“Claudia sees someone unlike what most funerals bring out in people. She sees a woman with wonders of what could’ve been, had Dr. Henning been a better man. But there is no regret in her face.”
Claudia Irvine, a combat operative, visits Diane Patya-Henning, an old colleague and scientist who has recently widowed. There is much more than what meets the eye at the funeral, but to Claudia, it could not be more obvious.
Claudia Irvine loathed discussions around death. She couldn’t stand to be in a room of people crying over the loss of a life, no matter how expected or unexpected it was. It didn’t have to be this way. Bionics, medicine, machines, pure skill— there were things that could extend life before death. In the end, maybe even cheat it altogether, putting mankind as close to perfection as it might ever come. Both she and Diane would do anything to reach that end. They'd make sure nobody in this room ever had to mourn again. Not for their sake, anyway.
But Claudia understood the shadow that Diane often lived in. Her husband wanted fame and money and buildings with his name across the front; Diane only ever wanted to further the pursuit of human biology. She would do anything for that, too. Dr. Henning’s funeral and Diane’s need for knowledge could not be mutually exclusive. Claudia had watched too many people die, both her own and her enemies, to miss that.
Claudia is sitting in the middle of a crowd that stands and walks around, chatting in hushed murmurs and subdued half-laughter. Grief makes an already dry room of scientists even less exciting. Diane hardly even knows the names of most of the guests, and doesn’t care to find out whether they were invited or they invited themselves. She accepts apologies and quiet smiles from the semi-strangers she passes, but her movement across the room isn’t aimless.
“I was expecting your husband,” she says. “I never took you as one for memorials.”
“He is occupied by his work at the moment,” answers Claudia. “Truthfully, I’m surprised you invited him. He’s much more of a sap than I am. Emotions are the last thing you need right now.”
“That much we agree on.” Diane takes a moment to gaze around the room, moderately occupied, and says, “It was like pulling teeth for me, putting this together. When I’m gone, it’ll be quick. Both the death and the funeral.”
“I’m not sure I’d even have one. Trevor and our daughter don’t need to mourn me. They’re too smart to be preoccupied by it. Waste of time.”
She turns to the side, only briefly considering the implication that this funeral is a waste of time. Diane can’t say she fully disagrees. “Daughter?” she asks.
Claudia nods, and with a glow in her eye, she says, “A girl we’ve been sponsoring at a group home for a long time now. We checked all the boxes and finished the paperwork. She’s ours now. It’s not easy, but we’re on our way to solid ground.”
“Do you ever doubt going down that path? With everything your work asks of you?”
She asks a lot more than she leads on in only two sentences. Claudia thinks for a minute. “Maybe. People are surprised at how much of their lives are not out of their control; you just have to learn how. I want my daughter to learn the same. If I ever do start doubting, I’ll fight it, and I’ll correct the errors. Like I always have. I will teach her to do the same.”
Diane nods, wrapping an arm around her colleague. “I'm happy for you.”
Claudia holds Diane’s gaze when she responds, “you, too.”
The women sit in silence for a long while. Diane should be worried. The Irvines are powerful people. If they know something, saw something, said something, it could be the end— not just for Diane, but for her research. Decades of innovation reduced to nothing. But she’s powerful, too, and Claudia is selfish; she has no interest in tearing down someone outside of her field of work. While they aren’t shy to hand batons off to one another, they are racing on two completely separate tracks. Diane will do what is required to put her over the finish line, and the Irvines will turn their backs and have deniability. She will do the same for them.
When Diane steps up to the podium, she doesn’t let the sorrow of the day get under her skin. Her speech is confident yet somber, thoughtful yet quick, reminiscent yet unromantic of the deceased’s life. Claudia sees someone unlike what most funerals bring out in people. She sees a woman in mourning. A woman who didn’t want things to end this way. A woman with wonders of what could’ve been, had Dr. Henning been a better man. But there is no regret in her face. Whatever choices led her to this moment, standing before an audience of grieving people over a man who did not deserve anyone’s grief, she does not wish she could change them. Second to a scientist, the best thing to happen to Diane is becoming a widow.
Claudia locks eyes with her one more time from across the crowd. “My husband’s achievements were only the beginning,” Diane continues. “I will continue on with my research in his stead. With any luck, I hope to reach heights he had only dreamed of.”
With a nod, Claudia leaves the room. Diane’s race is only beginning, and Claudia will remain with her back turned, as she always has.
“Colby’s only ever known fleeting love like roller coaster rides that never stop, operating from dusk to dawn. But she hasn’t had a girlfriend since she split with Alondra. Her days of chasing highs are over.”
Colby reminisces on her days as a bounty hunter, wondering if her and Alondra can rekindle a flame whose embers haven’t quite burned out yet. After almost six years of “just business”, maybe they can make something work.
-----
The panels of Colby’s visor retract into the sides of the helmet. She can’t stand to aim through a scope and a tinted visor, even if it hardly makes a difference. You’d be hard pressed to see her miss a target-- especially on a bounty this valuable.
“Tell me what you see, Lon,” she says, looking around the block from the rooftop.
From around the corner, Alondra heads south down the sidewalk in a jacket so big it almost looks like a poncho. On the other side of the road, two hooded individuals pass by one another and exchange a backpack without as much as a glance.
“Short, Caucasian, blue hoodie, black backpack,” she says, crossing the street during a lull in traffic and ducking into an alley between two shops. She cinches the jacket at her waist and produces a slender, black mask from inside of it. Its two eye holes almost seem to glow in the flickering streetlight. “She’s rounding the corner now.”
Colby watches the woman make it halfway down the block before she passes the backpack to another man in a black jacket and a baseball cap. He secures both straps over his shoulders rather than just one.
The intersection gives way to an abandoned lot left by a flattened building; dozens of cars litter the area, avoiding parking tickets and exorbitant meter fees. When Colby looks through her scope, she has a clean shot at the car that the man makes a beeline for.
“How do you want me to play this?” she asks Alondra. “Shoot out the tires and get the guy on the run, or tag the vehicle and see where he’s going?”
She jogs down the alley, making a beeline for the parking lot. “Get him back on his feet. If I’m fast enough and he’s confused enough, I can get him here and now.”
“‘Here and now’ better get a little more here and a little more now, then.”
Colby pulls the trigger, reloads, and repeats.
The two shots echo across the parking lot and air escapes from the tires. The man stumbles back into the trunk. Gripping onto the backpack straps until his knuckles turn white, he tries to seek out the sniper; but by the time he traces the bullets back to their source, Colby is long gone and Alondra’s just feet away from him.
She propels herself off of the trunk of the car and latches onto his torso, flipping him onto his back and letting him cough up a handful of dirt. From beneath the mask, Alondra’s pitiful laugh stays hidden. She throws a kick in the gut which he seems to take pretty well, for a lanky white guy. Her second kick lands on something stiff when he swings the backpack around to protect his chest.
“I could use another pair of hands!” she mutters, grasping at straws to get him in a headlock. The height difference certainly isn’t helping.
“Three cars are about to turn the corner. He’s stalling you, Lon. Get that backpack and go!”
Alondra manages to snatch the backpack from his hands as he continues to use it as a shield. Its heaviness sends her off balance. The screeching of tires and the flash of headlights gives her just enough time to slip back into the alley, where Colby waits for her. She aims her rifle at the ring of cars that just swung into the lot, but Alondra yanks the back of her collar and forces her into a sprint. Footsteps close in not far behind.
The pair descends deeper into the web of back alleys. Even beneath her helmet, you can hear a few laughs of adrenaline escape from Colby’s lips. She scales a dumpster, lunges over the fence, and rolls onto the ground. Alondra grabs her arm to keep her from stumbling, now fully broken out into laughter. The thrill of an escape is almost addictive.
