AI - Alpha Part 29

Her lips curved upward. "Ouch?""You don't want to hear what I really want to say." He took the bowl and discovered it was full of vegetable soup. Alpha held the crackers and the water while he ate. He didn't know what to say to her. Let me go had so far been futile.

"I think I figured this out," Thomas finally said.

Alpha regarded him warily. "Figured what out?"

"Your behavior." She wouldn't be able to resist that.

She raised an eyebrow. "Do tell."

"You took the EL-38 and the Banshee because you feared your own people would attack you."

"So what's to figure out? They did attack."

He settled back on the pillows. "By protecting yourself, you provoked the attack. Heading for the base in an armed fighter is hardly a friendly act. Maybe they thought the same thing about you that you did about them. You're Charon's right hand, after all." That was a guess, but it was worth throwing out to see what she said.

She frowned. "What makes you think I'm his 'right' anything?"

"Your interactions with him when I was your prisoner the first time."

Alpha spoke carefully. "I suppose you could call me one of his top officers. But his corporations have presidents and CEOs, all legit. They're his top people."

"Then you do military strategy for him."

"As much as anyone."

"And manage his personal finances."

Alpha shrugged. "Manage. Invest. Track. Sell. A lot of people use AIs for financial advice." She stared out the window. "That wasn't what he primarily wanted from me, though."

"What was it?"

She turned back to scowl at him. "You know how I can tell you're getting better? You're bothering me with questions again."

"You intrigue me." That was certainly an understatement.

"You enthrall me," she said dryly, looked more distracted than enthralled. "You cause me to input an entirely new range of human behavior, motivation, and emotion."

He smiled. "Always knew I was captivating."

"Don't give me that killer grin, Thomas Wharington."

He couldn't help but laugh. "What grin?" Although he had never figured out what about his smiles caused women to take such notice, it had never given him cause for complaint.

Alpha pushed her hand through her hair. "I have to figure out what to do from here."

He didn't think she was referring to his facial expressions. "The Banshee needs fuel."

"We could reach England with what we have."

"Charon has a base there?"

"No. The country is too heavily populated." She put his soup bowl on the floor. "Maybe we have to go back to the U.S."

"Alpha, listen." Thomas pulled himself up straighter. "Let me take you in with the Banshee. My people can protect you from whoever tried to kill us."

She gave him a dour look. "Your people are the ones who want to kill me."

"If you cooperate with them, they won't harm you."

"You said you couldn't guarantee that."

"I think I can." He wasn't 100 percent certain, but he thought he had a good chance of convincing General Chang.

Alpha was studying his face. "You aren't positive."

Her ability to judge the nuances of human expression was improving. Unfortunately. "Not absolutely.

But close."

Alpha rubbed her eyes. Her face was no longer perfect; signs of strain showed in its lines. "I've seen a different view of humanity from you. It's given me things to think about. But you're crafty. You would try anything to trick me into taking you back."

"Of course I would. So would you, in my position."

"Except I got myself out of that position."

He was tiring, but he couldn't let that opening go by. "How? The only way you could slip out of that safe house was with help from someone on the inside. And you knocked out my sec-techs."

"Your bodyguards weren't that difficult. Humans can't fight worth spit, and I'm designed to counter sec techs. Their bee-bots were easy to deactivate, too."

"You couldn't have knocked out all the guards and security systems at the safe house."

She met his gaze without a flicker of reaction.

"Who helped you?" he asked. Had his own people set him up?

Silence.

"d.a.m.n it, Alpha."

She leaned forward. "You are aghast at the idea that someone may have betrayed you. Yet you want me to betray Charon."

"Don't compare me to Charon."

"You are different. But the principle is the same."

"No it isn't. Charon betrayed you every day of your existence, every time he treated you like a slave. It was immoral."

Her voice went icy. "Who made you the judge of morality?"

"I don't know any standard that would judge Charon as moral."

"His own."

"Why the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l do you defend him?"

"He made me," Alpha said. "I exist for him."

Thomas was about to challenge her-but she wasn't done. She spoke slowly, enunciating each word as if it were difficult to p.r.o.nounce. "But Charon is dead and I am not."

It was only one sentence, but it contained some of the most important words she had ever spoken.

"Yes," Thomas said. "You have a right to-"

"No." She raised her hand, palm out. "No more."

"All right." He didn't want her to feel backed into a corner.

"Has your heart malfunction ceased?"

"I think so. But there may be damage. I need a hospital."

"We have four possibilities," Alpha said.

"Four?" Just the idea tired him.

"The first is this: I find a way to refuel and take you to Charon's base."

"What if his people there attack?"

Her eyes glinted. "Then I bomb the h.e.l.l out of them."

He grimaced. "Great."

"I won't bomb the hospital."

"I think I want to hear the second possibility."

She spoke matter-of-factly. "We return to the U.S. and I contact Charon's people to find out why they attacked. I tell them I have you. What we do after that depends on their response."

"I don't like that one, either."

"Number three is we do it your way."

His pulse jumped. "Good! We should go with three."

"Number four is we stay here."

Thomas blinked, bewildered. "You mean until whoever owns this station finds us?"

"I don't know." She turned her hands palm up, then dropped her arms. "I calculate many scenarios for plan four. Some involve people finding us, others involve us leaving here. All involve me not having to make an immediate decision, which is good, and you not reaching a hospital, which is bad."

He suddenly understood. "You want freedom."

"I don't know what I want."

She said it neutrally, but he didn't miss the significance. Until now she had maintained she didn't "want"

anything.

"You look weary," she said. "Am I causing this?"

"No." He rubbed his shoulders. "I'm just stiff."

"Lie down on your stomach."

"Why?"

"I may be able to alleviate the stiffness."

Well, what the h.e.l.l. What else could she do to him? He pushed aside the pillows and lay facedown on the bed. When Alpha started working his shoulders with a deep tissue ma.s.sage, he groaned.

"Is that helping or hurting?" she asked.

"Helping." It was bliss.

She continued to work, and gradually he relaxed. He drifted, mulling over arguments to convince her that option three was their best choice. He was vaguely aware as her ministrations wandered from his shoulders down his back. When she went lower yet, his body started having a reaction he hadn't expected so soon after a heart attack. The last time, he hadn't wanted a woman for months. It could have been the drugs, but he suspected at least part of it had been a depression he hadn't wanted to admit.

Maybe it had all been his mental state, given the way his body was reacting now.

"Alpha." His voice was blurred. "You should stop."

"Umm." She kept ma.s.saging. She pulled the covers down to his knees and then worked on his hips with slow, deep strokes.

"Don't do that," Thomas said, without conviction.

She caressed a scar on his hip. "How did you get this?"

"Helicopter crash." His voice was low. "Got shot down." It was why he had a Purple Heart.

"I thought you were a fighter pilot."

"I was. Just . . . going for supplies."

She moved her hand between his legs. When she reached under him and curved her hand around his erection, he groaned. "If you keep that up, I can't be responsible for my actions."She leaned down and spoke against his ear. "Good."Thomas was tempted to say, What about Charon? He should stop for a lot of reasons. He didn't have to avoid intimacy because he had a heart condition, and supposedly gentle s.e.x wouldn't strain him any more than walking the dog, but that a.s.sumed he had already recovered. Less than three days had pa.s.sed since his attack, which put him at risk by any standard.