Chapter 3: Grieselda

Grieselda blinked her eyes open.

‘I was unconscious.’

She regarded the four point harness strapping her into place.

‘And back on the carrier,’ she surmised.

She was in her skin suit. Someone had stripped her out her mechanical suit.

‘And treated my wounds.’

She had stitches on the back of her head, her left shoulder was bandaged and the rest of her fractured left arm was folded into a cloth sling.

“Grieselda,” the captain said. “You okay?”

‘Grieselda. Grieselda. Grieselda Blanchett,’ even in her own mind the name sounded foreign to her. But she had to completely adopt the persona.

‘Well, at least until the assignment is completed.’

“I’m fine, the agent?”

Technically she wasn’t but she was still muted so her senses remained oblivious to the damage.

The captain nodded to an unconscious figure in the corner of the carrier. “Thanks to your sacrifice I was able to sneak up on him,” the captain said evenly, wearing his usual tired expression which betrayed no emotion.

‘You Bastard.’

Her nostrils flared, breathing hard. It was one thing for the captain to act shamelessly but to own up to it as if it was normal, greatly annoyed her.

‘The assignment,’ she reminded herself.

She needed to get into his good graces. It would make the assignment easier to complete. Not to mention she was off to a bad start by defying some of his orders. So like always she suppressed her frustrations.

She ran a hand across her bandaged shoulder, numb to her own touch. And everything looked so dull, everything smelled so hollow and everything tasted like, like…

She swallowed some bile.

‘Like nothing.’

She felt uneasy, uncomfortable, unnatural, especially when she regarded her stabbed shoulder and broken arm. Deep down she knew it was unwise to prolong unmuting any longer.

‘It’s just pain. It’s just pain. It’s just pain,’ she recited but traumalash wasn’t something one got accustomed to because they thought positively. If only it where that easy. The moment she unmuted it would assault her. So she couldn’t help but hesitate.

“Knew a guy once,” the captain mused, staring out the window. “Xander Hacking was his name, bastard tried to come out 3 day mute after breaking his back.”

“Siii,” Grieselda winced and sucked in a hollow breath.

“He hadn’t meant to wait so long, just too scarred of the traumalash, so he kept putting it off and the trauma kept accumulating, on the 3rd day he finally decided to unmute not because he was braver but because he had started to fully experience the consequences of staying muted so long-”

“Going Null, I know,” Grieselda snapped.

She didn’t need his indirect advice. She knew better than to put it off any longer. She just needed a little time to psyche herself up, is all.

She took a breath and unmuted herself.

“Ng-Ng-Ng…”

Grieselda stammered incomprehensible gibberish as her mind shook and her body jerked uncontrollably. Pain screamed up her slinged arm, her bandaged shoulder, along her spine and through her brain as an excruciating headache, like needles swimming through her head.

The pain of her injuries bombarded her like a tidal wave of compressed pain, demanding to be felt. She felt like she was dying, she could swear she was and part of her wished she would.

‘Anything to make the pain stop.’

She hadn’t been muted long or injured too bad but those few seconds of hell felt like an eternity.

Even after her body ceased jerking, the pain eased and all was as it should be. She remained frozen for a good while but for her chest heaving up and down. Sucking much needed air into her body.

Grieselda shifted uncomfortably under the restricting seatbelt, tapped the centre of the harness and unbuckled herself. She leaned forward, elbows on knees and hoisted up her hands to massage the sides of her throbbing temple.

Her head pulsed, her gut sank and she shivered on and off. Her body trying to re-accustom itself with the prickling sensation of feeling again.

She wiped off the line drool streaking down her chin, held back the fatigue weighing down on her eyelids and ignored the sharp oscillations of pain assaulting her wounds.

“The hostages?” She asked when the shivers had subsided.

“After it was clear, they decided to stay and catalogue if anything was missing from their secret vault. The battle caused quite a bit if property damage to their relics so they weren’t much pleased. They tried to claim we used excessive force.”

“Excessive force?”

“Can you believe it? Even after we saved their asses. I had to explain the destructive nature of your fighting style before they let me off. Fortunately you were unconscious so they couldn’t have words with you. Still had to wave control a few of them to calm down.”

She glared at him. ‘Is he joking?’

It was too hard to tell with the captain because he rarely wore anything but his trademark exhausted expression and his tone was forever even. She waited for him to crack up and say he was joking but the moment passed.

Moreover targeting innocent civilians or worse comrades with subliminal waves was a blatant abuse of power.

‘But there’s no point in lingering on inadmissible details said in jest.’

Indeed, she required something much more concrete to complete her assignment.

