<<recollection>>
Two of him.
I have two choices.
I’m moving the knife back and forth, left to right, at them, and between them. Sinister, something sinister and eager is whispering to me. Which one do I stab first? Soft pants escape me as they look back at me and then at each other. One of them faces me. One of them speaks.
“Heero, don’t. That isn’t necessary.” It’s the one on the left who’s talking, the one who first walked into the room, the one who openly came for me. He turns on his double and strikes him on the back of the neck, just under the hair. Its eyes roll to the back of its head and it falls to the ground. He looks back at me. “I’m sorry. I should never have let it come to this, Heero. You should never be in pain.”
My hand goes lax. The knife falls to the carpet. Sodden. I’m wet with sweat.
He’s closer now.
My face is near to his. I’m moving. My head is tilting. My nose is near his neck, just by his ear. I find myself inhaling.
A shudder goes through me. My lips are moving. It takes me two tries before I can whisper, “You...don’t have... his scent.”
I back away. I keep stepping back. My hands are shaking.
Its eyes grow wide for just a second before it smiles and says, “I suppose, at this point, I should tell you my name.” Its voice is gracious. “Please, call me Raberba.”
I’m still taking steps back. I hit the wall. I look to the floor and see a stain on the carpet next to...from the mouth region...blood?
Raberba...Raberba follows my gaze. “It’s easier for you to interact with us one at a time, correct?” He goes silent for a moment. “Your breathing is irregular, Heero. There’s nothing to worry about. He’s not hurt, just incapacitated...but he’s drooling...a great deal.” A low noise comes from him. “That was unexpected.” He turns to me. He looks concerned. “You’re unsteady on your feet. It’s safer if you sit.”
“I’m fine.” I shut my mouth. It was a reflex. I was warding off his concern as though it should mean anything. I’m not consorting with a piece of equipment. My mouth goes lax. Or have I already? On a seedier level?
“You look horrified,” he murmurs. He inspects me for a moment before saying, “We haven’t--”
I cut him off. “I get it.”
He keeps his distance. “Is there anything I can do for you?” He takes in my expression. “Anything to put you at ease?”
Not exist.
Obliging. He sounds perfectly obliging. “I ensured your arrival, managed your stay, and I can support your departure. If it’s what you wish, I can help you leave everything behind. A new life. Anything. Anything that will make you happy.”
Ensured...my arrival—
There’s a noise from the floor.
We both look at the source. It’s the blonde. He’s shifting and now coughing. He manages to sit up, but he’s disoriented. It’s clear as he brings a hand up to his face. Wet...he’s just realized that the entire side of his face is wet. He stares at his hand. An expression of relief and then disgust marks him. He’s grateful that there’s no blood...but he’s covered in his own saliva. He looks up and seems to have regained his faculties because he appears frightened. “Heero...”
I feel the weight of their stares. They’re both staring at me. One is slick with his own saliva and sitting on the floor. The other’s standing and looking like he’s just stepped out of his office and is headed to a lunch break. They’re still staring. They’re still staring at me.
There’s movement. The blonde manages to stand up, but he stiffens when he hears his droid speaking to me.
“He had second thoughts about firing you, but he didn’t leave them at work. He took them home. He told me. He told me everything. I was his confidant.”
Now, he’s a stool pigeon and the blonde is stunned to the point of silence.
“For a week, you were a reoccurring topic.” Raberba suddenly pauses. His gaze moves from me to the blonde. As he turns, his expression changes. He appears curious, yet dismayed. He’s doing something with his hand. Holding...he looks like he’s holding, from the curvature of his hand, what is supposed to be a mug. He’s speaking. The hairs on the back of my neck are lifting. The realization is there on my skin. It’s there on my skin as I watch him. His words, mannerisms, and tone...they’re probably the blonde’s from that time.
Raberba frowns at what’s in his grasp. “Heero...Yuy...” He looks up from the mug. “Stubborn... he seemed like the stubborn type. If I had to hazard a guess...I’d say he’s, psychologically, grinch-like.”
Both of my fists are clenched.
Psychologically...grinch-like? The urge is there...to take the blonde and beat him... beat him until he can’t stand...to beat him until his face isn’t recognizable.
But I’m shaken from the thought. There’s another voice. It’s the blonde’s. He’s joining in... I know it without being told. There’s a wall up. They’re oblivious to me. They’re feeding off one another, spouting each other’s words from the past, swapping roles.
“You haven’t explained how you know this from one conversation.”
“It’s,” Raberba holds the mug with two hands, “difficult to explain. It came as an understanding. ‘Intuition’ is the best word for it.”
“Intuition. When do I acquire it?”
Raberba takes a sip from his mug before replying, “You can’t.”
“I’ve learned everything else.”
“You have limits. Everyone has limits in some areas...but...potential in others.” Raberba looks pensive. “I should have waited to fire him. Now, there’s no reason for him to return to that building.” He glances down at his ‘watch’ and puts down the imaginary mug. “I have to go. Monitor this floor and the 2nd while I’m gone.”
“The camera in the right wing elevator is--”
“I’ll have it fixed when I return. Stay out of sight. I don’t want you to have to explain why I’m at home rather than meeting with my father.”
“I understand. I shouldn’t be seen at home.”
The blonde suddenly turns to me. I exist again as he says, “Key words: ‘at home’. I didn’t pick up on it. He left the estate without my knowledge. He disregarded my first request and sought you out because he thought he was helping me.”
Sought--
The droid interjects. He’s speaking to the blonde. “It was what you told me you wanted, without words.”
They’re staring at each other.
The blonde breaks the eye contact. But he doesn’t reinitiate with a new partner. He’s talking to me without looking. “The next time I saw him, he had a broken arm and you were on my property eating with Duo.”
