Midas forced Resplendence aside, tried tearing his eyes away from Caspian's. Too late. Caspian felt the same connection, the same dark chain binding them, though this time it tightened around Midas's neck. The walls, the floor, the world beyond them, pulsed again– rippled and wavered like the surface of the ocean at night.
They broke the surface, and descended.
Moments screamed past them, and through them again. Too many to register, too quickly to register, all to a cacophony like a thousand violins screeching into tune. He caught only fragments. Feelings. Camera flashes. Muzzle flashes. Faces of the dead, and faces he never knew. A black, swirling maelstrom within– indescribable, irreparable, loneliness. The women he'd dated– or at least spent a night with– to stir anything within him. To prove there was more beyond the void. More than The Apoptosis Project, and the living weapon that would see it through.
He caught glimpses of the weapon's missions. Flooding the Final Entrance Examination with Grimm, making a mess of the day for Organds to clean up. Arum Ceddrak's body in the alleyway. Obstacles between himself and the security breach– Caspian and Moka. Fighting the urge to kill. And for a split second, Caspian could have sworn he saw his Uncle Douglas's face.
A light broke from the depths. Caspian felt his formless self drawn to it. Midas sunk with him, the half-illuminated wisp of gold roiling helplessly as he did. A slave to the undercurrent. The light grew to envelop all, and Caspian found himself in the first scene.
White lab coats surrounded the table, reflecting the walls that illuminated the abyss. All its darkness instead fixed on a single point– a syringe held in a white-gloved hand. An infant lay below it, on a tiny operating table. A curl of golden hair over his forehead. Arms, legs, neck, all locked restraints. A cart full of failures waited outside the door.
The needle-tip pierced the infant's chest. The syringe's plunger dropped, and darkness spread in veins beneath plush pink skin. The infant cried out in agony– writhed his skin raw against the restraints until black goo bubbled from his lips. But he didn't fall silent, like dozens of others. Like hundreds of others. His eyes, once crystal blue, faded to black.
The lab coats plugged away into their scrolls.
Their forms shrunk and filed into queue as color flooded the next scene. Each child– in a uniform of gold and grey suits, slacks, and skirts, with faces like television static– held a lunch platter. Kept their heads down, shoulders squared, feet forward, until a mouse skittered between them and shattered their order. Lunch trays flipped, students scattered, and screams echoed through the scene from all but one, the golden-haired boy staring down at the mouse with dark eyes. The mouse fled the chaos it caused, toward the island of calm.
But Midas's foot came down, and he felt bones snap beneath his thin-soled Derby shoe. The mouse squealed, clawed, and struggled, and Midas shifted his weight onto it. It stopped. He blinked at the crimson he smeared from the bottom of his shoe. He'd have to get them cleaned later, but at least no blood got on his slacks.
He looked up, curious why all had fallen silent.
Why were his classmates looking at him that way? With fear in their eyes, and disgust etched in deep lines on their faces? Did their screams, their horrified retreat, not mean they wanted the mouse dead?
He was ushered away, into another memory. Into the parlor of a mansion overlooking the sea. Not unlike Skye Manor, but all things bathed in the colors of Frontline Biomedical. White marble floors, a lavender sofa, gold trim on the black side table Griswold Baine had just flung into Midas's ribcage. He gripped his son's shoulder, forced his face up to his.
"You don't. Do that. Not in public."
"Why?" Midas questioned. "They were afraid of the mouse. They didn't want it there. So I killed it."
"People just… don't take kindly to that kind of thing. There are certain ways you should act in public. Around other people." He shoved his young son free, and took a gulp of rum. "Doesn't matter what you're thinking. Or if you're right. You have to put on a front, act just like anyone else. Especially us. The media's got a close eye on us– bunch of fucking vultures. Step out of line once, they'll swarm you." Another swig. "But get good enough at faking, you can have anything you want. You can be anything you want. And they'll keep building that image for you."
"Put on a front? Like a mask?"
Griswold Baine's stubble crackled beneath a broad hand. "Yeah… like a mask. That's a good way to put it."
