The Story Dig Part 2 Finale

Hey guys! Sorry this is late and that I am so, so bad to keeping on a schedule. Here’s the conclusion to my garbage sci-fi story! If you need to read up on the first part of this story, click here.

“Got it!” You almost choke on your sandwich as Grace shouts out of nowhere. “C’mon, no time for that!” She shakes the container of the nebulous WH1 in front of your face. “Let’s go.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Fine, fine. But eat while we walk.” With that, she strode back to the porthole and crouched on the edge of it, opening it and waiting for you to finish the last of your sandwich. “Now let’s go!”

Even now, after some sleep, Spirit was still shocked at Renaya’s words. Fifty thousand dollars. Only the richest people had that much money; necessary services were usually paid for with barter.

What did Kodyn do to acquire such debt?

The problem-solving part of Spirit’s brain wouldn’t rest until it had picked apart every mystery. She groaned and kneaded her pillow, hoping to fall back asleep.

Sleep–and her racing brain–was not kind. Spirit slid out of bed and tiptoed into the hall, letting her mind and feet rove.

Her mind snapped back to attention when she heard a creak. A door a little farther down the hall opened and someone slipped out. Nobody could’ve snuck in; Wayde was at the security cameras and the electric fence was back in working order.

“Hello?” Spirit called. The person turned; it was Kodyn.

“Spirit,” he said, eyes snapping. “What’re you doing?”

“I should ask you the same question.” Spirit’s heart raced like a stallion on a track, and she could see blinking lights in her vision, indicating her cyborg implants were attempting to calm her. “You know it’s the middle of the night, right?”

“I needed to find the restroom.”

“It’s that way.” Spirit pointed.

“Thank you.” He walked off, and Spirit ran.

Explosive fear rattled her as she skidded down the hall and burst into the security room. Wayde was waiting, leaning against the counter.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Why do you think he owes fifty thousand dollars?”

“Beats me.” Wayde wiped some dust off one of the computer screens. “I’m more curious as to where he and Taera came from.”

“There’s something off about them. Do you think he’s connected to the other four?”

“Not really.” Wayde pointed to the monitor. “Look, he’s coming back down the hall.” Kodyn came into view, strolling down the hall and into his room.

***

Spirit’s brain was whirring with theories. Hopefully, she thought, Renaya would be able to shed some light on the mystery. She tapped on the door before stepping into Renaya’s holding room.

The girl sneered. “What do you want?”

“Why in the world does Kodyn owe your boss?”

Renaya rolled her eyes. “I was wondering when one of you dimwits would ask! He stole and sold several our boss’s valuables and kept the money, right before he disappeared.”

Spirit let her brain process for a moment. “Thanks.” She walked out of the room, certain of what she had to do. Sneaking into Kodyn’s empty room, she opened his backpack, searching through it.

Nothing. She’d been so certain! She hurled the backpack against the wall and turned to storm out when she heard a dull clink.

Picking the backpack up, she set everything on the bed and began to feel around. The backpack had a false bottom! Ripping up the Velcro flap, Spirit reached into the compartment, and felt something cold. She pulled her hand out and gasped.

She was holding gold coins, stamped with the garlanded letter I of the Intersect, a notorious crime syndicate.

Kodyn’d had dealings with some of the most dangerous people in the world.

Warnings flashed in Spirit’s retinal overlay as she heard footsteps in the hall.

Blood pounded in Spirit’s ears as she shoved Kodyn’s stuff back into his backpack and slid under the bed.

The door opened and she watched Kodyn’s boots run in. She heard him lift something off the bed–she guessed it was the backpack. Then he sprinted out the door. Spirit was about to sigh when an explosion rocked the world. Hearing screams, Spirit hauled herself out from under the bed and bolted to the nearest window.

There was a gaping hold in the now-shorted-out fence, and as the smoke cleared she could see several figures advancing, one of which held a rotary cannon.

“What’s happening?” Coltin appeared at Spirit’s shoulder.

“I don’t know. Where is everyone?”

“In the mess hall.”

