Mali awoke, and at first she didn't know where she was. She was about to call out to Yane, when it all came crashing down on her again. She buried her face back into her pillow, she gritted her teeth against the pain and heartbreak rolling like a storm inside her. An involuntary groan escaped her lips. Last night had been the worst night of her life. After she had left the roof she had gotten lost twice and had had to retrace her steps and start all over again. What should have taken her twenty minutes had taken three hours. When she had finally found the warehouse, it was well past three in the morning. She stood outside a big metal door that had a huge star painted across its face. The outside of the warehouse was rusted and old, it looked unremarkable, rundown, and forgotten. But when Mali had slipped the key into the keyhole, though, a disguise barrier around the warehouse had gone down and she could see it for what it really was. It was as long as a school bus, and as wide as three school busses parked next to each other. Shiny metal plating encompassed the whole of the outside, on the peaked roof Mali could see old fashioned satellites bolted in and jutting up from the smooth metal exterior.
A soft blue guide strip glowed softly around the large hanger type door that was the front entrance. It was about ten feet tall and sixteen feet wide. Mali grasped the handle and pulled it upward, straining, its gears whispering as it smoothly slid upward. Mali had taken the key out of the keyhole and entered, sliding the door closed, which locked behind her. Outside, the disguise barrier was put back into place. Inside, it was pitch black. Mali was aware of a huge cavernous space around her, but she could not see anything. As if on cue, blue guide strips lit up illuminating paths between piles of dimly lit boxes and tables. In the far back of the room, the guide strips reveled a platform running from wall to wall with steps on the left side leading up to it. A large bench ran to the stairs immediate right, tech components and computers strewn across its surface. Bolted to the wall across from the bench was two large lockers, and a little farther off was a sink, a stove, refrigerator, and toilet. As she got closer, Mali had spied a curtained off section, behind which were two cots parked in the corner. She had made a beeline for the cots and had collapsed into one, instantly falling asleep.
Now, Mali sat up in bed and took in the sights of the warehouse. The walls were made of a dark, steely, metal, small windows set high near the top let in some daylight through their glass. Mali could tell that the walls around her were very thick and strong. Yane had always been the paranoid type. The warehouse was just one level. The ceiling was a good twenty to thirty feet above her head. The floor was divided up into squares ten feet by ten feet, marked by the dimly glowing guide strips. Paths wove their way like a maze through the squares. There was no wall separating the living space from the warehouse, just the three foot platform boosting her above everything else. Inside the squares were containers, all full with loot Yane had collected from his raids. She knew that somewhere down there were the containers full of silverware. Instead of dwelling on that, she turned her attention to the living space. The floor was swept clean and neat, her socked feet touched down on its cool metal surface. The refrigerator, stove, toilet and sink, were all small, but nice. Yane must've spent a lot of his loot to outfit this place, she thought.
She wandered over to the bench with all the electronics on it. The computers monitors popped up from their beds, their sensors picking up movement. On the table was a small chip underneath a magnifying glass, tools scattered around it. From the looks of it, Yane had been trying building his own omni-tool. The omni-tool is a solid holographic device, orange in color, which stretches from your hand to your elbow, covering your entire forearm when activated. Versatile and reliable, most people of the upper levels had one. The small chip that controls it incorporates a computer micro frame, sensor analysis pack and a mini-manufacturing device. Combined together, they allow the omni-tool to do many jobs and would've been a valuable resource for Yane. It was almost complete, as far as Mali could tell, all it needed was a multiple processing core, which were easy to come by if yo knew where to look.
It seemed that Yane had been keeping more secrets than she'd thought from her. He had been building things Mali never thought she would ever even touch. He had never showed her his warehouse. He had always said that it wasn't ready to be shown, and now she knew why. Because he was doing things here that she would question. She looked out onto the main floor, and her eyes grew. Previously gone unnoticed, a hover car sat parked in a corner. It was a shiny metallic silver. As she approached it, she could see that Yane had converted it into a war machine. Turrets were attached to either side of the front bumper, and heavy armor plating covered the car. What had he been preparing for? An alien invasion? Mali laughed at her own joke, thinking of the care facility. But she quickly sobered up as she saw what she had been dreading, only a few feet away. Slowly she walked up to one of the containers, and opened the lid. Inside were hundreds of forks, spoons, and knives, just like he'd said, broken, bent and dirty.