The scene melted away again, into the abyss. Colors pulled and stretched across the surface, and its ripples became the dark waters of a lake under grey sky. A canoe cut the surface, and on it an older man sat facing two boys. The edges of his face had blurred with time. One boy was a teenager, approaching academy age. Black wings rested against his back, feathers rustling in the breeze. His arms crossed over a knee, and no light escaped the bored eyes nestled deep beneath a mess of raven hair. The other was Midas, no older than ten.
The older man racked the oars on the side of the canoe, and leaned back to let out a breath. "Shame the weather didn't hold. Looks like it'll rain any moment," he noted, and looked up. "We should probably pack it up. Oh well– that's kinda neat at least." And the two boys followed the finger pointing to the clouds.
A falcon crossed overhead. It twisted its neck and flapped its wings, then folded them in to fall like a missile upon its prey. The duck's wings went stiff in disturbed water, its neck bent sideways. The mallard could only submit to the falcon as its wheezing, gurgling death knell was cut off by the falcon plucking its throat out. Its wings beat the lake's scarlet surface to carry its prey away.
Midas watched with nothing in his eyes. Excited breaths broke through Onyx's eager grin.
"Right. Well, sorry you had to see that, boys." The old man chuckled, and grabbed the oars again. "Nature can be pretty brutal sometimes, huh?"
The tortured scream of ten thousand moments lived. His father's hand tight on Onyx's shoulder. Hushed voices, half-truths. Full-blown lies. The old man's picture on a coffin, surrounded by roses. Confusion. Why did grandfather have to die? He seemed like a kind man. But perhaps that only goes so far. Why the condolences for his "sudden illness?" A front. A facade. Father called Onyx to his office. Onyx visited. Then grandfather was dead.
The abyss closed in, becoming the dark of night. And the ripples on its surface became the edges of Onyx's silhouette in moonlight. Crisp air flowed in through the doorway, lifting a cloud of breath from the golden wisp.
"We've been given a gift, Midas," the silhouette raved. "A gift that puts us above all others. We can be the predators, in a world run by scavengers. A world filled with prey." The silhouette's arms raised. "Why waste that gift at the end of dad's leash for the rest of your life?"
Black wings spread from Onyx's back, flapped like the falcon over the lake. And in a surge of darkness, he ascended.
What Caspian saw next confused him at first. Midas onstage– robed in black, painted black. A heavy chain wrapped his neck three times, but the padlock's key had never been cut. A thousand needles protruded from the inner face of his porcelain mask. Gold around the edges, smiling ear to ear. With each step of his dance the needles drove further beneath his skin, deeper into dark eyes. Caspian recognized it not as a memory. But some subliminal culmination of feeling. The Soul of Sentinel's Heartthrob, the Golden Boy, The Ambassador, Midas Baine, laid bare.
He danced to the tune of memories transposed across the stage, within the audience and upon the walls. In a vision Midas felled two Beowolves with Resplendence, dropped a third with an arrow of dust. But before he could transform his weapon back one caught him by the arm, and ripped him into the bare white ground. Two more piled onto him. A third. He kicked one's jaws free of his leg, and two more took its place. He screamed for help and screamed in agony, but behind foot-thick glass Griswold Baine watched on.
His eyes narrowed, and with a snarl his hand tensed around the device it held. Midas shielded himself from the spurt of hot black sludge the Grimm became, and his father's voice echoed through the chamber.
"You're what I'm stuck with now? Kill them, or control them. Again."
And the bloodthirsty shrieks of seven more Beowolves mixed with the cheer of the audience. But Caspian was silent. He watched as the scene repeated dozens of times over, until Midas stood with a hand to the Grimm and they waited like a hunter's hounds. Then again he writhed against the restraints of an operating table as Frontline scientists dredged the Blackened Pool that flowed within him. In the black vial they moved with the care of nuclear waste, three eyes blinked open. For it wasn't the death of the shadow within– but the birth. In his own mind's eye Caspian saw the Proto-Grimm in the bowels of the cargo ship, on the streets of Port Cyrreine, and not an hour before as the Tree of Death.
