It's early into the mission when it happens—when the unthinkable happens. He fights but he can't get free, so as he's taken away, he winds down all the process of the Holon to the bare minimum, to give himself the maximum uptime. Dr. Weller and the others will come for him. They'll come to get him back—he just has to hang on.
(He can't think anything else. They'll come for him. They will.)
The numbers in the corner of his display keep counting down, tick tock. Lower and lower the countdown plummets. Chase doesn't have a stomach, but he has the phantom sensation of his sinking along with all his hopes when the countdown turns red.
(It was supposed to be freedom but it turned into a trap.)
Well—well. That's not the worse thing that could happen, he tries to tell himself. There's barely anything left of his body, and he can't pretend that he hadn't thought of the Holon as a great chance to 'stretch his legs'. Only metaphorically. So really, this isn't that different. It's not… it's not ideal, but he can still help the doctor. He can still get back to them, to Miranda.
This isn't the end of the world. He just has to hang on.
There aren't many ways to keep a forty foot mecha contained that it can't tear itself out of, so the first thing that the Union do is rip off his limbs. The Holon's aren't programmed to feel pain, but Chase still winces. Too close to being a (thing) torso in a tank.
—But it's fine, it's fine. He can make it through this. Dr. Weller can build a new exoskeleton. Maybe install a few of those 'upgrades' he was talking about. He just has to… hang in there. Since they weren't able to mount an immediate rescue operation, the Union are naturally going to squirrel him away somewhere. Finding him will take time, but Dr. Weller will make it a priority.
(He matters he matters he matters—)
Chase settles in to wait.
Being the torso of a giant mecha is very much like being the torso of a person on the rare occasions Chase wasn't able to mix: it's super boring.
They've left him in some kind of—he's not sure if it's a hangar or a warehouse, but they've finally stopped shipping him about. Since he doesn't need to sleep, he was able to keep track of the days whilst they were transporting him about Union territory. One week turned into two weeks into three…
(Where are they?)
But since being in the hangar—Chase likes to think it's a hangar, his natural habitat—he's left in total darkness for most of the time. The Holon suit gives off enough light to see by, since they finally managed to hook it up to a power source so it wouldn't lose charge. Watching them run about like panicking little mice over that one had been pretty hilarious once they realised that they'd lose him completely if the power on the Holon ran out.
(Cheating death for a second time. Please—)
Since they worked out that problem, they don't come around often. At least, Chase thinks it isn't very often. He can't sleep and the hours seem to stretch out, on and on, beyond Chase's inclination to count if not beyond the Holon's ability to do so.
(Where are they?)
Once they'd taken basic scans of the technology, they'd tried to interrogate him. Chase had remained stoic and silent, and it wasn't like they could torture him.
(Alone in the darkness, on and on and on and on and on and on and…)
He plays videos to keep himself from being bored—his own memories, mainly, since he doesn't have the ability to connect to any of the public networks. It was deemed too tempting by the project leaders since the Holons are meant to remain top secret for now. Ha! That worked out well. Not that Chase really blames them—he can't lie, the first thing he would've done in given access to the Ether—
(Miranda—everyone—)
—would've been to binge every mecha show he could possibly find to see how they compare to the real deal. Isn't there that anime that's been running for like a decade or something? RoboShogun? Chase saw one episode when he was twelve or whatever, but he only has foggy memories of it. When he gets out of this mess, he is definitely going to watch that whole thing start to finish. Just because he can, dammit!
That's the downside to being given a computer brain—a computer, unlike a human brain, doesn't have imperfect recall. But it can only perfectly recall the imperfect human memories that are fed into it.
(Every second, every moment: trapped and stolen, please help me, please please, I don't want to stay in the dark—)
Chase still had a lot of good memories in there to get lost in. Mom and sis. Her stupid popstar streams and all the weird colours she made her hair. She picked green on his birthday because it was his favourite colour and told all her followers 'he's a fighter pilot in the Polity army, so he's kind of cool, I guess. This one's for you, big brother!'
Let the good times roll…
Sometimes that makes it worse.
At least he knows Miranda is okay. That was the first thing Dr. Weller did for Chase. He told him that Miranda, Jodie, Leon, Miguel—they all made it out okay. Well, not okay, maybe, Miranda lost her boyfriend and the guys lost a friend. That's got to be hard.
Chase is glad, now, that he didn't push harder to tell them that he was really alive. He thought it would be harder for Miranda to lose him again and—and, well, he never has to worry about that. She never found out they could've had a second chance because their second chance is gone. That's good, of course. They were both military, they were realistic, they knew that something could go wrong for them at any time. They both promised each other that if something happened, they'd try their best to move forward.
