The Man WIth The Blurry Face
Title: The Man With the Blurry Face
Fandom/Pairing: Killjoys. Korse-POV gen.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take too seriously.
Summary: Written for hc_bingo prompt, "accidentally locked in." Third in Danger Days series.
We hadn't been able to stop it, but we'd had hopes that maybe, one day, we could fix it.
Doctor Montano still does. He's on the radio now, voice free on the air, railing against the same company he'd once worked for. He's going to get himself killed, one of these days.
As for me, I remember hoping, though I'm no longer capable of actually doing so.
---
Remembering is maddening. It's better to forget, I assure you.
---
I was a scientist, once, before these more recent upgrades.
We were working to save the world. End the pain, the fighting, and the hatreds. We were going to blast the suffering right out of the human condition. I was working with people who had more hope for the future than I'd ever known to exist in the first place. It was an exciting time.
At least it should have been.
After my family fell apart, I wanted to die. I didn't know that I was already in the process then, though. I only knew that I was tired.
I thought it was symptomatic of my depression, later, a side effect of the medication. It wasn't until much later that I began to cough blood on a daily basis.
I first met Dr. Montano at a conference in Perth, years before any of this, before BLI Laboratories ever opened its doors. He was - and is, though these days, you'd never believe it to hear him speak - one of the most brilliant chemical engineers the world has ever seen.
He'd also become a friend, and truly enough, our work at the laboratories was the one purpose I could find in life, and I believe he understood as much. His enthusiasm for the work was infectious.
More importantly, though, when the full extent of the project was revealed to us, he was an ally.
---
Dissenters lost all access. The project would carry on, with or without us, and we'd be able to do more from within. We had to be careful, always mindful of the security protocols, of the language we used even when we thought we were alone. We sought to be ever mindful of our surroundings, of the cameras and the barely-audible recordings programmed into the building's noise generators.
We became model employees, developed patterns and kept to them when we could, and it worked. A month before the project entered it's second phase, we were quietly informed that we'd made the cut, that we would be given a space in the shielded stasis units underneath the complex.
It wasn't easy, leaving my supervisor's office and knowing that I, along with a very small few, had been selected. Outside of the company, no one knew what was coming, and that was bad enough. Internally, however, everyone knew it was coming. With our confidentiality agreements in place, none of us were allowed to warn them. They still had hope that their reprieve would come, right up until the end.
I fantasized about trading places with all of them.
I didn't want to be inside when the ident bomb went off, I wanted to open my eyes one day and forget everything that I'd done.
What gave me the right to remember when almost no one else did?
What gave Better Living the right to destroy that which makes us us?
Monsanto signaled me. He'd been selected for retention as well. We stayed on.
---
Stasis, for the uninitiated, is a daunting notion to contemplate. Your systems are slowed to a crawl. Your heart pumps the oxygen matrix into your blood, there's no need for breathing. It keeps the body alive, preserves what life one has left so it can be applied where it is most wanted or needed. The physical ailments of the body are suspended, as is the sensation of pain. Nothing hurts when you're not there to feel it.
But I've found it's the body that one tends not to be concerned with, but the mind.
There's always the chance that something should go wrong- that your memories will warp, lessen, become jumbled.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Though nothing is experienced, in stasis, all is preserved, and returns upon waking.
It's as close to peace as one can hope for, these days.
---
In those weeks immediately following our release from stasis, we stayed in our bunker and did not go above the shielding on the first sublevel. While certain of my coworkers who'd disregarded the warnings came back seeming no less happy for their amnesia, Montano and I couldn't risk it.
By the time it was safe to go above ground again, we were ready to begin construction, and for nineteen months, we prototyped, redesigned, and planned the Mass Reminder delivery device.
It had been redesigned no less than thirty seven times. We'd tested every version far from the watchful eyes of the company, our laboratory of choice being the back room of one of the less frequented sex delis in Zone One.
The Reminder worked, finally, on one of the boys from the a la carte line who'd volunteered, but burned itself out in the process. We lost our prototype that day, but found that we'd quickly gained the alliance of the best fixer in all the zones.
We had the supplies, we had the allies, and we had proof of concept. As soon as we could stabilize the device and release the plans, we could finally give the world their lives back.
---
I remember my wife, Mona. I recall how she could barely stand to look at me, towards the end, and how I failed to make it up to her.
