Page 85 of Even Robots Die
“I want to see him,” I say with steel in my voice.
“Okay,” Cassiopé says before she opens the door and there, right behind it, is Brice.
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say,” I tell him before he can utter a single word. “Bring my sisters here. I don’t know what you need to do or organize to make sure it happens, but I want them here. You made me come back with a shape-shifter in tow. You made me put them in a risky situation. Fix it. Now.”
Cassiopé gasps at the tone I’m using with her dad, but I don’t care. This needs to be addressed. I almost died because Daniel was there. I’m pretty sure things would have been totally different if I had come home on my own.
I won’t forgive myself if anything happens to the girls.
Brice doesn’t say anything though, and he looks at me as if I shouldn’t be moving—because obviously I’ve already discarded the thin bed sheet that was covering me and I’m standing with my butt resting on the side of the bed.
I’d like to stand completely, but my head is spinning slightly and I don’t want to take the risk of falling while I boss Brice around.
Except Brice does something I didn’t expect.
“Warn them that she is awake,” he says through his holo as he looks me in the eye.
A few seconds pass where it’s just me and him and the silence of the room. He looks like he wants to come closer but won’t let himself do so. Or maybe I’m imagining it.
In any case, it only lasts a few seconds before noise reaches me from the corridor.
“Stop being an ass, Elodie.”
I recognize Juliette’s voice as Amélie comes into view through the door opening.
“There was no need for all that yelling,” Brice tells me with a smirk before he sees himself out as my sisters pour inside the room.
It occurs to me that I still don’t know for sure where I am. I have an inkling of an idea, but I should have asked Cassiopé when she was there, just to be sure.
“See, she’s alright. Now can we go?” Elodie says, and if she wasn’t my sister, I probably would strangle her for those words.
“I don’t think it’s safe to go,” Coralie says almost too quietly.
“What happened?" I ask.
“We were chilling at home when those guys broke the door down. They tied us down and gagged us and were waiting for some kind of confirmation for extraction. And then there was another group that broke inside and killed everyone. You should see the living room. It’s ruined! They had no respect for our home whatsoever. There’s blood everywhere and I’m not even sure they took care of the bodies. And then they brought us here,” Elodie says, and I’m pretty sure I look as flabbergasted as I feel.
Elodie seems to think my face is like this because I agree with her but no, what shocks me is the fact that the only thing she seems to care about is going back home and blaming the people who—if I understood correctly—saved them from being taken prisoner by the birds.
Next to her, Amélie and Juliette look a bit pale, as if they haven’t gotten over what has happened already, and Coralie is back to being quiet.
“You do realize that they saved your life?” I ask after a few seconds.
“They wouldn’t have needed to save our lives if you hadn’t come home with a bat-shifter,” Elodie bites back as she crosses her arms under her breast.
I deserved that one.
“If you had come and found Dad when we asked, it never would have happened,” she adds.
That one was unfair, though.
“I couldn’t even move. How would I have been able to find him?” I ask, at a loss for words.
“You’re here now. Do your trick and find him,” Elodie says with a shrug and I still don’t know what to say to that.
I choose to change the subject instead.
“Are you all okay? Did any of you get hurt in the attack?”
