Lia the Dependant

I approached the woman, the underground MechDoc. She didn’t see me, busy pulling on a worn coat, sweatpants, and thick socks with sushi patterns. I cleared my throat, but my cybernetics distorted it like an error buzz. The woman jumped, spun, and aimed a snub-nose revolver at me. I raised my hands.

‘Next consultation isn’t for a few hours,’ she said, still aiming. She spoke fast, and the traces of Scottish gave her voice a pleasant lilt.

‘I’m not here for that,’ I said, disgusted by my mechanical voice.

‘Hence why I’m aiming.’

‘I’m here for…’

Why am I here?

‘We’re out of kyratalsate,’ the woman said. ‘Reach for the Malfix tabs and I’ll blow your head open.’

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ I confessed. ‘My name is Aurelia Sorannus. I thought you could—I don’t know.’

The woman’s cheek twitched and she looked suddenly eager to shoot my remaining 6% of flesh. ‘Where did you hear that name?’

‘It’s mine.’

‘Unlucky,’ she replied. ‘Any other MechDoc wouldn’t have thought anything of it.’

‘I’m not trying to steal.’

Her cheek twitched again and gaze intensified. A moment passed. Droplets trickled off the canvas canopy. ‘No…you’re not lying.’ She started to lower the revolver. ‘Some of Montim Aquinor never approved of the DelStag.’

‘Never stagnate,’ I replied.

She lowered the revolver, relieved. ‘You’re taller than I remember.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’m being rude. I’m Valeria Vitus, recall?’

My memory twinged at the name, but I couldn’t pinpoint her face. I had a vague recollection of a woman with blonde hair to her hips, but the woman before me had shoulder-length, ashen brown hair pulled back with numerous hairpins. She could have been the liar, not me.

‘You look like shit,’ she said. I laughed, a genuine one. Never mind; not a liar. ‘Zorica didn’t spent billions for you to look like a walking toaster.’

‘I…’ Hearing Mum's name silenced me. 

Valeria pursed her lips. She discerned something in me. ‘You said you don’t know why you’re here, but I have a decent idea.’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘It starts with the letter H.’

‘I’m in Hell.’

Valeria laughed. When she did, her vivacity was on full display. She didn’t care how her laugh sounded to others. I’d never seen someone look so…alive. ‘Starts with H and ends with E-L-P.’

‘Oh.’ I fidgeted. ‘I guess so.’

‘You guess so,’ Valeria parroted, with a smug smile. ‘Self-sufficiency is a dangerous illusion. In cities like this, you could be murdered, ignored for days, and then cremated and forgotten. Over-reliance on oneself isn’t a benefit. It decays humanity.’

She’d flipped between teasing and philosophical with the ease of breathing. It was like each second I perceived a different facet of a gemstone, yet just around the corner were a hundred more.

‘Our meeting must be fate,’ Valeria said. ‘I’ll help you, whether you ask or not. Your mother would kill me if she knew I’d turned you away.’

‘How do you know my mum?’

‘That’s a hamster-in-a-tesseract kinda question.’

I didn’t press her, given how desperately I relied on her support. She still had work, so I followed her instructions in the makeshift clinic. The people in the cots had come to die. If you’re shocked, don’t worry; I felt the same way. Down in the lower sections of the city, people’s bodies sometimes rejected the cheap cybernetics. This led to sepsis, necrosis, and a dozen or more issues.

Valeria made the people more comfortable as they passed. Then she harvested their cybernetics. The gear was supposed to go to a government recycling plant, but with clever bribes, Valeria loaded them on a barge and shipped them north, across the Sea of Japan. There, the parts were sold to various Russian organisations. Legal? Ethical? Profitable? No. Uncertain. Yes.

The parts went north, but Valeria planned to meet with the CEO buying from her in Kolyagrad (previously Volgograd, previously Stalingrad). He was a big-shot biotech guy with a penchant for authentic souvenirs.