Most clearly, I remember my daughter. It's only a small comfort.
Because I still remember the SUV flipping, remember her crying around the blood pooling in her lungs. Her ankle caught improbably in the strap of her backpack. I still remember the way my family hated me, afterward. The way we fell apart.
I cannot blame them. My work was- is the only way to save them, anyhow.
My daughter would be old enough to drive, now. I tell myself that at least I don't have to worry about her, now, running out in the zones like a wild half-starved animal.
Not like I do my sons.
---
We Can Fix You.
---
To this day, I still do not know whether it was mere chance, or some machination set in motion by some knowledgeable individual in the upper echelons of the company.
Gerard was third among the day's intakes. He'd been brought in for reprogramming and integration.
Restrained in the chair, he strove to fight against all of us. All the hatred burning in his eyes was nothing in comparison to the way he'd looked at me at his sister's funeral, and he didn't even know it.
I wanted to tell him that I was proud. I wanted to apologize for a hundred things. Destroying our family- destroying every family. I wanted to ask if his brother was safe, if he even knew that he had one. If he felt as lost without his memories as I did with mine. I only knew was that I missed him, terribly, and dreaded what was to become of him.
I'd read his file carefully, hoping to see Media and Knowledge Creation or Administration 3-A21 listed beneath his name, but instead found Deputized Recovery and Assassination Company.
And he glared at me as if daring me to either make it so, or make it all stop.
We weren't ready yet, not by far. But I sent word to Montano immediately.
---
Montano sat through my explanations and exhortations quietly, from the careful decreasing of voltage in his shock treatments to the prospects of the placebo he'd developed, and from the adjustment of tech and security schedules to the supplies we'd have to bring with us when we left. He could have said anything, could have chosen that moment to turn me in, but instead, he nodded, solemnly.
"We're going to need help from outside to bust him out," he said, glancing nervously towards the security cameras and trying to look casual, but I could read the excitement in the set of his shoulders. "And if we do this? We're going to burn every last bridge we've got, here."
But that had been our intention from the very beginning, and I was ill. Dying. The medications weren't working any more.
---
Did I Take My Medication Today?
---
I kept a distant, careful eye on my son when I could. The ident he'd been caught with said Party Poison, and I wondered where the name came from. He was an alien. Had been ever since he turned fifteen, and probably didn't know it.
I timed my visits to coincide with the evening shift changes, when staff activity in the Intake and Reprogramming wing reduced, but not so rare that my presence would arouse suspicion. I never stayed long, and was careful to keep my visits short enough that my delayed arrival at the dispensary for my medicine could easily be explained away as being due to getting caught up in my work.
---
Gerard was fourteen years old when I came home to find that he'd dyed his hair black. Mona was furious, and I was confused. It made him look pale and unhealthy, on that, Mona and I agreed, but at the time, I didn't understand that there was anything to be done about it. He looked no more a stranger than Michael did when he came back from the optometrist with eyeglasses. I didn't understand what Mona's fuss was about.
Later that evening, the music blasting angrily from Gerard's room had me wondering if grounding him, and thereby subjecting ourselves to all the noise, was worth it. His sister had taken it as a sign that she no longer needed to even pretend to be in bed, but his brother, at least, was trying to coax her back up to her room.
"It's just an identity thing," I said, remembering something I'd barely read in some parenting article somewhere. "It's not as if he's shooting up heroin."
Mona sighed, eyes pointing up the stairs, and finally, she smiled. "Okay, fine. He's not grounded any more. Tell him to turn that racket off, though, or I'll donate his stereo to Goodwill."
---
A few days after he was brought in, I nearly destroyed my cover when I arrived at Intake to find the image techs still struggling to complete their day's work. The cell was a mess, with water and bleach solution spattered over the walls, and several pieces of equipment knocked to the floor. Gerard was still fighting, regardless of the sedatives in his system and the restraints on his limbs, and the techs, each of them very aware that their shift had ended three minutes ago, were furious.
They backed off, though, when I came close, and Gerard, sensing their withdrawal, quieted. The electric razor was buzzing on the floor, and I picked it up and thumbed it off.
"It would probably be prudent to resume in a few days," I pointed out, watching Mary inject another dose of sedative into Gerard's line as I helped Anthony re-attach the electrodes that had been removed to allow for their processes.
