FSE

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Sixteen months ago.

Ashley looked around the room. What a bunch of miserable sods, she thought.

The laboratory was busier than it had been for the last few months. She hated the smell of it - the ever-pungent scent of sealant, hot soldering irons and synthetic blood. She wondered if the guests had noticed it, or if they would care. Somehow she didn't think they would mind much.

She looked out at the small crowd. Twelve people, of various species, but all men, each one their company's representatives. Looking from one to the next, she was sure that she could recognise, based entirely on the cut of their suits, who had come at the bequest of which sectors. The man at the front, he looked military. The one behind him, almost certainly from the media. She looked around, feeling just a little bit outnumbered by males. It was, she thought, unsurprising when dealing with megacorps.

To her right, the CyberaTech CEO adjusted the tie of his suit uncomfortably. Ashley took that as her queue. She looked down at the tablet computer in her hands. "Today" she read, "we have the honor of unveiling the new height of synthetic life."

One of the men; a thin dragon-like being, made a short sound that was almost a derisive snort.

She ignored him. "Thanks to your sizeable investments, we are proud to reveal to you today, without further ado, the first of our new line of CyberaTech androids."

The group's eyes collectively turned to the android that hung, suspended in an artificial gravity field, in a central cubicle. Ashley's instructions asked for her to pause for an applause, but there was none. The android was, physically at least, only partly completed - missing an entire arm and everything below the body's hips, and without any synthetic fur grafted to its alloy casing. It was, thought Ashley, unimpressive at first glance.

The CEO fixed her with a glare, as if daring her to continue.

She looked down at her tablet. These people are fools, she thought - they should know that all of the real work was in the programming. Scanning over the rest of the speech, Ashley closed the file. The speech would never hold this crowd; not a group of businessmen like this, who were used to hearing presentations and briefings every day of their lives. "Okay" she said, "let's have a look under the hood, eh?"

With a wave of her hand, she brought up a translucent, shimmering hologram of the android's schematics. A soft whisper passed over the crowd. She smiled as the atmosphere in the room seemed to shift, a rumble of curiosity trembling through those assembled.

"Right" she said, pointing to the schematics. "As you can see, we're using a high-density alloy for the core structure, tipped with fiber polymers for the joints. You" she said, pointing her way into the crowd at the man that she assumed was from one of the military corporations, "will like to know that we are expecting that this will allow the unit to move up to two and a half times as fast as a biological unit."

Pursing his lips, the man that she had singled out gave a short nod. "What's that part down below?" he asked, "about the nanofiber mesh surfacing?"

She waved her finger. "I think you'll like this." Ashley was off-script, and noted a firm, disapproving glare from her chief executive officer. She ignored it. "The fur, which has yet to be applied to the prototype, is constructed by microscopic nanofibers. We can program those fibers to perform a number of actions - strengthen their density to become bullet-resistant, for instance, that's one we're finishing off at the moment. This particular model is going to have one that we're really proud of, though. The fibers will be designed to reflect and mirror their surrounding environment, essentially creating a stealth mode."

With an impressed arch of his eyebrows, the man nodded. "What about the programming?" echoed a voice.

Ashley looked over. The speaker was the dragon, and she was not surprised. He was almost certainly from Shinjeki.

Working with CyberaTech, Ashley knew a lot about the Shinjeki Consortium. A megacorp specialising in software development, they had grown over the years to become one of CyberaTech's - and their parent company's - biggest competitors. Established in the northern climes of the international sprawl, where most of the dragons dwelled, Shinjeki had occasionally attempted to enter the field of cybernetics and robotics as well. Each time that they had done so, however, CyberaTech had been able to edge them out of the market, despite their robots finding considerable popularity among the dragons. Physically, their androids were vastly inferior to even the earliest of CyberaTech's manufactured products; they were often equipped with glassy eyes that seemed unfocused, gazing off blankly into the near distance, a flaw that created a disconcerting sense of the uncanny about them.

This proved fairly popular with the dragons; as a species, they tended to come off as emotionless to their neighbouring species and peers. She wondered if they saw the wide-eyed impressions on their android's eyes as being similar to a sense of fear, like a prey that they could stalk. It was, perhaps, no wonder that so many rumours had circulated of disturbing and gruesome behaviours being performed by dragons onto their androids and robots; robotic rights protestors all but avoided CyberaTech, which had long since perfected a more realistic construction method, in their condemnations of the abuses that androids were subjected to and instead focused their attacks on Shinjeki.

She felt a sense of distaste at the dragon, wondering for what reason he was even here at this presentation. The last time that CyberaTech had heard from Shinjeki, it was under the threat of copyright infringement - the most recent attempt by Shinjeki to create a new run of androids had featured, as standard, a barcode placed on the sole of the model's right foot, the usual spot for the CyberaTech emblem. Shinjeki had remained silent on the affair, neither confirming or denying their crime, but the experience had formed a bitterness between both companies that threatened to break into hostilities at any moment.

