Chapter 2: Calmer Days


The alarm buzzed in a shrill annoying way, that special annoying where there was no chance in hell you'd get up on your own, the sort of perfect annoying where you're about to see a bit of breast but the sound is so abrupt that you clench shut your minds eye and when you open it again you're in a still-dark room in a tiny cabin in a tiny village somewhere in the middle of Greenland.

It was 7:00 AM.

Glitch slid out of bed, regretting it instantly as the cold Greenland air impacted on his exposed skin. Why he slept in any less than a full winter jacket he could never figure out, and he wondered about it aloud the same way he had every morning since he had came to this place. There was a flash of red and Glitch turned to find his sister, Sara, in the doorway.

"Good morning, sleepy head."

You could almost hear her smile. Glitch, however, was less optimistic.

"What's so good about it." He said, while rubbing his face roughly, making it blotchy and red for a moment.

Each morning, Sara would say "Good morning, sleepy head." and each morning Glitch was determined to be sulky and would reply "What's so good about it.". This neither deterred Sara nor did it adversely effect Glitch. He had actually found that having someone to greet him when he woke to be something of a nicety and he happened to enjoy it a great bit. Of course, he couldn't let Sara win by telling her that. Not that she didn't know, the beautiful long haired girl being somewhat clairvoyant when it came to her younger twin.

"I've breakfast made up already." Sara pointed out of the doorway.

Indeed, the table was set and there were eggs steaming away on two plates, waiting to be eaten. Sara crossed the room and sat in the wooden chair that was sticking out. Glitch unceremoniously plopped himself down on the opposite end of the table, grabbing a fork and shoveling food into his mouth with hardly a second to possibly taste it.

"You always eat so fast," Sara frowned at him from across the table, her first bite still on her fork, "It's like you have somewhere to go."

Glitch had finally started to fully waken.

"Old habits die hard."

Sara popped the egg into her mouth.

"Gabriel Mason, you're not going anywhere." She winked at him.

For his part, Glitch chuckled and continued to eat.


* * *

“Your name is Gabriel.”

“What?”

Glitch glanced over his shoulder to find Dr. Engelmacht there behind him, fidgeting nervously.

“I told you I’d find your real name. So, I queried Deep 13 and it said your name was Gabriel.”

Her face reddened a bit, “It’s a very pretty name.” She added.

She took a seat opposite of his.

Glitch / Gabriel sighed, and put his food tray aside. The other patrons of the cafeteria were all trying their best to pretend they weren’t staring at the couple, but Glitch could feel their eyes on his back.

“Who or what is Deep 13?” He finally asked, a fork dancing absent mindedly between his fingers.

Kathryn’s face lit up; she was aching for a chance, any chance, to help Glitch in any possible way.

“Deep 13 is the super computer that runs just about everything in this complex. Its primary use, though, is to create the personalities that run the biosuits.” She explained regally.

Glitch pinched the bridge of his nose, “So Mother is my Mother?”

“Huh? Mother?”

Glitch didn’t notice his slip for a moment, but then realized his error.

“Sorry. Deep 13 is my mother?” Mother is my Mother? Where did that come from...?

Kathryn smiled after a beat, “Yep!”

Glitch leaned back in his chair and sighed again, something he was doing more and more when in Engelmacht’s company. It had been two weeks since he had sat dazed watching the cradle. When he finally returned to the infirmary he had discovered that ‘they’ had issued him a room and an ID card. The only use he’d found for it thus far was that he could get meals with it. Slowly, he was starting to settle into a routine. Part of that routine was beginning to be “avoid Dr. Engelmacht whenever possible”, which that blasted ID card hadn’t helped with, getting him trapped with her in the cafeteria right then. She may have helped design him, and even seem shy and timid, but Glitch sensed something decidedly sinister about her. He couldn’t place his finger on why, but whenever he was with her he was deeply uncomfortable.

The fact that he didn’t trust her any further than he could place kick her didn’t mean that he was going to be rude, however.

