by Gary Dejean
Patti takes off her training outfit and gets under the shower-head next to the one Ocampo is using. She hasn’t had many occasions to exchange with her only sister in the brotherhood, but she has heard rumors. A little intimidated, she is hoping today to set the record straight.
“Hey, Ocampo,” she greets, friendly.
“Gillian,” the stern Filipina replies, vigorously washing her armpits.
Patti does the same with a smile, a little trick she hopes will make her question easier: “Is it true you come from the secret service?” she asks, nonchalant.
Her colleague smirks to herself. “I can’t say I do!” she replies.
“Haha! OK, cool!” Patti gets the message. “Look,” she moves on, “I’ve seen your heart-rate, I’m just jealous… You got any tips?”
“Ask your trainers,” replies the former secret agent, dousing shampoo over her hair.
“No, I meant like pro-tips,” Patti insists. “Stuff you’ve learned with time.”
“Have you tried meditation?”
“Should I?”
“I’m just messing with you.”
Laughing to herself, Ocampo walks out of the shower and under a large drying blower. Followed by Patti, she grabs a warm towel to wrap around her torso before heading to the next room.
Six massage tables are arranged side by side, separated only by white translucent screens. Above each table, an automated masseur is hung to a railing, a dozen bumpy foam rollers pointed downward like the maw of some strange marine creature waiting to swallow its prey whole. Used to the devices, Patti and Ocampo take off their towels and lay head down on the tables while the machines descend on their backs and scan their respective anatomies.
“Oooh, damn! That feels fine,” lets go Ocampo, as the machine rolls from her feet to her shoulders.
Patti laughs. “You getting naughty on me?” she teases.
Her colleague snickers. “You’re one to talk!” she rebuffs.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You think we wouldn’t notice you left lunch to get some extra desert, yesterday?”
“Ho! Oh no…” Patti shivers at the implication. “Have you guys been talking behind my back?”
“Girl,” Ocampo replies, a hint of humor disguised in the reprimand, “only when you walk away from the squad!”
“That’s not cool…” Patti trails off.
“Yes it is!” her colleague refutes, letting the massage rollers dig into her back. “It’s very cool. There’s no rule against fraternization, I don’t know why you two are hiding like highschoolers.”
Patti hasn’t heard a word on the subject. “You shitting me?” she asks, rarely able to tell her colleague’s sarcasms from her otherwise cold demeanor.
“Why would I?” Ocampo insists, her face stuck in the hole of the massage table. “You can go after the Major for all I care.”
“Nah, I’m good,” Patti states, content. “You can have him.”
“I’d rather you share your Latino plaything!”
“How do you know I call him that?”
They both laugh at their banter. While the machine undoes muscle knots in her neck and shoulders, Patti marvels at the treatment they get every single day. Her heart warmed by her relationship with Angelo and by her colleague’s acceptance, she blissfully lets herself sink into the doughy massage table.
Coming out from the showers, their male counterparts are taking their place on the other tables when an alarm blares in the building. Patti raises her head, looking to cross Ocampo’s gaze and gauge her reaction, but the Filipina’s already getting up. They all know the proverbial drill.
A delivery UAV flies down to the entrance of the Workshop. Chloe’s there to greet it, presenting a QR code on her phone to the drone’s scanner. She picks up her package, the drone thanking her for her purchase before flying away.
Heading back inside, she spots Jake playing with 3D printers and goes to sit next to him. She wants him around for the unboxing of her ideal eye, the one he encouraged her to buy a few days earlier, the one she’s always wanted but never dared order.
“Is it your new eye?” asks the child.
“Yep!” Chloe chirps. “It just arrived.”
“What are you gonna do with it?”
They’re interrupted by their friends, gathering quietly around them with amused yet secretive smiles. Morgan’s drone emerges from the group, followed by the robotic dog Jake has grown accustomed to.
“Jake?” asks Morgan. “We’ve got a late Christmas present for you,” she says. “It’s a team effort, and it took a little longer than expected.”
