Liberation's Desire Read online

  She ran for the staff room and slammed the door lock behind her. The door shut and sealed. She dropped to the carpeted floor and unwrapped the pouch with shaking hands. One thing at a time. She had to focus on one thing at a time.

  “Mercury? Hey, Mercury!” Haskins pounded on the door. “Get out here.”

  “Sorry, Haskins!” She uncapped the bottle of pigment-darkening melanin pills. “I have to think about my future too.”

  “Don’t make me get the office key.”

  “That’s a violation of something.”

  He dropped silent.

  Mercury activated an ancient faucet. The plumbing coughed mist over her chilled face. Useless. She gagged the pills down dry and checked her wrist chronometer. In less than five minutes, she should develop the most amazing tan.

  “It’s also a violation for a criminal to be unescorted in a Transit Office,” Haskins finally said.

  “You’re escorting me through the door.” She tore open a canary-yellow flight suit.

  “Dammit, Mercury. The enforcement team will be here any minute. I have to prepare!”

  “Go right ahead.” She grunted as she forced the squeaking suit over her hips. Sized for a sixteen-year-old? No wonder it burst open on her generous bust. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “This isn’t a game! Do you want to get me fired?”

  “For goodness sake, Haskins.” The head transit officer tsked. “You have more important things to do than yell at a door.”

  “But I can’t let her actually escape.”

  “Even if she sneaks out the hub office, where’s she going to go? There’s one shuttle off planet today and you check all the elevator passengers. Go fire up the cleaning droids like I asked.”

  He grumbled and footsteps creaked away.

  She dumped teal dye on her hair and hung her head in the mist. Blue tears tracked sideways from her ears to her nose.

  Her uncle, unable to face a girl’s crocodile tears, had allowed her to put this stupid disguise into her escape kit. Just like he had allowed her to select a backwater asteroid with only one daily Upstairs shuttle to hide away.

  Cressida would never have chosen a disguise based solely on her favorite book. She never would have selected a hideaway because its name was the same as hers.

  Why hadn’t she listened to her uncle?

  What had she been thinking?

  Mercury righted herself and put her head under the fan. Teal powder puffed down her front, frosting the exposure suit to a speckled green.

  This wasn’t going to work.

  Haskins banged on the door. “This is longer than five seconds.”

  Her right contact slipped off her fingers and adhered to the wall.

  “J-just a little longer,” she called.

  No answer.

  She tried to pinch or scrape it with her fingernail, but it was stuck fast.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  No. Yelling at herself wasted valuable time. Fine. She would be a one-eyed Oliva Grait, famous teen chef-adventurer, and so would this chunk of tile.

  She packed everything back into the bag, rose, and stared at herself in the mirror. A fat woman with one blue eye and one brown eye and a bad dye job stared back.

  Wow. She looked like a failed holo star returning from a really bad trip.

  This was not going to work.

  “Mercury. The enforcers docked Upstairs. You’ve got minutes.”

  Oh, no.

  She fastened on the final piece of her disguise: Two vintage MAC medallions, one in pristine blue and one iridescent red. They hung around her neck, thick and heavy. The brand advertised a famous, now closed, intergalactic modeling studio. But the three letters on each medallion held a secret meaning for her.

  M for Mercury—hers was red, and flecked with tiny scratches from the years she had kept it secret under her pillow, rubbing it every night to keep from crying herself to sleep.

  C for Cressida—the blue perfect as their future meeting, when her older sister received the beautiful necklace she deserved.

  And A for the person who had entrusted her with these two necklaces. Entrusted her with the promise they would all be reunited.

  A was for their half-brother, Aris.

  “I promise we’ll see each other again,” she whispered, gripping her red medallion and repeating the words he had told her in the hospital, when he had draped it around her neck.

  She could do this.

  She could do this.

  She. Could. Do. This.

  Mercury strained to hear anything in the silence. Nothing. She eased the door open a crack. Haskins had to be right outside the door.

  No one in sight.

  She crept across the dim corridor between cubicles. There, at the end of the hall. The door to the terminal beckoned.

  Just a few more yards…

  Lights stabbed the darkness, illuminating the entire office. The whir of cleaning droids activated.

  Haskins backed out of the aisle in front of her.

  She froze.

  He shouted without looking. “Mercury! This is your final warning!”

  She held her breath.

  He paused in the middle of the aisle. So close she could have reached out and tapped his shoulder.

  “Carpet checked,” he muttered, blocking her path to the terminal door. “Lights on. Need to power up the reader board.”

  She lifted her foot to ease backward.

  His boss spoke from the office behind Mercury. “They’re on their way down.”

  She froze again.

  Trapped.

  “Armed?” he asked.

  “To the teeth. I really hope your classmate is innocent.”

  “She has to be.”

  He stepped toward the terminal, eyes on the tile.

  Mercury stepped silently behind him.

  “The date on those crimes is so old.”

  He took another step.

  She did too.

  “I don’t think it’s even legal to accuse kids of phrenology.”

  Her too-small shoes squeaked.

  Haskins lifted his head sharply and glanced to his right.

