This is the prologue to a new storyline, set in the same world as bootlegging but it's going to be less humorous and a little darker. The reason I'm starting it before bootlegging is complete is because the idea came out of nowhere and I just had to write it before college assignments overwhelm me.
I own none of the characters or the universe portrayed hereafter, (except the ones which I made up, in which case, I do.)
…..
Veronica Emminsky put down the file she had been reading and stared at the three people in lab coats standing before her desk. They were all looking studiously at anything but her and had been doing so quietly and without movement for the last fifteen minutes while she had been absorbing what they had reported to her. None daring to indicate in the slightest that they might be uncomfortable or that they needed to return to work.
Emminsky leaned forward, put one hand over the other and rested her elbows on the desk, still examining the project leaders at the Academy.
Finally, she spoke. "He committed suicide?"
The two men and the woman before all looked up but didn't meet her eye. They were unsure of how how to answer, or if it would be wise to be the one who answered. That might draw her attention to them in particular.
One of them, a doctor Liu if Emminsky's memory served (which it always did), screwed up all his courage and opened his mouth, "He appeared to be improving, increased lucidity, a cessation in his violent outbursts, he reacted to aural stimuli and eye contact…"
Emminsky spoke over him, "Is this an excuse?"
"No ma'am!" Liu managed to splutter out.
His colleague, Bennett, stepped in. "All signs showed subject one-five-seven had reached an acceptable state to be readmitted to the live-fire exercises." She faltered as Emminsky turned her homing-missile stare upon her. "We couldn't have known he had completely broken down and was unable to cope with the, erm, procedures. That he had decided to end his life, or that he had gotten around the programming preventing it."
Emminsky glanced at the open file, there were two photos contained within. One showed a boy of twelve in a hospital gown, the other showed a figure in black combat uniform sprawled on the ground with the left half of his head blown out and a large-calibre bullet hole to the right temple. The offending firearm was half clutched in his right hand. Sand-coloured hair was all that linked the two pictures.
She leaned back and calmed herself. They couldn't have foreseen this, could they? "Do we know how why he did it and how he managed to get around his programming?"
Bennett, surprised that she was still employed or indeed, still drawing breath after sticking up for Liu, answered. "He was the oldest, it's possible his mental development overcame the programming and he realised what was happening to him, with the operation on his amygdala he wouldn't have been able to control his emotions and couldn't live with himself after…" She trailed off. Convinced though she was of the need for what they was doing, it still gave her nightmares.
Emminsky blinked at her and raised an eyebrow, indicating for her to continue.
"Well… His original breakdown happened after the first… test of his programming, whether or not he would… follow orders… without question. He took longer than most to, er, complete the task. After that point the psychosis and hysteria set in." Bennett replied. Took longer than most to kill an innocent man that he'd never met before.
Clucking her tongue, Emminsky picked up a data tablet and pulled up a spread of numbers. She glared as she read, "In the last twelve months we have had… three suicides, seven instances where the subject had to be euthanized and twelve deaths during surgery. This leaves us with five subjects. We can of course acquire more but questions will be asked about our competency if our results," She held up the photo of one-five-seven's body. "Look like this."
She stared at the project leaders. "Well? I seem to remember progress being made with one-two-one?"
The last scientist, doctor Clemmons, spoke for the first time. "One-two-one was a special case; when she came to us she was a child prodigy, her mental resilience allowed her to deal with the impact of her actions much better than the others, which is why she made it to the age that she did without breaking down like one-five-seven. We made such progress with her that the others fell by the wayside." He sounded regretful.
"When she, well, absconded, her brother or someone working with him managed to gain access to a computer port inside the facility and wiped the records pertaining to the work we did on her so we've been unable to identify what made her different to the others. So far we've been unable to replicate the results."
Removing her glasses, Emminsky looked up at the ceiling. After a long moment, she said, more to herself and the ceiling than any of the other people in the room; "I suppose we'll just have to get her back then. No matter what the piss-drinkers in government say."
She motioned for the project leaders to leave the room. Then she made a call.
She did not want to end up like her predecessor.
…
In a rather unpleasant bar in a quite unpleasant town on the less-than-pleasant mining colony of Calaphraxis a communicator beeped in a man's pocket. He withdrew it slowly; a bulletin had been posted to all Systems Alliance military personnel of clearance level C3 and up. It was a notice to be on the look out for one River Tam, who had apparently killed several researchers and stolen highly classified military technology from the Blue Sun corporation R&D department's lab on Freya. She was believed to be accompanied by her brother Simon and had last been identified by CCTV in a bar fight on New Melbourne.
The man smiled, so they had finally stopped trying to repair the Tam's lofty position on the general fugitive's list that any fool with a cortex could access. (If someone were to look for the Tams on that list, they would encounter the details and photographs of a middle-aged couple that had died in a terraforming incident on a planet called Miranda).
For some reason no one in the Alliance Justice department's IT group could figure out how to repair the changes, so it had been removed.
They were going after them in a more subtle way now.
The man holding the communicator felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see an extremely large, extremely ugly man standing over his seat. He was looking at his communicator with mock interest. It was probably the only one like on the moon; it had cortex access and could use the system relay boosters to connect with any other communicators in the Allied systems, rather than just ones on the same rock.
"That's a mighty fine gadget ya got thar, mind if'n I take a look at it?" The improbably large man growled, looking at the seated man with a wolfish smile.
"As a matter of fact, I do mind." Said the seated man as he looked politely at his new acquaintance.
The thug made a grab for the small piece of technology, simultaneously smashing the hand that had been on the other man's shoulder into his face.
The problem was, the other man's face was no longer there, and two feet of steel had somehow found its way into his neck.
The entire bar watched as the man with the communicator wiped his blade on the dead thug's ragged wife beater. He then slid it back into its scabbard, tossed a few coins to the barman and left.
…..