One of the Second Headman's hands slipped free from its pinned position and reached up. Pa-5 flinched when she felt the warmth touch her cheek. "That wasn't what you needed to hear. I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"What is your earliest memory?"
"Pardon?"
"I want to know your earliest memory. What is it?" The change of topic emerged from a place Pa- never could have predicted. "What happened?"
"I…" Surveying the contents of her mind wasn't as smooth of a process as her preferred standard of operation. Each time she reached further back, a fog greeted her that forced her to exert her faculties. With each delve deeper, the fog closed around her, cutting her off from retreating. It was good she knew where to search, at least. "Training. With the Prime Beacon."
A spark flashed in those eyes staring up at her. "I suspected as much. He shows affection through…unorthodox methods, he does." The hand left her cheek. "Even at the start, his affection forced him to confront you with your limitations. Hardly the correct childhood for any child, but you wouldn't be alive today without it. Do you agree?"
"What are you doing?"
"Talking with you. What else?"
No, she wasn't. Not on its own. She couldn't place her finger on it, but Pa-5 could still connect some of the dots. This dialogue between the two of them…wasn't natural, and it wasn't safe.
How would the Second Headman know anything of her childhood when she was older than her in the first place? Even if she accessed her government-exclusive dossier, anything related to the Prime Beacon was edited out before she reached adolescence. Her lips thinned.
"Tell me something. What did it feel like, being at death's threshold?" Never before had Pa-5 forced herself to abstain from action with such internal vigor as in that moment.
All lingering doubts within crumbled to dust, and those thin lips disappeared into a line on her face where her mouth should've been. "It must be a life-changing experience. Did you change, Serviceman Pa-5?"
Pa-5 didn't trust herself to speak, and latched her tongue to the roof of her mouth, lest she bite on it. She mustn't forget the woman idly occupying her lap, intruding inside the Prime Beacon's office, and currently mocking her was a member of humanity's leadership.
The safest action was to disengage and retreat from the conversation--if it was that at this point. The Second Headman took her lack of input as permission to continue. "You'll stand to the side and allow the Prime Beacon to assume the burdens of sacrifice, won't you?"
Her replacement arm moved with such speed it shocked her, stopping a centimeter above the headman's unchanged face. The fingers splayed wide. Unnatural. If she still possessed her first limb--the one of flesh--it would have hurt to maintain the formation.
"I. Have. Sacrificed." The hand twitched as if it possessed independent life. "See this? I have sacrificed more of myself in seventy-two hours than you have in your entire life!"
A laugh shocked her back into silence. The Second Headman laughed. She laughed at her. It started low and quiet as a chuckle, but any attempts the other woman made to conserve and halt its momentum died as it erupted full-force from her throat until tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, her head gyrated up and down in her lap, and she was clutching her sides.
It took a long time to die, unwilling to leave in the same manner as it came. "Shouldn't…pfft." She coughed, giggled, and choked down the next rush before it consumed her. "Shouldn't a sacrifice result in something? What did you achieve with your 'sacrifice'? What did you trade for those kilograms of flesh ripped from you?"
"Nothing. That's what." The Second Headman draped a face-splitting sneer across her features. "That isn't a sacrifice. It's just loss. You lost those parts of you. And you might not have sacrificed anything, but others did. All those WAV pilots aboard the Nyx Breaker, do you recall any of them? The death toll was high."
"You don't--"
"They. Sacrificed. Some, limbs--but not akin to you. Others, lifelong friends. Most, their lives. And you want to know the most twisted piece of it all?" Pa-5 was shaking from head to toe. Her replacement arm still hovered over the headman like a hammer ready to fall at any moment, but there wasn't so much as an uneasy canter to her words.
"Their mission was never to save you. It was to preserve the chip buried in the back of your head. How convenient." Her speech dripped, oozed with acid. "What a worthless trade; how do you live with yourself, being so…pointless?"
She needed to leave before she committed to an action she'd forever regret. Without reserving a moment to push the Second Headman off her, she stood and marched toward the door with rigid, heated steps.
The other woman tumbled off the sofa, striking the floor with two thuds: the first, her shoulder, and the second, one of her knees. Pa-5 lurched toward the door, but something flaring inside her chest compelled her to turn back.
The Second Headman hadn't raised herself from the floor, on her back with one leg still in the meticulous process of sliding down the incline of the sofa to rest beside its sibling. She looked up and across the room at her. Her face showed no anger, fury, disdain, disgust, pity…it was a blank canvas, and she wore it like one. As if she exhausted herself already. As if she weren't worth anything further.
"Fine." She didn't recognize her voice. "I'll prove you wrong." If the Second Headman planned to respond, she offered no respite and swept around. The door sealed the office not long after. The headman groaned, massaging her shoulder.
Despite the fresh pain, a chuckle, the remains of the earlier stifled bout of laughter, wormed free. "We'll see. That I know." Her hand pulled a cylinder out of one of her pockets, with a button on one end. She pressed the fob, held the button for nine seconds, and returned it.
"Connecting independent memory registry and storage capabilities with a microchip is a terrible idea." She braced herself, wincing, and rose to unsteady feet. She may have hit her head in the fall, and the Prime Beacon's floors were not for the soft of skull.
She wobbled on unsteady feet and returned to her original, undisturbed position on the sofa, and exhaled. She pinned her shaking hands beneath her. "'Boring man', I want you to witness where this path will force her to tread. What will become of her once we are gone, or never were?"
Hiding her own tremors from no one, Ch-4's eyelids drooped.
...
Pa-5 rushed down one monotonous hallway, then another, then another, then another. She didn't know where she was doing, she never--!
Halting mid-step and twisting her torso, she slammed her fist into the wall. The shock set in before the pain, acting with great efficiency. She twisted her wrist one way, then the other, observing the full extent of the injury.
She bit her lip as the pain flared, insulted that she could ignore it for so long. The knuckles pressed lower into her hand than the ones of her replacement arm. She peeled back the skinsuit covering there. They were already coloring a bruised shade, which would darken without delay.
What possessed her to attack scutumsteel with her unarmored flesh-and-blood limb? Even the replacement one would've suffered damages. Why was she so angry she could hardly catch her breath before her chest squeezed out the unprocessed oxygen? She sunk until she was crouching, brow pressed against the metal wall and her arm cradled against her chest. The wall was cold.
And she was not. Something burned inside her. Fury? Rage? At what? Because of what? She cycled through her memories with perfect recall, finding nothing that could incense her like this. After an age, she felt assured enough to suck in a full breath, further relieved when her body no longer rejected the action.
But this round of oxygen too hardly had a chance to enter her lungs before a muffled cry tore them out. She wasn't sure whether to pull her hand away from her chest or press it in deeper, but as it twitched and a second round of agony seized her sole limb, she found it didn't matter.
She refocused inward to distance herself from the crippling sensations while walking upright as best she could. What was she doing? She was…was…there. She remembered now. The stabbing needles attaching her knuckles may have contributed to the clarity. She convinced herself to offer her services as an engineer to an officer, to request assignment to the wall defense.