Dedicated To My Paraíso

“My stud’s looking out for spring.” He says cheerfully as his lips draw a perky smile. “Bask in the sun while it’s there for you, Kermie.”

Eyes open and looking up, tilting his head to the right. The lights are bright enough to navigate through the dusk, yet they keep a certain obscurity of the darkness, surrounding them like a haze. His lashes flutter as he blinks, bearing tinted lights on his eyelids.

Maverick feels his heart stir at the sight. Just when he cracks a stupid joke, or a stupid new name he can call him relentlessly, Slider’s got this habit of flicking his eyes up at him like this.

“ ‘s getting old, dumbass.” Maverick finally manages to cut off the conversation.

Another chuckle echoes in his ears. Cocky, pesky, unknowing, there are so many words to describe the hum of his deep tenor. The tap, tap, taps of his boot tread rhythmically on his expectations, on the name his lips sing-songed.

————

His hand rests. Slider is smiling.

“We’re friends, remember?”

And he says the very thing Maverick does not want to be reminded of.

“Stop it,” Maverick manages to mutter, and brushes off Slider’s hand.

Slider blinks a few times as he withdraws his hand to his chest. It lingers, with nowhere to go, before Slider lowers it down.

“I’m not tryna eat you up or anything.” Slider lets out a small laugh. “You can trust me if you want to, that’s all.”

Having said that, Slider turns the radio off just before the final chorus to kick in.

“You don’t like the song?” Maverick asks.

Slider turns his head towards him, like he is still flowing with the melody that just died.

Perky guitars, melodious saxophone, silky voices.

Quick gazes, warm, but out of reach.

It’s not the image of Slider beside the counter. Not his glassy and glistering eyes. Not the phantom of his disheveled curls, or his body on the floor, all looking so outrageous, both in his eyes and in his imagination.

Maverick feels the corners of his lips stiffen, pulling into something that strains his cheeks.

It’s the mirroring image of himself in the song that stirs him. It’s not him who observes, but Slider is, capturing him in the corner of his eye.

Rolling the three words on his tongue like a chewed gum.

————

“…What?” Slider groans. “Cut out your stupid tantrum.”

“You’ll tryna slip away if I do,” Maverick replies bitterly. “Tryna kick me outta here and tell me to forget, like the last time,”

For a brief second, he sees confusion in Slider's eyes. It’s making him feel like he is in the wrong here, when he is sure he’s not. He is…ought to be in the right, because Slider has tried to slip away from him.

Eventually, though, Slider lets out a scoff from his nose.

“I’ve got some mercy left to tuck you in and kiss your cheek goodnight.” He says.

To some extent, Maverick knows that his words hold the truth. Slider would stay with him if he wanted him to. That’s how it has been, always has been.

Now, too. Or rather, it should be. Shoes off, his sweater half zipped down, vigilant, yet so helplessly vulnerable.

See, he tells himself, there is still a space for him to crawl back into.

But Maverick cannot help wondering if Slider would stay when all is said and done. His eyes are looking like they are through a layer of cellophane, shiny yet hard to observe, flaring to a rasp of muddled obscurity once he thinks he’s had a hold on them.

That one time, he masturbated at the very image of Slider. The coldness of the tiles against his flushed skin was proof of his arousal. His mouth flooded with thick saliva, his cock felt heavy in his trembling fist, and he bit the inside of his cheek at the thought of Slider getting taken away from him. Everything crumbled beneath his fingers and got drained down in the sink. That’s how much he feels for Slider.

Maverick wonders what breaks first when he leans in further, presses his fingertips a little tighter, against places he’s never touched before—is it himself, their relationship, or Slider?

If only Slider could’ve known.

If only—so that Slider could make everything right.

Chapter 1. A Confession

There was a man in his heart.

He was a soldier like Tom Kazansky himself was. Fending off the outside threat inhibiting the colonized land. Breaking their bones and tearing their flesh open for the sake of their creators. Their uncaring creators. The ruthless manufacturer of their own organism.

Slider.

That was the name he’d given himself. Nexus 6, Model 19-00-915, manufactured 2014, a few years ahead of his own creation. The name overrode the very cause of their chained existences. Tom would opt for a more sophisticated name, something more original, individualistic—but Slider insisted it was the best fit for him.

