Chapter Thirty-Five

Valerie

Valerie can hardly stomach listening to her sister trying to defend Mikel. She feels bad about tearing him away from her like she did, but she knows it’s for the best. He was an ignorant and rotten person. She wishes everyone would just shut the hell up and leave her be.

The fast ticking of the scanning machine in the background is subconsciously getting her worked up, and she’s about to start swinging that wrench again.

“Clarice, it’s over! He lied to all of us, to our faces, and then he went out and kidnapped Five from our home!”

“We don’t know what happened, Valerie! He still saved her though! He isn’t the one that killed Aaron, he tried to save him! He got Marco and Gabriel to bring him back didn’t he?”

“Your right Clarice, we don’t know what he did, do we? Why don’t you go and ask him? Ask him to his asshole face why he decided to burn everything to the ground like this?” She has her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, wishing Clarice wasn’t so naive. “I bet you he ran off like a coward. Why don’t you go and look for yourself! He won’t be showing his stupid face around here ever again, I can tell you that much.” She straightens one arm out and points in the direction of the back door, not even looking up. She doesn’t drop her arm until she hears Clarice walkout.

“Valerie.” The way Marco says her name is drawn out, and with disappointment. “I’m going out for a smoke.”

She knows he hasn’t smoked in at least a decade and doesn’t even have any on him, but’ he’s probably going out to apologize to Clarice. She shouldn’t have snapped at her little sister like that. Gabriel wants to get up and join him, but one look from her keeps him in his chair. He continues to type away at the console, doing his best to not draw her attention.

After what feels like hours of watching the scanning machine and the data stream coming over to the main large projector, both Marco and Clarice walk back in together. Clarice’s eyes are still red, and her cheeks have been rubbed pink. She might be having an even tougher time with all this than even herself. She has always been the tender one. She feels terrible for being mean to her like she was.

“Valerie, I’m gonna drop Marco off at work. I figured I’d take Five and Arma back home with me. I think they should be somewhere a bit more comfortable for now. Marco says Gabriel will handle things from here and there isn’t anything anyone else can do but wait for now anyway. You want me to take you home, to work, or anything?”

She picks the long steel wrench back up off the counter and lays it in her lap. “I’ll be fine right here. We have some things to talk about. Well… at least Gabriel will have some things to talk about.”

Marco is stern with her this time. “Valerie, do not hit him in the head like that again. Make sure he doesn’t screw us, but we need him alive.”

They all have their eyes on the end goal now and know where it leads. Murder, assault, and abduction are only the trivial laws of mortals now. If Aaron makes it to the other side, it’ll set a precedence, and it won’t matter if they are friends or enemies, they’ll all be in it together.

Arma picks Five up off the floor and follows the other two out to the car. She looks at Arma with suspicion and accusation, dubious of what happened out at Ray’s. Unexpectedly, she gets the same looks back.

As soon as the others are gone, she gets up and walks over to the cart with the unfamiliar robot body on it. She’s never seen this model before. She slides her hand across the things massive shoulder and chest. It has a handsome face. She rolls the head over and sees the gunshots in the side of its head. Her eyes snap open and then she looks back to Gabriel.

“Who the hell is this?”

“THAT was Paul Mendle. Your village idiot killed him this morning.”

She jerks her hand back away from the thing’s skin and wipes it off on her jeans. “What the fuck!” She backs away from the cart and turns to him. Her head is cocked to the side while she gawks at him. This is no shot in the dark with Aaron, is it? He won’t be coming back blank will he?”

He pauses, considering his words. “It should work… better, this time.”

“Tell me what you’ve done Gabriel, everything.”

“We can’t afford to be enthusiastic about any of this, Valerie. Were pretty much still winging it at his point, we have been from the start. That’s why we needed Five-One and Two, there’s just no way of knowing whether it’s going to work until we see it for ourselves. The mind is just way too big. We can’t even attempt to analyze or troubleshooting any of it. All we can do at this point is work on scan resolution and data translation.”

“So, you made this slicer scanner thing. You got the data, and then what?”

“Well, I cut out everything that isn’t applicable to a robot body, which is a good amount, to be more efficient. The system can tell the difference between tissue types, synapses, and all that. It translates all the 3D cell bodies into two dimensions… basically as traces.”

“What about Marco? Where does he come in?”

