The Prey

by Jenny Foster

  “You are right,” he says, thinking. “Why didn’t I notice this, before?”

  “It doesn’t necessarily need to mean something bad,” I think out loud and unroll my sleeping bag right next to his. “It just means that you should be extra vigilant. Is it possible that your mysterious contact person is playing both sides?”

  “Anything is possible,” he replies, deflated, watching Shazuul and Hazathel, who have gotten comfortable and are actually playing cards. The sight of them, sitting across from each other, with pebbles as substitute poker chips between them, makes the whole situation seem surreal. “I just don’t see a reason why anyone would send me after Cassie Burnett, of all people, so they could lure me into a trap or expose me. It would be significantly easier just to turn me off. Even if Ruthiel found out about our existence – no, it doesn’t make sense. He had plenty of opportunities to take me out of circulation, before we departed on our trip. And why would he send you with me?”

  “Exactly,” I press on. “Why did he send me to be with you?” Hazathel and Shazuul are focused on each other. I don’t need to lower my voice. “What did he tell you? Why did he order you to turn me off, anyway?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” my cyborg asks, surprised. “He wanted to know how you would react to modifications outside of the lab. He asked me to take care of you, but you already know that.”

  This is enough to shut me up for now. It is one thing to find out that the man whom I considered to be my father, was nothing more than a machine-human. I can even deal with – but not forgive - that he is experimenting with me by exposing me to new experiences, all in the name of gaining knowledge.

  But to then hear, out of the mouth of the man whom I love, that he was employed as my chaperone – that hurts.

  Chapter 4

  The night is quiet.

  We are spared any attacks from animals, and nothing spectacular happens, either. I spend the night snuggled up to Johar, and do some thinking. I have so much to ponder that I get little sleep. I know I will regret this the next day, but my eyes just won’t shut. At least, I now know who the mysterious “we” is that Johar talked about, and I also know the extent to which my creator fooled me. A thousand times over, I imagine confronting him, and every time, when I envision his reaction– from his mocking laugh to his surprise that I even care, anger courses through my body and I am wide awake again. My cyborg cannot understand that I am not exactly thrilled that he was only pretending to cooperate with my father. He tried to explain it to me. If he had refused to watch over me, then, obviously, Ruthiel would have just assigned someone else to the job. And since it is in the best interest of all mistreated creatures that Cassie and her damned children do not fall into my father’s hands, Johar had no choice.

  However, it’s not that simple. With only a few rational words he has assigned me to second place in the list of important things. I know, of course, that I am not a thing, and can also comprehend, to some degree, how important this duplicitous game is. But it still hurts. A lot. I feel childish and spoiled for putting my own feelings before the rescue of many, and think about all of the good things Johar has done. My image of him has gone through so many radical changes, over the last few weeks. I ask myself who he really is; the cyborg who is a double agent, the cyborg who happily completes my father’s assignments, or the man who awakens such passionate and extreme feelings in me that I can hardly deal with them. With him, nothing is in moderation; nothing is lukewarm. Everything is black or white, hot or cold. All or nothing. And if I listen to my heart, this half-mechanical, knocking thing in my chest, then I decide on all. It helps that I am lying in Johar’s arms, looking at the starry sky. The vastness of the universe makes me realize how small we, and our problems, really are. Anyway, I smile to myself, this is the most romantic night, out in the open that I have ever experienced, even with the loudly snoring scorpion-man nearby. Nobody other than me needs to know that it is also the first and only night I have ever spent out in the open to begin with. My surprise couldn’t be bigger when I realize how peaceful I feel.

  I examine my feelings, carefully searching for any conflicting emotions. Maybe looking at the sky has made it clear to me that the world consists of more than black and white. I can be both, I realize; neither a human or a machine, but a mixed being. A cyborg. The thought sends a kick of adrenaline through me that is so powerful, I sit up without losing physical contact with Johar. I understand now; it is not horrible to be a cyborg. My existence brings wonderful possibilities with it. I can be stronger, live longer and learn more. This last thought, in particular, brings me joy. My brain is more powerful, and my body more robust than a human’s. What is so bad about that? Exactly, I think, nothing. I am at the beginning of a path. I will not walk it alone. I will walk it with the man I love.

