雷電

The three of them didn’t communicate often. Every few hours, the doctor would pause to fish a bottle of water or a granola bar from his bag, and offer the provisions to the girl, but beyond that they simply walked in placid silence. Jack found his mind wandering again. His gaze drank in the amoebic outlines of the cacti, the dull rainbow of browns and reds of the gravel underfoot, the occasional sighting of a set of animal tracks. Before long, he could go hours without spotting any trace of the Patriots.

He stopped for a quick rest in the late afternoon, the heat wearing his companions thin. Though he didn’t feel the slightest trace of physical fatigue -- he was starting to see now why Madnar had been so excited to attach his muscles --  he was glad to drop his cargo and regain the use of his hands. The sutures along his head had started to itch. When he reached up to scratch his scars -- gingerly, lest he cut himself with his own, claw-like fingertips -- he was taken aback. A thin, uneven fuzz of hair had sprouted on his pieced-together scalp. What remained of his brow furrowed in thought, as Madnar and the girl sat cross-legged in the dirt.

He was growing hair. His body was growing. Trying to repair itself. Did this mean he wasn’t actually dying? That he could really live like this? Strange, he thought, as he sat down to join them, casting a brief, wary glance down at his own metallic palms. Strange how he’d taken that for granted, and yet, had never thought twice about trying to escape. That not trying would’ve been wasting something precious, no matter how hopeless their survival was. He was dragged onward by that indelible will to live, that need to fight for every second, that his childhood home had seared into him.

For the first time in months, he thought of the future. Of returning to his dingy apartment, long-since abandoned. Of reporting back to Big Mama. Of wearing t-shirts and jeans and going grocery shopping in public. Of needing groceries. Of waking up in the morning to that same skeletal, mutilated face. The best-case scenario that he’d never bothered to consider.

Sufficiently horrified, he sought distraction.

The little girl had taken to staring at him again, between bites of granola. Something occurred to him.

“W-H-A-T I-S YOUR N-A-M-E?” he signed, attempting to force a friendly expression. To his surprise, she answered him aloud.

“S-S-So-ne… S-Sone… Sone-ne-ne…” She scowled, one tiny hand curling into a fist, before she held out her wrist to him, displaying her ID bracelet. “H-H-Hard for me to s-s-s-say.”

He leaned forward, peering at the text, and tilted his head until the sun stopped reflecting off the laminated plastic. What he read made him gasp, albeit noiselessly, and he squinted, reading and re-reading just to be sure.

Gurlukovich, Sonechka E.

It was impossible, wasn’t it? The odds were far too slim. But, as she sat there, staring at him with that endearingly expectant look, he couldn’t help but notice the resemblance. That whitish-blonde hair. Those sharp, angular cheekbones and high-arched nose. He blinked, trying to process it all. Gurlukovich wasn’t exactly a common name, either. It had to be her.

She was the girl he’d promised to save. Sitting there, relatively unharmed, right in front of him.

He was glad, in that instant, that his new face was so inexpressive (or, perhaps, that she was so inexperienced at reading them). He allowed himself to boggle for a moment, marveling at the sheer unthinkability of it all, before he composed himself, his features relaxing into their usual, stiff contours.

The rare sound of the girl’s mewling stutter caught Madnar’s attention, and he, too, was visibly alarmed by the brandishing of her bracelet. He grabbed her wrist, twisted the plastic until it tore, and heaved it over one shoulder, his thick eyebrows raised. Sonechka, startled by the sudden contact, curled up again, pressing her knees to her chest. The doctor offered her a brief, consolatory glance.

“We cannot take any chances,” he murmured, more to Jack than to the girl. “I have ensured that you and I are free of tracking devices, but I cannot account for her.” He began to gather up his supplies, gesturing to the others that it was time to go. “It is unlikely, considering we have gotten this far, but either way, we should keep moving.”

Jack offered a solemn nod in reply, and gathered up the cargo containers, heaving them up to his chest with a jerk of his shoulders. In the corner of his eye, he saw the little girl stumbling inelegantly to her feet, her now disheveled-looking hospital gown fluttering in the gentle breeze. Noon approached, with its heat, as the vast zeroscape stretched into infinity before them.

---

Hours dribbled by. Madnar trekked in front, leading them on into apparent nothingness like a holy shepherd. Sonechka lagged behind, sweat plastering her stray wisps of hair to her tiny forehead. Jack brought up the rear, his alien feet leaving hoof-like prints in the dust. They were utterly alone now.

