The journey's over but you cannot leave
Let's follow our hearts until we break them
Break them into pieces
Extracting all the traces of who we are
- "Stack Trace"- Soul Extract
The walk to his cell was long as Red contemplated Ember. How did she survive the Purge? How did she end up here? Along with Autonomous AIs, the Vesper pilots were killed off outright.
Neo-Tokyo had killed its own children without hesitation as if they were the enemy. Somehow, somewhere one of them had said no. There was no other reason for it. They killed those they couldn't control.
Red scrubbed a hand over his face as he moved. There was no rhyme or reason to what they did.
The people in this prison were nothing. Most of them had no positions of power, they'd had no plans to overthrow anything. There was no reason for them to even be here.
He took a deep breath as the hallway widened. The halls were red. He'd at first wondered at the coloring and then later believed it was easier to not see the blood on them.
After the media had drifted away things had gotten pretty bad in here once those inside realized, there was no escape. No amount of talking, yelling, or screaming had gotten attention on the outside. And so their rage had been turned on each other...
But Ember? She made no sense... He wondered who she was all the way back to his cell, not realizing he was quite inside until he spotted Dag climbing into his own bed.
"Tell me everything you know about the Vesper program."
Dag looked over at him from the top bunk. He was a very large dark-skinned man with a large titanium arm that was seamlessly connected to his shoulder. It worked just as his other arm did only it was a hundred times stronger. Technology had advanced enough to give him a working arm and hand again. Not that it had helped him during the Purge. Dag had a wife and teenage son on the outside. He hadn't seen either in years.
Coincidentally, he'd also been assigned to work on the Vesper ships. He'd service them when they arrived into the Outlands on their own base. He was one of the few outside of Neo-Tokyo who had worked on them and seen them up close.
Like Ember, Dag had no explanation for why he was still alive, other than luck of the draw. Circumstances and his knowledge dictated he should have been mowed down with his friends. But he hadn't been... He'd been on leave the day they'd come in and lost a lot of those he'd considered friends.
"They're all dead." Dag sat up on the top bunk he was currently occupying. "Kind of useless info, don't you think?" He swung his long legs over the side and let them hang down to get a better look at Red. He couldn't help but catch the excited tone of Red's voice. "What is it?"
Red's voice dropped down to a whisper. "There's one here in the prison."
He had Dag's full attention. "That's not possible... Red I told you, they're all dead."
"I saw her with my own eyes."
"Her?" Dag's eyes widened. "You mean the new girl?" Dag shook his head. "I'm telling you, it's not possible."
"I'm telling you, I recognized the hardware."
"Looked up her skirts, did you?" Dag shook his head still not believing.
"Well no," Red hesitated. He hadn't shared the other information with Dag just yet. The signals that Ember had picked up. "She picked up satellite feed, do you know how long it's been since I've heard anything from the outside?"
"She's a powerful Aug. Doesn't make her a Vesper, could have a lot of expensive hardware. You do. Could be military, another prototype" Dag looked up at the ceiling and Red knew he was struggling to believe him.
"She picked up signals from New Elysium, Dag. Someone out there is looking for us."
"Red, that's not even close to funny."
"I didn't tell her a thing. I swear, she told me." Red ran his fingers through his hair. His visible neural connections glowed blue on his cheeks as he scanned for a signal. Something out there to pick up, anything to verify what Ember had said. He lowered his voice. "It means they did it, they got there Dag. And they are looking for us..."
But Dag's expression had changed from disbelief to hope. "New Elysium? That was just a pipe dream, do you think? Did they make it?" His eyes were wide as he clasped his hands together. Dag was a praying man and Red hated to play on that but he wanted Dag to believe in the idea of them escaping again just as he had.
"There is no other explanation, she mentioned you by name. It's your answered prayer."
Dag smiled. "They made it..." He looked at Red, his expression, pure joy.
"New Elysium is supposed to be a secret though," Red paused as he considered the little information he had.
"It's been seven years Red, it might not be anymore."
"So it turned into what we wanted? A safe place for augments?"
"What did she say about it?" Red knew Dag believed him now.
"Not much," he admitted. "They're just asking for us. It's them..."
"Do you think, she would help?"
"Tell me what you know about Vespers," Red answered. "I only know a little about them... I couldn't go through the program..."
"It's only for higher-ups, Neo-Tokyans, it's a loyalty thing, you know that. They have an interest in keeping the status quo, so you only take from the top to control the rest." Dag swung back onto his bunk in the dark. Red moved forward and shed his shirt before moving over to the toilet and relieving himself. He washed his hands and splashed water on his face. It might have been cold outside, but inside the prison it was warm. What he would have given for just one fan.
He settled on the lower bunk as Dag's voiced floated down to him from above.
"You already know they are the most advanced pilots ever created. Their relationship with the ships that were created is symbiotic. They need the ships as much as the ships need them to fly. It's a flaw I think that was added on purpose."
"Symbiotic," Red whispered. He heard coughing in the distance. Their cells were arranged in a large round circular room. There was little privacy, you could see your neighbors across the room if you squinted enough. Not to mention you could hear everything. Literally.
