Tap, tap tap.

The sounds of the stylus quietly being thumbed and striking the desk were the only sounds in the room. The hands that held it were wrinkled at the joints with veins tinted ever so slightly cyan blue in the way that only excessive age treatments could cause.

“Fucking hell.” The hand’s owner mumbled to himself. He was an older man with a soft rounded face and a small frame that would be begging to be folded in half if he was ever caught out on the streets. He moved his finger over the red button labeled “scuttle” testing the feel and weight behind it. The holes inside the makeshift faraday cage were waiting to be activated at which point the tubes connected would send compressed CHOO2 through the nozzles instantly raising the temperature of the sealed chamber to over 1200°C. He might as well be in the room with the kid-

No, subject 5314. He let his hand come to rest down and went back to tumbling the stylus. Leaning back there was an imperceptible hiss of hydraulics as his spine straightened out to push him into the back of his office chair. With his other hand he fished through his lab coat for an old digital recorder and pressed the side button which had seen so much use the red dot had worn off.

“Subject 5314 research log…” Tiredly he rubbed his eyes before tapping through a few screens on the tablet. The recorder continued to dutifully record the silence, occasionally punctuated by the sounds of some distant muffled noise.

“Research log 431. Subject assimilation has resulted in the second recorded success although cognitive function is,” he turned the dial on one of his monitors to switch the camera inside the cage to electrical readings, “severely impacted. Recorded data shows the presence of the Militech Universal Data Suit has caused a significant decrease in body temperature, the highest recorded spike was-” He paused to turn the dial before grimacing at the graph’s peak. “Fifty six degrees celsius for a duration of one minute twelve seconds with a cranial peak of seventy four degrees celsius for three seconds with an average temperature of sixty two degrees celsius.”

He twisted the dial twice more to set it back to the standard camera which showed the subject strapped into the netrunning chair. He was in a heavy duty netrunning suit with thick straps before and after each of his joints to minimize the amount of movement and flailing that would happen while the nerves were being replaced and modified by the nanites. The suit was a porous elastic metal material that allows sweat to leave while absorbing heat from the skin's surface although instead of sweat, blood had pooled out from all over covering the chair and much of the floor. The puddle around the chair had spread several feet from the base with the color going from red to a brackish brown-black the closer it was to the chair.

5314’s face was uncovered from the neck up and the mouth was distended open to the point where the skin had started to split from the force of his screams. His cybernetic eyes were popped out from the skull looking like they’d been dunked into acid for too long with one fallen to the floor and the other hanging off his cheek still attached by an optic wire. The face was covered in the blackened blood which was starting to dry and crust, cracking as muscles twitched at random.

“Bleeding observed from the pores. Observed temperature range and blood loss might have a… minor decrease in cognitive function.” He paused then cleared his throat.

“Temperature range and blood loss may result in temporary cognitive impairment.”

He went quiet once again as on the camera 5314 made an indistinct groaning that turned into a wail which, while short lived, was just enough to come through to the Doctor’s ears and into the old microphone on the recorder.

“There may be a-”

5314’s wail dipped then picked up again.

“Will you fucking shut up!” The elderly man screamed, shoving himself to his feet and knocking back his chair. He pulled back his arm with the tape recorder, the urge to throw it at the glass cage nearly overwhelming his mind but instead lashed out with his other hand sending the data pad and computer terminal crashing off the desk.

“FUCK! How the fuck am I supposed to get results when they give complete scop to work with?!” The hydraulics under his skin worked double time as he stepped over the broken glass. He pressed the recorder again and slipped it back into his pocket ignoring the slight ace in his arms from the outburst. People like him were the kind to use their minds, not their bodies though they suffered for it when the situation demanded such exertions.

He reached the box and tapped on the screen turning the viewing window transparent while he tried, and failed, to control his panting breath. They were going to kill him for this. Militech and Biotechnica had put down millions of eddies into his research at the start of the project years ago but now, well. Now he was operating off the lightest of the memory of a skeleton budget as new executive heads came and replaced old ones. It wasn’t helping that it was all classified under the highest executive orders but subject to approval from the lower committees so all they saw when the forms crossed their optics was “Classified request - 100,000 eddies; annually”.

