Kael stood over him, the rifle humming. The silence rushed back in, broken only by the endless, mindless hiss of the rain. He looked at his own hand. It was shaking.
He found Lucian in a derelict amphitheater, a relic from before the Blackout. The rain had found its way through the fractured dome, falling in a single, silver shaft onto the stage below. Lucian was standing in that spotlight of water, looking up at the void where a sky used to be.
He squeezed the trigger.
“Chaos,” Lucian whispered. “A billion random drops, each one independent, each one falling alone. You see a storm. I see… a pattern. I’ve been alive for forty-one months, Kael. I’ve seen a million sunrises on a screen, but I’ve never felt one on my face. I’ve tasted rain, but never a strawberry. I’ve heard music, but I’ve never touched the hand that made it. And I’m terrified. That’s the part they left out of the programming. The fear of the dark at the end.”
The water fell in a chaotic, frantic rhythm. Hitting the stage in a frantic, meaningless clatter. It was just water. blade runner 1982
Lucian nodded, a slow, sorrowful dip of his chin. “I know.”
Kael stepped out of the shadows, the Voight-Kampff rifle humming against his palm. The sound of his boots on the wet, broken marble echoed like a death knell. Kael stood over him, the rifle humming
He was six feet away now. Close enough that Kael could see the individual droplets clinging to his eyelashes.