>> Toys In The Attic

The shower's heat buffets me in a scalding roar, but I feel barely any of it within my armour. Cocooned as I am. But I wash off my hands, my feet. Scrubbing the crannies and dings to get rid of the blood. Midway, I hop from the desecrated shower and pat down my armour with a mostly-clean towel. Leaves of metal and plastic unfolding from my body as I hit the release. Gold circuits glimmer, like oil, on my slick underlay as I step out of the legs. Grenades and tool-packs arranging themselves around the edges as they fold down into a tight block.

I step back inside, and yelp. The fiery water burning though my skull. My face. Sheering from the rubbery shell of my skintight suit as I scrub it down with soap. Thankful the ancient filters and pumping machines still labour deep beneath The City, maintained by things humanity has long forgot.

I dry off again, and collect my suit. My guns. And....

....with some hesitation....

....the dataStick.

Light shimmers in its inky surface. The etched-in eyes of Moon filled with a perverse and mocking flicker. As if they’re alive. As if the monster sees through them.

My lips tighten, and I grip it hard enough to hurt. Staring at the monster graven into its surface.

There will come a day.

And an hour.

And a moment….

I exit the bathroom. Dumping my stuff by the couch, and ducking a giggly red monster. “Spoookiess!!! Me’sss bordsss! Needsss play-playssss!!!”

“Not now squirt!” I yelp, dodging the rebound.

“Butsss me play-playsssss!!” She trills again - a happy lil lump of mischief, sailing right over my head. "Me'sss wanna-wanna goesss outss bitingsss!!!"

"Bitings??" I wince. "Y'mean like.... random people?" Tiny, adorable, little nods. "Uh, yeah, lemmie think about that!" I yelp, darting up the iron-railed staircase on all fours. Wet fingers and feet slipping and sticking on old wrappers as I punt stuff off the side to distract our tiny terror.

Up here, the ‘carnage’ is less severe - thanks to gravity. But that don’t mean it’s tidy. Old pop cans litter everything - especially the fine ‘wooden’ table, overlooking the devastation below. Cushions and chairs tossed this way and that. Pillows and duvets scattered, wildly, and in various states of destruction. I hop round it all to confront the two little ovoid bedrooms cupping Zipper’s gaming den.

A hallowed hall he calls ‘The Nest’, and we call ‘The Beanbag Horder Zone’.

The nearest bedroom is Badger’s, and the less said about mad cackling the better. I won’t be going in there without a full Hazmat team, a bomb squad, and an exorcist.

The row of fire extinguishers beside it are not a decoration.

But, if anything, the furthest bedroom is even more disturbing. And strange.

I slip open the door, and step into an empty void of immaculate carpet and perfectly clean walls. Not just wiped clean, but clinically sterilised. As if every germ and speck of dirt was personally, and individually, eliminated with the precision of an assassin.

There is no junk at all. Nothing.

No garbage. No chaos. No objects, even.

Just a pale stretch of blank carpet, and a bed. Its sheets crisp, and perfect, and utterly flat. The single, pale, occupant laid out like a vampire’s corpse. Almost totally obscured by the storm of vScreens shimmering around his head in a whirl of glitching madness. A storm archaic film reels, hacked emails, and broken websites dredged from ancient and forgotten servers - down, down, deep in the ruins. All of it blurred together into a singular insanity of distortion and chaos.

No. Not a chaos.

There’s an order to it. A precision.

In it, I see flickers of words. Of old headlines, and hints, and whispers of long-ago panic. Hints of "Quarantine" and "Police" and "Shutdown". Of people saying "it's nothing" or "It'll be contained". All sewn together by a dark thread of mind-mangling narrative that urges you, hungrily, to unpick it. To pull the truth of what happened free from the morass of chaos and guesswork and panic and fiction. Welding a twisted thread of reality from the scraps and noise.

And the more you look at it, the more you want to-

“Polybius.” Whispers a boyish voice loaded with alien, almost academic, sophistication. “Timeline four, at position 78. Do insert the following items-”

“Hey….?”

“-then timeline two, at position-”

I give the nearest leg a sturdy claw-poke, but he never yelps. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all!” I grin. Electing a tired little sigh of resignation as the screens compact to a small square of virtual light, and vanish. Revealing a boy too beautiful to be real. Like a thing from a dream. A movie. A painting. But, above all....

