by Simon Archer
“I’m not going to hurt you, I promise,” I told her again. “We are going to help you, and our friend, Krysta, here.”
“Help her,” the cat girl whispered. “I didn’t hurt her.” Kennedi looked at her with sadness in her eyes.
“We don’t think you hurt her,” Kennedi tried to reassure her. “Can you tell us your name, so we know what to call you? I’d like to tell our friends the name of the cat girl who helped us find Krysta.”
The CG stared at Kennedi for a minute. It was then I noticed the striking yellow color of her eyes. It looked like she was considering giving Kennedi an answer, but the elevator bell rang, the doors slid open, and she shrunk back again, holding tight to Krysta’s hands. Kennedi looked at me and shrugged her shoulders slightly.
I stepped onto the elevator first and moved over as far as I could to the corner. One thing was glaringly apparent. This new CG was terrified of me, and I didn’t want to make her even more uncomfortable by being too close. I pushed the button to take us to Leah and Charlie’s floor and stood still, facing the doors as they closed and we made our ascent. The elevator was just coming to a stop when Kennedi and I heard the new CG quietly clear her throat. We both looked at her.
With her head down and her mangy tail wrapped around her own waist, she whispered, “Rosie.” She took a quick look at both of us without lifting her head. “My name is Rosie.” Joy spread across Kennedi’s face.
“I am so happy that we have met, Rosie,” Kennedi said softly, smiling at her. “Thank you for telling us your name. We appreciate that.”
Rosie gave Kennedi a tiny nod without looking at her just as the elevator doors opened. I stepped out first and moved to the side of the hallway to allow the girls to pass in front of me. Rosie turned her shoulder away from me, and toward Kennedi, when they walked past. I followed them down to the end of the hall where Leah and Macy were waiting with both doors open to their apartment.
The closer we got to the doors, the slower Rosie walked until she came to a stop when she was five feet away. Still holding onto Krysta’s hands, she stepped in front of Kennedi, hunched over Krysta, and turned her back to Leah. Kennedi was significantly taller than Rosie, so she looked down at the top of her head.
“Rosie,” Kennedi said softly. “These are our friends. Their names are Leah and Macy. Leah started an entire foundation specifically to help cat girls. Won’t you come in with Krysta and me?” It was a nice touch, her throwing in the fact that Krysta would be going in. Rosie leaned sideways to get a quick look at me and then turned her face up to Kennedi.
“Okay,” Rosie whispered. She turned around and stepped to Kennedi’s side once more. Kennedi took a step forward, and Rosie stepped with her. Soon, they were walking through Leah’s open doorway.
“Kennedi,” Leah spoke softly. “Take Krysta into my office and lay her down. It is more confined in there. I’ll be right in.” Leah waited for me to enter the apartment, then closed the door behind me. Kennedi, Rosie, and Krysta were headed down a hallway to the right. Leah and Macy stayed back with me for a minute.
I looked at Macy and asked, “Where is Ellie?”
“I had her go to Bev and Theo. Bev is still a mess. They are all at the house,” Macy replied.
“Thank you, Macy,” I said. She turned and followed Kennedi down the hall. I looked at Leah and shook my head.
“This is the last thing I’d have suspected would happen today,” I said to Leah.
“Where did she come from?” Leah’s concern was genuine.
“She was in an alley… actually, not even an alley. It was a space between two buildings that was lined with dumpsters,” I explained. Kennedi hadn’t wanted to say too much when she was on the phone in the car where Rosie could hear. “We saw her, but then she reached between two dumpsters and lifted Krysta out.”
“Did she say anything?” Leah asked. She was in solutions-mode, as I liked to call it when she was one-hundred percent focused on gathering information.
“She kept saying that she didn’t hurt Krysta. She also repeated, ‘Don’t hurt me’ multiple times,” I reported. “It took us until thirty seconds ago to get her name out of her. Her name is Rosie.” Leah walked further into the apartment, and I followed her.
