Betrayed

"We've got a match." - It was Renée, from forensics. The mysterious perp that had busted Camille's operation, a month before, had left ALMOST no traces... but some epithelial cells found on the bruise on Camille's neck were from the black woman. And the wonders of modern tech had done the rest.

"So, she is in the system? Who's she?"

The answer was preceded by a long, awkward silence - "She is in a database, but not in one from prisons' data or forensics. She is at Seattle Automated, in the long care unit."

"And she sneaks out to run drugs  - a criminal that exploits social services. How refreshingly normal"

"Camille, I don't think that she is your mysterious super-villain - this woman is a paraplegic, bound to a respirator 24/7."

"Those robots are pretty easy to fool... or she has a twin sister. In any case, we've got to check."

 "This is highly irregular" - the large, round face of the nurse was blank but, then, it was an administrative unit, not a caring nurse. It had no use for facial expressions - or its programmers had a very bleak vision of bureaucracy.

"As you can see, we just found matching epithelial cells on the scene of a crime , and we like to clarify how that is possible. ms. Lawson could help us ."

"This is irregular - our data are not available to forensics units unless it is for a terrorism case. Is this a terrorism case?"

"Yes, yes it is" - Camille was sure that a knee-jerk reaction, to concede when the T word was uttered, had to be among the routines inscribed in the so-called AI that made tick this tin woman.

As many humans, she forgot that an android is  always only milliseconds away from calling its supervisor, which is often a couple of rooms wide for a floor tall, and comes much nearer to have an actual intelligence than most human bureaucrats in the history of hierarchical organizations.

"Legal tells me to allow you an interview with ms. Lawson, pending review of documentation from your office. We reserve right of legal action, should the 'terrorism connection' you imply result questionable."

Shit - Camille considered drug smuggling a terroristic activity but that wasn't a view widely shared. She'd have to cook up some convincing tying-in of "Supa-woman"drug ring with some of the thousands of wannabe-terroristic organizations active in the state. Usually, it only took minutes and was enough to quell the thirst of justice of most pen-pushers, but it was still a distraction.

The important thing was, she had gained access to this "Keisha Lawson".

If she was her super-villaine, the encounter would be brief, but at least there would have been proofs of her inhuman qualities.

She was not -  as she entered the room, the woman in the bed only had a face resembling that of the giantess that smithed Camille and her two colleagues.

Camille went to the bed and briefly paired hers to the sleeping woman's hand, and shuddered... this woman gad such a tiny hand, a short arm.

Keisha Lawson couldn't be taller than Camille, probably she was significantly shorter -  and in the long years confined on this bed, her muscles had completely atrophied. Even if the physicians found a way to reconnect her spinal chord - which was bound to happen even for the few that were resilient to human neural growth factors, some day - it would have taken years to recondition her body to and be able to stand.

"Please, this is her afternoon nap. She wakes up, usually, at three o'clock. Could you wait?"

This robot nurse had full control of her facial features, and made a most terrific use of it.
[Camille] knew that she was talking to a lump of circuits and actuators, but couldn't resist the sheer politeness  and concern that emanated from it.

"Do you have her history?"

"I am her personal nurse - I have her complete medical history and she talks a lot"

"What happened to her?"

"A most uncommon accident - she was a ballerina, and was hit onstage by a barrage of eggs, thrown by protesters. This led her to momentarily lose control of her body motion, and to fall from the stage."

"Her body is resistant to the neural grow factor?"

"Yes"

It was certain that this small, broken frame could not be the towering monster that Camille met at America's Bet Quality Inn.

That woman was at least 6 feet of solid muscle.

A twin sister? It would explain the DNA, but one whole foot of difference in height? Exercise  can change body shape a lot, but height is genetic - exercise can actually, only, reduce it by compressing bones and cartilages, which is the reason why kids must avoid weight training..

If she had a very muscular twin, that should have been a tiny bit shorter, not way taller.

Camille used the twenty minutes or so, till Keisha awoke, mulling over these factors.


"Hi, ms. Lawson. I am Camille dos Santos.I am from the DEA."

"Uh... I am pretty sure that the drugs that they give me are legal. So, why are you here?"

