Ouroboros

Corporate Shadows by Badbrushart

Bit of an odd feeling, staring into the slime and seeing a version of you who doesn’t know who they are yet. Only four left now though, drifting in the ooze until someone pulls ’em out and tops ’em up.

There’s so much green and blue in here the red bar on my tablet looks a bit garish, the little coded lines sweeping across the screen as my replacement soaks up all my knowledge like a sponge. Wonder what she’ll do with all. Go after the Organisation, probably. Maybe stop by Breakers and drink a little first though, I got some good memories of that place.

Her fingers start twitching against the medbed, lookin’ to grab hold of something. Won’t be long now.

I should probably clean up the mess on the floor, dead body and a puddle of insides ain’t a great way to start your first day, but I get the feeling that if I bend down right now I’ll keel over. Then there’d be two bodies and a puddle of insides.

Should work out what to say to her anyway. Not ‘You’ll figure it out’. Like big sis said to me, ‘cos that was bullshit. There wasn’t anything to figure out, she’d given me all of it. The whole damned thing, from that first time she’d blinked and found herself here, to the last. When that big old guard had driven a knife right between her ribs and twisted. God damn. Who wants that kinda memory?

I’m being a little more generous, guess I’m nice like that. She’s getting the important bits. Who we are and how we were made, why we keep dropping and picking the next one up – all that. But none of the shitty parts. Not like how Tanner went ahead and sold me out and I had to shoot him. Nothing about that little kid Carly and her ice cream obsession, having to send her out of a transport so she wouldn’t wind up some night worker on the docks. And I’m keeping the fact that IceBreakers give you a hell of a hangover under my helmet too.

Some things you should get to figure out for yourself, you know?

Yeah, I shouldn’t be here at all. Not to just mumble some random platitude and drop in front of her…

The red blinks and fades out, deleting itself like I told it to, so I squeeze the screen of the tablet until it cracks then set it aside. She’ll come to in a couple of minutes, so I unhook her, pat her arm and wheeze my way over to the gravlift. My last words would have been shit ones anyway. I punch a button and get taken away, out of the labs and back into the night.

I’ll be just another shell in the alley above us by the time she makes it up there, with any luck. And she’s gonna need plenty of that.