Chapter 10: One good jab

Aurora had to clench her hands not to go for the hairpin filled with picos. One good jab, and she'd never again have to listen to him going on about her running. "No."

Balthazar paced up and down in front of her, the small room making his movements seem even more restless. It was ironic that he was now the one moving from wall to wall. He turned mid-march and pinned her with that disconcerting blue-gray gaze. "My scanners indicate that you are wholly organic. Are you a person?"

Aurora blinked at the shift in subject. She'd half expected him to start in with the running again. "Why are you asking me that? Are you not wholly organic?" Maybe now she'd find out exactly what he was, why he called himself a cyborg.

"I ask the questions, human. Are you a person?"

Or maybe not. "Well, yes." Did his question mean he was mostly machine?

"You have a soul. Because you are wholly organic and a person?"

"Yes, I have a soul," she said cautiously. Something about the way he asked the question gave her pause.

"Do you tear it in two and share it, or do you carry an extra one?"

"Uhm, I only have one, I suppose." She didn't like where this conversation was going.

He clasped her neck again. That huge three fingered hand sent the kind of chills down her spine that no tale of horror could manage. "Tell me, what is a soul?"

Of all the things she thought would happen once they got to the ship, having to run like a hamster and philosophical discussions about the soul, wasn't it. Aurora shrugged. "I'm not sure. I suppose it's the part on the inside of each person that makes them human, that allows them to care, to love." Until she had to explain it, she'd never considered how ephemeral a concept it was.

Again that metallic rumbling from his chest. "Humans consider artificial life forms to be without souls?"

"Well, no..." The way he held his body, the threatening tone of his voice, clued her in to tread very carefully here, especially since he still had her by the back of her neck.

"You made laws against self-aware machines." It was an accusation made while he loomed over her. If only he'd step back or start that nerve wrecking pacing again. Anything was preferable to him standing this close, his hand a manacle on her neck, those slitted eyes staring down at her with a clinical interest that chilled her right to the center of her being.

He stood too close, dominating her senses with his oddly pleasant smell, his touch, and then that creepy wall went for her butt. Again.

She sidled away from the wall and, to her relief, Balthazar let her go. "When you said you were a cyborg, did you mean you are an artificial intelligence?" It would explain why they don't talk to each other. Why he can't grasp the concept of a soul.

"I am cyborg." He leaned down, and she couldn't help but shrink away. "Show me your soul, human."

She threw her hands up in the air, almost hitting him. He tracked the motion like a missile tracked a target. She froze in place with her hands half raised. "It's not something one can show. It's simply there," she said.

"Why?" he grated.

If only he'd step back, maybe her brain would be able to function again. This close, he distracted her and affected all her senses - large and dangerous, his voice a rumble in her ears, his body warm against hers, and exuding a wild, oddly pleasing, spicy odor. "Why what?"

"Why are you lying to me about a person having this soul?"

"I'm not lying?"

He was almost childlike in his belief - a savage, six-foot-seven child who looked capable of killing her with one hand.

"Show it to me. What does the soul look like? How do you see it?" he said with obvious suspicion.

"I...it's when you look into someone's eyes, you see the soul." She kept a wary eye on him. If he tried to get at her eyes to see her soul, she was getting out of here, even if she had to bust through the walls. She had an eidetic memory. Many things she'd love to forget were forever burned in her mind. But even with all that knowledge in her head, she couldn't come up with an explanation of a soul that might get him to back off.

He planted a huge three-fingered hand on the wall next to her head and leaned down, brought his face so close to hers, she saw double. "How will you give me a soul? Tell me now, human, how does a soul get into a person?"

Did he just say she was supposed to give him a soul? She was so dead. Remain calm Aurora, win his trust, inject him with picos, and get off this ship. "I...I don't know. I suppose it happens when they're born." She could've kicked herself. This was obviously important to him. He said he was a cyborg, and that meant he was made and not born. She should look into his eyes and swear she saw a soul. The question about giving him a soul she'd try to ignore. If he'd demanded her presence so that she could give him that, she was in big trouble. Bigger trouble. Sometimes she wondered if she even had a soul, let alone having a spare one lying around to give to someone else.

"You despise me for not having a soul. You think that I am not a person because I was not born like you? That I cannot feel. That I am not worthy of a soul." He might be half emotionless machine, but he simulated menace real well.

"No, of course not. I think you're a person," she said, her voice an embarrassing squeak. How hard could it be to pretend she'd give him a soul?

"You said a person has to be born to have a soul," he insisted.

"I said I don't know. No one knows how a soul gets into a body." Damn, she'd meant to pretend to know how to put a soul into him. The way he glared at her made her want to volunteer to run for eight hours straight.

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled. "Did you feel it move inside of you?"

He peered into her eyes, his hand encompassed the whole of the back of her neck, sending dry ice shivers down her spine. He turned her head left and right, using the light to see deeper into her eyes. His face was so close to hers, his breath wafted over her cheeks, and her vision blurred.

She pushed against his chest and could've cried when he let her go and stepped back. "No." Aurora gingerly felt her teeth with her tongue. "But I'm sure you loosened some teeth."

"Do not think you can lie to me."

Don't pity him, remember what you have to do, Aurora. She frantically searched for a way to change the subject, before he tried to rattle her soul loose again - anything to get his mind off acquiring a soul. She tried very hard to look on the verge of collapsing from hunger. "I'm hungry. Are you going to feed me, or is starving me on your agenda of tortures?" Please let it get him off the subject of souls.

He went to the door, his firm footsteps like the slow deliberate beating of war drums. "I will bring you food."

"Balthazar?"

He stopped and turned. "Yes?"

"People don't like to eat alone. The food just isn't the same." It was a place to start, to win his trust - the starting point from which she could betray him.

"I will eat with you, and you will explain to me how you will gift me with a soul."

He left.