by Duran Cross
“With a hangover.”
“I see.”
“So what’s your name? You can either tell me, or I’ll call you Steve.”
“Carla.”
“I’m Rennin.”
“I think I have a cream for that.”
Rennin narrows his eyes. “Well it’s been a long time since there’s been a woman in my home and even longer since I’ve woken up finding one in my bed.”
“Well I wouldn’t take that as a reason to get obliterated every night.”
Rennin finds himself starting to grin, “With my head exploding like this? Not likely. But I do have a question.”
She gestures for him to continue.
“I have a couch. You could have slept there.”
She smiles and walks towards him, “I said we didn’t do anything. Not because we didn’t want to,” she says just barely touching him.
Rennin feels a lump in his throat, “You’d best not get too involved with me.”
“And why not? Are your problems too deep and dark?” she says pursing her lips and pinching his cheek.
“I’m carrying something.”
“I know, you told me last night. Indigo Reign. The entire human race is vaccinated or cured, you know. Although you pronounced it as ‘Inni’o’rain’,” she says imitating a drunk. “Either way, it’s pretty obvious with those baby-purples of yours.”
“Well being a bartender I suppose you’d have to learn to decipher the lame-minded and crippled speech.”
“Very funny.”
“Look I’d love to stay but I have to get to work. I’m already late.”
“Come by the bar after you finish.”
◆◆◆
Rennin walks into the lab three hours late. Upon clocking on he is instantly tagged as overdue, and docked accordingly. He shrugs, grunts, then heads up his tower.
He sits in his chair feeling his thrashed and alcohol-ridden joints creak and groan. He unsuccessfully wills his body to stop whining, and turns to the left where his coffee machine protrudes from the wall.
The machine has only two settings: water and what equates to the caffeinated version of a nuclear heart attack. Its green-friendly biodegradable cup symbolises another irony of the Godyssey Company in Rennin’s mind.
Before he even gets a sip the intercom buzzes indicating a visitor at the front gate. Rennin gets on the radio. “Hello, welcome to the Godyssey Laboratory, state your business.”
A rather dark voice of a sex Rennin can’t identify replies, “I am here to see Doctor William Caufmann.”
“One moment please,” Rennin switches the channel to Caufmann’s office. “Sir, there is a visitor at the front gate requesting entry to the Lab.”
“Scan it.”
Rennin starts a bio-scan. The reading shows a massive quantity of titanium, Thermosteel and selenium. Rennin frowns as a system match is registered: ‘Progenitor-class chassis.’ “Sir, it’s your target. I’m arming turrets now.”
“Negative, Ren, stand down.”
You ordered me to kill it. “What? What do I do, then?”
“It knows we can scan it. Ask it what it wants.”
Caufmann sounds far too calm for Rennin’s liking. He switches channels back to the android, “State your business.”
“I’ve told you,” it says with patience.
“He wants to know why you want to see him.”
“I’ve come to kill him.”
Rennin wills down a stutter. “Hold please.” Rennin switches to Caufmann, relaying its words.
“In broad daylight with a street full of people, it said that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Open the gate, say nothing more to it.”
“Sir?”
“Just do it, Ren.”
Rennin shuts off the radio unit completely and stares at the button on his console that opens the gate. He leans forward slightly to get a better view of the front gate where he can see the android, clad in black, standing at the entrance but the bars obscure any other details.
He takes a breath, checks his rifle and presses the button. The gates slide open. The android doesn’t miss a beat, and starts walking into the grounds. Rennin holds his sniper rifle up and aims at the strange machine walking through the grounds with perfect posture.
The being has long hair, tied back into a strange double ponytail, lashed together at three points down the length. The hair strands themselves are most certainly wires of some kind since the entire form of a progenitor model system is quite old and must have been built before the finer details were mastered.
The being’s face looks human enough but there are no distinguishing feminine or masculine features at all, making the face the epitome of androgynous. He gets a slight glimpse of silvery eyes before the android is facing away from him, reaching to open the front doors.
This construct is worth more than many entire countries and it’s just strolling through a city in the open, seemingly defenceless. People have killed to possess such technology, Rennin has no doubt of that. Rennin has to respect that kind of guts, even for an android. But he always has respected machines more than people. People have a choice of whether to fuck you over.
The android is wearing all black with knee high armoured boots, pants with many pockets up the legs, a vest that could be paramilitary and a leather overcoat with various designs embossed into the hide. The shoulders of the jacket look heavily padded in particular, or at least the leather itself is very thick. Rennin bets that the coat has an armour underlay, as would the vest.
The being enters the lab complex, disappearing from the watchman’s view. Rennin puts his rifle down and sits back down but keeps the gun within easy reach.
He sips at his repugnant coffee absently, pondering what the progenitor could be thinking just walking into the lab like that. More to the point, Caufmann knows the thing is here to kill him. It said it with its own mouth, and he still let it in the front door.
Rennin Farrow frowns as he thinks of something Saifer Veidan once said to him: ‘When your enemy comes knocking, it’s best to let them in the front door where you can see them, rather than turn them away to creep up on you.’
