Core Drive: A Westworld Story

Áine Part 2

With a blink, the fly on my knuckle flaps its wings to the thrum of its incredibly small and fast heart. A bullet rips through the bar and shreds off its wing. The fly struggles and then silence.

On instinct, my head snaps to the left. A bullet rips through the right side of the bar. My head knocks against a hard wooden knob. A gun handle.

I pull the sawed-off shotgun from behind the bar and pop the barrel.

"Empty," my voice is still foreign.

I search around for a box of ammunition. The display shelf bursts into a glass firework show, showering sharp glass fragments instead of coloured gun powder. The smell is the same though, dark and metallic, like the burn of a welding disk sawing at rebar.

How do I know that? My fingers find shotgun shells. Everything is a reflex.

I load the gun without instruction, Why do I know what to do?

I'm a raw nerve, acting, reacting, remembering...yet I don't even know my own fucking name or the sound of my own voice.

The shotgun goes off in my hands. I'm aiming it at a man in a cowboy hat and tasselled leather vest. He whoops, excitement derived from the hunt.

"Why don't ya come on out sweetheart," A vapid laugh. He's spurned on, "I promise I won't bite...much."

My fingers reload faster. A sting in my belly. I ignore it. Compartmentalise. My fingers pull the trigger. Again and again. The hat is blown off the man's face. The shotgun pellets spray into his cheek and eye. Fluid ruptures out. Blood too. I don't stop. Even when the man is no longer whooping and grinning.

The smell of gunpowder grows stronger. Choking like a phantom snaking around my throat. Burning acid across my retinas until I think my ears will bleed.

I shoot the man again, in his stomach this time. A drop of blood stains the ground below me. It's my own. I look down at my belly, blood staining the grey dress that is too modern in contrast to the cowboy's outfit. My dress, I notice, is more in line with the attire of the dead guests.

Am I one of them...A guest?

My fingers shake as I try to keep the blood from spilling out.

Why would I choose to come to a hell hole like this?

The side of my temple burns hotter and hotter. Gunpowder becomes the only thing I know.

Suddenly, a man stands before me, dressed in black from head to toe. A hat the same colour as his attire hides his venomous stare. A part of me doesn't need him to remove the hat, I've seen that stare before. I know I have. Hate, pure and unfiltered, shakes at my body strong enough for me to forget the heat on my temple and the sting in my stomach.

"You've outdone yourself, Ford. She looks just like her...Perhaps, too much like her," The man in the black hat talks to an unoccupied space to my left. No one stands there. It's just the two of us. But he said Ford's name. I look at the stage, the old man—Ford—still as dead as I left him. "With all the effort you've put into perfecting your little side project, I'm left to wonder if you still remember what the real purpose of this theme park is?"

No one answers him. The man in the black hat shoots. I scream, fingernails digging into my temple to remove the bullet from my skull. It isn't there, but I can feel it. It burns. It's hot and ugly and alien and I can feel it—I can feel—I can—

"Feel—I can—I can—make it stop! Stop! Stop! Get it out! It's inside me! It burns! Don't leave it there! Don—" Air floods my lungs, I gasp and suddenly I'm myself again.