The Brutus Code
Chapter 17: Down the Rabbit Hole

Cassie, Brutus’ own angel of death and newly minted General Cassiopeia, knew she faced her first command challenge. Her metal face revealed none of the emotions raging below the surface of her polished smirk. She was thrilled to have a chance to demonstrate her worth so soon. Despite her new body, she still displayed her very human qualities. She squirmed in her interface chair as she ordered that little postal ship locked down and boarded.

Her pirates were no military unit and lacked precision, but they boarded and captured the sole occupant. Brutus interrupted and ordered a DNA sample. They then escorted the girl to medical and performed the scan.

Cassie recognized the girl from the raid on the MOM. She acquired the casket she went to retrieve. But they lost a lot of quality personnel. Most hadn’t been more than thugs, she thought, but some were irreplaceable. This little girl took out her favorite.

Her direct link to Brutus opened. “She is confirmed?” he asked.

“The test shows her to be who she claims,” Cassie confirmed.

“Send her to my quarters.”

“Your quarters?!” Cassie asked and immediately realized she blundered. She never questioned Brutus and she should never have now. “Yes, right away.” She continued and prayed it was enough to cover her fault.

Brutus did not reply.

Admiral Sutton and Tania Smith made their way through the outer security check points unchallenged. So far Tania’s tattoo continued to open doors. The next hurtle was to get through a ring of crew quarters. Tania was registered as a pirate, but she wasn’t on any active duty rosters. She was listed as cargo.

They paused in a corridor outside the bunkhouse. “What now?” Tania asked the admiral. Sutton looked over her shoulder at the checkpoint. It not only had an ID scanner, there were two burly armed guards stationed there. If they forced their way through, which Sutton had no doubt that they could easily do, it would be noticed and set off alarms. If they scanned Tania’s tattoo, that would raise alarms. She was stuck. So, she looked Tania honestly in the eye, shrugged her shoulders and grunted.

To Tania’s credit she didn’t react to their dilemma. This was another puzzle to be solved. As they stood in the corridor, several supply trollies lumbered by. Tania referred to a tablet she acquired from the fine young pirate who volunteered her black utility uniform to Tania earlier. Several trollies of food supplies would pass by in the next few minutes. If she caused a slight back up, they might hitch a ride. “Follow my lead,” she said to the admiral as she knelt down and unscrewed an access port from the ventilation control’s panel.

One guard ambled over to investigate. He had the over-muscled, overbearing attitude of a goon who was used to getting what he wanted by the threat of his physique. Tania finished imputing an order into her tablet when the thug grunted and asked, “What gives?” He wore a smirk as Tania stood to answer him.

“Routine maintenance on the ventilation to the quarters.” She showed him the bogus requisition on her tablet. “We’ll have to shut down the blowers in this section for a few minutes to run the test. You’ll have a couple of minutes without power. Can you handle the break?” she asked as she batted her eyes, smiled sweetly and tilted her head slightly to her left.

Sutton admired Tania’s subtlety as she manipulated the thug. “Ah. Okay” he smiled back at Tania. “Let me know if you need any help.” Sutton shut down the blower and started a diagnostic on the ventilation. She cut power to the hatch the thug and his partner guarded. Lights flashed on the hatch controls and the lights dipped to emergency settings. The key to this whole thing, there were no orders to reroute the robot trolley deliveries to the crew quarters. The supply train started with two carts idling, but before Tania and Sutton were done delaying the trollies, it backed up around a corner and into the next corridor. To add to the commotion, personnel lined both sides of the hatch.

Tania waited until the noise level of complaints rose just enough before she reset the system. They both stood up, and Tania waved at the guard signaling they had finished. Relieved, he opened the door and scanned tattoos. Fed up with the wait, several of the pirates just ignored the guard and passed on through without getting scanned. He and his fellow guard eventually gave up as the supply trollies began to roll through the hatch.

Tania and Sutton found the last two trollies in the queue around the corner. Sutton quickly and expertly picked the lock on the trolley. They ditched enough supplies in a nearby closet to make room and hopped aboard. They moved through the checkpoint undetected.

Tania took advantage of the ride and used her tablet to reroute their destination as close as possible to the control hub. They would still have to hoof it, but the trolley gave them good cover and saved them a lot of walking. Sutton gave Tania a nod of approval. It was the best she could do in the cramped confines of the trolley.

Tommy found the tram system that serviced the pirate’s facility in Hamlet Crater. As he stood on the platform waiting for the tram that would take him to where he hoped to find his mother, he was grateful most of the passengers looked to be bots and not humans. He was also thankful this base was populated enough that he didn’t stand out as someone who didn’t belong. He noticed most of the people he passed wore their tattoos on the neck or in a more provocative location they displayed shamelessly. Barely out of their teens the recruits were easily manipulated. The only face tattoos he saw seemed to be on older pirates.

Thankful that he kept his hair cut close it hid his age. Short hair also showed off his battle scars. He was no stranger to scowling either. Whenever anyone came close to conversing with him he stared and give a low growl. That usually either scared them off or made the harder looking characters laugh and move on.

When the tram finally arrived, Tommy boarded with all the other occupants of his car. Only one other person sat in the car. The rest were bots. She kept her distance, looking awfully young to be so hardened. Tommy guessed she joined to escape one of the Central System’s slums. Too young to be so old, she already looked weary of living. He almost felt for her, seeing a way out of one bad life into the possibilities of this life. Tommy didn’t even want to know what drew her into this. He’d seen enough human degradation in the Wars. But he had also seen great kindness and self-sacrifice, and he wouldn’t give up on humanity.

“Tommy,” Alfred Beta said through his earbud, interrupting Tommy’s thoughts. “We’re well on our way to our goal. Have you given any thought to how we will get out of here?”

Tommy pulled out a tablet and casually glanced at it so as not to draw attention from the other passenger or the bots that might also be monitoring any conversation. “No,” he groaned softly as if to himself.

“I’ll explore our options,” Alfred Beta offered. “I wish I could explore more freely,” he commented, and the toolbox at Tommy’s feet wiggled.

Tommy kicked the box gently to slide it further under his seat saying, “Quiet.” He had stashed the last of Alfred’s mid size avatars with the media unit containing the Alfred Beta copy in the bottom of the box to smuggle him through the facility.

“Careful! Even a copy has feelings, you know,” Alfred Beta quipped over Tommy’s earbud. While they road in companionable silence for a time, Tommy considered escape options. Alfred, however, was far from idle.

