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‘You’re in safe
hands. Our government paid for you so we thought it high time we
got to know each other... have a little chat as it were.’

‘Go on, I like
little chats,’ said Madeline.

‘Put simply,
you are ours, we built you so we thought it fit that you actually
work for us.’

‘Who are you
then, MI 5 or 6 or something? Do I get an O, O number? More to the
point, do I have a choice?’

‘Actually MI 7
and no, you don’t’, said Nuttall.

‘MI 7? …Never
heard of it.’

‘Officially MI
7 closed down after the war but unofficially it’s a top secret
department that...

‘Don’t tell me,
does top secret things? Anyway, I thought I worked for a secret
government department with Brownsword – before he was
exterminated.’

‘We work
differently here. Naturally, assassination has become your forte
but often there are ways of getting results without chopping people
up into bits and poisoning them.’

‘Lets get
cracking then, untie me and give me my first mission.’ Madeline
falsely feigned eagerness.

‘As I’ve said,
we do things differently here,’ said Nuttall

‘How
differently, exactly?’

‘We will show
you.’

Madeline was
untied. She did her best to hide the pain as she rose from the
table but unavoidably a wince formed across her pretty face. The
Madeline automaton had not moved for a long time mainly because the
operator, Poppy, had not been conscious. Oil or what ever it was
that lubricated Madeline’s moving parts needed to spread and
circulate, so her first few step were almost geriatric. If Madeline
did decide to run for it, now was not a good time. Surprisingly
quickly, however, she became fluid in her movements although
bearing the pain remained a challenge for Poppy in her stainless
steel tank. And then all her pain stopped and she felt wonderful,
agile and in control. This was mainly because Barton had increased
the flow of morphine into Poppy’s veins.

‘Adam… it’s
Barton, where are you?’

‘Just gone
through passport control.’

‘Good. You need
to get to Cheshire, something’s going on.’

‘…Makes a
change, how’s Poppy?

‘Remarkable,
she really does have the constitution of an ox - apparently
Madeline’s in the company of MI 7.’

‘Didn’t know
there was such a thing - have you told her?’

‘She’s just
found out from a chap called Nuttall.’

‘Nut oil?

‘Nuttall!’

‘Okay Prof,
cool it… Adam to the rescue!’

Barton pressed
the end button on his mobile before he said something he would
almost certainly regret. Poppy was indeed remarkable, not by any
means indestructible but certainly many would have died many times
over going through what Poppy had gone through over the last year.
She was, however, still very ill despite controlling an automaton
now in the peak of mechanical health.

Barton had to
make a tough decision. He was all too aware of her fragility but it
was imperative that she had to be moved to a more secure location.
She had been moved before and was almost unaware of it but this
time a barrow load of life support equipment was attached to her
frail form.

Her new home
had to be completely secret, not even Adam could ever know.
Madeline’s greatest weakness was the human being who controlled her
and Poppy’s greatest threat was from Madeline’s enemies. There had
to be a firewall and Barton knew this.

Chapter 7:
Capesdown Hall

Apparently
there is
no
such thing as MI 7, at least
that’s what they want people to think.
Apparently
MI 7 is so
top secret that even the people who work for MI 7 often doubt it
exists. MI 6 is well known for secret agents, secret missions and
so on but that’s where the covertness ends. Everybody knows where
they are – the big building at the side of the Thames and the names
of the ‘
secret’
agents are listed in Wickipedia. MI 7,
conversely, is so secret that even talking about it is risking this
novel being censored.

The reason they
had Madeline was, in the grand scheme of things, relatively
straight forward. Madeline Bull was a massive asset to Britain, the
British government and British intelligence. Up to now she had
stumbled her way through her short existence. To be fair, she had
been successful in her vital missions but this had been more by
luck than judgement. Despite her invulnerable reputation she was
still relatively fragile even after the upgrade she had from the
Americans. One armour piercing bullet, grenade or IUD would
certainly scatter her high tech contents very effectively. This was
not good enough.

MI 7 thought
that Madeline Bull was no more and no less than a very advanced
machine, controlled by a nifty bit of computer programming.

