[Ben is quiet and still as he considers this. He wants to be honest, and if he is honest, there are two very specific, separate occasions he must talk about. One was very recent. One was definitely not.
The X5 straightens where he's sitting in his chair, hands folded together between his knees, gaze and voice steady.]
It's happened twice. The very first time I helped kill someone, it was because I wanted to.
[It's easy to remember; thinking back he remembers it as his fondest moment inside Manticore, the one time every desire he had, his unit had, and Manticore had for him all aligned and he knew exactly what to do, and he did it, and it felt like peace. He has no way of knowing if that's where the madness started though in his clearer moments, he suspects maybe it was.]
I had been telling my unit about the Blue Lady for almost a year when it happened; I'd begun to believe it, I think. I think I had to. I think we all had to. We'd been in training for combat, of course, from the time we could physically handle the sequences, as soon as we could begin to exercise fine control over our motor functions. It was a field exercise: we were turned loose, unarmed, to apprehend a man armed with a knife and a gun in the forest inside the compound.
He was meant to have his freedom if he escaped but of course, he didn't. When we caught him, he had... a mark. A heart, with a knife in it. Because I had begun to believe in the Lady, that she could protect us, that she would, I saw it and I knew - I knew - that he was a Nomlie. I knew that if we did not kill him, he would rise up and kill us. I couldn't let that happen.
We killed him. They'd trained us to even if we weren't, at the time, ordered to and we all knew what we were intended to do, so we did it. We wanted to be safe. [He pauses, and now here is some hesitation, the concern that the flaw that still exists in him had started as far back as then, further back. That he is going into too much detail.
But she asked about his frame of mind. He remembers it crystal clear.] I can still remember feeling... satisfied. I remember tasting his blood in my mouth and feeling like I finally understood what we were meant to be. I remember thinking we could keep ourselves safe.
[ Spam ]
The X5 straightens where he's sitting in his chair, hands folded together between his knees, gaze and voice steady.]
It's happened twice. The very first time I helped kill someone, it was because I wanted to.
[It's easy to remember; thinking back he remembers it as his fondest moment inside Manticore, the one time every desire he had, his unit had, and Manticore had for him all aligned and he knew exactly what to do, and he did it, and it felt like peace. He has no way of knowing if that's where the madness started though in his clearer moments, he suspects maybe it was.]
I had been telling my unit about the Blue Lady for almost a year when it happened; I'd begun to believe it, I think. I think I had to. I think we all had to. We'd been in training for combat, of course, from the time we could physically handle the sequences, as soon as we could begin to exercise fine control over our motor functions. It was a field exercise: we were turned loose, unarmed, to apprehend a man armed with a knife and a gun in the forest inside the compound.
He was meant to have his freedom if he escaped but of course, he didn't. When we caught him, he had... a mark. A heart, with a knife in it. Because I had begun to believe in the Lady, that she could protect us, that she would, I saw it and I knew - I knew - that he was a Nomlie. I knew that if we did not kill him, he would rise up and kill us. I couldn't let that happen.
We killed him. They'd trained us to even if we weren't, at the time, ordered to and we all knew what we were intended to do, so we did it. We wanted to be safe. [He pauses, and now here is some hesitation, the concern that the flaw that still exists in him had started as far back as then, further back. That he is going into too much detail.
But she asked about his frame of mind. He remembers it crystal clear.] I can still remember feeling... satisfied. I remember tasting his blood in my mouth and feeling like I finally understood what we were meant to be. I remember thinking we could keep ourselves safe.