Chương 32: Chapter 31: They Shouldn't Have

The copper-sewn mattress dipped heavily under D-66's weight. The rough wire thread scraped against a half-knit laceration on her left shoulder, but she remained perfectly still, waiting for the punctures on her right side to seal before shifting. A faint, metallic screech echoed in front of her. D-68 was probably doing the same. D-66 could feel those eyes tracking her in the dark. She always could at this hour but she kept her own eyelids locked shut.

This place is becoming too repetitive. It is driving me to insanity, the Other voice muttered in the recesses of her mind.

Tomorrow is the auction, D-66 thought back coldly. Maintain optimal condition.

By optimal condition, you mean act nonexistent.

Just for twenty-four hours. If they detect your presence, they will misclassify it as cognitive instability.

It is not instability. I am a feature. You and that weirdo are the only ones thinking that. D-66 let out a low, gravelly click in her throat.

"Is he bothering you?" D-68 asked into the quiet. D-66 offered no reaction. The silence stretched between their iron bedframes. D-68 drew a slow, measured breath.

"Are you nervous?"

"No."

"I know you are." The cellular repair on D-66's left shoulder finalized. She rolled onto her right side, her joints groaning against the strain.

"I require sleep."

"What if they purchase us separately?" D-68 whispered.

"What if they send us to different places?"

"Then nothing changes." A heavy pause followed.

"If they do. If they split us." D-68's voice was careful.

"Maybe we could find a way to meet. Maybe there's an opening somewhere." D-66 rolled back to face her, the narrow slits of her eyes piercing the dark of the cell.

"That plan ends in desertion."

"No." D-68 blinked rapidly.

"I… I am attempting to optimize our operational partnership."

"We're not partners. Not yet. And the probability of it is low." The dead quiet returned. Then, a soft question cut through the dark: "The handlers get to leave at the end of their shift. The guards rotate. Why not us?" D-66 said nothing.

"They sleep in beds that don't cut. They eat when they're hungry. We don't. Why is that the arrangement?"

"Because the arrangement works." D-68 turned away, facing the white wall.

"For who?" D-66 closed her eyes.

"Sleep. Whatever happens tomorrow... we'll survive it."

She came back to herself in pieces. The floor first—cold stone pressing into her cheek, gritty against her skin. Then sound, arriving muffled and wrong, like her ears were packed with wool. Then light, and the hole in the wall above her, still steaming at its edges, the stone around it dark and scorched. She blinked. Blinked again. Something was nudging her shoulder. Elma turned her head. Jorm was kneeling beside her, and she was crying. This was something stripped down to the frame.

Her whole body was in it, shaking with each breath, tears running faster than she could manage them, her face open in a way that looked almost painful to hold. Elma watched her distantly, the way you watch something through glass. What happened. The question formed and dissolved before she could speak it. She knew what had happened. The hole in the wall above her knew. The steaming edges of it knew. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. One glimpse of Silk.

One glimpse of the three scars, and something in her had decided quietly and completely that the math no longer worked. She had thought her will to live was structural—load-bearing, fixed. She had not known it could simply stop, the way a heart stops, without warning, between one beat and the next. She tried to sit up.

"No." Jorm's hand came down on her sternum and pushed her flat, still crying, not gently.

"No."

"What's wrong?"

"You're not—" Jorm's voice broke apart on the last word and she forced it back together.

"You're not killing yourself. You're not doing it." She said it again, the repetition less a statement than a thing she was nailing in place.

"I'm not doing it anymore," Elma said. The words came out flat and true.

"I don't know why I tried it." Jorm stayed where she was for a long moment, her weight on her knees beside Elma on the cold floor, crying into her own sleeve. Then she stood. Wiped her face—rough, practical, nose then eyes then nose—and stood very still for a moment, looking at something above Elma's head.

"You think I want your stupid pendant?"

"What?" Jorm wiped her face again. More tears had arrived to replace the ones she'd cleared.

"I don't want you to teach me anymore." Her voice was still cracking, still wet.

"I'll pay back everything you gave me." Elma staggered to her feet.

"No," she managed, her voice scraping out of her throat as Jorm turned and continued down the dark servant's corridor. Elma forced her legs to move, stumbling after her.

"We need to find the sword. What about your training?"

"I don't care! Stay away from me!" Jorm cried out, not looking back.

"I don't... I won't do it again," Elma stammered.

"I don't understand why I did it. I don't understand why you're crying." Jorm spun around, her face twisted in absolute anguish.

"Because you did it right in front of me and didn't even care!" she yelled, her voice echoing harshly off the stone walls.

"I…" Elma stared up at the crying maid.

"I didn't know it would make you feel like this." Jorm let out a jagged sob, turned her back, and kept walking. Elma followed. Her small hands were unconsciously gripping and twisting the heavy fabric of her own dress.

