Girl From Above #4: Trust by Pippa DaCosta Read Free Book Online Page B

Hung’s identity, and killed the man’s daughter—the only person who could expose him as a fraud. He then proceeded to build one thousand elite soldiers under the guise of the life-ever-after program, selling them to unsuspecting high society people, using the promise of immortality as incentive.”
    Silence fell over the assembly room. Caleb sat and slumped forward. He sank his hands into his damp hair, hiding his face from the crew. A fragile quiet settled. Fran and Bren were watching Caleb, while Lloyd gazed out of the window, chewing on his thumbnail.
    Everything Caleb thought he’d known about that night at the Chitec warehouse had changed. A synthetic had killed Haley Hung. A synthetic had sent him to Asgard, where he’d been expected to die. To know it wasn’t a man who had done those things, but a machine? I tried to conclude what that must feel like and failed, but all I had to do was look at him, hunched in the chair, his fingers fisted in his hair, to know how it must hurt.
    I blinked and found Doctor Lloyd watching me. He shifted in his seat, swallowed, and looked away.
    “This is what I learned when I faced Chen Hung on Janus. This is the secret that almost tore me apart.”
    “Why didn’t you destroy him?” Caleb fell back in the chair, but he stared ahead at nothing.
    “The synthetic Chen Hung also created me—One Thousand and One—and in doing so, prohibited me from ever directly attacking him.” I tried … I tried to end it, but I am not as free as I was led to believe.
    The same machine that had inflicted such cruelty upon Caleb had also created me. I thought of Caleb’s earlier smile, the gentle understanding on his face and in his touch. Would that change? Would the truth eat away at his trust in me? I almost wished I could take the words back and hold the secret close if it meant sparing him more pain.
    The quiet stretched on, interrupted only by the low background hum of the ship.
    “Why would the synthetic Chen Hung make you, One?” Fran enquired in that razor-sharp way she used to cut to the truth. An accusation hid inside her words. Her concerns were justified.
    “There are elements of the man inside the synthetic, in the same way there are elements of Haley Hung threading through my processes. He said I was a mistake.”
    Caleb flinched as though my words had wounded him and mumbled, “Synthetics don’t make mistakes.”
    Fran planted her boots on the floor, leaned forward, and looked to the others. “How do we know she’s not some walking, talking conduit that leads straight back to Hung?”
    “I think she’s proven herself,” Caleb replied, aiming something of a sneer at Fran.
    “By butchering the entire cadre of active Nine?”
    Caleb’s fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “That wasn’t her.”
    Why is the rain red?
    Part of it was me, I thought. The part designed to kill. The part hungry for Doctor Lloyd’s death.
    “But she could do it again?” Fran asked. “Whatever went wrong with her could happen again?”
    “No,” I said calmly. “Doctor Lloyd attempted to rewrite my internal processes and in doing so unlocked my default waking state, leaving my systems open to the synthetic group commands and Chen Hung’s orders.” An odd little smile tugged playfully at my lips as I considered my next words. “Doctor Lloyd will not be permitted to do the same again.”
    Fran arched an eyebrow. “Are you telling me that nervous wreck over there turned you into a killer? That’s bullshit, synth. You always had it in you—”
    “Throw one more fucking stone, Fran, and I’ll tell the Nine you’re the reason I lost the freighter they had their hearts set on not so long ago,” Caleb said, his voice as cool and hard as steel.
    Fran pressed her lips together, clearly contemplating her next words. “It takes a liar to know a liar, Captain. One can lie so smoothly you’d never see her endgame coming—until it was too late. Isn’t that right, synth?”
    “You