JB XXIX: EXORDIUM
At the end of the night, as the sun slowly crawled above the horizon, Jamelia called everyone together to get their findings together and plan again for their options.
Kessler, it seemed, had not yet decided he needed to changed and was still bedecked in the loincloth--and nothing else. Jamelia doesn't care, even if it flusters Henriette. She's made a career out of being a spy. Sexy men, even sexy men attempting to seduce her, were things she's seen so much of that most of the time it just involved a brief moment of eye-rolling.
Serafina hadn't changed yet either, possibly because she had been busy with work, possibly to irk people. At least in her case it seemed she didn't have time yet, as she'd at least put on a fur coat as an attempt at normality.
Shift. Bounce. It wasn't working. If anything, the hint of modesty was somehow making things worse. Or better. 'Don't blush, don't make eye contact, NEXT.' Thankfully, Henriette seemed to have been possessed of more common sense or, at least, a working temperature sensor and was dressed vaguely appropriately now.
Jamelia cleared her throat, focusing her gaze on Henriette (and causing her to become just a hair self-conscious). "This is what we know thanks to all of your efforts. We have Infernalist Hemophages ingratiating themselves to the local power structure with gifts of artifacts and knowledge. The artifacts have a variety of Reality Deviance traces on it, some known to us, some not. It's likely that some of these were taken from the Museum in the same break-in, but perhaps not all of it. Additionally, the current Hemophage power structure is teetering. They've had a expansion recently and it does not seem as if they can control or support their increased population, especially with their leader distracted. It's currently unknown whether the Prince's distraction is uncharacteristic or whether it's potentially being induced by either his new favorite deliberately or as an effect of one of the gifted artifacts."
She gestures to the map, which is already starting to get filled in with data obtained from the interrogations and cross-referenced with Ivan's databases. "We'll continue with information gathering now that we have a few points of interest to focus on. I want to know everything there is to know about these Baali. Their identities, their sleeping locations, who they're talking to, what they know." She paged the imager in front of her to display mug-shots extracted from memories of identified Baali, as a starting point.
"On top of that, I want to know where these artifacts are being stored, whether separately, in one location, on display in the Prince's mansion, crated in a warehouse, or wherever. I want to know what kind of security is present. If there are any that are ready for delivery but not yet in the Prince's hands, I want to know that too." Several artifacts were then displayed, along with notes by Henriette's overlay and her own hand-typed additions. "We'll need to see these artifacts and run deeper tests on them. It's highly unlikely that the best stuff from the museum ended up here. If what's left here is only useless curios or whether there are still legitimately dangerous artifacts remaining, that will give us the lower bound on what headed for the international arena."
"Modify the vehicle for whatever sensor suite you think is lacking to accomplish all this, I trust you to put your heads together and figure out what additional equipment or modifications are necessary to get this done. I'll be tracking down a separate source of information on my own, but don't hesitate to contact me if something comes up. We'll reconvene at midday. Hopefully, we'll have a target for direct action at that time."
***
Inside the office of the Syndicate limousine, the construct and their recently-acquired clones assemble.
Jamelia Belltower doesn't blush at the sight of
immaculately chiseled manflesh John Kessler. There was a time when she
might have, but that was before any of the others were born, before INVISIBLE BEAR and Operation RADIANT LONGINUS. Still her low bar for how many Ecstatics you can cram into one massage parlor. So it is with her usual calm demeanor and focus that Jamelia Belltower dispenses orders.
"Alright. One of the Victors is on the wheel." Already, the clone is moving out of her office, the battle-net established rendering verbal affirmation of compliance irrelevant. "Henriette, the Bobs have finished assembling the hardware you requested. I have forwarded a summary on the hemophages and their potentially Nephandic elements to you. Furthermore, I'm going to need you to do SIGINT."
Henriette nods. SIGINT she understands.
"Dr. Rosario. Your file said you've done infiltrations before."
"Short-term, and mostly as a consultant with a more experienced backup." She says tentatively. "You want me to..."
"to go and find some disillusioned hemophages and get them working for our cause, however indirectly, yes."
Serafina considers it for a moment. "Certainly. And you?"
"I'll be talking to a few of our lost lambs and seeing if they know something we can use."
"Shouldn't I do that?" Serafina asks. "You're probably better at infiltration and I've got a name for myself in the Union."
"But you're here, and beautiful, and famous, and powerful, while they've been left to rot. There's a lot of jealousy there that might cause unnecessary friction, and that I don't want." Jamelia says reasonably. "I know you're doing more lab work now, but when we're short on resources sometimes we need to wear multiple hats."
