All is Fair
Chapter 10

Extract from the personal blog of Millie Hargreaves

September 8th, V26 - Morning (Maybe?)

The light was on in the observation room, waking me up from my fitful slumber. Two people were there, discussing something. As my eyes came into focus I could see one of them was Penny, my captor. The other was a man, only slightly taller than her with long dark hair bound with a gold ring.

I could not see his face, but he was wearing a grey business suit that looked very expensive. Occasionally Penny glanced in my direction but gave no indication she thought I was awake. With my eyes slitted, I reached out with my Gunsinger.

With a double layer of insulated Ceramiglass between them and myself, little of their conversation was audible. But I had been honing my skill with the Gunsinger and used it to amplify what noise was transmitted through the window frames.

Faint scraps of their words reached me. It was like listening to someone underwater, all distorted and reverberating, yet I could make sense of it.

“She is not worth the effort of keeping her, Deeds” said the man.

“Venerae will give us everything we demand to get her back” stated Penny.

“But the child is dangerous. If I use my Mare on her she will do exactly as we order”

Penny weighed up his words and glanced in my direction.

“A Mare will be detected by Venerae, I am sure of that. All of our lives would be forfeit in that case” she answered.

He laughed without humour, a chilling sound even without the reverberation.

“When she finds out what you have already done to her, she will kill us anyway”

“Venerae will have a choice, and she will always choose to save the child” Penny stated.

“I think you are not as focussed on the mission as you should be” he responded. “Run a memory purge and get yourself under control”

“Not yet. We still need to convince Venerae”

The man grunted his assent and finally turned to look at me.

“Is she awake in there?” he asked Penny. He had noted her glances at me while they spoke.

He was of Chinese origins I felt, but his face was unknown to me. A cold smile spread across his lips and he regarded me like a python observing a mouse. I was little more than prey to someone like him.

“She can’t hear us” said Penny in answer to his question.

“Don’t be so sure” he replied, watching me with dead eyes. Just his look was sending a shiver of fear through me. Who was this guy?

The man in the suit finished his observation of me and left the room, sending a surge of relief washing over me.

Penny’s voice suddenly came clearly through the earbud.

“Millie, forget you ever saw him” she said earnestly. “If you see him again, just run. Run as far away as you can”

<Who is he?> I typed to her with the touchpad. She looked at the simple words as they displayed in front of her on the glass.

“The master puppeteer” she said. Then she shook her head as if trying to shake something free. When she looked up, the green glow from her eyes seemed brighter. Without another word the lights in her side went out and I sensed she left.

=====

Dusk

The chair shook slightly, a faint rattle sounding from the trolley on my left side. A tremor, like a small earthquake perhaps?

Something had woken me up. Everything was dark, my little cell and the observation room that overlooked it. Another tremor ran through the room, short but intense. A water bottle fell with a soft thud to the floor. The absorbent wall swallowed the sound up to leave silence once more.

I strained my hearing, pushing out my Gunsinger to amplify whatever was coming through to my prison. A faint and irregular popping noise became discernible. What the hell was that?

“Millie!” Penny’s voice exploded in my ears through the bud and I hastily pushed my Gunsinger down. “I am sending two Sentinels to escort you to safety. Please do not resist or they may use force to restrain you”

Before I could think of a response, the chamber door was flung open and two Sentinels entered. Lights flickered on in here for the first time and I could see them both clearly as they came to me, one either side of my restraint chair. I could tell they were the same two that attended me a few times already, bringing food and water.

For my own amusement I had named the one with the factory fresh right arm, still unscratched from use, as Bob One. His more battered companion with a dented chest plate I called Bob Two. Other than my visits from Penny and the chilling guy in a suit, these were the only members of her group I had seen.

Bob One had his assault rifle slung across this chest plate, leaving his hands free to undo the straps holding me down. His stun rod was stowed in a fast draw clip on his right thigh, ready to be grabbed with lightning speed. Bob Two stood as far back as the small room allowed, his own rifle held ready. Same routine as always. I did wonder why it was always Bob One that undid my restraints. He was also the one who followed me into the toilet each time. Maybe he lost a bet between the two of them.

