13/12/2009, 02:22 AM
Another weekend, another update.
--- SDA compound, Training grounds, 1 hour later---
Dimitri logged into a Simulation pod, and connected to training room 13. His vision was filled with wireframe objects for a moment, and then a wave of solidarity flowed down through his world, and everything looked real again. The transition, although it wasn’t part of any tests, had been known to induce vomiting and, in one rare case, insanity, in the inflexibly-minded user. Dimitri’s virtual body spawned inside a small sitting room.
“Huh, this is new.” Dimitri looked at the room. From the looks of things, the manual exit to the simulation was the door behind him, and there was only one other door in the room. The room was dark, and lit only by a single, archaic TV set. There were two high-backed armchairs facing the TV, which was showing random feeds from rooms unknown. Dimitri walked forward, to walk past the chairs and to the non-simulation-exit door on the wall behind the TV. He almost walked right past one, when he realized an important thing.
It’s a trap. This is part of a test.
Drawing his .45 handgun, Dimitri put three rounds into the high-back of one chair. He was rewarded by a scream of both pain and surprise; and a quickly dissolving holographic-green shape fall forwards out of the chair, gone before he even hit the ground. A slow clap sounded from behind him. He turned to see Silvertie, slowly clapping his hands.
“Bravo, Dimitri. You did better than I expected.”
“Wait, so wee’re already moving to a test?”
“More like a bet… which I won, thanks to you. A certain agent who disagreed with the results of your assessment a few days ago approached me. If you didn’t kill him first, he won the bet; and vice versa. I’m glad you did though, I don’t have 20,000 spare credits.”
“You don’t strike me as a gambler, Silvertie.” Dimitri frowned at being part of some other people’s sport.
“But I’m not. I was 95% sure you’d at least take the first shot or punch. From there, you should have had no worries.” Silvertie waved an arm, and the walls dissolved, revealing a much larger, brightly lit warehouse, filled with row upon row of weapons and equipment. “Now, to the real test. Please, have a seat.”
Dimitri did as he was told, and sat in the not-shot chair. Silvertie clicked his fingers, and the shot up chair shimmered, and became as it was before it had air holes punched through it. Silvertie sat, and pulled a table between them, placing a shit of paper on it. Dimitri picked it up. It was a mission brief.
“Your mission is to eliminate all the other Agents outside of this warehouse. You may take whatever equipment you need from this room, but once you leave, it will cease to exist for you.” Silvertie held up a hand with all fingers and thumb extended. “You have 5 Agents to defeat. It is likely they will be working together, so use that to your advantage. Good hunting.”
Silvertie clicked his fingers one last time, and was engulfed by a green stream of ones and zeros, and when it vanished, he was gone. Dimitri stood up, looked at the equipment around the room, and made a plan.
--- Elsewhere in the simulation ---
An Agent scratched the back of his head with one of his two SP-4 SMGs, and yawned. He was sitting in a swivel chair behind the reception desk of a dock-side shipping company; the warehouse door had opened, for him, at the main doors; true to the instructions’ words, the doorway no longer led back to the warehouse. He didn’t get why this was part of his course; he was majoring in Assault and Vehicular Combat, not guard duty. He pulled out his radio and clicked it on.
“Yo, it’s Derek. Anything going down on your ends?”
4 voices murmured things along the lines of “no, it’s boring as hell”.
“So, anybody know why wee’ve been picked for this one?”
“Eh, I heard Silvertie was the one who had us pulled from our regular training,” one voice replied.
“Silvertie? Sounds like he’s put together a bit of light exercise for himself,” speculated another.
“Bah, compared to Silvertie, wee’ve got no chance,” said the third, miserably.
“What are wee doing again?” asked the fourth voice.
“What did you do with your brief?” queried the second voice.
“Huh, James probably lost it already,” scoffed Derek.
“Shut up, I didn’t,” retorted James, “I just left it back in that warehouse.”