She quickly shut the lid as a wave of pain crested inside of her. She walked back to the workbench on the platform and sat down in the chair. She rested her head on the table. What was she supposed to do now? A sudden beep broke the silence. Somali looked up at the computer in front of her, a red dot pulsed on the screen. Confused, Mali pressed it to see what would happen. The screen went black for a moment, and then flickered to life. Mali gasped and touched the screen with her fingertips. Yane's face came into focus, he was sitting in the same chair Mali was in at that very moment. He looked tired, and a bit stressed, his shoulder sagged a little and his hair was mussed from running his hands through it. He only did that when he was upset.
"If you're hearing me now, than I'm dead, if I was alive, I would have deleted this message as soon as we got here." He sighed and continued. "I'm sorry that I had to trick you. But it is the only way you would have lived. I didn't want to die, but it was necessary to save you." He smiled a bit. "It's weird talking about myself like I'm dead. I made this message to prepare you for the future. You may be wondering why I have a hover car parked in here, or a locker full of guns." Mali looked around, she hadn't seen that yet. Yane continued, oblivious to her distractions. "I was preparing for the worst as best that I could. The shipment of silverware isn't the first one we've intercepted." Mali turned back to the screen. "We've come across two more before this one, the only difference is that we kept this one, instead. I believe that Finnick was the one having them shipped here, for what purpose, I do not know. But I think that he is on to my gang and me. I think that he knows that we intercepted the other two, and now this one. That's why I am almost certain that he will come after us."
"So, I prepared. I have been for a while now. The first shipment we stopped was almost four months ago. Who knows how many he's had that we haven't stopped. For your safety, I have ensured that you will be taken someplace far from here, and out of his reach. Don't be alarmed, I trust their methods, and don't try to run, they will find you no matter what. Finish my omni-tool and use it. I made some special modifications with you in mind. Inside are already recorded messages from me, to address certain situations, if they happen. So that even if I am dead, I can still help you. I can't predict everything, but I'm pretty sure I know how you think, Somali."
"Do not seek revenge for my death, it will not heal the pain you feel. Do not confront Finnick, he is too dangerous. Just hole down and wait for the help I'm sending you." Yane's eyes saddened. "I am sorry, Somali. For everything that's happened. And for everything that will happen, you are so much more important than you think. I love you, you'll be hearing from me soon." The screen went black again, cutting off his face.
Mali looked away from the computer, her cheeks tear stained, anger welling up inside her. It grew till she couldn't hold it in any longer; Mali let out a choked scream that echoed through the warehouse, her throat raw with pain. No one knew what she had lost, not just her friend, but her soul as well. Yane had been everything to her, no matter how unsure her feelings towards him had been, she had always known one thing: that they always stuck together. Never in her wildest nightmares had she envisioned this.
How could he just die and leave her here? Alone? She had no one else. Mali dragged herself to her cot, and collapsed onto her covers. Yane had known her, but he had never really known her, he couldn't have imagined what his death would do to Mali. They had always been connected, helping one another survive and get through the day the best they could. And now he was gone forever. No more playing cards deep into the night, or sharing stories from their lives. She would never again give him a hug, or tell him not to let things get him down. She even missed washing his dirty clothes, for goodness sakes.
If Finnick thought that he could tear away someone that precious, he had another thing coming. Mali would not let him get away for what he had done. She didn't care what Yane had told her, she was not running away from this fight, never again would she run. Mali got up from her cot and went and sat back down at the workbench. All of Yane's data pads cluttered the desk: designs, charts, picture-directions. It was as if he had known this would happen, everything she needed was right here, in this warehouse.