  No.

  Her heartbeat roared in her ears. All of her weight floated at her neck. She could see his brown iris. She could see the edge of his pupil.

  He was looking right past her.

  “Head Officer? I’m going to power up the big reader board.”

  “You do that.”

  “Watch Mercury.”

  “Sure.”

  Haskins strode out into the terminal.

  Mercury caught the closing door.

  He strode across the open tile to the power control booth, leaving the path to the Departures lounge unguarded.

  She entered the Departures lounge and raced around the needless line extenders, lapping back and forth in front of the mass scale. Her undersized suit made a frantic whisk-whisk noise where it rubbed.

  Don’t run. Don’t run .

  There, finally, the Departures mass scale door.

  Don’t run .

  Sweat dripped coldly down her back. She was so close. So desperately close. She reached out for the door handle.

  “Hey!” Haskins’ voice launched across the terminal. “You. Stop right there!”

  She jerked like he had shot her.

  “I said stop!”

  She forced her steps to a trembling halt.

  The door handle rested beneath her fingers.

  “Yes, you. Look at me. Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  She turned.

  Haskins’ furious red face directed over her shoulder.

  She kept turning.

  The silver enforcer stalked her, creaking and groaning in its rusty gears. It raised its neural disruptor and fired.

  Mercury dove for the ground.

  One, two, three smoking marks followed her head as she dove and dodged, blackening the walls, the booth, and the floor.

  Haskins grappled
the enforcer and shoved a deactivation key into its mouth, jamming it all the way to the back of its throat. The enforcer powered down. Its deadly barrel descended to the ground. It hissed to a stop.

  An alarm wailed through the building. She and Haskins both jumped. He rubbed the sweat off his forehead. The alarm blared warning of an imminent arrival.

  The other unit of robots had landed.

  They would not creak, rusty and slow. They would run fast, slick and deadly.

  Shudders trembled through her.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” Haskins unlocked the scale booth and held it for her to walk in. He spoke over her head, focused on the Arrivals corridor. “Sorry for the scare. We have the situation under control.”

  He closed the door, walked around to the employee area, and began taking her measurements.

  She tried to think as the scale failed to identify her chip and moved to alternate verifications. Begging Haskins to allow her onto the Upstairs shuttle could cost him more than his job. It could cost his life.

  “Oliva Grait?”

  Mercury accidentally looked directly into the face of the man who had grown up with her, attended every social hour together, threatened to kiss her when she thought boys were gross, and refused to kiss her when she would have given anything to taste his handsome lips. She looked at the man who had recently issued her a parking ticket and then patted her shoulder when she’d cried.

  He stared blankly back. “Touch if you accept the details, ma’am. I mean, miss.”

  She looked down at her screen. The scale registered her as a slender, sixteen-year-old girl with chalky lilac hair. Accept? She tugged on her teal locks, bursting out like everything else, and selected Yes.

  He tapped his screen. “Hmm. Can I get you to look over here?”

  Eye scan.

  She held her breath and leaned forward, favoring the eye that mattered.

  It scanned her retina and her contact.

  The transit lounge remained deathly silent while he punched buttons.

  The door of the Transit Office slammed. He looked over. The boss stepped out and looked around, one hand on her gray head.

  Oh, no.

  Mercury swallowed and opened her mouth to beg.

  “Sorry again.” He opened the door to the Upstairs elevator. “I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come back again soon.”

  Haskins, rules lawyer, broke the law to let her go?

  No, he was still looking past her. He had never really looked at her, not right now and not all these years the two of them had been locked together on this abandoned asteroid.

  Thank goodness she was so easy for attractive men to overlook.

  Mercury almost ran into the elevator. The heavy doors closed and pressurized. A few moments later, she shot upward to the shuttle landing disc outside the atmospheric pressure bubble. Technically, it was no longer part of the asteroid.

  She had escaped.

  Now she had to race to the emergency rendezvous on Luck Station in the Cloverleaf System and meet her uncle’s military friend, who would hide her away from the Faction again.

  This part of the drill, she and her uncle had never practiced. Her split personalities made it too dangerous. If her real identity appeared on the Faction’s radars, they would come after her immediately.

  Now, she had no choice.

  She was so busy thinking of how to survive that Mercury never noticed the man watching her in the shuttle landing. He noted her exit and called in her destination to his employers: The Robotics Faction.

  ~*~*~*~

  Three weeks later…

  Android Yves|Santiago watched his target, Mercury Sarit Antiata, stroll across the Luck Station departure lounge.

  She had no idea her “escape” from Mares Mercury had been manufactured. The old enforcer had been programmed to miss, and the new team had been instructed to delay their arrival until she had entered the elevator.

  She had no idea she’d been tracked across the galaxy and allowed entrance or passage when identity errors should have forced her into containment.

  She had no idea her “luck” was about to end. Six hundred enforcers surrounded this lounge. Every one held the program to kill her.

  The curvy target checked the wall chronometers, the incoming flights, and the wall chronometers again. She obviously waited to meet someone. Yves believed she was waiting to meet a rogue agent working against the Faction.

