Chapter Ten

Aaron

Aaron plops down on his bed, sticks his charging cord to the back of his neck, and stares up at the ceiling. His eyebrows scrunch together when he realizes something is off. He’s sure he put the charging cord under his side of the bed. It was there when he pulled his pack out when he left to the mountains. He doesn’t like it being out. It’s always a bad reminder of him not being who he was. Maybe Valerie took it out, but why? He tries to not think of why she might do that. Instead, he considers Five used it while she was hanging out with Valerie while they were gone.

He’s still blown away by what all Arma shared with him. He had no idea so much was going on with her. He’ll have to talk to Five, to make sure she’s doing ok too. Even if it’s awkward, he wants to make sure she knows she can still talk to him about anything.

It’s not long before his thoughts start racing like they always do. It’s like his mind is trying to make up for the last couple days of peace and quiet. He really expected Valerie to come in and talk to him, but an hour has gone by and she still hasn’t shown up. He knows he’s been a little intense lately, maybe a lot intense, but he’s worked on it a lot. He’s ready to level with her about what’s been going on. She’s the one he should’ve been honest with this whole time.

He thinks about how she and Sy were waiting up for the three of them, like they were their parents. Sy made him feel like a spoiled princess, taking off like he did. The rest of the guards are probably going to be on his heels about it for a while. He feel even more like a jerk when he thinks about having walked right past Valerie like he did. There’s no way he’s going to take her shit when she gets condescending like that though. Maybe they would’ve been able to reconnect with each other again, if it was her that he’d taken out to the mountains again. Then again, it might’ve gone the opposite way.

He jolts up at the edge of the bed, realizing he’s going to start slipping back if he lets his mind keep running on him like this. He can’t afford to lay around feeling sorry for himself. Turning into a stone-hearted machine was bad enough. He sure as hell doesn’t want to turn into pitiful wet blanket. He unplugs the charging cord and pauses thinking about what he’s going to do. He still has to charge for a bit longer, but he’s not in the mood for it. He coils up the cord real quick and haphazardly tosses it under the bed again.

While leaned over close to the nightstand, he notices something new on it. It looks kind of like a wristwatch. It’s one of those combat communicators all of the guards wear. When he picks it up, a message appears on the screen congratulating him on achieving field status. Banding it to his wrist makes him feel official, like a legendary full-fledged SSS guard, same as all the others. He wishes he hadn’t run off like he did now. It makes him feel pretty stupid.

Since Valerie isn’t going to show up, and it’s not even that late, he figures he might as well see who’s down in the lower prep hangers and see what’s what. Chatting up the techs is usually a lot more interesting than posturing around all the other swinging dicks downstairs. He’s been trying to get familiar with the techs lately, rather than the combat guards he’s been training with. He doesn’t want to be a combat guard anyway. He wants to be like the others, who get to work on the cool stuff. Most of the techs have seen time in orbit, and some have even been on the moon. That’s what he wants to do.

Instead of walking all the way around the catwalk to the elevators, and then down, he looks around to make sure no one is watching. It’s a good drop from the bottom of the catwalk to the top of the concrete dividing wall below, but his body can handle it no problem. He climbs over the railing, and drops over the edge only far enough to catch the steel grate in his hands again. As quickly as he can, he drops the next ten feet onto the narrow wall and balances on it for only a second. He backs up one step and drops out of sight again, catching the top corner of the wall in his hands like he did the on the catwalk. Even with him hanging a ways down the height of the wall, it’s still another fifteen feet down to the floor, so he drags his boots down the side when he drops to the floor.

Some other people, including Arma, had started doing this same thing, until Sy put a stop to it. Over the intercom, he told everyone that spending millions of dollars to bring back the stupidest of them all was not what he had in mind. Since Arma ignores Sy, and does it anyway, he figures it’s not that big of a deal, as long as no one sees him. Besides, he’s a robot, not all the same rules should apply to him.

Down on the bay floor, he finds a small group of guards hanging out with Mikel. Lately, he’s put a significant amount of his time into building his own custom rifle for space missions, and has been showing it off to everyone. Personally, he’d always thought of Mikel as being nothing more than a mean stubborn hick, but it turns out, the man is capable of demonstrating some impressive ingenuity. Marek helped him in the machine shop a little, but he pretty much made the whole thing himself.