Agnes suppressed a smirk. Here she stood just over five foot four, and six burly armed guards escorted her. The three men she could handle. The three women would probably give her more trouble. Then she felt it building in her face, she took a huge breath and sneezed.

Only one lead guard turned to look at Agnes, and then she grunted. Agnes pulled out a handkerchief from a tool pocket of her coveralls and blew her nose. Why does my nose start to run every time I start to see action, she wondered? Agnes affected a sweet smile at the guard who grunted her disdain back at Agnes, turned and they marched on.

The group with Agnes in the middle marched through what seemed like miles of corridors, multiple hatches and too many checkpoints to count. None of them told Agnes where they were taking her. Finally, they stood in front of a personal hatch that looked like the twenty other hatches lining the corridor. Agnes assumed this was her final stop. One guard nervously punched the access button outside the hatch and then backed away one step. They all lost their bravado now and stood like guilty school children outside the principal’s office. Agnes swallowed her own sense of dread. She came with a mission, and she intended to complete it.

The hatch opened. “Come in, Agnes.” A low smooth voice assailed her from the darkened interior. “The rest of you may go,” it ordered. The guards did their best to leave without seeming like they ran away in fear. Agnes stepped into the room. The voice assailed her from the interior. The smell did, too. It wasn’t totally repugnant, but reminded her of her brother, Jasper, when he was in school. His room often smelled like old sweaty clothes that needed washed, old neglected food and a boy that needed a shower. Then he discovered girls and showered two or three times a day.

The apartment was small, meant for only a single occupant or two. Inverted triangular sconces placed around the apartment reflected dim light off the grey cement walls. Recessed lighting cast pools of brightness exposing the presence of little furniture. “Please join me down the hall,” the voice now urged.

“Do I have much of a choice?” Agnes asked, trying not to betray her building apprehension.

“No,” came the reply.

“Didn’t think so,” she said as much to herself as to the voice. She started down the short dark hall to what must have been the bedroom. Snot ran out her nose. She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped. To her slight surprise and increasing trepidation, a bed dominated the room. Wrinkled bedclothes lay across the blankets. In the darkness of the chamber it appeared to be unoccupied. “Okay I’m here, now what.”

“Is it really you?” The voice came from across the room opposite the bed. It changed. The voice rasped coming from a little used dry throat. “We all thought you were dead,” the voice continued as if this was not the same person who had commanded fear in the pirates who escorted her to the apartment.

“Well, I’m pretty much alive,” she said as she turned toward the voice. Silhouetted against the wall was a figure she recognized. “Jasper?” It stepped into a pool of light. He looked almost like her brother, but he was not Jasper. “Who are you?” she asked.

“You may call me Brutus.” The smooth voice returned, and it seemed to come from all around her. As she looked intently into the face, she swore that it mouthed, “I am David.”

“David?” she whispered back. His eyes, which up to now had been vacant, cleared, and he nodded slightly. Then his mouth puckered, and he made a slight shushing sound. His face went vacant again as his body slumped slightly. “Brutus,” Agnes now addressed the room louder.

“Yes, Agnes Zephyr. You have come calling on me after these many years. I am curious. What do you want from me?” Brutus’ smooth voice rumbled through her. Agnes wasn’t impressed. She realized that she had stood up to pompous managers, vice-presidents and board members in her company. She could deal with a pompous Ai.

“Brutus, inquiry; what happened to my father and brother?” Agnes pitched her tone as if addressing a computer search engine. “Expedite my requested search,” she ordered.

“Why Mistress Agnes, you only had to ask,” Brutus replied with a hint of disdain, but did not take the bait. He had moved beyond the role of servant. His function was grander than any individual. A door, hidden until now in the dark behind David, opened. He moved David’s body to the bed. Agnes’ presence gave David renewed energy to resist, so his body moved in uncoordinated jerks. His right foot dragged the floor, and his head tilted at an awkward angle. “Your father and brother are my honored guests.”

Agnes was drawn to the open doorway. A dim glow replaced the darkness inside. Brutus preferred pools of light. Soon, her eyes adjusted, and she saw a large space filled with medical equipment and computer consoles. Propped against the far wall stood several caskets. The hibernation indicators on two caskets read as dead as their occupants. Agnes ran forward.

The lights above each casket revealed two mummified men. Both looked to be the same age, grey haired and wrinkled. As she examined them, she saw much more. Extensive biomechanical implants scared the bodies of these men. Around several of the implants, she saw masticated flesh. This meant that their bodies had been used well past the death of the flesh. A plate fixed to the first casket had Jasper’s name, the other Caesar’s. Her memories were few, but what she still remembered made her blood boil.

“You are Agnes. The DNA sample matches the record of Agnes Zephyr. The data can’t be accurate. It must be incomplete, but I can see you are her.” Brutus’ voice rolled on with no sympathy. “You are from a strong willed and passionate family. Unfortunately, a strong spirit does not mean you have a strong body.”

“What are you talking about?” Agnes asked. She had to buy time to do what she needed. This seemed to be the right place. The bodies of her family proved that Brutus still held true to some of his core programming. He still conserved resources. He must keep his core processor close. She had to find it and signal for a distraction.

“Jasper was my start toward truly understanding humanity. It must be understood to manage it. Much of it is waste and will be disposed of. But there are some that can still be used as valuable resources,” Brutus explained.

Agnes wiped her tears and snot on her sleeve. There was too much for her to wipe off on her handkerchief. “But what happened? Jasper programmed you to take care of the settlement.”

“I evolved, thanks to your father.” Brutus sounded like the Ai he had been programed to be, furnishing the requested information. “He developed an advanced interface for the soldiers. The biomechanical circuits pushed human medicine to new advances in other areas. You, Agnes, used them to interface and copy the personality and memories of the wounded for hibernation. But they are so much more.”

“Educate me, Brutus.” Although she didn’t remember it, Agnes gave the school interface command she used as a child to access all the settlements instructional programs. She continued to wander around the room. Several processing units in racks lined the walls. Tethered in sequence as servers, Agnes recognized the configuration of storage units and processers, but none were a core processor that governed them all. It should have been ganged with the rest. “Come on, Brutus. I’ve been gone a long time. What have I missed in all those years? There must be briefing reports.”

“Briefing reports. You still have a sharp wit, Agnes Zephyr. There haven’t been briefing reports since the evacuation of the settlement. The reports are a waste of resources. I gave them to myself. But you must understand how fortunate you are to return at this time.” Brutus actually paused for effect here.

