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* Prologue *
You are my son. Well, not yet. But you will soon be and I want you to know that my love for you is already there, growing in my heart, moment by moment. I can imagine you. I can picture you. I can think up wonderful futures for you, each brighter than the next. Above all, I wish you to have love, life and happiness. My heart swells when I think of the possibilities. I keep wondering what choices you'll make and what kind of person you'll be. I keep asking myself what the future holds for you..
I can't control any of that, the shape of the days to come, though I'm surely contributing to change the science we work with. The limitations inherent to the system we are labouring under are too many for me to accept. The desire to alter the status quo is what fires my research, what has turned wishful thinking into real potential, into a near tangible reality.
A few more months perhaps and then I'll have proof that my goal can be reached, that it can be fully achieved. The beauty of it will open up for everyone. But that's enough talk of that.
This message is only about you. About how happy you'll make me, already do. Above all, I want you to know that my love for you is fostering all my decisions. I hope one day you'll get to read this. I hope one day you'll understand.
You're going to be a great gift.
Ygraine.
Arthur strikes the question off the notepad, proceeds with the next one. “Imagine this. School lets out for the day. The sun is shining,” Arthur makes sure to inject enough detail to paint a clear, evocative image. “Children swarm out. One of them – he's wearing red running shoes, a yellow shirt – jumps ahead of the group. Starts crossing the street. A hover-craft flies low. It impacts the kid.” Arthur pauses, checks the monitor to his left, takes a screen grab of it, so he has the numbers down. “What do you do?”
The man scratches at his face, says, “I call an ambulance.”
Arthur pretends to note down the answer. He doesn't. He copies the numbers on his screen instead. “Question forty-five,” he continues, drumming his fingers on the desk in an annoying tap that puts even him on edge.
“Are there going to be many more questions?” the subject asks.
“No,” says Arthur, studying his notes and the chart. “Not many more.”
“Because I've got to go,” the subject says, squinting at the wall behind Arthur, an absent aura about him. “I've got to go to work,” he says, voice devoid of tone. “I'll get reprimanded if I don't get into work on time.”
“For the purposes of this interview, you've been exempted from work,” Arthur says, watching his subject for clues.
“It can't be true,” the subject says, wringing his hands. They're large, his nails are yellowed and the pads look roughed, callused. “My boss never cuts me any slack. If I'm not there when my shift starts--” The man stands, sending his chair careening against the wall. “I'll be given the sack.”
Arthur looks up at the man. His hair is a mess and his eyes have widened. The muscles in his forearms tighten in long lines that stand out like cables. Arthur gestures with his pen. “If you would sit back down.”
“No, I--”
Arthur resettles his jacket on his shoulder, once again points to the chair. “If you would just sit down, Mr. Bors, we'd be saving time.”
The subject glances around. Fixes his round eyes on the clock behind Arthur. Dabs at his forehead with a handkerchief he pulls out from his sleeve. “Right, right,” he says, and grabs the stool that's now facing the wrong way around. He rights it, sits back down. “We can continue.”
Arthur makes no comment. He's not here to interact with the subject other than in ways designed by the test. “Next question, Mr. Bors,” Arthur says. “Your fiancée--”
“I'm not engaged,” Mr. Bors says rather vacantly even if he's ostensibly making a point.
“It's just a scenario, Mr. Bors,” Arthur says, putting pen to monitor to note the subject's delayed response. “I put it to you and you answer the question.”
Mr. Bors nods, shakes his head, nods again. “I just wanted to clarify. I have a hard time picturing that scenario because I'm not engaged.”
“I'll be noting it down,” Arthur says, recalibrating the machine's inputs. “You're engaged. Your fiancée returns your ring. What do you do?”
“Fiancée implies it's a girl,” the subject says, putting his hands up and shrugging his shoulders.
“Does it?” Arthur scratches his pen across his forehead.
“Yes, I think so.” The subject chews on his lips. They're chapped, pale at the rim and red at the centre. “I think it's supposed to be. In French.”
“I think the sex of the partner isn't key to the question,” Arthur says, putting the pen down, pushing his chair away from the desk. He loosens his tie a notch. “I just want to know what you'd do if you were turned down by your--”
The door opens and Morris peaks in. “Mr Pendragon?”
“Yes?” Arthur says.
“I-um.” He looks at the subject, works his chin sideways, and backs away by a few steps. “There's a message for you.”
“I didn't get anything,” Arthur says, looking at the equipment strewn on the table. At least one of the numerous interfaces he regularly works with would have given him notice of any such message.
Morris runs a finger along the length of his collar. “I'm pretty sure it was from your father.”
“Oh,” says Arthur, pushing off the desk. “If you'll wait a moment,” he tells his subject.
Without presenting his back to Mr Bors, he walks over to Morris. Morris hands him the message he was talking about and Arthur gives it a quick skim. “I can't go see Gaius now,” he says once he's done, his mouth slipping open as he processes the request. He gesticulates at the subject. “I've got an interview going.”
“I was told Aeredian is taking over for you here,” Morris tells him, grimacing. “The meeting with Mr Oldman is to be prioritised."
Arthur doesn't say he doesn't trust Aeredian with the ID process. He doesn't say that all of Aeredian's interviews end up with him classifying the subject as a positive and that Arthur himself thinks that defies the laws of probability. He merely says, “I'll wrap it up here and get going.”
After all, there's no gainsaying his father, but he can still see this through, still do his duty as a Blade Runner and satisfy his father's wishes. Most of the time, hell ninety-nine per cent of the time, the two perfectly coincide. “So my question...”
***
The corridor is long and straight. One side is spun out of glass, overlooking the city, the steely grey mass of it, New Cam's tower on the far left, spearing the thick milkiness of the gloaming lights, the Darkling Hills on the right, rolling out towards the sea, clouds that bleed red licking at the single slab panes. The other side is intersected at right angles by other corridors, a warren of them, hung with painting upon painting and pitted by niches arching over classical statues.
As Arthur advances, his soles slap along seamless black marble tiles that shine under the transparent neon lights. Aside from the noise he is making, the passageway is plunged in silence, the kind that comes from a padded room. The corridor seems endless, stretching out in front of him in a succession of extremely bright areas. After some time, Arthur comes to a larger chamber overlooking the vast cityscape, a wide obsidian stairwell ornamented by an oblong strip of runner.
When he reaches its centre, a few yards shy of the stairs, Arthur is met by an antiquated android. It's short and twiggy, more of an assemblage of spare mechanical arms and legs than a proper robot. “Your raincoat, sir,” it says tinnily, its vocal imitation system clearly outdated.
Arthur doesn't particularly want to shed his raincoat. He only means to pull an in-and-out, do his duty and go home. But the android repeats the question and Arthur can't really see himself pitching a fight with the thing. He's partially slipped out of the garment, when a comment distracts him.
“I wouldn't give it to George,” the young man walking towards him tells him, voice laced with humour, “not if you're attached to it.”
Arthur looks at his well-worn rain coat. It's seen him through thick and thin and he'd rather not part with it, but he's hardly convinced the android can destroy it. “Why, what does it do, eat clothes?”
“No,” the young man – a lanky, blue eyed individual – says, grinning rather brilliantly at him, as though he knows Arthur and it's not the first time they're speaking at all. “He just has this very peculiar storage method. He never finds anything again.”
“Oh,” Arthur says, “in that case.” He shrugs his raincoat back on. He tells the android, “I'll keep it, thank you.”
“Very well, sir,” the android says, leaving in a chorus of clanging noises.
“Were you looking for my uncle?” the young man says, tilting his head to the side as if to study Arthur.
“Your uncle?” Arthur says, momentarily taken aback, then, naturally, connects the dots. “Yes, I, yes, of course. I'm Arthur Pendragon and you must be Merlin.”
Merlin's eyes cloud over, dim, their colour more that of stormy waters than that of a placid sky. He looks away. “From Pendacorps.”
“As a matter of fact, yes, I am,” Arthur says.
Merlin slips his hands into the pockets of his black jeans. “The company that has Blade Runners in their pay so they can kill off replicants daring to carve themselves a life out here?”
“The company,” Arthur says, eyes narrowing, his facial muscles hardening, “that created replicants in the first place and that only terminates them when they become a threat to society!”
“Considering they're thought of as a threat for standing up for their rights, your termination seems like an abuse of your powers.”
“You call that standing up for their rights!” Arthur says, his eyes widening, his heartbeat thickening. “That's a bit rich given that they outright rebelled, damaging property and killing both Pendacorps personnel and government officials!”
“And why do you think they did that?” Merlin says, moving into his space in a whirl of flailing limbs, his eyes flashing. “It's because they worked in abject conditions for inhumane hours!”
“Key word here being humane,” Arthur interjects as Merlin scoffs.
“They were treated like slaves,” Merlin rants on, ignoring Arthur's sensible point, his mouth tightening as his face screws itself up in a myriad lines and tension points. “They were assigned dangerous tasks many of them wouldn't survive and were never afforded a scrap of compassion.”
“That's because they were created to perform those tasks!” Arthur says, his heartbeat spiking painfully as his argument with Merlin becomes more heated.
“Yes! They were and are sentient beings only designed to provide a service,” Merlin says, shaking his head, his lips pursed, his eyes brimming mistily, “conceived to die after they've barely lived.”
“The four-year fail-safe is a necessary safeguard,” Arthur says, “after what happened with...” Darkness eats away at the edges of his brain; fiery sparks flash before his eyes in constellations of red and orange. His face heats. For long moments, Arthur has a hard time pinning down the thoughts swimming around his mind, but at length he manages to master himself enough to say, “After what happened on Avalon II, it was necessary.”
Merlin turns his head aside.
“Before the Avalon II incident, my mother was working on extending their lifespan,” Arthur continues, short, clipped, the uncontrolled words spilling out of his mouth. “After Avalon...”
“After Avalon,” Merlin says mournfully, “their life span was reduced from thirty odd years to a paltry four.”
“They needed,” Arthur says, his voice husky as he repeats words his father must have said countless times, “to be controlled.”
Merlin huffs, the lines around his mouth and his neck taut.
Arthur's about to say something, anything, to regain the upper hand in the conversation, a diatribe he's won many times over when speaking to replicant rights activists, when Gaius says, “Merlin, are you administering the Oldman test to Arthur?”
Both Arthur and Merlin whirl around at the same time; Merlin says, “Hardly, I was just discussing political equality with Mr. Pendragon.”
Gaius fetches a long put-upon sigh, then shuffles all the way down the stairs to join them. “Arthur, you must excuse my nephew. He's quite impulsive and I'm afraid discussing ethics for his bio-engineering course has affected him in such a way he can't help arguing about the topic whenever possible.”
Though Arthur still feels conspicuously wrong-footed, his skin prickling, words wanting out of his mouth, he has enough manners and enough of a purpose to know he mustn't insist and openly defy Merlin. “Well, I understand now why Merlin is so passionate about the subject.”
“My nephew is a very young man,” Gaius says, “you must forgive him.”
“I can speak up for myself!” Merlin says, squaring both shoulders and jaw, his eyes sparkling.
“I have no doubt of that, Merlin,” Gaius says, “but I'll have to ask you to stop doing it and go to your room.”
Merlin pivots sharply, eyes wide, and flashes Gaius a look that's part hurt, part defiant.
“Like a good boy,” Gaius says so deadpan that Arthur can't doubt the humour lacing his delivery.
Merlin sucks in his cheeks, glares, but then stomps off, as Gaius wished. His going is punctuated by more wild muttering than Gaius would likely appreciate.
Once Merlin's disappeared down one of the corridors, Gaius says, “If you'll follow me.”
Arthur trails Gaius along a warren of passageways and into a square room furnished with more sofas, chairs, and footstools than it probably needs. A large writing desk is jammed in a corner and strewn with papers and folders of various sizes and colours. Bookcases bending down under the weight of bona fide books line three of the walls. The third is bare up to mid-height. A fireplace is tucked in among the bookcases. No real flames burn behind the grate, but projected images of a well-tended fire morph into old-fashioned cityscapes that fan out in sepia tones.
Two armchairs, both of which present hollows in the padding, are positioned close to the fireplace. “So,” Gaius says, sitting down and tipping the fingers of both hands together, “what brings you here?”
“What do you think brings me here?” Arthur drapes his raincoat over one side of the armchair opposite Gaius' and sinking into it.
“I don't know,” Gaius says. “You haven't visited in years, Arthur. Though at a guess I'd say your Uther sent you.”
“He just wanted me to appraise you about the general situation.” Arthur tries to find a comfortable position though for some reason he can't quite. “A group of rebel replicants recently boarded an earth-bound shuttle and illegally entered our ionosphere. I've tracked one down so far, but the other members of this group are still at large. They've probably sought refuge with the extant members of the resistance.”
“I see your father is still good at controlling news sources,” Gaius says, arching an eyebrow at his wireless system. “There was no news of this on the radio.”
“I suppose he did some damage control.” Though Arthur's not privy to everything Uther does, it's not that hard to assume that he did gag the press. Arthur has no complaints about the secrecy. It makes his job that much easier. “But that doesn't mean he wants to keep you in the dark.”
“How kind of him to think of me,” Gaius says lightly, grimacing.
Gaius being no fool, Arthur thinks fast about what to say next. “You were part of the project when it started. You may be a target.”
“I've never been targeted before,” Gaius says, clacking his tongue. “Why do you think it will happen now?”
Arthur leans forward, locks his hands together. “You did bio-engineer them. They might hold you responsible...”
“For creating their race?” Gaius says, tutting under his breath. “I don't think they're wholly unhappy about existing.”
“I'd hardly call them a race,” Arthur says, the muscles of his face pulling so that his jaw hurts as much as if he were grinding his teeth. “But regardless, they might not see it like that. They might be bearing a grudge.”
“Towards Pendacorps, yes,” Gaius agrees with a careful, somewhat studied nod. “Not against me.”
“You were Pendacorps, Gaius,” Arthur says. “It's thanks to Pendacorps you found financing for the project you were pitching.”
“Is that the version of history your father taught you?” Gaius asks, calmly but fairly pointedly.
Arthur rakes a hand through his hair, shakes his head, makes as if to speak, then rethinks it. What he does say is certainly more pertinent than the heated defence of his father he had at first thought out. “You still draw your pension from Pendacorps. I don't think that rebel replicants will take their time to sort out the differences between you and active Pendacorps employees.”
“I'll take my risks,” Gaius tells him, massaging the length of his thigh bone and wincing in the process.
“Gaius, think about it,” Arthur says, knowing that Gaius has effectively defeated his purpose in coming here today. “We can set up a surveillance roster. I could shack up here and make sure you're protected.”
“I'm flattered to hear I now rate a domestic Blade Runner,” Gaius says, rising from his seat to a cacophony of creaks generated by the armchair's springs. “But I'm afraid I'll have to pass.”
With Gaius on his feet, Arthur can do nothing but rise as well. “If you're sure...”
“I'm sure.” Gaius steps towards the mantelpiece, moving the hands of the black Victorian clock sitting there. The clock purrs to life but that's not what Arthur notices first. He rather zeroes in on the frame that squats next to it, displaying an array of pictures of a slightly younger Gaius standing with his arm wrapped around a distinctly adolescent Merlin. “Thank you for the concern.”
“Well, then,” Arthur says, not taking his eyes off the frame, observing the shifting images, the varying poses, “I suppose I've failed to persuade you.”
“I'm afraid so, Arthur,” Gaius says, moving over to shake his hand. “I'll have George escort you out.”
Arthur picks up his raincoat. “Thank you,” he says, draping it around his arm, “there won't be any need for that.” He shifts from foot to foot. “I'll be going then.”
“Goodbye, Arthur.”
***
Raindrops hit the asphalt with sound slaps like rock pellets, flay his cheeks and hands, cool his neck to shivers. Lightning flashes before him, illuminating a dark neighbourhood that's better plunged into obscurity with its grimy byways and shadowy labyrinthine roads, all city landmarks enveloped in a fog saturated with such pollution levels they put a cough in your throat. Dazzling marquees coming in mesmerising shades flash across the hazy, fog-dirtied horizon. Hovering boards present 3D advertisements to passing pedestrians and hover-drivers, the quickly alternating animation shifting from one alluring image to the next. Mechanical voices graced by no dash of human inflection fill the cacophony of the night, the clearly enunciated limericks a pater noster of consumerism.
To protect himself from the steaming rain, Arthur pulls up the collar of his coat, tips his chin down and almost wishes he'd let the hovercraft drop him at his. Though he wouldn't have had the means to clear his head, he would have at least been spared the dousing.
He's fiddling with his shirt buttons, when something wrenches him off his feet. A constellation of pain blooms along his back and fires his skull as he's slammed against the wall of an alley building. Spots dancing before his eyes, ears ringing dully, he breathes through the waves of nausea. When he tries to squint, his vision dissolves into a blurry unfocused mass of shapes shot through by white star bursts. He has to battle the pain swamping his skull in to make out the littlest thing.
Needing to be aware, to assess the risks he's running, he desperately clings to consciousness. Slowly, his vision settles, focuses.
When it does, he picks out the mountain of a man currently pinning him to the wall by his throat. His biceps are defined, as big as those of a wrestler. They're not even remotely straining even if the man is holding Arthur completely off the ground. His chest is wide and his pectorals bulge out from under his tight neoprene vest. He looks like a heavy, and dresses like one in his all black ensemble, and most certainly acts like one. In spite of what he's doing, he displays no sign or rage, or anger. In fact he wears no expression at all. Replicant then...
The replicant is squeezing Arthur's windpipe, his thumb on Arthur's Adam's apple. He's hasn't cut his oxygen completely, but he has made it hard for Arthur to breathe or think.
Because of the swiftness of the attack, Arthur has been given no time to come up with a plan, a defence strategy, and that unsettles him more than the hold the big replicant has on him. He's discarding self-defence options that will only get him killed one by one, when a second figure emerges from the shadows.
It's that of a male, smaller than his companion, his frame much slighter than his associate's, spare. His face appears incredibly youthful under a shock of dark tousled air. But there's something in his eyes that belies that youthfulness, a look of awareness, an appearance of severity.
At sight of Arthur, the new arrival's face hardens even more conspicuously, first around the mouth, then lines appear on his brow, rippling one against the other, his green eyes dimming to a dull, murky colour.
“Mordred,” Arthur guesses. He's seen short blurry ID pictures of the man. They aren't masterpieces but they've given enough of an idea of this man's physiognomy. “So you have found your way to Camelot.”
“Indeed,” says Mordred, stepping forwards, his dark coat billowing behind him. “But that's probably no surprise to you, Mr. Pendragon.”
“We knew a shuttle bound for earth was 'boarded',” Arthur says, trying to clear his muggy thoughts. “We couldn't be sure as to its passengers.”
“Well, now you know,” Mordred says, crossing his arms. “I'm sure you were taking steps to hunt us down.”
Arthur doesn't acknowledge that, wouldn't dream of giving Mordred such an in. “So you decided to engage in some preventative measures,” Arthur says, nodding as much as he can given the position he's in, with the replicant holding him in a death grip.
“Let's say that,” Mordred tells him, tapping his fingers on his arms, “though, of course, that is a woeful misrepresentation of my actual motives.” He nods to his companion. “Percival, will you do us the honour?”
Before Arthur can make a guess as to what Mordred means, Percival lifts him bodily and hurls him to the ground. Arthur's sent careering to the back end of the alley. His head collides with tarmac, as do his shoulders, and for a moment all goes black, a pulsating sort of pain extending from the base of his skull to his temples. Slowly, the throbbing diminishes and his vision once again clears. All his joints aching, his legs feeling much hollower than they have any right to be, Arthur slowly picks himself up.
The moment Arthur's on his feet again, Percival comes for him. The air whistling, he throws a straight jab to his face. Arthur side steps, puts his fists up. Percival pokes at him with a left cross followed by a right cross. Arthur intercepts both with his wrists. The collision jars his bones but at least it wasn't his face suffering from that kind of impact.
Other blows come his way, but Arthur avoids them, ducking this way and that. When Percival aims a hefty left cross at his face, Arthur jumps back. Air fans his cheek, and his jaw stings, but at least he avoided the brunt of the blow. He's lucky that way. Arthur might have been severely incapacitated if he was hit fully in the face by a replicant sporting Percival's strength.
