Born in Darkness

by Thomas Farmer

  Pallasophia fell silent for another long minute. Tension hung in the air. Across the room, she could see Eleni and Stavros standing in silence. One side of her face was covered with a smear of quick heal and one arm hung in a sling inside her uniform jacket, strapped to her chest. Stavros looked, on the surface, better, but only because Victoria knew most of his wounds were on his torso, covered up by bandages and his jacket. They did not look directly at one another, despite guarding the same door.

  “If I ask you something,” Victoria ventured, “will you promise me, on your life, that you'll be honest?”

  Pallasophia's expression wavered between concerned, frightened, and open. Finally she nodded once. She said nothing, instead waiting on Victoria to continue.

  “These memories I have, these skills. I know you did that. I know it kept me alive but I need to know how much of my mind is really me.” She paused for a moment, growled from somewhere deep in her throat, and continued. “When I started giving orders earlier, is that something you programmed me to do?”

  Pallasophia looked back at her. For half a second, her face was hard, accusatory. That passed in a moment, replaced by the same serene concern she had shown earlier. “Some things cannot be... programmed. We only gave you knowledge. Your skill is yours alone.”

  “That's something, at least,” Victoria replied. She was not sure whether she felt grateful for that knowledge or if it only served to put her more ill at ease. Perhaps, she thought, it was a little of both.

  “I will say this, though. I will bring this matter before the Council of Hexarchs myself and demand a formal accounting for the gaps in our knowledge base.”

  “I would bring the matter before First Lord Tritogenes before you address the Council,” Victoria said. Her voice was tight as she continued. “If he knew and still did not provide us with the information, a 'formal accounting' will be the least of his concerns.”

  “I suspect, no, I know Tritogenes had no idea that the mastigas could do some of these things. I know him too well for him to hide knowledge like that from me.”

  Victoria nodded. “Good. Because if Tritogenes or the Hexarchs fucked us over deliberately, I will not hesitate to do the job they designed and built me for.”

  Pallasophia jumped at the venom Victoria poured into the word “built.” She started to say several things, but none of them actually came out. Finally, she repeated, “I trust him.”

  “And so far, I trust you,” Victoria admitted after a moment. “You haven't lied to me that I can tell. If you trust him,” she paused, “then, unless I have reason not to, I will as well.”

  Pallasophia's shoulders relaxed slightly. She still radiated tension, but it was less directed now. She stood. Louder, in a voice that carried across the room, she said, “start packing the gear. We're leaving.”

  The response from the two surviving soldiers was immediate, despite their obvious fatigue. “Yes, Lochagos.”

  ***

  Several uneventful hours later, Pallasophia stepped into the private wing of Aphelion's hospital. Automated systems would alert the doctor of her arrival in due time.

  Victoria, masked once more, entered directly behind her. The door closed behind them. The workroom beyond was silent; the workers had been momentarily sent elsewhere before their arrival. Victoria's presence was hardly a secret to the facility's staff, though she was still considered classified information. Right then, what they really wanted to avoid was a throng of curious questions and onlookers.

  They stood in the little room reserved for Pallasophia and Tritogenes only for a few minutes. It was silent between them, but the tension from earlier never came back. Pallasophia stood near the door, in the direct line of sight for anyone coming through it. Victoria took a seat in a wooden chair with a plush crimson cushion. She tried, and failed, to suppress a sigh as she sank against the soft material.

  Already, she thought, this place was more comfort than she had ever known.

  Victoria waited patiently, watching as Pallasophia shifted uneasily from foot to foot. She had no desire to rush into the unknown, even in an allegedly safe place like this. So far, every “unknown” had tried to kill her.

  More to the point, she had no idea what to do. Having her knives and baton close at hand helped calm her nerves, but the idea that nothing here would try and murder her was so alien to her thinking that it only served to put Victoria more on edge.

