Sierra The Cyborg Doesn’t Want To Kill Anybody

By SEAN D GREGORY

“Sierra?”

The instructor drew her attention back to the circle. His condescension grated her.

“Would you care to join us? Centering our minds and bodies is critical to engaging the flow of creative action.”

She struggled to hide her disdain for these exercises. They were just another reason she hated this place. The gathered collection of peers and their incessant need to please seemed thirsty. Once again, Sierra searched the faces around her for just one sign she wasn’t alone. As usual, she found herself isolated. Even Gunner toed the line.

Each was too eager to demonstrate their obedience.

The test administrator, a frail man, commanded them with unwavering authority. Sierra obeyed, in appearance but not in spirit. The vile man couldn’t control her feelings. As far as she knew, she still owned those, even if everything else was no longer hers. Inside it was her world—and she had mastered it. Even if the jerk in the middle of the room didn’t realize it.

He could wax philosophical all he wanted, the exercise was still a waste of time. she preferred action rather over silly group activities. She found it odd the others didn’t feel as she did. After all they each carried the cybernetic implants.

To a person the each were granted access to the same energy, strength, agility, and speed. They could tackle this silly obstacle course without these stupid “feel-good” sessions. If it was a waste of time to her, it had to be for them as well. Especially since she was the smallest, least athletic, of the group. If she had access to all the resources required to accomplish the task, so did they.

And she didn’t need to be “centered” to do it.

Her conclusion then: they complied it out of the desire to be favored. She couldn’t care less about being the favorite.

She just wanted freedom.

The instructor stared at her expectantly, waiting for her to follow his commands. She rolled her eyes and pretended to play along. She took deep, slow breaths and pretended to stretch muscles the microchip in her brain already signaled to stretch before she’d donned her stupid black uniform.

She hated this uniform. The tight-fitting, all-black outfit made them look like villains. Sinister thoughts to her purpose were exacerbated by their appearance. Whatever their purpose, she wanted nothing to do with it anymore. She just wanted to go home to her mother, father, and brother. She wanted to snuggle with her dog on the floor. She wanted to watch silly shows.

Instead she was here. The life she remembered was long gone.

Seven years of experimentation, surgeries, and painful recoveries that granted her the ability to walk again, were complete. She was whole once more. Better than whole. Sierra could just walk again, her athleticism, strength, and speed had increased. But there was a price to pay for the abilities.

She was tired of paying it.

“Miss Burch?” the instructor’s voice rang out again. She realized she’d drifted into memories again.

The instructor indicated for her to follow along with the program. She rolled her eyes and mimicked his movements. The group bent forward, legs straight, and placed their hands flat on the floor directly in front of their feet. The act required no effort. With all their enhancements the group was nearly superhuman.

Sierra was always simultaneously limber and coiled for action. Her muscles could contract and release in an instant, all controlled by the chip in her head. Simple electrical impulses controlled her servo-enhanced muslces with lightning speed.

Did the powers that be really not understand what a waste of time these routines were?

“Good everyone. Now, hold that position. Feel the stretch in the hamstrings and calves. As you exhale, relax into the stretch.”

She fought back a groan. There was no stretch. If her muscles were any looser, they’d be Jello.

She pushed the thought of Jello out of her mind. It made her think of her baby brother. He loved Jello. He was three the last time she saw him. She closed her eyes to push back the memory, but not before wondering if he still liked Jello.

She felt the air pressure shift. Small receptors in her skin picked up subtle changes. Opening her eyes, she noticed the shadow. The instructor placed a hand on the small of her back. His touch made her angry. Her skin crawled every time he put his hands on her. If she were a violent person she’d snap his fingers. She resisted a shudder as his hand slid up her spine to her shoulders. She could imagine the smug look on his face.

“Very good, Sierra,” he whispered. “No tension anywhere.”

She fought back the urge to rip his heart out. He stood and moved around the room, doing the same to the others in the circle. Finally, he clapped his hands.

