by Loki Renard
I thought they had a plan. They don’t have a plan at all. They’re winging this. None of us know where to even begin to rebel against the woman who has made herself the cornerstone of our lives. I thought they would know, being made separately, naturally. They are fully human people with a direct connection to normalcy, and right now, they are completely useless.
“I’m getting Tom back,” Ken growls. “He’d get me back.”
A cool woman’s voice comes over the speakers of the vehicle. “If the three of you have discussed the matter long enough, I would appreciate you in fact rescuing the President of Indonesia from the terrorists planning to murder him. Then you can get back to making plans as to how to defy me.”
So much for a communications dead zone. I’ve never seen a man look so petulant as Ken does right now. We all fall silent, knowing that each and every one of us is now completely fucked. I am humiliated more than ever. The Head knows that I refused to escape. She knows that I know that she knows how weak she has made me. None of us can win against her, not the most vicious woman, or the most highly trained man.
“Get back in the driver’s seat, Mary,” Ken sighs. “Let’s do this.”
The vehicle starts up, and we go off to save the Indonesian President.
Proposition
Tom
I look out the window and see nothing but ice. It stretches as far as the eye can see. The feeling of isolation is absolute. I sit and I regret everything. I should never have played along with the Head. I should have taken Electra the first time we had the chance and we should have run.
That would not have worked, though, and I know it. I could not abandon Ken and Mary that way. Knowing the Head, she would have forced them to bring me in to make the humiliation complete. There was never any way out of the trap that woman set for us. Electra knew that, but I was in denial. My ego wouldn’t let me see the truth. I lived in a fantasy where I was protecting Electra. In the end, I protected nothing. Not even myself.
I am not the only one with an ego. I am a prisoner, not because I have committed any crime, but because the woman who runs the world has an ego more fragile than any man.
I do not have time to hate the Head for doing this to us. My thoughts are consumed with Electra. I know she will be devastated. She had made so much progress, and that was all destroyed in a single capricious act of revenge.
The door creaks. It’s common enough. Sometimes the walls of the cabin shift and shuffle as if they’re made of nothing more solid than cardboard, but when I touch them, they’re real.
The door creaks again. Then it opens.
The Head steps in, closing it behind her immediately so I do not see the driven snow, only the woman who uses the weather as her jailer.
“What are you doing here?” My question is blunt. I notice she doesn’t seem to have ice or sleet on her clothing, which does not seem appropriate for an Arctic winter. Am I losing my mind? It is very possible. I think that was the aim of this exercise. The Head wants me good and broken. She’s succeeding.
She smiles at me, her expression enigmatic and completely controlled.
“I liked watching you with Electra,” she says, starting her sentence almost mid-conversation. She is not a woman who has to bother with pleasantries. She wields the power of life and death and she knows it. She has come to toy with me, like a cat with the sophistication to save a mouse for later. I don’t care what she does to me. I just hope she hasn’t hurt Electra.
“You liked watching me?”
“With her,” the Head repeats. “When you engaged in your particular brand of domineering coitus. I watched every moment of it, you know.”
She’s trying to shame me. It won’t work. Making love to Electra is the best thing I’ve ever done. If she wanted to stare at it from her embittered office, that makes no difference to me.
“It didn’t seem as though you did.”
“Oh, I surely liked it,” she says, her voice becoming arch and suggestive, and… oh no. There is a charge to her voice, to the quirk of her brow, to the sultry smile on her face. I am not being tortured. It’s worse. I am being propositioned.
“Give me what I want, and I will give you what you want.”
“And what is it that you want, ma’am?”
“Give me that cock,” she says, the crude words tripping off her lips with a smile. “And I will give you back your girl.”
I look at her askance. Is she mad? The answer to that, I think, is yes. Is she above attempting to blackmail me for sex? Possibly not, but this seems out of character for a woman of iron will and drawers, according to popular rumor. This is not typical behavior for the Head. She is usually decorous to a fault.
“Listen,” I say. “You know that’s not going to happen.”
“It is lonely out here, isn’t it?”
“Not that lonely.”
I don't believe she actually wants to be with me. No sane person would choose this as a method of seduction, and for all her sadism, the Head is not insane. She is calculating. I suspect this is a test. She wants to see how desperate I am, and what I will give up in order to free myself from this frozen prison.
It is tempting to try to hurt her, but I am a doctor first and foremost and my oath to do no harm stands even in situations such as these. I have to trust that Ken will look after Electra. He will find a way to do so, even if it seems impossible. And, truth be told, I trust Electra to look after herself. She has survived much worse than this for as long as she has been alive.
The Head’s smile thins and becomes mocking. “I’m hurt.”
“No, you’re not,” I say calmly. “I know I’m not your type.”
“No?”
“No,” I say firmly. “I’m fairly certain anyone short of a despot or dictator would find it impossible to survive your bed.”
Her cheek twitches. Have I amused her?
“It is a pity that you are caught up in this,” she says. “I must tell you, your brother is not pleased.”
