Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It took two days for her port to be repaired.
On the third day, she rested. Rissa smiled at the thought, but it was what she was doing.
Her body was being monitored to determine if the malfunction was in her nervous system or if the older device had simply seen too much use.
She knew the answer, but wasn't going to tell her employers.
The timing worked out too well like this.
By the end of the day, she'd be declared fit for duty, and the odds were good she'd have a new assignment by morning.
In truth, she was ready to be out of this box. Hopefully Sin would be in the mood to dawdle. Days of being locked in her cell were becoming unbearable. Besides, he did owe her for cutting their last trip short.
She chided herself at the thought. That was petty, and not the way someone would think of their friend.
She'd done him a favor. Favors meant she expected nothing in return.
She could hope, but it would be wrong to feel resentment if he wanted more time to grieve.
And he had been grieving. She'd never seen a person cry before; it was a powerful display of emotion.
One she'd always seen portrayed as a woman's thing.
To see a strong man like Sin crying over the loss of another person shocked her. He hadn't even been ashamed of it.
She didn't want to think about that, though.
Looking for a distraction, Rissa slipped through the network and onto the web.
The Praetor's funeral should be broadcast live, and maybe she'd even get to see her guardian.
She found multiple sites with the footage and chose one with the closest view.
It didn't take her long to find him. Standing beside the casket in a position of honor, Sin wore the traditional calf-length "suit" of the Legion.
The dark blue was striking against his bronzed skin; white cording along the edges made it impossible to mistake him for anything but a priest.
She stared at him for as long as the camera held the shot. His face was serene and peaceful. He was perfectly groomed, his hair pulled back, and his face clean-shaven. He did not look like a man wallowing in grief. He looked angelic. Powerful, even.
She sighed in relief. He'd be ok. When she'd seen him so upset, she hadn't known what to do. Nothing in her mind would change the outcome in any way. For the first time in her life, Rissa had found a problem she couldn't simply find an answer for by thinking.
Suddenly every head jerked to their left, looking up and over the camera. A second later, a blue bar appeared across the bottom of the screen announcing a blast had been heard in the city. It didn't take long before the cameras changed.
Smoke billowed over the lower west side.
Where a large apartment complex had once stood was little more than rubble.
She searched her mind, trying to find a better shot, and heard a warning beep outside her care bay.
She had to remain calm. She needed her vital and mental signatures to be those of someone sleeping.
She would play the tiny bleep off as a nightmare, but she could not forget again.
Surveillance cameras were being tapped by the media, giving Rissa better images of the blast. People were dragging themselves out of the wreckage.
Dust covered everything. Faces were screaming, but not everyone was moving, yet the cameras offered no way to help.
They could only record what was happening.
She watched the chaos while the other part of her mind searched for relevant information about the structure.
It didn't take long to find it, and when she did, she looked at the images in a new way.
A man with cybernetic legs carried out a child.
A woman with a face that was a little too perfect assisted an older man with mechanical eyes.
Every person on the screen seemed to be either very young, or very enhanced.
The apartment complex had been cheap, allowing the residents to dedicate a large portion of their income to the drugs that kept them alive.
Twenty-five stories of cybernetically modified citizens had just been destroyed in the middle of the Praetor's funeral.
It couldn't be a coincidence.
The first precept declared that man should respect all life.
Many of the religious zealots claimed it was God's way of denouncing enhancements, but modification wasn't even hinted at in the Good Book.
Rissa had been browsing it while she recovered from her upgrade.
She couldn't understand why people thought enhancing themselves would be bad.
She was smarter now than she ever would have been as a normal.
Cybernetics took the human body and perfected it, giving advantages with only one minor drawback: the need for Stabiltrol.
But it didn't matter why people hated the enhanced.
A new message flashed on the live stream, confirming what Rissa suspected.
A radical religious faction—followers of the Legion, supposedly—were taking credit for the bombing of the lower west apartment complex.
Over a thousand people were assumed dead, another five hundred likely wounded.
All of them were families. They were not criminals; they were simply the working poor, doing their best to make ends meet.
What mattered was a terrorist group had just targeted the homes of innocent people.
While Rissa watched the disturbing images, fighting to keep her vitals within acceptable ranges, she understood Sin.
He cared because no one else did. The media acted as if the bombing was a celebration, each of them trying to get more graphic, more shocking, and more blood-filled footage.
The suffering of the victims became a fight for ratings.
The more grotesque the images, the more popular the advertising was during the breaks.
It made Rissa feel sick.
She adjusted her endocrine levels and regulated her stress hormones.
Her body responded almost immediately as her heart rate slowed and her internal organs relaxed.
She needed to think about something else or her supervisors would notice the fluctuations.
If she was in a dream state, it would be realistic to follow a traumatic series of dreams with euphoric ones.
There was only one thing that always made her happy: Sin.
She released her hold on the graphic footage and concentrated on the fan sites dedicated to her guardian.
They often posted pictures of him, commenting on his good looks.
Today was no exception. Still images had been taken from the live feed.
A few had been edited for clarity and enhanced.
She scrolled through each one, finally able to admire him without anyone able to know.
He did look really good standing there like a leader of the Legion.
She decided to check the messages she'd left on the site, wondering if anyone had replied. There were quite a few, dozens from women offering to help him make it through this difficult time. Plenty more offered to kiss him and make it better. Rissa fought the urge to laugh. Sin would not be amused.
She was, so she read through each one. Near the end, a comment made by someone calling himself "Flightless" caught her eye.
Takes a genius to know the priests need time to grieve.
While you're patting your own back, maybe you can figure out how to clean up what's left of the Legion?
Going to be a real mess when they go to pick a new leader, what with all the complaints about the 1st precept. Just don't clip your wings, angel.
She scanned the message again. It had to be Sin responding to her.
If she was reading this right, he needed her help!
Reading it one more time, she noticed the date.
It had been posted yesterday, but he'd mentioned the concerns about the first precept.
The part about being careful was easy enough to understand, but he'd mentioned the complaints about the first precept in public? That meant he'd found something new.
Sin knew something she didn't, and he needed her help. He was finally going to save the Legion like she'd been telling him to.
There was no need to reply. Instead, she threw herself into the depth of the web, looking for anything related to the first precept and members of the Legion.
The best part of being an Ingénue was that her mind didn't work like normal computer systems. She had no identifying address.
Every other access point to the web was required to identify itself, but the Ingénues were exempt.
In order to work seamlessly with the corporate systems, OutLink had programmed them to be seen as simply an extension of whatever they connected to.
That meant each server Rissa connected to saw her as a moment of increased storage and processing power, nothing else.
She could go anywhere, see anything, and leave no trace.
It also meant nothing could keep her out.
No security system would prevent its own servers from handling the data.
Those who tried only needed the lightest nudge to convince them she was ok.
Because of this, she was able to delve into places that would be locked to most people.
She could find information Sin would never know existed.
For once, she could protect him instead of it always being the other way around—just like Benedict had said.
Rissa checked her vitals and moderated her mental activity.
She was supposed to be sleeping, recovering from the strain of the procedure.
Her eyes flicked open, peering through the darkened plexi covering her care bay.
Dim sparks of light proved it was still within normal working hours, because the halls of the Enclave were completely lit.
She took a deep breath and returned to her search.
She didn't care how long it took. Sin had asked for her help, and Rissa would give it.
If she was exhausted tomorrow, he'd understand.
If she walked a little slower or yawned behind her veils, he wouldn't harass her for it.
Not with the solution she was going to find.
If her guardian was ready to put his church back together, then she'd spend every second finding his answers.