Time Divide

[SmoulderingAbyss]

The fine layer of oil and grime sat over the rough surfaces of the metal infrastructure. A tight row of bare pipes lay exposed down the red-brick walls, held straight by a handful of rusting brackets drilled into clay and mortar. One was cracked, whistling loudly as steam squeezed between the two jagged edges and into the chill of the large space. Nothing about this place was neat. Wire cables that carried internet in from the outside world, pulling energy off the grid illegally, ran from the smog-smeared factory window. A pane was smashed, still held together with the other pieces, although barely by the wooden cross of the window that had begun to rot years ago. Large smooth tiles were permanently stained a gross coffee colour, oil slicks stubbornly darkening some patches. To anyone else, this place looked like an abandoned junk heap; cluttered and full of odd bits and pieces. To Nova Madisse, this place was organised chaos.

She stood over the center-most workstation within her makeshift lab. This was all she'd been able to afford with the money she'd earned from the Syndicate. All she could afford, that is, without raising their suspicion. Nova had spent the last five years proving herself as useful, dutifully completing all of the tasks, the assignments, that they set her even if her moral compass told her it was wrong. She'd given up being moral long ago, working with corpses and brains within jars, meddling with people's lives and trying to play God. Nova was no longer the woman she once was, and it was all for him.

Ten olive fingertips ran gently over a battered keyboard, a piece she'd found on the side of the road during a trash collection that she'd swiftly stolen. One might think that the Syndicate would better provide their sole useful robotics engineer with whatever she needed to get the job done. They were, however, less likely to fund a thus-far unsuccessful experiment that had the sole purpose of returning their arch nemesis to life. They'd bought her lie that she'd never loved him. They'd bought her lie that she had come to realise that the Syndicate could offer her more in life than anything righteous might. They'd swallowed her words without a second thought, but Nova knew that the slightest suspicious whiff would have them skinning her.

Her forefinger jabbed at the enter button before Nova moved off to another desk. The central monitor was connected to by large bundles of wires that ran to the outside and off into the shadows, where the second off to the right appeared connected only to a large, black object. A hard-drive, but not just an ordinary kind. What was held within it was more than just digital files and intricate code. As a charcoal strand of hair slipped from the loose bun at the nape of her neck, swinging forward to brush against the sharp angle of her cheekbone, Nova watched as the iridescent blue light of the drive began to twinkle.

The upload had started.

A knot began to twist in her gut, forming tightly within her to such extent she felt as though she might be sick. She had attempted this at least eleven times, all in a varying quality of consciousness. Freshly harvested, straight from the alive and awake. Newly deceased while the corpse was still warm. His was by far the oldest she'd ever attempted and she knew that if this failed, she'd never see him again. If the upload failed like it had done all others, it would be game over.

This had become her sole purpose in life, to return to him what had been so violently stolen by those she now worked for.

If it failed, she wasn't sure she wanted to live.

Smooth fingertips brushed over the warming surface of the black drive, the house to a consciousness she'd pined over for years. "I'll see you soon, my love." Her touch lingered, as if she were caressing the cheek of a lover, before those ghostly pale eyes blinked and she moved away. Her pair of leather boots strummed softly over the tiled floor, leaving behind prints in the grime, before she came to stand before the gargantuan shape she'd crafted from metal. It was by far the most sophisticated thing she'd created thus far. The Syndicate would be furious to learn that she'd kept her best work secret and to herself, sparing them the true fruit of her intelligence. Pieces of black, twisting metal towered above her, standing limply two and a half feet above her, supported only by the thick square frame and several chains. The smile that graced her plump lips was small, cynical even, as she spied the most ironic thing about this piece.

A black fibre-woven chamber sat beneath the dark breastplate, slightly off center and towards the left. A machine didn't need a heart to live, to function, but it was a dark little joke she couldn't help but include. It would make him feel a little more human, she hoped, since she'd encased it in proprioceptive wires. As dark pump would piston, creating a dual like effect from its two separate chambers, it would flush warm oil about twisting tubules. It served no true function, the oil able to be moved by something far less intricate, but only that of aesthetic and an inside joke.

'If I ever come back, make sure I still have a heart.'

Nova had always kept her promises.

Tucking both of her hands deep into the back pockets of her jeans, her forearms bare from where the knit of her jumper's sleeves had been pushed up for work, Nova meandered leisurely back to the central monitor. The dull screen, the righthand side split by a line of black and blue from where she'd thrown a spanner at it out of frustration one evening, blinked steadily as a loading bar began to appear.

