F-Rank Frank: Interlude II Behind the Scenes (Patreon)

Interlude II

Behind the Scenes

Bethany Song

Bethany stared at the control panel in complete fear, as the feed to the delivery drone she had been piloting abruptly cut out.

“Oh, what happened?” Bethany found herself frantically asking, as the drone she had been charged with driving and delivering a meal with, then returning back to base was now floating with its remaining power in a recovery position. The only problem was, there was no way they could recover the drone from its current location. Granted the drone was now in a free part of Death Row, but the entire operation had been run on the thinnest of margins for success. If the drone had gone right out and back, then theoretically there would have been enough energy for the drone to get up over the protective outer walls of the city of Last Reach.

The only problem was, as soon as she got there, she saw the boy nearly dead due to being burned alive by the sun. His hair was an odd shade of purple-green that only came from those who spent generations deep within the lower levels, worse his skin was so pale that it was clear he had never even seen the sun. Meaning that his injuries were far more devastating than almost any other surface dweller would face. Most who were born, or at least had a chance to experience the suns rays, knew to cover you face, to try to hide from the rays. Hell, even the zombies were smart enough to at least get off the black asphalt to avoid being burnt alive.

Seeing the boy, Bethany wanted to save him, but knew that doing so would waste a lot of reserve energy that the drone would need in order to get back safely. At which point Bethany would have to go herself to Last Reach and retrieve the floating drone. However, once the drone scanned the downed body and found that the boy was still alive, the machine brought up life saving functions and forced standard life saving measures to be implemented.

After the boy, Frank, was saved, Bethany went through the standard delivery process with him. Then was taken aback when he asked to continue talking to her.

At first she was concerned, as there might be a chance that the drone could still be retrieved if she used minimal efforts and attempted to auto-glide the device towards the walls. There it wouldn’t be able to make it over the grand walls of Last Reach, but she might be able to sneak out and grab the drone. That was her thought process until, Chad Falga, her boss told her to just stay with him. Bethany was about to protest, but then saw that he was pointing to a collection of monitors that showed what the boy had been doing for the last few hours.

“This is a PR miracle. Go ahead and chat with him. Play it up if you can.” Chad told her.

“Are you sure?” Bethany asked, then watched him do some dance moves over the corpses of burnt monsters. Seeing that, she felt an odd sense of horror, shock, and something deeper when she watched. The boy had skills, that much was undeniable. Not only could he mock-dance his way through a cleared war zone of monsters, but he did so with such ease that he felt confident enough to dance afterwards.

Then seeing him, and hearing the plea in his voice, Bethany also realized something else. There was something deeper, something more primal in his request to continue talking with Bethany. It was an odd sense of vulnerability that drew her in, just as it was apparently drawing in all other viewers who were busy watching one of the eight various live streams of him and his antics. And for a moment, Bethany found herself caught up in that loop, where she, or rather her voice was part of the live streaming. Her personal communication device, something she was only allowed to wear and use for emergencies was pinging like crazy, as many of her friends and family were asking if she was the voice of the drone.

This caused her to be somewhat distracted at first, then she tried to focus entirely on the boy who seemed to be normal. Power out the wazoo, capable of incinerating zombies by looking at them. Then unafraid enough to dance over their corpses as he made the Death Row walk look easy.

Of course, that’s when everything went sideways.

Beep.

First the drone let her know that she was nearing the end of usable energy. Even though she was at 15% energy, everyone knew the drone would go to standby mode at 10%. With that in her mind she spoke absently, trying to keep her tone fun and playful as she had been instructed. A request that had been far easier the more she spoke to him.

Then without warning, he hit her with something that came out of left field. At least to her it did. There had been a pause, and for a moment Bethany almost wondered if she had said something

“Was that a pickup line?”

“WHAT?! No.” Bethany blared into the speakers, momentarily getting a reverberation feedback. This was due partially to her noise level, and partially due to how low on energy the craft was becoming.

“Oh.” Frank said, slightly deflated.

Seeing him, something within Bethany broke, as she looked for the words to say, but couldn’t find any that would fix his sudden morose state.

Silence.

Finally the words came to her, when she asked. “What made you think of that as a pickup line?”

That’s when Frank requoted her line back to her, but also made a slight grabbing motion as he repeated them.

“I don’t know, it was the whole you’d love to see what I do when I have hold of something I want.”

With that, Bethany imagined Frank reaching out and grabbing her, which caused her to let out a high pitched scream.

