Chapter Seven

Aaron

Aaron opens his eyes at the sound of the contactor when all the overhead lights in the shop power on. Remembering his last thoughts before falling asleep, he realizes that all he needs to do is see the world from a different perspective, even if it’s only for a moment. It’s what he’s always done when he gets in a spot like this. He went to the forest every weekend, to keep himself from losing his shit like this. Being trapped underground the last couple months has not been doing him any good.

Whenever he’s out in the woods, he can literally look from the outside in. It used to put Welan city right in its place. Now it’s SSS that needs to be reevaluated. Compared to the vast, beautiful, and harsh natural world, his life’s troubles always end up looking so small. No problem in his life, no matter how daunting, could ever hold up to the size of the world once it’s been realized. Even now, his existence will be as short lived as a spark from the right distance. Maybe if he gets out of this damn place, he’ll see that he’s merely being dramatic, and that things aren’t that bad at all.

In a determined mood, he briskly heads down the hallway and across the balcony to his and Valerie’s apartment. When he opens the door, he’s surprised to see that she isn’t there. He looks down at the little battel com on his wrist. It’s still way too early for her to have already gone to the lab. Normally, she’d still be in bed. With a scowl, he marches over to his side of the bed and grabs his backpack out from underneath it. It isn’t her that he came for anyway, everything he’s ever needed is in his pack. With it slung over one of his shoulders, he swiftly heads upstairs, fixated on his plan.

Without asking he takes the keys for Mikel’s big redneck diesel pickup out of the box on the wall in the main hanger. As quickly as he can, he boots up Runner and has it climb into the back of the truck. He closes the tailgate quietly, knowing he’ll be noticed any moment now. As soon as he fires the engine up, he floors it on over to the little guard station at the main bay door control panel. He feels bad about not letting it warm up, but he doesn’t have much time before Sy or Vaun send word to stop him.

Sure enough, as soon as he stops in front of the first slider, the shifting black blot silhouette of an armed guard swiftly strafes around alongside the truck. It takes all of his self-control to not do something stupid. He grips the steering wheel tight enough to make it creak, and forces a low strained growl out from between his clenched teeth. There is no way in hell than anyone is going to be able to talk him out of leaving. They’ll have to punch him full of holes to stop him.

He closes his eyes for a second, thinking of how he can take care of the guard and get the door open before they can alarm anyone else. Maybe all he’ll have to do is threaten them. They should know better than to cross him, of all people. He can’t believe they have the balls to even give him side-eye like this.

When the guard moves to the side of his door, all he can see it the top of their helmet. All he’s probably have to do is slam them down with a good kick to the door. The stacks on Mikels truck are too loud for him to hear anything, so the person stands back and smacks the tip of their barrel against the window to get him to roll it down. He does, nearly ripping the handle off in frustration.

“What the fuck do you want? Get that damn door open.”

“Where ya goin there bud?”

“None of your fuc…” He suddenly recognizes the guard’s voice. It took him a second to place it, but it’s Alexis. “What the hell are you doing up here this early, all geared up?”

She pulls the black facecloth down and snaps her goggles up on the helmet, baring her innocent looking pale white face. “They put me on rotating duty like two weeks ago dude. What the hell are YOU doing up here this early, and with Mikel’s truck? This isn’t on the schedule.”

“I’m going…” he sighs, trying to not sound silly. “I’m going camping.”

She laughs out loud, but then then looks around to see if anyone else is there. “Like outside the city?”

He catches himself before giving her a smart-ass answer. It was an innocent silly question, coming from her. “Yeah, like way out of the city. You know, to the mountains. I’m putting a hundred miles between me and this goddamn place. I’ll walk if I have to.”

She looks behind herself at the black painted bay doors. Everything is black there, and it’s getting old. “I’ve never seen any mountains before.”

Abruptly, the combat com on his wrist erupts with Sy’s pissed off voice. “Aaron, what the hell are you doing in that truck! Did your brain finally short out or something?”

