Pieces of You, Part 1
By Harris, Mitch, Shaine, and Shatterclaw. Individual rating:
PG.
"Harris," Shaine smiled. "Thank you for joining us."
"What's all this about?"
"I've finally gotten some information on the Boomer that we took down last night, and it looks like I'm going to need some backup."
She called up an image of the Frankenboomer. "Apparently all of the fused parts of the Boomer came from the same retailer. Which is, needless to say, very...suspicious. It's unknown whether Genom had an active part in this, but I would assume it did. The question is whether we go in by the front door and ask questions first, or try to gather information more covertly. The place I tracked them to appears to be a perfectly legitimate shop, with all its licenses in order, and no previous incidents attributed to it.
"It might be possible to extort information out of the owner...the fact that unlicensed Dobermans and even a 33-S were traced back to him would be bad for business." She smiled hungrily.
Harris shook his head. "Then why not take the place out?"
"Then we'll have no idea how or why this was done, will we?"
"If you go in with guns blazing, no..."
"If Genom - or anyone - has a way of controlling which Boomers go rogue, we need to find out," she said firmly. "That's the real issue here."
"Then send someone in. No attack, just reconnaissance..."
"All right. Mitch, do you agree?"
"Yeah."
"Then get your hardsuits and meet me by the tubes."
///
It took a half hour to get across the city, even in suits. The store was in the pricier end of town, not too far from Erik's house. The knowledge brought up a few minor twinges of pain as Shaine stared at the high-end Boomers in the front window, their angelic faces devoid of emotion, which were not all that much different from or less advanced than the ones he probably had.
At the same time, Jim waited a few paces behind, wondering if he'd really chosen their course of action well. Something about the place, not to mention the way it seemed to affect her, just didn't settle right with him. Mitch, standing beside him, seemed to be raring to go and completely oblivious to the air of forboding that had fallen over the others.
Jim stayed silent. He was there to do a job, and he would do it.
"Right. This is the place. From what I can tell, there's a spare storeroom in the back with the less reputable goods. That is our main target, but I want to look at everything." She picked the lock easily. "Get serial numbers off of as many as you can; they may be falsifying their records."
The doors slid open and she walked in, closely followed by Jim and Mitch. "Wolverine, check out the showroom first. Harris, stay with me." Damn, he needs a codename...
Mulder?
Snakebite? Heh.
Oh, be good, girl...you've got work to do.
Against the walls were complete Boomers, and cases distributed throughout the showroom held partial ones - upgrades. Shaine made her way across the room, not stopping to look at anything, while Jim carefully scanned the room as he passed. At the far end was a thick metal door flanked by two old-model combat Boomers...hopefully disabled. The electronic lock was top-of-the-line Genom work...
"Hah."
An early design of none other than Evon Kohl. Shaine bypassed it without hardly trying, and the doors opened slowly to reveal a large back room.
Inside was a stockpile of what appeared to be almost every design of Boomer ever made. "Looks almost like this guy is a collector..." Workbenches lined the walls, every one occupied by at least one Boomer. There were no humans in the room save for the two Ravens. "Yeah, look at this one," Shaine continued. "You don't put that kind of work into a Boomer unless you really love it."
There was a huge pit in the center of the room. Shaine peered down inside, saw some DVD cases lying on the bottom next to a huge Boomer. She jumped into the pit as Jim studied the Boomer weapons hanging on one wall.
"Jackpot!" They were from Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein...
Well, at least it's a whacked-out Boomer fanatic and not Genom...
Jim followed her into the pit. She held up the cases, one eyebrow raised. He nodded.
"Freefall, I have a Boomer head on a shelf whose eyes follow my hand when I move it, copy."
"Damn! I'll be out there in a minute, Wolverine."
There was a deep rumbling sound, and a large panel began to slide over the open work area of the pit. Shaine quickly leapt out, but Jim was trapped inside.
In the showroom, Mitch crushed the Boomer's-head surveillance camera. An alarm sounded. "Freefall, that's our cue!"
