"Psst!"
Monarch turned in bed, startled at the sudden noise.
"Wake up, Mon!"
"What?" Monarch groaned.
"Get under the covers," Acmon said.
Monarch scooted to the other side of the bed to give Acmon room to lie down next to him. Once he pulled the covers over them, he felt Acmon's arm pull him closer until Monarch was close enough to hear his heartbeat. If the events of that day hadn't happened, he would have been very uncomfortable to be this close to Acmon, but he felt strangely comforted by his brother's presence.
"Am I whispering quietly enough?" Acmon asked.
"Yeah. I think so."
Acmon passed Monarch a slip of paper with various symbols and words on it.
"Okay, so I've created a few symbols as code for everything, since the prof records all our conversations. That butterfly represents Erebia."
Monarch held the paper under a sliver of light that shined under the covers. The other symbols included a coiled snake, a lightning bolt, and a compass.
Acmon continued. "The snake represents the professor, the lightning bolt is your new power, and the compass is our plan to escape. Do you know of anything else we may need a symbol for?"
"What about a symbol for Vega? The scientists? What about the Meta-Gene?"
They spent the next half hour deciding on symbols for everything they could think of. They chose a star to represent Vega, a beaker for the scientists, and a DNA symbol to represent the Meta-Gene. The Helix Tech laboratory itself was represented by a molecule symbol. After deciding on symbols for everything, they sat up in the bed. Acmon was exhausted, but Monarch didn't want to go to sleep one bit. The idea of sinking into unconsciousness nearly gave him goosebumps.
"Should we go to sleep, or is there anything left to do?" Acmon asked.
"I don't want to sleep."
"Aren't you tired?"
Monarch fidgeted his hands. "I am, but falling asleep makes me really uncomfortable. It reminds me of... the experiments. I don't like when they put me to sleep."
"Maybe we can... compass the room?"
Monarch raised an eyebrow at the word compass before remembering that 'compass' was code for escape. "Not right now, Ac."
"If you don't sleep, the scientists will notice how tired you are and give you sleeping drugs."
"How does the professor work day and night without sleep? He's a workaholic, but he always looks like he's well rested. I know he doesn't sleep a lot, because he's even done experiments on us in the middle of the night, and he's heard our conversations at night before."
"He's probably invented a way to live without sleep. He's a biology mastermind."
"What I would give to have some of whatever he takes."
Acmon grinned mischeviously. "Compass. Find the snake's molecule, and the invention."
Monarch thought Acmon had just come up with the most ludicrous idea ever, but he couldn't react as such without making it obvious what they were saying to whoever might be listening to their conversation.
"No. I don't want to get bitten."
"Bitten?"
Monarch mouthed the word 'terminated' and Acmon gave a nod.
"Lightning bolt the snake's eyes. If the star catches us, lightning bolt that, too."
Monarch couldn't help but giggle at how ridiculous this conversation must sound to anyone without context. "My lightning bolt doesn't work on snakes, or any biological being, for that matter, Acmon."
"No. The eyes. Not these-," Acmon jabbed in between Monarch's eyes, then made the hand gesture of snapping a picture. He was referring to the cameras.
"Oh. But still- We have no idea where the snake or the beakers are. The star won't be there to save us this time, even if the snake is blind."
"Maybe you can lightning bolt the eyes, and see through them?"
Monarch looked through the window at the camera. It was definitely a stretch, but surely he could transfer the image from the cameras to his own eyes, right? There were two problems with attempting such a thing; One, Monarch wasn't sure if he could use his power without being able to make physical contact with said device. Two- even if he managed such a thing, how was he going to get all the way to the professor's lab?
He had to try. Lying down, Monarch relaxed his mind and focused on the camera just outside their door. He could somewhat feel its presence inside his mind. Instead of reaching out to it, he instead tried to pull the information from the cameras toward himself.
Like a weight was placed on his head, Monarch suddenly felt an intense head pressure right between his eyes before his vision became immensely blurred. As it cleared up, the image from his eyes was replaced by the image from the camera outside.
"Woah," Monarch said.
"Did it work?" He heard Acmon ask, though he could no longer see him.
"I... I can see! I think all the eyes are connected. I'm going to try and see if I can possess them."
Monarch now tried projecting himself at the cameras. His mind once again disconnected from his body, but the rest of him went with it; Monarch felt as if he was falling out of his body, and being sucked inside of the camera. With his mind now inside of the camera, he could no longer sense with his actual body. Even his ability to sense the parts of his body was replaced with the cameras- He could sense the entire network of cameras like some sort of web. He could faintly see through the other cameras, but it was more distant like he was looking at something far away. One of the images he saw was one of himself and Acmon from inside their room.
So they even have a camera in our room, huh?, Monarch thought. He projected himself to it and he sensed a wire connecting from it to a screen far away. After projecting himself to the screen, he leaped to a nearby camera in the room.
