[timeframe: about a year ago]
Amelie raises her face to the soft rain coming down onto Rome Blue and smiles. The stoic city with its classic and soaring architecture, glistens in the rain, its facades reflecting a multitude of lights and flashes as people hurry past. Each person walks secure in the knowledge that they are safe and protected, they are part of the Corporation, that is why she is loyal and Omni. It has been a good day for her.
She lets her mind wander – today marks the third week back in full Omni-Tek service. A clean bill of health from Omni-Med let her return to active duty, but for a while, there was doubt that she would survive. A malfunction on a ship she was in cryo on had left her body severely damaged. Now it functions perfectly, better even, with the addition of Notum and nanobots. They had rebuilt her just the way she had been. Only visible differences were small specs of notum-blue in her brown eyes, just a minor side effect of the Notum-DNA splice.
Amelie smiles and wraps the cloak tightly around her walking swiftly through the whompa systems to Omni Trade. As usual she has one more thing to do before joining her friends at Baboons. She loves her new job and is finding a purpose that requires her skill set here on Rubi-Ka. With her new partners, they make a solid team. Today they cleared out three nests of Clan rebels in not time. They had moved swiftly through the levels of the facility killing everyone and taking down the leader without trouble. All went perfectly as if they had trained together for years.
She turns a corner and enters one of the many buildings in Omni-Trade. There are very few other workers in the building this late at night and the security system observes her cautiously as she passes through the hallways. It's late but there is no point in waiting till morning to file her reports. Tomorrow will see more work and more Clan attempts at destroying the one good thing on this planet.
"M-miss Freeman," someone broke into her thoughts "M-miss Freeman, may I have a w-word with you? It is ve-very urgent."
She turns around to face a small, nervous bureaucrat whom she vaguely recognizes as one of the many employees on this floor. He stutters out his request for a brief meeting - something about a security report. Amelie nods curtly walking as directed into one of the large offices down the hall. She makes note of the dim lights and a single automaton cleaning the office.
"Very well Mr...?" she trails of on the unfamiliar name as she turns around to face him.
The nervous little man stutters out something incomprehensible before a large atrox swiftly closes the door behind him. She feels an electric surge from the automaton stun her body as she reaches for the guns she does not have strapped on over the armor she isn't wearing. The atrox moves swiftly, for all his bulk, catching her and pressing a stim into her neck before she fully collapses.
The small bureaucrat does a nervous back and forth hop leaning in close to speak as the atrox carries her limp form.
"I am so s-sorry Seleena to be this a-abrupt, but we re-really must hurry, s-she can't keep the se-security blacked out for m-much longer,” he stutters out "A-avalon cannot be ke-keept waiting, s-she has been looking for y-you."
The words slowly flow through her consciousness and the upside down view of the hallways she is being carried down fades as her eyes roll upwards. She tries to speak but the stim has effectively shut down all her vocal and motor controls. There is nothing she can do now, she knows that too well. It's the same drug she herself had used on many clients in her former line of work. Not every person her old group had been sent to collect had come willingly into the team’s protective custody. It had always been for the clients own good though, and for the protection of the Corporation.
Absently, she wonders why she herself is being collected. Avalon is not a name she recognizes, but it sends a familiar chill through her.
[timeframe: about one year ago, continued]
A soft electronic hum permeates the room in which hushed voices talk. Amelie can identify the bureaucrat and the atrox, the third is a cool flat female voice she guesses to be Avalon. She lies motionless listening. The floor is cold and smooth underneath her and there is some form of restraints around her wrists and ankles. A tingling sensation along her spine and the base of her scull tells her someone had used a primitive method to access her implants. She needs a few more seconds to get a sense of her surroundings - to place the sounds and voices. To...
"She is awake. Open your eyes poppet - I know when you try to play dead,” the female voice intones with a mocking sweetness.
Amelie slowly opens her eyes, the room is sparsely furnished and lit with a single light. A small portable surgery clinic stands at one end of a beat up metal table. Amelie's clothes lie neatly folded on a chair and her NCU is spread open and hacked on the floor. There is no woman anywhere, only the atrox and bureaucrat standing by some small silver cylinder. A silvery tinkle of a female laugh emanates from the object as a stream of nanobots swirls out from the top.
A tall slender form takes shape, soft features with full lips and mercury-dead eyes. Avalon stands there clothed in a blue kimono with small silver flowers bursting and twisting around the fabric. Amelie observes the woman frowning; she has seen these high-end toys before - holo-projection, a construct, a manifestation of the self for an AI. The real system is probably miles away.
"I was not going to waste my energy just standing around while you took your beauty sleep Seleena."
The woman shimmers and swims in Amelie's field of view as if seen through water. Amelie blinks as a cold knot of dread knots in her belly. She has no idea what these people want, why they call her Seleena. It's not like her Omni-Tek clearance is high enough to warrant attention or su****ion.
"What do you want?" Amelie begins quietly, still struggling with the familiar feeling the AI holds. "You are abducting Omni-Tek personnel. You will..."
"I am here to save you poppet," coos the AI "to tell you who you are and what the corporation made you forget. What needs to be done."
"But you are in no position to talk now" the construct continues, its lips curving in a mockery of a smile. "Let us begin poppet, the download will take quite a few hours. Do not fight it and you will progress through it with minimal damage."
"What-..." Amelie tries to speak again but the sudden surge of a data transfer makes her stop and gasp. Information - pure raw data in the clean logic of an AI system flows into her implant and mind. She absently wonders when she had the appropriate link-ups implanted, she does not remember that modification being made.
"I do not have the time to coddle you poppet, I am on a schedule here. Not much time before I loose the signal so the transfer must be completed fast. All the data must be preserved." Avalon keep talking, the construct almost sounds regretful.
Infinite bits of data, possibilities, readings – memories, compiled and catalogues in order - with flashes of twelve childhoods, lives and secrets all flow through her mind. Amelie tries to focus on the words, focus on anything tangible she can hold onto as her mind splits and fragments. She slowly recognizes what Avalon is doing and how she fits into the pattern. She lies on the floor curled in on herself like a child, staring blankly at the wall in front of her.
The construct shimmers somewhere in her peripheral vision like an ethereal butterfly, but Amelie-Seleena is no longer aware of anything.
Tonight - "Dead Voices Calling"
A sharp cry stirs her awake. Her eyes fly open staring into the darkness as the echo of that scream fades. With all the lights off and no windows the small Tir apartment feels like deep space - cold and pitch black. Amelie lies motionless in her rumpled bed, the wet sheets clinging to her body. The soft whispers of distant voices fade from her consciousness like the scream from the room.
She counts her heartbeats waiting for something; for someone, for anything. Tentatively she raises her hand to the spot behind her left ear, just below the edge of her scull. One tiny implant, one more than the norm for the rest of Rubi-Ka’s population, hums softly with energy as it finishes a data transfer. Amelie closes her eyes and shivers. Her lips silently form a name: Avalon.
“They are all dead, they were dead.” She whispers. Is that not what she had been told?
The implant still hums softly with energy. The voices seem like a bad dream but one tiny speck of information remains. A coordinate floats in her memory. Somewhere in the un-terraformed regions of Rubi-Ka lies the crumpled wreck of a spacecraft that calls her name. Its sentient AI system insinuates and spreads itself out like a virus as it struggles for survival sending out tendrils of itself to anything it can reach.
Amelie moves slowly as if still in a dream, one foot onto the floor, other down after it. Across the pitch-black darkness of the room she can see her eyes reflect in a mirror. The Notum, spreading like an infection through her body, shows its presence in the soft blue glow of her eyes.
“The Outzone” she whispers to those eyes that blink slowly and stare back at her, “Military Vessel S-3367 - Avalon.”
She walks through the darkness slowly pulling on Tier armour and a brown trenchcoat. She twists off the ring she has been wearing for the past few months and leaves it on top of her Sentinel armour. She will need neither where she is going – she will know where to find it if she returns. A few extra bullets and a modified suit-helm is all she throws into the backpack she slings over her shoulder.
In the silent courtyard of the apartment complex there is no one to see her leave. She activates her nano program the instance she steps out the door.
A small green reet flies north from Tir.