Mikel wanted to stick with a projectile type weapon, but with some class to it, so he made a light-gas gun. The cool looking forty inch long trapezoidal barrel, breach, and body have all been profiled out of a single titanium billet. He even had the bore finished in a machine-tool coating, so it wouldn’t be susceptible to galling. He used the same big holographic sight that comes on the big flack cannon. Apparently, when connected to a shuttle’s target tracking system, it can lead a target from multiple miles away. All the SSS guns are made to integrate right into their spacesuit lens displays.

Mikel started the design around a small hydrogen gas cylinder with a cap base on the bottom of it. When the gunpowder charge in the base of the cylinder goes off, it shears the bottom cap free, and forces it through the full length of the cylinder, compressing the gas almost completely into a liquid state. At the tip of the canister, there’s a small solid metal dart that punches out when the hydrogen reaches critical pressure, shooting it at four times the velocity of any other rifle. Even though it’s a basic bolt action design, the gun is ridiculously heavy. The canister rounds alone are a foot long, but like Vaun had explained, they like their hefty guns in space, especially ones that are really accurate.

All the talk about custom weapons reminds him that he’d promised to get Five one of her own. He let Arma keep his big tungsten knife. She had held onto it for herself after he was killed. He felt bad that he didn’t have anything to let Five keep. She was absolutely inconsolable after what happened. When the techs notice him walk up to their group, they look around as if he’s not supposed to be down there. He kind of isn’t, but he does a lot of things he isn’t supposed to.

“Hey you guys, I wanted to make something cool for Five, you know, like a weapon. I let Arma keep my old knife, so I wanted to do something special for her too. What ya think?”

Selner, the shorter plump guy with the big beard, looks to be a little relieved. “Ah, so you gave her that big ass knife. Shit, I was kind of a little worried about that. She’s always packing that thing around. I wouldn’t want to be on her shit list.”

He slumps his shoulders in disappointment of them. “C’mon you guys. You know, she’s actually really cool, and a damn good friend. You should really say hi to her and talk with her sometime. If you ever find yourself in a tight spot, you bet your ass she’ll have your back. I suggest you have hers.”

Mikel sets the butt of his rifle on the floor and leans on it like a walking stick. “He’s right you guys. She’s saved my bacon, with that knife, I don’t know how many times. Same goes of Five. She may be small, but she holds her own for sure.”

For a little while, they throw around some ideas for what to give Five, but nothing really feels right. The best they could come up with is a tricked out pistol, but it just doesn’t carry the sentiment he wants. It has to be more personal, something of his, or something he needs to make. He wishes he could give her Runner. He knows how much she loves that thing, but it’s a little much.

After he moves on to the machine shop to look around, he finds Marek doing his best to model some parts at the CAD station. He has what looks like a new style of barbed leg for Sy’s fighting robot centipede up on the projector. The thing had done well for its first time in the arena, but a lot of it was luck. If they want to survive against the higher-end machines, they’ll need to up their game. Now that the world has seen its grappling power, other competitors will surely be adapting to it.

The biggest weakness the centipede has at the moment, is its lack of ability to deliver kill shots. Most of the machines out there have potent offensive weapons. The centipede has to grab ahold of its prey and crush it to kill it, and that’s going to surface as a serious disadvantage the next time out. What Marek wants to do, is slightly lengthen and beef up the front two legs. The new ones will have a pair of long tungsten spikes on the fronts of them, for stabbing things with some serious force.

After perusing what kinds of things they have lying around in the back of the shop for an hour, he finds that there is a rather impressive myriad of manufacturing equipment and material stock at hand. He figures that something will probably spark his imagination if he sees it. There are CNC lathes, mills, EDMs, laser cutters, and even a couple different DMLS systems. He could make damn near anything imaginable.

What catches his eye, is the library-like setup of chemicals and miscellaneous supplies in the back room. There’s even an entire section dedicated to powder metallurgy. It seems like there could easily be a variety of over a hundred different canned metal powders and additives to work with. From watching the guys at the shop he’d sent Runner’s parts to way back, he figures he should be able to work the laser printer himself. All he needs to do is design a graphical model, scale it, and send it to the machine.