Sound advice.
“So, Caufmann, how are you going to get out of this one?”
◆◆◆
In the lobby, the android approaches the unexpectedly empty front desk.
It scans around quickly with its metallic eyes and finds the entire lobby absent of employees. The construct’s expression shifts to a smirk. It doesn’t suit its face at all. It remains perfectly still for a few moments when a door flies up across the hall and Caufmann emerges, his lab coat soaked in blood and his glasses shining.
In his hand is a dripping bone saw and the sight of it makes the android smile.
“To die fighting, is that it?” asks the android.
Caufmann shrugs minutely.
“Shall we?” asks the progenitor bowing as if requesting a dance.
Caufmann’s expression remains neutral when he shows his other hand that is holding a matte black capsule about the width of his index finger.
The progenitor doesn’t say anything, it just regards the capsule closely.
“I know what you are and more importantly what you’re made of. You’re a prototype; the Prototype Progenitor-class android designed for the template uses of all subsequent test types and production line androids. You were once war coordinator during the CryoZaiyon War and were also the catena for data from the Embryon Protocol.
You chose all candidates for the CryoZaiyon Program. Then were incarcerated indefinitely due to your astronomical value. How you are operational, or even functioning, is somewhat of a mystery.”
“Incarcerated?” the expression on Prototype’s face is cold and its eyes are shining furiously. It takes a step forwards.
“Stay where you are,” Caufmann orders, again showing the capsule.
Prototype laughs. This disturbs the doctor because he can’t tell wheth
er the construct is just being theatrical or whether it’s genuine. “What bioweapon do you possess that can affect me?”
“As I said, I know what you’re made of.”
◆◆◆
Rennin is meandering around his second sewage water coffee when the glass front doors of the lab shatter outwards followed by smoke. He drops his cup and his rifle in his hands in a split second. His scope is immediately trained on the smoke pouring out the entrance.
That android is going down.
There is a slight ripple in the plume, or perhaps a rush of air. Time seems to slow down as Rennin readies to fire but it is not the android fleeing the lab like he thought it would be. It’s Caufmann, lab coat bloodied and torn, who is thrown into the courtyard.
Rennin’s sights are back on the doorway, waiting for the progenitor but Caufmann dashes back inside leaving Rennin to wonder what is coming next.
What happens next is not something Rennin expected. Caufmann and the android are wrestling but the scientist looks to be dragging it outside, but that can’t be right. Rennin looks closer and sees that it is indeed the case. Caufmann is dragging the android outside whilst the two of them are locked with hands at each other’s throats.
Rennin’s mouth falls ajar as Caufmann takes a right hook to the jaw that the sniper heard from the tower but doesn’t go down. The doctor flicks his right arm and Rennin catches a glimpse of something long and slender sliding out of the sleeve.
His arm swings up impossibly fast striking the android in the neck drawing a spurt of dark fluid. The progenitor covers the wound clumsily stumbling away from Caufmann who faces Rennin’s tower, points to his knee, then drags his index finger across his throat in the kill gesture.
Leg it. Rennin aims and fires a perfect shot striking the android in the left knee. The bullet glances off and hits the front of the lab. Rennin is shocked at this construct’s armour strength. The ammunition he uses is about as strong as it gets.
The android looks at Caufmann, then to the tower and makes a dash for the front gate. Rennin fires again, hitting it in the same knee. The second bullet glances off like the first. This time, though, the android’s balance is thrown completely by the bullet’s impact, and it tumbles unceremoniously to the ground.
Rennin could put it down for good but Caufmann obviously wants it alive, so he takes another shot at the knee and finally the bullet achieves its goal. It punches through, drawing a spray of dark purple liquid.
The android screeches more from rage than any discomfort. The sniper cringes, the sound is remarkably like fingernails scratching blackboard.
Despite the heavily gushing wound, the android lifts itself and attempts a massive, albeit unbalanced, leap over the front gate. Rennin takes one final pot shot, hitting the thing in the upper spine. The shot glances off as the sniper knew it would, but the momentum throws the android off the wall into the street.
Rennin’s communicator beeps and he can see Caufmann talking into his gauntlet in the grounds below. “Ren? Don’t call for assistance.”
“Why not? And I could have taken it out. I thought you wanted it dead!”
“I know. But now I need it alive.”
The blade. “What was that shit you stabbed it with?”
“A nano-transmitter. A temporary and traceable blood virus. It’ll wear off in a few days at best, but we’ll know where it’s going, if it’s alone… or working with someone else, with a little luck.”
Rennin has to hand it to him, Caufmann has balls. “Who’s tracking it?”
“Beta HolinMech will follow it.”
Caufmann turns to see several employees emerging from the foyer, so he hurriedly cuts communication and covers his arm with the remainder of his sleeve.
Security staff put the area back together over the next few hours, while Rennin wonders how Caufmann is going to answer all those questions about fighting a very combat-worthy android.
He smiles to himself as he thinks of his shooting. He comfortably leans back in his chair to ease the throbbing in his head. Four shots, four hits and one of them a successful crippling shot. It didn’t impair its movement much, but a hit is a hit, especially since he wasn’t supposed to kill the thing.
