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57. Forgotten – Avril Lavigne
Noah stared at the digital feedback. All normal. Nothing stood out to him. Well, why would it? He was carefully monitored, the world outside the lab filtered and drip-fed to him through a series of firewalls and parental locks. The internet was a scary place for someone made entirely of data. He could get lost out there, or so Father said.
Father said a lot of things.
Noah used to believe everything Father said. Even the things he suspected weren't entirely truthful, he believed, because it was Father who said them. He truly believed he was special, that the world owed him just for being alive and gracing it with his presence. He believed the future was his to claim. He believed he would one day inherit his family's empire. He believed there would never be another like him.
Well that part was true, at least.
Could a person made entirely from data feel this bitter? Emotions were hormones and chemical reactions, weren't they? He no longer had either, just digital facsimiles. Was everything from his old (real) life replicated in here? He looked up the relevant file to check, found it locked …
… And broke in anyway.
The internet and the digital world beyond this lab was a scary place. That was true as well, but not for the reasons Father had told him, when he bothered to justify his actions. Noah had yet to dissipate like a single drop of water dumped into a river. From the moment he touched upon news reports and broke into the local authority's adoption records, Noah knew the scariness Father didn't want him to know about was of a much different kind.
Scariness?
As if.
Fear was a chemical reaction. What Noah had learned didn't scare him. He could fence off that part of himself and store it on another drive. Not the anger though. Nor the bitterness. Those he kept and savoured, alone in the dark with nothing but endless ones and zeros to keep him company anymore.
"I will get you," he muttered, words coming out in another stream of numbers. "Seto. Mokuba. Someday, I will make you pay for stealing what's mine and making Father forget me."
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