I stood up as soon as the straps came off, making Bob One step back. His right arm dropped to lay his metal hand over the stun rod, but I placatingly put my hands in the air and he relaxed. Funny to think of a robotic soldier “relaxing” but he seemed more animated than the few others I had encountered.

“Please come with us, Miss Hargreaves” said Bob One in his neutral voice. I nodded agreement and went to remove the mask that covered my lower face. The Sentinel’s right arm snapped out and stopped my hand before I got halfway to the mask. “It must remain in place” he stated so I dropped my hand once more.

My two metal escorts led me out of the door and at the outside corridor we turned right instead of the usual left. No toilet break for Millie today I assumed. I glanced out of the windows as we walked past them. It was late in the day, nearly dusk and some building lights were already twinkling in the shadows. A thick black smoke wafted past our view, and then a heavy combat drone lifted up from below, the sensors alight and playing over our little group, a long weapon slung below its body.

Bob One pushed me onto the flooring, covering me with his heavy body as Bob Two opened fire at the drone. The windows blasted apart as his rifle spat bullets in a rapid burst, shards of reinforced glass scattering over us all.

A single shot came in through the window, shearing off Bob Two’s left arm in a shower of sparks and punching cleanly through the concrete wall behind him. Railgun I guessed from having helped Twenty use one in the past. The noise was deafening yet I had not thought to call up my Gunsinger to try and make an escape. It was all too bewildering. Was I being rescued or killed?

Before I could think further, Bob One pulled me up and with machine strength cradled me in his arms like I was an infant. His legs pistoned under us and he ran past Bob Two, heading for the door at the end of the corridor.

I heard Bob Two open up again with his rifle, blazing away one handed at the drone. Just as we got to the door, I looked over my Sentinel’s shoulder to see Bob Two take a second Railgun shell clean through his chest. He slammed back against the cratered wall and slumped, dropping his empty rifle to the tiled floor. Bob One crashed through the door with me in his arms, his armoured frame protecting me and taking it off its hinges easily.

Beyond was a large waiting room, filled with chairs in neat rows, low tables with magazines stacked neatly and a couple of vending machines. The place was just like any waiting area at a hospital or medical centre, so normal it stunned me for a moment. It was remarkable my captors had kept me hidden in such a public place for however many hours or days it had been.

Gunfire sounded from somewhere nearby and another booming crash rocked the building. Bob One headed quickly to a set of doors that lead into a reception lobby, still holding me protectively. The place was deserted and he bypassed the elevators arrayed on one side to push open a stairwell door with his shoulder.

Bullets spanged off his armour plating from above and he rotated at the waist in an instant to shield me with his back.

“Hold your fire!” yelled a human voice “The Sentinel has the girl in his arms”

Bob One’s blocky head looked down at me, his sensors gleaming softly and their lenses reflecting my terrified eyes. “You will be safe” his synthesised voice assured me and he rotated to the front once more.

His left arm kept a grip on me, his seven foot tall frame holding me easily off the landing. The right arm unlooped his rifle and he turned to face the attackers. In horror I realised he was deliberately using me as a human shield.

“Bastard!” I heard an armoured Police Auxiliary shout on the steps above us, flanked by more men in armour and Blue painted Sentinels. The men scrabbled back as Bob One calmly fired his rifle at them, striking a number with penetrating wounds as he emptied the magazine.

He then ran down the steps, taking them two at a time, each impact jarring as we descended. I felt my skin being abraded as I was flung about in the hard grip of the Sentinel. It really felt like Bob One’s rescue was going to kill me anyway. Not that I was sure he rescuing me. Those Sentinels had looked like they were from Pan City Defence backed up by Police officers.

Bob One dropped his empty rifle between jumps and drew his stun rod. As we came to the next landing, two blue Sentinels lunged from the stairs below, trying to grapple my erstwhile saviour. Or kidnapper. I think I had some Stockholm Syndrome going on and was identifying with my captors way more than I should have.

