“Okay, now step onto the platform.” The red-haired teen said from behind the console. Noah still hadn’t caught his name. Or maybe he had, but it had simply gone in one ear and out the other. The past half-hour had been pretty hectic, after all.
“C’mon now, don’t have all day.” The boy said, not looking up from the two screens in front of him. Noah gently placed one foot on the circular pedestal that dominated the center of the room and watched as spools of data appeared on the console displays faster than he could follow.
The room seemed purely dedicated to house this strange device and its controls. Thick cables of all colors ran across the ceiling, walls and even the floor, hooking up the featureless metal platform to all manner of devices, most of which resembled something like stereo installations. Some of the speaker-esque boxes were set up at eye-level on tripods, others hung from the ceiling, while others again were angled at him from the floor. Like the cables, the devices were set up in a chaotic and haphazard kind of way that spoke of low budgets and improvised solutions, while also being weirdly organized in a sense. It was clear that whoever had installed these systems had known what they were doing, even if Noah didn’t have a clue what the setup was supposed to be. If someone had shown him the machine without context and asked him to guess, he probably would have given an answer along the lines of a home studio for holographic rolls.
After a moment’s hesitation, –a short-lived fantasy of resisting his captors once more– Noah slumped his shoulders and took the full step onto the pedestal. In truth, he didn’t have the heart to fight back anymore. He’d had one shot, quite literally, and he’d blown it.
Noah had always wondered what firing a gun would feel like, though not in the boastful, creepy, near-obsessive way that some of his peers did. Weaponry was heavily romanticized in Runoran culture and media, its use synonymous with bravery, strength, and glory. Those who were willing to take up arms were the ones with the ability to defend all the Runora were and all they stood for.
His species’ armies always needed soldiers. If they didn’t fight, they would be wiped off the galactic map. That was what the recruitment rolls said, anyway. It was a message that had been drilled into Noah the same as it had been with every other Runoran child growing up.
From public firing ranges and military parades in the education districts to war-rolls played before bedtime, the leadership of his city spared no effort to convince the next generation to join up. And it worked, too: Over half of Noah’s classmates hoped to serve in the Militia some day. With a bit of luck, a few of them might even pass the Academy’s entrance exams, like his brother had.
Noah himself had never been particularly swayed by the recruitment efforts, something about them just put him off somehow. It made him avoid the public honor duels Cai loved to watch, or politely decline when his friends wanted to go watch a parade together. His mother often called him level-headed for it, though he didn’t really know what that might mean. His mother often came with metaphors only she seemed to know.
Standing here, Noah quietly wished his head had been a little less level. Maybe that way he would have been able to actually fire the gun.
He ran through the steps again in his head; When he had the pistol firmly in both hands, he took off the safety first by flicking the small switch above the trigger. Next, he turned on the power cell fitted behind the chamber and waited for the pistol to automatically chamber a round. The whole process had amazingly taken him only about four seconds, but when he pulled the trigger expecting a deadly projectile to be spat out of the barrel, he was left with a disappointing metal click.
Perplexed, Noah had turned the pistol sideways to check if the safety really was off. Rosa needed no more opportunity and wrestled him to the ground before he could try shooting her a second time.
Four seconds. That’s how long his little rebellion had lasted. Four whole seconds of glorious resistance before his captor turned the tables back on him. It was pathetic. His mind still reeled, playing his actions within those four seconds over and over again like a roll on repeat:
Grab, safety off, power on, shoot, nothing.
Grab, safety off, power on, shoot, nothing.
Noah’s calm outward appearance belied how his mind boiled as it searched for answers, which became increasingly outlandish as time went on, It didn’t take long for the replaying memory to shift and change, twisting what he remembered to fit whatever explanation popped up: The gun didn’t fire because it was never loaded, or it jammed, or it refused to work because the power cell was empty, or the room had some kind of inertial suppression stopping the bullet.
It wasn’t until he imagined a version of the scenario where the gun did fire, only for Rosa to impossibly catch the projectile with her bare hand, that Noah realized his imagination was running wild in an attempt to justify the mistake he made, because surely he’d made one.
