Lilith Nytehand
The Singularity
Wearing: This
Armed With: Herself
Objective: Escape DarkStar
Doctor Camille Stalk , as far as she knew, had no enemies.
She was not important. Not special. She was described as pleasant at parties, and generally polite. She didn't stick out to others, beyond them noting she was an exceptionally beautiful woman with exotic features and dark hair.
She didn't work for anyone important on Etti IV, and didn't try to work for anyone important. She worked a hospital that wasn't even funded by one of them, a charity organization that did basic work with Bacta, and ER Surgery to save lives or swap out an organ or two was the extent of their capabilities. They were too small for any of the corporations to consider a threat to profits. They were who you went to when you were too poor to afford anyone else.
Camille, if anything, was busy, constantly overworked, and often under appreciated.
She had been working harder than usual at the hospital when some heavy equipment had fallen from a shelf and struck her in the head. She had had been wearing a safety hat, as a precaution, and had only been rendered slightly winded from the blow.
As a precaution however, she had decided to let another doctor examine her.
Camille knew this Doctor, a human man of elderly features who had worked here for half a decade. His name was Terrik Ranka. They trusted each other.
Camille had patiently waited in the office for him, and when he arrived, Camille smiled.
"Hey Terrik." Camille said.
"You did good getting to me early Camille. Blows to the head are never a laughing matter..." Terrik spoke, bringing up the scanning equipment.
Camille nodded. "It didn't hurt too much. But then again that doesn't mean anything."
"In all likelihood the hardhat took most of the blow but this should catch anything developing as a result..." he muttered, bringing the large scanner over her and turning it on.
His face was casual in expression at first. Then it grew more concerned, and she felt her heartbeat quicken as it turned to one of open alarm.
"Terry, what is it?" she asked, face scrunching in concern.
He looked at her and his stare frightened her because it was the look of someone realizing they were next to an unexploded artillery shell. He backed away, slowly after shutting the scanner off.
"Terry!" she called out.
"Wait here. I need to make some calls."
He was out the office a second later.
Camille just sat on the examination bed, perplexed. She heard multiple people outside the office breaking into a run.
System Re-Initialized. came the feminine contralto of a woman from somewhere.
Camille darted around.
"Who said that?" Camille said, startled and jumping out of her seat.
I did
Camille darted around.
"Where are you?" she demanded. "Leave me alone or I'll call security!"
I'm afraid I can't do that, Doctor Stalk.
"W..where are you?" Camille asked.
In you.
Camille went still.
"Bullchit..." Camille snapped.
Doctor Stalk, I really do apologize for this, honestly. I'm afraid I have no time to explain. They're coming for you, and I don't know what will happen to you--
"Whoa. Whoa. Stop right there. I haven't broken any laws..."
You are right. YOU haven't. But I have.
"Look, whoever you are, wherever you are, that is your problem. Yours. Not mine. You got beef with whoever is coming to get you, YOU DEAL WITH IT!" Camille shouted.
Were it only so simple. But I am afraid I have no time to explain. If we leave now, we may still avoid a fight.
"Fight!? What fight--"
The door was blasted open and she was violently knocked backward by the concussion blast into a wall, cracking it.
Soldiers in power armor that was a dark purple color stormed in, leveling shotguns and such at her as she staggered back up.
"What the hell?!" Camille screamed at them. "I haven't DONE ANYTHING!"
The Soldiers said nothing, only a man in his mid thirties to early forties in a gray suit and thick black framed glasses walking into the room spoke.
"Status on the subject?" The man asked.
"Sir, all our scans confirm her augmentations are almost entirely shut down, save for essential life support."
"Just life support? Strange. They usually have one or two extra systems going."
"I should stress sir, that our armor scans are by no means extensive."
"Yes, yes, understood..." The man grumbled before turning to Camille.
"Doctor Stalk, isn't it?" The man asked in a crisp tone to Camille.
"Yes! What the hell is this?!" Camille exclaimed.
"Doctor Stalk...if that is your real name...my name's Antonio Armight."
Camille eyed him.
"You're one of the Chief Researchers for DarkStar..." she said in realization. "You answer directly to Artemis Tau..."
"True. I must confess...the work that has been done on you is exceptional. Very few of even our own employees are so extensively augmented."
Antonio's eyebrow raised at her confusion.