“Thanks for your help, Dr. Engelmacht, I really appreciate it!” Glitch said. He screwed his face in to an approximation of a grateful smile, but it looked more like a grimace than anything else.

Kathryn, of course, wouldn’t have noticed if you took a picture of it and faxed it to her. She was too busy reveling in his appreciative words.

“Really, it’s no problem!” She grinned, “And remember, you can call me Kathryn, Gabe.” She added with a wink.

Glitch nodded sheepishly and excused himself hastily from the table (although, if you asked him, it wasn’t nearly hasty enough).

“So, my name is Gabriel.” He whispered quietly to himself later.

First he was Glitch, now he was Gabriel, but there was still something missing, but he couldn't place his finger on it.


***


The days continued to pass for Glitch, who had favored his nickname over the one some computer had given him, and he soon settled into a sort of comfortable existence. The intervening time might’ve been called happy if you stretched your imagination, but at very least it was calm and easy. A laboratory wasn’t the most exciting place to be, much less one as well secured as the Apath Underground. Even with his initial distrust of Dr. Engelmacht (who still insisted he call her by her first name), he found himself wishing for her company during the long hours between waking and returning to sleep. For Kathryn’s part, she spent as much time as humanly possible with her creation, but a scientist of her caliber always had this or that to do, and that left her little time to socialize with her favorite psuedo-person.

After nearly a month, Glitch couldn’t take it anymore. One evening, the long haired boy found himself in a rather one sided conversation with the always beaming Kathryn. This was not unusual, seeing as Glitch usually didn’t have anything to contribute anyway, what with the nonstop excitement of siting around all day. Once she finished the train of thought she had been on, Glitch interjected with a question.

“Dr. Kathryn...” He began. Glitch refused to drop the ‘Dr.’ despite Engelmacht’s repeated protests.

“What does the Corporation plan to do with me?”

Kathryn shifted uncomfortably and took a quick sip from her coffee to stall her answer a moment.

“What brought this on?”

Glitch sighed at her obvious diversion.

“Look, I know I really don’t have a tight grasp of the situation. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff you and the Corporation are hiding from me,” He raised a hand to stall her protests, “But honestly, I’m a multimillion dollar project who’s doing nothing more than sleeping and eating. Surely there's something I was created for?”

There was a small tinkle as Kathryn’s coffee cup was placed on the table.

“I should have figured you’d get antsy after a while.”

Glitch stared unblinkingly at her, waiting for her explanation.

“Wahahaha! Don’t worry! I was planning on asking what we were going to do with you at the next staff meeting! After that, you’ll have your answers!” She had jumped to her feet and was aggressively giving the ‘V’ sign with her fingers.

“Oh, uh, okay.” Glitch scratched at his chin, trying not to laugh at his over exuberant guest.

“Ehehhehheeh...” Kathryn blushed something fierce as she realized how loud she had been, and refused to meet Glitch’s eyes as she returned to her coffee.

How could she tell him about Sara? That they were afraid that he would go nuts just like her and his brothers before him? How was she supposed to get him to understand that they had never intended for him to activate, and that he was already being replaced by the Type 07?

How exactly was she supposed to tell him that every BioSuit, except for one, had been a spectacular failure? He was the next in line of a series of continually lowered expectations. Kathryn, with all the love she had for him, could never tell him of the terrible legacy everyone expected him to live up to.

* * *
"Hey Gabe, what's up?"

Sara knocked on Glitch's window from the outside, startling him out of his silent daydream. He jumped slightly, and then stared into her clear blue eyes before comprehending what was going on.

"Oh, hey."

It was midday.

"What's wrong? You look so serious."

Gabe sat silently for a moment, trying to come up with a reply but ending up only being able to give a noncommittal shrug.

"Help me in."

Gabe sat up rigidly and attempted to help Sara through a frame that was about two sizes too small for someone with as impressive of a bust as her. With a rousing shout of "Pull!" from Sara, he somehow managed to force her through, but was unable to keep his balance in the process. Thus, they predictably ended up in a pile on the floor at the foot of his bed, with he chair he had been sitting on knocked far away.

