"The Experiment"
Chapter 10
I lay in the darkness in my stall, with my paws folded, resting my head on them. But I couldn't sleep. I kept remembering Inferno's words. "Who knows what she might do if she was pushed too far?"
Was he threatening her? Or did he mean something more subtle? All Inferno had to do was make things more difficult for her, drop a few hints in the ears of the right monsters, or even turn Gene against her. Brom and Gene didn't seem to get along, but that didn't mean that Inferno's reach didn't extend between their two stables.
The problem was, Inferno was right. Sandy could be capable of anything, if she lost control of herself, or just plain snapped. An image flashed across my mind, of Sandy striking down the Naga, with that inhuman green light glowing from behind her eyes. And I shuddered.
How could I protect her, when even *I* was sending pain and heartache her way? I wanted to... I wanted to make her happy. And yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I was letting her down. First with Frank and Curtis, and now Inferno. I wanted to help her, but all I was doing was making things worse.
"YOU love me, don't you?" I could almost hear Sandy's voice, pleading with me, at the lake. It seemed like a lifetime ago. But I did love her.
Something inside me balked. I tried to push the thought away, to deny it, but it was the truth. Somewhere along the line, I had forgotten that we had no future together, that we were just monsters, made for fighting and nothing else. "A monster's life is short," Ralph had said. "Don't waste it." But I wanted to spend what was left of mine with Sandy.
I heard a shuffling noise outside of the stable. It was right near my stall, footsteps in the grass, and then a scraping sound, as if someone was leaning against the wall. I heard a quiet sob. It was Sandy. She paused there for a second, and then the footsteps continued on, towards the door to the stable.
She fumbled with the bolt on the door and then eased it open. I leaped over the railing of my stall, landing silently on the soft dirt floor. I watched as she passed in front of the light from the doorway, but she hadn't noticed me. She sniffled again, and then called out to me, softly. "Steppenwolf?"
"I'm here," I answered, just as quietly. I padded over to her, and she blinked at me, trying to see clearly in the half-darkness. "Let's go outside. No sense in waking everyone up."
I stepped out through the door, and she turned and followed me. As I looked up at her, I couldn't suppress a gasp at what I saw. Her face was bruised, her cheeks were tear-stained, her eyes puffy from crying. And there was a large red mark on her chest, about the size and shape of the imprint of a fist.
"Sandy! What happened to you...?"
"It was Gene." She hid her face in her hands, sobbing. "He came to me tonight. He came to my stall. He..." Her voice choked.
"I'll rip his throat out!" I growled.
"No!" She threw her arms around me. "Molly doesn't know! She CAN'T know! It'll kill her! Please..."
I tried to get a better look at her. "Did he hit you? Did you get away, or..." I couldn't finish.
"I didn't want to hurt him. When I tried to stop him... he... he hit me. I didn't... want him to get hurt... so I... I didn't fight back..."
I couldn't hold back a snarl of fury. "He'll pay for this... Molly or no Molly, he'll PAY for this."
She buried her face in my fur, still sobbing. "Just take me to the lake, Steppenwolf. Please."
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. "Okay. Just climb on, I'll carry you."
She did so, straddling my back, and laying forward to keep her arms around my neck. She was so much bigger now than she was when we first went to the lake. But then I remembered the last time she had ridden on my back, her grip like iron, her body shaking with pain. I hadn't thought about it then, but she would soon be too tall for me to comfortably carry her.
I walked along in silence, while Sandy clung to me. She continued to sniffle, but only occasionally. The moonlight was more than bright enough, and I was able to wind my way through the forest with ease. Finally, we came to our spot on the edge of the lake.
Sandy sat up as we neared, and I trotted to a stop next to the big stone. She stepped off of me onto the rock, and dove into the water. I sat on the bank, watching her, while she swam. She stayed in the water for a long time, but finally she waded back to shore and sat down.
She sat huddled on the rock, her arms wrapped around herself. "How far did he go, Sandy?" I finally asked her.