“Well, for those of us who were too pants-on-head retarded to hold onto their briefs,” voice one announced, and the sound of paper being unfolded crackled through the radio; “Our job is to defend against and defeat an Agent who will be attempting to defeat all five of us.”
“Just one; Are you sure you got the right instructions there Andrew?” Voice three asked, skeptically.
“Of course, I- Hey! Stop right- don’t com-“Andrew was cut off by the sound of someone being grabbed by the neck, and gunshots. The other agents listened.
“I spotted the target! He’s running between shipping crates out the back! I think I have him cornered in a dead end, but I want some backup,” Andrew shouted. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief, and throughout the company building, got up and made their way to the docks area.
Andrew waited, pointing his SP-16 at the gap where the enemy had escaped, until his allies showed up.
“Got the bugger in the leg,” Andrew explained, as they looked at the blood spatters in the area, and the trail of blood leading into the shipping containers; “should be an easy kill. You guys take point, I have to reload.”
The other agents grumbled about shared risk and unfairness, but did it anyway, stacking up at the gap, they filed in one by one, followed by Andrew who was busy reloading his SP-16.
Derek led the way, closely followed by James and the other two; Andrew was somewhere at the back, as usual, finding an excuse to sit out of direct combat and still take the credit. He followed the crates, and stopped at a corner, where he waited. Everyone stood behind him, and he almost jumped when Andrew poked him in the neck with his finger. He looked at Andrew, who quickly said in sign language, “What’s the holdup?”
“Just being careful, you reckless bastard,” Derek signed back. Readying his dual SMGs, he stepped around the corner, guns leveled, to find…
“What the hell is this?” James exclaimed loudly behind him. In the dead end of crates, there was a body with shot up kneecaps, and a gag in his mouth. It was Andrew, bloodied and in exquisite pain, but still alive.
“Wait, if this is Andrew, then, who’s-“ Derek turned around to see himself pointing a fully loaded SP-16 at their own heads.
“What are you doing, Derek?” One agent asked the SP-16 Derek.
“Yeah, dude,” said the other, “I realize that I might have given you poo poo in the past, but this isn’t the time to-“
*BRAT-AT-AT-AT*
The agent who had been talking was blown backwards, with 4 rifle rounds in his head, and he did the virtual disintegration thing as he hit the far container, which was spattered with his own gore and blood. The agents watched him ‘Shatter’ into ones and zeros, before turning back to the two Dereks.
“Wait, there are two of you?” James said, and even though he was pointing his SP-12 shotgun at the SP-16 wielding Derek, he hesitated; a bad choice, as he was cut in half by a spray of bullets from the team-killer Derek.
“Jesus Christ!” The real Derek began to duck back around into the dead end, as his remaining ally began shooting at a Derek. Unfortunately, it was the wrong Derek in the confusion, and Derek took a spray of 9mm hollow points to the lungs. He landed heavily against the far container as he looked back at his friend, who had the back of his head blown out by the imposter. He dissolved before he hit the ground.
“You bastard, what are you?” The real Derek brought up one SMG (his other arm was paralyzed) and fired at… nothing. Derek looked around, and sat up against the wall, holding his chest. Nowhere to be seen…
“Surprise, Derek.”
Derek looked up, and saw a horrifically burnt face with a gold eye looking at him over the edge of the container, as well as the business end of a .45 pistol.
“Ah, spoon.”
*BLAM*
Dimitri shifted back to his original form, and dropped down into the dead end. The walls were splattered with gore, blood, and the floor was covered in bloodstained guns. It had been quite a gamble, but it had paid off. He even learnt a little about what he could do - assume any person’s identity at will, after just a brief second of skin-skin contact. He’d even managed to only shift some features; for the latter two shifts, he’d just kept the body of Derek, and changed faces.
“MFhmFF!” the tied up Andrew made noises.
“Oh, right.” Dimitri shot the tied up Andrew in the head, and he vanished. For a moment, nothing happened, and then the whole world shook, and all the containers dissolved, revealing an infinite expanse of flat concrete in all directions, and Silvertie, sitting in that same chair from before.