Knowing he has to keep avoiding Percival if he wants to stay alive long enough to come up with some sort of plan to stop him, Arthur vaults away. Percival comes at him with a jab-kick combination that's a deadly swirl of limbs.
Arthur makes sure to keep out of range. He dodges and only blocks the blows he thinks he can take. Percival lifts his leg into a roundhouse kick and Arthur dives to his knees so the kick meets air. Percival is too strong overall. Allowing him too much leeway would only put Arthur on the losing side. Percival isn't a man. Arthur must remember that.
With renewed intent, Percival comes for his flank, his knuckles glancing off Arthur's ribs.
Arthur wants to cradle them, take some time out, get his wind back, but he knows he can't allow himself any such luxury. The moment he does give in to weakness is the moment he dies. He has enough experience with replicants, especially the ones possessed with nearly super-human strength, to be aware of that. Arthur hasn't survived so many close encounters with them by being naïve.
Arthur swings a hook back at Percival. It's the best blow in Arthur's repertoire. He used to pull this move when he boxed in school. It was his winning, go-to jab.
However, Percival blocks the hook with such ease Arthur might as well have hit him with a feather.
“Shit,” Arthur says, and stabs his leg out in a front kick that Percival deflects with his hands. The bear of a replicant is not fussed at all by any of Arthur's counter attacks. In fact, he's expressionless and remains so even when Arthur fists him in the temple. Nothing. Percival doesn't bat an eyelid, though he does counter with a fist to Arthur's head.
Arthur's ears ring like bells tolling for mass. His thoughts scatter and the bones of his skull pulse to the rhythm of his heartbeat. Understanding he must back off – that's it vital for him to do so – Arthur staggers back.
“Very good, Perce,” Mordred says, clapping, sounding amused. “Now finish him and prove to him whose race is superior.”
When Percival comes for him again, Arthur is ready. He dances out of the path of what looks like a powerful punch and then hits Percival in the stomach and in the face. Percival's expression remains blank, as though he hasn't been hurt at all.
Is Percival invulnerable? Did Arthur do any damage? Is he toying with Arthur? Clearing that up would help Arthur devise a strategy that would help him survive this, but he has no time to initiate such a study.
He can't fall back on experience either. Because of his job Arthur knows a lot about replicants, but that doesn't mean that he's come to any conclusion as to their powers and abilities, their weaknesses. How closely they resemble real humans. For one because none of them is equal to the other, they've each been engineered to suit specific purposes. For another because most of them being hostile, they prefer to hold their cards close to their chests and not to reveal the extent of their skills. Studies and surveys only chart the characteristics of the tamer specimens.
Arthur must take his chances. One way or the other.
Knowing that he has to defend himself if he doesn't want to die, Arthur goes on the offensive.
He aims an upper cut at Percival's face. He must have phoned that in though, because Percival jerks his head away just in time. Arthur misses, and this gives Percival an opening. His fist comes hammering down on Arthur. Arthur swings his arm up, breaking the punch before it can connect. But Percival isn't done with him. He grunts, grabs Arthur by the shirt and lifts him up with one arm. He raises up his fist and drives it home into the centre of Arthur's face.
Arthur groans, bites his mouth to keep it all in.
Percival lands a punch in the soft of his abdomen and crashes a mean hook back on his face. The second the blow connects, it jars the breath out of Arthur. He tastes blood, tangy, bitter, with an edge of sweetness to it.
When Arthur crashes to his knees, he sobs. As he sways, Percival grabs him by the shirt, pulls him forward, and jabs his knee behind his back, so that Arthur's practically bent over his thigh. Before Arthur can wriggle out of that position, Percival braces an arm across Arthur's throat, exerting enough pressure that Arthur starts to choke. He wraps the other arm around Arthur's legs.
When Arthur understands what Percival's preparing to do, sweat blooms across his brow. His guts tighten, his stomach turns, and pin and needles run the length of his thighs, his back. His heart freezes in fear. Expecting the excruciating fire of pain, he bites his lip, refuses to say anything, beg, plead for mercy.
His eyes wide and guileless in a way that seems at odds with the ease with which he metes out near-killing blows, Percival looks to Mordred, then nods to himself, almost reluctantly. When he starts bending Arthur over his knees, Arthur's muscle pull, stretch tight, to a burn that's a prelude to them snapping. He wishes he could die now and be done with it.
If there's one thing he doesn't want to be it's the replicants' play-thing. But in his heart of hearts Arthur has always known that he would end like this.
In his constant chase for her killers, he's devoted himself to a cause that has no other outcome but death. It only makes sense that his passing should mirror hers. Still his mind protests the thought, the reality of it as it unfolds. Knowing what's coming, he braces for the avalanche of crippling pain that's sure to follow. He goes taut like a spring board, clenches his teeth so hard he nearly tastes the enamel off them, closes his eyes.
“That's enough, Percival,” Mordred says, stepping closers, his feet stirring ripples in a puddle. “You can let him go.”
Percival slackens his grip, nods, his eyes absurdly gentle considering the circumstances, so much so Arthur briefly wonders whether he's dreamt that up.
“Surprised, Pendragon?” Mordred asks, head tilted sideways like that of a predatory bird's. “You shouldn't be.” He chuckles though there's no trace of merriment in his face, or tone. “Count this as a warning.” He pauses rather theatrically. “If you try to track us down and attempt to kill us, if you so much as breathe in our vicinity, you're dead.”
“And you say you're not a danger to society,” Arthur says, as Percival lets go of him.
Mordred narrows his eyes, balls his fists. “And who made us a threat? Who made it their job to exterminate us?”
Arthur licks lips that feel as though they're about to crack, their taste coppery with his blood. He tries to hold himself up, at least his upper body, but he feels so limp he's all but sprawled on the ground. “You started killing long before we did. Long before Blade Runners were ever needed.”
“One,” Mordred says, holding up one finger. “That was one riot.”
“You killed innocents!”
“It wasn't me!” Mordred says, much less coolly than before. “It wasn't any of us who did that! Yet Pendragon thought himself justified in launching a crusade against all of us. Killing us, taking the beauty from our lives.”
“My father knew how you'd use your strengths,” Arthur says, not clear-headed enough to come up with arguments of his own but becoming the echo chamber of his father's. “And look at you, he wasn't wrong.”
“I'm ready to kill, yes,” Mordred says, his face a glacial mask of fury that still manages to burn hot. “As payback for the crimes you committed against my people.”
“People,” Arthur says, knowing he's goading Mordred, knowing he shouldn't, but not wanting to dance to his tune, not after he's been physically subdued. “You're not people.”
“Percival,” Mordred says, catching his companion's eyes.
Arthur can see the fist cleave the air.
When he comes to, Arthur aches all over. His stomach is a ball of cramps that start low in his gut, his jaw pulses, and a headache pounds against the inside of his skull in an inconsistent rhythm fit to drive any man crazy. His whole body feels leaden and cold. But then again, he thinks the moment he's once more capable of stringing thoughts together, he's been lying on the ground in the dull rain for god knows how long. Percival and Mordred are gone.
The moon, hiding behind the usual veil of phosphorescent pollution dust, isn't visible and no other marker can tell him how long he's been there. His watch stopped at eleven PM and no digital timepieces flash their numbers from shop windows. Not in a back end alley away from the luxury of the skyscraper district. Arthur breathes in, breathes out. The grit in the air doesn't help a thing, he isn't any more clear-headed than before, so he keeps still, waits the dizziness out.
Moaning, he rubs his palm across his forehead, closes his eyes. “That's it,” he says, and stumbles to his feet. Once he's vertical, he totters drunkenly to the closest wall, leans against it, so he won't go down again.
It takes him hours to get home and cover a distance of half a mile, but at least he makes it there and in one piece, which is more than he would have thought possible the moment he clapped eyes on Percival.
Safe in his pad, he makes a beeline for the drink dispenser, pushes the matching button and a ribbed glass shoots out of the metal contraption. The glass fills with a clear amber liquid that swirls with the colour of honey. When it's full, he presses the glass to his jaw and temple. When his skin has cooled somewhat, he knocks the contents down. His senses still a-buzz, all his aches and pains firmly in place, Arthur has the dispenser prepare another shot. He gulp that down too, beads of liquid pooling at the corners of his mouth, which he wipes at with his tongue.
Still, not enough. The pain throbs dully through him, coming in waves of stinging twinges originating from bruises that lie deep beneath his skin. His muscles strain and lock. If he presses his palm up against his side, aches light up under and along the length of his ribs. The moment he stops prodding his tender chest, he can breathe more easily. Yet pain unfolds like ribbons all along his body even when he's not poking at his battle wounds.
“Fuck it,” Arthur says as he starts rummaging his cupboard for the real thing. After he's gone over two, he finds a Scotch at the bottom of a compartment. It's covered in cobwebs, its label is barely legible and the neck is chipped around the cork. It's still alcohol. “You'll have to do.”
Holding the bottle by the sides, Arthur shuffles to the ice machine. He programmes it to disgorge two loads of ice into a towel he shapes into a pack. He pads into the living room. He puts the bottle down on the floor, strips off raincoat and shirt, and sprawls untidily into his favourite armchair. He applies the ice pack to a spot under his arm, one that flares with soreness the moment he touches it, grits his teeth, sighs and, says, “Lights at twenty percent.” Dim lights come on.
Arthur stretches his legs on the coffee table, takes a slug from the bottle, and moves the ice pack to another sore spot.
“Play video number 13,” he orders the house computer.
An image takes shape right before his eyes. It's three dimensional and steady, focused, perfect. The only give away as to its being a film rather than reality is its preternatural brightness, the punch of heightened colour it displays. The image is as picture perfect as it gets. At its centre is a lab. Arthur can see the tables laden with dials, test tubes, microscopes and pipes. Computer monitors stand on carts stacked up right up against a wall upon which charts hang.
When sound comes on, Arthur picks out a variety of sounds, random electronic blips and tones from a host of indecipherable computerized consoles whirring on and on in a race to conduct experiments Arthur wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of.
A voice breaks the silence. “Camera is on, Mrs Pendragon.”
The image widens to encompass Arthur's mother. She's wearing a lab coat, her name tag pinned above her right breast pocket. Her hair is up and gathered under a cap. Her lab mask is undone, its cords loosely winding around her neck. She's talking to a much younger Gaius, whose hair's more grey than its present white. What she's saying is at first incomprehensible, murmured in too low a tone to be more than a whispered buzz that yet makes Arthur's eyes dim. By and by her words becomes clearer.
He's still squeezing at his eyes with thumb and ring finger when he picks out his mother's first intelligible sentence, “... so close to a break-through in actually stabilising the process.”
“Ygraine, I wouldn't get carried away,” Gaius says in the same lilting cautionary tone he uses to this day. “Years of testing will be required before we can even--”
“But, Gaius, don't you understand!” she exclaims, a strand of hair escaping the net that contains it. “I've always known I would be able to replicate the process.”
“This is no confirmation.”
Arthur's mother places her hand on Gaius' shoulder. “Gaius, this will change things. People's attitudes, feelings, the way we perceive the world.”
“Mrs. Pendragon,” the lab technician who spoke before says, “we're recording.”
Ygraine bites her lip, a gentle dusting of colour pinking up her cheekbones. She settles on a stool that must have been placed right in front of the camera, looks directly into it. “Hello, Arthur,” she says, smiling softly, her eyes catching the light, looking a perfect crystal blue. “I'm so sorry I couldn't be with you today. Please, forgive me.” She reaches out towards the camera, pulls it to her so her face is framed in an extreme close up. “This is a happy birthday video, Arthur. Because of work I can't be with you today, but I wouldn't miss wishing you joy for anything in the world. Because you matter so much to me. There was a time when I thought I couldn't have children, but then you came along to brighten my life...”
Arthur drags a vicious pull from the bottle, one that dazes his senses enough for him to be able to watch the rest of the recording.
***
His father's office occupies the top floor corner of Pendacorps tower at the north end of the main hallway. Behind a set of opaque glass doors, isolating Uther's Pendragon's personal sanctum, the inner office opens up. It's is a hundred square metres at least, vaulted, and Avalonium panelled. A white carpet spreads under a voluminous square desk. Behind a wall of windows, a vista of Camelot Bay spreads out, allowing a glimpse of a purple and grey sky punctured by mounds of dark, green-limned clouds.
“Thanks for coming up, Arthur,” his father says, reaching out a hand and touching Arthur's upper arm with it.
Arthur can't summon the strength to smile; after all they both know coming wasn't optional, but lets himself be steered into the seat opposite that of his father. “Father.”
“I take it that you followed my instructions,” Father says, sinking into his own seat and tapping a pile of documents with his fingers.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“You had me followed?” Arthur asks, indignation stiffening his lips and almost causing him to push off his chair.
“No, of course not.” Father raises an eyebrow. “You know I wouldn't.”
“Then how could you be so sure?”
His father swivels in his chair. “First of all, I entertained reasonable expectations of you abiding by my orders.”
Arthur makes a stiff noise in his throat.
“Secondly,” Father says, returning his chair to its original position, “I have Gaius' city house staked out.”
“Already?” Arthur asks, considering he's not made his report yet, his father pre-empting him sounds hurried.
“Yes,” Father says, locking his hands together. “When one has a suspicion, one acts.”
“Of course.” That's just like Uther, after all. He hasn't backed Aeredian for nothing. He prefers preventative action to clean up manoeuvres. “I should have guessed.”
“It's not a twenty-four hour thing yet,” Father says somewhat dismissively. “I was waiting for your report to allocate funds to this.”
“My report,” Arthur says, “is that I don't know.”
“What do you mean you don't know?” Father spits out, his body undergoing some kind of internal somersault that manifests itself in an upwards sort of motion. It's soon checked. Father slowly lowers himself down and affects a smile, but Arthur spots it all the same. “I sent you to perform the Oldman test.”
“Well,” says Arthur, a touch of irritation creeping into his voice, “Gaius wouldn't let me. I tried to provoke an emotional response in our subject, attempted to rub him the wrong way, but there was no way I could establish whether he is a replicant or not, not without the proper equipment.”
“You don't need machinery claptrap to establish whether a subject is a replicant,” Father says stiffly, his mouth a thin pencil line. “You have enough experience under your belt to know it.”
“Six years and counting.” Arthur bobs his head, jaw thrust out. “But that doesn't mean I can dispense with all assessment methods. I had no equipment and only an emotional response test to rely on.” Arthur pauses, lets that sink in, for even his father with all his zeal will have to admit there are limits to a Blade Runner's ability to assess a subject. “And I barely had time to talk to him.”
“So you can't tell me whether Gaius' nephew is a replicant or not?” Father asks, a frown stitched between his eyes, the lines of his face sharpening. “Even though you're famed to be the best Blade Runner in the whole of Camelot, you can't tell me that.”
“I told you, Father,” Arthur says, going rigid in his seat, his jaw tensing. “There was no way I could confirm that on the basis of a two minute conversation that Gaius quickly nipped in the bud.”
“Well, if he did, he really does have something to hide,” Father says, as if that's clinches it and he's got his answer.
“Or maybe not!” Arthur says, his voice rising even though he'd meant to stay even tempered. Generally he manages to keep calm even when his father presses for results Arthur's not so sure he can easily get. He blames the beating he took overnight, the pains that still riddle his body, for his newfound sensitivity to what is standard behaviour from Uther Pendragon. “In which case we'd be retiring a perfectly normal human being whose only faults are being slightly contentious and having a bio-engineer for an uncle.”
“Contentious you said?” Father asks, “or do you mean fussily attached to answer protocol subsets?”
“I mean passionate, knowledgeable, wayward,” Arthur says, “all characteristics that don't fit the usual pattern.”
Father huffs, coughs into his fist, resettles into his chair with a creak of leather. “You're right. This will have to be investigated further.”
Arthur shakes his head. “Gaius is no idiot. Either way he won't let you.”
“I didn't say that he would.”
“And there's no legal way to force a subject to take the test,” Arthur says, holding his finger up. “Which leaves us with what? Nothing.”
“You're wrong there, Arthur,” Father says, smiling thinly. “It leaves us with subterfuge.”
“Subterfuge.” Arthur cocks his head, his blood thumping fast in his chest. “What kind of subterfuge?”
“Well, if you can't legally administer the test,” Father says, piercing Arthur with his gaze. “You'll do it in other ways.”
“There are no other ways,” Arthur says, narrowing his eyes.
“Of course there are,” Father says, positively tutting now. “You started down that road yourself when you went and engaged him. Continue along those lines, talk to him, data gather, collect proof.”
“Again, Gaius won't let me,” Arthur says, remembering how the old man had deflected the conversation away from Merlin. “Let's not kid ourselves.”
“There are other approaches,” Father says, his lips barely moving. “Other strategies that will get us the same results.”
Arthur thinks furiously but either the beating he took fried a few neurons or he's less perceptive than usual because he can't guess what his father is driving at. “I don't see what--”
“You make the subject talkative,” says Father curtly. “You sneak the test on him upon the pretence of continuing the conversation you started.”
“The one that lasted barely a minute, you mean?"
“Yes,” Father says, ignoring Arthur's attempt at sarcasm. “Draw him out when Gaius is not there.”
Arthur blinks. “How? How am I supposed to do that?”
Father grunts. “Arthur, do you really have to insist on such trivial points?”
“Well, yes!” Arthur says, twitching in place. “Most especially since I don't understand how I can achieve what you want me to do.”
“You've hunted replicants in direr conditions,” his father says and maybe there's a touch of approval in his tone that does make Arthur's chest fill with pride. “I take it you won't have a hard time approaching one young man.”
“Approaching?”
Father compresses his lips. “Go out with,” he then specifies. “Date.”
Arthur pushes himself so forcefully to his feet, the chair he's sitting on skitters backwards. “Others may, but I won't prostitute myself for the cause.”
“Arthur,” Father says, eyes blazing. “I'm not asking you to sleep with him, merely to spend some time with him.”
His indignation cooling, Arthur sits back down when his father gestures for him to do so. “Well, I can probably--”
“Wine and dine him,” Father says, supplying scenarios that make Arthur's skin prickle with distaste. “That won't be so hard, will it?”
“That's not...” Arthur's mouth forms the words without conscious thought from him, an instinct that he can't keep in check but that naturally plays under his skin. “That's not--”
“Ethical, honourable?” Father asks, his eyebrow shaping itself into a question mark. “Not at all. But we've done unethical things before. I don't see the difference now.”
“Pardon me if I do,” Arthur mutters, levelling his gaze to the desk. “Sneaking questions in after an arrest is one thing, sneaking questions on the pretence you're sentimentally attached to someone is completely different.”
“Arthur, you have to think long term,” Father says in a put upon tone. “If Gaius' nephew is really a replicant, then you'll have done society a favour by being unethical. A little underhandedness will have gone far towards protecting innocent people--” Father tips his head, spreads his palms. “--like your mother was, from the threat replicants present.”
“And if he isn't?” Arthur says, because that option must be considered. “What then?”
“You let the whole thing drop,” Father says. “You'll tell the young man in question you don't think you two will work out. You apologise and disappear. Happens every day to thousands of couples.”
Arthur grunts. “I still don't like this.”
“Duty is seldom pleasant, Arthur,” Father tells him. “Remember who killed your mother.”
With such a reminder Arthur can't do anything but acquiesce. “Yes, sir. I'll do as you ask.”
“Perfect,” Father says, opening a folder and putting on his glasses. “I expect a report of your activities within three weeks. You're dismissed."
Arthur rises. “Sir.”
When Arthur leaves, Father is deep in the reading of his files.
***
Gaius' forest house is a six story, multi-gabled, Victorian mansion with stained glass windows and walnut woodwork, a curiosity, a phantasmagoria, an inexact replica. Several chimneys of different heights dot the roof. Rounded mansards stud the upper floors. A slew of dormer windows peek out of the façade, opening out at varying intervals under bands of fancy woodwork zigzagging or flourishing into rows of scallops. They're shaped into quaint architectural patterns, jutting their bulks outwards, casting strange, elongated shadows over the ivy-overgrown porch.
The house stands alone, deep in the woods, where hovercraft cannot steer. It's surrounded by tall trees and a dirt road leads up to the main door. The trees have grey trunks and dark leaves. The dirt road is of a sandy grey, bike tracks biting into the soft soil.
