Shortly after this SA Strickland entered the facility via the underground entrance and had words with Lt. Kumala. She seemed to be angrier than usual (I think she was unhappy with the soldiers guarding the facility but I did not hear any details). SA Strickland stayed on-site for perhaps five minutes, during which time she approached me and asked if the equipment was ready. I told her that we would be ready shortly (we were still running the third ground-truthing sequence). This did not seem to be the answer SA Strickland was hoping for. At this point Lt. Kumala approached SA Strickland and reported that there appeared to be “a problem” with the guards stationed at Trinity. SA Strickland then assembled a small force (maybe 3 or 4 soldiers) and left through the Trinity tunnel. Before she left she told Lt. Kumala to reassign snipers to the roof because “Prophet won’t be thinking as two-dimensionally as you lot.”
Parpek and I completed the ground-truthing sequences during this time but then Dr. Rawles tripped over the power cord so we had to start again. While we were reinitializing the NODAR the ground began to shake and I heard what sounded like a muffled explosion in the distance. (I believe this was the ammo dump going up in the churchyard.) I noticed Lt. Kumala becoming agitated over at his command post. He then approached the technical team and said something like “He’s here. He’s right outside. Get that f______g machine working already or I’ll feed your nads to Hargreave myself.” Lt. Kumala then took the rest of his forces and left via the main entrance.
At this point only Abao, Chen, Parpek, Dr. Rawles, and myself were in the room and none of us were armed. We could hear gunfire and shouting from outside. Dr. Rawles suggested that we might be safer if we moved up the tunnel into Trinity but Abao pointed out that the trouble seemed to have started at Trinity so we decided we would be better off where we were. Chen locked the tunnel door.
The gunfire and the shouting trailed off while we were talking. I heard someone crying, and a single shot, and then two sets of footsteps coming up the tunnel. I heard a voice on the other side of the door but I couldn’t hear the words. Then the door unlocked from the other side and a male civilian weelding [sic] a gun entered from the tunnel (I learned later that this was Nathan Gould, an ex-employee of CryNet). Abao asked the civilian not to shoot and the civilian said he wanted to do a suit scan. Parpek was at the telemetry panel and I saw him mouth the word cloak but then there was a gunshot and Parpek was hit in the chest. At this point a second intruder became visible and I could see he was wearing a CryNet Systems Nanosuit either 2.0 or 2.2, it’s hard to tell without checking the neuropticals. (I learned later that this was “Prophet,” the rogue we were supposed to be debriefing.) He was also holding some kind of pistol, I think maybe an M12, and he had a machine gun strapped to his belt, too, although it was not deployed. Chen promised we would not make any trouble, but Dr. Rawles had been standing behind the door and he came at “Prophet” from behind. (He had a dynaport multitool in his hand, so he may have been trying to short out the Nanosuit through the cervical interface.) “Prophet” pointed the gun in Dr. Rawles’s face and Dr. Rawles backed away. Dr. Gould said something like “I asked you not to shoot the geeks” but “Prophet” had stopped shooting by this point anyway. I thought I saw a tic in the forearm musculature so it could have just been temporary spindle lock.
Gould then directed us at gunpoint to hook the rogue up to the NODAR, which we did. Chen handled biotelemetry and I ran the suit diagnostics. I was parsing the twitch protocols when Chen said “F_____k, he’s dead.”
Gould threatened Chen and told her not to make threats she couldn’t back up, but Chen explained that the rogue was actually, literally dead. I accessed his vitals myself at that point and confirmed this. The right ventricle and left lung were gone and his right lung was relatively intact but nonfunctional due to pneumothorax. I could see that the right lung might be salvageable (the diaphragm had been perforated but the N2 had infiltrated the injuries with a synthomyosin mesh that was restoring some integrity), but the rest of the thoracic cluster was just gone. The N2 had bypassed the pulmonary system entirely and was infusing O2 directly into the aortic arch. I also noticed that it had extruded synthomyosin around the shrapnel and it had coated all the torn internal surfaces with anafibrin, but none of these were stand-alone modifications. The N2 extended into its wearer at the molecular level and had taken over most of the vital processes, so Chen was medically right. The undamaged tissues left inside the suit did not meet the definition of a complete viable organism as defined by National Health Industry Standards. “Prophet” was legally dead.
I watched for some kind of reaction to that news, but he kept his visor locked the whole time and I could not see his face. I did not notice any obvious change in body language. I think maybe he knew already.
How did I feel? How did I feel? How do you think I fucking felt?
Betrayed. That’s how.
I knew it was bad, of course. I knew I was dead the moment that gunship hit me on Battery Park. But then, Prophet, yo? My hope and my salvation. This Lazarus suit, this second chance. I didn’t know if it was actually fixing me or just keeping me going until the guys at Syracuse could put me back together but I always thought that if I made it out of the battle zone alive I’d at least get a chance to step out in my own skin, you know? I thought, somewhere down the road, I’d be human again.
But all the suicidal thoughts and the despair over my lost humanity, none of that really gets a chance to sink in at first—because I’m still trying to parse the fact that the N2 just mutinied on me, that it actually froze my goddamn finger on the trigger and scolded me for killing “mission-critical collaborators.” I’ve already taken out the lab rat who tried to hack me on remote but there are still four other potential enemy combatants in the room, as they say. And the suit—the fucking suit—is telling me I can’t eliminate those threats.
But then I hear what one of those techs has just told Gould—
I’m dead.
I’m dead.
—and suddenly, crazily, I actually feel dead. I could swear that up until this very moment I’ve felt the air flowing in and out of my chest; when those Ceph came through the wall, when I tangled with the mercs outside, I felt my pulse pound. It’s not something you think about consciously but it’s damn well the kind of thing you notice when it’s gone, right? And I haven’t noticed anything missing until right now, until the moment that tech with the V-gloves says, “No, he’s literally dead,” and just like that all those comforting biorhythms I thought had been keeping me company all this time, they just drain away. I reach for a pulse and find nothing. I try to catch my breath and I can’t. And all I feel in that instant is this crazy gobsmacked astonishment that all those things have gone and left nothing behind and I never even noticed.