by Ran Vant
“See that it’s done.” Colonel Red turned and walked briskly out the door as the genbot drifted once more out of consciousness. Red had work to do.
39.
The Odds
“My good Doctor Psycho, it actually worked,” Red said.
“Hmph,” the Doctor smirked. “Of course it worked.” He told them it would work. Why should anyone be surprised when it did?
“I wasn't so confident,” Red admitted.
There was never a doubt in the Doctor's mind. He had worked on it for years. He had seen it tested. He had used it in other applications. They were just patterns and biology. The information was encoded, and he had the keys. Of course it worked. “The rest will work, too.”
“I hope so.”
“We take each step as carefully designed.” Doctor Psycho and Colonel Red had worked it all out. With General Chi, Colonel Blue, and the others, it all came together, just as planned. Perhaps it was even the most difficult part of the plan. There was only a little more to go. Then, they could stop the Event. They could stop the gens from destroying the truds. Natural humans were still smart enough to fight back. And Doctor Psycho led this part of the charge. “It's just a matter now of assembling the blocks, like one of your buildings. We put in place one piece at a time.”
“Agreed...” Red dragged out the word.
“But?” The Doctor knew there was more.
“But there is always the unanticipated. Our little enterprise isn't physics and engineering. There is chance.”
“Always. Which is why we planned for the unanticipated.” Doctor Psycho smiled. “Relax, we've done everything humanly possible to make sure this works.”
“I know. I'm just worried that everything humanly possible isn't enough.”
40.
Awakening
Once again the light grew brighter, and the world slowly began to seep back into Michael’s mind. Something was preventing him from lifting his arms. He tried to sit up, but failed. He tried to open his eyes, but the light was still too bright. And to make it worse, his head hurt. The pounding in his skull made him remember: the painful scan, the voices and before that… the explosion. Now the world raced back into his head. He remembered chasing the jetpacker and the split second hint of the smell of a petrol-like substance.
He again tried to get up, to give a report to Rex, but he couldn’t. Finally, he managed to open one eye against the white light to see the blurry room around him.
Spiderlyn straps crossed his body and ended in bolts fastened to the floor. The impossibly strong cord made of synthetic spider silk also secured his wrists and ankles to the cold concrete floor. In the stark room, there was only one item intended for his comfort: a small mat underneath the trunk of his body.
“Well,” he thought to himself, “I am obviously not on Fortress Magritte.” The thought was cold, not said with humor or emotion. It was merely a statement of observation and therefore fact. He expected a barrage from Magritte at any moment. Or perhaps Gabriella, Dante, and Martha might burst through the wall or ceiling.
He waited there.
The room was quiet. Michael slowly opened both eyes and stared skyward at the white ceiling and florescent lights. He turned his head, partly to see the rest of the room and partly to turn away from the lights, and the pounding pain between his ears began again.
He was alone. Despite the strange pulsing pain that came with each pump of his heart, Michael Lightbringer tried to observe the conditions around him. Regardless of his current circumstances, he would likely soon need to give a report to Rex. Each detail needed to be recorded accurately. The room was stark and nearly bare, but even in its bareness, it offered clues. There were no windows. Most likely, he was in the center of a large building, perhaps buried deep beneath the earth, or in the belly of a vehicle carrying him somewhere. If it was a vehicle, it would have to be a large ship or submersible, because there were no land vehicles of which he knew that were large enough to contain the room in which he now found himself. The possibility that he was in an airship did not even occur to him, for the gens jealously guarded the sky. Only trud buildings strove for the sky. Anything detached from the firmness of the earth was not allowed to exist for long.
Michael’s eyes were focusing better now, and he took note of the metal bars and energy shield transecting the large room. On the other side of the energy shield and bars were several desks, unoccupied, and a bank of recording equipment obviously focused on him.
Michael recognized the purpose: the room had some similarities to the holding pen on Fortress Magritte, though the last time they had held a prisoner in it for any significant length of time was decades ago. Prisoners typically held little value. If information could not be extracted from them through the scanner, chemical tracing, or bribery, further detention usually proved fruitless. So, any detainee's stay on Magritte was usually quite short, often only minutes. Still, Lightbringer was certain of the similarities of the two rooms. And the pattern recognition led to an inevitable conclusion.
The thought had never occurred to him that the truds might actually attempt to capture him. For what purpose could holding him possibly serve? He could understand the truds trying to kill him, for he was often preventing them from creating technologies and manufacturing weapons that were deemed a threat. Indeed, the situation often dictated that he go so far as to kill them. They had been trying to kill the gens, the Ancients, for generations. It was only natural for them to try to kill him, the gens' Guardian. But to hold him as a prisoner? He held no special information, nor a special place in the eyes of the Ancients, and his mere presence was a danger to them.
None of his training had prepared him for this situation. Nor had he been designed to deal with it. Yet a major feature of Guardians was their adaptability, which Michael understood. He was in uncertain circumstances, but he would nevertheless seek to advance the primary mission: Protect the Ancients.