Alondra unzips the backpack and eyes the shiny, solid bricks that have been pounding against her back for ten minutes. Pure tungsten-titanium. The strongest metal that bionics can buy.
“Holy shit!” Colby says, a grin still plastered to her face. She steps backward and leans against the wall, catching her breath. “That was insane! We can pawn this off for so much.”
Alondra can’t find any words to say. The euphoria keeps her giggling as she shakes the curls from her vision. Colby reaches for Alondra’s waist with her left hand and her own helmet with her right, but finds that her partner has already begun removing it from her face. With the visor still covering her eyes, warm, soft lips place themselves against Colby’s. Both hands wrap around Alondra’s waist-- but it isn’t long until the quiet, uncontrollable laughter takes hold of them again.
Even as the years go by, Colby’s days as a mercenary sit in the forefront of her mind at all times. The thrill of the chase. The catharsis of finally nabbing a bounty. The dopamine rush of cashing in. The quiet, mysterious life that she was lucky enough to spend with a person that she loved more than anyone.
Someone she loves more than anyone.
Their recent interactions have been limited purely to business: Colby sends vulnerable citizens to the sanctuary city Alondra runs, and Alondra tips Colby off about criminals in the area in exchange. Nothing more than the pass of a baton to someone who is better equipped to hold it. For nearly six years, they have been each others’ informants, but the title never sat quite right. It should’ve been more. It should be more.
Colby drums her fingertips on a coffee cup at the kitchen counter, metal clinking with the ceramic without her even noticing. Reese comes over and rests a hand over her fidgeting fingers. She offers her roommate a kind, quiet nod before opening the fridge. “Wanna talk about it?” she asks.
Colby downs the last sip of her coffee and grimaces at the bitterness. “Talk about what?”
“You’ve been tapping on that cup for almost five minutes without taking a drink from it. You’re a lot easier to read than you think.”
“That’s only because you’ve known me for, like, eight years.” She wanders over to the counter and pours another cup, careful to put an adequate amount of cream and sugar in it this time.
“And yet, you still don’t open up about your feelings to me. Or any of your team, for that matter.” Colby scoffs and tosses the creamer to Reese, which she catches with ease and returns to the shelf in the fridge.
“Tough talk from someone who wouldn’t leave her shell until she had a girlfriend to break her out of it.”
“It’s about Alondra, then, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t--” She slumps back into the barstool at the counter. The slightest suggestion of a nod comes from her head. Her roommate pulls out the chair next to her.
“Let’s start from the beginning. Why did you two decide to go your separate ways?” asks Reese.
“I had always planned to be a bounty hunter only temporarily. It was sort of my one ‘fuck-you’ to being given orders I didn’t believe in, but if I just ran from that responsibility and didn’t try and fix the system, I couldn’t live with myself. I had to go back to being an agent,” Colby explains. “As for Alondra, she wanted to make a bigger impact than just beating up criminals and getting paid for it. She wanted to look after people. The Nest is her baby-- a sanctuary city for people with illegal cybernetics was a pipe dream she always told me about, and now it’s real.”
“And you don’t want to pull her away from that.”
She nods and takes another sip. “Not even, like, as a partner. If I show up in her life again in any capacity beyond ‘business’ or whatever, I’m worried I’ll royally fuck it up.” Her expression melts into one that’s not quite sorrowful, but not quite frustrated-- just lost with herself. She meets Reese’s gaze and asks, “How do you and Adya do it?”
“I love Adya more than anything,” Reese says. “I have never loved anyone the way that I love her, but she’s also my coworker. Six-something years ago, we were too young and dumb to commit to a relationship and a career at the same time. We stepped back, looked at the situation a little more, and decided when we were ready to commit to both. You were twenty-one when you were a merc, running around LA and getting newspaper articles written about you. That’s prime ‘young and dumb’ territory. You and Alondra are much different people now. Adjusting your promises to match your values isn’t the same as breaking them.”
Reese takes a few dishes from the sink and sets them into the dishwasher, wiping her hands on a dish towel thrown on the counter. “Regardless, she’s still your informant. The least you can give her is an update on your life. Call her.”
Her last two words ring with a softness that’s seldom seen from Reese. Her and Adya’s relationship is steady, practical, and unbreakable; Colby’s only ever known fleeting love like roller coaster rides that never stop, operating from dusk to dawn. But she hasn’t had a girlfriend since she split with Alondra. Her days of chasing highs are over. She trusts Reese’s judgment.
After sorting through all the fruits picked from the backyard, Alondra’s finally ready to bring them downstairs to the Nest residents. They’re more than welcome to come upstairs and pick it themselves-- safety isn’t an issue when this acre of land is uninhabited by anyone else-- but most of them prefer to stay inside during the day. She doesn’t blame them for being wary; it’s all that most of them have ever known.
The back door swings shut with a creak and she sets the basket on the kitchen counter. Thick clouds passing over the sun cast shadows through the open windows and wooden floors. It’s a bit lonely, living up here by herself, but most of her time is spent downstairs, anyway.
The landline rings. “Hello?”
“No time like the here and now to say hello,” a familiar voice says. Alondra almost drops the knife in her hand.
“Colby?”
“Am I catching you at a bad time?”
She tucks the phone against her shoulder and returns to the cutting board. “No, no. Good time, actually. Is everything okay?”
“Great, actually. Just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing.”
“I’m… good. Things are good here. I’ve been…” She sets down the knife. “I have a feeling that there’s a bigger reason for this call.”
Colby chuckles. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t. But really, I just wanted to check in. I promise. What have you been up to?”
Her laughter immediately lets Alondra’s shoulders drop. She can’t help but produce a smile. “I’ve started growing grapefruits in the backyard. Thank God the residents like them, because I don’t know what I’d do with all this damn fruit if I wasn’t looking after almost two dozen people.”
“Reminds me of how you used to cut up fruit and bring it to me for no reason. Like your mom used to do for you.”
The recollection of a memory gives her a bit of an ache beneath the fondness. “Yeah, and I tried to placebo you into liking honeydew.”
“It takes like sweet, wet chalk! How do you even begin to like it?”
Her voice glows, like it’ll form a halo around Alondra’s head if she listens for long enough. It’s nice to talk for more than five minutes and have it not be purely business.
A laugh, followed by a soft sigh from Colby. “I hope it’s okay that I reached out, Lon. I know you’re picky about calls being traced and everything, but I… I wanted to—“ she pauses for a second. “I miss you.”
Alondra fidgets with a fridge magnet and says, “Me too.”
“Reese gave me this whole spiel about promises. About how it’s okay to update them as you grow and how it’s not the same as breaking them. I think that I was a very different person six years ago— I was young and chaotic and I don’t know how you put up with me. But you did, and I’m thankful.”
Her elbows lean against the windowsill, where the sun emerges from beneath a dark cloud and pours rich, honey sunlight into the house again. The warmth envelops her and allows the tension to lift from her spine. She breathes out sharply. “Come to the Nest,” Alondra tells Colby. “Friday evening. I think I want to update some of my promises, too.”
Colby trips over her words when she tries to reach some sort of acknowledgment, but says that she’ll be there. They exchange their goodbyes and she drops the phone back into its slot on the counter.
The moving train barely slows down enough for Colby to swing her body against its rungs and climb up to the top. Dozens of cargo cars stretch off into the distance; she tries to guess what each one’s transporting based on the color and the branding of the car.
It’s a trip she’s only made a handful of times, but she can’t deny that she loves the thrill of train surfing. Her and Alondra would do it all the time with the transit systems that run through LA, speeding across town to where they were needed most. Trying to catch a moving light rail in a metro area makes jumping onto this cargo train look like child’s play.
Dusky sunlight bathes her in a comfortable warmth that counteracts the rushing breeze passing by her for thirty minutes straight. The railroad stretches on for miles, curling around hills and disappearing behind the occasional farmhouse that pops up from the earth. There’s comfort in these barren, hilly lands. It’s a far cry from the densely packed city blocks she’s used to.
