When Alfia woke up, there was a small blanket covering her slight form. She was warm from the sun streaming over her bed through one of the slats in the boarded window and the blanket that was tangled with her body. She furrowed her brow and rolled over onto her back with a groan, reaching up to rub her eyes with her fingertips. She sat up, running her hands down her face and letting out a breath. She threw the blankets off of herself and got out of bed, heading for her bathroom to take a shower. She undressed and took her hair down from the sloppy bun she had put it in the night before, letting the long mint strands fall down her back before stepping under the steady stream of hot water. She washed herself, not in any rush to get ready for her day, just relaxing as though it were a lazy sunday. She got out and grabbed her towel, drying herself off before walking towards her counter. She slipped on her robe as she started to towel off her hair in preparation to put it into the towel as she continued to get ready. She brushed her teeth and put lotion on her arms, legs, and heels before getting a facial moisturizer and applying it. Only as she finished with that did she notice that Nate wasn’t in the bathroom talking to her. He usually came in when she called out that she was decent. He was the entire reason she had bought a robe. Although, now that she had it- big and fluffy and black comfiness that it was- she couldn’t imagine not having it.
Alfia walked to the wide walk through that was practically a portal from her bathroom to her bedroom and looked into the bedroom for her friend, lightly keeping her hand on the corner of the wall, “Nate?”
He was sitting on her chair at her desk, leaning over to rest his elbows on his knees and was staring at a fixed point on the floor, only grunting in response.
She took another step into the room, not letting her fingertips leave the wall completely, “You okay?” she asked gently.
He looked up at her now, “What?”
“You okay?”
He nodded, “Yeah, I’m fine.” he stood up with an easy smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Liar,” she said with a teasing smile.
He smirked, the humor reaching his eyes this time, “You got me.”
They laughed and walked into the bathroom so that Alfia could finish getting ready with the companionship of the A.I., someone she now considered as one of her closest friends. She continued to go through her morning routine, but Nate had yet to strike up a conversation, which was odd because he could usually lead one between he himself and the miniature version of himself he pretended was on his shoulder if Alfia was having a quiet day. Those days were often and most of the time he would just try to get a smile out of her. Most of the time it worked.
He was staring at his shoes, leaning against the wall with a shoulder when he suddenly asked, “What’s one of your biggest wishes?”
Alfia took her hair out of her towel, thinking, “I don’t really know, I’ve never really thought about it. What’s yours?”
“To be human, “ he said without hesitation.
She only looked at him, familiar enough with him to know he wasn’t done talking yet.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets, “I see everyone around me, some I care about, others I don’t. But I can’t touch anything, I can’t taste anything, I can’t physically feel anything, I can’t even smell anything. Do you know how maddening it is, Allie? To be a part of a physical world and not be able to participate in any of its pleasures? To not be able to feel anything?”
She hung her head letting her damp hair curtain her face, “I’m really sorry, Nate. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in your position,” she said in a soft voice, thinking of all the weeks after her surgery where every part of her was numb and she couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive. Yes, she knew what that felt like, but that wasn’t what her friend needed to hear at that moment, “But I do know what it’s like to want something you can’t have.”
“Benny,” He said.
She didn’t answer, not wanting to deny or accept it. She was confused by her own emotions. She had loved Benny for so long, never even thinking about any other boy because she was too shy and nervous to approach anyone, let alone get to know someone well enough to be able to decide whether or not they were worth the time.
He unhitched himself from the doorframe and took a few steps towards her, “Al, it I were human, if I were real, would you be able to feel anything for me?”
“You are real, Nate,” she said with conviction, closing the distance between them, as though she truly believed it- which she did with all her heart.
“You know what I mean. If I were human- if you could touch me, actually feel me- would you be able to feel anything for me?” he asked.
Alfia instinctively went to take his hand and grimaced when her hand went through his, making his whole form flicker. Nate closed his eyes painfully.
“Never mind. I don’t even know if I want to know,” He turned away from her and walked towards her bedroom.
“Nate, I-”
“Don’t. Just… don’t.”
She watched helplessly as he walked away from her, desperately wishing that she could do or say something-anything-to help her friend. Sadly, she knew there was nothing she could do to help him right now. This was beyond her. Besides, she had bigger things to worry about, no matter how badly she wanted to be able to make Nate and his well-being her first priority. But people were dying in droves and she had to stop it.
