EVE Fiction

Aphoxema exhaled the blue-dyed smoke from her nostrils, unconcerned with the burning in her eyes. The makeup couldn’t hide the weariness and her personality couldn’t cover up the vacancy of any spirit within her. It was all a void, and she didn’t care anymore. ”It’s a Neocom, it’ll manage any communication between us and the money we work with.”

”Is’ cool but, I can barely read, Matriarch.” Tauntay was the brightest of them all, but they all lacked any real education. That didn’t matter, they made up for it in experience and connections.

”You’ll learn, and the damned thing’ll do most of the work for you anyways. It talks and listens if you need it to, just be careful what you’re saying and who’s listening. It can also look up anything you need to know. Someday we’ll see about getting you rigged for skillbook.”

”My mom says implants take ‘way your... uh...”

Aphoxema looked coldly at Tauntay, speaking monotonously, ”I’m the only mom you need, now, and you’ll do what I tell you to do.” She unfolded the head-mounted display, sweeping the girl’s hair aside to help put it over her eyes, ”I’ll see what you see and you’ll see what I need you to. It’ll take a while for the cursor to calibrate to your thoughts, but you can use the touchpad on the Neocom for now.”

Tauntay gazed around in wonder, overwhelmed with the augmented reality software highlighting objects of interest around her. She reached out, trying to grab at the glowing outlines before leading to her own eyes, touching the glasses, ”This is amazing...”

”The charm’ll wear off soon enough. It’ll learn what interests you and how to understand what you want it to do... for now just do whatever you normally would. I got somethin’ else for you, too...”

Aphoxema looked up and down the corridor before taking a hard, plastic case from her bag, ”Don’t go fooling around with this too much. I coated it in omniphobic, so if you got to use it wash it off and get rid of it right away. It shouldn’t keep any blood’r fingerprints on it.

Tauntay shakily took the box and stared at it, unsure of what to say.

”And you hear me, you use that, you best plan on having someone all the way dead, forever. Two in the chest, one in the head... run like hell.”

Tauntay nodded hesitantly, ”Yes, Matriarch.”

Aphoxema put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, ”You get the orders, don’t worry ‘bout writing it down... the Neocom’ll get everything. Remember, nothing explicit, you use the slang’n tell’em we’ll come back later. Don’t make any promises that ain’t yours to make. Now git, I still got to talk to the other kids.”

Tauntay ran off promptly. Aphoxema watched after her, proud of her new Cherub. They would all serve her well.

Circuit laid in the first real bed he had to sleep in for months. The strange woman who had suddenly doted so much onto him that day filled his mind, not even sure she was real at all. He worried she would try to take advantage of him when she rented a lofty hotel room for him, but all she did was tell him to get some sleep and she’d come back tomorrow. This was an unusual punishment for punching her and stealing her purse.

Since they had first met, things just had gotten stranger by the hour. First she had taken him to buy new clothes, the best and probably most technologically advanced he had ever touched. After that, she took him to an expensive restaurant, getting him anything he would dare accept. She didn’t eat anything, making it hard for him to eat. She didn’t say anything, making it hard for him to say anything. She just sat and stared at him, almost as if she were resentful of him, making it hard for him to look at anything.

If that weren’t odd enough, she had taken him to a neurologist of some kind. They scanned his brain with a machine he had never seen before and asked a lot of questions. After the tests, the doctor spoke with that woman and though he didn’t understand much, he clearly remembered how... pleased she looked when the doctor told her he was ’compatible’. That was strange, but what worried him more was the suggestion that she had brought several other teenagers in for this test and he was only the second one to be determined as compatible for... for what?

After that she had taken him to this hotel, paid for a week in advance and told him to order whatever he wanted from room service. After she left, he just sat in a recliner and stared at the room. He tried taking a shower, but barely let the water run before feeling an incredible sense of guilt. Then he just laid down on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling.

The doorbell chimed. He looked at the clock again... he didn’t even realize he had been laying there for hours without sleep. The door chimed again.

This wasn’t the first night of sleep he had missed, he barely felt like a part of his environment, at the point where he didn’t know if he was talking or thinking. He opened the door, and there was the strange woman again, accompanied by a Brutor girl about as old as he was. ”You sleep?”

Circuit shook his head, not even certain of which one had asked.

Aphoxema stepped passed him, ”I wouldn’t, either. You eat?”

”No...”

”I wouldn’t, either. I don’t have a lot of time, so Tauntay here is going to fill you in.”

Circuit looked to the smiling girl, ”Fill me in?”

Aphoxema set a briefcase down on the coffee table and unlocked it before turning back to him, ”I know a little bit about you. I know enough that you don’t have anyone else, that your parents died a year ago and that you’ve been running around this station, alone, since.”

”How did you...”

”So,” she interrupted, ”You’re mine now, if you want to be. If you don’t, that’s up to you, and I’ll leave you a way to contact me if you ever change your mind. I’ll let you talk to Tauntay before deciding, she’s better with people than I am.”

This was definitely some kind of weird dream, ”Decide what?”

Aphoxema walked up to him, gripping his shoulders and staring down seriously at him, ”I can take you away from all of this. It won’t be any easier, but what you do will actually get you somewhere. I might ask you to do some terrible things, to steal and destroy and murder. Some day, you might be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people at a time. You’ll be a force of all your own and I want you to know this so you have the chance to say no. I didn’t know what I’d be getting into, and I don’t know what I’d have said if anyone warned me.

There’s a lot of good to go with it, there’s a lot of good things you can do, but I guarantee that you will sometimes be a monster and do things you regret terribly. You will hate yourself. Other people will hate you. Most of all, though, you’ll be worth hating because you’ll be special.”

Circuit stared, aghast. This was either a nightmare or he had ran into a total lunatic, ”You kill people?”

She smiled, somehow proud but frightened, ”With only a thought, and it’s awful, but it’s what we do. We kill... and we die, over and over.”