by Gary Dejean
He runs under the operating table and through the heavy metal door, surprising Chloe as he passes her by. “Jake!” she bursts, slamming the door shut while Morgan boots up the hovercraft.
“What’s happening?” he asks, lost and confused.
Morgan readies the vehicle to drop in the tunnel below: “Get in there you two!” she screams, snapping them out of their moment. “The destination is set, you’ll be safe.”
Without an instant of hesitation, Chloe grabs Jake between her arms and sits in the hovercraft. She turns to her mother, speaking with a disappointed tone: “You’ve been holding out on me!”
“I know,” Morgan replies, gravely. “Just trust me.”
The hovercraft launches into the tunnel, its modified engine propelling them at high-speed over a flow of black water. Jake curls up against Chloe, scared and worried for his father.
Morgan doesn’t take time to watch the vehicle disappear inside the tunnel: she can hear the troopers clearing the operating tent on the other side of the door. Pulling a crate open, she reaches for a set of experimental stun grenades, a discarded prototype buried there years prior. When the door behind her gets busted open by a single kick from Patti, and Bravo team storms the room, Morgan pulls the pin out. They do not pay much attention to her drone, having checked others like it a second before.
“He went in there!” shouts Patti, following Chloe’s thermal signature. Morgan’s drone pivots, grenade in hands, lifting the device high above the troopers’ heads, whose expression she can only guess. The magnesium blast tears off the hand of the fragile drone, shattering its screen and frying its electronics. Patti, Reyes and Yuwono are knocked deaf by the blow.
On Angelo’s console, alarm signals go off next to Bravo team’s vitals, displaying increased heart-rates and head concussions. The Major growls: “Dammit.” He activates the override, two clamps descending on his shoulders to lift him from the ground. The man motions a jump.
With her ears still whistling despite her protective helmet, and eyesight blurred by the sudden flash, Patti lands in sewer fluids up to her knees, locking her feet in a firing position. The narrow tunnel extends deep into the belly of the city platform, pitch black. “I can’t see shit, Major!” Patti complains in her radio.
Inside the transport, the Major speaks with cold resolve: “Give me light-amp.” Angelo executes the order, activating light amplification and turning Patti’s point of view viridian green. Following the Major’s manual commands, her HUD zooms in, revealing the fleeing hovercraft within firing distance.
On the tiny vehicle, Chloe can hear the voice of the Japanese officer coming from Patti’s armor, his tone just as threatening as the words he utters. “Stop the vehicle,” he yells, “or we will open fire!”
Looking over the rotor, she can see the trooper under a ray of light. During the fraction of a second when her head is exposed, before the Major mimics the motion of squeezing the trigger, and Patti feels the recoil of her rifle, Angelo recognizes Chloe. He hasn’t even time to blink before a rubber bullet flies through the underground tunnel, hitting her in the eye and shattering her mask. The cold realization of what just happened is still unfolding onto him.
Chloe cries in pain when her face is hit and her fake prosthesis explodes into fragments. She curls into a ball to protect Jake, as the tunnel makes a turn and they get out of sight.
Freed from the Major’s override, Patti shakes her head, fuzzy. She peers into the darkness while two small flying drones pass her by in pursuit of the hovercraft, at a pace too slow to catch up.
In the main room, police officers and NICA agents are swarming the area, wrapping handcuffs and zip-ties around every visitors’ wrists. Neither gently nor politely, each of them gets dragged into a police vehicle, rounding them up like dirty criminals.
David still has no idea where his son has disappeared to, and in the maelstrom of screams and insults, he does his best to catch anyone’s attention. “Jake? Has anyone seen my son?” he cries, desperate. “Officer, my son is missing!” he insists, but the general agitation is too much for the agents to care, and no one pays attention to his claim. Like Bill, Malcolm and the rest, he ends up locked in the back of a patrol car, his phone taken away and thrown in a large evidence box.
Chloe slowly feels consciousness escape her when she and Jake reach the end of the tunnel. They exit the sewer from under the city platform, jumping over a waterfall of feces and plastic packages in their fast-moving vehicle. Jake’s sensors only give him a vague idea of the horrible ambient smell.
