[fiction] [original] untitled part 2/?

[pielcanela]

edited the end of the last chapter a bit to suit this one.



Ben delivered his review of the security layout in the bulletproof limo. There was no one to listen except the bio and his primary handler, a small middle-aged man known by the name Preminger.

Preminger was not a likeable person. Which led Ben to wonder exactly how much human compassion was required to handle a bio. Looking at Preminger, he imagined it wasn't much.

To the best of Ben's knowledge, all handlers were scientists in some form - medical doctors, genetic engineers, nutritionists, psychiatrists. They were observers as much as they were controllers. Preminger did not say which one he was. Perhaps he was aware it was not vital information - or perhaps he was already earning comfortably and could afford to be a snob.

Preminger merely listened and nodded, regarding Ben (and everything else) with a condescending smile on his face. When he deigned to speak, he did so with a high-pitched, lilting tone that sounded comical to Ben. It was the tone of someone who took himself way too seriously, Ben was aware. And it was Ben's job not to laugh at him for it.

It seemed he was only too happy to dismiss Ben's concerns. He yawned openly a few times during the discussion, and even said "It's all up to you," at one point. "After all, that's what we're paying you for, isn't it?" Ben decided not to answer. He'd had worse from other clients, and with more uncalled-for spite.

All throughout, Tommy - no, Tom now - stared straight at him. Ben was unnerved at first; the stare unsettled Ben enough to not make him delve into it further.

- and this was a mistake, he knew, because he had already learned the hard way to spot risk factors in his clients themselves. One should always look into the client's eyes.

The big difference was, this was a bio. Bred to be attractive, to be unsettling. This set him apart from all the lowlives Ben was able to ignore in the name of professionalism, the artificially pretty people who had the money to stand out.

"Magnetic" seemed like an understatement. In Tom's doll-like stillness, he commanded attention. Ben could not be sure if he was even listening, because he seemed to take visual cues from Ben's body language to nod slightly or utter an impassive "Yes" at just the right times. His hands rested on his knees, his shoulders did not square or slouch, there was all about him an air of natural repose.

Not an unconscious flaw, not a hair or a gesture out of place.

What sort of risk would all of this entail?

"It's true my people and I'll be watching your back," Ben muttered, careful to keep his voice low, "but it's important that you understand the things we may have to do, in case an emergency happens. To spare you some... ill feelings, and the like."

This triggered a smirk.

"I see you haven't done your homework, Mr. Harald," Preminger said with a touch of gloating. It would seem that spotting flaws in every new person he came across was a hobby. "You don't need to worry about that at all - I mean the 'ill feelings,' or whatever you call it."

"What's that mean?" Ben challenged. He only remembered to sound deferential at the very last syllable.

"Bios don't feel." The words were spoken slowly, carefully, so that each one came out razor-sharp. "That is perhaps the one thing that makes them more marketable than many other human beings on the planet. They don't feel by themselves - they have to be told to do it. Isn't that right, Tom?"

"Yes," Tom replied impassively, as he did with everything Ben had said thus far.

"Oh no," Preminger said cloyingly, as if speaking to an errant child. "You spoke too quickly. You should be sorry, Tom. Aren't you sorry?"

Tom's expression changed abruptly, noticeably, though the change was subtle. By only a few degrees, the perfect face shifted from calm to distress.

Ben found himself mortified. Just a second ago, the bio was untouchable. With just a few words from his handler, he was knocked off whatever pedestal he had been on, and ground under a cold human heel. Tom's lower lip shook as he looked at his handler, an apology reluctantly forming. His back muscles tensed. The fingers of his hands curled slightly on his knees.

Finally he settled for turning his remorseful gaze at his shoes, saying nothing.

Ben recognized it for what it was: the "command prompt." The one forbidden thing.

He remembered it from when Tom was little. At the time, bios were still new, and handling was a science that was far from perfect. That was why absolute care was necessary. Leaving verbal emotional triggers, or "command prompts," to handlers was the one cardinal rule.

It chilled Ben to think that a group of individuals somewhere in his vicinity had fine-tuned it already, and wielded their power without fear. He couldn't keep from remarking, "I thought you weren't supposed to do that..."

"You aren't supposed to do that," Preminger sharply corrected. "We're specialists. We know how far we can go, how to prevent any lasting damage... and if malfunctions occur, we know how to fix them."

Malfunctions. Ben realized only now that it felt right to talk of bios like they were robots... but it was different hearing it from someone else, and in that blatantly superior tone.

Ben decided that there was no reason to like Preminger in the least.

Preminger patted Tom's head, but with a force that seemed to be just slightly less than friendly. Tom winced under his touch and looked at him, his eyes wide and pleading like a helpless child's.

