Chapter Eleven: Reporting the Incident
I hated her. The moment she showed me the mark I knew that I hated her because I knew that I had to hate her. They would tell me to hate her, surely, and I had to listen to them. My Master would punish me for even talking to her – that is, if I ever recovered. And if I did, My Master would punish me even harder for being rescued by the filth that I’d spent my life hunting.
And so, when the last of our batteries were finally dying – and I’d finally found a small trace of a signal – I knew that I would be compelled to run back to My Master, beg forgiveness for being so weak, and hope it didn’t cost me my head. The thought filled me with dread, but it was my duty to finish the job.
Wasn’t it? They’d wanted me dead, but maybe this changed things. Or maybe they’d thought I would not survive an encounter with an Aio. That sent a chill to my gut. That meant they’d known that there were Aios here, and My Master had concealed this from me knowing that I would fight them with the viciousness of a feral animal. Maybe he’d manipulated me into believing that I would die to ignite my will to live so that I could be just where I was, infiltrated, on the inside.
It wasn’t the usual job. I was an assassin, not an ambassador.
Fisher was gone. It was midday, and I made sure the rest of them had gone too. It was just me and the empty room, and I stood, holding my projector with shaking, weak hands. When I finally laid it on the ground, I pressed the green button next to it, leaning forward to kneel, head bowed, on one knee just the way My Master liked.
I waited for a long moment. The position began to pain me. Water came to my eyes, and I shook from the elbows, but I knew that I would need to maintain that position for the duration of our interview. It was a form of supplication. I feared punishment. Already, I feared punishment.
I felt so cowardly and full of shame at my failure, so devoted was I to doing his bidding. My survival was a failure. My incarceration here was a failure. I pressed hard into the dirt on the floor as I heard the flickering static that would announce his presence.
He was silent for a moment, just…peering at me. I knew he appeared holographically, and I knew that it was often just a mask I spoke to, never a face, never a pair of eyes. A wall of blackness that was his voice. I wanted to break into tears, but I knew doing so would only increase the punishment I would receive upon my arrival home. If I even got that far. I had to remain calm, dispassionate.
“Exterior 1138,” he said coldly.
That was all that needed to be said. His low, crisp voice reverberated throughout the room, and it echoed back to me as if the sound waves were made of burning needles. Chills rose and fell on my skin, and I brought my fingers into small fists on the ground to steady my wavering nerves. Nausea and fear unlike any I’d felt in a long, long time shot through me with the pulse of my jugular, and I was sure that he could feel it.
He was furious.
“My Master,” I said to him in address, hoping my voice was harder than I heard it in my head.
“You are…alive,” he said coldly.
I dared not look up at him, as custom dictated, eyes glued firmly to the floor.
“Yes, My Lord,” I said, swallowing hard.
I felt a blue horizontal line move over my form. It tingled, and I closed my eyes and bit the side of my cheek to prevent a reaction from rising out of me.
“You are injured,” he stated after a moment.
“Yes, My Lord,” I replied, curling my fingers tighter.
“How are you alive?”
“My Lord,” I began, my voice wavering. “I…we have made a discovery.”
Another dramatic pause. He knew it pained me, and I was sure that he took pleasure from it. When he said nothing for another few seconds, I knew it was my time to speak again.
“Master, there is…” I swallowed. “There are people here.”
He said nothing again, and, for the first time in all the time I’d known him, I was surprised. He did not react, did not say anything.
This was not news to him.
“Forgive me, My Lord,” I whispered slowly. “Did you know of this?”
He made a scornful noise.
“Poor boy,” he said with his most spiteful tone, as if he both pitied and loathed my gross ignorance. “There is nothing on this planet that is beyond our sight.”
I winced.
“Yes, My Lord,” I said quietly. “Forgive me, My Lord.”
“Have you discovered the Great Deviant?” he asked almost immediately.
I closed my eyes and tried to swallow. Doing so was impossible. He knew.
“Y-yes, My Lord, but I –”
“Where is it?” he demanded.
Again, I winced.
“She is gone,” I replied with a mounting desperation in my voice.
“She is gone?” his voice asked, growing with as much spite as I felt desperation.
“It is gone, My Lord,” I said, hunching tighter. “Forgive me.”
