Gus had to hold her back as she flailed in blind fury, attempting to get past him. If it weren’t for his increased stats, she would have knocked old Gus over in her fury.
“Hold on, let’s talk about this,” Gus said as they struggled, and the woman calmed, shocked that he could speak her language. The Nth and Nick were managing his tongue, facial muscles, and vocal cords, and it shocked them both. He was speaking in her language, whatever it was.
It startled the women out of her attack and gave time for Gus to explain that the men were essentially bound and were no threat at the moment. They had to figure out what would be the best way to ensure they received justice for what they had done.
Allowing Gus to gently remove the wrench from her clenched fist, the woman slumped to the sand, sobbing. “The horrible things they taunted us with, and our poor daughters.” She buried her head in her hands and let the fear, emotion, and uncertainty drain from her in the form of tears. Her husband came, knelt on the sand, and held her.
“When you are ready, I can show you to a place where you can get cleaned up,” Gus offered, but the woman shook her head.
“We will clean up here. I’m not going anywhere with anyone, even you!” She practically screamed the last bit, making Gus feel awkward and uncertain.
He put his hands up and backed away. Her husband looked up apologetically as Gus turned to give them some privacy.
He finished lining the men up side by side on the beach and started searching them. He found what must have been the leader, who had the keys to the boat in his pocket on a small keychain with a small orange oval of foam that kind of resembled a stress-reliever. He stared at the little toy, which looked to be a flaming carrot.
It seemed so out of place among these men who, by all appearances, were monsters with no redeeming qualities. But they had their own aspirations and most likely broken dreams and lost opportunities.
I know nothing of their history, I just see the end result and make some knee-jerk judgment on how good they are. They are horrible, for sure. But they’re human. Maybe they could be something more if circumstances were different. Gus reflected on his slow descent from good intentions to going with the flow as life beat him down with disappointment after disappointment.
The hypocrisy of judging others by their actions and himself by his intentions was not lost on him as he looked at the swarthy man lying in the sand before him. He pocketed the key, hoping it would buy him some time to figure out what to do with the men. The family couldn’t leave without the key, and he had no idea of what to do—not yet.
Gus sat down on a dune and looked out at the ocean. The waves rolled in, carelessly beating more and more forcefully upon the shore. He would have to make a decision soon.
The women would probably not take too long to clean up, and Gus was sure the father of the family would want to leave as soon as they were done. There appeared no way to win this situation.
Things were cut and dry with the zombies, but there were negative consequences to every decision that he could think of, and the responsibility weighed on him. As he stared at the rhythmic waves, Gus suddenly smelled the scent of cotton candy as he tasted something sweet and grainy, a pear? Lavender dust appeared to drift on the wind currents in front of his eyes.
“What the hell? Am I having a stro—”
“It’s the hybrid-Nth, trying to communicate with us,” Nick interrupted. Sensations alternated between the feeling of coarse fur rubbing against his back, the hollow *tonk* of a wooden wind chime sounding, and the scent of roasted marshmallows, all combined in ways that meant nothing to Gus.
“Well, since you’ve already jumped in, there may be something I can finagle to help you out. The hybrid-Nth have a proposition for you, Gus. They have offered to have some of their number swap places with the Nth that are embedded throughout your system. This will free up a limited amount of Nth,” Nick said haltingly, struggling to translate.
“Okay, what good would that do me?”
“The Nth could be gifted to the pirates—”
“Why would I ever do that!?” Gus pinched his eyes in disgust.
“Just listen. The gifted Nth would be a very limited amount, but they could enter the men’s systems and work their way to their brains. By stimulating dopamine release, it may be possible to rewire the training these men have had throughout their lives, to get them to choose a better path. These Nth would also need to provide negative reinforcement through nausea and dizziness by stimulating the medulla and vestibular systems.”
“Wa-wa-wait. These Nth are what give me my abilities, right? I don’t know if I want to just give them away to these guys. No way. Besides, isn’t that making the choice for them? I thought Nth weren’t supposed to force people to act a certain way.”
“I see you wrestling with the possibility that something happened to these men so that they do not have the normal social mores. Statistically, they most likely have been abused themselves or neglected enough that they failed to develop empathy and appropriate responses to function in healthy ways. This would provide them a functioning feedback system with which to become useful to society in some way.”
Gus thought about it, and the biggest problem with jails and how society typically dealt with criminals, viewing them as irredeemable. If they could change just that aspect of society, what could come of that? Still, he had his own dreams and ambitions with being a super. Was he being selfish? He knew the manor could fabricate more Nth, so that may not be a problem.