We spoke briefly while administering various drugs to the ailing people, during which I learned more about Valeria. For example, the name Valeria Vitus came from the New Roman Revival movement, just like mine. In the underground, she went by Valerie, but I preferred her real name. That topic got her talking just enough to learn she knew Mum from when they both joined the syndicate decades ago. I wasn’t sure about Valeria’s age. Forties?

Valeria also wore a gold crucifix. I assumed it was to ward away techno-vampires, but the truth was more unusual: She was baptised as a Christian of the Septethürn denomination. She’d done it to spite her parents and the New Roman Movement, but over the years she began to follow it with zeal.

That’s why she prayed when the people in the cots passed away.

Many passed. Some gave a sigh and went still. Some rolled onto their side and seemed to be asleep. One man went rigid yet still twitched, despite the overhead monitor showing he’d flatlined. It wasn’t how I imagined. I’d never witnessed death. I’d never killed. It was naïve to think I’d kill Horace without mental doubts.

If I’m being darkly honest, my first thought was that it seemed “right” for them to die. They had shitty cybernetics; there wasn’t much else for them. Then I glanced down and recalled I had shitty cybernetics. Relax, this isn’t a trite story about me learning to show empathy. Fuck early century morality. The only lesson from the dead was that I needed to get new cybernetics sooner than planned.

Hours passed, and when Valeria finished with the last of the patients, we packed up and took the moss-covered, escalator-turned-stairs to the surface. The evening neon stung my organic eye.

Valeria lived in the east, specifically in a steel shipping container by the port. We caught a train and walked the remainder. I heard gulls. There were no living gulls, but the local union demanded the speakers play organic-based auditory stimulation.

The shipping container contained a hammock, steel desk, and a locked, pre-war footlocker made from berakite composite steel. Berakite smelled of fresh cut grass and was nearly impenetrable. Finding a berakite container was like finding a dislodged piece of history. Something primordial. Something daunting in its resilience. Drop berakite in a volcano, wait for it to erupt, and you'll probably be able to retrieve it. 

Thick sheafs of documents, pictures, and scrawled notes hung from the ceiling. Academic books clung to the walls like paperback moths.

Valeria ushered me inside and noted my interest in the documents. ‘The Rat King,’ she explained. ‘On paper, I’m still a member of Montim Aquinor. The third lieutenant, Corvus Corinthian, maintains the research department, all eight of us.’

‘What’s the point?’

Valeria gave a weary sigh, as if she’d asked herself that question a thousand times. ‘The Rat King’s attacks every ninety days are random, but Corvus seems to think they’re random in the sense that it should only look random.’

‘So…it’s not random?’

‘It is random, but only to look that way.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘Basically, he thinks the Rat King’s attacks are to keep the world occupied.’ Valeria plucked a multitude of coloured strings. ‘Every major faction in the world believes someone else created the Rat King. I’ve traced and mapped them, like so, but it ends up looking like a dreamcatcher. There’s no clear origin.’

‘…Created the Rat King?’

Valeria hummed, plucked her lip, and squinted. ‘I may or may not have just leaked an Aquinor secret.’ She clapped, closed the shipping container, and tugged a string switch. We were bathed in halogenic white. ‘Well, too late now. Yes, the Rat King was created. Over the decades, we collected fragments of data from his androids. Sometimes literal megabytes. It was like making a tapestry with strands imported from around the world. But, it finally started to take shape. We understood one thing: The Rat King is an artificial intelligence, the most advanced ever to exist.’

‘More advanced than Autumn-Aphonic?’

‘By a magnitude of a thousand. The name is the answer. The Rat King was named after a phenomenon where rats get their tails intertwined. As a result, they’re forced to exist almost like a single entity. In the same way, the Rat King seems to be an amalgamation of multiple AI.’

‘If the name is a hint, how come “Rat King” has been used from the start?’

‘Because the Rat King named himself.’

As I pondered, Valeria stripped nude. I stared at her body, at her toned abdomen, ribcage, and nipples, at the skin and muscles beneath, at the warmth of blood. You’re staring, I told myself, and spun away. The blood remaining in my 6% body rushed to my cheeks. My heart pounded. Valeria apologised. She’d been alone for so long, she’d forgotten certain conventions.

