by Gary Dejean
“Perhaps the press will disagree. I called them before coming here.”
“You better watch that tone!”
Tires screech outside the precinct, as news vans and reporters gather. Policemen rush out to bar them from entering. Morgan frowns at the agent: “Or what?” she asks. “You’ll have me waterboarded? You’ve taken innocent people hostage, only to get to me. Now stop being such a child if you really have this nation’s interests at heart.”
She faces Agent Dimaguiba with contempt, certain he can share the blame for her daughter’s wound. The agent’s words come out like a spit of vomit: “Get her the high-security cell!” he orders.
In her new electronics-free wheelchair, Morgan is carried to an isolation cell at the heart of the building. Locked behind three grates at the end of a corridor, she chuckles at the treatment reserved to dangerous criminals and herself alike. The agent instructs her not to move until he’s walked out of the room, and locked the transparent door behind him. Morgan lifts herself up and moves to the hard cot, where she lies, exhausted and patient.
Meanwhile in the main hall, NICA agents index her personal effects, storing them as evidence in a secured hangar full of equipment brought from the Workshop. Morgan’s custom wheelchair, once safely powered down, ends up in company of her remaining drones, steps away from the Behemoth lying under a tarp.
The sick scientist lies, awake, reviewing the plan in her mind, her eyes directed to the only tiny air vent on the ceiling of her cell, when Jake shows up. He waves her a silent hello, pulling the device out of his backpack to place it on the grate, the two handles facing up. Slowly, he unscrews the panel halfway from the inside.
Morgan is smiling to him when he waves her goodbye, leaving the device and the backpack in place behind him. On his way out, now familiarized with the entire compound, Jake decides to pay the other cells a visit. While they planned this whole charade, his elder friend made sure he would follow her instructions to the letter, but now that the mission is essentially accomplished, the boy is feeling cocky.
He passes by the cells containing Malcolm and Bill, quickly scanning faces of piled-up detainees, and moves to the next one until he finds his dad. Lying in the corner, his back against the wall, David is the only one still awake in his cell. Jake whispers: “Dad!” but David doesn’t hear him. He insists: “Dad! Look up!”
Upon hearing the voice, puzzled, David looks out the door into the empty corridor. Jake has to insist once more for him to notice the small grate on the ceiling. He stands up, looking closer, only to find Jake waving at him, or rather the carbon-black face of a man he doesn’t recognize, waving, in the air-vents. David rubs his eyes, astounded, while Jake folds the grate like a Venetian blind. Both speak in murmurs.
“Don’t worry Dad, you’re getting out of here!” the boy says, excited.
“J-Jake,” an unbelieving David stutters, “is that you?”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t stay,” the child replies, as if merely skipping a schoolday. “Just wanted to say: I’m fine. See you at home!”
David is starting to wonder if he took a baton hit during the raid, or something. “Wh… What?” he asks. “How the hell did you get in there?” but Jake is already waving goodbye and rolls off, just as silently as he came. “Wait! Come back!” begs David. His voice resonates in the ventilation shaft and soon enough he stands, alone, looking at the bent grate of the air-vents, his head full of even more questions than a minute before.
Hanzo, Patti and Angelo have just finished dinner when the Major’s phone rings; he steps away from the table to pick up the call, leaving the young couple in an awkward face to face. When he returns, the bottle of tequila in hand, the Major looks quite satisfied.
“I’ve just received a message that Morgan Zhu has surrendered,” he says, unscrewing the bottle’s cap. “Congratulations are in order!”
Patti and Angelo need a second to register the information. “That’s amazing!” the young woman bursts with enthusiasm.
Angelo takes a little longer. “Wow!” he starts. “This… this is good news!”
The Major pours three drinks, emptied just as quickly by the glorified mercenaries. The strong flavor of alcohol wiping away remorse, Angelo smiles again, thinking the situation is now under control.
Jake exits the air-vents through which he came, closing the grate behind him. He walks calmly to the edge of the roof, avoiding cameras made literal child’s play by his augmented sight.
