It’s brutal.
Boss grabs me by the back of my shirt and drags me with him across the battlefield toward the ship.
“Careful of my head, they cut it open and my skull is loose in bits!” I scream.
The rushing of the air has made it hard for me to hear myself at normal volume, so I am screaming, but then again everyone is screaming. Some of us are screaming because we’re dying. Then they die, and it gets quiet, except for me.
“They cut your head open?”
“Yes. But it’s a good thing!” I shout. “But we need to go. Now. Off the planet. They’re trying to capture you.”
Boss pulls me onto the ship. They were already very aware that they needed to leave. It’s already humming and ready to go. Boss keeps a tight but careful hold on me while they all get in the ship in a complete chaotic, blood-covered tangle.
“Where did you come from?” Kronos asks.
“I jumped off the edge after they cut my head open and took out the chip that was letting them fuck up my memories,” I say as Sharp starts the ship up and hurtles us all into outer space so fast there’s absolutely no way any Earthling tech could ever hope to catch us. One moment we’re on the planet, the next moment we’re waving the solar system goodbye. Spaceships are cool.
“I can remember!” I say, excited to let them know.
They look at one another.
“I can remember everything. And I know why they’ve been wiping my mind!”
“Why?” Kronos asks.
“Because I’m the bad guy!” I say the sentence very gleefully, though I know it’s confessing the worst thing possible. “I’m the problem. It’s been me. The whole time. They sent me to you in the first place. They knew you were helping human women not be traded, and they didn’t like it. So I was supposed to be like a Judas Goat. I was supposed to be the woman you wanted to save. But then I kind of fucked it up and they decided to bench me, but then you found me, and that made everything complicated again. They’ve been manipulating my brain the whole time! But they took the chip out because they were going to retire me and make me pay them back for all my subscriptions, and they thought they had you, but they didn’t count on me paying a random man all my money to jump off the island.”
Kronos picks me up and hugs me tightly, but carefully. We have had such a tumultuous relationship lately. It’s felt like he kind of hates me in some ways. It’s felt a bit like I hate him too.
“You’re not the bad guy. You couldn’t be the bad guy if you tried. Not even on your very worst day.”
Tears start to prick my eyes as the last creature in the universe who I expected to be nice about this shows me kindness I am certain I don’t deserve.
“You let them carve your skull open?” Kronos asks.
“They had to, in order to get the chip out. It was proprietary. I wasn’t allowed to keep it. But I got to remember. My name is…” I pause. I remember my name. The name I worked under. The name I lived under. It doesn’t belong in this space.
“Pet,” I say. “My name is Pet.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Do you really not remember your name, or…”
“No, I’m being symbolic.”
“Oh,” he says. “Very good.”
“So you remember everything?” Sharp asks.
“Yes, but the everything is in three separate phases. There’s what I remember from before I met you. There’s what I remember from when I first met you. And then there’s the three years I sold pills for money, and then there’s meeting you all again, and then there’s forgetting again and then there’s living on the ground… I’ve had four different lives, it feels like. I don’t know.”
“We’re going to give you time to integrate it all,” Sharp says.
“But I am the bad guy! I was trying to bring you down. Don’t you get it?”
“You were working for a force that owned you,” Sharp says. “We don’t hold you responsible.”
“But you should! I’m an enemy. I’m like those soldiers you chopped up. You should chop me up, too!”
“Alright, pet,” Boss says in a deep, resonant tone. “I think it’s time you got some rest. You’ve had surgery on your brain. It’s understandable you’d be addled.”
