Core Drive: A Westworld Story

Áine Part 16

The Deputy stalks out of the shack, head hanging low. There's something defeated in her now. I must reconcile the fact that I'm responsible. But the weight of inflicting such damage on another is too visceral, so I keep my thoughts steady with pain; nails biting into the underside of my palm.

I exhale, "You're doing what you have to, to survive." I repeat the mantra three times, but deep inside I know that this unspoken power makes me feel untouchable. Closer to God. Which, for me, is Man. My creators.

The Deputy's boots rattle as she retreats from my line of sight, whistling and shouting commands to the others in the camp. I hear her mutter Clementine's name and a few others I haven't heard before—or didn't care to remember.

In short order, she's leading her horse by the reins. She stops short by the entrance to the shack, pulling out a bandana from the saddle bag.

"Turn around," she orders. I shiver at her cold intensity, hesitant, unsure of what she means to do.

She strides towards me, roughly grabbing me by the arm and spinning me in the direction she ordered me to turn to. Her lips are close to my ear when she whispers, "Do as I say. You want outta here, don't ya? Can't have the others wonderin' why I'm riding off in the sunset with our prisoner, now can I?"

"What did you tell them?"

"That Clem ordered you taken to the big boss."

"Who's the big boss?"

"Someone we better pray not to run into. Now," she fastens the bandana over my eyes and then spins me around again so she can tie my wrists together with what feels like a belt, "play meek and pretty, it shouldn't be so hard."

In this moment, as she manhandles me towards her mount, I can feel the Deputy's hate for me. She hates me. Something so human. So predictable that it feels like a string of code in one of their narratives. For all her grandstanding, for all her flaunting of being different, transcendent, she's just like the guests too.

But this hate is so alien. And I'm responsible. And it doesn't sit well in my stomach. It makes me hate a part of myself too.

The Deputy hoists me onto the hard saddle, then I feel her weight press into my back as she mounts her horse too.

"Want us to come witcha?" one of Clementine's men asks.

"You know me, I enjoy the solitude," I can practically hear the fake smirk in the Deputy's tone. "Tell my boys, if I ain't back by sun-up to meet 'em, to follow the smell of gunpowder."

A course laugh fills the air, "You got it, Hoss."

"Hyaa!" the Deputy kicks the underside of the horse, and all I feel for the longest time is the vibrations of the hooves riding up to my thighs.

We stop by a stream and the Deputy watches her horse kick up the cool water with its hooves as she squats by the bank, washing her hands up to the elbows. A scoped rifle at her feet.

The bandana hangs loose at my neck and the belt leaves a band of red on my wrists from the pressure.

We've barely said two words to one another in as many hours.

We've been many things, the Deputy and I, but never this.

Never silent.

"How long do we have to wait here?" I ask, looking to the dark horizon where I feel the pull but cannot see the canyons. I grow restless from inaction.

The Deputy doesn't answer. She lifts her rifle, busying herself with seeing whatever lies on the other end of the scope. I look in the same direction and notice a few flickers, like fireflies. Dim lights in the plum darkness.

"Wait here," she finally says. "When I give the signal, take the horse upstream till you hear the water rushing, then cross by the shallows."

Without another word, the Deputy walks into the stream and disappears beneath the waters. The rifle left behind on the stones of the shore. I place it back in its holster on the saddle.

It's eerily quiet. No crickets or cicadas or the gentle dips of fish by the stream. The Deputy's horse breaths shallow for such a large mount. Feeling aimless, I walk over to the spotted mare and run my hand through its mane. There's a braid at the ends, half undone.

I spot the Deputy's dusted brown hat on the saddle. The idea of putting it on makes me feel closer to her, less abandoned. Harsher. Dressed for this world. So, I do.

A subtle release of gunfire emanates from the distance. Not as loud as a revolver or shotgun or rifle, but a weapon I haven't heard before. Then more silence. Maybe a shriek, but too weak.

The horse shudders next to me, taking a few steps back.

"Easy girl," I say as I grab the reins. "Easy."

A flame paints the darkness, small at first, and then larger. It dies out in a matter of minutes. The signal.

When I catch up to the Deputy, I spot her in the same position she had been by the stream; squatted, washing her hands in the cool water, a hunting knife grasped in her dominant hand, bloodied.

This scene is different, I realise.

It's one of aftermath.

Blood washes away from her hands and forearms, dispersing into the water. I dismount the horse and wait for my vision to adjust to the lack of light.

I spot four bodies. None with any precise exit wounds. No bullet holes in them. Instead, they all carry a surgeon's carnage; slashes that cut deep to the bone at the neck; or tears to the clothes at the softness where the kidneys rest; or a deep, serrated cut to the heart.

Some of the bodies appeared unarmed. One was missing a shoe. A cream-white heel. Elegant. Sprayed with blood and mucked by mud on the underside. A few were dressed tactically. In all black. Their weapons are sleeker. Like the ones I saw at camp. The guns I never heard fired until today.

I should feel pity for them, or disgust towards the Deputy's violence, but instead I feel pity for the Deputy. Remorseful even though she's alive—in whatever sense of the word she can be—and the guests are not.

"Did they have to die?" I ask as I shut the open brown eyes of a blonde man.

"This is the quickest way to the canyons," the Deputy is suddenly behind me, untying the bandana from my neck to tie around a bullet hole in her upper arm.

I motion to help her, but she's already fastened the makeshift bandage with her teeth.

I grind my teeth, "Then did you have to be the one to kill them?"

"Why, did you want to do it?" she scoffs, picking up a hat discarded near a corpse. She dusts it on her trousers and fastens it on her head. I notice a new gash near her jaw, still bleeding. Still raw. "No one has to do anything..." The Deputy stills and a dark look befalls her face, a smile closer to a leer peering through the moonlight. "But that's not true, is it? Not with you. Because all you have to do is crawl inside here," she taps her finger at her temple, "and cut and cut and cut until you make us your walking playthings. Like them!" she spits on a corpse. "Do you even know what you are? Because I don't. You aren't like us. Aren't like them, either. You're your own devil. Unarmed and frail and beautiful, that's the illusion. Or is it? I don't know anymore." She laughs hysterically.

I feel something new from her now, and I clench my palm around my shirt.

"'Did they have to die?' Did I have to help you escape? Did I have to fuck you in the shack? In the moment, I thought I did. I thought it was me. But maybe it was you?" She walks towards me and I scramble backwards, tripping over a leg or an arm. I see a gun in my periphery and think nothing of what it means to arm myself with it against the Deputy. She flashes her teeth with a wolfish smirk, composing herself and relaxing her spine into a slanted rest. "Keep it. You'll need it where we're going. More foot-traffic. More wolves in the night."

Frowning, I look down and realise I'm pointing the gun at the Deputy's chest. I gasp as I lift off the ground, cutting my palm on a jagged rock.

"Their armour is thicker too," the Deputy points out as she sheathes her knife. "Salvage what you can, if you must. If there's anything left to salvage."