The last, red rays of sunlight were slanting into the tall, narrow windows of the castle, when MyKai walked down the corridor to Lady revolution9’s door.  For a long moment, he stood there looking down, motionless.  Finally, he looked up as if steeling himself to the task at hand, and knocked on the door.  He stepped back as Lady revo answered the door.

“MyKai, hello.”  She smiled warmly at him.  “I thought I might be seeing you.”

“Lady revo, I do intend to make an appointment to see you… soon.  My queen has insisted on it.  But for now… and I apologize for disturbing you… I came to see SamuraiKai.”

She smiled again.  “Of course.  Come in.”

“Please.  If my brother doesn’t mind stepping out… I will wait here.”

She looked at him, understanding in her eyes, and patted his arm reassuringly.  Then she went in, and in a moment, SamuraiKai came to the door, looking a little puzzled.  He had obviously been taking his ease, dressed as he was in white, loose-fitting pants and tunic.

“MyKai?”

“Brother, thank you for seeing me.  I’ve come to ask if we could begin training in kendo again.  I feel the need for… balance.”

SamuraiKai had heard the whispers going around the castle about MyKai.  He nodded, “Of course we can, elder brother.  I would be honored.  When would you like to start?”

“I will leave that to you.”

“This evening?  After we’ve made our rounds of the castle?  The gym will be deserted then.”

“Yes... that would be acceptable.”  MyKai nodded, not quite looking his brother in the eye.  “Thank you.”

He turned and walked away.  Samurai waited a moment, watching him go with a troubled expression.  

“Sam?”  He turned at the sound of revo’s voice.  “What’s wrong?  Is it MyKai?”

“I fear it is.  Things are not well with him.”

“Well, my goodness, after what we’ve all just gone through, it’s no wonder.”  Revo leaned her head against Samurai’s shoulder.  “Do what you can to help him, Sam.  I count on you to tell me if I need to step in.”

He put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.  “I will.”
 
 

CF - Voices in Another Room, Part 2
 

They practiced for hours.  MyKai seemed driven to get every movement down perfectly.  The intensity on his face was unsettling, even to SamuraiKai who was known to be fairly intense himself.  Eventually, Sam called a halt to the practice.

“But I don’t have this stance down correctly just yet,” MyKai began to protest, but Sam held up his hand.

“It is enough.  You’re at the point where you must stop and process what you’ve learned.  I can’t teach you anything else until you’ve done that.”

MyKai was instantly apologetic.  “I’m sorry, Sam!  I’ve kept you away from your lady for too long.”

“No.  I will go soon, but for now, we’ll sit down and talk.”

MyKai became wary and tried to hide it by fussing with the practice stick.  “About what?”

“About what’s troubling you.”

“Brother!  Nothing’s troubling me.  I merely wanted to take up this training again---”

“You insult me by lying to me, brother.  Do you think I’m a fool?”  SamuraiKai said angrily, and MyKai looked ashamed of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.  “I didn’t mean---”

“No excuses.  Sit.”  SamuraiKai waited with his hands on his hips like a stern father, while MyKai sheepishly sat down.  He stifled a smile.  It felt rather good to intimidate his elder brother like this.  He sat down beside MyKai.  “Now.  I’ve heard gossip about you in the castle.  Stop.  Do not speak until I’ve finished.  The other Kais are saying that you haven’t been up to the battlements to play troll golf with them in some days.  They say you walk the corridors at night and never speak or smile, and that sometimes you don’t even hear them when they call to you.  Your lady goes about with a troubled look on her face.  Is this proper behavior for a Kai?”

MyKai hung his head in shame, and Sam leaned over to him.

“What?  I didn’t hear you.”

“No,” MyKai said clearly.  “It isn’t.”

“So what is it?  Are you experiencing difficulty because of what happened to you during the battle?”

MyKai hesitated, and when he looked up, Sam was shaken by the look in his green eyes.  “Sometimes, I hear voices... in my head.  It’s as if I’m standing in a room, and I hear people calling from another room, but I know they are Kai’s memories.  They’re terrible memories, Sam.  I haven’t learned how to shut them off yet.  Something will trigger them and I can’t stop them.  Sometimes, I feel... almost overwhelmed.”

