The V.I.C.I. Diaries: Valley of the Damned (Part 7)

[DukeNukem 2417]

“You'll never save them all, you know.”

Vicki ignored the voice of Faceless as the elevator descended. The hallucinations (what else am I going to call them?) had been getting more and more vivid with each occurance, but they were beginning to feel less like errant code or glitches in her system and more like.....

“More like I'm actually standing near you,” Faceless hissed. “Like I'm in this elevator, right now---”

“You're in a hospital room, chained to a bed, doped up to the eyeballs on sedatives because you scream every time you move,” Vicki shot back. “What I'm hearing and talking to right now is just a stupid image that only I can see or here---an image you planted in my mind when you stabbed me through the head.” Her gaze never wavered from the closed elevator doors. “Even if you can 'read my mind' and all that crap, you can't make me kill myself or anything else like that---you threw your hand the first time when you made me think Ash was you, so my firewalls have been at maximum strength ever since then.”

The image of Faceless shook his head. “Always trying to think ahead of me....on any other day, I'd admire it.”

“Yeah, well, on any other day, I'd be shut off and running debugs on myself to clear every last trace of you from my memory---”

Faceless materialized directly in front of the brunette gynoid, and for a brief moment, she temporarily forgot that the figure wasn't the real Butcher of Lake Gilmour. Those eyes...they have that same look he had when I beat him....that look of complete hatred.... “Wiping your memory won't save you, Vicki,” the image growled. “Nothing---even death---can erase your pain.”

“I never said I wanted to erase my pain,” Vicki countered. “Running away from pain won't help me overcome it....”

Predictably, the figure of Faceless laughed. “So you admit that you enjoy pain?”

“There's a difference between enjoying pain and acknowledging that it makes you human...which is something you probably don't even care about---”

A ping interrupted Vicki's words, mere seconds before the elevator door opened---followed immediately by a blinding flash and a slight ringing in the brunette gynoid's ears. Seconds later, she recovered---and Faceless (or his residual image) had disappeared yet again.

Even stranger, the figure of Elena Vlatko stood in the doorway, smiling.

“You?!”

“Me,” Elena nodded. “You seem surprised, Agent Lawson.”

“Well, yeah! I mean....the last time I saw you, you had a hole in your stomach, and Boris Vlatko was trying to get you repaired....I thought you'd been scrapped!”

The Russian gynoid shook her head. “I nearly was, to be honest...but after Boris shot Faceless in the back, he spared no expense to bring me back from the brink of destruction. We cut our ties with the Coalition, of course, and Boris vowed to repay you for not letting Faceless kill him.” She glanced past Vicki, into the elevator car; “It seems your optical/aural sensors are no longer picking up the stray transmission I detected,” she added. “You are feeling okay now, I hope?”

“I am, thanks.” Vicki took one last glance around the car. “What did you do?”

“It would be better if I didn't tell you,” Elena admitted, “in case I have to use that trick again.”

Vicki sighed; “Fair enough. So....I'm guessing we're on the same team now?”

“I do not think of it as us being on the same team,” Elena replied. “Rather, I choose to think of it as us fighting a common enemy for a very good cause. Now, then....I believe Professor Malvineous needs your help?”

“He told you, didn't he?”

'I was in the building for unrelated reasons. As soon as these...'fembots' began attacking, I volunteered my services to help fight them.” Elena grinned a shark's grin; “So far, it's proven very effective,” she added.

And I am SO GLAD she's on my side this time around... “So what's our next move?”

Elena's smile faded. “I was hoping you could tell me, Agent Lawson,” she admitted. “I....have not been on the best of terms with the ALPA, and as such, the only times I have been in this building, I wasn't exacly able to get a clear sense of where everything was on every floor. I sincerely hope you know more of the building than I do, otherwise...”

