Back to top Chapter 9

It wasn’t long after he had left Holster he started playing with the newly found implant. There were things he was keeping from his long time partner but they were important to over all plans. He didn’t like lying or keeping secrets from people but this time he felt it was definitely necessary.

As he ran along the subway tunnel back to the entrance the hostages were taken he began to tap randomly on parts of his face. Were anybody watching they would have thought it looked most ridiculous. He made faces, tapped parts of his face and tried again with a different combination each time. Finally with one particular combination he heard a little bit of a high pitched electronic sound.

Then a series of translucent images flashed in front of his eyes. It was like someone was projecting a computer display into the inside of his pupils. The images were transparent though and really not that distracting. Clearly a piece of technology that had been around long enough it had been nearly perfected. He stopped cold studying what he was seeing. A bunch of text was scrolling past his eyes.

Finally it stopped and an interface which would only be accurately as a human interface in the purest sense was in front of him. After experimenting a bit he discovered that if he concentrated to could move a cursor around to various options on the screen and run them with an eye gesture. It would take practice but the interface was so intuitive he knew he would be going through it effortlessly before too long.

Kipper began to run again, watching where he was going but also trying to practice moving the selection point around the screen that was really his pupil.

At some point the words began to look more like icons, the icons like streaks of light in front of him. As he started down the tunnel after the hostages he had already reduced the series of gestures to a simple eye movement about as close to the sped of his thoughts as an interface could ever get.

He moved through the tunnel effortlessly apparently streaming access schematics on these tunnels from some unknown source and transferring this information to his legs and other forms of that instantaneously.

It did occur to him he may be giving up something in exchange for such a fantastic new feature but the thought only lasted a moment and was forgotten almost as quickly.

Finally he started to come up on an opening in the tunnel. Several yards in front of him was what appeared to be a crudely dug tunnel off from the main tunnel. He looked through his new programming and found he could activate some kind of stealthy mode. He was starting to think he could out maneuver even Mavaria. And there was only one way to find out.

He silently made his way through the newly created crude tunnel to a bigger gathering area. There, nearly invisible was Mavaria staring out at all the cult members and an apparent leader at the head in the middle of a grand speech.

He decided to broadcast a noise to everyone in the room, this would test his ability and see how aware of his new abilities Mavaria was.

Kipper closed his eyes and began to concentrate. Colors started to swirl in his eyes. More and more colors. Now they were moving from one side to the other. One side to the other, a river of colors; each one a thread of some action or concept. At least just let go and like a weight on a pulley suddenly released broadcasted the sound to everyone in the room.

Apparently it worked. The cult leader stopped talking and sent several cult members to investigate. Mavaria didn’t seem terribly concerned with it. Or maybe that wasn’t entirely true.

He decided to approach as silently as she could. When he tapped on her shoulder she turned around, clearly shocked by the concept of, as she had once called him, subjects, able to sneak up on her. After a series of gestures they left the large room in which the meeting was apparently breaking up and found some place to talk.

As soon as they were out of ear shot Mavaria was about to ask something about how he had snuck up on her. He didn’t want to deal with that right at the moment so he tapped side of his head to sequence to knock her out temporarily. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed.

As she did so he caught her and picked her up to carry her. He ran down the tunnel a little ways and sat her down gently.

Placing his thumb and forefinger on either side of her temple he concentrated again, watching the colors fly in front of his eyes. He was trying to carefully get some inside information for her while simultaneously some how waking her up. He wasn’t able to find any information but soon she opened her eyes.

As her eyes came into focus she almost wanted to strike him but resisted the urge.

“You’re ok now,” He said, “just had to try that, you understand?” he was almost nervous about her answer.

She just started at him for a long time. Then explained that wasn’t really necessary and that she had formed a plan though it was probably out dated by now.

For a while they talked about what they would do and how they would get in. She started to summarize what the cult leader had mentioned and was interrupted. Kipper asked her to put her hands on his temples and just try to think of the information. Within seconds of doing so she had inadvertently transferred her entire photographic memory laden account directly to Kipper’s mind.

“How did you learn to do that?” she asked stunned, “It took me quite a while. That you have come to such a level in so little time in quite a surprise.” Her voice took on a much different tone now. It was not that of smug superiority, more of amazement and clearly impressed.

“I don’t know. I just started to tap my head and brought up a menu. I started playing with the interface and it started to go by faster and faster. Finally I concentrated hard enough I started to unlock some abilities I didn’t know I had. Or implants you people put in me while I was asleep.” He explained.

“Oh, this is much more than we did. Your mind is apparently quite adept at the implant we put in. In fact the menu has more of a diagnostic purpose than anything else. You were never meant to see that. You must have a genetic marker we missed. When our deal is done hope we don’t catch you, as there will be many tests to be performed on you.” She said.

Kipper only nodded. The plan, as they had agreed, was to go back in and sneak in to the room where the hostages were and see what was going on. They would then communicate back and decided what to do after that.

No sooner had the two of them agreed on this minimalist of a plan than a large crash followed by the sound of gunfire could be heard from inside the cave.

Kipper and Avaria only looked at each other and took off into the direction of the noise.

As they re-entered the hand made tunnel there was yet more crashing and bangs followed by even more gunfire.

As they entered the cave where the cult was once standing they saw a giant scene of complete anarchy. Cultists were running in every direction and firing in seemingly random directions.

Avaria and Kipper looked over to their left and saw a glimpse of what looked like Holster at a far part of the cave. He was dressed rather oddly and seemed to be completely unnoticed by the members of the cult.

He caught a glimpse of Avaria and Kipper and then turned around and left through a far entrance away from where Kipper and Mavaria were.  ¶ 9:26 AM