Blaze

by Mara, Alex

  But I was not yet experienced enough to read what it was.

  To the side, I sensed Darcy West watching me. She was much shorter than both of us, her face lifted to see mine, and in her neck I observed that her pulse was still increased from its typical rate. This was another thing I was not experienced enough to fully understand.

  "Thank you," I said. "What will my first training be?"

  Her mouth formed a smile. "I think we'll go with linguistics. Vernacular. It's always awkward when we don't teach the rookies contractions to start."

  I nodded. "I understand." Though I was not entirely certain if I did.

  "Call me Scarlet," she said, and smiled with her teeth. They were straight and white.

  Ugly, I thought, though I did not know why. She was anatomically perfect, and yet her eyes bore none of the hidden softness that Darcy West possessed. In fact, she seemed the opposite.

  "Yes, Scarlet," I said.

  "I'll leave you two to it, then," Darcy West said, one hand set to my arm as she passed out of the room. "And I'll be seeing you again soon, 8024." The touch focused all my senses on that spot, and they remained focused there even after she had departed. I felt as though that spot were still being touched by her fingers.

  The door opened, closed. We were alone.

  When I returned my eyes to Scarlet, her expression had changed. She observed me with keen and severe eyes for a moment before she stepped to the capsule, touching the keypad on the side.

  It slid open, and she gestured to the bed with long, red-painted nails. "What are you waiting for? You'll exhaust my goodwill if you aren't careful, 8024."

  * * *

  My first training began inside the capsule. From one pod to another, awoken and back inside already, all within three hours. I was in a tomb, a capsule, probably not unlike the one I’d existed inside before I knew I existed.

  “Welcome to the world of words, 8024,” a young woman’s voice intoned from speakers set at either side of my head. “We’ll begin your training with the most commonly used words in English.”

  Above me, virtual images flicked over the inner lid of the capsule, running alphabetically through a series of letters and words. I had come pre-packaged with a basic understanding of written and verbal language, and the words to describe human anatomy and basic objects. But that was all.

  No intimate knowledge of emotions or feelings. No nuanced sense of interactions and interplay. I had no idea what the world at large consisted of until I encountered it.

  It was a linguistics training—a woman's voice speaking to me—and I learned all the nuances of speech. All the jargon, the slang, the words common and uncommon.

  "Fuck," was a nice one. Crisp, versatile, appropriate to so many situations.

  And my Scarlet had been correct about contractions: till now, language had existed in delineated shades of gray. Now I could hybridize, combine, shorten. All of which was to say: Scarlets don't know shit but clones and tricks.

  She probably wouldn't have appreciated that.

  At the end, the voice echoed through the capsule. "Let's proceed to the second basic training. Welcome to the world of creatures, 8024. We’ll begin your training with the most common animals.”

  "How about something useful?" I asked.

  She didn't respond. And without a pause, a telescreen appeared above me with the words Training Module 2.

  The first creature to appear was an aardvark. It flashed onto the screen, a static shot followed by video and the sounds it made. All of this occurred in the span of ten seconds, and I absorbed the information with the 25% of my brain that was necessary for such a training.

  I lay restless atop the memory foam, eyes half-lidded while the images flew by. I was thinking of Darcy West.

  The other 75% of my brain analyzed the past three hours—the only three hours—of my life. From nothing I had become something. How long had the nothing gone on, I wondered, before the something? But that was irrelevant now: I only knew the pinhole of light that appeared in the darkness, the expanding spot that gradually became my vision.

  I had been in a room, experienced my first sensation: chill. The surface beneath me was absorbing my body heat. And as my eyes took in the whiteness of the space, I experienced my first thought.

  What am I?

  That was superseded by the voice, the sweet, soft notes of her speech. The training module was onto 'D' now—ducks—and the concept of imprinting. And even if I hadn’t imprinted, precisely, I understood that the voice of Darcy West was the sweetest one I'd probably ever hear, in addition to being the first.

