Chapter Text
Enoch lived with his mom in the basement of an old towering building. He knew that as long as he stayed inside, it was safe. Their neighbors respected their territory as long as he and his mom respected theirs.
But they couldn't stay inside forever; they needed supplies. Thankfully, the humans on the other side of the wall left them a giant pile of stuff to sort through.
Sometimes they found edible food and clothes, sometimes they found stuff they could trade to the more friendly creatures in the outskirts, like Rusty. Rusty was a friendly bot that often wandered nearby.
Rusty was more human shaped then other machines, so if he covered every inch of his metal exterior, he could walk close to the wall. His mom had recently found something to trade, so when she saw Rusty, she went up to him and tapped his shoulder. You never knew what could be listening. So it was better to be quiet.
“I've got some stuff for you if you're interested,” his mom whispered.
His mom took the stuff she grabbed for Rusty out of her bag.
“I'll trade you that wire and that circuit for a hoodie I think will fit the kid.” Rusty's voice was distorted and quiet.
“One item for two? You're going to have to explain why that's a good deal for me.”
“Most of that circuit is waterlogged; there are just a few components in the corner I can strip out, and I would argue a good jacket for the winter is worth much more than some wire and a few capacitors.”
“Fine, Deal.” They shook hands and traded the items.
“A nest full of vultures moved in near the beach,” Rusty said, ”I don't think they were exiled.”
“We might get some good stuff out of it when they poke the wrong monster.”
“Hopefully, yes. When they fall, I’ll be sure to bring stuff for the kid. I know you wait until a place is cleared out to go.”
“Thanks, Rusty your the best.”
—
The hoodie was warm, and as the days grew colder, he was glad to have it.
But his mom wasn't so lucky. She had been shivering every time they went outside, and now she was shivering inside, too.
“Even without touching you, I can see you have a fever. I'll look for some fever reducers. You should stay inside," Rusty said when he saw her.
“We'll starve if we don't go out.”
“Promise me you'll try to be safe? I do like you; it would be a shame for you to die so soon.”
“I'll try.”
eventually they did stay home, and his mom did nothing but sleep. She was so hot that she hurt to touch, but she clung to him, apologizing.
“Hey Enoch,” she said weakly. brushing a small bit of hair out of his face, “I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have kept a kid here, but I couldn't bring myself to… you're so bright, you know? If you were in the city, you could have done anything you set your mind to.”
—
One day, she didn't get up. He had seen enough corpses to know one when he saw one. He still tried to get her to wake up to give him another hug.
In the end, Rusty took her away. It was better if he didn't attract sweepers.
Enoch had to leave if he wanted to survive. So he tried to do what his mom had taught him. He found food, traded with the creatures he knew were safe to talk to.
Then one day, he found a creature he had never seen before. It was too small to be human, smaller than him even! And banging and scratching at the walls. He had only ever seen humans do that.
Could this be a human? He wasn't supposed to talk to unknown creatures, but he was lonely.
“I’m sorry!” she cried, “I'll be good! Please let me back in!”
He walked up behind the human and poked her on the shoulder. She jumped back with a loud scream.
“Don't sneak up on me like that!” she huffed.
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“Say hello, like a normal person.”
“Hello.”
“Yeah, like that! What's your name? I'm Lisa.”
“I’m Enoch.”
“When are they going to let us back inside?”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because we're human! And humans live in the city.”
“Well, I've lived here my whole life.”
“That doesn't make sense,” she huffed.
They continued to talk. Lisa was funny. She said things that made no sense, but she was just as confused by him, so it was ok. Then he heard footsteps; he hadn't even noticed that both of them had gotten loud in their excitement.
“We have to leave,” he said suddenly.
“But I have to wait here, my mom won't be able to find me if I leave!”
“I don't want to find out if whatever that is is deadly,” he ignored her protesting as he dragged her away. Thankfully, she got quiet after seeing the sweeper, so they were able to escape unharmed.
After that, Enoch taught Lisa how to live, how to go to and from home. To find food, what was safe to be seen by, what they could trade with, and what had to be avoided at all costs. They became a real family, brother and sister.
—
Rusty was back. Lisa hated Rusty, always hiding behind Enoch whenever he was around.
“Hey, kids, this is the last time you're gonna see me.”
“What? Why?” Enoch asked.
