The pressure doors squeezed shut and engaged the magnet locks, and with that things were decided. Today there would be blood. The bullet train launched on its elevated super-rail floating on a moving plastic current, gathering speed on a swooping cruise of urban sprawl, of which the filth and menace passed like a nervous daydream behind flower-tinted windows.
Gavin stood in the aisle, not needing to take a chair like the other passengers. His metal limbs, though lithe and spindly, supporting a 1.5 tons on two split paws without shaking at winding speeds approaching Mach. His body was coated in a mimetic polyalloy liquid, lotus waxy white from head to knees and elbows, that rippled with each dive and rise the train made among the towers and slums. Most of the passengers, their heads hung low and appearing depressed, avoided his sight, though his gaze was nowhere; or what could be reckoned as a gaze, from the mildly friendly and wholly anonymous holographic projection that overlaid his android skull. Even these ghostly eyes were empty, and there was no presence nor movement from Gavin as his wireless connection allowed him access to the train's security systems, and in fact all recent information regarding the population in this metropolitan area. There were cameras everywhere, and with the backdoor programs provided to him, any of them could become his eyes. The android named Gavin, upon his initial construction, was no different from any of the hunter/killer droids, and his builders found it expedient to provide these republic knights with unfettered access to their Domain Emergency Regulation Grid.
Gavin had been dispatched to eliminate the target, a traitor to the state whose current alias is known to be Shem. His original identity had been erased even from databases attached to the DERG, but that was long ago, at the time of his recruitment. His DNA signature was recognized by DERG towers half an hour ago on the train platform, just as a winter storm rolled into the district from the empty plains. Immediately a bulletin went out over the network, reading only the location of "Jack of Spades / Milk & Cheese Deck" and condemning him to death. Shem was sitting in a seemingly unoccupied chair three cars ahead of Gavin, invisible, and deeply meditative in his headphones--for the moment, unaware of danger.
Shem sipped his coffee, effortlessly maintaining a higher vibrational frequency for himself and his belongings that rendered him invisible to those around him. He felt safe, and knew from his service in intelligence that average surveillance cameras would not detect the subtle ultraviolet refractions that would reveal his presence. He gazed out the rosey glass at the smoke and dust of post-industrial ruin, and considered the gathering storm with intensity. If dirty snow came to lightning She might appear as a moving apparition in the flash. He fought panic and tried to relax, because it was always panic that anchored him again in the present. Not in the healthy dissolution of the linear mind, but a weight tied to his throat that occluded his thoughts and restricted him from expanding his consciousness to more fully include the Time unfolding around him, the recent moments and near futures for himself and for those of the constitution of his surrounding environment, that would have whispered in his ear of the growing emergency. But there was no warning available, and Shem sat tense with his hands on his guns, lost in nervous reverie.
Mizraim Corp., Gavin's manufacturer, designed their hunter/killer model with on-board artificial intelligence. They modelled all the unhealthy personality traits of human beings into Gavin; he took childlike delight in appropriating the train security systems, enjoying the control he expressed, but became frustrated and impatient when success was not immediate. His reactor-core temperature even began to rise, though his liquid coat kept him in a supercool vacuum. The Jack of Spades was the most elusive deserter of the Milk & Cheese Deck, confirmed with the ability to jump through wormholes.
But, these are the kinds of problems that artificial intelligence is designed to overcome.
Gavin hacked the train's intercom system. "Jack of Spades!" He yelled, his own holographic face appearing on LCD screens all over the trains. "You have two minutes to arrive in the rear of the train before I begin executions!" The screaming image of his face, composed of blood-red digits, revealed the psychopathic disregard for life that was part of the hunter/killer program. Passengers in his car screamed and began smashing on the windows, which responded as innocently as bubbles. Fears formed at Gavin's first steps on the train were now being realized. The android reached into his own chest and removed dual sub-machine pistols firing .50-caliber slugs and stood in the aisle, rotating one at targets around the car and the other at the car door.
Hero/hero villain/villain
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Inferno Dragon
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Inferno Dragon
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- Posts: 6097
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2001 1:00 am
- Location: Planet Draco
- Has thanked: 1 time
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Erdawn Il Deus
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You kiddin? If Matt wants in on this let him go nuts - I haven't seen him write in ages. Come join us, ye!
<i>\"We know how to sing but we don\'t know how to handle money or women. Do-wap, do do wop.\"</i>
-The Runaway Five
<i>Rx Prozach</i>: Toronto is one sucky Toronto. :P I can\'t imagine smoking enough pot to find a shoe museum interes
-The Runaway Five
<i>Rx Prozach</i>: Toronto is one sucky Toronto. :P I can\'t imagine smoking enough pot to find a shoe museum interes
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Dhampir
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Shem's heartbeat raced like the hooves of a wild horse. Every pulse of blood sent surging through his body, he felt like a drum beating beneath his skin. Gavin's digital face was familiar; though "Gavin" designed for himself the teeth of a wolf that gnashed on every word with buzzsaw intonation, his eyes were shadowed absences like the Aboriginal Face of Knowledge that Shem had seen in the holographs that scrambled the faces of his former commanding officers while they gave their orders. But though the recognition made him feel his body harden and sharpen, eager and jumpy from recent anxienty, he already felt hope. Gavin addressed him by designation, in the Alice-in-Wonderland language invention that, Shem now believed, reflected the growing insanity of the Powers That Be. If Gavin had proclaimed a warrant for Shem, that would mean the encryptions for the resistance network were now compromised; but if somewhere there still existed the identity of Raymond Jacob Danko, then he knew that all his blood relatives to the third cousin were already dead. Well, Shem would have thought then, maybe that will open the procreation quotas.
His hands relaxed and he felt them fill with blood. Before his left brain ended his own conscious narrative, he thought, Even so, I'll remember to replace my codename.
OoC: Haha I set this up so I can just keep writing if nobody joins. Still, come on, somebody. Real simple, a hero and a villain, and the fight is heroes vs. villains--you can play both sides!
His hands relaxed and he felt them fill with blood. Before his left brain ended his own conscious narrative, he thought, Even so, I'll remember to replace my codename.
OoC: Haha I set this up so I can just keep writing if nobody joins. Still, come on, somebody. Real simple, a hero and a villain, and the fight is heroes vs. villains--you can play both sides!