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

RATING: NC-17 overall. This part ... not so much.
CODES: Uber J/7
SUMMARY: Nine brilliant, fast-paced, action packed chapters can't be summed up in one paragraph, people! Have some manners and start at Chapter One.

9.

"You will save me," Mia said.

She held out her hand to the woman on the floor. The ghost. Kaine Sigg's avatar blurred and twisted beneath her; transparent, hollow, glitching.

Kaine Sigg. Her fine features were colourless, her eyes unfocussed. She blinked once and then again.

Mia gazed at her, wondering if she was an illusion of some kind, a trick of her mind. Perhaps she had gone insane somewhere in the desert and this was the result.

A moment ago she had been climbing that dark metal tower in the wilderness, the smell of blood and dead flesh filling her nostrils.

She had connected to the Network and come to Kaine Sigg's office hoping to find Johnny Matei. To leave a message for Kaine Sigg. Unbelievably, Kaine Sigg herself was already here.

Mia reached out, trying to touch the other woman's avatar, but her fingers slipped through the fingers of the image before her. A little resistance, like magnetism, but nothing more.

Kaine Sigg's eyes closed. "My connection is bad," she whispered in a metallic twang. "Please, I need you to help me. I'm a prisoner. You have to help me, get a message to Alvaro, tell him to send troops. Across the border, I'm in a base ..."

Mia shook her head. Emotions overwhelming. Urgent. "You will tell me how to get out of the suit!" she barked, cutting her off. She did not have time to listen.

"What?" Kaine Sigg's eyes widened. Her avatar swam back into focus and then blurred again.

Mia took an impatient breath. "I am trapped in the suit. It is counting down. I have been cut off from the computer at the launching field and the suit has decided I can no longer support myself. You must tell me how I can remove it before I die."

Sigg blinked. Breathed heavily as her avatar wavered again. "I don't understand," she said. "Who are you?"

"I am Mia."

"Yes, I know that, I ..."

"That does not matter. You are Kaine Sigg, I have been looking for you ..."

"I got a message," Sigg whispered.

"Yes!" Mia cried. "Johnny, the boy ..."

"That's right. It said you needed me." Despite the metallic twang caused by her poor connection, Kaine Sigg's voice was clear and calm.

"Yes!" Mia repeated urgently.

"I will help you. I will. Whatever you need, I promise. But look, right now I'm a prisoner, my captors have fried my Augbrain and I have very little connection strength. I could disconnect at any moment. So please ... listen to me and help me and then I promise ... whatever you need ... I will try to help you."

Mia chewed her lip.

"All right?" asked Kaine Sigg. "Please?"

Mia chewed her lip. Looked at the carpet and then back at the avatar warping on the floor. It was clear that Kaine Sigg was telling the truth; her connection to the Network was tenuous at best.

This could be Mia's only chance. She had thought this woman Missing In Action, and Missing In Action meant probably dead. She had started to believe she would die in the desert, following Satellite Yimini like a fool.

But Kaine Sigg had been captured. She needed help. How could she help Mia when she was barely here?

"Yes," Mia whispered. And then again louder because she did not know how much Kaine Sigg could hear. "Yes, I will help you."

Kaine Sigg closed her eyes. "Thank you," she sighed, almost inwardly.

"What do you need from me?" Mia demanded, anxious to perform the task quickly.

"Trace me," Kaine Sigg told her. "Use TenkaTrace, find the source of my signal and trace me back to the base where they're holding me. I'm across the border, just across the border from Ghow. That's where they kidnapped me. They're holding me in an underground base of some kind, and I ..."

This meant nothing to Mia. She stared blankly at the image of the woman before her.

Kaine Sigg looked her up and down. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

Mia shook her head. "You have been kidnapped," she repeated.

Kaine Sigg let out a breath. Impatient and scared. "Find Alvaro, then," she instructed. "He'll do it."

Mia nodded. "Who is Alvaro?"

"He's the second in command of the base where I'm stationed, Base Sonn Io Oriel. Tell him that General Menendez and I have been kidnapped by Three Stars and we ... I ... I'm being interrogated about military secrets. I need rescue. There is an underground bunker ... a huge computer ..."

Again this meant nothing to Mia. "Where is Alvaro?" she asked.

"The base ... Sonn Io Oriel. A military base in the Ghow district. He's there. He's second in command. Contact him through the Network if you like, but you need to tell him ..."

Mia shook her head. A military base? Kaine Sigg did not understand. She could not go to a military base; she was the murderer of two soldiers. She was escaping from the military.