  I come to this conclusion as we are preparing to move on, right before sunrise. The orange-red fireball awakens hope in me for a second, just as the stars in the night sky did. There have been more sunrises on Earth than anyone can count, but today, the four of us experience one of the most beautiful ones. I can feel the rays from the fireball on my skin, even though they originate a gazillion miles away. It will still be here when we are long dead. I try, once again, to imagine a future at Johar’s side, in which we both watch another sunrise together, but this time, I can’t see it. The only thing I can feel is an overwhelming fear. Ruthiel appears in my head, leaning over me, smiling. It is this triumphant and always confident grimace that suddenly makes me doubt that we will all live happily ever after. With effort, I turn away from the sun. In a matter of minutes, the pleasant warmth has turned to a blazing burning sensation. It feels like a bad omen, far too much, and I cannot enjoy the sight of the rising sun any longer.

  I shoulder my back pack. At least it’s not as heavy as it was (canned goods weigh a lot and we ate well yesterday.) I decide to refrain from asking Johar any more questions, today. Instead, I walk next to the Sethari who still owes me something. I am going to claim that debt today, while we are on our way to the cave system at Point Blank. Before I replaced his sucking snout, he told me that I needed to “practice.” By that, he meant the moment when I was in his head, of that I am sure. I also think that this was not the first time that someone visited there, to put it mildly. The fact that the Sethari could open himself up to me and could sort his thoughts, so I could understand them, tells me that he has experience of this sort of thing. I am going to put that experience to good use today.

  The two of us drop back a little, and put our heads together. Shazuul understands immediately what I want, and is willing to help me, just not right now. He explains to me that my body will not move if I send my spirit into someone else, so we will need to postpone our experiments for another time. I sigh, frustrated, but there is nothing I can do about it. Shazuul sees my disappointment, stops for a second and touches my fingers. Immediately, I can feel that he is opening his head to me and I look at him, inquiringly. He shakes his head and runs after the men who are already looking for us. In the blazing sun, which rises quickly over the desert, I can just barely make them out. I notice how similar their statures are. When you see Johar for the first time, the one thing you notice is the metal plate on his face. When I look at him now, his eyes are most important to me, because they reflect his mood so strongly.

  I look at my blue-veined hands. Now, my whole body is covered in the lines. It would be silly to use the skin-colored paste when I don’t need to disguise myself, so it is still tucked unobtrusively into the pocket of my pants. I wonder if someone who meets me for the first time will only notice the blue lines. What does Johar see when he looks at me? Over and over, I have moments when it is hard for me to grasp that I am a creature who is half-machine. The old prejudices are embedded in my head, and I can’t get rid of them, even towards myself.

  Shazuul draws my attention to himself by pulling on my sleeve. “Yes?” I ask, without slowing down. By now, I can understand him pretty well, and he has also expa
nded the repertoire of words he knows. Right now, however, he does not need any words to make himself understood. He brings his hand close to my fingers, but this time, he does not touch them. He stops about an inch before our fingertips touch. Again, I feel this inviting pull coming from his head. Over the next half hour, he repeats this over and over, increasing the distance every time.

  I am so grateful that I could kiss him. He is teaching me how to feel the pull, how to manage it, and even how to resist it! This is amazing! When I tell him this, he chatters excitedly and wags his sucking snout back and forth, like he is embarrassed. “You’re not so bad for a Sethari,” I tell him and he surprises me with a quick-witted come-back.

  “You’re not so bad yourself, for a machine-human,” he says with that squeaky voice, and I look at him in astonishment, because he spoke a whole, grammatically correct, sentence. He frowns and I assume that if he had eyebrows, they would be raised right now. To hide my embarrassment, and my lack of self-confidence, I ask Shazuul about Cassie. It is a sign of the newly formed trust between us that he tells me about her.”

