Clouded Emotions - Series 1 - IX

Lost

Isabella is sitting on a chair. She's smoking.

Turmoil, anxiety, terror, nausea. Insects spreading through his brain. It's hard to breathe. Deep down, something is still fighting. In an induced stupor, Mario wonders: Am I about to die?

“No, no you aren't,” Isabella answers, holding his hand.

Mario loses his balance. He tries to hold on to his wife. He falls into the darkness.

“Isabella!” he yells. “I'm afraid! Help me!”

“Mario, come towards me.”

Mario runs through a desolate moor towards her voice. Isabella is sitting on a chair. She's smoking. Behind her, several people are clutching knives in their hands to slice their own throats, others are jumping off of bridges into an abyss, still others are letting the blood flow from the slit veins of their wrists. An interminable sequence of letters and numbers scrolls across the sky.

“See what you did? My genius!” Isabella says. Roberto lies at her feet, bound to a leash.

“He's dead!” Mario exclaims, horrified.

“They're all dying. You're the one who's killing them!” She smiles, showing him a second collar: “This is for you. Do you want it, sweetie?”

“Isabella, you're not...”
Mario finds himself back home, in the kitchen. The smell of eggs and bacon makes his mouth water. Isabella is standing at the stove.

Roberto lies at her feet,
bound to a leash.

“Isabella, are we back home?”

“Yes, my love. It's all over. I'm making you breakfast.”

She comes closer. He places his head on his wife's shoulder and closes his eyes, breathing the aroma in
deeply. He starts to feel drunk with happiness. She turns, takes his head in her hands and kisses it.

The woman's lips are frozen. Her tongue has a metallic taste. Her hands start to squeeze his head. Mario opens his eyes: instead of the Isabella's green pupils, two red LEDs stare back at him.

He hears footsteps. Someone is entering the room where the walls, ceiling and floor are created from luminous displays. The bed seems to be on the shore of a lake. The sky is azure. In the distance, the gigantic mirror of water flows towards the slopes of snow-covered peaks.

“Good morning, Mario. How do you feel?” John greets him, giving him a pat on the back.

“Great!” Mario responds, convinced. He feels an itch at the base of his neck. He touches it with a finger. There's a tiny scab.

people are clutching
knives in their hands
to slice their own throats

John smiles: “Finally on our side! We've been wanting to bring you here for ages but we were afraid that if we took you from your company, your productivity would have dropped. Now, however, your software is ready and works brilliantly! Come with me! There's lots you need to know.”

They leave the room. Mario feels confident and determined. Doubts, fear and anxiety have disappeared. His mind is clear. He smiles, pleased.

John notices his expression. “That nanochip is something else, isn't it?”

“Yes, it's fantastic. I never would have imagined. And Isabella? Eugenio?”

“Oh, your friend told us about their plan. Thanks to him we're flushing out the others, even though we don't have all of the ones we want. Hackers all work independently. Isabella is already working on an operation to capture one of their cells.”

“Did you redo her graft?” Mario asks.

“No, why?” John responds, bewildered.

Images of the capture run through Mario's mind: Eugenio hiding the nanochip in his pants pocket, then letting it fall down the sewer as they left the lab; Isabella lying to John, saying that Eugenio tried to torture her to get revenge for Lin's murder. Mario telling John everything. John's expression becomes more serious. They walk through a passageway suspended in a room with an infinite sequence of servers, all lined up. Every shape and size of robot moves through the air and across the floor.

Isabella is sitting on a chair. She's smoking. “See what you did? My genius!
They're all dying. You're the one who's killing them!”

They reach John's office. He speaks to a voice recognition system: “Put me in communication with Isabella.” The woman can't be traced. John calls another team member.

“Sir, Captain Orsini said she received new orders. She's already been away for several hours.”

Mario and John look at one another. They know they've lost her!

<-- Previous   Next -->

Table of contents

Full version available in Galactic Energies on Amazon Kindle.

Don't miss next issue. Subscribe to my mailing list.

Follow Clouded Emotion on Bloglovin.