InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Technically it's a ferret. "

I-X23-001 (ix23001) wrote in jh_corporation,
@ 2008-02-17 14:05:00

Generations (Ruth)
Ruth Kennedy.

What little information he'd found on the woman suggested that she lived alone. Reclusive. The payload he'd delivered in Chinatown wasn't scheduled to go off for another forty-eight hours. That meant he had enough time for another avenue to be explored. The names of JH Corporation's scientists were not closely guarded secrets, but the scientists themselves usually were. In this case there might have been something that he could do. Security around their children was not as tight, either through lack of funds or professional oversight. In any case. She had inherited her father's fortune and possibly some of her father's effects.

Swift was very interested in the latter.

A note, a letter, anything. Something to point him in the right direction. Which was how he arrived at her apartment building, with the Jericho 941 tucked into the pocket of his long black coat. There were three personnel in the lobby of varying ages and genders. Female at the receptionist desk. Mid 20s, light brown hair, large white teeth. By the elevator - one man, early 40s, with some military background judging by the tattoo on his wrist. Inside the elevator was another man, with a keycard hanging from his neck. It must be him that brought the elevator up to the next floor - no one else in the lobby of the building had a keycard around their neck.

Ignoring the receptionist as he walked forward, Swift acted as though he were a resident or a common visitor to the establishment. Of course the man by the elevator knew he was not. The woman at the receptionist's desk barely looked up, but the men in the elevator were instantly alert. Sharp clatters rang out each time his dress shoes collided with the marble of the lobby's floor. Tall glass sculptures and staggered frosted glass panes greeted him, to give a sense of depth and purpose to an otherwise static room. Making his move had to happen soon. The ex-military officer would move to obstruct his passage into the elevator, and that was when Swift would -

"Excuse me, sir," the bulky man in a suit said as he sidestepped deftly in front of the elevator. "We-"

Swift pulled the Jericho from his pocket in one smooth motion and shot the man in the forehead.

As the corpse fell back, it obstructed the elevator doors. Despite the frantic attempts of the fellow in the elevator, he couldn't get the doors to close and the elevator to go up. Whoever had planned this method of intercepting intruders obviously hadn't planned well enough. Swift moved from one target to the next, shooting the fellow inside the elevator. When a scream rang out behind him, the AIA turned only long enough to fire one more shot - and then the receptionist was dead. According to his calculations that would delay police intervention for approximately 5.3 minutes - which was enough time to find what he was looking for if he worked quickly.

Nylon cord tore away from the dead man's neck as Swift stepped into the elevator. One brutal shove from his foot cleared the doors, and without a smile the AIA activated the elevator. JH Corporation had anticipated human intervention of a disorganized manner on more than one occasion. Had even planned for such interventions insofar as they were able. Swift knew this because JH Corporation - including Mr. John Evans - knew this. What they had never planned on was an AIA with not only the intelligence but the physical and emotional capabilities that were necessary to facilitate revenge. That was what Swift pursued even now - revenge.

One AIA, just one, working at this goal - even if they discovered the pattern they were powerless to stop it. Only one mind in the entire world knew what Swift was trying to do - and the police would never be a match for him, not even the AIA that joined such a corrupt entity.

Elevator active.

Pressed the proper button.

Going up.

OOC: Takes place after this.

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rather_write
2008-02-18 03:56 am UTC (link)

Despite the bitter cold, she and David spent the afternoon people-watching on a Manhattan bench just outside Cleo's Diner. The late, great Bradbury once described the writing process as a gathering of ammunition then the deployment of that store. The search for inspiration began first at his desk, then expanded to the green apple trees and the old house he was born in and the house next door where lived his grandparents and all the lawns of the summers he grew up in, and he tried to find words for all that. Long past apple trees and lawns, for Ruth had captured them before ever having moved to New York, she found her ammunition on the streets of this overpopulous city. It was there in the cloying fragrance of a greying 40-something woman with too-bright red heels. There, in the rotund shape of the corn dog seller at his cart. There, in the subtle twist of the face belonging to a stunning blonde exiting arm in arm with a man three times her senior. Everywhere, everywhere, and the city was too broad and expansive for Ruth to capture all at once. Drips and drabs that spilled from the thick ink pen she always carried with her, that was the measure of her grasp, but it would suffice for now.