‘I-It’s fine,’ I replied. ‘I’m the one intruding.’ While she dressed, an earlier question resurfaced. ‘If you don’t mind, is your percentage…?’

‘Around one, give or take a tenth.’

‘One,’ I whispered, awed. ‘I’m jealous.’

‘You could go back,’ Valeria said, with an odd, mordant tone. ‘Grow new organs, skin, and muscle. Regenerate what bone tissue you can. Of course, you’d need to convince a dozen CEOs to sell their majority shares for funding. Then there’s the pain of convincing your body to accept the new parts, so you’d be in phys-hab for anywhere between two and ten years. And, at the end of it, you’ll still be classified as having exceeded the forty-nine threshold. But, yes, it’s possible.’

‘Oh.’

Valeria had put on an emerald sweater and hex-print slacks. She also put on a sympathetic expression as her hands came to rest on my metal-clad shoulders. ‘Scars are memories made manifest. To remove them would be to hide from memories, from the past, from the truth. Remember why this happened.’

Horace, I thought. But, rage didn’t manifest. Valeria’s face was so close to mine. My heartbeat increased again. Valeria had cerulean eyes.

Valeria cleared her throat. ‘With that said, I have a plan to make you less like a toaster and more like a particle accelerator. It’s what Zorica would want.’

Mention of Mum's name made my chest ache for different reasons, but I pushed the feelings away and focused on the future.

Valeria let me sleep in the hammock, while she arranged blankets and clothes on the floor. She turned out the light, and for the first time in weeks I didn’t dream of the DelStag.

#

The following day, Valeria brought me shopping in a bazaar situated in Sendai’s foreign ward. She spoke to merchants in Nepali and Bulgarian, without relying on automated software, and haggled for a travel jumpsuit, overcoat, scarf, and luggage. She gave me all of them. I questioned the last item, but Valeria told me I’d need it for our trip to Kolyagrad. Our trip?

Next, she bought a tiny cigar box made from genuine cedar, for the not-so-cheap price of 100,000 yen. We needed a gift for the CEO, since Valeria wanted him in a good mood before asking that he repay his debt.

‘The company’s maxim is: “Failures are the first steps of facts.” Well, you failed. You don’t have to tell me what happened, so let’s focus on facts.’

‘Facts?’

‘Your brain is intact. All we need is the right body to fulfil its potential.’

For the next couple months, I helped Valeria at the underground clinic or processed data on the Rat King. Nothing exciting. With the funds earned, we caught a flight to Kolyagrad. We would’ve left weeks earlier, but my 94% status required a premium and extra documentation. If Valeria hadn’t listed me as her autonomy-assistance vessel (AAV), I’d have been seated in the cargo hold. It felt odd to so wholly rely on a recent acquaintance. 

It took hours for me to be processed at both airports. I missed Aquinor's private jets. 

A taxi brought us to the company’s towering headquarters. We waited in the lobby, until the secretariat superior took us personally to the CEO’s office. As we rode the elevator up, I was plagued by nightmarish visions of androids clawing at a massive blast door.

The CEO was named Illarion Anatolyevich Athanaric. He spoke English with a thick Russian accent. His broad stature and tiny eyes weren’t strange features compared to his seven fingers on each hand, two hearts, and a bifurcated tongue that, when fully extended, went past his chin. He caught me staring. ‘Like it?’ he said, waggling both sides independently. ‘It helps when the bed gets busy. What is the word? Cunnilingus, yes? One on either side and I can—’

‘We understand,’ Valeria said, and presented to him the cigar box. It was a trifle compared to the fur coat made from a polar bear on his shoulders, yet he looked like a delighted child.

‘How much you want?’ he asked. ‘Will you accept rupeks?’

‘It’s a gift, Illarion,’ Valeria explained.

With a hand over his heart(s), he looked genuinely taken aback. ‘You are serious?’

