A message suddenly appeared in her vision.
-Initialization complete. All systems functioning within normal parameters.-
She realised she had regained all feeling in her body again, so she attempted to flex her hands, which moved just fine. She raised them up and looked at them. They looked just like the hands she had been using these past few weeks. She lifted her head and looked at her feet, wiggling her toes.
‘You have full movement, Frankie. I’m not restricting anything,’ Xenox said.
She looked up at him and smiled. ‘We’re learning, I see,’ she said, referring back to her first awakening in this body when she found she could only move her head because of the control he had over the body.
‘You could say that, I suppose. I probably deserved that remark. Okay, so I’m disconnecting you from the mainframe… now,’ he said.
There was a hiss and Frankie felt the various cables that were attached to her body release themselves and drop free. She watched one of the ports on her arm as its skin like cover slid back into place.
-Mainframe disconnected. Autonomous control resumed.-
‘You can move now; get yourself dressed again. I’ll leave you for a moment. I have some data to log. I’ll only be over here,’ he said before he smiled at her and moved away.
She nodded at him as he smiled and slowly sat up and looked down at herself. She looked nearly identical to how she looked before this operation with the smooth, unblemished skin that was only marked by seams, indented lines that symmetrically crisscrossed her body, marking where she had been assembled.
The first difference she could see was that she had nipples now. She smiled. It was such a trivial thing, and, yet, it made all the difference. She thought she looked more human, now. She looked more like how she used to look, and it felt so much better. The other request had been that she have some sexual organs as well. After all, why have a body in the shape of a woman if she didn’t have all the “bits” that came with it. She couldn’t resist a little exploration, and sure enough, everything seemed to be in place, cosmetically, at least.
Again, it was strange, but she felt she needed these things to identify as a woman, otherwise, what was she?
The transformation into a cyborg had brought with it all kinds of other changes she had noted with curiosity over the weeks. She didn’t need to eat or sleep or use the bathroom, although, she was aware that she did have the ability to eat and to get rid of the waste food or drink in the usual way.
She could also sleep if she wanted to, but she didn’t really need it. She often found she preferred to sit and read or wander through the building’s unused floors. She even headed out into town a few times, being careful to not draw attention to herself as she walked the streets, enjoying the nightlife from a distance.
Feeling happier with herself, she jumped off the cradle and pulled on her clothes before walking over to the doctor.
‘Thank you, Doc. I’m really pleased with the changes,’ she said.
‘Aaah, you’re ready. Okay, good. I’m glad you’re happy. I take it you’ve seen the cosmetic changes you asked for? Well, I’ve also made a few less obvious changes and upgrades, most of which you won’t really notice. You’re slightly stronger and faster now, and your armour has been upgraded.’
‘Oh, cool. Thanks,’ she said.
‘Well, enjoy the upgrades.’ He smiled. ‘By the way, you can make sensitivity changes and such to your sexual organs. Just access the relevant settings in your cyber brain.’
‘Oh, okay, thanks,’ she said. ‘Is this a new body, or did you just upgrade the old one?’ she asked, changing the subject to something less awkward.
‘It’s a new one, although, there are parts of the previous body in there,’ he said and pointed to a body on a nearby stretcher.
Frankie glanced over and saw the naked female body with the back of its head opened up wide like the petals of a flower, showing its hollow insides where her brain used to be. Seeing herself laid there again only brought back the memories of seeing her old biological body on a similar stretcher, covered in blood with the top of her skull sitting on a tray nearby and her brain no longer in her head. That had been a much more distressing sight than this was, but the similarities were uncanny.
She looked away and back up to the doctor, trying to smile and seem unconcerned while putting those memories and thoughts of body horror away as best she could. She figured these feelings of violation and the idea that this wasn’t really her body would always be with her. It was such a key part of her life now, and such a huge change in her that she guessed she would never escape it fully.
But she felt more comfortable in her cybernetic body than she ever had previously, which was saying a lot given what she had been through. This was at least in part because Xenox had stepped up and was now willing to help her and make the changes that she needed to feel more like her old self.
Xenox was not someone she had really trusted before, and while it might take a while for her to trust him completely, she did feel much better about him these days and felt that she could generally put some faith in him now.
That was a step in the right direction.
She checked her internal clock and realised she had been unconscious for the whole night. It was early morning, and she needed to go and change her clothes as these were the same ones she had worn yesterday on the mission.
‘I’m going to get going. I want to sort myself out before the day begins. Thanks again for everything, I really appreciate it,’ she said.
‘My pleasure, honestly,’ he said.
She smiled back at him as she left the lab and headed for her quarters.
2.04
Frankie walked through the A.C.T. building, feeling clean and refreshed after a shower and a change of clothes. She’d barely started to get herself dressed when William messaged her to come to his office in about ten minutes.
