- IV -

Incomputable Enigma

Harkness frowned as the tardy water caravan marched across the bridge toward the city entrance behind him. He counted the crates of Aqua Pura strapped to the brahmin walking alongside several armored Brotherhood members, noting that this week's shipment numbered a third less than usual. Their clanging footsteps all but drowned out Lana Danvers's barked orders to set up in the old science lab, and she exchanged a vexed look with him while the escort detail filed inside. Officer Lepelletier brought up the rear of the line and maintained her scowl as she strode over to report in.

"More hijackings, Chief. I don't know what else to tell you," she huffed, shrugging her shoulders. "I was dead serious when I said I needed more personnel to guard the caravans. The Brotherhood can't spare any more from their ranks, so it has to be from ours."

"And you know we're already spread thin enough as it is," Harkness replied. He shook his head and shifted the Chinese assault rifle at his back. "I'll figure something out. Some of our residents are under the weather, and they're counting on this water supply."

"Yeah, well, hopefully they're not holding their breath because our shipments are just going to keep dwindling unless we shut down the source of these attacks," Lepelletier said irately and crossed her arms, glaring off into the distance.

He analyzed the contrast between her tense posture and the anxious way she bit her lip. As his processes detected the steady elevation of her blood pressure, he demanded, "Do you know something?"

Lepelletier glanced back at him. "No, nothing for certain, but I've got a strong feeling that something organized is going on. Think about it. Since when are common bandits so on par with trained combative professionals that they manage to consistently fuck up our operations?"

"You have a point there," Harkness told her, although he knew assembling and deploying an investigative team was out of the question for now. He rubbed his forehead and, not for the first time, asked himself why he refused to resign from this migraine-inducing position. "Well, I'll give the caravan issue more consideration—"

"Please do."

"—and I'll get back to you once I draft together a POA."

Lepelletier let out a long-suffering sigh and moved toward the marketplace door, through which the last of the detail disappeared. "Try not to take too long, Chief. I'm almost at the end of my rope here."

Danvers passed her on the way over and issued a short greeting before coming to stand at his side. His second-in-command raked her fingers through her short brown hair, the lines in her face deep with stress. "This really is a major problem, Harkness. We need clean water now more than ever with all these people coming down with some kind of bug. Dr. Preston has been working overtime after the most recent influx of patients. And we need to look into why the outbreak originated in the upper deck."

He nodded, moving the matter up on his priority list through a series of internal numbers and computations. "Yeah, I hear you. I'll start working on a solution this evening after my rounds."

She peered sideways at him, tensing slightly. "You know, I've been meaning to talk to you about the security force's new shift schedule. Is there a reason you have so many of us on constant patrol around the city? With a little restructuring, you could give Lepelletier the manpower she needs and still have an adequate defensive team stationed around our perimeter."

Harkness pressed his lips together as he quelled the sudden stream of informational output from his computerized side, which listed the exact calculations for his rationale. A glower formed on his face when the zeroes and ones assembled an image of a specific individual. Much like a nagging thought, it persisted in his mind no matter how many times he tried to mentally tab out.

"I can't risk it," he declared in a gruff voice. "It's not just the perimeter of the city that needs watching right now."

Danvers stepped in front of him, her dark brown eyes boring into his. "This is about Raine Sinclair, isn't it?"

His lack of response spoke for itself.

"You've been treating that girl like a walking time bomb ever since she moved here, at the cost of the security force's efficiency," Danvers chastised as she fixed him with a stern glare. "Let her be, Harkness. She was making an honest contribution to the community before you and Seagrave drove her out of the marketplace. I really don't think she's looking for trouble on your precious boat, and your paranoia is crippling our productive potential."

While he grasped the validity of her statements, his less logical side felt the need to argue. "Have you forgotten everything she's done in Rivet City alone? Mr. Lopez is dead because of her, and James Hargrave and C.J. Young could've been killed when she drove them into running away. I'm not letting a person like that live unsupervised in this city."

"Yet you allow others like Flak, Shrapnel, Sister, and Trinnie to reside here without harassment," she countered. "You've been singling Raine out, and you're letting her presence affect your work decisions."

He bristled with indignation. The fact that the source of his daily headache went from caravan hijackings to Raine Sinclair hardly surprised him, but it only proved she was a legitimate concern requiring his attention. "Look, as the security chief, it's my job to pinpoint and monitor the most hi-risk citizens, all right? At this time, she fits the bill. I need my personnel to keep an eye on her as a precaution."