...like a thing.

A not-human thing.

With the large, copper-gold, eyes of a boy of eleven. Or maybe twelve. With skin of cream, and silk, so flawlessly perfect it's outright ethereal. Otherworldly. Dusted, only, by artful brown freckles and precisely placed dimples. Then tousled all about by the ruffled, russet, strands of a highly elegant ponytail - tied up in an actual ribbon. Its shimmering threads splayed out on the sheets, as if this boy-doll was carefully posed there.

Which it no-doubt was.

Because some people look like they were ordered from a catalogue.... but he actually was.

The bio-engineered thing in the bed stares up at me with shyly blinking eyes. Shifting his legs, to sit on the edge. As if he were caught being bad. And, slowly, like a knife through paper.... I begin to see the shy, shrinking, person behind the eerily airbrushed image.

image [https://images2.imgbox.com/83/55/Ko0toPgS_o.png]

“Ah. Apologies. I was conducting a little research.” He says in that same, strangely cultured, tone that doesn't fit his face. The kind children only get if they've been trained and moulded to speak that way.

'Or', a little voice whispers, 'if they had the "Your Perfect Son (Type 6)" personality uploaded into their perfect, synthetic-organic, brain....'

“Right. Sure. No worries. That's cool, I guess...." I stutter out, to cover. "Hey, y'seen that old laptop?” I peer under the bed, and almost recoil at the horrifying sight. "Damn. No wrappers.... No cans..... No mouldy anythin'...! No dust even! It’s bloody unnatural, in here!” I hesitate, then raise my head. “You need t’mess this place up a bit. Y'know? Chuck some knickers about.”

“I see.” He says, after a moment. 'Messy Kid' being an unpopular personality module.

A noise behind me. “Hey? Laptop? Whatcha want with that?” Kami says from the door, eyes quivering with restless energy.

I roll out from under the bed. “I gotta jam my thing in it.” I declare, waving the dataStick at her.

“Your thing, huh?” She smirks. “What’s wrong with your implant?”

I blink, sitting up. Sharply. “What.” I look at the stick. Then at her. “It’s from Moon.” No reaction. “It’s Moon’s dataStick. You literally just…..”

She laughs a bit, weirdly cheery. Well, for Kami at least. “I guess that makes sense!”

“Okaaay.” I glance back at the synthetic organism on the bed, who frowns. Perfectly. As if observing a world that only happens to other people. “Well..... Look, d’ya know where it is or what? Cause it ain’t in here.... And neither is anythin’ else.”

“I’ve been using it as a coaster.” She smirks, as if it were obvious. “It’s not good for much else.”

I jump myself up, and waggle a hand at her. “Alright then! Gimme! I need a secure way to contain this-”

She snags the drive, with an actual giggle. “Nah, I’ll do it! You’ll only muck it up!”

I snatch it back, and scoff. “Laptop.”

Kami’s teeth glitter. “Whatever you say, boss!" Her eyes shift, and she laughs uproariously. "Try not to share it with any creepy pretend-people! Specially not the lazy ones who won’t even train with us!”

I don’t even glance at the bed. “….deal?”

She tilts her eyes, sticks out her tongue, and rudely gestures her way out. Leaving confusion and surprise in her wake. As well as a nice, wide, inviting door.

Stolen story; please report.

Which is obligingly filled by a small round brown face covered in cupcake sprinkles, glitter, and probably semtex. Which no doubt came from him mixing said sprinkles, glitter, and semtex into some kind of exploding-

“SPOOK! Um, hey, uhhh…. Hahaha! Could I-”

“In a minute, Badge!” I grumble, lumping back towards Theo. "And I better not find you've bloody boobytrapped the food!"

"YEEEP!" He jumps, darting back out the door.

I sigh. Turning to sit, awkwardly, on the corner of his bed. “Look.... I ain't great with this stuff. And I know it’s rough here with-” I jerk my head back at the door. “-but, look, things ain't ever gonna go well with the team if ya hide up in here...."