***
Botkin Hospital, Moscow
The hospital cafeteria is lit in harsh fluorescence. Dressed in purloined surgical scrubs, Jamelia sidles up to a seated blonde figure eating in the corner. "Catherine," she says in greeting, and notices the twitch beneath the woman's flesh which look like weapons inserts activating.
Thirty years ago, Catherine Iosefova was an ice cold beauty with a perfectly sculpted figure, from a similar school of design to Dr Rosario. Now? The years - and lack of juvenat drugs - have taken their toll on her. The former Progenitor is plump, with bleached blonde hair. She doesn't look her age, because she's probably in her late seventies, but she does look fifty or so.
Of course, knowing her Jamelia suspects that she's added even more self-defense systems into the extra body mass, but it's the thought which counts.
"Jeanette," Catherine says, raising her glass lackadaisically. With one hand, she idly drops a listening jammer into the table. "I see you're still in favor. You haven't aged a day. Well, yes, you have. I'd say you've aged around six months."
"Seven point eight," Jamelia admits, taking a seat next to her. "As of my last check-up."
"And now you come back to the unfavored ones, the losers. Here to bring me in, crawling and squirming because some lab experiment has run wild and your superiors in the West need me as a consultant?"
"No," Jamelia says, honestly.
"Good, because I would not trust such an offer. You'd just want to drag me off to some reprogramming facility, to bring back the old fire and ice. Talking about reprogramming, are you still tripped out on painkillers all the time? Still wondering where your American bosses got the knowledge for INVISIBLE BEAR from? Maybe you've come to me for the better kind of drug your Americans failed to get their hands on?"
Jamelia ignores her. She's poked into INVISIBLE BEAR herself, through backdoors, and for all that the Russian Technocracy complains that most of the techniques used in it were stolen back in the seventies, those complaints appear to be ungrounded. She thinks. The fact that it's called "INVISIBLE BEAR" is probably why the Russians won't give it up. "I'm here in Russia for another purpose," she says calmly. "I didn't even know you'd..." she picks her words carefully, "... handed in your notice until I asked some questions of Ivan."
"Handed in my notice! Ha! Yes, such a Ivory Tower way of putting things. 'Oh, I am Jeanette Bahrain, I will say you handed in your notice rather than defected because that would sour the way we interact, even if I think you are treacherous scum.' Why not say what you think?"
"Because I don't. Think you're a traitor, that is," Jamelia says. She tries to articulate her words. "You didn't go over to the Traditions, even when you could have. And... well. I might not agree with your choice, but I can understand it. The Union in Russia has been... poorly treated."
"Starved of resources, beaten like a stray cur, and then left to die in a gutter, you mean," Catherine says bitterly. "Yes. That is your poor treatment. Just because we did not win." She laughs. "We would not have been as harsh to you. But then again, Communism says that men are fundamentally good and can work together. Your Capitalism disagreed, won and... ah, well, you have made your throne of bayonets. Now you must sit on it."
"Yeltsin," Jamelia says.
"An old drunk, but he did have a pithy turn of phrase."
"Quite so." Jamelia pauses. "Actually, I wanted to make a contribution to your healthcare efforts," she says blandly, reaching into an inner pocket and removing a small case. "A few thousand dollars, and some medicinal drugs. Immuno-boosters, some Regen, some samples of Anti-V. If you're the woman I once knew, you should be able to put them to good use."
Catherine's eyes widen, and then narrow. "How generous," she says sarcastically. "And what will you be wanting from that?"
"Oh, nothing at all, nothing at all," Jamelia says innocently. "I'm just not a fan of the local vampires, you see. They're linked to an assault on the Moscow museum, and while of course I'm not asking for anything, it would be very convenient to be able to pinpoint who was responsible. I'm not saying you might have contacts with the local Traditions - because, of course, both of us know that you're not a traitor, but if you did happen to pick up some information on the topic - from where, I couldn't possibly say - then I'd appreciate knowing. Of course, you shouldn't consider this an obligation."
"Always with the strings attached," Catherine grumbles.
"I just said there were no strings attached. My motives are perfectly transparent," Jamelia says.
"Yes. That means that I can see right through them," the blonde says. She takes the case, and it vanishes inside her clothing. Jamelia gets the feeling it's now in an inner compartment in her body. "I can't say this was a pleasant meeting," she says, "but at least you didn't drag me off."
"I'm hurt that you think so lowly of me," Jamelia says earnestly.
"I'm hurt if I get needles poked into my brain."