The train car rounds a corner and begins its ascent up a gradual incline. That’s her queue. Two homes in the distance grow closer and closer until they’re only a block away. Colby tosses her backpack onto the ground and her body follows close behind, rolling out of the jump. Years of experience with being on the run, and she lands without as much as a stumble.
She tries to keep her hands steady as she makes her way up the hill to the house. It’s been years since they saw each other in person, and even more since they’d had a conversation that wasn’t work-related. But at the same time, their year-long tenure as adrenaline junkie bounty hunters feels like only months ago. Picking up where they left off is both the most comforting and terrifying thought. It’s funny, the way that a year of love can stretch itself into six more.
The door of the first house creaks open. Alondra plants her feet firmly on the porch-- not because she wants to, but because she can’t bring herself to carry them down the floor without taking her attention away from the figure at the end of the road. Short, scruffy blonde hair that Colby’s been cutting shorter and shorter in the recent years. Two bionic hands that catch the sun at just the right angle. A blue jacket that Alondra insisted she buy because it looked good on her.
As the last of the train whirs by, everything around her seems shaded, but she stays in the light. Dusk hues pour out from her body and form a halo around it. The same happens around Alondra from the lamplight coming from the open doorway. The sun dips below the hills.
There is no more anxiety. No more fear of safety. No more tension. The world opens up and it’s all Colby’s and Alondra’s for the taking.
It has always been you.
Alondra tears herself from the porch and stumbles down the steps. Colby tosses her backpack into the yard, breaking out into a sprint. Their bodies collide and the kiss lasts a lifetime. It’s strong enough to grab hold of the last light of day and keep it in the sky for just a little longer.
Just like that, Colby is twenty-one again, standing in the alley and riding the afterglow of a successful chase. Her lips latch onto Alondra’s with a youthful buzz, but a tender adoration that could spread itself across lifetimes. Living hand-to-mouth feels like having all the money in the world if you spend it with the right person. And there will never be a righter person.
Alondra wipes the tears from Colby’s face, then her own. She chokes out a laugh at the sheer drama of her reaction to seeing her again for the first time in years. Tear-stained and wind-rustled from the journey, and she has never looked more beautiful. Her hands trail over her neck, down her arms and intertwine with Colby’s fingers.
“You cut your hair again,” she says with a smile. She guides Alondra to lace her fingers through the short, blonde locks. Colby leans her head into the touch.
“I wonder who I learned that from.”
Their foreheads tap together for a long while-- longer than they expect. The porch lights turn on, bathing the yard in yellow.
“Do you still have some of those grapefruits?” Colby asks.
“Plenty.” She takes Colby’s hand and pulls her toward the house. “Let me introduce you to the residents, too.”
She comes to a halt on the first step of the porch. “I was actually thinking we could sit out here for a while and just… talk. Update those promises we were talking about. I can meet everyone later.”
Pulling Colby’s bag from her shoulder, Alondra pauses and huffs out a chuckle. “Yeah, I’d like that. Let me put your stuff inside and get you that grapefruit. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t,” says Colby, settling down at the top of the steps.
“We-- aren’t anything,” says Caelius with a finger pointing back and forth over the table. “We are going to be brief. Do you understand? I don’t care that you 'get it', whatever the fuck it is, I don’t care what you know, and I don’t care what you can offer me. Every minute I’m not down there making money, I’m losing it. Someone with deep pockets and a body count is picking up my buy-in.”
“Someone like you?” asks Nora.
Caelius maintains a reputation as one of the best mercenaries in town, but when she's a major piece in a massive exposé for the American Cybernetics Association, she keeps her involvement to herself. But those who know where to look-- know how to look-- have the unique ability to uncover anything and everything. Those like Nora Luan, who has been looking into cybernetics corruption since long before Caelius was even born.
Ashlyn Mercy.
There is something especially poisonous about the way Nora says Caelius’s real name. Something unlike the blackmail of those who came before her. Nora’s reputation leads Caelius to believe that she doesn’t want to hurt her-- she just wants an audience. The habitual shotgun fear subsides. While her captor pours herself a drink in the kitchen, Caelius eyes the exits-- even the one that requires a leap onto the terrace, over the balcony, and a 150-foot plummet to the road below. She could survive it. The servos in her hips and knees would give out and the programmed pain would cause a sixteen-second delay, but only after about four minutes on foot maintaining a pace of seven miles an hour would she would blow the damaged motors in her legs entirely. But again, Nora only wants an audience-- not a mess, and certainly not a police pursuit. If these two women were anything, it was expensive and calculated.
Neither of them were an unusual sight here. Caelius spent plenty of time on the casino floor, several stories below, but seldom got acquainted enough with anybody to be invited up to a suite. Everyone she played with had one booked. She knew this. If they had a hundred extra dollars in their pocket for the entry fee of a semiprivate game room, then they had an extra thousand for a stocked bar and a top-floor view of Hollywood. It seemed that, unbeknown to her, Nora was one of them. More than that, Nora Luan was alive-- she’d rather start there.
The poster girl of American science, a celebrity gone silent since 1990, mixing a cocktail thirty-something years later looking no different than she did when she was on the ‘84 cover of Machines Monthly. Her fame was passed off as a broken glass ceiling for every girl who wanted to be a scientist. A feat of modern science and a step forward for feminism. An idol. She played the part like she was born for it, refusing for years to return to the girl she was. The girl living on borrowed time, removed from the modern world by government hands she could not control. Longevity was not the CIA’s goal when they took apart her organic body and rebuilt it with metal and wires during Project Gossamer-- it was simply a test of how far they could push the human body until it would break. So were the Mind Transfer procedures that uploaded human brains to bionic systems. Compared to Caelius’s military-built, top-of-the-line cybernetic body, Nora was an iron lung. There was a silence over the room that suggested both of them knew this.
Where Nora had gotten justice and reparations for the experimental procedures done on her, Charlotte Caelius received nothing but an APB from the American Cybernetics Association, an empty grave, and a past she could never return to. Nothing had changed in the 30 years since Project Gossamer-- the ACA was an extension of it, for many. This, too, they both knew. Nora wouldn’t be here, otherwise. This was something more than the acknowledgement of a truth decades old, though-- each has something the other wants.
“You gonna ask me if I want one, too?” Caelius asks when Nora returns to the coffee table, drink in hand. A Cosmopolitan, by the looks of it. The rim of the glass meets red lips when she raises it up to her face. “You forced me to come with you. It’s the least I’m owed.”
“I didn’t force you to. You came willingly,” she mentions. “You weren’t gonna win, anyway.”
Caelius keeps her sourness to herself. She had never been any good at roulette, or any similar game of chance. Games of skill provided a sense of authority; the outcome on the table belongs to the player, not the other way around. And she, as far as she’d learned, could outplay anyone and outluck no one.
“Didn’t get much of a choice.”
Nora breathes out a half-laugh into her half-empty glass. “We’d know plenty about that, wouldn’t we? You’ll get your money back. I promise.”
“We-- aren’t anything,” says Caelius with a finger pointing back and forth over the table. “We are going to be brief. Do you understand? I don’t care that you get it, whatever the fuck it is, I don’t care what you know, and I don’t care what you can offer me. Every minute I’m not down there making money, I’m losing it. Someone with deep pockets and a body count is picking up my buy-in.”
“Someone like you?”
Caelius twitches and bottles her rage, sitting back in the lounge chair.
“I need that money,” she admits with a bite beneath her tongue.
Another laugh from Nora, but a fuller, realer one this time. “But you don’t. You play because it’s fun. Because you can control it.” When her opponent fails to respond, she opens her placating palm and adds, “I don’t blame you. I did it, too. Pool was my drug of choice. Took me a while to get good at it, but what’s a while for people like us?