  The door opened after a few minutes, admitting a woman that Victoria assumed was the doctor. She wore a vivid blue robe, a color that Victoria's mind identified as sapphire. It was covered with embroidery in various colors, primarily oranges and dark reds. Most prominent was a spiral wrapped around one arm which, the longer Victoria looked at it, seemed to contain endless levels of minute detail. Streaks of silver stood out in her otherwise short, reddish brown hair.

  “Ah, Second Lord Pallasophia,” she said smiling. “It's been some time since I have seen you in here. What seems to be the trouble?”

  Pallasophia smiled in return. The cuts and bruises from their fight with the mastigas were obvious, especially the particularly vivid contusion on her left cheekbone and the cast Victoria helped to wrap around her arm. Victoria noticed an unusual tension in her posture that was not quite fear. Rather, she seemed somehow uneasy. “I'm fine, Second Lord Iro, despite appearances. I'm here to introduce you to an unexpected visitor.”

  Doctor Iro's eyes finally made it past Pallasophia's ripped and torn uniform and hastily-treated wounds and settled on the black suited figure in the corner. An unusual mixture of fear, shock, and joy passed across her features as she looked from the top of Victoria's head to the floor and back.

  “Sweet Lady Lovelace,” she muttered, “you did it.”

  Pallasophia took a small step toward the door, putting the other Second Lord and Victoria directly opposite one another. “Doctor Iro, allow me to introduce Victoria.”

  “Victoria,” the doctor repeated, sounding it out and seeming to roll it around in her head for a moment.

  “Allow me to leave you, then. I'll give you some privacy, doctor. Victoria, I'll have your things sent to your room.” Pallasophia nodded once and left the room.

  “Doctor Iro,” Victoria enunciated.

  She jumped, then suppressed her shock with a laugh.

  “What is it?”

  “I suppose I didn't expect you to be able to talk,” she admitted.

  Victoria cocked her head to one side. That, she thought, was an oddly specific preconception to have. The team of soldiers who came to rescue her had not expressed such doubts. If they possessed them, they either kept them to themselves or worked them out before coming to answer her challenge.

  Of course, the doctor did not exude the same sort of lethal air the soldiers did. Victoria supposed it made sense, relying on the encyclopedic definition of “doctor” her brain called up on demand despite never hearing the word before. Doctors healed; soldiers fought.

  She did seem confident, however. Whether that was in her own ability—her voluminous robes made it hard to judge her physique—or if she simply placed her trust in Pallasophia's hands, Victoria could not yet tell.

  “I'm going to assume, given how you reacted, that you know who I am.”

  Iro nodded. “We used to call you 'The Champion' back when you were only a hypothetical.” She shook her head. “I'm sorry, that must have sounded heartless.”

  Rather than reply, Victoria continued watching the doctor through her tinted visor.

  After a moment, Iro continued. “Anyway, to answer your actual question, yes. After the Incident, I voiced my dissent. I said that we ought to assault the lower levels and bring you, and the others with you, out of there and continue the Project properly.

  “I was overruled.”

  “I see.”

  “Pallasophia is not a bad woman,” she said quickly. “She...”

  Victoria interrupted. “She explained the urgency of my, ah, existence to me already.”

&n
bsp; Iro's face darkened a bit. “Then you understand why we did the things we did.”

  “Understand, yes. Accept? I haven't decided.”

  “I can't blame you.”

  Victoria shifted in her chair. “Pallasophia said you were a Second Lord. I assume you're equal to her in rank?”

  “In rank, yes, but she was also Aphelion's facilities manager. Ultimately, she was senior to everyone except Tritogenes himself.”

  “The Hexarch.”

  Iro smiled. “Yes. You learned a lot from those soldiers.”

  “I already knew a great deal. As a doctor, I assume you had a hand in that, so I suppose I have you to thank for the knowledge that saved my life.”

  “Pallasophia invented the process. I merely oversaw its implementation. Though, now I admit your presence puts me ill at ease.”

  “Why? From the sounds of it, you should be celebrating.” Victoria made a derisive snort. “Your 'Champion' is alive.”

