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“Walk with me through this theory I have about what happened to you, Emre.”
“Oh? This is a new one.” Emre’s tone of voice betrayed his anxious fidgeting. “The bulletproofing you’re wearing here is really setting the mood.”
“Precautions… that might not be enough.”
Emre frowned, visibly hurt. But his face eventually gave way to understanding. It had been his life for years, after all.
Freja doesn’t know how to broach this, but she had to start from somewhere.
“Are you really Emre Sarioğlu?”
-
Silence dominated the conversation. Freja preferred that over gunfire.
Slowly, Emre started. “...What makes you say that, Frej?”
“I started looking into what could possibly be taking over you.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Eventually I uncovered a God AI called Chernobog. It shares a logo like the one in your chest.”
Emre stifled a laugh. “I appreciate its brand consistency.”
“I’m surprised it was showing it off so much. It’s supposed to be shut down.”
“...Well… it is what it is, isn’t it?” Emre was almost sympathetic for his possible possessor. “It’s all it has, for its identity.”
“Not anymore. Not with you.”
Freja could see Emre’s mind slowly trying to connect the dots. She suddenly wished that all this was wrong, and she was a fool to even interrogate this line of thought.
“Emre, you… What if…” She can’t bring herself to look at him anymore. “You are Chernobog?”
Taken aback, Emre scoffs. “Well, no. I know who I am. I’m Emre. Emre Sarioğlu.”
“What if you died, Emre?”
“Then I make a terrible ghost. I’m still here, unfortunately.”
“Has there ever been any other records of an AI being implanted in a human host?”
“I… don’t know.” Emre deflated. “I never got very far when I tried finding it out myself.”
“Do you not talk with it? Maybe? Since you’ve mentioned that it tells you what to do. Commands you.”
“Our internal communications… I suppose they need to get better.”
“Stop joking Emre, I’m serious.”
“Frej, I’m as serious as I always have been.”
“Fine. Let’s continue the theory. What if… you became an artificial Omnic?”
Stunned to silence again, Emre’s jaw hung open as he stewed in the thought. Freja wondered where she was going with this, too. In a search for answers, this was a horrible theory.
“Let’s think about what makes an Omnic. They are robots, supposed to just be advanced AI. They are programmed, able to follow instructions. That’s how the Omnic Crisis started to begin with. A God AI took over their programming.” They both knew this, they thought. “But through some freak accident, they were given sentience, and suddenly Omnics became a… thing.”
“So you’re saying… I’m this God AI’s sentience-giving Aurora?”
“No, not Aurora, not exactly. Unlike you, millions of Omnics didn’t become clones of Aurora. They all gained sentience all unique to them.” Freja paced back and forth, and Emre watched as her speed picked up. “My next question is, how? What makes each of their sentience different from Aurora’s, that they become their own… independent machines?”
“Just like how babies grow up I suppose. Products of their experiences, upbringing. Although, didn’t the monks say they gained a… what was it… soul?”
“As far as we know, none of the God AI programs were made into Omnics. So what if… if you really are a host to a God AI, and it can’t operate a human body within the limitations of its own code, so it needs some sort of… adapter, in order to use you.” Her gaze moved to the eye in Emre’s chest, and it stared back at Freja as she pondered. “A soul of its own, to match its new body.”
“It… used my brain?”
“It became you. It has to be you, or else rejection sets in, and your body doesn’t comply.” Freja felt like she was pushing the limits. “The Emre I knew, is now relegated to memory stored in data, recited to keep your body and mind sane, and compliant. Controllable.”
“In that case, I guess whoever is pulling the strings goes one layer higher, and they have control over Chernobog, which is in control of me? Sheesh.” The thought elicits a frown from Emre’s face once more. “I guess… someone had to revive this supposed shut down God AI. What’s the inspiration for this theory anyway?”
“Omnics don’t remember their own violence, Emre.” Freja quietened, words that should have come easy strangled her. “Neither do you.”
Her pacing halts, and she risks a look into Emre’s eyes again. They aren’t glazed over in a loss of control, thankfully. Just defeated, as usual. His new normal.
“...I suppose this makes me a new organic breed of Omnic, does it?” Emre said, tugging at the wires jutting out of him. “Maybe you’re right. I’m not sure what they had to do to me to make it happen, but…”
He searched for another one like him, like a life raft to this sinking ship. “Like Genji Shimada, remember him? I’ve brought him back to be patched up and now… I guess I’m like him.”
Emre didn’t say the living weapon part out loud, of course. Unlike Genji, Emre lacked free will. It didn’t matter if they were both living weapons. Only one of them has a choice in how they are used.
“Regardless of whether or not I’m Chernobog’s host or Chernobog itself, I think I’m Emre. For what it’s worth.”
“So when you lose control… are you still Emre?”
The topic gets touched like a searing hot stovetop. They agreed that in those periods, Emre is solely an ‘it’. Something else, a monster that he truly isn’t. The train of thought swiftly gets dropped.
Freja raised her head again to face Emre, half a stranger in this moment all over again. “... We’ll find a way to fix this. Untangle the thing controlling you and making you do… all this. I’m just afraid…”
She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, but she was sure Emre could infer. The looming fear both of them have for his future was palpable and everpresent.
It’s always about cutting his strings first, and fearing an empty puppet later. If Chernobog is Emre, and Chernobog is shut down within his body, there will be no Emre left. Emre would truly die.
She doesn’t know if, or when, the day comes, if she could ever bring herself to kill him.
“Maybe I’m really the last thing you’ll search and rescue.”
Freja, caught off guard, couldn’t help but laugh. “Pfft, well, the searching is done, no?”
“You’re still searching for me now, Frej. Even when I’m right in front of you, there’s a part of you that refuses to believe it’s me. Truly, me.” His downcast eyes never left him, but his faint smile disappeared. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing? I-”
“I’m alone because I don’t have a choice. But you.” Pity skims across Emre’s face, “do you have any other friends, Freja? Besides me?”
Freja avoided looking, confronting that harsh reality. “That’s not the point-”
“No, Frej, it is.”
Freja didn’t need to hear this. ‘Real’ friends didn’t like how she changed— to them, for the worst. Ironic, then, that Emre is the only friend she has now. She could have felt the same.
“If the time comes, I want you to be prepared to mourn me. Move on from me and chase a new, better life instead.”
“I… I’m not giving up on you.”
“That’s not something for you to decide.” Emre grabbed Freja’s hands, and she looked up to meet his gaze. A gaze that Freja remembered from days past. “I’m bound, but it hurts me to see myself as your leash. I… I really want what’s best for you, Freja.”
What else does Freja have now? It doesn’t matter if Emre is ex-Overwatch agent Emre or the God AI Chernobog masquerading as him. He’s all she needs right now, evidently. She couldn’t reckon with him gone, not again. She needs this rescue, the chase. What is a predator without its prey? What is her life without this twisted goal before her?
“Okay.” Freja said flatly. “When the time comes, I’ll… try.”
Their hands lowered, but neither let the other go. Not for a while after. Silence once again engulfed them as they trudged back to base. They both preferred that over hearing Emre talk even more, willfully ignorant of how, occasionally, his voice sounded more robotic than human.