She said nothing. When she finally spoke, it was to say, "You can't tell anyone. It'll just hurt Molly. And I guess I don't really want to hurt Gene, either."
I lowered my head. "You can't just let him get away with this. Molly is one thing... or at least... she SEEMS to be with him by choice, from what you've told me. Who knows how their relationship started..."
"I was afraid," she said. "I didn't... I didn't want to hurt him. Like I hurt..." Sandy was silent again, for a long moment. "When he hit me... I just... I just decided to let him do what he wanted."
I shuddered. "Sandy... what if he tries this again? You have to talk to someone..."
Sandy looked at the ground. "Nothing happened, Steppenwolf. You don't have to worry."
"What? What do you mean?"
"He stopped, Steppenwolf."
I shook my head, confused. "What, you mean after hitting you and finally getting his way he suddenly decided he had a conscience?"
Sandy didn't answer. "Even so, he could try it again. And next time, he might not be..."
"He COULDN'T, Steppenwolf!" Sandy shouted. And then the tears came to her eyes again. She wiped them away, angrily, but then she wrapped both arms around her body, and started shaking.
"He couldn't," she repeated. "*I* couldn't. I was going to let him, but he couldn't. I'm not... I'm not..."
She sobbed. "I'm not HUMAN any more, Steppenwolf!"
I just stared at her. I didn't know what to say.
"When he realized... that I wasn't... that I couldn't... he just got up and left me... like I was nothing..."
"And that's what I am. Nothing. Just a thing. A machine. Pretending to be a... a Pixie. A cold, dead thing. Pretending to be alive."
"Stop that!" I stepped in front of her, leaning down to meet her eyes. I wished I had hands so I could shake her. "You AREN'T a thing! A thing doesn't cry! A thing doesn't hurt! And you've done BOTH more than any monster should HAVE to do in its lifetime!"
"It's GENE who thinks of you as a thing... What he DID to you... it's wrong. You can't let that... make you feel..."
"Oh, it's not just that, Steppenwolf." Sandy sniffled, wiping away tears. "It's... well... that, on top of everything ELSE. I just don't know what I AM any more, Steppenwolf. I've lost so much... of what made me... me..."
"I don't think so." I nudged her cheek, and she looked at me. "However much your body may have changed, you're still the same... in your heart."
She gave a little laugh. "Do I even have a heart?"
"You know what I mean. Maybe your heart is a... machine pumping whatever serves as a Henger's blood around in your body. But it still beats, doesn't it? You still get nervous, and scared, and excited, don't you?"
"I've known Hengers, and they have feelings, too. Maybe they're a bit... single-minded, but they're living things, just like we are. They grow, and eat, and sleep, and get happy, and sad..."
But Sandy shook her head. "Not like us. Their feelings are... cold, detached." She wrapped her arms around herself. "Their thoughts are... just... facts. Simple logic. They don't understand US, either. To them, we are unpredictable, chaotic."
She was silent for a moment. "As we've become... closer... more like... one mind... I've felt myself... losing... my feelings. I find myself... thinking about things. My stall, the food I'm eating, my training, I find myself... analyzing it, figuring out ways of making it better. Improving... efficiency."
"That's why I've been... avoiding you lately." She stared at the ground. "I'm not sure... what I'm becoming."
"... or whether you'd like it."
I felt my heart tighten in my chest. I knew what I wanted to say to her, but I just couldn't. Not after what Gene had done, anyway...
"Sandy. Do you remember what I told you? That I would help you become whatever you decide to be?" She bit her lip as she nodded. "I've never forgotten that promise, and I never will. Whatever's happening to you, we'll get through it, together."
She wiped a few more tears away. I took a deep breath. "Now... I understand how you feel about Molly, but we have to tell Frank. He should check you out, make sure you're all right."
She shook her head. "No. He'll tell Curtis. I don't want... I don't want anyone else to know about this."
"Sandy, you could be hurt! We have to make sure..."
"I'm fine!" She brushed at her face with a hand, then waved it at me, dismissively. "I told you, he didn't do anything..."
