Clarence laid on his bed, listening to music, the sound at a level that would melt eardrums. He could still hear his parents arguing in their bedroom. Never to the point of violence, but on a psychological level, the trauma was building. 

Coming from a modest family, he couldn’t afford the most advanced AlterLife programs, what he had was becoming tiresome. Forced to be content, there was one in the pile that still caught his attention: The Last of the Great Ones. A memory, a real one. It was special. It was about a war hero. A heroic act. It was about Stephen Killson. His father, who, in the next room, was trying to win a competition of who could scream the loudest. 

He stopped his music and picked up the splinter, the personal memory of his father and his involvement in the famed battle. The only way to see him like that. Normally, his father was an attentive, caring man. 

A good father. 

He knew things hadn’t been going well with his mother. He didn’t understand what the fight was about, but it had been going on for some time. Maybe because of his job. Maybe about something else—his father was always irritable about the war, closed off about it. So Clarence worried what might happen if his father found out. It didn’t make sense. Under his father’s skin, inside, every irreversible consequences to his father’s body. It’d been nothing short of… 

Ω

His comrade had been burned alive in his exo armor, while trying to escape from one of the tanks. Seized by rage, with only a grenade and a revolver, he charged the enemy mecha and managed to bring it down—but it’d cost him his left arm, from shoulder up the side of his neck and then to his jaw. The last vision he had was of Omega above him, looking down at him with his red eyes and saying, “You did good, kid,” just as he lost consciousness. The Omega. 

And he saw all this through his father’s eyes. 

Like a movie. 

The best movie. 

It was a painful memory that obviously hurt his father deeply—and he could feel the pain, both emotionally and physically—but, damn, his chest welled with respect and excitement. Why hide it ? Most people had access… so why not him, too? 

They were two modes with the AlterLife program. The first one was the controlled mode in which he could watch a memory like a movie in VR. Not much to feel… but every detail was available in a crisp, observable experience. Clarence had already done that so many time, but he was lucky, because Mickey, a friend, had hacked into the other setting. Life mode. Normally it was hidden behind a paywall, as was everything. It was the only way for Clarence to remember. Not just a spectator, he was his father. Every movement, thought, and emotion. Along for the ride. 

He laid down on his bed and closed his eyes, ready to start again. 

Ω

Stephen was exhausted from all the arguing. And he knew Lucinda was as well. 

A house full of emotions. That wasn’t the problem. The new job, being an inbetweener, and all for less pay. New skills and new expectations. The risk didn’t bother him. She understood it too. Maybe even adapted better to it. She’d been right though. He just didn’t want to admit it. He couldn’t own the feeling that he didn’t mind. Even if he could finally put decent food on the table, plan trips, or take a vacation away from the slums. 

A evening’s truce in hand, he wanted to see Clarence. He was well aware they’d been shouting. He wanted to check on his son. When he reached her door, he knocked.  

“Clarence. Are you home? Can I come in?” 

There was no answer, which was odd because it seemed to him that he’d seen Clarence come in during the fight. He tried again. But nothing. He grabbed the handle and slowly opened the door. As he entered, he saw his son lying on his bed, the LED on his splinter port flashing blue. 

He was annoyed, but couldn’t hold it against him. Not for long. He understood—anyone would need to escape, especially at fifiteen, but he hated being seen as a hero. Stephen knew what his son was thinking. What he’d seen, behind the way his son looked at him. He looked away and closed the door. 

He hated the idea of his son only seeing him as a man in a war. A crude hire for profit. A hopeless scene and some luck, turned into recruitment propaganda. Worst of all… there wasn’t anything gained from it. The images. The ideas. Nothing to slow him from bouncing between jobs, now that he was home. 

Those images, those memories, were taken from him by Caduceus. It wasn’t enough to go to war. Not enough to fight until he was hollowed out, broken, and deemed unfit; every record belonged to the corporation. A reaper, concerned only with maximum profits. Even ten years after the war, they refused to let the memories fade. 

In spite of what he did. 

But there was one thing. One thing that still belonged to him from back then. A memory they still didn’t have. An idea that was still his. 

Ω

“You did good, boy.” 

The words echoed in Clarence’s head again, almost bringing tears to his eyes. 

That praise was shattered as he watched his father sit on the edge of his desk and look down at him with a cagey grin. His first thought was to tell his father it was porn. The words were on his lips when his father raised his hand to stop him and said, “It’s not porn, don’t bother. Your mother and I know when it’s porn.” 

