RE: Riot Force 6 - Year One
06-23-2019, 03:28 PM (This post was last modified: 06-23-2019, 05:16 PM by OpMegs.)
06-23-2019, 03:28 PM (This post was last modified: 06-23-2019, 05:16 PM by OpMegs.)
The atmosphere within Lab Delta was fraught, to say the least. Since losing the initial hardware, replicating it from the specifications had proven to be an incredibly demanding task, which was hardly helped by what they still had to work with.
They’d taken backups, of course, the minute that the acquisitions team had brought the bioroid mindframe through the portal. The last thing they wanted was to lose it to someone dumping coffee on a server by accident. But the copies had proven just as willful as the original source. The most ‘successful’ one had simply been utterly non-responsive, curled in a ball in a holding cell after being activated, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.
The less successful ones had resulted in at least three completely burned out positronic brains, and when Director Smythe had been ushered out of the lab and never returned, shortly to be replaced by Director Sandov, rumors had promptly gone full speed about her potential punishment, starting from being summarily terminated from her position to one of the new model gynoids literally having had her brain put in it as a test for the combat armor systems.
As it was, the entire project was suitably on edge already when the alarms went off as a dimensional portal opened in one of the storage areas of the complex. A response team under Security Chief Tallers was quickly deployed to the area, only to find a woman in sharp business attire and a pair of large men dressed in bodyguard black suits and reflective glasses waiting for them.
“Quick response, I suppose,” the woman said. “I’ll need to speak with your management shortly.”
“The only person you’ll be talking with is your friends inside a holding cell,” Tallers said. “The folks upstairs don’t take trespassing lightly.”
The woman smiled faintly. “Truly. How ironic,” she said, brushing some of her hair back behind her ear.
“Take them in,” the armored Crey chief said, gesturing his men forward. The first few Crey security got as far as the two suits before one was simply punched square in his kevlar vest with enough force to send him flying against the far wall.
“Metas! Bring in the Protector!” Tallers shouted, as a yellow and blue figure came through the door like a bullet. The first suit took a punch to the face from the jumpsuited flier, crashing through several crates even as the second suit brushed two more Crey security aside like so much garbage, turning to face the new combatant with a smirk. The protector threw another punch his way before the suit simply caught the punch in one meaty hand. The Protector’s faceless helmet still somehow managed to convey shock before the suit pulled him closer, shattering the facebowl of his helmet with a headbutt, before the Protector managed to push him back, a blast of plasma from their hand obscuring the suit’s face entirely.
There was a cheer from the Crey before the suit stepped forward, flesh sloughed off a gleaming metal skull that chuckled with a slightly cruel tone before the rest of the suit exploded off the expanding biomechanical war machine. Nearly eight feet tall and covered in blue armor plate, the mechanoid reached down to grip the Protector by the collar, putting them face to face before a long weapon barrel extended out of its mouth. A brief flash of light and the Protector dropped to the ground, neck smoking where the head had been previously.
“Hold position,” the woman said, even as the other suit crawled out of the wreckage, similarly discarding any remnants of a human disguise to shield its mistress. “As I said, I wish to speak to your leaders,” she said. “If you don’t put me in touch with them, my guards will kill all of you and I’ll ask the next set politely. Now, what is it going to be?”
Chief Tallers looked around at his men, crumpled and injured, and the dead husk of the Protector still smoking off to the side. “...right, let me call this in,” he said.
“Much more reasonable,” the woman said with a faint smile.
***
“This technology is quite spectacular,” Katsuhito said as he ran the scanner up and down Sylia’s body, looking over the results. “If it weren’t for you telling me what to look for, I might never have even known you weren't human. The materials science involved here is astounding,” he said. “Replenishing your internal systems shouldn’t be difficult… they’re designed to handle a wide variety of intakes.”
Sylia nodded, stepping out of the scanner at her father’s direction, before turning around to look at the results. “Doubtless why this Crey wanted to raid GENOM’s laboratory for me.”
As the two of them went over the data, Sylia thought to herself how this was so unlike anything she’d expected since coming here. Bonding with her father like this had been a passing fancy of what her life might have been like, back in Megatokyo. Or a passing fancy of the woman she’d been based off of. It was so tempting to consider… just staying here. Abandoning the people who would never know she existed back there, for this…
“Sylia? Are you alright?” Katsuhito asked, and Sylia started, standing up straight.
“Sorry, I guess my mind was wandering,” she said.
“The fact it can do that is quite incredible,” Katsuhito said. “Self-aware intelligences are quite rare here. An older villain, Nemesis, used to make duplicates of people that could pass for human for a bit before their scripted responses gave them away,” he said. “Before the Rikti War, trying to determine how he did that and develop countermeasures was the core of my work.”