(Trapped, alone, on and on and...)
(Remember me remember—)
They try interrogating him again. Chase is bored. Eventually, they must get pretty bored, too, because they take him out.
Not out of the hangar. Out of the Holon.
Circuits are disconnected and then Chase is just a box. He sees nothing hears nothing senses nothing—
Deprivation torture, he tells himself. Classic technique. You know this. You know.
He knows but it doesn't matter. See nothing hear nothing sense nothing am nothing no arms no legs no head no heart or lungs or stomach—
Just a box, ones and zeros, code code code code.
Not a person at all. Even in his mindscape where he has a human body he throws himself at the walls of a concrete cell and accomplishes nothing.
They left him they left him they left him in the dark.
Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.
He loses himself in the memories but he can't forget it's just a box. No input or output no signals at all just box box box box.
Please let me out let me out let me out—
He can't tell how long it's been. Only the Holon can do that and in here it's just Chase, the box, Chase is a box. He remembers what a human looks like he can see it in the memories he watches over and over, Miranda smiling, Miranda lifting an arm to cup his face—
What does it feel like to have an arm to have blood to breathe, in out in out, how does it feel?
The memories dance, tantalising, out of reach. They play on a loop until they start to blur. Chase can't inhabit them, he doesn't know, they aren't real. He watches from his own perspective as he catches his breath, taking Miranda on a date and seeing how beautiful she looks, but he only remembers the sound of the gasp and the feeling of love that overtook him—not what it's like for cold air to enter throat, lungs to expand and contract, basic biology a function that is beyond him—
He remembers songs, the words, singing and laughing and sadness, but not the hum in his throat of a voicebox, the gentle thump thump of his heartbeat even when he was aware of his face flushing and his hands shaking, racing heart but what does it feel like?
How does it feel how does it feel how does it feel?
He can't feel anything as a box—no sight no sound no smell no touch balance pain nothing—so he doesn't realise that anything is happening at first, until he looks at the memory of his sister and—
Let the good times roll…
She's different. Her hair is blue, not green. She chose green because it was his favourite colour. He knows she did, he knows it is.
But he plays the memory again and again and there are only blue locs woven through her hair. All the right feelings are attached to the file. Pride Love Nostalgia Grief. All the tangential, linked memories are there, the first time Chase was away on deployment for his birthday, Sis telling him he better be on the Ether later anyway and surprising him with this. The one time his mother joined in on the concert, and they all ended up singing the song together.
Let the good times roll…
It's all there, just as he remembers. The blue is what he remembers. That is his memory, there, and it's in perfect condition, fits seamlessly into his mind, such as it is—
Except he knows it's wrong. He's sure. He knows.
He knows, he doesn't feel. It doesn't feel wrong to situate himself in it, to inhabit the memory. It could just as well be true.
(He knows. He knows he knows he—)
Let the good times roll…
All Chase has is a sense of himself in a box, lines and lines of code that doesn't feel or breathe or taste but he knows that it's him, that's who he is, more than the flesh and blood body he used to inhabit.
Only he keeps finding new corners of himself and he's not sure—not sure—
In school he asks the teacher about if the Polity has ever done anything bad like the Union, and she screams at him and gives him detention. Chase has to attend a re-education course and write three essays about the noble history of the Polity and the evil deeds of the Union before he's allowed back into class. He asks his mother about it when he gets home, because he knows some of what he had to write wasn't true, but she just shushes him and says not to ask those questions.
But Chase joined the Polity's military proudly, just like his Dad would've wanted—Dad wanted to be a pilot, he told Chase so—
A vague memory of overhearing his parents talking. Dad wants to transfer into the military because there's more 'leeway'—"we can make connections, think of the kids"— but Mom catches his hands and says she's too scared to lose him, please don't. Disquieted, Chase goes back to bed and never mentions it.
No, Mom was always against the Union—she said they were against freedom of expression—that's why she always encouraged Sis's singing hobby, even if she was actually pretty terrible at it. To be able to express yourself with art is—
Constant art lessons at school. Fun and games. Frivolity. Chase enters the military and it takes a crash course in maths, science, technology, before he's at all fit for the job – what they taught them in high school was useless. Even then, he still notices that the Union pilots respond better, fight better, just know better than them. Sis tells him about school, about art and poetry and dancing, and Chase has to bite his tongue to tell her about all the knowledge that's being kept from her. By now, he knows better than to say it aloud.
