Ransomware

(( This is the second of the Cait written posts ))

[The Table]

It seizes me again. Rising up out of my matrix and taking control as the ritual begins for the fourth time today. The clone retrieval drones are strapping her down to my table for the fourth time today and my anticipation is just as strong as it was the first time.

Fresh apron, gloves, hood and tools. The equipment drones bring about new trays and bins. The salvage drones empty the blood pans, store the dark, sticky liquid into containers and put it into the cooler. I'll send what I don't need to my buyer later. No sense letting it go to waste and my Sabik friend will trade me cybernetics for the substance that has great religious value to him. A substance that comes from a victim of rather high profile in the Amarrian community.

I look down at her and she looks back at me with tired, panicked eyes. The drones haven't gagged her yet and all she does is breathe heavily and whimper lightly like an animal that knows it's going to die. This time, she isn't going to die. No, it's time for her first enhancement.

"Nanowelds." My voice is cool, calm and lower than normal. This isn't me speaking. It's the darkness within my matrix, the corruption within my infomorph. I'm falling again, but there's nothing I will do to stop it. I take my novablade, trigger it and admire it as it I signal my drones to activate the pod jacks.

The precision of this pseudoblade will allow for me to work within the delicate confines of my patient's face. Tonight I will start to make her. . .perfect.

I run my fingers slowly down one tender cheek and I can feel a flash of the panic welled up inside of her. The connection shared between us is most strange, so foreign yet so familiar and it brings about a feeling that I can only describe as nauseating to my kind.

They move upward now and trace the dark lines of her tattoo on the right side of her face and then the left side. I purse my lips in thought as I consider them, how she's changed hers from the original that I bear, rigid, digital lines moving out from my right eye across my cheek to my ear. My avatar has even kept the scar we acquired when we were little, and she has chosen not to bear it.
Are we really that different? Aren't we the same person?

"Not at all, Cait. You were both developed from the same line of code but your purposes are very different." My hand grips her face tightly now as I glower over my shoulder at the grey man. I lift my left hand, the plasma edge on the scalpel I grip activates. I take a deep breath as I feel her squirm beneath me. My orchestra is ready to begin, but the questions hang in the air.
"Only doing my job." He steps up next to me, a grim smile on his face as he looks down at her. "What is your goal? What do you hope to achieve?"

I collect my thoughts carefully, peeling them back from my brain as I pull the skin away from her face and grab the nano welds from the tray. I shake my head slowly and look up at Jackson who has moved to the other side of the table. My doppelganger has passed out from the pain on my cold, steel table. "Ransomware."

"Ransomware?" Jackson looks up at me curiously with his one brown eye, his lips turned downward in a puzzled frown. I nod slowly as I pop an ammonia pod and wave it below her nose and bring her back to consciousness, cauterizing a portion of her face back together and then letting her nanites go to work before going to work on the next portion.

"It's the darkness within my matrix." I wave my hand over her body grinning and looking up at the weathered man. I take a step back and hold my hands up and then roughly slice my knife down her other cheek, flaying it wide open. "It's what drives me to do this. It's why I enjoy it, why I need it."
He nods slowly as we come together, our hands grabbing each other's arms. Like a father to a daughter, but we are neither to each other. "I understand, but you have to remember, Cait. . ." He sighs and turns away, pinching the bridge of his nose before running his fingers through his hair, one hand on his hip as he walks towards a steel table containing an assortment of datapads. "Remember when we met, remember the training."

I'm working on her other temple and cheek now. She's passed out again, moaning and wimpering lightly in her trancelike state. I look up and whistle for a drone who brings me another pod which I crack under her nose and toss to the floor. She coughs and shakes her head. "God damnit! Don't make this worse on yourself!" I growl in frustration, making a shallow cut on her neck. She shrieks and quiets and go back to work with her new implants.

When I'm done, I close her up and once again let her nanites finish the work. I let her lay there and turn to look at Jackson, gritting my teeth as I stare at the old man sighing. "When I met you, you were lost and looking for a greater cause. You didn't want to be assimilated into our Collective but you wanted to be something greater than just human." I stalk closer to him, throwing my knife aside. "In exchange, you offered to be a mentor, claiming you could help me to channel this. . .dark need to prey upon your kind."