"What?" Kaine Sigg demanded. Her voice cracked and split and her avatar shimmered. "Why are you shaking your head? You must do this! You need to, it's vital. These people, this Colonel, she's insane, you don't understand. She'll kill me, she already killed Ti ... General Menendez, she's forcing me ..."

Mia shook her head again. "I cannot go to a military base," she explained simply. "I will not."

Kaine Sigg looked desperate. She pressed her lips together and swallowed, repressing tears. "All right then, don't. Send a message. Contact him through the Network, you don't have to meet him physically if you don't want to."

"I will come for you myself," Mia told her.

Silence. Kaine Sigg stared at her for a long moment. Her eyes looked wide and hollow with fear.

"I will come for you," Mia repeated. "That way I will be certain you will help me."

Kaine Sigg shook her head, eyes fearful. "No, you can't. I don't think you understand ... this bunker - it's full of soldiers. Enemy soldiers, you ..."

"I will kill them."

"No, you can't ..."

"I will kill them to save you."

"There are dozens of them!"

Mia looked at the floor. Not wanting to meet the eyes of Kaine Sigg while she spoke. "I am not the way I appear right now," she said in a small voice.

From the corner of her eye, Mia saw the other woman examine her, looking her up and down. "What do you mean?" she wanted to know.

"Outside ... when I am not connected to the Network, I am not like this," she tried to explain, indicating the smooth flesh of her all-but-naked avatar. Her soft blonde hair. "Outside, I am inside the suit."

The words choked her; she could barely get them out of her throat. Here Kaine Sigg lay beautiful and weak on the carpet of her office; beautifully human with her pale slim fingers and shiny red hair. With her strong eyes. How could Mia admit she was controlled by that ugly, oily black machine?

"The suit?" Kaine Sigg asked.

Mia hung her head so far her chin touched her chest. "Yes," she admitted. "Your suit. The one you invented."

"My ...?"

Kaine Sigg fell silent before she completed her thought. Her mouth, lips pink then white then pink again, opened and closed. Her eyes grew wide, fading from grey to white. Transparent.

"Oh ..." she said. "A Softsuit."

"Yes," Mia replied, though it had not really been a question.

"You're a trooper?" Kaine Sigg asked.

Mia looked at her blankly. She did not know.

"A soldier, right? Wearing an armoured Softsuit. Weapons ... body augmentations ... that sort of thing?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Yes. Where do you come from? Where are you stationed?"

Mia shrugged. "I do not remember that information," she said, lifting her head again.

"What do you mean you don't remember?" Kaine Sigg had started to sound angry, but there was something fearful about her voice as well.

"I do not know!" Mia barked again. Emphasising each word. She did not like this interrogation. It was unpleasant. Unsettling.

On the floor, Kaine Sigg's avatar warped again, stretching upwards momentarily. She looked absurdly tall for a couple of seconds before snapping back to her actual size. She grimaced at the peculiar sensation.

Mia wondered how long the other woman's connection would last.

"I come from a ... a launching field," she tried to explain.

Kaine Sigg did not understand. She shook her head rapidly.

"A launching field," Mia reiterated. "Dark ... night. I woke up. It was raining. People in suits were getting onto a ... a ship. They ... I didn't get on it. I ran away. Since then I have been looking for you. Before that, I ... I don't know."

"You don't know?" That anger, that scorn, was back in Kaine Sigg's voice. That shrill note of fear, too. The Doctor's eyes were wide and black.

"No, I don't know!" cried Mia. Her voice came out louder than she had intended it to.

"What, you have amnesia? You were hurt, a blow to the head maybe?"

"No, I don't think so."

"You must know. You must have been hurt somehow and forgotten who you are. What you were doing ..."

"The suit rebooted," remembered Mia. "It rerouted power, it ... it came back online ..."

She screwed up her face with the effort of remembering. The memory of her first moments was still hazy and choppy. Disjointed.

On the carpet, on her back, Kaine Sigg bit her lip. She swallowed, her throat moving under her skin. Up and then down. Mia watched it, this small action of the flesh perfectly duplicated on the other woman's avatar.

"Soldier," she asked Mia in a calm, small voice. "Identify?"

Back in the suit, perched high on the struts of the tower, something responded to Kaine Sigg's request. Mia jolted a little; it fed the results of the query right to her mouth. She was speaking them before she could stop herself.

"ITENTITY: MIA #223939," she said. "ANCHOR: BASE KODAN-ECHO GG3"

Her traitorous mouth. An unnerving sensation.

