Descent into Mayhem

CHAPTER TEN - GEARING UP

MEWAC medical bay, 19H15, 19th of May, 2771

The confrontation with Rakaia left Toni horrified. Not with her, of course; the Terminator had always rebuffed the cadets surrounding her, and he would never have expected anything less than the same for him. It wasn't what she had said that distressed him, but his free-running mouth instead, and more specifically, the words it had uttered. Most especially, it was the feeling that had accompanied the words that were jilting his nerves.

The feeling was not entirely unfamiliar.

Over the course of his training, there had been moments when the pressure mounted alarmingly. In those times, a terrible thought sometimes crashed into the midst of his consciousness, yelling that he had finally reached his limit, and that it would all be so much easier if he simply gave up and took the Walk. At first he had simply ignored the thought and, more often than not, those moments were fleeting enough for the tactic to work.

But then those critical moments had begun to stretch out, and simply ignoring the voice was no longer a practical option. It eventually became something to put up with, like Mason or the tics, any attempt to smother the voice only resulting in it squealing even louder in more desperate instances. It began to harass his spirit and slowly he had begun to hate the voice, and then that feeling had begun to make itself known. His memory tended to become hazy whenever that happened, and he would eventually return to himself afterwards in the shower, another critical training session having been accomplished without incident, his only memory of the session that feeling.

A feeling as if he was no longer alone in his own mind, that there was another consciousness to be reckoned with, one which held grudges, which took revenge, which felt itself entitled to more than a fair measure of divine selfishness. There was no pity in it. That intrusive stranger would laugh whenever Toni agonized, and indeed he could hear it sniggering despite his present solitude. Closing his eyes, Toni focused on the emotion and sought to reach out and make contact with that hidden facet of his self.

He let go of his self-pity and felt himself approach the stranger. He abandoned his empathy, and closer he crept. He rose out of the trench that was his life and looked down upon it, observing the shoddy workmanship and the haphazard way it interconnected with those around him, and he sneered at it all. The feeling was becoming very strong. He accepted that he was of no worth. How tremendous it was, life. He had no value in the midst of it all. The myriad trenches surrounding him were better organized and kept, for the most part. They accommodated platoons, whole battalions, even, while his accommodated a young boy who didn't even know how to speak to members of the opposite gender. He sneered once more, his fangs showing. None of that mattered, of course. No matter how many virtuous lives needed to be snuffed out to validate his own insignificant existence, the deed would be done. No matter that his genes were defective, whether they be folic acid deficiencies or something more sinister, he would pass his genes onwards. He would engineer his way into the Terminator's unworthy womb, even if he had to forcefully pry her lily-white thighs –

He began to tremble as the horrible imagery paraded before his mind's eye, the stranger smirking slyly beside him. His emotional self began to tear itself apart, the horrified rejection of the delicious possibilities opposing itself to the epiphany of a draconian world view. A savage dogfight broke out in his mind, and his body began to shake and shudder.

Turning his back towards the infirmary door, he smothered a scream and caved in to the overwhelming intensity of his emotions. At the peak of his anger, as his hate extended beyond himself and towards all the antagonists of his life, he sensed his moral skin slip away, feeling simultaneously terrified and delighted that it could so easily slide off if he allowed it to.