by A. L. Davroe
I shove at him, rejecting him, and stumble back to my feet. “No. No, it’s not.”
I hear him half sigh, half growl in frustration and a light-stick snaps on, bathing Quentin’s soaking-wet features in white. He looks up at me, examines me hard. “A simple thank you would suffice.”
I touch my lips, hating the phantom warmth of him because I know his lips should be Gus’s. “You kissed me. Again!”
Quentin smirks at me. “Oh, come on. I kiss better than that.”
I frown at him. “What were you doing then?”
He lifts a hand and shoves a lock of sopping hair away from his forehead. “It’s called mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. You do it when someone stops breathing.”
Stops breathing? Me? “I was—”
He rocks to his feet and I try not to look at how his wet uniform clings to his muscles. “You wanna tell me why you decided to take a dive off a cliff when you quite obviously didn’t intend on a swim?”
I blink at him, muddle-brained. “Swim?”
“Yeah,” he says, his brows quirked. “It’s that thing you do to prevent yourself from drowning. I know you’re capable of it. You should try it sometime. Might add a year or two to the end of my life.” He lets out a breath and shakes his head. “Sparks, I thought that was the end of you.”
I look away, my face suddenly hot, and attempt to loop my hair behind my ear, but the curls have turned to soggy cords. “I’m sorry.”
He shoots me a sidelong glance, examines me for a long time. “You all right?”
I shake my head.
He straightens a little, his expression concerned. “What happened?”
“I—” The image comes back, reminding me that near death doesn’t excuse you from the haunts of visions past. I close my eyes, ashamed of how illogical and stupid and fragile I can sometimes be. “I can’t.”
I turn and try to walk. I have to move, have to do something.
Quentin keeps pace. “Stop.”
I shake my head, try limping away faster because I don’t want to deal with him. All I want right now is to bury my face in Gus’s chest and cry my heart out. But he’s not here. He’s with Delia…I hope. Circuits, what if something has happened to either of them? I couldn’t live. I quicken my pace, fleeing from the awful thought. Quentin grasps for me, I try to pull away, but he’s stronger. He has my wrist, pulls me to a stop and swings me around, pinning me against the rock wall. I continue to struggle because I’m afraid of stopping, of looking at what has to be examined inside me and outside in this cave.
“Stop. Stop it,” he growls, shaking me.
I still, his tone and strength making me go limp in his grasp. I brace myself against his chest, the tears falling hot and stinging. And suddenly I need to say it, I need someone to know, to validate what I just saw, tell me it’s not some nightmare I conjured. So, I give up the ghost that’s chasing me. “It’s my fault. All of this is my fault.”
Quentin doesn’t respond, but I know he suddenly understands by the sudden loss of agitated bite to his grip. I was manipulated. I was an instrument. I did this all unknowingly. But it doesn’t change that I am the one who did it. It does not and will not make the guilt ever go away. It only increases my need to right the wrongs. But I’ve let these people down even more and that just makes me fear my responsibility to help the remaining survivors all the worse. He must be feeling all these same things.
A moment later, his fingers are sliding over my cheeks, stealing away the tears. “Don’t cry,” he whispers.
I jerk away, making him retreat to placing his arms to either side of me. “Maybe you can prevent yourself, but I can’t. Just let me cry.”
He doesn’t respond, just stands close, his arms and body like a shield against the world, his head bent low as if to commiserate, and he lets me sob myself dry.
When it feels like I’ve drained my soul and there’s nothing but burning eyes and sniffles, I try to stand taller, but my legs are shaking with spent adrenaline and Quentin has to grab my elbows to keep me from falling.
“Easy,” he says. “Let’s try and find Faulk and Aaron. I’m sure they’re looking for us. I’ll take a look at your leg again when we get back.”
“I don’t want to go back,” I snap. I shake my head. That’s not really what I want. “I don’t want to go back to that expectation. Not yet.” I’m cold, wet, utterly miserable, and so sick of fighting. So sick of people dying and leaving me to see it. Part of me wishes he would have just let me die in that water, but the other part tells it to shut up and deal with the problem because at least I’m alive. “They were attacked, weren’t they?”
