Infinity Smashed: Number One and the UDC
Oct. 4th, 2017 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeNumber One and the United Dellan Coalition
Series: Infinity Smashed
Word Count: 3000
Summary: M.D.'s older sister gets a new case, comes to Earth, and stays to hash out legalities with the US government and make everyone extremely uncomfortable.
Notes: This story was sponsored by the Patreon crew! It is also the formal introduction for Number One. You definitely want to read Electrical Girl and Airport Security first (which got the latter half rewritten, thus the delays. My apologies).
Number One Eldest Daughter was meditating in her lead-walled chambers when she got the news that her sister had been found.
There was no question, of course, that she would be the one to make the retrieval. One’s failings had led to the loss in the first place; it was her responsibility to rectify her errors, and besides, in such situations it was always best to send someone the quarry trusted.
One had long since given her junior up for lost; it was a pleasant surprise to learn otherwise. “I’d be happy to do it,” she said, smiling. “When?”
The handler’s response was not ideal: “Now.” And with a rattle, a mission download came through her meal chute.
One took the tiny chip from the tray with distaste and carefully inserted it behind her ear. A zap, a twitch, and she had a basic language and culture download—though to her dismay, it sent a red message behind her eyes: [ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED.]
“This chip is faulty,” One said, keeping her tone even. “Most of this is inaccessible.”
“It’s the only one we have,” replied the handler through the wall; she had never seen him, but knew his voice well. “Get a proper download when you get there, and if you run afoul of law enforcement, work with them until told otherwise. Oh, and wear your wax; it’s wet there, apparently.”
One wove her mind smooth so she wouldn’t be irritated. “Understood.”
As she dressed in her waxed robes and boots, her handler filled her in on everything he knew, the civilized way. Apparently Little Sister had been found on some savage backwater that hadn’t even developed a universal system of emotional measurement yet. If the Jaunter’s League hadn’t set up a satellite field years prior, she might’ve avoided detection entirely. But as it was, something had finally gotten her tracker broadcasting again, and now the Jaunter’s League, the Dellan Coalition, and local law enforcement all knew Little Sister’s whereabouts. Which meant Number One had to hurry and hopefully get to Little Sister first.
One hated rushing. Corners got cut, things got sloppy. But emergencies always happened, so she dressed as quickly as possible and took the transporter when her handler pushed it through the meal chute. It was a simple model, with only two destinations: her chambers, and Little Sister’s location.
One pulled the stud. The fabric of space-time ripped and reformed around her and she found herself…
In a shrubby field by the side of a road. True to her handler’s words, it was raining, but there was nothing to catch or channel it, just open air. And free energy was everywhere, dripping from the sky, channeled through the ground under her feet and cables over her head. Cables! Just hanging off of false trees for anyone to see or access! Not even guarded!
Well, at least she wouldn’t need to eat or sleep for a few days. Or risk what was surely microbially disgusting alien food.
The transporter had set One down as close to the signal’s origin as possible without being seen. She zipped her hood shut over her face, wrapped the transporter safe in its little bag, and set off.
The signal’s location proved to be a civilian residential area, now a scene of chaos. People were swarming, radiating distress, and a number of impractically large metal (!) vehicles had congregated.
Number One took a moment to read the wardrobes, body language, and psychological signals of the people around her. Her clothes looked a little odd in comparison, but if she unzipped her hood enough to show her face, she wouldn’t look too out of place. As she did, she wove her mind into its careful balance, arranged her features, and then mimicked as best she could, broadcasting sameness. It wouldn’t work on everyone, but it’d have to do for now.
She wasn’t used to doing it in the rain, but it seemed to work; nobody looked twice at her as she made her way to the center of activity. Perhaps she wouldn’t need to speak and risk breaking the illusion. A smash and grab was barbaric, but she was in a hurry.
It was too late. Little Sister was gone. Number One could make a good guess as to what had happened—the burnt grass, the damaged roof, the raw energy seething in the sky. Such lightning was a prized resource at home, carefully attracted and harvested. It was good to see her younger sister could do it too; perhaps she had protected this residence (hers?) from further damage.
Now. Where had she gone?
