NaNo '05 - Shedding Skins (Chapter 2.2)
Shedding Skins
Chapter Two (Continued)
- Of Greed and Fortitude -
He comes to secured on a chair, legs and hands numb. They probably tightened his bonds on purpose so that he would lose sensation in his limbs and thus not be as dangerous as he might otherwise be. He forces his muscles to relax, because he isn't here to fight or kill, he's here to talk. And that might just prove easier to be done if he is at their mercy.the lights play
He hears noise in his back, and a man's voice. "He's awake."
He cranes his neck around to have a look at his gaoler, a man well into his fifties with a square jaw and small black eyes. Then he takes in the room they're in. Storage, clearly, it's filled with crates, but there is no clue to what is inside them. The man is standing next to a heavy door, one nobody could possibly kick down, one he would definitely need the code to to get through.
A door that opens now, and a woman strides in, a woman that's seen battle and hasn't come back from it as unscathed as Zoe Washburn, by which he means physically. There is a scar that starts on her upper lip and strikes through her cheek, and that is the first thing he notices, and how it seems to give her a constant snarl. Then he remarks her eyes, two large black eyes that seem more intense than any eyes should be, two bottomless pits that threaten to engulf anybody that stares into them, the gaze of someone that has seen the worst things human beings could do to each other. He's seen his share of those, even done his share in the name of a better world, and he has no trouble holding her gaze.
Then he notices the rest of her. The olive skin, the black hair pulled back into a ponytail, the dark circles under her eyes, the fact that she looks forty-something when she's probably ten years younger than that, her khaki slacks, combat boots and close-fitting black pullover, and also her bearing, not quite military but not entirely civilian either. Her voice is unneeded confirmation that she is the one that sneaked up on him in the alley.
"Leave us," she tells the other man, and he's about to protest when she pins him with her gaze. He hesitates an instant, then stalks off and closes the door behind him.
She strides around the chair to face Jeziah, and that's when he notices her slight limp, and when she stops in front of him the way her left hip juts out a little. She simply looks at him, silent, assessing. He stares back calmly, because he's ready to play her game. After a few long seconds she pulls a chair over and straddles it, resting her arms on its back. She's doing her best to keep emotions from her gaze, but he knows better than to let the apparent emptiness fool him. Just under the surface, dark feelings swirl in the black depths.
Her words are scornful, they do not attempt to hide anything. "We shoulda killed you already."
"Why haven't you?"
She pauses, considers. "I ain't rightly sure. You deserve death."
He frowns slightly. "Why do you hate my kind?"
She snorts, glances away. "Lackeys of the Parliament. Deadly lapdogs that will do their master's bidding without a second thought, just kill kill kill and then go back batting your tail happily and hoping for a bone and a pat on the head." She bares her teeth, snarls. "Dogs are good for eating."
He does not let any of her words touch him, or if he does he puts his reaction aside to study later, if there is a later to study it at. "Someone you knew was killed by one of us." She raises an unimpressed eyebrow, does not bother answering. "Why haven't you killed me?"
"You didn't kill Nicco when you had the chance," she snaps, looking decidedly unhappy with the whole situation. "And some of us made a good case for you. They pulled your file. You're a deserter. I figured I should find out what you want with us before offing you." She smiles wryly. "Curiosity killed the cat, but I got more lives than those buggers."
They have his file. Which means they have managed to hack into the Parliament's Secret Ops network, which is everything he was hoping for. Destiny.
"Then you know everything I have done, everything that brought me here. You judge that I deserve death, I tell you I don't fear it."
"I don't know everything. I don't know anything about what you done since you deserted."
"I doubt you'd believe me if I told you."
"Try me."
He watches the artificial lights reflect in her deep dark eyes, and they look like chips of ice. "I worked in an inn in the Rim, found myself a family, learned how to mix Lan de Teng and Mai Tai. But my past caught up with me when a younger, better Operative tracked me down to kill me, and I had to leave." The admission that the other was better costs him, but it is the truth. Operatives are trained to admit the truth, no matter how unpleasant, because truth is the only thing worth reacting to. "I've had my faith cut out of me, and then my heart. The only thing that keeps me going is, ironically enough, curiosity. I wish to know where - where I come from. This is why I sought you out. I need an in on the Parliament's Secret Ops files."
She holds his gaze for a few more seconds, and he sees the laughter bubbling up inside of her before it breaks past her lips, shattered and crude. "Yeah. I don't believe you." She stands up and leaves the room, and the other man comes back in, but he won't talk to Jeziah.
Well. Jeziah decides he doesn't want to talk to him either. He also realises he does not even know her name.
