11

“I’m glad to see you again, Naomi,” he said.
And that was the truth.

How long had it been, since he’d seen her face?  He thought.  Not since the night he’d left the organization.  That had been two years after she had joined.  He never understood why she had volunteered for the android program, but she was there, and it was because of her that he had retained his sanity in that black hell hole that was his own mind.  He never got a chance to repay her for all she did for him.
The Mechanical Man remembered.

He remembered wandering in every direction in a black abyss.  Where distance and time meant nothing, where he could feel his mind slowly slipping away into the nothing that surrounded him; the abyss was like the vacuum of space sucking his sanity out of his head.  Then one day (was it day? He had lost track of the time) there a stranger suddenly appeared in front of him.  If not for the fact that he thought himself crazy already, he probably would’ve gone mad just then.
“Well, this is a not so surprising surprise.  First I’m stuck in this empty hell, now I’m imagining beautiful women.  Next thing I know, I’ll be talking to fallen angels, and living on an island where everything’s named Dennis,” He said.  He’d forgotten when he’d started talking out loud.
“That’s both flattering and oddly specific.  But I must assure you, I’m genuinely real,” replied the stranger.  
“Oh really?  Since this is my mind, I’m not terribly inclined to believe you.  Can you give any proof of your reality?”  He asked.
“Well if this is your mind, then you should know who I am, so I respond by asking, Who am I?  What’s my name?”  Asked the stranger with a sly smile.
“Well it’s . . . it’s, uh.  Ann?  No, umm, Sydney?  No, no.  Hmm…touché.  I guess you are real.  In that case I welcome you to the inside of my mind, though you’ll have to pardon the sparse appearance,” he said as he spread his hands as if displaying a room and directing her eye to the nothing over here, the nothing over there, and keeping it away from the hideous nothing hiding in the corner, “I haven’t had a chance to refurbish it, since there’s no phone and I’m pretty sure nobody will deliver to the inside of someone’s head.”
“You’re funny,” the stranger giggled, “much more entertaining that emotionless metal head that’s running the rest of you.”
“Well I try, but enough about me, what about you?  What’s the name I failed to guess?”  He asked.
“My name would be Naomi.  My title given to me by the organization would be: Humanoid Assassin Type 2, codename: Dal’Lang, and you are Humanoid Assassin Type 1, codename: Leviathaan.  I’ve come to meet the human character hidden behind the mechanical bag of fun that controls your body,” she said with a grin.
There was a moment of silence while he absorbed all this new information.
There was another moment of silence which he tried to think of something to say to this new information.
There was another moment of silence which he added for dramatic effect.
“I’m flattered that you would go through all that work just to meet little ‘ol me.  It’s nice to have a friend in this fresh hell,” he said and returned her smile.
And that had been it.  A friendship formed that day and he learned much of what he knew to be going on about him through her.  What he’d done, what he’d been programmed to do, everything.  He also learned a little about his new friend.  She had had a rough past with her parents, and that’s all she would say about that.  However, after a little more prying, that was still all she would tell him.  He learned that she had chosen her codename based on the Filipino goddess of beauty, which he thought was appropriate and told her so.  To this he would get a laugh then a punch in the face for being a sarcastic jerk, which he was.  He also learned that she could visit him anytime, provided that his body stayed within range of hers.  She told him of how she was introduced to his body after the first day, but didn’t like his personality, so she hacked his mind with hers in hopes of finding the personality switch and to turn it on, “and instead of a switch, I found the personality himself,” she told him over ice cream.
“Well there you go,” he said taking a bite from his cone.  She had found a way to manipulate his mind to allow him to feel eating sensations and he was currently working his way through a chocolate hallucination with sprinkles while sitting in front of a nice little Baskin Robins.
“Hey listen,” he said after wiping his face clean with an imaginary napkin, “The other day I actually managed to get control of my finger and stop me from pulling a trigger.  I feel like I’m gaining more and more control each day.  I think . . . I think I’ll be able to break free soon.”
“That’s awesome!” she replied, chucking her remaining ice cream into a trash can that just happened to appear from nowhere, “Soon we’ll be able to hang out for real.  Oh, we gotta go do something when you get out.  There’s this new game called Guitar Hero, and I just got the 2nd one and . . .What’s wrong?”
“Nothing much, it’s just . . . I don’t know if I can do what I do,” he said to his hands.
“What?”
“I mean, I can’t be an assassin; I couldn’t kill people for no reason, it’s just not me.”
“Well what else is there for you if you manage to regain control?  Let’s face it, it’s not like they’re just gonna let you say, ‘No thanks, I don’t want to assassinate people’ and leave,” she said and waited for him to throw his own bit of sarcasm at her.   When he didn’t she continued, “Anyway, you don’t have to worry about it, I’ll become your personal trainer, and we’ll have you killing left and right in no time,” she said rising from her imaginary seat.
“Thanks for the help,” he said to his hands, but now with a ghost of a smile on his face, “but I think I’ll pass.  I was actually thinking of just running away.”
“What?!” she rounded on him.
“Yeah,” he said, finally looking at her with an impassive face, “it wouldn’t be that hard actually.  I remove my GPS systems, and run like hell to where ever I like.  It’s not like they’d want to try to hunt down a killing machine.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“I probably am, but in case I do manage to escape, would you come with me?”  
“Yeah, sure, let me just pack my things, and we’ll head out first thing in the morning,” she said with an air of sarcasm, though she could sense he was being completely serious.  When he just continued to sit and stare at her with that calm and serious stare, she said, “Look, it’s getting late, I need to go.  I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure,” he said smiling at last, “same time, same place.
However it wouldn’t be.

