The Rise of the Cyborgs

Interlude:Duane

Duane lay in bed staring at the ceiling. He felt the warmth of the body next to him. The hotel room was not the best but it was very far off the administrators' records. The sheets were silk which pushed the idea Duane wanted. 

"What's wrong?" said Sade slowly rolling over.

"You know about my son in law?" Duane said.

Sade paused "it was terrible."

"I'm wondering if the police report was right," Duane said. He reached for a glass and took a sip. The Rye tasted worse than the pain he felt.

"How is your daughter about it?" Sade asked rearranging the silk pillow. For her this was considerate.

Duane pulled a face "Remarkably good. She's strong."

Sade put her head on Duane's chest. His hair tickled her ears. "Strong father to take after. Did he have any enemies?" Sade asked.

"What Craig Enemies. No, NO" Duane said "too dumb, boring and inconsequential for enemies. He was part of the interface between the party, the remains of the senate and GovSys. I was told he had just done an overspend on and IT weapons systems. Typical thing, miss placed digit in the budget. More spent on new weapons than the committee allocated. It included riot stuff so no real harm done. Naturally, It all had to be hushed up. In the old days, an honourable man would have possibly taken his own life. Not get killed."

"So it was some kind of impaired attack. Like the police said." Sade added. Bored of Duane's lack of intentions she rolled over a filled her glass from the rye bottle. She rolled back with a drink in her hand "I don't like men who feel sorry for themselves."

Duane smiled "it's not that... As head of communications, I get to see a broad overview of what's going on across all sectors fo government."

This intrigued Sade. She pushed her self up on one elbow. "For example?"

"Well there was a riot at an institution when one of the what are we calling them now err? liberation trucks appeared."

Sade smiled "Did they find out?"

"Impaired find something out? No. Not smart enough, apparently in the confusion a few must have drifted off never to be seen again. What was weird was that GovSys found a body. They refused to have it sent to the local morgue. They rushed it back to their experts for examination."

Sade made a mental note. She didn't trust GovSys.

"So Impaired fighting back. That's odd." Sade said.

"Then according to one source, there have been odd goings-on in cyberspace. The number of Stockmarket crashes is growing. It's like it's slowly accelerating to some kind of peak."

"I'm not seeing your point," Sade said.

"Neither am I. It's like I have all these puzzle jig saw pieces and I can't put them together." Duane said taking another sip. "Did you know a few months ago one of GovSys's shall we say more secret technology assists managed to escape?"

"The Temptations Edge event?" Sade said.

"Yes, I don't know what is worse. That one of our illegal technological marvels escaped or the fact that we already have a word prepared for it. I was doing damage limitation for that.  Still it was recovered on the second attempt but not without killing a number of top administrator operatives."

Sade began to massage Duane's back. His skin wasn't new, or tanned. Pain an experienced was tattooed over every square each of his flesh. Sade liked that. She had a thing for it. You didn't get to be the leader's Mistress Then wife without getting an appreciation for the power accumulated are through the process of longevity. Survival had a quality In this world all to its own.

Sade ran Duane's quote in her head. He had used it before in some of the surveillance footage. This pondering wasn't some strange romantic angst act. Duane was trying to see a large scale conspiracy. Was this the truth she wondered?

Was he cleverly telling her something to put her and the surveillance team off his own plottings? If he was obsessing about threats to the party and the government then he was either incredibly nieve or an incredible genius. If he actually was spending time wondering about huge imaginary threats from outside then he clearly wasn't worried about the real threats to himself from the inside. Or he did know of the threats and then used this unicorn hunting to put people off. Sade felt uncomfortable. The only other person who deliberately played up his impairment was her husband. He would pretend to be deaf or stupid then just when he had you convinced. When your back was turned there would be knocking on the door.

"This business with the freedom party worries me the most," Duane said staring into space. "Parties don't form and grown this quickly. Nwithoutout someone behind them."

Bored of her leisurely attempts at for play Sade turned over. Perhaps a look at her rear might distract him. Duane ignored her. Sade fingered the tablet of poison she had taped under the night stand which currently held the whiskey bottle. She had already placed the old tablet in his drink when word of his son in law's death happened. Duane's drink had been accidentally spilled, two strange deaths in one family in one week. That would pull everyone's attention. Autopsies would happen. The new tablet stood sentry waiting for the right moment.

"Who's behind them?"

"That's the question." Duane said "Overseas maybe. Hard to see over the firewalls to be sure. Whats left of the other countries seem to be playing the same tape. Same tape over and over again. So external or internal? Who can say?"

Then the thought shot across Sade's mind. Had Duane killed his own useless son in law to spare himself? The killing had manage to drown out the news of the imbecile who had died during the riot. The freedom party had really played up the whole thing. The Freedom party members elected to congress had turned their backs in unison at the speaker. Then the shit fest which was the show funeral. Duane had said in meeting they had to take back control of the news cycle. A strange murder would be just what the news cycle ordered and doing his own son in law would stop the leader from killing him.

Sacrificing his own son-in-law. Sade had met the daughter and son in law.  The daughter was far too in love with the lousy hunky of a husband to notice the other women. The dumb sap of a daughter would be a pool of tears. Would he really do this to his own daughter just to keep the leader off his back. It would only be temporary, for what? A few months at best. that was ruthless, very ruthless, borderline psychopath. Such a will to survive regardless.  She looked at Duane he had a very firm nose, it kind of suited him and looked sophisticated and just a little sexy.

Sade rolled over and gently kissed Duane's shoulder. "Take me" she whispered.