DESPERATE  MEASURES

PART FIFTEEN:

As she knelt beside the cot, Sid began to moan and his fingers clutched the edges of the

small bed so tightly his knuckles whitened.

"Sid?" she asked. "Can you hear me, Sid?"

"H...hurts," he gasped, his eyes squinched tightly closed.

"What hurts, Sid? Where?"

"All. All of it hurts."

"All of what, Sid?"

"M...me. All me...hurts."

She caught herself starting to smile at him. There was something so different about Sid in

pain, Sid vulnerable, that he was very nearly...appealing. "What happened? What's making

you hurt, Sid?"

"Ma...Maximus."

She leaned back, trying to understand what he meant.  "Did Maximus hurt you?"

"Not...like...that.  Inside."

She saw that every word caused his lips to crack a bit more and so fished in a case and

brought out a small jar of Vaseline she'd noticed yesterday. "Here," she soothed, "let me

rub some of this on for you."  With her fingertip she traced his lips, spreading the moistening
jell across them, unable to believe she was actually touching him voluntarily.

"Mmmm," he said. "Better."

She studied his face.  She'd touched him before, of course, mostly because he'd picked her

up or something like that, but she was aware that his skin felt like human skin even though

it was not. But lip cracks? NanoTech skin simply did not...crack. It could be damaged, surely, from bullets or such things, but lip cracks existed because of an imbalance in the skin texture itself and that simply did not happen to NanoTech skin. Her eyes fell on a tiny mirror about

the size of a credit card that lay on the beside table. Hmmm? Perhaps if she touched it to his

lips, they would regenerate as she'd seen him do in Virtuosity? It was worth a try. Delicately, she lay it on his mouth, waited a moment, then pulled it back. Other than Vaseline smudged

all over it, nothing else had happened.

"Sid, why are your lips so cracked?"

"Don't know.  Hurt. Lips hurt, too."

Suddenly he doubled up, his face contorting in pain.  How many times had she entertained herself by thoughts of slowly torturing this very man...thing...whatever, but in the face of

what was actually happening to him, all that was rapidly draining away. He was in trouble,

real trouble, and she didn't know what to do to help him.

"I'm...coming...apart," he gasped. "I...I...can't...."

Could he really, literally come apart, she wondered. What did he mean? "Sid," she put her

hand on his shoulder as he writhed on the cot, "what can I do?"

"Don't...know," he moaned. "Don't...know." His fingers were digging into his abdomen
so hard she thought he might puncture himself.

"Stop," she urged, grabbing at his hands, "you'll hurt yourself."

He quieted somewhat, rolling onto his back, his bare chest heaving with his breaths. Opening
his eyes, he turned his face toward her. "Can't see you," he murmured.

Indeed, something was going on in his eyes, too. The irises were still that bluish green, but
the whites were so bloodshot as to be almost red. Again she recalled the looks he'd given

her all yesterday afternoon and seeing the contrast now left her a bit stricken. She dipped

a cloth in cool water and folded it over his eyes. "Keep them closed for now," she said softly. "This might just be temporary."

He lay so still now she wondered if he'd passed out again. Pulling the cloth off, she saw his

face was composed, his lips slightly parted, his eyes closed. "Sid? Are you still with me,

Sid?"

No reply. His left arm hung limply off the cot, his hand touching the floor. She lifted it,

pausing to study his fingers. Exactly like Maximus' they were. She traced the lines of his

palm with her fingertip, then folded his fingers down and lay his hand on his stomach, just staring at him. He was, undoubtedly, physically beautiful. Applying more Vaseline to his

lips, she let her fingers linger there. It was disconcerting, truly it was, how much he looked

like Maximus, especially lying as he was, his eyes closed. Maximus, though, had a slight scar

on his right cheek where the pine branch had punctured it, but Sid...," her breath hissed in.

Sid had the little mark! She leaned over him. Yes, it was definitely there. Good Lord!

She picked up his right hand, turning it to examine his knuckles, the mark of a sword cut

plainly visible. NanoTech skin, when it repaired itself with silicon, showed no trace of

damage; it didn't scar. She had to know...she simply had to. Going to the box with the

cooking utensils, she pulled out a small knife. As she knelt again at his side, she felt rather

like a ghoul somehow, but went ahead with it and touched the blade to his left palm, pressing just hard enough to break the skin. She sat back on her heels, eyes going wider and wider, as

a single drop of blood welled upwards... bright red blood. 

Maximus walked alone on the beach beyond the far headland of his little cove. Everything...

sky, sea, wetted sand...was colored in the lavender of the setting sun. He thought he'd grown accustomed to the aloneness of life. But then she had appeared unexpectedly in it and he had

let himself open to the joy of her companionship. Then Sid had come, telling him none of it

was real, that she was merely his hireling. And now the two of them, Sid and Brianna, were together. Something had happened to Sid and she would take care of him. That would be the

way of it.

