Gunmetal Dark
By Angelina Vansen (angelina@gunmetaldark.com)

RATING: NC-17 as a whole, but this part? Hmmm ... PG-13 for violence.
CODES: Uber J/7
SUMMARY: This was the uber I started to write for the JDI 2 competition. It was going to be short, but wow ... It's long.

PART I: SUICIDE SUIT

Her first memory was rain. Before that there were only bits, chopped to fit her head, with sharp endings and abrupt emotions.

A soft spittle of rain caressed her lips, kissing her awake, kissing her to life. No, maybe not to life; she had already been alive. When she awoke there had already been a breath of air in her lungs, and a sky wide and grey, already filling her eyes. The rain had just been kissing her ... aware.

Something inside her head had said

"Hello"

and she had awakened. It had been as simple as that.

She had been walking. She stopped and something bumped into from behind, four times. Then the others streamed around her, other people, their boots slapping into the water on the ground. She heard each one, each boot. Solid and definite. It was the first sound she heard.

She felt something, three ticks in her back, a little spark from somewhere deep inside her, and then something else came to life. It said

POWER REROUTED

Then

SUIT ONLINE.

As it booted, it identified itself:

TENKATECH SOFTSUIT AJ6249-9721-E
BUILD 7.008.766-ksigg-amichael-hgoboo-6643009
ver500-MIA#223939

Now it was functional. Still, something was not as it had been before. The suit, the softsuit as it had called itself, was puzzled. It said

DIAGNOSTIC

but found nothing wrong. Yet she was alive, and she had not been alive before.

Her head was tipped back and she was looking at the sky. She lifted it up. Light fell on her face as she looked around. Ahead of her, a trail of lights gleamed, large yellow lights the colour of dull suns. They shone, tungsten and artificial, wired to each other on a track in the sky. Six of them.

Something came to her about them, information. How bright they were, what powered them. How she might repair them if they broke.

The information pushed itself up in front of her eyes through the pathways of her brain, coming from that place in her back that had just switched on. She could literally see it, floating before her, numbers and grids and charts. She heard it too, clicks and whirrs and beeps for her analysis. Chittering and chattering.

Everywhere she looked, it was there. Information about everything: the lights, the ground she stood on, the air she breathed. Everything around her had data, though everything was also new.

What had happened?

SYSTEM REBOOT,

came the answer, there in her head before she had consciously asked the question.

A system reboot? Even then, in the first moments of her existence, she did not think that was the answer. A system reboot seemed simple, a mechanism and an operation. It could not have brought her so utterly to life. Yet here she was in the rain, standing still when the others were moving, in control of her arms and in control of her legs and not behaving in any way like the others.

The others were getting into a ship. Two hundred and fifty four of them moving in four neat rows towards the black shape the suit identified as

PEACH DELTA - H-Class MIA Transport #G499872.

Of the ship she could see little, and she could access no data through the suit as she did not have the correct clearance level. It was just a shape to her, slim and long with a rounded underbelly, dark against the sky and land. The others seemed to be shadows melting into the shadows beneath it.

Their heads, flesh and hair of all colours, rose and fell as they walked. Their shoulders swung, sharp and strong, the broad edges of their black armour bold and ugly.

She looked down to see what she wore; it was the same as the others, a burnished cage of dark mesh and metal, square at the chest and big at the shoulders. In her head, the softsuit confirmed its own identity, and there it was, armed and armoured and powerful.

They all had one, all of them. Their numbers ticked before her eyes as her own suit identified them.

MIA#433322

MIA#820237

MIA#787463,

one after the other.

Something in her head said

"Hello, run,"

and she and the suit became aware of movement. The turn of heads, forty of them. The snap of eyes and a change of purpose among some of the others. Forty pairs of eyes on her now, seeing that she was moving in a way they did not.

The suit responded almost at once, moving into a mode it called

YELLOW.

A tactical mode, she quickly deduced. It shunted maintenance data into the background and started exploring and inspecting potential dangers. The others now fell into this category. The suit considered them a possible threat.

Information about their weapons poured in, streams of it; too much for her brain to read, but apparently helpful to the suit. Its decisions buzzed in her brain; its presence tickled her synapses as it got ready to present its conclusions.

It seemed ready to concur with the voice by telling her to run.

