The room was huge and seemed even more chaotic standing down here than it had looking at it from above. Frankie looked up to see the observation room and was relieved that there didn’t seem to be any movement up there, which hopefully meant they still remained undetected.
‘Okay, spread out, let's sweep this room. I want to be out of here before we’re detected,’ Frankie said and set off walking. She was aware that her comment probably sounded a little harsh to Gibson, who was here to find his daughter, but if they were discovered, they would end up fighting their way out of here, which Frankie would prefer to avoid if possible.
With an image of Stephanie displayed in her vision, she walked from bed to bed, looking at the children they had here and checking them against her photo. She wondered what on Earth they were doing here at this facility. It looked like a mix of augmentation, healing and fixing, and experimentation procedures, but she wondered about the ethics of it all. Who were these people? Why were they here? It was all a very concerning. As she moved, a nurse walked around the corner up ahead, tapping on her datapad with her finger. She noticed Frankie’s presence and looked up, only to stop in her tracks. It took her half a second to take in what she was seeing before Frankie saw the panic rise up within her as she started to back off, bumping into beds and tables.
‘Oh, erm, hey, please, don’t shoot me, I just work here…’ stammered the nurse.
Frankie let go of her gun, letting it hang from its strap and raised her hands. ‘Hey, relax, I won’t hurt you if you keep quiet,’ she said, stepping up to the nurse. She jerked away again, so Frankie reached for her and pulled her away from another table, saving her from making more noise.
‘Look, we’re just looking for someone. We don’t want to hurt you. Okay?’
‘Uh, sure, can I help, maybe?’ she said shakily.
‘I don’t know, can you? A guy we spoke to in the observation room seemed to think it might be impossible. All the people that come here are given codes or are only referred to by their first names,’ Frankie said.
‘That’s right, but if you can get into the administrator's office and access her computer, the patient's full data is in there. It’s offline, though, so you can’t hack in remotely, but I guess you probably have ways of doing this,’ she said, looking Frankie up and down.
Frankie glanced down at her stealth-suit before looking back up at the nurse and smiled. ‘You’re not wrong,’ she said. ‘Where can I find this office?’
‘It’s on this floor, along the corridor. You’ll find it; it’s clearly marked,’ she said.
Frankie nodded and then thought of something else to ask. ‘So, I was wondering, what are you doing here? I mean, you have kids here. It all seems a little, concerning…?’
The nurse sighed and looked a little deflated. ‘Look, I just work here. We get told what we need to do and not to talk to the patients too much. I just do my job and go home at the end of my shift.’
‘Do you think you’re helping people?’
‘I like to think so… I think we do, most of the time. I don’t know. Maybe? I question it sometimes, but… I just try to do my best, okay? I really don’t need this kind of interrogation,’ she said, starting to sound affronted.
‘Okay, sure. Look, we’re after a girl, about six years of age, called Stephanie. She’s got dark hair…’
‘We have a few that match most of that description here, and some that have left recently, so… I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe?’
‘Okay, thanks anyway,’ Frankie said and pulled out another binder. ‘Sorry, I can’t just let you go,’ she said and led her to a nearby pipe that looked solid enough. Frankie restrained her around it before pulling out another neural plug and moving to insert it into the sockets on the back of her neck, only to see that there were none. Frankie raised her eyebrows. This nurse didn’t have a cyberbrain. ‘No neural net?’ Frankie commented.’
‘No, I just… didn’t get round to it,’ she said.
‘I understand that,’ Frankie replied, thinking back to her time before getting her cyborg body when she had also been without a cyberbrain. She’d seen no need for one by the time she was an adult.
She couldn’t pause here too long, though, so she reached down and ripped off a strip of fabric from the woman’s uniform and then tore a chunk off that, too. She balled up one piece and stuffed it into the woman’s mouth, apologising as she did it, before taking the other strip and tying it around her head as a gag to keep the first bit of fabric in her mouth.
‘Thanks for your help,’ Frankie said as she stood. ‘Someone will find you.’ Frankie moved away from the nurse and opened up the link to her team. ‘I have a lead guys. We need to get to an administrator’s office. Meet me back at the entrance to this room.’
Within moments, they were all back at the double doors and Frankie could hear the comments from them about what they had just seen.
‘Yeah, this is a bit messed up, really,’ Gibson said. ‘Thinking of Stephanie in here just, urgh, makes me sick.’
‘Absolutely, I don’t know how they can get away with this,’ Veronica said.
‘We can talk about the ethics of this later, for now, we have a job to do,’ Frankie said and peeked through the window in the door to look outside. The coast was clear, so she moved through the doors and led her team out and along the corridor. She didn’t have to go far before she found a door that was labelled as an administrator’s office, just as the nurse said.
‘What do we hope to find in here?’ Gibson asked.
‘The nurse I found said the full details, including the names of the patients that come through here, are all kept on the terminal in that office,’ she said as she tried the door. It was locked, and there seemed to be a key card entry system. Frankie eyed the door and felt sure she could get through it.
