I'd like to thank those of you who reviewed the story. I appreciate that you took the time to read, critique, and enjoy. I intend to keep working on it for a while, and will update it as often as I can remember.

-Maria

Three

“I’ll take care of you.”

But everyone takes care of me, I want to cry. Everyone takes care of me so that I can take care of them. I cannot cry out again, though I want to, because to do so might alert others to our presence, and I am perilously close to breaking the First Law. I do not even begin to know what I would do if I were exiled; to imagine even the fleeting possibility makes my stomach churn and my knees grow weak.

And yet, I hesitate. I cannot explain why, but I feel that to be taken care of, particularly and individually, by Stephen would be pleasant. More than that. It would be wonderful. I want so badly to let him, too, to step forward and take his hand and run away. I want to keep him at my side now that I have found him, now that he has returned to me. I feel a shaking of my faith, and a renewal at the same time, and yet, he is challenging me.

He means to tear me away from the underworld. Perhaps this is to be my final test. To see if I am able to withstand my desire to keep Stephen. My need for a companion, a single other being that I can lavish my care and heart upon. A being who will see it, and hold it, and understand what it is, and return it in kind. I believe that Stephen is such a being, that he would gladly play such a role for me.

To believe in him is supremely dangerous.

I am treading upon boundaries which no other Guide has ever broken, in the history of the underworld. I am reaching for things which cannot be acquired; I am reaching for life in the form of another being.

He is terribly convincing, devil-tongued and the sweeter for it. I see now what they mean by the honeyed words of men. He speaks them so fluently, pouring these things over me, tempting me with thoughts that I am not permitted to have. Even as a Guide, with my own free will, I am not given such leeway as to form my own opinions. I am given emotion that I might feel disgust for the surface world, and tenderness for the underworld, and pass these impassioned ideas on to my Citizens.

The others will see his visions as poison, as a vice. The other Guides will exile him at once, and likely I will be disciplined for bringing him in. I so desperately want to keep him, to cling to him, though. I cannot simply toss him aside, forgetting his face and name and that child’s smile. I cannot lose that essential piece of myself, and yet, I am not meant to have it.

Perhaps, I think, it is not meaning to have it that I am truly encountering that lost piece of soul I have identified as Stephen until now. Perhaps it is because I want him so badly for my own that I must be the one to save him, to convert him to the Faith, to acclimate him to the underworld. Perhaps that is to be the great trial of my existence, the conflict within that all Guides encounter in their journey to fulfillment. Perhaps defeating this unholy desire will bring about that which I have searched so desperately for. Perhaps, by denying myself this one vestige of the surface world that I have meant to capture and keep, I will achieve the supreme glory of my being.

And so, by virtue of my own weakness, I will redeem myself.

“Come with me,” I say to him. I reach out, unable to stop my own motion, to touch his hand. It is brief; like reaching for an open flame, I cannot remain there long. “I will make sure that this works.”

I see it in my mind. I can have this; have him, so close beside me as to be painful, a punishment until I no longer exist for his sake. I dismiss the idea that such a thing as living for another is possible; I live for us. But the plan is forming nonetheless, weaving itself in and out; knotting us forever together.

I will convert him. I will teach him, carefully, explaining to Gaia what I have discovered of my journey. She will report this through the Warrens, and the Senior Guides will observe and test him as I seek to convert him. I will turn his passion toward us, toward the underground. I will make him into a great Guide, with his inherent ability to control emotion, with his distaste of the surface. I will make him see the greatness of the underground, and I will make him adore it. I will save him, and the Guides will be proud of me, and I will have served us far better than if I were to leave him in the streets of the surface.

My resolution must show through to him, in some way, because he presses his lips together. I recognize the attempted surface gesture; he has tried it a few times. It is odd to me, seeing an upworlder who cannot smile easily. Even through their violence and hate, smiles are the most common surface expression. I see them far too much.

