The Oracle Paths

"Aahhhhh! Don't kill me!" She suddenly screamed as she crawled fearfully backwards until her back hit the wall.

Jake was so flabbergasted that he stood frozen in place. Watching as she continued to avoid his gaze, crouched on the floor shaking with fear, he watched her blankly for a moment and then broke the silence.

"Why would I want to kill you?" He asked with genuine concern.

It would be a lie to say that he had never felt the urge, but he was curious as to why a seemingly amnesiac Ruby was so convinced of his killing intent.

His question did not have the desired effect and the young woman yelled again in panic, convinced that he wanted her dead. Jake was already no saint before his recent mutation and his patience was even thinner now. After ignoring him for so long despite her belief that he wanted her dead, a real killing intent began to stir.

Ruby's eyes widened in shock, her mouth opening like a fish choking out of water.

"Since you want to die so badly instead of answering my question, so be it." Jake declared coldly with no hint of mercy.

His arm slowly reached out to the frightened young woman and his fingers curled into a fist. When his fist was about to close completely, Ruby shouted, " B-because... Because..."

Her face turned red with confusion as she realized she was unable to articulate an answer. Her gut was screaming at her that she should fear him and that he was her enemy, but ironically she was unable to come up with a reason. Yet every time she met his gaze, she was convinced that he had the power of life and death over her.

"Do you know who I am?" Jake then questioned her, giving up the idea of receiving an intelligible answer to his first question.

" ... "

Ruby couldn't answer that question either. The face was familiar and she was sure she had met him somewhere else before, but beyond that first inkling she was unable to say more.

Jake sighed and went on with his questioning, "In that case do you remember anyone or anything else?"

The young woman wrinkled her forehead in a desperate effort to remember something and soon the image of a late-twenties woman in uniform pushing a girl in a wheelchair around a military base appeared in her mind.

"My... Aunt?" She fumbled a half-hearted response. "I was... crippled?"

"What else? Do you have any more recent memories?"

Jake had devoured Digestor Ruby and knew most of the details of the amnesiac young woman's life as if he had personally lived it. It was very confusing, but it was still a thousand times better than having no memories at all.

He didn't ask all those questions for no reason. When Ruby's Digestor half had split from her original body under Psykow's spell, she had also stolen a lot of memories from her human half. Mostly recent memories.

He didn't realize it at the time, as the Digestor half's memories greatly predominated in intensity, but now that the real Ruby was in front of him a flood of memories experienced from a different angle assaulted his mind.

Jake could easily distinguish between these memories based on their clarity and perspective. When Ruby's Digestor half was conscious or in control, her feelings and perception of events were very grim and cold, filled with hate. It was impossible to mistake.

Memories belonging solely to the Digestor were rare in Ruby's early childhood, often lasting no more than a few seconds and with long periods of time elapsing before the next one. These memories became increasingly longer and more prevalent as the young woman grew, becoming explosively dominant shortly after she acquired her Oracle Device.

In contrast, the human Ruby's memories were much more nuanced. Although she suffered from ugliness and disability, loneliness, and the discrimination and teasing of children her age, her life was not all gloom. She was a cheerful, vibrant girl who strived to be constantly optimistic. Sadness and despair often overtook her and she would spend many nights weeping alone in her room out of sight, but these breakdowns never lasted more than a few hours. The next morning, she would smile again and face the next day with renewed fortitude.

Because Jake had access to all these memories, his hostility and resentment toward Ruby naturally waned. It was hard to hold a grudge against someone he understood and could feel the reasons and emotions behind her every action.

The truth was, the last few months of her life had been spent consumed by insecurity, fear and guilt. Like her Digestor half's earliest memories, everything her human half remembered from the past few months was rather hazy as if it were dreams or rather a succession of blurred nightmares.

At times, there were very rare bursts of lucidity where the memories appeared extremely clearly in her head, and Jake had realized to his utter dismay what they all had in common: He was present. In all of them.

He remembered those moments clearly too. Because he also had access to the memories of Ruby's Digestor half, he even had a second perspective to figure out the reason. Or rather, the two reasons.

The first was that since their first encounter, Ruby considered him her Soulmate as well. Their meeting in the VR Center was no accident. She too had been given an Oracle Mission. What she felt for him was obviously not love. They had only seen each other a few times, so they didn't really know each other.

On the other hand, he could feel how positively she viewed him and how keenly she wanted to see him smile as if he were someone important to her as soon as they met. This was uncanny since he could confirm by reading her past memories that they had never met before.

The second reason was that Ruby's Digestor half had come to fear him long before her demise. Every time Jake appeared before her, the Digestor would lose her footing and Ruby's human half would grow more ferocious, forcing her to exert more effort to stay in control. At some point, her Digestor half had identified Jake as her nemesis, a being she had to avoid or kill at the first chance.

Both of these projects had gone horribly wrong.

So why was Jake throwing all these questions at Ruby if he knew she didn't have those memories? Because if she didn't remember him, how could she let him into that building and deny access to her teammates who grew up with her?

There was something weird and inconsistent about it, and his instinct was telling him that it was very important. Upon reading all of these new memories, he no longer saw the term "soulmate" chosen by the Oracle as a childish attempt to set him up with a girl, but rather as something to be taken literally.

Why? Because he couldn't feel any discord between his memories and Ruby's. It was as if those memories were his own. It was as if those memories really belonged to him, and that caring impulse she'd felt when she first met him he'd also experienced in a milder way.

'Did our parents know each other?' he wondered as he scrunched up his face.

Once Pandora's box was opened, anything was possible. He tried to remember his parents and everything he knew about them, but unfortunately, it was too old. All he could remember was that his parents were on a business trip to Paris when the Digestors visited Earth on May 14, 2084.

Jake then studied Ruby's facial features carefully, but they didn't look the same at all. 'I doubt we're related by blood.'

He could at least rule out his father's adultery under the guise of a business trip. Ruby Hale... He had never asked what his mother's maiden name was, and he decided to investigate when he returned from the Ordeal to find out for sure. Whenever he felt a doubt arise, he would turn paranoid until the mystery was solved.

Then he remembered that Ruby looked exactly like her aunt when she was young. Craig and Ryo had told them that they didn't look at all alike when she was younger. Which was only natural, since they were not really related.

Jake's heart suddenly skipped a beat. He had a bad feeling about this. Didn't he also look like his uncle when he was younger? His Uncle Kalen had always said he looked more like him than his father and that was probably his reward for raising him so well.

Jake immediately banished that horrible thought from his mind. "It means nothing."

He was even blown away by his own imagination. An overly high IQ and tree-like thinking fueled by a pinch of paranoia could produce the most convoluted scenarios.

At that moment, Jake suddenly noticed that Ruby had been staring at him suspiciously for a while, her panic much less than earlier. He was immediately struck by a vague certainty.

"You remember me." He said.

"I remember you." She confirmed, staring at him with a complicated expression. "You killed me."

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