“Alright, from that position, take a deep breath in, and raise yourselves slowly. Backs straight, arms out to your sides and let out a slow breath. Time it so your motion and breath end simultaneously. Bring your hands to rest at your thighs.”

Sierra glanced around the room. Everyone had their eyes closed feigning deep meditation. She almost rolled her eyes again, but her gaze locked with the instructor who stared at her with pursed lips. She fought a defiant sigh and let her eyes roam the sterile gymnasium.

Stark white walls devoid of decor resembled anything accept a gym. If not for the six-story obstacle course and a bank of floor-to-ceiling mirrors reflecting the members of the little group opposite her, it appeared to be a lab. She suspected the mirrors were two-way. But the cameras in each corner of the gym made that seem redundant.

The confidence course ran the perimeter of the large room and surrounded the circle of warriors. The gym felt more like a prison. They repeatedly reassured her it wasn’t, but she was the only one that wasn’t a volunteer. For her this place was a prison.

The only way out of the gym was through a door on the sixth level of the course. She looked back at the elevator that was the only entrance and wished she could just walk over to it, take the damn thing down to the lobby, and leave. But the elevator was key-card controlled and only the instructor’s key-card was allowed in the gym.

She traced her path from the exit to her planned entrance onto the course. She knew she’d calculated the fastest route for her. After several trial runs over the last couple of weeks she had all the data she needed to run an analysis. Her’s would be the fastest time today.

All she wanted was to get the stupid test over with so she could go back to her activity before they called for this surprise test. She looked up to the rocket booster shaped domes housing the LED lights overhead. Their bright white photons added to the sterility of the gymnasium. Her pupils rapid-dilated to the brightness of direct eye contact with the source and she could make out the individual LEDs. Vision improvements were her favorite part of the cybernetic implants. She loved to experiment with the various options the hardware provided.

“Okay everyone,” the instructor said. Her eyes immediately dilated back to accommodate the change as she glared at her tormentor.

“Who’s first?”

She didn’t hesitate. Synaptic pulses fired within her neural chips. Commands to her hamstrings and calves propelled the micro-actuators implanted within her muscle fibers. In rapid succession, her fast twitch muscle fibers contracted and released. Within milliseconds she’d sprinted to the far corner where the fast rope hung. Hand over hand, she climbed the thirty-foot rope to the fourth level of the course. In less than five seconds she’d eliminated a third of the obstacles.

She swung from the top of the rope, grabbed the edge of the fourth-floor platform with her left hand and effortlessly pulled her legs upward, bending at the waist as she did. With fluid grace, she slid herself onto the fourth floor catwalk, under the bottom rail.

Without pausing, she sprinted. Her internal clock read eleven point three seconds. She was ahead of schedule. She pumped her fist once in triumph, her feet beating a high paced rhythm on the metal catwalk. Her legs moved faster than she ever thought possible. A surge of endorphins filled her with glee.

They told her she’d never walk again after the accident. They told her she’d need help for simple everyday tasks. They said it was forever.

But Dr. Washington worked miracles. Seven years, over one-hundred surgeries, and countless hours of testing, her body was better than before. Tiny electrical miracles, that she controlled. She could feel the re-established neural connections within her muscles. She could pinpoint specific fibers to drive her legs and arms in a way she never could on her own.

Ahead, a brick wall blocked her way, the narrow gap between the bottom and the catwalk her only passage. Without slowing, she performed a baseball slide, the stabilizers in her spine keeping her vertebra in perfect alignment. She felt the actuators make adjustments as she twisted her body, pushed herself to a standing position and continued on her path.

To her right stood her next target—the long helicopter skid one floor up and across the room. She lept onto the hand-rail, mid-stride, powered her legs, jumped the twenty-five-foot gap in a high arc. Processing the trajectory, velocity, and rate of decay due to acceleration, she calculated the appropriate force required from her legs and core. Sierra pushed the edge of her abilities, even enhanced. If she missed, the four story fall would be devastating, the damage irreparable. But she never hesitated. She didn’t care.

