Water Valkies

Aurie and Sneak were slumped against the stony wall, hands linked between the wrought iron bars. Since their first kiss they had shared several more and were nearly always connected at the fingers. They hadn't formed any sort of relationship. There wasn't any sense in doing so in their situation, but the intimacy comforted Aurie a little bit.

"So do you trust me enough to tell me your secret now?" she asked her companion as she twisted her fingers around his.
Sneak grasped her thumb in his fist and she wiggled her fingers in feigned distress. He released her thumb and locked his hand around hers firmly.

"Which one my lovely?" he chuckled. "The one about how I got my dashing good looks or the one about how I maintain a high level of wit."
Aurie snorted at his egoism.

"The one about how you got here?"
His hand fell limply from hers.
"So that's a no then?" she said, her voice tinged with disappointment.

Sneak sighed heavily.
"Tell you what? I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours, but you have to go first. That way I'll be less nervous."

Hesitantly, Aurie agreed.
"Well, I've never liked The Company, they always seem to cut into my fun when it comes to using my power, and I always thought there was something off about them, and I began to look into it. What I found was beyond anything I ever imagined and it landed me here.
They cornered me one day on my way home and bundled me into a car. They drugged me and next thing I know I was in a cell with an unruly headache and limbs that felt like they'd been put through a woodchipper.
They did things to me. Horrible things that I can only remember flashes of but I'm only grateful they didn't kill me. I know they weren't as kind to others who were in the same place before me. I did the research."

Sneak felt a lump lodge itself in his throat and he swallowed hard against it.
"What did you find out?"
"You know those Parents? They make those things. Underground, further down than even these cells I'm sure.
They build the skeletons out of metal and stuff, and then they grow the organs in a lab right beneath us. They put it all together in these weird bio-mechanical bodies, pump them full of a strange chemical, almost like blood. Then they upload things like feelings and thoughts onto a computer chip and send them into the world to act as guardians for children. Making them into active members of society. It's sick."
Aurie shivered visibly and Sneak doubted it was because of the damp and cold surroundings.

"I know." he said hoarsely while knotting his fingers in her hair.

"Right?" she asked incredulously. "Who would do something like that? It's creepy and-"

"No I mean I know they do all that," he interrupted her. "I mean, I knew already."

Aurie stared at him questioningly. "Is that why you're here too?" she inquired.

"Kind of. I discovered that too, but that's only part of why I'm here. It was mainly how I discovered it."

Sneak's eyes became misty and hard to read as he thought back to his time before imprisonment.

"I had Parents. A lovely couple. Mother was an all-round housewife and Father was a banker. We lived in a spacious three bedroomed house, just them and I. For years I didn't suspect a thing. I had been told they weren't my biological parents, and that they had been assigned to me when I was very young, not even a year old. I had vivid memories of my childhood with these people. I remembered going on picnics and vacations to the beach. I remembered visiting family members whom we no longer saw once I turned eight because they had moved far away.

"But there were cracks. Pieces that just didn't fit together. Sometimes I would get flashes of people I'd never seen but felt like I knew. The Company had been brainwashing me, like they do all kids who have Parents. Once a year they would take me in for an "update" and upload new, fabricated memories into my mind. They fed me lies. The problem was, the "treatment", as they called it, wasn't fully working on me. I would have blackouts and wake up in a violent temper. I lashed out and they ignored it until one day, I had enough and I shouted and screamed at my Parents.

"This wasn't normal. Children with Parents were supposed to be mannerly and behaved, and I was breaking all the moulds. In my rage, I grabbed a kitchen knife and I stabbed both of my Parents. After it happened I stood there shaking with terror. The shock was so great that I didn't even notice it at first, but then I saw.

"There was no blood, just a strange silvery orange liquid -those chemicals you spoke of -and I freaked. I was sure I had gone insane, I'd just murdered my Parents after all, and so figuring it could do no further harm, I pulled back the flesh from my mother's ragged chest and looked inside. There was a mass of wires and metal. And there was a faint clicking sound too, like the sound you hear when a DVD player gets stuck. I guess it was her heart, or whatever it is that powers those things, failing.

"The Company officials arrived shortly after. They didn't even send anybody from the Administration, they came right away themselves. No kid had ever killed their Parents before. They dragged me away and I didn't resist. I was a heavy load, weighed down by shock and fear, soaked to the elbows in the shimmering orange of my Mother's blood. I don't really remember the ride to The Company headquarters but when I got there they herded me straight into a laboratory and I was restrained. They erased what they could of the fake memories but a lot are still there. It's like my brain can't sort the fake ones from the real ones anymore. But I know enough to know what happened, and soon after they threw me in this cell, my real memories started to come back.

"From what I can piece together I wasn't even born here. I had a real family with real parents. The flashbacks I'd been experiencing were of them. I lived with my parents until I was around eight or nine. Things were never perfect. My Dad drank a lot and he used to be violent towards my Mom. I guess that's why The Company murdered them and took me in. You know, "Help the children" and whatever. They thought my parents were unfit for the job, and so they killed them and gave me god damned robots."

At this point, Sneak had abandoned Aurie's silver locks of hair and had his fists balled tightly in his own darkened curls as he seethed rage, anger, good old-fashioned hatred and every other boiling emotion he felt for The Company. He growled in a fit of fiery passion and hit his fist against the hard wall with such force that he felt sparks fly from his knuckles and when he examined the back of his hand he had angry little red marks patterned across the skin.

He slouched against the wall once more, overcome with emotion and sheer tiredness. Aurie sat there in mute shock at both his story and his outburst. Eventually, snapping back to reality, she reached through the bars and took his hand. She raised it to her lips and kissed the tiny burns on Sneak's hand. He looked up to her eyes and she saw that his were brimming with tears and held a look of sadness so immense she felt her own heart break further.