“I traveled a lot after-- you know. Played mostly in tap rooms and shitty dives. It was not a good idea, believe me. Drunks don’t like to be hustled. I am unwelcome in a lot of backwater bars under a lot of different names. Of course, you’d probably be a lot quicker on your feet than I was.” She taps her right temple a couple of times. “Automated learning and all. Self-defense, too. I didn’t know how to really throw a punch until I was in my forties.”
Caelius affords a scoff that almost sounds like she’s humored. Age was a far off, foggy idea for both of them, but only one of them had the privilege of cybernetic cosmetics that could make her look older. Project Gossamer drug cocktails meant Nora was frozen in time. Twenty-four, forever. At least she looked old enough to drink.
She downs the final sip of her Cosmo. “I do get it, even if that’s not what you want to hear. I was still living off of government residuals when I left, but that made me feel like I owed them something. A game of pool was the one thing I felt like I could control. I earned that money.”
“I’m not in the government’s pocket,” Caelius says.
“Oh, I know you’re not. I’ve seen it. I’m talking about the bounty hunting. That’s better money, anyway, right? Twenty thousand, just for some guy running a Ponzi scheme down in Long Beach? I read about that the other day. Wish I had that when I was your age.”
Caelius curls a fist into her satin dress. There was seldom a bluff she could not call, but there wasn’t one she could even begin looking for. Nora was a mystery, but not a liar. She knew exactly what people like us meant when she said it. A snap judgment, a bullet fired or a punch thrown, would be the easiest way out. Project Gossamer had made her strong, but not lethal. Not compared to Caelius. High-profile bounties take months, and yet, this one fell into her lap. Baby curls and gaudy skin seams and all. Still, she finds it within herself to want an answer before a fight. She regains her composure, even offering a cold smile. “This won’t work on me.”
Nora leans forward, arms folded over her lap. “I don’t need it to. I just needed you to know it could if I wanted it to,” she says. There’s a beautiful, haunting chill latched onto her tongue, with every word off of it perfect. So quiet and matter-of-fact, but poisonous. “We can get started now, if you’d like.”
Finding herself beyond blackmail, she says. “I don’t believe that for a fucking second. I’m just like you. What the CIA did to you, the ACA did to me. You wouldn’t feed me to the same hand you already bit off.”
“Is that right? What happened to ‘we aren’t anything’?”
Nora slips out of her chair and returns her glass to the bar, heels clicking on the oak floors. Despite the decades of history to her name, Caelius cannot figure her out like most clients she spends this much time alone with at the casino. Nothing is out of place. A purple gown with a sweetheart neckline, embroidered with florals and trimmed with tulle at the bottom. A short, boyish head of black hair and a maroon lip. She holds all the cards. Nora belongs; Caelius only believes she does. Pulling a short, clean glass from below the counter with one hand and a tablet with the other, she pours a rum and coke and turns on the device to a screen full of text and schematics. Her two fingers beckon Caelius to the bar.
“You were like me,” corrects Nora. “I came first, and I didn’t deal with my problems like you did.”
“Right. Because you let the press kiss your ass for ten years and then you fucked off and did nothing to help people like me for the next twenty. I could’ve used you! Maybe then, I wouldn’t’ve had anything to deal with!”
Nora rests her palms on the slick surface and leans into Caelius. “What does nothing look like to you, huh? Is it--” she gestures broadly, servos whirring in her arm-- “this? The Project Gossamer Exposé. The Skylight Programs. Mind Transfer law. The ACA Suspension.”
Everything is noise except for the last one. It was a word waiting to be spoken, a tooth waiting to be pulled. Her pupils go in and out of focus. These were rooms that she was in. She watched it happen-- she watches it again, now, in her mind’s eye. It was her employer who needed four nosy insubordinates out of the picture. It was her targets who ran their lips raw convincing Caelius to aid their cause. You, of all people, should know what it means to be wronged by the ACA. To have no control over who you are, one of them said. The taste of agreeing with an agent wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t worse than knowing she’d otherwise be sending a girl to the slaughter. She had killed before; it was resting on her to determine whether or not this was going to be something infinitely worse.
The plan to extract files and information disinterested Caelius. But it was, in part or in full at times, her idea to incite a spectacle that the agents across Los Angeles could not avoid. Scattered bees leave behind an empty hive, and all they needed was one opening wide enough for a data transfer. The discussion of the after started early in this process. Whoever they decided to give the files to-- they ultimately decided on a number of publications and a few irreproachable senators-- would move forward with it as they wished, and they had little say in it. The only conclusive thought was that the ACA was spineless. If they’d let killers and megalomaniacs climb through their ranks since its birth after Nora’s experiments, how could anyone possibly expect accountability when they’re faced with an ugly truth? A suspension was an admission of defeat. They would never yield to the findings of a few over the six-figure paychecks of many.
Caelius refuses. “They haven’t even--”
Nora slides the tablet across the counter and says, “They will.”
A brief view of the document is more than sufficient. Two seals, at the top and bottom respectively, dripping in decorum and the typical courtesies that come off of Capitol Hill. Mentions of thorough investigations conducted by unbiased, third-party contractors and incriminating documents uncovered by ACA employees and, effective immediately, a complete suspension of all field operatives and first responders employed beneath an American Cybernetics Association agency are printed in crisp, black ink. The time at the top is five days from the current date.
“This is on the DoD’s desk right now.”
“There’s no signature line.”
“It’s not a request.” Nora leans over the bar, elbows and forearms resting on either side of the tablet. If she were any closer, she could kiss Caelius, who isn’t entirely sure she won’t. Nora softens when she asks, “I didn’t just watch all of this happen.”
Caelius looks up. “And you think I did? I was there when--”
“The whistle blew about Exoware? So was I. Two years earlier. Picking through files that had anything to do with Project Gossamer. People who never moved on. Projects that got picked back up. It was always going to happen.” There’s a complete and utter coolness to her as she lifts her head up slightly. Nora knows Caelius wants an argument. She sees the unhinged jaw in front of her, but refuses to even bare a single tooth.
“So you know about all the fucked up things the ACA and the government doing and you just sat on it? And waited for someone else to fix what’s wrong with the world?”
A laugh slugs itself out of Nora’s throat, coming out as more of a distant, bleak sound. “What does that matter to you? You live in a bubble. Fix what’s wrong with the world? Are you serious? You bust petty crime in LA by committing even pettier crime. You want people to hurt the way you were.” A brief silence warrants raised eyebrows from Nora. “But I know you’re not so sure about that, now.”
Caelius bites her lip. She pushes the tablet over the and onto the floor with feline precision. The chair falls flat beside it when she launches her body out of the seat. Her hands reach across the bar-- one for the back of Nora’s neck, the other for her head. Caelius shoves downward until her nose is inches from the slick surface.
“Go ahead,” whispers Nora. She tilts her chin up against Caelius’s iron grip. “Do this your way. Hit me. Break me. Make it hurt. That’s what you do, right? You get things done. No matter who it’s for. So get me over with.”
Caelius presses her palms down and Nora’s nose pounds against the bar. Certainly not as bad as what a number of angry dive bar drunks have probably wanted to do to her, but enough to hear a hearty grunt of pain and see its aftermath spill down her lips. Caelius has done her research; this wound will heal overnight, just as the last thirty years of Nora’s wounds have. This assault is not a want, but a need. The same defense she has always used against those who know something about her: adrenaline and programming.
Nora swipes the back of her hand across her face. Her body bleeds in a dark shade beyond crimson. Beyond even the maroon on her lips. Beyond human. Caelius grimaces and releases her. “I bit the hand off, but you picked it up and just started doing the work for them,” Nora mutters. She spreads her arms wide and adds, “I bet this is a sting, right? I bet you are in their pocket. When it’s all said and done, anyway.”
“What?”
