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K felt her words behind his ears. He was warm, getting warmer, hazy in a way that made his eyes heavy and hard to keep open. He couldn’t help but think of his Maker; how his thumbs had felt prying his eyes open that very first day, slick with synthetic biofilm. He’d stood there and he called him beautiful and K couldn’t help but fall to the ground. The shock of it, it being something K wouldn’t come to realize until much, much later—hitting him so hard his knees couldn’t hold up his body.
His Maker probably smiled at him, but K couldn’t tell, because he was stuck down at his feet. Grovelling. Worshipping. Like a dog. It’s funny, that K thought he was like a dog. Even when Wallace smoothed his hair back with a hand, front-back, back-front, petting him. It’s funny because K didn’t know what a dog was.
He lifted his head when he noticed the silence drag on. He’d forgotten to respond. His Lieutenant still had him fixed with her stare, unblinking and heavy and good. He fought against the urge to roll his neck back and invite her teeth. Because he knew she would, if he gave her that chance. But Lt. Joshi was a mercy in a place like this because at least she’d ask, or even just hint at it, when most others thought it their right.
“Did you hear me?” Joshi’s smile was condescending. K thought she might of meant it as a kindness. “It isn’t polite to ignore your superiors, K.”
“I’m sorry, Madam,” K thought maybe she only spoke to him to hear herself addressed in that way. Lt. Joshi liked being superior to men, and K was enough, even if he would never be a real man. “I heard you.”
Joshi kept her windows open but her office was always dark. Mood lighting, she had told him once, sat in her chair with a glass of something dark in between her fingers. She was standing now, back to the raining world behind them. The shadows danced across her face, her strong cheeks and godwilling stare. “Then express your gratitude.” She instructed, searching his eyes for something. Left. Right. Left. Right.
“Thank you, Madam.” K said. Obeying was the easy part. He could deal with that. But this next part—
“Good,” Joshi’s smile got thinner. She didn’t take her eyes off of him, not when his hands shook at his sides and his eyes tried to roll by themselves. K knew something was wrong with him, had known that very first day when his Maker held his chin up by his fingertip and kissed him on the mouth and told him he tasted sweet. The only time he ever felt good was when he could be good. Good was such a good word. K’s mind spun out of control. Call me good, call me good—again again again again. “Was that so hard?”
K was saying no so fast she barely got her sentence out. Joshi’s eyes widened, if only a fraction, but K was programmed to pick up on these sorts of things. She must now he’s screwed up, now. She’ll get rid of him. She’ll lock him in that forsaken apartment and he’ll never be used again and they knew something was wrong with him, now. “No, Madam,” He said, finally lowering his eyes. He felt the pull behind his bones, forcing the default settings; a three-quarter stare, hands pressed behind his back. “It wasn’t.”
“Always honest,” Joshi’s voice was deep, like wood or hard liquor. It sounded like she was still smiling. The clinking of a glass was the only clue that she had even moved from in front of her window. “Drink.”
K lifted his head. A quart of something strong, served in clear crystal. Her nails were painted black around the glass. “I don’t know if that is proper, Madam.”
Joshi tipped the glass thoughtfully. She watched the liquid slide precariously close to the edge. “Would it be easier if I made it an order?”
K’s heard those words before. K thought, he’d probably do anything he was ordered to. He’s killed animals, and children, and he’s killed people—Nexus 8’s—whose dying eyes looked exactly like his own. He’s slaughtered families, stolen their keepsakes, and still he salivates in the midst of one pretty word. Good. He could be good. He could drink. “Thank you, Madam.” K took the glass and he drank like it was water and he didn’t look away from Joshi’s pleased stare.
“Attaboy.” She praised, sipping at her own. She pitched back against the cabinet, sat there. “Tell me a story.”
K’s skin licked with fire. There was that pull again, to obey, to blanket himself in her praise and earn more of it. “I don’t really have any stories.” Everything he’s ever done Joshi’s already heard about. Through his file, or his memories, or his mission reports.
Joshi took this. “Well, I’ll tell you one of my own,” She circled him, smiled once. “Did you know I was married?”
K’s eyes fell to her hand. He didn’t know what he expected to see there. Rings were Old tradition. “I didn’t.” He confessed, lifting his eyes back to hers.