  “Your survival down there,” she made a vague gesture toward the floor, “is proof that this Project was worth all of the time, all the lives, we put into it.”

  “Do you know how many deaths went into my...” Victoria stopped as she searched for the words she wanted. Finally, she settled on, “my engineering?”

  “Many,” Doctor Iro replied. Her voice was flat, face neutral. If she felt the same sting Victoria did, she hid it well. “Pallasophia was often upset by the measures she took to ensure this Project's success.”

  “'Upset?'” Victoria echoed, derision in her voice.

  “Yes. It weighed heavily on her soul—on Tritogenes as well. The cost in lives brought her much,” Iro paused, “frustration is not the proper word, because it ran deeper than that, yet sorrow is also not quite right. My job here was not just as a medical doctor, but also as councilor for them. I share that responsibility with Second Lord Philip, who resides in Tritogenes's palace on Limani.”

  “I see. I notice you're not using their ranks,” Victoria observed.

  Iro shook her head and smiled. “No, I find that such formalities tend to interfere with my duties as a doctor. You don't seem to put much stock in it, either.”

  Victoria nodded once. “I've been bathing in mastigas blood for days, doctor. Formality isn't in the picture.”

  The doctor nodded once. “That must have been difficult.”

  Coming from the wrong person, or delivered by the right person in the wrong way, that line might have seemed judgmental. Victoria felt a brief, involuntary bristling along her spine, but Iro's gentle demeanor put her concerns to rest.

  Victoria nodded once, but her actual reply was a dismissive shrug a moment later. “That place was my definition of 'normal,' doctor.”

  Iro's eyes were sad for a moment before she looked away to busy herself looking for something in a drawer. “I suppose that would make things worse.”

  Victoria watched her withdraw things from first one drawer, then another before speaking again. “You're awfully comfortable around someone who killed a mastigas elite with her bare hands.”

  “I am not a mastigas,” Iro replied. Her lips quirked momentarily into the barest of smiles.

  “No,” Victoria countered, “humans are significantly easier to deal with than mastigas.”

  Iro turned, a strange sort of smile on her face. “Yes, but you've got no reason to kill me, do you?”

  “Do I?”

  The doctor clasped her hands behind her back and turned to face Victoria. Her voice was firm, but level when she said, “you do not.”

  Victoria felt some of her tension easing. Early on, she learned to tell when the smaller varieties of mastigas were angry or simply scared. The difference was important, as she quickly figured out. The angry ones were predictable. The scared ones were not, and no amount of experience gave her the knowledge of how to accurately prepare for them.

  The soldiers had been scared at first. She supposed she could not blame them. She did greet them with a man-height sword before overpowering and disarming the entire team. As they grew more comfortable, their behavior around her grew less erratic as well.

  With this doctor already exuding that level of comfort, or at least confidence, Victoria felt more at ease than she had in some time. She wondered to herself if this was what “safety” felt like.

  Victoria uncrossed her arms and sank back into the chair slightly. “What sort of tests are you going to run?”

  “Tests?” Iro raised one eyebrow.

  “I assume that's why I'm here.”

  “You're here, my dear Champion, because you've been wounded in your brave struggle for survival.”

  Inside her helmet, Victoria narrowed her eyes slightly. Her posture never changed. “And none of my blood or tissue will find its way into your machines?”

  Iro chuckled to herself. “Pallasophia said you were perceptive.”

  “I imagine it's why I'm still alive.”

  “One reason, yes.” Iro smiled. “Yes, I will be running tests on you as well, simple ones. I'll check your blood for pathogens or signs that your body might have been damaged in ways beyond obvious wounds. Organ damage, or poison, for instance.”

  “I would know if I've been poisoned,” Victoria said. She crossed one ankle over the opposite knee. “I remember dying from several kinds.”

  “You remember,” Iro said, then frowned. She spoke quietly, more to herself than Victoria, it seemed. “Yes, I suppose you would. I warned Pallasophia against using such vivid memories.”

