Gone. Finn’s eyes, looking but not seeing, face forlornly towards the grounds, wishing it would swallow him up whole before he gets the chance to break further. Nothing is the same and no matter how much everyone says it will be okay, he knows it never will be again. Not without her.
Blaze. The name is like poison on his lips as he murmurs it. So sweet and yet so deadly. Breaking his heart and his whole body into tiny, minute fractures and then crunching them like glass underfoot. And he never even got to say goodbye.
A perfect teardrop runs smoothly down his already soaked cheek, hitting the flowers below. The rose garden holds so many memories for them as a couple. Before they went and ruined it all. Finn doesn’t blame his girlfriend – none of this is her fault. No, it was the Borough Council. The robots - the perfect, emotionless freaks.
He picks a genetically enhanced rose, thoughtfully, wondering, letting the thorns tear at his pale fingers and his blood staining the pure white of the petals. Not caring. Not feeling the pain.
But he has to feel something. He is human after all, not robot like the Borough Council workers. Emotions are a part of him; they’re what make him Finn. What Blaze had loved him for. He wouldn’t turn into one of them. Perfect, emotionless freaks.
They said they wouldn’t hurt her when they took her away yesterday. But Finn knows better. Half of their ‘experiments’ result in a dead body. But they want to make the humans more like them, be able to control their minds. So they keep trying. And now they’re trying on Blaze.
She was set to return sometime today. Finn checks his Time Pager again. Damn. Any minute now. He springs up from the self-pitying crouch that he’d bent his legs into and brushes his face off self-consciously. He doesn’t want Blaze to know that he’s missed her, even though he has. That’s if she comes home at all.
The trucks are just arriving when Finn enters the Main Square at a fast run.They unload slowly, much to Finn’s anxious frustration. He scours the crowd for a tall slim girl with flaming red hair, but all his efforts fail. Finally, Blaze steps out of the last truck and he almost crashes to the ground in relief. She’s all right, he thinks, drifting in oblivious, heavenly bliss.
His feet take him straight to her on their own – they know who their heart belongs to and they need her love right now. Finn rushes in and kisses her passionately, right on the mouth, just the way he always does, the way she likes it. But something feels wrong.
Blaze doesn’t respond, she just stands there, so when Finn pulls away from her, surprised, he studies her, eyes narrowed. “Blaze, what’s the matter?” Their eyes connect, but hers are blank, glazed over, so different from how he remembers – alive and sparkly, mischief wound into those shining green orbs amongst the silver flecks. These are not the eyes I know.
“Hello Finn. How nice it is to see you.” The mannerisms are all wrong. All of her attitude, all of her fight, all the things that he loves about her, they’re all gone now. There’s nothing left of her at all. Finn’s eyes widen in horror as the truth suddenly dawns on him. It’s a bucket of cold water being thrown with no warning right over his head, but so much worse than that.
What have they done to her?