With that thought, she suddenly remembered the coding and everything she had worked out about it on the papers that were scattered on her desk. Alfia ran into her room to her desk and stopped short when the papers were all gone, as though they hadn’t been there at all. She started to look for them frantically, knowing that the reason she had written everything down was because she knew she wouldn’t remember any of it without doing so.
“Allie, what’s going on?” Nate asked worriedly.
“They’re gone!” she cried.
“What are? Al, you need to calm down,” he moved in front of her to get her to focus, “What’s happened?”
“All the coding I was decrypting were on pieces of paper so that I could go back and look at them and keep figuring out. I left them on my desk when I went to bed last night and now they’re gone. I was this close,” she held her thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart, “to getting it!”
“Getting what?” Nate was still confused.
“The Basic Coding!” she started tearing her bedroom apart again, looking for the papers that had such precious information on them.
“You mean the Base of the coding?”
“Yeah. With everything cracked down to the ones and zero’s,” it was such an old form of code, most people forgot that it even existed. That is, everyone without CyberTech in their brains. Every cyborg with the Tech in their brains knew every one and zero that made up their Basic Coding so that no one could replace it. No one shared it with anyone else. The Basic Coding was the thing that kept them alive and functioning. The risks that came with sharing it were extreme and nobody did it for fear of what someone else might do to them. They were like snowflakes: no one the same as another.
“Why were you computing the Basic Coding?” he asked.
“Something about the Skin looked familiar,” she told him, straightening.
“You’ve seen someone’s Basic Coding?” he asked in surprise, knowing how precious that knowledge was. Even A.I.’s had Basic Coding.
She raised an eyebrow at him as she started to dig through a pile of papers, “I’m a cyborg, Nate. I can hack in school and the teachers will think I’m taking a nap. It’s not hard to get to it when you’ve had the practice.”
“What do you do with the codes?”
She shrugged, “Nothing, really. I just get to the Base and then move on. I don’t have any mastermind plan to conquer the world and start World War Seven.”
“Well, anyone could be the Creator,” Nate teased.
She snorted, “Why would I try to stop myself?”
“Cyborgs can be Hacked and made to do things they don’t want to,” he reminded.
“Yeah, except I upgraded my programmed firewall with one of my own. Not even Benny can crack it. And,” she pushed her dresser out a little to peer at all the papers that had fallen behind it, “I update it regularly with an even better firewall than the last one. The only one who can Hack me would be me.”
“What about Ben?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think he’s ever tried,” she straightened with a sigh and shook her fingers through her hair with her other hand pressed against her hip, “I can’t find them.”
“Do you remember anything that was on them?”
“I remember the Skin of the coding but that’s outdated by now. You need fresh Skin in order to get to the Base,” she explained, leaning against her dresser in defeat, “And now we have nothing.”
“Why do you need fresh Skin?”
“Because the Skin of the Virus evolves so that you can’t track it or find the Base unless you’re fast at getting to it. I’m fast, and I would have been able to get it, but I passed out and then I had to do it all by hand while my system was rebooting,” She said, crossing her arms over her chest, but using one to emphasise her point and then chew on her thumbnail as she thought about it.
“But even if the Skin does evolve, the Base can’t change,” Nate reminded her.
“Yeah,” She said as though it were obvious and she didn’t see the point to the statement.
He gave a small laugh, “Come on, Allie! You’re the genius here! Think about it!”
She stared at him blankly, still not comprehending what he was trying to tell her.
He laughed, a full-body, shoulder-shaking laugh that usually made her smile but now only made her annoyed.
“Are you going to tell me or just keep laughing at me?” she asked.
“You’re thinking about it too hard. Just because the Skin evolves, doesn’t mean you still can’t use the one you have to get to the Base. It doesn’t matter.”
Understanding dawned on her face, “I can still Decode the Skin until I get to the Base! Nate you’re a genius!”
He grinned as she shoved everything off of her desk and pulled out a large stack of blank papers and grabbed a pen to get to work, “Hey, Allie?”
“Yeah?”
“You might want to put some clothes on.”
She paused and looked down at her robe-clad form, “Oh, yeah.”
Nate laughed again, this time making her smile.
