Chapter 5

Citizen Hill

That night, after most of the fleshys had fallen asleep, Citizen crept out of the Elysium camp. HQ needed to know the intel she held as fast as possible, so she trekked to the tallest mound of rocks and began to climb. Halfway up the rocky formation, she turned on her night vision.

Heat signature sensors picked up no life forms in a hundred-meter radius.

At the peak of her perch, the signal strength went to ninety-eight percent. She stopped, then tapped into her voice-activated commlink. "Ghost to base. Ghost to base?"

"Go for base," the handler squawked over the channel. "Where have you been?"

"Shut up and listen. I don't have much time," said Citizen. "Objective one complete, I am in the group."

"Do you have the package?" The handler asked.

"Not secured, no. I am with Snowball now - the package. But I have an urgent message."

"Stay on the mission," the handler said.

"Listen to me," said Citizen. "There's a threat to New Therian. A large herd of Gollum moving from the west. They'll reach the outskirts of the city in forty-eight hours."

"That's not a problem."

"No, these Gollum are different. There's a new breed that's twice the size and strength. They're fast and incredibly strong. They hunt and eat human flesh. And they're intelligent. If this herd reaches the city, there'll be nothing to stop them."

"What are you talking about?" The handler's voice went off-script.

Citizen pulled up the recording. "Send File V 2-4." She watched it play in her mini screen.

"Dear God. Contact the boss right away. Tell Commander Kerr we're under red alert," the handler relayed to someone nearby. "Ghost, stand by. Will send further instruction at the regular time."

"What about the package?"

"Hold one moment. The commander is on the line."

Citizen's com went silent.Great. That's really helpful.

Sixty seconds ticked by, then static returned to the line.

"Continue to Milestone Two," the handler said. "Isolate the package. He is to be taken alive."

"Repeat that?"

"New instructions." A layer of tension oozed through the communication, then ended as quickly as it had filtered over. "Under no circumstances can he be killed. You must protect him until you deliver him to us. Once you are secure, transmit your location, and I will send a transport drone."

"But what about these large Gollum?" Citizen asked. "They could kill many innocent lives if they reach New Therian."

"Don't worry about that," the handler said. "Focus on the mission." The commlink squelched dead.

At the end of the conversation, the handler's lack of empathy was the opposite of Bless' voice.

Why was Bless so different?

Both of these people were human. Unless, somehow, the Federation was now using Syth-L handlers.

But that would be a waste of credits. Okay, on to more important things.

Citizen walked back to the camp.

Such as how to get Bless away from the group.

She didn't know why, but the destruction and death these Trolls inflicted created large amounts of distress in Bless. Not only was his increased consternation repeatedly confirmed by his voice inflections, but his skin tone and micro-expressions matched as well.

Why is he so emotional about these Troll attacks? Especially when the handler isn't. It doesn't make sense.

Bless was a warrior. If his file was correct - which it would be since the Federation had nothing to gain by giving her false intel - he was used to this, and he knew the precarious nature of human life. Why was this particular threat creating so much anxiety in him and the other humans that followed him?

This human, Bless, is peculiar.

She had not seen other humans follow someone with so much passion before. Even Federation troops didn't follow Commander Karr or Dr. Drayson like these people followed the snowball, the target, Julian Bless.

There was something about Julian Bless that all the record-scanning and computer power of her CPU could not place. When he interacted with his followers, he exhibited human emotions that she had no record of. She had not experienced gaps in her processing like this before. Maybe an emotion chip would help her decipher this unfamiliar data. She would request one after this mission was over.

The mission? Yes.

Why was she spending so much time thinking about things outside of her mission objective? Concerns over loss of human life unrelated to her mission never made her question anything before?

A growing desire to follow Bless and his cause infected her like a virus. She had received satisfaction from helping protect these innocent people.

Her mission told her to extract Bless. But she couldn't let those Gollum-trolls reach New Therian.

Why think this way?

Her repeated conversations with Bless about compassion had not been helpful. In truth, it only made things more confusing. Obtaining more data from the snowball would help.

Now, back at camp, she laid down and pretended to sleep like she had been doing before her excursion. It was yet another human behavior she had to pretend she possessed.