“He made everything I do possible. He came up with the idea for the synthetic materials, layout, the machine that laminates them, and even the actual artificial synapses that we use. Somehow, he knew what we were up to before we even hired him. People talk. Apparently, he already had thought up all this stuff, he just needed someone with the resources to pull it off. I’m not sure who discovered who, Paul or Marco. Maybe they met on a forum. I doubt we’re the only ones into this kind of stuff.

“So why all the shittiness? You owe him his due then!”

He holds his hands up. “Hey, that’s between him and Paul. They… had words about it. This doesn’t just end with us you know. You don’t think there would only be like, a couple of us, ever right? There’s no end to this. There’ll always be maintenance, security of the process, strings attached. We can’t just let immortals wander off on vacation. What if the Russians, like those Smekov fucks, kidnapped one of us? What if the zealots found out? This is the kind of shit that could ignite another war, Valerie, like a big one. And don’t forget, We’ll always be indentured to the process, for like ever.”

“That’s why you made it look like all the equipment and everything was destroyed. So there was nothing left for anyone to steal.”

“Like I said, People talk, and here you are, prancing the prototypes around town like a pair of cloned tigers.”

Before she has a chance to go off on him about treating the prototypes, real people, like caged animals, the doors in the back of the room open. It’s her sister again and she has a white grocery bag with her. She doesn’t say anything but sets it down in front of her and Gabriel on the computer station countertop.

It looks like she is still pretty upset about her having run Mikel off and isn’t ready to talk quite yet. When Gabriel turns from his work to say hi, Clarice stops and covers her mouth. The wrench shaped bruise across the side of his temple is already starting to show.

“Oh my, I’m so sorry she did that to you. Are you alright?” In the bag, she has a box with hot sandwiches, cookies, chips, and bottled water. She sets his stuff out and slides it over to him.

“Don’t bother apologizing to him, Clarice. You have no idea what he’s done. We should be apologizing to Five. I promised no one would do anything like this to her.”

Clarice still doesn’t answer her. “How’s Aaron doing Gabriel? They say you’re going to bring him back, like Five and Arma.”

Making sure to not look over at Valerie in any way, he points up to one of the large hologram projections in front of them. All it’s displaying is a broad fast-moving array of random-looking numbers and symbols on one side and something similar on the other.

“This is the new scan data coming in, and that’s after it’s been converted. He’ll be coming back, but not like the other two. This time, he should be able to remember everything.”

She is awestruck by how fast everything is, the scanner, the screen, all of it. “So how long is this going to take?”

“The rest of the day scanning, a couple of days of data management, and probably two full days of printing. I’ll need Marco for that part.”

“Cause you screwed up the last one on your own? Yeah, and here you were, trying to force him out. You’re supposed to be so damn smart, but you sure do a good job of screwing everything up too. From here on out, don’t plan on making any decisions yourself. There’s going to be some significant restructuring to all of this.”

“How far do you think the two of you are going to get on your own? Do you think I’m just gonna be your whipping boy? We already had structure, and you morons went and shot holes in its head!” He bats his hand over at what is left of Paul.

She’s not impressed with his smart mouth, and she can’t have him making any points either. She grabs the wrench again and stands up. She knows she can’t keep him captive forever, but she’ll still be keeping him on a short leash.

“You listen to me, you little shit. Paul is dead, Barry is dead, and the project, as it was, is dead. Do I need to make the list any longer?”

He knows to not remind her that Paul is not dead just because his body is laying there motionless. The first thing he’s going to do is bring him back, and then put an end to their little mutiny. As far as he is concerned, Paul can put an end to all of them. Marco is sure to put his best work into bringing Aaron back. Once he does, he’ll have that understanding under his belt. There won’t be any need for either of them anymore after that. They can all rot on the outside.

While Valerie stands there over him with the wrench, he pretends to be scared and even theatrically protects his face with his arms. “I’ll help you bring Aaron back, but after that, I’m done, I’m not helping you anymore Valerie!”

What Gabriel makes her think of is what Mikel had said once, that people have become soft. He said that the people out in the country call everyone else in the city sheep-people. Sheep that pile up on one another and suffocate when they get scared.

“You might be a smart little sheep Gabriel, but you’re still a sheep. You’d better just stick to what you know and leave the rest to us. I expect you to be at work tomorrow like nothing ever happened.” She starts to walk away, expecting Clarice to follow along with her.

