Monster Like You

Chapter 12

That day I came home late again. There was no strength left to yell and get drunk. I could only cry a little into my pillow, but then I had to get up and go cook dinner. Despite all the excitement of the last two days, I was unbearably hungry. Sleep, too, so I couldn't cry a little more before going to bed: I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

It was raining in the morning, and I couldn't figure out what was causing my head to ache: from a change in the weather, from fatigue that hadn't passed, or from emotions that hadn't really spilled out. With this rain and headache, a week of nightmare began.

I had to meet Alyss every day. It immediately became clear that after communicating with me, she calms down and she is better able to control herself. Otherwise, she began to rush at the guards and smash the ward. She explained later that she couldn't resist.

"How does it get cloudy," she muttered guiltily. "At best, I'm kind of watching from the sidelines. At worst, I switch off altogether and don't even remember anything."

The logical thinking tests that we passed in parallel with her also confirmed that her intelligence was losing ground. But the memory was still intact: Alyaa continued to amaze me with memories that I myself either completely erased, or very much dimmed.

We researched and documented everything all over again, because Penn's records seemed to have sunk through the ground. No one could find any traces. I personally got the impression that the documents were simply seized. And our management did it. On their own initiative or on the initiative of the authorities. After all, we only suspected that Penn had an accomplice in Corps. But what if she didn't have an accomplice, but a powerful patron? What if Penn started her research not as an underground project for "leftist" earnings, but on direct orders? Corps has conducted many controversial studies and experiments in both science and magic. And, of course, at their intersection.

Once I voiced my guess, Kiaran looked at me so expressively that I decided not to say anything like that out loud anymore. And don't even think about it, although I couldn't do the second one. But I tried very hard to focus on work, which required a lot of mental strength and time.

Communicating with Alyss was not easy. No, I wasn't scared of who she was. And I felt neither hatred nor jealousy. Intellectually, she understood that in the current situation she was the last to blame, that she was a victim of circumstances and could only be pitied.

This haunts me all my life: most often I comprehend the situation quickly enough and suppress an emotional reaction. I easily look at everything from different points of view, and put myself in the place of others. I dissect the facts, sort out the details and put them together again. This makes me a good analyst, but, God, how it interferes with life!

I wish I could just hate Alyss. Convince yourself that her existence is unnatural, that she is a threat, a monster. And then do what is customary to do with potential threats: get rid of them. But I couldn't. Logic and ethics rebelled against this. And even my feelings. The love for Nathaniel, which I could not bury, demanded to save the life of his copy, to find in the chimera what was left of a man, and to preserve it.

The brain was unwillingly looking for the most correct scenario and forced to strive for it. Even if he made me absolutely unhappy, assuming that Alyss and Nathaniel should be as "humanized" as possible, find freedom and stay together, raise a common child. And I'm going to look at them from the outside for the rest of my days, knowing that this could have happened with the real Nathaniel. If he had lived. They say that knowing for sure how everything would have happened is the most terrible curse. I think I agree.

Nathaniel, unlike Alyss, did not try to cooperate and did not seek to make the task easier for us. After he was placed in the same temporary detention ward as Alyss, he practically stopped communicating with us.