Chapter Text
“Be polite, Rey. Mister Ren will arrive this afternoon, and I expect you to treat him with respect. Understood?”
Mom gives Rey a whole low-down on the new bodyguard before she leaves for a meeting or whatever it is she has to do that day. Rey rolls her eyes and waves her off, too busy texting to care much about what mom wants. He’ll probably be dumb and annoying.
“He’s a robot,” Rey says, bouncing her heels on the armrest of the new white $3000 couch. “I don’t think he cares about respect.”
“He is an android, Rey.” Mom slaps Rey’s feet off the armrest, jangling the shiny diamond bracelets on her wrist. “You know they’re just as human as you and I.”
“Except they’re not.”
“Rey. Be nice to him. If Jeff tells me you were rude, we’re going to have an unpleasant discussion.”
“Fine. I’ll be nice to the Terminator.”
Mom heaves a sigh and shakes her head. “He’s here to protect you, you know. The least you could do is be nice to him.”
She leaves, and Rey is left to think about that. Lots of threats have been coming since mom was elected to the Senate, but Rey is pretty sure they’re all bullshit. Paying for Kylo Ren is coming out of her tuition money, too. He’s really ruining her life.
But it’s summer vacation, so Rey doesn’t want to spend the day being pissed off.
She goes for a swim in the indoor pool and waves for the cameras each time she does a lap. New house. Mom and her used to live in a efficiency apartment (which is a nice way of saying a dump) but now they’re in a mansion with eight bedrooms and five bathrooms. It’s just them, so maybe it’s a little excessive.
Around two the doorbell rings, and Rey grudgingly dries off and goes to answer it in her skimpy pink two-piece.
Two men are standing on the front porch: one a short bald guy with an iPad, and the other a very tall, very scary-looking linebacker with black hair and a scowl. His hands are behind his back and he doesn’t look at Rey as the guy next to him adjusts his glasses and gives her a once-over. She’s sixteen and kind of cute, and she knows it.
“Kylo?” she sarcastically asks the short guy, offering her hand for a shake.
“Oh—n-no,” the guy laughs nervously, glancing up at Kylo as his sharp dark eyes wander to Rey. “No, I’m Paul. I’m here for paperwork and programming.”
“Oh. Cool.” Rey opens the door to let them in. “I’m Rey. Mom is out.”
“That’s no problem,” Paul says. “You can sign in proxy.”
He has her sign a bunch of things she’s too lazy to read. Kylo stands off to the side looking around. His shirt is too tight and he’s wearing a silver chain around his neck. Rey has met a couple of androids, and they’ve all been boring and rude. That’s what happens when you’re not really human—even if mom thinks you are.
“He has been pre-programmed,” Paul says, nodding up to Kylo. “Protecting you is his primary objective. You’ll need to introduce him to safe members of the household or he may treat them as a threat.”
“Ooh—does he snap necks?” Rey asks.
“Y-Yes, actually,” says Paul, smiling uneasily. He gestures to Kylo with his iPad. “He is quite dangerous, Miss Niima. Please treat him with caution and be sure you teach him.”
“Okay. Guess we better go see Jeff, then.”
“Jeff?”
Kylo finally speaks, and his voice is deep and just as scary as the rest of him. Rey looks at him and nods.
“He works in the security office,” she says. “It’s in the basement—he’s here a few days a week doing IT stuff. Mom wanted you instead of regular security guards.”
“Yes, yes, please do introduce them,” Paul says. He sets down a big black duffel bag near Kylo’s feet. “Wouldn’t want there to be an… accident. But he’s quite good. A unique, one-of-a-kind model, human in every way, with our latest artificial intelligence software. He even learns right from wrong.”
“Can he die?”
Kylo stiffens and Paul laughs in his tremulous nervous way, shaking his head.
“His software is backed up to NovaCorp’s cloud,” Paul says, “and his skin is impenetrable. Can’t even be broken by a rocket launcher.”
Rey tilts her head and furrows her brow. “I didn’t know humans were rocket launcher-proof.”
“Yes, well…” Paul nods to them. “He will serve you very well. Please be sure he powers down at least once a week to refresh his data.”
Rey gives a small wave when he leaves. She closes the door behind him and turns to face Kylo, hands on her hips. He stares at her.
“Mom says you were uploaded from a dead guy,” she says. “Don’t you feel bad stealing his brain?”
“Where is this Jeff? I have things to discuss with him.”
Ugh. Rey rolls her eyes and motions for Kylo to follow her.
Jeff is in his hidey hole in the basement with a ton of screens from all the cameras littered around the house. He’s nice: tall and lanky and friendly, and he has two cute babies that he brings by sometimes. He shakes Kylo’s hand and gives him a list of all the cameras. Apparently he’s going to add something so he can tap into them whenever he wants.
“We can sync you to the house, too,” Jeff says. “It’s all Smart tech.” He gestures to Rey and smirks. “Then she won’t be able to sneak out anymore.”