He tried to reset and recall what exactly had happened without any bias, but the rampant imaginations had done their damage. By now, Noah had at least six different versions of the encounter swirling through his head, and he wasn’t entirely sure what to believe anymore. It had all happened so quickly, after all. With a sigh of resignation, Noah decided his unfamiliarity with firearms was to blame. He’d never even seen the particular type Rosa carried before. All he could really tell about was that it was some kind of coilgun, judging by the shape of the barrel.
If only he’d spent more time learning how to handle a weapon, he might have been able to save himself, Noah thought. He was different from nearly everyone he knew by taking a dislike to violence. It wasn’t the first time he had these thoughts, the overwhelming sensation that he was an oddball, and that being different was a bad thing. The feelings had never been so strong, though. He might have decided not to linger on what mistake he’d made anymore, that didn’t mean his brain was calm all of a sudden. Instead, it had just freed up his neural pathways to brood on his own insecurities.
“There you are, you little bastard.” The teenager across the room muttered, interrupting Noah’s downward emotional spiral. He brought up another screen depicting Noah’s silhouette. A prominent red circle was located over his hip, pulsing angrily against the cool-blue backdrop of the screen. The teen stuck his hand in a dial globe and slowly turned it. Noah watched as the equipment that surrounded him followed the movement, zeroing in on the indicated spot on his hip.
Without really knowing why, he took one experiment step to the side to see if the strange devices would follow him by themselves. They didn’t, and the annoyed glare of his captor told him he shouldn’t try that again.
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It took red-hair a few more seconds to readjust for the sudden movement, but then the studded black surfaces of the unknown machines were all lined up, their focal points all concentrated on the spot on his hip. With a final whir of actuators, the devices locked in place and began emitting a droning sound that pierced to the bone. While the noise wasn’t particularly loud, it still made Noah wince, the overlapping frequencies shifted and turned fluidly like the sound waves themselves were alive. It made Noah feel small, and he instinctively pressed his hands against his ears. It helped, but not as much as he’d liked.
The teen across from him didn’t seem to mind the noise. He frantically handled the device’s controls, the screens surrounding him now showing peaking graphs instead of Noah’s silhouette. A flickering warning message popped up on the screen, followed by another, and then two more. Noah couldn’t make out most of the prompts as they were mirrored from his point of view; but one line of text was prominent enough to burn itself into his retinae:
ЯOЯЯƎ ИOITA⅃UӘИAIЯT
The teen grunted something unsavory and bit his lip in concentrated anger as he dismissed the warnings. Whatever he was doing, it seemed to be going poorly. Another warning message appeared, this one showing a timer and some smaller text Noah couldn’t read. After briefly orienting himself, Noah was able to flip the numbers in his head, noting that it was a countdown. A countdown that had just ticked below two minutes.
The youth flicked a switch as beads of sweat started pearling on his face, prompting the wail of a siren and red emergency lights to switch on throughout the room. Not three seconds later the room’s sole door was thrown open and a bewildered Rosa hastily made her way inside, pistol in hand and her face set in concern.
“Nathe, what’s going on?” She asked, deciding to holster her pistol again after one look around the room. Noah felt his own heartbeat quicken, spurred on by the urgency of his captors.
“Gotta get his workskin off quick” Nathe stammered, gesturing at Noah. “Tech in there is better than any I’ve ever seen, the warbler’s gonna be overwhelmed any moment now.” He continued, but Rosa had already stepped onto the platform. Her expression turned sour for a half second as she entered the energy field, but she bit past it and stepped in front of Noah, towering over him. She moved her hands to the magnetic clasps that kept the thick environment suit around his body but then hesitated, looking Noah in the eyes andpulled her hands back.
“You understand this is life and death, right?” She asked, her voice distorted by the warbler, though Noah could tell she’d spoken in a soft and gentle tone. He swallowed, looking around the room. Nathe, the teenager, was still frantically working the controls of the warbler.
With every passing second, the screens surrounding him got more cluttered with red warning signals. One minute and thirty seconds to go. The airlock-like door opened again and Roke stepped in, having to squeeze himself through the opening. His eyes were set wide and he was panting with effort.
