Date Point: 15y4m2w AV
Holding cell
Adele Park
Adele was a problem-solver. Mostly, she solved interpersonal issues, scheduling conflicts, questions of team direction…all the things that a Managing Director did, she did well.
Figuring out how to escape a presumably alien prison while armed with nothing but her clothing and jewelry was not on her resume, but she was giving it her best effort on the grounds that it was something to occupy her mind.
Unfortunately, whoever had designed this particular prison had obviously heard the same things Adele had about previous human abductees being able to overcome their cell through such design flaws as forcefield emitters mounted inside the cell. Honestly, it was a miracle anybody had ever not escaped.
Her cell had no such fripperies: It consisted of concrete, and a hefty steel door with an eight-point locking system involving steel pins as thick as Adele’s wrist. In short, it had been designed around the principle that anybody inside it should not have any reasonable hope of removing themselves, not even with explosives. A middle-aged Korean-American armed with a handful of bobby pins, an executive translator earpiece and her mother’s bracelet didn’t stand a chance.
Rather than waste her time, therefore, she sat and thought. Worked on her novel in her head. Gnawed on a minor political argument she’d been having with her cousin over social media. Remembered a cocktail bar she’d meant to visit next time she dropped in on her college friend Cordelia.
Grew steadily and slowly bored out of her mind.
The final arrival of some kind of stimulation therefore was both terrifying and welcome. She heard doors opening in the distance past her own door, and the tap-tap-tap of a firm stride. She was already on her feet by the time the door was unlocked and opened.
A…body stepped through. In silhouette it would have passed for a tall, well-proportioned human man, but in the light the figure seemed to consist in its entirety of prosthetics. Prosthetic arms, prosthetic legs, and synthetic muscles wrapped around manufactured bones. It looked grotesquely naked and skinless, despite its unnatural clean pearlescent white hue. In fact, she could plainly make out the emblem of the Corti firm Thryd-Geftry dotting the figure’s…parts…like sponsor’s logos on a Formula 1 driver.
Except for the eyes. The eyes were disgustingly realistic, and twinkled with dark mirth as they focused on her.
The sight was enough to frighten the bejesus out of anybody, but she wouldn’t have been Adele Park if she’d let her discomfort show. Even though her feet stepped back and took the rest of her with them, she still managed to summon the bravado she’d thought up hours ago.
“…Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”
The apparition’s laugh was as uncanny as the rest of it: Full of human mirth but with a hollow grating quality, doubtless invoked by its synthetic throat.
“Miss Park, when I found myself in a situation very similar to your own some years ago, I fell back on bluff and defiance as well. It didn’t work,” it said, and sure enough there was an unnatural quality to the voice that said it definitely wasn’t being produced by fleshly lungs and vocal cords. Other than that, it was…cultured, but lacking any specific accent. About the best Adele could say for it was that it belonged to a highly educated native English speaker from the northern hemisphere. Presumably its neutrality was carefully calculated. “But rest assured, I don’t intend to detain you for long. Indeed the only reason you were waiting as long as you did is…well, bodies like this take time to manufacture.”
It spread its arms. “My name is Cynosure, but I used to be known as…Six.”
“…I’ve heard of you. The Hierarchy agent. Captured, escaped and founded the Cabal,” Adele resisted the urge to sit down on her small, narrow bed. Now was not a time for submissive body language.
“Well summarized!” Cynosure applauded her, with what sound like genuine warmth. “ I was quite amazed when President Sartori declassified as much as he did. Our assessment of him was woefully inaccurate.”
“And you’ve…abducted me,” Adele surmised. Her words were calm, but an insistent voice in the back of her head was insisting that she was about to die or worse and offering nothing in the way of advice about how she might avoid that fate.
“Yes. I would have preferred to catch up with an old friend by the name of Ava Ríos—”
“The reporter?”
“Yes indeed. But unfortunately her business has not so far taken her outside of the rather robust defences around humanity’s datanets. You are the first civilian of any real note—and it would have been quite impossible to abduct a non-civilian for this—to venture outside humanity’s aegis since the battle for Gao.”
