Cybersix was stunned when she saw the markings on the woman's arm. She closed her eyes and reopened them. But they were still there. Cyber 388.
"You're- you're a Cyber!" she blurted out.
Cyber 338 looked up in alarm. "What?"
Cybersix lifted her black sleeve revealing the identical tattoo on her arm: Cyber 6.
338 lowered her readied hands and took two steps back. "You're a Cyber too!" she cried in shock, "But... how?"
They faced each other on the streets, both women in black leather, with black hair and black eyes, Julian clinging onto Cybersix's leg and Data 7 still growling warily at the new Cyber. It was then that Cybersix realized why 338's face was so insanely familiar.
Because it was like her own. They had similar faces, like sisters, even if Cyber 338's face was partially covered by her long black hair.
"A servant helped me run away before Von Reichter destroyed the rest of us," began Cybersix slowly, "I thought I was the last one. But it seems that two of us escaped our death sentences."
338 looked up. "No," she said, "I didn't escape."
"But..."
She smiled, a small, sad smile. "I'll explain everything."
They leapt onto a rooftop, Cybersix carrying Julian. They sat down.
"338.." began Cybersix.
"Please," said 338, "Call me Kayla."
"Ok," said Cybersix uncertainly, "Kayla."
She smiled again. "Everyone calls me Kayla now. A Cyber may be what I am, but this-" she gestured to herself, "-is who I am. I stopped thinking of myself as Cyber 338 a long time ago."
"But if you didn't run away, how are you alive?" Cybersix was puzzled.
Kayla sighed. "When I, and my brothers and sisters, were nine years old, Von Reichter told us that he had to run tests on us. But something about the whole thing- maybe his voice, or the evilness in his eyes, or the excess number of Fixed Ideas- told us that this was the day that we were going to die.
"5000 is a big number and Von Reichter didn't have time to give us each slow, torturous deaths, no matter how much he wanted to. He ushered us into 5 chambers, each holding 1000 Cybers. We didn't know what he was doing, only that he was going to punish us, for being the way we were. I remember that I was one of the last to be forced into the chamber because I remember looking up at him, grim and glaring at us, as he slammed the door on us and bolted it.
"I remember gas streaming in, that was toxic and suffocating. It filled our lungs and cut off our oxygen. I was choking. We were all choking. Before an hour was up, I was dead."
Cybersix looked stricken. Julian's face was ashen. Kayla kept her eyes at the ground. Her memories were painful and they burned her mind like fire. But she continued her tale.
"Now, Von Reichter is very old. He was born in 1911 and served in World War 2 as a Nazi scientist. His field specialized in biological weapons and genetic warfare. The only reason he looks so young for a man nearly 90 years old is because he switched bodies twice. During this time, Von Reichter had a lab partner. Her name was Marryn.
"Marryn was nine years younger than him, but also a certified genius. She, and this is going to sound really sick, especially since he turned out to be such a monster, adored him.
"She did everything for him, and she helped him perform a lot of experiments. She knew he did personal experiments on dead tissue and animals but she didn't care. She helped him create the first sustenance. But it wasn't before long before she realized how twisted and insane he really was.
"When Marryn was very old, she heard rumors that her old colleague was alive, and still bent on playing God. Secretly she flew to the Amazons and slipped into his lab undetected. She discovered, to her horror, hundreds of dead children being dragged out by big, hulking monsters. They were going to melt us into sustenance to feed his other monsters. When no one was looking, she stole one of the dead bodies- me.
"Marryn brought me, the dead me, to her own lab in Switzerland. Remember that she knows mostly everything that Von Reichter knew, including how to make sustenance and how to create life from it. Using her knowledge from the war, she made a machine that fed life back into me."
Cybersix was amazed, but skeptical. "She resurrected you?"
Kayla smiled. "I know it's hard to believe, but if Von Reichter can make life from nothing, then surely someone who knew as much as him could breathe life into a body."
Cybersix nodded. Julian smiled, undisturbed.
Kayla continued. "It's funny you used the word 'resurrect.' That was what Marryn called the experiment: Project Resurrection. It wasn't perfect, of course. For one thing, when I was reborn, I was helpless as a baby. I couldn't talk, or walk, or feed myself, even if I was nine years old. I had no memory. I couldn't remember everything that happened to me. So Marryn taught me these things, as if I were a baby, and named me. Kayla.
"When I was young, she told me that I was her granddaughter, and the reason that I didn't remember my parents was because I hit my head when I was younger. But on my thirteenth birthday, she told me the truth of my existence and why I had to drink weird green liquid all the time. I spent my childhood playing in the cottage where we lived in and in the forest. I loved it. I loved her. She was my family, even if I wasn't human. Gradually, after ten years, I regained all my memories of the Cybers and Von Reichter.
"I lived with Grandmama- Marryn- for seven years. One day, when I was sixteen, I was playing in this meadow by myself. When I came back, I found my grandmother on the floor, dead, brutally slashed everywhere. It was Von Reichter's Fixed Ideas who murdered her." Kayla's eyes hardened.
"At first I thought it was because he knew that I was alive. But then I discovered that he was killing all his old associates from the war, because they knew too much about him, and his experiments."
Her voice became full of daggers and tears. "He killed my Grandmama. He has committed atrocious acts and has gotten away with it for years, without losing any sleep at all. Since then, I vowed to stop him, to punish him, for everything he did. I have been tracking him since."
They talked until the sun from behind them. Cybersix told her about how she hid in society as a man, and of Data 7's origins. She told Kayla about Meridiana's bloody history, and how it came to be known as the "city of the damned". Kayla talked about other, more minor, things. Like how she traveled to Japan and learned martial arts and the ways of the ninja. And how she went to America, and absorbed their culture and sights. Kayla had been educated there, and learned all about the arts, literature and computers. "Our physical traits are not the only things superior," she had explained, "Von Reichter also expanded our mental abilities like memory and our learning has been quickened. If we were given the opportunity, we could be real geniuses." She talked about how she had tracked Von Reichter all over the world, but constantly hiding and running whenever Von Reichter became suspicious that maybe not all the Cybers were destroyed."
Kayla laughed. "I'm sorry I fought with you, by the way. I didn't know..."
"It's okay. I didn't either."
When it was morning and Julian was sleeping soundly on the roof, Cybersix stood up and offered her hand.
