"I am dissatisfied."
"Ma'am, if I may, while the St. Mark's operation was only a limited success, we have bounced back and retained the initiative in its aftermath. Identifying the bodies of the dead terrorists has allowed us to establish links leading to many arrests and further kills in subsequent operations..."
"Breathe so much as a syllable about that blasted cyborg pitching warheads out of windows – again – and you're sacked on the spot."
"...yes Ma'am."
"This time, at least, I haven't come here to throw even more mud on top of Special Operations – and don't look so relieved. It's indelicate, and the Agency isn't out of the fire yet. Today I'm here for the Technology Department."
"Respectfully, ma'am, may I ask why?"
"I don't need to tell you that your name is pretty much muck in the Ministry of Defence at present. No matter what way you spin it, St. Mark's was an unmitigated disaster – and I'm a politician, I can spin quicker than a hurricane! Losing ten GIS troopers and two – two! – cyborgs for a mere one-to-one parity with a mob of partisans, on top of all the collateral damage, just does not cut the mustard.
"Each one of those girls running about on the grass outside costs over a hundred million euros! They don't have the luxury of 'off days'. They can't be 'as good as' or 'equivalent to' – they have to be harder, faster, stronger. Better. Otherwise, I can legitimately ask, what's the point?"
"We can only prepare for so many eventualities—"
"I know, nobody's perfect – but then, cyborgs aren't people, are they?"
"But research is still ongoing and even then the cyborgs remain well ahead of the curve—"
"That's not the issue. The Social Welfare Agency is now under closer scrutiny than it has ever been since the cyborg murder-suicide the winter before last. The Cabinet is riding me for constant updates on everything from kill-counts to paperclip usage, and in my reviews I've seen that the Technology Department is not up to snuff."
"Ma'am, I can't agree. As I said, we're still maintaining an extremely high operational tempo in the regrouping and consolidation following St. Mark's, and we've already fought several engagements. More are being planned as we speak. Throughout this intense phase of conflict the Technology Department's never been more active in repairing battle damage, and they've stepped up to the challenge with laudable ability—"
"And the fact you can't see beyond that is why I'm a government minister while you're still a civil servant with airs. Everyone in the department is listless. Anaemic. Going through the motions. Moving, aha, robotically.
"Morale there has gone down the pan since the cyborg death following the DCPP bombing. The scientists see themselves as intelligent, advanced, building a better world through their devices – but the cyborg died through conditioning complications, and it was the first occasion where their technology turned against them – it shattered their mirror of self-confidence. The very fact that they have to repair bullet wounds, having every imperfection be seen not in unfavourable reviews in the trade journals but genuine, physical pain, only cuts them deeper with its splinters. Now that I've opened your eyes to it, you must have seen that?"
"I suppose so, ma'am."
"It can't go on. They need something productive, now. If there's nothing going, then find it!
"Shape up – or we wrap up."
"...conditioning and basic life training have all been completed – 'bundled in with the welcome package', so to speak – and you shouldn't have any problems communicating with her. It's the start of her life, but she's not an infant. Military knowledge and basic drills have been taught to her under hypnosis. Normally it's quite effective but there's always a minor risk of rote regurgitation rather than actually comprehending what she's received, so it's best to talk it over with her for a couple of hours anyway, just to make sure that she's thoroughly acquainted with everything..."
Giliani droned on as he and Avise walked through the corridors of the technology building. Avise's head bobbed up and down like a dippy bird every point of detail and procedure that Giliani related, but really he was only half-listening. He'd come to know the hospital pretty well over the last few weeks during his occasional visits to see Agapita being worked on, and this journey seemed to be taking a lot longer than it should – was Giliani taking him on a circumlocutory route in order to have more time to deliver his spiel? And why were the corridors empty? Had they cleared them for his sake? Even though no-one was watching, Avise squirmed under the hot glare of focused scrutiny.
"What do you want for the First Breakfast?"
Avise physically jumped at the direct question, stumbling to a stop. "I'm sorry?"
"Just a little joke of ours. We're bringing them back to life, so it's sort of opposite to how they have a Last Meal on death row."
"That... that's a bit ghoulish." Avise frowned.
