Plucking Daisy
Chapter Chunk
Plucking Daisy
I hear the whirr of the machinery and the key words. "Let 'er rip."
Through the glass I can see Amina tapping at her datapad with a huge grin on her face, and Daisy. I see Daisy fighting to escape the builder arms as they pull her into the air. A feeling of determination fills me that I've never felt before. I shake the door handle to no avail, it's locked.
When I look back up I see Amina's eyes have found me. Her grin is smug, she knows she's won, that I can't stop her now. I see her chuckle before turning back to her work. The arms get closer to Daisy and I can feel my heart rate raising by the second. I have minutes before they've taken her apart. Why is Amina doing this to me, why is she so obsessed with Daisy? Why can't she just leave well enough alone and let me be happy?
The air catching in my throat is making it hard to breathe. I look up at Daisy to find her eyes locked with mine, wet with tears and my name on her lips.
I have to do something.
My eyes franticly are looking around for something, anything I can do. I can't get the door open, I'm sure that the security is all over that.
Wait. The security.
It was worth a shot.
I pull out my datapad and start hacking into the security programs. It doesn't take long, seeing as how I was one of the main programmers on the project. Once I'm hacked in I start working on getting control of the door lock. As my codebreaker files through options I look through the window again to see a mass of hair flying as Daisy throws her head frantically, Amina's grin only growing larger and larger as she flails. Its then that I realize that she hasn't shut of Daisy's nerve center, that she's planning on disassembling her while awake and aware.
A flash of determination flows through me as my hopelessness turns to rage and I cancel the codebreaker.
Amina's eyes shift to me and she laughs inaudibly before I smile back to her. Her face grows a twinge of confusion but she quickly turns back to the matter at hand. She underestimates me, she always has. She swipes across her holoscreen and I see her fingers tapping out commands. Daisy's skin slowly drains from her aerogel and I can see her throw her head back in a scream that I can't hear, the sight sends chills down my spine and I feel like I might vomit. I turn my attention back to my holoscreen and promise myself not to look again, not until it's too late.
It's only a few short seconds later that just that happens.
I yell out a triumphant, "Ah-ha!" and lift my head just in time to see Amina frantically throwing commands and her holoscreen to no avail, my gaze shifts to the builder arms to see them shaking, trying to do as Amina commands, but failing. Then they stop and Amina apparently loses all control.
I see her confusion as she punches in command after command with no reaction from the arms before screaming at some of the subordinates in the room, who scatter to their own holoscreens to try to help fix the problem. Amina, screaming at her help, turns mid-sentence to look at me and stops in her tracks, the last word she said falling from her mouth.
I am grinning, teeth bared and eyes small. I've won.
The rage builds on her face and I see her scream, throwing her data pad at the closest underling, who barely dodges, before running to the manual override. I laugh, this is useless, I haven't stopped the arms from functioning, they're mine now.
I shift one of the arms just as a blond worker typed in a command, seeing what looked like her regaining control, she shouts to Amina, who puts away the override panel, and walks just a few steps away before she sees the shock in the eyes of every person in the room. I don't give her the chance. A flash of black, and the intern trying to hand her the pad is gone. Amina looks up just in time to see the builder arm crush the intern, turning her scream into a gurgle. She looks up as blood rains down on her forehead, turning her face into a gruesome mask.
The room remains silent for two heartbeats, long enough to hear the squelch up fresh bloody skin submitting to gravity and meeting the new skin of the poor man beneath, that was when the room erupted into screams.
Panic ensued, interns running aimlessly at first, as if they could escape just by moving. I picked off another one with the second and third builder arm, pulling him slowly in two as the rest of them gained some sense and ran for the door only to find it just as Amina left it. Locked.
One of the taller interns ran to the window, banging on it to no avail while others tried to find things to smash it with. This was useless, they can't break the glass, they're all made to contain explosions within a build room; it was a safety protocol they issued to keep casualties to a minimum if something went horribly wrong. This was the same reason the doors locked from both sides. So anything going wrong inside couldn't get out.
I laugh as they bang chairs and tables against the window, using their lack of movement to pick them off one by one. When there is only one left, I watch as the claw grabs the woman. Her eyes meet mine and I see the fear in them as I slowly crush the life out of her. I see her pleading look turn blank and her head drop. I throw the body, more blood splattering on the walls as she ragdolls onto a table before rolling onto the ground.
The room is now void of any live humans.
I use this time to restart the codebreaker, the lock cracking in just two minutes. I take no time before turning the handle and bursting in the room, already typing in commands to lower Daisy to the ground. When she is safely down I run to her.
She lays on the ground, the only movement coming from her is her chest quickly raising and lowering. Her hair is a mess on her face, one of her arms to the side, the other covering her face. I slowly sit down on my knees next to her and pull her into my arms. When her eyes meet mine they are wide and her lips are trembling.
"Daisy," I sigh her name, "You're ok, everything's ok now. I've got you."
Daisy threw herself into my, wrapping her arms around my neck and sobbing. I pet her head softly and look around the blood soaked room. As I looked at all the motionless forms on the floor, none of them bore the face of the woman I so wished to see among them, all of them pale in skin, none had the honey coloured tone that was Amina's. My eyes scanned frantically for any evidence that she was caught in my hack frenzy. In my scanning I catch an anomaly in the corner of my eye.
A wall now painted with the crimson red evidence of my rage. Handprints scraping up it from failed attempts at escape being the only white, except for one panel. A completely untouched white panel, the blood from the panels on either side provided a clean outline of the strangely bare panel.
That bitch! She must have pulled the panel during the first wave of my attack.
I squeeze Daisy closer to me. She's still out there, and now I imagine, angrier than ever. This isn't over yet.
