She wandered the streets for a while, wondering what she could do to get out of here, feeling more frustrated by the day’s events as time went on. She felt trapped down here, unable to return to her old life, no matter what she did.
It was ironic really, given that she used to come down here to help the people who, through unfortunate circumstances of their own often involving Cybernetic bodies, had ended up trapped down here.
There was a running joke amongst the mid-level populace that a trip to the Undercity was a one-way trip, but it was also true, and to many, there was no coming back. They came down here to escape the Corporations and take advantage of the back alley labs, but they usually lost their old life in the process.
And now, because no good deed should go unpunished, she thought, it was her turn. Now she would be trapped down here.
This new city, Neo-London was built in the crater of the nuclear blast that had flattened old London. After the detonation and the resulting clean-up which had declared the area free of radiation, the choice had been made to rebuild and remake the city anew.
The huge shallow crater had filled with water from the Thames estuary around a large central island where the remains of the old capital still stood. Today, the central city sat atop these remains, which originally had been restored to a certain level, before the work stopped while the new city reached for the heavens above.
Neo-London had become an enormous multi-level metropolis centred around and on top of the crater island that was covered with massive skyscrapers and arcologies, built above the old town. The city itself had become a representation of the society that now encircled the globe with its all-powerful Corporations and impotent governments.
Frankie had wandered to the edge of the island where the street she stood on dipped and dropped into the waters of the Thames river that now encircled the central island city.
She stopped at the edge of the water. It’s gentle waves lapping at her boots as she looked out along the street, beneath the city above as it sunk steadily beneath the waves the further out she looked.
Beyond the edge of the Island and its metropolis, bridges stretched over the river, reaching out to the glittering towers of Greater Neo-London on the mainland.
She looked down at her wobbling reflection in the black waters, wondering where her life had gone wrong. She didn’t regret her life choices. She did what she had felt was right, and helping those less fortunate seemed like a worthwhile cause.
But somehow, it had led to this, and not only did she now feel trapped in a body that wasn’t hers, but she was also stuck in a part of the city she didn’t want to be in for any longer than needed.
She realised she had her hands out before her and focused on them, curling her fingers slowly and looking at the tiny details on them. They felt a part of her, the same way her hands had felt in her biological body. They were feminine human hands, slender with manicured nails, and yet, they weren’t hers.
Like most people, she assumed, she knew her own hands, knew what they looked like and the little unique parts of them, the tiny imperfections and idiosyncrasies of them. These new hands didn’t have any of those. They were alien to her, even if, when she closed her eyes, they felt unchanged.
Here, at the edge of the Undercity, away from the traffic and chaos further in, the streets were quiet. She hadn’t heard a Siren for a while, and she wondered if Psytech had called off the hunt for her, for the time being at least.
She stuffed her hands back into her coat pockets and turned away from the murky depths of the Thames, walking back into the city.
She walked, slowly, wandering the streets as the night drew in, eventually finding herself back in the vicinity of the Doctor’s Lab.
She sat around the corner from her usual checkpoint in an alleyway and listened in to the chatter on the security network, having hacked into their comms.
It didn’t take long. Frankie soon heard the report of her visit to the checkpoint earlier in the day, complete with a description of her and a video of her attacking the guards and fleeing the scene.
Even if the guards on this checkpoint were passingly familiar with her, she doubted they would let her pass. That would be more than their job would be worth.
She rested her head on her arms where she sat in the alley, feeling ever more dejected and at a complete loss of what she should be doing next.
Frankie turned her head and looked out at the street beyond. With night having fallen, the Undercity became a vista of artificial lights, like twinkling stars everywhere you looked. Even looking straight up, the lights on the underside of the city mid-levels filled her view.
A siren shrieked as a police car skidded past the alleyway and barrelled down the street away from her. She’d stopped flinching at them now. They weren’t after her from what she could tell, but as she watched this one move down the street in the direction of the Doctors Lab, she lifted her head up as a new thought occurred to her.
Richard Gibson. She wondered if he might help her.
She disconnected herself from the comms the security guys on the checkpoints used and scanned the digital signals that filled the air around her, soon finding the encrypted police bands. The dated S-AES encryption they used was showing its age, and within seconds, her hacking algorithms had bypassed the encryption, and she was inside the system.
She quickly ran a search for Richard Gibson, finding his online profile and schedule for the day.
Frankie had closed her eyes and dived into the net, allowing visualisations of what she was looking at to be viewable. She could look at documents and watch videos, or even interact in a VR environment with other Net users this way. She knew all this almost as if it were instinct, second nature to her even though it was all very new. It was certainly a very strange feeling.
For now, she just viewed the online profile for Richard, seeing what she could find out about him. Interestingly enough, his online profile appeared to be a little on the light side. She could see there were various reports on him and his work, but his basic details were a little bereft of any depth.
Was that on purpose?