He arrived at her room window sometime around 2 A.M.  Thank God security was easy to hack, he thought.  He started throwing rocks at it.
“Mmm, whosthere?” she slurred as she opened the window.  When she had woken up enough to be comprehendible she managed to say, “Leviathaan?  What the hell are you doing outside my window at 2 in the morning?”
“Listen, I don’t have much time.  I regained control of my body just before-” was as far as he got when he was rudely interrupted by Naomi’s outburst.
“Holy Frick!  Dude, that’s amazing!  You gotta tell me how it happened!” She exclaimed.
“Shush!  Don’t be too loud!  Anyway, I was about to kill this girl and I managed to stop myself before I did anything.  It’s actually because of her that I was able to fight myself and get free.  She saved me.”
She couldn’t help feeling a twinge of anger at him when he mentioned that last part.  However, since she couldn’t explain why, she dismissed the feeling.
“But back to why I’m here,” he continued, “I want a serious answer.  I’m running away and I want to know if you’ll come with me.”
A thousand different responses tried to wrestle their way out of her mouth, none of which actually made it.  She finally managed to stutter, “I, but, you, I…I can’t.  I-I just can’t.  Where would we go?  What would we do?”
“Who cares?  We’ll find something, anything, as long as we get away from this place.  I urge you to please, please, come with me.”
“I can’t, I just can’t.”  She said, taking time in-between each word.  Despite how much she wanted to go with him, she just couldn’t bring herself to say yes.  She couldn’t figure out why she didn’t want to go with him, but a part of her refused to give up her current life.
She felt a tear roll down her cheek, but wiped it away quickly, hoping he didn’t see it. Fortunately for her, he was looking to the horizon.  After a moment of silence, he spoke without looking at her, “then I must go.  Take care of yourself, Naomi,” and he left.  Neither of them managed to get much sleep for the rest of the night.


“I’m glad to see you again, Naomi,” he said.
And that was the truth.

She could tell it was the truth, her sensors told her it was the truth, but she refused to believe that it was the truth.  There could be no reason in Hell that he should be happy to see her.  He had abandoned her at the Organization. Him! Her best friend!  He had just left in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye!  He just ran away without even talking to her about it!  Well that was the past now, and she here to put him through the same pain he had put her through.  After what she’d been through, she thought she had finally found a real friend.  All she’d been through . . .
The Mechanical Mistress remembered.

She remembered her family.  She couldn’t remember much about her father because he had died when she was no more than five, but she knew that she had loved him very much.  She never found out exactly how her dad had died; her mother never told her anything, and the Organization thought it an irrelevant subject to search.
Her mother remarried four years later.  She remembered her first impression of him.  He seemed so good and kind and caring.  She was shy around him at first, often finding it hard to call him dad, but she had eventually warmed up to him.  Then her life fell downhill from there.
Her step dad had developed a habit of tucking her in.  This was just like every night since the wedding two years ago.  He came in while she was brushing her hair and had put his hand on her shoulder, and kissed her on the forehead.  But then he began to kiss her on her neck, and his hand started moving down her chest, and . . .
At first she just thought it would just go away and she acted like it never happened.  Then it happened again, and again for three weeks.  Finally she knew that she had to tell her mother.
It was just after breakfast.  Her “dad” had just left for work, and her mom was washing dishes, leaving just her and her mom.
“You better get ready for school dear,” her mother said when she noticed that her daughter was still in the kitchen.
“Mom, um, there’s something I have to tell you,” she said in barely more than a whisper.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it can wait till after you get home from school, now go get ready.”
“But mom, it’s about dad, he-” she managed before her mother’s hand smacked her across her face, knocking her to the ground.
She could only stare in shock and horror at her mother’s looming figure when she yelled, “it’s your fault!  It’s your fault he hasn’t touched me in weeks!  You stupid Bitch!”  
Her mom began to compose herself and managed to say, “Go and get ready for school,” before returning to the dishes.