Alfia got up and grabbed some clothes out of her dresser before walking into to the bathroom and changing into them. She walked back to her desk, pulling her still-damp mint-green hair into a messy bun on the top of her head wearing light grey high-waisted skinny jeans and a loose black t-shirt whose hem stopped a little below the button of her jeans, allowing some of her midriff to be exposed as she put her hair up. She felt Nate’s eyes on her and found herself almost blushing as she wrapped a hair tie around her hair and sat down at her desk. She opened a PrivateLink with Benny asking him if he’d bring her something to eat and a few minutes later he came up with a bottle of water and a sandwich on a plate. She didn’t look up when he set them on her desk, not even realizing that he had. She heard him walk towards the bed, though, and heard him lie on it. After that she zoned back in on her work.
Alfia didn’t look up from her work for hours, never realizing when Benny would come in or out and never really taking a break. She didn’t even realize when Benny started putting pens and pencils into her hair to see if she would notice. When she finally looked up from her desk and went to take her hair out of it’s bun, she found all of them and frowned in confusion.
“Benny put those there to see if you would notice,” Nate said, lounging on her bed.
She jumped, having forgotten that he couldn’t be very far from her since she was the person he had downloaded to, “I obviously didn’t.” She started to take them out of her hair, standing up and taking a bite of her sandwich that had been lying there untouched for hours. Once she had gotten all of the pens and pencils out of her hair, she pulled the hair tie out of it and shook her head as her hair fell around her shoulders, still damp from her shower earlier that morning.
“That was strangely hot,” he noted.
“So you’ve said on several occasions,” She grabbed her sandwich and water bottle and walked over to her bed and sat on it next to where he was laying down.
They sat in silence for a while with Alfia eating and finishing her cheese sandwich and drinking most of the water in her water bottle. She reached over Nate to get to her bedside table and opened the top drawer, reaching in and grabbing a bottle of nailpolish. She closed the drawer and started to paint her nails.
“Black is a strangely kick a-”
Alfia raised an eyebrow at him.
“-butt color.” he quickly corrected.
She smirked, “I know. It just happened to be the color i grabbed.”
When she finished with that she made her hands go really cold so that the polish would dry faster and then laid down on her back beside Nate. They lay there for a while, not really saying anything, just staring at the ceiling in silence. Alfia looked over to Nate to find him already watching her.
“Why do you always stare at me?” she asked softly.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Stop doing that,” she said.
“What?”
“Answering my questions with one of your own. It drives me nuts.”
He gave a small half-smile, but this one wasn’t cocky or anything, “I know. Why do you think I always do it?”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
He returned the gesture, making her laugh. He smiled again.
Alfia propped herself onto her elbow, “So why do you?”
Nate shrugged, “I dunno.”
“Liar.”
He acted offended, “I would never.”
She laughed again, “Yes you would. I know you Nathaniel Black. I can tell when you’re fibbing.”
He smiled, “Well, maybe I was a little.”
She held her thumb and forefinger apart ever so slightly, “Lil’ bit.”
He chuckled, “Cute.”
“Why thank you.”
He ran a hand through his shaggy blonde hair, “What was the question again?”
“Why do you always stare at me?”
He seemed to consider the question for a moment, “Maybe it’s cuz you’re just so dang pretty, Allie.”
She flushed, “Come on, Nate. Be serious.”
“I am being serious!” he defended.
She raised an eyebrow, “Seriously?”
“I’m totally cereal right now.”
She laughed, “Yes, very cereal.” She tried to keep a straight face, but inevitably failed and laughed some more.
Nate smiled, watching her and happy that he was the one to make her laugh so much in such a stressful time where the only thing she was focused on was getting the Virus and stopping the Creator.
“So what kind of cereal are you, Nate?” She asked.
“I’ll have to go with Rasin Bran,” he answered.
She made a face.
“No? How about Reese’s Puffs?”
She shook her head scrunching up her nose.
“You know, it’s really cute when you scrunch your nose up like that,” he commented.
“Are your flirting with me, Mr. Black?” she asked.
“So what if I am? Are you going to do something about it, Miss May?”
“Well, there’s nothing I really can do about it is there?” her eyes got big, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
Nate shook his head, “Al, it’s fine. We both know it and there isn’t anything either of us can do about it.”
“That’s kind of depressing, isn’t it?” She asked in a teasing voice.
