Free Program 13 Book One by Nicole Sobon Page B

single tear rolled down Colton ’s cheek. He began to look around the room frantically. Looking for what? I wasn’t sure. “Hold on,” he said, slowly backing away from the Pod. “Just hang on, Emile.”
    He ran behind the Pod, near the computer that the machine was connected to.
    And then everything went dark.
    I could feel the Pod shutting down, my body freeing of its hold. Colton pulled the cord, allowing my Program to function per usual.
    He strolled up to the Pod window, carefully releasing the latch. As he pulled open the doors, I could feel the panic rising in my Program.
    “Now,” he demanded. “What are you?
    I climbed out of the Pod slowly, taking a stance beside Colton . He knew what he saw. Even if he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. He knew I wasn’t like him. There was no point in lying. “I’m a Program.” The words slipped from my mouth so easily, almost as if the truth were nothing in need of hiding.

 
    12 TRUTH BE TOLD
     
     
    “ A nd what the hell does that mean?” Colton asked, clearly annoyed by my lack of explanation.
    “It means that I’m a computer. It means that I’m human outside, but metal inside. What it means is that I am technically not a living, breathing human being,” I shouted, failing to keep a hold of my emotions.
    I believed that I was alive, and that my life was given back to me by Hayden. But it was clear that was not the case. I’d never be alive again. I had no beating heart or lungs to breathe with. Everything that I had become had been carefully constructed. The human I once was, she was gone now and replaced with a computer. I ha d become a replica of myself.
    Colton moved towards me and placed his hand on my chest. “There’s no heartbeat. I don’t understand,” he said, his voice cracking.
    “I’m not human, Colton .” I backed away, looking at the floor.
    “If you’re not human, why do you look like one? Why are you able to talk like one, or act like one? You don’t seem like a computer to me.”  His words were everything that I wanted so desperately to hear, even if I knew they were all a lie.
    “Maybe I could explain it better if I started from the beginning.” I looked up at Colton before continuing. “My name is Emile, as you already know. I was sixteen years old when I was killed .”
    “Killed?” Colton shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
    “Let me explain.” I held up my hand to silence him. “I was walking down an alleyway, headed home, when a car came from out of nowhere and hit me.” I froze as the memory started to play back in my mind. It was a memory I wanted to forget, a memory that forced me to remember just what I had become.
    “The driver was Charles McVeigh. He had been following me for some time, though I was too blind to realize it. When he saw me alone in the alley, he stepped on the gas with every intention of killing me. You see, Charles McVeigh works for Vesta Corp – a company built on rebuilding the dead, turning them into perfect replicas of the living.”
    Colton stared at me as I uttered the words Vesta Corp, the place his parents were brought to upon their death. The place I was brought to upon my death. Yet here I was speaking to him. He had to think there was hope for his parents, too.
    “Without going into specifics, Charles McVeigh planned on using my Program for his idealist society, but my brother, Hayden, found a way to import my personality and memories back onto my core. He brought me back to life, well as close to alive as he could. I’m still technically far from living.”
    He reached forward, brushing his hand softly against my cheek. Shock, confusion, wonder – he wanted to know more about me. He wasn’t running. He wasn’t scared. “You say that you’re not alive, yet here you stand before me able to speak, able to move, able to care. To me, you are alive.” Colton smirked as he held my face between his hands. “Yes, you may be a computer, but you were able to care