The first groan came from Gabe, who had a woman just nearly as heavy as him bearing down on his body. The second groan also came from Gabe, seeing as how Sara had taken to giggling and bouncing up and down in his lap instead of getting up like a sane person would.

"So... are you going to tell me what you've been thinking about now."

It was only then that Gabe realized that this had all been a carefully orchestrated plot to pin him down and pry his secrets out. He began to struggle but in an instant Sara's face with centimeters from his own, lips pursed.

"Come on, aren't you going to tell all your problems to your cute... big... sister?" With each of her last words she got even closer.

Sweat dripped down Gabe's forehead as he began to realize the implications of not talking.

"Do..." He gave a false start as Sara grinned like a predator when she heard his voice.

He coughed sideways into his hand and started again, ever aware of the attractive young woman pressing herself on to him.

"Do you... ever think of that place?" Gabe lowered his eyes, unable to meet hers.

Sara's expression turned stoney and she backed off. Standing, she dusted off her pants and walked over to sit on his bed. Without saying a word, she patted the space next to herself. Glitch got to his feet and took a spot on the bed with slightly more distance between between them than where she indicated. Unperturbed, she scooted next to him and put her hands on his thigh. Looking at the ceiling, she began to talk.

"I don't think a day goes by that I don't think of that place. Sometimes I think I haven't, but then I realize that it's only because I'm so used to it that I don't think of it as strange. But..." She paused, still not looking at Glitch. Haltingly, he put his hand around her waist. She continued, "...Since you've come, it hasn't bothered me. I was always curious about what happened to you. When you showed up at my door, well, there's been almost no reason to think of it. Now, the only times I do-" She cut herself off.

Gabe looked over to see that she was looking at him, eyes misty.

"You can tell me...S-sis?" He held her tighter, unable to keep eye contact.

"The only times I do now," She sniffled, "Are when I see myself in the mirror and remember when happened that day."

Gabe clenched his eyes shut. Everything led to that. It was the only thing that weighed on his sister's mind, as far as he could tell.

"You've beautiful. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Don't ever forget that."

Sara grabbed the front of his shirts and pressed her face against his chest. Gabe slowly stroked her fire red hair as she composed herself.

"Why... do you ask?" She managed to get out between sniffles.

"I've been having dreams about that place." he said softly

"And...?" She looked up to see he was staring out the window again.

"And... I've been thinking about Engelmacht."


* * *
Stephan Apex rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Like most of the meetings, about five minutes in it had degraded into a shouting match between department heads and leaders from various corporations, all trying to get preferential treatment for their own project/ company/ harebrained scheme.

Face shaded by the shadows, differentiated from the others in the room only by the bold number 1 on his face, he was half tempted to ask someone to kill them all so he could hear himself think. That thought crossed his mind at every meeting, but he realized this time, like every other, that they weren’t actually there; they were only dummies with the voices and numbers of their puppeteer. The only live ones in the room were Engelmacht and Dr. Hung, even Apex himself opted to stay in his office instead of making the trek down to the bowels of the Underground. Besides, killing his own people wouldn’t do much for his cause this early in the game; it was best to wait until he had all the cards in his hand before he started to reveal them.

Though he was unable (at the moment) to kill them all without having to worry about consequences, he certainly wasn't going to stand for this idiocy in the middle of a Council meeting.

“All of you ignorant bastards are invited to shut the hell up RIGHT NOW!”

The sound of his voice crackled loudly over the speaker, which couldn’t quite keep up with his volume.

The table quieted. Apex was more than slightly amazed that such a group of powerful individuals could be so easily intimidated. Although, then again, maybe he shouldn’t be.

“Is there any NEW business we can scream at each other about?”

Engelmacht’s arm was raised so quickly you could almost hear it cut through the air.

“Dr. Engelmacht, you have something to say?” Stephan was aware of how obvious the answer to this question was.

“Yes sir, I do.” She got to her feet.

“This ought to be good,” chortled a tiny, germanic voice from across the table.