Number One concentrated. At the heart of it, all thoughts—all life—was energy. Electrical patterns shooting across axons, dendrites, and synapses, and once someone learned the patterns and imprints, they became a language all their own.
This was why foreign implants could never hold a candle to innate biology, in One’s opinion. By nature, life and everything associated with it was soft, squishy, and malleable. A hard artificial implant based on computational precision might appeal superficially to the ignorant, but it could never hope to fully mesh with life processes. That required organic intelligence.
As proof of the matter, Number One’s chip gave her a dreadful grip on the local verbal language, but images, emotions, and non-verbal memory, these were her mother tongues—and these savages were easy to read. They weren’t far from her genetically, only culturally, and it was clear how little regard this society gave psychological defense; their minds weren’t even insulated! She was an adult among children.
One opened her mind and listened.
--fire, power, fear, the thud of a human body falling from a good height--
--fatigue, deadlines, work that didn’t matter and a life partner who didn’t care--
--distrust, not that it was the child’s fault of course, but she would be the type to get hit by lightning--
The first thought-pattern seemed most promising, but once she got a good look at it, she drew back. The child weaving it was unwell, radiating loose thoughts and static. Frayed—and in this barbarous society, she doubted there was much cure. One tuned the child out; she had no interest in tainting her psyche with madness.
The third thoughts broadcast from a loosely-braided adult. Number One approached her, dug into her mind for added social lubrication, and the woman didn’t even notice.
“Hello,” Number One said. “I look for my sister. You have seen her?”
Awful. Dreadful. She sounded like an idiot child with a mouthful of tin. Had Number One not removed the emotion, she would’ve been mortified; as it was, she was annoyed.
Fortunately, the woman was malleable; she looked at Number One with glazed eyes and didn’t appear to notice. “Oh,” she said dreamily. “The [error] girl? [Error] nice. But she [error] not here. [Error error] the hospital.” The image and direction of the place appeared in her mind, and One drew them out, wove them into her own memory.
“Thank you.” Number One smiled and turned to leave, only to find the frayed child staring at her distrustfully.
“[Error]? [Error error error error]?”
The frayed child’s gaze was sedated, but One could tell that her broadcast wasn’t affecting it. The child was too frayed, too mad, too outside the normal limits. Number One fluctuated her broadcast, hoping to find the right mental frequency, but it was too late; she’d been noticed.
The mother remained placid. “This is [error] sister honey,” she said, taking the frayed one’s hand. “[Error] that nice?”
The frayed one eyed Number One with paranoia. Even without the broadcast, it was clear that the story wasn’t working. “[Error error error error]”
Without access to the frayed one’s thoughts, Number One’s speech comprehension was near-zero. More concernedly, she heard sirens.
Number One’s culture download was mostly garbage, but it was enough to tell her the basics about the local law enforcement and immigration authorities. Civilians she could handle, but she didn’t want to go against people with training with so little preparation. She was still hoping this would be a simple matter of finding her sister, grabbing her, and leaving.
One adjusted her broadcast to induce nausea and disorientation, and left while the crowd was distracted. When she was out of earshot, she zipped her hood shut over her face again and made her way through the rain. According to the woman’s mind, the hospital wasn’t far away; One didn’t have to lose any more time.
It seemed a good idea at the time, but it turned out that nobody in this ridiculous place went anywhere on foot, so the woman’s memory of the hospital location was distorted. And since apparently nobody in this bizarre society ever concerned itself with fuel shortage or road-destroying disaster, One found herself hiking through mud and weeds off the sides of roads, feeling like a fool. It stopped raining, but that seemed little help.
Unfortunately, one of the things her download couldn’t tell her anything about was transit. Even if she found a native with the skills, she didn’t trust herself to absorb them perfectly on such short notice; muscle memory was tricky. Besides, those lumbering vehicles looked dangerous and unforgiving, and she doubted she could persuade a driver to stop for her at this distance without causing a collision.
By the time she reached the hospital, she was disgruntled and ready to dismiss everything about this miserable place, its people, and its abominable weather. It came as no surprise to find that she was too late; her little sister had left the hospital and One didn’t even have to go inside to know. Indeed, the place was swarming with black cars and men in Peripheral Immigration and Naturalization uniforms, all radiating annoyance and frustration.
