Chromium

Chapter 19.3

First draft

"Imperial soldiers?" Dia kept her face impassive, refusing to admit how much that bothered her.

"That man." Omen pointed toward a man in the midst, "was part of the Cyborg Corps. He went M.I.A years ago."

"How is that possible?" Dia asked, the dismay in her eyes growing. "Don't tell me that all of them..."

She trailed off. The implications were disturbing.

Omen, however, shook his head. "No, that's unlikely. There are too many of them. Someone would've noticed if thousands of soldiers went missing."

His words seemed to comfort her a little. "Still...why are they here?"

Omen frowned. "Good question. We need to find out more." 

"We don't have much time." She reminded him, as gently as possible. 

His frown deepened for a second, then his face went neutral. "I know, but I need to know how they ended up down here. We owe them at least that much. "He eyed the monitoring console on his right, and asked, "Sarah, can you...?"

"Of course."  Sarah replied without hesitation, all too eager to please him. 

But when she tried to access the terminal, it beeped, error messages appearing on the screen. 

"Damn it." The doctor turned and looked at Omen, a defeated look on her face. "It's password-protected, I can't get in."

Omen scowled in irritation, his lips compressed into a thin line. Then his gaze fell on Dia and his face changed.

"Dia, I know that I'm asking a lot, but..." He trailed off, looking at her with a familiar anxious hope in his eye.

Dia bit her lip, looking conflicted, then gave a reluctant nod. "I'll try."

When she approached the console Willis gave her a strange look. Probably he was the only one who still didn't know about her abilities.

"What the hell is she doing?" He asked.

Rodriguez shushed him. "Not now, Jacob."

Ignoring them, Dia put her palms on the console. After her experience with the Chair, breaking through the system seemed much easier. She read bits here and here, quickly skimming through the head of the files until she found something. It was a long and highly technical report of the "treatment" the cyborgs had received. It was a little too technical for her but luckily, she wasn't alone.

"Sarah, can you take a look at this?" Dia asked, stepping aside to make room for her.

In any case, Dia didn't need to stay near the monitoring console to access the files. A second later, the doctor moved closer and started examining the data on the screen. She was so focused on her task that she didn't even spare her a glance.

"Make yourself comfortable." Sarah said a couple of minutes later, without lifting her eyes off the computer. "This might take a while."

While Sarah did her thing, Dia didn't stop searching, though her lack of knowledge inevitably hindered her progress.  There were a series of recurring words, but one, in particular, stood out. Failsafe. Unfortunately, there was no indication of what that word meant. Dia was about to give up and leave the field to Sarah when she saw a scan of a cyborg's body. Then she froze, a shiver running down her spine as she read the words "Biosynthetic brain". As far as she knew she was the only one to have something like that.

Not anymore. 

"They're...like me." Her voice came out rough and quavering. "All of them."

"Are you sure?" Omen asked softly.

"She is right, I'm afraid." Sarah answered before she could. "As far as I can tell, each of these people has been implanted with a core."