“Very nice work, Dimitri,” Silvertie said, “that’s some ability you got there. Even I would have had difficulty setting that sort of trap.” Silvertie stood, and pulled a door open out of thin air, revealing a pitch-black doorway.
“I’ll need some time to think up an assessment schedule for you, Dimitri. Your unique abilities would make a mockery of the infiltration qualification as it is now. Until then, though; the time is yours. Spend it wisely. Oh, and one other thing;” Silvertie turned around, “while I find it a note of honor that you assume my real features, I would appreciate it if you didn’t use it exclusively as a scare tactic.” And with that, he stepped through the doorway, vanishing into the darkness; after a brief moment’s pause, Dimitri followed suit.
--- Six months later, November 3, 2322 ---
Dimitri walked out of the training grounds, feeling like he’d been hit by a ton of bricks. While he hadn’t physically been hit with bricks, his simulation self had been in a situation leading to the collapse of a brick wall, on him; and anything experienced in the simulators had a memory of it sent to the real body, a prime source of people losing their sanity after one too many simulated deaths.
Rolling his shoulder to get a non-existent click out of it, he saw Jonathan walking the other way.
“Afternoon, Dad.”
“How’s your training coming along?”
“Very nice; you know that chip in my brain they found with a scan?”
“I remember it.” Jonathan nodded, thinking back to that day when he first looked at the report.
“Turns out it’s a super-capacity memory chip that somehow works with undetected BioSteel implants, to allow me to store the profiles of people that I touch.”
“So, what, you can still become Silvertie?”
“Yeah; I did it just before, actually.”
“He told me about what you kept using his face for.” Jonathan made a disapproving face.
“Oh, I only do that when he’s watching. I used it this time for his muscle structure; that guy is so much stronger and faster than he looks, and he’s got hardwired responses. You throw a punch, one twitch is all he needs to block it, it’s that deeply ingrained into his muscle memory.”
“That’s amazing, I never knew he was that into his work.” Jonathan genuinely looked surprised at the revelation.
“The doctor finally let you out of the medical bays?”
“Yup,” Jonathan replied cheerfully, “my arms are finally good to go.” Jonathan held up the afore-mentioned arms. The stump caps were now fully merged with Jonathan’s flesh stumps, and supported a smooth transition from flesh, to metallic flesh, and then to the hard steel of his two prosthetic arms. The two arms were different lengths; his left arm, which had been cut off at the forearm, had less prosthetic, mostly wrist and hand. The right arm was mechanical from bicep down. Both prosthetics were slightly thicker than their original counterparts, but that was because of the armor plating.
“Right beauties, aren’t they?”
“That they are, Dad. But judging from the expression on your face, I’d guess that there’s something secret in them.”
“Oho! You really are getting sharper!” Jonathan’s one eye crinkled with pride, “Doctor B chucked in some enhancements you wouldn’t normally find in a prosthetic; like so:” Jonathan lifted his left hand, and a small spike popped out of the index finger. “This hand is like a Swiss army knife. It’s got a Splicing Spike, lock-pick, and code buster inside it. This arm,” he lifted the right one, “is more combat-orientated, and can deliver a Tazer-grade electrical shock to targets that touch the hand. The hand is a grapple hook, and can be fired; very useful, and I can combine that with the Tazer to get people from far away. And lastly but not least…” Jonathan made a fist and concentrated, pointing his arm out to the side. The reason was evident when two blades on arms unfolded on the underside of the forearm and flicked forward; followed by a blade on the top of the forearm in the center. The three blades made a triangle shape, and if there had been a person’s neck in front of, or in the fist, the blades would have taken them in the shoulders, with the third one going through their forehead.
“Pretty basic, they’re limited to folding and unfolding; I’ll find a way to make them work.”
“Well, that’s cool; but you might want to remove shirts or roll up sleeves before you do that.”