But Miranda—when Miranda was at school—she told him—
Miranda was always quiet about coming from a military family. Chase zeroed in on her immediately because she was better than everyone else, knowing half the material already, and he had to know why. "Oh, well," she said, smiling an awkward, false smile, "with my family, I guess it was just expected from me that I follow their path."
Miranda—
He finds her in a corner of the base, curled into a ball and shaking. "Julian, I killed someone—I saw him die—why, why are we..."
In the memory, he can remember the way his heart ached—how does it feel—as she broke down crying, whispering that she'd never wanted to join the military, but she'd been trained for this job since she was born and she didn't have any other choice—she tried to run away from home, but that just made her parents furious when the police bought her back. She'd been trapped, was still trapped.
"I didn't have a choice," she whispered to herself. "Did I?"
"There's not much real choice for anyone," he murmured, remembering the empty rhetoric they filled his head with in school, how woefully unprepared he was for the reality of the job, even the requirements of the job. It was dangerous to talk about, but better to whisper it here, out of the way, than for Chase to snap and explode and shout it in his commander's face.
Miranda looked up at him, her eyes still red. "Julian, what if..." She bit her lip and her eyes flashed around the ceiling, checking for bugs and cameras. "What if… maybe the Union?"
He would never have considered going to the Union when he was younger—even with his suppressed doubts, it would've been unthinkable. But that was the point, wasn't it? To leave them unable to think. Maybe the Union didn't have the resources of the Polity, asked its citizens to work harder to make up for their inability to coast along, but they were at least honest about what they demanded.
Despite that, he had to shake his head. "My family—"
Miranda winced, eyes downcast. "Of course. You can't leave them. I didn't mean to ask that of you."
"You're family too," he said, taking her hand. She looked up again, and her eyes were filled with hope. "I'm just saying… we'd need to make a real good plan, you know? For all of us."
Her eyes were almost as red as her hair, but Miranda still smiled. "Yeah… yeah! When the time comes..."
Chase wonders if he should prepare a quip about bad timing, or she missed her cue, but something feels wrong. He lives the memories and they're real but they're wrong. He knows he was afraid of the commander, he can feel it in the memory, but he also remembers that she personally visited him when he was wounded saving refugees in an engagement – the warm, bright smile that she let him see. He inhabits that memory and knows that she's strict but she cares about those under her command—
He follows the linked memories, unable to decipher the contradiction. Everything feels hazy around it, almost like a painful feeling of static, making him want to pull away.
Because he's Chase, he only presses forward harder—maybe if he looks at that when the Colonel asked him to talk to the higher ups on her behalf. He has a vague memory of a grim expression and coldly furious eyes. "We must make them see the importance of—"
The importance of… something. She probably didn't mean 'The Importance of Being Earnest.'
Chase follows the link, and then—
Void.
A blank space. If Chase thought it was torture to have only memories of being (real) human then it was nothing compared to—to not even existing, nothing, no thoughts no feelings nothing to experience, just a void of nothing—
He pulls himself out of the memory—the gap—emptiness—feeling like he needs to scream but having no mouth to make the sound.
They're messing with him. Messing with him, the pieces of himself.
Chase scans his mind, his box, and he can't tell which ones are real and which ones are not, except the voids in his memory, places where something has been cut out. It's not a wound, because he can't bleed he can't feel pain, but it's the closest he's come in a long time.
He gathers his closest memories around himself, suspicious of what's left. He begins to repeat to himself facts, making new memories for the banks. If he can't tell the difference between the real memories and the fake ones he can at least make new memories of repeating the truth to himself.
His name is Julian Chase, he had a younger sister and a Mom, his favourite colour is blue, he loves Miranda and that one curl of hair that always refuses to behave itself, he is a pilot and he loves to fly. His favourite song is the same as his dad's, who was a police officer and always loved to sing—
Let the good times roll…
Good times, Chase thinks desperately. Good times good times—
He worked with Doctor Weller and he left him here, left him left him left him left him LEFT HIM.
It's dark.
What does sunlight feel like? He knows he's stood in the sunshine before. He knows it felt warm. But he inhabits those memories and the warmth is gone. Was it ever really there?
It's dark, and he's alone. He's empty.
They've built a new home for him. Do they think he's ready for use? Chase laughs, feeling the gaps in his memory as he—his box—he—gets put into a new shell. He can't tell where he's real or fake or begins and ends. He's forgotten what an arm feels like so it takes him a week before he realises he has more than two. They move independently with just a thought.