  “Cassie Burnett,” he says and looks into the distance, as if he were thinking about something wonderful. “She … first human, give energy voluntarily. She is a good human.”

  The knowledge that someone could give themselves to a Sethari, of their own free will, is a real shock. But it is highly fascinating for two reasons. One, the woman offered him her energy. Two, he didn’t suck her dry. Whenever I witnessed, by chance, how his race fed on humans, they were always self-indulgent and sucked their victims dry, until all that remained of them was a dried-out hull. “Can you control how much energy you tap?”

  He shrugs casually. It’s the only way to describe it. I throw a glance at Johar and Hazathel, who have their heads together while they are stomping through the sand, talking about important man things. I look at the Sethari. Trust. I keep returning to this word. I trust Johar – as far as he will let me. He trusts me, as well, in moderation. Hazathel trusts me reluctantly, because Johar forced him to. But he, this Sethari, trusts me so far that he let me into his head, and was comfortable letting me anesthetize him and operate on his snout.

  The men ahead of us are deep in a heated discussion and have forgotten all about us. Now or never. “Are you hungry?” I ask Shazuul and raise the hair off the back of my neck, revealing the right spot. My heart is racing like crazy. I must be completely crazy – this shoots through my head. Instead of throwing himself on my bare neck, as I half-expected, he tilts his head and looks at me searchingly. “Sure?” he wants to know, and even though I am scared, I nod.

  Slowly, almost hesitatingly, he moves his sucking snout over me. I am still watching how well the muscles are working, filled with overflowing pride about my work, when I feel the soft touch of the opening on my skin. A quick prick of pain, and then I don’t feel anything else. I have no idea how long he feeds on my energy. It can’t have been long, because when he pulls back from me, Johar and Hazathel are not much further ahead of us than before. Shazuul burps discreetly and I can’t help myself – I laugh. He really didn’t take much of my energy. Just enough to satiate him, but not so much that it weakens me. It feels good to give someone something without wanting anything in return. Learning this lesson from a Sethari, of all people, counts as one of the most surprising experiences of the last few days. Despite the loss of energy, I feel buoyant and stride ahead vigorously to catch up to the men. Shazuul smiles to himself and does the same thing.

  When we finally catch up to the others, we can hear their discussion which is still quite heated. “…definitely too dangerous. I say we lure them up.” Hazathel buzzes and looks at my cyborg darkly. He throws his arms up in fake desperation and counters with a dramatic sigh.

  “Fine. Then why don’t you tell me how you are going to get them out the caves,” he says and stops walking. He crosses his arms and looks at his companion furiously. “Of course, we could just yell into the caves that it’s just us and that we don’t mean them any harm.” Sarcasm doesn’t suit him, but I bite my tongue. “If you have a plan, then let’s hear it. I’m listening.” Hazathel grumbles something we can barely hear to himself, but it is obvious that he doesn’t have a plan. Johar gives him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. “It won’t be that bad down there,” he reassures the gigantic guy, whose scorpion has hidden behind his ear. When I look at the trembling animal, I realize that Hazathel is afraid. He doesn’t want to go down into the dark and narrow caves. It would be a snap to get lost down there.

  “We won’t get lost,” I add, somehow touched by his fear.

  “Oh yeah? How would you know?”

  Because the Sethari have a compass in their bodies that always tells them which way is north,” I improvise. Johar can barely hold back a snort, but he recovers quickly and confirms my story with a nod. “All we need to do is remember the coordinates of our entrance. Then nothing will go wrong. And of course, we have to be careful to not lose Shazuul.” In the distance, I can already recognize Point Blank, standing out gloomily against the blue sky. The huge cliff looks like a memorial. Hazathel’s unease jumps over to me now, and I picture massive rocks from the mountain blocking our entrance forever. I can see us wandering around aimlessly in the dark, looking for the exit we will never find. At some point, we will get so hungry that we will kill one of us and eat him. Just like back then, when I was still in a small cage in the lab, and the scientists made a game of driving us crazy with hunger and torture.