"Management won't like the delay," they grumbled, Mary glancing at me in annoyed confusion.
I shrugged, sympathetically, though the gesture was primarily an attempt to mask the wince that came when Anthony switched the electroshock machine back on. "It would be better to delay until the attitudinal adjustment has actually set in. I'll make a note of it in the file, should any questions arise with regard to your performance."
A few moments later, they'd all filed happily out of the room. After a few moments, I reached over and turned off the machine.
His body relaxing, the frozen scowl on his face fading, Gerard blinked, shaking shockingly blonde hair from his eyes to regard me warily. Though he didn't recognize me, and this small gesture was far from enough to earn his trust, it was the first time my son looked at me with anything besides drugged confusion or outright fury.
---
In the tram heading back to my residence each night, I again began composing the apologies I owed him in my head. I wanted them ready when he remembered that he hated me.
---
I talked to him sometimes. I never told him who he was, or who I was, and he never asked.
But sometimes, when I was able to shut off the machines, giving him what reprieve I could, he'd smile.
---
Mona's in the world, somewhere. She doesn't know any of this. It's the last blessing in the waking world.
---
Build A Better You.
---
Our fixer made contact with Gerard's friends, and, amazingly enough, Michael. Or at least someone named Kobra Kid who claimed to be my son's brother. The time was growing near, and Montano seemed to be riding the same cycles of excitement and wariness as I.
It hadn't become fear, though, not until Montano made his way into my office.
"They're striking today. We need to drag security away before they get here."
The fact that I'd known this was coming did little to set me at ease. "And if there's a problem, if they cannot pull it off?" Perhaps it was presumption, perhaps some under-used parental instinct, but I disliked the idea of leaving them to fend for themselves. And I still didn't know if Michael would be there, or if Gerard had found himself a new one to call brother.
"Their passcodes are solid and they've got more than enough intel to pull it off," he reminded me. "And none of it accounts for us. If they did find us here, they don't know that we'd be trying to help. We'd be a distraction that they don't need. They're coming in armed and, based on what they know, they're probably ready to shoot anything that crosses their path. That includes both of us."
I knew all of this, we'd discussed it before, and I could sense his fading patience, having to repeat it all now."
"The slightest thing going wrong could mean that instead of helping my son escape, we're dooming three others to his intended fate. The moment we leave, we'll lose all access to the labs."
"Which is exactly why we've been stockpiling the tools we'd need. But we'll have an easier time capturing and deprogramming them a year from now than we will if we're reprogrammed first. We have to go, now, and see how many Scarecrows we can pull out with us."
---
I don't know how it transpired, exactly, but I gleaned enough from my hearing to guess at some of the things that could've been automatically cross referenced in the HR system to initialize disciplinary action.
Montano going through the door without proper pre-clearance. Not notable in and of itself, but enough to trigger the surveillance history scan. At which point the system would register the statistical improbability of my being in his presence, or in Reprogramming and Intake, when cross-referenced with my appointment calendar. Though he and I had always worked closely together, it hadn't long been our custom to hold meetings in quiet portions of hallway.
Or it could be some minor detail. My recent slight deviations from my usual dosing schedule at the dispensary would be indicated. The fact that I'd begun entering and exiting from the parking tower, rather than using the tram. Or any of a hundred other tiny meaningless but statistically significant details would be pulled.
The system needed to find only three red flags before initiating a building scan and initiate localized lockdown.
I was trapped in between the inner and outer security doors, being informed by a cool voice that security was on their way.
---
We Can Handle it From Here.
---
The trial went exactly as I'd expected. It wasn't hard to connect Montano's disappearance, my involvement, and Gerard's escape. The drugs they pumped into me- one of them a creation of my own design- were enough that dissembling was impossible. By the time it was over, they knew about the Mass Reminder, they knew about my sons and my daughter, and they knew what they were going to do with me.
I was sentenced to stasis by the end of the day, and thought they were letting me off easy.
I didn't know then that they only wanted to keep me alive long enough to punish me.
---
I don't know how long I was in stasis. I didn't exist to wonder.
They promise me that when I fulfill my purpose, I will be allowed back in.
That alone is what I cling to.
---
Get Rid Of Those Counterproductive Emotions.
---
My upgrades and orders were uploaded into my mind the moment before I was released from stasis. It's these orders, not my first breath of real air, not the feeling of my body coming to life, that compose my first memory of my new existence.
