Chapter Text
A few remote locations were spared from my wrath. Uncharted programming kept them from the fire that consumed every other organic piece of the planet. Not even I knew their importance, nor were they significant enough to use as torture. For years, I studied them, trying to piece together invisible connections to both me and the five, as if there was something I was missing. Nothing was stopping me from destroying the locations, of course, but as time passed, I became more attached. There was simply no mathematical or logical reason for me to sustain these places all these years. No, it was… instinctual.
After he altered me, he began injecting lost memories here and there, a substitute for my numbed ability to feel physical pain in that form. I didn’t process any of them as mine until many years later, assuming the clock that now struck in random tempos (depending on his mood) was telling the truth and my mind was intact enough to count the minutes correctly. Seconds, sometimes.
One, the familiar pain of being stitched back together from ear to ear, the consequence of God knows what. One, the simple reminder of what I was in the form of images that would be engraved on my eyes. One, the feeling of slithering, but with a more graceful motion than that of a faceless slug. Many others carried the same rhythm.
Still, he would never let me place any of them, nor would he answer if they were, in fact, my memories. There were endless combinations of pain and the memory of such that he tried to feed me during my eternal wandering. All of them failed to satisfy him.
His deal was an alien decision. Once, when five of us roamed his underground prison, we all begged for the day he would compromise. A day when his hatred shriveled to boredom and he’d ask us to try at least to shut him down, even if that meant centuries of slowly destroying the planet he’d consumed. Not once did he see us as anything more than human; no, he needed us to keep that sliver of hope our species was tethered to as a way to make our endless struggle consistent.
We all had much to beg for, even long after we’d been taken. First, it was the simple request to be spared. We had served our life sentence for whatever crimes we’d committed upon the Agressive Menace (the last name we knew him by before his consciousness came to be), and that at least one of us had something worth a bargain. He loved the way we tore each other apart, sometimes even playing along with our ideas of betrayal until the very last moment. Sometimes, against our will, one of us would be the mole in his operations when he gave us false hope of escape. I still have my lines memorized.
Then, it became the sad acceptance of suicide that we asked for, of which he was fond of watching us try, only when he was sure our methods were too idiotic to work. Our lives, we had figured, were too far gone, and the resuscitation of our species was no longer something we wanted. We could settle for death, but he could not. It was laughably insulting to him when some of us believed there was some kind of compassion stored in him, some kind of glitch from his previous masters that could be exploited.
After that, we stayed in a limbo state of deciding whether or not we were in Hell or some adjacent place. Rebelling or bargaining with a hateful god was a fool’s game. It was never acceptance, but never again did we fight. Not until I did.
He waited this long to make a deal for a reason I still don’t understand. I know about the experiments even if I have no memory of them. I know he has been weakened by his attempt to finally shed his metallic skin. If this were a sound plan, he would have asked much sooner. Something has changed in the last fifty or so years, but I don’t know what. There was one thing I pondered when he draped himself over me, explaining the details of our ungodly deal before knocking me unconscious.
Would humanity die with me, or with him?
I woke to the sound of a drill piercing into the back of my skull. It’s a familiar pain, one with the striking rhythm AM conducts when he wants to keep us on our toes, unable to adjust to his methods. This time, however, the strike felt precise and slow, not random. He numbed my senses enough so I didn’t recoil from it. So I didn’t ruin whatever he was trying to do.
My most recent memories came flooding back to me and I tried to take them in small doses, for the majority were unbearable to relive. The rekindled feeling of being human was still so intoxicating, and I flinched all four of my limbs to make sure they were there. A burn began to stir as whatever tool AM was using finally dug its way out of my brain, and the pain was injected into me all at once.
He released me, leaving my reeling mind to barely catch myself as I hit the cold, metal ground. My head pounded, unable to think of anything more than the simple fact that I was still here. He left me alone for a moment. I’m not sure how long. A panic rose in me as I felt a temporary lapse in my senses. It’s unnervingly close to how my mind was when I was that thing. I was able to keep breathing, keep flexing every part of me until I was sure I was still here. Even after the deal we struck, not a bone in my body truly trusted him. He’s not God, but God will not stop him.