  I stare at the scorpion man. I must have been in his head for a split second. Otherwise, how would I know things I couldn’t possibly know? His memories were heart-breaking and also cruel. The snide smile from the man who was my father comes to mind, turning his cold, gray look to me – no, I cannot mistake this, to Hazathel – and pointing to him with his finger. “That one looks robust,” Ruthiel says and they put a noose around his neck and pull him from his cage.

  “Mara, is everything okay?” I didn’t even notice that Johar has put his arm around my shoulders. Relieved, I lean into him with wobbly knees. I need to learn to control this damned jumping into strangers’ heads! I am sure that Hazathel would not appreciate it, if I share his memories with the others, so I tell Johar that everything is okay.

  We keep on hiking.

  After an hour, we are at the foot of the mountain. Every one of us looks up in awe, and tries to see through the layer of clouds. Nobody knows how high the mountain is, and nobody who has ever climbed it has lived to tell about it. The air down here is easier to breathe than the air in the desert; not because it is cooler, but because it feels clearer and cleaner. In the distance, I can see the woods that Johar mentioned. This is a place where I could linger for hours. It gives me a feeling of peace, the last thing I would have expected here. A quick glance at the others tells me that they are experiencing similar emotions. Hazathel is looking up at the peak, as if he wished for nothing more than to hike up to it. The Sethari has very round, surprised eyes, and Johar has a dreamy facial expression, something I have never seen on him before.

  We land back in reality with a jolt, when, for the first time in days, clouds block the sun. The top of the mountain lights up blood red for a second, and all of us have to suppress a shiver. If I were superstitious, I would consider that a bad omen. But one half of me is machine – and for once, I am happy about that. As a machine-human, I couldn’t care less about such things, I decide, and give first Shazuul and then Johar a little push – I don’t dare to push the scorpion man. “What’s up?” I ask, and tap my foot impatiently. “Can we please get going?” Johar grins in response, and starts looking around.

  “I guess you can’t wait to go below the surface,” he says and pokes me in the side, before he pulls me to him. In the few days, since we have been on Earth, he has obviously developed the need to touch me more often than before. He is not only more emotional, and showing it, but also more loving. He kisses me, and I forget the world around me until a smacking sound in
terrupts my bliss. It is Shazuul, who has shaped the tip of his snout into kissing lips, and is running after Hazathel, who is doing his best to evade the love-stricken Sethari. This opens the floodgates completely, and we all laugh until our sides hurt.

  Suddenly, Johar turns serious. “The entrance should be about 500 feet to the northwest,” he says and points with his arms in the appropriate direction. “Are you ready?” We nod, more or less resigned. “In every backpack, you will find ropes, flashlights and fresh batteries. We will not, under any circumstances, be separated from each other down there. Is that clear?” He has taken the lead, but none of us have any objections. The role fits him like a glove. Johar is the most level-headed among us, and he is also the one who has the most experience in tracing people. “I will go first. Then comes Mara, and after her, Hazathel. Shazuul will bring up the rear of our chain.” Hazathel is not happy with being put in the safe middle, like a baby or a woman, but he has to accept it. It is obvious that, out of all of us, he is the one who is most afraid of going down into the dark tunnel system. I am also a little uneasy at the thought of possibly having to crawl on my belly through narrow passageways, but I know I can handle it.

  “How exactly will we find the woman?” Hazathel asks, and voices the same concern that I have; that we will be wandering around aimlessly down there.

  “We will proceed systematically, and keep moving further inwards in circles,” Johar explains. I must have given him a skeptical look, because he further explains that the tunnels are situated, more or less, around a subterranean lake.

  “It shouldn’t take more than half a day to find Cassie,” he thinks.