On him, this inability is all the more saddening. I wonder how it could be so truly terrible, to drive that foolish expression of joy from his face. I wish that I could bring it back, that I could make it as innocent and perfect as it was in childhood. I wish that I knew how to do so.

These are the thoughts that are too dangerous to have, these thoughts that I have held so carefully in my memory. In the privacy of my mind, I have already broken the First Law by wanting a connection with another person. I am a traitor to the underworld, to the people, to us. My mind is already betraying the others, imagining things like smiles and joy.

What sets me apart from other Guides is the fact that I have no interest in material things, in beauty. On the surface world, there is a sort of superficial veneer, on so many things, that makes them glitter in the red neon lights, that makes them appear something worth touching. I have learned from the mistakes of past Guides the true nature of such flat crystals. I have no interest in money, power, or beautiful things. I chose to become a Guide so that I might help others; I do it for the people.

On the same token, those people I love enough to help are my weakness. I crave a connection, just one single person that I could talk to, laugh with, cry for—a person who could see and share my emotions. Guides are meant to bear these terrible burdens by themselves; to seek no solace or companionship for themselves. There have been cases, in the past, of Guides who searched out their human companionship upworld, and theirs are the most terrible stories.

For a minor slip-up, such as liking jewels or beads, one may be punished. But to break the First Law, to want the care and compassion of another being, means exile, instant and without mercy.

I am terrified, shaking, that I can promise to help him. That I am able to say those words, and worse, mean to keep them, for his sake. I stare up at the pure black eyes, probably the result of some tiny slip in his genetic code, so carefully constructed. What would he say, to know that our scientists can read his tattoos? To know that, if they chose, they might alter the original code to remove the enhancements, to make him a man again?

“How do you plan it?” he drawls. I know this; it is called ‘sarcasm’ by the upworlders. An unpleasant, wholly vicious behavior.

It pushes me several steps away from him, wary and caged.

“You must be made into a Guide, like me,” I say, lowering my head and refusing to see the expression on his face change from bitterness to shock. I do not know which is the worse of the emotions, but I do not like either of them in him. I feel that they have twisted up the child Stephen and turned him into a sharp man with tattoos and no ability to smile.

He makes that snorting noise again. It is all cynicism, all anger, all helpless. I wish there was some reliable way to assure him that I would help him, that I want to. But such a jaded, untrusting man cannot be made to believe in me with a few pretty words.

I must be constant, then, determined in my desire to save him.

“So how easy is that, anyway?”

I close my eyes. How am I to answer his angry questions, his demands, when I cannot be completely truthful with myself? For twenty years, I have done my very best to deny this weakness in me, this wish for a friend. And now, the embodiment of my wishes stands before me, glaring at me with all the force in his eerie dark eyes, asking for my help and believing that he will be betrayed.

And I shall have to betray him, eventually, if I mean to keep my place in the underworld. I will have to send him to Gaia, to the others. I will have to do this before we will even have a chance at training together, for I mean to insist on claiming him as my own duty. I do not know how to begin this process. I am not a creature of demands or charisma; I am meek and obedient and serve others. I do not know what will happen when I abandon my previous sweetness in favor of companionship. When I display a different aspect of myself to the other Guides, pressing them to get what I want.

And yet, in spite of everything, I intend to do it. I plan to insist, for his sake. For my own sake. For my own selfish wishes.

“Most do not survive the training. Receiving emotions is… dangerous. Particularly at such a delicate stage in development.” I try to keep my voice flat and unfeeling, to remember that it is meant to ensure that only the best, the most impossible to corrupt, are the ones who may serve us. But I recall the other girl in my age-group, her face streaked with tears and twisted with pain. And I remember seeing the flash of the blade as she tore it through her own throat, unable to live with the rage of feeling in her brain.

