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May 30, 2016 3:02:33 GMT
S-K43 likes this
Post by aegis on May 30, 2016 3:02:33 GMT
They take him out of the cold. They take him out of the dark. He doesn't remember what came before that. He doesn't know what's going to come after. They put him in the chair when he asks where he's going, and what they're doing, and one of the women in white coats says I always knew this was a waste of time. You can't just rebuild people. You need to start tabula rasa.
Someone else makes a noise of disagreement and says He doesn't even know who he is anymore. I don't even think he knows he's a person, or what a person is, but that's fair, because he isn't one.
Half his field missions end in violent critical failure, the first woman says. He's tried to escape twice. He made it as far as Iceland, once.
He listens like the words are static. They mean nothing. He sits in the chair and waits for the pain, and eventually the pain comes, annihilating, and he is un-moored, weightless, until a handler grips him by the chin and tilts his head up and asks if he is ready to serve. He is ready to serve. We're going to have you training today, she says. He understands this. He knows how to teach, because he knows how to kill. It is the only thing he knows. (Something struggles to form itself in his mind; a thought, a memory, an image streaked in gold, and vanishes almost as quickly. He moves past it.) He follows the handler to the large, empty room where he will teach someone else how to kill. He waits with his back to the wall, on the balls of his feet, until the door slides open and another set of handlers steps through. God, I hope they don't kill each other, someone says. Someone else laughs nervously. You should hope they don't kill us instead.S-K43 |
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May 30, 2016 4:25:44 GMT
aegis likes this
Post by S-K43 on May 30, 2016 4:25:44 GMT
S-K43 is young, but she is not innocent. She is yet a girl -- her body, for all their efforts, still retains all the awkward-yet-delicate angles of youth. The child is only half-made, after all. It'll be years before they replace her flesh like they have her eyes. (Not that she's significantly more human now than she will be as an adult; where Aegis is to have nothing, S-K43 has too much. They've given her libraries and databases and nearly every record they have, decades of information pushed into her mind that all but flush out the part that's more man than machine.) She knows, of course, what she is, what they're doing. She knows the difference between her and the weapon. She knows their hopes for her, that she will not be a failure. And a part of her -- the child, not yet removed entirely -- does want to be a success. The rest of her doesn't care. She has her orders. They're all that matters. Her hands are not bound as she walks through the cold hallways, accompanied by four handlers -- two in front, two behind. Then they enter the room, and now her entire focus is on the man standing opposite them. She has never met him before, but she knows: he is dangerous. He could kill her. (She would not be able to stop him.) Her handlers remain in the room. Their heartbeats quicken with nervousness, but she pays them no mind. There are books, she recalls, detailing etiquette that she presumes is applicable for the situation, so she says -- "Hello."aegis |
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Post by aegis on May 30, 2016 8:43:16 GMT
His bones are still heavy with the weight of frost, and that's what keeps him from bowing under the sudden riptide of memory that surges through him-- a pretty girl smiling his way, tipping his hat at her, hello ma'am rolling off his tongue like sugar; he blinks his way out of the recollection and it hurts, a searing pain behind his eyes, a feeling like he's grabbed an electric live wire with both hands. His metal fist clenches tight with a loud grinding of gears. The handler on his left side steps backward. "Hello ma'am," he repeats. It doesn't sound the way it did in the brief memory, stilted and formal instead of warm and welcoming and he wonders why he's bothered by that. He wonders where the memory came from, what it means. A previous mission? "I think I'm here to teach you how to dance."
