Chapter 2 - Part II
(Whirlander)
Seated on my multipurpose high chair in the middle of the semi-circular observation room, I studied the images projected on the curved wall.
Multiple rectangular windows filled up the screen.
From here, I had a perfect view of the interior and exterior of the ship.
I could also access satellite imagery through a direct link between the ship and the Telos Corporation’s orbiting installations. I could tap into security holocams keeping an eye on the city of Ar Telica, or spy through the eyes of dozens of drones flying along the coastline.
At the moment, one very large rectangular window centered in the middle of the wall offered me a view of Akane Straus sitting in the front passenger seat of a company vehicle. The panoramic image also afforded me a view into the vehicle such that I could see part of the driver, the two men seated in the back, and a pretty young girl with striped hair sitting unconscious between them.
I steepled my fingers dramatically under my chin as I listened to the blonde woman.
With a playful smile, Akane waved her fingers at me. “How’s the view from up there, Chief?”
I ignored her and asked, “Did you have any trouble securing her?”
Akane stopped waving. “Not at all. I simply had to empty the magazine of tranquilizer darts into her buttocks. She was out like a light by the time I picked her up.”
“Any witnesses?”
Akane looked amused. “Does it matter? Well, if you must know, Erina saw the whole thing happen before her very eyes. I’m certain it was a traumatic experience for her.”
I refrained from exhaling heavily. “You seem to have enjoyed yourself.”
“Shooting someone from behind is hardly fun.” The young woman glanced away. “I wouldn’t mind facing her properly though. Just to see what she can do in comparison to me. After all, I’m something of an older sister to her—seeing as I was the first attempt to make you-know-what work.”
For a heartbeat, I studied the faces of the men in the backseat, but there was no reaction from them. Well, they had been informed that the girl was part of a classified research project and that they needed to be discrete. However, though the men were smart enough to keep their mouths shut, it didn’t help having Akane mouthing off unnecessarily.
I cleared my throat quickly. “Need I remind you of the importance of this venture?”
“Nope.”
“Then perish the thought.”
Akane’s smile wavered and I was certain she blinked quickly behind her dark sunglasses. “Oh, is that so. Well, it can’t be helped. Then again, it would be such a shame if she escaped. Don’t you think so?”
A chill spread quickly through my chest. “What are you contemplating?”
“Nothing much.” She waved at me again. “See you in a half hour. Make sure to have the room ready for her. We’ll need to be quick since we don’t know how long she’ll remain in Never Never Land. Over and out.”
The rectangular window vanished, and the empty space was greedily occupied by the other windows that had been pushed aside, and now vied for my attention.
However, as I sat staring at the curved wall, I wasn’t looking at any of the projected images.
Instead, I was pondering whether Akane had outlived her usefulness.
I sat back and steepled my fingers on my lap.
Perhaps I’d keep her around until the situation with Mercedes was stabilized.
Afterwards, it might be time to retire a failed product.
#
(Erina)
With my left wrist and forearm in a contoured cast, I downed the painkillers I held in my right palm, then washed them away with a swig of cold water in a plastic cup.
“Just tell me the final verdict,” I snapped at Uma. “What’s wrong with her?”
We were in my office with its glass windows and view into the lab. The giant Sarcophagus stood upright in the middle of the cylindrical lab. At six meters tall and three meters wide, it was vaguely reminiscent of the ancient Egyptian coffins of the same name.
Usually it sat silently, drawing power from the building rather resorting to its internal means of generating power, the so-called Reflex system that had the Alpha scientists scratching their heads as they struggled to reverse engineer it. However, right now its burnished, iron-grey body was glowing faintly with an eerie phantasmal light as it hummed softly in its support cradle.
The report had come in while I was in the medical bay having my broken wrist attended to: the Sarcophagus had begun powering up its systems without an external command from the control units attached to it. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that the device was warming up out of standby, but no one knew why.
That’s what troubled me the most.
House Alus Novis had supplied the Sarcophagus to us, and provided sufficient information for us to learn to maintain it, and even modify it to meet Mercedes’ needs, but some of its systems were locked down. If we identified a problem with that systemry, then the Sarcophagus was sent back to its home universe to be repaired or upgraded by the engineers of House Alus Novis.
