Chapter 90: Chapter 6: Chance Encounter
Zel's footsteps are mere gentle pops in the hallway that is deathly silent. The lighting were like upstairs where the faint LEDs are just bright enough to ensure that there won't be safety hazards of tripping or falling for those that works in this facility. Thankfully, Zel made sure to account for any situation when he made the prosthetics eyes back in the days, and there isn't a thing where a single dial up of brightness couldn't fix. Compared to the glamor of the above, the bottom layer and it's concrete walls paint a drastically different picture, and one that makes Zel feel a lot more comfortable.
The walkway he descended into splits into two in another ten meters, and Zel quickly connected his personal interface with a data port on the wall and quickly downloaded the layout of this level. Obviously as a staff, he won't have all of the information on everything on this floor, but a basic understanding would help him go a long way.
The personal interface gently beeps as the map for the level is finally loaded. There are many temporary rooms that houses the previous owners of each of the items up for auction. Some rooms are a lot bigger than others, presumably for owners that possesses more than one item. For his case, it makes sense to check out the smaller rooms first, assuming the theft of the energy core would be a big enough deal that it would be the only item sold in this trip.
Zel followed the instructions on the map and quickly moves towards the very first single room that's the closest to him. It was empty, and Zel was able to get an idea of what to expect in each of the rooms, as this one only had a fairly modest layout with a sofa, a mini fridge, a gigantic conveyor belt that leads to the floor above where the item would be auctioned to, a TV to keep track of everything and an emergency holocall.
The second room was occupied and the door was shut. There were a couple of Aquarians in there talking about something, and Zel could just about figure out what they are talking about. The topic of conversation some sort of a new drug formula, most likely the recreational rather than the medical type. Zel shrugged his shoulders and moved on.
The next few rooms were extremely quiet, and Zel had to turn on the infrared see through functions in his prosthetic eyes, and the heavy concrete doors gives him nothing. Cursing underneath his breath, Zel cleared his throat and knocked on the door gently.
After a little while, the door was slid a maximum of ten centimeters and a human head popped out. His giant body doing the best at blocking what's inside the room, but that's all Zel needed to peak the views behind him. It's some sort of machinery all right, but it looked nothing like the energy core.
'What?' The human asked and shifted his body and completely cover up the room behind him.
'Hi! I am just checking that the fridge has everything that you need?' Zel packaged a light and more feminine voice in drastic contrast to the low growl that came from the human male in front of him.
'Go away.' The human slid the door shut and left Zel outside.
It isn't this room either.
Zel continued his search in the corridor until he heard sounds of conversation between multiple people coming from beyond the next turn. The strained muttering rang an alarm bell in Zel's mind. Clearly there has been some sort of a disagreement between the two parties, and they are struggling to keep their voice down among the arguments.
'....I need that CORE! I said I will give you one hundred thousand for it up front!' one gravelly Aquarian voice said angrily, from the sound of it, he was already starting to lose his patience, 'and I am trying to be nice here.'
'Too low. No.' A robotic voice replied, the sound of a mechanical voice box. Zel raised his eyebrows out of surprise, is there another cybord in the building? Oddly, those that had underwent cybernetic enhancements/augmentations tended to have a certain feeling towards each other, as they know all to well the drawbacks of such operations no matter how good technology has gotten over the many years that prothestics have been out. Some things just cannot be replaced, like Zel's eyes, or this cyborg's voice box.
'One last warning....' The voice replied threateningly.
'One last warning to you too. Get out.' The cyborg replied, the voicebox conveying the angry tone rather well.
There were sounds of tussling and pushing, and the bangs of clashing metals and whooshing of sticks. There can be no guns on this station, but other weapons are a lot easier to sneak in, like an Aquarian short blade.
The sound of unsheathing of the short blade was all Zel knew he needed to step in. No matter who this cyborg is, he would rather be on the side of cyborgs than Aquarians. He paced around the corner and headed to the room with the open door as quickly as he can as he prepared to fight. Right before he could turn into the room, the sound of a low groan came through the room before a motionless Aquarian body flew out of the room and rammed into the door. A short blade burried deep in his chest.
Zel hastened his steps, and saw three Aquarian gangster-types surrounding a single cyborg. Well, at this point this being is way more closer to a droid than a cyborg, with barely an organic parts left in her body. She was quite short, with all of her body artificial except for some parts of her torso and half of her face. Her dark long hair also survived the augmentation. As the Aquarians circled her and attacked at the same time, she spun around at superhuman speed, sending a fist into the one Aquarian closest to him while perfectly balancing on one leg and kicking the other.