He pauses, staring at me, and narrows his eyes shrewdly. I wonder if he has been given the enhancement that allows his brain patterns to overlap with others, so that he can see into their minds. I wonder if he is seeing, even now, the girl’s blood, spilling over her uniform and sheets. I wonder if he can feel how I trembled, staring at the body as it slumped forward. I was not permitted to do anything to stop the other children from destroying themselves. If that was what they meant to do, then they were not fit Guides, and it was best that they saved us the trouble.

I remember how I had hoped, secretly, that Guides might be able to bend the First Law, to have friends. But in the training, we are not meant to work together. We are pitted against one another, meant to survive through ruthlessness. It is much like the training for our soldiers, except that we are given a full spectrum of emotions, not just the tag-worded rage impulse.

A Guide has to learn, first and foremost, the danger of emotions. And then they have to learn the danger of people with emotions, all the while learning to control and use their own. We are encouraged to manipulate one another, to hurt one another. The survivors, in the end, are not those who prey upon the weaker bodies, but those who prey upon the weaker minds.

I survived.

I wonder if that is what he sees, while he watches my gaze fall, watches my eyes turn inward as I contemplate my own past. Certainly, there is an aspect of cruelty to the training of Guides, but as they are to bear the cruelest burden of all for the sake of the people, there must be. For all of the honorable privileges that Guides receive, they must also receive a thousand times more anguish and punishment, as well.

Once again, I become aware of Stephen, staring at me, his face serious with some foreign emotion. I never have been able to put a name to it. The softness of the eyes, draw tight beneath his brows, the pursing of his lips that makes his cheeks seem more hollow, beneath the jaunty bones. The way that his shoulders hunch slightly toward me as he stares at my face. Some strange brand of anxiety, that much is clear. I am unfamiliar with it, though.

“How old are you?” he asks suddenly, quietly.

I blink and frown suspiciously. Has he been reading my thoughts, rifling through them like so many sheets of paper? Nervously, I step back and encounter the cavern’s wall with my hands.

“At birthing time, I will be twenty-five,” I reply slowly, regarding him with a new sort of caution. In spite of some fragile connection that has brought us back together, there is far too much that we don’t know about one another. I am afraid to trust him, to believe in him, and yet I do, without any will to do so.

He wrinkles his nose up disdainfully and I lean more firmly against the sturdy rock of underground, of wall. It gives me a pitiable sort of strength.

“You’re all born at the same time?” he asks, disbelieving, as he, too, draws a step away. I am grateful for the extra air between us.

I nod shakily. Why must he question all of my beliefs, all that I live for? Why must he throw my entire life into such a loss of questioning?

There is some test here, in him, I am sure of it. With his doubts, with his suffering, with this odd and yet powerful hold he had over me; this is meant as a test of my own faith, of my own strength of conviction and will to serve the people. I stare at him, wondering if I can somehow force the mental patterning that will allow me to read into his mind.

He presses his lips together grimly. It is not even the sorry attempted smile this time, and I shiver, horrified by it.

“You really think I could believe in that shit?”

I blink. I did not expect him to be so crude, so uncaring, and yet the words lay out, beating in the stillness of the cavern.

Anger rises up, an emotion that I have tempered, over the years, into a burning that lingers in my words and stare, charging them with my own strength. And when I am angry, I am strong, for the force of it is enough to carry me through stars and eons, yet so carefully fed into my reactions. Controlled into an electrifying state of being.

“You do not believe in anything, Stephen, and that is why you are unwilling,” I say, the wrath drawing me a step toward him. I am able to stand without the borrowed aid of the wall, held aloft by the fierce strength of fury. “If you would attempt to live for some greater purpose, rather than simply hiding yourself, you might discover what it is that you’ve been missing so terribly all of these years.”

My words shock even me; I did not mean to speak aloud the things that had merely lurked close to the surface until now. I try to fan my rage and it does nothing. All that I am capable of doing is staring as he draws closer, too horrified by my own lack of control to even look away from his dark eyes.

“There is no greater purpose,” he states gruffly. “There’s only the two of us, right now.”

