July 16, 2010 edit: many thanks to the awesome Strata-Assassin who betaed this chapter. I owe you a virtual beer or many cookies... or both! *hugs!*
Prey
Aprilius City, December 13, C.E. 81
"What the hell are you doing?" Yzak yelled, grabbing Athun's shoulder. "Leave it to me, my fingers are thinner than yours. Do you want to choke her?"
The silver-haired young man pushed Athrun aside, and pressed two fingers on Lacus's wound. Blood now soaked the collar of her white dress.
Athrun looked at Lacus, momentarily taken aback by the gravity of the situation.
The former singer's eyes were closed but she was awake, her lips parted and pale.
"Can you breathe?" he dared to ask.
If the bullet had pierced the trachea there would have been nothing to do, but since Lacus was not bleeding from the mouth he was slightly confident things weren't worse than they looked. Athrun was relieved when the former idol murmured a feeble, "Yes."
He was so distressed he didn't realize Meyrin was next to him until the woman spoke. "The ambulance will arrive soon. Relax, Athrun. The sniper didn't catch any of the arteries, or she would have already bled to death."
Yzak shot Meyrin one of his famous icy glances. "Captain Hawke, we're all soldiers here, and know very well how to recognize a mortal wound from one which it is not. Please, don't state the obvious."
Meyrin blushed, mortified, but Lacus blinked, her lips stretching into the resemblance of a smile that reassured Athrun despite the anxiety that was piecing his stomach. "How…?" he asked, more to himself, but Meyrin answered anyway.
"There was a sniper on the roof of that building," she explained. "It's a museum. I already alerted the security there to do everything they can to block him, and I've warned the police patrols in the area. They are all converging here."
"Meyrin," Yzak began," take the three agents who were in the car leading the parade and go assist the museum guards. I don't think they have guns. Don't allow anyone to leave that building."
The young woman nodded, waving to the men to follow. Athrun stared at Meyrin uncertainly as she ran away. He felt torn. Part of him wanted to join them, but he could not leave Lacus.
It was Yzak who decided for him. "What are you doing? Go help her. Here the situation is under control, but Meyrin needs someone experienced to help her. Shit, her position should have been purely ceremonial. She's not prepared to face a situation like this."
In that moment Lacus opened her eyes, staring at Athrun, and slowly moving an hand to touch his right leg. As if she wanted to reassure him he could leave.
"Athrun, there should be a gun under the driver's seat of Lacus's car. Take it and bring me the head of that bastard," Yzak growled.
Looking at his friend's distressed face, Athrun bit his lower lip. Yzak was clearly furious with himself for not being able to run after the terrorists, but to remain stuck there wouldn't have helped anyone. Even if it was years since he had done something like that, Athrun felt he had to take all the necessary measures to assist the search party. They could not let the killer flee.
So, he nodded vigorously and launched a smile of encouragement to Lacus, running towards the car. The gun was where Yzak had indicated, and the ease as to which it slid into his hand brought Athrun to an unpleasant conclusion: it was hard to believe that just few moments before he had thought Aprilius One was a boring place.
Then he crossed the street, warily entering the museum. Athrun released the safety catch of his gun, holding the revolver tightly. There was no room for hesitation, as the first shots resounded in the hall.
Yzak cursed the slow traffic of Aprilius City a thousand times before the ambulance showed up. He shouted at the doctors as soon as they jumped down the vehicle.
"Why didn't you take a flyer?"
"They were already all out, Commander Joule," a young doctor replied, nervousness echoing in his words. "The news that former Councilor Clyne was injured came in an already chaotic moment..."
"I don't care, help her!" Yzak snapped, proceeding to move his fingers away from Lacus's neck with a sigh of relief.
The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but the young woman looked shockingly frail to him. Extremely pale, Lacus's eyes were shut and she kept her hands clenched at her sides, while her breath came in ragged gasps from the terrible effort. But Lacus's condition was better than the man shot in the head.
Yzak looked at the corpse, which minutes before had been Alexander Borodin, the former Prime Minister of the Eurasian Federation. His body laid sprawled on the ground, half of this skull gone. There was no doubt that he was dead.