Arthur slogs up the last stretch of the drive, climbs the creaking stairs and rings the doorbell. It doesn't make a sound so he tries his fist, two sharp knocks followed by some rapping of his knuckles. Nobody opens, so Arthur pivots, looks to the road, then up to the first floor, where a few of the sashes are up. He tries knocking again. Nobody comes get the door, so Arthur turns on his heels and makes for the edge of the patio.
He rakes a hand through his hair, slides both of them to his hips, throws them up in the air. He winds his collar up and starts making his way back down the dirt road he just came along.
He's not even a hundred yards gone, when a bike rumbles towards him. Its rider is huddled against the bike's frame, elbows and knees welded to its side. He drives it at a mad speed down the lane-way. When the bike tilts into the tightening curve at an extreme angle, sparks grind out. Into the turn, he dips his bike lower so his shoulder almost grazes the gravel.
From this close, the rumble is louder, deafening. From a few moments, Arthur's heart beats to the rhythm of the putters from the exhaust. It stops when the biker rights himself and incrementally slows down, steering his vehicle onto the side of the bike path and to where Arthur is.
He brakes a yard away from Arthur, putting his feet down and taking off his helmet. His hair is slicked back, but his fringe is plastered to his skull with sweat from his headgear. “Arthur Pendragon,” Merlin says, arching an eyebrow. “What are you doing out here?”
“I was looking for your uncle,” Arthur says, focusing on the dash of Merlin's bike. With all its retro dials, Arthur deems it a refurbished antique, a collector's piece. “I called at his place in Camelot. George said he wasn't in for the weekend. I assumed he came out here.”
“He's been invited to speak at a conference,” Merlin says, his fingers tightening and loosening around the handles of his bike. “He's not here. How come you thought he was?”
Arthur bites his lip, slits his eyes. “My mum used to come stay out here when things got hectic in the city.”
Merlin's eyes sparkle with understanding. “Oh, I see now. Well, Gaius is not likely to make it here.” He toys with the strap of his helmet as if he's about to put it back on. “Sorry.”
“I think I had another reason for coming,” Arthur blurts out, not sure the timing is ripe for saying that but doing so anyway.
Merlin's gaze snaps to his. “What other reason did you have?”
“Apologising,” Arthur says, searching Merlin's face. “I was rude.”
Merlin twists his face away so that he's looking at the dirt road rather than Arthur. His mouth gentles in a soft twitch that rounds his lips. “I suppose you were. Was the apology aimed at me or Gaius?”
“Gaius can't hear it, can he?”
“Must I think the apology was for me then?” Merlin says, arching an eyebrow in the same way Gaius does. “Logic tells me it was but...” He winks at Arthur. “You haven't said as much.”
“I wasn't wrong, ideologically speaking,” Arthur says, pushing his chest out. He lets it deflate. “But I was rude to you. So I suppose...”
“All right, all right, we can save that for later,” Merlin says, cutting him off and latching his helmet back on. “Climb on.”
Arthur hesitates. “Why? Where are we going?”
“Just as far as the bike shed.” Merlin chuckles.
Arthur climbs behind Merlin. He fastens his hands tight on his hips, his legs hugging the back of Merlin's, his chin a breath away from Merlin's shoulder. Merlin breathes out, as if in preparation for the last stretch of the ride. “Ready?” he asks, an amused tone to his delivery.
“Yes,” Arthur says.
Before he can think of anything else, Merlin has let out the bike's clutch and begun to roll away. Wind hits Arthur's face, blows into his hair. The air smells fresher up in the woods, the stink of pollution typical of Camelot is notably absent here, the acid residue of rain no longer biting at the air, starving it of oxygen. Despite the smell of the exhaust, Arthur breathes in.
Merlin speeds up and dirt road comes fast at them, rushing steeply forward, narrowing down against a wall of pale tree trunks topped with yellow. Where the sun touches it, the foliage burns gold. He only gets a fleeting glimpse of it, but what he does garner is an impression of beauty, beauty caught in the moment. A bubble in time that speed lets never burst.
For a few heartbeats, they gain even more speed, reckless speed, and Arthur thinks they will crash, but then Merlin swiftly drops the bike to a lower gear and they slow down. Before Arthur can actually count to ten, Merlin eases his way into some kind of repair shed that smells of grease and oil, and parks the bike.
Merlin leaves his helmet hanging by the handle, doesn't bother locking down the shed. Arthur follows him as he trots up the stairs to the house. He comes to the door, wielding small rounded keys that hang from a rusty paper-clip rather than a chain. Arthur stares at Merlin as he pokes and probes a lock that seems to be jammed.
“Shouldn't you have fingerprint recognition software installed?” Arthur asks as he watches Merlin twist the key this way and that.
“No,” Merlin says, still fiddling, “Gaius' work is science; he's a Luddite in private.” The door still stymieing him, Merlin gnaws on his lip. “Besides, those systems are unreliable.”
“Well, I suppose you could lift fingerprints,” Arthur says, narrowing his eyes at Merlin. “But not iris readings. Once your readings are digitised...”
“Gaius doesn't like that kind of tech,” Merlin says and before he can explain why, the door opens with a loud clanking noise. Wrenching the key back out of the lock, Merlin pushes at it so the gap between it and the space inside widens. The hinges moan.
Even before the sound has died down they enter the hallway. In the dark the place looks a like a vault, square, the ceiling domed, and smelling of damp. Then Merlin flicks up a light switch. Evenly spaced light fixtures flush in the ceiling throw light upon cream walls covered in paintings, mostly portraits. A maroon carpet with gold specks cushions their steps, springy beneath their feet. Merlin unzips his brown biker jacket and hangs it on the coat rack.
Arthur drapes his own jacket next to Merlin's and follows him past a large, wrought iron staircase and into the kitchen. “Want some herbal tea, coffee? I can probably pull off a few synthetics as well, but I'll have to check their expiration date.”
“I'll have coffee.”
Merlin leans against the worktop, tilts his head at him. “Coffee? That's it? It's pretty vague. Do you want black coffee or macchiato? Or perhaps a cappuccino?” He grins toothily. “I'm sure Gaius' old coffee machine can even make it all frothy for you.”
“Black but sweet,” Arthur says.
“Black and sweet then.” Merlin repeats his words like a mantra, as if they hold much more meaning than they actually do. He turns around and fiddles with the coffee machine. “You can sit, you know. You don't have to keep standing.”
Arthur shifts his weight from foot to foot, pulls up a chair and sinks in it, drumming his fingers on the table top.
The coffee machine chugs and splutters, and the kitchen fills with the aroma of the brew. When it's done, Merlin pushes a cup over to him. Arthur grabs it by the sides with both hands. It's hot, almost too much so. He considers letting go but the near excessive heat is a comfort.
“So,” Merlin says, giving him furtive looks when he's not gazing across the room, “this apology of yours?”
Arthur huffs, twists his mouth into a half smile. “Right, I suppose I did promise it to you.”
“I'll help you. I think you said things that weren't too nice,” Merlin says, playing his tongue across his lower lip. “You can begin with that.”
“I still believe those things.” Arthur swallows, takes a tentative sip of his coffee. It burns the tip of his tongue. “I haven't changed my mind. But I was Gaius' guest and I should have been politer.”
Merlin nods. “True that.” He lifts his own cup, drinks some, says, “Though I would have loved it if you'd changed your mind, too.”
“Why?” Arthur asks. “I'm not on the lookout for an argument, but I'd like to know why the plight of replicants matters so much to you.”
Arthur expects Merlin to avoid his eyes, but instead he meets them head on. “I know what Gaius does, what he did.” He lifts his shoulders in an easy shrug.
“So it's because you want to clear him of the burden of responsibility?”
“Gaius doesn't deserve to bear it in the first place,” Merlin says, eyes wide with vehemence.
“You sound fond of Gaius,” Arthur says, taking another taste of the coffee.
“Of course I do. He half raised me,” Merlin says, with a smile that brings a shine to his eyes.
“Of course he did,” Arthur says, not wanting to ask any more questions, not right now. “That would explain why you were so prickly the other day.”
“Well, I'd say you were rather prickly too.” Merlin tips up an eyebrow. “But you're apologising, so I'm not bringing that up again.”
“In that vein,” Arthur says, running his knuckles along the surface of the table top. “I was wondering... if you'd like to...” He makes a small noise in his throat that he covers up by taking a few sips of his coffee. “If you'd like to go out with me?”
Merlin tips his chin up sharply, his eyes catch the light, a symphony of blue. “On a date?”
Arthur purses his lips, slowly nods.
“Would this date,” Merlin asks, pushing his upper lip under his lower one, “be a way of making it up to me? Apology part deux? Because you don't really need to do that.”
Arthur knows he has to supply Merlin with a good reason. He has a clear understanding of what's to happen next. But he hasn't rehearsed the words, wasn't quite prepared for Merlin's questions to take such a slant, so he flounders for logic, sense. “I do want to make up for my rudeness, but I...” He makes his eyes linger on Merlin, studies the shape of him. He's all sharp gangling angles that are by no means perfect. In fact they're so strange in their juxtaposition that Arthur wonders how they could be artificial, man-made rather than a whim of nature. Surely a test tube replicant would be perfect? Merlin isn't. Despite his quirks, there's a lot about Merlin that is eye-catching though. His hands are beautiful, the palms wide, his fingers tapered. They have a delicacy to them Arthur thinks pleasing to the eye. His lips are soft and somewhat bow shaped, twisting and curving according to mood, highly expressive. “I do want to go out with you.”
“All right then,” Merlin says, making it easier on Arthur than he would have thought, “as long as you let me pick you up.”
“Is that a point of honour?”
Merlin chuckles. “Entirely.”
“Well, in that case,” Arthur says, “I'll have to give you my address.”
***
Monmouth Tower is a glass construction that shoots for the sky, the pinnacle at its top seeming to pierce it. Though it stands solidly in Camelot's business district, it looks as if it's spun out of thin air, its sides as smooth as though it wasn't made of Avalonioum but fine glass. A round circular platform at the top of the building affords a 360 vista over the whole city. Once a long time ago, the panorama was said to be breathtaking. Nowadays, not much is to be seen from behind the walls of dark clouds that always shroud the horizon.
Mounted immediately beneath the platform are the lifts wells. The shafts run from the base of the high-rise to the top platform, carved out of a side of the surface.
Arthur walks into one of the lifts, following a lady dressed in black vinyl and sporting a complicated early eighteenth century up-do, countless curls framing her nape. “Which floor?” she asks, her fingers hovering over the control panel.
“Fifty-fifth.”
“The archives then,” the woman says, her lips scarcely moving under flakes of dark make-up. She pushes button fifty-five and sixty two.
The archives open up behind a set of transparent doors that slide open the moment Arthur walks towards them. Grey bookshelves line a long corridor that ends in a wider square area transected by a large desk. Behind it, a drone stands.
Arthur consults the catalogue, retrieves the call numbers of the documents he needs, and fills a form he gives to the drone.
“On behalf of Camelot City's Archive, I thank you for your request,” the drone says, slipping Arthur's form into a reader. The reader's lights blink green and another machine purrs. The drone turns around and stands before the second machine, which spits out a small digital card. “Here are the documents you requested, sir.”
“Thank you,” Arthur says, as the card falls into his hand.
He finds himself a lone table in a corner, lights the lamp up with a snap of his fingers. More carefully, he sets up the glass reader, angling it so it won't reflect the lighting. He slips the card in the slot and turns the reader on, punches his password in. In two seconds, he's scanning the files he requested.
The first is Merlin Emrys' birth record. It looks perfectly legitimate even though it's only a copy of the original. According to this document, Merlin was born 1 July 2161 at Camaret Hospital, Douarnenez Wing. That makes him 24. There are doctors' signatures at the bottom of Hunith's Emrys and Merlin Emrys' charts. Arthur opens a side page and enters the Camaret Hospital database. A quick name search provides the info he was looking for. Doctor Safir still works for the hospital, while Doctor Elliot retired fifteen years ago. Both have authored countless articles and are the real deal. They both stand witness to Merlin's birth.
The second document is a scan of Merlin Emrys' secondary school diploma. He got two As, seems to have been a diligent student. A brief check in the school record shows Arthur class pictures and a list. If he enlarges one of the pictures he can definitely make out Merlin, standing in the back, wearing a shy grin that doesn't seem to want to develop into a smile. The photo isn't high-quality and somewhat grainy, but Arthur can definitely recognise the Merlin he knows in the Merlin in the line up. He looks much the same as he does now, slimmer perhaps, his face rounder with the shaplessness of adolesence. “Maybe he's real,” Arthur mumbles around the nail he's biting. “Maybe Father is mistaken.”
There's a gap in Merlin's records after secondary school. Following the awarding of his diploma, he's not listed in any university roster nor does he appear to have made doctors' appointments, not even for something as banal as dental hygiene. He doesn't show up in any workers' unions. For that matter, he didn't pay any taxes either. “Where were you, Merlin? Did you take a gap year?” Arthur scratches at his forehead. He takes out a digital pen and scrawls a note across his glass reader. It reads: check.
Two years later Merlin pops up again. He's listed as a Camelot City University student. He's enrolled in the Bio engineering course – clearly going for the same degree as Gaius – and even won a placement in a project competition.
When Arthur clicks on the link to collect further info, he's hit with a slew of technical jargon that frankly terrifies him. His mother would have understood. He wishes she were here so he could ask. He wishes she were here full stop. It then occurs to him that Merlin is graduating in the same subject as her, that he would become what she was. Unless of course, he's...
Arthur squeezes his eyes with thumb and index. “What a mess,” he murmurs, before shutting down his reader. There's nothing more that he can glean from public records. He will have to look elsewhere for further information. He extracts the card and walks back to the desk. He hands the digitised copy to the drone. “Thank you, sir,” the drone says, dropping the card into a tube. “I hope you found what you were looking for.”
“I'm not sure,” Arthur says, even though he's aware the drone, being nothing more than a machine, can neither sympathise nor care. “I'm not sure.”
***
The sun peeks through heavy clouds tinged with grey, bathing swathes of the coastline. The clouds skim the dark blue waters, settle in folds across the horizon line. Two promontories close off the vista, each at opposite end of a bay that rolls by in a blur.
The road bends at its deepest angle yet, curving inwards and away from the beach. They weave along the narrow tarmac lane, overtaking other bikes, cars, lorries. Trees hulking over the path on one side, the sea on the other. They whiz past sparsely scattered houses that look onto the cove.
With the speedometer at 110, the road rushes them, lights on the street sweeping by in a dizzying choreography, the wind whipping at their clothes, at their hands, the engine singing at the same pace as Arthur's thundering heart.
As Merlin takes all his sharp turns with a burst of speed, the road seems to narrow, to converge into a pinprick. At each curve, the bike lists this way and that, till Arthur's knees brush the asphalt and his Adam's apple rises in his gorge. At one point, Arthur convinces himself they'll skid all the way to their deaths. Instinctively, he aligns his body to Merlin's. Clings to him. Waits for impact, but they suffer no accident. The bike doesn't overbalance. With ease, Merlin rights it again, urges it along with a turn of his wrist, and they're once more speeding along a straight stretch of road, Merlin in perfect control.
Some time later, Merlin signals. They come upon a small dirt road. As they race along it, they raise dust, what Arthur belatedly realises must be sand. They're on the dunes.
Merlin slows his bike to a halt. He turns off the engine and removes his keys from the ignition. With the heel of his boot, he lowers the kickstand and takes off his helmet, turning to ask, “So...”
“You took me to the beach,” Arthur says, a smile playing around his lips. “I don't believe it.”
Merlin frowns. “Why?” He gazes outwards towards the sea. “It's one of the last truly beautiful places there is in the Camelot City area.”
“Pollution is a little bit lower here, I'll give that to you,” Arthur says, “but it's not untouched. It doesn't work like that.”
“I wasn't talking about pollution.” Merlin hoists his helmet in both hands. “But if you want, we can drive back to the city.”
“Don't be an arse now,” Arthur says. “I was just pointing out a fact.”
“A fact?” Merlin sounds downright incredulous.
“A statistic.”
“You think too much by way of statistics then,” Merlin says, getting off his bike, extending a hand out to Arthur as he waits for him to do the same. “Come,” he adds, hauling him upright, his palm hot and his grip strong. “I'll show you the difference between dry, sad statistics and feelings."
They walk among the dunes, climbing frail knolls that crumble as they top them, soaking in the salt air till it fills their lungs. They get closer to the shore, where the sand is coarser and washed darker. Sea debris stretch out in a wavering scattered line, emerald seaweed weeping in clusters where the earth dips into the sea, smashed shells, shining wet, ochre and brown and pale yellow. When the water dampens their shoes, they slip them off and stroll along, the sand filling the gap between their toes. They hold their shoes by their laces, roll up their trousers up to calf height. Merlin picks shells and cuttlebones, whelks and stones worked smooth by the sea. They come in all shapes and sizes, all varieties. Big and small, striated and monochrome, hairy and smooth, halves attached at the hinge line. Not content with those, Merlin stalks the rocks at the base of the promontory for shrimp, crabs, and sea urchins, breakers rolling in from the sea and spraying him till he's very nearly soaking wet.
When he's done with that, he guides Arthur to a large tidal pool. He sits on the wet sandy ledge and dangles his feet in cool water, patting the spot next to him and inviting Arthur to do the same, a bright look of joy in his eyes.
Arthur can't bring himself to say no. He sits in the damp, his trousers getting wet under him. He listens to Merlin speak.
“I like it here,” Merlin says. “It might be silly to talk in absolutes, but I think it's my favourite spot in the whole world.”
Arthur almost doesn't want to ask, to press. But he must. It's his job. “May I ask why?”
Merlin scissors his legs in the water. “When I was little, my mum used to take me here. I'd collect shells and clean them and take them home.”
“When was this?”
“When I was a five, six perhaps.” Merlin smiles, and there's a touch of sadness to that smile of his, even if the memory seems a happy one. “She'd take me here Saturdays, sometimes Sundays too.” Merlin stills, no longer kicking his legs. “Back then it wasn't so easy to get here because we lived out in the country, on a farm.”
“She must have loved you a lot.”
“Yeah.” Merlin lips curl just a little at the edges, in the softest smile Arthur's ever seen. “She did. That was why she made the effort, I think. Though she used to love it here.”
Arthur tilts his head to the side, watching Merlin's sharp profile as the sun tinges it with its orange glow. Neither of them speaks for a while. The breeze breathes against their skin, the sea laps at the shore and bubbles in the pool as Merlin stirs it with his feet. “Why don't you two come here anymore?”
After a beat, Merlin says, “She died….”
“Oh,” Arthur says. He wants to apologise for asking Merlin because there's a tone of latent sorrow in his voice. It's real to him. His eyes are dim with the sheen of tears and he's squinting against it so they won't drop. He bows his head in a sombre motion and his shoulders bunch up as if to reflexively shield him from pain. “I'm sorry.”
“Uncle Gaius...” Merlin's voice, breaks. He turns to him. His lips quiver into a botched smile. “He was the one to tell me.”
“We don't have to talk about this,” Arthur says, knowing how deep it cuts. He still remembers the day they told him his mother had been killed. He recollects it with a keenness that isn't comparable to that of any other memory of his. “If you don't want to. I get that. I get what it feels like.”
“Because of your mother?”
Arthur dips his head, nods. “Yes, because of that. I know how painful that can be.”
“My mother wasn't killed,” Merlin says. “So it's not the same. Gaius said she died peacefully.”
“At the end of the day,” Arthur finds himself saying, “I suppose it is the same. You still miss her like I do.”
“But I don't harbour any anger,” Merlin tells him, shifting closer so their sides are brushing, body warmth radiating off him. “I think that you can't feel the same, be in the same place I am. Accepting. I understand that. I can even see why you still hate replicants for what they did to her. It's... it's logical that you should. And I apologise for not seeing that before.” He pauses, tentatively places his palm on Arthur's shoulder, withdraws it. “But I hope you'll be free of that pain one day.”
“So I can forgive.”
“Yes,” Merlin says, earnest, his eyes clear and of a blue to rival the depth of the sky. “But also so that you can be happy. I wish that for you.”
“And you think I'm not?” Arthur asks, raising his eyebrow. He wants Merlin to read him, to know him.