“Of course he isn’t. Is it worth destroying his morale and loyalty just to punish two people for a momentary lapse in respect?”
“Absolutely.”
“Alright.”
“Not the answer you expected, I suppose,” she smiles. “It’s not easy, having my position, Doctor Ares.”
“I imagine it isn’t,” I say. I am not in the mood to commiserate with the woman holding me and the woman I love hostage, but there is little point being openly hostile.
“There are many factors at play. Even the smallest decision has endless consequences, and nobody truly sees the larger picture. People are small players by nature, Doctor Ares. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“It sounds like you’re trying to tell me there’s a reason for what you’ve done to me.”
“Precisely.”
“Something which would make it acceptable to have manipulated Electra into a relationship and then deprived her of it, to have made her heart whole and broken it again.”
“Very poetic, Doctor Ares, but I can assure you, there was such a reason.”
“I’m tempted to reference something about means and ends, but I think it would be lost on you.”
The Head sighs. “I thought you might make a suitable companion, Doctor Ares. I should have realized that men always prefer the manic pixie to the ice queen.”
She’s lying again. Fishing for more words. I give them to her.
“People are more than tropes,” I say. “I love Electra because of who she is. I’ve watched her blossom these past months. Her personality has grown. She’s become deeper in so many ways. She’s discovering parts of herself that science never touched.”
“Good for her.”
“That’s what you wanted for her,” I say. “And do you know what else?”
“What, Doctor Ares?”
I call her bluff.
“I don’t think you want me now. You want to see if I am truly committed, or if I’d sell Electra out for my freedom
. Well, I can tell you now, I won’t. I’d die in ice if it meant knowing she was safe. You don’t have to test me. I took her as mine, and I meant it.”
“Yes, you took her in more ways than one,” the Head notes. She pauses for what feels like a very long time, and I wonder if she is going to address the elephant in the room in the form of what I just said to her.
“Am I right? Is this a test?”
“Evidently a rather unsophisticated one,” the Head sighs. “Yes. Very well. It is a test.”
The Head is mad, not in the sense of being removed from reality, but in the sense of knowing she can bend it to her will. Electra was right all along. We are pawns, and only a thin sliver of benevolence in the Head’s nature prevents her from destroying us all.
“You have not done anything to earn Electra’s trust, you know.”
“Electra is never going to trust me. She’s got too much of me in her.”
I look at the woman who runs her facility with an iron fist, always keeping herself perfectly separate from everybody. She appears to have no weaknesses, but suddenly I am realizing that she has just casually entrusted me with what must be her most precious secret, if it is true.
“Electra is your daughter?”
“They took my egg to make her. Against my will,” the Head says a particular far away note in her voice, as if she is disassociating from the memory while she conjures it. “That was two decades ago. I did not have the resources then that I do now. I have lived my life knowing that things were created from me, Doctor Ares.”
“Babies?”
“They weren’t all babies. Most of them were just things. Lab grown meat. Mixed with…” she trails off with a tight smile. “Best not to dwell.”
“I’m sorry.”
I say the words, and I mean them. I can tell when I am in the presence of trauma, and the Head is almost certainly one of the most traumatized people in this place. She runs her realm acting out all the horrors done to her, keeping order with a white knuckled grip and furiously lashing out at those who threaten it.
“When I first recovered Electra, she was entirely feral. She killed three men in three days. That is why I assigned Tyko to her. He was tough enough to survive her. He began the task of doing what I could not, but neither of us had the ability, the temperament, or the time, to care for her as she needed to be cared for. For that, I recruited you, Doctor Ares.”
“Tyko was useful?” The question escapes me before I can stop it. He struck me as a complete asshole.
“He’s not as bad a man as he seems,” the Head says. “He was what she needed first. Someone to break. She broke him swiftly. She has broken every man she has encountered. Except you.”
I would be more skeptical, but the timeline fits, and it explains so much, why Electra has been protected and yet not really treated like a human, why the Head leaped at the chance to engage me to work with her. It’s a commonly known fact that genetic and cybernetic experiments have been going on for decades. Electra is probably among the first to be healthy enough to live to adulthood.
“You need to tell her that you’re her mother.” That’s the first thing that comes to mind. This secret cannot remain secret. It is too powerful and it is doing far too much damage to everyone who does not know it and yet must live by it.
“Do I…?”
Truth
“I… ughhh!”
The Head starts to choke. At first, I think it is because she’s melodramatically exhibiting disdain for my suggestion, but then I realize that she’s actually being choked. Somehow, someone has just come up behind her, wrapped a very thin piece of material around her neck, and is pulling like Hades.
I knew Electra was a stealth assassin. I did not realize she could materialize in the Arctic, gain entry to a remote cabin, and murder somebody in front of others with them barely noticing. But there is no time to be impressed at Electra’s assassination prowess. I have to stop her.
“Electra! No!”
I’m not trying to save the Head’s life as much as I’m trying to not let Electra kill her mother. That is a level of Greek tragedy which does not need to be acted out here today.
