Promethean Files 2: The Prometheus Gambit

by Andrew Dobell

  But, in the end, it had all worked out for the best by giving them access to the Corporate flyer that had landed on the roof of her building.

  She’d maybe try to go back one day, see Oliver and tell him the whole crazy story. He’d be fascinated, she thought.

  She dropped her bag on the floor in her living space and took a breath that she didn’t need. Even though she was a cyborg, and really didn’t need to breathe in the traditional way, the old habits of the brain seemed to die hard.

  She thought back to the flight back here and Gibson’s chat with Xenox about his wife and kid. She needed to speak with him about this properly. The recovery from the injuries they had sustained during the police precinct raid and the chaos of moving in here had meant they really hadn’t had much time to talk. All their time had been taken up with the various jobs they needed to do here. Things had calmed down now, and with the official start of A.C.T. missions, things were trying to settle into a rhythm.

  She felt mentally tired. No doubt Gibson would be feeling the same, too, and probably physically tired, but she really felt like she needed to talk with Gibson about this, especially in light of the mission they had just been on and his conversation with Xenox.

  She didn’t need to take anything with her, so she stepped out of her quarters and made her way to Gibson’s, which were quite close by. She reached the door and was about to knock when she hesitated for a moment.

  Was this the right thing to do? Was she sticking her nose into someone else’s business where it wasn’t wanted? Maybe, but she wanted to help Gibson and the parallels between their mission tonight and what had happened to him just recently were all too clear to her and gave her just enough concern to override the thoughts of how rude she was being by doing this.

  Frankie steeled her resolve and rapped her knuckles against the door in a short series of knocks and waited.

  ‘Who is it?’ she heard Gibson say from the other side of the door.

  ‘It’s Frankie,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, come in,’ Gibson replied, so she opened the door and stepped inside. She found herself standing in his living room, which was dimly lit with a few desk lamps. She spotted some of his mission clothes on the bed a second before movement caught her attention and she looked up to see him in the doorway of his bathroom, topless and rubbing his face and head with a towel. He’d apparently just thrown some water over his face.

  ‘Oh, sorry to intrude,’ she said, pulling her gaze away from his nicely toned chest.

  ‘It's fine, you’re not intruding. What can I help you with?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing really, I just wanted to come and see you,’ she said, skirting around the real reason.

  ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, Frankie. How are you?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Excellent. The mission went well, I thought,’ he said.

  ‘For our first official A.C.T. mission, I thought it was a great success, really. Everyone pulled their weight. Veronica was a crack shot again with those sniper hits,’ she said.

  ‘She was, and Xenox did well to get us in there undetected.’

  ‘He did, and there was little he could do once we were inside the building apart from monitor the situation, I suppose.’

  ‘Seems that way,’ Gibson agreed.

  ‘Look, I thought I should come and see you because I was worried that dealing with a kidnapping by Corporate forces might have a few too many parallels to your own missing family. So, I just wanted to make sure you were okay,’ she said, getting tired of tip-toeing around the reason she had really come here.

  Gibson smiled at her. ‘I figured there would be another reason you were here.’

  Frankie shrugged with a smile. ‘So, are you okay?’

  ‘I… I suppose so, all things considered,’ he said.

  ‘It must be horrific to lose a child like that, I can barely comprehend what it must feel like,’ she sympathised as she sat on the arm of his sofa.

  Gibson moved around and sat in a chair opposite, resting his elbows on his knees and looking down at the floor. He didn’t say anything for a good few seconds, so Frankie looked up and felt even more terrible on seeing his pensive body language. She couldn’t imagine the thoughts going through his head right now.

  ‘She’s not mine,’ Gibson said.

  Frankie frowned, wondering if she had heard that right. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Stephanie, she’s not my daughter. She’s my stepdaughter,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, well, that still must hurt,’ she said.

  ‘We didn’t get on. She never really liked me, actually. I mean, I care for her and the last thing I want is for something bad to happen to her, but it’s not like she’s my flesh and blood, you know.’

  ‘Not really, but, I suppose so,’ Frankie said as she thought about this new info. She actually felt a little sad for Gibson more than anything else. But, even if he didn’t have that close a relationship with his stepdaughter, she was still the child of the woman he loved, so, it must still surely hurt. ‘Look, give it a chance, you never know. Once we get your wife back. Camille, is it?’

  ‘If she wants to come back to me,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, she will. She’ll understand that you did your best. She’ll still love you, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘That’s… that’s very kind and optimistic of you, but… Aaah, things aren’t that straightforward, actually. Look, Camille and I we were… we were going through a rough patch recently. We weren’t getting on that well and…’

  ‘And what?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Look, I’ve not known her for that long really. I mean, sure, I loved her, I think. We were very passionate in those early days, and she moved in very quickly because she was having some difficult times and it just made sense, especially with her having a child to raise, too. I mean, look, I’d seen those camps in the Undercity, I knew what happened to those who couldn’t pay their insurance or payment plans, so I asked her to move in. Getting married seemed like the logical next step at the time as she couldn’t afford her bills and by getting married we would qualify for the married couples discount, so, we thought, why not?’

