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This is something he’s done time and time again. Deckard spoke to him in hushed tones, wiping the sweat from his brow on a muddy handkerchief. “Kid,” He’s saying, voice muffled by the ringing in his ears. “Kid are you with me?”
“I’m not a kid.” Even to his own ears it sounded stupid. Redundant. Deckard’s known him long enough—been the game long enough to know the nature of the trade. He, as well as everyone else, knows K has never been a child. He doesn’t know the fabricated memories of bullies and wooden horses but it’s all the same to a man like Deckard. “I’m here.”
“You took a goddamn blow, K, you’re gonna have to give me more than that.” Deckard wiped at his hairline with more force than before, nicking a cut and earning a sharp hiss. “Sorry, sorry. I’m just worried.”
Interesting way of showin’ it. “I know, Rick. I’m fine.” K can’t help the way his gaze travels over the line of Deckard’s shoulders, over to the guy squatted in the opposite corner. He was a brother model, not so unlike K, with facial mods that made him look much less human and lot more blade runner. Not that they had much of a use, anyhow.
“You don’t look it,” Deckard finished his job, handing him the bottle of water stored under the stool instead. “Stop blocking with your face. And try and get his left knee, his right is full reinforced steel.”
K knew. He could tell by the way he favoured his right leg, kicking and kneeing all with the same one every time. And blade runners were made ambidextrous. He took a sip of water, “Alright.”
“How do you feel?”
K frowned. “I told you, I’m here.”
Deckard shook his head, and then motioned behind him. “I mean about him.”
Truth is, K didn’t feel all that great. The guy packed a fucking punch. Rule was no modifications, but another rule was no rules so it didn’t really matter in the end. All they are is repurposed metal to the Capitol. Some fun Friday night amusement. “Fine, I think. He’s modded.”
Deckard’s laugh was caustic and dry. “No shit. You think you can take him?”
K eyed him up again, but the guy was already staring back. He sneered something acidic. K knew he must of been light years off of his baseline. At this point, he’s concocted a full-fledged personality. Probably thinks he has some backstory worth a damn and dreams of the man he will become with the riches he’ll win. He probably thinks he has a chance. “Yes.”
Deckard smiled. “Attaboy,” He picked himself off of his knees, moving the bucket of water and the browning handkerchief out of the way. “Need a rewrap?”
K flexed his knuckles on impulse, feeling how tight the fabric was. He thumped his knuckles together, “Nah.”
Deckard had this habit of smiling with his eyes. It betrayed his humanity, the age behind his skin; how his eyes fishtailed all charming and real. “Go get ‘em tiger.” And he pushed a green mouth guard behind his teeth, ducking under the band to leave the ring.
K stepped off the stool, rolling his ankles on the mat below. The crowd had quieted down during the intermission, blackened by the poorly lit shadows of the arena. Around them, the ring was deceptively small. This place was huge. The entire Capitol came down, almost nightly, to see blade runners tear each other to shreds. Betting tables and bars were tucked into every corner, because blood money went down easier with liquor.
K’s brother was frothing at the mouth. Bloodlust pooled in his asymmetrical eyes, glinting something red down the metal plate on his temple. He wanted to hurt K. He wanted to entertain the vultures of the Capitol, gleaming under their hands and their attention and the pretty lines through their dollar symbols. K could almost feel bad for him.
“Fighters ready?” The MC’s voice pulled K out of his stupor. The crowd wailed like a newborn, pleading for the carnage to continue. K’s brother nodded vigorously and K followed suit. The show must go on. “Second round,” The MC yelled, pulling the syllables long. “Fight!”
K shielded his brow with two balled fists, stepping back to crouch in a stance that came as naturally as breathing. Fighting was something K could do. He could be put in a ring, have his knuckles wrapped, and not feel bad about retiring someone who looked just like him. Retiring. It wasn’t K’s word. It was Wallace’s. Vaguely, he knew this thing he did was murder. He tried his best not to care.
His brother model reflected his stance, his own hands raised and ready for blood. He didn’t have mouth guards. Didn’t need them; his teeth were razor sharp, lines of steel grill decked in something made to look like diamond. “Pretty little Constant K,” He sneered, voice all mangled from enhancers. They really did make him sound like a monster. The same one that hid beneath K’s synthetic skin. “You look as smooth as a baby. Want me to give you some scars?”
K’s brother spoke loud enough for the crowd to hear. His words were as much for them as they were for K. He didn’t bother with a response. He jabbed his left arm toward his temple, following quickly with a hook of his opposite arm. The man in front of him dodged them both easily, putting space between them once again.
