It was a different house than before. More of an estate, really; almost a feudal village, complete with outlying buildings dotting the grounds and, atop the highest hill, a turreted Gothic monstrosity that looked like a fairy-tale castle if the fairy tale was Sleeping Beauty, where the princess’s home was decrepit, covered with thorns and forgotten. Jude met me outside.
“You live here?”
“It’s Quinn’s,” Jude said. “She’s invited some of us to stay… for a while.”
“She barely knows you.”
His lips curled up. “I guess she knows enough.” He guided us down an overgrown path, headed toward a giant greenhouse. There was nothing inside but a thicket of dead plants. Most of the windowpanes were empty; the ground crunched with shattered glass. “So, you come here to chat about real estate?”
“It’s Auden,” I said, suddenly sorry I had come. It felt wrong to say his name out loud, here. To Jude. “He’s hurt.”
Jude nodded. “He’s an org. I hear it happens from time to time.”
I couldn’t believe him. “You don’t even care? You’re not even going to ask how bad?”
“He’s not my friend, as he’s always been so quick to point out. Why should I care?”
“Bad,” I informed him, whether he cared or not. “Thanks to you.”
Jude raised an eyebrow. Nothing touched him. Nothing.
“You pushed me,” I said. “You wouldn’t accept that I wasn’t like you. And you just had to keep pushing and pushing, all that crap about losing control and letting go and I finally did, and he’s the one who has to pay? Congratulations, Jude,” I said bitterly. “It all worked out according to your plan. He hates me, and I’ve got nothing, just like you wanted. Just like you predicted, right? I’m fucking alone. Thanks for your help. Thanks a lot.”
Jude leaned against the door frame of the greenhouse, ignoring the protruding shards of glass. “Deciphering incoherent rants isn’t really a specialty of mine,” he said, still perfectly calm. Detached. “But if I’ve got this right, you did something, your org got hurt, and this is somehow my fault because I told you to do it in the first place? You always do everything you’re told?”
I let myself sink to the ground. It sounded even stupider out loud than it had in my head. The grass was still wet from a morning rain, and the cold water seeped into my filthy, borrowed clothes.
“I hate you,” I said.
“Not much of an apology. But I’ll take it. Want to tell me what happened?”
I told him. All of it, from the fight with Zo straight through to the moment in the hospital room, the sound of Auden’s voice—the tone of Auden’s voice, cold and mechanical—when he told me to leave.
And when I was done, Jude nodded. “Tragic,” he said. As emotionless as ever. I wondered if he’d discovered the secret to shutting down his emotions for good. And if he would teach it to me.
“Feel free to do your little happy dance,” I said. “I know you hated him.”
“I never hated him. I hated the idea of you pretending that he could matter to you or that he could ever understand you. That the two of you were anything but a disaster.”
“Disaster’s right. I was the disaster,” I said. “I ruined his life.”
Jude didn’t say anything. I looked up. “Aren’t you going to tell me it wasn’t my fault? That I shouldn’t blame myself?”
Jude shrugged. “I don’t lie.”
“He decided to jump in after me. I didn’t force him. I didn’t need saving.”
“I know,” Jude said. “Because of who I am. He didn’t—because of who he is.”
“Why is it so important to you to believe that we’re different, mechs and orgs?” I said. “Why do you need me to hate them?”
He shook his head slowly. “We don’t hate them, Lia. They hate us.”
Auden didn’t hate me.
At least, he didn’t used to.
“We’re machines,” Jude said. “Unchanging. Perfect—and that perfection is our only flaw. They age, they get sick, injured, always something. They decay. We stay the same. We drift in time; they drown in it. They’ve got a deadline; we don’t. And it’s the one thing they can’t forgive.”
“It doesn’t have to make us inhuman.”
“It does!” he shouted, raising his voice for the first time. “Humans are mortals. Mortals die. Living creatures die. The whole concept of living is meaningless without its opposite. Light is defined by dark. Life is defined by death. Death makes them what they are. Absence of death makes us what we are. That’s the difference. It’s absolute. You don’t get to just wish it away.” Jude slammed his fist against the door frame, splintering the rotted wood. “You never understood. You never even bothered to try. It didn’t occur to you that that’s why we go to the waterfall, why we take risks, why we push ourselves past the brink? It’s a reminder—that for us, death is not an option. It’s a reminder of everything that makes us different. You can blame yourself for Auden all you want—because you didn’t want to remember. So you let yourself forget.”
“But—”
“No,” he said fiercely. “ You came to me this time. So you can either go or you can listen. You want to hear this or not?”
And maybe that was the real reason I’d come. To hear what I already knew but couldn’t believe. Not unless I heard it from someone else. I nodded.
“You got careless,” Jude said. “You let yourself believe that you and Auden were the same. You got emotionally tied to an org and refused to accept the reality of who you are—and the fact that it’s not who you were. You ignored the truth, and that put everyone around you in danger. Especially him.”
“It was an accident,” I argued. “Bad luck.”
“What would it have been if he’d gotten shot last night, in the city?” Jude asked. “Or if some thug had jumped him while we were up on the roof? Could’ve happened.”
“I didn’t think—I don’t know.”
“You do know,” Jude said. “You knew then, too. You did what you wanted to do anyway. Like you should have. But he didn’t belong there in the first place. You knew that, too. You just didn’t care enough to stop.”
“I care about him more than someone like you could understand,” I spat out.
“You care about yourself,” Jude said, smiling. “Something I understand entirely too well.”
I stood up. “I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.”
“No.” Jude stretched himself along the door frame like a cat. “Run away. It’s what you’re best at.”
I stayed.
“You brought him to that waterfall,” Jude said. “You brought him to the city. You would have dragged him somewhere else tomorrow. Or the next day. He’s probably lucky this happened. The next stupid decision might have gotten him killed.”
“I would never—”
“And that would have been your fault too.”
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “Lock myself in a closet and shut down, to keep the world safe from the horror that is me?”
“None of my business,” Jude said. “There’s no one I care about in the world. The org world, at least. But if I were you, and I still had someone, someone important…”
Auden, I thought, in his metal cage. My father, on his knees. Zo, hiding behind a locked door, guilt tearing her apart. We had more in common now, I thought suddenly. Just imagine the sisterly bonding possibilities: So, who did you almost kill today?