He glanced back at her. “Those automata, however, never had anything on par with you, my dear. Regardless of your construction, your self awareness, drive, and personality are all equivalent to that of an organic mind. If...if Sylia here had grown up, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to tell the difference between you two,” he said. “That said...now that you’ve established all this,” he said, gesturing around at the lab. “What do you plan to do with it?”
Sylia frowned as she sat down across from him. “...I don’t know.”
***
“I’d hoped to meet a bit more directly, but I suppose given the circumstances, I’d understand you not wanting to be within arm’s reach,” the purple haired woman on the other side of the hologram noted, the two large mechanoids framing her like a wall of armor plate.
Hopkins didn’t frown, but his resting expression was such that it was easy enough to think he did. “The security team that initiated hostilities will be seen to. However, the local facility manager said that you had a proposition.”
“Aye,” the woman said. “First, my name is Katherine Madigan, and on my world, I represent a corporation known as GENOM,” she said. “I imagine ye’ve heard of us, as your troopers broke into a GENOM facility and stole quite the load of hardware,” she noted. “It was well done, that. If we hadn’t been investigating a third party utilizing that facility without authorization, it might’ve gone for years without anyone noticing. Far too long to trace coordinates from the breach. As it was, all we could do was backtrack your...portal, I think they called it. That’s why we’re talking instead of just taking back what was stolen and burning the building to the ground,” she said.
“GENOM has an interest in portal technology?” Hopkins asked guardedly.
“Aye. While we control essentially the world’s manufacturing capability through subsidiaries and partnerships, the problem is that’s effectively finite,” Madigan said. “Space technology hasn’t advanced quite so quickly as we’d like, which leaves the majority of us on Earth...and resources are projected to run out within the next two centuries.”
“How unexpectedly farsighted of GENOM to be concerned,” Hopkins responded, not without a touch of internal irony.
Madigan chuckled, picking up the mug in front of her and squeezing it in her hand. Hopkins could hear a slightly louder whir before the solid porcelain shattered in Madigan’s hand. “Most of the GENOM higher ups have access to technologies that will ensure they see that resource depletion in person, and they’re not looking forward to it,” she said. “However, with your portal tech, from what Jones pulled down from the network, you have access to literally unlimited worlds. We don’t even have to take violent action to secure some of them. This… Portal Corporation has coordinates for several dead worlds that endured some kind of environmental collapse. Perfect for GENOM Buma to begin mining for more resources. Since your Crey Corporation already has a sizable investment and experience with such things, we thought we’d approach you directly about a partnership.”
Hopkins narrowed his eyes behind his mirrored glasses. “I’m hearing a lot about why GENOM would be interested in this partnership, but little about what Crey would get out of it.”
Madigan chuckled. “Oh, that’s the easy part of it. I hear you have a rogue unit on the loose before we even got here. We’ll be providing our expertise in marginalizing and eventually containing that potential breach entirely. I’m here personally to see to it.”
Hopkins stared at her for a long moment, before giving the slightest of nods. “We can start a preliminary operation to see what you have to offer. If it provides enough benefit to Crey, a longer term partnership can be established.”
Madigan nodded. “That’s acceptable. I’m already here in your… Scimitar project facility. It should work for a test facility.”
“I’ll send over the authorizations,” Hopkins said. “I trust you’ll have results shortly.”
“Oh, you’ll see the results, don’t you worry,” Madigan said.
***
“AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!”
Leon McNichol was familiar with a wide variety of sounds that could come from the wild Romanova tac witch, and the one currently coming out of its native habitat in the tactical room was not one that boded well. That said, Leon had never been one to let obvious danger get in his way, so he stepped in anyway. “Hey there, Nene. Did they turn it off and then back on again?”
“Oh, if only I could do that to the brains of the people in Provisioning,” Nene growled. “I’m on a waiting list. Again! I’ve had my power armor certification for five months now, but they keep saying making a suit in my size isn’t in the budget!”
She stalked away from the computer, making subvocal noises that Leon interpreted to be questioning the ancestry of every member of the supply chain back six pay categories. “Well, I mean, the suits are expensive. The Chief reads me a riot act every time I get one busted up in the field,” he noted. “Plus I can’t say that the boys would be all too enthused to lose you on the overwatch line,” he admitted.
“Hah, I see what you’re doing there, McNichol,” Nene said. “Flatter me about my not inconsiderate technical skills to get me to lay off this. But no, I can do tactical and be on the front lines at the same time. The hardware supports it, if their software types ever tried coding outside of a PPD mass production box,” she said with a scowl. “Unless you LIKED your suit’s targeting telemetry the way it was.”
Leon shuddered. “No thanks. I prefer not having to remember to aim three inches to the left because the gun sights drift, thank you.”
“Exactly! And I know the hardware they use too,” Nene grumbled. “I have CAD schematics and all they’d need to do would be to plug them into manufacturing and the 3D armor printers would do the rest. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even computer science. But apparently if it’s that simple, they put any idiot in charge of pushing a couple of buttons in the right order, but doing something different is ‘not within our allotted resources’,” Nene said, lowering her voice and practically adding a durrrrrr on the end as she did so. “Frag it. I’m taking the rest of the day off. Tacnet’s been quiet all day,” she said, stepping away. “Naoko, can you cover for me?”
