The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense by Marling Sloan

make
it.”
    “Of course,” the man said.
“This is an important occasion.” His voice was raspy, with a hint
of a European accent.
    “Let’s sit down on the
couches,” Damian said.
    He and the man sat down on
the couches in the sitting area.
    The man leveled cold blue
eyes on Damian.
    “We’ve been keeping tabs on
the progress of your androids,” he said. “We’re
impressed.”
    “Good,” Damian said.
“They’re supposed to impress.”
    The man leaned back against
the couch and clasped his hands together.
    “We’re prepared to open our
coffers to you, and our network of influencers all over the world.
But our involvement won’t come without a price. You know what that
price is.”
    “I know what it is,” Damian
said. “And I’m prepared to meet it.”
    The man studied him
hard.
    “You do want to change the
world,” he said. “But perhaps not in the way that the world
thinks.”
    Damian smiled.

    Brigite hurried back to the
fortieth floor from Damian’s office, running up the stairs in her
skimpy red bikini. Her steps echoed in the white marble stairwell.
She heard a door slam behind her and then suddenly she felt a hand
grab her neck and swing her against the wall.
    Tony del Travio stood in
front of her, with a twisted smile.
    “Where’ve you been, Brigite?
I was running diagnostics on all the other X-droids, but I didn’t
see you in the line-up.”
    “I was attending to Mr.
Foster,” Brigite said.
    “Mr. Foster, Mr. Foster,”
Tony mimicked. He grabbed her and yanked at her bikini
top.
    Brigite screamed. Her scream
echoed in the stairs.
    “Quiet,” Tony said, covering
her mouth with his hand. “There’s no use fighting, Brigite. I
disabled your shock system while you were sleeping.”
    Brigite stared at
him.
    Suddenly a strong arm locked
around Tony’s neck and dragged him away from Brigite. Tony gasped
for breath.
    “If I ever see you try
something like that again, you’re dead,” Luke said to him in his
ear, quietly. “Do you understand?”
    “Y – Yes,” Tony tried to
say. He waved his arms for emphasis.
    Luke let him go. Tony
stumbled down the stairs, but not without casting a hateful look at
Luke.
    Luke turned to
Brigite.
    “Are you okay?”
    Brigite nodded. She gathered
her fallen bikini top and pressed it against herself. She tried to
smooth her tangled bright blue hair.
    “Thank you,” she
said.
    “Come on,” Luke said, taking
her arm. “I’ll take you back up to floor forty.”

Chapter 17.
    “So I thought we might be
able to begin by making a review of the Super Soldiers,” Lina said.
“You can meet the other product designers as well. But the Super
Soldiers are a good place to start because they’ve been having some
maintenance issues. You might have some ideas on how to fix
them.”
    She and Luke were walking
down the long white hallway in Product Development. Ahead of them
there were three people huddled in a group, talking among
themselves.
    “Hey guys!” Lina called to
them. “Meet Luke!”
    The three designers turned
towards them. One of them was a tall, thin, angular woman with
iron-gray hair cut in a severe fringe. One was a short bearded man
with a visible stomach. The third was a brown-haired, round-faced
girl with extremely thick glasses.
    “This is Melinda Darts,”
Lina said, indicating the tall gray-haired woman. “Joe Alvin, and
Ledia Halsen. They’re the three designers on the android lines,
besides me.”
    The three people shook
Luke’s hand with immense interest.
    “The three of us had a
chance to look at the data read outs from your imaging session,
Luke,” Joe said. “It floored us, everything that went into making
you. Your designer was a genius.”
    “He is,” Luke
said.
    “Is,” Joe said. “Can’t give
up hope, right?”
    “I told Luke we’d start out
by showing him the progress on the Super Soldiers,” Lina said. “And
the kinks.”
    “Right-o,” Ledia said.
“Sounds good. Let’s go. Captain Mercenare is at the