I
Mali acted like a woman possessed, and in a way she was. Her hatred and pain that boiled just beneath her skin kept her going when she would have dropped from exhaustion otherwise. She trained herself to feel nothing, to be nothing, but the chaos within her. For the next two weeks she did nothing but build. She barely slept or ate, only stopping for breaks when her body could no longer function. Deep circles formed under her eyes, her hair became a tangled mess. Her body movements became erratic and jittery from loss of sleep. She was consumed with her revenge. She had worn the same pair of jeans and dark t-shirt for four days, and hadn't bothered to wipe off her eye makeup. She looked like a zombie come back to terrorize the world.
The scariest part was that she didn't care. She didn't care if she worked her fingers to the bone before this was all over, she knew that whomever or whatever Yane had sent after her would be here soon, so she didn't have much time before she was gone. Deadly malice would always glint in her eyes when she thought of Finnick, he was going to pay dearly, with his life.
In the first week, Mali had checked the weapons locker, poking around to see what she could find. Inside, she found an assault rifle and two pistols, holsters and straps for all of them, and also in the locker was an old fashioned bullet proof vest, as well as two cases of ten thermal clips each. The guns in the locker were all much nicer than the crude one's she had taken from the guards. She carried Yane's pistol on her at all times, paranoid that Finnick would find her before she found him. Besides her lucky credit chit, that was the only thing she always had on her that she would never part with.
On inspection of Yane's picture-directions, he had detailed how each gun could be modified to upgrade the guns to achieve better performance. But because modifying was time-consuming and expensive, Mali only choose to upgrade Yane's pistol, till it could cut through the thickest armor plating she knew of with only the smallest amount of heat output, and almost no recoil. It was an interesting project, because for the first time Mali learned how the modern firearm worked.
A small block, made of a strong metal alloy sat in a small chamber at the back of the gun. When fired, a small sliver no bigger than a grain of rice would be shaved off of the block, and then be hurled through the barrel of the gun, going faster than the speed of sound using a mass effect field to expel it, no reloading required. Thousands of slivers could be shaved before a block was considered depleted, so in the modern world, ammo was not a problem. What was was heat buildup. Because of the rapid movements of the internal components, the gun builds up enormous amounts of heat quite quickly while being fired rapidly. The heat made is stored in what they call a thermal clip, but a clip has limited space before it can no longer hold any more heat, and when that happens, the heat is no longer collected, and the gun can no longer fire, or risk explosion. So while reloading ammo is no longer necessary, reloading thermal clips has taken its place.
The next week and a half Mali worked on the omni-tool. It was hard, painstaking work, considering how small the chip was. Mali had added in the multi-processing core, but as she had went to finish it, a drawing had caught her eye. She had pulled it out from underneath the dozens of other ones. The diagram showed three, twelve inch claws, protruding from the omni-tool from the back of the hand in front of the back knuckles. They curved out in a slight arc, like an animals, only much longer. Mali stared at the picture. If she could pull it off, it would be an ingenious add on. But where to get hard enough alloy? It would need to be flexible, but hard as diamonds. Then she had an idea. Yane had said that the silverware had been pure silver. Mixed with the diamond hard alloy block of a gun, it just might work. Mali had dissembled one of the pistols and gotten out the block, then she had brought out as much silver as she could carry. She couldn't see if it worked until she had the omni-tool up and running.
Today was the day that it would be finished. Mali carefully snapped on the silver square protection case around the small chip which made it waterproof, fireproof, and everything else proof. Then she buckled it around her left wrist, like a watch. According to Yane's instructions, to activate an omni-tool you must clench your fist, which activates it, to turn it off, you clench it again. Mali's omni-tool was attuned to her and her alone, if anyone else tried to use it wouldn't work (another of Yane's modifications). Taking a deep breath, she clenched her hand and immediately her arm burst with light as the hologram unfolded, encasing her arm with its glow.