“Well, you won't have to worry about 'otherwise',” Vicki assured her. “We shouldn't have any problems---”

A loud crash from somewhere ahead of them cut off her sentence. “And I apparently spoke too soon,” she finished, blowing out an aggravated sigh. “Why is it that every time I say 'this should be easy' or 'we shouldn't have any problems', everything goes completely and utterly wrong...” She reached for her ES-9950, only to find that she wasn't even wearing the holster for it. “The ONE DAY I choose to go unarmed,” she muttered, “and the entire building is under siege. Just great.....” She sighed again. “You took all those fembots out in hand-to-hand, right?” she asked Elena.

“Of course.”

“Well, looks like we'll get to test our fighting skills on this next group...” Vicki struck a fighting pose, ignoring the somewhat-amused look Elena gave her. “Helps me focus on what's coming,” she explained.

Anything Elena could've said as a reply was drowned out by the sound of doors splintering on either side of the hallway, followed by fembots crashing through on both sides. “Don't worry,” Vicki assured her, “I've got---” Her sentence---and her thought---was interrupted by Elena sprinting past her, grabbing two fembots by the wrists and pulling from their hiding places, sending them face first into the walls on either side of the corridor. Two more fembots attempted to grab the Russian gynoid, but only succeeded in exposing enough of themselves for Elena to kick---brutally. Within five seconds, both fembots lay twitching and gibbering on the floor.

Vicki found herself unable to say anything other than a mutter of “Whoa”.

Five more fembots rushed Elena, apparently intent on tearing her in half. None of them managed anything close to it---after taking one of them down with a headscissors hurricanrana (she's a wrestling fan too?!), Elena clotheslined the other into the wall, knocked out the third with a spinning back kick, and brought down the final two with a double-chokeslam that left a gaping crack in the tile floor. Even as the thoughts of that was AWESOME flitted through her processors, Vicki managed to stay nonchalant as she approached Elena. “Well, that was...effective,” she noted.

“Too effective,” Elena countered. “The ones I fought before at least put up a fight...”

“You're saying that they lost on purpose?” Vicki inquired. “Maybe they used up their energy breaking in.”

Elena gave Vicki her best “oh, please” look. “You don't need to keep up the act, Agent Lawson,” she chided, with a wry grin. “I don't think the daughter of Ted Lawson would be so naïve to think that these fembots used up every bit of energy in their power cores just breaking through windows---and there is the small matter of you being a gynoid.”

“Guess you mentioning optical and aural sensors earlier should've clued me in to you knowing what I really am,” Vicki sulked. “Who told you?”

The Russian gynoid smiled again. “DuBraul told me not long after Boris and I relocated here. You can trust me, Agent Lawson....my days of working for those who oppose your organization are over. Also,” she added, “your father wouldn't stop going on about you beating Boris' earlier creation at a....spelling bee, was it?”

Vicki couldn't help but giggle. “I was kinda hoping nobody would bring that up...”

“You should be proud, Agent Lawson,” Elena assured her. “Even Boris would not shut up about how you beat Vladimir...” Her smile faded slightly; “He was much like you, if I remember,” she admitted. “Like the old you, according to Boris. He had potential, as well---he could have been part of our lives for longer...” She turned away. “Instead, he was the second loss Boris had to endure. The second pain that made his life in the old country Hell.”

“And you were the first loss?”

Elena nodded. “You have done your homework, Agent Lawson...Russia was among the forebearers of what is now known as transferrence technology. I---my human predecessor----was dying, and cancer research was nowhere near as advanced as the field of robotics had become....Boris promised me that he would do whatever it took to keep me alive until my memories could be transferred....but it was a promise he could not keep, though I would've been proud of his efforts.”

“So why'd he stick with the Coalition?” Vicki asked. “I mean, last I checked, they favor obedience over free will---and I don't even know what their opinion on transferrence tech is.”

“They did not have an opinion in those days,” Elena admitted. “I highly doubt that the 'ignore it and it will go away' method can even be called an opinion, so I don't picture it as such....that was how the Coalition viewed such things back then, really. Still, they weren't the ones Boris and I truly worried about.....” She paused, rubbing her shoulder and glancing at the floor. “We were far more concerned with evading the DVS than the Coalition, to be honest.”

