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51: Cyborg
Pleistocene Park, Siberia; on a slowly sinking tour bus-
TinTin whimpered softly, backing away along the steeply tilted aisle. A frigid wind gusted through the open windows, carrying off the last traces of 'knock-out' gas.
At the front of the bus, Alan Tracy lay crumpled in a blood-soaked, muddy heap. Around her were sprawled seventeen unconscious tourists; victims of the gas, and of that which stalked her along the cluttered aisle.
He… it… paced her, step for step, pale eyes never leaving the girl's face. Each time the assassin moved through a shaft of wintry sunlight, webs of circuitry shone through his silver-grey irises. The camouflage body suit that he wore shifted and flickered like fire, blending to the new background with every change of position. She was seeing him only because he desired her to. Only because he enjoyed it.
Stirling smiled.
"Thought you wanted quick," he said, not really minding the chance to play.
TinTin couldn't ever recall having been so afraid, nor so very alone with cold, smiling death. The girl tried something, then; crying out with mind and voice as loudly as she had when faced with a rampaging mammoth.
"NON! LAISSEZ-MOI TRANQUILLE!"
She'd stopped ten tons of furious animal in its tracks that way, and indeed, there was here an effect. A sort of shock wave spread away from her at the speed of a startled nerve impulse. Several passengers grunted and twitched. Poor Alan moaned aloud but could not, not quite, awaken. Outside, snow fell from the branches of a nearby tree, and the newly formed lake ice cracked in half. Within the freezing bus, small items bounced and slithered; the hairs on parkas, heads and stuffed toys whipping about as though stirred by an unseen whirlwind. Struck by a rolling cup, a very young boy began crying in his drugged sleep. And…
Stirling halted, his face momentarily blank. Faint, glowing circuit paths flared through the skin of his face and slim hands. Then, as though she'd flung but a handful of sand, the killer simply shook off the effects of her 'shout' and resumed his leisurely stalking. He seemed proofed against direct mental assault, but what else was there left to try?
"Beautiful and strong…" Stirling mused, with a smile that flicked on and off again as if by the press of a switch. "It's always nice when a job turns out to be fun."
Fumbling around with her mind, TinTin seized sacks and parcels and camera parts and hurled them at the advancing predator as hard as she could, but to no effect. Each missile was caught in mid-air, examined and idly tossed aside, for they came with no more speed or force than she'd have cast them physically. He wasn't even slowed.
As if roused by her terror, the bus rocked in its muddy prison, springs and shock absorbers creaking aloud. Unconscious tourists tumbled from their places, thrown about like broken dolls. Pitched suddenly forward, TinTin had to steady herself with a wild grab at the nearest seat back. Stirling merely rode out the chaos, shifting his stance to match the vehicle's every jounce and buck. In the end, thebus succumbed to three more feet of dank mud, and the assassin resumed his quiet advance.
She was nearly to the end of the aisle, now. Praying hard, hating the tears that had begun to slip from her dark eyes, the girl backed a cautious half-step further. A cold, snowy breeze whirled through the door, sighing unintelligibly as it caressed the girl's prickling neck.
Her left boot heel,when she backed that last tiny bit, met nothing but air. It was precisely then that inspiration struck. She required help of a very particular sort, and all at once knew right where to seek it. Perhaps Heaven had heard, and made answer.
At any rate, saying to herself,
'Distance is nothing but material illusion...'
TinTin reached out for Fermat Hackenbacker, her youngest friend. There was no distance… there was no time… only the one she so desperately needed.
Nothing… nothing… something?
A spark, faint and clouded. Drugged, he was, and injured.
'Fermat,' her mind whispered to his,past the folded membrane they all thought of as space, 'are you able to hear me?'
"TinTin…?" His spoken response was groggy with bone-deep cold and bewilderment. "I can't… I'm n- not suppose 'a move or… it'll blow up."
He was, she suddenly 'saw', caught up in the bare, icy branches of a tall tree, together with Dr. Aginbroad. There was a device attached to the shivering boy; a bomb. Were Fermat to climb down, or call out, the device would explode, killing both prisoners.
TinTin shuddered, less from Fermat's transmitted chill, than the realization that 'it' had hung up its prey as a leopard might, meaning to later return.
