SR IX: Incoming Storm
Director Belltower seems to know exactly what Yingzheng wants to say, anyway. "Li, we have a situation," she says, dropping the pitch of her voice fractionally and leaning towards the camera. "A potential risk to your operation has come up on statistical forecasts that you need to know about - and you're the prime asset in location to deal with it."
Yinzheng nods, her stomach bottoming out. "I'm listening," she says.
"What you're doing is critical. We have projections that a Red-5 hostile may be attempting to exfiltrate or aid DIDO. I'm sending you the data we have on FIERY ANGEL. Suffice to say, they're a master memeticist, expert in the life sciences and biological shapeshifter with extensive cognitive augmentation and superhuman emotional intelligence. They're a Reality Terrorist with possible Virtual Adept connections, but who also uses Progenitor enlightened science. We've lost track of them in Los Angeles where they were either exfiltrated by rogue enhanciles or - more worryingly - subverted the enhanciles themselves."
Li swallows. A Red-5 threat? That's… that's major. Red-5 indicates that they're a top-tier enlightened scientist or RD-equivalent. "Do we have workable intel on their location?" she asks.
Director Belltower scowls. "No. They took down two Vanessa squads and their helicopter support in the grab attempt, when they should have been dead already. We can't track them - they're keeping off the radar. The evidence suggests that they went north from LA, but then the trail goes dead. They might loop around back to Mexico. And they have a previous association with DIDO. The stat projections consider it a valid risk - the analysts have only made the correlations in the past twenty-four hours. Sending the cram now."
Yinzheng looks down at the report and pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to suppress the stress headache as she super-crams the report. All the things here are just as dire as Director Belltower said. A mentally unstable enhancile with a history of psychosis and hallucinations, possibly ex-Progenitor and certainly using their techniques, who's assumed so many forms and subjected themselves to so many mental alterations that they've lost their original appearance. The Technocracy doesn't even know if they used to be male or female.
What they do know is that FIERY ANGEL is incredibly intelligent, incredibly manipulative, and - joy of joys - has managed to extract the access codes to entire clone genelines from their previous victims. There are some suggestions that they might have acquired them in Moscow - and that they survived that clusterfuck speaks volumes about their threat rating.
This is the kind of thing that operational commanders have nightmares about. And if they were in Moscow, no wonder Director Belltower might be wary.
"Do you wish to change the priority of my orders to account for the possible presence of FIERY ANGEL?" she asks.
Director Belltower appears to give this thought. "Not right now. We don't know if the hostile is aware of the fact that DIDO is still alive or even if they're going into Mexico. But keep your eyes open. I want regular check ins - and I would advise that you enforce the same."
"We already are," Yinzheng says.
"Good. Anything else to report, Li?"
Yinzheng recalls one last thing. "Director Ladislao says that deployment of the PsiDAR grid is delayed by an extra three hours. Apparently they discovered damage to the sensor array in the first test. I didn't mention it earlier because," she raises her eyebrows slightly, "the ETA for activation is after the projected assault on our vulnerable point by DIDO, but it's good to know."
Director Belltower shakes her head. "Well, it was always only ever a backup," she says. "Very good, Li. Keep me posted."
She cuts the communication, and Yinzheng slumps down. What does she need to do?
Another inspection of the bait location. Yes. She needs to inspect it for vulnerabilities and features which she can now take account of with the access to Iterator Mendoza. She wishes she had more enlightened scientists - or even just more ordinary recruits - but she recognises that in the aftermath of Los Angeles, Director Belltower can't spare her the extra assets she said she'd lend her. And they can't trust local forces.
Especially now, with FIERY ANGEL possibly getting involved. She uploads the briefing to her glasses. She'll read it again in the car on the way to the location, and try to see if she can project the chance of involvement by the hostile.
***
The ticking of the timepiece on the other wall counts down towards the expected arrival of the Adversary from space. They're already getting interesting intercepts from the Void Engineers indicating that they've found… something. Something probably Jamelia Belltower-shaped. Which is probably, but not certainly, Jamelia Belltower.
Leaning back in her chair, Director Jazmin Clock sighs fractionally and returns to her paperwork. Void Engineers are just so unreliable. If they did their job properly Belltower wouldn't be coming back. And that's their self-appointed job she's talking about, not their real role assigned by Control. They're such a disappointment.