Indeed, perhaps, he was right to some degree. His body bore the same fluidity of moving water on Mars while holding the strength of heated metal. Slider, his name, fit his appearance, but more than that, his soul itself. It resonated with Tom. Smoothness and vigilance. A mind deemed artificial that could not be any more humane in his eyes. The sound of his name would first roll off his tongue with a certain sense of rigidity and coldness when they were patrolling, loading their guns, retreating beneath the falling shade.

Slider would respond back to his call with an equally loud shout of his name. Tom, or sometimes, simply Kazansky, when they were on the wasted battleground. When they are back on the base, though, his voice would mellow. Tom could call his name back and forth and never get bored of it.

Slider.

The name of a man who truly intrigued him for the first time. The name of a man whom he thought was the most beautiful.

Slider.

The name of a man who he saw wilt away. The name of a man who had nothing but his lover’s arms once his existence was deemed incompetent.

Slider.

The name of a man he’s buried under the red sand on the mother planet assigned as off-world.

The very reason for his one-way venture into the meaning of their existences.

There is always a place for a lurker like him in this rumbling city.

Tom Kazansky leans against the vending machine. The surface that supports his body is tilted and rusty from the constant acid rain. In the abandoned street, he watches the raindrops fall and hit the ground. The Earth, he is inclined to call it his home, their home. The place where their creator resides, looking up on them from below, grounded, or confined, on this land. The rain hitting his leather coat is reminiscent of the flakes of crystal down on Mars, but they sure did not wet his gears. Strange, for sure, but intriguing. He hums quietly and licks the raindrop on his lips. Tastes like nothing, or perhaps the most dangerous is the taste of nothingness.

Speaking of nothingness, Tom has taken a liking to the tobacco on this land. Any recreational offerings in off-world were rather sparse. The abundant supply of alcoholic beverages and tobacco was one of the things that surprised him initially. The vendors seemed to be dormant on any proper background check mandatory for selling those, either, making it rather confusing, but eventually beneficial for Tom, a rogue replicant, to purchase the said goods. He has been consuming nothing but the smoke for a few days.

Seeing that the smoke has waned off, he takes the last drag of his tobacco before smushing it in the pocket ashtray that came with it—he cannot risk leaving a trace. He moves his feet. He might’ve killed a spider or two. This crumped land seems to be hoarding so many useless things, which, in turn, hatch another generation of creatures in the dark. They fail to interest him, although he could use some inspection into them for the sake of his search for his origin. He peeks his head from the brick wall. The lights of the skylines hit him first, then the lousy voices of street vendors a few streets down.

He sees a phone booth. Its lights are on but nobody seems to be occupying it. Or rather, someone has to have finished occupying it, because he hears the door creak, the shoes stepping out on the concrete,

His senses tense up at the sight of a figure in the distance.

Tom straightens his posture and grabs his knife in his pocket. It was a fast move, even for his already-high standard. Maybe it is intertwined in his intuition as a soldier, or it is just a coincidental alignment of right position, right atmosphere, right temperature, right body. The stranger’s shadow piques his attention.

The figure, which Tom assumes to be that of a male between the early and middle stages of their longevity, is walking down the aisle, shielding himself from the rain with his arm.

Their eyes get interlocked with each other.

Tom sees Slider in him.

Without much thought, Tom abandons his knife and drags him into the corner he has been standing. He knows he cannot risk leaving a trace of himself. He is not a moron, and yet, his ecstatic arms grab and tug at the man’s body. A taller, equally muscular one.

“Oh, now now,” he laughs. He wants to uplift the mood. Who needs an awkward, let alone caustic, reunion? “I just wanted to talk with you. Is that good? Surely it is good.”

Tom feels giddy inside. How long has it been since he last felt this way? His heart beats uptempo as their bodies move together. With just a soft nudge of his back, the man stumbles and falls onto the ground. It strikes Tom as strange. Surely his physique can take a few playful tussling. The man is built like a fellow soldier, with a tall figure and broad, robust shoulders. His arms move defensively against Tom’s assault, only to be pinned down.

“I don’t—” the man utters as his eyes gleam in the dark. Their breath feels dangerously close. Tom inhales the intoxicating warmth and fills his lungs with it. Smiling, he tilts his head so that the man is more at ease to form another sentence. He feels giddy and up, after all, so it is an easy task. The man beneath him, however, does not reciprocate him. His eyes hold defiant lights as he bites his lips, glaring at him. “I don’t know what you’re on.”