  ‘You got married out of convenience?’

  ‘Looking back at it now, I know it was a bloody stupid thing to do, but we were all over each other in those early months. We imagined all sorts for our future, so getting married, it not only saved us money and made things affordable, but it just felt like the right thing to do.’

  ‘So, you’re saying you don’t love her, now?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’d been arguing and… I think we’d both been seeing other people, you know? Look, I feel terrible, just terrible. I feel like I should be having a breakdown or something, but, I just don’t have those feelings. I should be feeling worse than I am, right?’

  ‘I don’t know, that’s a tough one. I don’t know what the state of your relationship is really so…’

  ‘Bloody hell. I mean, I miss her, I miss her a lot, but I think I should be feeling a lot worse than I do.’

  ‘Do you want to find her, her and your stepdaughter?’

  ‘Of course, I’m not a monster. I know what those Corporations are capable of. The last thing I want is for them to be hurt.’

  ‘Then stop worrying about your feelings and just find her. It’s the right thing to do. The whole relationship thing can be worked out later,’ Frankie said and watched Gibson nod in agreement before he looked down at the carpeted floor. A few of Gibson’s decisions a few weeks back when she was on the run from the Corps started to make a little more sense now. He’d taken a huge risk helping her out, going on that raid of the Psytech building with her was incredibly dangerous, given that he supposedly had a family at home, but it went to show that you never really knew what was going on in the lives of other people.

  ‘Do you have anyone special in your life? Any family or loved ones?’ Gibson asked.

  Frankie looked up at him and smiled, but i
t was a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. A smile that said, okay, yes, you shared your story with me, so I guess I should return the favour.

  ‘I have some family, yes. My mum and dad. I left them about a year ago. I just couldn’t stand to be in the same apartment as them any longer. I mean, I had a great childhood, they loved me and I never really wanted for anything, but, when I was at University, I learnt a few home truths, and I suppose I found out they weren’t who I thought they were. I lost a lot of respect for them and decided I didn’t want anything to do with them anymore. I wanted to live my own life,’ she said. She’d skirted around saying what the reason was, but, he wasn’t silly she thought, he could probably work it out.

  ‘So, you took to heading down to the Undercity and helping the people in the camps?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, seeing where he was going with this.

  ‘So, do they work for a Corporation or something?’

  And there it was. Frankie sighed, she didn’t like talking about this, but, she felt she owed him after everything he had just told her. ‘They do. They’re quite high up in one of them and it started to become very clear that they were turning a blind eye to everything the Corporations were doing. The deaths, the murders, and the uncaring attitude they always seemed to have. Everything. I just couldn’t handle it anymore, and when it all came to a head, I decided to make a choice and left. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care if I never see them ever again. I’m my own person with my own view and they can just… I don’t know,’ she said, not feeling sure where that final thought was going. Deep down, she supposed she did love them really, but, they would need to leave the Corporation and open their eyes to what was really going on around them for her to change her viewpoint. When the Corps had killed her friend just before she left, that really was the final straw. She needed to make her own way in life and choose her own path. She wanted to break away from the Corporations and try to help those that she now knew to be kicked to the kerb by the Corps and their greed.

  ‘I understand,’ Gibson said, placing his hand on hers.

  She looked down at their hands and then back up to him and smiled. He was a good looking man, older than her by maybe fifteen or twenty years, but he was good looking, fit, and she had to admit to enjoying the view of him without any top on; his hair still wet from the water he had splashed over his face. The fact that she now knew him to be, well, not exactly single, but not really wanting to be with his wife anymore, it opened up possibilities and thoughts she wouldn’t have considered before. These thoughts ran through her mind as the feeling of his touch, of his warm and slightly damp fingers, swam through her mind.

  An icon in her vision started to flash and pulsate, warning her of an incoming message. She sat up, pulling away from Gibson as she opened it up. It was from Doctor Xenox, asking her to come to his lab.

  She read it and wondered what he wanted before she cancelled the message and looked back at Gibson. He was rubbing his hair with the towel, drying it off some more and waiting for her to come back to him.

  ‘Sorry, duty calls,’ she said and stood up.

  ‘Of course, thanks for coming by, and don’t worry, I’m okay. Really. I’m sure we’ll find my family soon enough, hopefully, if Xenox can dig up some information…’

  ‘I think we need a dedicated hacker or I.T. guy, really, someone who can do this kind of thing full time. Xenox has his hands full with the prosthetics and such so expecting him to do the computer stuff as well is asking a lot, really,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, I agree with that,’ Gibson said. ‘You should mention that to the director sometime.’

  ‘I will,’ she said and opened the door to his apartment, stepping out into the corridor outside. ‘See you later,’ she said and disappeared downstairs, making her way to Xenox’s lab. She walked through the unlocked swing double doors and into one of the largest rooms on this floor, which Xenox was still in the process of sorting out. He’d had a whole load of equipment delivered and installed already, eating away at the budget that Susan had assigned to them. But he seemed most of the way there now, with a huge area of the room set up and running with terminals scattered about, lab equipment, tools and medical equipment, a few stretchers and lots of things she didn’t really recognise or care to know more about. There were also large amounts of spare cybernetic body parts hung up on racks or laid out on tables. It all looked a little grim to Frankie, kind of like a morgue for cyborgs.

