Page 55 of Scion

Still, I’d always felt … unpleasant, after. At least a little.

So Oceanus had clearly made me harder, or colder, or had completely broken something in me, depending on how you looked at it. I was satisfying more contracts than ever—had to, given my debt to the Keres—but I never once had that old reaction to a job. And I noticed. Slowly. Like an itch in the back of my mind that I couldn’t scratch. I knew I wasn’t quite right, any more, and it didn’t bother me, but I wanted it to bother me.

Which is why that night, when Verity told me she could make me feel anything, I made the joke. Off-handed and entirely meant. I wanted something to make me feel everything. Not happiness or sadness or libido in a bottle like she usually sold, but a way of intensifying my emotions. Tapping into them. All of them.

And eventually, she gave me Deep.

Along with the memories, the nostrum manages to kick in with the worry that it won’t be the same, this time. That its effect will be diminished because I used it too many times back then, or that the years since will have changed something in me. But then, like always, I realise that the worry means it is working. Unfamiliar uncertainties flood me, and I suddenly feel wretchedly sad. Sad that I lost my friend, the only real one I’d made since joining the Keres. Hollow that I will not see him again, ever; that he is gone and I cannot laugh with him again and that nothing I can do will ever bring him back. Furious that I know, deep down, it wasn’t the assholes at Talios, and that someone else killed him and all those other people, and I cannot find out who or why or whether it was even really my fault.

I feel guilty about Jasa, too. It’s not exactly grief—I didn’t know her well enough for that—but definitely regret that I couldn’t do my job well enough to save her. Sadness, too. She was different from most people I’ve met. Unafraid of me, for a start. And the things she’d achieved were remarkable, even if the consequences of them were mostly along the lines of “screw up the entire world.” I didn’t get the impression that part was through malice, though. If anything, she sort of seemed to regret it all.

I never really bought her explanation for why she didn’t take the drug she invented, the one that ultimately left her on the top of Ten-O-Ten’s first Proscription list. But it did feel like it was a choice. It felt like, maybe, it was her way of acknowledging just how terrible a thing it was that she’d created. I wish I’d pressed her on it. Wish I’d understood her better.

Then melancholy twists to anger as I keep thinking about her. If the Keres really made a healthy, high-functioning Dupe based on me, then she had to have been involved. And she knew exactly what was after us. She was playing some sort of game with them, and I was a damned pawn in it.

Screw the Keres, too. Screw them for copying me like that. It’s a violation. Feels stupid to be so furious at a corp for being a corp, and I’m not dumb enough to ever have imagined they had attributes like loyalty or honour, but…damn.

Still. I worked for them. I chose them. Jasa died, but it could have so easily been me doing the killing. I always tell myself the people I put an end to deserve it. Did Jasa really deserve it?

Doubt. Rage. Horror. Despondency. The sense of being completely adrift.

I feel everything and it aches in my chest, and it is wonderful.

Ten minutes, is all it lasts for. Ten minutes of humanity. Ten minutes of genuinely feeling like I know I’m supposed to feel, like what everyone else says they feel. Ten minutes of shame and anger and sorrow and confusion and real connection with the rest of the world.

And then it wears off. Fades, an almost physical sensation. The lack of caring returns. I am, once again, completely fine.

And I wipe a few tears from my eyes, and take a breath, and tap the q-com back on.

“YOU KNOW WHAT? I CAN tell you’ve been here before,” says Atti.

I grunt sourly, keeping the cloth of my T-shirt over my nose and mouth as we climb the stairs past the remains of Jasa’s devastated aquarium. The ventilation’s done its best but even so, the smell of rancid fish was like a physical barrier as soon as we walked in. It probably hasn’t helped that Fish Boy’s corpse is still lying in there somewhere.

The air clears significantly once we reach the next floor, enough so that I feel comfortable in lowering my temporary mask. “Alright. Loop work’s underway?”

“Should be done in a few minutes.” The moment we arrived, I had Atti retask the repair drones to un-repair a large chunk of the end of the tunnel. I doubt it’ll stop the Dupe—as soon as it finds I removed the DNA lock on the Themis end, it’ll know I’m planning something bad for it on this one—but the impact might slow it down a bit. “You’re sure you don’t want to keep it operational? What if it doesn’t come in that way? Escape plans are good, you know.”

“Atti, if this doesn’t work, I’m not sure there’ll be anywhere to escape to. And you said yourself that another Loop pod launched ten minutes after ours.”

“I didn’t say anyone was on board though.” I can hear her doubt. “What about the aquarium intake you told me about?”

“If the Dupe’s not on that shuttle, I’ll Mark the intake with my cogs again. Promise.” I stretch. “But I won’t need to.”

“You can’t know that; it might be insane, but that’s not the same as reckless. I mean—it sent a canary last time, Azure.”

“The Keres sent the canary.” I pause to look down through the glass floor at the sad, bedraggled wreckage below. Most of the aquarium will still be functioning; there are multiple sections, and the tunnels leading to this one would have sealed as soon I smashed the glass. “Psycho-me doesn’t have time to be subtle.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Keres will be looking for it, and more than a little keen to bring it in.” I throw myself into a chair in front of a terminal; a few taps later and I’ve confirmed there have been no flags on the property sensors over the past twenty-four hours. “They just ran an unsanctioned in-city op with it, Atti, and the result was that Sanctum blew up. And even after that, even after risking exposure to DeGov, the Dupe came after me. I mean, it really came after me. You saw it. It’s off the leash.”

“Hm.” Atti’s doubtful voice. “That’s what we AIs call low probability, Azure. It’s still a bio. There have to be controls built in.”

“For a normal bio, sure. But this one can talk. It gets emotional. Who the hell knows how much autonomy they’ve given it.” I make a face to indicate my distaste at the idea, though she can’t see it. “I mean, come on—formal analysis. If the Keres really had it under control, would it have turned up at the lab?”

“No.” Almost instantaneous. “While we’re talking about formal analysis. Any chance you want me to turn it on for all conversational—”

“Hell no.” I shut that idea down quickly. “You remember how many times you nearly got me killed, early on, because we tried that?”