LustAfterDeath (4 page)

Josie pivoted her neck and gave him a huge smile, then
reached to her right and drew back on the gas. They slowed and Bane came up
behind her, but Josie placed her small, white hand at the center of his chest.
Her fingers dug in, but then she smiled and gave him a little push. “I can do
it.”

Not entirely trusting her, Bane stalked out of the cabin and
grabbed the ropes. Josie approached the dock a hair too fast and he thought
about shouting to her to slow down. But then again, maybe a good, hard shock
would teach her to wait for his help. He braced for impact on the rubber-lined
wood, but Josie threw the engine in reverse, almost tossing his body onto the
dock as the Sea Sport tore to a stop.

“Are you going to jump off?” she called to him out the
window.

With a shake of his head, Bane hopped onto the planks.

The man named Bane landed like a cat. The sinuous movement
held Josie captive as he wrapped one rope, then another around jutting bits of
metal. He landed on the back, tilting the boat to the side, and then opened the
glass door to the cabin. Bane fastened the knob with a hook on the outside
wall.

The chill breeze wrapped around Josie’s bare legs, caused
the tiny hairs to stand on end. She tugged at the shirt’s hem and resisted
passing her hands lower to rub her thighs.

“Hey! Don’t tear my shirt, babe.” Bane sauntered into the
cabin, his body filling the tight space. He crouched down to pull something out
of the cabinet under the sink and Josie crossed one leg in front of the other
to block his view.

“You need to eat, right?”

A wave of dizziness overcame her. Josie realized it wasn’t
just from the boat. “Yes.”

“Cool, ’cuz I'm fucking starving.” He tossed a plastic
container on the tiny countertop and opened the lid. The scent of meat and
blood filled the air.

Josie moaned aloud. She’d crossed to Bane and pressed into
his side before she realized she’d moved.

“Easy there, babe.” His large hands fell to her shoulders
and set her back a half-step. “I’ve gotta cook it. I don’t know what kind of
stomach acid you’re packing, but best to assume you don’t have any fancy
upgrades in that department.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a
square of shiny metal. Josie watched as Bane slipped his thumb over the top and
produced a flame, and then used it to light the stove. He dumped the
container’s contents into a pan. A sizzling sound filled her ears and the scent
grew stronger and more enticing. Josie clamped tight on her muscles, trying not
to kick and hit him to get at the food.

“I can hear you breathing,” Bane spoke with his back to her.
“You sure I don’t need to shut you down?”

With shaking movements, Josie angled her hips between the
Formica table and a faded checkered cushion of the dinette. “Don’t do that
again.”

“Don’t give me reason to.” Bane handed her a plate and a
fork. His lips curled at one side again, and she wondered what he kept finding
so funny.

She stabbed a piece of meat and demurely placed it in her
mouth, closing her eyes so he wouldn’t see them roll back. When she opened them
again, Bane’s gaze burned into hers. She found his expression disconcerting.
Adam had observed her the same way. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“I'm not looking at you like anything, babe.” He rolled his
shoulders and shoved in another mouthful, chewing loudly.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not telling me the truth.”

Bane leaned back in the chair. His body unfurled as he
stretched his long torso and wrapped his tanned arms around the back of the
bench. An odd thought struck her that she wanted to crawl into the crook of his
arm.

“No, babe, I’m not. The truth is you’re hot as shit and I
want to fuck your brains out. Is that better?” His smug expression and swaggery
grin told her he’d spoken exactly what was on his mind.

Josie cocked her head to the side and her brows drew
together. His words jiggled something in her memories, but only those hidden
behind the clouds. None of the images she’d learned to associate with Adam shed
any insight. She stared at his sky-blue eyes crouched deep in their sockets,
and his short blond hair and chiseled face, searching for meaning. She flicked
through all her interactions with him, looking for patterns, and found one.
“You say that word a lot. What does it mean?”

Bane shifted a fraction. His shoulders rolled forward. “I
say what a lot?”

For some reason, Josie felt a blush creep up on her cheeks.
“Fuck,” she whispered. The word felt too aggressive and masculine to say aloud.