"Cue? Whatinhell are you talking about?" Shaine arrived at the door just in time to see him take off. "What the hell! Get back here Wolverine or I will have your suit!" She rushed back into the back room, firing at the panel covering the pit. It didn't even dent the thick metal.
Shaine found the computer console and jacked in.
Mitch walked into the back room. "Where's Harris?"
"Stuck in the pit!"
Mitch glanced around, then saw the rounded metal door. "Oh, man..."
The encryption on the door controls was only an eight letter code; Shaine could easily break it. However, a noise caught her attention before she could start.
The Boomers were beginning to shamble to life, many of them missing parts. Their skin was a purple, bruiselike color and discolored masses of flesh hung from their bodies.
"Oh, shiiiittt..." Shaine abandoned the console and attacked the nearest one with her laser sword. It fell all too easily, and she ran the sword through its core to be certain it was dead.
Mitch was trying to shoot through the pit door with his rail gun. "You're not going to cut through that. I already tried. And in case you haven't noticed, we have a more immediate problem!"
"Oh, heck!"
There were five in all, including the one that Shaine had already destroyed. Mitch's twin laser swords flared to life and he gutted another. "Time to dance, boys!"
"No fancy nonsense...just take them out now so that we can get back to Harris."
Jim, standing next to the giant Boomer in the pit, eyed it warily. It didn't seem to respond to his presence, but he remained completely still and engaged his cloaking device.
As Shaine turned on a fourth Boomer, Mitch smashed the core of the last one. "How about that door?"
"I'm working on it!" Shaine returned to the console. "Get all the sensor data on those things you can, while you're at it!"
Mitch set his suit back to scan mode and carefully noted the data as it was placed in his suit recorder. Temperature, heart rate...all of it looked more like human data than Boomer...
Shaine finished hacking the door control mechanism - the code was ITSALIVE - and the panel began to slide open again. "Harris! Hurry!"
Jim approached the Boomer cautiously, ignoring her.
"Jump now and let's get out of here! Or are you thinking of fighting that thing just for the hell of it?" She stepped toward the pit again and saw a thick crack along the Boomer's chest. Great...and I thought the lunatic who runs this place was bad... Stepping closer, she could see that the Boomer's vital organs were contained in jars, with wires running back to its body...there was a second, humanlike figure contained in it, peering with glasslike eyes out of the rift.
"Rice? Is that you?
"I can't see, Babe...I can't see you... You said I would be able to see..." The huge Boomer's head began to move, following the path of its occupant's blind eyes. "Who's there?"
"Yes, this is Rice." How did it see past my cloak enough to even know I'm here? Or did it just hear me?
"Rice? Babe...what's wrong with your voice? Did the Shadow Lady give you money for the birds?"
There was a long pause.
"Rice...so, so Rice, did you get it?"
"It seems I'm getting sick. Don't worry about it. And no, I haven't seen her."
"Sick?" The chest of the thing inside the Boomer pumped up and down, its mouth opened a bit, but the laughter was silent, ghoullike. "That's a good one..."
"It seems no one has seen her...any ideas?"
"I thought you were the only one who goes and sees her."
"So did I. But now no one knows where she is."
Above the pit, Mitch was inspecting the room more carefully. He found a photograph of a man and a woman, both cyperpunks. "Freefall, look at this!"
"Great," the Boomer-symbiont moaned. "So she stiffs you on the money...yet again..."
Shaine quickly stepped away from the edge of the pit and snapped a copy of the image with her data recorder. "You recognize them?"
"The guy looks familiar, but I can't put a name to it."
"Yes," Jim replied. "But when I find her I'll get it this time."
"I told you, Babe, forget about her!"
"We'll run it through the ADP database when we get back," Shaine said, then returned to the pit's edge.
"But don't we need that money?"
"We'll go back to getting stuff the old way. Sure, she set us up here, but she's asking too much now. We don't need the money! Babe, I'm only half the man you wanted. I want to be whole...I want to live like we planned..."