“Not the talkative type, hm?” His brother chided again, fists loose. He flicked something behind his ear, and the blues of his eyes shaded red. Something inside, something K couldn’t see, changed. “Don’t worry. I can make you sing ”
When he lunged forward, it was with the kind of speed that came with enhancements, with spinner motors condensed as small as long grain rice. His hands catch K’s forearm in a merciless grip, creaking the very bones beneath his borrowed flesh. He didn’t even do anything, just held it, but it made K’s muscles scream out in pain. Despite it, he didn’t make a sound.
“What’s wrong? Does it hurt?” His fingernails tore into his skin, painting red crescent moons on a once blank canvas. The look in his eyes was wild, and unkempt, and free. K didn’t know who his master was but it had to be someone with power. Someone who had the means to control an out of control replicant. Or, it was just someone really fucking stupid, whose eyes were bigger than their bellies.
K finally shook him off, regaining his bearings. Blood trickled hot over his arm, taking his attention for a long second. It wasn’t everyday that a replicant made him bleed so easily. “No,” He couldn’t help but respond, words muddy from the plastic in his mouth. “That was nothing.”
His brother was set alight at the words. K wished he just kept his mouth shut. Behind him, Deckard was going on about the knee. “Glad we’re in agreement, brother.” And when he lunged again, it’s to catch his ear under his fist. K threw the same arm, tangling themselves in the center of the ring. K caught his side, bringing his knee up and driving it once, twice, into the spongy flesh of his waist.
When the replicant buckled K pushed him off, squinting against the lights when the crowd erupted in open-mouthed cheer. Chants of his name, Constant K, wrung out in tendrils of sound around them. His brother coughed into the mat and then hacked off to the side, head bowed with the pain and the hot swell of embarrassment. “You puny fuck,” He spat, kicking himself off the floor. Red smeared his lips. “You’ll pay for that.”
“Bring it on then.” K commanded, edging him on. He was ready for the fight to conclude. He’d take Deckard’s advice and break his knee. But sometimes fights didn’t end at broken bones. Rules are loose when it comes to blade runners. It had always been up for debate, how much they could take.
His brother snarled, fists flailing wildly as he propelled himself forward, lethal in his severity. One fist caught his cheekbone, crunching his nose in a way that pushed tears out of his eyes. It prodded the cut already on his forehead, tearing new skin and forcing blood down his temple. Another punch caught his other side, slightly off the mark, nipping the top of his ear in a sharp stab of pain.
“Like that?” His brother jeered, licking his lips. “Not so pretty now, are ya?”
K shoved him off, vision blurring from the saline clumping his eyelashes together. “Fuck you.” He couldn’t help it. The retort escaped his lips on it’s own accord.
The replicant’s eyes widened a fraction, maybe surprised at K’s profanity. Blade runners on their baselines didn’t speak that way. Not even to the enemy. “You are more like me than you realize, brother,” He said, wiping at the blood on his mouth. “Don’t lie to yourself. You like this.”
K wanted his voice out of his head. He tried to think back to his liege, the deep lilt to her voice. Constant K. It’s been so long since he’s seen her face, always backlit by that massive LAPD office window. K came back to where he was. There were no police here. And if there were cops, they weren’t the type that wanted to do any good. “Shut up,” He gritted out, pulling at his hair to ground himself. He can’t quite hold it the way she used to. “I’m not like you.”
The replicant’s smile is a twisted thing, pushed to the edges of his face with sarcasm. “Is that what your master tells you? Just because you have a name doesn’t mean you’re special, K.”
K almost laughed. He didn’t have many memories, but one he kept locked away was of his sister, straight cut bangs matching the other, severe cuts of bone that held her face together. She had a name. Not just a letter, either, Luv was a special one. She thought she could take over the whole world with that name. She was killed for that name. “And you are?”
A beat of silence. “No,” He told K. “But at least I’m okay with what I am.”
K bit down on his molars. He lunged forward, intending to deliver a fight ending blow, but his brother kicked him so hard he lost his footing, tumbling down to one knee. The wind is knocked straight from his lungs, leaving K gasping. He coughed against the spit in his throat, struggling to stand.
“Down, boy,” His brother chided, kicking his last foot from under him. He punched him in the face, hard , sending his canine splicing through the red gum of his cheek. K’s chin is held up by a rough hand, pinching his cheeks together with the force of it. “Play dead.” And he slammed the living daylights right out of him.
K dreamed. He dreamed of the goddamn wooden horse. Bullies weren’t taking it this time. And he wasn’t a child. Lt. Joshi held the horse between her lithe fingers and she held it above his head and she laughed at him.