Number One paused. She thought. Then, taking a seat in the wet grass, she took up a meditation position and opened her mind.
It was a challenge to do it from this distance, but the water everywhere helped. She could hear, just barely, the thoughts of the people in the parking lot, just enough to pull her new destination from their minds. At any other time, she’d borrow someone and spend a few hours unraveling them, learning the language and culture properly, but that would just have to wait. Speed was paramount; her listening had told her that the PIN had only just arrived themselves, and she still had some hope of beating them to the airport, especially now that their minds had given her the transit information she wanted. No more trudging on foot: the yellow checkered vehicles were what she wanted.
One waited until there were as few PIN around as possible, then approached one of the yellow vehicles with a driver idling inside it. She adjusted her stride to be businesslike, quick but dull; nothing to see here, nothing to notice. She didn’t trust her broadcast to work for long on trained immigration personnel, but it held enough to get her to the taxi.
One lacquered her tin tongue in persuasion and devotion. This was a hospital; surely she wasn’t the only one with poor language skills. “I go to airport. Double fast, please. I pay you.”
“Sure, lady. [Error]”
The vehicle was quick and comfortable. All in all, far superior to the slog prior, and One used the time to listen and take every bit of information the driver’s mind mindlessly pumped out. Sadly, it was mostly rubbish, abysmal popular music and sports team statistics, but at least she learned a little more of the language.
When they arrived, as quickly as One could ever request, she persuaded the driver that he had been well-paid, and then she was on her feet again, bursting through the doors (which opened for her; what a strange place).
The moment she did, she had to surrender the idea of simply snatching her sister and leaving. The place was enormous, far larger than she’d imagined, and crawling with PIN and local security; One could never hope to charm all of them. Her broadcast was for the weak-minded, the distracted, and people of median neurology, not trained personnel who were specifically expecting someone like her.
One had her orders. If she couldn’t avoid them, she’d have to join them. She rewove herself to exude confidence, competence, and authority, stopped her broadcast, and walked through like the place was hers. She approached the first PIN agent she saw, and before he could speak, told him, “I am Number One Eldest Daughter of United Dellan Coalition. I must speak with--” her wretched download tossed up many words, none quite right, “with manager head. Also, I need language download.”
The agent blinked at her, then requested identification. One gave it to him. It didn’t appear to ease any of his confusion; whoever this man was, he was clearly not in charge, and One tailored her body language for one speaking to an inferior, and risked digging into his mind a little.
“Manager head,” she said. “Now.”
Apparently the fool didn’t even know exactly where his superior was; he had to ask someone else before bringing One to a woman wearing a uniform similar to his, but with gold rings at the shoulders. She, at least, seemed to know what she was doing; until a proper translator could arrive, she consented to a mental link with One and even configured her mind to League standard to ease communication. The woman even had some basic shielding in place; out of respect, One didn’t try to unduly influence her.
“My name is Specialist Larkin; I’m second-in-command here. What is it you want?”
What followed was the expected back-and-forth of explaining credentials, verifying them, and so on. Fortunately, mental communication sped it up a bit, and this woman did recognize One’s identification, simplifying matters considerably.
“So you’re one of the Dellans. Why didn’t you come through the usual door?”
“I’m afraid that question would have to be answered by my superiors,” One said, weaving herself to believe it completely. “I am merely their instrument.”
She could tell Larkin didn’t like that answer, but was saved from having to field more questions about it when the door across from them opened and One found herself face-to-face with her sister, wearing a heavy knapsack and holding some sort of crate in one hand. Unmistakable, even after ten years and in strange foreign clothes.
A memory: She was a child in the dry, sandstone rooms of her youth, back before the lead walls, before the meal chute, back when she still had windows. Her first handler, the one she would remove later, was introducing her to her new sister. The child was small, all orange skin and yellow hair, day to One’s night. She was small, practically a baby...
For a moment, One forgot her training. “Sister!” she said. But then she got a hold of herself, and discarded that thread. She was an adult now, an adult with orders. Focus, take the child, leave.
Quickly, she assessed. A native boy was also there, but his body language was of a confused stranger and civilian, nobody to care about. Little Sister looked awful, as though she’d been drop-kicked off a building. Not in a position to resist. The crate in her hand held an animal--
Wait. The animal was broadcasting: Run, it was saying. This is an emergency!
