Recharge

The Traveler eyed his destination coming into view, a lage, 4 story, Victorian style home, situated high in the mountains, its large, overgrown palatial estate surrounded by woods. There was nothing this developed for miles, just a few smaller, broken down shacks, long since abandoned and overtaken by nature.

His left leg creaked as he walked, the sound it made barely audible, drowned out by the downpour. He had gotten used to the sounds the leg made in the nearly constant rain, but the high squealing noise it was making now still annoyed him, and potentially gave away his element of surprise. The leg was made of a sleek, tough titanium alloy from about the thigh down, complete with a working knee joint that connected the metal shin and foot, which was currently housed in a thick black boot.

The arm was in much better shape. It was also, titanium, but he had taken better care of it over the years since he relied on it so heavily in his line of work, (that was his trigger hand) and its comparative elbow joint, as well as his five metal fingers, moved smoothly and gracefully as opposed to the rusted out leg.

The raindrops dripped off of the brim of his hat covering his patchy tufts of long brown hair, a black, cowboy style number with a sharply pointed top. He looked out at the house through the dense rain and clouds, the only sign of life he could make out was the strange green ambient light, emanating from the top floor window, standing out amongst the heavy grey and dark blue of the sky, the only other light coming from the bright, full moon.

He continued walking up the dirt trail, and began to creep around the back side, looking for a way in. He paused and crouched down on one knee about 20 feet from the house. His pupils pulsed blue in the center as he scanned the environment.

His eyes narrowed as he scrunched his frowning, scarred face in concentration. After a moment, he got up and creeped around to the back door and opened it silently, his black duster coat blowing in the wind.

He entered into what seemed to be a kitchen, or once was. It was badly decrepit now, ancient skeletons of old world appliances hidden under a thick layer of filth and random scraps of paper and food. He cursed himself for maintaining his human nose, out of all his appendages.

The house was eerily quiet on the first floor, but he could hear mechanical noises faintly coming from upstairs. He crept from the kitchen into the neighboring parlor room, its wood floors horribly scratched, the fireplace at the end of the room completely bombed out, pieces of brick scattered all over the floor on top of the rotted furniture.

He heard a loud zapping noise from upstairs, followed by what sounded like a bizarre, high pitched laugh, and reached for his gun on the inside of his jacket. He pulled out his weapon, a .357 Magnum, and put his cold, metallic, finger on the trigger.

He walked towards the large, winding staircase, passing another room on his right. He briefly looked in the room, which appeared to be an old library or study of some sort, with large bookshelves plastered over with a variety of drawings and diagrams, sketches and equations. He didn’t go over to investigate further, he had a job to do and he wanted to get it over with.

He was beginning to wonder what that old bat wanted with this poor bastard anyway. She already had all the power, just another warlord demigod, holed up in her fortress, this one an abandoned high rise apartment building right at the edge of town. She was not unlike all of the others he had worked for, the local rulers who authoritatively controlled the power supply of their small region. The old woman controlled all of the electrical power in the area, stored all the generators and power boxes and wiring in her fortress, doling out a few volts here or there to their desperate subjects that lived in the surrounding wasteland and relied on their offerings for survival.

The peasants, most suffering from severe malnutrition and radiation sickness, only kept alive by their own biomedical attachments, would come in weekly to charge their supplies on the first floor, quotas on electric power strictly enforced by the armed, cybernetically enhanced guards. The guards always had access to more electricity and weapons than the peasants, ensuring their system ran smoothly, without the threat of any type of uprising. They kept the peasants in a state of constant energy depletion, giving them just enough scraps of food and electricity to survive, but never enough to gain any strength.

The woman herself had given him the creeps when he first saw her, which was saying something. He had come highly recommended for his...services...over the Network, the high powered electrical communications system that only these elite power brokers had access to, and had arrived at the tower just a day ago to get his assignment. He was able to keep himself alive, and in better shape than the rest of the peasants, with the extra food and electricity he earned doing jobs for the local syndicates.

When he had first walked into her throne room on the top floor, the Traveler was taken aback by her appearance. She was an elderly, skeletal woman, with a large, bulbous head. Only about half of which still maintained its human form, the other half showed her cerebral implant, filled with an ethereal blue glowing light shining through its translucent, smooth metallic surface that covered the top left quadrant of her skull. The blue light from the inner workings of the implant shone dully even underneath what was left of her skin on the right side of her face, its brightness ebbing and flowing as her neurons fired. She was seated, it seemed permanently, in a type of armored wheelchair, that lacking wheels, hovered a few inches off of the ground.

