Falling from the heights
Sink into the mud
Falling from the skies
You’d catch me if you could, you could
It takes two days for Jenny Byrne - or an intruder using her M.O. - to make an appearance. When she does, Alycia and the team are ready.
John Black is in position. He’s coated his armored mode with the same stuff as the Chimeras, and as such is now a night-black ninja, able to hide in any sort of shadow. While Jenny Byrne may be able to emulate any human skill, the android is super-human. As a result, he’s able to follow guidance from Alycia and Alex as they monitor the Russian spy’s departure from the Quill compound.
The list of destinations narrows, until it’s certain that Jenny is heading for a multi-story parking garage.
Jenny is walking toward a rental car, parked on the top deck of the garage, when John lands lightly on the car’s roof and crouches, like an animal ready to pounce.
Jenny spins, ready to flee, only to see four strange craft, darker than darkness itself, disgorge ultra-tech motorcycles. Alycia Chin is aboard one.
“Jenny Byrne,” she announces coldly. “It is long past time we had a conversation.”
Like Nono before her, the spy being kept in the jet’s cockpit, tied up and closely watched.
Alycia is about to start the interrogation when there’s a slight thump, resonating through the hull. Alycia glances at John quickly - “check it.”
But before he can make a move, the team notices someone peeking in through the cockpit window. It’s Jason Quill.
Alycia exhales, in a bid to keep herself from screaming.
In a minute, Jason’s inside with the rest of the team, making for a cramped cockpit.
“How did you find us?” Alycia demands.
“Nanotech tracers on the glass at the house,” Jason grins.
Alycia rolls her eyes. “Of course. You identified me and you couldn’t leave well enough alone. Couldn’t trust that I was there for a good reason.”
“You infiltrated my house in disguise,” Jason points out. “And you haven’t been returning my calls.”
“Ooh, what a delightful domestic,” Jenny observes slyly, turning on the lilt at full tilt.
“You keep out of this,” Alycia barks.
“Should uh, should we leave the three of you alone?” Emma asks, raising an eyebrow, and smirking like it’s going out of style.
Alycia and Jason turn. “No,” they say in unison, just as Jenny says, “yes.”
Emma nudges Nono, and glances at Alex and John. “Come on, gang, we’ve got Chimera maintenance to do.”
Alycia can feel her blood pressure elevating as the others pile out.
“Oh, I stuck my Q-Disc to the hull,” Jason says to John. “Do you mind hauling stowing it?”
“Gonna throw me the keys like I’m your fucking valet?” the android retorts. “Park it yourself.”
Then the cockpit door closes, leaving the three of them.
Alycia sighs, and turns back to Jenny. “You’re the leader of the Grasscutters, and we’re putting a stop to your organization.”
The lilt is now entirely gone. “I did my best to help those people,” the girl says softly. “They’d been through so much. Anyone who discovered Pyrrhus’ operation, or got in the way of it - well, they got addicted to his drug, then outfitted with a gadget. My gadget.”
She looks up, looking at Alycia and Jason and back again. “I had a responsibility! It was my invention. It was supposed to be useful. Maybe not for some ‘greater good’ as the two of you seem to aspire to. But it was something I could do. Something I hadn’t been programmed to do, or be, something that marked me as a person worthy of respect. And then Pyrrhus twisted it–”
“Why should I believe any of this?” Alycia cuts in.
Jenny’s expression quavers. “I’ve spent days thinking about how to answer that question. How could I make anyone trust me? And I can’t answer it. I can’t. I’m sorry. I thought, maybe I could get close to Jason, like you did. Make him see the real me. Earn his trust in time. But I reached too high in my ambition and paid the price. I’m not even a real person. I don’t deserve that, I’m too late for it…”
“Spare me your self-pity,” Alycia scowls.
But Jason holds up a hand. “Artificial beings have a good track record of earning my trust. Emphasis on ‘earning’. Right now you’re not giving us anything beyond ‘woe is me’. The Grasscutters are a real problem. If you want to earn that trust, you can help us solve it.”
Alycia jumps in. “You need to do more than that. We acquired one of their Poppet Systems. It’s attached to one of my teammates. I want it removed - and I need to know how to neutralize it on the Grasscutters.”
Tears are forming at the edge of Jenny’s eyes. Alycia knows at least four ways to do that without external aids - it doesn’t mean anything, as far as she knows. But Jenny’s words are more convincing. “I’ll give you all of that. But we have to go to where the systems were developed to do it. To зимняя колыбель - the Winter Cradle.”
“Why can’t you just tell us?” Jason asks.
“Sidorov did more work for Pyrrhus. He took my design, made changes, made it transferable. I’m not a hypergenius. I can’t explain what was done.”
Alycia frowns.
