Promethean Files 2: The Prometheus Gambit

by Andrew Dobell

  ‘No, they saved me… from you!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You went rogue. You got caught up in her schemes with that doctor and their vendetta against Psytech.’

  ‘They’re lying to you, they’ve been deceiving you. That’s not true. If you knew what had happened to Frankie, what they did to innocent bystanders as they tried and find her, what they did to the guys at work…’

  ‘Know Frankie, well do you?’ Camille asked.

  ‘What? What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘You’re quite close to her, aren’t you,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting. She’s a friend, someone in trouble who needed help. I’m a police officer, Camille. I help people; that’s what I do.’

  ‘I know what you do. You help yourself whenever you feel like it. You’ve been helping yourself to her as well, right?’

  ‘That’s crap, Camille, and you know it. Come back to me, we can start over.’

  ‘You’re a terrorist, Richard. You’ve killed innocents. I never want anything to do with you again, and neither does Stephie.’

  ‘You’re being unreasonable, Cammi,’ Gibson answered her, his voice sounding ever more desperate to Frankie.

  ‘Am I? I’ve seen the footage of you killing security guards when you broke into this building. They were just innocent men and women who were just doing their job. If that’s not the actions of a murderer or terrorist, then I don’t know what is?’

  ‘Cammi, it’s not what it seems. If you only knew the truth, if you only knew what Psytech was really like.’

  ‘They,’ Camille said, putting emphasis on the word, ‘have treated me with respect and dignity, unlike you. I mean, come on, we both know we’ve been drifting apart recently. I know you’ve seen other women. I’ve seen other men, and you’ve never got on with Stephie very well. It’s not been working for months.’

  ‘We can make it work again, make it like it was. I know we can…’ Gibson said. He sounded desperate, now.

  ‘Frankie, I’m picking up some security alerts, whatever you’re doing, I’d finish up soon,’ Dion said to her over the neural link.

  ‘Copy that,’ Frankie answered through the link.

  ‘You don’t want that, Rick,’ Camille replied to Gibson, her voice sounding more serious.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. But whatever happens to us afterwards, I can’t in good conscience leave you here. I’ve told you before what the Corporations are capable of. What they do to hamstring the police on a daily basis, you know this.’

  ‘I’ve heard your side of the story, you mean, and now I’ve seen theirs and seen you following her around like a lost puppy dog while breaking and entering and shooting people. Who am I to believe?’ Camille asked. ‘Look, you were the first to pull away from me. You were the first to cheat, and now you want to save our marriage?’

  ‘I want to save your life, and Stephie’s,’ Gibson corrected her.

  Movement caught Frankie eye as a door opened to her right. Frankie turned and pointed her gun.

  ‘That’s all very noble, Detective Richard Gibson. Really it is, but ultimately, futile,’ said a female voice. The speaker was a woman in a very sharp and expensive looking business suit, all dark colours, sumptuous fabrics and clean lines that hugged her hips and cinched in at her waist. The skirt ended at her knee, and her high heels clicked on the floor as she walked into the room. She was preceded in by a cadre of black-clad C-SWAT operators, their guns trained on Frankie and Gibson. The security forces kept the woman surrounded while they spread out to either side as well, flanking Frankie.

  - WARNING: Hacking attempt detected. Countermeasures deployed. –

  Icons suddenly started to appear in Frankie vision, blinking red warnings to her as Psytech attempted to hack into her cyber brain while Frankie’s countermeasures kept them at bay and out of her mind.

  ‘Time’s up,’ Frankie whispered to Gibson as she backed off, away from the woman. She pulled Gibson with her while Camille moved towards the corporate security with her daughter.

  Frankie felt sure she recognised the voice of that woman as well. She sounded just like the person she and Gibson had heard over the phone line when his wife had been kidnapped and someone from Psytech had called with demands. Her name had been Marissa Webb. Was this her, finally, in the flesh?