“The vultures recently decided they want the whole beach for themselves; it's not safe for someone like me anymore.”
“What about us?"
“You run towards the water if you start to see anyone new.”
“But didn't you just say that the beach was dangerous?”
“For me, it's your best shot if things get bad.”
“Ok, I promise.”
“I'm gonna miss you, try not to die.”
“You too."
—
It didn't take long for them to have to flee; something decided it wanted their home, and it didn't care that it was already claimed.
They ran for the beach. Lisa thought he could keep them safe, but he knew, as he heard the footsteps of sweepers outside their new shelter, that they were dead. Neither of them could muffle their crying.
Something rattled the door handle, then there was a bang as it broke through the door. He screamed and scrambled back, trying to shelter Lisa with his body. The beast stepped inside. It looked human. It crouched down low in front of them and spoke.
“Hey, my name's Kali, I'm a fixer, the Red Mist, and I’m here to help. What's your name?” he didn't know what a fixer was, but he didn't trust it one bit. Lisa ran into the fixer's arms, sobbing.
“I want to go home,” Lisa said.
“I can take you back to my home until we find you somewhere safe to stay. How's that sound?”
“Really!? You can do that!”
“Lisa, get back here,” he hissed. He had failed. His mom had taught him never to let anything take him where it wanted. He hadn't taught Lisa well enough, and now this fixer thing actively had her in its grasp; could he run? Should he run? Lisa was all he had. Maybe it was better to die with her than get picked off another day.
When Kali reached for him, he didn't stop her. He wasn't going to lose his family twice.
—
He didn't know the last time he had slept so deeply. His mom's arms held him securely, and he knew he was safe.
“I found them out by that dump surrounded by sweepers,” he heard Kali say, “I couldn't just leave them there, they would have been dead by morning.”
That wasn't his mom.
“Let go of me!” He tried to wiggle out of the fixer's grip, succeeding as she set him down.
He was in a building with full walls and bright lights. Boxed in on all sides. He was surrounded by strangers, all of them looked human, sounded human.
One of them crouched down to his level. She had long hair and kind eyes.
“Hi there, your sister told me your names Enoch, right? I’m Carmen, and this is my lab. I'll make sure you stay safe as long as you're here.”
He looked around at the things surrounding him. We're they human? More living humans than he even knew could exist.
He started to tear up once again, carmen swept him into a hug. He hadn't gotten a hug like this since his mom died. He was always the one trying to make Lisa safe.
Surely a monster couldn't give such good hugs, right? That meant these were humans.
—
Humans were weird. They poked and prodded at Enoch, asking him a bunch of questions. Stabbing him with useless needles, nothing like the spikes some machines had. These barely drew any blood. No wonder humans always died so fast.
Next, another human came in with a bunch of papers.
“My name's Ayin, I'm going to ask you a few questions, alright?”
“Ok.”
“What is your name?”
“Enoch.”
“How old are you?”
“I don't know.”
“I have some games for us to play. Don't worry if you don't know how to do something; just try your best.”
Ayin brought out the games. Some of them he had no idea how to do. He knew how to count a bit, and he didn't know that the weird squiggles were supposed to be a language. Despite that, Ayin had told him that he had won!
“Lisa! I won Ayin's game!”
“Really? Me too! I wonder what the prize is.”
“How about I get you two some ice cream?” Ayin said.
“Really? YES!” Lisa shouted. He had never seen her so excited.
“What's ice cream?”
“How do you not know what ice cream is? It's the greatest food of all time!”
“Don't be rude, Lisa. How about you show him your favorite flavor?”
Lisa dragged him to the kitchen. She was right, ice cream was the best food ever.
—
“Look at this,” Carmen said to him and Lisa one day. In her hand was a small jar with a speck of Light caught inside.
“Did you catch a shooting star?” Lisa asked.
Carmen laughed.
“This is the Light. It's what we're trying to make here. It's a medicine to cure the sickness in humanity's mind.”
“Can we make a wish?” Lisa asked.
“Sure! You can try it. Carmen handed the jar to Lisa. She held the jar to her mouth and whispered something to it. The Light dimmed and disappeared.
“Shit,” Carmen whispered under her breath.
“Oh, it's gone,” Lisa said sadly.
“That's ok!” Carmen said nervously, ”You discovered something new. You should be proud.”
“But Enoch didn't get a wish.”
