Chapter 7

Citizen Hill

Citizen Hill stood next to Bless. He had his katana drawn. Her weapons remained snug in their sheaths, resting on her back.

She and Bless were on the edge of a small group of Elysium fighters.

His skills and ability to work together with others continued to impress her. Joining forces, they were about to defend a small valley between the outskirts of town and a massive hill.

The Elysium tactics of choosing such a strategic spot forced the Trolls to bottleneck themselves. The humans were killing them one by one. If she could just move them a little farther down the hill, she could isolate herself and Bless from the main group. But Bless' people were excellent fighters and were used to fighting melee style.

Things had been going as planned until a handful of Trolls ran up behind them, disrupting the strategic battle plan in place. Somehow, the beasts had gotten around the hill.

Three Trolls ran at them, and Citizen grinned. This could be the break she needed to separate Snowball from his flock.

Bless drew his sword and engaged one. Sid jumped and clutched the throat of another. With her daggers out, Citizen ran to the third. Its eyes met hers.

The massive beast swung like it was hitting a regular fleshy. She dodged the blow by moving under it. She was already swinging up under his arm as she slid behind him. The blade sliced through the thick muscle and arteries of his armpit.

Anticipating his turn around, she dropped to her knees just in time. She sprung up too quick for him, and her other dagger lodged under his jaw.

Two more came within range, both attacking at the same speed, closing in on her from opposite directions.

"Well, now, aren't you boys strategic?" Instead of waiting to get smashed, Citizen ran at the one to her right. "Too bad you two charge like a hunting pack of wild animals."

With one step, she soared into the air, then spun sideways over his head. Double daggers came down in a reverse grip, both stabbing into his shoulders on either side of his head. She swung her body around and landed on his back. The two monsters were still running toward each other. The one she was riding on was so big that he couldn't stop his momentum even as he was dying.

Ripping the blades out, she severed both carotid arteries, then pushed herself off his back with her feet. She flew in the air again over the second one. The two Trolls collided behind her. The one that wasn't bleeding expressed confusion as to where his prey went, dazed from smashing into his companion. He looked over his shoulder and shook his head.

Bless ran in and took off its massive head with one perfect slice from his katana.

Citizen backrolled off and landed. Flicking the daggers into the air to fling the blood off her blades, she scanned for the next target.

Sid had already ripped the throat out of his first kill and ran after a second. Green Troll blood covered the bot's white and blue metal.

Tension filled her like never before. She wanted to stay and help, but she had to complete her mission.

"We can get around behind and flank them if we go over this hill," Citizen yelled to Bless, who was right behind her.

Now the main line of Trolls was between them and the rest of Elysium. Her plan had worked. This was it. She was almost at the top when she realized Sid was running after them.

Damn. I didn't expect the dog to be along for the ride.

It followed Bless everywhere. When they reached the top of the hill, they were in a perfect flanking position.

"There's too many," shouted Citizen. "We have to wait."

Sid took off after the closest Troll.

Good. The dog is out of play now.

Julian stopped. His chest heaved.

Well, now is as good a time as any.

She switched gears and surveyed the area, ensuring meddling eyes weren't in range.

"Why?" He asked. "What for? Let's go."

"Sorry about this, Snowball." Citizen stepped behind him and grabbed the wrist that held his sword.

Before he knew what was happening, her other arm found his neck. Wrenching the sword from his grasp, she let it fall to the ground, tightened her grip on his neck, then squeezed.

"What are you doing?" Bless struggled, but it only took seconds for him to pass out from the lack of blood flow. He went limp, and she laid him down gently.

She removed his belt, sheathed the sword, and put the weapon over her shoulder. Then, with ease, she picked him up and sprinted to the rendezvous point. Her carbon muscles pumped.

"Ghost to base," she said, sparking the commlink alive.

"Base here, go ahead," the handler's voice squelched.

"Snowball confirmed. I repeat, the package is in-hand and en route to the rendezvous point."

"Copy, Ghost. We have your position. Transport drone is three minutes out."

Citizen reached the destination point. Her sensors picked up the drone's signal. It was close.

She laid Bless carefully on the ground, and he began to wake from all the movement. There was no need for restraints. The nano-net would be here soon.

Bless' eyes opened, and he sat up, confused. "W-what? What happened?"

"I'm sorry, Snowball." Citizen glanced at him, then peered into the distance in search of the transport.

"There it is again, Snowball? So, is that my assigned target name?"

She ignored his probing question.

He instinctively reached for his sword that was usually on his belt, but he grabbed nothing but air. His eyes soon followed, and he saw that he had no weapon.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked in a daze.

Her vision screen displayed: Incoming drone in twenty seconds.