“Nene-simulator 3.0.1 is already up and running,” Naoko said. “The bosses probably won’t even notice the difference.”
“Good girl,” Nene said, hugging her from behind as Leon rolled his eyes and carefully averted them from the probably illegal bit of hacking the two were up to. “If anything actually serious pops up, you know how to reach me. I’ll remote in.”
“From home? You don’t have THAT kind of access,” Naoko said, the brunette glancing over her shoulder.
“Oh, no, I’ll just borrow a mainframe from the idiots at manufacturing,” Nene said. “I’m going over there to show them how to run an armor printer.”
Leon shook his head. “Try not to bite off too many heads, Romanova? Some of us grunts who use the mass production units need those pencil pushers.”
“No promises~~” Nene said as she scooted out of the room.
***
Lab Delta had proven far less troublesome than Madigan had initially feared, given their response to her entry. Walking along the hallway, Dugan stomping behind her in full battle mode given their lack of resources to create another bio-disguise, she simply bull-rushed over the objections Director Sandov seemed to generate faster than actual solutions to his problem.
“-simply don’t have the resources for more than one suit, and there’s no construction option that’d make that suit capable of handling a team of heroes on its own,” Sandov was saying.
“Why don’t we have the materials?” Madigan asked.
“Crey’s armor designs utilize vastly different mechanisms,” Sandov said. “While we can modify the plans from your files to use them, that will take time.”
“We don’t have it. What are alternate sources of the requisite components?” Madigan said as they turned towards the isolation bays.
“The only kind of people that get ready access to components of this precision, in large quantities, are the PPD and military,” Sandov said. “Or Arachnos troops, but that falls back on the problem that we don’t have the firepower to do another raid right now.”
“The PPD, you said?” Madigan commented. “Where do they store the components?”
“Ah… their central depot is in Steel Canyon,” Sandov said. “But a direct strike on the PPD would be impossible! We can’t risk people seeing our men breaking into a police building.”
“So they won’t see us coming, then,” Madigan said. “Spin up manufacturing on the suit. Stealth outfitting, designed to be as rarely seen as possible. Nothing to link back to us,” she said.
“That’s all well and good, but we don’t have anyone who can run the suit itself,” Sandov said. “The controls are built for your gynoid models, and we’ve yet to have a successful prototype beyond the original source who stole her suit and blew her way out of the building.”
“That’s because you’re not working hard enough,” Madigan said as they reached the cell, facing the lone woman sitting in the corner. “Let me in with her, then disable all recording.”
“Disable recording?” Sandov blanched. “But if we don’t know what she’s saying…”
“She knows she’s being recorded. If she isn’t, she may actually say something worthwhile,” Madigan said.
Sandov dithered, but a creaking noise from behind him as Dugan loomed demonstratively seemed to motivate him, the director issuing the necessary orders as Madigan stepped into the cell.
The woman on the other side was fit, but her skin was very pale while dark hair hung tangled and unkempt around her face. When Madigan stepped in and the doors shut behind her, red eyes looked up to fix on her. “I know you.”
“More accurately you remember me,” Madigan said. “You’re a smart woman. You’ve probably figured out a long time ago that you’re not Sylia Stingray.”
The woman scowled, but didn’t disabuse Madigan’s assumption. “I know what they want. It’s natural that GENOM would be behind it.”
“For once, no,” Madigan said. “GENOM is completely unrelated to this Crey Corporation, until we followed their teams to this world. Which is why I need your help.”
“Why would I help GENOM with anything?” the woman said.
“Because you’re not dealing with GENOM. You’re dealing with me,” Madigan replied. “You’re based on a smart woman. A brilliant one, really, if half the reports are correct,” she said, noticing the slight tic in the woman’s cheek when she said ‘based on’. “You know that you’re not Sylia Stingray, and you’re not even the original copy that Crey stole from that blacksite and brought here. Just a copy of a copy of a copy as they try to crack the code to make you work for them.”
Madigan locked eyes with the woman’s own red ones as she continued. “But that’s because they treat you like a machine. Like there’s some malfunction that keeps you from helping. I’d wager the other copies weren’t defective either. They just had differing reactions to the realization you’ve been through. That you’re not who your memories say you are, and that you’re all alone where no one’s coming to find you because no one knows you’re gone. What I’m offering is a way out of that. Work for me, not GENOM, and I’ll give you a shot at the person who did this to you in the first place,” she said, holding out a disc and activating it.
The woman stared at the white-haired man in a sharp suit projected above the disc. “Who is that?”
