WATCH ME NOW, FOR I AM BORN!…
Cyrus
November 22nd, 29462
On the road to Newland City
The former Engineer casts an embarrassed glance at the little girl sitting next to him. A pale, thin, fragile child, wrapped in an old dress and an old blanket, oddly silent, oddly quiet. She does not move, does not speak, does not react when she is spoken to. And he looks at her, at her empty gaze, and the two long white locks that have started to appear in her long hair since the accident.
They have left Borealis for a few days already, hiding in the mountains, then secretly, slowly making their way to Newland by hitchhinking on the roads with nothing more than a few credits in their pockets. And for days, Jenae hasn’t said a single word, absently staring at what surrounds her, her gaze so empty that Cyrus really wonders whether she is still sane or not.
In fact, she hasn’t showed anything–neither sadness, nor anger, nor any other feeling–since Heiji’s death, since the Engineer had to manually unplug her from the ravaged laboratory system in order to bring her mind back. Of course, Cyrus fears that this has damaged her memories beyond repair as well, but he hasn’t had time to do more than this. If ‘they’ have found them once, ‘they’ can very well send other assassins. And Heiji wisn’t here anymore to protect them.
Heiji. Cyrus is feeling so bad about him. Yes, he has brought Deannah back, but what was the point? The only person that had been truly waiting for her–and the only person she truly had wanted to live again for–is dead. Definitively dead. All that is left to her wis this false ID Heiji had crafted out of nowhere for her.
“I’m sorry, Jenae,” the Engineer whispers, as he has told her a lot during the last days. “You’ll have to start another life from now on… but I’ll help you as much as I can. That’s what I’ve promised Heiji. And I always keep my promises.”
But Jen/Deannah doesn’t answer. With a sigh, he simply places the new ID card in her hand, wondering if she’ll ever be able to speak and think normally again.
“In case we’re separated,” Cyrus says, as they approach Newland City’s gates, near the lake. “This will give you a home. It’ll be in an Omni-Tek town, but you can choose in which town. I’d advise Omni-Trade. It’s not far from where you… well, where you can have a job.”
The little girl absently looks at the name on the ID card. Jenae Markarian. Daughter of Frederick and Loise Markarian, Bureaucrats for Omni-Trans Department, Sector 5, Building 15-2, Omni HQ. That was something Heiji had decided: to give her the choice, the choice to live a ‘normal’ life, or to fall back into the shadows with him. And in case the memory transfer were to fail and not kill her in the process, little Jenae would at last still have something. According to Cyrus’s own advice, Omni-1 wasn’t the better choice ever, but the people of the Company relied so heavily on their ID cards and DNA identifcation–all in all, nothing impossible for Heiji to hack–that it’d be easier for her to stay hidden in the anonymous crowd than in the middle of a Neutral town, or in the Clans territories where faces tended to be spotted a lot more. An anonymous young girl, a single woman in Rubi-Ka’s biggest town. A simple face, quickly seen, quickly forgotten.
“Ya know, Cyrus. Heiji ain’t dead,” the girl who once was Deannah suddenly says. These are the first words that have come out of her mouth since they have run away.
Cyrus backs up a jerk, surprised by her voice seemingly got out of nowhere. She raises her head toward him, big brown eyes still gazing at something she alone is able to see, yet more focused than they had ever been.
“What do you…?”
“He ain’t dead. I know it,” Jen adds. “Ya know, Cyrus. One day, I will bring ‘im back. Mebbe ya can help me, then?”
There’s a long minute of silence, as he wonders what she means by these words. Then the former Engineer finally nods, not knowing what to make of her statement.