In His World.

The Arrival

"No," Seven says, "You've fooled yourself."

I can almost feel the presence of the Hound's knife, swaying around my hunched shoulders. He might have even flicked a lock of my hair.

"And how is that?" the Hound asks.

Seven continues slowly towards us, hands in his pockets like he's going for a casual stroll and not, in fact, facing three awful monsters.

"By believing rumours," Seven replies.

"What rumours!?" the Hound practically spits. He's lost patience now, but Seven is as calm as ever. "Are you not what you claim to be?"

Seven smiles. A tremor runs through my body at the sight. It is a beautiful, evil smile.

He's almost reached the landing when he replies, "Perhaps she is not what you claim she is."

The Hound steps away from me, towards Seven. He's seething, trembling with rage and frustration. "What - not human!? You expect me to believe that? She has bled, dear Seven, she is very much human."

Seven is picking apart the Hound, drawing him, and everyone else, in by a string. By the looks on Three's and Six's faces, they don't even know what he's getting at. And now, he's walked right up to us. The two lesser hounds don't even try and stop him - they're too enraptured, too eager to learn his secret.

"No, I agree - she is most certainly human," he says. Then he kneels down, right in front of me. His fingers brush softly against my chin as he lifts my face to look at him and says, oh-so-softly, "She's just not the last one."

~~~

There have been times, in my twenty years of life, that I stop and realise that this, this is a moment that will change my life forever. I guess that sort of overly dramatic introspection comes with keeping a powerful secret for as long as I can remember.

Was I different? Was I special? Was I something more than the people around me? There was no way I could ever know, because I couldn't talk to them and risk the truth slipping out - the truth; crimson, warm, and running through my veins, reminding me that I will never be as strong as those with bodies of metal and lightning.

So what is there for a boy to do, always feeling lesser - always being afraid of his shadow? Afraid that lurking in that shadow might be a recording device that picks up on his words and informs the big bad world that there is still one left; one human with the blood and flesh and mind that everyone else abandoned.

Movement Robotica was a failure. An obsession, and a failure. 'Once weak, now strong!' they chanted from the rooftops. Become a robot, loose your humanly worries, and be everything you want to be. Beautiful, strong, powerful. Don't feel like walking? You can glide on wheels. You lost your arms in an accident? Forget those old prosthetics - this works way better! Oily, dry, imperfect skin? Why not remove it all and try something smoother and 100% customisable? There was an answer for everything, a cure for everything. Everything, except death.

It was the goal of Movement Robotica to find a way to cheat death. If we could become more than human - perhaps we could find a way to live forever. Build ourselves bodies of metal, upload our minds onto data systems. But none of it worked. It all failed. It only brought death closer.

How do you kill a robot? How do you kill a machine? How does a mechanical creation die?

All you have to do is hit the 'off' switch. All you have to do is splash it with water. All you have to do is unplug it from the power source. Not enough energy, too much energy, it dies.