I feel my knees weaken and I release them, tentatively at first, but they give way instantly. There is a painful jolt as they hit the cement ground, but I ignore it in favor of the deeper ache within my mind.

What will I do now? I refuse to send him away, but I cannot possibly bring him with me into the Warrens. I wish in the deepest weakness of my heart that the decision could be taken from me, passed on to the senior Guides. I wish for guidance. I need the aid, I need the strength of their minds, more powerful and restrained than my own, tempered by experience and wisdom.

He is kneeling in front of me, reaching for my shoulders, carefully tilting my head back. Vacantly, unwilling to let him see the storm of impossible, confused emotions rushing through my mind, I stare into his eyes. I pretend not to see, but my vision remains fixed on the lines of his face, the angles and hard planes; the sweep of dark brown hair over scarab black eyes, shading them as if to hide their expression under a shaggy curtain. I think, momentarily, of pushing the bangs away from his eyes.

“One person can’t live for everyone,” he says quietly, his gaze locked with mine even through the hair. My fingers itch and I know that it reflects somewhere in my gaze, because he nods, satisfied in unspoken measures.

“If everyone lives for everyone, then there is no more ‘one person,’” I answer tiredly. I cannot keep these arguments up with him much longer. They send tremors into the deepest recesses of my faith, making my entire being reverberate with the ache of shaken convictions.

He shakes his head, a slow, sorrowful swiveling motion. He is angry, somehow, but not at me, and I wonder how that is possible. To stare at me and be furious at another being on my behalf. I realize, belatedly, that he is furious at the underground, at my teachers, at everything that has made me believe what I do. He hates everything that has shaped me into who I am.

By that logic, he ought to hate me, as well. But no, it is something far more loathsome and as I recognize it, I struggle away from him. Pity: cruel, sickening, and wretched.

I choke as I scrabble over the stone floor, staring at him. My lungs constrict in my chest and my breath comes in sharp, pained little gasps. How can I possibly expect to stand up to such a crushing, all-encompassing power as pity? How can I tear that apart?

This shall be the most terrible of tests, equivalent to the ones that the senior Guides must take to earn their seniority. I realize that the possibility of failing, of being exiled, looms so very close and real.

“Angeline,” he says quietly. His tone is firm nonetheless, demanding my compliance. My attention.

I continue to watch him sharply, my eyes steady as they bore through his. I press my lips together firmly, refusing to speak, and remain crouched, defensively, frozen.

He extends a hand toward me, fingers outstretched, but he does not move. “Come here,” he whispers, the sound barely audible in the cavern.

I remain still for a long moment. Before either of us can move, however, the door opens.

Gaia sweeps out, in the robes that mark her as a senior Guide, her dark hair knotted efficiently back and her gray eyes sweeping through the cavern, tracing our bodies and words and thoughts. I look up at her and immediately draw to my feet, clasping my hands behind my back and lowering my head in a sign of deference.

Stephen remains as he is, kneeling on the ground, though his hand drops limply. I watch his eyes fade into a somewhat vacant upworlder stare, the lifeless expression of one who has endured too much on the surface to turn back. A touch of desperation, a resemblance to pathetic, and underneath it, the bubbling determination at the core of his being. I think of the actors on the surface, glittering distractions for the masses, and wonder if he is one of them.

“What are you called?” asks Gaia quietly, soothingly. Her stare remains distant, and she does not acknowledge me as she moves to stand before Stephen.

“Steve,” he answers quietly.

She turns, at last, to look at me. “Have you brought us one to be saved?” she says, arching one eyebrow.

Above all, Gaia is firm, even ruthless. One does not question her authority, or her will. One does not touch upon any line around her. As the senior Guide of Warren number eight, she is an absolute ruler, keeping her flock close and allowing not a moment or breath of time to stray. Last year, at the season time, she named me her second in command, honoring me with the title of junior Guide.