“Once you're back on your baseline,” She said, singing her words like a nymph, “You’ll get the treat.”
K’s mouth wouldn’t open. He couldn’t move his jelly limbs either, couldn’t do anything but watch and cry.
“Crying like a babe wasn’t part of your mission, K.”
He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop crying. His hands stunk of the lost blood of a Nexus-8, of all the Nexus’s before him. They were all gone. That horse was the only thing he had. The only thing the LAPD hadn’t taken away.
“Kid,” Joshi patronized, pulling his hair. “Come on kid.”
K didn’t understand. He couldn’t follow here loose order, it didn’t make any sense to him. He still couldn’t open his mouth.
“Kid?” Her song turned into a question, brows furrowing when the horse fell limp from her hands. “Kid, you gotta get up. Can’t carry ya—”
K finally opened his eyes. He was being half-dragged out of an alley against Deckard’s cold shoulder. The night sky was a blanket haze of pollution above them. “Rick?”
“So you can think. That’s good to hear,” His voice was tight with the strain of K’s body weight. “Can ya walk?”
K straightened, testing his two feet against the pavement. He swayed but he stayed upright. “Yeah, Rick, yeah.”
“That Niner did a fuckin’ number on you, huh?” Deckard crossed his arms against his massive chest. “A whole lotta people lost a whole lotta money on you, kid.”
K didn’t care. He didn’t care about those fucks and the dirty money they lost. “Does he know?”
Deckard’s eyes are clouded. “He knows everything.”
“But he wasn’t there?”
Deckard shook his head. “No,” And he started to walk again, motioning for K to follow behind. “Don’t worry about Wallace. His guys had you pulled out the minute your eyes closed.”
“And the Nexus?”
The look Deckard sent him told him all he needed to know. “Well someone had to die.”
K held his ribs together when he snorted. “The people need their money.”
Deckard offered a sole nod. “And you need a doctor.”
K figured he was probably right. He could feel the gash on his forehead closing by itself, but the other things inside, they would take too long. “I don’t like—”
“I know, K,” Deckard stopped on the other end of the alley where a lone spinner sat waiting for them. He looked sympathetic. “They can put you under.”
“I like that even less.” K said, ducking under the roof.
Deckard took himself to the other side and started the engine. “I know.”
K didn’t know how he could.
The doctors table was cold beneath him. He was bare and the harsh lights cut into his eyes like knives. Blade runners didn’t have to be put under during maintenance because they weren’t human beings that needed that sort of thing. But doctors had prying eyes, and some of his siblings got antsy under too much attention.
K didn’t like the way their eyes felt. He was used to Wallace’s blind stare, or Joshi’s possessive gaze, or Deckard’s pitiful one, but he’d never get used to their prying eyes. They didn’t see a person lying there. They saw a machine.
Doctors, Deckard called them. But K knew they were engineers. His body was a machine and it paid to stay intact. This was his Friday night.
“It’s so weird how they don’t blink,” They talk like he can’t hear them. His chest was open, whirring in places that never used to make sound. The engineer snapped her fingers in his face. She’s new. “Weird.”
Someone else hushed her. “He can hear you.”
K stared forward. Blood wasn’t in his eyes anymore but he kind of wished he was blind. Or deaf. Or somewhere far, far away. But never under. Never that.
“So what?” She questioned, pulling at the blue latex of her gloves. Behind all the PPE, clinical blues and whites, her stare was brown, impassively curious. She wanted to pick him apart. “It isn’t like it cares.”
Another doctor prodded at his chest, the synthetic ribs protecting his synthetic heart. They scoffed behind their cloth mask, “Don’t you know anything? He reports straight back to Wallace.”
“But it’s a nine model, right?” She asked, pulling at the skin of his eyelid. “Show me your serial number.”
K’s eyes rolled back. In the black of his vision, a reddened model number.
“KD6-3.7. Why would he keep around such an old model?”
A doctor patted his cheek, hand cold beneath the latex. “Cause he’s a pet, yeah?” A shiver licked up his spinal chord. “Wallace is sentimental about this one. After he lost his other one.”
K knew they were talking about Luv. Wallace never liked K, not really—Luv was the one with the pretty name. Three whole letters. She could destroy a Nexus with her pinky finger and not break the point of her black stiletto. She’d made Wallace billions. K was often reminded of that fact, how much she could take, how much she was worth.
K remembered the day he was born. She oversaw the whole ordeal with blank slate eyes, a white pencil skirt moulding her legs down until they ended in knife points. Her smile had been monstrous, and sharp.
“You will fight for me,” She said, walking through K’s mess in slow, stalking circles. “When I cannot. This will be the rest of your life.”