"I'm sorry, Snowball - Julian Bless," she said. "My mission wasn't to kill you. It was to arrest you."

Bless' eyes widened at the realization. First, he heard the drone, looked around for it, and then he saw it.

"Citizen, you can't do this."

As she suspected, he didn't run. Perhaps it was because he knew she would catch him in only a few steps.

"This is how it has to be," she said.

"No, you don't have to do this."

"It's my mission." She turned to face him.

"Humans don't have missions." He held her gaze.

This made her pause. She thought about the statement.

What did Snowball mean?

Then the incoming alarm went off.

Text blinked in the bottom of her GUI vision: Drone approaching.

There it is. A mid-sized transport drone.

Citizen sighed, but she wasn't sure why.

It was a box-shaped container about the size of a compact car. Four enormous helicopter rotors spun from its roof. The engines whined as it flew closer. Dust kicked up, and the vehicle hovered about ten meters away.

Bless shielded his eyes from the dust and blowing sand. His mess of hair blew in all directions. There was nowhere he could go. The drone lined up with them, and the bay doors slid open. The nano-net gun came to life and pointed outside at its target.

"Citizen, they'll kill me," he yelled over the sound of the engines. "You and I both know this to be true."

She just stared at him. The micro-expressions she captured were new. He continued to surprise her with emotions.

With a mechanical burst, the nano-net cable shot out and engulfed Bless. He threw his arms in front of his face on instinct. The nano-cable divided and separated itself into multiple strands, just as she had seen it do many times before. Then strands separated and melted together as needed to create a pliable netting around Bless' body.

As Bless struggled, the strands settled around his ankles first, then his wrists - pulling them and binding them behind his back. Now that he was immobile, the strands melted back into one cable that retracted Bless' body into the container.

He kicked his legs, but all it did was cut a deeper path in the rocky dirt.

"Don't let them take me," he yelled as the darkness of the interior of the container swallowed him.

Again, his vocal inflection contained more than fear. It was something else. Sadness, maybe. She would review the audio later. The doors would close, and the mission would soon be over.

She held up the sword that still hung around her shoulder.

I should make sure they get this too.

She didn't want to leave it in the container with Snowball, just in case.

The doors should close. The drone should lift off by now.She looked up.

The doors were still open. Bless lay bound inside.

Why isn't it leaving?Then she saw it. The nano-gun was pointed right at her.

Her reflexes were fast, but not quicker than a nano-gun. The net knocked her over as the nano-tech strands pulled at her and bound her hands.

"No," she shouted. Why would they be capturing her too?

Something must be wrong.

She engaged her carbon flexors to break free from the nanotech, but it was like trying to split water. The strands were already forming complex bonds around her ankles and wrists. And in a matter of seconds, it pulled her into the container.

"Ghost to base," she called over the commlink. Nothing but static. "Ghost to base. The drone has malfunctioned. It's trapped me inside with the prisoner. Base, do you read me? I'm inside the drone with the acquired target - Snowball." She saw the hundred percent icon in the corner that proved her transmission was getting through. But there was no answer - only silence.

The cable pulled her into the dark container alongside Bless, who was already bound and lying next to her. The doors slammed shut before she could wiggle up.

Darkness swallowed her. The cables continued to retract and re-form around her.

The Nanos detected the weapons on her body, her two daggers and Bless' sword. The strands pinned her arms to the sides of her body, just out of reach of all three weapons.

"Snowball." Bless' voice echoed in the square, metal box. "Seriously, that's the codename the Federation gave me?"

"No." She felt the drone liftoff, and the sound of the engines went into high gear. "It's the name I gave you, along with the other snowballs living clueless as to how society runs. They just went along with it."

They were flying back to New Therian and into the hands of the Federation Leadership, back to Commander Karr and Dr. Drayson himself. What would they do with her - or with him?

"Fine, Snowball it is." A chuckle slipped from between his lips. "Well, just so you know, I'm glad I'm not the only one mislead by today's surprise capture."

Citizen engaged her night vision and looked over.

His face had gone from fear to a smile. A glimmer of humor played in his eyes.

"There must be a bug in the system," said Citizen. "Or one of the new handlers programmed it wrong. Told it to catch two prisoners instead of just you."

She struggled against the strands that hardened into solid metal enclosures all around her hands.

Damn. I can't even move a finger.

"I doubt it," said Bless.

"What do you mean?"

"Your mission was to capture me, correct?"

"Yes, and I just completed it." She paused a second. "Are you not captured, Snowball?"

"Oh, most definitely, thanks to you." He scooted to a sitting position, inches away from her. "If they wanted to capture me so badly, it must mean I have something they still want. And that thing, you must know as well."