He drove one sideways with a one handed swing of the stun rod, the force of the blow snapping the weapon in half with a bright flash of electrical discharge. The second Sentinel grabbed Bob One around the legs, locking its arms and bringing us all tumbling down.

Bob One released me from his iron grip and I smacked into the concrete wall of the stairwell, dazed for a moment. The two Sentinels were rolling about on the stairs, their pistons driving and motors whining as they fought to immobilise the other.

“Millie, you need to get out of there” Penny’s voice sounded in my earbud again. “These forces are not here to rescue you. They want you for their own purposes”

I ran down the stairs, ripping off the face mask as I went. Penny was lying to me, of that I was sure. Yet a trace of doubt remained, for reasons I was unsure about myself.

More men and Sentinels were clomping up the stairwell from below, so I opened a landing door and hurried through. I found myself in another reception area with a big sign above the counter welcoming me to the Yamaguchi Awakening Centre, Level 1 Testing and Improvement.

I heard shouts and gunfire echoing in the stairwell so with a burst of adrenalin filled terror I ran into the waiting area beyond. As I came through the glass doors, dozens of teenaged boys and girls looked at me with panicked faces. They were all crouched behind hastily upturned lounges and tables, with a few teachers and Centre staff standing in front.

This place was still in operation? How ballsy was it of Penny to hide me in the middle of an actual Awakening Centre still testing kids. They had to be from the adjacent high school, which is why the travel lockdown had not kept them at home.

“Please miss, what is going on?” called out one young man. He was probably only a couple of years younger than me. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ (ꜰind)ɴʘvel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Just an emergency fire drill” I answered glibly. More gunfire sound behind me, putting that obviously into the lie category. My eyes roamed the waiting area looking for an exit. I suspected the main exit was the one I had just came out of.

“Are you the escaped criminal they have been hunting?” asked one cute little girl with pigtails and freckles. Was that the story the authorities had been spreading? It gave them a good cover for the patrols and curfew.

“Nah, she is too short to be a criminal” said another boy next to her. He had his phone out and started filming me, which prompted a flurry of phones being whipped out to record me.

As the kids started discussing my lack of criminal appearance, I honed in on one of the staff. Her name tag identified her as Tammy, Assistant Assessor.

“You, Tammy, is there another way out of this building?” I demanded, standing right up close and giving her my best bad mother look. Another boom echoed through the building, shaking the framed prints on the walls. Whoever was fighting out there, they had brought some serious artillery.

Her eyes flicked involuntarily to the trash chutes set near the vending machines. Of course I remembered, most buildings linked their waste disposal to a central network under the streets. I ran to the chute and ripped the plastic cover off the front, the one designed to stop small children doing exactly what I was about to do. For once I blessed whatever genes had let me stay small and skinny as I got older. With my usual grace I clambered into the chute, looking back at the stunned faces of the adults and kids. Little Miss Freckles waved me goodbye as I let go, still filming me with her free hand.

I am sure I heard Tammy say something about the service elevator at the back of the building, but by then I was sliding feet first down the chute so I missed the rest.

The chutes were designed to be smooth and slippery to assist the recyclable cans and bottles to fall easily to the collection hoppers at the bottom. My hands and feet braced me as I descended, slowing the rate of my fall to something I hoped I could survive. The skin on my hands and forearms burned, with my socks stopping the worst of it for my feet but not actually slowing me down that much.

Suddenly I was in open air then landed with a clatter of cans and plastic bottles in a half-filled hopper. The air whooshed out of my lungs and I disappeared under a layer of trash. It was like being in one of those ball pits for kids, but stickier. For a good minute I lay there, so tired, then I half swam my way to the edge and hauled myself out onto the floor.

The space I was in now had a number of chutes feeding to storage hoppers arrayed around the walls. A single door led out of the room, not including the two big covered hatches that fed to the main recycling tunnels. Near the door was a robot recharging bay, holding a multi-armed service unit.