"Do we really want to go back to the old ways?"
"Hey, it's not like those ADP jerks ever missed anything...what's more some of them just let us have the bodies after they'd shot 'em up..."
"Yeah, but we can't keep it up forever."
"Sure the parts were a bit on the messy side...but we can always cobble them together again..."
"Sure. We can still use 'em."
The being in the Boomer groaned and slumped back. "I...I need some more rest. We can talk later, 'kay?"
"Yes...get your rest..."
Mitch walked to the edge, next to Shaine. "Any luck?"
"Hey, who's that? Who's there?"
"Who's who?"
"Babe...? Did you bring another guy over?"
Mitch backed up slowly, without making a sound. "Next time, use your suit comm!" Shaine hissed.
"Who's who? I thought...I thought I heard someone... There's no one else, right, just you and me?"
"I didn't hear anything. Someone let a cat in, but that's it."
"Damn cat. --Hey Babe...even though I'm in pieces...I'm still your man, right?"
Shaine fought back an attack of nausea. A human, or seeming human...and that thing...
"Yeah, you're still my man." He paused. "Don't worry. I'll take care of it...now get some rest..."
"Babe?" The thing's voice was weak. "When we're together again, promise me we'll turn the cats into our kind first?"
"All right. The cats can go first."
"Like the one we saw when the sky was set on fire...that was real pretty..."
"Yes it was. Now, then, get your rest before you wear yourself out..."
A light snoring could be heard issuing from inside the fissure in the Boomer's body. The door to the chest compartment closed.
"Finished, Babe?" Shaine snickered. You remind me of the babe... A Goblin babe! How appropriate...I feel like I'm lost in the Labyrinth today...
"Yes, Freefall...coming up..."
"Then let's fly."
The sound of a door opening stopped them cold. There were footsteps... Shaine and Mitch cloaked quickly as Jim jumped out of the pit. "Wait..."
"Stay for now. I want to see this." Shaine and Jim took up positions by the wall, while Mitch stood his ground.
A small, dishevelled woman walked through the showroom, several bags in her hands.
"We should take her," Jim whispered. "Get more information."
The woman looked around and dropped the bags in shock. Boomer parts fell out and scattered across the floor. She ran into the back room, and Mitch retreated to an out-of-the-way corner near Shaine.
"I don't think Crimson would take kindly to snatching humans...even guilty humans..."
"It's also kidnapping!"
"Is Crimson here? We need to find out what's going on here!"
The woman sat down at the computer and started typing furiously.
"No. We were never here. We can't let anyone link us to this..."
"Babe? Is that you?"
"What happened?" she asked.
"What do you mean what happened?" The creature and the woman - Rice, Jim assumed - began arguing. The three Ravens slid out of the room and back to the Nest.
"All right," Shaine said. "Once we get back, get your suits off and bring your data recorders to room 402. I'll meet you there."
///
The jumpsuit was glued to her skin with a sheen of sweat. Shaine grimaced as it peeled off like an old bandage. She was going to need a good shower when this was done--
Well, why not right then? Pinning her hair up with two large clips, she turned on the spray and ducked under before she could think better of it. Let them wait for me.
But she only allowed herself a few moments before grabbing a towel and returning to her locker. As she toweled off, a picture taped to the inside of the locker door caught her eye: a girl standing next to her, both of them in black and gold facepaint.
Liddy...Crash...I promise I'll call you. Soon. I just hope you understand...
///
Jim took his time getting the suit off, carefully studying each piece. We should've taken the woman...there's little enough we learned as it is, and hacker-girl sure is upright for a woman wanted by the FBI... He shook his head, finished dressing, and popped the data recorder out of his suit.
The elevator spat him out on the fourth floor near several small offices of the type used by graduate students and associate professors the world over. The tiny cells had little plastic holders next to them, too, sitting beneath the room number and announcing whom the occupant of the month happened to be.
Room 402, Shaine Kohl, was written in a vague scrawl. Beneath it was something that looked like, Welcome to the realm of the truly bizarre. There was a circle-like sketch, a wheel of some sort with lines, that seemed to break at the top...
