A Torn and Twisted Earth, pt 01.

         Bam...bam...bam...bam...
The slaughter drones out there sounded hungry. Mantyl had wanted to search for more samples in the dusty basement, but judging from the rhythmic bangs of metal against the sturdy polymer door, she didn't have enough time. She was just lucky they hadn't figured out how she actually got in here: the central elevator shaft was exposed to the open air where the top of the stratoscraper had been blown away. She'd spotted the entrance and figured she had a perfect ingress option into the tower. Unfortunately, the drones had caught her scent. They weren't very bright, but they were exceedingly good bloodhounds. She started snatching any vials within reach in the dimly lit basement. They were scattered atop of the stainless steel tables and inside the rusted cabinets. Most of them had no internal refrigeration left and were rotten, but sometimes you could coax new life from ruined samples. She stepped over to the wedged-open elevator doors.

         Mantyl wasn't supposed to go on these missions on her own, but she wasn't going to sit idly back at home like some kind of prewar bum. She wanted?needed?to do her research. It was her life's work, and she wasn't going to slow it down just because there weren't enough roughnecks to protect her. She stepped through the still warm circle she'd cut in the doors and stared up the elevator shaft. She nearly tripped on the crenellated roof of the elevator car beneath her. It was because her prosthetic leg. The cheap stick of metal was a disgrace in this day and age. If she had the parts she could make one with full biometric integration. But no, nobody had time to get Mantyl parts for her goddamned leg! They were too busy making TANKS! Really? The folks in the Applied Force Department get 60-ton killing machines, and a bioresearch investigator can't even get an effective prosthetic?
For perhaps the hundredth time, Mantyl snorted at the irony. All of the funding was going to the shooters in AF, but it was her and her people that were going to actually solve the world's problems.

         The small light at the top of the elevator shaft was so high up that it seemed like a little pinprick in an endless dark fabric. A rope dangled down next to her. She affixed the end to the harness around her torso, and tugged once on the rope. Just as she did, she heard a crash in the basement. The rope vibrated, and then grew taught as the clacking of metal on tile floor could be heard. The rope finally started lifting her. She swayed from side to side and rose off the ground. Just as she reached ten feet in the air, there was a scuffle outside the elevator doors and two bright lights poked through the hole in the doors. Above the two lights was a series of black plates. Those were eyes. The whole structure pressed into the shaft carried on a long trunk of metal tubing and plates, a neck of sorts. Behind this several limbs grabbed onto the sides of the door and the ground, pulling the last of its sluggish bulk through. This consisted of two spindly grasshopper legs and a shiny, organic abdomen of a mottled brown color. The slaughter drone's clawed arms rose up, and almost grazing the sole of her shoe and the bottom of the metal leg. It made no noise other than a subtle clicking and continued stretching out its arms in a stupid, vain attempt to reach her.
"Yeah, fuck you too." She snarled at it.
The creature recoiled its arms and then did something unsettling. It pressed them against the walls of the elevator shaft and began pushing off against the walls. Its multitude of clawed metal limbs scratched against the concrete and metal shaft. Foot by foot, it began to crawl vertically up the elevator shaft, towards Mantyl.
"Oh shit." She hoped the lifter's winch would speed the hell up.

         She continued to dangle like a morsel above the crawling drone. The thing seemed to be keeping up with her, if not gaining. Behind it, she could see the white lights of others. The one in front kept its spotlights fixed directly on her as it climbed, the blank black surfaces of its eyes staring up at her.
"You know, it's impolite to stare at a lady like that."
It clicked.
She sighed "Nobody has manners anymore." She reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a stick of gum out. She pulled the wrapper off and stuck it in her mouth for a few moments. She swilled some spit around the thing and then bit into it, altering its shape. She then spit out the little square. The sticky blob stuck directly to one of the drone's eyes. It's long neck swayed with distress, and it clawed at its eyes angrily. Mantyl silently counted to herself.
Nine...Ten...
With a small thunderclap the sticky explosive went off in the drone's face. Its head blew apart, pieces bouncing around the shaft. Mantyl felt herself lifted by the shockwave, and her human foot burned with heat and pressure. She looked down to see the red-hot end of the creature's metal giraffe neck sway mindlessly, before the entire body gave out, and slammed into the drones beneath it. Drone after drone collapsed under the weight of the ones above it. Mantyl grinned as she listened to the crashing echo through the shaft.

