A low, reverberating trill traveled in all directions, until Cassie plopped down on a bench nestled under a shady tree in the very core of the city. The effort of emitting waves of infrasound taxed the exhausted Augment, leaving her nerves raw and patience stretched thin. She’d pinned her last hopes on this bustling wasteland of overcrowded humanity to yield favorable results but had been confounded by her lack of progress. With a final desperate plea, she sent a weak call and strained to listen for a response.
It took every fiber of her being to concentrate on ignoring the din of the collective human noises around her. Busy city people living busy little lives created a cacophony of sound that smashed into her like a brick wall, limiting her ability to locate her quarry. This persisted until Cassie clenched her jaw and perceived the gentle jitter of a returning echo in her ears. At last, she heard a reply.
Six days had crawled by like a withering serpent in the scorching late-July heat before Cassie found what she’d been searching for. The returning low-frequency rumble of a fellow Augment rang in her ears and Cassie hustled in the direction of a lesser-used back alley away from human interference. Her eyes boggled and ears twitched to pick up the lingering trail of his signal until Cassie found herself secluded in the dank, humid underbelly of the city. Before she could orient herself to this unfamiliar location, a hateful voice seethed from the shadows.
“What do you want, Asteras?” Cruxuss growled from the shaded cover of his temporary hovel. “You’ve been calling for days now, and I can’t stand to listen to you anymore. State your business and leave me be.”
“I have something you want, and you have something I need.” Khazmine dropped her taxing camouflage and informed him while triangulating his position in the alley. “Do you remember that rainy night in the bus shelter? Well, I salvaged your nodes and made a few repairs…”
“What about them?” Cruxuss sneered. “Do you think I have any interest in your little pilfered trinkets? If I remember correctly, you stripped them from my body and left me for dead. I have no need of false charity or—”
“Would you please shut up and let me finish?” Khazmine snapped at Cruxuss as her leather gloves creaked under her clenching fists. “I took a closer look at them, Crux. They’re all new, aren’t they?”
The lurking Augment remained silent at her observation and Khazmine couldn’t detect a hint of motion from his concealed hiding place.
“We both know you didn’t come by them honestly.” Khazmine’s lip tugged into a snarl as she continued. “Who did you tear apart to get them, hmm? Friends, family, or colleagues, perhaps?”
“It’s none of your d*mned business, deceiver.” Cruxuss hissed back with a venomous contempt for Khazmine’s accusations.
“You’re right, it isn’t. And do you know what? I don’t care who you got them from.” Khazmine admitted as she shook her head. “My guess is you caught a few weak-willed, newly minted models and helped yourself to their Upgrades, yes?”
His silence was all the confession she needed.
“You picked their carcasses clean and made off like a ragged bandit, didn’t you?” Khazmine narrowed in on where the other Augment was hiding as she pinpointed his subtle movements. “I applaud your ambition but not your methods, Crux. If the Makers find out—”
“They won’t find out.”
“But if they did, you could be scrapped for treason against your own people.” Khazmine pressed.
“To hell with the risk. I just want to go home.” Cruxuss betrayed the loneliness and anger in his voice as he faltered for a response.
The drive to return to the Progenitor's Cove was seeded into all Augments, and Cruxuss was unable to defy his programming. Even after destroying countless peers and comrades, Cruxuss felt compelled to return to the place of his Conversion and be reconfigured at the hands of the Makers. With luck, they wouldn’t care about his ill-gotten Upgrades, and instead, reward Cruxuss for completing his mission to this backwater planet.
“I’m close to finishing this blasted mission and have even found a new Summoner. All I need is to find where the vein of crystals is hidden and get that skinny whelp to send me back. Even if I can’t find her original lens, the faceting crystals will work just as well.” Cruxuss defended. “Then the Progenitors won’t care about my methods if they get results.”
“You’ll never make it.” Khazmine lowered her posture and prepared herself for an attack. “Not if that low power warning is anything to go by.”
She was right. Of the processes he could control, Cruxuss couldn’t stop the distinctive sound made by a low power warning that faintly traveled to Khazmine’s ears. He confronted the reality that stealing the life-force of his measly organic meals wasn’t enough to keep him alive. Cruxuss had to get his greedy hands on a new power source if he had any hope of surviving, and Khazmine had offered him a tempting target.
“And before you try taking a bite out of me, you may want to recalibrate your expectations.” Khazmine warned. “I am not a known murderer, but I will defend myself and my Summoner from you or anyone else who threatens us, make no mistake.”
“What is it you want then?” Cruxuss inched towards the edge of his shadowed recess.
