New Elysium: Breakout

"Gift For You"**

Thank you to the wonderful cosmogyral-delirium for the descriptions! 

Red could see Ember's face on the screen. She looked so different than she had the past few days. He punched in a few keystrokes and the image widened and zoomed out showing her body suspended in the air. Her face was raised skyward with a rapturous grin on it. Her eyes were wide open seeing the open space in front of the ship.

From his seat he could only stare, his mouth going dry. She was beautiful.

Even with all of the wiring in her back, sheathing her hands and feet, she looked like some sort of cybernetic angel flying through space and time, immune to the gaze of a lowly being like himself.

He zoomed in again to just her face. The look on her face said this is exactly where she wanted to be. This is where freedom for her lay. Her eyes seemed expressionless but he wasn't sure if it was because they were augmented or is she truly was looking elsewhere.

He knew in flight her body would tilt and roll with the ship, wherever she moved the ship would go as well in an instant. A simple movement would send them in a new direction should she choose.

He placed his palm on the screen. Immediately the interface connected him to the ship.

Ember immediately responded. "Registering you as the Co-pilot." Her voice carried into the small room barely above a whisper meant only for him to hear. She would be able to feel him examining the general coding, sifting through the lines of binary. Her voice had an odd ring to it. They hadn't yet spoken about what he'd seen.

An urge rose up in him, one that he couldn't deny or push away. There was one way he could show her that it didn't matter. That she could start over with her identity as a Neo-Tokyan hanging over her with every step.

The lines in front of him were like a book that he could easily read. There was one thing he could do for Ember, something that would make it easier for her if she had to plug in anywhere else and he wasn't the only audience.

He placed both hands on the interface and closed his eyes, leaning back into the chair and letting his body relax. It had been ages since he'd entered Cyberspace. Most people did so for entertainment, virtual reality had been a booming business and Red couldn't see that stopping just because of the purge. They would just find new ways to do it. Not everyone in cyberspace had been an augment.

A shifting sensation was all the warning he had and then he was standing in a vast landscape that made up the inner workings The Ember.

It didn't stop the sudden nausea that developed from the transfer. He hadn't stepped into cyberspace in more than seven years. He sank to his knees and started retching before his augments took over, smoothing the feelings away. He knew his body sitting in the pilot's chair would not have moved a muscle. It wasn't completely frozen in time, but everything that happened here happened in the mind. He shouldn't have done more than twitch in place.

He was not expecting the scene that laid before him, a scene he realized was completely Ember's own doing. It was the cyberscape belonging totally to the ship, not the usual cyberscape that connected worlds, which when he'd gone there in the past had resembled some neon lit city scenes from movies from by-gone years. It had proved to be easy form to advertise in, several levels of signs would light up the "streets" with brightly colored neon right above your head as you walked.

The name cyberspace had simply stuck for the world that existed whenever you plugged in.

Most people forgot it was completely comprised of binary code as they walked the streets. The place even had restaurants you could dine in for a taste, they couldn't actually feed you. In the beginning people had starved to death when they didn't leave cyberspace.