"... Anything but HIT you. You know how fragile your body is. You might be bleeding, like when Curtis hit you."
"But..."
"Sandy, please... just so I can feel better about it."
She stared at me a moment, but then nodded. She wiped her eyes again. "I'll go see him in the morning," she said.
Sandy looked back across the lake, and I slowly turned away. I found a dry spot on the bank, turned around a few times to pack down the earth, and lay down. Sandy continued to sit on the rock. I could see the outline of her body, lit by the moonlight, as she sat there in silence.
After a few minutes, though, she stood up and walked over to me. She knelt down next to me, and curled up against my back, with her hands in my mane.
"Steppenwolf... I don't know what I'd do in this place, without you..."
"It's all right. I'll always be there for you."
"Will you?" Her arms tightened around me, a fierce hug. "How can you be sure? How can you be sure something won't happen... to either of us?"
I had no answer. She held me like that, protectively, until she fell asleep. And then I fell asleep as well.
As Sandy expected, when she told Frank what happened, he wanted to tell Curtis immediately. He was just as enraged as I was, and his reaction was almost as violent. Sandy insisted that he tell no one, however, and refused to let him examine her until he agreed. So he reluctantly promised not to tell Mr. Curtis.
He looked Sandy over thoroughly, although he seemed relieved when Sandy explained why Gene had been forced to stop. Sandy was embarrassed to talk about it, though, and blushed a deep red as Frank made sure that her hips weren't damaged.
"I'm sorry, Sandy," Frank said to her. "I know this must be hard for you."
"No... I'm being silly, I guess. I mean, nothing happened, right?"
Frank put a hand on her shoulder. "Sandy... just because you got away, that doesn't mean you weren't violated."
Her eyes widened, and then she nodded. "I guess I didn't think of it that way."
"It's all right. It could have been worse. He still beat you pretty badly."
As well as on her face and chest, there were several large bruises on Sandy's thighs. There was even an area of discoloration on the plate that grew up over Sandy's left breast. The tan material had turned a dark brown, and where the plate grew out of her chest the skin was purple.
Frank examined the plate. "What happened here?"
"He tried to... take it off... I think. It hurt... I told him it was part of me. But he pulled down on it, really hard. It fractured, cracked where it grows out of one of my ribs."
"How do you know that?"
"System status. My repair system has discovered the break and is working on it."
Frank looked impressed. "So he stopped pulling on it when he realized it didn't come off?"
She nodded. "He found he could... um... get his hand underneath it..." she turned pink again. "But that didn't hurt."
"There is some bruising, though." He walked back over to his cabinet. "But I think that's all. I'll just use the normal cream for bruises. It'll probably work on that spot on your Henger shell, too."
He picked up his jar of cream, and began to rub it onto Sandy's face and body. He continued to talk as he worked, keeping his voice casual. "You'll want to stay away from the other Pixies for the rest of the day. By tomorrow, the bruises should have faded enough that you won't have to answer any questions."
"I think I'll stay here in the lab," she said. "I feel a little too sore to do any walking around..."
"That's understandable." He frowned. "I have to tell you, I've treated Pixies for mysterious... bruises... before. Lately, it's been Molly. Nothing serious, just... well, I knew it was a trainer, I just couldn't tell which one."
Sandy didn't say anything. "Is she in love with him?"
"I think she is, yes."
"There were others, before her."
"I know. I guess she knows, too."
"Well... for now I'll keep the secret. But I better not see any bruises on any other Pixies."
He returned to his cabinet with the jar of cream and put it away. Then he walked back over to Sandy. "Sandy... about yesterday..."
She looked at the floor. "I'm really sorry." Frank said. "I didn't think your reaction would be so... well, I guess I thought you might get mad, but..."
"Frank, how do you expect me to feel?" Sandy asked.
"Sandy, just hear me out, okay? Let me just explain, and then if you still don't want to do it, we won't."