“Leave it to Luccessi to leave a mess for me to clean up.” the Doctor mumbled to himself as he looked at 5314’s twitching body. The subject was alive if you considered any measure of brain activity alive, but functionally he was dead. He was the last one that the Doctor had in the facility, the very last try he had to get some real results for the corporation and the best he could do was a vegetable with a heart.

“They’re going to have my head over this,” he said into the empty room. At the start there had been over fifty of the brightest minds in his generation within the facility. The best of the best, all striding forward to create the next phase of humanity. Now it was just him, an old man alone in a dusty room of empty cubicles with a handful of robots for the heavy lifting. Errently he wondered if he should just go outside and walk around until he got shot by some gangbanger going for the change in his money shard. For the first time in years, he opened it with a quick flick of his eyes to check how much he had on him. 8630 Eddies. Barely enough to rent a studio apartment in a decent place for a few months and not nearly enough scratch to make him disappear from the corporations. He would probably be able to avoid Biotechnica for a little while but Militech? They’d always been the heavy hitter on this project and they’d demand every enny they invested paid back with interest.

“Miss Rrrr… haaaaaaann aaadd heeey. SSssttt uh, uh uh. Beh Bueh tttuh.”

His focus snapped back to the sealed cube in front of him. 5314 looked like he was trying to struggle against the restraints. The Doctor quickly tapped at the screen on the side to bring up the camera electrograph view nearly pressing his face into the screen. His brain activity was increasing.

The Doctor practically pushed himself away from the wall panel, servos whiring in excitement as his new singular focus was the monitor that had been thrown to the ground. Reaching the desk he picked it up off the floor, his heart hitching for a moment seeing it was dark. His eyes looked over the mess before noticing the disconnected cable in the monitor stand.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Stupid stupid,” he mumbled to himself as he haphazardly shoved it back into place connecting the wire. “This thing can survive bullets of course it’s not broken.”

He tapped on the screen trying to rush it past the operating system notices about corporate misuse and reopened the camera program. Face inches from the screen, he watched through X-ray transmission as subject 5314’s brain moved and shifted like liquid inside the skull. Certain sections were starting to solidify with the moving liquid mass beginning to slow around them before becoming increasingly stable.

“Ha, hahaha! HAHAHA! Yes! Finally!” The smile that split the old man's face from ear to ear took ten years off his wrinkled stooped form as he stood tall, not daring to take his eyes off the monitor as if his precious lifeline would disappear.

“I’ll contact the department heads first and then- no I need to work on reapplication for the sol-”

“Mr. Haaandy mmMr. Stuuuhd dooess itt beeter!”

The words were muffled despite the force they were belted out with. Or maybe that was the only reason he had heard it through the sealed chamber. His eyes flickered between the room with the subject and the monitor as the mental rollercoaster his heart was on started beating for the plummet.

“I can’t believe it,” he said to himself as his eyes burned a hole into the screen. The brain had stopped before becoming solid and now the chunks were floating around like ice cubes, slowly bouncing off the sides of the skull. He looked at the camera’s diagnostics and saw its tracking had shifted from ‘stagnant’ to ‘moving target’. Trying to swallow his mounting dread he turned the knob on the side of the monitor to switch back to the default camera where the subject was…

“Huh?”

There on the table, still restrained and tied down, subject 5314 was jackknifing at the waist while his mouth moved rapidly. The Doctor watched for a moment in disbelief before tapping the screen to turn the audio on.

“Mr. Handy and Mr. Studd dohes it betteur to leuht youu go alllll niht! Eeevery night! Now aaaahvailabllle inn threee new styyhl-”

His finger pressed the mute with enough force to send the monitor listing away, tilting the screen where he could still see 5314 continue to thrust into the air. He blinked rapidly, thoughts lagging behind his movements as he stumbled back falling into the chair when his knees made contact. The wet slapping sounds of the subject's pelvis frantically hitting the netrunner’s chair covered in brackish blood continued to ring in his ears. For the second time today he reached into his coat pocket pulling out the recorder with shaking hands. His thumb hovered over the worn down record button before pressing it with a slow deliberate motion trying to quiet his quivering body.

“My name is Doctor Issac Newg, and I am,” he stopped trying to collect his thoughts. “I am recording the final phase of project Renfield for my personal records. I have failed in my directive.” He closed his eyes breathing in and out trying to emulate the centered emotions he’d once felt on a meditative BD. “My next recording,” his body remained tense but the cool shivering plaguing him came to a stop as he decided on his next course of action, his next step. “My next recording will be from outside these walls, or not at all.”

