An Unknown Location. January 3rd, 2104.

The wooden beam above her head creaked, gently rousing the infamously indomitable mercenary into consciousness. Her eyes fluttered. Like the careless waves of the ocean holograms she had been so entranced by in her youth, the ground swayed back and forth beneath her dangling toes. Slowly, she raised her head and stretched her neck. Tension stung in her back and shoulders. Her biceps seared. Her wrists burned. Gritting through the dull pain that seemed hours old, she craned back her neck and swore. Above her head, bolted into the wooden ceiling beam were shackles clamped around her wrists. Taped crudely to each metal shackle were frayed and thick wires sheathed in deteriorating, plastic insulation. Her gaze traced them along the beam, down wooden structs, and across the floorboards of the unfinished room to the electrodes of a decrepit, black box and an old, rusting lever.

Primitive and crude relics of early 21st century technology. Iza had only ever seen shit like this in holos.

She shook her head. Long, red hair tumbled down her back. From somewhere behind her, fresh, unadulterated, morning sunlight was streamed in, casting her nude form in a long, hanging shadow against the bare, illuminated space. Wherever they had taken her, it must be outside The City. Fresh sunlight there only hit the rooftops of the commercial offices of multi-trillion dollar CEOs, and not an iota found its way into the crevices of the underbelly where so many, including herself, called home.

But then where was she? Real wood was one of the most expensive building materials on the planet, reserved only for the decadence of The Suburbs. Way outside the budget of some lowlife gang of purity fetish thugs, not to mention real estate like this to build on. But beyond the improvised and antiquated torture device she was strapped into, there wasn't a single sign of "unnatural" materials in the room. Even from the wooden beams, structs, and boards was absent any synthetic materials, nails included. Everything seemed to be glued together with a splotchy, white paste, probably "all natural" too. The smell was authentic pine.

Her own "impurities" were also, of course, absent. Her gun was nowhere to be seen. Her nanomite blade, usually strapped to her hip, missing. Her undersuit, lined with enough microfiber chips and transmitters to crack a class-9 corporate firewall had been stripped off and disposed of somewhere, as with the rest of her clothes. She was as bare as the walls.

Bare except, of course, for two important exceptions. The lush and colourful tattoo covering the length of her right arm and, much to her dismay but not her surprise, the grey band wrapped around her left forearm, glued to her skin with the most advanced bio-adhesives known to humankind, technology patented and protected as one of the most closely guarded corporate secrets on the planet.

Grasping the top of the beam, and gritting through one of the most intense pull-ups of her life, she lifted her head to the band and poked it with her nose. It hummed and glimmered. She clenched her teeth, breathed in, and held her breath. Then, she counted.

One... two... three.

The band shimmered white, then flashed green.

Once. Twice. Then again. Three times.

Iza let the breath out of her lungs in relief and, with great effort, lowered herself carefully back down. Thankfully she was used to doing thirty of those every morning.

As the florescent light evaporated and the band returned to its inert, dull grey she caught in its lights wake the circle of fresh cuts and scratches in her arm around its ridge. She grinned. The one thing these freaks couldn't take from her, no matter how hard they tried. Did they really think they could accomplish in a night what she had never been able to do in the whole 27 years of her life?

Then, footsteps from below, slow and casual. She kept her body low, but her arms tense, and hung her head. Floorboards of steps creaked. Low voices chattered. Her blistered wrists singed but she kept her face and legs slack, letting them dangle.

"She still there?" Deep voice, male, coming from somewhere below but close. Hint of distortion in his voice. Augmented vocal cords, most likely.

A board creaks behind her. Maybe ten feet away. Maybe fifteen. "Yeah."

"She up?"

A pregnant pause. A shifting of weight on the floor. "Don't look like it."

"Boss doesn't want her up till he gets here." This one's a little closer now.

"I said she's not up."

"You said didn't look like it." Iza grins. She's whipped them up and down enough that she's not going to be underestimated. A compliment, in a way.

Faint whizzing, scan from an eye implant maybe. It'll tell him in an instant that she's conscious. Her hearts beating too fast and she can't exactly slow it now. Yet there's another creak, another step closer. She sneaks a peak. A shadow not as tall as hers encroaches behind her. Apprehensively, curiously, doubting the 12 year warranty on his own eyes prosthetic eyes. Maybe because his purity cult taught him to.

Too bad. She saw the silhouette of his gun, and his grip didn't look tight. Her own tightens on the beam and she swings herself forward then back, curling up her leg then kicking straight for his pelvis. Her bare sole connects with his groin, protected by light armor that cuts at her skin but it still sends him reeling, stumbling, and gasping. His gun clatters by her feet. She reaches for it with her toes. Her hands itch, bound by the wrists yes, but still with fingers free if she can swing them a weapon.

But the one downstairs was closer than she thought. The gun is kicked out of reach and the short, stout underling with four eyes, three arms, and a back hunched over by the weight of four bricks worth of batteries is standing at the switch. Iza swears, but knows now that at least they don't want her dead, and so just braces herself.

Then enough volts to start a gasoline engine surges through her body, and she goes back to being limp, unconscious, and helpless.