by K. T. Hanna
“You need to be encouraging the cells to merge with your healing abilities. Did Dom not show you that?”
Sai shrugs sullenly, all the anger dissipating and leaving frustration in its place. “Yeah...he did.” She buries her head in her hands. “This all feels so foreign, and my legs are so much heavier than they were. It’s hard to move myself. So much more difficult to trigger them.”
Mathur smiles kindly. “They will ease up as soon as everything clicks.”
“It takes forever for things to click. There’s so much I have to relearn, and we just don’t have time.”
“You have to make time, Sai. You will just have to make time.”
She mulls her thoughts over in her head and plucks out the one worrying her. “Something isn’t right, and I’m not sure what it is. We’ve overlooked something.”
“Premonition, child?” Mathur raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just know that I wanted to understand what Dom is doing...because I’m worried, regardless of whether or not I can show him that right now. He’s not...” She thinks back to the touch of his cool skin against hers, the presence of his mind, and the other thing in the back coaxing her to look away. “He’s not himself.”
He watches her for a moment, head cocked slightly to the side. “He is Domino.”
“I know that!” she snaps and shakes her head immediately. “Sorry. I know that. I just don’t know how... Everything is so complicated now.” She shrugs and gives up trying to explain the thoughts in her head that not even she can piece together.
Mathur’s smile fades, a frown taking its place. “That is something I understand all too well. So be it, then.” He stands and walks to his bookcase, humming a tune under his breath. When he returns, he reaches toward her. “Hold out your hand, palm up.”
Sai does, only to have Mathur drop a beautiful sphere of adrium right into her hand. It’s heavy and cold but immediately starts to adapt as soon as it touches her skin—flowing from a smooth black to a strange mimicry of her Asian skin tones as it sends small jolts of static down her arm. “I don’t get it...”
“That is the nature of adrium. To adapt for its own survival, to protect itself and anything attached to it that it needs for survival. With me so far?”
Not entirely sure whether or not she was, Sai nods anyway. “I think so?”
Mathur chuckles. “It will be clear soon. I will endeavor to make it so. Your legs are made up of adrium fused and combined with your own DNA, adapted to your blood type and synaptic patterns, which are then reinforced further by adrium tendrils in order to give you a beautiful working relationship. You, my dear, were simple by comparison.”
“Oh.” It suddenly dawns on Sai just how much more effort, how much more science went into the creation of Dom.
“Exactly.” Mathur smiles and pats her head in his fatherly way. “Adrium has many sentient properties, but it will never be sentient all by itself. We fused too much machine with it during the Damascus arm of the project. The metal lost its ability to morph and properly assess situations. Without the majority of human components, there was no conscience, only a machine-driven, survival-obsessed parasite.”
Sai gulps, suppressing a shudder. “Then how does Dom work?”
“Dom was created from scratch. Human, specifically psionic DNA, interwoven with a skeletal structure based on the human one. He thinks and has the potential to feel, and this gives him the ability to develop judgment and make decisions in rational thought.” Mathur’s tone is affectionate, and his eyes crinkle happily as he speaks. “He is nothing like the Damascus. Which means he also does not have the communication channel the Damascus do, and by forcing one into him after I left to communicate with the others, they effectively set Dom’s development on permanent hold.”
Sai leans forward. “They broke him?”
“Briefly. Luckily he is fixed now, and after a few weeks with me, he has discovered true impulses and abilities that were overshadowed before.”
“So he’s on a discovery mission?” Sai guesses, still not exactly understanding everything.
Mathur chuckles again, but this time it doesn’t sound as happy. “No, he is on an ‘I can do anything’ mission. It involves pushing himself to new limits, stretching himself to discover what he’d forgotten and perhaps what he never knew. And all the while getting us the information we require.”
“You’re making him fulfill the assassin role?” Sai crosses her arms and scowls at Mathur.
“Never. It was never my intention to create an assassin. Those were directives from above. I am giving him the chance to discover exactly what he can do.”
“Pfft. Lousy excuse and bad facade to put on it, Mathur. A spade is a spade after all.”
“Is it really, Sai? In all my theorizing, I can only tell you what should technically be possible with those legs of yours. Will you, once you have regained complete and satisfactory control, want me to prevent you from finding out the new possibilities it opens up for you?”
“If you put it that way,” she says grudgingly, rubbing her arms and not liking where multiple trains of thought are leading her.
“And I do.” Mathur’s expression turns grim. “Dom is not a robot. He is not some science experiment. He is a living, breathing, sentient being. If you can find it in your heart to forgive him for something that was definitely out of his control at the time, I think we might be able to keep him the way he is without him reverting to the assassin he was intended to be.”
“He wants to revert to his originally intended role?” Sai asks, barely wanting to know the answer.
“I am not sure. He mentioned something about discovering his roots and returning to his true purpose because it was easier, but...” Mathur shrugs. “He has grown in ways I did not know he could, and some of that is due to his very short acquaintance with you.”
“Why me?”
“Did you ever once look at him and think of him as a thing?”
Sai shakes her head.
“Why?”
