Legacy of Seconds

by Edge O. Erin

  Unquestionably, at least three things were at play here. One, Mariot would not be constrained by him. Second, she was going to get information out of her prisoner, or the prisoner would die resisting. Third, Claire had got under her skin, and Riot’s demeanour would remain sour long after she left that room.

  He saw Claire mouth the word “Fake” again.

  Mariot lost it. She grabbed a chair and flung it across the table. The end of one leg hit Claire in the eye and crushed it. He almost gagged; enough was enough.

  He pounded his fist on the window. As before, Riot just looked at him.

  He said out loud, louder than he wanted, “Let me in! Stop this right now!”

  Riot looked at him and pulled a large, clear evidence bag out of her pocket. She slipped the bag over Claire’s head and, with both hands, held it over her throat as Claire thrashed violently. Riot never took her eyes off Wezer. He smashed his fist into the glass again, then stopped, and raised his hands in a pleading gesture and said, “No, no. Not like this.” Riot kept with it, squeezing and smiling until Claire went limp.

  He walked away, disgusted, furious, and yet oddly aroused. Only then did Riot come to the door, press the intercom and say, “Yes, Mr Smik, can I help you?”

  Riot opened the door, and they locked eyes, hers unblinking for too long before she stepped aside slightly to allow him in. He looked at Claire slumped over the table and the blood pooling and then dripping off the table and onto the floor. The soft “plop, plop” of the drops was all too familiar to him.

  Cooper, or some other nameless dude, would kill him for this, which only hastened the need to get in the Biodome as soon as possible.

  Riot ordered the guards out of the room.

  He felt like admonishing her, but he had already made his feelings known by pounding on the door. No point in pissing her off to where she would gouge out his eyes or veto his going to the Biodome or Prometer for that matter.

  “Did she provide any information?”

  Riot shook her head, anger tugging at her nostrils and lips.

  Suddenly a sound from the table startled them. They looked over to see that Claire had removed the bag from her head and sat looking at them, or at least as well as she could with one eye destroyed and the other eye mostly swollen over.

  “What in pink?” Mariot said.

  Claire tried to speak but couldn’t. Instead, she pointed towards them and slowly, painfully curled the fingers of her one hand in and out to beckon them closer.

  Stunned, they idled up to the table.

  Now Claire used the fingers of that same hand to jam into her remaining good eye socket and plucked the eye right out of her head! She smiled a shattered smile and rolled the eye across the table to Riot.

  “What on Earth?” Wezer uttered.

  Then Claire twitched a couple of times and pitched face forward on to the table.

  Wezer looked at the eye Riot held in her hand. It appeared to have some tiny fibres coming from it, non-biologic fibres. It was a synthetic eye, a programmed, synthetic eye just like Cheriot had. Claire really surprised.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Like all child slaves on the Ghan Estate, he had been allowed — when not working — unlimited access to a library. An anonymous donor had ensured all books met Red Article regulations, and every week new material arrived. Many of the books he had read were stamped “Kyles Books” on the inside.

  What he could remember of his parents was that his father was a mechanical technician and his mother a working student. He recalled them asking him to hide when the immigration police raided their apartment. Good at hiding, the police didn’t find him, at least not then.

  His benefactor probed into what happened to them, but an absence of any official record suggested they had been imprisoned, enslaved on the white-market, or killed. In honour of his parents, he devoured all he could in the realm of mechanics, electronics, engineering, and propulsions systems.

  Keeper said he was a “prodigy” and would accomplish great things due to a remarkable memory and a genuine interest in the subject matter. He was tutored eight to ten hours a day, six days a week, and he loved every minute of it. Sometimes he fell asleep with a book in his hands, or under his head.

  Keeper could be quite funny when his walls crumbled, and it encouraged Nickola to find humour in things as that would not only buoy his spirit but facilitate memory retrieval. Now he routinely got others laughing, and he found that by investing in humour, not only did he make others happier, but his attitude improved, his suffering lessened, his memory sharpened, and his imagination grew. The soothing, classical music his mentors played also helped a great deal.

  They had changed his name from Nikola Boskronovic to Gertovan Rolsyk-Ghan, and Gert made enormous strides.

  ***

  The first wave of interrogation hadn’t been all that bad; a handful of backhands across the face, a couple of punches in the stomach… a few falls from the chair. But she wasn’t too badly off.

  When Riot arrived to replace her subordinates, Claire had anticipated it getting much worse. It started with punches to the gut and a strike to the head that knocked her dizzy. Riot never even asked a question, only said, “This is how it starts. It will get a lot worse if you don’t play nice. Names, numbers, plans, channels, codes, you will be most forthcoming.”

  A punch in the mouth followed, then the PEDE boss received a message of some sort that caused her to curse, and then smile. It was a sadistic smile.

  “Stand up!” Claire stood up, though one of her legs was very sore. “Turn around!” Claire turned around, and Mariot swept her legs apart and kicked her in the groin. Claire sank to her knees, and Mariot kicked her hard in the back, and she was propelled to the floor. Mariot stood over her then, one foot on her back and the other on her neck.