From the start,
Brownsword – Turner as he was known then – insisted that no one
except for the four scientists and two surgeons knew the truth
behind Madeline Bull. Now, Brownsword and two of the scientists
were dead leaving only Barton, Alexander and two surgeons. The two
surgeons were hypnotised by the very best, most expensive hypnotist
in existence to forget all about the Madeline Bull project. If they
ever did blab, they were conditioned to instantly and
uncontrollably squawk like a chicken for the rest of their lives.
Alexander was now incarcerated and condemned as a mad man in
solitary confinement. This left only Barton, Adam and Poppy Cock
who know the truth behind Madeline Bull – that she uses the essence
of Poppy Cock.

Madeline Bull’s
talents had been well noted. Admittedly not always fully approved
of but the inescapable facts were that Madeline Bull has the
potential to stop conflicts, terrorism and even wars: If they had a
weapon such as Madeline Bull in 1939, there was a good chance World
War II would not have happened. In 2003
,
the Iraq war would
not have happened. In fact in 2001, Madeline Bull could have
searched the caves in Afghanistan herself and saved an awful lot of
bloodshed. Putting it simply, Madeline was not being used to her
full potential.

If there was
one thing Madeline hated, it was being dissected, dismantled,
disassembled, upgraded, tweaked and generally messed with. Up to
now, what she had gone through was nothing compared to what she was
about to go through.

It has to be
said that everyone was very friendly, amicable and genuinely
concerned for her feelings even though they all believed that
somewhere inside her there was probably just a processor chip being
over-clocked to the maximum.

Emerging from a
lift that had descended a considerable way, a completely different
decor greeted her. Gone was the grandeur of the oak panelled walls,
herringbone maple floors, the Chippendale furniture and faded oil
paintings. Now the coldness of emulsioned breeze blocks and
fluorescent ceiling lights filled her vision. To Madeline, this was
all too familiar; it was very similar to her original home
underneath the prosthetics lab.

It was only
fair that Madeline should know what was going to happen to her, so
they told her.

‘We are going
to upgrade you and make you indestructible,’ said Nuttall.

‘Fuck, not
again!’ said Madeline.

And that was
that.

This was the
plan: a team of highly talented engineers would replace her entire
titanium skeleton with boron nitride. And then when they had done
this, install a graphene lattice under her artificial skin. When
all that was done, her skin would be completely replaced with an
indestructible carbon nanotube material. If she had been human
which she obviously wasn’t, this mammoth operation would have been
pretty damn painful. However, being an automaton, it probably
wouldn’t even tickle.

The ‘time under
the knife’ was used wisely by Madeline; she caught up on several
hours of TV soaps, watched dozens of films and completed countless
codeword puzzles. Apparently, credit to all of them, they made a
superb job. True, the operation took over a week to complete –
which was slightly inconvenient but afterall, this was something
that couldn’t be rushed. Madeline was surprisingly patient
throughout and took almost no interest in what they were doing. As
long as there were no scars, she remained jaw droppingly gorgeous
and everything still worked perfectly, she really wasn’t bothered.
After all, it was a useful time for convalescence which was what
Poppy needed – loads of rest and television.

Something else
that’s good about being an android – automaton – whatever, when
it’s done, it’s done. No recovery time, no secondary infections, no
drains, no MRSA, no stitches to take out, no scars, absolutely
nothing.

‘Okay, Madeline
Bull… you’re now pretty much indestructible. Your skin is now
entirely carbon nanotube. All your bones have been replaced with
chloro bromine. Your hearing and eyesight have been upgraded and we
have taken the liberty of installing a monitoring system, happy?’
said Nuttall just like a real surgeon would.

‘Yes, fine,’
said Madeline with indifference, ‘got a mirror?’

A mirror was
produced from somewhere, she examined her face, her hair, eyes and
skin; all was exactly the same. She was still gorgeous.

‘Well, I don’t
feel any different. Okay, so what now?’ she said casually.

‘This is the
first of three development stages. The next stage is training and
the final stage is compliance,’ said Nuttall nonchalantly.

