What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance by Travis Simmons Page B

came toward her.
    “But you’re not me, and you will never be me. You aren’t human, you’re a machine. What makes you think you’re my equal? You’re not my equal, you’re my servant!”
    She lunged at Cass then, but something inside the automaton snapped and she lashed out at Natalia, knocking her to the side and into a chair.
    “Oh,” Brandon said, stepping away from the two of them.
    “How DARE you,” Natalia said, standing, but Cass didn’t give her time to get started again, she turned and raced from the apartment, not bothering to close the door behind her.
     
     

“You better get back in this apartment, machine,” Natalia said, stalking Cass down the hallway.
    Cass didn’t pay any attention to her, she kept running, her bare feet propelling her faster and faster down the carpeted hallway. She didn’t bother with the elevator, she figured it would take too long to reach her. She turned right, to the emergency exit and pounded her way to the ground floor.
    She didn’t hear Natalia follow her.
    Cass pushed her way out of the apartment complex to a busy side street. The sun filtered through the trees and on to her face. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the light, but the brilliance of the sun made her stop dead in her tracks.
    Cass closed her eyes and tilted her head back, letting the light of the sun bathe her. It was warm, and she imagined what it might be like for a human, what they might feel and smell. Was her sight better or worse than theirs? She wasn’t sure, but she could tell, as she opened her eyes once more, that the scene was lovely.
    She imagined taking a deep breath of the air, and what she might smell there. She’d been outside with Brandon many times, but this was the first time she’d felt truly free.
    Birds chirped in the trees above her, and the sound of hover cars honking milling about and honking their horns wafted through the alley toward her. She could hear the bustle of city life, and she turned toward it. Out of the alley she turned left, so she wouldn’t have to pass underneath the patio to her home.
    Home, she thought. Is that what it is? She looked toward the apartment complex and to where she thought she lived. It wasn’t hard to find the patio that belonged to Natalia, it was the only one filled with so much foliage. Will I even be welcome there any longer? She wondered.
    She didn’t care. The day was before her, and for the first time in a long time she felt free.
    If she wasn’t so excited, Cass would have been concerned about that line of thought. Even when she’d lived with Jack and Olivia she hadn’t thought much about life outside of her home. Now it nearly consumed every moment of her existence.
    Where should I go? Cass wondered. Where do automatons go when they are away from their humans? She thought. It was the first time out of the house without any true mission. Was there a place that robots went when their humans weren’t around? Were there humans that let their automatons wander around free?
    Then something flashed over her visual overlay, like a red path stretching out before her. She followed the line, knowing that it was leading her to others like herself. Leading her to the other machines.
    The path led her through streets of open markets where children begged their mothers for toys, and women and men alike haggled over prices of produce or meat. She paused for a moment before a fruit stand, thinking how much Natalia would like a watermelon, but she quickly dismissed it. Today was her day, and there was no saying if Natalia would take her in if she chose to return.
    She stopped beside a translucent hologram of the Secretary of State that was issuing the same message over and over to the passersby. The war in the Middle East was slowing, but they weren’t ready yet to pull the troops back.
    Beside her there was the short and thin Secretary of Homeland Security assuring people that automatons weren’t a threat to their everyday lives.
    Cass had