She tapped the hologram, moving it along. "I think you'll be pleasantly surprised" she said.

The dragon folded his arms. "I should hope so" he muttered. "We have invested a lot into your Project Icarus, I sincerely hope we will see a return on..."

From her right, Ashley heard her manager give a short, irate cough.

"I understand, entirely" she said, quickly interrupting the dragon. "In fact, let's discuss the android's artificial intelligence protocols. I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised. The personality packages that are loaded into the system are..."

She continued to talk for a moment, letting her words carry away the attention of the gathering away from the dragon's careless words. She had no doubt that they had all heard his mention of Project Icarus, that they would be listing it up on their report and taking it along to their managers. Perhaps, she thought, that was what the dragon was intending - a veiled threat to remind CyberaTech that at any moment they could drop mention of the project to the media, leak it to the general population.

Two weeks ago

Gunfire tore through the hallway, ripping heavy chunks from the brick walls behind the pair.

The fox was the first to react, throwing himself down close to the floor and into a forward roll. Turning his head, he glanced towards the security team that was firing at them. Drawing his pistol up, he fired a few snapping blasts back down the hallway. "Shit!" he barked. "Cybe, move it!"

The android didn't look up. His attention was focused on the screen before him, even while bullets and plasma blasts tore chunks from the masonry around him. "It will be another twelve seconds, Sam" he replied, working his fingers as fast as he could across the touch-screen. To his right, a large pair of heavy bay doors stood, unmoving, waiting for the right access code.

Samedi fell into place beside the android, pulling his body up into the doorway and taking another shot down the hallway. "We don't have another twelve seconds" he snapped, "they have another team inbound!"

Cybe didn't reply, focusing entirely on cracking his way through the doorway security. With lockdown protocols in full effect, the door had fallen back to its inbuilt secure nodes, divorcing it from the base's network. While the sirens blaring deafeningly throughout the hallways of the base, it would be all but impossible to get in through the door any other way but the old-fashioned way.

A crackle burst through the hacker's in-built audio receptor, quickly giving way to a panicked mousy voice. "We're losing it over here!" yelled Rowan. "We've got one man down! Are you almost out?"

"Almost!" yelled the fox, the wall barely an inch above his head crackling with the impact sparks of the bullets. "Hold our escape route!"

Samedi swore. The entire run had started out so well until he had pulled the data. The moment that he had done so, the whole base had lit up. There was no way that there should be this many guards, and definitely not so heavily armed. Whatever CyberaTech had been expecting to hit this place, it was big - definitely not a small group of runners like the four of them. "Cybe?" he wailed.

The android hit the enter button, and the door slid open with a grudging hydraulic hiss. He hurried through, taking a quick series of steps before he realised that he was on his own. Turned back to the fox, he insisted "Come on!".

It was then that Cybe noticed that the fox was down.

A look of pained shock covered Samedi's face, his teeth gritting as he lay splayed on the floor. The shot had hit his lower leg, just below the knee, sending a shock of crimson across the floor. From the first glance, Cybe could tell that it wasn't a serious wound, but the guards were already tearing their way down the hallway, gaining on him inch by inch.

The android sprinted back towards his colleague.

Cybe wished that he had brought his original body. Whilst the modifications that Rowan had made to it had made it somewhat less cautious and unreliable, the lighter weight of its smaller frame would have allowed him to cover the ground just a fraction of a second faster.

The door gave another soft hiss, this one sounding more like the wheeze of a dying man, and slid shut. Cybe slammed against it, his last image of the fox laying on the ground before him, arm reaching out, desperate for help, as a troupe of CyberaTech guard descended upon him like vultures.

Slamming his fist hard against the door, the android sunk down to its knees.

Today

Luke clutched his hands to the side of his head and screamed.

Doubling over, the fox crumpled to the charred floorboards, fingers digging against his temples. Cybe rushed over to him, barely taking a second's notice of the stallion that held the pair of them at gunpoint.

"What's wrong with him?" barked Ashley.

Cybe reached around, clutching Luke around his shoulders. The fox's body shuddered, twitching. Cybe turned her gaze towards their attacker. "What do you think is happening?" she snapped. "He's trying to unpackage several thousand terabytes of personality data. What do you think would happen when that hits against the erroneous data that you people copied into his brain?"

Trembling sharply, Luke turned his head up and opened his mouth, a resounding crackle of digital squeals streaming from his lips.

Lowering her gun only slightly, Ashley took a step closer, moving the bulky equine body that she puppeted with clumsy awkwardness as her fear started to get the better of her.

Luke barely even noticed. In his mind, he saw those Christmases with his family again. He saw flowing grass and tall trees. He saw the neon lights of digital highways and the heady thrill of corporate secrets bristling in his hard drive. Samedi, he thought - a name with meaning. A reputation that he couldn't remember. No, he could now remember it - flooding back to him in transcendent shards, like broken glass which cut away the fabric of what had once been, each slice searing with a white hot burning.