  Victoria hummed, but said nothing. That statement alone conveyed a lot of information. She would never know how many nightmares she might have avoided, sleep interrupted by cold sweat and the memory of vomiting to death, if she had simply been educated with simple facts to identify poisons.

  On the other hand, she reasoned, playing devil's advocate with herself, would such bland thoughts have had as much impact as the memory of feeling cold as her muscles liquefied because she drank from the wrong water source?

  She shook off the memories and the fog that came with them. “Yes. I remember a great many things that never happened to me.”

  Iro seemed visibly shaken by that particular revelation and so Victoria decided not to press any more. “Well,” the Doctor said, “for even a cursory inspection of your wounds, I have to ask if you would remove your helmet and clothing.”

  Victoria considered that for a moment. Around the soldiers, she did little more than take off her helmet. Despite that, Iro's examination room, and the doctor herself, radiated a feeling of safety.

  After a moment, she said, “I'm going to keep my weapons nearby.”

  Iro's face brightened with a momentary smile. “Of course.”

  Victoria undid the strap under her chin and slipped the stolen mastigas helmet over her head. The sudden increase in light dazzled her eyes, and she shrank backward with her hands up in an automatic defensive reflex. The room might not have been quite as bright as the elite's arena, but it was brighter than anything else down there.

  After a moment, when her vision cleared, she realized Doctor Iro was staring. The expression on her face was strange, different from what it had been before she removed the helmet, and Victoria struggled to comprehend the emotions beneath it. She thought for a moment that, despite her previous calm, the doctor actually looked somewhat frightened now.

  No, she realized, not frightened—awed. If that was the case, Victoria thought she ought to try Iro's own trick against her.

  She made a little half smile, hoping it seemed genuine. “Don't tell me there's something wrong with my face.”

  “No,” Iro replied, after a moment. A smile crept across her face and she let out a small laugh. Her shoulders relaxed slightly. “No, there's nothing wrong with your face. It is simply that, behind that mask, you could have been anyone. You could even have been...”

  “One of them?”

  Iro let out a sigh. “Yes,” she admitted. “Given your clothing and weapons, that thought crossed my min
d, as did the idea that Tritogenes might have given up and ordered Project Titan to create an android instead.”

  “Would that be possible?”

  Iro shook her head, but said, “ordinarily I would say no, as it's never been done before, but neither have you.”

  “Trust me, if I was a robot, there wouldn't be nearly as much of my blood staining the floor down there as there is.”

  “And now here you sit.”

  “And here I sit. So, what tests do you have to run?”

  “Nothing invasive, I assure you. I need to run a few blood tests and scans. Check your hormone levels and...”

  She continued explaining what was going to happen, but Victoria's mind had not been shaped for medical science and she quickly lost track of the procedures and tests. She simply nodded along, comforted in the knowledge that none of them would be as painful as a mastigas blade.

  She concluded with, “first, however, we need to actually treat your wounds. Quick heal can only do so much.”

  Victoria nodded and began the process of removing her handmade clothing. The black garment was festooned with ties holding various overlapping layers together, ties that took some time to knot or, as she needed to do at the moment, unknot. Iro stood nearby, close enough to help if Victoria asked, but never once reached for anything.

  Completely undoing the ties was difficult enough as her aching muscles and joints fought her. Much worse was the sensation of her flesh being pulled as the tattered pieces of fabric unstuck themselves from her wounds. It took more time than she thought it should have, but Victoria kept herself calm by counting breaths, happy that Iro did not offer to help.

  Finally, the outer layers were off. Underneath them was the bandage she used to bind her chest. Like her outer layers, it was made of stolen mastigas fabric. The bandages underneath that, like those wrapped around her arms and legs, were from Pallasophia's medical field kit and were soaked with a mixture of her blood, mastigas blood, and the residue of quick heal.

  Iro's eyes grew progressively wider as Victoria removed bandage after bandage. Scars stood out against her skin, some white, some pink, and some still the curious red they turned after coming in contact with mastigas blood.