"What?"

"Now you know about the Trolls. They can't let that information get out. Think about it. After extracting the information, they want, they will kill me, then dismantle you."

"They don't kill their own Syth-Ls." Citizen took a reading of his vitals. "They paid too much money to have me made." But the readings confirmed he was truthful, at least from what she could ascertain.

"I'm sure they thought of that and weighed the consequences." Bless let out a heavy sigh. "But how much would it cost them if you were to release all the data and recordings you now have in your CPU to the public?"

Citizen now understood. She was a pawn in a chess game, an expendable piece on the board.

She saw Bless' mouth curl down and his eyebrows scrunch together.

The confused and empty thoughts she had inside her now must be what disappointment felt like to a fleshy.

This human had calculated all the possibilities and the strategic consequences of the damaging data she now held. The Snowball was right. She would have given the same order in their place.

Immediately, she killed the commlink, and her internal GPS and navigation program captured in the drone. She could at least kill her signal.

"They betrayed me." The thought confused her further.

"Yes, they did. Just as you betrayed me."

"That's different."

"How is it different?" Bless scoffed.

She did not have an answer, or any time to waste. She had to break out of here before the transport reached the Federation HQ landing pad in New Therian. At the speed they were flying, it would take approximately seven minutes.

"Can't you use your Sythy strength and break us out of here?"

"No." She resisted the urge to roll her ocular implants the way she'd seen humans do in the past out of sarcasm. "The nano-tech cables are too strong. They design the density for this very reason."

She scanned the generator controls. Her hacking code was scanning all frequencies. Maybe she could shut down the engines or hack into the navigation computer. But they blocked everything from her. Nothing was getting through.

"Can't you use one of your internal scanner things and take over the drone?"

"Already tried that. They shield all frequencies. No encryption is possible with my capabilities. There's nothing I can do, Snowball."

He shot her a disapproving look at her name choice.

She was able to see that the drone's computer code did have the orders written in basic programming.

It read: Objective: Capture and retrieve Julian Bless and CH012SYTH-L 1.

It was true, and there was no mistake. They had betrayed her. So, not only did humans want to disassemble her for parts, but the Trolls also wanted to worship her, and now, the Federation wanted her dead.

"So, we have no other choice?"

"No other viable options. Believe me. I just ran through all of them." She listened to the hum of the drone's engines. "We'll have to wait until we land."

"What other sensitive information do you have?"

"Nothing directly connected to this mission." She butted the back of her head against the metal transport. "Those bastards."

"I can second that statement." He grinned with an understated laugh. "You aren't like any Sythy I've ever met."

"Well, Snowball . . ." She held his gaze. "You're not like any fleshy I've ever encountered."

Her only logical option to survive was to wait until they landed and were extracted, then either try to reason with her captors or fight her way out once the nano-cables released her. But that was only if they released the cables, which they surely wouldnotdo. They knew what she was capable of. After all, they had designed her.

"So, what are we going to do?"

"Nothing. There is nothing to do. Why do you ask?"

"There's always a way out," said Bless. "We can't give up hope yet. I'm sure something will come up."

There's that word again. Hope.She still didn't understand what Bless meant by it.

Sure, she knew the definition. But she couldn't connect how this feeling of hope tied to a person's emotions and brain.

"Humans are so complicated."

Bless opened his mouth to say something, but the drone crashed to a stop.

She slid forward, then her head collided with the side of the container, followed by Bless tumbling into her. Then the nano-stands adjusted both of their positions.

"What's that noise?" Bless' voice rose above the sound of the engine.

The drone hung in the air, sped up again, then smashed into something solid. This time, it spun in the air several revolutions, then stopped to hover once more.

"What the hell is it doing?"

Citizen read all her instruments. "I do not know. It shows we're positioned on the western border of New Therian. We're in Sector 52." It felt like the drone repeatedly crashed into the side of a building.

"We've just crashed into something else," said Bless, next to her ear. "Could we have hit a mountain or a wall?"

"It would never hit a mountain," said Citizen. "And we're too high for buildings."

"We ran into another drone then. In mid-air?"

"Extremely improbable." Citizen tried to get a feel of the direction the transport was going.

It increased altitude for another minute. Then the drone stopped, spun three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, then began decreasing altitude to a landing speed.

"Are we landing?"

"I think so." Citizen listened to the whine of the engine changing gears.

What is going on?The momentum slowed again, and the transport landed with a jolt.

Citizen and Bless bounced. Bless winced in pain. If Citizen was human, the impact would've engaged the pain receptors in her back and neck.

Dust settled. The engine died down, but it didn't power off.

She heard nothing outside. No landing party to meet them. No Federation Troops. This was strange indeed.