“I saw that she was clinging to Krysta for dear life,” Leah said.
“She is terrified of me,” I said. “She acts like I’m going to come at her with a knife every time I move too quickly, so I’ve been keeping my distance.”
“Hopefully, she isn’t lying about not hurting Krysta,” Leah said. She was so quiet I couldn’t tell if she was speaking to herself or me.
“Kennedi is a lie detector. Rosie isn’t lying,” I reminded Leah.
Then she turned, looked at me, and spoke up. “We have to get her at least a few feet away from Krysta so Kennedi and Macy can figure out what is wrong with her.”
Leah’s eyes started to get misty, but she blinked several times. In a flash, determination had taken over her petite features.
“What do you want me to do?” I wanted to go to Krysta. I was saddened by the condition Rosie was in, but my first concern was the gentle, bubbly, brilliant CG that I’d rescued from Omnicorp.
“Go to Charlie’s office and wait for him there,” Leah instructed. “We have adjoining windows so you’ll be able to see what is going on in my office, without scaring Rosie. The last thing we need is an over-protective, frantic CG on our hands.”
I looked around the apartment, then asked, “Where is Charlie, anyway?”
“He was canvassing pretty far west. It’s going to take him a few to get back,” Leah said. “He should be back soon, though.” She headed towards her office, and I followed. Charlie’s office was one door down, so I kept walking after Leah went through her office door.
Once inside Charlie’s office, I walked to the adjoining window and peered into Leah’s office. Krysta was lying on the dark brown leather sofa, unmoving. Rosie was kneeling on the floor beside her legs, and Kennedi was on her knees, leaning over Krysta’s torso. Frustration coursed through my veins and quickly turned back into anger.
Whoever did this to Krysta was going to experience everything he’d put her through. Until then, however, there were more people that cared about Krysta and were worried sick about her. I turned and walked to Charlie’s desk and picked up the phone to call Bev, Theo, and Ellie.
29
Krysta
I hadn’t seen it coming. In an instant, I had been bound, and the crack in my modification nano-wire had been extended. I felt the energy start flowing to places it wasn’t supposed to. My autonomic nervous system started shutting down to protect my internal core processor and other vital programs. Then the crack deepened even further when Leila picked me up.
By the time I’d been transported to the rundown apartment where they’d bound me, my communications systems had short-circuited. I couldn’t speak out loud, even though I was screaming in my head. I tried to regain enough strength to break free, but the messages weren’t making it from my core to my muscles. My vision started to darken as one-by-one more processes were damaged. Every time Leila moved my head to do her tests, the crack deepened. I was grateful that my pain center had shut down, but I would have traded it for the panic I felt instead. I had managed to stay semi-conscious until Leila threw me in the trunk of her car again. My spine hit a spare tire, and everything went dark.
An undetermined amount of time later, a spark shot out of my core processor and woke me up slightly. A CG’s core processor will continually try to reboot, and if it isn’t able to, it will eventually shut down completely. That is basically death for a CG. Somehow, my system had accumulated enough energy to send a spark. That spark made it so that I could feel my body move. I was being pulled up. Then I felt myself falling and hit what I assumed was the ground. The spark in my system died out, and I slid back into dormancy.
The next time my system was sparked, I felt myself being lifted. That time I didn’t fall. A sudden but
faint surge of energy shot through my back and my thighs. It was enough to power my sense of sight just a little. I saw the night sky above me. I couldn’t move my eyes, but in my peripheral vision, I saw the face of a cat girl I’d never seen before. She was beat up and scraggly looking.
She was facing straight ahead, and occasionally her lips would move slightly. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I had the faint sense that she was holding me up. I tried to talk, to yell, to scream, but nothing would come out. My communications capabilities were gone. I felt the little bit of energy that had woken me start to drain out of my cracked nano-wire. Just before my vision went black, and my systems stopped processing outside stimuli, I felt my legs swinging. The CG was carrying me somewhere. Then the world went black again, and I was locked in my AI subconscious with no way to get out.