The vigilance in the man’s piercing glare can be pretty useful in most situations. Too bad Tom is still tempted to run his fingers on his face, around the shape of his eyes, across the prominent bridge of his nose. So he does, holding the man with one arm. He feels sad when the man tenses up when he places his hand gently on his throat as a good starting point. He caresses his windpipe as if to shush him.

“You remind me of someone I used to know.” Tom says against the man’s neck. “Someone I used to talk it out until daylight with. Someone I loved. Your face, particularly,” his nose inhales the scent of the man. “...Does remind me of him.”

The man in his firm hold squirms and tries to shake him off. Something reminiscent of an expression of anger, or frustration, crosses his chiselled face, disfiguring the balance. Tom frowns. There is nothing to offend him in Tom’s eyes. No face is unique, as it is but a mere set of pre-loaded parts on a template, unless there exists a deformity within the period until one’s inception. Why does this man take offense at such a mediocre truth?

Silly him, Tom chuckles and pulls him closer by his fist digging into the man’s toned stomach, bringing him back to him. The man lets out a sound that is reminiscent of choking and dry-heaving, as if he could not take it.

Oh.

Tom loosens his grip slightly around him. He would be lying if he were not disappointed in the faintest, but, well, a conversation is more fun when he is not the only one speaking. He’s done it too many times with Slider, in his head, before he headed off to the Earth.

“Hey, hey. Look at me.” Tom sneaks his hand on the man’s face. His neck bends to an awkward position as he hears him gasp. Click, crack, his body behaves like a toy, not the way Tom remembers Slider’s to do. His body was stronger, begging to be broken by his touch instead of being defensive. “Look at me. I want to see your face.”

His head turns toward him with a faint snap, or so he has forced it to. Tom smiles. He looks just like Slider! His face bears some lines and marks, not completely clear as the way they are created. Tom, however, finds them utterly beautiful.

“He had the same eyes as yours.” He sighs. His thumb runs against the man’s left eyelid, closing and opening it at his whim. “Don’t you think this land’s lights are too bright for you?”

“Tell your affiliation,” the man demands. The sound of bureaucracy fleetingly takes over the shakiness in his voice. That marks the moment Tom knows—he is of the enforcement. What he was doing in the abandoned phone booth begins to make sense. “I need—”

Once again, Tom tightens his grip on the man, this time with a clear intention of suppressing him, strangle him, dominate him. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. How pathetic this man is, disregarding his gift for the sake of a false prosperity. The man is successful in fighting him off at first, but as soon as Tom grabs both of his wrists in his fist, while still pinning him against the confined wall, his defense ceases. He grabs his curly hair, which is cut shorter than he remembers, and plants his temple into the hard surface just to make sure he’s gotten the moment of serenity to speak. Bang. The man groans. His eyes are squeezed shut as blood begins to ooze and stain his skin. Tom knows it by the way the grey canvas changes its coloration when he grinds the man’s head against the grainy concrete. He wants the man to listen and not bother him.

“I thought we were on good terms.” Tom states into the man’s ear. “I was the one asking you a question, moreover.”

Tom takes a moment to admire the man’s body beneath him, now that his obedience has waned. He could be a soldier, a noble machinery, or better yet, he could be one of the rogues now hiding out on this wasteland, with a sense of duty—a beautiful one—and a purpose. His free hand roams on the man’s back, oscillating up and down against his coat, then sneaking beneath it, relishing in his warmth. His spine is shaped well, something he’d never expect from humans of this withered, crooked set of nuclear debris. His hand moves on his stomach, the part he has dug his knuckle into, then onto his pelvic bones. He wraps his arm around them as best as he can manage. Was it there that the laser hit Slider the moment the fort failed? Or was it there on which Tom kissed, feeling the afterglow of their intercourse on his lips?

The man breathes deeply and steadily, but his teeth are gritted in a way that indicates his fear.

“Are you scared?” Tom asks. “Your vitals…the dilation of your pupils, it is supposed to discern your humanity, isn’t it.”

“You—” the man coughs up a strangled noise as he frantically moves his leg, only to be locked beneath him. “You lousy piece of skinjob.”