He decides that he can make Five a knife too, and they’ve got all the stuff to make it out of the same alloy too. Since he’s going to be using the laser printer to make it, he figures he might as well go for broke with a crazy monolithic design. It’d be a waste not to. The problem is, Marek is on the computer he needs.

“Hey marek, when you goin to bed bud?”

“Oh, I don’t know, why, you need this thing?”

“No hurry, but yeah, I was thinking of modelling a cool knife to print, as a gift for Five.”

“Have you looked at any of the files that are already in the scanner?”

“No, what scanner?”

While still looking at his projector, Marek points to his side, at a round platform that has some kind of an overhead camera stand on it. “Yeah, you can do all kinds of neat stuff with it. The guards mostly use it to custom fit their molded armor. It’ll scan you, superimpose augmented items, all kinds of stuff. Everything’s in there. Someone’s been making some pretty cool stuff. You should check it out. There’s Knives, guns, silly prop stuff, whatever you want. Hell, half the guards themselves are in there.”

He goes over to the scanner and starts flipping through all the things he was talking about. Like Marek said, there’s a whole bunch of people’s profiles in there, most in their underwear. He looks over his shoulder when he comes across the three-D scans of some of the female guards. They’re almost as shameless as Arma is, especially since anyone can apparently access the terminal. Seeing the figures standing in T-poses like they are gives him an idea, but he’ll need Arma’s help. She’d be perfect for what he has in mind, if she’s willing to do it. It’d be really cool if he could make the knife a gift from both of them.

He doesn’t really know how his combat com is supposed to work, or if Arma has one or not, but he figures he might as well give it a shot. He presses one of the slim metal buttons on the side of it, making it give off a short vibration pulse. After waiting for a second, to see if anything else will happen, he taps the screen. The screen lights up, displaying the word “call.” He has no idea what anyone’s channels are, so he hits the other metal button to see what it does too.

Clarice’s face pops up on the screen, and she’s wearing a headset. “This is command.” When she looks at him on her screen, she squints at him and looks a little surprised. “Aaron? Where are you, is that downstairs?”

“Yeah. Are you the dispatcher or something? I’m trying to see if I can get ahold of Arma. Did she get one of these things too? He hopes she did. He’d feel real bad if she’s being left out.”

“Yep. Now Aaron, the right button, that’s the hotline. That’s me, and it’s only for the real shit ok. Left button is a call out to everyone who’ll have been put on your mission team. The screen won’t come on that way though. If you want to video while you call, tap the screen instead, and just say the person’s handle.

“Ok, cool. So… do they call it the hot line cause you’re on it?”

She’s smiling wider than her hand can cover up now. “Just say her name and it will call her Aaron. Now, you’ve gotta keep this line clear ok. Nice seeing you hon.”

It takes him a moment to clear the smile from his own face before trying another call. He taps the screen and says “Arma.”

As soon as he says “Arma”, a wide angle video feed from the perspective of her wrist starts showing on his little screen. He holds it closer to his face when he sees that she’s laying in her bed topless. Her eyebrows bunch together when she looks down at her com unit, and then cocks her head to the side.

“Huh, that sounded like Aaron.” Five is in the room with her and he can see her over on her own bed.

“Hey Arma, it’s me, Aaron. Touch your screen to see me.”

When his display pops up on her end, she peers through it at him excitedly. “Woah, cool, you’ve got yours on now too! Did you see Clarice?”

He smiles sheepishly. “Yeah, saw er.” They both laugh. “Hey, would you come down to the machine shop, I was hoping you might help me with something, for Five.”

In the background, he can hear Five. “Hey Aaron!” She’s holding her wrist out to show him that she got one too.

Arma looks into her screen again to see where he’s at. “Yeah, sure babe. I’ll be right down.”

He catches a glance of Marek out of the corner of his eye. He has his ear turned toward him and is obviously eavesdropping. “What? That’s the first time she’s ever called me that! I don’t know where she picked it up. She and Five are trying out new things all the time.”

It doesn’t matter, Marek still looks like he heard something he wasn’t supposed to. It makes him wonder if Alexis might’ve already told him everything about their trip to the forest. He’s not going to get into it anymore, but he hopes Marek is not the kind of person to spread rumors. It’s not likely. He’d know well enough that kind of habit is a good way to get an ass kicking down on the streets.

