“Why did you lie to us about the switches in the first place?” I ask her. “We could have been working on this. We could have been prepared.”
“Because I was afraid you would leave,” Raven replies. “That you’d run away and hide, and I’d never find you again.”
“We’re not cowards,” Marcella says sharply. Raven nods, conceding.
“I know,” she says. “I was wrong. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“You’reselfish,” Brynn says, startling us. “You put us in danger; you put Claire in danger. I blame you.”
Raven wilts at the harsh words, murmuring another apology. After a few moments of quiet, Raven looks over at Brynn. “All I can say is that I’m here now. I can help. And if I can look inside your programming again, I’m sure I could—”
“Not a chance,” I say. “We’re done with letting you poke around inside our brains. We can’t trust you, Raven. And to be honest, we can’t trust your skills anymore either. You’re supposed to be advanced, but what if you’re compromised and don’t even know it? You could be—”
I stop abruptly, realizing I was about to reference that Raven isn’t human, tell her that she might be unknowingly passing information to the corporation. Leandra did tell me not to trust anyone.…
My pause was too late. Raven widens her eyes. “What is it?” she demands, turning back to me. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I was mad at Raven for keeping a secret from us, but I’m keeping one too—a pretty massive one. I won’t be a hypocrite; I won’t be cruel by keeping it from her any longer. I glance sideways at Sydney, and she urges me on. I turn back to Raven.
“Winston came to see me,” I tell her. “And he provided some information about… well, about you.”
“Wonderful,” Raven says. She folds her arms over her chest. “It didn’t take him long to find you. So what did the brilliant Winston Weeks have to say?”
My throat feels dry, my heart beating fast.
“He, uh…” I steady myself. “He told me that you’re not human, Raven. You’re a girl. You’re one of us.”
“What?” She actually laughs. She looks around the room, even at Jackson. “What?” she repeats more seriously.
“Winston built you in a laboratory,” I say. “He—”
“That’s not true,” she snaps. “I’m not… No.” She shakes her head adamantly. “I’m not programmed. These aremythoughts! I wasn’t built by some fuckingman. This is my—”
But she stops suddenly, swallowing hard. Despite the fact that I’m mad at Raven for lying to us, she doesn’t deserve this pain—this crushing insecurity. Absolute annihilation of self.
I’ve been here before. I know how much it hurts to learn the truth about our existence.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. “I should have…”
I move toward her, but Raven takes a step back from me. For a moment, I think I can feel exactly what she’s going through. Raven may admire us, but she doesn’t want tobeus. She doesn’t want to know that her every thought was preprogrammed, prewritten. She wants to be real. She doesn’t want to be an appliance, atoaster, as Winston Weeks would say.
Raven blinks, and a tear slips onto her cheek, racing down to her chin before dripping onto the floor. Her shoulders are slumped, and devastation radiates off her body. She breathes loudly, little gasps between her lips. Concerned, I turn to Marcella and Brynn and find them watching her with heavy expressions.
And then suddenly, Raven snaps to attention as if just wakingup. She looks dead at me. “I have to go,” she says. “I have to get the fuck out of here.”
“You don’t have to leave,” I say, struck with guilt. We may have started out angry at her, but watching her come undone has changed my perspective. I won’t abandon her in this. “We didn’t mean to hurt you,” I tell Raven. “I know things are strained between us right now, but we’re here for you. Wearewith you.”
“I’m not upset with you,” she says. “I just… I don’t know who I am anymore.” She meets my eyes. “I’m sure you can understand that nothing… None of this matters anymore. I’m a fucking robot, Mena. I’m an android, and…” She begins to rub the skin on her arm as if she can rub it off. “I’m a creation—Frankenstein’s monster. A fucking abomination.” Her voice dips low, choked with tears. “Nothing I’ve ever done is real; not a single accomplishment is mine.”
“That’s not true,” Brynn says, all of us hoping to stop Raven’s downward spiral. But Raven is shaking her head, pulling at her clothes, losing her connection to all of us. From the door, Jackson looks terrified.
I think back to the academy, the moment we found out that we weren’t real. There was an opened body of a girl, her wires and metal laid out. We struggled, of course, but Jackson was there. And I remember he whispered,We were all created in some way, right?
Who gets to decide which creations live? Why would our lives be any less valuable because they were made with software and not sperm? We’re all awake. We all have souls.…
“I have to think,” Raven announces. wiping roughly at the tears on her cheeks, clearing them away. She moves swiftly for the door, and Jackson hops to the side to keep from getting hit as she yanks it open. Raven escapes into the sun-soaked afternoon. Jackson closes the door, and turns to look at us, his mouth downturned.
“That did not go well,” Sydney says to the room. She puts her arm around me. “You did the right thing, Mena,” she adds. “Not just for her, but for us too. Our… kind. If Raven is one of us, she needs the truth. It would have been unjust to keep it from her.”
