Free Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 by Manfred Gabriel Alvaro Zinos-Amaro Jeff Stehman Matthew Lyons Salena Casha William R.D. Wood Meryl Stenhouse Eric Del Carlo R. Leigh Hennig Page A

this illness. Like a diabetic not producing insulin, I don’t produce fear.
    We cured diabetes years ago.
    I don’t think she knows that. Have you come up for a cure for me, with all that blood you took?
    I wouldn’t be here if we had. Tell me more about Cecelia. You’re fond of her?
    Sure.
    You’re in love with her.
    Never been in love. Loved, yeah. But not in love. Have to think about that.
     
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    You really should let me go. The guards will be here any moment.
    They won’t. I know you had the eyes turned off. To keep what we talk about secret. ‘Sides, all I have to do is give my wrist a twist, and I’ll break your neck.
    If you can kill me so easily, why don’t you let me go? You can always reach out and snap my neck later if you want.
    No matter. I wasn’t going to kill you anyway. Had enough killing in my life. Just wanted to let you know I could.
    Why?
    Cecilia had a meltdown last night. She was crying, saying she was losing it, she couldn’t do this anymore. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew she needed help, so I went to her.
    You escaped your room?
    I told you, I can leave whenever I want. You forget where I’ve been, how I’ve been trained. So I head down the corridors, twisting this way and that. Turns out, Cecelia still has that chip her mom planted in her, and I still have my tracking hardware. Can’t take that out of you without turning your brain to mush. All the while, I hear Cecilia cry. I don’t understand though, because my room is far away. I think maybe she started filtering it through the buzzers in the hallways, luring me. Like a siren.
    Still, you went. Out of love.
    The locks to the offices are biometric. Old style, easy enough to clear. I get to the room where Cecilia is. She’s there in the corner. A lot like I imagined her. A lot like she described herself one night when I asked. She couldn’t lie. Maybe that’s why she was having so much trouble now.
    I don’t understand .
    Maybe I should kill you. Lying to me still. Even after I know the truth. I took her and held her tight.
    You had sex with her?
    You know I didn’t. You were watching the whole time. You or someone like you. I found the eyes. No, I held her, rocked her, like a child in my arms. I told her it would be okay, that I understood. It wasn’t her fault. That’s when I realized what was going on. Who you are. Not a coat at all, not the kind you pretend to be, at least. You don’t care about helping me. You just want to use me, and you were using Cecelia to help you. You want to know what makes me tick, why I don’t feel fear. You want to take it, bottle it, feed it to all the other soldiers out there. Make it into a weapon. Imagine, an army without fear, charging into battle without a care for their own skins. Every general’s dream.
    It doesn’t matter anymore. We have what we need. We thought it might be in your psyche. That’s why the talks. But it’s in your blood. We can reproduce it in other soldiers, create that dream you seem to dread. Finally bring the war to an end… Why are you laughing?
    I had gone to get Cecilia a drink of water. When I came back, she’s got something sharp and bright in her hand. Blood is pooling on the floor. And me, without a kit, without a patch. But I’ve still got skills. I use my shirt to stop the bleeding. I pull the alarm. Others come. She’ll be all right.
    So?
    Well, when I saw Cecilia there, near unconscious, spilling blood, near death, I got this lump in my throat, an empty feeling in my stomach. My heart almost beat out of my chest. My breathing was quick and shallow. My mind raced with a thousand thoughts of what would happen if she died.
    And I began to shudder.
     
     
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    Manfred Gabriel's short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Tales of the Unanticipated, Abyss & Apex and Forbidden Speculations . He has published non-fiction articles for History Is Now Magazine , and his musings on the modern workplace can be