Desiderium

CW: murder, blood

By the time Cybil reaches the room, pills litter the tiled floor, and the heart monitor is steadily weakening, but Cybil can’t bring herself to shed any tears. When doctors and nurses come pouring in to wheel the hospital bed away, Brienne’s face has already blanched a few shades paler.

Cybil rubs at the bump on the back of her neck. She can feel the processor chip embedded there, faintly vibrating, probably eating away at whatever she’s feeling.

At least Brienne didn’t seem to be in agony.

There’s a call in the early morning, a few hours after Cybil returned to her apartment, a nurse explaining they couldn’t do anything. Brienne is dead for good.

“That’s obvious,” Cybil scoffs. “I know what I saw.”

Val shows up at her door later in the day when they receive the news, voice cracked open like eggshells, and Cybil can only listen to their fragile sobs as she offers them small comforts, glad she couldn’t break in the same ugly way.

A couple of weeks pass before Cybil’s neck starts aching—it always does when her chip needs to be replaced. The pain is akin to a bad sprain; it begins in her neck and spreads down her back in minute electrical surges, one vertebra at a time until it becomes too unbearable to lift a finger.

How much time has it been since Val had changed it? Two months? Three? Cybil would probably be long-dead if it weren’t for them.

She slips out at night when few eyes are sober enough to linger. The zips and whistling of transport pods on airway tracks chatter above in the Upper City’s din—a language of glass and steel. Noise is one downside of living in the Under City. There’s also the stain of sweat and alcohol on its citizens; the neon lights that spill out from clubs in the Rouge Lys—the Under City’s red-light district—and sickly children in every nook and cranny of the place who are more rags than skin and bones. People like Cybil can only imagine what the upper elites have. What Brienne once had. The chip in her neck buzzes.

Cybil stops in front of a worn garage door. The narrow back alley cloaks her shadow from passing headlights and party crowds higher than clouds.

“Val. Open up, it’s me.” She raps a knuckle against the metal ridges, dust scraping over her skin. Shuffles and a few clangs sound from inside.

“Who’s me?” A hint of amusement works its way into the voice.

Cybil makes a face. “You little—Val, it’s Harker. Open up before I throw up on your door from breathing in smoggy shit all day.”

There’s a loud click when the garage door scratches open, and two gloved hands pull Cybil into the dark. Val hits a button to close the door as Cybil gropes at the wall for a light switch.

“Switch is here, idiota.” Light flickers through the space. Val grins crookedly, pulling the gloves off their hands and flexing their metal fingers. “What’re you here for this time?”

“Spare me the niceties.” Cybil lifts the short hairs at the back of her neck away. “I need a new chip. Up the strength.”

Val’s prosthetic hand prods at the bump at the base of Cybil’s neck. The cool metal burns. “You sure, Harker? This one’s already pretty—”

“Val, just do what I say,” Cybil snaps.

Val shuts up. They lumber away, muttering a curse, and return with a large gun-like tool—silver knobs on the side and a thin, harpooned barb for the tip. Cybil settles on a nearby stool and braces as the tool presses to her neck. Her eyes screw shut, fingertips flush against the stool underside.

“Relax. This one doesn’t hurt.” Cybil swears she sees stars when Val presses the trigger. “Well, not as much as the last one.” They don’t do a good job hiding their shit-eating grin.

Val picks up a pair of tweezers and starts poking at her neck, thin metal biting into flesh and plucking veins. Cybil glances at the array of chips next to her: dark chrome plating and silver etchings, the same silver forming ridges on the edges that resemble hooks. Some stolen, some bought. All smuggled.

Cybil scowls. If she studies the processors at the right angle for long enough—garage light outlining each groove and hook with something more alive than industrial—they look like little parasitic beings, needle legs designed to snag into flesh.

She looks away. It’s far too late to be afraid now.

When Val finishes, Cybil grabs the towel from their hands. “Look out for a payment soon.” She wipes away all the blood and hands it back, stretching her neck. “I’ll call you if I need to.”

“Harker,” Val grimaces. Cybil looks at them coolly. “The new processor chip I just gave you, it’s…a lot stronger than your usual one. And something’s clearly wrong with you.” They frown. “What’s this about, really? Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened,” Cybil says. “Lift the door. I have work to do, so I need to get going.”

“Wait—um. If it’s about…Brienne, you can talk to me.” Val adjusts their metal fingers, tracing the brass knuckles and twisting the copper joints. “You know that, right?”

“Val, that—you know that was years ago.” But Cybil can’t help looking away. “And she’s…dead anyway.” She can’t help the twinge of bitterness, of anger, of regret—that instantly fades when the new chip pulses in her neck—and her expression becomes neutral again. “I need to go.”

