What... am... I?
The beast towered over me, perched on its clawed toes, its twisted and ugly flesh covered in layers of sharp, smooth black carapace. It looked oily. Monstrous. It had horns on its head and beady, glowing eyes that bore into mine and seemed so familiar. As familiar as a mirror.
I'd seen this creature before. Dream after dream, it had visited me, frightening me at first. But it never hurt me--never so much as raised a claw in intimidation. When I stopped running, it collapsed at my feet, and that visage I'd found so ugly and cruel suddenly looked pleading and innocent. But then it was gone, every time.
This was the first time it had communicated with me. It spoke more in visions than words, just abstract concepts and feelings it pressed into my mind--not aggressively; more like it was begging me to understand. But unlike the other visions my affliction caused, these didn't hurt.
It crouched before me and took me by the shoulders, its claws threatening to pierce my suit. Its face was inches from my own, and I almost forgot this was a dream, it seemed so real. I could feel the heat of its breath and smell the salt of its tears as it studied me. I shuddered, but pushed the fear down.
Despite my apprehension, I reached up and touched one of its mandibles. It was sharp and smooth, but not at all oily as I'd thought. Cool to the touch. Probably not as organic as it looked--it was one of the Orokin's experiments, after all. Some technocyte abomination, as much metal as flesh, as robotic as it was organic.
My fingers left trails of light where they caressed its face, and its lids fluttered, hands on my shoulders loosening. There was fear in its pleading eyes, now. Once more a mirror of my own.
Did it find me as familiar as I found it? It should, if it feared my power as much as I feared its own. I may have been just a child, gaunt and small and sickly, but that power coursing through me and corrupting me left me every bit as ugly as this poor, pitiful beast.
We were both monsters.
As if it heard me--perhaps it did--its hands loosened further, claws smoothing the dents they'd left in my suit. It studied my hand as I pulled it back and let the glow dissipate, then turned its attention to its own to study them as well. Could it see that we were the same? Its head tilted in confusion, a picture of perfect innocence.
I couldn't let that seduce me. Released, I took a step back, and its head snapped up. Betrayal. It fell to its knees, silently pleading, but I shook my head and took another step away until a piece of broken glass cracked under my heel.
The real world just outside our shared dreamscape came crashing back into focus: the lab where it was created, bearing evidence of the beast's rampage. Memories played back like a broken record, and this time the visions hurt--but it wasn't my pain. It was the beast's, as it broke from its constraints, savoring, with a roar, a freedom it knew would never last. In its anguish, it broke the machinery around it, it clawed the fine gold filigree on the walls as if it could tear its way out of its prison, it beat its fists against the reinforced glass separating it from us sleeping children until webs of cracks formed. Now the shattered glass showed our reflections, distorted and wrong, obscuring my kin from view. Isolating us.
And in the center of the wreckage, this poor pitiful beast sat, collapsed, tired and sore. Like every dream before this one, it drew me in like a moth to a flame, even as Margulis' impassioned words echoed in my thoughts.
Though they were trying to break it--again and again, torturing it and manipulating it into submission so it couldn't resist my power, a power they didn't yet understand--it wasn't the one resisting. It never was. It threw itself at me, almost instinctively, willing and wanting to give up its autonomy, its fledgling sense of self, if only it meant an escape. No pride, no ego--just a desperate, scared animal.
I was the one resisting.
Margulis raged against the Orokin for perverting her discoveries. She refused to share her knowledge with them, and impressed upon us, her surrogate children, the importance of not helping them to discover it for themselves. I'd never seen her so angry. I knew her as so calm and kind--she reminded me of my mother.
(I closed my eyes against the visions of what became of Mother, taking an unconscious step closer to the beast once more.)
I respected her, so of course I would abide by her wishes, I thought. They could put this beast before us like a steak before a pack of hungry wolves as much as they liked--we wouldn't give in. Margulis said we were better than this, that it didn't have to be this way.
I took another step closer, the glow of my energy encasing us so the real world fell away once more. And then it was just us--just us monsters. Margulis wasn't here. She didn't see this. She didn't know what I knew, hadn't seen the things we'd done. And in the privacy of our dream, the darkness of sleep, I pondered--and I doubted.
We would fight. That was for certain. Clad in armor on bodies not our own, we would wage a war we didn't believe in. One way or another, it would happen--I'd seen it, every time I'd touched the golden halls of the Orokin. Those fine ivories would stain so red.
At first, after the accident, these powers had seemed a gift. This useless, stupid outcast finally had a place in the world, a role only I could fill, a talent in a dire situation that earned me respect over derision for the first time in my short life. In my naivete I'd tried to hold out hope--tried to believe we didn't have to descend into madness just because madness was all around us. But then our fledgling alliances fractured, some succumbing to despair, others seeking to satiate a newfound bloodlust. What did all my grandstanding, all my hope and compassion mean when our broken ranks finally let the corrupted into our only remaining refuge? When we had no recourse left but to fight?
Nothing. In the end, I had as much blood on my hands as those whose choices I'd condemned.
What a pretty thought, that Margulis could be a second chance. That she, somehow, wouldn't fall to the same fate. What a pretty fantasy.
We were monsters. Weapons. Like this beast before me--this poor, pitiful thing, just as much an unwilling pawn in this chaos as we were. And I should know, more than anyone, that there was no weapon, no monster, powerful enough to fight fate.
The beast's pleading had given way to resignation. It sat, slumped, expecting our time to come to an end and thrust it back into the cruelty of the real world, where it would grit its many rows of sharp teeth and try to endure its torture until we could meet again. Why draw out our suffering?
I gripped it by the sides of its head, its mandibles digging into my hands as they tried to open in surprise. My forehead pressed against its own, I looked into its eyes--my eyes--and we breathed out as one.
I'm sorry, Mother. Margulis. Please, forgive me. But this is what I am.
