Chapter Fifty-Four

Aaron

In the morning, Mikel wakes everyone up with the smell of eggs, bacon, and seasoned potatoes. Everyone that’s still human of course. “You’d all better enjoy this, cause it’s probably the last time you’ll ever get a real meal again.”

The investigators have given them the night to rest before facing up to the whole situation they’re in. After they’ve gunned down at least a couple of dozen civilians themselves, they stayed up through the night trying to figure out how to assess what kind of situation they’re in. It is going to be difficult to make it look like they did not side with the robots in slaughtering dozens of the homeless. Most of the people at the precinct already know how much they hate the rats and they have already been reprimanded for it before.

The liberal world already makes it difficult enough for them to deal with all the vagrants in the city as it is. They can all live like the rules don’t apply to them, but when it’s convenient, they can stir up a human rights fiasco. At the moment, both of them can very easily be made out to look like the villains. Countless zealots will be placing the two of them at the scene, shooting the hell out of everyone.

They’re looking at facing a scenario far worse than just the public’s outcry this time. They can imagine even worse riots happening if they’re not thrown to the wolves by the department. As far as the two of them can figure, it’s only a matter of a few days before they’re totally fucked. It doesn’t matter if they were in the right this time, too many people have died at their hands and the only way for the precinct to stop things from getting way worse will be to martyr them.

Aaron is outside in the yard where he was murdered. He is hunched over with his hands on the browning grass where he was beaten into a mess and dragged away. He’s discovered a few dried splotches of his blood here and there. He’s wondering if he’s mourning over the loss of his first life or just someone that he wishes he was.

The possibility of not being the real Aaron still bugs him from time to time. Arma has one of her hands on the back of his shoulder. She gently wraps her long fingers around his meaty shoulder and squeezes them to get his attention.

“Before all of this went down, I meant to thank you for coming back. It takes more than just us doing the leg work. You pulled through for us, and it means everything to me. I don’t know if I would’ve made it much longer if it weren’t for you. I was in a bad place, and you helped me… deal with myself.” He places his hand over hers but doesn’t look up.

Arma stands behind him, thinking of everything they’ve been through. She wants to tell him that she loves him but she’s nervous. She wants him to be hers, not Valerie’s. She can’t keep him out of her mind. He is like her now, it’s the way it should be. She’s afraid that if she doesn’t say it now, she may never get the chance to. Before she can, she gets distracted by Clarice when she comes around the side of the house looking for them. Aaron is startled out of his thoughts when she calls out for him to come inside.

“I’ve found some clean clothes that I think might fit you, Aaron. I laid them out on Ray’s bed.”

The shirt he is wearing used to be grey, but it’s now pretty much solid black from all the blood that’s dried in it. When he raises his arms and starts pulling it up over his head, Arma grabs the waist of it and helps slide it up his torso.

A shiver goes down Arma’s spine when her hands glide over the meat on his ribs. When Valerie saunters around the corner, she pauses at the sight of them and then mumbles for them to join the rest.

“C’mon you guys, the investigators want us all together for this.”

Valerie’s face is still quite colorful from all the bruising and there’s a big dark line where her lips were split open. She has no makeup on and her eyes are all red from crying again. He’s never seen her so raw like this. She has none of her firm confidence, pride, or strength left to hide behind anymore. All that is left of her is the gentle and fragile woman that he’d fallen in love with.

After Arma walks through the front door ahead of them, he stops, turns around to her, and wraps his arms around her. She shakes a little when she lays her head on his chest. She doesn’t cry or sniffle, but only takes in a deep breath and lets it out. She’s already starting to harden herself for what’s ahead of them. He strokes her hair and lays his cheek on top of her head. The killing of all those people can’t reach him as easily when he has her in his arms.

Mikel makes his rounds, doling out more breakfast to everyone wherever they’re sitting. He’s cooked up everything that was still good in Ray’s freezer and doesn’t want it to go to waste. Clarice and Alexis are sitting on the couch together, sipping coffee as they talk about what she might to do with herself now. She definitely can’t go back to the life she had, not after last night. She keeps looking over at Marek while they talk.

