I am Automaton 3: Shadow of the Automaton Read online

  Luka knelt down and felt her forehead. Then he leaned over and kissed it. “Everything is going to be okay,” he whispered to her.

  He stepped out of the bathroom and returned after a couple of minutes with a glass. He ran the cold water at the sink for a moment and then filled the glass with cool water. He turned off the faucet and placed the full glass on the floor next to the bathtub within Marina’s reach.

  “You have to drink, to stay hydrated.”

  She nodded appreciatively. “Thank you.”

  He stood there for a moment, taking in her bruised face from last night. He blew her a kiss and returned to the kitchen.

  He sat down in front of the RGT apparatus and began to put the final touches on the assembly. Kafka told him that it needed to be completed by the afternoon and ready for a field test. It looked like Luka was going to be on time.

  However, there was the menace of expectation in Kafka’s command. There were unspoken consequences implied if the apparatus was finished and it didn’t work. He needed to test it first.

  He finished his work twenty minutes later and powered it up. It worked, but he needed to know that it was functional.

  He got up, grabbing the headset in one hand and the portable tower in the other hand, and brought it all into the bathroom.

  Marina looked up at him. “What are you doing?”

  “Sweetheart, I need your help.”

  “For what?”

  “I need to test this equipment out.”

  She looked at him uncertainly.

  “A quick test. It will only take a minute.” He reached out to take her hand. She gave him her hand and hoisted herself with his help out of the bathtub.

  Luka reached out, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it around her naked body. She was shivering. It was the fever. He put down the toilet lid and guided her to sit on the toilet. He dried her hair tenderly with another towel and then reached down and picked up the headset.

  Marina put her hands up. “What is it?”

  He gently lowered her hands with his, placing them in her lap. “It won’t hurt, I promise.”

  “Luka, I want to know what it is before you place it on my head.”

  “I will, my Dear. After I see if it works.”

  She hesitated but then nodded. He placed the headset on her head and then plugged it into the tower. He switched it on and took out his cell phone. He turned a knob while looking at his cell phone and then stopped.

  Marina, in her half-delirious state, did not understand any of this, but she trusted her husband.

  “Okay, sit still.” He pressed a button on the tower. Images began to flicker on his cell phone screen. Marina putting groceries in the refrigerator, Marina walking home from the supermarket, Marina shopping in the supermarket—it was her memories in reverse transmitted to his cell phone in perfect clarity. The apparatus worked.

  He reached up to remove the headset when images of Marina lying in a bed with a naked man on top of her played on his cell phone screen. He didn’t want to see himself bite her. He was ashamed. But the scene passed.

  Then it showed her waking up in the morning.

  Wait a minute. The sex occurred after she woke up. Luka was out of the house all night. He didn’t return until morning, and Marina was already up.

  He took the headset off her head as his thoughts raced to make sense of what he just saw. Marina smiled up at him, looking for his approval.

  “Good? It worked?” she asked.

  Luka placed the headset down gently on the floor and switched the tower off. He couldn’t look at her. He wasn’t sure what he felt exactly at that moment. Sad, angry, confused.

  “Who is he?” Luka’s voice trembled as he barely contained his rage.

  Marina looked confused. To her the question came out of left field, apropos of nothing. “Who? What do you mean?”

  “The man…you were having sex with,” he practically choked on the words.

  Marina didn’t know what was happening, but when the significance of his question dawned on her, her eyes went wide. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “DON’T LIE TO ME, MARINA.”

  She was startled by his outburst and in her dizziness nearly fell off the toilet. Luka did not reach out to steady her. In fact, the gentle, tender man that was looking after her but a moment ago appeared to have left the apartment.

  “I would never lie to you.” The pitch of her voice was higher.

  “Then tell me who he is.”

  “What was that machine you put on me?”

  “Just tell me who he is.”

  She hesitated, looking down at her feet. “Our neighbor, from downstairs.”

  “Yuri?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, Marina?”

  “Luka, you are always out of the house doing your work. I got lonely.”

