The Lost

Memory Override

It was a good thing she was half cyborg. It allowed her joints to be reset a lot easier, and the pain was ten times less than it would have been had she been completely human. It had been three days, and she still hadn't been cleared by the curator to return to normal activities. She was stuck in her room again with Georgina, the automated system companion as her only source of communication other than when the curator came to check on her well being.

It was getting to be the norm for her to be stuck in her room for days at a time, with no interaction. She had gone through nearly half of the information that was in the instructional database that she was currently able to Access. She flexed her fingers, and danger sensors flashed in her programming. "Still not healed." She said softly.

It was then that the curator walked through the door. 'How is it he always appears right when I'm thinking some of the worst?' She wondered to herself. She had begun to learn which parts of her consciousness could be used without the aid of the machinery running throughout her system, and she was quite rather sick of some of the changes they had put her through. But she couldn't change it now. Not without severely limiting her functionality.

She looked up at the Curator. "Hello, Curator."

"Hello, Anna. I see you are upset that you are not healing as fast as you believed you should be. It's understandable. I have been going over the data from when you were in the training grounds. You tried to go beyond your human muscles capabilities to keep up with Antonio. While we admire your tenacity to compete, we would rather you be safe, and not injure yourself needlessly. Can you do that for me?" He asked her as he set down his clipboard.

She looked down at the ground, not wanting to meet his eyes, but eventually she nodded, and stood. "Are we running more tests?"

"Not today, unless I can get clearance for you to travel with another extraction team to test your computer infiltration skills. I know we upgraded them and they were of some use in your last assignment, But i would like to test how you did with a system with a much more complicated security system."

"When would we leave?" She asked, suddenly interested, if not to just get the hell out of this boring room she had been stuck in.

"Well, Annabeth, I have to talk to the elders. We have to take into account what you can do, physically and not physically, and the personnel we would choose to send with you, as the test for you would only be the purposes of hacking into the system. You would be ordered not to engage anyone, and to do as you're told. You have been through a lot, and you have not completely healed since we upgraded you. Injuring yourself in the training grounds has only delayed your return to full health as well."

"Delayed? By how long?"

"Weeks, at the very least. two months at the most." He was pacing in front of her, his hands behind his back as he seemed a little lost in thought.

She looked at anywhere but him. She needed to distract herself from the potential hope she had felt at the prospect of possibly getting out of here. "W-what can we do to speed up my healing?" She asked the room at large.

He stopped his pacing and looked at her. "We would need to replace even more of your human components. But that could alter your body to a point where you would not be able to blend in as human."

She thought about it and weighed the possibilities before she shook her head. "No... that won't do at all. I like the way I look. I still age as slowly as a human, and if I ever did get to have my freedom, I wouldn't be free for long if my appearance didn't allow me to blend in."

"Precisely the point as to what I didn't say earlier, Annabeth." He stopped before her and looked up at her. "I could help you escape."

"E-escape?"

He fidgeted a little bit. His eyes shifted as they darted about the room. "Georgina. turn off Security measures for this room. Cameras and microphones. I'd like a private conversation with Annabeth. Monitor Vitals though."

Georgina chimed. "Security parameters have been shifted, Curator. Re-establishing normal security protocol at your command." And the system went silent.

The Curator sighed and he took a seat. "What I propose to you now is no easy feat by any means, Annabeth. I have been here for over two hundred years. I have altered so many of your kind. If I could help one such as you to escape this life I would do so. No matter the potential harm that could fall down upon me for doing so." He confessed.

Annabeth blinked. This was not something she would ever thought she would hear the Curator say to her. Then again, she barely knew him outside of the lab he worked in, where she had been altered. "Why would harm befall you?"

He straightened in his chair, and he looked at her again. "For letting their 'property' escape. That's why. I built you. So I know what you are capable of doing with what you have been granted in exchange for a second life, you have lost the right to do whatever you want until the elders are done with you. And I have no clue when that will be."

She tilted her head to the side, confused. "But why tell me any of this?" She was genuinely curious. He didn't have to tell her any of the things he had just told her, but he had, and her curiosity was winning.

The Curator looked into her eyes. "I don't look it, Annabeth, but I am several hundred years older. I have seen many come through this facility, with much more tragic ways to how they have died and been brought back to be given a second chance to be utilized for the betterment of life. People with pasts that were much worse than yours. You were a child. You deserved a second chance at life without these trials. But how you woke up in the testing facility, where I first put you back together. I didn't think you would have reacted that way. Then again, that Doctor had been way out of line with you. I wanted to erase your memory, and repair you and put you back in the world, but the Elders said they had other plans for you since you had accessed Project D-3 on your own."

He had started rambling, and she had listened without interruptions, but as he stopped to take a breath as if to continue she broke into the conversation. "But I don't want you to be harmed, Curator. You have shown me the most kindness throughout this entire situation. Ever since--" She knelt and her hands clutched the sides of her head. "Ever--" She doubled over, placing her head against the cold floor as it felt as her mind was being split apart.

She was overriding the memory compression, and her old memories were breaking through. She was having a flashback.