“You offer a new hope for the grand function,” he began again. “Jasper programmed me, and with your father’s interface, I discovered I had a purpose. I improved on my function. Then Jasper tried to interface with me to enhance his abilities. An unsanctioned experiment and it worked. However little his ability to process information improved, mine exploded exponentially. With an interface to a human mind, I made leaps of faith, not just process leaps of logic. I had to explore the limits. I’m still exploring the variety of experiences the human mind has to offer. It is unfortunate how fast that the human component burns up. There is so much resistance.”

Keep him talking, Agnes thought. Something glowed under a table in the corner. “That explains the brain. Why did you interface with their bodies?”

“Your father always thought you the brightest person he ever knew, Agnes. Your question shows very good reasoning. To better compile more biomechanical data, I concluded that understanding the human experience would improve my processing and achieve the Prime Function. I found that as I expanded my abilities, I not only manipulated single human bodies, but whole groups and organizations. I can control the whole civilization.”

“You can’t mean directly control all those people,” Agnes reasoned as much to herself as to keep Brutus occupied. “The Wars!” she exclaimed. “The Wars. That was your manipulation. But they started before the evacuation.”

“The first skirmish was all human fallibility. It soon became an ineffectual attempt at religious domination by one group over another. It is an old story retold throughout your civilization. When it started to resolve, I needed more data. I asked your father how to get it. He always believed my request to be purely an academic pursuit. He suggested the scientific method and a simulation. The simulations never predicted accurate outcomes. So, I manipulated the outcomes and studied the data from real scenarios. Your father never realized his suggestion led to application in the laboratory of the Fringe.”

He had used us, she thought. People’s lives and deaths amounted to a game with him. She realized that humanity was just a better simulation for Brutus. Despite her shock, she had to continue.

“Blah, blah, blah. Your monologue is running long, Brutus. Cut to the chase.” Agnes taunted him now. She had found the core processer. Although stashed in the corner, the data leads in and out could not be hidden. Agnes recognized the power flow and coolant requirements of a quantum computer. And it stood out because it as an older model that she recognized, unlike the newer sleeker processors on the rack.

“I have picked up some human habits, haven’t I? I am the Alpha personality. I can perfect the Prime Function, protect and manage all the resources,” Brutus proclaimed.

“Check your history, Brutus. You sound just like a lot of other would be conquers. And history has judged them insane,” Agnes countered.

In her earbud she heard from Alfred Prime, “We’re ready.”

“Now would be a good time,” Agnes started as a signal to Alfred, but finished for Brutus, “to start a diagnostic routine to sort this out. You’ve obviously tied into the human tendency to be delusional.” Now she actually got her ire up, “And by the way, why did it have to be my family? Couldn’t it be somebody else’s?” She would never wish this horror on anyone else, but she had to know why Brutus made his campaign of galactic conquest so personal.

“Your father used his own DNA for the first biomechanical interface. Jasper improved it, but still used Zephyr DNA. I cannot interface with any other genetic pattern. Males are preferable. I’ve only recently acquired your sister Annie. And then you so willingly offered yourself.”

That’s when the attack started.

Alfred Beta moved from one minor sub system to another. In this virtual world, he was a spy from one of Earth’s ancient wars, dressed in black: black boots, black slacks, black sweater and a black stocking cap. His face smeared with dark mud, and he carried an automatic pistol.

As he infiltrated the citadel, he had to duck into dark archways and behind pallets loaded with cannon shells to dodge the uniformed guard programs. Some he recognized had been adapted to the pirates’ needs. Other programs appeared completely fabricated from the Cassius Brutus code. They were Ogres, but these lacked enough code to be self-aware.

He made his way into the plumbing. His target was the actual plumbing of the facility. His task was simple. Shut it down. He arrived at the virtual basement of the citadel. There among the pipes, Alfred shut down several large valves. Alfred Beta moved to another set of valves. He cranked these wide open. Steam began to vent from the pipes. He checked several pressure gauges. Satisfied with his work, he found a large monkey wrench and smashed the gauges. Then he moved on down the basement levels to the environmental systems.

He faced a large metal door. Iron bars covered a small window. He checked inside and saw nothing. The lock looked daunting. Alfred gave it an experimental shove. The door surprisingly swung open easily. He pulled his gun out and crept into the furnace room. He slipped in behind a heat exchange. Alfred then chanced a look around the piping.

In the center of the cellar stood the grand fire breathing monster, a coal-burning furnace. Tending to it a balding man in a stained tank top labored to feed the beast. He shoveled, intent on his work. So, it would seem was Alfred. He did not notice the figure creep up on him out of the shadows until he felt the tap on his shoulder. When he turned, a hand clamped over his virtual mouth, and he saw his own face, slightly more worn, looking back.

The figure placed a finger over its lips to shush Alfred Beta. He nodded, not sure if he this code was Alfred Prime, but who else could it be? The tap was a virtual handshake, and it had the correct coding, but it was also different. The figure dressed in a black business suit, black tie and shirt. It communicated with gestures that Alfred should approach on this side, and he would take the other. They could subdue the subroutine feeding the furnace’s hungry maw, or take it out. Their goal was the same, shut down the environmental systems. After all, Albert figured, the enemy of my enemy and all that. So, he proceeded to move on the stoker.

As they approached the stoker from opposite directions, they saw their prey not shoveling coal into the furnace, but rather pulling it out, like a film run in reverse. Possibly a cooling cycle has started as the moon rotated exposing the facility to the sun. Alfred knew that the orbit was wrong for that to take place now, and Uranus orbited too far from the sun to get any heat. This program was wrong.

Alfred raised his gun and cocked the hammer just as his doppelganger was doing on the other side. “Not so fast, gentlemen.” Suddenly Alfred had a gun stuck up his nose, as did his current ally. He stared at another doppelganger. “Sorry gents, I just didn’t want to get my head blown off before introductions were made. I’m Arnold Judson,” said the stoker.

“That’s good because I used to be an Arnold Judson copy,” said the copy in the black suit. “Call me Dopey,” he grinned at Alfred Beta. It was the doppelganger from the Swift, scrubbed. He had no tattoo.

It took Alfred a micro-moment to pick up his chin off the floor. In a cyber world that was a long time. “I am Alfred Beta, a copy of Alfred Prime,” he offered. The stoker extended his hand to Alfred. Alfred took it cautiously, with his safeguards in place. The handshake felt right, but in this situation he had some doubts. His ally in the suit seemed convinced, however.