"Well, she will be hungry once she's woken up properly, you know," Giliani shrugged, "so she's got to eat sometime. Leave your order with me and the caterers will have it ready for her."
Food? The leftfield pitch smacked Avise in the head and knocked him off of his already-tenuous balance completely. With his head lost in the dense clouds of old and new lives, the weight of something so low and mundane smashed him down to earth with a winding impact. What on Earth should she eat? What would she want to eat? She came from Naples, so pizza would a comfortable, easy start – but should he choose something different for precisely that reason, in order to shear off her old past associations and emphasise her new being? Should she just eat what he'd eat? Would that be strengthening bonds, or making her too dependent? Would asking for something too rich or complicated antagonise the cook? How could he make it right?
"Tell them to... to surprise us." Avise finished, lamely.
Giliani frowned and wrinkled his nose in distaste, the answer being disappointingly vague and inexact for a measured man of science. "Alright then... that should be simple enough to give." But not to follow through on, his sniffed to the air, before sweeping forward with a disdainful stride and forcing Avise to hop along to catch up.
They walked in silence for a few moments, and in the quiet Avise seemed to curl up into himself – his head dropping, his shoulders hunching. Giliani glanced at his companion from the corner of his eyes, and tutted irritably.
"Look, Mr. Mancini, I can tell that you've got nerves, but if you stay so highly strung you'll snap. This isn't that big a deal, really. You're..." Giliani paused for a moment before settling on what he must have thought to be a suitable analogy, "...just meeting an enlisted soldier newly entering the ranks. She's not some airy sprite beyond mortal ken. Trust me, a few days ago I was up to my elbows in her intestines and had bile all down my apron. She's very much of this earth."
"If you say so." Avise mumbled. Privately he wondered whether Giliani was genuinely trying to reassure him, or was envious of how the handler could elevate his thoughts to a height that the scientist could not reach, and wanted to drag him down to a lower level out of jealous spite.
"Anyway, here we are."
The two came to a stop before a pale pastel blue blue sliding door recessed slightly into the wall of the corridor. It was a plain, flat surface and completely devoid of detail or decoration, but its outwardly anonymous and unassuming nature was belied by the large, blocky console mounted into the wall beside it.
"Is this..."
"The recovery room." Giliani said matter-of-factly, still trying to defuse any sense of wonder to the occasion. "Just a moment..."
Giliani pulled a keycard out of his pocket and swiped it down through the slot set into the side of the console. Avise winced instinctively at the sound of clacking plastic and rubbing contacts – it felt like the wet hiss of a blade parting flesh.
A blue light moved over to red.
Tucking the keycard behind some fingers, Giliani moved on to the keypad. His index finger darted across the numbers, typing in a long stream of a multi-figure code with practised speed. Avise almost choked – his heart pummelled and pounded to the beat of each rapid beep.
A red light moved over to amber.
Still holding on to the keycard, Gilini now twisted his wrist so that he pressed his thumb onto a small square black pad beside the keycard. There was a moment's breathless pause, and then a shrill whistle sounded out of the grille on the other side of the console. Avise almost stumbled – the high-pitched noise felt as though it had stabbed into his chest.
An amber light moved over to green.
The door slid open.
Giliani stepped smartly to one side, and then with an encouraging smile motioned Avise towards the opened portal. "Well, in you go."
Avise suddenly realised that his lips were dry. Licking them nervously and swallowing noisily – the phlegm glucking in his throat like a rubber ball – he made a halting step forward. As he crossed the threshold, Giliani called out to Avise again, making him turn round before he could take in any detail of the room. "She's still asleep at the moment, and it should take about..." – he glanced at his watch – "twenty minutes or so for her to wake up. Try not to disturb her too much. They arrive here in an induced sleep and they can be disoriented and... reflexive if they don't emerge from it naturally." Giliani tipped his head slightly as he thought back to Petrushka's activation. It had taken a couple of days for the pain to surface, but catching Alessandro under the chin with a smart snap-kick ended up giving the new handler whiplash, and all things told it was fortunate for everyone that Petrushka hadn't snapped his neck altogether. That would have got the second-generation programme off on the wrong foot, to say the least.
Avise's head twitched, the strain of proximity repelling him like poles on a magnet. "Couldn't you have brought me closer to the time? This is... a bit awkward."
