SynTracker | ONC 2021 | MM Romance | Sci-Fi | Complete

Seven: Wednesday

Ian was back in the car, hanging upside down, Quentin beside him, speared by the billboard's frame. But there was blood, so much more blood than he remembered. It poured from Quentin's mouth when he tried to speak, light fading from his eyes faster than Ian could free himself. Somehow Ian was next to him, looking for the Syn mechanism inside the wound. There was none. Just Quentin's lifeless body.

'That's your fault. Didn't you say you wanted him human?' The Syn from his garage — just a disembodied head — looked on mockingly from his glove compartment. 'You're the monster here,' it repeated, over and over. And, when Ian caught sight of his reflection in the rear-view mirror, all he saw was a BioSynth mechanism with no flesh.

He woke up covered in sweat, heart beating erratically in his chest, trapped between horror and relief. It hadn't been the real Quentin in that crash; for the first time, Ian saw that as a positive thing. If it had truly been his husband, he'd have come home a widower; this way there was still a chance — a good chance, every chance, he told himself — Quentin was still alive. As long as that remained true, better to have had the Syn in the car than Quentin.

Throughout Wednesday morning the Syn's words kept playing in his mind on a loop.

'You're the monster here.'

Ian ordered a new security system for the garage, so there'd be no more unwelcome surprises. Then he settled down to make calls to more traditional contacts and set up filters and alerts, all based on Quentin's face. The last two times he'd seen the Syn, it was still wearing it; maybe it'd malfunctioned in the crash and was unable to alter its appearance.

'You won't listen.'

It was a tricky balance to strike. He couldn't get Trackers after the Syn because they might damage it — or worse, hurt Quentin if, by some miracle, he managed to free himself from wherever he was being held captive — but he couldn't report Quentin as a missing person and knowingly expose local law enforcement to a Syn. Whichever way he looked at it, it had to be him.

'You're the monster here.'

Zaiden called over lunch, to invite Ian and Quentin over for a party on Saturday. A fist clenched over his heart at having to retell the entire tale. He thought he'd have Quentin back by now. That he wouldn't have to listen to the shock, the sympathy, the falseness of friends saying they hoped Quentin was returned soon when their tone was filled with nothing but pity and the implication they thought there was no hope at all.

A drone delivered the security system after lunch; setting it up and modifying it took a good portion of his afternoon. The Syn sat unmoving in its chair, face still arranged in the contemptuous expression it'd worn when Ian had shut it down.

'Do you even know the fate you're sending us to?'

He sat down in his living room after that, to search for answers to questions he'd never posed before. Where did repurposed Syns go to? What was the government doing with them? He found no info other than wild theories on activist sites. Everything, ranging from work in radioactive mines, to reprogramming attempts so they'd be usable as weapons again, to exclusive bordellos.

He might believe the mines theory — it made sense to program synthetic bodies into doing dangerous work that could be lethal to humans — but not the rest. Government officials were short-sighted, but the rebellion had proved anyone with sufficient skill could program Syns. Who'd want their gun to fire on them mid-fight?

And bordellos? The article went on to describe, in vivid detail, that appearance altering Syns were used for all manner of sexual work, paid for at a premium. It read more as wish fulfilment of the writer's sick, twisted fantasies than as anything the government would actually promote. Weapons of mass destruction used as sex toys.