Hilargi shook her head, incredulous that he thought that. “Listen, you. I programmed and designed you to be the toughest robot out there! There’s no way you can lose—unless you get in your own head about it like you did on the battlefield.”

Yair was left to wonder, “Then why did you build me with emotions?” there was a slight bite to his tone that unsettled Hilargi. She stepped away from him, sitting down in a chair next to her work desk. Yair, who had been lying on the floor, now sat up. He sat cross-legged, gazing at Hilargi silently.

Hilargi crossed her legs at the ankles, wondering why his tone had been so accusing. She lowered her eyes after a moment, rubbing her arms for comfort. “I wanted you to be compassionate… I wanted you to want to serve mankind because of your own moral compass and emotions. After all, there’s no one more loyal than someone who does something of their own freewill.”

Yair stared at her intensely, wondering what to make of her motivations. A sentence that could deeply land him in trouble fumbled out of his mouth, “What if humanity isn’t worth saving?”

Yair’s unreal mind played images in front of his eyes; he couldn’t tell whether he had brought up a video recording of the fight from his memory files so he could view it, or whether his imagination was just vivid enough to conjure it before his eyes. All he knew was that what he had just experienced was haunting him.

He had seen women blowing each other apart and bursting into bloody messes on the sand floor, and he had experienced, firsthand, the viciousness of the metallic creations that humans commissioned via their mutant slaves.

His mind had put together an ugly image of how the tribes operated, and he viewed it with extreme distaste. A tribe would defeat one tribe and absorb that tribe into their own, that tribe would capture and enslave mutants to do their bidding, and the mutants would have to create hideously dangerous weapons to help their tribe defeat others, creating a vicious cycle.

A cold tendril of electricity slithered through him, then. It kept blooming and blooming until it felt like he was made of ice, and couldn’t warm up.

I’m a weapon. He recognized, but this time, upon recognizing it, he fully understood what it meant. He was a creature designed to kill, and he felt a shiver of hatred toward Hilargi once again, when he realized how malevolent it was of her to create a creature with a conscience who was made to kill.

This conclusion made his whole body creak and rumble, momentarily scrambling his systems and causing him to view static.

“Yair? Yair!” he heard Hilargi scream his name in terror as she removed his helmet, intending to pick at his artificial brain. When he came to, he seized Hilargi’s wrist. Hilargi yelped; he had gripped it harder than he intended.

“I am fine. Please don’t worry.” Yair said. “I was emitting thoughts that caused a malfunction.”

“Emitting thoughts?” Hilargi repeated, hand on her chin as she pondered his words.

Yair frowned, wishing his thoughts to go away. “I am a weapon, and killing is wrong, and I have the ability to recognize that.”

Hilargi’s mouth opened in shock. She stammered, “I-I… I didn’t consider that when designing you.” Hilargi collapsed back into her chair, looking completely exhausted. She murmured, “Killing is a sin…”

Yair climbed to his feet, staring at her expressionlessly. “I have encountered quite the conundrum. I feel like I should not be here.” Hilargi’s face was pensive as she considered what to tell him. Her face was lit up by the blindingly bright room—casting her in angelic light—but at the moment, he could not view her as such. In fact, he couldn’t stand to look at her at all; he ended up averting his gaze.

“Do you mind if I clear my head by exploring the fortress?” Yair asked.

Hilargi nodded in response. “O-of course. Do so.”

Yair marched out of the long, tubular hallway and into the adjoining hallway. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He just wanted to take his mind off of the awful thing he had just discovered. He decided to help in the kitchen again, since it was useful in distracting him.

He made several plates for hungry women. He assisted in cutting tomatoes, limes, and oranges, and cooking hyena meat. Some of the women in the kitchen appreciated him helping, for the most part. Many of them, however, gave him looks that indicated that they were afraid of him. In fact, now that he thought about it, he realized that they had been giving him looks like that before he had come to the conclusion that he was a weapon. How long have they been afraid? He wondered. And he found himself frowning at the idea that he could kill them all in an instant, and how horrifying it must be for them to live with such a creature. I would be terrified, too.

Rebecca—the woman who had made her disdain towards him clear on their previous encounter--was in the kitchen. While she cooked up some rice, she consistently threw glares over her shoulder at him. He wanted to say something to her, but found that no words were adequate enough to convince her to like him.