"She's still operating."
"Sweet! Bring it over here."
"...Hey, look at those legs. Man, they look real!"
"Stop talkin', start workin'! I wanna know which systems are online. Screen's on your side."
"Uhh, computer is alive, all sensory inputs turned off, all movement outputs turned off, drivers are inoperative, and there's a load of weird files I can't seem to get into."
"What are their names?"
"Just a bunch of random letters. Must be a virus... Hey, here's something! Come check this out, come on!! Look, there's something going on with her hard drive. The heads keep going back and forth."
"This isn't looking good. Can you open her chestplate?"
"Yeah; there's a slit here, I can fit my fingers in there... There you go."
"Sweet mother of God, what kind of android is that?!"
"Maybe a product of the Department?"
"All signs point to them all right. Go phone the gang and tell 'em we might have something powerful in our hands! I need Masahito and his girlfriend in there first. They can help me with the exploration of the data."
"Got it. You think you can load that thing into the truck by yourself?"
"Easy! Just go and phone, I can take care of her!"
Wheel to the left, taking second gear, two guns out, magazines full locked and ready, about a hundred feet in front of the chaser, she couldn't identify the type yet.
Ring.
Crap. Never enough hands around here. "Hello?!"
"Alex! It's Xian. What's your twenty?"
"I'm in the car."
She checked her rear-view mirror and fired a shot behind her, hoping luck would let the bullet strike a tire or the windshield. Neither happened.
"Which street?" asked Xian.
"Uh, Saint-Urban Boulevard, right next to the Columbia River. I've got someone on my tail, is anyone nearby to help me out?"
"Negative. Do your best to lose him and head back home. Call me back when you're halfway there."
Click. Call terminated. Wheel to the right, shifting into third gear, this time she put two guns behind her and fired each twice. She didn't hear any screeching tires or explosion. Tough luck once again. Next time, she'll look back and actually try to aim.
She quickly jerked the wheel to the left to avoid a slowpoke, went back into her own lane in time to avoid a head-on with a minivan, and passed into fourth.
Corner coming up. Downshift to first, wheel to the right once again, a bit of handbrake, really hard turn here, this one going up on an onramp. There's the freeway. Time to get rolling for real.
She had a lane to herself on the five-lane freeway until the next exit, so she checked her mirror to get an assessment of her enemy. She could recognize the trademark triangular bumper of the Lancila make, which meant she had to get rid of him or he'd easily catch up. Mental note: get something else than a Laserfire next time she shops for a car. Convertibles are great all right but they sure don't do the job when it comes to doing a getaway.
There was absolutely no one in her lane - the freeway was almost empty. She shifted into second, and quickly into third - running a little late here - and reached behind her to stick some of her hair into her suit. This way she won't have it in her face when she turns around. Opps! Shifting to fourth here. And... Here, why not to five. The enemy was closing in. The windshield was tinted and reflective, no sign of how many she was up against.
Bam! Bullet! From the sound, she could guess it had hit something behind her, something like the bumper maybe. That meant they wanted her alive, and to do so they were trying to blow the tires. And just after passing into sixth gear, nothing less!
She was all calm and ready now. With both guns secured in her hands, she turned her head around, and fired until her weapons clicked.
A quick look forward. Nothing in sight.
A quick look backward. The enemy was slowing down. Switching to another lane, she noticed something trailing behind the chasing car. She must've hit a fluid container! Finally! Two dozen shots but it had been worth it. The car slowly shrank into her perspective. She could see it hugging the side wall and turning its hazard lights on. Score!
She switched to the middle lane, downshifted to fifth to keep under the speed limit, and speed-dialed Xian on her cellphone.
"Xian! It's me!" She screamed over the wind noise. "I got rid of my mosquito and am now on freeway 440 eastbound. What about you? Almost there? What? I'm losing you!... Ah, okay! Yeah, expect me there in twenty minutes... Yeah, I have to stop to buy some rice spice for 'Ragie'... Well I'm sorry but that's at the other end of the city, so while I'm in the neighborhood I might as well do the business I have to do there instead of wasting my gas driving all over the place tomorrow! Tell you what, you have a beer when you arrive home and take it easy until I get there. Besides, it's only four thirty, still two hours before I go and order a pizza. We have more than enough time!... Well, whatever. Ciao!"
