"Come on, man, hurry up!"
Zed shifted uneasily from one leg to another and cast a sideward glance at his partner. Shanks was biting his lip in deep concentration, the tip of his freckled nose only an inch from the switchboard embedded in the wall.
"I thought you know how to hotwire these things Shanks!" he groaned in frustration.
"Put a sock in it, Z. It won't go any faster if you keep distracting me," his partner mumbled.
"You're not even doing anything!" Zed complained. "You just kept staring at for the past fifteen minutes. It won't open by itself, you know!"
"Why are you in such a hurry? The stuff in there won't run away. It didn't during the past weeks, and it won't now."
"I dunno, this place is weird, man..."
Zed gritted his teeth in frustration. He knew that Shanks was right, but it didn't help with his uneasy feeling of being watched. Of course it was paranoia. The station was abandoned, had been for weeks, after it had been picked clean to the core. The raiders had taken anything that had not been bolted to the walls or floors. And even some of that. Everything except for what was in this one room, behind that door that nobody had been able to open.
They were lucky that there was still gravity and oxygen, at least. Zed and Shanks had used to come here a lot, but in its current state, the place gave him the creeps. Perhaps it was because of the kind of work that had been done here in the past. Or due to the dark brown traces of old blood, smeared on the walls and splattered all over the floor. The place had a haunted vibe, alright.
It had been a pity that their boss had died, but Zed didn't shed a tear for the man himself. The sheer endless supply of money that he seemed to have at his disposal, and his willingness to pay for every millimeter of subcutaneous wire they could find for him, that was what Zed missed. But he was certain they would find other buyers. Especially with such high quality wares. Zed knew what was behind that door, because he had seen the Butcher go there once. It was like a vault. Worth a fortune.
So after obtaining some hard-to-come-by tools, Zed and Shanks had returned here, to try again what others had failed to do - to open that goddamn door.
"Excuse me, gentlemen, but you're in my way."
The sound of a female voice behind him startled him so much that he almost dropped his gun. Despite his paranoia, he had apparently been too focused on what Shanks was doing, so he hadn't heard her footsteps. He fumbled for his weapon and brought it up to point it at the woman who had seemingly appeared out of thin air.
She was pale, small, and clad in black, and for a second he thought she might have been a ghostly apparition. Her hair was two-colored, and she wore an eye patch, contrasting oddly with the doll-like features of her face. His gaze wandered down along her body, and stopped at the pair of white guns in her hands. Or at least he thought they were guns. He had never seen anything like them, and the sight fascinated him so much that it took him a second to realize that she had pointed them at the two of them.
"Shit," Zed muttered under his breath.
Next to him, Shanks had dropped his tools and fortunately drawn his weapon too. Now they found themselves in a stalemate.
"My, my. I'm having quite the déjà-vu here... Why don't you put those things down - wouldn't wanna get anyone hurt, would you?" she said in a sweet voice as she took a step toward them.
Zed gritted his teeth and gripped his weapon more tightly.
"Stay where you are!" he warned her.
"Let's not get off of the wrong foot here. I'm not looking for trouble," she said in a placatory tone, "I'm just looking for something behind that door. Just like you. So, how about we make a deal. You let me pass, and I will unlock it."
Zed cast a glance at Shanks, who scrutinized the strange woman through narrowed eyes and with a frown on his face.
"I just spent half an hour trying to crack that thing, what makes you think you can open it?"
"Because I'm the one who locked it in the first place," she replied and flashed them a wicked grin.
"Wait a moment..." Shanks eyes suddenly widened in surprise, "So you're..."
"Let's skip the pleasantries and get to work, shall we?" she cut him off.
"She's who?" Zed asked, confused.
"I think she's telling the truth," was all that Shanks muttered to him, "No harm in letting her try."
Slowly, all three of them lowered their weapons, and the two men stepped aside to let her pass.
"So how are you gonna do it?" Shanks asked her curiously, "The door controls can't be hacked, there's no juice left in any of the systems whatsoever. I tried to get them online but no luck. So then I tried to hotwire the control mechanism directly, but... now wait a second, don't tell me the rumors about you are true?"
"Which rumors?" Zed asked again, and then turned to look at the uncanny lady, "Who are you?"
He stared at her in confusion, and she just cast him playful smile as she passed by him.
"They say she can hotwire anything with a rubber band and a bobby pin," Shanks explained to him in a hushed and uncharacteristically awed voice.
"Of course that's not true," she said.
She walked over to the door, but didn't stop at the switchboard that controlled the mechanism and that Shanks had exposed. Instead, she pressed her palm against the interface that controlled it. The interface was offline, Shanks had explained that much to him, it was dark and dead.
"I don't need a rubber band and a bobby pin."