  He suddenly seized her by the shoulders, the impact sending the room spinning around her. “Why, Marina? Why?”

  “You are never here!”

  “My work that I do, it is for us! It is for you!”

  She lost her timidity and lashed out at him. “You and your work! You drag me to this evil country and hold me captive in this little apartment while you do your work.”

  “It is for the Cause. We were chosen.”

  “Chosen by who, Luka? This Kafka?”

  “You have desecrated our bed, our marriage!”

  “I bet Kafka knows how to please his woman.” She regretted it the moment she said it, but she didn’t have time to regret it for long.

  Luka lifted her off the toilet seat and threw her into the bathtub, her head hitting the side nearly causing her to black out. Her ears rang as she gripped the side of the tub to hold her aching head out of the water.

  Luka descended upon her, grabbing her throat with both hands, and he shoved her head under the water. She clawed at his wrists and forearms wildly as her legs thrashed about in the water.

  A vein popped out of Luka’s forehead as he held his wife’s head under the water. With his people, there was no question. Adultery committed by a woman under any circumstance was punishable by death. It was law. Their Law.

  After a moment, the thrashing slowed down and Marina’s hands slid off his wrists. Her body shuddered and her eyes went wide one last time as he saw the life slip out of her. When she was still, he let go of her throat and sat back on the floor in the water that splashed out of the tub.

  He sat there with his hands tearing at his hair at the horror of what he was compelled to do, of her betrayal of their marriage. Then he remembered the RGT apparatus and spun around. It was not sitting in water, thank goodness.

  He stood, snatched it up, and stalked into the kitchen, putting it carefully on the table. He paced back and forth, his eyes still seeing red as he remembered Yuri downstairs.

  He ran through the living room, threw open the front door, and spilled out into the hallway, slamming the door behind him. He dashed to the stairwell and descended the stairs, taking two at a time, until he reached the next floor down.

  He shoved past a man that…looked just like him, but he didn’t take the time to stop and look. He was moving too quickly, like a runaway train about to go off the rail.

  He ran to Yuri’s door and was about to pound on it, but then thought better of it. He took a deep breath and then rang the bell. He waited, listening for sounds of life on the other side of the door. To his surprise, he heard Yuri…no, he felt it, his heart beating on the other side.

  He was struggling with his impatience and about to ring again when he heard heavy footsteps approach the door. The digi-lock disengaged and the door cracked open, the chain preventing it from opening any further.

  Luka was thankful that this shitty ghetto building still had chains instead of the door magnets. He could break the chain.

  Yuri’s eyes went wide when he saw Luka, and in a guilty reaction, he attempted to push the door shut. However, Luka’s boot already hit it, sending the edge of th
e door into Yuri’s forehead with a crunch.

  Yuri stumbled backwards clutching his forehead, and Luka gave the door another swift front kick, snapping the chain. He shoved his way into the apartment as Yuri ran for the kitchen, blood running between his fingers from the wound beneath.

  Luka was right on his heels. He felt Yuri’s pulse race, and it excited him. He was the lion, and Yuri was the gazelle. The chase was on.

  Yuri opened a drawer and pulled out a large knife, but Luka was on his back. He reached around and held Yuri’s knife hand, controlling it. It was a part of his training. When in a knife fight, control the knife hand.

  Yuri had no training. He only had an intense instinct for survival. He shoved the counter, pushing himself and Luka backwards, but Luka pushed back while controlling Yuri’s knife hand.

  Yuri kicked hard against the counter, sending the two of them flying backward and onto the shoddy wooden kitchen table. It collapsed under their combined weight, sending both men crashing to the ground.

  Yuri lost his grip on the knife, and it flew from his hand across the kitchen floor. He tried to sit up and make for it, but Luka reached his arm around Yuri’s throat and tightened his grip.

  Yuri clawed at Luka’s already torn arm and tried to pull it away. He lurched his head forward and then slammed it back, catching Luka on the bridge of his nose.

