I Will Breathe (Forbidden Book 1) Read Free

Boy didn’t answer, she stood and walked over to him. He was sitting on the only chair in the cabin, staring without blinking at the opposite wall. She waved a hand in front of his big metal eyes but nothing happened.
    She patted the top of his glass head. “You need to be wound up, huh?” It was a little disturbing getting no reaction, seeing how chatty the robot had been the night before – excessively so. At one point she’d had to tell him to stop talking, long enough for her to think, but the silence had only lasted until he’d made another observation and asked yet another question. It wasn’t until she had Airus in the air again that she realized his prattle had kept her from worrying about the danger they’d been in, being anchored. Sometime during the night, she had decided to keep him.
    Liberty washed her hands and face before dressing. She attempted to run her fingers through her tangled hair, but decided it was a lost cause. With her morning lavations taken care of, she went over and slowly turned what she dearly hoped was the right key in Boy’s back. With each turn, Boy slowly came back to life. He blinked and turned to watch her as she continued with the task.
    “Good morning, Boy. What made you come into my room last night?” She gave the key one last turn before patting his head and stepping back.
    Boy blinked a couple of times, as if getting adjusted to being up and going again. He finally answered, “I was afraid of being alone.”
    Liberty sat on the edge of her bed. “What do you know about being afraid? You’re a robot.”
    He moved his legs and fingers, as if testing to make sure they still worked properly. “I know all about feelings. I’m afraid one day I’ll wind down and no one will wind me back up. I loved my father. He created me and made certain I was always wound up, so I would never die.”
    “You think winding down and dying are the same thing?”
    Boy blinked, as if considering her question. “Isn’t it? Father wound down and never woke up.”
    She nodded. “But you’re a robot. You can’t die.”
    “What if I wind down and there’s no one around to wind me back up? Won’t I be dead then?”
    It must have been the lighting in the cabin, because it almost looked as if Boy’s eyes were filling with tears. “I see your point.” Liberty slipped on her boots. ”I understand fear too. I feel it at least twenty times a day for one reason or another, but the one thing my father drilled into my head, for as long as I can remember, was never to give in to feeling love. He said love was too close to hate and that’s why the world is in the shape it is today. Without those two emotions, The Great War would never have been fought.”
    Boy blinked so slowly it gave him the appearance of considering what she had said. He finally asked, “Did you not love your father?”
    She wasn’t certain how to answer that. What was love anyway, and how did a person know if they loved someone or not? “I miss him.” She stood, to put a stop to their conversation. She wasn’t used to so much thinking, not so early in the morning. She waited for Boy to slide out of the chair. “Remind me to wind you up before I go to bed tonight. I can’t do anything to bring your father back, but I’ll do what I can to keep you from being afraid.”
    The sounds of metal clicking along behind her on the wooden deck followed Liberty all the way to the galley. Instead of the clatter being annoying, like she had at first thought it would be, it was comforting not to feel so alone.
    Liberty pulled a round of cheese from the cooler and sliced off a couple of small chunks. It saddened her every time she opened the fruit locker. She only had eight apples left to last until fall. She shouldn’t have given in to Shatter’s negotiations the day before. Out of everything she’d had to trade, he’d demanded ten apples in exchange for the pressure seals. At least she had received the apples’ value plus more,