“Shut your face you kraut.” Snapped Engelmacht.

The heckler was silenced, at least for the time being.

“As you may know, some two months ago the Type 06 BioSuit activated of its own will and has been confined to the Underground activation level.”

There were nods of acknowledgment around the table.

“As the creator and guardian thus far for the boy, I wish to know what we will be doing with him. He is becoming restless.”

The din of voices around the table grew slightly, but she continued anyway.

“We have to put him to use; he has a virus system already, he can be put into service.”

From her side, Dr. Hung voiced his opinion on the matter.

“NO.”

Her contemporary rose to his feet and regarded her arrogantly over his spectacles.

“That would be of the utmost foolishness. To allow something we know nothing about out into the world would be madness.”

She spun to face him, ignoring the majority of the council as they continued the fight she and the TestType developer had been waging for the last several months.

“He’s a kind a gentle boy, and he’s smart as sin. He would work wonderfully as an agent.”

“You say he’s gentle, so how do we know he can fight? You do realize that he will most likely only be used as an assassin? How does that bode with you?”

Kathryn was stumped for only a moment before an idea popped into her head.

“I’ll put him through training. That way we’ll be sure he can fight, and he can do it with our methods in mind.” She smirked at the balding Dr. Hung.

Stephan spoke up from the background.

“I see no problem with this.”

Kathryn smiled victoriously, Hung grunted in dissatisfaction.

“Training or no, the Type 07 will wipe the floor with him.”


***


Training, Glitch had decided, was the most boring thing in the world. Even thirty years from now, if prompted, his answer to the question “What was the most boring thing you have ever done?” would be training in the Apath Underground.

Kathryn had enrolled him in the Apath Security Program. After the first day, all of his innate fighting talents had surfaced. After a week, he dropped out of the class (much to Kathryn’s dismay). He did, however, stay around to spar.

It wasn’t long before he was tossing every challenger he faced across the room. He began to take more an more opponents on, performing combos on scores of men with superhuman feats of agility and leaving them exhausted on the floor while he stood there, the single survivor.

Kathryn watched him fight when she got a chance. She had been diverted to developing prosthetic devices while the TestType BioSuit was being constructed. Everyone attached to that project were doing their best to put as much distance between it and the good doctor as possible. Engelmacht's track record could be called rocky, if you felt like being really, really nice.

There was a flash. A slashed wrist, a room full of blood, a smiling face. Red hair.

Engelmacht shook her head as she caught Glitch's eye from across the room. The memories faded. She waved at him and he waved back, before being rushed by another fighter. Kathryn gasped as it looked like Glitch was going to be clothes-lined, but he dropped into a split and elbowed the man in the gut. The man's forward motion was used to toss him over Glitch's purple head. He pulled himself to his feet and ran over to her.

"Hey babe." Glitch was becoming more comfortable with Kathryn by the day.

"Hey Gabe!" Kathryn couldn't be happier about it.

Glitch grabbed a towel from a hook on the wall and wiped the sweat from his body,and then pulled a t-shirt over his head. Kathryn admired his body while his eyes were hidden.

"What brings you down here, Ms. Doctor? You've been pretty scarce lately," Glitch probed while freeing his hair from underneath the collar of the shirt.

Kathryn tapped at her chin, the way she often did when she was telling a fib. It happened often enough that Glitch had picked up on it. As far as he could tell, she only did it when she was hiding some Underground business from him. He prepared to take whatever she was about to say with a grain of salt.

"You know, this and that... I just wanted to see how you were carrying on."

This was a lie.

"Really, what brings you?" Glitch poked at her with his fingers while she stood there, laughing nervously.

"Well..." she began.

The Council had been satisfied with Gabe's progress. It proved, at least, what they had all been hoping, that any information that a BioSuit had stored via download was usable. If it had to be experienced, learned like it had to be with humans, the BioSuit program as a whole would be at risk of failure. The primary advantage a BioSuit had over a normal human was that, theoretically, it could learn skills by downloading them, and instantly apply them without prior experience. Jumping in a tank or a helicopter when the situation required it without being befuddled by the controls was a definite plus when things came down to it. The fact that Glitch was able to unlock all his martial arts and fighting skills so quickly functioned as an excellent proof of concept as far as the Council was concerned.

