Shutdown (Glitch)

mind. “I’m sorry. You know, she might have found another way out. Or they could be holding her for questioning. That’s probably what they are doing—”
    Something sparked in his eyes, but it wasn’t sorrow or grief. He jumped to his feet. “That is exactly why I don’t want any more of the poisons. You say you were trying to heal me but all you wanted was to make me weak.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “You all delude yourselves constantly, but I’m the one who’s broken and sick? You can’t even tell the truth when it’s obvious to both of us. Sophia is dead. You know it and I know it. I don’t have to hide behind pretty delusions. It’s all lies, all of you trying to shape the world the way you want it to be, instead of seeing it like it really is. And you treat me the same way.”
    “What do you mean? We all just want you to get better—”
    “No.” He held up a finger sharply, advancing toward me. “That’s another lie. You want me to be him.”
    “What?” I put my hands on my waist. “We want you to be you.”
    “No.” He shook his head. “You want me to be him . Sophia wanted me to be him too,” he said, seeming agitated. He spun and walked away from me. He cast a long dark shadow as he passed in front of the lamp. “She barely knew me. It was him she wanted. All of you are the same, trying to pressure me into pretending to be someone I’m not.”
    He turned again to look at me. “I may have his face, but I’m not him. None of you are willing to see it. Not you, not the doctor, and most of all, not the woman who called herself my mother. You kept dunking me in that shunting chamber for weeks at a time, hoping I’d turn back into him, when I’m perfectly healthy as I am.”
    “How can you say that?” Angry heat rose in my cheeks. “Your mother sacrificed herself for you because she loved you. If you can’t see that, then you obviously are still broken. You’re cold and emotionless. You’re not a whole human being.”
    “Emotionless?” His voice rose an octave. “Then what do you call this?” He threw his hands out wide, then brought them back and hit his chest with his palms. “I’m a human being. I feel anger. You’re just upset because I don’t feel what you consider the right emotions—I don’t feel what you want me to feel. You all walk around ignoring your most basic human instincts.”
    “And what are those?”
    “The instinct to survive!” he yelled. “That woman, sacrificing herself for us? She was a fool. All we have is this life and she just threw it away.”
    “She was your mother—”
    “She should have been trying to save herself!”
    I was shocked and taken aback at all the emotion showing so clearly on his face.
    “Instead she wasted her life for nothing—for a memory of someone who’s not even here anymore. She didn’t love me. She didn’t even know me, and she died for nothing.”
    “Don’t you dare say that,” I said, stepping toe to toe with him. “She died for you . You grew in her body and she birthed you and she’d die for you no matter what you’ve turned into.”
    “She was a fool,” he repeated, his face red. “And I used to be a fool too, back when I thought lumps of flesh had souls.” He threw his hands up in the air. “It’s so obviously the opposite. We are organisms, and like all organisms who are threatened, we adapted to survive. That’s all.”
    He moved to turn away from me again, but I grabbed his arm. “No, that’s not all,” I said, even though once I had thought the same thing. When we’d first met, we’d had this argument backward. I didn’t know now if I’d said it because I actually believed it, or if I’d wanted to believe it. “You always said there was more to it. That we matter. That relationships between even just two human beings—that love—can change the world.”
    He shook his head. “What you call love is the ultimate lie. It means putting someone else’s needs above your own. Which can get you killed. It got Sophia killed.” He paused and looked straight at me with a burning intensity. “And it got me tortured and lobotomized.”
    A lump rose in my throat. All my anger dried up in an instant. I knew what he was saying. It was my fault. Loving me had gotten him tortured within an inch of his life. All that pain and anguish, when it would have been so much easier to relent and give into the Chancellor’s compulsion. He was right. He’d already suffered enough on my account.