All right. Breakdown Boy, you might want to avert your eyes. Everyone else: this is 16-year-old Miranda, so don't expect her personality to match the 35-year-old version. Still, she should be very much recognizeable. I hope.... Also, this excerpt is preceded by a few paragraphs setting the scene, which I didn't include. This should explain the first two sentences. The chapter is as yet unnamed.
Up on CAE Tower's executive level, another pair of eyes allowed itself to be distracted [[by the sunset]] for a moment. A rare smile transformed Miranda's face as she reflected that four of five requirements of a perfect moment were fulfilled: no company, it was quiet, there was a stunning view, and she was on her way to do something forbidden. The fifth requirement, or rather the first, she rarely admitted to herself. The last time she had screamed "I wish you were dead!" at her father no one had taken her seriously, but he had remarked in his typical offhand manner that people who couldn't control themselves ended up in mental hospitals or jails. So she had learned control. But the wish remained. As did the roiling mixture of fear and hate that she could feel eating her guts at times when she thought of him. For as far back as she could recall, she had wanted nothing more than to please him, longing for acknowledgment, for any sign of the love she was told there was between them. But all she ever got was a distant nod - and the next task. And when she failed the air around him seemed to turn to ice, his words inflicting a pain sharper than any slap ever could. He had hit her only once - when she started to cry when facing his icy disapproval. Control again. It was a pattern, she had learned since then; almost an obsession. Even his punishments were controlled, in accordance with recommendations from the psychologists he employed for her education. She had never cried in his presence again. If this was love, then love was a lie.
She pushed the remembrance of that time away, determined to take as much fun as she could from her 16th birthday, limited as the opportunities were. She wasn't allowed to see Niket, and the presents she got were always something to work for, and about work. But the most important gift no-one could deny her: one year less to her majority. Two more years, and her father would have no legal hold on her any more. These days any apparent attempts to please were acts. She learned, she worked, but for herself. She liked to learn, and deciphering complex patterns of facts came easily to her. She also liked acting. The first time she had successfully fooled her father had been exhilarating, like an unexpected gift of an hitherto cruel fate. Now she could even fool the psychologists. She could take two more years of this. Nobody ever knew what she felt anymore. Nobody would ever know again.
The thought was like a mantra, bringing with it an inner calm and detachment that had been only faked a moment before, making itself superfluous. She finished her preparations with the systems check of her omni-tool. Another gift of her father's, this indispensable tool for any job even remotely relating to information technology had once been a high-class standard model. Never bothering with such details, he had overlooked that the main reason it was so expensive was that it was so easy to adapt and modify. Figuring out what exactly she wanted it to do had been easy; actually making the modifications much harder. Four hours of sleep for eight months would be a heavy price in health to pay for secrecy for any other human, but it had been no problem for her, another unexpected gift of her engineered genes, she assumed. And it enabled her to do things she liked, in satisfying defiance of her packed schedule during the day; as she did now. Another corporate secret would be falling into her hands this night. Her omni-tool couldn't fool the outer security, as it ran independently from the central VI controlling everything else within the tower, or she would have been able to sell what she already knew to CAE's competition for a few million credits. But she wasn't after business. The word itself had come to epitomize everything she hated. Instead, she was almost consumed by a burning need to know what others would hide. First and foremost, what her father would hide. Once, he had ruled her by his knowledge of her innermost thoughts, her secrets, which she had told him in childish trust. This was her way to fight back. Knowledge was her weapon.
Finishing the systems check, she looked around in her room, and after a moment of hesitation pulled a pistol out of a drawer. She wasn't exactly competent with guns, and if she needed to use it, the **** would have hit the fan in a way that couldn't likely be hidden, but better to be prepared. Ironically, it was one of CAE's own new models, the first pistol-sized mass driver gun made on Earth. Her fingers flitted over the omnitool, then brushed the touchpad to open the doors. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the doors. Nothing happened. Her omnitool, monitoring the security, could detect no silent alarm. By stepping into the corridor armed, she had passed the first test.
The executive level was mostly abandoned at this time, which suited her fine. As the CEO's designated heir, her clearance topped most others' she would encounter, excepting only some security and employees in certain top-secret areas. Even so, she didn't care to be monitored or seen. The way she had programmed into her omnitool accounted for the regular schedules of everyone who worked there. The few working late she would hopefully be able to avoid by stepping into restrooms, closets or store rooms. Or by stealth, another appreciated skill she had acquired almost without trying. But first, she had to pass the elevator. As the main entrance to the executive level, its security was deadly. Again, her pistol triggered no alarm. She didn't want to use her personal code, but entered the security guards' code she had stolen from the VI instead, hitting the touchpad for sublevel 12 only after the code was acknowledged. The door closed, and with the familiar vertigo the elevator started its way down. The biolabs awaited her. She wondered what she would find there. As far as she knew CAE wasn't into bioweapons, but the accounts showed suspicious amounts of money spent on them. It must be a big secret.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 26 août 2010 - 06:38 .
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