"...the Council wants to put you through some VR training. But, I'm not sure if you'll like it." Kathryn said.

"Why is that?" Gabe looked up at her face, only to see that she was looking away from him.

"It's a bit more... l--" Kathryn paused as if she couldn't bring herself to say something. Her tongue remained clenched between her teeth, unable to proceed.

"You'll see." She said, smiling down on Gabe reassuringly

* * *

Gabe faced the massive machine that covered one whole wall of the room and could only guess what he was in for. Kathryn was still standing by the entrance, glancing nervously between him and the clipboard she held in an iron grip. She seemed wholly unwilling to break the silence, preferring the only slightly less harmful option of letting Gabe try and figure things out himself. The less she said, Kathryn thought, the less he would associate this event with her.

The machine was so big the Gabe had to get closer to realize it wasn't just a block of mechanics and that it actually had pieces sticking out from it. Of particular interest was the plush looking seat at the base of it all, appearing completely dwarfed and out of place.

"I'm just going to assume that I'm supposed to sit here."

From across the room he could almost make out Kathryn nodding.

He moved to sit, but stopped short.

"It's, like, safe... right?" Gabe questioned awkwardly.

Without a second's pause Kathryn rushed to his side, attempting to ease his concerns.

"Oh, don't worry! It's perfectly safe. Sara used to love this thing."

Gabe frowned.

"Who?"

Kathryn turned bright red and dropped her clipboard.

"Uh.. uh--" She had gotten a hold of the clipboard only to have it tumble from her hands again, spinning across the floor.

"Is something wro--" Gabe was cut off as Kathryn stood straight as a board, her clipboard caught in a death grip by her side.

"No! Nothing's wrong! Never mind!"

Gabe blinked at her incredulously as she composed herself.

"It may sting a bit when you first connect but otherwise it completely safe." She finally managed to croak out, too embarrassed to face Gabe any longer.

"Right," He narrowed his eyes at her blatantly suspicious behavior, but finally sat in the chair anyway.

Kathryn moved to the far, far right wall.

"Are you ready?"

Gabe gave a curt nod forward, face set.

"Do it."

There was a snap and all the lights in the room dimmed. What sounded like a huge turbine began to spin just centimeters behind Gabe's head. His chair began to vibrate. A roaring sounded in his ears that blocked out whatever it was Kathryn was yelling at him, her mouth opening and closing in front of him, her eyes moist.

The chair back seemed to fall out from behind him and he crashed into a flat position. It gave one final shake, and then sank backwards into the machine. The roar was dulled inside. From the darkness there was the sounds of whips, snapping against metal. Gabriel, sealed in the heart of the thundering machine, felt slithering tubes begin to wrap around his body, tying him to the chair. The last thing he remembered was the feeling of being shot by a gun about a thousand times along the back of himself, and then the alarming sensation of his consciousness draining out through the tubes that had trapped him.

[welcome home]

* * *

Kathryn jumped as she heard Gabe's muffled yelp from within the machine, which had now quieted to a dull hum while it worked away. She scampered to a terminal next to the hatch where Gabe had disappeared into and began typing furiously.

"He should be connected now."

The picture of the screen scrolled rapidly as information passed across it at the behest of her keystrokes.

"Time to start it up."

She grabbed a headset that hung neatly out of the way and adjusted it so it fit snugly on her head. After a quick check to make sure the mic was receiving, she pulled a lever next to the monitor. The machine began to roar again and Gabe's voice came through her headset.

"What-- What the hell am I seeing?"


* * *

After that last blinding bit of pain, vast grassy plains had appeared before Gabriel's eyes, stretching onwards into infinity in all directions. A gentle wind blew across the landscape, making the thick green grass sway under its caresses.

"This is virtual reality."

