It had taken sixty-seven days of incarceration before Elinor had deliberately destroyed her timing sensors. The little control nodule was buried under the skin at the back of her neck, and she had had to be careful to crush just the right place. It had been a good choice, at the time, but now she often found herself frustrated as she relied on her inaccurate organic perception of the passing of the hours, and her bruised neck cramped up if she lay on her back too long.
Her battered legs creaked as she moved about her cell. The sounds registered as damage, and caused her sharp flashes of pain. Her uniform was a tattered mess and her torso criss-crossed with healing scars, but it was her limbs that bothered her the most. The armor encasing the bolts and pistons and gears and all the workings of her mechanics was cracked and blackened. Soft, malleable metal meant to allow her free reign of movement had become hard and brittle as old bones. She was crumbling into pieces, and the damage wasn’t limited to her body.
On the sixty-eighth day, she lost her fear. She could still recollect the experience of it – imprinted on the crystal circuits that augmented her memory that had once allowed her an eidetic recall – but it was like food she could not taste: flat, bland, incomplete. Just another sign that the signals from one hemisphere of her brain to the other were being distorted through shattered crystals; she’d already spent many nights in the cell waiting for her overrides to kick in as one limb or another had twitched uncontrollably, rendering her helpless.
Such incidents convinced her to restart her self-maintenance, despite her lack of orders. There were no medical engineers or any replacement parts available, but regular readjustment of her mechanics would keep them in better alignment and less prone to malfunctions.
One limb was removed at a time, then disassembled, the parts laid out for her inspection. There was never anything missing, but she could see the signs of decay and knew that the same thing was happening inside her head. She did not know whether to wish for her organics or mechanics to fail first. She did not know whether or not she would be considered dead with only one hemisphere of her brain active.
Elinor saw no-one, had seen no-one since she had been ordered here, save for her jailor. He was an old mechanical, all cogs and wheezing hydraulics, but he was well made and his brass gleamed in that particular way that spoke of a lifetime of good maintenance.
He shoved basic sustenance under the door each morning and the tray was retrieved in the evening. If it was not in place, she would not eat the next day. Sometimes her jailor had a few short words for her, but she found them of no value and ignored them. “Ain’t nothing but a living junkyard,” he’d say. “Gotta keep ‘em rolling round in circles.”
Mendoza came later.
Elinor did not know how much later – she could guess, but she felt uncomfortable using information collected purely from her organic senses. When the door of her cell finally opened, she saw her jailor and a slim, leanly muscled woman with short dark hair. Elinor’s optics registered that she wore a uniform of some kind, but she had no information on the style or insignia.
“She can still move real fast,” said her jailor, the pistons of his jaw moving in time with his words. “You don’t wanna be in here alone if she gets violent.” He made a hacking noise from a small steam pipe, meant to imitate a laugh. Elinor said nothing. She had been involved in no altercations here, and while once she would have been able to tear the great wooden door of her cell from its hinges, now she couldn’t even make a mark on it if she tried. She was weak, but her jailor was foolish.
“I’m fine, thank you,” said Mendoza, clear and clipped. Elinor studied her and her sensors informed her that this one was fully organic, with not even a memory crystal installed.
The jailor left, locking the door behind him and the organic approached her. Elinor noted how cautious her movements were, heard the heartbeat increase and detected a slight sweat on the forehead. The organic was afraid. Elinor stared at her and she stared back. Her eyes were blue and unblinking.
She stopped just in front of Elinor, the parts of Elinor’s disassembled left leg lying between them. She looked down at them for a long moment and then slipped a hand into a pocket of her jacket uniform – Elinor tensed, knowing weapons were often concealed in such places – and took out a standard joint casing piece. It shone, had no signs of decay, and was a beautiful cut. It was perfect.
Mendoza offered it to Elinor, her palm flat and unthreatening. “I’m going to need the one you’re replacing, though,” she said. Her accent was familiar; her tone was hard, but not unkind.
Elinor nodded and removed the piece from her right leg before handing it to Mendoza and deftly attaching the new piece. She flexed her leg, testing the joint. The casing glided smoothly, without resistance.
“Thank you,” the organic said, pocketing the old part. “My name’s Mendoza.”
“Corporal Elinor Rochelle.” She paused, and looked again at the epaulets on the organic’s uniform. “You’re an officer?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mendoza said, and left.
The next time Mendoza came to her cell she wore civilian clothing.
“It would be more efficient if you brought more than one part each visit,” Elinor said as she accepted the undamaged control node that Mendoza wordlessly offered her.
“I’m afraid this is the best I can do.” She sat down opposite Elinor, the grime of the cell marking her clean clothes with smears of sticky black as she leaned back against the wall. She moved in a neat, precise way and sat with her hands clasped over her knees. Elinor looked at her fingers: soft and clean, the nails smooth and unbroken.
