2

The ticking of the click made the room feel emptier than it was. The clunky ticks and tocks echoed around the circular hall, bouncing off sleek walls and plastic enclosures. Those plastic screens were nine inches thick but reflected like sleek polished glass. Whether that shield of plastic

was designed to keep him inside or keep everyone else out had never been explained to Maika.

"You just sit and watch him," she had been told. That was the sum of her responsibilities. The entire explanation. "Sit in the outer ring. Use your enhanced focus. Don't take your eyes away from him for a second."

"Him... Eigen."

As they turned onto a glass-lined corridor she squinted. Harsh light shone through the panels of glass, reflecting directly into her retinas. She looked at the floor until the final approach, where the huge mechanical guards lined the walls. They never moved but Maika felt as if they watched. Of course, they were watching. But watching without seeing. The thought gave her chills, like one of those creepy lifeless dolls that would fix you with their dead stare wherever you went in the room.

'Where did that doll memory come from?' she wondered. 'A movie perhaps.'

The world, as it was now, did not have many dolls, if indeed any. Most of the relics from the old world were destroyed. But the movies had survived, in the form of code, all available via the AI chips in the brains of the survivors. Not that Miaka had much time for movies. 

Through the haze of brightness, she saw one of the sleek robotic warriors step out of line and twist to face her. 

"Why are you still wearing that face?" it whispered, so softly the words barely formed ripples in the air.

Maika turned to ask what it meant - what on Earth it was talking about, but the mechanical guard was back in line with the others, silent and still as if it had never moved at all.

"Did I imagine it?" she wondered. 

She stared at the still line of toy warriors, arranged as if by a child.

"Probably," she figured, frowning. It seemed like something she would do. Mika lived firmly inside her head - her imaginary friends more real than the so-called 'real world'

Thirty-foot tall doors rumbled open with a hydraulic hiss, allowing entry. The first thing Mika noticed inside the tomb-like enclosure was the chill of the air and the inky blackness. 

Further inside it was cold. So cold. And the air felt... wrong somehow. Wrong in a way she wasn't able to put her finger on. It felt like something she should know about, but the information was trapped in a distant memory. The cold air had a certain weight to it - a hum of electricity.

She hugged her arms to her chest as the chill penetrated her chest - taking her breath away.

The lights switch on as soon as they enter the room and the information screen appeared almost instantly, as if from nowhere.

The screen, an atom-thin projection display, cut the room in half. Static filled the screen, taking only a second to shift and form into words that made sense.

"Welcome to the control room."

Since the chip in her brain was always connected to the master computer

there was no real need for her to read the screen. The screens were obsolete, yet they never disabled them. Maybe it had to be that way for the humans who did not have a chip. Old tech.

It had to be hard to exist in this world without a chip. No inner system to guide and assist. No connection to the others in the system.

"You have been assigned a mission," the voice/screen explained, interrupting her thoughts. 

Maika paused, assuming it meant her companion. 

She looked up, blinking. 

"Huh? Who? Me?"

"Yes, you," the voice told her with no impatience. "We need you to find the world's most dangerous criminal and infiltrate his rebel group."

Maika was fairly sure she had to have misheard. Or misunderstood. She leaned in as if getting closer to the screen would make it any easier to process the sentence. 

"Rei will be your guide," the voice announced.

'Your name is Rei,' Mika thought. 'Hmm. Suits you.'

"You will follow his orders," the voice continued.

Maika swallowed. Hard.

'He's going to be my boss?'

This information was too distracting for Miaka to focus on the words of the machine. All she could focus on was Rei. Had she had her senses intact, she would have asked why someone of her power level was being sent on what sounded like a top-priority mission. She had low-level abilities and powers but nothing like the rebels had access to. Their abilities came from black magic - chaos majik.

Her blood ran to her cheeks in an involuntary reaction. An unwelcome reminder of her humanity. She had taken all the upgrades possible, every improvement on the flesh that PAVE had to offer, but she was still a woman on the soft, sticky insides. 

Too many questions came to mind, but there was only one that stood out.

She turned to Rei and asked the one that filled her with dread.

"What's the likelihood of mission success?"

"I'm not going to lie, Princess," Rei told her, leading her back out into the brightness of the glass-lined corridor. It felt even brighter after being in the darkened room. Almost blinding. "You aren't the first agent we have sent."

"How many others?" she asked, and immediately regretted it.

Rei winced, looking back at her with no sadness in his pale eyes. 

"Think of it this way and you won't have anything to worry about. You are, categorically, most definitely going to die. Just focus on enjoying your final moments as best you can."

Miaka leaned in so close to him that she almost tripped over her own feet as she chased after him, "Er... what did you just say?"