"Absolutely not. Get out."
The words came sharp and final, a stamp slammed onto paper.
The tall man in pale lab coat stood awkwardly in the doorway, his mechanical arm fidgeted with a hard case in both hands. Behind it, was a containment pod which sank slightly on the white pebble stone flooring.
Inside, something lay motionless.
Someone.
"Price," The man in white said carefully, "I just need five minutes."
The other older man, dressed in a forest green lab coat remained stubbornly faced away from the door. "You need a lawyer."
"I can explain—"
"You can leave, Ghost." Price turned around, his face a mixture of distraught, disappointment and stubbornness. "You have got to be out of your damn mind!"
Ghost shifted again, daring to step into the compound, Price took a step forward, a clear indication that he did not appreciate whatever his subordinate decided to bring this time, or rather he was one word away from shoving Ghost out his home.
"Tell me," Price said, voice controlled to the point of cruelty, of absolute restrain and agony, "that you didn't bring it into my home."
Ghost swallowed. "Her."
Price's jaw flexed once.
"That," he pointed towards the pod. "Is. Dead."
The words landed like a verdict. And it was, actually.
Project RV-09 was shut down 8 years ago.
"I know what you're thinking," Ghost said quietly, shifting the hard case to his other gloved hand. "She is disabled, not armed anymore. Stripped the combat stack and all predictive modules."
"You think that's what made her dangerous?"
Ghost paused, sighing. "No."
"What did? Go on." Price demanded, folding his arms.
Ghost replied, reciting the document from memory. "Unstable and highly reactive beyond control from fusing human and non-human architecture."
"And the casualties that spanned across 22 pages." Price ended the conversation, turning away again before Ghost stepped back into his line of sight.
"I didn't bring her here to mock you, it's…a gift."
"Do you know what it looks like," Price chuckled humourlessly and ran a hand up his hair, "when you hand someone a loaded gun and call it a gift?"
Ghost replied instantly. "Yes."
"You know what I did after the first disaster," Price said slowly.
"Yes."
"You know why I wrote the restrictions."
"Yes."
"You know how many bodies it took before the pig slops agreed to stop."
"You can terminate her."
"I damn well will."
"Will you?"
Price’s gaze slid off Ghost’s bionic eye, down the line of his robotic arm, to the hard case that seemed to carry the weight of the world. Then, as if his body remembered before his mind could, his eyes flicked to the door again.
The thing on his threshold.
The pod stood there with the audacity of something that didn’t belong in the world and yet had been built by human hands anyway—tall, solid, clean like a shard of sterile monlight, smooth and oval with seamless white curves.
A rectangular pane of glass ran along the front, revealing the abandoned prototype inside, as if the pod itself was proud to display what it contained. Memories of schematics, blueprints and approvals form flashed across his mind, the reminders that he had been one of the few who watched the prototypes rolled out one by one left a sour taste in his mouth.
The interior was dim, lit by a slow, clinical pulse of a neon blue that washed over the moulded supports, carrying life through machinery, flowing in and out of a singular tube into the head of the pale, motionless figure held in perfect alignment.
A breakthrough in innovation and weaponry. The most anticipated project in history.
No.
More like a glamorised coffin for a false human.
A sneak peek to my upcoming project, featuring Price, Ghost and Raven in a futuristic sci-fi world.