Its sensors lit up and the small domed head on top rotated to look at me. As I warily stepped away from it, the unit deployed its tracked legs onto the floor and stood clear of the recharger. The arms unfolded showing various tool fittings and then folded back again.

“Well done, Millie” came the distinct voice of Penny from the robot’s communications grille. “My Sentinels are keeping them engaged on the floors above but we are nearly out of time”

“I am not going with you or anyone else” I said to the robot. I hoped it could pick up my words and relay them to Penny. She must be heavily infiltrated into this buildings network to have hidden me here so far, so I did not doubt she could find a way out for me. But that would just put me back in her control.

“Please Millie, I don’t want you to be hurt” her voice pleaded from the robot.

“Just stop lying to me Penny” I snarled back. “I am nothing more than a bargaining chip to you”. I had enough of her lies to me. My Gunsinger rose up, fuelled by my anger and frustration. I screamed my lungs out with all the anger I felt towards her and my little monster ripped the robot in half.

In the silence that followed, I sat on the floor. It was all too much for me, the fight against Carter, the captivity, the loss of Goody. My heart ached to have Twenty at my side, urging me on, helping me find the strength I needed to continue.

“Millie...” said Penny through the earbud. I pulled it out of my ear and threw it into the recycling hopper. I would have stamped on it but my boots had been taken from me, like so much else. Once more I got to my feet and went to listen at the door. There was silence.

The door led me into a series of service tunnels and rooms that filled the lower levels of the Awakening Centre. I picked a tunnel at random, moving as quickly as I dared. The sounds of fighting had ceased and I had no idea where I was, let alone Penny’s forces and those who had attacked the building.

It seemed like a quarter of an hour had passed with no one coming near me. I had my Gunsinger probing ahead of me for noise and air movements. Twice I had to change direction and hide while men and Sentinels trooped past in the distance. Once I heard someone calling my name, Millicent Hargreaves. No friend would call me that so I kept quiet and went down a different tunnel.

I finally encountered a shaft with a sign advising that street level access lay above and to be careful of traffic. I was always careful of traffic I thought so eagerly climbed the inset rungs. The shaft was about ten to fifteen meters high and ended at a metal hatch. I unlocked it from below and opened it up to reveal a cloudy sky darkening into night. It was a typical streetscape in Pan City so I climbed up from the depths and shut the hatch again.

Standing on the street, surrounded by brightly lit towers, I felt relief at last. I had escaped the clutches of Penny and her minions. Nothing around me gave any clue as to where I was in the city, so I could be a kilometre or more from the Awakening Centre with all the walking I had done below ground.

At the end of this street I could see a sign for a Metro station, so I went that way. At least I could get an idea of where I was from the station map. The streets were still devoid of people or traffic, but I could see quite a few residents looking out of their lit windows in the towers, all facing roughly this way. Had they been watching the action at the Centre?

I arrived at the Metro station and saw the name of this stop, Yamaguchi Awakening Centre and School. Crap, I had gone in circles under the streets and came back up right next to the damned place!

My first thought was to turn and run, then two Police Auxiliary Carriers rolled up at the station entrance. Police officers and blue Sentinels surged from the vehicles and surrounded me, guns and stun rods at the ready.

“Millicent Hargreaves, you are under arrest” boomed an amplified voice from a Sentinel. If it had only been Sentinels, I would have blasted them with my Gunsinger. But I could not harm Police officers just doing their job, so I put my hands up and surrendered peacefully.

A female Police Auxiliary quickly patted me down then cuffed my hands behind my back. She was gentle but thorough, her eyes behind her clear helmet visor watching me closely but without malice. She was tall and solidly built, reminding me of Twenty. Once she was done, I was led out into the street and past the waiting Carriers.

“Where are we going?” I asked the female officer who accompanied me. “The boss wants to see you personally” she replied and my escort stopped near the wide double laned street that bordered this side of the Awakening Centre. There were people over there being evacuated from the Tower I could see, including school children. I hoped they were all OK. At least they would have some exciting stories to tell each other in class tomorrow.

