Chapter Nine

Aaron

After the sunrise has come and gone, Aaron reluctantly leads Arma and Alexis back down the mountain trail. As much as he’d like to take them ever farther into the mountains, the only one of them that could make it would be Alexis. Being hamstringed by his battery life is now something he’ll always have to contend with now.

Even after such an incredible reprieve, none of them are anywhere close to being ready to head back to the grind of SSS yet. Every bit farther they make it down the mountain, the closer they feel to regret. At about noon, when they come across the waterfall again, Alexis stops her runner in the middle of the path and looks back at him. Neither she nor Arma want to go home yet.

He’s a little worried about how much battery life he has left. It’s not like he has an actual gage to go off of. It’s more of a feeling, and he’s definitely gone past half way already. Neither of the other two would be able to get the truck back to base, but they might be able to call someone to come out. He sighs when they give him puppy-dog eyes.

“Alright, we cans stay, but Arma and I won’t be doing any swimming. We’ve got to conserve our energy. I didn’t think to bring any spares.”

Again, they take all their clothes off, and head back into the dark pool under the falls. While he and Arma bask atop the flat rock out in the middle, Alexis frolics like an energetic foal, swimming around as hard as she can and jumping off the massive tree that hangs over the edge of the water. For the first time since he was brought back, he feels normal, relieved, and even happy. While Arma sits up, he lays on his chest, closes his eyes, and lays his head down on his crossed arms.

The longer they stay in the forest, the more distant and trivial his worries become. The anger within him is still there, waiting to be unleashed, but it’s held at bay for now. He couldn’t have asked for more. He still has a ways to go before it’s good and buried, but it’s a good start. It gives him a little more confidence that he won’t make things any worse when he gets back. He might even be able to talks to Valerie more sensibly.

Even though he’s working his damnest to let go of it, that raw feeling of strength and power that comes with his rage is intoxicating. While it was wrecking his life, he hadn’t really noticed how the feeling was sneaking up on him in the form of an addiction. Now that he feels it starting to slip away, he has a desire to pull it back, closer to the ready. He finds himself not wanting it to go away. He wants to embrace it, but only if he can keep his mind straight and control it.

Arma looks down at Aaron’s bare skin, and then at her own. Hers has so much more to it, not only on the surface, but beneath it too. She looks down the entire length of him, considering sliding her hand down the length of him, just to see how it feels. He looks like he’d feel different from Five, or even her own self. The muscle on his body has so much shape to it, like Alexis’s, but so much bigger. She wants to feel the smoothness of it while it’s wet.

Feeling a little ignored, and left out, she decides to lay down next to him on her side, hangs one of her arms out a little over the edge of the rock, and rests the side of her face on her bicep. She rests her other hand down flat on the rock between them, but can’t help herself to scoot it over just far enough to touch his.

He opens one of his eyes for a second and sees that she’s lying next to him. The curious look on her face makes him remember their moment under the water. “You know, when I was brought back, everything felt pretty good right off the bat. I didn’t even realize I’d been remade until they told me. Since then though, shit’s really gone sideways.”

“Oh?” She says it a little mockingly.

He feels a little bad that she noticed it too. “You know, the whole time everyone was looking up to me, I was looking up to you.”

She kind of scoffs at him a little. “Is this a pep talk?”

He rolls his shoulders over just enough to get his elbow underneath himself and sincerely looks at her with both eyes. “Since the first time I saw you, I thought you were so… incredible. No matter what anyone told you, or did to you, you knew what was right and what was wrong for yourself. Since the day you were made, no one’s been able to twist you, or make you doubt, or hate yourself. The person you were, before all of this, was too strong for them to erase. They blanked you out, and you still came back. Both you and Five did. You might not have any memories. But you are you. Forget the past. I don’t care about that, but don’t forget that you are you, and I am me. Aaron or not, I’m going through with this for me, and for all of you.”

She lets out a chuckle of a sigh and presses her forehead down on her arm. “Aaron… I hate myself almost every day.” She pushes her forehead down a little harder in frustration. “I wish I couldn’t Aaron, but I can feel every bit of who I once was. I feel it all day, every damn day. They did something to me, they did change who I was, they did twist me, and I can feel it. I wish I could erase it all and just start over. All I ever do is try to forget, try to clean myself of it, and just move on.”

He reaches for her, to put a hand of condolence on her forearm, but he stops and brings his hand back. He can see her tensing up, and it doesn’t look like she meant to ever tell that to anyone. He turns over and sits up, crossing one of his ankles under the other knee. He hunches forward and props his head up on his hand in contemplation.

