"Uh, Kaitlyn…" muttered Melbourne in shock as he raised his Zlock in preparation to shoot.
"Ah, Melbourne." said the woman as she turned to face him. Her eyes were glowing an unnatural red, though the glow was fading. She gave Melbourne an unnatural smile. "I was unfortunately compromised when that pirate over here took over the bridge. Poor Captain Sterano discovered my secret. So have you, based on your gawking staring into my eyes. Oh, where are my manners? I should introduce myself to you formally since you now see my greatest secret. My real name is Victoria Gambria. Kaitlyn Genee was just an alias."
"Right." said Melbourne. "I'm gonna take a wild guess as to what happens next."
Melbourne pulled the safety and prepared to fire.
"You are very astute, Melbourne, I'll give you that. Unfortunately, you leave much to be wanting in terms of perception." said Victoria as the barrel of a surgically implanted wrist gun extruded from her deceptively human-like skin.
Bang.
Melbourne keeled over in pain, but it wasn't from Victoria's bullet. A knife struck him in the back, missing major organs but still hurting like nothing he had ever felt before in his life.
[*HP: 2/12]
*You are bleeding out and will take one point of damage every minute until you can bandage the wound.]
Regardless of the fact that he didn't feel Victoria's bullet, she did shoot. She shot five separate times.
[*Pirates Defeated: 25/25
*Your Contribution: 7/25
*Mission Complete: Pirate Attack
*+10XP
*XP: 104/100
*LEVEL UP]
Melbourne rotated uncontrollably as his vision started to become hazy. What he witnessed behind him were the corpses of the five pirates who he had been racing to stop. They had sneaked up on him while he was talking with the traitorous cyborg.
As he rotated again towards Victoria, his vision began to go black. The last thing he saw before fading into unconsciousness was the red haired woman approaching his helpless body like a spider coming up on her prey as the bleeding prompted another System message.
[*HP: 1/12
*Subject is near death and will now fall unconscious.]
***
Melbourne awoke in the ship infirmary strapped to a wall. In the room with him was none other than Victoria Gambria typing vigorously on a computer terminal.
Melbourne decided to keep his mouth shut for a few minutes and check his status screen.
[*Subject: Melbourne Acliate
*Level: 2
*XP: 4/200
*HP: 15/15
*ST: 20/20
*BE: 10/10
*Str: 15
*End: 14
*Per: 18
*Int: 21
*Agi: 19
*Cyb: 10]
"Victoria?" mumbled Melbourne weakly.
Victoria turned around and smiled.
"You almost bled to death after those pirates sneaked up on you." said Victoria.
"Why did you spare me?" asked Melbourne in confusion. "I know your secret. You killed the Captain over that knowledge, so why spare me?"
Victoria looked down in stress. Melbourne could tell that she was trying to think of the best way to explain something very complicated.
"Captain Sterano was as trustworthy as the government itself." explained Victoria carefully. "If I hadn't dealt with him, he absolutely would have turned me in to the authorities as soon as we got back to Mars and I would be promptly strapped to a chair and given a lethal injection after a speedy trial for formality. The dear captain was a threat to my cover and my life. You, on the other hand are a wild card."
"Wild card?" asked Melbourne inquisitively. "What do you know or think you know?"
"I know that I witnessed your fight with our cook on the airship." said Victoria. "Unimpressive to the untrained eye, I'll grant you that. You probably thought that you looked like a perfectly normal teenage boy dealing with a personal problem. You did to any human eye, so you can relax on that point. The government shouldn't be onto you."
"You mean you think I'm an augmented human?"
"Maybe." said Victoria, playing with a holo disc in her fingers like a toy. "We've done background checks on you. Your family isn't anything extremely impressive. You grew up relatively poor and I'm certain you could not afford black market augmentations. I scanned you with a handheld X-Ray machine many times and to my dismay, I have found no trace of any computer in your brain. What really drives me nuts is that when you fight, you seem to be following external direction like there's a voice or H.U.D. in your brain telling you how to fight. It's so subtle that even many expert cyborg hunters wouldn't notice given no augmentation of their own. However, it is there. Genetic augmentations can avoid detection systems like that, but they don't put useful voices or computer interfaces inside your brain. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"
"Listen, given my situation, I don't really want to tell you anything about my own secrets unless you tell me a little about your own." said Melbourne cautiously. "Who do you really work for and why are you here on this expedition with me?"