“He calls himself Largo,” Madigan said. “As far as we can tell, he created your original as part of some scheme to discredit the Knight Sabers for revenge. He also devastated several GENOM towers in the same action using the satellite weaponry control codes he’d stolen. We have a mutual enemy.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed as Madigan could see her thinking. She pressed onward. “And afterwards… I think your skills are such that I could use someone with them to assist me. You aren’t Sylia Stingray, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a person for not being the one you remember being. I can offer work, resources, and my personal backing in discovering who you want to be.”
“...and the original?” the woman said. “Did you offer her this?”
“No,” Madigan said. “From what I understand, she’s settled in to become this world’s Sylia Stingray, since the original died several years prior.”
“I see,” the red-eyed woman said, before looking up at Madigan. “...we can work on this...as a trial.”
“I’m getting a lot of that lately. I hope to satisfy you,” Madigan said with a nod. “...do you have problems with the first copy being out there still?”
The dark haired woman shook her head. “And you’re right. I’m not Sylia so...I’ll need something else.”
“A name?” Madigan guessed.
“Yes,” the woman said, looking down at her hand as she looked back up at Madigan. “Call me Galatea.”
***
“I’ve done some research,” Sylia admitted as she pulled out the food she’d ordered for the two of them. “Priss I already met by accident, but several other people I knew in the previous world have counterparts here,” she said. “But...it seems selfish to try to pull them in just to give myself a sense of normalcy.”
“And from what you’ve said, back in Megatokyo, you were essentially the only one doing this. With so many other heroes doing the same work here in Paragon,” Katsuhito mused, working on his chow mein. “You feel adrift. Without purpose.”
Sylia nodded. “It’s probably not healthy that not being the sole line in the sand against encroaching corporate greed was what was keeping me focused and balanced,” she said, giving her father a faintly rueful smile.
“Was it?” Katsuhito asked, looking at her seriously. At Sylia’s confused expression, he chuckled. “When you were smaller, you always focused on the problem at hand. You fixated on solving it. The teachers were astounded at how well you pulled your fellow classmates into the project with you, delegated duties, that sort of thing. It was a talent you always had, but when they complimented you on it, you always acted confused. As if it weren’t an achievement to recognize your classmates for the talents they had. And that you couldn’t have done it without them.”
He chuckled faintly. “You always gave them credit for your own success, even if you always made any failures your fault. I think there’s a reason that one of the first things you did was look for your old team in this dimension,” he said, looking at her.
Sylia looked back, contemplative, before an alarm sounded on her display. Sylia frowned, before pulling up the report.
“What is it? Some kind of trouble?” Katsuhito asked.
“It’s an APB from PPD Headquarters,” Sylia said. “One of their primary depots is being raided by an unknown villain. They haven’t gotten much in the way of proper identification, but,” she said, before pulling up the attached image, then paling a little.
The figure was obscured by some sort of light-warping active camouflage, but Sylia could make out the lines beneath it. The gauntlets had been modified, extending out a pair of blood red claws each, and the faceplate replaced with a glowing red visor. Almost everything else was difficult to see, but Sylia could see enough to recognize a variant of her work.
“...I think I’m going to need to pass on lunch, Dad,” she said, heading for the armor bay.
***
The inside of the depot was something out of a nightmare. Nene scurried down a hallway, trying to stay out of the open as she looked around for any sort of sign that she was being followed. She’d just been reading the tech the riot act about using his machine when the lights had flickered for half a second before she’d found herself splattered in blood forced out by the two red claws emerging from his chest. The faintest shimmer of the cloak flexing around the villain that had just murdered a man in front of her let Nene see the armor plate underneath, meaning her only option was to run out the door, slamming an emergency seal as she did. From the sounds of gunfire and screams of pain elsewhere, her attempt seemed to only have slowed the villain down from exiting the room, as did several of the bodies scattered around the area. Nene didn’t close her eyes, but she tried to block out the faces. She’d have time for grief and recognizing the dead when she was alive and safe.
So far, she hadn’t seen anyone who hadn’t been killed in a minimum of stabs, like their attacker was surgically eliminating the guards with a minimum of fuss. Given how easily they’d dispatched them, Nene wondered if she’d been marked as not a threat what with not bothering to bring her sidearm with her when she went to the place. Most of the weapons lockers had been broken open and emptied or their locking mechanisms sabotaged to seal them shut. However, she was getting closer to the exit, if Nene remembered the layout correctly. As she cleared the landing of the ground floor stairs, Nene was feeling almost optimistic before she slipped in a puddle of blood on the tile and went skidding to the ground, crying out in pain as her leg twisted and banged against a wall. Nene groaned, trying to push herself up, even as she saw the visual distortion in the air that she’d missed in her urge to move faster, turning towards her.
Nene tried to suppress a whimper of fear as the half-visible figure stalked towards her, knowing she had no real chance against it, but keeping her eyes on the silhouette as it came closer, even as she heard the claws unsheathe.