"One last thing," Jamelia says. She glances down at her watch, checking the satellite positions and that her counter-probabilistic jamming and anti-EM snoopers are working. She reaches out and touches the other woman's hand, tapping out a code while she talks about the necessity of stopping the local vampires from finding out about this meeting.
[Hardline Union faction. Panopticon. Beware. Much assets. Do not care about facts on the ground. No compromise. Will not be friendly. Take care. Hear anything of them, tell me. Do not trust.]
The other woman narrows her eyes. [What you playing at] she taps out hesitantly.
[Safer for you not to know. Do not trust. You risk Pogrom. Or being taken in.]
Catherine Iosefova rises. "Come with me," she says. "I too am worried about the vampires."
They head down corridors, down to the staff lifts, down below any room marked on formal maps of the hospital. It's an old Moscow deep air raid shelter, she figures, lit by a Cherenkov blue glow.
She suspects that she's accidentally or on purpose run into the last big secret of the USSR. Except this is no Collective Consciousness underneath Pripyat, not some sort of alien wish granting device hidden inside a bunker. Not a brainwashing machine designed to make New Men that she heard rumors was built in the 1950s. This is something else entirely. The machinery starts off recognizable, standard Technocratic systems put together in a novel fashion, but then it rapidly becomes hypertech that's completely alien. It looks like what Jamelia imagines Iteration X's Computer to look like-primitive machinery bootstrapping the design at the core, then layered with ever-more complex devices as it helped them develop the technology used in self-improvement. It has clearly been devastated by weapons fire. She can track plasma blooms, the impacts of railgun flechettes, and the use of a couple of rocket-propelled grenades. The room has undergone serious high-energy remodeling, Jamelia thinks.
One of the Singularities. Jamelia thinks. One of the potential methods for some sort of 'Ascension'. The NWO didn't think it was possible to just create something to instantly create Utopia, but some factions did. The Progenitors and Iteration X had been laboring endlessly to do something of the sort before the Dimensional Anomaly put that to an end. Even the Syndicate had their ideas of
homo economicus. The Void Engineers, some of the more extreme ones, dreamed of fusing man and machine and vessel and industry to create a post-scarcity civilization that could survive anywhere.
"We called it EXORDIUM." Catherine says. "When the USSR looked like it was going to crumble within two decades, in the 70s, our leadership embarked on a crash journey of radical technological advancement. I was not one of the physicists, but I was one of the workers on the control system. Human minds, quantum-locked, paired to Iteration X hypercomputers. The result was a method of receiving acausal communication from potential futures. It would have worked, and did."
Jamelia doesn't quite understand. "So you had some sort of oracle system in your basement, and yet the USSR collapsed? What happened? Did it fail?"
"No. Not quite. It worked beautifully for the time being. We got so many designs out of it. So many beautiful things, genetic codes, machine parts. Sociological theories. There is a reason they stole so much from us." Catherine explains, and even her explanation is loaded with venom. "But one day, it stopped. It gave us one last message. And then it started broadcasting honeypots. Viral strikes. Agents were lost. We fought our way down here and shut it down, disassembled it." She glances down regretfully, and Jamelia understands. That was the time when she started loading up on combat biomods, ignoring aesthetic constraints. "We did not tell anyone, of course. There was merely an accident."
"Had the west merely cut off funding, we would have survived. But with EXORDIUM's failure, the loss of agents, and the subsequent bitterness-many of us thought that Control had stood aside and let the machine stab us in the back. The message implied it too, which is why you have so many of us leaving. Only bitter old wardogs who have deluded themselves into thinking the message was another attempt at psychological warfare among the many attack vectors the EXORDIUM system provided in its death throes."
"It left messages before that, though. A few hidden messages that got to the right people. How to shut it down. And a mention of 'Panopticon'. Girl, you are embroiled in a fight which might tear the Technocracy apart at the seams. I hold no love for you, but even so, I wish you young and idealistic men and women luck."
"Is that it?" Jamelia asks. She snickers internally at the accusation of idealism.
"There are the printouts of that last time. We never did go through them because of the danger of sequestration. We were afraid to destroy them because we thought they were cursed. I can tell you where."
***
"Are you done yet?" Henriette demands of Serafina, pacing up and down in front of her door.
"Just doing my face!"
"Urgh! Still? You've been doing it for literally an hour!" Henriette wrenches open the door, takes one look, screams, and slams it after her.
It is fifteen minutes later when a blonde, blue-eyed woman with a heart-shaped face appears from Serafina's dressing room. "I said I was doing my face," she says, in a slightly husky voice.