Mitch was already there, and Shaine stepped up behind him, walked in. She seemed a bit more relaxed and he thought that parts of her hair looked damp.
Her newfound casual look blended in with the character of the office. Alien and UFO paraphernalia, including an actual "I Want to Believe" poster, cluttered the room, along with a handful of computers and boxes full of expansion cards and disks. On the desk, Mulder and Scully action figures held hands and came as close to gazing soulfully into each others' eyes as two plastic people of disparate height could.
Jim gingerly stepped over a rather ancient IBM - 8086, or maybe even 8088 - and sat down.
"Let's go over the Boomer scans first," Shaine said, artfully sidestepping the piles of paper, books, and software by the side of her desk.
"These look almost like human readings," Mitch said. "Heart and lungs are organic...only the skin and a few small parts are Boomer."
"I don't get it. That would make them weaker." She looked at the scans from the brain. "Verdrehen!"
"What?"
"The brain...it's human and Boomer..."
"It looks like the man wants to become a Boomer himself..."
"Yeah, like he's J.F. Sebastian or something."
Mitch rubbed the side of his face and watched a series of confused expressions play over Shaine's face. Jim remained silent.
"Now, the cyberpunks going for that I can understand...but what's a man on that side of town doing falling for that Boomer-is-better crap? He's got money, his life's easy...
"Why would he want to have Boomer parts?" She frowned.
"If we had taken the woman, we could've found out," Jim replied flatly.
"And would we have put her back? Knowing what she would about us?"
"No. When we're done we'd kill her."
Shaine's voice was soft. "We don't do that sort of thing around here, Mr. Harris."
"Then what's the point? Pussyfooting around doesn't get you anywhere."
"And leaving a visible trail for Genom to hunt us down by?" She exploded. "Tell them exactly what we're thinking? What we're doing?"
"You left enough of a trail with those Boomers you killed earlier."
Shaine didn't say a word.
"What difference would it make to kill more?"
"Humans, not Boomers. Boomers aren't alive!"
"So... When we go after Genom, do you think we will always be fighting Boomers?"
"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it," Mitch said.
"Or fall off it," Jim countered.
"There's one over there I'd really like to shoot," Shaine muttered, the point of the matter temporarily forgotten.
"So what makes them different from the woman last night?"
"Do you have any idea what Genom has done--" She cut off sharply.
"Do I care?"
"Listen, Mr. High-Price Assassination, I have lost more than you think." Mitch was beginning to get just as hostile.
"And you'll probably lose more. Get over it."
"I'm not going to be what they are."
"If we don't set some boundaries..." Shaine whispered, barely holding back tears, "Draw a line somewhere...then we're really no better than them."
"In war, boundaries get you killed. If you don't pull the trigger, the enemy will."
"No. Boundaries are what keep you sane. They keep you from becoming a machine...or a monster..."
"And how do you come to that assumption?"
"Believe what you like, Mr. Harris. Just don't act on it unless you know you have the Ravens' approval."
Jim shook his head. "I'll not be killed over your ideals. I'm here to follow orders--"
"I'll not be like him!" The sudden, sharp outburst took him by surprise. Before she had been passive, even in anger, but at that point she seemed ready to vault over the desk and fly at him.
"Be like me? What's wrong with me?"
"No. You know who." She was furious, and he had no idea why.
"Who is this you know who?" he demanded.
"Erik..." It came out grating against her throat, as if her entire body was fighting against its release. She stood and hurriedly walked out, tipping over a sheaf of notebooks.
Belladonna appeared at the door, seemingly about to walk in. She hung back, watching Shaine walk away.
"And who the hell is Erik?"
"Her uncle," Bell said.
"A really sick loser."
"And VP of Genom...among other things..." Her demeanor changed almost instantaneously. "So, you guys done with the computer?"
"Go ahead, Bell." Mitch smiled uneasily.
