VOCOM

chapter XXIV

I smirked a bit at the irony, believing VOCOM more than ever at that moment. He was just trying to confuse me, to twist things around, but I wasn’t that stupid. After all, she had made several valid points, despite some of them being rather self-centered, and I was still alive. He would’ve killed me right then and there thirteen years previously.

“Feeling cocky, are we, my dear?” his body’s extended reach was limited, with him being based in the wall rather than the ceiling, so he moved four of the mechanical arms to slink around me and hover just out of reach. The dark metal was cutting off my vision of the light source I had yet to find that was spilling in from the rightmost side of the domain.

A dark, mechanical sigh whirred, followed by the computerized voice I hated with such a burning passion, even when it was human. “I’m so glad you’ve come; I really am. When I had been put in charge of you after your parents’ deaths, I didn’t know what to expect of you. But look, you’ve turned out to be the person that grew up and single-handedly took down Kortan. Oop! But you didn’t do it alone, did you?” he sneered.

I kept a careful eye on the arms circling me like a wolf to prey, waiting the moment to strike. I didn’t like people who sneered at me. When people sneered at Vera Mattice, they got their face shot off. 

“That foolish boy and my very own creation are on your side. Funny how the three of you are teamed, isn’t it?” he laughed gently, as if amused. “Where are they now?”

Like I’d ever tell him.

“You’ve ripped me away from her, haven’t you?” a metal arm pushed gently at my back. I didn’t budge. “Don’t be stubborn now, you insolent child. You always were a hardheaded one; always getting the in way of things, nosing where you had no business.”

Perhaps then was the best time to question him over my parents. VOCOM couldn’t care enough, but I knew Benlark would tell me just to enrage me. But I had a comeback; I knew his Achilles heel. I took a few steps forward, just to see his reaction and to get the focus of the arms around me back into my peripheral view. “How did you kill them, huh?” I asked boldly, voice strong and unfaltering without fear or pain. “Toxins? Poisoning? A nasty experiment?” there I gave dramatic pause—unlike me, but I wanted to make my point clear. “Did you beat them?” I spoke with a dark undertone, hinting at what I knew. I would be ruthless in this revenge. I looked into his blue processor light, knowing I was going to strike a nerve. “Did you inject them with lethal substances? Narcotics?”

“You—!”

“What? Tell me!” I yelled. I scowled, letting my anger burn through me. I was releasing all I had built up in a careful, steady stream of spite through words. “Tell me how you killed them! I want to know! I want to know so I can do the same to you! Did you hit my father? Did you dope my mother? Just like your own parents? Do tell me, Benlark, for I’ve waited fourteen years to know.”

That’s when he struck at me with two arms, swinging with high velocity. I jumped out of the way, easily predicting that move.

He yelled with rage, “I burned them!” he was in a mad terror. “I burned them with their own fire! You were nothing but another David Mattice! Another little girl that’d fall in the name of science! You were no more special than—“

“KASNA!” I screamed, still moving. “You wanted to turn me into another KASNA! Don’t tell me I’m worthless—they were your friends, you coldhearted bastard!” I dodged more blows from the attacks that were causing the ground beneath me to shake and crumble unstably. I couldn’t let him destroy the concrete floor—or I’d go down, and he possibly with me.

I looked up, aiming to shoot the first aperture on the highest slope of the domed ceiling. I kept wondering when VOCOM was going to interfere, if she even was. The communicator had been dead silent ever since I walked through those doors.