Techno

Chapter 15

Ellie

     Ellie awoke, for the second time, in the grips of the Central Intelligence for National Assurance. A feeling of deja-vu passed over her, and she forced air through her nostrils in frustration.

     National assurance or not, they were beginning to get rather annoying.

     She was in a cell of some kind, but the material felt odd to her. Ellie tried to sit up but quickly discovered she was tethered to the mattress with leather straps. She flailed her arm and accidentally bumped one of the walls of the cell. The sound it made was hollow; wooden.

     Ellie was encased in a wooden tomb.

     "Hello?" she called out. "Hello?"

     There was, of course, no response and Ellie rolled her head to the side to get a better view of her surroundings. Some natural light filtered in through the wooden bars on the other side of the room, but it didn't reveal much. As she lay there the soft murmurings of voices could be heard from outside the cell:

     "Her biological readings are extremely abnormal, they seem to indicate that technology is present throughout  her system..."

     "She's more machine now than human..."

     "So the reports are true then, she can interface with technology...."

     "The possibilities...they're endless..."

     "Don't forget that she's a threat doctor..."

     Ellie shook her head at what she heard, her worst fears being realized.

     "She should be placed with the others for her own safety...and ours..."

     "But what about what Agent Jones said? She explicitly told us not--"

     "I have direct orders from the director. Besides, Jones is a freak like the rest of them...she's probably sympathetic..."

     Ellie remembered to when Olivia did something in Times Square. She'd created an energy field, or something, that stopped the bullet. Ellie had trouble contemplating everything, trying to apply scientific rationale to her situations.

     Then again, how could one know the difference between science and magic after what she'd seen?

**

Gabriel

     Gabriel walked down a hallway with flickering lights and scanned a keycard on a wall terminal. The keycard had been pried from the dead hands of a scientist, but it was all right. The visions had told him the the doctor was supposed to die.

     There was a click and the door unlocked. Gabriel opened it and stepped inside the dark interior, feeling around on the wall for a switch of some sort as he did so. There was another click, and lights flickered on above revealing several stations of computer monitors.

     An advanced facility nestled in the isolated wilderness.

     The visions told him it was where he needed to go, and their persistence was relentless. They spoke to him, telling him what he had to do. Listening to their bidding, Gabriel picked up one of the computer monitors and smashed it to the ground. Carefully, and meticulously, he picked out several important pieces from which he would create something. For hours he sat there, constructing the one piece of technology that would complete his mission.

     Gabriel clawed at his eyes, more visions erupting in front of him. People, all around the world, flashed in front of his mind's eye. Faces, pictures, and events of which he had not seen laid themselves out to him.