 
He lay on the wet sand, letting the incoming tide ripple up the length of his body. The water

was warm, almost like fingers as it lapped up his legs. He closed his eyes, lying there, aware

that would be the only touch he would know.

For at least two hours Sid had lain there inert, the rise and fall of his chest all that showed

he lived. She fixed herself something to eat and then sat quietly, nibbling at it distractedly

as she stared at him. Could it be possible? Her mind tried and tried to figure it out. How?

How could such a thing be happening, have happened? It seemed Sid was barely surviving whatever the process of it was. She knew he had been filled with tubing through which blue nanogoo coursed. There was nothing in him, had been nothing in him, that would produce

red blood. She'd always thought of him as a glorified computer gone amuck, a bundle of
wires and circuits and chips. He was like the tin woodsman. He had no heart. No wonder

he acted as he did.

Setting her plate aside, she leaned over him, placing an ear to his chest. Heartbeats. Slow

and regular like Maximus' when he slept. Sid had...heartbeats. She kept her ear there,

listening, the sound of it taking her back to times she'd lain beside the General. She closed

her eyes, consumed with yearning.

A hand settled softly on her hair. "My...lady?"

She lifted her head, tears stinging her eyes at the familiar words. But it was Sid. Wasn't it?
His vision had come back and he was looking at her with eyes filled with more tenderness

than she could bear at the moment. "My lady," he said again, letting his fingers briefly

brush her cheek before they settled onto his chest. "You are...safe?"

"Me, safe? Oh, Sid, you are the one who has been in danger."

Her use of that name caused a slightly raw sensation to snap unpleasantly through his nerve endings. He felt terribly disoriented still, like he had when he'd awakened on that cart lumbering across the North African desert. He knew, though, that Brianna had almost died.

He remembered holding her in his arms, feeling life begin to leave. He remembered...both.

The faces of Parker and Proximo merged into one, then flowed apart into two again.

"Pr...Proximo," he stammered, trying to bring back the face of the one he felt most
connected to.

"What?" she asked, not quite making out what he had said.

He lifted his hand to his head, recalling the feel of the sword hilt smashing down on him

from behind there in his tent in Germania. He remembered lying beside the dirt he'd

mounded over the two graves and the enormity of the loss he felt as fever took him and he slipped into the soft darkness. He remembered carrying Brianna down the hallway of the

med center, knowing she was dying even as he carried her. He turned his gaze back to
her, every bit of all that remembering glistening in his eyes. "I love you," he whispered.

Looking in them, seeing what lay there, she nearly stopped breathing. He wasn't lying or

even pretending. You couldn't lie such things into being in your eyes. She swallowed hard,

not able to grasp what was going on. "Oh...God!" she moaned, burying her face in her

hands. "Don't."

"Don't...what? Don't love you?"

"Yes. Don't love me."

She lowered her hands. His lips were curved in a slight smile. "I cannot not love you,

Brianna."

"But...you...you're...."

"I am me, Brianna. What I am, who I am, all that I am...all of it loves you."

"Who ARE you? I don't...."

He smiled a bit more broadly, then grimaced as it hurt his lip. "I...you want the truth?"

She nodded firmly.

"I don't know," he sighed.

"You don't know the truth or you don't know who you are?"

"All I know is what I remember. I remember fighting with Parker Bowles on a rooftop."

He frowned. "And I remember the slight tingle of ripened wheat under my fingertips. I remember you telling me that Tigris would kick dirt in my face.  I remember in the tunnel

under the gladiator quarters aiming a dart at a neck and I remember the sudden sting of it

as it lodged under my ear. I remember the soft glide of the water over your skin in the bath house pool and I remember looking at my monitor as you slept in arms that were not mine.

I remember it all...Brianna. If we are what we remember, who, then, am I?

His eyes closed again. "I'm so tired," he sighed.

She watched him sleep. A new concept: Sid sleeping. But what he'd asked, was it true? Were

we the sum total of our memories? And, if so, who did that make this man sleeping so close?

He was not Maximus, not like Maximus was Maximus. Yet, he was no longer only Sid. He

was no longer NanoTech. He was...who? Pinocchio? He had not lied to her. Was that because he'd become real? Her mind wandered off into thoughts of the Velveteen Rabbit and the

Skin Horse, both of whom had also become real, but only because they were loved so much.

That didn't apply to Sid. No matter what his initial motive, had he become real not because
he was loved, but because he...loved? It was a fantastic thought.

ON TO PART 16

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