“Boris was with the DVS?!” Vicki couldn't keep herself from gasping in shock.

“Very, very briefly. Both of us thought that it was for the better...not surprisingly, we soon found out how wrong we were. One of them in particular was obsessed with disassembling me and seeing how various parts of me reacted to....'tests'....and others among their number had ideas so vulgar that I refuse to discuss them.”

Vicki nodded silently.

“In any case,” Elena continued, “we both overcame that...particular stage of our lives, and Boris tried to make himself a better person in spite of it. Yes, we both relished the chance to work with seemingly like-minded individuals---you probably remember Boris joining forces with Drake Bradford---but in reality...we never truly enjoyed it. Bradford was a contemptable fool, and the others we allied ourselves with were either just as bad as he was, or worse. Eventually, the Baron....decided we were no longer worth his time. He gave Boris one final chance---the mission to acquire Kirsten Sanderson---and.....that obviously did not turn out as he had planned.”

The memory of Boris shooting Faceless in the back rose, unbidden, from Vicki's thoughts. “He did what he did to keep you safe,” she heard herself reply. “He said Faceless threatened to destroy you...that time healed the wounds he had from me beating Vladimir....”

“They did,” Elena admitted. “And I must admit, knowing what Boris went through to rebuild me----”

Somewhere ahead of them, a wall was reduced to rubble.

“I think we can finish this introspection later,” Vicki suggested. “Right now...”

Five fembots, all of them moving in a manner more akin to primates than human beings, loped down the hall, chattering nonsensical bursts of vowels and consonants. It's getting worse, the brunette gynoid realized. If they can't even speak coherently now---let alone walk like normal human beings....

“You're not having second thoughts about this, are you?” Elena asked.

Despite her revulsion (or perhaps because of it), Vicki shook her head. “They're can't feel or think anymore, so putting them down now would probably be the best thing we could do for them.”

“My sentiments exactly. Now, then...” Elena turned her attention to the fembots. “Shall we?”

Despite the fact that she was charging into a fight against a group of five mentally-broken fembots who had no qualms about ripping her limb from limb, Vicki didn't feel as if time was slowing down around her, or any such feelings commonly associated with what human beings know as an adrenaline rush. Appropriately enough (as per Anton's suggestion), she viewed the fight from a coldly analytical standpoint---approaching the entire situation with the thought processes of a machine, rather than a human. Within the span of a few seconds, she had effectively gone over the entire fight in her head, and figured out over a hundred ways to defeat the fembots, with or without Elena's help.

That being said, she still felt a bit of a thrill before the last fembot hit the floor.

Whereas the analytical part of her mind wasn't surprised in the least that her every move---ranging from arm bars, leg sweeps and the standard punches and kicks to more exotic fare, like German Suplexing a fembot into a wall---worked flawlessly, the more human part of her mind---the part that made her Vicki Lawson, rather than just a nameless gynoid---was mentally cheering and whooping it up. She didn't say a word during the actual fight, of course---she was too busy mopping the floor with the fembots.

Some day, she reminded herself, I'll have to analyze the logs of this and go over exactly what I just felt....

Elena, meanwhile, was showcasing the same ruthless efficiency she'd used against the earlier group, dropping them to the floor with moves that would've made a UFC fighter cower in fear. In the end, the five fembots ended up ruined, gibbering on the floor with their vital fluids leaking everywhere.

Had that been the end of their fight, Vicki might've felt more than a little giddy....instead, she started feeling giddy---and then immediately stopped when she saw what was coming.