Clarice doesn’t pry, even though she wants to. For the last hour, Marek has been sitting with the two investigators, continuing his side of the story. He even offers to vouch for the two of them and how they had to stand their ground if they help him and Alexis out of homelessness. Neither he nor she will have a chance in hell on the streets now.

Both Valerie and Arma dote over Five while she sits upright in what used to be John’s favorite chair. She’s a terrible sight and can only weakly move her body, and they’ve covered her in a throw so that she doesn’t have to see herself in such a bad way. They even put sunglasses on what’s left of her face. One of her eyes has been boiled while the other is completely exposed and about to fall out of its socket.

No one has uttered Evan’s name since last night. Valerie only remembers him in the room with her before their door was kicked in. A group came in at them, and that’s all she remembers. There’s not much of a likelihood that he made it out. She feels sick to her stomach for bringing her troubles to him and getting him killed like that. She wraps her hands in through the back of her hair and tries her best to not break down into tears again.

Mikel has noticed Clarice glancing at the old flat-screen TV on the wall a few times, but she’s not about to turn it on herself. She probably doesn’t want to see what the world has made them out to be this time around. He can see that she’s still at least a little bit curious about it though. He goes ahead and turns it on himself and everyone turns to the screen when he changes it to the local news. The first thing they see is the word “bloodbath” in huge red letters at the top of the screen.

There are what looks like a hundred bodies covered in red-stained white sheets out front of Evan’s burnt down home. Both Cris and Gerald close their eyes and rest their foreheads in their hands. They know they’ve screwed up not making Mikel take them all to the station immediately. They knew they were screwed and they don’t believe it’ll make a difference, in the end, either way. Clarice asks the clueless question everyone knows the answer to.

“How’d they get that many of the bodies out before the house burned down?”

Aaron is already sauntering out the back door when everyone turns around to look at him. Arma immediately defends him, even though it’s clear what happened after they left him behind.

“Come on! Most of them are probably the ones Mikel ran over with his truck!”

Mikel tries to follow after Aaron, to tell him that they all did what they had to, but Valerie holds him back by grabbing his wrist. After she goes out to the back yard herself, Clarice turns up the volume so they can all hear what the reporter and the people she’s interviewing have to say.

“Over sixty dead have been accounted for, while the charred remains of dozens more are still being discovered. Most of the victims appear to have been ghastly torn apart, some limb from limb. Others have been chopped up, run over, burnt alive, gunned down, or simply bludgeoned to death.”

A soot smudged rat, who looks to have been there all night, comes on next. “Is this what you all wanted, huh! Are you all cheering at home! The fuckin’ killer robots are real, they were here, they did this! The fuckin’ cops were here to help ‘em too! They were in on it! This is systematic slaughter, people! Wake up!”

“What were you doing rioting out here in this upper-class neighborhood?”

“We’re all out here fightin’ for our lives against these murder machines!”

“Out here? I’m confused. Why out here, at this person’s home? You just happened to be out here when the robots attacked?”

The rat that was being interviewed doesn’t have an answer to the reporter’s question. After failing to come up with a real answer, he just marches off, repeating that they’re all getting slaughtered and no one cares.

A firefighter can be heard in the background saying they have already found the remains of at least twenty more people, all piled up together in the rubble. The camera operator pans over to him as he’s patting charcoal off of his pants.

“It’s just a rough count of the skulls in there.” He’s shaking his head in utter disbelief. “There’re piles of ‘em.”

The firefighter has packed out one of Paul’s skulls. The charred white ceramic-coated lump almost looks like the real thing, but it’s not. Where the ceramic has been shattered, heat tinted titanium is showing beneath, and strange hair-thin fibers are hanging down out of its base. A nearby police lieutenant immediately interrupts by snatching the thing out of the man’s hands and marching off with it.

Clarice turns the television off when the others start getting all riled up over the following interviews. Somehow, Marek is the first one to call the other homeless witnesses a bunch of “shitbags.”