They sail through the half-submerged old town, leaving a trail of thick moss behind them. As they pass abandoned buildings, Jake can see faint fires and cheap LED lights illuminate forsaken floors in which squatters have moved. Fishing lines are hanging from window-ledges; fortune row-boats slowly slide on distant waters. The entire sprawl is home to a livid population, living off the waste excreted daily by the platform’s gaping holes.
“What is this place?” Jake asks, stunned by the discovery. The boy has never heard of this part of town, full of secrets too shameful to lend to a child’s ear. Chloe doesn’t answer, she only moans in pain, half of her face turning purple from the strike. “People live here?” The boy trails off.
Soon before the hovercraft reaches the side of the swamp, where an old building stands next to one of the few dry roads, Chloe faints. The vehicle slows down and drives itself inside the building’s moist ground level. Algae and reed have grown all over the puddle, and they park next to the stairwell leading to the second floor.
One of Morgan’s drones is here to greet them, its uneven wheels bent over the steps. At the sight of the familiar silhouette, Jake feels intense relief. When she sees her daughter unconscious however, Morgan hurries to carry her upstairs, devastated, the narrow frame of the drone lifting up easily the equally thin young woman.
Jake precedes them into an abandoned apartment lit by camping apparel; computers are arranged atop stacks of crates bearing the H+ logo, the decrepit walls are covered in a silver fabric marked with circuit patterns, a distinct hum fills the entire room. From the back of the apartment, a large fuel generator is pumping noisily.
Morgan’s drone carries Chloe to an improvised operating table, an ergonomic desk chair urgently bent backwards by her other drones, under the strongest lights in the room. The three drones immediately bend over her to clean up her wound. Resisting shock as only a child’s psyche does, Jake looks at the machines coordinating their first aid effort with apprehension. From his small canine stature, they look like giants, and so does Morgan’s wheelchair when she passes him by.
It is the first time that the boy and the scientist meet in person, and beyond that surprise Jake is also struck by her looks. Her long skinny arms hover around tactile screens arranged in front of her, sending commands to her drones, and a messy set of wires connects the chair’s neck guard to the back of her head. Below the screens, two curved and atrophied legs are hanging in floppy sweat pants.
In this far removed room, in the middle of nowhere, he pains to recognize the woman he knows as a friend. Still, Morgan smiles to him, for a second before returning to her more pressing task; and when Jake tries to smile in return, he feels his tail shaking.
The Workshop now empty of its original occupants, NICA agents have swarmed the area. Inspecting any electronics they find with their own devices before consigning them, and letting hard-working cops carry them to safety, they sort through the hundreds of items and personal effects left behind by heart-wrenched visitors. Among the gaming consoles and 3D printers, Jake’s body gets carried like some improper toy, thrown in the back of a van with a paper tag taped to his sweater.
Agent Dimaguiba is directing the operation when he’s approached by the police Lieutenant in charge of the officers on site. Taking off his cap and rubbing his brow, the man scoffs to get the agent’s attention. He points to the Behemoth behind him, asking: “What about this big boy, sir? You want us to dismantle it?
”
Dimaguiba grins in response while a strong wind invades the room again. An NICA helicopter pulls over the rotunda, deploying four strapping cables around the Behemoth. “You need to widen your scope, Lieutenant,” taunts the agent.
The troopers are back in their support frames, snapping their suits open and pulling themselves out. Looking at them arms crossed, a discontent Major is waiting for their attention. Alpha team is exchanging high fives and bro-hugs, while the members of Bravo are pressing their temples and blinking like idiots.
Hanzo barks a quick debriefing: “Bravo team, that was amateur work at best. How are your ears?”
“Buzzing, sir,” replies the team leader.
“Me too,” Patti admits, rubbing her ears to little effect. She immediately stops when the Major looks at her, feeling like a freshman at the academy. In the noisy dropship and with her ears whistling, she can hardly make out the conversation.
“You deserve it,” says the Major. “Now find a seat, you don’t need any more concussions.”
