Heart of Steel (17 page)

Ah, yes—the healing angel was out in full force again. And really, he
was
tired, and there wasn’t anything further they could do until Arthur was fully-

functional again. Taking a nap in the middle of an emergency went against everything he believed in…

… but it was quite difficult to argue against rest while fighting back a yawn.

He consulted his internal map of the floor. “There should be a secure room near here,” he reported. “We’ll be able to hole up there and sleep.”

“Beds?” Julia asked hopefully.

He double-checked. “Yes,” he confirmed.

“Good,” she sighed, and for a moment Mechanus had a light-headed moment of social panic as a long-disused portion of his brain smirked at the possibility that she was suggesting that they
share
a bed—until he realized that she’d said
beds
, plural, and relaxed marginally.

Shut up, you
, he scolded his libido as he led Julia down a short stretch of hallway by the hand. It was very strange, being alone in his own head and subject only to his own thoughts without Arthur. He was discovering elements of himself that he hadn’t been aware of for so long. Would he even be able to sleep without the white noise of network maintenance subroutines in the background?

The room he had located was small and, by his own standards, reasonably cozy, measuring fifteen feet by twenty, with a low ceiling and a metal floor kept clean by diligent maintenance drones. In the center of the room, as promised, were two cots with rumpled bedclothes. He would have to find out who used them last and reprimand them for their untidiness, but that was another matter for another day.

“Here we are,” he said. “We should both be able to get some rest while Arthur is compiling.” He sat on one with a groan of physical and mental exhaustion.

“I can relate,” Julia said with a sympathetic smile. “I’ve had enough days that just kicked my ass

all over the city.” Her smile faded. “Nothing quite like this, though.”

He lay back, settling himself on his back on the cot and preparing to listen, but she said no more. He glanced over at her; she still sat on the edge of her cot, looking pensive.

“How did you come to work in emergency medicine?” he asked, uncomfortable with the silence.

She glanced briefly up at him, then down at her hands. She shrugged. “I’ve always been the nurturing type,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to help people, ever since I was a little girl, and I read everything I could get my hands on about first aid and the like. It just seemed like the natural field to go into, when I went to college.”

“I imagine that was a lot of hard work,” Mechanus said, closing his eye to listen as he tried to settle into sleep.

“It was,” she affirmed. “Long nights of studying, grueling exams, learning to live without things like sleep and a social life.” She paused. “All in all, it prepared me pretty well for emergency medicine.”

He smiled, realizing how little he knew about her. It didn’t seem fair to worship her as a pure archetype of beauty and intelligence rather than as a person, and they hadn’t had much of an opportunity to talk of late. Besides, her voice kept the silence at bay.

“Do you enjoy your work?” he asked.

“It’s hard,” she sighed. “Some nights I would give anything to work normal hours and not be on call at all hours of the night, but… when you get right down to it, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

“You have a passion for healing,” he said. “I could see it after my fight with Jim.”

She was silent for several seconds. “Yeah,” she said finally. “I… I couldn’t let myself be afraid. You needed my help.”

Mechanus was silent for what he deemed to be a diplomatic interval; he wasn’t sure how she would handle his next topic of inquiry, all things considered. There was nothing to be done for it, though—not if he was to keep the silence at bay.

“So how did someone like you come to date someone like Jim?”

She was silent for so long that Mechanus was almost certain she wouldn’t answer.

“He wasn’t always like this, you know,” she finally whispered. “He was charming and fun-loving and helpful. He never wanted…” She hesitated. “I never thought he’d ever want to hurt me. Not like this.”

Mechanus digested this. “How did you meet?”

“In the Emergency Room, oddly enough.” She gave a short, mirthless cough of a laugh. “He’d been skiing at Big Bear Mountain and fallen. He came in strapped to a back board, his neck in a cervical collar, and his leg splinted with a broken ski pole. He’d broken his leg in three places and was just about senseless with the painkillers, but he was awake and talking.” He heard her shift position. “The first thing he said to me was, ‘Are you an angel?’ For the entire rest of his stay in the hospital, he called me ‘Angel’ or ‘Dr. Angel’ or things like that. He was in pretty good spirits, considering how severe his injuries were. He…” She paused. “He flirted with me a lot, and… I guess he started to grow on me. He asked for my phone number after he was discharged. He wouldn’t

take no for an answer. He just… kept asking. He sent me flowers, things like that—little romantic gestures. I thought they were sweet, actually.”

