In a small room that felt more akin to a warm study than some kind of lab, Karla stared at the woman. She tried to talk, but she wasn’t connected to anything.
“My name is Olivia, but I’m sure your identity is more interesting than mine, no? Oh, you have no voice synthesizer, right?” The woman got up and grabbed a small yellow cylinder off a nearby table. “I don’t want to read everything you say, let me install this.”
Karla nodded and leaned her neck forward. There were several quick movements, a whirring of an electric driver, and then something clicked. When Karla lifted her head, Olivia stood, inspecting a small black sphere in her hand.
“Whew, you brought in some firepower, didn’t you?”
“Is that…?” Karla began to speak, but stopped at her voice. A digital harmony of several voices blended together.
“Vocalizing check!” Olivia grinned. “And this, is the bomb that always does such a fantastic job of erasing you Inner-Circle pups whenever you get your foot caught in a trap.” She turned the explosive over in her hands. “And do you know how this works?”
Karla shook her head. “I only know it is called an Iso-Bomb.”
“Iso? Huh…” She placed the sphere into a small plastic sleeve and sealed it. She saw Karla staring at her and grinned wider. “Snacks for later. But right now, you are the main dish! A cyborg! A cyborg with gifts!” She leaned over the torso. “You said you were over two hundred and fifty? Amazing! I’m only around one hundred and twenty myself, less than half of your age and I’ve still had to do a lot to keep my body up and running. My, my, you don’t seem to have any degradation at all!”
Karla wanted to frown. “You were listening in on the shuttle.”
Olivia shrugged as she fetched a small, wheeled gurney. “Nothing better to do. Clans are all busy, Church is up in arms over it’s dead leader. No, my time will come in the following months.” She lifted Karla with far less ease than the others had. “Damn you’re heavy. Is your entire skeleton replaced with metal?”
Karla thought for a moment. “Wait. How did you know my name? Most people seem to think I’m some kind of creation.”
Olivia shrugged as she pushed the small bed through a rear door and into what looked like a long, thin garage. Multiple bays each had projects in various stages of completion. Olivia pushed her into a nearby open slot. “Like I said, nothing better to do. While you were coming in, I looked up records of a gifted with the name Karla from before the time the Witch first appeared. Not many actually! You were either a twelve-year old who died in an accident first testing their powers, an old woman who had the ability to spit acid, or you were a mysterious woman who suddenly disappeared some two hundred and forty years ago who’s powers and appearance were both heavily classified by the Church. Not hard to figure out which one you were, despite how little was left about you. My biggest sources of information was just some investigations into a damaged apartment and a lawsuit that technically still stands against unpaid rent filed by the City West Housing Authority.”
Karla grunted. “So you know who I am. Now what?”
“Well, I’d like to figure you out. You seem to be conscious, sane, and with one of the most elegant electro-neurological interfaces I’ve ever seen.” She rubbed her hand down the spinal column that hung beneath what was left of her ribcage. “And the fact that you’re still alive and not crazy after so long as basically a brain in a jar… it’s impressive is all.”
“I have a torso, though. Some of one at least.” Karla looked down at her shining ribs.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is you have lungs, a heart, and a brain, and somehow that works. That’s enough. Not only that, but you can still use your gift. Though, I would suspect you are having a bit of trouble with that, right? Has it degraded over time?”
Karla nodded slowly. “You know about my gift?”
Olivia pulled out a datapad. On it was a video, paused on the face of a terrified clan member running. As she made it play, the camera turned to reveal what they were running from. Seven feet tall, all black steel and a strange reddish bronze. The being looked utterly terrifying and inhuman aside from its arms. It pointed with a hand, and six large guns floated in the air, pointing at six different targets. The guns fired, blinding the camera for a moment as they unleashed hell across the battlefield. A second video played, Karla playing with the nearby seat, swiveling it back and forth.
Karla looked up at the woman as the video ended.“That first one was me?”
Olivia nodded. “The Supreme Holy Guardian to the Church, the Black Witch to the rest of the world. You were terrifying back then…” She shuddered at a memory.
“You saw me. Back when I was… that.”
“Yeah. That awesome display was what made me want to become a technician in the first place! The unmatched power, the raw ability. I’ve collected some remnants of battle harnesses used by the Church and replicated or improved beyond what they’ve used, but you are something special.”
Olivia dropped the pad and looked at her. “You hold a lot of secrets that could help my research immensely. I’d like to offer you a chance of rebuilding into something that is at least livable. More human than what you have now. In exchange, I’d like to study you. I want to take you apart and see what makes you click, but then I promise to put you back together.”
Karla laid there. “That’s it? You seem awfully accommodating for having me as your enemy until a day or two ago.”
“Ha! You weren’t my enemy. Just another soldier in this never-ending war for the Americas. I don’t want to dance around the issue, it’s a waste of time. If you were crazy, or if you seemed resistant, I’d use a different tactic, sure. Not to mention I’ve been running diagnostics on you the entire time you’ve been here. What I need, though, is a willing participant, not a cadaver to dissect. You have the brain scan of someone who just woke up from a nice nap, not the typical mental degraded psychos that usually come from putting a human brain into an unfeeling murderbot.” Olivia pulled out several devices and tools from nearby toolboxes, setting them onto a metal bench. “If we can both get what we want, then I won’t go blaming the tool for what the hand did. I’ll give you a good place to rest, and I’ll learn many things. After I’m done, I’ll let you go off to whatever hole you wish to dive into for all I care. Is that something you’d want?”