He walks back to the front of the ship. Angelo can hear the loud clinking of his metallic boots over his shoulder. “ETA five minutes,” the young man announces, a bitter taste in the back of his mouth.
“How are you, soldier?” asks the Major, somewhat surprisingly.
The young overseer sighs loudly before swiveling on his chair. He lets his distress show, lips pinched, but keeps a lid on it. The Major only expresses his stern form of sympathy.
“You know who she was, right?” Angelo asks.
The Major replies with a simple nod.
“Then you know how I feel.”
Jake has moved to the next room when he hears Chloe wake up. She hasn’t been unconscious very long and, sitting a few feet away, Morgan is busy piloting her remaining drones to clean her daughter’s wound, pouring iodine over it like syrup on a dessert. When Chloe regains consciousness, she sends her feet kicking in a panic, toppling one of the drones over while screaming in terror.
Morgan moves in closer, hoping to calm her down, but now an absolutely awake Chloe explodes: “Mom!” The surprise lasts only a second. “Where are we?” she asks, looking around the place.
“It’s alright! You’re safe,” quickly appeases Morgan.
Out of breath, Chloe asks all the questions running through her mind, as quickly as they come: “What the hell is going on? Are the cops after you? What the fuck is this place?”
“I told you I’ll explain,” delays the mother.
Seeing the crates of equipment stashed in every corner, Chloe yells: “Is this a secret LAIR? Why do you have a SECRET LAIR, Mom?”
“Baby, you’re hurt. I need you to lie down.”
Remembering the shot to her face at last, Chloe touches her blood-dripping cheek. Her eyeball pierced by debris is trapped behind swollen eyelids; it feels like a truck full of hammers fell right down on her. “I can’t see,” she says softly, yet unsure if that’s cause for panic.
Morgan presses a hand on her chest to push Chloe back inside the improvised operating chair. “You’re full of painkillers, ease down now,” she says, her brow pinched with loving concern.
Reassured to find his friend in good care, Jake walks farther away into the apartment, the sight of blood worrying to his young mind, despite the irony that it would never be his. He reads on the side of crates inscriptions he doesn’t understand, serial numbers, past delivery dates and cryptic prototype descriptions.
“What are you gonna do?” Chloe asks, while Morgan resumes cleaning her wound.
“I can’t treat your eye properly here,” the mother explains. “I’ll stop the bleeding, then you’re headed to the hospital.”
The statement has Chloe stiffen; she refrains from raising up. “You can’t be serious!” she spits through her teeth. “What about the cops?”
“They’re obviously set on finding me,” Morgan points out. “I’m going to surrender.”
“What?” Chloe’s breath cuts short. “What do they want with you?” she asks, her journalistic instincts alive and kicking.
Morgan pulls out a large shard from Chloe’s eyeball. “I’ve deleted research they want to use for weapons…” she says, moving to other debris.
This is all breaking news to Chloe, and she needs a little time to catch up. When she does, she speaks with incredulity mixed with fear: “For real?”
Morgan nods slightly, focused on the task at hand.
Chloe opens wide her valid eye. “Mum,” she exclaims, “I’m one hundred percent with you on this, you can’t surrender!”
“If I run, they’ll tag me as a terrorist.”
“Because that’s what they do! Doesn’t make it right!”
Morgan looks away to sigh, trying to avoid additional contamination of her daughter’s wound, and terribly ashamed. “They weren’t supposed to be that aggressive,” she confesses.
“That’s because you hurt them, Mum!” encourages Chloe. “You can’t quit now, or it’s all for none.”
Filled to the brim with adrenaline and virtuous anger, the young woman reaches for her jacket pocket to pull out her prosthetic eye, still intact in its sterile packaging. “I’ve been telling you again and again,” she declares, “this is the eye I want!”
Morgan takes a moment. In the next room, Jake is hearing everything of the exchange, but dares not intrude. He hardly understands what’s at stake anyway. Finally Morgan speaks: “I’ll have to put you under.”