He's trembling for good now. He tried to hide it at first, because he did not want to let them in on his weakness. But there's only so much he can hold in, and now he's rather desperate for the last shot he has, back in his hotel room. Yes, one last shot, all he has. He does not fear death, he told the scarred woman, and it's just as well that he shouldn't. He'll be dead soon enough, one way or the other. This is his last chance to find out who they are, all of them, and how they could be made into such relentless Believers. His last chance to to fulfil his destiny.
He's been trembling for long minutes, convulsions that vary in scope and rhythm, but his gaoler probably thinks it's all an act. He'd think that too, if the roles were reversed. He rather wishes it were an act, in fact. An act would not be tearing his insides apart, making sweat break out all over his body, sending mind-numbing pain bouncing off the walls of his skull, or bringing visions along.
River's there, she always is these days. She's peering at the crates, crouched next to one of them, and she sticks her ear against it and frowns, and then her face clears and she looks as if she is listening to the thing. But she isn't alone, no, the unbidden image of Mr. Universe, pathetic little puppet he killed in a surge of emotion he did not really understand, and here is your silver is what it was all about. How weird is that, the puppet-man mouths, and the words echo in his mind. There's Caden as well, beautiful Caden whose neck is bent at an impossible angle, Caden that he has killed because he felt threatened, a pointless murder that made the world that much worse.
He blinks, and blinks, and blinks again, but still those three are there, keeping him company, because the seizures are getting worse each time and he can't blink them away anymore. He doesn't realise he's trying to blink tears away, however, until his guard circles around the chair to look at him, and River stands up and shadows him, and her face eerily takes on the exact same expression as the guard's, mouth set in a sceptical line while concern still shines in the eyes, and she mouths the words he says, or maybe speaks them with his voice.
"Are you really... you're crying."
It's hard to tear his eyes away from River, so he doesn't bother because she's talking to him after all, no matter whose voice she uses. He locks the pain inside himself, makes his voice not so weak. "The tears of the stars," he answers, and that was her speaking with his voice now. "I'm done."
The man looks indecisive, and then he walks back to the door and the comm beside it. River has stopped shadowing the guard, and is on her knees in front of him instead, looking up at him with those soul-finding eyes of hers, and he just wants to be forgiven, and answered. He wants to know who he is, and he's breaking down inside and he isn't even sure it's the withdrawal.
The door opens and her voice is even more hostile than he's ever heard it. "What's goin' on?"
He laughs. It's all so funny, like a joke the gods pulled on them. She's there hating him for what he was, and he's there trying to figure out who he is, and River is the one with all the answers but she's keeping quiet in that way she has of telling everything but truly nothing. "I'm crying," he answers, because that explains it all, and he's still laughing.
She's scowling fiercely down at him, ordering him to cut the crap, and he's still laughing at her, laughing so hard that his ribs smart and his cheeks hurt and he's crying, and sobbing, weeping, and he isn't sure why or for what, or who.
Something passes over her features and she slaps him once, twice, sharp stinging buds of pain that erupt into acuteness. "Pull your act together, soldier," she snaps commandingly, and connections are made. She leans forward, hands planted firmly on his thighs, and her face is right into his and from this close her scar looks like some tiny person ploughed their way across her skin. Her deep black eyes are looking for something in his, except he doesn't know what, and he notices how red their white is exactly, and knows how she pulled through. "Leave us!" she snaps at the guard, not taking her eyes off of his.
Once they're alone she straightens up and gets something from the small leather pouch attached to her hip. It's a syringe, and she prepares the injection quickly, expertly. He's stopped laughing and weeping, and he's quiet and his insides are all knotted together, and his mind is on loop, a screamed YES and a whispered no, and he's shaking, craving for it, anything, just to make it all stop, and make River and Mr. Universe and Caden go away, the living and the dead and the non-dead that have no place here, his torturers.
She tilts his head back, holds it fast by tucking it between her arm and body, and with her other hand she swiftly brings the small syringe to the white of his eye and injects the drug.
It's not like the governmental drug that brings him back to who he is supposed to be. At first an eerie calm settles over him, the pain is gone and there is only stillness and silence. And then it's a fireworks of sensations, and he just sits there and takes it all in, and wonders idly whether his mind will not be blown away by it.
After a length of time he could not for his life assess he comes back down, getting used to the extra sensations and locking the buzz inside of him as he usually does the pain. He tilts his head back down and looks at her, sitting on the other chair with her elbows propped on her thighs, staring down thoughtfully at her clutched hands. His voice comes out stronger than he meant it to. "Treth?"
She looks up at him. "Treth," she acquiesces. "I tried a few things, but it's what works best. It's a special dosage I use, so the high isn't as much as it should be. It's just switching one addiction for another, but treth is that much easier to come by."
His mouth is dry. She seems to know that, because she brings him a water bottle and holds it for him to drink from it. Then he looks up at her standing tall above him. "When?"