“You have killed it then?”
I swallowed.
“No, My Lord, she – it is clever.” He said nothing. “It has taken our weapons and hidden them from us. We are trapped here without them.”
“It has taken you prisoner?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, My Lord,” I said, feeling weaker by the second. “I have failed you.”
“What have you done?” his voice roared after a moment.
I could not open my eyes.
“My Lord, I am so –”
“You have failed me for the last time, Exterior!” he said. “You have…”
His voice faded into static. Such interference would surely infuriate him, and I scrambled forward to get it back, but it reemerged quickly. I fell to my hands clumsily and all over again, I felt like the boy he’d tortured when I was young.
“Master, please, forgive me!” I clasped my hands together, remembering and hating all the desperate hatred I felt for My Lord. “Please, Master, I can –”
“You are of no further use to me,” he said dismissively.
“No, wait!” I cried, daring to look up now.
I saw the mask that was his face, never actually a face. Just a black wall of metal in the shape of a head.
“I am…we will kill it, My Lord, but we must wait. Our weapons…the Aio has agreed to give them to us when it deems us safe.”
He was silent, still displeased.
“Master, forgive my failure,” I begged, hanging my head once more. “I did not know – we did not know this was possible. We are all…a little confused.”
“Your understanding is not necessary,” he said plainly. “Only your compliance.”
“Yes, My Master, but…” I swallowed. “The High Council surely did not know that Aios truly existed?”
“Do you dare question the all knowingness of the High Council?” his voice boomed, clearly enraged.
“N-no, My Lord!” I cried, raising my hands as if to shield myself from being struck. “I just meant…how could such a large development be kept a secret? I thought…we have all been told…that she is impossible. Deviants cannot be capable of reproduction?”
The High Council had deemed this impossible, but there she had been, standing before me as real as day, the impossibility and the possibility meeting right before my eyes.
“You do not need to understand the Council’s motivations,” My Master spat coldly. “We only desire you to do what you have been bred to do.”
“To…” Something surprising and small sank inside of me. “To kill her, My Lord?”
“She is their god,” My Lord said spitefully. “Killing her will be the enemy’s undoing. You will return her body to us, and we will drag it through our streets and put it on every sign in the Territories to show them what we can do to their god.”
I tensed now for a different reason.
Fisher was no god.
“My Lord, she is…it is merely a child,” I said hesitantly. “Not an adult.”
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“The Great Deviant is what it always has been. An abomination. We must snuff it out, no matter how old it appears.”
The first rule of cloning was that it was the illusion of real life but that it could not produce life itself. Deviants just weren’t supposed to evolve like that. The High Council had said so.
I had never needed to kill anyone who looked younger than I did.
“My Lord, she also seems to be…unaware…of her condition. She thinks she is human.”
He snorted disdainfully but otherwise said nothing.
“There are large groups of them,” I said, eyes closed. “Are we to kill them all?”
“What happens to the rest is of no consequence,” he said dismissively. “If their lives are sacrificed to take the Aio’s, so be it. It cannot ever escape that gate.”
“But…My Lord, how do you know that she is a Deviant?”
“Once many years ago we detected an unusual blood signature similar to that of a Deviant’s, but unique. It was very close to the gate.”
“Yes, it has told us the story of its parents,” I said nervously. “They travelled to the wall to make sure she reached the other side.”
“To what end?”
“I do not know, My Lord, forgive me,” I replied softly.
“Guess,” he demanded.
I swallowed, nodding obediently.
“Yes, My Lord,” I replied, clearly my throat. “If I was to guess, I’d say…maybe they have attempted to breed to create a Great Deviant so that they could make it into our world. Maybe this was their purpose for generations.”
Or maybe it was for the abuse that I saw Fisher suffered from regularly for reasons that, in ways that became increasingly obvious, the other Colonists had little knowledge of at all. They didn’t even know what a Deviant was, let alone the stories of Aios or Great Deviants or whatever someone wanted to call Fisher.
“This is how you knew of her existence?” I asked quietly.
“Yes,” he said. “Since this time, we have discovered that it lived here – among humans, we believe.”
His voice scowled for him.
“This is unnatural,” he said spitefully. “Deviants do not live among humans.”