“Do you consider yourself a danger to APEC then?”

He shook his head.  “No.  At least I don’t think so.  But I am afraid.  What if I lose control?”

Samurai smiled reassuringly.  “You cannot harm a mistress, MyKai.  Your programming takes care of that.”

MyKai looked away again, and the expression of shame returned, causing SamuraiKai’s metaphorical heart to flutter.

 “I have to tell you something, brother,” MyKai said solemnly.  “I have done something... unforgiveable.”

“What?”

“You may have heard that some time ago, my queen and I had a disagreement over my programming.”  He stared at his clasped hands, his shoulders slumped under the burden of what he was about to say.  “She wanted to have me reprogrammed, because she wanted me to be free to make my own choices... about whether to love her or not.”

It was SamuraiKai’s turn to fuss with the practice sticks, adjusting his grip.  “I heard something about it.  I thought that was resolved.”

“Not quite.  I thought about it for a long time.  I realized that she could never be sure of my love, that she might always believe I had no choice in it.  So I... I went to a place in Kaitown... a place run illegally by antiKais...”

“MyKai.”

“For a fee, they wipe runaway antiKais and reprogram them, so that they can escape servitude to the Nadless and Martha factions.  I had them... do the same to me.”

“MyKai, no!”

MyKai closed his eyes and hung his head again.  “I don’t know if it worked.  I don’t feel any different.  My love for my queen is as strong as ever, but... I don’t know if I have the same safeguards I had before.”

The two brothers sat in silence for some time.  Finally, Samurai spoke.

“How long ago did you do this?”

“Nearly four months ago.”

“And you told no one.”

“No,”  MyKai said miserably.  “I intended to tell dgrequeen what I had done, but... afterwards, I was afraid.”

Samurai stood up.  “I will have to tell the Council of Elders, you know that.  As a Kai without programming controls, you are... you *may* be... a danger.  They will have to decide whether to let you stay.”

“Please.”  MyKai looked up, and his eyes were wet.  “Let me tell my queen first.  Don’t let her hear it from someone else.”

“Tonight then.  You will tell her tonight.”

MyKai nodded gratefully.  “Thank you, Sam.”

Samurai relented and put his hand on MyKai’s shoulder.  “If it’s any consolation... *I* will stand beside you, brother.  I think you are a worthy and honorable Kai.”

He bowed and walked away.
 

CF - Voices In Another Room, Part 3
 

dgrequeen lay still in the moonlight.  MyKai had gone out after the afternoon spent with her and had not returned.  She gave a sad sigh.  He had been as attentive and loving as ever, but something, some… * passion *… had gone out of him.  He would almost but not quite look her in the eye.  His movements were hesitant, almost shy.  She knew he must be feeling some torment since the battle, but he would not share it with her.

She heard the front door open, and lay still as if asleep, waiting to see what he would do.  His footsteps crossed the front room quietly and paused at her open door, before coming in.  She heard the rustle of his clothes, but surprisingly, he did not undress.  She felt the bed give as he lay down beside her, and she rolled over.

“MyKai?”

“My queen,” he said, stroking her hair.  “I must tell you something.  But before I do, believe that I love you with all my being.”

“I do believe it.  There’s nothing you can tell me that will change that.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“You did WHAT?” she yelled a few minutes later, startling ZenFAA out of his sleep.  He came to her door, blinking sleepily, scratching and yawning.

“Something wrong?”

“Go back to bed, Zen,” she said, and closed the bedroom door.  She began pacing back and forth.

“How could you do it?”  she said, wringing her hands.  “After all we went through!  Do you know what they might do?  They might make us leave the castle!”

“Not ‘us’.  Only me.”

“Oh, no.  No, no, no, no.  Zen and Party will be allowed to stay, and probably the possum --- well, maybe not the possum --- but if they send you away, I go too!  There’s no discussion about that.”

“dgre---”

“Shut up.  You’ve said QUITE enough tonight.”  She folded her arms and stood there, tapping a foot and thinking.  “Well, we’ll have to go see the Council of Elders tomorrow.  It’s better if you tell them rather than Samurai.”  She began pacing again.