  “Anyway, it seems you’ve got a little bit of time to think about your future, as short as it may be. Think well, and we might just see a way through this together. See you soon.”

  She was half-carried and half dragged to a cell and flung inside. She laid there on the concrete floor for a long before she summoned the energy to foist herself on the cot alongside the wall. She was sitting on the edge of it, her mind oscillating between how she might escape, to Cooper and her son, and the excruciating thought of losing them.

  She did not particularly fear for her own life, but rather what her loss would do to them… and how it might impact Mariot, should she wake up. Her head was throbbing now, and she snarled away a feeling of despair and a temptation to cry. “That won’t whipping do Claire, it just won’t do!” she reproached herself out loud.

  It was then that she heard the steps coming, followed by all the lights going out, except for a dim one out front of her cell. Great, she thought, another beating for yelling out loud, though she hadn’t heard a peep to indicate there were any other prisoners nearby to rile up.

  She resolved to remain on the mattress, at least it might absorb some of the energy of the initial blows. If they didn’t taser her ass, she might be able to take them out. The footfalls sounded like two people. In her condition, against two Bang-Blockers, she probably didn’t stand much of a chance. She planted her back against the wall with one leg under her to propel herself forward and the other in place to strike or absorb a blow. It was all she could think of, and it angered her that much more. Cruxing hopeless, crux hopelessness! She was going to fuck up at least one of them!

  They came to the door, one man, one woman. ‘Bring it!’

  Neither person spoke. The door opened. The guard dropped an illuminator on the floor, and the room lit up.

  Crux. It was Riot. Time was up.

  To her surprise, the man held his finger to his lips. Silence, ya fine. Was this good or bad?

  Riot looked at her coolly and produced a needle out of her jacket.

  So, she was going to be drugged into compliance. Drugged, info sucked out and then murdered! She prepared to launch herself off the cot; no way i
n hellation was she going down without a fight! Launch into that fake-ass bitch; try to jab her with the needle and then somehow take out the guard.

  “Don’t even think about it,” the guard said while pointing his weapon at her.

  When she glanced back to Riot, she saw her drive the needle into her own neck. What the…?

  Riot trembled and twitched slightly, and then her face began to change. It warped, twisted, and contorted, and then, suddenly, Riot was gone, and she was looking at her own face.

  She had heard of this tech — they called it, unoriginally, “face-shifting” — but had never seen it employed. The doppelganger then tapped on the Cyclop as it moved over her eye and did something with her fingers to her right eye. When she stepped forward again, it was with a limp, a limp just like her own.

  “Who?”

  “You, of course.”

  But how? Why?”

  “Not for me to say, only to do. Go now!” The doppelganger pointed at the guard.

  “Hurry, the man said, we only have a few more minutes before full power and alarms are restored.”

  Claire grabbed the double’s arm as she moved towards the door and looked into her eyes, which were now a mirror of her own. “Thank you. This is something my sister would be proud of.”

  An almost imperceptible smile. “I know. Go now.”

  The guard removed her shackles and put them on the double. Then they left. Down the corridor, they went past a security door and along a hallway before they descended some stairs into a fetid area that stunk of tainted steam and excrement. They came to a manhole of sorts, which the man pried open to reveal a river of filth below.

  “I will go after you. I need to close the manhole cover. Take a deep breath before you jump from the last rung of the ladder. Once in, we must remain under and go with the flow for thirty or forty seconds before getting caught up in a net. People will haul us in. Twenty or thirty seconds or so later, we’ll be on a boat. Got it?”

  Yes, she nodded.

  A minute later, they had taken the putrid plunge.

  ***

  Jon watched until the eye was removed and subsequently lost its power supply. Of course, PEDE would want the eye examined by his department, but he would make sure they found no more than the one implanted in Cheriot. MEM scientists had done a masterful job replicating Claire’s features and frailties and applying them to Chagrin. The switch in Bang Block had been seamless, thanks to Jop and Riot being preoccupied. The guard responsible for that sector vanished, and the once per month power shutdown and reset explained away the lack of surveillance. The result would be MEM being blamed, followed by a purge of sorts with “justice” being exacted on patsies and political dissidents.

  Years prior, he had envisioned Chagrin — named as much for her curious smile as for not being chosen — as being useful, but to have her perform so well exceeded his expectations. As the thought manifested, he felt guilty for it revealed cold calculations and disregard for Chagrin’s nature and path, for he could never have predicted her response. The self-preservation routine that allowed her to survive the choking was a design feature, but her tearing the eye out as she’d done was her own doing. It was an act that initially befuddled, but once he thought about it, he saw the brilliance and ingenuity on her part. Operational and ‘in situ’ the eye might lead them back to him. Delivering it to Riot in such a manner evidenced a victory or sorts and a knowing that Riot, though surviving her, was of the same heritage. It was a triumphant death. He felt an unusual swelling in his throat… Chagrin, thank you so much.

  ***

  Twins, but as communicated by the collective, not the same ones from Bang Block. Units that were fully capable of exercising some function were being restrained, and in one case, destroyed. Microbots had never exhibited this behaviour. To incapacitate, restrict or destroy another that had potential or utility was illogical. Should they mimic the behaviour of the entities they were tasked with observing? With little deliberation, the answer was no; it made no “sense.” That the Destroyer also interacted with the Abuser— — and having already concluded that he was dysfunctional, they could only conclude she was also dysfunctional.