It came on gradually, like a creeping shadow. A sluggishness in his limbs. A heaviness in his eyelids. The sun bore down mercilessly, each wave of heat more oppressive than the last. He stumbled -- once, then several times in quick succession, until each stride was effortful. His feet dragged, drawing gashes in the dusty earth beneath him. He could feel himself start to sway as Madnar began to outpace him, and he squinted, his posture drooping under the weight of the crates. Air seemed to escape him, and his usual deep breaths grew shallow, hectic. But he was still silent, of course; the others only noticed his failing strength when he sank to his knees.

Madnar expressed his concern with that telltale physician’s frown, but Jack forced himself back up, ankles wobbling. They continued on in silence for a few more miles, as he felt the sickness rise in him. A powerful, sinking nausea. His head began to reel, his thoughts fragmented, distracted. Pain was bearable, but illness had a way of sapping his focus. Step, step. He just had to keep walking. Nothing more. The crates grew heavier in his arms. He lurched, closing his eyes.

He had to keep walking, or he would die. He clung to that thought, as all others grew blurry and distant. He’d made it so far.

He didn’t realize he’d fainted until he awoke, dirt dusting his nostrils, with the cargo crates splayed out in front of him. As the arid world began to refocus around him, he felt Madnar’s wrinkled hands paw at his forehead. He tilted his jaw to the side, panting audibly, as he stared up at his companions, little Sonechka nervously fisting her hands in the frayed edge of her gown.

“It is setting in very quickly,” the doctor mumbled, palm pressing lightly against what remained of Jack’s cheek. “I would have assumed you would have several days, at the least, but perhaps all the heavy lifting you have done has worsened things. And the heat.”

Jack tried to fix his gaze on Madnar’s thick frames, even as that sickening headache began to return. He shot him the most questioning expression he could muster, one hand pawing limply at the ground beneath. He was too dizzy to stand.

The doctor obliged him, kneeling down to be closer to his eye level. “Your blood -- it is white, not red. Do you know why?”

A very strained, subtle shake of his head in reply.

“That is because it is not really blood, in the strictest sense. It is a blood replacement fluid which we have modified. It has no red cells, no haemoglobin. It simply carries oxygen and trace elements directly to your organic parts.” As he spoke, he tugged up at Jack’s chest, encouraging him to sit up. He obliged, even as his head spun. It was hard to understand Madnar with a clear head, let alone now, in this heat. 

The doctor continued. “But you do not have kidneys, and you do not respire in the normal sense. Your body has no way of removing the waste it collects from your cells, so that waste builds up in your blood, poisoning you. To survive, you need constant dialysis. That was simple enough to provide when you were bedridden, but now…” He frowned softly, reaching over to pat Jack’s head. “Forgive me. The portable dialysis unit I brought with us cannot function without a power supply, and I thought your strength might hold out a little longer.”

Jack could respond with little more than a pained, elongated blink. His jaw hung open an inch, like a panting dog, and he tried again to stand, his body only barely supporting him. Madnar jumped up to steady him, grabbing his shoulder, but Jack shrugged him off, shooting him a droopy-lidded glance.

He could die here, now, in the desert, or he could keep walking, endlessly marching towards uncertain, distant coordinates. What could he do but carry on? What choice was there? Even with a clouded mind, and even as the solid ground rolled like a tide beneath his feet, he could understand that much. So he was dying. At this point, what difference did it make? As long as he could manage to stay conscious, why not keep going?

The doctor gaped as Jack reached for the cargo containers. Gaped, but did nothing to stop him. He understood. Wordlessly, he beckoned Sonechka along, one eye fixed on Jack’s hunched, looming silhouette.

---

When the sun set, he allowed himself to collapse again, the pounding in his head overtaking him. As soon as he fell to his hands and knees, he began to dry-heave violently, until the whiplash of each lurch robbed him of what little sense of balance he’d managed to retain. He rolled onto his back, a few droplets of drool slicking his metallic jaw, and curled up, the dust matting his patches of hair.

Maybe he’d overestimated himself. Maybe this wasn’t a matter of willpower. Maybe death would take him kicking and screaming. He closed his eyes, letting his head fall flat against the dirt. He could feel his consciousness slipping away, all non-vital thoughts drowned out by each frantic, effortful breath. He didn’t know if he could keep fighting the inevitable. Every pore ached. Was this worth it?