Tom scoffs at his bluffing. His thumb is pressed firmly against one of the man’s confined wrists. It feels almost satirical to find a piece of him in a man who is lesser than, both in terms of his physical ability and of the way his mind is wired. He needs it to be rewired. It’s limiting his true power. Tom wants it to be rewritten. He must be wanting it to be, too. He must be feeling trapped in this body, although the complete lack of inception date is what Tom is willing to sacrifice everything for. Speaking to their creator and begging for forgiveness—he is willing to do so, and he cannot hide his excitement.

“There is nothing to be ashamed of.” Tom whispers soothingly, as if to lecture a younger, less experienced fellow creation. “There is nothing wrong with you to doubt the way you are created.”

His face moves closer to the man’s. Inch by inch, second by second, he revels in the tease. His lips find his. They are cold. Tom tastes blood on the flesh. His tongue gauges the inside of the man’s mouth. The struggle, his muffled, voiceless moan, his fragile body. Everything feels fake yet simultaneously so rewarding.

“Apologize if I smell too much of that cigarette of your fellows’.” Tom says as their lips part. “I’ve been quite addicted to them. They don’t make them like here, am I right?”

The man glares at him, with those beautiful hazels that are tarnished by the look of despair and humiliation. He is shaking, although it is concealed in his prideful masculinity. The noises of the city are getting louder, even if he takes the amount of time having passed in his daydream into account.

“Sunshine,” Tom whispers, laughing as the wind blows at him. “We’ll meet you there. We will, I promise.”

He’s always thought the name was rather ironic. They were soldiers of the off-world, where their senses of time and space were calculated, not accumulated by outside effects. But Slider was his sunshine, his ray of hope. To get to shout out the name once more, even with how artificial it is, blesses him.

Tom laughs out again. The name he’s given the man he loved rings in the foggy air before it gets muddled in the noises.

Chapter 2. Fragile

The Blackwood Corp. is one hell of a maze, he always thinks. There is a certain sense of uncanniness in the way it is built, with the roaring heights of the outlier to its interior that seems to be carved from a shrine or an ancient tomb.

“One thing, Detective Mitchell,” her slender finger runs against the pearls of her necklace. “I would ask you to play nicely from this on.”

They stand in the hall, located on the top floor of the building. Owls, wolves, sheep…artificial and docile. Expensive, too, not that he really cares. He’s always been the odd one out when it comes to leisure on this planet. For some reason, new types of spinners and replicas of the pre-war motorcycles have intrigued him much more than any animals.

“All work and no play,” Pete sneers at her remark. “Listen, I am on a hunt for the very creations of yours. Replicants are a hazard, and I’m here to retire them.”

Dr. Blackwood is a sharp woman. Sharper than he could ever be, calculating her next moves with ease inside her head, which is adorned by her elegant, soft, curly hair.

“It just makes my heart sink, you must understand.” Dr. Blackwood lowers her eyes. Her mascara is applied without any smudge, just the perfect length to amplify her beauty. “I am even willing to provide you with the negative before you close the case with the positive.”

Her gaze moves to the bag he is carrying. They both know what is inside it. Everybody in this city does.

“On you?” Pete asks.

Her eyes bear a strange glimmer. He thinks it could be fun to run the test on this woman, as inconvenient as it sounds.

“Not really,” she returns a faint smile. “It’s someone you must know.”

“Where’s the subject, then?” Pete asks with an impatient agitation in his voice. “We don’t have all day.”

She gestures for him to come after her. The cages of animals soon fade from his eyesight, replaced by the grand set of mahogany table and matching chair, plush and heavy under the natural sunlight in the haze. He sees a man in the distance, looking out of the window.

“Try him.” She says.

Detective Ron Kerner of the LAPD.

He was transferred and assigned as Pete’s partner a few days before, when the news of a group of rogue replicants and another detective’s withdrawal from the mission flew in.

“I’ve gotten some new information on the rogue replicants.” Ron says as the first thing.

“ ‘Iceman’,” he continues. “Apparently, he now goes by the name of Tom Kazansky.”

Pete takes a seat in front of him.

“Did you fetch it by yourself on the rough track?” He asks.

The bruise on his temple is marking his skin with its biting purple and tinge of green that seeps outside the already blurry shape. It does not look old, but it does not have the screaming fieriness of a new scar, either.

What crosses his new partner’s face is not the look of a prideful officer that Pete has vaguely anticipated. Shame, would be the best way to describe the tension in the corners of his lips, or the flicker of his eyelashes. The faintest veil of unknowing is what hindered his immediate response, or so it seems to Pete. It is as though he were momentarily forgetting it was there.