There's a muffled, disgusted noise from his right. He doesn't have to look to know which woman it is. S-K43 |
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May 30, 2016 22:01:43 GMT
Post by S-K43 on May 30, 2016 22:01:43 GMT
She doesn't know what she was expecting. Perhaps an immediate demonstration, a blade at her throat as an attempt to instill fear; or a complete dismissal of her words, because words wouldn't teach her ... but Hello, ma'am certainly wasn't it. S-K43 remains unmoving, frozen. His words are at odds with everything about their situation. Her gaze darts between him, his clenched fist, their disgruntled handlers -- uncertainty flickers across her face, a brief ripple to disturb otherwise still waters. But he is her teacher, now, and his orders are her law. She steps her right foot back as her arms lift from her sides, bending her knees in a curtsey without ever breaking eye contact. "Yes," she agrees. (The murmuring of their handlers grows louder and more discontent. S-K43 does not dare to look away from Aegis.) aegis |
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Post by aegis on May 31, 2016 0:10:12 GMT
Aegis starts circling her, fists up, slow and steady. There's no rush. All he has is time. All he has is this. "What do you know?" he asks, flashing her a slightly arrogant smile. "I hope they didn't just throw you to me without any idea how to throw a punch."
At least she knows not to take her eyes off of him. If nothing else, she's got good instincts. Like Anna. He shakes his head. The thought goes up in smoke. S-K43 |
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Post by S-K43 on May 31, 2016 5:31:01 GMT
He's ... smiling. At her. S-K43 isn't sure what he wants of her; the weapon does not smile. (The weapon isn't supposed to smile, she thinks.) She's being circled, and the analogy of a predator versus its prey enters her mind. Her handlers have not yet intervened, however, so the girl takes it as a sign to continue. He is dangerous, yes, but she somehow does not feel threatened. "I have been taught combat," she confirms. "I can punch."S-K43 recalls what she was told just earlier that day, and slowly adds, "I am to learn to be a better weapon." The unspoken like you hangs in the air. Then, "I have never danced."aegis |
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Post by aegis on May 31, 2016 9:39:35 GMT
Her name is Annalise Kering. She is 37 years old and has dedicated the bulk of her adult life to Spectre. She's a genius who could reshape the field of modern psychology, but all she cares about is torturing a man until he forgets he's anything but a tool, and right now, she's disappointed with her work. She has experienced some exquisite pleasures in her time with Project #18ALS71. She remembers when he used to wake screaming every time they brought him off the ice, when he used to beg and beg and beg for his pathetic symbol of a wife to save him. She remembers when he used to fight. She remembers stopping all of that slowly and carefully, using pain when she could and pleasure when she couldn't. But he is not what they dreamed he could be, not what she knows he could be. Sending him on a mission is still a calculated gamble. He'll strangle a child bare-handed without complaint, and then turn on his handler for ordering him to kill a blonde woman. That's not even speaking of the idiot who sent him on a mission to Baltimore, despite her fervent objections. He'd broken programming after four hours in the city and disappeared for weeks, and when they'd finally brought him back he'd looked at her with burning eyes and spit in her face and it had taken months to get him back to where he'd been previously. At least she'd gotten the small joy of witnessing the man's termination personally. He's doing better now, a year on but there are still discrepancies, still weaknesses. Like this little display in front of her right now. She resents not being transferred to the S-K43 project and knows it for the slight it is, the punishment for her failings with Project #18ALS71. It is difficult not to compare the two of them, especially when they're right in front of her: 18ALS71 displaying the little sparks of personality she can't quite iron out yet. There's still a slight accent to his words. He's doing what he's ordered, yes, but he's doing it his way when he should be docile and remote, doing it Spectre's way. Well, if this goes as planned, it won't matter. She'll move on to greater things, even if her failure to break this man entirely will always nag at her, always be a reminder of her own imperfection. She watches as he unleashes a flurry of punches upon S-K43, testing her ability to block. His physical engineering, at least, is a marvel. The techs claim his metal arm, and the work that went into reshaping his body to accommodate it, is decades ahead of anything else in the world, and she's seen no proof so far to argue otherwise. His serum experiments are not unequivocal successes like the one that went into Fidelia, but he's due for another round of experiments this afternoon, and one of the new biologists she's been talking to has some interesting ideas. S-K43 |