  In the waking room, I had focused my pupils for the first time, took in the swath of her face over me and then the details: the green irises flecked with brown, the pink lips parted by two degrees, the slight upturn to the nose, the heart that made up the shape.

  Her blonde hair was pulled tight to her head, the light haloing her. Her scent came to me—my first smell—with a sensation I didn’t have words for. A human female, aged 27, and she was looking back at me.

  Who is she? I'd thought.

  And so there were two of us in the world, me and her, and the chilliness of the surface beneath me.

  Above me, the creature training had delayed on breeds of dogs, cycling through dozens, and I was down to 20% cognitive attention.

  In the waking room, Darcy West’s fingers had come over mine, cutting through the chill, and she said: “Don't be afraid.”

  It seemed like the most obvious thing in the world not to be. What did I have to be afraid of? Her?

  “I am not,” I'd said. And I recognized surprise in the lines that formed between her eyebrows. In that moment—when those two vertical lines appeared on her face—I felt the surge through my body, a heat and a want, and I knew desire.

  The lines between her brows grew deeper when I asked her what I was. Her heart rate increased, and she dropped her stenopad, evaded the question entirely. This was not a good question to ask, so I didn’t ask it again.

  The training had progressed to wolves. Quadrupeds, untrainable, their own masters. By the time Darcy West had set me on the treadmill this morning, I'd understood: I had to be a perfect specimen, strong and capable. But subservient, perhaps naive, unquestioning.

  In this place, they wanted a dog, not a wolf.

  * * *

  12:14 p.m.

  My first set of trainings were complete. I now knew about aardvarks and dogs and compound words, and a lot of good that did me when it came to a room full of trained assassins.

  One training had been helpful, though: emotions and physical cues.

  When Scarlet brought me to the main capsule room and left me there, the other infiltrators eyed me with ferocious silence, and my instincts told me there would be a fight. I was new, untested, competition: all ten of us were identical in appearance and probably in strength—actually, they were probably stronger than me on account of being a few days older—and perhaps it was my model’s tendency to determine a pecking order.

  All right, fuckers—versatile, like I'd thought—let’s go.

  I’d already analyzed the room for perils, pits, traps. The sleeping area comprised a big white rectangle, a maze of unsealed pods. Off to the side, a small metal room with three urinals and a single stall. A camera sat at the center of the ceiling in our pod room, its black eye studying everything that occurred beneath.

  On the other hand, the side room was unmonitored. If anything happened between me and the others, it would happen by the urinals.

  8013 was displaying all the dominance traits I’d been engineered to recognize, which meant he was at the top of a pecking order, if there was one. But I understood implicitly that he wouldn’t be the first to test me; it would be a weaker one—maybe even the omega. From what I knew about myself already, not a single iteration of me would deign to be the omega.

  Of course, put ten of me in a room together and someone would draw the short straw.

  8018 was the first to set
his toe in the water. He came to where I sat in my capsule, and I understood from his walk and 8017’s possessive stare after him that the two were more than friends. That was why 8017 had held back during this morning's weapons training I had witnessed with Darcy West.

  “Welcome to the Ides facility, 8024,” 8018 said, his elbow set atop the buglike lid of my pod. It was a hedged greeting, couched in the safe, familiar language we’d heard when we were woken. "Don't be afraid." "Put these on."

  Soft and easy words. Except Darcy West hadn't intended to assert her dominance over me.

  I lifted my eyes, lowering my hand from where I'd been rubbing my neck. “Blaze,” I said, and held his gaze.

  He straightened a little, but didn’t let his elbow off the pod. “What?”

  “I’m called Blaze."

  The others watched more closely now, though they pretended to be consumed by their own conversations.

  “Cute. Did you give yourself that name?” 8018 asked.

  “No. Dr. West did.”

  8018’s eyebrows went up. So that was how I looked when I felt surprise, and maybe a little bit intimidated. I resolved never to be intimidated by this crowd. “Ah,” he said. “Well, I see you won’t be with us very long.”