"Okay, cool! I was just checking the ISDN lines." She burrowed under the desk, pulling out a toolkit.
"James, you always been this way?"
He turned toward Mitch. "What way?"
Belladonna hit her head on the desk and clawed her way back out. The resulting deskquake knocked Mulder and Scully from their perch and they fell to the floor.
"Kill anything to achieve the goal..."
"That's not a way of being. It's something that is just done. I follow my orders. If I were ordered to kill you...her...anyone here...then so be it."
"Man, that is some cold slag!" Belladonna scowled. "Like getting bit by a damned snake..."
"I understand about orders. I've even killed before. But only in self-defense."
"And the difference? You're still taking a life."
"Snake...bite..." Bell jumped up and started hopping around.
"Self defense! That's only an excuse!" Jim shook his head.
"Yes...murder in cold blood is always wrong."
"And who are you to decide what is cold-blooded murder?
"Killing for a cause...killing in defense...killing for sport... It's all the same. Someone dies."
"No. The important thing is why."
"Why has no meaning. It's still killing. And why not? Why should any person die? You don't need an excuse."
"You're wrong. You've lost the reason why you kill...you just do."
"I kill because I have orders to do it - or to stay alive, in the case of humans. If you threaten my life, don't think I won't hesitate to pull the trigger."
"Hey, HEY! There will be no killing of a fellow Raven! Okay. Wolvie, Snakebite, go to your corners..."
Mitch left the room.
"Do you have something to add?"
"Do I really need to? ..."
"If you have something to say, say it."
"...Or could it be that somewhere next to the venom you call blood, you think they might be right?"
"Right or wrong has nothing to do with it. I'm here on a contract."
"Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourself that. One day you might just believe it."
"Sad thing is...I do."
"Yeah, Snakebite, somehow I think you do..." She walked out.
Jim shook his head. "Not a backbone in any one of them..." He sighed. "At least I'm getting paid well..."
///
The darts flew into the board with uncharacteristic force, seemingly swift enough to crack the thing in two if enough of them were used.
Mitch didn't see Jinks standing behind him. "Mitch..."
He jumped. "Jinks! What are you doing here?"
"We need you back at the office."
"Is the Black Snake still there?"
"Who... Harris? No, he said he was going to the rifle range..."
Mitch slammed one more dart into the center of the target, then nodded. "All right, let's go."
///
Shaine really, really didn't like computer labs.
This one was set up so that no one else could see what was on her screen without a considerable amount of effort, but she still felt as if anyone could see over her shoulder. She began to type faster. Let's get this over with...
She hadn't intended for the final blow to Genom's research labs to be such a burden in her mind, but she couldn't very well go back to the office, and she didn't want to wait until she'd calmed down again.
Punishment ought to be swift and severe, don't you think? ...damn, who was it who said that? Going over sci-fi villains in her head, she sliced into a relatively unsecured Genom terminal for the third time and transmitted the second activation code.
"Do you want to leave a message?" displayed, followed by a prompt.
"Hmmm..."
"Shaine?"
She turned the monitor off hastily. "What?"
"Jumpy, are we?" Jinks smiled.
Shaine could type the logout sequence blind, so she entered white rabbit and then severed the connection without looking. She doubted she needed to give him any clues, but she enjoyed taunting him...
"I was wondering if you would mind me looking over some of the data from the Boomer shop."
"No, go ahead." Shaine turned the monitor back on.
"Thank you." Jinks sat down at the next terminal and opened Shaine's shared network drive. She clicked on a few files, then began to type. "So what did you think of the Boomers that guarded the Frankenboomer?"
"They looked too human. Not much of a threat militarily - a light breeze could've pushed them over - but I'd worry about the mental state of a person who would make such things."
"Did they say anything?"
"No. Rumor had it when I left that Genom was working on something like that, with new emotional capabilities, but it didn't look like it'd ever pan out as a commercial model. Too dangerous...like Sexaroids. My father did some research on it, but nothing too detailed."
"I've read a few reports on hybrids," Mitch said. "But that was the first one I'd actually seen."