“Open the door!” barked one of the people. Spirit complied, even though every part of her tried to resist. As soon as she’d twisted the doorknob, the door banged open and the intruders burst in. One of the men slammed Spirit against the wall, and white rockets burst in her vision. “Coltin!” she screamed. The boy tried to run, but one of the man grabbed him, pushing him into a kneeling position and pressing a pistol to the base of his skull.

Spirit knew who these men were from their white bandannas and wings tattooed on their foreheads. They were the Fallen Angels, a gang composed mainly of the rebel sons of people who’d been in power before the Hardening Year.

“Where is he?” the man with the rotary cannon asked. Spirit took a moment to wet her parched lips, but the man was impatient. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Kodyn!”

Spirit didn’t say anything, wincing as the man holding her smashed her into the wall again, warnings blaring in her brain. One of the gangsters, who’d gone down the hall to check things out, shouted. “Hey Gaerry! There’s more people here!”

“Who?” called the man with the machine gun.

“Just a bunch of kids.”

Gaerry turned back to Spirit and Coltin. “Bring ’em,” he said.

“Hands behind your head,” said Spirit’s captor, letting her go. She complied reluctantly and was marched into the mess hall at gunpoint.

Nayel, Fyster, Shaw, and Wayde were there, kept at bay with the shotgun one of the Angels had trained on them. Where were Kodyn and Taera?

“Sit.” Spirit slid into the seat next to Wayde, and the two shared looks.

“I’m not a kid,” said Wayde under his breath. Spirit kicked him under the table.

“Where’s Renaya?” Gaerry asked another.

“Gonna check the building.” He disappeared.

“Renaya’s a Fallen Angel?” blurted Fyster.

Gaerry turned smoothly to the boy, a small smile playing on his lips. “So Renaya’s here?” He considered Fyster’s face. “We knew that already.”

Renaya stepped into the room, rubbing her wrists and tossing her hair out of her face, throwing Wayde a cheeky wink. “Sorry to foil your plans.” She turned to Gaerry. “Kodyn’s here.”

“Good.”

Kodyn had sold valuable items to the Fallen Angels, too? Spirit shut her eyes. “Search the building,” demanded Gaerry. “We’re gonna find him if it’s the last thing we do.”

***

As dusk fell, Kodyn and Taera were still missing. Gaerry’d helped himself to the food in the pantry, and him and his gang were feasting on the rations, while Spirit and company just watched and went hungry. Spirit clenched her fist under the table, stomach tight with hunger and anger.

After they’d eaten, Gaerry marshalled everyone into one of the dormitory-style bedrooms. One of the guys, Ifan, held a tablet out to him. “We’ve scanned the building, but there’s no sign of life. We’ve done some exploring outside, but it’s too dark and there’s monsters out there.”

“Good job. Now we just have to do what we can. Did you send for the second chapter?”

“Yep.”

Gaerry contemplated the prisoners, who were sitting in the corner of the room. “What’re their names?” he asked Renaya.

“I don’t know all of them, but the cyborg girl is Spirit, the scruffy one is Wayde, and the ugly little one is Coltin.” Coltin’s shoulders slumped, and Spirit bumped his shoulder.

“What about the rest of you?” Asked Gaerry. “What are your names?”

The three looked at Wayde, who nodded slightly. “I’m Nayel, that’s Shaw and Fyster.”

Gaerry rubbed his jaw and walked over, grabbing Spirit’s arm and hauling her up as she yelped. Pinning her arms down, he grabbed her chin and turned it from side to side. “She’s got some good implants in her.” He fingered a spot behind her ear. “Speakers, small tools, even some jet thrusters by the look of it.”

“Well yeah,” said Ifan, “but what good are some implants if you can’t use ‘em without her consent?”

Gaerry grinned. “Oh, but you can.”

“How? They’re installed in her.”

