[b]Ta'if, Ethiopian Hejaz[/b]

"My chauffeur announced to me that he had observed a ghost on the roadway." Sisi said dryly. His hand was wrapped tightly around the golden head of his cane, and he wringed it as he walked. The weight of his grey-black, four thousand Spanish peseta tweed suit caused the late-spring heat to well against his skin and boil him in his own sweat. He had taken to wearing a smart pair of yellow-tinted glasses to protect himself from the Arab climate, where a brutal sun and eye-burning sandstorms were too common for a civilized man to endure.

"You're not listening to me..." the Walinzi agent replied. He had been blustering on for some time, about war and public relations and a myriad of other obnoxious technicalities. He was imposing enough, in his black great coat and sunglasses dark enough to completely hide his eyes, but Sisi had spent years around his kind. The truest Walinzi agents - the warriors and geniuses - were out in the field. Most of the agents that lurked around bases like this one were paper-pushers. Sisi had little interest in him.

"He said it came to him in the darkness, on that wretched goat path." Sisi continued. The 'Goat Path' was his pet name for the newly paved road that snaked through the Arabian mountains. It was such an unreasonable little path - jerking him around and making him nauseous any time he ascended toward his hidden site in the hills. Though the laboratory he had been gifted by Ras Hassan was nothing short of a godsend, the land it was tucked away in was a dusty hell. The Sarawat mountains that divided Hejaz from the rest of the Arab wastes were hardly true mountains at all. Dr. Sisi had seen the Alps of Europe and the Pyrenees of Spain. Those were true mountains. Even the highlands of Ethiopia could impress if one was in a good enough mood. The Sarawat, however, were scrubby hills knifed with rock. It was the rock that made people think they were mountains. In some places, the desert stone formed serated caps on the tops of the hills and created an illusion that would make the uneducated dream of beautiful places. In the end, it was nothing but brown.

"Ghosts aren't what I am talking about..." the Walinzi agent continued to harass. Sisi responded to his gnat-like buzzing by ignoring it.

"The ghost was bleeding from his scalp, my good driver explained. He said this multitudinously as if I had not heard. He was bleeding from his scalp and... grasped out, with a limb outstretched, as if he was going to seize the driver out of his truck from the roadside. When his headlights reached the ghost's eyes, he saw that they were dead. That's what he told me, and I when I asked him what he meant by that, he told me that it was the same look his mother gave him when she died. It looked like whatever had once existed behind those eyes was fading into the abyss."

There was a moment of silence between the two, where Sisi could hear the voices of the Ethiopian encampment mixing in the wind. 

"That's fine." the Walinzi agent replied. "But we need to talk about the Spanish. If they find what we have here... if they find your research. They could tell the world we are evil while using what you've learned here to do worse."

"We have done no evil here." Sisi answered. "Only what science has laid before us. The inevitable."

If the chauffeurs ghost were to climb this mountain and float through the three layers of guarded fence unseen, it would find a small encampment that didn't look worthy of it's defenses. There were a few long tents, a mishmashed plywood and tin-panel mess hall, and a collection of aging armored vehicles covered in a fine layer of Arab dust. The constant stream of people walking across this ground had pounded the dirt into a fine powder that felt like congealed air when walked on. Outside, the desert was a sprawling dead land covered with boulders and brush. Islam had been born in these mountains. Seeing this place, it was not hard to understand why the Arabs had been so quick to conquer the world. Anything to get away.

The black-grey tweed of Sisi's suit jacket was covered in a patchy layer of dirt. Every few steps, Sisi brushed it off with his hands as delicately as a young woman caring for new clothes. He preferred the quarters he had in the Congo, where the last few living specimens he had be awarded during the Civil War were still held. He had nearly used them up, however, and Hassan had insisted his work stay close to the source of his subjects.

At the heart of the small encampment was a cement pad surrounded by locked fencing. It looked more like a house for a sewage pump that something important. It was so unimpressive that the two guards that stood at attention in front of it looked comical in comparison to their charge. Still, they took their business seriously, and they hassled him for identification despite it being plainly obvious who he was. His clothing alone concluded the terrible fact that he was the only well-dressed man on the entire wretched peninsula. It was tiring, but Sisi submitted all the same. Fumbling with a pocket in the lining of his suit, he pulled a high-priority clearance badge that marked him as a Walinzi consultant.

To Sisi's vast personal entertainment, the same guards harassed his Walinzi tail. Sisi tried to amble ahead, opening a rusty manhole cover and climbing down the simple cement tube ladder as awkwardly as a man carrying an expensive pure-gold tipped cane would be forced to do. He hoped to board the elevator and get lowered before the agent could finish groping his own badge. A third guard stood inside the metal cage elevator and nodded curtly as Sisi stepped on. He felt it wobble uncertainly under his feet. Sick yellow lighting filled the dank-smelling cement compartment, and a high-pitched whine - barely audible - attacked his hearing. Much to Sisi's annoyance, the Walinzi agent caught up. The guard pushed the steel-grate elevator gate closed and latched it. A red light came on above them, accompanied by a screech that sounded like the light itself had decided to scream in bored pain from it's abrupt glow. Shifting back to the corner, the guard pressed a button and held. They began to descend.