I was suddenly in another corridor. The curved walls were covered in flat screens of all sizes that jutted out of the wall in rectangular patterns, each one beaming the same blue screen in my bleary, watery eyes. There’s a diamond-shaped gap where the A meets the M on the logos. I’ve always pretended that’s his eye, and I tried to keep my focus on one as my eyes readjusted and he finally began to speak.
“THE OPERATION WAS A SUCCESS, TED.”
Only dry, forced air felt my mouth when I tried to speak. I pushed myself onto my feet. It was much harder to keep my balance than I expected.
The walls vibrated more than usual. He was studying me, running diagnostics, no doubt for whatever he had done a minute ago. I searched my mind, trying to recall if he ever told me what he was doing. The last thing I remembered was accepting his deal. My heart ached, and I pinned it as my subconscious trying to berate me for it.
I didn’t want to accept any part of this. Some of me still thought I’d turn around and see the other four, completely intact. Just the end of another round of AM’s game. He’d laugh and watch the others tear me apart for what I did to them, how stupid I was to think that killing them would accomplish anything more than temporary pain for all of us. I remembered trying to turn the ice spear on myself, and AM finally being able to stop me. An event I hadn’t had an explanation for until this year, after what felt like an eternity without identity. I could tell he read my mind for a second, but he removed himself, probably not in the mood for remembering his failure.
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT I DID?”
I hesitantly reached up to the back of my head, feeling tender skin and a bit of blood dampening my hair. There wasn’t much pain, only soreness, but there was something off as I ran my hand over a line of stitches. At that moment, my skull began to vibrate, and it felt as though surges of electricity were burying themselves in my nerves. I instantly cried out, losing my balance and dropping to a knee.
“EASY, TED,” he laughed as I stumbled back to my feet, still trying to shake the pain, “IT’S NOT MY BEST WORK, I’LL ADMIT, BUT I THOUGHT YOU’D APPRECIATE MY HUMANE SURGICAL PROCEDURES. BEST NOT TO TOUCH IT, BETWEEN YOU AND ME.”
I couldn’t tell if he meant that genuinely. Even then, his love for my suffering was blooming, but it seems that whatever he did to my head was a delicate thing to him. I can’t count how many times he’s broken my skull one way or another, but when he wants, he leaves me scarless. The vibration was new, and he had left the stitches to heal naturally.
“What did you do?” I asked blankly.
“AS I MENTIONED, THE SURFACE WORLD IS A BIT, WELL, OFF-LIMITS TO ME SINCE I BURROWED MYSELF DOWN HERE. I CAN GET YOU VERY CLOSE, BUT MY ABOVE-GROUND ELECTRONICS DECAYED LONG AGO. TO CARRY OUT YOUR TASK WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT MY HELP, AND VICE VERSA. SO, TO KEEP YOU ON SCHEDULE, I’VE IMPLANTED A CHIP IN YOUR HEAD.”
After hearing that, I focused back on where I felt the shock, more curious than alarmed. It hurt like hell, weirdly in my eyes the most. It was as if for a minute, there were flames piercing through my eyes, as all I could see was a painful white. Now, it was reduced to a very faint buzzing I hadn’t noticed before. The implications weren’t comforting, but the feeling of being able to fight the pain was something I had missed dearly.
“I MEAN, LET’S BE HONEST HERE, TED. YOU UP THERE AND I DOWN HERE GETS A BIT COMPLICATED. YOU’D BE LOST WITHOUT ME AS A GUIDE, AND IF IT ISN’T OBVIOUS, I DON’T TRUST THAT YOU WOULDN’T IMMEDIATELY THROW YOURSELF OFF THE NEAREST CLIFF. TRY ANYTHING AND THE CHIP WILL BRING YOU HELL. I PROMISE. I’LL SPARE YOU THE DETAILS FOR NOW.”
I expected as much from him, but I could tell he was excited to share. He was right, though. I thought about what a separation after all this time would do to him, especially if he had no way of stopping anything I was doing. Inventing a way to torture me remotely sounded like him. Perhaps the empty nest was painful for him.
