In the Heart of the Iron Conundrum: Part Eight

Content Warning: graphic violence and disturbing themes

Left over right. Under. Over. Tie a knot. Three loops… no, two loops. Genesis was frantically trying to tie his left boot and failing miserably. The blinking neon lights from the carriage, those sickening blue and pink lights, sporadically cascaded over the body of the nameless scientist he’d left broken on the floor. He was surrounded by lies, he was late to pick his daughter up from the tent he’d left her in, and he’d only just scratched the surface of taking down every sticking android. His mind was racing, and despite all the training he’d undergone in preparation for this mission, he just couldn’t calm his breathing and heart.

“Daddy, why don’t you do the song? It always helps me settle down!”

Genesis looked up, staring at his bright-eyed daughter, sitting cross-legged behind the scientist’s body. He lurched towards her, going to grasp her by the shoulder so he could turn her away from the dead body.

“Don’t look, Sara! Look away!” Genesis yelled, slipping slightly on the growing puddle of ruby red that was oozing from the scientist’s head. He fell onto his elbow and rolled to one side, still trying to reach for his daughter’s shoulder. Sara was now sitting at the far end of the carriage.

“Honey, stop running away from me! Let me… let me help you.”

“No. No, Daddy, I don’t think it’d like that,” Sara whispered, frowning and fervently shaking her head.

“What? What do you mean, sweetie?”

“I don’t like what you did. And I know what you did.”

Genesis stopped crawling towards Sara then. Leaning back on his heels, he stared at his daughter. He was beginning to remember that this wasn’t the first time he’d heard her voice on this train, suspecting that the Obscura Labs scientists were up to something.

“I didn’t do anything, Sara. I’d never hurt you.”

Sara stood up then and walked towards one of the windows looking out into the ink-black night. The gaudy neon lights lit up the left side of her face, which was currently twisted into a furious scowl, an expression that Genesis had never seen on his daughter’s usually happy face.

“But you did. When I was sick, you brought me to work. My head felt funny the entire day I was there. And I met all those people in the white coats. You told me they were your friends, and that they’d be my friends too. But they weren’t nice, not at all. And nor were you, Daddy.”

Genesis rocked back and forth on his heels, shaking his head and bunching up his fists in his trench coat, smearing blood down it. He was confused and angry. He didn’t understand what his beloved daughter was saying, or where she’d gotten such strange thoughts from.

“At the end of that day, that long day, my head stopped feeling funny. And then I stopped feeling anything. I remember all the wires, and all the numbers. Numbers bigger than I could ever count to.”

“Stop it! STOP!” Genesis shouted, standing up and moving to his daughter, hand raised. Sara turned to look at him then, and it stopped Genesis dead in his tracks. Half of her face was twisted into an image of pure unbridled fury. The other was devoid of skin, revealing a hard, blue endoskeleton that had several wires curling around it like hair.

“You made me the first. The first one,” Sara whispered, reaching a hand up to Genesis’ face. He held her hand there, eyes searching the two faces of his daughter. She was one of them. The scientists on this train, they’d somehow made his daughter into… a thing. And then, Genesis remembered something he’d forgotten a long time ago. The last thing he said to his daughter before… before he…

“Do you… remember when I took you to see Violet?” he asked, his voice a broken whisper. “You loved that horse. You thought her white spots looked like flowers, and you’d make her flower chains. We used to go to that farm all the time so you could feed her. I’ll make it so you can visit Violet whenever you want.”

Sara paused, the furious side of her face relaxing into a small smile before becoming impassive. “I remember. And then, you made it so I couldn’t touch anything ever again. You. Made. Me. Metal.”

Genesis pushed her hand away from his face then, turning his back on her as he pulled his hair in frustration.

“I can’t believe this. These damn scientists making you like… them, those things. Sara, please, can you-”

Genesis had turned around at that point to address his daughter, finding her nowhere to be seen. A painful pang swept across his head as he remembered why he was on the train. He was going to stop this experiment so he could make sure Sara had a better life. He was just seeing things; the scientists were probably pumping the train full of gas to make him hallucinate and fail at his task. He’d let two androids go already; he wasn’t going to let them go again.

Striding down the carriage, a second figure emerged from the door leading to the guest carriage where Jonah and Trixie had slinked off to. Fitted in heavy riot gear and holding a baton, the figure strode forward, weapon raised. Genesis sidestepped the first blow, narrowly avoided the second, but got clipped by the third on the side of his arm, the fight making the pair chase each other's footsteps down the length of the carriage. Genesis whirled the guard around and slammed him against the window Sara had just been staring out of, the glass cracking then splintering at the force. The guard then shifted his weight so Genesis had to take a step back to avoid getting squashed to the floor by the guard’s own weight, which gave the guard an opening to swing his baton and clip Genesis around the face. His lip cracked and a tooth got flung to the floor, blood spraying down the front of his coat. But the guard was so focused on Genesis’ face, he’d not seen the tiny glass shard Genesis had managed to tear from the cracked window. A horrid squealing sound sounded out as the glass shard made a jagged line down the guard’s face and neck, tearing through skin, metal, and wires. Genesis didn’t stop stabbing until the guard had fallen, and even then, Genesis kept going. It wasn’t until the carriage was blinking with blue, pink, and electric white light that he stopped, grabbed the guard’s baton, and stood up, wiping his bloodied lip. Full of adrenaline, Genesis opened the nearest door, which led to a carriage he’d already been in with a door leading to the laundry, and strode inside, spotting two androids that had been shut down. He beat their immobile forms, fury making him blind to his own violence, until they too were sparking. The serial killer was fully unleashed; all semblance of calm had been burned away by his monstrous lust for carnage on the androids he believed would end the world, not remembering that he himself was responsible for starting the experiment with the conversion of his own daughter.