Mechanus said nothing, though his stomach turned over slowly. Had she seen echoes of this in his own attempts to charm her?

“And we’ve been dating ever since, really,” Julia finished.

“How long?” Mechanus asked.

“Five years,” she said. “It’s only been the last year that the sheen’s worn off, though.”

“How so?” The conversation was helping him relax, but he still didn’t want her to stop talking.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard to describe. It’s like… I woke up and realized how much he’d taken control of everything. He was even the one who proposed we take a trip to Hawaii after…” she trailed off.

“After?” Mechanus prompted quietly.

She sighed, and there was a shudder in it. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this.”

Silence loomed large in the small room.

“I need you to keep talking,” he said quietly, and was surprised by the tremor he heard in his own voice. He cleared his throat. “I’m not used to being alone in my own head. It’s…” he shook his head. “It’s too quiet, without Arthur.”

She touched his shoulder, just below the ragged fabric where his sleeve had once been. Her fingers were warm and soothing against his bare skin.

“How’s your arm feeling?” she asked.

“I don’t expect it will fall off,” he said. “It still hurts, but I can manage.”

She was quiet for another interval, though two or three times he heard her inhale as if to speak.

“I… look,” she said, sounding uncertain. “You’ve… done a lot for me. You saved my life… you led me to safety… you even put your life on the line for me—and this is just today. I don’t… I don’t think I really thanked you for all that. I was hung up on the parts you didn’t do, or did wrong, and that isn’t right.”

“You tended to my injuries,” he pointed out. “Was that not gratitude?”

“That was me being a doctor,” she said. “That’s different.”

He wasn’t entirely sure where she was going with this, and had no idea how to request that she get to the point already without sounding peevish. That absolutely wouldn’t do.

However, the silence between them stretched, a yawning void that he could not bear to leave empty. He turned his head to look at her again, and that was when she kissed him on the mouth.

Chapter

THIRTEEN

Holy shit,
said the reasonable voice.

Holy shit,
said the rat voice.

Holy shit,
the rest of her thought.

She’d been aiming for his cheek, in a more platonic sort of reward for all he’d done for her—and he had to go and turn his head at the wrong moment, and their lips sort of… crashed together.

She pulled away an instant later, her heart pounding, as he stared at her in shock, one eye wide and the other dilated until the leaves of the mechanical iris were nearly invisible.

What the hell am I doing?
she thought, and then dove back in, tentatively at first. A few seconds later he relaxed into it, making a low, hungry noise in the back of his throat like a man who has subsisted on bland food his entire life and is now savoring a suc-

culent meal. His metal hand gently cupped the back of her head, while its biological counterpart came to rest on her hip. She cradled his mismatched face between her hands as she savored the taste of his mouth, that unique combination of salt and metal that was so specifically Alistair Mechanus. The way his mouth responded, eagerly reciprocating what she had thought was an accident, lit a fire inside her that she hadn’t felt in years.

Ten years of solitude or not, it appeared that Alistair Mechanus was a
fantastic
kisser. What he lacked in experience it appeared he made up for in raw enthusiasm.

Easy there,
the sensible voice said, once it had caught its breath.
Slow down. Think this through.

She did, and after what felt like a wonderful eternity, she finally tore herself away. Below her, Alistair lay there for a few moments with his eyes closed, breathing hard as though he’d just been chased all over Shark Reef Isle by a failed experiment. Which, honestly, he probably had. Finally he opened his eye, and for a few seconds he just stared at her, looking flushed and a bit poleaxed, before breaking into a broad, unashamed, and slightly dorky grin.

“Wow,” he gasped. “That was. I mean. You. That. Wow. I. That was. I mean. Wow.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, and then cleared his throat before trying again. “I… was not expecting that much gratitude.”

“Neither was I,” Julia said, a bit breathlessly.

“Not that I’m complaining.”

“Neither am I.” She studied him at length. “Where’d you learn to kiss like that?”

“I… I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.” He bit his lip, just looking up at her for several seconds. Finally he spoke again. “Is this… what it feels like to be human?” he asked quietly.

