A Circle of Fate and Pain
by Elliot Bowers
Chapter 3—Introduction to Red Anger
1.
It was a while before Kyrie could calm herself enough to settle down for tonight's rest. A nice hot bath in her own bathroom helped somewhat, just her alone and relaxation in a polished titanium tub of water large enough to be a wading pool. But there was still a feeling of agitation that could not be properly alleviated. That feeling was a small but troubling dot of thought in her mind—like a dot of annoyance that would not leave her alone. She laid back in the big circular tub of steamy water, the hot water relaxing muscles and mind…
But it did not relax all of her mind. Trouble would just not leave her alone. The annoyance surpassed her tolerance. Kyrie could not relax. So the girl quickly climbed out of the tub, pulled the lever to drain the water and dried herself off before dressing in a nightgown before putting on cloth slippers to cross the tiled bathroom floor in heading for the attached bedroom—her bedroom. Bath water drained as she went.
There in her bedroom, her head of hair still slightly damp, she dressed herself in ankle-length nightgown--belted at the waist to keep it from becoming too floppy. The entire third floor of this converted border-land building was what she truly called home--her bedroom and attached room for bathing the core of home. Her bedroom was large, with a bed that was opposite the window. A sofa, three bookshelves and a desk against the right-side wall. Since there was only night-lights on at four corners of the room, most of the place would seem to be in darkness. Even with low red light, Kyrie's unusual eyes allowed her to see well enough. She crossed the large bedroom to climb into the big bed--pulling the bed-covers over herself. Why did people have to hurt and kill, to be hurt and killed?
The girl knew that Sieben was trying her best to keep this building safe, maybe trying too hard. After all, being a bodyguard was the first and official arrangement between themselves. Part of that job meant dealing with anyone or anything threatening this home—even if the troublemakers were mutants. But Kyrie insisted that Sieben not be a killer in keeping this place safeWho knows, maybe Sieben would mistake Kyrie's returning father for a mutant? Or her father may have actually become a mutant after wandering all of that contaminated and junk-covered landscape of the Scrapyard…
As close as it was to the Scrapyard, as dangerous as it could be sometimes out in the open land between the Scrapyard and Scrap-Iron City, this was home. Everything was going to be fine. That was especially true since Kyrie had activated the lock-down mechanisms for tonight: all armored doors mechanically locked shut, blast-proof shutters over the windows, infrared cameras and sensors monitoring everything within the perimeter. Most nights were not trouble-ridden anyway. As Kyrie went off to sleep after the day's business now, she thought of Sieben being so deadly and violent…
Kyrie had replaced Sieben's face earlier tonight. She was still dressed in the jeans-shorts and tee-shirt outfit worn to Tire Wire Alley, her long pale-silk hair tied back with an elastic band. Her fingers flexed and grasped as she followed the procedure. She was still very angry at Sieben for using too much brute force in getting the mutants in going away. That was because Sieben broke one of the biggest and most important rules regarding mutants! Still, Kyrie had made sure that her friend and bodyguard was properly repaired.
You must not kill, Sieben! You know full well that not all mutants are the mindless and violent creatures everyone in the city says they are. Kyrie said that while applying a chemically specific gel that would soften the edges of Kyrie's damaged face. I count myself among them, among mutants. Deterrence is why you are my bodyguard. Deterrence does not mean murder. And from what I observed by way of remote camera, I saw what could very well have been murder...
When the gel set, Kyrie was able to use a thin steel blade to cut all along the perimeters of Sieben's damaged face. Then, by pressing in certain places, Kyrie was able to disconnect the subcutaneous connections that connected the synthetic skin of Sieben's face to the front of her head. It was like pulling away a thick mask.
The girl held the damaged, rubbery face in both hands. Hmmph, the acid had managed to eat almost all the way through this face—a face that Kyrie now held in her hands.
Just maybe the girl should have left Sieben lying on the table right then and there, leaving the replicate without a face. But no, the pale-haired girl could not do that—though she wanted to do so. So Kyrie turned away, carried away the damaged face over to a specially rebuilt machine designed to recycle raw materials--the machine itself recycled and rebuilt from the wastes of the Scrapyard region. Next to the machine was a storage case where spare faces and other accessorizing spare parts were kept for Sieben. Kyrie took out one such replacement item.