The PIN people were already moving, but One didn’t move. She was busy counter-broadcasting, unraveling the cat’s programming, locking its motor control, trying to shut it up and down before it went for its emergency transporter. Because if it was talking, then it wasn’t native; it was from the League, and while One could negotiate with the PIN, the League was a different story.
The PIN tackled her little sister and a fight broke out. One ignored them, busy with a more important battle. This cat wasn’t some defenseless savage. Its digital brain was well-braided, expensively shielded, and actively fighting her. One tore through its firewall, almost got snared in a dead end memory trap, wove her way out, and evaded some anti-psych theft programs, all while frantically re-braiding her own defenses. The animal's mind was intricate, however artificial, and loath as she was to admit it, it could multi-task better than she could.
Its motor functions, however, were all organic. And that, One had a lock on. Maybe she couldn’t incapacitate the animal completely, but it couldn’t leave either. Yes, she had it, it had lost--
“Let go of me!”
One snapped back to herself. Her sister was on the floor, thrashing like a greased snake. Her nose was bleeding, she still gripped the cat’s crate, and one of the PIN—the man, that stupid, stupid man—was pulling a weapon.
And One’s download, so useless for so many things, told her what the weapon was: a stun gun.
“No--” One started.
Too late. The weapon unleashed a bolt of electricity. Instead of deflecting, Little Sister convulsed, then whip-cracked it out again, shocking the PIN, the civilian under her… and the cat.
Along with the cat’s transporter.
There was a CRACK, the smell of something burning, and then sister, crate, cat, and boy were gone, along with a couple floor tiles and a chunk of the airport floor.
One closed her eyes. This was why she hated to be unprepared. Her language download gave her nothing to excoriate the man with, but that was fine; his superior was doing fine on her own. Instead, One focused on rebraiding herself calm, removing the thread of anger before it could lead her to do anything regrettable.
Once Specialist Larkin was done scolding, she said to One with an air of resignation, “You’ll need to stay. We need to hash this out.”
With similar feelings, One nodded and said, “I must contact my people.”
She did not relish the conversation.
Series: Infinity Smashed
Word Count: 3000
Summary: M.D.'s older sister gets a new case, comes to Earth, and stays to hash out legalities with the US government and make everyone extremely uncomfortable.
Notes: This story was sponsored by the Patreon crew! It is also the formal introduction for Number One. You definitely want to read Electrical Girl and Airport Security first (which got the latter half rewritten, thus the delays. My apologies).
Number One Eldest Daughter was meditating in her lead-walled chambers when she got the news that her sister had been found.
There was no question, of course, that she would be the one to make the retrieval. One’s failings had led to the loss in the first place; it was her responsibility to rectify her errors, and besides, in such situations it was always best to send someone the quarry trusted.
One had long since given her junior up for lost; it was a pleasant surprise to learn otherwise. “I’d be happy to do it,” she said, smiling. “When?”
The handler’s response was not ideal: “Now.” And with a rattle, a mission download came through her meal chute.
One took the tiny chip from the tray with distaste and carefully inserted it behind her ear. A zap, a twitch, and she had a basic language and culture download—though to her dismay, it sent a red message behind her eyes: [ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED.]
“This chip is faulty,” One said, keeping her tone even. “Most of this is inaccessible.”
“It’s the only one we have,” replied the handler through the wall; she had never seen him, but knew his voice well. “Get a proper download when you get there, and if you run afoul of law enforcement, work with them until told otherwise. Oh, and wear your wax; it’s wet there, apparently.”
One wove her mind smooth so she wouldn’t be irritated. “Understood.”
As she dressed in her waxed robes and boots, her handler filled her in on everything he knew, the civilized way. Apparently Little Sister had been found on some savage backwater that hadn’t even developed a universal system of emotional measurement yet. If the Jaunter’s League hadn’t set up a satellite field years prior, she might’ve avoided detection entirely. But as it was, something had finally gotten her tracker broadcasting again, and now the Jaunter’s League, the Dellan Coalition, and local law enforcement all knew Little Sister’s whereabouts. Which meant Number One had to hurry and hopefully get to Little Sister first.