I suppose that was to be expected, since both parties to the agreement were keeping secrets.
We hadn’t given them the data on the Angel Fibers, and they were holding back on the process to manufacture Simulacrum bodies, and the innermost mysteries of the Sarcophagus.
It was a cooperative endeavor wrapped in mutual distrust.
I downed the rest of the water in the cup, and tossed the empty container into a refuse bin under my desk. Then I dropped myself unceremoniously into my expensive chair.
Uma stood in front of two members of my team, including Mia, each with reports to present.
She wore an expression of quiet displeasure at my behavior, while the others were trying to hide their unease. “How many of those have you taken?”
“About half a dozen in the past hour.”
“Erina—”
“Don’t lecture me, Doctor,” I snapped harshly. “This hurts like a bitch, and won’t fully heal for a couple of weeks. And that’s with the best tech at our disposal.”
The cast was more than a simple wrapping around my forearm and wrist. It was an apparatus feeding my arm with nutrients that promoted cell regeneration. It was also monitoring the repair viruses working on the broken bone and ripped tissue. Through its adjusting of the virus code, it could program them like nanomachines.
I refrained from cradling my left arm as I stared up at Uma. “Just answer my question.”
Calmly lowering the data slate in her right hand, Uma gave me a visible scowl that could be directed either at me or the subject of my inquiry. “Mercedes, I mean Cassidy, is suffering from a personality imbalance that stems from your brother’s repressed psyche and the fact that he is male.”
“This is my brother’s fault?”
“Yes.”
I glared at her. “You’d better explain that.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “Do you remember the psych evaluation I performed on your brother—the one you told me was all wrong and I didn’t know your brother the way you did? Do you remember it?”
I drew my lips into a thin line before replying, “Yes. I remember it.”
“Well, I was spot on.”
“Oh really.”
“I’ll make this brief. Your brother was a wimp and a nobody that everyone ignored. As Cassidy, he’s a hot babe in a killer body—literally—that makes him impossible to ignore. And he’s cutting loose.”
“What…?”
“In short, he’s going to town in Mercedes’ body, like a push-bike rider now in the driver’s seat of a sports convertible.”
I swallowed hard. “You have got to be joking.”
“Doctor Kassius, I never joke about my work.”
“My brother is nothing like Cassidy.”
“You mean a loud mouthed harlot who smokes in between classes and draws the eye of the number one bad boy of Telos Academy—by the way I heard that from Jive.” She nodded firmly. “Oh yes he is. Your brother is in Cassidy and the playing field has changed. The rules have changed. His inner demons have been let loose, and Cassidy is the perfect medium to express them.” Uma waved her slate around. “This is the square peg fitting the round hole problem on a new level.”
“What does that mean?”
Standing behind Uma’s left shoulder, Mia, the team’s bioengineer stepped abreast of her. “Doctor Kassius, what she’s trying to say is that the problem stems from the male mind in a female brain.”
I placed my left arm across my lap. “Tell me something new.”
“Oh, okay. Well, how do I begin…?”
“Oh, Mia. Don’t fade out on me now.”
Uma muttered, “That’s a professional thing to say.”
I shot her a quick glare, then focused on Mia. “Just ignore her and tell me what you think.”
Mia took a quiet breath. “We found a chemical instability in her neural matrix.”
Uma rolled her eyes. “Let’s just call it her brain, because that’s what it is. A brain.”
I scowled at her. “You call it her neural matrix all the time.”
“Well, I’ve decided to turn over a new page.”
Mia raised her hands. “Please, can I explain our findings?”
I nodded. “Yes, yes. Please do.”
This time, Mia took a deep breath. “Well, we found an influx of testosterone in her system, but her estrogen levels were also abnormally high. In addition her amygdala and prefrontal cortex were showing a barrage of activity.”
Uma dropped her weight onto a hip and said, “In other words, she was on an emotional overload.”
I looked at her. “What does that have to do with my brother’s repressed personality?”