"Where did you read about hybrids?"
"MIT science journal. It was by a former graduate student, I think. They did a study but no experiments."
"Yes, exactly!" Shaine's eyes lit up. "He called them Replicants...it was all he would talk about for a few months."
"I've seen those. They're not much use."
"There's a problem with sensory deprivation," Mitch added.
"Yes, they had to be powerfully stimulated...and it was very easy to get the emotions out of balance."
"Where did you see Replicants?" Mitch asked.
"Right here in the city. But we destroyed them; there aren't any in Chicago now."
"I'd like to see the records of that, if I may," Shaine said warily. "I might be able to tell if they're 'Kohl' or not."
"Man, what a nightmare!"
"They were posing as a band called Red Equinox. Pretty dark, had a wide following. Mostly Boomeroids."
"Perfect cover," Mitch said.
"They used a virus that turned humans into Boomers via a...mutation. More or less it made a human want to become a Boomer. Fortunately it wasn't airborne; it required physical touch to be transmitted. But still, they managed to turn a lot of kids into monsters..."
"Is there an antidote?"
"None. It is irreversable and eventually fatal. It began as an anti-Boomer weapon but something happened to it...all of the samples degraded, even in lab conditions... We have found a way to block it for a time, but not cure it."
"So there is a way to stop this nightmare."
"The nightmare ended after their last concert in Old Grant Park. We...had to set off...a low level explosion. There were no survivors."
"What about these cyberpunks?" Shaine asked.
Jinks seemed to zone out.
"Something tells me that something survived." Mitch frowned.
"I can assure you that the things in that lab were not my father's work. Therefore they had to come from someone else who had experience with Replicants. I studied those bodies and it would have been possible to see his trademark mannerisms in design. Even if some other engineer had taken up where he left off."
"We never found the person who made the virus. Or any survivors."
"There's no point in finding fault here," Mitch said. "I just want to put an end to this."
Jinks turned back to the computer. "These things you fought...do you think you could get one back here? Or at least to a containment van?"
"Depends on who's looking for us now that they know we know. The symbiont mentioned a 'Shadow Lady' who was subsidizing their work..."
"Oh, there should be no problem there."
"She could be powerful. Hell, she could be Genom!"
"If she is, and she gets in our way, she won't live to regret it."
"Call it a guess...but what about the President of Genom?" Mitch asked.
"Isn't she three-quarters Boomer herself?"
"The Red...those bastards tried to turn my child into a monster...I won't let it happen again!" Jinks stopped. "Yes...she is..."
"I heard a lot of griping about her, before I came here... This seems just her style."
"It may very well be."
"I've heard rumors about Carter that would make your skin crawl." Mitch added.
"She has a personal grudge against me and Starbright. There have been many attempts to kill me...and my children... I don't have proof but I believe that Red Equinox were one of her pet projects."
"The police have been trying to make a case against her, but she always slips out of it. High-priced lawyers."
Shaine shivered. "What else do you expect? They've got money and no compunctions against using it..."
"I would expect her to make sure Mr. Kohl came between her and us...and I would expect that at some point Chicago will be our own personal war zone. Fighting out in the open..."
"Then you'd best make sure they never know I'm here."
"Shaine, no one will ever know any of us are here. The Ravens don't have files in any outside computer system... Even now, the only person to know for certain that you are alive is Erik, and he may be in as much danger as you are."
"Oh?"
"Carter...takes to men like a cat to a mouse. She plays with them, gives them the illusion of power, then has them killed. I know...I've buried three lovers because of her."
Shaine scowled. "I doubt he'd fall for that. Doesn't go for humans, y'know..."
Her voice grew softer, quieter. "No consequences to anything you do with a Boomer..." It sounded like a direct quote.
Jinks smiled. "I know. But Erik may not be fully human, either. There was something in his last posting at Genom..."
Shaine looked up from the computer screen in confusion.
"There was never a full report, but he was in a hospital for at least three weeks..."
"When? That can't be right!"
