by CG Blade
“As I said earlier Petra you are Cobalt and made up of Self Replicating DNA which also gives you full body protection armor.” Suddenly, Petra felt her body shudder and vibrate almost to the point of a seizure. Her boots, jeans, and shirt quickly disappeared from the ground up. Her grass covered bare feet and toes began to feel engulfed by a flexible hard steel-like warm pliable substance. She looked down in shock and saw plating swallowing up her feet and gaining speed up her legs quickly forming a tight vacuum against her white skin. The horror and the beauty of it all startled Petra now paralyzed by disbelief and fear. The plating was a slight blue color mixed with incredible hues that glistened dark purple and beautiful spirals of cobalt and silver. It slowed down above her pelvic bone leaving a two-inch circle at her naval exposed and it continued covering up her back and ribs. It advanced up her breasts and formed a collar around her neck leaving an undisturbed oblong spot open where her sternum was. The armor left her shoulders and elbows open and exposed for more flexibility as it gained more speed down her forearms and stopped at the first knuckles on her fingers and thumbs. Her new skin had cobalt blackened sharp edgings to every piece that spiraled inward with beautiful etched circular engravings and fantastic swirls that echoed ancient carvings. Staring at her exposed fingers in front of her face, she inspected her palms and squeezed her fingers tightly to check out her newfound epidermis. Her cobalt Colt guns now attached to her hips were demanding attention.
“Your armor is now complete Petra and may I say you wear it well,” Ter commented.
“Are you sure you’re not a male Ter behind that voice?” Petra asked now awestruck over her new body as if it were a fine painting studied and admired. Her long blonde hair had three small blue streaks through the center from top to bottom as it swayed with the wind and shimmered in the sunlight.
“No. A female team at NIB did my voice programming. Particularly, Doctor Jackie M. Siebert PhD head of Neuroscience Programming. I on the other hand am your yottabyte processor attached to your brain and spinal cord. I continuously monitor your brain and body functions as well as other augmentations.
“You gotta be shitting me.” Petra said.
“I would not shit you,” Ter quipped back. Should I add ‘shit’ to your list of language databases as it is not currently included?”
“No Ter. Not now,” Petra said halfway laughing with a smirk. “So what am I? Was I born, hatched, dead, alive—what is going on? Petra was in shock and it stopped her moving. She was thinking so hard it hurt and she tried to cry but could not. She clutched her head and squeezed it hard with her hands. “What the hell am I!”?” Petra Screamed aloud.
“You, Petra, are the product of a century of bioengineering and chemistry made possible by General James S. Cooper, Doctor Norman Sanders, and his team who work for NIB—the National Intelligence Bureau—who are also the main facilitator and assisted in your development. If you would like to knock out the communications between bogies here and the nearest satellite please climb the wind generator with the red paint swirl around the bottom”
Petra started walking through a tall grassy field towards the tower in which she could see a ladder locked at the bottom with a rusty chain and a padlock wrapped around its base.
“Would you like to see a video of yourself in action before your upgrade?”
“You can do that? What Upgrade?” Petra asked quizzically.
“Yes, I can show you if you would like. I can also patch you into General Cooper at any time or any other network that exists on this planet.”
Petra was stunned. Did she want to know? Yes. Shock had settled into her frame but she kept moving and her pace was quickening towards the tower. Ter began monitoring Petra’s increased blood pressure and let her know about it. In her new skin, she methodically started running swiftly like a deer for the tower with her eye on the prize. She started thinking about the lock and chain and a small bull’s-eye appeared in her view. Figures and calculations appeared in her HUD as her facial armor started to cover her face from the neck up. She drew the right cobalt colored Colt Peacemaker out of her side and aimed it as she ran. The bullet left the gun as everything moved in slow motion and it collided with the lock and chain. Metallic pieces blasted apart and a ladder slid down rails and clunked to the ground. She just knew what to do. Why? Too many questions were circling around her brain—or at least what she thought was her brain. She reached the ladder and began climbing.
Chapter3
VIVICATION
“Petra—Petra can you hear me? Petra dear can you hear me?”
General Cooper sat with his hand on a warm touchscreen looking through a cold glass wall, talking into a mic calmly and methodically. Monitors quietly hummed everywhere above and around him and the techs in the control room. The screens were showing her vitals and full anatomy and gave them vision into her system. These screens allowed the user to track electrical, chemical, and biological aspects of a patient’s recovery.
General Cooper talked with Dr. Norman Sanders and Dr. Jackie Siebert upon his arrival at the Med Lab. He had returned from a trip to NIB headquarters in Washington D.C. and after an hour of sleep was back at it again. Petra raised from her warmed tank overnight on Cooper’s orders was quickly ushered into a sterile sealed room with zero percent gravity. This allowed her to reconstitute her system while breathing through a tube and allowed the techs to clean her up and check her vitals. There was to be no physical pressure put on her thirty-year-old system at this time while the atmosphere she was now breathing slowly reintroduced her newly tinted organs and bloodstream to the surrounding environment. This process took twelve long hours and now she was lying in a hospital bed with the normal vital monitoring wiring and equipment hooked up to her system. Petra was now breathing purified air and an infrared vision system kept an eye on her while she lay there waiting for orders.