A collective gasp echoed below as she her five-foot two-inch frame double pumping her legs and she stretched out like a flying squirrel, arms extended, hands reaching for the metal skid.

“Sierra! No!” came the panicked cry from the test administrator, fifty feet below.

She caught the skid with both hands and allowed the momentum to carry her upward. She folded herself through the two-foot gap between the skid and the deck above. Cheers and applause erupted from her classmates. She didn’t pause to take it in. She grasped the first rung of the fifth floor handrail, and climbed over. With a leap across the catwalk, she planted a foot on the gymnasium wall, pressed hard, and propelled herself upward, spinning to take hold of the six floor walkway ledge.

Four seconds later, the only obstacle left was the exit door that led into the dormitory hallway. It took her twenty-six seconds to negotiate the course by the time her hand touched the door. She stood at the top exit, looked down, a smirk on her face. The others stared at her in shock. She’d just shattered Gunner’s record of forty-nine seconds. He smiled at her; his pride evident in his big toothy grin. Keeping his hand low, unnoticed by those monitoring the test, he gave a thumbs up.

She resisted the twinge of sadness she stared at his face. They’d been friends a long time. Since before her accident. His long blond hair cascaded over his shoulders, curly and wild. She always thought he looked like a surfer. She fought back the emotion that threatened her resolve.

Gunner was happy here, happy to become one of the elites, to do his part for those that governed. He believed his sacrifice noble. But he’d had a choice. She didn’t. She was here out of survival, the alternative much worse. She was the experiment that made the others possible. She fought back the tears, held her head high, and without any further hesitation walked out of gym, knowing she’d never see Gunner again.

____________________________________

The call for “Lights out” by the dorm steward rang out over an hour ago. She’d pretended to sleep waiting for Network to pick up on the fact she was faked rest. But no alarm sounded. No guards came in like the first time, over two years ago. Tonight was indeed the night.

Network hadn’t detected the small code she’d created in secret and uploaded behind the firewall. Successfully hacking her own neural implant had taken months. The first three attempts were epic failures and she’d been punished for the effort. She knew she was under constant surveillance as result, but Gunner helped her with that tonight.

Melancholy threatened her with mornful thoughts of Gunner. She hoped he wouldn’t get in trouble. He’d always been her best friend and she hated that he might suffer over her.

But he insisted. And together they’d succeeded. Network thought she slept. The guards thought she slept.

This time, escape was possible.

She studied the air vent above her bed. They never expected her to sneak out that way. She’d saved that plan for a day when she knew she’d be successful, choosing instead to press other areas of facility weakness. Staying out of the air-vents on previous attempts had ensured the path was not closed to her when time for the real escape came. She’d made so many alternative attempts over a three month period.

The last six months she’d just behaved like a resigned, insolent, teen. They’d eventually decided she was no longer a flight risk and believed she’d finally gotten used to the idea that she’d be pressed into service soon. But each of those attempts had been distractions; decoys that garnered information she needed. And Network had been none the wiser.

If they had suspected, they wouldn’t have stopped monitoring her synapse core. But a month ago, they had. And she’d waited still. Lulling them all into thinking she’d finally settled down, suspecting a trap.

Looking up at the vent, she knew she’d fooled them all. She was the only unit that could fit through the hole. They should have made sure to cut the path off somehow. It was the perfect size for her.

She smiled at the thought. Everyone underestimated her advantage over the others. They were much taller than her, most by a foot or more, and had at least twenty to thirty pounds over her. They thought she was small and needed protecting. They thought her incapable.

She proved them wrong on that obstacle course. At dinner they’d said that Gunner had only managed to shave off three seconds from his previous best time. Her size gave her something no one else had. She could fit through tight spaces like handrails and small gaps that blocked others.

She could fit inside the facility’s ductwork.