  ‘Stand down, Detective, and you as well, Francesca. You’ve had a good run at this little rebellion of yours, and, I have to say, it’s quite cute that you thought you could break in here and take Camille back, but it’s all over now. Camille has seen your true colours, Richard, so, I’m not sure she’d go with you now, anyway. But, if you were to work with us?’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘You’re Marissa Webb, right? The one who called to tell us you had kidnapped Camille and Steph?’ Frankie asked. Despite the overwhelming number of security personnel in here, Frankie felt strangely optimistic. It seemed like they had no idea that they had really come here for Brenna. ‘You’re on your way out, right?’ Frankie messaged to her team through the neural link.

  ‘Well ahead of you, Frankie,’ Cole said over the link.

  ‘Kidnapped is such an ugly word for what we did,’ Marissa said.

  ‘It’s a very accurate word for what you did. Brainwashing is another,’ Gibson hit back.

  ‘Now, now, come on. We’ve only shown your wife the truth. That’s hardly brainwashing, now is it,’ Marissa said. ‘And, anyway, I want to help you. It looks like you and Camille are headed for a divorce anyway, and I’m sure you’d like some kind of access to Stephie, right? We can help with that, or not. Depends if you want to see her ever again really.’

  As Marissa talked, Frankie noticed another woman in the midst of the security guys. She’d walked in just behind Marissa and had kept back, out of the way. But as Marissa talked, she walked around closer to Frankie, looking at her in a way that made Frankie feel very uncomfortable, like some kind of insect being studied under the microscope.

  She wore black trousers that hugged her hips and flared out over her boots with a dark coloured turtle neck sweater. She wore her hair pulled back from her face in a harsh but neat bun, and she also had some obvious cybernetics. Including a pair of prosthetic black metal eyes and some subdermal circuitry visible at her temples, around her hairline. and creeping around onto her cheeks.

  Frankie watched as the woman rounded another guard and peered at her, looking her up and down.

  ‘Don’t mind Wynter, she doesn’t mean to be rude’ Marissa said to Frankie then. Frankie glanced over at Marissa. ‘She was just keen to come and see you in the flesh after hearing about you being Xenox’s creation.’

  ‘Why?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Because I was his former protégé,’ Wynter answered in a husky sounding voice. ‘That’s why, and, I have to say, he really has surpassed himself with you. I’d love to get a look under that skin of yours,’ Wynter said, her dark eyes gleaming. They looked soulless, like pits of darkness in her face.

  ‘Is that right?’ Frankie said, backing towards one wall of the room, which she knew to be an outer wall of the whole building.

  ‘Camille, think about what you’re doing, please,’ Gibson called after his wife, who just looked at him with eyes full of distrust and suspicion.

  ‘We’re getting out of here,’ Frankie said to Gibson over their link. ‘We can’t stay here.’

  ‘I know, this was hopeless,’ he answered her.

  Frankie sensed the movement behind her, and reacted quickly, ducking the lunge from an operator who tried to grab her. His attempt was slow and lazy looking to her, so dodging him was easy. She threw an elbow into his side as she moved, hearing the crack of his ribs as she hit home. The man grunted and crumpled to the floor at Frankie’s feet as another man appeared from behind the first and raised his gun, pointing it at her face.

  2.19

  Frankie moved quicker than the gunman could track her, stepping
forward she grabbed the weapon that he desperately tried to aim at her. Frankie pointed the firearm harmlessly at the wall where it discharged before Frankie was able to twist it from the operator’s grip, breaking several of his fingers in the process. Frankie kicked him away to the side where he dropped to the floor, holding his broken hand.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Wynter from a short distance away. Frankie looked up at her, seeing the fascination in her eyes and recognising the look as one that Xenox had given her countless times. She felt like an object, an invention that was now being put through its paces by its creator who looked on in utter fascination. There was a total lack of empathy there. Wynter didn’t see her as a person, she saw Frankie as a product, something to be improved upon, adjusted, and fine-tuned.

  Frankie looked away and pulled out a sticky bomb from her belt pouch and threw it at the wall before ducking to one side as the thing blew just a second or so later.