“No wonder they fucked it up so many times. No wonder they’d loan it out to someone like you. Make it look like a hit for a bounty. God! I’m so fucking stupid! You want me dead?” Nora snakes past the lounge chairs and the coffee table, past the curtains and out onto the terrace where the railing meets the concrete floor at its closest edge. She steps up onto an ottoman and turns around with arms outstretched. “Scrape your reward off the fucking pavement!”
Caelius leaps forward in as few steps as she can manage. Her hands reach out and yank her body back onto the terrace without a second to spare. “I’m not with the fucking feds!” She screams, grabbing Nora by the straps of her dress. “What the fuck are you talking about? What’s wrong with you? Have they been trying to kill you? How many times? Do they know what you’ve been taking from them?”
But she knows the answer. If Nora knows what she claims to know, the CIA would have no doubt over who is bleeding their information out to people with other ideas on what to do with it. They paid her off to be quiet. This was not quiet. It was revenge, in a way. And second to collecting high-profile information was finding someone who understood that she was right to break her peace. Someone equally motivated by revenge. To the government, the only thing better than a quiet victim is a dead one. Yet another notion they both knew well.
“You’re a cunt. You set me up.”
Vicious as she sounds, she couldn’t hide the admiration if she tried. Nora smiles. Blood still trickles from her nose and down her chin.
“Are you ready to start yet?” she asks, heaving through breaths of adrenaline.
Emma puts two fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Good God, I fucked this up. I just wanted to tell you I get it. I might be the only one who gets it. I’m sorry. I promise I can make it make sense. I don’t need you to—“
“I believe you.” Reese sits back down in the grass, steadying her inhales. She waits for Emma to follow. “But I want all of it. No cutting corners. No poetics. Start from the beginning.”
After criminals and frauds are revealed in the fold of the American Cybernetics Association, Reese is at the center of the fallout. She knows she’s not the only one, but none of them are like Emma. She carries the same weight, only it goes back decades versus Reese’s meager five years.
Though there were wounds that no amount of time could heal, by the time two and a half months had passed since the American Cybernetics Association put its work on pause, Reese was ready for the interviews. She was ground zero. The epicenter of the ACA’s sudden exposure and suspension. There was nobody in the country who could have taken this more personally than her, hence the eleven-week delay in communicating with the media. It was easier to assume that they wanted to talk to her because of her proximity to Adya. Easier to assume she was important only beside the poster girl of science, not on her own as an individual. That didn’t matter to the people asking the questions, though. Adya told her to just speak honestly, and then where they took that would be out of her hands.
“What do you think the future looks like for you?” The reporter from the LA Times asked. The previous journalist had asked the same thing. And the one before them. “You don’t have to have any sort of clear picture. Just an idea.”
Reese shrugs. The answer comes naturally now. “Get better,” she says. “Decide who I want to be. If I don’t go back to the ACA when everything is—“ she makes a vague, circular gesture with her hands that makes the servos in her wrists whir— “normal again, then I don’t go back to the ACA.”
The man delays his response for a second. He expects a silver lining. Reese doesn’t continue with any addendums. It’s not worth it. She’s begun to recognize which journalists will produce the most candid and successful articles versus whose will hardly make the front page. “Thank you, Miss Franklin,” he says, a hand outstretched to shake. She takes it. As soon as he’s arrived, he’s getting up and leaving the courtyard.
“That’s all,” Adya says from the doorway. “Should I call Nate and ask him to pick you up, or are you gonna stay late with me?”
“I’ll stay,” answers Reese, “As long as it’s okay. I want a few minutes first.”
Adya nods. The doors hiss as they close behind her. Being under house arrest with Goddard for the first week post-suspension gave her plenty of time to scope out the courtyard. It’s circular, connecting the two halves of the L-shaped building. All the dormitories that Goddard keeps vacant for rehabilitants or agents or simply scientists spending long lights in the lab face the space, windows easily opened for fresh air and a look down at the oak tree in the middle. A small wedge on the north side, five stories beneath Adya’s dormitory, was the only place with a blind spot.
A few warm tears roll down Reese’s face. Just because she’s prepared to make a statement doesn’t make it easy. Not only does it happen all over again when she explains the details, but it never comes out right. It will be printed with words she never said. Ideas that cannot even begin to explain the feelings that they were derived from. It’s not enough. Nothing is, right now.
“Excuse me? Agent Franklin?” A body comes out of the south entrance. “Do you have a couple minutes? I have just a couple questions. I promise I won’t waste your time.”
“You’ll have to come back tomorrow, I’m sorry.” The woman keeps walking, still bathed in shadow from the oak tree standing watch over the courtyard. Reese wipes her tears. “Hello? Tomorrow. I’m done for today.”
The woman that pours out from the shadows looks nothing like the past three journalists. No notebooks or microphones or business-casual attire. A well-worn, brown jacket on her shoulders instead. A rectangular bulge in her left jeans pocket. Marlboros, maybe. Or a taser. She can’t be more than a few years older than Reese.
“I just wanted to make sure it was empty. I do have questions, but I’m not here to interview you.”
“Are you an agent?” asks Reese.
“Yeah, I guess I was, at one point. Is this a blind spot?”
She frowns. “How did you know that?”
“I get the feeling you didn’t want CCTV footage of you crying. I did the same at my job. A lot.” Reese wipes her cheeks again, risking an even redder complexion. “My boss turned everything into a study. A cough, a laugh, a bad day. Everything was a symptom to her. Project first, person second. You know?”
Reese nods. “Did you work somewhere that shut down because of-- well, I mean, they all shut down, but the ACA…”
A kind nod from the woman. “Kind of. Not ACA, but similar. A lot older. My boss had connections with people in the ACA but I--” The girl’s hand catches on a piece of the flowerbed’s metal edging. She sucks in air through clenched teeth. “Oh, shit.”
Reese sits up and cranes her neck. “Are you okay?”
But there’s no pain on the girl’s face, no tension in her shoulders. She offers an outstretched, bleeding hand, magenta rolling down the side of her hand and over to her thumb. No crimson red, no signs of aching at the site of the wound. Reese says nothing. She can’t stop looking.
“The same thing that gave you this—“ she taps below her ear, just behind the jaw, then flexes the fingers of her wounded hand— “gave me this. Scientists who went too far. I guess I just wanted to tell you that I get it.”
Reese runs her metal fingers over her neck. The scarred wound, the skin that once sat beside the bionic chip that held her memory in a vice grip, forms a raised line no longer than a sewing pin. She looks up with a little more trust in her eyes. Nothing is a surprise anymore.
“I’m Emma.”
“You meant to do that.”
“I was getting the feeling you thought I was a cop. Did it work?”
Reese bows her head back down and affords a chuckle. “I was. And it did. Sorry.”
“What happened to me happened a while ago. Different… social climate, I guess.”
“That’s probably for the better.” Reese looks up past the five floors of Goddard and into the sky, painted with dusky blues and a few distant, bright stars. The sun has long since set, leaving them to fluorescent lamplight and whatever additional light pours out from the clear sliding doors. “I kind of wish it was worse. On the public side of things, I mean. Is that bad? That I want people to freak out more. I feel like nobody in the real world has any idea how terrible this really is. I don’t want people to ask me questions, I want them to get angry. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“Like they got angry in the 80s?”
Reese’s head lolls to the side with a faraway noise of disbelief. “Everyone keeps asking me about that. That’s what they’re not getting. This isn’t the psycho-unregulated-human-experiments that they were doing back then. These are bad people who want power that they can’t ever get normally. That doesn’t mean people should be any less mad.”
Emma furrows her brow. “That’s… also what Project Gossamer was.”
“But not like this! My friend explained it to me. What they did to that girl. This is a small group of lingering people with a lingering agenda. Not some government op. I think people should be more angry. Focused anger at a few people is better than just… being mad at an idea.”
