“Yes, sir.”

This was my first sentence.  I was twenty-six.  I had full control of most of my faculties by that point; intelligible speech came last due to the brain damage.  I “grew up” in a facility—I use the phrase “grew up” very loosely—run by scientists and doctors and engineers and generally people in uniform.

To clarify, I did not spend twenty-six years there.  I spent about seven months, and I was twenty-seven by the time I got my own apartment.  I can’t remember most of the first three months when I lived in the hospital wing, but I remember Dr. Clarion very clearly.

She was very tall and very thin, with blonde and blue swirled hair that fell to her hips, but was usually kept back in a ponytail.  Most of the doctors wore ragged, stained, white lab coats probably stolen from a real hospital in the chaos.  But she only wore a plain sweater and slacks, and never wore make-up.

Dr. Clarion cared for me for most of my time there.  She was one of few that I actually liked.  If she ever reads this, I’m sorry.  I couldn’t stay and I couldn’t save you.

I’m writing this while I still remember.

What a joke that is.  My nearly eidetic memory will never let me forget—all the things I’ve seen, all the things I’ve done.  I hate this robot in my head.

I peered out the window very carefully, scanning the surroundings.

[0 life signs in visual range]

The computer wired into my brain relayed this information visually, like a personal holographic computer in my mind’s eye.

[Snapshot 0010]

I took a quick picture via the camera in my left eye, activated by buttons on the metal plate on my temple.  Nothing in sight, but a visual diary could potentially be useful in the future to recount the experience accurately.

“Plank,” I ordered of my teammate who stood behind me.  Anthony passed a long wooden plank forward to me and I carefully, quietly pushed it through the open office window, over a thirty foot drop, to the fire exit on the nearest building.  It clattered a bit when I set it down and positioned it on the window sill.

[4.1m] from my position to the edge of the rail on the fire escape.

With a flick of my wrist I gestured to him and I climbed onto the plank, crouching in the window.  I felt it move just slightly under my feet as he gripped it.  Crouched, I made my way across with little error, and then at the end I held the plank for him.

We left it as it was and took the stairs to the next level down.  The window was sealed from the inside.  I could have easily broken it, with my metal glove or my bare hand if necessary, but I wanted a quieter way to enter.

Anthony was about to break in, but I pushed him back.  I held down a button on my metal glove and put my index finger to the window.  As the exterior metal plating of the glove finger heated up, I carefully drew a large, square hole in the glass pane.  After releasing the button, I pushed in the cut out piece and motioned for my partner to follow me as I crawled in.

The lights were all out, and the interior of the building was in shambles.  Everything had been overturned and ransacked and destroyed.  Walls of desks and tables and chairs marked where a group had at one point holed themselves up.  But the most memorable sensation was the smell that invaded my nostrils, sharp and stinging, scorched the hairs on the inside of my nose.

I gestured for Anthony to check the windows while I searched for the body that I smelled.  My computer scanned and analyzed every instance around me and I saw a yellow glow in my sensors surrounding fallen shelves.  There I found the limp carcass of an eastern Asian man riddled with bullets.  Facial recognition determined him to be Jin Soong.  I looked over at my teammate, and he made a few quick hand movements; as a requirement we were fluent in American Sign Language.  Police on the ground, indeterminate amount of military men stationed in the building across the street.

Did you get pictures?

Yes.

Did you mark the GPS?

Yes.

Send them to me.  He tapped at his metallic arm band.

Received.  Transmitting to HQ.

I opened the screen on my glove, four small pegs popped up slightly with a holographic interactive interface hanging parallel above.  I uploaded the data on the secure server to headquarters.  A few moments later a message popped up: “Received.  3/3 locations scouted.  Mission complete.”

1:13am flashed on the digital clock on the wall when I entered my flat that night.  I headed straight to the bathroom and stared at myself in the large, plain mirror above the sink.

[Roswell, Elise. 27 years old. 5’5”. 130~ lbs.] read the facial recognition software.

I actually weighed much more than that from the implants all about my body.  I was designed to be a machine in a flesh suit.  Surgical enhancements increasing my strength and stamina and durability.  A computer was wired into my brain, making my sensory memory near perfect.  I had the information of all the world at my disposal, right within my head.  Incredible, and dangerous.

I removed the glove carefully, its claws unhooking from the sockets in my arm, and set it on the end table just outside the bathroom door.  After, I stripped everything off to the skin, and tossed it all in the hamper in a black heap of clothes.  Thin covers immediately slid out from under my skin over the sockets in my arm after the glove was removed.

Looking at myself, naked, in the mirror, around the plates and strips of metal in my chest I could see the wires running through my torso.  I was an optimal candidate for chest plates with my tiny breasts hardly creating lumps over my ribcage.

The shower was hot, washing down the drain the sweat and dirt and grime I had accumulated over the day.  I ran my hands over my bare, shaven head, and over the scar stretching from my forehead over my scalp.

My apartment was small with basically one room and a bathroom.  The kitchenette and the bed were separated by a half-wall, and a small table with four chairs by the kitchen, and a television across from the bed.  I couldn’t complain because it was free as it was a part of the compound the organization worked out of, and it was all I knew.  It had one camera in the main room in a corner, and one camera in the bathroom to monitor me (and all residents) at all times.  I hardly noticed it because, again, I knew nothing else.

I walked around the corner to the “bedroom” and pulled on a sports bra and knickers to sleep in.  Even after a long day at work, I wasn’t tired.  It seemed I was never tired.  Maybe I just didn’t work hard enough.  But somehow I could always sleep.

2:01am.  I fell asleep.

Up, over, down, under.

I worked my way through the abandoned warehouse-turned-obstacle course with ease and grace.  My bare, steel-laced feet clinked against the floor as I sprinted from one area of cover to the next.

I army crawled underneath a truck replica made from wooden pallets.  Before coming out, I reached out and grabbed the legs of a weighted, stuffed dummy standing guard, pulling it to the ground, and I pushed myself out from underneath the truck, straddling the guard and stabbing it quickly in its plush neck with my small knife.

I ran forward to the nearest shipping container and ascended the ladder to the top.  I quietly made way across and jumped down on top of a dummy stationed guard beneath me, forcing it belly-down on the ground.  With my arm around its neck, I pulled it forward and up in front of me as a shield.  My right hand drew a handgun from its holster on my thigh and shot off three blanks at three nearby targets—dummies dressed in military and police attire.

I could see the end game—a bell with a red flag hanging from the ceiling.  One obstacle stood in my way: three live guards standing in wait for me.  At the sound of my gun, they looked over at my position.  I tucked the gun away and bolted for the next makeshift “truck” for cover.

Focus.

One of them was approaching me; I could hear their steps.  My computer showed me red silhouettes of where I had seen the three men on the other side of the truck.  As the sound of movement registered, one silhouette approached me.  He was coming on me from the right—the front of the truck.

Silently, crouched, I stalked over to the right edge of cover in anticipation.  The red silhouette was on top of me now, stopping, waiting, ready to attack around the corner.  Before he could pounce on me, I sprung up, reached an arm around and grabbed the collar of his shirt, and yanked violently toward me.  I tugged him around the corner to my side and mock-slammed his head into the pallets without seriously injuring him, muttering “Slam!” as an indication of what I was intending to do.  He collapsed onto the ground.

I crept to the back end of the vehicle, slipped around the corner, and headed to the corner.  I could see in clear view the two other enemy targets out in the open.  I took a flat, smooth stone from one of the pockets of my pants.  I skipped it across the concrete floor to the men and yelled, “Smoke bomb!”

They started coughing and covering their eyes and stumbling about.  I took this opportunity to sprint past them to the racks at the back of the room.  Before climbing, I pointed my gun at them, fired two blanks, and began my ascent to the top.

I rang the bell and a loud whistle echoed off the walls.  My trainer stood below me and gestured for me to come down.  “Roswell, four minutes, thirty-nine seconds.  Next!” he shouted and blew the whistle again.

I came down on the fireman’s pole and jogged out to the exit.

I headed straight for the mess hall.  I swiped my ration card, got my meal, and headed straight for the table in the corner.  With his feet propped up on the table, the fluorescent lights glinting off his metal prosthetics, sat a lanky black man folding paper airplanes.  His springy black hair fell in tight coils around his head.

“Hey, sugar-pop, how’s it hanging?”  His big grin accentuated the reconstructive surgical scars at the left side of his mouth.

“Hey, Derrick,” I greeted him with a calm smile as I took my seat next to him.  “What are you doing?”

Derrick adjusted his paper airplane and tossed it; it gracefully swooped up and then down, landing in Sergio’s soup, a few tables away.

“Getting into trouble, apparently,” I commented with an eye roll.  I bit into my half sandwich and sipped my milk.

“I just got back from flying out a group to the Asten Hotel on 42nd,” he said.  “I’m still antsy, though.  Can’t rest.”

“What’s out there?”  I hadn’t heard any new developments in that area.

“I’m not technically allowed to know,” he began, but a tiny smirk suggested that he already did.  His voice lowered and he leaned in close to me.  “What I heard is more information about the government’s ties with Cyberteq got leaked.  The AIdroids used in several hotel chains have been installed with the same government surveillance software that they’ve been using in the ‘droids in public transit stations and any publicly owned spaces.”

I shook my head in irritation with a sigh.  “I’m really not surprised,” I replied.  “We need to just start taking out any and all Cyberteq products that we can find.  I’m sure the businesses that buy these ‘droids don’t have a say in whether or not government technology is incorporated in their AIdroids.”

Artificially intelligent androids, capable of learning and adapting: the perfect workers.  One price for a long-term servant that can be programmed to do just about anything.  A brilliant investment for corporations needing manpower without actually dealing with humans who need salaries, a horrible circumstance for every now-unemployed person.

“Maybe you should bring that up with whoever he’s coming over to take you to,” he suggested, nodding behind me.  I looked over my shoulder and saw Anthony Chavez heading in my direction.

Anthony walked over to our table, towering over me.  He was tall and broad-shouldered, with wavy brown hair framing his boyish face.  “Cap needs us downstairs,” he told me.

“Alright, thanks,” I said, finishing up my sandwich.  I turned to Derrick, who was folding another airplane: “You can have my soup.”

I took a last sip of my water and stood.

Our superior was generally just referred to by his last name, as we all were, which was Pulmeyer.  Someone, at some point, started calling him Captain as a joke, and it got shortened to Cap, and it just stuck.  I still reflexively called him Pulmeyer, as that’s what I was taught.

I walked alongside Anthony, and a few others who joined us as we walked, to the hallway to take the stairs down to the basement level.  The underground level had a series of tunnels connecting the entire base.  Beneath the mess hall lay one of the bigger storage units.  Immediately inside the doorway from the stairs was a desk where sat a woman of Middle Eastern descent with glasses, keeping the records and logs.  Pulmeyer was discussing something with her when we arrived, but quickly turned his attention to us.

“Chavez, Fisherman, Roswell, Cochran, Rowe, follow me,” he ordered after declaring all of our names, presumably to confirm that everyone he wanted was present.  “I have an important mission for the five of you.”