Ch.1: What we do know
Undisclosed Location
[July 1rst, 2004. 10:30 PM]
So we must fight.
We as in we all must fight.
"No, we're forced to fight for them," Booker reminded. "We fight on behalf of the human race. We fight them because we were given no other choice."
"We never gave them our consent to do what they pleased with our bodies." Charlie said, her voice on the edge of anger.
"But it's already happened," he said to himself, in a soft, almost saddened voice. "These prosthetics have been grafted to our bodies."
___________
Inside Belle's head
_______
Trust me I'm nothing special.
I never finished college.
I hated it, so I dropped out and joined a vocational school. Then I worked a load of odd jobs and then I moved onto fast food. A few years later I got sick of that and worked retail, it's a little bit more roomier. A bit more relaxing, even though my supervisor was always breathing down my neck.
I can tell my supervisor never liked me in the slightest.
I took orders, I took all of my orders even from my own co-workers in my own department.
You know those types of people, they find out you happen to be the most productive, quiet employee. Then all of a sudden all of them are trying to find some way to proactively control everything single movement you make.
God, I hate micromanaging! It makes me so angry!
It's just that I really don't have any room to complain about my worst job experiences. Jobs I know that won't play a bigger role on my resume. I had worse jobs. I won't even bother mentioning when I needed the extra money just to make rent.
I suppose it's better than becoming a part of the permanent unemployable underclass.
Except the only difference between my old jobs vs the present.
This isn't one of those times I can quietly slip outside during my lunch-break. Sneak into my beat up car. Crank up the Molly Hatchet and roll out of the parking lot before anyone notices I'm missing.
At least when I used to have the satisfaction of walking away.
The right to know
[11:00 PM]
"We're not all human," Charlie says, embittered. "These aren't human manufactured prosthetics either."
"Then what are they?" Belle asks.
"Alien." Booker says, giving Rei a clipped response.
"I'm surprised our handler never debriefed you yet on how they pilfered alien prosthetics they built into their human hosts." Charlie says, with a smirk.
"They're all dead now." Booker informed Belle. He stared at the newly formed cyborg with an impassive expression "It took the military years enough to know the only way to separate the body from those parts was to cremate their remains before finding some way of utilizing them against our enemies."
"Hopefully you last longer than the other guy we used to know a few months ago." Charlie said, quietly. "But you know, he could have died a valiant death going down in a blaze of glory and earned a purple heart posthumously but that's not what happened either." she laughed a dry humorless chuckle.
The guy I replaced died on the job - easy come easy, I guess.
[11:34 PM]
"We're using technology that doesn't belong to us," Booker explained. "And remember we're disposable and only two of us have survived over the years, most of our compatriots have a nasty habit of turning on us."
WTF!!!
"Talk about high turnover." Belle says, a soft chuckle rolling off of her tongue. No amount of levity will ever make this okay she screamed inside of her mind.
Neither Charlie nor Booker were laughing along with her.
Belle fixed a gaze of suspicion upon them.
"Murdering people we considered to be brothers in arms doesn't exactly mean we enjoy doing." Charlie says, fear and anger were evident in her voice. "We're not exactly thrilled we might succumb one of these days."
Belle can hear it.
The tremor in her voice.
Fear was blossoming inside of Charlie's chest.
"We're not monsters but somedays it feels like we sort of are." Charlie says, raising her voice.
"Super humanity really is overrated." Booker said, trading tired glances back at Charlie.
"That's the reason why they locked us up?" Belle says loudly. "We were captured to fight some secret war and now you're telling me there's no hope of escape?"
"Pretty much." Booker said, exhaling a short depressing sigh.