  The room was rocked by its powerful but focused explosion. The shaped charge focused its energy on the wall and blew a six-foot hole in the concrete and metal. Frankie moved again and pulled Gibson out through the hole with a single glance back into the room, watching people ducking for cover while Wynter looked on in fascination and Marissa frowned with a face like thunder.

  They fell from the playroom, hundreds of meters up above the glowing city streets below them. Frankie’s heavy body dropped like a stone, the wind whipping past her, roaring in her ears as she fell.

  ‘Wing suits,’ Frankie sent to Gibson through the link.

  ‘Copy that,’ Gibson replied to her.

  With a single thought directed at their stealth suits operating system, webbing snapped out between her arms and the sides of her body, and between her legs, turning her into a flying wing. Gibson did the same, and they brought their descent under control and started to glide away from the Psytech building. They zipped between the towers of other buildings, putting more and more real-estate between them and Psytech, and hopefully avoiding any kind of pursuit.

  ‘You okay back there?’ Frankie asked as she banked around another tower, its glowing windows whipping past her at breakneck speed.

  ‘Gutted, pissed off, frustrated, but alive, at least,’ Gibson growled through the link.

  ‘You’ll live to fight another day,’ Frankie offered, feeling suddenly free and elated after that tense confrontation as they dove between flyers and underneath elevated highways. Their black outlines would be barely visible as blurred shadows moving silently through the night air. In her heads up display, Frankie could see everything clearly as they flew into the concrete canyons of the city. This was a new experience for her, and one she had taken a liking to right away.

  ‘If you say so. So, where are we headed?’

  ‘Over there. Let’s find a rooftop we can use,’ she said, before sending a coded message to the doll pilot they had on standby. They would need picking up. Frankie then angled her descent left, zipping between two buildings and out over an area of the city that hadn’t been built up so much, meaning they were above the buildings once more.

  ‘Follow me,’ Frankie said and aimed for a rooftop, pulling her parachute shortly before reaching it. She slowed to a more leisurely drop and finally alighted on the roof just before Gibson, who came in decidedly softer than she did. Her heavy carbon nanorod skeleton meant that the chute didn’t slow her fall as much as it did Gibson’s.

  ‘Pick up by flyer at my location,’ Frankie sent through her neural link to the doll pilot who was now inbound. She turned and looked over at Gibson. On landing, he’d dropped to his knees and stayed there with a look of defeat all over his face.

  ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out as you’d hoped,’ Frankie said, gathering up her chute.

  Gibson looked up at her and smiled. But it was a sad smile, one that said thank you for the sentiment, but little else. ‘I thought she knew better than that. I thought she understood the way things are…’ he muttered.

  ‘Not everyone is going to understand what we’re doing. Not everyone is going to agree with our fight. Some will be happy with the status-quo and see us as a threat to that.’

  ‘Camille knows what the Corps do. She’d heard me talk about it before, countless times.’

  ‘They could be offering her anything. You don’t know what she is dealing with, what she has to weigh up. You can’t compete with that, not while your relationship with her is falling apart. Anything could seem like a better offer to her at this point,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Yeah, I know. I just… I know what the Corps are capable of. I wanted to save her from that.’

  ‘I know, and you did your best. You tried. Short of dragging her from that building, there was little you could do. Your conscience is clear, Richard,’ she said.

  He looked up at her, apparently noticing the use of his first name, and smiled. This time, the smile looked more genuine as he nodded, clearly thinking about her words, and maybe agreeing with them.

  Engines roared over the sounds of the city as their flyer dropped in and bumped down to the rooftop, its rear loading hatch lowering to the floor.

  ‘Tell me you’re out of there, Cole,’ Frankie sent through the neural link.

  ‘We’re out. Brenna is with us. We’ll meet you back at base, you still back there?’ Cole answered her.

  ‘Excellent news. No, we’re out, too. We’ve been picked up and we’re heading back now. See you there,’ she said as the flyer’s hatch closed up behind them before lifting off into the neon city.

