Akir Bondar, Otto Bondar
Akir Bondar[NPC], Otto Bondar[NPC],
@The Savant@LanaStorm Soylent Green.
The Brewery District - HO JOC HQ
Akir’s leg bounced. She looked over the numbers on the screen again. Nothing. No correlations, no data of significance. Another fruitless experiment. Tired eyes darted back to the top of the report. Maybe she missed something. An error present, maybe. Nothing. No interference, another sleepless night turned morning, another dead end. Frustration fuelling her movements she swatted for her packet of cigarette’s only to smack them off the table across the room.
“Oh. Just. Shi-.” She turned finding one of her patients. “-iiiiiooooot.” She looked the child in the eye. Her hardened expression quickly softened. “Heeey bud. What are you doing up here?”
The child’s eye’s stared through her to the screen. “Did it not work again?”
Akir’s mouth fought a frown and instead smiled. “Not quite. It showed us what not to do.” Akir’s smile became genuine. “So that means we’re a little bit closer to a cure.”
The child’s eyes lit up somewhat. “Does that mean we’ll be better soon?”
Akir looked at the child. The professional inside her knew not to lie. False hope was as deadly as the worst of diseases, but the humanity inside her begged to say yes. She forced her mouth open. “I don’t know, but I hope so.”
A nurse entered the room. “Akir, Mr Bondar is demanding your presence at the top of the tower.”
Akir held her emotions back. “Then you should tell him he knows where to find me and why I have to be here.”
The nurse shook his head. “He’s not taking no for an answer.”
Akir spat back involuntarily. “Then you tell that fu-.” She glanced at the child again. “-uuuuuny man. That I’ll be up shorty.”
The child spoke quickly. “Please don’t go. The rooms are scary. The glowing snakes in the ground will start talking again-.”
Akir moved to the child, crouching down. “I know. I know. Mr Bondar is a… foolish man though. If I don’t see him, he might do some silly things.” Akir took in the fear within the child’s eyes and softened her voice further. “And I know the rooms are scary, but if you’re not in your rooms while I’m away kids like Scotty could accidently set the whole tower on fire. That wouldn’t be good, would it?”
The child looked unconvinced. Akir sighed. “I’ll be as quick as I can. I promise.” Akir looked to the nurse. “Let me know the moment they’re secure.”
Akir rode the elevator up watching the city sprawl before her. Every floor she passed upward dropped her heart lower. She had her post, and she was being torn away from it. There were those who needed her more than anyone else in this city and rather than come down the big man upstairs still saw fit to drag her up to him. She growled looking at the door. “This better be important. Or I’ll throw you off this bloody tower myself.”
The doors slid open. A stiflingly warm office with a reflective floor and a sturdy metal desk next to the window walls looking over the city. A thin wirery man wearing glowing glasses and a coat that didn’t quick suit or fit him held two glasses and a bottle of alcohol. He greeted Akir with a nod, opening the bottle and pouring out two drinks, offering Akir one. “Courtesy of our familial friend Antonio.”
She declined. “You know I don’t drink. Also aren’t you sweating in all that with the aircon off?”
Otto tilted his head. “Ah yes, watching your health. Best stick to smoking.” Akir snarled but Otto paid no mind, tilting the glass through his mask filter and diving into his thoughts at once. “I have good news dear sister of mine. Firstly, affordable every day eviro-wear.” Otto adjusted his jacket. “If the world won’t take a climate crisis seriously, then we can at least prepare the vulnerable for it. Should the wet bulb temperature tip past the lethality mark, they can at least survive it.” Akir raised an eyebrow, frustration building and ready to boil over if this was the only reason she was here.
Otto continued. “Secondly, thanks to the good subsidiary of Noc Noc Burger and the personal aid of that charming miss Soylent, the self-sufficiency city program test was successful. All that stands now is actual city-wide construction of infrastructure and Nocturnia might never worry of shortage or aid delays ever again.” That was good news. It might even be the best news Akir heard in an exceptionally long time. Otto walked along the side of his desk running his hand along the edge. As his hand flew off the end his head rolled over, eye’s back on Akir. “However.” Akir grimaced. It was never good when Otto said ‘however’.
He spoke again. “It is highly unlikely that the forces that be outside this city would enjoy us finding such stability. In fact, they might see it as a rogue state possessing the power of God becoming a cohesive threat.” He picked up a file and passed it to Akir. “The reason you’re here. Skim that. Can it be done?”
Akir looked at the blank folder, then Otto. “You could have just sent me this. You know what happens to those kids when I’m not around.”
Otto offered a curt smile. “Then I suggest you stop wasting our time and review that little document.”
Akir furrowed her brow and flipped the folder open. She found herself skimming through the theory quickly and it wasn’t long before frustration turned to anxiety. Looking up after a few minutes she questioned Otto. “Modular heavy armour outfits, light grapple rigs, Gyft protective suits, what the hell are you planning?”
