Machine Man (serial)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

My left leg thumped into the concrete. There was a pause. My right leg jerked up, hung in the air, hiccuped, and came down.

“My God,” said Cassandra Cautery. “Jason, can you go any slower? You can’t drive this guy for crap.”

“It’s…” Jason pushed sweaty hair out of his face. His eyes flicked between me and the device. “Complicated.”

I twisted my head to see Lola. She was terrified, her skin gray and waxy. I felt faint stirrings of an invisible force. And I connected a few data points. When Lola turned magnetic, that was her heart beating just below the EMP trigger. It was the weapon preparing to discharge. The first time it had happened, at Better Future, Lola and I had been getting intimate. The second time, I had leapt in via her balcony window to rescue her. At Angelica’s, we had kissed: that time she had actually detonated. And the final data point: she had gone EMP while driving blind, fleeing from Better Future, and sideswiping a parked car. Afterward, she’d said something like: I thought we hit a car. Unless that was outlier, she had actually said: I thought we hit Carl.

If it were me—well, if it were me when I was still organic—my heart rate would peak at moments of extreme personal danger. But Lola didn’t seem to do that. Her heart seemed to beat fastest when she feared for someone she cared about, and during moments of intimacy with me.

At times, I had doubted her. I believed in science: I was skeptical of anything that couldn’t be measured, written down, and independently verified across a series of double-blind tests. But now I had data. The data said she loved me so much her heart exploded.

“Lola.” I reached for her, with the arm that still listened. “Lola, kiss me.”

179.