Again, I didn’t know how much time had passed when a sensation came in through my hands. It was an almost indiscernible flow of energy, just enough to send stimuli signals into my core and wake it up. I still couldn’t see, or hear, or speak, but I could feel the tiny drip of energy into my hands. I broke down inside. I wished my core would auto-self destruct to get me out of that hell.
Just then, flashes of the faces of the people who meant the world to me crossed my consciousness. Clark, Kennedi, Macy, Ellie, Bev, Leah… all of their faces were there in my mind. I decided to focus on whatever was sending energy into my hands. I couldn’t feel my skin or muscles, and I still couldn’t move. The power started to build up in my core, and finally, another spark shot out.
The spark only resulted in one thing. I could see again. Everything was blurred and dark, but I could see. If I’d had the ability to cry, I would have cried for joy at just that one capability. I tried to focus and figure out where I was. I could see a sculpted ceiling above me, but that was it. I knew I was inside, but I didn’t know where. I could still feel the tiny bit of energy flowing into my hands, but it was waning.
Once again, I tried to talk. Nothing came out. I had no way of keeping Leila from doing more damage if she wanted to perform more tests. I wasn’t able to warn Clark about the man who’d orchestrated my attack. I wished for self-destruction again. As the thought crossed my consciousness, I felt one last spark go out. My core had stored enough of the incoming energy to try to reboot yet again. This time, the only change was to my olfactory senses.
Suddenly, I could smell something. It was a very faint aroma, but it was familiar. I focused on the scent with every ounce of consciousness I had left. The power was no longer flowing into my hands, and everything started to fade away. A split second before all my external systems shut down again, and I identified the aroma. It was Kennedi’s shampoo.
As the blackness flooded over me, I cried inside.
30
Kennedi
I wanted to shut my eyes. Seeing Krysta that way was nearly unbearable. Of course, I knew there was cruelty in the world. I had been subject to it in the past. It was nothing like this, though. Someone had intentionally tried to destroy her. Add to that the lame-looking Rosie and my virtual heart was breaking. I was afraid to touch Krysta after I laid her on the couch. I didn’t know what would make her damage worse. Hell, I didn’t even know what her damage was.
“Kennedi,” Macy said softly. “Can you tell what happened to her?” I snapped out of my sadness and looked up. Macy was standing on the other side of the couch, behind the back, looking down at me.
“I don’t know yet,” I told her. I knew I had to examine her, so regardless of my fear of making things worse, I started to look her over. I checked her clothing for punctures or anything that indicated that she’d been stabbed with something. I didn’t find anything other than some rips that were covered in dirt, no doubt from being dumped.
I went back and examined her head. I worked to move her the least amount possible, so I tugged gently on her hair to get her head to move from side-to-side. Her skull was intact, and it didn’t appear that she’d been beaten. I put my hands on her shoulders. I couldn’t feel any structural damage through her shirt.
In fact, I didn’t find any structural damage on her body at all. I worked around Rosie as much as I could. She refused to move and refused to let go of Krysta’s hands. I looked at Macy when I’d finished with the physical evaluation.
“There isn’t anything structurally wrong,” I told her. “It has to be internal.” Macy dropped her head. There was only one way to damage a CG internally without causing bodily injury: through the nano-cord. Just as I turned to Rosie to try to explain that she would need to let go of Krysta, she slumped down onto the floor, unconscious.
“What the hell is going on?” Leah, who had been observing Rosie from across the room, bolted to her side.
“I have no idea,” I replied. I reached over to take Rosie’s hands off Krysta’s so Macy could pick her up to lay her on the other couch. When I touched Krysta’s skin, before I even had a chance to pick Rosie’s hand up, I felt an electrical current. “Hold on!” I shouted at Macy, who was starting to lift Rosie.
“What?” Macy stood perfectly still.
