31. Bad memories

Dan.

For the past year I've been getting major waves of déjà vu. They come in random pulses: eating pancakes, watching Tohka handle a gun, and on the rare occasion, seeing Grace drink moon treated liquor. It's a strange feeling, like a tingle down my spine. Like the Unit was trying to tell me something.

Only once has it felt like the Unit was trying to actually speak to me: the night on the river bank. That gut feeling of being pulled into the Gray, not by the bullshit orders I clouded my own judgment with, but something deeper.

I was getting that gut feeling again, but much, much more physical.

The metal bat whacked into my ribs again, it stopped hurting an hour ago, now it was just blood running down my side and into my trousers. Pain so hot my brain couldn't keep up. The Unit was the only thing keeping me awake, that and Grace.

Jin groaned a curse when the bat hit his side, he spat blood into the soldier's chiseled face, and received another round of snap a rib.

"What's wrong, cousin?" Grace asked from behind a computer screen, the blue light highlighting her sharp cheek bones, darkening her already inky hair. "Would it seem that you're giving up?"

I looked up, through the hair hanging over my eyes, past the tears stinging them. "Hunter is-"

"Going to kill me." She waved a hand through the air. "You're like a broken record. Come up with something more…enthusiastic."

"Go fuck yourself," Jin and I said in unison.

She laughed mirthlessly. "Yes. Now that's better."

The bat smacked into my side, a gunshot type bark of metal hitting skin. I felt that one, it hammered against already split skin. I bit down on my tongue to suppress the scream – I wasn't going to give her an inch. But blood was pulsing out of my side, breathing sent shards of icy pain through my body – wheezes escaped my mouth.

Jin was biting down on his lip, hard enough to have split it now. He had barely spoken ever since the corridor, he didn't even say anything when the back of our necks were slit by a centimeter and connected to Grace's computer. A towering monster that surrounded her, the room was brain achingly cold, poking at the wounds on my sides.

I'd been the same, not a word apart from the broken record threat dribbling out of my mouth. I'd said it as a threat at first, but I'm not so sure anymore. It's a chant bouncing around my head, trying to make itself more than just wishful thinking.

The metal bat was making it just that, wishful thinking.

"Okay," Grace said, "enough."

The two soldiers stopped immediately, wiping the bats across our trousers. They stepped out of the room, heavy thuds as they marched in unison. The door hazed shut.

Just the three of us and the giant whirring computer.

Grace muttered to herself and shook her head. "Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. I am extremely impressed that you're still alive."

"I've lived through worse." It came out muffled, with rickety breaths in between each word.

She shook her head. "No, not the beating. Your brain, it's…astonishing. Grandfather would have been amazed." She looked up at me, blue eyes pale and lifeless. "Do you ever hear a voice in your head?"

"I'm hearing one right now." I chuckled to myself. "It's telling me to snap your neck."

"Stop with the bravado," she said. "Answer the question."

"Because asking me warrants a response?"

She smiled, red lips a thin line like the horizon from the Island's view. "You can say that, but I know the answer." She went back to the screen, slim fingers racing over the hovering keyboard. "Almost sentient. Can you believe that?"

I don't want to believe that, but I knew what she was talking about. Something I refused to acknowledge and think about. I've had my issues in the past with it, not right now, though. I don't have any reason to push it away, we're the same thing after all. But she was right – the chatter at the very edge of my consciousness, the jolts I'd get down my spine whenever I spoke wrong of it.

The chuckle I swear I heard when I jumped out of Grace's office building. I thought I was going crazy, losing it. That wasn't the case, not by a long shot.

"It seems," she said, "that it's even trying to communicate with you right now." Her voice was on its edge, filled with energy. "In a few years, when we've killed all your friends, you could even become a threat to the people on the moon and further." She looked up and smiled, this time a smile full of malice. "And all it needs, that one final push, is one more threat to its host. And everything would be in place to start."

"The fuck are you talking about?" Jin said, sweat plastered his forehead, even though his breaths came out as fog. "We had a deal, Grace! You put this damn thing in me to hunt Dan down."

"A deal?" She laughed. "Why, in God's good name, would I make a deal with you, Jin? I didn't agree to anything. You came to me with a need, I gave it to you, and now here we are. I've wanted Dan from the start, and I saw an opportunity." She laced her fingers. "Having two Units was just a gift."

I love when I have no clue on what's going on. It's been like that for a year now, the past couple weeks have been the worst. Like trying to put a puzzle together with half of the pieces missing and the other half chewed up.

"What do you mean another threat to the host?" The chains around my wrists held me tight against the wall, trying to push away from them would rip my arms out of their metal placements. I tried anyway: nothing.

"Threat means what it has always meant, Daniel." She brushed her thick hair behind her ear. "But I don't need it sentient. That would be an issue for me. So a simple reset would be good enough, and then I'll have two little puppets that would tear down that damn government hovering above the earth."

Her eyes had become distant, staring up at the charred ceiling. Nails tapping against the metal table in a monotonous hurry.

