Yinzheng III: The Living and the Lost
Ruby eyes track a dark figure as he makes his way down the mountain. Their owner huffs in frustration. The mystery pilot has very been evasive in his answers, and that's only made Yinzheng more curious. His arrival here is
strange, and not just because she'd heard nothing about a new pilot. It's bizarre because of how unnecessary it is. Clarent fills the role of 'heavily augmented, talented combat pilot' perfectly well. Another is just wasteful.
So his purpose must be something beyond the obvious. His augmentations aren't very helpful, being stereotypical, if very advanced, examples of Iteration X pilot enhancement procedures. His mannerisms, all shy politeness when he isn't dryly sarcastic, aren't much use either. So that leaves his personal history. Which he has been very diligent in avoiding, while not actually
saying anything like 'classified'.
Stranger and stranger. Still, she's not going to let him slip out it
that easily. So when he stops nearby, snow spraying up like an outstretched wing, Yinzheng makes some adjustments. A prouder arch to her spine, a challenging smirk and a predatory glint in her eyes. Nothing invented, just... accentuated. Let the Progenitors keep their pheromone packages and the Iterators their models and spreadsheets. The New World Order would always have them beat when it came to the arts.
"How about we make this a bit less boring?"
The mystery pilot freezes for a moment before turning to her, expression wary. "How so?" he asks.
"A race. First one to..." she makes a show of looking for a finish line, before pointing at a gnarled tree, chosen minutes before. "There."
"What's the prize?" he asks, voice suspicious and something else as well. Resigned?
"To be determined," replies Yinzheng primly.
The pilot shuffles a bit, swaying side-to-side on his skis. But it's not until Yinzheng lets herself look through his scarf and hat that she realizes he's
laughing. Quietly, sure, but laughing nonetheless.
He looks at her, and she's once again struck by how expressive his eyes are. They're less haunted now. More... nostalgic, maybe. "Fine. On your mark."
It's not a question, and Yinzheng begins the count. Three seconds later she's off, the mystery man close behind. Now that they're pouring on the speed, caution thrown to the wind, the trees whip by in an undifferentiated blur. The gnarled tree is fast approaching and Yinzheng grins, any discomfort with her new body drowned out by the rushing air. Behind her, the mystery pilot- what.
He's not behind her anymore. They're neck and neck. Yinzheng only spares a moment for shock as she notices the expression on the pilot's face, so unlike the polite stranger she'd spent the past while trying to drag answers from, all iron determination and bared teeth. He's good, she realizes. If the smooth movements he's displaying now carried over to piloting...
well. Pilots like that are rare, these days. Very rare.
Then she focuses, and the race, already pushing the limits of human endeavor, gets serious. The wind clawing at her skin and eyes would probably be
extremely painful for a normal human, some distant part of her brain notes. She ignores it. She ignores the racer beside her, all her worries, fears and questions. All she sees now is the tree.
Twenty meters. Ten. Two. One.
None. A crack echoes through the woods as her hand makes contact with, and then short work of, the gnarled finished line. Snow explodes in a massive plume as she stops, skids and then finally encounters another tree. She turns to face her compatriot, currently leaning on his own tree. He's covered in snow, and Yinzheng knows she must look much the same.
So she smirks at him, all confidence. The effect is rather ruined by the snow tumbling off her once immaculate suit, and he starts chuckling, which sets off his own miniature avalanche.
"What exactly did you want?" The young man says, after they manage to regain sufficient composure to try to figure out who won that challenge. "I don't suppose it was just for fun, was it? Black suits never do."
"Is there anything wrong with just doing it for fun? Or anything odd about it?"
"I suppose not." He concedes. "But you don't strike me as the fun-loving Bond Girl type." He looks her up and down. "Not with augmentations like that. Seems you take your job very, very seriously."
"I do." Yinzheng admits. "That still doesn't mean I can't have fun some of the time." Even if this excursion was, yes, not entirely for fun. "If you need to keep asking, I'm undergoing physical therapy to get used to these augmentations."
"So. Not voluntary." The young man responds. "My condolences. That must have been rough."
"Not voluntary, no. Nevertheless, they feel good." She says, trying to open a rapport. "Surprisingly good." That, after all, is true. It gives her a whole host of capabilities, as long as she remembers how necessary it is to manage them. "What about you?"