Kaine Sigg was looking at her as if she were a monster. Something large and terrifying. She tried to get up; failed, tried to pull herself along the carpet on her back. Her hands could not find purchase.

"Mia ..." she breathed. A long, fearful sound. "Project MIA ..."

Mia stared at her, wide-eyed. For some reason, the mere utterance of her identity code had terrified Kaine Sigg. Had she heard? Was it possible? Had news filtered through about the rogue soldier who had escaped from the launching field? Did Kaine Sigg know she was a renegade and a killer?

"I will not hurt you," she reassured. She crouched down on the carpet next to Kaine Sigg's prone form.

Sigg herself was still in shock. "No, it's not possible. No ... you're not ..." she panted. She shook her head rapidly in denial.

"This is why I have been looking for you," Mia tried to explain. "I believe you were involved in the development and creation of the suit."

"No! Well, yes, but ... not that part. Not Project MIA. That's Honn and Kidder. I had nothing to do with it. I didn't know, I swear ..."

She was gibbering hysterically, unable to get her words out and gesturing wildly with her avatar's thin, colourless hands.

"You are responsible for the physical development of the suit. Your name is on its internal physical signature. I have been looking for you because I need to know how to remove it."

"Remove it?" Kaine Sigg almost laughed. "Did the Colonel send you?"

Mia looked at her blankly and she shook her head again.

"You will remove it," Mia told her in no uncertain terms. "You will. I will come to this base where you are being held captive. I will rescue you, and you will remove the suit."

"No ..." Kaine Sigg breathed. Still pale and shocked.

"Yes!" barked Mia in response. "You will!"

Kaine Sigg let out a breath, a long, tired sigh. "It's the Softsuit, Honn and Kidder's version. Look, if you're part of Project MIA, I doubt I can remove it."

Cold fear took hold of Mia's chest like a white fist. "What do you mean?" she demanded.

"I developed it, and I built a prototype. It's Honn and Kidder who put it into use, and they've made changes. Massive changes. The whole thing, it's called Project MIA, and it all involves classified technology I've never seen before. It's all designed to be perfectly synced ..."

"No!" Mia insisted. "You must. The suit will kill me! It started to count down when I disconnected from the computer at the launching field."

Kaine Sigg wrinkled her brow in confusion. "A countdown?" she asked.

"Yes," Mia confirmed desperately.

She did not understand. This was Kaine Sigg, the woman she had been looking for. The inventor of the suit. She would know everything. She had the answers.

"That's Honn and Kidder's work," the Doctor said a little sadly. She let out a tired breath.

"You will stop it!" Mia shouted. Her voice rang around the four warm walls of the office.

"I don't know if I can!" Kaine Sigg shouted back.

"Yes!" Mia yelled again. "You will! I will come to the bunker and save you ..."

"I don't know if I can!" Kaine Sigg repeated, even more forcefully.

Mia took a ragged breath. Her chest was tight with emotion. "You must ..." she pleaded. Her voice cracked too, but it was nothing to do with a bad connection.

Kaine Sigg sighed. She bit her lip as if thinking. "This countdown ... it's a program, right? Just a program?"

"Yes?" asked Mia, a small note of hope creeping into her voice.

"I may be able to hack a program."

"Yes!" Mia cried. "Hack it. Please, you have to do that!"

She was not sure what hacking entailed but if it could end the countdown ...

That dreadful countdown. No more of those hideous dead black pulses from her back; no more numbers, smaller and smaller. The prospect filled her with indescribable relief.

Kaine Sigg was squinting at her, mind clearly ticking over behind narrowed eyes. She looked alive while she was thinking; completely different, full of purpose.

This was what she did best, Mia thought. The woman was a scientist, an inventor. As difficult as the problem was, Mia believed Kaine Sigg would find an answer.

"I wonder if the Softsuits still take my password ..." Kaine Sigg mused suddenly.

"You have a password?" Mia stammered, not daring to hope. "For the suit?"

"Mmmmm ... a backdoor setup code. Maybe ... I mean, there's no reason for Honn and Kidder to remove it. It was deep in the code, and as a professional courtesy ..."

"Yes! Yes, you will attempt it!"

"My connection may not be strong enough here. And my Augbrain ..."

"You will try it!" Mia demanded, forceful again. "Now! Quickly!"

"Yes, I'll try ..."

Kaine Sigg squinted, then closed her eyes, a look of deep concentration on her face. A thread, thin, pearlescent, almost transparent, moved slowly through the space between them, purposefully edging towards Mia's port.

