"I don't know if we can stay here."

There was something eerie about the village that had been hastily evacuated the night before.  Cybersix sympathized with Elio, the speaker and onetime head servant of the Main Residence for many years, "Yes, something just doesn't feel right about it, but I can't put my finger on it," she admitted as she watched the people returning to the small village, going through their homes, walking in their gardens, checking everything.

"You can't tell?"

"No."

"Listen."

She stopped and listened for several moments, "I don't hear anything other than people talking." she said.

"That's just it, Cyber.  Nothing.  No pigs, no parrots, no birds, no monkeys.  Nothing.  Not even any flies or mosquitoes."

"Dead." she thought, falling into step with Elio, "Everything is dead."  She tried to speak, but could only stammer, "I-I'm sorry, We didn't think-"

Elio waved his hand, "Cyber, I have my family, my relatives, my friends, and my neighbors.  We are all alive thanks to your warning.  We shall have to move, but we are alive, and so there is hope. It is-"

But he was interrupted when a furious man came out of a hut they were passing, saw her, and yelled, "WHAT HAPPENED? Even the crops are dying!  What were you doing in that damned place that caused this?"

"No!" Cybersix whispered, shocked, "It wasn't us!  It was-"

"Ramas-" Elio said warningly.

"BAH!  You've been corrupted with all the years you served that madman!" he turned to Cybersix and screamed  "GO AWAY!  LEAVE!  You've caused us enough trouble!"

Cybersix glanced at Elio, who pursed his lips and moved his head slightly, "I-I'm heading back to the compound." she said, ignoring his implicit permission for her to stay, "I-I must-" She turned and sprinted into the jungle as Ramas yelled curses at her.

"Ramas!  She's lost her family too!" Elio said sharply.

"I certainly hope so!" Ramas spat out, turning to re-enter his hut.
------------------
Cybersix paused at a small creek, bent down, and was about to take a drink when she saw the cold sliver eyes of several dead fish staring up at her from the water.  Reminding herself that YX gas deteriorates totally in 6 hours, she steeled herself, swept the carcasses aside, swirled the water, and brought some up to her lips in her cupped hand.

She had been travelling for a half hour, conserving her strength while trying to cope with the sights on the way.  Corpses of snakes, monkeys and brightly colored parrots littered the forest floor.  The flowers were starting to drop their pedals.  Ant mounds that normally teemed with life when kicked had been transformed into heaps of motionless dirt.

"Death, death everywhere."

She leaped across the stream in a bound and continued on, wondering how she was going to take it when she actually arrived home.
------------------
The Techno quarters were the easternmost, so she came to them first.  The wild hope that some might have escaped arose when she noticed the empty beds when she peeked in through the windows.  That soon gave way to shock when she saw a bed with clothes sticking out from under the covers.  She went numb when she went into that room, pulled the covers back, and found a pair of pajamas lying next to a nightgown, both lit from within by a cylindrical green glow...

The absence of Technos was strangely disturbing: Ever since she had tumbled out of tank 6, she had been cared for by Technos. Certainly, her parents were ultimately responsible for them, but the day-to-day care of the Cybers and other newborns were entrusted to members of the first 1500 Technos.  Where was Techno 387, who first dried her off and dressed her?  188, who taught her how to bathe, dress, and feed herself?  419, 536, and 1118, who were the medics and kissed their scratches and patched them up?  What of 881, who taught them literature, encouraged her interest in books, lent her many of his copies, and came up with wild excuses to cover her absences after lights out, when in reality they had been shooting the bull far into the night, debating the inner meanings and symbology of the Great Works?

At first, she left the vials alone, but then reason asserted itself: She knew the theory for making sustenance, and could reproduce the blueprints for the machinery required from memory, but she didn't have the time to put everything together and tinker with it until it worked.  These vials were life.  As the images of the dead rose in her mind, she just knew they would want her to have them.  They had cared for her, taught her, and, yes, loved her.  They had always tried to provide for her during their life, and she knew it would give their souls peace, if souls they had, to know that they would continue to sustain her even after their deaths.

She knew where 881 was, and went straight to his room.  She weaved a bit uncertainly around the cartons of books piled in his room:  Everything started to get a bit blurry.

She pulled the covers aside, lifted the tee shirt, and picked up the vial that fell on the bed.  She looked at it, eyes welling.

She flicked the cap open.

She began to sob as she lifted it to her lips.

"I love you!" she murmured, tears streaming down her cheeks as the liquid flowed into her, his life joining with hers in the most intimate way possible.
------------------
She stayed in 881's room only for a few minutes, her memories her only companions.  There was work to be done.  Even though all the insects were dead, the bodies of Normals might start to rot from internal bacterial action.  The Compound, and all within, were dedicated to making sure that atrocities like this never occurred.  It was unthinkable for this place, sacred at least to her, to be defiled by the stench of the dead Normals that the residents had been created and raised to protect and defend.  The high sustenance concentrations in the bodies of the Cybers not only prevented them from vanishing like a Techno's, but would also kill any bacteria that dared to enter them.  They could wait.  As always, the welfare of Normals, alive or dead, took precedence.

Besides, she wasn't quite ready to go to the Cyber barracks.  Not yet.

She went to the motor pool, got a back hoe, and drove it to the grounds in front of the gardens and the Main Residence.  In 15 minutes, she had a long, deep trench dug.  That was the easy part.

Now came the hard part:  Going to the residences, finding the bodies, and bringing them here.  She didn't want to use a truck:  Stacking them like cordwood would look too much like the photos from the concentration camps that had given them their first nightmares.  Father himself had come in to discuss that gruesome period of time and emphasize the seriousness of the subject.  His solemn charge at the end of the lecture was seared into their hearts and minds forever: "You will bring me shame if you discover this happening again, but you do nothing!  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN!"

