Page 7 of Agrippa's Acceptance

“Do you understand, clone?”

“I … I understand Cyborg 321.”

He grew in size. How did he do that? He hissed in her face. “Never call me by a number again.”

She shrank back from him. “Well, what am I supposed to call you then?”

“My name is Amelagar.”

“You chose a Tunrian name?” She’d have thought with his hatred for the clones he would chose something totally alien. “All right, I am sorry Amelagar, I didn’t know.” It galled her to apologise, but the way he’d grown in size reminded her of that day he killed the clone. Although, if he called her a clone again?

He glared at her for a long time. She sat petrified and barely dared to breathe. At last, he stepped back. “I will be back.” He turned on his heel and left.

Hamurabi motioned at the bed she sat on. “You can sleep there. Stay out of my way.”

“I can help.”

His top lip curled. “I will tell you when I need help.” His suspicion hurt, why can’t they accept her? They had a common enemy.

Agrippa suppressed a sigh and sat cross legged on the bed. At least she wasn’t alone anymore. Honestly, she could endure almost anything if she just didn’t have to be alone anymore. It was quite humorous considering how many times she’d wished for a home where she could be alone. The clones had allocated her parents and her brother and sister a one bedroom house. She rubbed her chest. Her heart ache with how much she missed her family. She would never see them again.

***

Amelagar exited the infirmary and then just stood there. She might say she’s not a clone, but when he looked at her, he saw their enemy. The people who’d called him backwards and redundant every day since he came online. He looked around, vaguely uncertain where he’d planned to go.

“Will she give you a soul?” Arakhu asked. His friend leaned against the wall, looking casual and almost human.

He turned. “I do not understand your question?” He’d been called creature and soulless abomination so many times he never considered that he might grow one too.

“You are claiming the natural? Because if you are not—”

Amelagar narrowed his eyes. “She is my natural, I caught her.”

Arakhu rolled his eyes, the way the humans did. “I don’t want your natural. I will claim Elizabeth.”

“You think she will consent to give you a soul?” Balthazar had only said that human females will give them souls. He hadn’t believed it until he saw Balthazar’s grey patch of ryhov start to pulse with moving colors. Would a Tunrian female be able to give him ryhov?

Arakhu straightened away from the wall. “I will do it like Balthazar, I will instruct her to insert my soul into my body.”

Agrippa had to be even better at giving a soul than the human females who did not even have ryhov on their strange skins.

From what Amelagar has seen of claimed females, he doubted ordering one to do anything was possible. But he refrained from saying that to his friend.

“That is how I plan to do it with Elizabeth as well. I will be respectful, but firm. She will give me ryhov,” Arakhu said. Determination in every line of his body.

Nebuchadnezzar joined them. “Are we practicing conversation? I am very proficient at it?”

Arakhu straightened and glared at their second in command. “I am the best at it.”

Amelagar was one of the first cyborgs to practice conversation with Aurora. These two should know he was the best, but he was not going to argue about it. He had bigger problems.

“How can I be sure she can give me a soul?” he asked the other two. Now that there was a possibility of it, the idea would not leave his head.

“Interrogate her.”

Amelagar was tempted to punch Arakhu but Balthazar had forbidden any fighting outside of training. He’d have to wait until he can spar with Arakhu. “I will not hurt a female.”

Arakhu set his jaw at that stubborn angle that meant he would not budge on an opinion. Conversation was difficult when Arakhu was like that. “You don’t have to hurt her. Go into the infirmary and ask her questions.”

---