Giliani didn't doubt it. Avise looked so nervous he seemed to be shedding years like hairs – the cyborg would wake up to find that her handler had shook himself up into a shrivelled old man. Still, that's what the handlers had signed up for – if they couldn't take the heat, they shouldn't start the fire. "Hey, it's five P.M. already – I'm clocking off for the day." Giliani smiled wryly. "Have fun."
The door slid shut – smoothly, quickly. Like a guillotine.
Avise blinked at the plain, flat colour of the door for a moment, then he turned around.
"No."
"Sir, why?"
"Don't be obstinate! This is a paramilitary organisation, not an evening social club! We're not in the habit of offering privileges to whichever 'associate member' happens to know the secret handshake!"
"That's a disservice, sir. He's been an invaluable contributor to the Agency's mission—"
"He's a career criminal and a child trafficker who managed to wriggle off the hook. We discharged all due recompense and obligations to him when he took the stand in court – we don't owe him anything else."
"What about what we owe the cyborgs?"
"Excuse me?"
"Sir, we talk a lot about rebirth, second chances, and the like. That's fair enough, but we are nonetheless taking these girls and possessing them for our own ends. If what we do is truly selfless charity we'd rebuild the girls and leave them to go as they would."
"Any advancement in medicine requires heavy costs – what we do is part of the price selflessly paid for the benefit of future generations and millions of people far beyond our own small world. Etcetera etcetera. Do I really need to send you back to Policy 101? You did a test on that the first week you were here."
"The first week I was here, sir, I was locked in a cell waiting to be taken out and shot."
"Hmm."
"What I'm getting at is that his daughter – this... candidate, if you prefer – is unique. Some might see us as scavengers, leaping on and ripping apart the weak ones that fall back from the herd—"
"Do you see yourself that way?"
"...no. What I mean is, we can be relieved that this is, for once, an opportunity where no-one can twist it that way, where it is definitely not the case. He is offering up his only child to us. All that he'll leave to the world is being invested in us. For the first time, we can offer a return on that – advancement, achievement, fulfilment – and not just some meagre consolation after the fact."
"You really think this?"
"Yes sir."
"It's not something that you're reciting for his sake? It's nothing but you yourself, with your own conscience?"
"Yes sir."
"Very well. On your own head be it..."
"Well... here I am."
Avise spoke not so much to announce his presence to anyone else, as to reassure himself that he was here at all.
Avise had heard that before they'd finished this wing of the hospital the awakening – although they preferred to call it "activation", now – was held in the monastery cells, in warmer, earthier, more homely and enlivening environs. Avise couldn't help but feel a wistful pang longing for the good old days to improve his own circumstances.
The recovery room that he was in now was not so much Spartan as actively inimical. The room was windowless, and while well-lit, the lighting came from audibly-buzzing fluorescent tubes. An air-conditioning unit set in the centre of the ceiling blasted out cold air, but just enough to tip over from cool into chilly. The walls were bare metal plates, and the door he had just come through seemed to merge into them. He could exit the room the way he came by means of an access panel him, but he could espy the thin but noticeable seam of another pair of double-doors on the wall to his left, although there was no apparent way to open them. It must be where they moved the cyborg in from surgery—
The cyborg.
Agapita.
A bed, with a bare metal frame, lay before him. The endposts prevented Avise from seeing anything from the door, and her body came into view with all of the momentousness of land over the horizon as Avise walked around the side of the bed, his breath catching in his throat as he did so. Only Agapita's head was visible above the covers, but the thin hospital sheets didn't disguise the contours of her body. She looked... small. Thin. These narrow limbs were supposed to toss cars and punch through walls? This slight frame could be ripped through with a shotgun and still keep coming? During his training he had acted as support on previous Agency missions and seen other cyborgs in action, from a distance – but to be confronted with it, now, here? It seemed impossible – and the fact that he had accepted it, witnessed it, for months beforehand, made him feel like an absurd fool.
Ignoring Giliani's warning about not interfering with the cyborgs, Avise reached down and took the curve of Agapita's cheek in his palm.
Soft.
He pulled Agapita's slender – but lean, not merely thin – arm out from underneath the cover and ran his hands along the length of it.
Warm.
