The Pill and the Patsy – Part 2

For now, my work will be an adventure story, set in a Cyberpunk sci-fi universe, focusing on the exploits and exploitation of The Duchess, as she wrestles with her own demons and the mysterious Monty in the streets of New Amsterdam.  Her foes will be many, cloaked in shadow and mystery, and it will be up to her implants, her wits, and her army of ‘vagabonds’ to pull her through each situation.  We will both get to learn more about what makes her tick.  This tall, dark, beautiful woman with aristocratic features and a quick, clever mind is just as intriguing to me as it is to the rest of you.  It’s weird, in a way.  This character is uniquely my creation, from her flexible and well gripped boots, to the tip of her flowing silver-blue locks.  Yet right now, I know as little about her as anyone else.  Less, in all likelihood.  She’s simply two-dimensional to me at this stage, and I am both burdened with and blessed by the opportunity to breathe a third dimension into the rough sketch before me.  It is one aspect of being an author that I never imagined existed, and something which draws me to the Temple of Words as surely as a moth to the flame.  I am creating something wholly unique, giving life to a woman where before nothing had existed.  I saw a world in which The Duchess was not, and realized it was lacking something vital.  So I fixed it.

With creation in every keystroke,

The Pill and the Patsy – Part 2

The Duchess walked down the back alley of the apartment building she had just vacated, and plotted her next move.  Riding securely in her backpack was the successful culmination of a month and a half of scheming, planning, and training.  In the end, the run itself had been almost anti-climatic.  The government building hadn’t been prepared for someone like her, willing to put in the time and money to steal directly from the Military Police Adjunct General’s office in the MP building which ran New Amsterdam’s whole civil support arm of the Imperial Government.  Yet when you got past the sheer audacity of the concept, the preparation hadn’t been any more or less daunting than any other heist.  From that point on, it was simply down to the tricks every good cat-burglar used: gather information, gather more information, and when you think you know everything, gather more information to make sure.  Form a plan, pick the plan apart, form a stronger plan, then strip that one down.  Do it over, and over, and over, until you were out of ways that it could go belly up.  Then, simply train your body in the required motions for the job until you could do them in your sleep.  For all her prep work, the actual heist had taken less than fifteen minutes from the time she stepped off the curb, to when she entered one of the innumerable cabs which worked the City Center.
 
Her patience, her attention to detail, and her personally exacting nature with the use of every tool at her disposal was what made her invaluable.  That was why Monty needed her, why Monty kept her on a short leash with her drug supply.  He had her over a barrel, because the IG had seen fit appoint Monty as the Adjunct General of Health and Medicine.  He controlled all the drugs in and out of New Amsterdam, and not one pill would be given to her without his express permission or authorization.  The drug, known as ‘salvation’ or ‘sal’ on the streets, was Top Secret Stuff.  Made by the IG to support one of their innumerable attempts to create ‘the perfect soldier’, Ipsohydrophetaline 22-B (IB22) was a breakthrough drug which allowed the body to not only stop rejecting implant technologies, but actually to push them even further into their various locations within the body.  When she had first gotten the nexus implant, it had been attached to the outer portion of her cerebellum.  Now, five years on, it was buried deep within the center of her brain, slowly worked there by the effects of the drug.  It was hooked into every aspect of her mind, assisting her in countless ways.  Perfect recall, lightning fast reflexes, the ability to process terabytes of information in a heartbeat, and the ability to heal from any would which left her even marginally functional without even so much as a scar.  Not to mention longevity.  The first test subjects had only been on the drugs in combination with their implants for 12 years, but they all to a man and woman showed no signs of aging.  In fact, all the previous signs of aging present had rapidly reversed themselves as well.  Each of them had the appearance of a human in the peak of physical health, roughly in their mid-twenties.

And that’s all they ever looked like, no matter what happened to them. To us, Patsy thought ruefully.  She was one of those unfortunate test subjects, and even when she had made good on her escape, she hadn’t gone far enough.  Her handler had been a man named Edward Hall.  But everyone always called him Monty.  It was he who had found her, he who had made sure that he was reassigned to New Amsterdam, and he who used her abilities and her intelligence to build himself an unconquerable parapet from which to rule.  Damn the bastard to hell she thought roughly for what had to be the millionth time.  What no one but she and the other (deceased) test subjects who Monty had been responsible for knew about him was that he had secretly stolen one of the neural implants, and used it on himself.  Somehow, the opportunity to ‘lose’ one of the precious devices came along, and Monty was either lucky enough or smart enough to make it his own.  Since then… well, his actions always alluded to Patsy that it had been the latter.  He had very quickly taken over New Amsterdam, and he ruled here in all but name, which was exactly as he wanted it.  He was always the coward, willing to let others do his dirty work, willing to remain in the shadows and operate things as if we were all puppets to be moved at his whim.  Just my luck that he actually holds all my strings her mind unhelpfully reminded her as it meandered down the alleyways of her past as her body walked the alleyways of her present. 

Salfully,
Justin