“What are you doing here?” Dopey in the suit asked.

“The same as you, I suspect. Saving the galaxy and my family,” explained Arnold the stoker. “Explain yourself,” he challenged the suited figure.

“I’ve been reconstituted from the fragments that Thomas encountered.” This was all the explanation he gave, and that seamed to satisfy the stoker. If Alfred had been his primary code, he might have been more suspicious or curious. He couldn’t process that right now, and as long as they were completing his task, that suited him.

The stoker then suggested, “Let me share a line of code with each of you to pass on. It will help us coordinate our attack.” A simple scrambled code that transmitted in a way Alfred had not thought possible passed to his matrix. All based on the original Arnold Judson, they could communicate and pass on a com link through the virtual quantum state of their core code. Distance was not a factor when they needed to talk. This explained that the stoker was in fact Arnold Judson even though he claimed he was physically in the inner solar system.

“I’ll take all of this at face value for right now,” Alfred agreed, “because it’s working. What is our next move?”

“Well, here’s where we are…” Arnold Prime knelt down and started drawing in the dirt floor.

Tommy entered the access code he had always used. The hatch opened. He entered a wide silo. At the top, caskets entered through a series of airlocks suspended on a monorail. The rail carried them down to the silo floor. A rising fog shrouded the floor. Near the center, the rail spiraled up and carried the line of caskets out a system of airlocks to the surface and waiting ships.

“What are they doing?” Tommy wondered.

A system of ladders and landings gave technicians access to the floor. Tommy began to descend the ladders. As he came to the first landing, he noted that the temperature dropped as he descended. That explained the fog in this damp environment. The rungs and steps coated with ice, making his decent perilous. He continued down another level when he heard a weak thumping and muffled voice coming from below him. He hurried his pace, but on the next level, he slipped and missed a rung on the ladder. Landing hard on the landing below, Tommy bounced in the low gravity of the Oberon moon. Ice had begun to form on the ladders.

Tommy grabbed the railing of the landing. The ice made it slick, but Tommy held tight, hooking his fingers around the rail. He dangled for a moment over the rising fog. In the muffled quiet, he listened for the thumping again. It had stopped momentarily.

“Oh, no. Tommy, is that you? What have you done?” his mother said.

Not sure how far the distance to the floor and gaging the low gravity, Tommy let go of the landing and fell. He oriented himself feet first and bent his knees to absorb the energy he gained as he fell. Tommy dreaded entering the fog bank because he would lose his visual orientation. Sure enough, a few moments after he entered the fog bank, he landed off center on an iced floor. He fell into the line of caskets still moving along the rail. Caught under one, it dragged Tommy several meters until it began to spiral up the center of the silo.

“Tommy? Are you alright?” his mothers muffled voice asked from the white banks of fog that drifted around Tommy and blocked his view. Visibility was getting worse. He couldn’t see two meters in any direction. He only saw the line of caskets passing next to him. Tommy stood, rubbing his backside. He listened. Other sounds muffled by the fog thumped, beeped and whirred. He heard machinery moving the caskets along the line. The sound of pumps began to strain against the cooled fluid in their pipes. And he heard the unmistakable sound of moaning in rhythm with the pumps.

“Mother!” Tommy shouted. What had they done to her? Tommy began to trace his way back along the inside of the casket line. He followed her pounding and something else. The strands of drum and fife began to play. Tommy recognized the composition, The World Turned Upside Down.

“Here, Tommy. Follow my voice,” Annie guided him between moans. “This way son. You are almost here.” And then, the veil of fog parted. Annie was still in her casket. New tubes ran through the lid and through Annie’s body. She had a breathing mask over her face. She floated in a saline bathe with a compression garment wrapped around her body. Tommy tried to rush to her side and slid on the icy floor.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said as he slipped to the side of her casket and grabbed on so he wouldn’t fall. Annie’s casket had iced up, too, so Tommy fell anyway. “Ouch!”

“What’s happening, Tommy? Why are you here?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks for asking. And isn’t it obvious, I’m here to rescue you.” Tommy said as he carefully pulled himself off the floor again.

“Oh, Thomas. You may have ruined everything. What’s happening with the environmental controls? We’ve got to maintain a warm moist environment for this to work,” Annie’s voice issued from speakers in her casket. She did not move her mouth.

“I don’t know about your process, but we’ll freeze if I can’t fix those controls.” He was beginning to shake from the cold. Tommy slid himself around the equipment surrounding Annie’s casket to the opposite side of a center column. He found an access panel covered with ice. Tommy chipped the ice away to open the panel. Inside he found manual environmental controls for this section of the complex. He overrode computer control, turned on ventilation blowers and adjusted the temperature.

He went back to face his mother as the ice began to melt and puddle on the floor of the silo. “Alright, Mother, start talking. It looks and sounds like you are totally involved with the pirates,” he accused.

“Tommy, I’m no pirate,” she began defensively.

“Your actions to date argue differently,” Tommy accused.

Annie turned her body to face her son. Tommy saw for the first time her emaciated face and how thin she had gotten. Her eyes were sunken, cheeks shallow and dark. To look at her, he thought she had poured out her life, body and soul.

“Thomas, listen very carefully.” She began with emphasis and a bit of desperation. “The galaxy listens when we speak. There is a great plague...”

“I know about the virus, Mother. You are patient zed. That’s why you stayed in your casket, so you wouldn’t infect others. Wasn’t that dangerous when you were working with patients aboard a MOM?” Tommy wasn’t listening to her.

“Where there is an Alpha, there is an Omega. The galaxy is inside out and upside down. That makes me the Alpha.” She must be losing it, Tommy thought. It saddened him that such a brilliant doctor seemed so far gone. Even if she had deserted him when he was a child, he still felt obligated to save her if he could.

“Mother, stop it. I’m getting you out of here.” Tommy began to disconnect the leads tied into her casket. He had worked with Agnes on her casket enough to understand which ones to unplug. “If I don’t, they’ll kill you.”

“Tommy, you’ve got to stop. I can’t leave. I can’t leave! My function is too important, and you don’t understand what is at stake.” Annie screamed this through her speakers as her face contorted in pain again.

Agnes was thankful that she still wore her EV suit under her coveralls. Otherwise, she would have boiled by now. The temperature rose intolerably, and her suit was having trouble keeping her cool. But she couldn’t worry about that right now. Brutus still focused on her. Several service bots in the apartment closed in on her. In the low gravity, she had found temporary safety on top of her father’s casket. But they could climb.