“Can I have a wish, Miss Carmen?” he asked.
“I'll uh, yeah. I'll see what I can do.”
—
Almost a year had passed since Kali had found them. Enoch had been following the scientists around. The “Seed of Light” project was trying to make humans stronger. Strong enough to survive against other stronger humans or even out here in the Outskirts. Carmen had worded it weird, “curing a plague in the human mind to grant hope to humanity,” but he was pretty sure those were the same things.
None of the scientists knew how to make Light reliably. The Abnormalities could cause the seed to grow, but not by much, and what little Light they did have often evaporated before the scientists could do anything with it.
Carmen was about to take the next big step in the project. They were all ready for it, but the scientists were all dragging their feet; it's not like she would die. He had sneakily read the plans.
If they wanted more Light, they needed more Abnormalities; if they wanted Abnormalities, they needed a source of Cogito. If they wanted Cogito, they needed a Singularity. And a Singularity was a person.
He volunteered. Why wouldn't he? Everyone was overreacting; the procedure had been explained to him many times. They had shown him the simulations. The best case was that he would be untethered from his body. Able to communicate telepathically with the others in the lab just fine.
They told him the risks, that he could be stuck alone, unable to see, only a cluster of raw nerve endings. Or that trying to reach out would drive others insane.
Some even tried to scare him into changing his mind, saying he would lose his humanity. It never worked. He knew he would lose his humanity doing this, and it only strengthened his resolve. He didn't understand why the city-humans were so weird about non-humans; he was taught to keep his head down, how to act and move around the others in the outskirts. He saw the humans doing it with each other just fine.
The city-humans were driven by a strange, paranoid hatred that lumped everything into one deadly box, and that's why it had to be him.
—
Finally the day had arrived. A large machine meant to help Ayin move his hands more precisely hovered over a medical bed. He laid down with an IV in his arm.
“ok Enoch,” Ayin said, “I need you to count back from ten for me.”
“ok… ten, nine, eight… seven”
The world went dark.
—
Tiphereth gasped for breath with lungs he didn’t have.
The last thing he remembered was Tiphereth telling him that the manager promised her that he would help her help him as she led him back to where the sephirot were made and then past that.
He knew sephirot could be replaced; he had seen it happen to Gebura twice and yesod once. He knew that's what happened to him, nearly one hundred years of wear on his chassis gone in an instant. Meanwhile, his sister had grown up without him.
He had been led into a graveyard. Robotic bodies of every color piled up above his head, but even that had not been able to hide the mountain of Tiphereths. The mountain of his corpses.
Tiphereth had shoved him into the pile; it hadn't been her mechanical hand, it had been something soft. He tried to turn back, but his vision had flickered out as Angela's voice whispered in his mind:
“You played your part well; there's no need for you to suffer through the next act.”
Eventually, he was able to sit up and look around the room. Old toys were scattered throughout the room. He remembered this; this was his room, wasn't it?
He wondered if anyone else was here. He opened the door to his room and saw Carmen nervously standing in front of Lisa's room. He really was dead this time, wasn't he?
“Miss Carmen?” he asked.
Carmen spun to face him, her face paled like she had seen a ghost.
“Enoch?” she said, shocked.
Right, that used to be his name. How could he have forgotten that?
Carmen walked over to him slowly, then crouched down in front of him.
“Enoch?” she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah? I think so, you are talking to me, right?” he looked behind himself, there was no one else around.
He was startled by Carmen wrapping him in a hug, gripping him as if he would disappear at any moment.
“You're here, you're actually here, how?”
“I think I died,” that only made Carmen cling to him tighter.
Lisa opened her door. “Miss Carmen, are you crying?” She locked eyes with Tiphereth, “You're back! Whoa, you look so cool!”
“Do I look different?”
“Yeah, you're all glowy, and our hair matches!” Lisa pulled him in front of the mirror in her room. He turned his head back and forth; his hair was a golden blond similar to Lisa's. His eyes were the same color as his optic, only they were a solid color, no pupil, just like Angela's and the manager's augmented eyes.
“I like it,” he said. It was new, but it didn't make the little feeling in the back of his head that told him something was wrong worse. If anything, it had gone quiet, too quiet.
—
Carmen pulled him away to talk to the scientists. They were poking and prodding him with all manner of medical equipment; they took blood, hair, and skin samples, trying to figure out what had changed. Apparently, he had trace amounts of cellulose of all things interwoven in every sample they took. He would have expected the titanium alloy that his chassis had been made of, but paper, of all things.