“I think you're struggling for it,” Merlin says, studying his face. “But you hide who you are. I can't tell whether what I'm seeing is the real you or the man you want me to see.”
Arthur nods, rubs his thigh with the flat of his palm, works warmth in his leg. “You're unexpectedly wise.”
Merlin bursts out laughing, wiping at the tears that bead the corners of his eyes. “You thought I was an idiot, is that it?”
Arthur can't look Merlin in the eyes or he'll crack up too. “Yes, that's definitely it.”
“I knew it,” Merlin says, nodding vigorously. “I knew that all that superciliousness must be for a reason.”
“Now, now,” Arthur says. “That's a big word, Merlin.”
They chuckle together, look to the horizon. The sun dips towards the sea. It's as if a fire is burning in its depths, flaming upwards towards the surface, fighting the cool currents to keep burning.
“Beautiful,” Merlin murmurs, his face cast in amber.
Arthur cocks his head so he can look at Merlin's profile as the sun bathes it in dying light. “Yes.”
Merlin lifts his legs off the water, stands. “Daylight's failing.”
Arthur doesn't follow suit. He tips his head back, studies Merlin. “Go out with me again,” he asks in a rush of breath that's too quick and puts pressure on his lungs.
Merlin doesn't answer.
Arthur's shoulders go rigid. He feels a pain bloom at the base of his neck.
“Yes,” Merlin says. “Yes, why not.”
***
Ealdor lies in the interior. There is no hovercraft service to the town. You can't jet there, too short a haul. And it has no helicopter pad. Neither is it served by the old railway. With so few options at his disposal, Arthur rents a car, a vehicle he barely knows how to drive and that looks too insubstantial compared to modern tranport. It comes with an inboard computer system though, so before starting out, he looks up the coordinates, calls up a geo map of the place, and punches in the address.
As he leaves the city behind, he speeds into an area of high rounded hills and smooth, empty valleys, the fields left fallow. The pale rays of the morning sun light up stretches of wan grassland on either side of the carriageway. No other car is on the road. Precious few people make it this far out into nothingness. The citizens of Camelot City seldom stray away from the comforts of the metropolis. As the locals don't seem adventurous either, the landscape is bare of life.
Though he has navigational maps, Arthur sticks to the motorway. Getting lost out here is not something Arthur is looking forward to. There'd be no one to ask directions. As he drives on, the asphalt gets more and more britlle. Potholes multiply. He occasionally slows the car down, negotiating the bends prudently.
The town has a common, a high street and a youth centre. It's quaint, irregular. The streets are wide but not particularly so, full of odd corners, crooked buildings, sharp angles, hidden hideaways. It's not particularly well swept. High rises are lacking as are most other contemporary buildings and amenities. There are no virtual reality hubs. No Avalonium structures. No zero gravity centres. Despite this lack of resources, the town appears cheery, vine-clothed, bestrewn with flowers that smell like the genuine article, full of little oddball shops and other picturesque venues. Clapboard store fronts line the streets in early nineteen hundreds fashion.
Arthur proceeds as snail pace so he can spot his goal. Side streets spiral off and up the hillsides. Small frame houses line the residential area. The school itself lies between the village green and a forgotten train junction. The building isn't particularly tall, but it sprawls outwards horizontally. The headmaster's office is on the second floor, overlooking a stretch of pasture.
Upon showing his Pendacorps Badge, Arthur is admitted without any trouble. “Please, please, sit down,” the headmaster says, pointing to a chair opposite the one he's occupying, “Make yourself comfortable.”
“Comfort is not the reason I've come here,” says Arthur, aware he's sounding like his father. “I've come to enquire about one of your former pupils.”
“Yes,” says the headmaster, linking his fingers, nodding his head solemnly. “Your message warned me of that.”
“Well, then.” Arthur arches an eyebrow.
“Might I ask why?” the headmaster says, his mouth thinning, his knuckles whitening.
“No, not really,” Arthur says, though he has a feeling the man has guessed.
“I suspected you wouldn't say.”
“For how long was Merlin Emrys your student?” Arthur asks, making a concerted effort to make his voice sound all business, even when it threatens to tremble.
“The last three years of secondary,” says the headmaster. He does it casually, off the top of his head. But it's been six years since Merlin left. He can't possibly remember with such precision. Unless, of course, he has looked the information up. “He graduated from this school.”
“Right,” Arthur says. He knows all this. He's seen the documents. But he needs the human factor. “What kind of student was he? What kind of person?”
“I can't answer that,” the headmaster says. “I do retain an impression of young Mr Emrys, lanky fellow, a little awkward, but that's hardly grounds for a description of his character.”
“No, of course not,” Arthur says, nodding his head. “I'm not asking for absolutes. Just give me something. What did you think of him at the time?”
“He was reserved,” says the headmaster, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. “Timid. His marks were... sufficient but not outstanding. He got along with almost everybody, especially the quite types and he members of the track team. Was otherwise unremarkable.”
Arthur huffs. “Unremarkable.”
“From our point of view,” the headmaster says, appearing to choose his words carefully. “He picked no fights. Caused no trouble. We never had to contact his parents. In his case his single mother.”
“So he breezed through secondary without any of you taking any notice,” Arthur says, shaping his eyebrows into a frown.
“He did win a couple of trophies when he was here,” the headmaster says, clearly trying to appear helpful. “One for participating in a debate tournament and the other from an inter-school race he took part in.”
“A race?” Arthur asks, wondering if that fits with Merlin's personality as he knows it. “What kind of race?”
The headmaster says. “A hundred meter run.”
“How did he do?” Arthur asks, looking for traces of Merlin's recklessness in his performance.
“He came third,” says the headmaster. “He did fine. It's the more communal activities that he shirked.”
“I see.”
“He was timid.”
“So you said.”
“I can show you the trophies,” says the headmaster. “We kept a copy. And we have some photos of those events in our archives.”
“Yes, please,” says Arthur, standing.
Merlin's race trophy stands in a glass case surrounded by other such items. It's properly tagged, displaying the date and the type of event that occasioned the awarding of such a prize. Above it hangs a photo. It shows three boys, each with a medal around their neck. Gold, silver and bronze. Two of them are grinning widely, chests stuck out, the third – Merlin –is smiling thinly, as if he's biting the inside of his cheeks. Yet pride shows in his eyes.
Arthur tries to match that expression to the ones of the Merlin he knows and can't quite. It's been years though. People change. Adolescents most certainly don't stay the same.
“Do you need to see our archives?” the headmaster asks, tilting his head sideways.
“No,” Arthur says, biting his lip. “There won't be any need.”
***
The stadium is full to bursting. Men and women, girls and boys, families with children, and elderly couples fill the stands. They're a wavering, moving mass, a cacophony of colours. Chants, choruses of cheer and half mangled songs rise in the air, the sound magnified when the live show picks up the action in the arena. As the waiting spectators prepare for the event, music blares. The air is supercharged with their enthusiasm, the communality of their purpose, thousands of souls gathered together for this one event.
As Merlin and Arthur find their seats, huge screens light up, displaying a roll call of the vehicles and drivers. They're presented by issue number, name and make.
“Hovercraft races,” Merlin asks, rolling his eyes. “This is your idea of fun?”
Arthur resettles in his seat. “Shut up, you. You're the one who bought a scarf even though he doesn't know what he was at or what team he was supporting.”
“Does it matter?” Merlin says, tugging at the ends of his scarf, as if he's quite proud of his purchase.
“Actually it does,” Arthur says, pointing his chin at the people around them. “Fans of certain teams can be very committed and loyal.”
“Are you saying I'm going to be beat up for supporting the wrong hover?”
“No,” Arthur says. Though such accidents have been known to happen, however rarely. He doesn't want Merlin to focus on that. He doesn't want to dampen his enjoyment of the day. “I'm just saying you're a philistine.”
“Just because I don't get the hang of this?”
“Yes,” Arthur says, looking down at the piste. They're far up in the gallery today because Arthur couldn't find better tickets at short notice. “I have a feeling you don't get the hang of sports in general.” Arthur steals a glance at Merlin.
“Maybe I don't,” Merlin tells him, settling and resettling in his seat. “Or maybe I like the ones that you don't.”
“Have you ever competed?” Arthur asks, grabbing the rail of the seat in front of him, holding on tight.
“No, never.”
Arthur looks sharply away, back at the piste. “Right,” says Arthur. “Look, the race is about to begin.”
The vehicles have aligned on the track, each hovering in their lane. They're all fully functional already, motion brakes on as they wait for the green light.
Arthur has a slight preference for Team Bondex, has had ever since his mother first took him to one of the races. Today though he can't concentrate on their good start or their strategy. He keeps glancing at Merlin, at his profile, and only focuses on the piste from time to time. He starts paying attention to what's going on in the arena when Merlin takes to asking questions. So Arthur explains the nature of the race to him, and begins a commentary on it, highlighting the teams' strategy, some of the technical points as he understands them. The hovers zing past, noiseless, as fast as a bullet, so much so they're like smudges of charcoal threaded through with dashes of colour. Arthur's head moves with the turns of the hovers. And he talks and talks and talks.
The giant screens reproduce the race, shown in slower motion so human eyes can catch the details of it.
As he looks at the screen, Arthur realises the first hover from Team Bondex is a hair's breadth away from leading the race, its snout close to the tail of team Sagramore's hover. When he truly processes what this means, Arthur jumps upright, claps his hands, calls out encouragement. Hands cupped around his mouth, he shouts it.
When he sits back down, Merlin dimples up at him, his eyes shining with amusement. “Now I see why you took me here.”
“Because hover races are exciting?” Arthur asks, not quite hoping Merlin will bite.
“You're ridiculously into it!” Merlin says, chuckling at Arthur's expense. When Arthur's face falls, Merlin wraps an arm around his shoulder and squeezes. “It's not a crime. It's actually something quite endearing.”
Arthur feels his face go hot, ducks his head, shrugs Merlin off. “Yes, well, it's an interesting event.”
The Bondex hover overtakes the Sagramore one. Arthur pretends to have eyes only for that. It's probably less than brave of him to do so, but his skin prickles with Merlin's scrutiny. He prefers to take his mind off it by concentrating on the race. It isn't hard. He's always loved hovers.
The middle part of the race seems to be more balanced than the first. Team Bondex keeps the advantage it has gained and there are no coups de theatre. Arthur relaxes against his seat and regales Merlin with with all the racing factoids he can recall until he's almost sure Merlin's secretly bored with it. Before long though, his eyes get once again riveted to the piste. Bondex loses its advantage to two teams and rolls in third position. With only two minutes to go, this means they're not likely to fight back and vie for first place.
“Come on,” Arthur says, leaning forward in his seat, clutching at his knee. “Come on.”
The Sagramore Team hover zigzags in its lane, making it impossible for the Bondex one to overtake it. But the hover from Leodegrance makes a mistake. It loses power in a curve and the Bondex vehicle bypasses it at the straight. From then on, it's a head to head race between Yellow and Red, the Sagramore team and the Bondex one. Arthur stands, fists in the air. He doesn't mutter encouragement anymore. He only thinks it. And when a second before the end of the race the Bondex team's hover slinks past the Sagramore one, Arthur claps, his heart in his throat.
Later when they're trickling out of the stadium together with the rest of the spectators, Arthur says, “I suppose I wasn't great company.”
Merlin shakes his head. “No, no, you were.”
“I mean this must have been a botched outing if I know one,” Arthur says, lifting his shoulders. “You don't like hover races, weren't interested, and must have got bored.”
“I'll give you not being into hovers,” Merlin says, “but I didn't get bored.”
“You must have,” Arthur says, considering what Merlin's just said, there's no way he can have had a good time.
Merlin smiles knowingly. “I didn't. I had enough to keep me interested.”
“What could possibly have interested you?”
“You,” Merlin says, with a shrug that is somehow a little tense. “You were so enthusiastic. Cheering and cursing and murmuring prayers. It was a good way to get to know you.” Merlin looks away. “And if you haven't noticed by now. I want to get to know you.”
Even if there are still people behind him pushing forwards towards the exit, Arthur stops dead in his tracks. “You...” his mouth rounds in an utterance that doesn't make past his lips because he can't process anymore and his brain has frozen.
Merlin looks at him, his gaze penetrating, his eyes sparkling. The breath stops in Arthur's chest, heat spreads across his face. Merlin leans into his space and kisses him. At first it's a brush of lips on lips, Merlin's lower one sealing around Arthur's upper one. But then Arthur grabs Merlin by the elbows, sinks his fingers in his flesh. Merlin moves closer. He makes the kiss slow, unhurried, nudges Arthur's mouth open and licks inside, his tongue warm and slick against Arthur's.
Arthur's heart rolls around in his ribcage, bumps against his lungs, constricts them, makes him breathless. One thing he knows is that he doesn't want the kiss to stop. Arthur feels hot at his core, undone. A sense of well being, warmth, floods him. He lands a hand on Merlin's neck, holding him there. He returns the kiss, pushing his tongue in Merlin's mouth, pulling it in his.
The kiss goes on and on. They draw back for breath every now and then, ignore the catcalling crowd, but otherwise keep trailing their lips across each other's mouths, nipping at the corners of each other's lips, sucking the fat line of them in. With no thought to spare for being in public, Arthur slips a leg between Merlin's, lets his hands roam low down Merlin's back, anchoring him close.
“I guess I should be the one to ask you out now?” Merlin says, breathless, flushed.
“Yes,” Arthur says, voice worked raw. “You should be the one.”
***
The light that washes upon the stage has a red cast to it. It lights on the singer, following the contours of her face, her stark expressionistic make up. It makes of her a sad figure, underlines her oddities; her mouth overly red, like an apple in a fairytale, her costume, half lace dress, half military in style, the mass of her bones, the frailty of her skin, the tracery of her veins, like dark smudges that burrow under the surface of her flesh.
The song is sad and plaintive, the delivery warbling at points. The lyrics are in German, so Arthur doesn't get the words. But he still can sense the mood of them, get the gist of them. He can still tell the recitation is sombre. The words are dragged out, delivered in a long rolling tempo that only partly follows the rhythm provided by the instruments, a falsetto that has its own timbre and its own cadence.
As the singer sings, love and loss burrow into Arthur's heart, into the chambers of it. As the performer hits the higher notes, promenading herself across the stage in a sinuous slide of high heels, Arthur feels all the pathos of her delivery. It caresses his ears and tugs at his insides, dampens his hands and his eyes. The lilt of the song sounds like tears, like infinite longing.
The stage light turns yellow, then goes ochre, finally blooms white. Eyes slitted, Arthur looks across the table and at Merlin.
Merlin's head is tipped back so he can watch the action on stage. He is tapping his foot to the rhythm of the song, his fingers, all knuckles, drumming to the same cadence. When he registers that Arthur's looking at him, he smiles. The smile shows in his eyes, in the mobile wrinkles around them, in the dimples in his cheeks. It's a beautiful smile. Arthur can't return it, not just yet, but he covers Merlin's hand with his. They stay like that till the end of the performance, till the last alto, the last round of applause.
When it's over, a waitress takes to circulating around the tables, taking orders. Merlin doesn't follow her progress, though it's clear he knows her because he shakes her head at her rather familiarly. She takes her tray elsewhere, while Merlin addresses Arthur. “You hated this, didn't you?”
“I--”
“Cabaret is not for you.” Light bathes the audience, painting Merlin in its glow, turning his eyes almost gold. “I'm so sorry. I should have gone for something you were more likely to be into.”
“Merlin, it's fine,” Arthur says, squeezing Merlin's hand. “This was fine.”
“Really?” Merlin says, the arch of his eyebrow rising. “I ought to have taken you to a race.”
“No,” Arthur says, “you ought to have taken me to yours.”
Merlin's eyes go a little wide before they thin, crinkles surrounding them. He huffs. “You should have said I didn't need to court you! Knowing you're that easy would've saved me the price of the ticket.”
Arthur relaxes against his chair, palms his face and laughs, starting small and ending up chuckling irresistibly.
Outside in the street they kiss with their mouths open, and their lips soft. They grab each other by the lapels and back each other against the nearest walls. Merlin's lips skim Arthur's throat. Arthur's touch the underside of Merlin's jaw, trace the impossible angles of his face, learn them with a fever of movement that makes his heart beat fast. His fingers comb Merlin's hair: his fingertips trace Merlin's scalp to the root of his hair until he butts his head against the motion and starts making pleased noises. His hands drop to Merlin's hips, pull him into him in one heave of body and breath.
But then the crunch of shoes on glass sounds in the alley. Merlin says, “Perhaps we should take this elsewhere.”
Arthur watches the darkness, eyes trying fruitlessly to plumb it. “Let's go to yours.”
“Gaius will be there,” Merlin says, scrunching up his face. “I'd rather go to yours.”
“Not to mine,” Arthur says, thinking fast. “When I said... when I said we should go to yours I meant the house in the forest.”
Breathing quietening, brow creased, Merlin says, “I thought you didn't like the place?”
“Indulge me,” Arthur says.
Merlin buries his nose in the crook of Arthur's neck. “I'll have to get the bike. It's a long way away. Are you sure you want to go there?”
“Yes,” Arthur says, although he doesn't want to wait, he doesn't see any other solution. There's nothing else that can be done. Surely, the forest house is a haven. “Please.” He kisses the top of Merlin's head. “Please.”
Merlin's shoulders drop; he exhales. “Right, okay, right. Let me get the keys.”
The house is dark, cramped full of objects. Merlin leads him upstairs by the hand but doesn't turn on the lights. On their way, Arthur stumbles into chairs' legs and into the base of potted plants, the hem of carpets. Merlin tugs him upstairs, turns him down a corner and leads him down a long passageway shadows play in. “You're not taking me into Gaius' room, are you?” Arthur asks and though he wants to joke his voice comes out cracked and thready.
“No,” Merlin says, opening a door and towing him into the room, backing Arthur against it once it closes again. “No, this is my old room.”
“Okay, all right,” Arthur says, his breath taken away when Merlin steps right into his space, when he anchors one hand at his hip, his breath sweet on Arthur's mouth. In the penumbra, Arthur can make out the angle Merlin's lips curve at, the shape and brightness of Merlin's eyes, dark and blown, and he forgets to think. What he ought to do, the situation he's in. All the dangers. All of those considerations melt away when Merlin gets his mouth on Arthur’s throat and sucks on it, teasing a deep bruise. Arthur shakes, closes his eyes.
“Want to come to bed?” Merlin asks, mumbling the words against the surface of Arthur's damp skin. “I want to, but I need you to say you do too.”
Arthur nods his head. When he realises that that's not enough he says, “Yes.”
Merlin goes back to nipping at his throat. “Thank god,” he says as his hand quests for Arthur's, warm, firm, a shock of intimacy that is so, so simple in its way and yet undoes Arthur at the most basic of levels.
They undress each other. Undoing each button and snap, they progressively reveal skin. The outer layers go until they stand panting and bare chested, feet splayed apart and sunk into the soft rug. They kiss, deep and tangled and breathless, sucking on tongues and lips. To work at their belts, they tangle arms. They have to break apart so as to be able to do away with the rest of their clothes.
At last their garments fall on a heap on the floor and they're naked, their skin pallid in the darkness, a spectre of whiteness highlighted by the moonlight streaming in through the window slats.
Naked, they look at each other, bellies caving and filling. Merlin's gaze burns his skin, under it, chases sparks up his spine. It makes his cock stand and swell. It strokes his heart to a frenzy, a wild fugue. Arthur stands taller, draws his legs together, hands down by his sides. He returns Merlin's gaze, measure for measure.
They come together in a surge they simultaneously begin, kiss deep and fast.
Merlin lays him down on the bed, climbs on top of him, his knees either side of Arthur's waist. He kisses Arthur's throat, nipping at his Adam's apple, touching his open mouth to it and then licking it clean. Arthur burrows his head against the pillow, baring his throat to Merlin's touch, making a noise low in his gullet every time Merlin touches his lips to his skin.
Running his hands down Arthur's chest, Merlin scatters a trail of open-mouthed kisses down the line of Arthur's thorax, from the space at the base of his throat to his navel. The skittering of Merlin's mouth punches the breath out of Arthur, sends his pulse sky-rocketing, melts his bones. His insides become tender. He wonders if Merlin's reaction is the same, if his heart is contracting painfully in his chest, propelling his blood faster and faster as Arthur's is. If he feels so good, he fears he will be overwhelmed. It's perhaps selfish but Arthur hopes so.