It takes almost two whole minutes for Cris and Gerald to get everyone to lower their voices. The ramifications of what has happened are looking bleak for all of them, and are only going to get worse by the minute. It doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to handle these crimes on their own anymore. The best they can figure to do is quarantine the group and buy themselves some quick time.

They give everyone half an hour to gather themselves and be ready for a pick-up, with a strict warning to not bother trying to disappear on them. They call up one of their fellow officers and tell them to bring out a personnel truck.

Almost an hour later, a big black tactical team truck pulls into Ray’s driveway. They all watch through the windows of the house as Cris meets the driver, who looks to be dressed like another investigator. They all get a feel for the mess they’re in when the driver is seen throwing his arms up high, then pointing this way and that way. The man puts his hands over his face in frustration and drags it down to his collar while Cris shouts back. When the two are finally done yelling at one another, the driver reluctantly opens up the back doors and then jumps back in the cab to wait for all of them.

When Cris comes back through the front door, Gerald gets up and goes out the back, to retrieve Aaron and Valerie. “Alright everyone, you’ve got about fifteen minutes. Everyone in the truck!”

Mikel, being the last one out, closes up the house and locks all the doors behind himself. Aaron bocks at loading Runner into the back of the truck when he’s told. The machine is too heavy for the investigators to budge themselves and the thing will not operate for them as a runner should. Aaron knows damn well if he lets them have Runner, it’ll be impounded and he’ll never see it again. It takes quite a bit of threatening to get him to comply.

He may not recognize anyone as an authority over himself, especially now that he’s not even human anymore, but he does heed rifles being pointed at him. It’s not likely that his memories are going to be backed up ever again, and that’s a significant problem at the moment. If he dies now, he might not even get resurrected again at all.

Things are getting much tenser by the minute. While most everyone has been worn down, he and Arma have both been recharging all night. She looks like she might snap at any moment too. The way they are treating him is getting her riled up and even Gerald knows to back off on his attitude before it’s too late.

“Look, everyone, a lot has happened and there’s no easy way forward, for any of us.” His rifle isn’t shouldered, but it’s still at the ready for a hip-shot if he’s forced to it. “What I’m saying is that Cris and I need to contain what’s happened before speculation gets the better of us. It’ll be safer for all of us down at the precinct, ok?”

Mikel is holding back his chuckles while he shakes his head at the investigators. “Oh, you slithery little shits. I knew you were stupid.” He doesn’t mean to make threats, but he can’t help himself. “None of you have a clue what you’re dealing with here, do you? This isn’t robots ‘n rats any more folks, if you take us in, it’ll be a whole new ball game.” It doesn’t matter. They have their minds made up.

It’s a rough ride all the way out to the pavement. They have to hold onto the bottoms of their seats over most of the big ruts in the road just to not get thrown to the floor. Once they’re on the highway, the fact that they’re all being taken to jail starts to set in. Aaron leans forward and catches Valerie’s attention around Gerald, who’s sitting between them.

“If you don’t want to go to the precinct, babe, if you don’t trust them… just say the word.”

Gerald’s hands tighten around the grips on his rifle. “You sit back and shut up, Aaron.”

Aaron doesn’t smirk or anything. He simply ignores Gerald as if he isn’t even there. “Runner and I will stop this truck, and we’ll get you out of here. There’s not a damn thing any of these guys could do to stop us.”

Gerald is a very stout and strong man, but he finds that he can’t even begin to force Aaron back in his seat when he puts his elbow into him. His mouth gets dry, knowing the truth behind Aaron’s boast. He was hoping no one would notice that both he and Cris are completely out of ammo. The magazine in his rifle has merely been a show for the last eight hours. The three robots could turn the entire truck into a deli stand if they wanted to.

Valerie feels pretty cool when she pretends to seriously consider Aaron’s offer. “No, but thanks, Aaron. It looks like this is how we’re gonna have to establish common ground with Welan City. The precinct will be the safest place we can recoup for now. We were going to have to set some conditions with them eventually, might as well be now.”

Gerald was kind of glad she talked him down, but now he’s not so sure they are all on the same page at all now. “Recoup! Recoup for what?” He can’t believe Valerie thinks she is the one who is going to be setting the conditions. They’re all insane.

