His legs hadn’t worked at all when she’d first found him, the Corp he owed money too had shut them down. But with the help of one of the labs she had a good relationship with, they’d been able to hack the Corps code and give him some mobility back. Nothing like what he’d been capable of before, and still much slower than a purely natural human, but at least he wasn’t sitting in his own piss and shit anymore.
‘Hey Jude, how’ve you been?’ she asked.
‘Oh, hi Frankie. Yeah, I’ve been okay, you know,’ he muttered. He sounded down and depressed, understandable considering.
‘Anything I can do to help?’ she asked.
‘Not unless you can give me a new set of legs,’ he joked.
‘I wish I could. Have they been working okay?’
‘I’ve had a few issues with them, but nothing I can’t manage.’
‘I can always see if we can get you back into the lab, what’s the issue?’ she asked.
‘It’s my right leg. It’s picked up a few glitches, nothing major, but… hey, look, I’m fine, don’t worry about it, there’s others around here that need your help more than me.’
‘I’ll get to them, but for now, I’m talking to you,’ she smiled.
Loud engines roared nearby, followed by horns blaring, loud shouts and whoops of several people.
She knew what these sounds meant, and after listening for a moment looked back at Jude.
‘Jackers,’ she exclaimed.
‘Aaah shit certainly sounds like it. Go on, get out of here,’ he said.
‘No chance,’ she answered. ‘Not without you.’
‘I’ll only slow you down, I can hide,’ he offered.
‘No dice,’ she quipped as she got on one knee and started to help him up. He was heavy, and his legs were having some issues, occasionally shuddering as the hacker code within them fought against the Corps own code.
As she got him to his feet, she could hear shouting and yells of pain close to the entrance she had come in here through.
‘There’s other ways out of here aren’t there?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, there’s one over there,’ he pointed, so she started to head that way, his arm over her shoulder as she helped him walk. His black prosthetics scraped the concrete floor as they attempted to walk through the camp and escape the Jacker Gang.
A couple of the guys who lived here ran past them, nearly knocking her over. She wasn’t entirely sure how she managed to keep hold of Jude and remain on her feet, but she did. They took a few more steps when they heard the sounds of fighting up ahead. Frankie considered her options, and just had a bad feeling that a Jacker was about to walk around that corner at any moment.
Makeshift shelters were on both sides of her, so she pushed through the plastic sheeting that covered the door to the one on their left and stepped inside.
The place seemed unoccupied, so they backed round a corner and waited.
Sure enough, she could hear the sounds of booted feet walking outside approaching the shelter.
‘Look in all of these shitty things? He’s gotta be kidding me,’ said a voice outside.
‘That’s what he said,’ answered another.
‘Well I ain’t doing that, I got shit to do,’ answered the first voice.
As she stood there, silent, she noticed the scared face of a little boy buried in the junk, very well hidden with only his eyes being at all noticeable.
Frankie raised a finger to her lips, indicating that he should keep quiet. The boy nodded, agreeing with her.
Moments later, the voices and the footsteps receded, so she thanked the boy, and manoeuvred Jude back to the entrance and with a glance in both directions, left the shelter behind.
She moved along the row, doing her best to try and anticipate any Jackers finding them.
‘Hey, you?’ came a shout from behind them, making her stomach do somersaults in fear.
She stopped, and gingerly looked back the way they’d come in time to see a tattooed Jacker with a bionic eye, staring at her.
‘Ugh, hi! Um, gotta go, she said turning away from the Jacker and continuing on her way, only to see two more gang members, another man and a woman, both with prosthetics of their own, appear in front of her. She stopped and eyed them suspiciously.
‘Hey guys, so… um, let’s talk about this shall we?’ she said.
‘Where are you going with our legs little lady?’ asked one of the Jackers.
‘Oh, nowhere, you know, just out for a walk. We’ll be back before you know it,’ Frankie answered.