He used to hear screams in this place, and plenty of sobbing. Now though, it was mostly silence broken by the grunting of two people releasing some tension for the night...
Good people tended to devolve in this environment. It didn't take long.
"It means," Dag interrupted his thoughts. "Whoever put her in here must have known what would happen to her."
Red sat up in the darkness almost hitting his head, but years of actually smacking his face on the top bunk prevented him from doing it this time. "What do you mean?"
Dag had paused for a moment. "Red she is going to die. Slowly too. The food here will sustain her, but her body is built to take power from the ship. Right now, it's running off a human body and a body isn't meant to power that type of hardware. She hasn't been here that long, but give it a few more days and you'll see the signs."
Red lay back down. Suddenly his hope for escape seemed far away. He knew all of this but hearing it spoken out loud. "What's she capable of?"
"Besides getting past every organic human pilot? Unless they stripped her which I bet they haven't, she has shock weapons, a built-in stun, her connection ports run along her spine. Sensor arrays in her hands. At the base of the skull, she would have that scanner."
"That's a lot of hardware."
Dag smiled. "It is. But the spine has to be replaced and rebuilt to sustain the connection while she's suspended in the ship itself, and— "
"Whoa." Red paused Dag. "She's capable of fighting?"
"Yes, they all have training in case they are captured."
"And she can stun people?"
"Don't drain her dry on the first date, Red." Dag voice carried a warning. "We'll only get one shot at this, she may not make it."
Red found himself shrugging that off. "She's a Neo-Tokyan. No offense, but I don't care if she makes it."
Dag's eyes narrowed and he turned and flopped back onto his bed leaving Red to stare after him in the dark. Guilt flooded through him. He remembered too late that some of them had been on good terms with him. Despite everything they'd been through Dag had always insisted there were some good people. Red had privately disagreed based on his own experiences.
Dag didn't say a word for a while.
Red knew he'd said the wrong thing. But it was exactly how he felt. He thought about Ember again, remembering her hands in his. Dag had talked about her keeping the status quo as if it was their job. He remembered seeing Vesper ships helping to patrol and guard the same lines and borders he had. But while they were beautiful to see in the black they never crossed paths.
Red had wanted to be part of that, but there was no hope of ever joining for someone of his rank. So, he piloted his own ships which were the next best thing. He'd had the implants to quicken his reflexes, he communicated with his ships by thought.
Being cut off had been a nightmare...
...and possibly the best thing to have happened to him. The reverse side of the leaps and bounds in technology was how dependent humanity had become on it. It was literally everything to them.
The entertainment industry alone...
Red didn't even want to think about that. No one could ever keep up the pace. It had run away from them, enslaved them, and very few could see outside of cyberspace let alone stand in the real world.
Helion had been built to be inescapable for people like Red. There were no plug-ins for them to interface with. No signals he could hack into. Everything was mechanical. The guards rotated on one-month shifts because no one liked being disconnected from the web of the entertainment industry that sheathed humanity like a glove. Helion had become the trash world of their Empire. Discarded ships from a bygone era. Even the bodies of AI's had been dumped here.
That could be to their advantage if they could just escape. He was surprised that he still wanted that. Red thought he'd been prepared to die in here... That he'd accepted it.
Getting out of this prison was going to be the easy part, but getting off this planet, that was going to be trickier. But he still hadn't managed the prison part as of yet...
"You have to care." Dag's voice interrupted Red's train of thought.
Red didn't respond in the darkness. Somewhere out there he could hear two people rutting like wild animals. He wondered what Ember was thinking in her cell about her first night here.
"Think about it this way. Those rich Neo-Tokyans, had their world ripped out from under them like the rest of us. Vespers served and guarded the borders just like you did. And they're all dead now. Except for this one."
"So?"
"So, who did she piss off enough to throw her in with the rest of us to die slowly while we just watch?"
Red was silent. He heard Dag turn over and after a while, he heard him snoring. It no longer bothered him, half the sounds in the prison consisted of snoring after lights out.
He turned the problem over in his mind. Dag knew more about Vespers than he did, she was supposed to die? Why not just shoot her and be done with it? A simple EMP blast would knock her out...
It's what had taken him out all those years ago...
Ember was a new problem. Hiding her identity was going to be difficult if she'd already spoken to a few others here and there. There were a few inmates here who would tear her apart if they knew. Or they would try and Ember would wear herself down keeping them at bay until she literally ran out of juice. He grimaced, despite his words to Dag he really didn't want to see that happen.
He had a grudge against Neo-Tokyo, not Ember personally. He was predisposed to not like her but if she had the tools they needed to get out of here. He'd be glad to use them.
He frowned in the darkness, bothered by his callousness. When had that happened? He'd been a driven man before, more career-oriented, but never outright cruel.
Before coming to Helion 7, he and Dag had been on the run... He grimaced as he remembered their capture. It was his fault Dag had been brought here...
