Alistair walked outside into the pitch-black night, with people moving all around him. Air transports flew above, landing at different levels of the buildings that nearly scraped the lower levels of the atmosphere. "This is a city that doesn't sleep," he said.
The AllMother gave her sly smile but said nothing.
They walked toward the hotel, Obs sticking close to the AllMother.
"He was an arrogant bastard," Alistair said to no one in particular, thinking about what the man had said.
The AllMother gave a little shrug. "He's an android. Love doesn't exist for him. Love is knowledge."
Alistair looked at her with wide eyes. "Wait, that man we talked to wasn't a man?"
She shook her head without looking at him. "Nope. He was another one of those creations we saw outside. Maybe there is a real nameless one somewhere, a human nameless one, but I doubt it. I think a very long time ago, that creature got a bit more information than his creator and took his place."
The Written History of the Great Insurrection
My imprisonment taught me certain things, and I think it is valuable to put that information in here. This isn't necessarily about the Insurrection, but about people.
My captors brutalized me, and I use the plural for a simple reason. Only one tortured me, but the other two let it happen. They didn't stop it, not until the severity grew too bad for even them to countenance.
All this time later, it makes me wonder who is actually good and what the word even means. I was changed by my torture, and not in a way that tends toward the universe's arc of good.
The people who kept me captive while Pro searched for me? I wouldn't consider any of them good, either. However, only one was evil. I don't know what the others were, Ares and Veena. They considered themselves honorable and looked down on Hel for her sadistic acts, yet the acts continued.
Mankind is capable of feats that make the heart sore and actions that make the soul want to quit existing.
You're going to see some of those acts in the next few chapters I write because you must understand that both sides of this Insurrection were capable of almost unfathomable evil. What happened to me, I did unto others.
In some ways, what happened to me allowed our Insurrection to rise as high as it did because, without my becoming cruel, we wouldn't have had what it took to kill as many as we did.
Even now, I don't know if I'm sorry for what I've done because of what was done to me.
Chapter Twelve
“Hel’s value to the Commonwealth is in her uncommon ability to mete out pain that most people didn’t know existed.”
—Alexander de Finita, Current Imperial Ascendant
Thoreaux wanted death. When he was alone, he prayed to the gods for it. The idea of prayer was primitive, something from mankind's earliest days. The gods, wherever they existed, did not interfere with the universe, if they even knew about it any longer. Yet in his desperate pain, Thoreaux forgot the logic of his choices, and he prayed to die.
His ear was missing, and only a basic salve rested on it. Those holding him hadn't even bothered covering it with a patch to keep insects and dirt from getting stuck in the blood and salve. His nose was crooked across his face, and breathing out of it was impossible. One eye was swollen shut, and the other only barely open.
He lay in a room of complete darkness; the only comfort they'd given him was a mattress to sleep on. He was curled up on it, praying for death and hoping no one came into his room.
Someone knocked on the door, though, and it was a cruel joke—as if there was any privacy for Thoreaux. He tried not to whimper as the door opened because he knew who it was. Anyone else would have simply walked in, but Hel liked her mind games almost as much as her physical ones.
Light swept partway across the room as the woman walked in. Thoreaux had no idea how long ago they'd arrived, only that the woman's face appeared to have been fixed. Even that was hard to say for certain, given his lack of vision.
"Time to wake up, sweetheart," she said, the smile on her face beaming through her voice.
"No more," Thoreaux said. "Please, no more."
"Oh, there's always more. There will be more until you are no more, but by then, I should have your fearless leader." He heard her approach his mattress and tried to push himself back against the wall to get away from her, but it was futile. She grabbed him by his greasy hair and dragged him off the mattress and out the door. The light hurt his eyes, and he tried to shield himself from it, but Hel tossed him out of the room.
He hit the cement floor face-first, and his injured ear exploded with new pain. It felt like a bomb had gone off on the side of his head and all he could do was curl into a ball. He shut his eyes and felt his head growing woozy. The pain was about to take him under.
He felt something stab his neck, and seconds later, he roared back to life. He knew what’d been done; Hel had jabbed him with a stimpack. She wasn't going to let him escape into unconsciousness.
"Get up against the wall, Thoreaux," she demanded. "Stop sniveling like a child."
He knew what she wanted because she'd made him do this before. He obeyed even as he protested, begging for her to stop. He pushed himself up against the wall, seated with his legs splayed out in front of him. He kept his hand over his ear, careful not to touch it, and he averted his eyes.
She squatted in front of him, her tiny knife in her right hand. "Have I told you why I'm doing
