Read Girl From Above #3: Trapped for Free Online

eyes and mentally reached for the cloud. Like a dream, the cloud embraced me, wrapping my processes in knowledge-rich data, but within moments, the dream darkened. The lingering sensation of being watched amplified a hundredfold and surged over me, sinking in its claws to drag me under. I tried to disengage from the cloud and pull back, but the oily presence tightened, holding me close, refusing to let me go …
    Human sensations of panic and fear shattered my organized attempt to flee so that I flailed uselessly in the stream of knowledge. Whatever had a hold of me didn’t hesitate. It locked onto me with machine precision and dragged me under.

Chapter Three: Caleb
    W hile the synth stood cool and immobile, part of her off searching the datacloud, I studied her smartly dressed figure. She rocked her skirt suit like a fucking celebrity and was just as untouchable. After the chaos of Jesse’s murder and the subsequent police meat grinder, I’d almost forgotten I was supposed to hand the synth over to Bruno in two days. I might have been able to fool her, had the male synthetic not fucked up my plans, but as I’d suspected, she’d read me like a book the second she’d seen me and had known I was hiding a fuck-load of things from her.
    I had to tell her the truth, at least some of it. I wasn’t going to tell her how the Nine also wanted her, or how I’d been thinking of her while Jesse was fucking me. That was too much emotional shit I didn’t need right now. My half-truths seemed to have placated her; she would get us off Lyra, if she could hack the port authority. For now, that would have to do. If I could get back-in-black, maybe I could think straight again. As is, I could barely string a fucking sentence together without wanting to throw a punch or throw up. The synth would tell me that I was having a psychological breakdown. Fuck her constant reports and her detached bubble of not giving a fuck.
    I slid my gaze down her shoulder and over the neat curves of her jacket where it hugged her chest and the sweet hollow of her waist, and down those athletic legs. Fuck. I knew she wasn’t real. Her and her five hundred sisters looked the same. The real her —#1001, Haley, or whoever she really was—existed in her head somewhere, trapped between programming and memories. But I could look to distract myself for a few seconds. I shifted in the chair and adjusted my pants as I started getting hard. It occurred to me that this was probably a fucked-up thing to be doing—getting my rocks off while she was plugged into some metaphysical data-plane—but I didn’t give a shit.
    Then I remembered how the male synth had broken Jesse’s neck as easily as snapping a twig and my distraction technique withered. That man—that machine had killed without blinking. He—it had felt nothing in that moment between her life and her death. All one thousand synthetic units were the same: Cold. Hard. Machines. I’d tortured myself with the image of Jesse’s death while sitting in the jail cell. The last moments of her life had consisted of fucking an asshole smuggler who hadn’t even been thinking about her. I’d been low before, but this time I wasn’t sure I could possibly hate myself more.
    The synth collapsed.
    She just fell, as though someone had unplugged her.
    “Hey!” I dropped to my knees and gripped her cool face in my hands.
    Her fucking eyes were open but unfocused. When I waved my hand in front of her, she didn’t flinch.
    “Holy shit.” I patted her cheek and then lightly slapped her, but she didn’t register a thing. “Synth…?” Was she dead? “Synth? C’mon … you can’t do this right now.”
    Nothing. I reached for a pulse point on her neck and then wondered what the fuck I was doing. She didn’t have a heart to beat.
    “Is there an on switch? A reset fucking button?!”
    How the fuck do these synthetics work? I spied her wrist comms. If I called Doctor Lloyd, I’d risk pinging our location and the