---
Primary objective A: Grace. Coordinate field efforts and target for live recovery. If impossible, recover and transport remains for genetic processing.
Secondary objective A: Dr. Deathdefying, alias Dr. Steven Montano. Target for priority one extermination. Coordinate field efforts and destroy free-channel network upon completion.
Secondary objectives B through F: Party Pony, Kobra Kid, Jet Star, Fun Ghoul, and Show Pony. Target for priority one extermination. If remains are viable for reactivation, transport to intake for full reprogramming. If not, alert cleanup and decontamination personnel.
---
Full reprogramming is cruel, it's the very thing Montano and I were seeking to fight against, but partial reprogramming is the cruelest punishment. The mind knows it's will is weak, that it will bow to the commands given.
It's enough to drive a man insane.
---
BLI knew nothing of Gerard or Michael, and I refused to think of them by any other name, but at the back of my head, I knew that the two of them cared for these names no more or less than the company did. I prayed, though, that it would be enough to create a loophole.
I followed the intel to a hotel on the edge of Zone Four, where I found Gerard hiding out in a room with the one named Fun Ghoul. They'd planned it. They were decoys. A diversion, so Michael and Jet Star could move Grace further off the radar.
I remember little from the hotel. My mind was raging, trying to fight the orders, trying to kill my targets while trying to preserve them for use in completion of the primary objective while wanting to protect them from all of this.
---
It doesn't matter what names they use. The names all point to the same thing.
---
Keep Working Hard.
---
They'd escaped the hotel, but the cameras on the eastern border of Zone Six picked up their car less than two days later.
As much as I wish I could say that my will was strong enough to break the commands, it was not. They lived, that day, but it was the girl's presence that saved their lives. I had nothing to do with it beyond my inability to disobey orders. Free-range extermination would have risked the primary objective. Her safe transport was the priority.
My sons and their friends didn't matter at all.
Still, though, I managed to warn them to run, to force the words out through grinding teeth. It was a small victory, but it was mine.
---
I reviewed every memory I had of my sons on the way back to Battery City, trying to search out some memory that I wanted to keep, that I wanted to hang on to.
My sons weren't fools. They didn't have to know who I was to be the enemy, they just needed to know who I worked for. But they didn't hate me as much as they did before the bomb.
---
Keep Smiling.
---
From the moment I opened my eyes, I knew only three things.
That they'd infiltrated, that I wanted them to defeat me, and that they wouldn't.
---
There was recognition, anger, but no hope, when I pinned him against the wall I felt his last breath on my face, and until the end, his eyes give up nearly nothing.
He was silent, almost calm, and inside my head, I was screaming. But I could feel my face, the tight pull of the rictus.
I wassmiling when I blew my son's brains out of his skull, and I didn't know why.
---
I didn't begin to feel ill again until it was all over.
The screaming didn't let up as I watched the cleanup crew remove the bodies for transport down to sorting and reassignment. Michael and Fun Ghoul and Jet Star all took chest hits, there's a chance that they might be rebooted, but Gerard?
They were all probably going to be routed through for transplant harvesting, anyhow. It was pointless to hope.
---
I Am So Happy To Be Alive.
---
Mona's out there, somewhere, and doesn't know that I've killed the last of our children. She doesn't know she has any.
---
The part of me that isn't in shock doesn't care at all.
Grace was last seen on the street outside, being swept into Montano's van. She escaped. That's something, at least.
It's what my sons died for, after all.
They'll put me into stasis again, soon, once the drone cameras send in the triangulated data points that will tell us what we need to know. They'll send me out to retrieve her, to destroy Montano, but.
Montano's a smart man. He knows what he's doing. He's already defied death once. He can probably do it again.
---
Everything Is Going To Be Fine.
---
I step backwards into the chamber, feel my back come against the wall, and I relax against it. Three small pin pricks in the back of my hand, and I have everything I need to live. The door swooshes down, and through the glass I can see everything, just blurred enough to be unreal. Nothing beyond it is real, any more. None of it matters.
Already the buzzing along my nerves is setting in, but soon I won't feel anything. I know that the chemicals are combining with electronic impulses that are causing the sensations, that they're not gifts of some benign presence seeking to comfort, but the feeling is the same.
It's like finding peace for the first time.
I can't remember what I'm doing here, where I am, but it's pleasant. In another few moments, I won't remember that I exist.