The camera showed the corner of a large lab. A little office was set up in the corner, the desk of which took on an L-shape. In the chair, Professor Ern was sitting with a stack of folders, and a computer screen depicting Monarch and Acmon's room.
So he is watching us, Monarch thought with slight annoyance. How often did he watch them at night? Did he even see them escape their room the other night? If so, why hadn't he done anything?
Behind Ern, Monarch noticed Vega inside of a glass box with a wire plugged into her back. Out of curiosity, he projected himself to her.
Monarch felt all his limbs return, but they felt heavy and stiff. He was controlling Vega.
His first course of action would have been to instantly get out of Vega's body- If Vega was truly sentient, possessing her like this was the purest form of violation. But as Professor Ern turned around in confusion, the reflection of blue light from Vega's eyes meant that she'd turned on. Could she sense that Monarch was there?
"Vega? How'd you turn on? You aren't supposed to be active. Did Dr. May forget to hit the Non-Auto button?" Professor Ern asked.
Vega gave no answer, and no indication that she was conscious at all. The only entity conscious inside this vessel was Monarch himself. The idea of this filled him with a strange sick feeling. Did this mean Vega wasn't sentient after all? How would consciousness even work on a robot?
He had to answer the professor, though. It took Monarch a few seconds to figure out how to work the robotic mouth.
"No, Professor Ern," he forced Vega to say. An overwhelming flood of guilt buried itself deep inside of Monarch as he could only guess what this must have felt like to Vega to be controlled in such a way, if she was conscious at all.
Professor Ern shrugged and turned back around. "Just don't break anything. I'll have to check you for malfunctions later."
Rather than walk around as Vega, Monarch needed the answer to his previous question. Was Vega, a robot, conscious? He'd already tried asking her, but he hadn't gotten a clear answer. He felt around for her memory card and chose to look through some of her memories. He chose the very first one.
Like a video, the memory filled his vision and transported him to a place in the past.
Vega's eyes opened for the very first time, and to Monarch's surprise, a sense of wonder filled her. So she could feel emotions, after all. He felt both relief, and guilt at that.
A younger version of Professor Ern stood before her with a wild grin on his face, like he'd just accomplished something phenomenal. He appeared almost twenty years younger. Behind him, two large glass tubes with two near-term fetuses were built into the floor. They were labeled 'Subject A', and 'Subject B,' respectively.
"Yes! You work! Hi, Noelle!" he said. Noelle? Who was that? Was this not Vega's memory?
Vega, or Noelle, took her first steps toward the incubators in the back of the room. Professor Ern followed her.
"You're interested in the babies? I suppose you would be. You were programmed to have motherly instincts, after all. I haven't named them yet. Maybe you'll do that honor, huh?"
Vega/Noelle pressed her hands to the glass of one of the incubators. The baby inside opened its eyes and peered at her through the glass. An overwhelming wave of deep adoration crashed down on Vega/Noelle. It reminded Monarch of the way he felt toward Erebia, but this cut way deeper. This was the love of a mother.
The emotions that swarmed Monarch were so powerful that it ripped him out of Vega's body, and sent him shooting back to his own. He didn't know what to process first- the guilt of having violated her in such a way, the overwhelming notion of knowing Vega loved him so deeply, or the idea that he'd spent his entire life taking her for granted? Tears were already spilling down his face before he even made it all the way back.
"Monarch, what's wrong? Are you okay? What happened?" Acmon shook him back to reality.
All Monarch could choke out at first was a pathetic few jumbled words. He gasped for air and attempted speech again. "I possessed Vega," he managed to get out.
"Dude, why? Did she sense that?"
Monarch wiped the tears from his face. "I... I dunno. I needed to know if she was conscious."
"What did you see?"
"I... I saw the first memory she ever had. We weren't even born yet- She saw us inside the incubators. She loves us. Like, really loves us. It was a kind of love that I didn't even know was possible." Monarch clenched his face as another tremor of emotion shot down his spine. More tears flooded down his face.
"Damn...," Acmon didn't know what to say after that.
The sound of their door opening startled them. Monarch gave an audible gasp as Vega stepped inside, took one look at him, and proceeded to march toward him.
"Busted," Acmon whispered.
Vega stood across from Monarch in silence as she tried to decide what to say to him. She didn't seem angry, but robot body language was hard to read. Finally, her mouth lit up.
"Monarch-"
Monarch didn't even let her finish. He threw his arms around her. "I'm so, so sorry! I'm so-"
"Monarch," Vega said, trying to get his attention.
"You must be so ashamed of me- I just needed to know. Vega, how can you ever forgive me?"
"I knew it. I knew it had to be you when I saw the reaction you had on the professor's screen. You're lucky he was too distracted getting a screwdriver to examine me to hear what you said about possessing me. You have no idea what experiments he'd put you through if he knew you had such a power."
"You're not mad?"
"You're hard to be mad at, Monarch. I was a little annoyed, but it's clear you understand the gravity of your actions."
"Is it true, Vega? Do you... love us?" Acmon asked.
The robot pulled both her boys close. "Of course."