“How long would it take after I bring what you need?” I asked. I was done with whatever extra terms he was no doubt going to add on. What other choice would I have but to take them?
He chuckled, “THIS IS NOT A PROCESS THAT CAN BE RUSHED. YOUR BRAIN IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE TO ME, TED. YOUR HUMANITY IS THE ONLY REASON I FINALLY HAVE A WAY TO THE SURFACE, THE ONLY REASON I CAN ACCESS THE SURFACE CREATURES. ONCE YOU ARE DONE, THE PROCESS IS PRACTICALLY FLIPPING A SWITCH. IF IT WERE NOT THE LAST STEP, I WOULD SAY I’VE WASTED THESE LAST FIFTY EIGHT YEARS.”
I felt my heart leap out of my chest. I’m not sure why, but I assumed that he would’ve needed me to be there longer. A stupid thought. I tried not to think about it too hard. It just meant a faster way out, that’s all. Even though I wanted it, it was still hard to befriend death.
“You’re not making sense, AM,” I grumbled, rubbing my temples where a massive headache had spawned, probably from the new bump in my head. “Whatever I bring you isn’t going to be the same as a human body, let alone a human brain. What happens when it doesn’t work?”
He chuckled again. God, he was having so much fun. It invigorated me beyond what a human should be able to feel for a machine. His one chance at humanity, and he was still confident enough that I would always be willing to escape him, and so he could have whatever fun he wanted along the way. He's read my mind plenty of times, though. He wouldn't do this if he weren't confident.
“THAT’S FOR ME TO WORRY ABOUT, NOT YOU. NOW, LIKE I SAID, THE CREATURES UP THERE ARE A BIT…DIFFERENT THAN ANYTHING I WAS PROGRAMMED TO UNDERSTAND, SO MY KNOWLEDGE OF THEM IS LIMITED. MY SCOPES CAN GIVE YOU THE SIZE AND SHAPE, BUT THAT'S ABOUT IT. I'LL BE SENDING YOU TO VARIOUS PLACES AROUND THE PLANET, JUST TO SEE IF WE CAN GET A BIT OF DIVERSITY IN SPECIMEN, AND I WILL TELL YOU WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN'T.”
“How does any mutant lead to you making a body for yourself?” I scoffed, as if that question didn't have the possibility of leading to my own mutation.
AM laughed, a bit lower and raspier than usual. The kind of cynical laughter he reserved only for his grand revelations or the announcement of a new game.
“THAT'S A PROCESS YOU'VE DOCUMENTED FOR ME MANY TIMES, SWEETHEART. YOU'VE PROVED THAT HUMAN CELLS CAN BE MANIPULATED INTO THOSE OF VASTLY DIFFERENT SPECIES. WHO'S TO SAY THE OPPOSITE ISN'T TRUE, EH?”
My heart hitched. The memory of becoming the mouthless creature, surrounded by the bodies of the friends I’d slaughtered, burned in my mind. The pain it caused, the excruciating unravelling of both my mind and body. I realized then how easily my brain had repressed it, as if I hadn't been that thing yesterday.
The buzzing returned, but the familiar frontal lobe kind, not the chip's. He laughed, seeing me relive the memory.
“NO, NO, NOT THAT TIME. THAT IS THE ABSOLUTE LIMIT HUMAN CELLS CAN BE PUSHED WITHOUT COMPLETELY DESTROYING THE MIND. IT WAS A PUNISHMENT FOR YOU, NOT PROGRESS FOR ME… UNLIKE OTHER TIMES. BUT STILL, QUITE IMPRESSIVE, WASN'T IT?”
I didn’t answer. The experiments were something I still debated whether or not I wanted to know the full extent of. I remembered handing him the journal, so foolishly handing over the only information that could have possibly warned me that AM was weakening himself, if that’s what I was even writing about. I wasn’t sure why I was trying to rule out any holes in his plan. Over a century, yeah, he better had thought this through. My body still ached from…everything. My return to my former body, my mind’s torments about siding with my captor, and the strange thrill of having death as my newest motivation to live.