Despite her best efforts, the third Aquarian found an opening and send the short blade deep into her back. She fell forward as the Aquarian put all of his weight into that attack and tried to rip apart whatever inner circuits she had.
'NO!' Zel yelled and winded up his prosthetic arm and got ready to step in when an Aquarian short blade appeared within the cyborg's hands and she reached behind her back, completely twisting her shoulder the other way and sent it straight through the facemasks of the third Aquarian.
The last of the attacker struggled for a moment before life escaped his body. Zel came in and knocked out the one that was kicked to the side with a swift punch and went to check the damage made to the cyborg's back.
'Stay back.' The cyborg said, though her voice sounded comically out of tune. So the voice box was one of the damaged components.
'I am just trying to help here.' Zel stopped in his strides and rolled up his sleeve, 'see, I am one of you.'
'Ah. Cyborgs take care of cyborgs.' She relaxed a little bit, 'but what are you doing here? Who are you?'
'I am just here to find something...' Zel said as he sat down behind her and popped open the hidden tools compartment in his prothestic arms, 'I got all kinds of tools you can use.'
'Good.' The cyborg reached out and picked a spanner and a screw driver with two of her fingers before twisting her neck all the way around and started assessing the damage to her back on her own, 'what are you looking for? Who are you? Have I seen you somewhere before?'
Zel looked up in the room and was about to answer her question when the gigantic piece of machinery that sat on the conveyor belt came into view. It looked exactly like the energy core that was stolen from the acceleration gate! With the spherical shaped magnetic coils and the piece of pseudo-artifact sitting in the middle. The whole thing was surgically removed from where it sat in the station and is now sitting peacefully on the belt.
He swallowed hard, and looked back at her.
'I am Zel, but the thing I am looking for isn't in this room.'
'Zel... Have I seen you somewhere before? I am RG. ' The cyborg looks at Zel as she searched her memory. From the look of her augmentation near her skull, it appeared that parts of her organic brain was still intact and digitally interfaced with the inorganic parts, a rather popular way of maintaining some level of humanity and processing powers of computers all at the same time.
'I don't think so.' Zel couldn't recall seeing any more cyborgs in his journey. I mean, he definitely saw a couple, but there weren't any relationships beyond a knowing nod and some small talks when they came across each other, however, he has certainly heard of the name RG.
'You meant the rogue ghost? That's you?' Zel asked curiously.
'So I am famous.' She looked up and searched her memories once again, 'I haven't been active for a while though.
'And you stole this?' Zel opened his mouth in shock, still trying to process what has just happened.
Now everything made sense.
The Rogue Ghost was one of the most famous thieves operating under the guild of thieves during that period of time when Zel was still small, and he admired that mysterious figure like a heroine of his. It was said that there is not a single place the Rogue Ghost couldn't get in and not a single piece of cargo the Rogue Ghost couldn't get her hands on. The only thing was that the Rogue Ghost weren't active all the time, and every time she appeared to do a job, it would be something big. Nobody knew how she did all the things she did, and the 'Magician' was another nickname of hers.
Zel never knew much about the Rogue Ghost, and he was really surprised to learn that she is a cyborg.
'That's the job.' She continued.
Zel looked up at the piece of machinery once again, and looked back down at the cyborg who's quickly working her way through the damage. Though her movements aren't very sharp compared to her fighting.
'You know, why didn't you accept their offer? One hundred thousand is a lot of money.'
'It is not enough.' She shook her head, 'I need another two hundred thousand. Then, he would be free.'
'So are you trying to earn enough money to get someone out of the bounty?' Zel immediately knew what she is talking about by her still overly attenuated tone, 'Three hundred thousand is quite a big sum.'
'You know?' She turned to look at him curiously.
'Yeah. I got a big one on my tail too.'
'How big?' She asked after twisting a dial on her voice box. The weird vibrating tone that was funny a moment ago was turned all the way done and her voice was replaced by a manly low voice.
'Five hundred.' Zel shrugged.
'What a coincidence.' RG replied, 'he had five hundred too.'
'That used to be a big sum back in the days, you know.' Zel said jokingly, 'but why don't you just take the money now and do another few jobs?'
'I am breaking down.' RG said quietly, and the room became silent.
'You mean....like THE breaking down?'
'Yes.'
For cyborgs, instead of the normal organic aging that was greatly delayed in organic lives through the advancements of genetic engineering in the old ages, the cybernetic implants and augmentations will have a noticeable impact on the organic part of the body regardless of how 'biocompatible' something is. This is called the breaking down, but really it's the piece by piece rotting of the organic part compared to the inorganic part. Typically, when a piece of 'meat' has broken down, then the cyborg will usually replace that part with a machine equivalent. As the process continued, more and more body parts will be replaced, and in a sense, the cyborg will become less and less human.