“Undoubtedly.” The boy says, sliding his thin legs away. “However; my research is important..... and....” He droops, generally. "...I feel that they see me as a...."

"Guy who hides in a box cause he's up to somethin'?" I say, very quickly.

The breath drains out of him in a voiceless sigh, and his eyes turn away.

"Look.... It ain't-"

But he raises a refined hand. "Please.... don't. I'm well aware that Zipper and Demon believe I am 'The Traitor'."

"Total bleedin' nonsense." I retort. "They only said that to stop Kami murdering Tufty."

"I find....." He trembles, quietly. "...that quite revealing."

"Yeah...." I look away. "I guess."

"Do you recall his words to you?" The thing's voice shifts to mimic Zipper, perfectly. "Aristo kids, mate. They'll, like, sell you up the street for a lollypop. Right?"

"Fu- You- You sounded-" I lean back.

"Quite so." He whispers, in his own true voice. "You know what I am, after all."

Words like 'doll' slither their treacherous way through my mind.

"One of us." I state, cold and calm.

"I will betray you." He says, softly. Regarding me with those same shy, yet placid, eyes. "I am a liability, by design."

"You-"

"Please, don't fall into that folly." He whispers, raising those boy-pianist fingers once more. The words at odds with his childish-sweet tone. His doe-eyed face. "My kind were sculpted to be perfect, living, playthings." No ire. No anger. Nothing. "And, we all know, The 'Perfect Child' is quite agreeable to adults. To parents, especially."

I swallow. "Theo."

"We do what we are told." His face turns to mine, and all the emotions are wrong. As if he were telling me about his day at school, or a movie, or his favourite thing. "Whatever the parent.... or master.... desires, that is what I am." He never chokes, nor sobs. But there's something- "Ageless. Undying. Alive, and yet not. Eternal child. Puppet. Pet. And a good deal more." His fingers bite knees, as the warm façade cracks. "For as long.... as I am required."

"But-" My voice stumbles.

"I cannot help it. I cannot turn it off. And.... you cannot...." He smiles, sweetly. "I informed you.... I told you, right from the beginning that you cannot ever begin to trust me. Nor I, myself." He allows himself to fall back, onto the bed. "My fondest, deepest, desire.... is to please the owner I no longer have. Which makes me little more than a lost toy. One that anyone may steal and imprint."

"Own yourself!" I snap.

His head turns. "How may I do that?" He can't even beg. "How may I overcome that which I was made to be?"

"I....."

His head shakes. "I will follow you as far as I can. But you must know....." The boy-thing smiles, gently, peeping at me over the bed. "Adults outrank teenagers.... and I will want to do as they say. Exactly as they say. I can no more disobey them than I can chop off my hands." His eyes remain bright and clear he stares at me. "So I will betray you, one of these days, my friend. Without even a thought. And it will not be my choice, nor yours." Perfect fingers touch his perfect face. "They may order me to forget, until the moment I must shoot you in the back. And how would you, or I, even know?"

"Jesus." I breathe. And I thought I was dysfunctional....

"So.... now you see why I must isolate myself?" He whispers. "Why I can do more good, in here, when I do not know what you are doing? Where I cannot be ordered to act against this group?" His head shakes. "I am sorry. I tried to warn you.... before the escape..... but...." An almost imperceptible shiver. "I will be your undoing."

My ears snap flat, and I snarl. Fighting the urge to grip him, and to not. "I don't bloody accept that!" I snap. "I can't."

The perfect smile dims. "Reality is what reality is. No matter the dreams of fools."

My hand snaps to grab his chin, but my other grips it. "No." I shake my head. "The School said we were theirs as well." I stab a claw at his nose, and he barely shies back. "But I'll be DAMNED if I'm owned! If I'm bought and sold! Or if you are!" I shake the claw. "So deal with it! You're more than some bio-sculpted.... thing! Own yourself!"

"If you say...." He shrivels in on himself, and hugs his hand to his chest. "I... I don't know....." He starts to shake. True tears failing to so much as threaten the edges of his placid, cheerful, eyes. "I.... I am told to be Real. And I would so very like to be..... But, even now, I cannot tell if that is merely because I have been told to be." His whole body stiffens, then relaxes. "And. Even were you a parent, or a master, I do not know if I could obey....."