The screech of Sy’s voice has him imagining how many guards he can bludgeon to death before they finally get him down. As hard as it is for him to do it, he lowers his voice, slows it down, and talks to him as calm as he can. he imagines how his voice used to sound, back when he was really himself.

“I don’t know man… I… I just need to get out for a bit ok. I was gonna go…”

Alexis interrupts them on her own combat com, trying to not sound like she was standing there being negligent. “He was going camping sir.”

“Camping!” There’s a chuckle and then a long pause on Sy’s end. It sounds like someone else is there talking to him. “You know, Aaron, I kind of expect people around here to request vacation when they’re getting cabin fever, not just take off down the road in the world’s most famous piece of CRIMINAL EVIDENCE!”

“I need this break man. I’ll come back, but I just can’t stay right now. It’s not gonna be good if I go back underground right now.”

In the background, someone is telling Sy that no one would have the balls to pull him over in anything with an SSS logo on it, and that he’d probably be fine. “Alright, I’ll give it to you this time, but you will OWE me for this. You got that? And Alexis is going with you, no negotiating. You are not the kind of asset that I can have being captured, do you understand me? I will turn you and that ruck into a glass crater in the ground before that happens.”

“Yes sir, I understand.”

Alexis is rather shocked. She looks up at him with a face of worry. “Uh, what do I need? I’ve never been camping before?”

“Just grab some extra clothes and maybe some snacks, it’s not gonna be a whole thing.”

She looks back down to the main hallway doors and then to her com. “Ok, but we’re gonna need a bigger truck, like twice as big as this one.” She glances across the hanger for a second, and then points to the nearer cargo truck. “I don’t know, Just grab the smaller flatbed, it’s not listed for the next couple days.”

“Fine, but hurry your ass up, before they change their minds.”

He finds it funny whenever anyone calls the behemoth eight wheeled shuttle hauler the smaller truck, when it’s wider than a road lane. It doesn’t take up two whole lanes like the even bigger eighty foot truck, but in no way is it small. He squints down at her, wondering why she would, in any rationale, consider such a thing, but he’s not going to pass up the opportunity.

“Fine, now go and get your stuff. I’ll pull up outside.”

She has big eyes when she looks back up at him, then scurries off out of sight. It suddenly dawns on him that the new runner downstairs must be hers. It’s the only reason they’d need a bigger truck than Mikel’s. He wonders if she’s kept it a secret to surprise him, or if she never said anything because he’s been a jerk. At least Five and Arma would have to have known about it, if they were to copy Runner’s programming. There’s no way they could have copied his programs without their voice authority.

After parking Mikel’s truck back where it was, he climbs up the driver side of the big flatbed and looks inside of it. The four door cab is big enough to seat a good ten people in it. Only having two runners in the back will look a little weird, when they’ve got room for a good twenty of them or so. He finds it strange how SSS doesn’t really have any vehicles in between the size of the personnel trucks and this thing.

After sitting parked outside for a few minutes, he closes his eyes and listens to the clatter of the big v-sixteen engine deep inside the truck clattering away. A sound catches his attention and his eyes snap to the mirror on his side. Something white and red flash across the pavement behind him. Even from the back of the truck, he can see the giant grin on her face when she gallops her machine on over. He can’t help but to grin right along with her. He might even be as excited as she is, and can’t wait to show her the forest. It’ll be inspiring, especially since she’s never seen such a place. Having lived a life of homelessness, he figures that she could use seeing an entirely different world too.

When she jumps down off her machine, she drops one of the heavy rear gates and stands back, making sure he’s watching when she commands her runner to load up. “Go on, get up in the truck Monster, up there next to Runner!” She commands it so exuberantly, as if coaxing it like an animal, and hops around on her toes when it does what she says.

