The world they stop at, well....it had cities, once.
but that's not where she's being taken. "Go on in." he tells her.
Steel doors in the side of a mountain, gaping like a the broken jaws of a long-dead monster. she walks in.
it's dark, she doesn't really think about objecting. something is drawing her forward.
Her penlight reveals peeling paint and musty, fungal stained corridors. deeper she goes.
the doors have labels, but those are so corroded as to be illegible. crumbling plaster piled on the floor suggests a drop ceiling was once here.
Nuclear Ordnance
the door to this room is ajar, but she feels no urge to enter. she shines a light, revealing row after row of empty cradles.
a bit further on, Biowarfare Research. The door is closed, sealed, the window fogged with age. She tries the handle and it doesn't open.
Oh well. Gail continues downward, through a maze of corridors, passing offices, and laboratories, sleeping areas with rotting blankets and the mouldered bones of long dead personnel.
Art***c*al *n*e**i*ence Research and development
long dead chassis and frames, scorched and shot with holes crowd the room. a pile of machined parts is wrapped around the rags and bones of some long-dead soldier.
nothing here. she moves deeper.
the doors simply say No Access without Clearance.
she pushes the doors open, past a vacant guard station.
her penlight dies...but she can see.
diagrams on the walls and ceiling of an improbably huge place. a musty smell of sulphur and carbon in the air, like someone has been burning a fire.
There is something in the middle of the room, and it hurts to look at it.
but she can't look away from the shape, as her memories play on the walls. the screams, the fires, the blood...and the bandit soldiers who used her, displayed meters tall on every surface, her pain, the way the pirates had laughed as their leader did unspeakable things to her children before her eyes-and she remembered it.
"What do you want?"
"I WANT REVENGE!!!" she screamed.
The contract is signed, the payment is made. You will have your revenge.
she felt it. like her breath being drawn out of her body, to be replaced by fire.
the symbols blazed, and when they faded, a door on the far side opened.
daylight came in, revealing a machine. a beautiful machine, made for the task at hand, armored and armed. two six-tube missile racks on the torso, a pair of PPC's, one to each arm, and she knew this machine, knew it was for her. That it would respond to her, and her alone.
as she walked up on the death machine, it lowered itself onto one knee, and extended a weapons-housing with hand actuator, she stepped up, onto the hand's palm, and it lifted her to the cockpit, where she knew a Neurohelmet awaited her.
she donned it.
"I have known terrible things, and I seek terrible things, because no-one should feel what I feel." she recited.
the panels lit, the machine responded to her.
she walked out, to join her Unit.