She blinks. “He never struck me as anyone other than Dom. He’s got more humanity in him than many people I’ve met.”
“Most people see him as something to be feared, as something not human and therefore less than they are. You saw him and became his friend. You deferred to him. You treated him as your equal. When he saw the way you regarded him when you realized he had been used as the instrument to injure you? I think it broke some of the emotional connections inside him.” Mathur waits as the information sinks in. “If you can find the friend you once knew, the person you once cared for, I think his chances might be very good.”
“Do I have time?” Sai asks hesitantly, knowing, despite everything, that she needs it for more than just forgiveness.
“We always have time, Sai. Just sometimes it does not wait for us.”
Far from Central, the dusk air outside of the Mobile domes is slightly caustic. Too long out in it, with the sun still in the sky and no filter, and it’ll slowly burn a human’s airways. It’s why the cities are in Domes, why travel outside is limited to nighttime unless in a transport, and why the cities in what used to be North America have become so dependent on the GNW. Luckily for Dom, the adrium suffused in his system allows for its own form of filtration. He can come and go at any time, only seen when he so wishes.
He pauses and finds a foothold on a relatively barren hill. The rusted remains of a wind turbine crumble into the sand near him as his foot disturbs its resting place. Wisps of stubborn dead grass cling to the ground, the roots long petrified. With a thought, he adjusts his eyes to watch Mobile Alpha move softly, barely noticeable clouds of red sand puffing to each side, settling in its wake. His eyes gently buzz back to their usual scan setting, giving him a film over his eyes to let him see heat signatures and cold pockets, along with his regular sight.
Looking down, his body blends slightly with the mound of earth he’s standing on, taking on a vague red hue in response to his
lack of focused instructions. He has business of his own—his own slice of revenge, his redemption for what they made him inflict on the other dominos.
For what the GNW made him do to Sai.
His chest heaves as he takes a diving leap off the hill, landing with a rolling thud that shakes the ground around him, sending small lizards running, some of the only inhabitants out here. Adrium is heavy and even deadly if he doesn’t keep himself in check. Without the concurrent restrictions placed on him by the engineering department of the GNW, restrictions he hadn’t even realized he had until Sai’s accident broke him free of them, he had to focus on the parasite so much more. In such tiny ways, small things, little signs that it was eating at him. In the stray thoughts that crept in when he wasn’t concentrating on something in particular; in that convincing sly voice that whispered of the need for more energy, more electricity; and in the way it made him doubt which voices were his own and which belonged to the parasite.
It was hard enough to rein in his resentment toward Mathur, regardless of how much of a father figure the man was. Taking technology he didn’t quite understand and twisting it in the wrong ways. The other dominos were so screwed up by those who had assumed too much, who had attempted to keep them under control and devoid of their own sentience until it had damaged all of them in ways he hadn’t realized were even possible.
Sai.
Before she’d remembered his part in the accident, before her eyes had held so much pain, he’d thought things would be okay. So many small things went wrong to bring them to this. The greed of the GNW almost makes him wish he had no human DNA.
He focuses above the noise in his ears, beyond himself and through the surroundings. Cicadas chirp, mostly unaffected by the atmospheric changes of the last couple of centuries. Hardy and vibrant, their little lives are some of the only ones the GNW haven’t brainwashed into apathy.
The cracks in the ground turn into tiny black abysses with the setting of the sun. Rainfall is usually channeled into the reservoirs and sent through a myriad of underground service centers to keep the cities hydrated. It leaves the grounds outside the protective domes starving for water, cracked and brittle and dangerous. His breath catches in his throat as the anger boils to the surface again. This dark abscess of emotion that wells up and tries to take him over when he least expects it...even about the most mundane things. There has to be a way to keep the parasite at bay, a way without the GNW’s resets and controls.
And then there’s the inner quiet without the static of the other dominos.
Music pulses in his ears through tiny inserts Kayde gave him. They keep the silence at bay a little. All those voices gone, reduced to nothing by the severance of the link in his head. The link no one else was ever supposed to have access to. He turns the sound louder to drown out the loneliness he didn’t realize would be so cold.
The city looms above him, huge and dark, foreboding in its sheer size. He smiles again and makes his way to the end of town and an old set of living quarters—partially abandoned by those who’d come into fortune, but still good enough for those who were down and out or those with the illegal jobs.
Dom halts before entering, shifting through the phases of adrium adaption, making subtle adjustments to his surroundings—the bleak concrete walls, the red traces in the sand as it spreads across and into the cement floor. He flexes his fingers in front of his face, slowly willing their shape to change, to morph into sharp implements, rounded, and back into fingers again. The response times are more sluggish than he’s used to, but as long as he continues practicing as he moves through the city, his abilities should be back at peak performance by the time he truly needs them. It’s easier to practice in the dank part of town where no one looks twice at things they don’t understand.
