Engineered Tyrant by J.S. Morin

Author:J.S. Morin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942642688
Publisher: Magical Scrivener Press

Chapter Thirty-Three

Abby paced. She didn’t like to pace. She didn’t usually pace. But she felt caged in her own flesh, wanting to be in some other life where her mother wasn’t the target of a character assassination and she wasn’t a puppet of the attempt. Walking the length of her living room back and forth at least granted her the illusion of activity even if the exercise was pointless.

That realization—without the willpower to act on it—only made her pacing more frustrating.

“I’m going to kill him,” she muttered. “I’m going to be the first honest-to-goodness murderer of humans since Keith Dakota Smalls.” Since the dark impulse to end Alex’s life had crept in, Abby had looked up the name of the last person convicted of murder prior to the invasion.

Various methods played about in Abby’s head.

She could hack into one of the agrarian supply vehicles and tamper with a delivery of groceries destined for Alex’s plate. Dad might even help her with that. He was good with computers and probably as mad about the way Mom was being portrayed as anyone.

No. Too scattershot. Might just give him food poisoning. Also, might accidentally kill a dinner guest.

Programming an automaton to betray him had a sort of poetic touch. One minute it’s helping rearrange the furniture. The next, it has its fingers around Alex Truman’s throat.

Abby rolled her eyes at the overwrought melodrama. Before discarding the idea entirely, she imagined the automaton croaking in a barely enunciated growl, “The Fourteen family sends their regards.”

Pure drivel. Sad on the stage, worse in person.

Of course, there was always the good old-fashioned duel. Cloth-O-Matic up a glove to slap him with and challenge Alex to a fight. Pistols at dawn might draw attention from robots who’d stop a lethal contest. But perhaps just the two of them alone in a room. Best she knew, neither of them had any formal combat training—Mom had taught Abby some kung fu stuff as a kid but nothing like fighting.

Abby figured that being the angrier party, she’d have an edge.

But all of this was idle musing. Abby wasn’t going to follow through on any of it. In fact, if she cared a whit about what the world thought of Mom, proving that her daughter had turned out to be a thug would justify everything Alex was saying about her.

She couldn’t just do nothing, and pacing didn’t count.

“I need an Abby-friendly solution.”

Names flitted through her mental contacts list as she tried to come up with someone who might tell her what that could be. However, she’d already had the conversation she needed. Dad had told her that she can either accept something or do something about it.

“I can’t accept Alex’s plan to smear Mom. I’ve got to do something.”

Now that she’d said it out loud, it sounded less like a solution and more like a philosophical framework. For a guy named after a philosopher, perhaps that wasn’t too surprising. But Plato hadn’t been Dad’s original name. She couldn’t count the number

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