“How dare you!” sputtered Rove. “How dare… you insinuate that… I am not one of those disgusting…”
“Awww, homophobia! How quaint. Didn’t that die out with all the other infectious diseases?”
“Throw her in the van!”
Sienna couldn’t help but notice two of the guards failing to stifle their chuckles as they directed her back inside.
Lying back against the warm metal, she could hear Rove barking orders at the men. Already piecing together that they would arrive at their destination tonight, she still wasn’t quite sure why he had allowed her to keep her earpiece — he had to realize it was a cog-jack design. Not that it mattered; she couldn’t leech through it.
Rove seemed certain that she knew why she was being captured. Maybe he hoped she would put it in her eJournal at some point. She was going to be really happy to further piss him off when he finally realized that she honestly had no real idea.
Gemmel. Gemmel was dead. She had sobbed for hours after Rove had led her off to where the Guards were waiting with the van and they had tossed her in the back. She mourned the loss of her friend, and mourned the loss of what she had realized might have been. Sienna raged in every direction, at everything taken, at Rove, at the Northerners, at the Gimmes, Sigma-8, Camus, Gemmel… everyone. In the end, it was mostly directed inward, onto herself.
Now? Now she just waited.
DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 10-07-24
After the Mancer Wars had drifted to a close, those still alive and in power had staked out their territories clearly. Occasional skirmishes did still occur, but even those had grown quiet of late. Mancer warlords ruled his or her own little fiefdom according to whatever bizarre ideology struck them as inherently correct. In Raleigh, Margaret Kepler-Madison saw utopia as a totalitarian state, with her at the top, its rigid class system held in check by a placid conformity. Any expressions of individuality were considered an opposition of her authority — unless one of her citizens were informing on a potential dissident. Only then, would The Madam applaud original thinking.
Sienna was told all of this on her way to a cell.
The cold, monotone lecture continued, delivered by a man who introduced himself as Warden Ashmore. She didn’t pay much attention to the rest of it, only noticing that the humorless Mancer acolyte kept staring at her boobs. Sienna considered commenting on it, and decided against it.
“Raleigh is a place attempting to obtain perfection,” intoned Ashmore. “The Madam removes the uncertainty of choice and provides the joy of purpose. The Madam removes the suffering of desire and provides the glory of duty. The Madam removes…”
“Fucking hell,” exclaimed Sienna with sigh.
Ashmore spun on her in confusion.
“Right, you love the crazy bitch — I get it. Don’t tell me, tell her.”
As he turned bright red, Sienna waited for the fist he was cocking back to knock her unconscious. At least she wouldn’t have to listen to him drone on anymore. The punch never came.
“I said that’s enough, Mr. Ashmore!”
“This… vile little…”
“She’s no longer your concern,” said the fidgeting small man. “The guards will, er, escort this, um… to my facilities.”
“Claiming this piece of soft skin for your own needs, Doctor?” Ashmore asked, his voice dripping acid.
“Scientific needs, yes. Er, you were the one ogling her tits, Ashmore.”
Sienna gave the warden a girlish wave as she was marched off, watching him turn red again and sputter in fury.
DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 11-07-24
Sienna had been locked inside a small observation room since she had first entered what she was referring to as “The Mad Scientist’s Lair” in her head. It was filled with more high-grade technology than she had seen in years, let alone in one place. While lit from above, everything was cast under a dull greenish-yellow cast from all the hard-light projections running. Along with charts and graphs, a series of equations were running in one spot, maps of the T-Net tower grids beside it, and a rapid-time digital composite of a human molecular system adapting to Leecher status with it’s eventual collapse into a Feeder.
She didn’t like to look at that one much, even if it was a median calculated avatar. Stuck in the room now for a few hours, she had watched the doctor rush past a few times, stop to fiddle with a device or two, then disappear again. At one point he had walked past, lost deep in thought, paused to look up at her with his index finger searching for somewhere to point to. Whatever idea he had been looking for must have come to him, because he dashed over to a table with two Servants and began tapping on them simultaneously. Then out the door again with one of them.
It was exhausting to watch him through the window, exhausting to be so filled with fear and sorrow. Even though the room was small and illuminated, a small cot had been set in the corner with some water. Sienna couldn’t take being strong anymore right then, not with everything that had happened. They would either kill her or they wouldn’t.
Either way, she was curling up and passing out.
DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 12-07-24
“Um…” came an electrical voice, accompanied by a series of knocks.
Sienna struggled awake, almost fell out of the cot, and saw the doctor peering at her through the window.
“Hello,” he said, as if having a polite conversation over tea.
“Aw, for the love of…” grumbled Sienna climbing off the cot. “I need to pee.”
“Right, yes… er, press the wall there to your, um, left? Yes, left.”
She did and a section of the wall slid back to reveal a small alcove with a toilet.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t close when, er… you know, a subject… yes, um, is inside. But I can’t observe you through the window! Not, um… it’s not the right angle.”
Sienna went in, went to the bathroom, and came back out. The doctor was still standing there. They stared at each other for what felt like a full minute.
“Don’t you have more sciencey things to run around and do?”
“Um, no?”
“Of course.”
Silence.
“Er, what are you?”
Plain as that.
“Well, I’m a female, of the human variety,” she responded, growing irritated. “Blonde, twenty-six, about five and a half feet. I like acoustic music and shooting things that piss me off. Oh, would you like to make a note for Warden Ashmore that I’m a 34C?”
Sienna almost laughed at the reaction her rant had on the doctor. He didn’t seem to have any idea how to process this stream of information, or even determine if it was in fact sarcasm. He basically rocked back and forth, eyes everywhere but on her.
“That dick warden called you ‘doctor,’ right? Hi doctor, my name’s Sienna. What’s yours?”
Motionless now, he replied, “I’m… Dr. Harvey.”
Sienna sighed. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Harvey.”
“You, er… you’re a very strange young lady.”
“Yeah, I’ve got that before.”
He blinked rapidly. “Um, do you appreciate, er… understand how strange?”
Sienna clicked her tongue. “I’m assuming you’re referring to the fact that I’m not going to end up a Feeder or a Mancer.”
“So you know?” Dr. Harvey exclaimed with excitement.