Girl From Above #3: Trapped by Pippa DaCosta Read Free Book Online Page B

faults.
    “Caleb didn’t kill her,” I said, now alone with Brendan. “He’s not lying.”
    Brendan’s sigh seemed to carry the weight of the world with it. “I know that. I do. He just … he just doesn’t see how these things come back on him. He needs to grow up and take responsibility. Help him see, synth, because I can’t.” He rubbed his neck, his gaze returning to the exit. If he left, Tarik would find him. Bren’s face was too conspicuous. Fleet had made Brendan a posthumous hero after his freighter had been hijacked by pirates. According to fleet’s official report, the commander had died defending fleet’s honor and their cargo, but his reputation wouldn’t stop the synthetic. Tarik would use him to draw Caleb out, and by proxy, me.
    I would stop the commander from opening that door by any means necessary.
    The moment he gave up on the idea of leaving, he turned his back on the exit and walked past me, leaving the hold. He was trapped inside Starscream , just like the rest of us.
----
    “ I ’ve spent some time rewriting key segments of code. I’d like to try them.” James’s light touch fluttered over my face, applying a light cream designed to help my synthetic skin replenish. “It could be the breakthrough we need to free your prohibitive protocols.”
    “Agreed. But first, I need to speak with the captain.”
    James’s soft hazel eyes focused on my eyes instead of where his fingers were working across my skin. A moment dragged between us. He clearly wanted to say something, but as the quiet stretched on, the likelihood of him doing so waned.
    “He’s unstable,” James finally whispered, as though suspecting Caleb could hear through Starscream’s walls.
    “Yes.” So am I.
    The moment stretched thin. The smallest hints of a smile tightened his lips, but there was little humor in it. He’d aged since arriving on Starscream. I could tell in the tightness around his eyes and in the thoughtful hesitation before he spoke. He guarded himself, but I wasn’t entirely sure against what.
    He’d spent every hour of his time on Starscream trying to unravel the mysteries of my programming. When he wasn’t examining my protocols, he was gathering additional equipment to help with his mission to understand me. He had expectations and hid them well, but not well enough. But while he served a purpose, I would allow the lingering touches and soft pauses to continue. His feelings for me motivated him to succeed.
    “Tarik must have an owner.” James turned away so abruptly that I felt the tension snap and fall away. “He has to be someone’s life-ever-after dream.”
    Chen Hung controls him now. I twitched and buried the screaming truth beneath streams of nonsense data. Each one of Starscream’s panels contains three hundred and ninety-two rivets, and each recreation bay holds over a thousand of them. Over and over I folded the data, until it silenced the terrible need to tear into my own skin and scratch the truth out of me.
    “To find his owner, you will need to search the cloud manually. I wouldn’t recommend it,” I said. “He’s clearly maintaining a connection and could easily follow your search back to Starscream . If he gets inside the ship’s systems, I am not entirely sure what damage he could do. Besides, discovering who he was meant to be is redundant.”
    James stood rigid at his desk. He had his back to me so I couldn’t see his face, but I heard the tired pull in his words. “Failsafes and protocols are designed to prevent this kind of attack.”
    I ran a quick diagnostic of my overall wellbeing and then headed for the door. “Failsafes and protocols can be unlocked, Doctor Lloyd, if you have the key in the code.” I didn’t need to look back to know he’d already be lost in his work.
    When he’d joined Starscream alongside me, he’d had little choice. On the run from Chitec and various authorities, he couldn’t have stayed with his sister on Janus, but he’d had