So that’s what the smile is? Clarence felt totally defeated. So… he knows about that too? 

As soon as he had the thought, his father stopped smiling. Deep lines creased his father’s face, and Clarence finally saw how tired his father was. Exhausted really. His father wasn’t done surpising him. 

“I know what you’re thinking, what you’re thinking about. Don’t panic, son, I’m not angry. A little upset, but not angry. And only partially with you. Tonight I’ve got four things for you: an apology, an explanation, a splinter… and a warning.” 

Clarence was stunned. For a few seconds not a word came out of his mouth. 

“First, I’d like you to apologize to you for the… atmosphere at home. That’s from both me and your mother. Well… more me. The new job… it’s a bit complicated for your mother to adjust. And honestly, I don’t blame her. I realize that now, but in the heat of the moment, sometimes the obvious isn’t the most obvious thing to say. I love your mom, boy. I love your mom. And obviously, yelling like that… Well, I think she still loves me a little bit,” his father still had that grin. “She wouldn’t yell otherwise.” 

He went on to explain how he felt about the corporation’s use of his images. His memories. It filled Clarence with shame and regret. 

His father noticed and tried to calm him down. “Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known, and your mother never told you, because it was up to me. It’s done now, and it should have been done a long time ago. Since the first time. Now we come to the third thing. Even your mother doesn’t know.” 

His father took a small metal case out of his pocket. He looked at it for a few seconds while Clarence read the lines on his father’s face. The cyborg took a deep breath and tossed it to his son. 

He opened it. 

There was a splinter inside. 

“Caduceus didn’t understand. Don’t ask me how. Technically, this is one of the most expensive dives ever. These are pictures of what happened when we were in South America, in Suriname. Our encounter with the local forces, mainly members of the cartel and the neo-Farc.” 

His father paused. Looked down. Breathed deep. 

“The confrontations had been brutal. He could still remember the sounds. The smells and the screams. The cartels… they’d felt like we were fighting an entire city most of the time. And then the Neo-Farcs came… respected and feared fighters, guerrilla specialists. They were the bête noire of Caduceus’ units. Real bastards on the ground, who would stretch out into the jungle with nothing but wood sticks in their hands. And the traps … oh God, the fucking traps! Most of the infantry units sent out there just fattened the cybernetic market. A constant need for synthetic limbs, believe me. Well, not me. At least not at the time. Eventually, Caduceus decided to take action, because too many soldiers were losing their leather. And what you are holding is the measure taken.” 

His dad paused for a few seconds. 

“They sent Omega… Go ahead. Take a look.” 

Clarence didn’t hesitate for a second and inserted the splinter in his port. He immediately plunged back into his father’s skin, but the setting was no longer the urban setting from “The Last of the Great Ones.” 

When he found his senses, Clarence was invaded by colors and smells. The trees in so many shapes and sizes, so tall… so tall! Not just leaves and flowers… but also animals; Clarence couldn’t see them, but he can hear all kinds of calls and chitters. Green everywhere! It was terribly hot, humid, and noisy… Clarence told himself that it was alive. Jungles were alive. 

Then, he took slid into the scene and join the protagonists. They were soldiers, and they were dead silent as they moved. A morgue of young men. As his father, he felt anxious, nauseous, tired, stressed, and on the verge of tears. He didn’t understand why—these were feeling he hadn’t experienced in the other splinter. Then, suddenly, the soldiers all looked in the same direction with a mixture of surprise, relief, and fear. His father’s eyes turned to see a dark silhouette stepping through the green hell. The soldiers, at first frozen in fear, began to whisper as the shape approached.  

“Is it him?  Is it really him?” asked a soldier with a shredder in his hands. 

“Fuck.” Another face, half covered in a glaze of red and brown camo. 

“They sent Omega?” asked the sarge, sweating and heaving some food that didn’t sit well. “A massacre for a massacre. They’re finished—deserve it, after what they did.” 

Deadly Omega. One of two Apexes—apex predators. The other, Alpha, the symbol of hope, was missing. He wore a nano-suit and an integral mask that revealed only the backs of his eyes. He came right at Clarence… no, Stephen. He noticed the partly-evolved, partly-machine being had a body in its grip. Carried it like it was nothing.  

His heart pounded as he realized Omega was going to address his father directly. As Omega looked down and he came face to face with it, he realized how much younger his father had been during the war. He saw the reflection of a young man in the black eyes of the predator. 

