"How can you be cleaning right now, like it's just another day around here? The sim and that weird engineer girl, I get, but you-? Thought you cared about our people."
Cade glared at Torc, who was on his hands and knees with a brush and a bucket of water, scrubbing the blood off the floor. Crypto, in turn, glared at Cade.
"Don't talk about Natalie that way."
"Whatever," the enforcer snapped, shaking his head. Crypto bit back a retort. The disrespect toward Wattson angered him, but- he couldn't let himself be angry at Cade. Not right now.
Torc dropped his scrub brush into the bucket with a splash, letting out a quiet sigh. He leaned back and looked up at the two men standing over him.
"It's like none of this affects you at all," Cade grumbled- somewhat angrily, somewhat dejectedly. "Fourteen of our own, dead. I'll be dead in a few hours, and you're just thinking about the fucking building!"
"I'm thinking," Torc replied, "that it'll be easier for us to brainstorm if we're not distracted by the hazardous waste on our walls and floors. We're going to figure out something that we can do for you, Cade- I won't have it any other way."
"Do what?"
The enforcer flung his hands up into the air. "Our command center's been compromised. We've got no supplies, we don't know where our people who didn't get slaughtered are- they're either running around on the streets with no supplies either, or they're prisoners of the Syndicate. We're done for, Croyhan- me, sooner than the rest of you."
The scientist let out a quiet sigh as he stood up.
"Don't forget that when I was designed and assembled, I was given four years before my body would shut down. Obsolescence and death- both were hard-wired into me… But it's been twenty-two years since that fourth one, and I'm still around."
"Great speech," Cade replied in a sarcastic tone. "Guess what? You had help, and you had resources. We just ran out of both those things."
"The faction has other stations, right? Like that safe house, and the electronics store." As he spoke, Crypto stepped around Cade so that he could lock eyes with him. "We should try to contact them and get a better sense of where we stand."
"They smashed the radios," replied the enforcer. "We aren't going to be contacting anybody any time soon."
Crypto nodded once. "Then I'll grab Natalie and we'll start fixing them."
"That'll take hours on its own! No… You guys clean and fuck around with radios if you want to. I'm gonna pick up all the weapons we have left, march right into Syndicate HQ, and take out as many as I can before-"
"Slow down, Cade," Torc responded with a frown. "Let's think through our options, here."
"Don't you tell me to slow down!"
The enforcer turned away from the scientist and stormed past Crypto to the doorway. He nearly collided with Revenant, who stepped into his path from outside the room. Both stood facing each other with their shoulders hunched and knees slightly bent, subtle tension in their arms and hands, each ready to defend themselves - or attack the other - at a moment's notice.
"Get the hell out of my way, sim," Cade snapped. He raised his right arm to shove the assassin.
Revenant saw his aggression, his weight shifting to his right foot- faster than Cade could react, the simulacrum lunged forward and pushed his left shoulder. It didn't take much force to throw him off-balance, as he'd already been pivoting in that direction… Instinctively, the enforcer's hands flew out in an effort to maintain steady footing. Revenant caught his arm and used it as a lever to spin him around, so that he faced away from the assassin. At the same time, Revenant stepped to the side. His control of Cade's arm forced the enforcer to move with him. In a second at most, he had Cade pressed face-first against the wall, right arm bent behind the enforcer's back in a shoulder lock.
He sensed the weight and added resistance of Cade's mechanical arm- the amount of force necessary to keep him restrained would have dislocated a human shoulder. With a modicum of added effort, he could snap the cybernetic joint; for the moment, he held back. Cade pressed his left hand against the wall and struggled to shove himself and the assassin backward. Wasted effort, Revenant thought– he could tell that the cyborg's other arm was human. The chances that this weaker amalgam of man and machine could gain the upper hand over him were close to zero.
"Let go of me, you outdated pile of scrap metal! Goddamn it!" The enforcer shouted and screamed in frustration as he tried to turn around, to back up, to drop lower to the ground and cause Revenant to release him– all of which proved ineffective. Crypto held his breath as he watched, fear rising in his chest and throat that the assassin would maim or kill Cade. Revenant, however, was surprisingly patient. He kept the cyborg pinned against the wall, but didn't use enough force to inflict lasting harm.
Torc shook his head. "Tsk. Cade… This isn't helping."
"Crypto," Wattson called from down the hallway, "Are you all right? What is going on there?"
She pressed her hands over her ears in response to Cade's enraged screaming.
"I'm fine-"
The hacker's eyes widened as an idea clicked into place in his head. He rushed out into the hallway to join her.
"Natalie," he said, "do you still have that signal disruptor?"
"Hmmm? Oh! Yes- it's in my bag, in the truck!" She snapped to attention and sprinted down the corridor at an alarming speed. Though it was all too easy to underestimate the engineer's slight build or gentle mannerisms, she was surprisingly strong, and she was quick. Within seconds she had returned, holding the cylindrical device tightly with both hands.
