The Girl with the Iron Touch. Kady Cross

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      She woke up with a start, a strange pounding in her chest. Was one of her parts defective? A cog off its pattern? No, it was that organic thing—that lump of muscle that pumped blood through her system.

      What was blood again? Oh, yes. It was essentially the oil that kept human organisms running smoothly.

      She touched her head. Inside her skull felt odd—as though her logic engine had somehow changed—had become more. Information assaulted her at an alarming rate.

      She understood it. All of it.

      She was learning. She was evolving. Her heart—that’s what it was called—gave another jump.

      They’d given her a name—Endeavor 312—which she didn’t like, and clothes, which she did. They’d also given her access to a water closet should she need to expel fluid again. And they’d given her food and water—things that would act as fuel in her changing system. Things she would have to expel later on, only to continue taking more in. It seemed wasteful to her, but she understood the necessity.

      It had been explained to her that she was the first of her kind, that she would notice changes. The spider had told her not to get emotional over them. She wasn’t quite sure what emotions were, but she knew it was linked to this pounding beneath the cage that protected her internal workings.

      Voices. That’s what had brought her system to wake. The machines had gone to gather supplies, leaving her alone. They told her that soon others would join them. Was this them?

      She rose from the horizontal rest bay. No, that wasn’t what it was called. It was a bed. An odd term. Rest bay sounded much more accurate. Slowly, she walked across the dirt floor—it was cold against the bottom of her bare feet. She was much more aware of temperature fluctuations now, and anything else that engaged her sensory inputs. Her endoskeleton was now completely covered by the pale membranous material that was sensitive to everything around it, including a breeze that seemed to blow through the cavern.

      It smelled of age and dirt and metal down here. She knew she was underground because of how muted the noise of the city was. And this was a city, because she felt the rumble of trains, both above and below street level.

      Slowly, on limbs that felt awkward, she went to the door of her room. It didn’t want to open at first, but one good yank solved that problem; the entire metal and wood slab came free. She propped it against the wall and slipped out into the main chamber.

      There were boxes and crates everywhere, and more slumbering automatons, too, though none seemed to have the same covering that she did. They didn’t wear clothing, either. Some of them looked battle-scarred and patched together while others gleamed with the brightness of new metal.

      Normally she would stop to inspect them all, but she wanted to see their guests. There was another door on the far side of the room and she moved toward it. There was an odd-looking glass-front box mounted on the wall—it showed the catacombs beyond the door. She knew this because part of her was still machine and she understood.

      A photographic camera had to be positioned somewhere near the ceiling out in the catacombs, not far from the door. Harnessed Aetheric energy fed the images seen through the lens of the camera to the receiver in the box with the glass front.

      The visitors appeared on the glass. She grinned and hurried toward the door. Halfway there, she came to an abrupt and unanticipated stop.

      Scowling, she looked down at the limbs that refused to move. She pulled and strained but to no avail. She could not move. It was then that she became aware of a humming noise and realized that she was more prisoner than guest herself.

      The spot where she stood was home to a powerful magnet, one that froze the metal inside her to the spot. This was why the others felt they could leave her, leave the other slumbering machines—because there was little chance of escape.

      And if there was little chance of escape, logic insisted that she was to be kept there regardless of her own thoughts on the matter.

      She stared at the girls on the grainy surface of the glass, and then through a small slit in the door. There were two of them—one tall with light hair streaked with dark and another shorter one with hair that looked like ropes.

      Part of her reacted to the sight of them. It was her heart again, kicking up a fuss in her chest cavity. She knew them. She didn’t know how, but she had seen them before. The little one especially.

      Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement and jerked her head around. For a moment she was terrified of the strange girl staring at her from just a few feet away. The girl had curly red hair, honey-colored eyes and pale skin. She was tall and slender and dressed in ill-fitting clothes.

      The girl was her. It was nothing but her own reflection СКАЧАТЬ