Season 02 - Episode 20

‘and again widening’

Hacking the GovCo server has taken a lot longer than Ga expected. She has finally fallen fully asleep and is slumped awkwardly in her chair when a sharp little chime announces that the video download is complete.

She rouses and for a moment stares stupidly at nothing before waking fully and sitting up. Then she watches the video from the news, the full, unedited version and immediately understands why the security was so fierce.

The video shows the woman GovCo calls The Enemy, cutting away a section of handrail, just like the news says. At the point where the video usually ends however, where the news says she continued cutting for several hours, the woman actually sets off back up the steps.

She didn't do it.

The Enemy is innocent.

As Ga ponders what to do with the video, she checks in on her latest project and curses. Ak Williamston's unwitting replacement is still not behaving as she wants. She takes a breath and reminds herself that the little figures on her screens are actually real, living people.

Her thick fingers and long, ornate nails clatter across her keyboard in a blur, going through regular motions. Checking GovCo systems, she finds that the box transit network is still in lockdown, with every service hatch sealed to prevent the cults from moving through it.

She also notes that GovCo are now cutting meal deliveries to cult controlled areas, despite the civilian populations trapped there. She finds a top secret memo which explains that their starvation is intended force the people to resist the cults and so help GovCo.

Thinking of the cults, Ga starts to check through their strongholds. A few have fallen while she was sleeping and she watches as EnFo's round up and execute the surviving cultists. A few are empty however, apparently deserted voluntarily as they haven't yet been captured by GovCo.

Ga frowns and flicks around, wondering where the cultists have gone and why they would abandon territory they've paid so dearly to defend. The puzzle spurs her on and she hunches forward and to dig deeper, cursing herself for falling asleep.

She is wholly focused on this task and is only half looking as she periodically checks back in on her pet project and scans the other screens. When she looks up and sees a group of EnFo's assembling a firing squad, it barely even registers at first.

Something about this firing squad hooks her attention however, even though when she looks again she can't tell what. The EnFo's are lining captured cultists against a wall in a long meeting hall. So far so much the same, she's seen half a dozen mass executions like this one today alone.

She scratches her long nails through her scrubby beard and thinks, glancing habitually at the monitor tracking her project. There she sees her would-be agent sat still, huddled in a box transit tunnel looking sorry for himself.

Her eyes flick back to the firing squad and then back to the tunnel, then back again and again, widening with horror as realisation dawns. The cultists and EnFo's are all lined up and the EnFo commander is preparing to give the order.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Ga gasps, attacking her keyboard in a flurry of fingertip violence beneath a steady flow of curses. Her fingers move faster than she can think.

The EnFo's raise their rifles.

Ga frantically attempts to hack the box transit system.

The EnFo's aim their rifles.

Ga crashes into the system and begins to search for the right tunnel.

The EnFo's fire.

Ga bears her teeth and cringes but sees the fire suppression shield drop over the vent beside her man, just before the bullets hit. She slumps back in her chair and pants, one shaking hand at her lips.

She watches unblinking, ignoring every other monitor now, as the skinny little body drags itself out of the tunnel and on into the dark. Eventually he comes to a junction and stops, looking as if he's never going to move again.

“Ok, kid,” says Ga, now calmer as she idly hacks the box transit system's lighting grid one more time. “That was a close one. Now let's get you back to that hatch.”

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