Something Mechanical

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Far Harbour
August the 31st, 2289
19:19

When he had first seen the bones his right hand man and detective Nicholas Julius Valentine had retrieved from what they described as a horrific, secret medical facility, the General of the Minutemen had been completely and utterly silent; even more so when he saw the holotape and locket they had found with it.

The first thing that had taken him back to his childhood were the screams. So similar to those that came with the fog, and those of children first being told of the whispers of a woman living in the woods who lured, to their deaths, those willing to enter the fog to fight off that which it too often spit out, and the cries of horror when a fishing boat or merchant ships set off only to never return with an ominous red glow in the distance. The second was the silence that followed, and the buzz of electricity and white noise that felt almost painful. It being soon broken by the piercing cry of a nuclear siren – long used on the Island to indicate a heavy storm brewing in the fog – was the third and, shaken, Preston snatched the holotape up off the table and shut it off. The hum of silence ringing out in the 'hotel' room they had been provided by the surprisingly generous Mariner and her family in the equally surprisingly finished attic of their home made the air feel heavy and delicate. Some of those sounds being on the tape made it all too familiar yet an uncovered secret in the same breath. The unfamiliar sounds were, however, what made the tape truly awful to listen to. The voice of a woman pleading for her life, the same voice that still came out of Captain Olympia Avery herself. The screams of that woman as she fought against her attacker but lost. The sound of silence accompanying death. The thumping of her shallow grave being dug. The static at the end of the recording.

"We should tell her," Ada mumbled from where she was sat in the window seat, still looking half asleep and sick, having wrapped herself tightly in blankets. "She should know the truth about what happened to her and the woman she's supposed to be."

"Maybe so, but it might be best to wait until we have dealt with Dima," Nick said grimly. "And you still need to take some time to rest. Going into that simulation for as long as you did just to make his databanks accessible was worse for you than I think anyone could have anticipated."

"You didn't spend several hours puking up whatever you could get down for two days after," She muttered. "This is bullshit. Little over a week later and I feel like I have the fucking flu. This is worse than the worst hangover I ever had."

Her father sent her a sharp look. "Which, until a few days ago, I – and your mother – assumed had been a particularly nasty stomach bug. I don't know what made you think, much less as a twelve year old, that drinking a full bottle of vodka you and your friends found was a good idea, but I hope it taught you something. Regardless, I do agree Olympia has a right to know what and who she is."

"She does, but she's not a danger to herself or anyone else," Ellie shook her head before glancing at Nick. "Dima and the Children are, if you put them side by side, equally dangerous. I know you're angry with Dima, as everyone should be, but that doesn't make the Children any less of a threat to the people living here."

"The Children aren't dangerous without the information Dima has, not on their own," Nick said, starting to pace. "Dima is a war criminal, Ellie. How many cases have you managed across our desks over the years where we've thought that but could never truly say it? It's true here. What he's done is no better than what the Institute do."

"It's exactly what the Institute do," Derek said, worriedly looking between them and at his daughter. "The only difference is Dima is a synth doing what the Institute do to synths, and won't be able to be convinced what he's doing is wrong because he is himself a synth. That's where he's blind."

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