Meanwhile, back at the table, the currently faceless Sieben looked exactly like what she was: a robot, a robotic replicate with an electromechanical body in the shape of a young woman. It was a metal face and head on top of an articulated neck and female-shaped robotic body. Seiben still had the rest of her scalp to hold her shoulder-length dark hair to her head, and her dark eyes still stared out from a metal skull-visage.
Sieben did not look like Sieben. Kyrie hesitated a moment before beginning to attach this replacement part to the thing on the repair table—who simply stared. There was no use talking to a thing.
Then the large-eyed girl began the reattachment procedure for the new face. After lining up the top of the forehead with the chin, then pulling the sides to align the cheeks, Kyrie pressed the face to the front of the replicate's skull. She then pushed and held the temples and chin as the catalytic adhesive sealed the cut edges of the face. Induction nodes at the front of the metal skull connected to points beneath the skin. In about a minute, Sieben's new face became part of her.
It was as if Sieben's face wasn't damaged at all. While the replicate-girl sat up on the work-table, blinking and adjusting to a new face, Kyrie left the room. Thanks, Kyrie. I'm sorry, said Sieben when her friend left--her voice sounding small and sad among the humming of the machinery. Kyrie just barely caught the words as she went through the hall to go upstairs--into the more habitable parts of the house-building. Sieben sounded close to crying. But Kyrie didn't care if the replicate did cry. Kyrie was feeling angry. And it was good that the replicate hurt a little inside for fatally wounding—maybe killing—amutant. Some mutants did not know any better and ought not be murdered for what they do. That was one of Kyrie's rules.
It was a while since Kyrie had since gone off to bed… Sieben got up off of the work-table and set her bare metal feet to the square-tiled floor. She put on her footwear to keep from slipping on the hard-tiled floor. Metal feet and hard-tiled floors are not the easiest of combinations to walk with. Now Sieben could walk around. About her face…
The rolling tray in the far-right corner had a mirror on it. She picked it up, metal fingers clasping the plastic edges of the frame, held it and tilted the thing as so she could see her replacement-face. Of course Kyrie had done a typically wonderful job in repairing the damage. This was the second time she had to have a new face. And new faces always felt a little funny, a little rubbery--as if she was wearing a flexible mask.
Yes, it was her face in the reflection. It was the same milk-complexion look on her round sort of face, with her dark eyes open and staring, along with her high-boned cheeks flanking her slightly pouty lips, a pert sort of nose. It was all framed with straight dark hair that framed her face to barely touch her shoulders. Her original face used to have a number 7 etched into the artificial skin of the forehead, along with two chrome streaks embedded in her cheeks. Her body repaired after destruction and her face replaced twice, Sieben was not her original self.
Sieben knew full well that she was not even an original herself. She was made a copy of someone else--one of multiple robotic copies. The number 7 was her name: Sieben, when pronounced. There also once were over ten other people who looked a lot like her--ten other replicates. They were all made with the same replication process, all had numbers on their heads to tell them apart. Then one of their number went insane and began destroying all the other replicates with the idea of becoming the "original"--not stopping until everyone else was destroyed. That other replicate was a killing machine--a real monster with a gigantic alloyed screw in place of an eye and a wild-haired look. The monster was still roaming Scrap Iron City, looking for all replicates.
Don't be silly, came the thought. I'm safe. In fact, Sieben was more than safe. She was just recently repaired! So... Sieben opened her mouth wide-open as far as possible. Ah... Then she tried a pout, lips out and cheeks out. The cheeks felt just a little bit tight, but that's fine. A smile, and her reflection smiled back at her--dark eyes twinkly with glee. Okay, everything was as it was supposed to be--even if her cheeks felt a little bit tight.
Except, was Kyrie okay? Oh boy, that could be a problem. Sieben put the mirror back on the rolling cart and sat down cross-legged on the floor to think about this. Kyrie was really angry about what happened outside--not pissed enough to leave Sieben with a messed-up face, but still not happy at all. But Sieben had to do something about those mutants.
Those mutants were a really nasty group. There was the one with the acid-spitting big mouth, really quick. And there was that other one with the huge arms. Those two together could have broken into this house-building eventually and caused trouble. The one spitting acid could probably spit holes in this house-building's glass while the other one could use its big arms to try and break the bars over the window. Sieben had seen some really freaky mutations before, but those were some of the freakiest. She just had to stop them from being trouble to the house.