“Adya Prisham is lucky she’s far enough away from everything to think that. She gets a choice that most of us were too experimental to be offered.”
Reese straightens up her shoulders. “What?”
“There were people before her, you know. During the… unregulated-psycho-human-experiments. Every success is a hundred losses. I definitely was. She’s probably a lot more.”
“I didn’t say her name.” A brief silence. Reese shoots to her feet. She reaches for a weapon at her hip that isn’t there. “I didn’t say I was talking about Adya. How did you know I was talking about her?”
Placating hands reach out in surrender. “Easy. It’s okay. Part of my job is science research. Bionics or otherwise.”
Reese extends a stiff finger to Emma’s wounded ones. “The same job that did that to you? What do you want from me?”
“I don’t—“ Emma sighs and buries her head in her hands. Another exhale before she looks back up. “What did Adya explain to you about the girl? From Project Gossamer?”
“Don’t try and test me.”
“Please.”
A tense, bothered sigh from Reese. “They replaced all her body parts with bionics. Most of them. Was that the plan for me?”
“What? No. How would I know that? Keep going back. Before that.”
Reese shrugs. “A drug cocktail? She stopped aging.”
Two hands, forming two slowly pointing fingers, direct themselves at Emma’s chest. Reese’s face goes pale.
“Are you her?” she asks.
“Almost. Same people, different experiments No bionics, drug cocktail only. Diane would kill me if she heard me calling it that.”
“Diane? Patya-Henning? Are you serious?”
“She was friends with your mother.”
“Claudia is not my mom.”
“Right, sorry. It’s better that way. I never liked her.”
Reese heaves in and out in shallow, nervous breaths. “It’s Diane? She’s involved in— in the Gossamer stuff? I thought she was just a scientist. She did that to you? I have to— where’s my phone?— I have to call Adya—“
But as soon as it washes over her, the revelation has already worn off. Of course Dr. Patya-Henning, an old, widowed friend of her foster mother, would be associated with the oldest cybernetics scandals in the nation. Of course there would be victims like Reese-- victims of the same crime-- beyond just bionics. There is little left in the world as shattering as learning her parents never wanted to love her; they only wanted to fix her. Shock has become an old, familiar friend in just a few short months.
Emma’s hand reaches for Reese’s wrist. “Reese,” she says softly. “This is not something for you to worry about, okay? People already know. I’m safe, you’re safe, that’s what matters.” Slowly, Reese pulls her hand from Emma’s grasp. She puts two fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Good God, I fucked this up. I just wanted to tell you I get it. I might be the only one who gets it. I’m sorry. I promise I can make it make sense. I don’t need you to—“
“I believe you.” Reese sits back down in the grass, steadying her inhales. She waits for Emma to follow. “But I want all of it. No cutting corners. No poetics. Start from the beginning.”
VEIL and Project Gossamer. Coincidentally similar program names with uncoincidentally similar goals. Before Diane-Patya Henning there was Dr. Henning-- her husband. Project Gossamer was his operation in its exodus and before his death; VEIL-- for its entire lifespan and beyond-- belonged to his wife.
“You think she killed him?” asks Reese.
Emma takes a drag of her cigarette. “I know she did,” she says. “The technology was hers. He brought it to the CIA. I’d kill someone too if my wife handed my life’s work over to the government.”
Reese raises an eyebrow. “You’re married?”
The smoke huffs out from her lips and she shakes her head. “Just a hypothetical thing.”
“Don’t you feel like it’s a little dangerous to tell me about this? Why not report it?”
“Diane can’t hurt me more than she already has. What would the government do? They’re basically in her pocket. They don’t care what she’s doing, as long as she’s quiet.”
She was more than quiet-- she was a shadow. VEIL operated wordlessly for its entire lifespan. Not even those whose pockets she was in could find her. The same way she had made Emma disappear and turned her into a test subject, she made her own identity disappear. Wiped clean. If the CIA wanted Diane to be quiet and stop fighting them over the death of her husband, then they had no jurisdiction over what she did thereafter.
“Before she disappeared, the press doted on her,” Emma goes on. “Why wouldn’t they? Beautiful. Successful. Powerful. Smart. It didn’t even matter if men didn’t like her. Women in science loved her because she was all they had. They would go to war for her.”
“And that’s what kept you.” Reese knows this all too well, given all the tabloids she’s read about Adya, despite her persistent attempts to keep all of her friends from consuming gossip from anyone except directly from her. Only Adya never chose to be an icon for women in science; Diane made sure she was the only one available in her time.
Emma nods-- a somber, accepting gesture. “I wanted to be respected like that. Diane held that against me until I learned how to do it myself. For fifteen years.”
“How many more?” she asks. “How many more besides you?”
“Not your problem,” answers Emma, putting her cigarette out in the dirt. She brushes off her jeans and rolls her head in a circle. A few soft pops from the back of her neck.
Reese exhales in some sort of half-laughter, interlaced with disbelief. “So that’s it? You come here to tell me your whole story and then you’re gone? What kind of--”
“Do you think I came here to ask you for help? To fix my messes? To help you fix yours?”
Reese sits up further. “I don’t need help.”
“I wasn’t gonna offer mine.”
But there’s no contempt in the way she says it. No sensation that she’s withholding something that Reese needs, nor that she deserves to be alone. From anyone else, rejection; but from Emma, reassurance. I’m not going to coddle you, she’s saying. You don’t need to be fixed. You don’t need help-- you need trust.
“It’s a choice,” she says. “You can’t watch things just happen to you forever.”
“Or what? I’ll end up like you?”
Emma shrugs. “I’m still here, aren’t I? I did something right, eventually. So did you.” Reese frowns. She also gets up and dusts herself off, picking stray pieces of gravel from her metal palms. “Pulling yourself out. Diane had me ball-and-chained for fifteen years. I had myself ball-and-chained. But your friends talked you down one time and you trusted them. You made a plan. You got out. So, what changed? Suddenly it’s the press instead of your fucked up foster dad, and you roll over and let things just happen?”
Reese sighs. “I didn’t ask to be the poster kid who killed the ACA. I don’t want to be a celebrity like Adya,” she says.
Emma has already begun walking across the courtyard to the same door she came in. It hisses open. “Good!” she shouts. “You can do way better than that.”
Reese stands in the open air for a long while. She doesn’t resent Adya’s celebrity status; she’s good at their game. Both before and after the bionics, she was designed to have conversations and give speeches and be personable. Reese has to choke her way through every audio interview she has in this courtyard, and every diplomatic responsibility her former father put in front of her before he got locked up. It hasn’t gotten any easier. Maybe it doesn’t have to. Adya can keep being the face of cybernetics, and Reese can keep being the fist. But it means something, now. Now, it is a choice.
“Hey, wait!” she yells. “Can I get your--”
But Emma is long gone, beyond the halls of Goddard and out in the open world.
“They didn’t fawn over her as a pioneer for women in science; there were engineering textbooks with Nora’s name in the index a decade before Adya was even born. They weren’t shocked at the outcomes of any hearings on Capitol Hill; Emma had lived them. Every decision for science and medicine-- and often the cybernetics ones, too-- affected her. Affected what her boss would do with her next.”
Adya Prisham is the poster child of cybernetics; Nora Luan and Emma Pearce are relics of a bygone era. They keep a close eye on the general happenings of science and medicine; but as exiles from scientific programs that are long gone, there isn’t much more they can do.
Adya Prisham’s celebrity was participated in from a variety of angles. Most of the civilians that took an interest in her were bionicists-- people who spent their days in labs, trying to come close to recreating the technology her cybernetic body was designed with for their own private patenting. They had the most interesting questions to ask, as well as the most invasive. It always came from a place of curiosity and never ridicule, though it didn’t make much of a difference. Inability to read the room is natural when the room is empty and almost always bereft of women. They are only social when it benefits their work.