Ahh-hh.

That’s when the last feed was exchanged. Or able to be transmitted to the drone.

Darkness.

The screen before Bethany was completely dark.

“What? What happened?” Bethany asked, then just when she thought everything was over, she heard him speak.

“Well, I don’t know what happened, but thank you for the meal, and most importantly for the company. I can’t tell you how much that all meant to me.” Frank said, his voice echoing from the bank of assembled live feeds that were all displaying Frank.

Bethany looked up just in time to see Frank give a bow to drone. Then she felt her heartbeat slightly as he gave a slight smile, before he began moonwalking away from the camera of the still floating drone.

Once he was away, Bethany saw the slight pause in Frank’s face, as he seemed to deflate slightly. That’s when he spoke so lightly that at first the drones didn’t catch his words. Only after a second, did the modulators catch the words, distort the background noises and finally gave the final words he spoke.

“I knew it was too good to be true.”

Hearing that, Bethany felt her heartbreak just a little as she watched the boy continue on his way. Looking at him, Bethany realized one thing. The boy, a kid randomly out here was lonely. He might try to hide it, but he was lonely.

Just as Bethany was coming to terms with this epiphany, Chad came over and began going over the after action.

“Sorry about the drone.” Bethany instantly began, hoping that the cost of the drone would not come out of her paycheck.

“Don’t be, that feed alone more than covered the cost of the drone.”

“Really?”

“Yes, the executives have already written off the drone as advertising expenses.”

“They have?”

“Are you kidding me, yes. That was perfect. I couldn’t have scripted a better more compelling case. A boy wrongfully convicted of a crime, imprisoned by corrupt politicians who rather than looking at facts, force a boy to go to prison on self defense charges when their own monstrous family member initiate and then lost an attack. That boy then is given the choice, to wait for trumped up cases to be filed against him, or take the Death Row. Which he takes and is the first one to be able to succeed. He not only shows new powers never seen before, but he is young, charismatic, and a heart throb. Then all the world can do is watch, as this boy begins to die, not by the impossible monsters, as those are no match for him. But rather he is going to die due to lack of food and water.

“The world can only watch in horror as this hope for humanity comes, only to be struck down by corrupt politics. But then, just when he is about to die, a miracle happens. A Golden Arch drone comes, identifies the person as requiring first aide, and due to the delivery device compliance act of 45. That’s when a Golden Arch machine not only rescues the boy, but then we get solid gold images of him eating something more than mushroom stew and he loves it. Honestly that alone was worth it, but then seeing how you two interacted, how you were able to make him smile and feel a bit more confident in himself. It was all golden.

“In fact, it was so good, that News agencies are already trying to find out who the enchanting voiced driver is, and if she available for an interview.” Chad finally ended his speech.

Pausing, Bethany looked around and realized that what he was talking about was being displayed in some way shape or form on the different screens. Yes, one continued to show Frank and his trek towards Last Reach. But the others were showing different past images of Frank. There was one when he was getting awakened for a second time. It was just a brief moment, but Bethany felt ill watching as she watched the boy get infused with dark pulsing lines of energy. In horror, she watched as she realize that the energy Frank was showing was not supposed to be in the human body. Then the screen cut, and showed the boy who altered the feeds, a clear feed showed the boy maliciously ripping off the safety seal for the dark energy portion of the energy cells and then feeding that into the feed tube for the awakening stone.

Bethany wasn’t an expert on exactly how the awakening stone process was performed, but she could tell that the safety seals were torn off and discarded. Then bile rose in her throat as she saw that boy smile brightly as he watched Frank writhe in agony. Then Bethany saw how Frank rose from the ground and then seemed to know exactly who had done this to him. She watched as he reached out, with a black glowing arm and then squeezed his fist shut, causing the boy to drop dead.

The entire thing was horrific.

Immediately afterwards Frank collapsed to the ground, and people rushed to help, but then quickly had to stop as they themselves could not get near the dark matter.

Seeing the feeds, Bethany’s mind broke as she tried to understand one thing. “They had all that, and they still sent him to prison?”

“Yeah, but don’t worry. Corporate is already reaching out to The Innocence Project to show their support for Frank Fotos.” Chad said.

Hearing that, Bethany felt a bit of relief. While killing was bad, and something that should be avoided at all costs, the person he killed tried to torture him to death. After seeing and hearing everything, Bethany was slightly at a loss for words, though she did finally manage to answer.

“Good.”

“That brings me to my next task for you.”

