Cyber-Evolution
War
"They'll come for me, you know," the young girl says softly. She seems to expect no answer from the empty white room in which she sits. "They'll come, and then you'll know..."
The room is monitored, of course. Keeping such a dangerous... Creature... captive is a struggle. The walls are not proof against her abilities. Only the heavy electrical charge running through the mesh under the padding has prevented another break out. They still aren't sure why. Twice she has attacked guards who entered the room, the second time inflicting considerable damage, in spite of the ceramic-alloy armor the guard wore. She seemed to be trained in martial arts and was a well known street brawler, but for a 14 year old girl to take down 3 full grown men had seemed impossible. Especially since they had 'known' the limitations of her abilities and had been armed and armored. Somebody had neglected to inform the 'girl' of the impossibility of fighting 3 trained guards. Somebody else had neglected to verify that her abilities were within the expected limits.
So now, no guards enter the room. Meals are delivered by remote robot. Several times she had attacked those as well, until the 'antitheft' electrical charge had been used on her. Now she likes to see how far she can push them before they attempt to electrocute her. She rarely bothers to actually break the robot carts any more. And they study her from afar, via remote cameras carefully concealed and protected. But she seems to know they are watching and where the cameras are. More than once she has stared right into a camera as she casually mentions that "They" are coming for her. There wasn't any real worry about rescuers coming for her. At least not until she began quoting from "Revelations." And, at about the same time, the Company's San Francisco offices were attacked, apparently by 3 of the 4 Horsemen. They had politely signed their names on the front of the building.
In laser carved letters 6 feet tall. Death. Famine. Pestilence.
No witnesses, living or mechanical, had seen them. They left only the dead behind, the bodies desiccated, or with expressions of mad horror.
Security was tightened almost immediately. And the observers and scientists sped up their studies of their captive. A fully Evolved, a Carbon-freak, a mutant, an Abomination; the names and epithets depend entirely on who you ask. Many believe her to be a 'victim' of a nano-plague. Some consider her abilities to be 'gifts', whether from "God" or some other source is open to debate. The scientists who study her simply think of her as "Experiment X." They run tests as best they can and have discovered that she does not fit any of the "known" types of Evolved (as they often referred to themselves).
They determined that 97 percent of her body is changed, becoming what is referred to as 'Hexite.' Similar alterations have been seen before, but never more than 30 percent of the body is changed, even in the most extreme cases. Her form is completely malleable, though her mass remains the same. Her mass is also surprisingly low for being made entirely out of a "meta-alloy." The few other known "meta-alloys" are extremely dense, but 'Hexite' is incredibly light for it's size and strength. The malleability of her form gives her incredible strength and her nervous system seems to be "hardwired," giving her uncanny reaction speed. She could, literally, dodge bullets. Yet even if she couldn't, bullets could hardly harm her. Even high caliber armor piercing rounds would do little more than annoy her. On the other hand, EMP grenades seem to be able to incapacitate her, if only for a few short moments. The first use of EMP had ended in disaster when she had stiffened and begun moaning and writhing in obvious pleasure. The guards had stopped to stare. She hadn't tried to escape, that time, but they had resorted to using another EMP pulse to paralyze her so they could retrieve the first set of guards before she could finish castrating them. Fortunately she had been angry enough to take her time.
"They are coming," she repeats softly. She stares into the hidden camera, her limb flexing and writhing as it changes, briefly, into a knife.
"Who is coming?" One of the psychologists asks. It is a rhetorical question, one she has never answered before. He shudders as her metallic lips curl into a rictus 'smile'.
"The Horsemen are coming. Death, riding a pale horse. Pestilence, leading the storm of plagues. Famine, bringing hunger and suffering."
"Will the angels open the seals then?" asks the psychologist.
"Then the gates of Hell will be opened on you. And you will know..." She trails off.
"What will we know?"
Silence.
"What will we know?"
"You will know what we know. Pain. Suffering. You will become the hunted, the prey. You will fear."
"How do you know all that?" Genuine curiosity and, almost, concern. He is a psychologist, after all, with an urge to fix his patient's delusions.
"Do you know what it is like to be hunted?" She doesn't wait for an answer. "Do you know how it feels to see your friends, your family, gunned down before your eyes? For something they hadn't done and couldn't control? I was 8. I had only my brother left as we ran from you. The others were dead, or dying, or captured for your experiments. 30 of my friends, the people I called family. Because you thought we had the Plague. You were right of course. I had the plague. My brother had the plague. And look where we are now. Me with my anger and hatred, and you with Death peering over your shoulder and breathing down your neck."