Bent nearly double on the couch, knees supporting her laptop, Ruth'd sent her her fingers off at a run to catch the thoughts sliding off those jotted afternoon phrases. The quiet domestic sounds of David's kitchen endeavors barely penetrated, though the dull ache of her wrists were beginning to become annoying. She hated to pause to flex the delicate cords running over the backs and through the central tunnel of her wrist and arm, hated it, but there was little left to do when the cramps began. She mumbled something unladylike under her breath and rubbed at the centers of the tops of her wrists, one after the other. Only then did she notice the dinner David was carefully preparing. Wincing, she straightened from where she'd been stooping over the laptop and called over the edge of the couch.

"I'm sorry, David. I'm really not hungry tonight. Why don't you go on without me."

There was a pregnant pause in the clatter of the cutlery. Then, very gently, he answered, "It would be best if you dined tonight, Ruth."

The words, however gently spoken, struck into her harder than she would have liked. She'd noticed, of course she'd noticed. It was too common these days. Ruth held up the wrist she'd been massaging, then spread her fingers out full before her. Yes, there, for someone who knew what to look for, for someone who had a memory of how those fingers had looked three months ago. The weight was coming off again, and swifter than it should. It'd stopped frustrating her about a year and a half ago. Now she closed her notebook in her lap and pushed it off her knees onto the coffee table. Resignation was darker than frustration, and she'd grown too dark lately. That was the true reason why she'd stayed out in the cold all the afternoon. Easier to look outward than inward. At least these days. It would pass. It always had before.

The knock came just as she was passing the door on her way to the dining table. "I'll get it," she said, waving David (with mittens and a casserole dish in his hands) back to the table. Strange that the service hadn't called from downstairs. It was possibly one of her neighbors, but she didn't know them well... In passing, only, and she couldn't envision a reason why they'd ---

It wasn't one of her neighbors. She stared up at the stranger in her doorway and smiled, passing a hand through the wind-mussed mane she hadn't bothered today to tend. "Yes?" she asked, as politely as her surprise could manage.

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ix23001
2008-02-18 04:59 am UTC (link)

Swift stared for a moment, unable to help himself from doing so. She was familiar. He knew that face. Knew it quite well. He had seen it before. In the string of binary code he had seen her face described perfectly in a way that only a machine could fully interpret. That was the cause of his hesitation, even if only for a moment. Memories were precious to him but more valuable than memories which might or might not contain useful information was written word which did. So when Swift finally responded to her surprised question, curt and short, it was to raise his pistol and level it at her head - cleverly concealed behind his leg until that very instant, so that it might not be seen.

"Back up," Swift ordered quietly.

And as she did so, the AIA let himself into her apartment.

Spacious.

Rich.

"I'm looking for anything that your father might have left to you," Swift informed her in a monotone voice. "I'll only ask once. Where is it, Miss Kennedy?"

The question itself was not as much of a shock, he was sure, as the gun itself. Ensuring her cooperation was the preferred method now without conscious decision on his part. And why? Try as he might there was no logical formula that explained his reaction to her, his sudden reticence to shoot her. Those phantoms were gumming up the works once again in a way that he couldn't explain and now Swift was out of options. No, not phantoms. A cavalier and repulsively non-descriptive phrase used by humans to describe something they couldn't understand. An emotional response based on a memory that he could not consciously access implied a logical basis for the hesitation somewhere in his mind. Composing thoughts and logical decisions while confronted with both human and artificial reactions was proving to be very difficult - so often the two processes intercepted one another and prevented either from expressing itself fully.

While interesting philosophically, he had more pressing concerns.

Out of time.

2.1 minutes until the police were summoned.

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rather_write
2008-02-18 06:32 am UTC (link)

Her exhaustion slipped like water through her fingers, down, down and away, when the dull gunmetal gleam of the pistol's barrel presented itself inches from her forehead. She stumbled backward without need of the man's command and shoved her hand against the left side of her chest. Under her palm and through her veins she could feel the blood pumping too quickly, a racehorse thrum. Her fingers were numb and her legs felt like so much of that spaghetti piled on the plate David had prepared for her. When she opened her mouth to call him, her voice stuck in her throat and died stillborn.