"Poor bastard, unlucky enough to be in the trajectory of the shot," Yzak mused with a grin disfiguring his refined features. Soon his attention returned to Lacus. The doctors did not seem to be having difficulties in stabilizing her condition.
"It's not as bad as it seems, Commander. But we need to take her to the hospital as soon as possible."
He nodded. "Good. I'll leave everything in your hands."
"Won't you come with us?"
Yzak shook his head. "No, I would be useless. You are the ones who save people. My job is another one," he said dryly, walking quickly towards the museum. Commander Joule held no weapons, but he was ready to stop the terrorists with his bare hands, if that was necessary.
The visitors had escaped with the first shots, so Yzak had no difficulty in crossing the deserted atrium. He walked carefully down the halls to catch the slightest sound, and finally a burst of gunfire, followed by a howl of pain, claimed his attention.
Yzak rushed toward the stairs. He took two steps at a time, discovering on the top the bodies of three men clad in blue uniforms. The guards of the museum.
The terrorist had hit them in the legs and arms, but luckily the wounds did not seem severe. One of the guards even had the strength to point Yzak to a glass door at the end of the corridor.
"They ran there, in the auditorium."
As fast as he could, Yzak closed the distance from the door, opening it without a second thought. He found himself on the balcony with a clear view on what was happening on the stage.
From a giant window on the far wall, the light of the early afternoon flooded the theatre, shining on unlikely actors performing the strangest representation: Meyrin, two guards and Athrun were looking for cover behind half columns placed here and there on the stage. The third agent was not in sight, Yzak wondering if he had fallen.
"Surrender, now!" Meyerin shouted. "There is no place where you can hide!"
One of the guards leaned forward and fired, but his bullets only hit one the pillars. Probably conceived for some kind of set, they were made in a white, shiny material that looked like ceramic resin. The impact scattered fragments in all directions, but the terrorist, that Yzak could see hidden behind that same column, did not return the fire.
'Did he run out of ammo?' Yzak asked himself. It seemed too easy. As if to reply, the other guard opened fire but the terrorist did not react.
Yzak saw a black object launched towards the agents and he stiffened, only to discover, when it landed on the floor, it was only a machine gun.
"Great. Now come out, and keep your hands in plain sight," Meyrin ordered.
The terrorist complied obediently, slowly walking away from the shelter, while Yzak's pale blue eyes focused on him. He was a man, clad completely in black, and the hood of his short sport jacket completely concealed his face.
"Stop there!" Meyrin ordered again.
The young woman and the two guards cautiously approached the terrorist, keeping the guns aimed in front of them. Athrun stayed behind, never taking his eyes off the prisoner.
Yzak frowned. 'I hope the guy doesn't try anything funny.'
"Get on your knees," Meyrin commanded. With, again, no strange reactions from the man. The guards surrounded him while the redhead moved closer.
Yzak sank his teeth into his lower lip. 'Too close.'
In that moment the prisoner raised his head to look at her, and Yzak saw Meyrin startle, throwing her shoulders back in stylized surprise. She lowered her gun imperceptibly, and it was enough for the terrorist to find a way out.
He leaned forward so quickly that nobody had time to react. He snatched the pistol out of Meyrin's hand, then grabbed the girl by the hair, throwing her against a column. Yzak saw Meyrin slip to the ground, leaving a trail of blood on the immaculate surface of the pillar. The two officers fired simultaneously, but with a quick twist of the torso, the terrorist hit both of them in the arms, lifting his own left one to protect his face.
He had freed himself in no more than three seconds.
'Not even a Coordinator can be so fast. What is that?'
"An Extended?" The word escaped Yzak's lips as his features twisted into a ferocious grin. That couldn't be real. He tightly gripped the handrail, conscious that Athrun was still there.
Yzak would have never confessed his inner turmoil to anyone, but he began to fear for his friend's life.
He saw the young Admiral raising his gun, shooting and rushing into the open space between two of the columns. He rolled on the ground so that the bullets of the terrorist found only air. Quickly, Athrun stood up, ready to hide behind the closest pillar, but the aggressor anticipated him. His next shot was not in fact directed at Athrun, but against the column he was going to use a shelter.