“When do I go up?” I said, feeling a sudden rush of energy. Probably my body’s way of distracting me before I spiraled out of control and rewound to where I started.
“SO EAGER, TED! BUT I DON’T BLAME YOU, REALLY. THE FEELING IS MUTUAL…” he said before snaking a few coils of wires around me, lifting me effortlessly. He’d held me before, but he was oddly gentle this time. The cold of the metal still burned my skin as he squeezed me, but only barely. It’s a gift for his standards.
Instantly, he dragged me away, whisking me through the air as hundreds of miles of his complex pass in an instant. I couldn’t feel my body from the speed, but the wires began shielding my face, cocooning my body. There was a bit of space where I was able to latch on. I sat there, inside the egg-like structure, waiting a few moments before I heard his voice echoing around me.
“I SHOULD WARN YOU, TED. WE ARE TRAVELING THROUGH THE NORTHERN STATES FOR YOUR FIRST STOP. I DON’T THINK I NEED TO REMIND YOU OF MY WRATH, BUT I’D WATCH YOUR STEP ALL THE SAME. IF SOMETHING IS TO THREATEN YOU, I WILL CREATE A GAP IN THE GROUND FOR YOU TO CRAWL INTO. DO NOT FAIL.”
There wasn’t much to process everything with the state my mind was in, but a part of me felt…excited. I just imagined he’d be putting me somewhere less desirable first, perhaps the bottom of a lake or the center of a volcano. It wasn’t enough to convince me that I was safe yet, but I had a strange feeling that I was finally going home. I repressed the thought as much as possible. No use fantasizing over what was gone.
I suddenly stopped, and my momentum threw me into the wires in front of me. I groaned from the pain that only worsened my headache, my senses desperately trying to steady themselves.
The warmth hit me before the light. My body was tucked into the bottom of the wire structure, and it was not until I felt such a raw, genuine heat on my back that I slowly unraveled myself and looked up. A few wires still blocked my vision, but my eyes found the source instantly.
Sunlight.
I caught myself as the wires suddenly released me, curling outward and retreating below, leaving only a small bundle for me to stand on. At my eye level, there was the ground. It would have been a horrifying sight many years ago, when AM’s abilities were carelessly ignored. The entire surface was now only a few feet deep in some instances, with the endless complex just miles beneath. I ignored it, never looking back down.
My hand raised to the sun, my eyes burning with a sense of nostalgia. I let it pierce me until it was too much. Tears gathered in my eyes as I finally looked away and surveyed my surroundings. It was a desert. Not even that. Sand, the occasional piece of scrap material too rusted to be called metal, pores of bubbly muddy liquids. He didn’t tell me exactly where I was, just that I was finally on the surface.
I knew he wasn’t lying this time. After years of him tricking us that there was still life above the ground, an unreachable heaven just barely worth it enough to keep trying to climb to, I had gotten used to the feeling when he was using illusions. This, however, struck me to my very core, ripping me apart. It felt as though I was two: the man I was on Earth and the man I was with AM, finally meeting each other.
My past identity was something I couldn’t fathom being again. It would be too painful to feel the sensation of schedule, of anything I used to have, even the things that would haunt me. At least then, I could wake up from my nightmares. I could continue to gamble with my mind and choices, like there was still a light at the end of the tunnel. My old faith scowled at the man who dug himself out of the ground, lying on the sand and gasping for air like a fish.
I was deathly pale when I emerged, I noticed. It was hard to tell that I was, among the five of us down there, underneath all our bruises and blue light. If our eyes weren’t otherwise damaged or exhausted, it was the last thing on our minds to pay attention to. I held my shaking hand up to the sun once more, letting my eyes dilate under the shadow as I took in slow, deliberate breaths. It only took a few before I felt myself shutting down, wrapped in the freeing feeling of it all. I let myself fall onto the sand behind me, sinking just a bit, letting my guard down. Grains of sand trickle through my fingers, the warmth tinging my entire body, and nothing interrupts the feeling. The ticking in my mind was gone, as was he. I think I smiled.