Fandom/Pairing: Killjoys. Korse-POV gen.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take too seriously.
Summary: Written for hc_bingo prompt, "accidentally locked in." Third in Danger Days series.
We hadn't been able to stop it, but we'd had hopes that maybe, one day, we could fix it.
Doctor Montano still does. He's on the radio now, voice free on the air, railing against the same company he'd once worked for. He's going to get himself killed, one of these days.
As for me, I remember hoping, though I'm no longer capable of actually doing so.
---
Remembering is maddening. It's better to forget, I assure you.
---
I was a scientist, once, before these more recent upgrades.
We were working to save the world. End the pain, the fighting, and the hatreds. We were going to blast the suffering right out of the human condition. I was working with people who had more hope for the future than I'd ever known to exist in the first place. It was an exciting time.
At least it should have been.
After my family fell apart, I wanted to die. I didn't know that I was already in the process then, though. I only knew that I was tired.
I thought it was symptomatic of my depression, later, a side effect of the medication. It wasn't until much later that I began to cough blood on a daily basis.
I first met Dr. Montano at a conference in Perth, years before any of this, before BLI Laboratories ever opened its doors. He was - and is, though these days, you'd never believe it to hear him speak - one of the most brilliant chemical engineers the world has ever seen.
He'd also become a friend, and truly enough, our work at the laboratories was the one purpose I could find in life, and I believe he understood as much. His enthusiasm for the work was infectious.
More importantly, though, when the full extent of the project was revealed to us, he was an ally.
---
Dissenters lost all access. The project would carry on, with or without us, and we'd be able to do more from within. We had to be careful, always mindful of the security protocols, of the language we used even when we thought we were alone. We sought to be ever mindful of our surroundings, of the cameras and the barely-audible recordings programmed into the building's noise generators.
We became model employees, developed patterns and kept to them when we could, and it worked. A month before the project entered it's second phase, we were quietly informed that we'd made the cut, that we would be given a space in the shielded stasis units underneath the complex.
It wasn't easy, leaving my supervisor's office and knowing that I, along with a very small few, had been selected. Outside of the company, no one knew what was coming, and that was bad enough. Internally, however, everyone knew it was coming. With our confidentiality agreements in place, none of us were allowed to warn them. They still had hope that their reprieve would come, right up until the end.
I fantasized about trading places with all of them.
I didn't want to be inside when the ident bomb went off, I wanted to open my eyes one day and forget everything that I'd done.
What gave me the right to remember when almost no one else did?
What gave Better Living the right to destroy that which makes us us?
Monsanto signaled me. He'd been selected for retention as well. We stayed on.
---
Stasis, for the uninitiated, is a daunting notion to contemplate. Your systems are slowed to a crawl. Your heart pumps the oxygen matrix into your blood, there's no need for breathing. It keeps the body alive, preserves what life one has left so it can be applied where it is most wanted or needed. The physical ailments of the body are suspended, as is the sensation of pain. Nothing hurts when you're not there to feel it.
But I've found it's the body that one tends not to be concerned with, but the mind.
There's always the chance that something should go wrong- that your memories will warp, lessen, become jumbled.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Though nothing is experienced, in stasis, all is preserved, and returns upon waking.
It's as close to peace as one can hope for, these days.
---
In those weeks immediately following our release from stasis, we stayed in our bunker and did not go above the shielding on the first sublevel. While certain of my coworkers who'd disregarded the warnings came back seeming no less happy for their amnesia, Montano and I couldn't risk it.
By the time it was safe to go above ground again, we were ready to begin construction, and for nineteen months, we prototyped, redesigned, and planned the Mass Reminder delivery device.
It had been redesigned no less than thirty seven times. We'd tested every version far from the watchful eyes of the company, our laboratory of choice being the back room of one of the less frequented sex delis in Zone One.
The Reminder worked, finally, on one of the boys from the a la carte line who'd volunteered, but burned itself out in the process. We lost our prototype that day, but found that we'd quickly gained the alliance of the best fixer in all the zones.
We had the supplies, we had the allies, and we had proof of concept. As soon as we could stabilize the device and release the plans, we could finally give the world their lives back.
---
I remember my wife, Mona. I recall how she could barely stand to look at me, towards the end, and how I failed to make it up to her.
Most clearly, I remember my daughter. It's only a small comfort.
