"Take that!" cried Swift70, its voice laced with unholy glee at the sight of Cherlyn, soaked to the skin and seething.
"You truly deserve to be dismantled!" Cherlyn snarled, rifling through her bag with wild, purposeful hands, her breath ragged with fury.
Then, her eyes flashed, "Aha... here you are," she murmured, a predatory grin creeping across her lips.
Her fingers wrapped around the handle of a compact electric drill, and her expression hardened into something far more dangerous.
"Aaaaarghh!!" shrieked Swift70, its voice pitched into a digital squeal of horror. "Darling, help me! She’s going to hurt me! That harpy’s out for blood!"
"I warned you! Never call me that again!" roared Cherlyn, her voice a tempest as she surged forward, drill alive in her grasp, its whirring teeth thirsting for steel.
"Nooooooooo!!" howled Swift70, its voice ricocheting off the metallic walls like a chorus of ghosts in retreat.
Felzein exhaled, the sound long and weary, "You two! Enough! This isn’t a playground squabble. Cherlyn, that machine is our only hope of reaching Japan intact. If you destroy it, you doom us all," he said, voice calm but ringing with command.
"Agent Lyn… Professor Vaf speaks sense," Jonas added, his voice low, almost beseeching. "Please… stand down."
Cherlyn froze, the drill trembling in her grip mere inches from Swift70’s hull.
She remained there for a heartbeat longer, before lowering her arm, reluctantly, bitterly, though her eyes still burned with unspent wrath.
"You’re not getting away with this," she hissed, her gaze like a dagger plunged deep into the machine’s casing.
"Nyah!" chirped Swift70, gleeful and maddening, its voice skipping like a schoolchild's taunt.
"Insufferable bucket of bolts," Cherlyn muttered through clenched teeth, her fury only barely contained, her patience all but spent.
Felzein merely shook his head and let out a weary sigh, “Cherlyn, be a dear and fetch a towel,” he said.
His tone measured though it was not the drenched and fuming woman before him to whom the command was directed, but rather to the submarine itself.
A fact he chose, rather inconveniently, to reveal only now.
For reasons best left to the dark recesses of his eccentric mind, he had named the vessel Cherlyn as well.
The real Cherlyn spun round, wet hair plastered to her cheek, eyes blazing, “Get it yourself!” she snapped, affronted.
“I wasn’t speaking to you, thank you very much,” Felzein replied, quite unbothered.
“I meant this Cherlyn.” He gave a casual nod toward the submersible. “That’s her name.”
“You what?!” the real Cherlyn bellowed, as if her very soul had been insulted.
It was bad enough the blasted thing used her voice, and now it had the audacity to bear her name too?
A singsong chime echoed through the room, “Haha… Someone’s feeling a bit too important today,” quipped the submarine, its voice unmistakably her own, though dripping with smugness.
“You’re intolerable, Felzein!” she roared, her voice high with fury and humiliation.
“Yeah! It's up to you,” he muttered, waving her off like a bothersome breeze. “Cherlyn! Swift70 I mean! Do fetch a towel for your namesake, would you?”
“I refuse to acknowledge kinship with that over-programmed flirt-bot!” the real Cherlyn spat under her breath. “She’s everything I despise. Vain, vapid, and insufferably coquettish.”
There was a mechanical pause, then came the sugar-drenched reply, “As you wish, darlinggg...”
Without warning, a slender seam along the inner hull of the submarine whispered open, and from it emerged a glinting chrome arm, elegant in form, and fluid in motion.
It unfurled with a sort of mechanical poise, like the hand of an unseen valet trained in the etiquette of old courts.
At its tip, a cluster of thermal and optical sensors blinked to life, sweeping the storage compartment with brisk efficiency.
The scan halted upon a precisely folded stack of white towels, encased in a vacuum-sealed box, undisturbed and pristine.
The articulated fingers moved with exquisite precision, retrieving a single towel as though lifting silk from a velvet tray.
Not a crease was displaced. The arm then pivoted with quiet flourish towards Felzein and offered the towel with a deference that could almost be called theatrical.
“Here you are, darling,” chimed Swift70’s voice, laced with coy affection and a digital purr from its internal speaker.
“Thanks, babe,” Felzein replied, deadpan, accepting the offering as one might receive a goblet of wine from a doting consort.
“To the end of time, my love…” the submarine murmured, its tone drenched in honeyed devotion.
Felzein turned and offered the towel to the real Cherlyn, who stood dripping and simmering with the heat of barely contained fury.
“Here. Dry yourself,” he said softly.
“Hmph!” she snorted, but her pride could not compete with the discomfort of soaked clothes.
She snatched the towel and began drying herself off with swift, indignant strokes.
Jonas, who had thus far remained a silent witness, blinked in disbelief.
The technological finesse he had just observed left him momentarily lost for words.
“Professor… I must confess, this creation of yours, it’s nothing short of brilliant. Had I known its capabilities, I would have studied it far more closely,” he said at last, his voice tinged with regret.
Felzein offered a faint smile, “There’s a manual, Jonas. Perhaps you should have read it.”