This is where Sai grew up. Before her gift took away everything she’d ever known, Sai had been one of them—living on the outskirts of society, picking through garbage for a meal, and begging anyone who might be able to toss her a credit. The area hasn’t changed much in the last five years. Children still scrounge around garbage cans, their little urchin eyes wide and smeared with dirt as they gasp in glee at a half-eaten piece of bread. None of them see him, not with camouflage in full swing. He watches for a while as they huddle in groups around hastily built fires to get some warmth. Odds are their parents can’t afford heat in the buildings, or else they’re too drugged out to care.
For a while, he wants to soak up this darker side of humanity, to see if there is anything from that side of him that might help him figure out this strange new tug in his brain, this darker whispering that doesn’t form words. Everything has an easier way out, a more sinister tinge than he recalls from his sealed memories. Revenge was never his thing, but right now it’s all he can concentrate on. Maybe sating it is all he needs to do. Perhaps the act of fulfilling this strange compulsion will end it.
Everything is putrid, even the structure he eventually settles on. People passing by don’t acknowledge each other, in too much of a hurry to get their next fix or try to earn a meal. There are no marks to target down here. No one worth anything visits this place.
The building is adequate, with a few scattered one-bedroom apartments free of habitation, as long as you don’t count the rats. He keeps cautiously out of the way of the children as he makes his way through the halls. Children crouching next to the rats, feeding them scraps and petting their heads. Cheap pets. Easy to feed and free to obtain and most of them would give a cat or dog a run for their money.
Dom finally chooses a room and settles in, the tiny ear buds making the bass resonate in his head while he thinks of who and when and where.
The next day dawns in all its murky gloom, and Dom turns the music down a notch. Eventually, he’ll have to wean off things for noise, to fill that gap.
Concentrating on the shadows, he blends his body to them, wills the adrium to conform. If he maintains that focus, he should be able to pass through the city virtually unseen, even while jogging slowly. It takes a few false starts to acclimate to the chill in the city, so different to the outside world where the adrium seems more at home.
Concrete walls begin to crumble less the further he moves toward the center. The dirt affixed to every pore of the buildings in the poorer sections is far less visible, as if someone remembers to half-heartedly blast the grime off every few years. If you peer close you can see where it was blasted back, overlaid with more, then cleaned again. Eerie patterns, reminiscent of cave paintings.
Central looms above him, its windows bigger than the living quarters at the peak of the other buildings close to it. Large and luminous, looking out as if watching the whole city. It rises towers above, precisely in the center of the city. Perhaps not the most original reason to call it Central.
Dom watches the people coming in and out of the building with one swipe of their wrist, and he frowns. They pass in bulk, a few of them here and there, rarely a straggler by themselves. The night shift’s leaving to let new staff in. He knows everything about the building from the inside, but he’s never had to gain access covertly before.
Watching the people and their fluid movements, Dom waits. Nothing is easier than blending with shadows—it’s like they want to be used, twisted and bloated to accommodate anyone willing to traverse them. Timing is everything.
He knows he can’t go through the main doors. Even if the cameras don’t see him, the sensor will register something and the alarms will go off. Not being seen is always an advantage, except when it’s not. He slips around to the alley and waits until no one is due to pass. Going in through the sewers isn’t his first choice, but it’ll work best.
There are a plethora of tunnels crossing under Central and the rest of the city, from the time when it was still Kansas City, back before the Great Disasters of the twenty-second century. Some of the catacombs are falling apart, rubble barring the ways from the earthquake tremors that have long since stilled. At least he doesn’t have to go that far in toda
y.
He bends down swiftly, fingers morphing into knife-like sharpness, and jimmies dirt-caked seals on the grates. Once loose, he raises the huge set of metal bars that would otherwise take several men and drops himself down, closing it behind him with a louder than he intended clang.
For a few moments he waits, crouched low, taking on the dark hues of dirt and grime that litter the bottom of the sewer entrance. Perhaps the noise was only loud to his current hypersensitivity.
Thoughts nag at him from all different corners of his brain. Most questioning what he plans to do to those who caused this, who hurt not only the dominos, but caused Sai’s situation as well. But one of those thoughts rings louder than the others, beckoning him, encouraging him, cajoling him.
He likes that avenue best. There’s a sinuous strength, a righteousness about evening the score, about standing up for himself with the strength Mathur gave him. A need to reach out and take that energy from where it is wasted. That...electricity.
So many dominos affected by the ignorant actions of people who presumed. Davis, Selwyn... If it weren’t for them, Dom wouldn’t have had the communication channel forced into being. The rainbow strobing would never have happened, and Sai would still be whole. She’d still look at him with all that trust from their shared missions, that friendly way no one else but Bastian did.
Dom clenches his fists, bricking them hard for a moment before relaxing. He resets his body to default. The gunmetal grey shimmer surrounds him, his sleek surface back to its more androgynous form. But even as he moves, it leaks back to his own preference, to himself. He lets it, clinging to the parts of him that are still whole as he traverses the tricky twists and turns beneath the building.
Maybe Mathur made him too human. Maybe he should be the alien he’s supposed to be—the alien at least half of his makeup wants him to be. With no light in the tunnels, the adrium compensates, gently glowing to light his way even though he adjusts his vision once again. The glow is a balm and lulls him into a sense of security in himself and what he’s about to undertake.