“Eh?” Jonathan looked at his right sleeve, which was torn to shreds by the emerging blades. “Oh Christ, I didn’t think of that one! Thanks Dimitri, I think I’ll go get one of my spare shirts and jackets.” Jonathan turned and began jogging. “See you at dinner!”
“Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan.” Dimitri shook his head. Obviously, when it was said that wisdom came with age, Jonathan had missed the lecture, as it were.
Dimitri stood there for a moment. He felt an itching sensation on the back of his head. He turned to see Sasha Carnstrom standing by the steps to the training grounds, looking at him. She wasn’t moving, just standing there, arms crossed.
“Anything you want, Sasha?” Dimitri enquired, loudly. Sasha gave a start, and coughed, walking over to Dimitri.
“Sorry about that, I kind of… zoned out… there,” Sasha apologized, “bit too much work lately.”
“Really, just work you say? Huh.” Dimitri started walking to the tower, and Sasha followed. “You’ve seemed like you’ve had a lot of work since about 6 months ago, to be honest.”
Sasha gulped, barely on the edge of hearing. “Have I been that pre-occupied?”
“Yeah, you certainly looked like it.” Dimitri stroked his chin, he was starting to get some light stubble; a shave was in order soon. “You’ve certainly acting odd, definitely.”
“Me? Acting odd? As if,” Sasha dismissed, waving a hand; then she stopped mid gesture. “I just remembered; I had something to get from my quarters! I’ll have to chat later, Dimitri, bye!”
Sasha ran off. Dimitri scratched the side of his head. Even more curious; it seemed that Sasha was up to something… he continued to the tower.
Sasha sprinted back to her quarters, and shut the door. She quickly kicked off her shoes, and padded over to a desk on the wall. There was a Frankenstein device sitting on it, and a square communicator device. She hit a button on the Frankenstein, and it clicked, whirred, and beeped; creating a big blue sphere big enough to fit a short man, or a woman, inside it. Sasha grabbed the communicator, and stepped inside. Abruptly, the ambient noise one never really noticed cut out. She flipped open the communicator, and pressed a button. The other end picked up immediately.
“You’ve reached a number which is not connected to the network. Please check your dialed number.”
“Epsilon, reporting in; I have an urgent sit-rep,” Sasha’s voice sounded much different now; not her usual self. It was the voice of a completely different person.
“Epsilon, your identity has been confirmed by voiceprint, patching you through now.” Sasha, or “Epsilon”, waited for the channel to connect, tapping a stocking-clad foot on her carpet in impatience. She started when the other end was picked up.
“Epsilon; your update isn’t due for another 3 months.”
“Not that. I think I’ve been found out.”
“Found out, you? That’s impossible, unless you’ve been ignoring cues from your assumed identity?”
“Well, sort of. If I listened to the cues, it would be worse; Sasha Carnstrom’s personality is being very un-co-operative with me; I’ve had to make do with ad-libbing, but it seemed that someone’s noticed. Nobody else seems to have noticed yet, but one leak is still serious.”
“You should stop dicking around, and kill him already.”
“As you say, Commander,” “Sasha”, or rather, Epsilon, disconnected the communication channel, and rubbed her temples, “This isn’t going to be easy.”
About 800 meters away, in the security room for the whole SDA compound, Silvertie sat back from his console; they’d picked up that barely detectible channel, again. If it was legit, nobody had told him, and he got told everything.
“Did wee get a trace on it this time?”
“Yes, Agent Silvertie.” A subordinate agent ran up, and passed him a datapad. It had a map of the entire SDC complex, and zoomed in on the source of the transmission. It closed in on the SDA compound, and then onto the residential area, and then stopped, looking at a radius of about 5 living quarters.
“What’s up with this?” Silvertie tapped the screen with the back of his gloved hand.
“Some local jamming, it seems to only show up when the transmission is being made. Wee know the source is somewhere in here; it’s the only area wee can’t track through. It doesn’t have to be the center; some jammers can project an off-center interference dome.”
“Alright, get a list of inhabitants in the area; wee have an illegal transmission to find.
