Quivering in a bed, thrashing every so often, sleeps the Conduit. If you can even all it sleep. His nights are plagued by faces…screams. A cold sweat clings to his whole body and he can feel the hunger coming back to him. He jumps, and the nightmare is finally over, but the faces still remain. Every second of every day he remembers each one.
He slowly makes his way to the small glass door of his cell that leads to his shower, desperately turning the water scolding as if the water or heat could cleanse him and wash away the faces. He wipes over the fogged mirror and looks at his face, but sees only a stranger. Disgusted he moves his attention to his left hand. Just bellow his wrist is the catheter used for the gauntlet. They always take the gauntlet away afterwards to test his blood in it, and what they call the MT-VS7. That’s apparently what he takes from the targets.
The buzzer above the door goes off and the Conduit instinctively moves towards his bed. A tall blonde man in a clean cut suit walks in, gauntlet in hand and female companion in tow.
“You will remove more.” Eugen Diederich would waste no time asking the Conduit to do anything. He has the man wrapped around his little finger. Throwing the gauntlet into the conduits towel covered lap he swiftly leaves his companion alone in the room with the Conduit. She takes three canisters from her white lab coat and kneels beside the Conduit to take her medical examinations. Extracting blood here, taking temperature there. Then she speaks
“These are for the secondary targets” slipping two of the three canisters into the gauntlet, “this is for the primary target.” She sometimes told him added mission details but then she asked”You got out before…Why not again” The conduit looked at her. Dozens of times he had been sent to ‘remove them’, before and after each one she had done the same exams. She had never asked him a question. He simply looked her straight in the eyes and told her:
“They’ve already won.” He noticed a sadness to her eyes. He went back to staring straight ahead at the door. But out of the corner of his eyes he noticed her deviating from her usual routine. She was trying to remove the needle slyly but when she saw him looking she lunged, but he acted fast, first grabbing her needle hand next her other arm. He tossed her to the other side of the small room and she hit the wall with a thud. The conduit grabs the metal chair from the corner and throws it in her direction but before he knows it she is already on him needle in one hand and ice covering the other. Pinned down she freezes his arms to the floor and bites the cap from the needle, spitting it aside. “Do it!” he says, quietly at first, but soon he’s shouting it. He breaks down into tear-less sobs of “end it”s and “please”s. Sitting on top of him, needle poised to kill, Dr Emily Read stops hesitantly.
“Why?” she asks “why do you want to die?”
“Every second i see them-“
“-who?”
“YOU KNOW WHO” he roars “you sent me after every single one of them! If you had done this sooner they’d be alive!”
Emily sits up slowly, needle still pointed at the Conduits neck. “and you’re one of them” he mumbles in realization.
“It wasn’t my assignment to kill you then” she replies “it is now”. Emily looks at the needle for a long time, and eventually tosses it to the side.
Minutes later the Conduit is at his sink, rubbing warm water over his arms, Emily stands watching him.
“Why poison? Why not just freeze me to death?” He inquired.
“That’s the poison we lace the gauntlet with, i needed it to look like suicide.” She pauses “And it cant’t be known that i’m a Vessel”
“And why am i not dead now?”
“Because you want to be.” she said taking a few steps closer to the Conduit “You feel regret. I’ve seen too many of the Augmented come back and revel in what they have done… I can’t kill the one good person on this ship” she said in a hushed voice.
Fully changed the conduit walks out the door, leaving Dr Read alone in the cell.
