Black Cat wandered through the town, by rooftop of course. He hadn't seen Sven or Eve since after the Edan Project Incident and he was starting to miss them by now, he knew where they were since they had decided to central themselves in a sweeper job in Hailong city. He might pay them a visit. He sat on a slate roof of what seemed to be a Town Hall, we was only two miles from Hailong, in a small town called Gongla.
The moon light up the place he sat and he almost purred with satisfaction, milk, moonlight and peace. What more could I ask for, he thought. He pulled his phone from his pocket and put some catchy tunes on to help him sleep, the headphones would fall out sometime in the night but he didn't mind. Slowly, he began to drift off...
Train Heartnet began running through the endless maze of flowers and trees which blocked his view. Everything was so colourful and yet deadly, everything seemed to have sharp edges that tried to reach out for him and Saya, but they were laughing and singing as they leapt across the river of ice shards. Then from the distance appeared a girl, a young and pretty give with very long black hair and bottomless ebony eyes. She stood in their path until they were a metre or so apart, then she drew a gun and pointed it straight to them.
All of a sudden the colours were spinning and Saya was swallowed by Rose vines with thorns, the red dripped from beneath the flower bed, it made a puddle to where Train was standing. He looked up to see the young girl had gone but in her place his gun, Hades, lay with three bullets left. Train looked around but found himself falling and falling, deeper and deeper into a pit...
Black Cat woke with a start, he was breathing heavily and it took a while for him to realise where he had fallen asleep. Ahhh, he sighed deeply, the morning sun and by the end of the day I should be in Hailong City. Granted it was a strange dream, even by his own standards, but he got over the night easily and soon he was on his way. He had located his motorbike and sat on the saddle ready to go, when something out of the corner of his mind made him turn quickly, only to catch a glimpse of some black hair whisking around the corner- so very much like smoke.
He shook his head and started the engine. It was a long drive through tough dessert terrain but eventually he could see the city looming ahead of him, just in his vision. Then, something darted across the road in front of him; he braked hard and threw the bike down, running towards the dark shape that was lying on the sand. To his surprise he saw the long black hair silhouetting the rest of the body; he recoiled, drawing his gun cautiously. The figure got up slowly; it looked around before turning to Black Cat.
Black Cat couldn't stifle the gasp, it was the same girl from his dream and the one he had seen not an hour ago in Gongla Town. The same eyes, hair, face. She was quick to draw a gun from her back and aim it at Black Cat's head.
"Who are you?" She asked boldly, something told Black Cat that she knew how to use the gun and that she definitely wasn't afraid.
"I could ask you the same," He looked the strange girl up and down; she seemed normal enough but then again so did Eve, "What are you doing following me? Are you a Talwist?"
"I've seen you before, in a dream," she seemed almost eerie as she tried to conjure up the memory of the strange man in front of herself, "YOU! It was you; you taught me how to shoot, in my dream! You helped me when I was a kid!" Black Cat gave an obvious blank look on his face, "My parents were cruel people and then one night you sent me this," she pointed the gun upwards," it was in a dream but when I woke up it was really under my pillow!"
"So, I gave you that. But I don't remember doing it. You're telling me you killed your parents? I don't think I would ever encourage that," Black Cat slouched his position slightly; the kid was not going to shoot him.
"But you did. And I didn't. I arrested them; you are looking at one of the best sweepers in the world. Known as Lightning! Feared by criminals and adored by the unsuspecting public," still a kid he thought, she shouldn't have been put in this big bad world yet he thought. "Hey, I can look after myself!"
"WHAT? You can read my mind? For how long? I don't understand, are you a Talwist?" She shook her head gently from side to side with movements like a snake.
"I've always been able to hear you, so I take it it's only been recently that you've had a connection with me. What's goin' on? I just thought I was crazy, I didn't think the thoughts were real..."
They both decided to take the matter to someone who might know something about it, Rinslet. So after many arguments over who would drive Black Cat finally won. The girl had a name but she preferred Lightning so he agreed to call her that. Eventually they made it to Hailong City where they went straight to Eve and Sven's house; they waited until they got back. After explaining everything to Sven he contacted Rinslet and arranged for her to come by in the morning...
She woke in a long white room, filled with people of all shapes and sizes who were wearing huge white bio-safety suits. She was so scared, but at the back was Train Heartnet, someone she had to get to know very well. The men poked and probed her body until she was sore all over; they then left her for a while. Train was slightly translucent and the girl knew that he was a hallucination but no harm in pretending he was real.