Because I still remember the SUV flipping, remember her crying around the blood pooling in her lungs. Her ankle caught improbably in the strap of her backpack. I still remember the way my family hated me, afterward. The way we fell apart.
I cannot blame them. My work was- is the only way to save them, anyhow.
My daughter would be old enough to drive, now. I tell myself that at least I don't have to worry about her, now, running out in the zones like a wild half-starved animal.
Not like I do my sons.
---
We Can Fix You.
---
To this day, I still do not know whether it was mere chance, or some machination set in motion by some knowledgeable individual in the upper echelons of the company.
Gerard was third among the day's intakes. He'd been brought in for reprogramming and integration.
Restrained in the chair, he strove to fight against all of us. All the hatred burning in his eyes was nothing in comparison to the way he'd looked at me at his sister's funeral, and he didn't even know it.
I wanted to tell him that I was proud. I wanted to apologize for a hundred things. Destroying our family- destroying every family. I wanted to ask if his brother was safe, if he even knew that he had one. If he felt as lost without his memories as I did with mine. I only knew was that I missed him, terribly, and dreaded what was to become of him.
I'd read his file carefully, hoping to see Media and Knowledge Creation or Administration 3-A21 listed beneath his name, but instead found Deputized Recovery and Assassination Company.
And he glared at me as if daring me to either make it so, or make it all stop.
We weren't ready yet, not by far. But I sent word to Montano immediately.
---
Montano sat through my explanations and exhortations quietly, from the careful decreasing of voltage in his shock treatments to the prospects of the placebo he'd developed, and from the adjustment of tech and security schedules to the supplies we'd have to bring with us when we left. He could have said anything, could have chosen that moment to turn me in, but instead, he nodded, solemnly.
"We're going to need help from outside to bust him out," he said, glancing nervously towards the security cameras and trying to look casual, but I could read the excitement in the set of his shoulders. "And if we do this? We're going to burn every last bridge we've got, here."
But that had been our intention from the very beginning, and I was ill. Dying. The medications weren't working any more.
---
Did I Take My Medication Today?
---
I kept a distant, careful eye on my son when I could. The ident he'd been caught with said Party Poison, and I wondered where the name came from. He was an alien. Had been ever since he turned fifteen, and probably didn't know it.
I timed my visits to coincide with the evening shift changes, when staff activity in the Intake and Reprogramming wing reduced, but not so rare that my presence would arouse suspicion. I never stayed long, and was careful to keep my visits short enough that my delayed arrival at the dispensary for my medicine could easily be explained away as being due to getting caught up in my work.
---
Gerard was fourteen years old when I came home to find that he'd dyed his hair black. Mona was furious, and I was confused. It made him look pale and unhealthy, on that, Mona and I agreed, but at the time, I didn't understand that there was anything to be done about it. He looked no more a stranger than Michael did when he came back from the optometrist with eyeglasses. I didn't understand what Mona's fuss was about.
Later that evening, the music blasting angrily from Gerard's room had me wondering if grounding him, and thereby subjecting ourselves to all the noise, was worth it. His sister had taken it as a sign that she no longer needed to even pretend to be in bed, but his brother, at least, was trying to coax her back up to her room.
"It's just an identity thing," I said, remembering something I'd barely read in some parenting article somewhere. "It's not as if he's shooting up heroin."
Mona sighed, eyes pointing up the stairs, and finally, she smiled. "Okay, fine. He's not grounded any more. Tell him to turn that racket off, though, or I'll donate his stereo to Goodwill."
---
A few days after he was brought in, I nearly destroyed my cover when I arrived at Intake to find the image techs still struggling to complete their day's work. The cell was a mess, with water and bleach solution spattered over the walls, and several pieces of equipment knocked to the floor. Gerard was still fighting, regardless of the sedatives in his system and the restraints on his limbs, and the techs, each of them very aware that their shift had ended three minutes ago, were furious.
They backed off, though, when I came close, and Gerard, sensing their withdrawal, quieted. The electric razor was buzzing on the floor, and I picked it up and thumbed it off.
"It would probably be prudent to resume in a few days," I pointed out, watching Mary inject another dose of sedative into Gerard's line as I helped Anthony re-attach the electrodes that had been removed to allow for their processes.
"Management won't like the delay," they grumbled, Mary glancing at me in annoyed confusion.