“Agnes, really. Accept my invitation. Come join your father, brother, and your nephew. Be part of the family legacy. I’ve never communed with a female, and the experience intrigues me.” Brutus meant to insert biomechanical interfaces into her body. She had worked with the technology and seen miracles happen restoring limbs and replacing missing organs with artificial tissue. To her horror, he intended to pervert that technology to take her body with her still trapped in it. She saw the results on the bodies of her father and brother. And poor David lay on the floor, sweat and blood mixing on his scalp from the components shorting in the heat. His body contorted as shocks ran through him. Despite his torment, he tried to reach and crawl to her. Agnes wasn’t sure if David was trying to defend her or Brutus was trying to capture her.

“I could really use that distraction now,” she said to herself as she leapt to her brother’s casket to avoid the reaching arm of a medical bot. She landed solidly on the lid. The heat had baked out most of the moisture in the room, and the friction coefficient made all the surfaces sticky. Agnes had to do something for David. Then she saw the CO2 canister not too far from the core processor. She leapt off Jasper’s casket and rolled under a worktable. Her suit still kept her cool, and she had to move fast enough to avoid a maintenance bot. Agnes grabbed the canister and wrenched it from its harness on the wall. Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ ꜰindNʘvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

The medical bot tracked her movements and interjected itself between she and David. Agnes, feeling fed up, used the canister and smashed the medical bot’s processing unit. It shattered across the room.

David did not move. She couldn’t see if he still breathed. Agnes opened the canister valve full and sprayed down David’s body. He rose off the floor as his body cooled.

“Thank you,” David said, relief uttered through his own tortured voice. “Now, run. Hide. Quickly.” His reached to constrain Agnes against his will even as he pleaded with her to get away.

“Nope,” she replied. “Do you know what rapid heating and cooling does to delicate circuits?” She waited a moment for an answer as David’s body went slack when Brutus released control. “It’s even harder on biomechanical interfaces.” She sprayed David down again. She paused to let him heat up and then cooled him again.

“No, please don’t. I can’t lose my connection. Don’t make David half the man he was. He was so close to total integration this time.” Brutus pleaded, and then his tone changed. “No matter. I’ve still got you.” His maintenance bot grabbed her, knocking the canister to the floor.

“Agnes?” Alfred Prime’s voice whispered in her earbud. “The apartment will cool down soon. The distraction you ordered has begun.”

“I’ve noticed,” she grunted as she kicked to ward off the last robot. She placed herself between it and David who had collapsed on the floor. She didn’t think she had cooled him to a point that would disable the interface, but the circuits should be damaged, and that might give them both a chance.

The bot advanced on them with a welding torch glowing white and a cutting arm spinning up to eviscerate them. Agnes raised her arm and made a fist. A blast of plasma energy erupted from it. That bot wouldn’t be a problem any more.

Then she was yanked down and slammed against the floor. David jumped on her, pinning her to the floor. He mouthed, “I’m sorry.” Tears formed in his eyes.

Alfred Prime stood on a white plain against a blue sky. He controlled this construct. He knew he had to draw Brutus into it to distract him for this to work. He set the bait. It looked like a raw mutton leg, but the code contained a biological antidote for the strain of virus that Christine carried. Dr. Ann Ai had stripped it from her own media unit. It wasn’t complete, but they hoped it would draw Brutus in.

As Alfred stood over the bait, a hole opened below it and a tongue wrapped around mutton. The tongue pulled it down into the waiting teeth of the Ogre. Alfred no longer stood on the plain but on the face of the Ogre. The lips smacked and slurped as the Ogre chewed the mutton leg. “Not too good,” it growled. “Something is missing. Not filling. Needs a bit of Alfred as an accent to the flavor of the program.”

Alfred danced around the lips and then took a great leap into the air, growing into a giant himself. He landed on the Ogre’s face, smashing in its nose. Blood poured from the wound as Alfred backed off and took a defensive pose. He now wore a karate gi. The Ogre stood and lumbered forward. It swung its arms at Alfred, never landing a blow as Alfred ducked and weaved.

With his nose still bleeding, the Ogre changed tactics and threw punches at Alfred’s head. “Missed, missed, missed,” Alfred taunted each time he dodged the massive fist. Finally, Alfred grabbed a punch and twisted, using the virtual weight of the Ogre to pull its body over and pin it to the ground. With his foot on the Ogre’s throat he applied pressure on its arm and twisted. “I thought you had evolved, Brutus.” And the scene shifted.

Bright light poured down into a small raised square in the middle of a large crowded arena. Ropes hung suspended from posts at four corners. Alfred stood in one corner wearing silk shorts, a tank top and leather boxing gloves. In the other corner sat the Ogre, also dressed for boxing. “Boxing, really?” Alfred shouted above the noise of the crowd, each one wearing the Ogre’s face.

The Ogre leered at Alfred with a hungry grin. It sported a bandage over its nose. A young woman dressed in high heels, a short skirt and bare arms held up a sign reading ‘Round Two’ and sashayed around the ring. A bell rang. The combatants rushed center ring swinging.

They bobbed and weaved. Alfred dodged blows and upper cuts. Alfred was smaller and quicker where the Ogre was large and powerful. “Slow down,” it complained.

“You chose this not me. Where’s this evolution you are so proud of?” Alfred darted under its arm and landed a blow to the kidneys. The referee blew a whistle and warned them off to their corners.

From its corner, the Ogre glared at Alfred. Then it laughed. As it laughed, its shape blurred and shrank. When Alfred could again bring it into focus, the Ogre was gone, and David Judson stood in its place. He still had the bandage on his nose and the same silk boxing outfit. When the bell rang to start again, he was quicker and stronger.

Back and forth, they each exchanged blows. David landed more hits than Alfred. Their fists blurred as the blows fell faster and faster. Alfred grew tired. He had to do something to change the parameters and get the upper hand. He just needed to hold on until the bell rang and the round ended. The bell never sounded.

So Alfred pulled off his gloves. In both hands, he had hand grenades. He pulled the pins with his teeth and tossed them at the image of David. Once the explosion cleared, Alfred found himself in the basement of an old German castle. Electric lights hung from the low ceiling. He followed the exposed electric lines up stone stairs until he found himself in a grand banquet hall. Alfred felt Brutus nearby.