The door at the end of the room opened and in walked a smartly dressed woman who crouched next to the girl. She gave a friendly smile and started to bathe the girl's wounds carefully. "Soon," she said, "He will come and take you from this misery." The things began to phase away as the light took her back up...
Black Cat and Lighting awoke at the same time. Gasping for breath they both looked at each other, the same question bubbling in their eyes, what do they mean? Black cat had dreamt he could not moved as he watched the guys hurt Lightning, and Lightning had felt the whole horrible ordeal when she first woke up she could almost see the bruises but the vanished immediately. They sat around the open fire waiting for Rinslet, none of them dared spoke a word but eventually she came. They explained the situation to her.
"Well, as it happens I have been investigating a project that involves you, but you're in a lab in Tokyo. It just doesn't make sense." She sighed grimly, "They've covered their tracks well, but I could find out that are experimenting Transmuting Nano-Shells to Brain Waves. I don't even know what it means, but I think this girl is a Bio weapon like Eve." Everybody looked up at that, Eve looked at Lightning.
"I could check," she said quietly, "This won't hurt at all, I'm just going to see if you have Nano machines in you." She placed her hand on Lightning's shoulder and closed her eyes, concentrating. "How strange, she seems to be made of just Nano Machines but not a lot, as if there's trace amount of Nona machines."
"We need to investigate that lab," Sven interjected, "It's the only way to find out what's happening."
They arrived in Tokyo with no trouble what so ever, an unusual journey for them to make. The labs were in an old warehouse, it took them only seconds to devise a plan. They climbed onto the roof to look through the skylights. The space was used well, there were a lot of people in white lab coats, and the only bit they couldn't see was a long room which was completely concealed. One by one they jumped through the hatch and onto the beans supporting the roof up, Sven took out the guards next to the door to the mystery room with his sleep gas.
Lightning twisted the handle and entered the room first. She stopped in her tracks. Eve shut the door behind her only to turn and see that the others were frozen in place with the weirdest sight they have ever seen. In a small pod at the end of the room was Lightning, her long hair wet and her pale face bruised. Her eyes were wide open.
"Princess, you were not meant to see this although it is what I intended," the woman from Black Cats and Lightning's dream was there her auburn hair tied tightly in a bun and her brown eyes sparkling, " do you see? Lightning." She seemed to be enjoying herself.
Lightning had drawn her gun and stepped away from the others, her eyes shining with wild anger, "What is going on here? Who is that?" She shouted at the woman.
"Temper temper. You are dead, technically," Lightning's gun lowered a fraction as the news sunk it, "well, you've not been alive to begin with. You see we are trying to remake Eve. With you. Except this time we want no free will nonsense." She threw her head back and laughed manically!
"What are you talking about? I'm right here!" Lightning's patients was wearing thin and the woman had very little time before she snapped.
"Ah, so misguided. No, you are just some stray Nano Machines that escaped this prototypes conscious, so you have her traits and personalities but not her full potential. Unfortunately, you were the Nano shells that provide free will, so unfortunately for you we had to draw you back here in order to destroy you. Just in case you and the Prototype will ever meet, when she awakes." The woman's features had gone cold.
"Then, why are we connected?" Black Cat interjected, his gun also raised.
"Ah, well we needed an inquisitive soul who knows a bit about Nano Machines, so we connected you and the stray Nano Shells together by putting a few of them into you. That way you are linked but not too much, my fight is not with you Black Cat so it will not kill you when we dispose of these stray Nanos." She smiled through her teeth, obviously she was not used to smiling, "Now leave, so we can get on with our work."
"But Lightning's a person too; you can't just dispose of her like she's garbage!" Eve nodded in agreement to Black Cats interruption.
She grimaced, "Too late." It was only then when they noticed that Lightning had a bullet hole in her chest, from behind the woman out of the shadows stepped a man holding a gun with a silencer on it. Lightning fell to the floor just as the Orecalcon Bullet began to spread golden light across her chest. She began to vanish. Eve knelt beside her and held her hand until the very last bit of her was swallowed by golden light.
Train, he stood shocked at what he had missed, a single tear escaped his eye as he dropped to his knees. He hung his head and closed his eyes. There were too many guards to fight their way out, so they were escorted to out of the building with the woman close by their side.
Just before Train left he turned to the woman and smiled a small smile, then he leant to her ear and whispered, "I'll be back for her, and she will turn into a good person, because you can't take free will. I will save her and make her become that person."
He winked and walked away into the night...