Kriegspiel [Sequel to The Turing Test]

23. Queen

Reality spirals back to me in chunks. An echoing thud of feet on wood. The familiar, plasticky scent of technology. The whisper of traffic as it rolls by on a street far below. Somewhere close by, the soft in-out of breaths, even and reassuring.

I blink. My head turns right, then left, as if on a motor outside of my control. I recognize the calculated nothing as my eyes become nothing but observers, taking in my surroundings with analytical indifference.

Get out of my head, Carlos! I try to shut my eyelids, to block out anything that might identify my whereabouts, but they won't budge.

Don't you dare come here. If I could speak, I'd shout it.

Blurry shapes start to take form in my vision, which quickly zeroes in on one thing: A splotch of blond, backlit by sunlight streaming through sweeping windows.

Him.

Next his eyes come into focus, icy blue and sharp as knives as they watch me with cosmic intensity. I want to look away, and if he takes my return stare as defiance, he's sadly mistaken.

I physically can't look away. The second I become aware that I'm sitting, the realization that I can't stand steals my breath.

My head is too heavy for my neck, lolling uselessly. It takes me a full minute to process my surroundings, and when I do, I shiver. Sweeping mahogany desk, expensive leather chair, only a view of sky out the window behind Sven's head.

We're on SynCo's top floor, just like the vision I had in Ayo's lab.

Slowly, I feel my body returning to my own control, but the emotions that flood me in the wake of Carlos's mechanical nothingness leave me paralyzed anyway.

"No," I blurt, but it comes out as a formless blob of noise. Sven just stares at me, the softness behind his eyes almost pitying.

I clear my throat, finally shifting my weight. The chair creaks beneath me. My cheek still stings, feeling stiff and crusty.

"Why here?" I croak.

At that, his face cracks into a grin, his eyes crinkling with humor that almost feels genuine. "This is where it all started."

I frown. If he wants to get technical about it, my life started in a lab, the one that Ayo and Carlos brought me to. The fact that he can't contemplate existence for me beyond the day he met me would have made sense to me once—back when I couldn't think of a time when I didn't know him, either.

It's different now. I have existed without him, and it makes me wonder why I ever thought I couldn't.

"For who?" I ask.

"Us."

I stiffen, my fingers digging into the chair's wooden arms. That word, a foreign lyric in a haunting song. It drifts from a time I can barely remember anymore, a time when I still believed in him.

In us.

I swallow, and it rubs painfully against my dry throat. "I don't love you."

His eyes search mine, tiny lines appearing underneath them that almost hint at humor. "It's easier that way, isn't it?"

I take a deep breath, my mind whirling in cyclones of miniature destruction. "I never did."

"And that's what makes us perfect." Even as he says it with the buttery-smooth conviction of someone who's spent years convincing even himself that his lies are true, something disappears behind his eyes. Something like his last hope.

But the moment of weakness is gone in a flash as he continues. "I need somebody to love. You need to be loved. But you can't bear to be with someone who will leave you behind in the end." He got up, pacing languidly behind my chair. "Mortality is a curse. Humans always end up leaving, whether they want to or not."