“I heard your other drive has your original mind on it. Your raw brain scan data.”

She closes her eyes for a second. She’s thought of it a few times over by now. “No… I can’t go back. Not anymore. I can’t lose everything again. She swings her calves over the edge of the rock and sits up with him. Her voice is resigned, but she looks at him a little more hopefully this time. “Like I said. I’m moving forward. I know what I want, and I’m not going to get it by going backwards” She scoots right alongside him, till her thigh is up against his.

He watches the muscles in her legs flex and move as she slowly swishes her feet around in the water. They sit quietly for a good while, sometimes glancing over at the other, but not saying anything. He can tell something is still on her mind, but maybe she doesn’t want to say it, like how she confessed her troubles to him. When he looks at her again, she catches his eyes, but with a face of worry.

“Can we not love anymore? Like the way you and Valerie used to love each other?”

Hearing this from her is a little bit unexpected, but they are kind of having a heart to heart. It takes him a moment to think about what she’s asking him, or what’s happened to make her think such a thing. “Valerie and I still…. we still… I still love her Arma. That never changed.”

She diverts her eyes to the water this time. “K. But what about you being like us now, like me-n-Five? You’re one of us now. The other guards have even started to tease Valerie about it. They say you’re a…” She doesn’t want to repeat it.

He’s suddenly aware of his nakedness again, and hers too. They both catch each other’s eyes wandering and immediately look away again. Luckily he can’t blush anymore. It was one thing trying to explain this stuff to Five after she had obliviously undressed in front of him way back then, but this is a whole other thing. She is not oblivious, and she is still very naked. She isn’t done with him either.

“Yeah, I know we can all love each other like that. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about, you know, like the other part. Love is supposed to be something you do too right, with the person you love? Five said that… well, you said that it’s a man and a woman thing. Do we not have that cause we’re robots?” She doesn’t tell him that she damn well knows the answer, at least for herself. She wants to know what he feels.

“Well, take it from me, we’ve been pretty much made the same as before. We didn’t really have to give anything up there. Valerie and I… We’ve just been... I’ve been kind of a jerk lately, and that’s why it doesn’t look like we love each other anymore.”

She looks at him a little annoyed. It’s hard enough for her to talk about this stuff as it is, let alone with him being dense. “Five and I... we don’t just ask people questions all day you know. We have the internet, and we’re not stupid.”

He awkwardly tries his best to not look at her bare chest, but she’s purposely making it nearly impossible. “Uh huh. Well, for one, I wouldn’t recommend starting with the internet on that front. It’s not exactly a… clean resource.”

Accusingly, her tone becomes a little sharp. “No one told us anything about any of this Aaron.” We knew something was up damn it! You all think we can’t tell? We can feel it you know! I can damn well feel it! I sure as hell can’t ignore it! You’re… it’s driving me up the wall Aaron!”

He runs his hands through his hair and lets out an exasperated breath. He chuckles a little at the irony of it. “Welcome to being human. What you’re feeling, is like the biggest monkey on our backs, ever. Always has been, since the dawn of time.”

“Monkey? What the hell does that even mean?” She looks around for where Alexis is, and then right at him concernedly.

“I’m talking about sex Arma. You’re talking about sex. It’s the hand behind the wheel. There are two main things that drive people to do pretty much everything there is to do. One is survival, and the other is sex. One way or another, everything stems from those two things.” He holds his clawed hands out in front of him in frustration. “Sex though, is like this fucking little animal that’s always there, on our backs, always demanding attention from us. It’s not gonna stop screeching and smacking you on the back of the head until you feed it. You understand?”

Her eyes open wide. “Yeah, exactly like that!” she presses her hands down on her hips and forcefully slides them across the tops of her legs, down to her knees, where she grabs them firmly. Little rivulets of water run from her fingertips and down the sides of her legs.

He looks at her sympathetically. “Hell, and I thought I was dealing with some shit.”

“Ok, so how do you make it go away? How do you feed it? How did you make your anger go away?”

He shakes his head and chuckles as he stares at her reflection in the water. “Eh, this is a little different than just brushing off some anger.” He puffs up his cheeks and blows out a deep breath, wondering if her problem is insatiable, like his. He can’t bring himself to explain masturbation to her, so he deflects a little. “Well, uh, I guess you’re gonna need a partner then.” He shrugs. “Someone you’re attracted to.”

She looks him up and down, not caring one bit about how forward she’s being about it. “Ok. So I want a man’s body on mine. I want to touch him, and I want him to touch me. All over.” She closes her eyes and starts slowly taking in a long full breath. “Alright, then what?”