Spoiler for Chapter 9 – The man with a thousand faces:
--- SDA compound, Training grounds, 1 hour later---
Dimitri logged into a Simulation pod, and connected to training room 13. His vision was filled with wireframe objects for a moment, and then a wave of solidarity flowed down through his world, and everything looked real again. The transition, although it wasn’t part of any tests, had been known to induce vomiting and, in one rare case, insanity, in the inflexibly-minded user. Dimitri’s virtual body spawned inside a small sitting room.
“Huh, this is new.” Dimitri looked at the room. From the looks of things, the manual exit to the simulation was the door behind him, and there was only one other door in the room. The room was dark, and lit only by a single, archaic TV set. There were two high-backed armchairs facing the TV, which was showing random feeds from rooms unknown. Dimitri walked forward, to walk past the chairs and to the non-simulation-exit door on the wall behind the TV. He almost walked right past one, when he realized an important thing.
It’s a trap. This is part of a test.
Drawing his .45 handgun, Dimitri put three rounds into the high-back of one chair. He was rewarded by a scream of both pain and surprise; and a quickly dissolving holographic-green shape fall forwards out of the chair, gone before he even hit the ground. A slow clap sounded from behind him. He turned to see Silvertie, slowly clapping his hands.
“Bravo, Dimitri. You did better than I expected.”
“Wait, so wee’re already moving to a test?”
“More like a bet… which I won, thanks to you. A certain agent who disagreed with the results of your assessment a few days ago approached me. If you didn’t kill him first, he won the bet; and vice versa. I’m glad you did though, I don’t have 20,000 spare credits.”
“You don’t strike me as a gambler, Silvertie.” Dimitri frowned at being part of some other people’s sport.
“But I’m not. I was 95% sure you’d at least take the first shot or punch. From there, you should have had no worries.” Silvertie waved an arm, and the walls dissolved, revealing a much larger, brightly lit warehouse, filled with row upon row of weapons and equipment. “Now, to the real test. Please, have a seat.”
Dimitri did as he was told, and sat in the not-shot chair. Silvertie clicked his fingers, and the shot up chair shimmered, and became as it was before it had air holes punched through it. Silvertie sat, and pulled a table between them, placing a shit of paper on it. Dimitri picked it up. It was a mission brief.
“Your mission is to eliminate all the other Agents outside of this warehouse. You may take whatever equipment you need from this room, but once you leave, it will cease to exist for you.” Silvertie held up a hand with all fingers and thumb extended. “You have 5 Agents to defeat. It is likely they will be working together, so use that to your advantage. Good hunting.”
Silvertie clicked his fingers one last time, and was engulfed by a green stream of ones and zeros, and when it vanished, he was gone. Dimitri stood up, looked at the equipment around the room, and made a plan.
--- Elsewhere in the simulation ---
An Agent scratched the back of his head with one of his two SP-4 SMGs, and yawned. He was sitting in a swivel chair behind the reception desk of a dock-side shipping company; the warehouse door had opened, for him, at the main doors; true to the instructions’ words, the doorway no longer led back to the warehouse. He didn’t get why this was part of his course; he was majoring in Assault and Vehicular Combat, not guard duty. He pulled out his radio and clicked it on.
“Yo, it’s Derek. Anything going down on your ends?”
4 voices murmured things along the lines of “no, it’s boring as hell”.
“So, anybody know why wee’ve been picked for this one?”
“Eh, I heard Silvertie was the one who had us pulled from our regular training,” one voice replied.
“Silvertie? Sounds like he’s put together a bit of light exercise for himself,” speculated another.
“Bah, compared to Silvertie, wee’ve got no chance,” said the third, miserably.
“What are wee doing again?” asked the fourth voice.
“What did you do with your brief?” queried the second voice.
“Huh, James probably lost it already,” scoffed Derek.
“Shut up, I didn’t,” retorted James, “I just left it back in that warehouse.”