There was a flash of movement and then Nene gasped as she looked up to find herself unharmed… and a silvery armored figure standing between her and the darker one, now decloaked and with blood red claws parried by a pair of silver wristblades.
“I don’t know who you are, but we need to talk,” Sylia said.
They’d taken backups, of course, the minute that the acquisitions team had brought the bioroid mindframe through the portal. The last thing they wanted was to lose it to someone dumping coffee on a server by accident. But the copies had proven just as willful as the original source. The most ‘successful’ one had simply been utterly non-responsive, curled in a ball in a holding cell after being activated, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.
The less successful ones had resulted in at least three completely burned out positronic brains, and when Director Smythe had been ushered out of the lab and never returned, shortly to be replaced by Director Sandov, rumors had promptly gone full speed about her potential punishment, starting from being summarily terminated from her position to one of the new model gynoids literally having had her brain put in it as a test for the combat armor systems.
As it was, the entire project was suitably on edge already when the alarms went off as a dimensional portal opened in one of the storage areas of the complex. A response team under Security Chief Tallers was quickly deployed to the area, only to find a woman in sharp business attire and a pair of large men dressed in bodyguard black suits and reflective glasses waiting for them.
“Quick response, I suppose,” the woman said. “I’ll need to speak with your management shortly.”
“The only person you’ll be talking with is your friends inside a holding cell,” Tallers said. “The folks upstairs don’t take trespassing lightly.”
The woman smiled faintly. “Truly. How ironic,” she said, brushing some of her hair back behind her ear.
“Take them in,” the armored Crey chief said, gesturing his men forward. The first few Crey security got as far as the two suits before one was simply punched square in his kevlar vest with enough force to send him flying against the far wall.
“Metas! Bring in the Protector!” Tallers shouted, as a yellow and blue figure came through the door like a bullet. The first suit took a punch to the face from the jumpsuited flier, crashing through several crates even as the second suit brushed two more Crey security aside like so much garbage, turning to face the new combatant with a smirk. The protector threw another punch his way before the suit simply caught the punch in one meaty hand. The Protector’s faceless helmet still somehow managed to convey shock before the suit pulled him closer, shattering the facebowl of his helmet with a headbutt, before the Protector managed to push him back, a blast of plasma from their hand obscuring the suit’s face entirely.
There was a cheer from the Crey before the suit stepped forward, flesh sloughed off a gleaming metal skull that chuckled with a slightly cruel tone before the rest of the suit exploded off the expanding biomechanical war machine. Nearly eight feet tall and covered in blue armor plate, the mechanoid reached down to grip the Protector by the collar, putting them face to face before a long weapon barrel extended out of its mouth. A brief flash of light and the Protector dropped to the ground, neck smoking where the head had been previously.
“Hold position,” the woman said, even as the other suit crawled out of the wreckage, similarly discarding any remnants of a human disguise to shield its mistress. “As I said, I wish to speak to your leaders,” she said. “If you don’t put me in touch with them, my guards will kill all of you and I’ll ask the next set politely. Now, what is it going to be?”
Chief Tallers looked around at his men, crumpled and injured, and the dead husk of the Protector still smoking off to the side. “...right, let me call this in,” he said.
“Much more reasonable,” the woman said with a faint smile.
***
“This technology is quite spectacular,” Katsuhito said as he ran the scanner up and down Sylia’s body, looking over the results. “If it weren’t for you telling me what to look for, I might never have even known you weren't human. The materials science involved here is astounding,” he said. “Replenishing your internal systems shouldn’t be difficult… they’re designed to handle a wide variety of intakes.”
Sylia nodded, stepping out of the scanner at her father’s direction, before turning around to look at the results. “Doubtless why this Crey wanted to raid GENOM’s laboratory for me.”
As the two of them went over the data, Sylia thought to herself how this was so unlike anything she’d expected since coming here. Bonding with her father like this had been a passing fancy of what her life might have been like, back in Megatokyo. Or a passing fancy of the woman she’d been based off of. It was so tempting to consider… just staying here. Abandoning the people who would never know she existed back there, for this…
“Sylia? Are you alright?” Katsuhito asked, and Sylia started, standing up straight.
“Sorry, I guess my mind was wandering,” she said.
“The fact it can do that is quite incredible,” Katsuhito said. “Self-aware intelligences are quite rare here. An older villain, Nemesis, used to make duplicates of people that could pass for human for a bit before their scripted responses gave them away,” he said. “Before the Rikti War, trying to determine how he did that and develop countermeasures was the core of my work.”
He glanced back at her. “Those automata, however, never had anything on par with you, my dear. Regardless of your construction, your self awareness, drive, and personality are all equivalent to that of an organic mind. If...if Sylia here had grown up, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to tell the difference between you two,” he said. “That said...now that you’ve established all this,” he said, gesturing around at the lab. “What do you plan to do with it?”
Sylia frowned as she sat down across from him. “...I don’t know.”