White fragments flew everywhere, and instinctively Athrun brought his arms to his face, just in time to protect the eyes. He still fell on the ground with a loud cry, glassy shrapnel embedded in the forearms.
Yzak could not suppress a scream. "Athrun!"
The silver-haired man flinched as the terrorist turned to him, instantly aiming his gun at Yzak as if elicited by a conditioned reflex. But he refrained from shooting.
Instead, his attention returned to Athrun, who laid on his knees with the injured arms abandoned at his sides. Deep blue hair fall loosely around his face, hiding his features save for the grimace of pain bending his lips.
With no idea how he could disarm the terrorist, Yzak ran down the stairs leading to the stage while, with the corner of his eye, he saw the terrorist lowering the gun and walking towards Athrun.
Athrun's gun slid away from his grasp, and hit the floor with a muffled noise that sounded to him like the toll of a passing bell. 'I'm not going to die here!' Athrun screamed in his mind, struggling to rise to his feet and fighting the pain but, just then, he was lifted roughly off the floor and slammed against one the columns. The young Admiral grunted loudly as the impact took his breath away. Lifting his chin, he faced the terrorist. And such was the surprise that Athrun opened widely his eyes, for a moment forgetting the throbbing ache in his arms. From the shadows of the hood, yellowish eyes stared out at him. Unnatural orbs, with feline slit pupils, focused like those of a predator. Eerie, not even for a second Athrun thought those could be contacts. Whoever—or, better, whatever—the terrorist was, he was young, of some indeterminate age between twenty and thirty with a fair, flawless complexion and regular but anonymous features. Except for the eyes.
Athrun felt like a guinea pig ready to be vivisected. Fear sizzled through his veins, fueled by outrage and the uncanny sensation that something in the young man in front of him was definitely not quite human.
"Let me go!" Athrun yelled, kicking the terrorist right in the ribcage with all of his strength. Surprisingly, not only did he not move, but neither did he take his strange eyes away from Athrun, and his only reaction was to narrow them.
Then, he slowly parted his pale lips. "Athrun Zala?" the terrorist asked with a low voice tainted with insecurity.
"What the hell do you want from me?" Athrun replied, trying in vain to break free. He could not lift his arms and, even though the terrorist was a shade shorter than him and rather thin, he held the Orb Admiral firmly a few inches above the ground with only one hand. Athrun was going to kick him again, now more annoyed than frightened by the situation, when suddenly the terrorist released his grasp.
Without a word, he tuned on his heels and sprinted towards the giant window. In the same moment, Yzak reached the stage. Without slowing down, the silver-haired Commander crouched to collect one of the guns abandoned on the floor and shot against the terrorist. But the young man was already by the window. Breaking the thick glass with a volley of bullets, he jumped through it, disappearing into the void below.
A few moments later, but still too late, Yzak reached the ruined window too and put his head out, cursing. Not seeing the shooter, he walked back towards Athrun, raising the mobile to his ear. "Stop the monorail immediately and frisk every passenger. I do not care if it's rush hour! The sniper who shot Lacus Clyne has jumped on that train. Find him! Concentrate the attention on the districts around the track and be careful, he's armed."
Athrun blinked. When he was young, he loved to visit that museum with his mother, and he remembered hours spent with his nose glued on that very window to watch the monorail train pass. Fifteen feet below.
Yzak was still speaking when he reached him. "And send a medical team up here, we have at least seven people seriously injured."
The silver-haired man could probably read the confusion painted all over Athrun's face, because he looked at him, frowning with disdain. "Do not ask me how, Athrun. But I just saw that bastard jumping on the roof of the running train as if it was a carpet. Just who the hell are these people?" he shouted and, despite the pain, Athrun managed to give his friend a look of support. With that determination he had no doubt Commander Joule would have achieved his goal.
Athrun closed his eyes, trying to calm down. He should have known it was stupid to jump into the fray after so many months of inactivity, and now he could have paid the price. In particular, his ears would have been affected when news of what had happened had reached Cagalli. Athrun smiled, trying to concentrate on her and on their two beautiful daughters. Intensely he clung to the love he felt for his family in the attempt to forget that the terrorist had seemed to know him.