It seems Marek is better at minding his own business than he would’ve expected. He mentions that he’d better turn in for the night, and takes off, clearly to leave him and Arma to themselves. It makes him wonder if maybe there are already rumors going around. He hadn’t considered that people might think they were together or something. With Valerie avoiding him like she is, it’s more than likely.

He brushes it off as probably being nothing. For now, it’s simply convenient. Not long after Marek has left, Arma glides in through the double doors. She catches the stunned look on his face before he realizes he’s even making it. He pretends to occupy himself at the computer, but he knows by the smile on her face, he’s been busted. Everyone is plenty used to seeing her naked, but now that she’s wearing something, it’s somehow a bit less appropriate.

She is wearing a strawberry-red high-hipped thong, and a loose white tank-top that barely covers the bottoms of her breasts. She’s not exactly a graceful woman, but the way she stalks on over to him reminds him of the way a tiger walks when it’s flaunting its size. She sits down in Marek’s chair, drapes one of her legs over the other, and slowly spins around to face him. Her face is tilted down, but her eyes are still looking up at him.

He doesn’t know if she’s has been using the internet again or what, but she’s picking up some behavior that did not naturally come to her on its own. When he turns a little to face her, straight on, she tilts her head back, exhales, and looks him over with an almost disappointed sounding sigh. While arching back, she reaches up and smooths her amber hair back, making it all lay long and smooth behind her chair.

When he thinks about it, he’s only seen this kind of behavior from one other woman, Valerie. She used to tease him in this very same way. When she pops into his mind, he realizes it’s nearly been two days since they’ve even spoken to one another, and that was only briefly. He really shouldn’t have brushed her off like he did when they got back. Walking away with Arma couldn’t have made it any better.

The two of them would catch hell from her if she knew how carefree they’ve been around one another. He looks past Arma and notices some random guards in the hallway watching them through the small windows in the double doors. Most likely, they saw Arma walk in and wanted to maybe catch another glimpse of her. He sticks his arm out and points for them to move along. Arma turns around and glares at them. When the guards see that they’ve been caught snooping, they trod off down the hall.

He makes sure to not be caught looking her over again before she turns her attention back to him. “Ok, so, remember when I told Five that I’d give her something too, when I let you keep my old knife.”

“Yeah…. K.”

“Well, I want to make a knife for her too. I want both of us to make her one.”

“I don’t really know how to make anything Aaron, but I’ll try.”

Her eyebrows are scrunched again and she’s looking at him a little sideways, trying to figure him out. She can probably tell something’s up because of the way he’s acting. He shows her over to the metal laser sintering machine, explains how it can make any kind of shape, and then brings her back to the console he was sitting at. Full sized augmented holographs of a whole bunch of random things, and even other guards, slide through the big scanner as he scrolls through them on the computer. She’s pretty amazed by it.

When he’s gone through a couple things, he takes her back over to the desk and lays down a piece of blank white printing paper on the top of it. With a pen, he draws out the design for her. He starts with a long broad tanto tipped blade, like his old knife, and works his way down to the handle. At the handguards, the lines lose their straightness and start becoming much less predictable. As he draws each curve, he shows her how it would naturally fit his hand. He’s almost finished by the time she realizes what he’s drawing.

Arma folds her arms and slightly turns away from him. She’s wondering how long she’s going to be able to put up with his shit. Sometimes she feels like she’s going to have to have to bluntly explain things to him like as if he were a child. The only reason she doesn’t, is because she’s too nervous and couldn’t bare looking foolish. He probably doesn’t even have feelings for her. It’d be embarrassing. And he’s already taken anyway. She’s about at the end of her rope with it all.

The handle is clearly the figure of a woman, specifically hers. In the way he’s drawn her though, she has big horns on her head that point up and hold the base of the blade like hand guard would. Her arms are also reaching up to hold onto the horns, embracing them for more strength. She holds her breath when she realizes that he’s noticed her body language and mood. He even shrinks from her deliberate gaze and starts typing away at the computer. He models the blade portion while explaining himself to her.