Wherever she was, wherever this was, there was no perimeter, no fence or guards. Just this place, the launching field and some low, square buildings that the suit would not identify in Yellow Mode. Beyond that, only a dark sparse scrubland disappearing in all directions.

So she ran. She ran away from the lights, away from the ship. Through the squat little plaster sheds, their vacant grey sides flashing past her in the dark like dull moons.

THREAT,

the suit said, and everything changed again as it flicked to a mode called

BLACK.

Now her body was barely her own. It felt suddenly electric and strong. The suit held each of her limbs in its spastic thrall, and it started to use them.

A sudden thrust of her legs sent her vaulting unnaturally high into the air, and then her body erupted into starbursts of metal as her weapons spread out of the suit. Guns slid out and grated against the bones of her hands and arms and snapped into place.

As she reached the apex of her extraordinary jump, the suit twisted her at the hips to face the others. The guns came up and she watched with a distant fascination as they discharged on the ends of her arms. Jerking, exploding, white muzzle flash and sharp powder smell.

She hit the ground and compacted into a crouch even as she shot them. Three

TARGETS

people fell and she dropped to roll again, legs over head on the dry grass at the edges of the compound. Shot and shot again. The suit telling her what to do and how to do it.

More targets. The simple serene mind of the suit centred on each one, pulsing the red data of statistics at her. The voice spoke in her mind, helping.

"Shoot this one here. In this part of his body."

The voice said.

"Now move. 42 50 N. 42 50 N, 12 50 E,"

The others fired back, but their bullets flew past her, screaming and whistling as they sliced through the rain. The suit captured the calibre and power and trajectory of each projectile.

The voice continued to direct her and she avoided the shots easily, stepping between them and out of their paths. It was as if the voice knew, almost, where they would shoot before they did it.

Effortless.

She shot them down, enough of them to make the space to run. And she did run. She let the blackness of the night close about her and take her away. She pumped her limbs hard, every muscle burning and acidic. Her heart felt full and huge and it beat as if about to burst.

The suit remained pure and analysing. Her mind and the voice were cleanly thinking one thought, one command.

"Run"

She ran. She ran so far she couldn't see the place, couldn't see anything behind her at all, not so much as a glimmer from those yellow lights.

She ran so far, all she could hear was herself. Her breath, regulated, hissing from between her teeth like an exhaust, one following the next following the next. The clank of her arms in the weapons, the slight rattle and vibration of them. Swipe after swipe by her sides.

The suit fed her topography from its scans. Ahead lay a range of hills, and it wanted her to run there. She could see them now, dark shapes and shadows that awaited her on the distant horizon. Yes. She would go there. They would provide shelter and defence.

The suit seemed satisfied. It shifted back to Yellow Mode as she reached the hills, guiding her up into them through a series of slopes and paths.

"Stop,"

the voice said, and she stopped dead, in the middle of nowhere, between two hills.

For a moment, she stood still in the rain. Her weapons crackled and fizzled slightly in the downpour, which had grown heavier. One of them reported damage. Blood coated the other, and some biological matter. Part of one of the targets she had killed.

She tipped her head back to look at the sky again, that open grey sky that was even darker now. Night.

It was cold as well, she noticed as her body calmed after her run, too cold to be comfortable. She required shelter and warmth.

On this, however, the voice remained silent. She seemed to have done what it wanted for now.

The rain rattled around her and wind made the sparse vegetation whisper sly secrets. She shifted her weight; the sandy earth chafed and slid a little under her feet.

What had she done? She looked around her, looking for something, for the reason she stood here, the reason the voice had wanted her to stop here. The suit, shifting back to its original mode,

BLUE,

captured the information from her body and presented it.

It threw a grid over the landscape so she knew altitudes. Fed numbers from her feet so she knew the composition of the soil. Filtered the air she breathed so she could detect the microbes and gases within.

None of this helped. Yet the voice had been here, and it had said "Stop". It had. And now it was silent.

What had she done back there? The suit played it back for her, recorded and observed. She saw herself stopping, standing still before the dark shape of the ship while the others carried on.

She saw it all play out again, the killing, the running, the spectacular leap that had been taller than anything around. She saw herself run, disappearing into the distance until she was a small and distant pixel.

It was strange, though, wrong. The memories felt weird and disembodied. They were grey somehow, too, electronic and static and flat. She became aware that she was seeing herself silently, stagnantly, and utterly in third person.