They stand facing each other under the dimly lit garage as the air dips into raw, glacial tension—until Val eventually resigns from digging further with a quiet sigh and hoists the garage door open, Cybil ducking past.

“I won’t be here next time, by the way.”

This stops her. An embarrassing crawl of fear thuds in her chest before it also disappears. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I won’t be in this garage the next time you see me. Well. Whenever you need me.” Val toes the alley pavement. Outside the darkness, Cybil hears the sound of retching splatter against thin metal; hollers and cheers erupt, muffled, from the distance, music booming. The damned Upper City is still grating its steel-enforced heart above them.

Cybil continues walking.

“…See ya.” The garage slams behind her.

—

I. The chip always buries itself into tissue first.

Cybil reloads her gun before shoving it back to her side. The back of it clicks, locking onto her belt. She cracks her knuckles, inhales, exhales—a routine after some jobs—and looks to the sky, cigarette smoke rising in wisps. The moon hides behind polluted air like it’s horrified by what she just did; stars that usually twinkle in the smoky raw umber sky flash precariously in a warning.

It’s not dark enough to hide everything, though, and Cybil kicks a limp arm away from her feet, boots slick in inky residue. A woman slumps over against a dumpster, tousled hair, wrinkled satin as a dress, and liquid trickling away from a menagerie of glass, remnants of a wine cup. The smell of alcohol and drugs is strong, even under her fragrant perfume, and the sharp odor of blood oozing from her midsection.

Cybil doesn’t remember what the target’s name was. Or who wanted the woman killed. She usually can’t. All she knows is someone with enough spite and cowardly tactics found her employer—Damian—and for a reasonable price, they’d let a contract killer do the job. Cybil knows that much, and that’s all that matters.

Her phone buzzes. A co-worker had texted her, asking if they could get drinks sometime. Cybil types out a response—‘Can’t. Too busy’—and shoves the phone back into her jacket pocket.

She detaches her gun again to examine its sleek black surface, cigarette flicking between her teeth. There’s a hideous scratch on one of the corners, resulting from clattering to the gravelly pavement during a struggle with the woman after she’d left the club through the back—a mistake on Cybil’s part.

Cybil frowns; she’d have to fish a few more clients from Damian to get it fixed. Again.

A groan sounds behind her, and Cybil whirls around, gun aimed to kill. It hisses against the woman’s forehead once to ensure death, twice for good measure, and the woman fully doubles over like bent pipes, blood running so dark against her skin it nearly resembles her hair.

Cybil clicks her tongue. It’s already a long way before she can reach the city borders and dump the body. Getting all the red off the ground would take time she doesn’t have.

She reaches for the woman before pausing. In the moonlight, the woman’s face and hair are oddly familiar, bearing an uncanny similarity to—Brienne. Cybil flinches. A static jolt in her neck causes her to drop her gun again.

It dissipates just as quickly.

Cybil huffs in frustration. This is the ninth time. Barely a full month later, and Val already has to replace the chip soon. What a waste.

She picks up her gun and re-examines the woman: sunken eyes, thin lips, angled nose, and no freckles.

“Exactly,” she mutters. “It’s not Brienne. Stop thinking about pointless shit.” Cybil hoists the woman over her shoulder, spits out the remains of her cigarette, and stalks into the cold night.

—

II. Perhaps it’s the way the chip was designed that makes it seek out control. When flesh does not satiate it, it will search further into its host to establish more of a connection.

The nightclub is empty save for the bartender and a few workers cleaning and preparing to clock out. Cybil studies her empty glass. The neon lights are seriously too damn bright.

“Say, Cybil,” the bartender calls out. His hands are occupied with wiping down a Bordeaux glass. “Do you want a refill? You’ve been staring into space for ten minutes.”

Cybil has the urge to throw her glass at him. Or kick his face in. “Be quiet, Damian. I’m here for more important reasons than getting drunk.”

Damian’s smile is crooked, sarcastic, the clean scar over the right side of his lips thin and faded. 

Cybil used to wonder in her first year how Damian managed all his employees—especially when a handful of them acted like rabid dogs that’d bite before they bark. That was before some guy had tried a mutiny over money and ended up blind in one eye, his fingers mangled, and unable to walk properly. The man had only pulled off a small cut, but Cybil had seen how Damian shifted to allow the blade to graze his mouth, his demeanor unflinching.

“Cybil doesn’t want to drink? Well, isn’t that a surprising first?” Damian swipes Cybil’s glass before she can react and fills it again with whatever lime-colored concoction he was mixing earlier.

“It’s on the house,” Damian says when she starts to protest. “Something tells me that the shit you’re about to spill isn’t for the sober.” His tone sounds drained. Seems like he worked another long shift—even if it’s just a cover.