Gabe jumped as Kathryn's voice came from the sky.

Before Gabe could venture a question, Kathryn began to explain.

"This is a virtual battle field. I am connected to you by headset. Anything you say will be transmitted to me, and anything I say will be transmitted to you. I can even monitor what you see, to a limited extent. If what the Type 5 said is any indication, 2D representations could never recreate what you are seeing."

"Type 5... That's the Sara you mentioned, isn't it?"

As only silence came over the line, Gabe could almost picture her tapping away at her chin, trying to come up with an explanation.

"Ah... yes, but lets not dwell on that right now!" Was Kathryn's eventual reply, apparently unable to come up with a suitable fabrication quick enough.

In the distance Gabe began to hear the sound of marching, hundreds of footfalls stomping towards a goal. Though he could barely make it out, he thought he could see something coming over the ridge to the east.

"You are about to be tested on your ability to remotely command a theoretical BioSuit army."

As the troops came closer, he saw that they were all identically uniformed, with identical builds, and each of them with the same platinum blond hair. Their faces too were all identically shadowed.

"Am I really able to do this?"

There was a pause on the line.

"Actually, so far as you have been designed, you are not able to do this in the real world, which is fine because there is no BioSuit army to speak of. However, in VR you should find yourself very much able to control this small of a force."

There was another pause.

"If I remember correctly the Type 5 had a limit of about 10,000, give or take a few dozen men."

Gabe found himself strangely disturbed by the reply. It was as if Kathryn had finally shed her pleasant mask and was the perfectly fridgid woman he had always feared her to be when she was away from him. The implications of a BioSuit army put a cold fear in his belly while at the same time made a suppressed part of him call out for joy. He chose to ignore both parts and instead focus on what was happening on the field.

In the depths of his brain he felt a connection bloom. Hundreds of tiny thoughts began to pour into his head. They threatened to overflow and drive him mad. With a bellow, he silenced them.

"STOP!"

[STOP!]

Though he had yelled aloud, the voices in his head indeed stopped. Down on the field, so had the BioSuit force, halting some 40 yards from him.

"Did... I do that?" Gabe asked quietly, awe struck.

From the west, another force appeared. As it passed the crest of the hill, and came towards the flat lands where Gabe's force resided, a man in shrouded in black stood behind it.

There was an electric crackling in Gabe's head, and the enemy forces seemed to focus.

[Attack.]

The man in black thrust a sword into the air. It was huge, and at the end came to a deadly looking hook.

The enemy began to charge.

"Jesus christ!" Gabe shouted as they closed with alarming speed.

He started to panic. Hundreds of men (and women?) who seemed intent on ripping him limb from limb were careening down at him and there was nothing he could do.

"Gabriel! Lead your troops!" Engelmacht sounded from above.

There was a ripple in time.

Instinct took over.

Where Gabriel's left arm once was, instead there was a powerful metal tube, with a massive claw.

It shot forward.

[Troops focus. Defensive position. Prepare for incoming enemy. Separate in the hopes of surrounding. There is no line. Fight.]

Purple hair trailed in the wind on one end of the field, while blond hair blew on the other.

Then, there were screams, and blood, and death. The green disappeared, and the skies turned grey.

* * *

In the end, Gabriel's forces had won, but by a negligible number. There were three BioSuits left on the field by the end of the exercise, and only two of them were in one piece. Gabe reflected upon the horrible violence and savagery the two groups had demonstrated. Armed only with blades, they hacked each other to pieces, and when they blades were lost or broken, they bit and scratched their way to victory. They disemboweled each other, chewed through each others throats, gouged out eyes, cut off tongues, anything they could get their hands on. They weren't people, or even soldiers. They were monsters, and beasts, and animals.

Gabe and the man in black, across the way, watched. The last one standing, who had one hand buried in the belly of an opponent, and the other holding his own guts in, flickered and disappeared from existence. A beat later so did the landscape, leaving only white and the two men. The man in black soon vanished, and then too did Gabe.

[farewell]

A white feather fluttered past, and then nothing.