lightberg

> Sophia Light

Loyalty smiles their malicious smile at you. "Whatever made you think Project Resurrection was devoted solely to Mobile Task Force Alpha-9?"

"I didn't," you say, but they're still going.

"This project has been in the works for years, Doctor. We've been calling it Project Resurrection before Alpha-9 was a twinkling in our eyes. And what would be the point of calling something "Project Resurrection" if we did not at least attempt to resurrect the literal dead?'

You shake your head. "But why him?"

"They assigned him to Gears for a reason, you know. They figured his impressionability would make up for his lack of skill at anything beyond paperwork. Well... you know how that turned out. Even his nasty little habit of sexual harassment was going away, by the end, and the project leads were declaring unmitigated success, right up until the moment he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger." A wider grin. "Gears molded him, alright. Molded him right into a corpse with an exit wound in the back of its skull."

The Factotum shuts up for a moment, letting that sink in. You find that you don't have anything to say.

"Gears found the body, you know," Loyalty says. "Do you know how he reacted?"

"How?"

A thin smile. "He didn't."

You don't know why the Factotum saw fit to tell you that.

They continue. "With that impressionability, and so much ambition and potential, and yet so little native talent — to interfere with malleability, you understand —  Iceberg was the perfect test subject for the arm of Project Resurrection dealing with the defiance of death."

"Was?" you ask.

Loyalty slides a finger across a button on a small remote. Before you, the cover to the steel pod slowly rises, revealing the figure inside.

"Indeed," Loyalty says. "Unfortunately, the experiment didn't quite work. What you're looking at is the only viable product. The prototypes... it's more than your job is worth to have to see those…"

The figure is still, silent, corpse-like, bound in blue metal. Recognizably human, but bloodless. No rise and fall of the chest.

You recognize the features. Iceberg's. There's something wrong with them.

You hazard a guess. "A robot? An automaton?"

"Oh, no," Loyalty says. "This creature is quite human. Perhaps better characterized as a cyborg, or more unfairly as human corpse, but it can animate, nonetheless…"

The word "ghoulish" flits through your head. You've never been one to be squeamish, but this…

"Iceberg," Loyalty says. "Rise up and walk."

The figure's eyes flick open. Cold, cold eyes.

He sits up, frost wicking off his stiff clothing. With a strange, hissing mechanical sound, he moves, and places one foot on the ground, then another.

A dead man stands in front of you. You find that you have no idea what to say.

"I am not Iceberg," the man says softly. "I have no name."