Kyrie was still angry at her. As Sieben sat in this corner of the work-room, sitting with machines and machine-tools--the low humming sound of the house-building's generator in the basement--she imagined Kyrie with that slightly contemptuous downturn of lips. It was that slight pout of hers that said, You disappoint me greatly. Kyrie may have the physical appearance of a child, but her attitude was sometimes like someone's mother.
I'm trying my best, thought Sieben to herself. I'm really, really trying! Why couldn't Kyrie understand that? Now the pout on Sieben's face was for real, not a test-pout in the mirror. Just because Kyrie was a bit mutant herself shouldn't mean that she should sympathize with those monstersand stuff! Monsters, that was what those other mutants were. In fact, Kyrie ought not even consider herself a mutant; she was too pretty and too smart to be something like that. Maybe she'd tell Kyrie that in the morning.
Thinking that, Sieben uncrossed her legs, then bent her knees before snapping to her feet. She then made her way for the open doorway out of this work-room. A click of the light-switch, and the work-room was shut into near-darkness: there still being the low red glow of a night-light built into the far-right wall, along with green pinpoints of little lights on the various machines. It was time for Sieben herself to shut down for the night. It was not that the replicate-girl needed sleep, but the hexagonal brain-chip in her head operated in a way similar to that of a human brain. Sleeping made her feel better.
2.
Flying along, little wings… fluttered above a jagged landscape faintly illuminated with moonlight. In contrast to the pale glow were round red lights attached to the gigantic machinery. Those construction machines were the size of buildings and skyscrapers, having large scooping arms looking as if they were detached from space-faring giant robots and attached to oversized trucks. Now those gigantic machines were used to move mountains of metal junk. The mountains were moved to prevent them from piling up and avalanching too much.
If one did not believe that, then there was another truth: The gigantic machines were actually in place to keep the junk from piling too high and maybe reaching too close to the floating city from which they were dropped. There were lights on those machines because, long ago, the lights were needed to keep flying machines from crashing into them at night. Even with flying machines long-gone for hundreds of years, the immense machines still had those lights attached--though now the machines themselves were used to adjust and move the mountains of junk to spread it out--shifting this landscape of junk. Then came the fog…
It was a sinister, noxious fog born of the chemicals within certain kinds of junk. Ancient junked cars, long-lost flying machines, generators, there was no telling what exactly was in that fog. It hissed up and out from various places. Before long, the toxic chemical fog was everywhere and obscuring the moonlight. Those distant red lights on the mountain-moving machines became glowing spots. It was harder to keep those little wings fluttering fast enough now…
This view moved upwards. From higher up, there were shapes among the toxic mists. Some of the shapes among the mists began to move. Those moving shapes loped among the valleys between the hills and mountains of junk. And how they looked could have been a trick of the light. Some of them seemed to twist as they walked. Others seemed to move along on more than one set of legs. Extra humps seemed to go where there should have been just the head. Except... Those were no tricks of the light. Those shapes were alive.
Some of the more unpleasant mutants were on the prowl for food this night: many of them with skin too raw with deformations and sores to be exposed to sunlight. They looked towards one building in particular as Sieben saw herself coming out through the armored front door. The view moved in as three malformed shapes made their way for the house-building. They usually stuck to eating rats and the occasional stray dog--the rawmeat more…rich and satisfying than anything cooked. And if a fleshie human so happened to come by, they would be next.
…
There was a glare of light. "Don't eat them!"cried the replicate-girl, sitting up in bed. What... What? Sieben looked around--seeing sunlight streaming through her bedroom window. What it was, it was just a nightmare. It had to have been a nightmare. How else could she see herself coming out of this place and outside to see herself getting ready to fight? It really was like watching herself.
Like all nightmares and dreams, that strangeness made sense while she was there. It was like a trace-transmission from one of those flying spy-drones from the Floating City of Zalem. The people up in that floating city tried to be discreet abut deploying those spying things. But how discreet could a flying furry creature with one big eyeball be? And they were especially not too careful about the radio frequencies used to communicate with those things. That in mind, Sieben sighed and climbed off of the bed.
She then reached for the robe on a chair next to this bed and put it on over her bare body. Not that there was anything to look at besides shaped and segmented metal, but it was still her body--even if it was not of flesh. She preferred to cover herself rather than walk around without clothes. People wear clothes. Machines do not. To feel more like a real person, she wore clothes. Besides the robe, there were simple rubber-soled shoes for her articulate gray feet to keep her from scratching the tiles or slipping. So dressed, Sieben made her way out of her bedroom to go downstairs and towards the kitchen. Kyrie ought to be up within the hour or so since it was daylight.