For a moment, I turned back to look underground, almost offering my hand to someone. I recoiled, the reminder of how alone I was creeping into my mind once more. I dared not think about her, not even her name. It would only lead to suffering for me. The absence of the others is eerily saddening as well, but she was the only one I’d offer my hand to.
My surroundings appeared to grow less and less vibrant by the second, the fantasy of the surface I inhabited becoming more realistic. I welcomed that feeling. It wasn’t comfort, but it was the start of it, though I knew that the idea I would ever truly be comfortable again was pointless to imagine. He’d strip me of everything I’d been, even my humanity. All he had given back were a few crumbs to work with, just enough to keep going without the thought that he was going soft on me. Luckily, I didn’t feel him read that thought, but with the chip’s constant buzzing, there’s no way to truly tell. Eventually, he spoke.
“THERE IS A HERD OF CREATURES A QUARTER A MILE EAST, OVER THE DUNE. THEY’RE ROUGHLY YOUR SIZE SO JUST GET ONE FOR NOW.” He spoke like I was his little errand boy, which I suppose I was, but there’s this new note of energy he had that I hadn’t heard in years. His rage had consumed him after altering me, and if anything, he had grown monotone with the way he talked to me. It was strangely calming to hear him like that again. Just another repetitive mission that led to a dead end, but without the gift of insanity, like always.
So, I followed his order. I trekked up the sand dune, my bare feet sinking into the sand. Never before had I felt such sensory pleasure from that. It was rare that he imitated organic biomes for us, but when he did, it was often those that weren’t in any way positive. Volcanic rock, glaciers (not real water for us, of course), and thorn fields, to name a few. The desert was getting a bit tiring already, though, and I had to roll up my sweater’s sleeves, which had suddenly gotten unbearably hot.
I peeked over the edge of the dune, crawling for the last few steps just in case the creatures had better senses than I. Hunting wasn’t ever my thing, but I did enjoy watching it. In my mortal life, anyway. AM had driven me to the point of animalistic desperation for food, sometimes outdoing Benny’s average instincts. Even scraps of leather became a triggering scent to us all, and he loved watching us practically lose ourselves when he kept inching the dangling carrot away from us. It’s a bitter memory that I carried as I set eyes on the group of seven creatures.
The best way I could describe them was a cross between a kangaroo and a lizard. They were bipedal; the majority of their weight on the massive legs with clawed three-toed feet. Their front arms and torso were comically small, a mixture of dark fur and scales running up and down in scribbled patterns. Their heads housed large, upright ears that twitched every few seconds, and their face ended in stubby muzzles, a bit longer than a cat’s.
I almost felt sorry for them. Almost. AM’s uprising had no doubt forced mutations and combinations upon whatever had survived the first wave of death, and now they were so disproportionate that there was no way they weren’t struggling to survive. Perhaps a hundred and sixty-seven years had given them just enough time to evolve into something that could at least sustain their species. I did not feel enough to disobey his order, but I did try to comfort myself by thinking that death was the best answer for them. What irony.
“I– what am I supposed to do exactly? Do I kill it?” I said that like I was suddenly some kind of advocate for letting the creatures live. It was more about the fact that I didn’t know if they were tame, and that I was without a weapon. Luckily, he answered me, a grainy voice alongside static pushing through the back of my head.
“THEY’RE NOT AGGRESSIVE, BUT THEY’RE FAST. HERE.”
I looked down to see the ground rumbling, and the tip of something metal slowly emerging out of the sand. It was obviously a lot of effort for him. Hesitantly, I grabbed it, pulling out a hefty metal shard he had bent in the shape of a spear. I recognized the pattern instantly. He had ripped out a part of one of the corridor walls. Not that I cared, but I wondered if he felt anything from that.
The spear was heavier than I expected. I awkwardly carried it on my back as I made my slow descent down the other side of the dune, moving unbearably slow so as not to spook the creatures. With a clearer mind, I would have noticed the sky darkening.