“Does it make a difference?” asked Mendoza, nodding to the precisely arranged disassembled components. Elinor’s left leg was still only partially reconstructed. She should have been able to take apart one limb, check and clean the parts, and put it back together in under twenty-eight minutes. Even with one limb deactivated, she should still be over eighty percent battle effective. There was no war here, no spare parts, not even a rag to wipe away the filth from her cogs of her gears.
“It’s something to do,” she said. She’d thought of making changes, of taking pieces from her optic crystals and a short-span datastream node from the base of her neck and using the parts in one of her legs to construct a limited life mechanic. That would be something to do too, something different.
Mendoza nodded, her eyes moving from the leg to look all around the cell. There wasn’t much to see. Four stone walls, black with dirt, a sheet of solar paper on the ceiling for light, a wooden pallet, a toilet and a power jack. She pointed at the jack. “Is it active?”
“No.” Not for months. There had been a riot, and by the sounds beyond her door Elinor had estimated seventeen casualties. After that there was no more active jack, no more topping up her fuel cells. It was a slow death sentence, but she had been ordered here. She would wait.
“How do you feel about salt water?” asked Mendoza.
“Undrinkable.”
“I meant, how do your systems cope with it?”
“The same way yours do.” There was a note of pride in her voice. “There’s nothing you can do that we can’t.”
Mendoza nodded; she wasn’t insulted. “Do you remember learning to swim?”
Elinor knew she could swim and searched through her crystal memories, but could find no swim protocol. She must have learned as an organic. Memories were not reliable, but she looked through them anyway. “No,” she said.
“Most people learn when they’re children. It was probably a long time ago.”
“Memories aren’t reliable.”
Mendoza shrugged. “I suppose not.”
“You depend on yours.” Mendoza stared at her, her face blank. Elinor chose to read it as incomprehension. “You’ve no crystals or mechanics.”
“No,” Mendoza agreed.
“Religious objections?” She tilted her head, considered that Mendoza was in the military, and the military had clearly changed. “Political?”
“Personal,” Mendoza said.
Elinor began to count mark time by scratching a vertical line on the wall after she woke from her sleep-cycle.
Mendoza came back on the third vertical line, still dressed as a civilian. She wore her hair down, but had decorated it with some sort of brightly colored ornament shaped like a bird.
“You can get them cheap now,” she said, passing Elinor a crystal network node. It was a delicate thing, and Elinor held it carefully between her thumb and forefinger. Once this little component had been a revelation; a way to regulate the signals between the organic and artificial hemispheres of her brain and allow the two to coexist, but technology changed fast.
“They were always cheap,” she said, not able to keep the bitterness from her voice. She had seen what a faulty crystal could do to a soldier. She held it up to the light, turning it until the light reflected off one of its flat surfaces. “This has been in use.”
“I know. It was battlefield salvage,” said Mendoza. “Is that okay?”
“I can’t install it myself. You’ll have to assist me.” She flipped back a panel on her forearm and retrieved one of the bone rods that she’d modified: one side was razor sharp. “Do you know what to do?”
“I think so,” said Mendoza. She crouched down gingerly by Elinor as she bent her head forward, allowing access to the back of her neck. The scars there had been made deliberately, to act as a guide in an emergency situation when a qualified medical engineer wasn’t available.
“The small triangle,” she said, passing Mendoza the sharpened bone rod. “You have to cut along it, one and one half centimeters deep.”
“Okay.” Elinor heard a sharp intake of breath and sensed an increase in heart rate. Her hand snapped out, seizing Mendoza’s wrist. She could feel her pulse thumping beneath the metal of her fingers, getting faster. Mendoza’s bones were weak, bending even now under her grip. The strongest material within them was osseous tissue; it would be such a simple thing to crush her wrist.
“If your hand isn’t steady,” Elinor said, her head still bent forward, “then it would be better not to do it. The component is still operating within an acceptable efficiency range.”
“But it’s damaged, right? It’s getting worse?”
“Yes.”
“So I’ll do it. My hand won’t shake.” Elinor looked into Mendoza’s eyes and they, at least, were calm.
The metal stung as it cut into her skin, uncomfortable more than painful. Elinor felt the blade move around the three sides, angled slightly inwards, and then she forced herself not to wince as the small lump of skin and fat and muscle was dug out. “I see it,” said Mendoza. Elinor remained still, forced down the panic reaction as the crystal was removed. She held her breath as the new one was pressed down inside her. She felt it activate.
“That’s it,” she said. “I haven’t a flesh-kit.”
“Right,” said Mendoza. “Of course not.” Elinor pushed the lump of organic tissue she’d just removed back in. “Not sure that’s a good idea. Might cause an infection.”
“It’ll heal faster. My immune system will take care of any infection.” Elinor stood up, stretching her neck and running a diagnostic on the new component. “Feels good,” she said.
Mendoza look at her fingers, then rubbed her hands together. Elinor’s blood was designed to coagulate quickly; there wasn’t much to get rid of.
Mendoza came more and more often, and every time she brought some new joint or node or crystal. Elinor accepted each one and she grew stronger. She could feel her limbs respond more quickly, noticed how much faster and more precisely her fingers moved as she worked on reassembling the ankle joint of her leg.
