38
Once the lights had become fully lit, Ken entered the room, looking around at the ancient looking equipment pushed against the walls and the large casket in the centre. Of a similar, cylindrical shape to the glass containers in the warehouse room, this one had only a glass porthole at one end with which Ken could see inside.
"Anna!" Without thinking, Ken began to scramble at the casket, searching for a way to open it.
Inside the casket, she could see the figure that she could only believe was Anna's real body. She had found her in the Real, only to see the tube erupting from her friend's throat and wires and tubes trailing from her arms and bald head.
The grey haired man stepped forward, closing a cover over the port hole, and laid a hand upon Ken's, stopping her search for a way in to the casket. She glanced at him and saw the sorrow filled shake of the head. She didn't want to stop, however, her first instinct was to free Anna and it took a lot to ignore that. For now.
"You know what she is, I trust?" The grey haired man ran a hand over the polished metal of the containment unit, a sense of pride emanating from him. "We thought this one was going to fail like all the others. A cascade failure that we could not compensate for and then you fell into her dreams."
"I'd never experienced a dream like it and it didn't come up on my media collections." Ken moved around the room examining the equipment. "All this tech, it's beyond old school. This is almost analogue."
"Correct. Even while in a deep REM sleep, the specimens showed an innate ability to connect with technology. It took several generations before we could construct a containment unit that could block their technopathy. Or, so we thought." The grey haired man joined Ken near a console, all switches and flashing lights and ticker-tape read-outs. "When three-zero-two-two, Anna, connected with you alarms everywhere, here, upstairs, rang. It simply could not happen. There is no Thought-Scape down here, no digital equipment within three hundred metres of this room. But you and she connected. Do you know how?"
"I'd say a combination of my over-modded implant and Anna's strength in this 'technopathy'." Ken hesitated to sit in the seat the grey haired man offered, beside one of the consoles.
"Partly. After your second incursion into Anna's dreams, we began a wide search for the culprit. We managed to get a hold of the results from your sister's tests. You're not the only one with skills." He sat upon the seat, adjusting his suit jacket. "It was easy for your sister to miss, but we have much more experience in the area. On your scans, you showed unusual activity in the same areas of the brain that we see when the specimens' technopathy is activated. In short, we believe you, and possibly your sister, too, are among humankind's first natural technopaths."
Ken's mind began to surge. She wasn't foolish enough to dismiss the grey haired man's conclusions, but she had to think it all through herself. She had to admit, she even surprised herself, sometimes, at the feats she had accomplished. Near field connections to tech that she had passed off as a side effect of her continued implant modifications. Her ability to dive into anyone's dreams, even when they had security against such things.
"Kontessa said that the implants were a therapeutic device for the aliens that built this place." Running a hand through her short mess of hair, she continued to work through the problem. "It's possible that, over the centuries, continued use of implants has switched on the ability. An evolution of the species not seen since, well, ever."
"Since that discovery, we've made a basic study of the population of the Tether. Using the data your sister gathered, we've managed to find similar mutations in zero-point-zero-zero-two percent of the population." The grey haired man seemed excited, proud of what he had discovered. "We are witnessing the emergence of a new sub-species of humanity, the possibilities of which are endless."
Something occurred to Ken. She had wondered why Trace: Sinister had attacked Allure's club with such an extreme use of force. It was far and above that needed for the simple and widespread criminal enterprise of stealing people's dream media. Nothing like it had happened ever, as far she knew.
She began to turn over several hypotheses. The grey haired man had said he had not set that massacre in motion. So, what could have been the catalyst? The man had also mentioned that previous experiments had almost caused disasters, in the past. She began to connect the dots.
"You say you share everything? Everything is shared between all the government departments? Standard operating procedure, right?" She hadn't realised she had begun pacing, much like she tended to do in her little apartment. The grey haired man nodded. "What if the government didn't like the idea of humans having this technopathy? You said yourself, the consequences for the Tether from a rogue technopath would be disastrous. What if that was why they came after me at Allure's with such force? And you've told them there are more like me up in the Tether."
"That's ridiculous. Like I said, we're not doing anything illegal ..."
"Only shakily moral?" Biting her lower lip, Ken moved over to the metal containment unit again. She considered what the consequences of many more people with the ability to affect technology, without the need of a traceable implant, could bring to the Tether. "I made a mistake coming here. My need to find answers might just have signed the death warrant for thousands of innocent people. You have to wipe any trace of your research, before Trace: Sinister figures out what you've found."
The grey haired man didn't even question her. Moving to a section of the consoles, he pressed a button, leaning in towards the console.
"Doctor Simmons, please report to the Specimen Monitoring Room." He waited for a reply, but none came. Frowning, as an afterthought, he pressed another button. "Security. Bring our other guest to the Specimen Monitoring room. Unharmed."
"They should have answered, shouldn't they? That Doctor, Simmons?" She tried to catch the grey haired man's eyes as he rubbed his chin, staring at the console. He made a slow nod of the head. "Then it might already be too late. If I can get back to somewhere connected with Thought-Scape, I might be able to destroy all the data to do with the others like me. I might be able to save the lives of the people I, we've put in danger."
The grey haired man rubbed his forehead, now, leaning over, once again, to the console. He pressed the button and tried to contact Doctor Simmons once more, only for a sharp, staccato rattle to emerge from the tinny speaker. The sound of gunfire through the tannoy.
"I can get you out of here, you and your sister, but you have to take specimen three-zero-two-two. I cannot allow my life's work to be destroyed, or perverted. Project Narada was supposed to bring in a golden age of new technologies and medicines, a messenger from the past." He slumped back onto the seat beside the console. "I don't think destroying the data will be enough. You may have to erase everything that Trace: Sinister has. No doubt they will have copies and their troopers will have lists in their implants. You might have to take out all of Trace: Sinister."
"And how the hell am I supposed to do that!" Even as she said it, she already began formulating an idea. "Fine. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."
In visible distress, the grey haired man lifted himself from his seat, crossing the room to join Ken beside the metal containment unit. He opened the cover on the porthole and then reached behind the unit, pressing buttons that Ken had not even noticed, too caught up in her own thoughts and the shock of seeing the real Anna within. The sound of gasses and liquids releasing came from the rear of the unit.
"You are our last resort. Should you need to, you are the only one that can end all of this." The grey haired man placed his hand back on top of the metal containment unit, his face growing sad as he looked at the form of Anna within. "This specimen, three-zero-two-two, "Anna", could be the greatest danger the Tether has ever faced. We need you to stop it, if it comes to it. Permanently."
Ken, felt a strange mixture of sadness and elation. She had brought death to Allure's by her sheer presence, due to a mutation she never even knew she had and now she had brought that same fate down upon the heads of the people at Project Narada. But, she had also achieved her goal. She had found Anna and now she was about to meet the girl for the first time in the Real. She placed her hand upon the metal of the containment unit, hardly able to wait for it to open.
"No! That cannot be me! It cannot!" Anna, the manifestation of Anna within Ken's mind, had appeared next to Ken, looking through the porthole on the containment unit, her face contorting in abject horror at what she saw.
The image, the manifestation of Anna screamed and the entire room became dark.