“I don’t even have a car because of you!”

“Then walk your fat ass, you could use it.” She knows he isn’t going to report anything. None of them can tattle on each other without the risk of getting the entire project shut down.

Even though Valerie has him pretty well cornered, he still has a few good cards up his sleeves. His ace is Paul. While Aaron is still being scanned, he makes a few calls and sends a production order of his own out to AMF. After having listened to Mikel and Arma describing their encounter with Paul, he’s been thinking about the potential of the man.

Paul was already known for having quite the spine, but now he’s even more sinister. Barry had used the word “sociopathic” when complaining about the quality of his recreation. He was not happy about seeing his best friend struggling with the changes. At the time, he didn’t have the balls to tell Barry it didn’t have anything to do with his work. Paul was already a psycho, he’s only been un-collared now.

He has to consider what he’s doing before he commits to the printing jobs. It’s an easy choice to not go out and bring Barry back. He was an asshole and a pervert. Paul though is driven, and simply dangerous. Things could end up getting out of hand. He thinks back on the day he told Paul that they should try bringing someone random back, to see if the process would work. The thought was to not experiment with their own damn souls.

He was thinking more along the lines of a volunteer or someone that’s already been preserved. He didn’t expect two fresh young bodies within the week. That was when he learned how frighteningly serious the endeavor was. He’s always felt partially responsible for their deaths because of that, and it’s something he’ll probably see again if he brings Paul back again. It was never the idea to wait until someone dies of old age first.

If he uses Paul to get the project back on track again, he can count on that actually happening. The how will likely be out of his control though, and that’s what worries him. He figures that if he sandbags finishing up on Aaron over the next couple of days, it should leave him enough time to remake Paul a couple of times first. It’ll be a good idea to have a few backups this time around. Since Valerie has her muscle now, he’ll just need even more.

Mad, and feeling defiant, he yells out to the empty room, pretending Valerie might still hear him. “You could hardly handle one Paul, you dumb bitch! How about four…or ten of them, you fuckers!”

Unbeknownst to the others, Paul’s body is already an off-the-shelf Item in the AMF stockroom now. The only disappointment he has with Paul’s death is that the man won’t remember it. They’re going to be practically back to square one again. At least he won’t have to relearn how to use his new body.

When Valerie gets back to the apartment complex, she doesn’t go to her apartment with Clarice but goes to Aaron’s. She curls up around a pillow in his bed and breaks down into racking sobs all over again. She misses him so badly and wishes as hard as she can that last night had never happened. She can’t help but feel that it was her fault. It’s like he was taken away from her because she was too stubborn to say she loved him back. She might’ve deserved it, but he didn’t.

She didn’t even know that he had gotten back out of bed last night. It makes her afraid of what else might be gone the next time she wakes up. She doesn’t think she can bare waiting for another terrible morning to come around. She imagines all of the terrible things that could happen. Maybe his scan goes bad and he’s lost forever this time. Maybe Clarice leaves, and then Five and Arma are seized again anyway.

She tries to hold onto the thought of Aaron as hard as she can. She pictures his face, the sound of his voice, and the feel of his hands. A sudden flash of his charred headless body comes out of nowhere and makes her scream his name into the pillow.

Even though Gabriel said that they should be able to bring him back the way he was, she just can’t seem to believe it’s true. No matter how hard she tries to tell herself that it’ll be him, but just in another body, she knows he’s simply gone.

In Clarice’s apartment, Five lays on the couch with her head on Arma’s thigh. Arma is slowly stroking the hair on her head, trying to console her about Aaron’s death, but it’s not going well. What Mikel had told her has sunk its claws in and won’t let go. Even though they’re bringing him back, deep down, she doesn’t believe it will really be him. It makes her wonder what she is herself.

Neither she nor Arma have any memories of being who they once were, and she knows nothing about the difference either way. Aaron is the only one who ever talked to her about life and death. All she knows is that she feels alive and is still part of the world.

She feels the love she had for him more clearly, now that he’s gone. It’s just like he had told her “when a person is gone, you’ll know if you truly loved them or not.” Seeing for herself, that someone can so suddenly be taken away forever, makes her think about everyone else that’s close to her. She imagines losing them too. Falling deeper into despair, she grasps onto Arma as if she were a branch on the edge of an endless chasm. After a while, she falls asleep in her arms.

