Stormblood by Jeremy Szal

Author:Jeremy Szal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2020-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

All the smart folks from the House of Suns had slipped away. Well, not Simmons. But something told me he wouldn’t have been very forthcoming in Harmony’s interrogation room anyway.

We didn’t say much on the way back to my apartment. Grim told me they’d snatched him coming out of the Academy library. His answers were brief, his thin shoulders hunched over. He seemed to be looking away from me. Like he was afraid I’d hit him.

I’m not my father, I told myself. I’m not my father. I’m not that monster.

Autonomy. It’s a classic human issue that’s been repeated ad nauseum by stormtech: how much are you to blame for your actions when you have non-human biotech manipulating every element of your behaviour? I’d seen it during the war, convicted Reapers blaming stormtech for their war crimes, including the torture of Harvesters. Denying all responsibility. Saying the drugs had morphed them into bloodthirsty, rabid dogs. It wasn’t until I’d been in the battlefields and mud pits and then the barracks afterwards that I fully understood how the stormtech ravages your thoughts, twists your body into something you’re scared to live in. I’d never known where my instincts and emotions ended, and where the borders of stormtech’s manipulation began.

I’d heard similar excuses before. Like when I was twelve and sprawled out on the floor, my body striped with belt lashes, warm piss trickling down my leg, my father standing over me. You provoked me. You brought this on yourself. It wasn’t me. It was never me.

I never imagined I’d one day be making these same excuses to a friend. Was the stormtech really turning men into monsters? Or was it just nurturing the evil rooted deep inside us all? Would the stormtech have killed Grim to survive, or would I?

When we got home, I got in the shower and set about cleaning out the fistfuls of sand caked under my armpits and thighs that had been grinding the whole walk home. The water turned muddy around my feet, layers of grit and grime and blood washing away. The stormtech was livid now. The bands thicker, the colour brighter, the movements faster. I traced a ripple of them down my bruised ribs with scarred fingers. It was hot to the touch. I felt it knocking and jarring against my bones, hungry for more.

What had I been opened up to?

I shut the shower off and rested my head on the fogged-up glass. Breathed in the steam. I had this under control. I had this under control. I hadn’t killed Grim. I hadn’t ploughed into the audience.

I so easily could have.

I heard footsteps as Kowalski arrived and guessed I’d better face the music.

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