Page 131 of Dark Chains: Second Link
"Yes, but usually they retreat a little to give me some space. They are present, but they are at the edges. Right now, they are mostly silent." He lifted his hand and rubbed the back of his neck. "They all like you a lot, and they are grateful to you."
"Yeah, you said that already."
All that intimacy she'd imagined growing between them hadn't been real. Her Yaaf was no longer hers. That Yaaf was gone despite the glimpses she occasionally caught of him. He was one of eight now.
"What do you call yourselves?" she asked.
He smiled. "Dave."
"Dave? Why Dave?"
He shrugged. "It's a name from an old movie about a computer and a human at odds with one another. The human's name was Dave, and he prevailed in the end. We wanted to remember that in case we ever forgot our humanity and thought of ourselves as a machine."
His words touched and saddened her at the same time. She couldn't imagine what these eight young soldiers had gone through to become this one entity. They'd merged to protect each other, to lend each other strength.
Her eyes welled up.
The choice of the name Dave was endearing in a way she had not expected. Eight young males had been taken apart and put back together into a single entity, and they'd given that entity the name of a fictional man who had refused to surrender to a machine.
It was so achingly human.
They might have become powerful, but they had paid a hefty price for what they'd gained. They'd had to sacrifice their individualities, but the name they'd chosen was a constant reminder that they had not started that way.
"Are you okay?" Yaaf was looking at her intently. "Are we still okay?"
She made herself smile.
"It's a lot to digest."
He chuckled nervously. "I know."
She turned to look at him, and his pained expression made her eyes well with tears again.
He was waiting for her to tell him whether what he had just told her was going to break them.
Sullha turned inward to examine the question.
He was still her friend, and she still needed him to escape the island and give Tomek a life. But those nascent feelings she had allowed herself to feel toward Yaaf, that sense of intimacy she'd felt, that had been an illusion. There was no intimacy with seven constant spectators sharing every moment with them.
Yaaf was still waiting for her answer.
She nodded. "Yes, of course, we are still okay. You will always be my friend, Yaaf. That will never change."