And the next memory that played out caught Caspian by surprise– because he saw himself surrounded by the Sparring Team. Tumbling through the air, crashing into Moka, the two holding each other and shaking with laughter. The team's elation was visible in the scene as golden sparks flickering between them. Everyone was so happy for Caspian when he finally unlocked his semblance. Just like the research team when the black syringe infected Midas with his. When a second test subject finally survived. His father was happy too– happy he had a fallback, a plan B, a last resort. So when the Grimm-plagued son that actually had a sense of self-worth left, he'd still have a personal weapon in reserve.
Caspian and Moka, holding each other and laughing. Coming to practice together, leaving together. He wasn't jealous about Moka in particular– the faunus's incessant chatter would drive him the rest of the way to insanity. But the way they stood just a bit closer, their smiles just a bit wider every week. He knew how to smile, of course. Which muscles to flex, in which order. How did it come so naturally to them? Then Lazula and Lilly, on that bench beneath the stars. Best friends holding each other and admitting they'd been in love for gods know how long.
But he was alone. Always alone. It didn't matter he could walk up to any woman in that too-crowded dance hall, peel her away from her date, hope she left before he woke up in the morning. For even feeling the warmth of another's skin he was alone. Because before he could walk, or speak, or muster the strength to hold the weight of his own head, that black syringe had killed everything human inside of him.
Teammates talking, laughing, screaming and arguing. Walking to class together, dining together, crying together in the Red Claw's wake. Midas's teammates, MDLN– three androids, three soulless machines. Or four?
He was a husk. A shell. A corrupted soul– or soulless entirely. "Get good enough at faking, you can have anything you want. You can be anything you want." But a front, a fake, is all he ever was, thanks to the one who told him. And beneath the farce, nothing.
The music swelled and closed; Midas struck a final pose and took a bow. Roses rained from the audience, landing softly at his feet. And the blood that fell from behind his mask was lost upon them.
Caspian held a rose in his hand, too. But he held it. Crushed it.
"I used to be so jealous of you," he said. "I thought you had everything I wanted. I thought you were everything I wanted to be. But this is just sad."
The mask cracked.
"The only thing you've ever been good at is lying."
"Shut up! That's not true!" Midas's voice boomed from the walls, the ceiling, out of the mouth of everyone in the audience.
"You're still doing it."
And the mask shattered, taking with it the world of his subconscious.
In the physical, Midas lay at Caspian's feet. He curled up, hands shielding his face, and his back heaved with the effort of holding back tears. Caspian almost allowed himself pity, but killed the feeling when he remembered his Uncle Douglas's face in the vision. And remembered "The Ambassador had to pay him a visit." Undertow transformed in his grasp, and he spoke past the end of its barrel.
"Looks like you failed your own test."
"I-I'm sorry, I…" Midas sputtered. "I'm sorry."
Caspian looked down at him, and heard only the muffled rumble of the ship's engines beyond the huntsman. His finger slackened on Undertow's trigger, but its barrel stayed true. "I want to believe you," he said. "But as we've established, you're an accomplished liar. So let's start with one question. And I want you to answer honestly. You killed my uncle, didn't you?"
"...I'm sorry."
Caspian was silent. Undertow's trigger again rested firmly against his finger. But to pull it now felt less like some earned revenge against Uncle Douglas's killer– more like pulling the plug. And there were still so many questions, so few answers. He hardly noticed Snow opening the door to the reboot station hallway, and joining him at his side. She looked down on Midas, and Absolute Zero flashed to life.
"He's our enemy, correct?"
"Yeah. He is," Caspian answered. "He's the one that killed Douglas."
Absolute Zero's light refracted in her eyes, and Caspian felt what lay just beneath the placid surface. A horrific, unbridled fury. The calm of her words hardly belied it.
"I see. Do you want me to dispose of him?"
"No. Not yet, at least. He has a few questions to answer first."
Snow held her axe steady for several seconds– long enough Caspian thought she may have reached a different conclusion. One he couldn't entirely fault her for. But the blue of her weapon's glow in her eyes and on her skin faded, and she stood clutching its inert handle.
"So, my uncle's announcement, right after the Vytal Tournament," Caspian prodded. "Everything was true, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was."
