II. Cyperpunk AU: A Broken Body And A Broken Soul
The rain clattered in the background, mixing with the oil that swam on the roads. The young man sat against the alley wall, staring towards the dark, cloud-covered sky with emotionless eyes.
There was no beauty in life.
The rain probably would have caused problems for all his various mods, but they were all rusty already anyways. Not that he cared. Not that he cared about anything, really.
He was damaged goods, that's why they threw him out on the streets. Back to where they picked him up from, essentially.
He groaned at the memory, at all the shit they put him through, but he was desperate, and he needed the nutrition and the money, so he let them install one mod after the other. Then he did their dirty work.
He remembered being stabbed in the eye by a rebellion member, then getting an advanced optical nerve installed. God, that hurt. But God wasn't on his side. After the surgery was done, he remembered liquid running down his face. He experienced joy at the thought of being able to cry, only to find that it was blood from the messily done operation.
One infected wound and difficulties syncing with the software later, and here he was, ungratefully thrown out with the garbage.
Whenever he moved, he would hear the mechanical whirr that would remind him of his bad decisions in life. Dying from starvation or sickness would probably have been better.
His optical drive suddenly came to life as it scanned his surroundings of its own accord. He grunted in pain and clutched at his head as the information was painfully relayed to his brain.
Damn bastards didn't even give him pain meds.
There was another human being in his vicinity, and it was walking towards him. He grew startled. He hadn't seen an actual human being in a long time. The scan didn't pick up any implants of any sort, which meant that this person had to be completely bone and flesh, a rather foreign concept nowadays.
It didn't take long for his hearing implants to pick up the soft sound of careful footsteps and differentiate its track from the monotone pitter-patter of the rain.
Another surge of information reached his brain with a wave of agony, telling him that the approaching person was a female teenager and that she posed no threat.
Nothing really posed a threat to him anymore, not after replacing more than half his body with the most advanced alloys.
"Hello?" A soft, feminine voice asked tentatively into the alley.
He chose to ignore it, she'd go on in a few seconds anyway. There were two kinds of people who didn't get mods: Those who can't afford them and those who don't need them.
Against his will, his eye continued scanning the girl, placing her into the latter of the two categories. Good health, good clothing, lowered body temperature due to the rain…
If he had a way to switch off his brain, he would. He groaned as the pain became too much to bear, and he could make out her footsteps coming closer.
"Are you alright?" She asked again, worry lacing her speech. "Are you hurt?"
He held up one hand, signalling her to stop. He didn't need to get involved with higher society if it could be avoided. Additionally, if she were to come any closer, his scanners would pick up on her ID-chip and it'd go on his records that he encountered her.
That would only lead to more trouble.
Unnecessary trouble.
"You really don't look well." She stated, ignoring his hand and coming closer. "I must be able to help somehow."
There. She crossed the line and entered the perimeter. Data flooded his mind once the damn radar found the chip.
Lenalee Lee. February 20th 2077. 17 years old. 168 cm tall. 48 kg. Blood type B. Deceased mother. Deceased father. Deceased brother. Taken in by an associate's family. Leverrier. Low muscle build-up. Balanced diet. No registered mods or surgery.
He hissed and bent forward, clutching his head as the information came and went. He'd already forgotten half of it.
"Oh my goodness, what happened to you?!" The girl rushed to his side, putting her small palms on his shoulder in a wasted effort to comfort him.
He could hardly form any words as her entire file was being downloaded straight into his brain. He tried telling her to get away, but the pain kept interfering as he felt his few last remaining human brain cells die away.
His fingers clawed into the muddy grounds, the rain drowning out the girl's frantic inquiring, the pain drowning out his common sense.
He started panting once it died down, only to realize that he hadn't actually been clutching at the ground, but rather at the girl's delicate wrist that was now heavily bruised.
"S-Sorry…" He wheezed in exhaustion. The optical drive focused on her face, immediately displaying the percentage of various chemicals that had built up on her hair and skin.
"Are you feeling better now?" She asked, eyes wide in shock and panic. A display with her current hormone levels popped up in his periphery.