One hated rushing. Corners got cut, things got sloppy. But emergencies always happened, so she dressed as quickly as possible and took the transporter when her handler pushed it through the meal chute. It was a simple model, with only two destinations: her chambers, and Little Sister’s location.
One pulled the stud. The fabric of space-time ripped and reformed around her and she found herself…
In a shrubby field by the side of a road. True to her handler’s words, it was raining, but there was nothing to catch or channel it, just open air. And free energy was everywhere, dripping from the sky, channeled through the ground under her feet and cables over her head. Cables! Just hanging off of false trees for anyone to see or access! Not even guarded!
Well, at least she wouldn’t need to eat or sleep for a few days. Or risk what was surely microbially disgusting alien food.
The transporter had set One down as close to the signal’s origin as possible without being seen. She zipped her hood shut over her face, wrapped the transporter safe in its little bag, and set off.
The signal’s location proved to be a civilian residential area, now a scene of chaos. People were swarming, radiating distress, and a number of impractically large metal (!) vehicles had congregated.
Number One took a moment to read the wardrobes, body language, and psychological signals of the people around her. Her clothes looked a little odd in comparison, but if she unzipped her hood enough to show her face, she wouldn’t look too out of place. As she did, she wove her mind into its careful balance, arranged her features, and then mimicked as best she could, broadcasting sameness. It wouldn’t work on everyone, but it’d have to do for now.
She wasn’t used to doing it in the rain, but it seemed to work; nobody looked twice at her as she made her way to the center of activity. Perhaps she wouldn’t need to speak and risk breaking the illusion. A smash and grab was barbaric, but she was in a hurry.
It was too late. Little Sister was gone. Number One could make a good guess as to what had happened—the burnt grass, the damaged roof, the raw energy seething in the sky. Such lightning was a prized resource at home, carefully attracted and harvested. It was good to see her younger sister could do it too; perhaps she had protected this residence (hers?) from further damage.
Now. Where had she gone?
Number One concentrated. At the heart of it, all thoughts—all life—was energy. Electrical patterns shooting across axons, dendrites, and synapses, and once someone learned the patterns and imprints, they became a language all their own.
This was why foreign implants could never hold a candle to innate biology, in One’s opinion. By nature, life and everything associated with it was soft, squishy, and malleable. A hard artificial implant based on computational precision might appeal superficially to the ignorant, but it could never hope to fully mesh with life processes. That required organic intelligence.
As proof of the matter, Number One’s chip gave her a dreadful grip on the local verbal language, but images, emotions, and non-verbal memory, these were her mother tongues—and these savages were easy to read. They weren’t far from her genetically, only culturally, and it was clear how little regard this society gave psychological defense; their minds weren’t even insulated! She was an adult among children.
One opened her mind and listened.
--fire, power, fear, the thud of a human body falling from a good height--
--fatigue, deadlines, work that didn’t matter and a life partner who didn’t care--
--distrust, not that it was the child’s fault of course, but she would be the type to get hit by lightning--
The first thought-pattern seemed most promising, but once she got a good look at it, she drew back. The child weaving it was unwell, radiating loose thoughts and static. Frayed—and in this barbarous society, she doubted there was much cure. One tuned the child out; she had no interest in tainting her psyche with madness.
The third thoughts broadcast from a loosely-braided adult. Number One approached her, dug into her mind for added social lubrication, and the woman didn’t even notice.
“Hello,” Number One said. “I look for my sister. You have seen her?”
Awful. Dreadful. She sounded like an idiot child with a mouthful of tin. Had Number One not removed the emotion, she would’ve been mortified; as it was, she was annoyed.
Fortunately, the woman was malleable; she looked at Number One with glazed eyes and didn’t appear to notice. “Oh,” she said dreamily. “The [error] girl? [Error] nice. But she [error] not here. [Error error] the hospital.” The image and direction of the place appeared in her mind, and One drew them out, wove them into her own memory.
“Thank you.” Number One smiled and turned to leave, only to find the frayed child staring at her distrustfully.
“[Error]? [Error error error error]?”
The frayed child’s gaze was sedated, but One could tell that her broadcast wasn’t affecting it. The child was too frayed, too mad, too outside the normal limits. Number One fluctuated her broadcast, hoping to find the right mental frequency, but it was too late; she’d been noticed.
