First of Her Kind Part 7

A tap on the door drew Adam out of sleep. She cast a glance at her alarm clock. A couple hours had passed. Another tap at the door drew her scrambling from her bed. She straightened her clothes as she went to the door and cracked it open. Emily stood at the door.

“Yes?” Adam asked.

“Lucian made lunch for everyone,” Emily said. “He talked the doc into letting him get a grill after he watched some barbeque cooking competition show.”

Adam just noticed the savory, smokey smell wafting down the hall. “I’ll be right there.”

She quickly went to the bathroom to straighten herself up, running a brush through her hair and washing her face. She removed the soft pink jacket and threw it in the laundry hamper, wanting to avoid the distraction the perfume on the sleeve posed.

Adam followed her nose out to the kitchen and through the glass doors and out to the cement patio. Emily, Benjamin and Jessie sat around a picnic table talking. Adam noticed however that Evander was absent. Lucian stood in front of a big, silver grill, eliciting puffs of smoke and sizzling sounds as he flipped burgers over in quick succession. Adam approached to observe.

“Hand me the cheese?” Lucian asked.

Adam looked over at the table top next to the grill where a plate of cheese slices was lined up next to various condiments and toppings. She held the plate up to Lucian who took the slices one at a time and placed them on the burgers on the grill. Adam set the plate down when he was finished.

“Tray,” Lucian said.

Adam noticed an empty metal tray and held it up as Lucian loaded the finished patties onto it. She set the tray down next to the rest of the food while Lucian shut the grill down.

“It’s ready,” he announced loudly.

Adam was slightly surprised when everyone stood up and lined up clumsily at the table, grabbing buns, burgers, scoops of a strange white, chunky dish and another that Adam recognised as being made from some kind of beans.

“Here,” Emily passed Adam a plate, “better grab and growl.”

“Why would I growl?” Adam asked.

Emily looked at her with a blank expression for a moment before chuckling. “It’s just a phrase my dad used to use,” she said. “I had three big brothers and a little sister. Dinner time was a bit more like feeding time at a zoo in our house.”

“That seems like a large family,” Adam noted, helping herself to a bun and burger.”

“Larger than most,” Emily agreed. “My dad came from a family of eight kids. My mother was one of twelve. They always planned on having a big family, but, well, she passed away.”

“Was that hard for you?” Adam asked, accepting a ketchup bottle.

“Very,” Emily nodded. “But, I had my big brothers, my aunties. And my dad remarried eventually. My step mom couldn’t have kids, so she was thrilled to be a mom to us, even though we put her through hell at first.”

“How’d she pass?” Adam asked.

Emily dished a scoop of beans onto both their plates. “Child birth, I don’t know exactly what went wrong, but, she and the baby were both lost. Would have been another brother.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said.

It was strange how the words came out like a reflex, sincere as they were.

“Thanks,” Emily smiled softly. “It was a long time ago. I’ve dealt with trauma, projected it onto some bad relationships, went to therapy, done the work.” She led Adam back to the picnic table. “I’ve decided to look at the happy sides of it. How many girls can say they’ve gotten to have two amazing moms in their life? And, I had to take care of my baby sister growing up. She took on similar interests to me. Now we are both successful scientists. Only difference is, I live in this posh house rent free, and she’s out somewhere in the Siberian wilderness freezing her tatas off and dodging bears.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Adam observed.

“Believe me,” Emily smiled. “You don’t know my sister. You should be worried for the bears.”

Adam cast a confused look at Benjamin.

“She’s a tough one,” Benjamin explained. “Small lady, big temper. But, she’s nice.”

“No, she’s not,” Emily scoffed. “She’s sharp tongued and meaner than a snake. But, it’s gentlemanly of you to attempt a compliment for your ex.”

Benjamin chuckled awkwardly and nodded.