Mia winced faintly. “We believe the mapping of his male mind into the female brain inside Mercedes caused the differences between the two to exacerbate. As a result, where we expected Mercedes prefrontal cortex to take charge and keep her rational, Ronin’s male mapping caused it to refrain from making decisions. It failed to put a stop on the amygdala’s behavior. It effected a fight response rather than one of compromise. This was driven by the fact that Ronin is now finding himself in a position where he can take charge, or rather, confront his opponents head on. He’s been given the means to exert himself in a fashion he was never able to before.”
The more I listened to her, the more an unpleasant sensation was beginning to swirl in my stomach, but I kept my eyes on Mia the whole time. “Go on.”
“Well, as you know, women tend to be less confrontational than men. But in Mercedes, under the effect of your brother’s neural mapping and his personality traits, she’s turned out the opposite.”
Uma broke in. “Which serves her well as a Gun Princess, who needs to make fast decisions and take risks in the battlefield, but not as a teenage high school girl.”
“You still haven’t explained what my brother’s personality has to do with this?”
Uma stepped up to my desk. “Oh for the love of the gods—I thought you were an Alpha. Think about it.”
I clenched my jaw. “My brother’s repressed personality is screwing with Mercedes’ female brain. Correct?”
“Bingo.”
I stood up slowly. “That means that unless the two adapt to each other, she’ll continue to ride an emotional see-saw.”
“Double bingo.”
I leaned over my desk and glared at her. “Then by your calculations that could take up to six months.”
Uma averted her eyes. “Yeah, bingo again….”
I pointed behind me at the sarcophagus sitting in the middle of the lab. “How is she supposed to function as a person and a Gun Princess under those conditions for the next six months?”
The third team member standing in the background, a young bioengineer by the name of Colin, stepped around Uma and stood at a corner of my crescent shaped desk.
He quickly brushed aside his long dark hair. “Doctor, we are working on a treatment program for her that will allow her a modicum of normalcy in her day-to-day existence.”
I tried not to sound pained. “A treatment?”
Uma inhaled angrily. “Of course a treatment. We already know that the forced application of Ronin’s male mind into Mercedes is mainly responsible for the problems with her behavior.”
“You could have told me that a week ago.”
Mia squeaked in, “We didn’t see the problems manifest until now.”
Uma shook her head. “No, I saw problems but I mistook them for stress and symptoms of gender distress. When Cassidy locked herself away in her apartment, and struggled with her sudden agoraphobia, I should have picked up on the signs then. Instead, I put it down to a consequence of her inception into girlhood. But the indicators failed to improve, and today in the school environment the numbers went exponential. The fact that Ronin’s male mind is suddenly feeling liberated is causing Mercedes female brain to work differently. You could say that he’s forcing it against its grain.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I wanted to hit something but knew that wasn’t a good idea with my broken left wrist. Instead, I turned around instead and walked up to my office’s glass wall that looked out into the immense circular lab.
I heard Mia speak up softly. “Doctor, Colin and I have been working on a chemical treatment, but it’s not a cure. However, we believe it will allow her to enjoy a normal daily life—”
“Normal?” I looked at her faint reflection in the glass wall. “What’s normal for a Gun Princess?”
“Then what do you propose?” Uma asked. “I’m out of options, because what happened today proves we really don’t know how to handle a Gun Princess of this nature. She’s not a machine, she’s a living, breathing person. She’s far more human than we credited her. That was a huge shortcoming on our part. But one thing is certain, we need to find a way to balance out the imbalance in her mind.”
I half turned and faced her. “Are you suggesting we change my brother’s mental model, his neural map, to fit Mercedes better?”
She paused and took a deep breath. “I know how you feel about his eventual transition. However, that girl is suffering and she will continue to suffer because we can’t regulate her male and female sides properly for her. I’m concerned that a day, a week, maybe even a month from now her disjointed mental and physical states will cause her to break down…in a dangerous way.”
“Dangerous? Are you referring to the problem of Mercedes and Cassidy stuck half way.”
Colin spoke up. “Chief, we’re not sure, but it appears to be a byproduct of the Angel Fibers responding to his confused state.”
I regarded for a moment. “Go on.”
“We’re seeing the Angel Fibers respond to his emotions, bringing out Mercedes during periods of anger, anxiety, and—and whenever she feels her physical existence is threatened as it is during a Princess Royale battle. It’s like a reflex reaction linked to the fight or flight decision making normally performed by the amygdala. But in her brain’s confused state, the amygdala is in conflict with the prefrontal cortex, you could say it’s in a tug-of-war, and its causing her to make snap decisions that are uncharacteristic for a girl. In fact, we’re seeing processing in the anterior cingulate cortex is way, way down. She’s not worrying about her decisions. She’s just making them without a second thought. Although…as Doctor Pearson said, your brother’s repressed state of mind has been unleashed, and that’s adding to Mercedes’ woes.”
I grimaced and that caused Colin to hesitate.
He took a breath and added, “We believe that once he calms down or achieves a degree of emotional security, Mercedes will go back into her shell…so to speak.”
I swallowed and asked, “How is she now?”
The three of them shook their heads weakly, and Uma replied, “She’s still stuck.”
Colin sighed, “And although she’s much calmer now that she’s sleeping under sedation, the Angel Fibers are still exhibiting heightened activity.”
Mia muttered something that chilled me. “It’s like Mercedes is on standby…ready to jump in at a moment’s notice to save Cassidy.” Uma and Colin gave her worried looks, and Mia quickly raised her hands. “Ah—I could be wrong. Very wrong.”
I muttered, “That’s not what I want to hear from an Alpha.”
Mia paled and bowed her head. “Sorry.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I need to speak with him—I mean her.”
Uma asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to tell him the truth about his condition. Maybe that will help ease his mind. There’s little worse than not knowing the state of your own body.”
“And then what?”
“You’re asking about the rift between his male and female sides?” I exhaled loudly, then took a quiet breath. “I’ll give him the options we have for now, and let him decide which one to take.”
Uma’s eyes widened, then narrowed as she looked away with a pained expression.
I folded my arms under my breasts. “What else can I do?”
High above my desk a holovid bubble expanded quickly, startling everybody including myself until we recognized Jive’s cube form. Its walls flashed silver before becoming purplish with swirls of orange and red circling over them.
I hadn’t seen that mixture before, and it made my heart skip along quickly.
“Jive—what’s happened?”
The Maestro Awareness snapped out a terse, “She’s awake and she’s not happy.”
Uma muttered, “That’s understandable.”
The cube turned around and faced her with a rapidly blinking orange face. “Then maybe you’d like to come down and explain the situation to her.” The blinking stopped for a moment, then Jive added, “I meant come up and explain the situation.”
I started walking around my desk. “Jive, tell her I’m on my way. And please, try to keep her calm.”
“That’s easier said than done,” Jive quipped.
“Well, do your best,” I threw back at the Awareness.
“Some suggestions would be appreciated.”
“Tell her I’ll raise her allowance.”
Jive’s voice rose to a panic. “Your flippancy is not appreciated.”
I stopped walking and turned to look at the cube. Its walls were beginning to melt again. I’d seen this before, but this time it was a ghastly sight. It gave me the impression of skin melting off a person’s face.
Suppressing a shiver, I asked, “Jive…what’s the matter with you?”
“It’s—it’s the Angel Fibers. They’re—they’re invading the wetware.” The cube struggled to retain its form. “They’re—they’re breaking me down.”
My colleagues were all staring at the displays on their data slates, with Colin confirming Jive’s assessment.
“He’s right. The Fibers are corroding—no, absorbing the wetware.”
I stared in horrid fascination at the image of the cube melting away.
Jive wailed in my office.
“Princess—stop! No, don’t do it—don’t do it—!”
Abruptly the holovid bubble burst and vanished from sight, but the sound of Jive’s blood curdling scream lingered in the air.
For an interminable length of time I stood rigid in shock before eventually finding my voice.
“We—we need to get up there.”
#
With Jive’s scream echoing in my mind, I felt myself fall out of the wall and land painfully on the padded floor.
I was so weak, so addled, I wasn’t able to catch myself with my arms, and landed bodily on my chest.
Pain lanced through my breasts, and as my chin hit the floor it knocked my head back.
It was like being punched under the jaw, making my vision swim and double.
For a long while – I have no idea how long – I lay motionless on the soft floor, breathing raggedly, until I eventually succeeded in moving my arms, and rolled myself onto my back.
It was then that I was able to see the wall I’d been contained in.
It had sockets for my arms and legs, and was contoured for my butt and torso.
As I stared at it, the wall began to assume an ‘unassuming’ flat surface. Moments later, after it had fully filled in, no one would have suspected it was capable of holding a person in captivity.
I pushed myself up to a sitting position, and wondered how I’d managed to break free.
I’d been struggling for a long minute, pulling so hard I thought I’d tear my limbs apart.
Then a strange, cold sensation had enveloped my arms and legs. It was as though my limbs had begun to spread into the wall. I’d felt the wall resist that, but then that cold feeling had emanated within my skull. At that point, Jive had started pleading with me to stop, but I didn’t know what it meant. A piercing headache swept through my mind, blooming from my temples and rushing to the base of my skull. It was so strong that I forgot to struggle, I forgot to breathe, and then with one final scream from Jive, I found myself falling free of the wall.
Much of the headache had faded into an unpleasant memory, but some of it remained.
However, none of this explained why I was suddenly released from the confines of the wall.
Sitting on the floor, I looked down at myself.
I was out of uniform and wearing the equivalent of a hospital gown. I found it embarrassing, and immediately began looking around for clothes. But the walls of the square room were bereft of any discernible features. No cupboards. No drawers. No closets. I saw nothing that indicated a door, and the ceiling was just as barren as the walls, though it appeared translucent with strong lighting behind it.
Rising to my bare feet, I abruptly realized that I was naked beneath the gown, and shivered in shame.
Just as quickly, anger overrode that shame, and I clenched my fists.
Stalking up to the nearest wall, I punched it with all my strength.
To my surprise, my fist sank into the wall. A heartbeat later I sensed the material begin harden, so I quickly pulled out my hand. The impression I’d made into the wall vanished as the surfaced filled out and restored its smooth finish.
I frowned.
If the wall could do that, how was it I’d escaped.
Punching the wall again, I left my right fist buried into it, and waited for the material to harden around my hand. I didn’t have to wait long. Closing my eyes, I first struggled to pull my hand free from captivity. When that failed, I concentrated on the feeling I’d experienced before – a feeling of spreading into the wall – but it eluded.
After concentrating to no avail for another minute, I decided to tear my hand free of the wall.
That proved impossible.
No matter how much I pulled and twisted against the grip of the material, it was as though my hand was buried in permacrete.
My struggles grew in intensity, as did the panic I was enduring.
I was mentally kicking myself for trying something so stupid.
Eventually, my panic migrated into despair, and I began kicking and screaming at the wall while continuously pulling my right hand with my left.
I screamed even as my voice grew hoarse and my knuckles became bruised.
But the wall refused to release my hand.
Then in a blinding wave of despair, I screamed the loudest I’d ever screamed in Cassidy’s body, and punched my left fist into the wall beside my captive right hand.
I wasn’t thinking of anything but the single minded desire to free my hand.
My left fist punched into the wall, and I felt it explode.
It was as though my fist burst apart and spread through the wall’s material. At the same time, my right fist felt like it was merging with the wall.
In my mind I had the impression that my hands and fingers were now like hundreds of tree roots growing through the wall, spreading through it an incredible rate. The shock of the experience capped my despair and choked my screams.
Then, just as quickly as the sensation exploded to life, it came to a sudden end.
In front of me, the wall rippled, then bulged, before exploding in a cloud of debris. There was force behind that explosion, kinetic energy that knocked me back across the span of the room, and against the opposite wall.
I was too shocked to be relieved that the wall behind me didn’t latch onto me.
In fact, I rebounded off the wall, and landed on my hands and knees.
As I looked down at the floor, my view curtained by Cassidy’s long blonde-raven hair falling loosely, I noticed strange strands of silver hair covering my hands and fingers. Within moments, the strands turned to a fine powder, even finer than silver glitter, and completely dissolved into the air.
I sat up on my knees, and studied my hands, slowly turning them over. Whatever the silver strands were, they were now gone, and only Cassidy’s smooth, almost hairless skin remained.
Only then did I have the presence of mind to look up at the wall.
A huge gaping hole existed in it.
A gaping hole large enough for me to climb through with room to spare…and it showed no signs of closing up.
It took me a heartbeat to realize escape was staring at me in the face.