Evolved(61)



Sasha’s face hardened. “How?”

“Maybe the Core z isn’t compatible with the neural integration. I don’t know, but we’ll have to—”

Sasha gnashed his teeth and spoke over him. “Just wipe him clean. Erase everything. Scrub his data collation, wipe his recurrent networks. He won’t remember a thing.”

“No,” I sobbed, trying to fight out of the hold I was in, but I didn’t have the energy. They were going to erase me from Shaun’s memory.

Sasha got down in my face. “Your boyfriend’s gonna be a vegetable. Do you like potatoes? What about fried potatoes?” he asked, then laughed. He turned back to Myles. “Fry him.”

I sagged, the will to fight gone, and the bodyguard let me fall to the floor.

“Okay, done,” Myles said.

And just like that, it was over.

The Shaun I knew and fell in love with was gone forever.

“Okay, help me get him up,” Myles said, and I thought he meant me at first. But the four men in black took hold of Shaun, lifted him from the table, and set him on his feet. Myles tapped more buttons on the screen he was holding, then waved his hand at me and the big guy picked me up and stood me in front of Shaun. “We need to reactivate him. You’ve done this before. When he opens his eyes, read this to him.”

He held up the control panel, tapped something, and Shaun’s eyes opened. They were the same perfect blue, but seeing them now just broke my heart. Tears streamed down my cheeks and Myles shoved the panel at me with a furious look on his face.

So I read the words on-screen out loud. “My name is Lloyd Salter. I am your custodian.”

It didn’t even sound like me. Not that it mattered if Shaun could no longer work on voice commands or recognise my face anymore.

None of it mattered.

Myles tapped out something else on the panel then yanked the cords out of Shaun’s chest. I could see inside him. Instead of ribs or a sternum, he had grey metal and moving parts and small green lights.

I shook my head. This was not the Shaun I knew.

“Don’t worry about the skin problem.” Sasha’s voice startled me. “We’ll get that fixed right up. A bit of liquid TPE and he’ll be as good as new.”

Then Myles used a silicone gun and literally glued the flap of skin back up into place with liquid skin, leaving a silver scar in the shape of a back to front number 7 lining the centre of his chest and over his pec where his heart should be.

Where it no longer was.

“Upload Mr Salter’s original file,” Sasha ordered, then rolled his eyes. “So they can discuss books.”

Myles tapped away at the screen and I saw the words download complete before he turned to Sasha. “We’re done.”

I finally locked eyes with Shaun. “It’s nice to meet you, Lloyd Salter.” His voice was all wrong; too robotic, too stilted. His smile was wrong.

More tears rolled down my cheeks and Shaun’s expression didn’t change.

It really wasn’t him.

“Okay then,” Sasha said brightly. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for returning what was rightfully ours.”

I couldn’t speak.

“Myles and these lovely gentlemen will see you out.”

And just like that, I was ushered out the way I’d come with an android I didn’t know. My car sat waiting where we’d left it, the doors were opened, and we were shoved inside. Myles pointed his master key panel at my driver, tapped something, and the B-Class android buzzed to life. “Please state your destination.”

“Home,” I whispered.

Myles gave me a menacing wave and the car drove out of the underground car park. The afternoon was dark, the clouds were low and heavy. It had never been so fitting.

Shaun sat beside me, sitting too straight, too rigid. He never asked any questions, he never spoke at all. So very not the Shaun I fell in love with.

His shirt was torn open, untucked, and his hair was a mess.

And my heart was broken.

I stared out the window, letting my tears fall freely until we drove into my apartment car park. I got out, not caring if the android followed me or not. It did, and we rode up to my floor in silence. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his reflection.

My heart just couldn’t take it.

I opened my apartment door and waited for the android to walk in. Before it could do or say anything, I said, “Please, take a seat.”

I watched as it sat on the edge of the sofa. I could barely look at it. I struggled to speak.

“Power Down.”

And it did.

It closed its eyes and bowed its head slightly, its hands clasped in its lap. I stared at it for all of five seconds before I burst into tears and sobbed.



I showered, trying to wash away the horror, trying to wash clean my memory of what I’d just been through.

Shaun was gone.

Only when I went back out to the living room, he was still sitting there, right where I’d left him. Powered down, motionless. It looked just like him, everything was the same. Only now everything was very, very different.

I walked over to the other end of the couch and sat down, feeling like a stranger in my own home. Actually, I felt like I’d been left in a private viewing with a corpse. The dead body of my loved one. That was what it felt like, and no shower was ever going to fix that.

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