Zooming outta nowhere - like a tiny, mucky, angel, streaming snot and tears and all sorts - Badger throws himself toward the germaphobe. "Spook can't hug you, but I can!" He cheers, happily. "And you're TOTALLY real!"

"Not helping, squirt." I block his sudden charge with a foot.

"Real." Theo shudders again. Eyes closed. His expression never once crossing a line that might be inconvenient to adults in public. That might embarrass them. Might force them to console, or nurture, a product built purely for show. "I wish to be Real. A real boy. Yet I am so afraid I am not.... and the terror burns inside me. It hurts."

"Cause you're real." I tell him, with a smirk. Foot still planted on Badger. "Look...." A swallow. "I ain't exactly.... not a paranoid bastard." I wince, then snort. "Because ya gotta be, right? To survive at Tanky School? But….” I draw a long breath. "You were bleedin' there with us. Through it. And you made that goddamned escape happen, no matter what anyone bloody thinks." I turn to him, and almost rap him on the chest. "You are not a goddamned toy. Or a puppet. Or a bloody pet. You're a... a you. Understood?"

"Perhaps." His eyes bore, politely, into mine. Like The City’s mildest power-drill. "It would mean so much to me, if.... if I could be.... a person."

"You are!" Badger insists again, hopping about and trying to dodge me. Pure of spirit, if literally nothing else.

"Yep." I grin. "Which means you're outvoted."

"I suppose." A small, wan, smile. Inoffensive, like him.

"But." I add. "Bein' one of us means bein' one of us. So. Let's talk about how we're gonna get your jammy ass downstairs." I raise a hand to cut him off, though he says nothing at all. "We even got food now, and it's perfectly sterile. So lets go stuff a few sweets in ya gob! Alright?" My hand twitches, as if itching to slap his back in a reassuring way. "C'mon! They'll put a bit of…. chest…. on your chest?"

His lip quirks. "I will.... pass. Thank you. This.... this is already too much interaction. And I will need to decontaminate myself. And the room." That shudder, again. "Polybius tells me.... my phobia is an attempt to manufacture a world I can control. Because I know.... that I can control nothing else." He gestures to the cold, empty, walls. "But for this false and barren womb."

“Yeah…. Well. I dunno about that.....” I scritch my ear, fretfully. "Lot of Aristos are.... obsessed."

"I am no Aristo." He states, in that same quiet tone.

"No." I grin. "You ain't nothing. Nothing at all. A blank slate" I jab that claw at his nose again. "Which means... you could become anythin'. Anything at all. Without limit."

His eyes barely widen. As if even that is too much. "I see."

"We save up a little, and there's ways to fix you. Gene therapy. Cybernetics." I breathe. "So start dreaming. Start planning. Cause one day I'm gonna sit you down in front of a damned catalogue, and it'll be your turn to order whatever you goddamned please."

He stares at his hands. "Sometimes." He almost murmurs. "I have dreams.... of wings.... of soaring...."

"Well.... It's on the cards. You want wings. Tail." I flick mine. "Bark for skin. Or just plain human.... It's up to you. Ain't like body parts are hard to remove, if ya get bored of em. Or put back." I wince. "Well. Long as we got the cash."

I stare off at the door. So much we need. So little money. Badger's hand. Theo's brain. All of our implants...

His hands close. "I.... I will think about it.... Though I doubt I rate high on our priorities." His living doll-eyes turn to me. "It's strange, though. When I dream of that.... it always ends with you..... tearing off my wings."

"That...." I stumble. "....is kinda wild."

A tilt of a smile. "Perhaps my mind searching for an owner. It's hard to say."

I look away, to hide the wince. "Talk to Polybius. It does good with dreams...." My head snaps back, a fangy grin forming. "But. In the mean time. That reminds me....” My claw jabs out. “I want ya to train with me…. Privately.”

His eyes flicker. “Pri-”

“Oooh, wait Spook! I just remembered what I wanted!!!” Badge suddenly yelps, on the end of my foot, hopping about like he needs the loo. Right up until somebody decks him with Theo’s pillow, and chases him out the door.

"As I was saying." I grin, kicking it shut.

“Are we sure…. training something like me is a good idea?” The synthetic boy says.

