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Ctrl+Alt+Del
Story One :: Control
She didn't have a name.
Well, not that anyone could tell you. Nobody
really knew who she was, or why she was there, she just was. She didn't
talk very much, and she slept less. Not that it mattered, because in a few
minutes she'd be gone forever. Like she had never existed. The sky had never
looked so low before. Maybe she was imagining it, but she saw where the sky
stopped. Looking up, straight up, from the rooftop, the stars began to
disappear, one by one, into darkness that could never look real. She remembered
how the sky stopped being rendered clouds and became just sheets, blocks of
solid colour, in computer games. Just a memory now. This would all come to an
end soon enough. With a remorseful sigh she looked down at the city in its
sparkily glory, lights in all shades of neon illuminating the ground, the gently
whirr of light traffic at 2am, and, out of sight, but not out of mind, a tiny
child, crying for its mother. She hadn't even named him.
Across the city, she could just about make out the shimmer of water, made visible only by the searing light of 24-hour bars. The world she had grown into fading before her. It had to stop. It started the day she knew she was pregnant - a hollow, unwanted feeling, and delerium - objects would slip out of place, spoons would bend before her eyes, the rain fell in awkward showers of strange, cryptic nonsense. Numbers, characters she'd never understand, sometimes they'd fall into the gutter, sometimes they'd return to their normal visage before they hit the ground. No churchman could help her, no doctor could prescribe a cure. As the baby grew inside her it became worse. She went shopping, and everywhere she looked, there would be men in clean-cut suits, officials no doubt, but who were they after? They would seem to get closer each day. Once she saw them drive off around the corner. Inside her he - yes, it was a boy, she was sure - kicked and cried for freedom, and six weeks premature she gave birth to him. She hadn't even thought of a name.
So here she was now, watching the city continue to breathe into the early hours of the morning. For a moment she wondered who would take the baby in, or whether it would die. Not having any friends or family she knew of suddenly became quite a problem, but she'd left it on the doorstep of a hotel room the other side of town. She tried to recall the number, something like 403 or 300... 303, that was it, 303. Room 303 of a backstreet hotel. Not the best place for an upbringing but whether he lived or died was not important to her anymore. She just didn't have the maternal instinct, it wasn't her. How she'd ever become pregnant she couldn't remember, she didn't care, not for much longer, the world would be over and she'd finally be at peace. No more alienation, no more feeling out of place, just soft, solid death, welcoming her. Under her jacket the cold gunmetal began to numb her leg. She took it out - a .50 Desert Eagle. Her father's before he died. On many an occasion she'd thought about selling it, but the memory of her father tore at her like a splinter in her mind, and she'd put it back in the small black box he kept it in. She sniffed and smiled weakly, her hand barely shaking at all as she lifted the gun, studying its intricate carvings on the side. She pointed it round to her face, the muzzle growling at her, fingers firmly around the trigger. This is it, then, I guess. But... am I really doing the right thing, running away like this? Yeah, of course I am... I am, right? Suddenly, the trigger snapped and she fell off the side, blood chasing her, a half-dead rocket, the full effect of shooting herself front-on hitting her as the bullet went right through her skull. She landed with a heavy crack in a gauzy mess of skin, blood and cloth.
"Agent Parker, you should perhaps invest in exercising a little more control
when you decide to barge onto a rooftop containing a suicidal human."
"Do we
know where the child is?"
"No. Run a search. We must find it."
"It will be
hard to trace - an anomaly? Honestly, sir."
"Don't question the Source,
Parker. We're just here to do our job."
"Yes, sir." Parker leaned over the
edge and yawned, arms folded. "What do they think they're doing, allowing
anomalies? You would have thought they would have prepared for one."
"I
suppose they just weren't expecting it. They've never had to deal with human
anomalies before."
"Granted." There was a pause, and a short, quiet
buzz-whirr in Parker's earpiece. "The trace has startedm, sir."
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Well...? I hadn't seen any fics about the first One... so I wrote one! Expect
the second part soon. It'll probably have nothing to do with the first, but
they're seperate stories... kind of like a written Animatrix, I guess.
Toodles!
~Ikobe