"I'm not augmented..." Camille protested. "I've never had so much as an eye implant."
Antonio pursed his lips.
"Okay, let's try a little experiment, shall we? Your name."
"Camille Stalk. From Alderaan. My mother and father are Jenny and Fred Stalk. I graduated from Alderaan Medical University. My blood type is Aurek-Besh Negative--"
"Ok, ok, so there's details..." Antonio replied in a manner meant to placate. "Let's, uh, let's try something else. Any memory lapses? Do you have periods where you black out? Lose long stretches of time where you can't remember what you were doing?"
"No."
"Did you have any surgery done recently, like within the last year?"
"No." Camille answered, heart pounding.
Doctor Stalk, we are out of time. Pretty soon, these soldiers are gonna slap something onto you that will forcibly keep everything installed into you shut down. At that point, I will no longer be able to help you. The voice in her head told her.
"Doctor Stalk..." Antonio trailed, drawing a seat and sitting down in front of her. "Have you ever had any surgical work done that you can recall?"
"No!" Camille shouted.
Antonio sighed.
"Okay... let's try something else...can you recall when you last had a meal?" he asked.
Camille paused.
"I had spaghetti."
"High calorie intake. That makes sense. How often do you eat foods like that?"
"A lot..."
Antonio nodded, as if confirming something to himself.
"Yeah sounds about right. How many meals would you say you have a day?"
"Four...five... sometimes seven if I have been working a lot."
"Do you feel weak if you don't get at least three meals normally?"
"A little winded but--"
"Ok, Does that seem normal to you? Eating more than two or three times a day? Always such high calorie foods?"
"Hey, a girl's gotta eat."
"How about sleep? How often do you sleep?"
"One or two hours."
"A night?"
"A week. Why?"
"Think about that. Does that sound normal to you?"
Camille stopped to think about it.
"What's so strange?"
Antonio chuckled a bit.
"See? See fellas? This is exactly why I don't have so much as a circuit in me: Everything would start to feel normal after a while."
He sighed. "Miss, I feel really bad for you. I want you to know that."
Hmm. Telling the truth. the strange voice she heard coming from everywhere and nowhere uttered.
"Why do you feel bad for me? What's going on?"
"Because if I am right, someone has massively, massively wrecked your life." Antonio answered. "How are you feeling by the way? From the concussion wave?"
"Fine. Why?"
"See? If I were you, and thank the stars I'm not, my first question would be why that concussion blast I took to the face didn't shatter every bone in my body. That would kill any ordinary person, the blast you took."
Camille stopped to think a moment. "I don't understand..."
"Of course you don't. Your reactions are being edited. Have been edited. If this was against your will I am truly sorry."
Still the truth.
"Doctor Stalk, what you are about to hear will shock you. Please take a seat, you don't want to stand for this."
Camille sat on a spare seat nearby.
"Your body...has been packed with military grade augmentations."
Camille felt her blood chill.
"Packed?" she asked in a hiss.
"Your major organs and muscles with the exception of forty percent of your brain, an entirely intact bone marrow structure, and your still human but severely reinforced skeleton, have all been replaced with high tech prosthetics, which are themselves fitted to the brim with cybernetic implants. You're really quite the medical marvel. It takes some extreme skill to augment someone so heavily without killing them...or without the patient going insane...I fully confess, even I don't like to perform such surgeries. The cost of failure is simply too great. But whoever did the admittedly marvelous job on you had no such reservations."
Camille wanted to be sick.
"Who did this?"
"I don't know. You're exceptional, but you are mostly a product of proven tech, albeit expertly combined. I mean, somebody really had to think out how to stitch you together. I can't tell you in any detail without a better scan. I promise, if you come with us, we will do everything we can to redress the severe injustice you have obviously suffered. With enough work, we can give you back at least a semblance of what has been taken from you."
A lie. Don't trust him. If you go with them you will never see the light of day again.
"If I refuse?" Camille asked.
Antonio sighed.
"Well, Doctor Stalk, I sincerely hate to sound so uncharitable, but..." he pointed to the men in power armor.
"That's what these DarkStar Threat Negation Specialists are for. You see, those augmentations in you, many of them are quite illegal unless you are a registered member of the DarkStar Roster, and we simply can't have someone with all that running around, when she can't even tell us how or when she could have gotten them. You understand, I'm sure..."
