Mardock Scramble

Boiled watched with steely eyes as Shell sat there on the bench, head in his hands. The two of them were the only ones currently in the Broilerhouse waiting room. Shell removed his Chameleon Sunglasses. Holding the deep violet sunglasses in his hand, he turned to Boiled, his voice a pitiful mess of self-recrimination. He should have worked it out long ago.

“If only I’d told you everything right from the beginning, none of this would have happened… I was a fool to imagine that it would be easy to kill the girl.”

Boiled sat there. He didn’t make a sound; his expression remained constant. He didn’t nod and he didn’t shake his head.

“I can change. I can become anyone you want me to be. I can clean up any dirt. I’ll make the best of any situation. So, please, just get me out of here,” Shell continued.

Boiled crossed his legs and met Shell’s gaze. Still he said nothing.

“I’m frightened, Boiled, and I have absolutely no idea what it is that frightens me so. That’s the worst part of it.” Shell sounded as if he were about to burst, his innards ready to spill out of him at any moment.

“I’ll make everything disappear,” Boiled replied, his voice soft.

Shell’s eyes, so full of pain and distress, opened up ever so slightly.

“It’s time to talk to your lawyers,” Boiled continued and started to rise, when Shell clamped his hand on Boiled’s arm.

“I’m begging you… Help me… Help me become a different person again.”

Boiled nodded.

≡

“So it was a matricide, after all…” the Doctor said. His face was calm, almost respectful. “That must have been the root of all his deviant behavior. Despite losing his memories—no, because he’s lost his memories—he was left with no other way to control his emotions, to keep his urges in check.”

–Why?

Balot snarced the words through the choker on her neck, Oeufcoque.

“Imagine that you’re experiencing constant feelings of terrible fear and anger and have absolutely no idea how to deal with those emotions—you have no idea what will help you calm down. Then you’ll get a sense of what it is to be Shell. Wouldn’t you do whatever you could to try and stop the terrifying feelings that are gnawing away at your mind? Sure, you’d be fine so long as you could find a way to successfully sublimate those feelings—in your professional and social ambitions, maybe—but what happens when you’re no longer able to sublimate the urges? Self-restraint goes out the window.”

“And as Shell grew used to the whole process, he became inured to it and started to believe that what he was doing was entirely normal,” added Oeufcoque, now taking the shape of a geometric pattern inside the crystal pendant on the choker. “It was probably a self-defense mechanism against his memory loss. He was afraid of the spirit of his dead mother coming back to haunt him, but even stronger than that was the feeling that he was responsible for the girls’ deaths, that their sacrifice was all his fault.”

–Because his first lover died, I think.

Balot found herself contributing to the conversation.

–The girl that Shell really did love. It was a real shock to him to find out that she had an abusive past, similar to his. A shock to discover that they might have chosen one another because of their similar histories.

Balot felt a pang of sadness in her chest. Sure, she felt uncomfortable and irritated too, but the feeling of sorrow was winning out over all other emotions. She hadn’t imagined for a moment that Shell had lived through experiences similar to her own. On the contrary, Shell had always looked for such girls in order to convert them into that which was beautiful to him—Blue Diamonds, money, the stairway to success.

I’m going to make you clean. I’m going to clean you up. When Shell had first yelled this out, it was as a lonely soul, but also as a kindred spirit. Burnt out and wanting others to join him.

“Empathy, eh? Well, people do indeed actively seek out people like themselves—birds of a feather…” the Doctor murmured. Then he coughed, conscious that the mood had been brought down somewhat. “Anyhow, all the memories we copied from the chips have already been submitted to the Broilerhouse as evidence. All we have to do now is wait for the DA to start moving, and then we hit them with a chronological simulation of Shell’s memories. It’ll be just like fingerprinting him. Our aim for today’s trial is to get official recognition that this will serve as proof of Shell’s crimes.”

–What’s my role in all this?