Sieben walked down the carpeted concrete stairwell to the first floor. This brought her down to the living-room area of this house-building--with morning light coming in through the barred windows high up on the living room walls. She then turned around to begin stepping towards the kitchen-room...where Kyrie sitting over in there at the table--her back to the living room.
Even from across the living room and looking into the kitchen, without seeing Kyrie's face, Sieben could see that something was wrong. Kyrie was sitting somewhat leaned over, her head down. Cascading down her nightgown-covered back, her hair was in disarray. The girl must not have brushed it before coming downstairs. And she wasn't eating. She was just sort of sitting there...
Well, there was no use in just standing here and staring. The way to find out what was the matter with her friend was to walk up and ask. So Sieben crossed the carpet-covered expanse of the living room. There was just barely the slight clinking of her electromechanical body's hip-joints, the sound muffled by the long robe she had on. Over there, Kyrie looked up for a moment before lowering her head again; she knew that it was Sieben.
Stepping off of the living room carpet brought her into the kitchen proper as Kyrie still sat there. The replicate-girl in robe then walked around to the right side of the table and reached to get the other chair. This was as so she could sit right next to Kyrie--who still had her head down, her hair curtaining her face to hide her expression--hair brushing the top of the table.
"Kyrie...? Like, are you feeling sick?" asked the replicate-girl. She leaned forward and turned her head, trying to look beyond that hair to see Kyrie's face. "Oh-h-h... Is your head bothering you again? I'll go get the headache-pills and some water..." Snif-f-f-f!
Just thenwith that loud sniffing sound, Sieben knew that it wasn't a headache. The pain was emotional, not physical. Sieben just now noticed the pool of wetness atop the polished surface of the kitchen table that was below where Kyrie had her head down: a pool of tears. There was the ever-so-slight sound of Kyrie trying to sob very quietly--thin shoulders quivering in nightgown, head shuddering. Those were a lot of tears... How long was Kyrie sitting here and crying? It must have been an hour.
Sieben quickly got up to face the kitchen sink--drinking-glasses in the cabinet It took just a few seconds to turn on the tap and get some water. She took less time than that to get back to the kitchen table to set the glass of water atop it and sit closer to Kyrie. "Listen... Like, whatever's wrong, you've gotta tell me. We can try and fix whatever's wrong."
Kyrie gave another sob and gently shook her head. There was another loud sniff before she tried using words, her voice sounding raw and troubled. "It... It is myself...at fault. The... The blame I put on you, I should...blame myself. For...it is you who seek to maintain my safety. My fault, for…!" At this point, the girl then leaned over until her face was nearly on the table. It looked as if she was going to try and smother herself in her own tears--until she felt a metal arm reaching across her back and a familiar metal hand gently clasping her left arm.
Sieben's face was soon close to her own--a face having been replaced just last night. "Sh-h-h-h... It's okay," she whispered, her machine-warm breath fluttering lengths of Kyrie's hair and puffing her face. And this close, Sieben's gentle breath smelled vaguely of plastic: familiar breath, a familiar voice.
"I still understand about what you feel," she continued, "about mutants and stuff. Listen... I know that I didn't kill them. They walked right on out of the front yard. If they were gonna die, they wouldn't have been able to walk away, right? Besides... Out there, they must get into a lot of trouble. They're okay. They just won't want to come backcause that's what I do. I made it so they wouldn't ever wanna come back here and cause trouble. There's an old Zalem word for what I've done: deterrence. You know what it means, right?"
Kyrie nodded. There was truth in Sieben's words. The idea that Sieben could have killed those mutants, that was just an over-reaction. If the replicate wanted to kill those mutants, it was well within her capabilities of doing so. Killing actually was why Sieben had been made by Zalem: a replicate-girl originally designed to hunt and kill someone in particular. Except, the replication process that went into making Sieben's bio-chip brain made her a lot less aggressive than the other replicates. It could have been why that other replicate had nearly destroyed Sieben.
Sieben didn't kill any of the mutants. That mutant must have just been badly hurt. Sieben would not kill. That in mind, Kyrie tilted her head up and reached up to tuck some lengths of her hair behind an ear to reveal her face--to look into those big dark eyes that Sieben's has. The replicate-girl may have been a robot to the core of her being, but she was as real a person as Kyrie could want.