I incline my head slightly. “I believe that I may be able to help acclimate him, Gaia, with your permission and that of the Council.”

She taps a finger against her lower lip thoughtfully, but I know she has already decided on her course of action. I can only pray that it will not cause harm to either Stephen or myself.

“I shall give you precisely one week’s time to demonstrate to me that you can make progress saving him, without the aid of your fellow Guides,” she says, not allowing me a moment to guess at her motives. “If, in that time, I deem that he is progressing, we shall bring the matter before the Council.”

I hesitate. I do not want to ask the inevitable question.

Stephen rises from his place them, looming over both Gaia and myself with his height. He saves me from her will by asking in my stead.

“And if I don’t make progress?”

Gaia blinks; she is not used to being addressed so easily by others. Slowly, she turns to look back at him. “Then we shall put you into our acclimation clinics,” she says, her tone detached, her expression almost bored. And then she turns, her robes fluttering around her ankles as she moves back through the door.

I glance at Stephen and catch his eye briefly. He still has that expression, that look of despair and need, so perfectly mimicked on his features that I believe, for a moment, that he is truly fleeing to the underworld.

Not for me, but for his own sake.

I feel a solid ache in my gut at the thought that only selfishness motivates him. And it is so possible, too. The surface is a very different place, a place ruled by selfishness, greed, and fear. He may be another of them, another among their throngs of people, another one hoping to prey on our resources and way of life.

I let one of my hands brush out, curving ahead of me to indicate that he should follow first. He hesitates, studying me with that inscrutable expression, and I feel the tingling of fear burning at the edges of my nerves. I wonder, momentarily, if he will betray us. But he moves, catching up to walk behind Gaia, but not too closely, and I follow after, closing the door.

We enter the familiar steel-plated walkway from the Guides’ quarters to the tunnel doors. Stephen looks around briefly, and then ahead. I sense that he knows the place now, and will not forget it. No, I know. His entire genome is written on his arm, to be copied or altered or destroyed.

The first bar codes that combination of speed, strength, and sense enhancement. Most people have all or part of that chromosome activated and do not touch any other part of the DNA. Stephen, however, has been built entirely of enhancements. I doubt that even he knows this, but I have learned enough about the Gene Labs’ code to read that.

The second bar codes intelligence. His brain has been built with shortened synapses, so that thought moves even faster than normal, so that reactions are be instantaneous, so that he is able to observe and remember at the rate of a supercomputer. His mind has been built, framed into a super-brain. So what has gone wrong? Why is he so lost?

The third bar is a coding for his internal organs and organ systems. No disease can ever hurt him. His immune system is extreme, to the point where I would be surprised to learn that he could even imbibe the surface drugs, like alcohol, and feel any effect. He will age more slowly, now that he has reached adulthood, and will live longer than most other humans.

And the fourth bar gives him a sort of behavioral modification. I couldn’t read the specifics when I looked at his arm, but I saw that it allowed for gaps in his emotional function. That means he can turn his emotions off at will, and turn his other modifications on and off as well. I do not know how complex the engineers who made him had to get in order to create such a superhuman as Stephen. More troubling, I do not know why he was created, built into a perfect specimen, or why he was abandoned. Parents do not have babies built. Governments, perhaps. Secretive agencies. Terrorists. Who made him, and why?

Troubled, absorbed in my thoughts, I do not realize that Gaia is addressing me at first. I blink and look up at her, an expression of reverence and repentance on my features.

“You two shall be confined to your suite, Angeline,” she says, her mouth pursing disapprovingly as she has to repeat herself. “Food will be brought to you. You must make excellent progress indeed if you mean to prove your case to the entire Council. Do not disappoint us.”

And just as quickly as she arrived, she departs.

I am left with Stephen standing together just inside of the door of my small suite. For a moment, I believe that she was merely exaggerating the terms of our confinement, but then I hear the click of the lock behind her.

Never has anything sounded so hopeless.