Karla let her head fall back onto the table. “I wanted to kill Stoke.”
“Haha! You’re too late to hop on that train. Here, I’ll tell you what. I’ll build you a body that performs up to gifted standards. If you want to go join some Clan or gang in some kind of holy crusade against the Church, then be my guest. Deal?”
Olivia stood there, tools in her hands as if she knew Karla would say yes. Karla let out a sigh, then nodded. “Deal.”
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Delta picked through the gravel and stones at the bottom of the valley, picking up every little indication there had been a wreck here. Olivia had scolded him twice for not doing it perfectly, that’s why he was currently scanning the entire branch of the canyon all the way back to the river, again. He had just made a second pass without finding anything when a humming noise echoed down through the valley, scaring off the crystal-eating birds into clouds of flapping wings.
He deactivated his tools and pressed himself up against the cliff face. Hearing the droning noise coming closer, he activated a digital camouflage. The cloth on his harness flickered, then settled on browns and reds and tans as he nestled himself between some fallen stone. Sections extended, others retracted, giving his form a rough, stone texture with hard edges. Anyone who looked would find yet another fallen stone amongst many.
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Minutes passed with nothing happening, then with a sudden roar, they appeared. Six drones, round and shuddering the air around them, swam through the canyon, searching. Delta didn’t breath as they passed. The drones mapped their way to the end of the canyon, then turned back, scanning and analyzing as they went. Green lasers marked a grid as they passed overhead. His pile of rocks was scanned, then passed by. As the drones exited the branch, he remained crouched, not emitting any EW, isolating himself from the world. An hour passed. He risked a peek around, and found the area as silent and abandoned as before, besides the birds who again were making a racket as they chipped and ate the crystals. A good sign the drones had left the area. He lifted himself up, still maintaining his rocky appearance as he crept back towards the lift.
He made his way down into the underground base and into his master’s workroom, shaking and patting down the creased outer cloth. At one of the first tables, he could see the old woman bent over, working on something.
“Master!” He ran to her. “Three were drones! Church models, I think.”
She nodded. “They followed you in.”
“But, the shuttle has stealth—”
“Not if you’re spraying fuel your entire trip. You left a giant mark across the landscape that lead directly here.” She huffed. “I told you to be more careful.”
“But, there were bears!” He turned his attention to the table, and was shocked to find dismembered cyborg body parts hanging on a steel rack. A metal and tech-covered brain with a dangling spinal cord, a pair of black lungs hung like digital wine sacks, and a small black thing with hoses that attached all four. A heart, he supposed. On the table were all of the coverings and items that seemed to be extra. Ribs, muscles, the face he had grown accustomed to referring to as Karla. He hesitated to ask. He had promised Karla she wouldn’t be killed, but now…
“Uh, hi.” A voice called out.
“Karla?”
“Yes, yes. She’ll be here for a while, so go fix up your suit, and take a shower. You smell disgusting.”
Delta deflated, and walked to the back of the workroom where his own gear stand was tucked away.
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First, Karla was disassembled, then reassembled. Her gift was tested repeatedly, finding Karla needed nothing beyond her brain to use it. Everything was secondary, and Olivia couldn’t figure out why.
“So other cyborgs can’t have gifts?”
Olivia shook her head as she refilled the whitish liquid that circulated through Karla’s heart and lungs. “A cyborg is entirely mechanical. Because once you replace the arms with something really powerful, the torso can’t handle it. Organs get crushed, bloodflow stops. It’s not uncommon for scavengers to pick up hardware that’s too powerful for their body to handle, permanently injuring or killing themselves. Of course those gifted have a strong body already, and don’t need to replace everything else. The only problem is once a gifted replaces their torso, they lose their gifts. They are then just a cyborg.”
“So if you were to replace only parts of your torso? Like just the heart, just the ribcage?”
Olivia shrugged. “No matter what people do, eventually their gifts fade away. And no gifted wants to live like that.” She watched as Karla played with a small toy with her telekinetic powers. “You are something special. If we can figure out what Stoke did to you, we’d have a revolution in gifted biomechanics.”
The tests continued. Each and every piece of her was extracted, subjected to scans, modifications, and analysis before being reinstalled. “Fascinating!” Olivia kept muttering, her excitement was infectious. After three weeks of tests, dissections, and inspections, Karla was finally gaining new parts. First was a torso, a standard mechanical model that was frequently used for puppets and automated attack systems, but heavily modified to support the few organs she needed. The controls were directed through her spine, and the Raley-Coil strands that acted as muscles were upgraded. When she was asked why, Olivia didn’t have answer. She just grinned and upgraded it anyways. It seemed the old technician just couldn’t help herself when presented with a project.