The mother remained placid. “This is [error] sister honey,” she said, taking the frayed one’s hand. “[Error] that nice?”
The frayed one eyed Number One with paranoia. Even without the broadcast, it was clear that the story wasn’t working. “[Error error error error]”
Without access to the frayed one’s thoughts, Number One’s speech comprehension was near-zero. More concernedly, she heard sirens.
Number One’s culture download was mostly garbage, but it was enough to tell her the basics about the local law enforcement and immigration authorities. Civilians she could handle, but she didn’t want to go against people with training with so little preparation. She was still hoping this would be a simple matter of finding her sister, grabbing her, and leaving.
One adjusted her broadcast to induce nausea and disorientation, and left while the crowd was distracted. When she was out of earshot, she zipped her hood shut over her face again and made her way through the rain. According to the woman’s mind, the hospital wasn’t far away; One didn’t have to lose any more time.
It seemed a good idea at the time, but it turned out that nobody in this ridiculous place went anywhere on foot, so the woman’s memory of the hospital location was distorted. And since apparently nobody in this bizarre society ever concerned itself with fuel shortage or road-destroying disaster, One found herself hiking through mud and weeds off the sides of roads, feeling like a fool. It stopped raining, but that seemed little help.
Unfortunately, one of the things her download couldn’t tell her anything about was transit. Even if she found a native with the skills, she didn’t trust herself to absorb them perfectly on such short notice; muscle memory was tricky. Besides, those lumbering vehicles looked dangerous and unforgiving, and she doubted she could persuade a driver to stop for her at this distance without causing a collision.
By the time she reached the hospital, she was disgruntled and ready to dismiss everything about this miserable place, its people, and its abominable weather. It came as no surprise to find that she was too late; her little sister had left the hospital and One didn’t even have to go inside to know. Indeed, the place was swarming with black cars and men in Peripheral Immigration and Naturalization uniforms, all radiating annoyance and frustration.
Number One paused. She thought. Then, taking a seat in the wet grass, she took up a meditation position and opened her mind.
It was a challenge to do it from this distance, but the water everywhere helped. She could hear, just barely, the thoughts of the people in the parking lot, just enough to pull her new destination from their minds. At any other time, she’d borrow someone and spend a few hours unraveling them, learning the language and culture properly, but that would just have to wait. Speed was paramount; her listening had told her that the PIN had only just arrived themselves, and she still had some hope of beating them to the airport, especially now that their minds had given her the transit information she wanted. No more trudging on foot: the yellow checkered vehicles were what she wanted.
One waited until there were as few PIN around as possible, then approached one of the yellow vehicles with a driver idling inside it. She adjusted her stride to be businesslike, quick but dull; nothing to see here, nothing to notice. She didn’t trust her broadcast to work for long on trained immigration personnel, but it held enough to get her to the taxi.
One lacquered her tin tongue in persuasion and devotion. This was a hospital; surely she wasn’t the only one with poor language skills. “I go to airport. Double fast, please. I pay you.”
“Sure, lady. [Error]”
The vehicle was quick and comfortable. All in all, far superior to the slog prior, and One used the time to listen and take every bit of information the driver’s mind mindlessly pumped out. Sadly, it was mostly rubbish, abysmal popular music and sports team statistics, but at least she learned a little more of the language.
When they arrived, as quickly as One could ever request, she persuaded the driver that he had been well-paid, and then she was on her feet again, bursting through the doors (which opened for her; what a strange place).
The moment she did, she had to surrender the idea of simply snatching her sister and leaving. The place was enormous, far larger than she’d imagined, and crawling with PIN and local security; One could never hope to charm all of them. Her broadcast was for the weak-minded, the distracted, and people of median neurology, not trained personnel who were specifically expecting someone like her.
One had her orders. If she couldn’t avoid them, she’d have to join them. She rewove herself to exude confidence, competence, and authority, stopped her broadcast, and walked through like the place was hers. She approached the first PIN agent she saw, and before he could speak, told him, “I am Number One Eldest Daughter of United Dellan Coalition. I must speak with--” her wretched download tossed up many words, none quite right, “with manager head. Also, I need language download.”