He can hear its sharp claws scratch and scratch on the diamond-plate steel bed when it climbs into the back, and then the heavy gate close again when she’s done. As soon as she climbs up into the cab, he gets the truck going. The sound of the turbos and the incredible feel from the weight of the truck perks his mood up.

“I like Monster, the name you gave im. When you were you gonna tell me?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to wait for the right moment I guess. Marek only finished it, maybe yesterday or something.” Her face flushes a little and she looks out her side window as they turn out onto the main avenue. “Marek said he’d do all of the mods for me, if I’d date him.”

“You know he’s absolutely in love with you right?”

She covers her eyes with her hand and smiles. “Yeah, I know. It’s just that we’re all kind of stuck here together you know, and I don’t really even know him. I never did before any of this. We met like once. I guess I’ll be finding out now, huh.”

Once they’re out on the main road, he starts to think about Valerie. They’d only been dating for about a week by the time he was killed. “So, do you have any feelings for him, are you at least attracted to him?”

“Well, I mean, I guess. There actually is some history between the two of us, but only from way back when we were both still kids. I was only a teenager at the time, and he was only boy.”

He looks at her a little awkwardly. “K.”

“No no, ugh, not like that. I caught him trying to mug a trader, which is not something you do in our culture.” She hangs her head a little, but with a shy smirk. “I beat him up a little.”

“Aw…. Does he remember that?”

“Yeah. I guess he was going through a real hard time in his life. I knew he was too, back then. He was so pitiful. I tried to help him. I gave him what cash I had, but that was really all I could do. I never knew if he had made it after that. A lot of kids don’t at that age. He wasn’t the only one I’d seen like that. Not by a long shot. Then one day, he just showed up, a grown man. It was a little, I don’t know…”

“Seems to me, he grew up alright. He’s not a boy anymore Alexis.” That gets her to blush again.

“Yeah, he’s alright. It’s just hard for me to let my guard down you know. I’ve been watching my own back for so long. It used to be like men were always the enemy. There’s some good ones out there, but it feels like I’ve only ever come across the bad ones.” She looks at him with scrunched eyebrows. “I’m working on it. It’ll just take some time.”

“I can see where you’re coming from. I used to simply hate people, period. Honestly, I’ve always liked robots more than people.” He nods his head, looking out the window, down the road. “After today, I think you’ll see that people aren’t everything. There’s a whole big world out there, and it goes on perfectly well without any of us. Up until this point, I’d say other people have only taken up a rather small portion of my life.”

Both his and Alexis’s heads almost hit the ceiling of the cab at the sound of a sudden and loud “YAAAA” from the back seat. Arma jumps out from behind them, where she’s been hiding behind the seats in the back of the cab the whole time. She must’ve snuck in while he was loading Runner or something.

“So you do like robots better than people huh. That’s what Five said.” She folds her arms over the back of the front bench seat and looks him over for a moment. “Five told me all about the forest, after you took her there. And you didn’t think to invite me this time?” She pretends to have hurt feelings.

He can only watch her curiously out of the corner of his eye while he’s driving. He knows she’s only giving him a hard time, but he still feels bad about it. She’s right. He was going to go alone from the start, but once the gig was up, he should’ve considered the others needed a break too.

Alexis tries to defend him, rolling her eyes. “We knew you were back there the whole time.”

Her voice is loud. “Ha, no you didn’t. You both jumped like such scaredy cats!” It gets them all to laugh and smile.

Catching them off guard again, the dash com in the truck comes on extra loud. This time it’s Vaun looking at them through the center screen. “You were just gonna jet off in the truck without clearing through me, or even telling anyone? What the hell is wrong with you boy? We had an agreement you weren’t gonna be pulling any more shit. Get your ass back here!”

