Born

Like the one who called himself Vitrolith, this girl had white-blond hair and no visible implants. Though the way she’d managed that fall made Cormack believe she had some sort of biomechanical enhancement going on, even if his super keen senses couldn’t detect them.

Dismissing him, the girl turned to face Allora. “Do you know who I am?”

“Cassandra?” Allora shook her head. “”Tis not possible—you died when the world stopped spinning.”

“Who told you that, daughter?” Vitrolith raised an eyebrow. “I see the Borns are still spreading their lies, just as they did with your mother.”

“You will not speak to me of her!” Allora snapped, hand dropping to the whip on her belt. Cormack moved to her other side, providing her physical and emotional back-up.

Seemingly unaware of the danger to herself, the girl took one of Allora’s gauntleted hands in both of hers. “The soldiers told me you found the missing journal, the first one Cassandra ever wrote.”

Cormack scowled down at her. “I thought  you were Cassandra.”

The girl grinned at him. “I’m only a replica, an incomplete copy of she who beheld what would be. My function is to interpret events that the real Cassandra saw and based on those prophesies; guide the survivors past this time of turmoil.”

“Then, you’re not real?” He couldn’t believe it, every pore, every wisp of hair, even her scent told him that this child was as alive as he was.

She shrugged. “What is real, soldier? Something that your senses tell you is there? The way one comes into this world? The knowledge we pass on, is all that real? I live, as you do, can die as you one day will. But I was engineered, not born or bred, same as my father.” Her gaze fell on Allora, who collapsed to her knees, her head bowed, shoulders shaking. “And my sister.”

Cormack shook his head. “Lies! I have seen her hurt, seen her bleed. Felt her body! She is no Cyborg!”

Allora said nothing.

He gripped her by the shoulders, shook her. “Tell them! Tell them about your mother.”

“My mother….” Her eyes had gone unfocused, and he shook her again, until her head wobbled. Damn it, she had to tell them!

“Soldier, it will be all right.” The child said, slipping her arm around his. “She is just as you’ve always known her, the same as you’ve always loved.

Does it matter so much how she came into being?

Would the world be a better place if she did not exist?”

His vision blurred as he stared at Allora, still lost in a daze, so far away from him, so far he could never hope to reach her again.

“Cassandra…,” Vitrolith warned.

The girl held Cormack’s arm in a vice-like grip.

“Be at ease, my sire. We need him as much as we do her.”

“He’s losing it, he might hurt you.”

Cormack shook uncontrollably and fell to his knees. My task mistress is a Cyborg creation? It must be false, he would have sensed it about her, the same way he did the others.

“He needs to see the truth. Only then will he accept what is rightfully his.” She kissed his cheek and the world went fuzzy and dark.

19

When Allora saw Cormack fall flat on his face, she came out of the odd trance Cassandra had cast over her with her touch. Nothing was as she’d believed it to be, not even herself. Memories of things that happened before her birth vied for her attention, shouting inside her own head, but she locked them all away, needing to help Cormack. “What did you do to him?”

“She is beginning to see.” Cassandra straightened her shoulders and stepped back toward Vitrolith. “In time you will accept it as truth instead of the lies you were fed from infancy.”

Questions plagued her and as she leaned over Cormack, checking for his pulse she had to ask, “Why did you come for me now, after all these years?” The answer doesn’t matter, she told herself even as she braced for impact. Just like the overlord, these people needed something from her. She’d be a fool to give it to them just because they claimed to be the family she never thought she’d have.

Cormack’s heartbeat was strong, his breathing steady. She stroked his face while staring up at Vitrolith as he responded to her question.

“It was prophesized that your mother must take you to a Born colony, where you were to be raised as one of them.”

“Cyborgs can’t reproduce sexually—they feel no drive toward anything but power.”

“Really, Allora, is that what you feel when you look at him? Only the need to take, to assert your power over him?”

He shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. “I am not a Cyborg.”

“Dearest sister, do you even know what a Cyborg is? We have been around since well before the earth stopped turning. Anyone with a pacemaker or hearing aid used technology to enhance his way of life. This colony is made up of scientists, who used our technological know-how to better our lives. Look around you, Allora. What do you see?”