Murasakino

Confronting Indigo

   I woke up in a room I didn't recognise. The lights were dim and I was lying on my back on an uncomfortable bed. I sat up and looked around, wanting to know if there was anyone else in there with me. There were five other beds, two next to mine and three along the opposite wall, and a door at one end. I thought my hearing had come back, but it was hard to tell in complete silence.

   There weren't any people in the other beds, and they had all been cleaned and the duvets tucked in. Strangely, I noticed that the door had a small, letterbox shaped window at the top, so I got up to look through it. My purple shirt was gone, and instead I had been dressed in a skintight purple costume that covered my whole body apart from my hands, feet and head. I stumbled, my legs feeling unequal in weight. When I looked down, I realised that it was because my left leg had been replaced by a prosthetic one. Annoyingly, it didn't have any feeling in it, but it was springy like the other leg. I managed to reach the window and peered through.

   Outside, a tall black chair was positioned in front of a screen, which showed various views of Dr Takeda's lab; the kitchen, the capsules, even another room I hadn't seen before. One section of the screen showed the room I was in, and me standing by the door. The person sitting in the chair placed a mug on the desk in front of them, and the chair began to turn towards the door.

   I stepped back and fell onto a bed. As I was sitting back up, the door unlocked and slid upwards. There, in the doorway, stood Indigo Gardner. Her golden brown hair was no longer tied up, but hanging down over one shoulder. She was wearing the same dark blue suit I had always seen her in, but she did not wear a false smile; her eyes pierced mine, and my artificial blood ran cold.

   "So you're awake," she said, her voice no longer sweet and friendly. "I hope you had a good rest."
   "Where am I?" I asked, standing back up on the bed. I was taller than her, but felt like she was towering above me.
   "Oh, that doesn't matter, Murasakino." Hearing her use my name made me shiver. "I've been waiting to talk to you."

   She stepped toward me, and I moved backwards a few paces.
   "You were all acting as Dr Takeda wanted you to. As I wanted you to."
   "Why am I here?" I asked, ignoring her. I could sense that she was going to shout at me anyway.
   "I said it doesn't matter," she said, her voice rising. "But, for some reason, you decided to run away. Why, exactly?"

   I just stared into her eyes, not daring to speak.

   She let out a sigh and turned around to walk back to her chair, looking up at the screen in front of it.
   "You know, I've never liked robots. They're unpredictable, unreliable, you can never understand them."
   "Dr Takeda told me," I murmured. "So why do you own a lab like this?" I said, just to annoy her.

   "I inherited the company, and the lab, from my father. A brilliant man. He created lots of robots with AI."
  
   "Why are there beds in here?" I asked, noticing how odd it was.

   "Do you ever stop asking questions?" Indigo almost shouted, turning to glare at me. "I've told you twice that it doesn't matter. Anyway, like I was saying, my father was amazing. He was most proud of a robotic girl he made. Erica. Very similar to you," she said, looking at me sideways. "He told me that she would be my sister. At first, I had thought that it was brilliant; I had always wanted a sister, too.

   "But something went wrong. A glitch in her programming, or something. She... it," she said, still furious at whatever had happened, "started storming around our house, throwing things out of its way. Chairs, tables, everything it found. She came into my bedroom while I was studying, shoving the door open and throwing a vase at the wall behind me. It even lifted a chair to smash over my head..."

   She paused, looking back up at the screen. "When I saw that Dr Takeda had created six of you, all the same, I couldn't help but be cautious. Sure, you all acted nice and friendly, but so did Erica."

   I knew where this was going already. Harper was right to have been suspicious.

   "So, just in case it happened again," she said casually, "I got him to send you to that supermarket so you couldn't..."

   Something snapped.

   "I knew it! How could you?!" I shrieked, starting towards her. She stumbled backward in suprpise, grasping for her chair so she wouldn't fall. I saw a look of fear in here eye, and even though she tried to hide it, I knew it was there.

   "Okay, I admit it. It was selfish of me," she said, "but that is no way to talk to..."

   "I don't care!" I yelled. "It was more than selfish. I trusted you at first, but now I know that I shouldn't have."
   "I'm warning you," she said, coming towards me.
   "Almost everyone I know, I trusted at first. But one by one, they all decieved me. And I'm not going to stand here and let you..."

   Indigo slapped me across the cheek, and the room fell into silence. I gasped, my face and eyes stinging. Indigo stared at her hand, then at me, as if she didn't quite believe what she had done.

   "That's it!" I shouted, lunging at her. She yelped and dodged out of the way, rushing over to a microphone on the desk. She held down a button and started talking into it.
   "Send help quickly! The subject is attacking me!"

   Remembering what Indigo had said about Erica, I grabbed a coffee mug and threw it at the wall behind her. It shattered, and she screamed again.
   "Stop!" she shouted, her voice wavering slightly. "I repeat; send help! I'm being attacked..."
   I grabbed the microphone and yanked it out of the desk, tossing it away. I had always thought I would be helping people, not deliberately trying to scare them.

   "Please, Murasakino," she cried. A tear ran down her cheek and she crouched in the corner, shivering.
   I was crying too, but with sheer anger. With a lot of effort I pulled the black chair off its supports and lifted it above my head. Indigo screamed and covered her head with her hands.

   Suddenly, there was a deafening bang on the door.