He dismissed the display and nodded weakly. "Yeah, I'm good now." His voice sounded raspy in his ears. Oh, right, they threw him out before he could install that equalizer.
And he still didn't have any pain meds.
"You don't really look that way. And I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen." She remarked unhappily.
He gave her a half-hearted shrug. "Incompatibility with the software."
The digital trail was there now, he might as well find out what somebody like her is doing in shady alleys in the middle of the night.
"I thought they check these kinds of things beforehand."
He chuckled, but sounded more like a weird mixture of a cough and a dying breath. "Only for the public eye, only for the public eye. You're awfully smart-mouthed, aren't you?"
It was her turn to shrug. "I read a lot of books. I'm not allowed out of the house."
He nearly laughed, but was too tired and pain-stricken to. "You actually still read? Oh right, you don't have a nerve plug, sorry."
He sighed. What was it like, actually reading, fine lack words printed on solid paper?
"There's nothing to be sorry about. It got boring eventually. The broadcasts aren't much better, either." She replied with a soft sigh, cradling her injured wrist and sliding down the side of the wall next to him.
"You might not want to say such things, everything I hear gets recorded and relayed." He informed her as a warning. The corporations had eyes and ears everywhere. Quite literally.
"I don't care." She answered honestly, lifting her gaze to the dark sky. "I really don't care about anything anymore."
"Oh really?" He attempted to crack a joke. "You seemed quite worried about me back there."
She didn't laugh. He had always been terrible at telling jokes.
"What's your name?" She abruptly changed subjects instead.
"I don't have a name, only a designation number." He explained.
"Isn't that kind of sad? Aren't you upset about that?" Her eyes left the star-less sky, focusing on him now.
"Should I be?" He answered with a question, never having given that point any thought.
"Well, yes. A name is given to you by somebody who cares about you. It's a reminder that at least one person out there cares about you. A number is just… crude."
"You think so? That's a nice thought." He smiled softly, but it kind of hurt with the metal bones in parts of his face. He wasn't built for smiling.
"It is. If I keep telling myself that, I might believe it." She spoke more to herself than to him. Then she went silent for a few seconds.
"Aren't you going to ask me what my name is?" She inquired after gathering her thoughts.
"No, I already know it. Lenalee Lee." He recited for her.
"Wh- but how?" Her eyes grew wide once more, and a display showing the change in her hormonal composition popped up again.
He groaned and dismissed it. He didn't need the scientific explanation to 'she is distressed by what you just said'.
He strenuously gestured to the base of his neck, where his chip was implanted. "The only surgery you've ever had in your life, your ID-chip."
The display showed her calming down again.
"Oh." She replied with a hint of embarrassment. "Right, I forgot."
A pause.
"So… what is it?" She tentatively spoke up again.
"What is what?" He raised a brow at her.
"Your name, number, whatever I should call you." She rolled her eyes.
"18-54."
"18-54, huh? That seems pretty random."
"I'm very sure it is. I've never really questioned it, it's just… been there." He shrugged again, as far as his damaged body allowed him to.
"So, 18-54, do you feel like you have a purpose in life?" She changed topics once more, her purple eyes reflecting the dull sky and mismatched neon lights in their surroundings.
"A purpose in life?" He hummed in thought. "Looking back, probably to become a guinea pig for some corporation to experiment on and then get thrown away once I've outgrown my usefulness and starve away on the streets. What a fulfilling life."
"But, in a twisted way, you still served a purpose for humanity." She remarked bitterly.
An alarm went off for another change in hormone levels, but he ignored it. He desperately tried to pry the word displayed in the conclusion box out of his mind.
Envy.
Why would she be envious of his sorry life?
"If that's the way you want to word it, yes, I've contributed to the development of scientific mods for human bodies. Still not very fulfilling." He answered carefully.
"I read this quote once, in a very old book. It said that you value the things you don't have the most. Just now you asked me why I was worried about you. Basically, I wanted to know whether I was worth anything. Whether I was good for anything. Whether I had a purpose."