She's not foolish enough to wish for opponents just as good as she is, or even nearly as good as she is. She has one of them already and she's the most problematic mission she's ever been assigned. Not to criticise Control, but speaking purely in hypotheticals she would have activated herself rather earlier. In her sleep she's been running lucid-dream simulations of Moscow from both sides, and she is sorry to say that - even accounting for hindsight - she believes she could have commanded either side more competently. And she is very sorry to say that it was the forces of Control who underperformed more.
Though perhaps that is to be expected when one puts Iterators in charge of an operation, especially when such an operation requires delicate handling of one's human resources - and the Iterator field commander was certainly such a
human resource. She believes that with approximately two weeks to work on her, she could have wound her around her finger in the same way that the Adversary gained the personal loyalty of Lt Langley.
But Control chose otherwise. She isn't entirely sure why, but Control would not make such a decision without good reasons. Control is simply more intelligent and with better access to data than a near-baseline agent like herself.
Jazmin Clock does question her orders. She isn't some thoughtless meat bioroid who merely does exactly what she's told. If that was what Blanc had wanted, he could have settled for the other fork of Jazmin Blade, post-INVISIBLE BEAR. He wanted something better, so had her made and tasked the other fork as a standard wetworks Operative. Maybe if he had settled for her, she wouldn't have gone rogue and caused so many problems for the Technocracy. Ms Clock is willing to die in the name of the missions she's given, so philosophically speaking she would be perfectly fine if there was a way of terminating Jazmin Blade in 1983 even if it would mean her own non-existence, if the consequences of doing so would spare the Technocracy from the treason of Jamelia Belltower.
Of course, that's not an option.
So, yes, she does question the logic behind her orders. For example, from her perspective, even the allocation of Agent Li and some low-to-mid-grade constructs is excessive for the threat Alice Aristide currently poses on near-to-medium-term projections. The requisitions Yinzheng is burning will add up, and questions will be asked. The other Conventions will notice. And Oversight isn't ready to shed its chrysalis yet.
But Professor Blanc has access to assets and projections that she doesn't. She lacks information. He speaks for Control. He knows things she does not. Therefore he is better placed to make the correct judgement and he has directed her to ensure that Alice Aristide is terminated.
She is merely using her operational flexibility to prioritise the elimination of the Adversary with the limited assets available.
Ms Clock tilts her head slightly as a thought occurs to her. No, it may not be Alice Aristide who he wants dead as a primary objective. It may be her unknown allies - the ones who must have helped a fourteen-year old girl escape from Damien. It was impossible for her to do on her own. There was no sign of assistance, which means whoever aided her must be a high-level threat to cover such an escape up. If they keep up the pressure, they may reveal themselves to save her again.
That would be worth the asset commitment. She nods minutely. It is a workable hypothesis. She will take no action based on it, but she feels no need to enquire further. Control is perfect. Control knows better.
And at a personal level, Ms Clock would very much like to see whoever helped her dead. Alice had not been unsavable when she fled. She could have been corrected - and would have been, if Ms Clock had realised how much she had slipped. Back then, Ms Clock lived in the knowledge that she existed to train her replacement, that Alice would one day exceed her. It was good to know that she would be instrumental in making the perfect Operative.
Maybe she shouldn't have been sent to Damien. She never had the iron hard knowledge that Jazmin Blade - and therefore both her forks - had of what the world was like without the Union and how much she owed it. She's thought that many times, in her too-long sixteen year exile in SLEEPYTOWN. Alice was told of all the ways the Technocracy benefitted her, but maybe she'd have properly known it if she'd had a childhood which
demonstrated it. If that was a miscalculation, then they were to blame for it and failing Alice in that way.
The discovery from An-Jin Choi that Alice is genetically her daughter does not significantly reframe the matter. It only provides context as to why she was her trainer. Jazmin doesn't fool herself: she
is very good at what she does. But it doesn't matter that she's biologically her daughter. Genetics can be changed. Alice was her
student - and that won't ever change.
The screen in front of her fills with static. Ms Clock blinks. Somewhat unusual, but she'd been expecting something like this.
