Zaharah pushed her vegetable curry around in the bowl, the potatoes carrots and cauliflower mixing with the rice. The pit in her stomach was both full and empty – full of worry but devoid of food. Her mind kept going back to the video, back to that night, back to the accident.
Her phone sat at the centre of the table, purple casing glinting under the lights. Jade's and Markus' flanked it, plain silver and black because they had no taste. Skorpi stood guard over them, with orders from Markus to pinch anyone who tried to grab theirs. And he took his job seriously.
She tore her gaze away from the phone and let it drift around the kitchen instead. The yellow walls were Jade's idea, along with the floral curtains hiding the sliding glass door. The doilies on the round dining table and vase of fake flowers at its center completed the grandma chic look.
The only contribution Zaharah had made was a chip on her side of the table from when she'd slammed her metal arm into it. She'd often toy with it when she got lost in her thoughts, digging the chip deeper.
"Zaharah." Markus' voice cut into her thoughts. Both he and Jade stared at her as though she had sprouted horns.
"Yeah?" She stuffed a mouthful of food in her mouth and chewed even though the taste didn't register. She could have been munching on a forkful of spiders for all she knew.
Markus frowned at her. "What's going on with you?" Nothing ever got by Markus. He could tell when something was wrong with her or Jade, which made him uncannily more human than the other androids.
"I've just been in my head a lot, sorry."
She's fine, Markus, Jade signed. You know how dramatic Zaharah is sometimes.
Zaharah feigned offense, but under the guise she was grateful. Markus could get doting when he thought something was wrong with them. He'd hover around with offerings of cookies and ice-cream until they talked. And her thighs were thicc enough as is.
He put his hands up in mock surrender. "Fine. How was the beta testing today?"
"It was fun." Zaharah snatched her phone and stood, ignoring Skorpi's beeping. "But that reminds me, I have to make a call. The Director pulled me from the lab early so I didn't have time to give feedback."
"What did she want?" Markus asked, before she could escape to the balcony.
"Something about a new arm. Said she'd have a cybernetics team on the mainland come up with something. It's still in the early stages, and I haven't decided." She backed towards the sliding doors until the curtains brushed against her hands. "I'll tell you about it later. It was an... interesting meeting."
Zaharah slipped outside and dumped herself into a chair, the wicker squeaking beneath her weight. Beyond the metal rail the community gardens glistened, sheened by the rain. The HID lamps shined down on rows of vegetables. Tomato vines, hung heavy from lattices and planters filled with herbs weighed down the long tables and benches edging the pathways. At the center of the garden was a hog plum tree, bare this time of year. Its spindly branches stretched high enough for her to lean over and touch them.
She popped the screen on her phone, and swore at the sight of the email, still open. Want the rest? Ask Dwight. Her leg shook, an unconscious habit she'd developed after all the surgery and physical therapy. She switched to the phone's dialler and punched in half of Jodi's number. Then erased it and dialled Dwight instead.
"What?" he answered after a single ring. Charming as always.
"Why are you sending me creepy emails?" A long pause followed, and she could imagine him scowling at the phone.
"The fuck are you talking about? I sent you a photo. The one you asked for."
She sunk down in the chair, the collar of her shirt suddenly tight against her throat. "Are you sure?"
"Zaharah, go waste someone else's time please."
"Wait!" She bit the corner of her lip. If the email was a stupid, insensitive prank, she wanted to know who did it, and Dwight had the resources and knowledge to find out. And the prankster had mentioned him.
"Someone sent me a video," she explained, the words tumbling from her mouth in one continuous breath. "It was security camera footage from the night of the accident. And it said the Director isn't my friend. I'm not sure if it's real or if someone is trying to mess with me."
"Zaharah..." Dwight's voice passed through her head, but it didn't register amongst the frantic ramblings filling her mind.
"You were mentioned too. It said if I wanted the rest, I should ask you. And there was this thing... this robot thing in the video. I feel like I've seen it before but I don't know where." Her leg shook hard enough to rattle the whole chair. "Some Cammi person sent it, and—"
"All right. All right." Dwight exhaled and Zaharah could imagine a cloud of vapour surrounding his head. "Just so we're clear. You got a strange email from someone you don't know, and you opened it? I thought you were smart."
She refused to take that bait.
"Are you home?"
"Yes, why?"
"I'll be there in a few minutes." The scraping of his chair came through the phone.
"Okay. But meet me down in the garden. I haven't told Jade and Markus about this and I don't want them to worry." Any more than they are already, she added in her head.