He wants to burn Merlin the way Merlin burns him. He wants him to want Arthur the way Arthur craves him, with body and soul and touches of the mouth. Thoughtless with desire, Arthur palms Merlin's neck, where the jugular runs and climbs upwards, traces the tendrils of blue of that embroider his skin with the tips of his fingers. As he does, he finds that Merlin's heart is beating wildly in this tight serrated rhythm, a quick clip that waxes and waxes.
Merlin curls his hand around his cock, and it's as if he's ripped Arthur's heart from his chest and driven him to blinding new heights of devotion. “Merlin,” he gasps.
“Perhaps I should've warned you before I did that,” Merlin says and Arthur can't tell whether he doubts his welcome or he's only teasing.
“No,” Arthur chokes out. “No, no. It's just that you... It's good. You.” Arthur goes cross-eyed.
“You know,” Merlin says, in a thoughtful tone, “when I first saw you I never thought you'd look at me twice.”
"I- um," Arthur says, as his hips rise into the touch. "I do look at... at you all the time." Arthur's cheeks go on fire, so much so he seeks to douse the heat of them on the pillow. He adds, much like an idiot, “I like you.”
"You only like me?" Merlin says, the pressure of his lips light on Arthur's neck as he teases his skin with his teeth. “Isn't that a little underwhelming?"
“No, I don't o--only like you,” Arthur says, squinting against the pleasure. "There's-- There's such life to you. Such--"
Merlin strokes him, moves on top of him, his cock hardening against the damp of Arthur's skin. He doesn't say anything, stops teasing Arthur, his lips pressed together thoughtfully, but looks at him out of huge eyes that caress Arthur and undo him just as much as Merlin's hands are. Merlin rubs the pad of his thumb along the slit of Arthur's cock. Arthur's body strains upwards, seeking Merlin's mouth for kisses, his body for contact. Merlin doesn't let him, bows his head when Arthur strains for his mouth, but kisses a line down Arthur's torso, down his belly. He takes Arthur into his mouth.
He only sucks in the tip at first, looking up from under his lashes, spearing heat and heartbreak right into Arthur's flesh so that Arthur is breathless and broken well before Merlin takes him to the root. It's wet and hot and perfect there and Arthur can't resist. He wants to take it stoically. He wants to sink into the pleasure without having it written all over him. He doesn't want to come apart so visibly. But he makes small noises that are like sobs, like he can scarcely breathe, and grabs the covers, frantically, fingers curling around the hem of the quilt, catching it and releasing it. If Merlin didn't know how gone Arthur was before, he must surely be aware now.
Merlin withdraws a notch, mouthing the tip of Arthur's prick, tonguing the raised fold of skin beneath the head. Arthur keens because that's nearly too much. Merlin doesn't stop, gives him no respite, no matter that Arthur's by now covered in sweat, that he's shivering in place and saying things that make very little sense. Merlin eases his mouth back down, lips fattened and fleshy. Arthur feels it when he hits the back of Merlin's throat. He senses the warmth surrounding him, the tightness, and feels his guts knit, give, turn to water, the warmth of it flooding his insides.
Merlin swallows against him, and Arthur almost can't resist. He bucks, he thrashes his head, draping an arm across his eyes so he can't see, can't take in the beauty that is Merlin, so as to stay his orgasm. His cock goes harder. It twitches, shedding pre-come. “Merlin,” he warns him, because he's that close and he should.
Merlin, though, doesn't back off, not at all; he goes up and down on Arthur, keeps sucking even as he slides between Arthur's legs and thumbs the ridge of his hole. Arthur goes hot all over. He feels it in his face and on his skin. His bones soften and his organs dilute, his heart in particular. It beats and beats like a chase, like a fugue, his pulse frantic.
Merlin does something, sucks harder, and pushes a finger neatly inside, angled just so, and Arthur sees white for a moment, an adrenaline charged one that saturates him with a jolt of raw well being. Without even thinking about what he's doing, he spreads his legs open, bearing down. Merlin enters him with another finger, a touch of his tongue easing the way. It's so good it hurts. There's so little breath in his lungs, Arthur starves for air. His hips shoot off the mattress in half circles. His hands seek purchase, find the back of Merlin's neck, where short damp hairs bend under his touch.
Merlin mouths his hole before going back to his cock, licking and nibbling at the head, then going deep again. He does it twice before Arthur feels like he can't take it anymore. His belly flutters, his limbs jerk and quiver. He comes with a sigh he hushes on his pillow, trembling like a child.
As Arthur comes, Merlin sucks him dry until he has nothing more to yield. With lips shiny with sweat and fattened by friction he pulls off his cock and moves back up the bed, trailing his mouth in a whisper soft touch that raises shiver wherever it lands. A skimming of flesh on flesh that together with the torpor of orgasm takes the bones out of Arthur. He fights for breath, inhaling slowly, the glide of Merlin's body on his steals all oxygen for him.
“Would you like me to...” Arthur makes a gesture with his hand. “...help with that?”
Merlin slides up the bed and drops next to him. Head cushioned by the same pillow as Arthur, he nods. He strokes himself with the heel of his hand. His cock glistens more and more with each pass. “I--uh-- would love that..”
Arthur touches him, splays a hand on his chest. Merlin's eyes flutter shut. When Arthur inches his thumb down the length of Merlin's cock, tracing the vein with his nail, Merlin opens his mouth, and gnaws at his lip. He sighs a long, stuttered sigh that ends on a puff of breath. The slackness of his face makes him look helpless, broken. But in spite of how scrunched up his face is, Merlin also looks as beautiful as Arthur's ever thought him. "Is this a good start?" Arthur asks.
“Yes,” Merlin says, one eye open. "Yes."
Arthur leans down, puts his lips to Merlin's chest. It caves under his touch, the result of a sharp intake of breath. Merlin's hand lands warm on his nape. Merlin tugs. Arthur trails his lips upwards, sucks on Merlin's collarbone. Merlin's hands wrap round his middle. He pushes off the mattress and lands Arthur on his back. Arthur snorts a laugh. "I hadn't pegged you as athletic in bed.”
“I can be when I want,” Merlin says, smiling toothily. "I'm a man of many moods," he adds and he sounds happy, carefree. His eyes have laughter lines around them and his cheeks tiny indentations. Arthur can't resist. He cards his fingers through Merlin's hair; from there slides his hand down his back “You are, aren't you? So alive."
Merlin snorts. "I'm most certainly not dead."
"No." Arthur licks his lips. "Obviously not, you're just... so... so..." He doesn't say what he thinks. He doesn't believe he ever can. He doesn't want to see the smile fade from Merlin's face, ever. He wants to kiss it instead, taste it, learn the shape of it and the yield of it. So he fits their mouths together, dips his tongue between Merlin’s lips and sinks into the moment, into the way Merlin makes him feel. It's as if he's brand new, no past to him. It's as if there's no thought. He experiences no burdens, obligations. His soul soars free of the shackles of his life and he just is.
He warps his arms around Merlin, holds on tight, closes his eyes and kisses him, not only his mouth, but his neck and face, his shoulders, teasing his jawline with sharp nips of his teeth. When Arthur suckles on his Adam's apple, Merlin gasps, mouth rounded. That's when Arthur remembers. Merlin hasn't come and must be close. For all that Arthur would love to run his mouth all over Merlin's body, now perhaps he should stop.
“Merlin," he says, nuzzling Merlin's collarbones, licking at the skin, tasting the salt of it before mouthing at his shoulders. "Let me. Let me do something for you."
"You want to..." Merlin says, eyes unfocused. "I-- what?"
Arthur cups Merlin's cheek, sweeps a thumb along the arc of the bone there, before sliding both hands down his body and manhandling him wholesale between his legs. Merlin's eyes widen. Arthur kisses the fleshy yield of his lips. Merlin buries his head in his shoulder. "I have what we need," Arthur says, because he can't explain in so many words. "Root in my pocket."
Merlin grabs the lube and condom Arthur packed there. He smiles, his eyes crinkle. "Always prepared?"
"Come on, Merlin, don't be silly."
"Like a boy scout," Merlin says, climbing back onto bed, between Arthur's spread legs.
He works open the capsule, smears clear liquid over his fingers, touches Arthur between the legs, thumbing circles around his hole before going back to opening him up as he had been before.
He starts with two fingers, because Arthur's already loose. He pumps them in and out, purposeful, but not rough. Arthur resettles his head against the pillow, stares at the ceiling. Without the mounting rush of orgasm to confuse his senses, he finds there's a startling, harrowing intimacy to this. An unearthly quality to it. It's like drowning, plunging into untold depths, but it's a drowning of the kind Arthur wants to do. Sinking into this, the presence of Merlin, the consciousness of his body, is what he craves with a thirst he would never have suspected of himself. Never thought he would experience it, not like this, not as blindly, not as earnestly, not quite as honestly. Merlin pushes in again, fingers bent. He startles a ragged breath out of Arthur, impresses a thrill on his senses, like gauges on his body.
Merlin plucks the condom out of the packet, rolls it on with a hiss. “Hair trigger.”
Before entering him, Merlin cushions his lips around his, all gentle pressure. At the same time he starts pushing in slowly, his breath punctuating his efforts. It comes in warm puffs that caress Arthur's skin, that alert Arthur to the rhythms of Merlin's body. Arthur bears down on the pressure, welcomes it like it's easy. Perhaps it's not, physically and mentally, but it's what he wants, a piece of Merlin, the shadow of him, of who he is inside. He needs him bodily; he needs to explore the ins and out of him, his taste, the weight of him, the warmth of him. He needs him at some other level too, though he doesn't know how to achieve that other than with sex. He re-settles his legs around Merlin's middle, forces him forward so he slots in to the hilt, surprising a gasp out of them both.
“Oh,” Merlin breathes out and it sounds as though he's got no more words left, but then he manages to get some breath back and says, "Warn a bloke, will you."
"You were taking your time," Arthur says, and though he was trying for humour his voice comes out too husky for his own good.
Arms braced on the mattress, Merlin angles himself forward. When he's all the way in, he anchors an arm round Arthur's shoulder, leans his brow against Arthur's forehead. He's so warm, his breath, his skin, it's perfect. “I--uh,” Merlin says, drawing back, his cock nearly sliding all the way out before slotting in again. “Was trying to focus?”
“Focus?” Arthur asks, the mellow warmth of low level arousal flooding him as Merlin wakes up nerve endings. "What on?"
"Not you," Merlin says, belaboured, raspy. His hips snap forward in sharp snatches.
"Oh, that's ever so encouraging, Merlin," Arthur says, though he doesn't loosen his embrace, doesn't rebuff Merlin.
"I mean," Merlin says, making of his home-slide a slow, careful affair that awakens sensations Arthur wants more of, "that I can't think about you for how much I want you."
Arthur makes a noise to indicate he hasn't got it. What Merlin said is too nebulous and anyway he's too drunk on Merlin, what he's doing, the ripple of his body against his, to pay any true heed to his words.
“Because," Merlin says, "you're hot and too much of a dream and if I think about you," Merlin says, "I'm going to come."
"Oh," Arthur says, but just then Merlin begins to move with more purpose, breaking out of his slow glide pattern to erupt in a series of deep thrusts.
Arthur rocks against Merlin, wants him to come a little bit more undone, wants him to let go of the last of his control. He's waiting for him to rid himself of his coordination, to let his defences down. He thinks he'll find the true Merlin there, the elusive man he's been looking for. In the push and pull of their bodies, Merlin does start losing it. His face contorts. His movements shorten, sharpen, start to have no rhyme or reason anymore. His breathing pattern gets shot too, made of soft keening sounds and cries stoppered in the throat.
Arthur incites him with words he'll probably regret, because they expose him, leaving him more naked than he is now. But he doesn't care because he's been chasing this for a while, and nothing else matters, nothing can. Their skin slippery with the perspiration gathering between their bellies, between their chests, their rocking escalates. Merlin scrunches his face up and freezes on an in-stroke. Arthur palms Merlin's neck and forces him down for a final sloppy kiss, one Merlin barely reacts to because he's too busy shuddering into orgasm.
When he's done, he collapses on top of Arthur, saying, "I swear I'll move."
Arthur combs his fingers through Merlin's hair. It's slicked by sweat that parts his hair into thin strands. "You don't have to."
"I'm heavy."
"Not really," Arthur says, though it's not true. Lax, Merlin's a heavy bugger, for all that he looks as though he's lightly built.
"Liar," Merlin says, his lips moving softly against Arthur's shoulder.
"Yes," Arthur says, "Yes," but Merlin's already fallen into a doze and doesn't catch that.
***
Night has fallen quiet. Moonlight festoons the room in strips and wider pools. They bathe the bed, they soak the floor, while shadows lurk in the corners, in the nooks Arthur doesn't know, isn't familiar with. The hush of the night is like a held breath. Merlin is a warm mass next to him, his skin hot with the weight of the blankets, with Arthur's borrowed heat. His face is plastered to the pillow, his profile stark in the dark, his mouth soft in its openness, delicate in its lushness. His heavy breaths hit the pillow, fan the case hollow. There's a delicacy to that, a profound vulnerability. Merlin radiates humanity.
Arthur sighs, puts his feet down. Walks over to the spot where their clothes are strewn. He bends down, picks up his jacket. He rakes his hand into the inside pocket. His fingers close around the hard smooth oval. He takes it out, shifts the object from palm to palm. He dithers, studies it. With his nail, he finds the switch. The on light flares green. Arthur wipes his hand across his brow, balances the device on his palm. He scratches at the space between his eyebrows with his nail, narrows his eyes. He breathes out again and fixes his gaze on Merlin.
As Arthur watches him, he rolls flat on his front. For a spell, Arthur believes Merlin must have sensed his movements, must have made out that Arthur left the bed, but Merlin's breathing pattern deepens and he dangles his arm so laxly off the bed, there's no way he can be awake. Arthur walks to the bed, bends over Merlin. Merlin sniffles into his pillow and Arthur drops the device.
If he had shoes on, he would step all over it, destroy it, make sure he doesn't have to see it again. But he's barefoot, and even destroying the device would accomplish nothing. There are so many of them in Camelot City alone, the destruction of one would mean nothing. It'd be a satisfying gesture, but ultimately useless. As it is, he picks it back up and throws it in the rubbish bin. He gathers his clothes, dresses in the dark. He walks to the first hover-station, hires one of the vehicles. Lets himself be driven back to the city.
It's morning by the time he makes it. Pale light washes the city clean, like new rain does. But it hasn't rained, not at all and everything's a glimmering honey colour: the city gardens, the concert hall, Camelot Tower right in the distance, even Gaius' city flat.
George ushers him into the brightness of a passageway showered in gold. The wall windows look upon a panorama streaked with white and cream.
He finds Gaius at the breakfast table, a cup of tea and a plate of buttered scones before him. When Gaius sees him, he puts down the cup. He says, "Can I offer you something? Tea? Biscuits, those scones?"
Arthur swallows, says, "He's a replicant, isn't he?"
Gaius puts his cup down. His face goes ashen and he looks to the door.
"I have no recording equipment on me," Arthur says, stripping off his jacket, patting himself. "No wires. And the only one who can listen in is George."
Gaius says nothing. His eyes harden and his mouth sets.
"I know he is," says Arthur, turning his head aside because he can't bear the flintiness of Gaius' gaze. The old man is not made for that kind of expressions. His is a gentle, weathered face meant for kindness. "I have reason to know he is."
Gaius' eyebrow arches upwards. "So that was why Uther sent you. He thought he could exploit my feelings towards your mother, that I'd lower my defences because my dear colleague's son was leading the investigation."
Arthur forks the fingers of both hands through his hair. "Gaius, my father hates replicants. That's why he sent me. I bet his thinking wasn't that refined."
"I'm sure."
"Gaius, you have to tell me."
"Why?" Gaius says, sucking on his teeth. "So you can be sure you're right? So you can have proof positive and terminate him right here and now?"
"So I can save him," Arthur says, letting his feelings make it through his tone, so that Gaius will believe him. He must believe him. Or nothing will work out in the end.
Gaius hangs his head. "I'm sorry, but I don't trust you, Arthur. I can't think of a reason why you'd help Merlin." His shoulders sag and he looks at Arthur with indescribable pity in his eyes. "Uther has thoroughly brainwashed you. I'm sure it's out of filial love that you do what you do, but I won't fall into that trap."
Arthur shakes his head from side to side. "No," he says. "No, you're wrong. I have reason to want to help Merlin.”
Gaius looks at him sceptically.
“I love him," Arthur says, even though he never meant to breathe out those words to someone who's not Merlin. Even to him he hadn't meant to speak up so soon.
Gaius' chair hurtles back as the man stands. "Oh, so that's what you're going with."
Arthur hadn't prepared a speech coming here. He hadn't decided what to say. Gaius' reaction has him double take though. "Do you really think..." he says, before his voice breaks down. “Do you really think," he starts again, "that I want to deceive you? That I would use that love to lead a man to his death?"
Gaius fixes him with a penetrating stare. "I wouldn't put it past Uther. In his hatred."
"But you know that's not me!" Arthur says, beating a hand on his chest. "You know that."
"That wasn't you," Gaius agrees. "But how do I know that Uther hasn't changed you completely? The boy I knew, Ygraine's son, would never have become a blade runner, but you have!"
Arthur's jaw juts out. "Do you really think that if I believed in my father's lies I would say I love a replicant?"
"Certainly," says Gaius, "if it got you what you wanted."
Arthur sniffs, wipes a hand before his mouth, closes his eyes and says, "I love him because he's more alive than you or I can ever be. Because he bursts with life. Because he feels with all his heart." Arthur claws at his. "Because he goes for it full throttle. Trusts you. Welcomes you in. Because--" His voice gets more strangled in the delivery. "Because through him I've learnt what it is to feel."
Gaius sits back down. "He's achieved all that, has he?"
"Yes," Arthur says, nodding his head, hands to his hips, voice feeble with the weight of his delivery. “He has.” He smiles to himself, calls to mind Merlin's moods and antics, his tics and expressions, the minutest details of them. He lets his tone grow fond. “He has, all the way.”
Gaius rubs at his temples as though they pound. With his brow streaked across by frown lines, he looks much older than he ever has. His eyes narrow and his mouth purses. He exhales; his shoulders sag. “As you may know, I never married,” Gaius starts.
“Yes, yes, I do know that,” Arthur says, brow twitching as he fails to get the non sequitur. “But how does it relate to Merlin, to all of this?”
“In a way, Arthur, it does,” Gaius tells him, his voice tired but level. “I had family once. Family I loved very much.”
“You had...” Arthur says, moving to seat himself at Gaius' table, but only effectively doing so after he receives a nod from his host. “Are you implying that you no longer have?”
“In a manner of speaking I don't,” says Gaius, his shoulders cast in a severe droop. “Not the family I started with.”
Arthur arches an eyebrow. “How...”
“Six years ago my nephew....” Gaius lips stretch in a wan smile. “If we want to be exact he was my sister's daughter's son... Well, twenty-four years ago now Hunith had this lovely boy. The boy's father left when the little one was only two. I had no... no wife. I was mostly alone at the time. So I helped raise him whenever I could.”
“I didn't know,” Arthur says, shaking his head. “I never... You never mentioned having family over when I was little.”
“Your father wanted his personnel to live for the job, to always be available, off hours included,” says Gaius with no heat, no rancour. “So I never mentioned the boy. But I did have him here often.” Gaius smile softens into something more like the real thing. “He was a thorough joy. Such a miracle, watching a baby becoming a toddler, then growing up a little more... When he started school of course, he came visiting much less often.”
“What happened then?”
“Nothing,” Gaius says with a tired shrug. “The boy grew up. He was fine. Until... Until he died.”
Arthur doesn't want to ask how Gaius' nephew died. He doesn't think it's his place to open that wound up. But he needs to hear the rest of the tale because it's changed his life in a way that's permanent. “And you decided to...”
“I was a broken man,” Gaius says, sounding weary, the wind out of his sails. “I was broken by grief. I didn't understand how I could still be alive while the boy was dead. It wasn't right. It wasn't natural, I thought.”
