Chapter Twelve

Valerie

After leaving Five and Gabriel to themselves for most of the day, Valerie stayed up late to finish her work in the lab by herself and is now in the bar upstairs. Sy is the last person she’d ever pick to hang out with, but with her sister being pregnant and all, she’ll still take him over drinking alone. With Aaron off doing whatever he does these days, all she can think to do is stay up far into the night, dwelling on the past. She wishes none of it ever happened. Her mind keeps returning to a specific time, back when she was spending some quiet relaxation time with Aaron on the green couch in his apartment. He was the Aaron she wanted back, but no good deed ever goes unpunished.

Sy sets his drink down on the bar top a little bit more loudly, pretending it slipped in his hand. She must’ve been zoning out on him again. Though they’re both pretty lit, he’s doing a surprisingly good job of behaving himself. His side glances have not gone unnoticed though. Every time she looks away, he takes the time to look her over. She can see him doing it in one of the mirror backed neon beer lights. So far he thinks he’s gotten away with it. She thought he was supposed to be combat hardened or something. Drunk or not, he should at least be more aware of his surroundings than she is. She has no interest in him, but the attention is still nicely flattering. After all that’s happened, she doesn’t exactly feel young anymore.

“So, it’s none of my business really, but how’s things going between you and uh, Aaron? I don’t mean to pry. I was just curious if things have been alright for him, you know, after coming back as a robot n all. It can’t be as easy as they make it look. Still, I’ve overheard some of the guards making jabs at him. Has he always been such an intense guy?”

She tries to not scoff. It got her in trouble last time. “Everyone has their issues Sy, and yes, it really is none of your business.”

“Well dang, I was trying to be polite about it, but now that you say it, I might as well be honest that it very much is my business. I may come off as being a cocky son of a bitch most of the time, but I’m not stupid. He’s obviously been having a hard time with all this. I have a well-informed picture of what that man is capable of when he’s pissed off, but I need him cool, alright.”

She knows damn well what he means, but she wants him to say it out loud. Someone needs to. She takes a sip of her whisky and holds it in her mouth while she looks at him, swallowing it slowly. “Tell me. What exactly is it you think he’s capable of Sy?”

“Cris and Gerald told me everything. I had to pay them a good amount more to get them to talk, but they did. They’re keeping the whole thing hush hush, mainly because their asses are on the line too, but also cause I paid them to. They explained to me, in good detail, how he tore the shit out of everything that stood between the two of you, and with an outright animalistic rage I might add. You saw it. You were there.”

“We don’t really talk about it, and yes that was a little hard on him. He does feel guilty about killing all those people like that, even though they damn well deserved it.”

“Well, in case it hadn’t dawned on you, there’s nothing that man wouldn’t do for you, and I mean nothing.”

She brushes him off with nothing more than a mutter this time. “He isn’t even a man anymore.” At the change in his eyes, she makes her point again by raising her voice more than clearly this time. “It’s not even really him anyway. Aaron was a kind, gentle, and collected man. I was never even the one who asked him to be brought back. That was all Arma.”

Sy brushes at his moustache with his hand and picks his glass up off the bar top. “Hmm, I guess that explains some things.”

“What does?”

“Oh, nothing. Continue.”

“I miss my Aaron to pieces, I can’t even tell you how badly. You tell me what you see out there. It aint my Aaron anymore. You’ve got a Paul, but with a nicer face, exactly what you wanted.” She watches him nearly choke on his bourbon. “What, now you don’t like him?”

Sy is shocked. He doesn’t know if Valerie is just talking drunk, or if she’s actually being serious. Either way, it spells trouble for him. Without her, Aaron is nothing but a loose cannon. His voice turns serious.

“You guys can’t be pulling this kind of shit on me already! You all tore Werker apart with these same shenanigans, but I won’t stand for it under my own roof! If you abandon him now, like this, he could end up murdering the shit out of everyone. You know what the guards call him?”

She glares at him. “Yeah, they call him sex doll, to piss me off.”

He grimaces, having not heard that one before. “Um, no, that’s not… They call him Mothman! Cause they’re all starting to think he’s a sign of the end! We’ve all seen him swing from gloom, to rage, and back to defiance at the flip of a switch. I need him skilled, but it’s your damn job to keep him stable. You’re the robot psychologist. I just threw a whole bunch more money down on his ass this week. Like millions. I have big plans, and I will not have everything go blowing up in my face.”

“Well… at least you didn’t outright ask me to keep fucking him.”

She has him pissed off now. He almost gets up off his stool. “You’re just upset. I know you wouldn’t have gone through with it if you didn’t believe it was him you were bringing back. No way! What about Arma and Five, they’re people too aren’t they? You don’t think they’re soulless mistakes too do you? What’s the fuckin point of all this if you don’t believe you’re bringing them back? That is what you sold me! Did you lie? What the fuck am I doing with all this, and all of you, if I can just go out and buy Werker bots from down the street? I wanted to save my guards from death! I wanted this! We all did.”

