| He had always felt at home with shining
chrome and flashing LEDs.
His earliest memories were of a room filled with a giant
computer that
flashed and whirred, with its large, sporadically spinning
tape reels
and the clunky noises it made whenever a calculation had
been
completed. He recalled a white Knight and a black
steed made not
of flesh but of metal. He remembered seeing it once,
the sun
shining off its polished hide, that haunting, hypnotic red
light moving
eerily, steadily, back and forth. After his father's
death, that
light - that demonic, monoscopic eye - had stalked him
through his
childhood nightmares. His father had left him a legacy of villainy and the means and method by which to apply it. He had spent his life learning, modernising, building a network of contacts and associates, and he'd been close, so close to his goal at one point that the bitter tang of finality had been on his tongue, the blood of his enemy had almost been on his lips�. The network had failed him. The Knight and his steed had vanished, literally, dropped off the face of the Earth. For years there were only rumours, stories of another Knight, another steed, this time not white and black but grey. More dangerous, more powerful, a deadly enemy apparently, and some of his contacts also vanished, their charred bodies found in the smouldering shells of their cars or houses, their legacies destroyed. In response he had relocated his own work, made his lab more secure, kept only his trusted employees and had the rest murdered in a series of increasingly bizarre accidents. Because in the end his life had only one purpose, and unlike his father, he'd succeeded in capturing the one thing the black Knight would himself die for. Not the thing he'd expected it to be all these years of waiting, of biding time. In the dreams which he'd had throughout his adult life he'd imagined some sort of harness suspended the black steed in place; wheels spinning, that single red eye flashing back and forth in panic while the drills penetrated the impenetrable hide, and the diamond points cut into vulnerable electronics, nerve-like wires, slashing the veins and arteries of the machine until it finally died. What he'd captured was something he still didn't understand. And it was held prisoner before him not in a harness but a cradle. Not held with chains but cuffs and bolts. His associates had assured him that while Knight and steed had been inseparable, this blond haired, brown eyed thing staring back at him, wrists restrained either side of his human head, legs pulled apart, ankles fixed in place, was just as important, perhaps even more so, to the older, wiser man he had hunted for twenty years. After so long, so many nightmares and dreams, so much plotting, scheming and baiting, it was something of an anti-climax to be torturing not an aging multi-million dollar defence project, but the reproduction of a man no older than himself. His own perversity had surprised him, faced with this pathetic thing, but not one of the devices of the crudely designed, rapidly made one-off cradle had brought so much as a tear to the large, brown eyes, or forced a single minute sound from the fleshy lips. Why would a Knight be willing to die for something so� fake? Sebastian Deauville was beginning to suspect he'd been lied to, fed false information either by mistake or knowingly by his own enemies, because he'd surely made many over the years, and when the hours started to flow into one and trying to cause pain was tiring him, he lost the stoic calm that had kept him going for all the long years. "Why won't you SCREAM?!" And for the first time since his capture, the man - the thing - in the cradle spoke. In a voice that Deauville recognised, remembered from one day when he was eight years old and he'd watched a man in leather talk a black car into not killing him. "I know who you are. I remember your father. Tell me, why should I scream for you?" It took him a moment to get over the shock of hearing that voice again. "I couldn't kill you, Michael�." And he failed to keep the awe completely from his own words when he breathed in amazement, "You really are, aren't you?" "I really am. Do I look so different?" The question was asked with a sarcastic lean and a little smile and he wanted to do something he hadn't done in as long as he could remember; he wanted to shout with joy. "How?" "Progress. Something you apparently don't understand." Wary, on the look out for any tricks, he took a step back from his seemingly helpless captive, cane in one hand, hand-gun in the other; both had belonged to his father, a man who'd consistently failed in everything he'd ever set out to achieve, a man who in the end had deserved his fate. Now he deserved a moment of two of gloating before he completed the work his whole life had been dedicated to. "Of course I do! I, of all people! Look around you! This whole place is progress. My father was a second-rate criminal, a man who consistently used the wrong tools for every job. I've never made a mistake." Those brown eyes - harder than he'd initially given them credit for - flicked from one side of the gadget-filled lab to the other. "You're not special. You've made the same mistakes every other power-crazed, ego-driven James Bond villain-type makes. What do see when you look at me? A young man? A child even? Blond hair, brown eyes, slim frame? Vulnerable without his guardian, his protector? That's not who I am, or what I am." He laughed. Or rather he made a noise in his throat that he termed a laugh. He couldn't remember what real laughter sounded like. "You're synthetic skin stretched over a metal frame. You're a robot. And a cheap one at that. You're nothing." "You're wrong. I'm the protector. I'm the guardian. Are you honestly under the illusion that these bonds will hold me?" As he spoke, impossibly the left restraint opened. Lifting the gun, Deauville fired� and the bullet was caught in the robot's left hand, tearing open the skin, lodging between two metal 'bones' in the skeletal structure beneath. Deauville backed up. "Why did you wait...? Why did you let me�?" "I'm not like you. I can choose which actions to engage in and which to ignore. Torturing this body is like torturing one of your computers, and just as effective. So while you were having your perverted fun, I did just that, and I know what I'm doing. I have all the information I need. I have directory paths to all your research, passwords to wipe your systems and codes to disable security and let in my friends who are waiting just outside�." He heard heavy doors opening, the sound of an invasion. He fired again, and again, and again, each bullet