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A Technical Exorcism

By Draconicon

It had been years, perhaps decades since the snow leopard had escaped his captivity at the hands of his creators, and Kai Lee spent his days utilizing every skill that he had to minimize what they had done to him, and how it affected his daily life. He had long-since distanced himself from most of his assassinations, and he had done a great deal more to ensure that the pre-programmed wall between him and his emotions - most of which were still unexplored - had come down to a degree.

The problem was less with the past and its ghosts. It was more how the past liked to try and creep into the present, and pretend that it still mattered.

The snow leopard sat at his desk, the latest of his silk suits stretched across his shoulders with a hint of discomfort. The cloth was pulled a bit tighter than he'd like, and his build had shifted since the last time that he had been to his tailor. The next version would need to be let out in the shoulders and along the lower back, just to take in the new muscles that had come in since the last time. He ignored it, leaning back slightly to read through the latest reports on his tablet.

Gray suit, white gloves, black tie, black shoes. He was the picture of someone bored at his office. He knew it, and he projected that image intentionally. It allowed him to find out what sort of employees were those with 'initiative', thinking that he would be easily distracted from work to hear their idea, and which ones knew how to follow protocol.

It also allowed him to be interrupted when he most needed it, and much as the snow leopard didn't want to admit it, such a time was coming.

It would be better if you had more control, wouldn't it?

Kai Lee allowed himself a slow blink, one of those that might have been used as a gesture of trust from a feral cat, but from him carried a different meaning. He took a deep breath, slowly setting the tablet down on his desk and setting his hands on his lap. The thought returned again, as he knew it would.

Nobody listens to you. Nobody understands what it means to actually pay attention and do what the smartest person in the room tells them. Everyone's going to mess up, everyone's going to make your work harder. You might as well use that ability of yours to control them. It would make it so much easier if they weren't people anymore.

The snow leopard tapped his gloved fingers against the backs of his hands, shaking his head. This was familiar. Another doubt about the people under him, another reminder of how it had been so many years ago. Subordinates were objects, things that could be damaged, sometimes valuable things that were nonetheless incapable.

Yes, they are. You can fix that, though. Just stop them from being people. Make them objects again. Make sure that they do what they're told. Then you don't have to worry about it. Then you don't have to be afraid. Then you don't have to -

"You are quite annoying today..."

As if he had interrupted a real person rather than a thought, there was no immediate response. Instead, there were images, memories, pieces that came through the back door from memories locked in the vault. Kai Lee sighed, lifting one gloved hand to his head as they passed through the wall of memories...somewhere to the back and bottom of his mind, he felt.

They came, images of dead men. Images of other agents that had been sent to find his creators out in the world. Men that had served him well and then died when they decided to do something on their own. There were others, servants that had come into the company that had then become valuable because of their skills, and had come under threat from the outside. Then, of course, there were those that were planted by his creators to try and bring him down, men and women that he had been forced to kill.

Those were merely the most dramatic of his problems. There were the mundane ones, as well, from the executives of his company that countermanded his orders and made mistakes that took him months to fix, to the average worker that, in a moment of petulance, deleted a file or sent it to someone he shouldn't, and ended up causing even more problems. Sometimes it was pettiness, sometimes it was malice, and sometimes, it was someone trying to save him some trouble and causing far more.

All of it stemming from independence...at least, according to the little voice in the back of his head. Frustration, anger, loss, reminders of his own imperfections, reminders of how he had made mistakes trusting people in the past, how he had tried to change from believing that people were assets to believing that people were people -

"This is pointless. And so...are you..."

Kai Lee stood up from his desk, walking to one of the many metal panels that filled the upper office. He stared at himself, at his reflection. Gray suit, spotted cat, black eyes. Black eyes, in particular.

He stared at his own eyes, and he felt the sudden shift in the back, a hint of something that wasn't comfortable. The snow leopard pressed his finger against the side of his head, slightly up from his eye, back by an inch.

"There you are..."

You know I'm right. Relying on others, trusting others, is a mistake.

"No. And you are no more than a demon that has outlived his use. A piece of survival concept that no longer serves a purpose. And now...I can experiment with something."