         She reached the lifter a minute later. He ears were beginning to ache from the change in pressure. The lifter hummed and buzzed like a giant bee. The winch pulled her right into the central hold, a ten-foot long space for holding equipment. She sealed the bay door and stepped into the cockpit. She flopped down in the empty seat, breathing heavily. She needed to get back into shape if she was going to do this more often. She took a moment to look through the canopy at the city. The stratoscrapers stretched far into the distance like spines on the back of some great hedgehog. Below them, a wavy surface, an ocean of apartments and stores and commercial centers. All of it was blown to hell. It was called High Altitude Massive Effect Cluster bombing, and it had turned what was once a city of millions into a ghost town. Of course, a couple tactical nukes and bio agents had helped it along as well. But it was the bombing that really captured the imagination. During the HAMEC bombing it had rained fire for weeks on end. Mantyl shuddered. She clicked in a set of coordinates on the archaic keyboard and took a deep breath as the vehicle set off.

After maybe an hour, Mantyl could see the vague shape of orb on the horizon. She took the craft off Turing-pilot and clasped the joystick. The lifter moved quickly and attentively in response to her movements. She engaged the horizontal thrusters and jetted off towards the sphere in the distance.

         As she flew the many-rotored lifter back home, a viewscreen flashed red with a radio alert. Mantyl flicked a switch and spoke into the mike.
"You rang?"
"Jesus, Mantyl, we've been calling for nearly an hour. I was going to send out a lifter."
"No worries, Jack, I'm fine. I got some new samples."
"Of course you did, you and your goddamned samples. Listen, next time you wait, damn it! There's a reason we use security details. Why didn't you answer me?"
"Relax, Jack, you're going to pop a vein. I ran into some drones but I used a sticky on them. "
"You got into combat!!" He yelled. Mantyls ear hurt.
"Hardly. It was just a goodbye present to some of them who'd been tailing my lifter. Anyway, I couldn't talk to you because I was in the interference zone. Radio waves were two clogged with signals from the drones and Turings."
"Shit. Tyl, change channels to condition 960, will you?"
"Okay." She turned the dial to the rarely used method of encryption that changed the EM signature of the communication of every decisecond.
"This line's scrambled." She said.
"Tyl, You can't keep doing this. I was scared shitless."
"I was fine, Jack. You go out into the city all the time, without a lifter."
"Yeah, except I'm followed by thirty people and a gun that can blow up an apartment building. You had neither of those things."
"And I made it fine, which should indicate something about our respective martial prowess." She chuckled.
"This isn't funny Tyl! I don't want to lose you."
The only sound was the whirr of the rotors and the wind outside.
"So we're here now."
"Yes we're here dammit! You think this wouldn't? I understand why you don't want to appear close to me to everyone else, and I've respected that. That doesn't mean, however, that my feelings aren't real. If anything happened to you...I don't know what I'd do."
"It's not your job to worry about me."
"Wha- it's not a job! I care about you! It's not something I can put away! I can't just switch from soldier Jack to lover Jack with the flip of a fucking switch like y...um..."
"Like me."
"No, that's not what I-"
"I know it doesn't look like it, but I do care too. But I can live with it, because I always had to. You spend half you life out in the city with you comrades, and not once have I complained because I know there's nowhere you'd rather be."
"Listen, Tyl I'm sorry."
"The thing is Jack, this isn't about our relationship, its not about us. What I'm doing is about everybody, and I think it's worth it. The risk is worth it."
She looked down at the controls and sighed.
"Are you okay with that? Because if not, you're wasting my time, and I have precious little of that left. I'd rather spend it with you than anybody else, but if this isn't going to work then I'm not going to waste any more of it."
"Mantyl Emmerich, I'm with you to the end of the line."
Mantyl realized that there was single tear flowing down her face. That was odd for her.
Jack continued, "Just stay safe, alright? I just want you to be okay."
"I'll see you after I land."