He lay it back down, mumbling under his breath something that was half a desperate prayer for fortitude and half remonstrating with himself for being a gullible fool so completely suckered by a gross practical joke. The sense of distortion and dislocation – of unreality – threatened to overwhelm and drown him in a void detached from the world.
Seeing her lying there – it wasn't enough.
"What do you think of our new arrival? Have you seen her?"
"..."
"I said—"
"—And I heard you. And I'm concentrating on observation of the east face of the target building. Our mission?"
"It's been our mission for the last four days."
"Alright then – if it'll expedite you shutting up and letting me concentrate then yes, I have seen her. Not that there's all that much to see in the first place – she hasn't even got any limbs yet. She might as well be a joint in the butcher's."
"That's a bit strong!"
"That's a bit forceful, which should force my dislike of this irrelevant conversation onto you."
"There's something else though, isn't there?"
"Something else--? Is this some fist of 'fraternal outreach' or what other crap there is in your self-help books?"
"Can it with the hard-ass attitude just this once, I know I'm not wrong. You've been in a piss-ier mood ever since she—"
"Quiet!"
"*Kzzzt* Sniper post. Tango Aitch and Tango Eff have begun a roof patrol, over."
"Understood. Maintain watch. Out."
"—arrived here."
"You're still going on about that?"
"Guess so."
"You've grown up, little brother."
"Don't be patronising."
"Hmph. If you must know, then yes – I've no confidence in this new cyborg. She's deficient, and I don't want her in the Agency anymore than I'd want a helmet with a gopping great hole in it."
"How do you work that out? She's not even..."
"Bolted together?"
"...healed yet."
"I never figured Germans to be much for sentiment, but this is the second time now that he's inveigled some bleating sob-story into the Agency."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"Don't be dense, of course it is! A cyborg is a device, a tool, an instrument, a weapon. This latest indulgence is not here through good strategic procurement but as a favour. That's a moral decision, not a rational one – people won't command her but respond to her. It muddies the waters – and I know that all the shit that conflicting orders landed you with in the Balkans, so don't backtalk me there.
"She's compromised, damaged goods – she has too many ties, and we're going to trip over them."
"Doesn't all that bile taste bad from time to time? The first 'indulgence' hasn't turned out all that badly."
"More by good luck than good management. Mark my words, this new cyborg will be one thing – trouble."
"...Speaking of which, I'm seeing movement by the front entrance."
"You're right, and they seem to be in a hurry too—shit, we've been made! All posts, weapons free—"
"...and there we go!"
Giliani tapped his stopwatch as the grainy feed from the camera mounted in the air-conditioning unit's grille looked down on Avise beginning to turn the bedsheet down from Agapita.
Several other members of the Technology Department, arranged in a semi-circle around the television, all applauded enthusiastically at the handler neatly vaulting his first hurdle with good form.
Not everyone was so animated. While Bianchi chortled along in a sportsmanlike manner with the other technologists – it would hardly dignify the senior psychologist of the Agency to not be able to assume an outward persona – his eyes nonetheless betrayed a despondent attitude; he'd anticipated that Avise would have marched straight to the bed, not beat around the bush for a while. Marianna's dismay was more overt, as she ran her face down her hands in cosmic despair. "I was sure – sure – this one was going to be a no-peeking!"
"Aw, bless." Fabio chortled. "Marianna, everyone peeks. Hell, Jean practically ripped the covers off of his cyborg the moment he walked in. Hilshire only got a no-peeking because Triela woke up straight away."
Marianna pouted. "Well! It was obviously my mistake for trying to expect decency from a bunch of pigs." She tossed her head haughtily.
"And you'd know all about that, considering what you get up to with Tubby Terrero from Security? Oink oink." An anonymous voice was thrown in from across the room.
Marianna's face flushed volcano crimson at the sneering retort, but she was cooled from an eruption by the interjection of Bergonzi, who tried to spin the conversation off at a less piercingly acute angle. "Ah, Marianna, you understand that we are merely captivated by the female form, and the question of time is only how we can bear to be separated from a vision of perfection."
Even though it was a luridly obvious and overcooked line, the very fact of its exaggerated hammy nature made young Marianna's angry red cheeks nonetheless softened into a flattered, blushing rouge. "You are a charmer!" She giggled despite herself.