Once near the lamp post, he slides elegantly down to street level and, as the van drives by with its side door open, he skips in, closing the door behind him. Inside, he hides under the blanket but can’t resist looking out the window. As he passes by the entrance of the precinct, he sees press vehicles, reporters, lights and cameras, swarming the area. All he can do is wait, while the van automatically carries him back to Chloe.
Chapter 8
That night, the police officer in charge of surveillance is beating his record on his favorite mobile game. The dozens of cameras blanketing the precinct are showing little movement in the early hours of the day, and he’s doing his best to keep himself awake.
But all the while, the device Jake left behind is running a string of programs. Piggybacking on the precinct’s security system, it accesses Morgan’s chair in the evidence room. The chair boots up, only a few meters away from her drones and from the Behemoth, lying flat on a large trailer.
The surveillance agent sees none of that, as the image to the evidence room freezes for a minute. When the clock on the screen starts running its normal course again, the drones have pulled wires from the local electric grid into the Behemoth. Back in their original position, they remain, inconspicuously active.
When the sun rises over the precinct on that last day of the year, David hasn’t caught a single minute of sleep. The rattling of the grates, when all cells suddenly open, pulls him out of his eerie state of mind. “Come on, get up! You’re released!” shouts an officer to the attention of the civilians, packed in overcrowded cells. Painfully they get up, sore from a night spent sleeping on concrete, and queue up in the main hall to sign off their belongings. In a hurry, David is first to check in with the clerk.
“Name?”
“David Patel.”
“Ha, yes, the one with the missing son. We’ve put out an APB. Call us if he gets home by himself.”
The policeman walks to the back and returns with Jake’s body on a trolley, before carrying it to the desk. The light armature of the prosthetic, swung awkwardly by the officer, bobbles like an oversized puppet, its arms flinging around and a blank expression stuck on its mindless face. David signs it off, along with a bag of miscellaneous items, pulling the brainless shell over his shoulder in order to carry it to his car. Brought to the precinct’s parking lot by vindictive agents, David’s sedan has been searched to and fro, instilling a sense of violation in the already vulnerable man.
He hasn’t told anyone about his odd midnight encounter, and a sleepless night is enough to make him doubt any of it even happened. Sitting the prosthesis in the passenger seat, he reaches for his cellphone in the bag of personal effects. Praying all the while that Jake kept his own phone with him, he shuffles through the few items only to find it there. David gasps as he sees it; knowing that his son is out there, beyond reach, tears his heart to pieces.
Back in the belly of the abandoned building where Morgan was hiding, Jake is exhausting the Little Blackjack’s functionalities, while passing time in the company of the robotic dog, waiting for Chloe to wake up. The last of Morgan’s drones are running on auto, monitoring her vitals and cleaning up around her.
Her head half covered in bandages, she opens her eye, feeling like she’s waking from the worst hangover of her life. “Good morning,” greets one of the drones. “Breakfast is served.” On a platter the drone is holding a measly juice-pack, a protein bar, and a cup full of painkillers and antibiotics. Jake rushes in to find Chloe awake. He greets her, audibly relieved.
“Chloe!”
“Jake?”
“How are you feeling?” he inquires.
Chloe swallows the pills and struggles to place the straw in the juice pack. “Fine, I guess…” she says, still drowsy. Though visibly high-tech, the Little Blackjack looks to her like any custom prosthesis. “What’s this body?” she asks.
Jake answers partially: “Morgan gave it to me,” he says, quickly dropping the subject.
Chloe finally manages to drink a sip of juice. Looking around at the drones, all displaying their idle avatar, she asks: “Where is she?” obviously alluding to her mother.
Jake looks away, embarrassed. Even if he had the courage to tell her, he wouldn’t know how to explain. “Jake?” Chloe insists.
The boy dares not look her in the eye. “Play recording,” he says, to the attention of the drones.
The one with the platter starts displaying a recording of Morgan: “Zuzu, I’m sorry I won’t be here when you wake up,” she starts, while Jake quietly walks away. “You’re not going to like this. I surrendered. I am guilty.”
