Camila eyes the meat she has been requested to slice and serve like overcooked roast beef.
[Camila: Detect anything?]
[Ha-Yun: No, but as much as I’d love taking a bite from the arm of your beefed-up lover, this is the Devil’s Daughter we’re dealing with…]
As if proving something, Emi lifts the arm and takes what would be a very tough bite if not for her years of practice biting into human flesh. Taking a bottle branded with Jashi Farms: Verified Human—Jashi Farms’ best-selling product doesn’t typically come with drops of blood…unless specifically requested—and drains half the milk to flush the unchewable pieces of Matviy’s muscled arm down her throat. She slaps the arm back onto the center serving tray, “A bit tough, but low on fat.” She hands the half empty bottle of milk out for Ha-Yun to take: “Sorry, I thought I remembered you having arms.”
At the behest of the pistol Emi points at Ha-Yun then the glass that was just placed before her, the scientist stakes a cautious sip from the straw Emi burrowed from the child’s abandoned bottle. When she tastes nothing suspicious, just a little rust from the blood, she nods to Camila.
Camila leans her knife over Matviy’s arm, cutting a small slice for herself and the armless friend beside her.
“Eat,” Emi demands when they hesitate. “Then we talk business.”
[Camila: After you.]
Ha-Yun takes a bite, needing a pull of milk to help her swallow.
“What do you think?” Emi asks.
“Needs more spice,” Camila answers.
“I appreciate your honest feedback. More constructive than what I’m used to receiving,” Emi replies with a pinch of annoyance in her voice.
“Aren’t you going to ask for your knife back?” Camila asks while she struggles to chew.
Emi replies, “My knife for your gun…seems like a good deal to me.”
Camila says sardonically, “Good deal for you.”
Eyes not leaving the two threats sitting across the table from her, not even when the child drops from his chair and slams open the door to sprint outside like someone just called for him and promised something sweet, Emi shrugs as she runs her fingers over the rounds in the magazine she just ejected—she’s counting the bullets as if they’re beads on a rosary, and she has been tasked with saying a prayer over each one as penance for her sins.
The metal gears at the back of Ha-Yun’s jaw start to turn.
Emi cuts her off before she can speak, nodding to her missing arms. “Another experiment gone wrong? I notice you have successfully transitioned from cyborg to chrome—congratulations! That is quite embarrassing for such a renowned scientist. Wait until the others hear…”
Ha-Yun looks down, taking another bit from the meat on her plate. This time, she chews as long as she can before leaning on the bottle of milk for assistance.
Camila, understanding she is the only one allowed to speak for Unit 731 at this table, asks, “What do you want?”
“Who says I want anything?” Emi asks with another shrug and a click of the magazine snapping back into place.
Camila points the tip of her knife back and forth, “You can’t kill us, and we can’t kill you. Why else would you invite us to dinner?”
“Because it’s the neighborly thing—,” Bee can’t finish the sentence because she and Emi burst out laughing. When they gather themselves, they answer with a serious smile, “I need information.”
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“What kind?” Camila points the knife at her partner, “More of her research? I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Ha-Yun’s pale cheeks turn rosy—like she has just eaten something spicey…or been betrayed. If she had hands, she’d probably be able to hide it better than she can by simply dropping her chin to her chest and loudly finishing off what isn’t left of her milk.
Bee starts to say, “Yes, we need—,” but Emi cuts her off: “Tell me what you know about my father?”
Camila drops the knife, showing off her reflexes by catching it before it lands on the table as if proving to Emi how fast she had to have thrown the knife to get it past her hands and into her inhuman eye. “What can I possibly tell you about The Devil that his favorite Assassin—and daughter—doesn’t already know?”
“For starters, is he alive?” Emi asks.
Ha-Yun looks up, a frown on her face, “She’s serious.”
Emi smiles, revealing the gaps in her teeth, “Always.”
The scientist shivers, imagining the infamous fangs like they aren’t missing.