He nervously looks over his shoulder. Nothing. When he looks back, she has moved closer.
"I was 8," she says. "When the Change took me and made me a God. I learned the amazing things I could do. I could kill with a mono wire finger. I could catch bullets. I was invulnerable and impossible to kill. And I could still fly. Even better than before, because now my body was able to become a part of my 'board.'"
He glances at a screen with a list of information. She is a 'boardpunk,' one of a group of youths that ride skateboards or aeroboards. She had been without a 'board when she was captured.
"Do you know the price of invulnerability? Do you know what the cost of becoming a God is? Do you think you can pay that price?"
His eyes snap back to the screen of the girl in her room. She is staring, her gaze capturing him, forcing him to watch and listen.
"I saw my best friend die in my brother's arms. Shot by a rail gun. I saw a sex-a-roid seduce my brother away from me. I saw other friends shot, stabbed, killed in horrendous ways. I killed an old class mate, because she had the courage to tell me that she was on the other side. I killed her because she asked me to."
He stared, aghast at the calmness with which she recited this litany of horror.
"I have become a lesbian. Betrayed by my body because another woman was able to make me feel. To feel her touch, her caress, her lust. And for her I shape my body to fit hers. To satiate her passion in ways that mine cannot. But I am her willing slave and toy. Because I cannot feel anything from anyone else."
"Why 'betrayed'? What is wrong with lesbians?" He asks. Maybe her homosexuality was her problem. Many homosexuals were repressed like this. Or perhaps she was actually male, hiding behind a feminine appearance. Hard to tell with a malleable body.
"Is it natural for a woman to love another woman? Even if it is, how can any physical interaction be natural with me? I can't even become excited without a car battery. I'm little more than a sex toy, giving satisfaction, but receiving none in return. I don't even have the ability to menstruate or produce 'lubrication' any more."
He is aghast. The tests show that she has normal hormone levels for someone her age and she can't do anything with them.
"Do you see yet? Do you think you know? You don't. Not yet."
She stands and turns away for a moment, then snaps her head back around.
"When you can't feel on the outside, eventually you stop feeling on the inside. When you can't cry, the need for tears fades. When a touch evokes no response..."
She looks down at her body.
"When you can't tell the difference between a lover's caress and a killer's stab, then what difference does it make if you caress or kill with a touch? When you can't get aroused with passion or anger or fear or hope, you no longer care. Death means nothing when life has no feeling. That is the ultimate cost of Godhead. My humanity. Your humanity."
He rocks from the impact of her words. Because he is a psychologist, he reads more from her words than she says. He sees the real meaning behind her tortured rant. Her pain, her anguish, her anger, all a cry for help. An anguished screech snaps his attention back to the monitor. She hasn't moved, nor is she screaming. She is smiling though, an unpleasant grin.
"They have come," she says. "Now cry Havok, and loose the hounds of War. The Hunt is on."
The wall behind her splits and the camera goes black.
Death
He knew exactly when it had gone wrong. The whole business had been screwed from the beginning, but it had gone bad when she had seduced him. And now she had him right where he shouldn't have been. And he knew the whole thing had been an act. She had played him and set him up to fall. And he had fallen hard.
It had begun three days ago when he had received the surveillance orders. The target was a scrawny looking redhead. Observe her, but do not make contact. He had been given some special equipment and told to stay near enough for the sensors to get readings. About five or six hundred yards was optimal.
She had known from the beginning that he was following her. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty. But he hadn't really noticed at the time. He hadn't been fully briefed about her, but he suspected his employers didn't know either. She was one of the Evolved, but they hadn't the faintest clue exactly how far she had evolved.
The first afternoon went without a hitch. She had glanced his way a few times, but he hadn't reacted. No flinch, no stares, no ducking for cover. She was reassured and went about her business, apparently ignoring him. He knew better now.
The problems had begun the first night. She was in an apartment and he rented a room across the street at an exorbiant cost to his employers. He set up their equipment to watch her automatically, and turned on the vid. At some point he had fallen asleep.
Then the dream started. Glimpses and flashes of his target, sometimes watching him, sometimes looking shyly away. She lost bits of her clothing with each glimpse, until she wore only a bikini. The images became stronger, clearer, and her clothing covered less and less.
He remembered thinking she wasn't as scrawny as she first appeared. He snapped awake to find her standing over him wearing little more than a g-string. As he blinked, clearing the sleep from his eyes, she faded away. The after images of a dream. He ran
Famine