Author: Bill Cox

She weeps and Tony’s heart aches like never before. He knows that he will do absolutely anything to protect her. He holds her close and she burrows into his chest, her sobs echoing through his ribcage.

“It’s going to be all right,” Tony whispers, caressing her head gently, “I’ll hide you from them.”

Her sobs pause, she looks up at him.

“Really? You’d do that for me?” she asks, her sky-blue eyes so big that Tony feels himself plummeting into them.

“Yes,” he replies, “Absolutely!”

Tony’s never felt such conviction in his life. The young girl was a stranger banging on his door mere moments ago. Now, he’s sure that he’d give up his very existence to preserve hers.

Some discordant thoughts hover at the edge of this conviction, but she smiles and any doubts melt away like morning fog on a hot summer’s day. She turns her head slightly and he becomes aware of the sound of vehicles approaching the cottage.

“They’re coming,” she whimpers.

Tony feels a power rise within his chest, an iron determination to protect this girl.

“Quickly,” he says, “There’s room to hide underneath the house.”

He walks briskly through to the bathroom and lifts the aged carpet. There’s a small hatch in the floorboards which he pulls up, revealing a dark space below. Her small frame descends into the darkness without difficulty.

She looks up at him, a mixture of emotions playing across her face. There’s fear, which bolsters his anger at her pursuers, but also a flicker of admiration, which swells his chest with pride.

There’s a loud knock at the door.

Tony replaces the hatch and carpet, walks to the front door and opens it. A number of armed men, clad entirely in black, stand there.

“Where is she?” the lead man demands.

“Who?” he replies.

“Anderson?” the man asks one of his colleagues.

“Definite signal from here, within ten metres,” the man replies, consulting a hand-held instrument.

They barge past him into the house, noisily searching the rooms. Tony’s rage builds.

“Down here!” comes a cry from the bathroom.

The next moments are hectic, disjointed. Tony fights them, fists swinging wildly. There’s a shout of “Taser”, a searing spasm of pain. He falls to the floor.

From the bathroom, he’s aware of shouts, yells, what sounds like bones breaking, followed by gunfire.

Tony lies on the ground, unable to move, shame at his failure to protect the girl flooding through his veins.

Someone kneels down beside him.

“Just hold still, mate. I’m a medic, I’m going to check you over.”

He finds his voice. Just a rasp, but enough to be heard.

“Why have they hurt her?” he pleads.

“Ah, it got you good, didn’t it? Listen, it wasn’t a real girl. Just a mechanical shell, with a really good AI inside. They’re too smart, you see, that’s why we hunt them down. They understand us so well they can hack our instincts, wrap you around their little finger. You can’t think your way out of it, it’s all on an unconscious level. Techno-hypnosis, they call it. Don’t worry though, it’ll wear off.”

Tony lies there, the feeling slowly coming back into his limbs. The discordant thoughts from earlier come into focus; the obviously mechanical girl who smelled of plastic and oil, standing at his front door.

Tony feels like a fool and sobs quietly. The soldiers drag the destroyed robot shell outside. Something young did die here today though, its death but a small victory in Planet Earth’s latest war for evolutionary supremacy.