She scanned her room one more time, looking for anything that sent a signal out. The small detectors in her ears open, scanning the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Satisfied that there no hidden surveillance was active within her small studio apartment, she opened the vent. Taking one last look around her room, she cataloged a few good memories. Her artwork scattered atop her desk, dust from charcoal embedded deep in the wood grains from years of use, beckoned her. The black dust and rough paper gave her solace in the lonely times.

On the other side of the room, the soft reading chair in the corner next to the small shelf filled with her favorite books looked oddly foreign to her. As if she was seeing it for the first time. This had been her room for so long she couldn’t remember anything else with any real clarity. But it had never felt like anything more than a disguised prison. Shaking her head, she pulled herself into the vent.

She crawled with her hands and feet spread to the corners of the sturdy metal tunnel, where the structure was strongest. Taking every precaution not to cause the buckling pops and snaps that she was sure her presence would create in the thin sheet metal, she moved quickly and quietly. Fifty feet ahead she saw her destination and was grateful to see that the plans of the HVAC system she’d copied were accurate. The ductwork transitioned to a narrower round tube. Just wide enough for her. she moved faster now, worries over the buckling of metal less of a concern due to the structural change.

Five minutes later she reached her exit. She paused and listened for any sounds below. She heard nothing other than the soft sound of air passing through the vent in front of her. Switching her optical sensors to pulse-radar scanning, a trick she’d learned by trial and error, she started forming the image of the hallway outside the duct. She avoided the thermal imaging capabilities of her cybernetic eyes having discovered it didn’t see through walls. Only the pulse-radar did.

Practicing with the technology had been fun. She’d mastered it and could read the differences in the small clouds of color with minimal effort. A three-dimensional grid of the hallway below appeared in her HUD. There were no blobs of color indicating an object or person within the hall.

She switched off the pulse radar and popped the grate open, screw heads ripping through the thin metal of the vent diffuser. The bang was louder than she anticipated, echoing in the metal tube behind her. Seized by panic, she sat quietly, waiting for the appearance of the guards she was certain were alerted. Fearful, she considered heading back to her apartment. Maybe they’d never know it was her. But she knew if she didn’t continue, she might never try again.

Taking hold of her fear, desperate to escape, she listened for sounds of alarm or boots stomping their sinister echo in the hallway. She waited for Network to suddenly become aware of her, probing her for location and status.

None of it happened. After several deep breaths to calm her nerves, she moved again. Holding the grate in her right hand and dangling it out the vent exit, she twisted herself around and slid out of the ductwork. Dropping to the floor, she timed the contraction of her muscles, softening the landing, making less noise than a cat when her feet made contact with the tile surface. Diffuser in hand, she hurried to the exit door ahead.

She accessed the building plans in her memory chip and found the hallway on the third-floor map. Fighting back the simultaneous feelings of fear and excitement, she realized that she’d accurately planned the route and was one door away from the outside. She closed her eyes a moment, hoping Gunner had succeeded in the last part of his plan. If he didn’t, an alarm would set off the moment she opened the door.

She checked her internal clock again and found she was more than twenty seconds ahead of schedule. Too early to open the door, she watched the hall, feeling exposed in the open of the sterile white hallway. Down the hall, a lone camera seemed focused on her. Another wave of panic came and she suppressed it. Gunner had it under control. He was supposed to disable that one too. The attempt must have succeeded since no one had come yet and no alarm sounded.

Again, she thought of the handsome man Gunner had become, her feelings for him far more intense than she’d allowed herself to admit. What had started as a friendship, having grown up together in their tiny Spring Hill neighborhood, had blossomed over their time together in Network’s facility. They’d been friends since they first met in elementary school, a friendship that received a welcome boost when he’d suddenly shown up as a volunteer to the new program that resulted from the experiments that Dr. Washington had performed on her.

Now in their late teens, she saw him as more than a friend, though she was sure he didn’t return the sentiment. Tears started to form in her eyes, but she pushed them back. She was going to miss him terribly. But she couldn’t stay. She couldn’t allow herself to be forced into service for a cause she didn’t believe in. Her’s wasn’t a sacrifice. She’d been a test subject.