The agent blinked at her, then requested identification. One gave it to him. It didn’t appear to ease any of his confusion; whoever this man was, he was clearly not in charge, and One tailored her body language for one speaking to an inferior, and risked digging into his mind a little.
“Manager head,” she said. “Now.”
Apparently the fool didn’t even know exactly where his superior was; he had to ask someone else before bringing One to a woman wearing a uniform similar to his, but with gold rings at the shoulders. She, at least, seemed to know what she was doing; until a proper translator could arrive, she consented to a mental link with One and even configured her mind to League standard to ease communication. The woman even had some basic shielding in place; out of respect, One didn’t try to unduly influence her.
“My name is Specialist Larkin; I’m second-in-command here. What is it you want?”
What followed was the expected back-and-forth of explaining credentials, verifying them, and so on. Fortunately, mental communication sped it up a bit, and this woman did recognize One’s identification, simplifying matters considerably.
“So you’re one of the Dellans. Why didn’t you come through the usual door?”
“I’m afraid that question would have to be answered by my superiors,” One said, weaving herself to believe it completely. “I am merely their instrument.”
She could tell Larkin didn’t like that answer, but was saved from having to field more questions about it when the door across from them opened and One found herself face-to-face with her sister, wearing a heavy knapsack and holding some sort of crate in one hand. Unmistakable, even after ten years and in strange foreign clothes.
A memory: She was a child in the dry, sandstone rooms of her youth, back before the lead walls, before the meal chute, back when she still had windows. Her first handler, the one she would remove later, was introducing her to her new sister. The child was small, all orange skin and yellow hair, day to One’s night. She was small, practically a baby...
For a moment, One forgot her training. “Sister!” she said. But then she got a hold of herself, and discarded that thread. She was an adult now, an adult with orders. Focus, take the child, leave.
Quickly, she assessed. A native boy was also there, but his body language was of a confused stranger and civilian, nobody to care about. Little Sister looked awful, as though she’d been drop-kicked off a building. Not in a position to resist. The crate in her hand held an animal--
Wait. The animal was broadcasting: Run, it was saying. This is an emergency!
The PIN people were already moving, but One didn’t move. She was busy counter-broadcasting, unraveling the cat’s programming, locking its motor control, trying to shut it up and down before it went for its emergency transporter. Because if it was talking, then it wasn’t native; it was from the League, and while One could negotiate with the PIN, the League was a different story.
The PIN tackled her little sister and a fight broke out. One ignored them, busy with a more important battle. This cat wasn’t some defenseless savage. Its digital brain was well-braided, expensively shielded, and actively fighting her. One tore through its firewall, almost got snared in a dead end memory trap, wove her way out, and evaded some anti-psych theft programs, all while frantically re-braiding her own defenses. The animal's mind was intricate, however artificial, and loath as she was to admit it, it could multi-task better than she could.
Its motor functions, however, were all organic. And that, One had a lock on. Maybe she couldn’t incapacitate the animal completely, but it couldn’t leave either. Yes, she had it, it had lost--
“Let go of me!”
One snapped back to herself. Her sister was on the floor, thrashing like a greased snake. Her nose was bleeding, she still gripped the cat’s crate, and one of the PIN—the man, that stupid, stupid man—was pulling a weapon.
And One’s download, so useless for so many things, told her what the weapon was: a stun gun.
“No--” One started.
Too late. The weapon unleashed a bolt of electricity. Instead of deflecting, Little Sister convulsed, then whip-cracked it out again, shocking the PIN, the civilian under her… and the cat.
Along with the cat’s transporter.
There was a CRACK, the smell of something burning, and then sister, crate, cat, and boy were gone, along with a couple floor tiles and a chunk of the airport floor.
One closed her eyes. This was why she hated to be unprepared. Her language download gave her nothing to excoriate the man with, but that was fine; his superior was doing fine on her own. Instead, One focused on rebraiding herself calm, removing the thread of anger before it could lead her to do anything regrettable.
Once Specialist Larkin was done scolding, she said to One with an air of resignation, “You’ll need to stay. We need to hash this out.”
With similar feelings, One nodded and said, “I must contact my people.”
She did not relish the conversation.
