Sacrifices

Chapter 16: Beyond The Sea

Warning for implied suicide.

--------------------------------------------------------------

"They tell you what you need to know

Tell you who you need to be

When everything inside me
Looks like everything I hate...

I'm standing on the edge of everything I've ever been
Standing at the edge of me."

-On Fire, Switchfoot-

--------------------------------------------------------------

Just breathe.

More times than he could count, Danse had held Jackie's hand in the dead of night and uttered those seemingly simple words as he reminded her that she was so much stronger than her night terrors. Barely half a day ago, Jackie had in turn laid with him, held him, and encouraged him to just keep breathing. But now-

"Did you know?!" like the howl of the gale, the violent lashing of locution assailed his ears, and he didn't understand.

Fingers seized his hair, metal ground against his skin, cut into his scalp. Those words... Letters and numbers and characters that spelled out the damning of his soul, his very being, like a distant flame, flickered on the screen.

Synth.

Nothing made sense. Lies and treason and betrayal. Everything he hated, the embodiment of what he fought against, contained in a single phrase before him - containedwithin him. Fear and loathing had come to fruition before his eyes, pieced together by a string of numbers and letters that now defined him. The disassociation fell heavy and thick upon him as if the present wasn't truly his reality. As if he were an extension of himself witnessing the events unfold from another vantage point. It wasn't possible. Was it? Couldn't be real. Could it? How could he be the very thing he despised?

And he had forgotten...

Breathe, Danse, just breathe.

Was he? Such a rudimentary autonomic function, but Danse couldn't seem to remember how. Breathe in . And he forced his lungs to expand and contract, capillaries gobbling up the precious oxygen. Breathe out. His diaphragm relaxed, expelling dirty air into the atmosphere.

"Answer me!" The sensation of the barrel of the gun pressed against his skull felt muted and numb as the signal was crossed between misfired synapses.

Slowly though, Danse was coming around, the initial shock wearing off as Geers yelled his piece in the background.

Pull the trigger.

His instincts demanded he shout it, scream at Geers to do right by his duty and pull the trigger.

But he was helpless and frail in the harsh reality of his condemnation. His mind refused to allow his mouth to form the words and instead he choked.

"I...I didn't know." Weak. A machine. Afraid to die. Abomination.

Geers tightened his hold, tearing at Danse's scalp as the lancer yanked him back by the scruff of hair held captive in his hand. "The Institute," the pain was a dull throb conveniently coexisting with the incurable throbbing within Danse's head, "did they send you?"

He needed more time to think. But his time was up and he just didn't know. Couldn't remember. He would know, right? He would remember being built and programmed and ordered out for infiltration. But what if that was the point? Perhaps he wasn't supposed to remember. The Institute having advantageously made him forget so they could freely mine data and steal his thoughts straight from his head without him ever knowing. The idea was terrifying and preposterous, yet not out of the realm of possibility.