Malfunctioning Utopia

Chapter 38: The Pregnant Woman

Sun Jack pulled up his system map and sprinted after the signal.

Though the target could turn invisible, AA’s tracking device was proving invaluable.

The target was fast, darting and weaving through the alleys, and Sun Jack was starting to lose pace. Glancing at the map, he decided to ignore her feints and take a shortcut he had mapped earlier in the day, aiming to cut her off.

Crouching at the corner, Sun Jack watched as the red dot on the map moved closer. His heart pounded as he clenched his fists, his mind flashing with images of the mutilated corpses from the case files and AA’s battered body.

The moment the red dot rounded the corner, Sun Jack snapped his arm forward, unleashing the Electric Arc Blade.

As the shadowy figure emerged, he thrust the blade straight at the target’s head.

But just as the blade was about to pierce, it retracted into his arm with a sharp clank. His prosthetic had been hacked!

"F***ing hell!" Sun Jack cursed, launching himself at the trench-coated figure with a powerful leap.

To his shock, the opponent’s strength was overwhelming. She grabbed him along with her coat and slammed them both against the wall.

As Sun Jack wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and got to his feet, he finally saw his target clearly.

It was a woman—a tall, heavily pregnant woman standing at least 1.9 meters tall. Her silver-coated skin gleamed, clearly modified all over.

But the most disturbing feature was her stomach.

Her abdomen had been replaced with a transparent, glass-like material, exposing a half-formed fetus floating naked in amniotic fluid.

Clenching her fists and looking at Sun Jack with a mix of rage and despair, she screamed, "Why are you stopping me?! I just want my body back! Why won’t you let me go?!"

"What the hell...?" Sun Jack muttered, unable to process her words. He flicked his arm again to extend the retracted blade.

This time, he jammed a strip of fabric into the joint to manually lock the blade in place, preventing another hack.

"Ratatat!" Bullets rained down from Four Ai’s drones above, blending with the heavy downpour, but the woman’s modified skin shrugged off the assault effortlessly.

"This isn’t my body!!" she screamed, her voice cracking. The drones suddenly shut down mid-flight, crashing to the ground. She had hacked them too.

Whatever her story was, it didn’t change the fact that she had killed so many people—and nearly killed AA.

Seizing on her mental breakdown, Sun Jack charged forward and swung his blade at her head.

"Why does everyone want to hurt me?! I just want to go home! My head hurts! Mom!!"

The woman crossed her arms defensively, blocking the strike. Sun Jack’s blade left only a shallow scratch on her arm, despite his full force.

"Why does everyone want to hurt me?! What did I do wrong?!" she howled. Her arms split apart at the elbows, morphing into four, each tipped with glowing red lasers that sliced through the air toward Sun Jack.

He barely escaped being severed into pieces by closing his left eye and reopening it in a glare. His cybernetic eye surged with energy, disrupting the lasers, which stopped just a step away from his boots.

Under the interference, the woman’s four arms spasmed violently. The fetus in her transparent womb silently wailed, its tiny mouth gaping. The sight turned Sun Jack’s stomach.

"Why the f*** are you in combat prosthetics while pregnant?!" Sun Jack shouted, leaping high and slashing with all his strength. His blade severed all four of her laser-tipped arms.

Thinking the fight was over, Sun Jack relaxed slightly, but her forearms suddenly snapped open. The stumps morphed into scythe-like blades, which she swung at him in a vicious arc.

Sun Jack barely dodged, retreating several steps. He tried to activate his eye’s interference ability again but found it disabled—she had hacked it too.

Yet she didn’t immediately press her advantage. Instead, she crouched and trembled, her scythe-arms raised defensively as she begged, "Let me go... please... I just want my body back. This isn’t my body! Someone’s controlling it! They’re making me go back!"

"Has she lost her mind?" Sun Jack thought, noting her illogical behavior.

He glanced up and saw two more drones approaching. His team would be here soon. Taking a deep breath, he decided to keep her talking.

"Why did you kill those people?!"

The woman raised her scythe-like arms to shield her head, her body curling in fear. "It... it wasn’t me! I just wanted my body back. This isn’t my body! Someone’s controlling it! They want me to go back!"

She suddenly swung her blade at her own transparent stomach, stabbing it repeatedly. Yet the glass-like material remained unscathed.

"So this is cyber psychosis," Sun Jack muttered, taking another cautious step back.

The woman raised her tear-streaked face to him, her expression twisted and grotesque. "Do you know?" she sobbed. "I worked so hard... I worked so damn hard! And this is what I get?!"

Sun Jack looked at her with a complicated expression. "Calm down. You can still be saved. Your prosthetics can be removed and replaced."

"No!!" she screamed, her voice cracking into a raw, guttural rasp.

"There’s no going back! You have no idea what I’ve been through. It’s all over! I can’t even feel love for this child!"

Tears streamed down her face as she scraped her scythe against the glass-like material, producing a nails-on-chalkboard screech.

The sound terrified the fetus inside her. It flailed and silently cried harder, but the woman only grew more frantic.

"A mother! Why doesn’t she love her child?! Why doesn’t she love it?! Because this isn’t my child! It’s all wrong! I’d rather die than go back to that cold hell!"

"My head hurts! My body hurts! They want to control me! I won’t go back!"

Her ramblings grew increasingly incoherent, and Sun Jack found himself unable to comprehend her anymore.

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