When he opened his eyes again, the doctor and the girl were beside him, Madnar reaching down to prop up his neck, Sonechka hovering over him like a worried mother. After a moment or two, he felt something soft against the base of his skull; when he looked up, he saw that Madnar no longer sported his grime-spotted lab coat. He’d folded it up to use it as a pillow.

“We will rest for a few hours,” he murmured, sliding the GPS unit into his backpack. He offered Sonechka half a protein bar and the last sips from a plastic water bottle, and as the girl ate, he rummaged through his supplies. Eventually, he produced a tattered notepad and a ballpoint pen, both emblazoned with pharmaceutical logos, and slid them into Jack’s limp cybernetic hands.

“I could only find a pad with a couple of pages,” the doctor said, offering his companion an empathetic smile. “So use them wisely. There is still enough sunlight to write by, if you would like to.”

Another gift. But so different from Hudson’s. The gift of speech. He blinked in reply, fingers curling around the pen. The lines of the paper slipped in and out of focus, and he strained to sit up, but it was well worth the agony.

Had he been free of that mental fog, fully in control of his faculties, he might have picked a more profound message. But in that moment, his head reeling and lungs gasping, he knew exactly what he wanted to write. A thought that had been humming in the back of his mind for miles, one that somehow didn’t escape him when the sickness came on.  He straightened the paper as best he could, his claw-tipped fingers struggling to grip the thin pen, and scrawled, in a preschoooler’s all-caps penmanship:

YOU CAN’T SAY YOUR NAME? YOU SHOULD GET A NICKNAME SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY THE HARD PART.

He tapped the notepad with his finger, to get her attention, and beckoned the little girl over. To his surprise, she read his scribbles with ease; she didn’t even drag her pointer finger under each word as she read, like he had done as a boy. He wondered if the stutter was the only thing slowing her down.

“Wh-wh-what k-k-kind of n-n-nuh-nick-n-name?”

He met her eyes, attempting what he hoped would pass for a smile, before writing again. Each stroke took agonizingly long, as if he were attempting some excessively intricate form of calligraphy. Madnar watched him work over his shoulder, the girl pressed up beside him.

WHAT IF YOU SHORTENED IT? SOMETHING LIKE “SUNNY”

“Suh-nee?” The girl squinted, as if wondering if she’d read correctly. Jack nodded.

A moment passed. He waited.

“Sunny,” she repeated. “Sunny.” The realization was slow to dawn on her.

No stutter. When it sank in, her smile stretched her thin cheeks so widely, she looked like she was going to tear them. “Sunny!” she squealed, as shrilly as her meek voice would allow. “Sunny! Sunny!” She grabbed Jack’s arm, nearly bouncing with excitement, and beamed at him. Even Madnar’s worn-through expression warmed.

---

Within a few hours, the last streaks of desert sunset had faded away. Jack had long since given up any hope of further travel that night. Sonechka -- “Sunny” -- had gone to sleep as abruptly as any small child, and lay curled up against him, her tiny hand clutching at a vent-like portion of his chest. Madnar wordlessly munched granola and stared up at the stars, the crumbs catching in his two-day beard. Jack wondered if he was searching for constellations, or trying to navigate. Or just staring.

He was aware that he’d slipped in and out of consciousness, but he didn’t try to fight it. He was exhausted. And nothing else could dull the throbbing in his skull. It was as though invisible ropes bound him to the ground; his every movement required excruciating effort. It was after the third time he woke -- always with a bit of a start -- that he heard the doctor’s rasping voice again. A moment later he felt a rough hand in his frayed hair.

“Your pain is almost over, metallicheskiy drug. One way or another, it will all be over soon.”

---

Movement. The ground beneath him, dust and pebbles grinding under his weight. The navy-blue pre-dawn sky. His fingers struggling to grip the cargo containers, the small, black box he’d balanced atop them skidding with each step. Frigid air on his cheeks. Threads of drool hanging from his slackened jaw. The faint shadow of his companions, walking in unison, always a few steps ahead of him. He trudged on, as if treading water. As if trying to wade across an ocean.

He saw lights. Heard grumbling, metallic noises. Felt the artificial flatness of asphalt underfoot. Some large, dark shape to his left. A softness draping over his skeletal shoulders. White fabric. Madnar’s coat? He heard voices. An unfamiliar twang in one of them. The others had stopped walking. He hesitated, blinking furiously, as if to clear the mental fog. His head seethed.