Danvers's displeased expression became more pronounced. "I understand your apprehension when you consider her history, but you're devoting too much of our focus on something that may not even be an issue when we're facing a very real issue right here." She gestured to Lepelletier's makeshift office at the gangplank building across the bridge. "People are sick, and they need water. We can't lose any more shipments, Harkness. At least consider switching some of the officers to rotational duty under Lepelletier's command."

He paused at the reasonable suggestion, which both challenged his stubborn mindset and lined up with the logic in his coding. Of course she was right, and literally part of him was inclined to agree. Even so, it took a few minutes before he worked through the inner struggle and exhaled in resignation.

"Fine, I'll see to that when I sit down and revise the personnel assignments tonight," he relented. Despite the number of times they clashed over work-related affairs, he tended to place significant value on her input. "But if you want to get started on it this afternoon and show me what you come up with once I'm finished with my rounds, that's an option, too."

Finally, a satisfied smile broke through her dour countenance. "I'll do that. Good to know you still listen to my advice."

"It's a habit."

"Bet you're glad you keep me around as your sidekick."

"Nope. I hate it when you're more sensible than I am."

They approached the stairwell entrance together as the sun hit high noon. Before opening the heavy metal door, however, Danvers sent him a peculiar stare.

"By the way, I'm kind of taken aback by your hostility toward Raine lately," she remarked, quirking an eyebrow. "Weren't you singing a different tune the last time she stayed in the city?"

Harkness peered back at her, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Well, after whatever altercation that was with that Zimmer guy, you just seemed like you changed your opinion of her, at least for a short time," Danvers reminded him. "What was it you said? That she was an unfathomable riddle? If I didn't know any better, I'd say she fascinates you more than anything."

Harkness followed her inside, but declined to answer. His memory bank pulled up a clear reference of the instance, and he scrolled through the successive events as Danvers bid him good bye and split off in another direction. He recalled his sheer astonishment when Raine had decided against betraying him to Zimmer, remembering the overload of questions and speculations that had wracked his system, only for her to refuse him a reason. As much as he'd wanted to assign ulterior motives to her choice, he suspected that even she had no clue why she did the things she did.

He'd spent more hours than he cared to admit mulling over the potential workings of her mind, eventually reverting back to his initial unfavorable opinion when he determined her too perplexing, too… illogical. All attempts to analyze her resulted only in errors across his cortex, leaving him with inadequate conclusions about her motives. She had proven to be an incomputable enigma. A conundrum too multifaceted for science to solve. An outlier among the masses of society.

And somehow, despite the volatile nature that made her so dangerous, everything about her seemed so familiar.

He reached the common area of the security quarters, crossing the vacant floor toward his office. The automated lights flickered on once he unlocked the door, and he grimaced at the mountainous stacks of clipboards and papers littering the surface of his desk. No amount of nagging from Danvers had motivated him to willingly sort through the documents, but now that some actual deskwork loomed in his near future, he foresaw an evening of tedious organization to look forward to.

Proceeding past the clutter, he strode to the set of dented lockers leaning against the far wall and opened the single intact one. Spare holsters, batons, and knives met his sight, but his eyes went straight to the plasma rifle sitting at the back, his mouth hardening into a straight line as he took a moment to study the returned gift. The immaculate condition of the weapon implied good upkeep and care, but judging by the look on Raine's face when she'd shoved it back at him, she had likely repaired it once and then tossed it in storage somewhere during her travels.

Harkness scowled to himself and switched out his current firearm for the plasma rifle. No use letting it waste away just to avoid thinking about how it had been unwanted. Several microfusion cells went into his pocket, followed by a switchblade and two pairs of handcuffs.

When monitoring Raine Sinclair, one could never be too cautious.

He shut the locker and paused to tap into his built-in tracking matrix. While he considered it one positive aspect of recovering his memories, the matrix's capabilities were limited enough to render it useful only within certain distances. The re-mastery of all his android functions had been a quick process, but after living as a human for so long, the dual components of his psyche still caused a bit of cognitive dissonance. Many features of his system ran automatically in the background while he went about his day-to-day activities, and the fluidity with which he alternated between the two facets sometimes became disconcerting.

A small alert flagged his attention when he managed to locate his target on the digital grid pulled up across his vision. In all honesty, the orange indicator on the next floor could have been any living organism, but upon zooming in on it, he knew that body mass, that internal temperature, and that resting heart rate. He'd memorized her vitals, learned her subtly unusual physical processes, knew her inside and out except for what went on in that unpredictable mind.

And he intended to find out what she was up to now in front of the armory.