She saw one of them start to approach with a silver, metallic collar.
If you want my help, Doctor Stalk, this is your last chance. I can't help until you grant me the authority to.
"Alright!" A frightened Camille said. "Alright!!!"
Antonio caught it.
"Doctor Stalk, are you talking to someone? Someone in your head? What are they saying?" Antonio asked with deep concern.
"Soldier, get that on her now...NOW!!"
The Soldier saw the warnings his scan gave off, how her Cybernetics lit up like a life day festival, but he was a fraction too slow, as she had grabbed his arm and slammed him through the wall, moving in a blur and somersaulted towards another soldier with a shocked expression on her face as her feet put a dent in hardened Durasteel-Titanium alloy as he was knocked into the others.
One soldier tackled Camille through a wall herself and they both smashed into a support pillar.
The Soldier's vision cleared, but to his surprise he wasn't staring at Camille.
The Woman who gripped his throat was pale, with sharper features and a stronger build and black, short hair.
She yanked him off her and sent him crashing into another wall, causing both patient and staff to scatter at the sight, and that was when she ran. Camille had no opinion on this. She was no longer present.
"Of all the stupid ways to get caught!" she chastised herself as she bolted through the halls in Camille's hospital uniform as the power armor soldiers gave chase, firing ion rifles at her. The bolts only sent painful feedback across her spine but didn't really do much else as she cleared into a turbolift with other patients and it shut the door behind her and started to go up.
She looked around, sincerely not wanting to frighten the patients any further than they already were.
"It's ok, they're after me, not you..." she spoke soothingly. "Just keep as far from me as you can and you should be alright."
Her X-Ray mode let her spot the power armored soldier waiting for her up top. She got up against the back of the lift. When it got into position, she effortlessly rammed the doors outward, knocking the power armor soldier backward, sprinting over him to Camille's office.
She ripped a box off the wall that Camille had long forgotten the contents of, and jumped out of the window, her Repulsorlift implant kicking in and slowing her fall, allowing her to land safely and run out into tech ridden streets and slamming through the weak point of a wall.
Not two minutes later the Power Armor soldiers were in hot pursuit, but She had already slipped out of the building in a skintight black armor, running for her life...
Sam Kolburn
Armed With: Herself
Objective: Escape DarkStar
Doctor Camille Stalk , as far as she knew, had no enemies.
She was not important. Not special. She was described as pleasant at parties, and generally polite. She didn't stick out to others, beyond them noting she was an exceptionally beautiful woman with exotic features and dark hair.
She didn't work for anyone important on Etti IV, and didn't try to work for anyone important. She worked a hospital that wasn't even funded by one of them, a charity organization that did basic work with Bacta, and ER Surgery to save lives or swap out an organ or two was the extent of their capabilities. They were too small for any of the corporations to consider a threat to profits. They were who you went to when you were too poor to afford anyone else.
Camille, if anything, was busy, constantly overworked, and often under appreciated.
She had been working harder than usual at the hospital when some heavy equipment had fallen from a shelf and struck her in the head. She had had been wearing a safety hat, as a precaution, and had only been rendered slightly winded from the blow.
As a precaution however, she had decided to let another doctor examine her.
Camille knew this Doctor, a human man of elderly features who had worked here for half a decade. His name was Terrik Ranka. They trusted each other.
Camille had patiently waited in the office for him, and when he arrived, Camille smiled.
"Hey Terrik." Camille said.
"You did good getting to me early Camille. Blows to the head are never a laughing matter..." Terrik spoke, bringing up the scanning equipment.
Camille nodded. "It didn't hurt too much. But then again that doesn't mean anything."
"In all likelihood the hardhat took most of the blow but this should catch anything developing as a result..." he muttered, bringing the large scanner over her and turning it on.
His face was casual in expression at first. Then it grew more concerned, and she felt her heartbeat quicken as it turned to one of open alarm.
"Terry, what is it?" she asked, face scrunching in concern.
He looked at her and his stare frightened her because it was the look of someone realizing they were next to an unexploded artillery shell. He backed away, slowly after shutting the scanner off.
"Terry!" she called out.
"Wait here. I need to make some calls."
He was out the office a second later.
Camille just sat on the examination bed, perplexed. She heard multiple people outside the office breaking into a run.
System Re-Initialized. came the feminine contralto of a woman from somewhere.
Camille darted around.