She took her hair out of her suit and took all the windows down. Pressing a little black button on the side, she set her seat to "cool cruisin'" configuration. Back leaned a little, headrest retracted, legs fully outstretched to reach the pedals, same with the hands on the wheel - oh let's just put one hand - sunglasses in place, head leaning a little to the back, long royal blue hair proudly waving in the wind like a beautiful flag for the patriots. She put a hand on the volume knob, turned it to 25, set the station to 99.6 KICK and let a smile please her face as she realized she had tuned on just in time for the classic rock hit "Like a Breath of Fresh Air".
She looked to her left, her head bobbing with the beat, her eyes set on the skyscrapers and the elevated highways of New Colombus, capital of the United Provinces of North America.
In this year 1956 After Birth, things were just the way they have been a hundred years ago. Back in the 1800s, it was humans against the infamous Reli demons. Since 1892, it had been humans against mutants. It had all started in 1825 when the Independent Department of Governmental Research had built the first artificial mutant in history. It was supposed to be an enhanced human, a test slightly smarter and stronger than the average, just to show off the country's power when it came to fooling around with genetics. And then, things went sour. There had always been mutants on this planet, but all of a sudden, they weren't just people with unusual features anymore. For some reason, cripples and monsters were increasingly present in the cities.
TABLOID NEWS REPORTS: Girl born legless. Legs are found attached to twin sister.
TABLOID NEWS REPORTS: Artificial insemination leads to birth of four headless babies. Researchers are concerned.
TABLOID NEWS REPORTS: "I saw it with my own eyes! She could walk through the wall as if it didn't exist!"
TABLOID NEWS REPORTS: Born a unique child, she is now a set of triplets. What went wrong?
TABLOID NEWS REPORTS: Arnold Thompson Jr. and his amazing ability to control fire! Shocking photos inside!
TABLOID NEWS REPORTS: Young man found dead in Elenbakk. Doctors are astonished as they find out he had five hearts!
Thanks to a brave soul, the truth came out: it was all the Department's fault. Unknown to all, that government-funded group had been working illegally on genetics, nuclear physics, war machines and biochemistry. And all the cripples, they had been artificially bred. That's when the mutants found their scapegoat. Down with the Department, down with the research, stop the testing, stop everything! And when the government didn't do anything about it, they decided to screw the turn of the century by declaring a racial jihad: kill the humans for what they've done. This terrorism's been going on since 1899. Fifty-seven years total.
Gradually, her face showed sadness. Those memories were too painful. She was one of the few mutants to have escaped the facilities with gifts instead of curses. That's what the Department always did. They kept the good stuff and sent the rest on their own, in the streets. That's what caused the so-called cripple boom.
The sun was blinking in and out from between the skyscrapers. The highway led her close to downtown, just south of it by a minute. The usual smog was a detail in comparison to the fantastic golden light reflecting off the glass-walled buildings. It wouldn't last long. Such a sight occurred only for a few minutes, and then afterwards the sun was behind the fog, throwing the city into a charmless dirty brown atmosphere. And when night settled in, no one could see the stars. It was brighter by night than by day. Bedrooms didn't have windows anymore. House prices were high because they all had that new special soundproof technology to keep the traffic noise out. Inside the average home, it was quiet and dim, paid for after years of hard work.
The people, they all looked the same. There was a spot for work, and there was a spot for business. The uniform was either a hard hat or a black suit. The eccentric people were the leaders. That was how they were recognized.
Like Ash Taylor. He was a born leader. Black suit with vertical lines, red tie, red shoes, swept-back shoulder-length white hair with sideburns, and the face of a young model. He was the perfect representation of the ideal charismatic man, the dream come true. Humans loved him because he had declared that he would stop the Mutant War. The mutants hated him for the exact same reason. He's been sitting on the governmental chair for God knows how many years now and little progress had been made. Yet, he knew how to get away with it. He managed taxes and funds, proposed the right projects at the right time, arrested mutants exactly when he had to. He was able to catch the pulse of the American population and please them before they could say a word. After all those years, he didn't show signs of aging, and people preferred it this way. They wouldn't have taken any other man as governor.
