Chapter 13

Sorry for going so long without an update. I'm going to try and get back on the monthly update schedule now that the holidays are over.

And I just want to thank everyone for being patient, and for all the wonderful reviews and support you've given me. I never would have gotten as far along with this story as I have if it hadn't been for you guys providing a constant source of motivation. It really means a lot.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Elizabeth paced back and forth in the living area, trying to think. She had let herself huddle on the couch for at least an hour, ashamed of herself, hating herself, even scolding herself, but in the end it had done no good. Her feelings hadn't changed. And she had to figure out what to do about them. Sitting there wrapped up in self-loathing wasn't going to solve anything.

Then again, neither was agitated pacing, if she didn't actually force herself to think about what was bothering her. She let out an exasperated laugh at herself and was surprised to find real amusement in it. Real pleasure. Somehow, against all odds, a part of her felt…happy.

She was being foolish. She was being selfish. She was being utterly ridiculous. And yet, once the initial shock and shame had passed, a part of her was almost overjoyed to have someone to care about again. Not just need, or put up with, but to genuinely care about.

To love.

Olunnhar…

She looked back toward the doorway that led out into the hall, wondering how he was doing. Not well, she supposed. Coming to terms with committing genocide was probably going to be as hard as, if not harder, than coming to terms with being in Hypersleep for thousands of years. She wondered how much strain Olunnhar's already fragile sanity could handle.

And that, of course, made her mind wander back to the attack in the cockpit of his ship, and how dangerous he was to her. Even if she was willing to overlook the genocide (and how could she, really?), he was too dangerous to…to…

But…

But she did.

She wondered if maybe it shouldn't have come as such a surprise. She was so utterly alone out here on this moon, and had been through so much loss and hardship, that it was natural to become close with whoever she'd been forced to rely upon for survival. Even if he had turned out to be despicable…no, not just despicable. A monster.

And still, she loved him anyway.

And what made this whole situation even stranger was that she didn't even know what kind of love she felt for her Mala'kak. Certainly not romantic…no, they barely knew one another and besides, she was not nearly over losing Charlie. But it seemed to be more than friendship all the same. Something stronger, deeper. It had been ignited when she'd found him weeping all alone in the storage room, fanned to flame when he'd almost died back in his ship and now had become a wildfire upon the discovery of his sins. It seemed as though seeing him broken…mentally, physically, and now, spiritually…filled her with a protectiveness, a compassion, a love so strong she could barely contain it. She had never, in her life, been so utterly and achingly needed by anyone the way Olunnhar needed her.

She didn't understand it, but she was ready to accept it. Right or wrong, good or bad, it was simply the way things were.

But, of course, that still didn't give her any idea of what, exactly, to DO about it.

Do I go to him? she wondered. Do I tell him? Should I tell him? Would it even matter? Would he even care anymore?

And if it did matter to him, then what?

Would she stay with him and become his…companion, following him to wherever he intended to go? Was she really willing to commit the rest of her life to chasing an irrational feeling for a being she barely knew and who was drenched in the blood of countless innocents? The very idea was absurd, but…

A part of her felt a strange stirring of excitement at the idea. Most likely because Olunnhar was surely intending to go to the Mala'kak homeworld and find out what had happened to his people, and the thought of going there with him utterly thrilled the scientist in her. After all, going there, seeing it, would be the culmination of her life's work. Her and Charlie's work. In a way, it almost felt like a way to honor him. To complete their work and perhaps, find a way to make Charlie's death not in vain.

And oh, she wanted to see Olunnhar's homeworld. Even if it seemed likely that all they would find would be a wasteland of crumbling cities and scattered bones, she still wanted to see. And, almost as intensely, she wanted to be there beside Olunnhar when they did see. Because he would almost certainly need her, and she wanted to be there for him.

Even if he didn't deserve it.

She sighed. That was the elephant in the room, wasn't it? Even if she managed to get past everything else…the absurdity of relationship, the ridiculousness of her feelings, the danger she was putting herself in, how could she possibly, in good conscience, cavort around with someone who had killed more people than Hitler, Stalin and all the other murderous dictators on earth…combined? She couldn't. She shouldn't. She should shun Olunnhar, she should leave him to stew in his own misery, she should put him to death herself. To do anything else would be to place her own happiness above the lives of billions. She couldn't do that, no matter how she felt about him.

Could she?