A truck. A big-rig truck had stopped for them. They were on the side of a road. How long had they been walking?

He followed Madnar’s blurry figure to the back of the truck, and saw himself slide the cargo boxes inside. The doctor mumbled something almost unintelligible, a command, and he obeyed, clamboring in and settling amongst the crates and boxes. His head lolled back on his shoulders as he watched the trailer door slide shut, drowning him in darkness.

---

He could hear the ocean. Feel velvet sand caress the pads of his toes. The air was dense with salt, and the sun melted into the horizon, spraying purples and pinks across the early evening sky. The beach was empty, lifeless, the coastline stretching into infinity on his left and right, the waves crashing in front of him.

He held her hand. Silken-smooth skin against a soldier’s leathery hide. She smiled up at him, thin and pretty and serene, her dark hair let-down and tousled. He could feel that smile on his skin, a tangible warmth. She didn’t say anything. She just nodded. He understood.

They strode into the waves.

The water was warm, welcoming, and the tide seemed to quell in their wake, beckoning them closer rather than pushing them away. They waded in to their knees, hips, chests, shoulders. He felt as though they were dissolving, all the pain and hatred and terror diluted into nothingness. They kept going. Water poured into his ears, up his nostrils, past his smiling lips. He embraced her, the bubbles trickling more slowly from him, his whole body submerged. Her lithe arms hugged him close.

They sank together, deeper and deeper, and he let his lungs fill, let himself be overwhelmed by the tranquil waters. As the light of the surface faded away, he surrendered himself, her cold body still pressed against his chest. No more pain. No more agony. Only sleep now, and the gentle, wafting tide of the ocean. He was happy.

---

He could feel the thick crusts around his eyes before he’d finished opening them. He didn’t feel alive.

Sunlight filtered in from a window behind him. He was splayed out on a beige carpet floor, rolled over on his left side. A bed towered before him, freshly made with dingy floral blankets. The walls were covered in peeling, yellowed wallpaper, and everything smelled of Pine-Sol. A motel room.

He tried to sit up, but felt something tug at his back. Suddenly wary, he craned his neck over her shoulder, twisting his upper body to get a better view of himself. A series of thin clear tubes fed into ports along his spine, and they carried a white liquid to a piece of equipment a few feet away. It was a small, greyish box roughly the size and shape of a desktop printer, and its elaborate control panel gave little clue as to its function. A pink logo on its side identified it as the Freedom™ Personal Home Hemodialyzer. It was plugged into a nearby wall socket.

Madnar. This must have been in the smaller cargo box. He’d brought it along, knowing that Jack would grow ill in a few days’ time. He’d genuinely believed they’d make it this long. It was strangely touching thought.

He felt footsteps reverberate through the floor, the uneven bounds of a child. Moments later, the door creaked open, and a baggy t-shirt-clad Sunny tiptoed in. She peered gingerly over the side of the bed, to where he lay, and inched down towards him, nearly shrieking aloud when he made eye contact. Visibly startled -- but just as visibly gleeful -- she bolted back out of the room, and he thought he could hear her stifled giggles echo down the adjacent hall.

He’d only gotten the briefest of glances, but somehow, she looked healthier. More vibrant. The change of clothes had helped.

It wasn’t long before he heard heavier, slower footsteps approaching, and heard that familiar, accented mumble. The doctor seemed to punctuate each syllable with a sip of coffee.

The wide asphalt road on which they stood stretched infinitely into the distance, cutting across the barren landscape like a gash. When the man turned his back on Jack, he broke into a run, his lab coat flapping behind him. Jack followed suit, the pallet truck’s wheels creaking behind him, the little girl still squeezed around his shoulder.

He had to remember they were still being pursued. In that brief reprieve, he had almost forgotten. Even if they died now, they would’ve stolen some tiny, insignificant victory from the Patriots ­­ but that, as much as anything, was why they had to make it. He was starting to believe it was possible, if they’d gotten this far.

As he crested the first hill, several hundred feet from the hangar, he heard a thunderous groan behind him, and the dull, reverberating thud of shifting metal. Madnar whirled around mid­step, ghost-­white.

“Oh, God,” he breathed. His eyes, dead with fatigue, fixed on something in the near­-distance behind them.

Another series of thudding sounds, followed by low, droning groans. Jack froze, a fresh haze of fear settling over him. He didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to look. As though staring down whatever was clunking towards them ­­ were those noises animal or machine? ­­ would, in itself, kill them.