“And…‘this’ is…?” Adele asked, warily.
“There have been upheavals. Gao was an awakening, of sorts. It led to sweeping changes of policy though I naturally don’t expect you to believe me.”
“Genocide no longer the game plan?” Adele asked, acidly.
“The game plan was always survival, Miss Park. My species has a right to exist—”
“So did all the ones you wiped out.”
The intricate synthetic musculature that served as Cynosure’s mouth formed what might have been a grimace or might have been a slight, condescending smile. It was difficult to tell.
“You preempted me,” he objected. “I was not making a philosophical statement. I was, in fact, quoting last year’s resolution by the nation of Israel. What do they call it, a Basic Law? The exact wording was ‘all sentient people’ I believe. A definition which includes my own race.”
Pure outraged anger made Adele take two steps forward and get right up in Cynosure’s face. The synthetic body was eighteen inches taller than her and well built, but she couldn’t possibly find room to care about that past the rage that was making her whole body shake.
“You want to invoke those protections?!” she demanded. “Your species are the worst mass genocide merchants in…in the galaxy! Maybe the whole universe! What…what makes you think that…?” her words finally failed her. The last few had been an emotional croak rather than the tirade she really wanted to unleash.
“What I think is irrelevant,” Cynosure replied calmly . “The facts, Miss Park, are all that matter. And the facts are simple: The Igraen people are being slaughtered by the million. By any coherent definition, we are now the victims of a genocide ourselves and the…entity…responsible for our predicament is, or was, Human…and it is being assisted in its efforts by a pogrom against cybernetics that your people instigated.”
He ignored Adele’s indignant attempt to interrupt and talked right over her, though his voice remained level, calm and reasonable. “Your own diplomatic zeitgeist meanwhile is now firmly summarized by the words ‘Never Again.’ You are, I’m afraid, bound by your own rules to help us…either that, or your precious UN resolutions, NATO treaties and the Basic Laws of the nation of Israel don’t count for anything.”
He stepped back and now the expression on his unnatural face was definitely a smug smile. He gave her a shallow bow, little more than a tight tipping-forward at the waist and neck. “Thank you for your time. You will now be returned to Origin. You should find it simple enough to send a message to your employers from there.”
He vanished. So did the cell. One moment, Adele was surrounded by bare concrete and unyielding steel, and the next she was standing disoriented and bewildered atop a low rise amidst scrubby yellow grassland dotted with blue flowers and stickly bulbous cactoid plants.
Civilization wasn’t difficult to spot. There was a thick river of traffic maybe a quarter of a mile away, directly in front of her and there, beside it, was what looked for all the world like a truck stop. Far in the distance beyond, she could just about see the sharp spikes of titanic buildings and the glint of sunlight on glass. The Corti cities on Origin, she remembered, were supposed to have some of the largest and tallest buildings in the known galaxy.
Odd furry things like skinny rabbits with long whippy tails bowled away from her as she strode out and blithely ignored the way the grass bruised and broke as she barged through it. At least she’d been wearing flat, comfortable shoes.
She got about fifty paces before nearly jumping out of her skin at the sound of Six’s voice just behind her. “One last thing, Miss Park?”
“Jeez!” Adele flinched and spun. The synthetic man was standing a few yards away with his hands resting lightly on his hips as though he’d tucked his thumbs into the belt he wasn’t wearing. “…What?!”
Six smiled. “Please give my regards to Miss Ríos and the SOR.”
He vanished again. This time, whether out of adrenaline, because she’d been expecting it or a simple mistake on Six’s part, Adele just about managed to gather the impression of a blur of impossible speed and the sense that something enormous had been hanging above her head for a trimmed fraction of a second. Then it was gone, and some faint sixth or seventh sense told her she was finally and truly alone.
Cursing and grumbling, she turned around again and resumed her walk.
It had been a long day, and it was going to be much longer still.