BioSynth | ONC 2021 WINNER | MM Romance | Sci-Fi | Complete

Three: Saturday

Pain had been a constant throughout the night, but that was the least of what was tearing Quentin apart. He'd spent the night standing bare-chested in the bathroom, staring at his literal insides in front of a dirty, cracked mirror. On the plus side, the hole in his chest was smaller.

The physical one, at least.

This was who he was: Pinocchio on a string.

But who pulled it?

For the umpteenth time Quentin clutched the ruined t-shirt he'd worn last night, the one piece of clothing he hadn't had the heart to discard. Much like his marriage, it was torn beyond all mending. Much like his marriage, it wasn't his.

This time, when the tears came, he did nothing to stop them.

'Weapons don't weep,' he remembered Ian saying, and succumbed to laughter that brought no joy.

Enough.

Wallowing for an entire night had to be more than enough — staying in the same motel for two nights in a row was not an option. He needed to figure out how to heal himself, and that meant he had to delve into his memories.

They were all... Jumbled inside him. Fragmented, corrupted. Some were buried beneath layers of useless data, impossible to untangle.

How could he even pick a date to begin? To know which ones were fake?

No, that wasn't hard — there were hashtags. Verifiable hashtags, one per memory. He could tell apart the fake ones, once he began untangling, but he needed a baseline for comparison. A thread of despair threatened to overwhelm him, that he even knew how to do this. He had to work backwards.

Quentin started with memories that couldn't be anything but real — drinking water, minutes before. Dumping his clothes in strategic places, using evasion procedures he'd have sworn he didn't know. Using Ian's traceless card last night to purchase the clothes he wore now. Stealing said card from Ian's wallet. Getting Ian safely to the sidewalk where TrackerEvac could get to him. The accident, Ian's face, the gun, the coldness, the absolute coldness of his expression—

He pulled away, breathless from the pain lancing through him. Ridiculous, that he'd still have all these human reactions and no control over them. This wouldn't work — he couldn't relive each memory, expose himself to its weight in full.

He'd go mad.

A few breaths and he tried a different angle — viewing only the beginning of each memory file, when he already knew what was in it, and note its hashtag.

This he could do without shattering.

But he still found himself lingering in the memory of them together, in the car before going in the restaurant, making love.

That one was real.

That one was his.

On some level, he didn't know if he hoped to find this Quentin alive, to return to Ian, to do a single good thing for him, or to find that the original Quentin had been dead for months. Ian was right — Quentin was nothing like a human. But he wasn't the emotionless puppet Ian believed, either. He was something darker. A petty thing, jealous of what it couldn't have, a source of death and destruction.

He tried to think more logically. If he were a programmer looking to replace Quentin, where would he do it? On his visit to Xeygh last week, perhaps? But no, those were all real as well. Three months before, when Ian had been away on assignment for almost two weeks? All hashtags were valid. How long had he had with Ian, then?