“That’s the beauty of surgery.” Gaerry sneered at Spirit, who’d gone pale. It seemed like her cyborg brain hadn’t stopped warning her of danger, and they continued to do so. “I mean, why would someone waste good programming on some castoff who would’ve rotted in a ditch anyway?” He pushed Spirit to one of the gang members who wore a set of blinking metal bracelets. “Whaddya think? Would any of those parts be salvageable?”

Spirit knew very few cyborgs survived implant removal, and those that did were crippled for life. She squirmed and wiggled as the gangster prodded her face. “Quit moving,” he growled as he turned her around and lifted her hair to view the maker plate at the base of her neck. Spirit fought harder, but the man grabbed her chin and brushed her hair aside. He whistled. “This isn’t just some wretch who needed implants, Gaerry. This is an Oxford cyborg, first class.”

“What?” Gaerry grabbed Spirit and squinted at the small metal plate on her neck. “So these are cutting-edge implants and tech…that could be worth a fortune. If we don’t find Kodyn, we can take her instead.”

“Wait a minute.” Wayde stood up. “What are you guys talking about? You can’t be serious. Most of her circuitry is in her spinal cord.”

“There are two ways around that. One is to keep her alive and use a restraining chip–” Gaerry fished a small silicon square out of his pocket and tossed it into the air, watching it glint before catching it and putting it back. “–and two is to cut the circuitry out.”

Fyster wrinkled his nose. “Won’t that kill her?”

“If the circuitry isn’t embedded into the spine, it could just cripple her. But if it is, then yeah. We’d have to cut her whole spine out.”

Fyster blinked, going pale and putting his hand to his throat. “Oh.”

“Of course,” Ifan said, “if we’d use the restraining chip, she’d do whatever we wanted her to do, without resistance. We could use an intelligent cyborg like her.”

Spirit’s heart rose to her throat, threatening to choke her. Wayde looked at her, seeing her wide eyes and flared nostrils. “What if we could pay the debt?”

“Then we might not need to take her,” said Gaerry, sizing Wayde up. “But I doubt you’ve got the money.”

“We can get it.”

Gaerry laughed and turned to metal-bracelet-guy. “Can you assess her worth?”

“Sure can.” He grabbed Spirit and took the restraining chip from Gaerry, reaching to open her maker plate and insert the chip there.

“No!” Screamed Spirit, flailing. “Please!”

Gaerry strode up and backhanded her across the face, so hard that her head snapped against her shoulder. He grabbed her face and slapped her again. Blood poured from her nose and Nayel let out a strangled sob. “If you cooperate, this won’t be so hard on you, yeah?”

Spirit turned to Wayde with wide eyes as Bracelet Guy inserted the chip into her with a small click. There was a subtle hum from inside her, then Spirit started to scream. Pain seized her, starting from the base of her neck and traveling down her spine to her extremities. Smoke rose from the small exhaust port in her shoulder. Her retinal overlay went haywire, lines of green and white text scrolling rapidly across it.

She couldn’t take it anymore. With one last scream, her head lolled forward as her vision clouded.

The dark, dingy world of the story crumbled into nothingness, and you and Grace swam towards the door. You stepped out of the world, and Grace shut the porthole and began to tag it.

“That was horrible!” You stared down at the porthole in astonishment. “That was…that was horrible.”

“Pretty dark, wasn’t it?” Grace stood, dusting off her hands. She was smudged with the grime of the apocalyptic world, and as she smeared something off your forehead, you guessed you were too. “Let’s get back to camp. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Great. Come on.”

***

This is pretty long.

Since you already know the inspiration for the story, I want to touch on Spirit’s backstory a little bit. Before the Hardening Year she was a student at Oxford. Since scientists had been predicting the Hardening Year for a while, Oxford decided they wanted to create cyborgs to try and prepare the world. They ran a program that many students signed up for, but the students had no idea they’d be turned into cyborgs. Afterwards, the new cyborgs were put into stasis until a computer program decided the Hardening Year was over and let them out. Spirit is upset that she’s lost part of her humanity, and she has no clue what happened to her family.

This story is actually pretty angsty *laughs nervously*

That’s all for today. I’ll try to put out a post next week, but until then, be blessed!

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