The Prometheus Creation- A New Prometheus Prequel - EBOOK

0.3.1

Xenox felt no remorse for the two men he’d just killed.
They were Jackers. Scum. They deserved it.
Sitting at his main terminal, he watched the security feed. All the views from the various cameras he’d installed inside and outside of his lab were playing in real time. The main central screen showed the scene from further up the back street his lab was located on. An enlarged view from one of the cameras in the alley.
The area had been cordoned off by police barriers. The holo tape glowed blue with warnings to keep out emblazoned across it, while inside, uniformed officers and a detective went about their work, examining the two bodies on the floor.
One of them had a mohawk, and the other had a missing cybernetic arm that now hung on a rack to Xenox’s right. Both men were quite dead, with a single bullet hole in each of their heads.
Served them right, as far as Xenox was concerned. They were criminals, and he was merely defending his property. Not that the detectives would find anything that could link him to the deaths out there. He’d been quite thorough in his clean-up before dumping the corpses within view of one of his hidden cameras.
He wanted to watch what happened and how it all played out. As he’d suspected, the Police were not looking at things too carefully. These were Jackers, after all, in the Undercity. No one cared about them, least of all the underfunded and understaffed Metropolitan Police.
It paid to be cautious, and given the enemies he had, it was a necessity. But, as for how well his defences would fare should one of those groups from his past actually come calling, he didn’t know and hoped never to find out.
Partially because he had a sinking feeling, they would be woefully insufficient. Apart from the reinforced shutters and his own personal weapons, the only other major security measure he’d managed to set up was an android. The non-sentient AI ‘doll’, with its robotic body covered in white armoured plates to give it a human shape was in the other room, freshly cleaned of the blood it had been covered in after shooting the Jacker.
So far, no one had come calling. No police officers had knocked on his door to ask him any questions, and he was feeling better about things as the minutes passed.
As he relaxed, an alert popped up on his screen.
-Match Found.-
Xenox tapped a button, and another video feed opened up before him, showing the alleyway again but in the other direction.
A woman walked along the alley towards the police cordon and was just about to pass his front door.
-Facial Recognition Confirmed. Subject: Francesca Eve Gene.-
Xenox issued a mental command from his neural net, and the image enlarged to full screen as Xenox’s breath caught in his throat.
It was her. She was back.
It had been months since he’d last seen her, and now here she was, back in his alleyway. What was she doing here? Might she be coming to see him again? He hoped so. Everything was complete now, so maybe he could speak to her about it?
As he watched, Frankie didn’t slow, and as she walked past his front door, she raised a hand to the camera without looking up and extended her middle finger.
She’d flipped him off.
Xenox stared at her in shock as she wandered up the alleyway, paying him no more attention, and walked over to the police cordon where she started to speak to the detective.
“A friend of yours, Frankie?” he muttered, still surprised by her actions. With another command from his cyber brain, he activated the audio pick up from the camera. She knew he was here, behind the unmarked locked door not far from the bodies, and there was a chance she might tell the police about him, given her apparent distaste for him.
“Yeah, well, if people keep getting executed down here, we have to come down and clean it up,” the detective said.
“What is it this time?” Frankie asked the man. “Gang wars? They look like Jackers to me.”
How very perceptive of you, Frankie, he thought, pressing his lips together as he listened to the conversation.
“Yeah, looks that way,” the detective said. “Maybe they tried to Jack the wrong person or the wrong lab. Who knows, just two more faces with made-up gang names to add to the folder.”
Xenox ran a search on the detective, using a screengrab of the man’s badge he’d taken earlier.
“Do you ever find out who these people are or what happened to them?” Frankie asked.
“Sometimes, if they’re related to someone up there who cares,” the detective said, looking at the city above briefly. “Do you recognise them at all?”
“Sorry, no. Can’t say I do. Good luck. I’ll catch you later, okay?”
“Thanks. Go careful tonight. The gangs are out and about.”
“I noticed,” Frankie said before leaving with a brief wave.
She’d kept his location to herself. “Good girl,” he said to himself.
Checking another screen, Xenox noted that his search listed the man as Detective Sergeant Richard Gibson. It displayed his arrest and work history, noting that he’d clashed with his superiors in the past.
A Rebel, interesting.
Returning his gaze to the main screen, he could still see Frankie walking off into the distance. He would not lose her again. A simple command later and a drone was launched that would track her through the Undercity streets while he decided what he should do.
Getting up, he turned and crossed the room, coming to stand before the upturned cyber bed with the inert cyborg body on it. It hung from the Kevlar flatweave straps, lifeless, and lit from above by a single bright light.
The face was almost identical to Frankie’s, and her proportions were fairly close too. Perhaps a little idealised, if he were being honest with himself, but still very close.
He remembered the first time she’d walked into his lab and spoken to him and how captivated he’d been by her, almost agreeing to her request simply to see her smile and to maybe see her again.
She’d make the perfect subject for his ultimate creation, his masterpiece, and maybe she’d even agree to be transplanted into it.
But his business head ruled the day, and while he strung her along for as long as he could, she saw through him soon enough and realised she was wasting her time with him.
He sympathised with her fight against the evils of the Corporations—lord knows he’d suffered at their hands too—but offering free cyber work to the homeless and the needy?
No. He would not do that.
He needed the money and the parts to fund this, his ultimate goal.
But it was all ready now and hung before him, immobile and as good as useless without a human brain to give it life.
And now, here was Frankie, his inspiration, walking right past his front door again.
He might be a man of science, but he couldn’t deny the perfect timing of this coincidence. It was a gift and not one he was about to pass up. He needed to follow her, to see what she was doing down here and maybe see where she went, or even where she lived.
He needed her for his creation.
It was all he wanted, and he would not squander this opportunity.
With a thought, he brought up the feed from the drone in his HUD and noted with satisfaction that it was still tracking her. Its top-down and slightly to one side view showed her walking across an intersection.
Xenox checked a map in his HUD and made a guess about where she was going as he marched through his lab to the garage and the waiting van with its medical and cybernetic equipment in the back.
He made a quick check of it to make sure he had what he needed before jumping into the front and rechecking the drone feed.
“I thought so,” he muttered to himself as he watched Frankie walk into an Exiles camp and start to search around. She was looking for someone.
Xenox sent a command to LUCI, his mainframe AI.
-Initiate Plan F-04, at the following coordinates.-
He sent a string of numbers to the AI and started the engine of his van. The front garage doors rolled up, and Xenox drove out of the garage, turning towards the camp.