She tried to imagine what it must have been like for his victims. Had they been like humans, and been without contact with the Engineers for several millennia? Had Olunnhar's ship suddenly appeared in the sky one day, without warning, and rained horrific black death from above? Or had they known the Engineers, known that they'd failed them, and known what their creator species was planning to do? How terrified had they been, as they waited for the end? How betrayed had they felt, knowing their "parents" wanted to kill them for turning out "wrong?"

She shook her head sadly. That was probably what was most horrific of all, to her. These weren't just random lives being taken, but the Mala'kaks' "children." That any parent could so callously try to end their children's lives for not being what they had wanted. For someone like her, who had desired parenthood for so long and so desperately, the thought was utterly sickening. She would have cherished any children she had borne, even if they weren't exactly what she'd been…

All at once, her hypocrisy hit her like a slap across the face. She had borne children. Two of them. And the first, she had loathed since the moment she learned of its existence, had desired nothing but the removal of it from her body. The second she had tried to bludgeon to death as soon as she'd gotten a good look at it.

But they had been monsters, of course. Not only not human, but not even sapient. And they had been dangerous too. At least, the squid-monster had been. It could have attacked her from within, or burst from her womb, killing her. And once it had grown to full size, it almost certainly would have killed her. She had seen what it had done to Olunnhar, after all. And the other one…it had been helpless, true, but if it had lived and grown, it certainly could have become dangerous.

She had had her reasons, and yet…looking at them, they didn't seem much different from Olunnhar's reasons. Olunnhar's excuses. Yes, she had been right about the squid-monster being dangerous, but she hadn't known it was dangerous when David first told her about it. He'd said it wasn't a normal fetus, but that didn't necessarily make it a monster. She had simply assumed so because the idea of carrying an alien child revolted her. It wasn't what she wanted, and so she'd convinced herself it once that it was a monster, and dangerous. And while she had been right…she just as easily could have been wrong, too. She hadn't even considered the possibility in her rush to kill the thing.

Was her desire to destroy her child based on scant information really any different than Olunnhar wiping out a planet full of people because he'd been told they were "bad?" The mentality was almost identical. The only difference was in terms of scale.

For perhaps the first time, she found herself feeling ashamed at the similarities between the two of them. Perhaps the Mala'kak and their "failed" creations weren't so different after all. And perhaps Olunnhar, now that he had been faced with his own hypocrisy, had begun to realize that too.

Olunnhar… Her heart softened and she finally allowed herself to fully feel the pity she had been fighting against since she'd learned the awful truth. Her beautiful, broken, fallen Engineer. Her friend. What was she going to do with him?

She smiled and shook her head.

She was going to love him. As his friend, it was really all she could do.

She couldn't change his crimes, but she also finally understood that loving him in spite of them did not equal an endorsement of them. Nor did condemning them mean she was not allowed to care about him. And he needed her. He needed her to be with him while he figured out what to do. And if he wanted to atone somehow, if it was even possible, she wanted to help him. As for forgiveness…well, the vast majority of his crimes were not against her, and therefore, were not hers to forgive. She could only offer him love and support.

And she wanted to. After all, didn't the set of values she'd so recently discovered they both shared teach that no one was too far gone to find redemption? The idea that she was proving her worth by living up to the very ideals the Mala'kak thought were beyond humanity made her smile, but then she reminded herself that she needed to stop with the petty scorekeeping. She didn't really feel inferior to Olunnhar anymore, did she?

She smiled again when she finally realized that she didn't. And yet…she didn't really feel superior to him either. They were just two people in a terrible situation, two friends in a terrible situation, and they needed to figure out what to do.

All right…all right, I'll go to him. And with that, Elizabeth finally felt at peace. She still wasn't completely sure if she'd made the right decision, but it was a decision, and she'd done the best she could with it, and now she could finally allow herself to proceed forward with a clear goal in mind. No more feeling wishy-washy or second guessing herself.

With that, she headed toward the infirmary, wondering how best to discuss matters with Olunnhar. And wishing they could have said discussion without that lousy android's assistance. She hated the idea of David being privy to such an intimate conversation, but there was no help for that. They couldn't have such a discussion without his help, after all. She wondered how the android would react to finding out the depth of her attachment to Olunnhar. Given what he had done to Charlie, she doubted he'd take the news well, but then again, he couldn't really do anything to hurt Olunnhar, could he? He was completely helpless now, incapable of acting on his own, and if he didn't like the fact that she loved Olunnhar, he could just sit there and stew in his own milky juices.

Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth pushed the infirmary door open…and stopped short.

Olunnhar was gone.

"Hello, Elizabeth," said David, still on the workbench where she'd left him. "Are you feeling better?"

"Where is Olunnhar?" she asked him, just stopping herself from giving him an ugly look, as if he were personally responsible for the Engineer's absence.

"He has retired to the storage room," David told her. "He asked that he not be disturbed."

She felt that familiar pity, and this time, didn't force it back. Her heart ached, thinking how alone and miserable he had to have been feeling at that moment, and she longed to go to the storage room and comfort him, to show him that she was no longer angry with him. It would be small comfort for him, but it would be something.

But then she remembered how he had always respected her wishes when she'd needed to be alone, and supposed she should show him the same courtesy.

"All right," she said with a sigh, sitting down at the workbench upon which David's head rested. She wasn't really sure why…it wasn't like she wanted to talk to David. But the thought of going back into the living area and sitting there alone with her thoughts appealed to her even less. She'd already made her decision, and any further rumination would just result in her second-guessing herself.

Still, she didn't really want to talk to David either. She stared at the counter top awkwardly, not knowing what to say to him, and her eyes fell upon a familiar gold ring lying beside the android's head.

"Charlie's ring!" she exclaimed, snatching it up. "But where…?" She trailed off, giving David another nasty look, deciding for a brief, irrational moment that he'd somehow taken Charlie's ring the way he'd taken her father's cross.

But of course that was ridiculous. She'd lost it before David was brought back to the ship and anyway, he couldn't have stolen (or returned) anything without hands. It had to have been Olunnhar.

"He wished to return that to you," David told her, as if reading her thoughts. "He was curious about what it meant and took it from you while you slept on your first night together. He wishes you to know he regrets that action."

Elizabeth held the ring in her hand, running her finger over the smooth gold surface, imagining Olunnhar doing the same. Imagining him trying to understand, when there was no way he possibly could. How could he know that the ring represented Charlie's touch, his kiss, his arms around her at night…his love for her? "Did you tell him what it meant?" she wondered, blinking back her tears.

"Of course, Elizabeth," David told her, in that maddeningly calm voice of his, sounding as if she'd asked him if he'd remembered to take out the trash that morning.

She pressed her lips together, trying to bite back the sudden rush of anger. She supposed it was time to have this conversation, but she didn't want to lose her composure while doing so. To give herself a bit more time to calm down, she slipped her necklace off, undid the clasp, and slid the ring onto the chain so it hung beside the cross. Hopefully, that would keep it safe, since it was too big for her to wear on her finger. She put the necklace back on, then looked up to meet David's eyes, finally ready.

"David, why did you kill Charlie?"

The android seemed to…freeze for a moment, as if taken aback. Or maybe his fried circuits were just taking a bit longer than usual to come up with a suitable answer. It actually surprised her a bit that he didn't have a canned answer all ready for her. He had to have known this conversation was coming sooner or later.

"Elizabeth, are you certain you wish to discuss this now?" David asked her. "You were very upset earlier and perhaps you're not in the best frame of-"

"Just answer my question," she said flatly, not in the mood to put up with his attempts at stalling via phony concern for her.

David was silent for almost a minute. Elizabeth kept her eyes locked on his, staring him down coolly the entire time. Apparently realizing there was no getting out of it, David finally answered her.

"It was not my intention to kill him," the android explained. "I was merely testing the substance we found in the caves, trying to determine what it did and if it would be of use to the mission."

"So you just….infected him with it?" she snapped. "You poisoned him, just to see what would happen?"

"Yes, Elizabeth," David replied. He flicked his eyes away from hers for a moment then met her gaze again, his expression still a mask of calm. "I understand this is difficult for you to hear, but I had to follow my orders."

"The HELL with your orders!" she shouted at him, just managing to stop herself from seizing his head and throwing it across the room. "You can't just go around killing people because you were ordered to!"

"Yes, I expected you'd say that," David said. He didn't sound annoyed with her, though. He sounded almost…interested. "You said as much to Olunnhar. 'A soldier knows when his orders are wrong,' correct?" David paused again and his eyelid dropped the way if had before when he seemed to be diverting energy to neural processes.

