In the Darkness Born

“He’s awake, sir,” came a familiar voice as Plisken tried to force himself awake. His vision was dark and blurred and only the distant voices acted as a link to reality.
“God damn, couldn’t he have waited a while longer?” said another familiar voice.
“He shut the copy down, sir; there was nothing we could do.”
“Damn.”
“It is of no matter,” said yet another familiar voice, though this time it was female, “We have enough data to construct one based on him.”
Footsteps crossed over to Plisken, the old man still unable to see properly.
“Nice to see you again, Jack,” was all Plisken heard before he collapsed into unconsciousness.

This time, Plisken woke properly. He was lying down on a cold table, a kind of place he found himself waking up on all too often these days, with a large white room lying out in front of him. It was clean, sterile, and the air was stale, like it had been recycled for a while. The room was windowless, and only a single door seemed to offer any kind of escape. The room didn’t seem to pose any threat, however, but nor did it offer any comfort. It just emanated a neutral atmosphere, that anything that occurred within its walls was neither good nor bad. The walls were clean and lacked any features, save for one strange object. It was one of the few things that occupied the room, that and the bed Plisken had woken up on, with all its wiring and controls, were all.
Plisken pushed himself up, his one and only arm straining to hold his frail body up right. He rubbed the open socket in which his prosthetic arm should have been - the open wound beginning to sting in the air. Sitting on a table nearby was a gleaming metal arm, a far cry in terms of quality compared to the rusting piece of tin that he had been using, and that was no probably still being soaked by the Arboretum rain. The arm on the table was red and all the components were covered by a strong looking metal, the kind of arm someone would take into battle. Plisken’s withered hand reached for the arm and he lifted it, placing the connection pins into his shoulder socket. There was a slight jolt of energy though his nerves but it was nothing compared to the massive shock that most prosthetics give when they are attached.
With the arm fully functioning, Plisken dropped of his bed and onto the cool floor, his bare feet curling. He was dressed only in a simple set of blue trousers, and not the kind that were meant to be worn outside, but the temperature was comfortable, though the floor was cool.
Plisken padded over to the strange object in the room. It was tall, slightly more so than himself, and appeared to be a kind of tank. It was cylindrical and contained a thick bluish liquid, one which seemed to contain something though it was impossible to make out what.
“Know what it is yet?” said one of the familiar voices from before, an impossible voice from before. Plisken spun round and was met with set of gleaming green eyes set against a cold metal face.
“No,” whispered Plisken as he tried to back away from the man that stood before him. Of all the ghosts he wished were real that haunted him, this was a ghost that he wished was not.
“What?” said the man, his mouth locked to a small gap from which a green light blinked and a grated cybernetic voice echoed. “Don’t you recognise me, Jack?”
“Solomon? But you died, you burned. I watched it happen.”
“And I watched you abandon me in the inferno you lit. You left me blinded and scarred. But I was saved.”
“How?”
“He survived though me,” whispered another voice from behind Solomon, “Another that you left in your flames.”
“Oh no, Josef.”
“Dr. Josef, Jack,” whispered the man again, coming into full view of Plisken. The bald man held no hair except for a neat beard of brown hair that came to a point. He was a small man dressed in a brown coat and with brown leather gloves. But the most sticking feature of all was that instead of eyes, deep black sockets dominated his face, only small white lights appearing from depth within the black.
“But you all burnt, all of you. Only the Crux survived.”
“That’s what you thought,” echoed Solomon’s dead voice, the tall man pacing the room, “But He saved us. Greyman pulled us from the flames and gave us life again.”
Plisken allowed this to sink in, the appearance of two of his ‘brothers’ from the dead was more information than his fatigued mind could handle. Plisken took a pace forward, Solomon’s hand flicking to the handle of some small device attached to a belt of his heavy black nanosuit. Plisken’s quick eyes, albeit blurry eyes, checked the small motion, though the hand didn’t do anything more than rest on the handle.
“So why am I here,” Plisken asked, directing the question at both his brothers.
“Because we needed you for our plan,” whispered Josef, his thin and light voice creeping around the room.
“Oh, so master scheme has Greyman got in store for us now?”
“You are mistaken, Jack, on two things there,” said Solomon, leaning into Plisken, “We are not working for Greyman, but rather the other way round.”
“And the other thing?”
“You are no longer needed, Jack,” whispered Josef, “In fact, we were about to kill you before you woke, but things were… disrupted.”
“But it is of no matter now, you have woken and that disruption has been taken care of. You are no longer needed,” said Solomon, his hand grasping the handle of the device and yanking it free, a glowing light emanating from the base of the handle and a humming softly filling the room. He pointed the tip of his sword at Plisken’s throat; one slight move would cut through his skin and bone, severing his head. There was no way he could escape. Solomon was faster, more so because of the nano suit, and was better armed, Josef was probably carrying a gun inside his coat and there was no telling how many guards would be outside that door.
Plisken stood his ground, staring Solomon straight in the eyes, the cold green glow revealing nothing of his humanity. “Then do it,” spat Plisken, “End my life so that I may rest.”
Solomon flicked his wrist. The edge of the holo-sword should have sliced Plisken’s throat, leaving him dead, but there was a soft ‘whumph’ and the sword had come flying out of Solomon’s hand and instead of cutting Plisken’s throat, sliced though his right eye, his vision going black from that side. Plisken growled in pain and collapsed to the floor, his hands flying to the searing pain in his eye.
“Sol!” cried Emily as he strode in though the door, her eyes glowing and her hand outstretched, “I told you we needed him.”
“I told you I was leading this operation!”
“Did you even think of the amount of information that could be gathered from him? Or that he might even want to join us?” Emily scolded, oblivious to, or not caring of, Plisken’s injury. Josef shrank away from the conflict as Emily’s eye began to grow brighter as her anger rose.
Solomon growled, emitting a chilling electronic hiss from his cybernetic voice unit, and deactivated his sword. “Fine, set him up for interrogation,” Solomon ordered as he strode out from the room, quickly followed by Josef, leaving Emily and Plisken alone.