‘What’s going on down here? Are they like prepping the ship or something?’ Kira mused to the unresponsive Azrael. ‘Like, maybe the aliens are leaving ’cause you’re all done. Is that it? Mission accomplished?’
She blinked away the vision of Eron that flickered in her head.
‘Fuck him.’ Kira glanced at her watch. She hadn’t been awake and sober at six thirty in the morning since they’d checked her out of intensive care three years ago. Her gaze wandered over Azrael’s bare torso. The boy had some impressive dips and rises. ‘What’s with that? I mean, seriously, no complaints, but I’m pretty sure the budget can cover a T-shirt.’
Being forced to look at a chest that had curves like the fucking Sahara shouldn’t bug her this much. She liked half-naked men almost as much as fully naked men, but something about it – how exposed it seemed to make him, like a giant featherless baby bird – pissed her off. In fact, a lot about him pissed her off, and she had no clue why. Hadn’t gotten the bastard out of her head since the morning he’d cracked one of her ribs. The fear had something to do with it, the all-too-clear shadow of horror in his eyes when Blake had brought him to life. Programming, Blake said. Cruelty to fucking androids, Kira said. What asshole would purposely enable something to be that scared?
She knew that fear.
Kira ran the tip of her flesh fingers over the glass, tracing the outline of Azrael’s body. ‘I hope you appreciate this, mate. I could be at my pub, watching Perry clean up vomit and spilled beer. Instead I’m sitting here babysitting your sorry ass ’cause you remind me of some sad bitch I know.’
She pointed a metal digit to the centre of her chest, right at the tip of the scar that ran most of the length of her sternum. The assumption might be that when aliens from an advanced world were involved in your surgery you might not end up stuck with a scar the size of Texas. Wrong. No memory wipes either, which would have been nice.
She couldn’t hide from the memories of waking up in the medical ward, half her bloody parts missing, and a giant hole, the size of her dad, wrenched open in her life. Panic attacks were par for the course in the beginning. Fuck, those were the days. The sweet, sweet memories of sweating buckets in freak-outs so violent she sometimes thought she might burst an eyeball. And more than once, after dousing her face with cold water, she’d stared into the bathroom mirror and seen the fear shadows. Her eyes just like Az’s, vacant and intent all at once, wide as hell, as if there wasn’t enough light in the world to chase back the darkness that wanted to swallow her up and eat her whole.
It was a blast.
‘What’s in your shadows, robo-boy?’ Kira’s breath whitened the glass. ‘What tree did you drive into?’
She leaned her forehead against the glass, shooting out quick little breaths. It had been a long while since she’d had a full-on panic attack, and she didn’t intend to start again now. Time to go back to the surface where the Earth didn’t feel as though it were preparing to pummel her. A mimosa perhaps, to put a little brightness in her day. Kira uncrossed her legs, jigging them against the concrete, trying to work back some life into the limbs. Her butt ached.
‘Blakey Blake, what are you up to down here?’ Kira rocked onto her knees, and Azrael made a tiny movement. His first in about an hour. Hugged his hands in against his chest. ‘Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to touch you. Not going to hurt you.’
There was that, too. If she moved a bit too quick, he acted as if she were about to beat his head in. She pushed to her feet, slow enough that her knees sent out ‘cease and desist’ jabs of pain. Az’s gaze didn’t leave her, and his hands slipped back onto the concrete, unclenched. Fuck she was tired. Time to sleep most of the day away. Probably should eat at some point too. Then maybe in the afternoon consider if this was the day she’d leave the Facility and go back out into the real world. Where there were no shirtless robots with haunted faces, and abs to go to war over.
***
True to form, sleep took up a good chunk of the day. No thanks to the little pink pills she downed when she got back to her townhouse just after seven. By the time she resurfaced late in the afternoon, the niggling hunger pains had become a raging fire-storm of starvation.
Kira’s stomach made a sound like a wookie giving birth. Pizza. Extra jalapeños. Kira could feel them now, jumping around in her stomach acid as if they were having a pool party. The chef had gone fucking nuts with this one, apparently so excited someone had ordered food that he’d thrown every damn ingredient at the base. Poor bloke must have been bored to tears cooking for Blake and Tamas mostly with Kira so rarely in her Facility townhouse. Those two sparrows seemed to live on air alone. Blake sure as hell looked like she did. How that half-mute asshat Tamas ran this place, Kira had no idea. The guy always looked as if he were going to puke a lung when she spoke to him, which was so rarely she couldn’t remember when they’d last come face-to-face. She took a sip of freshly opened champagne.
A message blinked at her from her cell phone. Perry called hours ago, wanting to know if she was going to drag her ass into work and help