Dag wrestled him to the ground just as all Six of the Scandroids approached. He was going in guns blazing, he'd already taken one down...
Dag's metal arm wrapped around his shoulders and he couldn't move.
"Red, stand down! This is suicide, you have too much time left!"
"My choice dammit! Go with them!" He'd snapped back. Dag had held him in a headlock until even after his augments tried to sustain him, he'd passed out.
Dag had kept him alive by surrendering both of them to the Scandroids sent after them. In doing so, the others had escaped, including their friend Jack and Dag's wife and son, Dag.
And Red had awoken a prisoner.
And yet, Dag never blamed him for being here. If anything he stuck by Red's side, making sure "you don't pull any more damn crazy stunts." Red could never make him go away and finally, he'd tried to apologize. The prison cooling his anger, his rage, and his thirst for revenge.
So why haven't I cared before? He asked himself. When did I stop?
Sometime after they tossed you in here for no damn reason. Then they killed your friend buddy out of fear. Not to mention the countless others who died just trying to save you. Red remembered his second in command, an AI that had achieved autonomy, named Lars. Lars had a body, most AI's did, that resembled a droid from some ancient movie. He owned his own home somewhere and had a cat. He was probably the most sentimental AI in existence. You would never look at Lars and believe him to be a human but the way he went on about his cat, you would certainly know he was sentient to the point of being annoyingly sentimental. All over a damn cat. A living robotic cat lady, in real life.
He had been excellent at working as most AI's were. Otherwise Red might have fired him for too much chatter over a feline. He'd never been sure if that was legal but somewhere someone had to have felt sympathy for his plight.
God, he missed that stupid AI more than he was going to admit. Lars had more humanity than most people.
Oh, and after that, they took your job, your life, and declared you subhuman...
"...we were discarded like trash. Is that your plan?" Her voiced popped back into his mind out of nowhere. He didn't want to admit to himself, but that was exactly his plan.
He also didn't want to admit to himself, just for a brief moment he sounded exactly like the ones he hated so much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He dreamed...
The darkness of space surrounded him but it wasn't just the darkness that was all around him. When he looked down at the ground he saw tendrils of it pulsating in and out of his very being. He held out an arm in front of him watching as the darkness moved in and out of his own flesh.
It didn't cause any pain but it was heavy and every time it passed through him he could feel the weight of it.
It both horrified and fascinated him at the same time. He didn't know what it meant and yet...
As he held up his hand in front of him he understood it was the weight of his own decisions, a weight that he still carried even as he brushed it away...
And then Ember was in front of him, she was wary, trembling in spite of herself. In spite of the knowledge that between them she could fry his body to slag with a simple touch if she chose...
She stared back at him, her mouth open in fear, she was saying something to him but he couldn't hear what she was saying.
Unlike him she did not have the black tendrils running through her body, if anything she was a beacon in the middle of this blackness and it was closing around them both.
Realizing he was carrying it with him he tried to back away from her but the further he stepped away the heavier he became, the more entangled into the blackness his body. So he tried moving forward again and the closer he got to her the lighter he became...
He held his hands up in front of him stunned as the tendrils slipped away. He was right in front of her...
As he did so, the blackness closed in for them both, he could feel the cold icy grip on his body as it tried to surround them both, slow them down...
The icy wind whipped around them both blowing Ember's hair into her face, her arms spread out to him as if she was going to embrace him. Her face looked terrified as she looked past his shoulder.
Sensing danger he surged forward and wrapped her in his arms, as he did so the blackness swirled in on them covering them both. His heart started pounding as he felt the blackness cut into him. He grunted and felt her twitch against his chest in response. His arms tightened around her skin as he withstood the onslaught.
"Red!" Her voice came from under his chin.
He felt her arms around his chest...
And then as suddenly as it was there it was over...
He stepped back from her taking her in, she wasn't harmed in any way and part of him surged upward, gratitude, relief, he couldn't name the feeling.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The sound echoed across the dark landscape and he stared at her. "You're safe?" He was amazed at how hoarse his voice sounded, but at this point, for whatever reason, her safety was the only thing that mattered.
"Red..." Her voice whispered, echoing across the dreamscape. "No...."
His body felt weak and the only thing he could hear was the echoing sound of whatever was dripping onto the ground...
When he looked down his arms were slick with red blood dripping to the ground...
He held his hands up in front of him again, even though there was blood, he felt relief through the pain for a burden of darkness he was no longer carrying...
I don't understand, he thought as he slid to the ground.
Ember caught him before he fell and her face flowing with tears stared down at him.
Would she really ever look at me like that? He found himself wondering.
Then the cold invaded abruptly, he was shivering and Ember's face was moving far away...
Red's eyes snapped open. His augments flared to life and in .5 nanoseconds he recognized the inside of his cell and the snoring of his cellmate above him.
He was covered in sweat and had kicked his blanket off to the floor. He worked his breathing down to a normal state and stared into the blackness remembering the dream in vivid detail.
What the hell? He thought, truly disturbed as he reached over and pulled his blanket over his shaking body. What in the fucking, hell?