Nassau, October 29, C.E. 71
Hearing the news about the end of the conflict with the PLANTs, Cecilia allowed a derisive smile to emerge on her face. The war was over. After thousands of deaths and the possibility that the Earth itself was reduced to nothing more than a desolate land scattered with corpses, mankind could finally breathe a sigh of relief. "Yes, until the next fool who will stir up hate between Naturals and Coordinators. It will happen for sure, humans are too stupid to not fall back."
The young scientist shrugged, unable to join his colleagues who were celebrating. Cecilia knew very well the envy and the fear that genetically modified humans caused throughout the rest of Earth's population; at the same time, having been hated by her classmates since childhood, because of her too brilliant academic results, the anger and the hatred the Coordinators felt against the Naturals were not unfamiliar to the young woman. The memory of those who called her 'patchworker monster', even if she was a Natural, struck Cecilia as the anchorwoman kept talking about the meeting between the Princess of Orb, Cagalli Yula Attha, and the pink haired daughter of Siegel Clyne, Lacus. Apparently, the two had played an important part in stopping the conflict, and the video of the girls together, ecstatic with the result, made Cecilia shook her head.
'It won't last. Hate is stronger than your childish pacifism.'
Finally, she decided to turn her back to the monitor and left the cafeteria of the research centre, determined to finish her report before she went to sleep. Lenk Granato was right. She should not be concerned by the political issues. The important thing was that, despite the end of the war, the Institute would continue to receive financial support. Their sponsors were delighted with the success achieved, and they were eager to fully capitalize on their investment.
'Sure, even in peacetime I guess they'll find a way to use these guys. At least as highly efficient bodyguards,' Cecilia thought. Then, smiling, she opened the door of the common room where all the former Coordinator pilots, not busy with tests and drills, could socialize and relax. Most of them, as she had expected, had gathered in front of the television. Two were playing table tennis in a corner of the room, moving the rackets at a speed impossible to reach for any human, Coordinator or Natural.
Cecilia suddenly felt proud of herself.
The bodies of the Coordinator had adjusted without any problem to the cybernetic implants, while their strong immune system, that Cecilia had feared could reject the synthetic materials, had unexpectedly tolerated them. Also, accustomed from childhood to consider their genetically engineered bodies subjected to external manipulations, even psychologically they had not reported the same trauma that affected the Alliance soldiers who volunteered for the experiments.
'It's funny, these Coordinators were more shocked with the idea to be still alive than to have cybernetic limbs,' Cecilia thought looking at their faces. Someone still had to deal with it, but fortunately that was not her area of expertise, and Cecilia felt almost proud of it. She had always been at ease dealing with numbers, chemical formulas and inanimate materials, while it was the physical side of her work that made her uneasy; the scientist suffered from pessimism about what mankind was capable of, and she was instinctive repulsed by human beings.
Cecilia looked around in the room, finding the person she was looking for seated with his other comrades in front of the TV. She smiled. Apart from her mentor, Cecilia had few acquaintances among the rest of the staff—composed of scientists much older than her—but she was perfectly content to maintain her level of personal involvement with them at a mere professional level. One would say that Cecilia Jesek was a very lonely young woman, but that was not true. Everyone knew she only loved her work. Her colleagues were surprised Cecilia enjoyed the Coordinators' company so much. Someone, even maligned they were nice-looking guys, but Cecilia knew her appreciation was not for a reason so trivial.
Several Coordinators turned to look at her as she walked towards them and, examining their faces improved by reconstructive surgery and their arms marked by the geometrical scars left from the operations, Cecilia could not mask a satisfied smile. They were like a group of beautiful dolls which, by chance, had been given the gift to speak and to move. Thus, she should not be afraid of them. They would have never hurt her, or make derisive comments behind her back because Cecilia was so dissimilar from the other human beings. Now, they were different too from any other creature on Earth: missing or fractured bones replaced with an endoskeleton in chrome-cobalt-molybdenum, damaged internal organs transplanted or substituted with synthetic ones generated through bioprinting, the former pilots were no more humans in the strict sense.