"It's all right," he said to Tom, again in that cloying tone, which Ben felt was certainly part of the whole act. "You didn't mean it, Tom. I forgive you. As you were, now."

Tom's lips trembled again. The apology still wouldn't come out right. But "As you were" was the cue for him to shift back to calm.

Then it was as if nothing had happened. Hands on his knees, shoulders not squared and not slouching. Ben caught himself staring, until Tom had taken the necessary handful of seconds he needed to compose himself, and look Ben in the eyes again. Then Ben had to look away first.

"Anyway, you wouldn't be able to do it," Preminger declared, finishing with a few more pats on Tom's head. "Only a handler can. And that is what makes us more marketable than any bio on the planet."



When they reached their destination, a large general hospital in the heart of the city, Ben kept himself occupied with his duties, and at a safe distance from Tom. "Safe" in this case meant outside of Tom's line of sight. This was easy enough, since Tom was also engaged.

His eyes roved the white walls. He stopped walking and stood still, listening, whenever a sound caught his attention - such as muffled crying from one of the wards, doctors whispering instructions to orderlies, or wheels from a gurney creaking as it rushed past. Ben recognized the signs of alertness, all senses on full, though there was no sign of fear or anticipation.

And Preminger, Ben, and the bodyguards on Andy's payroll, moved along only at Tom's pace. Preminger stayed oddly silent and grim during this leg of the excursion, not hurrying Tom along or harrassing him. Instead he glared at everyone in the hospital who dared approach the barrier formed by the bodyguards - almost as watchful as the security staff themselves.

It was made clear to Ben when he took the job that the mission objective was to allow Tom to safely observe. To give him as much time as he needed to look around the hospital.

What for? Why, for research.

Of course, Ben was not told this. Ben did not need to be told this.

He had done this before.

A room had been especially cleared for Tom's use. Ben led the retinue to this area, then stepped out to secure it. When he came back in a moment later, he took his seat by the door.

From there he could see everything: Tom, Preminger and the bodyguards on their seats by the glass wall, and the scene on the other side of the wall: a small hospital room. There was a bed in the middle of that room, on which was a man.

The man was elderly - dying sooner of some cruel disease than of old age. He was emaciated, barely breathing, hooked up to a small machine that gave him everything he needed to stay alive for a few moments longer.

One of Tom's younger bodyguards whispered an inquiry to his colleague, perhaps to ask what the man was dying of. She shushed him, which was a good thing to do, as they were tasked to minimize interference at this phase of the mission. If the young bodyguard had tried to speak again, Ben would have strode over, picked him up by the collar, and thrown him out of the room himself.

Tom sat on his chair, perfectly still but leaning forward, more alert than usual. He was staring intently at the man on the bed. Ben imagined that Preminger had given another command prompt, one that disallowed him from focusing on anything other than what was going on in that room.

When Tommy was little, Ben remembered, a handler had said something, too. What was it?

...But Ben didn't want to dwell on the entire issue. In fact, he wanted to put the incident in the limo out of his mind, along with anything that might remind him of it.

It seemed to be forever that Tom sat watching the man on the bed. Ben took to asking himself, was he going to play a dying person? Was that it?

At one point, other people entered the room, and then Tom sat up straight. His eyes went wide. From where Ben sat he saw Tom's gaze dart from one person to another.

The door had been opened by a doctor, appropriately slow-moving and solemn. The ones who entered were a young man, and an older woman, whom Ben presumed was the youth's mother. She rushed to the dying man's bedside, and the young man followed.

They knelt side by side by the bed. The woman took the old man's hand and pressed the back of it against her cheek. Together the two of them fought back tears.

The young man was about Tom's age. He was, of course, ganglier, less attractive and more expressive - in other words, far more human. He held the woman's shoulders while they shook. He seemed determined not to be the one to cry first.

Ben knew that the people in that hospital room were not told that they were going to be observed. This was to ensure that their reactions were going to be completely natural. The large glass panel between the two rooms was disguised as a wall by a fiber-optic pattern on the side of the patient and his visitors. There was no way for them to see or hear anything going on in the other side, but they had no inkling of the presence of an "other side" all the same.

Ben lauded this development. In the past, there were no glass walls. He did not know yet what was going to take place, but he had already decided this was kinder.

Tom was watching the people in the room more intently now.

The young man spoke, finally. They heard it clearly through the disguised glass, as if no divider existed:

"Grandpa, don't go."

Tom said something under his breath, too weak for Ben to hear from where he sat.

"Grandpa," the young man said more insistently, reaching up to touch the dying man's hair. "Grandpa..."

"Grandpa," Tom echoed.