This wasn’t unusual. William usually held meetings in the mornings to discuss the day's tasks, sometimes with just a few of them, sometimes with the whole team. She had no idea what this was going to be about as William had not given her any clues in his message, so she finished getting herself dressed and made her way out of the living area and down into the more official level of the building. This section of the A.C.T. building's sublevels consisted of lots of corridors linking offices, labs, computer rooms, the armoury, holding cells, briefing rooms, interrogation rooms, and more. For the moment, most of the rooms were empty as their team was small, but William kept a group of dolls on site, which acted as bodyguards and pilots, as well as a small staff of carefully vetted assistants.
Frankie knocked on William’s office door and waited.
‘Come in,’ called William from inside.
Frankie stepped into the office, which was a modest size with only a few simple furnishings, including a desk and a few chairs. William had few personal effects on display, but they hadn’t been in the building long.
William sat behind his desk while doctor Xenox and Cole, the bodyguard from the mission yesterday, sat in chairs opposite him, closer to Frankie. A spare seat sat waiting for her.
‘Aaah, Frankie, welcome. Come in, take a seat,’ William said.
‘Morning, William, Doctor, and Cole, it’s great to see you again. What brings you here?’ she said, looking at William. This was a covert operation in a covert base; you didn’t bring people back here unless they were to know what they were doing.
‘I was invited by Mr Forrester,’ Cole said anyway, even though she’d directed her question at the director.
‘That’s right,’ William agreed as Frankie took her seat. ‘I invited him here because I was impressed with his abilities and wanted to offer him a place on our team. We could do with someone with his experience on the frontlines with you and Gibson. Cole is ex-military Special Forces and would be a valuable asset to us. He also has no love for the Corporations,’ William said.
‘I can verify that,’ Xenox sai
d. ‘We did an extensive background check. He would be a great addition to the team.’
Cole smiled at the comments, probably amused by how they were talking about him like he wasn’t there, thought Frankie.
‘Aaah, well, that’s great, then,’ she said. She had enjoyed working with Cole and had found him easy to work with on the last mission. He was clearly well trained and a capable fighter; the fact that he held similar views to them was the icing on the cake, really. ‘Welcome aboard, Cole.’
‘Thank you, Frankie. I’m looking forward to it,’ Cole said.
‘So, Frankie here will be your team leader,’ William said to Cole.
Cole nodded to Frankie. ‘Sounds good,’ he said.
‘Will the Foreign Secretary be okay without you there to protect him?’ Frankie asked.
‘I have personally chosen his new security team, and I have complete trust in their abilities. He’ll be quite safe,’ Cole said.
‘Excellent.’ Frankie smiled.
‘Will you show him around?’ William asked.
‘Of course, that would be my pleasure,’ Frankie said.
‘As we’re on the subject of new additions to the team,’ Xenox said. ‘I’d like to ask that we find someone to take on the role of Digital Support.’
‘Absolutely,’ Frankie agreed. ‘We need an I.T. guy, a hacker, someone who can do that job full time. Expecting the doc to do that as well as the prosthetics and medical side of things is asking a lot, I think.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ William agreed. ‘Do you have anyone in mind?’
Xenox frowned and thought for a moment, but he didn’t seem to have any ideas.
‘Well, I have been thinking about this recently,’ said Frankie, ‘and I think there might be someone I can look into. His name’s Dion and he was a neighbour of mine and seemed to be a part of the hacker community. I could look into him?’
‘That sounds like a long shot, Frankie. Do you have any idea if he’s right for this?’
‘No, I have no proof, but I’m sure he has no love for the Corporations, and I have a hunch that he’ll be a good fit. But if I don’t look into it, then I’ll never know, will I? It would mean a trip back to my apartment building, though,’ Frankie said.
‘That shouldn’t be an issue for you. You can make minor cosmetic changes to your appearance, enough to throw off any Corporate agents on the lookout for you,’ Xenox said.
‘Oh, really? I had no idea,’ Frankie answered.
‘It’s a new feature I added. I forgot to mention it earlier. You can change the colour of your hair, eyes and skin, as well as grow your hair quite quickly, too; about a centimetre a minute.’
‘Oh, well, that sounds good. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue, then,’ she said to William.
‘You want to get on that now?’ William asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
‘Okay, take Cole over to the living area and ask Gibson to show him about. I’ll get one of the doll pilots to fire up a flyer for you. Good luck,’ William said.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Frankie said, standing up. Cole stood up, too.
‘I’ll get the lab ready to deregister your bots for you,’ Xenox said to Cole.
‘Thank you for the opportunity, sir,’ Cole said to William. He thanked Xenox as well before he followed Frankie out of the director’s office and through the corridors outside and into the nearby elevator, pressing the button for the floor above.
‘I can’t believe you guys are doing this, taking on the Corps. That’s hardcore, man,’ Cole said as the doors shut.
‘Oh, we know. Psytech already wants my head after what we did to them a few weeks ago. By the time we really get going, I don’t think there will be many Corporations that like us very much.’
‘And that doesn’t worry you, with the control that they have over everything?’
‘Sure, but I’d rather die knowing I tried to fight for something than to live in fear and do nothing,’ she said, exiting the elevator on the floor above where William’s office was.