The Jackers walked towards them, looking like they were enjoying this far too much for her liking.
‘I don’t think so,’ said the second man, his head shaven clean. He had two Cybernetic arms in addition to his two organic arms and was a very well built man. ‘Hey, Razor, you think those legs would look good on me?’ the four armed man said to the woman stood next to him, who had a pair of digitigrade prosthetic legs herself.
‘Sure would,’ she said and smiled at Frankie and Jude.
Frankie scowled at the Jackers but had no idea what she could do. She’d been in dangerous situations before, but this one seemed like it might be the worst.
‘Go, get out of here. Go on, leave, it’s me they want anyway,’ Jude whispered to her.
She glanced at the small gaps between the shelters. It was possible that, on her own, she could maybe slip through the gaps and make her escape, but she wouldn’t be able to take Jude with her. She’d be leaving him to die as these Jackers would most likely hack off his legs and take the prosthetics for themselves. It’s what Jackers and Tech Gangs like this did.
‘I’m not leaving you,’ she said after a pause to weigh up her options. She could maybe escape, as they were obviously more interested in Jude than in her, but nothing was certain, and she could just as easily be chased down by them or run into other members of this Cyber Gang.
Jude was suddenly hit from behind and flew forward and out of her grasp. He fell to the floor and splashed through the puddles he landed in. The Jacker that had been behind them had quietly moved up and kicked Jude in the back. Frankie looked up at the tattooed man in shock, only for him to backhand her across the face with his Cyberized hand. Her head rang, and she yelped in pain from the hit as she dropped to the floor.
Reaching up, she touched her jaw and felt the warm wetness as she bled onto her hand. Her jaw felt like it had been ripped from her face it hurt so much.
She looked over at Jude to see the three Jackers kicking him. The four armed man stopped and pulled a huge machete from his belt, and Frankie felt the anger rise within her. She just saw red, jumped to her feet, ignoring the pain in her face and ran over to the nearest Jacker leaping onto his back.
She screamed as she hit the man in the head, again and again, feeling nothing but rage and hatred, not only for these Jackers but for the whole thing, the whole system that created these people.
She hated the Corporations and the selfish corporate elite who were raping this society. She hated the fact that we let them do it, we enabled them and bought into their plan, becoming culpable after the fact.
She let it all out, all the rage and anger and channelled it into her punches and bites.
The Jacker moved and threw himself forward. She couldn’t hold on and flew through the air, landing in the dirt against a metal wall of a shelter. Her head swam with the impact, her vision blurry with the pain. After a moment she pulled herself up into a sitting position and looked up, thinking she could hear someone talking to her.
In front of her stood the woman with the cyber legs, holding a gun pointed at her body.
‘Wait…’ Frankie said, raising a hand in protest, only for the pistol to bark at her anyway. Its muzzle flashed yellow as it fired a quick staccato burst.
It felt like her stomach had exploded, as if a bomb had gone off in it. Her mind reeled as she went into shock, her brain becoming overloaded with pain signals.
She dropped sideways an
d lost all track of time as her life essence drained onto the ground beneath her.
She saw the Jackers carry Jude away while they laughed at her, she saw the faces of the people she had helped and wondered if she had made a difference? If her work down here had been in vain or not?
She wondered if she would do anything differently if she had her time again. Would she have run from her parents and her family against their wishes to pursue this personal goal? Had the Corporations even noticed her? She doubted it. She hadn’t even made a dent in their empires. Not even a scratch.
She saw another face swim into view, a face she thought she recognised. Was it Detective Gibson? Was he here to save her?
‘Frankie? Are you in there?’
‘Detective,’ she said, ‘you found me…’
Her vision swam again, and she saw the face of Doctor Xenox from the Lab she had passed earlier that night.
‘Can you hear me, Frankie? I can save you if you want me too…’ he said.
‘Save me…?’