Most of the rest of the meal was spent with the staff telling stories and joking while Adam and Lucian observed and asked questions. Emily spoke fondly of her large family while Jessie explained that her own family left much to be desired and that the team at the facility was more like family to her than her relatives. Benjamin, however, was decidedly vague about his past, but mentioned he had a brother and was raised by a single mother. As the conversation continued, Adam noticed Lucian’s gaze become distant, his eyes glazed over with deep thought.

“If you think about it,” Benjamin spoke up. “You three are kind of a family, kinda like brothers and sister.”

Lucian, having snapped out of his thoughts, looked at Adam and then back at Benjamin.

“We are all different though,” he pointed out. “Adam is physically far superior to me, and neither of us are anything like Evander.”

Adam thought back to her conversation with Evander in the rec room and the hours of pain as her muscles miraculously repaired themselves.

“Being siblings doesn’t mean you’re exactly alike,” Emily scoffed. “Look at me, I’m six feet tall, have red hair, my sister is five - two and dark haired. I took a comfy job that comes with housing and benefits and will help me advance my own studies. She has a tiny house parked behind my parents’ house that she spends maybe three months out of the year in when she isn’t out trying to save the world. My brothers both enlisted in the army. Danny got out and went to culinary school, Thomas got out and went on a two year bender before he got his lady pregnant and straightened out. He’s been working as a mechanic for a few years now and helping Daddy on construction jobs when he needs extra money.”

“Daddy?” Adam repeated the word out of curiosity.

“Sorry,” Emily flushed a little, “my southern comes out a little when I start talking about my family. It’s not unusual for grown women down there to still call their dads ‘Daddy’.”

“It’s kind of nice though,” Adam observed aloud. “Like, a nick name only some people get to use.”

Adam noticed Jessie looking at her intently. She wondered if she wasn’t giving away something she hadn’t intended to.

“If we were siblings,” Lucian spoke up, “Evander is definitely the black sheep.”

“Be nice,” Jessie chided. “Who knows, maybe he was never a particularly emotive person.”

Lucian cast a doubtful look at her, “well, I know he likes to eat, and even after smelling burgers out here, he just walked through without batting an eye.”

“He’s done early today?” Jessie asked. “Maybe I better go make sure things are going okay.”

She stood up and dismissed herself from the table. Benjamin and Emily began working on cleaning up.

“I’ll make him a plate for later,” Lucian said, getting up and taking the plate of burgers in to the kitchen.

Adam thought for a long moment then made her way through the house to the rec room. Evander was there, running on the treadmill, his gaze locked on the white wall in front of him. Adam looked over her shoulder before closing the rec room door and crossing over to the treadmill beside Evander’s. He looked over, his countenance still bearing little expression, but a great deal of intensity. Adam stepped up on the treadmill and turned it on, glancing at Evander’s speed and matching it. They ran side by side for a moment exchanging glances. Evander reached forward and turned the speed up on his treadmill. Inexplicably driven, Adam matched him again. Again their gaze met. This time, was that a smile on Evander’s face? It was so brief and so subtle she wasn’t sure. He raised his speed again and Adam followed suit. Pretty soon, both were up to nineteen miles per hour and holding pace. Suddenly Evander lowered his speed.

“You’re going to give yourself away if you push too hard,” he said.

Adam lowered the speed on her machine to a comfortable jog, “you assume I don’t want anyone to know that I’m like you too. Why?”

“If you haven’t figured that out for yourself yet,” Evander said, “you should at least trust that I’ve figured some things out in the past two years and heed my advice.”

“What other things have you figured out?” Adam asked.

“They’ll take notice if your diet leans towards any extreme,” Evander said. “Meat helps with the recovery, but if you start eating too much of it, they start to wonder why.”

“I’m wondering why you are helping me,” Adam said. “Everyone says you are a robot.”

“Maybe I am,” Evander said coolly. “I don’t feel.”

“Ever?”

Evander shrugged.

“What about when you first woke up?”