The twelve or so guards standing around her, each armed with long, callously bayoneted rifles, most looking more gearbox than human, didn’t give him too much pause, but the old woman who controlled them, well, something didn’t sit right. Not that the Traveler cared though, or cared to know what she needed this man in the tall house killed for. She had uploaded the directions to his own, much less powerful cerebral implant, instructing him to dispose of the inhabitants of the house and retrieve the “experimental item” from the lab.

He didn’t know what item was being referred to yet, but also wasn’t big on asking questions and figured he would know what to take when he got there.

The Traveler tip toed up the stairs, which would have been a good strategy if not for the creaking leg, which groaned with each step. If the man upstairs could hear him approaching, the increasingly off kilter laughter and whirring sounds still coming from the top floor were no indication.

He ascended the staircase, past the next two floors, in similarly bad shape as the downstairs, and neared the closed door at the top of the steps. His leg squeaked once more as he held his right ear to the door, trying to gauge what was awaiting him on the other side. The laughter now stopped abruptly, as did the mechanical noises, just a faint hum of electric current and that glow of the green light segueing out from under the doorway.

He softly turned the doorknob and let the door swing open gently.

In this top room was a desk underneath a large skylight, more papers scribbled with electrical charts, wiring configurations, and designs for what looked to be like circular, floating generators of some sort. There were two smaller tables on either side of the room, with spare electrical parts and wiring on the right one, and what looked to be a half finished prototype of one of the generators on the left. There was an indent in the top of the generator that held the glowing green light, and he walked over to see what its source was. As he looked into the top of the circle, he saw a gold, heart shaped locket seemingly powering the device, ensconced in a cloud of greenish energy. He gazed into the unfamiliar light and lost himself for a moment in its uniqueness.

Just then he heard a loud “ZAP'' and was knocked over and briefly electrocuted by some kind of circuit box that was thrown at him from across the room. He hit the floor, just as a loud gunshot rang out, not his Magnum but a shotgun, most of the blast hitting directly above his head, inches away from the mysterious generator.

Sensing the danger to his machine, the man with the shotgun frantically cried out “N- No!” while struggling to reload.

The Traveler, having not yet glimpsed his combatant, rolled over onto his back, pulled his gun and fired at his attacker, barely being able to make out his figure in the confused lighting. Evidently, his shot found its target. The man and the shotgun fell immediately to the floor in front of the main desk with a thud.

The Traveler brushed himself off, took a moment to listen for any other surprises, heard nothing, and walked over to the body.

It was an older man, maybe about 60 or so, with a large, round frame. He was wearing some plain, tattered clothes, but as he got closer the Traveler could see a metal glint shining off of his head. He, much like the old woman, had what looked to be a fairly advanced cerebral implant as well, the blue light underneath the metal now dimming rapidly as his life faded. He had a tough, block shaped face, and a grey mustache, about 3/4ths of his face maintaining its human appearance, with the implant covering the top left of his skull, only inches from the bullet that had pierced his right eye.

The Traveler walked over to the table with the generator, and picked it up. As he held it in his hands, staring into its core, his face was hypnotically bathed in its soft green light. The storm outside still raged.

By the time he arrived back at the old woman's tower, he was ready to get paid. His fuel reserves were getting dangerously low after the day's journey back from the inventor's mansion. The guards escorted him to the top floor, where she was waiting.

When he gave her the glowing generator, she said nothing, but quickly extracted the green locket from its center and held it in her hands.

He was desperate for a recharge, and was about to head down to the first floor for his reward, but the old woman just stayed still, staring at the locket. The blue light in her implant started to blink, then flash and buzz loudly at random intervals. She closed her eyes and grasped the locket with both hands, as the whole room started pulsating with electric current.

He was waiting for her to upload another message for him, but received nothing. The guards stepped forward with their weapons drawn as the current in the room grew louder, the myriad machines in the room beginning to short circuit from the surge.

The traveler turned around, as if to leave, then quickly reversed himself, gun drawn, and fired three shots. The first hit the old woman, straight in the implant, slumping her in her chair. The second hit the guard closest to him in the temple, and the third hit the circuit box on the wall, cutting the lights.

In the darkness, he made his escape. The locket in his jacket felt warm as he ventured back out into the rain.