“Why am I the one drinking, then?”

“Already had one.” Damian scrunches his nose. “Half a cup of vodka actually—stuff can really knock you out.”

Cybil laughs dully. “That’s because you’re one hell of a lightweight, Damian. Probably the worst I’ve seen by far, and I’ve seen plenty.” His right brow twitches slightly, and Cybil leans back, shrugging. “It’s true.”

“If you have something to say, Cybil, hurry and spit it out. The club’s technically past closing hours—plus, my partner’s waiting for me.” Damian resumes polishing wine glasses, his slicked-back hair falling apart in dark, curled pieces over his brown forehead.

“No Upper City stragglers today?” Cybil asks. A mixed chorus of high and low laughs rings from the bar’s private rooms. “Nevermind. When do I get to meet your partner?”

“That’s not—Jesus Christ, will you get on with it already?”

Cybil rolls her eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Cybil Harker.”

She downs her drink and sets the glass aside. “I need you to help me find Val. Sooner than later, if you can.”

Damian blinks at her. “You came all the way here just to tell me that? What do you need them for?”

“I—” Cybil hesitates. “My processor still hurts even though I got a new one.”

Damian’s hands freeze, and his face hardens.

“I’m fine. Seriously,” she quickly adds on. “Val will take a look at it once I track them down again. But they haven’t ever gone without contacting me for this long. And if I need another replacement, then I’ll need more money. So, more jobs.”

“Cybil,” Damian scowls, setting down the wine glass. “I thought I told you to get off those things. Val’s been giving you stronger—illegal—ones, and you’re saying you bumped it up again?”

The corners of Cybil’s mouth dip down. “I don’t see why that’s your business.”

“It is my business because you work for me. If the upper authorities find out Val is smuggling those damned chips into the Under City and that you’re using them, we’re all done. No more jobs, no more pay for you. Hell breaks loose here because our upper elite patrons can’t fuck around in secret anymore.” Damian cards through his hair exasperatedly. Cybil raises her eyebrows; it’s refreshing to see his composure slip once in a while.

“There’s a reason why they’re banned in the Under City, Cybil—our bodies aren’t modified like the upper citizens to handle that kind of technology. And you clearly don’t plan to leave like—”

Cybil slams a fist on the bar counter. “Shut your mouth.” Her voice ricochets across the peaceful nightclub. A muffled fuzziness thrums in her ears as she stands, glowering at Damian, chair kicked aside.

Brienne this, Brienne that. A light splash of freckles, gold hair, always a full smile—Cybil might as well go insane trying to avoid it all. Brienne is gone. Forever. Cybil had watched it happen; she'd let Val sob into her arms. So why does that traitor—

—Cybil almost tips forward, colored, fuzzy spots dotting her line of sight as she grasps at her neck. Even with the warmth of alcohol swirling through her system, there’s a momentary chill that passes over her skin, so fast she doubts it ever happened.

Get yourself together.

Cybil breathes in. “Just…don’t mention her.”

They trade a minute of silence. Damian watches her, grinding his jaw thoughtfully. “Is it really for work anymore, Cybil?”

Cybil stiffens. “…What are you talking about?”

“I only allowed the processors because you were practically a kid when I hired you. Yet you’re still using them, and we both know you’re aware of the risks. The costly replacements, too.” Damian folds his arms. “Val’s more aware than you are, actually—if only they’d berate you for me.”

Cybil’s hands ball into fists again before she realizes and forces them to relax. “I thought I told you not to tell them.”

“They’re your partner,” Damian chides. “So they should know.” When Cybil doesn’t argue further, he goes on. “Honestly, if you were a little less detached from people, I bet Val would be here right now, and you wouldn’t need to go looking for them all the time.”

“Whatever.” Cybil’s fingers itch for a cigarette. “Get to the point.”

Damian casts her a scrutinizing look. Despite all the blinding neon, it’s his perceptiveness that prompts Cybil to look away. If she has any lingering trace of a reaction on her face, Damian will never fail to catch what she’s thinking. He's never off the mark either.

“Fine, then.” The drop of his arms is proof of surrender. “Back to what I was saying.” He picks up another glass to clean. “I thought a temporary trial with the processor chips would help you adjust better. But here you are, on the verge of addiction, an agenda of your own.” 

Cybil’s pulse jumps. 

Damian stares at her like he can hear it. “But you asked me not to talk about her, right?” He cocks his head with a pitying sigh. “So I’ll stop there.”

Cybil grinds her teeth as the chip aches to keep her irritation at bay. “Just give me more jobs and I’ll be on my merry way.” She tosses her glass at Damian’s nose, who catches it smugly. “And pour me another drink.”