Pale blue eyes were cast upwards at the sole window of her makeshift lab as she swallowed, shifting her weight anxiously from foot to foot. What if this didn't work, just like the rest? What if it worked but the technology he was being uploaded into wasn't able to accommodate what he needed? What if he fried the motherboard? What if the code was too stale, too old? Could she live with herself if he became another failure? A set of sharp molars snagged the smooth inside of her cheek, biting into the flesh it found there until it bled. It was the only way Nova had ever been able to numb her racing mind, the back corners of her mouth scarred from multiple incidences of self-abuse. The copper taste of her blood withdrew her from her own mind, and her gaze lowered back to the screen in front of her.

A nervous twitch had Nova suddenly swiping the packet of cigarettes from beside the monitor. One was plucked, lit with a cheap plastic lighter, and was lifted to settle upon her lower lip as it was held pinched between her forefinger and thumb. It was a new habit, one that he was likely to despise, and something that had grown on her after she'd began to run with the Syndicate. Their way of life, their recklessness, had begun to rub off on her more than she'd care to admit. The smoke burned on the way down to her lungs, searing healthy flesh before it was expelled in a ring from between her pursed lips and red tongue. Three more drags later and the hit of nicotine had her feeling less nervy, the cigarette being stamped out on the metal bench of the work station.

Her phone buzzed, and it was initially ignored. The Syndicate could go fuck themselves for all she cared, nothing was pulling her attention from these final minutes. But the vibration became incessant, stubborn as it buzzed within her side pocket of her denim jeans, until she couldn't ignore it any longer. "For fucks sake," Nova growled as she phished the vibrating phone from her pocket and tossed it down against the table. The name that blinked at her, in bold white lettering, made the sizeable knot in her gut suddenly clench.

Markus never text, and definitely never rang three times in a row when ignored, unless he was being paranoid and thought something was terribly bad.

Markus was someone she considered to be part of her old life. He couldn't stand what she'd become, having distanced himself in order to avoid having to watch someone as sweet as Nova become twisted and bitter the deeper she dove into the Syndicate's web. Yet, he still kept tabs on her. Every now and again she'd spot him spying on her from a distance, as if he were hoping she'd catch him trailing her to prove that she wasn't forgotten. The world mightn't have remembered who she had once been, but Markus certainly did and as much as he despised what she had gotten herself tangled in, he knew that she did it for the right reasons. He couldn't bear to see the likes of her get in trouble, not even with the law that he stood for. He'd text her on two occasions, with similar urgency, but neither threat had come to fruition. Whatever he was warning her against was likely not to occur. Markus was, she'd decided long ago, an old cop who grew nervous if the wind blew wrong.

And so she sent nothing.

The dark screen of the monitor blinked at her. Nova glanced towards the black hard drive, and she could have sworn that the blue light within it had begun to glow more fiercely as if it were coming alive. False hope, her cynical mind warned her, best not to become too hopeful. Her phone buzzed atop the table, but it didn't immediately demand her attention. Instead, Nova watch as the digits flickered; 46%.

Markus was nervous, that's all it was. He likely knew that she was trying something, today being the anniversary of a particular death. If Nova was to try and upload his consciousness to a bot of her creation, she might as well do it on his death day. Another piece of irony she wasn't sure she could forgive herself for, his new birthday to be on the same day that he'd been violently murdered by the Syndicate. Nova grit her teeth as her phone buzzed twice more before it finally lay quiet. Again, it went ignored.

The old copper likely just wanted to stop her from trying, anxious about the repercussions of her work. If she was successful, her work would change death as they knew it; it would alter the course of life. That was, of course, so long as the box didn't fry during the last two percent of the upload and if she'd wired the bot just right. Markus' nervousness was misguided, and Nova wouldn't dare let his apprehension destroy her chance.

The whipping blades of an overhead helicopter were not unusual for this part of town. Nova had chosen this old industrial zone for her makeshift robotic lab for a reason; that the police were too busy fining unsafe work practices rather than searching for illegal activity. Typically, they moved on after several seconds, the abandoned factory appearing mundane enough that it didn't raise suspicion. However, as a chopper above continued to linger straight overhead, Nova visibly tensed and gazed upwards, as if she'd be able to spy the hovering craft from through the rafters. Something was off.

She cast a glance sideways at her phone, the screen now black after Markus' last few texts had gone ignored. Was it possible that his warning wasn't misguided? The monitor blinked, edging a little further in percentage but then refusing to budge. Not a good sign. Something similar had happened with her last attempt, and it had failed on the last two percent from a fried circuit breaker. She couldn't bear the thought of this happening now, not to him.