Once she asked to keep the replaced piece – spare parts, even ones as degraded as hers, could always be useful – but Mendoza refused. Elinor said nothing else. The exchange was already more than fair to her; she did not want it to stop.
The day Mendoza brought the replenished fuel cells, Elinor smiled. Astonishing, the energy flowing through her now, the ease of thought and recall, the strength she felt in her metal limbs. It was a revelation, that energy, and it finally allowed her to question. “Why am I here?” she asked Mendoza. “My last orders were to report to this structure, and then there was nothing. Why?”
“Because you’re dangerous,” Mendoza told her, “and because there’s nowhere else for you to go.”
“I’m a soldier.”
“There’s no war now.” She paused. “Isn’t there a Geiger counter in amongst all those extra senses you’ve got?”
“I can withstand a high radiation environment. It’s not a danger to me.”
“Your organics reflect it, your mechanics absorb it,” said Mendoza, as though reciting.
“Yes.”
“I’ve been replacing your mechanics.”
“I was exposed.” She sounded uncertain.
“Yes. You don’t remember? You were damaged when you arrived here, didn’t you know why?”
“The damage extended to the crystal lattices in my left hemisphere.” She tapped her temple. “Brain damage,” she said. “Memory loss.”
“Well,” said Mendoza, “now you know, and that’s why no-one’s coming for you.”
“You don’t have organic upgrades,” said Elinor.
“No.”
“You don’t have a Geiger counter, either. How do you know you’re safe from the radiation?”
“I don’t.”
Elinor was silent a long moment, then asked, “Why are you here?”
“Because this is all I can do to help. The recruitment drives took over a third of my colony when this all started, and I lost someone very important to me.”
Elinor stared at her for a long moment, then she nodded. “Me.”
“Yes.” She took a breath and stepped closer to Elinor. “The war is over, but the soldiers are still here and they’ve been forgotten, abandoned. They’re considered too dangerous to even be allowed near another organic.”
“Except me,” Elinor said.
Mendoza hesitated, then said, “Yes, now.”
“I can’t leave,” she said. “I was ordered here.”
“I see,” said Mendoza, and left.
-
Over the next few weeks, Mendoza stayed silent when she visited, and it was only ever long enough for her to hand over her new component and take the damaged one in return.
Elinor found her strength and energy returning. She was alive again – and she could do nothing. She was here; she was trapped.
She had her orders.
“Wait!” she called under the door one morning as her nutrients were shoved through. The clank of her jailor’s pistons ceased.
“You talking again in there?” he said, and she could hear the clank of his jaw, vanity keeping it moving even when there was no-one there to see.
“I want to speak to someone.”
“You speak to me. This is my place.”
“An officer,” said Elinor.
“Ain’t none of those around here.”
“I want to speak to an officer,” said Elinor. “I want to appeal against my being held here. I at least want to know my crime.”
“Eh, eh,” said the jailor with a whistle of super-heated steam. “What’s that, then? That a lot of demands there, that is. Sounds a bit rowdy to me, bit close to insurrection.”
“I’m just talking to you.”
“Don’t like it,” said the jailor. “Just you stop it or I’ll give my stinger a try on you. Not tested it since we got them after the riot, not on a live one. You want me to test it on you?”
“No.”
“Good, good. Best not have any more demands then. Can’t have them, can’t be doing with them. Busy now, getting on with things.” He clanked away, the faint burr of his voice muttering still audible until he left the floor.
Elinor stared at her nutrients, then kicked them away, cracking the little plastic container and splattering grey sludge across the far wall.
“I want to leave,” she told Mendoza.
“Good,” Mendoza said.
“I am safe now, aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“The jailor’s armed.”
Mendoza nodded. “They’re ready for another riot.”
“But I’m fast now, and strong. He’s an old model.”
“That wall,” said Mendoza, pointing to the one directly behind Elinor, “is one hundred and two centimeters thick. Beyond it is the sea.” She left then.
It was an odd sort of goodbye, not one Elinor was familiar with. Her crystal synapses took the new information and began automatic calculations, informed her a few minutes later that given the thickness of the wall and the material it was composed of, she could now punch through it with acceptable damage to her fingers and elbow joints.
It felt good, using her strength again, felt good to feel the building shaking around her, the cries of alarm. The stone chipped and cracked before her and finally shattered outwards in a great explosion of rock and concrete. She felt the sun on her face and she breathed: the air tasted of salt.
She climbed up into the hole and looked down onto a whirling storm of grey sea. The shouts were louder now, closer. She didn’t have much time.
She turned off her optics and relied on her human eye. It was a long fall, and the waves hit the cliff face with an unremitting fury. She noted the juts and crags of sharp rock spiking out of the sea and assumed there would be even more dangers hidden beneath the surface.
Still, there was a chance she could survive the fall. She did not calculate what it was. She didn’t think it mattered very much.
She took in a great breath and looked up at the sky, stretching her arms wide.
She jumped, and, for just a moment, was glad she could no longer feel fear.