“I thought you weren’t getting drunk?”

“I’m not. It’s a cold night.” Alcohol would also dampen the aching, but she doesn’t need to tell Damian that. Or else his nagging would never end.

“Well,” Damian sighs. “Take it easy, still, you’re technically not of drinking age. And you'll have another job in the morning.”

One drink becomes two; two devolves into four. It’s after that one that Damian decides Cybil’s had her fill, makes her pay, and kicks her out of the club with the assurance that the target’s information will be sent to her soon enough.

If the neon lights inside were blinding, then the whole of the Under City’s Rouge Lys is a spectacle: brothels and sex shops piled on top of each other as women and men alike beckon to multiple throngs of passersby on the street. Glittering lights flit into a rosy pair of lips, blink into suggestive outlines of people—all advertising the same thing repeatedly. Dozens of vibrant, bold-lettered signs for hotels, restaurants, and bars transform the nightscape into saturated pinks and dizzy yellows and narcotic blues.

It’s not long before Cybil’s pocket vibrates. The grainy, white screen stings her vision; the chill air makes her zip up the collar of her jacket over her nose before she skims over the information Damian sent. A text accompanies the target’s photo:

The client wants it to look like an accident. I’ll send you any news I get on Val’s whereabouts. And stop using those chips. You’ll get yourself killed, Cybil.

As if.

Cybil ducks into a nearby alley after slipping through crowds of people and swings over a staircase railing. She scales a ladder to the roof of a shabby apartment building.

This had better pay well.

—

III. The human body cannot sustain a chip without the necessary alterations. After direct contact with the temporal lobe through the brain stem, the chip overwhelms the organ with its signals, some translating into direct commands.

Days drift into weeks; the weeks turn into a month. Damian’s sent her on about eight jobs by now, and Cybil’s growing impatient.

A slight brush through her hair now feels jarring to the bone. She can’t sleep on her back without an electric shock rattling through her spine every two hours. There were even days when her mind seemed disconnected, her movements slow and delayed; sometimes, they wouldn’t happen.

And most of all—Val.

Cybil hasn’t heard their voice in months. The low smoothness to it. The ever-present tone of amusement. The way it sharpens when they swear at Cybil in Spanish so she won't understand and retaliate. Even now, legs dangling from a random building she’d climbed onto, cigarette embers in the wind, it’s Val she thinks of—not the chip’s inflictions.

Because I need a new processor. That’s all it is.

Cybil checks her phone—no new messages from Damian—and sighs heavily, tapping a finger against her knee in a choppy rhythm. She can’t deny she’s getting desperate; there’s no money to make if she can’t move, obviously, but getting jobs done is a necessary, brutal satisfaction in itself. It's control. A pleasant weightlessness. One moment of dead calm that ends too quickly to keep her satisfied. And there's no point in stopping when she's already here.

The chip whirs, almost as if to reassure Cybil. She laughs drily.

It’s right, though. This is simply another job, and as long as Val continues to rely on her for money, they'll show up. She can get a new processor. Do her work. Repeat.

The eleventh job is where things start going wrong.

She had her gun pointed at the man, other small weapons tucked away in her belt. He’d pleaded about a daughter; Cybil hadn’t cared until the girl appeared behind him, wide-eyed and crying—and Cybil’s grip involuntarily loosened.

Maybe it was her thin legs and bony frame. Or how young she was. Or the fact she was handling a knife too heavy for her. But Cybil had hesitated for too long when a repressed memory of running behind Val and Brienne with a small dagger in hand surfaced, and her neck was set aflame. She glanced away. Her arm lowered.

In the next moment, the man had charged her.

Cybil tastes blood when her head crashes into the alley wall—shit, she bit her tongue. As the man lunges again, she ducks, sweeping out his legs from under him. He falls, and Cybil stamps a foot over his back. Blood drips down her chin.

Before the man can react, she yanks one of his arms into an unnatural angle, her other hand tightening around her gun. He cries out.

“Serves you right,” she sneers, pointing the gun. “You son of a—” A blade sinks into Cybil’s thigh, the girl suddenly beside her, and she would’ve toppled backward if the chip hadn’t immediately dulled the pain.

There’s a click—the man spasms once; he stops moving—and she turns to glare at the girl, who still has a hand wrapped around the knife, barely a third of it stabbed into Cybil’s leg. Tears drip down the girl’s face, eyes wide and unblinking. Her hand slips from the knife handle as she hesitantly steps back.

Cybil glares at her. She removes the knife. Lets it drop in front of the girl condescendingly. The girl flinches when Cybil raises her gun, finger poised to kill.

—But Cybil chokes on a breath.

