Humans were inherently disappointing. Especially, it seemed, the humans that I had the misfortune to be saddled with.
"I suppose I would have to say my glass is half empty, Mr Delay," I said, turning around to look at him. "Four armed GS agents versus two unarmed women, and it's the GS agents who end up in a pile." Mr Delay did not seem to have an answer to that. "On the other hand, I will grant you the wonderful success you have had in shutting down these so-called safe houses of Adam's."
"Thank you, sir."
"It would appear our little secret weapon is working. Now, if only we could develop a means to countermand the self-destruct devices."
"We're working on it, Mr Eckhart," said Mr Delay. "As for the debacle at the Skywalk, I've already begun disciplinary action on the quartet."
"Good."
"All four GS agents will lose rank and privilege and undergo extensive retraining," Mr Delay assured me.
As he spoke, the familiar figure of Michelle Bigelow appeared in the doorway. "Well I don't think that'll even begin to solve the problem, sir," she said.
Mr Delay turned to the her. "Miss Bigelow, I don't recall inviting you to this meeting."
"The first thing GSA trainees are taught is to take initiative, sir," she said.
"Well if it isn't our new secret weapon. Come in, Miss Bigelow, and share your feelings about the way we do things here at the GSA," I said.
"The problem with the current crop of GS agents isn't their training, Mr Eckhart. It's their trainer," she said.
Mr Delay looked simply scandalised. "Excuse me?" he said.
"Are you saying that Mr Delay is at fault?" I asked.
"Well I'm afraid so, sir. I accompanied Mr Delay on the safe house raid. The squad demonstrated the same lack of team effort that resulted in the embarrassment with the two women."
"Your telecyber abilities make you a promising recruit, Miss Bigelow," I said. Thanks to the reckless experimentation at Genomex in the early days, and the more focused efforts of my current team, Miss Bigelow was technically a cyborg. But when she was not using her powers, she did a good job passing as human.
"Well thank you, sir. And if I may say so, I would love to have the opportunity to fulfil that promise sooner rather than later," Miss Bigelow said.
I noticed Mr Delay looking at her in suspicion, clearly feeling that his position was in jeopardy.
"What exactly are your ultimate professional goals?" I asked her.
"Ultimately, I would like to have your job, sir," she said.
I laughed to myself. I wasn't expecting such a bold answer, but I had to respect her ambition. "Precisely," I said. "And how would you plan your career trajectory to get my job?"
"By taking his job," she said without even a glance at Mr Delay.
"Now wait one damn minute!" he said, approaching her.
"Mr Delay is one of my most capable and trustworthy agents," I said, holding a hand up to him to warn him against getting any closer to Miss Bigelow. "Why should I transfer that trust to you?"
"Well right now you shouldn't, sir. Given the opportunity, my actions will speak for me," she said.
I regarded her, then looked over at Mr Delay, who looked more than a little put out at the situation. If this was the way he responded to a challenge to his authority, then perhaps Miss Bigelow was correct in questioning his leadership skills.
I was already aware of Miss Bigelow's childhood friendship with Emma deLauro. So when she used their prior relationship as a ruse to meet with and capture Miss deLauro, I falsely thought that this was an attempt to show her loyalty to the GSA and her superiority over Mr Delay. It would be untrue to say I was not tempted to get involved. I had wanted Miss deLauro on my side for some time now. But I decided to see just how much I could rely upon Miss Bigelow.
The answer, as it turned out, was not at all.
I was alerted to the presence of two women in my office while I wasn't there, so I took a team of agents with me to bar their exit. My office was securely locked whenever I left, so there was no doubt that they had broken in for nefarious purposes.
"I'm afraid you two schoolgirls are about to get permanent detentions," I said.
Behind me, Mr Delay sniggered.
I gestured to the two women to follow me.
"After all the opportunities I've offered you, Miss Bigelow, this is how you repay me?" I said as we walked.
Miss Bigelow didn't reply.