Why did mom hit me?  I didn’t want him to do those things to me?  It’s not my fault he’s a sick bastard! She thought running down the street in any direction but the one to her school.  She was still crying when she tripped over something and hit the ground.  The thing she had hit was a bum who had managed to make it out of the gutter before vomiting on his shirt one more time and passing out on the sidewalk.
“Watch the Hell where you’re goin ya stupid kid!” he said through his hangover, “Stupid bitch, not bein considerate of other people.”
She looked at the bum who was starting to fall back to sleep.  She felt blood running from her forehead into her eye, but she didn’t care.  She hated him.  She hated all adults just then.  Adults who thought they knew everything and could do anything.  Those damn adults don’t deserve to live.  At that moment her anger overwhelmed her.  She grabbed a chunk of rock that lay in a nearby ally.
The bum could feel the girl’s stupid little shadow on his back.  Stupid kid.  He’d show her what happens when she doesn’t respect her elders.
“I thought I told you to-” he said turning towards the girl before a pushy piece of concrete had to interrupt him and just insisted on taking a closer inspection of his face.  While he writhed in pain, Naomi decided that the block of concrete hadn’t had a close enough look at his face and decided to give it another chance, and another, and another.  The next thing she knew, her front was covered in blood, and the bum was suspiciously missing a face, but she didn’t care because now she just felt so . . . happy!  It felt so good taking a life; to hear him scream in pain, to see the life drain from his eyes, it had to be the best feeling she had ever had!  She hardly noticed when the police came on sight and took her away.  She knew she’d be in trouble with her parents when they heard that their daughter was in prison, but she still didn’t care.  She had killed, she had liked it, and that was all that mattered.  She barely noticed that the two people who walked into her cell weren’t her parents.
They were two men.  They said that they’d heard what she had done and were impressed.  They told her they could make it so she could do it again, and they could make her better at it.  Whoever they were, she immediately liked them and accepted their offer without a second thought.  They took her away to a secret place, did a few tests on her physical capabilities, then put her into surgery.  When she woke up, she had a whole new mechanical body.  They gave her a gun and a sword and told her that her first task was to kill her parents.  Finally.
She did it without hesitation.  She got them back for what they did to her, and it was wonderful.  That same feeling of being so happy; there was nothing else like it in the world.  Eventually she learned that she wasn’t the first, but that there was another.  He wasn’t a volunteer, however, and had had his personality locked away.  When she first met her fellow android, he seemed . . . dull.  He acted just like, for a poor choice of words, a robot.  So she decided to reactivate his personality, because she just couldn’t work with him otherwise.  
She managed to hack into his brain and found the real him wondering around.  He made her smile, he got her to laugh, he seemed like a nice guy.  They became friend that day.  She visited him whenever she could.  She never told him of her past, but all friends have their secrets, so it didn’t matter.  Then they had talked about him regaining control, and she had thought it just a joke.  But the next day, she got news that he had escaped, and he hadn’t even told her!  He didn’t even see her to say goodbye!  He just up and left after their last meeting in his mind and didn’t even tell her about it!  She could vaguely remember a dream she had had that night.  He was at her window, and he seemed so normal, so human then, but it was just a dream.  
Oh well, she thought, he was here now and she would make him pay, just like she had made the bum, her parents and countless others pay.  He had accessed the internet while on the run and she managed to track his I.P. address.  What was weird at the time was that he seemed to be using it from 23 different places and she had searched every one with nothing.  How she managed to stumble on this beach with him on it was still a mystery to her, as her GPS told her she was in the same 23 different places.  That too didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that she managed to slip out of the Organization and had disabled her connection to their computers so they couldn’t track her or interfere.  That meant that she would have all the time in the world to deal with him.

It’s almost too coincidental that both the mechanical assassins were running memories through their minds at the exact same time.  It was also almost too coincidental that they both finished processing their memories approximately a second later.  She saw him move towards his death dealers and let him.  Might as well make this fun, she thought.  
“So I take it you’re not here just to visit me are you,” he said, unsheathing his sword.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m not,” she replied, as he strapped on his gun.
“Well then I guess we better do this formally,” he said, returning to where he had just been standing, “Naomi, Humanoid Assassin type 2, codename: Dal’Lang, I challenge you to an Assassin’s Duel.”