Mechanical Gods (lgbtq+)

Chapter Twenty-Four: Governed by Prime Probability

     Tyler felt his heart beat with every single pound pummeling in his chest. He couldn't hear it through his ears, occupied by the deafening silence that swallowed the room as he foolishly kept his lips shut. Letters and sentences jumbled up together in his mind, incoherent and out of reach, as he scrambled in the void, desperate to be whole.

     Aiden didn't expect a word from him. He could see it through the Android's softening eyes, always the considerate one. He hated him for that, wishing he'd aggressively demand it, then maybe, the words would spill out like a molten lava. And then maybe both of them would be happy, plucked out from the limbo of uncertainty that intertwined like a coiling cobra around them, ready to inflict a poisonous touch of doubt and heartbreak.

     But Aiden understood somehow this want to replace the silence, even if the vicious pain overpowered it.

     He understood.

     Aiden that was the sweetest, the gentlest, and the kindest of heart, who expected nothing out of something, and braved the ambivalence of his true existence. But that shouldn't be enough. He deserved more than the silence and the dark beating suppressing Tyler through the void of regret. And a smile shouldn't creep on Aiden's lips, knowing that the answers he sought could break him. Answers not from his existence or the history of his past, but answers of the future that planted Tyler right in the middle of that hope.

     Yet, the silence prevailed.

     Aiden gently placed Tyler's hands off of his chest and helped him to his feet. If his organs could speak, Tyler might find the reason of what was wrong with him. This way, he could fix this tension between them. Something in the air had changed drastically, and he didn't know if he should welcome it or drown in it.

     Aiden led Tyler toward the door where Al and Isaac waited. They, too, held grim expressions on their faces, but Isaac held more of an amused and gratifying stare, like beholding Tyler up a pedestal in a circus, made to be gawk at with scrutiny. Al was at least reassuring, mildly drooping his eyes as if saying he was sorry. But he didn't have anything to apologize for. And when the doors locked behind him, and Aiden had returned to his jigsaw puzzle, Tyler realized that there were more people huddled inside the cramped monitoring room. Mostly everyone was there, including Gideon Reese.

     Tyler expected a hard blow from him, annihilating him with harsh words of breaking the rules he had implanted hours before. In the split second when their eyes locked, Tyler determined that it would be better if he could take the brunt of that force. The silence was still there, then maybe, it could help him dampen Reese's words.

     But not of that came.

     Reese simply ordered everyone back to their quarters and to those working in the monitoring room to continue what they were doing as he led Tyler out of the lab. Reese determined that if Tyler could almost chuck Isaac out of a room and even sneak past the guards patrolling the lab, then, he was strong enough to go back to the comfort of his suite. He meant it to be playful, but Tyler wasn't in the mood for all of that. Frankly, he was annoyed by the elevator's slow ascent toward the second floor of the facility.

     "How much have you heard?" Tyler asked Reese.

     "A good amount," he answered.

     "Oh. Then, you must've heard..."

     "Your plan to escape? Yeah. I've known about it," he said nonchalantly.

     Tyler glanced at him warily. Of course, he knew. He was so stupid. Al must've told him after he tried to convince him to escape. After all, Al had done it before. He got caught somehow. Again. And Reese got to him fast. Again. In the building full of eyes, he should've been more careful.