Chapter Text
Gogo blinked herself awake and glared at the canopy ceiling of her bed. She shifted out almost robotically, feeling the carpet in her bare feet, stretching her toes. Glancing to the side, out the window was a landscape of buildings partially blocked from view, and a pigeon pecking and bobbing, a feeble creature.
Gogo's fist tightened. She needed to kill.
In a trunk at her feet was a map of the compound and a basketball, which she held up to her face like a globe of the world. Pushing with minimal resistance she punctured the ball and let it sag on the carpet like a testicle.
In the room was a desk with a holocomm unit which began to glow. She fixed her eye on it and pressed a button, and the image of a woman with a clipped doctor's uniform and dark hair in a bun addressed her.
"Gogo, glad to see you're awake," came the director's relieved tones. "We're sorry for the sudden evacuation - "
"What happened to Chicago, director?" Gogo's voice was playful, almost mocking.
"It's gone," the director replied, mournfully. "You and the other trainees will set up here for the time being."
Gogo's expression remained hardened, firm; then suddenly placid.
"You… are alright, aren't you?" asked the director.
"Goodbye, director," Gogo flicked the holocomm off.
Into the apartment she ventured, sliding open the bathroom door with the press of a button and showering, changing into a school girl's uniform with plaid pleated skirt. In the apartment, she bent over the fridge and ate some soy with a moue of distaste.
"Gogo," interred a voice in her infolink. "Come to my apartment. We have something to discuss."
Reluctantly, Gogo slinked out of her apartment into the corridor, well furnished with rugs and statues and little tables with a vase of flowers. The map in her datavault was second knowledge; she continued along the corridor, past an empty break room when she felt a shudder, and tensed to see a security guard with the label 'SSC' on his uniform rush into sight, his mouth forming words she would never hear as the vent opening on one side of the wall exploded and knocked him opposite with force.
Detached, Gogo knelt to feel his pulse and rifled through his uniform. He had nothing of merit.
"My God!" the janitor gasped, in his overalls with his forty year old man mustache.
Gogo merely watched him huddle for cover and rose, heading down the corridor and up to a door where she rang the intercom. From the map, this was Billie Adams' apartment.
"Come on in," came the same voice from her infolink.
Gogo entered, to see an apartment in more or less the same layout with similar furnishings to her own. A woman with cropped auburn hair and a fit build looked stern but glad to see her.
"Good, you made it," she greeted Gogo. "Did you hear from Dr. Nassif?"
Gogo nodded.
"I'm not convinced she's telling us the truth," Billie began. "I rifled around in her office and found some files that makes me think Tarsus isn't just keeping us here to train recruits."
"There's a dead man in the hallway," Gogo smiled, in a way that made Billie shudder.
"I thought I heard a crash," Billie said, after a pause.
"He didn't have any weapons," Gogo shrugged, eyeing the apartment as though she might find one within reach. Billie felt uncomfortable, as though the air conditioning had become a bit too cold.
"You should go meet the other recruits," Billie advised. "I'm going to look over these files, find out what I can."
Gogo turned on her heel and headed out the door, down the hall to where another security guard with the 'SSC' tag on his uniform stood beside an elevator and a drinking fountain. She held the lever and smiled as she sprayed the guard with tiny pelts of nano fresh water.
"Stop that," he frowned, as her eyes clapped onto the pistol at his belt. She smiled at him once more and pressed the button for the elevator, and her eyes were what he remembered as the doors closed between them.
The music in the elevator made her irritable and Gogo once again yearned for a weapon. It was not enough to use one's fists to get the aggression out.
The doors opened and Gogo stepped out into a corridor where to one side, the director stood behind a glass window in her office.
"Gogo," Dr. Nassif called her over, she who had been wandering forth into where she could hear someone running laps. "The other recruits are in the rec area."
"There's a dead man upstairs," Gogo eyed her with a smile.
"An isolated incident," Dr. Nassif replied with a frown.
"Dr," interrupted the voice of a man who appeared in the holocomm in the office. "We've got a Code Yellow."
"I'll be right there," Dr. Nassif told him, and turned to Gogo. "Nothing to worry about."
"What a shame," Gogo replied with a smile, heading into the rec room. If she had to endure a day of seclusion and stability she'd blow her brains out, even if she had to filch a pistol from a guard.
In the rec area, Gogo saw a fawn-haired woman doing stretches and saw the man she had heard earlier doing laps around the second floor of what was a basketball court beneath. Idly Gogo thought of the punctured ball and watched the fit man run whose record time could be better run off for another lap.
"Hi there!" came a voice beside her, and Gogo turned. "I'm Klara Sparks. You must be one of the new trainees."
Gogo continued to stare, making Klara discomfited.
"OK… " Klara got the hint and returned to her stretches, a line of perspiration now on her brow.