“Tell me what isn’t in the mission briefing. Tell me what happened here, boy.” 

Seeing Stephen feeling hesitant, it dropped the body and said, “Your camp is surrounded by the Neo-Farcs. You won’t last long, but not one of you is moving. This is inhabitual.” 

He told him everything. Endless words, though it didn’t sound like his voice. “It’s the Neo-Farcs, Omeg… Sir. They managed to capture two of us, and they’ve been torturing them all night. The thing is, we felt like the sound was coming from all sides, that our instruments were scrambled in the area, and the heat and the noise… even with the augmentations and the fear inhibitors, we’ve been going crazy. They were screaming and crying. And the Farcs… they laughed. But we don’t understand how they did it … it seemed to come from everywhere. 

“The soldiers. Were they found?” asked Omega. 

“Yes, this morning. They were… I can’t even describe it, they were in pieces. You can look if you want. They’re hanging by their feet from those trees.” He pointed. “Over there.” 

He saw Omega raise his head and look in the direction of the hanging, naked and partially skinned bodies of the lifeless soldiers. A slaugherhouse. A copse of foliage stained in red horror for any willing to look. There was a moment of complete silence, even from nature. As if to give the Apex time to take in the scene.  

“Clever,” said the Apex. 

Omega turned and walked off into the jungle’s night. 

Half an hour later, the soldiers heard gunshots, screams, and began to smell fire. 

They set a perimeter. Chopped through the tangle of roots and dug deep in the loam. They watched and listened. The first scream came a few hours later. Something ran through the shadows, tripped and screaming, and then disappeared. Clarence heard the fabric of a uniform tear. The rustle of leaves. Then the screams became louder, more frequent. Nothing could have made him leave that foxhole. As others shot into the dark, he closed his eyes and covered his ears. This was a memory best not relived. 

Then he heard the women scream. 

The men found the pair in the dark, and it didn’t take long before they were surrounded. One of the Neo-Farc remained on her feet. With her MPK out of ammo, she tried to use it like a club. Swung it back and forth. The other women, younger, was terrified and tried to keep the men away. He was struck with fear when he realized one of them, despite visibly wounded… was beautiful.  

Convicts and violent climinals, all. They’d each been hired by Caduceus to swell the corporate ranks. Reduced sentences, for some. Immunity, for others. But they weren’t hired for their good manners. Unable to do anything but watch through his father’s eyes, he could only move within the sequence of memory.  One of the Surinamese women, indignant and defiant, took a violent blow to the face from a rifle buttstock. She fell to the ground, stunned. The other woman tried to step up to protect her fellow soldier, but she failed, and was dragged away by another group of conscripts. The beautiful face disappeared into the underbrush, leaving only the name Lucinda to hang on the shadows where she’d just laid on the ground.  

Ω

Stephen watched his son trying to move but couldn’t; he was on life mode. When he’d handed the splinter over, he’d assumed his son was on the controlled setting. He watched in horror as his son relived the experience. Live it for himself the first time, with eyes too young to watch. Unable to look away. 

 Now was the moment his son’s vision would change. If he had to tell that story by himself, he would’ve toned down the passage. He would’ve loved to tell to his son that he was brave enough to not let that happen, but he wasn’t—not during the first moments. He would have loved to tell his son that it ended well, but that wasn’t the case. He would have loved to tell him that he had allies, but it was just the contrary.  

Stephen told himself. I tried… I tried… I tried, until Omega intervened. 

Ω

Seeing this, he snapped out of his stupor and charged the group. Other men stepped in and brutally cut off his advance. They grabbed him and slammed him against a large tree. He could feel the breath of the men. The cagey grin of the convicts. On the edge of breaking. On the verge of snapping. 

“Let it go, Stephen, let it go. Don’t interfere. It’ll only go bad for you… stop fucking struggling. I’m doing you a favor.” 

The other man pressed him against the tree. Barely able to breathe, he watched the scene: the women screaming, the laughter, the beating… the black silhouette appear above the group on the ground. Everything struggling to escape. 

Omega. 

He raised his weapon and fired two shots. 

Everything and everyone stopped. Shocked, their leader, the most agressive one, pulled up his pants. His eyes squinting through blood, brain, and skull. The young Farc woman was dead. The other one screamed through her tears. There was nothing beautiful left in the jungle. Omega returned his weapon to his holster and stomped away. 

