Planet Omega

Chapter 24

Everything I'd planned, everything I told myself I'd say and do, goes flying out the window. I forget it all. None of it matters. My heart drops, and there's a buzzing in my head that keeps getting louder and louder as I work to process what the fuck Ry just said.

Emma...was there that night.

Emma was there that night.

'You were always meant to die.'

"You're lying," I accuse, unable to stabilize my voice.

The five of them chuckle, laughing among themselves like it's a joke. I watch them expectantly, waiting for one of them to admit that indeed, it was a lie. But those words never come.

"We are not," Adamantos begins, "but if it makes you feel better to assume that we are, you can assume we are."

There's not a single thing in his tone to indicate that this is a cruel joke. How can they not be lying?

I suddenly feel sick, like I can't get enough air to breathe properly. Maybe I'd heard wrong. Maybe Ry hadn't actually implied what my brain thinks they implied. It was all just a misunderstanding. Right?

"We can't all detect magic, you know," Celeste says, that deceptively warm smile on her features. "Emma was always the lucky one."

"Number Oh-One gets all the best features," Laurence sighs, getting a faraway look in his eyes.

"But you guys are EMMA model pawns," I blurt out, grasping for anything, anything to make this make sense. "There's sentient stone inside all of you, you're all made of magic, you're..."

Violetta's laugh echos around the room. "Is that what she told you? Is that how she boiled it down for your puny little mind to comprehend?" She bares her teeth at me, no hint of that previous pretend mirth left. "We are sentient stone, placed in synthetic bodies. But we were each given talents and abilities to serve the masters we were created for."

Masters. She called them masters.

"We aren't 'made of magic', only mages are made of magic on this planet. And some sentient stone is capable of recognizing that magic," Violetta continues. "As a memory keeper, Emma also possesses the ability to remember what interacting with magic feels like, which is why she is capable of finding it. She didn't find you by chance, that night. She didn't rescue you because she felt sorry for you."

My mind goes back to that conversation I had with Emma. I remember being angry with her for rescuing me because I didn't understand why she would jump in front of bullets for a stranger. I didn't want to hear her out. But she said she lived close by. She said magic isn't supposed to die.

I don't think she lied to me. She just didn't tell me the whole truth.

But I remember what Thackery said that day he and the others were executed. How Zaselir was pulling the other EMMA model pawns out of hibernation to start up the program again for hunting mages.  

 Oh god. Emma told me once that she'd been used for field work before officially being decommissioned. I didn't connect it at the time. I didn't think anything of it. I had just assumed it was another disgusting plot to use pawns to kill other non-humans. I hadn't realized it might just be the field work Emma had mentioned.

She didn't lie, but every conversation we've ever had flashes in my mind. All of the hints, the warnings, the subtext.

Emma saying I looked brighter after I unlocked my magic, but not correcting me when I assumed that since she saw my magic, other pawns could too. She was a personal companion pawn, made to save her captor's life, made to remember everything, made to remember the feel of magic.