Another demographic was adult women, mostly between twenty-five and forty, who doted on her from a political perspective. To them, she was a hero. A broken glass ceiling. A poster girl. Adya had spoken about how it was a difficult thing to understand. “I didn’t really do anything,” she had said. “I just… something bad happened to me, something good happened to come from it. I think there are smarter and harder working people who deserve that label.”
They knew it was true. There were stronger icons for women in STEM, sure, but Adya painted the prettiest picture. She was STEM, in some regards. She was designed for perfection. The same women who refused to perform their womanhood expected a show and dance from Adya every time she spoke, from the moment she first opened her mouth in her brand new body.
Lifestyle-oriented individuals-- talk show hosts, social media stars, mic’d up individuals at any red carpet event she might’ve been invited to-- were unreadable until the moment the cameras came on. Some treated her like the girl she saw herself as, letting her laugh and play games and talk about her favorite things. Some treated her like a paycheck. Ask the questions that people are too embarrassed to be curious about. Harvest views based on an uncomfortable response. Ask another. Monetize. It was getting harder and harder to pretend like she was used to it.
There were few who observed her from above rather than below. It was mostly executives and politicians, curious about what her place in the world means for cybernetics moving forward. They had the power to do what they wished with her as an employee and used it plentifully. It was very easy to include her attendance at certain speeches, meetings, or other functions as part of her contract. And she would have no choice but to put on the face, smile, and tell her story in the most agreeable way possible.
Still, despite all the boxes Adya had to put people in, some were beyond placement. Nobody observed Adya Prisham in the same way that Nora Luan and Emma Pearce did. Observing from above was an accurate description, sure, but they had no stake in the fight. Adya was not an investment they were expecting returns on. They had no concerns over her anatomy or the functions of her body; they had her schematics. Similar ones, anyway. The military-made evolutions of her build that Americans started receiving shortly after her success. They didn’t fawn over her as a pioneer for women in science; there were engineering textbooks with Nora’s name in the index a decade before Adya was even born. They weren’t shocked at the outcomes of any hearings on Capitol Hill; Emma had lived them. Every decision for science and medicine-- and often the cybernetics ones, too-- affected her. Affected what her boss would do with her next. Though Diane was never one to wait for the government to approve a new toy before she started playing with it. She was no different in the eighties than she was when Emma resigned from her position: cold, obsessive, and horrifyingly driven.
There would not be an Adya without Nora and Emma. The combined, public death of Project Gossamer for Nora and VEIL for Emma led to the birth of the American Cybernetics Association. A body founded on scientific advancement and-- though they would never admit it-- crossing the moral lines of what it means to be human. And in their social and scientific exile, all that Nora and Emma could do was watch.
Emma takes a drag of her cigarette. Her fingers, stained with ink, pull back the third page of the newspaper. A police siren sounds about eight blocks away. It still makes her throat tighten, no matter how far. It had never been her before. She was a loose canon now, though, and there is nothing she would put past Diane. She would probably try and come after her in a more subtle way than by making a fake 911 call, anyway. Emma lets her shoulders relax.
Nora grabs the paper by its wings and pulls it from Emma’s hands. It rustles onto the living room carpet, narrowly missing a long fall out the open window. Emma throws her arms out.
“What the fuck? I was reading that!” she shouts.
“Old news.”
“That was printed this morning!”
“Exactly.” Nora turns her wrist and offers Emma a tablet, screen bright-white and open to a headline. Emma grabs the device with both hands. She squints. With the swipe of a few fingers from Nora, the display dims. “Stop doing that. It makes you look like a fossil.”
“I am a fucking fossil,” says Emma. She takes an even closer look at the news site. The New York Times-- an acceptable change in pace. Their research as of late has been way too many conspiracy journalists, academics, and declassified government documentation. Her eyes focus in on the headline, bold and italicized and impossible to miss.
FBI Arrests 103 in American Cybernetics Association Scandal; Illegal Weapons And Bionics Development Uncovered
“The other shoe just dropped,” says Nora. But Emma stands perfectly still, jaw set in place. Her cigarette burns down to her fingertips and she hardly feels it. It is such an evil thing to think anything but condolences at a headline like that. No moral high grounds, no meaningless discourse over who was justified and who wasn’t, but it’s impossible not to. All she and Nora can hear in her heads is I knew it.
ok im gonna make this as casual and concise as possible so i dont sound insane. all character information available here once youre done with this
their present-day world is more or less the same as ours, only with furthered efforts in bionics and science at large. the operatives are a team of individuals who work with a cybernetics institute to handle particularly dangerous/violent situations in LA. any place where having a high pain tolerance/steady robot hands/mechanically enhanced agility/etc would be both helpful and necessary to make sure people Do Not Die. there are five main operatives in the story— adya, reese, colby, zion, and nate— as well as two mercenaries, caelius and kiana.
adya is the world’s first successfully uploaded human consciousness into a bionic body (aka a mind transfer), giving her some celebrity status in the science world. she is a natural leader and an honest person, but also stubborn and worried about what others think of her.
reese is a combat specialist who, with the help of her friends, is removed from a job that is actively brainwashing her into Doing A Lot Of Crime. adya’s girlfriend. she is focused and curious, but also distrusting.
colby is a sharpshooter with a background in mercenary work, as well as the reason reese was rescued from her job. she is clever and laidback, but also loyal to a fault and unwilling to open up.
zion receives bionic replacements for all four limbs after he loses most of them to cancer. he is incredibly gentle and level-headed, but also naive and often too trusting.
nate is adya’s mentor when she first becomes an operative. he is easy to talk to and a humble leader, but also self-destructive with a savior complex.
caelius is also a mind transfer, only her procedure had terrible complications. naturally, she resents adya for a long time, and jumps at the opportunity to go after her when hired by an anonymous client. she is loyal and fearless, but also A Terrible Bitch.
kiana is caelius’s partner in crime. trading in cage fighting for mercenary work, she is skilled in computer science and bionics programming. she is a good liar and can throw a good punch, but also controlling and combative.
that’s mostly it :] they all have different little details/side stories but this is the general gist of it. more fun facts that are not necessary but i like them ⬇️
adya fucking sucks at video games. it doesnt matter that she has a robot brain. she is terrible at them
caelius’s birth name is ashlyn mercy and she grows up in las vegas. she and her best friend both allegedly die (and then survive) in sudden freak accidents with little conclusive explanation given to the public. if i had a nickel
nate’s old roommate is one of colby’s exes. colby lives in her ex’s old apartment bedroom. very weird thing that would only ever happen to a lesbian
zion and reese both have “house arms” aka a set of very simple, endoskeletal bionic arms that are basically just for picking up utensils and turning on the faucet and stuff. their real arms are complex and combat-built
there is a big industry for black market bionics, since they have to be registered and regulated by the government. caelius’s enhancements and kiana’s bionic arm are both illegal and theyre often involved in deals related to black market bionics
colby and caelius are motorcycle girls. theyre not really friends but they will go to car/bike shows together LOL
they were all created in the form of a really shitty screenplay i wrote when i was 17
Rio throws her backpack onto the kitchen counter, making a beeline for the pantry. “Why didn’t you ask me to move in with you?” she asks, hardly thinking about it before she says it. “Loaded question, I know.”
“I care about you too much to live with you.” There’s a dry smile on her face, but she means it. She knows it’s true.
Ashlyn and Rio, two college students and childhood best friends, spend some time together after Rio’s last-of-the-night lecture. The past has its ways of reaching people again, no matter how distant it may get.
Rio takes the long way down the stairs when she leaves the building. It’s cold and quiet at this point in the day, with few students lingering on campus. On Thursdays and Fridays, most people were spending their time elsewhere. Hence why, when she steps out of the lecture hall, she’s only accompanied by about twenty people. Database Entry Principles wasn’t exactly everyone’s ideal Thursday night. It wasn’t even Rio’s ideal Thursday night. But it got her the perfect schedule, the perfect amount of study time, and the perfect ride home at least every other week.