She had no idea. Putting away Gibson’s profile she checked his schedule and the report of his movements today, seeing that once again he had been assigned to the Undercity, and the GPS of his Pad showed him to be only a few blocks over.
She could contact him right this moment, but, she decided that she wanted to see him, to watch him as he spoke, so she rose from her sitting position and left the alleyway behind.
Frankie walked the dark streets of the Undercity once more, moving through the people who lived down here, walking the streets going about their business.
The meagre public services did their best to keep on top of things like the collection of refuse, but the mountains of rubbish bags on the streets grew much too quickly for the sanitation workers to collect. The thrown out food attracted rats and foxes, many of which had become somewhat brazen in their foraging for food.
Everything seemed dark and dirty down here and all of it in need of repair. The only areas that were maintained with any dedication were the buildings and structures that supported the upper city.
Rightfully so, she figured. The city council, which was based in the upper city, and the Corps might be doing it out of their own self-interest, but it also meant that the upper city did not collapse on top of the Undercity as well.
Not that the residents down here were under any illusions about what the elites were up too.
A few blocks further on, Frankie moved down a narrow side street, the red and blue lights of nearby police vehicles lighting up the main street up ahead.
Approaching with caution, she walked up the alley as quietly as she could and, on reaching the end, peered around the edge of the wall to look at the scene beyond.
Unsure of what had happened here with her view blocked she logged into the Police Net, quickly discovering the report of a double homicide that had only just happened.
Although an interesting side detail, that wasn’t her purpose here, so Frankie continued to peer over onlookers and vehicles, looking for the detective. It took her a short while before she spotted him, but there he was, doing his job and talking with the team around him doing the clean-up.
She smiled. Not knowing many people and having a relatively small group of friends, most of them being work colleagues who would probably not be of much help to her, seeing Gibson gave her a sense of relief and hope.
Thoughts of work hadn’t entered her mind for a few days now she realised. She had been so caught up with what had been happening to her that she had totally forgotten about it.
She hadn’t called in sick or anything and hadn’t heard from them either. It made her wonder if she even still had a job after missing two days without notice?
Thinking about it now, though, she knew she didn’t care that much about it. She had far more pressing matters to attend to, for now at least.
Looking up again at Gibson, he seemed to be just watching and waiting now. He looked a little bored and tired, but then he usually looked that way. She figured now would be as good a time as any and concentrated on her hack. An icon flickered up close to him in her vision, pointing out the wireless connection she could make with him. She concentrated and created a secure connection to him through the police bands. It would look like a call from headquarters to him.
Looking up, she saw him react right away and turn from the scene before him and move out of the way to the side of a van.
The line opened up in her display with a small thumbnail image of the Detective next to a waveform of his voice.
‘This is Gibson,’ he said.
‘Hi Richard, it's Frankie…’ she said somewhat tentatively, wondering what he might think of her contacting him this way.
‘…urr, Frankie…?’ he asked.
‘From the streets, Frankie Gene, I saw you in the alleyway the other night.’ She clarified for him.
‘Oh, how did you…’ he began.
‘I’ve been through some changes… and I need your help… please,’ she interjected, not wanting to get sidetracked.
‘Changes? What’s happened? I had no idea you were a hacker.’
‘I wasn’t, I just… Look, it’s probably easier if we just meet and you can see for yourself.’
‘If you can hack into the Police band, why do you need me? He asked.
‘Hacking the Police comms and hacking the Corporations are a little different, I’m sure you can understand that. I don’t want to say too much, but, please, just meet me.’
‘Okay, sure. Where do you want to meet?’ he conceded.
‘Around the corner from where we last saw each other, there is a disused lot with a bunch of people living in tents and shacks,’ she said.
‘I know it,’ he said.
‘I’ll meet you there in an hour,’ she said and cut the line before he could answer.
She looked up and saw him flinch at the abrupt ending to their conversation. He then seemed to think for a short time before looking around him, probably rightly guessing that she was nearby.
She didn’t want to be spotted by him yet, though, so she headed back up they alleyway and away from the crime scene.
She made her way to the shanty town via a somewhat circuitous route, entering the area by one of the lesser known back entrances and making her way through the lot, and the gaps between the shelters towards the front.
It hadn’t changed much since she was last here, people still clung onto what was left of their lives here as their prosthetics became less and less mobile, eventually becoming nothing better than a paperweight.
She stopped by the small shack that Jude usually slept in and poked her head inside. It looked pretty much as he had left it, and as yet, no one had taken it over. She stepped inside and crouched down by the old stained mattress that had sagged in the middle, and bowed her head.
‘I’m sorry Jude,’ she said to no one. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, that I couldn’t stop them, or save you,’ she whispered.
Could this new body cry? She felt like she wanted too, but no tears came.
Opening her eyes once more she sighed, and stood up. She’d never stood a chance against the Jackers with their guns and prosthetic bodies, they’d cut through her like she was nothing and taken what they wanted, and she hadn’t been able to stop them.