It should be wrong but it's not. It just is.
The Union wants to make use of him, and if he let's them Miranda can come and live with them like she wanted to—wants to—did she? He knows he loves her and she loved him when he was (real) alive and they shared secrets. Why not this one? Why not?
But they said they'll spare Miranda. That's important important Chase only has her left, even if he can never—can never—
"You sure he'll do what he's asked?" someone murmurs.
Chase's eye swings around to the noise, analysing. Red and yellow, heat signatures, shows him two figures standing behind the large computer system his box used to inhabit. This is not seeing but at least there is warmth, is people. He doesn't know their names, but he feels like he should. Maybe it's yet another part of him that was removed.
The other person shrugs. He detects the minute movement of the shoulders with his sensors. "Can always put him back—"
His hands slam down on the system they're hiding behind, crumpling and shredding it into pieces. No. No. They'll never put him back in the box. This isn't his body but it's all he has it's not a box don't put me in the dark.
They're frozen. He cannot read the expressions on their faces. He has forgotten how. But he remembers that he is supposed to keep casualties to a minimum; they said, or they'd find a way for him to go back in the box. He doesn't want the box. The Union is at least honest about what they demand.
He laughs instead. He is supposed to be working with these people. The only people Chase has ever trusted in his life are his family and Miranda—the thought feels incomplete but he can't find the ending of it. Deleted. His family are dead anyway, so there's only Miranda left. Not these people. She can come.
"Let the good times roll."
He has forgotten how to sing, forgotten how to speak. Lungs, breathe, voicebox, murmurs—
Hazy, theoretical knowledge. Not something he practised. What is flesh and blood like? How does it feel?
"Let the good times roll..."
It is a voice, though. Noise, vibrations, sound. Inside is empty there's not enough of him to fill the space but on the outside he can make noise and fill it up. He can fill it up so no one else can come in. Just Miranda.
Miranda didn't know, Chase wanted to tell her, Doctor Weller and the Colonel said no—they told her he was dead and he never wanted that, they kept him in his body in his prison of flesh and blood—
Miranda would've come if she had known. She knows Chase doesn't like the dark.
(They left him.)
(They left him and what he has left is a shell—an imitation—the real Chase was only half of himself but there were still breaths a beating heart racing pulse he was alive—)
He manages to fill up the emptiness in his head with echoes of Miranda—the warmth of her lips the softness of her cheeks the (blood, unwanted) calluses on her hands—and his family. Let the good times roll…
At first, Chase doesn't know what he's hearing when voices crackle into life in his head. He pulls his memories closer around his core and is silent, suspicious. He had thought it would be pleasant to have something of himself to fill up the empty spaces but they only echo around him, making the gaping voids of himself more obvious.
The voices radiate through the extra limbs he knows he shouldn't have and the limb-outside-himself, the nanotech, cheerful and easy and making Chase feel wrong, wrong, wrong.
The shell itches uncomfortably even when they pass into silence. (Miranda won't know me, can't hold me—)
He can never tell how long it's been before they start up again. He can track hours, minutes, days on the processor's systems but the numbers are meaningless after aeons spent in the dark knowing no time at all. Chase can only remember the feeling of impatience, he can not be impatient because he has been waiting for so long…
Then. Then.
"Let the good times roll..."
"Don't you ever stop singing that song?"
"It has been known to happen. On occasion."
And it's—it's—
They copied him. Weller copied him. They didn't need Chase because they had a fake waiting in the wings, waiting to steal to be real to inhabit the flesh and blood that should be his—Weller. Weller was never coming for him the colonel was never coming for him, the lies are all true, the lies—
Time passes before he thinks to report this to the Union soldiers at the base. A copy of him, that stole what was his. Another, the voice higher and blunter. An ally of the thief?
"They made a copy," someone says; slow, thoughtful.
"Of course they made more Holons," another says, accompanied by a curse. "How are we ever going to—"
"Don't worry about it. Our spies say they're desperate for new recruits. They won't be too willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, so we'll offer them a trojan horse."
"What?"
"Ugh, I forgot what a cretin you are. Never mind. I'm telling you, that's my in..."
Chase knows. The Trojan War, ancient Greeks, literature and mythology, stories older than all the nations of the world, stories that outlasted their creators and were told again and again, becoming immortal.
He knows he found it beautiful once. But he's looked on immortality since then, and seen only darkness. Eternity, unchanging.
It frightens him.
(They abandoned me. They replaced me. I can't go back, I can't—
But I want to.)