His gaze dropped and he pressed the stop button on the treadmill. As the belt slowed and then stopped, he leaned on the hand rails.

“When I woke up,” he began. “I felt like the containment they had me in was a cage or a trap. I wanted nothing more than to get out of it and I overexerted my body trying to do just that. The pain that followed…” He paused and swallowed hard. “I didn’t know what I was or had been. I just woke up and was. There was no pain prior to that. All I could think was that somehow I was being attacked from inside my own body. I tried to fight it, but there was no fighting it.”

Adam stopped her own treadmill and stepped off the back. “Why help me?”

Evander stepped off his treadmill and, once again, he was uncomfortably close to her.

“Why not tell the doctor everything?”

“I…” Adam searched for a reason but couldn’t find anything beyond a feeling she had that the mistrust both Evander and Lucian had for the staff was justified.

“My new ‘curriculum’ is not for my emotional development,” Evander explained. “I don’t know what they are trying to do with me. They won’t explain anything plainly. Have you ever noticed that?”

Adam thought for a moment then nodded in agreement.

“The things they want us to understand, they explain every detail to us, like children,” Evander said. “There’s things they don’t want us to know and they gives us short, vague, half answers. Those are the things we should be worried about. Ask questions, they’ll assume you are just curious.”

A noise at the door drew both their attention. Lucian stepped in, peering around the door. He beheld the scene before him for a long moment before propping the door open and crossing the room.

“Sharing your new workout regimen?” he asked Evander cooly.

Evander’s eyes shifted slightly as he took a step back from Adam.

“We were actually just talking about…”

“The questions we all have about what really goes on around here,” Lucian interrupted. “I’m not as naive as I lead the good doctors to believe I am. If this robot would share his side of the story, maybe we would have a better idea.”

Evander straightened up and turned away. “You don’t need to know. And, I’m not the only one keeping secrets, soldier.” He threw a towel over his shoulder and made his way to the door, pausing to look back at Adam. “Secrets are the native tongue in this place,” he said. “Keep that in mind, no matter who you’re talking to.”

As Evander disappeared down the hall, Lucian grabbed Adam’s arm, turning her to face him.

“Evander is right,” he said. “But, he also only does anything to benefit himself. When he was still in containment, they brought me in to socialize him. He got to a point where it seemed he and I had an apparent friendship. That was the deciding factor in them letting him out of containment. Then slowly, he stopped spending time with me. Essentially, he figured out how to convince them he was a sociable creature and when he got what he wanted, he figured out how to keep them from catching on to how he played them. They just figured now that he’s out here and there are people around, he can be ‘independent’ without necessarily being alone.”

“He used you,” Adam observed. “And, since you’re emotionally intact, that hurt?”

Lucian paused for a long moment, his blue eyes searching her face. He emitted a defeated sigh and looked down.

“Yeah, ok?” he admitted. “We were the only two beings like us in existance and I hoped there was a real friendship or comradery in there somewhere. There wasn’t.”

“I understand that,” Adam said. “I might not be able to empathize with it, but I understand. You know, they made the comment earlier that we are all kind of like siblings and, it seems like siblings don’t always exactly get along. But, I noticed you made Evander a plate after lunch too. You could have just put away the leftovers and let him make his own plate later.”

Lucian looked back up Adam, his eyebrows furrowed, “are you sure you don’t feel more than you’ve been letting on?”

Adam shrugged, “I’m honestly not sure.”

“Well,” Lucian smiled slightly, “if it’s not emotion, I really like the way you think.”

He and Adam spent the rest of the afternoon talking over a puzzle he had been working on. Adam discovered that Lucian had spent 2 years in the house before Evander came along. He “came alive” as he called it, with emotional intelligence. Adam listened intently, nodding and asking questions. He didn’t know it, but Lucian had given her the key to getting the truth out of both him and Evander. She had the ability to be the friend they both needed. Now, she just needed to figure out how to get answers out of the staff.