Scott Medbury - Inga

He stood up straight and looked at Molenski.

“How is it even possible?”

“Ahh, is the penny finally dropping on the big dummy’s head? I saved your scrawny ass in Moscow, and I saved it again when you were shot to pieces. That’s how it’s possible.”

Ivan shook his head.

“You were dead meat, my friend. The doctors couldn’t believe you were alive. They fished 36 bullets out of you before you died on the operating table.”

“That’s impossible; I remember waking up.”

“Of course, you do. In a private facility . A private facility owned by Genitix. And guess who is a majority and silent shareholder? Even little miss smarty pants Marina doesn’t know that. But seriously, you should be proud Ivan. You were the first of your kind. A dead man’s mind downloaded into a machine. A test case, one that I can say was a roaring success until this robot cunt came along.”

“But why?”

“Why not? You were a good bodyguard. I had invested a lot of time and money in you, and here you were about to check out on me. Your crisis was an opportunity to test new technology on a real human. I wasn’t about to let that slip through my fingers.”

“But I eat! I breathe, I shit…” said Ivan, desperately trying to find a reason to deny what he already knew.

“Explain,” Molenski snapped at the man that Ivan didn’t recognize.

The man stepped forward and pushed his glasses further up his nose.

“You don’t do any of those things. We call your programming ‘Ghost Imperative’. To preserve the sanity of the downloaded psyche, the program continuously imprints mimicked human functions like eating and going to the bathroom over your day to day existence. They are randomly introduced, like advertisements in a TV show, based on the normal biorhythms and bodily functions of a real person. You may remember eating, drinking, going to the toilet or even masturbating, but you never do. The only thing you really do is sleep, or more accurately hibernate, the same way a computer does.”

It was then that he looked down at the dropped plate. The plate he had eaten his dinner from earlier. The plate he had emptied with relish, even wiping the last of the gravy from it with his finger.

Except, it wasn’t empty. The contents of the plate the chef had prepared for him earlier were there, splattered in living color under the broken plate.

“Do you ever have feelings of Déjà vu?”

Ivan nodded without looking up from the mess on the floor. The man knew that Ivan finally understood. Not without sympathy, he went on.

“There are only so many ‘ghost’ scenarios we can input. Thus you get the feeling it has all happened before sometimes.”

Something snapped in Ivan’s mind, something that felt like the cable of a heavy suspension bridge.

“Why tell me now then?” he asked, in a quiet voice.

“Because, dickhead,” said Molenski, “I needed this bullshit to stop now. That’s my property you’ve been running around with, and she’s brought a shit storm down on my head.”

Another cable snapped, and the bridge of Ivan’s mind tilted dangerously.

“So, are you going to kill… deactivate me?”

“No, you are worth too much to me. The research has been invaluable. We are about to go to market with Ghost Directive, and it will make me fucking billions. You won’t be deactivated, you will be reprogrammed.” He gestured to Inga. “Her on the other hand, well she will be deactivated – but first, I will let you watch me cut her into tiny little pieces.”

“You will not touch her.”

“Oh, I’ll do more than fucking touch her, dummy. I am going to flay her…”

The final cable snapped.

Molenski saw it and realized he had pushed too far.

“Disable them,” he ordered. “Now!”

The Genitix man reached into his pocket even as Ivan’s hand whipped out and grabbed Andre’s gun hand, twisting it sharply. Bones snapped and the gun dropped to the floor as he grabbed the squat man by the throat.

The other men started shooting at him. Ivan ignored the hot metal ripping into his back and drove his right fist into Andre’s face. It caved in, a piñata smashed by a brutal child.

There was a bang and a gurgling scream behind him as he dropped the body. Inga had disarmed a man and used his own weapon to shoot him in the throat.

She immediately shot the other man between the eyes as Ivan rushed at the last gunman.

The condemned man put three bullets into Ivan’s already bloody chest before Ivan grabbed his head and twisted it violently.

Molenski had retreated into the living room and stood behind the Genitix man as Ivan let the body of the last gunman drop to the floor. Babic was further back, his face horrified. The Genitix man raised a small black device.

Too late, Inga raised her gun. The man’s thumb pressed the device and suddenly Ivan found he couldn’t move. If he had been asked later to describe how he felt at that moment, he would have described it as being totally paralyzed. He was aware of what was happening, but unable to move.

Inga seemed to have suffered the same fate. In his peripheral vision, he could see her frozen, weapon still aimed at the spot that the technician had now sensibly vacated.

He watched helplessly as Molenski, chuckling, stepped past the technician and headed towards Inga. Looking at Ivan and smiling, he traced the muzzle of his Ruger along her jawline before placing it between her eyes.

Noooo! Screamed Ivan silently

The loud bang behind him surprised all of them.

Perhaps even Mateo Babic, who held the smoking Colt .45. The technician fell to his knees and then toppled face first into the wooden floorboards. The controller he had used to disable the robots fell from his lifeless fingers.

Babic immediately turned his gun on Molenski, his eyes filling with tears.

“I’m so sorry, Ivan. I didn’t know what the bastard put you through until just now,” he said, his voice cracking. “He didn’t tell me they put you in there. He just told me you were a robot, like her. Oh God, what have they done to you… to your soul ?”

Shoot the bastard ; Ivan willed the Croatian. Shoot him!

With his gun trained on Molenski, the emotional man walked over to the control device.

“I will make this right.”

Babic only took his eyes off Molenski for a moment, but it was enough. The Russian’s hand snaked out. Babic was bending for the remote when the knife struck him in the side of the neck. He fell to his knees and struggled to keep his weapon trained on the Russian.

It was too heavy. His arm wavered and slowly drooped, before the weapon finally slipped from his numb fingers and he toppled onto the man he had just killed.

“Oh, good,” said Molenski, with feigned relief. “Now, where were we…? Oh yes, alone at last.”

He pocketed his gun and reached out to Inga. Gripping the top of her dress he ripped it down the middle, exposing her underwear.

“Oh, yes. So perfect… Ivan, I can see why you fell for her.”

He pulled her bra down, freeing her breasts, and then slid his hands down her belly to the top of her panties. His fingers were just slipping under the soft material when Babic, with one last effort, reached out and touched the green icon on the controller.

Molenski wasn’t aware he was in danger until Inga smiled.

He immediately reached for his Ruger. He was quick. She was quicker.

Her hand, claw-like, slashed his right cheek. Her nails rent his skin like tissue paper, and he backpedaled, the wet flap of skin hanging from his cheek, waving like a flag of surrender.

He managed to pull his Ruger out of his pants, but she disarmed him as easily as a parent taking a lollipop from a child, then threw it across the room. He put up his hands and she punched him in the forehead. Molenski reeled and took another two steps backward.