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Post by S-K43 on Jun 1, 2016 0:20:51 GMT
Her arm comes up to block the first hit. The impact shakes her entire body. There's even the hot bloom of pain shooting through her nerves, and she knows she's made a mistake. The next one, then, she dodges -- along with the blows that come after. She does not want to get hit again. S-K43 is not graceful in her movements. Her steps forego beauty for efficiency; her movements are essentially mechanical in their purpose and precision. As she stays on the defensive, however, she watches him. S-K43 commits everything about him, about this encounter, to memory. It's not just the arm that's a weapon, she quickly learns -- were he being completely serious, there is no doubt that he could eliminate her without his arm at all. She waits, observing and absorbing and avoiding as much as she can, until she hears an impatient, Go. Obedience is immediate. To dodge next attack, instead of going sideways or back, S-K43 weaves forward and aims her own fist up, at the hollow directly beneath his ribs. aegis |
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Post by aegis on Jun 3, 2016 4:34:15 GMT
She's taller than he is. He has a sense memory of being taller than he is now by two or three inches. He doesn't remember why that changed. He doesn't know if the memory is even real. He side-steps her blow and launches his own parry with the metal arm, a quick jab aimed for her extended elbow joint. Aegis circles again. This is real. He knows this much. This room, this moment, has to be enough. "I said we were going to dance," he says. He's not smiling anymore. The Baltimore accent--not that he even recognizes it--is draining out of his words, sentence by sentence. "You'll have to be quicker than that."
It's difficult, he knows, to learn to be quick. His own bulk and the metal arm and the metal they've put inside of him would cripple a normal human's hopes, but he's been experimented on and enhanced enough to the point where it doesn't matter. He wonders if they've done the same to her. S-K43 |
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Post by S-K43 on Jun 3, 2016 22:39:39 GMT
It hurts. S-K43 withdraws her own arm with a muted gasp, feeling the the hot flash of pain rocket through her body. Were she any other human, there's no doubt in her mind that her arm would already be broken. As it stands, however, it's still mobile -- just unlikely to be throwing any further punches. She holds her arms close to her body, attemping to slow her rising heart rate. Quick, he says, and she can almost hear the quiet murmur from the scientists observing from outside. No matter how much they've changed her body, tweaking her bones and muscles over and over again, she remains a fighter without elegance. (It's the one failure that frustrates her creators to no end.) Even if she's broken today, however, they can fix her; even if she does not land a hit, she will have watched him, and learned. So S-K43 takes only another, single moment of pause before attempting a tight feint while preparing for the inevitable counter. aegis |
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Post by aegis on Jun 5, 2016 7:39:29 GMT
She smiles thinly as they fight. S-K43 might be the more obedient, technically successful project, but 18ALS71 is still unsurpassed in his capability for violence. She's watched him spar before, unrestrained by orders and ambitions that he can pass on what he knows, and seen him in the field as well, and she hopes that the other handlers, her competition, judging this exercise understand how much he's holding back for S-K43. (She hopes they recognize the depth and complexity of the beauty of her work, the gleaming cut-glass edges of it.) The two of them are getting faster now, settling into a rhythm. Annalise watches the faint echoes of humanity bleed out of 18ALS71 as the fight draws on. This is the longest she's ever seen him engage a single opponent. Most fights she's learned under his tutelage--and isn't that a thought to have--end in thirty seconds or less. Usually less, when your opponent has super-strength and a metal right hook. 18ALS71 breaks the distance between them when S-K43 throws what Annalise assumes, with her untrained eye, to be an attempt at hitting him. They're almost too fast for an un-enhanced human to track with the naked eye at this point. She'll have to review the security footage on a slower setting. 18ALS71 is out of even S-K43's considerable reach at the moment, and he looks content to stay there, fists up and bouncing on the balls of his feet. She's about to order him to get back in there and get to work when there's a knife in 18ALS71's right hand, without preamble or warning. When did he get that? Who gave him that? His face is like stone as he cuts in with a low, vicious slash aimed for S-K43's gut. His deactivation command is at the tip of her tongue for if he goes too far. S-K43 |
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