“That thing.” I point to the screen.
“Kind of. Close enough, I guess. You understand that computers are machines.”
“You’re a machine?”
Now he chuckles. “In a very crude way, yes. All gods are machines. It’s a long story, the take home message is that my reach is very far. Well, notmyreach, per se. All my augments are close. But Delta, for instance. Or Alpha. Or any of them who make augments. They can see as far as their farthest augment travels.” He points to the screen again, where Tyse’s fight is still playing. He’s ripping off limbs. “I see through his eyes. I will always see through his eyes now. There is no escape from the puppet master.”
An overwhelming sense of doom swallows me whole.
“That’s right,” Epsilon says. “You’re trapped. Forever. And so is he. Because as long as he lives—and this is the important part, Clara—as long as you feed him, hewilllive. And as long as he lives, I will use him. I will drain you to death every time.So if you’re lying about that spark reservoir inside you… well.” He laughs. “We’re gonna find out soon enough, so it makes no difference to me at all. But to you? You will die, sweet Clara. It’s as simple as that.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care if you die?”
I press my lips together as I shake my head. “No. I don’t care if I die. The only reason I’m here is because I was sacrificed to my god. And my god is dead. So instead, I will sacrifice myself to Tyse.”
Epsilon lets out a long sigh. Almost as if he’s tired.
And it occurs to me now that he’s… different. Not as strung out. Not as insane as he first came off. I can’t tell if it’s because that was all an act, or if he’s… tired. And this weariness makes him a little bit vulnerable.
Either way, it’s worked, this act. Because I see him as a person now. Someone I can converse with, at the very least. And I’m making a deal. A deal that will save Tyse and surely sign my own death certificate.
“I don’t want to live,” I say. “Not without him. He’s my world now. So whatever it is you’re going to do, just do it. And I will willingly give you every drop of my spark if you promise to give it to him.”
Again, he sighs. “You know, I could just… take it.”
“And do what with it? If not put it into Tyse. Clearly, whatever it is you’ve been doing to these men here—it’s not working. I mean, look at them.” I want to say, ‘Look in the mirror,’ but that would provoke him. Which isn’t my goal, so I don’t. “You need us. You need us to complete whatever it is you’re doing down here. You might never get another chance like this. Tyse is… the cornerstone in your crown. You need him. And if you need him, you need me.”
Epsilon stands up, turns his back, and starts to walk over to the door.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
He pauses, his hand pressing into the door, as if he’s about to push it open. Then gives me one last side-eye. “If you want to be a sacrifice, then how can I resist?” With that, he’s through the door and it swings closed behind him.
Movement on the screen catches my attention and I strain my neck to see what’s happening. Epsilon enters the room next door where Tyse is lying unconscious on the augmentation table. He does something here—fingers tapping on a control panel—and the needle-wired cage suspended above Tyse begins to lower.
This is it. It’s happening. He’s going to harvest me again.
But it’s going to be OK.
This is what I tell myself as the cage of needle-thin wires across from me comes to life and begins to migrate across the distance between us.
It’s going to be OK. It’s going to be OK.
And I say this, I picture us. Tyse and me sitting in that restaurant after I had all those brain scans at the Tau City health center.
The look on his face. The seriousness in his eyes. And the way he demanded, gently, and firmly, that if we were going to be partners, we needed two things.
Absolute trust.
And absolute loyalty.
So as the needles stab my skin, and as the spark of life is sucked out of me, I repeat his words like a mantra.
If I have your back, then you must have mine.
I’ve got your back, Tyse.