"If no one deals with them…," she shook her head slowly, "we'd be more than fucked." She looked at me, and for once it wasn't a look of pity or contempt or malice. It was a look of apology. "There are so many things I want to tell you dear cousin. But I cannot. I'm doing more of a justice than you'd think."

"Taking the Gray is a justice?" I spat. "Killing my friends? Turning them against me? Justice my ass."

"You say that now," she stood, "but when the men on the moon come back to earth after Abigail changes it forever, you'll realize what I mean." She chuckled. "In fact, you wouldn't. Because, my little puppet, you won't be in control of your body when it's happening." She pressed a button on the keyboard. "For the better."

My body decompressed. At least, that's what it felt like. It felt lonely, like I'm in a vacuum in my own head. The pain was a raging rash of heat on my side, sending pulsing waves of pain into my skull. The Unit had been on, numbing the pain, but it was…it wasn't now. I tried to turn it on and nothing.

I tried again and again. But nothing.

It was quiet.

She started towards the door, pausing at the rectangle of light. "One thing I can tell you, Daniel: the Unit was not created as a weapon of war. It wasn't created by grandfather to be mass produced for the war effort." One foot out of the door. "The Unit is a defense system, designed to protect the user. Or at least, give them a chance."

With that, she left, the blue haze replacing her red lined figure.

The darkness was instant. The dark, the buzz of the computer, our wheezing aches of pain, and the silence in my head. Lonely. I always wondered how it would be without the Unit. Now…it feels like the world is bland. Painful and blunt.

My head swam, putting together a thought was like putting paper in a bathtub. The pain blew apart anything coherent. A buzz settled in my ears, the darkness was becoming bleaker.

Jin spat at me. "Hey, dipshit, keep your damn eyes open."

I forced them open, but the edge of my vision blurred. "Why…did you…call me brother?" Speaking had suddenly become as hard as keeping myself awake.

He raised a questioning eye brow before shaking his head and saying, "It was a mistake."

"Why?"

"Because…" his face contorted as he moved, pain blazing in his dark eyes, "you used to call me that. Every freaking day."

Here we go again. I couldn't turn to him, so I tried raising my voice above a mumble, "Why?"

"Hell should I know, Stray." He groaned. "You've always been weird."

"We were here together. Weren't we."

"Yeah."

"Isn't this a prison?"

"Yeah."

"So," I said through gritted teeth, the pain was flaring, "what we do to get in here?"

"You allegedly killed your dad."

Something greater than the pain hit me between the eyes. "What?" I knew I was scum, but I'm that low?

He shook his head. "It wasn't true. Myself, on the other hand, assaulted someone."

I could believe that. "Who?"

"This guy," he chuckled and shook his head, "he kicked the crap out of you. So I…helped you out."

"Why?" Grace was right, I'm like a broken record.

"We were best friends." He spat blood out of his mouth. "A long time ago."

Was that what the déjà vu was? I'd felt it in the hallway, and when the others said his name as well. The Units had also reacted whenever they were close. But that gut feeling had been there as well. A few of the puzzle pieces were coming together.

"And then I messed up?"

"And then you killed everyone in here." He flexed his sharp jaw, dark eyes rivalling the shadows. "You kept mumbling my name when you did it. Guards. Doctors. Hell, you slaughtered other kids, too. Apart from me, you smiled, and then you disappeared." He looked at me. "Then you came crawling into the Gray like the parasite you are." He growled his final words, so heavy they felt like one of the bats to my side.

Parasites are lower than scum, right?

"That's why you want to kill me?"

"That's why I want to kill you."

A puzzle piece didn't fit in with the rest of the puzzle. "When I came into the Gray two years ago, why didn't you kill me?"

"I was close, but when Hera is up my ass and everyone thought you were some sort of breath of fresh air, how could I?" He whispered, "And there was Tick. I couldn't do that to him."

"Was he your best friend, too?"

He shook his head. "Little more than that."

I was in a dip of the pain, enough to understand what he was saying and how. I was a parasite. And he didn't want me anywhere near him or his friends. The Unit must've done something that day, like what Grace was saying. When I wasn't in control of anything I was doing, it was just the Unit, and I was just the incoherent passenger.

Since day one – me and the Unit, leaving a trail of blood and tears.

"Hunter isn't going to kill her," I muttered.

"Giving up?" he spat. "You don't-"

"I don't get that luxury," I finished. "I know. But I wasn't finished."

He gave me a look.

"We're going to kill Grace. For everything she's done to the both of us."

"Are you hearing yourself?" he hissed. He tugged at his shackles to emphasize his point. "We can't just leave, Stray. We're done." He spat theatrically. "Guess it's time to become just like you.

"Maybe you will." I shrugged, sending tendrils of pain up my back. "But we can get out of here."

"How?" He looked me over, eyes like slits.

"How flexible are you?" I smiled through the jabs of pain – the Unit was showing me one thing at least: 1% reboot completed. "And how much do you like that red arm of yours?"