Her knuckles whiten as she clutches the glass tighter, and she forces herself to relax, puts it down on a nearby crate, leaves her hand on it and stares at it, for a few seconds. "Three years ago."
"Why?" What made you lose faith is what he is really asking, but there is no point voicing it; she understands.
She looks back at him, eyes glinting dangerously. "I didn't get any feihua de Buddha-sent revelation. Some of us didn't have it as easy as the likes of you, some of us just weren't that good. After a while, it takes its toll. It took me months to reach a decision. Then I staged my death and took off, end of story."
He can guess there is more to it than that, and her whole stance is defying him to push it, question her statement. Wisely, he retreats. Blinks, glances off, then back at her. "Are you going to kill me?"
Her smile is not pretty, it's a bitter thing, rendered uglier by the scar that curls up her lip. "You can't kill something's already dead inside."
"Is that a no?"
"Might be."
"Why did you join the rebels?"
"Same reason as you. I wanted to find out about me. When there ain't nothing left inside you look to the past for something to cling to."
"Why did you stay?"
"Because I found out about me. About you. Us, the new kids, the other kids." She walks forward, unties his wrist and straightens up, letting him free himself of the rest of the restraints. "You'll see. You won't wanna leave either."
He looks at the facts of his life and they don't feel like his. They're a story, not reality, just words that could be made up. Against all logic he expected a revelation, a spark, at least a vague feeling of déjà-lived, of recognition, of his.
There is none.
His name means nothing to him. His past means nothing to him. How is that destiny?
Oliver Cairo. He repeats it in his mind, and then out loud, because he is alone in the room with her and she knows.
"It won't help," she tells him, and there is no judgement in her eyes. No judgement, but no compassion either. "They do a tama de good job on our minds. No memories, no identity, it's the way we're meant to be."
He was raped by his father. It sounds like something terribly tragic, but he does not care. Those words aren't him. Raped by his father when he was twelve, ran away from home a few months later, recruited because of his aptitudes and trauma. Trauma, except he doesn't feel it. It all sounds like a bad, cheap novel, something for housewives to cry over. He isn't something for housewives to cry over.
His eyes skim over the first psych report. Promising, they say of him. The trauma makes his young mind particularly malleable; convincing him that the world needs to be made better and that he is one of the ones to do it should not be hard. His sense of self is already warped, as the trauma will likely curb his natural tendencies. His absence of self-worth, the feeling that he deserved to be raped and is dirty and soiled, will make it all the easier for him to accept to be the monster he will need to be, for our cause, a just cause. He was raised in strict Christian tradition; emphasis should be put on sin.
They're only words, they find no echo in him, and the silence rips through his chest.
She leans down next to him, pulls out other files for him to look at as she talks. Evidence of what she's saying. "Yours is a typical case. They picked runaways, orphans, young criminals, kids that wouldn't be missed. Troubled kids, malleable kids. My file says I got whored out to help the family pay their debts. Others lost their parents to crime, their lover to intolerance, all kinda trauma. They took our psychological instabilities and twisted them 'round so it served them, gave us something to obsess over. When the time came, we all agreed to let them wipe our memories. They couldn't pull off something like that if we didn't go along with it, mind has defences and walls even they couldn't break down."
Voluntary. They all agreed to have no existence, no life, for the good of the world. He agreed to let go of Oliver Cairo, and that is why when he sees that he has a sister he does not want to see her, when he sees he comes from Bernadette and remembers the missions he carried off there, the people he killed, he does not care that they might have been related, or people he once knew. Because he agreed.
"You keep using the past tense."
She nods, and a few touches of the stylus later she's pulled another set of files to the fore of the terminal. She straightens. "The new kids. They figured it'd work even better gettin' 'em as babes. No need to wipe the slate clean if they were conditioned from the start. They took to raidin' orphanages. Run tests on the babes, grab 'em that pass, and then comes the real test. Drugs. They keep those live through a shot."
He goes through their personal files until he is looking at the picture of the young Operative that tracked him to Domo.
"Pretty boy," she sneers. "He the one you had trouble with?"
"He's better than me. Stronger, faster... better."
"They improved their drugs cocktails since the good ol' days. Not to mention those kids got training from the crib on."
There are no personal details on him, only the name and address of the orphanage he was snatched from. He stares at the picture, the sandy hair and clear eyes, the chiselled jaw and the straight nose, the thin lips and the smooth skin. A pretty boy with no identity. Pretty enough to be a Companion, and if he is an Operative his looks are not the only thing that would have qualified him for this profession. If not a Companion, he could have been so many things, all robbed from him when he was just an infant.
He did not agree to anything. The old school, they were all damaged, they made their choice. The new school, they were only babes.
"You were right," he tells her. "I'm not in a hurry to leave."