You can't get rid of me. I'm part of you.

"Would you like to place a wager on that?"

Kai Lee shook his head, keeping his finger pressed right to that special spot, feeling that the concept, the voice, the source of all those difficult memories was trying to squirm away. He did not let it; in fact, he slowly dragged it backwards, pulling it towards his neck, and then down his arm.

Visualization was such a useful tool.

The voice screamed as he moved it, dragging it towards his hand. Several times, it moved, trying to squirm out from under his finger, but every time he stopped it. He pressed down, hard, holding it in the palm of his hand. Just under his skin, in his mind, the little demon of mistrust and suspicion screaming for him to listen.

You need me! You can't trust anyone. Everyone's out to get you. Nobody can do it right. They're not real people! They're monsters!

"No. They're not."

Then you're a monster!

"No. A monster cannot change. A monster cannot be better. A monster..."

RIIIP!

The snow leopard ripped his hand off, holding the gloved appendage off to the side. It bled for a moment, then stopped. His arm, however, glowed red, dark and crimson, and little sparks burst from the stump that had been left behind. He watched the new hand grow in, flexing his fingers as they came into being, and shook his head at the tattoo that was left on his palm.

"A monster...can't heal. It can only hurt."

He dropped his hand, the voice no longer speaking in his head. He looked down at the glove, stained red at the wrist and slowly spreading further. When nothing happened, he nudged it with the toe of his polished show.

"Regenerate. I left you enough for that. Regenerate, or be nothing but a hand."

A second passed, then two...and then the sparks began.

Taking a step back to give the demon space, Kai Lee watched as the creature took form. It was him, almost completely, save for the fact that black eyes had turned red, and it did not have the regenerative energy to create clothing for itself. It stood there, glaring at him with impotent rage, with a face as twitchy and untrusting as one could imagine.

Kai Lee studied it for a moment, tilting his head one way, then the other. His eyes were not wide, not in the way that another, more emotional man might have been. If anything, he was, once again, bored. The voice was no longer in his head, the annoyance, the demon no longer nattering away in the depths of his mind. Instead, it stood before him, a pitiful caricature of what it had been.

It lunged for him, face twisting to fury. It was quick, he granted it that; it dodged around his block and grabbed him by the throat, claws sinking in.

"You can't...trust...anyone...not even yourself," his red-eyed double said.

"I would think...by now...you'd have some new...material..."

Punch, slap, punch, knee, to the armpit, to the inside of the wrist, to the outside of the elbow, to the stomach. The demon side of him doubled over, falling back a pace, and Kai Lee shook his head as the little holes in his neck healed over. The sparks flew once more, and it was as if they had never been.

"I see that it is possible to remove the demons within, then," he said, shaking his head. "Perhaps, then, you might make yourself useful."

"Nnngh...you...why?"

"Fear always has a cause. Sometimes true, sometimes false. Sometimes rational, sometimes not. You fear everything. Perhaps, if you can learn how to use that, you might be worth enough to keep around..."

"And if not?"

"If not, then it will be simple enough to remove you. You've already lost your place up here," he said, tapping the side of his head. "And I did not give you my power. You have only your own fear...and that, I can see, is growing. You see me as the monster now, don't you?"

The other snow leopard nodded, slowly.

"So quickly does fear change the world. So quickly does fear twist what reality is. Your greatest ally to your greatest enemy."

Shaking his head, he turned to his desk. There were ways such fear could be turned to something useful, ways that he could make this clone work for him. However, he already knew that it would never happen. Fear could bring clarity, but it could also bring -

"Gluk!"

He grabbed his inner demon by the wrist that had been on-course to the back of his neck, reversed it without even looking. His claws found the same place in the back of his clone's neck, severing the spine and nerves attached in one strike.

Fear also brought stupidity, and in this case, death.

The other little demons would likely be quiet for a while, he imagined. He imagined they'd want to live.

The End

Summary: Kai Lee ends up facing a minor inner demon, and decides to take a step towards dealing with it that he hasn't tried before.

Tags: no sex, cloning, inner demon, Kai Lee, snow leopard, artificial being, dealing with problems, fight, death,