“I don’t know. Marek was showing me some of the stuff in here. When we came across the figures of some of the guards, this idea came to me. I wanted to do something… bold, for Five and I think she’d be ecstatic if you were part of it, don’t you think?”

He puts the blade he just made up on the projector, making it at least as tall as himself. After he slides it all the way up high overhead, he goes and stands up in the projector underneath it. He looks up and reaches for the thing floating over him, as if he were trying to hold onto it. He holds his elbows straight out to his sides and keeps his body and legs as straight as he can.

“Now Arma, tap the blue icon on the screen that says scan.”

When she taps the screen, the platform lights flash a few times and then turn a dim blue color. When he steps out of the scanning station, his captured holographic form stays behind, as if it were his ghost. At the computer, he reduces the size of it all the way down till his figure and the blade together are only about a foot long. He spins it around, looking for what changes he’ll need to make it work.

“See, here, where your palm would be, it’s just not very good, but you get the idea. It needs to be humped up, like how your hips would be, if you were up there. And here, where my lats are, that’s just too big.”

Her voice is still a little pessimistic. “I was gonna say you should try it with your clothes off, but yeah, you don’t make a very good knife handle Aaron.”

“Ok, so I’m gonna put the horns up there and see if they’ll look better as a base for that blade. Then you wanna try it?” She doesn’t answer him, but only lifts an eyebrow.

It takes him almost half an hour to finish putting together the simple structures of the blade and horns. By the time he’s done on the computer, Arma looks like she might be a little more into what he’s got going. When he’s ready, he swivels his chair around to her.

“Well, whattaya think?”

She gets up and walks over to the scanner. “So I just stand in it right?” As if she were disappointed in them, she takes her top and panties off, and tosses them back at her chair.

While she poses, still as a statue, he helps her position herself with the blade in the projection above her. He imagines her in his right hand, how her body will curve in his grasp. He has her stand up on her toes and cross her right ankle over the other, putting her weight on that foot. When she does, her pelvis pivots to create the last angle that needed. Only she would be able to hold that position as still as she is.

He quickly leans over his chair at the computer, giving her one last look, and then hovers his finger over the scan icon. “This thing is gonna be so damn cool. You look incredible. Ok, now put on a serious face, like you’re gonna push that blade into someone’s chest.”

When the station is done scanning her, the lights turn blue again and she steps aside, leaving the holographic copy of herself behind. The green light from the projection makes Aaron’s eyes look even bigger while he stares at her incredulously. Feeling he’s been caught staring again, he sits back down at the terminal and starts quickly typing away at the console.

While he’s busy, she glides around behind him and puts her hands on the back of his chair to watch what he’s doing. Her frustration is starting to build again. She isn’t blind to the way he looks at her. She feels like she’s been shamelessly putting herself out there for him, and he’s clearly pretending to not notice. It’s so damn hard to keep her hands off him anymore. She holds her breath and closes her eyes for a moment, trying to get ahold of herself. She knows better, she knows he isn’t hers, but that’s not going to hold her back forever. This kind of shit is why she wishes she weren’t human.

In a fuck-it attitude, she leans over him and slides one of her hands down then neck of his shirt, spreading it across the middle of his chest. There’s only one way this is ever going to be dealt with. She puts some of her weight into it when she feels the meat on his chest, letting out a breath of fulfillment when she does it. It doesn’t matter what he thinks. She’s finally gotten her hands on him.

When his wide eyes dart up at her, she wraps her other hand around the front of his neck, under his jaw, and holds him there firmly. She brings her face down against the side of his so that her lips touch the bottom of his ear.

She watches his hands grabbing the arms of his chair with a death grip, forearms bulging, and everything. Her voice is smooth and deep, with all seriousness behind it. “What do you think Aaron? Is it something you have to have?” With the side of her lips, she places a selfish kiss next to his ear.

Aaron’s phantom heartbeat is back, and it’s trying to go into arrest. The overload of shock grabbing ahold of him makes him feel like the floor has opened up and he’s falling through it. It’s the same rush that comes after a close call with death. He swallows hard but still can’t bring his mind around to handle himself like he’s supposed to. With her staring into the depths of his soul, she makes him question who he is to the very core. All he can bring himself to do is swallow and say her name.