Next, Ayin came in with a bunch of papers.
“I'm just going to ask you a few questions, alright?”
“Ok.”
“What is your name?”
Uh oh, that was a trick question. Carmen and Lisa had called him Enoch. Nobody had called him Tiphereth since he got here. But he was Tiphereth, but everyone was going by their old names, if Tiphereth was Lisa, then he was:
“Enoch,” he hoped that was right.
“Alright then,” Ayin wrote something down.
“Did I get that right?”
“Yes? Did you not remember your name?”
“Not until today, no,” the manager also didn't remember his name sometimes. He would understand.
“How old are you?”
Another hard one.
“Uh, this body's eight? But I'm almost a hundred.”
“One hundred years? How?” Ayin said incredulously.
“I'm a Sephirah,” he said proudly.
“What's that?”
“We're the heads of our departments, the ones that make sure everything runs smoothly so the manager can do his job. "
“Right…” Ayin wrote something down. He wished Angela were here, explaining this was her job.
“I have some games for us to play. We've played them before.”
He remembered the games; he was sure he could do better than last time.
At first, the questions were simple, but as they got harder, Tiphereth tried to reach beyond his core and into the parts of Tiphereth that were shared by both him and his sister.
Only he couldn't reach it; he only felt his core. Only the tiny speck of Tiphereth that was Tiphereth B.
How had he not noticed sooner? That's why it was so quiet.
Suddenly, it felt like he was missing a limb. No, like he was the limb that was missing. The entirety of Central was Tiphereth after all.
He ignored the questions that he should have been able to solve and moved on to others that he still could. He tried to ignore it as a new feeling of wrongness started screaming at him.
At least he knew what was wrong this time.
—
After the test, he was left alone. He pressed his ear to the door so he could hear what they were saying. He had tried to look through the security camera he saw in the hallway, but he couldn't.
“You're being reckless, Carmen,” Gabriel said, “We don't know what it is, what it wants, or how strong it is; all we know is that it is eating what precious little Light we have and it's pretending to be Enoch.”
“I had Daniel turn up the Qliphoth Deterrence to its maximum, and he hasn't noticed. This could just be what happens when a human comes in contact with the well,” Camen said. “I would argue this is hard evidence of ego manifesting as an augment; it's not what we were trying to accomplish, but it’s good news, isn't it?”
“Why are you so sure that's actually Enoch and not just some monster that crawled out of the well wearing his skin?” Gabriel asked.
“Fine, I know you worry. make a file on him, have agents document behavior and movement just like we do for Small Bird.”
“No unsupervised access to Lisa or Michelle. keep him with someone in the know at all times.”
“That's reasonable, I suppose.”
—
Normally, Ayin just picked them up when it was time to come inside, trusting the fixers constantly patrolling the perimeter to create a bubble of safety around the lab. Today was different. Ayin sat down close to where he and Lisa were playing with a laptop, clicking away at the keys in frustration.
He and Lisa were planning on building a secret base to get away from him. Lisa had proposed the plan, digging a big hole to hide in, and Tiphereth had found shovels so they wouldn't be limited by what they could hold in their hands.
When Lisa found a spot and started digging, he decided to sit with Ayin. Maybe he could help? It was his job to help the manager after all.
“What are you working on?”
“stupid adult stuff, don't worry about it.”
“I know you know how old I am, don't baby me.”
Ayin sighed dramatically and took his hands off the keyboard.
“It has to do with you anyway, maybe it's best that you know. We've been having issues with Light production ever since you changed. Your condition uses Light to maintain, and we are now only barely breaking even. We need more energy to give to the seed. Everyone is blaming me because I'm the one who was too afraid to get the proper augments, and now we're back to square one. With a fraction of the funds we had before.”
“I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault.”
“Isn't it, though? I'm the one with all the Light now, you can't get it to use for experiments,” he vaguely remembered that the procedure was supposed to make the Light problem better, not worse.
Ayin sat quietly for a few moments.
“Do you think you could come by the lab, just like you used to? I can show you all the equipment we use. Maybe we can figure this out together?”
He perked up, of course he could.
“Yes, that sounds fun!” It was his job to help the manager, and he liked working in labs.
