stay over.

There is something about this house that makes me feel like a child again—too many memories of my mother’s fussing and my father’s stern expectations of obedience. Yet as I climb the stairs to my old bedroom, the familiar sensation of the wooden rail under my palm and the powdery scent of my mother’s favorite laundry detergent warms my frayed nerves just a little.

In any case, it’s better than returning to my apartment. My safe place will never feel safe again, and I can live with that. But right now, I need just one night to curl up in a cocoon. Tomorrow, I’ll be strong again.

I will.

The stairs creak behind me, groaning under my shadow’s weight.411 pounds.

His stats flash through my brain, followed by the memory of his body on top of mine—the heavy press of it.

A shudder runs up my spine, and I miss my step and stub my toes against the wood. But before I can fall, a large hand flattens against the small of my back, steadying me. It’s only for a second—the moment I’ve regained my balance, he pulls back.

I have never cared what thoughts or feelings my AX class may or may not have had about their new existence. They are barely more than machines, after all, and my intervention is the only reason they are even alive.

The physical sensation of AX2’s seething resentment, however, is harder to ignore.

I flex my hand not gripping the wooden banister, forcing myself not to rub at my chest where I feel his smoldering anger. He hates that urge to reach for me, to ensure I’m safe at all times. Unharmed. The intensity of the burn behind my ribs suggests he would have gladly stood aside and watched me break my neck on these stairs, if he’d had a choice.

Hopefully he feels my bitterness as keenly as I do his.

I’m alive. That’s all that matters.

I grit my teeth against the roil in my gut when my thoughts threaten to delve farther down that path—to the dark memories of what happened in that bunker before he came for me. They don’t matter.

I survived.

I continue up the stairs, heading left at the top.

411 pounds.

That number keeps poking at my brain as I open the door to my old room, cross the floor to grab a too-frilly nightgown from the closet, and head to the ensuite.

He was always a big man, even when he first came to my lab, but my enhancements and the rigorous exercise regime the AX class undertake has packed his frame with heavy muscle beyond his natural physique. I had to readjust his macronutrient requirements several times before I found the perfect balance. His daily caloric intake is ludicrous.

I frown at myself in the mirror, toothbrush pausing halfway to my mouth. I don’t remember seeing him eat at the hospital. Probably because I did my best to ignore his presence.

But the thought won’t leave me alone. He needs sustenance—and a lot of it. Did they feed him? Sufficiently? I’m not prepared for the bolt of anxiety at the thought that he might not have eaten for days.

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