  Ω

  Frankie walked into the hanger from the lower levels of the base to see William, Isaac the Foreign Minister, his wife and Secretary Clare and Zhou Tan, waiting for the van to arrive with the rest of Frankie’s team and Brenna.

  ‘How’s Gibson?’ William asked.

  ‘He’s fine. I left him in his quarters. He’s got a lot to process after all that,’ Frankie said.

  ‘So, you saw his wife and child?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘It was Brenna who put us onto them, yes, but it didn’t go as planned. They’ve been turned against him by the Corporation, which is not really very surprising,’ Frankie said.

  ‘That was always the risk,’ Isaac agreed.

  Frankie glanced at William and pinged him through a neural link. William opened the link up right away.

  ‘What’s up?’ William asked through the link.

  ‘Why’s Zhou here?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘He insisted on being here. He has a history with Brenna and wanted to meet her on arrival. I saw no harm in that,’ he answered through the link.

  The door to the side of the hanger opened up and the lights from the van spilt over the concrete floor in front of them before the van pulled in.

  ‘But the extraction of Brenna went smoothly,’ William asked out loud.

  ‘As far as I can tell. It certainly did up until Gibson and I were separated from the others, and I’ve not heard anything to say they had any trouble getting her back here,’ Frankie answered.

  The van drew up to them and stopped. The side doors opened up to reveal Kalypso, Dion, Veronica, and Brenna inside the back while Cole drove.

  Brenna looked up and scanned over the faces of Frankie and the others waiting for them, but on seeing Zhou, her face lit up.

  ‘Zhou? Is that you? I had no idea.’

  ‘Hello, Brenna, it is lovely to see you again,’ Zhou said.

  Brenna leapt out of the van and wrapped her arms around Zhou in a huge embrace, nearly lifting him off the floor.

  ‘This should work in our favour,’ Frankie said to William through their neural link.

  ‘I hope so, because she’s not on such great terms with Xenox,’ he answered her.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be here. Are you helping them with the virus as well?’ Brenna asked Zhou.

  ‘That’s right,’ Zhou answered her.

  ‘That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. It’ll be just like old times, but without Xenox, so, even better
,’ she said.

  Frankie raised her eyebrows at the comment, and she could also see the look of worry on Zhou’s face as well.

  ‘Where is the doctor?’ Frankie asked William over their link.

  ‘On the base somewhere. She needs to know he’s here, really. She will need to work with him on some level, at least.’

  ‘That’s what I feared,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Come, let me show you our team,’ Zhou said. ‘If that’s okay,’ he asked William.

  ‘Of course, let’s go,’ William answered, and led everyone over to the lift, which rose up to their level as they walked over to it.

  The doors opened up to reveal doctor Xenox standing inside. He looked up and stiffened upon seeing Brenna amongst the small crowd.

  ‘You! What are you doing here?’ Brenna growled at the doctor. ‘No, no wait… This is all your idea, right? The virus? You thought of this, didn’t you?’

  ‘Sort of… Brenna, look, I’m sorry,’ Xenox started.

  ‘Sorry? After all this time that’s all you can say? You left me behind in that hell hole, Xenox,’ she said. ‘Is he working on this virus as well? Is he working here?’

  ‘He is, yes,’ William answered her.

  ‘If he is, then I won’t,’ Brenna protested.

  ‘Brenna, no,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Brenna, please stay,’ Zhou grasped her arm as he spoke.

  ‘But he can’t be trusted,’ Brenna answered Zhou.

  ‘I think you’re wrong, he’s changed. Look, come on. Stay for me.’

  ‘He’s not changed. He’s still the selfish self-obsessed man with ideas above his station. I can tell just by looking at him. He left me there, at Psytech, after promising to get me out as well. Do you understand the hell that Psytech put me through after that? I was interrogated because they were convinced that I must have known about his plans to leave. Wynter especially had it in for me. I was banned from leaving the building for months and was forced to move into the tower. They made my life a living hell,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Zhou said.