“Nathe? What are we looking at?” He demanded, stumbling over to the control center to join the stocky redhead.
“Bug is using polyphasic encryption algorithms or something like that. I can’t get a bead on it, and it’s fighting back!” Nathe said, now nearing full panic, his accent growing more pronounced as a result. “Once it figures out the warblers wavelength patterns we can expect a full data breach, Roke. Whoever’s made that thing will have control over our data cores.”
“Okay… how do we stop it?” The fat man asked after a moment of uncomprehending silence.
One minute left.
“We could cut all physical lines and go full local for a while, but we don’t have the time for that. Our only hope is to squash the bug and, I’m sorry to tell you Petals, that means we have to disrespect the twerp’s personal space.” Nathe said, frustration creeping into his voice. “You gotta take that workskin off of him and you gotta do it now.”
“I know it’s just… shit…” Rosa shouted back at him, then turned to Noah and slumped her shoulders.
“I really hate to do this to you, little buddy.” She sighed, and grabbed at his suit, but Noah took a step back, out of her reach.
He shuddered, then started taking his workskin off himself. He didn’t even realize it at first, not until he heard the telltale click of magnetic clasps coming loose. His hands worked on autopilot, performing the movements without conscious thought. Taking his workskin off wasn’t any more complicated to him than putting shoes on, though it did take longer.
A small voice within him was shouting: Telling him to stop, to stall, to wait for the timer to reach zero out of spite for his kidnappers. It was what his father would do, what Cai would do: Offering resistance at every step, never giving in, never relenting. Hy all accounts should be doing that too, yet something was stopping him. Something was making him go along with every wish of Rosa and company, and he didn’t know why.
Perhaps it was the fact that his captors were just people: Noah could put faces to them, and names as well. They weren’t scary people, although he was still frightened around them. Noah knew he was too quick to trust, but there was a panic in Rosa’s eyes he just couldn’t associate with an evil person. He looked into them, taking in the brown of her irises and black of her pupils, and she looked back.
At thirty seconds remaining, Noah made a choice.
“Pure eyes are a sign of a pure heart.” he muttered with an air of finality. His hands had acted on instinct, but now they were moving quicker, growing strong with purpose. He undid his torso clasps in a matter of moments and threw the piece off, the clattering of his air tanks against the metal platform muffled by the shimmering field emitted by the warbler.
He pulled down the thick, rubbery material of his leg pieces, exposing his workskin’s internal tubes, pumps and heat sinks centimeter by centimeter.
“There!” Nathe called out, abandoning his controls to stand next to the platform. He pointed at a small pocket-like extrusion in the graphene-fiber workskin material “Signal’s coming from there; the tertiary warming tank.”
“On it.” Rosa responded, pulling a prydriver out of nowhere. She stuck the flat edge of the tool between the recycler and the gel surrounding it and pried it loose. With a click, the tank’s cap came off and spilled a foul-smelling, grayish fluid all over the pedestal. Without missing a beat, Rosa grasped the brick-sized tank with her bare hand and stabbed her prydriver inside. With a grunt, she twisted the tool around until something made of metal tore inside and a black object not much smaller than her thumb came rolling out. The object was completely smooth and featureless other than the sharp edges that gave it its shape, making it hard to discern what exactly it looked like.
Noah and Nathe bent over curiously to examine the thing that had just come rolling out of his workskin like a parasite, but Rosa beat them both to it. She grasped the device and threw it against the far wall, drawing her pistol before it had the chance to fall.
With a crackle of electricity, Rosa’s gun spat out a ceramic-tipped tungsten slug at three times the speed of sound, piercing the black device straight through the center of mass before it shattered into fine dust against the wall behind it, not leaving as much as a dent.
At six seconds remaining, the countdown stopped, and the warbler fell quiet with it
“There.” She said, turning towards the stunned boys with a broad grin of either pride or relief, or maybe both.
“So Noah." She said, holstering her pistol with her hand still slick of heating fluid. “I think we owe you a bit of an explanation. I’m Petals, and I’m with a group called the Cradle of Branches.”
Roke continued for her as he too approached the platform “It may not look like it, but we’re here to help.”