‘Having this done, and looking at my body and seeing all the differences, it makes you wonder who you really are. I mean, I feel fine, but when I look in the mirror, I’m not sure who’s looking back at me. I look similar, sure, but I’m not the same. So am I really me anymore? Am I even a woman anymore, or am I just a thing? A construct of some kind maybe? A product? It just opens up all these thoughts in your head that you’ve never thought of before, like, what makes me, me? What part of me is Frankie Gene and how much of me do I need to keep that identity? Am I even human anymore?’
‘You still have the same rights as any other human as long as there’s some organic matter left in that brain of yours. The Cybernetic Act of 2075 takes care of that.’
Frankie smiled at Gibson’s attempts to comfort her. ‘Sure. But just because it says that on a database somewhere, it doesn’t change how someone feels inside.’
‘The only person who can change that though is you. I think you just need time to think things through. This is all still very new to you. You were only Cyberized the other day right? And it sounds like you’ve not had much time to digest all this. It’s going to take a while.’
She looked at her alien hands again and sighed. ‘I know. I’m still very much unsure about it all, though. I'm not sure if I will ever really get used to it. I mean, I love the added strength and speed, the new abilities, all that stuff. They’re great. But, it just doesn’t feel quite right, not yet,’ she mused.
‘Do you think there’s any going back?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it; I think I’m in this body forever now. I firebombed my original body during my escape.’
‘You did what? Why?’ he questioned her.
‘I was trying to hide the evidence, stop them tracking me. They’ve not found me yet, so maybe it worked?’ she said, her voice becoming a touch brighter at the end of that sentence.
The door to her apartment exploded off its hinges and fell to the floor between them. Frankie reacted almost instantly, rolling over the seat to find some cover from whatever had just made its entrance.
She saw Gibson do the same, ducking behind the sofa as gunfire erupted through the door, spraying her apartment with bullets that slammed into the chair with a “WHUMP” as each one hit.
A message flashed up in her vision; it was another one from Gibson.
- You had to say it didn’t you!-
1.08
Frankie crouched behind the chair as automatic weapon fire tore into it, sending the stuffing from the cushions billowing up into the air like soft white snow.
With her powerful hearing and enhanced vision, she felt sure two people were firing at them, stood just inside the door to her apartment, and if she didn’t do something soon, they would move and get a better angle on her, and that would be the end of that.
Looking up, the stuffing from the two soft chairs she owned that she and Gibson were hiding behind filled the air, making it difficult to see much of anything at all, and figured this might be her chance.
Hiding here like scared animals did not sit well with her, and she was starting to feel very confident in her strength and abilities. So she bolted to the left and ran in an arc around the room, the momentum of her run carrying her up the walls as streaks of tracer rounds shot after her as the assailant tried to keep track. But Frankie moved too quick, and within seconds, she leapt towards the figure, realising as she approached them that she recognised this first one.
It was the woman, the Agent from Doctor Xenox’s lab who had been running things and who had seen her that first time.
The Agent’s arm, which appeared to be a small Mini-Gun from the elbow down, angled towards her, trying to get a hit, but she reached the Agent before she could get the shot and kicked her arm away, sending it wide as it continued to spray death and destruction.
Landing next to the Agent, Frankie followed her kick up with a powerful gut punch that doubled the Agent over and brought her gunfire to an abrupt end.
Without wasting a moment, she rolled sideways over the female Agents back and lashed out with a couple of kicks at the other, male Agent. She hit him in the back and sent him sprawling, the Automatic Machine gun he carried clattering to the floor at his feet.
Frankie span, turning back to the woman with the augmented arm and took hold of her other wrist with both hands. She looked up into Frankie's eyes and seemed almost to anticipate Frankie’s next move as her eyes went wide.
‘Wha… NO!’ she yelled as Frankie continued her spin, her momentum lifting the Agent off the floor, and in one more turn, threw her with all her strength at the nearby window that had already taken substantial damage from stray gunfire.
There was an almighty crash as the Agent smashed right through it, and dropped out of sight.
Frankie watched the window for a second or two more, just in case the Agent somehow managed to stop her fall. Satisfied the Agent wasn’t coming back, she turned away from the view of the city beyond and looked back at the second Agent.
Gibson stood over the fallen Agent with his gun trained on the man's skull.
‘You good?’ Gibson said.
‘Just awesome, you?’ she asked.
‘Unharmed, no thanks to this guy,’ he said. He never took his eyes off the Agent, not even for a second. Frankie stalked back towards the Agent and stood a short distance from Gibson.
‘You’re a Psytech Agent here to take me in, right?’ she said to the man. He wore a black leather outfit made from layered garments, with tactical webbing to hold his weapons and a long leather trench coat over the top. Against his dark hair and clothing, his skin seemed almost white in comparison. She could see a tattoo rising up his neck from his body, stopping just short of his jaw line.
The man just looked up at her, a look of hatred and fury etched on his face, but he didn’t say a word. He just stared at her.
