Directive: Attack.

It always began the same way. The hiss in his collar valve, the flood of red, the world narrowing in to a single point--instinct taking over, fortified by the Tactics bank he was linked into and the training that had been so repetitive, so relentless, that it had become like reflex. The pressure in the back of his head, the tension that built up until the first sudden strike--

The process of losing himself was nigh-instantaneous. He didn't quite know how he had managed to disarm the patrolman--just as he didn't quite know what he was doing, and could only notice that by the time he had noted what he should be doing, odds were it had already been done.

The Patrolman was an enhanced soldier--not quite a Cyborg, but possessing many of the same abilities. He was a later generation than Taiga was, as well--it was hard to believe how incredibly precise the man was--every pivot, every swing, every feint was perfectly timed and impeccably delivered. The battle reports that flooded his mind were sent at a frenzied pace--duck swing block swingfeint step swing duck swing blockfeintswingduckswing--he had managed to get in close somehow, where the hand-to-hand scuffle was threatening to turn into a grappling match. The gun had some time ago skittered out of the battle somewhere--neither combatant had the time or inclination to look around for it. Lu was also out there, somewhere--watching them. Irrelevant.

Nothing was relevant except the automatic defenses and the programmed aggression. Nothing mattered except the easy kill spots he had already identified--neck, temple, heart--and his own vulnerabilities.

In the years Taiga had spent fighting, he had learned something. No matter how much someone had heard about a certain fighting style, there was no way to be ready for it without seeing, up close and personal, what was really going on. The patrolman had probably heard all about the murders, all about the kills Taiga had made--but in the heat of battle, instinct--and not logic--governed what he did and did not do.

The Patrolman was right-handed. His left was arm staying in close to himself to block, tucked at the elbow. It would fly up if Taiga made an attempt at his head, and that was the moment he was looking for.

--step step block stepblock duckblock feintswing--

Taiga dropped his left arm, letting the patrolman take the invitation he was programmed to take. He felt the man's right hand close around his throat, clenching and bruising--just as his right hand launched a roundhouse at the left side of his skull.

Like clockwork.

The left arm went up to block and Taiga shifted from a fist to a grip, grabbing his arm and immobilizing it for the second he needed to make his move. The patrolman's hands were engaged, as was Taiga's right--

--but the left was still free.

One second.

He stepped forward to give added momentum to a punch already fueled by hydraulics--an assault whose force slammed into the man's ribcage and continued through the bone into soft tissue. The man's fists clenched, sending blue-black spots swimming in Taiga's vision--his right hand dropped as the Patrolman's left broke the hold--his right slammed back into his opponent's chest as left went to his own throat--

They fell at the same time.

The patrolman's grip was broken as he hit the ground, and Taiga sucked in air. His opponent was curling up, gasping like a landed fish--Taiga had seen that look on people before this, and he knew what it meant.

The red haze began to clear, and Taiga came back to himself with a sensation not unlike that of a dislocated joint snapping back into place. A second hiss in the collar valve indicated that the battle chemicals were being shunted away.

He felt utterly, physically sick.

If the stomach implant didn't regulate just about everything that went on in his digestive system, he would have retched. As it was he rolled onto his hands and knees and heaved, throat aching from the man's stranglehold and nearly causing him to choke on the dusty air. Vision still blurring slightly with the effect of the synthetic hormones and head still spinning as he regained his oxygen, he barely managed to choke out the command for a one-fifth tranquilize. The chemicals were released dutifully into his bloodstream, but they did little aside from brining his heart rate back down to normal from the acceleration of the fighter's high.

When he didn't think he could stand it any more, he stood up.

Carefully, he walked over to the patrolman and rolled him over onto his back to examine his chest. The man tried weakly to fend him off, but his attempts were so laughably feeble Taiga was able to ignore them without difficulty. Unbuttoning his shirt, he winced at the array of colors his chest was already beginning to turn.

"Dammit."

The patrolman's eyes focused on him, and then unfocused again. He was on his last breaths--that much was obvious.

"Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!!"

Taiga sunk his fist into the ground, lurching to his feet. His hand moved to his forehead, and he swayed.

Lu was silent, staring at the downed patrolman. Taiga turned to her, still unsteady on his own too legs. "Well," he rasped, every word leaving his mouth more bitter than the last. "Say it. You've been waiting for a chance since you met me, so just--just say it."

Lu swallowed. "You killed him," she said. She swallowed twice more, and tried to return her shaking voice to its usual timbre of scorn. "I--I said it. All along. You're programmed to kill, and so you--"

I really just HATE--

"You!"

