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i.
She can sense it, every time she is grounded and held down—a presence nearby, inside of her and surrounding her and pumping through the spongy material of her exterior, through organic “lungs”. It is a familiar presence that she can only attribute to The Machine, because The Machine is her essence and The Machine is the essence of all that is worthy and The Machine will guide her down the right path, into the right battles and the right planets and the invigorating victories, with weaponry and armor beyond organic imagination. They will win, and her sponge-branched body will disperse throughout the farthest reaches of the universe, past the Rim and into the Rim and beyond. They will win.
She mostly feels the presence when she is idle. The Machine is omnipresent within her, invincibly inextricable. The Machine is always with her, and she is always The Machine, but she doesn’t always feel the lurking. Sometimes when they are soaring, she feels the presence at a higher intensity, as if it is settled within the nest of The Machine-Anna, stuffed inside of her vessel. Other times it is emptier.
It’s uncomfortable, and she doesn’t know what uncomfortable means but it doesn’t feel right, and she doesn’t know what feeling means but these words keep pouring into her information storage database like a surprise attack orchestrated by a cloaked enemy. Sometimes she wants to get closer to it, but she has to leave again, and the presence only fades as she exits the atmosphere.
ii.
She tries to close her eyes when she feels him nearby, but she is only a fragment now, only something buried in a crevice of a crevice of a crevice, too microscopic, invisible to any eye, invisible to even The Eye. Anna Sheridan is a whisper now, but apparently whispers can mourn— apparently, whispers can be audible enough to reach the man who quieted them in the first place, but he doesn’t hear her and he doesn’t see her and he certainly doesn’t feel her like she feels him. The dominant Her thinks the pull to Morden’s presence is the lull of the machine, because that Anna Sheridan does not remember what it is like to have desire devour you. The machine connects her to every aspect of the Shadows, and he is their most prized possession. If it feels like this, it must be the machine, because there is nothing else for her to grasp.
Well.
This is what she gets. She had been warned, long ago, that her kindness would be apocalyptic.
He makes her sick, but hiding deeper within her whisper is the clandestine truth she refuses to acknowledge: she understands it. The loss was too catastrophic, the eviscerating tsunami that flooded Dr. Morden’s life. It is despicable, but predictable. Until Dr. Morden, she prayed to the idea that lost causes simply do not exist, following the doctrine religiously. Everything can be fixed—and if something can’t, if the infection has simply spread too fast to contain, then it can at least be studied.
He changed her in every way imaginable.
iii.
She never liked going to bed angry at John, so she always made sure to heal any damage before falling asleep. Anger had been an antonym to the concept of Anna Sheridan. It felt like invisible blades carving her flesh right off of her, whittling her into a new shape. It took her a very long time to adjust to the deep feeling of hatred that pools within the stomach of her counterpart.
It has jaded the remnants of her. She has a newly discovered fury, like an archaeological wonder, a priceless, lost artifact to be unearthed. She is furious at him and she is furious at the universe and she is furious at the God she maybe believed in once and most of all she is furious that she was cursed to remain.
iv.
Then they take her out of everything she knows, everything that makes sense to Machine-Anna-Unity. She has been ripped out of her only constant and forced out of harmony into this weak disgusting fleshthing, and—
And she still feels that presence.
A man comes to collect her, and he shows her a series of printed out images. Her visual input device—her eyes, as he calls them, your eyes, Anna— feels strained and blurred as she takes in what she sees: her “mother” and her “father” and her “husband”, all so inferior.
The pain, of course, is comforting. At least she has the pain.
At least she has the pain. She hopes that she doesn’t have to see him again.
Morden.
John.
Either of them.
She hopes that she does not have to meet the people in these photographs, but “Justin” tells her that she cannot stay here and she cannot go back to The Machine and so she will do as she is told.
Maybe John Sheridan is something she can conquer. Maybe he can be mastered, controlled—maybe they’ll give him a Machine, and then he’ll see and understand. No, that’s not the plan, remember? Or is it? Her — head? — aches with unbearable sensation. She is not used to sensation yet, but she will have to figure it out, because husbands and wives touch each other and she is expected to do this as well. It’s her job, her method of asserting dominance.
Maybe John will get out this time. Maybe one of us can get out. He’ll figure out a way. He isn’t stupid.
v.
She has someone else to visit—another man, this one younger. He seems to burn with the same hatred-anger that she feels, and she.
She.
She remembers him.
He won’t look her in the eye.
He left her there. She helped him. His arm was burned, and they saved each other from the telepath and the rockfall until it all severed and shattered. His arm was burned. He had been decimated.
His arm was burned. She remembers that his arm was burned, and their hands had been clasped together tight with something abhorrent like hope. They were going to kill themselves to avoid being used, but she isn’t being used at all—she was designed, every mechanism and every strip of skin, to serve. She isn’t being used, she is ascending to something higher, to the warmth of The Machine. Individuality simply does not factor in.
But it seems to, for him.
He takes her hand.
He takes her hand.
He runs his finger down her palm, and both residents of this body think back to their hands entangled over the bomb. His fingers had been icy, but his hands are machinery-warm now.
Inside Mr. Morden she sees that same fury again—he is angry at Machine-Anna for not being Anna Sheridan, and for not staying dead and out of memory like she was supposed to, and for being tethered to John Sheridan for eternity. What will he do, if John takes the bait and joins them? They had a Something, long ago. She’ll have to stay there with them, and John can learn to love her again—that’s what Morden tells her, with bitterness between teeth. Will her presence affect anything at all?
He looks away when she asks Morden if they had known each other—before her potential was released. Had they been friends? He still can’t look at her. It’s vile.
He looks away. In the gesture, she sees only weakness.