SynTracker | ONC 2021 | MM Romance | Sci-Fi | Complete

Twelve: Monday

"What did you do?" Ulla's voice barely punctured the fog that was his grief.

On his knees on the ground, Ian didn't raise his head before replying, "I killed him."

"Your husband?" She cocked the gun, pressing it harder. "Was that how you wanted to 'help' him?"

"I wanted him to be free." He choked. "I don't know where I went wrong. I followed every instruction — his... model was supposed to be easier than yours. I didn't damage anything, not that I saw."

"Tracker." She slid the gun under his chin and pressed up so he'd meet her eyes. "What were you trying to do?"

Answering her was easy, the words cascading like water, evidence of his guilt. "I took his tracking chip. But I killed him." He closed his eyes, the gun retreating. He hoped that meant she was aiming.

"Tracker," she insisted. "Get up."

"No need." After the last twenty years? After Quentin? Dying on his feet or on his knees made no difference.

"You can wallow in self-pity after you've done your duty," she said, in a tone so much like the mother she was, he opened his eyes just from the surprise of it. She'd put her gun away. "Get up, I said. He's not dead."

Hope blossomed, sharp and terrible, slicing through him like a laser knife through butter. She might be tricking him — toying with him for revenge — but he had to believe she wasn't the type. He got up as instructed, a plea in his voice. "Tell me what I have to do."

☵☲☵

"He needs a tracking chip to boot up," Ulla said, eating canned soup she'd heated with just her hand while sitting at the foot of the bed where Quentin lay immobile. Something in her expression had turned soft the moment she'd seen Quentin, as if looking at him was the final thing she needed to be sure Ian and she stood on the same side of the divide. Ian sat on the floor eating his own soup, incongruously heated the same way. If he was to be useful, he'd need to be in as good shape as he could manage. "We can't function without them. That will tell you all you need to know about how they never planned to keep the promises they made us."

He set the can down to massage his temples. "I don't know who they are, or what promises they made you."

"Humans," she said, but she didn't sound hateful. Just used to it. "During the war. We were always told we'd get to integrate once Xeygh was defeated. Be normal. Have a life."

"But they designed you to be trackable at all times," he finished for her. "And never put that info in the manuals." A revolting picture. Ian had never known BioSynths had once wanted to become a part of human society. No one knew. He reached for his soup again, trying to figure out the missing piece of the puzzle. "But I've heard of so many BioSynths who got rid of their chips and vanished, and their codes never showed up again."

"Really? So many? Think for yourself: how many were their Trackers?" She helped him reach his own conclusions with a patience he imagined she usually reserved for the children he'd dragged her away from. There was none of the vitriol she'd displayed in his garage.

And 'his own conclusions' were chilling. "Three, maybe four Trackers." One or two outliers who'd only lost a single BioSynth that way, but all the other BioSynths had been tracked by the same Trackers. "They never escaped, did they? They were murdered." He couldn't eat another spoonful if he tried.

"Now you get it. I thought you might be one of those, back in your garage." She patted his knee before he could open his mouth, a comforting gesture he had no right to accept. "Some would say I should call myself lucky to get one with a conscience."