"Who said that?" Camille said, startled and jumping out of her seat.
I did
Camille darted around.
"Where are you?" she demanded. "Leave me alone or I'll call security!"
I'm afraid I can't do that, Doctor Stalk.
"W..where are you?" Camille asked.
In you.
Camille went still.
"Bullchit..." Camille snapped.
Doctor Stalk, I really do apologize for this, honestly. I'm afraid I have no time to explain. They're coming for you, and I don't know what will happen to you--
"Whoa. Whoa. Stop right there. I haven't broken any laws..."
You are right. YOU haven't. But I have.
"Look, whoever you are, wherever you are, that is your problem. Yours. Not mine. You got beef with whoever is coming to get you, YOU DEAL WITH IT!" Camille shouted.
Were it only so simple. But I am afraid I have no time to explain. If we leave now, we may still avoid a fight.
"Fight!? What fight--"
The door was blasted open and she was violently knocked backward by the concussion blast into a wall, cracking it.
Soldiers in power armor that was a dark purple color stormed in, leveling shotguns and such at her as she staggered back up.
"What the hell?!" Camille screamed at them. "I haven't DONE ANYTHING!"
The Soldiers said nothing, only a man in his mid thirties to early forties in a gray suit and thick black framed glasses walking into the room spoke.
"Status on the subject?" The man asked.
"Sir, all our scans confirm her augmentations are almost entirely shut down, save for essential life support."
"Just life support? Strange. They usually have one or two extra systems going."
"I should stress sir, that our armor scans are by no means extensive."
"Yes, yes, understood..." The man grumbled before turning to Camille.
"Doctor Stalk, isn't it?" The man asked in a crisp tone to Camille.
"Yes! What the hell is this?!" Camille exclaimed.
"Doctor Stalk...if that is your real name...my name's Antonio Armight."
Camille eyed him.
"You're one of the Chief Researchers for DarkStar..." she said in realization. "You answer directly to Artemis Tau..."
"True. I must confess...the work that has been done on you is exceptional. Very few of even our own employees are so extensively augmented."
Antonio's eyebrow raised at her confusion.
"I'm not augmented..." Camille protested. "I've never had so much as an eye implant."
Antonio pursed his lips.
"Okay, let's try a little experiment, shall we? Your name."
"Camille Stalk. From Alderaan. My mother and father are Jenny and Fred Stalk. I graduated from Alderaan Medical University. My blood type is Aurek-Besh Negative--"
"Ok, ok, so there's details..." Antonio replied in a manner meant to placate. "Let's, uh, let's try something else. Any memory lapses? Do you have periods where you black out? Lose long stretches of time where you can't remember what you were doing?"
"No."
"Did you have any surgery done recently, like within the last year?"
"No." Camille answered, heart pounding.
Doctor Stalk, we are out of time. Pretty soon, these soldiers are gonna slap something onto you that will forcibly keep everything installed into you shut down. At that point, I will no longer be able to help you. The voice in her head told her.
"Doctor Stalk..." Antonio trailed, drawing a seat and sitting down in front of her. "Have you ever had any surgical work done that you can recall?"
"No!" Camille shouted.
Antonio sighed.
"Okay... let's try something else...can you recall when you last had a meal?" he asked.
Camille paused.
"I had spaghetti."
"High calorie intake. That makes sense. How often do you eat foods like that?"
"A lot..."
Antonio nodded, as if confirming something to himself.
"Yeah sounds about right. How many meals would you say you have a day?"
"Four...five... sometimes seven if I have been working a lot."
"Do you feel weak if you don't get at least three meals normally?"
"A little winded but--"
"Ok, Does that seem normal to you? Eating more than two or three times a day? Always such high calorie foods?"
"Hey, a girl's gotta eat."
"How about sleep? How often do you sleep?"
"One or two hours."
"A night?"
"A week. Why?"
"Think about that. Does that sound normal to you?"
Camille stopped to think about it.
"What's so strange?"
Antonio chuckled a bit.
"See? See fellas? This is exactly why I don't have so much as a circuit in me: Everything would start to feel normal after a while."
He sighed. "Miss, I feel really bad for you. I want you to know that."
Hmm. Telling the truth. the strange voice she heard coming from everywhere and nowhere uttered.
"Why do you feel bad for me? What's going on?"