Gogo watched the man do his laps, deciding against challenging him for the record and took the stairs down to where she saw a candy bar machine. The slot accepted credit chits, but Gogo hammered on it, punched and kicked it and got all her fury out. The scrum brought Klara to hurry down and investigate.
"What - are you doing?" Klara eyed Gogo with disdain, as Gogo pulled the machine off its hinges, allowing a couple dozen candy packets to fall out.
"I'm hungry," Gogo replied, searching through the midst. "It's gone."
"What's gone?" Klara eyed the trainee with some derision.
"My flavour," Gogo pouted. "They're all out."
A sudden crashing sound made Klara duck instinctively for cover, and the room seemed to wobble from the impact while Gogo merely looked up at the ceiling as though transfixed in some mantra. The alarm began to sound, a piercing wail to match Gogo's shrill cry at this assault to her senses.
"This is no drill," Dr. Nassif's voice blared in her intercom. "The facility is under attack. Gogo, please fetch the medkit and equipment from your locker. I'm transmitting you the code to your datavault."
Gogo's senses surged such that she might see action. Across from the basketball court, she headed towards the bathrooms and another shudder racked the building and a nearby vent opening exploded, sending a trolley packed with basketballs to scatter like frightened mice.
Gogo entered the bathroom, past the toilets and showers to where she found four equipment lockers in a row. She unlocked the one with her name and opened to find a pistol, baton, multitool and medkit.
At that moment, the power died and all became black but for emergency lighting at the lower end of the walls.
"The attackers are Order fanatics," Dr. Nassif paged in her intercom, as Gogo soured to see the baton was nowhere as sharp as she would like, and pistols too cowardly by far. The multitool would at least serve her purposes well, and she chucked the medkit back where she found it. "Gogo, there's an emergency exit in my office you can use to escape."
Gogo spun the pistol on her finger not unlike a revolver, with the baton tapping against the wall as she found her way easily in the dark, murder in her eyes that would light up if they could.
As she neared the exit, Gogo's eyes snapped to a female SSC officer holding a pistol and prepared to fight.
"There's an Order member out there," she motioned to where the corridor would lead to the basketball court. "I'd prefer not to fight, but sneaking out seems too risky."
"Do you have a knife?" Gogo asked, nicely enough.
"No," she replied with a quizzical frown. "It's the standard issue baton for SSC officers. Why?"
"Batons don't wound well enough," Gogo apprised the weapon as though it were a cut of meat she wasn't fond of.
"You've got a pistol," the SSC officer pointed out. "That'll do the trick."
"From afar," Gogo's eyes locked onto hers mercilessly. "How will I know he's dead?"
"When he stops shooting," the SSC officer replied, after a pause. "If you're unsure - "
"Unsure?" Gogo prompted, with nary a muscle moving in her face.
"I'll cover you," the SSC officer replied, after a pause.
Gogo smiled at that, and walked out into the corridor. The SSC officer didn't know what to make of that, but followed her all the same. The basketball court was empty, scattered with orange and black striped balls, but footsteps were coming close.
"Get ready!" the SSC officer prepared, hiding for cover behind one of the columns which held up the lap track above. Her pistol was prepped to aim.
Gogo spun the baton in her hands and whacked the officer over the head, who went down with a sigh and crumpled to the ground. Gogo searched her pockets and found to her dismay that she had told the truth - there was no knife. She saw a basketball lying idly by, kicked it into her hands, and as she rounded the column, saw the seeker raise her pistol at the sudden presence.
Gogo threw the ball like a linebacker and though the seeker fired, her shot went awry and the ball caused her to stumble and drop her pistol. Gogo surged forth, adrenaline running in her veins as she leapt atop the seeker, who wore a hooded robe and whose eyes of fervour were replaced with fear.
Gogo held her pistol to the seeker's face, who froze like a lamb before the slaughter. She tossed it aside and pressed her baton to the seeker's mouth, who winced and tried to worm away as Gogo smashed the baton, breaking her teeth and smashing again, her face a pulpy mess by the time she was finished.
Gogo rose with her bloodied baton in her hands, continuing forth past the deluge of candy sweets, their wrappers crinkling underneath Gogo's sneakers and upstairs, to where she saw the elevator to the trainees' apartments opening and Billie Adams came out.
"Gogo," she called, entering Dr. Nassif's office and locking the door behind her.
"Are you afraid?" Gogo taunted, she with her bloodied school uniform.
"What happened?" Billie glanced to the bloodied baton which completed the ensemble.
"Someone got in my way," Gogo replied, calmly.
"You have to go back to your apartment," Billie didn't hesitate. "There's something about Tarsus you don't know. We're not trainees - we're test subjects."
Gogo felt fury at that.
"Trust me," Billie said.
"Trust you?" Gogo asked like a cornered cat. Her tone became serious. "Open the door."
"You have to see it for yourself," Billie pleaded, watching as Gogo tried her multitool on the door without preamble. When she saw it required two tools to unlock, she let out the shrill cry of a teenager denied.