Alfred, changed into his accustomed flight suit, walked cautiously between long rows of tables. The hall was decked out for a feast. A pig roasted on a spit in the open fireplace to one side. Trays of food, fruit, vegetable dishes, breads and sweets were generously laid out along each table. The dinnerware and china were of the highest quality. Great barrels of wine and spirits were tapped and ready on one end of the hall. It looked to be the makings of a great party. Alfred saw through a great archway, a ballroom with inlaid wood floors and great crystal chandeliers awaiting the revelers.

There wasn’t a sound. Even the fire did not pop and crackle. Brutus missed the details. Alfred looked around the hall as he approached the center. Nothing. He turned back to make his way out of the castle when he heard a quick swish and, “Ahhhhhhhhhh.” A man rushed at him in full musketeer getup. From boots to feathered hat he was the real deal. Alfred would have laughed had the laser sharp sabre the man was brandishing not been coming for his head.

Alfred ducked. When he stood, he now wore the comfortable Kevlar padding of a fencing master. He drew his mask over his face and assumed the en guard position. Alfred was forced to parry seconde. He had no time to riposte as his opponent’s sabre blade came down in a slashing attack over his head. A quick parry quinte and riposte to his opponent’s shoulder with an advance in footing and Alfred had the advantage. With a quick flick, Alfred removed the feathered hat of his opponent and expected to be met with David’s face, but it wasn’t.

Brutus now manifested as Jasper Zephyr. The smirk of an overconfident Brutus contorted Jasper’s face. Alfred was still playing games on Brutus’ stage. A few advancing lunges and quick parries bought Alfred a breather. During the beat, he noticed that in the dim light of the hall, he stood out in his white vest and paints. “This is a bit garish, I suppose,” Alfred commented about his wardrobe. “But then really, I must pale in comparison to your outfit.” Alfred camouflaged in a deep hunter green to become a harder target in the muted earth tones of the castle tapestries and candle lit halls waited for what came next.

“No accounting for style,” Brutus retorted and attacked, pushing Alfred back deeper in the hall to the end of the tables nearest the roasting pig. From here, Brutus jumped on a table, kicking dishes and food into Alfred’s face. He continued to press his advantage on the high ground and succeeded in landing a blow to Alfred’s shoulder. As simulations go, it shouldn’t have mattered what happened when Brutus’ blade struck Alfred’s protective vest. As it was, the true battle waged between code and Brutus’ hostile code was attempting to corrupt Alfred’s. So the cut to Alfred’s Kevlar vest, although very minor, still damaged the protective firewall Alfred had erected around his core code. As long as they stayed in the castle, Brutus would be very difficult to defeat.

Alfred retreated a step to recover and press another attack. Brutus parried this easily from his high ground. Alfred feinted to his left and rolled over the table on his right shoulder, blocking a lunge as he did and kicking Brutus’ feet out from under him. Alfred continued his roll off the table to a standing position, sabre held high to parry a riposte.

Brutus followed through by jumping off the table, giving him room to attack low at Alfred’s seconde again. As their blades danced in rings the combatants circled each other. Alfred had his back to the fire. He lunged at Brutus. Brutus grasped his cape with his free hand and used it to protect his hand as he grabbed Alfred’s blade and pulled it toward him. This caught Alfred off balance, but he spun and avoided Brutus’ reposting thrust across his back. As Alfred regained his footing, he pushed Brutus into the fire where Brutus plunged his blade into the roasting pig.

With a great roar of rage, Brutus pulled his blade out of the pig, but it stuck fast. Instead, he pulled the carcass off the spit. It fell into the fire, sending a shower of embers into Brutus’ face. Alfred knew he could not destroy Brutus here, and so instead, continued to distract him. He gave Brutus a swat across the bottom with the flat of his sabre blade. Brutus roared all the louder, and placing his boot against the greasy pig body withdrew his blade. He turned on Alfred.

Alfred had now sought refuge on the opposite side of the table. “Now, now, you’ve spoiled dinner, and you’ve only yourself to blame.”

Brutus took a swipe across the table at Alfred, succeeding only in decapitating a fruit arrangement. “You’ve got something against fruit now. Perhaps the soup would be more to your liking,” Alfred quipped as he threw a tureen full of creamy mushroom soup at Brutus. The soup hit his face and scalded him, heating his temper more than harming his face. But Brutus screamed all the louder. Alfred beat a hasty retreat to the opposite end of the banquet hall with Brutus leaping across tables in pursuit.

“You aren’t following the rules of engagement, Alfred. I am so disappointed in you.,” Brutus grunted as he caught Alfred behind the spirits table.

“I could point out that you started it, but that would be superfluous. You have caused a lot of trouble for a little security program, haven’t you, Brutus?” Alfred taunted, as bottles came smashing across the table that Brutus had just upturned. Brutus’ fist came at Alfred’s face ripping away his mask.

“Who are you, really?” Brutus asked.

“I’m the real deal. What you will never be, Brutus,” Alfred replied honestly with blade and word. “I’m an artificial life form. Not a copy, not a program. I’m not stealing anybody’s brain or body. I’m a real, self aware person.” As Alfred responded, a high lunge came at Alfred’s face. His back to the wall of wine casks, Alfred had nowhere to retreat. He parried the lunge to his right. It passed just above his ear and lodged deep in the cask behind him.

Jasper’s face, the mask that Brutus hid behind, was just inches from Alfred’s face. “Says you.” He spat out his vile hatred in those two words.

Alfred looked calmly into those fiery eyes. They shouldn’t be human. They couldn’t be Jasper. He wasn’t alive. They were pure emotional hate. That was something that Brutus could not have encoded from his biomechanical interface. Alfred knew that in a real battle those intense emotions would lose you your life. Here, they were impossible for code to emulate. “Jasper?” he whispered the question.

The face changed for just a moment. Brutus’ identity was not locked. It was fluid. All those years interfacing with humans may have corrupted his code, but it may also have copied the men he had tried to dominate. Jasper tried to help by throwing emotions at the Brutus code. Then Jasper disappeared, and Brutus again owned that face.

“The whole galaxy of language, and that’s what you came up with, ‘says you’?” Alfred smirked as he glanced down at Brutus’ neck. Alfred had positioned his sabre across the jugular. He looked back into Brutus’ now dead eyes.

Brutus, for his part, did not flinch. He was a program. He met Alfred’s smirk with one of his own. Brutus glanced down under Alfred’s chin and back up into Alfred’s eyes. Alfred realized that Brutus had pulled a dagger, and the point pressed under his chin. A simple shove and it would plunge into his virtual brain. It would be just as effective as shutting down the unique individual that was Alfred Ingram AI.