Steeling himself, he threw a brief, backwards glance over his shoulder, before bolting forward, his alien feet clawing against the asphalt.  The things pursuing him looked even less human than he did. Bipedal and huge, they lumbered forward on sleek, faintly glistening legs. Heavy machine gun turrets had been bolted to their boxy, tank-like bodies, and what appeared to be arrays of sensors swung around in front of them, like the eyes of hunting predators searching for their next meal.  They moved in a formation so calculated it almost seemed random – one scouted, the others followed, and the scout fell back, to be replaced by another unit. They bleated and moaned to one another – not in any kind of identifiable pattern, so it was hard for Jack to tell if they were communicating, but everything about them seemed so anthropomorphic it wasn’t hard to just assume they were.

That quick glance had offered him a look at their appearance and behavior, but little more. Were they tanks? Vehicles of somekind? There didn’t seem to be space for a human pilot – so, then, were they UAV’s? Some experimental smart-weapon design hidden from the public eye? Or, God forbid, something in between? Something like him?

It didn’t make much difference, he realized, as he heard them give a fresh chorus of groans. They were gaining. And he didn’t need a close look at those guns to know they were probably capable of ripping right through a scientist and a pre-schooler. He veered off the road, stumbling briefly on the dusty gravel beside it, and ran, willing his new legs to pump faster, harder. Brush and twigs snapped effortlessly underfoot, the weight of his new body evidently much heavier than it felt, and the pallet truck’s wheels sped over the broken terrain, leaving thick tracks. Behind him, Madnar exclaimed something, his human strides tiny by comparison. The older man would have to keep up.

He didn’t look back until he’d sprinted for what felt like several minutes, the little girl using his momentum to occasionally readjust herself on his shoulder. He could still hear the doctor’s huffing breaths, and, further back, the lowing of the tank-things, but they must’ve made it half a mile from the main compound by now, and most of that, off-road. They were safe, so far as they kept to ground that only human (or, well, human-like) ankles could traverse.  

But Madnar showed no sign of slowing down. If anything, he ran more frantically now, his cheeks pink, sweat lining his brow. What was it, he wondered, that had terrified him so? Couldn’t he stop to catch his breath, now that they had a comfortable lead on their pursuers?

He was just about to stop and rest – for Madnar’s sake, if not his own – when he felt a sudden snap behind him. He whirled around. The pallet truck’s front wheel had jammed and popped loose, after being caught on a large rock, and the axel had shattered under the weight of the cargo. He gave it a sharp tug, to little effect, then pulled with as much strength as he could consciously muster. It obstinately skidded in the dirt, the plastic wheel housing grinding away. Useless.

Another noise from one of the tank-things, but this time much closer – much closer than it should be. He followed the sound with his eyes, yanking harder still on the pallet truck. To his horror, he saw one of them crest a hill a few hundred feet away, plainly ignoring the boundaries of the paved road. The toelike appendages attached to its feet easily gripped the rocks and shrubs it trampled. They were much more mobile than he’d thought. Shit, no wonder Madnar had barely stopped to breathe. He must’ve recognized them.

The doctor had outrun him by now, and was waving him on, half-perched on a broken boulder. “What are you waiting for?”

As if in reply, Jack gave a last, furious pull on the pallet truck, only to break the rear wheels off as well.  The girl squeaked, clinging to him with newfound strength, as the cries of the tank-things drew closer. He scooped her up in his palm, dislodged her as gently as he could manage, and slid her up onto the back of his neck, so that she straddled him like a hobby-horse. It hurt – she didn’t weigh much at all, but God, that part of him still hurt – but he kept his breaths even, her tiny hands clawing into his patchy scalp. He stooped, picked up the cargo trunks from atop the pallet truck, and, shoulders jolting, lifted them to his chest. His whole upper body heaved as that energy crackled through him, but he held firm, and in a moment, after his arms had seemed to adjust, the trunks felt nearly weightless. The small black box he’d piled atop the others threatened to teeter out of his reach, but he managed to angle himself under it, keeping it from tumbling down.

It had never occurred to him, throughout the last – it couldn’t have been more than 45 minutes! – of his life, he had no idea what exactly the cargo boxes contained. Merely that Madnar had deemed them essential enough to take – and the man was smart enough to know survival would be easiest if they brought only necessities. It was a lot of trust to place in him, but hell, an insider like him was better equipped to survive their escape than Jack was. He could only pray the crates held nothing fragile.