“This bitch deserves to die!” Electra pops out from behind the Head. “Also, hello! I love you!”
“Let her go. Come here.”
Electra doesn’t listen to me.
“We saw through your lie, bitch,” Electra says, keeping the pressure steady on the Head’s neck. “We figured it out. You don’t send people away. You don't trust anyone enough to have power anywhere else. Only here in this building. So we came back and we searched the building and then we realized you’re a one trick pony who thinks everyone is stupid and you like fucking with them. So we came back here, to the floor you made for me and Tom in the first place.”
“Electra,” I repeat, not wanting to see the outcome of what seems to be her murderous intention. “Please. Come here.”
There’s a moment of hesitation in which Electra must choose between death and love.
She makes the right decision.
I stretch my arms out and instead of murdering the Head, Electra falls into my arms…
THUD
That is the sound of the wall of my cabin falling away to reveal that I have been kept captive on the very same level Electra and I once lived on. I am an idiot. I have spent weeks of captivity in a heavy lined wood wall which was only ever supported by struts like a movie set.
I was duped into believing in my captivity so thoroughly I didn’t even truly try the bonds of my prison. There’s probably a lesson in that somewhere, but for the moment I am thoroughly distracted by holding the love of my life.
Having her in my arms is more important than anything. I squeeze her tight and I whisper how much I missed her in her ear. She's mine. I will never let her go. Ever.
“She’s a bitch and she was lying,” Electra hisses in my ear once she’s told me she loves me. “She’s not my mother.”
“I’m afraid I am,” the Head says, her voice hoarse. She has a bright red line around her throat where the wire almost cut through all the parts that make a person work. Does she know how close she came to dying? Does she care?
“No. There’s no way you’re my mother.”
Electra
“I do not know how many of my genes were selected for your use, but I know it was my egg that was taken from me.”
The Head just. keeps. talking. I should have cut her fucking windpipe already so all we’d have to listen to would be gurgling.
I turn in Tom’s arms to look at the lying bitch. “And I’m supposed to believe you, when everything you ever say is a complete and utter lie?”
“Your belief or lack thereof makes little difference to me,” the Head says. “The truth does not need to be known to be true.”
“I think she might be telling the truth,” Tom says.
“Well, you thought you were in the Arctic, so what do you know?”
“Fair,” he admits, his big hand sliding down warningly to cup my ass. God I have missed him. I want him so badly. I want to feel his hand on my butt, I want to feel his cock deep inside me. I want to be taken so thoroughly it is like we were never apart at all.
“This has been my poor attempt to save you,” she says, interrupting my lusting. “I am not maternal, Electra. And you would not have known what to do with a mother. I thought I would find somebody to help you. And, I believe I did.”
“And then you got in his way, freaked out when he didn’t obey you like a wind up doll, imprisoned both of us…” I screw up my face. “That is not how you help someone. You could have been nice to me. You could have set me free. You could have not used me to kill people.”
“But that is what you were made for.”
What a bitch.
“So I am your daughter, but I’m also a tool. You care, but you want to use me too. You want to look after me, but you’ll ruin my life on a whim…. Fuck you. You’re not my mother. If you’re anything, you’re a DN
A donor, and I don’t even believe that. I’m going to fucking kill you.”
I want to wrap the wire around her neck and I am going to cut and squeeze the life out of her. This woman is evil. She does not know how to be anything other than evil. She’s broken. She sees the world in terms of things to be used, people aren’t people, they’re just pawns in her game….
Wait. No. Death is too easy for her.
“We’re taking her,” I say to Tom. "She's ours. Let’s see how she likes being held captive.”
I expect Tom to disagree, but to my surprise, he doesn’t.
“Where are Ken and Mary?”
“Watching the door.”
“You restrain the Head,” he says. “I’m going to get them in here.”
“You can’t escape,” the Head says as I tie her up using her own stupid silk scarf which she had wrapped around her waist in some attempt at fashion. She was practically begging to be strangled today.
“We're not going to try to escape.”
Tom and Ken come in along with Mary, who alone looks less than comfortable with this. I see her give the Head a rueful smile and shrug her shoulders.
“The rebellious four,” the Head smiles back. “This is not going to end well for any of you.”
She does not like this. She’s not used to finding herself at a disadvantage. She's not used to having her lies seen through, or probably worse still for her, having her truths laid bare.
“It was never going to end well. You made sure of that.”
“My people are going to overrun this floor within minutes.”
“We’ll see.”
“You’ll all be charged with treason and executed.”
“Alrighty,” I say. I don’t care. This fake world she constructed, I think it is all as flimsy as the fake cabin wall which lies on the ground. Who cares about dying when nothing is real anyway?
“You’ll all be killed before the end of the day.”
“I don’t think so. You’ve made a lot of enemies. All you’ve ever made are enemies. People do what you say because they’re afraid of you, but their loyalty only goes as far as their fear, and now we have you, I’m not so sure they’re going to want you back. See, we have one thing you don’t have: people who love us.”