SILAS

I know this trope. It’s as familiar as it is horrible.

You have to give something to get something. Nothing’s for free. And sometimes the cost is steep. Too steep. But that's just the way things are.

Imagine Star Wars if Obiwan hadn't sacrificed himself on the Death Star. Imagine Spiderman without the canonical death of Uncle Ben. It's pretty hard to, isn't it? If you can do it at all.

That's because life is the same way. It's the Yin and Yang of causality. And if you think that's cruel, consider the times when there is no Yang to the Yin. When there is only bad, and no good to offset it.

Maybe it's reductive, and even dehumanizing, for this to be what's on my mind, right now. But I'm just trying to compartmentalize this. Make sense of it.

I've never been good around blood. And I'm sure I'll never be able to deal with death, not really—if such a thing is even possible. But here I am, staring both in the face. I don't know how else to look at it.

As I survey Sal's condition, my breath catches in my throat, as if a valve in my esophagus has sealed shut.

Blood wells at various points all over her torso, dark blots illuminated by the bike's headlight, dripping through and soaking her shirt.

Bullet wounds.

During the chase, I thought I was just getting lucky. But Sal was the one absorbing all the gunfire from behind.

"Be honest," Sal says, smiling a little at the corner of her mouth. "How bad is it?"

I stare, scanning her wounds. Or at least, the blood I can see from her wounds. Her torso and chest heave from the effort of every breath she takes, as if at any second now she's bound to run out of energy and stop breathing entirely. Every inhale and exhale echoes strangely.

"You're going to be okay." That's a thing you're supposed to say, isn't it? Even if my expression probably says the exact opposite. I can only hope, standing next to her with my back to the bike's headlight, that my face is still cast in shadow.

"No, I'm not," Sal says, her smile turning dark. "But you are. And that's what's important."

"Important..." I say, confused. "What- Look, there's gotta be something we can do. We could go back to the armory, or maybe once we get to that place you were talking about-"

"No," she says, interrupting me. "Don't. We're well beyond that. I don't need an OS to tell me how busted up I am. My systems are failing. I'm leaking out, and I don't think there's a way to stop it. I may have only minutes."

Minutes.

I stare at her, watching the dark fluid drench her clothes, dripping down onto the rocky floor of the cave. I feel a compulsion. A drive to put pressure on these wounds—somehow, though there are so many—and get her back onto the bike, and to ride. To get her help. How and where, I couldn't say. But how can I just stand here while she slowly dies in front of me? How can I-

I get a sudden flash of a memory. Of a body, wet and cold and dead, being lifted out of a river, and laid onto a stretcher.

My mind recoils from the image, closing a curtain on it. A twitch courses throughout my body. A physical reaction to the mental turmoil.

"It's not your fault," she says, reading my body language. "They wanted me dead. But they wanted you alive, Blast. You have something they want."

It is my fault. I didn't react fast enough, and all those unconscious people in the tanks died, unable to defend themselves. The least I could have done was keep Sal safe. And I failed.

There may be something to what she's saying, though. There were bullets flying every which way, and none of them managed to hit me. As if they were trying to capture me unharmed.

Maybe there is something they want from me.

The data transfer.

The attack happened after the signal was received, if what Sal said was true. It's all connected, somehow.

But what does any of it even mean? What could it mean?

"I don't even know who they are," I say.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"They," Sal says, "Are the reason the world is the way it is. And if they get their way, it always will be." She coughs again, covering her mouth. Blood seeps between her clamped fingers. "This is pretty much the worst."

I kneel down, holding her shoulders to keep her from putting so much pressure on her torso.

At some point in the chaos, her hair had come undone. She peers up at me through a tangle of dark strands, scrawled in matted bolts across her face. Her eyes, ringed with irises the color of bright moss, shift back and forth, searching mine.

“You still don’t remember, do you?”

I shake my head.

I have an impulse to tell her there’s nothing to remember. She’s mistaken about me. I’m not just some construct, built and housed in a derelict facility, in a wacked-out timeline where humans seem to have left the world and there’s nothing left but machines. All evidence to the contrary, I am human. All evidence to the contrary, Sal is the one whose memories are wrong.

But this isn’t the time to say such things. If there ever was such a time.

“I’m sorry,” I say. And then, “I wish I did.”

Which is true, in its own way. It’s a shame for her to look at me, expecting a friend, and see only a stranger. It's a shame she has to die alone.

Sal studies my expression. Then, she shakes her head. "No you don't. You still don't understand, yet. And that's okay. Because I know that, even though you know nothing about me in this moment, one day, you will. You're going to figure out what happened. You're going to fix your memory. And it's all going to make sense."