Before he knew it he had pushed Lu up against the rockface, bringing them almost nose-to-nose. Lu was startled--frightened, even--but he disregarded it.

"Look!" he snapped, almost yelling with the conflicting forces chemical, technological and emotional running rampant inside him. "Do you know why in hell you're doing this? Huh?" He gave her a shake for good measure, to ensure that she wouldn't think she knew. "All this shit about killing machines, and how soulless I am. Do you know why?" He didn't give Lu a chance to gather her wits and respond, pressing the few moments of terrified silence he had bought. "You wouldn't talk like this to a tank, or an X-ATM, or a gun. They're killing machines, aren't they? They're soulless! No! You talk like this to me because you know I'm human--a human like you, and you know that it will hurt. You do this to make me pay for something--make me pay for being something that you don't like, for doing something that I didn't do!"

"Ah--" Lu began, shaken. Taiga clenched his hands, probably bruising her arms but not caring at that point.

"I didn't want to have to kill Joe Unlucky there--I didn't want that fight to happen! But there's this little voice in my head that tells me things, and it said that when someone puts a gun to my head then maybe it's time to defend myself! I--how many kills have I made that I've wanted to make? How many times have I just wanted to run away from a fight? I don't know--I don't know any more. But I didn't have a--"

He choked, shuddered, and recovered.

"Do you even know how cyborgs are recruited? Do you? Not many people do. An official came to my house when I was three and took me away from my father and mother. They destroyed the records of who they were, they renamed me--they named me Taiga, I don't even know what my parents called me--and they took me to a facility where they trained me to be Adel's soldier. When I was nineteen I was sedated and put into surgery, and they did this to me. I didn't have a choice. No one ever asked my permission or my opinion on anything--I had no choice! And how much do you know about the Cyborg technology? Well? How much?" He shook her again, the action only making him more angry as opposed to allowing him to vent as he suspected it should have.

"I--not very, ah, not much," Lu stammered, trying to shrink into the rock. Without her perfected appearance of affront, she seemed smaller, less powerful--as if she had been wearing an armor which had been stripped away. Taiga was the power in their interactions, and he was beginning to realize it.

"The technology is integrated," he said, snapping out the syllables so that there was no mistaking them. "That means it's tied into my biological systems. There are wires and chips that go into my heart, my lungs, my stomach--everything that might be a source of weakness is something that they thought they would improve in the cyborg models. Do you have any idea where that leaves me?" His eyes narrowed. "No, I suppose you don't. What it means, Field Officer Lu, is that they can't take this suit off. Ever. Not without killing me. One way or another, I'm stuck a cyborg until the day I die."

With an effort of will, he loosed his hands and stepped away. Forcing a smile over and in spite of everything he felt, he spread his arms.

"But maybe that's all right with you," he said. "After all, once a Cyborg, always a Cyborg--doesn't that sound like something you'd say?" The muscles across his back underwent a small spasm, shaking him. "...maybe it's better that we just all die. Maybe it'd be best if we just disappeared, so that the world wouldn't have to deal with our disgusting, amoral existence. Maybe good people like you--good, human people like you, with souls like yours and higher senses of justice like yours, should take care of it. ...go on. Take that guy's gun and shoot me like he tried to do. I have a human core, after all; I can't take a bullet in the head any more than you can. ...deactivate me. Isn't that what you want to do?"

Lu's horrified gaze traveled from him down to the gun, and her arms went up to hug her chest. She shook her head, unwilling to look up at him. "I--" she started.

Something about the way she was standing and the object of her gaze connected with a fragment of programming in the back of his mind, amplified itself through the adrenaline that hadn't yet faded, resonated in his battle-charged mind--and the ICI blazed to life. Taiga C1128513. Analysis: Threatened. Directive: Attack.

No...!

Taiga stepped forward, swinging his arm around to catch her in the side with a brutal punch. He could hear bones snapping as she screamed, looking up at him in terrified surprise--

A backhand across the face sent her to the ground, where all she looked at was warm dirt flecked with blood.

No! No! No!

Wrenching his eyes closed, he searched for the override command. "...disregard!" he screamed, almost incoherent against the force of the compulsion. Another spasm went through his back, this time traveling down through his hips and into his legs. He fell, landing unevenly on the corpse of the patrolman and staring at Lu through tunneling vision.

Taiga C1128513. Analysis: Threatened. Directive: Attack.

"Disregard--" Red hazed his vision, and the servos in his leg fired aimlessly. "Directive. Directive!" The ICI didn't respond before he could choke out the rest of his command. "Sleep. Please. Directive sleep."

Taiga C1128513--

Nothing.

Suddenly, there was nothing.