That, and he was supposedly the adopted son of the now dead Chuck Taylor. Hint hint, she thought to herself.
The smooth flow of air had become a slash in her face. Even behind her sunglasses, she had to squint and sometimes hide right behind the windshield to get herself away from all the noise and troubles of a convertible. Finally, she activated the soft top and decided to do the rest of the trip with the help of the ventilation system instead of fresh air. She was almost there anyways. Time had gone by too fast. That, or maybe she had complained for too long. She didn't remember.
It was like a blur now. It happened whenever she felt the blues inside her heart. The car almost drove itself on the offramp, onto Dorval Lane and a few miles south to take a right on Underpass, named because it was placed right below a tight spaghetti of elevated freeways. Then another right into a hidden parking, through a maze of twists and turns and wreckage, to end up in her parking spot.
She closed her eyes as she turned the engine off. Gear into neutral, handbrake pulled, doors unlocked. She stayed there for a while, taking deep breaths and forcing herself to look happy once again. It was hard. Really hard. She gulped and attempted to keep tears from leaving her eyes. She was sick of her life. She had fun, but she wanted to live like a real person, with a steady job and a carefree life. She could find fun anywhere. She was just missing the safety and peace of mind. But she couldn't do that until the Mutant War was over. She had to stick with the Crate until the end, seen as a liberator by her friends and as a terrorist by the news. Her, and Xian, and 'Ragie', and Works, and Lowlife, and Akaya - everyone, they were all in the same boat.
She didn't really notice Xian and Works waving at her while they went into the elevator. Her eyes were looking down, so all she saw was the pink, white and black android they were carrying. It was a weird thing. The heap of metal seemed to have hair that looked more real than reality itself, sporting a natural-looking black color with a sudden fade into bright pink at midpoint. The simu-skin covering its face, neck and arms was of a seemingly glowing white like snow under the noon rays. The torso, completely covered by a swimsuit-like assembly of pink metal plates, showed lean and slightly thin yet well-defined curves.
However, her look was fixed on that pair of legs. They were soaking into this matte black color and surrounded by an enigmatic spiral of pink dots starting from the thighs and going into tighter circles until just above the ankles. The feet had no toenails, tiny detail compared to the apparent masterwork of simu-skin supposedly forming those two limbs. The illusion was even more real with each shake the droid encountered as the Xian and Works moved about. Sometimes, lines protruded out of the feet and pieces of simu-skin on the legs moved while others did not, as if those were real legs, with bones and muscles. A dead android normally had very loose simu-skin, as it was traditionally held by electronically-activated internal hooks. She felt somewhat intimidated by the android. It couldn't move - yet - but it seemed dangerous to her...
The conversation between her two comrades was nothing but a buzz to her ears. She went out of the trance when the elevator reached the headquarters, the loud noise of the opening doors forcing her to wake up and move. The Crate was just that: a big ugly box, an underground mini-town hidden under an abandoned building. She resumed her inner wanderings after taking a slow walking pace. Her legs did all the work for her. She headed straight for the stairs - good aiming - and went up to the lounge. Once in a while, a mechanic or a technician walked by with a piece of scrap metal in his hand and waved at her. Like a robot, she waved back, every seven seconds, give or take one... Even the sounds of the hammers had some kind of rhythm to them.
She leaned against the wall, pressed the button on the coffee machine, waited for the little bell and took a quick sip of her drink. No immediate effects. As a matter of fact, she had to yawn.
She felt better all of a sudden. That jaded feeling was slowly moving away from her. She saw in the corner of her eye her two teammates carrying the android into another room, then followed by four technicians and their laptops. Another one joins the ranks, maybe?
She put her foam cup on the table and was about to sit down when she noticed the red armor passing in her field of view. Looking up, she saw him and smiled.
"Hey Exi." He said with his soft, deep voice.
"Hey 'Ragie'." It rhymed. She grinned.
Masahito smiled and undid his armor top. Setting it aside on a couch, he welcomed her in his embrace. "Tough day?"
"Not really." She answered. "Just tired. I needed a hug."
He kissed her head. It was all she needed. She let out a soft, satisfied hum in response to the warm body of her boyfriend, and locked her three pairs of arms around him.