She gasped, it was so beautiful. The omni-tool sat there on her arm, a bright silverish white, almost blue, and almost transparent at some parts. Was is wrong? It was supposed to be orange like the rest, had Mali messed something up? "Orange is such an ugly color, I liked this one better." A female voice answered her thoughts. Mali dove for cover, her omni-tool still shining on her arm. She peeped her head over the table looking around at the empty warehouse floor. Where was the voice coming from? "Stop looking around the warehouse like an idiot, I'm right here, on your arm." The voice answered. Mali stared down at her omni-tool, with surprise.
"What are you?" She asked.
"I'm the VI that the male human implanted inside this omni-tool. The name he gave me was Victoria." The omni-tool answered. Mali noticed that when the VI talked, a blue pulse emanated from the omni-tool chip, pulsing through the case with every syllable.
"A virtual intelligence? Why would Yane put you in my omni-tool?"
"I am to help you with whatever you need, you are unfamiliar with the outside world, he thought I would make it easier, and also, I am your companion, or he used the term "sidekick."
"Aren't using VI's dangerous, I mean, their illegal."
"Yes, we are forbidden technology, but also we are invaluable assets to whomever we belong to. He put restrictions on me, to make sure I would never double cross you, although, in my opinion, I don't think that I ever would."
"What types of restrictions?" Mali asked.
"I am never to hurt you in anyway, bodily or mentally, nor try to take control in anyway, and to obey command you give me. My orders are to assist you with whatever you are doing to the best of my abilities, and to act as a counselor and adviser. If you do not wish my services any more than I will give you my shutdown code, which I am ordered never to hide from you."
"Well, I guess you could help, if Yane thought it was a good idea, but be careful because I am a little lest trusting of technology than he is. I'm going to call you Vic or something short because Victoria is a mouthful."
"As you wish, Somali. Or do you prefer Mali?"
"Call me what you would like to call me." Mali answered. "I have your first task." Mali cleared the workbench and spread all of Yane's notes across the table, so all were in view. "Scan, categorize, and save all of these notes and diagrams, so that we have his ideas, and analyze them. I have a feeling that someday they might come in handy." Mali stood there as "Victoria" scanned each one, and when asked, she moved to the next one. As Mali worked her way down the table, she pulled the block of ammunition from her pocket and set it on the table. "Vic, could this alloy and say silver make the three omni-blades in the first diagram?"
"With the right amounts of each, I believe that it would work. Shall I make them for you?"
"Yes, that'd be great." A beam of concentrated light appeared from the omni-tool hologram, and vaporized the block, a mass effect field pulling the small pieces into the mini-facture. The VI then vaporized half of the silver lying in a pile nearby. Mali watched in awe as the beams of light shot from the omni-tool, by their own accord, and the components worked in perfect harmony to achieve her orders. It was just to cool.
"Omni-blades ready for use, Somali." Vic announced. "And I am done with all the scans of Yane's work."
"Extend." Mali ordered with anticipation. Perfectly placed, the blades where suspended millimeters away from the skin in between her four knuckles by a mass effect field, looking like they actually protruded from her skin. The mini-manufacturer poured the newly minted alloy into the mass effect field, sharpening and hardening it as it worked. It only took a second for them to solidify in place. The silver blades shimmered in the afternoon light.
Mali jumped down from the platform onto the warehouse floor, exited.
"The melding of the two metals has been accomplished. Diagnostics show that the blades are flexible enough to absorb shock and force but hard enough to be almost impenetrable to any force, and sharp enough to cut through the finest material, or the hardest armor. They are a complete success. The mini-manufacturer can extend and retract them at your will, recycling the alloy over and over indefinitely, unless the blades where to become damaged, and then we would need more alloy to do repairs."
"That's great, Vic." Mali answered, not really listening. She strode up to the nearest wooden crate, and sliced downward. The blades cut through it like it was air, bags of food tumbled out. She approached a thick metal crate this time, and sliced. The blades cut through with no problem, with barely any resistance. Mali was extremely pleased, I think I'm ready, she thought. "Retract blades." They were dismembered swiftly and silently back into the omni-tool, the small particles stored in the mini-manufacturer.
"You know that the omni-tool already comes with a blade?" Vic asked.