He can hear them hugging, Chloe’s voice shaking with fear and conviction: “I’m with you all the way, Mum,” she says, devoted. Morgan’s lack of a reply leaves them both hanging.
Jake ventures deeper into the apartment while Morgan prepares the operation. Raised on his rear legs, he manages to peer inside a few crates, pushing away their lids with his muzzle. Inside each of them, he finds a different electronic device cushioned in foam peanuts. He hasn’t got a clue what all this is about. Moving from one room to the next, he finally reaches the bedroom in the back, where the loud noise of the generator beats like a jungle drum.
In the middle of the room, a strange transparent plastic coffin contains what looks like the robotic body of a child, its surface a matte shade of black, its shoulders, knees and elbows mounted with small rubber wheels, and wires running out of its extremities. Jake has no idea what this body is for, or who it belongs too, but when he lays eyes on it he feels immediate desire.
Midnight is nearing and, in the police precinct, visitors of the Workshop are all thinking they should’ve stayed at home. Under the supervision of NICA agents, zealous police officers confiscate every single electronic device they can get their hands on; phones, laptops, accessories, even detachable prostheses, all get labeled and carried away.
David is still trying to have his case heard: “Have you found a toy dog, officer? My son’s brains are in it!” he asks repeatedly, only half-aware of the apparent absurdity of his words.
It’s not much of a surprise when a cop grabs him by the elbow and throws him in a cell: “Get in here, you junky!” the man shouts, excruciated.
A few feet away, standing at the check-in desk, Bill is seeing everything of the exchange. Disgusted, he pays little attention to the cop asking for his fingerprints until he raises his voice. The biker turns a scornful face, lifting both his stumps above the counter. “It’s not obvious,” he says, “but I’m flipping both fingers.”
Chloe’s operation over, and the sedated young woman’s head heavily bandaged, Morgan leaves the living room to refresh herself. Jake hasn’t left the bedroom where the child-sized full body prosthetic rests in its plastic box; he’s been admiring the design with intense curiosity. Morgan enters, a vial of nutrients in her hand that she offers to the boy. He shakes his head in reply.
Morgan sighs, and bends over to put her hand on his shoulder: “I’m very sorry for all this, Jake,” she says, her eyes speaking louder than her words. “It will all be over soon.”
“Are you really gonna give
yourself up?” the boy asks, having had time to digest the whole situation.
“I’m at a point in my life,” Morgan explains, pausing, “where I can’t tell whether I’ve gone mad, or if the rest of the world has.”
Jake looks down. He understands knowing little of the larger picture, but Morgan is being deliberately obtuse, and he doesn’t feel like overstepping his bounds.
“In any case,” Morgan goes on, “I can’t have my daughter pay for what I’ve done.” She breathes in, keeping her lungs full as she speaks in horror. “I never thought they would come at you like this. And I’ve put you, David, and the others, in way too much trouble already.” She exhales, her eyes fixed to a horizon behind the concrete walls. “I need to end this.”
“But…” the child objects, worried, “what are they gonna do to you?”
“That’s a minor concern…” Morgan retorts, “I’m an old woman, Jake. All that matters to me now is family. Chloe… you, and your Dad: it’s not my place to make you go through this.” She rolls over to the transparent sarcophagus, within which the obsidian body seems to look back at her. She lays a hand on the container, looking at the prosthetic body with the strange mix of love and concern parents show over progeny. “Besides,” she adds, “I didn’t tell Chloe the whole truth… I’ve worked on a number of classified contracts throughout the years…” When she turns to Jake, pride and shame oddly meet in her regretful expression. “This is my masterpiece.”
Like an appetizer to a starving person, this little information has the boy wanting more. “What does it do?” he asks, fascinated.
“It’s an infiltration unit,” Morgan replies, “for spies essentially. It’s undetectable, and it can take over any electronics within its WiFi range.”
The dog’s tail starts shaking again, a signal Morgan knows how to interpret. “Awesome!” Jake chuckles.
“We called it the Little Blackjack,” Morgan states, a deep melancholy brought forth by the years of collaboration with friends and colleagues she has now betrayed.