“Yeah. I do.” I growl. “Strong is good. Weak is bad. Weak is a liability. And, right now, you’re made of cotton-candy and fairy wishes." I turn on him. "Weakness is your whole problem. .…but we’ll get you there.”

Or thereabouts. Or close enough.

“If…. You say so.”

“I do.” I nod. “It’s good for you. Good for the team. Give you a will of your own. So….” I hesitate. “Tell ya what - I’ll shoot you a copy of our Training Program. We can hotwire it right into your fancy Aristo implants, so you know how to fight….” My eyes flicker across his thin, decorative, limbs. “Or, at least, start to.”

“I don’t th…. Thank you, but….” He seems touched, but sceptical. Fidgeting with his long, thin, fingers. “....the last…. the last time I tried….”

I blow a breath out. “Yeah. Look, I know you kinda got demolished….” I cough. “….by Badger.”

“WOO!!! YEAH! AND IT WAS ULTRA BRUTAL!!” The dork cheers, leaping back through the door to execute a tiny-but-solid elbow-drop on the pillow. “I never beat-up no one big before!”

I snort. "He ain't that big."

"Whahh!? But he's huge!" The squirt yells, bouncing about like a tiny bomb. "And you're even more huge! Miles and miles huge!"

Yeahhhh. Anyways. Y’did pretty well." I say to Theo. "Considering he’s nine.” I cough again. “And crippled.”

Theo’s eyes never narrow, but they gain a spark of almost-flame. “And I suppose you’ll be pitting me against a toddler to practice?”

“I do hear they're vicious, but lets not get ahead of ourselves, eh?” I grin. Winningly. “Lets just get ya outta here, and get ya some of that ‘exercise’ stuff everybody's talkin' about. Alright? Build some…. some….” I shoot a sceptical squint at his slender arms “….muscles?”

“If you say so.” The boy-shaped thing says, very calmly. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”

“Yeah…. Guess gettin’ pinned by a one-armed squirt ain’t on anyone’s bucket list….” I try not to snort. “But, still. Train a little. Grow a little. And, one day, if you do it right…. you can fight im again. And-”

“WOOOOO!!!! DEATHMATCH REMATCH!! BRUTAL!!!!” Badger explodes behind me, punching the air.

“Hey! One thing at a time!” I yelp, but he’s raring off to tell every bugger who’ll listen (plus every bugger who won’t). And probably saying it’s right now, too. “Well, that went great.”

“I suppose I could…. try….?” Theo hedges, in a bashful tone. One loaded with undercurrents of ‘I hope I drop dead’.

“Hey, c’mon! It won’t be that bad!” Provided I tell the disabled tween to go easy on him. Mental cough. “I mean, you won’t actually die.” Probably. Fingers, toes, and freaking tails crossed. “And-”

“I suppose we’ll have to see….” The boy thing murmurs, with a final shy smile.

I open my mouth. Shut it. Then shake my head. “Guess we’ll find out….. But right now?” I toss the dataStick in the air, and catch it. “We got a little ‘gift’ from Moon’ to unpack, so let’s get ya tail down to The Command Centre.”

He hesitates. Torn between his need to please, and the torment of phobia. “I'm sorry. As.... as much as I enjoy this conversation." He whispers. "My research is somewhat vital. And...." And other excuses. "And, I'm sorry, but you.....” He gives a small sniff. “You smell strange. Wrong. Almost..... contaminated.”

“Probably the viscera.” I say, knowledgeably.

“Ah.” His eyes gravitate to the micron of fabric I’m occupying. “Superb.”

I jolt upright, and away. Guilt streaming through me. "Uh. Yeah. Catch ya later, then, I guess...." He nods quietly, as I step away. One hand burning with an umbra of dangerous purple as it passes, slowly, over the sheets.

Leaving them unstained, and perfect.

For a moment I pause, right at the door. Swallowing quietly. As if there was something I could say. Something that would bring this boy-like thing out of its strange, sterile, shell. Bring it down into the warmth, the light. And the shadow. To people who view him as something unsettling.

A nearly-person.

Not one thing, or the other.

But a thing, none the less.

A thing with ideas.

A thing with secrets....

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