She flexed her hand once. “He looked a little like you. Blonde. Slim. He was a fighter, always had been. Maybe I thought I could mellow him out,” She shook her head once, laughing at herself. “I don’t know why I thought I was special. Men don’t change, K. Not for you, not for anyone.”
K ignored the thoughtless jab at his humanity. Of course Joshi wouldn’t see him as a man. How could she? He does anything she tells him to. He wasn’t a man. K was a dog.
Joshi traced a finger down the side of her face, like following an invisible scar. “And one night he comes home and he smells like a bar and a brothel’s love child. Of course, women shouldn’t yell at their husbands. Even if they are the bastard-cheating kind,” She shook her head, fishtail eyes crinkled. “He hadn’t ever laid a hand on me until that day. Men don’t want their women controlling their lives. It’s an easy lesson to learn.”
K couldn’t imagine his lieutenant being subordinate. Not even to a husband. She didn’t fit the mold; her slick-back, her strong shoulders, the way she handled her liquor. The way she stood over K, how her hand weighed down his shoulder. “You are the strongest woman I know.” He doesn’t know why he said it. She didn’t look mad—just, perplexed, maybe.
“Do you know any women, K?”
K thought of his sisters, stuck in plastic bags. He thought of the LAPD’s lambs with codes under their eyeballs, programmed to kick sandbags or answer emails. He didn’t know any women. Not really. “Strongest person.” He corrected, averting his eyes awkwardly.
“It takes discipline. I had a normal life before all this. But I don’t think it would ever be enough again,” She finished her drink, smothering her smile with the glass. “Our own personal hell, hm?”
K didn’t know Joshi thought of this place as hell. As far as he knew, she practically lived in her office. Alas, they were in Hell. Hell wasn’t some special place, far away from life here. Because in the end, Earth was enough of a hell as it was. It didn’t need a special name or fire or the devil.
“Not to worry, K. The story has a happy ending,” Joshi pours herself a second drink and takes it like a shot. “I bled that parasite for all he was worth. I used our money to go back to school and I bought a spinner and I came here. Now my kids can go to school, if I wanted any.”
K doesn’t know what to say. He nodded once, at her easy display of power. Her money, her strength, it was something everyone knew she had, given her status and the two letters before her first name. Joshi need not flaunt it, not unless something’s happened. Or K was being taught a lesson.
“I don’t, of course,” She rambled, turning her back to face the window. K stared at her hair kissed nape, the white flesh that sat there. He thought it could be easy to wrap his fingers around it and squeeze until she was little again, little like she was with her husband. Maybe it’d be enough to get away. “Wretches only leave behind other, smaller wretches. Would you want children, K?”
How does it feel to hold your child in your arms? Ice licked up his chrome spinal cord. Of course, she knows he can’t procreate. “I don’t think I could, Madam.” K felt himself slipping off his baseline. Somehow, this conversation was worse than kicking a Nexus through a wall and uprooting his child’s bones. So, so much worse.
Joshi turned on her heel, expression blank. “Right. Of course. That was insensitive,” She motioned toward her head, skewing her hair slightly. “Sometimes I forget. Your type, K, are very lifelike.”
Something in K itched to thank her, something Wallace put in there, but something he’s made all on his own fought against it. All it brought was bile climbing up his throat, threatening to spill.
Joshi was uncomfortable, after that. She drank a third glass, and then a fourth, and she spoke the whole time. K wondered if she had anyone else to talk to. By the fifth, she was swaying against the desk.
“I think it’s time to go home,” Joshi said, with an unfamiliar pink to her cheeks. Her ring finger was especially barren when she propositioned, “You can come with me. If you’d like.”
K watched her throw on a coat. Her words weren’t an order. There was subtle desperation stitched into each syllable, vulnerable in a way that she never allowed herself to be. “I do not think that is wise, Madam,” He said, handing her the scarf on her desk. “I can get someone to escort you.”
Joshi shook her head loosely, taking the fabric and looping it around her neck. “You know those damn spinners—pretty much drive emselves, these days,” And she put a hand on his shoulder. “You take care of yourself, K.”
He didn’t smile. “Good night, Madam.”
Neither does Joshi. She nodded, once, and pulled away. “Good night.”