“Arma.”

The mere sound of his voice is all she needed from him. It tells her everything. He’s not shocked, or disappointed with her, but if anything, afraid. She knew better before she grabbed him, but she couldn’t stop herself. She’s his soulmate and he damn well knows it. Her mouth almost unnoticeably curls down at the thought of Valerie. She is human, and she has no business with him anymore. The problem is, Aaron is too loyal for his own good.

She slowly eases up on her hold of him and then lets go of him, standing up tall behind him like a cat waiting for its mouse to run again. Then it comes across her in a wave of disappointment, in herself. She was supposed to be above this, able to control herself.

“I’m so sorry Aaron. I shouldn’t have done that.” She cups her forehead with her hand and slides it over her eyes when she turns away to sit back down. For the first time, like Five had explained, she truly feels naked now.

Aaron can feel something has changed inside of himself because of her. It’s been changing for a long time now, but undetected. It’s like she’s gotten ahold of his strings or something. Deep down, that part of him that cared about losing who he originally was is dissolving. There’s no getting back what’s already been lost either. As much as part of him wants to give himself up to her, that part that’s still left is warning him no to. There’s not much left of it anymore.

He thought he’d have all the time in the world now, to get things right, but it’s turned out things are changing even faster than before. One thing he can’t do is lead her on, if that’s even what he’s been somehow doing. Not if he can’t be who she so desperately wants. He so badly wants to be there for her, but he can’t this time. He doesn’t know how to tell her. He can’t bear to tell her that.

He feels like a jerk for letting this slide for so long. He had to have seen this coming from miles away, and refused to acknowledge it. It’s like she’s laid her mark on him and let it etch in good and deep. He thinks about the first time he saw her, back when she was running out front of his apartment. She had a different face then, but he can still feel that look she gave him, the way she made him feel. She’s a phantom that will haunt him forever. He can’t help but wonder if she’s that darkness that has been trying to claim him for so long.

The two of them stare into one another’s eyes for a while, not saying anything, they don’t need to. The cat is out of the bag and there’s no putting it back in. When they finally break eye contact, she folds her arms across her chest again and glances back over to the projector.

She’s said her peace and all she can do now is give him his space. She’s not going anywhere anytime soon, and the seed has been planted. All it will take is for him to nurture it and it will eventually consume him. The shock of outing herself will be enough to keep her at bay for a little while now. She’s got a lot to think about herself.

Aaron remembers what Five had told him way back, when they were fresh acquaintances. All the synaptic stimulant running through his mind right now definitely has him wound up like a cornered animal. It’s going to keep his mind overclocking for a good while. At least it’s this, and not something else. Deep down, he knows he doesn’t have a chance.

Arma turns back to him with a much mellower look. “Let’s just forget about it for right now and finish this thing, k.”

He looks down at the floor for a second and then back up to her, giving her a nod. “Alright, yeah, lets get this thing made huh.”

While he sends the file to the powder metal printing machine, Arma puts what little clothes she was wearing back on she doesn’t want to be seen carrying them in her hand, or worse, leaving them in the chair for someone to discover later. As they walk over to the printer, the machine clicks and emits a quiet hum as it powers on. The screen previews the monolithic form of her horned figure holding the blade. It looks like a knife should, but so much more elegant. The excitement alone does a good job of keeping their minds off of what happened earlier.

At the printer, he scales the entire object so that it’s eighteen inches long, end to end. When the file is ready to run, he customizes the laser and metal powder settings for a san-mai layered effect.

He has the machine mix the metal powder to be ninety percent pure tantalum and ten percent tungsten alloy. It’s not as ideal as crucible powder steel for a knife, but it’ll have incredible high temp and corrosion resistance. To make the thing even stronger, he adds another five percent of its volume in titanium coated silicon-carbide nano-whiskers. The tiny unbreakable particles will reinforce the matrix like rebar and make it nearly indestructible.

“I’m pretty sure this thing will be able to survive reentry into the atmosphere.”

She looks at him curiously. “What’s that?”

He still often forgets that she’s fairly new to the world and takes for granted what people typically already know. Rather than explaining the whole mess, he goes easy on her. “It means that it’ll pretty much be indestructible.” He smiles at her, considering that at least the world hasn’t had the chance to turn her into a resentful person yet.