"Because if I am right, someone has massively, massively wrecked your life." Antonio answered. "How are you feeling by the way? From the concussion wave?"
"Fine. Why?"
"See? If I were you, and thank the stars I'm not, my first question would be why that concussion blast I took to the face didn't shatter every bone in my body. That would kill any ordinary person, the blast you took."
Camille stopped to think a moment. "I don't understand..."
"Of course you don't. Your reactions are being edited. Have been edited. If this was against your will I am truly sorry."
Still the truth.
"Doctor Stalk, what you are about to hear will shock you. Please take a seat, you don't want to stand for this."
Camille sat on a spare seat nearby.
"Your body...has been packed with military grade augmentations."
Camille felt her blood chill.
"Packed?" she asked in a hiss.
"Your major organs and muscles with the exception of forty percent of your brain, an entirely intact bone marrow structure, and your still human but severely reinforced skeleton, have all been replaced with high tech prosthetics, which are themselves fitted to the brim with cybernetic implants. You're really quite the medical marvel. It takes some extreme skill to augment someone so heavily without killing them...or without the patient going insane...I fully confess, even I don't like to perform such surgeries. The cost of failure is simply too great. But whoever did the admittedly marvelous job on you had no such reservations."
Camille wanted to be sick.
"Who did this?"
"I don't know. You're exceptional, but you are mostly a product of proven tech, albeit expertly combined. I mean, somebody really had to think out how to stitch you together. I can't tell you in any detail without a better scan. I promise, if you come with us, we will do everything we can to redress the severe injustice you have obviously suffered. With enough work, we can give you back at least a semblance of what has been taken from you."
A lie. Don't trust him. If you go with them you will never see the light of day again.
"If I refuse?" Camille asked.
Antonio sighed.
"Well, Doctor Stalk, I sincerely hate to sound so uncharitable, but..." he pointed to the men in power armor.
"That's what these DarkStar Threat Negation Specialists are for. You see, those augmentations in you, many of them are quite illegal unless you are a registered member of the DarkStar Roster, and we simply can't have someone with all that running around, when she can't even tell us how or when she could have gotten them. You understand, I'm sure..."
She saw one of them start to approach with a silver, metallic collar.
If you want my help, Doctor Stalk, this is your last chance. I can't help until you grant me the authority to.
"Alright!" A frightened Camille said. "Alright!!!"
Antonio caught it.
"Doctor Stalk, are you talking to someone? Someone in your head? What are they saying?" Antonio asked with deep concern.
"Soldier, get that on her now...NOW!!"
The Soldier saw the warnings his scan gave off, how her Cybernetics lit up like a life day festival, but he was a fraction too slow, as she had grabbed his arm and slammed him through the wall, moving in a blur and somersaulted towards another soldier with a shocked expression on her face as her feet put a dent in hardened Durasteel-Titanium alloy as he was knocked into the others.
One soldier tackled Camille through a wall herself and they both smashed into a support pillar.
The Soldier's vision cleared, but to his surprise he wasn't staring at Camille.
The Woman who gripped his throat was pale, with sharper features and a stronger build and black, short hair.
She yanked him off her and sent him crashing into another wall, causing both patient and staff to scatter at the sight, and that was when she ran. Camille had no opinion on this. She was no longer present.
"Of all the stupid ways to get caught!" she chastised herself as she bolted through the halls in Camille's hospital uniform as the power armor soldiers gave chase, firing ion rifles at her. The bolts only sent painful feedback across her spine but didn't really do much else as she cleared into a turbolift with other patients and it shut the door behind her and started to go up.
She looked around, sincerely not wanting to frighten the patients any further than they already were.
"It's ok, they're after me, not you..." she spoke soothingly. "Just keep as far from me as you can and you should be alright."
Her X-Ray mode let her spot the power armored soldier waiting for her up top. She got up against the back of the lift. When it got into position, she effortlessly rammed the doors outward, knocking the power armor soldier backward, sprinting over him to Camille's office.
She ripped a box off the wall that Camille had long forgotten the contents of, and jumped out of the window, her Repulsorlift implant kicking in and slowing her fall, allowing her to land safely and run out into tech ridden streets and slamming through the weak point of a wall.
Not two minutes later the Power Armor soldiers were in hot pursuit, but She had already slipped out of the building in a skintight black armor, running for her life...
Sam Kolburn
Last edited:
