“It might not work for most couples, but it does for us,” Betsy said with the same smile stuck on her face. “We want to welcome you to the Furnace. We’re so glad you’re not in that terrible simpod anymore.”
“Betsy and Martin here run the People’s Union,” Gauge said. “They’re the only reason we’re here, rather than lobotomized or worse.”
“We merely have an excess of funds and try to put it to good use,” Betsy said. “Martin and I have always been privileged, even since before we married. But we paid attention. We see the inequality around us and we know that it cannot stand.”
“We happen to be in a rare position of power, you see,” Martin added. “We’re so wealthy that the Council doesn’t even mind the fact that Betsy is a human. With our money, we’re able to make a real difference. We might even be able to knock the Council down a peg.”
“You’re doing this just out of the kindness in your heart — er — hearts?” Ethan asked. He didn’t mean it to sound rude, but by the look on Betsy’s face, it was taken as such.
“We’re doing it for our son, actually,” she said. Her face became warm again rather quickly, having shrugged off Ethan’s question. “Or, his memory, at least.”
“We lost him when he went to a protest,” Martin Clevinger said. “There were a group of humans protesting the way the Council was treating their kind, and he wanted to go. It was mostly the poorer folk, the ones they forced to live in the slums. Still, he wanted to show his support. That was the kind of boy he was.”
“The Council gunned them down,” Betsy said when her husband paused for a moment. “All of them. And before anyone was informed, they had the bodies burned. There was nothing left. No one could be installed — they didn’t even bother to try.”
“I’m — so sorry,” Ethan said.
“That’s what they said, too, when the news broke,” Martin said. “Once they figured out whose son they had murdered, they came over to kiss our ass and beg our forgiveness. As you can imagine, we were less than willing to provide it.”
“Over the years, however, we started to realize the advantages of playing along with the Council,” Betsy said. “We started to think we could take the monster down from the inside. And that’s when we founded the People’s Union. Funnily enough, a good amount of the money we’ve used buying fancy bodyshells, powerful E.M.P. weapons, and supplies is what they gave us to ‘compensate’ us for the loss of our only child. I think it’s rather fitting.”
“So do I,” Martin added.
“We even used some of those resources to break you out of your cyber-prison,” Betsy told Ethan.
“Why though?” Ethan asked, processing it all. “Why do you need me?”
Gauge and the Clevinger’s shared a glance with each other. Ethan felt distinctly like he was being left out of an inside joke.
“Not only would you make an excellent soldier because of the muscle and reflex training the simpod provided for you,” Martin said through the speaker in his wife’s head, “but you’d be a perfect mascot for recruitment.”
“A perfect mascot?”
“People would be terribly upset if they knew what the Council was doing to you and your friends,” Betsy said. “You probably don’t know this, but you were being grown to be Councilman Harring’s next meat puppet. He was planning to walk around in you like a suit. With your story, it will be hard to resist joining us.”
“So I’m some kind of promotional tool?” Ethan asked.
“No, but that is the icing on the cake,” Betsy said. “What we really need you for is whatever might be kept in that brain of yours. If you’d allow us, we’d like to take a few harmless scans to see if what we’re looking for is there.”
“And what are you looking for?”
“We don’t know just yet,” Marvin replied. “We think that, if Councilman Harring was raising your body for himself, he may have planted some information in you, deep in your subconscious. Something that would be useful to him if he were in possession of your body, and may prove useful to us as well in the fight against him.”
“What do you say?” Gauge asked.
Ethan wished there was someone nearby he could converse with. Someone he could bounce ideas off, like he used to do with Sharpe. Now, he was all alone. There was no one to lean on. He had to trust himself to trust someone else.
“Harmless scans, you say?” he wanted to clarify. The last thing he wanted was to escape possible lobotomy only to have his brain damaged by his rescuers.
“Of course,” Marvin replied. “It’s just a hunch, anyway.”
“Now, dear, our guest here is probably pretty tired,” Betsy said, seemingly to herself. She eyed Ethan. “And hungry.”
“Right, right,” her husband replied through the speaker. “I sometimes forget those kinds of things. Gauge, would you please show Ethan to his quarters? Make sure to bring him as much food and water as he likes, and give him a bath. Tell the others that he’s not to be disturbed until he’s had his rest, understand?”
“You got it, boss,” Gauge said. He looked to the teenager. “You ready to get pampered, pal?”
Ethan simply nodded. There was still that nagging voice in his head that doubted everything around him. He was too tired to listen to it, or any other voices for that matter, however. All he could think about was food.
It will be my first meal, he realized. Ever.
The impact of the thought hit him like a punch in the gut, and he needed a moment before he could continue with Gauge to the makeshift quarters they put together for him.
His first day awake in the real world was far from how he pictured it.
Outside
A month flew by, which Tera spent in relative solitude. They had confiscated her old
