The Lightbreakers of Orpheus [4]

A Sci-fi flash fiction

Previously: [1]. [2]. [3]

[4]

Must self-terminate. Must self-terminate. Mark gritted his teeth. His body was recovering from the injuries, so was his brain. His perception of sounds got more nuanced. A voice. There was a high-pitch voice. Not like the one produced by his biomechanical brain. It was somewhat softer. Mark wished he could distinguish the words, but he could not. His vision wasn’t recovering at all.

All he could do was lay in the darkness all day, listening, and thinking. His thoughts had never been so loud. Mark discovered he had not been thinking for himself for a long while. Good soldiers didn’t need to think. Their job was to follow orders of the voice.

This new voice hummed softly in his ear. It took care of him. It cleaned his body with a warm sponge. Sometimes it touched his chest with a pair of warm hands. He had forgotten what a human touch feels like. His life as a Lightbreaker soldier was fully automatized. Sanitizing shower, automatic shave, no touch, no fuss.

All Mark could do was wait to see what the enemy has planned for him. Clearly, it did everything to help him recover. Maybe it hoped to torture him afterward. Maybe to experiment on the Lightbreaker’s body. Mark gritted his teeth. Must self-terminate before it happens.

He received a dose of daily injections. Pain killers, he presumed. The sharp syringe found his blood vessels with a cold pinch…

***

“You should keep an eye out for your girl, Derek. The boy may be blind but he ain’t dumb. She spends all her spare time in there. Your Anouk is a bit too attached to the guy, eh?” Doc Benton winked, walking near Derek through the shabby hallway of the abandoned hospital.

“I asked her to take care of him. These Lightbreakers are brainwashed to self-terminate the first chance they get,” Derek ignored Doc’s hints. “Anouk is curious, that’s all. She hasn’t met many humans her age.”

“Well, of course an eighteen-year-old gal would be interested in a well-built young soldier, but I wouldn’t call that curiosity!” Doc Benton let out a loud laugh.

“Listen, Benton!” Derek grunted, “if we could afford a nurse to take care of him…”

A shriek interrupted him. Both Doc and Derek rushed back into the ward, only to discover, Anouk fighting the patient, his hands clutching a syringe pointed at his own heart. Doc and Derek reacted momentarily. They tore the syringe from the patient’s desperate grasp, Derek held him down, while Benton strapped him to the hospital bed. Although there was no need for it, the attempted self-termination had used up all the patient’s strength. The machines monitoring his vitals beeped and buzzed insanely.

“I thought… I thought… I never…it’s been only a couple of weeks,” Anouk stuttered sitting on the floor. Derek helped her up.

“He’s recovering much quicker than normal humans do. Who knows what those Rebel bastards pumped into his system. Calm down, Anouk! We must be more careful with him.” Derek embraced the crying girl.

“Daddy, he would’ve stabbed himself in the heart, if it wasn’t for you…”

“I can’t be around him all the time. Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out,” said Derek.

“All this fuss for a half-dead, brainwashed Lightbreaker,” Doc Benton shook his bald head, “you can’t save him. As I said from the start - saving his life is pointless. He will never be a normal human being.”

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