“I don’t know. It made sense at the time. In a kind of clarity you only experience like…” his face is creased with a frown, “hitting a perfect shot in golf, or… or catching a ball that was travelling so fast you didn’t even see it.”
“You said he had a pass to get out of the city?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you use it?”
“I gave it to Samara.”
“The maid?”
“My friend.”
Mia nods, “Did she get out?”
“She did,” Drake smiles. “My father thought he was very clever paying more for a pass that had no name attached. ‘A Drake doesn’t run away’ I think he said once.”
Mia is looking at Drake closely and the smile he has on his face mentioning Samara escaping compared to the reptilian one when he mentioned his father almost makes her shiver. “Rennin shake you up much?”
“I’m scared to death of him. I feel the same when around Caufmann, too. Both of them are just…” he trails off but his hands move as if trying to will the thoughts together to produce adequate words.
“It’s okay, I know what you mean,” she rotates her shoulders not really knowing how to be comforting.
Drake’s dark eyes fix on hers. “I’m so sorry.”
She frowns. “What?”
“For shooting you. I’m so sorry,” the second apology is barely a whisper.
She’d forgotten about that. Maybe it should bother her, but it really doesn’t. He is a normal guy, at least he was, and probably would never understand. “Try to forget about it.”
He shakes his head. “Caufmann said—”
She grabs his face firmly but not forcefully. “I don’t care what Caufmann said.”
Drake’s hands are starting to shake a little. “The thing that really hit me when Rennin attacked us in the toilets is that we’re murderers too.”
“Hey,” she moves her hands and grips both of his, “they were going to suffer far more if we didn’t do what we did.”
“We didn’t know the others in the houses were infected.”
“If you think about it forever you’ll do your own head in so far down you’ll be poked in the eye by the seat before you even sit down.”
Drake huffs a laugh. “I think my head is crammed up the other way.”
“Yeah, well don’t enjoy the view too much.”
Being so close to her Drake notices the cut on her neck that very nearly took her life. He runs his thumb very lightly underneath and along it. “Jesus…”
Mia tilts her head just slightly without realising it. “He cuts like a grandma.”
For the first time since he’s known her he notices Mia’s blue eyes with flecks of brown and her dirty blonde hair tied into a bun that’s tighter than her grip on his hand. He’s about to speak but instead finds himself kissing her. Or she kisses him. He doesn’t know, and doesn’t care. Feeling her hand on the back of his neck turns all his conscious thought off and for one glimmer in time all he can feel is delight.
Arca Drej is sitting in a toilet cubicle with the door shut. He isn’t going to the toilet, he never has and never will need to. He’s staring straight ahead. The voice from under the city is still calling for help, but he doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to think about anything. The more he thinks, the harder the tapping gets. It’s happening right at this moment, tap-tap-tap, right where his heart should be if he were human. He’s starting to think again already. The tapping gets harder. Drej tries to remain calm but feels his face briefly morph into a fierce expression as if he’s in a battle of wills with his own physicality.
A heart beats. What this thing is inside his chest was never a heart.
Not many have seen any assembly footage, not even those in the innermost circles of the Godyssey Company. Sergeant Joseph Yomak, Reaver-class HolinMech like Drej himself, showed him the footage of Regon Tirren’s conversion from man to the thing he became. Drej replays the images in his head in perfect clarity as if it were happening to him now.
HolinMechs are discouraged from using their total recall very often because it can trap them within the memory, starting a cycle that invariably results in thought-spiral; an irreversible condition. It’s similar to catatonia in Standards. Unfortunately the thought line they’re trapped in becomes the sole focus of their existence and kill-code erases everything else in their mind. In many cases it fries the organic part of the brain rendering an android—once worth more than the entire economy of some countries—as useless.
Drej’s eyes glaze over and as far as he’s concerned he’s back in his room on Iyatoya with the form of Joseph Yomak sitting in front of him.
Drej was sitting on his bed, and Joseph at his desk fiddling with a monitor. The window above the desk showed a view out into space, with part of Earth peeking in at one side. Drej was mesmerised by the sliver of Earth and didn’t notice Joseph talking until a ball of synthesized paper hit him in the face. Drej looked at Joseph’s neon-blue eyes. “Are you paying attention?” asked the Sergeant.
“To what?”
Joseph smiled for some strange reason that Drej still doesn’t understand. “You’ll miss a great deal if you keep daydreaming.”
Drej recognised the feigned emotion for what it was and imitated it perfectly back at him by willing the sides of his face up. “I can see what you do.”
Joseph turned his attention back to the screen he was tinkering with. “You’ve been in for maintenance,” he said softly.
“This morning. How do you always know when each unit goes in for maintenance? The order is almost always random.”
Joseph ran a hand across the top of his head and closed his eyes. Drej remembers thinking that the Sergeant would be an ideal infiltrator with human traits so well imitated. “Why are your eyes blue? We’re the same chassis type but mine are red.”
Joseph looked back to him. “Something is different about you.”
“Yours are the blue eyes. Mine are red, just like the others. You are different, not I.”
“I’m a clone. All Reaver-class units are clones. Your eyes should be blue.”
“Magnus and Cain’s are green, they’re Reaver-class.”
“No they’re not.”
Drej’s eye twitches. “Their dossier says they are.”
“The one we are allowed to read says that, yes.”
“Then what are they? Maybe we are both odd, they share green eyes and you and I are both different.”
“I don’t know. It’s irrelevant. What ever they are, they are not the same chassis type, there are too many differences in their strengths and fighting styles. You’ll notice that they are both far more drawn to physical strength whereas you and I favour energy-based attacks,” said Joseph.
“Still.”
“Still, nothing. They are not Reaver-class because they are not clones.”
“Clone tissue was supposed to be unusable due to its rapid degeneration,” said Drej.
“Boson-tissue is not. We are rebuilt from partial samples. In a way we’re all just copies.”
Drej nodded and pretended he understood the meaning behind Joseph’s words. He glanced at the screen Joseph has finally stopped adjusting. “What are you doing with that?”
Joseph smiled a genuine smile this time, at least as much as an android can manage. That smile tended to get anyone in the vicinity in trouble. The HolinMech Lieutenant, Cain, once required three days in maintenance for letting his curiosity get the better of him in regards to Joseph. “Want to see something?”
“No.”
“A wise answer,” said Joseph as the screen flickered to life. The video that began to play was an operating table featuring HolinMech Regon Tirren. At the time Joseph played the recording the actual Regon Tirren was right next door.