Her eyes were still trained at the sky, the rain still splattered onto her flesh, but a single drop that held a higher salt percentage left the corner of her eye.
"If I have a purpose, as rotten as it may be, then surely you have one too." He tried comforting her with genuine understanding in his voice.
He grew up on the streets, a mess in rags questioning his existence. The moment somebody offered him anything, he latched on and never let go. Unfortunately, he was simply cut off. Disposable.
"How would I ever find out, though? I'm never allowed to leave the house, I have maids tending to my every needs, I never fall ill, I never injure myself. In fact," She held up her fractured wrist which he had completely forgotten about. "… I must've taken so many supplements and medications in my life that I don't even feel pain anymore. I once read that pain makes you feel alive, it's proof you're alive, but what if you don't feel pain?" Silent tears broke out from her tear ducts.
"…You're here, right?" He asked her heavy-heartedly. "You're here, talking with me, right?"
She merely gulped, swallowing down her sob.
"You're here, crying, aren't you?" He went on, joining her gaze directed at the empty sky. "I… I'm incapable of crying, you know? The tech won't allow it. Only blood comes out."
She still remained quiet, a soft hiccup the only thing to escape her lips.
"You say you're unable to feel pain, yet you're still crying, right? Why are you crying then?"
A louder, but still suppressed sob came from her mouth. Finally, she choked out the reason.
"Because it hurts! Not knowing, not understanding, it hurts!" Her uninjured hand clutched at the fabric over her chest, where her heart was.
"It hurts so much!" She wailed into the rain.
He sighed, putting a hand over where his human heart used to be. It also still hurt.
"That pain is proof you're alive, isn't it?" He continued sadly.
"This is not the kind of life I want." She admitted through tears. "I'm a waste of space. I'm not able of doing anything at all, I'm treated like a fragile doll at home. Think of all the people who would be better off getting the food I'm fed! Think of the medication wasted on me!"
"It's a privilege."
"That's the worst part of it all. I know that, but I still can't seem to find solace in it." She pulled her knees close to her torso and buried her face in them.
Her hormone composition went off the charts, switching between multiple emotions and showing numerous error codes.
"Lenalee." He said softly.
She responded to her name, lifting her head slightly and glancing at him.
"Lenalee." He repeated once more, firmer. "Somebody gave you that name, right? Somebody who cared about you? I'm sure this person wanted you to live a good life."
Their conversation would have to be cut short, it seemed, judging by the red dots that appeared on the mini-map in his periphery.
"They're gone, though. I don't remember any of their faces." She sniffled.
He nodded. He also had no idea what his family looked like. However…
"Allen."
"What?" She asked, visibly confused.
"The last name I remember having. It's… Allen."
The next few seconds were filled with chaos as multiple armed men stormed around the corner into the alleyway, voices blurred by speakers penetrating his artificial eardrums all while the scanner picked up all the ID-chips of the intruders.
The expected load of pain hit him as his brain desperately tried processing all the information, but peering through his eyelids he could only see Lenalee being dragged away by two of the armed men, one female sound pattern breaking through the rest.
"ALLEN!"
"Huh, didn't expect it to be him."
"What, you know him?"
"Yeah, used to be one of the test subjects at the lab. Turned out to be defective and useless, though."
"Yeah, we get those kind too, from time to time. Anyways, how should we proceed?"
"Make a copy of his voice pattern, we'll forge some conversation later. Delete the rest afterwards. Let's just go with 'defective mod causes man to injure Minister Leverrier's ward and blame it on one of the other companies. Nobody'll question it."
"Roger."
AN: Something darker, because the only good things I write are tragedies.
Heavily inspired by OBSERVER, a cyberpunk horror game that came out a few weeks ago.
This was originally going to be the second part of the Sky Pirate AU, but that one's only half-way done, so...
As for the guest who left AU suggestions, I'll definitely put something time travel-y on my list, as for demon/angel... well, I have bad experience with writing demon/angel stuff, once I deleted a 23k-word fic because it was kind of crappy and I'm just completely unable of putting it into a decent story. Sorry.
More ideas and reviews are always welcome!
~Emi