Then her scanners picked something up.

"Hold on." She listened to every sound ruminating around her.

"What is it?"

"The drone is scanning all possible frequencies." Confusion made her circuits whirl. "It's troubleshooting."

"Can you hack it now?"

"No, it's still shielded. But switching frequencies is a last resort method," said Citizen. "It's requesting location coordinates. It has repeated its request to HQ over a dozen times already. It's as if HQ went silent. It has to find its orders. If it has no orders or no way to solve its problem, protocol default is for the drone to land and wait."

"How long does it wait?"

"Why do you ask, Snowball?"

"Well, unlike a Syth-L, I'm human," said Bless. "I will die without water in three days."

Citizen thought about his words. It must be scary for a bound human, locked in a metal container in the middle of nowhere with no access to food and water. If scared, Bless didn't show it.

Something crashed into them again. This impact was smaller than the last one.

They were still on the ground, and something repeatedly clanged into the container. It sounded like someone was hitting a metal box with a sledgehammer. The noise rang.

Bless winced in pain from his ears, and Citizen turned down her audio sensors.

A minor explosion made her ears ring, then seconds later, buzzing noise hummed at a steady cadence, and the container stopped moving. The rotors whined to a halt.

No sound. Her scanners saw all data from the drone cease.

Then the metal doors buzzed to life and slid open.

Sunlight blinded her.

The nano-strands around her hands and ankles dissipated. She was free.

Scrambling to her hands and knees, she crawled to the opening with Bless right behind her.

She rolled out and landed in a crouch, prepared to face Federation soldiers.

"Heads up." She unsheathed Bless' sword and threw it to him.

He was ready and caught it. "Got it." Bless turned around to face any attackers from the rear.

Citizen pulled her daggers and stood in a fighting stance.

All she saw was a wasteland. No one was there. No soldiers. No other drones. She looked around. Some disheveled buildings lay nearby. They were undoubtedly at the outskirts, as her GPS indicated.

Bless laughed. His sword was down.

"Why are you laughing, Snowball?"

Has he gone mad, she wondered? But a quick scan showed he was in optimal health despite the crash.

He continued to laugh at something on the other side of the drone.

She stepped next to him to view what he saw.

Sid stood there with the central controls of the drone held in his mouth. He had attacked the drone and torn out its vital components. The canine bot dropped the parts, and its false tongue hung out of his metal mouth, mimicking the actions of a real dog. Its mechanical tail wagged back and forth, and its gears buzzed.

"Good boy, Sid." Bless set his sword down at his feet, then held his arms out.

The dog sprinted to him and put both front feet on his owner's chest. "Ha, I knew you'd come!"

Citizen replaced her daggers in her back holster.

Sid jumped down and walked to Citizen and tilted its head.

"Thank you, Sid." She simulated a smile, and Sid wagged his tail in excitement.

"Well, now we have to get out of here," said Bless.

He was correct. If the Federation knew they lost their precious cargo, they would come.

We. He said we.Bless was her enemy. But now, all logical strategies indicated she had to work with him.

One of the human philosophical quotes displayed on her vision: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

She scanned the area, overlaying the terrain with the maps stored in her database.

"The Federation Leadership will send more drones." She calculated the best path down the mountain.

She couldn't help wondering why the transport had stopped. What had they crashed into? She looked in the direction they were traveling, toward New Therian.

There it was. The answer. The earth broke open in front of both her and Bless.

A large iron base plate protruded out of the ground. And from within the iron base, a massive, thick piece of dura-glass shot straight up into the air like a glass wall. It must have been at least three meters wide.

The entire structure continued north and south until it disappeared into the horizon.

She looked up. The dura-glass stretched higher than she could see, creating an impenetrable wall around the city.

"What is this?" Bless looked around, then his gaze fixed on the wall.

"It's part of the Doomsday Protocol," said Citizen. "It's a last-ditch measure to save the city from infection. The Emergency Action Plan. A mandatory quarantine."

"I've heard of the Doomsday Protocol," said Bless. "So, it's true. They can seal off the city. The entire city."

"Correct," said Citizen. "Someone must have made a mistake and activated the Doomsday Protocol. They probably didn't know how long it would take. The walls must have reached height before the drone made it inside. Being cut off from communication no doubt caused the confusion."

Citizen unbuckled Bless' sword belt and handed it back to him. "I guess you'll need this."

He sheathed the sword and then put on the belt.

Audio coming from the south made her ears perk. Human voices. Engines.

"What is it?"

"We have to get out of here," said Citizen. "They're coming for us, Federation troops, dogs, at least one drone."

Citizen Hill and Julian Bless took off running into the wasteland. Sid stayed right behind them.