Page 7 of Repossess My Heart

CeCe stops, the way it often does when it’s calculating risks. The sight of mommy’s blood stands out on the white metal like a neon light in the dark. For a moment I think it’ll unlock the door, so that I can go lay with mommy. My heart stops racing for the first time since CeCe carried her limp, haphazardly covered body up the lift.

“It goes against my core directive to allow you inside. Scenes depicting traumatic loss of life are emotionally damaging, which would cause harm to Reverie. I cannot-“

“CeCe shut down!” I scream, my heart is racing again. My head feels funny on my shoulders and the floor looks so far away.

“Primary user override code?” It responds as that floor that looked so far away jolts up to greet me.

That wasn’t the last time I cried, but a catalyst in the age of tears. An unstoppable torrent of misery and confinement. Seven years of confinement. Of terror and mind-numbing boredom. The age of stories, so many stories.

“The sun shined down on the pink peonies, and they felt grateful for its warmth.” I whisper with a newfound irony, because I don’t feel grateful. I was just given a second chance, an escape… and it only made me feel sick to my stomach. I’m not even sure what I’m meant to feel.

How are you supposed to feel when an assassin yells at you because your eyes aren’t interesting enough for him to kill you? Isn’t that his job? For fuck's sake, why am I embarrassed? What would be the normal response in my situation? Feeling grateful to the person that prolonged your suffering? I don’t. In fact, I hope he’s suffering for it.

I’m not a violent or hateful person… I’m not any kind of person. I’m a shell and this is the least shell-like I’ve felt in years.

My heart picks up speed as I head for the hall, my forehead stopping just inches from the locked metal door. “When they come again, they’ll have no choice. I’m going to be sure of it. I’m sorry nothing worked out the way you wanted it to. That you wasted your life in that brothel for an ungrateful daughter. One that can’t even muster tears. One that desperately wants to throw away the life you fought for.”

My hand drifts to my chest again, tracing the scar the way he did. His breathy voice follows me as I head for the shower, my mind clearing just enough to allow the pain from my calf through. It shouldn’t bother me; I mean, it wouldn’t bother anyone else, I don’t think. I’m sure they’d even be happy about it.

I wasn’t good enough to kill, but he was, and I don’t feel bad, not in the slightest.

Nine

My back aches from hours of being pressed against the metal boning of an ad. A groan slips from my lips as I sit forward, moving for the first time in three hours. It's not an unusual sensation, especially when I slip, but that’s not now. I’m laser focused.

Has it been three hours or six?

Certainly, feels closer to six.

“Live. Breathe. Get better. Be better. Organs.” I mumble along with the woman’s voice that’s liquified my brain on repeat for however many hours I’ve been sitting here.

For fuck's sake, just play a different ad.

My snowy hair falls into my face as I lower my legs to dangle off the edge of the platform. Bright lights and people reduced to blobs dot the ground. Hanging my head lower, I allow my vision to clear, watching the next best things from the roaches of the Down go about their lives from thousands of feet up. Another Repo Man blips into my field of awareness, his com frequency merging with mine. Sending off a quick succession of six barely audible beeps, moments before the platform dips as I quickly dismiss the picture displayed by my implant.

“Where the hell have you been? Not like you to miss an upload.” Six remarks, already fishing for information we both know I have no interest in sharing, “And with that mug of yours out.”

“Got caught up at work.”

He sits down again, making the platform shift again. Blurring my temporal tech's blue lined layout of the small pod apartment. Six raddles on about a few more things, but I’ve pulled the hazy layout supplied by my drone full view again, blocking out anything else. She’s still there pacing around the way she has for an hour now; in thirty minutes, her shift starts. The fact that she didn’t run… excites me. Makes me want to bleed the fucking gall straight from her beautiful soon to be corpse. My thoughts drift to dangerous places for the billionth time since she gored me on that rooftop. How it would feel to force tears into those hollow eyes, how she’d scream as I jerked her up and down on my cock. Whether it’s from pleasure or pain, it doesn’t matter much in the end. Maybe I’ll do it again after I gut her. Never really was my thing, but it’s not a terrible fuck as long as they’re still warm enough. Many Repo Men take advantage both before and after their collections. That begs the question…

What if I hadn’t survived, if they had sent another?Would they have taken her at the very end? Wasted such beautiful umber-colored eyes?

The gears in my arm tighten, the sound of groaning metal pulling me back to Six and far away from bizarre unwarranted thoughts. Thoughts that have never phased me before.

Am I… phased?

No. She’s just slightly more interesting than the rest. It’s the eyes… the wrongness of them.

“Never seen you canvas a fucking pod for… going on a full cycle now.”

Closer to eight hours then.

“Did you need something, Six?” I ask absently, tuning him out again before he can answer as I narrow my tech in on the still signature in the back room of the pod. One that hasn’t moved in all the time I’ve been here.

Full of surprises, aren’t you sweetling?

“…. want her. They’re pissed, man.”

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