It was as if she was underwater and looking up through the surface the way her vision swam and changed. One moment it was the Doctor, the next it was the Detective, and then Jude, a sad expression on his face.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save you…’ she heard Jude say before the vision faded.
‘Save me… Save me…’ she muttered, repeating his words.
The lights were moving then, or was it herself that was moving? She couldn’t tell.
‘Hold on Frankie, I can save you, just hold on,’ said a voice nearby. She didn’t know who was speaking anymore. Xenox, Gibson, Jude? She’d lost all judgement, and everything was blending and blurring into one.
A bright light filled her vision, and she saw a masked man stood over her briefly, followed by a pain in her arm, a new pain that soon faded along with the world as a whole. Everything slowly faded away. All the noise, the sights and bright lights, all of it as she descended into a black oblivion of fitful dreams, strange images and thoughts that made no sense.
1.03
Frankie felt herself begin to rise from the darkness, the strange dreams she couldn’t quite get a grasp of faded and slipped away from her as sounds started to register. She could hear humming, the sound of cooling fans or electronic equipment perhaps, and then a voice, a voice she thought she recognised, but struggled to place right away.
‘Frankie? Can you hear me, Frankie? Are you awake?’
She felt strange. She could feel her body, but… it wouldn’t move, and it didn’t feel quite right. She tried to move her neck, to stretch her muscles, but nothing happened. However, she found she could move her jaw and her facial muscles. With an effort, she opened her eyes and knew something was very different. She didn’t feel at all tired. She felt alert and ready if only she could move.
Suddenly, icons like on a Data Pad flicked into life around the edges of her vision. Then, to one side, text appeared in a window and scrolled up in front of her. It moved incredibly fast, and yet, she understood it. She knew what it meant. It listed the date and time, noting that she had apparently slept the night and one whole day away, and then a long list of “systems” coming “online” and passing some diagnostics tests. She started to get a bit of a sinking feeling as her suspicions grew.
In front of her stood Doctor Xenox holding a Data Pad and tapping at it occasionally and looking up at her. Xenox was a thin looking man in his fifties maybe if she had to guess, with a shock of white hair, combed back from his face making him look like he had been blasted with wind. He wore a lab coat and had two chrome metallic attachments, one over each eye. They might even be artificial eyes. She wasn’t sure.
‘Frankie?’
‘Xenox? Doctor Xenox? Is that you?’ she asked.
He smiled up at her. ‘It is, yes. Welcome back.’
‘What? Welcome…? Where are we? What have you done to me?’
‘I saved your life,’ he said.
Memories suddenly flooded back, images of the Jacker girl firing her gun at her and the incredible pain she’d felt in her stomach.
‘You found me?’ she asked.
‘I did.’
‘And you… healed me?’
The Doctor pressed his lips together. ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. I did the only thing I could. You were very badly hurt, and there was only one way for me to save you.’
‘What have you done?’ she said, her voice demanding.
‘I gave you a new body,’ he said and tapped on his Pad.
Her vision glitched with digital static for a fraction of a second, and she found she suddenly had use of her neck muscles again. She watched as the Doctor gestured to her right, to a nearby gurney with a female body laid out on it. The injuries to her lower torso were severe. She could see her insides and the huge loss of blood that she had sustained, as most of it was on the floor. A green surgical cloth covered her face up to just above the eyebrows, revealing the top of the head, or what was left of it. The top of the skull had been cut off like a lid with a clean surgical cut and the brain removed.
Frankie felt odd. Like she should be feeling sick to her stomach, and about ready to throw up, but although she felt sickened by what was before her, she knew she wouldn’t actually vomit.
Still, she had a horrible feeling that the body she was looking at, the body she was no longer inside of, had been hers.
‘Is that…’ she couldn’t finish the sentence and hoped that the Doctor would know what she was going to ask.
‘…Your body? Yes, it was your body. But now you have a new one.’
