Jacq listened at the door to her room, a rustic synthwood slab with a magnetic lock that opened at the touch of her key card. Nick and Behr spoke in hushed voices in the hall beyond:
"I don't know what you're so angry about, you're the one who wanted to go to the capital in the first place." Behr said from two doors down the hall towards the stairs -- Jacq had seen Nick stop him to talk before she'd entered her own room.
"Not like this -- not as a damn prisoner!" Nick's voice was frantic, "I know he was holding your… one of yours hostage, but he isn't now." His volume dropped significantly over the course of his sentence, forcing her to press against the door to make out his next words. "... Significantly more of us-"
"With guns, there's three of us," Behr growled. "Maybe if a few of yours run down and distract him…?"
Jacq's fists clenched against the door -- that damn backwater local wanted them to sacrifice themselves to appease his enemy. She closed her eyes, focusing over her breathing to hear Nick.
"I'll admit, I've never seen a cyborg fight -- let alone one so… heavily modified. Are we really backed that far into a corner?"
She couldn't hear Behr's sigh, but she imagined one in the gap that followed. "That -gun- of his can shoot as fast as he can pull the trigger, and he can aim just as quick despite losing his eyes." Another pause. "You don't believe me?"
"I… what if I try to be the distraction?"
Jacq's eyes popped open.
She could practically hear Behr's mouth drop open. "Who are you trying to impress?"
"There are worse things than dying."
"It wouldn't work -- he's not going to shoot to kill anyway. When they take people from the Dust, they do their best to take them alive. No one's ever come back to explain why."
Jacq's heart beat hard and fast, drowning out the closing words of Behr and Nick's talk. She turned from the door to her little one-by-two meter room, sitting on the 3d-printed bed with her hands at her sides as the horizon swiftly blackened beyond the single-pane window to her left.
Beyond that and the repeating pattern of tree-rings in the synthwood walls and floor, the room was an empty box. Nick's story over the campfire echoed off the silent walls; "there was no trial, my translator bugged".
She stood and opened the window, staring down the smooth side of the building at the hard earth below. She looked out over the horizon for a destination but found nothing but darkness as the blurring waves of heat were replaced with a chill that bit through her button-up shirt. She couldn't make out the details of the other buildings beside the one she occupied, but their existence gave her hope -- it was at the very least somewhere to hide from the malfunctioning robot who'd holed them up here.
But she needed a distraction, something to turn his attention away from the stairway. She slipped her hand under the mattress, and slid it to the floor with a thump. She removed her bedsheets before proceeding -- if this didn't work, she'd want something to sleep on besides the hard synthwood. With a concentrated effort, she folded the mattress longways and wedged it into the open window. It folded slightly beneath its own weight, but held rigid enough for her to push it through.
With her back against the door, she took aim with her shoulder, and tackled the mattress's end. It moved a handful of centimeters beneath her wiry frame, and she took aim again. It moved even farther the second time thanks to the extra room she had to run. The third tackle left it dangling out the window, and all it took was a mild shove to send it falling out the other side. It snapped open as it left the window frame, landing flat on the ground below with a satisfying thud -- that ought to get the cyborg's attention.
She took her shoes off before leaving her room, noticing the tapping they added to her steps on the synthwood. Carrying them in her left hand, she hurried to the stairwell on tiptoe. She made her way down as quick as she could without making noise, drifting through the cooling night as she glanced around the corner to the second floor -- It was clear, as expected. She slowed as she descended the final stairs; there had been no sound of the scrap above the door, but the cyborg would have silenced it wouldn't he?
She neared the ground floor quiet as she could, the lights off for the evening. The cyborg faced the door about a meter away, his right arm angled unnaturally behind him to aim his gun towards the stairs. "I told you."
The muzzle flash shone through the windows, highlighting the silhouette of a large vehicle out front as Jacq was violently pushed backwards onto the steps. Her interface rang alarms in her head, numbing her from the chest down until she consciously acknowledged the damage she'd just sustained. Despite this she could feel a spreading warmth on her abdomen, and deep inside she felt unnervingly cold.
Heavy footsteps resonated through the synthwood floor as she slid down the steps, and a moment later a metal mask stared down at her -- this one without eye-holes, like armor in the movies. The soldier turned to the side, and a moment later she was being dragged from the stairwell by her ankles.
She blinked, but she didn't wake up. The pain was beginning to surpass her interface's abilities to numb it, her face twisting as she screwed her eyes shut. She opened them as heavy boots landed around her and saw more soldiers, kneeling to tear open the red-stained button-up over her torso. Another lay a rectangular metal frame with a smooth black material stretched between it next to her. The material peeled open like the gullet of some creature, it's inside covered in short, grey hairs.
She closed her eyes, and her face was covered by something hard and dark as she felt herself drift away. Maybe now the dream was over, and she would wake up back at Estermere.