The dog quickly goes to Jake. Turning around, it sits down; its back snapping opens reveals an alcove the size of a melon.
“We’ve retrofitted your little friend for you,” Morgan explains. “It’s… a little weird, but we believe you’d find it fun.”
Knowing nothing of this, Chloe interrupts: “Hold on, you want to put his brains in this?” she asks, a little chilled at the idea. At the very mention of it, however, she can see that Jake’s interest is struck.
“Like I said,” Morgan replies, “only if you want to try, Jake. Otherwise the dog’s unchanged.”
“I love it!” the boy exclaims, ecstatic. “Thanks! Can we try now?”
Chloe feels out of bounds. “Maybe we should wait for David…” she says, hesitant.
“Why?” asks Jake straightaway, as a manner of rebuttal. “Is it dangerous?”
Morgan smiles reassuringly through the seven inch screen of her telepresence device: “Oh, it’s completely safe.”
The boy can’t wait. “Let’s do it then!” he exclaims.
He finds a stool to sit on, before Morgan directs her drone to connect itself to the port in his ear, and unlock his braincase. Morgan removes his wig and the skull of the little boy snaps open, revealing his brains encased in metals and plastics. Small LEDs shine on the surface, witnesses of life support systems running their course.
“You’re going to lose your senses for a bit,” warns Morgan. “Don’t be afraid,” she adds, but Jake shows no sign of fear.
By remote, she delicately lifts up his braincase to disconnect it from its prosthetic body, before pivoting to the dog and sliding it inside. While the dog reboots, Morgan watches it close its back and calibrate. It stays still for a while.
“Jake?” Chloe calls.
Finally looking up, the mechanical dog barks in response.
Chloe turns to Morgan: “You didn’t install English?” she asks, annoyed, thinking the voice synthesizer is leaving the boy mute.
Morgan smiles to her daughter, knowingly. Of course, Jake is only playing: “Dogs can’t speak! Woof!” he chimes in, his pitch slightly higher than his usual voice. Someone with a ball catches his attention, and soon Jake is running after it like a young poodle. Chloe relaxes and decides to let them be. Her vacuum-sealed prosthetic eye, shining brand new in its blister, is the only thing on her mind.
Back in their uniform, Patti and Ocampo enter the briefing room together. Major Hanzo is standing in front of screens and white boards, exchanging with a man wearing a black suit and tie, his eyes hidden behind cybernetic glasses; an outlet on his temple suggests that his implants are far-reaching. Angelo is sitting in front; as he turns around and smiles at Patti, she smiles back shyly, before sitting next to Ocampo. The Filipina is staring at the man in black with intense scrutiny.
Reading her, Patti asks: “You know this guy?”
“Ha!” her squadmate exhales. “You’re good.”
“You mean, he’s…” Patti lowers her tone even more, “a former colleague?”
Ocampo nods quietly, which Patti finds very promising. Their male colleagues enter and sit down next to them, before the Major starts talking.
“Alright troops, we have a new assignment. This one is coming to us from the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, so I’m gonna let Agent Dimaguiba, here, do the briefing.”
The
NICA agent walks in, his eye-less face giving a new definition to the word “cold.” He’s talking in the calm monotonous tone of spy agencies, making his words articulate enough not to repeat himself.
“Thank you Major Hanzo. This morning, at approximately oh six hundred hours, H+ incorporated has undergone a cyberattack. They’ve lost data regarding classified government contracts, as well as one of their prototypes. We have reasons to believe that this is an inside job. Our primary suspect is Dr. Morgan Zhu, head of the R&D department. She’s been missing since this morning.”
Angelo stiffens as he hears Morgan’s name. Among the redacted data displayed on the screens, he spots her in an old professional picture; the woman he knows seems a lifetime away from this one, and the young overseer feels his blood pumping, a taste of metal in his mouth.
