Radicle (Terminal trilogy #2, can stand alone)

17: Breaking the law

 "Who do you want me to be, then?" I asked TC the moment she stopped reading. It seemed sudden, but I knew that whatever conversation she had been planning to start would have eventually come to the same question. "Why do you want me to know these things?"

"Knowledge is power." She offered with a shrug. "And you'd be good to have some power in your life."

"My power is-"

"Michael's. Yeah. I've figured that much out. Your soul is Michael's. Your body is Michael's. And the rest, and the rest. Jesus Christ, I get it. But when will you?"

"Get what?" I asked, nerves on edge. I had not enjoyed listening to the file TC had read. She still had two more in her lap. Was I going to be forced to learn them too?

"That you belong to Michael."

"I don't have to realize that. I know it. I welcome it, actually. Michael is our supreme leader. He raised us, and he loves us. This is not a matter that is up for debate."

"No, but- Aug, look. You belong to Michael. I can't make that any more clear."

"Yes, true."

"You're not understanding what I mean though! You're not independent from him in the slightest, are you? Your thoughts are what he wants them to be. And your actions too. Your whole everything. I came too late for you, didn't I? I came too late."

I was starting to feel just a little more than incredibly angry with TC. Her and her terrible everything, always trying to do vague things for vague but likely malicious reasons. "The fact that I am who Michael wants me to be is not an insult. Michael wants me to be pure, loyal, restrained and better. And I am. And thus, I am perfect."

"Is your head honestly stuck so far up your ass that you think you're perfect? I swear-"

"Oh, shut up. You're the one who dragged me here in the first place- this library and this city. Quit bossing me around."

"Don't interrupt me! I-" TC started.

"I'm just-" I interrupted.

"Hey-"

"Interjecting my commentary-"

"Stop-"

"When there's natural pauses in the conversation."

"Aug!" TC crossed her arms and fell back on the mattress. "You're absolutely abhorrent!"

"I don't know what that means." I said. The maze of bookshelves was no place to angrily storm out of though, so I again had to climb a book shelf and jump my way across.

So TC thought I wasn't my own person, all because I had decent respect for my superiors? Clearly, there was something wrong with her, not me. She was the one trying to mislead me. First she took me from Heaven, then she tried to make me hate it- she was a classic demon. I had yet to see her horns. But I'd see them when she was dead.

Not like I was going to kill her. I still needed somewhere to live and someone to buy food for me. But I'd only need those things on the chance that something went wrong tonight, as I made my escape with the two halfbreed children. I had to do it right now, in fact. I was too pumped up with adrenaline not to.

There was nothing outstandingly different or rebellious about obeying Michael's orders to take the kids, actually, so I probably wasn't proving much of a point to TC. But I didn't need her approval.

I was so worked up about everything that I just kept walking right up to Pride without much thought to anything. I was only vaguely aware of surroundings.