Bergonzi's endeavour of sweet-talking was not unnoticed by Duvalier, who people might have thought to be the more natural figure for smooth moves handled with the same dexterity and finesse he employed when lifting cheeks and rounding foreheads. As it was, though, Duvalier was sitting with his chair turned around and leaning forward onto the chair-back, idly creaking onto two legs from time to time, keeping his own counsel and watching the back-and-forth with an expression of bemusement – just because Bergonzi designed the cyborgs' vascular systems didn't mean that he had unlocked the secrets of the heart.
Behind Duvalier and sitting on a table pushed against the wall were his technicians, the willowy twins Melissa and Melitta. After tossing their long bangs of hair back from their faces, they both stood up in one smooth movement and leant forward into the discussion at the exact same angle.
"So, Avise Mancini has done what he had to..." Melissa commenced.
"... and we are here for what we want. The time?" Melitta concluded.
That brought a hush down across the entire room, as the assembled technologists all suddenly began exchanging narrow glances and tugging at their pockets. The crinkle of paper cracked apart the air.
Giliani checked his stopwatch. "Let's see, from door closing to peeking makes it... seventy-eight seconds." He used his free hand to extract and flip open a small notepad from another pocket. "Which makes you two the closest guess, yes."
"I do believe..." Melissa began.
"...that we've won." Melitta ended.
A round of groans and lamentations circled the room, along with a growing roll of 100-euro notes as the wheel of fortune span round to raise up Duvalier's assistants.
Despite the bounty they were receiving, the twins both frowned critically at the money resting across their outstretched palms, and then they turned their heads up and narrowed their eyes at each other.
"Nine hundred euros..." Melissa started.
"...is hard to split." Melitta finished.
"It's alright, girls, I brought my ante in two fifties just for this eventuality." Duvalier sighed philosophically, holding up the banknotes fanwise, like a V-for-Victory sign. "Four hundred and fifty each"
"Thank yoooooooouuuu!" Both girls cried in unison, their faces lighting up and their long hair shaking in joy as they gleefully snatched their prize.
Donato was not infected by the animation of Duvalier's assistants as they skipped gaily around the room, instead staring forlornly at the gap of his open, unzipped wallet. "We're going to have to cut down the bet if we're to keep this up," he grumbled, "a hundred Euros a pop is killing me."
Duvalier laughed, and you'd swear that his spiked hair rustled like grass as he did so. "Ah, Donato, it's easy enough to make it all back, you just have to be a better judge of character to improve your... timing..." Duvalier trailed off as his eyes settled on the television, and with slow realisation he stood up from his chair and raised a finger towards it, for once caught off-balance. "Is he... is he... is he feeling the cyborg up?"
The words were immediately met with hoots of derision, but curious eyes which turned towards the camera feed despite themselves suddenly became wide with incredulity, and the laughter became gasps of astonishment and horror. Avise was indeed leaning over Agapita and placing his hands on her chest.
An uncomfortable, squirming silence descended on the room. Even Alessandro hadn't been this sudden and brazen. Guilty glances were exchanged – feet shifted nervously – awkward coughs caught and tripped on throats. Melissa and Melitta glanced down quietly and agitatedly at their winnings, as if they had clenched a handful of excrement but were trying to contain their exclamations of horror and disgust in case they attracted attention to themselves.
Should they intervene? Could they intervene? Guilty complicity in their sly book stewed with a desire to expose a twisted act, and the undermining, backsliding realisation that they did give their handlers free rein (and reign) over their charges...
Then Avise took the pot off the boil.
The rustling of clothes from sagging shoulders made the relaxing of tension audible and physical as the camera showed Avise beginning to quite deliberately turn his head to one side and gently lower it down onto Agapita's chest. It was unusual, even somewhat questionable, but it was indication enough that he was searching for a different kind of sensation.
"He's feeling her heartbeat." Marianna said, her words tumbling out in too much of a rush to disguise her relief at dropping the burden of responsibility. "That's actually really sweet." A smile crept across her features as she allowed herself to be warmed by a show of sensitivity.
The twins looked at their wad of banknotes again. Sharing the decided understanding that it was no longer dirty money, they split the take in a businesslike manner and folded it into their blouses.
(Continued)