***
“I’d hoped to meet a bit more directly, but I suppose given the circumstances, I’d understand you not wanting to be within arm’s reach,” the purple haired woman on the other side of the hologram noted, the two large mechanoids framing her like a wall of armor plate.
Hopkins didn’t frown, but his resting expression was such that it was easy enough to think he did. “The security team that initiated hostilities will be seen to. However, the local facility manager said that you had a proposition.”
“Aye,” the woman said. “First, my name is Katherine Madigan, and on my world, I represent a corporation known as GENOM,” she said. “I imagine ye’ve heard of us, as your troopers broke into a GENOM facility and stole quite the load of hardware,” she noted. “It was well done, that. If we hadn’t been investigating a third party utilizing that facility without authorization, it might’ve gone for years without anyone noticing. Far too long to trace coordinates from the breach. As it was, all we could do was backtrack your...portal, I think they called it. That’s why we’re talking instead of just taking back what was stolen and burning the building to the ground,” she said.
“GENOM has an interest in portal technology?” Hopkins asked guardedly.
“Aye. While we control essentially the world’s manufacturing capability through subsidiaries and partnerships, the problem is that’s effectively finite,” Madigan said. “Space technology hasn’t advanced quite so quickly as we’d like, which leaves the majority of us on Earth...and resources are projected to run out within the next two centuries.”
“How unexpectedly farsighted of GENOM to be concerned,” Hopkins responded, not without a touch of internal irony.
Madigan chuckled, picking up the mug in front of her and squeezing it in her hand. Hopkins could hear a slightly louder whir before the solid porcelain shattered in Madigan’s hand. “Most of the GENOM higher ups have access to technologies that will ensure they see that resource depletion in person, and they’re not looking forward to it,” she said. “However, with your portal tech, from what Jones pulled down from the network, you have access to literally unlimited worlds. We don’t even have to take violent action to secure some of them. This… Portal Corporation has coordinates for several dead worlds that endured some kind of environmental collapse. Perfect for GENOM Buma to begin mining for more resources. Since your Crey Corporation already has a sizable investment and experience with such things, we thought we’d approach you directly about a partnership.”
Hopkins narrowed his eyes behind his mirrored glasses. “I’m hearing a lot about why GENOM would be interested in this partnership, but little about what Crey would get out of it.”
Madigan chuckled. “Oh, that’s the easy part of it. I hear you have a rogue unit on the loose before we even got here. We’ll be providing our expertise in marginalizing and eventually containing that potential breach entirely. I’m here personally to see to it.”
Hopkins stared at her for a long moment, before giving the slightest of nods. “We can start a preliminary operation to see what you have to offer. If it provides enough benefit to Crey, a longer term partnership can be established.”
Madigan nodded. “That’s acceptable. I’m already here in your… Scimitar project facility. It should work for a test facility.”
“I’ll send over the authorizations,” Hopkins said. “I trust you’ll have results shortly.”
“Oh, you’ll see the results, don’t you worry,” Madigan said.
***
“AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!”
Leon McNichol was familiar with a wide variety of sounds that could come from the wild Romanova tac witch, and the one currently coming out of its native habitat in the tactical room was not one that boded well. That said, Leon had never been one to let obvious danger get in his way, so he stepped in anyway. “Hey there, Nene. Did they turn it off and then back on again?”
“Oh, if only I could do that to the brains of the people in Provisioning,” Nene growled. “I’m on a waiting list. Again! I’ve had my power armor certification for five months now, but they keep saying making a suit in my size isn’t in the budget!”
She stalked away from the computer, making subvocal noises that Leon interpreted to be questioning the ancestry of every member of the supply chain back six pay categories. “Well, I mean, the suits are expensive. The Chief reads me a riot act every time I get one busted up in the field,” he noted. “Plus I can’t say that the boys would be all too enthused to lose you on the overwatch line,” he admitted.
“Hah, I see what you’re doing there, McNichol,” Nene said. “Flatter me about my not inconsiderate technical skills to get me to lay off this. But no, I can do tactical and be on the front lines at the same time. The hardware supports it, if their software types ever tried coding outside of a PPD mass production box,” she said with a scowl. “Unless you LIKED your suit’s targeting telemetry the way it was.”
Leon shuddered. “No thanks. I prefer not having to remember to aim three inches to the left because the gun sights drift, thank you.”
“Exactly! And I know the hardware they use too,” Nene grumbled. “I have CAD schematics and all they’d need to do would be to plug them into manufacturing and the 3D armor printers would do the rest. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even computer science. But apparently if it’s that simple, they put any idiot in charge of pushing a couple of buttons in the right order, but doing something different is ‘not within our allotted resources’,” Nene said, lowering her voice and practically adding a durrrrrr on the end as she did so. “Frag it. I’m taking the rest of the day off. Tacnet’s been quiet all day,” she said, stepping away. “Naoko, can you cover for me?”