“Yes, it looks that way. I haven’t stopped to take it in yet.”
“I-I saw her body.” I slide down the rock, plop on the floor. He follows me down, sits across from me. “Veronica.”
He grimaces. “I was afraid of that. She must have gone off alone. She did that a lot.”
I shake my head. “What if… What if they’re all dead?” I whimper. “Bastian? Violet? Delia? What if Gus is dead?”
“He’s not dead,” he says, voice quiet and eyes on the ground. “Of him, at least, I’m certain.”
I blink at him. “How can you be so sure?”
He stares at me. There’s something he’s trying to decide whether he should tell me. He gets that look.
“Quentin,” I say, dropping my voice in warning that he better be open with me.
He’s obviously thinking, trying to figure out where to start, what to tell me, what to exclude, probably the best way to sum it all up. “When we were younger and he got his first Modification, he didn’t take it so well. My mom sent him home. She thought it would be good for him to spend some time with family.”
“He told me about it. He went home, and Max beat him, so he went back to the Cyr estate.”
Quentin taps his knee for a moment. “That’s what he believes. That’s what we told him happened.” He breathes in a rush. Then, as if relieved, he adds, “But he didn’t walk home that night.”
I crunch my brow, confused. “Then how’d he get back?”
Quentin’s jaw muscles flex and he takes a deep breath. “They sent him home. In a shipping container.”
“What?” I gasp. “A shipping container?”
He nods. “He arrived two days after they packed him in it.” He makes a bitter noise in his throat and shakes his head. “It was so small. Too small. I remember thinking that.” He lifts his hand, places it against his upper lip, and talks against his fingers. “Before they pulled him out and I really saw. Then I couldn’t think at all. I just stared. I couldn’t help it. The way the blood had settled, the unnatural angles of his joints and neck, the glazed look in his eyes. They’d beaten him. Tortured him. To make an example, I suppose.”
I suddenly can’t breathe. My chest feels so tight that I’m not sure if my heart is even beating anymore. “He was…” I swallow, unable to finish.
“Dead.” He lowers his head as if nodding. “Or at least so close to it that for all intents and purposes he might as well have been.” His voice is clipped and rises and falls a few octaves as he speaks. It’s obvious that recalling whatever horrific scene he remembers is traumatizing. “His brain was still alive, but badly damaged. He was comatose and completely paralyzed. Vegetative. Eventually, everything just gave out and the only thing keeping him alive were the machines.” He lifts a shaking hand and runs trembling fingers through his ghostly hair. “I kept thinking, ‘It’s all my fault. I did this to him. If I were better, if I didn’t need to be perfect, this wouldn’t have happened.’ I hated everyone. Me, my father and mother, his mother and brother. I even hated him for doing this to himself, for being a Doll.”
“So,” I say, trying to understand. “What happened? Some kind of medical advancement? How did you bring him back to life?”
He shakes his head. “Not medical. No matter how advanced certain medicines are, they’ll never be able to do certain things. The human brain,
you can regrow it, but you can’t recreate a person just as they were or transfer sections of memory into a new brain. We’re not that advanced yet. But technology… That’s different.” His eyes lift. “It was my mother’s idea. She’d always loved Guster like a son, and she blamed herself as much as I blamed myself for what happened. She said he’d died too young, that he’d lived too harsh a life for that to be all he had. She wanted him to live. So, she brought your father and uncle in.”
I blink, stunned. “Dad and Uncle Simon? What did they have to do with anything?”
“Along with Nexis, your father had another pet project. Something he began working on after your mother died. He was developing better android operating systems, creating androids with more autonomous personalities and a wider range of emotional capabilities. I believe your house android was the original prototype.”
I unconsciously touch the personality chip at my breast. “Meems.”