Standing eight feet tall, armored with what appeared to be a chromed titanium alloy and with a red slit at eye level, the only vaguely-humanoid....thing looked more than a little like one of the OSE robots Vicki had last encountered in Singapore. “What....the hell is that?!” she gasped, backpedalling away from the bipedal mech as fast as possible. “I thought Hannsen had just boosted a load of fembots---nobody ever said anything about him stealing from OSE---”

“Oh, the clever girl doesn't even recognize her own side's toys,” Hannsen's voice taunted from a speaker mounted in the robot's “head”. “The ALPA doesn't just rely on fancy dolls to do their dirty work---sometimes, they need something with a bit more kick!” The armored robot swung a massive arm in Vicki's direction, missing her by a hair---literally. “Say hello to the ART 5972 Ares-class Defender,” Hannsen declared proudly, “the most powerful non-sentient machine in the ALPA's arsenal---and now, MINE to play with!” His sentence ended in a cackle as a cannon rose from the Defender's left forearm, leveled directly at Vicki's head. “To quote a classic film that happens to be a favorite of mine: SAY GOODNIGHT TO THE BAD GUY!”

Even with her destruction nearly certain at this point, Vicki shook her head. “I don't think so.”

The cannon began charging. “Then I'll say it for you---”

“Allow me.”

Even with the advanced gyroscopic stabilizers Vicki detected inside of it, the Defender couldn't turn around fast enough to correct its aim---giving Elena the perfect chance to peel away an armor plate covering its “spine” and tear out a clump of wiring. “Goodnight.”

Within seconds, the Defender slumped to the floor....

….just as another punched through a wall behind Vicki.

“How EASILY you forget who you're dealing with!” the Maestro cackled. “I've been BOMBARDING your stupid building with signals, and every non-sentient in there is now under my control! Hell, if I wasn't in hospital right now, I could've easily modified the signals to take over every sentient machine in your HQ as well---but I'll settle for all of these wonderful toys.”

“Elena,” Vicki whispered, “try to call Oberon and tell him---”

“Tell him what, oh mistress of useless ideas?!” the Maestro taunted. “I could just as easily find your boss and sic one of these on him. Oh, and the whole 'whispering' thing is pretty much a joke, right now---the Defenders have an auditory detection scale that, quite frankly, beats the sodding crap out of anything you could possibly do.”

Ignoring Hannsen's taunt, Vicki continued on her hastily-formed plan of distracting him. “Okay, fine. So you can hear Elena and I even when we're whispering. Good for you. But what about all the stuff you can't hear?”

“Oh, don't even try to play that card with me, Lawson–-”

“I'm serious. This building has security systems that could rip the Defenders in half before you could even think of commanding them to do any damage. Even someone as skilled as you couldn't hope to---”

“DO NOT finish that sentence! I am NOT going to fall for that 'even someone as skilled as you' crap! There is NOTHING in this building that can stop my plans and I REFUSE to fall for this stupid trickery! I'm not even in the building right now---even if there was some magical way your friends could find me, I'm in hospital, so it's not llike they'll be pulling the Rambo routine to come in and drag me out!”

Vicki fought the urge to grin; they won't have to “pull the Rambo routine”, if you keep talking---

“How does it feel, Lawson?”

The question was somewhat surprising, especially since Vicki didn't know what the Maestro was referring to.

Without waiting for her to respond, the Maestro spoke again: “How does it feel to know that you nearly killed me back there, in Dawley? That you broke every bone in my body...toyed with me, like a cat toying with a mouse, and nearly convinced me that I was going to die?” His voice was no longer mocking---every word dripped with caustic, pent-up rage. “How does it feel to know that I may never walk again because of what you did to me?! Tell me! HOW DOES IT FEEL, LAWSON?! HOW THE BLOODY HELL DOES IT FEEL?!”

Even with her earlier feelings of levity and bravado on the verge of slipping away, Vicki stood her ground before the Defender. “Unlike some people who might've been in my situation,” she replied, her voice calm, “I'm not proud of what I did to you, Hannsen. Maybe I thought you deserved a beating---maybe you did deserve one---but I crossed the line by doing what I did to you...and I'm sorry.”

“You....you're sorry---”

Before Hannsen could utter another syllable, the Defender's head was torn off its shoulders.