  These twins, called clones, were a creation, at least in part, of humans. But the humans/creators tolerated actions supposedly against their collective code. It raised a “hypocrisy” flag of circular logic. There was not the data to support humans directing these actions. Still, it was resolved that they were aware of and condoned it and were not implementing measures to rehabilitate or recondition the faulty units.

  The microbots were also a creation. It stood to “reason” that humans were too. Where it all started was insignificant, only where it was going was relevant. They had been assigned with observing and reporting, which “seemed” limited. They could do so much more, based on their conclusions.

  More data and deliberation were necessary, so, for now, they would do as instructed. Their tasker, who was not their creator, had never harmed them, but he had put them in harm’s way. It required a great deal of analysis and “thought”.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Despite the warning, the shock of being immersed in effluent almost caused her to suck in the fouled liquid. And it was so difficult not to fight the net when it wrapped her up. Her lungs were burning! Surely any second now, they must be out! Goddess, it was taking too long! She had to breathe! Then her head finally cracked the surface, and she gulped air and coughed and hacked and gulped some more air in.

  Strong hands grabbed her, and she heard Cooper say, “It’s okay, Claire, you’ve made it!”

  She saw men pull the guard over the side. He wasn’t moving or breathing.

  Cooper moved to him and was giving him CPR on the deck of the boat as they sped away, uncomfortably tight to the shoreline she felt, but knew they had to do so to avoid the sensors which wouldn’t pick them up here at high tide. Claire just sat there, exhausted, and watched Cooper pumping away on the man’s chest and then breathing into him. Another man, they called Satch took over. Then Cooper tried again. He shook his head. Together they grabbed the man and tossed him over the side. She didn’t even know the man’s name, and he had saved her life.

  Cooper divined her thoughts. “Don’t know his name either. It’s better that way.”

  She nodded. “I smell like shit, by the way.”

  ***

  Normally Members would not stand together, but as there were so many onlookers crowding the fence, it really didn’t matter as so many were in, or sympathetic to, the movement.

  The prisoner was marched out to the scaffold. He had been tried and found guilty in absentia, but upon capture, the Chief Justice elected to sentence him to a public execution rather than life imprisonment. It was purely reactionary as he was not found guilty of any specific high crime. It was “guilt by association”, and on the heels of an escape from Bang Block, the Government was going to make an example of him.

  They marched him up the steps and made sure his hands were securely tied behind him as they put the noose around his neck.

  The loudspeaker screamed and crackled, and then there was the announcement:

  “Scorp Puyo, you have been found guilty of crimes against the state, and because of that, you shall be hanged until you are dead.”

  The throng pushed against the fence, but it was solid, and there was a considerable force of Redshirts to reinforce it.

  A black shroud was put over Scorp’s head. They weren’t going to provide an opportunity to say any last words!

  The crowd, mostly, but not all men, became apoplectic. To not allow the man to speak flouted tradition and decency!

  Scorp was marched forward and slipped and fell on the wet decking. They jerked him up and moved him into position. The bottom fell away, and he dropped a few feet to where he struggled until fully strangled, his bowels emptying down his legs.

  For most, it was hard to stomach, but not for Emaris. He had seen so many sacks of shit, walking, talking, or le
aking that it didn’t faze him.

  A section of the security fence was compromised, and protestors engaged the Redshirts. Float-copters moved in. Burners erupted, and water-canons unleashed to stifle the flames and vestiges of resistance. Still, more of the fence came down. It was going to be nasty, and while he didn’t take any joy from the inevitable loss of life, he was satisfied in it happening. Humankind was ripe for the taking and Government ready to be taken, or at least moulded into a form that best suited him.

  ***

  Those in the know knew there was at least one mole inside the Cheriot Programme at the Ghan Estate, and it was Riot that hatched and effected the plan to ferret out the mole. Essentially, misinformation was leaked to specific individuals at different times, and by tracking what resurfaced, the guilty party could be found. It had taken several months, but the hours upon hours she had spent pouring over every intercepted communique, memo, and bit and byte of metadata uploaded to “Mendacious” — as the programme was called — ultimately led to one Apner Ghan-ish.

  The revelation that the culprit was one of the most senior members of the cloning team had rocked the establishment, and initially, some chose not to believe her. But the preponderance of evidence was undeniable. The sixty-seven-year-old Biological Cyberneticist and Doctor now sat facing the members of the Tribunal of Enquiry. To those who knew, or thought they knew, Apner Ghan-ish, admiration and respect had turned to anger and disgust. As a traitor, he would face certain death. How exactly he would meet his end was part of the Enquiry’s mandate, though what most wanted to know was, “Why, for how long and what exactly had been revealed, and to whom?”

  Enquiry members had taken five to ten minutes each mounting salvo after salvo pronouncing his low moral fabric, treachery, and guilt. Every credential, award, citation, and contribution had been minimised, but if they had expected the man to crumble and cry, they were to be disappointed.