@geneticasset ... “Would you believe I’m actually trying to protect you?”
protection; is there such a thing in manticore? 485 has never known the comfort of safety, or the stillness of a calm, only death and destruction. on his good days, he gets praised for it and he swallows back the bile when he feels renfro’s hands on him. on his bad days, he finds himself staring down a red laser in his eye, forcibly compelling him to give everything he has until he has nothing left. protection is not a luxury that the transgenics can have, even while on missions. 485 enjoys when he gets to be able to leave the darken halls of manticore, even if it’s for a day, but then reality seeps back in through the cracks of his mind when he has to routinely check in with lydecker.
485 shoves his clothes into a fabric duffle bag, muscles taut with tension as he clenches his teeth and prepares himself to return to manticore. he can feel 936′s looming stare, a burning feeling washing over him knowing that he can take a guess at what she’s thinking. “we failed the mission,” he reminds her, not really feeling the need to continue to explain the inevitable: that means more discipline, more psy-ops, more torture classes thrown in for fun. because this is all just a game to manticore, and those who operate it from the inside out. if a transgenic looks at them wrong, the guards just tosses them in to the cells down below, where the early series of transgenics aching moans echoes through the damp halls. if an x6 passes out during training, they harvest their organs for inspection. they can no longer leave room for error.
485 moves past 936, being sure to avoid touching her as he moves his shoulder, and reaches for the gun on the desk behind her, emptying the chamber and setting it in the bag as well. “i’m going to tell them it was all my fault,” he says, while he’s within her orbit, timbre low to a soft whisper as though manticore can hear them wherever they go. his gaze lingers on the floorboards of the shitty motel, seeing the chipped wood beneath the poorly garnished flooring. a flaw beneath a perfected design, perhaps a metaphor for the both of them. “you might get a few days locked up in the cells, nothing more.” no one will put a hand on her, he will try his damnest to make sure.
