“It’s not common knowledge that each Cyborg is built differently, for different purposes. Technology can do so much but only so much can fit in the space of a body designed like a physically fit human. What is commonly known, though, is that we’re all designed with strength—some more than others—and the power to seed into the network and siphon energy. We all have speed. We all have perfect memories that function like storage units and a hard drive with practically infinite space. That’s the machine inside us, and machines don’tneedfamily and they don’t get lonely. The problem is that not all of us are ruled by the machine, and regardless of what technology we’re given upon birth, we still have a conscience and we still have emotions. So your question is a hard one to answer.” He pushed away from the wall. “Each Cyborg created does have a different function and a different power stored within. Some call it checks and balances. I call it intrigue.”
“But jackal?” She was still stuck on jackal.
“Let me explain.” He took a step toward her. “The moment I woke up, I knew something was different about me. I had all this knowledge and I knew there were other Cyborgs—like me—waking up in separate vats throughout the cybernetic facility. My first memories were of feeling ill. I knew, instinctively, that Cyborgs didn’t wake up feeling that way, but there I was, freshly created, and feeling unnatural. There was a third part to me, an animalistic part, that agreed with my illness. I had just experienced life and yet I had an affinity for death.
“In those first minutes of waking I registered my abrupt obsession as a malfunctioning calibration, maybe a misplaced code, but the more I gleaned from my makeup and from the others around me, I quickly realized that the illness I was feeling wasn’t an error at all. It was a bestial contender for my headspace. That different part of me, the one that made me unique compared to all other Cyborgs, also made me unpredictable.
“Some beasts are docile, some beasts exist in perfect harmony with their environment. Those beasts are not jackals. We were all coded to win a war and war meant death, a lot of death. But in those first few years of my life, I wasn’t only filled with bloodlust like my brethren. I was filled to the brink with hunger, and I wasravenous. I felt at home among the corpses. Fucking docs spliced an opportunistic, pack-centric carrion-eater with a machine and then sent their creation off to war.”
Elodie stiffened her spine and held her ground. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Eat...carrion?”
“Never.”
Gunner stood at her back. Her fingers gripped the edge of the sink, her knuckles white. Relief filled her but so did her curiosity. “Did you want to though?”
His eyes flickered red. “Yes. The problem with a jackal-machine-human hybrid is the jackal thinks it’s a great idea and the machine sees an abundant energy source ripe for the plucking, but the man...” Gunner paused, “...the man is horrified. Horrified and outnumbered.” He pressed a hand to her lower back. “I have more control over myself than that, Ely, so don’t look so sick.” His palm was hot against her spine. “I never ate a corpse but I’m also not infallible. I didn’t do it out of motherfucking spite. Those who made me knew what they were doing and maybe it was a fun test for them, to see how far they can push us before we lose control. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.”
Gunner ran his hand up her body until he held the back of her neck. “No. I did what you did. I hid in plain sight and pretended normalcy. And although I was surrounded by corpses—constantly—for years, I buried that third part of me until it was like it never even existed. Because Iama spiteful bastard that didn’t want them to win. It was probably my biggest mistake.”
Gunner’s eyes went dark red and glazed as if he was looking into the past. To something she would never truly see. When he didn’t continue Elodie prompted, “Why was it a mistake?” She glanced down at her camouflage and wondered if she was making one herself.
“I corrupted myself.”
“How?”
“I erased some codes that I shouldn’t have.” He pried one of her hands away from the sink to capture it between his own. “I was looking for the parts of myself that gave control to the jackal but I ended up reconfiguring my basic settings instead. To do so is tantamount to suicide.” Gunner shrugged. “But at the time I was sick of feeling at home among the dead. And I’m not even a goddamn spider! Or a bat. I know a guy whoobsessivelyrests upside down. Obsessively. Can you imagine?” He released a grim laugh.
Confusion still gripped her. “Did it work? What happened after you messed up your codes?”
“It did work. When it happened, I was commander of a battle station and suddenly I had no driving will to fight a war that wasn’t mine. Cyborgs want nothing more than to kill Trentians. Taking even one of those alien bastards out gives us a better high than any possible combination of narcotics. The scientists figured Pavlovian reinforcement to our basic coded desires was a good fail-safe. I inadvertently axed that part of my brain. I had dozens of ships in my fleet, all designed for guerrilla warfare and planetside battles. I got up, walked out of the bridge, hijacked one of the flyers and deserted. The shock I created brought on panic from the pretty boys in charge. My desertion branded me with eternal exile.”
Silence settled between them.
She hadn’t realized how little she knew about the dangerous man at her back until just then. And he was right, loneliness and family meant vastly different things to them. On top of that, the war had ended when one of the Cyborgs single-handedly demolished a Trentian colony ship roughly forty-five years earlier.
Everyone learned that as a child, but that had to mean that Gunner had already been alone for almost half a century.
She wanted to turn around and hug him, to bury her face into his chest and breathe in his hard smell, but that meant she’d have to stop looking at him, if even for a second. They watched each other quietly until the distance his words at first created slowly receded.
Until they were gone altogether and it was just the two of them again.
In a bleak situation.
Alone.
Gunner lifted a pair of scissors that she’d set aside earlier by the sink and raised them to her hair. He twirled them with his fingers and she was transfixed.
“Do you regret it?” she eventually asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
A small smile twisted the corner of his lip. “Because since then, they have never even tried to create another Cyborg like myself, at least one who preferred the dead over the living.”