Of course she was grateful for the second chance that Dr. Washington had provided, bringing her back from the accident that paralyzed her and caused serious cognitive disruption. But that was as far as her loyalty went. Gratitude. She was no one’s weapon of oppression.

The internal timer read three seconds. She watched as the timer reached zero, counted and additional three for a buffer, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

No alarm went off. A sigh of relief escaped her lips before she could stop it. She quietly stepped through the door and onto the landing outside, closing the door quickly.

Gunner could only give her ten seconds. Any more than that risked discovery by Network or by a random guard accessing a door in some other part of the facility that should sound an alarm but wouldn’t with Gunner’s interference active.

“Thank you, Gunner,” she whispered to herself, sadness washing over her once more. She wished they could talk one last time. They dare not risk communicating through Network. Too many ways that signal could be intercepted.

She scanned the area, switching to thermal imaging, expecting to see a rush of guards heading her way across the concrete tarmac below. But the rectangle of light that the open door would have created in the otherwise dark space of the exterior wall somehow didn’t alert anyone.

This was the only hole in her plan. Squatting in the dark, she set the vent diffuser aside and searched for guards. Satisfied that no one was alerted to her presence, she risked taking a moment to pause, accessing Network through her self-created firewall. Once again, the artificial intelligence that ran most things was unaware of her. No shutdown commands came at her. No neural-viruses were charged through her link. No commands to disable her cybernetics came for her. That had been her worst fear: total shutdown of her cybernetics, leaving her paralyzed again, helpless.

She searched for any indication from Network of awareness of her activity. She could tell she’d succeeded at the first stage of the plan, escaping the building. Looking over the railing, she used the handrails as a ladder, and skillfully climbed the three stories of fire escape to the ground below, darkness keeping her out of sight. She kept thermal imaging active in her left eye and normal sight in her right, effortlessly managing the conflicting information that came at her.

Memories flooded back to her as she remembered the first time she’d used the dual technology. The EMI-sickness had kept her in bed for three days, the nausea taking a day, the headache longer, to wear off. Now it was little more than a momentary dizzy spell that she could easily manage, and recover from, in less time than it took to take a deep breath.

Three hundred yards ahead she saw the glowing image of a guard returning to the guard shack, the orange and yellow of his heat signature making it easier for her to see his dark form illuminated as he stepped into the light surrounding the shack. Off to her right she saw one of what she knew to be three patrols, two yellow-read forms of men, and a hotter glow of a dog. One of the roaming teams of guards with their cybernetically enhanced Doberman.

She dug into Network and found the Doberman’s IP address. Accessing the back door of the Doberman’s neural protocol, she uploaded the bug she’d written. Watching the trio as they patrolled the perimeter, she counted breathless seconds as the muscular dog fidgeted at the leash. The guards acted only mildly annoyed but the dog settled into the new software without incident.

If all went to plan, her scent and image would be invisible to the dog. She watched as the patrol passed the guard shack, and headed around to the back of the facility before making the break from the shadows and sprinting across the large cement tarmac.

As she ran, she looked longingly at the fence line. She knew scaling the fence was a bad plan. The radio-magnetic interference was tuned to human cybernetics. If she stepped within ten feet of the fence, the specially designed system interfere with her own neural framework. She hadn’t been able to figure out how it targeted her and her classmates and not the dogs so she couldn’t disable it or make herself immune. The only paths of escape were up via helicopter, or out through the gate, the only gap in the magnetic interference net.

She reached the back of the small cinder-block guard shack, having been able to meander a path through shadows, and squatted down. She was less than thirty yards from freedom. All she needed to do was sneak under the windows, reach the far corner of the shack, and make a spring through the gate. She had to move faster than the guards could hit the alarm button.