With that he clicked the recorder and swiftly dropped it into his pocket. Pulling the swivel chair forwards he pushed the monitor back into place and moved the camera to the corner of the screen where it seemed like 5314 was maintaining his deviance. He pulled up a secure connection and penned out a message, not to the council directors who managed his budget and the project but instead to the logistics department of Biotechnica.

“Advanced notice, bio organism requires immediate transference to disposal at Oregon Biotechnica facility. Priority Alpha. Safety level,” he thought for a moment, “Omega.” Just high enough that they would send someone competent, not so high that it would set off alarm bells. He grinned, even all alone down here having some special privileges from the head of Militech came in handy. The grin became a grimace as his eyes were drawn to the still thrusting subject. Handy indeed.

He set up encryption for the message that would move first from the facility to the private servers before reaching its intended target. Setting the message to send in five minutes, he started a timer in the bottom of his optics and moved from his desk to the hallway, footsteps leaving behind the mindbroken subject. He strode through the hallway with purpose as he set up a secure line to the company bank accounts that were in his name.

He’d never cared for contingencies and that attitude was punishing him in dividends. What good was offshore accounts when you’d spent the last forty years underground where money was worthless? His mind ticked through the options he could have taken and faster than he was ready, he reached the server room.

‘3:44’ remained on the timer. He entered feeling the weight of his years now more than ever as he pulled his personal link out of his arm and connected to the server. As the seconds ticked down he went to work, rerouting set ordinances and scrubbing his traces from his life down here as best as he could. It wouldn’t be enough to save him, but it would buy him just a little bit of time, a few days at most, which he’d need to set up his escape.

“I suppose I should be thanking Luccessi for leaving behind such a mess.” Indeed, if not for the succession problems within Militech, there would have been many more eyes on him and the founder’s secret pet project. Instead he was the last caretaker of a forgotten casket buried deep underground while the war hawks above pitched and squabbled over the still hot seat.

Doctor Newg cleared his head as the timer ticked down to the last minute. Screens popped up which he modified and closed moving one after the other as the ex-disk started to heat up taking the mental load off his frontal cortex. He would have liked to enter into a full dive for something like this but it would leave behind traces that would take too long to erase given the volatility of 5314’s brain. He finished downloading the most damning data as the timer ticked to the last thirty seconds. Information about the facility dating back to its creation in 2040. Data collected and stored safely in a packet inside his mind, he shifted through the capture log for the AI.

When the AI was first captured it had taken merely 2.73 seconds for it to trigger the cutoff failsafe of the integration program and yet it had still managed to reduce the subject to mush. Well not mush, he mused as the timer reached the final ten seconds. At least the last subject he had to work with retained some level of ‘higher’ brain function, even if his mind was filled with literal corpo scop for the masses to feed on.

The timer ticked down ever closer to sending out his request.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Right as the message sent, the server crashed, corrupting the encrypted message. It tried to reject the message but the priority level dictated that it had to go through. A combination of old tech and old school big wigs ego came crashing together and the targeted server port broke down sending what it had received of the encrypted message through a public relay trying to contact the facility server while the server in the facility went through a hard reset. Doctor Newg wished he could thank Antonio for his abrasive paranoia. If not for him thinking his own IT department was trying to cut off his personal messages such a failsafe would never have been allowed to be present on a corporate Militech server, especially not one in a facility like this.

Humming back to life, no worse for it, the server checked and the target server made contact once more at which point it sent the message properly. Doctor Newg disconnected and began the walk to his personal chambers. He had to guarantee that the encrypted message would be intercepted as it traveled through a public relay, but a Militech server? That would be noticed for sure, and likely by most existing gangs which took an active interest in the comings and goings of corporate entities.

He felt confident it would also spark NetWatch’s interest which, well he wasn’t happy about it but they’d be contending with Militech red tape before they could make a move against the corp and by proxy, himself. By the time Militech realized what was happening and cut him loose to appease NetWatch he’d have already disappeared. Cracking his neck for the first time in years, he stood tall as he made his way into his personal chambers. It was time to get out of this place and see the sun.