"You know that's one of your biggest problems, Eckhart. It's just not always about you," Miss deLauro said.
"And that where you're wrong, Miss deLauro," I said. "And as soon as you realise you're nothing but a satellite that revolves around me, we'll all be the better for it."
Finally, Miss Bigelow spoke. "After what I saw in your database, I'm ashamed I ever trusted you," she said. "Who do you think you are?"
I turned around to face her. I was mildly irritated, but false promises followed by serious insubordination had unfortunately become a common occurrence here at Genomex. "It's not who I think I am that matters. It's the fear I strike in others that makes life worth living," I said.
I had lost Miss Bigelow's loyalty, if indeed I ever had it in the first place. But fear worked just as well if not better than loyalty. They would need to be separated, of course. Perhaps if I put one of them in stasis, the other would be much more willing to fall in line. They were both powerful new mutants. It would be quite the task to decide between them.
Miss deLauro turned to her friend. "And this is the guy that you trusted," she said.
"You know what?" Miss Bigelow said.
"Yeah," Miss deLauro said, and they both tilted their heads in an overly dramatic fashion. "We're both over this place."
Miss Bigelow's eyes emitted a mechanical green glow as they did whenever she used her telecyber powers. The lights went out, plunging us into total darkness. Since the previous incident, I had ordered a complete overhaul of our backup power grid, so light returned after a mere few seconds. But those few seconds were enough to allow Miss Bigelow and Miss deLauro to disappear completely.
My men scrambled to search for them, but their search failed. Of course it did. A telecyber and a telempath were the perfect team for bypassing both human and computer security.
I cursed my luck in losing them. I should have kept a closer watch on them. But Emma deLauro and her school friend? They would have betrayed me sooner or later.
But an idea occurred to me. Miss deLauro would most likely be taking her old friend back to Adam's Sanctuary. During her time at Genomex, my geneticists had worked on Miss Bigelow's hybrid computer and genetic code to make her more powerful and less unstable. But thanks to the staunch warnings offered by science fiction, we all were wary of becoming the subjects of a cyborg uprising, so Miss Bigelow had been fitted with a self-destruct device.
I returned to my office and tried to do some work, but the day's excitement had rather taken it out of me, and I now had a pounding headache. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, and waited to be informed of when Miss Bigelow had reached Sanctuary.
I had precious little time to relax before I heard the doors to my office open. I cursed the fact that I hadn't locked them.
"I'm busy, Mr Delay," I said without opening my eyes.
"I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, sir. The techs tell me they've lost contact with Miss Bigelow."
"Well there's something wrong with their scanners. Miss Bigelow was a perfect weapon."
"That may be, Mr Eckhart, but I had them do a complete systems check," he said. I opened my eyes and looked at him. "She's gone."
I stood up. "The whole escape was a perfect charade to get her into Adam's world before the failsafe self-destruct could go online," I said, gracefully implying that this had been my intention all along.
"I understand, sir. But the fact remains, Miss Bigelow has disappeared."
I dropped my head and sighed. "Well then. It would appear that you can keep your job for just a while longer, Mr Delay."
I turned away and waited for him to leave the room. I stared hard out of the window.
In the end, it was always the human element that was unpredictable and impossible to trust. Machines did not betray, but people did. Perhaps we should fear the cyborg uprising not because they are partly robotic, but because they are partly human. After all, humans themselves have always ranked among the greatest threats towards mankind all throughout history.
Now we had lost contact with Miss Bigelow, I knew that we were unlikely to get her back. But now she was Adam's responsibility. Perhaps she would betray him just as she had betrayed me. I began to smile at the thought.
For now, I still had Mr Delay. He already knew that I was less than pleased with his performance and quite open to the idea of replacing him. That might spur him on to improve his performance. At least until I found a suitable candidate to replace him with, that was. That was one thing that humans had in common with machines. Even the ones that performed well at their jobs were always replaceable.