Recordings, she realised, security playback from that place back there. She was linked to it, to a computer inside it, and she had uploaded the files automatically instead of accessing her own memories from her own mind. That must have been the work of the suit.

She knew at once she must stop accessing them. They might be able to find her that way. Quickly her mind raced through the suit, checking. It found six open ports and shut them down, sending little surges back along their pathways just in case the suit was already betraying her. Traitorous. Insidious. Transmitting.

The systems protested a little at being given orders from inside, but they obeyed. They were there, it seemed, to preserve her.

She felt a little different, then, without the ports open. Things seemed more acute. She felt wet, and colder, more aware of her skin and the parts of her body beneath her skin.

Her muscles ached from the running, and her skin itched where it disappeared into the suit. Irritated.

She supposed that the computer she had been linked to was reasonably important. It had been part of her, part of her maintenance somehow, but also a part of her mind.

Her head felt very different. A moment ago, there had been something huge about her brain, something uncaring as well. Her head had been like an empty room. She had felt a little bit ... disconnected.

Now she was here, here between two hills in the late evening in the rain. Two guns attached to her arms and everything hurting.

What was she going to do?

Her mind ran the pathways, idiotically, looking for data that wasn't there. Hitting the ports and finding them closed, almost screaming with panic. What was she going to do? What was she going to do?

The suit came back with

ERROR

It said there was an

INPUT FAILURE

Almost at once there was a surge, felt deep in her back, as the auxiliary kicked in. Something hot and electric formed a band around her waist, flared and then faded.

Then there were things to do. Commands came in, comforting and plain and positive. Even though they were technically her, they were part of her back-ups.

MOVE,

said the suit.

SHELTER.

It examined the scans and gave her some options. It evaluated and presented and took away the frightened feeling that had begun to grow. She knew what to do.

She moved, one foot at a time, under an overhang in the rock where the rain would not reach her. Stood. It was quite sheltered there and she felt a little warmer.

STAND BY

the suit said. A pause of thirty seconds, then

STAND BY

again. And again.

STAND BY

STAND BY

STAND BY.

In her mind, it began to sound desperate, though its tone had not changed at all. It activated the heating units, although they drained power quite rapidly and there would be no daylight to recharge them for many hours. It seemed confident things would be operational by then, that soon she would not have to

STAND BY

any longer.

Here, waiting for that under the overhang, she began for the first time to wonder what she was doing here.

Who was she? That was another question that had been lurking on the edges of her consciousness. There did not seem to be any data to answer that. No, there was nothing at all, not even about who she had been before she just "woke up" on that launching field.

It seemed she had simply blinked into existence.

There had been that voice, though. The voice in her head, the one she was sure had not been her own, and definitely did not come from the system inside the suit.

The voice had awakened her. It had wanted her to run, to escape, to come to this place. It had guided her here so perfectly and then had left her with nothing but questions.

Wherever the voice was now, she hoped that following its instructions had been the right thing to do. After all, she had killed to be here. What would she have been doing now had she got on board that ship with the rest of them? Where had it been going? What was she supposed to be doing on it? What was her function?

More questions. More, all leading back to one question. Who was she?

The suit began to cool a little now that her body temperature was comfortable. It showed her some biological statistics; her own. They were green and safe.

In the background, her back-ups tried to connect to that computer, told her to

STAND BY

every thirty seconds. She could ignore it. Since she had shut the ports, her own thoughts seemed much louder than the suit's. It was still mildly irritating, especially since she did not know if it would ever stop.

Then, abruptly, it did. Obviously it was designed to cycle for only a finite length of time.

ERROR

she was told then, for the second time.

INPUT FAILURE

A warning about a power conservation mode flashed before her eyes. Her head dropped to her chest, her arms locked firmly to her sides, and everything went green.

Full green, then dark green, then black.

She wasn't there. She was just a million bits of buzzing binary waiting. She was flat lines and tiny data waiting. Tasting the air a little with those panel sensors on the suit, just in case, but waiting. Waiting.

It was almost peaceful. Her head rested on her chest and her breath came nice and slow. No pain in her arms or her head or her lungs. No fear. She was just nicely regulated, warm and taken care of. There and not there.

When she snapped awake again, several hours later, something was different.

Dawn light sprayed the horizon. The rain had stopped and everything around her was dry.

Why had she woken up?

