“They took my leg. The soldiers. They dragged me by it, and it fell off.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t have most of that leg, but I made an augmentation which allowed me to walk and even run. But it’s gone now, so…”
“So you have to hop.”
“Exactly.”
I look around. “So is this your room, or…” Wherever I am is much better appointed than a standard korabi dungeon. I thought they’d stick me in some filthy cage and poke me with spears for the amusement of the king, or something worse.
“It is not my room. It is yours for as long as you are a prisoner here.”
“This is a very nice room.”
“This is our human suite. I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. And I know who you did it for. I can’t stop what is going to happen, but I can make this part of things comfortable.”
Isn’t he just the swellest guy. I want to laugh in his face. I’m not sure if he thinks we’re being listened to, or if he’s just trying to play this super cool and gaslight me into not knowing who he is.
“Is that what you do? Make people comfortable? What do the korabi cells look like? How many cells are there? How many prisoners are here?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Information is life,” I say confidently. “Even us. We’re just bits of information floating around with carbon attached.”
He cocks his head at me, red mane flowing dramatically. “That is… one way of looking at it.”
“It’s the correct and proper, accurate way of looking at it. We’re just code and then things stick to the code, and we get all made up into people or korabi or whatever. So there’s not really much we can do about anything is there? It’s all in the code.”
“It’s all in the code?”
“The code that makes a drone kill an innocent woman holding a baby is the same code that makes that baby refuse to die. Nobody has a choice. Everything is predetermined. So nobody is good or bad, they just are.”
“I see. That’s a very pragmatic attitude to take for someone in your position.”
“I am practical,” I say. “There’s no point being emotional, is there?”
“In my experience, humans are mostly driven by emotion.”
“Not me. I use the data. I know the systems. That’s how I survive. Not by having”—I curl my nose up—“feelings.”
“I see. Well. I hope you can relax and enjoy this room. It is the only oasis of kindness and calm…”
I stop listening to his lecture on kindness and calm. He is strange. And this room is very odd. I don’t trust it at all. Just as I don't trust him.
“Why is there an oasis of kindness and calm in the middle of a hellish torturescape? Is it part of it? Are you attempting to first terrify me, then give me time to remember what being comfortable is like, before plunging me back into unimaginable pain? Is that it?”
Tyvian does not reply. He simply turns around and leaves me to my questions. The door closes behind him, and I find myself alone in a strange spa twilight more pleasant than any surroundings I have ever experienced before.
My first impulse is to look around for items to use. It’s reflex. I am a scavenger. It is how I have survived. This space is absolutely full of salvageable materials. I bet if I pulled back the surface fixtures, I’d find enough wiring to make another leg. And the sensors and such, there might even be enough of those to make it responsive.
I am really very unhappy that the soldiers destroyed my leg. Their rough and humiliating laughter still rings in my ears. If I’d had my leg, I wouldn’t have had to grovel quite so pathetically before Krush. He might not have fucked me.
There is still an internal ache flaring through the core of me. I don’t know if it will ever leave. It feels as though the king has branded himself inside me, claimed that part of my body for himself. That is what kings do, after all. They take.
Carnal memories distract me from my purposeful destruction of the nearby area. I am not going to hop for long, and I absolutely re-fuzkin’-fuse to be carried like a baby or a potted plant.
Fortunately, I have a very good memory for design. The first legs took me years to make, but now I know what I need and how to use it. Still, I doubt I’ll have the tools I’ll need, and I really doubt the korabi are going to give me any. Maybe I can surreptitiously ask Tyvian. He might still be an ally. It’s hard to tell. All I know is that the original plan has gone out the window and I've been left holding the bag.
“I’ll make it better,” I tell myself, kind of a pep talk.