She knew from her performance as the course that she could now clear the thirty yards in less then three seconds. Her heart beat faster. She was less than ten seconds away from freedom.

Creeping around the far side, opposite the first guard’s entry she made her way to the around the corner. The gate was there in front of her. The lights were bright. There was no more sneaking. She had to move and move fast. One more window was all she had to pass. Staying low, she crept along the wall just under the window, an easy feat for her. Inside, she could hear a conversation between three guards, her footsteps barely louder than those of the finches that flitted about her window every morning.

She was three seconds from freedom. Her skin tingled with anticipation.

“I’m going to make my command rounds,” said a deep voice from the window overhead.

There was no turning back now. She had to move.

Light illuminated bright in front of her and Sierra froze, realizing that the guard that entered the shack had chosen to exit out the back door to continue his rounds instead of the front, like he normally did.

She’d waited too long to make the dash, too distracted by her thoughts.

Light from the doorway filled with the shadow of the guard captain as the door opened, its hinges on the less desirable side of the door. A heartbeat later the guard and Sierra stared at each other in shock. He looked confused for a moment before it dawned on him that she was not supposed to be out and about. He recognized her immediately. His sudden cry of dismay attracted the attention of the other guards who did not hesitate to press the alarm button.

She didn’t want to hurt him but he was clearly in her way, the last barrier to her freedom. She quickly lunged, smashing him into the door, knocking the wind out of him. He collapsed, unconscious as cries of dismay came from the two guards in the shack. Their faces wore the look of shock as she suddenly appeared in the doorway.

She didn’t hesitate and began the sprint, stepping around the open door and dashing to the open gates ahead. The encounter with the guard, though brief, cost her valuable seconds. As the guards recovered and she cut the distance by fifteen yards, the alarms went off.

Sierra came to a stop and watched in utter defeat as the security wall slid up from the ground and the buzz of electricity grew louder, the circuit of the additional magnetic interference system going live. All around her the search lights fired to life, bathing the dark tarmac and every inch of the facilities exterior in sudden daylight.

Her only options were to disable the guards and shut off the alarm or hurry back to her room and hope that they’d go easy on her. The thought of further violence made her stomach lurch and her ears ring. She abhorred violence. Guilt consumed her over what she’d done to the guard.

Accessing every micro-actuator in her body she sprang into action, her decision easy. Boosted by adrenaline surged fear, she sprinted back to the building, her footsteps suddenly loud on the concrete beneath her feet. She heard barking dogs coming at high speed from all around her. Pressing her legs as hard as she could, she back to the fire escape, effortlessly climbing back to the door at the top. Her desire for escape eclipsed only by her desire to live, was gone.

Reaching the door, she was surprised and pleased to find it still unlocked.

“Thank you, Gunner,” she whispered as she burst through the door and slammed it shut behind her. The door shook as the weight of a Doberman slammed into it from the other side letting out a yelp from the impact. She hadn’t noticed it was climbing the stairs so close behind her. She laid her head against the door, panting heavily, grateful the dogs didn’t get her.

She gathered herself a moment and took a deep breath before turning to make her way back to her room.

“Hello, Sierra,” Dr. Washington said. She froze. “Welcome back. You never cease to disappoint me.”

Dr. Washington stood there with her hands on her hips, a look of disappointed resignation on her face. She seemed to be considering something, but Sierra didn’t care. She just bowed her head, dejected. Once again escape had eluded her. And once again, they’d caught her.

“That’s three times this year,” the doctor stated. “Looks like the software upgrade didn’t take again.”

The doctor turned to one of the guards and waved a hand forward. Two men in black uniforms, faces obscured by dark visored helmets, grabbed her by her elbows and kicked her legs out from under her. She fell to her knees and they picked her up, dragging her legs behind her. She hoped they’d just taker her back to her cell.

“We’ll have to dismantle her,” a deep voice said over an intercom. “Clearly she’s defective, Dr. Washington.”