And then it was all torn apart.

The factory window, already smashed from a heavy rainstorm, shattered into a hundred pieces. Glass shards rained down upon the metal grate stairs, bouncing over the edge and crashing over the central workstation. Nova dropped into a crouch behind the monitor, shielding her face with her bent arm as she swore loudly. The string of bare bulbs that swung from the pipes above her short circuited, the space about her instantly falling into darkness. The whirr of an engine echoed about her lab a second later, the back up generator providing enough power to the monitor, hard drive and all essential wiring to ensure the upload wouldn't be disrupted.

She shot up from her crouch, blinking at the sudden flood of white-blue light that illuminated the lab in from the empty window, beams of torches and floodlights blinding her. With a hand shielding her almond eyes, Nova squinted, struggling to see the dark shapes that swung in from the window. Men, armoured in black plating and carrying large automatic weapons, jumped over the jagged shards still clinging to the wooden frame of the bottom of the window frame. Gloved hands snatched at the railings, the hoard of armoured police sprinting down the short flight of stairs, their guns drawn.

Neon green pinpoints danced across the center of her chest, declaring her in their sights.

"Nova Madisse, you are under arrest for several counts of murder. Step away from the monitor and put your hands where we can see them." The disembodied voice was hoarse, shouting to her from over the scurry of leather boots across shards of glass, as the mediocre army of officers approached her cautiously in a wide circle. She might have been petite in frame, barely five foot three, but their hesitancy to get any closer to her than they already were was near comical. A woman didn't run with the Syndicate if she wasn't dangerous herself, after all. But, when Nova refused to move, instead just lowering her hand to her side as she blinked at them stubbornly, the lab echoed with several latches of their triggers. "Raise your hands!"

She glanced to the screen and smirked, her hands obediently raising but not at the speed they preferred.

"Step away from the computer!"

Blinded by the flood lights, her eyes having struggled to adjust in the neon brightness, Nova had missed the officer sneaking around her right flank, having kept to the shadows that concealed him. In a split second, she was on her knees. A booted foot swept her legs from under her, sending her weight down upon the tiles. Her knees slammed against the ground, her spine jolted, as leather-gloved hands snatched at her wrists and yanked her arms up above her head, hands planted against the silk of her hair.

"No!" She struggled against her captor, trying to twist out of his hands as several more men rushed forward to swarm her. They couldn't take her away, not when she was so fucking close. She shot a leg backwards, her foot careening against the officer's shin, earning her several precious seconds. Nova surged forward, rushing towards her computer, hoping to lock the device to stop them from interrupting the upload. She was close, her fingertip brushing the mousepad, but she still wasn't close enough.

An arm wove about her middle, snatching her mid-lunge with such ferocity that her vision became speckled with black as she was torn backwards away from the station and slammed against the metal plating of an armoured chest. Nova writhed in the grip, thrusting an elbow furiously backwards as she tried desperately to squirm her way free. She managed to twist in his grip, thrusting her elbow higher and into the side of his masked face as she tried to reach for the monitor again.

A rush of electricity burned at her flank, a taser shoved so ruthlessly against her side that it zapped through her jacket and shirt, singeing her flesh. Nova screamed, still struggling against her attacker, before she was caught by her hair and flung to the ground. The round of her hip smashed against the tiles, her cheek striking the cold floor, and she lay breathless there for several seconds before two officers moved to pin her down. With her cheek smooshed against the floor, her face caught beneath the knee of an officer as the other knelt on the small of her back to wrangle her kicking legs, she could do nothing but stare at the monitor as its black screen began to flash red.

"LET ME GO!" Like a rabid animal, she writhed beneath them, even as two pairs of knees crushed her beneath their combined weight. Her voice was hoarse, pained, and it echoed about the lab as the officers made a rush to disrupt the upload. "NO! Don't touch that! Leave it alone!" Nova bucked under the knee at her back, her hands clawing helplessly at the oil-slick tiles as the sludge smeared over her cheek. A third man joined her oppressors, pinning down her shoulders and snagging her wrists behind her back as they cuffed her. She snarled, "Get off me, you fucking piece of shit!" Nova was subdued momentarily, however, as she watched a larger-framed officer come to stand where she had been only moments before. With his back to her, he seemed to stand there for several moments before brushing a gloved hand over her keyboard. "Get away from that!"