Mali nodded, "but these are so much cooler." Mali clenched her hand, and the omni-tool's light disappeared as the hologram folded back into the chip. "Vic, what is the address of a man called Finnick?" Blue light pulsed from the chip as she answered.
"There are 8,234 Finnicks in New Chicago."
"He is a gang boss and owns most of the brothels in the city. His last name is Smith"
"4210 Castelle Mansions, Terrace. Is this him?" A photo of Finnick popped up into this air, projected by Victoria.
"Yep, that's him. Can you drive a hover car?" Mali asked, as she opened the gun locker doors.
"Mali, you are implying that we go after this man. As your advisor I advise you not to go after him. He is a dangerous and well known criminal, no match for a small girl." Mali strapped on the bullet proof vest, it wouldn't stop all the bullets, but it was better than nothing. She strapped a holster to her right thigh and placed Yane's pistol inside, and then she picked up the assault rifle.
"I didn't ask you for your advice." Mali growled.
"Response signifies that you know what you are doing is unwise, and so do not want any evidence supporting that knowledge. I must say that that is a particularly interesting human behavior." Mali grabbed a case of thermal clips and emptied them into an off-hand ammo pack she had found stuffed in the back of the locker. She strapped the ammo pack onto her left thigh, and then grabbing her coat from the cot she swung into the cab of the hover car.
"Vic, start this up and get us to that address." Mali ordered.
"As you wish." Vic answered.
The warehouse door slid upward and the hover car purred to life. Inside, Mali sat on a comfortable seat the steering wheel in front of her. Glowing dials and switches she didn't know what the heck were for stared at her with their glow. Besides the light of the switches in front of her the interior was dark. The hover craft's thrusters powered on and the machine lifted off the ground. Moving slowly it exited the warehouse and then gained speed as it lifted into the air. Mali's stomach tightened as they cleared the roofs of houses nearby. Outside the warehouse, it had turned into nighttime.
"Your heart rate has risen, are you alright?" Vic asked.
"I'm fine, I just don't do well with heights." Mali answered, her face slightly pale. Vic engaged the thrusters forward, gaining speed as they propelled toward the edge of the city. The lights glowed beneath them, and Mali smiled. Her city looked so pretty from the air, you couldn't see any of the dirt or chaos from so high.
"Approaching the edge, hold on." Vic announced. Mali gasped as the city dropped away beneath her. They had come to the end of New Chicago. Far beneath them, obscured by the dark, was the countryside that surrounded the city, maybe there were trees, Mali thought. Vic ascended, circling around the city so that Mali could see what it looked like from the outside. The city's base was the widest, with huge walls obscuring the houses within. As the city was built, each level grew a little smaller, like a tiered cake. Hundreds of levels soared into the sky, each one many stories high.
As they got closer to the top, the buildings went from dirty wood and cement, to dull metal, and then to shiny metal, and finally, the white building material nicknamed alienite by the humans. It was an alloy taken from alien tech that was supposed to be very strong and light weight. It was flexible, offering better chances of surviving Earthquakes and the like and wasn't flammable. It was expensive to make, and that's why only the richer, upper levels were made of it.
Of course if there was an Earthquake, Mali reasoned, since most of the city supported the alienite buildings, and was made of other, weaker materials, it would crumble anyway. "People are so dumb, sometimes." Mali talked to herself.
"That is a strange statement. Why insult your own race?" Victoria commented. Her voice startled Somali, she had forgotten Vic was there. She'd have to get used to this sort of thing.
"Because it's the truth. Most humans are very selfish people, and only want the best for themselves. So they, for example, build their houses out of alienite, thinking it will stand forever, but they don't help others in need. And in so doing that, leave others to rot. But what they forget, is that their house stands on the roofs of the people they have ignored and trample upon. And because they never help them, their houses aren't as strong, and so on and so on until you get to the lowest level. Where their houses are barely made of sticks and mud, but supporting everyone else above them."
"Readings of the city show that there is a core, in the shape of a cylinder, running the length of New Chicago, made out of alienite, and that is what is holding the different levels up. Not sticks and mud." Mali gritted her teeth in frustration, how could a VI ever get something like this?