"And then there's the kids like your little friend Tam." She closes those files, opens others. River Tam is smiling at him, a shy little smile, genuine and a bit embarrassed. She's so much younger than he knows her, not simply by years. "Those are only a handful, and she's the only one made it this far into their program. Kids with capacities that get noticed, and promised the best education. Next thing they know they're being... improved. Against their will. Most attempts died on the table or offed themselves, but this one..." She looks at River, and there is a spark of something in her eyes. "She lived through it. Got a loving brother to rescue her. Exposed the Miranda scandal, more than we hoped for."
"They want to make people better, always," he whispers, and looks up at her. "What is it your organisation does exactly?"
"Antigone. We're called Antigone. And the sit's more complicated 'n you might think. It's not just the Parliament, they're the good guys."
He frowns. "The - good guys?"
"Compared to Blue Sun," she explains, but it explains nothing.
"Blue Sun, the corporation?"
"That very one. They're the financial body, and the real tama de hundan. Parliament, they're misguided, wanna 'make people better'. They got it all wrong, but they're idealists. System ain't wrong in itself, only what they make of it. Blue Sun, they're in it for money and power. They got their own operatives and their own agenda. And things are starting to unravel for the PTBs. They're unravelling mighty fast."
"The Miranda scandal."
"The Miranda scandal," she confirms, and suddenly he feels as if he is in just another briefing, as if he's never left, except for once they're explaining the situation to him instead of just giving him his mission, no questions asked. "There's unease among the high players, they can't harmonise their statements and things keep going the way they are, we're lookin' at a recall of the Parliament. But that won't change nothing for Blue Sun, and that's what's got the governmentals so on edge. Diverging agendas."
"What's your part in all this?"
"Right now we're focusin' on Blue Sun. We didn't know about them until recently, but we got ourselves a new hacker can dive through the Cortex like nobody's business. We got the wrong target all along. It's not the Parliament we want, it's Blue Sun. Take the creds away and the govermentals ain't nothing."
"Why is Nicco still working on the protests then?"
"Politics. We have our own, that's inconsequential. Nicco can play around with protests, cover our bases. That ain't our turf. Yours and mine."
He pauses, weighs her offer of recruitment over. "What are you proposing exactly?"
"Ain't many of us made it out and stayed alive," she answers. "Ain't nobody as good as you, either. You were the best they had, of the old ones. New kids are different. You were it, their dream Operative. Efficient, dedicated, a Believer. And you still believe. You still wanna make the world better, only you don't know how. And you got all this faith you don't know what to do with anymore."
He shakes his head, feeling tendrils of irritation curl in his chest. "No. I've got no faith left."
"That's what you think," she says, and she sounds as if she knows what she's talking about. "That's what I thought. Then I found this, here, this work, and it made sense again. We'll always be Operatives." Her eyes are shining hard with all of her hatred and passion. "Always."
He takes a few seconds, and his tone is as devoid of strong emotions as hers was filled with them. "No..." He shakes his head again. "Don't you see? We're more than that already. Listen to yourself, your voice. We feel. They taught us not to, but we broke free. We feel, we think, we -"
"And you think that makes us stop believing?" she cuts in, and her words slice him up with their bitterness. "I tried to turn away, but it just ain't in me. This is all I got, and it's all you got too. We can fit in anywhere, but the fight is where we belong. And the fight is here. The fight is now. The fight is against Blue Sun, and for a better world. A world where they don't snatch babes to turn 'em into the perfect killers, a world where they don't take whiz kids and torture them into being psychics."
He knows the truth of her words. He thinks again of his name - Oliver Cairo - of his past - Bernadette, and his father, and his sister, and his mission - words that have no meaning. Hers have meaning, hers touch something in him. He thought that he was free, he thought that he could let the world be. But he hears her words and he feels it stir within himself, this need to do something, to act, to make the world better. They have to be stopped.
"Yes," is all he says, and the stirring within his chest flares to life just as victory glints in her dark eyes.
"Yes," she repeats in a whisper. Then her emotions are quieted again and her tone is professional, practical, commanding. "We're closing in on Blue Sun. Nicco's work is also distraction, makes 'em think we're keepin' busy with the protests. Soon enough we'll be able to move with our info, but I'd be surprised they didn't send us some muscles to shut us down. Things are gonna get hen dangerous 'round here. But they send us some operative of theirs, they'll have the two of us standin' in their way."
After a beat, he nods. "I'll stop by my hotel, pick up my things. On site at all times?"
"On site at all times."
He stands up, and she moves to block his way to the door. Looks up at him, and there is death in her eyes. "I read you wrong and you gonna rat on us..."
"There is no threat you can make that would impress me," he remarks, and knows better than to give empty reassurances of loyalty.
She knows the truth of it, and moves out of his way.