Camila interrupts their stare-down by moving to throw the knife. Emi points the gun and fires. The bullet catches the shoulder of the arm holding the knife and makes it go limp by short-circuiting the electronics beneath the synthetic skin and chrome shell. The knife clatters to the table.
Ha-Yun stares at the deactivated arm like she wants it. Bee and Emi laugh as one when Camila’s spare hand rushes to take the knife back before Ha-Yun can grasp it with her teeth. The short battle ends with Ha-Yun’s mouth sliced open to the ear on one side. She’d be bleeding if her face was made of anything human.
Camila tries to pay her penance with the truth, “Your father is alive.”
Emi thinks aloud, “Then…I’m innocent.”
Both Camila and Ha-Yun spit their disgust and disbelief onto the table. “Aren’t we all…”
“If he’s alive, then why am I here? On Hachijo?”
“Why are you anywhere?” Camila asks like the answer is painfully obvious.
Emi thinks about it, stopping herself just before making the mistake of reaching for another piece of meat: “You think my father sent me?”
Camila shrugs one shoulder, “He certainly didn’t try to free you when Ha-Yun was torturing you.”
Ha-Yun’s chair moves like she is going to do something about being thrown under the bus by her supposed comrade one too many times. Something makes her stop…probably the realization she still doesn’t have her arms when she tries to use them to throw a punch.
Camila continues after a quick wink at her friend, “Which means you must be exactly where he wants you—where he sent you.”
Bee speaks using the voice of Emi’s father, “Nygil told her she was here because she murdered her father.”
Camila laughs nervously at Emi’s naivety. “And you believed him? His job is to make the waking up process as unjarring as possible.”
“He did a pretty shitty job at that,” Emi mumbles.
“What do you expect from a chrome?” Bee offers.
Emi’s head nods in agreement while Bee winks her right eye at Ha-Yun to unnecessarily remind the woman of her newfound chrome status.
Camila leans forward, speaking as if trying to make Emi believe she’s a friend, “Look, I don’t know why you’re here, but I can help you find out what your mission really is and how to accomplish it. I’ve been here a long time; I know this island inside and—”
The next bullet shuts down the power source where Camila’s brain used to be.
When the kitchen door slams open, sounding like yet another gunshot, the child moves inside to see what fun he might have missed. He stops over Camila’s limp body, turning his head sideways as if mimicking how her head is resting.
Emi saves him with a stern, “Stop! Not that one. And put your gloves on first if you don’t want to get sick.”
The boy grabs his jagged knife from the counter and heads for Ha-Yun, pulling her chair to the ground and sprinting after her—catching her before she can get over Matviy’s steroid enhanced body.
The torturer screams as the child surgeon laughs and gets to work sawing off her prosthetic legs.
Emi crawls over to her, using a napkin to silence her screams. Oven mitts from the kitchen drawer along with a clean knife in hand, she cuts open the women’s stomach to begin harvesting her for better parts as if precise cuts have been her life’s work—she starts above the liver. “Oh hush,” she says as she examines what’s inside, “you’ll be dead soon.”
“Then so will you,” the woman’s voice struggles to process to words aloud.
Emi shrugs the artificial liver free as if to say she has died before. She turns to the child who is working hard at detaching Ha-Yun’s legs. “Don’t fuck with Jashi Farms, right kid?”
The child smiles, blood-stained milk spilling from his mouth when he repeats the only word he processed fully: “Fuck…fuck…fuck…” Hiccups eventually choke the word off, but he keeps trying to repeat it despite them.
Her emergency power finally bypassing the bullet’s weakening pulse enough to come back to life, the sound of Camila scrambling to her feet, slipping in the grease spilling from her head and leaking shoulder, pulls Emi from her work.
Bee calls after her just as the door slams shut, “Wait, where are you going? We worked so hard on this; let me at least bag it up for you.” She grabs the child’s hand before he can go by and take a piece of meat left behind on the table. “Do not touch that—it’s poisoned.”
“I knew it...” Ha-Yun gurgles behind them in the overcrowded hallway.
Do you have any messages you would like conveyed to the inmate?