Elizabeth nodded sulkily, still trying her best to remain calm. She'd known this conversation wasn't going to go well, but it had ended up being even more frustrating than she expected. Because now realized she wasn't going to get what she wanted from it. There would be no ashamed confession for her to condemn, no guilt to ferret out, no apology to expect. There was no way for David to know his orders were wrong because he was a machine, and to a machine, orders were orders. Morality did not come into play at all. Condemning David for poisoning Charlie was as pointless as condemning Vickers's flamethrower for burning him. David was not a murderer, he was a murderer's weapon. A tool. It was pointless to be angry at a tool.

"Elizabeth?" David's calm voice seemed to come at her from a great distance.

She shook herself out of her musings. "Yes, David?" she said miserably.

"Elizabeth…" he paused again, as if unsure about something. He almost seemed hesitant. "Elizabeth, how does a soldier…know? How does he know when his orders are wrong?"

She sighed, wondering what the point of his question was. How could he possibly hope to understand? Trying to explain morals to a machine was as pointless as trying to explain them to a rock.

Still, he had asked. And after being angry over his lack of morals for so long, could she honestly hold it against him if he actually wanted to learn some? True, it was too late for Charlie, but….

"Elizabeth?" David prompted her.

She decided to try, despite it almost certainly being an exercise in futility. "I suppose a soldier knows his orders are wrong when they go against everything that he's been fighting for."

Almost immediately, she knew that approach wasn't going to work. It might explain how Olunnhar should have known his orders were bullshit, but now how David could know. David did not share the morals that she and Olunnhar did. His entire existence revolved around serving Weyland. Weyland was his god and father, and Weyland's wishes were his Commandments. If Weyland wanted to use Charlie for a guinea pig, then, from David's perspective, there was nothing wrong with doing so.

She pressed her lips together, trying to think of another approach to take. What could a robot possibly consider important enough to override his master's orders? Could David have some sort of important internal programming, something considered powerful and inviolate, something akin to Asimov's Three Laws? It was worth finding out.

"David, don't you have programming that tells you not to kill humans?" she asked him. "It seems like they would have given you some, anyway. I'm sure Weyland Industries would want to make sure its androids were safe to be around."

"Of course, Elizabeth," David replied.

"So killing Charlie would have violated that," she pointed out to him. "Unless…" Her heart sank. "Unless your 'father's' orders override it."

"They do, but they have to be very specific," David told her. "I was merely told to try harder to find answers. That is not considered a direct order to kill."

"Then why?" She gaped at him, almost aghast. It sounded like he could have gotten out of killing Charlie easily.

"Experimentation, even of the dangerous sort, is not considered the same as killing," said David. "My programming in such a case is less clear. Although experimentation on an unwilling human specimen could be considered a violation, due to the danger involved, a willing specimen is another matter entirely. I would not be allowed to prevent a human from voluntarily partaking in such an experiment, any more than I would be allowed to prevent a human from voluntarily choosing to partake in other dangerous activities, such as exploring the Mala'kak caves without a helmet."

She hated him then, hated him more than she had ever hated anything. He wasn't a tool, an innocent puppet of Weyland's. He wasn't just "following orders." His orders had been too vague for that to be a valid excuse. He had chosen to kill Charlie and he had gone through some elaborate mental gymnastics to justify doing so. He had wanted to do it.

She wanted to reach out and tear him free from the battery he was connected to, wanted to stare into his eyes and watch him "die" as his internal fluid ran out the tubes in his neck, wanted to take him apart, piece by piece while he lay there, helpless to stop her. Even her translation needs, her desire to help Olunnhar, paled beside her overwhelming need to make David suffer. There had to be a way, even if it was different from human suffering. She would make sure she found it.

There was only one thing that was stopping her, if only temporarily. One more piece of information she desired.

"Charlie would never agree to that," she told him. "How did you trick him?"

"I asked him to what lengths he would be willing to go to find his answers," David told her, still speaking matter-of-factly. That made her want to throttle him even more. "He said he would be willing to do 'anything and everything.' Such an answer covers participating in an experiment to discover the effects of the substance found in the caves, and therefore could be taken as permission."

"I hate you," she snarled at him, no longer caring about keeping a calm demeanor.

"I understand," David replied. "You were very attached to him." The android paused for a moment, sounding almost hesitant. "I saw."

In my dreams? she wondered. The thought only fueled her desire to tear him apart. She pushed it down once more, because the thought of him spying on her dreams also brought up another question, and she figured she might as well get all the answers she desired before she turned David into scrap metal.