She slowly looked down at herself, and quickly noticed that she was naked. Not only that, but she felt like she didn’t recognise her own body. The shape was different. It was a subtle difference, but she knew it wasn’t hers. She also noticed she had no nipples on her breasts and there seemed to be various lines, like seams where she had been assembled, running across many parts of her body.
‘What the fuck have you done!’ she exclaimed. ‘What is this? This isn’t me? I… Shit, what the hell?’
‘Calm down, you’re not helping yourself,’ he interjected.
‘Calm down? Don’t you tell me to calm down. You’re not the one strung up and inside a body you don’t recognise,’ she accused him.
‘Look, I appreciate that, but it was the only way…’
‘And why can’t I move? What’s going on?’
‘I’m restricting your movement, which, given your reaction, was probably a good idea,’ he mused, almost to himself.
‘You’re doing this?’
‘Well, LUCI, the mainframe is,’ he said, indicating the computer stations behind him.
‘Well, I’m awake now, let me down, let me go.’
‘Hmmm, well. Not quite yet, I might wipe your memory. It might make this easier,’ he said.
‘You’re what?!’ she exclaimed. ‘You can’t do that. Why would you do that?’
‘Well look at yourself, look how you’re acting.’
‘I’m acting like anyone would do, who had been through a back alley surgical procedure, without their consent.’
‘You gave me your consent, you asked me to save you,’ he corrected her.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Well, actually, yes you did. I told you I could save you and I asked if you wanted me to, and you agreed with me,’ he stated.
‘I was delirious and in shock, you can’t ask me questions like that when I’m in shock from a gunshot to my stomach. I probably wasn’t thinking straight. I can barely remember any of it as it is,’ she explained. She looked over at the bloody mess of her body on the gurney and sighed, noting that she found, she hadn’t been breathing like usual. She’d been drawing in breath to speak, which mean she had some artificial vocal cords, but she clearly didn’t need to breathe to survive.
She eyed the mess of her natural body again, icons popping up in her vision over the body analysing the wounds and giving estimates about what her chance of survival
would have been based on the data her Cyberbrain had.
The wounds looked severe, fatal probably. And yet, here she was, alive, in a manner of speaking.
She might not agree with his methods, but, it appeared that he had saved her life, she thought, calming herself down.
‘Look, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It seems like you have saved my life, from what I can tell, so, although I might not agree with your methods, I am grateful for that.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘Thank you, even with the caveats, I appreciate the sentiment.’
‘Don’t think for one second though that you’re forgiven. I’m still not happy, and the way you’ve gone about this… well, it leaves something to be desired, that’s for damn sure.’ She grumbled, doing her best not to get too angry before a question popped into her mind. ‘Anyway, why me?’
‘Why not you?’ he asked.
‘Just seems a little, random?’
‘Not really. I’ve been looking for someone to inhabit my creation for a while, and you were pretty high on my list of choices, so…’
‘You saw me go past your lab yesterday, didn’t you?’ she accused him, making a mental leap.
‘I saw you, yes, and when I heard the Tech Gang, I thought I’d check out the aftermath, just in case, you know.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ, you were out there looking for someone to harvest?’ she said, feeling her anger rise again.
‘That’s one way of putting it, yes.’
‘You are a fucking animal. You know that? A psycho! I feel like you’ve raped me and now I have to live with this monstrosity,’ she yelled looking down at herself, unable to keep her rage in check and wanting just to rant and shout at this monster of a human being.
Xenox tapped his pad, and suddenly her voice stopped working. She could still move and do everything that she needed to do to talk, but there was no noise. It was as if her vocal cords had just stopped working.
She panicked for a moment, trying to shout and scream as loud as she could, but to no avail.
The doctor looked up at her and seemed to be resigning himself to something.
‘Frankie, you’re not leaving me with many choices here, I’m going to have to run a memory wipe on you. I can’t have you acting like this,’ he said, deadpan as he walked towards his workstation.
Promethean Files 1: The New Prometheus Page 3
