The Eighth Day

Chapter 21

Emma Tyler burst onto the front porch as Echo-7 tore out of the driveway in his pickup with a squeal of tires, Jackson and Garcia sprinting across the yard toward the barn. She raced after them, but they had too big of a lead, and by the time she got to the barn's open doors, they were in the car and backing out. They almost plowed into her, and she jumped out of the way.

"Watch out!" she shouted.

Garcia was in the passenger seat, Jackson behind the wheel. He stomped on the brake, and the car jerked to a stop. "Jesus Christ, Emma," he said through the open window. "I almost ran you over."

"I'm coming with you," she said and started toward the car.

But Jackson shook his head. "Keep your sweet little ass here and hold down the fort. We got this." He winked. "See you soon."

Then he punched the gas and they were gone, rocketing up the drive and out of sight.

Emma clenched her jaw and her fists and fumed, but it was useless. They were gone. She whirled and stomped into the shadowy gullet of the barn. A layer of hay blanketed the floor, and bales of it were stacked in one corner. Tiny particles of hay dust swirled around her, and the stench of it choked the air.

The trapdoor in the rear of the barn was usually hidden beneath a twisted rust of old farm machinery that slid aside when it opened and back into place when it closed. But Jackson and Garcia had left it open, and Emma dropped through it, descending an aluminum ladder into the room hidden below.

There was a bunk bed, closet, kitchenette, bathroom, and washer and dryer combo. There was also a glass multi-touch interface with multiple windows opened to show video feeds of different rooms in the house, a comms control panel, and a moving map that displayed Echo-7's GPS tracker. The place was a mess, dirty clothes and dishes strewn everywhere, and in one corner, a PlayStation 10 projected its holographic main menu.

She studied the moving map, watching the icon that was Echo-7 as he raced away from her with Jackson and Garcia in pursuit.

Fucking Jackson. What a prick.

She should've been used to it by now, guys like him objectifying her, like she was some kind of challenge, a mountain to be climbed. Like she was intrinsically inferior just because she didn't have a penis. All the better if she kept her mouth shut and stayed on the sidelines, as if women's suffrage hadn't happened over a century ago.

Yeah, she looked good. But she hadn't gotten here on looks alone. In high school, she'd been both the homecoming queen and salutatorian. The company had offered her corporate sponsorship during her junior year at Northwestern, and after graduating summa cum laude, she'd entered their training program.

Her father was one of the most sought-after plastic surgeons in Beverley Hills, her mother played the part of his trophy wife, and in public they paid lip service to their marriage. But behind closed doors, her father had made it obvious he wanted neither a daughter nor a family, and her mother drank too much. They weren't real people. They were fakes, frauds, and they disgusted Emma. She went to Northwestern to escape their phony smiles and make-believe life. So when the company's recruiters told her she could leave it all behind, she jumped at the opportunity. It gave her a cause, a purpose. God knew the only cause her parents ever had was impressing their friends at the country club.

A week after graduation, she'd vanished like tears in the rain, and the world kept turning.

Of the seventy-one candidates, only she and two others made it through the brutal training program. Afterward, she applied for field status but instead came down with a desk job at the company's corporate headquarters, and she punched the clock there for over a year before the execs approved her request for a transfer. It would have taken longer, but the chips fell in her favor. Fortunately, men had a way of stepping on their dicks around her.