“Well, for those of us who were too pants-on-head retarded to hold onto their briefs,” voice one announced, and the sound of paper being unfolded crackled through the radio; “Our job is to defend against and defeat an Agent who will be attempting to defeat all five of us.”
“Just one; Are you sure you got the right instructions there Andrew?” Voice three asked, skeptically.
“Of course, I- Hey! Stop right- don’t com-“Andrew was cut off by the sound of someone being grabbed by the neck, and gunshots. The other agents listened.
“I spotted the target! He’s running between shipping crates out the back! I think I have him cornered in a dead end, but I want some backup,” Andrew shouted. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief, and throughout the company building, got up and made their way to the docks area.
Andrew waited, pointing his SP-16 at the gap where the enemy had escaped, until his allies showed up.
“Got the bugger in the leg,” Andrew explained, as they looked at the blood spatters in the area, and the trail of blood leading into the shipping containers; “should be an easy kill. You guys take point, I have to reload.”
The other agents grumbled about shared risk and unfairness, but did it anyway, stacking up at the gap, they filed in one by one, followed by Andrew who was busy reloading his SP-16.
Derek led the way, closely followed by James and the other two; Andrew was somewhere at the back, as usual, finding an excuse to sit out of direct combat and still take the credit. He followed the crates, and stopped at a corner, where he waited. Everyone stood behind him, and he almost jumped when Andrew poked him in the neck with his finger. He looked at Andrew, who quickly said in sign language, “What’s the holdup?”
“Just being careful, you reckless bastard,” Derek signed back. Readying his dual SMGs, he stepped around the corner, guns leveled, to find…
“What the hell is this?” James exclaimed loudly behind him. In the dead end of crates, there was a body with shot up kneecaps, and a gag in his mouth. It was Andrew, bloodied and in exquisite pain, but still alive.
“Wait, if this is Andrew, then, who’s-“ Derek turned around to see himself pointing a fully loaded SP-16 at their own heads.
“What are you doing, Derek?” One agent asked the SP-16 Derek.
“Yeah, dude,” said the other, “I realize that I might have given you poo poo in the past, but this isn’t the time to-“
*BRAT-AT-AT-AT*
The agent who had been talking was blown backwards, with 4 rifle rounds in his head, and he did the virtual disintegration thing as he hit the far container, which was spattered with his own gore and blood. The agents watched him ‘Shatter’ into ones and zeros, before turning back to the two Dereks.
“Wait, there are two of you?” James said, and even though he was pointing his SP-12 shotgun at the SP-16 wielding Derek, he hesitated; a bad choice, as he was cut in half by a spray of bullets from the team-killer Derek.
“Jesus Christ!” The real Derek began to duck back around into the dead end, as his remaining ally began shooting at a Derek. Unfortunately, it was the wrong Derek in the confusion, and Derek took a spray of 9mm hollow points to the lungs. He landed heavily against the far container as he looked back at his friend, who had the back of his head blown out by the imposter. He dissolved before he hit the ground.
“You bastard, what are you?” The real Derek brought up one SMG (his other arm was paralyzed) and fired at… nothing. Derek looked around, and sat up against the wall, holding his chest. Nowhere to be seen…
“Surprise, Derek.”
Derek looked up, and saw a horrifically burnt face with a gold eye looking at him over the edge of the container, as well as the business end of a .45 pistol.
“Ah, spoon.”
*BLAM*
Dimitri shifted back to his original form, and dropped down into the dead end. The walls were splattered with gore, blood, and the floor was covered in bloodstained guns. It had been quite a gamble, but it had paid off. He even learnt a little about what he could do - assume any person’s identity at will, after just a brief second of skin-skin contact. He’d even managed to only shift some features; for the latter two shifts, he’d just kept the body of Derek, and changed faces.
“MFhmFF!” the tied up Andrew made noises.
“Oh, right.” Dimitri shot the tied up Andrew in the head, and he vanished. For a moment, nothing happened, and then the whole world shook, and all the containers dissolved, revealing an infinite expanse of flat concrete in all directions, and Silvertie, sitting in that same chair from before.
“Very nice work, Dimitri,” Silvertie said, “that’s some ability you got there. Even I would have had difficulty setting that sort of trap.” Silvertie stood, and pulled a door open out of thin air, revealing a pitch-black doorway.
“I’ll need some time to think up an assessment schedule for you, Dimitri. Your unique abilities would make a mockery of the infiltration qualification as it is now. Until then, though; the time is yours. Spend it wisely. Oh, and one other thing;” Silvertie turned around, “while I find it a note of honor that you assume my real features, I would appreciate it if you didn’t use it exclusively as a scare tactic.” And with that, he stepped through the doorway, vanishing into the darkness; after a brief moment’s pause, Dimitri followed suit.
--- Six months later, November 3, 2322 ---
Dimitri walked out of the training grounds, feeling like he’d been hit by a ton of bricks. While he hadn’t physically been hit with bricks, his simulation self had been in a situation leading to the collapse of a brick wall, on him; and anything experienced in the simulators had a memory of it sent to the real body, a prime source of people losing their sanity after one too many simulated deaths.
Rolling his shoulder to get a non-existent click out of it, he saw Jonathan walking the other way.
“Afternoon, Dad.”
“How’s your training coming along?”
“Very nice; you know that chip in my brain they found with a scan?”
“I remember it.” Jonathan nodded, thinking back to that day when he first looked at the report.
“Turns out it’s a super-capacity memory chip that somehow works with undetected BioSteel implants, to allow me to store the profiles of people that I touch.”
“So, what, you can still become Silvertie?”
“Yeah; I did it just before, actually.”
“He told me about what you kept using his face for.” Jonathan made a disapproving face.
“Oh, I only do that when he’s watching. I used it this time for his muscle structure; that guy is so much stronger and faster than he looks, and he’s got hardwired responses. You throw a punch, one twitch is all he needs to block it, it’s that deeply ingrained into his muscle memory.”
“That’s amazing, I never knew he was that into his work.” Jonathan genuinely looked surprised at the revelation.
“The doctor finally let you out of the medical bays?”
“Yup,” Jonathan replied cheerfully, “my arms are finally good to go.” Jonathan held up the afore-mentioned arms. The stump caps were now fully merged with Jonathan’s flesh stumps, and supported a smooth transition from flesh, to metallic flesh, and then to the hard steel of his two prosthetic arms. The two arms were different lengths; his left arm, which had been cut off at the forearm, had less prosthetic, mostly wrist and hand. The right arm was mechanical from bicep down. Both prosthetics were slightly thicker than their original counterparts, but that was because of the armor plating.
“Right beauties, aren’t they?”
“That they are, Dad. But judging from the expression on your face, I’d guess that there’s something secret in them.”
“Oho! You really are getting sharper!” Jonathan’s one eye crinkled with pride, “Doctor B chucked in some enhancements you wouldn’t normally find in a prosthetic; like so:” Jonathan lifted his left hand, and a small spike popped out of the index finger. “This hand is like a Swiss army knife. It’s got a Splicing Spike, lock-pick, and code buster inside it. This arm,” he lifted the right one, “is more combat-orientated, and can deliver a Tazer-grade electrical shock to targets that touch the hand. The hand is a grapple hook, and can be fired; very useful, and I can combine that with the Tazer to get people from far away. And lastly but not least…” Jonathan made a fist and concentrated, pointing his arm out to the side. The reason was evident when two blades on arms unfolded on the underside of the forearm and flicked forward; followed by a blade on the top of the forearm in the center. The three blades made a triangle shape, and if there had been a person’s neck in front of, or in the fist, the blades would have taken them in the shoulders, with the third one going through their forehead.
“Pretty basic, they’re limited to folding and unfolding; I’ll find a way to make them work.”
“Well, that’s cool; but you might want to remove shirts or roll up sleeves before you do that.”