But it was already over, wasn't it? The file had already begun to corrupt, hence the internally triggered warning. The upload was beginning to fail, only a portion of his consciousness having shifted from hard drive to catatonic bot that hung limply from its chains. Just like all of her other attempts, so too would this one fail. It was over. There would be no coming back from this. She'd gotten lonely, desperate, and in her selfish greed to have him back, she'd attempted the upload before she'd given herself the chance to fix the motherboard. A tear welled in her eye as she watched, defeatedly, as the officer stood encased in the red glow of the flashing monitor. Nova was killing him a second time, and this had all been in vain.

"What is it?" The officer by the monitor growled at her from over his shoulder, his men over by the bot strung by wires and chains from the metal frame. "What is it you're creating, girl? Another bot for the Syndicate? Another creation for death and destruction?"

As the butt of a gun was raised over her head, Nova simply said blankly as she watched the officer's gloved finger hover over the red emergency stop button; "You'll never know."

Life as she knew it ended as unconsciousness swallowed her in a blink of searing pain.

"I don't think I have ever seen someone released from cryoprison in the whole time that I've worked here. I thought that was specifically against protocol. Why are they doing it for her?"

"Our job isn't to ask questions. Keep your mouth shut and just complete the task. Are you done with the insertion?"

"Not yet. Her skin is thicker than I anticipated."

"53 years in the cooler will do that to you."

In the end there was nothing. In the beginning there was nothing. Darkness was enveloping, engulfing, consuming. Death was not like sleep. There were no dreams, no colourful visions that lacked faces. There was no peace, no serenity, no childhood memories, no hope. There was no awareness in the expanding darkness. There was simply nothing.

And then there was everything.​

A slab of cold metal was biting at her thawing, exposed flesh. The lick of lukewarm air brushed over her bare body, leaving behind goosebumps. Blue-pallor skin felt as though it were on fire, even though the slow draught that blew over her chilled extremities was barely a mark over nine degrees Celsius. A twitch in her leg was restricted, the burning limb pinned instead to the chilled, metal examination table by a leather shackle. The restriction of movement caused her other leg to test its freedom, jerking upwards violently only to be met with the same firm restraint. She wiggled her toes, first numb and then scorching as blood began to warm and singe its way down through fine capillaries. Her eyelids were glued tight by the frost that lingered on the rows of dark lashes, a speckle of ice beginning to melt upon the sharp angle of her cheekbones. Nova Madisse looked like death thawing and, in truth, that was exactly what she was.

Charcoal hair, a shade between dark silver and raven, spilled in a mess beneath her head, snaking across the metal slab in all directions in thick tendrils. The colour of her skin was still a ghastly shade of blue-white, her blood not quite yet warming from its chronic state of viscous sludge as it had remained stagnant within her veins. The two incisions at the base of her throat were what kept her alive, flooding her cerebral arterial loop with a manufactured liquid rich with oxygen and potent nutrients while draining away waste. Her lips were a mottled violet, appearing lifeless even as they parted for the first time in half a century and took their very first breath.

The air burned on its way down, pressing apart the viscera of her lungs, before it was released in an equally scorching sigh. A puff of mist escaped between her plump, violet tiers. The hands by her sides, her fingertips slowly losing their mottled colour, began to curl into fists against the chilled metal of the table, fighting against the leather restraints just as her legs had done. The sound of voices about her was too much, too intense. After years of silence, years of nothingness, simply being aware was overwhelming. Her dark brows pinched together over a slender nose as her eyelashes fluttered and teeth clenched together in discomfort.

It was the searing pain at the inside of her upper arm, however, that had her intense ice-blue eyes snapping open.

"She's awake…" a voice mumbled, nervous, and by her side. "Should we sedate her while I finish this? I still have one to go."

"Don't be stupid. It takes at least fifteen minutes for someone to be functional once released from a cryogenic state. She's harmless."

The sharp edge of a scalpel pressed against her tender, pale flesh. At first, it gave resistance, dimpling beneath the blade. The fingers that pinched at the metal handle of the instrument pressed more firmly downward; a breath held in lungs as if they were anxious. The slight shift in pressure was all that was needed, her milky skin splitting beneath the razor edge in a precise, thin line. Yellow subcutaneous tissue spilled open; muscle visible beneath. The flush of pink to the tensed fist by the man's hip went unnoticed as he cut deeper into her arm.

A monitor began to alarm, warning of an elevating heart rate.

"I think she's waking."

"Keep fucking going. She making you shit your pants?"

