Perfect by Pauline C. Harris

work. I’ll see you get
rewarded for this.”
    Yvonne had a smug expression on her face and
her eyes sparkled.
    “Take her back,” Glen directed the
androids.
    I looked at Yvonne and saw her watching me
being dragged toward the double doors. You better get me out of
here , my eyes pleaded, but hers just stared straight back at
mine, emotionless and uncaring.
    A realization I had been holding back and
refusing to see pushed its way to the surface of my mind. I didn’t
know if Yvonne was going to save me. I never had.
     

Chapter Fourteen
     
    I waited the rest of
the day and night and didn’t see Yvonne. For hours, I leaned my
head against the cold white wall and wondered if I would ever be
free. What would happen to me if I never got out? Through the metal
bars, I could see others in their own cells. Sitting and doing
nothing. Some were crying. Some were sitting there with defeated
looks on their faces. They had given up.
    I had already tried breaking the bars but to
my dismay, they were android proof. No one came to see me or to get
me and I hoped that the computers would stay shut down for the time
I was to be held here.
    Altered. Is that what lay in store for
me once their systems were working again? What did that mean
exactly? I had known androids that had been altered. They had
seemed like the same people afterward but a little different. They
seemed new again. Like they had just been perfected. I didn’t want
to be new again, stripped of all memory and emotions.
    The next day Yvonne still didn’t come for me.
How long had she been planning to keep me here? But once I thought
about it, it did make sense to leave me here at least a couple
days. Otherwise, they could get suspicious. But it still made me
sick to my stomach—the white walls, the worried faces, and Yvonne’s
absence.
    The minutes seemed like hours and the hours
like days in my small, blank cell. How could I stand to stay here
even for just a week? There was nothing to do but listen to the
soft sobs and cries of my neighbor cellmates. Sounds that sent
shivers down my spine every time I heard them.
    Every once in a while someone would come in
bringing food. They always skipped me and went straight to the
humans. After all, they knew I didn’t need it. I knew it as well
but I almost hoped they’d give me something. Something to do.
    “You’re already one of them aren’t you?” the
girl in the cell across from me said one day.
    I looked up, surprised to see her talking to
me, and nodded.
    She frowned. “Then why are you here?” Her
tone wasn’t accusatory, just curious.
    “Because I helped a bunch of people escape
before being changed. The creators got mad at me and here I am,” I
told her simply, surprised to find that my long and frustrating
saga could be condensed to just one sentence.
    “Oh.” She looked down.
    “So you’ve realized what they’re doing?” I
asked her, realizing it could sound harsh, but not caring.
    She nodded. “I’ve been here...three weeks
now,” she said, counting numbers on her fingers. “I’ve figured it
out and overheard things.”
    “How did they get you?” I asked her, leaning
against the metal bars.
    Her face saddened. “I was kidnapped on my way
home from school.”
    I watched her. Is that what had happened to
me? Had I been snatched away once upon a time? Away from my friends
and family, to be changed into a monster? Had I waited in one of
these cold damp cells, thinking the same things as this girl right
here?
    “I wish I could stop them,” I said quietly.
“I want to, but I don’t know how.” My voice was a whisper now.
    The girl was watching me, her almost violet
eyes boring into mine. “I wish you could, too. I wish that anyone
could. But I don’t know. They seem powerful and willing to do
whatever is needed to accomplish what they want.”
    I nodded. I knew that better than anyone. I
had experienced firsthand the creators’ undying greed for power and
a so-called perfect world.
    “I