10.16

"Fix what's broken," he says, his throat still hoarse from the unexpected ratcheting scream when Carolina threw Texas into the fire, and holds the capture unit out to the thin, waiting tentacles curled inside the metal box.

(The only Covenant alive in human control, and he stole it, he and his beautiful chess-piece soldiers, knock a few down to get to the checkmate. And this, the king of technologies, alien and subtle and Halsey would never have known to use it, it's his alone —

But fall too far into the love of the work and he starts to remember why he can love it, why he greets the AI by name and keeps the Huragok fed himself, pushing the little tubes into the box.

This is backlash love, so that he doesn't think too hard about her.

Because he feels backlash hate too, hatred for the AI that they can be so comforted, self-desiccating hatred for the Alpha that enables him to listen, dry-eyed, to that voice that is not his but occasionally speaks words he knows he put together. They're like phrases spoken by a friend that he recognizes were spoken first, and often, from his own mouth.

Alpha can scream about Agent Texas all he wants. The Director has seen Agent Texas. She was a steel body lying on an operating table, all wires and pins, translucent.

It's very rarely that he confuses her with Allison, but when he does it's like he's swallowed a stone.

And then he is back to thinking of her as Texas the machine again, the industrial revolution writ small and sick-minded and deadly, and she is not the concern.

Allison, distant, is the concern.

Keeping her separate from his thoughts is essential.

Keeping her fed to the AI only in tantalizing drips of rumor, like a narcotic, like the Alpha itself, is also essential.

Let him focus on the Huragok, and keeping alive the creature that is making Tex's hundred simulated deaths, each tumbled from his mouth as if giving the words away will free them from his memory, worthwhile.)

He won't let the creature near the AI.

It might try to fix them, and that's the last thing he wants.