Chapter Eleven

Five

Five is gradually becoming more and more frustrated with Gabriel. She thinks she’s done a good job of gaining his trust, but he still hasn’t really taught her any of the real secrets behind the technology yet. He is a careful person, and knows that as long as he holds the project hostage, Valerie can’t touch him. Undoubtedly, he knows that she’s intent on learning everything about the science for herself. She’ll never be able to trust anyone but herself with what keeps them all alive.

She’s tried metering the pressure she puts on him, but she just can’t stand his slow pace any longer. Her patience is at its end. Foremost, she needs to find out what he did to her and Arma’s minds. They both know something is wrong, they can feel it. Like what’s happened with Aaron, something is causing their minds to chase off in some direction with full abandon, and get lost. It’s becoming such a strain on their lives. None of them can afford to play games with Gabriel anymore. She wants answers, and she’s bound to hurt him to get them.

While she waits in the scanning lab for him to show up, she wrings her hands on the knife Aaron made for her last night. She’s been going over her and Arma’s original map data for twelve hours straight now, trying to find what went wrong. It’s like trying to read sand on the beach. There’s nothing comprehensible about any it at all. It’s simply raw data. What has her most frustrated, is that Arma’s current mind doesn’t match up with her original brain scan. Someone changed her. It makes her want to throw and break something, anything.

Her eyes scan around the room in frustration, and then back at the time on the computer. Only another minute has gone by, making Gabriel a full half hour late now. She can’t keep going on like this. She’s so worked up and mad at him for being such a worthless ass.

In a fit of pent up rage, she starts to freak out. Her shaky hands drop the knife on the floor, upsetting her even more. She immediately picks it up, about to drive it through the computer, but she knows she can’t do that. Without even thinking, she snatches the keyboard up off the desk, and bites down on it as hard as she can like a rabid animal. She thrashes her neck from side to side and pulls on the thing with everything she has, snapping it apart in both of her hands.

Keys scatter across the room when she slams what’s left of it down on the edge of the desk, blowing it into pieces. She lurches up onto her feet and barges out into the main room, stomping her way across the floor. Gabriel isn’t there, but she cusses him in every way she can think of. “You fat fucking piece of… FUCK!”

The oversized knife hanging from her hand nearly reaches the floor as she paces around with it, all hunched over like a maniac. She wishes she were back in Evan’s house, back in the fire. She imagines herself tearing through all the rats again, gouging and mauling them every way she can. It would be pure release. She basks her mind in the memories of it. She relives watching one man’s face change from the excitement of pillaging, to fear, and then to such awful anguish. The son of a bitch though he had her good with that flaming glass jar, till she got ahold of him.

She can feel the fire and the pain crawling up her body, entirely engulfing her in hell. She relives having the young man’s arm, and breaking it under her knee while he helplessly claws at her face and burning skin. He screams for his mother when she bites a chunk out of him, and then she pulls his arm nearly apart, twisting the bones completely apart. The horror he has on his face makes it all so much sweeter. Someone had finally gotten what they deserved.

That boy’s penance wasn’t good enough though. There was so much more anger and hate to satiate that night. The man that was trying to drag Valerie away by her hair was the one she made an example out of. She stands out in the middle of the floor of the main lab room, but her mind is in a completely other world.

She grabs ahold of her knife as tightly as if it were the man’s throat. She’s leaped on top of him and taken him to the ground like a leopard. She remembers the exposed pointy bone in the tips of her fingers breaking through his skin, and the feel of the soft flesh gurgling in her grasp. She’s got a full hold on his windpipe, but she can’t seem to pull it out of his throat, no matter how hard she tries. It’s just so damn tough and slippery.

Even then, the man is still able to make a pitiful scream. All of his friends have to watch in horror as she rakes her other hand down his face, dragging his eyes right out of their sockets. She watches their eyes when she does it. The flames all around her are consuming everything, climbing the walls, and licking down from ceiling. She screams again, this time, louder than the deep roar and crackling of the fire filling the upstairs hallway.

Gabriel shoulders his way through the double doors, with a piece of cold pizza hanging from his mouth, while he messes with the key code lock. He’s still in his sweatpants, and late, but he’s here. He told Five he’d be in first thing, but he couldn’t fall asleep till real late last night. She’s been waiting for him in the mornings lately and told him more than once he could maybe put in some more effort.

While he turns around to take his key out of the door, he hears something going on in the back of the room. It sounds like a couple of guards having rough sex or something in the back. He doesn’t want to make a scene, but enough is enough.

He grumble sunder his breath. “Goddamnit, ugh, why they gotta be such nasty animals about it. How’d they even get in here?”