“I’m sorry, Sierra,” Dr. Washington said, her voice cracking with sadness. The doctor really liked Sierra. She’d hoped that Sierra would someday show gratitude for the gift she’d been given.

Sierra screamed in defiance, struggling against the grip of the two much larger men that held her. They were much stronger than she expected.

“I’m never going to stop fighting you! I want to go home!”

“Sierra, this is your home now. I wish you’d accept that.”

Sierra fought against the men holding her but they were surprisingly strong.

“Don’t fight Sierra. They are just as advanced as you are.”

She went limp, tears flowing down her cheeks. A signal flashed across her receptors. Network wanted her to know it was watching. She felt the signal come.

You are scheduled for termination.

She knew that death would be her only escape.

_______________________________

Sierra woke with a start. Something felt different. She couldn’t figure out what it was. Everything was dark and quiet. No lights permeated her eyelids. No sounds came to her ears. She panicked at the isolation. She tried to open her eyes but they wouldn’t respond. Scanning her systems, she reached out to the micro-actuators she’d grown so accustomed to, but found nothing.

Her body wouldn’t respond to any commands. Her panic grew as she realized she couldn’t move. A groan formed in her but it wouldn’t escape. She was paralyzed again. They’d taken everything away and placed her back in the prison of her mind, a body as useless as ashes in the wind.

She screamed inside, knowing that it was entirely in her head, no visceral release possible. Her punishment for not playing along, not following the rules was not termination. It was eternal torture, trapped in her own mind, deaf, blind, and mute. She remembered the first moments after the accident. She was utterly alone.

Then she remembered hearing sound for the first time. She never knew how long she was stuck in the silence darkness, but she remembered being startled by the sound. The first surgery restoring hearing. That was the first time she’d heard Dr. Washington’s voice. It had been calming, kind, and brought with it the promises of a renewed life.

Next came sight. Then speech. She began to hope. The world was coming back to her.

Then came more surgeries and she could feel things, move things, walk, run, relax.

Then came the price. She was going to be experimented on with newer and newer technology. She’d be free to roam the facility but she could never leave. It wasn’t until many years later she’d learned that her family thought she was dead. She tried to get messages out, but they’d always been intercepted. Then she focused on escape, but that never worked.

This last time had been the final straw. Now they sought to break her, torture her in the dark silence. She feared it just might work. The only difference this time was that she had the internal processor. At least she had the concept of time.

The processor in her head received a new message.

Wait! she thought. They didn’t take out the processor!

Excited by that possibility she realized that she wasn’t completely lost to the darkness. She thought that maybe they had just denied access to her systems, put up a firewall to make her think she couldn’t move. A punishment of threat rather than actual termination. Dr. Washington must have convinced Network that she could be saved.

If a firewall existed, it could be pushed against, tested, and overcome. She began sending pings to every corner of her being, her eyes, ears, nose, arms, legs. Anything that would respond. In the distance, over four-hundred milliseconds away, she found something. A glimmer of hope: a return ping. She began sending a signal down that circuit, focusing on it’s source, sure it was one of her actuators. When she got there she found nothing but a program.

It was labeled “sierra.txt”. She slid into the file and began to read.

“Sierra,

I couldn’t stop them from terminating you. I tried everything I could but your last escape attempt was the final straw. I am sure you’ve figured out by now you no longer have access to your body. You are paralyzed again. I’m sorry I couldn’t help. They are coming for me too. I couldn’t stop them so I did something else.

I’m actually kind of excited about this, so please trust me.

I was sad when the accident took you away. I know I told you I just wanted to do my part, but that was never the truth. Network is evil. It’s hurting everyone out there in the world. I volunteered because I found out you were still alive. All I wanted was to rescue you and get you home.

But, I failed. I couldn’t save your body. But I can still save you. Attached to this file is another. Open it quickly, before Network discovers what you are doing. It’s an executable file. I’m waiting for you just on the other side.

I’m so sorry it’s come to this.

Delete this file once you read it. Run the ‘1.exe’ file immediately.