Arthur shifts on his chair. He's tempted to touch Gaius, offer comfort in the traditional way, but he knows he shouldn't, that Gaius is at his most fragile now. “I get that.”
“You don't get that until you're faced with it,” says Gaius. “I didn't want to face it myself for a long time. Two long weeks of bleak despair. I couldn't comfort the boy's mother. I couldn't... I couldn't start my days with the knowledge my nephew was gone.”
“So you made a replicant,” Arthur says, the breath punched out of him even as he says it.
“It wasn't as easy as you're making it out,” Gaius says, rising a challenging eyebrow. “I hesitated long after I'd conceived the idea. Don't think I didn't consider the moral... repercussions. That I didn't see what it was I was doing.”
“But you did it anyway,” Arthur says, not because he wants to pass a judgement. He's too entangled with it to be able to. He just needs for Gaius to tell him the truth. “Didn't you?”
“I had the means, the know-how,” says Gaius, flinching a little. “I used Pendacorps studies and equipment.”
“And you got yourself a replicant identical to your nephew,” Arthur says, reconstructing the story in his head, using the scraps of knowledge he's gathered in his investigation to fill the gaps. “Same look, same age. You even gave him the same name.”
Gaius' jowls sag as does his whole face. “I know.” He passes a hand over his forehead, his eyes. “I realise that what I did is unforgivable. I know for certain that Hunith will never forgive me. When I told her... she broke down. Refused to see Merlin. She said Merlin wasn't... She said Merlin wasn't her boy. He was a sham, a replica.” Gaius wheezes out a sigh that seems to come deep from his lungs.
“But he isn't,” Arthur says, fingers curling inwards on the table top. It's not sure whether it's in rage or pity. He can't tell on whose behalf he feels it. “He has a different personality, a different sense of self. He's much more daring, more outgoing, wittier than the person he was based on. He's not your nephew. You may have engineered Merlin to look like him. But he's never acted like him a day in his life, has he?”
Gaius wets his lips, sucks his cheeks in. “Yes. I came to realise that soon enough.” Gaius pulls at his mouth absently. “We know so much about creating life, the science of it, but at the same time we understand so little. We can draft the genetic code of a replicant, imagine it down to the specifics, dictate how tall they'll be and how long they'll live, and yet some things are out of our control, imponderables.”
“Like personality,” Arthur says, inclining his head to show his understanding.
“You might say that, or you might call it the individuality of the soul,” says Gaius. “Hunith understood that. She said we were messing with God. That this new Merlin would never be her son. That was why she cut me off.”
Arthur swallows, understands and doesn't. “Merlin, his memories... are they the original Merlin's?”
“No,” Gaius says. “I wouldn't lead the post mortem on my own... but I did give him memories of Hunith. Mostly coming from videos. Some of them were engineered to feature a younger Merlin. They're all...”
“Sham,” Arthur says, a chill chasing up his spine to the base of his skull. “Fakes.”
“Yes, in that way they are...” Gaius dabs at his forehead with the heel of his hand, one, two, three times. “I had to tell him Hunith was dead so he'd make sense of her never wanting to see him. I had to plant those memories. For him. So he's have a shot at a happy life.”
“Because Merlin doesn't know,” Arthur says, voicing something he's felt deep in his bones from the very first moment. “He has no idea he's a replicant. That he's different.”
Gaius rises. He goes over to the range, puts an old battered kettle on. As it starts to make noise, he takes a mug down from the cupboard. “There's an art to making tea that all of our technology hasn't mastered.”
“Gaius,” Arthur says turning in his chair.
When the kettle bubbles, Gaius takes it from the stove and makes a pot of tea. He pours the liquid into the chipped cup, picks up a sugar bowl and a pot of pale honey. He puts everything on a tray and goes back to the table. He waits for Arthur to take the mug up, then takes his seat. “He's different in other ways.”
Arthur doesn't drink. “How?” he asks. Although he's sure of Merlin's blazing uniqueness – though he knows it with his skin and his teeth and his mouth –, he has an inkling Gaius is talking about something entirely different altogether. “What do you mean?”
“When were you planning to kill Merlin?”
“What?”
“Merlin,” Gaius says, flapping his hand about. “When did you mean to end it with him?”
“Never!” says Arthur voice high, riding the edge of hysteria.
“But replicants come with an expiration date.”
Arthur stands up. His chair screeches as it's sent rattling back. Tea spills on the tablecloth, on Arthur's shirt. “Never, not till his last very last day, last breath, last moment.” The idea of Merlin's death washes upon him like a black tide. He sees dark, sweats cold, but makes himself stay upright. “I will never consciously abandon him.”
Gaius' eyes soften. “Sit down, Arthur.”
Though his legs feel brittle, boneless, hollow, Arthur doesn't. “No, I--”
“Merlin,” Gaius starts again, “isn't an ordinary replicant...”
Arthur sinks onto the chair, cramps in his legs, in his belly.
“Some thirty years ago your mother started on some new research,” Gaius says in a reminiscent tone. “Back then the aim was not to curtail replicants' lives, but to extend them.” Gaius flattens his palm on the tabletop, looks at his hands reflectively. “We all strove to improve the tech, as we thought of it. But your mother, your mother did it for humanitarian reasons. She wanted to give these people the time they'd been robbed of by the very nature of their creation.” Gaius looks up and meets Arthur's gaze. “She also meant to help who couldn't have children. The issue had been close to her heart, for personal reasons, and she meant to give them the chance to adopt replicants who'd live as long as a normal child. The baby would have their parents' genes and be able to grow old as any other person.”
Arthur's eyes widen when his mother's name mentioned. He's come here with nothing but Merlin on the brain and nothing has prepared him for the impact of hearing it now. It's like someone has ripped his guts open in one sudden gash. He breathes hard, his jaw ticks, and a shiver runs through him. He steadies his hands on his thigh. Makes himself ask the necessary question. “What has my mother got to do with Merlin?”
“Everything,” Gaius says, a gentle expression smudging the tension away from his face. “She came up with a way to extend replicants' lifespan considerably, so that it matched, if it didn't surpass, that of non bio-engineered people.”
“That's...” Relief floods Arthur, sending the blood roaring through his veins. At the same time though he's hit by a myriad considerations. “How can you know that for certain? I mean before the restrictions were put in place--” Arthur grimaces, hating the vocabulary his father's policies have provided him with, the euphemisms, the dehumanisation inherent in them. “--replicants had been known to have an average life span of thirty years. How do you know her...” He gestures. “...her alterations work?”
“I know,” says Gaius. “They were.... Let's say they were tested.”
Arthur doesn't see how, can't grasp the science of it, but he believes Gaius and his mother knew a thing or two about bioengineering that he doesn't get. “Okay, all right,” Arthur says, squeezing his nose. “So he's not dying...”
“No,” Gaius grants him with a small smile. “This time I'm going to go first.”
Arthur lifts his head. “Gaius,” he breathes out. But then he accepts the words for what they are. “My father suspects.”
“I realised the moment I saw you darkening my door a few weeks ago.”
“Merlin must be made aware he's in danger,” Arthur says, inching forward in his seat. He beats his palm on the table for emphasis when he adds, “He must be told he's a replicant!”
“No,” Gaius says, his mouth thinning, his upper lip curling inwards. “That would shatter his world view.”
“No,” Merlin says, stepping into the room, tear tracks smearing his face, which now looks splotchy, swollen, though not as much as his eyes, which are a deep red, the lids soft and sticky, and twice their normal thickness. “I just don't know who I am anymore.
***
Arthur rips to his feet, whirls around. “Merlin, fuck.”
Merlin flashes him a smile that trembles, crashes on its very first note. “Yeah, fuck,” he says, before tearing out of the room.
Arthur whirls round. “How long has he been there?”
“I don't know,” says Gaius, face as pale as a sheet, hand on his chest. “I presume... long enough.”
Arthur wants to go after Merlin but a look at Gaius and the way he's clutching his chest makes him hesitate. He looks backwards, walks to him, puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes,” Gaius says, gritting his teeth while he waves Arthur away. “Go after him. I've never seen him so upset. Just go.”
“Right,” Arthur says, looking to the door, gnawing his lip. “Right.”
“I said go, Arthur!”
Arthur skids out of the room and runs down the empty passageway, light chasing his every step, the tiles blurring one into the other. When he makes it to street level, he can't see Merlin anywhere. There are precious few people on the pedestrian passageways. They're little dots on the grey pavement, the reverberation of the sun painting their clothes a lighter colour. Orange coats, charcoal scarves, black umbrellas move at the pace of those who bear them. On the gangways connecting the high-rise buildings, there's more traffic, but Merlin is on none of those structures.
Arthur hails a hover, jumps in the back before it's quite floated level with him. “Dragon Cove,” he says, paying the fare in advance. “Quick.”
Merlin has his jeans rolled up and his feet in the pool. He has shed his jacket, which lies crumpled behind him, and is in his shirt sleeves. He wipes at his nose from time to time. His shoulders are up, drawn in.
Arthur steps forward. “Merlin.”
Merlin springs upright, staggers sideways. He staunches his tears with the back of his hand. “Arthur.”
Arthur reaches a hand out to Merlin, palm open. He doesn't mean to grab him, or make him retreat, but the gesture comes natural to him, replacing the words he can't think of. “Merlin, just, let's talk about it, please.”
Merlin looks away, rakes his hands through his hair, pulls at its roots. “Talk about what?”
“Everything,” Arthur says, “everything that you overheard.”
Merlin scoffs. His mouth skews sideways when he botches a smile. “Where do I begin then?”
“I don't know,” Arthur says, shaking his head. “I don't know, where you like.”
“Maybe I should begin with you getting together with me because your dad told you to.”
Arthur's heart stops for a few whole seconds before reprising its beat. “I won't deny that he started it, but then I got to know you, Merlin.” Arthur breathes in, out, the need for honesty pressing on his heart. He could have this conversation without putting his feelings on the line, but that wouldn't be fair. To either of them. “I lov--”
“I heard that too,” Merlin says, shaking his head. He hugs himself, faces the sea, turns around again. “And I believe you. I mean I don't think you lied about your feelings."
Arthur sucks in a sharp breath. It's not relief, not nearly, but it's good. He doesn't feel like choking anymore. “I never would, not about that.”
“No,” Merlin agrees. “Besides you had plenty opportunity to...” Merlin makes a cut-throat sign, grimaces at his own gesture. “And you never... took it.”
Arthur pictures it, Merlin lying in a pool of blood, spreading crimson at his feet till it laps at his shoes, inveigling him in its sticky web. He sees himself wielding a gun, a smoking gun. His stomach turns sharply, until he tastes bile and he's a step away from heaving. “Merlin, I would rather die first.”
Merlin doesn't say anything. He meets his eyes, his veiled through with tears as they may be. He lowers his gaze, digs his shoes in the sand, heel first. “But that doesn't change anything, does it?” Merlin looks up. “It doesn't change the truth about me. About what I am. Who do you think you're in love with, Arthur?”
“You,” Arthur says, feeling on safer ground. “I love you, all that you are.”
Merlin huffs. “And what's that?”
“What sort of question is that?” Arthur asks. “You're you, brave, sarcastic, principled.”
“You still can't see, can you”? Merlin says, very very slowly, “I'm not Merlin. Not the real one. Everything that I am is a product of science and engineering.”
“That's not nearly as true as you think it is.”
“Arthur,” Merlin says, nearly stomping his foot. “Someone made me the way I am. To be like him. Someone created me so I'd look like him and be as just as smart or not smart as him, just as talented or not talented as him. I am what my replicant DNA made me.”
“But aren't we all?” Arthur says, holding his hands up. “No, let me. Let me speak. Aren't we all the product of genetics? Of circumstance? I can't be a maths genius with the IQ of Einstein. I don't have a sense of rhythm and I can't sing to save my life – I sound like a howling dog. I don't really have the gift.”
“I see where you're going with that,” Merlin says, though he's no longer hanging his head. “But it's different in my case, isn't it? I'm not just the product of my own genetics. I'm meant to be someone else, Arthur. One hundred per cent.”
“And yet you're still not him. You're unique,” Arthur says, reaching for Merlin's fist, enclosing it in as gentle as grip as he can. “Completely and utterly.”
“The love I remember,” Merlin says, and his eyes are once again flooding, “is all sham. My memories, even this place... It means nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Arthur has to let go when Merlin tears away. “Gaius loves you. The real you. And my feelings are honest. They're for you, not him. And this place... You can make it mean whatever you want. It can be still be a place that gives you joy.”
“Arthur, this place only made me happy because I associated it with my dead mum,” Merlin says, his voice going higher before definitely breaking, “but as it turns out she isn't my mother at all. I'm only a bad copy of her son and I.--”
“You know what I associate this place with, Merlin?” Arthur asks, tipping his chin up.
“No,” Merlin says on an exhale. “What?”
“Finding myself, finding you,” Arthur says, extending his palm out. “Can I... can I share it with you?”
Merlin makes to reach for his hand, drops his own, then grabs his palm. “Maybe, I don't know, yes...”
“How very touching,” the voice interrupting them says. “Pity I will have to put a stop to this heart-warming scene.”
Arthur whips around and recognises Aeredian. He's pointing a gun at them, a small precision one with a laser homing device. “Aeredian, what the hell do you think you're doing?” Arthur says, arching an eyebrow in what he hopes comes across as a severe expression. “Put down that gun!”
“You really think we're that stupid?” Aeredian says. “That we wouldn't put two and two together? That we wouldn't get you were playing us. That we wouldn't notice how long it was taking you to establish whether the subject was a replicant or not?”
“He isn't,” Arthur says, perhaps too hurriedly to sound truthful. “I'd have reported sooner if I could, but my findings are that he isn't.”
“I'm sorry,” Aeredian says, shifting the gun's muzzle a little to the right, so it becomes obvious that Merlin's his target. “But I've been at the job too long to swallow that.”
Aeredian pulls the trigger. The gun's laser sight flicks across Merlin's face. Then it dances along his torso, until the dot stills over his heart.
“He's not a replicant!” Arthur shouts.
Aeredian laughs and pulls the trigger the rest of the way. In the split second that follows Arthur's blood runs cold. He dives. It's like a punch. It's like a fist to the sternum that robs you of all breath, takes the world away.
Merlin shouts, “Arthur!” and cushions his fall.
“Merl--”
Merlin's fingers dig into his forearm. “Arthur,” Merlin says as his face blurs, becomes a smudging of lines and colour. Then pain blooms sharp, like the petals of a flower opening. He catches his breath, tries to blink it away. But it stays, until every inch of him is burning.
“Oh, well,” says Aeredian, “that mistake is easily seen to.”
Though he knows he mustn't, not now that Merlin's in danger, Arthur loses his grip on consciousness.
***
He comes to with a jolt, followed by a gasp. His chest burns, his face does as well. The pain has grown, ripping at his insides, until it has him in a sweat that voids his thoughts. Cold has seeped into his bones. But when his vision clears and he sees Merlin, he smiles. “You're all right...”
“Yes, I'm all right,” Merlin says, half smiling, half crying.
When the darkness dissipates enough for him to remember, he sits up. “Aeredian.”
“He's dead,” Merlin says, pushing him back down, the pressure causing Arthur to grit his teeth.
“How?” Arthur asks. He remembers the situation they were in. Aeredian had a gun, him and Merlin none and no place to run to for cover. “I don't get it. How did you make it?”
“I was lucky,” Merlin says, staunching Arthur's wound as he speaks. “His pistol jammed, so I charged him, wrestled with him for it and then... “ Merlin's eyes lose focus, become all pupil. “I killed him with it.”
Arthur pushes off his elbows again. It feels as though his shoulder is being torn right off, but he has to. “Merlin, that was stupid, thoughtless and rash. Are you sure...” He coughs and tastes blood in his mouth. “Are you sure you're all right?”
Merlin smiles at him. It's such a weak smile it crumples into a grimace right next. “I'm fine. We should get you to a doctor though.”
“No,” Arthur says, placing a hand on Merlin's chest. “The moment I get scanned they'll know who I am. We've just...” He fights a dizzy spell off, concentrates on saying what needs to be said. “Left a corpse in our wake.” He coughs. “And an important one at that. As of this moment, we're outlaws.”
Merlin wipes at the blood beading the corner of Arthur's lips with his thumb. “Wrong. I am the replicant. I'm the outlaw. You're Pendacorps.”
“Merlin,” Arthur grabs the collar of Merlin's jacket. “I am in this with you. I'd have killed him myself if I could have.”
“But you didn't,” Merlin says. “I did.”
“Doesn't matter,” Arthur chokes out. “I'm not leaving you.”
“Arthur, your father would save you, get you to a doctor,” Merlin says. “As long as they have me, the guilty party...”
“The only way you get to do that, to shoulder all the blame, is if you leave me here to die,” Arthur says, pronouncing each word slowly, carefully, so they can better sink in. He refuses to listen to Merlin's self sacrificial ravings. “Get it?”
“Okay, all right,” Merlin says. “We'll have to get you away from here. Somehow.”
“Aeredian,” says Arthur, breathing in and out so he can ride the wave of pain lashing him. “He must have used a hover. Or something. We can use that to get away.”
“What if he was dropped off?” Merlin says.
“No,” Arthur says, biting on his lip when his chest burns so much it's past bearing. “He wasn't. Or they'd already be on us. I know... I know how Blade Runners work. This was a solo mission.”
“All right,” Merlin says, easing him back down again. “I'll go look for the hover. Wait for me.”
As he lies back down, Arthur closes his eyes and concentrates on fending off the lancing pains that riddle his body. He focuses on breathing, even though the air he feeds into his lungs hurts, burning its way through his airways, like fire scraping at live flesh. He tries to forget the stabs of pain that rack his chest, the constant throbbing he feels in his neck and at his fingertips. Most of all he attempts to drive off the darkness that encroaches upon his thoughts, the coldness that numbs his body to everything outside it, but can't.
“Okay, all right,” Merlin says, lifting his head and cradling Arthur's nape. “I found the hover.”
“Good,” Arthur grits out.
“It's hidden away a mile or so from here. That's why we didn't hear him land. But you've got to help me out a bit,” Merlin says, voice soft and gentle.
“Why, how?” Arthur asks. “What's wrong?”
“You need a Pendacorps badge to activate it and I couldn't find one on Ae-- “ Merlin's gaze loses focus. His throat works. “On the body.”
“Okay,” Arthur says, nodding his head as slowly as he can so he won't engender a new dizziness spell. “I've got mine.” He groans as he shifts. “In my back pocket.”
“Easy reach,” Merlin says, as he helps Arthur to a sitting position.
Arthur grabs his forearm, levers himself to the side, lets Merlin root into his pocket and take the badge.
“I'll be right back,” Merlin says, clutching the object.
Before Arthur can muster the strength to say anything more, Merlin has taken off at a run. Arthur wants to call him back, to tell him that there's no point and he'd rather die here with him than be left alone. But the cold laps at his brain, freezes his muscles, so he doesn't say that. He can do nothing but clench his jaw and stay still. Progressively, his thoughts dim into explosions of colour, images that supersede each other.
His mother teaching him how to walk. Bright lights behind her. His father nodding severely. Lips touching his for the first time, soft and gentle. Blood blooming on fabric in a crimson tracery that pools larger and larger. His very first victim.
A hand on his face. “Arthur.”
Pinpricks of light behind his lids, “Arthur!”
“Merlin,” Arthur says, fighting the darkness.
“I'm here, Arthur.”
He opens his eyes to a close up of Merlin's face. His eyes are wet and red and puffy, but he's smiling, two dimples hollowing his cheeks. “You're still with me, good.”
“Yes,” says Arthur, wanting to grab Merlin's face, pull him to him. If it's the last thing he does, he wants to kiss Merlin.
When he understands, Merlin goes with the movement, kisses his mouth with lips that taste of salt. “Arthur, help's coming,” he says, drawing back.
As he pulls away, a room, not the bay, comes into view. It's bare, the walls are brown, either because they've been painted that colour or because dirt has darkened them to such a pitch their original hue can't be guessed at. A few posters, mainly old soviet ones cast in tones of red and white, hang, washed out and tattered, on the walls. A single bulb emanates intermittent washes of yellow light. “Where are we?” Arthur rasps out.