"I am here to talk with you about your sister, ms. Lawson."

"I have no sister. I think that you have this on file."

"We have found traces of your DNA on a crime scene."

"If it's something from 9 years ago, maybe, but I've been tied up a little, lately. Your people must have made a mistake."

"Forensics checked it thrice... no mistake, that's your DNA."

"Maybe... but I have no sisters, nor brothers. Believe me."

"It must be a twin of you, to justify our findings. Your parents may have had given her out in adoption."

"Or I may have been adopted? No, never heard anything like that - talk with my parents. I have no sisters."

Camille realized that this interview was going nowhere - it was pretty frustrating, and she had good chances of messing up under the camera eyes of the robot, so she left.

On the taxi to the airport, she realized that there was another scenario that fit the available facts.

She could have seen it before, if she had not let her own prejudices have the better on her rationality.

It was a scenario that obliquely justified the terrorism link, because human cloning was classified as bio-terrorism. If she could demonstrate that her assailant was a modified human clone...
there were almost no limits to the implications, or the budget she could command.

Camille finally noticed that the automated taxi was going faster than the limit, which was impossible. She died soon after, in one most uncommon traffic accident, when the automated taxi capsized and fell from the overpass at 100 kph (which was supposedly 25 kph above the vehicle maximum potential speed).

"Son of a bitch - Goddamned bastard son of a bitch." - Keisha Lawson, Revenant, murmured this, watching Keisha Lawson, the original.

The robot nurse, as every digital computer equipment on the planet, ignored her presence... without any conscious effort on her part, the vastly most powerful quantum black boxes hidden inside her vast frame - the real reason why it had to be so vast - simply hacked every digital equipment that came into their sensor range, and erased her presence.

She only had to worry about analog recording, humans, cats and other quantum machines... well, the day the aforementioned 'bastard' decided stopping to destroy potential competitors before they were born.

Keisha looked at Keisha, and remembersed when she made a pact with her demon - "Give me your soul, and you will walk again". Walk, and fly, and lift cars, and kill whoever can't be just disappeared, like that nosy DEA agent.

It took her soul, alright, but - evidently - it didn't bother restoring the original body.  It just used it as a blueprint for a new one, more suited to its needs. At least, he hadn't been so gross as to dispose of the original.

"I am a fucking copy."

She caressed the face of Keisha, hesitantly, then withdraw the hand in horror... she didn't realize how huge she was, and how tiny she had been. Seeing the contrast of her enormous hand and her tiny head was almost painful.


What to do, what to do?

She reached out, consciously, and read all the data in the medical files of Keisha then, cautiously, tapped 'god' Infranet for solutions. With extreme care - she didn't want to wake 'god' up, and let it know that she had discovered that she was not, she had never been the tiny ballerina.

Thank God - the true one -"it" had added so many non-sentient automated sub-levels to its mind, that one could have them do almost anything without catching his attention.

I't 'had originally considered to restore the true Keisha, using the same kind of nano-repairers that keep the revenant in the shapes he wants fo them - uh? - before discarding it because a 5' woman body was simply too small for what it had intention to do.

But the plan, maniacally detailed (as almost anything 'it' does), was virtually completed. All that was needed was a number of nanobots, and to program them accordingly.

The nanos were abundant in Keisha's body, so it would have been just a matter of a simple body transfusion, to get enough of them in Keisha's (the original) body.

Then, once out of her body and its fail-safes, she could easily reprogram them to fix the other body's spinal cord and stimulate muscles' regrowth. Miraculous healings are rare, but sometimes happen... or some doctor will have to die, if he didn't content himself with that explication and started to snoop in search of the actual cause. She wasn't it, and could not waste resources just to save some idiot's life.

By midnight, Keisha was back on her way home. Both of them were.

She NOW knew that it had betrayed her, and there was no reason to be loyal to the bastard.

There never had been a reason, because she was not the Keisha it had made the contract with - no matter what her memory told her - and the one that had made it, well, never received her due.

Open rebellion was out of the table - it was just so damn powerful, once it knew it had to destroy you -  but it was so easily distracted, and not all of its ten thousand hands knew what all the others did.

There was plenty of room to play in...