I shrugged, sympathetically, though the gesture was primarily an attempt to mask the wince that came when Anthony switched the electroshock machine back on. "It would be better to delay until the attitudinal adjustment has actually set in. I'll make a note of it in the file, should any questions arise with regard to your performance."
A few moments later, they'd all filed happily out of the room. After a few moments, I reached over and turned off the machine.
His body relaxing, the frozen scowl on his face fading, Gerard blinked, shaking shockingly blonde hair from his eyes to regard me warily. Though he didn't recognize me, and this small gesture was far from enough to earn his trust, it was the first time my son looked at me with anything besides drugged confusion or outright fury.
---
In the tram heading back to my residence each night, I again began composing the apologies I owed him in my head. I wanted them ready when he remembered that he hated me.
---
I talked to him sometimes. I never told him who he was, or who I was, and he never asked.
But sometimes, when I was able to shut off the machines, giving him what reprieve I could, he'd smile.
---
Mona's in the world, somewhere. She doesn't know any of this. It's the last blessing in the waking world.
---
Build A Better You.
---
Our fixer made contact with Gerard's friends, and, amazingly enough, Michael. Or at least someone named Kobra Kid who claimed to be my son's brother. The time was growing near, and Montano seemed to be riding the same cycles of excitement and wariness as I.
It hadn't become fear, though, not until Montano made his way into my office.
"They're striking today. We need to drag security away before they get here."
The fact that I'd known this was coming did little to set me at ease. "And if there's a problem, if they cannot pull it off?" Perhaps it was presumption, perhaps some under-used parental instinct, but I disliked the idea of leaving them to fend for themselves. And I still didn't know if Michael would be there, or if Gerard had found himself a new one to call brother.
"Their passcodes are solid and they've got more than enough intel to pull it off," he reminded me. "And none of it accounts for us. If they did find us here, they don't know that we'd be trying to help. We'd be a distraction that they don't need. They're coming in armed and, based on what they know, they're probably ready to shoot anything that crosses their path. That includes both of us."
I knew all of this, we'd discussed it before, and I could sense his fading patience, having to repeat it all now."
"The slightest thing going wrong could mean that instead of helping my son escape, we're dooming three others to his intended fate. The moment we leave, we'll lose all access to the labs."
"Which is exactly why we've been stockpiling the tools we'd need. But we'll have an easier time capturing and deprogramming them a year from now than we will if we're reprogrammed first. We have to go, now, and see how many Scarecrows we can pull out with us."
---
I don't know how it transpired, exactly, but I gleaned enough from my hearing to guess at some of the things that could've been automatically cross referenced in the HR system to initialize disciplinary action.
Montano going through the door without proper pre-clearance. Not notable in and of itself, but enough to trigger the surveillance history scan. At which point the system would register the statistical improbability of my being in his presence, or in Reprogramming and Intake, when cross-referenced with my appointment calendar. Though he and I had always worked closely together, it hadn't long been our custom to hold meetings in quiet portions of hallway.
Or it could be some minor detail. My recent slight deviations from my usual dosing schedule at the dispensary would be indicated. The fact that I'd begun entering and exiting from the parking tower, rather than using the tram. Or any of a hundred other tiny meaningless but statistically significant details would be pulled.
The system needed to find only three red flags before initiating a building scan and initiate localized lockdown.
I was trapped in between the inner and outer security doors, being informed by a cool voice that security was on their way.
---
We Can Handle it From Here.
---
The trial went exactly as I'd expected. It wasn't hard to connect Montano's disappearance, my involvement, and Gerard's escape. The drugs they pumped into me- one of them a creation of my own design- were enough that dissembling was impossible. By the time it was over, they knew about the Mass Reminder, they knew about my sons and my daughter, and they knew what they were going to do with me.
I was sentenced to stasis by the end of the day, and thought they were letting me off easy.
I didn't know then that they only wanted to keep me alive long enough to punish me.
---
I don't know how long I was in stasis. I didn't exist to wonder.
They promise me that when I fulfill my purpose, I will be allowed back in.
That alone is what I cling to.
---
Get Rid Of Those Counterproductive Emotions.
---
My upgrades and orders were uploaded into my mind the moment before I was released from stasis. It's these orders, not my first breath of real air, not the feeling of my body coming to life, that compose my first memory of my new existence.