“The old student centre,” Merlin tells him. “Undergrads use it to hide after anti-establishment protests.”
Arthur huffs. It figures that Merlin would know of such a place.
“But nobody's using it at the moment,” Merlin says, lifting his hand and taking it in his. “So I thought... It's a roof over our heads, isn't it?”
“Merlin,” Arthur says, gripping Merlin's hand hard, “Aeredian knew about you. That means Pendacorps know.” He coughs. “Merlin, you have to get away, not stay in some squat students use. Leave earth. Get to safety.”
“We'll think about that when you're okay, right?”
Arthur wants to object but he's interrupted by a strange, musical sort of knock.
Merlin stands. “That'll be Gaius,” he says, and disappears up a rickety wooden stair. “Gaius, thank God,” Arthur overhears Merlin say.
“I was as quick as I could,” Gaius says, the stairs creaking under his weight.
“Did you get all the equipment?” Merlin asks.
The sound of wood giving way stops. “About that. I want you to understand that I took my degree in medicine more than fifty years ago, and never practiced it. I moved onto bio-engineering before I ever had the chance.”
“It will have to do, Gaius,” Merlin says, curt and decisive.
“Yes, but I've never treated a live patient before.”
Merlin bounds the rest of the way down. “Do we have any other choice?”
“I'm afraid not,” says Gaius. “I'm afraid not.”
Huffing and puffing Gaius transports two white plastic cases over to the bed.
“What are those?” Arthur asks, levering himself as far up as he can manage.
“This is a portable bio-sensor,” Gaius says, depositing his load onto a table that's missing one leg and that has therefore been propped against the corner wall. “And this thing here is a tissue regenerator.”
“You managed to get your hands on more than I thought you would,” Merlin says, rubbing his hands together.
Gaius arches an eyebrow, but opens the case nonetheless. He extracts a hand-held device of the shape and size of a gun. One of its faces is covered in blinking sensors, the other presents a blank monitor. As far as these contraptions go, it looks, big, unwieldy. “Just how old is that thing?” Arthur croaks.
“It's a few decades old,” Gaius says, pointing the sensor end at himself, but without activating the device. “Don't worry, though. It will do its job just as fine as any new-fangled machinery.”
“Oughtn't we try and get something more modern?” Merlin asks, inching forward to take a look at the scanner.
“And steal into a hospital?” Gaius asks, both his eyebrows going up this time. “This kind of equipment is worth a fortune. If we absconded with any of it, they'd track us down in a second. And I gather we're acting stealthily.”
“Right,” Merlin says, sniffing loudly. “Just fix him, Gaius, please.”
“I'll do my best,” Gaius says as he passes the sensor over Arthur's body.
Though Arthur had braced himself for it, it doesn't hurt at all. The device whirs and chirps as Gaius moves it down the length of his body, but that's it.
Gaius frowns at the reading.
“What?” Merlin asks, stepping closer. “What's wrong?”
“I can't find any trace of the bullet in his body,” Gaius says.
“That's good, isn't it?” Merlin says. “It means it passed clean through him.”
“Yes,” Gaius says, putting down the sensor. “That's good. What I don't like are the other readings. He's tachycardic, has lost 30% of his blood volume and is experiencing peripheral hypo-perfusion.”
“Hey,” Arthur says, getting a sinking feeling in the depths of his stomach. “I'm here. You can talk to me.”
Gaius turns to Arthur. “I'm going to close the wound, reknit the tissue.” He picks up the second piece of equipment he came with, the regenerator, and turns it on. It gives off a low-volume buzz that sets Arthur's teeth on edge. “Then we'll have to find some blood to transfuse into you so as to get your levels back up to normal.”
“I can do it,” Merlin says. “I can find the blood. I can try the black market for that.”
“Jolly good,” says Gaius, re-orientating himself towards Arthur. “This is going to be mildly unpleasant.”
When the regenerator touches his skin, Arthur feels it burn. The burn expands, goes from skin deep, to molecular deep. It's as if he's been tossed on a pyre and it is consuming him from the inside in. Bones shift, reconnect with other bones, tearing through tissue to do that. The tissue reforms, but by then Arthur's on fire. Merlin rushes to him, presses a hand on his forehead, holds him down to the mattress he's arching off of. Arthur screams. Feels himself pass out.
***
When Arthur wakes, body heavy and aching, Gaius is gone. Merlin is hitching him up to a blood bag he hangs from a nail. “Arthur,” he says, smiling a quivering smile and sighing from deep within his chest. “You're awake.”
“Doesn't feel like it, but yeah.”
Merlin fiddles with the drip line, likely adjusting the flow, then sits on the bed. He puts his hand on Arthur's chest, well away from where the wound originally was. Arthur can't see it anymore, though he has a sense for where it spread. Besides, his shirt still sports a hole. “You should sleep.”
“It feels like I've slept for days,” Arthur says, swallowing against the dryness in his mouth. “I feel no urge to do so again.”
“You actually have. But it's helped you recover. You ought to try to get some more.”
“Merlin,” Arthur says, wetting cracked lips. “I've been out for days.” Not particularly wishing to have this conversation lying down, he pushes himself up. Though his muscles strain and he's sore, he can manage that just fine. It's something he couldn't have done right after he was wounded, so he must indeed be better. “Two days for Pendacorps is an eternity. They'll have already sicked a Blade Runner on you. And trust me my colleagues are good. You need to go. You can't stay here and play nurse!”
“I may not be a real person,” Merlin says, his face locking, “but I won't take orders and be told what to do.”
Merlin tries to push off the bed but Arthur grabs his wrist, pulls him back down. “I'm talking logic here, Merlin. I'm better now. I don't need you to assist me. You ought to run.”
“I won't run without you,” Merlin says, setting his lips in a stubborn line. “So you can think again.” Merlin tips his chin down. “Unless of course you've changed your mind...” He twiddles his thumb, licks his lips. “About me being worth it.”
“You're worth it.”
“Even though I'm not real?” Merlin asks, pushing that question with a certain obstinacy as if he's looking for Arthur to admit that he isn't.
“You're as real as they come,” Arthur says, grabbing Merlin's hand and squeezing his fingers. “I haven't changed my mind about wanting to be with you at all. But I want you to have a good shot at surviving. And here you can't.”
“Well, I'm not going anywhere without you,” Merlin says. “So you'd better do your best to recover.”
Arthur arches an eyebrow. “That's emotional manipulation.”
“Maybe,” Merlin says, as he goes to check the blood bag once again. “But we shouldn't discuss this now. You should sleep.”
“All right, okay, but this isn't over,” Arthur says, holding up a cautionary index. It's not as if his body isn't riddled with pain or as if he doesn't feel like a tonne of metal has been dropped on top of him. He'll recover, gain strength, put himself in a position to guard Merlin. But he does need a moment or two. “Not in the least.”
He falls asleep forming plans guaranteeing Merlin's safety.
***
The front of the café has a white awning. Under it a red sign swings in the wind. Arthur marches past stainless steel tables dotting the patio floor and marches up to the bar counter. He orders a black coffee then returns to the seating area outside. He takes a table. It smells like it's just been cleaned. Once he's seated, he lowers his hat on his brow, turns on the screen embedded in the table surface, thumbs open the local magazine and makes a show of flipping through the news.
From time to time, he scopes the area. The immediate vicinity of the café is a no fly zone for hovers. This makes it a less frequented area compared to other parts of Camelot City. Pedestrians are few and far between, which suits Arthur fine, but the café does have patrons, mostly performers from the near-by arts theatre. Actresses with their faces painted in tones of gold and ochre sip from tall glasses decorated with webs of artificial leaves and lollipops the colour of varnish. Authors, hidden away behind scarves looped around their necks, fill long pieces of parchment with their latest contribution.
No policeman or Pendacorps personnel loiters around. In their sober greys and traditional fashions, they would stand out like a sore thumb if they did.
Arthur's coffee arrives in a tall enamel cup with rose designs. “There you are, sir,” says the waiter, patting his black trousers.
“Thank you,” Arthur says, lifting his hat a notch to acknowledge the man who just served him before he flits back into the café proper.
The cup is steaming. Arthur waits a few seconds before lifting it, fingertips dancing along the scalding enamel. A paper napkin has been slipped under the cup. The words Camlann Power Plant have been scribbled across it.
Arthur puts the cup down, studies the area around him, picks the object back up. He takes a sip of his coffee, places his cup on the table, swipes his stolen card into the check-out scanner and pockets the napkin that was lying on the dish.
With a grunt, he hoists himself up, holds his coat closed with his hands, and stalks out of the café.
***
The night is moonless, cloudless. The darkness lies heavy around them, like a pall, a thick inky blackness that coats the skin and weighs down on the body. It's almost complete save for the street lamp shining a few yards off and the waning glare of the headlights coming from an abandoned hover.
The thermal plant itself gives off a pale halo of its own; at least the paint peeling off the building hasn't made way for rust. Bare concrete, enormous slabs of it, gapes at the sky.
Merlin and Arthur walk past the open gates and towards the gutted open remains of the building. The only audible sound is that of their feet on the gravel, of their breaths as they make the trek across the industrial unit.
The first room they enter is square. Cutting across the roof, the beams are fractured, the pipes leaking and setting afire the wiring that hangs loosely from above lintels. There's debris on the floor, ranging from tile pieces to big masses of concrete, columns, and steel trusses.
Two pane-less windows let some lighting in, the pallor of the feeble starlight lending the premises an otherworldly glow.
“Are you sure we're in the right place?” Merlin says, stepping over a fallen beam.
“Yes,” says Arthur, following Merlin into the next room. “My informant has never passed me the wrong information before.”
A rat scuttles across their path, whiskers twitching, before disappearing into a hole at the base of the wall. “This place looks completely abandoned.”
“If it is,” Arthur says, squinting into the darkness, “we'll have to start again.”
“Arthur,” Merlin says, kicking something with his foot that goes skittering across the length of the floor, “are you even sure this is a good idea?”
“No,” Arthur says, and before he can specify why, the lights blink on with a blinding glare.
A group of people comes into view. They form a compact line. Leading it is Mordred. He hasn't changed from the last time Arthur saw him. His eyes are just as green and intense, his expression as unflinching, his mouth set in as unwavering a line. Next to him stands Percival. His face isn't as expressive as Mordred's, but his body language, folded arms and splayed feet, looks challenging enough.
“My, my,” Mordred says on the heels of a whistle, “look what the cat dragged in, Percival.”
“Arthur Pendragon,” Percival says, his delivery toneless.
“I thought I'd warned you, Pendragon,” Mordred says, giving a little nod at his wingmen, two of whom step out of the line up, bearing maces and push daggers of all things. “Now I'll have to kill you.”
Before Mordred can gesture to his men, Arthur says, “Wait, I have reason to be here.”
Mordred smiles a wan smile. “You mean other than killing us?”
“I have come to seek your help,” Arthur says, holding both palms up. “Not to harm you.”
Mordred laughs. It's some kind of belly laugh, but it sounds completely insincere. There's a theatricality to it that hollows out the mirth. “And why should I believe you, considering you've made it your life's calling to kill people like us?”
“Because I've learnt how wrong I was,” Arthur says, holding his head high and making a point of seeking out Mordred's gaze. “I've seen the truth of it now.”
“A Pendragon changing his mind. This seems far-fetched,” Mordred says, cocking his head at Percival and tapping his mouth. “Don't you think so, Perce?”
Percival doesn't answer but Mordred continues on as if he has, or as if it doesn't matter that he hasn't. “It smells like a trap.”
“No, it's not a trap,” Arthur says. “Some things have opened my eyes. Mostly.” He shares a look with Merlin. “It's been him. He taught me how wrong I was even before he found out... He found out that he's one of you.”
Mordred's gaze sharpens on Merlin. “So you're one of us, are you?” He steps forward, saunters up to Merlin, eyes sparkling with something Arthur can't decipher but that he definitely fears. Humming softly, Mordred grabs Merlin's face. Merlin goes rigid, but doesn't step away, lets Mordred have his read of him. “You have honest eyes,” he says, his gaze boring into them, to the point Arthur's left wondering whether some kind of mind reading ability has been engineered into him. “I'm tempted to believe you.” He eyes Arthur. “But I don't trust him. I long ago swore he would be the last person on earth I ever confided in and I'm not going to change my mind.”
“At least help him,” Arthur asks. “Help him flee earth. I ask for nothing else. You can have your vengeance on me if you want. Just help Merlin out.”
Merlin steps back, eyes big and betrayed. “No, it's the both of us or nothing.”
“Charming of you to treat us to your marital squabbles, but I fail to see what I would get out of it,” Mordred says.
“I thought you were the one fighting to uphold your people's rights,” Arthur says, trying not to dig his nails into his palm. “I thought you were the one who had morals.”
Mordred prowls over to him. “I'm afraid I lost my morals long ago.” The corners of Mordred's lips lift but Arthur hardly dares call that a smile. “You're out of luck.”
“Let's go, Arthur,” Merlin says, his face tight. “You said these people were freedom fighters, but they're not.” He snaps his gaze onto Mordred. “I thought... I thought tonight I'd find someone like me. Someone who'd help make sense of it all. But you're not it. You're not it because you harbour so much hatred.”
Mordred looks back over at Merlin. “Do you know of many of ours we've lost? Have you any idea?”
“Yes,” Merlin says, taking a step forward so he touches toes with Mordred. “I actually marched for replicants rights before I even knew what I was. I know the statistics.”
“But have you ever had a comrade die in your arms?” Mordred asks, fire in his eyes. “Have you ever felt the life drain out of them?”
“No,” Merlin says, and Arthur can see he's moved by Mordred's words. He's tearing up and his mouth is contracting in pain. “No,” he says breathily again. “But I still don't think that what you should be left with at the end of the day is hatred.”
“So I should help you out of the goodness of my heart, is that it?” Mordred asks.
“Yes,” says Merlin, one fist lifted, his eyes wet with, Arthur thinks, tears of frustration.
Mordred sweeps his arms out then pivots round, addresses his fellow replicants, “What do you think? What should I do? Should I help the man who killed so many of us?”
Someone boos. Most replicants just make discontented noises. The general consensus, Arthur gathers, is that, no, Mordred shouldn't.
Mordred says. “I won't.”
Arthur can't bring himself to say anything. Nothing he can come up with would be truly meaningful. Mordred isn't wrong in saying Arthur has been an enemy to replicants. He has. His hands were long ago washed red with their blood. He remembers each one he killed, by name, code number, work designation. He wishes, with all that he has, that that wasn't the case. That he hadn't done it or believed the propaganda thrown at him. But he did, he acted without questioning his orders. He'll have to take responsibility for his actions. Is ready to. He merely wishes Merlin didn't have to suffer because of his mistakes. And he already is, isn't he?
Merlin's shoulders have meanwhile gone down and his eyes have shed some of their lustre. “Right then,” he says and turns around, heading for the exit.
Arthur starts following him, shoulders rigid, awaiting an attack, not sure one won't come before they've cleared the doors of the plant.
“Wait,” says Mordred. “Wait.”
Arthur angles his body towards Mordred. “What for? You said no.”
“I said I wouldn't do it for nothing,” Mordred says, piercing him with a cold look. “But I will do it in return for a favour.”
“Arthur, no,” Merlin says, shaking his head, jaw set.
“What favour?” Arthur says. If this can help Merlin get out of here before Pendacorps gets their hands on him, then he's ready to help Mordred. “Speak.”
“You were Pendacorps.”
“That's not news, Mordred.”
“Well,” Mordred says, “everybody knows that you need Pendacorps badges to access Pendacorps Tower.”
Cold pierces Arthur's heart and lungs. His vision drains and for a brief moment it grows dark. He shuts down wholesale. When he can speak again, he says. “True, what of it?”
“I want to do away with Pendacorps, and by that I mean the facility, the labs, the documentation,” Mordred says. “Everything in there puts our race in danger. From replicants name listings to the scientific data allowing them to create us. It's got to go.” Mordred pauses. As they wait for him to finish, his companions stay silent and it's like all sound's been sucked from the building. “And you'll be the one that helps us achieve that.”
“What do you mean?” Arthur says.
“You'll give us your badge,” Mordred says with a shoulder lift. “It's a high clearance one.”
“They'll have deactivated it,” Arthur says, feeling the weight of the thing in his pocket. “I'm AWOL. Have been for some time. My father must have guessed I threw my lot in with Merlin.”
“That doesn't mean anything,” Mordred says. “We can create a viable new badge based on your sample.” He smirks. “We have geniuses among us. People with way higher than average IQs, all courtesy of the Pendacorps engineers. We'll manage.”
“But even if you get in,” Arthur says, thinking fast, not sure this is the way, “what do you think you can achieve?”
“Safety,” Mordred says, his face setting into a stony cast.
“I can't let you destroy the building with the people in it,” Arthur says. “I'm responsible for too many innocent deaths as it is.”
“Those people aren't innocent!” Mordred thunders. “You can't call them innocent.”
“Are the security guards working there guilty of any crime?” Arthur asks, nocking an eyebrow. “The secretaries, the nurses...”
“They help Pendacorps' so called scientists so, yeah, I do think them guilty.”
“You can't condemn them all without knowing what they're responsible for!” Arthur says, chewing on the inside of his cheeks. “I won't help you do that.”
“And if we don't kill anyone,” Mordred says. “If we make sure to get in at night and have zero civilian losses, would you get us into the building?”
Arthur's eyes narrow. “But how can I hold you to your promise? Once you have the badge...”
“You'll have to trust me,” Mordred says. “Like I'll have to trust you not to run to daddy dearest and disclose our latest location.”
Arthur looks to Merlin. He doesn't know how to act. Merlin needs to leave the planet and that's a fact. Mordred has got the underground connections to make it happen. Has pulled that off before with countless replicants. If he really means to achieve nothing more than the destruction of a physical building, the erasing of data that has been used for nefarious purposes, then Arthur can subscribe to that. But if he's lying...
Merlin lifts his shoulders to his ears, his face sombre. He must have guessed what Arthur's thinking and is leaving the decision up to him.
“All right,” Arthur says at last, slowly, reluctantly. “I'll provide the badge.” He feels the shape of it against his ribs. It feels like it's burning his skin through his clothes and of course it isn't. It's just his mind playing tricks on him. “But...”
“In exchange for that I will get you and your friend on a fast shuttle out of earth,” Mordred says. “Do we have a deal?”
“Yes,” Arthur says, though his heart doesn't feel lighter, but rather like a stone sitting high in his chest. “We have a deal.
***
Seen from the old underground tunnels Pendacorps Tower looks like a monolith. Bathed in moonlight, its Avalonium shell takes the appearance of a diamond crust scintillating with the reflected glimmer of a thousand stars. The edifice's square base thins at the top, giving the building an impression of litheness, grace, while at the same time its height and breadth lend it an aura of impregnability. Its pinnacle seems to pierce the sky together with the veil of clouds streaked around it, a symbol of man's power over the natural world.
Down here in the darkness, rats scuttle and stagnant water flows. Even though the tunnel opens up at street level, the air is dank and stale. The arching tile and concrete walls are thick and since the ventilation system was long ago killed, there's no fresh air influx. Mildew cakes the ceiling and dots the foundation of the arch leading to the exterior. In the other direction, Arthur can spy the bulk of the turnstiles, but only if he points his torch that way.
“All right,” says Mordred to his group of replicants. “Here's the deal. It's an in and out job.”
“We know that,” says a young replicant, a slim girl who's armed to the teeth.
Mordred flicks up an eyebrow and continues talking. “We'll have to split up. Freya's going to lead group one and destroy the archives.” He unfolds his map and pins it to the curving wall of the tunnel. “It's located here,” he says, tapping his finger against the relevant spot. “Group two is going to come with me. We're taking care of the labs.”
Everyone nods.
“About the guards,” Arthur starts.
“We'll disarm those we find and put them to sleep,” says Mordred, rolling the map back up and slipping it under his jacket. He fishes an object coming in the shape of an ovoid out of his pocket. “Step on them and Mandrake Gas will be released. It will put everyone within inhaling distance to sleep.” He tilts his mouth sideways. “Of course, try and remember to put on your mask before you do any such thing.”
“Are we sure that gas isn't noxious?” Arthur asks, unable to recall what that particular substance was used for in the past. “That the guards are going to be fine?”