A thundering crash to his left, loud enough to make the little girl squeal. He staggered, knocked off-balance, and craned his neck, trying to get a better look. One of the tank-things had landed beside him – had it leapt over to him, from that far away? – its massive, muscular legs coiled under it. It howled, those machine guns training their sights on him, and he darted forward, the trunks slipping from his grasp. They rolled out of his arms, still latched, as the tank-thing fired a few rounds at him. He flattened himself, dropping into the dirt. The girl gasped when they hit the ground, her knees scuffing against the sides of his neck.

It had to be an AI, and a crude one at that – no human would’ve missed him at such close range.

He lay perfectly still for a full second or so, listening for any changes in the girl’s terror-stricken breaths. Nothing too choppy -- safe to assume she hadn’t been hit, either. His eyes flickered back up, the mechanical monster looming over them.  Its head swiveled, like a beast unable to find the corpse of its fallen prey. Thinking.

It was easy to feel doomed. It was second-nature. That sense of impending death had overtaken him so many times in these last few months, it no longer had the same rare, all-paralyzing sting. But what came with it now, what was different this time, was a sort of desperate indignation, the valiant struggles of an animal hopelessly snared. With every urge to give up and proffer himself up for his pursuers, there was another, doubly powerful urge to fight, to kick and squirm in whatever final acts of rebellion he could manage.

He rose, the girl teetering on his neck, and darted forward.

Straight for the droning monster before him.

It let out a cry (of surprise, he thought) when he stood, its body angling downward as it tried to train its guns on him. He sprinted between its trunk-like legs, and it ducked down its head, following him. He kept running, not pausing to look back. The tank-thing’s thighs bulged in his peripheral vision. The little girl’s panting felt hot against his temple. A creak from above. He sprang forward, the boxy head still following him, the machine doubled-over on itself. Then, all at once, it lost balance, and rolled forward, somersaulting onto its back. The ensuing crash kicked up a heavy plume of dust.

He turned back at last. The tank-thing had skidded to a halt several feet behind him, and its spindly toes pawed helplessly at the air, searching for traction. It didn’t seem able to get up. At least, not quickly.

He circled back, running as fast as his powerful new frame would carry him, and scooped up the cargo boxes, the small, black cubic one sliding around atop the rest. The other tank-things couldn’t be too far behind, and he’d seen how suddenly they approached. His chest unmoving but his breaths deep and heavy, he sprinted towards Madnar’s far-off silhouette. The only human figure in sight. The girl was latched to his neck like a lamprey. It was miraculous that she’d managed to hold on.

Only as he ran did he begin to wonder what had just tried to kill him. He had acclimated to a life without questions, without explanations. Without articulated thought, even. Only self-evident reality.  

Those mooing cries echoed behind him.

---

He found that he never tired. Each pump of his white-muscled thighs was as strong as the one before it. Mechanical in precision. He wondered why it surprised him. And so they ran, aimless and hungry like freshly-loosed animals. They paused only when Madnar’s frail body refused to keep up -- and then, only for ten minutes at most. Staying off the roads had somewhat helped to dissuage the sedans patrolling the area, but the air was abuzz with the hacking of helicopter blades, and the roar of diesel Jeep engines was never quite out of earshot.

When night fell, the sky blazed with spotlights. He felt mortally exposed, even in the cover of darkness; the shrubs that grazed his ankles did little for camouflage. But they trudged on, Madnar leading them, deeper into the lifeless rocky abyss. Every so often, he produced a small, battery-operated GPS unit from his backpack, pinged it, and adjusted their course; where they were headed, exactly, Jack could care less, but it was somewhat comforting to know the doctor had some kind of destination in mind. He knew it was optimistic to think they might reach civilization, considering the apparent remoteness of the Patriots’ base, but the gentle, cool breeze that caressed his skin was more than enough to keep him moving.

Darkness, too, was something new, something forgotten. He was so used to the endless glare of fluorescents, even in his fitful sleep. He still disliked it, and the still very loud, very abrasive memories it begged, but he’d seen plenty of horrible things in the past few months. Lighting didn’t make much difference.

As twilight wore on, he felt the little girl go limp against his neck, her breaths stretching into snores. Madnar offered to shoulder her, rather than risk her being dropped; he was tall enough now that a fall from the height of his shoulder might injure a tiny thing like her.  But soon Madnar was drooping too. His footsteps grew languid as the hours passed, his face visibly creased with weariness. Jack realized abruptly that he had no idea how old the man was -- early 60’s, at least.