“Now hold on a second. This is not just about getting yourself a piece of meat ok. You have to find someone that you love, someone that you trust with EVERYTHING. Absolutely do not be sharing your body and yourself with anyone unless you have that. That kind of shit stains your soul in ways that can never be cleaned. Fucking around is all fun and games until the day you find that no one will love you, because you’ve rotted inside.”

She looks at him with bewilderment. No one said anything about this. “What do you mean? It’s just…”

His eyes are on hers like the world is burning down all around them. “Sex is an incredibly powerful force Arma, like a bomb going off through space and time, but so much more. It can change yours and everyone else’s world in both deep and far-reaching ways than you cannot fathom. You can easily destroy yourself and others with it. Please God, do not throw it around like a fool. If you do, you will come to understand a shame that…” He shakes his head. “I hope that you never have to learn the hard way.”

“How? How does sex do that?”

Pretend you really want someone, you’ve thought about them for like, ever. You’ve saved yourself for them, and you’re going to tell them you love them. But then you find out that they share themselves like that with pretty much everyone. Think of this person having already had sex with all the other girls at SSS, but they didn’t even think anything of it. You really want to bond with them, now?”

She has a sick look on her face. “Fuck no. Screw that.” She looks out across the water again for Alexis again, and then back to him. “I only want one person. I could only trust one person like that.” He face turns away, a little upset now.

His chest is getting tight again. “Would you ever give these feelings up, if you could, to be rid of them?”

Arma looks out across the pond and then wrings her hand across the back of her neck. “I feel ashamed for wanting this, but no. Hell no. I want this in such a bad way. I want it more than anything. It’s all I can think about anymore.” She crosses her feet over one another, straight out over the water, and flexes her thighs tight. She grips the edge of the rock with her hands and lets out a deep sigh when she lets go. “Shit. I thought I was going insane or something. I’ve made a whole mountain out of it all by now.”

He looks up at the narrow veins of sky between the massive conifers all around them. “Oh, there’s nothing thing sane about any of it. That’s just the way it is.”

When Alexis has about worn herself out again, from swimming around, she climbs up out of the water and plops over onto the rock next to Arma. “I’ve decided to live out here in the woods Aaron, with the rest of the wild animals. But I’m gonna need you guys to bring me more food and blankets every week, k?”

He and Arma smile at each other, both enjoying how happy she is. “I’d do that for you. Maybe if Sy or Vaun pisses us off again, we’ll bring his truck out again and never go back.”

"I’m pretty hungry, but if we find some more of those berries or something, maybe we could stay another night?” Suddenly, her eyes dart aside, to look past him towards the trail. She nudges at Arma to alert her too. Her voice picks up loud. “You’d better’ve brought some food with you, you son of a bitch.”

Someone hidden out amongst the thick ferns calls back. “What in the hell kind of freaky shit are you guys doin out here?” Vaun gets up from a crawling position, not many yards past the edge of the water.

Arma quickly rolls onto her side, blocking any view of Alexis’s naked body, and scorns him. “Don’t you know what camping looks like? Ya Ass.”

Aaron is scratching his forehead in annoyance and doesn’t even bother acknowledging Vaun. Instead, his eyes have noticed the beads of water running down the valley of muscle on Arma’s back. He lets out a huff and hops down into the water. “Shows over folks.”

While the other two sneak off to get dressed, he occupies Vaun, making sure that he stays facing away from the other two. He doesn’t get confrontational with him, like he normally would, but instead finds himself considering a different viewpoint of the man. He even sympathizes with him, having clearly been raised like an attack dog, in a cage, and not knowing any difference.

Vaun still looks rather suspicious of him. He’s probably wondering what they were all doing up in the mountains, naked like this. He doesn’t feel like explaining himself, and he won’t be bothering to either. “Everything’s right as rain Vaun. Couldn’t be feeling better.”

Every time Vaun tries to glance past his broad shoulders, he shifts and makes sure he is well in between him and the girls. From what Vaun is wearing, he looks to have prepared himself for the worst. It’s not surprising. Everyone probably thought he was going to go postal and left to go do something sinister. He decides to poke at Vaun.

“You’re kind of a little nerdy getting all geared up and dragging yourself through the dirt all the way out here like this, don’t you think?” He even pats him on the shoulder to be a little extra condescending. “Hey, but none of us had any idea you were there. Coulda had us all dead to rights.”

Vaun tries to be scornful, but that last comment has cut his appearance down a notch. “I came out here because over a million dollars in assets, your dumb asses, and that truck, went rogue a hundred miles away, to do god knows what.”