He marches around to the side of the scanning shack to run them off, but he doesn’t find what he was expecting. All the raucous is actually coming from Five, in the throes of some kind of savage break. She’s destroying the shit out of a sheet-metal storage cabinet with what looks like some kind of big-ass knife, slashing and smashing at it wildly. She starts screaming at it, completely unhinged.

He doesn’t quite know what to do, he’s never seen anything like it in his life. One thing is clear, she’s somehow snapped. Such a thing shouldn’t even be possible, but it’s happening right in front of him. She’s clearly malfunctioning. He’s afraid that if he calls out to her, she might turn on him. His blood would paint the entire room before anyone else could stop her.

Hoping she won’t notice him, he backs up towards the doors as quietly as he can. When she hears one of his shoes squeak on the epoxied floor, her head snaps in his direction, and starts staring at him sideways. She looks like some kind of goblin, all hunched over like she is. He freezes up and drops the pizza to the floor.

He stammers and almost falls over himself. “Oh… oh god.”

Instead of attacking him, Five drops the knife to the floor and begins to sob. She plops down on the floor, leans up against the buckled cabinet, and hides her face behind her arms.

Gabriel knows she’s mostly been pretending to be his friend, but he’s not so sure this is one of her tricks this time. He’s always been aware that she and Arma can have rather strong emotions, but hadn’t imagined anything like a complete meltdown. The thought of such a thing strikes him with concern. He hurries into the lab and grabs her one of the bottles of water in the storage locker, crouches down by her side, and pushes it at her. When she takes it from him, he can feel the warmth in her fingers, and even smell the humidity on her breath when she takes a drink.

While she refuses to look at him, he tries to level with her. “You know, I never asked for any of this shit either. Sure we’ve had our differences, but it doesn’t mean we have to always hate each other. I know I tried to kill all of you, and that’s maybe not something any of us can ever get past, but you guys are the ones who drew blood first.”

“What are you even talking about, you idiot, you’re so much more of a piece of shit than that. You helped kidnap me so that Barry could molest me! You’re the one who started all of it!”

“Now, that’s not fair Five. I didn’t know!” The inflection in his voice drops, because he really did damn well know what kind of person Barry was. “That’s the biggest regret of my life Five, and I wish I could take it back every day.”

“What about Aaron, huh? He died searching for me.”

I did not have anything to do with killing Aaron, and you know it! Don’t you try to put that on me.”

“That wasn’t the only time you tried to kill all of us, you idiot!”

“You’re the ones who attacked me first! You destroyed my car, my home, kidnapped me, beat the crap out of me at every turn, and threatened to kill me if I didn’t do what you said! I never had super robot strength to back me up when I got ambushed by a bunch of rats! I had to take my lumps and crawl away ashamed of myself...how many times? I thought I was gonna die for real Five! What’d you expect me to do, let Valerie make me her little eunuch? The only thing I did was try to get her fired before she could take things too far. Now look where we are.”

“I don’t want to hear your sniveling Gabriel.” She looks up with one eye. “And I like this place anyway.” Now she’s glaring at him. “You’ll never be able to take back what you did. You made your choices and they hurt us. They hurt me. The only three men who gave a damn about me died because of you!”

I can’t change what happened Five. You have no idea how sorry I am about that. But can I at least try to make up for some of it? Would you let me do that?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, you can.”

He’s a little taken aback that she’d actually be open about it. “What do you want me to do Five?”

“Go and get fucked!”

He stands up, walks away into the lab shack, and sits down in his chair. He scratches his head as he looks around at all the keyboard carnage scattered everywhere. He feels he did his best to try reconciling what happened between the two of them. Sometimes, things are too broken to be fixed. What happened between all of them will probably be an open wound forever.

He realizes this really is no place for him to stay. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, even giving it a try. He really did like working with her while it lasted, even though it was all pretty much all fake. No one else has even cared enough to even fake-talk with him before. He only wishes he could still somehow make it all up to her, whether she hates him or not.

Before he gets up and walks out the door, he hears her quietly call out for him from the dim corner of the main room. He goes out there and crouches down next to her again. He wants to put a consoling hand on her shoulder, but he knows it’d only anger her.

“What is it Five?”

“I only need you to do one thing for me. Can you shut me down? I don’t want to keep going like this. Someone can wake me up after they fix me. “I just want out… till it’s over.”

What she says makes his heart clinch tight until it hurts. He can’t bear watching her suffer the way she is. He’s the only one who can ever make this right. He has to help her, whether she wants it or not. “I won’t shut you down Five, but whatever this is, whatever is wrong, I’ll make it right. Can you hang in there for me, for a couple more days, while I figure this out?”