“Task?”

“Yes, how would you feel about a promotion?” Chad asked.

“What type of promotion?” Bethany asked, a bit of concern filling her features as she knew that promotions, especially ones like these, often required people to give up a bit of their morals.

“A promotion to Tier V. One that would require you to go back and get retrained.” Chad replied.

“What, how?”

“You have been Tier III for a long time. Also, with this we could use one of our Golden Arch resource scholarships on you.”

“Okay.”

“There would of course be one catch.”

Hearing that, Bethany knew this was coming. But she still dreaded the idea. Still a chance to get promoted and hopefully get an source of energy that was better than her stupid internal wind affinity would be great.

“What is it?”

“Nothing much. In fact, we chose you as you seem to already have a slight interest in what we are attempting.”

“Just what are you asking me to do?”

“Go to the school, get retrained as a newly re-awakened Tier V cultivator and befriend Frank Fotos.”

Bethany suddenly felt embarrassed by the whole thing.

“I’m not going to sleep with him.”

“We aren’t asking you to. Also, he is still only fifteen, so it would be illegal, which we would recommend against. No, we just want you to go and be his friend during his time at the Academy, and maybe get him to sign a contract with us.”

“A honeypot? You want me to be a corporate honeypot?” Bethany asked, suddenly feeling slightly queasy about the idea of luring over an unsuspecting murk dweller, the malicious slang used to describe those of the lower levels, and get him to sign a binding corporate contract with the Golden Arches.

“That is a rather crude term for this. All we want is for you to be a friend, get video and photos of him during his time at the academy, and then if you want, we can likely strong arm him into a contract if needed. We just need you to go in and get the dirt on him.” Chad said.

“What if there is no dirt?”

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about. You will go as our sponsored scholarship student. Get a new power and likely a new career path, and can either choose to stay with us, or get sent to the front lines. Either way, your job is done so long as you make friends with him.” Chad said reassuringly.

Bethany paused, feeling slightly queasy about this whole idea, but realized this was the chance of a lifetime.

Pausing, she looked up to see the current live feed of Frank. He was currently climbing up the walls of Last Reach.

Seeing this, Bethany couldn’t help but ask. “Why didn’t they let him in?”

“Apparently the gears rusted shut and the doors were welded closed after the first outbreak. Thus the climbing.”

“Couldn’t someone go down to help him?”

“Apparently a helicopter tried to grab him, but he waved it off.” Chad replied.

Pausing, Bethany looked at Chad and realized just why he was chosen for the job of crew supervisor, he was able to take in and process so much information all at once that it was crazy. That’s what her internal air powers should eventually lead to, but she was far from his level of expertise. Realizing that she wanted to eventually be like Chad was the final push Bethany needed.

“Okay,” Bethany stated.

“Okay?” Chad replied, turning back from the monitors to face Bethany.

“Yes, I will gladly take up the scholarship offer and be trained with Frank.” Bethany said clearly.

Ding.

Chad’s personal monitor dinged, apparently having recorded the verbal phrasing needed to get this process started.

“Perfect. Don’t worry, we will take care of everything.” Chad began, then was about to leave, before he paused and looked back at Bethany. “Oh, one last thing. I would suggest taking a cleansing fast over the next 48 hours, as any toxins in the body can be unpleasant to deal with during this process.”

Before Bethany could say anything in response, Chad was gone, apparently going to take care of some other crisis or harp on some other opportunity that would shortly arise.

All Bethany could do was stare at him, then watch the feed of Frank climbing up over the lip of the walls of Last Reach, where he was promptly greeted by the Mayor of Last Reach who was using this moment to give him a key to the city.

Apparently, news about this new phenom moved quickly, and everyone was ready to take advantage of the moment.

There at the top of the wall, General Graves was also in attendance, presenting a leather case holding an Acquitted plaque. Along with personally pinning a bright silver medal on the boy’s shirt that also denoted a Silver star and the word Acquitted. The medal was only visible due to the close up of the screen cameras, but it was official. Regardless of whatever trumped up charges or cases had been put against Frank Fotos, he was now a free man.

Seeing him, Bethany couldn’t help but feel her heart pound a little heavier about the chance of meeting him. Then remembering the words of Chad, she went ahead and ordered the 48-hour cleansing solutions. This was not going to be a fun few days, but there was a bright side.

“Tier five, and a chance to meet him in person.” Bethany muttered to herself as she took a deep breath and then finally got around to answering her personal messages.