Hastily, he exited his office and locked up before making his way toward the stairs that led to the upper level of the security quarters. On cue, a loud clattering noise drifted down to raise his caution, and he drew the plasma rifle as he climbed the steps two at a time. Anticipation heightened his senses, preparing him for a range of possible confrontations.

"Private Jones?" Harkness called as he reached the top and rounded the corner. "Is everything—"

He halted in his tracks at the sight of the slumped Mister Gutsy, which lay in a mangled heap on the floor behind an individual whose back was to him. A small but callused hand picked up a wrench and banged it against one of Jones's open hatches, sending several fragments of material flying left and right from the robot's body. Her long black hair spilled over her shoulders, and she brushed it back with an impatient flick of her wrist as she worked. Searing anger curled around Harkness's center when everything in his charts pointed to the blatant intentions of the troublemaking girl.

"Sinclair," he growled, lifting the plasma rifle and aiming it at her head. "So you've finally made your move."

Although she didn't bother turning around, he sensed the subtle jolt in her pulse. Trying to break into the goddamn armory. I should've known. Danvers, you were completely wrong about her. She's trouble through and through, and now she's crossed the line.

"Stop what you're doing, drop everything you're holding, and stand up," Harkness ordered, on guard as he approached her.

Raine merely glanced at him from over her shoulder without ceasing her abuse on the Mister Gutsy unit. "Give me a minute. I'm not finished."

Her audacity was so absurd that it almost coaxed a laugh from his throat. As if I'm going to let you finish destroying security force property and retrieve your guns.

"I'm not saying it again. On your feet or I'm taking you down. You've got guts deactivating Jones and going for the armory," he rumbled, his finger applying the slightest pressure on the trigger. "Letting you into this city was a mistake. I'm not making a second one by letting you walk free from this."

Her manner remained calm as she continued to ignore his commands. From an objective standpoint, her courage and nerve in the face of imminent injury and death impressed him. But given the complete depletion of his tolerance, he edged closer, ready to shoot her if she failed to comply.

Suddenly, she snapped Jones's hatch back into place, straightened, and stepped aside. Before Harkness could say anything else, the Mister Gutsy shot up with a sharp whirring sound, spinning around on the spot and rotating its arms. Once it stilled again, it hovered in front of the armory door more steadily than he'd ever seen it, the propulsion jets quieting down to a smooth hum.

"Reactivation complete. All systems at full efficiency. Private Jones resuming this post," it proclaimed.

Harkness hesitated at the clearer intonation of the robot's vocal speakers, and he furrowed his brow at the difference in its performance as Raine bent down to retrieve her tool belt.

"He should be working fine now," she declared, face devoid of emotion as she fastened the belt around her waist. Steely blue irises swung to Harkness, drawing his gaze into their inscrutable depths. "I found out he was malfunctioning, so I fixed his processor and removed the rusted sections around his wires. Nothing unauthorized will get past him now. You can look him over if you're still skeptical."

The security chief stood immobile even when she sauntered toward him, her collected expression unchanging as she came close enough for the barrel of his rifle to bump against her chest. Then, in a startling move, she reached up and slowly pulled down the neckline of her tank top. He watched in mild alarm and opened his mouth to berate her, but the words died on his tongue when she exposed the scarred skin of her modest cleavage. His eyes widened and locked onto the healed red gashes crisscrossing over her sternum and breasts, his wrath completely dissipating at the way she placed her heart right in the impending line of fire.

"So either shoot or let me leave," Raine said in a voice so monotone and unfeeling that he wondered how she even qualified as a living human.

Harkness's jaw tightened, and he forced himself to look away, trying to dismiss how quickly he had jumped to conclusions. A new series of valuables entered his endless calculations, but he pushed them aside as he regarded her. Everything in her countenance hinted that she cared nothing for recognition or for mercy, and the indifference in her demeanor only confused him tenfold. When it came to Raine Sinclair, it didn't matter whether he was human, android, or both.

No sentient being in this world would ever comprehend that incomputable enigma.

After a few seconds, he withdrew the plasma rifle.

She released her shirt and walked past him without a word, the last glimpse of her face telling him his reaction hardly surprised her. However, his thoughts gave him no time to dwell on her reasons for repairing Jones, filling his brain instead with the permanent image of the lacerations on her body. He knew almost every type of scar and injury gained from combat, and hers fell into neither category. Whatever story lurked behind them, their infliction had been intentional.

He stared after her as she bounded down the stairs, his fixation shifting to something else entirely.

x-x-x-x-x

A/N: Finally getting back to working on this. Sorry for the long wait, and hopefully I haven't lost all of my readers! (Wishful thinking?)