His words only confirmed what Paige had gone out of her way to discover. None of the others had marks. Paige had lied and said she was a doctor. They’d believed her, the simpletons.
“Master, it exists as a protector here,” I said to him cautiously. “If it is removed, all of these people will die.”
“Is that so?” he asked mockingly. “And why is that?”
“The Aio is immune to the Necrosis, Master,” I whispered.
He was silent now, and for the second time in my life, I felt surprise.
“I don’t believe I heard you correctly,” his voice spat, trembling. “Repeat last transmission.”
“She is immune to Necrosis, My Lord.”
“That is impossible,”
Based on everything that I’d ever known, everything about Fisher was impossible.
I could not hide a feeling so overwhelming that I didn’t even know how to begin interpreting it. My Master had never been kind to me as a boy, and I hadn’t had friends. I was brought up by faceless machines.
Not somebody with a lot of self-awareness.
“What distracts you?” he demanded.
No! I wanted to spit back. I can’t tell you! You will punish me!
“They are qualms that are beneath you, My Lord,” I tried weakly.
“I command it, boy!” he shouted. “Tell me now or you shall suffer!”
Like a dog, I obeyed.
“My Lord, she appears very…human,” I said, feeling bile rise up through me at the shame of the admission. “She seems very human and…beautiful. She has saved my life, resuscitated me from sure death. Am I to repay her with treachery?”
Both of those variables rarely came into the equation on a “To Kill” list. No one had ever saved my life before, so I didn’t know how to feel.
“It is manipulating you,” he snarled. “Do not let it. This is an order.”
“Master, she has saved me,” I said, feeling suddenly helpless and prostrate before him. “Why did she do that? What purpose does she have to save me?”
“Its existence is incompatible with our own,” he snapped coldly. “Do not forget, despite her ‘rescue,’” (his tone was so mocking that I had to hang my head to hide a snarl of hatred) “that you still serve me.”
“But, My Lord,” I dared a final time. “I owe a Deviant my life. It is so…undignified.”
“You owe her nothing but a knife in your back,” he said viciously.
This felt wrong. I felt wrong all over. She was different, more than he could ever know or understand. Something needed to be said.
“Master, what if she can be brought to our side?”
I felt his scrutinous eyes peer down at me.
“And why would we do that?”
“My Lord, if she were spared, we could rally her to our cause and force her to fight for our side or die. It would be…very demoralizing to our enemy.”
“You do not think. You do not feel. You live and breathe exclusively to serve me.”
“Yes, My Lord,” I said, falling to my hands and knees. “I did not mean –”
“There is more that you wish to confess?”
I felt like I was being whipped.
“No, My Lord, please, I don’t –”
“Tell me now what you have done!”
I winced into myself. He acted as if my overwhelming feelings were of my own design, which was far from the truth.
“I sometimes…dream of things, My Lord,” I whispered. “That she and I are friends. That she is human. I dream of her often, and I do not know why.”
Desperation was clear in my tone, but I couldn’t make it go away. It was almost like I was pleading with him to take this feeling away.
“I find myself…watching her, Master. She is unique. I have never encountered a Deviant so…humanlike. I sometimes forget that she is a Deviant and that I am an Exterior. I hear her voice when I try to sleep. I see her eyes when I close my eyes. When she leaves, I ache for her to return. I find her…”
I didn’t want to say it, but I knew he would make me.
“She is beautiful to me, My Lord,” I said, prostrate and full of shame.
My voice wavered.
“Why do I feel like this?” I asked louder, full of anguish. “I don’t understand! What is she doing to me, Master?”
“She is manipulating you,” he said, almost as if to encourage these tumultuous feelings. “Your feelings for her are not real, no matter what she’d have you believe.”
“How do I stop feeling this way?” I asked breathlessly.
“Strike her down, and you will see.”
Pain came at this. As I opened my mouth to reply, the batteries finally fizzled and died. He disappeared with a flicker, and as much as I felt panic at his surely enraged reaction, somewhere thousands of miles away, I was also relieved. He was gone. I could breathe.
I realized I’d been holding my breath on and off for the duration of our conversation. I leaned forward weakly, feeling my wounds ache, and I collapsed against the mat. Exhaustion bettered me, and I fell into a restless slumber that was filled with emotions I couldn’t even begin to understand.
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