  My lips twitched into a faint smile. “Why is that?”

  “Anomalies get incinerated, Blaze.”

  Incineration meant fire. She'd told me about fire. "It consumes everything." Which meant 8018 had just threatened me.

  “I’m guessing weaklings do, too,” I said, lifting one foot onto my knee, an open posture. I wasn’t afraid.

  8018 seemed to flinch, but he didn't fully recoil. Instead, his mouth flickered with amusement. The glint in his eyes had changed—did he actually like me? “Suppose you’ll find that out in weapons training,” he said, and with the briefest wink he spun, returned to where 8017 sat.

  Toe set in water. Water a bit too warm.

  Twenty-two minutes before my first weapons training, 8023 joined me at the urinals. The omega. I could tell he didn’t want to be there, that he’d been sent by the others. He waited until I was finished, and then his arm went out, the palm flattened to a knifehand as it approached my trachea. A sucker punch.

  I reacted on instinct, and my instincts were good (Thanks, Dr. West). I ducked, dropped my head right. His hand slid through air, and I felt a cool sweep across the side of my face.

  My right foot came out, catching him halfway up his calf. He buckled, dropped back a half-step, which gave me enough time to pivot—the urinals and stalls swept by in a blur—and catch him as I came around the other side.

  My arm swept over his shoulder and I jerked him to me, his pants still undone. I stood almost directly behind him. “I don’t think we’ve met,” I said. “I’m Blaze.”

  His left leg went out, the heel aimed for my own shin. My programming took over; I lifted my foot, stepped the toe of his boot down to the floor. His left elbow came out this time, swung around for my ribs, but the blow was weak.

  Through it all, I'd spent the past five seconds cutting off the artery in his neck. Now my arm tightened around him.

  And now 8023 met my eyes—green, identical to mine—and I could feel the adrenaline, the nervous fear. We stood staring at one another for a tense moment until his eyes dropped.

  “8023,” he murmured. He’d acceded to me that quickly.

  And with that, the standing between the two of us had been determined. One less threat.

  I walked him out of the bathroom, removing my arm from his neck only when we came into the camera’s view. I couldn't be an anomaly—anomalies got recycled.

  8023 allowed me to walk ahead back to our pods, and I cast my eyes around, met the gaze of every single fucker who might want to try me.

  None of them wanted to—at least not here, not now. Their body language was clear.

  Except 8013. He was strong, his gaze level, unafraid like me. He’d been around a week longer than I had.

  Between us two, it might come to blood.

  * * *

  1:55 p.m.

  Our break time was over. The pod room door slid open, and my Scarlet appeared in the doorway in a black jumpsuit and boots. "Good afternoon, gentlemen."

  The way she'd pronounced those words suggested nothing good.

  She asked for four of us: 8013, 8022, 8023, and me. The perfect number for single-opponent duels, plus a veteran to shake us up.

  We followed down the same hall Darcy West had led me through this morning. Our Scarlet was quiet on the walk, and each of us aligned ourselves appropriately to her behavior. The others watched her backside.

  I understood now: the facility played on our heterosexual attraction, our desire for female approval.

  She led us into the weapons station I’d glimpsed yesterday, brought us to a dark anteroom with racks along the walls. “Watch the video, pick up a tanto, start your training.”

  And then she left us alone.

  They like their videos in Ides. We waited until a hologram appeared, another Scarlet explaining the use of blades. I’d been designed with perfect memory, so each concept only needed explaining once. She demonstrated self-defense and disarming, and 8022, 8023, and I mimed her motions.

  8013 stood off to the side, arms folded. If they woke one of us per day, that meant 8013 was at least twelve days old. He'd been through twelve more weapons trainings than I had.

  And it showed: he wasn't even watching the hologram. He was watching me.

  Within fifteen minutes we were on to offense training. The hologram demonstrated with a tanto as the simplest weapon, the one we would carry with us always. Easily concealed, easily brought to hand, and easily the deadliest (if used right).