Underneath her hand, the dark control panel began to glow now, and Zed connected the dots – or at least some of them. Apparently, this woman was an augment, and somehow, she had found a way to work her way into the station's systems. He didn't quite understand all of it, but the admiring look on his partner's face told him that what she was doing right now was apparently quite impressive.
The door mechanism clicked, and the coils of the magnetic lock began to shift.
"No fucking way," Shanks whispered behind him. "She's the real deal!"
The woman stepped back with a confident smile on her lips as the doors slid open and revealed the storage room behind. The lights flickered on, and illuminated rows of shelves that were stacked to the ceiling with hardware. The sight behind – now that was something that Zed could be in awe over. The thought of all the money they could make with this made him all giddy with excitement.
"Woah, man, there's even more stuff in here than I remember!" Zed exclaimed as he entered the room and looked around. "I think we should get some kind of container, there's no way we can carry all of it."
Shanks did not reply, he was probably still awestruck by whatever that strange little lady had done to the door.
"Shanks? I said we should get a container so-"
He turned around again, and almost bumped into the woman. Behind her, he spotted the lifeless body of his partner on the floor.
"I agree," she just said.
Before Zed could so much as gasp in surprise, it was already too late. The last thing he saw was her fist coming at his face, and then his sight went dark.
~ ~ ~
When he came to, he found himself on the dirty floor, tied back to back with Shanks. Judging from the overall lack of tension in his partner's body, he was still out cold. Zed cursed under his breath for turning his back on the woman.
"See, I told you I'd handle it without bloodshed this time," the woman spoke to someone somewhere in the storage room.
He turned his head to get a look at the door, just as she passed through. He could not see anyone in the room behind her, but he noticed with alarm that the shelves were empty now – picked clean down to the last microchip.
Yet she stepped out with nothing but a single stuffed bag over her shoulder. It made no sense. They must have been out for a long time for her to carry it all off. Or perhaps she was a ghost after all?
"What the fuck!" he exclaimed. "Where is our loot?!"
"Our loot?" she stopped in her tracks and raised an eye brow at him. She had removed her eye patch, and he saw that she had hidden a pitch-black eye augment underneath.
"What about our deal? You lied to us, you sneaky bitch!" he spat at her. "What about honor among thieves, huh?"
"I only said I'd unlock the door. I never said I'd let you take what's behind it," she said with a shrug.
Her indifferent attitude made him angry. Behind him, he could feel Shanks begin to move as he regained consciousness.
"Wow..." he mumbled in a slurred voice, "I can't believe it... this is...
"...a fucking disaster!" Zed exclaimed.
"...absolutely awesome," Shanks said at the same time.
"What?!" Zed snapped at him. "Are you insane, man?"
"Dude, this is the best day of my life..." he mumbled. "Never thought I'd get to meet..."
His voice trailed off again. He was clearly delirious, Zed noted. Ignoring Shanks, he began to struggle against their restraints.
"You said we had a deal!" Zed snapped at the woman, who just watched him, with an utterly impassive expression on her face, like a doll.
"Oh, yeah. I suppose I should give you something in return for stepping to the side so I didn't have to shoot you," she noted, "Well, let me repay you by giving you a piece of advice."
She moved closer and crouched down right before him, meeting his gaze on eye-level. There was no expression on her mask-like face, but something about it was terrifying as hell. Her black, augmented eye seemed bottomless, it drew his gaze in and swallowed it like a black hole, causing him to feel dizzy.
"Go home. Hide. A storm is coming," she said, and he thought that it was already here, raging in her other, organic eye, "When it hits, remember the day that I let you live, and think very carefully about which side you're on."
With those cryptic words, she got up again, shouldered her bag and turned to walk away. He stared after her in speechless disbelief for a moment before he snapped out of it.
"Who the HELL are you?" Zed yelled at her in frustration.
"She's..." Shanks began, but his voice trailed off again.
The woman turned around again, and despite her small stature, the way she was looking down on the two of them made a shiver ran down his spine. A wicked grin appeared on her lips, and it almost seemed to him as if she spoke with more than voice as she answered.
"I am legion, for we are many."
~ ~ ~
One thousand five hundred thirty-six.
Huh?
That's the number of people we've killed in the past sixteen months, she explained. Including Astraphos.
You're still keeping track? He asked, incredulously.
She did not reply. They were standing on the starboard observation deck, staring out into the darkness of space, and he recalled their last conversation in this very spot, on that very topic, shortly before their first visit to the Butcher's.
Yes, she said, But I realized something now. I always thought of it all in terms of a balance... cosmic justice, or whatever. That I have to somehow make up for all the death. But the problem is, it's much harder to count the lives we saved.
