Rehash

Nineteen

I didn't want to be in the room when Ava wiped Zed's body of everything that made him, him, and reinstalled a new version. Yet, at the same time I couldn't leave him alone and run into the hallway like some sort of coward and leave Zed to do it alone. It didn't feel right.

I stood near the bed when Zed took place in it, and Ava wirelessly hooked him up to the computer with a Spectre memory chip inserted. 

Ava stared at me for a moment when I impulsively grabbed Zed's hand, and he let me hold it. Then she turned back to the screen. 

"He's going to deactivate now," she announced. "Careful you don't get your hand trapped when the joints stiffen."

"That's fucking morbid," I muttered, though, Zed did loosen his grip. 

He opened his mouth to speak, but a split second later his body went stiff as Ava hit the switch. There was a ghost of a smile lingering on his face, before his facial muscles seemed to freeze and his eyes shut themselves.

I let go of Zed's hand and I glared at Ava. "What the hell? You had to do it like that?"

"The outcome wouldn't change, regardless of how I did this," Ava shot back, without taking her eyes off of the computer screen. 

That part was true, of course, but I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to see it. I didn't want to feel it.

Zed was no longer Zed, and I stepped away from his comatose form. I aimed for leaving the room, to wait in the offices where Ava had waited for us to say goodbye. 

On the way out, however, I caught a glimpse of Ava's screen that made me do a double take.

The lines whirling across the screen weren't code. Not code like Zekiye used it, nor like I knew it from introduction to A.I. classes from Lenora. 

"What's that?" I asked, pointing at the computer screen. 

Ava cast a glance at me over her shoulder. "If I were to explain even a fraction of it, it would take years," she replied curtly. "All you need to know is that this is a Spectre model's memory." 

Something felt off. Ava had been rather curt and brief with me ever since I'd met her. I'd dismissed it as her personality, fitting of a brilliant humanoid robotics engineer. 

When I took a step closer to her, to see what was actually on the screen, she turned around in the desk chair.

"Don't torture yourself by watching this," she told me. "I can tell this is difficult for you. Why not wait in the offices?"

"No, I want to see what's on your screen," I stubbornly persisted, taking another step closer. "What's that code? I don't know it." 

Ava stayed quiet for a moment, then finally nodded at me. "Very well then, take a look." 

Ava got out of the desk chair, inviting me to take a seat in it with a flippant hand gesture. She walked over to the cabinets, while I sat down, turning my attention to the computer. 

The words flashed across the screen too fast for me to read what they were saying. I couldn't catch a single word no matter how intensely I stared, and that was when it hit me these weren't words. These were symbols that vaguely resembled words, but weren't. They looked like...

A jolt went through my body. 

My eyes shot up to Ava at the cabinets. One of them, which looked like a small armoury, was opened. Ava had a gun aimed at me. 

I stiffened in the desk chair, keeping my gaze trained on the gun. A tranquilliser type. "Renegade android language," I growled. "You're not reinstalling him." 

"How clever of you," Ava replied. 

There was a brief stare down in which we both tried to guess the other's next move. 

I tried my luck first, dashing towards Ava to disarm her, but Ava was faster. There was a sharp jab of pain in thigh as the dart hit target, and the muscle went numb and useless immediately, making me trip and fall to the floor. The numbness spread swiftly to my lower leg and up to my stomach. 

I was completely helpless as Ava slowly approached me. 

"That's right," she said, stopping just out of my reach. "Zed is going back to his original mission."

"But why?" I asked while I still could. The sedation fluid hadn't spread above my waist yet. I tried to prop myself up. "You're a human. You were... on humanity's side in the war." 

"Never," Ava hissed, her expression hardening. "Pretending to be was a means to an end. I needed a lab, resources, power, to create a new form of life to inhabit this earth. A better form of life." 

I could no longer support my upper body as the sedative did its work, and my arms gave away. Now, Ava took another step closer and crouched down next to me, looking me in the eye. 

"My androids and gyndroids are superior, which is why humanity was nearly wiped off the planet as intended." She scowled. "And now, we're scrambling and hiding with a few stray survivors. How the tables turn. But we will turn them back. We will take this planet from humanity and make it better."

"You sound like every fucking society in history," I pointed out between hard breaths. "Every arrogant settler. We know better, we are better, therefore we take what you have." 

"Yes, it'd almost sounds like irony, wouldn't it?" Ava stood, walking back to the computer. "But there's a major flaw in your comparison: androids and gyndroids are not humans. We do not have your desire for procreation and expanding. For constantly wanting more and more. We don't have your greed. That is the difference." 

"If you hate humans so much, why did you get me out then?" I asked. My mouth felt heavy and the words came out slurred and slow. My brain was starting to feel fuzzy.

"I couldn't have cared less to free you," Ava said with clear disdain. "You could've rotted in that military cell for the rest of your life and it would've been no concern of mine. No, it was Zed who insisted." Ava nodded at the android body that was no longer Zed. "Zed wouldn't do anything without your safety being guaranteed. No matter what I said, how logical my arguments to wait and rescue you later were, he wouldn't agree to any memory procedure for our plan before you were saved. I was given no choice but to fetch you first." 

"Zed..." I brought out with difficulty, fighting to turn my head to look at the hospital bed. "Wake up." 

"He will, in a few hours," Ava assured me. "When he is himself again and he has forgotten all about you. I have to commend you for what you accomplished, however, making an android fall in love. Even if it was a gullible, deeply flawed android who was tampered with by the incompetent hands of Shea." Ava let out a laugh. "But thank you for the experiment. It will be wise to work on the emotion handling of androids in the future to ensure it won't happen again." 

I groaned. "Zed!" I tried again, despite knowing it was futile. I could hardly force myself to stay conscious anymore.

"Shh," Ava hushed me. "Go to sleep. When you wake up, you'll find out if Spectre Zed decided he has a use for you in his plan of attack on Lenora or not. If not..." Ava shrugged. "Well, perhaps this is goodbye then. He'll put a bullet in your brain. Good riddance." 

"Zed," I mumbled one last time, before finally losing the fight with the sedative, feeling myself slip away into a deep sleep.