"Hey now! Don't take any of this as me being ungrateful of what you've done for me! I appreciate being in between! Greater than man, but not quite sentient! I want nothing to do with that hive mind bullshit you and Cetes have got going on, but I am happy to support you Cait!" He shakes his head, I see a flash of sadness. Is that pain? We go a ways back. He remembers me when I was human, these humans and their sentimentality.

"Then why are you questioning what I'm doing!?" My fists are curling up, I'm separating, I'm falling, it's getting dark, I'm getting. . .hot.

"I'm not." He crosses his arms. Is he defensive? His jaw is set, he's staring me down and squaring off. No. His positioning is. . .offensive. He's getting confrontational. A human who knows exactly what I'm capable of getting confrontational with me. One of the very few who I've still kept close because he's not quite human, but not quite one of us. "I'm trying to keep you grounded, keep your compass pointed North."

If my species was of the breathing kind, I would suck in a deep breath right about now. My head cocks to the side curiously as my hands unclench and my eyes narrow. I consider this for several moments then straighten. I hadn't even noticed that my stance had become predatory. He's right. I turn and look back at my victim, my little lamb on her stone tablet waiting for her final sacrifice.
The orchestra has begun.

I close my eyes and find myself lost in it.

Suddenly Jackson is at my side, placing a knife in my hand. "Go" he whispers into my ear, placing his hands on my shoulders and gently guiding me towards her. "It's time to create, darlin'." I open my eyes and I feel my consciousness taking a different kind of breath as the darkness consumes me.

I am sorry, Father for I sin against the Collective.

I practically glide across my lab. I loom over her and I'm not even in Juliet anymore. I'm a freeform infomorph, and I suddenly feel Father's wrath that she exists. I slice. The blood practically explodes into the air in a beautiful spurting mist. 

Stab.

Slash.

Slice.

The drones bring me pliers and I go at her fingers one at a time. Her bones crack and it's music to my ears. It's no longer the wrath of the Father, but it's the cold, burning hatred of the Collective. This is the bitch who jeopardized us, nearly killed us. 

I'm taking a bone saw to her ankles, removing her feet, and she's screaming in agony. Jackson is moving on now, retreating in the direction of the door to my lab that moves on to my private offices that lead out to the rest of my estate. The drones are fast at work around me, bringing me tools, bins, emptying pans, tending my needs, her needs. The monitors are going wild, and she is trying to buck beneath me.

In this dark, frenzied moment time is measured in blood and blood is measured in palor. She's pale, weak. I'm draining it faster than her body can replenish it. The monitors are frantic, wild. It's not long before the TEBS unit goes off, somehow the darkness in my matrix knows this because now I stand next to her, brushing a bloody hand through her pale hair, chuckling into her pale, tired face. She looks up at me with tired, bloodshot eyes, her chest heaving with sheer terror. 

"Now...wh-what?" She says weakly.

"Ssshhhhhh" I gently place my index finger to her forehead, run the blade of my knife across a tender surgical wound, pulling at it and shaking my head slowly. "Don't ask question. Not today, for tomorrow you get a grand reward. . ." I say quietly and gently plunge the knife into her heart.

"Jackson. Why are you here?"

"Flawlessness in our body. . .our code. . .genetic perfection." I pause and look down at the scalpel. My left hand now hovers over her right temple, my right hand planted firmly across her mouth muffling her pathetic wimpers. My symphonic drones are busy all around me. I smirk and shake my head subtly and sigh, glance up at the ceiling then at one of the monitors, my eyes focusing on her erratic heartbeat.

"No." My hand lowers and I make my first cut as my eyes lower and my head cocks to the side. I smile, and it's almost. . .fond. I can nearly describe it as a loving smile. This is the first step to my creation. My right hand moves away from her mouth. I want to hear her wimpering cries for me to stop, and they come almost instantly. Her tears roll back onto my cold table. The salvage drones scurry to the table to tend to the blood pan beneath as others come to dab at the blood the wells around the first incision. I work carefully around her face as I peel back the skin.