Twisted: Brides of the Kindred 23 Read online

  “Would anyone like some stew?” she asked, looking at Malik.

  “I’ll have some, thank you,” he said, holding out his bowl.

  “I’ll have some, thank you,” echoed the male Replicant, also holding out his bowl and speaking with the exact same inflection Malik had used.

  “Oh, um—you guys eat?” Nikki asked, before she realized it might be a rude question.

  “We do all that Organics can do—and we are always capable of learning new behaviors,” the female Replicant said. She held out her bowl. “I’ll have some, thank you.” Her tone was also a perfect copy of Malik’s.

  This display was disturbing but Nikki tried not to think about it. Instead, she hastily filled all the bowls with stew and cut everyone a slice of bread. Then she sat back down and she and Malik began to eat. After a moment of watching them, the Replicants did as well, copying their gestures exactly.

  Again, Nikki was creeped out but she had other things on her mind than the androids mirroring her every move. After the first bite she realized the stew was incredibly bland. It didn’t just need salt, either—none of the colorful chunks of vegetable—red, purple, blue, and yellow—had any flavor at all and the pale green broth tasted like hot water.

  Might as well be eating chunks of meh in blah juice, Nikki thought, putting down her spoon, which looked a little like a miniature shovel. She picked up her bread and tore off a piece—noticing as she did that the female Replicant was doing the exact same thing. The male Replicant was copying Malik. Experimentally, Nikki dunked the little piece of bread in the steaming broth but when she put it in her mouth, it was like chewing a lump of soggy paper.

  Great—so the bread doesn’t have any taste either. Gross. Maybe it has something to do with being made by creepy doll robots, she thought, looking across the table to where the female Replicant was still copying her.

  “Where did you learn to cook?” Nikki asked the female Replicant.

  “Cook?” The girl raised her blond eyebrows delicately in apparent confusion.

  “Where did you learn to prepare food?” Malik asked, restating the question for her.

  “I do not prepare food,” the female Replicant said. “Nor does Chad.” She nodded to the male Replicant. “It comes from the Knower—all good things come from the Knower.” She took a mechanical bite of her stew and then dunked another piece of bread, again copying Nikki’s earlier motion.

  “So did someone bring it down here?” Nikki asked. How else could they have gotten hot stew and warm bread—well, stuff that looked like stew and bread, anyway—with a non-functioning stove?

  “The meal arrived in the supply tray of the meal prep area,” the female Replicant told her. “Will you not eat some more? Chad and I wish to learn more of your mannerisms that we might become more like the Organic.”

  “Why do you wish to be like us? Like the Organic?” Malik asked, frowning. He had given up on eating as well and had put down his shovel-spoon.

  “Because such behaviors are optimal in pleasing Organics,” Chad explained, answering the question. “It has been seen by the Knower that Organics feel easier and more comfortable with Replicants who can act and speak as they do. This is why we wish to learn from you.”

  “Excuse me.” Nikki rose from the table. “I need to, um, powder my nose.”

  She left the table and went down the hall at a brisk pace, noticing as she did that the hallway lit up for her again. When she reached the bedroom at the end of the hallway, she went inside and went straight to the bathroom.

  Going to the sink, she ran some cool water and blotted her face with a towel. God, this was so weird. Despite all the other things she’d been through since switching lives with Mistress Hellenix, she thought that eating the bland food and being copied by the weird naked Replicants in the underground living space on a dead planet was somehow the most strange and unsettling.

  Looking in the mirror, she noticed that her hair was a mess. Taking one of the brushes from the display on the counter, she began to run it through her hair, counting the strokes as her mother used to do when she brushed her hair as a little girl. The ritual soothed Nikki, who was badly in need of soothing after the weird display at the table. Under her breath, she murmured to herself, “One…two…three…”

  “Four…five…six…” a voice said beside her.

  Nikki opened her eyes and nearly screamed.

  The female Replicant was standing beside her at the mirror, holding an identical brush in her hand and brushing her long blonde hair in exact rhythm with her, pulling the bristles though her golden strands as she watched Nikki without blinking.

  “What are you doing in here? Why did you follow me?” Nikki exclaimed.

  “Please be at ease—Chandra wishes only to learn from you,” the female Replicant said—but the voice she used was different. Different and familiar. It was the same soft, gender-neutral voice that had greeted them when they first came to this weird planet.

  “Knower?” Nikki asked, taking a step back. Was the AI who ran this place talking out of the Replicant? Or was it just her imagination?

  “Yes, it is I—the Knower,” the female Replicant said. “I have the ability to see and speak through any of my SORs at any time. I perceived an elevated heart rate coming from this chamber and decided to check it out. Please tell me why it bothers you to let Chandra learn from you?”

  “I…I…” Nikki licked her lips, not sure how to answer.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Malik was suddenly there. He frowned when he saw the female Replicant standing there, so close to Nikki. “I was worried she might have followed you when she left the table after you did. What is she doing?”

  “Chandra is only trying to learn from your Mistress, as Chad is trying to learn from you.” The Knower’s voice came from the male Replicant, who was suddenly standing right behind Malik in the bathroom doorway. Even for a fairly large bathroom, the space was getting pretty crowded, Nikki thought faintly.

  Malik frowned at the male Replicant.

  “Your voice has changed. Who is speaking?”

  “It’s the Knower,” Nikki told him quickly. “It can, uh, apparently inhabit any of its Replicants at any time.”

  “Is everything well here?” the Knower asked, through the male Replicant. “Do you have any complaints about your accommodations?”

  “No, no,” Nikki said quickly. “But, um, we will need some privacy in order to get to sleep. I’m assuming that the Replicants don’t need to learn how to do that?”

  “They can replicate sleep without problems since it mainly consists of lying still in the sleeping platform,” the Knower said.

  Once again, Nikki was reminded of her earlier thought of the two soulless creatures lying flat on their backs in bed and staring into the darkness with unblinking eyes. Ugh!

  “Then we must bid you goodnight,” Malik said firmly. “Otherwise, how can my Mistress be fresh and rested and ready to deal with you when the sun rises again?”

  “True,” the Knower said. “Very well—I bid you both good night.”

  This time it spoke through both of the Replicants at once, which gave an odd stereo effect since they were on either side of Nikki. She tried not to shiver as they both turned at the same time and left the bathroom and bedroom with the same, measured tread.

  When they were gone, Malik shut the bedroom door firmly behind them and then came back to Nikki.

  “Come, Mistress, I think it’s time we gave you that bath to help you relax for bed,” he said and went to run the water in the tub.

  Nikki understood what he was doing. The sound of the running water would hopefully mask the sound of their voices, providing a double layer of security in case the Knower was somehow able to detect what they were saying through the privacy bubble.

  “Thank you, Malik,” she said gratefully and came to sit on the edge of the wide oval tub. It was extremely wide and deep—big enough, really, for two people.

  Malik must have t