  Luka knew his nose was broken, and in that moment, he loosened his grip on Yuri…and that was all Yuri needed. He flung Luka’s arm off of him and threw himself forward on all fours, his fingers reaching out for the knife.

  He wrapped his fingers around the handle and turned around on his knees, but Luka had a leg of the table in his hands. He swung it like a bat, connecting with Yuri’s temple, and Yuri dropped the knife.

  Luka swung again and missed, his eyes running from the broken nose obstructing his vision. Yuri had enough time to stagger to his feet, but Luka swung and hit him on the side of his neck.

  Yuri collapsed against the refrigerator, pulling down several papers that were held up with little magnets. Luka stood over him with the table leg in his right hand trying to catch his breath.

  He licked the corners of his mouth as he panted, and his tongue found his canine, first the right one, then the left. They were…big. He raised his hand to touch them, but Yuri groaned on the floor. Luka gave him a swift kick in the ribs.

  He wanted to kill the lecherous bastard, but in that brief moment he was struck with an uncanny clarity, as if seeing the plain truth of things for the first time. He had Marina’s body lying in a tub upstairs. If he wasn’t careful he was going to have a body down here as well.

  Too many bodies.

  Luka looked down at Yuri, who was lying on the linoleum moaning. The son-of-a-bitch learned his lesson. No more killing. He dropped the table leg and grabbed a dishtowel off the countertop and pressed it to his nose, which was leaking blood and mucous.

  He left the apartment and began to climb the steps back to his floor. If necessary, he could explain to the police why he had attacked Yuri, but he wouldn’t be able to explain Marina’s body in the bathtub.

  As he climbed the steps, he quickly worked out a plan in his head. First, he would wrap up her body and quickly clean the bathroom up. It wouldn’t be hard. There was no blood. Only water all over the floor. Then he would hide her body at the Order safe house until he would be able to dispose of it. Then he could say she left the country to return to Serbia to be with her mother.

  He opened the door to his apartment and closed it carefully behind him. He looked around the living room and then shoved the coffee table over to the side. He reached down, pulled the rug from underneath, and dragged it behind him through the kitchen.

  He was careful not to bump the kitchen table with the portable RGT apparatus on it. Shit. He forgot all about it. He stopped in the middle of the little kitchen and checked his watch. He had some time, but not much.

  He proceeded into the bedroom and then the bathroom, where he stopped dead in his tracks, perplexed by what he saw. The bathtub was empty.

  For the first time in all of this Luka began to panic. Where was she? He couldn’t believe she wasn’t dead. He saw her die, he felt himself smother the life right out of her.

  He heard a wheezy growl behind him, and he turned around in time to see her rounding the tall dresser in the bedroom. Her eyes were practically white and glazed over, and she snarled as she reached out for him.

  He dropped the rug, and she lunged at him. They both stumbled backwards into the tub, once again splashing water everywhere. As he tried to push her off of him, she snapped her jaws at him like a wild animal.

  He heard screaming and it took him a moment before he realized it was he who was screaming. He pushed her up and managed to pull his knee in and place his foot on her chest.

  She lunged forward again, but he held her at bay as she swiped at him with her hands and growled like a bobcat. He kicked hard, shoving her back into the sink, knocking it off the tile where it was bolted down.

  As she got her bearings and prepared for another lunge, he pulled himself out of the tub. She ran forward but tripped right over his back falling forward into the tub face-first.

  He got to his feet and backed away, staring at Marina in terror. “Marina! What happened to you?”

  She pushed herself up and out of the water. She spun around, her maniacal features dripping with water, her teeth bared. She pushed herself up to a standing position, snarling and snapping.

  Right before she came at him again, he backed into the bedroom and shouted, “STOP!”

  To his surprise, she listened.

  He looked at his wife, taking her in for what she was now. He didn’t understand what had happened to her. He knew she was sick. Was this what he was to become?

  Then he remembered General Ramses. He didn’t turn into…this. Luka hypothesized that when he killed her, the infection in her body had not yet been complete, but it was there.

