The First Steps of a Dance

How will I try to convince Adam that I'm harmless?

I know. Let's try my trick from before. But to do that, I have to enter the room from the outside.

Okay done.

Adam heard a knock on the door, jolted him out from his deep mourning. He tried again to wipe his tears again but felt stupid when his hands bumped into his helmet visor instead.

The brass door creaked open, and there was a lady with a blue blazer and skirt, with brown-black hair and brilliant makeup, entered the room. The room with the dangerous chemical still filling up the air.

"No! Lady!" Adam stood up, "the air here is dangerous! You need a protective suit!"

"Don't worry. I'm fine," the lady said, then, "Felicia Armstrong, Angkara Gazette."

A reporter, "you'll die if you inhale the air here at this proximity," Adam said nervously.

"Respiratory problems?" she asked, "I know about that. I wrote the article. Your superior seems not to pay any attention to that when I asked him about it this morning."

'Superior?' "You mean, George?"

"Yes," she answered matter-of-factly, "you may need to check on him later since he shot one of your androids."

"I heard about that, but…"

"…but you need to be here?"

Adam didn't know what to think. He was still struggling to drag himself back to reality after such deep sadness. But now a charming lady appeared in front of him, without fear of death, talking as if she knew what he was thinking. He wondered if he needed another shot of BE, or he was already dead, and he's not with the living anymore.

"This isn't the time to think about Bel's Encounter, Adam," Ms. Armstrong said.

"Wha… how do you…"

"Doesn't matter for now Adam. Look…" she moved closer to him, "… I know you're very confused right now, but I can assure you, we are looking for the same thing. I can try and explain how I know what you are thinking, but we haven't much time."

"We haven't much time for what?"

"I am wondering about that too," she answered, then she walked away from Adam, "both of us are trying to find out who we are in the grand scheme of things. I can't remember anything from my past, while your past is shrouded with questions. But I have this feeling that… that we need to work together to uncover both."

"What are you talking about?"

She scoffed, "hell if I know. All I know is, we need to work together."

***

Hagar and Y-0 were greeted with a commotion. People and androids were scampering to and fro, seemingly unaware of their existence.

"Can you detect Y-14's whereabout?" she asked.

"I usually can, but his signals are strange," Y-0 said, "I've been trying to assess his condition since we heard about the news, but … I've never experienced anything like that before."

They are calling themselves with gendered pronouns, she'd never experienced anything like that either. It all suddenly happened after the DomArt incident, where both of the androids seemingly insisting on their individuality. Human individuality. But she knew that to link the incident as a cause is a post hoc fallacy: prematurely assumes that one incident causing the other to occur just because it happened one after the other.

"How about George?"

"He's being detained."

"Now how do you know that?"

"I accessed the security footage."

That made sense, "who's detaining him? I mean, he's the commander…"

"I … I … it seems like five or six androids are holding him in the interrogation room…"

A dark feeling surged over her, but she decided to let it go, "Okay. Let's go there, I guess…"

***

"Look, lady," Adam said, "it's not safe for you to stay here any longer. Let's just get out of here."

"Are you sure you found everything that you were looking for?'

He forgot about that. He was supposed to investigate, not ruminating on his past with Marco.

"It's nice to get some resemblance of closure, Adam," she said, seemingly read through his mind again, "sorry if you're not comfortable with me reading your thoughts. I can't help it, it's just… I heard it almost like you talk to me directly. I can't separate your thoughts and your spoken words, at least I still don't know how…" she trailed off, "… what was I saying? Oh yes… It's nice to get some resemblance of closure, but you still need more to investigate, right? We need to be closer to the group that did this…"

"What's in it for you?"

"As I said, I need to make sense of my existence… my reason of being… the purpose of my sudden awakening…"

" 'Awakening,' huh…"

"I… I can't explain it now, but…" she snapped herself from her wandering thoughts and returned to the professional stance she showed when she introduced herself, "… let's not linger to that. I felt like whatever we intend to do here, we must do it swiftly."

"I don't know where to start," Adam admitted.

"Start with the black leather jacket, I guess…"

Adam almost marveled about she found out about that, but he stopped himself. She already said that she could 'hear' his thoughts. He remembered that most of the time he and Marco played detective games when he was a child, the jacket seemed to be a recurring hidden object. Sometimes Adam would disregard the clues and just used his eyes instead to find the black jacket, to no avail. Marco always hid it very carefully so Adam could only find it if he consulted the clues.

The tears almost emerged once more.

"No time for crying, Adam," Miss Armstrong said, "you need to set aside your emotions now."

She had a point, annoying as it was.

"The jacket isn't here anymore," Adam said, "we need to go back to the station's morgue."

"…it's not safe there now. We'll run out of time," she said, "all you have to do is remember. Why did Marco put so much emphasis on his jacket?"

"Let's see… he said that it was his jacket from when he was in the military."

"Which military? Is there any military branch that uses black as their color?"

Adam felt like he was being punched, "… no…" Five years in the police department and he was just realized that now.

"Was it just black? Or there was other… insignia of sorts?"

"No… it was just black…" but then he remembered something. It was the first time he saw Marco, he said to him not to cry, but he let him cry anyway. He recalled an upside-down blue-grey triangle, with another smaller lighter triangle superimposed on top of it.

He knew exactly what it was, "Callisto Industries."

"Sorry?"

"There was an emblem on the jacket's right chest, but after a couple of years, Marco tore the emblem. But I just remembered them now."

"Because you saw it when you're in your most volatile emotional state. The death of your…"

"Yes, yes," Adam interrupted her.

"The memory which accompanied by strong emotional condition usually sticks," she said, "all we have to do is to… juggle the emotions all over again."

"Juggle," Adam sneered, "an interesting choice of words."

"Or do you prefer 'dance'?" she asked.

"A dance…" he wondered loudly, "… that's poetic, all things considered."