She wondered if this new body would change all that? She wasn’t sure, but she hoped it might.
Leaving the small shelter behind, she continued on, and soon caught sight of the Detective who had arrived on time. She smiled to herself and adjusted her course.
It took her another minute to reach him, and eventually, she stepped out into his path from between two shacks. He’d been looking the other way, so when he looked back, she caught him totally off guard, surprising him. He jumped on seeing her apparently appear from nowhere and in a flash brought his gun up to point at her, a reaction born of experience and training.
Frankie didn’t move, she just stood there, looking over the top of the gun barrel, and smiled.
1.07
‘Frankie? Is that you?’ Gibson asked.
He didn’t lower the gun as he spoke, and seemed a little on edge, but curious. Frankie didn’t like looking down the barrel of a firearm, though, so she moved as quickly as she could with a deft hand movement, taking the gun from his hand in one smooth motion.
‘It’s me,’ she answered.
‘Ow, jeez Frankie, there’s no need for that,’ Gibson said, rubbing his hand.
‘Sorry, I don’t know my own strength,’ Frankie offered, which was actually true, but also entirely false. She knew to the gram how much she could lift, but knowing that was a little different to knowing how to pull your punches to hurt someone just enough, especially when you’re made out of non-ferrous composite materials, like metal and armour.
She offered the gun back to him, and he took it, gingerly, placing it back in his holster.
He looked back up at her and frowned, a curious expression on his face as if he were trying to figure something out.
‘You look… different, somehow,’ he said, peering at her as if trying to figure out who she was. ‘Are you alright?’
She sighed and closed her eyes. This would be the first time she had spoken about what had happened to her with anyone other than Doctor Xenox, and suddenly the thoughts and emotions that accompanied the events felt suddenly and fleetingly overwhelming. She stepped to a nearby vertical metal girder and leant against it.
‘Hey, Frankie, it’s alright, I’m sure I can help you, just tell me what’s happened,’ he comforted her.
She sank to a sitting position, sliding her back down the strut as she did her best to rein herself in and organise her thoughts on the events of the past couple of days.
‘I am different,’ she said, answering his earlier statement. ‘I’ve… I’ve had a complete body replacement,’ she said, waiting for his reaction.
‘What?’ he exclaimed, crouching down before her to be at her eye level. ‘But, I thought you were against all that, what with the control the corporations would have over your life, and anyway, how did you afford it?’
‘It wasn’t my choice, it was totally against my will, although, it did save my life,’ she said.
‘Shit. What the hell happened?’ he asked.
‘I was in this camp, just over there, in fact, helping someone out, you know, just doing my thing, when a Jacker Gang attacked this place. They shot me and killed my patient. I would have died, but a Doctor from a local lab found me and saved me, putting me into this… thing.’
‘Holy shit. You had a full body transplant, against your will?’
‘He said that I asked him to save me, but I don’t remember it.
‘Him?’ the detective asked.
‘Doctor Xenox, one of the back alley Doctors around here,’ she said.
‘Doctor X? You got kidnapped by Doctor X and put through
a full body transplant?’
‘Doctor X? Is that what you’re calling him?’
‘We’ve known about him for a while. We’re not sure where he’s based, but we think he’s on the run from the Corporations, Psytech mainly who want him back. They’ve been breathing down our necks over it for a few weeks now. Some of the boys back at the station have been calling him Doctor X, making him out to be some kind of mad scientist.’
‘Well, they got him back. Psytech I mean. They attacked his lab after the procedure and managed to capture him, but I got away, somehow.’
‘We heard about that. We got a few calls about some gunfire just near here in fact, but Psytech had the area locked down and shut us out,’ he explained. He thought for a moment. ‘So that was Dr X’s lab, and you were in there at the time?’
‘I was, but I escaped just after they got the Doctor. I’ve been on the run since.’
‘Are you okay, is there anything you need?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine, I think. This body doesn’t need much of anything by the looks of it.’
‘So, that’s a totally new body?’ he enquired.
‘That’s right. I don’t think there’s much of me left apart from my brain. I think that was the only thing of mine he actually saved.’
‘Better than nothing I suppose,’ Gibson mused. ‘You said you needed my help? I’m more than happy to do what I can for you, you’ve clearly been taken advantage of, but, you’re more aware than most about how little we can do against the Corporations. They run things now; we just clean up the mess when things get out of control.’
‘I know, but, you can help me in other ways,’ she said.
‘Please, go ahead and ask, I will do my best for you.’
‘I can’t get past the checkpoint to go home for a start. I think the Corporations are on the lookout for me and have the checkpoints locked down. Can you help?’ she asked.
‘I’m sure I can help with that, there’s a flyer nearby that brought me here, I can get it to drop us off at your apartment if you’d like?’ he offered.
Promethean Files 1: The New Prometheus Page 6