Some of them wore dark goggles to protect the optical devices installed, like the young Coordinator with whom she had to perform the latest test of the day. He was staring at her and, when Cecilia raised her hand to motion him, the former pilot stood up from the sofa with a grimace, walking towards her with a slight limp.
Cecilia sighed. She had explained to the Commission all the technical problems related to recover the body of someone still growing—insisting that at least the youngest ones should have been discarded by the program—but the Institute's donors refused to listen. Cecilia considered herself cold but not heartless, and she would have rather given them a merciful euthanasia rather than to condemn the unfortunate boys to years of tortures. However, she could not decline the order to treat them. Since the specimen were already few, they did not even have the luxury to die.
The scientist smiled at the Coordinator, helping him sit down in front of her. He seemed to have problems in standing. He was the youngest of the group, and also the biggest problem, but Cecilia was at least relieved the operations were a complete success.
"Does it hurt?" she asked, taking a seat too and pointing a finger to his right knee.
He shrugged nonchalantly. "A bit ... "
Cecilia raised an eyebrow. After all those months she had come to know them. "A bit," in the language of the subject Twenty-one meant that the pain was killing him.
"I'll tell the doctor you need an injection of Lidocaine. For a while it should be ok, but if it's still bothering you in the next couple of days we might decide to replace the implant."
Cecilia could barely conceal a worried frown. A more severe therapy based on opiates would fix the problem, but doctors were forbidden to prescribe them; not to create new Extended-like beings dependent on drugs. She wrote a note on the medical records of the boy she had brought with her, adjusting her glasses. "I had hoped to wait a little while before substituting the implants, but, unfortunately, you grew up damn fast. Your parents must be quite tall, am I right?"
She shot him a look, but Twenty-one did not move a muscle of his new face. She considered for a moment to remove his goggles, but it would have been useless. The omnipresent fixed gaze of those optical devices was a problem they had still to fix.
Sighing, she took his hands instead. As far as she knew the Coordinator could also be an orphan; he had not revealed anything about his past, not even his real name. Worse, he spent days without saying a word. And, yet, in the explosion that almost took his life, he did not report any neurological damage.
'Post-traumatic stress disorder,' Cecilia diagnosed, while running her fingers over the ones that had been installed on the Coordinator. 'I hope he will recover, or this will be useless.' She passed the tip of her index on the inside of his left wrist, and felt him shiver. "Well, it might hurt a bit but you have shown an excellent response to regenerative drugs. Honestly, I had never expected all of you to adapt to my implants that easily."
Mute as ever, the Coordinator only tightened his lips and, assuming that was an unspoken question, Cecilia felt compelled to explain. "We call them implants and not prosthesis because they are interfaced directly with your nervous system through the neural connections fully integrated with it. The impulses from the brain reach the motion detectors in the exact same way as—in an intact human body—they arrive at the joints. No, much faster than that." The scientist closed his right hand into a fist. The artificial skin had the same silky texture of the epidermis of a child. "And, you know, these implants are more efficient than normal arms and legs. You, and all of your mates, will be much stronger, faster and more agile of any human being." She raised a finger to touch his goggles. "And with these new eyes you'll see the world in a different, more complete and functional way." Cecilia could not suppress a satisfied chuckle. "Think about it, you might as well consider yourself as the evolution of our species."
The boy withdrew his hands from hers, while the enthusiastic words of Cecilia met a wall of silence, broken only by a brief "fascinating," said in a whisper. The scientist had the weird feeling that, if he could, the subject Twenty-one would have given her a piteous look.
Slightly disappointed, Cecilia shook her head, taking the boy's medical record and raising from the chair. 'Sooner or later you will understand ...'
"Come with me," she said with less vehemence. "There is one last test I need to run on the coordination of those fingers." The Coordinator followed her obediently out of the room. He might have been quiet but, as the good soldier he was, there was never a need to repeat things twice.
It was cold in the laboratory, and Cecilia pressed her white coat around her, grabbing two black gloves placed on a table. "Here, wear them, sensors woven into the fibers will transmit your movements to the computer. Now, do you see that digital keyboard? Sit there and press those keys for a while. I need you to play for five minutes, but listen, I would be very grateful if you refrain yourself from touching the keys on the far right, they produce the most acute sounds and I've already an incredible headache." With that, the scientist seated wearily in front of the computer, starting the program.