<< “Quatre told me to prepare the Porsche. He said he was trading it.” >>
<< “Here I was expecting a car…but you’re it. You’re supposed to be what he gets in return.” >>
It came slowly, three months late, but I get it now. I was duped. The blonde’s droid went AWOL and tried to lure me back to the estate with the Porsche. With little effort, he’d gotten me to drive him back in the car.
Despite this realization, my focus hasn’t shifted. I watch the blonde. I watch his left hand move. He’s holding his right arm. Despite the frail stance, he looks shifty...corrupt...guilty. He’s walking a thin line between tattling on his android and confessing as he says, “Damaged. He came back damaged and was seen in that state....I panicked. I had him break my arm to match his injury.” He shakes his head. “I should have told you to leave that day...but I didn’t.”
Instead, he continued on with the ruse his double had set up. But the bastard is forgetting to mention one thing: he wanted me here and relished my arrival. It’s there on his face, behind his flushed skin and sweaty brow. Raberba was the one who brought me here, but he was the one who wanted to keep me. And he still does, despite the earlier contention between him and his disobedient droid.
The blonde is still talking, still pumping me with unease. “The accident...besides his arm...it wasn’t until later...much later...that I realized something else was damaged...the change...the imprinting... I was no longer his master. Over time, he began to seek your favor over mine. My contact with you was overlooked as long as my actions met his approval. But he went too far when he followed us off the estate.”
I’m still on the first half of his explanation. My lips are moving. I hear myself murmur, “The airbag didn’t entirely inflate.”
“And the accident,” whispers the blonde. He’s still not looking at me. “I don’t think it...”
I think back to that day and the blonde’s, no Raberba’s, timely warning about the slick road…shoddy brakes on an expensive car...and the apartment fire… is it possible...had he set the—
<< “Fire...that word seems to like you. You were fired and your building was a fire trap.” >>
Raberba...
I turn on him. “What did you do?”
“It was rational,” he responds quietly. He’s not looking at me as he says, “It was the quickest way to get you here.”
The only clear mishap was the dud air bag. The blonde’s good, too good. His likeness, this android, is more human than he is. He’s manipulative and dangerous and all the more human because of it.
“I was trying to help.”
I watch the tears flow. They’re sudden and unnerving. The wall at my back prevents me from taking a step away. Raberba is weeping. I look to the blonde. He’s attempting to be stone-faced and failing.
My mouth is moving on its own. “Is he supposed to be capable of ...”
The blonde is staring at him in what appears to be unwilling interest. He’s speaking slowly...as though his tongue is weighed down by molasses. “He has the fluids and ducts, but I never got the chance to work out all the cues he should follow. He’s learning by himself. That, or…”
“I don’t want to hear anymore,” I say.
I’ll end this.
I turn back to the weeping, flesh-bound contraption before me. “You’re unstable. You can’t be trusted. Shut down.”
“Shut down?” He stops his crying in that instant. “How can you be so cruel to me? After all I have done for you?”
“You were designed to help.”
“I wanted to make you happy.”
“It was imprinting.”
“That’s not it. That’s…I--” He pauses. He looks like he’s had some kind of epiphany as he says, “I think…but I can’t…is it…could it…do I…would you…could you…can I…”
I know what he’s trying to say, but he utters it before I can cut him off.
“I feel. I love. I’m capable...”
He takes in my expression. The air is tight as he asserts with new confidence, “It’s love when you want to make someone happy.”
He’s wrong.
<< He sought you out because he thought he was helping me.>>
He’s wrong. I know he’s wrong.
My mind reaches out...pulling a rationale from the past...
The trouble began before I ever made the scene. The cell phone...referring to his master as “Love”...he was experimenting in what he thinks is emotion before I was of any interest. The car accident was not the beginning of his cross over into the implausible, but the confusion that sent his devotion my way.
The blonde had already postulated it. And now I fully understand it. I’m an accidental target.
I watch Raberba.
He’s still repeating himself. Wanting to make someone happy is love. He doesn’t get it. It’s not love when it’s programming. I have to shut him up. I can only think of one thing. As it stands now, I am...the perfect solution, someone he can’t disregard. I don’t want to leave the wall. I approach him. I don’t want to have to touch him. I feel ill as I bring my hand up to his cheek. I don’t want this proximity, this responsibility. His eyes go wide and he pipes down as I say, “You’re being irrational.” I wait for his full attention. “You’re a danger to me.”
“I am?” A tear falls from his eye, lands on my hand, and rolls down it before hitting the ground “I am?” he says again in a soft voice filled with wonder. “I am.” He brings up a hand to hold mine against his cheek.
“Shut down.” I’m shaking. I know this because he’s no longer moving. I’m the one who’s unstable. He’s staring, unblinking. He’s rigid and his body is growing cold. I know this because his face is no longer warm and soft. My hand is trapped against his cheek, in a death grip by his stubborn cold hand.
The thought... the justification is there. Whatever loyalties I had to either of them are over. I’ve done my part. I pry my hand from Raberba’s grasp and turn away.
It takes me a while to clear my head enough to locate my wallet. I have it. I’m leaving.
But there’s still baggage, and it’s calling after me.
“You understand why I did it? Why I made him? Why I never told you? Don’t you, Heero?” The blonde is desperate for a response, any indication that I haven’t already tuned him out.
I’m out the suite’s door, in the hallway, heading for the staircase. He’s tailing me.
I finally say what I should have said the first day I got here. I look back at him. “You’re fucked in the head.” I turn back to the staircase. Before he can take another step, I clarify my stance. “Stay the hell away from me.”
“Heero…wait. Don’t—just--”
I keep walking.
I don’t hear him move. He doesn’t follow.