Borne (Borne, #1)

by Jeff VanderMeer

Refugees who came to the city for sanctuary had often become refugees again.

“No, Rachel, I’ve stopped trying to be good,” Borne said. “It isn’t in my nature. I was made to absorb. I was made to kill. I know that now. And it’s no use.” “You must try.” Empty words that agitated him, made him flare up. “I’m telling you, Rachel, I can’t anymore. I’m not built like you. I’m not human. I’m not a person.”

Borne had been talking to himself again: “I don’t feel like a weapon. I do not look like other weapons. Maybe I was meant to be a weapon, but I came out wrong. I don’t even know where the word weapon came from. I did not have it before. Weapon weapon weapon. Weapon? Wea-pon. Wea. Pon. Weh. Apon.” Digesting the word before it could colonize him.

“Let’s assume you’re not a weapon,” I said. “You’re not a weapon but something amazing and wonderful and useful instead. Discover what that amazing thing is, and then try to be that thing.” But I couldn’t sleep after that, vaguely worried. Yet what did Borne know? We were all weapons of some kind. We were all weaponized in our way.

The Magician was still talking. The Magician in that cavern was still trying to tell me things. Why I should join her. What this all meant. How the city could be saved from itself. But I heard no more from her. I hit the Magician with a rock until she was dead,

For in one of the rooms I had found what he had hid so ably and so well, lived with for so long: There was a mound of discarded diagrams and models for biotech. Boxes full of withered-away parts. Each one had some version of Wick’s face. Crushed. Cracked. Discarded. Tossed aside. Abandoned. Discontinued. Wick had never been a person. But he had always been a person to me.

Wick’s letter no longer exists. I destroyed it because it was dangerous. But I have not forgotten what he wrote. There are parts of that letter I will never share with you.

Mord no longer fought Mord. Instead, Mord fought Borne, for Borne had shed his disguise, had abandoned claws and fangs to become even more terrible and complete—like a true god, one who repudiated worship because he had been raised by a scavenger who had never learned religion. The monster I had helped raise fighting the monster Wick had helped create.

I was filled with the grief of that absence, could hardly breathe for it. He was born, but I had borne him. I knew Borne was terrified at the end. I knew that he had suffered, but that he had given us this gift of a better life anyway, and I mourned the child I had known who was kind and sweet and curious, and yet could not stop killing.

Wick never believed he was a person, was continually being undone by that. Borne was always trying to be a person because I wanted him to be one, because he thought that was right. We all just want to be people, and none of us know what that really means.

I went searching, as any scavenger would, near the place in the city where Borne and Mord had disappeared. There, I found Borne again. I picked him out of the rubble. I brushed him off. He was weak, tiny—as small as the first time I found him. But it was him.

I gathered Borne up as good salvage, and I took him back to the Balcony Cliffs. He did not speak, could not speak, but I felt as if he were still there, inside. He had killed so many people. He had done terrible things despite not wanting to do them. We had all done terrible things. I put him on our balcony, right where Wick could see him, and promised myself that if Borne ever grew, if he ever spoke, I would end him. That if Wick wanted to take him, Wick should take him and use him for parts. But none of those things happened. Wick did not take him. Borne did not move on his own; he was just a kind of plant, taking sustenance from the sun. Borne never spoke again, although I spoke to him and maybe I wished he could respond, but only a little. A lingering doubt, a lingering need, and I think you can forgive me that, at least.