That day she had already performed the same test several times on the other subjects, and they had all cruelly tortured her ears with the most gruesome sounds. She had no reason to hope this time it would have been different.
The first chord was uncertain, and Cecilia looked gingerly at the headset abandoned next to the monitor. She reached out a hand to grab them but, in that moment, harmonious notes poured from the keyboard, as if it was a different person who was playing. The scientist turned her eyes back to the Coordinator. He was moving his hands on the piano skillfully, clearly knowing exactly what he was doing. And the melody was perfectly executed, with an enthusiasm that she would have never attributed to the young Coordinator, considering how dispassionate he looked.
Cecilia did not dare to stop something so beautiful. It was the former pilot who brought the concert to an end ten minutes later, a grimace of pain on his androgynous face, and eyes fixed on his right hand. Cecilia made a mental note that there was another part that needed an analgesic.
Uncertain about what she could say, she chose the most obvious thing. "Good. The test is successfully passed. And congratulations, you never told anyone you were a pianist."
"I was ok…" was the meek reply, but uttered with a tension that was not lost to Cecilia.
"We're done?" he asked, rising to his feet abruptly, without looking at her.
"Sure. Come with me, I will take you to Dr. Meine for that Lidocaine shot." She followed the Coordinator to the door, unable to tear her eyes away from the hand he was opening and closing nervously. Alarm bells started ringing in Cecilia's head, but she decided to test her luck anyway. Some of those guys were really a mystery, and there was no better moment to find out something about them then when they were so vulnerable. "And you are truly talented to be so young. Since you were also a Mobile Suit pilot, when did you have the time to learn to play piano like that?"
The Coordinator laid his left hand on the button that opened the door, but without pressing it. "I suppose I was born with that ability" he answered flatly.
"But, still, I think you had to practice a lot."
"My mother... since I was a child she had wanted me to take lessons... she had this old piano and she liked that I played it for her."
"How sweet. I bet that she loves you very much, am I right?"
Cecilia became aware of her error when it was too late. The Coordinator turned towards her, leaning heavily against the door. "Why am I here? I want to go home... let me go home... I want to see my mother... my piano... " He pressed his arms around his body, shaken by deep, agonizing sobs. But he could not cry, because the optical systems were not yet completed. Cecilia had never seen in her life something that painful.
She felt lost. None of her schooling had prepared her to handle a hysteric teenager. Taken completely aback, the scientist saw the Coordinator place his hands on his face, and she ran to him before he could do something irreparable. Instinctively she grabbed his wrists. "Hey, don't try to ruin my work." The magnitude of her mistake was clear to Cecilia when she was tossed aside as if she was weightless.
The scientist hit a table, causing an atrocious pain to pierce her side. Cecilia felt herself fainting, but it did not escape her what the Coordinator was screaming.
"And don't you ever think to lay again your hands on me. I'm not your toy."
"Do you realize what you did? He could have broken your neck."
Cecilia blushed furiously under the tense gaze of her mentor, uncomfortable for the reprimand and for the stiff bandage that held her two broken ribs in place. Knowing the extent of her own error, the scientist tried to justify the Coordinator. "I don't think so. It was only an accident."
But Lenk Granato silenced her with stern gesture. "I know. I saw the video taken by the camera of the laboratory. Who do you think called the doctor? That guy, realizing that you were unconscious, got a grip on himself and pressed the alarm. You should be grateful that at least one person in that room retained a bit of control."
"I'll go to thank him..." she murmured, embarrassed like a child caught stealing cookies.
"I do not expect anything less from you. Listen, Cecilia, luckily we managed to hide this incident to the military, or it would have caused quite of a fuss. Because, you know, nominally you are only my first assistant, but everyone knows that you are the project leader. If something had happened to you, what would we have done? The military could have thought he attacked you willingly, and they would have taken further measures to restrain the Coordinators. Those guys are already their guinea pigs, do you want them also to be prisoners on a leash?"