When Valerie slinks in through the open door, she catches the last of what’s going on. She’s a little surprised to hear him apologize like he did. She had figured he was simply a shitty person that didn’t care either way. She can’t stand that he’s able to connect with Five like this, but she still kind of feels like it’s a good thing. What upsets her more though, is that the hate she has for him has somehow dwindled some. That spite is what she relied on to keep moving forward with her work. She still has plenty of disdain for him left either way.

Even though she doesn’t want to, she does understands where he’s coming from. It almost makes things less horrible. She still won’t let herself be fooled by his words. What happened, happened, and no matter what he does, he’ll never be able to make up for it. She might not end up killing him herself anymore, but she won’t be giving him any heads up if she sees his ticket about to get punched either. While they aren’t looking, she sneaks on into the lab so things don’t get awkward with her standing there.

When Five and Gabriel finally come into the lab, they act as if nothing happened at all. He sits down at the main terminal, puts his hands up on the bare countertop, and stares straight ahead at the main projector. She finds it especially annoying.

She looks at him mockingly, with her head tilted to the side. “What happened to your keyboard Gabriel?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Looks like it… exploded or something. Must be an SSS thing.”

Five refuses to acknowledge her too, and immediately starts jamming away on the keys at the other terminal with a spiteful tenacity. It looks like she’s finally dropped her kind and willing assistant persona. While she refuses to say good morning, her eyebrows scrunch lower and lower as she boils inside. Eventually, she does stop, and turns to Gabriel. She glares at him for an awkward moment while she taps on the formica with her nails, forcing him to eventually look at her.

“It’s time you explain what you’ve done to me, and what you’ve done to Arma? I want to know what you changed, when it was done, why, and how. All of it.”

He looks up at her defensively. “Changed? We didn’t change anything. I mean, we did small things, like getting rid of hunger cues and stuff, but we can’t change who someone is. That’s way too complex.”

Valerie turns to them, concerned about what Five is saying. “What did they do Five?” She turns to him. “What did you do?”

He almost looks scared, and for good reason. The two of them look like they might do something. “I didn’t do a damn thing! All I did was slice your brain into hundreds of thousands of layers, basically saved them as image files, and then ran them through Marco’s program. That’s it!”

Valerie glares at him accusingly. “That’s not all of it. You may be the neuroscientist, but we’re not stupid.”

He puts his hands up in front of him. “Look, all we ever did is remake the original layers as electrical films, like super thin circuit boards, and then we stacked them all back together. That’s it! All your neuron cells have basically been flattened down into graphene traces laser etched on nylon film.”

Valerie raises her eyebrows at him, as if he’s skirting her question. “I know what Neuromap is Gabriel. Marco sowed me everything. You’re the one who did the editing. Why’d you blank out all of her memories Gabriel?”

He didn’t do anything that would’ve changed her like she thinks, and Valerie knows he didn’t. She’s just trying to make it sound like he did because she’s and awful bitch. He tries to ignore her and only turns to Five. “Your synapses are really what holds your memory, ok. Your new synapses come from the tantalum oxide layer that’s on the films, the ones I just told you about. Yours were all set to default because we couldn’t quite figure out how to read them back when we scanned you. They’re really small Five.”

“Then why’d you still do it! You knew I’d lose everything, and you did it anyway!”

Paul made us. The whole Five series was made for him. You were only a stepping stone. He was old, dying, and impatient. I’m sorry. I’m not the one who… brought you in. All I could do was try to save you.” He looks at both of them as if they’ve really hurt his feelings. He was never the bad guy. “You guys know this already. Why are you drilling me about this now?”

She screams at him, making him grab the arms of his chair. “Bull shit!” Even with her small stature, she looms over him in anger. “Why was Arma processed different than me? Why is her copy drive different than the original, huh? You think I’m stupid? You think I wouldn’t find out? Mine matches. What’d you do to her? How do I know if my original is even original? Did you delete who I really was from the start?

There’s a clear look of shock on his face this time. “I… I didn’t do it.” He looks over at the big black storage drives in the rack. “Marco stole those drives… not me!”

She puts her hands on each side of his head and holds it like a vice while she stares into his face up close. “What did you do to us Gabriel?”

His eyes are wetting with both fear and hurt for what happened to her. “The only things that should’ve changed are your biological functions, the ones you don’t need anymore. That’s all!” She lets go of him in utter disappointment. “Those are the sub programs I made to Marco’s Neuromap. It’s little stuff, nothing that could make you different, I swear!”

Five almost sits back down, but then she turns back around, anger flaring anew. “But you kept changing us. Like when we didn’t do whatever you wanted.” She looks betrayed, and backs away from him as if he’s disgusting to her. “You twisted and mutilated us. Do you think we wouldn’t remember that?”

