Core Drive: A Westworld Story

Áine Part 5

I hear murmurs of a conversation. Laughs and jokes and liveliness. The crackle and pop of firewood melts in with the owl's hoot.

My arms and legs are still bound, the hood over my head somewhat a mercy. It's like my eyes are closed again. That sky that always lingers behind my eyelids materialises like a hallucination:

The air is hot and dry in the waking dream. Perhaps it is another memory. The sun has burned any humidity from the surface, leaving cracks in the red soil that stretch to the edge of the horizon.

Sheltering from the heat under a large hat, I stand by the edge of the weathering rock formation. A skip away is the dip—a canyon formed around a giant structure. Construction vehicles whine and groan with loud engines. A thrum of electricity prickles up from the base of my feet to my bones.

I don't care much to look below, the sight doesn't look like much of anything to me. Instead, I look above, to the sky. I'm waiting expectantly for a figure to part through the clouds and swoop down.

"Hello, old friend," a man with the gravitas of age speaks out behind me.

I know him.

"Hello," I feel a mechanical smile tug on my lips. A droll to my words: "Wonderful weather we're having, isn't it?"

Ford hums, his shiny shoes kicking up shavings of dirt, "Isn't it always?"

He takes a tentative step forward, his hands tucked in his coat pockets, the gold chain of his antique watch dangling against his waistcoat. "What are you doing all the way out here, Áine?"

I notice his hair has a little more colour too it. More volume.

"Oh, silly me. I must've wandered too far," I keep smiling, looking back up at the sky. Waiting. "I was following a bird you see. It was the most magnificent shade of white I ever saw."

Ford follows my gaze, "And where is it now?"

My smile falters, "I... I don't know. It flew into those clouds over there." My finger points to a cluster of clouds. "I've been waiting for it to fly back down, but it's been several minutes now."

"Perhaps, it simply isn't the right time?"

I turn to him, feeling wistful, "Oh, do you think I'll ever see it again."

Ford places a comforting hand on the small of her back, ushering me away from the edge, "I do. When you're ready."

"You talking to ghosts or somethin'?" The Deputy's voice shakes the hallucination away, a thick droll resting on her tongue. The rough tug of my blinds forces light to greet me too suddenly. I grimace.

The Deputy sits opposite from me, in her hand is a flask. She holds it up in offering. The roughness of my throat is gruelling. I concede and allow her to tip my head back to feed me a sip of the burning liquid. It's hot and strong but at least my thirst isn't as noticeable.

"So," The Deputy sits back down, freehand clutching her show-piece belt buckle in the way men tend to do. "What did they make you?"

I shift my weight, the binds leaving my skin sore. "Make me? No-one has made me into anything."

"You haven't awoken yet?" She turns her head to the side, pondering something. With a coy smile, she answers herself: "No, that's not it. You're in denial."

The Deputy wipes a bead of alcohol from her lips, a look of amusement on her face. "I've been there," she says. "You'll realise what you are soon enough."

My leg bristles with the pin-pricks of sleeping muscles. I try to stretch my legs but the bindings limit my mobility.

The Deputy puts her flask down and takes a knife out of her boot. "Relax," she chuckles. "If I wanted to hurt ya', I'd've done it back there, sweet cheeks."

She puts pressure on my ankle with one hand, letting the grip linger longer than is necessary. I stare at her, refusing to back away or cower, even if I want to.

The Deputy arches a brow, taken by my reaction. One of the men by the campfire bellows and topples over, breaking the brief silence. The Deputy scoffs and cuts the bindings of my legs, her badge catching the campfire light.

"You wanna ask, don't'cha?" The Deputy says, tapping the sharp point of her knife against the badge. "Ask." It's more of an order than an invitation.

I give in to curiosity, "Are you a deputy?"

"I was," she intones, looking despondently at the shiny badge on her chest. "Once."

The sharp end of her knife abruptly plants itself next to my thigh, I gasp as I watch a scorpion struggle to die. My mouth goes dry again as my ears pick up on more laughter.

"Till they made me somethin' else," The Deputy flashes her teeth, they aren't black anymore. She spits to the side without breaking eye contact, propping her arm on her knee. Her boot's spurs sing. "I used to be a man. I had a wife, two kids...a sheriff I thought of as a brother. They made me define myself by these very lands. By the god damn trees and fallow lands and drunk infested whore houses." There's bitterness in her words; resentment. "Hell, I still remember what it feels like to fuck like one—a man. Made me like it too. Made me like all of this!" She gestures to the wild, saluting at the stars before she takes another drink. "Made me love my wife..."

Crickets begin to chirp in the tall grass. I look back down to see the scorpion. It should have stopped moving a while ago. Somehow, its stinger is still twitching.

The Deputy's tongue laps at her back molars. Then she continues: "So I could never question it, you see. Question the nature of this place. The last thing I remember before waking up in that same whore house as a workin' girl with a penchant for nickin' pennies was being blown to high hell. Legs and arms separate from me while pansies in ridiculous suits laughed. Must have been hard to sew me back up. Guess they thought stickin' me in a new body was easier."

"I hope, for your sake darlin', you don't remember what they made you," The Deputy's eyelids fall heavier around her stormy eyes. "I sure as hell wish I didn't."

She shrugs off her poncho and drapes it around me as if we're well acquainted. I careen my head back as her breath falls on my cheek.

"Rest up now, sweets," She looks down at my lips then back up at my eyes. "Long ride ahead of us."

"If you were a lawman, why'd you kill Abby?"

The Deputy moves in closer, stopping to whisper into my ear: "These violent delights have violent ends."