It connected, and Mia felt Kaine Sigg inside her systems. She felt like a voice, whispering warm in Mia's blood, in the cells of her body.


It raced through her, filling her, Kaine Sigg's meticulous mind peeking into every system. Mia was aware of systems within the suit reacting; coming to life momentarily, answering queries and then shutting down again.

The suit loved Kaine Sigg. She could go anywhere inside it, look at anything. Its systems obeyed her without question.

Suddenly, something sprung free with a clunk, and Mia was flooded with blue. Warm blue, suffusing her.

TERMINATION PROCEDURE DISCONTINUED

appeared before her, white letters floating in the space before her. She gazed at them, mouth open. Not believing them, not daring to. She had done it. Kaine Sigg had done it.

The thread retreated from her port, and Sigg was gone from the suit.

She lay on the carpet, breathing hard as if she had just been running. She grimaced and tried to hold her head, but her useless fingers slipped and missed and her hand fell onto the floor beside her head.

"Think that did it," she whispered between gritted teeth.

Mia nodded dumbly, overcome.

She tested it, sending a query to that black place that sat low on the suit's back. The place that would normally have given her that dark, terrifying two-digit number in response.

ALL SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL

it sent back calmly. Just like that. One moment trying to kill her and the next ...

ALL SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL

She checked again, just to make sure. Not daring to believe it yet.

Emotions threatened to overwhelm her, bubbling up in her throat and eyes. She swallowed them, blinked them back. She did not think Kaine Sigg wanted to see her cry.

"The rest, the physical part of the suit, is harder," Kaine continued between gulps of air. Sounding as if the effort had exhausted her. "So many changes."

Mia nodded again. "But you will do it," she said. Not a question.

Kaine Sigg nodded once. "I will try." She licked her lips as if they were dry. "But I want you to know ... I didn't know this was happening, all right? I didn't know they were doing this to people like you."

Mia did not understand. She blinked. "Yes," she agreed because it seemed important to the other woman.

"I really didn't," Kaine Sigg reiterated.

Mia nodded. Dismissing it.

"You're not far from me, you know," Kaine Sigg said. "Physically, I mean. You're at the edge of the desert, close to the border, close to the base. It would take you a couple of hours at most to get to there."

"The base where you are prisoner?" Mia asked excitedly.

"No, my base. The military base. Alvaro ..."

"No," Mia shook her head vigorously. "I can not go there."

"You have to!" Kaine Sigg pressed desperately. "Trace my signal, tell him ..."

"No," Mia refused.

Suddenly, Kaine Sigg opened her eyes wide. Her avatar flickered madly, actually disappearing for a couple of seconds. She came back, rippling back into full, strong colour.

"The lock!" she panted. "They're coming in! I have to go ..."

"What?!" Mia gasped.

"I have to go! They've found me."

"No! No, you will wait!"

Kaine Sigg shook her head. "I can't."

Her eyes locked with Mia's, scared and wide. Her avatar blinked once and then disappeared, fading into its own shadow.

Mia reached for it frantically, her fingers sliding hopelessly through something that was already just a memory.

Kaine Sigg was gone.

Mia screamed, her anguished howl bouncing off the office walls. "Come back!" she shouted to the space on the floor in front of her.

But Kaine Sigg did not come back. Whatever had happened to her, she could not return.

Mia was alone again.

No. She could not be alone. Although Kaine Sigg had disabled the countdown, removed the threat of imminent death, the thought of spending the rest of her life in the suit was almost as bad. A life on the run, forced to murder everyone she encountered ... perhaps she would have been better off dead.

No. She would find Kaine Sigg. She would rescue her from the people who were holding her captive. Kaine Sigg would remove the suit.

"Help!" she called to the Network.

The interface popped open beside her, the grinning red rodent waving a paw.

"Welcome to Tenkatech Network Help!" he chirped. "Would you like support services, help topics, tutorials or troubleshooting?"

"I wish to trace an individual," she told it. "Her physical location."

"The use of TenkaTrace is limited to military and law enforcement personnel only," the rodent replied.

"TenkaTrace?" Mia asked.

She blinked in surprise as another interface snapped into view beside her.

TENKATRACE v3.80.2
TRACE CODE?

Waiting for an input.

Of course. Military personnel. She had almost forgotten that before this began, she had been a soldier. The Network recognised her as such. She would use the program.

She would save Kaine Sigg, and Kaine Sigg would save her.

CLICK HERE FOR CHAPTER 10!



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