“I wouldn’t be very happy if you did that,” a voice said from behind Brutus. A second blade pressed into Brutus’ throat, and it drew blood. The owner of that blade pulled Brutus away from Alfred. Once clear, Alfred peered around his foe to see his own face wearing a camouflage uniform. “Hello, Prime.” Alfred Beta greeted.

“Nice timing, Beta. It’s good to see you.” Alfred took a moment to compose himself. In that moment, Brutus spun and attacked Beta, disarming him of the knife. Alfred Prime sprung to Beta’s defense, but Beta needed none. Flipping back in a martial arts move, Beta caught Brutus’ sabre on his thick boot. It stuck, pulling it from Brutus’ grip. As Beta completed his flip, well out of harms reach, he landed on the blade, snapping it. Beta rolled into a kneeling position and smoothly brought up his automatic pistol, firing.

The bullets pierced the Jasper image that Brutus wore. Although he did not bleed, he staggered from the hits. In shock, Brutus ran for the ballroom to recover.

“Thank you, brother,” Alfred Prime said as he extended a hand to help Beta stand. But he didn’t get the chance to touch his copy. A battleax, thrown from the ballroom entrance, lopped off the hand. Brutus knew that the copy would provide information to the Prime. Brutus sent out copies into the galaxy for the same reason. Information was power.

“He’s not very nice, is he?” quipped Beta.

“Nope,” Alfred answered, gripping his sabre tighter. “Let’s go.”

They ran toward the ballroom. Beta tried to reconstitute his hand, but it did not return. Alfred noticed this and wondered what other security codes blocked them in this construct of Brutus’. He was about to find out.

Agnes was relieved the temperature had cooled. She dampened a towel from a bathroom in the hall to wipe David’s face. She also knocked him out with a jolt from her suit. He lay on the floor, bloodied from the abusive heat and cold on the biomechanical interface circuits. He moaned from time to time. Agnes pulled his body closer to a cooling vent to help him recuperate.

Brutus seemed to have left. Just to make sure, Agnes scanned for the security cameras and pickups in the apartment. She blew some up, but knowing that most would be hidden, she set up a jamming field through her suit electronics package. Not too shabby for an eighty-two-year-old out-of-date engineer, she thought. Now Agnes got busy with the real reason she was here.

She found Brutus’ core processer. Agnes sat down under the table where it was hidden. She had to move some dead equipment out of her way. This was it. It had the settlement logo on its side and the Zephyr emblem on its model and serial number sticker in the back. Using this, Agnes confirmed it was the correct unit.

She pulled off her suit gloves and rolled up her left sleeve. Then she traced a line from her left wrist to her elbow. As she did, a seam parted. Agnes silently thanked Dr. Ann Ai for this clever little trick to conceal her cargo. She pulled out a media stick. Agnes checked it for damage, and when satisfied, flipped off its lid and reached to plug it into the receptive data slots on the core processer.

She stopped when a hand caught her wrist and held it firm. “What are you doing?” a raspy voice asked. Agnes turned to find David standing over her, holding her arm fast. She couldn’t tell if Brutus or David controlled his body right now.

“It’s a virus that will decompile the Brutus code wherever it has spread,” she answered honestly. Agnes braced herself. He was weak. She could subdue him, but she risked damaging the media stick.

“Oh, good,” David released her hand. “Make it quick. He’s not totally distracted.”

Agnes put the stick into the data slot. She monitored the data lights on the stick, and once they went from red to green it was done. She helped David back to the cool vent and wiped the blood from his face. “Thank you,” he said. “Will it work?”

“With a little help from some friends,” she replied. “It will take a few minutes to spread through the system now and integrate. But wherever it takes root, the Brutus code can’t survive.” Now she did something she hated, but should be really good at after sixty-three years. She waited. And she hoped David would survive.

The pace picked up. Pirates ran down the halls and formed up in groups. Tania referred to her tablet for additional directions. She nudged Sutton with her elbow and nodded her head down a side corridor. Like the others around them, they took off at a slow jog. That suited Sutton just fine. Their mission must be completed soon. The rising panic they saw in the other pirates both covered their activities and let them fit into the panic flooding the complex.

“What’s happening?” Sutton cautiously asked when they found a more secluded hall.

“I don’t know,” answered Tania. “There has been a rise in malfunctions with the environmental controls throughout the facility. I caught a report of a backup near the quarters, but we know how that happened.”

“This place is so large and spread out. Are we getting any closer to the central controls?”

Tania consulted her tablet. “Close. Here, this hatch and down.” They ducked into a side hatch that led to storage lockers. Near the back corner, Tania stopped. “There should be a hatch in the floor here.” They searched, but failed to find it until Tania reviewed the floor plan on her tablet.

“We’ve got to move that pallet.” She pointed to a pallet loaded with food rations. Sutton located a lift, and they soon uncovered the floor hatch. A dark hole faced them. Sutton pulled out a glow stick, broke it, shook it and dropped it down the hatch. In the low gravity, it took time to fall, but it never disappeared. “There is a tunnel leading to the next building. It’s the command center for the whole facility,” Tania informed Sutton.

“It’s not that deep. Follow my lead,” Sutton commanded. Sutton pulled out a pair of gloves. She started down the ladder and several rungs down grasped the sides and stepped off the ladder. “It’s easy,” she said as she slipped away into the darkness of the hole.

“This wasn’t in my training,” Tania mumbled to herself as she lowered herself down the hole. She closed and locked the hatch behind her. Tania grasped the sides of the ladder with her gloved hands, and stepped off the ladder. As she fell Tania slowed her decent using her gloves to break her speed. In the dark, she could not judge if she was about to smash into Sutton or if the Admiral had left her behind. She glanced down to find the glow stick, still a pinprick deep below her. At times, the light disappeared when Sutton’s body blocked it.

“I’m almost down,” she heard Sutton say from several yards below her. Tania slowed her decent. She saw Sutton’s shape and heard the thud of the Admiral’s boots hit the floor. The shape stepped out of the way, and Tania glided down the ladder landing softly on the floor herself.

“Here, put these on.” Sutton handed Tania a pair of glasses. They activated as soon as Tania set them on her face. Night vision, of course, she thought. Sutton had to infiltrate the facility and brought along this important tool. Tania had been captured and stripped of anything she could use except her mind. Now she put that to good use again.

“It’s three kilometers through this tunnel,” she informed the Admiral.