"So why Charlie?" she asked him. "From the sound of things, you're clever enough to have tricked any one of us into 'volunteering' for your little experiment. So why did you pick Charlie specifically? Was it because he was mean to you? Or was it because of the reason he was mean to you?"

"Elizabeth?" David said, sounding confused. An act, certainly.

"It was because you wanted me for yourself, didn't you?" she shouted at him. "You were obsessed with me, and Charlie could see it, even if I couldn't! That was why he hated you! And why youhated him! Wasn't it, David?"

David was silent, his face oddly twisted, as if he was devoting full power to trying to process her question.

"Answer me!" she shouted, slapping him across the face. She doubted it hurt him, but David's wide-eyed, startled look was satisfying enough.

It made her want to twist the knife further. "You still can't have me, you know, David," she said, smiling and leaning over the counter almost seductively. "Charlie may be gone, but I still don't love you." She leaned in closer to whisper in his ear. "I love Olunnhar."

"That would be the alien who has killed billions?" came David's immediate reply.

"He is sorry!" she snapped defensively, realizing her justification sounded lame. But it was the only justification she had. And the only one that mattered.

"And that absolves him of his crimes?" asked David.

She raised her hand to slap him again, but paused when she saw the look on his face. It wasn't his usual maddening calm. It wasn't anger or smugness, either. Instead, she saw genuine curiosity in his eyes. He truly wanted to know.

It reminded her anew that he had no morals. He had never been taught any by his creator. He had programming, and he had orders, but no system of morals. Nothing against which he could weigh the rightness or wrongness of his actions. Not only did it leave him ill-equipped to question his orders, but it also gave him no guidance when he happened into a situation that gave him enough leeway to exercise his own free will…in this case, eliminating the competition for the object of his…"affections." Without a system of morals, what was stopping him from taking that opportunity? Why wouldn't he jump at the chance to do something he wanted, if he had no idea that what he was doing was wrong?

Was David's action any different, morally, than that of a young child who hits another child so he can steal his favorite toy? A child relied on his parents to tell him when his actions and desires were wrong, but with a "parent" like Weyland, a selfish amoral bastard who saw his children as nothing more than tools to carry out his wishes…

"Elizabeth?" David said. He sounded concerned, and she was startled to find herself wondering for the first time in a long while, whether that concern actually was genuine, rather than an act.

"Yes, David?" she whispered, shaken, perhaps even feeling a touch of guilt over her recent cruelty.

"Does being sorry absolve him of his crimes?" David repeated.

She shook her head, miserably, not really feeling able to have a discussion on morality right now. But she tried anyway, perhaps motivated by that distant and unwanted guilt.

"No, it's not enough to be sorry," she said softly. "But it's a start. You can't atone until you admit your wrongdoing and want to make things right."

"How can he make things right when his victims are dead?"

"I don't know," she said miserably. "But he has to try. There has to be something he can do. Some way to help others." As if simply helping others would magically absolve him of genocide. "I guess ideally, he should….try to save other lives. I doubt he'd ever be able to save as many lives as he's taken, but he has to do what he can. Even if it seems hopeless, he has to keep trying to do good, as much and for as long as he can." She sighed, not sure if she sounded at all convincing to David. "That's what I believe, anyway."

"What you choose to believe," David reminded her.

Her eyes blurred with tears as she remembered her father, so strong and wise. She doubted he would be struggling with this as much as she was. He would probably know exactly what to say to David. Of course, since David had spied on her dreams, and had made it clear that some had been about her father, maybe he already knew. She felt the familiar sense of violation, but she tried to let it go, realizing that David probably hadn't known that that was wrong either.

She looked up at him and was startled to find what looked like jealousy in his eyes. Did he….envy…her relationship with her father? Did he wish his own father had been there to guide him the way hers had been?

And finally, finally, she began to feel the first soft stirrings of pity in her heart for the broken and confused android.

It wasn't a feeling she much wanted, since she was still too raw over Charlie's death, but she did her best to accept it, knowing that such a feeling wasn't wrong, any more than her feelings for Olunnhar had been.

Still, she didn't know what to say in response to it, and she dropped her eyes from David's to study the countertop. David didn't seem to know what to say either, and for a long moment, there was silence between them.

Then it was broken by a familiar whoosh, a sound that caused both of them to meet one another's eyes again, and then look toward the doorway in shock.

The airlock had just opened.