Three Degrees Of Danger (2019)

|| NINE ||

"Are you insane? I told you to head for the market and not capture anybody's attention." Lex positions his hands by his hips and the rise and dip of his chest is frantic. It resembles the note of panic in his voice. "Instead, you go and do the opposite. You engage in a vulgar fight with the enemy while getting the entire world to notice!"

I huff at Lex and roll my eyes at him. "Maybe if you had clarified beforehand, I would have attempted to follow your orders."

"You have a problem with authority, Vic? Then I suggest you get a new attitude because pretty soon, someone would be controlling you and you wouldn't have a say in it whatsoever!" Lex throws his hands upwards in a gesture of empty hope and I take step back, frustration bubbling beneath my skin.

"What's your problem with my decision?" I demand, "He was going to kill me, anyway."

There are specks of annoyance in Lex's eyes as he turns his fingers inwards, rolling them in a manner to soothe himself. "He is the enemy, Vic. He's one of them. If you die, you would be under his full control. He'll be able to see what it is that we need so badly to reverse Danger and he'll stop it."

"I don't understand." Though it brings colour to my cheeks to say it, I find the words stumbling out of my mouth, regardless.

"You're fighting for credits, right? You already know what that means- if he dies, you get full say over his Software and vice versa if you die. Why my team and I need you to assist us in reversing Danger is linked to your Software. He knows this and I'm more than certain that he'll do anything within his power to get a hold of your Software."

I sniff in distaste. "You're talking about me like I'm not a human being."

"Well, you don't seem to be taking this very seriously." Lex returns.

"That's because you're withholding information from me. What's so important about me that I'm crictical to reversing Danger?" I demand.

Discomfort carves itself onto Lex's face as he shifts his feet, the shuffling noise cutting the air. For a while, we sit in the silence before he answers, "I can't say why."

"Alright." I fight the temptation to roll my eyes. "Then answer the questions you didn't from before. What are you? Who are they and who, exactly, are you working for?"

Lex chews on his lower lip and lers his gaze dart towards the floor, steadily averting my eyes. "I can't tell you anything."

"Wow." I shake my head and let my arms fall from my chest to my sides. "And here you are, demanding the world from me."

Anger smears Lex's cheeks with pink. "Don't you understand?" His voice rattles with fury. "If I tell you and you die, it's not going to do us any good."

"Oh, I get it." I sneer, "Let me use one of your great metaphors- I'm the lie to your con man, just a tool for you to get what you want."

Lex bites the inside of his cheek, seemingly trying to cap his annoyance. A strange look glances off his facial features so quickly that I almost wonder if I had imagined it. Quietly, he says, "You need to survive, Vic. You need to live so that we even have a silver of a chance at reversing Danger. You need to win and get that information from them so that we can finally put an end to all this."

A foreign sensation washes over me, like a tidal wave. I can feel a pressure building up behind my eyes and a knot where the base of my throat is. "What's it to you, anyway? What's so wrong and terrible about Danger that you want to eradicate it? You keep telling me that Danger needs to go, that erasing it is salvation but you're just like all of us- killing in cold blood and going about daily activities after your massacres, like it's as mundane as having breakfast."

Lex's entire body shakes at my words and I stare at the way he curls his fingers in and out, forming a fist and deconstructing it in the moments between seconds. When he speaks, his voice is a low rumble, like thunder in the distance.

"I have already told you that my intentions to murder are justified. I'm always practising the Greater good theory whenever I'm faced with the need to kill someone. What is the value of one life if thousands can be saved? Is it not a chamber to store the necessary human organs? When you do the math, does it not become just a number?" Despite the lack of empathy in Lex's words, there's a flash of sorrow that sparks across his face when he speaks. His tone lacks emotion and sounds as distant as the stars but his face brims with a need to be reassured, with a regret that has been growing for years.

He's been lying to himself. The thought feels strangely calm in the storm of anxiety that rages in my head.

"The act of killing someone can only be justified if the culprit thinks it is. If you can't even convince yourself that you're right, how do you expect others to say that it's fine?" I plead.

Horror flares across Lex's face. There's something naked and veridical about the twisted pain that flashes in his eyes. As if he has just realised the truth himself.

"You- you're twisting my truths," Lex stammers weakly, "Don't try and distort my reality. I can kill if I think that it's right and you shouldn't have to tell me what I'm doing is wrong."

I shake my head at him. "I'm not trying to dispell your gospel. All I'm saying is that it isn't right to pretend what you do is right just because you believe your actions serve a greater purpose. It's like telling a half truth and pretending that it's the whole truth."

Lex takes a step towards me and I inch away, suddenly terrified of the flames of indignation held hostage in his eyes. "I am nothing like the rest of you. I have, even if it is a minute quantity, human decency in me. I want to fix this world and show that there can be a place where Danger does not exist. To do that, I need to fufil my role, even if it means going against the thing I value most."

"You can't measure human decency. It's a matter of being entirely good or bad. And if you think that Danger is harmful, then I should have finished you off earlier." My laugh is a bitter bark and my terror of Lex's rage disappears.

"The world isn't as black and white as you see it. Nothing just exists or doesn't exist at all. That's probably why you don't see what Danger is turning us all into."

"Oh, yeah? What's so bad about Danger, then?" I fix my gaze on Lex and he returns the stare with an intensity that matches the hatred burning inside of me.

"It makes the nonexistent beasts inside of us real. You told me that the monsters inside us cannot be tamed but that isn't true because," Lex's voice is a faint whisper and I have to lean forward to hear him properly, "They're not real. What we have is a want to understand and be understood and when we don't and aren't, we breathe life into the things that turn us into monsters. This is the property of Danger. It makes us more inclined to believe that these monsters exist within us, and are as real as we are. But they are only as real as the power we give them to control us."

Everything stops when I listen to Lex speak. My whole body freezes up and his words are the only thing shifting as the earth suspends its tilting of the axis. They register in my mind and they pour through my head, sifting through every crack like fine sand. And it's funny because I never knew words could matter until I met him and listened to the way he spoke.

But all that mattered in the moment breaks as the door leading to the preparation room bursts open with an explosive energy. The man, whose name I recently learned is Cooper, stands with an impatient expression on his face.

"So, are you ready to fight or what?" Cooper demands and a lump solidifies in my throat. Lex shoots me a look and I feel myself nod. "I'm ready. Let's do this."

Word Count: 1459