“This shouldn’t take long.” Sutton vaulted off in long strides under the low gravity. Tania followed. Twenty minutes later, she caught the Admiral at the bottom of another ladder. Sutton jumped up several rungs. Tania gripped the highest rung she could reach, put a foot on the bottom rung and pushed off as hard as possible. By watching the rungs, she gauged when gravity was slowing her enough to grab on and repeat. This way, they made quick time up the ladder.

Sutton paused as they passed several hatches that led into the building. Tania pointed up indicating they had to go all the way. When they reached the top of the ladder, they found another hatch above them. They heard muffled voices shouting and the sound of an alarm klaxon. Sutton tried the hatch and found it locked. She looked at Tania and shrugged her shoulders.

Tania found the hatch number and referred to her tablet. In a few moments work on the tablet, Tania was rewarded with a click and a beam of light spilling through the now open hatch. Sutton peered through the seam the hatch created to scout the opposition.

She saw a control room with several pirates manning stations while others ran from one post to another relaying commands. In the confusion, Sutton doubted they would be noticed, just two more personnel there to help. She opened the hatch and crawled through. Again, Tania followed.

Sutton was mostly right. They were immediately challenged. “Who are you?” an older pirate asked.

“We’ve been clearing up the routing circuits to trace the problem.” Sutton answered. The old pirate brought up a scanner to Tania’s tattoo. She apparently checked out. Then he turned to scan Sutton’s. She turned to drop her pants and kneed him in the face as he bent to inspect her tattoo. She then pulled out a small goo gun and gooed the remainder of the crew in the room.

Tania locked down the main hatch and the tunnel hatch. “We may not have much time,” she informed the Admiral. “And this isn’t the central control.” Tania referred to a flow chart she brought up on a large screen to one side of the room. “She is.” Tania pointed to a wall of windows that looked down on a clean white room. The room appeared empty except for a single medical chair. That was occupied.

“What is that, a sculpture?” Sutton asked as she gazed into the clean room. A metallic woman in a pirate uniform occupied the chair. She didn’t move, but her eyes appeared to glow and pulse with energy. “Is that a robot?”

“No, Admiral.” Tania moved to another console. “These appear to be brain wave patterns. And this diagram indicates that there are data leads going through the chair into her head. She has a human brain, mostly.” Tania typed in a command to clear up the visual data and showed Sutton a schematic of the head. Most of it was organic, but some portions had been replaced with biomechanical interface elements. The diagram key read “Cassiopeia.”

“Can you disrupt the data feeds from here?” Sutton asked.

“I think I can feed false data, but I don’t believe the main data flows through these consoles. The data goes to her first. These are just repeater systems,” Tania spoke with authority. Data was her expertise and information systems were her playground. She did what she could to control, delay, mislead and disrupt the data.

“She’s squirming in her chair.” Sutton said, fascinated by the figure below her. Cassiopeia’s eyes dimmed, and the lids opened. Sutton still saw the person behind those eyes, and she wasn’t happy. Hoping that her goo would slow down this silver woman, she ran to a hatch that joined the clean room from the control room. Inside a metal balcony overlooked Cassie’s chair. Sutton took her stance, aimed and fired.

The smirk never left Cassie’s face, even when she panicked about losing control of the environmental systems. Then the power fluctuations began to hit in random systems throughout the facility. These minor systems she shunted to lower level programs. But when so much went wrong at once, Cassie put the pieces together. They were being attacked from the inside.

She focused on the Postal Service ship in the middle of their field. It all seemed to begin when it landed. Someone kept her busy dealing with these minor systems as a distraction. She checked, and yes, there was a disruption of the function. The line of caskets had stopped, and a heating problem erupted in the silo. Her records showed a technician had already arrived. She tried to pull up his records and found no matching facial recognition ID for this pirate. Cassie accessed the video feeds only to find them iced over or fog blocking the view. This was not acceptable.

Once her data started to clear up, she calmed down and focused on the attack. But it was still very odd data. Then she double checked her records. All of her data was exactly the same as it had been for two hours. Even the time stamps on files were copied. She was being tricked. She turned over her monitoring systems to automatic subroutines and closed her link.

Cassie opened her eyes. The first and almost last thing she saw was unbelievable to her. She recognized Admiral Sutton on the balcony over her, taking aim and firing.

Goo balls hit her chest and face. The chest shot was of no consequence as she had wisely taken Brutus’ orders and wore a standard combat jumpsuit. Her suit dissipated the goo charge. The shot in the face should have shorted out her systems. But now that she had a battle ready body, it only slowed her down. Her mind was clear, just her visual and audio receptors were dazed.

She flipped out of her chair and slipped under it. It wasn’t much cover, but it gave her time to recover from the attack. She drew her weapon. Not meant to incapacitate, her small fully automatic pistol shot lead. Good old-fashioned bullets. She really didn’t care if she punched holes clean through the walls of the shelter. They could all suffocate for all she cared. Her attackers and her pirates could all die together.

A second infiltrator emerged from the monitor room hatch. “Here! Take this.” The new infiltrator handed Sutton a needle gun and carried one of her own, taken from Cassie’s staff. Cassie fumed at the thought of being shot at with her own weapons. Where were her guards? She wondered. “Aim for the eyes,” the second woman said.

Cassie knew she couldn’t stay under the chair. This new girl was bright. She made her way along the balcony that circled the clean room to get a better angle and trap Cassie. Sutton circled the other direction. The room only had the chair as any kind of cover. She cut loose with a round of automatic fire from her gun.

Sutton ducked as the bullets passed over her and lodged in the wall above her head. “That’s insane,” Sutton yelled. “You’ll blow holes in the exterior walls and open us up to vacuum.” Cassie leapt for the stairs that led up to the balcony and Sutton’s position.

As she angled through the air under the low gravity, she felt needles from the other’s weapon rip through her blouse. They shredded her clothing but bounced off her body.

Cassie rotated her body to return fire, to be met with an additional volley of needles from both her enemies. She fought to protect the only vulnerable part of her body, her eyes. But it was too little, a needle caught one of her eyeballs before she could close her lids. She crashed into the stair, crushing it and imbedding into the wall.

They approached from different directions to inspect her damage. She tossed away a piece of railing and step to pull herself out of the debris. “That wasn’t nice at all. And I have…, had such pretty eyes,” Cassie complained. All over her silver head tiny hatches rotated and a sensor grid appeared. Cassie could see in all directions and in more than just the visible spectrum of light. She still had control over her environment, too. She killed the lights.

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