The scalpel sliced further, until a flood of syrupy crimson obstructed his view and was dabbed away by sterile gauze. There came a metallic clink as the blade was discarded against a tray, gloved fingers instead pinching at a small, metal device that hummed softly. Someone like Nova Madisse needed to be watched, and carefully, lest she scramble off back to the Syndicate and become an even worse problem than the one the Bureau was already facing. The tracker was no larger than a vitamin capsule, the length of the man's thumbnail, and it was wedged carefully within the deep incision, beneath the yellow layer of tissue. Deep enough, he'd thought, that she wouldn't be motivated to remove it herself.

The monitor trilled again, warning that her heart rate was climbing quickly above 160.

"I don't think I can…"

"Shut the fuck up and move out of my way!"

"No. I'll do it."

"Good. Quit fucking talking."

A pinch had her fist tightening within the restraint, her knuckles paling as blood finally began to warm her body. The viscous sludge thinned to become free-flowing liquid, and it began to weep steadily from the large wound the man was beginning to suture. A curved needle made easy work of bringing her flesh back together, a layer of internal stitches carefully knitted as an extra deterrent should she try to remove them.

Vision finally returned to her, the blurred lights and shapes beginning to clear as Nova blinked slowly. She could see the man hunched over her arm just to the side of her, his white lab coat matching his rounded spectacles as he worked dutifully on his neat stitches. Some movement by her feet had her glancing down over her uncovered body, her nude form completely bare to them as she lay supine on the metal table that was sucking her body heat down into its surface as she slowly warmed. Another man, dressed in similar attire, paced anxiously by her feet, greying hair slicked backwards to hide a bold patch at the crown of his head.

As the final suture pierced bleeding flesh, Nova slowly twisted her neck as her head fell to the side, those ghostly pale orbs staring intensely at the man by her side. "Get." Her voice was hoarse, barely an octave above a whisper, her vocal cords stale. "Off me." The sudden jerk of her wrist made him pull away, his final suture knotted off only once as he withdrew.

"Fifteen minutes?" The younger man bolted to his feet, turning to the other who'd paused in his pacing by her restrained feet. "How about fucking six, you bastard? I fucking knew it. How the hell am I supposed to explain this? She's seen me." An olive hand swept in gesture at her maimed arm, her flesh beginning to bruise about the surgical incision he'd neatly brought back together.

The other man said nothing.

"How the fuck am I supposed to stand in front of him and tell him about this, huh?" The metal kidney dish was swiped from the bench, the man enraged.

The other man blinked. "I hope you'll remember your manners when you call him to come collect her. He doesn't take well to disobedience, never mind rudeness." A door unlatched. "Just cover her arm and pray he doesn't see it until after he has left with her. He made it clear in the file that she wasn't to be touched, but that tracker is necessary, ordered by those above him. I'm going for tea." The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, before closing and sealing the younger man alone with Nova.

"Fucking bastard." A finger pressed his glasses higher along his beak-like nose as he stood glowering after his supervisor, before he turned on the spot and moved back to her side, producing a syringe from his pocket. He said nothing as metal needle pierced the flesh of her thigh, his thumb pressing the plunger as thick, cloudy liquid tore apart the fibres of her muscle. It wasn't until darkness swallowed her again that she heard him speak.

"This is no longer the world you know."

​

The next time Nova woke, she was slumped against a padded chair. With her ankles now free but her wrists bound together with leather cuffs and thick chain, she found herself gifted with the illusion of freedom. She blinked the last remaining fog from her mind, whatever sedative that had flooded her system beginning to wear off. Nova had slipped down in the chair, the back of the baggy black shirt she'd been tucked into hitching upwards a little. The clothes that she'd been shoved into were concealing, unimpressive, bland, and the long sleeves concealed the bandaged wound of her upper arm.

Rolling out a kink in her neck, she dug the soles of her feet into the concrete floor, pressing her spine against the back of the chair as she licked her lips. Her breaths were shallow, the effects of the sedative still stubbornly lingering, and she found herself needing to rest her cheek against a shoulder to keep her head from falling forward. Her dark hair was swept away from her face, tied messily in a high ponytail though loose wisps fell into her face, framing sharp features as she frowned at nothing in particular.

The room was bare, stripped of anything save for the chair she was slumped in. An ominous metal door was off to the side of the room, a blacked-out window on the opposite wall. The light above her was dim, flickering every so often, and she was thankful that it wasn't as bright as the white incandescent bulbs she'd been blinded with upon her first waking on the slab.

Her voice still harsh from disuse, Nova grumbled; "What the fuck is this?"