Sandy was quiet, so he continued. "I think that I can prevent the next Pixie/Henger from having to go through what you went through. We know that your Henger half misunderstood what was going on in your body during puberty. It tried to take control of your body, by 'growing over' your Pixie half, kind of like the way your skin grows over a big wound when you are hurt by an attack."
"The thing is, we didn't realize that your Henger half had a mind of its own. We just thought the Henger Eye was, well, just an Eye, we didn't realize that there was a mind connected to it. We never tried to communicate with it, and IT never tried to communicate with US, either. When things started to go wrong, there was no way for us to tell it to stop, to make it try and work WITH your Pixie half."
"Now... from what we understand, Hengers have some sort of a special way of thinking, all their own. They have their own language, and can talk to each other through their Eyes. And they have a... well, a set of instructions, a program, it's called, that makes them run."
"The Operating System," Sandy said.
"Yes. Well of course, you know all about it." He grinned. "Anyway, the Operating System contains all of the parameters for the Henger, and how it's supposed to grow and develop. For most Hengers, they grow at a constant rate, just getting bigger, they don't undergo growth stages like other monsters do."
"In your case, the Henger half was able to keep up with the Pixie half, at first. You grew at a constant rate, through your childhood. When you entered puberty, however, your growth accelerated, becoming faster. The Henger half couldn't keep up. In addition, your body was changing, as well as growing. So even when your Henger half was able to catch up with your Pixie half, it was still worried about the erratic way in which you were growing."
"The rest you know. If we can tell the Henger half what to expect, though, when it should begin its growth spurt, to keep pace, and when to stop it, and assure it that nothing is going wrong, there should be no reason for what happened to you to happen again. We can get a purebred Henger to communicate with the undeveloped Henger mind in our Pixie/Henger, or even get you to do it."
"So you see, there's nothing to be afraid of. You've paved the way, you've... you've made it so that all those who follow you can have it easier than you did..."
Sandy was silent for a long, long time. She kicked her feet a couple of times. Then she looked up at Frank. "Can you be sure of that?"
"You told me that I wasn't going to die. You told me that you knew what to look for this time. You were wrong. What if you're wrong again?"
Frank stared at her a moment. "I... I can't make you any promises, Sandy. But I didn't... I didn't let you die." He swallowed. "I know... I know I made a mistake. But at least this time... you survived."
"Did I?"
She fell silent again. A hush seemed to hang over the room. Then she picked up her hands, and put them on her chest.
"Look at me. LOOK at me. I'm not a Pixie. I'm not a Henger. The line between my flesh and my machinery does not start at my ribs, and end at my elbows. This feels real," she indicated the bare skin of her chest, "but inside, there are wires and motors, mixed in with the muscles and organs."
She looked down at herself, at the cable buried just under the skin, following the line of her breastbone down from her Henger Eye. "I'm half a person... TWO halves of a person, forced to work together just to survive. I'm not alive..." she sobbed. "But I'm not truly dead, either. The machine won't LET me die, it keeps my body going, feeding it what it needs, but... I'M NOT WHOLE!"
"Don't you understand?" She was crying, now, her voice pleading. "THIS is as much of a violation as what Gene did to me! I didn't ask for this, YOU did this to me, and I..."
She shook her head, blinking away tears. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't blame you for this. You couldn't have known."
"But don't you UNDERSTAND?!!! Don't you think there's a REASON why Pixie/Hengers don't exist?"
"Look at me!" She sobbed. "Can you look at me and tell me that this is all worth it?"
Sandy stared at Frank, and then at me. Letting out another sob, she stood up, as if to run out of the lab. But Frank caught her arm. He pulled her to him, hugging her. "It's all right, Sandy. We won't make another Pixie/Henger. Not until you're ready."
She cried in Frank's arms, while he stroked her hair reassuringly. "I... I never meant to hurt you, Sandy. I guess I didn't realize how this affected you. I won't do any more research -- okay? -- until we can work this out. I promise."
"What about Curtis?" She asked, her face pressed against his chest.
"He can wait. I'll tell him that we shouldn't create any more Pixie/Hengers until I can be sure I've got the process right. Is that all right?"
"I guess so."
