Freaks in the City by Maree Anderson

okay?” he murmured.
    “It’s more than okay,” she said. “It’s
perfect.”
    He snuggled closer, spooning. “Thanks.”
    “For what?”
    “For letting me stay.”
    She folded her arms across his hand and held
his palm over her heart. “Goodnight, Tyler.” And as she lay there,
listening to his breathing slow and deepen as he relaxed into
sleep, she felt very, very lucky. Perhaps there was a God, after
all, and maybe, just maybe, He’d given His blessing to a cyborg who
wished with all her heart she could become what her boyfriend
wanted her to be. Human.
    The night deepened. Jay entered the same
semi-downtime state she used when performing mundane tasks. Right
now, the mundane task at hand was simulating sleep.
    The one crucial aspect she hadn’t considered
was her dreams. Cyborgs weren’t supposed to have the capacity to
dream—how could they, when their brains were nothing but glorified
computers? But Jay had begun dreaming during her downtime periods
ever since the night Father had commanded her to end his life. He
was old, dying of cancer, and he’d insisted the only way to protect
her from those who hunted her was for him to take her command codes
to his grave.
    She’d fought the command but the compulsion
was too strong. That dream—of Father’s passing and the aftermath,
when she’d shed tears for the first time—hadn’t faded over time. It
was still as vivid as it’d ever been. Jay knew not even deleting
the memory from her permanent databanks would allow her to
forget.
    This time, the dream was a new one—a
replaying of true events but with a horrifying twist. It looped
over and over, like a visual version of a broken record. And
despite resting safe in Tyler’s arms, she could not break free of
the dream….
     
    ~~~
     
    She can sense them closing in. It’s
imperative she lure them away before they storm her apartment via
the skylights, and everyone inside the building risks becoming
collateral damage. The people hunting her don’t care about Tyler or
Caro or their father Michael, who had inadvertently led the
extraction team to Jay’s door, and put his own children in harm’s
way. They don’t care about innocents like Matt and Em and the rest
of the girls’ baseball team. They don’t care about anyone or
anything except for their mission objective: retrieving Cyborg Unit
Gamma-Dash-One, AKA Jay Smith.
    She’s always known this day would come.
She’s prepared for every possible eventuality. She’s always
prepared, she never makes mistakes. Except… encountering Tyler has
changed all that. Now she is driven to protect him. His safety is
paramount. Because of him, she truly feels alive. Because of him,
she wants to live so badly she aches with the wanting. The pain of
leaving him—even if she knows it is the only way to keep him
safe—is a giant fist squeezing her heart.
    One leap takes her down half a flight of
stairs. There’s no need to cover her tracks. She won’t be coming
back to this place. She rips two bricks from the wall, reaches into
the exposed cavity to snatch the wrapped package she’s hidden
there. She shoves it down the back waistband of her jeans and heads
for the doors.
    She glances up the gloomy stairwell, hears
the squeal that confirms the reinforced door of her apartment is
closing. In seconds Tyler and his father will be locked inside her
apartment along with Tyler’s twin, Caro, and the other oblivious
partygoers. For now, it’s the only place they will be safe. But she
can’t think about Tyler right now. He’s her weakness, and she can’t
afford to be weak.
    The instant before the door locks engage she
punches out a stairwell window with her fist. It’s a “Look! Here I
am, so come and get me!” gesture, and the shattering glass sounds
abominably loud over the now faint thrum of the music playing
upstairs. Just to be certain, she allows herself to be seen, luring
the extraction squad away from the building, away from Tyler and
Caro and the