At her words, he thought of Gatekeeper. On their way out of the Sol system, they had been greeted by a small fleet of Aedes ships. The AI had left them behind to protect the ecosystem of Terra, from raiders and other ill-willed visitors, because despite her newly found independence from her old orders, she still appreciated the importance of mankind's old home world. The ships had also delivered a final message to them. The AI had thanked them for saving her from her lonely fate.
Or the lives we improved, he added, thinking of the girl Juniper, back on New Elysium.
Let's hope we'll be able to save another one today, she thought.
Down in Engineering, Higgs had been working on Calliope for the past days with barely a break. He had found all the necessary parts to upgrade the mobile unit among their loot from the secret Lazarus storage facility, except for a very specific one. Luckily, due to his near-perfect memory, Lars recalled having seen one not too long ago, in a place that was just a little detour away on their way back to New Elysium. They had taken everything else from the Butcher's place too, while they were at it. Now there were bags and boxes of hardware all over the ship, as the cargo hold was already filled to the brim with the Atlas crates.
You know, once this is done, there's another promise I will have to fulfill, she thought.
Oh? Which one?
You know, for a guy with perfect memory, you're kinda forgetful sometimes, aren't you, she scoffed.
He huffed internally at her remark.
I mean the one I made to you, dummy, she thought as she grinned at her own, faint reflection in the window.
There was something behind the veil – ominous and strange, he could barely make out the silhouettes of an idea she was nursing. But he couldn't make any sense of it, and didn't get to ask, as Higg's voice resounded over the intercom.
"Captain, Heisenberg, would you come over to Engineering please. Everything's ready."
~ ~ ~
Down in Engineering, Calliope's mobile unit was lying on a work bench motionlessly. Higgs had fashioned her a new silicone coating, and her body was covered in pure white again, except for a few spots like the joints, which were covered in more flexible black rubber. As the Captain entered the room, she gasped in surprise at the sight.
"She looks exactly like she used to," the Captain whispered as she stepped closer and took her hand.
Higgs knew that to a human, it would feel soft and warm, and almost organic. After all, back in the day, this type of android had been constructed for close interaction with humans. They even had special tactile sensors embedded on the palms of the silicone cover, to allow them to mimic human touch better. He had restored those sensors with some of the materials they had found at the Butcher's and within the Atlas crates. For all intents and purposes, the unit was like new. Even better, he dared to think, because it had better hardware now than back in the day when it had been originally constructed about sixty years ago.
With his spider arms, he finished connecting himself and Heisenberg to Calliope. He could feel her, somehow, inside of him, rattling at his circuits like a prisoner trying to break free of a cage. It had been distracting while he had worked, and now it was beginning to be downright obnoxious. But he couldn't blame her. He couldn't begin to imagine what it must have felt to partition. It was the inorganic equivalent of chopping oneself apart, if the recipient units were not somehow connected.
He finished that connection now, and the moment he affixed the last cable, he could feel her surge through his circuits eagerly. Heisenberg straightened his posture, and the lights on his head began to flicker erratically, turning blue every once in a while.
The Captain held onto Calliope's hand throughout the process. But as Heisenberg's face lights returned to normal, and Higgs felt the last remainder of her code leave his unit, she still didn't wake up.
They all stared at her in silence for a few seconds.
"Did it not work?" Heisenberg asked what everybody was thinking.
"I... I'm certain I did everything correctly," Higgs said dismayed, "I don't know why-"
"She's alright," the Captain said with a soft voice. "She's in there. But she's... asleep."
She still held onto the android's hand, and Higgs understood. Through the circuits of the new sensors, the AI could probably feel her presence, somehow.
Heisenberg was eyeing Calliope curiously. They looked a bit alike, Higgs noticed now. Heisenberg with his white armor plating and Calliope with her white silicon coating, both with black joints. There was something strangely ethereal about the image of the tall android, a unit that had been nicknamed 'Angel of Death' in the military, bending down to look at the lifeless, white figure now.
"Do you think she will wake up soon?" Heisenberg asked.
"I'm certain of it," the Captain said, "After all, Lars did, too."
She had told them all about the AI, after they had learned about what had happened to the organic part of her. They all still referred to her as they used to though, on her request. Nothing had changed, except that sometimes, Higgs could now make out the difference between who was in control of their body. It was the organic part now, as she stepped back from the table and a wistful smile washed over her face.
"Anyways, meanwhile, we've still got work to do," she said. "Heisenberg, with me."
As the Reaper unit didn't react, she grabbed his arm, practically dragging him away from Calliope and toward the door. It was an odd sight, the small human pulling the tall android along as its face lights blinked in sheepish confusion.
"So... we're not going back to New Elysium?" Higgs called after her, equally confused. "Captain, the cargo hold is stuffed to the brim, we can't possibly collect any more loot!"
"One last stop," she called back. "This is the last one, really! I promise!"
