Boss King and the Blade

Boss King Residence, The Hole

Melody-Six

“Are we there yet?” Melody demanded peevishly. “It feels like you have dragged me all over the place”

“Well, I needed to make sure we weren’t being followed” Boss King snapped back at her. “It looks like there are no outsiders around and no drones, so it’s time to meet my mom”

They were in one of a series of identical looking narrow streets that the boy had led her down, lined with cheaply made one and two storey dwellings. The streets were scattered with surprisingly little trash and the buildings, though roughly made, looked relatively clean and liveable. She commented on this to Boss King, who looked angry at first then shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeah, people think everyone in the Hole lives in pig pens, tossing their garbage in the streets like animals. Fact is, we collect all the trash and sell it to the Recycling Centre. Some of it is made into new things and the rest is burned to generate heat. That and solar power runs the centre so there is little pollution”

The boy pointed along the street, the morning sun showing the brightly painted walls and doors of the houses. Some were blue, others red or green, with the window frames picked out in white or yellow. As the sun dispelled the shadows, the street gleamed like a rainbow.

“It’s beautiful” Melody agreed. Her Nest had been nearly all grey and white, yet parts like the Nursery and the Gym had been brightly coloured as well. “The street looks like it is from a fairytale”

“Yeah, it is beautiful” Boss King acknowledged. “But it is still a dangerous place for an outsider. Don’t go wandering off without me, Okay?”

“Sure, Boss” she laughed, the tension of the past night and dawn fading a little. “So, are you going to take me your house?”

“Of course” he grinned back. “It’s this one right here” He pointed over his shoulder at a sturdy looking house with two floors, the roof sheathed in corrugated plastic and covered in solar cells. A cheery green painted door faced onto the street but there were no windows visible at ground level. Melody could see shuttered windows on the upper floor, the slatted metal barriers also painted a vivid green like the door.

Her companion trotted to the door and went to unlock it, the heavy head of the hound banging on the keypad.

“Whoops” he said in embarrassment. “Kind of forgot I still had this thing attached” He used his left hand to punch in the security code and the door clicked open, pivoting inwards.

“Why didn’t you try and prise it off on the way here?” Melody asked him. She reckoned the boy’s razor sharp and super strong machete would have gotten it loose.

“Tech like this will be worth a lot of Pandas” the boy explained, gesturing her to follow him inside. “The processor for the machine will be a current model, plus the metals and plastics in the head and jaws will be valuable too”

The doorway led to a small foyer, where dirty shoes could be discarded and umbrellas and the like stored. Boss King sat on a step then took off his dusty shoes, fumbling a little as he did it one handed. Melody slipped her new shoes off then reached down and yanked his second shoe off for him.

“Hey, warn me before you do that!” he spluttered, her action having sent him onto his back. Melody glanced around the entry hall while he grumbled and stood up, noting there only seemed to be shoes that would fit Boss King.

“Sorry” she mumbled distractedly. “Is it only you and your mom that live here?”

“Yeah, that’s right” he admitted. “Mama likes it that way”

Something in the way Boss King said that made her ears prick up.

“Will she be Okay with you bringing me here?” Melody wondered aloud.

“She would insist on it” he answered, then went to a box of tools in the hall entrance and selected a few items including a set of expanding metal arms that was like a pair of weird pliers. With Melody’s help they levered open the jaws of the Hound and set it on a shelf. The jaws slowly closed, making Melody jump back in fright.

“Is that thing still alive?” she asked worriedly.

Boss King rubbed at his right wrist, the skin red and bruised from the jaws but otherwise seeming to be unhurt.

“Nah, once it was disconnected from the power pack it was harmless” he assured her. “I reckon Foreign Jay will give me a hundred Pandas for the processor alone”

“Foreign Jay?”

“Just a local tech guy I know” Boss King answered. “Don’t ask me why he is called Foreign Jay. That’s just his name”

“Fine” she assured him, squashing down her curiosity.

Boss King gestured for her to follow him, leading her through a modest living area. Old and worn chairs faced a large TV screen, then they went through a door and up a narrow staircase made from concrete.

The upper floor had one long corridor with a couple of doors leading off from it, painted in different colours. Boss King led her to the last door, painted a pastel blue like a summer sky. He knocked once on the plastic panel and a woman’s voice spoke from within.

“Taiga?” queried the woman.

