It keeps talking.
It keeps wearing me down and winding me up.
She let him in. She let him close. She talked to him for forty-five minutes about things she won’t tell you. You’re nothing anymore, you know this. You never were anything.
“So, what did you talk about?” I ask, trying to gain some sort of control back, feeling that darkness hovering above me like a net ready to drop. “For forty-five minutes. What was so important?”
She gives me an incredulous look. “What do you think? The mission. We talked about what happened at the warehouse. What I’ve learned about Global Dynamix.” She takes a breath. “He asked about you, of course.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“That things got…complicated.”
“Complicated.” I let out a huff of frustration. “Is that what we are? Complicated?”
“Are you trying to tell me that we’re not?” Her voice cracks on the last word. Just barely, just for a second, but I hear it. “Complicated is all we have. Nate, I don’t know what any of this is. I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
The crack in her armor makes something twist in my chest. Part of me wants to pull her into my arms and tell her I’m sorry and that I forgive her, even if there’s nothing to forgive. It wants to be the man I was in Montana, before everything went to shit.
But there’s something else in me now. Something cold and watchful that won’t let go of the image of Cal walking into her room. Something I don’t think even belongs to me anymore.
That something is winning.
“Does he know?” I ask. “About us?”
She hesitates. “He knows I’ve gotten close to you. The team—they’re worried I’ve lost perspective. I guess they passed that message along.”
“Have you lost perspective?”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“I don’t know. I think so.”
The honesty helps, enough for me to be honest too.
So that when Mia says, “The voice is getting louder, isn’t it?” I can’t help but tell her the truth.
“Every day,” I say, my voice a whisper. I’m telling her this like it’s a secret, like I’m not supposed to, like someone will hear me.
“Fight it,” she implores me, searching my face. “Whatever it is, whatever they did to you—you’re stronger than that. That voice isn’t you. You have to push back.”
“But how do you know?” I look at her, really look, and I don’t know what she sees in my face but it makes her stop. “How do you know this isn’t exactly what I am? How do you know the thing in my head isn’t the real me, and everything else is just…programming? Just what they wanted me to believe so I’d be easier to control?”
“Because I’ve seen you.” She takes a step closer and my skin vibrates, craving her. “The real you. The one who flew me to Montana and showed me his childhood ghosts. That’s real. That’syou.”
“And the one who threw you off a building? The one who put his hand around your throat and didn’t let go until you hit me in the windpipe?” I lean in, close enough that my breath stirs her hair. “Is that real too?”
She doesn’t flinch. “Yes.”
“So, which one am I?”
“Both.” Her hand comes up, fingers brushing my jaw. The touch is feather-light but I feel it everywhere. “You’re both. You have darkness in your light and light in your darkness. That’s the duality of being alive in this world. That’s what makes you human.”
Human.
The word echoes in my skull, rattling around like a stone in an empty room.
You may be human, but you have no humanity. You’re a weapon. You’re a thing they built in a lab and programmed to follow orders and the only reason you think you have feelings is because they wanted you to think that.