“I think you both will want to know about it anyway,” adds Jenny quietly. “It is where they are making more people like me. More Antibodies, designed to neutralize heroes, politicians, activists, influencers - anyone the state deemed a threat. Next to them, next to our potential, the Grasscutters are amateurs.”
There is a short argument, which Jason wins, about how many people will be coming on the mission. There is another argument, which Alycia wins, about how short a leash Jenny Byrne will be kept on.
“If you could track me, you can and will track her,” she told Jason, and that sounded reasonable. Jason concocted a nanotech tracker that could be mixed with water and drank. Jenny made a comment about “swallowing anything you give me, Mr. Quill”, and Alycia cold-cocked her. But the tracking solution could be administered to an unconscious person, so it all worked out.
The Winter Cradle is located in the Kamchatka Peninsula. The region is in the far eastern part of Russia. It’s a frigid, lifeless expanse of snow-capped mountains and fitfully sleeping volcanoes. It’s the perfect place to build a base you don’t want anybody to find.
The team’s jet lands not far from the coordinates Jenny provided. It takes less than half an hour to set up a base camp, cover the jet with a winter camouflage net, and ready the Chimeras for deployment.
Everyone is unhappy and out of sorts. Alycia knows her stress is leaking out of her mask, despite her impressive self-control. She knows that being on the run is not easy, but the attack on MIA’s headquarters made it feel a lot more real. Jason tries to lighten the mood by demonstrating that even here in the show and ice, there’s flowering plants and edible berries to be found. Despite supplying the team with a fresh meal, the effort falls flat emotionally. Jason has what nobody else has at the moment - a nice warm house to go back to - and that creates a distance that only deepens the gloom.
Finally, Alycia has had enough. She draws a gun - not one of the non-lethal chemical guns, but a simple firearm - and gestures with it in Jenny’s direction. “You will brief the team on what to expect.”
Jenny is all business, and doesn’t waste time looking to anyone for sympathy. “First. What I know about the Cradle, I know only from overhearing Sidorov talk about it. I have not been here. I will not be responsible for things I can’t know about. So be cautious.”
“It is… a city. There are clones. Automata. Officers overseeing the activities. I will be playing that role, since none of you know the pass-words or procedures. When we are confronted, follow my lead.”
Alycia tilts her head. “Put in you charge? You must be joking.”
“Only to speak to the overseers,” Jenny says, scowling. “Unless you want to be hunted in two countries.”
“We’ll see what happens,” Jason suggests. “What do we need to do to blend in?”
Jenny smiles strangely. “Just be yourselves.”
She gets the business end of Alycia’s pistol placed against the back of her head for her trouble. “I don’t like vague declarations like that,” the girl murmurs in Jenny’s ear. “Why don’t you be more explicit.”
Jenny is silent. Prodding from the pistol gets her to speak. “I can’t say any more. I can’t explain it. You must see it for yourself to understand what Kovačević has done.”
The team have parked their Chimeras out of sight, and John pushed snow over them for concealment. Alycia and Jason both spotted an accessible sewer pipe at the same time, and the team scouted it out and took it.
They emerge from a manhole, one by one, and find themselves in an alley. They step out into the street. There are few passersby, and none of them give the team any acknowledgement. Without any clearer idea of a destination, they begin walking.
The city is Soviet-era brutalism at its best. The residences are clone-stamped rectangles of concrete. Civic services are found in buildings that look more like stories-tall headstones than proper offices. The architects’ idea of decorative and imaginative construction look like blocks stacked up by a hyperactive child.
John Black is the first to observe something. “Some of these people are Rossum-type robots.”
“You mean Rossum is involved in this?” Alycia asks.
“No. Well kind of. I mean… his designs were copied by the Russians and the Chinese. Big surprise. It always irked him. He was gonna do something about it sooner or later, he said.”
John doesn’t point, but a brief inclination of his head is enough to indicate a couple of people, walking together. “There’s little signs, but they stand out once you look. Get two of them together and they automatically coordinate their walking gait, to keep up with each other. The hair will bounce too much too. Dear old dad never cared about getting the little details right. He just wanted something that could pass for human long enough.”
Further into the city, Jason sees something that makes him draw breath sharply. Alycia catches the sound and follows the line of his gaze. She inhales too.
The quartet looks ordinary to anyone who doesn’t know the history of their families. But there, real as life, are Byron Quill and his son Jason, walking alongside Achilles Chin and his daughter Alycia.
Two pairs of eyes drop to their legs. They’re walking in exact unison.
“Robots,” breathes Jason, perhaps relieved that they aren’t living clones.
“That’s why you won’t need disguises here,” Jenny whispers. “Do you understand now? This is the training ground of the Antibodies. This is where they are tested against their targets. The masters of this place sow the seeds that will destroy the world.”