Caspian shook his head, and threw his arms halfway up in exasperation. "How would that even work? And what does he want from merging us all into one consciousness?"
Midas pushed himself upright. "He wasn't lying when he said he'd create a world without suffering. You can't starve, you can't get sick, there's no crime and kingdoms don't go to war if nobody exists." He shrugged. "Any job we still need would be carried out by androids, leaving the handful left to a life of idle luxury. That could've been you. And it could've been me. Not to mention, whoever held the souls' power would practically become a god."
"What do you mean?"
Midas cocked his head back. "Your sister has what, four hundred and sixty souls in her? And she's incredible. Imagine someone with a hundred million."
"Gods…"
"They wouldn't all be held in one place, though. We'd give out a few souls here and there to keep the ones left happy. They'd live longer, age slower, stay healthier. Some are so terrified of their own death they'd kill the world to put it off a few years."
"And it's always the ones the world is better off without," Caspian muttered. He shook his head. "At the end of my vision, you– or me. I don't know, and I don't care– mentioned a failsafe in regards to The Apoptosis Project. You killed Uncle Douglas over it. So what is it? Why was it worth his life?"
"You're not going to like what you're about to hear."
"I haven't liked any of this. Just keep talking."
"We know our androids aren't foolproof." He tried meeting Snow's gaze, but her eyes cast to the floor. "We know there's a possibility of reversing The Apoptosis Project. So we implemented a failsafe to make sure any android that attempted to do so would have its consciousness data wiped. Mr. Hudson was trying to find a way around the failsafe. And in doing so, became too much of a threat to leave alive."
"Then that means…" Caspian's hand came up to cover a trembling lip. He turned to Snow. "When it happens, you'll…"
"Yes." She nodded once. "When I reverse The Apoptosis Project, my consciousness will be erased. Effectively, I will die." Her eyes fell again. "So… my father was killed trying to save me?"
"No…" Caspian whispered. He tried to take a deep breath. But it quivered, and couldn't break past the tightness in his chest. "Why didn't you tell me? There has to be another way!"
In that moment they locked eyes, hers were just as blue as his. "Your father told me to keep it a secret because he knew you'd react this way. There's far too much on the line to change the plan for my sake now."
"We can reboot you though, right?" His eyes flitted between Snow and Midas. "After Arum Ceddrak almost killed you, we did. And got you a new body. We can just do that again, can't we?"
The shake of Snow's head was slow, solemn. "This time, my consciousness will be wiped completely. 'I' will cease to exist, not just my body."
"We can't lose you. We have–" he raised his wrist to check his Holoband, but remembered it lay broken beside him. "We have a day or so, we can figure out something else!"
"What's my life against the world, Caspian? I have to do this."
"The worst part?" Midas interrupted. "It won't even work."
Snow's fist balled tight enough Caspian thought synthetic skin would split, and show steel. His own fingers tensed around Undertow. "What did you just say?"
"Let me ask you something in return."
"No. No games. Just answer me."
"We also know the failsafe can be delayed long enough to free the souls inside if it receives an input sufficient to override the android's coding. An emotional input," he continued. "If we knew this, why would we let you keep the only android in the world capable of doing it?"
Caspian didn't answer, but his furrowed brow told Midas to continue. Beside him, Snow went rigid.
"We knew Headmaster Skye couldn't be trusted. Remember that security update, right after the "hacking" incident? We re-established total control over our products. And thanks to that update, the instant Snow crosses the threshold into Empyrean Tower, she'll self-destruct. Violently. And everyone inside of her will be erased."
Snow's brows stitched, and the eyes below them were wide. She was trembling. "You're lying. You have to be lying."
"And what would I gain from that?"
"Demoralizing us in the final hours before fighting off the apocalypse?" Caspian suggested.
Midas's shrug was infuriatingly nonchalant. "That's a side effect, not my intent."
"Why are you telling us any of this in the first place?"
Midas finally stood and looked out the window, to where Port Cyrreine lay somewhere over the black horizon.
"Because. I think I'm tired of being my dad's weapon."