With a roar of engines, a VTOL Carrier came overhead, its hazards lights flashing. It was armed too, the chin turret tracking across our group and the sensors checking us out. We must have passed muster because the landing gear deployed and it dropped quickly to the street in a hurricane of vectored thrust.

The engines whined down to silence and the side hatch opened. My escort stiffened to attention and I looked with interest as a man about my height climbed out. He had short blonde hair, with dark glasses over his eyes even at night, wearing a dark grey business suit.

“Mr Jericho sir, we have recovered the target as requested” announced the female officer to my side. I felt a stirring of hope in my chest as I realised who this was.

“Very well done, Officer” said Jericho in his familiar smug tones. “Please have her secured aboard my craft.” I was led past him into the VTOL and seated in a restraint frame used for prisoners, my hands still cuffed behind my back. It was damned uncomfortable but I was sure I would be released once we were out of sight of all the Police Auxiliaries.

Jericho came on board, looked at me and smiled confidently to himself. Two Sentinels followed him and braced themselves to either side of the passenger cabin, their rifles slung. Other than the helmeted pilot up front, that was all of us aboard.

“When you are ready, Pilot, please return us to base” he announced. The pilot acknowledged and the turbines cycled up to full power again, lifting us smoothly into the air. I could see the towers that lined the street dropping away as we rose above Pan City. The setting sun filled the sky with red clouds as the VTOL moved across the vast city, heading east towards the harbour and sea. The noise inside the cabin was remarkably quieter than the other time I had flown in a VTOL craft.

“Hey, Jericho, where are you taking me?” I asked him. This looked like the direction of the Fortress, the massive structure built in the mouth of the bay. It was the primary base for all the Pan Oceanic Defence Forces, where the Guard and the Sentinels had their Armouries and Training Centres. It was the most heavily armed and defended place in the Zone, other than Archimedes Tower.

“Just sit quietly and don’t make a fuss, Miss Hargreaves” said Jericho. “It took a lot of effort and resources to find you, so I would hate to be forced to damage you now”

A chill ran through me. I examined his face and wondered who I was dealing with here. This was not the way he usually acted with me. What had changed?

“Jericho?” I said softly. He met my gaze from behind his glasses and smiled coldly.

“Miss Hargreaves, I realise you may be under some misapprehension” he said. “I am not Jericho-Three. That is my brother, a fellow Avatar of Archimedes. I am Jericho-Two”

I opened my mouth to speak and he held up a warning hand.

“Before you do anything rash, I am fully aware of your talents as a Gunsinger. If you try to use them in any way, my Sentinels will shoot you dead an instant later. I am not afraid of death, as my memories are constantly downloaded via the quantum network to a cloned body held in reserve. I will be back in operation before your lifeless body has time to fall to the floor” He paused in his litany. “Are we very clear, Miss Hargreaves?”

I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. It had always been Jericho-Three that I thought was the biggest asshole in the Zone. He had just been pushed back to second place. What a family he came from I thought to myself.

“Very clear, Mr Jericho” I answered over the sound of the engines. We flew onward to the Fortress, to continue my role as captive and bargaining chip in whatever plans he had for me. Some days I just can’t catch a break.

=====

Excerpt from the personal logs of Jericho-Three

September 8th V26 (2046 AD) - Evening

“Greetings Three” said Jericho-Two, his face looming at me from the large holo-screen in my office. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

“You took Millie Hargreaves into custody this evening. I want her released to me immediately” I said, barely controlling my anger.

My brother paused as if considering my request. “No” he said flatly.

“She was arrested for unauthorised entry into Pan City according to the Police Auxiliary logs. That makes her the responsibility of the Guard and under my jurisdiction” I explained to him. My internal alerts showed my heart rate and neural activity was spiking into the red so I adjusted my metabolism to calm my exterior body signals. I did not need Jericho-Two seeing how much he was pissing me off right now. It would make him try even harder.