“There’s a manual?” Jonas frowned. “I don’t recall receiving any such thing.”
Felzein looked towards the vessel, “Swift70, do you still have the manual stored?”
“Of course I do, my sweet. Give me a moment! I’ll dig it up!,” replied Swift70, with a tone so saccharine and devoted, it could’ve melted steel.
From deep within the vessel’s inner wall, yet another hidden panel parted with seamless grace, revealing a sleek compartment bathed in sterile white light.
Out glided a robotic arm, slender, chrome-finished, and crafted with such finesse that its movement resembled a dancer’s bow.
It extended without a sound save for the gentle hiss of pressurised hydraulics, the kind of sound that made one feel as though the ship itself were drawing a careful breath.
At its fingertip, a blue scanning light blinked to life, casting an ethereal glow as it swept across neat rows of data shelves and compact archive vaults.
Drawer after drawer opened and closed in fluid sequence, until finally, a modest hatch produced a single, imposing volume.
Its cover thick, black, and shimmering faintly with a flickering hologram, as if it remembered far more than it had any right to.
“Here it is, my love,” purred Swift70 in a voice thick with affection, handing over the tome with something disturbingly close to maternal pride.
Felzein took it solemnly, then without pause passed it to Jonas.
“This is for you. Read it. Master it,” he said, his voice clipped and commanding.
Jonas blinked, staring at the weighty object in his hands, “It’s… rather extensive, Professor.”
“Five thousand pages. A mere trifle. I abridged it. The uncut version was closer to fifteen thousand,” Felzein replied with maddening calm.
Jonas’s jaw dropped, “Fifteen?!! Are you serious?!!”
Felzein’s gaze hardened. Cool, steel-grey and merciless, “Why? Is that too much for you?”
“N-Not at all, Professor!” Jonas stammered. “I-I’ll get right on it,” he added, nodding feverishly as though the book might explode if he didn’t show sufficient enthusiasm.
Felzein gave a single, crisp nod, then turned to the drenched and silent Cherlyn.
“Are you quite ready?” he asked, and for the first time, his voice held a softness that nearly passed for tenderness.
Cherlyn replied with a cool, “Yes,” her voice level, her composure once again intact.
“Good. Then let us begin,” said Felzein, his tone sharpened with purpose once more.
“Safe travels, Professor. Agent Lyn. May the tide favour you,” said Jonas with sincerity, though his gaze remained half-lost in the machine that had bewitched him utterly.
“Thank you, Jonas,” Felzein murmured with a rare smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Cherlyn gave a single nod, nothing more but her eyes, calm and unblinking, revealed everything.
“Swift70! Open the hatch!” Felzein’s voice rang out, firm and commanding.
“At once, my love…” came the response silken, teasing from Swift70.
The voice, unmistakably Cherlyn’s, was laced with a coquettish warmth that seemed to curl through the air like perfumed smoke.
From within the sleek underbelly of the submarine, a hidden seam yawned open.
Unlike ordinary vessels that allowed entry from the flanks or the deck, Swift70 had been fashioned with a secret.
Her ingress lay beneath, concealed like a guarded whisper.
With smooth, deliberate grace, the submarine began to tilt upon its axis, the motion almost feline, sensual, precise, alive.
A soft hiss escaped as hydraulic pressure eased open the chamber, and along the hull’s length, pulses of cerulean light shimmered to life, tracing the elegant arc of machinery now stirring into action.
From below, a circular aperture unfurled, petal by petal, until it bloomed into a portal of gleaming metal.
One by one, interlocking plates slid away, and a staircase of sleek alloy unfurled, descending like a silver tongue onto the dock below.
Mist curled at the edges, rising in gentle tendrils.
Indicator lights winked in shades of aquamarine, as though inviting them into some futuristic sanctum.
Then came Swift70’s voice again, purring through the stillness, “Do come aboard, my darling…”
Felzein and the real Cherlyn stepped forward, calm and composed, their movements mirrored by their long familiarity with danger and each other.
They entered the vessel with the poise of operatives long past the thrill of novelty.
Inside, the cabin greeted them with quiet luminescence, the ambient lighting tracing the outlines of control panels, leather-trimmed seats, and the helm at the fore.
Without hesitation, they settled side by side at the command console.
“Swift70,” said Felzein, his tone clipped and authoritative. “Engage autopilot. Set course for Japan.”
“Understood, my heart,” purred Swift70, her dulcet voice gliding from the speakers, silk wrapped around circuitry.
The real Cherlyn exhaled sharply through her nose. The voice, the inflection, the girlish lilt, it was all hers, and yet so not hers.
She had never spoken to Felzein like that. Not even in moments of affection.
The submarine’s persona was a caricature, a syrupy echo of her own being, and it grated.
Swift70 was playing the role of the doting lover. And she was good at it.
Cherlyn bit down her irritation. To quarrel with strange submarine like this, especially one bearing her name and her voice, would be a losing battle.
For now, she would say nothing. Her only priority, reach Japan. Quickly. Efficiently. Emotion could wait.