Clothed in scrubs the General walked past the facial scanners past another door and into a decontamination chamber. He stood there for thirty-seconds while he was air blown and checked for impurities and contamination. A sterile glass chair sat next to the bed in wait for this moment. He walked over to the chair in his cloth-covered crocs and sat down. He put his gloved hand on her arm. Her body was healthy and glowing. She was intact. Her beautiful alabaster skin is a result of the months in the tank he thought.
He was elated that they had finally done it. They had really done it.
News of her transfer had echoed throughout the facility in a scuttlebutt fashion and already stories of her conquests were already hugely overrated. Whenever the General heard any “rumors”, he put them to bed immediately as he was largely overprotective of Petra and her project. Most people in the facility knew the stakes and chose to discuss this project in secrecy not in the open where they could be ‘put on the General’s shit list’.
“Hey” Her blue eyes opened slowly “I had this dream.” He could barely hear her so he moved his ear closer to her face. She looked so vulnerable. Her beautiful features were radiant and glowing in the artificially lit room. “How is my…unit?” She asked.
“Petra, dear, you’re at my med lab in New York.” He spoke softly and calmly, not wanting to startle her.
“Am—I okay?” Her voice quivered.
“Yes. Yes, you are fine. Now get some rest I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”
“I had this dream…”
Cooper knew she was feeling the side effects of the drugs she had been on for the last two years. The drugs put her in a ‘catatonic’ state so it would allow her brain to accept her new body as it grew.
“Petra get some sleep. We will talk in the morning okay?”
“Yea okay my dad—my unit?” She was falling in and out of consciousness and mumbling about past events.
Cooper set a key on a table next to her labeled ‘PKD’ and left the room to talk with his staff in the control room. They all agreed it would be best to give her a mild sedative for the night and start early in the morning again.
“Petra,” he said softly and quietly to himself. “I’ve got your back. Your father would be proud of you and so am I. Rest well you’re going to need it.”
What the hell was the outcome going to be? Five Star General James S. Cooper sat in the lab control room thinking about this problem as he had for the last two years. Maybe this was all for nothing. He was weathered and worn, firm but fair. Those close to him in the facility knew that he had cared very deeply for his family and this girl lying in stasis. There she rested a sleeping beauty of sorts waiting for that kiss but there was not going to be any kisses. There was not going to be anything but chaos and destruction for her.
He rubbed his tired eyes with his hands and creakily started to stand. He was a man who had served his country to the fullest and gave orders that no one under him questioned. He always knew that to be a good leader he had to be a good follower. He was now a Chameleon. The Army Corps of Medical Engineers had been his home for as long as he could remember and he always gave a sigh when mentioning his past tours of duty. This would be the hardest thing he had ever done. He hoped his best friend would forgive him one day. Footsteps started to loudly echo through the hall of the wing as a doctor turned left into the control room and said hello to the General.
“I hope you haven’t waited long?” Doctor Sanders had a low even tone to his dialect that reflected his southwestern upbringing. He wore a white lab smock about ninety-nine percent of his time spent awake.
“Why no Doc I just got here.” The general reached out his hand. Cooper’s soft gravelly voice was always calming and reassuring. The two shook. They both knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that could not be overlooked. There was more at stake here than any one man could fathom.
“So how is she Doc?” The General asked carefully choosing his tone. Need to take the emotion out of the equation.
“She is right on schedule. I will have a final set of blood work, skin and tissue samples, and electrical mock ups for you by tonight. We’re getting the new testing facility ready as we speak.”
“That is great Doc. I’m not sure another team of human beings could have pulled this off,” the General stated.
“Well, we will start praising each other if and when this is over but I do have lots of optimism and some doubts. A lot of good men and their families have given their lives for this project—especially the early ones,” Dr. Sanders admitted. The doctor smiled confidently as he shook the General's hand again and said goodbye. Sander's five-foot-nine-inch form made a pronounced loud thud each time he hit the checkered tiled floor as he proceeded to the hallway and into the next room and began talking to a lab tech.
Cooper retreated to his wood-grained quarters and began making log entries before mixing himself a strong drink. He was so proud of what they had achieved here. He wanted to be the first one to talk to her when she fully woke up and he instructed his team not to discuss any details of her life before he had a chance to speak to her. Knowing her, she is not going to let any of this go until she gets some answers. He thought about this day for the past two years and it was finally here. It was all so surreal. The theories the labs, the testing, and the people involved. A lot of people’s time and a lot of effort was spent trying to repair what had happened. Now they had finally done it and it was all over. No, no, it was just beginning he thought. Now they had other problems to deal with and she was just beginning. Petra was renewed, rejuvenated, and a brand new armament in his arsenal against pure evil. How would she feel about that? On wrongs, swift vengeance waits. Cooper sat back in his bed and rested his creaking body against the wall as he closed his eyes. The usual cold sweating drink sat against his forehead as he rolled it back and forth. He visualized the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and burning hell. His favorite quote went through his head: God created men but Samuel Colt made them equal. Petra was now his equalizer in more ways than she would ever know and God did not create her.