"My superiors affirm it." the agent started to caw again. "You should pack what you have here. All of the information. We can put it on file in the Walinzi offices and obfuscate the sources. Obfuscate. You know you can't use any of this as evidence for any of your work..."

"I know." Sisi cut off, tapping his cane against the grated floor. It caused the entire cage to shudder lightly. They were descending slowly through the dark, cement giving way to rock, though steel girders occasionally poked through the stone. 

"My superiors affirm it." the agent repeated. "The Spanish fleet is expected to reach the canal any day soon.."

"You're superiors..." Sisi muttered. "I'm your superior. I'm superior to you! You should not be pretending to instruct me on the intricacies of neural science. When it comes time, I will... perform as I must. Given these... abominable circumstances."

They slipped out of the elevator shaft and into the main chamber. Even still, it had the power to take his breath away.

Through slave labor, they had excavated a hole deep enough to comfortably embrace the tallest skyscrapers in Madrid, and wide enough to hold a small-sized city if one discounted the urban sprawl that accompanied so many of the western population centers. It was huge, it was hard to fathom how huge it truly was until you were inside of it.
From this wall there was no hope of seeing the other. The cavern was bathed in darkness, except for the lanterns that twinkled like stars along the nearest walls and on the ground below. Ventilation shafts had been constructed through the roof, but it was hardly enough. The air was thick and hot down here, so soupy that it often made Sisi feel as if he was choking. The hum of thousands of captive Arab rebels filled the expansive cavern with a soft suffering sound. There were thousands, he knew. He had files for every one, and he had explored the brainscape of many. They were his subjects, set to dig rock for no other reason but to keep them busy. If Hassan had a goal in mind for this veritable wonder of the world, Sisi had never been made aware of it. 

The descent would have been harrowing to an individual with weaker bowels. The elevator lowered between two steel pylons, and it felt as if they were dangling precariously from a single cable. Sisi had known prisoners to react in undignified ways when first exposed to it. They screamed and moaned and cried. Some clung to guards, or to the rough metal grating of the elevator cage itself. It was also hardly uncommon for individuals to lose control of their bodies and spout a bodily substance through an orifice, whether it be digestive or waste.

They reached the bottom, brought to a halt by a sudden jerk followed by a soft thud. The guard opened the cage-door and Sisi exited, tapping his twice against before stepping out onto the rocky floor. Around him was the sound of clapping pick-axes and scraping shovels. Men wailed, guards shouted, and Sisi felt like Dante stepping into one of the lower rings of the Inferno. It was hot, uncomfortable, and misery played across the massive tomb in rushing waves, but Sisi could feel nothing but the excitement of discovery. 

Guards transported lines of rag-clad prisoners - slaves, really - that had been captured and tried in military kangaroo courts as rebels. Hejaz had rebels, there was no doubt, but Sisi also had no doubt that Hassan would have anybody who as much as fed a rebel convicted if he thought it would scare a peace into the region. That was his way. Hit them where it hurts, and if they argue then hit them again. These prisoners had been hit where it hurt them more than once. Men or women, their hair had been sheared away to reveal lumpy scars running along their scalps like seams. They had been worked bloody and starved. Some looked frightened, some beaten down, and others completely dead to the world and drooling. 

A staff car arrived to pick him up, driving him down a road that cut through the underground bedrock. It went for a mile at least, if not more, before it reached a wall where a series of white tents covered in red dust stood along the edge of the cavern. Floodlights bathed the site in in manufactured daylight, and a similar pale glow emanated from the tents themselves. With his Walinzi tail close behind him, Sisi entered his home away from home.

It was beautiful, white, and clean. Every table and every chair was covered in see-through plastic. The Walinzi agent ducked into a nearby room where several of his comrades were busy transcribing code and listening intently to the static babble of a radio who's wires ran along the road and up the elevator to communicate with the world above. Free of the black-clad gnat buzzing in his ear, Sisi entered his lab. He was impressed by what he saw.

A pair of assistance had taken it upon themselves completely remove the brain of their patient, putting it in a nearby jar. The same patient's own blood was being used to feed the jar, filling the jar's fluid with rich red and pink before removing the blood from the synthetic fluid through a filter and returning it to the patient's beating heart. Sisi knew they had tried this many a time before - and lost their patients as a result. In truth, it was a death sentence. This prisoner had likely upset the guard. Sisi had seen worse happen to men who spat at their Ethiopian watchers.

"Seven minutes." one of the surgeons announced coolly as Sisi entered the room. "Extraction took three hours, but we severed the arteries without immediate death to the patient. Our time was mostly spent severing the spine while keeping the necessary nerves untouched."

"Remarkably done." Sisi tapped. "Has there been any noticeable paralysis?"

The second surgeon shrugged. "The patient has been mostly catatonic. Whatever might be going on in their head is completely unknown to us."

Sisi looked away from the bloody gore springing from the back of the head and at the patient's face. It was a she - a younger Arab woman who's face had no doubt once been attractive, but was no puffy and swollen. Her mouth hung open, her jaw limp, and her eyes were crossed. Whoever she had been, she was long gone.

"Whatever might be going through the patient's jar." Sisi chuckled dryly.