"It was ten years ago. February 2, 2030. Nowadays, they can replace your whole body..."
"Of course he was in hospital ten years ago! He broke his arm skiing and they had to perform surgery... Mama flew out to Germany to see him, and I went with her."
"Well, I could be wrong, but a broken arm doesn't take three weeks, and didn't even in 2030..."
"It was at the end of the war. They got his records mixed up, thought he was an East German soldier. That hospital room could as well have been a prison cell."
"I see."
"They did DNA testing," she insisted. "He's human!"
"Well, it was just a guess. At any rate, we have to go get those Boomers from the shop."
"Right."
"Suit up and grab your rifles. We'll go in ready for whatever trap they may have for us..." Jinks looked shaken, maybe even a little crazed. "We're going. Now."
Mitch's cell phone rang. He ducked into the hall, then returned a few moments later and said he had ADP business.
"It's all right. We'll call one of the others." He left.
Jinks found the phone in the computer lab and called Jim, then Saki, then Belladonna. None responded. "Well. They seem to all have left for the night. Do you think we can do this on our own?" There was a mischievous grin on her face.
Shaine scowled.
"Or should I try to raise Lark and Sprocket?"
"Let's just go and get this over with."
"I knew you'd see it my way."
///
Evon glanced at the battered Rolodex card in his hand again. 1013 Lake. This must be it. He'd never visited his brother's house in Chicago, despite frequent prodding to "come meet the girls," and he wouldn't have been there then except for the fact that Erik insisted upon his presence.
Besides that, there was that damned huge hill looming up in front of him. And no stairs either. Using his cane almost as a mountain climber would a piton, he made his way up the steep slope.
The size of the thing reeked of mathematical precision and efficiency to the engineer's eyes. It was, by his estimate, exactly large enough to house one reasonably well-off man and a Boomer support staff...no frills. He thought he noticed an indoor pool off to one side, but the rest so far was simply a quite tasteful and expensive version of the old essentials. No dead weight. There were some small flower beds lying empty in the winter cold, but the trees had been left to their own devices.
Perhaps he'd worn off on Erik after all.
A tiny, female Boomer appeared at the door. She was roughly of the phenotype that Robert Heinlein called "China doll," though she seemed to be Japanese rather than Chinese. That one looks familiar...
"Oh, you must be Evon! I'll go tell Erik you're here... Sit down, go ahead...would you like anything? Tea? Coffee? Anything?" She was far too eager to please. Yes, he remembered her...
"What's your name, dear?"
"I'm Callysta. Service number 3056-C--"
Evon waved a hand in dismissal. "No need to be formal. I thought I knew you. My little hummingbird..."
She glanced at him oddly. "Oh, he must have wiped your memory. I remember building you...I called you Hummingbird because of the way you rushed here and there...always so busy... They changed that, though, when they started testing...all of those repellant alliterative names..."
"Oh. I'd like to hear about that sometime; Erik never lets us talk about being in the lab. I think some of the others remember it, even if they never say anything... Oh, but let me go get him!"
Evon grinned as she retreated hastily. He hadn't thought Erik had the patience to take on Cally, but perhaps she made good practice for dealing with Carter.
He sat back, and allowed himself to gasp for breath. He didn't want to go in there still exhausted from the walk up the hill.
///
The Replicant Kathy's fingers worked their way gently but insistently across the surface of Erik's right hand. Kathleen O'Shea Kohl, the human, had been a physical therapist and Erik had seen no reason to cut corners in the training of her replacement. He was quite glad he hadn't.
"Mmmm...there, is that better?"
"Much, dear." He smiled. She turned her attentions to his wrist, and he leaned back, closing his eyes.
Cally opened the door to Erik's study and walked in. "Evon's here!" she announced.
Erik glanced at her from beneath ever-so-slightly raised eyelids. "You ought to knock first, next time."
"Uhm...sorry." She left just as quickly as she had arrived.
"Do you want me to leave?" Kathy asked.
"No, that's all right. It's about time Evon met you..."