"So what happens after this 'treatment' huh? You just take me back to jail?" The tall boy had complained all the way from Washington and it was starting to bug his handler.
Topher looked up momentarily as they exited the lift and then returned to his work getting the chair ready for the boy he would have called evil when he was younger. These days he had learned that all humans were ugly; some just covered it up better. "That's one way of putting it." He said with a sigh.
The boy's handler made him sit in the large chair in the middle of the room and it leaned back like a dentist's chair. There was a whir as the machinery came to life and he screamed in pain before a deathly quiet filled the small room, broken only by the sound of the chair rising back up.
Golf's eyes opened and he sat up. "Did I fall asleep?"
"For a little while." Topher replied
"Shall I go now?"
"If you like." He got up and wandered out the door of the imprint room.
"After that long term engagement I need some down time, see you around Topher." Topher nodded and then moved next door into his office where he slumped down at his desk like a puppet whose strings had been cut. His assistant, Ivy, looked at him and sighed. He had been like this for the last month; it was almost as if he had been broken by Alpha's return. When he wasn't working he would just sit and stare out the window of the office; looking down at the actives going about their daily life.
Ivy thought she had a way to snap him out of it but it was the matter of pulling it off that was troubling her.
The next day the pair of them were getting ready for the first imprint of the day, Ivy looked up and smiled at the four people that entered. "Ah Echo and X-ray together again, you two keep getting paired up together don't you." She glanced back at her boss and he hardly reacted as usual.
Echo broke the silence that had settled in. "I like X-ray, he's nice."
"And I like Echo too."
"Yeah, yeah a great big happy family. First up I'll take X-ray" Ivy recoiled from the anger in the head programmer's voice. She quietly slipped out of the room as X-ray was lowered into the chair.
She turned to the blonde girl sat on the sofa. Foxtrot was Ivy's go to girl for this imprint even if Topher had no preference. He had imprinted an active with this girl every year for one day but it was a different one every time, as if he was trying to find the perfect look for her.
"Is it time yet?" she stood up and stretched. Ivy had first activated her a year ago and the two of them had become friends, she was always OK with being imprinted whenever Ivy needed to talk.
"No not yet, 10 minutes." What Topher need right now was some time with the person he was closest to.
The two of them sat down next to each other in silence watching over the balcony as the dolls ambled around downstairs and a phone started to ring. The ring stoped as Topher picked it up; there were a few moments of silence before he yelled. "Ivy get in here now!"
"W-what's up Topher?" She had never heard such urgency and violence in his voice before.
"I need an active, any active." He was running around franticly connecting wires from the walls to the chair as Ivy had seen him do many times before; he was getting ready for the special imprint for some reason. "Foxtrot! You'll do get here." He yelled as he saw the active standing in the doorway. She did as he said and walked forwards.
"B-but wait a m-minute." Foxtrot was already imprinted so this would do no good; the special nature of this personality might break the chair if Topher tried to double it up.
Topher turned and struck out, knocking Ivy to the floor clutching her cheek, more in shook than in pain but he ignored it and carried on working regardless. "No Ivy this has to..."
"Chris, stop." The name hung in the air and caused everyone to freeze. She hadn't needed to speak much above a whisper and all attention was on Foxtrot. "Ivy said she activated me to cure your depression but this is something different. Do you even see what you're doing? You don't have enough friends that you can afford to hurt them. What was on the other end of that phone call that made you act like this?"
He had backed away when she started speaking and then looked from his hand to Ivy. A look of horror flitted over his face followed by recognition. "A-Alex?"
"Yes Topher, now tell me what's wrong?"
"It's time. They found her."
Although it doesn't show it yet this fic crosses over with my Avatar fic that I'm writing at the same time. The plot merges about half way through. I'm gonna be posting the chapters together i.e. chapter 1 of both will go up at about the same time. Both stories are part of the silicaverse, see my profile for details.
That's Sam from twilight at the start and if you read my other story 'we are nothing if not human' you will see what he did to get put in jail.
Alex isn't a fan character BTW it's just a name me and my beta came up with for the imprint put into Sierra in episode 6 (the one Topher uses every birthday so he has someone to spend it with.)
This was planed out before season 2 aired so mostly it will follow what we knew from the first season but some of revelations will make their way in.