Aaron gets her drift. He knows exactly what she’s thinking, and she’s probably right. They are the first real immortals. If anyone else finds out, big money will be coming for them. All of their crimes will be swept away and forgotten like a fart in the wind. If Werker doesn’t come for them, someone else surely will.

In his head, Gerald is counting up all the charges the group has racked up between them. Murder, assault, illegal modification of a robot, illegal research, burglary, and significant property damages are just the obvious start of an ever-growing list. He only stops counting when he realizes they’re already pulling into the back gate of the downtown precinct. Everyone in the truck cranes their necks to look through the front windows of the truck. They’ve all seen the building from a distance, but not this close.

The main tower is so big, it can be seen from almost anywhere in the city. The one hundred story plate-steel-skinned building is a flagrant show of the government's executive power over the land. The sight of it alone confirms that the old-ways are dead and gone. The hot-rolled mill scale has been left on the steel, giving the building a dark bluish brown color. The metal has only been clear coated so that it doesn’t rust, and gives it a little bit of a glossy sheen to it. The few long, narrow, horizontal windows up high are all deeply recessed into the side making it look like a bunker.

This precinct has always been famous for the two enormous old war mechs that stand out in front of it. They’re claimed to have been decommissioned and only serve as statues, a testament to Welan City’s history. Though many insist that they are, no one knows for sure if the machines are actually still functional or not.

Normally, demilitarized robots have had their dynamic systems and joints all fused, but adamant skeptics bold enough to try climbing them swear that they’ve only been sealed from the weather. Trespassers are always immediately detained and forced to relinquish any information they collect. That alone is a pretty good indicator that something is being hidden. No one still alive has ever seen them move since the day they were placed there. It’s said that giant machines like these shaped the world the way it is today.

The backside of the building, where they pull in, is another similarly large courtyard but surrounded by a matching fifteen-foot steel wall. They pull up outside the operations loading zone so that they don’t draw too much attention to themselves like they would through the normal processing center. Gerald has all of them line up outside in the order that he previously discussed with them.

They all quickly form two lines behind Aaron and Cris, who are the biggest and take the lead. Valerie and Mikel follow directly behind them, with Arma and Five after them. Lastly, Clarice and Gerald bring up the rear, trying to make things look normal from the rear of the line as well. They all do their best to move along quickly, knowing it’s only a matter of time before they’re recognized. As soon as they go through the doors, they head straight for the elevators.

When people inside the building start to figure out who Cris and Gerald are escorting, a crowd starts to gather. Arma might as well be lit up like a Christmas tree. The many officers accumulating in the hall know to not impede their way and stay back a safe distance from them. The investigators are not taking them to the normal holding cells like they were expecting either, that would be down the main stairway. Surprisingly, they all abruptly stop in front of the rear entrance elevators. While they wait, they all look sheepishly back at the gathering officers around them. It’s unnerving seeing such judgmental and shocked faces on so many seasoned individuals.

When one of the pairs of elevator doors open, it’s full of even more officers on their way out. The group startles a little at the sight of Cris, bearing his rifle, and Aaron’s still blood-spattered face. Aaron smoothly steps aside and waits quietly for them to all slink on by. His courteous cooperation makes a significant impression on everyone. He looks like he should be dressed in logging chains, and the media has already made them all out to be vicious monsters that could attack at any second.

A few people turn pale at the sight of Five when Gerald nudges her onward to get in the elevator. She looks like a charred human corpse except for a few pieces of shiny metal on her skeleton showing through and her fibery melted muscle tissues look like burnt flesh. She walks slowly while each movement she makes is done by weakly jerking herself along. The stop-motion effort is enough to prickle most people’s skin. Somehow, it’s still a little comic, seeing a crispy-looking zombie walking around with sunglasses on.

Up on the fourth floor, the whole group sits calmly in unexpectedly nice chairs out front of the few investigators' offices while Cris and Gerald start formally interviewing each of them. They start with Valerie since she’s the one with the largest scope of knowledge on the whole situation. They keep her strictly focused on the events she was personally present for. It’s quite painful for her to talk with her mouth busted up like it is, so they are kind enough to keep their questions down to simple yes or no answers.