Still only half awake until that moment, Chloe feels her heart racing; breathless, she stays quiet, knowing that the recording won’t react to her sorrow. Still, Morgan marks a pause, herself trembling with emotion. “I’m glad I got the chance to give you the eye you wanted,” she confesses. “If I’m correct, our friends will have been released by the time you see this. I need you to bring Jake back to his father, and I need you to stay on your toes, baby girl. You’ll hear from me soon. I love you.”
Chloe can hardly take the blow. “What? Mom!…” she whimpers, touching the screen in front of her.
In her wheelchair, both hands on a metallic table, Morgan is serene, sitting in front of a wide mirror covering the entire wall. For the past half hour, a special agent has been sticking electrodes to her chest, while setting up a lie detector. He hasn’t said a word, and neither has she, but Morgan refrains from smiling because the man is clearly struggling to find her heartbeat, when the lady has none: most of her internal organs have been replaced by artificial counterparts. The scientist knows, unlike the agent, that her blood flows continually, and that he’s wasting his time and efforts.
Finally, Agent Dimaguiba enters. He sits in front of Morgan and sets up a recording device. “Good morning, Agent,” she greets him.
Meanwhile the other agent is getting angry at the machine, slapping the side of it like that of an old radio. “There’s a problem with the detector,” he complains.
Morgan decides to put an end to the joke: “Your machine is fine, agent,” she informs. “My heart is non-pulsatile.”
“What?”
“I have no pulse.”
The agent looks at her with exasperation, knowing she could’ve said so when he opened the box. Morgan smiles in response, like some gentle grandmother. Dimaguiba takes it from there, severe and threatening: “We won’t be needing this. If you lie to us, you’ll never see the light of day. You understand?”
“I’m here to tell the truth, Agent.”
The other agent packs up the lie detector in its suitcase and goes to stand by the door. Agent Dimaguiba turns on the recording device on the table.
“State your name and profession for the record.”
“My name is Dr. Morgan Zhu, I am the director of the Research and Development department at H+ incorporated.”
“Where were you on December thirtieth, between four and six AM?”
“I was at the H+ headquarters, downtown.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was destroying the fruit of six years of work.”
“Can you clarify, for the record?”
“Of course. I deleted the blueprints of the Little Blackjack stealth infiltration unit, as well as all of the research associated with its development. I also destroyed every cloud-based backup, and ran a full wipe to ensure that the data couldn’t be recovered by anyone.”
“What about the prototype?”
“Ah, yes. I had drones deliver the prototype to a secure location, then I erased their logs so it couldn’t be traced.”
“Where is it now?”
“Dismantled. I made a backup of the software, and destroyed the original. It can be found in fragments down the shoreline.”
“Where is that backup?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Agent. You told me I could give a full deposition, so let me start at the beginning.”
Morgan checks the agent’s reaction, salivating like a sniffing dog: visibly upset, he sits back without a word, which the scientist interprets as her cue. “I came to Manila with my daughter back in 2024,” she starts, “soon after the hurricane, when H+ raised an antenna designed to assist in the construction of the city-wide platform.”
Dimaguiba exchanges a glance with the other agent, and sighs, while Morgan goes on: “We already dealt in government contracts back then,” she continues, “but nothing like today…”
Jake and Chloe do not talk much on the way back to town; the boy is too shy and afraid to admit what he’s done, the young woman is too devastated to ask. She drives her mother’s automated van to his apartment building, accompanying him up on that late morning.
Before ringing the doorbell, she hugs him from the side, unsure when or even if they’ll ever meet again. They can hear David rushing on the other side of the door before it opens. “Thank God!” he cries, hugging his son immediately. Jake remains stiff in his embrace; David looks at his new body, the alien-looking military design made even scarier by the fact that he recognizes it from the night before.
Standing right next to them, Chloe feels invisible, taking a strange comfort in the notion. Father and son reunited, she’s now free to indulge in self-pity, and whatever other complacent feeling might come up. David turns to her, noticing the mountain of bandages covering her face at last. “Chloe, what happened to you both?” he asks, keeping his tone down.