“Yeah, it’s me Mama” he replied. “I’ve brought someone to see you. Can we come in?”

“Please” came the response.

Boss King opened the door and stepped in, dragging Melody in his wake. The room they entered was spacious enough for a narrow bed, a desk covered in monitors and data terminals, and lastly a cupboard and tall closet.

Lying on the bed, propped up with pillows, was a woman with almond eyes, long braided hair that was jet black and a face that Melody could only describe as beautiful. The dark eyes of the woman regarded Melody frankly, then turned to Boss King.

“Why did you bring her here, Taiga?” she demanded. “She’s dangerous”

Melody looked between the boy and his mother, seeing the anger mounting in the older woman.

“I’m sorry, I’ll leave now” she said, bowing her head to the boy’s mother. “I didn’t mean to bring any trouble to your house”

She had turned and was just out of the door when the woman spoke a command.

“Stop right there, if you please” The voice made Melody stop on the spot, like an order from the Nursemothers or Guardfathers. “Turn around and hold out your left arm”

Melody complied without thinking, presenting her left arm towards the woman. Boss King was ordered to fetch something from a small drawer, a slender metal tube with a lens at one end.

“Shine the blacklight on the inside of her wrist” the woman told Boss King, who switched on the device and asked Melody to roll up her sleeve. “Turn off the room light too”

Once this was done, the boy shone the blue light that emanated from the tube over her exposed wrist. Melody looked at her wrist too, wondering what all this fuss was about. It was just her normal forearm, the same one she had been born with.

In the light, a letter and number glowed on her skin like blue starlight. It was a simple code and in a way she wasn’t surprised. It read: M-VI

Boss King called out the letter and Roman Numeral to his mother, then switched off the blacklight. Melody was still blinking away a sudden tear in her eye when the main light came back on, making her squint against the sudden brightness.

“You are Melody-Six, am I right?” asked Boss King’s mother.

“Yes” she admitted, wiping her eyes. “How did you know?”

She opened her eyes again and looked at the woman. Her face was no longer hostile, rather it seemed sad and perhaps resigned.

“I used to be known as Nursemother Samantha-Two”

“What?” gasped Melody. “You are from the Hive!”

“Long ago, just over eleven years in fact when I was carrying Taiga in my womb”

Melody was dumbfounded, her eyes switching from Boss King’s face to that of his mother.

“So you know what I am?” she breathed, her heart hammering in her chest. “You can take me to another Nest, so I can rejoin the Hive?”

“I know what you are Melody, you are a Shadow Blade. One of the cloned warriors born and raised to be elite soldiers in the service of the Hive Master”

Samantha-Two regarded her with compassion, lifting her hands from the bedcovers towards her as if to embrace Melody.

“But everything you know is a lie” she continued. “You can’t go back to the Hive, they’ll kill you rather than let that happen”

“NO!” screamed Melody, backing away from the woman. “You are lying to me now! The Hive is my home, the Nest are my family!”

“No Melody, it’s all a trick” Samantha persisted. “I’m sorry, but the Shadow Blades are tools created for a war that shouldn’t exist. Once your Nest was destroyed, the Hive won’t take you back. You have been contaminated by the outside world and their only response will be to eliminate you”

“No!” Melody cried again, collapsing to her knees. “It was real, Nursemother Narelle loved me and taught me everything I needed to know!”

“Her love was real, that was true” Samantha-Two replied. “All the Nursemothers loved their trainees, it was how we were taught to raise you. But the lessons we gave you, the training from the Guardfathers, it was designed to achieve one result and only that”

“To make me into a Shadow Blade?” Melody whispered. “It was what I was born to become”

“A killer who obeyed orders without question, a soldier who fought whomever the Hive Master ordered without fear or remorse” Samantha-Two continued.

“Is that why Archimedes is hunting me?” Melody breathed out, her heart breaking as she tried to understand what she had been told. Tears were spilling unheeded down her cheeks, dropping like tiny raindrops onto the bedroom floor.

“Archimedes wasn’t hunting you, Melody” she told her. “He has been sending his Guard clones to try and break open the Nests and free the children. It’s the Hive that wants you dead now”

“NO!” she screamed once more and sprang to her feet. Melody ran at the woman, her hands hooked like claws to rip and tear the awful lies away. “I don’t believe you!”

A heavy body crashed into her, driving Melody sideways into the cupboard. Her head hit the woodwork with a painful impact then everything went black.