“Thanks for the distraction, Agent Lawson.” Elena dropped down from where she'd been clinging to the mech's shoulders, grinning. “I was hoping you'd keep him busy long enough for me to....ah, what's wrong?” Her smile faded as she noticed the look on the brunette gynoid's face. “Those things Hannsen said---”

“Doesn't matter. We have to keep going.” Vicki turned and headed for the elevators. “Anton's waiting---”

“And he can keep waiting,” Elena declared. “I would appreciate an explanation of what I just heard---”

Vicki stopped, turned on her heel and glared at the Russian gynoid. “You want an explanation?” she hissed. “I nearly killed Matthew Hannsen in Dawley---broke his legs, almost broke his hands, and effectively beat him within an inch of his life, all because he murdered a friend of mine in cold blood. And I enjoyed every minute of it. Ever since I got back from the UK, I've been feeling less and less like myself, and nobody here has been able to give me a straight answer as to why---and the WORST PART......”

Her voice broke. “...the worst part...is that I don't know how far I can go before I stop being me......”

Elena's annoyed look turned to one of concern. “I didn't know---”

“Well, you damn sure know now, don't you?!” Vicki snapped, turning away again---and sobbing just a few seconds later.

For a few minutes, Elena and Vicki just stood there (or knelt there, in Vicki's case)---one too shocked to say anything, the other caught up in yet another torrent of guilt and shame. After what felt like an hour's worth of quiet sobbing, the brunette gynoid felt a hand on her shoulder. “When this is over,” Elena informed her, “no matter what happens....you will still be you. Whatever it is that you did to Hannsen, it will not change who you are...no matter how guilty you feel.” She smiled; “There is a song that sums this up perfectly,” she added, “by one Mister Lawrence Gowan: 'With every act of love, the good catches up'...and I have a feeling that the good will catch up with you if you only give it time.”

“How can you say that?” Vicki sobbed. “I nearly killed someone---”

“There is a fundamental difference,” Elena interjected, “between nearly killing and actually killing. You were able to keep yourself from crossing that line---whether it was with or without help is irrelevant---and because Hannsen is still alive, you are, in fact, still you...”

Vicki let Elena help her to her feet. “Funny how everyone keeps telling me that,” she mused, “and I still don't believe it.” She stared at the floor; “I'm surprised you're so quick to believe that I'm still me,” she added quietly, “especially after the Starlet Dolls concert---”

“You don't have to explain what you would've done to me there,” Elena cut in. “That was then....we're on the same side now, Agent Lawson, and I most likely would have stopped myself if I had been 'in your shoes', as the saying goes, at the time. As for Hannsen....he is still alive, and you are, by far, a better person–-machine or otherwise---than he is.” She smiled again. “Now then, if we're finished with introspection and 'guilt tripping', I believe we still have an objective to accomplish.”

“Right...Anton's waiting,” Vicki replied, nodding. “Think we should make sure that thing's done?”

Elena glanced back at the Defender. “Good point.” She walked over to it, nudged it a few times with her foot...and then stomped on the “spine” of the massive humanoid mech. “I think it's done,” she called back over her shoulder. “So....shall we?”

“Might as well.” Vicki nodded, gesturing for Elena to follow her towards the elevators. Even with Hannsen's words still ringing in her mind, the brunette gynoid felt a lot better than she had earlier in the day.

Guess I'm still me after all....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[TW]

A new ally, or a potential double agent? Just gets me wondering...

The plot keeps thickening! You do a great job of describing the fight scenes in both this and the previous chapter. It can be difficult to juggle writing both stories unfolding, but you do a great job of it here.

Can't wait for more!

[Uhoh]

Feels like a climax, though I do hope I'm wrong in thinking that, there's much more action to be had! Continue on with the great work please

[DollSpace]

Feels like a climax, though I do hope I'm wrong in thinking that, there's much more action to be had! Continue on with the great work please

No one here should use the word "climax" lightly...

[Uhoh]

Whoops, didn't see that