“How do you mean?” Julia asked in return.

“Limited perceptions. Flooded with emotions. Vulnerable. In pain.”

She chewed her lip. “Most of us go through that every day.” She thought about how much pain she saw in the Emergency Room most days, the relief when she was able to fix what was wrong, and the anguish when she lost a patient.

“That’s what I’m hoping to prevent one day,” he said, his expression distant. “Starvation. Sickness. Poverty. War. All of those, a thing of the past once I…” He trailed off, and then winced. “But I have more urgent things to take care of here first.” He closed his eye and shook his head. “Too many things to do.”

“I know exactly how that feels,” Julia said. “But you’re not going to be good for anything until you get some rest.”

He nodded slightly, and then opened his eye. “Stay with me,” he said.

As she studied his face, she thought she caught a glimpse of the man that Alistair might once have been ten years ago—intelligent, level-headed, and utterly in love with a woman who might have been named Lauren. Now, all of that had been torn away, leaving behind someone who feared the silence in his own mind.

She wanted to ask him about Lauren, but now was not the time; he needed to sleep.

She nodded slowly. “I’ll stay. At least until you fall asleep,” she said.

“Until then,” he agreed.

She straightened up from her position at the edge of his cot without encountering any resistance from Alistair, and started to move over to her own cot,

when she noticed that he was holding tightly to her hand. She glanced down at their joined hands, and then at his face; he was watching her quietly.

“Close your eyes,” she said.

He closed his eye; the mechanical lens kept staring.

“
Both
of them,” she admonished.

With a soft whirr, the mechanical lens closed.

After maybe five minutes, his grip loosened, and a few seconds after that he let out a soft snore. Julia relaxed a bit, relieved to see Alistair achieve some state of peace, if only for a couple of hours. She gently worked her hand out of his, moving carefully to ensure that he didn’t wake up. Once she’d released her hand from his, his fingers folded into a loose fist, his arm still dangling off the edge of the cot. She instinctively glanced around for a blanket to cover him, uncertain if he was subject to catching a chill in his sleep, and ultimately settled for grasping a free end of the disheveled blanket he was lying on and wrapping it around him to the best of her ability, focusing on his injured, sleeveless arm in particular.

She sat back, regarding her work—so much like what she often had to do back at the hospital—and as the last of her adrenaline drained away, exhaustion started to curl its aching fingers around her muscles, so she lay down on her own cot next to his and attempted to get some rest as well. While her feet cheered at the prospect of Julia not being on them for a while, her body still ached and her mind spun in circles, eventually leaving her unable to sleep.

Dammit
.

She’d usually been able to catch a bit of sleep during the rare slow times at the hospital, even if it was a ten-minute power nap. Now, though, when all

she had to occupy her time for two hours was waiting for Arthur to finish compiling so that she and Alistair could handle Jim once and for all, sleep eluded her entirely.

The irony was almost painful.

After an hour of trying to find a comfortable position, Julia finally fell asleep, and
—

—she finds herself standing in one of the hallways of the Emergency Wing of St. Luke’s Hospital in Los Angeles, a patient file in her hand. The only thing she can read on the file is the date—everything else is gibberish—and as she looks at the date her blood runs cold.

She has been here before, hundreds of times. She knows that date as surely as if it was burned into her brain, and she knows what’s going to happen.

She tries to run, but her feet only move in that steady pace she had always used for making the patient rounds, making sure that everyone under her care is comfortable and generally okay. She passes by one of the very few nighttime security guards on duty at this hour, and she tries to call a warning to him, but no sound comes out, and he just offers her that same familiar wave that he always does.

Inwardly, she is nearly choking on her own helplessness as she is forced through her role like a video game character, controlled by some unknown outside force.

No. No. No. Not again. No. I can’t. No. Please wake up. Wake up. Wake up wake up
wake up
—

She is grabbed from behind with strong, merciless arms. The smell of body odor and vomit fills her nostrils, and she chokes, even as he presses the blade of a scalpel against her throat.

Listen close,
he snarls into her ear,
Do what I say or I’ll slit your fucking throat.

Even now she can’t scream, and her limbs feel as heavy as lead.

I know you have morphine around here,
he continues,
And you’re going to get me some, understood?