“Yes,” says Mordred, clutching the sphere so tight Arthur fears for its integrity. “I promised, didn't I?”
Though his hackles are still up, Arthur nods.
Mordred does too, his mouth a thin line. “As of now,” he continues, swiping his thumb at his watch display, “Percival has taken control of an Australasia bound shuttle....” He shows everyone the screen giving them the live feed from Perce's camera. “That will take us to safety.”
“With an out of planet stop for Merlin and me,” Arthur says, looking at Merlin.
“Yes,” Mordred says, mouth tight around the words, “that's part of the plan too.” He addresses the company at large. “What I want to impress upon you is the need for speed. We must be in and out in under an hour because that's when the security shifts take place. This means we must all be done by 4 AM. That's when Percival is going to fly the shuttle by. We can only disturb radars for so long too. So it's essential we stick to the planned schedule.” He pauses, sets his jaw, then adds, “Because the last thing we want to do is to be caught. Remember being caught means death.”
Everyone makes an assenting noise, even Merlin, because, like the others, he must know that no quarter will be given.
“Good,” Mordred says. “Let's go.”
Head gear down, torches in hand, they make way for the interior of the abandoned station. They jump over the ticket turnstile and march onwards past the silent lobby, the shuttered news-stand and towards the stalled escalators. Slime and grit covers the steps, making them slippery. Layers of dust cover the handrails. They proceed in single file, moving slowly but with purpose. It takes them five minutes flat to negotiate escalator one alone.
The hall at the bottom of it still has the appearance of a passage lounge. There are signs supplying directions, pointing commuters to other lines, to rail links and towards the exit. The signs have faded and are missing letters. Tiles have come off the walls and rubbish is strewn across the grubby floor.
They go further down, past another set of stairs and down a second escalator. By this point, they're deep in the bowels of the city. Arthur can taste how rank the air is. It's more suffocating than it was at surface level, but that's normal. It's too deep in here. Graffiti, mould and dirt eat away at the walls. Fuse boxes have been forced open. Signs of human occupation stand out in the shape of a few bedrolls, broken bottles, and a barrage of utensils kept in a stained and holed canvas bag.
Mordred stamps past these objects and conducts them down a flight of stairs. A turn left gives them access to the train platform. They proceed along it until it cuts off. Then they jump onto the train tracks. They extend into a converging wall of darkness though torches swathe the near vicinity with their feeble light. Even so, they stumble when they bump into sidings or errant pieces of tunnel masonry. After a mile or so, they come upon a steel door. Here Mordred halts. “Enion, deal with it.”
Enion, a tall replicant with nearly white hair, takes a crooked object out of his tool belt and fiddles with the old rusty lock. Giving rise to a lot of scraping noises and little clicks, he proceeds to pick it. The door opens slowly to the sound of creaking hinges. They trudge up a set of service stairs that seems to never end until they come to a large concrete chamber. “Where are we?” Merlin whispers.
“I think,” Arthur says, trying to get his bearings, even if moving underground has thrown him, “we're under Pendacorps Tower.”
“Oh,” Merlin says, locking his jaw. “So this is it?”
“It seems so,” Arthur says, and he wants to add something, some manner of caution, but Mordred's watching them and Arthur doesn't feel like he can.
“This way,” Mordred says, leading them to a steel door that seems twice as big as the one from before.
Enion steps forward and says, “I can't pick that.”
“No,” Mordred agrees, signalling a second replicant, a tall woman with strong muscles and a determined expression, to come forward. “Blow it off.”
“Yes, Mordred,” the woman says, applying four blinking devices to the four corners of the door.
“Wait,” Arthur says, “if you blow it up, it'll alert Pendacorps security to our presence here.”
Mordred tuts. “Pendragon, you're not the only one in possession of good tech. Blasine was an explosives safety officer off Tydfil planet. She was literally made to be an explosives expert. Believe me, she knows what she's doing.”
Blasine thumbs her wrist unit. It blinks red and then blue. At the same time, the lights on the devices applied to the door start going on and off to the same rhythm. “The device will go off in fifty seconds, people. I suggest you find shelter.”
They duck for cover, hiding behind concrete columns or crouching at the opposite end of the room.
The air seems to crystallise, noise entirely sucked out of it, then the door itself implodes, silently. “Where the hell did you get Silent Blasters?” Arthur asks Mordred.
“We're the resistance,” Mordred says, dusting debris off him. He stands up and says, “Let's go.”
They find themselves in a vast room split into two sub-chambers. They're both high-ceilinged, rib-vaulted, roughly two hundred feet in diameter. At the end of the second one, the doors of a freight lift stand closed. Mordred marches over to them and halts, studying the number pad for a second or two. He punches in a code and the doors slide open.
“How did you know the code?” Arthur asks. “They change it week in, week out.”
“We have our sources,” Mordred says, motioning the others in. “That's how I knew where to find you in the first place.” He places the Pendacorps badge against the reader. The first bar changes colour and goes from red to green quickly enough, but the next one fails to do so Arthur breathes hard. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
“Yes,” Mordred barks, though, judging by how white he is, Arthur doesn't believe him.
Merlin looks from Arthur to Mordred to the badge reader console.
“Sir,” Blasine says.
Before Mordred can reply, the second bar goes green and then the third and fourth do so too.
Arthur's the last to file into the lift, right behind Merlin. He watches as the doors close and the cage is pushed upwards, buttons lighting up as they climb. -4, -3.-2.-1 and so on until the lift halts on the fifteenth floor. The doors open slowly. Blasine crouches and throws a sleeping gas canister in the gap.
“Masks,” says Mordred, putting his on.
Merlin's among the first to strap a mask on, helps Arthur when his hands tremble. “Easy.”
“It's just,” says Arthur, as Merlin regulates the strap so it'll fit. “I feel like I'm about to betray my own, my family.”
“Arthur,” Merlin says, shifting right into his space so that nobody can listen on, “your family isn't about creating and killing as many replicants as they can. Shutting this place down has nothing to do with that.”
“So you're with Mordred on this?”
Merlin's eyes darken, look troubled. “I don't know. I mean I don't subscribe to everything he says, but I know destroying the data isn't wrong.”
Arthur nods. “I don't think it is either.” He pulls the mask over his nose. When they're both ready, they spill out of the lift, following in the wake of Mordred's group. The security guards lie on the ground. Their bodies sprawl in untidy heaps. Shouldering his current companions aside, Arthur goes on his haunches and places his fingers on the throat of one. Only when he senses a rabbiting heartbeat does he straighten.
Mordred angles an eyebrow at him, then addresses the rest of the group as though nothing has happened. “Freya, I want you to reach the twentieth floor.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Only radio us if your group is overwhelmed,” Mordred tells her, her head dipping in assent. “We want to keep all communications to a minimum. Pendacorps is good at intercepting signals.” He seems to be aiming that remark to Arthur in particular. “And we don't want that. Now let's go.”
They split in two groups. The party led by Freya takes one of the opposite corridors at a run. Mordred leads his team, which includes Merlin and Arthur, to a second lift. It's activated like the first but requires two pass codes instead of one. Mordred manages to hot-wire it all the same.
The lift gives onto an empty floor. They take a set of stairs at a run and break into a white-washed corridor lighted by garish neons.
A guard sights them, fires a shot. Merlin throws himself in front of Arthur, but he needn't have done, both because Arthur will kill him for putting himself in the way of danger and because the shot itself goes wide.
Before more can be shot at them, Mordred treads over one of his Mandrake Gas capsules and the security guards go down in a body. Area clear, Mordred uses their badges to negotiate their way past a set of hulking double doors. They close behind them with a whoosh of air. Once they have sealed, they take off their masks and head covers.
They find themselves in an open plan set of rooms with walls curved so as to better exploit the space available, ceiling high windows overlooking Camelot City's night-scape. The labs are fitted with desks, reality simulators, monitors, and processors. Computer units chirp away from behind transparent locked doors. Waist-high stainless steel tables stand in row after row, each a few feet apart from the other. On some equipment is balanced; microscopes, test tubes, and beakers crowd their surfaces. Others come with a small basin at the front. The walls are stacked with shelves loaded with folders, storage units, and other technical devices. Arthur is acquainted with a good number of them. Most have been created with a view to unearthing replicants, dissecting their DNA for lab signatures. One of those Arthur had been about to use on Merlin. Further storage cabinets divide the lab in subsections.
A locked room, separated from the rest of the lab by doors and guarded by an alarm system of its own, opens to the right. Arthur's never been here before but he knows what's in there: the apparatus necessary to create more replicants, the beginning of everything, the Alpha Room.
Mordred tells Blasine to, “Destroy the Alpha Room.” He tells the others, “Short circuit the computers, fry their data.”
Arthur steps forward. “I'm not against destroying this material,” he says. All of Merlin's pain has, after all, stemmed from this place. “But you must know scientists will be able to recreate it, retrace their steps. Even if you erase it, they'll come up with it again. You can't hijack their brains.”
“No,” Mordred agrees. “You can't. We should kill them all for that.”
“Mordred,” Arthur says, slitting his eyes.
“I promised I wouldn't, didn't I?” Mordred says, tossing him a microchip. “And I won't. Now erase the data from the main console.”
Arthur looks at the microchip, fists it. On the one hand, he's about to destroy something that was his mother's work. On the other, his mother surely never intended for it to become what other people have made of it. She can't have meant to create an army of slaves bound to die at the drop of a hat. Erasing the data can only buy Merlin and people like him time, time to get to safety, time to enjoy their lives. In the case of ordinary replicants, that's short enough already.
He walks to the main console. It lights up the moment he inserts the chip in the slot meant for such devices. A projection of the data contained within the main framework appears before him. Strings of numbers float before his eyes, page upon page, until a million of them open. DNA sequences unspool, mate, come together again in new formations highlighted by colour. Chemistry formulas complete themselves, lines upon lines of them. Then with one whoosh of air, the data erases itself.
“It's done,” Merlin says, and there's a note of hope in his voice that fills Arthur with joy. “It's... all gone.”
“Yes,” Arthur says, his heart going out of synch as he looks at him. “Yes. Now it's up to us.”
An explosion from the Alpha Room shatters the moment. Flames leap high and crack the glass partition, whooshing outwards towards them. Arthur and Merlin flatten themselves on the floor, Arthur's hand over Merlin's head, heat singing his knuckles. But before Arthur can worry about how they're going to escape the fire, the smoke detector starts whining and the water sprinkler system goes on, dousing the flames.
Blasine stands and says, “Sorry, Mordred, that got out of hand.”
“I can see that,” Mordred says. “It doesn't matter. What matters is that the Alpha Room is destroyed.”
“I don't think any of the data or equipment that was in there can ever be used again,” Blasine says, a smile blooming on her lips.
“How about the folders and computer data?” Mordred asks his other team members.
Enion says, “Shredded, erased, hacked. We loaded a virus onto their mainframe that's affecting the entire Pendacrops system, on planet and off planet, as of now.”
“Good,” Mordred says. The he turns and looks at Arthur.
“Gone,” Arthur says without need for prompting. “All gone.”
Glass cracks under someone's shoes and Arthur swings round in time to see his Father step into the lab. “What in God's name is the meaning of this, Arthur?”
“Ha, Mr. Uther Pendragon,” Mordred says, his mouth lifting at the corners. “Just in time.”
Arthur's head whips between the two of them. “You, you were waiting for him!”
“Of course, I was,” Mordred says. “In fact I was the one who contacted him.” Mordred looks daggers at Uther. “I had a message delivered to him. It said I had news of his son's whereabouts.”
“Arthur, step away from these deranged creatures,” Uther says, gesturing him over. “I've contacted a special unit. They'll liquidate them and you'll be free.”
The truth dawns on Arthur with perfect clarity. “You think they've kidnapped me?”
“What other explanation is there?” Uther says, palms falling open.
“Father, I made a choice,” Arthur says, stepping between him and Mordred. “I helped them destroy all the data relating to replicants.”
“That's folly, Arthur!” Father says, eyes wide with surprise. His jaw tightens as he adds, “You don't understand what you owe to that information, to your mother's work. What you did was reckless. Reckless! Replicants form a much needed labour force.”
“You're talking about them as if they were cattle, Father,” Arthur says, unable to accept such words. “Pendacorps was using them. And that just wasn't right.”
“They're all criminals, with violent tendencies,” Uther says, his pupils widening. “They killed your mother.”
“A few of them did, Father,” Arthur says with a hint of desperation. He needs to make him see the truth, understand that what he's being doing at Pendacorps is not right. “Not all of them.”
Father scoffs.
Arthur takes Merlin's hand. “You tasked me to kill him.” Arthur meets his father's eyes. “Instead I met someone worthy of the deepest respect.”
“Arthur, you're confused,” Uther says, in less steely tones. “You're still young. I understand that. You heeded the call of...” He seems to rethink his words. “You're still vulnerable to the fake charms of a creature made to be whatever you want it to be. He's not the real thing. He's not even a person.”
Merlin sucks in a breath but holds his head high. “I may not be a person. None of us may be. But we have a right to life.”
“No, you haven't,” says Father, flashing Merlin with a murderous glare. “We gave you that life. We have the right to do what we want with it.”
“Can you even hear yourself talk?” Merlin says, shaking his head. “We feel, we experience pain, we fear and we love.”
“Oh spare me the Shylock speech,” says Uther, waving his hand down like a hammer. “You wouldn't be here if not for Pendacorps bio-engineering. For my wife's work. We own you.”
“You can't own sentient beings!” Merlin says, mouth open, eyes all pupils.
Arthur's blood is boiling and he wants to say something to make all this stop, to make his father come round, when Mordred pre-empts any sort of action on his part by saying, “That's why he's here,” Mordred says, nodding his head. “Because you needed to hear what he really thinks.”
“So you've put the outcome of this action at risk just so I could hear him say things I knew he believes true,” Arthur says, thinking of all the replicants in the building.
“No,” Mordred says, pointing a laser gun at Uther. “You were right. Deleting the records and the data will only give us so long. That's not enough. I lured him here so I could finally kill the killer of my people.”
Arthur throws himself between them. “No, no I won't let you. He's my father.”
“I don't really want to kill you, Arthur Pendragon,” says Mordred, not lowering his gun. “You're not like him. But your father's another matter.”
“No,” Arthur says, bracing himself for the shot. “No.”
Merlin shouts, “Mordred, what's the difference then?”
Mordred cocks his head. “What?”
“What's the difference then, between us and them?” Merlin asks. “If you kill him, what's the difference?”
Mordred's body locks and he flicks a glance at Merlin. “At this point does it even matter?”
“Yes, yes, it does,” Merlin says. “You have taken an important step here, Mordred. You don't need to compromise yourself.”
“I already have.”
Before Mordred can do anything, the floor to ceiling windows smash inwards. Papers fly about, come back down in a rain like streamers. The roar of an engine hits Arthur's eardrums. A hover is floating outside the window, piloted by Percival, its passenger port open.
“Blasine, Enion, take the others and go!” Mordred shouts. “Pendragon, I suggest you take Merlin and go. I wasn't lying about the shelter I offered. If you stay, his little friends,” Mordred points his chin at Uther, “will kill him.”
“I--” Arthur hesitates, his legs like lead. He can't step away and let Mordred kill his father. “Merlin, go.”
“No,” Merlin says, clenching his jaw. “You stay, I stay.”
Mordred's team finish off what they were at and negotiate the jump between window and hover.
“I advice you to go,” Mordred says, his features hardening. “Percival has orders to go in...” He looks at this watch. “53 secon--”
A stain blooms on Mordred's black jumper, expands as Mordred reels.
Arthur's head whips round and he sees his father wielding a pocket gun.
Mordred, face pale, hurls himself at Uther and wrestles him for the gun.
Uther kicks and punches him, leaving Arthur at a loss for what to do. Him, Mordred. He can't pick. One of them is his father, the other a man fighting for his right to live.
The hover is veering away from the window, raising a wind-flurry as its turbo engine goes from red to a deeper blue.
Arthur closes his eyes. He sees a younger Uther tracing a mark on the wall for Arthur to measure his height against. He remembers striding towards it with the intention of doing his father proud. He remembers his mother's face, the way her smile would tilt. Her words, as he'd come to know of them later from her video. Her life's work. He looks at Merlin. He's everything that his mother would have wanted replicants to be. She'd be proud.
Arthur grabs Merlin by the wrist and rushes towards the window, the hover already distancing itself from it.
***
At midday every two days, Pen Rhionydd's two suns converge on the horizon line, seemingly setting the world on fire. The first time Arthur saw the phenomenon, he very nearly braced himself for some sort of cosmic upheaval. He has since learnt that the suns never actually touch even if it looks as though they do. They are in reality light years apart. The Lovers, these suns are called, and though Arthur likes the metaphor, he has never admitted he does. Not out loud.
Merlin's the one who at least once a week goes out to watch them pseudo merge. He sits there, his knees gathered up to his body, his head tipped up, eyes made small against the glare. He stays until the outer arcs of the suns graze each other, then he picks himself up and walks back towards the shadows of the house.
Today it's Arthur who wades across the russet sand and out to him. He sits next to Merlin, where the sand hollows around him, and gives him the bread.
Merlin arches an eyebrow and says, “I'm not hungry.”
Arthur looks down at his creation. He made the bread from dough he bought at the trading outpost. He has no idea what kind of flour went into it, probably the synthetic kind. Arthur's still not used to the paucity of rations off galaxy. “It was the most I could pull off.”
“You thought I--” Merlin looks away, then back to Arthur. “No, Arthur, thank you.” He takes the bread, munches on a bit.
Arthur's not convinced. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing is,” Merlin says after a dry swallow. “I've just been thinking.”
“Is that what you do?” Arthur asks. “Out here every day?”
“No,” Merlin says, then lifts a shoulder. “Sometimes.”
Arthur looks down. “Are you unhappy, here?”
Merlin makes a grab for his face. “Arthur, no!” He thumbs the cheekbones, Arthur's jaw. “No, I... I thank the stars every day because of all I've got.”
“Then what do you think about?”
“It'll sound very selfish,” Merlin says, hinting at a tentative smile.
“No, tell me,” Arthur says, taking Merlin's hand from his face and linking it with his.
Merlin slowly nods, licks his lips. “About me, what I am. What difference it all makes.”
Arthur gets that. It makes sense. He'd hoped Merlin wouldn't torture himself with questions like that, that once they got here, all that would be in the past. After all, they seldom meet other people, and nobody really knows. But the truth is it can't be helped. Some lies leave a mark. Some truths brand you forever. Merlin was the product of Ygraine's genius and Gaius' love, but he was never exactly a normal human. “I hope that you know it makes no difference to me.”
“I know,” Merlin says, squeezing their locked fingers till Arthur's bones ache with the touch. “That's one of the things I'm grateful for.”
“You don't--”
Merlin puts a finger on his lips. “But sometimes I wonder whether you regret it.”
“What?” Arthur asks, shaking his head.
“Your father,” Merlin says, cupping his cheek, thumbing the corner of his lips. “Not ever knowing.”
“I love him,” Arthur says, making a conscious choice of the words he uses. He doesn't know. It's true. But he'll never talk about him in the past tense. Refuses to. Still clings to the best memories of him that he does have. “I do. But I had to make a choice, just as he made his. It came to a point... I don't regret this.” He waves at the horizon line, though they both know they're not talking about Pen Rhionydd. “I need you to know I never did, never will. Not for a moment.”
Merlin smiles till his face gets all lined with it. At the same time, the sky lights up. Green curtains of light swirl across the heavens as tails of brightness streak through them, travelling along parallel paths, diverging, brushing close, trails of dust shimmering silver as the iridescence forms veils and ribbons and knots. “Meteor shower,” Arthur says, when he realises what it is, what a rare occurrence it is out here on Pen Rhyonnyd.
“No,” Merlin says, kissing him slowly and softly on the mouth, a kiss that's mostly all lips. “No.”
Arthur frowns, looks sideways at the horizon. “It's very much a meteor shower, Merlin.”
Merlin smiles and Arthur can feel the contours of that smile against his flesh. “No.” Merlin nips softly at his lower lip. “It's a real memory.”
“Yes.” Arthur opens his mouth to the kiss and when it's over, he presses it under Merlin's chin, open and soft, trails it down his throat. “Yes.”
***