She doesn’t like how he has her cornered, or how he’s getting all worked up about it. “Fine, yeah, they’re people… alright. They’re as good as you or me, but you know damn well it’s not really them. Come on, we can’t call people back from the dead! It just doesn’t work like that! I don’t know what we were fucking thinking!”

All he can do is shake his head at her. He dumps the rest of his drink down over the edge of the bar into the sink. You’re fukin drunk, and I’m out.”

She isn’t done with him yet though. Her eyes are welling up. “Aaron is the one that wanted to come back. They’d already chopped his fucking head off before I even woke up that morning! We went to sleep in the same bed that night and then I woke up in the morning all alone! I lost him back there at that stupid fucking farmhouse! All I have left is a fucking crazy robot thing that is obsessed with me, stalking around and constantly reminding me of what I will never have back! What the fuck did I ever do huh?”

“Don’t you say that shit. That is totally fucked. That’s fine if you don’t think you owe him anything, but goddamn it, that is some cold ass shit woman! He’d do better by you, and you know it.”

“Look at him. Go out there and talk to him. He’s a big, cold, angry, killing machine. He isn’t the man I fell in love with, that man is long dead. He’s yours now. You go and love him.”

He’s pacing now. “I don’t need this Valerie. You’d better keep this sad-ass shit to yourself.”

“Hah, what in the hell am I supposed to do then Sy? Huh? I guess I’ve been taught my lesson then haven’t I! Why do you think I’m drinking with you of all people? It’s not like I can have dinner with him anymore.”

Sy quits pressuring her when he catches a glimpse of her eyes. He hopes to hell it’s drunk talk. If it isn’t, one of them is going to have to go. He sees her point though. Aaron is not the pleasant inspiring man everyone says he used to be. Even Vaun has been spooked by him, and that’s not an easy thing to do.

He looks at his battle com for the time. It’s a lot later than he planned on staying up. He figures it’d be best to get Valerie to her room before she gets too carried away. If she has another drink, he’s bound to find her shouting down the halls in an hour, or god knows what.

“Alright fine.” He puts his elbow under her shoulder and helps her stand up. “It’s time to hang it up for the night ok. I know you can handle your liquor, but I don’t need you dragging your ass all day tomorrow.”

When they step out through the swinging doors, he hears a loud crash far down at the other end of the hall going into the hanger. Going into it are still swinging. He tries to assure himself that it wasn’t Aaron he saw storming off on the other side of them. He considers running to his office and hitting the alarm. “It was just one of the guards is all.” Valerie, in a slump, looks up at him curiously. She probably didn’t even notice someone else had been there.

Aaron had been waiting in their apartment for hours, waiting for Valerie to show up, but she never did. He didn’t even expect her to talk with him about anything if she didn’t want to. He just wanted to be there with her. Now, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. What little he had left of his life has completely fallen apart now. They all think he is some kind of monster.

He can’t believe the things she said about him. He was finally starting to feel like himself again, but not anymore. He’s been stripped down to nothing all over again. He’s already been worried about what he actually is, but hearing it from her like that really pushed the dagger in the rest of the way. She was all he had left to hold onto.

It has him feeling exactly like what she said he was, some kind of obsessed machine, driven by some dead man’s memories. He remembers dying. He remembers it all. The thought of never seeing her ever again was so horrible. It was the worst moment of his life, until now. It’s the sickest punishment he could’ve been given, like out of some tragic script or something.

He paces around in the main hanger, trying to figure out what to do with himself. All he can think about is burying himself alive and waiting for his battery to run out. He wishes he could find a deep well to jump down, where they would never find him. It figures, as soon as he found a way to iron himself out, he gets kicked right back down again. Maybe he’ll load up Runner in one of the vans, and never come back, for real this time.

He walks over to the machine under its tarp and leans forward with both of his hands on it. So much is running through his mind. He takes a moment to really think about his future. There’s so much anger, shame, sadness, and fear all trying to shackle him down. He needs to think of his long game. He was bound to end up alone at some point. It only happened sooner than he expected is all.

He takes the tarp off of Runner and gives it the voice command to wake up. Nothing happens. When he checks the battery, it’s too low to even bring up its main systems. Now all he wants to do is throw something, but he knows he’d better not go down that road right now. It’s a slippery slope. He feels worse and worse about himself every minute that goes by. He may not be able to calm himself down right now, but he might be able to at least manage not doing anything dangerous.

Slowly, he reigns himself in by force, one step at a time. He concentrates on simply plugging Runner’s charging cord without tearing it in half, and then walks over to sit down against the wall. He has all the time in the world. He can wait to let it charge before getting the hell out of there. He watches the first bar on the battery status light start blinking. It’s got another nine to go.