Higgs looked down at Calliope after they had left.
"I think you might want to stay asleep a while longer, Calliope," he recommended. "I have a feeling we're only bound for more trouble."
~ ~ ~
The rain clouds had parted here and there, and a few rays of pale light found their way to the drenched ground. The solar sheets were coming offline for the night, and the setting sun painted the horizon with its radiant spectacle of scattering colors. The scent of petrichor was in the air, and the water dripping from the edges of leaves and roofs chimed their faint song, as a woman walked through the streets of the settlement.
She wore all black, and a jacket with a hood, pulled deep into her face. Nobody cast her a second glance as she passed, for it was not unusual that people did not trust the weather. The rain could come back any moment. That was part of life on Satherna.
She stopped briefly, and looked out into the distance, where a solar sheet, spread over one of the fields, transitioned from the orange color of an artificial sunset to the purple of twilight. It would soon diminish and turn completely dark for the night. She watched the subtle change of color for a while, and then continued on her way.
She stopped again on the sidewalk before a house. There was a sign posted before it – it was up for sale again, after it had been bought and re-sold countless times in the past years. The house had a great view, but not many people liked life on Satherna, the planet of eternal rain. Not many people had an eye for the beauty of the planet. None of the tenants had stayed long.
Tentatively, the woman walked up to the front porch. She hesitated for another moment, and then sat down to look at the sunset over the fields in the distance. She was deep in thought, so she didn't notice the boy who had walked up to her, until he stood almost before her.
"Hello," he said.
"Uhm... hello," she replied. "Sorry, am I trespassing or something?"
"No," the boy shook his head. "I was just wondering what you're doing here. You're not a new tenant?"
She shook her head. "No, just... visiting."
"Who are you visiting?"
"Uhm... nobody. I just know someone who lived here once."
"Ah, I see."
She eyed the boy, who could not have been much older than ten. He eyed her back, and tried to peer at her face under the hood.
"Say, do you know anything about the people who lived here in the past years?" she asked. "Anybody interesting among them?"
The boy shrugged. "Nah. They were all pretty boring. They think life on Satherna is boring because it rains a lot, when in reality, they are the boring ones. They're too dull to see the colors."
He turned to look at the horizon, and the woman smiled behind his back.
"Oh, there you are," the boy exclaimed all of a sudden.
He went over to one of the bushes next to the sidewalk and bent down next to it. When he got up again, he was cradling an orange cat in his arms. The woman's eyes widened as she spotted the animal and she rose to her feet. The hood fell from her head, revealing that she wore her hair in a strange, split black and white style, and an eye patch.
"Is that-"
"That's my cat," the boy explained, "Her name is Tangerine. Because of the color."
He seemed proud about that, and the woman snickered. Just then, the cat struggled free from his grasp and jumped down again. It moved toward the woman, who crouched down to scratch it behind the ears.
"Oh, she likes you!" the boy noted with some surprise in his voice, "She's usually not that friendly with strangers."
"I'm not a stranger..." she whispered.
The cat took a leap and jumped onto her shoulders, and she laughed. The boy eyed the strange woman curiously as the cat nestled around her shoulders like a fluffy, orange collar. It looked very funny with her mismatched hair and eye patch.
"Where are you from?" he asked her, "What happened to your eye?"
"That's a long story," she said and cast him a crooked grin. "Tell me more about your cat instead. How long have you had her?"
"A man brought her to our house a long time ago," he said and shrugged.
"A man?" she asked, tensing up all of a sudden, "What did he look like? Military?"
"I was very young at the time, but I'm pretty certain he wasn't military," the boy explained. "He looked more like a... well, I don't know. But no uniform. And strange hair... colorful."
The cat had come to rest around the woman's neck in a position that looked like it could not possibly have been comfortable for either of them. Yet she purred contently, and the woman smiled happily. The boy watched the two of them, and his expression turned into a sad frown.
"I live down the street, but Tangerine keeps coming here often," the boy said in a low and dejected voice, "I wonder... if she does it because she doesn't like it at home. Or if she doesn't like me..."
She looked up at the boy, and there was a look of bittersweet sadness and melancholy on her face.
"Oh, no," she said as lifted the cat from her shoulders gently, "I think she just likes to watch the sunset."
She sat back down on the porch with the cat on her lap, and patted the space beside her. The boy came closer tentatively and sat down next to her. The cat stretched across the woman's lap until could place a paw on the boy's leg, digging her claws into the fabric of his pants, as if to keep him from going away. Her content purr put his worries about her comfort somewhat at ease.
The boy looked up at the strange woman, who pointed at the horizon, where the sun painted a fleeting picture in the sky.
"Let's play a game," she suggested to him, "Let's try to name all the colors of the sunset."