“Yes. He always said that he’d hoped he could bring your mother back one day.”
I grimace. “You can’t bring back the dead.”
Quentin doesn’t take his eyes off of the ground. “You couldn’t be more wrong. It took a few months, but eventually they developed a near-perfect operating system. They re-created his body out of a fusion of prosthetic technology and regrown biological material. Mom wanted him stronger, a better Doll, capable of acting as my bodyguard and also able to withstand whatever his Disfavored family might throw at him, so she Customized him. His body is capable of things most Customized humans are not—things only my family has access to. Then, they uploaded what was left of his mind.”
“Wait, what?” I breathe, confused. “What are you saying? Gus is a-an android?”
Quentin glances at me, his expression uneasy, as if he’s afraid of how I’m taking the news. “Cyborg, really.”
My jaw drops. Gus is a cyborg? I shake my head. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you like. It’s the truth.”
I clench my teeth, mentally denying it all. I can’t help but look up, some morbid need to see something, anything, to prove Quentin wrong, and I study him. In just a few days he’s changed so much. His Alts fading, the grief and fatigue taking bits of his youth and beauty with gusto. I stare at them and think of the last time I saw Gus—his straight back and shoulders, his fret-free face and bright eyes, his strong body. His Alts that didn’t fade like everyone else’s. I never actually saw him eat. Never saw him sleep. And he never seemed winded when we were running around during the attacks.
“Why didn’t he say something about it? Why would he talk about sleeping if he was a cyborg?”
Quentin stares at his hands. “Because he doesn’t know he’s a cyborg. He thinks he’s a real person.”
All I can do is gawk at Quentin as if he’s slapped me. It feels like he has.
“The ruse to keep him thinking he was a real person was all orchestrated. Real-time downloads for organic experiences like eating, sleeping, defecating, pain, and pleasure. He’d be transferred into a new unit twice annually to exhibit growth and puberty.”
At my stunned silence, he rubs his hand across his cheek. He’s so drawn and tired looking. He’d always been an obelisk, an ivory tower, but now he’s just real. So very real that I don’t want to look hard, because I might see myself reflected in his eyes. “We thought it would be best.”
“Best,” I scoff. “He’s living a lie! You brought him back from the dead so that he could be your Doll! Do you know how sick that is?”
Quentin pins me with an acidic glare. “I don’t regret what they did! I loved him more than anything and losing him was like dying myself. You’ve lost friends and family, Elle, don’t you dare tell me that you wouldn’t bring them back if you could.”
“But you’ve lied to him. He can’t have a normal life. He’s a freak of nature.”
Quentin sits back and takes a long inhale, his expression stony. “Is he? Is that what you thought of your android? Was she less to you because she wasn’t a real person? If your father had eventually uploaded your mother into a similar unit to Gus’s, would you have shunned her as anything less than your mother?”
“My mother is dead,” I hiss. “There is no bringing her back, even if she was an android or a cyborg or whatever. Her mind and personality would be gone.”
Quentin breathes a dark chuckle, his eyes rolling. “You know so very little, don’t you.”
I scowl at him, confused. “Don’t I?”
He gives me a knowing expression. “Your mother and father were two of the most brilliant Programmers Evanescence ever had. Do you honestly think Evanescence wouldn’t upload and periodically back them up while they were still considered useful to the cause? My father may have done away with their physical forms, but he never erased their data. They’re very much alive, not in the flesh, but somewhere on the Main Frame. Just. Like. You.” He reaches out and touches my forehead, right where my scar is.
My teeth make a clacking noise as I slam my mouth shut. Is that even possible? I suppose it is. I mean, the Aristocrats change out body parts all the time, have them grown anew. But making copies of the brain? If they could transfer sections of Gus’s brain into a nearly android body, why couldn’t they put entire brains into all android bodies? “Why haven’t I heard of this?”
Quentin hoods his eyes. “There’s a lot you and everyone else in Evanescence don’t know,” he mutters darkly. “And it would have stayed that way, even if my mother or I became President. It’s best that way.”