Bane raked a hand through his hair, causing the muscles in
his shoulder and arm to ripple. He scowled. “Motherfucker!”

Confusion overtook embarrassment, and Josie pounced. “See.
There it is again! You use it in so many ways I can’t tell what you mean.” She
paused. When he didn’t answer, instead eyed her like a being he couldn’t
understand, she added, “And what’s a mother?”

Bane’s laugh started as a deep rumble. Then his guffaws grew
loud enough to scare her. He swiped the back of his hand at one weeping eye,
then the other. A slow burn of embarrassment crept up her spine. “I don’t see
what’s so funny.”

Bane dabbed at his face with a napkin. “Oh babe. That dick
who built you really did a half-assed job. And he didn’t try to…?”

She didn’t understand all the words, but could tell his
meaning—all except the last part. Tears stung her eyes. Josie stood from the
table. “Thank you for the food. I need to use the restroom now.” It was true,
but not entirely the reason she wanted to get away.

Bane sobered. “Um, yeah. It’s up the hill.” He pointed out
the window to a trail leading up from the dock. At the top of the hill, a brown
shack peeked out between the trees. “Do you need help?”

She could tell it humiliated him to ask, and was glad.

“No. My maker made sure I knew that much.” Josie snatched up
the blanket she'd used to sleep and wrapped it around herself. She marched out
into the cool fall air and positioned her leg to climb onto the dock.

In the still morning, she heard Bane mutter to himself. “
Fuck
,
I’m an idiot.”

Josie knew enough to know she agreed.

* * * * *

Bane threw the dishes in the sink and scrubbed them hard
enough to scrape off the outer layer of plastic. He wrung out the sponge like a
scientist’s neck and reached for his phone. To his surprise, Frank picked up instead
of Q.

“Where’ve you been, kid? I’ve been worried sick!”

Bane ran his hand over his stubbly face, feeling his
exhaustion catching up with him. “Synaviv took out our main engine. I drove all
night and only made it as far as Sucia.” He looked out the window at the
graying skies and the choppy water beyond the bay. “I must have iced them all,
otherwise they would have followed, but I need to wait out some weather before
going any farther.”

On the other end of the line, Frank cussed and growled.
“We’ll see about getting another boat out there to pick you up.”

Bane shrugged. “It’s not much farther to Orcas. I just need
calmer water.” He craned his head out the window to see whether Josie was done
in the can. “I need you to send me everything you’ve learned about the girl so
far. I don’t normally deal with the new recruits this long.”

“You didn’t just put her on voice command?”

Bane was getting sick of Frank and Q-ter acting so
surprised. “Well, yeah, for a minute. But she fought it.” He rifled through the
cabinets for spare clothes, but found only an ancient pair of boots.

“Good! That means she’ll do okay after we reprogram her.”

Bane nodded to himself. She could be a whole new person once
Frank was done. “Sure, but I need to know how she’s programmed now. Words she
does and doesn’t know…and, um…other stuff. I may be stuck with her a few days.”

“All right, all right. Lemme put Q on the line.” Bane
listened as Frank cussed about the Underground’s phone system. He still hadn’t
figured out how to transfer a call. Bane rubbed his temple when he heard the
old stein give up and walk across the office to hand the phone to Q-ter.

At the top of the hill, the shack’s door opened. Josie stood
in front of it, looking back and forth between the dock and the trail leading the
other direction. She rubbed her arms, looking for a moment like she was in
pain. Bane wondered what was wrong before she turned and walked away. “Give me
the rundown, Q.” Josie disappeared behind the tree line. “Fast.”

“I'll send you attachments about her vocab, but it seems
pretty straightforward. She’s got a basic ESL-type dictionary, but he only
attached pictures to the stuff she’d see in his house. No slang or curse words.
No current events or history.”

Josie’s dark mane disappeared behind a tree.

“So most words will sound familiar, but she won’t know what
they mean? Fantastic.” He couldn’t chalk up the scientist’s lousy program to an
oversight. Complete visual dictionaries were available all over the internet.
Heck, the guy could have uplinked her to a fucking search engine.

“Hey, just be happy he didn’t block much. She can learn just
about anything.”