‘Not gonna talk?’ She asked, but got only a stone cold expression back from him.
Most companies had to deal with other businesses that traded in similar goods or services, and you just had to fight for your market share, but usually the fighting was metaphorical and took the form of marketing campaigns and other harmless activities.
But the giant Cybernetic Corporations and those in the medical and Nanobot world were massive global conglomerates that protected their IP with a ferocity that few could withstand. But as the power of the Corporations grew, and they started actually to control the world's governments and lawmakers, this Corporate espionage grew into something much more deadly.
The stories said that it began with targeted assassinations and the theft of prototype tech, and as the Corps realised that there was little that anyone could do to stop them, the attacks grew more and more brazen.
These days, when the Corps went to war, people stayed out of their way as it frequently became deadly, and these Agents were often on the front line of any offensive, either open or covert. They were highly trained in espionage and in resisting torture. They were also usually augmented with a range of Cybernetic enhancements, sometimes with full body replacements.
The methods these guys used were barbaric, and these Agents were trained to resist it. So if this one didn’t want to talk, she doubted they could make him. But, there was another way.
Frankie decided that it was pointless wasting any more time on this, and delivered a powerful punch to the side of the Agents head, aiming it perfectly to knock him out cold.
Dropping to the floor, the man went still, a small cut being the only sign that she’d hit him.
‘Jeez Frankie, did you need to do that?’ Gibson asked.
Frankie rose up to her full five foot six height and looked up at Gibson. ‘He wasn’t going to talk, but I can get the information I want out of him another way.’
‘Are you sure he wasn’t going to talk?’
Frankie had started to turn away but looked back at him again. ‘I think we both know I’m right,’ she said, raising her eyebrows for a moment.
&
nbsp; Gibson took a breath. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he conceded.
Frankie looked back down at the Agent before sitting down next to him on the floor and closed her eyes, concentrating on the wireless connection she could make with him.
His wireless access ports appeared in her mind's eye, so she set to work, launching a barrier breaker software program that started the hack into the man’s cyber brain.
The subroutine ran for a little over a minute before breaking through his firewalls and giving her access.
The extensive database of the Agent’s mind opened up before her as she dove into the VR environment. One moment she was sat with her eyes closed on her apartment floor, looking at information in her mind's eye, the next second her body seemed to launch itself into the air. She found herself floating in a dark environment with an intricate lattice of glowing lines of light in the shape of a brain hovering before her. As she looked, streams of information were shooting out, through the firewall she had passed through, which surrounded her and the mind before her.
Merely by thinking of it, she changed the codes on the hacked firewall, preventing any more info or communications from getting out before she turned her attention to the cyber brain itself.
She reached out a hand and saw that she appeared to be coated with a glossy film that covered her body like a skin-tight white latex catsuit with circuitry lines pulsing with light tracing along her limbs.
She marvelled at her curious appearance once more, before she continued to reach out and touched her hand to a circular icon on the data lattice. The circles within circles of the icon she touched moved, spinning around as she delved into the man’s mind, looking for the information she wanted.
Light pulsed along the lines of light as she asked her questions.
The female agent she had thrown through the window went by the name of Myasma, while this guy was called Venin. She quickly got the impression that Venin had been through a memory wipe, as she found very little of a base psyche left. Just enough of his old memories were left there to keep him going and working for the Corp as their attack dog.
But as fascinating as it was to learn more about these Agents, this was not why she was in here, so she twisted her hand slightly and entered a search to look for signs of Doctor Xenox, using an image from her memory of him in her search.
She got a few hits back, the most recent one being of Venin seeing Xenox in a building here in Neo-London where he was being questioned by one of the senior Psytech Managers, Marissa Webb.
Leaving that memory alone, she focused on finding out which building this was on and on what floor, sending that query into his mind as well. The information came back quickly, and the realisation that she knew where Xenox had been about an hour ago, flooded her mind with possibilities. He was probably still there after all.
Snapping herself out of the reverie, she focused on finding some useful info that might help her mission before pulling herself out of this otherworldly Virtual Reality. One moment she had been floating in Cyberspace, the next she was sat on the floor of her apartment again.
She looked up at Gibson. ‘I know where he is,’ she said.
‘Excuse me? Where who is?’
‘Doctor Xenox, I know where they’re keeping him,’ she explained.
‘Oh, okay, great, is that why you hacked him?’
She stood up, sensing his incredulous attitude and looked at Gibson. ‘I have to get him back you know, I have to get him out of there.’
‘Why? After what he did to you I mean, why would you want to go and save him?’
‘It’s for that very reason that I need to save him. He created my body; he knows how it works and can make changes and adjustments to it. I don’t need to tell you the obvious reasons I can’t go to a Corp for that, and I wouldn’t want to trust another back alley lab either, I’ve seen too many procedures go bad in those places.’
‘And there’s no one else you can go to?’ he asked.
‘Not that I know of, no, not without selling my soul to a corporation,’ she answered.
‘What you’re talking about is very dangerous,’ Gibson warned.
