Reality Check
By Rowe
My wonderful beta, Mel, a huge thanks for the great job you do.
Chapter 5: And things that needed to, come out into the light…
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For a short while he had almost found paradise. This place was full of welcome distractions to both the flesh and mind. The atmosphere was buoyant and his pain had receded back into him. The room he had taken was at the back of a small run-down hotel. No one asked questions there. He could come and go as he pleased. It reminded him of the only place he had ever really called home, spartan and functional at best.
He could prowl the streets with some anonymity, without feeling that he was too exposed. For a few weeks the predator in him had remained silent. During that time his senses were still alert, danger didn't stop happening even if he wasn't being dangerous. He sometimes sensed people watching him, staring at him. Sometimes he felt that he was more than a little paranoid. It rather unnerved him because he didn't think that he looked any different or stood out. At least he tried not to.
On bad days, he felt that locking himself away in his room was the only way he could get away from the prying eyes. Then he had only himself for company, that wasn't all that healthy for him either. It gave him far too much time to think about things he knew he was much better not to. He wasn't human, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't become one. The despair would overwhelm him. This was never his world. It belonged to those too naive to know what actually went bump in the night. He desperately missed where it all had made sense, where they knew who he was, and so did he. When he spent time alone he started to remember how it was. Then he started to miss it. This was when things always turned bad, because then he would also begin to question his purpose.
He could feel it again, the tightening in his gut. He tried to ignore it, he tried to ignore 493 talking in his mind, telling him it was time. The need to hunt was rising fast, it had come upon him quicker this time. With a predator's eyes he looked around him, assessing his prey. He needed a new lair.
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Her lessons had been progressing well. She was bright and bubbly and injected her personality into her playing. Her warmth was attractive. She had asked him to dinner tonight, as her escort, to a formal dinner with her father's work contacts. It was a natural progression from the time they had been spending together over the past few weeks. She appeared to enjoy his company, which was making his job easier. At the debriefing his superiors had appeared excited by the prospect. They saw it as a good opportunity to further investigate her father by promoting further interest in the daughter. He was to encourage her to spend time with him. They had asked him outright whether she had a romantic interest in him. He had very little experience in the area of 'romantic interest', how was he to know what the girl was thinking. He knew she liked his company, drawing out the time they spent after her lessons. He enjoyed her company too, he realised. When in her presence he sometimes forgot he was a soldier on a mission and just got swept up in her enthusiasm. He wasn't disappointed that they were encouraging him to spend more time with her.
Dinner was a sumptuous affair. Berrisford was a wonderful host. As coffee was served the talk turned to business. The conversation was complex, obviously boring to Rachel. He saw when she signalled him, indicating for him to follow her. Excusing himself politely he moved over to her. He saw her father's look of approval, deep down he felt like a fraud.
"Come on," she grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the door. Exiting onto the balcony, he looked back reluctantly, he knew that he should've been staying to listen and maybe find out more of Berrisford's plans for Manticore. Rachel urged him on. Torn between conflicting orders of gathering information and furthering his acquaintance with her, he let himself be swept along. He was just following orders, he tried to reassure himself.
As they snuck into the pool room, 494 enjoyed a frisson of illicit pleasure. They were fugitives from his true mission at the moment. He didn't normally ignore priority orders. She gathered his hands in hers and she declared him a funny one, he panicked for a second., Had she seen beyond it his cover? Was she questioning his legitimacy? With relief he realised she was talking about his interest in the technical genetics talk of her father and those she called his 'cronies'. Coming from Manticore, he'd found it interesting. When he told her that he wasn't like most boys she seemed sort of pleased, he enjoyed a jolt of pleasure at this.
As Rachel moved closer he was mesmerised. When she indicated the pool and asked if he'd like to swim, he wasn't sure what do and hesitantly agreed. As she started to move her dress straps down her shoulders, he stood trapped frozen in fascination. Things were getting out of his control very quickly. This was something far outside his training. Turning shy she asked him to turn around, he hastily complied and began to undress himself. His mind was going a million miles an hour as he started to question what he should so. The splash of the water was unexpected, he turned startled. He had been totally unaware of her position, as he'd been caught up in his revelry.
As he entered the pool and moved over towards her he knew he was totally out of his depths. He felt shy and awkward, something he had never really felt before. He'd been trained to be confident in his abilities and actions.