"Of course." said Victoria. "Well, I initially became interested in this mission when I saw you on the airship back on Mars. I recorded your fight and forwarded the data to my superiors. They approved a request to change my former mission to following you and acquiring more information about you."
"You're a Red Cyber Rebel, aren't you?" asked Melbourne.
Victoria smiled coyly, confirming Melbourne's suspicion.
"You see, my superiors want to know if you can be trusted and if you could be a valuable asset. They would also love to get their hands on any sort of cybernetic technology that can modify the body or mind and be hidden from any X-Ray scanning technology."
Melbourne briefly wished he had been killed as the disturbing thought occurred to him that he might be kidnapped and taken to some underground laboratory somewhere and be treated as a guinea pig. He suddenly thought that explaining the reality of the situation would be better for him in the long run as he might not have to endure torturous surgeries designed to figure out what he was made of.
"Okay, I'll tell you on one condition." said Melbourne. "Please don't take me back to some lab and have me dissected."
Victoria smirked, amused by Melbourne's sudden worry.
"Alright. I won't do that." said Victoria.
"I do have an augmentation." began Melbourne slowly. "How I got it is a long story."
Melbourne explained the misadventure into the woods after he had graduated from high school and his encounter with a Cosmist artifact from before the Artilect War. He then explained the System and how it guided him to train towards becoming some kind of supersoldier by gamifying his life with mission objectives and rewards. He finally explained how the System gave him a quest to find a "neural interface" within the derelict ship that the Seeker was going to find.
Victoria's eyes were wide in disbelief through the whole tale. By the time he finished, her mouth was hanging open.
"A nanobot system spread throughout your brain and nervous system that can get all of your vital statistics and interact with you like a computer?" muttered Victoria in awe, more to herself than to Melbourne. "The Cosmists really were far ahead of us in the field of cybernetics research. That just goes to show you how much more you can progress with a few decades of uninterrupted research than over centuries of hiding underground."
Melbourne himself became surprised that the very nature of the technology within him went beyond what the Red Cyber Rebellion itself was capable of creating.
"So what happens now?" asked Melbourne.
"Now we're in the same boat." said Victoria. "We both have something to hide and we both know it. I don't wish to kill you and I think you may be a potentially valuable asset in the future for the Red Cybers. I can destroy you if you cause trouble for me by exposing what you have learned just by exposing your secrets."
Melbourne felt like a fish on a hook at that last threatening statement. He was basically being told that he had no choice but to cooperate with her for now.
"Alright, alright." said Melbourne. "What is the situation on the ship, by the way? How long have I been asleep?
"You have been unconscious for two days. We have been in standby mode since the pirate attack. Orbital police forces from Luna have already come and analyzed the situation. The pirates were part of a pretty infamous gang around Luna called the Lunarian Reapers. The Seeker has been repaired as of about three hours ago. Everyone else believes that Captain Sterano was killed by the pirates who attacked the bridge. I have been promoted to de facto captain. As communications officer, I have been the most intimately involved in the ship systems."
Melbourne processed all this information despite an overwhelming sense of bewilderment.
"I would like to help you. I believe that cultivating yourself with this System of yours will be the best path towards unlocking the secrets of the work of this Professor Galten. We are going to follow the initial plan of using your robotics systems that Arian Horizons hired you to create to map out the ship and expose any dangers before sending an expedition team inside to get any knowledge from it and beam it back to Arian and the Red Cybers. You are going to find this Neural Interface and learn all the secrets you can from it. I would be appreciative if you would share those secrets with me for the rebellion. I will share any such information with my superiors and not with Arian Horizons. I suggest that you follow that example. The more the government knows about ancient Cosmist technology, the more at risk you are of being caught by cyborg hunters and finally executed. Do you understand me?"
Melbourne nodded, processing all this information. After all he heard, he could understand Victoria's actions. He probably would've had to do the same thing if he were in her shoes. While it was true that she primarily wanted to use him, she at least had no ill will for him even after learning his secret. Given that she was the only potential ally he knew about at this moment who knew his secret, working with her would be better than working against her.
Now, as his conversation with Victoria came to an end, Melbourne's attention turned to his Aclito and he prepared to analyze all the benefits he would get from finally reaching Level 2.