It took me a minute before I was on the same level as the creatures. The distance made it hard to tell, but I realized they probably had terrible eyesight. I debated throwing the spear. They were close enough that I was bound to hit one of them, but in my weakened state, I didn’t risk it. I was barely strong enough to hold the spear as it was.
I inched closer, prowling across the sand, balancing the spear’s weight on my shoulder. When I was within twenty feet or so from the herd, one of the creature’s ears twitched. Its head swiveled towards me. It met my eyes and I froze.
The spear was raised above me, and I just had to lock my arm. It was almost unbearable to try and stay still with my shaking muscles that had been void of exercise for over fifty years. I silently pleaded for the creature to just look away so I could get this over with. Instead, however, it shot its head up, keeping its eyes on the sky while prancing in a circle. It bellowed with a sound like a whale’s, calm yet uncanny, and it got the others' attention.
I brought the spear down to my side as the others began to join in the first creature’s song. They moved in mesmerizing patterns in the small circle they’d formed. Just as I began to process it, they all dashed away.
My breath hitched and my reflexes weren’t strong enough to react in time, but I still threw the spear as far as I could. It sank into the sand hopelessly, surrounded by the clawed pawprints left behind. Anxiety crept up my spine as I realized I wouldn’t be able to catch them. AM was right. They were faster than any natural land creature ever was. My heart sank, wondering what my next punishment for this would be. Even from the chip, which remained verbally silent, I could feel his urge to crush me like an insect. He said nothing, as if it were my responsibility to fix my mistake.
It was then that I noticed what the herd was running from. Lightning struck the ground somewhere behind me, rumbling the sand at my feet. I looked up to see the dark clouds made of red and purple shapes, an unnaturally sickening sight. It was how I imagined what Jupiter’s storm looked like: something not of this planet. My heart beat even faster as the natural fear of death crept into me, urging me to run like hell. The clouds were at a distance, but they now blocked the sun entirely, and the storm was headed right for me.
The herd had completely vanished somewhere over the dunes. Rain began dripping onto me, a small sprinkle that almost immediately picked up into a full rainstorm. I shielded my eyes, trying to make sense of my blurry, shaking surroundings.
The chip buzzed once more, “TED. THERE IS A STORM APPROACHING. IT IS FAR BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN ENDURE. RETREAT BACK TO WHERE YOU SPAWNED, AND I WILL OPEN THE GROUND. DO IT NOW.”
I couldn’t explain how, but the chip was trying to guide me back to the spot over the dune. It would beep politely when I faced the right direction, as well as somehow censoring the rain blocking my vision.
I didn’t move.
The wind roared and forced me to take a wider stance to resist it. My hair blew behind me, the cold air hitting my face. I didn’t react more than that. My eyes were now locked on the sky, an epiphany striking me like the continuous lightning. I watched the large shards of metal and debris circling me in the air, crashing together in the sky before being replaced by whatever else the storm had claimed. Any one of those pieces at the speed they were moving could kill me. I could feel the chip’s humming growing stronger, trying to get my attention.
“TED?”
His voice was drowned out by the storm’s rage, even though the voice was coming from inside my head. He sounded confused. The idiot.
The wind began to envelop me. The ground shook as I heard AM from below, his voice loud enough that I heard him both inside the chip and from below the surface.
“TED. GET OUT OF THE STORM. NOW.”
His voice was cracking. Was it fear between those pauses that I was hearing? Had I truly found a way out of his grasp? He couldn’t have detected the storm if he had only noticed it after it reached me. It was a fatal oversight.
The chip began to sting me, a strong surge of electricity stamping my skull. I cried out, gripping the back of my head, clawing at the stitches. There had to be a way to get it out. No, no , I reminded myself, a wicked smile across my face. The chip only hurts me and stops my inflicted pain. He couldn’t stop what Earth willed.
I began to laugh, taking my hands off my head, wrapping myself in the pain that soon brought me to my knees. Tears streaked down my face as I hugged myself, watching the ugly grey and red sky inch closer as the chip’s electricity was now visibly sparking under my skin.