The image of the stretcher on the riverbank starts to reassert itself in my mind, as two EMT's rush to push it up the side of the embankment. A shock of dark brown hair hangs out over the side of the stretcher. That, and a limp, pale hand.

That's when the bile starts to rise, acidy in my throat. But I swallow, pushing it down. I need to keep it together, because maybe there's still something I can do. There has to be.

Not long ago, I watched as cyborgs like her were killed in their sleep. But did I actually believe it, then? It hadn't felt real. It seemed like a dream.

Now, with time, the lens of surreality has begun to wear off, like fog on a windowpane being scrubbed away, leaving me with a view unbearable in its clarity.

There's a girl dying in front of me.

"C'mon," I say. I'm starting to panic. Can she hear that, in my voice? "I don't know what to do, here. You're the one who knows all the rules. Come up with some kind of crazy plan, and I'll do it. I'll get you out of here."

Sal shakes her head again, smiling sadly. "This is just like you. Reality was never good enough. The world was never good enough."

I don't answer. I'm tense, lost in thought.

Do I go against her wishes? Because if I'm going to, now's the time. I should just grab her and go, on the off-chance that-

What? The chance of what?

'Getting help?' Because as far as I know, it's just rock, sand and dirt for miles. I don't even know how to get to the facility she was telling me about.

"Once I'm gone," Sal says, as if reading my thoughts, "Just keep heading north. Something'll jog loose in your memory, eventually. You'll find the way."

"You can't possibly know that."

"No," she admits. "It's a long shot. But it's all you've got. So I know you'll take it. And...I know it'll work. It has to."

Again, I'm at a loss for words. I can't stand the way she's looking at me. Like she sees me as this whole other person. Makes me feel sick all over again.

"I..." I swallow, trying to bring the words together in my mind. "It's not fair, is it? You saved my life, and...then...this..."

"You saved my life first," Sal says. "And plenty of other times, besides."

Right. According to her.

Something runs against my boot. It's the pool of blood running out of her, welling out in a circle on the cave floor.

"Hey," Sal says, bringing my attention back to her. "Don't look at that. Look at me."

The openness and warmth in her face is disarming. Meanwhile, the rest of her body is a rigid, contorted, leaky mess. She's coming apart. Unspooling. But only from the neck down.

I'm not sure where I'm supposed to look. I settle on her cheek, just a bit to the left of her nose. Though my body is still, I'm having trouble getting my mind to stop spinning, to be present in this moment.

"Hey," Sal says. She looks...drained. Her face takes on a pallid cast. Her head slumps to one side as strength leaves her neck and upper body. "Can you promise me something?"

I gulp, and my throat makes an audible click. "I think so."

"Get your memory back. Figure out what happened. And...remember me. Please."

"Okay."

And then things start to get quiet. In visuals as well as sound. In my own thoughts. Everything seems to slow, winding down. From Sal's breathing, to the whistle of the wind in the canyon outside the cave. The fight I feel in my own soul starts to tire and wane—the urge to not just sit here, to do something.

She's too tired to speak anymore. And what do I have to say? So I meet her eyes, and hold them. I watch her, staring until I see her face less as one whole thing and more as a collection of singular anomalies. The curve of her cheeks. The slant of her chin. The wrinkles of consternation on her brow. The way her bright eyes flicker with every blink.

I don't stare out of attraction, or admiration of beauty, though some would likely consider her beautiful. I don't think I would have ever been in love with this person, if we were even friends. I just...I'm trying to take a photograph, I think. I'm trying to see this person, really see her, in her final moments. The way that I one day hope I might be seen, at the end, rather than dying alone—even if it's what I deserve.

The light from the mouth of the cave shifts as the sun moves across the sky. I realize that though Sal's eyes are open, I haven't seen her blink in some time. She's no longer breathing.

I let out a gasp. It was some emergency reserve of strength and will which kept me going as I sat here watching her die, but it leaves me now. I keel forward, catching myself with my palms braced against the rocky floor. Frantic, I pull in breath after breath.

I wish I would just pass out. Let my consciousness, my awareness, be taken away from me. Even better, I wish I could wake up and realize that this is all just some nightmare.

If I'm just someone's synthetic robot creation, why am I so tired? Why am I so debilitated by this?

I crawl toward her body, careless as my fingers, knees, and shins drag through the pool of crimson fluid. In a distant way, I wonder to myself if it's even blood at all, as it doesn't smell like it to me, not to mention it doesn't appear to congeal. But as I collapse next to her, my back against the big rock, those thoughts fade, as well as every other, as my consciousness finally leaves me behind.