  The doctor stood in the midst of this, tinkering away on something and looked up when Frankie walked in.

  ‘Aaah, Frankie, thanks for coming so quickly. I thought now would be good time for us to do this, so…’ he said.

  ‘Do what?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Oh, right, yes, I forgot to tell you didn’t I. You have made a number of requests about changing or upgrading your body, well, I have some ready and, as we’re between missions right now, it would be a good time to do it. So, if you’re willing, let’s get this underway, shall we?

  ‘Aaah, okay, sounds good,’ she said. She thought about it for a moment and thought about what she would have been doing tonight. Well, there was nothing really, other than relaxing and getting a good night’s sleep, not that she really needed to in this body.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Xenox said, clearly picking up on her hesitant body language.

  With one last think, she made up her mind. There was nothing that she had to do right now. So it really was a good time to get the upgrades she had been hoping for.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said, smiling over at the doctor. ‘Where do you need me?’

  ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to a vertical cradle that she immediately recognised from the doctor’s back alley lab. It was very similar to the one she had woken up in for the first time in her new body not too long ago. Seeing that huge thing right there caused her to flinch for a moment as the memories of the attack and her subsequent transformation passed over her once again. She felt scared and vulnerable and really did not know if she wanted to go through with this.

  ‘I guess it brings back a few memories, right?’

  Frankie jumped. She looked to her right and saw the doctor there. He was in his fifties or sixties maybe, with a shock of silver hair and skin that had seen better days. His eyes had been replaced with cybernetic implants that looked like dark lenses set into an oval metal housing that covered the eye socket. He was securing his lab coat into place as he waited for her.

  ‘A few, yes,’ she said. She couldn’t help it. Those feelings of distrust and violation that she had initially felt on the first realisation that she was in a cybernetic body flooded her brain all over again and gave her a real wobble about whether she wanted to go through with this upgrade. But her rational mind knew she wanted to do this, knew that this was the best thing for her to do. She had been thinking about some cosmetic changes for a while, mainly to give her back some of attributes that would make her feel a little more at home in her body.

  She took a deep breath and did her best to push those feelings of worry and concern away and focus on the end result, on getting a better body.

  ‘You still want to do this?’ Xenox asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. It’s just, you know, memories,’ she said. ‘So, where do you want me?’

  Xenox walked over to a control pad, and with a push of a button the cradle tipped back to lay flat, like a large metal bed with a recessed centre that she would no doubt need to be within. There were a number of robot arms with various tools attached around the end of the bed, and the whole thing looked like something out of a horror film.

  ‘On the bed, please,’ he said, indicating the cradle.

  Frankie went to climb up onto it.

  ‘Oh, wait, you need to get out of those clothes unless you want me to cut them up once you’re on the bed and asleep, but whichever, they will need to be removed,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ she answered. ‘Of course.’ She looked down, she didn’t want these
clothes cut up, they were a part of her tactical gear and she doubted that William would be happy with her if they were destroyed.

  She looked up at Xenox, who stood waiting and watching her.

  He smiled back, also waiting, until a few seconds later he suddenly realised what she was waiting for.

  ‘Oh, of course, sorry,’ he said and turned his back to her.

  She smiled. It was silly. He had designed and built every part of this body of hers, he knew it more intimately than she did in many ways, and yet, she felt like she wanted at least a little privacy while she was getting undressed. She was soon out of her clothes, so she climbed up onto the bed and laid herself down.

  ‘Okay, ready,’ she said and looked over at the doctor.

  He turned to her and seemed totally unfazed and uninterested in looking at her body. Not surprising really, she thought.

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘So, I’m going to power you down, first, which will be like dropping off to sleep, and when you wake up, you will be fully upgraded. Are you ready?’

  Frankie nodded, doing her best to put on a brave face as she lay there naked, feeling very vulnerable while her mind swam with memories of her transformation in the Undercity.

  ‘So, here we go. Three, twooo, ooonnneeeeeeeee…’ Xenox’s voice seemed to slow down and fade off into nothing as darkness flooded her perception and she fell into what she would remember as a very strange sleep, filled with curious dreams of floating and flying through a strange psychedelic landscape. They seemed to last forever, but also, in hindsight, were incredibly fleeting.

  She seemed to rise from the dark miasma of sleep quite quickly, and the various sensations of her body started to appear one by one, including various icons in her vision popping up, turning green, and disappearing while endless code scrolled up the left side, way too fast to read. Suddenly, her eyesight came back online and she could suddenly see the ceiling above her again with the doctor off to one side, holding his Data Pad and tapping away at it with a look of concentration on his face. She waited a few more seconds before the code stopped and the icons settled into place in her HUD - her Heads Up Display.