Aaron gathers up the big cans of metal powder from the stock room, loads them into the machine’s hoppers, and opens the valve on the argon tanks. As far as he can remember, it’s all he needs to do for it to work. He hits the green cycle button and watches the operation start. Hundreds of tiny square pins that make up the printing bed inside the machine drop down a tiny bit, creating the most efficient sized fill-box for the part to start in. The hopper pours a thin layer of the powder mix into the recessed area and then skims it perfectly flat.

Startling Arma backwards a step, the laser rapidly blasts across the first pattern layer, shooting a bunch of tiny sparks all over inside. The process goes on for hours, but the excitement never wears off. They watch closely while each layer pattern changes as it works its way up. When the machine finishes and the door automatically opens for them, he lets her reach in and pull the finished piece up out of the leftover powder.

She gently shakes it off and holds it out for him to see. Even with the dull glittery luster of its abrasively textured form, the thing is gorgeous. The intricacy of the detail is impressive. The figure and its little face is clearly that of hers. While she holds the formidable weapon out in front of herself, she gazes upon it like it were something incredibly precious and delicate. She’s not envious of the thing, but she clearly doesn’t want to so easily give it up either.

You know, you can keep this one if you want. It’s only right that it be yours.”

“What about Five? I don’t know. You’re knife meant the world to me, but I’d give it back if I can have this one. We still have to make one for Five though, but I think it should be of her.”

He looks back at the machine, seeing that it only used about half of the powder. They’re supposed to finish it after all. “I don’t see why we can’t make another one real quick. Go and get her. I’ll hang back and see if I can find a way to polish this thing up a little.”

Arma immediately calls up Five on her wrist communicator to tell her that she has something to show her. He can see on her screen that Five is back down in the scanning lab with Gabriel, working away on something. He looks at the clock to find that it’s already past midnight. Five is excited to show her something too, so Arma rushes off to the lab.

While twirling the knife in his hands, he contemplates what he’s going to do about Arma’s advances on him. He doesn’t know for sure if she has feelings for him or if it’s just her libido getting the best of her. Maybe she’s chosen him because he’s the only man she feels she can trust. One thing that’s for certain, is that she’s having a serious impact on him. He’d been so infatuated with Valerie when they met, it makes him wonder if he might’ve blinded himself to how she actually felt about him. He always assumed she loved him as much as he did her.

His thoughts of Arma come on so strong that he can’t keep his mind from going places it should not. He doesn’t quite know what to do. He’s going to end up being the asshole to someone either way. Telling Arma that she has to look for someone other than him could easily end up badly. He doesn’t trust anyone more than her, and he can’t just tell her to go kick rocks.

He closes his eyes and tries to focus on Valerie. He imagines curling up in bed with her and wrapping around her. Then he remembers her shoving him away the last time they slept together. She said he was too cold. Even after he warmed himself up in the hot shower, she was over it. No matter how human-like they made him, things like that keep reminding him that he’ll never have his old life back.

He holds the knife in his hand and grasps it as tightly as he can, pulling on the powerful anger he keeps at the ready. It washes away his doubt, making him feel confident again. With the knife tight in his grip, he realizes it still has quite a bit of heat left in it, and that he accidentally sized it perfectly for his own hand. Luckily, Arma’s slender fingers are just as long as his own, so it’ll fit her hand all the same.

He mounts the flat side of the blade in the shop’s tool grinder and takes a very light pass over it. It takes quite a bit for even the diamond wheel to put a bright and smooth finish on the surfaces, but it does do it. When he’s done, he can almost see his reflection in it. It feels like a stranger is looking back at him from inside it. He’s always felt like himself, and believes that he truly is himself, but yet he’s not the same man either. He realizes that he almost never looks at himself in the mirror anymore. It’s not that he’s disappointed with what he looks like, but feels more himself if he doesn’t.

The surface of the figure on the blade is done well enough to not need any further detail work to it, so all he needs to do is clean it up a little bit. He puts it in the blasting cabinet and hits it with some alumina grit till it’s nice and bright all over. When it’s done, it doesn’t have a rough or gritty feel to it, but more like the smooth dry surface of an eggshell. It’s really quite soothing to the touch.

