“Shh. Don’t make so much noise.”
Althea woke with a start. Pontikos whispered her, contributing authenticity to Althea’s dreams of someone speaking to her.
Subvocally she said,
“What’s going on?”
“Four intruders. One of them sounds like Tobias.”
As if the creepy teen had been listening to her thoughts, Althea heard something clatter in the distance and Tobias say,
“Holy shit, be quiet, idiot.”
She recognized his voice from the first outburst. The irony of shouting a warning about volume while sneaking around was lost on the obviously simple Tobias.
“Pontikos, I need you to prep my combat protocols. Are you ready?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Give me a sit rep.”
“We have seven approaching unknown subjects. One of them is Tobias, I do not believe Gerry is part of the group.”
“Seven?”
“Four walking and three being carried.”
“That’s weird, right?”
“Based on respiration and heart rate five of the seven children are quite young, Mistress.”
Althea shook her head. Based on what Tobias said, he knew she possessed a combat chassis and Persona implant. Why on earth would he risk attacking her.
Of course. Almost everyone else decided to make a play for me anyway.
She could not quite argue that point. If Tobias knew about her implants, he might have taken steps to neutralize them. This way would work just fine. Althea remained frozen in place, ready to spring on the children when she felt something heavy and rough thrown over her body.
Althea growled, but the noise cut off as her body started convulsing. Pontikos fuzzed out of focus and Althea lost any semblance of control over her body. Between eyelids fluttering open and sounds, Althea got the impression of what the boy and his cohorts intended. Four of the smaller children surrounded Althea like a wall while the others picked up her own kids and carted them off, carrying two at a time, except for Tobias.
He looked down at Althea and sneered,
“I will be back for you later. I can let Gina take a look at you and see if we can’t make that body a little more pliable.”
He kicked Althea, somehow avoiding the charged netting sending hundreds of amps of big fat, chunky current through her body. All over her form, breakers and electrical anti-surge systems failed as the fundamental laws of physics played havoc with her highly engineered body.
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Althea watched her six sleeping charges carried off. Her mouth and limbs remained uncooperative, but during the brief flashes Pontikos appeared and disappeared, Althea tried to shout at her.
Thinking that she might be able to control her body manually, she tried to issue an order to Pontikos to disconnect the primary control services from her implant. But nothing seemed to happen. She seemed to still have the ability to manipulate her installed protocols from her AR space, but otherwise nothing approaching motor control. Whatever they had connected the netting to had serious charge capacity.
Three of the kids watched her dispassionately as Althea thrashed about. All three bore haunted, empty expressions. Althea had seen faces like that only on late night advertisements about the horrors of the early space boom.
At least five minutes passed while Althea suffered from her lack of control. Then as she pitched and kicked, she noticed that the rain still dripped into the warehouse and seemed to get an idea. She could control her systems manually, she had learned to do it at Boris’s side.
But without Pontikos, she would fail.
Each time she imagined a solution to her problem, she discovered something new keeping her from acting. As a desperate move to stop Tobias, Althea instituted CQC-1, hoping that she could at least try to activate or control her limbs.
Rather than help, the protocol seemed to exacerbate her pitching and rolling. As if the digital interface still managed to exert some control, but not enough to make any useful moves. Watching the hollow-cheeked kids as she buckled, Althea knew that her last option could mean all of their deaths.
Torn between risking the lives of the kids keeping her here and letting the children she swore to protect fall under Tobias’s clutches, Althea made her choice.
She activated the CC-0 implant and tried to apply a thirty second timer, hoping that would work even if it did not register to her interface.
Suddenly, her segregated space felt full and almost pregnant. A sinuous chrome serpent wearing Althea’s face appeared in the small space.
“You would be so sad if I ate them, wouldn’t you?”
Althea froze in her SEP. This should have been a safe place. But somehow the projection of her own mind as a survival obsessed psychopath found a hole and wormed her way into Althea’s place of refuge. She needed to answer the serpent, give it some form of guidance about what she wanted. The question answered itself, but Althea stared at the words, trying to find the hidden trap in them.
She steeled her resolve, ignoring the reduced, less violent flopping of her body as she said,
“Not just that. If you think I have issues now, try leaving me with a child’s blood on my hands.”
The serpent seemed to read the judgment and accusation in Althea’s words. It spun on liquid silver coils and brought its face even with Althea’s. It snapped at her and said,
“You should thank me instead, not pout at me.”
“You killed a bunch of people you didn’t need to.”
She knew she should not be engaging the insane alternate version of her mind, but Althea could not help but debate it. Pontikos’s absence gave Althea no reason to keep her guard up against vivifying her own mental projection. Pressure from knowing each second put her further from the kids made her feel extra standoffish.
The snake smiled at her and said,
“Did I? Did they? Hmm.”
She twirled in Althea’s mental space, as if the renewed dance mocked Althea for her prudishness and pacifism.
“Look, are you going to help me or are we dead here?”
“No killing the children? Squish squish?”
Althea shook her head an said,
“No! Don’t kill anyone who doesn’t need to be killed. But get me out of here.
The serpent seemed to brighten, as if an interior light grew at Althea’s words.
“Good, we live.”
With those words, the serpent sunk into the floor of Althea’s mind. Her body’s movements took on a kind of rhythm she could feel in her teeth. Like a jarring full body rave went down between her hips. The kids stepped back as her seizing carried her across the room. Althea figured out what her CC-0 protocol did in an instant mere seconds before she flopped into a small pool of water.
Her own scream sent her into unconsciousness.
