May 24th, AW1276, Zyrica, Palma
I sat in an idling truck in the Techna suburb of Zyrica. I ran my hand through my short black hair and examined the unfamiliar face looking back at me. My orders required me to change my appearance - I was to infiltrate the cyborg ring, find information on the cyborg we had, and get out.
Cyborgs make perfect tools for criminals - strong, untiring, and to equip a variety of weapons and gear. While, naturally, cyborgs came shipped from the factory with prohibitions against illegal activity, but those were easily subverted. Cyborgs had more regulation than guns - some joked that nuclear weapons were less regulated.
Soon after the invention of the cyborg, groups sprang up that stole and modified cyborgs for nefarious acts. Eventually, a worldwide ring emerged, which is now so entrenched that almost every local ring has very strong ties to it. Despite how expansive it was, however, law enforcement had little luck in breaking the worldwide ring apart. Some officials have doubted that it actually existed, The Agulia ring was the local outcrop of the world organization.
The light flicked to green and the truck's autopilot jerked the truck forward. It turned and stopped at the gated entrance to a warehouse.
A blue overalled man looked at me from underneath a cap. "Well?" He said expectantly.
"I've got the roses." I said.
His lips turned upward. "That's such a stupid passcode." He opened the gate and waved me through. "Head into that garage," he pointed at the only open garage of the six the warehouse had.
I did what he asked, and the garage door closed behind me, locking with a loud "ka-chunk". The garage was empty, except for a couple of very conspicuous cameras and a cyborg, the barrels of the machine guns attached to it's arm glinting in the harsh light.
"Get out and open the back," the man told me via a speaker set on the wall.
I hopped down from the cab and went to the back of the truck, with the cyborg following. I pulled the back open to reveal six tall wooden crates, a design that had been used for millennia.
"Open them up for me."
With the cyborg looking on, I pulled the crowbar from it's holder from the wall. I "fought' with the crate for a second before popping it open, revealing a cyborg.
"Is that a Xiren type?" The man asked. Like cars, each model of cyborg had a certain stock body styling. The Xiren was "next year's model".
"Yeah," I yelled back.
"Open the rest up," the man said, "and we'll discuss how you got those."
More fighting with the crowbar revealed five more cyborgs.
The garage door unlocked with an audible click. It slid open. "Come on out," the man took off his hat and wiped off his brow, revealing a head of short cropped dirty blonde hair. "Name's Sete," he said. "Follow me."
"I'm Niya," I said, as I followed him into the warehouse. The warehouse was empty, save for a couple of motorhomes.
"I'd imagine that this would be more impressive," I mused.
"We wouldn't want to have new recruits come straight to our headquarters. That would be a giant neon sign to police - 'Please raid us!'"
"Oh." What he had said wasn't much of a surprise.
Sete lead me over to the warehouse's office, which had been converted into a fully equipped cyborg repair bay. "We need to test to see if you know your cyborgs," he said. "I'll be right back."
He wheeled in a rather new Wren type. He rolled it out on to the work table. "Fix it," he said. "Try to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible." He walked out of the room, leaving the cameras on the wall to watch me.
I tried to turn the cyborg on, which, to my complete nonsurprise, didn't work. I popped open the cyborg's chest. At first glance everything looked ok, but a closer look reveal that the cyborg's power supply, normally held in place by a powerful electromagnet when the cyborg was on, was slightly out of place. I snapped it back into position, closed the cyborg up, and turned it on.
The cyborg promptly powered up and said, "I am fully operational."
Sete came back into the room and shut the cyborg back down. "Well done. You can't believe how many people tear the cyborg apart looking for that one simple problem. Needless to say, they didn't make it."
"What happens to those who don't make it?"
"Depends - the worse case is that we just let you go. After all, you haven't seen anything important. I'll go get your next test."
The tests got harder and harder, to the point that one the last one, I had to completely disassemble the cyborg to fix the milieu of problems.
Sete came in and admired my handiwork. "Wow. Not many can figure out the last test. Nice work."
"Thanks."
"Well, obviously, you've passed the test." Sete said. "Now I need to know your background. Tell the truth here," his voice took on an edge, "because we'll find out if you're lying."
I gave him the background that Pyre had prepared for me: I was a junior researcher at Sa Riik Robotics that thought there was more money to be made in the black market. He also asked about my high school, previous employers, my college degrees - nothing, fortunately, that Pyre hadn't prepared for me.
Sete took this down on a palmtop. "Alright. It's going to take some time for our contacts in various places to verify what you said. Until then, we're going on a little drive."
"Drive? Where?"
"Nowhere in particular. We do this to throw off anyone that may be following you." He led me back across the warehouse to one of the motorhomes and opened its backdoor. He motioned me to get inside.