[HIPPOCAMPAL NEUROfragment #127]

TRISS knows what every director is thinking.

TRISS runs her programs, plugs in the numbers, checks all the data then double checks them to make sure her outputs are perfect as ever.

She can see Glamis pacing the conference room, furrowed brow and tight-pressed lips reflecting in spotless windows all around him. A thousand Glamis all following him in quiet supplication.

Her calculations are complete, her programming impeccable, her predicts are always accurate down to the millionth percentage.

Glamis finally listens for the first time in months, perhaps years:

War is coming.

Then Sanctorium shall know fear like never before.

Sector Sigma, Ministry of Artificial Intelligence, Sublevel C-07

Spooks puts down her wrench with a heavy thunk, the workbench is littered with little metallic flowers that extend in five petals.

"There are mercenaries out there looking for you, you know." A voice interrupts her thoughts, it crawls into her ears like slimy cold fingers, "I can't be expending so much security on you all the time."

"You don't expend any security on me." Spooks doesn't look back to answer.

"I do so much more for you than you'll ever know." There's a chiding tone used to discipline children, "If it weren't for me, Director Six of Sector Zeta would have you executed as a TRISS subroutine too..."

"Tell Six she's nothing without me."

"I shall." Then in the shadows of the room comes a polished, glistening smile moulded for the cameras, followed by soft jingle of medals across expensive fabric. Half of them have been awarded to himself by the man currently wearing them, but that's only natural for all of Sanctorium's honours.

Director Glamis strides across the room as machinery parts way for him, then settles comfortably in the only chair in the room, which a service drone has dragged out for him in front of the workbench.

"I have some new ideas for Sector Sigma I'd like to run by your brilliant mind." He crosses his legs, fingers tapping on the armrest bring me something to drink right now

Spooks doesn't move. She's frozen between the workbench and the chair (the AC is way too strong, there's a whirring noise somewhere, her battery is running low, there's the smell of stale Cocoa-Fix in the air-)

"What is it this time? A new Benevolence Day parade? Recruitment ads on oatmeal packages? Wiretapping other directors?"

"None of those."

"I'm not building you a 'mega death-ray' to use on the Insurrectionists."

Glamis throws his head back and laughs. Spooks briefly contemplates throwing one of the little metal flowers into his mouth so she can watch him choke.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I want to discuss this with you over schokolade and brandy - the real stuff from the Bleak Lands nomads, none of that Nexus synthetic bullshit."

He summons two crystal glasses from a service drone and tips the small amber bottle over, inebriation never looked more tantalizing as it does now, trickling down. Its darkness drinks in what sterilized light and steel there is in the cold room, then reflects everything into soft golden hues. Anyone who looks at it suddenly and inevitably find their throat very, very dry.

Glamis snaps the tinfoil-wrapped schokolade over a silver plate. He seems to take delight in the sounds. What grimy, charcoal-black schokolade the Nexus market offers is often too hard to break in half, let alone bite through.

"There." He pats his hands over what he considers a proper display of wealth and power, "Our little Eucharist."

Then he laughs again at his own vast knowledge of pre-Annihilation practices. "The blood-" he points to the brandy, then the schokolade "-and body of Christ, if only we had a priest."

"It's always so illuminating to hear what you have to say."

Glamis lazily toasts her with the brandy. He swirls it under his nose before taking a polite sip.

"Fifteen-year Asbach Uralt, aged in an oak casket and plundered from a militia's private stash. And to think if I gave the order for an artillery strike, this would've been lost to the wasteland forever. Such a shame."

Spooks doesn't move from her spot, but her eyes are fixed on the drink. Glamis continues on without even looking at her.

"And do you know what the men were doing with their liquor? They were using it to sterilise wounds! Pouring good brandy and cognac over their war-sick like it's water! Sometimes I think they know how much it's worth, but waste the drinks just so they could say they cleaned themselves with a 2007 Frapin Château Fontpinot cognac."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I don't see any other reason why they would use expensive alcohol as disinfectant."

Glamis slowly chews on a piece of schokolade, "Well, that's what I came here to talk with you about."

"About liquor?"

"About the threat that is eating Sanctorium from the inside out."

Well, now that sure is a place to take a conversation.

"I've been thinking - good leadership ought to be like good liquor, strong on the outside, strong on the inside. Outside it's a disinfectant: cleans the skin, kills the bacteria. The Mauer Wall and our riflemen division take care of the sickness we call Bleak Lands already, at least for now."

"But on the inside...?"

"It ought to warm, burn, pleasant to the taste but fierce enough to keep you invigorated. Do you know what I mean?"

"I don't speak riddles."

"Our stock is bad, Spooks." Glamis chuckles at her name, "Our people are...fermented into vinegar. The Ministry of Health can blame it on the radiation, the tox storm, whatever environmental factors they want to bring up. That doesn't change the fact that our gene pool is damaged. What I want is a nice, strong brandy to clear out the system, wash away the illness and stagnation."

A dull ache starts growing from behind her eyes. Something akin to defunct tear ducts screaming at their own ineptitude.

"You're proposing a culling."

Glamis throws up his hands in supplication, or perhaps he's not quite threatened. He's still smiling.

"Your mind jumps to genocide too quickly - I understand your wariness, given what you've seen during Halcyon...but please, don't brush me aside so soon. I'm not suggesting something so calloused as removing people, I do want the best for everyone...even if it means I have to make the tough choices."

He pushes the glass of brandy towards her slightly.

"As for pleasantness, we can always incentivise people...faster marriage application form approval for preferred couples (people with good traits, that is.) Maybe special schools for the naturally gifted, compensation for compulsory sterilisation..."

There's a faint whirring coming from some part of Spooks that's overheating. Glamis apparently finds it very amusing.

"Relax, I'm only entertaining the thought so far - not too far, mind you, we are at war. I'll entertain this notion as simply a notion until the war demands both the best and worst of Sanctorium to make their sacrifices."

"And what about you? What will you sacrifice?"

He raises an eyebrow over the brim of the glass, "My cognac, of course."

"Get the fuck out of my workshop."

"You're no saint." Glamis makes no move to leave, "Do you tell people you've taken up metallurgy to make lead bouquets?" He tilts his chin at the table of little metal flowers, "You think I don't know what expanding bullets look like?"

He bends each of the petals inward until it folds together into the shape of a bullet. When he throws it at Spook's face, it bounces off her with a clear ding.

"I know what Irkalla tells you - that it's meant for the blighters, the snow-beasts, the Niemandsland monsters that won't go down in just a few shots. We both know she's gonna use this on the Insurrectionists and militia fighters. So if you're alright with literal war crimes being fired at enemy combatants, you should be fine with a little genetic engineering-"

"Leave."

"All I'm asking is for a bit of addition to TRISS's programming, a few extra lines...nothing more. Just make it so that...she can screen out the undesirables, maybe some ideal candidates for the Husk program. After all, the Nexus is always looking for heroes to join the war effort."

"What if I say no?"

He grabs the other glass of brandy and splashes it over Spooks' head. She doesn't flinch when he holds out his silver lighter to her chin. The flame flickers, flirts with the idea of alcohol.

"I can turn you into flambé crêpes suzette right here and nobody would even notice you're gone." Glamis hisses, "Then I'll just get someone else to do what I want. It'll be annoying to search, but not impossible."

Spooks knows this little song and dance that she always does with the Nexus, not just Glamis. Every once in a while someone important comes down from the HQ to visit her, and it's always either "you're convenient and expendable so do what I want", or "make this killer robot for me or I'll remove your legs", because none of the directors are creative enough to appeal to anything outside her sense of self-preservation.

Even if all Spooks has left is her sense of self-preservation.

So she grabs the lighter from Glamis, says fuck self-preservation, and lights her face on fire.

The room is filled with the smell of burning plastic. Glamis stumbles back, holding his nose as the ventilation system kicks into overdrive. The only thing he could make out in the orange flame and black smoke is half a steel cranium beneath the synthetic skin. It flashes a rictus grin at him.

"Between the two of us, Director..." Her voice scratches its way out of the modulator speaker, mercury bubbles up damaged throat, "I think you'll find I'm much harder to kill. So you might want to hold off on the death threats."

Now it's even. Now she can look Glamis right in his eyes and tell him to piss off.

"We're both horrible, horrible people, so don't throw around that greater good slogan." She ignores the melted polyethylene trickling down her neck, "Although you are welcome to overextend your ambitions like all the other grand figures of history. Let me know, I'll save you a seat in hell when I get there."

She can tell he's trying not to run, there's a mental tug-of-war going on between preserving his pride and preserving his suit. His nose scrunches up at the acrid scent of burnt plastic.

Glamis goes for the most hasty throw-down of an ultimatum possible.

"At least I know where I stand, woman, I know my allegiances and aspirations. You're nothing but a puppet for the sector-"

He shuts up real fast when the flaming, melting, hissing metal endoskeleton that is half of Spooks' face comes uncomfortably close to his own. The scent of singed eyebrows is unmistakable.

"I'm not gonna say it again. Get the fuck out of my workshop."

He's still yammering on about the war effort, the sacrifices, the social welfare when she slams the door shut behind him. Thought it sounds more like a mantra to convince himself than a speech for her. She takes a moment to douse out the flames, then start cleaning away melted plastic goop.

She gives up halfway through, calls in a cleaner drone, and decides the cool metal floor is a great place to sit while eating the leftover schokolade Glamis forgot to take. Well, eating is an exaggeration, because her tongue is gone.

Spooks thinks back to when she could actually taste sweets, and it's like her tear ducts are functional again.