She can’t pull the trigger. Not when Brienne’s face is hovering right there, a ghostly apparition blurred over the girl’s. Her tears are Brienne’s, her nose re-sculpts itself—even her sobs sound like Brienne's.

Cybil’s arm teeters. It has to be some shitty joke her mind was playing on her. Merely a hallucination that borders on insanity. But her finger doesn’t draw the trigger any closer, and the girl still looks like Brienne.

‘Shoot her, Cybil’—but Brienne—‘it doesn’t matter, pull the trigger’—Cybil hears a second click.

The girl keels over.

“I—” Cybil sucks in a breath. “Damn it.” She throws the gun away from her, vision hazy and as red as the liquid dribbling at her feet. Her pulse thuds feverishly; bile creeps up her throat.

It wasn’t Brienne. It wasn’t. There’s no way it could’ve been.

So why does she still feel as though Brienne is the one splayed out on the ground instead of some random girl? And more importantly, the damn chip was supposed to be managing things like this—what the hell was it doing now?

“Damn it,” she repeats. Just the sight of the girl—blood spilling from the hole in her forehead in greasy rivulets—sickens every nerve in her body.

Cybil claws through her pocket for a cigarette.

Damian. She needs to get back to the club. And do what? He’ll tell her to calm down. He’ll give her another job. She can redeem herself and forget this fuck-up ever happened. And Val—she needs to find Val so they can fix her.

‘The bodies need to go first, Cybil. You’re smarter than this.’ 

Cybil takes a step back. Or at least, she tries to; a crackle of pain convulses through her spine, and she trips onto the ground. When she moves to get up again, her body doesn’t respond.

Move, she tells herself. Get. Up.

‘Pick up the bodies and walk away. That’s what you’re supposed to do.’

Cybil’s face contorts. Fine. She rips off a piece of her shirt to messily tie around the wound on her thigh—now fully free from any pain. The rest of the alley looks normal except for the dark dribbles of blood, but Cybil focuses on what she needs to do.

Like that makes her any less guilty.

Clouds streak the sky, lacing frigidity into the air when the bullet holes are fully staunched with gauze pads and the blood has been washed into a nearby sewage drain. Cybil makes her way to the outskirts of the Under City—marked by a towering wall circling the city. After that, the land dips into toxic wastelands, an ocean of trash miles wide and meters high.

She lays the man in one of the waste tubes built into the wall. She watches him disappear down it before heading back for the girl. By the time Cybil’s done, the chip has returned her to normal, and her fingers are so numb that she can’t feel them.

As she walks back to the club, cigarette between her lips, breath smoking from her lungs like mechanical steam, she reminds herself to wear gloves next time.

—

The chip’s signals only grow stronger from here.

Damian called more often after Cybil had told him what’d happened—with some parts left out—to check in on things. They exchange more insults and vulgar comments than normal conversations, but Cybil thinks it’s practical to have a periodic, grounding presence at least. Not that she’d ever say that to his face.

After nearly two months since she started looking for Val, Damian finally shed some light on their whereabouts in a segment of footage he found through an old security camera system. Cybil could’ve said she was happy—until she recognized where Damian got the footage from.

“Are you sure this is where Val was last spotted?”

Damian’s scoff is muffled on the other end of the call. It’s still just as annoying. “You’re doubting my information?—after three years of working for me? And what’s wrong with this place? The Under City is really a maze of the same scenery.”

Cybil drags a hand over her face, peering down the repulsively nostalgic street of ripped tent roofs, buildings made from half-melded metal sheets, and murky windows, an interlaced web of rust-eaten pipes above. No wonder Brienne chose to leave. “I’m just—not fond of this one.”

“Oh? Care to share why? You know, I’ve learned more about you in the past month and a half than in the past three years.”

“Yeah. Sure, you have.” Cybil fumbles in her pocket for a cigarette, boots crunching over worn stone roads and jagged glass shards from broken bottles. The lined buildings—more like ruins at the moment—stand around her menacingly like they’re trying to find a way to swallow her whole. What a warm welcome. “Tell me the address again.”

“949. You’re looking for 949.” Even the same address too. “And Cybil?” Cybil knows where this is going. “Get the processor removed, okay?” Damian’s voice drops to a whisper, his tone eerily serious. “I know you’ve been busy with all the clients I’ve given you, but you—”

“That’s why I’m looking for Val. Can’t trust anyone else to do the job.” Cybil shines a flashlight on the protruding metal plates on each door she passes until she can barely make out a ‘949’. It marked the last one on the remains of the street before the tall, foreboding city border cut off the setting.

“I’ll call you later, Damian. Just found the house.” Cybil pauses. “And I’ll get the chip removed when I find Val. Promise.” She hangs up without hearing his response.

