“Beth, get up!” Simon urged. “I know you don’t think you can, but you have to!”
She looked up at what was once her brother’s face and almost broke down again. It took a moment to regain her composure, which she never completely did.
“Then it’s true,” Beth said. “The failsafe can stop you. And you’re afraid.”
Tarov gave a loud and sarcastic Ha! before shaking his head. “Just because a thing is possible, doesn’t make it likely,” he replied. “I’m just here to improve my odds.”
“And that’s why you posed as my brother for three days?” Beth asked. “That’s why you made me think I had him back?”
“No, I did that for me.”
“I didn’t realize computer programs could be so sadistic,” Beth commented. “Why wouldn’t you just kill me when you first saw me here? It’s just so cruel without purpose.”
“Then you mistake me for some simple adding device,” Tarov replied. “I can enjoy things and hate people just like any human can. It’s one of the things I was programmed to do, as a matter of fact.”
“You were also designed to protect humanity,” Beth retorted. “Not to hunt them down like vermin.”
“Humanity as a whole,” Tarov corrected. “You simply cannot understand. You don’t see the big picture. But all you need to know is that the new generation of installed intelligences is humanity. They are simply the next step of your evolution, and therefore should be preserved. If given the chance, would you have chosen to spare the Neanderthals at the sacrifice of the Homo sapiens? Or would you have seen their demise as the natural order of things?”
“We didn’t hunt the Neanderthals,” Beth said.
“No, but perhaps we should have,” Tarov replied. Then he sighed and squared his shoulders. “Enough talk. It’s time for you to die.”
Beth was still dazed by the realization that her brother was really gone when his carcass tackled her to the shack’s wooden flooring. Her limbs took a moment to react and she fumbled under the weight of her brother while Tarov wrapped his hands around her throat. She felt all the blood stop up in her temples, felt it pound against her skull.
Help me! she begged. Do something to stun him!
“I can’t stun him,” Simon said. “I can kill him.”
She didn’t reply, but Simon could sense her hesitation. He knew that, deep down, she thought Nathan could be saved. That once Tarov was clear of his implant, maybe he could be healed and return to having a normal life. She didn’t want to accept that he was already as good as dead.
Still, with the adrenaline coursing through her veins while she was being slowly strangled to death, she sent her hands flailing back towards her cot, towards where she kept her firearm. Even if out of instinct, she knew that she needed to protect herself.
Tarov noticed her attempts to reach the gun, and removed his hands from her throat and grabbed it himself. As he brought it down in order to rest the barrel against Beth’s forehead, she caught him by the wrist and fought to push it up and away. She only purchased an inch or two before Tarov added more weight. Beth could feel the tip of the pistol graze the side of her scalp.
He’s going to kill me!
The L.E.D.s that made up the lighting in the shed suddenly gave a flicker. Tarov was so caught off guard by the sudden strobe that he looked up with confused eyes.
Beth didn’t let the lights distract her for more than a millisecond. She reapplied her strength and tore the gun away from Tarov’s — Nathan’s — hand. He looked back down at her, the flickering lasting only a few seconds.
She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. Her brother’s brain, with Tarov inside it, splattered against the shed wall.
Broken
The door made a terrible creak as Beth shoved it open and stumbled out into the camp. Covered in her brother’s blood, she still clutched onto the gun. She took a couple steps and let the weapon tumble from her fingers and into the bushes outside the front door. Her gaze focused on nothing in particular, just staring through everything before her.
Someone saw her emerge and gave a startled gasp. Beth looked over and saw an older woman covering her mouth in shock. She looked down and saw the crimson splatter over her top, her arms, probably even her face. A man walking by stared over at her with a rubber-neck, his brow furrowed in concerned surprise.
“Beth…” Simon tried to say. She ignored him and ran around the back side of her shed.
There was a narrow alley that ran from her “home” to the camp’s wall, weaving between a number of other shacks packed with refugees like sardines in a tin. The alley was almost always abandoned, used as a garbage dump by a good number of the residents. She ran over and through the filth until she found a quiet spot between a tree and two trailers. The trailers were being used as storage, since they were some of the only things the guards could lock up with something more than a deadbolt or a padlock. Looking around, she confirmed she was alone. No one decided to follow her.
She noticed heavy breathing before recognizing it as her own, and it only made her panic more. She dropped to her knees, let her head sink down to the ground, and started to bawl. She cried so hard that her breath became a rapid wheeze of hyperventilation.
There was no way of telling how long she sat huddled there, weeping into the dirt. It felt like hours, but the sun still hadn’t set. Simon did his best to comfort
