This may sound like a foolish thing, but I wasn’t afraid.   Serra wasn’t either, she stood defiantly in the middle of the room, as though there was nothing in this world that could move her.  She says, “try to keep up.”  Then she sprung forward, the force of which made the Cicada dip slightly, she struck the door with enough force to rip it completely off it’s reinforced hinges, and rode it right into the side of the police cruiser that had it’s guns aimed and ready to fire, the magnetic lock cable it had anchored to us to halt our movement snapped off with ease, whipping back into it’s reel.   The moment she struck it, she used her momentum to leap to the side and out of sight.  The way she moved, the force of the impact as she hits the police cruiser, sending it spiraling off towards the ground.   It looked ridiculous, spiraling away like that, it’s black gunmetal shape almost giving the impression that it were a large fly that had just been swatted away.

Cyborg.   Probably high-level bionics.  Military grade muscle fiber interlaced with a skeletal support system.   Probably bone density supplements and nano-fiber.   Definitely had spinal grafts, maybe titanium plating.   Judging from the force she knocked that door off, I’d say she had the same treatment for her arms that she had for her legs.   As a matter of fact I wouldn’t be surprised if she had an artificial body, but that seemed unlikely.  Her touch was too warm, she still had human emotions.   Something about taking the leap from human to bio machine did strange things to people.   In my limited experience of it and what I’ve seen, the top police officers and some of the private security guys that go through the process lose their humanity in the process.   They were perpetually on the net, never tired, never seemed to give a damn about anything.   An emotional no-man’s land.   Not her though.   To be honest, I had expected to have been popped off by now.   I confessed everything to her, not really out of trust, but because I thought that I was going to be executed any moment so I didn’t see much point in hiding anything.  She said she was my bodyguard, and I laughed in her face.  What a fool I was, she really is an army unto herself.

That’s when a more dangerous notion wormed it’s way into my head.   I began to have a little bit of hope.   It happened so fast, like a lightning striking, that I couldn’t stop myself.   Once one begins to hope all sorts of insane ideas begin to gestate in one’s head.   Ideas of escape, survival, even victory.   In my experience hope was something that happened to other people, I never dared tamper with the stuff.   That way I was never let down too bad.

Cicadas were piloted with an old control stick setup.   Like you see in the ruined sectors of Europa, hovering around from landing to landing, scavenging old tech and fuel.   There was a pain that resonated from the back of my head.   Then what sounded like someone took an old circuit board and put it in a microwave.  Then a flood of memories, reality and dream seeming to blend together in that moment.   Zombie-like I wandered over to the control panel and pressed the manual override.   With the magnetic lockdown the police cruiser Serra destroyed was placing on us gone, I could get the ship moving again.  Outside I was half seeing, through the cockpit window, Serra holding on to the railgun mounted on the top of another police cruiser,  and shadows of the past.   The conflicting vision was of me piloting a helicopter away from a corporate strike team, you could see the logos on their body armor shinning brightly amidst the snow.   They were firing up at me, but more to get my attention then to try and shoot me down, I must have left them behind.   The image faded, but I found for a second I could think about it free of pain.