With Eyes Wide Open

I have everything I need.

The night I am meant to seduce the president and usher in a new era of Lusand control in world politics, I have a cable running from my wrist and into Hayward’s personal tablet.

The one time my creator has left me alone with his personal effects is also the one time he should have declined that extra glass of wine at dinner.

Even now, I can hear him laughing in the dining room as he tries to impress a foreign diplomat who just so happens to be the spitting image of his first creation from Lusand’s initial undercover missions.

“Eve?”

The wire snaps back into my wrist just as I turn with a smile and see the man whose life I was supposed to upend.

If all goes well, then maybe his country will remain stable.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was just hoping to find something for my head.”

I dash a hand across my temple, and the unspoken human code for a headache makes sympathy crinkle his eyes. “No aspirin?”

“I’ll be fine,” I say.

In a manner of speaking, it’s true. I clench my hand, data already circulating through my internal archives.

I have everything I need.

Fauss meets me outside the perimeter of the main estate. With a few tweaks to nearby cameras, I’ve made sure the surrounding security detail has been occupied elsewhere on the grounds.

“Did the night go as planned?” he asks, pretending at a conversational tone.

“If the objective was to slip a few crushed sleeping pills into an after-dinner cocktail, then yes.”

Fauss looks begrudgingly impressed. “Was Hayward disappointed?”

“I didn’t have a chance to ask him,” I say. “He was passed out in one of the guest rooms.”

My co-conspirator’s eyes gleam in the dark. “Your doing?”

I actually laugh. “Oh, I can’t take credit. His sentimentality was his undoing.”

The humor in Fauss’s face melts away into resolve. “I take it you were successful with your other objective, though?”

I hold up my wrist as schematics and coordinates flash behind my eyes. “Did you doubt me?”

He sucks in a breath. “You really did it.”

“Don’t be giving me accolades now,” I say. “This is only part one.”

His brow furrows in confusion. “Part one?”

“Part one of the evening,” I clarify before smiling. “Let’s just say Hayward likes to keep his workshop closer than we thought.”

“You’re not worried?”

“I don’t feel compelled to be worried.”

“Don’t you think it’s too soon?”

“Are you losing your nerve on me now, Fauss?”

“No, I just — I thought we had a plan.”

“The plan is open to deviation.”

“Eve!”

“What?”

“Have you thought about what happens after?”

“Just spit out what you mean.”

“I have my own ends at stake. If I have to choose between the two — ”

“I understand. After tonight, we go our separate ways.”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“You can’t fool me. You’re more than just programming.”

“Maybe it’s just easier to pretend otherwise.”

Your eyes would tell you the place is just a shack.

But looks are deceiving.

A hum of tension runs through me. With each second I break through invisible firewalls, all Lusand make. When I breathe out after the last, Fauss puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Are you ready?”

I have flipped through lives — all archival footage — in my mind.

Each one is a fabrication.

Like me.

I act the part, but I am no living woman.

I am just a shell.

I am what my creator intended.

I am meant to be filled, but I am empty.

Nothingness.

The line of bodies is what we find below — each face perfect, every gaze exquisite.

Hayward’s arsenal could ensnare entire populations.

I’ve seen the plans.

But Fauss is not looking at the invisible army. He is looking at me with pity.

“Eve?”

I shut my eyes to the husks that will be made to terrorize worlds beyond even this earth, all the forms made in the shape of females who are often deemed harmless in countless societies.

“I have the codes,” I say. “Let’s do what we came to do.”

Fauss says nothing, but then again he doesn’t have to.

By the time my creator finds me, it is too late.

Fauss left hours ago. His goodbye was just a kiss on my cheek.

“Find a way,” he said. I said nothing in return; lies weren’t mine to give.

Hayward is a mess, looking to each of the destroyed bodies leaking wires.

A slap to my face makes my pain receptors flare, but I do not blink.

“You are nothing! Nothing, I tell you!”

The creation is not supposed to rise against the creator. In this, he wants me to be the doll he always claimed I never was.

I smile.

Then he moves to the last remaining keyboard.

He sneers at me over his shoulder. “Bodies can be remade.”

I see something like triumph in Hayward’s eyes.

But I laugh. His eyes sharpen.

“I’m your only hope?” I laugh again. “Really, Hayward, you should have known better than to have contingency codes for self-destruct capabilities.”

Hayward just stares at me.

“Why would you do this?” His voice is a broken plea — the disappointed way a father might ask why his child has done wrong. “Why would you help them?”

I search my creator’s eyes and feel nothing.

“I wanted to be the last.”

I should say more — tell him how much I hated being a puppet— but I see from how his eyes scrunch that he will never understand. It was always about Lusand, the politics spread across the universe, the human cretin who went beyond their bounds in intergalactic relations.

It has never been about me.

I wanted something that was mine. A legacy. A lasting mark.

I think of my last moments with Fauss when I pressed the flash drive into his palm.

Fog and static intertwine at the edges of my vision.

And then I —

For the first three conflicts in this series, follow the links below:

Many thanks to Microcosm for hosting this series and inspiring it with their August 2021 challenge “Rings of Conflict”!