“Please, my queen.  Lie down and rest.”

“This looks bad, MyKai.  On top of getting slammed with Kai’s 2000 years of assassin fun and games?  About which, by the way, you haven’t spoken to revolution9 yet, have you?  I didn’t think so.  They aren’t going to like this at all.  Not at all.”

He rose from the bed and started for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

He blinked.  “To my room.  To let you rest.”

“Oh, no, deadboy, you’re staying in here tonight.  I’m not letting you out of my sight until this is fixed.”

He opened his mouth, took another look at her, and decided it was probably best not to say anything else the rest of the night.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Predictably, when the special session of the Council of Elders was called, there was a great deal of heated disagreement.  MyKai humbly stood before them, eyes downcast, with dgrequeen defiantly on one side and SamuraiKai and Lady revo quietly on the other, awaiting whatever decision they made.

“We could put it to a vote,” Fields-of-Heather said.  “Since he *is* living in the castle, all of APEC should be able to decide whether he stays or not.”

“That’s true,” dishroom_princess said.

“But that’s going to take time,” lafemmenikita said.  “Where do we keep him until it’s decided?”

“I will stay in cryostasis until then, if you wish,” MyKai offered, hesitantly looking up at them through the curtain of his forelock.

“He’ll stay with me as always,” dgrequeen said.  “I’ll take the responsibility for whatever happens.”

“Well, that doesn’t help if he runs amuck and kills one of us, does it?”  said angelmay.

“He won’t,” revolution9 said.  “Both MyKai and dgrequeen have agreed, he’ll come to see me every day for a counseling session, until we all agree that he has sufficient control of these implanted memories.  I really don’t think we have a problem here.”

“I don’t either,” said Micromary from the sidelines, where she had been listening since being asked to come to the castle.  “We’re forgetting something.”

“Which is?” said remma.

“MyKai is resistant to memory erasure.  Which means, he’s probably resistant to reprogramming, at least with our techniques.  Look at him.  He hasn’t changed.  I doubt the procedure the antiKais used is any more advanced than our own, if that.  And it certainly can’t be as advanced as what Mania used.  So he probably still has all his original programming.”

MyKai’s eyes widened.  “Do you think so, Creator?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes.  I do think so.”

“But can we afford to take that chance?”  remma asked, looking around the Great Hall.

“dishroom and I can run tests,” Micromary said.  “We should be able to determine if any major changes were made.  But I honestly don’t think any were.  I think we’d have noticed it before now, and certainly dgre would have.” 

“But what about right *now*?”  TwilightRhapsody insisted.

“We’ll have to put it to a vote,” lafemmenikita said.
 
 
 

CF - Voices In Another Room, End
 

I humbly thank you, ladies of APEC and my brothers, for allowing me to stay.  The tests indicated that my supposed reprogramming was a failure.  Perhaps it’s true that I cannot be reprogrammed, or perhaps the antiKais simply took my money under false pretenses.  Either way, I’m grateful beyond measure and vow never to do anything so foolish again.  

I can easily meet the conditions put upon me --- the vigilance of my brothers concerning my behavior, counseling with Lady revo, staying close to my queen --- without hardship.  Or, at least, it will be without hardship when my queen has decided she is no longer angry with me.

I  swear to you upon my unlife, my ladies and my brothers, that I will always defend you to the last drop of my protoblood.

As to the memories of the Original… I’ve begun to see, with Lady revolution’s help, that they are not all bad.  It’s true that there was much agony and death in his 2000 years as an assassin.  But he also absorbed his victims’ memories of love, and life, and yearning, and happiness.  My experience with these memories has led me to believe that not only I, but all of my brothers are mostly immune to permanent reprogramming. The longer we exist here with our ladies, the longer they nurture us, then the more our personalities develop and grow and become uniquely ‘us’.  We are not simply programmed robots.  We are people.

I still hear the voices often.  Lady revolution assures me they will fade with time and training.  But sometimes they are beautiful voices, speaking of all the things that make us human (yes, even me).  Thus, the evil is balanced by the good.  I see now, perhaps this is how Kai can bear them.  

I hope that I can do the same.