Tin Man

Chapter 6: Footsteps

Chapter 6; Footsteps

I went to check on the human early the next morning. We had moved him to a room with a bed.

"Hello, Iver."

"What do you want." Statements, always statements.

He was hunched over the side of the bed, staring at the wall.

"How long are you going to keep me here?" He didn't turn his head to look at me.

"You mean are we going to let you go?"

"Yea."

"We're not planning on it, were there others, where we found you?'

"I don't remember."

"What about your arm, do you remember how you lost that?"

"I told you, I don't remember anything but my name!"

"If you can't be useful to us, then we can just- dispose of you."

I can't understand why he's so stubborn.

"Go ahead. 'Dispose' of me." He turned and sat back to face me.

"So you can't remember anything prior to when you woke up yesterday?"

"I said no!"

"We could help you, you know, if you would just cooperate with us. We could even replace your arm."

"What makes you think I want a bunch of idiotic machines doing that for me?"

"We aren't idiotic. We are highly intelligent artificial beings. And we can help you."

"Help. Your kind is what did this to me. To my species. You can't help anyone. Not even yourselves." He's starting to make me angry.

No, I'm offended.

"Would you like something to eat?" I say, gritting my teeth.

"I'd rather starve." He was so thin. He couldn't afford not to eat.

"I'll come back later with some food for you."

"Please don't."

"You know you're very foolish. You're malnourished. Your body is going to give out on you. Do you want that? To die of starvation?"

"It's a very painless death, you know. But then again, you don't know anything about death."

"That's enough!" He looked up at me. Calm. Not the least bit bothered.

"You don't scare me. You're just a little girl."

"And you're just a little boy."

"Ha. But I get to grow up." I shot him the middle finger and slammed the door shut. He isn't staying here.

I flagged Dwayne down in the hallway nearby.

"You can just get rid of him." I said, somewhat hesitant.

"Nah. I have an idea on how to get info out of him. A machine. It reads the human brain."

"Well that's interesting, you can do what you want with him now. He's too stubborn for me to handle."

He gave me a toothy grin. "You're just as stubborn, hon."