Startling even himself, Aaron immediately smashed his fist through the center screen, completely destroying the com unit. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

A few sparks and a puff of smoke comes out of what is left of the unit when he pulls his fist back. He has to grab ahold of the edge of the seat as hard as he can so he doesn’t make any other errant swings at anything. The other two kind of lean away from him for a second as he puffs his cheeks out and exhales in such seething anger. Alexis isn’t quite reaching for her door handle, but he’s certainly frightened her. She probably hasn’t seen this side of him.

Arma shoves at her mockingly in an effort to get her to relax. “What’d I tell you? He’s been holding it back, like a lot.”

She puts her lengthy hands on his shoulders and gently slides them up the sides of his traps and neck, pushing her thumbs in along his spine. He takes in a long slow deep breath when her long fingers wrap down over his collar bone down to his upper chest and then spread back out to his shoulders where she lets go of him.

It’s when his eyes open again that he realizes it was her that had her hands on him, and not Valerie. He’d completely lost himself there for a second. When he looks up in the rear view mirror at her, he only catches a glimpse of her red-gold eyes before she slips back into her seat with dark look.

He wonders if she’s had to deal with the same kind of anger as himself. He feels terrible about the possibility. As if reading his very thoughts, her smooth voice lofts out to him from the back. He almost wonders if he’s hearing her in his head, or for real.

“You can find your way back Aaron. You just need to know what you really really want. Figure out the one thing you don’t want to live without. Focus on that, and don’t let your mind stray from it.”

Alexis looks at him and then back to Arma. “Well, then what is it that you want Arma?”

Arma looks straight at her, without wandering from her eyes for a single moment. “That… is none of anyone’s business.” She folds her arms with a little bit of a scowl and remains quiet.

Trying to break the awkwardness, Alexis confesses to her own insecurities. “I want money. I never want to be alone and hopeless ever again. No one will ever look down on me ever again. I will fucking kill anyone who tries to stop me.” She folds her own arms too, and then looks back at Arma. “Were you just as violent before… all of this?”

“Neither I or Five should have ever known what violence or anger even was, they way we were brought up, but yes, it was always there from the beginning. I’ve always had some kind of… hate inside of me. Some kind of resentment that made me want to keep everyone away.”

“He looks up in the mirror again, but all he can see of her is the dim reflection in her eyes. “Everyone but Five. She said that the two of you were bonded, like you’ve always been bonded, from even before.” He can see the glare she is looking at him with, even in the dark back of the cab. It doesn’t look like Five told her she shared that with him.

“Yes, everyone but Five.” What she doesn’t tell him, is that he has somehow, in a way she can’t reason, taken Five’s place. She hasn’t figured it out yet, but it is him that she’s become so fixated on. In the same way he’s been hiding his anger, she’s been hiding him. Five is and always has been more that her friend, but he is someone she must have, someone that she is driven to somehow consume, or be consumed by. It’s been driving her up the wall. He clearly has his demons, but she has her own too.

Not really in the mood to beat around the bush with cryptic explanations, he turns around in his seat and looks right at her, as if able to stop her from evading him. “How did you make your hate and anger go away Arma?”

Under her breath, she answers him angrily, showing him that it is certainly not gone. “Think of someone else Aaron.” One of his eyebrows raises, and the same with Alexis. She catches herself, not meaning to have actually said that. She changes her answer, more causally this time. “Think of something else. Fixate on something you must have, or do, whatever. Stay focused on that one thing. That will give everything else a chance to calm down.”

He turns back around. “That’s been making it worse, if anything.”

She says it at the exact volume only he can hear, and not Alexis. “Let go of who you were Aaron. Want what you are. Be what you actually want. You’re a robot painted in a lie. Look at yourself. You’re wearing someone else’s skin.”

Suddenly, he feels a little gross in his old appearance. She makes him feel like he’s wearing the skin of a dead man. “Is that why you won’t wear clothes, because then you can feel who you once were?”

She’s got a real glare this time. “It makes me feel gross, like I’m covering myself up so no one has to keep looking at me. Does it bother you, to see me Aaron?