She averted her gaze, rested her eyes unto a more pleasing prize.

‘The next time he wakes he’ll be trapped in the tomb with all the other lawbreakers.’

She hoisted a hand to cover the radiant grin on her face and giggled through the lingering agony of her injuries.

The agent was in electromagnetic handcuffs and a half mask with a tube extending from a gas tank which periodically gassed him. It was also better to sedate hackers. Prevent them from com-linking their buddies for back-up, diving into the virtual network to post about their arrest, activation of some random upgrade designed for escaping etc.

Grieselda’s grin did a 360 upon recollection of their initial interaction with the agent.

“What was all that stuff about the Saint Oracle?” Grieselda asked. “From his tone one might’ve thought he approved of the AI’s.”

“He does,” the captain said. “Probably a machine worshipper or an offshoot of the religion.”

Grieselda’s frown deepened as the captain confirmed her suspicions. “Those fucking lunatics.”

Her gut churned and turned. The machine worshippers had the craziest of ideologies.

‘Are all the agents part of the faith?’

The captain harrumphed, eyes closed and arms folded.

“What?” She snapped.

“Did he look crazy?”

“No, not in the generic sense but anyone who’d believe AI’s are benevolent has some screws loose, no?”

Ray Dawn shrugged.

‘He doesn’t agree.’

And she didn’t like it.

“You think all agents are the same?” She asked conversationally.

“Perhaps, don’t think it was ever brought up with the other agents we’ve caught,” the captain said his voice suddenly scratchy and electronic.

“What’s wrong with your voice?”

The captain cleared his throat in a microphone feedback like screech. “New upgrade. Still tweaking the voice calibration settings to perfectly mimic my old voice.”

‘He got an electronic voice box! When did this happen?’

A wide-eyed Grieselda stared at the captain.

‘More importantly, that’s his third extra upgrade. Well, the ones I know about.’

“Why would you do that to yourself?” She asked.

He opened his dark rimmed eyes and regarded her with his skewed gaze, his skewed perspective. “You’re asking why I’d make myself better.”

An awkward silence filtered in.

Their mech suits were just armour. To truly become a cybermage, only a single upgrade was required. A mage chip implanted into the brain granting the user superior computing power, an array of mage control software, advanced control over the body and more data storage than they knew what to do with.

Yet there were cybermages who were never satisfied, equipping unnecessary upgrades. Additional cybernetic implants were usually out of necessity, like after an injury etc.

Except for the captain, he seemed to enjoy chipping away at his humanity in the name of modification. He had at least three extra upgrades she knew about. And only the captain could reason that replacing his perfectly normal voice equated to improving himself.

Grieselda shut her parted lips and massaged the back of her neck. “Um yeah never mind. Um, you seem to know a lot about the machine empire,” she said trying to move past the awkwardness.

“Hmm. I do.”

‘Unexpectedly honest.’

Most of her assignments were slippery on such sensitive topics, tried to maintain straight and narrow image by denying knowledge of any controversial topics.

‘Not, the captain but the best liars are the honest ones because they excel at spewing half-truths.’

“How?” She pressed on.

Before today she’d never seen one of the empire’s killer androids because there weren’t any pictures on the virtual network. And sure she’d flunked history at school but even she knew how limited information on the old empire was.

“I’m a cybermage.” The captain shrugged. “I often find myself in places on the network I shouldn’t be.”

Her brows wrinkled. She knew better than most about the darker parts of the virtual network. Places on the virtual network were all sorts of crimes were committed and criminals operated without remorse. Dark sites prohibited by the federation law.

The Data Guilds were constantly unearthing and crushing these dark sites but they were like cockroaches. Kill one and another would soon take its place. One stubborn site in particular was akin to a phoenix in the way it always resurfaced.

“Like the LostNet,” Grieselda said.

The captain’s lips curled up faintly in a rare display of emotion as he shrugged again.

‘A confession if I’ve ever seen one.’

Perhaps he was investigating but that thin smile of his told a different story.

‘And I wouldn’t put it past him to actively access the dark site in the name of the greater good.’

The captain was self-righteous like that.

“Hmm?” The captain hummed and gazed out the window.

“What is it?” She asked, swivelled to look out the window on her side.

The lights were coming on across Gau City as they raced over the central metropolis. They flew well above the sky traffic of floatcars splitting through the tall buildings. It took a moment to realize what had caught the captain’s attention. The sky above them shimmered like transparent glass reflecting off a bright light source.

“The glass field is coming up,” the captain said belatedly.

All the way from the tall city walls, a translucent casing was flowing out in an arc, blanketing Gau city in a glass like dome.

“A lockdown,” Grieselda said.