tearing clothes, skin, lodging harmlessly against whatever alloy the futuristic robot was made of. Still the steed, still the protector. He didn't bother trying to escape. There was something sickly nice about the grip that wrenched his right arm up and twisted him around so that he dropped his gun, something nauseatingly comforting about the hard body he was held against, the warm arm around his throat in a gentle lock that he had no doubt now would break his neck if he was considered a threat. Not to the one who had him. But to the one approaching. The Knight indeed looked older and wiser. But at the same time he looked happier, more content, like the worries of the world had lifted from his shoulders. Deauville had always believed he'd shared those worries somehow. He knew now he'd been wrong. He stopped no more than a couple of inches from them, gaze flicking over Deauville's face but otherwise ignoring him, settling on the face of the robot behind him, asking in the tenderest of tones, "Are you okay?" Reaching a hand out, briefly stroking man-made skin, false warmth, fake hair, touching the damaged hand. "I'm fine, Michael." His life's work had been a waste, just like his father's. The robot had been right - he wasn't special, he was just one in a long line of failures. Breaking the top of his father's cane off in his free right hand, he raised the barrel of the small weapon to underneath his chin and pushed the button under his thumb, firing the single shot up inside his skull and through his brain. ~ The distant sounds from the Docks reached him in the still of the cold evening air. Leaning on the railing outside Nicholas MacKenize's warehouse - the place that had long been his home - he watched the water rise and fall, the waves made by the cargo ships as they returned home or started out on their long voyage. "Kitt?" He turned his head slightly, relaxing his taught frame as Michael's arms came around him from behind and a hard chin rested on top of his head. "I knew you were lying to me back there." "I wasn't lying at the time. I was okay until he took his own life while I held him�" in my arms. He wasn't surprised that no more words were forthcoming. He closed his eyes and for a while he simply felt the physical warmth of his partner around him, and rested against the other warmth, the presence of Michael in his mind. Gentle teeth lovingly bit the back of his neck, just below where the implant that linked them sat protected at the base of his android skull. "Want to go home?" he was asked after the sounds had died down and the sky had darkened. How much time did they spend lost in one another other the years? "No. I want to stay here tonight. Where's Nick?" "Dealing with Deauville's associates." "I want to talk to KARR when they get back." "That could be a long time." "I'll wait." He felt the touch of lips to the sensitive skin at the top of his spine and increased the input of sensations from that spot, shivering slightly. Michael's voice was low, soft when he asked, "Can I wait with you?" Hands spread flat on his stomach and abdomen, he could feel their heat through the cotton of his white shirt, and he leaned back into the tight embrace. "Please do." Wet lips caressed his throat, the ghosts of kisses over bloodless flesh. The damage they'd had to fix hadn't been mentioned, the cause of it left for a later discussion. Michael would have been able to read the idea of it anyway, as he'd dropped the block and opened himself to his partner on the drive back from Deauville's 'lair'. The highly modified TransAm did most of the work anyway, with Kitt giving a remote nudge now and again, and in their way he and Michael had already 'talked' about what had happened, the increasingly dangerous lengths they were going to. "You're not Nick," Kitt reminded him gently, continuing the wordless conversation that had been going on in their heads. "Wouldn't be doing this if I was." "I mean, you don't have to be him. He may think sometimes he has nothing to live for, but you do." The kisses faltered. "There'll come a time�." "A time that's still a long way off." "I'll be old and tired and you'll still look like this." //don't do this now// //then what do you want?// //make love to me inside on the car// The kisses returned. //kinky// //you're the one in a relationship with a fake// //you're not a fake you're more real than most people I know// Only the halogen spotlights in the floor of the warehouse were turned on. The living area upstairs, the area away from where their black car was parked, was in degrees darker right back to the cobwebs shrouded in black in the very far corners. Lying back against the windscreen, naked on the smooth bonnet, Michael's hands held his partner in place, arched on top of him, the blond head dropped back against his shoulder so he could bury his face in the spun silk hair, taut butt cheeks pressed to the tops of his thighs, his cock buried deep inside the fever-hot body, legs and feet tangled, Kitt's toes curled tight against the warm skin of the car, arms out, palms flat, supporting the weight of him. Slowly, so slowly, Michael tilted his hips back and forth, the only movement he could make, stroking in and out of his lover while Kitt's hips tipped to meet him. They remained in the position long after both had echoed their shared climax to one another through the mental bond, an oddly silent moment, no sound to bounce around the huge mostly empty space of the warehouse. After a while Kitt shifted, turned his head and Michael smiled into eyes like warm brandy. //what?// Kitt though moved to the more usual method of speech, quietly starting, "Deauville kept talking about his father. Do you remember him?" "Yeah. Jacob Deauville. I looked him up when this whole thing started. Twenty years ago he got to you through Bonnie, had her reprogram you to assist in a robbery and when it didn't work turned you on me. A year later he stole the car with the help of an ex-Foundation technician, held you hostage�" he trailed off. "Tortured me for twenty-nine hours and fifty-four minutes. When you turned up, cavalry in tow�" "�there was a fight. And I killed him." "You didn't mean to." "Maybe. But I wanted to. He left the communicator link active and I� I could hear you screaming. Believe me, I wanted him dead. I put my hands around his throat to strangle him. He kicked out, broke away, cracked his head when he fell and died of the injury but� it was my fault." What Kitt sent through the link in response wasn't verbal, and couldn't be translated into more than a smile and a kiss. "KARR and Nick are on their way back." Michael sighed. "Better put some clothes on then." |