"I thought you... you were putting on makeup," Henriette says, trying to sound calm.
"Darling, I don't need make-up. I naturally look like this," Serafina says. "Well, not like this, but I naturally look like this once I've shifted around the fat under my face, moved some from my chest to my hips, lengthened a few muscles, and that sort of thing."
"Don't call me 'Darling'," Henriette says grumpily. "I... I just didn't expect you to... to..."
"You caught me at a bad time. I was swapping noses," Serafina says calmly. "I mean, normally I'd shift the cartilage myself, but I didn't have time for that. So it had to be a surgical solution."
"Didn't it hurt?"
Serafina blinks. "Not really," she says. "Pain's just your body telling you that something is wrong, and I knew exactly what I was doing. Do you have everything?" she says, changing the topic.
Henriette swallows. "Yes," she says, trying to sound bored. "I've already prepped a full supply of microcoms for you to chip animals with, and I've got my bugging gear in the back of the car. As long as you plant the things where I tell you to, there should be pretty much nothing in the Winter Palace I won't be able to hear or see. Plus, all the phones, in and out. This club is meant to be a really big place in the vampir… the hemophage community, right? Where a lot of the ones who are losing out from the current situation are meant to be be hanging out." She adjusts the sleeves of her chauffeur's outfit. "I'm just glad to be out of my robe and wizard's hat. This time I'm taking a balaclava and snow goggles. It's freezing out there. Can we go now?"
"Not yet," Serafina says. "I need to get changed."
"You just got changed!" Henriette says hotly.
"Don't be silly, of course I'm not going to use my good things when I'm doing surgery on myself," Serafina says with a wave of her hand. "I'd bleed on them. Although if you're bored, could you please see if you can adjust Kessler's tuxedo so he looks like less of an ape in a suit?"
"This… this is a misuse of my skills," Henriette protests.
"You're the one who's good with fabric," Serafina says. "Me, I'm not really at home with weaves which aren't biological in nature."
***
Dr Serafina Rosario has a dirty little secret which she isn't about to admit to anyone, least of all Director Belltower.
No, not the one about the harem protagonist. She was fourteen at the time, for goodness sake! Why won't people drop it? No, another one.
It's that this whole spy game is… well, awfully fun. There. She thought it. But it is! She didn't enjoy her time in Damage Control much, but apparently the decade and more since she was in the field has made her just a bit silly. Of course, Director Belltower would probably be all "Grr" and "This is not a game, Rosario", and "I've got my official New World Order stick so far up my ass that even you with all your surgical skills couldn't remove it", but it's true!
It is awfully fun. Normally the only kind of thing which gives her this kind of buzz is when she's in life or death situations, like when the specimens have escaped from Biohazard-Beth, or when she's presenting her findings to a review panel. She's been having to do things with substandard equipment, having to cross-apply techniques, having to think up improvised solutions on the spot, and it's amazing! Now she's about to walk into a vampire's lair with only a wide array of subdermal mods -which she's pretty much mostly installed since she got here - and a backup nervous system to shunt any nasty mindfuck effects they try to pull on her onto, and she's having the time of her life. She must have been getting bored in the lab, and she must have figured that out subconsciously before she realized. No wonder she agreed so readily to check up on Rose.
Her Genius is feeling more stimulated than it has in years. Literally years. She's having ideas it'll take months, maybe even years to work out the full ramifications of when she gets back to the lab.
Plus, she kidnapped vampires while dressed mostly in body paint, which is going to go down
hilariously at the next Christmas party.
God! It's all just such a
rush!
The nightclub known as the Winter Palace is a baroque monstrosity. The sun is on its way down, and the great glass windows and icy-rimed waterfalls catch the red light, making it look like the west facing is daubed in blood. Way to show off that a vampire runs this place, she supposes.
They've arrived early so they have a chance to get the place wired up before there are any vampires around. Henriette is… displeased that they cannot take the fancy car for fear of it getting linked to their activities, but Serafina thinks she'll deal with it when she gets to sit in a nearby Starbucks and listen in to communications.
This club is the court of the self-proclaimed 'Tsar Vargo'. A freaky coincidence for someone up to date on their Union history, of course, but apparently just a coincidence. He's a figure who's from all the memory trawls lost out big time with all the vampire politicking going on. He's lost favor with the local Prince, and has had territory confiscated in something involving tax and some kind of double-leveraged scheme you'd probably have to be a Syndic to understand.
Dressed in black, with a small silver cross necklace as her only jewelry, Serafina steps into the building. The entire outfit gives her a vaguely clerical appearance. That's the point. She's not going to say anything explicit. She's certainly not going to claim to a member of the Celestial Chorus.
