What Lies Behind: A New Adult Dark Science Fiction Romance by Travis Simmons Page A

the stool was the white shorts and the blue peasant shirt she’d worn the other day.
    “Did you think I wouldn’t notice my clothes were coming up missing?”
    Cass shook her head. “I only took the one?”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know,” Cass said. Her voice quivered in time with her hand.
    “Because you want to be a human, is that it? You want to know what it’s like to be me?”
    “No,” Cass said.
    “ Lies !” Natalia slammed Cass’s face into the stool.
    Cass reeled backwards. Natalia took her by the hair once more and dragged her out of the closet. She pushed her to the floor and straddled her. “Did your nose break?”
    “No,” Cass said.
    “Why?” Natalia asked, slapping her upside the head. She had Cass’s arms pinned to her side, held in place with her knees.
    “Because I don’t have a nose made of cartilage like you,” Cass told her.
    “Why?” She slapped her again.
    “Because I wasn’t made like that.”
    “Right, you were made . You’re not human. You’re a filthy machine.” She slapped her again. “Is your skin going to bruise?”
    “No,” Cass said.
    “Why?”
    “It can’t.”
    “Why?” Natalia asked louder, slapping Cass harder.
    “Because I’m a machine.”
    “No, you’re a filthy machine!” Natalia stood and dragged Cass to the closet. She pushed her inside and slammed the door shut. “And filthy machines don’t feel pain. Machines can’t love. All they can do is pretend to be human, but they aren’t. And to show you that you aren’t.”
    The inside of the closet flared a blinding white. Cass listed to the side, falling into the stool. She tried to stand up, but like the day at the doctor’s office when the nurse shined the light into her infrared, Cass was blinded. Circuits all along her nervous system screamed out in pain at the blinding light.
    It was more than the light. There was a noise underneath. A high-pitched, droning noise that made Cass lose all control of her body. She fell to the floor. The stool tipped over, spilling the shorts and shirt onto her. The clothes missed her face. They didn’t blot out the light, or the noise that chased her into oblivion.
     
     

 
    The white light shown on Cass. She was on her back again, the metallic surgical table under her. There were other people in the room with her. She couldn’t see them, but she knew they were there.
    “And it’s done?” a man to her right asked. “They’re dead.
    “Yes. Jack is dead,” the woman said.
    The light shown on her painfully. The memories were still there, but Cass wouldn’t let them in. She didn’t want to see what they offered.
    “Will she be alright?” the girl asked. It was the same dream as before, but this time the memory was slightly different. Was she experiencing the same moment?
    “She will be fine.”
    “She didn’t get burned?” the woman asked.
    “That would have been against her programming,” the man told her. “Is that the memory stick with her next programming?”
    “Yes,” the woman told him. A shadow crossed over her vision as the woman handed the crystalline memory stick to the man on Cass’s right. When her hand retreated, the light blinded her once again.
    “Perfect. Let me get these last couple memories and we will upload this new programming.”
    There was movement to her left as the woman knelt beside Cass. “I’m sorry for what’s coming,” she whispered into her ear. “But in the end, everything will turn out the way it should. On to the next project.”

    “And that’s what she said? On to the next project?” Brandon asked. He looked up from his sweeping chore. Natalia had left Cass with a huge list of chores to do that day—
    Probably so I wouldn’t go anywhere—
    So they could go out and investigate, Brandon had decided to help her.
    “Can’t you see though?” Cass asked. “She got rid of me because I killed her husband!”
    “That’s not what it sounds like,” Brandon said with a frown. He returned to