"Commander," she says curtly. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"
There's a shape in the static. Two dark eyes stare out. "Director," it says, in a voice which is barely distinguishable from the hiss of the speakers. "We have information. Hyperdimensional scanners have detected abnormal and unexpected activity on Darkside Moonbase. The Adversary may be on the move. We will contact you again if we have verification. That will be all."
Ms Clock nods. "Thank you, Commander. Await further instructions."
***
The sun is high in the sky as Alice sneaks over the rooftop. She wouldn't want to be doing this without daylight. A well-placed boot is enough to silently pop open the fire escape, and she's in, heading into the dark, boarded up interior of the building. With her psychic powers, it's trivial to evade the few moving, conscious minds in here.
She doesn't feel so good. She hasn't slept in the same place for two nights in a row since Miami. She hasn't slept two nights in a row, cramming her rest into two hour catnaps and using her biokinesis to keep her body from falling apart. Soon she'll need to get some rest. She's getting groggy faster and faster.
There's… there's
something after her. Something which isn't Panopticon. Or An-Jin Choi, either. It's working within the Traditions. She can
feel the thick, oily presence of its spiritual gifts on people. Or maybe its alien enhancements. She isn't sure if it self-defines as an alien or a spirit, and that worries her because most of them are pretty clear. She gets the gut feeling it does whatever benefits itself most at the time, and that's very alarming because most spirits or aliens never show that kind of metaphysical self-awareness. A few trickster spirits, maybe, but… no, tricksters don't feel so
hungry.
Either way, it's being very, very generous with its gifts, and that's bad news because she can taste its hunger, its greed, and she can taste that it wants her. She can't trust people - and they don't trust her. People are wary. They somehow know what happened in Miami and they know she's an ex-Operative traitor who abandoned her cabal to save her own skin.
Maybe it's the work of this presence. Maybe it's just regular human gossiping.
She'd care more, but she hasn't been able to re-split from Bastille yet. She needs her. It means she only cares that it makes her life harder that people won't trust her. She can't use people as ablative cover so easily if they don't trust her. There's a little voice in her head that screams and wails when she thinks thoughts like that, but she ignores it. Because if she didn't ignore it, she'd spend all her time crying in the corner and that'd just mean Panopticon can catch her.
She's never going back. Ever.
Well, it's that problem she's aiming to resolve right now, she thinks as she picks the lock to one of the apartment doors and slips past the sleeping dog. Just to make sure, she bends and drops a few drops of a colourless liquid onto its tongue with an eyedropper. Who needs magic when you have perfectly mundane sedatives you stole from a vet?
There are bodies in here. Dead bodies. They'll rise when the sun goes down, but for now they slumber in a sleep close to death. And wouldn't you just know it? She happens to be quite good at doing things to the dead. And also to sleeping minds.
Honestly. Blanc was like a grandfather to her. The creepy, domineering, plotting-out-every-step-of-her-life-ahead-of-her kind of grandfather, but still, like a grandfather. Didn't they think she'd recognise what they were up to? Which means it's a trap, of course, but just because it's a trap to make her think that they want her to think that the second weak spot is a trap and so congratulate herself on avoiding it and so miss the next trap doesn't mean that it's not a trap if she doesn't take down the weak spot. Oh, and of course it's a trap if she goes. Obviously.
A bit of her has missed the way having the Bastille parts of her personality around allow her to casually think that kind of thing. Probably it lived in the Bastille parts. Blanc and his damn handbook are so annoying. Even more annoying than the nwooblets who think that just because they've read it they're god's gift to the intelligence community. It's the same two minds out there. The young idealistic one with the cold edge, and the clinical one which… which reminds her of her childhood. When she can spare six hours to meditate she'll get her mind in order and try to pin down the deja vu, but she hasn't
had six hours.
She's all kinds of fucked up but it keeps her alive, she thinks as she climbs on a chair and places an air freshener on top of a cupboard where no one will notice. The place could do with some fresher air.
Of course, it's not going to get it because she mixed the perfume with grave earth, ashes of a burned picture and a drop of her own blood, but that's the price you pay for being a vampire - and not the decent kind of vampire like Marissa.