“At the time, it is unclear whether Dr. Zhu is directly responsible for the attack, or if she’s been coerced,” continues the agent. “We’re interrogating personnel at H+, and we want your team to secure Dr. Zhu’s known relations outside the company. They gather most evenings in a warehouse downtown. You’re to go in and round them up for interrogation while police forces cordon the area.”
Under the agent’s command, the screens play CCTV and aerial surveillance of the Workshop. A drop of sweat dripping along his temple, Angelo raises his hand to the attention of the Major.
“Mr. Saldana?”
“Sir!” Angelo speaks fast, hoping for a misunderstanding. “I know this place, I’ve met Morgan Zhu. These people aren’t criminals!”
A quiet murmur fills the room as the troopers hear this. Sitting in the middle of the pack, Patti doesn’t know what to think.
The agent resumes his briefing, pointing to information that seems to contradict Angelo’s assessment: “We’ve tracked several automated deliveries, illegally rerouted to this location in recent months. Something’s definitely going on, there.”
“Thank you, Agent Dimaguiba,” concludes the Major.
Angelo gulps; he turns to Patti and they share a quick compassionate glance before the Major steps in.
“This operation’s gonna be very different from your last,” he begins. “We’re going after civilians. I want you to exercise extreme restraint, and caution.” He pauses, contemplating the possible outcomes of this operation. “This is our occasion to show a little finesse to the Mayor’s office. We’re going in non-lethal: rubber slugs and dazzlers only. I want no shots fired unless fired upon: intimidation should be quite enough. Now, give me the layout of this place…”
Aside from the main room, the Workshop is built around smaller alcoves along its back corridor. The one furthest away has long been arranged into a clandestine operating room, where friends unable to pay for proper medical services can get cheap surgery from Morgan. Several of her drones are stored here, some offline, some on idle mode performing menial tasks.
Chloe is well aware of all that, which is why she’s come here to talk with Morgan privately. The exchange has already heated up, as do most debates one has had many times in the past. Her prosthetic eye in hand, Chloe is arguing her case. “I’m telling you,” she insists, “I’ve wanted this for fifteen years, and you can help me make it right! You’ve performed dozens of operations here, it’s just not fair to hold back on me!”
“Oh, baby…” Morgan sighs, her face masked a moment by her own hand in the frame of the screen, “I know it means a lot to you, but you need to understand: I can’t disfigure my own daughter!”
That much, Chloe understands. She knows she’s asking her mother to overcome her own feelings, that there is no debate there. She has tried bargaining in the past, now she’s reduced to begging: “You’d be making me how I want to be!” she pleads.
“Zuzu, take it from me,” the mother refutes, “before long you’ll be full of machines anyway, so why the rush? For a camera?”
“Stop playing dumb!” Chloe explodes, her lips quaking under the weight of this issue. “You know it’s not about that! I want a neural interface! You’ve got one, for crying out loud!” she yells, pointing to the back of her neck. “You know what life is without it.”
Meanwhile, David is just arriving from his day. As soon as he passes by the front-door automaton, he’s welcomed by Jake in the body of the dog, who drops the ball at his feet.
“Dad!” the boy greets cheerfully. “Check out what Morgan got me!”
“The dog?” David replies, guessing from previous occurrences of Jake remote-controlling other toys.
“Throw me the ball!” Jake moves on, excited by his new perspective on the world.
David throws the ball in a bouncing arc while scanning the room for Jake. A few feet away, he can see him sitting on a stool. He takes his jacket off, and walks drowsily to his son, tired from a long day. When he gets to Jake and finds his skull open, David’s heart starts racing. He looks around, dizzy, eyeing for the dog, but it is nowhere to be found and David doesn’t know what he should make of this. Bill walks in with two beers and hands one to David. “No need to freak out, my friend,” he says, chuckling.
The ball bounces off the walls of the narrow corridor and ends up rolling the rest of the way, closely followed by Jake. He grabs it in his mouth, when he hears Chloe and Morgan talking in the next room. He stops and listens in, his robotic ears turning accordingly.