=====

Boss King

Boss King wiped down Melody’s forehead, pushing a few loose strands away from her delicate brow as he perched on the edge of his bed. He could see the perfection in her sleeping face, the crafted symmetry in her nose and jaw.

She was utterly beautiful and as deadly as a Tiger snake, just like the battle-cry she had chosen for herself.

“Banzai Butterfly” he said softly and the girl stirred, her eyelids opening drowsily.

“What happened?” she asked him. “Where am I?”

“Well, to answer in order of your questions, you attacked my Mama so I knocked you out” Boss King told her succinctly. “I then dragged you into my bedroom and laid you on my bed”

“What!” she cried out and shot upright, then clutched a hand to her forehead. “Oww! My head hurts” She lay down a lot more slowly than she had risen and Boss King looked at her in concern.

“Take it easy, Melody” he chided her. “Mama checked you over and she said there was no concussion, but you’ll have a sore head for a while”

“Your Mama looked after me, even though I tried to attack her?” the girl whispered.

“Yeah, she was a Nursemother, remember?” Boss King answered her. “It was a long time ago and she’s a little rusty so take it easy for now. She said you should eat something as soon as you feel well enough”

Melody’s eyes roamed the room, taking in the posters of Anime characters on the walls and a shelf full of game discs and reader chips for a datapad.

“I can’t believe this is a boy’s room” she told him. “It looks so well ordered and clean, just like the sleeping chambers the young Blades lived in at my Nest”

Boss King smiled and nodded his head.

“Mama was always a stickler for a tidy house” he agreed. “As I got older, she got sicker and wasn’t able to manage the place as well as she liked. That’s why I have been doing a lot of the cleaning and cooking since I was a kid”

“You are still a kid” Melody reminded him, but she smiled to take any sting out of her words. “I’m sorry I went crazy and attacked your Mama. I know she was just trying to tell me what she believed and I over-reacted”

He frowned at that and laid a gentle hand on her arm, his palm lying over the hidden tattoo on her wrist.

“I know you can’t accept it right now, but what Mama told you is true. You can’t go back to the Hive, Melody. They will kill you to stop any infection entering another Nest”

Melody didn’t answer, pulling her arm out from under his hand and turning onto her side. Boss King looked at her back and shook his head in resignation.

“Okay, I understand” he said. “Your whole world has been turned upside down and you don’t know who to believe. Let’s leave all of that for now and just get some rest. I’ll be downstairs making some late lunch for us”

He got off the bed and went to the door, turning back to her silent form.

“I took the magnet off too so you can be comfortable. This whole house is shielded so the tracker won’t be detected, but you can’t leave here without masking it again, you understand me?”

He saw her reach around and touch the back of her neck, then she nodded her head on the pillow in agreement.

“Okay” he added. “Get some rest”

Then he turned off the single globe that illuminated the room and closed the door, leaving it open a crack so she knew it wasn’t locked. There was no reply but as he walked away, he heard a soft sound of crying coming from within.

=====

Sleep-Inn Motel, Washima District

Mr August

“Have you tracked the location of the Retrieval Hound?” August asked. He was perched on the edge of a double bed, seated in a cheap motel room on the edges of the Washima District. He could have accessed the data himself using the Quantum Processor installed in his skull but making his operatives scurry for the information emphasised his authority.

“Yes Sir” answered Michael-Two after checking his datapad. He had no Enhancements at all, his perfect clone body untarnished by implanted machinery. “The signal was traced to a residential street not far from the Central Markets. It appears the boy attempted to throw off any tails by using a circular route, which worked in part. We know the rough location where the signal was masked, however we don’t have the exact building”

“No matter” August replied flatly. “We can send in a monitoring team to watch the street. As soon as the boy and the girl reappear, we can deal with them”

Michael-two hesitated in responding, causing August to swivel his head and regard him with cold, flat eyes.

“Is there a problem, Michael-Two?” he asked his subordinate.

“My apologies sir, it appears the drones we sent to monitor the street were disabled by rival drones. They appeared to be the same ones that intervened in the Market parking lot”

“Ah, I had wondered if Mr Tao would take an interest in the situation” August pondered aloud. “Very well, there is no point deploying more valuable resources that will be destroyed for no benefit. What about the ground teams?”

“We sent a pair of covert Agents into the area, dressed in civilian clothing to follow the children….” Michael-Two began and then wound down to an awkward silence.