"I didn't know that you wanted me to not do it." Jorm didn't slow down.

"Please, don't leave," Elma whispered. Her breathing was growing heavy, erratic, pulling shallowly in her chest. Jorm stopped dead in her tracks.

"If you leave, I might do it," Elma whispered into the quiet hall, her voice small.

"I don't want to do it." She aggressively rubbed her forearm across her eyes, trying to clear the sudden burning sensation. When she finally lowered her arm, Jorm was suddenly there. The maid had thrown her arms around Elma and pulled her into a tight hug. After a second of rigid hesitation, Elma wrapped her own small arms around the older girl, burying her face tightly into the crook of Jorm's shoulder.

"What is wrong with you?" Jorm sobbed, hugging her so tightly it practically bruised Elma's ribs.

"Why did you do it?"

"I do not know," Elma murmured blindly into the fabric of Jorm's dress.

"It just... it was easier at that moment. I never thought I could. I won't do it."

"I'm sorry," Jorm whispered, her voice still trembling.

"I almost left. I almost—" She stopped herself, pulling Elma tighter instead of finishing it.

"It's okay," she whispered.

"You're okay now." Elma maintained her tight grip on Jorm's shaking frame. The fabric of the maid's dress was damp against her cheek.

"Do you still wish to learn weaving?" Jorm slowly stepped back, breaking the embrace. She aggressively wiped her eyes.

"I am sorry. I didn't mean what I said earlier. I don't know why I said it."

"I know," Elma said. A faint smile crossed Jorm's damp face.

"You're my friend, you know. Friends tell each other when they're not feeling well."

"Friends," Elma repeated.

"Yes. Friends." Jorm gestured loosely between them.

"We give each other gifts. We're always together. We care about each other. So please tell me if something was bothering you."

"I understand," Elma said quietly. She lingered on the word longer than she meant to, as if tasting it. Friend.

"I will." Jorm searched her face, eyes still glassy. Elma met her gaze without blinking, the way she had been taught. But her small fingers stayed twisted in the fabric of Jorm's sleeve, clinging with a grip that hadn't loosened since the hug. Jorm looked at her, grief clouding her eyes.

"Why did you do it?" Elma opened her mouth. The answer was there. Silk's scars. The white rooms. The researchers who smiled. The corroded thing in her gut. The self-verdict that had felt, for one moment, like the only logical conclusion. She closed her mouth. Saying it would require explaining Beitelham. Explaining D-68. Explaining what she was before she was Elma. Jorm would listen—she knew that—but she would be listening to a language she didn't have the context to read yet.

The words would arrive and mean something different in Jorm's ears than they meant in hers. She stayed quiet. Jorm watched her for a moment, Elma lost somewhere behind her own eyes. Then she took a slow breath and let it out.

"It's okay," she said.

"Just tell me when you're ready." She let out a long sigh.

"Are you feeling better now?"

"I feel better," Elma said quickly.

"That's good." Jorm wiped her hands on her apron, smoothed down the front of her dress, and took a sharp breath.

"Let's go. Let's go get it." Elma nodded. They moved quickly through the dark corridors, slipping out of a small door, somewhere at the eastern side of the manor, and into the cool night air toward the servant quarters. The grounds here were completely empty. The estate's security detail was heavily concentrated around the main manor and the perimeter exits. The servants were not worth guarding or monitoring, which explained how the maids had managed their nocturnal excursions.

They stopped in the shadows directly in front of the maid house. Jorm tilted her head back, staring up at the massive clock mounted above the entrance. The moonlight caught the cold metal of its hands, casting a pale, sharp reflection against the stone.

"What now?" Elma asked, rubbing her palms together against the cold.

"Just wait a moment," Jorm whispered, her eyes fixed upward. They stood in the quiet dark. Elma rubbed her hands again, slower this time.

"What happened back there?" Jorm didn't look down.

"You just fell. You collapsed to the ground right before it hit." Elma looked down at the grass. Was the weight of her chest that overwhelming? If it could overwrite her will to live, then losing consciousness wouldn't be far-fetched. She remembered consciously directing the drill toward her own temple, and then… nothing. A quiet sense of relief settled over her. It hadn't struck. She looked at Jorm, still standing beneath the clock in silence, her face tired from crying. A tightness settled low in Elma's chest.

She had done that. She had placed something on Jorm that Jorm had never agreed to carry. She looked away. Jorm kept staring at the clock. The hour hand rested dead on the twelve. Silent, Elma looked up and stared at it too. Then the hour hand ticked forward. One. Something slipped from behind it—caught the moonlight for a fraction of a second—and fell. Gund slammed into the grass at their feet, burying itself in the earth.