‘I’m going to break it down,’ she said. ‘Fan out and keep watch.’ At her orders, the rest of the team walked away from her and posted themselves at the junctions of nearby corridors, their weapons at the ready. Feeling satisfied that everyone was in place, Frankie stepped back and then stepped forward, kicking the door as hard as she could.
The door had been locked, but it wasn’t really a bank vault. It broke and flew off its hinges after a single kick, opening up the room beyond. She looked inside, but found it empty of people. It looked just like a typical office with its single desk, a few chairs and a terminal including a screen and keyboard.
There were a few personal effects in here, too, including some photos on the desk, but Frankie didn’t bother to look at them. The rest of her team followed her in with Kalypso and Gibson racing to the terminal to log in.
‘Do you need anything hacked or have you got this covered?’ Frankie asked.
‘We’re sorted,’ Kalypso said, smiling. ‘Thanks anyway.’
Frankie smiled back and let them do their thing. She moved away and walked over to the door. Cole had been standing there and moved to one side.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You not hacking this time?’ he asked.
‘Nope. They have this covered, I think. Plus, they know what they’re looking for. So, I get to sit this one out,’ she smiled as she moved to the door and looked down the corridor outside.
‘Cool,’ Cole said.
Moving through this building and seeing what was happening in here, served to only cement her thoughts surrounding the Corporations even further. She wasn’t sure what Psytech where doing here, but she had a feeling, even if most of it was legitimate augmentation of consenting individuals, that there would be a good section of patients that were not here of their own volition.
She knew enough about this Corporation to know that nothing was out of the question when it came to what they would do. As long as it served their needs and increased their bottom line, then anything could and would be done.
Seeing those kids in there, children, whose needs were probably not listened to, broke her heart. One day, she thought to herself, she would see th
is Corporation brought down. Whatever it took, she would do, just to end the tyranny of Psytech.
She heard a door close. It was a faint sound from a good distance away, but it was unmistakable. She focused on the sounds in the corridors beyond, listening hard and doing her best to ignore the talking going on in the room.
She felt sure she could hear voices. Out there in the corridors somewhere. She wasn’t sure where exactly, but she could certainly hear them. She couldn’t say why, but she felt a need to go and look. She just needed to check on them. For security reasons mainly, but also because she just needed to.
‘I’m just going to check on something,’ she said quietly to the room.
‘No problem, I think we’ve found something here, we’ll be ready to leave this office, at least, shortly,’ Gibson said.
Frankie nodded and stepped out into the corridor.
‘You want me to come along?’ Cole asked.
‘No, I’m only going down there,’ she said with a smile.
Cole nodded and smiled back.
Turning away from her teammates, she crept along the corridor and made her way to the four-way junction up ahead, further away from the large room and the stairwell they had used to get down here.
She could hear the voices more clearly now, but they were speaking in hushed tones, and although she was sure that it was two women talking, she couldn’t quite make out the majority of their words. Instead, she could only pick up the occasional one here and there.
Feeling sure the voices were coming from her right, she pressed herself up against that wall and edged along to the junction before leaning out and taking a look. She did her best to reveal as little of herself as she could as she took in the scene.
She could see two people, two women down there, facing each other, standing sideways to Frankie and talking quietly between themselves. She recognised them.
Hellion and Wynter.
4.04
Hellion, a tall blonde woman in black, looking as severe and serious as ever, spoke quietly with Wynter, the smaller of the two women who wore her dark hair pulled into a harsh bun on the back of her head.
Frankie almost did a double take, not quite believing they were there for a moment. She’d been sure that Hellion had survived her fall from the flyer when she’d had kicked her out of it at the end of the siege at the support building, but now she knew for sure that Hellion was alive and well.
When she thought about it, though, she wasn’t that surprised that she found her in a Psytech facility with Wynter, either. If Frankie had to bet, she felt confident that Wynter had probably been the one to fix Hellion up and give her a new body. It made sense. She and Marissa Web hated Frankie, and Hellion was also likely to hold a grudge against her as well now that she’d killed Hellion’s entire team.
This would only mean one thing: Hellion would be after her in the very near future, so she’d better watch her back.
But, Frankie thought, why let them leave here? Why give Hellion the chance to come after her in the first place? She had them dead to rights. She could shoot them now and eliminate the problem once and for all. Finish the job that she should have done two weeks ago.
‘Guys,’ Frankie said through her link with them. ‘How’s it going? Are we ready to leave yet?’ she asked.
‘We have the info we need, yes. Seems like she was here, but isn’t any…’
‘That’s great,’ Frankie said. ‘You can fill me in later. Things are about to get messy,’ she said.
‘What? Why?’ Gibson asked.
‘Hellion is here. I have a clean shot, so I’m going to take it. Get ready,’ she warned them.
Frankie muted to the link for a moment, wanting to only concentrate on her two targets. She listened to them as she moved to ready herself.
‘Excellent, so I’m all clear,’ Hellion asked.
‘You are. You’re ready to return to active field work,’ Wynter said.
‘Great. I have so much I want to do,’ Hellion said.
‘I’m sure you do, but before you disappear, Marissa wants to see you to discuss our little arrangement, so you need to head into town and make an appointment,’ Wynter told her.
