Chromium

10.3

"A woman like me?" She sounded offended.

"A beautiful woman."He explained without breaking a sweat. "Capsuli V is probably the worst planet in the entire system, the first imperial colony in this little corner of the galaxy. Life is harsh there."

"It is." She answered. She looked uncomfortable and it wasn't an act this time. "I don't want to talk about it. I'm sure you understand."

However, Freddie didn't take the hint.

"I can't imagine what you went through growing up in the bayou."

Dia stiffened, a bead of sweat trailing down her forehead. She knew very little about Capsuli V, and absolutely nothing about Katrina's childhood.

"Yes, it was very bad." She answered, rubbing her temples. She was starting to feel a bit sluggish.

"It's a pity Karniek is still against the use of droids. Restoring the planet would be much easier with their help." The kind of tone he used, the conviction in his voice, set off every alarm bell in her head.

"You're...pro...synthetic?" She was having trouble speaking and her knees would have buckled If she wasn't already sitting. In the corner of her mind, she thought something was very wrong, but she felt dizzy, unable to think clearly.

"Of course. In the future, humans and machines will share a much stronger connection than we have now. It's inevitable."

"Those words..." Her eyes went round, her hand searching for the drainer in her purse.

However, she never reached it. She was so weak that even closing her hand seemed like an impossible task. Freddie's lips curled in amusement, but his eyes weren't laughing. They were cold and calculating.

"I never told you, did I?" As his voice changed subtly. "I visited Capsuli V some time ago, and I heard a lot of interesting rumors about the planet's new queen. But in none of them, Katrina lived near the bayou. Curious, isn't?"

"Who...are...you?" She was barely able to breathe as fear clawed through her.

"Shouldn't I ask the same question...corporal Dia Zephyr?"

Dia gasped, her fingers in the purse fumbling as she searched for the drainer's button.

"Don't try to resist it." Freddie politely warned like he had her best interests at heart. "The gas you inhaled is quite innocuous but has strong sedative properties. Invisible, odorless and basically impossible to detect. Quite useful, isn't it?"

Dia was almost completely paralyzed when she finally found the button and pushed it. However, she would have never imagined what happened afterward. His entire image flickered, and then started to change, the flashy Freddy Jackson she knew disappearing before her eyes. Reyes was right, it was a hologram, but what lay beneath it wasn't a man. It was a thing, maybe a monster, but not a man. That's for sure.

That heap of metal she was seeing looked like an armor, no different from a high-powered suit, but it wasn't. It was his body. Strangely, the only thing remotely human he had left, was the most terrifying. It lay at the top of the armor, inside something close to a glass bell filled with a weird liquid, clear like water but thicker like some sort of jelly.

It was a severed head. It was connected to the rest of the suit through some kind of wires, maybe electrodes, directly linked to his brain since half of his skull was missing.

"You shouldn't have done that." He said, and Dia shrieked when she saw those glassy eyes, his twisted jaw and that pale, dead face. She barely recognized him, but she knew what, or rather who he was.

"G-g..i...b...son." She whispered, terror flashing in her eyes.

"Oh, you recognize me? I'm a bit different, right?" An amused voice came out, but his lips didn't move. They couldn't move. "Everything has a price in this world. This was to escape from the empire." He said before snatching the purse from her feeble hands.

Then he took out the drainer, observing it. Or at least it looked that way.

"That's a tricky device. Collective's technology." He said, and Dia paled. "Luckily my suit's primary systems are still online." He said and then dropped it, losing interest in it. "This one on the other hand..." He looked at the purse. "is something much more complex. Still, using nanotechnology to make a simple tracking device seems a bit of a waste."

Dia squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the tears.

"You didn't know about the tracking device, did you? But you should have expected it from someone who tried to plant an IPS and a kill switch in your skull."

Dia could only helplessly stare at him when Gibson took out something that looked a lot like a gun. However, she wasn't the target, the purse was. Gibson aimed the gun at it before pulling the trigger. Nothing happened at first, and for a moment Dia thought the weapon misfired, but then the purse started melting, little by little, until it turned into a blackish blob.

Gibson looked at her and smirked, "Don't be too hard on yourself." He said, his tone oddly polite. "You couldn't win. The game was hacked from the start."

"W-wh...at do..."

"What do I mean? Of course, that someone betrayed you."

"B-e...t...rayed?" She asked, her face glistening with sweat as she tried to stay conscious.

"Well, it's not a surprise." Gibson continued. "The Umbra has never been a good judge of character. Otherwise, he would have never trusted me."

The implications, or better, the confirmation that the Umbra and Gibson knew each other made her blood run cold. However, there was something else she wanted to know at the moment.

"W-W...ho?"

Yet, Gibson answered her question with another question, "Who are your enemies on the planet?"

There were just two: Collins and Suzanne.  However, Collins was just a coward, he didn't have the guts to betray the Umbra.

That bitch!

"Su...za...nne"

"Oh? Seems you get it." She heard a long breathing sound and understood he was sighing. "Jealousy is an ugly thing. I know that well."

"W-w...hat...do...you...want...from...?" She asked with her last ounce of strength. 

"From you?" He asked, and Dia could do nothing when he got close to her, that gruesome face inches away from her own.

"The same thing the Umbra wants. I want to know your secret." He whispered in her ear. "I want to know what you really are, Dia Zephyr."

Then, everything faded to black.