Realizing that if he was deep underground or underwater and if this group of truds were technologically advanced enough, as the energy field indicated, Michael considered that rescue or destruction of the building/bunker/ship might not be imminent. This meant he must consider escape. He was not considering escape out of fear of death or fear of anything else. As a matter of fact, had he been able to reveal his location to a floating fortress but for a moment, he would have done so and called down a barrage upon himself. After all, he would be restored in a short period of time while his enemy would not. In his situation, flight was not fear, but power. If he could get back to Magritte, Skyguard would be able to read his thoughts, analyze everything he’d seen, discover what the truds were trying to accomplish, and destroy not only this base of operations, but others as well. Escape then.
Straining his head against the throbbing pain, he looked down to examine the spiderlyn straps that secured him to the floor. What he noticed first was not the spiderlyn, but the large gash in his right arm. Michael had no memory of the submersible’s mechanical arm cutting through the malfunctioning liquid metal and into his arm when it retrieved him from beneath the dark waves of the lake. Though Michael was aware of the gash now, it did not particularly hurt. While pain produces useful information, it also can inhibit functionality. Thus, the pain sensory abilities of Guardians had been significantly reduced, and that pain they did feel was typically more of an awareness of something wrong rather than agony. An exception had been the agony of the crude scanner-like device he was subjected to upon his arrival, and the strange continuance of the throbbing pain in his head. Studying the gash more carefully, it was clear that it had already been treated with crude stitches, though he did not know who had done it. He did not understand why the savages were helping him and actually healing his wounds. Like the purpose for holding him prisoner, it was a mystery.
Not able to recall where the gash was received, Michael returned to his original purpose. He noted the two straps crisscrossing his body and the smaller ones securing his wrists. The spider
lyn securing his ankles was out of his line of vision. He flexed his muscles against the straps. The spiderlyn was high quality, construction grade. Likewise the bolts on the floor. He was strong, but brute force would not likely extract him from his current circumstances. Besides, the energy field presented a second impossible barrier. Even if he might extract himself from the spiderlyn, he would not be able to find a way to neutralize the energy shield before the truds would be alerted. As for the poor-quality steel bars: They were thick enough to stop a trud, but they did not concern a Guardian such as himself. He could tell just by looking at the bars that it was subgrade metal, and old. His body and, more importantly, mind were more than capable of defeating that crude technology. However, he decided it would be best to conserve his energy rather than fight against straps that could likely not be broken. His captors may have crudely stitched up his arm, but he had no idea if they would provide him with energy or how long it might be before the best opportunity for escape might present itself.
So he would wait. Patiently. Calmly. Coldly. Until there was an opening.
41.
Mortar and Pestle
Flora took the assorted plants from the strainer, and placed them in the bowl. She picked up the pestle and began to smash the plants into a paste. It would take a long time. The fibers needed to be broken down. Then the paste would go into the flask, and the chemistry could commence.
Flowers and plants. Full of strange compounds with miraculous properties. Medicine, healing, salves, elixirs, life from some. Poison, decay, rashes, acids, death from others.
In fact, one could bring forth both good and evil from some of the same unemotional, unthinking, unfeeling botanical wonders. The plants and flowers were just naturally there, waiting to be used for a higher purpose. It was not for the plant or flower to decide.
And many of those flowers could be bought from a local market. Most people just appreciated the superficial beauty of the flowers, but there was an internal beauty that was so much more magnificent, so much more powerful.
Flora knew how to draw the beauty out. And a few others would share in that beauty. For a brief moment of their lives, at the end.
42.
In Red We Trust
“Listen, I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Jack was trying, and failing, to apologize properly to Maren. “It’s just that I don’t think we should be risking the whole operation by keeping the genbot alive. I’ve seen last minute changes to operational plans get people killed before, like with Trenton. I still think it’s a mistake to nurse that killing machine back to health. A genbot is like a homing beacon. It attracts trouble. It’s just a matter of time before some havoc emerges from above looking for it. Somehow the gens always find one of them when a genbot goes missing. And that doesn't even factor in the danger of it going berserk and killing people down here. Those things are stronger than the strongest man and faster than the fastest. We should be putting the body back in the lake.”
“He's in a cage, Jack.”
“There's a whole army of his friends up there that would try to free the genbot from it if they knew where it was.”
“But they aren't going to find out where it is.”
“It's the possibility that-”
“What can you do about, Jack? Red gave the orders. And I know you: you are going to following the orders. You're worrying too much about things you can't control and won’t change. We have to trust a little bit that High Command knows what they are doing.”
Jack stood there and let Maren's comments sink in for a little while before responding. “I know. You are right. Orders are orders. And maybe there is some wisdom in it. Maybe the Colonel knows something I don’t that makes it all worth the risk. Anyway, I’m sorry about yelling.” He moved closer to Maren and put his arms around her waist.