         She was now hovering over her home. The Containment Sphere had once been a maximum-security prison, with only one entrance. When the most recent war had flooded the continent with Von Neumann drone, it had served as a last refuge against the self-replicating monsters. The metal globe was fully three kilometers in diameter, and now housed the seat of power for the United States Provisional Government.

         "You are cleared for descent. Sphere is rotating now."
Under her, the massive metal surface of the sphere rotated until the single circular opening in it's casing was revealed. The hole rose until it faced the sky, and under it, the landing pads were now revealed. Mantyl lowered the lifter slowly into the crevice, and landed at one of the many circular pits. She shut down the vehicle, letting the Turing pilot finish the post flight checklist as she walked out.
         One of the Applied Force lifter pilots, a man named Silt, grinned at her with an engine grease covered face:
"Ah, the dread Captain Emmerich, back from the trash seas. Ahoy matey, how be your plundering?"
She had been plagued by "Captain Emmerich" jokes since soon after she got her prosthetic. To be fair, it did look exactly like a cybernetic peg leg, just an aluminum and titanium pole sticking out of a black metal knee. She hadn't been surprised by the practice. Good taste was not something regularly exercised by those who ventured out into the deadly chasms of the city for a living. Mantyl calmly flipped off the man, who wandered off to get supplies.

In a few moments, a dark haired man thundered down the rusted stairwell to the lifter pad.
"Well there you are! Good job on not being dead." He said in a tone that belied the fear he'd experienced just minutes before. The man definitely had the 'Applied Force' look: muscly, day old stubble and tousled hair, well worn jeans and a significant cybernetic augmentation; in this case his grey-black left arm with it's large, clawlike combat hand. His green eyes pierced everything he looked at with laser beam intensity.
He stepped forward as though to hug her, but then probably realized that there was no shortage of personnel on the flight deck that were watching them.
"How was your unauthorized, highly dangerous flight, Ms. Emmerich?"
"Rewarding," She replied, hefting her backpack, clinking with vials "The stratoscraper once belonged to General Biologics. In the first years of the Pakistan-India war they started to develop targeted bio-agents. By the time Double-U Double-U four came around they had the most advanced and selective bioagents in the industry. If the bacteria spread too far, you could wipe it out with a radio signal. Made bioweapons feasible for the first time."
Midway through this speech, Mantyl had begun walking away from the platform, and Jack had followed.
"Thanks for the history lesson." Jack said. He looked around and then whispered:
"That's the hello I get?"
"Just acting casual for the cameras."
"Oh right, like you didn't just want to show off your shiny biotech knowledge."
Mantyl grinned "Maybe a little."
The two cyborgs made their way out to the edge of the platform. Arrayed below them were the glowing lights of the enclosed city. Mantyl smiled.
Everything will be like it was again.

         Seven hundred meters away from where the clandestine couple walked, man with tired and sagged shoulders drank coffee while reading his viewscreen. His brown skin was splotched blue and green where a selective virus had been injected to kill cancer cells. So far, the treatment wasn't working, which was a problem because he had work left to do. He looked up to his assistant.
"What did she find?"
"Unknown as of yet. She'll upload her results to us after she gets to the lab. Probably bioweapons from the war years."
"Does she think that she can synthesize the agent?"
"She hasn't given any hints on her timetable, sir. I think she understands the politics of command too well to give a hard deadline. She wont let anybody pull the plug on her project, and creating false expectations would be a way to make that happen."
"She always was a smart one. Keep tabs on her progress, but make sure she doesn't get suspicious."
The assistant nodded, and then opened his mouth again. Then closed it.
"Speak your mind." The tired man said.
"Sir, You know...if you asked, you could probably have her synthesize something...a bacteria...for you. Something that targets your cancer."
The diseased man nodded languidly. "I could." He started at the little viewscreen, hard. The letters and numbers and background picture blurred as his eyes defocused, until it was simply a mange of shape and color. He continued:
"But the D7 agent is top priority. Any available time she has should be spent on it. Maybe after we synthesize that..."
The assistant nodded curtly once again "I understand sir." He walked out.
The tired man leaned back in his chair and looked up. At the center of the oak table he sat at, a globe floated above the table, held in place by magnets. The man reached out and brushed it with his finger. It wobbled slightly and began to turn. The man smiled.
Everything will be like it was again.