"Stay out here," Crypto instructed. If Cade and Revenant got into a violent fight, he didn't want her to get caught in the middle of it. The hacker held out his hand to take the device- reluctantly, Wattson let it go.
It was difficult for her to trust others - even Crypto - with her own projects and inventions. They were a part of her; they always would be… Most people didn't understand that connection, and only saw objects that could be replaced.
Crypto stepped back into the room with the others and turned it on. Its light, gentle interference flooded his neural synapses, taking the place of negative feedback. Cade's furious shouting died down- slowly, he stopped struggling and relaxed. His head turned to look at the transmitter in Crypto's hands.
"What the fuck is that thing?"
"It's an aggression suppression system," Torc answered incredulously. "They were theorized as early as the twenty-first century, but- no one ever made a working prototype…!"
"We won't be calling it that," Wattson informed him in a firm tone, from the doorway. "I do not want the abbreviation for my invention to be 'A.S.S!'"
Cade snickered loudly. Revenant finally released the enforcer and shoved him toward Torc- he caught his balance and the two of them stood in place, watching each other carefully.
"Anyway, it's- not quite fully functional," the engineer continued, looking sadly at Torc. "It only works on the digital sensors of people who have neural interfaces, or on artificial neural networks. I don't know a way to make it work on a human."
As she herself lacked augmentation, the signal disruptor - despite being her own creation - had no effect on her.
"Ah- well– the human mind is a tangle of chemical signals and proteins as well as electrical impulses," Torc replied. "That, however, is a problem for another time."
He approached Cade, hands held out at his sides and shoulders relaxed. When the enforcer didn't react, Torc clapped him on the back in a friendly gesture.
"Just give me half an hour," said the scientist. "Half an hour to put together a stronger plan. If you don't like it, you'll still have plenty of time to go stage a solo attack on the Syndicate's headquarters- how were you planning to get into their building, by the way?"
Cade shook his head, eyes squeezed tightly shut. "I don't know. I'll figure it out when I get there."
Rather than judge his friend's questionable logic, Torc simply nodded in answer.
"Why don't we ask him?"
The enforcer pointed at Revenant. Though his tone was commanding, his voice and body language didn't carry anywhere near the same level of anger as they had moments ago. "He's a Syndicate operative."
"He didn't choose to be," Crypto replied quietly- yet his tone and the focused look in his eyes conveyed fierce determination. "And he's on our side now."
Revenant watched their interaction, unsure of how to respond. From the moment he'd broken free of the inhibitors that made him believe he was human, he had turned against the Syndicate- but did it matter whether or not he'd chosen to affiliate himself with them? His predecessor - the virus - had made that decision before he'd existed as a separate entity.
Cade and Crypto were both wrong. He wasn't a Syndicate operative. He wasn't on their side, either- not as a long-term commitment. He was the enemy of every organization. The only one that he could trust and rely on was himself.
"You shouldn't stand up for me, skinbag," he told the hacker quietly. The assassin doubted that could ever reciprocate loyalty. He didn't expect others to show it to him.
Crypto opened his mouth to answer.
"You're both wrong," Torc interrupted. "Cade, you are incorrect to act on the assumption that he is currently working for the Syndicate- and Crypto, you are wrong to dismiss his history entirely. A former employee of theirs has the potential to be an enormous asset!"
Cade glanced skeptically at the simulacrum. Revenant, in turn, was watching Torc- he, too, doubted the man's idealism, albeit for a different set of reasons. He had never been one for planning. Someone up the ladder sent him a name and a place, and he took the unlucky pawn off the table- with relentlessness, not strategy. If he failed - if he died - they'd upload his consciousness into a new body, erase his memory of the failure, and send him right back until the job was done. He knew how the Syndicate functioned, but he was no expert on information and planning. The faction would be foolish, he thought, to trust him.
Torc had his holographic screen pulled up in front of him. It glitched and flickered for a moment.
"Ah- Crypto, I believe we can lower the power on the aggression suppression system now," he said with a frown. "While this effect is quite interesting, it's interfering with my transceiver."
"We aren't naming it that," Wattson cried out, more insistently this time.
Keeping a watchful eye on Cade, the hacker turned off the device. The environmental feedback that it affected came back in full force: exhaustion, pain in his shoulder, the heaviness of his limbs. He collapsed the antenna and handed it back to Wattson without averting his attention from the enforcer. Cade, it seemed, was keeping his word to give Torc half an hour before doing anything extreme. He was scowling at the others, leaning back against the wall with his arms folded across his chest– though he didn't appear friendly, he displayed no imminent hostility. Revenant had moved to the other side of the doorway– far enough from Cade that the enforcer couldn't walk into him by accident; close enough to the others to stay informed as to what was going on.
Torc pulled up an image on his holographic screen– a 3D model of Cade's cybernetics: right arm, shoulder, and upper part of his rib cage; stomach, liver, parts of his intestines and the descending abdominal arteries and veins of his heart; parts of the muscle, nerve, and bone of his right hip and leg. The scientist rotated the model slightly, then pulled up another screen: this one showed an electrical schematic. Wattson stepped around Crypto so that she could look over Torc's shoulder.