I d… don’t have the key,
she hears herself say. He presses the scalpel harder into her throat and she feels a light tickling sensation run down her neck; she is bleeding. Her throat closes, her heart pounds, and she is certain that she is going to die, her throat slit by some drug-addicted whackjob on the graveyard shift.

That’s what you get for trying to help people,
the addict whispers in her ear, but his voice is the rat voice.
That’s what you get for putting others before your own needs. And this is all the gratitude you’re going to get.

She hears a tremendous impact behind her, and her attacker falls to the floor, releasing her. She staggers away from the fallen man, instinctively putting a hand to her bleeding throat. The cut isn’t too deep, but she puts pressure on it anyway to stop the bleeding.

Thank you,
she says, trying to catch her breath, and then turns around to see who her rescuer is.

It is Jim.

Well, mostly Jim.

It is Cyborg Jim, legs and arm replaced by mechanical limbs, and he has the twitching druggie’s

head clasped in the three-fingered utility claw that now serves as his left hand. The digits flex, and the man’s head explodes like a smashed watermelon with a wet
splut.

She screams—

Julia jolted awake, the tail end of her scream escaping as a shrill yelp as she folded herself into a protective huddle out of sheer reflex, trying to ward off her own subconscious. For a few minutes she stayed like that, her heart hammering, her limbs shaking, and her breath coming in short gasps.

Shit.

Shit shit shit shit
shit
.

The nightmares had been tapering off by the time she and Jim had left for Hawaii. This wasn’t a new one, exactly, but it was only the second one that had not ended with her getting her throat cut. In its own way, this one was even scarier.

She reached up and touched the thin scar on her throat. She didn’t even need to feel the slight raised area to know where the blade had been pressed to her skin—things like that tend to burn themselves into one’s psyche just fine without physical landmarks. She didn’t
want
to remember—but for the longest time her brain had refused to let it go, leaving her jumpy and sleep-deprived. It was the reason she was on leave from the hospital, and subsequently the reason why she and Jim had gone to Hawaii.

A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped, biting back another scream.

It was Alistair, awake and propped up on one elbow, a concerned expression on his face.

“What is it?” he asked.

She shook her head, uncurling herself and sitting up. “It’s… it was nothing, just a… a nightmare, is

all.” She pushed her hair back away from her face, trying to slip into the ‘no really, I’m fine, don’t worry about me’ mode that had become so familiar to her after the attack. After all, he needed the rest more than she did right now.

It’s your own fault for waking him,
said the rat voice.
He’d still be asleep if not for you.

Her stomach twisted, and she tried to screw a reassuring smile on her face.

He tilted his head skeptically. “You woke up screaming, Julia,” he pointed out. “And you look like I feel after one of my flashbacks.”

Her smile cracked a bit. “Look, just go back to sleep,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I’ll be—”

He sat up, pulling free of the blankets and swinging his feet over to rest on the floor between them with a soft
clank
. He reached forward, grasping her hands in between his own, and she found the contact comforting.

“What was your dream about?” he asked.

She bit her lip; how much should she tell him?

What do you have to lose?
asked the sensible voice.
It will help to discuss this with someone.

She’d already discussed the incident with a therapist at the hospital, but she was warned that this wasn’t the sort of thing one just ‘got over’.

And he already knows you’re damaged goods,
the rat voice put in.
Might as well hammer it home.

Her hands started to get that crawly, dirty feeling again. She rubbed them together within his gentle grip, hoping it was just an itch but knowing it wasn’t. It was better than seeing them shaking, in any case.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I can do this.” She took a deep breath, and told him.

***

Mechanus listened. Julia spoke quietly at first, as though what had happened was a deep dark secret that had the potential to ruin her forever, as a doctor, as a woman, as the object of anyone’s affection. Her hands continuously made those compulsive washing motions, slowly at first but getting faster and more vigorous as she reached the climax of her tale.

“It happened about six months ago,” she said. “I was working the graveyard shift, making the rounds and checking on one of the patients. There’d been a bad car accident, and I was seeing if this one little girl who’d been involved was due for her next round of pain medication.” She chewed her lip for a few seconds. “I put her chart back, and I’d only gone maybe five steps when someone grabbed me from behind and put a scalpel against my neck.”