Arc uses his knife to cut his burnt suit away. It’s a good thing temperatures don’t affect us. “Do you know what’s waiting for us down there?”
“No… but we’ll find out soon enough.”
CHRYS
My grandmother used to say that only boring people get bored. She was wrong. Obviously.
“Do you keep sending these out to die, just so you can keep the guys close?” I look down at the creatures and wonder aloud, “Or were they another one of your mistakes?”
“They got a little out of hand, I’ll admit. For a while I’d thought the boys were my only hope for dealing with them. But once I developed this handy little bioorganic control chip, they’re easy enough to direct.”
The air is bitterly cold, but Atker is colder.
“Did they start killing people before or after you got them under control?”
After.
The word whispers in my mind with his voice, and I hate it. “Oh my God. Why did you kill all the women?”
“My creaturesdidn’tkill them.”
“But they said…”
“Theyneeded a… what do you call them? Scapegoat.” He laughs and makes a little bleating sound. “Many of them left. Some of them died—enough to write history the way it has been, I suppose—but there’s so much to this planet that they’ve kept from you.So muchthat they think you’re too fragile, too weak to understand. If they told you what really happened… no more women from Earth, no more weeuns… and we’re right back where we started again.”
“Then what really happened?”
“Perverse science.”
“I’m sorry… what do you callthis?”
“What I have done is going to move us forward. What they did…” he grits his teeth and glares at the screen.
He actually looks like he might throw up.
“When my son was born, I thought he was a miracle. I thought there was no greater purpose than to protect him. But I couldn’t protect him from whatthey’ddone. Do you know what it’s like to watch a child struggle to breathe, to keep his eyes open, to exist in this world he never asked to be brought into? Have you ever held the answer in your hand and been forbidden from doing what needed to be done in order to save someone you love.”
“No.” The hopeless look on his face makes me shiver. “I’m sorry your son died, but that doesn’t justify hurting other children.”
“Savinghim did. He will hate me for the rest of his life. But he’s alive.”
“And how many others aren’t?”
“You don’t want the number. I could tell you.” He glares down at the data in front of him. “I could tell you every name of every child who wasn’t strong enough for what I needed.”
He looks up at me, not an ounce of remorse on his face. “I did not want any of them to die.”
“Ask me if I believe you.”
He doesn’t.
“Monsters don’t like to call themselves monsters.”
“It’s strange how willing you are to provoke someoneyoucall a monster.”
“If you didn’t need me, I wouldn’t be here. So I have a little time before you kill me, right?”
He exhales heavily, and I know the look he gives me. It’s the one I’ve gotten on a semi-regular basis since childhood. He’s questioning all of the choices he made up to this point to have to deal with me.