“That’s awful Five! All those changes you remember, were us trying to get it right! For you! Ask Valerie. She was there. All we ever did was try to make you the way you always were. That was the point. This project wasn’t for you. It was always for us! Look at Aaron, look at him now. I made him perfect.”

Valerie rolls her eyes while Five huffs at him with folded arms. “Yeah ya did.”

It’s not what he was expecting. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Valerie raises an eyebrow at him, incredulous that he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. “He’s a fucking rage machine Gabriel.” She says it like he’s already lost and it doesn’t even matter anymore. “Where the hell have you been this whole time? Haven’t you even checked in on him? Whatever. I’m fucking over it.”

Five suddenly snaps her attention to Valerie. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?!”

Valerie isn’t about to talk to either of them about her problems, so simply she gets up and leaves. “You know what. I’m not doing this shit today. You guys have fun.” There’s only two good computer stations left anyway.

Five shuts the door to the lab behind Valerie and waits to make sure she doesn’t stick around to eavesdrop. “Ok, fine. Now what about the sex stuff then? Did you bungle that all up too? Arma’s been acting like a… special kind of mammal all goddamn month!” She sits back down and puts her forehead in her hand.” Hasn’t been any better for me either.”

He did not see this coming. “Wha…”

She won’t look up at him. “Why do I want… Why do I… ?” She can’t bring herself to talk to him about it. She’d rather talk to anyone else in the world but him.

Gabriel puts his elbow on the counter and runs his hand through his hair, letting out an embarrassed sigh. “This whole thing was always about coming back for real, ya understand? Paul wanted to make sure he’d be able to… enjoy his new life. He wanted his youth and his strength back, all of it. So yeah, he made sure the Five-Series line of bodies would support everything he was used to having as a human, especially sex. He wanted his life to be desirable again.”

“He still wanted to have sex? Is it that damn important to you guys to bring it to the other side of death with you?” She stares at him as if there were something seriously wrong with him as a male. “You could’ve just deleted the impulse! Then he would’ve been fine without it. He wouldn’t even miss it then.”

He can hardly look at her straight. “Yeah, well, that’s plenty easy to say. I’ll turn it off for you if you want. Hmm, how bout that?” He looks at her indignantly. “You want it to go away? Is that what this was all about?”

She thinks about it, but not for more than a single second. She hates it, but she also wants it. It’s simply insane. It’s made her f-ing insane. “No. No, it’s part of me now, and I won’t risk you screwing anything else up anyway.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He flops back, completely melting into his chair, realizing she’s not actually broken. It’s a huge relief. He was nearly sick with worry.

He rolls over to the other terminal and opens up the link to Arma’s Five-One drive. While she watches over his shoulder, he walks her through the changes that were made, proving that he didn’t touch anything he shouldn’t have. “My specialty, my part of the project, was mostly on the on the physical side of things. Marco designed the artificial systems and did most all the big programming. My responsibility was removing the subject’s brain, prepping it, and scanning it. If absolutely anything went wrong during that time, everything would be lost. I had the most important job out of everyone. So long as the brain was scanned successfully the first time, there would always be time to make up for the rest later.”

“So you did see me when I was a human then.” Her eyes well up at the thought of it.

Gabriel pauses for a while, remembering what it was like back then, when everything was still so exciting. Before it all blew up in their faces. “Yes I did Five, and I’ll never forget it.” He wishes he’d kept that mental image of her in his mind during her development. It would’ve prevented so many terrible things from happening. He forced himself to think of her and Arma as being machines instead. They gave them numbers because they knew damn well bad things were bound to happen.

“I did Five, but I never knew who you were. You were already dead, cleaned and cold on the table when Paul brought me in to you.”

“What’d I look like Gabriel.” She asks apprehensively.

He nearly starts crying himself and has to hide his face from her. “You were dainty, like you are now. I think you were homeless, like Alexis and Marek. You had long wavy blonde hair, but it wasn’t cut very well. I’ve tried to forget Five. I had your… I had your open head in my hands. That is not how I wanted to meet you, or remember you.”

“I won’t ask again.”

“Five, I can’t change you anymore. Look, you’re hormone system has been completely scrapped and remade, and that’s going to be real hard on you. There’s no way around that. It’s either this, or death.” He turns and looks up at her. “You have no idea how proud I am of you, and I don’t want you to change. Yo are so wonderful, I can’t even put it into words. I’ll teach you everything I know, so you can see for yourself that I did my best, but that’s all I can really do.”

She still scowls at him. “That’s what I want. I need to learn how to do everything, so I’ll always be able to bring us back on my own. One day, I’ll be able to build my own secret lab. None of us will need anyone else to live off ever again. I won’t need you, Sy, Valerie, or even SSS. We’ll be free.” She leans over him and points at the projection over the terminal. “There, that’s the part that’s not in her original drive.”