He’s starting to lose his patience with Vaun already, but the man’s severity has certainly lost its edge, so it’s not as grating. “What do you think of our little spot out here? Pretty nice huh?”

The forest clearly has little, to no effect on Vaun. “It’s nicer than a lunar graveyard. Now lets get going.”

Now he wants to ditch Vaun’s dumb ass up on the mountain, for ruining their day. If he was stupid enough to hike all these miles up the mountain in all his gear, he can do it the whole way back too. He’s tough for sure, and may not be dead tired yet, but he sure will be by the time he gets back to camp in the dark. As soon as the thought crossed his mind though, it makes him feel a little bad. Vaun was probably only doing what Sy asked him to. He wonders if the man has any friends at all. Maybe he can’t, because of the work they do. He might even be able to be Vaun’s friend. He at least won’t be dying on him.

A soft but steady rain starts to fall on all of them. In the light of the day, it gives off a silver sheen to the air, almost like a fog, sifting about in the breeze. Arma holds her hands out in front of her and wipes at the wetness on her black skin. He looks at her curiously, smiling.

She catches him watching and folds her arms, a little shy about it. “What, now water comes from out of the air?” The look on her face is awkward as if it were all somehow a prank.

They all chuckle, but he knows to not poke fun of her. Yet again, she’s shown him how they’ve all taken such a strange thing for granted all their lives. It’s wonderful to see her experience it. “Yeah, kind of. You know when water dries up? Well, it goes up into the air. When there’s too much up there, it comes back down.”

Vaun raises an eyebrow at the explanation, but considers it a pretty good start. He looks up to the sky, and slumps his shoulders as he grumbles. “Hell.”

“Hey, why don’t you ride with one of us on the way down, huh?”

Even though Alexis is mad about him catching her naked like he did, and for who knows for how long, she lets him ride behind her on the back of Monster anyway. The two of them do make some small talk, but not much. She makes sure Vaun holds onto the rear handles, and not her. He gets the point and painstakingly leans well back of her.

Even though there are handles on the back of Runner too, for Arma to hold onto, she wraps her arms around him instead and asks him more about things like falling in love. Most of the time she’s pretty straight forward about things, but then often enough she is not. It doesn’t become apparent to him that she already knows the person they’ve been talking about until well after they’ve moved on from the subject. It makes him quite nervous. He isn’t ready to see her or Five date anyone. He’d never consider himself as having a fatherly role over them, it’s just that he feels so protective of them.

The sun is only beginning to set again by the time they reach the transport truck. Vaun offers to let someone ride back with him in the team truck, but neither of the girls want to. It’s a little awkward, but their excuse is that they can lay down in on the long bench seats in the big truck. After they load up the runners they still caravan together back down the logging roads. This time, Arma sits up front while Alexis takes a nap in the back.

Arma sits backward in her seat and lays her arm across the dashboard towards him. She’s tall enough that her back leans against the center console while her calves hang over the back of the seat next to him. It looks like it would be terribly uncomfortable, but she doesn’t seem to understand what such a thing is. This time, she almost never looks away while they talk. It makes him feel a lot more at ease, like there’s a whole other level of trust between them.

By the time they get back to Welan City, both he and Arma can really feel the effect of tiredness Gabriel incorporated into their systems to warn of a low battery. Despite that, they all have grins on their faces when they roll into the hanger. That mood quickly disappears when they find both Sy and Valerie waiting inside for them. Their arms folded and they are bearing condescending glares.

Neither he nor Arma feel like listening to anyone’s whining, but they do understand that they still do answer to Sy. While he only acknowledges Valerie with a nod, he does speak to Sy. “Hey, thanks for letting me have the weekend man. It made all the difference. I can’t even tell you how much. We’ll be ready to rock in the morning, no fuss.”

“You did earn it Aaron, just so you know. You’re not a disappointment. I just need you to be honest with me, and tell me when you’re burning out. No one else here gets to run amok like I just let you guys do. And I mean no one. I’ll be getting looks all month over this. There’s a lot of people out there that are waiting to pick us off if they ever get the chance.”

“Understood. You won’t be seeing anymore drama from me, I promise.” He shakes Sy’s hand quickly and slowly heads off straight for the double doors. I’m on my last legs. I’ve got go plug in for the night. When he and Arma reach the end of the hanger, Valerie is still standing there with Sy, watching them in the distance.

Alexis stays behind, playing the part that she was keeping an eye on him like she was supposed to. Luckily for her, Vaun doesn’t say a word about finding them all naked in the forest like a bunch of cult members. While she stays behind and speaks with Sy, she unloads the Runners, and makes sure the truck is all ready for the morning.