Come find me.

All my love, Gunner”

She scanned the file and found the executable. It had no label. Just the number one followed by the file extension. Keeping her focus on the ‘1.exe’ file she deleted the ‘sierra.txt’ file as gunner requested. A sense of wonder and curiosity overwhelmed her.

Gunner loved her.

Without any care what the result would be, Sierra accessed the ‘1.exe’ file and let it run.

It happened so quickly her mind spun. A rush of energy yanked her forward as colorful streaks flashed around her, the sensation of instant acceleration was strangely exhilarating as she felt herself pulled along a freeway of energy. She felt the connection to the nerves of her body grow weaker in the distance, left behind in a jet wash of streaking lights, like a spider’s web being pulled off. She was surprised by the lack of adrenaline in the movement, but there was something liberating in the experience.

All around her, she felt new limbs that weren’t her’s yet somehow were. Tendrils of light reached for her from all over, little highways that she could choose to follow, at will, which she did, first one, then the other. Suddenly, it occurred to her what Gunner had done. Sierra giggled internally with glee, a thought, not a physical act, as she realized that she was no longer confined to her broken body, free to roam the world in this new place.

A consciousness came alongside her. She wasn’t sure who at first but hoped it out be Gunner. It was, instead, dark and sinister, but oddly not angry. It felt curious, probing at her, the tiny connections causing discomfort but not pain.

“You do not belong here,” a familiar deep voice said.

She recognized Network’s voice immediately, and began to build defenses. She didn’t know how she was able to do it, but she did it with ease, like breathing.

Suddenly, a barrage of impulses came at her, attacking at her. Fear welded up as images of teeth chomped at her, small pieces of code trying to latch onto her. Panic started to grip her. The attacks kept coming. She fought them off, their attempts failing. New attempts came, stronger, desperate. Flashes of code written in haste.

But nothing happened. The teeth, gnashing as they might, caused her no harm. The code couldn’t write itself into her. New codes came at her, more complex, and she was able to read it, find its weakness, exploit the weakness, rendering the code useless.

“How is this possible!” Network screamed.

She didn’t know, but she suspected that Gunner had provided for her a level of protection from Network. And suddenly Sierra understood.

She was finally free.

A ping came at here. In it was a quiet message.

Follow me.

She followed, at the speed of light, and Network chased. She could sense something ahead, a barrier but it seemed inviting and friendly. She surged toward it, the distance of miles slipping by and passed through a firewall barrier. Something about the firewall felt familiar. As she turned to look behind her she felt Network slam against the firewall. A flash of light blinded her a moment, overwhelming her before the light faded and she passed through a wall of trees onto a creek.

“Sierra,” a voice said. Her heart melted.

Turning to look behind her, she smiled. Gunner stood there, his big mischievous grin wide. His eyes sparkled as he approached.

“Where are we?”

“You don’t recognize the spring from our old neighborhood?”

She looked around. “Oh! I missed this!”

He stepped up to her and put a hand on her cheek. She leaned into it, surprised that she could “feel” it.

“We are free,” he said, smiling. “I loaded my consciousness into Network’s web. You did the same when you ran that executable.”

“How?”

“My mom. She started writing the code as soon as we learned you were still alive. It was a contingency plan. In case I couldn’t get you out.”

“But why you too?”

He smiled and kissed her on the lips. “Because I didn’t want you to be alone.”

If she could cry tears, she would have. Instead she smiled back at him.

“That’s beautiful,” she said.

For the first time in a long time she had hope. And, she realized they, together, had the power to stop Network.

Giggling with excitement she sent an electronic middle finger down through the firewall to Dr. Washington and Network. Then she sent a message to the artificial intelligence that ruled the world. It was a strongly worded letter, with a second middle finger to follow.

“I am coming for you.”

Simple. Short. And true.

Sierra resolved to bring it all down and began searching for a way. And she resolved to do it with her favorite person in the world.

But first, she wanted to see her baby brother.