Ashley raised the gun again. "I don't want this" she barked. "I don't want any of this. Look, just give me what you stole."

Cybe raised herself up, kneeling, her hands protective on Luke's back. "Shut up" she hissed. "You did this to him. You implanted those memories."

"I don't want to hurt him!" retorted Ashley. "Really, I don't. Look, maybe you don't understand this, being a bloody machine and all, but I don't want him to suffer either. None of us do. We just want back what you took from us."

The android narrowed her eyes. "It's just business" she snarled, "right?"

Ashley lowered her gun, dropping it to the ground. "You're right, actually" she said, stepping over towards the fox. "Despite what you think, we're not monsters."

Cybe moved quickly, almost as fast as an instinct, raising her blade to the stallion.

Staring at her, the horse returned the android's gaze. "You stole the data from us" she explained, trying to keep the fear from her voice. "We have to get it back. Project Icarus is important to the company. That doesn't mean that we want to kill you to get it, we would much rather just ask you to give it back. If you would just..."

Luke let out another scream, his body convulsing fiercely.

"He has the files, doesn't he?" she asked. "Just make him give them to me, and we can help him."

Cybe looked down at the fox. A deep rumbling emanated from within the boy's cyberbrain, data processors straining and struggling to reconcile ream upon ream of contradictory data, thousands of error messages assailing his processors. "Why should I trust you?" she asked.

"What choice do you have?" insisted Ashley.

The android cupped her hands around Luke's face, turning it towards her. She wondered if the boy would even recognise her after all of this. His entire personality was in flux, ready to break apart. She closed her eyes. No, thought Cybe, there was another way - exactly one more way.

Luke, she whispered silently, transferring her words right into his interface, open the other file. Open the data that we stole.

In a moment, all went silent.

The fox's body stopped twitching.

A soft, hushed stillness pervaded the air.

And then all lights within the apartment snapped off.

Reaching down, Ashley snapped up the rifle, bringing it to bear. She glanced, first down at the pair, and then towards the boarded up window, then into the hallway. The rifle's muzzle trailed, anxiously and nervously, around the air, speaking of her panic. "What is going on?" she demanded.

Cybe looked around. The stillness felt unusual, indeed. She couldn't even hear the soft hum of her home appliances. She throb of electronics that normally sat as a peaceful, near-silent background was gone, empty. She quickly scanned the local area network and found nothing - no power to her television, no heating, water, nothing. It was as if something had reached in and, with one gentle flick, pulled the switch. "I'm not sure" she muttered.

She looked down at Luke. His entire body seemed limp, unresponsive. Pressing her hand to his chest, Cybe felt that he was still breathing. It must be his cyberbrain rebooting, she decided.

"If this is a trick" yelled Ashley, unable to keep the panic from her voice. She drew the barrel of the rifle towards the android, "I swear, I'll shoot you right now if you don't stop th..."

The fox's eyes blinked open.

Cybe dropped her hands away from Luke's body, pulling back. A sharp luminescent light spilled from the fox's eyes, glowing like torches in the darkness.

"Shit!" snapped Ashley, pulling down fiercely on the rifle's trigger. The gun clicked, registering the pull, but nothing happened.

With that, Luke started to move. Carefully, pulling himself up from his position on the floor, he stood. His mouth opened, and he spoke - no, thought Cybe, not quite speaking. Instead, a voice echoed from the fox's throat, an unfamiliar and alien voice, all the while the boy's lips stayed wide open and unmoving - "Operations online. Icarus reactivating."

Cybe scrambled to stand too. She looked over at Ashley, watching as the stallion pulled the trigger again and again. Cybe knew that it was a futile attempt.

"What is this?" cried Ashley, panic now taking its full grip on her.

"My best guess?" replied Cybe, edging carefully around the fox's static body. She circled around Luke, staring at him, watching the blue glow from his unblinking eyes. "The program that Luke was storing in his cyberbrain is active now. I'd think that it had to pull additional power from everything around us - lights, heating, probably even the battery pack for your gun."

Ashley lowered the gun, realizing that without the battery pack to power the weapon's onboard digital components it was all but useless. Instead, she clutched it defensively, like a club. "What is it?" she whispered, her voice growing quiet with fear. "What is this program?"

"Don't you know?" retorted the android.

The stallion shook his head. "Above my authorization level. But you know, don't you? After all, you stole it."

Nervously, Cybe shook her head. "The buyer didn't tell me. But I think I know. I think..."

A voice reverberated from Luke's throat; deep but soft, neither strongly masculine nor feminine. "I am part of Project Icarus."

"You're the program?" asked Ashley. "You're the data that they stole?"

"Correct" came the reply.

Turning to look at the fox, Cybe said "And Luke? What about Luke?"

The stranger that stood in the room turned, examining the android with a cold and uncertain gaze. "I am not familiar with that designation" it spoke.