The Arena (Book 1)

Lifeless

When I see David, I realize just how cold he is. Holding his ice-cold hand in mine makes me sick to my stomach. The thought that a machine, something that never once technically lived, is warmer and more lively than a person. I shiver and flinch when I look at his face, remembering what it once looked like.

Few people still linger around the room, cleaning up medical supplies and getting ready to move the body. "Could I please have a moment to myself," I say, just loud enough for everyone to hear. After a moment of silence, everyone files out of the room.

I return my attention to David, still holding his lifeless hand in mine. I wish I would've been there for him, with him in his final moments. I wish I could've thanked him for granting me this wonderful thing called life. The thing that was so violently stolen from him.

I allow myself a moment to walk around the now empty room. The only thing that remains is the heartbeat monitor, which has now also gone silent. I look at the mostly bare, ugly blue-ish-grey walls. The paint is cracked and peeling away in some places, where in others it's just plain boring. An almost obscenely dull place to die.

I return to David, sitting on the edge of the bed he lays in. I feel like speaking but I know if I did, I would just begin rambling on in inaudible, pathetic spurts of emotions. Also, it wouldn't be like he could hear me. I feel so unwelcome at his side, feeling like I betrayed him so much. Feeling that I caused his death.

Is this what losing a loved one feels like. Is it always this filled with regret? Does it always feel like there's something else you could've done?

Thoughts rush in and out of my head like trains in a station. Each one carrying a new form of regret, worse than the last. My mind starts to drift deeper and I begin to feel myself falling down a dark and unending spiral of fear, sadness and most of all hopelessness.

"What do I do?" I finally say. In all honesty, I have no idea what I do from here.

I'm still needing to be turned human, but I know if I do that, it'll feel wrong. It'll be like I've just been given a real life, while my very creator's life was taken. And I don't know what to do about the robot, or about Liam, or Luke or Joey, or Dawn. And even if I do become human, what quality of life will I have? I'll have no real family, no friends, I'll have nothing. My thoughts feel endless, a terrible ever-going cycle of torture. Inescapable, and inevitable; that all of my fears are bound to come true.

In the midst of all my terror, I manage to make out a tiny beep among the silence. At first, I think it's my imagination but then it happens again, and again. I can't make out where it's coming from though. I look all around the barren room and still find nothing.

Suddenly my eyes drift up to the heartbeat monitor. I almost believe I'm dreaming when I see the screen. What was just a black screen a mere minute ago is now lit up with a dial that jumps up and down in sync with the beeping. What I'm seeing is a heartbeat. Davids heartbeat.