HUMANS (A Humans Novel) #Wattys2015

Chapter Eight

Note: 300 views, so many wonderful comments and votes! Is it Christmas?!

"Odi!" she called her friend, feeling slightly distressed at her sudden wave of nausea.

The sound of his fast approaching footsteps reverberated throughout the abandoned repair store.

As he entered the main room they were inhabiting, warmth from the space heater hit him, causing the synth to feel uncomfortably hot under the collar. "Pine, it's boiling in here!" he declared, kneeling down to lower the thermostat temperature.

From her perch on th table, Pine squeaked at the sight of him making the room cooler. "But I'm cold." she whined, wrapping her yellow, woolen blanket closer around her trembling figure.

Striding over to the female, Odi proceeded to place a palm on her forehead. "You're burning up, my scans show that your current temperature is 37 degrees."

Her eyes widened at this information, her already flushed cheeks darkening with an added blush. "Oh."

He frowned further. "Do you feel dizzy?"

"A little." she mumbled in a low voice, averting her gaze to the concrete floor.

"Headache?"

Pine nodded.

"I don't think I really need to ask this but I will anyway, do you feel cold?"

The female shot Odi a look of pure annoyance, as she began to cough violently.

"Okay, so you've got a cough too." he muttered unhappily under his breath, whilst patting Pine on the back. Once her bone-shaking coughs had died down, he soothingly rubbed her back in small circles, trying to relieve some of the aching in her lungs.

Wiping the tears of pain from her red-rimmed eyes, the female took in a shaky breath, a wheeze filling her chest as she did. Her eye sight was now marred with a yellow tinge, making everything appear a sickly colour, which just added to her increasing nausea. She slumped forward, elbows on knees and her head resting in her hands. "Urgh, I feel awful."

"I'm not surprised, you're suffering from the flu."

"Did your scans tell you that?" her question reached his ears as a muffled murmur, which he was still able to just comprehend.

"I typed your symptoms into the in-built internet server in my system."

"Huh."

Then Odi frowned, looking slightly nervous. "Pine, you need a doctor."

There was an brief moment of silence between the synth and human. Odi dared not look at Pine, knowing what she was going to say to him, ahem, opinion.

"No." she hissed through gritted teeth.

"Pine, please-"

The female shook her head. "No, Odi " she cut him off. "You know that I can't. To have a doctor examine me, I have to set up a patient file. To set up a file, I need identification, which I do not possess. Also..." she trailed off, coughing again. "Also..." Pine gasped.

Moving away from her side to stand directly before Pine, Odi knelt down so that she was gazing down at him instead of up. "I know that you don't want the authorities to find you but I don't know why. When you gave me consciousness, there was an automatic download which overrode my server and forced me to trust you."

Tears were now spilling from her eyes. "Odi, I'm so sorry-"

"-But my systems deleted that download immediately after installation." Odi paused. "I decided to trust you of my own free will. Pine, I know you're in danger but I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong. What's stopping you from seeking help?" his green eyes stared at her, pleading and sad.

"There's..." she whispered. "There's a guy called Grey Steel."

The male stood up and sat next to her on the metal table, the cool material seeping through his synthetic skin, his systems registering the change in temperature.

"And he wants to kill me."

For a moment Odi was sure that if he had a heart, it would have skipped a beat.

"My name isn't Pine Tree, nor is his Grey Steel, they are the code names we chose. My real name is..." she began coughing. "My name is Adeline James."

She watched as Odi used his internal internet server to search her name. "Your Father was Doctor Harrison James."

More coughing from Pine.

"Who assisted Elster and Millican on the original synth project."

Silence.

"But he left the team because his wife gave birth to little girl..." the blonde synth's voice trailed off. "...who was stillborn."