Ain't Talkin'
Chapter 106 - n i w

When the doctor drew forth the little girl Roche’s heart stopped for more than a second. From behind him, on the side of his good arm, Doctor John Weaving pulled a little girl, barely old enough to be walking on her own without a hand to hold. Her head was shaved like a lobotomy patient and the clothing she wore was threadbare. Damned if she wasn’t the spitting image of the girl Roche had seen that day in the library, hiding behind the stacks.

A dozen and more guns were trained on Roche and Markus, and in his core the walker could feel more constructs rearing out of the world into existence. He could feel them opening the throats of men and women, so fearful of their own existence that they lashed out at those that were truly there. None of that mattered at the specific moment.

The doctor hadn’t been lying. Whatever bastard science he’d used in test tubes and petri dishes and ovens full of somatic cells, he’d built a little person. He’d built her out of her.

“You harbored some doubt, did you? I don’t blame you, the claims I made were wide and improbable. I apologize for any time you may have wasted considering whether or not I was telling you the truth, but I went to great lengths to find you, Mr. Roche, and I’ve been going to those lengths for a good long time. This-” He jerked the girl by the arm. “I’m afraid was one of the lesser lengths I went to. The science was all there for us to discover! Pre-catastrophic research into rebundling and conditioning the human genome to suit out needs. Imagine choosing the eye-color of your offspring!? This wretch was a long-term investment towards a bargaining chip.” Grin.

Roche’s arms felt limp at his sides. The gunmetal chik-chak of rifles was an intermittent noise all around, with overtones of air-raid siren, very human screams and the electric hum of lights over distant gunshots where the Res had met fire with the Corp some streets back.

Rain from the booming clouds pattered down cold and thin.

Markus kept his gun up, but the play was hopeless, too many barrels trained on two men.

“What do you want?” Roche asked, though he was sure he knew the answer already.

“I want what I want, Mr. Roche. I want the original.”

“Wha-?” Markus made a noise in his throat.

“Yes, Mr. Markus. The original. The conduit point in all things. The first walker, the first man. Do the math son. Catastrophe, doors and holes into the white, the ages of the walkers. . .all the men we pulled apart who gave their ages up after days in torment, protecting the numbers of years like trade secrets and matters of vast import. But they all gave up their ages. I’ve been hunting this hunter most of my life Mr. Markus, and through a carefully executed series of events financed by inquiring and ever-interested minds we’ve brought the plan to fruition perfectly.” Grin, squeeze the girls arm, she howled a little in protest when Weaving yanked her to the front like a doe-eyed shield.

Roche was silent. The chaw in his lip filled up and he spat, but he did not move. Guns in his gloved hands, coat flapping a canvas noise in the New San Fran breeze, bootheels solid on the asphalt, gunshot wound forgotten save a tidy throb of heat.

“Me for the girl.” Roche said coolly.

“Precisely. I give your precious a second chance at life, something even your white could not give her. Through the miracles of science she again draws breath in a similar husk. She lives, you become mine.”

“To do what with? Fuck, kill, eat?” Roche gritted his teeth, but he was trying to bait the doctor into a mistake.

“Oh, no, no, no. . .that won’t do. You take me for a man of baser interests when in fact I am a man of epicurean standards and tastes. I want to know you, Mr. Roche. I want to know what makes you work. Why you of all the others? The white ought to have ripped a living creature apart as it has so many who went in before you and after you and instead of you. But you. . .you changed things. . .something about you changed things and since you there have been hundreds like you.

`You’re the crux point and the conduit and the enigma that plagues my analytic mind. I. Want. You. You for the girl. She goes free, you give up without a fight.”

Roche moved his chaw around in his mouth, thinking. He could open fire, and risk a child that looked so like his Mollie, getting hurt. He could run, slip out of things and into the white at his next chance. He could stall, but who knew what would happen, the Res fighting the Corp in the distance some streets over might make it as far as the standoff taking place on Mission Street, but what if they didn’t. Would any of it be worth it. Was the girl worth it?

Roche was not a stupid man, he was as educated as any man in the wastelands and then some much more. This girl was not the girl he’d carried cold and dead into the white all those years ago. This girl was a construct in her own way. Something terrible and new and created from composite parts that made her the same, but in all ways made her the vastly inappropriate opposite. But created or not, that didn’t make her not a human being, not a little girl deserving of a life, of happiness. She might have fun sometime.

“Alright.”

“Excellent. Mr. Markus if you would please drop your gun, then.” The doctor waved his hand at Alex Markus, and a pair of Corp men in fatigues motioned him with the barrels of their guns.

Markus looked to Roche, then to the girl and then to the doctor. He wasn’t sure what to do. He wasn’t sure how to do it.

Roche prompted him. “Drop the gun, kid. Get that girl and get her out of here.”

“How?” Markus laid the gun at his feet and kicked it another couple feet across the asphalt.

“Dunno, kid. Just get her out of here. And I better not find out you were a part of this.” Roche spit onto the ground, he still had his guns in his hands.

“I swear-”

Doctor Weaving cut Markus off. “I’ll alleviate that suspicion Mr. Roche. I can assure you Mr. Markus is more a patsy in all of this than anything. I’m afraid I must take the credit for the entirety of this charade. I’ve worked far too hard for far too long at making sure this all falls into place to not take my piece for my ingenuity. Go on now sweety, see your uncle Alex.” Grinning, Doctor Weaving put a dainty hand on the little girls back and nudged her forward. She hugged herself with skinny little arms and walked toddering to Markus. She couldn’t have been more than four, and her big ol’ eyes watched all of the soldiers with their guns trained. When she reached Markus he bent down and put his jacket around her and picked her up, holding her to his chest muttering “It’s okay. It’s okay. I gotcha.”

Over Markus’ shoulder, the little girl met Roche’s eyes and for the first time in many long years, Walter Roche tried his very best to smile genuinely for someone else. He tried with his eyes to affirm what Markus was telling her. It’s okay. . .I promise it’s okay.

“Care to complete the exchange Mr. Roche?”

Roche stepped forward.

“Guns?”

Roche dropped his guns quietly to the ground, setting them with care. In the near distance, constructs shifted.

“Come to me then, Mr. Roche. My original. Let me have you.” Grin, grin, grin, grin, grin, grin, grin.

In the face of a split second, Roche got a look at Markus and said all he needed to say with a single look, then the world exploded.

Sᴇarch the FindNovel.net website on G𝘰𝘰gle to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.