‘There is the matter of a certain debt.’ She raised her brows. Illarion nodded, ponderous and knowing. ‘I need certain gear and pseudo-skin.’ She handed him a sheaf of documents, specifications for her request. He flipped through. His frown deepened after each page. 

'Gear this old is in storage. That aside, we have things sturdier than pseudo-skin,' he remarked. ‘We are bio, not beep-boop.’

‘Follow my specifications exactly.’ Valeria gestured at me. 'She will do the rest.'

Illarion eyed me, dubious. ‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘Now, as in, right this moment?’ He laughed. ‘My people are occupied. If you could make an appointment with—’

‘I cleaned up your physical indiscretions, but wiping the footage may have slipped my mind.’

The colour drained from Illarion’s face. I could’ve sworn one of his hearts stopped beating. ‘You said no photo.’

‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’

He ground his teeth together. ‘Do not play riddles.’

‘I have the footage. Nobody has seen it. The footage will be deleted the second after this girl is outfitted, as if it never existed.’

With that, the deal was finalised.

Even I was shocked by the “now” definition. Once we left the office, a swarm of masked attendants led us to the middling floors. They dressed me in a hospital gown. A MechDoc analysed my current gear. A bio-seamstress took samples from my 6% of organic material and measured my body to prepare the bespoke pseudo-skin.

Within the hour, they got me into an operating room. Just like that? I wouldn’t have my old body, but I’d be a bit better? At the very least, I’d have skin? I suppressed my emotion, as if excitement might jolt me from a dream.

They didn’t need anaesthetic. What flesh needed to be numbed? A plastic sheet blocked my view, while the MechDoc and surgeons worked. Half-an-hour passed. Replacing the cybernetics was easy. Fitting the pseudo-skin was not. Another few hours passed before they got my head and torso done. They spun a monitor and showed me the results.

…You know when you get a haircut and the hairdresser asks if it’s good? Then you say yes, even though it isn’t, but you know it’ll be fine in a few days?

The MechDoc wanted a response, so I smiled.

My skin looked passable, at a glance. But I spotted seams and weird spots. A bit doll-like. They’d fitted synthetic hair, too, but it wasn’t the thickness or shade of my original. I didn’t complain. I wanted them to hurry up, as my skinless arms and legs made me uncomfortable.

They were about to start on my shoulders when the room filled with red light. A siren wailed. The MechDoc pulled away equipment and got me out of the chair. ‘We can keep going, right?’ I asked, but nobody heard.

Valeria burst into the room soon after. ‘Rat King!’ she said. Now, imagine your friends and family saying, ‘Happy birthday!’ Blend the words of the former and tone of the latter:

‘Rat King!’

Valeria grinned and pulled me from the room, despite my protests. ‘Do you know what this means? We’ll have access to all the androids firsthand. I’ve never been in a city during an attack. Can you believe our luck?’

‘What about my skin?’

‘Later,’ she replied. ‘If we find an active android, we can duplicate it as a ROM construct. Imagine the data.’

Half-dragged, half-supported by Valeria, I hobbled along. Glass shattered in the distance. It was unlikely but not impossible for androids to attack a biotech company. Nobody really knew where they attacked or why. 

Androids swarmed the intersection down the hall. They slaughtered a few doctors and patients before security arrived. Then they slaughtered security, too.

Valeria and I spun and went down another passage. No good. More androids. But, steady gunfire resounded. The androids fell with precise, clustered shots to their heads. The rhythm sounded familiar, as did the firearm. A Kasagi MK.IV semi-automatic rifle. I’d heard that rifle used hundreds of times during visits to a private shooting range with an old friend. It had a secondary magazine that auto-cycled when the first was depleted; it made a satisfying sound like—

Like that, I thought. The Venator entered my field of vision. He wore a new suit but otherwise hadn’t changed.

I froze. ‘I didn’t need anaesthetic, did I?’

‘Not that I’m aware,’ Valeria replied.

‘Does pseudo-skin make you hallucinate?’

‘Of course not.’

Then, that’s…

Yagi Akinori.