“Nene-simulator 3.0.1 is already up and running,” Naoko said. “The bosses probably won’t even notice the difference.”
“Good girl,” Nene said, hugging her from behind as Leon rolled his eyes and carefully averted them from the probably illegal bit of hacking the two were up to. “If anything actually serious pops up, you know how to reach me. I’ll remote in.”
“From home? You don’t have THAT kind of access,” Naoko said, the brunette glancing over her shoulder.
“Oh, no, I’ll just borrow a mainframe from the idiots at manufacturing,” Nene said. “I’m going over there to show them how to run an armor printer.”
Leon shook his head. “Try not to bite off too many heads, Romanova? Some of us grunts who use the mass production units need those pencil pushers.”
“No promises~~” Nene said as she scooted out of the room.
***
Lab Delta had proven far less troublesome than Madigan had initially feared, given their response to her entry. Walking along the hallway, Dugan stomping behind her in full battle mode given their lack of resources to create another bio-disguise, she simply bull-rushed over the objections Director Sandov seemed to generate faster than actual solutions to his problem.
“-simply don’t have the resources for more than one suit, and there’s no construction option that’d make that suit capable of handling a team of heroes on its own,” Sandov was saying.
“Why don’t we have the materials?” Madigan asked.
“Crey’s armor designs utilize vastly different mechanisms,” Sandov said. “While we can modify the plans from your files to use them, that will take time.”
“We don’t have it. What are alternate sources of the requisite components?” Madigan said as they turned towards the isolation bays.
“The only kind of people that get ready access to components of this precision, in large quantities, are the PPD and military,” Sandov said. “Or Arachnos troops, but that falls back on the problem that we don’t have the firepower to do another raid right now.”
“The PPD, you said?” Madigan commented. “Where do they store the components?”
“Ah… their central depot is in Steel Canyon,” Sandov said. “But a direct strike on the PPD would be impossible! We can’t risk people seeing our men breaking into a police building.”
“So they won’t see us coming, then,” Madigan said. “Spin up manufacturing on the suit. Stealth outfitting, designed to be as rarely seen as possible. Nothing to link back to us,” she said.
“That’s all well and good, but we don’t have anyone who can run the suit itself,” Sandov said. “The controls are built for your gynoid models, and we’ve yet to have a successful prototype beyond the original source who stole her suit and blew her way out of the building.”
“That’s because you’re not working hard enough,” Madigan said as they reached the cell, facing the lone woman sitting in the corner. “Let me in with her, then disable all recording.”
“Disable recording?” Sandov blanched. “But if we don’t know what she’s saying…”
“She knows she’s being recorded. If she isn’t, she may actually say something worthwhile,” Madigan said.
Sandov dithered, but a creaking noise from behind him as Dugan loomed demonstratively seemed to motivate him, the director issuing the necessary orders as Madigan stepped into the cell.
The woman on the other side was fit, but her skin was very pale while dark hair hung tangled and unkempt around her face. When Madigan stepped in and the doors shut behind her, red eyes looked up to fix on her. “I know you.”
“More accurately you remember me,” Madigan said. “You’re a smart woman. You’ve probably figured out a long time ago that you’re not Sylia Stingray.”
The woman scowled, but didn’t disabuse Madigan’s assumption. “I know what they want. It’s natural that GENOM would be behind it.”
“For once, no,” Madigan said. “GENOM is completely unrelated to this Crey Corporation, until we followed their teams to this world. Which is why I need your help.”
“Why would I help GENOM with anything?” the woman said.
“Because you’re not dealing with GENOM. You’re dealing with me,” Madigan replied. “You’re based on a smart woman. A brilliant one, really, if half the reports are correct,” she said, noticing the slight tic in the woman’s cheek when she said ‘based on’. “You know that you’re not Sylia Stingray, and you’re not even the original copy that Crey stole from that blacksite and brought here. Just a copy of a copy of a copy as they try to crack the code to make you work for them.”
Madigan locked eyes with the woman’s own red ones as she continued. “But that’s because they treat you like a machine. Like there’s some malfunction that keeps you from helping. I’d wager the other copies weren’t defective either. They just had differing reactions to the realization you’ve been through. That you’re not who your memories say you are, and that you’re all alone where no one’s coming to find you because no one knows you’re gone. What I’m offering is a way out of that. Work for me, not GENOM, and I’ll give you a shot at the person who did this to you in the first place,” she said, holding out a disc and activating it.
The woman stared at the white-haired man in a sharp suit projected above the disc. “Who is that?”
“He calls himself Largo,” Madigan said. “As far as we can tell, he created your original as part of some scheme to discredit the Knight Sabers for revenge. He also devastated several GENOM towers in the same action using the satellite weaponry control codes he’d stolen. We have a mutual enemy.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed as Madigan could see her thinking. She pressed onward. “And afterwards… I think your skills are such that I could use someone with them to assist me. You aren’t Sylia Stingray, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a person for not being the one you remember being. I can offer work, resources, and my personal backing in discovering who you want to be.”