I find my fingers tracing the chips. Two of the three chips are identities. My father. Meems. Why did I take them? What would I do if I could bring them back? I couldn’t possibly. They’re dead. Dead is dead, I can’t play God. I shake my head. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring Mom or Dad back. It’s wrong. They’re human beings, not playthings.”
Quentin’s chest collapses as he lets out a long exhale. “What about your android?”
Meems. Meems, who was nothing but a computer program. Before Evanescence fell, android personalities got transferred into new chasises all the time. Dad had even wanted to transfer her once.
What would Meems think of a new body if I gave her one? She’d never wanted new skin. Her skin was her own, she made that clear. She’d hate it if I gave her a new body. But I’d do it anyway; I’d do it just to have her back and hope she forgave me. “I-It’s different.”
“How?”
“I’d tell her, for one.”
“What if you could give her a body exactly like hers? What if you could save her the pain of knowing her own death? What if she could live exactly how she was?”
I shake my head. “Still, it’s not right. He should know.”
“He would have demanded we kill him.”
I look away, knowing Quentin is right. His whole body being a machine? Gus wouldn’t be able to live like that in his false skin. He’d question everything he was, everything he’d ever done. Right down to his feelings for Delia and me.
“Wait, if he’s a cyborg, then…” The word dies on a squeak, and I clear my throat. “How’d he play the game?”
Quentin lifts his chin and stares into my eyes for what seems like an eternity then looks away, his Adam’s Apple bobbing and his eyes glistening in the yellow light between us. “Gus first found out about the game from listening to Warren discuss it with my mother. He was obsessed with the idea of being able to create a new life, to make different choices. It was only a matter of time before he began playing it, so we prepared accordingly.”
“We?”
“Me, my mother, Simon, your father, the other Dolls.” His eyes lift and search over the far side of the tunnel, as if he’s uncomfortable. “We knew he wouldn’t be able to play. Synthetic life forms can’t play virtual reality games, or VR systems aren’t yet compatible with the biological and neural layout of synthetic life forms. Simon wanted to just download virtual experiences like we’d been doing for his other life functions. B
ut your father didn’t think that would be fair to Gus.”
“Fair?” I whisper. My voice sounds hollow and strained to me.
Quentin bobs his head. “Gus had never expressed a desire to carry out life functions. We just gave him those to maintain the guise of reality. But he’d expressed a desire to play, and Warren wanted to honor that. He wanted to give Gus the most authentic experience possible. We discussed everything from creating a virtual avatar programmed with his personality profile to creating experiences from scratch and playing them out like movies in his mind. But the issue was creating a truly organic experience for him. Something reactive and true to being in an entirely new world. Something that elicited true joy and wonder, which are hard to manufacture in AI. Eventually, we decided that someone would go into the game for Gus, play his avatar as he would want it. He’d act exactly as Gus might act and as he played, the experiences he had in the game would be downloaded into Gus’s memory. He’d wake thinking he’d played the game.”
My chest feels tight. “Who played him?”
Quentin won’t look at me. “You already know the answer to that question.”
“Still,” I breathe, “I need to hear it. To know it’s true.”
Quentin licks his lips. “I did.” It’s a tight, almost inaudible response. He puts his hand on his knee and stares at it. “My mother didn’t want me to do it. She said that if he ever found out, he’d never forgive me. But…” He pauses, his gaze tracing his broad palm and strong fingers. “I’m the only one close enough to him. He’s my best friend, my brother. We know each other better than we know ourselves, I think. And I’m certainly the only one he ever told certain things to—things like what he felt about you…” His fingers tense on his knees, biting into the skin. “I’m the only one who could have believably played him.”
“So all that? That was you?”
Why is this all so shocking? I already knew. Deep down, I knew. My confusion between the two of them—times when I thought it was Gus and it was actually Quent; the way Quentin acts around me; Gus’s confusion at somehow being in love with two different girls.