  So it stood to reason that, given the limited progression of the infection, this was all she could become. No speech, no intelligent thought, just an animalistic killer. She would be one of the drones after all, not a lieutenant.

  He stepped forward, approaching her carefully. “My poor Marina. I am so sorry.”

  She growled at him, a low, guttural sound, but she made no move to attack him. He moved in a bit closer, reaching out a hand to caress her face. She let him do it.

  “My poor, dear Marina. I will take care of you. I am so sorry. I will take care of you. Everything will be all right.”

  As he uttered the words, he knew they were a lie, but he didn’t know what else to tell her. Maybe Kafka would know what to do. He was in touch with all of this Outworlder bullshit. He rigged the portable RGT; Kafka had to do something to help him.

  Maybe there was a way to bring her back, restore her. Or at least to give her the faculties of speech and thought. She snapped at his hand like a puppy playing but didn’t actually bite him.

  Just then, he heard the door to the apartment open. Heavy footsteps stomped through the kitchen. Yuri was coming, but all Luka could think of, was his poor Marina.

  Yuri caught sight of him standing in the bedroom and came at him. He was holding the knife in his right hand. Luka did not care. He didn’t know how to think or feel anymore, so when Yuri rushed into the bedroom, he stood there as Yuri plunged the knife in between his ribs on his left side, burying it to the handle.

  The force of the blow sent Luka falling on his right side. Yuri stood over him, blood dripping down his face, panting and looking vindicated. He heard a growl come from the bathroom.

  When Yuri turned he expected to see some kind of dog, but instead he saw Marina lunge at him with her arms reaching out for him. She grabbed his head with both hands and bit his nose and lips right off his face.

  He pulled free and fell backwards onto the bed, clutching his face and screeching hysterically. Marina stood there for a moment chewing. Yuri rolled off the
bed and onto the cheap carpeting spurting blood from his face.

  He tried to commando crawl out of the bedroom, but he was unable to move. He looked back over his shoulder with a mangled face and saw Luka clutching his ankle and smiling.

  “Please, Luka, let me go,” he tried to say, but without his lips it came out as, “Leez, Luka, let ree go.”

  Luka did not.

  Marina got down on all fours and sunk her teeth into Yuri’s thigh. He yelled out in horror and pain. Blood poured out of the wound and began to spatter the shoddy beige carpeting. Yuri’s pant leg became drenched in a dark liquid.

  Luka laughed wickedly. “She wants your body, Yuri.” He crawled over to Marina. “That’s it, my Dear. Feed. You are a soldier now and you need to keep up your strength.”

  He stroked her hair lovingly as he watched her slowly eat the neighbor from downstairs alive on their bedroom floor.

  Part II

  Something About The Road to Hell and Good Intentions

  Chapter 6

  “Well, I don’t know about you, brother, but I agree with the notion of requiring a license to become a parent,” said Skylar with obvious contempt in his voice. “It would certainly decrease the amount of people dependent on our tax dollars.” There were cheers and boos from the live studio audience.

  Tyler rolled his eyes. “But don’t you think it’s a little too Big Government? Don’t you think it infringes on our civil liberties? 50,112 hits on Tylerblog agree. What say you?”

  “It’s not like the welfare state wants these kids anyway,” replied Skylar. “Most of them are accidents. Besides, it would cut down on the amount of abortions, which you and your Religious Right detest anyway. 59,008 hits on Skylarblog agree. What say you?”

  “Skylar, dear brother, I just don’t think it’s up to the government to decide. I think that the decision to have a child is a deeply personal one, and the decision to abort is forbidden by the Church.”

  “But, Tyler, your camp is always complaining about the amount of lazy people dependent on public assistance. They reproduce like rabbits, their numbers increasing exponentially. Public assistance dollars delivered to each household increases with each child born into it, and the tax code favors them as well. If you want to reverse this welfare/food stamp culture, you have to hit them where it hurts. For every unlicensed child born into a household, that household is hit with a tax. Or decrease the amount of public assistance. Either way, it is a financial penalty for having unlicensed children. 71,231 hits on Skylarblog agree. What say you?”