‘Understood,’ Hellion said, her voice sombre.
They didn’t say what the arrangement was, or what Marissa would want for Hellion to do, but Frankie felt fairly sure that it would likely involve her and the A.C.T. in some capacity.
Frankie didn’t want to wait any longer than she already had, and as she glanced back up the corridor towards the administrator's office, she could see her teammates stepping out of the room and into the hallway that Frankie stood within.
It was now or never. Frankie moved away from the wall and turned to face in the direction of her two targets.
Shouldering her gun, she took a deep breath, even though she didn’t need to. For some reason, this seemed like a monumental moment, like she was about to do something huge, but she guessed this was only because she had failed to kill Hellion once already and she knew the horrors that Wynter and Psytech caused people.
Frankie closed her eyes and focused herself before she opened them again and stepped sideways, into view of her two targets.
Hellion must have sensed something or heard something because she was already looking her way when Frankie stepped out from cover. Hellion moved like lightning and shoved Wynter away through the door she stood in front of. Wynter fell backwards and disappeared from view as Hellion moved the other direction. Frankie fired, and even though Hellion had less than a second to react, by the time Frankie had squeezed the trigger, she was already almost entirely out of harm's way.
Frankie’s burst of gunfire, even though it was suppressed, was not silent and was unmistakable to those with the right experience and training.
The bullets slammed into the walls further along the corridor, missing Hellion and Wynter entirely, but the noise of the shots hitting the unyielding walls was loud.
‘Is that you Frankie?’ Hellion said, her voice light, cheery almost.
‘Pop your head back out; take a look for yourself,’ Frankie answered back.
‘You know what, I’m not sure that’s the best idea. So, what brings you to this little facility, then? You weren’t looking for me, were you?’
‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re really not that high on my list of priorities.’
‘Frankie, your words wound me,’ she answered as a guard stepped out of the door next to the one Hellion had disappeared through. Frankie ducked. The guard's shots went wide and missing her before she fired off a short burst of her own. Blood erupted from the bullet hits as the guard fell. Hellion’s hand whipped out and snatched the gun from the dead man.
Frankie could hear her racking the slide on it to check the breach.
‘That was a little severe, don’t you think?’ Hellion said.
‘He tried to kill me first,’ she answered, not feeling sorry for her actions.
‘Even so, someone has to tell his family that he’s dead now,’ Hellion said, taunting her.
Frankie knew what Hellion was trying to do. ‘I’m a little past being guilt tripped by the likes of you,’ Frankie called back.
‘Quite. Well, I’d love to stay and chat, this really has been utterly fascinating, but I really have better things to be doing right now,’ she said.
Frankie suddenly heard movement from further along one of the other corridors, and recognised the noise of boots on the floor and knowing they were likely the advances of an armed security force. Looking back down to where Hellion was, she suddenly caught the last black blur of Hellion running down another corridor, having taken advantage of Frankie’s momentary lapse in concentration.
‘Aaah, crap,’ Frankie cursed.
‘See you soon,’ she heard Hellion call out as a group of security forces started to move into the opposite corridor behind her.
Frankie didn’t hesitate, turning and running for her friends who were already moving back towar
ds the stairs up to the top floor.
‘Let’s go, we’re no longer welcome here,’ she said and led the charge up the stairs as gunshots sounded behind her. Frankie paused at the top of the first flight of stairs and looked back down. ‘Everyone okay back there?’ she asked as she saw Cole, who was bringing up the rear, firing a burst of high powered rounds down the corridor they had just run along.
‘I’m fine, keep going,’ Cole shouted back. He fired again and then ran into the stairwell and up the first flight of steps. Frankie waited for him as the rest of her team went ahead, before falling into step with him as they bounded up the stairs.
‘I’m not going to leave you there to fight alone. I’m not risking leaving anyone behind,’ Frankie said.
‘I hear ya,’ Cole answered as they charged up the steps, passing the doors on the second floor. As they ran up the next set of steps, the doors they had just passed slammed open. Frankie paused and turned, firing off a burst of gunfire at the door, catching the first couple of guards as they stepped through. Shouts of, ‘Fall back,’ echoed from the corridor beyond as Frankie resumed her sprint up the stairs, right behind Cole.
As she reached the top floor where they had first entered the building, she could hear more gunfire up ahead. Cole opened the door to the corridor beyond to find Gibson, Veronica, and Kalypso crouched in the hallway in doorways, firing along it. Cole crossed the corridor, taking cover behind a corner and started to fire. Frankie leant out, spotting the guards up there and did the same, firing off a few bursts. These guards were right in front of the stairs up to the roof. In the momentary pause in gunfire after her second burst, she heard movement below her on the stairwell. In moments, they would be flanked and fighting on two sides. They had to go, now.
‘We have to push up,’ Frankie called out over her neural link. ‘We’re being flanked.’
Cole looked over at her. Frankie saw him and pointed behind her into the stairwell.
‘Understood,’ Cole said, and with his rifle ready, moved up the corridor, letting off brief two or three round bursts every few seconds to keep the guards up ahead from being able to get a shot off at them.
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