Her cigarette tastes musky in the thick, convoluted air; she lets the vice curl its wisps in her lungs for a few more minutes before snuffing it out and nudging the door open, gun cocked in a high guard. She was here to find Val, replace her chip, then leave. Nothing more, nothing less. A cloud of dust swallows the dark.

It’s quieter than she thought it’d be. Then again, there’s not much to expect when she greets the same sorry sight each time she ventures into the more run-down parts of the Under City: air green and hazy, crumbling structures, and wood blackened with mold. And especially when she’d grown up here.

Cybil’s phone flashlight barely illuminates the floor, let alone the rooms and hallways beyond. She yawns. Then freezes to listen.

There’s a disruption in her breaths—a third one between two of hers. But she doesn’t get a chance to react when a force barrels into her from behind, and she sprawls forward, phone flying from her hand. Cybil tenses on the ground. “Who’s there—”

The gun gets knocked out of her hand—shit, she hisses—and someone grabs her arms and trips her to the floor. Metal presses against her jaw.

“Don’t move, or I’ll crush your skull.”

Cybil’s eyes widen, stinging from the dust. She’d recognize that low voice anywhere. “Val?”

A beam of moonlight pouring through the empty living room’s grimy windows sculpts the figure’s shadow into silhouette. Val scoffs. They’re on their feet then, re-positioning their tool belt. Dirt coats their face like blood, and Cybil can’t believe what she’s seeing. “Val—where have you—”

“I’m not in the mood for this, Cybil.” Cybil flinches at her name. Val hasn’t referred to her by that in years.

“Is something wrong?”

“Look around,” they say. “You don’t recognize where we are?” Cybil’s eyes narrow. So they knew. Maybe they purposely led her here.

“What are you doing here, then? Revisiting old memories?” Cybil doesn’t mean for it to sound mocking, but her words come out harsher than she intended, bordering accusatory. Above them, the whirring of the Upper City grows to a peak as a large transport pod dips down on one of the many curving tracks weaved throughout the city. Still hundreds of miles away, despite how loud it is.

Val laughs. “It’s been…what, almost six years?”

“Val,” Cybil groans exasperatedly, “Just leave the past in the past—”

“—because none of it matters now?” Val glares at her. “It’s a little funny now that I think about it. You acted like you’d die without Brienne back then,” they smile wistfully, “but now, you don’t care at all?”

“…You didn’t answer my question.”

“You haven’t answered mine.”

How annoying. Cybil bites her tongue, debating whether or not to storm off and remove the chip herself. But no matter how irritating, she needed Val. She needed another processor chip. By any means necessary.

“Brienne—” her neck starts to hum— “left me to rot—left us to rot, Val.” Cybil’s face scrunches into a pained expression. “So you tell me. Why should I care?” Her voice raises with each word. “Why the hell should I care when she did what she did? When she gave up on us? How can I even begin to—!”

‘You’ve said enough.’ Cybil coughs. That’s right. She was here for Val to do their job; nothing more, nothing less.

“Does everything else before that mean nothing?” Val spreads their arms. “Brienne may have left, but she still loved us as much as we loved her, Cybil.”

A job—nothing more, nothing less. “That doesn’t change the fact that she chose to leave,” Cybil fumes..

“Did you choose to leave me, then?” Val’s voice rasps brokenly in the dark. Cybil blinks, eyes wide. “After she left for the Upper City, you got Damian to hire you without telling me. You chose him, not me—after what we’d been through.” They exhale sharply. “I was terrified—”

“You think I wasn’t afraid!?” Cybil stumbles, taking a step forward. “I took Damian’s offer so we could survive, Val!—so we wouldn’t need to live on the streets anymore—but I didn’t…” She lifts a hand to her neck, teeth grit tightly. “I didn’t want to involve you in any of it.”

“But that wasn’t important to me!” Val curls their fingers into their chest.

Cybil sighs loudly. “I know, Val—”

“So why, then? Why, Cybil, do you keep pushing me away? I’ve been playing catch-up with you for two years, and I’m still chasing something!…even when Brienne’s—gone.” Cybil watches them wipe their eyes. “I was the one who showed up at your door after—since you ignored all my texts like you always do. We don’t even talk face-to-face unless you need me to do something for you.”

Sweat pools on Cybil’s face as she sways lightly on her feet, still gritting her teeth in feverish pain. Dark spots were beginning to appear in her vision, and Val’s words were scrambled in her head. This damn job was taking too long.

She opens her mouth, but the look on Val’s face sends bile up her throat.

“Do something, Cybil. Yell at me, punch me, hate me—anything. I don’t care if I’m her replacement.” Their expression softens, melancholic and longing, one that Cybil doesn’t deserve. “But please…don’t give up on me the way she did.”

