A/N: I am SO SORRY it took this long to update! Aughhh! School's been nuts and I have another upper respiratory tract infection so here's an update! A long-awaited, actual update! I haven't given up on Texx! For any confused readers out there, the past tense until the last chapter was him processing and recounting the events leading to him getting taken to the hospital section of the Research Centre in his sleep. When he wakes up, he starts telling the story as he lives it out. I thought it would be more dynamic if the reader experiences the story with the characters.


On this champagne, drunken hope,
Against the current, all alone,
Everybody, see, I love (her).

'Cause it's a feeling that you get,
When the afternoon is set,
On a bridge into the city.

And I don't wanna see what I've seen,
To undo what has been done.
Turn off all the lights,
Let the morning come.

Florence and The Machine – Over The Love


Kahler Institute of Science: Weaponry & Experimental Military Research Centre

Kahler-Tek's POV - Present

"Stay here, love," I whisper to Axx as I climb out of the tall hospital gurney, my partially bionic heart working to supress the apprehension I feel.

The hallways stretch further and further as I walk, the two paths to either side seeming to only move farther from me as I stagger towards them. Blinking hard in the hopes it would somehow fix the depth perception malfunction, I take the right to the waiting laboratory. I've missed these halls, the winding paths. Being free to research and work as I like. I shake these blasphemous thoughts from my mind. The hormone-blocker is still missing – which is good, I suppose. I'm free to feel. But in ways that is a disadvantage, I realise. I will be forced to kill and be completely aware of it, emotion-wise. For the good of whom? The Empire? My family?

I am only partially aware of the lab doors swinging open at the push of my fingertips, and I savour the familiar resistance the old hinges provide. The cold iron gazes of Kahler-Mas and Kahler-Jex fall on me, sending a wave of anxiety rushing through my veins. It strikes me then, the extent to which they do not care.

Mas greets me with a cold smile as I approach wearily. These legs are a little hard to move than the ones I had before. Clasping his hands, he sneers, "And what brings our favourite suicidal soldier to the lab? Shouldn't you be resting?" Jex looks between us uneasily. Good, I think. God help them if they get too comfortable around me.

"I'm much better now, all thanks to your... immeasurable compassion and care."

"Ooh, was that sarcasm? I think he is feeling a little better, what do you think Jex?"

The other scientist looks fit to squirm. I just want my wife and son back. I want my life back.

"I, uh... Well... Kahler-Tek, we..." Kahler-Jex begins, and I wave my gun hand at him.

"Cut to the chase, Stutter-face," I growl, trying not to wince at the awkward non-intentional rhyming quality of that sentence.

"We're..." he begins nervously, eyes beading at my various (unloaded) body weapons, "we're going to send you back into the war. Without your hormone-blocker, as that evidently didn't work so well. You'll just have to learn how to kill willingly, my boy."

My eyes narrow before I can stop myself. They'd saved me for a fix-and-go! Like some kind of machine! But you are a machine, I remind myself with some measure of melancholy. No time for emotions. I don't have a choice. On Kahler, it's not a mystery as to what happens if you disagree with government choices. If you want to live – if you want your family to live – you cooperate.

"Okay. I'll finish the Blacklist. But don't expect me to be your new hitman."

I want to rip the beaming expression off Kahler-Mas' face. I want to hack his skin away from the bone until it falls away in chunks like petals off a dying flower. No emotions, I remind myself, but it's just... it's frustrating. What else am I meant to do? Not feel?

I pour over this for a long time, until snapping out of my thoughts inside our delivery truck. Some Kahler named Captain Kahler-Zed is driving us to wherever we need to be, and it comes to my attention that there are twelve others chatting quietly beside me. My Blacklist is sitting folded in my lap, full of notes and directions I don't remember writing down. The conversations of the other soldiers overlap and merge into a grey haze, and I don't know how to pick them apart.

"Yeah, I had a wife. She was beautiful. I feel like I should miss her, but this work isn't too bad, so-"

"I had seven kids. I know right, seven. They were a handful. Bet their mother's keeping them in line now that I'm here. She was crazy, I tell you-"

"I haven't seen my girlfriend in nearly a year now, with this Blacklist everyone got given-"

I try to dim the volume in my ears, but I don't know how. I was meant to ask those things when I got taken in for maintenance. Their words seem resentful, but their voices are light and pleasant. Like it doesn't even matter that they haven't seen their loved ones since we wrote away our bodies and minds. I wonder if they know what they're really feeling, like I did. I wonder what they put in their mental reports. Are they pretending? Are there others like me, whom the hormone-blockers don't seem to work on? Someone cracks a joke, and they roar with laughter collectively. Simultaneously. Then their heads snap to face me with stern expressions.

"Laugh," they command in synchronisation. "Laugh!"

Kahler-Mas must have some kind of control over them – us. Who knows what kind of things he could make us do with the press of one of those buttons. They never taught us about those in internship. A weak chuckle comes from the back of my throat, and I throw up my hands in a mixture of disbelief and surrender as they go back to talking about the weather, and what a waste it is that early hunting season started this year and they can't even take advantage of it. Again, I hear the complaint in their words, but there's no complaining for them. They're just saying things that sound normal, they sound human, but they don't mean any of it. They can't.

I'm still trying to think it all through as best I can when the back doors swing open, and Captain Kahler-Zed whispers "Move!" harshly. We spill out of the truck like cockroaches fighting for a crumb, and I realise I've left my Blacklist behind. Restraining the urge to smack myself very hard in the metal-plated head, I grab the Captain's arm.

"Sir, I left my Blacklist in the truck. What's my part in the mission?"

He frowns, but he's not angry at all. The Captain feels nothing.

"Too late to go back 'n' get it now. Kahler-Yed and Kahler-Diz are gonna infiltrate the Master's quarters and kill the kids while you..."

Captain Kahler-Zed pauses, presumably to scroll through his mental agenda. Then he just laughs.

"Lucky bastard, you. You get to kill the Indigo family."

He pats me on the head and begins to run off when I shout out again.

"Who even are they? Isn't the Master our priority?"

Turning back, he rolls his bionic eye at me.

"Everyone knows that old lunatic isn't the one in charge. Run ahead now, you'll see what I mean when I say you're lucky. Or rather, unlucky. Either way, it'll be good to see you make it through this one. Indigo is less of a family and more of a... clan, you could say. Now go! Too much chit-chat already."

We split, running full-speed towards the crystalline architecture that glimmers intimidatingly in the blue-tinted sunlight of this region. It must be summer in this part of Kahler. When I spot the building marked 'Indigo', I suddenly understand, and burst into bitter laughter.

Indigo isn't a family name. It's the corporation supplying weapons to us.

I stop dead in my tracks; this wasn't on my Blacklist.