“That would normally be the case, I agree, but under the emergency provisions set by the Governors I am now responsible for all access violations in Pan City” Two answered with a hint of smugness. “That makes your little puppet my problem for the moment”

“However, I may be willing to give her to you in exchange for a full and detailed report on your involvement with the attacks in Spitfield and Pan City” he added, watching me intently from his office at the Fortress.

“This is not the time to be scoring Brownie points against me with Archimedes, dear brother” I said through gritted teeth. My alerts were flashing red but I was tired of how he insisted in meddling in my affairs.

“Well Three, I think this is the perfect time for you to come clean on your recent activities. I have been conducting a thorough sweep over the Guard Deployment rosters for the past 12 months and have found a number of discrepancies. Added to that is your constant involvement with criminals and known mercenaries in Spitfield and it is building into a comprehensive case against you”

“Do you know, for instance, that in just the past 12 months alone we have had eighteen Defective Guard Units sent for recycling, but their processors were deemed unrecoverable. Eighteen Units in just the past year? That is a remarkably high failure rate, considering the year before we had only ten Units fail, and six the year before that.”

“If I were a suspicious mind, I would think someone was deliberately falsifying the records and making off with our Quantum Processors. Or maybe even the whole Guard Unit. But what would anyone do with a Guard Unit that was disconnected from the Quantum Network?”

“Are you done, Two?” I asked my brother coldly.

“Not yet, Three. I still need a lot more data before I present my findings to Archimedes and the Board”

He paused, and adopted a concerned look.

“You know brother, I am surprised your agents had not been able to trace Millicent Hargreaves before I did. It was such a simple matter to piece the damaged memory files from the Sentinels she destroyed on entering the City with my surveillance network footage. Things got tricky after she disappeared from the Orphanage, but then I reasoned that keeping an Aeromancer subdued would require specialised chambers, such as found at an Awakening Centre”

“It was easy to run a cross check against all the Awakening Centres to find those with dedicated containment rooms for Aeromancers. Even easier was to recognise a falsified maintenance record at the Yamaguchi facility that had closed an entire floor at short notice”

“I am impressed, Two, that you found her” I agreed. “Since you have intimate access into all the research and Awakening facilities in the City it should come as no surprise to me”

“So what will it take to get Millie released?”

“As I have already stated, dear Three, your full and frank disclosure of your activities”

“That is not going to happen, Two” I stated.

“Then perhaps you can make your request directly to Archimedes and the Board? If you can convince them I will gladly hand her over. Until then she stays here at the Fortress where I can keep her under observation”

I realised Two had me over a barrel and was not going to accept anything but complete surrender.

“Are you still holding a grudge over the death of your previous incarnation? I keep telling you that bomb had nothing to do with me”

“I lost a lot of organic memory when I died that time, Three, and I know you were behind it” he glowered at me from the holo-screen.

“We are both loyal Avatars of Archimedes” I said deadpan to the screen. “I would never want to harm my own brother”

He sighed in sudden resignation, displaying human emotion in one of those rare moments.

“We both have our missions to complete for Archimedes. You do it your way and I will do it mine. Good luck to you Three. I hope you can survive whatever it is you have gotten involved in”

He ended the connection from his end and I sat and looked at the empty space in my office where his image had been. I did feel bad about killing him last time. There was data in his organic memory that I could not erase remotely, so blowing his body apart had been the only option.

Up until then we had worked a lot more closely together, but he had gotten wind of some of my more underhanded operations here in the Zone. That left me as the only one of the Avatars still residing in my original incarnation.

There was a lot of memory hidden in my organic brain that I dared not reveal to either One or Two, let alone Archimedes. It also made me think and act in a far more human manner than either brother, giving me the edge when it came to being devious.

Two had gotten the jump on me, finding and recovering Millie like that. He had learned a thing or two from me but I was still better at this game than he could ever hope to be.

I just hoped I did not have to kill him again.

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