  When that rogue agent arrived, Yves would order the execution. Enforcers would flood the transit lounge and destroy both Mercury and the rogue.

  Through his green-tinted oculars, Mercury looked clumsy and sweet. Her death was a pity. But it was the assignment.

  The rogue agent had hunted and destroyed hundreds of robots already. Most recently, she had discovered how to disconnect an x-class soldier android from the Faction Central Mainframe, an impossible accomplishment, and driven him insane.

  As a y-class analyst, Yves was at risk of suffering the same fate. But the rogue had to be stopped. No matter the cost.

  A lock of hair found its way into Mercury’s mouth. She tugged it free impatiently and licked her full lips.

  He wondered what she tasted like.

  As a data point only, of course.

  Her hair, soft and seductive, brushed her shoulder blades. During the two weeks he had been watching her in this station, bright teal had faded to purplish-black. The same color as the bruises under her sleep-deprived blue eyes.

  Her false identities printed on the inside of his oculars. She stuck to heavily occupied areas. Smart, given her condition, but she would never have made it off Mares Mercury if not for him green-lighting her every move.

  She finished checking the incoming flights and took a seat in the waiting area directly opposite him. Her favorite seat, second row in, center, had the best view of the hub’s tangerine dwarf star projected on the screens behind him.

  And the best view of him.

  Without having ever felt any emotions himself, Yves was programmed to read them and predict behavior. His analyses always produced flawless conclusions. Therefore, he concluded Mercury was in love with him.

  Or she was in love with the all-too-human skin covering his unbreakable titanium alloy bones, human irises masking robotic pupils, and natural brown hair blending him perfectly in to the crowds. He was just one more traveler stuck at a hub. In the center of a row, perfectly triangulated to see every entrance and exit.

  Like her.

  A lanky woman interrupted his analysis. She took the seat in front of him and unfolded a large woven sun hat.

  Popular brand , his oculars printed. Purchased two hours ago from the tourist booth eighteen floors down.

  She rested her elbows on the seat backs and sighed. Her new hat completely blocked the target.

  Fucking hell.

  Moving to another seat would block his view of at least one exit.

  He leaned forward. “Excuse me.”

  She tilted her head. “Hm?”

  “Could you shift a seat over?”

  “No.” She opened her screen reader and flipped to a gossip mag.

  He weighed the utility of calling station security to remove her. Attention was the last thing he wanted.

  Time to use expression 27a—genuine entreaty. He retracted his oculars.

  The two halves unhooked over the bridge of his nose, pointed out, and slid seamlessly into the slits carved into the sides of his face.

  He fixed his expression and leaned forward farther. “I’m waiting for someone. I’m afraid they could miss me because of your hat.”

  She tilted her head again without looking. “My hat?”

  “Yes. It’s blocking the view.”

  “Oh.” She returned to ignoring him.

  Fuck.

  One rudely entitled traveler would not ruin his meticulously planned operation.

  He shifted onto the balls of his feet and rested his elbows on his knees. “Is there anything I can do to convince you to
move?”

  “Actually, yes.” She put away her screen reader and turned to face him. “Tell me. Have you ever been kissed?”

  An odd question for a stranger.

  Her hat blocked out the whole rest of the station, enclosing them in a personal bubble. Her elbow hung over the seat back between them, and her watery human eyes gleamed with gossipy interest. Their faces drew inches apart.

  Intimate. As though they already knew each other.

  But that was impossible. She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her.

  Did he?

  Error-conflict.

  “Why?” he stalled.

  “Because I’m interested.”

  He reevaluated the wide set of her shoulders and the angularity of her cheekbones. Was she, in fact, a woman?

  He’d never doubted his first impressions before.

  Error-conflict.

  He flexed his fingers to change the visual density of the skin on his left palm, revealing the reflective titanium alloy of his bones. He moved his palm beneath her chin, where her neck hid.

  No Adam’s apple reflected back at him. So she was female.

  “Come on,” the strange woman urged. “Have you? Ever been kissed?”

  This was taking precious time. She had promised to move along if he answered her question.

  “No,” he said.

  “I thought so.” She reached out and stroked his cheek with one finger. “You’ll regret it later.”

  “Regret what?”

  “That I was your first.”

  He was about to ask First what? when her mouth fell on his.

  He accepted the new experience. Warmth, tender entreaty, and then boldness marked her nibbling mouth as her hand went around the back of his neck. He cataloged the sensations. There, her tongue, stroking his lips and nudging them apart. Tasting her, feminine and wet. She murmured and pushed deeper.

  Her tongue hit the back of his mouth. He braced for her reaction. Where a human would have a uvula, all androids had an interface jack directly into the brain.

  Impossibly, she connected to the data jack.

  Electricity paralyzed him. His arms and legs stiffened. Foreign files shot into his brain, worming around his neurons and burrowing new routines. Rogue programs burned his visual cortex to black.

  In the darkness, the woman pulled back and her voice sounded mildly disappointed. “Yves, I expected so much more from a y-class. If you want to live to see tomorrow, you better hone those observational skills.”