"Fine." And he hung up.
Zaharah pulled down the screen and pressed the base of her phone against her temple. The cool casing shocked her skin and she tapped her metal fingers against it. She hated these moments of weakness, when her mind seemed to work against her. The paranoia grabbed her by the throat, squeezed hard and made her sweat and shiver all at once.
Was I this much of a nervous wreck before the accident? She couldn't remember. Her arm shook as she pushed herself up on her feet and she stretched the stiffness from her joints. Back in the kitchen, she found the table cleared and dirty dishes in the sink.
Skorpi waited for her on the table, standing with pincers opened and pointed up like he was ready to fight her for breaking the kitchen bylaws. She scooped him up with her metal hand, and he clamped onto her thumb.
"I'm sorry," she said. He made a sound halfway between a beep and a hiss and beat her hand with his free pincer.
In the living room, Jade sat on a cushion while Markus parted her kinks and coils into manageable sections. Oils, moisturisers and ombre kanekalon sat on the coffee table, and prime time cartoons blasted on the TV.
"What do you think Zaharah?" Demarkus asked. "Braids or twists."
"Yeah." Zaharah drifted by them and grabbed a pair of flip-flops from by the door. "Dwight wants to meet with me. I won't be gone long." And since Skorpi refused to surrender her finger, so he was going too. She slipped out the door before Markus or Jade could stop her and took the stairs down to the garden.
Zaharah sat on a bench with her back to the pots of aloe vera, not caring that the water soaked through her pyjamas. The rain had cooled the air down, left it crisp and pleasant to breathe, yet lungfuls of it did nothing to loosen the tightness in her chest. Her finger hovered over glowing blue button her phone's base, ready to pop the screen up and play the video again.
And again and again. Until she knew for certain it wasn't her and Jade running from that metal beast. Those lights, those blinking lights danced in front of her face, mocked her. Blue, green, blue, green. The date, the time, the lights, it was all too much to be a coincidence.
The Director is not your friend. Ask Dwight.
Skorpi rapped his legs against her hand, and the noise brought her out of her own head and back into the garden.
Zaharah looked up in time Dwight appear in the doorway, a silver case tucked under his arm, usual scowl in place; he wore his resting bitch face horribly. It clashed with his boyish features and, combined with the glasses, made him look like an angry, hipster nerd from the 2010s.
He threw his jacket over the wet bench before straddling it. "Give me your phone."
Zaharah obliged without a word, rapped the fingers of her good hand on the bench while he set up his computer. She went cross-eyed trying to follow his inputs since everything was backwards from her vantage point. Windows came up, text ran across them, the lights on her phone blinked.
"Mmm," Dwight hummed. Another window popped open with the email on display. The video played, and her mind told her to look away, but her eyes stayed glued to the screen.
Meanwhile, Dwight watched as though it was a Sunday matinee, body angled towards the screen and e-cigarette balanced between his fingers. His expression remained neutral even when the two figures ran onto the scene, even when the mechanical nightmare fuel glared at him. His stoicism in the face of it, made her want to punch him in the throat. How could he be so calm?
"Well?" she asked when the video ended.
He took a long drag from his cigarette. "Well what?"
"Who were those people? What was that thing? Do you have the rest of the video? Where is this even from?"
"That thing was a creeper. It's a type of android the teams on the mainland have been working on for... military and law enforcement applications. They're still in beta, so this could be footage from a test. Those two people may be androids too."
Androids. Beta test. She was being hysterical for nothing. Her leg still shook and her clothes were squeezing the life out of her. "But that date. That's the night of the..." She forced the word through the tightness in her throat. "... accident."
Dwight shrugged a shoulder. "This Cammi may be trying to stir up trouble or scare you. The good news is this wasn't a malware attack. I'll look into it further."
"Fine," she said on an exhale. It made little sense. She had given no one in Denden a reason to bother her. Other than the Director, the people at the lab and the Doctors at the clinic, the only people she spoke to were Jade and Markus.
Zaharah debated telling him about the blinking lights, about Skorpi. He might pass it off as another coincidence. She'd keep it to herself, in case he was lying.
"Okay. But could you keep this between us for now? I just don't want this to blow up into a bigger deal than it probably is," she added when Dwight quirked a brow at her.
"All right. I'll let you know if I learn anything new." He snapped his case shut, but not before she caught a glimpse of the video's final frame. The creeper, lunging towards the figure as they ran for the garage.
An android? Zaharah wondered. Or me?