'Fermat,' the girl's thoughts rushed forth, 'can you… feel through me, into the circuit and code of this beast, to destroy it?'
Somehow, the half-frozen boy collected himself well enough to respond. Not understanding how he could hear his pretty friend, hung by his torn parka like a joint of meat, he nevertheless grasped her intent. She needed help, and there was no-one else who could give it.
"Like you're a… w-wireless router, you mean? O- Okay, TinTin… I'll try."
Granted entry, her touch deepened, sinking into a mind that (like Gordon's)did not flinch away, nor question her power. Then, as though slowly waving a giant bubble wand, she… drew him, pulling Fermat's mind over to that of their enemy.
With TinTin functioning as a sort of ethernet, Fermat could see and access, and then write to, the cyborg's source code.
Like leaning into nightmare while clasping hands with an anchoring friend... It was scary and subtle in there, with feedback loops, shifting syntax, self-writing software and an operating system that had long since overwritten the human mind beneath. It was by design a monster; the perfect killer.
But there were a few weaknesses, and Fermat swiftly found them. Acquiring 'devices' (/dev/ video… /dev/ audio… /dev/ tactile… /dev/ random) the boy exploited a tiny flaw in their parameter settings to confuse sensory input, feedback and decision making. All he did was extend the sensory 'refresh' time from .0001 to 5 second intervals, in effect giving the cyborg brief, recurring seizures. Then, Fermat seized and scrambled the assassin's object code, as well, causing its movement and action to falter.
He could not, however, shut Stirling down; not entirely. The cybernetic component defended its organics just as the human 'wet-ware' prevented total loss of conscious control. Short of, say… a blast furnace… the thing could neither be turned off, nor killed. Not by Fermat or TinTin, anyhow. The best they could hope for now was to drive the thing off.
Lengthy to discuss, quick to accomplish. Between one fractional instant and the next, Stirling went from reaching for TinTin's throat, to near-fatal error.
His entire aspect changed, horribly. Freezing, jerking and blacking out, with balked energy coursing along its circuits and flaring through his glitching optics, the assassin began silently, swiftly to burn. Its flesh peeled away from the metal beneath. Small cuts opened up; black at the edges, leaking brilliant blue energy and sluggish blood. A noise escaped him, something between the grinding of a stuck disk drive, and a low grunt.
TinTin's hand flew to her mouth, then extended just a bit. He… the human beneath the programming... was writhing in agony she'd caused. Grief and shame and hard, burning anguish filled the girl because, somehow… you might wound a marauding lion, yet still pity its throes. She was a very sweet person, TinTin, unable to turn her back on the pain of another. Even that one. She'd visualized shutting the cyborg down, not tormenting it. Once again she put forth her mind, meaning to provide surcease, forcing herself through darkness, pain and programmingto a bit of the creature beneath. This time, she was not blocked.
What might have been several long minutes passed. Then, from outside the bus came the roaring clatter of heli-jets, severing her fragile, soothing contact. They crested the hills beyond Lake Svetlana in force, seeming to darken the very sky. The Russian Army had arrived, courtesy of Jeff Tracy, in greater than expected numbers.
Blackened hands clutching at a seat back, Stirlingdragged himself upright. His ravaged face turned to regard the advancing heli-jets. Swooping low, the big aircraft kicked up giant blizzards of snow and ice, forming a front that approached the bus in dense, billowing waves. Someone began shouting through a loudspeaker, ordering surrender or cooperation, probably; the girl hadn't enough Russian to say. As the thundering fleet circled for landing, Stirling looked back at TinTin, his head moving in short, jerking spasms to meet her frightened gaze.
His hand shot out between paroxysms, reaching once more for the paralyzed girl. Still in TinTin's mind, Fermat cried a silent warning. But all the cyborg did was to mark her uniform with the same fiery stuff oozing from its split and gaping palm. Perhaps, after all, her impulse had been correct, and accepted.
"First blood…Int….scue," the assassin grated out, apparently returning her gesture. "Look frd…nxt…. Round."
Then Stirling pushed past her, leaping through the door into the wild-swirling white-out beyond.