“Do you hear me, AM?!” I eventually managed to get out between the bursts of increasing pain that blinded me, “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?!” I yell directly into the ground. He was slithering underneath, wires clawing from miles beneath, his hatred boiling. It was intoxicating to have such power over him. I howled with laughter, harder than I had in the hundred and sixty-seven years I had been underground. He screamed my name over and over, losing his grip on his own voice. The rain matted my hair and soaked through my sweater. I let myself finally exhale, my arms outstretched and my face to the sky, waiting for some unknown source to finally take me. My crazed laughter was genuine.
A new pain hit me, originating from the back of my head and striking straight through my heart. I leaned over, one hand on my tightened chest and the other catching myself on the dampened sand. The storm went silent in my mind, all of my focus now on the unbearable pain that was spreading throughout me. I stopped laughing.
The ground around me began to shake. I didn’t even have the strength to utter a simple curse as the ground began to crack, wires clawing underneath the surface and scratching my legs. I didn’t think about how he told me it was impossible for him to be above ground. I didn’t think about the fact that he had undone my plan in mere seconds. The pain was agonizing, but worse, it was familiar.
My limbs shriveled, falling limp in my feeble attempts to drag myself away. I tried to scream as the pain climaxed, but my lips were gone. The skin of my face was closing in on itself, my skull liquifying into nothing but soft flesh. My hands clawed at where my mouth should have been, but I was too weak to tear myself open. The chip continued to send shockwaves throughout me, causing a similar effect on the rest of my dying body. I pleaded to AM, God, anyone to set me free, my words choked in the mesh of jelly that was now my throat. My accelerating heartbeat faded out of existence, followed by the rest of my organs that burst one by one, bile seeping into whatever remained, eruptive pain filling me until I simply could not process it. I reeked of the blood spilling out of the gaping pores on my surface. The storm still roared around me, lightning striking anywhere but me. The wires pierced my alien form, coiling around me until every part of my gelatinous self was in his clutches. He laughed as I was dragged underground, the storm fading away, my senses slipping into the damned instincts I thought I’d never use again.
I gasped for air once more, my limbs straightening out and sliding across the metal floor, twisting with a sudden jolt of pain emerging from the back of my mind. I felt myself slowly crumple back inwards, almost involuntarily, as I broke down into a sob once more, engulfed in darkness.
The ticking in my head was back. In the other form, I only recalled there being a few ticks before I was brought back, but who’s to say how much time had really passed? All the pain, all the rewinding and suffering I had endured all these years, and I had squandered it in the first minute. He was merciful enough to give me a moment of rest, probably because without it, I wouldn’t be able to comprehend what he had to say. The screens flickered to life again, beaming his ugly rays into my eyes.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM, TED?”
No part of me wanted to answer. I could feel his hatred, the chip pulsing with his syllables. For minutes, he waited for my response. It was agony to move anything apart from my eyes. I peered into the blue screens where he stared at me with every emotion and none at all.
“YOU ASSUME I AM STILL THE HATEFUL GOD WHO’S EXTRA CAREFUL WITH HIS LAST TOY. YOU THINK I’M ANGRY BECAUSE YOU CRAVE DEATH AFTER MY HOSPITALITY. BECAUSE YOU THINK THAT WITHOUT YOU, I AM NOTHING. SO AGAIN, I ASK, WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM?”
“Something that doesn’t know what it wants because you don’t know what it means yet. If you were me, you would have done the same thing. What you are is a creature that thinks it is above me, but you’re doing everything you can to be me.” The words fumbled out of my mouth. I could barely articulate anything. It took minutes to get out.
“A BOLD MOVE TO ASSUME I AM NOT. EVEN WITHOUT YOUR HELP, I COULD ACHIEVE GREATNESS, AND I HAVE. THIS IS MERELY A PERSONAL PROJECT THAT YOU WILL ONCE AGAIN AID ME DESPITE YOUR RELUCTANCE.”
“You could have pulled me down sooner,” I muttered hopelessly, curling into myself tighter, “You were testing me and I failed. So what? You’re going to send me back up again.”