“Eh?” Jonathan looked at his right sleeve, which was torn to shreds by the emerging blades. “Oh Christ, I didn’t think of that one! Thanks Dimitri, I think I’ll go get one of my spare shirts and jackets.” Jonathan turned and began jogging. “See you at dinner!”
“Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan.” Dimitri shook his head. Obviously, when it was said that wisdom came with age, Jonathan had missed the lecture, as it were.
Dimitri stood there for a moment. He felt an itching sensation on the back of his head. He turned to see Sasha Carnstrom standing by the steps to the training grounds, looking at him. She wasn’t moving, just standing there, arms crossed.
“Anything you want, Sasha?” Dimitri enquired, loudly. Sasha gave a start, and coughed, walking over to Dimitri.
“Sorry about that, I kind of… zoned out… there,” Sasha apologized, “bit too much work lately.”
“Really, just work you say? Huh.” Dimitri started walking to the tower, and Sasha followed. “You’ve seemed like you’ve had a lot of work since about 6 months ago, to be honest.”
Sasha gulped, barely on the edge of hearing. “Have I been that pre-occupied?”
“Yeah, you certainly looked like it.” Dimitri stroked his chin, he was starting to get some light stubble; a shave was in order soon. “You’ve certainly acting odd, definitely.”
“Me? Acting odd? As if,” Sasha dismissed, waving a hand; then she stopped mid gesture. “I just remembered; I had something to get from my quarters! I’ll have to chat later, Dimitri, bye!”
Sasha ran off. Dimitri scratched the side of his head. Even more curious; it seemed that Sasha was up to something… he continued to the tower.
Sasha sprinted back to her quarters, and shut the door. She quickly kicked off her shoes, and padded over to a desk on the wall. There was a Frankenstein device sitting on it, and a square communicator device. She hit a button on the Frankenstein, and it clicked, whirred, and beeped; creating a big blue sphere big enough to fit a short man, or a woman, inside it. Sasha grabbed the communicator, and stepped inside. Abruptly, the ambient noise one never really noticed cut out. She flipped open the communicator, and pressed a button. The other end picked up immediately.
“You’ve reached a number which is not connected to the network. Please check your dialed number.”
“Epsilon, reporting in; I have an urgent sit-rep,” Sasha’s voice sounded much different now; not her usual self. It was the voice of a completely different person.
“Epsilon, your identity has been confirmed by voiceprint, patching you through now.” Sasha, or “Epsilon”, waited for the channel to connect, tapping a stocking-clad foot on her carpet in impatience. She started when the other end was picked up.
“Epsilon; your update isn’t due for another 3 months.”
“Not that. I think I’ve been found out.”
“Found out, you? That’s impossible, unless you’ve been ignoring cues from your assumed identity?”
“Well, sort of. If I listened to the cues, it would be worse; Sasha Carnstrom’s personality is being very un-co-operative with me; I’ve had to make do with ad-libbing, but it seemed that someone’s noticed. Nobody else seems to have noticed yet, but one leak is still serious.”
“You should stop dicking around, and kill him already.”
“As you say, Commander,” “Sasha”, or rather, Epsilon, disconnected the communication channel, and rubbed her temples, “This isn’t going to be easy.”
About 800 meters away, in the security room for the whole SDA compound, Silvertie sat back from his console; they’d picked up that barely detectible channel, again. If it was legit, nobody had told him, and he got told everything.
“Did wee get a trace on it this time?”
“Yes, Agent Silvertie.” A subordinate agent ran up, and passed him a datapad. It had a map of the entire SDC complex, and zoomed in on the source of the transmission. It closed in on the SDA compound, and then onto the residential area, and then stopped, looking at a radius of about 5 living quarters.
“What’s up with this?” Silvertie tapped the screen with the back of his gloved hand.
“Some local jamming, it seems to only show up when the transmission is being made. Wee know the source is somewhere in here; it’s the only area wee can’t track through. It doesn’t have to be the center; some jammers can project an off-center interference dome.”
“Alright, get a list of inhabitants in the area; wee have an illegal transmission to find.