“And….?” prompted August with a frown of disapproval marring his normally bland expression.

“They were mugged by a gang of local youths” his senior Agent replied. “We had forbidden them to draw attention to themselves by using their concealed weapons or hand to hand combat training. So the kids stole their wallets and shoes and chased them out of the area”

“They left the Agents their guns?”

“They were very well concealed” admitted Michael-Two.

August sighed softly and stood up, moving to the curtain covered windows of his room. He twitched the faded curtains aside, disturbing the small black spider who had been industriously weaving her web against the dirty glass. His hand reached forwards and gently pressed, squashing the creature into a black smear.

“Contact the local Freelancers. There will be teams who know the area and are willing to turn on their own for a substantial reward”

“Of course, Mr August” Michael-Two responded. “How many teams should I engage?”

“Two, as per Hive protocols” he said. “One to complete the mission and the second to eliminate them once the work is done”

“At once, Sir” the Agent replied. “Is there anything else?”

August looked out the filthy window and rubbed his fingers on the curtain, adding a black smudge to the old fabric. He frowned at the cobwebs and dust lining the windowsill, an affront to his own tidy nature.

“The girl has shown no sign of Manifesting at this stage?”

“No, Sir” said Michael-Two. “She has only used whatever weapons she could find against us”

“Hmm” mused August. “She is old enough to become a Shadow Blade, but it is possible she will remain a Blade. Keep me informed if the situation changes”

“As you command, Mr August” The Agent went to stand when August held up one finger like a question mark. “Was there something else, Sir?”

“Yes. Find out the name of the maid responsible for cleaning this room and have her killed”

Michael-Two barely blinked as he nodded in acknowledgement. He stood up to leave, pausing only when August laid a hand on his shoulder as he passed.

“That was a joke, Michael-Two”

“Of course, Sir. Very funny”

The Agent left, closing the door quietly behind himself. August watched him walk away, heading to his own shared room. He let the curtain drop, blocking the view beyond of the grimy industrial zone that comprised much of the Wash.

“If I wanted the maid dead, I’d kill her myself” he said to the empty room.

Boss King Residence, The Hole

Melody-Six

Melody walked down the stairs, hearing the sounds of chopping and frying coming from below. A waft of fragrant spices drifted past, savoury and sharp, that set her stomach rumbling. She hadn’t eaten since the previous night, polishing off the last donuts that Boss King had given her.

She stopped halfway down, wondering how she could face him. He had risked his own life to protect her, to give her food and shelter, yet all she had done was try to attack his mother. Melody looked at her left wrist, seeing again the simple tattoo in her mind’s eye that was hidden there.

Even without knowing anything more than the letter and numeral, the woman had identified exactly who and what she was. As hard as Melody found it, she knew there had to be truth in what Samantha-Two had revealed. She had been lied to, manipulated by those she believed in, to become a weapon controlled by others.

She knew Nursemother Narelle-Five had loved her, but maybe the mother had been deceived as well. Maybe all of them had been, used and tricked into serving the Hive Father.

Melody had never met the Hive Father, an enigmatic presence occasionally called by his name Alex-Four. He had only appeared via viewscreens or phone messages, exhorting them to greater efforts in service of their noble cause.

“You Okay up there, Melody?” came a gentle voice from below. She glanced over the edge of the stairs, seeing Taiga looking up at her. He had a simple black apron tied around his waist and was holding a wooden spoon, an image that was a far cry from the haughty and taciturn boy known as Boss King.

“Do you have a noble cause?” she asked him, leaning on the balustrade. He was confused by her answer to his query, then thought for a moment.

“Yeah, I guess so” he replied. “One day I am going to run the Central Markets, maybe even take over the Spitfield City Markets. I’ll make sure everyone gets enough to eat and can work in a job that they enjoy” He met her eyes and asked her what her noble cause would be.

“It used to be the destruction of the Archimedes Artificial Intelligence” Melody replied. “To allow humans to make their own decisions, to rule themselves without having a machine tell them what to do”

“Hmm, I am not sure I trust the humans to make any better decisions than the AIs” he answered. “Have you chosen a new cause?”

“No” she confessed. “I think my life needs some serious re-assessment right now”

“That’s cool. Come on down and have some lunch. It’s always better to set your life goals on a full stomach”

She smiled at the boy and considered his words.

“Couldn’t a full stomach be a life goal?”