"What happened to you?"
She addressed Cade without taking her eyes off the screens.
The enforcer rolled his eyes in response. "Hasn't anyone ever told you not to ask questions that are none of your business?"
"Now, Cade…" Torc said his name in a scolding tone as he fiddled with a menu on his holographic interface. Wattson tried to make herself look smaller, with her head lowered and her hands pulled close to her body. She maintained her focus on the screens.
"I met someone who was cybernetically reconstructed by the Syndicate- after they were almost killed by the Syndicate," Crypto muttered as the technical drawings on Torc's display reminded him of his conversation with Bloodhound, back in the arena. "Keeps them dependent on the corporate network for parts, if they want to stay alive."
Cade grunted in anger. "Yeah. Happens a lot. They stop manufacturing shit, replace it with something new, and suddenly anyone with cybernetics that relied on those parts has got to get another surgery. And if you can't afford the new ones? Fuck you, I guess."
"That is how our little faction began, you know," mused Torc. "We were a group that improved the availability of parts and quality of upgrades for cyborgs. Now, however, we are so much more than that."
"Were. Before we lost everything in our command center."
The scientist's eyebrows narrowed slightly. "No- I believe we'll come back from this. With the knowledge and experience that we have now, we'll rebuild our operations in record time!"
"You helped me survive when the Syndicate came for my sister and I," Crypto replied quietly. He watched as Torc pulled up another holographic screen. This one displayed the charger that Cade needed to survive. Torc manipulated the model, separating it into its component parts. He hummed thoughtfully as he made a mental list of what they'd need to acquire to rebuild it.
"I'll never forget that."
"I know where Hammond Robotics has an abandoned production facility."
The attention of everybody in the room was suddenly on Revenant. He didn't like that– it showed in the way he leaned forward, knees bending slightly, a subtle shift into a more stable stance if he needed to defend himself… The reaction wasn't anywhere close to the sort of irrational aggression that he once would have shown. He hesitated, leaving an unnaturally long pause in the statement before he finally continued.
"It's under the Apex arena."
Crypto raised his eyebrows. "Museun soliya–? You must be joking."
"Oh, I know you've been trying to find it for months," the assassin replied. His tone carried an edge of amusement. "'I've been watching you. Couldn't figure out why you were looking for it, until you told that archaic hunter that you thought the corporation kept hostages down there. You never came close to finding the way in."
"But they do have a facility under the battlefield," he muttered in response. "I knew it."
"They lost access to it after the last major shift of government power," Revenant growled. "It belongs to me."
The last shift of government power– when had that happened? Crypto must have been a child back then, he thought; ignorant to the reality of the corruption that ran rampant through the Outlands.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"Could have some of the equipment you need," the assassin answered in a low tone. "I… do owe you skinbags something, for freeing me from that damn virus."
He spoke somewhat grudgingly, like he was forcing the words out. Revenant despised the idea of owing anything to anyone. He was looking down as his clawed hand ran lightly down the front of his chest- remembering that creature that lived inside him, how much he'd wanted to cut it out.
Wattson looked up at him and sighed heavily. If the AI reacted this way to being tethered to a human consciousness, she thought, how did that human feel about their connection to the sentient AI-? She needed to take a much harder look into Milutin's research once this was over…
"Ah, that is kind of you," Torc responded thoughtfully. "And it is the last place we'll be going. If that is the first solution you'd go to, it's likely what the Syndicate is expecting us to do. I know you aren't one of them- but you were trained by them."
On his holographic displays, he'd divided the modeled components of the charger into groups: what could be obtained from vendors or other safe houses with minimal effort, and parts that would be more of a challenge to procure.
"What about the building where the clones are produced?"
Crypto's voice was tight and hoarse- the last thing he wanted to do was go back there. Seeing his own body from the outside, produced and controlled by the corporation, was… disconcerting at best.
"They do cybernetic modifications on some of those people. Most of the building is automated- and there's no way the Syndicate will expect us to go back there."
"Hmmm." Torc scratched his chin. "Revenant, what are your thoughts on that statement?"
"You do realize I wasn't a strategist for them," he growled. "I was someone that the strategist gave a name and location, and that person disappeared."
"And if you wanted Cade here to… disappear," said the scientist, "where would you look for him?"
Revenant glanced from Torc to Cade briefly, then returned his attention to Torc. "At the core of the city center– where those illegal shops scrap robots and sell their parts."
"What?" snapped Cade. "I wouldn't be caught dead buying from them, no matter how bad things got."
"It isn't a reflection of what you'd really do, Cade," the scientist answered quickly, holding up one hand before the assassin could argue. "Only what our government and their supporters think you would do. If that's where the Syndicate is expecting us to go, Crypto's plan may well work."
"I guess," grumbled the enforcer. "Anything is better than sitting around here, doing nothing."
The corners of Crypto's mouth contorted into an ugly grimace, attempting to hide his disgust for the cloning facility behind a fierce expression.
"Then let's get ready."