Some cyborgs sets a hard limit of time of death, when the level of breakdown reaches a certain threashold, but it appeared RG has a different idea. She continued pushing forwards for one reason or another, and now, she is mostly inorganic.
The brain could be replaced also, but this is where most cyborgs drew the final line. You think differnet, and you are different. The old you dies with the old brain, and nobody really knows what is the new you.
From the way RG puts it, it seems the brain itself is rotting.
'I...I am sorry.' Zel haven't experienced much breakdown yet, as he mere replaced his entire left arm with a prosthetic limb and have been taking care of his body daily.
'Don't be.' She said, 'I had someone to take a look at this technology, and it will sell well, at least three hundred thousand. With that, he will be free, and I will be too.'
'He is very lucky to have you.' Zel said quietly, 'no matter who he is.'
The cyborg didn't say anything, and the two simply sat in silence.
The project screen that's showing the current progress of the auction was muted, but Zel can tell the various technologies are selling extremely well even without the sound.
The silience was tore through by the sounds of many footsteps, and Zel quickly got up onto his feet and was alerted. The doors were closed but the clear sounds of heavy boots striking the floor was still clearly audible.
'What you have here is certainly very popular, assuming they are here for you.' Zel remarked as he approached the door and locked it tightly before hiding right next to it, fist clenched and ready to fight, 'What are the chances that its the case?'
'One hundred per cent.' She replied, and the door was busted open. The first Aquarian that appeared was knocked right over, his face mask cracked by Zel's metal fist. The Aquarians behind him pushes the first person to the side and raised a gun towards Zel.
'Now, now, if you would have cooperated with us before, then we would not have come to this.. As more and more armed Aquarians flooded the room with guns aimng at the two cyborgs, Zel was pushed back further away from the door and forced to sit down besides RG, who's still fixing her gear quietly.
'No guns are allowed on the station.' RG said quietly, 'are you willing to risk getting booted out of the airlock?'
'Well, it won't matter if nobody knows about it. What are you going to do, report us?' The leader of the invading Aqurian said mockingly, 'you can't even speak properly.'
What a low blow. Zel thought as he closes his eyes and focused from within, calling his artifacts to awaken.
'Watch where you are moving. I may not be able to speak, but I can still kill all of you.' RG threatened, and this isn't her usual behavior. She was never this desperate to the point where she knew she had to fight a losing battle. No matter how good she was back in the day, one cannot win against the ruthless flow of time. She needed this job to work, and to do that, she needed to survive.
The Aquarian leader gestured towards his underlings as he walked past where the two is sitting and headed towards the energy core.
The underlings looked at each other for a moment before opening fire at the two!
'You know what, you should have taken the offer! Instead, you are both going to lose the core and your lives! Do you know who you are dealing with here!'
'Uh...boss...?' The firing stopped after a moment, and the leader asked impatitently as his victory speech was so rudely interrupted.
'What?!'
'They...they have disappeared...'
He spun around quickly, and the two cyborgs have simply vanished. The floor was filled with bullet holes, and every sign of the cyborgs being there erased. Then, the alarm on the lower levels were triggered, and a robotic voice announced the use of a firearm was detected.
'Shit, take the thing and get out of here!' The leader yelled as he ran towards the door while his underlings were scrambling to quickly pack up the energy core. However, before he could get out, another set of doors appeared from right in front of him and sealed him into the room.
He slammed his fists into the door and called for his underlings to open their fire with their lasers in an attempt to blast the door wide open, but the shiny metallic door reflected most of the lasers back and screams of pain and death echoed through the little room.
The riot control droids won't find much here except for a pile of burning corpses and an energy core that's moderately damaged.
Hopefully it can still sell for a good price, though RG won't be there to collect the transaction.
Before RG can put her hands up and shield herself from the laser fire, all of her surroundings suddenly became a shade paler as a tingling sensation palpates throughout her body and circuits. All of the lasers passed straight through her body and left burned marks on the ground beneath him.
Is she already dead? RG wondered, then the sound of heavy breathing came from beside her, and she saw Zel crawlling on the ground and wincing in pain. Was that his doing?
'What is going on?' She asked as she squatted next to Zel, 'what did you do?'
'I...I saved...us.' Zel struggled to speak out a full sentence, as the pain expending from the middle of his stomach near the origin of the artifact almost became too much to bear, though he was still able to activate the Pocket just in time to warp the two out of harms way.
They are safe for now, though it appeared that the energy core might be lost.
'What is going on?' RG asked, now starting to lose her patient as one strange thing continued to happen after another. There is something odd about the cyborg right in front of her, and she wanted to know what that is.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone