Welcome to Cisyn, by Colby McClung
23, June 2393
Greetings Dr. Grey Evans:
The Gongen police force has apprehended one Raizen “Sparky” Laxus, part of the interplanetary terrorist group lead by one Radical Doitzel. He is to be incarcerated for a period of four months in a maximum security prison on Gongen. I understand that you have a personal interest in this man, as he is widely known as a Kizen of unusual demeanor and power. I’ve managed to pull some strings to get him, ah, reassigned to your Personal Care. We have it on good authority that Laxus’ early life was spent with a small band of Mavericks that made their way in the world by stealing from cargo ships and selling it on the black market, as well as by hijacking transport vessels bound for the rim. The development of his Kizen abilities seems to have progressed in conjunction with this way of survival, as they make it easier for him to bypass security systems. Aside from his skills in stealth, he is a decently good Cracker and, given the proper amount of time, can make his way into most computer systems. It is ill-advised to allow him any access to electronic devices of any sort, lest he escape.
I have personally investigated his involvement with the crew he travels with and it appears that he was recruited into their ranks shortly after making landfall on Gongen and unloading a shipment of contraband. He seems to get along well with only two or three members of the crew, one being a retired soldier turned cab driver, and the other being a Quay of unknown background. His relationship with the shinobi that recruited him is questionable at best. However, he seems to get on better with her than with the rest of the crew, who appear to believe him to be of violent disposition and untrustworthy nature. On an unrelated note is the tendency of certain crew members, including Laxus, to revere David Bowie as a saint. However this is of little consequence as neither the captain nor his crewmates are not likely to spend the resources to discover his whereabouts when he is not released from the Gongen prison in which he was incarcerated.
It is recommended that you take great care in the handling of this prisoner, as he is quite clever and, if given an opportunity to escape, he will take it. It is also recommended that you use the Kizen suppressors on him when you are not performing tests, as his Kizen abilities give him great offensive and defensive power, in addition to utility. Raizen Laxus will be deposited into your care tomorrow afternoon, arriving via transport shuttle. I wish you the best in your study and hope any questions you have in regards to this fellow are answered.
Regards,
Bowie J. O’Shaughnessy
Fed Grav Negotiator
As he opened his eyes, the Maverick winced in pain. He felt a migraine pulsing behind his left eye. His vision was blurry, and as it slowly came into focus, he tried to sit up. It was then he realized that he couldn’t move, even though he struggled. As his brain began interpreting the signals from his mechanical eyes, the world began coming into sharp focus. He wished it hadn’t. Not only was the physical pain unexpected, but so were his surroundings. Instead of seeing red walls and the Gongen propaganda designed to help reform prisoners, he found himself in a sterile white room with lightly padded walls. Suddenly the Cog realized why he was having such difficulty moving. Looking down at his body through his bionic eyes, he discovered that he was wearing a clean, white straight jacket with the CISyn logo emblazoned over his heart.
“Well this is unexpected,” he said as he rotated his neck. Suddenly he stopped and his eyes grew wide as realization dawned on his face: Those bastards had stolen his headphones!
“This is an unfortunate and difficult position they have put me in. I’d love to stay and find where in Bowie’s name I am and why I’m here and not being fed Gongen Propaganda through a straw for the next four months, but since the apparent douche moose in charge has seen fit to remove my most valued possession from my person I’m going to have to break out and kill a few people.”
Sparky stood, which was considerably harder to do in a straight jacket. He took a deep breath and felt the familiar flow of power rush through him as his golden eyes began to glow an electric blue. Things didn’t quite go as expected, however; when he tried to engage his aura of electricity, there was but a crackle as he felt the briefest of manifestations of his power before it fizzled and died. The strangest thing was that he felt as if he had expended the energy required to engage his aura.
“Huh... well isn’t this a pickle,” Sparky said to himself “It seems that they have some sort of Kizen suppressor on me. Looks like it will actually be a challenge to break out of here.”
Sparky began moving around the room, examining it as he went. As far as he could tell, it was a perfect cube with white wash walls that appeared to be soundproof. He also noticed that the single light above him burned brightly, though it appeared to be an ancient fluorescent bulb which hummed incessantly. The room was perfectly timeless, which at first only gave the scoundrel time to think. But soon the humming of the light began to drive him up the wall. And in this case, it was literal. Sparky began doing his damnedest to take a few running steps up the wall in order to leap towards the light. His intent was to bash the Bowie-damned thing in so it would stop humming. After several failed attempts, which left the Maverick lying in a heap on the floor, he nearly made it; however, he misjudged the distance and slammed his head on the un-padded ceiling and blacked out, landing in a crumpled heap on the floor, blood trickling from his forehead.
When he awoke he saw a tray of food sitting next to the door. He briefly wondered how they expected him to eat without the use of his hands, which ended with him feeling rather stupid. Of course they didn’t expect him to use his hands.
“Earther pigs.”
Swallowing his pride Sparky bent over the tray and began eating the questionable substance that looked much like someone had gone through their house, emptied every liquid and semi-solid food item in their refrigerator, spice cabinet and pantry into a bowl, tossed in a potato, and added green food dye for fun. The stuff had the consistency of a diaper full of sick baby and the color to match and, to top it all off, tasted more horrid than the paste he had eaten on the last CISyn facility he had been on. It was food, though, and the Cog had no idea when his last meal had been. After eating this poor excuse for a meal the Maverick sat back against the wall, trying to tune out the humming sound which was beginning to permeate his brain, scattering his thoughts and making it generally hard to focus. This was a major issue as he tried to concentrate to draw forth hose hidden reserves of energy he used to fuel his electricity. With no idea how much time had passed, he fell into a fitful sleep, waking occasionally to curse the humming sound coming from the fluorescent light.
He had no idea how much time had passed. It seemed that meals only came when he was asleep, just to keep him guessing. The humming sound began to fade in and out as he slowly began to grow used to it. The random appearance of food coupled with the intermittent humming and continued solitude began to cause a significant strain on his mind. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been alone for this long. After joining on with his crew he rarely spent time alone, he was always interacting with someone, before joining with them he would only ever be alone between jobs and when he wasn’t employed on another Cog ship. And even when he was alone he knew he didn’t have to be. Here there was only himself and it didn’t look like he would get company any time soon.
In order to cope with the solitude, he began to wonder what was happening. It was obvious that he had been captured en-route to prison, since he had woken up in an ambulance and the medic had explained he would be spending the next four months in a prison cell for attacking an officer. He had blacked out after that, though, and woken up here. Judging by how he felt, he could assume that he had been abducted after a side trip to the hospital, since he didn’t feel like he was riddled with bullets. It didn’t seem like the Earther style to waste money to patch someone up before submitting him to psychological torture, so he must have been at a Gongen hospital at some point. This meant that he was captured between the hospital and the Prison.
“Wait... I already came to that conclusion,” the disoriented Cog said aloud, “If only this Bowie-damned fluorescent light would...!” The bound engineer realized then that the humming had stopped. He hadn’t tuned it out - he tried to focus on the sound and it just wasn’t there. They had replaced the light entirely!
He sat in silence for what seemed like days to his addled mind before letting out a scream and slamming his head repeatedly against the wall. The walls were padded, but the force he used was more than enough. His vision blurred and a headache rocked his skull, pulsing angrily behind his mechanical eyes. He groaned in pain, but welcomed the feeling. It was another foothold that helped him from sliding into insanity. Something to focus on.
A sound at the door pierced the silence, causing the Cog’s eyes to widen and shoot towards the entrance. He turned his head too fast, making his headache flare. He dropped to the ground, pressing his head against the cool floor. The door opened for the first time that Sparky had seen and in walked a tall, brown-haired man dressed in a pristine white lab coat over a pair of Khaki pants and a white button up shirt. His face was clean-shaven, boyish, and round and his green eyes were magnified ever-so-slightly by the narrow-rimmed glasses he wore. He glanced at a clipboard as he stepped in, flipped a page up, and returned his piercing stare to the blonde-haired man pressing his forehead against the padded floor.
“Why, hello there Raizen,” the man said in a voice that sounded like it was coated in honey. “My name is Dr. Grey Evans and I’m your new physician.” The Earther smiled, revealing his impeccable, white teeth.
Evans stepped into the room and was followed by a shorter man who looked like he had been modeled after a tree stump. He was a good thirty centimeters shorter than Evans, but his arms were comparable to Evans’ thighs. The short man even had all the intelligence of a tree stump stamped over his face. His grey eyes and dim expression, along with his slack jaw and thick neck, made it seem to Sparky that this man was the definition of ‘grunt.’ This assistant, whom Sparky silently began referring to as Grunt, stumped over to the blond-haired Maverick and reached out to grab him by his straight jacket’s arm ties. It was only after Grunt gave a one-armed heave and Sparky was lifted into the air that he realized that Grunt must have had some genetic enhancements that helped his stocky appearance. The Cog had little time to ponder this. Upon reaching the apex of his flight, he began the descent only to find the hard way that Grunt had shifted his body slightly to place his meaty shoulder directly in the downward path of Sparky’s midsection. The wind was driven from his lungs as he bent double over Grunt’s shoulder facing backwards.
Sparky was carted off down a series of pristine, white corridors that would have made most doctors jealous. He tried to keep track of the turns they took and the path that they followed, but the throbbing in his head and the ache in his midsection made it very hard to concentrate. Suddenly he found himself slapped down on a table, Grunt looking no worse for the wear after carrying him what seemed like half a mile. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate through the migraine and the dull ache of his body, but he couldn’t quite manage to summon the concentration necessary to summon forth those strange reserves of power within him. Evans began to move about the room and prepare machines, the purposes of most of which Sparky could only guess at. The Cog quickly began to grow bored lying on the table. He strained his core muscles to sit up, and suddenly he felt as if he had been punched in the chest by Tatsuya. As he sank back onto the table, his vision fading, he heard Evans’ cool voice.
“Be gentle with our guest Ivan, He needs to be in peak physical health.”
Sparky’s last thought before he blacked out was, “Prick.”
Sparky started awake. Sitting bolt upright in his bed, he rubbed his eyes. His initial thought was that it must have been a bad dream, but then the dull throbbing in his chest reminded him exactly how real it was. Standing up, the Cog began to look around, peering through the inky blackness, and wondering if Evans had shut off his eyes while he was out. Reaching up to his face Sparky touched his eyes, happy to discover that they were still there and were not the empty sockets he had expected.
“Well at least I still have my eyes,” Sparky said sardonically as he mentally flipped his vision from the visible spectrum to the infrared. The world was suddenly illuminated in varying shades of red and blue and it became immediately apparent he was in a different room. Not only was there a bed, but in the far corner were a desk and a chair and against the wall away from the door was a dresser. Next to the bed was what appeared to be a night stand with something sitting on it.
He shook his head and began looking around for a light switch. After a brief foray around the room he found the light switch. He flipped the switch and switched off his infrared vision so as not to be blinded, then began exploring his new quarters. There was a notepad and pen on the desk, but nothing else. Checking the dresser drawers he found basic white socks, underwear, and scrubs, all with CISyn emblazoned on them.
“They have no sense of style at all!” he huffed “I’ve been wearing the same outfit for Bowie knows how long, and all they give me to change into is more of the same thing? Don’t these people know I have the best sense of style in the system?”
He spoke aloud to keep the mind-breaking silence at bay. At least with the two sub-factions of his crew, there was rarely ever silence. Granted, most of the sound was someone yelling at him for something, but that was okay because he enjoyed making things interesting. As he reminisced, he moved back to the bed to check out the object he saw on the night stand. Upon picking it up and examining it, he found it to be the most interesting thing since his arrival! It was an archaic Etch-a-Sketch! Sparky had heard of these before, but never seen one.
He picked it up and immediately became frustrated with the fact that it was so difficult to draw curves of any sort. He shook it and put it back down before walking over to examine the door. There didn’t seem to be any sort of mechanism on this side, which meant it was more than likely an electronic lock. Ordinarily that wouldn’t have stopped him; there wasn’t a lock in the verse, mechanical or otherwise, that could keep this Kizen confined. This time, however, CISyn had the advantage in some form of Kizen suppressor. Resigning himself to his imprisonment in this timeless chamber, the blonde-haired Maverick sat on the bed, picked up the Etch-a-Sketch, and began drawing very sloppy circuit diagrams to pass the time. He practiced in his spare time when he wasn’t eating, reminiscing about his crew, or sleeping.
Sparky awoke strapped to a table with a bright light overhead. It reminded him of the surgery tables in Maverick Space where he had gotten his cybernetics. The key difference was that the ceiling wasn’t the floor of a bar. There was no dust floating down from the floorboards above whenever someone walked across them Thank Bowie for small favors. Sparky tried to move his head slightly, just to see if it was possible.
Surprisingly, he found that his head had full range of motion, despite his body being strapped down. Not one to let opportunities slip by; the always curious Maverick looked around the room. This one was no different from any of the others as far as the decorum went; clean white walls, shining metal machines, and brightly lit ceilings. Sparky growled to himself. This white wall bullshit had to stop.
“I swear, I’m going to paint the walls with blood as soon as I get back to my room. Just to get some color in my life,” he grinned, then shook his head and closed his eyes. Darkness was a relief from the blinding white.
“Now, now, don’t do that. I’d hate to have my favorite guest injured,” came Evans’ honey-coated voice, “I’ve been watching you for the sum of your stay here. You’re a very interesting individual.”
Huffing sarcastically, Sparky’s golden eyes sought out the location of the voice as he muttered, “You could at least have had the common decency to slip up and tell me how long I’ve been here.”
“Ah, but my dear friend, wouldn’t that take away from all the fun?” Evans finally stepped into view. He had changed. He was now wearing a white apron and blue scrubs. His head was covered in a blue cap and his face was now hidden behind a white mask. “But since you’re such an amusing patient, I’ll tell you about the procedure we’ll be starting shortly. First we’ll open you up and make sure that all of your natural organs are in peak condition. Then we’ll attach sensors to your heart, brain and various other organs before closing you up again. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Sparky shrugged as best he could with his arms and shoulders bound. “If you’re worth your salt as a doctor, then after I woke up I wouldn’t have a clue you even opened me up. Why bother telling me?”
“Oh, my dear Raizen,” the Earther said in his honey-sweet voice, using Sparky’s real name, “when did anyone say we’d be putting you under? We need to do a few tests which require you to be awake. In fact, here comes your shot of adrenaline now.”
As he was speaking, a nurse walked into the room with a cart and began preparing Sparky’s arm for injection. All the while, he writhed on the table, trying to escape these insane fucks. His struggling got him nowhere, however, and the nurse injected his arm with the shot fairly easily, while Evans strapped down his head.
“Now we’ll just wait a moment for that to take effect and then we’ll begin,” Evans said as he began preparing scalpels and various other items. The nurse kept busy by preparing clean surfaces, water, and rags to assist Dr. Evans.
It wasn’t long before the adrenaline hit the Maverick’s brain and took effect. He stiffened, his bionic pupils narrowing as the chemical took hold. It bonded itself to the receptors in his brain and forced him into a state of alertness that he’d never before experienced. This was pure adrenaline, not that from-concentrate stuff they used in hospitals. It was then that a machine beeped and the Engineer realized that he had been hooked up to several machines all along, each one monitoring some specific vital sign or some obscure brain function.
“That’s our signal to begin,” Evans said smiling. Sparky forced himself to breathe calmly. He wasn’t going to let Evans get the better of him. From here on out this was going to be a game, and he wasn’t going to let Evans win. The thought was driven out of his mind as the masked Evans pulled on his rubber gloves and picked up a scalpel.
“Gloves,” Sparky said with a grin, “You don’t get that sort of treatment in Maverick Space.”
Then the first cut arrived. Sparky had been in plenty of fights before. He’d been shot and stabbed and a good variety of other things, and in each case his naturally produced adrenaline numbed the pain. This was different. The sharp scalpel that Evans firmly but carefully began to press into the Maverick’s flesh felt like fire as it severed skin and muscle. His nerves screamed in pain and his voice followed suit before the nurse inserted a clean white rag into his mouth to shut him up.
Evans smiled behind his surgery mask, his cheek bones raising the mask slightly on his face. He had started his cut at the top of a carefully drawn line down the center of Sparky’s chest, starting at the collar bone and ending at the navel. Once the first incision was made, Evans pulled the flesh apart and fastened the Clamps to keep it apart. Sparky felt all of this, his synapses howling in agony as the sharp tool severed blood vessels all the way down his torso. The Adrenal shot kept him from passing out from the sheer pain. His teeth clenched at the rag, but his voice still managed to howl out around it.
All the pain melted together as Evans began attaching small devices to various organs. Sparky’s vision went red, but he was able to mentally concentrate enough to take the edge off the pain... that is until they cracked his ribcage open. Sparky saw the bolt cutter-like device when Evans picked it up, but didn’t realize what it was for until the first rib was cut. It seemed then that both the Nurse and Evans started when Sparky’s clear screaming was heard through the gag. Sparky’s pain-addled brain somehow managed to forge a connection with the energy reserve that resided deep within him. The Cog’s eyes began to glow electric blue and an aura of crackling energy surrounded him. Now Evans looked panicked. He jumped back from Sparky’s twitching body, leaving his scalpel behind. The smell of burning flesh began to permeate the room as the blood that soaked Sparky began to boil, searing wherever it touched. This only intensified the pain. The Maverick’s wide eyes began glowing so brightly that his pupils and irises couldn’t be seen.
“Get the Kizen Suppressors in here! He’s breaking loose!” Evans screamed to the nurse as he grabbed several needles and attempted to inject the raging Kizen with enough sedatives to knock out an angry gorilla. The nurse bolted out of the surgery room, but paused when Evans’ voice rang out from the table, “Grounding doesn’t work! Hurry before he gets himself killed!”
Sparky’s vision went red and blue, a strange combination of colors to experience. With his muscle spasms driving the abandoned scalpel deeper and deeper into his liver and the electricity scorching the insides of his blood vessels, the thought never did occur to him. Slowly his vision began to fade to black, and with his vision, the pain began to fade as well. He felt himself drifting, as if surfing physically through the Ion Stream. The feeling of drifting slowly eased to a halt as his fading vision witnessed Evans standing over him. Just before his vision went dark he could have sworn he saw Evans’ glowing hands hovering over his body. Then it all went dark and he felt himself rising, feeling lighter than ever before. It was then Sparky felt the warm embrace of death and accepted it.
Sparky found himself standing in the middle of the Black. He looked around and saw nothing, but when he tried to engage his infrared, nothing happened. He reached up and touched his eyes and felt the soft orbs of organic eyes. He gasped in shock. Why did he have organic eyes again? Was this some new form of CISyn torture? Did he die on the table? He thought back to lying on the table, feeling the pain of being cut open. He shuddered at the thought feeling his body release a portion of power and then shouting, but after that he remembered nothing.
Suddenly a voice rang out through the darkness, calling his name. A soft, unfamiliar voice that soothed him greatly to hear. It reminded him that he wasn’t alone. His name was repeated, leading him through the darkness, through the fog, and back into consciousness. He blinked, bleary eyed, his brain not quite fully interpreting the signals from his cybernetic eyes. He quickly toggled between spectrums a few times to be certain, but they were in fact his own bionic eyes. As his vision cleared, he found himself lying in a curtained hospital bed bandaged with his whole body throbbing dully. Once again, he had no idea how much time had passed or how long he had been asleep. Did he really experience death, or was that all a dream? He shook his head, an action that caused his migraine to flare up so hard he groaned in pain and clutched his skull.
“Shh, don’t get too loud,” a voice said to him from behind the curtain that surrounded his bed. It was a familiar voice, one that he had heard somewhere before. “They’ll come check on you if you do, and we’re not supposed to talk to each other.”
“Then why put yourself at risk?” Sparky breathed. He had been in enough situations to know you always question anyone who put themselves at risk for a stranger.
“I heard them talking about you. How you survived something that should have killed you. They weren’t sure you’d wake up. They’re going to want to start testing you in more situations,” the voice said. It was young, female, perhaps seventeen or eighteen.
“Who are you?” the Maverick asked as he felt exhaustion overtaking him.
“You sound tired. Get some rest and I hope we get to talk again,” Her voice was soft and almost melodic. Almost as an afterthought she added “I’m Kaelyn by the way.”
Sleep overtook Sparky. When he next awoke, he was lying in a bed, shirtless and wrapped in bandages. He slowly sat up and looked around the room, sneering at the security cameras. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand. He winced slightly, but the pain wasn’t very strong. Once he was sure he was able to stand on his own and was stable on his feet he began searching for the Etch-A-Sketch to pass the time. He felt that he was getting better; he was able to sketch circles and various other geometric shapes with only a small amount of error.
‘Sketching helped calm him. It brought his scattered thoughts together and helped him to focus. He wondered about that girl, though he would probably never see her again he couldn’t help but think that she wasn’t a trick. One of the very few things in this god-forsaken hell hole that wasn’t a trick. Sparky shook his head and looked down at his ‘Sketch, he had been idly drawing a small landscape portrait and had discovered that he could tap the proper areas on the screen in just the right way to erase selected lines. He started practicing it on a drawing of a tree to get the process exact.
The next few “days” as Sparky experienced them were all the same. He slept when he was tired, and when he woke, it marked a new day. When he was awake he spent his time meditating or ‘Sketching. Some “days” he would wake up and it would be cold and dark - so cold that his infrared would hardly register his own body clearly. On these days he would huddle under the thin blankets they had provided him with and try to meditate. Other times he would begin to exercise to try and get his body temperature up. Anything to alleviate the sensation of freezing to death.
The cold days were always interspersed randomly - or perhaps rhythmically - with days that were so hot and muggy that Sparky couldn’t even find comfort sitting perfectly still while completely naked. On these days, he tried to move as little as possible to avoid producing any extra body heat. He felt himself growing sick, his body unable to cope with the extreme changes in temperature. His nose was stuffy, he sneezed and coughed and shook with cold, huddled up under a thin Standard Issue Blanket, on the hot days as well as the cold.
Through all of these things Sparky would sometimes hear a soft, familiar voice reverberating through his head: “...I’m Kaelyn by the way.” He kept hearing that voice, and it brought him comfort through those dark days. He swore then and there that he would free this girl, whoever she was, from this hell hole those Earther Pigs called a facility. He grinned at the Cameras he knew were there; the game was getting interesting. He would break free, get his headphones, find Kaelyn, and kill every last Earther that stood in his way.
Then one “morning” when he awoke, everything was normal. The temperature was just right; he didn’t feel sick at all. He jumped out of bed and moved over to the door. He placed his hand upon it and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate, trying to summon the reserves of power from deep within him that allowed him to release his electrical power. He concentrated for several minutes, but nothing came. He couldn’t feel the reserve of power. He slammed his fist against the door in frustration and turned away. Then he heard the door slide open and a powerful shock ran through his body and everything went white.
When he came to he was sitting in a chair with electrodes strapped to his body in various places. They were on his chest, his palms, his arms, his shoulders and his neck. Even his legs had electrodes placed on them. He looked up and saw Evans standing behind a pane of glass, clipboard in hand, with a group of techs in lab coats. Sparky stood up and walked over to the glass, his golden eyes smiling as he watched the techs bustling about.
He slammed his fist against the glass, causing several techs to jump in surprise. The glass remained in one piece, not even cracking. Sparky doubted that even an archaic rifle would be able to punch a hole in this glass. “I see you’ve got yourself some fine glass here.” The Cog chuckled.
Evans leaned over and pressed a button and spoke, his voice coming across slightly distorted over the Intercom. “Thank you, Raizen. Just to inform you, we’ll be performing a few tests to measure the level and range of your abilities, and then we’ll be done.”
Sparky shrugged as he turned around and walked over to the chair. In one quick glance, Sparky discovered that the chair was bolted to the ground. He grabbed at the wires coming from the electrodes and tugged at them. He realized with some amount of displeasure that the electrodes were glued to his skin with a powerful epoxy that wasn’t going to give way without tearing his flesh.
“And what if I don’t want to? I don’t think you’ll be able to make me, unless you have one of those Mind Control Kizen locked up in here, though I doubt they’d be willing to cooperate.” Sparky thought back to Doitzel and how he had discovered the Captain’s mental Kizen powers. He couldn’t help but laugh as he remembered trying to ride on Doitzel’s back and how his fellow Maverick had reacted - by forcing him to remember every time anyone had ever punched him in the head. The techs looked moderately uncomfortable at his laughter; it was far too good natured for the things he had suffered. Evans looked thoughtful, but his face betrayed no emotion.
Evans smiled, seemingly appreciating the game, “Don’t worry. You’ll complete the test.” He pushed a buzzer and a door in the wall slid over, revealing Ivan. The stout Russian stepped into the room and the door slid shut behind him. He smiled at Sparky and the Scoundrel understood why he was there. Ivan cracked his knuckles and stepped toward Sparky. The Cog sized up the Russian. He was easily taller than Ivan and he had reach on him, but he could tell that Ivan had been modified genetically. Those thick bulging muscles weren’t all natural and if one of those punches landed, Sparky knew that he would be out.
Sparky smiled. This was going to be fun. He adopted a fighting stance and raised his fists. He kept light on his toes, his body moving much more fluidly than Ivan’s. Ivan took the first swing, and his ham-sized fist moved more quickly than expected. Sparky narrowly avoided the blow. He dodged to the side and ducked under Ivan’s thick arm, bringing his own right fist up and into Ivan’s jaw. Sparky jumped back and shook his hand. It appeared that taking down Ivan would be much harder than expected.
Ivan threw another punch; this time it was a quick one-two combo that was far less sluggish than a man of his build should be capable of delivering. It was nearly all Sparky could do to dodge the punches, and when he did manage to return the blows, it was much like punching a brick wall. Ivan hardly seemed to notice the blows. Then it happened: Sparky was just a tad too slow on a punch. He caught the blow in his left shoulder and heard it snap even as the force of the blow spun him around. Ivan followed up with one more hard blow to Sparky’s kidneys.
The Maverick collapsed, his knees slammed against the ground, and his vision went blurry. He staggered to his feet once more and raised his right fist, but his vision was shaky and he was moving slowly. He shook his head, but Ivan had already braced himself. He let loose with a mighty punch that connected with Sparky’s sternum. The bones cracked again, the Maverick’s feet left the ground, and he slammed into the wall that was nearly ten feet behind him. Sparky slumped to the ground and blacked out.
He awoke back in the same hospital bed that he had been in before. He listened, but this time there was no voice from the bed next to his. He leaned to look around, immediately discovering that they hadn’t bound him to the bed. He scanned the area with his infrared vision only to see several horizontal hot spots through the curtains and two vertical hot spots towards the foot of his bed. Evans’ voice came from the taller of the figures and the shorter could only be Ivan.
“You were supposed to rough him up, Ivan. I didn’t want him hospitalized again! You were supposed to...” Evan’s voice trailed off as the machines detected Sparky’s raised pulse and engaged the morphine drip that put him under once more. The last thing he remembered was hearing a soft voice calling out to him, but he couldn’t tell if it was real or imaginary.
The next time Sparky woke up he was in his room and Evans was sitting across from him. “Good Morning, Raizen.”
Sparky sat up and winced at the pain that shot through his ribs. “How many times have you broken my ribs?” Sparky rubbed his left shoulder, and adjusted the sling that held his left arm.
“Twice, but I assure you the second time was not meant to have happened. Rest assured, Ivan will be punished. Unfortunately, I won’t be letting him go. He’s a very useful member of my personal team and he would be very difficult to replace.”
“I do hope you’ll at least dock his pay,” The Maverick replied calmly. This was yet another chance to play the game. They had put him through his paces, and he was feeling it. It ate away at him in his moments of solitude.
“Six weeks working overtime with no pay whatsoever, actually.” Evans’ voice was calm and he carried his usual clipboard. “But that’s not what I’m here to discuss, Raizen. I can’t help but notice how very well you’re taking your stay here. I knew you were resourceful, but so many of our guests and patients grow to hate their doctors by this point in their stay.”
Sparky smiled, the gears in his head turning. He had always had a knack for knowing what people didn’t want to hear. This was going to be fun. “Is that so? I can’t imagine why. You give us excellent food and take good care of us. I mean, sure, the quarters are a little small and your nurses are a bit... overbearing, but overall It’s a very pleasant stay.”
He smiled inwardly at his knock to Ivan, but Evans seemed nonplussed. He jotted down something on his clipboard before speaking again. “I give you my personal assurance that your complaints will be taken into consideration.” Damn. He was good. “But I’m concerned for your well-being. It’s not good for one to bottle up emotions like you’ve been doing. How are you feeling?”
“Honestly, I’ve spent a lot of time in space. I’ve spent more than my fair share of time floating in dead lifeboats full of contraband waiting for my pick up. I know how to handle solitude,” Sparky crossed his legs and readjusted his sling. He couldn’t help but notice that Evans had that air of patience about him. Good. Sparky was willing to wait.
“But you have so much experience with technology, why would you let yourself be caught in a dead lifeboat?” he asked, suddenly seeming interested in Sparky’s personal life.
“Sometimes you have to overload the engines to make a clean getaway, then kill the whole system so their scanners don’t find you. Depending on how you do it, you could end up more than an AU away from your rendezvous point. Then you have to wait for your team to find your scrambled beacon. It is a gamble that has killed many a Maverick.” The Maverick shrugged and watched the Earther closely. He wasn’t very good at reading expressions, but he was trying to catch a glimpse of something - anything - on the doctor’s face. So far it remained unreadable.
“So you’re used to solitary confinement,” Evans said as if it was something he had just discovered. “But you must harbor negative feelings towards me, and surely you must hate Ivan. After all he did just break your ribs a second time. Before they even had time to heal properly at that!” Sparky couldn’t tell if he was trying to goad him into a reaction or if he was just fishing for information. Either way, the game was being taken up a level.
“I’ve been in fights before. One thing I’ve learned over the years in Maverick Space is that you win a few, you lose a lot.” Sparky realized he had grown a little tense while his doctor had been speaking, so he took a breath and relaxed. Apparently this didn’t escape the Physician’s notice.
“You seem tense. Have I struck a chord with you?” he asked, his voice having that soothing quality that Sparky was beginning to find vaguely obnoxious.
“I’m not used to talking about my feelings, to be honest. It’s a little uncomfortable,” he lied. He didn’t really care about discussing his emotion. He just didn’t like how Evans was going about it.
“You are truly an unusual case, Raizen. No other patient has been able to keep themselves under control for as long as you have. Usually they go mad, or at the very least begin to hate those they view as their captors,” Evans looked up at Sparky, his cool green eyes casually reading Sparky’s expressions. He was fishing for a reaction, the Engineer decided, and he was going to do his best to not give him one.
“I guess I’m just more mellow than most. I don’t consider that anything special.” he said casually, dismissing it with a shrug.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Evans said, standing. “Well, so long as you’re doing alright I have no need to worry.” He walked to the door and glanced back over his shoulder “I hope you enjoy your stay here.”
The door cycled open, revealing a rather disgruntled-looking Ivan. It was obvious he had just been informed of his punishment. The door slid shut and he heard the slight click of the lock being bolted.
Sparky wandered around the room, still unable to connect with his Kizen powers. He reflected on what his guest had just said. Questions began to flood his mind. How long had he been here? Was he really holding off a reaction so well? Why had Evans shown a personal interest in his case? These thoughts and many others began flooding his mind as he paced back and forth. He continued to pace until he felt everything welling up inside him.
No. He couldn’t allow himself to get caught up in this. If he did, he would be playing right into his captor’s hands. He sat down and with one hand he began to try and clear his mind with some ‘Sketching until he fell asleep. The next few ‘days’ passed in solitude, as if Evans was testing his claim that he could handle solitude.
Eventually his shoulder and ribs stopped throbbing, so he knew his body was adjusting to the pain. When he felt it had been a long enough time he began working out, trying to strengthen his arm and prevent more atrophy. He kept to a strict regimen of pushups, sit ups, and squats. He practiced Shadow Boxing on the padded walls to keep his agility up. It was also good for practicing his punches and kicks. He may be a captive, but he could at least be in shape.
He alternated working out and ‘Sketching, but eventually the solitude began to get to him and he started talking to himself again, just to hear the noise. His meals seemed to get less tasteful, but they seemed more nourishing. At least they appreciated the fact that he was trying to stay in shape. He continued his boring routine until one morning he awoke to find himself elsewhere.
Slowly he opened his eyes and began to look around. The Maverick found himself in yet another blank white room with no windows, only a chair. After taking a brief inventory of himself he found that he could sense the hidden reserves that fueled his Kizen abilities. He wasn’t being suppressed.
“Great, I know what this is,” he said sarcastically as he looked around the room. He noticed the same sensors glued to his body and knew what was going to happen next.
“Good,” came Evans’ honey-coated voice over an unseen intercom, “It looks like you’re awake. We can get started then. What we’re going to do is try to elicit an emotional response from you using certain clips from footage we’ve collected. Our hope is that this footage will persuade you to cooperate with us.”
As Evans spoke a screen rolled down in front of the Cog. From somewhere behind him he heard a hum of a projector starting up and video began streaming onto the screen. Maybe they didn’t know he could just shut off the projector if he chose. He wouldn’t, of course; that would mean losing their little game. He saw a space view of his crew’s ship. The camera began to pan in closer, and suddenly metallic slugs entered from the top of the screen. The slugs, fired from some sort of Mass Accelerator, collided hard with the aft of the ship.
Sparky watched the engines flare and explode, silent in the dead of space. The ship with the camera swung in closer to the dead boat, close enough for Sparky to see his Crewmates running to and fro on the bridge. Kalingkata was typing skillfully at his terminal with one hand, a rather bored expression on his face and a steaming cup of coffee in his free hand. Celeste was bringing guns to bear on their attackers. Doitzel was shouting orders and waving a sword at a screen projecting Jane’s chosen image, nearly cutting off Hotaru’s arm in the process.
Jane, the Ship’s AI and, for all intents and purposes, owner, was obviously dividing her attention between crafting a firing solution and arguing with Doitzel. Sparky knew that the latter was a lost cause, but they seemed to enjoy arguing anyway. Leave it to Doitzel to argue with Jane in the middle of a battle of which they were not on the winning side.
Another slug went hurtling forth, this time colliding with the bow of the Jane’s Ship. The camera zoomed in on Cabby being jettisoned into space, his cigarette going out as it ran out of oxygen. The attacking ship swiftly circled around and pulled alongside of Jane’s ship, avoiding Celeste’s volley of fire. Two more slugs pierced the hull of Sparky’s ship and suddenly fire began to blossom from various ports along the ship. The reactors had been hit! Escape Pods began to jettison from the underbelly of the doomed ship. The CISyn ship was prepared for this, too. Short-range Missiles were fired off to dispatch the small, unarmed lifeboats as they floated in space.
Suddenly half a dozen missiles went streaking for the hull of Jane’s ship. Sparky knew that those missiles wouldn’t do much damage to the ship’s hull, so why were they fired? Then the camera zoomed in and Sparky saw Aequitas standing on the hull, bellowing silently in space. He launched off from the ship, bat-like wings spread, bravely facing the missiles bearing down on him. The black Quay batted away the first projectile with his massive fist before the next five slammed into his body. Sparky held his breath as the explosion bloomed, not sure if that was enough to do in his friend. Just then a ball of black streaked towards the camera from the aftermath of the missiles. Aequitas had survived!
As he drifted through space on a collision course with the CISyn ship, Sparky noticed a massive gun strapped to his back as well as the Quay’s personal, oversized katana which he was in the process of unsheathing. Sparky found himself hopeful: If anyone could avenge those who had died, it was Aequitas! The brute could easily dispatch dozens, if not scores, of humans single-handedly. The Scoundrel’s hopes were unexpectedly dashed as he watched another Mass Accelerator Round enter the screen.
Quay were distinctly alien, their emotions unreadable on their faces. But Sparky had spent enough time with this particular alien that he recognized the look of surprise followed by realization on Aequitas’ face. As always, the Quay Kizen refused to give up and swung his oversized katana in a mighty arc, but lack of firm ground to stand on, coupled with the speed of the slug, rendered the effort useless. The slug collided with Aequitas with such force that it fractures his exoskeleton and turned him to pulp, which was then carried off in space by the slug.
Sparky was filled with rage. He screamed, his voice hoarse in seconds and his face burning as he strained against the restraints that bound him to the chair. The Maverick didn’t tap into his powers, even though he would have loved nothing better. He wasn’t prepared to lose this game, especially now that the stakes had been raised. Evans was apparently impressed by this, because his next choice of words seemed specifically designed to both compliment the Maverick scoundrel as well as crush his hopes.
“You are taking the deaths of your closest companions well. Rest assured those you saw die in the initial attack were the lucky ones. After assuring the weapons systems were dead, our operatives boarded the ship and permanently disabled the systems. The rest of your friends died a slow death of asphyxiation due to the oxygen recycler being offline. There was nothing they could do.”
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Tears once again welled up around those golden eyes and began streaming down his face. “I swear to you, Evans. The next time I use my power it will be to end you. YOU ARE TO BLAME FOR THIS!” He dropped his head and closed his eyes, tears falling into his lap. His body was shaking and it was all he could do not to release the rage in the form of a lightning storm. He envisioned it in mind. His body covered with an aura of arcing energy, sparks issuing from electric blue eyes, cracking bolts jumping the gap between his hands and Evans. He gritted his teeth and held himself together. This wasn’t the time.
A door opened to Sparky’s left and he forced himself not to look. Footsteps crossed the room, stopping in front of the Maverick. Sparky opened his eyes and saw shoes and a white lab coat over khaki slacks. He closed his eyes again, unwilling to give anyone the honor of his curiosity right now. Something flat and solid dropped into Sparky’s lap and the footsteps receded out the door.
Evans’ voice came over the intercom once more. “Kaelyn Yaney. Earther - German Descent. Female. 19 years old. Displays the ability to heal wounds on herself and others. Currently receiving disciplinary action after it was discovered that she initiated contact with another patient.”
Sparky opened his eyes again, and there on a clipboard was a picture of a young woman with curly brunette hair, wide green eyes, and freckled skin. This must have been the face that matched the voice that had woken him in the hospital wing. Now she was being punished on his behalf. The Cog looked back up to the screen and his heart sank. The image on the screen had changed. It now appeared to be an undated feed from a security camera showing Kaelyn strapped to a table, stark naked with dotted black lines drawn across her body in various places. Places that to imagine a scalpel flaying caused the Cog to wince. Her fair skin looked like a poster of a hog one would find in an old butcher shop.
The room, like every other in the place, was pure white. The table she was strapped to was a stainless steel operating table with no padding. Her arms, legs, and head were all strapped to the table with leather straps. A thin-faced man who appeared to be of South African descent was standing next to a stainless steel table on wheels. He had in his hand a scalpel, while the table held many more devices meant for cutting and severing. There was a pair of surgical scissors, what appeared to be a butcher’s cleaver, and various other tools. It looked to Sparky like they were about to do to her what they did to him.
The CISyn ‘doctor’ then made a long, deep slice across one of the dotted lines on her stomach and Kaelyn screamed and writhed on the table. Blood flowed, a bright red stain in the white room against pale skin. He took his time with the slice, making sure it was straight and deep.
“There is no need to scream. You and I both know that you will be fine.” the African said, his accent thick and rich. And sure enough the wound began closing as he spoke. Slowly the bleeding stopped and the wound knitted closed. “You should know better than to communicate with other patients. It’s strictly forbidden as it could greatly affect the mental state we work so hard to create and maintain.”
Over the course of the next few minutes the African doctor made several more scalpel slices over various parts of her body, humming to himself over the sound of Kaelyn’s screaming. When he seemed satisfied that he had cut on her enough with the scalpel he picked up the cleaver. He drew back and it seemed to Sparky that time slowed down. Kaelyn’s eyes widened and her mouth opened in a piercing scream that drowned out the sound of the doctor’s humming. Sparky could feel his heart slamming against his shattered rib cage as the cleaver dropped towards the woman’s arm. There was a thunk and a splash of blood that doused both the African and the German.
When the blood finally settled a heartbeat later, the Maverick saw that the swing had not been heavy enough to sever the bone. The young woman had passed out, her eyes streaming with tears from the pain. The doctor pulled the cleaver from her arm and for a brief moment the notched bone was visible. He wiped off the cleaver on his apron, then wiped the blood from his face and sat watching. It wasn’t long before the flow of blood slowed and finally stopped and the wound began knitting together again.
“Remarkable. Her body heals so quickly,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. He wiped his hands off on a pristine white towel, staining it crimson with his handprints. He then walked over to another stainless steel table, well out of the reach of the splatter, picked up a pen and started jotting down notes. When he had finished, he returned to the unconscious body strapped down to the table and picked up a needle from the stand holding his tools and injected it directly into her neck.
It must have been a shot of the same Adrenaline that Sparky himself had received, for the young woman’s eyes shot open nearly immediately. The slim African placed the needle back down on the table with the rest of his tools and looked at Kaelyn.
“Now, we have on record everything you said to the patient in the bed next to you, and all of our information on you tells us that you don’t know him. What we don’t know is why you risked your well-being to talk to a total stranger.”
To her credit, Kaelyn remained silent. She averted her eyes from the doctor-turned- interrogator, showing her defiance. The man smiled “Now Kaelyn, I know how you must feel. You wanted to make him hope, didn’t you? You wanted to give him something to cling to. Good for you! You’ve always been such a kind-hearted girl. But you should know that the reason we have you in here now is because he wasn’t who you thought he was. We had reason to believe you were communicating with our other patients, so we had an agent put in the bed next to you. The man you were trying to help never existed.”
Those dark green eyes widened in shock and at the same time Sparky saw something in them die. With that one simple lie he had crushed her hope and shown her that she was doomed here. The Cog could see it in her eyes; they had broken her.
Sparky’s body went numb. He let himself go limp and closed his eyes again. This was all because of him. Had he had the common decency to die on that table none of this would have happened. He heard the door open and felt an intangible weight descend over his body as he felt his connection with his Kizen fade away. They had suppressed him again. Sparky started laughing.
It was high and shrill and it didn’t stop, even when he felt strong hands clap down over his shoulders. The restraints were removed from his body and he was freed from the chair. Someone slid a bag down over his head and he was lifted from the chair like a sack of potatoes. He was still laughing as he felt himself tossed over Ivan’s shoulder before he was spun around several times to disorient him.
In this manner he was taken back to his cell, still giggling like a man gone mad, carried over Ivan’s shoulder so that he bounced as they walked. Every now and again at odd intervals the person carrying him would set him down and spin him around a few times so that he lost his sense of direction again. He could have tried to remember the turns they took and how many times they spun him, but that would have done him no good. He didn’t want back to the room they had just left. He knew there would be nothing there if he got there.
When they finally removed the bag from his head, he was back in a Cell and under suppression again. He finally stopped laughing and scowled to himself, images of the only person to have shown him genuine kindness in a long time lying naked and bloody on a table. He shook his head, sat down on the bed, picked up his ‘Sketch and began working. It was now he wished he had a magnify function built into his eyes, but not having one he made due with squinting at the ‘Sketch. He had gotten a lot of practice in during his time here, and now he used it. He began to write. In hardly visible cursive he ‘Sketched his manifesto. He included everything that had happened to him during his imprisonment and declared the Maverick way of life as being the most virtuous and ethical form of life. In the letter he called for the Mavericks to rally together to protect their way of life from those Earthers and Gongen who would take it away from them.
This is how he passed the time, struggling to keep his emotions in check. While he was writing, several meals had been delivered at random intervals, all of which went uneaten by the Cog sitting on his bed, staring intently at his Etch-A-Sketch in his lap. He had no idea how much time he spent writing furiously, but what he did know was that when he finally stopped his back was sore and hunched and his fingers were stiff and swollen. He estimated by the amount of food piled at his door he’d been at it for more than two days, but with the strange amount they fed him and the random intervals at which they fed him, he couldn’t tell. It could have been only a matter of hours. It was just about then that the lights in his room went dead.
He blinked a couple times, trying to get used to the dark, but the artificial rods and cones in his eyes were so strained that they were having trouble adjusting to anything that wasn’t cursive lettering a millimeter high. It was a lengthy stretch of time before he thought to engage his infrared vision. The lights still hadn’t come on. He began to wonder what brand of torture they were going to try next.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and a small voice whispered in his ear, a familiar voice. One that he shouldn’t be hearing again. A voice whose source he had seen die in Space.
“Stay calm and stay quiet. I managed to knock out video Surveillance in this block and kill the lights, but I wasn’t able to stop the sound recording system. Now follow me and we’ll get out of here. Do you still have your Infrared?”
“Celeste Roth, when we get out of here, I’m going to kiss you. Then you’re going to explain how you’re still alive,” he said under his breath. He turned around slowly and saw the red and yellow heat signature of Celeste move to the doorway. Then he saw the strangest thing he had seen in a long time. The Heat signature that represented Celeste blurred ever so slightly and her heat signature increased a tad bit as if her molecules themselves were separating. Then she walked right through the door.
The Maverick’s jaw dropped. He had known that he wasn’t the only Kizen on the crew, but he didn’t think there were so many! Celeste opened the door from the other side and beckoned to him. Sparky wasn’t about to let his surprise cause him any delay in his escape. He had been in here for what felt like years and he didn’t want to have to be there any longer than necessary for an effective escape. He grabbed his ‘Sketch off of his table and headed out the door after the heat signature of Celeste. He wondered how she was seeing at the moment, but thought it best to not ask.
So far there was no alarm going off or guards running around. They were safe for now. A few hundred meters down the hallway the lights were still on and Celeste was heading in that direction. Once he was about a hundred meters away from his cell Sparky felt his Kizen power welling up from their suppression. He smiled and reached out to touch Celeste’s shoulder and she slowed to a halt. The Maverick touched the wall of the hallway and concentrated. His eyes began to glow an electric blue and he lost his sight, his mind overwhelmed with the sudden visualization of the power that was flowing just beyond his fingertips. He began creating a mental map of the area, his knowledge of computers and other tech telling him what patterns stood for terminals and what stood for doors. He found the closest terminal to their current location and let go of the wall, cancelling his concentration and letting his sight return.
He pointed down the hall and took off, his bare feet padding lightly over the cold tile floor. He made sure not to shake his right arm at all, so as not to erase his hard work. When he reached the line of light he reached out and touched the wall again and with the briefest moment of concentration the power in the hallway went out.
“We’re looking for a terminal. I’ve killed the power to lights and all the surveillance in our path. They’ll notice if they’re watching, but it shouldn’t set off any alarms,” he said over his shoulder. He could see Celeste running behind him, the heat signature of her favorite gun visible in her hand, just in case.
“Why do we need a terminal? I know how to get out and I have a shuttle waiting,” Celeste said, her thick accent a comfort to Sparky’s ears. He hadn’t had friendly contact in so long he was wondering how he managed to make it.
“They took my Headphones, Celeste,” he said simply. “And there’s a couple people I need to check on.”
She shook her head. The female Maverick knew from experience that Sparky generally did as he wanted and that there was no force in the system that could stop him from doing something he had set his mind to. Hell, that’s exactly how he had landed himself in this place.
They came to a terminal and Sparky nearly skidded to a halt in the dark corridor. He began typing furiously at the keyboard, muttering constantly under his breath. “Some heavily encrypted... Not even close to being clever enough... So that’s where they’re holding her... that Rat Bastard!”
Sparky grinned and in the light of the monitor it looked to Celeste like the grin of a madman. He giggled slightly as he added the final touches to the logic bomb he had been writing as the information he needed downloaded. The second he had what he was looking for, he compiled the program and sent it to the central server.
“There, that should keep them busy for a while. I’ve dropped a logic bomb into their main server and had it spin off a subroutine to the security system to start looping footage. The logic bomb will wipe their servers as soon as they try to access any data concerning me. Sure, they’ve probably got it backed up somewhere, but it’ll be fun to mess with them. Anyway, so long as we stay quiet enough that the computers can’t pick up our sound, we can walk out of here in broad daylight,” he explained. “Now if you would be so kind as to follow me and we’ll make the stops I need to make.”
It took all of three minutes for Sparky to get up three floors to the storage room where they stored all of the patient’s belongings. Sparky dug through the boxes and managed to find his headphones. Searching through the boxes he also compiled an outfit to wear on the way out. He stepped out of the impound room in a pair of black pinstripe pants, black and white wingtip shoes, an emerald green button-up shirt with gold pinstripes and ruby cufflinks, and a black overcoat.
Celeste stared at him. “Umm... Sparky? Do you think that’s appropriate?”
“You’re right... I need a tie!” he exclaimed before darting back into the room.
“That’s not what I...” Celeste started, but he was already gone.
He returned with a Christmas red tie emblazoned with a bronze cog. “It’s perfect!” he said “What do you think Celeste?” he asked as he touched his headphones once more, reassuring himself they were still there.
“I meant, do you think it’s appropriate to stop and dress up in the middle of an escape from a CISyn facility?”
“But Celeste!” he whined, “I’ve been dressed in rags since I got here!” He pointed to the pile of clothes he had been wearing. The plain white scrubs with the CISyn logo emblazoned on them lay discarded on the floor of the storage room.
The Cartel agent sighed heavily and looked down the hallway. “Haven’t you noticed that there aren’t any guards here?” she asked. “I thought they would at least have patrols.”
She was on edge, the Cog noted. “About that. I may or may not have dropped a hint about an intruder down on C level. They’re busy chasing a ghost. Besides that, they take every precaution to ensure that inmates don’t leave the room without an escort.”
Sparky glanced both ways and turned on some good escape music on his headphones, then looked at Celeste and gave her a thumbs up. He then took off down the hall. They managed to avoid finding any security guards on their way to their next destination and as Sparky stopped in front of a cell door. He then made sure to straighten his tie and smooth his suit before knocking.
A small voice spoke up from inside, sounding weak and broken, but still sarcastic “You know I’m in here. Why would you bother knocking?”
“Well, I figured I was going to be polite. Make sure you were decent before barging in on you.”
Sparky glanced at the electronic lock, touched it, and then opened the door after hearing the audible click from the lock. The young brunette inside looked up and she took in Sparky’s smug countenance. Her eyes were red and puffy as if she had been crying, but that didn’t stop a smile broke out over her face. She leaped up from the center of the floor where she had been huddled, hugging her knees. She ran the whole five steps to the well-dressed scoundrel and hugged him as tight as she could.
“They told me you were their agent!” she cried, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Hey hey hey! You’re going to wrinkle my suit! It’s Italian Silk, or something fancy like that,” he said, pulling her away and holding her at arm's length. “Anyway, they told me all my crewmates were dead - Hell, I got to watch the video of them all dying, but right here is Celeste Roth and she’s most definitely not dead...” He trailed off as a look of curiosity crossed his face as he glanced over at his crewmate.
“Actually, strike that. I’m not entirely sure about that last statement. I’ll cut her open after we get out of here just to make sure.”
Kaelyn looked horrified and Celeste took a step back, making a point to put her gun between herself and Sparky, though she didn’t raise it. “You’ll do no such thing, Sparky,” Celeste said firmly.
“Celeste, I just watched you walk through a solid wall. Either you’re actually dead, or you’re a freak of nature!”
“And where do you get off calling me a freak of nature? Did they jar your brain putting your eyes in? Or has all the voltage finally gotten to you, you freaking human power plant?”
“All humans generate an electrical field, mine is just a little stronger than most,” he said offhandedly. “Anyway, we can sort this out later. Celeste, I need you to take Kaelyn back to your shuttle. There’s something I need to take care of. Let me know if anything goes wrong - you’ve got my number.” He tapped the tip of the spike extruding from the center of his left headphone and grinned.
Kaelyn clung to his arm. “I’m going with you,” she said looking up at him, her green eyes full of tears.
“Sorry, but I can’t let you see what I have to do.”
Celeste got a distant look in her eye and she spun, holding up her gun. Sparky hadn’t heard anything, but he had learned to trust Celeste’s instincts. Just as she raised her gun, two guards walked around the corner. In the brief moment it took the guards to register that someone had a gun pointed at them, Celeste shot one in the throat and Sparky took advantage of the other’s distraction to charge down the hall at him.
He was only ten meters away, and Sparky covered the distance like a shot. By the time he got there, his eyes were glowing blue and his hands were sheathed in crackling energy. He snatched at the guard’s radio and heard a popping sound as the circuits overloaded. He then shoved the guard in the back and he stumbled towards Celeste and Kaelyn.
Quick as a flash Kaelyn kicked at a tray of scalpels, sending them flying into the air. She snatched two before they had a chance to fall and darted forward the remaining five meters between the guard and herself. Sparky barely saw the elegant movement that left blood splattered against the walls in long, thin sprays. The guard clutched at his throat, gurgled, and fell to the floor. Blood quickly began pooling beneath him as it drained from the deep cuts in his neck.
Sparky’s jaw dropped “What the hell?! Where did you learn how to fight like that?”
Kaelyn looked sidelong as the scalpels that she had started idly twirling in her fingers. Embarrassment was written all over her pretty face. The Cog noticed that neither scalpel had blood on it, she had moved that fast. “I never really learned to fight. I was a surgical intern going through med school. I just know the human anatomy and where to cut.”
“Regardless, remind me to Never get on your bad side. I don’t think I’d live to regret it. Anyway, I don’t think I need to say that you should be careful of guards on the way back. Celeste, you have the number to my headphones, just remember to scramble the signal.” He took off down the hallway, coattails billowing.
He found a staircase and went up a couple stories. As he reached the level he needed, he quickly slammed himself against the wall behind the door. Two guards stepped in, talking casually. Sparky slipped through the door behind them so that they wouldn’t hear it open again. He managed to find a weapons locker, where he grabbed two lengths of thin chain and a few combat knives. In a couple of minutes, he had two knife blades attached to one end of both chains, and a vibro dagger tucked into his jacket.
On his way back down, his music faded out and was replaced by Celeste’s whispering voice. “Sparky, we’ve got trouble. They found the killed power and are patrolling the area.”
“Shit, how big of an area did you black out?”
“It was the entire wing; I wanted to give us freedom of movement.”
“Dammit Celeste, there were probably guards and doctors in that area when you blacked it out. They probably know I’m gone. On the bright side, they probably think it was only me. You should be able to get out without drawing too much attention to yourself. Get back up to the floor where we found Kaelyn and get a disguise. You can convince them you’re moving a patient. Let me know if you have trouble.
“Hmm. A disguise might not be a bad idea. But they already know I’m out. It’s worth a shot, it might keep them from spotting me at a distance,” the Maverick concludes, voicing his thoughts to himself.
He then dropped back down two floors and made his way down the hall. He peeked out the door and when he saw that the coast was clear he slipped across the hall to a closet marked “Coats”. It looked like this was where the doctors swapped out their outside coats with their lab coats. He sifted through lab coats until he found a last name that he liked embroidered above the left pocket. He pulled it on over his suit and pinned the ID badge that had “SCHULTZ” in bold print to match the embroidery. Fortunately the days of having pictures on ID badges long ago gave way to the days of retina scans. Far more reliable for the average person, but to a skilled Engineer like Sparky, it was something to sneeze at.
Sparky stepped back into the hall and turned to his left. There were doctors bustling around, but Sparky had an ID badge and no one gave him a second glance. He had hidden the lengths of chain in either coat sleeve and walked with a purpose. It was a little trick he had picked up. If you act like you belong, then no one notices you. When he reached the office marked “G. Evans,” he took a deep breath and touched the wall next to the door.
He concentrated on the flow of power through the room, and when he had blocked all of the power to the security systems in the room, he opened the door. Evans was facing away from the door when it opened and Sparky had enough time to shut the door before Evans turned around. When he finally did, he looked up, dropped his clipboard, and stepped back in terror.
A wide grin full of pure malice spread across Sparky’s face. Madness filled his eyes and a wild laugh began to well up from deep inside. The laugh was dark but giddy and permeated his words giving them a horrifying undertone. “Good day, Mr. Evans. Heheheheh... It’s good to see you again.”
“Raizen! How did you...?” Evans choked, the look of hate and insanity that his patient was displaying brought him up short. It was hard to have imagined such a well-dressed man could twist his face into the horrifying display that he witnessed now. Evans had seen men crack before, but this was something new.
“That’s not really important. What is important at the moment is that I have two promises to keep.” This time Sparky spoke, despite the grin and the expression on his face, it was in a cold, level voice that drew chills up Evans’ spine. One swift flick of his left wrist sent a blade attached to a chain across the two-and-a-half meter gulf between Evans and Sparky. The doctor tried to move, but was too slow; the blade embedded itself in his right shoulder, just under the collarbone outside the ribs.
Evans screamed and grabbed his shoulder, but the Mad Cog wasn’t worried about the sound. He knew all of the offices were sound proof. He had found that out while looking up the floor plans. Sparky flicked his right wrist and the next blade stuck in Evans’ left thigh, a good fifteen centimeters below his hip.
Sparky held the ends of the chains and smiled, “You are of course aware that I can generate enough voltage to kill you instantly, but that isn’t good enough for me. I promised to kill you slowly. And you’ll be grateful to know that I’ve only used my power to get here thus far, which is well within the boundaries of my promise, because getting here was for the express purpose of ending you.”
With that, Sparky tapped into his reserves of power and an electrical current built up in his hands. The charge forged its way along the chains and into Evans, who screamed and writhed. The scent of burning flesh began to fill the room as the meat surrounding the spikes began to cook. Evans collapsed to the floor and grabbed the chain in his thigh. He pulled it out, his hands blackening with the current.
In response, Sparky killed the current from his hands and flicked his wrist again to bring the blade back to his hand. Evans whimpered pitifully on the ground, pulling at the blade in his shoulder. The Cog started laughing again and threw the free blade across the room once more, embedding it in Evan’s right foot. Another wave of voltage passed through the chains and into Evans, and he began to convulse. He collapsed to the ground; his spasming muscles unable to support him.
“S-stop! M-mercy!” Evans begged through gritted teeth. Blood was seeping from his mouth where he had bitten his tongue and cheeks in his spasms. The blood that had come from the wounds was seared and closed off the arteries and blood vessels, so those they didn’t bleed.
“Why would I give you mercy? You nearly killed me, and forced me to feel all of it. You made me watch the death of my crew and the torture of the one person who tried to get me through this hell that you gorram Earther swine have put me through!” The Maverick had lost all reason. “No. You will suffer just as I have.”
The glow of the electricity arcing down the chain illuminated the room with an eerie blue glow. After a couple seconds the glow faded and the crackle of electricity died away. The only sound left was the sound of Evan’s screaming and whimpering. Even this was muted to Sparky, for he had simply adjusted the volume of the New Neo Classical music playing on his headphones.
Forty-five minutes later Sparky slipped out of Evan’s office and shut the door tightly behind him. Eventually someone would find his remains and the twin chains still stuck in his body. They’d figure it out eventually, he hoped, and take it as a warning against capturing him again. He got off the floor as quickly as he was able, stripped off his disguise, and made his way to the docking bay. He ran into several security guards, but was able to duck out of their way before they noticed him.
When he finally arrived at the shuttle and the bay door cycled shut behind him, he collapsed into a seat, head tilted back against the rest, body splayed in the chair. He was tense and could feel the edges of his breakdown tugging at him still. “Get us the hell out of here, Celeste,” he said over his radio. “I’m sick of this Bowie-damned place.”
Sparky closed his eyes and felt the shuttle shake as it undocked from the station. Celeste’s voice came over the intercom on the shuttle. “We’ll be back on Gongen in Seventeen hours. We’re pretty deep in space.”
Sparky felt a weight settle next to him and a hand touch his left forearm. He didn’t so much as stir, but he felt the fever pitch of emotions suddenly calm. “Are you okay?” asked Kaelyn’s quiet voice from near his shoulder. He nodded at the ceiling.
“Celeste, how long have I been in there?” he asked as he heard a second set of footsteps enter the cabin. These were lighter than Kaelyn’s, more adept at moving quietly. Celeste stood just inside the doorway to the cabin.
“Roughly four months. You’re actually due to be released tomorrow from the Gongen prison. I asked about you about a month ago, because we were supposed to be incarcerated in the same prison. They told me you were never processed. I felt so bad about helping Jade and Dexter get away that I decided to break out and come find you. I had to chase down nearly every contact in the Cartel that I have, called in a couple favors to get here, and had to get away without Doitzel noticing, but you’re safe now.” He heard a small thump as Celeste leaned heavily against the whitewashed wall of the shuttle.
Sparky nodded. “I owe you big, Celeste. You ever need anything, you let me know. I’ll pay you back for every favor you called in to get me out of that gorram place.” He placed his right hand over Kaelyn’s and squeezed reassuringly.
He felt Kaelyn shift slightly as she nodded in agreement. “I owe you too. I’m sure I can be useful, I was working my way through med school when they found out I was a Kizen.”
“We’ll call it every favor minus one. I helped you out so that I could make up for being on the wrong side during that cluster-fuck of a witch hunt.”
Sparky stood up, stretched, and opened his eyes. “I’m going to lie down. Wake me up when we get back to the prison. I suppose I should serve my time there.” He slowly walked back to the aft of the shuttle and fell onto a cot, passing out in his clothes as soon as his head hit the pillow. He was exhausted from the emotional strain that went into his confrontation with Evans, and his body demanded rest to recharge the pool of energy that fueled his Kizen.
Twelve hours later, a gentle touch to the shoulder brought Sparky up out of a nightmare. As he bolted upright he produced a dagger from somewhere so quickly it was a blur. He saw Kaelyn sitting on the side of the bed calmly, even as he pulled the dagger away from her throat and returned it to its hidden sheath. “Sorry,” he said simply, and the look in her eye told him she understood.
“We’ve just landed outside the prison.” Her face was unreadable. He had never been very good at reading people, but he could usually get some vague sense of how they felt. As he looked at her, he couldn’t get anything from her; she was a blank slate to him. He did notice she had changed from her CISyn scrubs into an emerald green dress that matched his shirt. There was a golden sash wrapped around her waist. Sparky had to appreciate her sense of style.
Sparky walked over to a computer and started typing. His fingers moved with the speed that only years of honing one’s skills could explain. Occasionally he would brush a hand through his hair and he felt Kaelyn’s eyes on his back. When he finished typing, he pulled a small disk from the drive and turned around to lean casually against the terminal.
“Okay, so I’ve opened an account for you and dropped enough credits into it to get you to Maverick Space. You’ll have to make your own way after you get there, but I’ve compiled a list of people who you can talk to. They’ll give you work if you need it and help you get situated. You’ll have to lay low for a while. CISyn will probably be after you, but I’ll find you as soon as I can.”
Kaelyn’s face fell, “Why can’t I go with you?” she asked softly. “I told you I can make myself useful. I don’t want to be alone!” Tears were welling up in her eyes. Her face was tight from holding onto a mask that was slipping with every word of farewell he spoke.
“I promise you I’ll be safe. My crew will take good care of me. But we get in a lot of trouble and I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself if I dragged you into it. There are more than a few members of my crew that I wish would find somewhere safe to be, but that can’t be helped. They were there long before I was.”
Kaelyn sniffed and tried to look strong. “I can take care of myself. I want to go with you!” The Earther clenched her fists and fixed a stern gaze upon her savior, but it cracked and she averted her gaze so he wouldn’t see the tears falling. “I-I don’t want you to go...”
Sparky scratched the back of his head awkwardly and pressed the data disk into her hand, closing it shut. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small round gear that he had been saving for this moment. “Here. I busted this out of an old clock that belonged to my doctor. I wanted to give you something to remember me by, and a Cog was the only thing I could think of to remind you of a Cog.”
Kaelyn sniffed and looked down at the gear. It was roughly eight centimeters from outer edge to outer edge and looked just like the larger cog on his tie. She smiled and hugged the blonde Maverick around the middle. “How could I forget you? You saved my life.” She smiled up at him and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I’ll see you again someday!”
Sparky followed her as she bounded out of the shuttle. He stopped at the top of the exit ramp in the doorway and watched her waving down a cab. When she had the attention of one, she turned and waved, her brunette hair falling about her shoulders in waves. The green sundress she wore contrasted sharply with her hair in the sunlight.
Celeste walked up behind Sparky, being careful to make enough noise that he heard her approach. He glanced back and saw her, hands on her hips, watching the Earther climb into a cab and wave.
“How did you meet her?” she asked the Cog in a solemn voice.
“She saved my life. Gave me hope,” he said with a smile. He looked up at the afternoon sun and held his silence for a moment before speaking again. “Anyway, I think it’s about time to serve our time. They’ll probably be glad we turned ourselves in and go easy on us.”
Celeste laughed and smacked the Cog on the shoulder “Were it so easy!” she said good naturedly. They stepped out of the shuttle together and walked towards the prison. Just as they got to the road, another cab pulled up and honked at them. The window rolled down and Oiji stuck his head out. The old Gongen smiled as smoke rolled out of his window.
“Sparky! Celeste! It is good to see you! How was prison?” He asked in his thick Chinese accent, puffing on his cigarette. Sparky would never figure out how he managed to smoke and talk at the same time.
“Cabby!” Sparky shouted and waved his arms, the ruby cufflinks catching the sunlight and sparkling. He looked at Celeste and shrugged.
“What the hell,” he said, “I’ll hack their systems later and make it look like we both served our full time.”
Celeste shook her head and they both crawled in the back seat of the cab. It was obvious they had a long drive based on the amount of smoke that rolled out of the back doors when they opened them. Celeste began to cough as soon as she shut the doors because Oiji rolled up his window.
“Cabby, have you ever considered smoking with the windows down?” she asked as his cigarette began to once again fill the roof of the cab with a haze.
The elderly Gongen turned around, his kindly, wrinkled face smiling and his crow's feet furrowing deeply. “Why would I waste smoke in such a way, Celeste?” he asked, clearly not understanding her question.
“It’s really good to be back,” Sparky said contentedly as he looked out the window.
Greetings Dr. Grey Evans:
The Gongen police force has apprehended one Raizen “Sparky” Laxus, part of the interplanetary terrorist group lead by one Radical Doitzel. He is to be incarcerated for a period of four months in a maximum security prison on Gongen. I understand that you have a personal interest in this man, as he is widely known as a Kizen of unusual demeanor and power. I’ve managed to pull some strings to get him, ah, reassigned to your Personal Care. We have it on good authority that Laxus’ early life was spent with a small band of Mavericks that made their way in the world by stealing from cargo ships and selling it on the black market, as well as by hijacking transport vessels bound for the rim. The development of his Kizen abilities seems to have progressed in conjunction with this way of survival, as they make it easier for him to bypass security systems. Aside from his skills in stealth, he is a decently good Cracker and, given the proper amount of time, can make his way into most computer systems. It is ill-advised to allow him any access to electronic devices of any sort, lest he escape.
I have personally investigated his involvement with the crew he travels with and it appears that he was recruited into their ranks shortly after making landfall on Gongen and unloading a shipment of contraband. He seems to get along well with only two or three members of the crew, one being a retired soldier turned cab driver, and the other being a Quay of unknown background. His relationship with the shinobi that recruited him is questionable at best. However, he seems to get on better with her than with the rest of the crew, who appear to believe him to be of violent disposition and untrustworthy nature. On an unrelated note is the tendency of certain crew members, including Laxus, to revere David Bowie as a saint. However this is of little consequence as neither the captain nor his crewmates are not likely to spend the resources to discover his whereabouts when he is not released from the Gongen prison in which he was incarcerated.
It is recommended that you take great care in the handling of this prisoner, as he is quite clever and, if given an opportunity to escape, he will take it. It is also recommended that you use the Kizen suppressors on him when you are not performing tests, as his Kizen abilities give him great offensive and defensive power, in addition to utility. Raizen Laxus will be deposited into your care tomorrow afternoon, arriving via transport shuttle. I wish you the best in your study and hope any questions you have in regards to this fellow are answered.
Regards,
Bowie J. O’Shaughnessy
Fed Grav Negotiator
As he opened his eyes, the Maverick winced in pain. He felt a migraine pulsing behind his left eye. His vision was blurry, and as it slowly came into focus, he tried to sit up. It was then he realized that he couldn’t move, even though he struggled. As his brain began interpreting the signals from his mechanical eyes, the world began coming into sharp focus. He wished it hadn’t. Not only was the physical pain unexpected, but so were his surroundings. Instead of seeing red walls and the Gongen propaganda designed to help reform prisoners, he found himself in a sterile white room with lightly padded walls. Suddenly the Cog realized why he was having such difficulty moving. Looking down at his body through his bionic eyes, he discovered that he was wearing a clean, white straight jacket with the CISyn logo emblazoned over his heart.
“Well this is unexpected,” he said as he rotated his neck. Suddenly he stopped and his eyes grew wide as realization dawned on his face: Those bastards had stolen his headphones!
“This is an unfortunate and difficult position they have put me in. I’d love to stay and find where in Bowie’s name I am and why I’m here and not being fed Gongen Propaganda through a straw for the next four months, but since the apparent douche moose in charge has seen fit to remove my most valued possession from my person I’m going to have to break out and kill a few people.”
Sparky stood, which was considerably harder to do in a straight jacket. He took a deep breath and felt the familiar flow of power rush through him as his golden eyes began to glow an electric blue. Things didn’t quite go as expected, however; when he tried to engage his aura of electricity, there was but a crackle as he felt the briefest of manifestations of his power before it fizzled and died. The strangest thing was that he felt as if he had expended the energy required to engage his aura.
“Huh... well isn’t this a pickle,” Sparky said to himself “It seems that they have some sort of Kizen suppressor on me. Looks like it will actually be a challenge to break out of here.”
Sparky began moving around the room, examining it as he went. As far as he could tell, it was a perfect cube with white wash walls that appeared to be soundproof. He also noticed that the single light above him burned brightly, though it appeared to be an ancient fluorescent bulb which hummed incessantly. The room was perfectly timeless, which at first only gave the scoundrel time to think. But soon the humming of the light began to drive him up the wall. And in this case, it was literal. Sparky began doing his damnedest to take a few running steps up the wall in order to leap towards the light. His intent was to bash the Bowie-damned thing in so it would stop humming. After several failed attempts, which left the Maverick lying in a heap on the floor, he nearly made it; however, he misjudged the distance and slammed his head on the un-padded ceiling and blacked out, landing in a crumpled heap on the floor, blood trickling from his forehead.
When he awoke he saw a tray of food sitting next to the door. He briefly wondered how they expected him to eat without the use of his hands, which ended with him feeling rather stupid. Of course they didn’t expect him to use his hands.
“Earther pigs.”
Swallowing his pride Sparky bent over the tray and began eating the questionable substance that looked much like someone had gone through their house, emptied every liquid and semi-solid food item in their refrigerator, spice cabinet and pantry into a bowl, tossed in a potato, and added green food dye for fun. The stuff had the consistency of a diaper full of sick baby and the color to match and, to top it all off, tasted more horrid than the paste he had eaten on the last CISyn facility he had been on. It was food, though, and the Cog had no idea when his last meal had been. After eating this poor excuse for a meal the Maverick sat back against the wall, trying to tune out the humming sound which was beginning to permeate his brain, scattering his thoughts and making it generally hard to focus. This was a major issue as he tried to concentrate to draw forth hose hidden reserves of energy he used to fuel his electricity. With no idea how much time had passed, he fell into a fitful sleep, waking occasionally to curse the humming sound coming from the fluorescent light.
He had no idea how much time had passed. It seemed that meals only came when he was asleep, just to keep him guessing. The humming sound began to fade in and out as he slowly began to grow used to it. The random appearance of food coupled with the intermittent humming and continued solitude began to cause a significant strain on his mind. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been alone for this long. After joining on with his crew he rarely spent time alone, he was always interacting with someone, before joining with them he would only ever be alone between jobs and when he wasn’t employed on another Cog ship. And even when he was alone he knew he didn’t have to be. Here there was only himself and it didn’t look like he would get company any time soon.
In order to cope with the solitude, he began to wonder what was happening. It was obvious that he had been captured en-route to prison, since he had woken up in an ambulance and the medic had explained he would be spending the next four months in a prison cell for attacking an officer. He had blacked out after that, though, and woken up here. Judging by how he felt, he could assume that he had been abducted after a side trip to the hospital, since he didn’t feel like he was riddled with bullets. It didn’t seem like the Earther style to waste money to patch someone up before submitting him to psychological torture, so he must have been at a Gongen hospital at some point. This meant that he was captured between the hospital and the Prison.
“Wait... I already came to that conclusion,” the disoriented Cog said aloud, “If only this Bowie-damned fluorescent light would...!” The bound engineer realized then that the humming had stopped. He hadn’t tuned it out - he tried to focus on the sound and it just wasn’t there. They had replaced the light entirely!
He sat in silence for what seemed like days to his addled mind before letting out a scream and slamming his head repeatedly against the wall. The walls were padded, but the force he used was more than enough. His vision blurred and a headache rocked his skull, pulsing angrily behind his mechanical eyes. He groaned in pain, but welcomed the feeling. It was another foothold that helped him from sliding into insanity. Something to focus on.
A sound at the door pierced the silence, causing the Cog’s eyes to widen and shoot towards the entrance. He turned his head too fast, making his headache flare. He dropped to the ground, pressing his head against the cool floor. The door opened for the first time that Sparky had seen and in walked a tall, brown-haired man dressed in a pristine white lab coat over a pair of Khaki pants and a white button up shirt. His face was clean-shaven, boyish, and round and his green eyes were magnified ever-so-slightly by the narrow-rimmed glasses he wore. He glanced at a clipboard as he stepped in, flipped a page up, and returned his piercing stare to the blonde-haired man pressing his forehead against the padded floor.
“Why, hello there Raizen,” the man said in a voice that sounded like it was coated in honey. “My name is Dr. Grey Evans and I’m your new physician.” The Earther smiled, revealing his impeccable, white teeth.
Evans stepped into the room and was followed by a shorter man who looked like he had been modeled after a tree stump. He was a good thirty centimeters shorter than Evans, but his arms were comparable to Evans’ thighs. The short man even had all the intelligence of a tree stump stamped over his face. His grey eyes and dim expression, along with his slack jaw and thick neck, made it seem to Sparky that this man was the definition of ‘grunt.’ This assistant, whom Sparky silently began referring to as Grunt, stumped over to the blond-haired Maverick and reached out to grab him by his straight jacket’s arm ties. It was only after Grunt gave a one-armed heave and Sparky was lifted into the air that he realized that Grunt must have had some genetic enhancements that helped his stocky appearance. The Cog had little time to ponder this. Upon reaching the apex of his flight, he began the descent only to find the hard way that Grunt had shifted his body slightly to place his meaty shoulder directly in the downward path of Sparky’s midsection. The wind was driven from his lungs as he bent double over Grunt’s shoulder facing backwards.
Sparky was carted off down a series of pristine, white corridors that would have made most doctors jealous. He tried to keep track of the turns they took and the path that they followed, but the throbbing in his head and the ache in his midsection made it very hard to concentrate. Suddenly he found himself slapped down on a table, Grunt looking no worse for the wear after carrying him what seemed like half a mile. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate through the migraine and the dull ache of his body, but he couldn’t quite manage to summon the concentration necessary to summon forth those strange reserves of power within him. Evans began to move about the room and prepare machines, the purposes of most of which Sparky could only guess at. The Cog quickly began to grow bored lying on the table. He strained his core muscles to sit up, and suddenly he felt as if he had been punched in the chest by Tatsuya. As he sank back onto the table, his vision fading, he heard Evans’ cool voice.
“Be gentle with our guest Ivan, He needs to be in peak physical health.”
Sparky’s last thought before he blacked out was, “Prick.”
Sparky started awake. Sitting bolt upright in his bed, he rubbed his eyes. His initial thought was that it must have been a bad dream, but then the dull throbbing in his chest reminded him exactly how real it was. Standing up, the Cog began to look around, peering through the inky blackness, and wondering if Evans had shut off his eyes while he was out. Reaching up to his face Sparky touched his eyes, happy to discover that they were still there and were not the empty sockets he had expected.
“Well at least I still have my eyes,” Sparky said sardonically as he mentally flipped his vision from the visible spectrum to the infrared. The world was suddenly illuminated in varying shades of red and blue and it became immediately apparent he was in a different room. Not only was there a bed, but in the far corner were a desk and a chair and against the wall away from the door was a dresser. Next to the bed was what appeared to be a night stand with something sitting on it.
He shook his head and began looking around for a light switch. After a brief foray around the room he found the light switch. He flipped the switch and switched off his infrared vision so as not to be blinded, then began exploring his new quarters. There was a notepad and pen on the desk, but nothing else. Checking the dresser drawers he found basic white socks, underwear, and scrubs, all with CISyn emblazoned on them.
“They have no sense of style at all!” he huffed “I’ve been wearing the same outfit for Bowie knows how long, and all they give me to change into is more of the same thing? Don’t these people know I have the best sense of style in the system?”
He spoke aloud to keep the mind-breaking silence at bay. At least with the two sub-factions of his crew, there was rarely ever silence. Granted, most of the sound was someone yelling at him for something, but that was okay because he enjoyed making things interesting. As he reminisced, he moved back to the bed to check out the object he saw on the night stand. Upon picking it up and examining it, he found it to be the most interesting thing since his arrival! It was an archaic Etch-a-Sketch! Sparky had heard of these before, but never seen one.
He picked it up and immediately became frustrated with the fact that it was so difficult to draw curves of any sort. He shook it and put it back down before walking over to examine the door. There didn’t seem to be any sort of mechanism on this side, which meant it was more than likely an electronic lock. Ordinarily that wouldn’t have stopped him; there wasn’t a lock in the verse, mechanical or otherwise, that could keep this Kizen confined. This time, however, CISyn had the advantage in some form of Kizen suppressor. Resigning himself to his imprisonment in this timeless chamber, the blonde-haired Maverick sat on the bed, picked up the Etch-a-Sketch, and began drawing very sloppy circuit diagrams to pass the time. He practiced in his spare time when he wasn’t eating, reminiscing about his crew, or sleeping.
Sparky awoke strapped to a table with a bright light overhead. It reminded him of the surgery tables in Maverick Space where he had gotten his cybernetics. The key difference was that the ceiling wasn’t the floor of a bar. There was no dust floating down from the floorboards above whenever someone walked across them Thank Bowie for small favors. Sparky tried to move his head slightly, just to see if it was possible.
Surprisingly, he found that his head had full range of motion, despite his body being strapped down. Not one to let opportunities slip by; the always curious Maverick looked around the room. This one was no different from any of the others as far as the decorum went; clean white walls, shining metal machines, and brightly lit ceilings. Sparky growled to himself. This white wall bullshit had to stop.
“I swear, I’m going to paint the walls with blood as soon as I get back to my room. Just to get some color in my life,” he grinned, then shook his head and closed his eyes. Darkness was a relief from the blinding white.
“Now, now, don’t do that. I’d hate to have my favorite guest injured,” came Evans’ honey-coated voice, “I’ve been watching you for the sum of your stay here. You’re a very interesting individual.”
Huffing sarcastically, Sparky’s golden eyes sought out the location of the voice as he muttered, “You could at least have had the common decency to slip up and tell me how long I’ve been here.”
“Ah, but my dear friend, wouldn’t that take away from all the fun?” Evans finally stepped into view. He had changed. He was now wearing a white apron and blue scrubs. His head was covered in a blue cap and his face was now hidden behind a white mask. “But since you’re such an amusing patient, I’ll tell you about the procedure we’ll be starting shortly. First we’ll open you up and make sure that all of your natural organs are in peak condition. Then we’ll attach sensors to your heart, brain and various other organs before closing you up again. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Sparky shrugged as best he could with his arms and shoulders bound. “If you’re worth your salt as a doctor, then after I woke up I wouldn’t have a clue you even opened me up. Why bother telling me?”
“Oh, my dear Raizen,” the Earther said in his honey-sweet voice, using Sparky’s real name, “when did anyone say we’d be putting you under? We need to do a few tests which require you to be awake. In fact, here comes your shot of adrenaline now.”
As he was speaking, a nurse walked into the room with a cart and began preparing Sparky’s arm for injection. All the while, he writhed on the table, trying to escape these insane fucks. His struggling got him nowhere, however, and the nurse injected his arm with the shot fairly easily, while Evans strapped down his head.
“Now we’ll just wait a moment for that to take effect and then we’ll begin,” Evans said as he began preparing scalpels and various other items. The nurse kept busy by preparing clean surfaces, water, and rags to assist Dr. Evans.
It wasn’t long before the adrenaline hit the Maverick’s brain and took effect. He stiffened, his bionic pupils narrowing as the chemical took hold. It bonded itself to the receptors in his brain and forced him into a state of alertness that he’d never before experienced. This was pure adrenaline, not that from-concentrate stuff they used in hospitals. It was then that a machine beeped and the Engineer realized that he had been hooked up to several machines all along, each one monitoring some specific vital sign or some obscure brain function.
“That’s our signal to begin,” Evans said smiling. Sparky forced himself to breathe calmly. He wasn’t going to let Evans get the better of him. From here on out this was going to be a game, and he wasn’t going to let Evans win. The thought was driven out of his mind as the masked Evans pulled on his rubber gloves and picked up a scalpel.
“Gloves,” Sparky said with a grin, “You don’t get that sort of treatment in Maverick Space.”
Then the first cut arrived. Sparky had been in plenty of fights before. He’d been shot and stabbed and a good variety of other things, and in each case his naturally produced adrenaline numbed the pain. This was different. The sharp scalpel that Evans firmly but carefully began to press into the Maverick’s flesh felt like fire as it severed skin and muscle. His nerves screamed in pain and his voice followed suit before the nurse inserted a clean white rag into his mouth to shut him up.
Evans smiled behind his surgery mask, his cheek bones raising the mask slightly on his face. He had started his cut at the top of a carefully drawn line down the center of Sparky’s chest, starting at the collar bone and ending at the navel. Once the first incision was made, Evans pulled the flesh apart and fastened the Clamps to keep it apart. Sparky felt all of this, his synapses howling in agony as the sharp tool severed blood vessels all the way down his torso. The Adrenal shot kept him from passing out from the sheer pain. His teeth clenched at the rag, but his voice still managed to howl out around it.
All the pain melted together as Evans began attaching small devices to various organs. Sparky’s vision went red, but he was able to mentally concentrate enough to take the edge off the pain... that is until they cracked his ribcage open. Sparky saw the bolt cutter-like device when Evans picked it up, but didn’t realize what it was for until the first rib was cut. It seemed then that both the Nurse and Evans started when Sparky’s clear screaming was heard through the gag. Sparky’s pain-addled brain somehow managed to forge a connection with the energy reserve that resided deep within him. The Cog’s eyes began to glow electric blue and an aura of crackling energy surrounded him. Now Evans looked panicked. He jumped back from Sparky’s twitching body, leaving his scalpel behind. The smell of burning flesh began to permeate the room as the blood that soaked Sparky began to boil, searing wherever it touched. This only intensified the pain. The Maverick’s wide eyes began glowing so brightly that his pupils and irises couldn’t be seen.
“Get the Kizen Suppressors in here! He’s breaking loose!” Evans screamed to the nurse as he grabbed several needles and attempted to inject the raging Kizen with enough sedatives to knock out an angry gorilla. The nurse bolted out of the surgery room, but paused when Evans’ voice rang out from the table, “Grounding doesn’t work! Hurry before he gets himself killed!”
Sparky’s vision went red and blue, a strange combination of colors to experience. With his muscle spasms driving the abandoned scalpel deeper and deeper into his liver and the electricity scorching the insides of his blood vessels, the thought never did occur to him. Slowly his vision began to fade to black, and with his vision, the pain began to fade as well. He felt himself drifting, as if surfing physically through the Ion Stream. The feeling of drifting slowly eased to a halt as his fading vision witnessed Evans standing over him. Just before his vision went dark he could have sworn he saw Evans’ glowing hands hovering over his body. Then it all went dark and he felt himself rising, feeling lighter than ever before. It was then Sparky felt the warm embrace of death and accepted it.
Sparky found himself standing in the middle of the Black. He looked around and saw nothing, but when he tried to engage his infrared, nothing happened. He reached up and touched his eyes and felt the soft orbs of organic eyes. He gasped in shock. Why did he have organic eyes again? Was this some new form of CISyn torture? Did he die on the table? He thought back to lying on the table, feeling the pain of being cut open. He shuddered at the thought feeling his body release a portion of power and then shouting, but after that he remembered nothing.
Suddenly a voice rang out through the darkness, calling his name. A soft, unfamiliar voice that soothed him greatly to hear. It reminded him that he wasn’t alone. His name was repeated, leading him through the darkness, through the fog, and back into consciousness. He blinked, bleary eyed, his brain not quite fully interpreting the signals from his cybernetic eyes. He quickly toggled between spectrums a few times to be certain, but they were in fact his own bionic eyes. As his vision cleared, he found himself lying in a curtained hospital bed bandaged with his whole body throbbing dully. Once again, he had no idea how much time had passed or how long he had been asleep. Did he really experience death, or was that all a dream? He shook his head, an action that caused his migraine to flare up so hard he groaned in pain and clutched his skull.
“Shh, don’t get too loud,” a voice said to him from behind the curtain that surrounded his bed. It was a familiar voice, one that he had heard somewhere before. “They’ll come check on you if you do, and we’re not supposed to talk to each other.”
“Then why put yourself at risk?” Sparky breathed. He had been in enough situations to know you always question anyone who put themselves at risk for a stranger.
“I heard them talking about you. How you survived something that should have killed you. They weren’t sure you’d wake up. They’re going to want to start testing you in more situations,” the voice said. It was young, female, perhaps seventeen or eighteen.
“Who are you?” the Maverick asked as he felt exhaustion overtaking him.
“You sound tired. Get some rest and I hope we get to talk again,” Her voice was soft and almost melodic. Almost as an afterthought she added “I’m Kaelyn by the way.”
Sleep overtook Sparky. When he next awoke, he was lying in a bed, shirtless and wrapped in bandages. He slowly sat up and looked around the room, sneering at the security cameras. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand. He winced slightly, but the pain wasn’t very strong. Once he was sure he was able to stand on his own and was stable on his feet he began searching for the Etch-A-Sketch to pass the time. He felt that he was getting better; he was able to sketch circles and various other geometric shapes with only a small amount of error.
‘Sketching helped calm him. It brought his scattered thoughts together and helped him to focus. He wondered about that girl, though he would probably never see her again he couldn’t help but think that she wasn’t a trick. One of the very few things in this god-forsaken hell hole that wasn’t a trick. Sparky shook his head and looked down at his ‘Sketch, he had been idly drawing a small landscape portrait and had discovered that he could tap the proper areas on the screen in just the right way to erase selected lines. He started practicing it on a drawing of a tree to get the process exact.
The next few “days” as Sparky experienced them were all the same. He slept when he was tired, and when he woke, it marked a new day. When he was awake he spent his time meditating or ‘Sketching. Some “days” he would wake up and it would be cold and dark - so cold that his infrared would hardly register his own body clearly. On these days he would huddle under the thin blankets they had provided him with and try to meditate. Other times he would begin to exercise to try and get his body temperature up. Anything to alleviate the sensation of freezing to death.
The cold days were always interspersed randomly - or perhaps rhythmically - with days that were so hot and muggy that Sparky couldn’t even find comfort sitting perfectly still while completely naked. On these days, he tried to move as little as possible to avoid producing any extra body heat. He felt himself growing sick, his body unable to cope with the extreme changes in temperature. His nose was stuffy, he sneezed and coughed and shook with cold, huddled up under a thin Standard Issue Blanket, on the hot days as well as the cold.
Through all of these things Sparky would sometimes hear a soft, familiar voice reverberating through his head: “...I’m Kaelyn by the way.” He kept hearing that voice, and it brought him comfort through those dark days. He swore then and there that he would free this girl, whoever she was, from this hell hole those Earther Pigs called a facility. He grinned at the Cameras he knew were there; the game was getting interesting. He would break free, get his headphones, find Kaelyn, and kill every last Earther that stood in his way.
Then one “morning” when he awoke, everything was normal. The temperature was just right; he didn’t feel sick at all. He jumped out of bed and moved over to the door. He placed his hand upon it and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate, trying to summon the reserves of power from deep within him that allowed him to release his electrical power. He concentrated for several minutes, but nothing came. He couldn’t feel the reserve of power. He slammed his fist against the door in frustration and turned away. Then he heard the door slide open and a powerful shock ran through his body and everything went white.
When he came to he was sitting in a chair with electrodes strapped to his body in various places. They were on his chest, his palms, his arms, his shoulders and his neck. Even his legs had electrodes placed on them. He looked up and saw Evans standing behind a pane of glass, clipboard in hand, with a group of techs in lab coats. Sparky stood up and walked over to the glass, his golden eyes smiling as he watched the techs bustling about.
He slammed his fist against the glass, causing several techs to jump in surprise. The glass remained in one piece, not even cracking. Sparky doubted that even an archaic rifle would be able to punch a hole in this glass. “I see you’ve got yourself some fine glass here.” The Cog chuckled.
Evans leaned over and pressed a button and spoke, his voice coming across slightly distorted over the Intercom. “Thank you, Raizen. Just to inform you, we’ll be performing a few tests to measure the level and range of your abilities, and then we’ll be done.”
Sparky shrugged as he turned around and walked over to the chair. In one quick glance, Sparky discovered that the chair was bolted to the ground. He grabbed at the wires coming from the electrodes and tugged at them. He realized with some amount of displeasure that the electrodes were glued to his skin with a powerful epoxy that wasn’t going to give way without tearing his flesh.
“And what if I don’t want to? I don’t think you’ll be able to make me, unless you have one of those Mind Control Kizen locked up in here, though I doubt they’d be willing to cooperate.” Sparky thought back to Doitzel and how he had discovered the Captain’s mental Kizen powers. He couldn’t help but laugh as he remembered trying to ride on Doitzel’s back and how his fellow Maverick had reacted - by forcing him to remember every time anyone had ever punched him in the head. The techs looked moderately uncomfortable at his laughter; it was far too good natured for the things he had suffered. Evans looked thoughtful, but his face betrayed no emotion.
Evans smiled, seemingly appreciating the game, “Don’t worry. You’ll complete the test.” He pushed a buzzer and a door in the wall slid over, revealing Ivan. The stout Russian stepped into the room and the door slid shut behind him. He smiled at Sparky and the Scoundrel understood why he was there. Ivan cracked his knuckles and stepped toward Sparky. The Cog sized up the Russian. He was easily taller than Ivan and he had reach on him, but he could tell that Ivan had been modified genetically. Those thick bulging muscles weren’t all natural and if one of those punches landed, Sparky knew that he would be out.
Sparky smiled. This was going to be fun. He adopted a fighting stance and raised his fists. He kept light on his toes, his body moving much more fluidly than Ivan’s. Ivan took the first swing, and his ham-sized fist moved more quickly than expected. Sparky narrowly avoided the blow. He dodged to the side and ducked under Ivan’s thick arm, bringing his own right fist up and into Ivan’s jaw. Sparky jumped back and shook his hand. It appeared that taking down Ivan would be much harder than expected.
Ivan threw another punch; this time it was a quick one-two combo that was far less sluggish than a man of his build should be capable of delivering. It was nearly all Sparky could do to dodge the punches, and when he did manage to return the blows, it was much like punching a brick wall. Ivan hardly seemed to notice the blows. Then it happened: Sparky was just a tad too slow on a punch. He caught the blow in his left shoulder and heard it snap even as the force of the blow spun him around. Ivan followed up with one more hard blow to Sparky’s kidneys.
The Maverick collapsed, his knees slammed against the ground, and his vision went blurry. He staggered to his feet once more and raised his right fist, but his vision was shaky and he was moving slowly. He shook his head, but Ivan had already braced himself. He let loose with a mighty punch that connected with Sparky’s sternum. The bones cracked again, the Maverick’s feet left the ground, and he slammed into the wall that was nearly ten feet behind him. Sparky slumped to the ground and blacked out.
He awoke back in the same hospital bed that he had been in before. He listened, but this time there was no voice from the bed next to his. He leaned to look around, immediately discovering that they hadn’t bound him to the bed. He scanned the area with his infrared vision only to see several horizontal hot spots through the curtains and two vertical hot spots towards the foot of his bed. Evans’ voice came from the taller of the figures and the shorter could only be Ivan.
“You were supposed to rough him up, Ivan. I didn’t want him hospitalized again! You were supposed to...” Evan’s voice trailed off as the machines detected Sparky’s raised pulse and engaged the morphine drip that put him under once more. The last thing he remembered was hearing a soft voice calling out to him, but he couldn’t tell if it was real or imaginary.
The next time Sparky woke up he was in his room and Evans was sitting across from him. “Good Morning, Raizen.”
Sparky sat up and winced at the pain that shot through his ribs. “How many times have you broken my ribs?” Sparky rubbed his left shoulder, and adjusted the sling that held his left arm.
“Twice, but I assure you the second time was not meant to have happened. Rest assured, Ivan will be punished. Unfortunately, I won’t be letting him go. He’s a very useful member of my personal team and he would be very difficult to replace.”
“I do hope you’ll at least dock his pay,” The Maverick replied calmly. This was yet another chance to play the game. They had put him through his paces, and he was feeling it. It ate away at him in his moments of solitude.
“Six weeks working overtime with no pay whatsoever, actually.” Evans’ voice was calm and he carried his usual clipboard. “But that’s not what I’m here to discuss, Raizen. I can’t help but notice how very well you’re taking your stay here. I knew you were resourceful, but so many of our guests and patients grow to hate their doctors by this point in their stay.”
Sparky smiled, the gears in his head turning. He had always had a knack for knowing what people didn’t want to hear. This was going to be fun. “Is that so? I can’t imagine why. You give us excellent food and take good care of us. I mean, sure, the quarters are a little small and your nurses are a bit... overbearing, but overall It’s a very pleasant stay.”
He smiled inwardly at his knock to Ivan, but Evans seemed nonplussed. He jotted down something on his clipboard before speaking again. “I give you my personal assurance that your complaints will be taken into consideration.” Damn. He was good. “But I’m concerned for your well-being. It’s not good for one to bottle up emotions like you’ve been doing. How are you feeling?”
“Honestly, I’ve spent a lot of time in space. I’ve spent more than my fair share of time floating in dead lifeboats full of contraband waiting for my pick up. I know how to handle solitude,” Sparky crossed his legs and readjusted his sling. He couldn’t help but notice that Evans had that air of patience about him. Good. Sparky was willing to wait.
“But you have so much experience with technology, why would you let yourself be caught in a dead lifeboat?” he asked, suddenly seeming interested in Sparky’s personal life.
“Sometimes you have to overload the engines to make a clean getaway, then kill the whole system so their scanners don’t find you. Depending on how you do it, you could end up more than an AU away from your rendezvous point. Then you have to wait for your team to find your scrambled beacon. It is a gamble that has killed many a Maverick.” The Maverick shrugged and watched the Earther closely. He wasn’t very good at reading expressions, but he was trying to catch a glimpse of something - anything - on the doctor’s face. So far it remained unreadable.
“So you’re used to solitary confinement,” Evans said as if it was something he had just discovered. “But you must harbor negative feelings towards me, and surely you must hate Ivan. After all he did just break your ribs a second time. Before they even had time to heal properly at that!” Sparky couldn’t tell if he was trying to goad him into a reaction or if he was just fishing for information. Either way, the game was being taken up a level.
“I’ve been in fights before. One thing I’ve learned over the years in Maverick Space is that you win a few, you lose a lot.” Sparky realized he had grown a little tense while his doctor had been speaking, so he took a breath and relaxed. Apparently this didn’t escape the Physician’s notice.
“You seem tense. Have I struck a chord with you?” he asked, his voice having that soothing quality that Sparky was beginning to find vaguely obnoxious.
“I’m not used to talking about my feelings, to be honest. It’s a little uncomfortable,” he lied. He didn’t really care about discussing his emotion. He just didn’t like how Evans was going about it.
“You are truly an unusual case, Raizen. No other patient has been able to keep themselves under control for as long as you have. Usually they go mad, or at the very least begin to hate those they view as their captors,” Evans looked up at Sparky, his cool green eyes casually reading Sparky’s expressions. He was fishing for a reaction, the Engineer decided, and he was going to do his best to not give him one.
“I guess I’m just more mellow than most. I don’t consider that anything special.” he said casually, dismissing it with a shrug.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Evans said, standing. “Well, so long as you’re doing alright I have no need to worry.” He walked to the door and glanced back over his shoulder “I hope you enjoy your stay here.”
The door cycled open, revealing a rather disgruntled-looking Ivan. It was obvious he had just been informed of his punishment. The door slid shut and he heard the slight click of the lock being bolted.
Sparky wandered around the room, still unable to connect with his Kizen powers. He reflected on what his guest had just said. Questions began to flood his mind. How long had he been here? Was he really holding off a reaction so well? Why had Evans shown a personal interest in his case? These thoughts and many others began flooding his mind as he paced back and forth. He continued to pace until he felt everything welling up inside him.
No. He couldn’t allow himself to get caught up in this. If he did, he would be playing right into his captor’s hands. He sat down and with one hand he began to try and clear his mind with some ‘Sketching until he fell asleep. The next few ‘days’ passed in solitude, as if Evans was testing his claim that he could handle solitude.
Eventually his shoulder and ribs stopped throbbing, so he knew his body was adjusting to the pain. When he felt it had been a long enough time he began working out, trying to strengthen his arm and prevent more atrophy. He kept to a strict regimen of pushups, sit ups, and squats. He practiced Shadow Boxing on the padded walls to keep his agility up. It was also good for practicing his punches and kicks. He may be a captive, but he could at least be in shape.
He alternated working out and ‘Sketching, but eventually the solitude began to get to him and he started talking to himself again, just to hear the noise. His meals seemed to get less tasteful, but they seemed more nourishing. At least they appreciated the fact that he was trying to stay in shape. He continued his boring routine until one morning he awoke to find himself elsewhere.
Slowly he opened his eyes and began to look around. The Maverick found himself in yet another blank white room with no windows, only a chair. After taking a brief inventory of himself he found that he could sense the hidden reserves that fueled his Kizen abilities. He wasn’t being suppressed.
“Great, I know what this is,” he said sarcastically as he looked around the room. He noticed the same sensors glued to his body and knew what was going to happen next.
“Good,” came Evans’ honey-coated voice over an unseen intercom, “It looks like you’re awake. We can get started then. What we’re going to do is try to elicit an emotional response from you using certain clips from footage we’ve collected. Our hope is that this footage will persuade you to cooperate with us.”
As Evans spoke a screen rolled down in front of the Cog. From somewhere behind him he heard a hum of a projector starting up and video began streaming onto the screen. Maybe they didn’t know he could just shut off the projector if he chose. He wouldn’t, of course; that would mean losing their little game. He saw a space view of his crew’s ship. The camera began to pan in closer, and suddenly metallic slugs entered from the top of the screen. The slugs, fired from some sort of Mass Accelerator, collided hard with the aft of the ship.
Sparky watched the engines flare and explode, silent in the dead of space. The ship with the camera swung in closer to the dead boat, close enough for Sparky to see his Crewmates running to and fro on the bridge. Kalingkata was typing skillfully at his terminal with one hand, a rather bored expression on his face and a steaming cup of coffee in his free hand. Celeste was bringing guns to bear on their attackers. Doitzel was shouting orders and waving a sword at a screen projecting Jane’s chosen image, nearly cutting off Hotaru’s arm in the process.
Jane, the Ship’s AI and, for all intents and purposes, owner, was obviously dividing her attention between crafting a firing solution and arguing with Doitzel. Sparky knew that the latter was a lost cause, but they seemed to enjoy arguing anyway. Leave it to Doitzel to argue with Jane in the middle of a battle of which they were not on the winning side.
Another slug went hurtling forth, this time colliding with the bow of the Jane’s Ship. The camera zoomed in on Cabby being jettisoned into space, his cigarette going out as it ran out of oxygen. The attacking ship swiftly circled around and pulled alongside of Jane’s ship, avoiding Celeste’s volley of fire. Two more slugs pierced the hull of Sparky’s ship and suddenly fire began to blossom from various ports along the ship. The reactors had been hit! Escape Pods began to jettison from the underbelly of the doomed ship. The CISyn ship was prepared for this, too. Short-range Missiles were fired off to dispatch the small, unarmed lifeboats as they floated in space.
Suddenly half a dozen missiles went streaking for the hull of Jane’s ship. Sparky knew that those missiles wouldn’t do much damage to the ship’s hull, so why were they fired? Then the camera zoomed in and Sparky saw Aequitas standing on the hull, bellowing silently in space. He launched off from the ship, bat-like wings spread, bravely facing the missiles bearing down on him. The black Quay batted away the first projectile with his massive fist before the next five slammed into his body. Sparky held his breath as the explosion bloomed, not sure if that was enough to do in his friend. Just then a ball of black streaked towards the camera from the aftermath of the missiles. Aequitas had survived!
As he drifted through space on a collision course with the CISyn ship, Sparky noticed a massive gun strapped to his back as well as the Quay’s personal, oversized katana which he was in the process of unsheathing. Sparky found himself hopeful: If anyone could avenge those who had died, it was Aequitas! The brute could easily dispatch dozens, if not scores, of humans single-handedly. The Scoundrel’s hopes were unexpectedly dashed as he watched another Mass Accelerator Round enter the screen.
Quay were distinctly alien, their emotions unreadable on their faces. But Sparky had spent enough time with this particular alien that he recognized the look of surprise followed by realization on Aequitas’ face. As always, the Quay Kizen refused to give up and swung his oversized katana in a mighty arc, but lack of firm ground to stand on, coupled with the speed of the slug, rendered the effort useless. The slug collided with Aequitas with such force that it fractures his exoskeleton and turned him to pulp, which was then carried off in space by the slug.
Sparky was filled with rage. He screamed, his voice hoarse in seconds and his face burning as he strained against the restraints that bound him to the chair. The Maverick didn’t tap into his powers, even though he would have loved nothing better. He wasn’t prepared to lose this game, especially now that the stakes had been raised. Evans was apparently impressed by this, because his next choice of words seemed specifically designed to both compliment the Maverick scoundrel as well as crush his hopes.
“You are taking the deaths of your closest companions well. Rest assured those you saw die in the initial attack were the lucky ones. After assuring the weapons systems were dead, our operatives boarded the ship and permanently disabled the systems. The rest of your friends died a slow death of asphyxiation due to the oxygen recycler being offline. There was nothing they could do.”
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Tears once again welled up around those golden eyes and began streaming down his face. “I swear to you, Evans. The next time I use my power it will be to end you. YOU ARE TO BLAME FOR THIS!” He dropped his head and closed his eyes, tears falling into his lap. His body was shaking and it was all he could do not to release the rage in the form of a lightning storm. He envisioned it in mind. His body covered with an aura of arcing energy, sparks issuing from electric blue eyes, cracking bolts jumping the gap between his hands and Evans. He gritted his teeth and held himself together. This wasn’t the time.
A door opened to Sparky’s left and he forced himself not to look. Footsteps crossed the room, stopping in front of the Maverick. Sparky opened his eyes and saw shoes and a white lab coat over khaki slacks. He closed his eyes again, unwilling to give anyone the honor of his curiosity right now. Something flat and solid dropped into Sparky’s lap and the footsteps receded out the door.
Evans’ voice came over the intercom once more. “Kaelyn Yaney. Earther - German Descent. Female. 19 years old. Displays the ability to heal wounds on herself and others. Currently receiving disciplinary action after it was discovered that she initiated contact with another patient.”
Sparky opened his eyes again, and there on a clipboard was a picture of a young woman with curly brunette hair, wide green eyes, and freckled skin. This must have been the face that matched the voice that had woken him in the hospital wing. Now she was being punished on his behalf. The Cog looked back up to the screen and his heart sank. The image on the screen had changed. It now appeared to be an undated feed from a security camera showing Kaelyn strapped to a table, stark naked with dotted black lines drawn across her body in various places. Places that to imagine a scalpel flaying caused the Cog to wince. Her fair skin looked like a poster of a hog one would find in an old butcher shop.
The room, like every other in the place, was pure white. The table she was strapped to was a stainless steel operating table with no padding. Her arms, legs, and head were all strapped to the table with leather straps. A thin-faced man who appeared to be of South African descent was standing next to a stainless steel table on wheels. He had in his hand a scalpel, while the table held many more devices meant for cutting and severing. There was a pair of surgical scissors, what appeared to be a butcher’s cleaver, and various other tools. It looked to Sparky like they were about to do to her what they did to him.
The CISyn ‘doctor’ then made a long, deep slice across one of the dotted lines on her stomach and Kaelyn screamed and writhed on the table. Blood flowed, a bright red stain in the white room against pale skin. He took his time with the slice, making sure it was straight and deep.
“There is no need to scream. You and I both know that you will be fine.” the African said, his accent thick and rich. And sure enough the wound began closing as he spoke. Slowly the bleeding stopped and the wound knitted closed. “You should know better than to communicate with other patients. It’s strictly forbidden as it could greatly affect the mental state we work so hard to create and maintain.”
Over the course of the next few minutes the African doctor made several more scalpel slices over various parts of her body, humming to himself over the sound of Kaelyn’s screaming. When he seemed satisfied that he had cut on her enough with the scalpel he picked up the cleaver. He drew back and it seemed to Sparky that time slowed down. Kaelyn’s eyes widened and her mouth opened in a piercing scream that drowned out the sound of the doctor’s humming. Sparky could feel his heart slamming against his shattered rib cage as the cleaver dropped towards the woman’s arm. There was a thunk and a splash of blood that doused both the African and the German.
When the blood finally settled a heartbeat later, the Maverick saw that the swing had not been heavy enough to sever the bone. The young woman had passed out, her eyes streaming with tears from the pain. The doctor pulled the cleaver from her arm and for a brief moment the notched bone was visible. He wiped off the cleaver on his apron, then wiped the blood from his face and sat watching. It wasn’t long before the flow of blood slowed and finally stopped and the wound began knitting together again.
“Remarkable. Her body heals so quickly,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. He wiped his hands off on a pristine white towel, staining it crimson with his handprints. He then walked over to another stainless steel table, well out of the reach of the splatter, picked up a pen and started jotting down notes. When he had finished, he returned to the unconscious body strapped down to the table and picked up a needle from the stand holding his tools and injected it directly into her neck.
It must have been a shot of the same Adrenaline that Sparky himself had received, for the young woman’s eyes shot open nearly immediately. The slim African placed the needle back down on the table with the rest of his tools and looked at Kaelyn.
“Now, we have on record everything you said to the patient in the bed next to you, and all of our information on you tells us that you don’t know him. What we don’t know is why you risked your well-being to talk to a total stranger.”
To her credit, Kaelyn remained silent. She averted her eyes from the doctor-turned- interrogator, showing her defiance. The man smiled “Now Kaelyn, I know how you must feel. You wanted to make him hope, didn’t you? You wanted to give him something to cling to. Good for you! You’ve always been such a kind-hearted girl. But you should know that the reason we have you in here now is because he wasn’t who you thought he was. We had reason to believe you were communicating with our other patients, so we had an agent put in the bed next to you. The man you were trying to help never existed.”
Those dark green eyes widened in shock and at the same time Sparky saw something in them die. With that one simple lie he had crushed her hope and shown her that she was doomed here. The Cog could see it in her eyes; they had broken her.
Sparky’s body went numb. He let himself go limp and closed his eyes again. This was all because of him. Had he had the common decency to die on that table none of this would have happened. He heard the door open and felt an intangible weight descend over his body as he felt his connection with his Kizen fade away. They had suppressed him again. Sparky started laughing.
It was high and shrill and it didn’t stop, even when he felt strong hands clap down over his shoulders. The restraints were removed from his body and he was freed from the chair. Someone slid a bag down over his head and he was lifted from the chair like a sack of potatoes. He was still laughing as he felt himself tossed over Ivan’s shoulder before he was spun around several times to disorient him.
In this manner he was taken back to his cell, still giggling like a man gone mad, carried over Ivan’s shoulder so that he bounced as they walked. Every now and again at odd intervals the person carrying him would set him down and spin him around a few times so that he lost his sense of direction again. He could have tried to remember the turns they took and how many times they spun him, but that would have done him no good. He didn’t want back to the room they had just left. He knew there would be nothing there if he got there.
When they finally removed the bag from his head, he was back in a Cell and under suppression again. He finally stopped laughing and scowled to himself, images of the only person to have shown him genuine kindness in a long time lying naked and bloody on a table. He shook his head, sat down on the bed, picked up his ‘Sketch and began working. It was now he wished he had a magnify function built into his eyes, but not having one he made due with squinting at the ‘Sketch. He had gotten a lot of practice in during his time here, and now he used it. He began to write. In hardly visible cursive he ‘Sketched his manifesto. He included everything that had happened to him during his imprisonment and declared the Maverick way of life as being the most virtuous and ethical form of life. In the letter he called for the Mavericks to rally together to protect their way of life from those Earthers and Gongen who would take it away from them.
This is how he passed the time, struggling to keep his emotions in check. While he was writing, several meals had been delivered at random intervals, all of which went uneaten by the Cog sitting on his bed, staring intently at his Etch-A-Sketch in his lap. He had no idea how much time he spent writing furiously, but what he did know was that when he finally stopped his back was sore and hunched and his fingers were stiff and swollen. He estimated by the amount of food piled at his door he’d been at it for more than two days, but with the strange amount they fed him and the random intervals at which they fed him, he couldn’t tell. It could have been only a matter of hours. It was just about then that the lights in his room went dead.
He blinked a couple times, trying to get used to the dark, but the artificial rods and cones in his eyes were so strained that they were having trouble adjusting to anything that wasn’t cursive lettering a millimeter high. It was a lengthy stretch of time before he thought to engage his infrared vision. The lights still hadn’t come on. He began to wonder what brand of torture they were going to try next.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and a small voice whispered in his ear, a familiar voice. One that he shouldn’t be hearing again. A voice whose source he had seen die in Space.
“Stay calm and stay quiet. I managed to knock out video Surveillance in this block and kill the lights, but I wasn’t able to stop the sound recording system. Now follow me and we’ll get out of here. Do you still have your Infrared?”
“Celeste Roth, when we get out of here, I’m going to kiss you. Then you’re going to explain how you’re still alive,” he said under his breath. He turned around slowly and saw the red and yellow heat signature of Celeste move to the doorway. Then he saw the strangest thing he had seen in a long time. The Heat signature that represented Celeste blurred ever so slightly and her heat signature increased a tad bit as if her molecules themselves were separating. Then she walked right through the door.
The Maverick’s jaw dropped. He had known that he wasn’t the only Kizen on the crew, but he didn’t think there were so many! Celeste opened the door from the other side and beckoned to him. Sparky wasn’t about to let his surprise cause him any delay in his escape. He had been in here for what felt like years and he didn’t want to have to be there any longer than necessary for an effective escape. He grabbed his ‘Sketch off of his table and headed out the door after the heat signature of Celeste. He wondered how she was seeing at the moment, but thought it best to not ask.
So far there was no alarm going off or guards running around. They were safe for now. A few hundred meters down the hallway the lights were still on and Celeste was heading in that direction. Once he was about a hundred meters away from his cell Sparky felt his Kizen power welling up from their suppression. He smiled and reached out to touch Celeste’s shoulder and she slowed to a halt. The Maverick touched the wall of the hallway and concentrated. His eyes began to glow an electric blue and he lost his sight, his mind overwhelmed with the sudden visualization of the power that was flowing just beyond his fingertips. He began creating a mental map of the area, his knowledge of computers and other tech telling him what patterns stood for terminals and what stood for doors. He found the closest terminal to their current location and let go of the wall, cancelling his concentration and letting his sight return.
He pointed down the hall and took off, his bare feet padding lightly over the cold tile floor. He made sure not to shake his right arm at all, so as not to erase his hard work. When he reached the line of light he reached out and touched the wall again and with the briefest moment of concentration the power in the hallway went out.
“We’re looking for a terminal. I’ve killed the power to lights and all the surveillance in our path. They’ll notice if they’re watching, but it shouldn’t set off any alarms,” he said over his shoulder. He could see Celeste running behind him, the heat signature of her favorite gun visible in her hand, just in case.
“Why do we need a terminal? I know how to get out and I have a shuttle waiting,” Celeste said, her thick accent a comfort to Sparky’s ears. He hadn’t had friendly contact in so long he was wondering how he managed to make it.
“They took my Headphones, Celeste,” he said simply. “And there’s a couple people I need to check on.”
She shook her head. The female Maverick knew from experience that Sparky generally did as he wanted and that there was no force in the system that could stop him from doing something he had set his mind to. Hell, that’s exactly how he had landed himself in this place.
They came to a terminal and Sparky nearly skidded to a halt in the dark corridor. He began typing furiously at the keyboard, muttering constantly under his breath. “Some heavily encrypted... Not even close to being clever enough... So that’s where they’re holding her... that Rat Bastard!”
Sparky grinned and in the light of the monitor it looked to Celeste like the grin of a madman. He giggled slightly as he added the final touches to the logic bomb he had been writing as the information he needed downloaded. The second he had what he was looking for, he compiled the program and sent it to the central server.
“There, that should keep them busy for a while. I’ve dropped a logic bomb into their main server and had it spin off a subroutine to the security system to start looping footage. The logic bomb will wipe their servers as soon as they try to access any data concerning me. Sure, they’ve probably got it backed up somewhere, but it’ll be fun to mess with them. Anyway, so long as we stay quiet enough that the computers can’t pick up our sound, we can walk out of here in broad daylight,” he explained. “Now if you would be so kind as to follow me and we’ll make the stops I need to make.”
It took all of three minutes for Sparky to get up three floors to the storage room where they stored all of the patient’s belongings. Sparky dug through the boxes and managed to find his headphones. Searching through the boxes he also compiled an outfit to wear on the way out. He stepped out of the impound room in a pair of black pinstripe pants, black and white wingtip shoes, an emerald green button-up shirt with gold pinstripes and ruby cufflinks, and a black overcoat.
Celeste stared at him. “Umm... Sparky? Do you think that’s appropriate?”
“You’re right... I need a tie!” he exclaimed before darting back into the room.
“That’s not what I...” Celeste started, but he was already gone.
He returned with a Christmas red tie emblazoned with a bronze cog. “It’s perfect!” he said “What do you think Celeste?” he asked as he touched his headphones once more, reassuring himself they were still there.
“I meant, do you think it’s appropriate to stop and dress up in the middle of an escape from a CISyn facility?”
“But Celeste!” he whined, “I’ve been dressed in rags since I got here!” He pointed to the pile of clothes he had been wearing. The plain white scrubs with the CISyn logo emblazoned on them lay discarded on the floor of the storage room.
The Cartel agent sighed heavily and looked down the hallway. “Haven’t you noticed that there aren’t any guards here?” she asked. “I thought they would at least have patrols.”
She was on edge, the Cog noted. “About that. I may or may not have dropped a hint about an intruder down on C level. They’re busy chasing a ghost. Besides that, they take every precaution to ensure that inmates don’t leave the room without an escort.”
Sparky glanced both ways and turned on some good escape music on his headphones, then looked at Celeste and gave her a thumbs up. He then took off down the hall. They managed to avoid finding any security guards on their way to their next destination and as Sparky stopped in front of a cell door. He then made sure to straighten his tie and smooth his suit before knocking.
A small voice spoke up from inside, sounding weak and broken, but still sarcastic “You know I’m in here. Why would you bother knocking?”
“Well, I figured I was going to be polite. Make sure you were decent before barging in on you.”
Sparky glanced at the electronic lock, touched it, and then opened the door after hearing the audible click from the lock. The young brunette inside looked up and she took in Sparky’s smug countenance. Her eyes were red and puffy as if she had been crying, but that didn’t stop a smile broke out over her face. She leaped up from the center of the floor where she had been huddled, hugging her knees. She ran the whole five steps to the well-dressed scoundrel and hugged him as tight as she could.
“They told me you were their agent!” she cried, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Hey hey hey! You’re going to wrinkle my suit! It’s Italian Silk, or something fancy like that,” he said, pulling her away and holding her at arm's length. “Anyway, they told me all my crewmates were dead - Hell, I got to watch the video of them all dying, but right here is Celeste Roth and she’s most definitely not dead...” He trailed off as a look of curiosity crossed his face as he glanced over at his crewmate.
“Actually, strike that. I’m not entirely sure about that last statement. I’ll cut her open after we get out of here just to make sure.”
Kaelyn looked horrified and Celeste took a step back, making a point to put her gun between herself and Sparky, though she didn’t raise it. “You’ll do no such thing, Sparky,” Celeste said firmly.
“Celeste, I just watched you walk through a solid wall. Either you’re actually dead, or you’re a freak of nature!”
“And where do you get off calling me a freak of nature? Did they jar your brain putting your eyes in? Or has all the voltage finally gotten to you, you freaking human power plant?”
“All humans generate an electrical field, mine is just a little stronger than most,” he said offhandedly. “Anyway, we can sort this out later. Celeste, I need you to take Kaelyn back to your shuttle. There’s something I need to take care of. Let me know if anything goes wrong - you’ve got my number.” He tapped the tip of the spike extruding from the center of his left headphone and grinned.
Kaelyn clung to his arm. “I’m going with you,” she said looking up at him, her green eyes full of tears.
“Sorry, but I can’t let you see what I have to do.”
Celeste got a distant look in her eye and she spun, holding up her gun. Sparky hadn’t heard anything, but he had learned to trust Celeste’s instincts. Just as she raised her gun, two guards walked around the corner. In the brief moment it took the guards to register that someone had a gun pointed at them, Celeste shot one in the throat and Sparky took advantage of the other’s distraction to charge down the hall at him.
He was only ten meters away, and Sparky covered the distance like a shot. By the time he got there, his eyes were glowing blue and his hands were sheathed in crackling energy. He snatched at the guard’s radio and heard a popping sound as the circuits overloaded. He then shoved the guard in the back and he stumbled towards Celeste and Kaelyn.
Quick as a flash Kaelyn kicked at a tray of scalpels, sending them flying into the air. She snatched two before they had a chance to fall and darted forward the remaining five meters between the guard and herself. Sparky barely saw the elegant movement that left blood splattered against the walls in long, thin sprays. The guard clutched at his throat, gurgled, and fell to the floor. Blood quickly began pooling beneath him as it drained from the deep cuts in his neck.
Sparky’s jaw dropped “What the hell?! Where did you learn how to fight like that?”
Kaelyn looked sidelong as the scalpels that she had started idly twirling in her fingers. Embarrassment was written all over her pretty face. The Cog noticed that neither scalpel had blood on it, she had moved that fast. “I never really learned to fight. I was a surgical intern going through med school. I just know the human anatomy and where to cut.”
“Regardless, remind me to Never get on your bad side. I don’t think I’d live to regret it. Anyway, I don’t think I need to say that you should be careful of guards on the way back. Celeste, you have the number to my headphones, just remember to scramble the signal.” He took off down the hallway, coattails billowing.
He found a staircase and went up a couple stories. As he reached the level he needed, he quickly slammed himself against the wall behind the door. Two guards stepped in, talking casually. Sparky slipped through the door behind them so that they wouldn’t hear it open again. He managed to find a weapons locker, where he grabbed two lengths of thin chain and a few combat knives. In a couple of minutes, he had two knife blades attached to one end of both chains, and a vibro dagger tucked into his jacket.
On his way back down, his music faded out and was replaced by Celeste’s whispering voice. “Sparky, we’ve got trouble. They found the killed power and are patrolling the area.”
“Shit, how big of an area did you black out?”
“It was the entire wing; I wanted to give us freedom of movement.”
“Dammit Celeste, there were probably guards and doctors in that area when you blacked it out. They probably know I’m gone. On the bright side, they probably think it was only me. You should be able to get out without drawing too much attention to yourself. Get back up to the floor where we found Kaelyn and get a disguise. You can convince them you’re moving a patient. Let me know if you have trouble.
“Hmm. A disguise might not be a bad idea. But they already know I’m out. It’s worth a shot, it might keep them from spotting me at a distance,” the Maverick concludes, voicing his thoughts to himself.
He then dropped back down two floors and made his way down the hall. He peeked out the door and when he saw that the coast was clear he slipped across the hall to a closet marked “Coats”. It looked like this was where the doctors swapped out their outside coats with their lab coats. He sifted through lab coats until he found a last name that he liked embroidered above the left pocket. He pulled it on over his suit and pinned the ID badge that had “SCHULTZ” in bold print to match the embroidery. Fortunately the days of having pictures on ID badges long ago gave way to the days of retina scans. Far more reliable for the average person, but to a skilled Engineer like Sparky, it was something to sneeze at.
Sparky stepped back into the hall and turned to his left. There were doctors bustling around, but Sparky had an ID badge and no one gave him a second glance. He had hidden the lengths of chain in either coat sleeve and walked with a purpose. It was a little trick he had picked up. If you act like you belong, then no one notices you. When he reached the office marked “G. Evans,” he took a deep breath and touched the wall next to the door.
He concentrated on the flow of power through the room, and when he had blocked all of the power to the security systems in the room, he opened the door. Evans was facing away from the door when it opened and Sparky had enough time to shut the door before Evans turned around. When he finally did, he looked up, dropped his clipboard, and stepped back in terror.
A wide grin full of pure malice spread across Sparky’s face. Madness filled his eyes and a wild laugh began to well up from deep inside. The laugh was dark but giddy and permeated his words giving them a horrifying undertone. “Good day, Mr. Evans. Heheheheh... It’s good to see you again.”
“Raizen! How did you...?” Evans choked, the look of hate and insanity that his patient was displaying brought him up short. It was hard to have imagined such a well-dressed man could twist his face into the horrifying display that he witnessed now. Evans had seen men crack before, but this was something new.
“That’s not really important. What is important at the moment is that I have two promises to keep.” This time Sparky spoke, despite the grin and the expression on his face, it was in a cold, level voice that drew chills up Evans’ spine. One swift flick of his left wrist sent a blade attached to a chain across the two-and-a-half meter gulf between Evans and Sparky. The doctor tried to move, but was too slow; the blade embedded itself in his right shoulder, just under the collarbone outside the ribs.
Evans screamed and grabbed his shoulder, but the Mad Cog wasn’t worried about the sound. He knew all of the offices were sound proof. He had found that out while looking up the floor plans. Sparky flicked his right wrist and the next blade stuck in Evans’ left thigh, a good fifteen centimeters below his hip.
Sparky held the ends of the chains and smiled, “You are of course aware that I can generate enough voltage to kill you instantly, but that isn’t good enough for me. I promised to kill you slowly. And you’ll be grateful to know that I’ve only used my power to get here thus far, which is well within the boundaries of my promise, because getting here was for the express purpose of ending you.”
With that, Sparky tapped into his reserves of power and an electrical current built up in his hands. The charge forged its way along the chains and into Evans, who screamed and writhed. The scent of burning flesh began to fill the room as the meat surrounding the spikes began to cook. Evans collapsed to the floor and grabbed the chain in his thigh. He pulled it out, his hands blackening with the current.
In response, Sparky killed the current from his hands and flicked his wrist again to bring the blade back to his hand. Evans whimpered pitifully on the ground, pulling at the blade in his shoulder. The Cog started laughing again and threw the free blade across the room once more, embedding it in Evan’s right foot. Another wave of voltage passed through the chains and into Evans, and he began to convulse. He collapsed to the ground; his spasming muscles unable to support him.
“S-stop! M-mercy!” Evans begged through gritted teeth. Blood was seeping from his mouth where he had bitten his tongue and cheeks in his spasms. The blood that had come from the wounds was seared and closed off the arteries and blood vessels, so those they didn’t bleed.
“Why would I give you mercy? You nearly killed me, and forced me to feel all of it. You made me watch the death of my crew and the torture of the one person who tried to get me through this hell that you gorram Earther swine have put me through!” The Maverick had lost all reason. “No. You will suffer just as I have.”
The glow of the electricity arcing down the chain illuminated the room with an eerie blue glow. After a couple seconds the glow faded and the crackle of electricity died away. The only sound left was the sound of Evan’s screaming and whimpering. Even this was muted to Sparky, for he had simply adjusted the volume of the New Neo Classical music playing on his headphones.
Forty-five minutes later Sparky slipped out of Evan’s office and shut the door tightly behind him. Eventually someone would find his remains and the twin chains still stuck in his body. They’d figure it out eventually, he hoped, and take it as a warning against capturing him again. He got off the floor as quickly as he was able, stripped off his disguise, and made his way to the docking bay. He ran into several security guards, but was able to duck out of their way before they noticed him.
When he finally arrived at the shuttle and the bay door cycled shut behind him, he collapsed into a seat, head tilted back against the rest, body splayed in the chair. He was tense and could feel the edges of his breakdown tugging at him still. “Get us the hell out of here, Celeste,” he said over his radio. “I’m sick of this Bowie-damned place.”
Sparky closed his eyes and felt the shuttle shake as it undocked from the station. Celeste’s voice came over the intercom on the shuttle. “We’ll be back on Gongen in Seventeen hours. We’re pretty deep in space.”
Sparky felt a weight settle next to him and a hand touch his left forearm. He didn’t so much as stir, but he felt the fever pitch of emotions suddenly calm. “Are you okay?” asked Kaelyn’s quiet voice from near his shoulder. He nodded at the ceiling.
“Celeste, how long have I been in there?” he asked as he heard a second set of footsteps enter the cabin. These were lighter than Kaelyn’s, more adept at moving quietly. Celeste stood just inside the doorway to the cabin.
“Roughly four months. You’re actually due to be released tomorrow from the Gongen prison. I asked about you about a month ago, because we were supposed to be incarcerated in the same prison. They told me you were never processed. I felt so bad about helping Jade and Dexter get away that I decided to break out and come find you. I had to chase down nearly every contact in the Cartel that I have, called in a couple favors to get here, and had to get away without Doitzel noticing, but you’re safe now.” He heard a small thump as Celeste leaned heavily against the whitewashed wall of the shuttle.
Sparky nodded. “I owe you big, Celeste. You ever need anything, you let me know. I’ll pay you back for every favor you called in to get me out of that gorram place.” He placed his right hand over Kaelyn’s and squeezed reassuringly.
He felt Kaelyn shift slightly as she nodded in agreement. “I owe you too. I’m sure I can be useful, I was working my way through med school when they found out I was a Kizen.”
“We’ll call it every favor minus one. I helped you out so that I could make up for being on the wrong side during that cluster-fuck of a witch hunt.”
Sparky stood up, stretched, and opened his eyes. “I’m going to lie down. Wake me up when we get back to the prison. I suppose I should serve my time there.” He slowly walked back to the aft of the shuttle and fell onto a cot, passing out in his clothes as soon as his head hit the pillow. He was exhausted from the emotional strain that went into his confrontation with Evans, and his body demanded rest to recharge the pool of energy that fueled his Kizen.
Twelve hours later, a gentle touch to the shoulder brought Sparky up out of a nightmare. As he bolted upright he produced a dagger from somewhere so quickly it was a blur. He saw Kaelyn sitting on the side of the bed calmly, even as he pulled the dagger away from her throat and returned it to its hidden sheath. “Sorry,” he said simply, and the look in her eye told him she understood.
“We’ve just landed outside the prison.” Her face was unreadable. He had never been very good at reading people, but he could usually get some vague sense of how they felt. As he looked at her, he couldn’t get anything from her; she was a blank slate to him. He did notice she had changed from her CISyn scrubs into an emerald green dress that matched his shirt. There was a golden sash wrapped around her waist. Sparky had to appreciate her sense of style.
Sparky walked over to a computer and started typing. His fingers moved with the speed that only years of honing one’s skills could explain. Occasionally he would brush a hand through his hair and he felt Kaelyn’s eyes on his back. When he finished typing, he pulled a small disk from the drive and turned around to lean casually against the terminal.
“Okay, so I’ve opened an account for you and dropped enough credits into it to get you to Maverick Space. You’ll have to make your own way after you get there, but I’ve compiled a list of people who you can talk to. They’ll give you work if you need it and help you get situated. You’ll have to lay low for a while. CISyn will probably be after you, but I’ll find you as soon as I can.”
Kaelyn’s face fell, “Why can’t I go with you?” she asked softly. “I told you I can make myself useful. I don’t want to be alone!” Tears were welling up in her eyes. Her face was tight from holding onto a mask that was slipping with every word of farewell he spoke.
“I promise you I’ll be safe. My crew will take good care of me. But we get in a lot of trouble and I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself if I dragged you into it. There are more than a few members of my crew that I wish would find somewhere safe to be, but that can’t be helped. They were there long before I was.”
Kaelyn sniffed and tried to look strong. “I can take care of myself. I want to go with you!” The Earther clenched her fists and fixed a stern gaze upon her savior, but it cracked and she averted her gaze so he wouldn’t see the tears falling. “I-I don’t want you to go...”
Sparky scratched the back of his head awkwardly and pressed the data disk into her hand, closing it shut. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small round gear that he had been saving for this moment. “Here. I busted this out of an old clock that belonged to my doctor. I wanted to give you something to remember me by, and a Cog was the only thing I could think of to remind you of a Cog.”
Kaelyn sniffed and looked down at the gear. It was roughly eight centimeters from outer edge to outer edge and looked just like the larger cog on his tie. She smiled and hugged the blonde Maverick around the middle. “How could I forget you? You saved my life.” She smiled up at him and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I’ll see you again someday!”
Sparky followed her as she bounded out of the shuttle. He stopped at the top of the exit ramp in the doorway and watched her waving down a cab. When she had the attention of one, she turned and waved, her brunette hair falling about her shoulders in waves. The green sundress she wore contrasted sharply with her hair in the sunlight.
Celeste walked up behind Sparky, being careful to make enough noise that he heard her approach. He glanced back and saw her, hands on her hips, watching the Earther climb into a cab and wave.
“How did you meet her?” she asked the Cog in a solemn voice.
“She saved my life. Gave me hope,” he said with a smile. He looked up at the afternoon sun and held his silence for a moment before speaking again. “Anyway, I think it’s about time to serve our time. They’ll probably be glad we turned ourselves in and go easy on us.”
Celeste laughed and smacked the Cog on the shoulder “Were it so easy!” she said good naturedly. They stepped out of the shuttle together and walked towards the prison. Just as they got to the road, another cab pulled up and honked at them. The window rolled down and Oiji stuck his head out. The old Gongen smiled as smoke rolled out of his window.
“Sparky! Celeste! It is good to see you! How was prison?” He asked in his thick Chinese accent, puffing on his cigarette. Sparky would never figure out how he managed to smoke and talk at the same time.
“Cabby!” Sparky shouted and waved his arms, the ruby cufflinks catching the sunlight and sparkling. He looked at Celeste and shrugged.
“What the hell,” he said, “I’ll hack their systems later and make it look like we both served our full time.”
Celeste shook her head and they both crawled in the back seat of the cab. It was obvious they had a long drive based on the amount of smoke that rolled out of the back doors when they opened them. Celeste began to cough as soon as she shut the doors because Oiji rolled up his window.
“Cabby, have you ever considered smoking with the windows down?” she asked as his cigarette began to once again fill the roof of the cab with a haze.
The elderly Gongen turned around, his kindly, wrinkled face smiling and his crow's feet furrowing deeply. “Why would I waste smoke in such a way, Celeste?” he asked, clearly not understanding her question.
“It’s really good to be back,” Sparky said contentedly as he looked out the window.