Mikel is brought in after her. They take nearly twice as long with him, despite having already heard his story. Most everyone can see him through the window slats. He’s slumped forward in his chair with his head down in his hands. This time, he’s only going through the motions with them. By the time they’re done with him, he walks out with an unexpected bold look on his face.

Gerald momentarily steps out after him to call another fellow officer over. He hands the man a sticky note with something written on it and requests that they be quick about it. When it’s Clarice’s turn, she plays cute and dumb with them and is out quickly. They know what she’s doing, and they know that she knows, but none of them care. It’s obvious enough that she simply got dragged along for one hell of a ride, so they only ask her time-sensitive specifics, in case they catch any discrepancies in how things went down.

After Arma unwaveringly stonewalls them, Cris reluctantly brings Five in to be alongside her as she requested. Five is the only one she completely trusts and won’t answer anything without her guidance. Out of protective instinct, Valerie, Aaron, and Mikel sit tall in their seats and peer thorough the office window while Cris question the two of them.

Rather than interrogating them in the same intimidating fashion as the others, Cris maintains a good amount of curiosity and a comforting disposition while he talks with them. Wondering whether the two are at all simple or not, Gerald tries to trick them with the inflection of his voice as well as a grin.

“Wow, how many people do you suppose you’ve killed by now?”

Five grumpily folds her arms in front of herself and scoffs. “What’d you make us out to be… stupid or something?”

Arma’s scowl deepens and she refuses to look at either of them. “So much for that.”

Cris ends up rephrasing the question. “How many people have you killed… in self-defense?”

“At least a dozen, that I’m sure did not make it.” She shakes her head while she recounts them all in her mind, not in shame, but in that they definitely couldn’t have survived.

Five can’t confirm that she has actually killed anyone. She speaks in a very soft and unsure voice “I really don’t know. I’ve had to protect myself many times and hurt some quite badly for sure, but I don’t know if anyone died ‘cause of it.”

The rest of the interrogation is simply to satisfy Cris and Gerald’s personal curiosities of what it’s like to be a robot. After a great deal of awkward chit chat, Valerie can no longer stay awake while listening in on them. She falls asleep across Aaron’s lap.

When Aaron is requested into the office, the investigator’s moods change noticeably. Things had visibly gotten out of hand after they left him alone back at Evan’s. He could have ridden out after them on Runner, but he didn’t. Not only did he butcher dozens of additional people, innocent or not, but he had also illegally redesigned a robot to help him do it.

Neither of those cases can be considered as being anywhere close to self-defense. The claws that he put on his runner are a clear sign of premeditation. They start grilling him with questions on why he did what he did, but he stops them in their tracks immediately. Just as the others did, he insists on starting from the very beginning.

He starts with the moment he first began to fall for Valerie. He wants them to understand how hard he fell for her, and why he’s gone so far as to do what he’s done.

“This whole… mess, started when I saw Five-One, Arma, runnin’ down the sidewalk out front of my apartment.”

He makes it sound like he was suddenly dumped into a meat grinder and reformed on the other side, the way he is now. He doesn’t miss a single gory detail or emotion that he went through the entire time. He doesn’t try to excuse what he’s done either. As their discussion drags into its second hour, the two finally give in to the possibility that he did initially rebuilt Runner for completely innocent reasons. It’s a huge leap forward in their understanding of his situation.

By the time he reaches the events of last night, he has worn them down with sheer voluminous detail. Rather than bothering to establish his innocence at all, he focuses his concerns on the well-being of Arma and Five.

“Even though I wasn’t given the choice to be brought back as a machine, I wanted to be, and I embraced it. They did not, they were forced into this situation as physical property, stripped of everything that they once knew, and were lied to about everything. They deserve a second chance.”

Cris does agree with him. “They should be refurbished and given a clean slate, but in a structured environment.”

Gerald is not as heartfelt about it though. “It’s not like we’re going to powder their little butts and release them into the forest, Aaron. Nuh-uh, dude. They’re gonna be on probation, like, forever, but probably still in a cell. But we’ll make it a big one, ‘cause we’re nice like that.”

They already know Aaron feels guilty about what happened. They were there at the ranch and regardless of that, they still want to hear it from his mouth.

“Do you think you should be charged with murder, for all you have done? Don’t you think you took things too far, Aaron?” Gerald sighs, letting that thought sink in.

He thinks about it for a minute before answering and tries not to smirk in any way. “Yeah, for sure, that was... too far.” His voice is not sarcastic, but serious, and he nods in agreement, considering the truth of it. “But I’m afraid serving time would only hurt the people I love, so… I’ll take a pass on that part.”

Cris doesn’t take to it very well. He throws his hands out to his side when he knows he’s being mocked. “What is this shit?”

Aaron resorts to being blunt with them again. “If I were imprisoned, what would you do? You can’t keep me awake. I can shut down from the inside if I want. You could put me away for a hundred years for all I give a shit. I’d wake up as if it were mere minutes from now. Hell, I could make it so I wake up ten minutes ago and erase your smug asses. My friends would still be out there, waiting for me. Try two hundred years! See if I give a shit. It’d be an easy way to get rid of you clowns. I wouldn’t even have to raise a finger.”

“Nope, we’re talking about destroying you, turning you to dust, poof, gone.”

Now is the time for him to bluff his ass off. He laughs “I’m in the ether, brother! I’m downloaded, uploaded, backed up, all that. I’m safe, dude. Do you think Valerie would have risked losin’ me all over again? We’ve already been playin’ our long-game. Go ahead, hang my body by its neck, if you want to do things by the book. You’d have to return it to my family though, by the next day if that’s ok.”

“No, we’d make sure you were done. You’d be on a forever list.”

“What if there’s six of me? I could come back as anything, anyone! I could be put in a regular production frame and you’d never know… not until it was too late.” His eyes light up with all the possibilities coming to mind. “I’ll come back six ways from Sunday!” He leans forward intimidatingly with his eyes wide. “I could be out there already, waiting for your shift to end.” He squints at them “That’s probably where Paul is right now.”

They know he’s right, and that they have no real measures to do a damn thing about it either. They did just encounter three different Paul Mendles already. With nothing more to ask of him, they call for their last detainee. “Alexis, you’re up.”

After everyone else’s accounts of her knack for brawling, Cris and Gerald are quite curious to talk with her. They thought they remembered her being taller, but she is only about five-six or so. She makes Gerald look like he might need to start stepping up his game at the gym. As intimidating as her figure is, she isn’t really a confrontational person.

Alexis hangs her head low, knowing that she’s in really big trouble. Her hands are gently folded in her lap, and her teeth lightly clench once in a while when she breaths too deeply.

“What substances have you been taking, Alexis? Word is, you’ve been like this for quite a while, but you look perfectly healthy to me. Seems you know what you’re doing.”

Gerald doesn’t even try to be polite like Cris. “Do you fight for money? I heard bum-fights are a real thing.”

This is not at all what she was expecting from them. Her mouth hangs open with the absurdity of their questions. It’s quite unprofessional and she has lost a lot of respect for them now. She thought Investigators were supposed to be the real deal so she doesn’t right out tell them to f-off, but close.

“I’ve been trying to tell people, but no one’ll listen! Everyone here just thinks I’m crazy.”

“Tell them what?”

“I was born on an alien planet, one with twice as much gravity as here. I’ve been stranded here for years and’ve been thrown in the gutter ‘cause of it.”

Their curiously raised eyebrows quickly droop, having been made to look like jerks. They don’t have any reason to hold her either way around, they were just going to ask her what she thought of the others since they did rescue her. They’ve blown their chance though. She doesn’t look like she’s going to be very cooperative now.

After talking to Aaron for so damn long, they’ve just about had all they can take anyway. They already know plenty about how she ended up at the steel mill, and frankly, don’t care. They apologize for their insincerity and wave her on out. As much as they want to be done with all of this, they still have a long evening ahead of them. They still have Gabriel to question, and they’d honestly rather shoot themselves than deal with him right now. After that is over with, they’re wanted up in the commander’s office. The fuse will be lit, and they’ll have to get their shit together in a hurry after that.

“Ok everyone, we're gonna have a little slumber party, till we get this all figured out. We have boarding facilities for at-risk witnesses and anyone else that needs to be detained for whatever reasons we see fit. That’s where you’ll be staying and I don’t wanna hear it. It’s the best you’re gonna get, and definitely better than you deserve?”

While Cris heads down the other end of the hall, Gerald escorts them all at gunpoint to the largest guest room on the sixth floor and locks them inside. “If for any reason, you need to leave the area, the door pager will alert me. Do not use it for stupid reasons and I will count it against you.”

The room is set up like a typical waiting room, but there’s a row of individually enclosed bunks all along the wall for them to sleep. As soon as their door closes, something catches Valerie’s eye through the window, it’s Gabriel. She could spot him in his stupid favorite light-green t-shirt from a mile away. He must’ve been on this floor the whole time and they’re escorting him out, not in.

By the time Gerald returns to the office with Gabriel, Cris has already finished his large coffee. He is wide awake and ready. Even though the other group painted a picture portraying Gabriel as a bastard and a weasel, they know better than to jump to conclusions. The entire world can be turned upside down, simply by turning one’s head over.

What they don’t like though, is that he has been lying to them about almost everything already. Gerald pulls up a chair and sits right to the side of him. He lays his rifle across his lap and waits quietly while Cris does his thing.

“Start from the very beginning, Dr. Ahl.”

“Paul may have been old, but he was very smart, and not to be blown off. I shouldn’t have brought him back, but he had countermeasures to everything. He had me trapped from the start. There was nothing I could do.”

It only takes a few minutes before they realize how much easier it was dealing with the others. They can’t get him to form any semblance of a timeline for all he’s worth.

“Why is it that none of you could follow even the most basic laboratory standards? It’s like you ‘re all a bunch of children playing with matches. You made this beautiful coveted little flame, and then you set the fuckin’ city on fire with it!”

“ ‘Cause they are not basic prototypes that could be handled like robots! They are cunning like you wouldn’t even know. Everything was going fine… until Valerie got attached to them, then it all went to shit. I told everyone we needed to keep their frames blank, but nooo, they had to make them look like real people. No one would’ve made the connection otherwise.”

“That’s just shitty, Gabriel. You knew they were people! In the least, you should be charged with false imprisonment. You may not have murdered or abducted anyone yourself, but you knowingly detained two individuals and the things you assumed to do with them! That’s the rest of your life in the hole, dude, and no, you don’t get the chance to be brought back after that.”

“I told you already. I wasn’t able to help them. Paul would’ve killed me too. No one could’ve ever proven the prototypes were real people, where they came from, or that he was the one who killed them. Everything was wiped out to make sure of that before they were even built. Even their original brain scans were eventually wiped. There was no whistle to even blow if I tried. Even now, no one could prove they were ever real humans, not in court, nowhere, no how.”

“It’s pretty obvious, Gabriel. Have you even talked to them yourself?”

“Pssh… please. What rights do they have, Cris? They are robots. Human conditions no longer apply to them. You will learn that soon enough.”

Both he and Gerald pause for a while, understanding exactly what he means. Aaron already made that point clear enough. “That’s still no excuse. So… you were forced to do all of this against your will too then, huh?”

“As I was saying, I was just on my way to work one morning when Mikel came for me. They beat me, forced me to work on Aaron, they killed Barry, and Valerie even stole his seat on the board!”

As he listens to Gabriel give his accounts of constantly being intimidated, bullied, abducted, assaulted, and held against his will, he’s reliving all that happened at Evans. In his mind, he is watching all those people falling under his rifle. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. The rioters just wouldn’t listen and stay back. He was forced to gun them down as they were going to kill them all. Who are they to insist Gabriel did all of this willingly.

“You turned Paul into a weapon, and instigated the riot that nearly killed both of us.” He looks over at Gerald, with a now angry look on his face. “You knew damn well what was gonna happen. You deserved everything that happened to you.”

Both he and Gerald have a lot to consider. Like Valerie had told them, with Marco and Paul gone Gabriel is the only one who can keep the Five-Series process alive. They can either end everything now or not. He promised to give the girls a chance on their own, but there’ll be a heavy price to pay for it.

If word gets out that successful mind transfers are being done industrially, they’ll all be screwed. The entire city will be caught up in a hell-storm of speculation, rioting, and giant corporate battles for the technology. He fears that the snowball has already started rolling and it’ll smash them flat if they don’t start running like hell, and right damn now.

Everything they’ve seen so far is telling the two of them to bury the whole incident six feet deep, but it’s becoming more of a moral call than a legal one. Mind transferring is something the word has both dreamed of and also feared for hundreds of years. It’s a monstrous double-edged sword with the power to launch humanity into a far unreachable territory, or crush it all in chaos.

They can’t very well sentence Five, Arma, or even Aaron to their deaths because they were forced to defend themselves. They had their trial by fire, and they survived. The three are no more deserving of incarceration than Gerald or himself. The two of them hate the rats just as much, and they won’t sit up on their high horse pretending they’re still better than everyone else.

Cris kicks at the leg of Gabriel’s chair with his boot. He’s had enough for the day. “Alright, we’re done here, back to your room.”

Cris sits back in his chair and puts his boots up on the desk, considering the consequences of his options. He won’t be able to charge anyone for murder without it blowing up in their faces. Like Aaron had said, they can’t send a robot to prison or kill a man that can’t actually be killed. Gabriel wouldn’t stay incarcerated for long either, he would talk, and then he’d be bought.

Once the public catches rumor of what’s going on, it’ll be unstoppable. They’ll have to pull the project from Werker, but they won’t be able to stop it forever. The highest bidder will get their hands on this stuff one way or another and fire things back up in full swing. The next time it surfaces, people will be selling their souls for it. He wonders how many people alone might die at the hands of frauds promising eternal life. That’s one of the main reasons something like this could never be allowed to surface.

Upon Gerald’s return, he has made up his mind on giving the case over to his superiors to handle. He doesn’t want this blood on his hands any more but Gerald convinces him otherwise.

“We should just let them all go.”

“You’re kiddin’ me. How the fuck do we do that? Why in god’s name would we do that?”

“No, I mean, we really just let them all go.” There’s a significant moment of silence between them. “All the bad guys are dead anyway, Paul, the rats, they’re dead.” He nods his head “This was never just a crime, Cris, it was war. You don’t charge anyone with murder in a war. This shit has already started and there’s no way we can stop it, silence it, or anything. We are way beyond Welan city justice here.”

“We just happened to’ve drawn one of the short straw then?”

Gerald smiles, but maniacally, and then lets out a depressive chuckle. “Our toasted cruiser is out there at the riot scene. Right now, the coroners are counting how many rounds we pumped into those rats.” His eyebrows are raised and he’s making an insinuative look.

“Whatta ya suppose the commander’ll be asking us upstairs, hmm?” In a mocking tone, he holds his elbows out and mimics their boss. “Hey guys, heard ya had a pretty wild night, how ya hold’n up? Need any post-event counseling?”

Cris laughs and moves his elbows side to side too, joining in with the fun. “Hey, guys, the rat king called, said we’re square, ya know, I try ‘n kill you, you try ‘n kill me, no big fuss.”

Gerald’s cheer abruptly vanishes. “Honestly, it’s past the time for us to give a shit about what happens to them. We need to get the hell out of here.”

“Alright, but we should take care of a few things first. Since we’re… goin’ rogue. I say we get somethin’ out of it for ourselves.”

Instead of heading up to the commander’s office like they’re supposed to, they fill their vest pouches with fresh magazines and lock the door behind them. They know damn well the two of them have made it to the very top of the infamous rat watch-list by now. They’ll need to be ready for anything. They have a hunch that there’ll be a gathering of the elusive zealot leadership tonight, and if the two of them want to get out of Welan alive, they’ll have to strike first. Luckily, rats are about as predictable as one gear connected to the other.