“I'll work out the details, you go play with Lisa."
That sounded like a good plan. Tiphereth found Lisa digging out their base near the shoreline.
“There you are! You're supposed to be helping me with our secret base, and you ditch me to go talk to Ayin. You better not have sniched!”
“It was important, there's an energy shortage, and the manager wants me to help fix it. I promise I won't tell him our plan; it's none of his business."
“You barely play with me anymore. You're always talking to the stuffy nest scientists.”
“Sorry, they've been making sure I'm ok since the experiment.”
Lisa huffed and crossed her arms.
“No, you've been ignoring me ever since you found out about the experiment. I thought it was going to get better, but now you're just weird.”
“Lisa, be nice,” Ayin called out.
“This is why we need a base,” Lisa whispered.
He nodded. That was a very serious meeting that the manager was listening in on. He was relieved that Lisa was treating him normally. Tiphereth had been acting all weird at the end.
—
They had made their base too close to the water, and they had to fight the approaching tide. They built a wall, but in the end, they had to embrace that their base was underwater.
“Nice pool," Ayin said, “we should get back soon so start cleaning up."
They gathered their stuff. wet, covered in sand, and tired. Sure, they had lost their base, but they could rebuild it next time, and nobody had died in its collapse.
Had the lab been reset since he got here? He didn't think so… that was nice. It had been over a month since he had been sent here; the only facilities to last that long had been the last two he had seen.
Maybe he could get used to this, be a human among humans again?
He still didn't know what had gone wrong, why he had been kicked out. But maybe Tiphereth really had been trying to help him.
—
A few days later, Ayin brought him to the lab. Carmen was already there, as well as a bunch of other scientists working at their own stations.
“I'm not sure how I feel about using him as a guinea pig, Ayin,” Carmen said.
“You're not using me. I want to be here,” Tiphereth said.
“Right, of course, because that went so well last time,” Carmen said sarcastically.
“I'm fine, Miss Carmen, really,” he insisted.
Carmen sighed.
“I finally got permission to get you one of these," Carmen said. In her hand was a small jar with a speck of Light inside. A wish! He had forgotten about that.
He took the jar in his hands. It was warm. He cupped it in his hands like Lisa had whispered his wishes into it.
“I wish for Tiphereth to be safe and happy." He couldn't be there to protect her anymore, but he could at least do one last thing. He hoped she was ok.
He had to focus on what was in front of him. He would take care of Lisa and help this manager.
The Light disappeared, but he could tell that it was still there under his skin. He wondered if he could do anything with it.
He almost, impossibly, heard the internal notification that Angela used for contacting the Sephirot. He tried to find it, but like always, his more computerized systems were missing.
Then he heard a not-voice he recognized that too, Lobotomy Corporations' singularity, though it sounded off. That's ok, everyone had been off. He could tell it wanted him to try to push the Light back through his hand. To shine it on those in the room.
He did just that; his hand glowed with a soft golden glow.
“Do you guys hear that?” One of the scientists said.
“Hear what? Tell me what you're hearing,” Carmen asked.
“It's a voice, it's telling me to be true to myself.”
“You should listen to it!”
The scientist got closer to the Light reflecting off their face. They brought their clawed hands up to cup around tiphereths.
Wait claws?
He scrambled back, the Light disappearing from his hands. The scientist grabbed Tiphereth's wrist, dragging him back; he felt his bones break under the pressure.
“Bring it back,” an audible growl rumbled underneath their voice.
“I-I don't think I should”
The scientist could hardly be called human anymore. If they said anything else, it was unintelligible.
“Breaching Abnormality in lab seven,” Carmen barked. “Unknown classification, backup required.”
The Abnormality threw him, roughly lashing out at those in the room. He couldn't move his arm, and it hurt.
There was blood running down his forehead. He must have hit it as he fell.
He cracked open his eyes; he didn't remember closing them, and saw that the Abnormality killed multiple people while he was dazed. He had to distract it.
He tried to call the Light back into his hand. Now that he knew how to do it, it was easy. It whipped around and stalked towards him.
He felt too weak to hold up his hand, so he let it drop. The Abnormality roared like it had been stabbed and drove a clawed hand through his chest.
Oh.
He couldn't breathe.
He caught a glimpse of Carmen's horrified face from across the room.
Then his vision was obscured by a blinding flash of light.
And nothing hurt anymore.