“Allie are you drunk?” Nate asked, propping himself up on one elbow to match her level.
“So what if I am? Would you do something about it?” she asked.
“I would put you to bed and then make sure to make your life a living hell the next morning,” he told her.
She giggled, “You wouldn’t try to kiss me?”
“I’m an A.I., sweetheart, I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
“But do you want to?” she leaned forward as though she was going to try even though he wasn’t physically there and she could move straight through him.
“Would you want me to?”
“I dunno,” She flopped onto her back and he thought she was asleep when she said, “I just did that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.”
She groaned and ran a hand down her face, “Sorry. I get a little fritzy when I’m tired and sometimes my mainframe sends a bunch of stuff to my brain that makes me act like I’m drunk for a minute or two.”
He chuckled, “That’s okay. You’re a pretty giggly drunk.”
She gave a short chuckle, “Yeah, that’s what Benny says.”
He smiled softly down at her, “How long have you known old Ben?”
She let out a breath, “A long time. Twelve years? I think? I don’t know. We were in the same area of ICU after we had our accidents.”
“You never talk about yours. How come?” he asked.
She visibly tensed, “I don’t tell anyone about it. Not even the shrinks that said they were trying to help me. Not even Benny.”
“Why not?”
She turned her head to face him, “You try seeing your parents blood dripping from somewhere on their bodies onto the roof of the car and seeing your mom’s head at an odd angle because her neck broke and feeling nothing but pain and thinking that you’re dying and actually hoping that you are because that would be easier than living as an orphan in that much pain for the rest of you life at the age of six years old. I was suicidal until I was sixteen, and when I was in the hospital after the accident, the nurses and doctors had to strap my wrists down so that I would stop pulling the I.V. out of my arm so that I would die and be reunited with my parents. So ask me again why I don’t talk to people about what happened?”
Nate just watched her for a few moments, trying to find the words to reply.
“That’s what I thought.” she got up to change into her pajamas.
“Al-” he tried.
“Don’t. Just- don’t.”
He winced at having his own words from earlier that morning used against him.
Alfia went into her bathroom and braced her hands against the sink, squeezing her eyes shut and feeling her shoulders shake in silent sobs. She pulled in a sharp breath and covered her mouth with a hand. She heard Benny’s footsteps run up the stairs and soon felt his arms wrap around her from behind. She grabbed them with one of her hands and leaned back into him.
“What’s wrong, Alfie?” he asked.
She shook her head and just kept crying, barely able to breathe as she thought about all the things she and her parents would do before everything went wrong. Benny picked her up and carried her to her bed where he sat both himself and her in his lap down on it. He held her to his chest and hushed her gently, smoothing her hair back and talking to her quietly, telling her that “it’s okay” and “I’ve got you” and other sweet nothings in a soft voice. Nate just watched from the corner and when she looked up at him, she could see how desperately he wanted to be the one to comfort her. She could also see the guilt that he felt because he felt that she was crying because of him. She closed her eyes and sent him a PrivateLink that they had opened a few months ago and just never closed.
A: It’s not your fault. And even if it was, I would forgive you.
His reply came only a few seconds later.
N: But it is. And I’m sorry.
A: No it’s not. Nate, you’re in my head. You can see everything in it.
N: I can but that doesn’t mean I go looking through your thoughts and memories. Those are yours and they aren’t my business.
A: You can if you want to. Actually, I want you to. Go through my head. Look at all my memories, maybe you’ll find some that I had forgotten.
N: No, Al. I won’t invade your privacy like that.
A: It’s not invasive if I give you my permission.
N: You’re upset. If I do it now, you’ll regret it later.
A: How do you know?
N: Like you said, I’m in your head. I know you.
A: Then you’d know how much I want you to be human, too. Do it. I want you to.
N: Maybe when you’re not upset anymore.
Alfia pulled in a few steady breaths, calming her nerves, opening her eyes and sniffing. She wiped her face and let out a heavy breath, wiping her face.
“Are you okay?” Benny asked.
She nodded.
“Did he do something to upset you?”
She shook her head, “I’m gonna get ready for bed.”
“Okay.”
She got up and started to walk towards her bathroom, “And Benny?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks,” she offered a small, grateful smile.
He gave a little smile and a slight nod, “Anytime.”
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