She blinked slowly for a minute. Exactly a minute. So precise. She seemed able to measure time so acutely now. It seemed like a part of her, moving forward, counting down.

Her mind sent a query to the backups, expecting that she'd get the

STAND BY

response. Instead she got

ERROR: NO CONNECTION

and

TERMINATION PROCEDURE IN EFFECT

Panic struck her. Fear. It grabbed every part of her, powerful and sickening. She was being terminated. She had shut the ports down and she was being terminated because of it.

She sent urgent commands all over herself, to every pathway she could access, telling the suit to shut down the procedure, to stop it.

All she got back were errors and denials of access. Nothing in the suit would let her get that close. It was the suit, it was the suit. The suit was programmed to kill her if she were cut off for too long. Of course it was. She'd be a danger, with all that weaponry. She needed to be controlled by that computer.

The suit, the interface, was not going to allow her to override this.

With dread, she pushed through a query to the termination system, something that felt like a bleak black heart sitting in the base of the suit. Asking, wanting to know how much time she had.

She got a number in reply.

79

said the suit, which meant nothing. Was that minutes ... hours? Was it code? On that, the suit remained silent. Repeated queries only got the same response.

What should she do now? For a moment, she contemplated going back to the launching field, turning herself in. They would probably reactivate her, open the ports and let the computer back in, save her life.

For some reason, though, that did not feel like a desirable option. Despite this ... all of this, despite being lost and lonely and despite the terrible fear she had of her own death, she did not want to go back there.

Something told her that would be worse.

She had to move. She had to leave. She had to do something. She stepped out from under the overhang which had sheltered her so well all night and analysed the landscape once again.

At least the suit was still operational in that way. Faithfully, it interpreted the data she fed it, helping with her escape plan even as it counted down coldly to her death. She was very aware of it. It took her 15.44 seconds to walk to the top of the hill that stood behind her.

From there, she saw little. The landscape around was fairly featureless, almost a tundra, and without the suit to remind her, she felt certain she would not have known from which direction she had come.

She was certainly not sure which direction she should go. From there it looked as if the launching field could be the only thing on the planet. Just in case, though, she decided that heading in the opposite direction would be prudent.

She went back down the hill and started up the next, essentially continuing the path she had run last night. This time, however, she did not run. Without the computer to tell the suit how to take care of her body, she felt much more vulnerable and would tire easily. The suit itself, and the weapons, were heavy.

Then

"Wait,"

The voice again. Back again. Then

"Wait,"

again. She felt faint with gratitude. The voice was back. It was back. She almost fell to her knees.

Certainty filled her; she would live, she was saved. The voice, wherever it came from, wanted her to live. She listened to it guiding her, saving her. Wanting her to

"Wait."

Without her command, the suit searched for a signal, for somewhere the voice might be coming from, but found nothing. It returned an irregularity. She did not understand either. She should not have been capable of receiving a signal then, from any source.

That didn't matter, though. So overwhelming was the euphoria that she did not question it. There were things about her that even the suit did not know.

Good. The suit was against her, the suit was her enemy and if the voice could circumvent it, so much the better.

She waited.

Time passed, and then more. She stood still, absolutely still, a pillar of stillness waiting, waiting.

Waiting.

A black pulse came from her back, from the termination unit in the suit. A black feeling went through her body and the single, simple thought flashing from the suit to her brain.

78

It was counting down. Counting down and she waited. Waited, frozen almost with terror. It was a terror that she was being played with, or that the voice was part of her, something she had imagined because she was secretly insane. It was a terror of her own death, too, of that horrible cold countdown.

She waited again. She was getting warmer with the rising sun, hotter. Not able to see so well. The suit went into action, trying to cool her body. It was only partially successful. Trying to preserve its power cells, she supposed.

She waited, and it was agony. Waited even though she wanted to run, even though she wanted to burst with some overwhelming emotion, make a sound and scream and explode.

She waited for the suit, too. For that black pulse of horror in her lower back, waited for that next number.

She didn't want this. She didn't. Maybe this was it, the suit divorcing her, leaving her alone with only herself, with only her biological brain to rely on. She felt so uncertain.

But the voice was her friend. She had to believe that. The voice had saved her, had woken her up, had guided her.

The suit was her enemy. It was heavy and ugly and she couldn't get it off. She hated the suit. The suit wanted her dead.

The voice had said to wait.

She would wait.

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 2!


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