Something sparks uncomfortably in Cybil’s neck, and she’s thrown into a distant memory. It’s the three of them: her, Val, and Brienne. They’re tossing a pair of silver dice they had stolen onto a filth-coated street, playing a game Cybil can’t remember the rules of when a man begins to eye the metal greedily from across the cracked road. The rest is fuzzy—until the end: Val, a mouth of red, crumpled on the ground. Their hands shattered and bruised beyond recognition. And Brienne—crying to the sky.

Right. Brienne had left shortly after that. Maybe she had grown disgusted with everything, including Cybil and Val.

Cybil avoids Val’s eyes. They shouldn’t look at her like that. “You can answer my question now, can’t you.”

She hears them chuckle defeatedly. “…Today’s the day she left. That’s why I’m here.”.”

“The…day she…?”

The color drains from Cybil’s face. Sparks erupt from the chip again, and she drops to her knees with a groan. Images of Brienne flood her head: Brienne handing her a stale portion of bread, Brienne excitedly dragging her and Val into the house she’s standing in right now, Brienne in a transport pod, drifting smaller and smaller heavenward into the Upper City, turning away, face unreadable.

God. She really had ruined everything. And Cybil had wasted so much time and energy crying over it.

The sudden, cold press of metal against Cybil’s skin brings her back to reality. “Shit—Cybil, you alright?” They reach for her forehead. “What happened? Are you feeling sick? Do you have a fever?”

Cybil can’t think straight. She refrains from gagging. “—Fine.”

Val looks like they want to gut her and console her at the same time “Fine, my ass. I should’ve never given you a processor in the first place. You look terrible. And that’s putting it lightly.”

“If I look that much like shit—” Cybil grips one of Val’s metal wrists— “get me a new chip. That’s why I went looking for you.”

“You wouldn’t go looking for me for a reason besides that?” Cybil can hardly believe Val is still messing with her in a situation like this.

“We can—talk about that later,” Cybil weakly retorts. “But the chip comes first.”

Val is quiet for a moment before they respond. “I can’t do that.”

Cybil feels her stomach drop. Her neck scalds. “I—what? You know I need them to do my job.”

“Oh, shut up,” they snarl. “You, Cybil,” they chuckle dryly, jabbing a finger into Cybil’s sternum, “you’re as thick as it gets sometimes, you know that? It was never about your work—you’ve already gotten used to the killing a long time ago. Maybe even by the time Damian sent you on your first job.”

Cybil clutches Val’s wrist harder when the chip sends another intense burst of pain through her neck and spine. “I don’t care.” The desperation in her voice makes her feel sick. “I don’t care,” she says again, hand around Val’s wrist near-suffocating now, “I need it—to live. You wouldn’t understand.”

Val turns to face the window, jaw clenched, eyebrows furrowed. They look back to Cybil. “Then make me.” Their other hand finds hers. “Make me ‘understand’, Cybil. Tell me what's wrong. Tell me all the things you keep running away from.” The metal of their hands feels so, so cool. And Cybil’s neck is burning and burning and burning. “Because I don’t want to lose you too.”

Outside, so many miles away from the spiraling pipes arched over their heads, the Upper City shines like a second sun over rotting filth, softly illuminating Val’s profile through glass windows. ‘You’d never lose me,’ Cybil wants to say. It would be so easy to. She’s practically dangling on the edge of the precipice, words slathered over her tongue, a breath away from folding. Brienne left her. Brienne abandoned her. Brienne betrayed her.

And she had done the same to Val.

Cybil runs her fingers over the grooves between their hands’ metal plates. Val had suffered, just as Cybil had. Val had endured everything Cybil had, maybe even worse. Yet they were here, regardless.

Val won’t lose her. Because they’re all she has left.

Except, for some reason—some treacherous, ignominious reason—there’s the thinnest sliver of her heart that wishes everything would return to the way it was before, that longs for it. Bleeding, cleaving, then bleeding again.

Cybil is so tired of bleeding. And Val is in front of her with hands ready to mend. They always are. They always have been.

But she doesn’t get a chance to do anything.

A thrum of energy courses through her veins, and she finds herself tearing away from Val, snatching her gun off the ground, and twisting around to face them in a defensive stance.

—

IV. When the chip gains control over its host’s body, it will be too late for any restrictive actions. All it needs then is one last trigger to pull.

“Cybil…?” Val’s gaze flicks between Cybil and the gun in her hand. They take one step toward her, and a throwing knife instantly embeds itself into the wall behind them. A single drop of red slides down their cheek, the diagonal cut as thin as a needle.