Jealousy and nausea keeping her throat choked, she answers, exhausted, choosing her words with parsimony: “We made it out the back. I got hurt. Got Jake another body…” She swallows bitter spit, certain she’s about to puke. “My Mom’s with the cops, David. I can’t stay.”
“Thanks for looking after my boy,” the father says, his voice made deep by genuine gratitude. Chloe quickly turns away, waving them both goodbye as she swallows her tears and heads down the stairwell. Jake remains silent, knowing his friend’s sadness will only last so far, and yet he discovers how painful such secrets can be.
His regrets only grow once he steps back inside their apartment. His usual body, now customized beyond recognition, is sat on the couch of the living room, glitter still encrusted in its clothes. His father starts pacing, agitated by the realization that their midnight chat was no dream. “You owe me an explanation, young man,” he starts. “What were you doing at the precinct?”
Jake lies by omission: “I was there with Morgan,” he says. “She surrendered.”
“What? No, I mean,” David shakes his head, confused. “What were you doing in the vents?!”
“I came to tell you I was fine! You didn’t have your phone!”
“That’s not… How did you manage to get inside? Where did you get that body?”
“Morgan gave it to me.”
A wave of disgust flows over David. Made sick by the impotence to which he’s been reduced, he’s not taking lightly the news that his son is committing felonies. “That’s it,” he snaps. “You’ve spent way too much time with these people. Get back into your own body and this one’s going to the cops.”
Jake shakes his hands in surprise, the fluid motions of the Little Blackjack convincing him even more that this is a mistake. “What? No!” he bursts.
But David is relying on the type of phrases his parents used on him: “That’s not a vote, Jake Patel!” he shouts. “Now do as I say.”
Jake looks at his former body, its disparate pieces oddly fitting together like the
harlequin figure of some old scarecrow. Through the overriding interface of the Little Blackjack, he boots it up and controls it to stand on its feet. The body moves like a string puppet, bobbling its head and swaying its limbs as it walks in David’s direction, the voice synthesizer uttering sardonic words.
“OK, Daddy,” the machine says, under Jake’s control. “What’s wrong, daddy? I did what you asked. Wha-- what’s the problem, Daddy?”
“Alright, that’s enough!” David waves his arms, almost in a panic, pushing the remote-controlled body away. Jake sends it signals to twist its arms and legs at unbearable angles, and soon the shell contorts, crumpling to the ground like a desiccated mummy. Jake and David stand, silently furious at each other. “Go to your room!” bursts David at last. “And get some clothes on!” he adds, grasping at any straw of authority he can get his mind on.
Jake shrugs, amused by the mundane absurdity of that last remark. “To hide what?” he asks, defiant, before grabbing his cellphone from the table and storming off to his room.
David watches the body on the ground, the lifelike face of an Indian child, mouth agape, with a thousand mile stare. Wires are jolting from every joint, plates fractured, rotors bent. The thing is ruined beyond repair; he sighs. From the bedroom, he can hear his son crying, a continuous digital moan made chilling by the fact that Jake never needs to catch his breath.
The father is feeling horrible. He grabs his cellphone and calls the police precinct, civil duty taking priority over his personal concerns. “Hi, this is David Patel,” he starts. “I’m calling about my son. Yes. Yes, he got home, you can stop looking. Thank you, you too.”
When he’s done with his call, he pulls the destroyed body up and sits it on the couch. The familiar shell seems to look back at him, its disturbingly alive eyes filling David with questions.
Morgan’s van parks down the shabby garage. Chloe honks and exits, locking the vehicle behind her. From a second floor window, Malcolm waves her to come up. She climbs the narrow stairs and walks through the open door, into the messy apartment shared by the mechanic and his rasta friend. It is still quite early to call it New Year’s Eve, but after the night they endured, sore and exhausted, they’re treating themselves to an early celebration. Bill is filling a fluorescent water pipe with thick buds of weed; Malcolm is standing inches away from one of the many screens hanging to the walls, listening to a news report about Morgan’s arrest.