Ben fought a shudder. It was Tom's voice, but the intonation was the young man's, the accent.

Eyes fixed on the boy, Tom left his seat. He walked forward slowly, until his nose almost touched the glass.

Some of the bodyguards stood, alarmed, but Ben motioned for them to stay in place. Everything was fine. This was to be expected.

Preminger did not even acknowledge this gesture. The young man's eyes were fixed on his grandfather's face; Tom's were fixed on the young man's face; Preminger's was fixed on Tom's.

It was like watching a sleepwalker. Ben could understand if one or two of the bodyguards had thought Tom was going to walk straight into the glass, injuring himself and botching the mission. But Tom knew when to stop. He just had to get as close as he could to the subjects he was observing.

Tom's back was straight. He was hardly blinking. He was so still Ben could not even tell if he was even breathing. But, unlike the less experienced bodyguards, he consciously avoided staring.

"Don't leave us," the young man begged the unresponsive body.

"Don't leave." Tom's voice, deeper than the young man's, nonetheless echoed the emotions trapped inside the words.

The tips of his long, slender fingers touched the glass. Just barely.

"You were going to teach me how to fix airplanes." The young man's voice started to break. Pain tore through him and he was too young to know how to hold it back. "I was going to introduce you to the girl I liked. There's still a lot of things we got to do, Grandpa. Don't go, Grandpa!"

"Grandpa," Tom said, and his voice broke, too. His hand formed into a fist. It shook against the glass. "Don't go..."

The young man was at his limit. He started to hunch, and sounds of his grief took over the room. His mother could not help but cry as well, but her soft weeping was drowned out by the boy's words, garbled by sorrow.

It was already hard enough to watch and listen to.

The difficulty was doubled with Tom in the room.

Ben had not seen this happen, and he found himself being morbidly fascinated. This was not how it had gone on when Tom was little. It had been nothing like this.

Tom was suddenly a wreck. Like the young man on the other side of the glass wall, and his mother, he was sobbing and trembling, tears pouring out of his eyes and snot trickling down his nose, staining his pristine shirt. Still he kept his eyes on the family, still he mirrored their pain. He babbled when they babbled, screamed when they screamed, dealing out their sorrow measure for measure.

He was the young man, and the mother, both. He was losing his father, and his grandfather. He was never to be taught how to fix airplanes, never to introduce the girl he liked, never to be able to say exactly how much he loved, how sorry he was he couldn't do enough, how sorry he was, how sorry.

As compelling as the scene beyond the glass wall was, everyone's gazes were drawn to Tom, like moths to a flame. One of the bodyguards, the young one who couldn't keep his mouth shut, stared open-mouthed, like someone being shaken to the core by a stellar acting performance.

Which was exactly the point.

One of the bodyguards rose from her seat, clearly intending to comfort Tom. Preminger snapped at her to "Leave him alone!" and Ben seconded the command with a nod of his head. She reluctantly sat down again, but looked thoroughly miserable.

In the family's presence, the old man's life support was turned off. Quietly, with only a long sigh, his suffering ended. The family's wailing grew louder, and Tom's did, as well.

Soon enough, orderlies entered the room and started to take the body away. As the corpse and the family left, Tom crumpled to the floor. After so long of crying so intensely, all the strength finally fled his legs.

There was no beauty in him now, no grace... but it was still impossible to look away. The sounds of his pain filled the room. Ben spotted one of the bodyguards discreetly wiping away a tear. Taking a moment to laugh at it privately gave him a reprieve from the tightness in his own chest.

Preminger let Tom whimper for a moment longer. Then he said in his sugary, condescending voice, "That's enough, now."

The crying stopped.

The room became deathly silent, waiting. Then, slowly, Tom got to his feet.

Preminger took out a handkerchief from his coat pocket and stood so he could hand it to Tom. Tom accepted it without a word. He started to wipe his face with it. Everyone could still hear his breathing, a bit labored as he returned to calm.

By the time he had returned the handkerchief, mere moments later, there was no sign at all that he had been crying. His eyes were not even red. There were still moisture and mucus stains on his shirt that could not be simply wiped away, but in the face of such a feat, they were negligible.

"Mr. Harald," Preminger said without looking at Ben, "I think it's time we headed to our next location."

Ben's impulse was to disagree. The boy's all spent, he wanted to argue, give him a rest.

But he met "the boy's" eyes again, and there was no trace of tiredness, not a single echo of sorrow left. He stood straight and tall and elegant as always.

(Bios don't feel.)

Almost like a soldier ready for battle. Ben had certainly seen his share of that. And he certainly knew how to respect it.

So, instead of wasting time, he opened the door.