‘Compliance?
Doesn’t that mean obedience - as in dog? Like to know how you’re
going to do that?’

‘Quiet easy
really,’ said Nuttall as he walked over to a monitor and turned it
on.

‘Adam!’
screamed Madeline with delight.

‘
Hi
sweetheart
,’ a perky reply whimpered through the monitor
speaker.

Three things
Adam was not very good at were planning, thinking ahead and playing
chess. Ideally, getting Madeline out of a high security building in
the depths of the countryside, surrounded by armed police, required
some of these skills. Adam decided to go ahead anyway – just break
in, find Madeline, untie her (if she was tied up) and leave
quietly. Consequently, this procedure failed instantly. He climbed
a fence with a big red ‘keep out’ notice fastened to it and the
next thing he knew, he was locked in a small comfortable room
complete with plush carpet, comfy bed and a large screen TV. He had
failed again; he was truly Madeline’s weakness and Nuttall knew
this.

‘You do
anything to my Adam and you’ll see another side of me,’ said
Madeline sternly.

‘What do you
take us for, thugs? Now you’ve seen him, he’s free to go... or stay
a while and use our amenities. We have an a la carte restaurant,
sauna, Jacuzzi, a fully equipped gym,’ said Nuttall amicably.

‘Your
point?’

‘We can find
him and bring him in anytime we want and make life very unpleasant
for him but... as I’ve said, we’re not thugs - we just want some
means of chaining down a loose cannon.’

‘Loose
cannon?’

‘A feisty
android,’ said Nuttall bluntly.

‘Oh that,’ said
Madeline quietly.

There would
always be a mystery why such an advanced, cutting edge machine -
automaton, had been programmed to embrace love and develop a
relationship with a human. Surely this was a serious flaw in her
programming and clearly a weakness. However, there was nothing that
could be done about it. Nuttall and his team of scientists were
certainly not qualified to interfere with such advanced piece of AI
software – wherever it was situated in her frame. Of course it
wasn’t situated in her frame at all because she used Poppy Cock’s
intelligence but they didn’t know this.

‘Are you
alright Sweetheart?’

‘
Fine, fine,
can’t grumble,’
Adam whimpered through the monitor.

‘How long have
you been here?’

‘
Oh, only a
few days, a week at the most.’

‘I’m so
sorry... they’re letting you go now, don’t worry about me, I’m fine
– more than fine. Just got some training to do, shouldn’t take long
then we’ll be together.’

To recap,
Madeline has six effective weapons: Her knock out fart gas, two
fingers that doubled as a tasar gun, a finger that transformed into
a hypodermic needle to administer poisons, another finger that
doubled as a powerful laser gun, her explosive motion and finally,
the overwhelming benefits of her ‘Aphrodite ratio’ gorgeousness.
This was indeed a comprehensive range of combat devices for such a
delicate, unassuming, defenceless slip of a girl. However, past
results were by sheer luck and cunning more than skilled use of her
artillery. Because of her complete lack of fear, feistiness was
Madeline’s way, certainly not by old fashioned stuffy discipline.
However, in the eyes of the military, this was a serious weakness.
Certain high ranking anonymous officials had noticed this
inappropriate and irresponsible behaviour. They insisted that the
matter of proper disciplinary training must be addressed whether
she liked it or not. After all, she did carry a massive
responsibility with her unique arsenal.

Madeline
decided to send a text to Adam, hoping that he still had his mobile
on him. The text would have been something simple like ‘I love
you’, but a serious problem became apparent.

‘Okay, what the
hell have you done with my mole!?’ screamed Madeline.

‘Sorry, mole?’
asked a confused Nuttall.

‘The mole on my
arm, it was there before you messed - my mouse for controlling all
my functions. Without it, I can’t do anything,’ said Madeline
sternly.

The mole acted
like a computer mouse, selecting menus in the top of her vision.
These menus controlled just about everything including weapons,
explosive motion, internet and… texting. Now, with new skin, the
mole was gone and perfection was in its place. Nuttall called
someone on his mobile phone.