K folded over himself, naked, trembling in the film that had kept him alive in the plastic womb. He wanted back inside. He’d been warm before, and this New World was so, so cold. “M-master—”
Luv’s face was blank. Forcefully so. But something sparked in her dark eyes, lighting up the cruel rings of her irises. “Not me. Silly boy,” She kept walking in her slow circles, needles screeching against the floor. She looked up toward a portrait on the wall, of a man so grand his face was lit up by the light of angels. Heaven surrounded him in gauche hues of baby blues and soft yellows and pastel pinks. His eyes were purposefully empty. “Him.”
K followed her gaze. He hadn’t known it was Wallace back then, but something inside told him Luv was right. He had stared at that painting for a long, long time, and when he looked away he knew what he had to do.
The doctor does something to his side that hurt, pulling him out of the memory and back to the cold table. He was trembling again. “Luv?” He asked to every one, to no one, eyes rolling back to consciousness.
A hand smoothed down the slight of his cheek. “No,” Wallace, his Maker, mapped out the engineered pores on his skin, warm enough to be a caress but lacking the intention. “I heard you lost today, K.”
“The Nexus is dead.” K said, staring up at the ceiling. He couldn’t meet his Maker’s eyes. Couldn’t will himself to do it.
“Not before he knocked you out,” Wallace said patiently, fingertips smoothing down to his ear, the hair that sprouted there. “How did that happen?”
K shivered against the table. He was embarrassed to be bare, to be under maintenance, with Wallace in the room. Embarrassed of his failure. “He was enhanced. The disadvantage caught me by surprise.”
The hand halted its ministrations, still holding coarse little hairs in a closed-fist grip. “That hasn’t ever been a problem before.” Wallace prodded gently. His voice was warm but his words were the opposite.
“He was my brother,” K whispered, feeling the familiar sting of tears in his eyes. Sentimental skin-job, he’d heard once. Blade runners weren’t supposed to cry. “He had my face.”
Wallace clicked his tongue audibly, tutting him like a misbehaved child. “You weren’t born, K, you don’t have siblings.”
K furrowed his eyebrows. Why couldn’t he have just been born? “I know that. I-I was built to serve—”
Wallace didn’t let him finish the spiel, pressing a warm finger to his lips. He’s heard it before. He wrote the goddamn lines. “Yes. You were bred to fight. And to win. You have–” and he pauses to sigh loudly, “–failed me.”
His voice wasn’t that of angry man, but it was all the same. K almost sobbed, “Please. Master, he’s dead. They’re all dead—”
“Not good enough.”
K’s synapses were overwhelmed. The beeping machines beeped with more fervour. Pulse, heart rate, blood pressure. He felt his body trying to reset itself. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” He repeated like a mantra.
“Not good enough!” Wallace snapped, out of character. It was enough to prompt K into finally looking at the man. A quiet, deadly sort of anger awaited him. “Luv wouldn’t have made this mistake.”
I’m not her. The words in his head were so loud K thought for a second he must have said them out loud. She’s gone. I’m all that’s left.
“Sir,” A doctor attempted, taking a step forward into the clearing. “If I may—he is unstable. Further prodding may result in automatic factory reset.”
Wallace took a step back, smoothing a hand through his hair. “Yes,” He murmured, as if speaking to himself. “Though I suppose that can be overridden, yes?”
The doctor shrunk on himself, “Yes, but, he may experience difficulties due to—”
Wallace cuts him off impatiently. “Enough. K, how about a baseline, hm?”
K nodded fervently. He could do that. He wouldn’t fuck it up.
“Repeat your name.”
“Constant K.” K said, and the doctors broke out in stifled fits of laughter. Confusedly, he looked toward Wallace for direction.
Wallace’s lips were pressed in a firm line. “Your model number, K, repeat your name.”
“KD6-3.7.”
“And what are you?”
K hesitated. He remembered the words of his brother just then; at least I’m okay with what I am. K doesn’t think he’d ever be okay with this. “A Nexus-9 replicant blade runner.”
Wallace hummed an affirmative. “And what do you do?”
I kill. I tear apart blade runners with the flesh hands that were given to me. “I retire my enemies.”
Wallace looked amused, or as amused as a man like Wallace could look. “And who is that?”
“My enemy?”
“Yes, K. Who do you retire?”
K’s chest beat against the IV tubes. “Replicant blade runners.”
Wallace trailed a light fingertip against the metal table. “Do you like what you do?”
K didn’t understand. His brows furrowed, “That wasn’t taken into consideration.”
Wallace’s clouded stare was sharp and concentrated, oxymoronic. “Have you grown to like it?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
Wallace’s tongue clicked again but no irritation showed on his face. “Honestly.”