For just a moment when he had it lined up on the ground, he knew he could have taken its head off. Something inside him knows he should have.
◆◆◆
Caufmann is in his office, his upper body bared in front of a mirror. He inspects his wounds, fresh and old. His torso is a sea of scars. Up and down his arms and his chest is another miasma of frequent surgeries. All of them self-inflicted.
There are quite a few smaller holes around his shoulders and chest that could only be bullet holes. He remembers some, but not others. Only the surgical ones he can fully account for. His scalp is riddled with winding incision marks, where he’s been removing implants and learning about what he is, or once was.
His right arm—where his skin has been removed to seat the gauntlet—is sparking from time to time, drawing his attention. Prototype gripped his arm so hard it cracked the shell casing. A few of the underlying circuits are damaged.
Caufmann sighs, feeling that nagging razorblade pain in his chest for a moment before having a closer look at his fresh wounds. They steam mildly, but are already closed and fading.
He looks hard at his ruined body and his jaw clenches. He is glad his glasses are on because he can’t bear to look himself in the eyes at this moment. Their luminous glow through jagged cracks in his irises haunts him more each day.
He barely recognises himself anymore, but not because of the scarring. Each time he removes an implant, it should make him feel less forged and more real, but it doesn’t. He wonders how much more he has to excise.
There are some parts he will never be able to remove, he knows. However, after his fight with the android, he isn’t sure if he wants to remove them all. That kind of strength can be very useful. He’d forgotten what it was like to fight like that. But the fact he even had to bothers him.
The fibre armour in his lab coat held up well enough to the incendiary grenade he threw at Prototype, but that android has had work done. No Progenitor-class should be able to take three sniper rounds from Rennin’s rifle, which itself is illegal for the amount of damage it can do. No Progenitor-class has ever been rated as combat grade. The chassis has been extensively upgraded.
Without warning, Jellan Roths opens the door to his office and sees him in all his ‘glory’. “Good god, William, what have you done to yourself?”
At first he doesn’t fully acknowledge her. It’s her absent scratching that draws his attention. His frame isn’t the largest but his muscles are wound so tightly that he looks like he could go fifty rounds bare-knuckled.
“Did I call you?”
“No, you made a complete spectacle of yourself. What were you thinking?” Roths asks, wincing as she regards his body.
“I needed to get some samples.”
Roths scoffs. “What for?”
Caufmann faces her but isn’t paying attention to her words, just her periodic scratching.
“William, what’s that?” she asks, pointing at his right arm. “Didn’t I tell you that you can’t be seen doing things like that to yourself? What will the rest of the staff think?”
“I’d gone too far not to finish it. Now I can talk to other staff and order pancakes.”
“This is not a joke. Why did you deny security interception of the progenitor?”
“The Prototype is being tracked as we speak. We need to know if it’s working alone or with others, and that was worth the risk to me,” says Caufmann slowly.
“Worth the risk, what rubbish, you wanted to see it for yourself eye to eye, didn’t you?”
Caufmann smiles at how well she knows him. “Yes. Yes I did. I know it’s not alone. It’s wearing radically advanced armour. It took three rounds from Rennin’s rifle to get through its defences.”
“What does this mean?”
&nbs
p; “It means we have to find where Prototype is going and kill it along with all who are working with it. This is not a capture mission. Once we find it and its accomplices, they will be killed.”
“You could have captured a rogue progenitor-class and you thought it best to play cat and mouse?”
“There’s more at stake here, we can’t just cut the fingers off the hand trying to open the door. We need the whole arm,” he says lifting his own, damaged, arm in front of himself for effect. “If you’ll excuse me, Doctor Roths, I have to repair my bracer.”
“There are tests being conducted in the lab and we need your guidance on many of them. Adrenin is taking far too long to gestate and Del’s programming is an absolute mess, it’s a miracle it even functioned enough to talk to that degenerate sitting in his tower.”
“Del is a he and Rennin proved once again why he has that job by four brilliant shots. If you knew how close his pay is to yours you’d be sick.”
“A warmonger earning five figures is more than he deserves.”
Caufmann points up indicating the figure is more dramatic.
“Six figures?”
Caufmann nods. “That war veteran is an expert sniper and finding someone of his quality to shoot any target when ordered is very difficult.”
“I hear he lives in that disgusting Godyssey commission housing area.”
“He does, yes. He said his needs are simple.”
Roths glares at Caufmann for a moment with an incredulous expression. “How often do you talk to this sniper?”
“Often enough to worry the general population.”
“General population is usually a term applied to prison inmates.”
Caufmann smiles. “Look around you. You think you’re free here?”
A moment of silence, and they fall back into desultory conversation, what lab supplies are running low, and how Del’s progress has been hampered by anomalies produced by his simulated Instinctual Cluster Unit. The first simulated IC Unit ever.
All business related topics exhausted, Roths leaves Caufmann to his thoughts of Del and IC Units. The original IC Units were postulated to house the remnants of the human soul from the donor body, supposedly giving them all the instincts of a real person.