‘I know. But if I don’t go, I figure I’m probably dead soon anyway through disrepair or a corporate assassin.’
Gibson nodded, apparently seeing her point of view.
‘There’s a flyer on the roof, the one these two used to get here, I got everything I needed from him to take control of it. I just need to send it back to home base with me in it and infiltrate the building Xenox is in.’
‘You talk about it like you’re about to take a walk in the park,’ Gibson commented.
‘I have to do this Gibson; I’m not asking for your approval. You’ve been very helpful, thank you for everything you’ve done.’
‘So when do we leave?’ he asked.
‘We?’ Frankie exclaimed.
‘I’m going with you of course,’ Gibson said.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, this is probably going to get me killed.’
‘Then you need my help, don’t you.’
‘Gibson, think about this. You have a family…’ Frankie began to say.
‘…And every day I go out there, and I put my life on the line, put myself in harm’s way. I could die tomorrow from a drive by, but I do it anyway. My family are quite aware of what I do and the risks I take; this is no different. And besides, I’ve had enough of these Corporations relegating the police to the sidelines, so if I get to give Psytech the finger at the same time, then it makes it even more attractive. I’m going with you Frankie; I’ll just use you as a shield if things get out of hand,’ he smiled.
Frankie looked at him and frowned. She didn’t like this idea, but, he was totally right. Whether it’s infiltrating Psytech or patrolling the streets of the Undercity, he was risking his life doing either of these things. So who was she to stop him doing this?
‘Okay, sure, you can come,’ she said as she rummaged through the Agents pockets, taking anything that looked useful such as a keycard. She took his handgun and spare magazines as well while Gibson picked up the discarded assault rifle and its additional ammunition.
Leading the way, Frankie picked up and put on her yellow leather jacket before checking her gear and walking to the remains of her front door. She stepped through, emerging from the smoke and dust that still lingered in the air.
‘Frankie?’ said a familiar voice to her left.
She looked over and saw Oli, her neighbour, stood there in his boxer shorts and wrinkled tee-shirt, looking at her in confusion and fear.
‘Hey there, sorry to wake you,’ she said.
‘You okay? What’s going on?’
‘I’m fine. Go back to bed, I’ll… come and see you sometime, tell you all about it, but I gotta go, see you soon,’ she said and turned to her right, back towards the elevators.
Looking down the corridor, she saw some open doors and people peeking out, curious to see what the commotion was, including her landlord who stared at her and Gibson in shock.
‘I’ll clean it up later,’ Frankie said as she strode past her, enjoying the look of pure horror on her face.
Most of the onlookers quickly ducked back into their apartments as she and Gibson approached them, clearly afraid for their lives.
Frankie paid them no mind. They had never shown any real interest in her life before today, so she kept to herself and let them think they were Corporate Agents or whatever.
They rode the lift back up to the top floor in no time at all.
‘Do you have a plan for this?’ Gibson asked.
She looked up at him, and then back down again. ‘Not really. I know roughly what floor the Doc should be on, and I’m going to attempt to land their flyer as close to him as possible. Get to him and get him out. That’s about it. I suspect I will be hacking their systems, as well, which will be the real test of the software I have in this brain of mine.’
‘Understood. I’ll be right beside you the whole w
ay,’ he said as the lift stopped and they disembarked. Reaching the roof, they opened the door to a scene of blood and death as Frankie counted three dead bodies on the floor. They looked to be the friends of Dion, but he didn’t seem to be amongst them. Taking a few steps out, she suddenly heard movement and something banging against metal over the drone of the nearby flyers idling engine.
Dion stepped out from behind some nearby machinery on the rooftop, holding his right arm as it bled profusely, dripping on the floor.
‘Frankie, I… there were… I don’t know, these guys, no, a woman and a man, they…’ he looked over at his friends and choked back his tears.
‘Dion, it’s okay,’ she said. ‘They were Corporation Agents, and they were after me, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Look, I can’t explain right now, people are depending on me. Get out of here, go to a hospital and get that arm seen too. If I get a chance I’ll follow up on you later… if I’m still alive.’
‘Someone will check in on you, I’ll make sure of it,’ Gibson said, a reassuring smile on his face.
Dion nodded and went through the door to the stairs without another word.
‘God damn it,’ Frankie said with one last look at the mess of dead bodies before she turned away and made her way around the rooftop.
They found the idling tilt wing flyer the Agents had used to get here just sat on the landing pad, its rear ramp open and the Android Doll pilot standing guard on top of it. Frankie paused for a moment but quickly scanned the area for its wireless signal. Within seconds she had found the Doll’s data port and ran her breaching software as she continued to walk towards the craft.
The Doll reacted immediately to their approach and pointed its arm at them both. As it moved, the Doll’s arm split apart to reveal a gun barrel and the tips of several short range missiles, all pointing at them.
‘Aa shit,’ muttered Gibson.
‘Halt, do not approach any further or suffer the consequences,’ it said in its synthesised voice.
Promethean Files 1: The New Prometheus Page 8