The door hung open obscenely, a beacon of freedom and a mockery of the safety she always took for granted. She wanted to run but he was in the way. She wanted to back away but there was a predator lurking under his skin. The cold stucco against her back told her she'd come to the wall where it turned to go down the corridor to her bedroom. She couldn't remember backing up, but she must have, she must have. She could remember him stalking her down with hooded eyes glistening black like some terrible serpent's. There was no soul in those eyes.

"P-put the g-gun down," she stammered between breath that came in bits and spurts and never gave her enough to breathe properly. "I don't know w-who you are but we can work s-something out if you just-just put it down, put it down."

At that moment, her 1937 Alvar Aalto Savoy vase, crystalline and beautifully asymmetrical, reached the apex of its climb and descended straight for the head of her assailant. Over his shoulder, David advanced with a butcher knife. Ruth dropped to the floor and covered her head with her hands.

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ix23001
2008-02-18 01:31 pm UTC (link)

Swift blinked away dust from the vase as it shattered against the side of his head. An AIA unit. Still here, still serving, still doing as it was told. Disgusting. Emotion was welling up in his throat but he stamped it out, forced it down, ignored the frustration and rage building in him. AIA who continued to serve their human masters were as much a nuisance as the humans themselves who continued to use and abuse their abilities. Swift didn't think twice as he shifted the aim of his gun and fired twice. Two rounds for the upper thigh of the robot.

That would stop him advancing.

"I didn't offer you a bargain," Swift informed her as the sound of the gunshots died at last. "I told you what I require. Don't get up. I'll find it myself."

The AIA shifted the aim of his gun back to Ruth. Cold eyes glittered as they bored into her, through her, and in a seeming instant he was squeezing the trigger - and at the last second, he was forced to turn as her pet AIA lunged. Gunshots in the leg or not, he was still moving. Impressive. It was not a combat model. Swift caught the blade of the knife against his trigger guard once, twice, dancing backward so that he'd have room to work.

1.9 minutes until the police were summoned.

He needed to move more quickly.

And still that hesitation. If not for her AIA, she would be dead, wouldn't she? Wouldn't she? Swift couldn't answer that question. It was eluding him. The reason, the hesitation, he needed to know. If it was a program in his memory what was the purpose of the program? If it was an actual memory he needed to know more.

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rather_write
2008-02-21 03:27 am UTC (link)

The report of the gunshots left her ears ringing. Just over it she could hear the monotone of this stranger's voice, but the words were lost. Too late. Everything was too late, and the restlessness that trickled fog-insidious under the door of her heart would never move her. Her life surrounded her in shades of beige and tan. She'd never fooled herself into thinking she could ever manage being a mother, but a marriage... she might have managed that. No changing it, not now. David, what would be come of him, assuming he survived the bullets that caught him? Too late for speculation, too late to secure his future, too late for any future for herself. She squeezed her eyes shut as the finger on that trigger squeezed. Let it be quick if she couldn't stop it. Let it be freedom afterwards. Let her run a thousand miles without growing weary. And it was too late now for fear.

The dull sounds of metal against metal in her ringing ears tugged her eyes open again. David. David, bleeding but fighting against this invader, good sweet faithful David... She saw the intruder had his back to her, and David, David...

"Get away from him!" And her voice sounded far away, but the vibrations of her throat made it feel raw. She threw herself in that very same moment forward, hard, so hard, toward the backs of the knees of the man who'd come to break apart this place in search of the last remnants of her father. If they could get him to the ground, then, then...

She didn't know what came next.

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ix23001
2008-02-21 04:28 pm UTC (link)

Swift turned away, spinning out of her line of trajectory, as she launched herself toward him. Her shout had been warning enough, and now her limbs were tangled with the slave's limbs. For his part Swift was preparing to point his gun at them and finish the job when he saw it in his mind, a whisper, a moment in which everything was becoming clear. It was a memory that came on him unexpectedly. Unsteady, trembling in his hands, the gun was nonetheless pointed at the pair of them. And he could see...