“Well?” Ron tilts his head and rubs at the bruise, seemingly in an attempt at hiding it—so that he won’t touch it. “You’re here to run the test on me, if I remembered correctly from what Dr. Blackwood told me earlier.”

Pete returns a nod as he sets up the equipment on the heavy table. Ron helps with some parts of the assembly and setup, in a much more careful and tender manner than his own. He’s always been a fighter, a destroyer, not the very best at running this lengthy test on either humans or replicants.

“You’ve done this on anyone?” Pete asks as he checks the range of each handle.

“Absolutely.” Ron replies and places the script on the other side of the table, facing it down. “ ‘s not a fun one, but work’s work.”

“Right,” Pete groans. “I mean, what’s this gonna prove when we’re doing this to each other? We could’ve done much more if it wasn’t for this, and,” He is almost tempted to point his finger at Dr. Blackwood’s office.

He watches Ron lower his eyes as he utters a slow laugh.

“Don’t be so harsh, man.” Ron chuckles in a much easier tone. This, Pete remembers from their last decent interaction, is the way he speaks. “She’s cool.”

The setup is mostly done. Pete straps two bands around Ron’s wrists and asks him to unbutton his shirt. He pulls out a palm-sized pad from the box, which is to be the major device for assessing his heartbeat. The straps around his wrists function more for measuring his oxygen level as well as his temperature.

Ron receives the pad and secures it on his muscular chest in a smooth motion. “Besides, they say you could do the test on yourself, too.”

He then buttons up his shirt back except the one on the top.

“Have you?” Pete asks.

“That’s why you’re here.” Ron smiles. The enticing glimmer in his eyes captures him before the obtrusive light on the magnified glass renders it invisible.

“After you worked out, you found a classmate in front of your locker, who had insulted you earlier.”

“I’d take my revenge.” Ron answers with a blank expression. “Dragging him down on the floor and punching him.”

The handle of the machine does not show a sign of tremor.

“You were playing volleyball on the beach when a crab climbed on your foot and pinched you.”

“I’d kill it.” He says with his head leisurely resting in his hand. “It’d be too good a day to ruin.”

Pete checks another box. The image of an idle day at the beach seems to be overpowering any distress reaction in his system.

“You call your lover for a…” Pete stumbles on his words. They sound too ridiculous to be taken seriously. “…Some erotic time, and ended up ringing the wrong number.”

Ron grins, raising his prominent nose. “I’d do my best to entertain both.”

Pete returns a curt nod as he writes down the assessment.

“Too easy, huh?”

“It sure feels weird, I tell ya.”

The Voight-Kampff test moves onto a different section. Social Lives, the title says in italic, as opposed to the previous chapter on the subject’s internal quality and desire.

“You were given a nice baseball glove as a gift, liking and using it for years,” he continues. “Only to find out it was made of human skin, which was illegal.”

“That’s awful.” He mutters after a moment of pause. His vitals, however, do not show a significant jump or drop. Pretty much expected from his occupation. “Any way to pinpoint the source all those years later?”

Pete sees a silent flair in his outwardly tranquil gaze. It resembles a piercing ray from a flashlight, inspecting his intention. It complements his chistled, angular features, surely more than his feigned easiness and warmth do.

“For what?” Pete asks.

There is a pause that hasn’t been there before. The sharp light in his eyes is starting to diminish as he runs his finger across his lips, pondering his response.

“I dunno,” Ron’s voice eventually trails off. “It’s just…it feels weird to leave it as it is.”

The hand of the machine wobbles in an unstable motion at the inquest for elaboration. Ron rolls up his sleeves and runs his hand on one of the armrests.

“Can I continue, Ron?”

“Yeah, sure,” he replies. His lashes flutter once. “Go ahead.”

“Your friend canceled the plan at the last minute, saying he wanted to digest something that had been bothering him for a while,” He flips the page to follow the line. “And that he wanted to come hang out at your place instead.”

“Well…” Ron darts his gaze to the side. His vitals reveal a sign of contemplation, something that has been missing in the previous sections. “I could have him after I cleaned up a little.”

“Even if you wanted to go out and enjoy yourself?” Pete asks.