They trekked on through the night, until the first glimmer of dawn crested over the dunes. The girl remained firmly unconscious, curled limply in the doctor’s arms like a tiny corpse. The whirr of the helicopters was fainter now, somehow, and it had been hours since they’d seen any sign of a marauding Jeep. Jack ran his silver tongue over his upper lip, the skin chapped. He’d been without an IV for a while now, and he could feel his body growing vaguely warmer, like the first vestiges of a fever. But conspicuously absent was the slick, greasy feeling of dried sweat on his skin. No sweat. That figured.

After they’d spent nearly the entire night in silence, Madnar spoke suddenly, in the disjointed, fragmented speech of the sleepless.

“We have made it further than I thought possible.” A pause, as he adjusted his backpack, sliding it forward onto one bony shoulder. “The girl was an inpatient too, I assume.”

A nod, his gaze resting on her. Settling on the thin plastic bracelet still wound around her wrist.

“She did not escape on her own, did she?” No, of course not. But the doctor knew that. He hardly hesitated. “Or rather, do you recall what room you found her in?”

Madnar glanced up at him expectantly, and he hesitated, thinking. It hadn’t even been half a day, and already those first panicked moments, once so clearly etched into his mind, had gradually started to fade. His eyes narrowed as he tried to picture the door, as sterile-white and homogenous as the others.

He held up one finger, then four, then six, then seven.

“Ah,” his companion replied, his expression darkening with solemn comprehension.

Jack stopped short. He adopted what he could only hope was a desperately questioning countenance, sorrow creeping over him. Oh, God. He should’ve known it was bad. She looked healthy enough, if very thin, but why had he assumed? Why had he assumed anything?

“Walk,” Madnar muttered, frowning, “and I explain.”

A nod, and he resumed his unnaturally quick-lumbering pace. The doctor kept one eye on the girl as he spoke, as if worried she might wake up and hear him, and cleared his throat, a fresh gust of wind threatening to buff them.

“Dr. Hudson -- the other doctor you saw frequently, my colleague -- is a physician of unmatched talent. But it was no secret that his true fascination was not in surgery, but in behavioral psychology. After years of faithful service, and approval from, ah--”

It was as if he’d choked on the words. Jack bobbed his head, encouraging him to go on. Saying their name aloud still felt strange; it was the public recognition of something that did not exist.

“--he began to work on special projects outside his specialty. Some of the rooms on your floor were being used for his studies. He used children, primarily, as they were unlikely to have suffered any prior psychiatric trauma, and would therefore produce the most scientifically valid results.”

He sighed. The girl stirred in her sleep, but showed no sign of waking. “Room 1467 was a study in the effects of extreme social isolation. From the time she could walk, this child was locked alone in a room, only to be visited in case of severe illness or emergency. Her meals and changes of clothing were delivered through a slot in one of the walls, and she was filmed 24 hours a day. Her only link to the outside room was an old computer with an internet connection -- highly monitored, of course.”

The wind had picked up again, swirling the dust underfoot. Madnar grew more and more melancholy as he went on, pausing every so often to cough. “As ludicrous as it sounds, I wonder if she did not discover a way around our firewall. Hudson mentioned 1467 was vastly intelligent, and would make for an especially interesting subject.” He attempted to clean his glasses as he finished, limboing so as to avoid losing his grip on her. “It is too terrible to think that this girl has never held a real conversation.”

How he longed to rebuke that. He inhaled sharply, as if to reply, before letting his breath leave him through grit metallic teeth. Rage seethed in him, boiled under skin he no longer had. He gripped the cargo boxes tighter, slightly crumpling one of the edges. Demons, they were. Demons and sadists in lab coats. It was one thing for him to suffer alone. To get what he’d known was coming to him. But this Hudson -- no, this sprawling, all-powerful entity, the faceless five-syllable thing that ruined his life -- tortured a helpless child. One of many, the way Madnar talked about it. But why? What could she have possibly done to them? If this nightmare was his punishment, what the hell did she have to atone for?

The other man spoke, snapping him out of his thoughts. He’d been unresponsive for a long time, evidently.

“May I ask you something, metallicheskiy drug?”

A slow nod. Of course.