  I closed my eyes with the movements, committing them to my muscles. I intuited that if I lost too many fights during my trainings, I would be recycled. They were watching, always watching.

  Beside me, I heard a voice. My own voice, but it sounded raspier. Mocking. "Blaze."

  I knew it was 8013.

  "That's me," I said, my voice barely audible above the trainer's. I couldn't stop listening to her; I knew 8013 was trying to distract me, keep me from fully absorbing the training. So my body kept moving, a good 50% of my brain still devoted to memorizing the motions.

  "You and me, first duel," 8013 said, and I could feel his breath on my cheek. "If I win, no more unearned nickname."

  My eyes opened, flicked to 8013. His gaze bored into mine, our faces not six inches apart.

  I smiled. "It's not safe, standing this close."

  "Side swipe," the hologram instructed, demonstrating the motion.

  And then my left hand flicked out, stopped right beside where 8013's heart beat in his chest. If I'd been holding a tanto, it would have gone straight in. "If I win, you'll study up on personal space."

  Neither of us moved. We didn't even blink.

  The truth was, I had nothing against 8013. And I knew he had nothing against me. We were just two tigers who'd been thrown into the same cage, and neither of us was prepared to accede that space.

  The hologram flickered as it completed the second half of the training. “All right, infiltrators,” she said. “Please select a tanto from the wall and pair off.”

  I straightened, turned to 8013. He might have been there longer, gotten to know the cage's dimensions, but I had an advantage.

  I wouldn't ever be put down.

  Over the intercom, our Scarlet directed us into separate training rooms. 8013 and I stepped into a square room so glaringly white I nearly had to squint. Above us, LEDs buzzed, sending our bodies into harsh light. We'd stripped down to the standard ivory boxer-briefs we’d been assigned, and both of us held our tantos in our left hands.

  Clever: while our model was ambidextrous, we universally preferred the left hand. A genetic variation present in so little of the human populace that it could potentially throw off our opponents.

  But who were those opponents? What were we being trained for
?

  Those were questions I wasn’t allowed to ask.

  The floor was hard, without cushion. A good deterrent to falling, to losing. My eyes flicked around the room, saw the one-way glass, and I wondered who was watching on the other side. My Scarlet?

  This was training, but it was also testing.

  8013 crossed to the other side of the room, turned to me. Where my body was a great swath of unbroken skin, he bore scars. Dozens of them. One sat on a diagonal right across the center of his chest.

  He’d been tried more than once—many times—and he’d won.

  “All right, 8013 and 8024. Begin,” came our Scarlet's voice. Well, the question of who was watching on the other side had been answered.

  I dropped into a fighting stance, my feet separating. And as though I was watching myself in a mirror, 8013 did the same. When we came at each other, it was at an identical pace, our bare feet slapping across the floor. And right before we met, Darcy West’s face appeared in my mind. I wanted to see that face again. I wanted to hear that voice.

  I wanted to win.

  My eyes were on 8013’s tanto—the first rule of fighting: keep your eyes on the weapon. That was the only reason I survived when he tossed the blade into his right hand and side-stepped me to deliver it straight into my back.

  We were instructed to make only shallow cuts. He was going straight for a kill.

  I lunged forward, and the blade only entered an inch into my body. I gritted my teeth as it penetrated my skin and muscle, whisked back out. Through the adrenaline, I hardly felt the incision.

  My mouth quirked. This was good; he saw me as real competition.

  “8013, none of that,” came our Scarlet's voice. She hadn't realized what 8013 had attempted to do. That, or....

  But before I could process that thought, I turned and straightened, found 8013’s eyes lit on me.

  We came together in a flurry, blocking each other’s feet. His hand came down for a strike, and I deflected with my forearm, sweeping around and under to drag my tanto across his back. It made sweet contact, and before he had the chance to grunt, I drove the heel of my right palm into his back, pushing him forward.