“...and the original?” the woman said. “Did you offer her this?”
“No,” Madigan said. “From what I understand, she’s settled in to become this world’s Sylia Stingray, since the original died several years prior.”
“I see,” the red-eyed woman said, before looking up at Madigan. “...we can work on this...as a trial.”
“I’m getting a lot of that lately. I hope to satisfy you,” Madigan said with a nod. “...do you have problems with the first copy being out there still?”
The dark haired woman shook her head. “And you’re right. I’m not Sylia so...I’ll need something else.”
“A name?” Madigan guessed.
“Yes,” the woman said, looking down at her hand as she looked back up at Madigan. “Call me Galatea.”
***
“I’ve done some research,” Sylia admitted as she pulled out the food she’d ordered for the two of them. “Priss I already met by accident, but several other people I knew in the previous world have counterparts here,” she said. “But...it seems selfish to try to pull them in just to give myself a sense of normalcy.”
“And from what you’ve said, back in Megatokyo, you were essentially the only one doing this. With so many other heroes doing the same work here in Paragon,” Katsuhito mused, working on his chow mein. “You feel adrift. Without purpose.”
Sylia nodded. “It’s probably not healthy that not being the sole line in the sand against encroaching corporate greed was what was keeping me focused and balanced,” she said, giving her father a faintly rueful smile.
“Was it?” Katsuhito asked, looking at her seriously. At Sylia’s confused expression, he chuckled. “When you were smaller, you always focused on the problem at hand. You fixated on solving it. The teachers were astounded at how well you pulled your fellow classmates into the project with you, delegated duties, that sort of thing. It was a talent you always had, but when they complimented you on it, you always acted confused. As if it weren’t an achievement to recognize your classmates for the talents they had. And that you couldn’t have done it without them.”
He chuckled faintly. “You always gave them credit for your own success, even if you always made any failures your fault. I think there’s a reason that one of the first things you did was look for your old team in this dimension,” he said, looking at her.
Sylia looked back, contemplative, before an alarm sounded on her display. Sylia frowned, before pulling up the report.
“What is it? Some kind of trouble?” Katsuhito asked.
“It’s an APB from PPD Headquarters,” Sylia said. “One of their primary depots is being raided by an unknown villain. They haven’t gotten much in the way of proper identification, but,” she said, before pulling up the attached image, then paling a little.
The figure was obscured by some sort of light-warping active camouflage, but Sylia could make out the lines beneath it. The gauntlets had been modified, extending out a pair of blood red claws each, and the faceplate replaced with a glowing red visor. Almost everything else was difficult to see, but Sylia could see enough to recognize a variant of her work.
“...I think I’m going to need to pass on lunch, Dad,” she said, heading for the armor bay.
***
The inside of the depot was something out of a nightmare. Nene scurried down a hallway, trying to stay out of the open as she looked around for any sort of sign that she was being followed. She’d just been reading the tech the riot act about using his machine when the lights had flickered for half a second before she’d found herself splattered in blood forced out by the two red claws emerging from his chest. The faintest shimmer of the cloak flexing around the villain that had just murdered a man in front of her let Nene see the armor plate underneath, meaning her only option was to run out the door, slamming an emergency seal as she did. From the sounds of gunfire and screams of pain elsewhere, her attempt seemed to only have slowed the villain down from exiting the room, as did several of the bodies scattered around the area. Nene didn’t close her eyes, but she tried to block out the faces. She’d have time for grief and recognizing the dead when she was alive and safe.
So far, she hadn’t seen anyone who hadn’t been killed in a minimum of stabs, like their attacker was surgically eliminating the guards with a minimum of fuss. Given how easily they’d dispatched them, Nene wondered if she’d been marked as not a threat what with not bothering to bring her sidearm with her when she went to the place. Most of the weapons lockers had been broken open and emptied or their locking mechanisms sabotaged to seal them shut. However, she was getting closer to the exit, if Nene remembered the layout correctly. As she cleared the landing of the ground floor stairs, Nene was feeling almost optimistic before she slipped in a puddle of blood on the tile and went skidding to the ground, crying out in pain as her leg twisted and banged against a wall. Nene groaned, trying to push herself up, even as she saw the visual distortion in the air that she’d missed in her urge to move faster, turning towards her.
Nene tried to suppress a whimper of fear as the half-visible figure stalked towards her, knowing she had no real chance against it, but keeping her eyes on the silhouette as it came closer, even as she heard the claws unsheathe.
There was a flash of movement and then Nene gasped as she looked up to find herself unharmed… and a silvery armored figure standing between her and the darker one, now decloaked and with blood red claws parried by a pair of silver wristblades.
“I don’t know who you are, but we need to talk,” Sylia said.