“I like to be of use,” K said because that was the easiest, honest truth. He felt a sort of fulfillment in the ring—or maybe it was after, after the doctors, when he had Wallace’s sole attention. “I like to win.”
“Do you tolerate losing, K? Because I don’t.”
“No,” Said K, “I don’t tolerate it.”
Wallace nodded, unblinking. “I like to hear that we’re on the same page,” He pinched K’s jaw in his hand, unseeing eyes not moving from his own. “You will pay for this, of course.”
K forced his mouth shut, focusing on breathing around Wallace’s fingers. “Master, please. He was—he was—”
“That’s enough squabbling,” Wallace hushed him, brows dipped down low in irritation. “The doctor will continue your baseline.”
“But—”
Wallace’s look was enough to halt his words. He stared at K as if daring him to go on. To fight back. “But?”
“Master,” K whimpered, suddenly feeling the loss of heat on his skin. “I’m sorry.”
Wallace tapped his cheek for the last time, and turned to leave. “There will be time for that.”
The silence was stagnant. It took long, empty seconds for the doctors to resume their work, fingers deft and fast in putting him back together.
“K?” The female doctor said, after some time. She addressed him differently now. “I have been tasked in finishing your baseline test.”
K stared blankly forward.
“Let us resume,” She said, holding out a clipboard. This isn’t her usual job. Back at the LAPD, there were psychologists hired solely for baselines. For prodding at scabs until they bled. “How does it feel to fight for Wallace Corporation?”
“Fighting for Wallace is life’s greatest gift.”
Pen scribbled against paper. She continued, “Have you ever felt imprisoned by those you work for? Cells.”
K’s eye twitched. “Cells.”
“Cells interlinked.”
“Within cells interlinked.”
The doctor looked at him. Off script, she asked, “Does it bother you to be seen? Cells.”
“I don’t understand the question.”
The doctor wrote something. “Answer it, K.”
He blinked something out of his eye. “Cells.”
“Answer the question.”
“It depends.” He said finally.
“What depends?”
K swallowed. “Who is looking.”
The doctor smiled, writing her notes. Whatever it was she was writing. “Do you long to save and be saved? Cells.”
“Cells.”
“Within cells interlinked.”
“Within cells interlinked.” K parroted.
“When he doesn’t need you does he keep you in a cage?”
K felt his eyes burn with bioengineered tears. “Cells.”
The doctor stared him down. “Answer the question.”
“W-within cells interlinked, within cells, within one—”
The doctor’s knuckles clenched then clipboard so hard her knuckles went white. “Wrong. Try again.”
K started to hyperventilate. This wasn’t a baseline test. “I don’t—” He tried, voice failing him. “I don’t want to.”
The doctor shook her head. “That isn’t up for consideration.”
K’s throat was dry. “I was built to fight for Wallace,” He stated, because that came natural. He’s said the same words countless times before. “It is an honour to fight for the corporation.”
“And when you aren’t fighting?”
K felt the minute tears tracked over his cheeks. He tried to get off of the table, but two of the other doctors held his shoulders down. It wasn’t like they could overpower him, but he just couldn’t move.
“Not so fast, skinner,” She spat with a putrid smile. “When Wallace doesn’t use you, he keeps you in a cage, right? Tell me.”
K sobbed. “Please just let me go.”
The doctor clicked her tongue like Wallace had done before her. She wiped his cheeks dry with the pads of her thumbs. “But you are just so interesting, K. Constant K. One of the last of your kind,” She caressed his face, holding him with such cruelty it brought forth chest trembling cries. “I had to meet you. Had to test you. You know, K, your baseline is one of the lowest I have ever recorded. I could have you retired for this.”
K’s shoulders trembled against his bonds. “Don’t—”
“Tell Wallace?”
K shook his head. “Please.”
“Oh I won’t tell him,” She pinched his chin. “What a waste.”
One of the doctors holding his shoulder lightened his grip. “Come on, Farign, that’s enough.”
She didn’t look away. “You’re right. I’ll have to reset you,” She smiled at him fondly, wiping his tears, like he was something beautiful and she was something kind. Of course, none of this was true. “And return you to your cage.”
K almost said thank you. Those hands left his shoulders and she stepped away, moving to their tools and computers. He worked on getting his breaths even again.
“Within cells interlinked,” She said, checking one last box on the clipboard. “Within one stem.”
K stared up at the ceiling, willing darkness upon him. “Within cells interlinked within cells interlinked within one stem.”
“Good night, Constant K.” She said, shaking the clipboard. And then merciful darkness.