She knew where every Normal in the Compound was.  Everyone did.  The natives (Amazonian indians that had intermarried with escaped black slaves) loved working here because the pay was good, and Von Richter's children respected and obeyed them.  Cybersix went after them first.  As she found each one, she would wrap them in their bed spreads and carry them to the mass grave.  She made sure that the couples were laid together, including the ones she found in the same bed when, she suspected, they should have been in separate rooms.

One of the two redeeming virtues of YX gas ("If a nerve gas could be said to have virtues," the instructor had said drolly), was that it was very unstable and totally broke down in the atmosphere to harmless levels in six hours, leaving no residues to harm anyone who entered the area afterwards.  The second was that it killed quickly by attacking the nervous system in a way that caused no convulsions, leaving the victims with some small measure of dignity.  There were no messes, thank goodness, so she didn't have to clean the bodies or change their clothes.

Then came the research aides and co-workers.  She didn't know them that well, but their faces were familiar from the many times they all ate together or were pressed into service to perform mass medical exams.  She laid them in the grave next to the native workers, leaving a gap next to Marryn, her father's oldest and most trusted co-worker.

Cybersix sighed when the aides were done, and the Instructors were next: The training. drills. and classes had been so rigorous, and the instructors so verbally abusive where necessary, that every Cyber, at some time in the past year, had muttered something about wishing the instructors were dead so they could dance on their graves.

She wished it was yesterday, with her in the infirmary and  the instructors circling her bed and cussing her out.  At least, everyone would be alive.

She wished it even more when she pulled the covers off of Colonel Dansk's bed and found a glowing vial right next to his dead body.  She stood there stupidly, looking and yet not believing: The cussing, cigar chomping, "dammit take charge!", always in motion  Colonel Dansk had a Techno as a lover?  She had no idea who it was, but there was only one thing to do that would have met the approval of the head of the Instructor corps:  She buried him in the grave with the vial clasped in his hands.  She would consider the implications of that pairing later, when she could think again.
------------------
"So still.  So horribly still!" Cybersix thought as she walked through the eerie slience of corridor 4 of Barracks 1.  Stopping at the door to the fourth common bunk room, she swallowed hard, opened the door, and went inside.  Counting the bunks starting from the left, she went to the eighth bunk, wrapped the coarse green sheets around the still body of Cyber 338, and lifted her into her arms.  She walked through the jungle path separating the Cyber Barracks from the rest of the compound, hearing nothing but the scuff of her boots on the dirt.

She laid her sister next to the woman who had saved her life when she had been born, and had come to love her like a daughter.
------------------
Cybersix stood barefoot at the bottom of the Main Residnece staircase, looking up and dreading this moment.

But it had to be done.  Slowly, she mounted the steps, turned left, and walked to the door leading into the master bedroom.

She gazed at the plain panelling for a long moment, then forced the door open and went inside.

Her parents lay in their beds, as if asleep.  She walked around to mama's side, bent down, and tenderly began planting kisses on the cheeks that would never again feel the touch of her daugher's lips, nor the wetness of her tears as they fell from her eyes.

After a few long minutes, Cybersix gently pulled the covers aside and lifted the light, frail body out.  She exercised the privilege of the living and chose the dress that she put on her.  Holding her mother in her arms, she slowly walked downstairs, out the front door, and down into the mass grave, laying her in the gap she had left in the middle of the line of bodies.

Her father, Dr. Von Richter, probably would have scorned the kisses on the cheeks, so she settled for kissing the hands that had manipulated the DNA that wound up living in her own body, silently swearing never again to complain about her onyx black eyes or the unruly, thick strands of black hair that fell over her right eye.  She dressed him up in his favorite dinner jacket and riding suit, took him outside, and laid him next to his wife.

She knelt in the dirt at their feet, looking up and down the line.

What to say?  To help them fit in, they had been taught the fundamentals of the major religions in the regions they had chosen to specialize in, and had practiced debating their merits as if they were one of the faithful.  All those religions had some kind of ritual to perform over the dead before burial.  Which one to do?  What to say?

Silence.  Silence all around her.

Slowly, she began to recite:

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

"We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields."

"I love you all.

"Goodbye."

Slowly, she got up, climbed out, pulled her boots on, got onto the back hoe, and pushed the dirt back into the grave, taking care not to drive over it.  She then drove it back to the motor pool.  Once there, she turned the motor off, put her head down on the steering wheel, and cried.

She didn't know how long she stayed on the back hoe, or how long she cried.  Eventually, she stopped, all cried out, and listened to the silence.

After what seemed like an eternity, her ears pricked up.

There was a noise.  Something distant and far away.

But something.

She leaped off the back hoe, ran out the garage, and jumped onto roof.  From there, she sprinted to the tall tree growing next to it.  In a few seconds, she was as close to the top as she dared, scanning the horizon.

Off to the east, she saw them.  Two helicopters.

Military helicopters.  Flying low, in formation, and heading toward her.

Toward the Compound.

Toward her home.

She estimated she had ten minutes.  Maybe fifteen if they had sense and were cautious.

She thought for about two minutes, then leaped down to the ground and sprinted around back to the small concrete bunker far behind the motor pool.  She yanked the lock off, pulling the hardware out of the wood, and went inside.  Coming out moments later with a satchel slung over her shoulder, she closed the door, then ran back and ducked into the garage.

"Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high."

"If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."

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