Defect

[chapter 23]

Two days later, I sat on a familiar brick building's rooftop, swinging my legs over the edge and trying to ignore the smell of smoke in the air. The last time I had checked the time, I had an hour until our next meeting with the city's leaders. It had been quite a while ago--definitely more than an hour.

I tried to will my hand to move, to will my eyes to look at the watch perched on my wrist that the Evo had thrown at me with so much disgust. His words resonated in my head:If you're going to invade our home and slaughter our people, the least you can do is be on time to your own meeting. I couldn't look down--knowing the time meant knowing I had to leave, and I was too soul-weary to do that.

I closed my eyes, trying not to remember the past two days. I tried to forget the screams as Evos were funneled by a "crowd control force" into a huge, empty hall, tried to forget the looks of horror and fearful tears as Evos felt everything for the first time.

It didn't work. The sight of an eight-year-old little girl, her hair done up in a french braid, sobbing for the first time in her life, would be burned into my mind forever.

"Hello," said a smooth voice behind me. I jumped, stifling a curse as I near fell off the edge, and scooted back, my heart pounding. I glanced backwards, looking up and finding... Maximus?

I blinked. "What are you... How did you know about this place?"

"You're lil' boyfriend told me all about it," he said, sitting down next to me, "He sent me to come an' find you. They're gettin' worried."

"Yeah," I replied, looking down. The wind was whipping around us, getting hair caught in my mouth as my words tripped out. "I know I need to go, I just..."

"Don't want to own up to your mistake? None of us do."

My breath made a little puff of visible air that was swept away instantly, cold filling my lungs and making them burn. "I didn't know. I thought... I thought it would give them emotions again. I thought they'd be able to feel, not that everything they would have felt in their lives would hit them at once."

"Yeah, well." Max said, his voice bitter for the first time I could think of, "We all mess up sometimes."

"Yeah, we don't all mess up so badly that suicide rates rise by 200% in two days."

"That's true." He paused, letting his words sink into my guilt conscious. "But it's not all on you. Your team found the bomb, misinterpreted, and set it off. My people hurt you badly enough that you had to set off a bomb. There's plenty of blame to go around."

"I should've known better."

"No offense, but ya aren't exactly a science expert. How would you have known any better?"

"Not about the bomb--about the Wrobel. I should've known better than to get involved in any of this. My parents did, and they died--most people would know better after that, but no, I just had to go and screw over the world."

"Hold on now, ya can't take all of the credit. The world was screwed up long before you. And besides, how about the rest o' us, huh? How are we supposed to live with emotions when you're hogging them all?"

I laughed, and the sound echoed for a moment across the barren rooftops. "Fine, I guess I'll have to share the guilt."

I stood, holding out my hand to Maximus. "I'm really sorry. For everything. I know that you got pretty lucky, only being happy--I didn't mean to screw that up."

He watched me quietly for a moment. "It was nice, being happy. But sometimes it's also nice to be sad. This was hard, it all hitting me at once--but I think in the long run, it'll be for the best."