“Val, stop!” Cybil shouts. Her heart hammers in her ribs. The chip bites into her neck, searing. “Just—don’t move, okay? I’m not—don’t come near me.”

They say something back, but Cybil can’t hear it over the ringing in her ears, or the millions of images reflecting off one another in her mind, each one its own shard of reminiscence, and she can’t decipher between sweet and sour.

Brienne—in all her gold waves of hair and freckles and collections of scabs on her knees and elbows. A brightness amidst the Under City.

Blood on the streets under Val’s mutilated hands. Two silver dice. Brienne crying.

A warm night; a small Val peering at Cybil and Brienne from behind an abandoned store, hair shorn and cracked lips.

Small, light laughs—were those Brienne’s?—and Val’s thunderous ones.

Val unconscious, breathing thin.

Brienne fading, fading, disappearing.

Cybil almost wants to laugh.

It’s so easy to fall apart, she realizes, without the chip holding her together. All these memories swell behind her skull as they threaten to diverge into madness. Into desire. Into a plethora of emotions Cybil would rather keep buried—even in her grave—than divulge any bit of. No one should see her like this; Val should never have to see her like this.

So she jabs her knuckles into her temples like she’s trying to pry the images out of her. She holds her tongue, willing all the memories, all the chip’s searing sensations away.

Cybil doesn’t notice until it’s already too late.

Until Val’s already crossed the distance between them and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, eyes darting over hers. No, no, stop, she tries to scream. Val, get away from me—

Cybil’s hand quietly aims the gun, quietly pushes the safety to the off position.

‘Shoot it, Cybil. Do what you’re supposed to do.’

The first bullet wrenches a surprised shout as it pierces flesh.

The second splinters a wall. The third ruptures Val between their lungs, and silence follows suit as they tip backward to the ground, shock still prevalent in their features. Moonlight catches on the edges of their face, rendering their eyes an abysmal, silvery brown. Paired with the color of crushed cherries, the sight is almost ethereal.

Cybil flinches harshly.

…No, what did she just do?

Cybil stares at the body, then at the gun in her shaking hand—shit. She didn’t mean to pull the trigger, right? The chip in her neck vibrates—like it’s laughing at her.

“Val…What…I didn’t…” The gun clatters to the floor, but Cybil can’t be bothered to care whether it’s scratched when Val is lying there. Still. More still than Val’s ever been.

Fuck—what did she do? The blood stains their clothes thickly like fuel, darker than petroleum. Cybil stares into eyes that seem to consume her whole. Ones she thought she’d grown used to seeing on all the countless, nameless faces she’d killed without a second glance. Ones that seem to pass through her just like Brienne’s did.

“No. No, no, no, no, no.” Cybil backs away, hands curled over her ears. She can feel the chip working in her neck, burning like it always does, trying to erase everything like it always has. “No, no—shit, this—this can’t be happening—” But there’s the color of cabernet pooling before her, a bullet where a heart should be, and Val is strung between it all. Unmoving. Too, too still.

“Make it stop,” Cybil rasps. “Please. Someone—” her fingers dig into her skin— “help me—make it stop—just make it stop!” Pain envelops her throat like a noose. It trickles down her spine like it’s tightening puppet strings, all the while numbing, numbing, numbing.

Cybil screams.

She collapses to her hands. Her fingers begin to lose any sense of touch; her legs already have.

“I didn’t mean to,” she wails. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t.”

The numbness spreads through her arms, wraps around her torso, fills her veins with nothing. A benign stinging sensation leaves what it touches lifeless and steals her breath like it’s merely fiddling with the idea of suffocation.

Cybil can do nothing to stop it when it finally reaches her heart.

“No…” She relaxes into the ground. Even with her cheek pressed against the floor, Val’s eyes are still in her line of sight. “…S…to…p…” But there’s no point. Her eyelids begin to sink, heavy with the weight of looming death.

Though, there’s a moment.

As her heart slows to a stop, just for the briefest of moments, an image of Brienne’s face—young, full of life, laughing beside her and Val, who wears their own wide, boxy grin—flits through her dimming vision. A small caress of warmth seeps through her chest in the desolate, numbing cold.

Cybil’s mouth lifts ever so slightly into a soft smile. Maybe she finally got what she’d wanted after all.

—

V. You are not you anymore. You are not you anymore. You are not you anymore. You are not you anymore. You are not you anymore. You are not you anymore. You are not you anymore.

It’s long past midnight when Cybil’s body picks itself off the ground.

The limbs stretch themselves, tense and stiff, and move together as if they were doing so for the first time. This Cybil glances at Val, and her face betrays nothing, a visage carved from stone. Dead. Unchanging.

It’s an instinct, the way this Cybil hefts Val over her shoulder and walks away.