“There is a current flowing in Krysta’s hand,” I told her. I used my other hand to remove Rosie’s hand. When I touched her, I felt nothing. I should’ve felt some sort of energy, or heat, or vibration, but there was nothing. I moved her hands, and Macy picked her up. I sat back on my heels and looked over at Macy.
“What do you think happened to Rosie?” Macy asked me again.
“I’ve never seen it before, but I’ve heard about it,” I pondered. “I think Rosie was using her own energy to charge Krysta. She must have completely drained herself.”
“What?” Leah looked confused. “Why would she do something like that?”
“To keep Krysta alive,” I told her. “If a CG’s core processor can’t reboot for a certain period of time, it will completely shut down. If Rosie was pushing energy into Krysta, there is a better chance that Krysta hasn’t shut down all the way.” Leah went to Rosie and kneeled beside her.
“What do I do for her?” Leah asked as she brushed some matted hair out of Rosie’s face. Macy kneeled beside Leah.
“Time is what she needs now. If she can control her energy flow like that, then she should be able to recharge. The best thing you can do for her now is to get her cleaned up,” Macy told Leah.
“I’m on it,” Leah said with determination. She jumped up and rushed out of the room to get supplies. Macy looked back at me and stood up.
“What do you need me to do?” She came back over to Krysta.
“Kneel by her legs. We have to turn her over, but we need to do it while keeping her spine immobile,” I instructed.
Macy pushed her hands under Krysta’s legs as I pushed mine under her torso. We gently slid Krysta toward us until we were holding her almost completely off the couch. We both raised ourselves up to start turning Krysta over as we brought our tails forward to keep her from flipping too fast, and to keep her head from turning. When we got her repositioned, she was face down on the couch.
“Do you need scissors to get her shirt off?” Macy got up and headed to Leah’s desk.
“No,” I wasn’t going to wait a second longer. I tore Krysta’s shirt open to reveal her spine. I unsheathed my index claw and sliced an X at her nano-cord port.
When I peeled back her skin, I saw a tiny bit of diamond dust fall out. Instead of trying to look down into her cord, I decided to open up her spine. In one smooth motion, I cut through her spinal vertebra from her port to her tailbone, exposing the length on her nano-cord.
Once she was opened up, it didn’t take long to see what had been done to her. Someone had elongated the crack that had modified her. There was discoloration around the surrounding wires where energy flow had been inappropriately redirected and had short-circuited other nano-wires. The damage showed clear down to the midpoint of her back. I sat back on my heels, and Macy stood beside me. Neither of us could believe what we were seeing.
What
kind of monster could look at himself in the mirror after doing something like this?
“What do we do now?” Macy whispered.
“Go get Clark,” I told her. She rushed out the door without another word.
31
I saw Macy rush out of Leah’s office, and a moment later, she opened the door to Charlie’s office.
“Kennedi needs you,” she said and stood aside in the doorway. I walked quickly from one office to the other. Kennedi looked up when I came in.
“She needs a few new nano-wires, and enough power to reboot,” Kennedi said. “And she needs them fast.”
“Do you know how to replace a nano-wire?” I had never asked her before.
“I know how to splice them together,” Kennedi told me as she took a closer look at Krysta’s damage. “It will allow her to reboot and be functional, but she will be very delicate. She’ll be moving slowly or not moving at all until we can replace the entire wire.”
“How long do the wires need to be, and how many of them do you need?” I was already racking my brain on where to get nano-wire. The stuff wasn’t sold to the public.
“I’ll need six pieces, nine inches long each,” Kennedi said. She looked up at me. “I don’t know where you’ll find it, though.” My mind sped in circles. There had to be someone with nano-glass.
“Samuel!” I said excitedly. I rushed to the phone on Leah’s desk. “Kennedi, what is his number?” Samuel had given Kennedi a business card with his phone number on it, which Kennedi undoubtedly cataloged in her memory bank. She rattled off the number, and I dialed it. The phone rang three times before Samuel answered.