Otto smiled. “The chaos within the city is increasing. Nocturnia Performance Vehicles has already been split, it’s other half now operational as Nocturnia Defiance Armouries, N.DEF ARMS, and adapted for personnel protection applications. I think native police units would be dying for an upgrade specialised for the nature of the city, and through incorporating Khor’s experience with firefights I think they shouldn’t be found wanting. Educational conversation that was. Fire and movement.”
Akir paid no notice to Otto’s rambling as she went over the project that followed. Pages flipped more rapidly. Anxiety turning to fear. The information not being fully digested but the overall content sinking in. Finally at the end of the folder in the appendages she found her eye’s locked with the photos of the prototypes. Her voice was a whisper when she spoke. “Why?”
Otto drank then looked out over the city before repeating himself. “Can it be done?”
Akir’s eyes wandered side to side, speaking almost trance like as she recounted what she’d just read. “A metallic cage enveloping the body for purposes of elevating personal performance and or combat endurance. The suit must be permanently fused to the user via drilling bolts directly into the skeletal structure enabling synaptic clamps to splice into the nervous system. The suit may then be used to amplify the user’s physical ability according to the power available to the suit.”
Otto rolled the glass in his hand impatiently. “Yes, I know what it is. Can. It. Be. Done?”
Akir locked eyes with Otto. “Damaging the bone marrow in such a way leaves rejection and necrosis inevitable. The immune system will fail first. If they’re lucky they’ll suffer infection and perish. That's if shock from the pain caused by synaptic clamps slicing nerves doesn’t-. “
Otto interjected. “Pain can be managed.” He took another sip. Akir continued. “-doesn’t kill them after integration. If the suits are powered to the degree in the report the body will slowly tear itself apart. The user will eventually expire through multiple organ failures, driven by cellular death, not unlike lethal radiation exposure.”
Otto finished his drink. “So, it can be done. How long would such a subject last, physically, your estimate?”
Akir's eyes darkened. “At best, in a sterile intensive care environment with the power source off, a few weeks, months maybe.” Her eyes began to water. “Otto what poor bastard have you done this to?”
Otto raised his hands. “Whoa hey. I haven’t done this to anyone. It’s just on paper. A theoretical project for a rainy day.”
Akir dropped the file. “Why would you design this?”
Otto picked up the glass he poured for Akir, raising it to the wall on the horizon out the window. “Because beyond this great pen we live in, we find ourselves surrounded by a military force with more men than we have bullets. I balanced that equation by formulating a force multiplier. So should such contingency be needed, we have one.”
Akir felt fire rising in her. “We wouldn’t need a contingency if they didn’t have a reason to fear us. If we cure the Gyft we wash the target off peoples backs. If you just distributed a fraction of the wealth in this tower to my efforts, I might have even already had that goddamn cure! A cure for you Otto! So you can see the world like everyone else again!”
Otto drank from the second glass, eyes locked on Akir. He raised the glass to eye level, liquid sloshing around it’s halfway mark. “That’s the problem with you. You see the glass as half full. You think if you are noble and just that the world will become a better place. A future dependent on hope, dependent on chance. I see the glass half empty. It’s statistically proven that the pessimistic make the best judgements on risk analysis, and the numbers don’t lie Akir.”
Otto walked to the window. “And even with you here, your Gyft suppressing mine, blinding me to the flowing numbers of reality, I can still see the facts laid before me.” He turned to Akir, the desk in between them. “The entropy within this city is increasing beyond that which is measurable. The system is fracturing, failing under forces it was never meant to contain, and the unknown is seeping in through the cracks, corrupting what we thought we once understood. It may not be long now until we have no choice but to manifest our destiny through blood alone. The only question is, will you be ready?”
Akir stood resolute. “I know that I’m not giving up. I could lose my clinic, my research and everything around me, and I’ll still keep trying to find that cure. To hell with your projects. You can’t steer me down this path Otto.”
Otto’s eyes rested on Akir for a moment, then back into the drink. “Foolish.” He contemplated finishing the glass. Instead, he put it down. “But admirable.”
He pulled his chair back, then slid down to the desk. “I’m not a monster Akir. I want to believe you will succeed. I want to put the entirety of my resources behind you. The times being as they are however will not be kind to miscalculation. If we are to survive the coming violence, we must follow where the numbers tell us is safe.”
Akir huffed and turned to leave. She’d wasted enough time up here. As she walked to the elevator Otto spoke. “I’ll arrange for more funding to be allocated to your clinic. Enough so your patients are cared for as not to distract your efforts on your cure.”
Akir entered the elevator. Her eyes betrayed the confusion of emotion within her from that statement. As she looked back at Otto, he rolled down his mask and gave a small but genuine smile. “I don’t like your odds Akir, but I wish you the best regardless.”
In that moment Akir saw her brother for the first time in what felt like years. The quiet, inventive boy who created contraptions alongside his sister. She raised her hand but the elevator doors closed before she could speak. The elevator began to trundle back down toward her clinic. She stared at her reflection thinking back to the kind-hearted man her brother used to be before his Gyft slowly stripped him of his humanity.
Her head fell low as she tapped her fingers on the door. “I’m going to make this right Otto. I’m going to make this right for everyone.”
The doors retracted open. She marched to her desk.
Back to work.
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