Chapter 4
COGNITION
Petra was sitting up in bed eating sloppily when Cooper walked into her room the next morning. He was dressed as a doctor today again and not as a soldier. As soon as she saw him, she had a grin that went from ear to ear. The food on her plate was being shoveled down her throat faster than running water down a mountainside and he chuckled to himself when he saw her in action.
“I don’t know who made this food,” she said, “but this stuff is so good. Have you tried these burgers?”
He sat next to her and instructed everyone in the room scurrying around to leave quietly.
“I am so…hungry. This food is delicious.”
“Petra,” He focused on her eyes and not on the meat juice running down her chin, “you’ve been on a feeding tube.”
She stopped chewing and froze. Some kind of thought went through her head as she started chewing again, slowly. “Okay—okay General,” she replied.
“First let me say that I’m glad you’re alive and healthy and in good condition. I’ve missed our talks we used to have.” The two of them would discuss her missions, her father, past wars and military strategy. They would shoot together at the pistol range. He handed her a napkin to wipe her chin. “You can eat whatever you like whenever you like. My chef will always be at your disposal.” She grinned even more and patted her stomach as if she were getting full. Every bite of food was like her first memory of it. It reminded him of an outsider visiting our planet eating our food for the first time and not getting enough of it. “You can eat as much as you like and never gain weight…ever,” He finished, waiting for her response. She was a good 155 pounds soaking wet and she looked herself up and down to try to figure out what he meant.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Do I have a disease?” The look on her face was slightly quizzical.
“No, no, no you don’t have a disease. There is nothing wrong with you at all. Just the opposite is true you are in perfect working condition. You’re better than ever—maybe too good.” Cooper could not stop now. He had to keep going and so far, there was no real feedback from Petra, just childlike responses. Her head was tilting like a dog waiting for a command. He was talking to her as if she was a porcelain doll that was going to break into pieces.
“General, why are you talking about me like I’m a '36 Vette?” He had a stunned look on his face and she stopped chewing and put down her napkin. The smile she had earlier had turned into a look of inquisitiveness. “Does this have anything to do with those weird dreams I had? That blue box?”
There came a calm voice from the speaker in the corner of the room wired to the control room. “General Cooper, can you come in here for a moment?” He could tell it was Doctor Jackie Siebert.
“Petra will you please excuse me?”
“Yes, General,” Petra replied softly with her brow scrunching down towards her nose searching very hard for answers.
Cooper walked out of the hospital room and into the control room. Jackie had her fingers together, covering her mouth. She stared at him as he walked in. “Would you like some advice, Jim?”
“Sure what do you have in mind?”
The crystal Vidscreen hanging on the wall facing Petra’s bed began cutting in to a scene of the national news. It was the WDNC the World Democratic News Channel. It was the only news channel left in the nation. A woman was in front of a gated fence holding a Vidset in her hand.
“Hello this is Melanie Bargage from WDNC news. I am standing outside of the Medium Particle Collider in Bangor Maine that brings most of us clean power every day and is thought to be quite safe. However today an event unfolded which may have us all thinking twice. We are now going to show you a video feed from the Bangor collider site earlier in the day.”
The video and audio feed started: A man’s voice began shouting from a loudspeaker on a pole, “Miss, please get off of the gate and leave the property!” The onlookers started to gather around the street as the speaker continued to bellow out demands. The woman started to climb the fence scre
aming the numbers “3639361155935” as loud as she could. One of the soldiers took his baton and batted at the fence hitting her fingers. She shrieked and fell to the ground. A large crowd had gathered inside and outside the MPC. The authorities and the Ambulance-Carriers were just arriving. The soldiers loaded dummy bullets into their guns to take her down alive if possible. The woman ignored the soldier’s demands and jumped onto the fence. The first shot came from directly behind her and hit squarely in between the shoulder blades as she shook the gate violently. It seemed like this just made her mad and she turned towards the soldiers and started to run at them full steam. Bullets flew at her like bugs hitting a windshield and she didn’t seem to care. The woman jumped and flew over a soldier who was behind a door of an Aeolus Cruiser. She grabbed the gun out of his holster as they both hit the ground. She stared at the gun straddling him. Pulling back the hammer of the pistol, she put the barrel to her temple. She pulled the trigger. It was over as fast as it had begun.
“Again this is Melanie Bargage from WDNC news and as far as we can tell the day had been like a dream for Suzanne Hobbs. She finally sold her first sculpture and was excited to get her first check into her bank account. On this windy bright and sunny spring day, her blonde hair blew in her face as she headed for the bank in a green sundress and heels. Her petite body briskly walked down the street towards her destination. There was a crosswalk up ahead and as she slowed down to wait for the light. Suddenly, she stopped and held her head with crushing hands. The pain in her head had taken control of her mind and body. She screamed out the numbers “3639361155935”. She began to run through the street dodging the oncoming traffic heading towards the large brick building. She reached the gate of the MPC and began shaking the gate screaming the numbers again. That is all the video and information we have for you right now and we will give you more as soon as we can. Once again this is Melanie Bargage from WDNC news, we are with you everywhere.”