Cole nodded as he followed her through another set of double doors.
‘So, this is the living quarters for those of us that live here. This is the communal area, and we have private quarters off the corridors that you see around here. There’s only a few of us here for the time being, and you’re, of course, welcome to live off base, but if the Corps find out who you are, they might come hunting for you, so there will always be a space for you here.’
‘Understood,’ Cole said.
Frankie noticed Gibson step out of a side corridor and walked over to him, with Cole following close behind. ‘Gibson, do you have a moment?’
Gibson stopped and turned. ‘Sure, what can I do for you?’ he said.
Ω
Frankie walked up the rear ramp of the flyer, pulling on the slide of her gun to load a round into the chamber before she slipped the gun into the back of her leggings beneath her mustard yellow jacket.
‘We are ready for lift off,’ said the doll stood before her. The android stood there in a black outfit that had the look of a flight suit, but without any of the inbuilt technology that was designed to fight off the effects of high-G manoeuvres that would normally be found in flight suits for humans. Its head and hands were still visible, though, with its tell-tale shiny porcelain-looking armoured skin and expressionless face.
‘Excellent, then let’s go. Here are the coordinates for the destination,’ she said, before sending over the details through her Neural Net link with the doll. She sat in a flight seat and strapped herself in before leaning back and accessing the settings in her cyber brain. In her field of vision, a menu popped up with a number of options. She quickly spotted one labelled appearance and accessed it. This opened up another menu, listing her hair colour, length and style, eye and skin colour. She figured she would make a simple change for now. She wanted to pass by unnoticed in case there were any Corporate guards, but as she was only going to pay a visit to Dion’s apartment, it would be unlikely that the Corporation would spot her. Besides, she would be going into the building from the roof
She accessed the hair setting and changed the colour of her hair to white. She didn’t really feel much of anything, other than a very slight tingling sensation on her scalp for a second.
She cancelled the menu and held her hair out to where she could see it, and sure enough, her hair was white.
She smiled. That was easy, she thought. She pulled out a pair of shades and put them on, hoping this would be enough and waited a few more minutes until the doll messaged her, saying they were on final approach.
‘Thank you. Don’t land, just open the doors when you’re close and hover a short distance above the deck,’ she sent back through their neural link.
The doors started to open, so she walked forward, holding onto a Kevlar flat weave hand-hold dangling from the roof. She watched below her as roads and buildings passed by, hundreds or sometimes thousands of meters down.
Suddenly, a rooftop swung into view, much closer as the flyer slowed to a hover.
‘We’re on station,’ said the doll directly into her mind.
‘Move into a holding pattern once I’m down, and wait for my signal before returning,’ she sent back through the neural link.
‘Copy that,’ the doll answered.
Satisfied, Frankie stepped forward to the very edge of the ramp and looked down to check her landing site. She waited for a second for the flyer to drift slightly away from an obstacle before she stepped off the ramp and dropped the forty feet to the reinforced concrete below. Her legs took the force of the landing well. She ended up in a crouch with a couple of cracks in the rooftop beneath her.
‘Down and clear,’ she sent to the doll.
‘Copy that, moving off station now,’ the doll said. Frankie looked up and watched the flyer bank sideways and rise into the air, into the spaces between the buildings where other flyers went about their business.
The downdraft
from the two propellers on either side of the flyer sent a backwash blowing past her, making her coat flap wildly in the wind and sending her hair whipping about in all directions.
It soon passed, though, as she stood and straightened herself out.
She looked about her and found what she was looking for: a weathered metal cabinet with some stickers on it that had seen better days, warning people to keep out with a threat of prosecution for offenders.
She scanned it for wireless ports that she could remotely hack into but got no reading from it.
So, Frankie walked up to it, spotting the double locks on the inset door as she approached. Frankie pulled a fold-out knife from her inside pocket and opened up the blade. She stuck it into the edge of the door and levered the top lock open, bending the thin metal of the door in the process. Putting the knife away, she took hold of the door and yanked it open, breaking the second lock with ease.
The inside was filled with wires and sockets over the top of a complicated looking circuit board. She scanned over it, though, and, in a matter of seconds, picked out a remote access board with a socket and a switch, which had a wireless logo on it. The switch was off. Frankie flicked it to “on”, and suddenly an access port icon popped up in her vision.
Frankie connected to it and sent in a cracking program which quickly got to work on the firewall. It didn’t take long as the building's security wasn’t exactly state of the art, and she quickly had access to the building’s intranet.
She quickly navigated to the information on the residents and ran a search on Dion’s surname, which she knew to be Neil. There were a couple of listings in the building, only one of which was on the floor where her old apartment was. Satisfied, she headed to the doorway that led off the roof and broke through it with a swift kick. She noticed there were still some blood stains out here from the remains of Dion’s friends, killed by the Corporate agents that had come to kill Frankie. That had been the last time she had seen Dion. He’d been hurt, and she suggested that he get to a nearby hospital before she’d left on the Corporate flyer with Gibson.
Promethean Files 2: The Prometheus Gambit Page 5