She has something else to hunt down tonight. Which means she needs rest, she considers as she sneaks out. She'll need to find a cafe somewhere where she can get a black coffee and hypercram some sleep with her eyes open. It's a good thing she totally blends in as Mexican. People don't remember her. She should probably get some food too. Hasn't eaten today. No wonder she's a bit woozy.
Alice has someone else she needs to track down tonight, and she has a distraction in place. She has a dead girl to talk to. A dead girl who's been leaving her messages in a very old code indeed.
***
The small, cramped motel room hasn't been cleaned in days and smells decidedly lived in. The reason it hasn't been cleaned is the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. And the reason there's a Do Not Disturb sign on the door is the small matter of the guns, stolen clothing, cash and false IDs lying all over the place.
Seelicia tosses up a knife and catches it. "What is identity?" she asks her audience. "We know that it is but a story written in flesh - but is it a falsehood? I sprung to life fully formed from the head of another, without learning yet with knowledge, without forming yet with shape. I am not a product of my DNA. And… what is it now?"
Beelicio lowers his hand. "Wouldn't springing to life from someone's head be sort of messy?" he says.
Seelicia glares at him. "Idiot. I'm making a mythological reference. I am comparing myself to Athena, the virgin goddess of- what?"
"But you're not a-"
"Shut up shut up shut up shut up! That was just testing!" Seelicia glares at Alicia, who's watching the display with a catlike grin over the top of a cheap - and yet still stolen - laptop. "You are literally the worst creator I've ever had. Fix him! Urgh! Why did you even give us feelings and urges?"
Alicia nods seriously. "Ah, that is a long and complicated story," she says casually. She raises a finger dramatically. "I was in a rush. And didn't have much time. So basically just stuffed a beta fork of me into you and cut some unneeded bits off."
"And some needed bits off him," Seelicia says bitterly.
"Were they really needed? Doesn't he seem much happier than you?"
"Worst. Creator. Ever."
"I like her," Beelicio says contentedly. "We're having fun, we're trying to save a pretty girl, and we're going to murder in the face the people who tried to kill Serafina."
"You're right, Bee," Alicia says happily. "We
are going to murder them all in the face. Anyway, See, the other reason for the emotions and stuff is that honestly, I just wanted people to talk to. By making you full, high-functioning personalities, you can make novel contributions and stuff. And that's why you have a totally useless Damien education on classical mythology in you."
"I don't!" Beelicio says.
"Yeah, you don't, kiddo. That and I damaged Beelicio too much trying to prune him, so I sort of went the other extreme with you. Didn't have much time. But you're both people because I damn well want proper real people to talk to. And because if you're people, you'll stand up to Conditioning if someone tries it. Because you both want to help Sera just as much as I do."
"I know, it's just…" Seelicia trails off, shoulders slumping. "I remember having enlightened science and I
want it."
"Sera is nice. She's good," Beelicio says. "And no one should have done that to her. So I'm going to keep her safe - and you too, Alicia! You're nice too! You shouldn't have to be secretly upset anymore!"
"Aww, Bee. Thanks. Also, don't remind me that you're smarter than you look." Alicia shakes her head. "No good. Still can't break into those Traditionalist sites. Grr. Wish Henriette was here. This whole thing would be so much easier."
"With all due respect - which is none at all because I don't respect you one bit," Seelicia says, "shouldn't we be worrying more about Serafina?"
"Nope," Alicia says happily, leaning back on the bed, laptop balanced on her stomach. "She's fine."
"Sometimes I really wonder what you two are really talking about when you talk and whether it matches what we hear."
"Do you?"
"I
know she doesn't always see things as they really are."
"Is that so?"
"And I know you're an alpha fork while we're pruned beta forks and I still understand enough enlightened science to know that should be fucking impossible."
"Oh no! My secret is out. I guess I'll have to seduce you to keep you quiet."
Seelicia pouts. "Literally the worst creator ever."
They sit without talking for a while, the clicking of the computer and the noise of Beelicio checking the weapons the only sounds.
"So… is that a yes or no to the offer of sex to keep quiet?" Alicia asks, grinning. "Because I'm going to take a shower to wash off the smell of the biosuit and you're welcome to join me."
"I hate you. So very much."
Beelico clears his throat.
"Not a word from you, idiot!"
The
previous equipment vote is still in effect.