“Jeff,” Rey hisses. Kylo is staring at her, and she defensively crosses her arms. “I don’t sneak out. He’s kidding around.”
They go back upstairs and Rey starts to wander off to text her best friend, Rose. She’ll want to come over to watch the weirdo doing weirdo stuff.
“Where are you going, Rey?”
She pauses at the kitchen doorway. Kylo is playing with the paper between his big fingers, and he raises his eyebrows. Human, kind of.
She touches the doorframe. “To text my friends?”
“You are not going to ‘sneak out’—are you?”
“In the middle of the day? No?” She laughs and shakes her head, turning away. “And you better not bug me when I do. I’ll turn you off.”
“I cannot be deactivated.”
“Sure you can. Every robot has an off switch.”
Kylo doesn’t respond. Rey waves as she walks away.
| | |
Rey bumps into Kylo a lot more than she thought she would. He’s always tinkering with the cameras or wandering around the outside of the house checking the bushes and the trees and shit. He carries a holstered gun, too—a whole ass gun, like a real serious bodyguard.
Rey watches him from the window, and one time he turns and sees her. He’s at a tree looking up into the branches. She waves to him with her fingertips, and after a pause, Kylo waves back.
Mom likes him, of course. She invites him to eat dinner with them and he sits there and doesn’t eat, because he doesn’t have to.
“Can you eat?” Rey asks, chewing a greenbean.
“Yes,” Kylo says. He’s sitting ramrod straight in his chair, and his eyes flicker with red as they move to her.
Rey raises her eyebrows. She offers him a greenbean between two fingers, and mom rolls her eyes.
“Eat this,” Rey says.
“Rey, he does not have to—”
Kylo suddenly leans over and eats the greenbean straight from her fingers. His lips brush her fingers, wet and soft. Very much what a human’s would feel like. Rey bursts out laughing. Kylo chews, almost smiling, but he sees mom looking annoyed and rearranges his face to the blank Terminator expression.
Rey decides to bug him as much as she can from then on.
She tries wearing her bathing suit around the house, but all that does is get Jeff to look at her, and Jeff is married with kids. Kylo averts his eyes or keeps them on her face. Even when she pushes her boobs together, he still doesn’t look away from her face.
He’s always busy, too. Tinkering. Sometimes Rey has to look around the house for half an hour before she finds him attaching cameras under a desk or scanning an empty closet with his creepy red eye beams.
“Do you have eye lasers?” Rey asks one night. She’s laying on the couch watching TV and Kylo is searching through the books on the bookshelf.
“No.”
“Lame. Do you have any superpowers?”
“No.”
“What about super strength?”
“Yes.”
Rey huffs. “That’s a superpower, dude.”
“All androids have super strength.” Kylo slides a book back on the shelf. “I have superhuman intelligence as well.”
“Because you’re a robot.”
“I am an—”
Glass shatters somewhere upstairs.
Rey scrambles up on the couch. She frowns, confused, fear blooming in her belly—and when she turns to look at Kylo, he’s already standing over her. He pushes her down by her shoulder and pulls the blanket on her. Rey almost kicks it off to ask him what’s happening, but she knows, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.
The lights go out. Rey’s blood pressure skyrockets, and through the small holes in the knitted blanket, she sees Kylo’s eyes glow red in the darkness. He walks around the side of the couch, and Rey can’t see him anymore.
It feels like an hour passes with her laying there. She wants to ask Kylo if she can just get up and leave, but she’s too scared to move. She waits and waits.
The stairs creak. Rey squeezes her eyes shut.
Two loud firecracker sounds come—Rey has never heard a gun go off before, but she instantly realizes that’s what it is. Tears fill her eyes, and her blanket is suddenly torn away from her.
A man in a black ski mask stands over her. He points a gun at her face.
Another shot comes. The guy’s head makes an awkward tilt to the side, and blood sprays out of the side of his skull. He wavers on his feet and falls straight forward onto the ground. He doesn’t move.
Rey stares at the body, mortally terrified. Kylo appears around the side of the couch with his gun still in his hand, and he peers out the living room window.
“The police have been notified,” he says. He nods to Rey. “Are you injured?”
She shakes her head, still staring. Kylo steps over the corpse and crouches beside her, examining her face without touching. Rey peels her eyes away from the body and stares into Kylo’s dark eyes instead, and something crazy and stupid comes over her.
She kisses him.
Kylo recoils instantly. He blinks, pupils swelling and shrinking and flickering red. Rey catches her breath and kisses him again, and this time he doesn’t pull away. She grabs his face in both her hands, even pushing her tongue into his mouth, even though Kylo doesn’t get it. He waits until she pulls away.
Rey swallows, nodding and looking around. She’s in shock, she knows. Terrified.
“Okay. Alright. Um…” She climbs over the body, bumping into the coffee table. “Cl-Clean this shit up. I’m gonna go throw up.”
Kylo watches her go. He doesn’t move. She swears his eyes are glowing pink.