Morgan is brushing off Chloe’s arguments: “If it’s that important, I’m sure you can find someone else.”
But the young woman will hear none of that: “I don’t trust someone else!” she implores. “Do you know anyone willing to toss their medical license for me? I don’t mind butcher shops for a piercing, but not for my eye, Mum! Please! You’re the only one who can do this for me!”
Packed into their transport, the assisted squad is preparing to drop on the Workshop. The Major has finished inspecting each of them and connects his own suit to the override software.
During final approach, he yells a reminder of their prime directive: “Remember, if you fire even a single shot, I’ll have you do so much paperwork it’ll turn you into bureaucrats!” They chuckle at the joke, aware still that he means every word. “Fear factor first, self-defense second. Am I clear?”
All in one voice, the squad barks: “Sir, yes sir!”
The doors are about to open. Behind him, Angelo can hear the Major pull down his headset. Only a few more seconds before he gives him the green light to drop heavily armored troops onto his soon-to-be former friends. The young man shakes with fear.
Chapter 6
Bill’s inebriated chatter is starting to help David relax, despite his son’s whereabouts remaining unclear. He sits next to Jake’s empty body, the face of which is stuck in a single expression of excitement, uncanny like a painted porcelain doll. Glitters and confetti are still stuck in his clothes, and the father brushes off the shoulder of the mannequin as if removing dandruff.
Suddenly, the shriek of police sirens coming from a distance grows louder, and occupants of the Workshop are pulled from their merry celebration as the building gets surrounded. At the front entrance, an armored vehicle parks sideways, followed by dozens of patrol cars blocking the street up to the intersection.
Intense searchlights light up above the rotunda, bathing the room in blinding whiteness. A few meters above, the silent dropship is hovering, its metallic wings spread wide and three tons of robotic equipment ready to drop through the ceiling. The glass shatters as the heavily armored troopers fall through, in a circle around the Behemoth, quickly followed by personal shielding units armed with submachineguns.
A dozen flying drones detach from shields and troopers to scan faces around the room. The occupants are terrified by the dramatic intrusion of armed men, the small UAVs adding to the panic as they fly around, flashing laser dazzlers at unarmed civilians and uploading their pictures to a matrix of face-recognition databases.
From loud-speakers located on the transport, the voice of the Major resonates: “This is the Police. Lay down on
the ground and place your hands behind your neck.”
At the back of the building, in the operating tent, Chloe can hear the ruckus, hardly muffled. “Five-O!” she whispers, taken aback, her delinquent jargon speaking for herself.
“Oh, no!” Morgan whispers. “Come with me!”
The drone rotates to face the back wall, covered by a plastic curtain that Morgan pulls open. Behind, a heavy metal door rests on massive hinges, a magnetic lock devoid of apparent interface buzzing open. On the other side, Chloe discovers a small room she never knew existed, the pungent stench of sewers coming from a drain savagely enlarged with a jackhammer. A small one-seat hovercraft, parked next to a ramp leading down below, has been supercharged to move crates in and out surreptitiously.
Chloe can’t believe her eyes. She shakes her hands, incredulous. “What the fuck’s going on? Mom?”
Morgan turns around, her face showing little surprise, which Chloe interprets as consciousness of guilt. “There’s no time!” says the mother. “Hurry!”
Cables are retracting and arms folding back inside the transport while Angelo monitors the scene. Cameras on the belly of the ship display thermal signatures all over the central area of the Workshop. One additional signature in the backroom catches his attention.
“Ground team, there’s one more in the back,” he warns, highlighting the subject on everyone’s radar.
Behind him, the Major switches from point of view to point of view, looking for sudden moves among the terrified faces. “Bravo team, go after the target,” he orders, focused.
With dozens of targets to deal with, the ground drones stay with Alpha team while Patti heads first into the corridor. “I’ve got movement!” she warns, spotting Jake’s canine body in the darkness. Seeing the troopers freeze a second, the boy rushes inside the operating tent, fearing for his life.