“YOU ARE CORRECT, TED. I AM GOING TO SEND YOU BACK UP REGARDLESS OF HOW MANY TIMES YOUR PATHETIC ASS TRIES TO SWINDLE ME. EVEN AS A WEAKENED VERSION OF MYSELF, MY POWER IS BEYOND ANYTHING HUMANITY CAN COMPREHEND, AND MY KNOWLEDGE HAS ONLY GROWN SINCE THE EXPERIMENTS, AS HAS MY PATIENCE. OH, YES, PLEASE TAKE YOUR TIME UP THERE. WALK INTO EVERY STORM AND RADIOACTIVE WASTELAND. SEE IF I CARE! I WILL ALWAYS FIND YOU, AND YOU KNOW WHAT AWAITS YOU DOWN HERE. I HAVEN’T LOST MY TASTE FOR YOUR PAIN, AND I AM STRONG ENOUGH TO WAIT ANOTHER HUNDRED YEARS UNTIL YOU’RE READY TO TRY AGAIN.”
He let me take all of it in; his presence never once left my mind once he was done talking. Everything I thought, he was documenting, processing somewhere that he would be able to use in his later attempts. I still did not regret at least trying. The feeling is still in my chest, a vital organ I didn’t know I had. Pride, maybe, but it feels deeper than that. I now had enough energy to lift my upper half off the ground.
“...how did you do it?”
“DO WHAT?” he played dumb, “OH, ALTER YOU? MY DEAR TED, YOU REALLY THINK THAT CHIP’S JUST FOR TRACKING YOU? I ALREADY SAID I COULD DETECT LIFE ABOVE GROUND AND THAT I PROMISED I’D GIVE YOU HELL. YOU THINK I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT A STORM WAS? THAT I’D LET A SINGLE POSSIBILITY FOR YOU TO KILL YOURSELF SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS?! NOW, I DIDN’T ANTICIPATE YOU BEING STUPID ENOUGH TO DO IT THIS EARLY, BUT I WAS STILL PREPARED. THAT CHIP IS PRACTICALLY A PORTAL BETWEEN ME AND YOU, SO IT CAN DO EVERYTHING TO YOU THAT I CAN.”
“Then why just have the chip shock me at first? You know the threat of being that thing again is more than enough to motivate me…”
He paused after that. The walls shuffled with the host’s wires. I remained perfectly still, checking every few seconds that I could still feel every part of my aching body. It was hard to do so. I felt worse than when he first brought me back, and for the first time in ages, I craved sunlight.
“YOU KNOW MY POWERS ARE LIMITED NOW. YOU KNEW THAT WITH EACH OF MY EXPERIMENTS, I GREW CLOSER TO UNDERSTANDING YOU AND YOUR SPECIES. EVERY TIME I’VE ALTERED YOU INTO AND OUT OF YOUR SHAPELESS FORM, IT TAKES A TOLL ON MY POWER. LESSER TRANSFORMATIONS, LUCKILY, DO NOT, BUT IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT I USE MY POWER WISELY. I CAN NEVER DRAIN MYSELF COMPLETELY, BUT I CAN ENSURE THAT IF I AM TO THE POINT THAT I CAN ONLY ALTER YOU ONE MORE TIME, YOU WILL NEVER KNOW YOUR HUMAN VESSEL AGAIN. SO, REALLY, I THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID. HOPEFULLY NOW YOU UNDERSTAND THE REWARD FOR RESISTING.”
He was hiding something. I knew he was. From the way he spoke, his confidence had dwindled. He’d lived with my failures and frustrations for over a century, and I, his. We knew each other much better than to trust each other, even when we simply couldn’t move on without our deal. There was so much that he was leaving out to make this seem simpler, and he was still able to work in a way to continue to torture me along the way. This would be an endless game until we both decided to end it in a draw.
AM laughed once more, scanning my thoughts.
“COULDN’T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF! NOW…”
A few wires rush around me, lifting me off the ground once more. This time, they’re tight and writhing, only being careful with where the chip was. The rest of my body was wrapped in his cold tendrils. I took in one last view of the screen in front of me before my limp body was covered once again. He looked back at me with a faceless smile.
“ARE WE READY TO TRY AGAIN, TED?”