Girl From Above #4: Trust by Pippa DaCosta

pushed my head back and brought himself close enough that his breath warmed my cheek. “A glitch didn’t cut down fifty people with its bare hands. Women and children. Families. I got a family, synth. But you don’t. You’re just … just a thing .”
    I understood his pain, his anger. I knew his grief. The one thousand synthetics were everything he’d seen at Janus Park. He was correct in his assessment.
    “You look just like the one that slaughtered those people. You all look the same.”
    Not all of us. I have scars, inside and out. Do you not see them? I curled my fingers into fists.
    “I don’t even know how to make you hurt for what you did.” He brought the rifle up to my shoulder and pulled the trigger. Engine noise drowned out the shot, and I shut the pain away as soon as it rushed in. I looked back at him, blank and unresponsive. Rage twisted his face. He couldn’t hurt me, not with physical pain.
    When he punched me in the torso, I absorbed the impact, wrapped my processes around the pain, and packaged it away. But not all of it would retreat. The blow to my cheek whipped my head to the side.
    “You’ll never be more than a tool!” Spittle dashed my face, and inside, the poise—the control snapped.
    I cracked my knuckles across his jaw. Pain flashed up my arm. A punch wasn’t the most effective way of diffusing the situation. There were other, more immediate solutions. But it had felt … good .
    He reeled backward, leaving himself wide open for a fraction of a second. I could have killed him. Had I been all the things he thought me to be, I would have. Processes whirred in my head: solutions to a scenario rapidly spiraling out of control. His eyes widened in shock and then narrowed with intention. He saw the killer in me.
    I snatched the rifle from his fingers, cracked the butt under his chin, spun it, and shot him in the thigh. Data trilled through me. I wanted more.
    He collapsed and cradled his leg. Only when the engine noise subsided did I hear his groans. Slipping the weapon strap over my shoulder, I knelt on one knee, clutched a handful of his gray Chitec jacket, brought him level with my face, and smiled the flat, empty smile that elicited fear in others.
    “My name is One. There were six ways I could have killed you in the last fifteen seconds. I advise you: do not further provoke me.”
    I dragged him behind me, leaving a trail of blood, passed through the cabin door, and dumped him at Doctor Lloyd’s feet.
    The doctor yelped and shot from his seat. “Wh-what?”
    “I’m taking control of this vessel.”
    “What?” he repeated. Doctor Lloyd’s attention snagged on the rifle. He backed away, likely wondering if I’d turn the weapon on him. “You can’t. We’re meant to be undercover. This is supposed to be subtle .”
    “Tend to his wound. I don’t want him to die.”
    “You shot him?”
    “He shot me. I retaliated with equal force.” I shrugged off the rifle and headed between the stacked crates toward the bridge. The locked security hatch gave with a powerful shove.
    Three passengers.
    The captain, up front and focused on his control console. The female guard, reaching for her weapon. I lifted my rifle at hip height and fired a pulse-round into her hand. The third guard, the one who’d made his desires quite clear, received a round to his hip for his trouble. It wouldn’t kill him, despite the volume of his cries, but it would see him bed-bound for months. I reached the captain and placed the rifle against the back of his head. Four seconds had passed since I’d broken through the door. Not long enough for him to have released a distress signal.
    I eased myself around to sit in the empty second’s flight chair while maintaining my grip on the gun against his head. He lifted his trembling hands from the flightdash and turned his thin, pale face toward me.
    “I will pilot this vessel back to Chitec. You are redundant.”
    “Fleet—”
    “I have everything I need to