---
Primary objective A: Grace. Coordinate field efforts and target for live recovery. If impossible, recover and transport remains for genetic processing.
Secondary objective A: Dr. Deathdefying, alias Dr. Steven Montano. Target for priority one extermination. Coordinate field efforts and destroy free-channel network upon completion.
Secondary objectives B through F: Party Pony, Kobra Kid, Jet Star, Fun Ghoul, and Show Pony. Target for priority one extermination. If remains are viable for reactivation, transport to intake for full reprogramming. If not, alert cleanup and decontamination personnel.
---
Full reprogramming is cruel, it's the very thing Montano and I were seeking to fight against, but partial reprogramming is the cruelest punishment. The mind knows it's will is weak, that it will bow to the commands given.
It's enough to drive a man insane.
---
BLI knew nothing of Gerard or Michael, and I refused to think of them by any other name, but at the back of my head, I knew that the two of them cared for these names no more or less than the company did. I prayed, though, that it would be enough to create a loophole.
I followed the intel to a hotel on the edge of Zone Four, where I found Gerard hiding out in a room with the one named Fun Ghoul. They'd planned it. They were decoys. A diversion, so Michael and Jet Star could move Grace further off the radar.
I remember little from the hotel. My mind was raging, trying to fight the orders, trying to kill my targets while trying to preserve them for use in completion of the primary objective while wanting to protect them from all of this.
---
It doesn't matter what names they use. The names all point to the same thing.
---
Keep Working Hard.
---
They'd escaped the hotel, but the cameras on the eastern border of Zone Six picked up their car less than two days later.
As much as I wish I could say that my will was strong enough to break the commands, it was not. They lived, that day, but it was the girl's presence that saved their lives. I had nothing to do with it beyond my inability to disobey orders. Free-range extermination would have risked the primary objective. Her safe transport was the priority.
My sons and their friends didn't matter at all.
Still, though, I managed to warn them to run, to force the words out through grinding teeth. It was a small victory, but it was mine.
---
I reviewed every memory I had of my sons on the way back to Battery City, trying to search out some memory that I wanted to keep, that I wanted to hang on to.
My sons weren't fools. They didn't have to know who I was to be the enemy, they just needed to know who I worked for. But they didn't hate me as much as they did before the bomb.
---
Keep Smiling.
---
From the moment I opened my eyes, I knew only three things.
That they'd infiltrated, that I wanted them to defeat me, and that they wouldn't.
---
There was recognition, anger, but no hope, when I pinned him against the wall I felt his last breath on my face, and until the end, his eyes give up nearly nothing.
He was silent, almost calm, and inside my head, I was screaming. But I could feel my face, the tight pull of the rictus.
I wassmiling when I blew my son's brains out of his skull, and I didn't know why.
---
I didn't begin to feel ill again until it was all over.
The screaming didn't let up as I watched the cleanup crew remove the bodies for transport down to sorting and reassignment. Michael and Fun Ghoul and Jet Star all took chest hits, there's a chance that they might be rebooted, but Gerard?
They were all probably going to be routed through for transplant harvesting, anyhow. It was pointless to hope.
---
I Am So Happy To Be Alive.
---
Mona's out there, somewhere, and doesn't know that I've killed the last of our children. She doesn't know she has any.
---
The part of me that isn't in shock doesn't care at all.
Grace was last seen on the street outside, being swept into Montano's van. She escaped. That's something, at least.
It's what my sons died for, after all.
They'll put me into stasis again, soon, once the drone cameras send in the triangulated data points that will tell us what we need to know. They'll send me out to retrieve her, to destroy Montano, but.
Montano's a smart man. He knows what he's doing. He's already defied death once. He can probably do it again.
---
Everything Is Going To Be Fine.
---
I step backwards into the chamber, feel my back come against the wall, and I relax against it. Three small pin pricks in the back of my hand, and I have everything I need to live. The door swooshes down, and through the glass I can see everything, just blurred enough to be unreal. Nothing beyond it is real, any more. None of it matters.
Already the buzzing along my nerves is setting in, but soon I won't feel anything. I know that the chemicals are combining with electronic impulses that are causing the sensations, that they're not gifts of some benign presence seeking to comfort, but the feeling is the same.
It's like finding peace for the first time.
I can't remember what I'm doing here, where I am, but it's pleasant. In another few moments, I won't remember that I exist.