Silence. Neither the birds nor the insects were brave enough to make a sound. The predators, hidden in the canopy, remained still and watched. 

The man holding him back let go, and with tears in his eyes and no sense of self-control, he charged the Apex. Soldiers and conscripts alike, they followed his sprint toward the Apex. Hearing the approaching footsteps, Omega stopped at the soft edge of the creek, ignoring the advance. The metallic leg stood in the water, red lines of vitae stretched downstream through the jungle. For weeks, every plant along the eroded shore would lose some of its green brilliance. The jungle would change in such a way that all life would refuse to eat or drink from it. Omega crouched and washed the blood from his hands. Splashed clean water over his tactical mask. 

As he climbed onto Omega’s back, he’d expected the Apex to do something. Anything. Desperate to share his pain, he swung the shredder off his shoulder, widened his stance, and pointed the barrel at the back of the Apex’s head. The predator didn’t acknowledge him. Omega just kept cleaning his murderous hands. 

“Ask,” ordered Omega, with a firm but calm voice. 

“What?” 

“Nobody has asked, but you want to know… So, ask already.” 

Clarence’s voice fused with his father’s, and shouted at him, “WHY?” 

The Apex turned his head. 

“Because we’re in the middle of the jungle, and I spent the night destroying every Neo-Farc camp I could find. I tortured every member I could find. All of them. I found them bragging to their comrades about how little courage their friends showed in taking care of them. So I forced her to watch me kill her friends. The people she considered her family, I took my time. I’d written it into her retinas, and I let her go when I finished hanging my last ornament. She needed to send a clear message to the other groups and cartels in the area. But it fell on you, and you did what you did. So they’ll have to go and see for themselves?” 

“Hell, no! Why did you kill her? You could have saved her! You’re the Omega!” 

“Save her for what? I prevent what happens here and take her prisoner, when she comes to the medical examination… to prison, what do you think will happen to her? The same. So I might as well get it over with and put her out of her misery. I’m not the one to blame here. I wasn’t between her legs. I didn’t stand there and watch.” 

Omega stood up slowly, let him jump from his back. There was nothing else he wanted to say. He’d made his point. Without expression, he turned and started walking away. 

“Damn you, machine,” he said. 

Omega stopped abruptly, turned around, and looked down with his murderous red eyes. “You’ve got guts, kid. I like that.” And then he walked off. 

Once Omega was out of sight, he waited for a while… and then followed. Thirty minutes on the trail out, he found the evidence… the extremes to which Omega had gone. Horror? No. Terror? Maybe. Thirty bodies, all hanging by their feet; it brought him to his knees. Skinned, their screams still hung from their mouths. The pain in their eyes told him they’d felt everything. The slick wet and glistening suffering was a feast for swarms of flying insects. 

Others walked by him. He ran to catch up. 

Before nightfall, There were more gunshots. More screams. More fires through the jungle leaves. 

Far more. 

He couldn’t sleep. 

The next day, as the soldiers left the area, Clarence was the first person packed and ready to to go. He’d had enough. Double checked his gear. And looked up to see a fellow soldier tense at the sound of the footsteps. The sound of something metallic. The heel-toe punch of the ground as every step jolted their spines. Clarence could smell what his father had smelled: more blood.  

He turned back, and saw, Omega, covered in it. 

“You’re with me now, boy. Follow me. Hear me.” 

He followed without a word, without knowing why he obeyed. He wondered if the predator could be angry. Wondered if anger was the right word. They entered the transport, and as the ramp closed, the transport went dark. A red sensor scanned each of their bodies. A hollow voice, cold and digital, addressed him directly. “You’ve been discharged. Don’t come back.” 

As the transport took off and they gained attitude, he noticed there were three more body bags just inside the ramp. He stared for a while, and then he heard someone ask about Virbowzky, Pavart and Latrell. They’d been missing since the morning. He looked at Omega, standing in the corner of the transport. Cleaning his blades. Always cleaning. He caught the Apex’s attention when it looked up and looked into his eyes. Those eyes. 

Ω

The splinter ejected, and Clarence came back to reality. Shaken. His father looked down from the desk. 

“We weren’t heroes, son. Far from it. We were… We are, eveyone of us, butchers. Blood on our hands.” 

Stephen stood, gently took the memory from his son’s hands, and put it back in its case. 

“Never get involved with Caduceus, son. Don’t ever do it—not for anything.”