Bane walked out the door and up to the dock, testing the
limits of his phone’s range from the mobile receiver on the boat. Static filled
the line and he took one step back. “I gotta run. Normal food, water
requirement and the rest?”

“Yeah.” Heavy clicking carried over the line.

His muscles tensed. He needed to catch up to her. On the one
hand, Josie couldn’t escape the little island by water. On the other, she might
not realize it.

“Fine, I gotta go. Text me if you find some other anomaly.”
Bane pulled the phone away from his ear, but heard Q-ter shout and laugh.

“Hey, Bane. Hold up!”

“What!” His teeth ground together and he gripped the phone
hard, fighting the urge to tear off after her.

“You’re not going to believe this!” Q-ter’s laughter
exploded over the line. Bane heard his fingers clicking even as the kid called
out, “Frank, you gotta hear this!”

“Just spit it out!”

Another peal of laughter sounded over the phone. ”The sicko
programmed her to need feedback of the naughty-naughty kind. Man, the guy was a
perv!”

Bane’s body went taut. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean if she doesn’t get touched, her programming will
degrade. Like, the way infants need sensory feedback to develop the right
neural connections. Well, he ratcheted up her need for it, and specifically
skin-on-skin.” More clicking sounded and Bane held his breath for Q-ter to
learn more. “And proprioceptive input too…”

“What?” Bane snapped. He knew he should understand what
Q-ter was talking about, but was too distracted to properly listen.

“Proprioception? Like how the body moves in space. Have you
noticed her fidgeting a lot, hopping up and down or anything?” Q-ter giggled as
he spoke, clearly unable to maintain professionalism in the face of the
innuendo.

Bane thought about Josie’s squealing excitement when the
boat sped up, the way she seemed to run her fingers along anything and
everything she could find. “Yeah.” He scrubbed his jaw. “I may have noticed
something along those lines.”

“I’m going to need to look into this more. I can’t tell if
all she needs is some arm stroking and running around, or if she’s going to
eventually require full-body contact.”

Bane chewed at the side of his lip. He took a deep breath
and thrust his jaw out in determination.
Neither of us will remember any of
this in a few days
, he chanted. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t work too hard, buddy.” Bane could almost hear Q-ter’s
smarty-pants grin over the line.

“Just text me when you know the whole story.” He clicked the
phone off and shoved it in his back pocket. Sure it wouldn’t work off the boat,
he’d gotten lucky with the 24G on Patos, but Bane felt naked without it.

Naked. Man, Bane hadn’t touched a female intimately in a
long time. If he was honest, he’d never touched a female
intimately
. His
handful of sexual experiences in his undead life consisted of drunken screws in
back alleys. The thought of doing something like that with a wide-eyed virtual
child who didn’t even know the meaning of the word forced self-loathing like
tar through his circuitry.

He put the thought out of his mind and jogged along the path
in the direction he’d seen her explore.

* * * * *

The tiny animal didn’t want to come to her. Its rounded head
was different than Cat’s, and it had a bushy tail. It held its clawed hands in
front of itself, studying her with onyx eyes. “Come, animal!” Josie spoke in
the authoritative way Adam had, but the animal failed to obey.

“Would you come here please?” The animal neither responded
nor spoke, which she took as a
no
. Tomorrow she would bring it food.

She rose from her crouching position and folded the blanket
over her arm. The air warmed and the walk had heated her muscles. Josie liked
the looks of this island quite as well as Adam’s, though she missed her friend,
Cat. A bird cawed from a tree above, a crow stared down, its head tilted in
question.

“I don’t have any food for you today. I’ll bring some
tomorrow.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Perhaps then you’ll let me touch
you.” Her fingers twitched and Josie rubbed her palms together, then stroked
her fingers up her forearms. Her skin felt tight and hot. She remembered Bane’s
hands on top of hers as she steered the boat. Sensation had zinged up her arm
like electricity.

She trudged farther down the path, looking for more animals.
Josie wouldn’t touch him again if she could avoid it. He’d laughed at her,
ordered her around, put her under voice command and threatened to do it again.
She thought of the mindless creature she became under Adam’s control. Her chest
hurt that the man she’d thought so beautiful would want to do that to her.