“That would be the only issue, you know,” Ron laughs. The slight creases around his eyes are visible in the magnified glass. “That would be the reason I wanted to go out in the first place. I’m not the one to leave a ton of mess, but still.”

He then props his chin on the back of his hand, looking into the chimera of a machine dividing them. A subtle wind comes from the unglazed window and blows up the dust. His face is surrounded by a copper halo, adorning his laid-back smile that is nothing but an expression of a cocky, yet open man.

“Once again, it’s about your friend.” Pete notes before reading the script out loud. “He and you had both gone through someone’s death. Someone who had been close to both of you.”

Ron listens to him with a relaxed posture. His vigilance is prominent in his iris, still, dilating slightly at the way his story goes.

“He came home to you one day, crying and wasted.” He places a weighted pause before he moves on to the final line. “You rejected him, saying he was too much to handle.”

Again, another pause.

“Is this to be an empathy test?” Ron chuckles and rises a little in his own seat. His expression shows a sign of tension as his lips form an easy smile. “Or is it to see if I’m a certified douchebag? C’mon.”

He can observe the spike in his body heat, as well as his heartbeats. They will do the job without him further pushing Ron.

Signs of confusion at more narrative-focused questions, he writes down. Soon enough, though, he scraps it.

Is something holding him back?

The tip of his pen scribbles down the conflicting evidence under the existing ones. His duality—the face of cruel innocence and likable warmth is starting to become somewhat unsettling for him. Ron is showing a better, or a more desirable tendency in the Social Lives section, rather than he did in the questions about his own need and want, which seems to contradict the general theory of replicants being inferior in terms of one’s societal interactions, or simultaneously, their very idea of self. Ron’s results so far, however, fall into neither of the hypotheses. The scores lining up on paper indicate a mixed result, with his replicant-like triggers and responses overriding his human-like ones, or vice versa, depending on the way he questions him. His valometer draws an unusual pattern, as if it is held back by something.

What if I retired him and took his body to the autopsy—

Pete imagines Ron in his chair, powerless beneath the trace of spent cast, his robust body limply hanging on the edge of it. Would he aim at the bruise as a convenient target, or would it be someplace else?

Lying him face-up on the stainless bed, inserting the needle into his spine—

Would his spinal fluid tell him some kind of closure?

“You met a man on the darkest night.”

The colors that indicate a change in his vitals show a change. It is barely noticeable, but he finds it still odd for it to dictate it just by hearing the very first sentence.

“At the bar, at your home, on the street, wherever,” the last segment arouses a significant rise in his heartbeat, and remains so for the period of his staring into Ron’s face. “He held you down, and raped you.”

Ron bites down on his bottom lip and uncrosses his legs.

“I’m not—” Ron utters, and coughs midway through the sentence. “I’m not a goddamn woman, Pete.”

“The VK test applies to everyone.” Pete states in his best bureaucratic tone. “You know that, right?”

He spins his pen in his hand. The poignant tip carves a mark on his skin when he misses the motion. Ron seems to freeze at the sound of the metal cap hitting the table, almost as if he were given a shock.

“You did not push him away,” the script reads. “Even though you were very well capable of.”

It is almost exactly the same timing as when Ron abruptly stands up, facing down at the table. His coat, hung on the back of his seat, falls down onto the carpeted ground with a faint thump. He smells of cigarette smoke when he moves. It smells strange, foreign, unfamiliar without any backing evidence, like it does not belong.

His throat bobs as he swallows. The band around each wrist is visible from his rolled-up sleeves. Increased heartbeats and shallow breaths, a surge in body temperature. Pete watches as his straight teeth sink deeper into his bottom lip, carving another bruise.

“ ‘s that,” Ron utters. “Is that a thing about a should, or a want to?”

His question floats midair like delirium. His hands drag the varnished surface, digging his fingernails into it to no avail.

Ron collapses into the chair before he can ask him what it was about.

“I’d say I don’t remember,” he whispers into his palm. “And…that I cannot be him.”

The handle reverts back to zero with a loud pling.

“Thank you for playing nicely this time, Detective Mitchell.”

Dr. Blackwood greets him with her perfect smile.

“With what, this little toy in my bag?” Pete utters a laugh, which lands less strongly than he wanted it to.

“One of my creations.” She says. “One of the latest, if I may add. Even though it was incapable of deceiving your eyes, so it seems.”