“A trade.” Khazmine smiled. “I’ll give you the means to fix your camouflage so you can hunt again and mingle amongst humans without drawing attention to yourself. All I want in exchange is your dampening field network.”
“What makes you think I have something expensive like that?” Cruxuss winced.
“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” Khazmine scowled. Iris returning home alive after their encounter was all the evidence she needed of its existence. “I know you have one, and it’s too power-draining for you to use anyway. Just give it up.”
“No. It’s not enough.” Cruxuss balked at her suggestion and hatched a counteroffer. “I want your power cable, too.”
“What? Impossible!” Khazmine rubbed unconsciously at her forearm panel in a protective gesture. “I need that in order to recharge.”
“Exactly.” Cruxuss smirked as he emerged from the shadows. The gaping hole in his face sparked with unpleasant arcs of electricity as his camouflage misfired. “Without a cable, you will have to find organic morsels to drain dry. Turnabout is fair play, eh deceiver?”
So that’s his offer. Khazmine maintained eye contact as Cruxuss circled like a starved wolf salivating over a scrap of meat. She would have to give up several of her emergency plates and nodes to repair his camouflage circuits, and hand over her power cable as well. In exchange, she would finally have access to the one Upgrade she could never hope to procure from the Progenitors: a dampening field network.
Why that no-good, dirty dealing… Khazmine tensed.
It was too good of an opportunity to ignore. Dampening fields were incredibly valuable node bundles that created a protective barrier between an Augment’s plates and organic matter, preventing them from shocking things on contact. Khazmine could still perform manual power drains with her hands like Cruxuss could, but she would have control over its effectiveness. With this single Upgrade, Khazmine could do the one thing she longed for most in her lonely, inorganic existence—to embrace her “little brothers” again.
She knew the dampening field network was useless to the damaged Augment, but Cruxuss found its value in its tradability. He could ask for any node in her body, and it would still not be enough to barter directly with the Progenitors for this premium node bundle. Khazmine ran a quick diagnostic in the background as she considered her options. The screen listed off her own Upgrades, including her adaptive camouflage, her cooling matrix, her—By the Makers, I forgot… Khazmine concealed a brief flicker of a smile.
“Well? What do you say?” Cruxuss unhooked two of the dampening field nodes from his neck and cradled them in the palm of his hand. He clicked the anterior plates on his chest and abdomen to prepare to remove the remainder of the node network. “Do we have a bargain?”
Khazmine resisted the urge to reach out and touch the precious nodes. My little brothers. My family… The nodes were close, so tantalizingly close. She shook faintly with anticipation at the deliverance of her fondest wish. All Khazmine had to do was make a choice…
Late that evening, when the last of the office staff dwindled out of GC&S, Warren spotted Iris at her desk, rounding up her meager belongings into her pathetic little purse. The results of the investigation into his treatment of Iris were still pending, but he couldn’t help but worry about being censured or punished for abusing Ms. Alcazar. For the time being, Warren had avoided using harsh words or tormenting his office specialist until the investigators released their findings. There was no sense in feeding his accusers anything that could be used against him, so Warren was on his best behavior with the useless weakling that haunted the desk by his door.
He spread his fingers in the gap between two horizontal office window blinds to spot Iris lingering for a moment to text Khazmine again. After a pause, she finally sighed deeply once a message popped up from the wandering Augment. Warren watched as Iris turned off her task light, tidied her desk, and made her way for the elevators, knowing that a posh chauffeur was waiting for her on the garage level. The silver lighter clicked and shut in his hand as Warren fiddled with the striker. He hated seeing Iris happily stride away from her post and allowed the blinds to close as she departed.
Finally. I thought she’d never leave.
Warren closed his office blinds and resumed his restless search for a way out of his dire financial straits. He’d had to cash in on nearly all his dirty dealings with stolen products, launch surplus supplies, and corporate favors to pay back Mr. Matheson’s cash advance from months back, leaving him practically penniless. Warren scanned through the GC&S pipeline for options and noticed a few possibilities for a quick profit. There were his old standby methods of skimming off the top of product sales’ profit margins, “mis-shipping” products to his personal warehouse near the official drop zones, and performing some creative accounting with his expenses.
His other options were bolder and more daring. Warren had recently attended a new product research meeting and had been granted access to review a new prototype that had gained traction around the office. With luck, he could get a hold of the schematics and sell them, or leak information about it to competitors, or…
The idea struck him like a bolt of lightning and Warren sought to harness the flash of inspiration as much as possible. He hastily scribbled a few cryptic details on a scrap of paper, folded it, and pocketed the note before leaving the office for the evening. If all went well, Warren would finally transcend the limits of this crummy office and launch his gilded escape pod as GC&S burned to cinders.
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