Isolation (Partials 0,5) 90% 15 csillagozás

Artillery pounded the city, fiercer and closer than before.

(első mondat)

As always, Heron was fascinated by the men’s reaction to her. She felt removed from their attention, as if they were watching not her but a character she had created, and through her creations she could manipulate their every action. A certain walk and their pulse would quicken; a smile, a bit of eye contact, and their entire attitudes would change. Some wanted to protect her, like General Bao; others wanted to talk to her, to learn who she was; and still others wanted simply to touch her. All these reactions, and more, were a form of control—they saw something pretty and wanted it for themselves. How many of them suspected that she was the one controlling them?

“Thetas are designed with no conscience at all. A soldier is different from an assassin—when you kill, you must feel nothing for your target.”
“Then our existence is a crime,” said Heron. “My life is against the law.”
“Some laws are made to be broken.”

Her first sensation was sound.
She didn’t know it as sound, because she didn’t know anything; her life was the barest essential minimum to qualify as life. An unborn child in its mother’s womb feels warmth and motion, hears sounds and voices, sees light and dark through the thick red filter of its mother’s own body. Its brain begins to process these sensations before it even finishes developing, an insatiable learning machine that is already defining the world months before it understands, on any conscious level, that the world exists. An infant human becomes so accustomed to its mother’s voice, for example, that it cries with its mother’s accent mere seconds after birth.

January 5, 2058

“I was designed to be a killer. You engineered me, from the genetic level, to be a heartless, analytical machine, ready to kill or sacrifice anyone to get the job done. I was made this way: What’s your excuse?”

June 10, 2060

“And then kill them,” said Heron.
“If necessary, yes,” said Latimer. “Does that bother you?”
Heron cocked her head, confused. “Should it?”
Latimer smiled. “Absolutely not.”

“I’m not a soldier,” she said. “I’m espionage.” It was one of the harder words she’d learned, and she was pleased with how well she’d pronounced it.
“You are all soldiers,” said the instructor, walking slowly toward her. “No matter what your role is on the battlefield, you are all soldiers, and you answer to me. I am your superior officer.” He stopped in front of her. “What do we do to a superior, Heron?”
She couldn’t read him on the link; she couldn’t read any of the instructors, only the Partials. The instructors were something called humans, and all Heron knew about them was that they were better at nearly everything – they could walk, they could run, they were stronger, they knew more, and most powerful of all, they could hide their emotions from the link. You never knew what they were thinking, or what they were going to do. The Partials in the room watched with fear, wondering what would happen, and Heron felt their fear through the link like a hammer. She answered carefully.
“We obey our superiors.”

October 7, 2058

“You do not say no to me!” he roared. “I am your superior officer! You do what I say, when I say it, and you don’t even have the privilege of not liking it, because you are a machine. You’re a doll – you’re my doll – and I will play with you however the hell I want to. Now drop your towel!”

February 15, 2059