He looks at the clock on the wall again and then at the double doors. Arma and Five seem to be taking their time in coming back. They must be talking with Gabriel, or maybe Five is showing Arma something important. Meanwhile, he wastes a little bit of time looking into the scanning program files for more ideas. There’s a lot of random items that the guards have been putting in there for fun.

As he quickly swipes through all the items as fast as the computer can load them, he stops dead on something that raises his eyebrows. There’s a beautiful pair of large fathered wings in there, the kind for an angel. For Five’s knife, he’ll do something a little more fitting of her persona. Sometimes, he feels that she and Arma are almost opposites, like light and dark.

Instead of a single edged tanto, he quickly makes a long double edged dagger for hers, with nice long curved edges leading to the point. He scales and positions the wings so that they’ll reach from her lower back up to the base of the blade, to hold it, like Arma’s horns did. The wings connect slightly above the base of the blade on its sides and then sharply bend outward to form the handguards. He quickly glances back to the doors, wondering if it’ll be too beautiful, and outshine Arma’s design.

Needing to see it again, he puts Arma’s full sized bare figure back up on the projector, but with the wings and new blade. While he refines the design, he becomes so focused on it that he doesn’t even notice that Five and Arma have already made their way through the doors and are standing behind him.

Five is astounded with what’s up on the projector. “Holy crap? What is it? Are you gonna get wings Arma?”

Startled, he quickly turns back in his chair, to find Arma with her arms folded, looking down at him with a smirk. “I… I was, uh.” He turns back to the console and reduces the size of the figure until it is not just Arma’s naked body on the projector, but clearly the whole knife design. He reaches out to Five, handing her Arma’s finished knife. “We want to make you one too. It’s kind of what started this whole thing. That’s supposed to be yours up there on the projector.”

Arma smiles at how big of eyes Five has while she holds the big heavy knife in her hands. “We were wondering if you wanted to pose for your knife though. Mine might be a little big I think.”

Five’s voice is nervous. “You didn’t say I was gonna have to get… to take all my clothes off.” She looks down at the knife in her hands again and then up to Arma. “I’ll do it. I can do it.”

With Arma following behind her, she cautiously unbuttons her long white lab coat and starts taking her clothes off underneath it. When she steps up onto the scanner, Arma takes her coat by the shoulders and gently lifts it off of her, letting her stand there completely naked.

Taking her privacy into consideration, Arma stays standing in the way of her, blocking him from being able to see. As he did with her, she coaches Five on how to pose for the knife. He had his own ideas, but decides to see how Arma would have her do it.

She has Five stand on her toes and cross her ankles, like she had done, but keeps her pose symmetrical for the double edged dagger. She has Five keep her posture perfectly straight and positions her hands on the blade for her perfectly. Rather than looking up, like before, she has Five turn her head to the side, close her eyes, and hold an expression of dignity. It’s better than he could’ve imagined himself.

“Ok, Arma, stand back and make sure you don’t get scanned too.”

As soon as the scan completes, he checks the finished model to make sure it’s straight with the blade and sends it over to the printer. After Five gets dressed again, she and Arma join him at the machine to watch the long process start all over again. After letting Five watch the laser spark away at the powder for a little while, they head back over to the computer and dote over Arma’s finished knife while they wait. Five can hardly contain her excitement while they wait so many hours. She keeps running back and forth to watch the layers progress about every ten minutes, even though nothing really changes that fast.

When Five’s blade is finally done, he lets her hold onto it for a few minutes before taking it to the surface grinder and finally the blasting cabinet. It’s amazingly satisfying to see the two of them so happy with the things he’s made for them. He wonders if Valerie would be interested in having one made of herself. When he looks at his communicator to call her up, he sees that it’s already almost three in the morning. It’ll have to wait for tomorrow. He closes out the programs that he was using and puts Marek’s project back on the screen.

“I’m gonna head back to bed and try settling down before the day starts. I was supposed to be charging this whole time, and I kinda need to turn off for a little bit, if I can”

Five gives him tight hug and zooms off through the doors to go and fawn over her knife in her apartment. Arma follows after her, but more slowly. She looks back at him, reminding him that he’s going to have to make up his mind eventually.