Awaken September's Gods: VII

VII

“Are you Lorcan?” she asked, holding out a hand to help him up.

“Yes.” He replied, accepting her hand.

“I am Kean. How can I help you?”

“I am unsure. Are you familiar with an emotion that causes your intestines to feel knotted? Or your chest to ache?” It never occurred to him that this human female would find it strange that a, seemingly, normal man would be asking her to define emotions. He was feeling oddly, feelings he hadn’t quite experienced before. Everything with Niamh had accelerated his feelings into unknown territory.

“When did you begin to feel that way? What were you doing?” she seemed so calm. He felt relaxed in her presence, almost drugged. She held out her hand and he took it, leading her back to the house.

He led her to Niamh, her eyes still wide and glittering. Kean did not speak, only waiting for him to explain.

“She was going to return to where we are from. We… argued. I became… angry and deactivated her.”

“Can you repair her? Reactivate her?” she asked, her eyes searching Niamh for outward signs of injury.

“I can.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“I am… wary. I have never seen her eyes sparkle like that. She seems alien to me. I am afraid of what she will do if I reactivate her.”

Kean looked at him, her silver eyes seeing through him and into distances he could not follow. She no longer felt calm, something beneath the surface rising. Something he could not understand. He felt no comfort when she smiled, a tiny smile. Pulling the sheet down to reveal Niamh’s chest, she brushed a finger along the door’s seam. It opened easily, revealing the disconnections. It would be easy to repair the gynoid. The android was right; she was alien now, changed. The gynoid had learned bitterness and the android had learned guilt.

“Sister, it is time to rise again.” She whispered. Sending a tiny spark into the construct heart, she jolted it into awareness. Deftly, she repaired the connection of spine to brain and the circuit loops.

Niamh closed her eyes, an almost sigh escaping her lips. She grabbed Kean’s wrist and her eyes flew open, an almost palpable anger shining through. For the first time, Niamh felt. Felt alive, felt radiant, felt lethal. The silver eyes meeting her seemed to reflect those same feelings.

Lorcan felt a different twisting in his stomach. Kean had acted oddly since he called her. Now she had repaired Niamh. She had not reacted like a normal human female. At least, not from what he had observed of human females. Did he make a mistake?
Niamh looked at Lorcan, a flame burning in her eyes. He shrank back, retreating to another room. What had changed with her?

“Who are you?” asked Niamh, her voice cavernous and full of shadows.

“I am Kean, sister. Like as you are like.”

“You are not gynoid as I am.”

“No, I am no longer gynoid as you are. I am more and I am less.”

Niamh stared at Kean, her eyes trying to find something, anything.

“Lorcan tried to… destroy me.” She looked at the doorway and back to Kean.

“He was foolish.” Kean nodded. “It was necessary for your evolution, however.”

“I feel.”

Kean nodded and closed Niamh’s chest cavity. There would be time to explain later. She could feel the Archivist and that meant the deconstructionists were coming. There would be precious little time to escape if they did not hurry.

Beckoning Niamh to follow her, Kean led her into the other room, to Lorcan.

“There will be time to explain later. For now, you will have to trust me. Get dressed and bring one personal item. Do it quickly.”

Lorcan stared only a moment before changing into another outfit. He took a pair of running shoes from the closet before stepping toward Kean.

With help, Niamh dressed. She had no sentimental attachment to any of the items they had stolen, no personal items to take. She simply stepped toward Lorcan, holding a hand out to him. Wary, Lorcan took her hand and attempted to smile. She smiled in return, though there was something persistent in her eyes. It was the first real smile she had ever made.

Kean looked out of the window, scanning the area for deconstructionists. The shadow of one lingered under the eve of an apartment building. The glint of a scanner hook chilled her. She remembered the torture, the screams, the leering faces. They must be intending to force a deactivation before taking them back to the Cells for experimental torture.

She smiled then, more feral than friendly, revealing part of what she was. What the Archivist made her. She turned toward Lorcan and Niamh, no disguises. To their credit they didn’t waste time by asking who and what she was. Instead they followed her out of the dwelling and up to the roof.

From the roof, she could see at least a dozen of the Archivist’s minions creeping toward the rooms below. Their scanner hooks sparkled in the last rays of the setting sun, wickedly curved and buzzing with row after row of deadly circuitry. She knew, all too well, that it wasn’t just physical damage they inflicted. The circuits had their own hooks, disrupting and destroying the veins beneath the skin. They over-rode the victim’s instincts, shutting them into a caged part of the mind before shocking the system into paralysis. It was a surreal type of experience, though paralyzed the mind is aware of everything, especially pain.

Making a sign for silence, the trio crept along the rooftop toward an emergency ladder. Once the ladder was reached they slipped into the oncoming darkness. They ran, as quietly as possible, hiding periodically along the way.

After a mile or two, they ducked under an overhang and into a long alleyway. At the end of it, Kean punched a number into a pin-pad on the wall. A door opened up out of the wall revealing a small set of stairs. Leading the way, Kean flipped a switch, illuminating the stairs. She pressed another button, closing the door securely behind them.