Her radiant natural beauty drew him closer. She shyly spoke, her eyes shining up at him. "In case you hadn't noticed, I've been sort of throwing myself at you for the past few weeks. Don't you like me?"
"I like you" he couldn't help himself, it came unbidden from inside. As she kissed him, her soft lips pressed against his, his analytical mind for the first time in his life went completely blank.
"I like you a lot". As he moved to kiss her again his mind kicked back in. "What the hell was he doing?" 494 mentally chastised himself. He knew he was utterly compromised, he had broken the cardinal rule of espionage, he'd gotten involved with the target, or in this case the target's daughter. He couldn't let them know, he knew what they would do to him if they did. As far as they were concerned he was still the loyal soldier, he was just a little confused as to whom he was supposed to be loyal to.
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He wasn't crazy. This was the one thing he needed to be sure of. He also wanted to somehow be reassured that he wasn't actually capable of committing those atrocities he had envisaged in his dreams. So much blood, so much fear from his victims. Thinking about it now made him gag. He forced himself to move through the crowd. The smell of the sweaty bodies around him was overwhelming his already tenuous control over the contents of his stomach.
Eyes everywhere, staring at him, watching his every move. Cain mentally shook himself free of the paranoia that was taking a hold in his mind. He looked around the market place puzzled; he got a strange sense that something was not right. Not something he could put a finger on, but a feeling of imminent danger that was sending tingles up his spine. His immediate overwhelming instinct was to leave, so he followed it.
Back at the parish he felt relief at being within the walls he called home. It was his sanctuary. The television in his kitchen was switched on and with horror he watched the broadcast relay the news. A gang massacre had occurred just moments after he had fled the market. For him knowing that his instincts had been right brought conflicting emotions. He hadn't been imagining the threat, something real had happened. That meant maybe there was something more to these nightmares he had been having. Ever since they had started the world had begun to feel surreal. It was as though all his senses had been heightened, enhancing his perception of what was happening around him. It was like a part of him had been lying dormant and had now awakened. It scared Cain, this dormant part, for was it that which was capable of the violence he had seen his own hands carry out.
As he closed his eyes that night, and his mind slipped into unconsciousness, the eyes started to crowd in on him. They were almost inhuman in their intensity, many showed incredible pain and fear. The images were driving him towards madness, driving him deep into the dark recesses of his soul. He reached out for his faith in desperation. It was his rock against the overwhelming feelings of despair he could sense all around him, his grasp was tenuous but it held. No deaths were to haunt him tonight but there was the underlying threat of violence, always there, always stalking him. As the eyes became faces, he knew that he surveyed them with predator's eyes. He felt his pulse surge, time to find his next prey. A small-frightened voice inside him cried "Noooooo".
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"Damn it all", he cursed angrily at the report that was in front of him. Now was not a good time for 495 to show signs of imploding as well. The details of the report suggested he was becoming aware. Deck had a feeling that there was a connection between 493 and 495 behaviour. The psychic connections between these kids were hard to predict. Later series like the X7s had been deliberately linked but the earlier ones like the X5s, it had come naturally in some. Usually sparked by cases of heightened emotional trauma. Thankfully X5-494 showed no sign of being linked into 493. Or maybe as a good soldier he was just better at hiding it, or better prepared to deal with it. Lydecker mused on that fact for a while. He had better tell Sandoval to increase his vigilance on the boy.
There was still no sign of 493, it had been a little while and he was getting impatient. The faint hope that the killing spree was over was tantalising but unrealistic. No, when this sort of psychosis was seen, it just only ever got messier. It was awful but he wished the kid would do something to help him find him. They needed to bring him in, bring him home. They could deal with it all here. He was one of them, one of his kids. Other rogues had been successfully reindoctrinated; he saw no reason that with a little psyops therapy they couldn't recover Ben as well.
In his fitful sleep these days, all Lydecker ever saw was visions of barcodes and tattoos. His mind constantly puzzled over the connection. They would also need to move in on 495 before he lost it. Bring the lost sheep into the fold. It would be difficult to indoctrinate someone of his age but better that than two wild men hunting the general populace. Maybe he would be able to lead him to a few clues, to help him find the elusive Ben.
