Her body tensed, muscles tight as she quickly averted her gaze from Owen. Her fingers clenched a little as she worked them in her hair, braid almost done, and her eyes closed.
She stayed still a moment, the scientist immediately regretting his words, before her shoulders fell slightly and her eyes opened to scan over the bed.
“How long will it stay fixed-” she winced halfway through the word, holding back a hissing noise.
“Bit my tongue…”
Owen sighed.
"Look... I'm sorry. That was... Rude. I'm pretty bad with interacting with other humans, let alone... Well...” He took a moment to reframe his words. “I know what they made you do..." They made her kill one of her own... Friends? Did the subjects have friends? He stood up and gently put a hand on her arm.
Why don't you lie down so I can see the back of your neck?"
With a quick glance at him, she turned, curling up on the bed and pulling her hair up and over her shoulder to expose the back of her neck.
“Can’t talk?”
She shook her head lightly, facing away from him.
"Well... I can talk enough for the both of us, so don't fret, darlin'," Owen grumbled as he crouched behind her, brushing aside a few strands of hair. Up in the base of her skull was a small port that could run directly to a computer. He already had the other end in his laptop.
"Okay... What I'm going to do it plug a wire into the reactor port. That's this thing," he tapped it lightly. "Usually they sedate you for this, back at the labs... I can't find any reason why... So I have no idea if this will hurt or anything..."
She stopped herself from looking back at him. Face still in the pillow, she tried to reassure both him and herself.
“I’ll be fine.” Eventually.
Lying on the bed wasn’t helping much with the fact that she was still exhausted. With her eyes closed she could already feel herself drifting off to sleep. Maybe she could keep that up and sleep through it.
"Good - 'cause tomorrow I am going back to the lab - alone. I don't get why they want to destroy you," he said sourly, as he literally plugged a mini USB wire into the back of her neck.
There was a small, sharp intake of breath as the USB went into the slot, and she curled her hand into the blanket below her.
"Just loading the reactor data," He put the laptop aside and went to get another cup of coffee. Owen found himself staring at her, leaning against the peeling counter, a question on his mind as sure as the mug in his hand.
"So... Why did you do it?"
She was silent for quite some time, apparently willing to pretend he had never asked that. However, after a long while she must have had a change of heart, because she started to speak. Maybe not what he expected though.
“Which one?”
Coffee was never ever designed to leave the nasal passage it would seem. Especially when it was fresh, and warm. He set the cup down hastily, coughing and spluttering as he went.
Having apparently decided against the coffee, he came back around behind her, back to the computer.
"It doesn't matter... Shouldn't have asked..." He murmured, beginning to tap away.
“No, you should know. Because I would have killed you, if you were there. You deserve to know.”
She wouldn’t move. She was going to stay lying her for as long as she could get away with, which she hoped would be a long while. Her voice was steady but light. She meant to no threat. She said it flat, a statement that held no more weight than a grocery list.
Her hand let go of her braid though, holding onto the blankets as well. With her back to Owen, she felt a lot more comfortable than if she had been watching him choke on his coffee instead of just hearing it.
“I killed Toby because they told me to, and if I hadn’t....... well. If I hadn’t...” Her fingers curled into a fist. “I killed the first guards because... I panicked. I was sure they were going to kill me. I was sure that I had failed. After that...” Her hands were shaking. She closed her eyes.
The male watched her from behind, the tapping of the keyboard having stopped as he listened to her words, a curious but bemused frown on his face. He didn't know what to do... how do you comfort someone who did that? Hell, he never knew what to say to his own species, let alone whatever Xi was.
He'd helped create whatever she was... he was partially responsible for those deaths.
Tap tap tap went his fingers on the keyboard.
"Well, Xi... I guess you just did as you were created to do."
“That’s what I mean....” Her voice was small, a whisper.
It seemed as if Owen wasn’t going to give her the answers she was looking for. The fabric of the blankets was balled in her fists.
Her mind was racing, trying to come up with the whole story so maybe she could tell it.
“I’m a mistake.”
"No, you are not," Owen said firmly, giving her a firm look... Well, looking at the back of her head.
"Recalibrating the reactor now... You may feel some warmth down your spine... Just try and relax for me," he said in a soothing tone of voice, as he mulled over her words.
"A mistake was the idiot who threw your friend in at you, when you ran the maze... You did what you did, and you panicked," he said softly as he unplugged the wire from her . "All done kid"
As he pulled out the cord, she forced herself to sit up again, taking a glance at him.
“How long will it stay fixed?”
"To be honest, its usually about three days until the radiation levels start to fluctuate... A week until you start to get the achy neck... A week after that... Severe illness, not unlike meningitis... Is say another week after that..." He trailed off, not needing to say it.
She sat quiet, looking down at her hands, slowly soaking in his words.
“You’re leaving though. So my options are limited.” Her hands clasped each other, moving about themselves nervously, wringing. “Three weeks to....” to do what? To find someplace she wouldn’t hurt anyone? To give herself up? To live? She let her upper body fall back onto the bed, still facing Owen and legs still dangling off the side. Taking a pillow she held it to her chest.
The scientist shrugged slightly as he packed up his laptop, into the back pack once again and rubbed his eyes. All he wanted to do was be back at home with one of his housekeepers stews, a warm shower and his own bed... but instead, he was trying to persuade a renegade experiment that she should give herself up, whilst comforting her that her termination wouldn't be that bad.
Life was really crazy at times.
"Three weeks until you go thermonuclear and level a city," he said, dumping the back pack on the bed. "If I were you... I would steal a boat and a gun, get as far out to sea as I could then put the gun to my head... at least that way, its on your own terms..." His words were firm... but held pity for the girl in front of him. "What else can I say?"
The girl winced, holding the pillow tighter to chest.
“My own terms...
I would rather turn myself in.” Then with a small shake of her head, she let her eyes lock on the air in front of her.
“I don’t want to force you to stay, but...” She stopped herself from ending that sentence, instead pushing up so she was sitting again, and looked him right in the eyes.
“Either you stay with me, or you leave that-” Xi motioned to the backpack, “with me, teach me how to use it, how to get food and-” well, there were a lot of other things she didn’t know how to do, but she didn’t know how to ask for them specifically. So she let herself trail off and think about it.
"Wait," The young scientist gazed at her, looking absolutely flabbergasted by what he was hearing. "You want me to either stay with you... as in to go on the run and become a fugitive with you... or teach you how to use this, get food... how to survive..." Own shook his head.
"Xi, you are not meant to survive in the human world. You were made to kill... its an impulse in you. If I stay, I have no doubt that you would kill me too in the end... I will give you my stuff, on the condition that you get as far away from here as you can..." The whole speech was soft, and somewhat painful for Owen to say. He'd invested a lot of time and effort into the Enigma project, along with everyone else... but everyone else was dead, and soon she would be too.