Ultimately, Jack knew he trusted Red, despite his current frustration. The Colonel had almost always done the right thing. And Red knew things. Colonel Red always knew more than the others, often even more than Colonel Blue, and Blue was the director of intelligence for the whole city. And if he needed proof for how much Red always knew, he had it in his arms. They’d found her out there in the midst of the Refuge Territories, that vast wilderness, right where he said they’d be. She’d been in his arms pretty much ever since. Over the years, it grew into something like a real relationship. Jack trusted Red that Maren was important, though despite Jack’s best efforts, he didn't know why. Jack had to accept he couldn’t see the whole picture and would probably never have most of the answers. Still, it was within his power to decide, based on the evidence, who he trusted. There was no question that he trusted Colonel Red.
When it came to Maren, however, Jack wasn't sure he could ever trust her completely. He didn't have an answer for why that was the case, either.
43.
Puzzles
The pieces didn’t fit together. Felix sat at his computer, supposedly drafting structural components of a new gleaming tower of glass and metal. It was to be 75 stories tall, one of dozens of medium-sized towers his firm was in the process of designing in the city of mirrored pillars. With the combination of intelligence and years of experience, Engineer Katz could do his day job while simultaneously working out the problems of Colonel Red. Instead of drafting, he was thinking. And the pieces didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense.
All of the data said it couldn’t survive the scan. Now what was he going to do with it? He had saved its life because Felix was the type of man who preserved options when he could.
Yet this option came with risk. But maybe the risk was worth the opportunity. The idea grew in his mind. Something in his mind hummed ever so slightly. Slowly, gradually, as he manipulated the structural components on the screen, the pieces began to fit together. Soon, the proper course of action naturally dropped into place.
But he had to put that out of his mind for a bit, to be returned to later. Now, it was time to focus on the primary concern: the Event.
44.
Machine Watching
The door opened and two women tentatively walked into the room.
“I’m telling you, it was moving around.”
“I believe you. I just think we should see him for ourselves. You’ve been staring at the monitor for hours, and I know what that can do to one’s eyes,” the red-haired female said somewhat skeptically.
The genbot blinked its now opened eyes.
“You see, it is awake. I knew it wasn’t dead!” the blonde one exclaimed.
“Of course he wasn’t dead, Eve. It was just a question of whether or not he would gain consciousness.” Then the blonde one is named Eve.
“Then why have you been so nervous, Private Bern?” The red one is Bern. She was there before, during the pain-
“The lieutenant gave the strictest instructions that he needed to make a full recovery. I was nervous because whether he woke up or not was really out of my control,” Private Bern replied.
“If you can’t control it, Maren, you shouldn’t worry about it,” Eve counseled as she moved closer to the bars and the energy barrier to get a better look. They were words of advice she herself had often ignored. Eve often said things as much as to convince herself of the truth of her statement as to converse with her friend.
“Easier said than done, Eve,” Maren said, thinking back to her own conversation with Jack and the nightmares that visited in the darkness.
“Should we try to talk to it?”
Maren arched her eyebrows at her friend and made a half frown, held it for a moment, and then turned her palms upward in an expression of “Why not?” Private Maren Bern motioned towards the genbot. “If you want the first shot, Corporal, be my guest.”
“Your guest? It’s the prerogative of rank,” she winked.
Eve looked at the killing machine. It wasn’t even looking at her, though she had seen the gen’s warrior blink half a dozen times. She desperately wanted its attention. “Hello? Genbot, can you hear me?” Eve rattled her sidea
rm against the steel bars just outside of the energy shield. “Genbot, are you in there?” She paused for a brief second before turning to Maren. “I’ve asked it a bunch of stuff and I don’t think it is listening to any of it.”
“First of all, I was right here listening, and I’m not sure I’d respond to you either. Second, why don’t you try asking him something he would care to answer? Besides, you asked him only, like, two questions.”
Eve turned quickly back to the body formerly enclosed in gargoyle-like armor and asked in a seductive voice, “Mr. Gargoyle, do you want to be let out of the cage?”
“Quit kidding around,” Maren said as she grabbed Eve’s arm. “Let me give it a try.” Now Maren moved closer to the cage and asked in a caring tone, “Are you hungry?” The genbot did not seem to register the question. Eve smirked. It sounded a bit like Maren was trying to talk to a little kid. Maren tried again. “Excuse me, would you like something to eat?”
Nothing.
“Do you have a name?” she persisted.
“Come on, Maren, it’s a machine.” Eve didn't think a machine would call itself anything.
“Without his armor, he is just blood and flesh and bone,” Maren replied. She’d seen him bleed. He had been unconscious and in captivity for three days. He had to be hungry, so asking him if he wanted something to eat seemed perfectly logical to Maren. Maren remembered being a prisoner once. She had wanted her captors to show some sign of humanity, some glimpse of understanding. She had been thirsty and hungry.