Remembering what Arma had told him, he tries to think of a way to change how he thinks about what’s happened. He needs to separate himself from needing Valerie, or any of it. It doesn’t work. All he can manage to do is sink further into despair, dropping him like a heavy hammer. He scoots himself into the corner of the wall, puts his forearms over his knees, and drops his head down. Closing his eyes, he tries to shut out the world around him. He doesn’t need any of it. He has lifetimes to start all over again. He keeps repeating it over and over, to force everything else out of his mind. Eventually, everything does go quiet.

When Aaron opens his eyes, he’s on his mountain, back on the dirt trail again. It looks like a nuclear bomb has gone off there. Only a few grey whiskers of the forest are left standing, and there’s debris scattered everywhere. The only green around is at his feet, and most of it is covered in dust. He doesn’t even care. He’s tired of this same stupid dream leading him around by the nose like the dumb bull he is. He deserves it, and if he sees another damn squirrel again, he swears he’s going to kick it.

There’s nothing around anyway, live or dead. He’s finally all alone. The entire place is quiet and still. Death has taken the life out of the entire place and it shouldn’t be back for a long time. Instead of continuing on down the trail like he’s supposed to, he heads out across the endless valley of slash to get good and lost. After a while of aimlessly meandering about, he finds a nice buckskin log to sit on and wait. What does he need to walk around for anyway?

When the darkness finally does come for him, there’s something different about it this time. It’s like he’s familiar with it, personally, as if there is something common between them. He’s in no mood for some stupid realization to make everything suddenly better though. H’s still upset, and doesn’t even bother acknowledging its presence. He focusses on the surviving emerald moss and matted ferns at his feet, appreciating them before they disappear too.

Slowly, the world around him fades into complete blackness, first losing its color, then it’s light. There’s no more log, or anything else around him anymore. Even though there’s nothing left to see, or get his bearing on, it feels like everything around him is spinning out of control.

The Darkness is not only swirling around him, but has a strong hold on him. He’d be fine if it would finally take him away this time, but making a whole thing out of it is getting old. He relaxes and lets it have him. Quickly, it becomes very clear that it’s not interested in making it easy on him. It thrashes him about violently, forcing the anger and hate within him to surface, no matter how hard he tries to hold it back. It tears at him with its claws until he can no longer feel anything but that seething resentment suddenly erupting forth. The weight of the blackness feels like his entire body has been buried in a lake of steel chain, but his rage gives him far more than enough strength to tear himself away from it.

Even though there is nothing to see, he can feel the darkness glaring at him. There are no words, but he still understands the avalanche rumbling sound it makes. It insists on taking him one way or another. It must have him. The feel of its starvation has forced its way into his mind with the help of a sledgehammer.

Suddenly, something changes. Something else has discovered the two of them, and they are not alone anymore. He can’t tell if it’s something worse, but it causes the monster to recoil. As the darkness tries pitifully to drag him away, he is ceased by the entity, like a helpless cub in its mother’s teeth.

Arma is desperately trying to figure out what’s wrong with Aaron. She can’t get him to wake up and he’s completely unresponsive. His skin is as cool as the concrete and there are no signs that he’s even alive. She looks him over to see if he’s been hurt but can’t find a single mark on him. She grabs ahold of his arm and pulls him across the floor away from the corner. He’s a lot heavier than she was expecting. Part of her is telling her to yell out for help, but the other is almost afraid to. Down on the floor, she pulls him up over her legs and holds his head against her chest in her arms while she tries to peel his eyelids open. When she has them open, she catches his pupils only slightly shift towards hers.

“Aaron! Oh, my Aaron. What happened to you?” His arms hang loosely to his sides as if he were paralyzed and all she sees in his face is sadness. It’s like what happened to Five when he had died. She doesn’t ask him what’s wrong, but only holds onto him.

Aaron breathes in sharply and then slowly exhales all of his breath. Instinctively grabs ahold of her arms while he realizes what’s going on. He relaxes his weight and then blankly stares across the hanger floor. She sets her cheek down on his forehead and squeezes him in her arms. “It’s gonna be alright.”

“I thought everything was over Arma. How’d you find me? You always find me.”

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I’ve been up here twice, but I didn’t see you over here. No one’s seen you since yesterday. What are you even doing in here on the ground, lying in the dust like this?”

“I fell asleep.”

She gives him the look that she knows better. “We can talk about it later. Today is your big day Aaron. You’re finally going on a mission.”

“Let me guess, Sy has cooked up something dangerous, where we might not make it.”

She sounds a little disappointed in herself. “No, it’s actually just you and Mikel. I’m not going. I haven’t hardly done any of my training.”

Arma pulls his head back and looks him in the face again for a minute. She wishes she could take his sadness away. She leans forward over him and gives him a long wanton kiss on his lips. “They’re waiting for you in the briefing room. You’d better hurry up.”