"No, of course no" Cecilia said, rising quickly to her feet despite the pain. She clenched her teeth, staring at her mentor serious face. "Sorry Lenk, I was too enthusiast. I felt... drugged. "
He nodded. "You are hardly to blame, Cecila. You are a genius, and your inventions saved those guys. I'm sure that if the Nobel Prize was still awarded it would be yours, but you need to be more careful when dealing with them. They could become very dangerous for you, for others and for themselves too. And, also, did you hear what that Coordinator yelled to you? He's a human being, Cecilia. He's very young, almost a child, and he has suffered something unspeakable. Do not treat him like a dummy with no feelings."
Grief struck Cecilia like a knife. The last thing she wanted was to hurt them. "I didn't! How can you say that? I'm the only one in the staff that cares for the guys like they were normal patients, while for the others scientists they are nothing but materials for their experiments."
"I know, Cecilia, but it's not what I was saying. I can see you are very close to the Coordinators, but refrain from spitting your usual cynical remarks when you are with them. Keep in mind, they are still psychologically recovering, and the wrong word could trigger something impossible to control."
Lenk's eyes rested on her injured side. "You are the inventor of those implants. You should know how strong those Coordinators are now."
Cecilia nodded stiffly, silently biting her lips. He was right, of course, and she was lucky to be still alive.
"Go to sleep now, it's really late," the man added more cheerfully, rubbing his cheeks with his fingers. "Starting tomorrow, I'll ask Julia to replace you at least in the tests on the more advanced subjects. This is also my fault, as I worked you too hard. Damn, sometimes I forget you're still a child too."
"I'm twenty, Lenk…"
"So? You should be still studying, not here working with too many responsibilities placed on your shoulders. Go, Cecilia."
The young scientist nodded, deeply moved by his words. Then, wishing him goodnight, she left the office.
Cecilia found the Coordinator in the doctor's waiting room. The boy had his arms on a table and his head resting on them, but raised it immediately as he felt her entering in the room. The goggles hid his expression, but the mortified grimace twisting his lips spoke volumes about how he felt. And Cecilia could not suppress her surprise when, before she could open her mouth, he asked for forgiveness.
"I'm sorry, I should not have reacted that way."
The speech she had prepared evaporated. How could he feel at fault? Embarrassed, Cecilia could not suppress a chuckle. "What? I'm the one who hurt you. I was terribly indiscreet and tactless, you are not obliged to say anything about your previous life." The boy shifted on the chair, clearly uncomfortable, and Cecilia hastily focused on something else. "Anyway, thank you for calling the doctor."
"It was my fault if you were unconscious. I could not leave you like that."
"But you didn't have to ring the alarm when, sooner or later, someone would have found me."
"Do you think I could leave you like that? Do I look so insensitive?"
This time, Cecilia laughed openly. "I have no idea. This is the longest speech I have heard from you since you arrived here. I was starting to fear you had a mental deficiency. In any case, I don't know how sensitive you are, but you are certainly very efficient."
The Coordinator straighten his back. "Of course. I am a soldier, and one of the best of my class. I was trained not to lose control in any situation… although it's very difficult sometimes... but it will not happen again, I promise." He lowered his head, looking away from her.
Cecilia could not help but to smile sadly at his afflicted tone. Despite his declaration, his thin frame to his quiet nature, told her the contrary. And the words he had just spoken sounded, tragically, like those of a repentant child looking for approval. She sighed silently. 'What the hell are you doing here? What kind of society is ours that induces children to fight its wars?' Then, she remembered. The guy seemed nice, but surely he had already killed. And certainly he would do it in the future, thanks to those implants she had installed on him.
The scientist turned towards the door, trying to mask her unease. No matter who they were—and it did not matter if she felt at home among them—she could consider those Coordinators her most perfect creations. But they would soon become the war dolls of someone else.
"It's ok" Cecilia whispered faintly. "You don't bear any responsibility about what happened."
'Not even for the things you'll be forced to do when you'll be out of here. That will be all of my fault too.'
Again, thank you Strata-Assassin for the betareading!
I usually reply personally to all reviewers but, again, many thanks to Bryon Lancaster, Crimson77, my dear Galadan, and to all of those who read this :)