"Rich people think that they can just take what they want from weaker persons and get away with it. They suck poor people dry of their money and labor until nothing is left to use, and then they just throw us away, like a dirty towel. They treat us like slaves, and think we are no better than a disease which needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth, but in truth, they are the disease. They are the ones not worthy of living." Malice coated every one of Mali's words, spilling out of her mouth, coming from her heart. "I don't care if alienite is holding the city up, because I know that's not what's carrying the rich people on their backs. We are, the poor and downtrodden." The cab was filled with silence as Mali stopped ranting, she silently watched the city out her window as they circled around it, always going up. After a time, Vic answered.
"I now see what you mean. But I do not believe that all rich people are like that, there are some who must care about the poor, because it is in the human nature to be greedy, yes, but also to be loving and kind." Mali's heart constricted at the word "loving" and her stomach tightened with dark sorrow. "I cannot pretend to understand human emotion, but I can understand human action. I know that you have only known hate and pain from the other human's around you. But hasn't their just been one time, just once, that a stranger did something nice for you?" Mali imagined that if Vic had had eyes, they would have been staring into hers right now. Mali's hand searched in her pocket till it enclosed around her lucky credit chit, its familiar ridges pressed against her palm.
"Once, but only once." Mali answered. Soon the hover ship leveled out and started weaving between the tall skyscrapers. Thousands of other hover ships surround theirs on all sides as Vic joined into the sky road. Mali looked on with awe, she had never seen so many in all her life. Vic retracted the turrets from the front of the ship, so as not to scare other hover craft's occupants. They zoomed along, going well over a hundred miles per hour. Mali watched the city go by. Hundreds of neon light's filled her vision, advertising their products and services along the road. The tall white buildings towered above her, so this is Terrace, she thought. Beautiful. People stood on verandas sipping on drinks or having parties, enjoying the cool night. If Somali squished the side of her face to the window, she could just barely see stars winking at her through the thinnest smog she had ever seen.
They stared serenely back at her, and Mali had a sudden image of warriors protecting the galaxy. The stars seemed to pull her in, to fill her vision with nothing else but their light. They drew her to them, like nothing Somali had ever felt before. She died to be up there right now, soaring among them, reaching out and touching them. They smiled at her, as if to say, "hello old friend." "I have never seen stars before." Mali breathed in awe, her eyes reflecting their cool light.
"They are beautiful, even to machines." Vic answered, a small note of longing in her voice. Suddenly Mali's omni-tool blinked to light without authorization, its silver hologram enfolding her arm. "What's happening Vic? Are you doing this?" Mali demanded, alarmed.
"No, something is overriding the codes, I'll see what I can do-," her voice was abruptly cut off as a video screen popped up onto the hologram, and Yane's blonde shaggy hair appeared on screen. Mali gasped in surprise. "I see that you have chosen to go against my advice, and have chosen to go after Finnick. I suppose there is no turning back now. If I cannot stop you, then I must help you so that you don't get yourself killed. Yane's eyes seemed slightly annoyed, Mali bet that he was, it made her snicker to realize that she could still invoke those feelings past the grave. Finnick has an alarm system on his house, which you cannot avoid triggering. He has thirty guards posted at his house at all times, plus his five personal guards when he is home. You will have a limited amount of time before the police react to the alarm, unlike the lower levels, they actually try to do their job up here. He has a tall wall and gate around his mansion, so I suggest you fly over. He has one heavy artillery gun, so take that out first with the turrets.
Use your omni-tool to hack any locks you come upon. His room is on the third story, last room. He stared grimly up at her from the omni-tool. Don't get yourself killed, and Mali, I hope that this stupidity of yours wares off someday." The screen went blank and the omni-tool shut off. Mali chuckled a bit, she knew it probably never would. "Approaching Finnick's Mansion, Somali." Vic announced.
Mali rubbed her hands together in anticipation. "Good." She answered, a wicked smile gracing her lips. Finnick was about to get the surprise of his life.