“I want you to practice your gift as much as possible. There’s been a small amount of progress, but I’d like to see more. If you can get back to full capacity, then whatever Stoke did would be viable for others.”
Karla nodded as a pair of ball bearings orbited one another above the table. “I’d like to recover more, I feel a bit lost without it.” Karla wasn’t planning on fighting if she didn’t have to, but seeing the torso, her torso, grow from a mass-produced object into a work of art under the hands of a talented technician was both exciting and difficult to wait for. She felt like a kid staring at presents under a tree, desperately wishing to tear the wrapping off and try it out, but not until given the go ahead by her parent.
She had watched as Olivia worked, skillfully bringing plain metal ingots into parts that looked straight off a computer-controlled mill. Her power, the manipulation of metal was a valuable one. She could make prototypes quickly, and some parts she produced were impossible to craft any other way. Karla realized she’d never be able to get some of these pieces serviced by anyone else, perhaps that was this woman’s goal, but that was for the future. Right now, she was excited to finally test out the new body that had been customized just for her.
The limbs Olivia fished out for her were not as customized. Prosthetics for civilians who had their limbs amputated or damaged beyond repair, the limbs would bring her up to a human level of ability, which Karla thought was plenty. Long, humanoid, and vaguely feminine, the arms and legs were fashionable models, meant for those who wished to focus on attractiveness and style rather than strength or speed. Karla had claimed these would be fine, but Olivia promised her she give her something more sturdy in the future.
Once the limbs were installed, Karla couldn’t help but look over herself in awe. A bright, shiny metal made up most of the structure, then covered with nano muscle strands of some kind of dark gray material. Her body now looked like a mix of dull carbon fiber and polished silver, a sports car made organic. She knew the limbs were more form than function, but it was hard to be upset with how good everything looked.
“Try it out. See if everything’s hooked up right.” Olivia gestured for Karla to stand.
She did. For the first time since her long dream, she could stand on her own two feet. She swung her arms for balance, but turned too much, nearly falling on the old woman. Everything was a bit clunky and awkward to use still.
“Hmm.” Olivia looked her over and held up a wrench. “Tap the wrench with your right hand.”
Karla reached out, missing the wrench entirely. The second time she managed to hit it, the third she touched it accurately. After a few dozen attempts, her hand was gently tapping the wrench along its length with each finger.
“Other hand.” Olivia ordered.
Again, her movements were awkward at first, but they improved faster than the first arm’s attempts, reaching competency in half the time.
“You’re adapting so quickly. It’s like the ride-along components are recognizing what you are attempting to do, and fixes your neurons to behave in the correct manner.” She looked over her handiwork. “Try walking now.
Karla took an uneasy step, and fell. Luckily her arms were calibrated, and she caught herself on the metal workbench, leaving a dent in the shape of a hand in the tabletop. “Sorry,” she muttered as she straightened herself. The legs were a bit more difficult, since she had to balance herself with her legs, her arms, and her spine. But after walking down the workspace several times, she began to jog, then skip, then run.
“Enough!” Olivia shouted and Karla skidded to a halt. “You’ll destroy my workshop at this rate. Go ahead and sit down.” She gestured to a small steel chair by her side. “How does everything feel?”
“Amazing!” Karla shouted in her strange electronic voice. “Everything works so well!”
Olivia humphed. “That’s not me. That’s your hardware up top.” She tapped Karla’s skull. “You adapt so quickly, I bet I could equip you with whatever shape of limb I wanted and you’d work it out within a few minutes.”
“I want human legs.” Karla deadpanned. Olivia had been pushy for the first few weeks, insisting on how much faster, more mobile she’d be with six legs or some kind of electric snake body. She didn’t fancy becoming a monster, and Olivia’s suggestions on how much better at combat held no interest to her. Now that she thought about it, this small woman seemed obsessed with turning her into some kind of combat unit again.
“Weren’t you supposed to make me into a gifted human only? Nothing more, right?” Karla asked.
“Well… you adapt so quickly. I bet we could equip you with various bodies, and you’d be able to move easy enough. You’d make an amazing soldier with how adaptive you are. If only you made some progress with your powers…”
Karla shook her head and turned to a mirror. Staring back was a metal mask in the shape of a skull with large glowing orbs for eyes. Behind it was actually her, a brain encased in some kind of high-performance metal. “Is there a way of getting something like skin again?”
“Eventually.” Olivia waved her off before she said anything. “Growing a bio-skin requires a more in-depth toolkit than what I have here and it’s frankly a big waste of time if you’re going to be doing anything but looking pretty…” She seemed to think of something. “Actually, would you want to see a city? It would give you a better idea of what the world looks like. You aren’t too far from the norm, honestly. I’ll just need to get you some clothes and a mask…”
“A city?” Karla looked back. “You’re okay with me going out on my own?”
She laughed. “Hell no! You’d be lost within the first day! Delta will go with you. I’ve been invited to the Digital Snow Clan down in City West. They seem to have some new technologies they want some help with. You might find their tech interesting.”
“City West…” Karla sighed in memory of her old home town. “What is it like these days?”
“You’ll see for yourself.” Olivia grinned at her as the woman took several measurements.