In a dream like she has never experienced before, she finds herself at the bottom of a pit so deep there’s only a tiny bit of light shining down from far above her. She can feel the ground under her feet, but there’s nothing else around her but dusty darkness. She can almost hear a faint whispering of a voice in the distance, but it’s so quiet, she doesn’t know if she’s really hearing anything at all or not. The only thing she can figure is that this is where Aaron is, in a place of nothing, not dead, but possibly dead. Maybe there is a chance for him.

When she thinks of him, she suddenly hears his voice. She can kind of feel him there somewhere, but she’s not sure how to find him. When she calls out for him, she hears his voice again. It’s faint, and he sounds scared. She calls out for him again. The very second she hears him, she reaches out and snatches hold of what is there in the dark. It’s him, and he grabs hold of her too, but it seems they are not alone. The blackness ceases both of them and rips them apart from each other. It is so incredibly strong and violent and it’s surely going to kill them.

She kicks, screams, claws, and bites at everything around her, demanding that it give Aaron back to her. The inky emptiness only quietly laughs back at her, like Ray used to. Her rage keeps building though, sending her into a frenzy of even more violent of thrashing, trying to find a shred of anything to get hold of and tear apart. She can feel the dark world surrounding her, trying to drown her and smother the life from her. No matter how hard she rails at it, it just keeps wearing her down like an unstoppable heavy tar.

When she suddenly awakens from the terror, Clarice is looking her right in the face and shaking her by the shoulders. Arma has a fiercely strong hold on her, keeping her from escaping. Her eyes are wide and her hands are warm. “Everything’s gonna be alright, Five. Just lie still and drink some water. Here now.” She holds out a squeeze bottle and starts pointing it at her face. Arma’s eyes still look alarmed, even after letting loose of her. When she realizes that she’s the one still holding on with a death grip, she lets go. She must’ve been a little terror in her sleep. She can still feel some of the strain in her bones even after relaxing.

Arma pulls her up across the couch a little, so she can sit alongside her. She embraces her and has her rest her head on her shoulder. After they finish off the bottle of water between the two of them, they decide to go to their room and wait for the morning. Clarice turns most of the lights off but doesn’t go to bed either. She takes up the couch where they were and sits there with an elbow on her knee and her head in her hand.

With only a dim night light illuminating Valerie’s room, Arma watches over Five while she falls back asleep. She can only imagine what she must’ve been going through to do that in her sleep. Whatever it was, it snapped her right out of her catatonia of despair. She stays up, keeping track of her breathing, making sure she doesn’t get pulled back into whatever craziness was getting at her. The last thing she needs now is for her to be losing her mind. Five is all she’s ever had this life, and she can’t lose her.

After several hours, her thoughts begin to wander, and she feels like falling asleep herself. For a second, she nods forward and then jerks her head back up. It’s one of those involuntary responses she must’ve inherited.

Suddenly, she realizes she is breathing heavily, and most of her body is slick with warm blood. She doesn’t know where it came from, she’s sure she washed off real well like Clarice told her to. When she looks down, she finds herself standing over the torn remains of four dead men.

She vaguely remembers having been here before, but this time, it’s far worse. There’s only twisted and mangled scraps of them scattered about on the ground. When she takes a step back, she finds that the ground under her bare feet is wet and sticky with the carnage. She can’t find any boundaries to her anger it’s spiraling even farther out of control than ever. She needs to kill, to satiate the hell inside of her.

When she hears shouting coming from inside Ray’s house, she rushes to the back door and nearly pulls it off the hinges, eager to get at whoever is in there. When she barges in, it’s not Ray’s place inside, it's somewhere else she’s never been, but it’s real enough.

When she turns around, the door she came in through is gone. Behind her, the yelling gets louder, so loud it scares her. She remembers the voice from somewhere, she’s heard it so many times before, but she can’t place who it is. It makes her feel hated and unwanted. She should shout back like she used to, but it just makes her want to die.

When she wakes up with a start, it’s morning and it’s getting light outside already. She doesn’t know what the hell just happened, but she’s pretty sure it wasn’t just a dream. It felt like a part of her soul or her past, and it’s forcing its way back up from where it was buried. She doesn’t know who she was, but it doesn’t feel like she was any better off than either.