Someone might take that as her implication, of course, but that would be their mistake. She's going to avoid making mistakes by not claiming anything concrete.
And if she implies that action will soon be taken against the Prince, and they have statistical analyses which tell them that the Chorus will likely be attacking the opera… well, that might strengthen their story.
She spends a little bit of time planting bugs and dropping tiny chips where Henriette tells her to by radio, and after not too long of this the sun has set. It takes a while longer, however, for the haemophages to start showing up. Presumably they have to do their morning routines, or in their case, evening regimes. Either way, the club begins to fill up, and she has to put up with, and deflect, attention from Russians who grow increasingly drunker. Kessler is no help at all, because he's busy standing there in his re-tailored suit still managing to look like a shaved ape.
Which admittedly both helps the bodyguard appearance, and is better than him punning.
It's time. A few well chosen words, the right body chemistry, and judicious application of psychology, and she's let into the VIP area to see the Tsar.
The so-called Tsar isn't that impressive to behold. To those who know about vampires, of course, that makes him someone you might want to take more seriously. He is a diminutive man, who wears far too much make-up to conceal what Serafina can clearly recognise as smallpox scars. He probably tells modern women - or men, because vampires tend to wind up haemosexual, interested in anyone who has blood - that they're acne scars. Or just doesn't care. He has a man and a woman on his lap at the moment, and she can see the microscars on their necks.
She wishes she had Rose here.
"Tsar," she says, inclining her head respectfully.
"Eh?" His accent is a trifle archaic, something of the rural peasantry still about him. "And who are you, eh?"
"I represent a group who does not like demon-worshipers, or those who consort with the Infernal." Her Russian is flawless, of course; she was taught it as a child and she's crammed it while she was here. "I hope you understand."
"Well, no one likes those sorts," he says, waving a hand lazily. She can tell from his posture that he is far more interested. "Filthy scum who consort with the forces of darkness are not things you can trust. And I say 'things', because they are not real people."
No, Serafina realizes as she looks more closely. The pair on his lap aren't blood dolls. They're vampires, too. But they gaze up at him with all the adoring reverence of heroin addicts. No wonder she can't see any more obvious bodyguards. They'd die to protect him. He feeds off them, and they are fed by him. A snake biting its own tail.
"So, blondie," he says. "Sit yourself and your shaved ape down. Let's talk."
She takes the seat. "I would like to make a proposition." Serafina says. "I would like to offer you a trade of information. We wish to know more about your demon-worshipers. In exchange, we can, perhaps, focus our efforts on them, instead of catching you in the collateral."
"And how do I know I can trust you?"
"You can trust that we find demon worship distasteful, and that we seek to combat it first and foremost. You can also trust that soon, those monsters who pretend to appreciate art and culture will have their false pretenses ripped away to reveal what lies underneath. You are undoubtedly smart enough to put a few things together." Serafina says. She knows what she's guiding him into-concluding that they'll betray him, but that he could profit from the deal.
She waits.
His response is satisfactory, and almost entirely as predicted.
So guys. This is what happens when you write in shady nuclear-physics related things underneath Moscow. What, you thought Kiril-25 being built from future knowledge was going to be a one-off sentence?
Vote Time:
[ ] (0.6x) Investigate EXORDIUM. Remember the last thing related to 'messages from important Technocrats' you looked into, that being Rose's history? How suspicious that the
exact same thing happened. How... very... suspicious. Of course, this also sounds incredibly dangerous.
[ ] (1.2x) You want to understand what happened in Moscow first. And now you can time your 'investigation' to ensure that the hemophages are busy dealing with the fact that Spetsnaz are firing thermobaric rockets into an opera house. Choose one or both of the options below (note that choosing both requires you to split your team)
[ ] Let's go find some of those Baali the Tsar gave you hints about, and then beat them until stuffing vital information falls out.
[ ] How about we actually just stop pussyfooting around and look into the museum? The power armor even almost works!
[ ] (1.3x) Or maybe we could incite him to stab some of those Baali in the back with the assumption that he can do that, skip town while the RDs are busy murdering all the hemophages, and then come back with all the people he backstabbed, and all their allies, dead due to fatal religion poisoning.
[ ] (-0.5x) While he's doing that, and while the Chorus is blowing everything up, we can nab the Prince and interrogate him until answers come out.
[ ] (2.0x) Hey this Panopticon group actually seems pretty good and we should totally join them. What? Memetic hazards giving you bad judgment you say?
However could that happen?
[ ] Write-In.