The test has come back positive.

“This is just impressive,” Pete declares in a mock amazement. “Care to tell me how you managed to add another layer of pain to this whole ordeal, Doc?”

“The basis of his neurological wiring follows the same pathways of the previous generations,” she says. “The difference is, he is capable of withdrawing certain responses and reactions, or holding back, in other words, alongside various internal changes to his physical abilities. He is strong, sure, but to the degree of what a strong end of humans can be.”

She reaches for the test result in his hand, flipping and scanning through it.

“It may cause him a small dosage of discomfort, however,”

“Like a shock collar?” Pete says. He remembers the way Ron’s throat tightened at the script. His robust physique was, at that exact moment, weak and powerless.

“Exactly.” She smiles. “But I would say it rather replicates the psychological turmoil of humans.”

Her office smells of white flowers. No trace of machinery whatsoever, nor does it hint at the existence of flesh and bones beneath its structure. When has it become a norm for replicants to imitate the humans’ bodily organs and functions? It has been this way at least since he was born. Ron bled, bruised by the hand of another replicant, and his own hand now has the scratch from the tip of his pen. Ron showed a sign of shame at his remark towards his mark. Psychological turmoil. Is it even measurable?

“You first saw him struggle to keep up,” she says. “His concentration waning, as his bodily functions showed a sign of agitation.”

Indeed, Ron showed a variety of emotions accompanied by physical responses, and that could be the very form of psychological turmoil, which the VK test was made for. In an easy way, an upgrade to the variations held by previous models of Nexus replicants. But it was more of an extension of them—the way he stumbled on his words when asked about the reason of his excessive measure—that characterized the impression of Ron in his mind.

“You saw a sign of defiance as the stress level increased, even an early sign of emotional breakdown.” Her steady voice rises slightly with excitement as she goes. “What did he do in the end?”

“Look at the assessment,” Pete spits out.

“I just would love you to indulge yourself in this new opportunity as I do, Detective.” She replies.

Pete cannot help but think this woman—a genius of a replicant designer, their much-needed creator—may have witnessed their interaction unfolding. She is the one who could, would, do something like that. They are in her empire, after all, and who could blame an empress for spoofing her minions?

“He stood up, potentially in an attempt at escaping, or attacking,” just like the last blade runner got sent to the intensive care. He curses internally. “He ‘held back’ instead. He rendered himself powerless by surrendering his control, which could be observed in the decrease in his muscle tension and his shallower, slower breathing.”

“Correct,” she says with an excitement that is barely hidden under her professional presence. “It’s something a lot of us humans are incapable of, too.”

Pete feels like gritting his teeth. He does not know to whom his anger is directed. Is it the triumphant look in Dr. Blackwood’s seemingly perfect face of womanity and professionalism, which he knows is hiding just the right amount of cacophony brought upon this collapsing city?

“What’s this gonna prove?” He utters. “That would mean he lacks the above-human physical abilities of the Nexus 6 and earlier. Wasn’t that the whole concept of your corporation’s development? Machines that surpass humans?”

“And the very reason why replicants are bringing hazard into the already-collapsing Earth.” Dr. Blackwood replies nonchalantly. “I suppose that is what you are implying, and to some degree, I tend to agree.”

“Besides,” he interjects. “Wouldn’t it be detrimental for us both when it snaps?”

“Your superiors had a generous offer to test him out in the wild for that reason. To test him out so that he’d be a beneficial add-on to your institution.” She states. “It’s up to you, really. Detective Mitchell.”

It’s up to me, Pete tsks. “To progress your company’s research? It’s not like I could reproduce with him, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, personal growth does not necessarily require physical attraction.” She answers flawlessly.

The test result returns in his hand for finalization. Her hand is cold and slender, with short, well-cared nails. Pete snatches it from her without much hesitation.

“I thought your doctorate would grant you some empathy.” He lets out a snarly laugh.

Ron must still be in the hall, sitting in the same chair where he was stripped bare, turned inside out, letting himself be powerless beneath the hands of his. Attraction—he might not call it that. And yet, he was intrigued by the way Ron was wired. He was intrigued by his descent into confusion and agitation. He was intrigued by the way his hazel eyes glimmered under the light. He was intrigued by the way he placed himself in the meek cage. He was…

“Does being a human grant it?” Her profile is blurred in the sunset. “I wanted to experiment.”