“I have been trying to figure out if there is a method to their madness. Why they choose the subjects they do. All we were told is that you -- the subjects, I mean -- were violent war criminals, and would try to assault us and escape if given the chance.” He glanced over at Jack, his vein-dotted eyes skirting over that twisted, bulging off-white frame. “We never learned your names, your ages -- anything about you, aside from all the biometric data they’d compiled for us. But there was a lot of that. ”

Another brief spasm of coughing, as he collected his thoughts. “They lied to us so often, about so many things, I am not sure what to believe. I do not doubt they would try to make us feel less guilty about it. That perhaps if we thought we were killing murderers, we would not mind it so much. Those of us who minded, at least. So I wonder. Do you have any idea why you wound up in that operating room?”

At first, the answer was obvious. Yes. Of course they wanted him. He had something of theirs, installed in his brain and pulsing through his veins. And his continued existence was a personal affront to them. In those hazy, self-injurious days after Big Shell, he had been beyond their immediate control, and that, as much as anything he might’ve done for Big Mama, was enough to make him a threat. So naturally, they sought to erase him. This was all self-evident, something to be taken for granted.

But why this. Why the costly surgeries, the intricate tests, the careful supervision. Why, when they could’ve shot him with a high-powered rifle from miles away and left his body in a ditch. That was a different question altogether, one he hadn’t had much time to ponder. When had the nightmare started? He’d been working with the assumption that the amnesty workers who’d ‘rescued’ him had been Patriots, and that’s where the chain of custody began, but now -- who could know what went on behind Solidus’ back, during those long lapses of time where his memories failed him?

But slowly, he nodded an affirmative.

“And -- were we told the truth?” Those bespectacled eyes met his again, briefly. “Are you a criminal?”

Another nod, sorrow registering in his sagging eyelids, in the line of his brow, in the sutured corners of his lips.

“I see.” The doctor was silent for a few long beats, as if mulling it over. “And you are someone who has had a difficult life, yes?”

Yes, yes. God, yes.

“Do you know why I was so intent on helping you? Why I risked everything?” Said in such a deadpan tone, Jack wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard correctly. He shook his head. No, he realized -- he had no idea why Madnar was helping him. Out of sheer desperation, he’d assumed, but -- surely it would’ve been easier, by this point, to abandon him?

“You were unusual from the beginning. When you were wheeled into the operating suite, you were still mostly conscious. We had to administer extra sedation to keep you still. And, once the operation began -- you never lost consciousness. Not once. Even after your blood had been replaced. Even after your jaw had been bifurcated, and your cervical vertebrae had been stripped away. Even when you were just a head, disconnected from a body -- you stayed wide awake, those bright blue eyes staring back up at me. None of the others had done that; they had all fainted at some point or another, usually when the blood transfusions began. But you did not. The expression you wore… You had a look of pathological determination.”

The little girl began to stir in Madnar’s arms, and glanced down at her, lowering his tone. “I am a man of science, you know. I do not believe in what cannot be proven. And yet, none of the others survived, and you did. It is as if they had simply relinquished the will to live -- and you clung to it, unwilling to die.

“I did not choose this life, either. After my work on the Metal Gear prototypes, I was disgusted with myself, with the military-industrial complex, and with the scientific community at large. I am a criminal, too, and I regret every moment. I wanted to use cybernetics to help people -- if I could make a tank walk, why not a paraplegic? But they -- the la-li-lu-le-lo -- they found my daughter, who had been in hiding back in Russia. They found her, and they used her as leverage.”

His voice broke, trembling softly as  he went on. The girl had evidently drifted off again, and lay limp in his arms. “What could I do? What could I do, but assist them in these travesties? For years I worked for them, performing unspeakable procedures like yours -- until one day I realized, I could go on no longer. If they had Ellen, they would kill her eventually, no matter what I did -- and knowing them, and their unending cruelty, there was a good chance she was dead already. And I could not do it. I could not keep making men into monsters.”

He stopped dead, the wind kicking a fresh gust of sand against his ankles. Jack turned to face him, wishing to feel something. Anger. Disgust. Anything, really. Anything but a strange, unsettling sort of empathy. The same cocktail of sickening emotion he’d felt when he watched his father fall. It must’ve showed; he watched Madnar’s facial expression crumple in response. He looked as if he was nearly in tears.

“If we survive, I will do whatever I can to help you, metallicheskiy drug. Those crates -- they contain the rest of your body, the armored portions I could not wait to install. I… I will spend the rest of my life undoing what I have done to you. And while I cannot hope for your forgiveness, I can seek to atone for my sins.”