At the bottom of the stairs, a newly-blonde woman leans against a black motorcycle and drums her fingers on the helmet in her lap. Rio smiles out of habit, but soon furrows her brow. “I thought you were going out with your friends.”
Ashlyn shrugs. “Don’t I usually pick you up on Thursdays?”
She pauses on the last step down from the lecture hall. Her confusion turns to concern. “They didn’t show up, did they?”
A few seconds of silence, and a mildly resentful look on her face. Finding her footing in college had been the easiest thing Ashlyn has ever done in some areas, and a miserable uphill battle in others. Making plans was the latter; rather, hoping others would stick to her plans.
“Oh, Ash,” she says, hand on her friend’s shoulder, “I’m sorry.”
She shrugs again. “I don’t really wanna think about it. I’m used to it. We should probably go before you start yelling at me about wasting your study time.”
Rio looks at the spare helmet that Ashlyn holds out to her. She always kept one on her when she was expecting a passenger, but bought it specifically for Rio. They picked it out at a bike shop when they were both seventeen. It was the cheapest, most boring option that wouldn’t run the risk of letting her skull crack open in a crash. She loved how quick Ashlyn was to keep her safe. She resented that others were blind to that.
“I don’t have anything to study, actually,” says Rio. The honest list of assignments is short enough that she can lie without feeling too guilty about it. “Where were your friends gonna go?”
“I said I didn’t want to--”
She shoves the helmet over her head and pulls down the visor. “Ash.”
She huffs in defeat. “Some house party a few miles beyond campus. Friend-of-a-friend kind of thing. I don’t really know them.”
Rio flicks her visor back up and says, “Isn’t that the same thing you called it last time?”
“Oh, the one I invited you to the other week? No, no. That was a frat.”
She gasps and throws her knuckles into Ashlyn’s arm. “Oh, my God! You bitch! I almost went to a frat party with you?”
Ashlyn turns the key in the ignition. Any further expletives spoken by Rio are drowned out in its thrum. She lowers her foot on the gas, taking off and heading up the road a mile a minute.
After arguments at red lights and several indiscernible hand gestures while riding 70 miles an hour down the highway, Ashlyn and Rio fumble up the stairs of Ashlyn’s apartment. It’s a miracle she’s been able to make it look homey. It’s not one of the nice, close-to-campus high rises or a townhouse just down the road. It’s a kitchen, a living room, and one meager bedroom, each space with its own peeling paint and stiff drawer and door handles. It’s sparsely decorated, but looks better than the last time Rio was in it. It still looks a little lonely, despite her efforts. So does Ashlyn, sometimes. She sits in the living room loveseat and watches a group of birds shuffle along a powerline out the window.
Rio throws her backpack onto the kitchen counter, making a beeline for the pantry. “Why didn’t you ask me to move in with you?” she asks, hardly thinking about it before she says it. “Loaded question, I know.”
“I care about you too much to live with you.” There’s a dry smile on her face, but she means it. She knows it’s true. Rio takes the late classes, allegedly scoring the most laid-back peer groups and best professors. Ashlyn takes early morning classes and sleeps away the rest of the day. Rio can’t stand the heat. Ashlyn hardly has her AC on. Rio wants a rabbit. Ashlyn hates the smell. Both of them bake and neither can cook. It’d do more harm than good to share a semi-permanent space. Rio simply smiles and shrugs in agreement.
Ashlyn turns around in the loveseat and huffs out a laugh. Rio has suddenly paused rummaging through the cabinets. “What are you looking at?”
“I’m still not used to the blonde,” she admits.
“I was worried you weren’t gonna like it,” she says.
“What?” Rio frowns and climbs out of the chair. “No, no, no. I like it a lot. Do you remember when I cried because my mom wouldn’t let me dye my hair red?”
“Yes, I do.” Ashlyn sits in silence for a moment before a scheming grin grows across her face. She points at the bathroom, slowly raising her arms into a shrug from there.
“No,” Rio says.
“Then why the fuck did you bring up the red hair thing? Don’t lie to me. You can start with bleach and I can go get red dye tomorrow.”
“It looks good on you! I don’t know if I can fuck up my hair this close to Christmas--”
“Who cares? If your mom hates it, you can spend Christmas with me. Go into my middle dresser drawer and pick any shirt in there and put it on. Start thinking about where you want the color.”
Rio puts up little fight and withdraws to Ashlyn’s bedroom. She smiles on her way down the hall. Their parents had always managed to snuff out their mischief, but this would be the first vast step away from what they would want. It’s exciting. Thrilling, even. Ashlyn always had a knack for giving her that gift.
From the drawer, Rio pulls from the drawer an old shirt with the words “2010 Regional Robotics Championships” displayed across the front in big, blocky text. It’s not the first time she’s worn this shirt. Her version hangs over the towel bar in her bathroom, used to dry her wet hair. She sets it back down. Ashlyn was likely to go “no, not that one” and make her change again, though she’d never admit to being that sentimental. Rio knows her well enough to choose wisely. Instead, she pulls a plain, blue t-shirt over her soon-to-be-red hair and shuts the drawer.
“Cae.”
Silence. The feeling of someone shaking her shoulder follows. “Caelius.”
Her eyes open. A body hovers over her with raised eyebrows. She only now realizes that she’s still sitting in the loveseat, but this one is cleaner and nicer. This apartment is bigger. Enough for two people. Who’s the other? The body above her is still a haze. The front door is on the other side of the apartment than it used to be. The kitchen is clean. A little empty, almost. Unlike her to not clutter up the sink with dishes and the cabinets with snacks.
“Rio?”
She keeps trying to shake the fog. When she stretches her knuckles, her joints feel stiff. Her body is heavy, like there’s lead in her bones. When her eyes fully open, she must look afraid, because the other person in the room sighs softly and kneels down. A round, dark face meets her eye level. “Caelius,” she says again. “That’s you. You sleepwalked again. I don’t know how long you’ve been out here. Close to an hour, maybe. It’s almost six in the morning”
The fog recedes. “Kiana,” she mutters.
Kiana nods. “You’re alright.”
A hesitant nod. She looks at Kiana for a long while, expecting fear or disappointment or something to express how tired she is of babysitting a girl with a broken body. The expression never comes.
“I have a little good news,” she says. “I’ve been running some algorithms based on the data you let me pick from your brain. I think we might be able to narrow down what part of it is making you disoriented when you wake up. From there, it’s probably an easy fix.”
She can’t deny the appeal of not waking up in a stranger’s body every other day. It still feels wrong that she’s not the one trying to find that solution. “I shouldn’t have to be your lab rat,” she mutters, slumping back into the chair.
“You’re more of a project car than anything.” (A dry huff, hardly any laughter. “Thanks,” says Caelius.) “Also, I like doing it. Is it so unbelievable that I don’t want you to die over a headache or a bad dream?”
She forfeits the argument and says with a grin, “There’s more than enough people who do already.”
“You don’t do yourself a lot of favors in keeping that number down.” Kiana’s arms lower a cup of coffee down over the back of the loveseat. “Drink.”
Caelius takes the cup and glances at herself in the reflection of the TV. She hasn’t seen herself with brown hair in years. Her original dye job was lousy and destructive, so she’d replaced the synthetic scalp on her head altogether. Maybe it was time to get some new colors. She could finally afford it. She tries to picture her original brown, a soft silver, and even a red.
Her eyes travel down to the cup, warm in her otherwise cold hands. Her body doesn’t need caffeine-- or any sustenance, in general-- but Kiana has made a habit out of fixing coffee for her most days of the week. She makes it outrageously sweet. Caelius complained about it for a while, but grew to like it and can’t stand the taste of anything less.
Though, of course, she’d never admit to being that sentimental.
