I, Cassandra

05 | RYAN MADDOX

'It turns out he was a man of certain principles.' Akron glances at the image of the bloodied, white-haired old man. 'He might have been one of our brightest scientists, but he was a secret philanthropist. He felt guilty living in luxury while the rest of humanity grovelled in the gutter.'

'So he's been making medicine all this time,' I say, a sliver of admiration tainting my eastern accent.

Akron laughs, scornful. 'Of course not. The UFF were not as indulgent as Command. They lured him out with promises, feeding his ego, but when they got him, they threatened to kill his kids, demanding cheap opiates manufactured by the truckload, and something else, too.' Akron looks at me now, square in the eyes. 'A drug which makes people susceptible to suggestion and erases the memories of what they have done as though it never happened. Virtually untraceable in blood tests. Hypnotism, but without the hypnotist.'

I get it now. Where he is going with this.

'You talked, Maddox,' he states. 'We know.'

'How?' I ask, my gravelly voice lowers, suspicious. 'You can only see images.' I tilt my head at the wall, where she had just been. 'There is no sound.'

'We have lip readers,' Akron mutters, flat. 'When you were fucking her, Cassandra called you her Delta Force Captain.'

'I told her,' I lie. I can't help myself, something visceral inside me is determined to protect her from whatever Akron's got up his rolled-up sleeve. She did call me that sometimes because she said it was her fantasy to fuck one. I went along with it because it made her happy, pretending along with her, even though that's exactly what I was. Six months of my life she was all I thought about, craved for and wanted by my side. Six months. She told me she loved me. I believed it. I fucking smuggled pouches of cat food taped to my groin out of Omega V for her. If that's not love I don't know what is. What we had is not going to go away just because Akron wants it to. Not by a long shot. She didn't send me to my death. It would have killed her.

I'm betting there was no drug, and the images I'm looking at are staged. I get the feeling Akron's playing me, trying to get me to talk, to say where she is—sensing there's a big, fat bonus in it for him if I give her up, maybe even a golden ticket into Alpha VII. I'm no sadist like him, but I also know enough to know I'm not one of the good guys either—not after some of the missions I have executed. In this new skewed world of haves and have-nots, there's a lot of shades of grey. It's dog eat dog. And in the middle of this stinking, festering hell-hole, I found her.

I turn my back to Akron.

He exhales, slow. A pissed off sound, hinting things will go south if I don't give him what he wants.

'Did you tell her about the mission in Lubochnia?' he asks, quiet, dangerous.

'Of fucking course not,' I snap. I close my eyes, shutting out the image of Henrik's brutalised face. 'You know me better than that, sir.'

'I don't get you Maddox,' Akron says, cold as ice. 'Delta Force have a wing full of pleasure droids, yet you choose to risk everything to fuck some woman you know nothing about.' He scoffs before continuing, derisive. 'It wouldn't have been so bad if you'd just fucked her the once, but you went back, over and over. You even smuggled cat food across the barrier for her, you sad fuck.'

'Premium cat food,' I taunt. 'That shit's not cheap.'

'You committed treason,' Akron continues, relentless. 'Good men are dead because of your recklessness.' He pulls his pistol free. I brace myself. Cold metal presses against the back of my head. 'I want to kill you,' he whispers. 'You made me look bad.'

'Except you need me,' I say, calmer than I feel, since I want to smash his head into Henrik's image, until his face is as bloody as the old man's. 'The DoD spent all that money rebuilding me and got an executive order signed because my memories weren't enough were they? They would never have brought me back if you knew where to find her.'

Akron chuckles, mean. He pulls the pistol away, sharp. A whisper as he slides it back into its holster. He moves up beside me his knife freed from the holder strapped to his thigh. Quick as a viper he slices into my triceps, deep. I recoil, but there is no pain. I look down. No blood. Instead, a clear viscous liquid, and within the opening, thousands of tiny metallic movements, like a sea of silver ball bearings smaller than pin heads, swarming together, knitting into place, rebuilding me. Horrified, I watch as the opening closes within the space of several seconds, a layer of new flesh sliding into place. Only the rent in my shirt remains.

Akron eyes me, impassive.

'What have you done to me?' I breathe, my flesh crawling, revulsion slamming into me. Those things are inside me.

'Brought you back from the dead,' Akron says. 'Did you think you would still be human? You're more machine than man, now.' His gaze drops to my crotch, the faintest of a malicious smile ghosts his lips. I can't help myself, I feel between my legs. Nothing. Smooth as a doll. I stagger backwards, and stumble against the edge of the bed.

'I drank whisky,' I say, desperation clawing into me, denial riding me hard. 'I'll have to piss it out.'

'Under that shell of skin,' Akron says, watching me with morbid fascination, like a scientist watching a lab rat die, 'you're packed with nanotech. Anything you eat or drink will be broken down to its molecular basis. Any excess that can't be stored or used will evaporate through the pores of your skin as inert gases.'