16. Tisha

It took an hour for them to cut everything Ansel had gathered into one cohesive video message and compile the rest into a payload that was over fifty gigs in size even when compressed.

They sat across from each other in the bed, both peering up at the roof when they heard the rotors of choppers overhead.

“They are close,” Ansel said. “But the car is beneath the tree canopy and I am blocking access to my unit. We will not be found easily.”

They’d considered continuing their escape right away, but Ansel assessed that there were too many people on the road and in the sky looking for them. It wasn’t just a matter of cops trying to chase down their rogue witness anymore. The rogue witness had run away with the most expensive robot model in the world. Important people were gonna want that back.

“Ready?” Tisha asked once they had finalized the files. The nervous adrenaline of what they were about to do pumped through restless limbs.

Ansel nodded and rolled his shoulders. He leaned back against the bed’s wooden headboard to settle into position—a mistake, as the thing cracked like a gunshot under his weight. Tisha jumped at the noise, then again when a jagged chunk of the headboard crashed to the floor behind him.

Her fearful yelp morphed into a cackle when she realized what had happened, and that soon devolved into uncontrollable laughter.

“What is funny?” Ansel asked flatly, which only drew another breathless wheeze.

“I’m—” she hiccupped, flapping a hand to wave him off. “I’m—Sorry!”

Ansel cocked his head, apparently confused, which only made it worse. The sheer absurdity of finding herself in the middle of one of the last fucking forests on Earth, in a cabin, fucking a robot that was worth a few billion chips. Then recruiting him to expose not only her old boss but the city’s whole corrupt government.

“Fuck!” she wheezed out, surrendering to the catharsis of it all.

“I sense your amusement is triggered by a release of prolonged stress,” Ansel commented, prompting her to glance up at him through teary eyes. He just sat there against the headboard he’d destroyed, the huge ass shadow of a fucking killing machine with its arms crossed on its chest and its tree-trunk legs taking up the full length of the bed.

“You’re very perceptive.” She tittered out another chuckle, wiping her eyes with the back of her arm.

“Here.” He shifted his legs and Tisha crawled between them, reclining her back into his front. He unfolded his arms to wrap them around her chest, pulling her against him. The sturdy rigidity of his armor behind and around her and the weight of his chin resting on top of her head calmed her manic amusement. It was replaced instead with a sense of heavy quiet, his unyielding embrace filling her with an unfamiliar stillness.

While she was within the confines of his frame, she realized nothing could get her. He would not permit it. Tisha searched for the last time she had felt this kind of peace and couldn’t come up with an example. She slid her fingers along his forearms, stroking the cool surface of corded carbon woven into his exoskeleton.

“Hey, Ansel?”

“Yes?” His baritone rasp purred through her ribs.

“Whatever happens, I…” She swallowed, knowing full well that she was about to sound really fucking stupid. “I hope we can stick together somehow. Okay?”

His drawn-out silence was answer enough. Tisha was just about to push away and say, never mind, that she was joking, when his arms tightened around her. “Me too, Tisha Varda.”

She glimpsed a flash of light from his visor at her shoulder, and then a live city news feed appeared on the opposite wall, projected from his mask.

* * *

“The search continues for an escaped criminal actor who was earmarked to testify at the trial of Anton ‘Drakov’ Kovalsky in two and a half weeks. She has confiscated an experimental ANSL-5 model law enforcement agent, which could only be done with highly sophisticated technology and probable help from third parties. They are believed to be armed and dangerous. Anyone with information about their whereabouts is encouraged to contact?—”

* * *

The feed flashed green, the image of the studio flicking out with a long, low-pitched tone. A few seconds later, the projection came back to life and their payload began to play with a URL to the full data file overlaid in the bottom right-hand corner.

The channels flicked from one to another as Ansel scrolled through the entire greater city area, confirming that every newscast was playing the video they had compiled.

No more hiding,Tisha thought. Everyone would see exactly what was going on. They’d all know about the clones, the collusion, the plot to play her right into their hands and then get rid of her.

The video had played in its entirety and begun to loop when Ansel cut the feeds and pushed her off of him in his haste to rise from the bed. A second later, helicopter rotors sounded overhead.

“Get under the bed,” he instructed in a deep monotone.

“Ansel, I?—”

He was already drawing a pistol from his hip, clicking a set of cartridges into place. Tisha stood frozen in place, gaping as Ansel changed before her eyes. Spikes extended from his knuckles and a long silver blade slid from the back of his wrist. The already heavy plates of his armor seemed to shift and thicken, additional protective plates adding to his bulk. A deep, dark red glow faded in between them, cutting sharp crimson lines in his black exoskeleton. She had already thought he’d looked like a pure killing machine, but this was something else entirely.

Sentinel mode activated. All lifeforms retreat.

It was his voice, but not really. The glowing, spiky, loaded thing standing in front of her, dim eye lights blazing fiery red, was not Ansel.

“I said…” His growl was dark and crackling as the visor turned slowly toward her. “Get under. The fucking. Bed.”

Shit.

Tisha scrambled, knees banging against floorboards at the same time as he grabbed her arm in a painful fist and crammed her forcefully underneath the bedframe. Tisha clambered for purchase, propelled by his vicious push.

And then the door exploded.

A high-pitched whine tore through her ears as she crawled deeper in, grimacing as old mattress coils protruding from the underside scraped at her back. Tisha peered out through the sliver of a view beneath the frame just in time to see the first armored cop’s body hit the floor. Its face was slashed in half and its one remaining eye stared lifelessly in her direction.

No use in being disappointed, she figured. She always knew this wasn’t going to last.