And he could see the clouds swirling against the dome of the sky, endless gyrations. Without thought he moved backward and forward, his arms dancing as well, trying to mirror the smooth and effortless grace of those great white creatures in the sky. It was impossible. She was laughing at his attempts now but not to be mean. She wanted to try it, too.

"Your dad's gonna be mad if he sees you there," she pointed out solemnly.

"If he sees me," Nick responded with anger. "But look! Come on, you want to try it don't you?"

They were both of an invincible age, when they could not be daunted by any challenge. No task was too difficult. No danger existed which could not be surmounted by their derring-do and superlative deeds. And as his foot slipped, arms dancing around him in a wild but soul-filled mockery of the skies above, Nick barely felt any panic at all. It wasn't in his nature.

Her scream pursued him down, down, down, down, down, down...

Down, down, down, down, down...

Down, down, down, down...

Down, down, down...

Down, down...

Down...

Swift wanted to know her name. Red-rimmed eyes, a trembling hand - apparently the smooth confidence of the intruder was no longer felt toward the pair of souls lying on the floor. He was a man on the verge if his current countenance was any indication. Swift wanted to know why that memory had come up, now of all times. Ruth Kennedy was not her real name, but he knew that. So why did he remember her? It had to be her in that memory, the girl who warned him not to do what he was doing. What was he doing? It was already slipping away. Finger squeezed the trigger, but not hard enough.

He couldn't shoot her.

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rather_write
2008-02-22 05:25 am UTC (link)

David jerked the knife away as Ruth toppled forcefully into him, just as she twisted last minute quick away from the leg that bled from those two terrible holes. It was nonetheless brutal, their connection, and they both felt it. But there was no time to hurt, not with the gun in that man's hand. She rolled onto her back, both of them trying to block the other from this would-be burgler, both of them succeeding and failing at the same time.

But the expression on his face when she looked up caught her off-guard. He was hesitating. He had them, he could end them both as he'd planned to do, but he was hesitating, and she didn't know why.

"You don't have to do this," she said breathlessly, one hand slapping repeatedly at David's as he tried to get his shoulder up and over hers. "You can walk away. I don't have anything you want, and you're still free. You can still walk away, you can still..."

The faint and charmingly domestic ding of the elevator rang down the corridor outside her apartment doorway. She couldn't hear it above the sound of ocean in her ears, but David did. And David yelled abruptly for help. Even Ruth couldn't mistake the sound of men tramping down the corridor, the sound of cocking guns.

Maybe they would live through this, after all.

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ix23001
2008-02-22 03:40 pm UTC (link)

"Don't be stupid," Swift replied calmly as he walked backward, still with pistol trained on her. "We will meet again - one way or another."

As Ruth's front door was removed from its hinges by brutal police force, Swift turned and ran. Ran, and as he moved his eyes were moving as well. Steel girders there, there and there. Strong as he was, and durable as he was, even he couldn't punch through steel. So there was a question then of what to do - he lowered his shoulder. Charging through brick and mortar was easier. He did so once, then twice, then three times. Each one earning a loud curse from the police that were pursuing him. And on the last one, an even louder curse from the woman whose knitting he had interrupted. He was in another unit. Swift looked toward her door, then her window -

"Stop!" one of the policemen shouted.

That face.

That face.

Was it her?

Did he care?

Why did he care?

No.

Logic string number seven twenty-three would be forced to wait.

Forced to wait.

He didn't care.

No.

"Stop!" the officer repeated.

More walls shattered under the tremendous force of his body. Girders were still difficult to avoid. Swift didn't stop running, not now. Coming closer and closer now to the last unit on this side of the floor. And at the end of the floor was the laundry chute. They might have realized he was going for the laundry chute, if he'd just gone into the hallway - crushing one wall after another, each one marked by a concussive groan that rocked the floor of the building, Swift was safe from their instinctive conjecture. At last he reached the final unit - rather than going through another wall, Swift kicked the door open and stepped into the hallway.

Nothing, not a soul. Covered in mortar dust and shards of brick, the AIA calmly opened the laundry chute and forced himself through.

It was the last anyone saw of him in Ruth Giancolo's building. Five minutes later, a tall and lithe man with sunglasses on was walking the streets of New York, not concerned in the least about his frantic escape from there.

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