"Same. Just trying to get some of my old skills back. Getting back into peak fighting form is a lot harder than it felt the first time around. Is that normal?"
"I suppose it's because before, every day was just an improvement on your best, while now you know what your best is and it's a long way from where you are." Yinzheng muses. "If we're both trying to recover, perhaps we can help each other..." she thinks.
"We could." He agrees. "I'm Sanjeet Langara. I'd love to help you with your recovery. For the Union."
There's something odd about how he says it, a little bit of misplaced anger there-but Yinzheng shelves it. It's probably just her mistake.
***
Yinzheng circles her challenger in the ring, her heart racing. Well, for her new body, which means it's barely beating once every three seconds. She isn't even sweating, while sweat is beading all across his dark skin and dripping in rivers down his face. It's still exhilarating having been given a chance to go... not all-out, but to ease the limiters up a little more. She remembers the pedagogical brain imprints, the neutral voice which talks to her about the equipment. Sometimes she thinks the voice resembles that of the faceless man in her dreams. The imprints are probably the reason she's getting memory bleed. The strange dreams, too. Those are a known side effect.
"The Avatar Slaying Enhancement is mostly made of extradimensional protomatter, cloned and bred from an EDE hybrid. Much like the DSS, this tissue has enormous strength-weight ratios, orders of magnitude higher than human tissue at peak, requiring a heavily reinforced skeletal base created from artificial metamaterial to anchor. In practical terms, the failure of the power supply or structural systems will happen far earlier than the protomatter capacity is reached. Unlike a conventional cyborg, the implants in the ASE are not intended to improve the body's function, but rather to moderate it so that it the quite literally godlike power available to the enhancile is usable without excessive collateral damage effects to the user and the surrounding environment."
She pays for the distraction of the imprints by jerking back and slamming into the edge of the ring when Sanjeet punches her in the face. With boosted musculature, that blow would have knocked out a heavyweight prizefighter. With her skull reinforced by nearly indestructable composites and her brain buffered by inertial dampeners, all it does is moderately annoy her. "You're not supposed to score cheap shots when someone's distracted."
"You've been cheating too." Sanjeet responds. "You never even insinuated that you're in a full-up combat body. Anyways, you aren't even hurt, and it's not like you'd get a chance to stop and think in a serious fight. You never do. You always have to improvise, because you don't know what the enemy will do-or what your allies will."
"You didn't ask about what my upgrades were, and this isn't a serious fight." Yinzheng retorts. She wonders about that statement-as far as she knows, Pilot Langara has fought all of once, in a single combat sortie which also led to his recent retrieval from a hostile subdimension. Those records are highly classified and there's no reason to lie on them, which makes his statements odd. They sound like something a veteran Operative might say, not a wet-behind-the-ears flight lieutenant who never had any sort of command role outside of mindless drones. She responds with a series of quick jabs, which Sanjeet tries and fails to block. He's not as good as she is in hand to hand. Basic training for confidence and discipline, not an actual killing art like the Operatives teach it.
The young man listens to the lecturer carefully as he describes a multitude of killing blows that can be used from behind a hostile, with assistance from an old-style projector. "There will be situations where even the most covert weapons risk discovery. There will be situations where you are disarmed, or at a disadvantage. Only a fool of an Operative will trust their life to a weapon. The skilled Operative understands that everything of his can be used as a weapon."
This time, the memory bleed is narrow, less overwhelming. She doesn't lose her focus. "Give up yet?" She asks.
"Sure, but remember I'd have won in the rematch." He grins, telling her that he doesn't mean any of it.
Yinzheng smiles. "Of course you would have."
***
She spends a few days like this, working with the oh-so-similar newcomer as both of them challenge each other. He's a quick learner and sharp, but of course the vast majority of Technocrats are. He's interested in everything Yinzheng does as physical therapy enough, and she's unused to her body enough, that it means that they can both participate. Yinzheng suspects, and is slightly flattered, that he's attracted to her and is using it as an excuse. Just a little, of course. Which is useful. It means he's likely to open up to her. And there's something intriguing as to why Panopticon needs a dead Iterator pilot when they already have Ling Clarent. A mystery she wants to understand. Why is he here-especially since he's been brought back after a year.
Today they've finally mastered the art of playing the piano at a level sufficient for a professional musician. It's much easier when neither party is a baseline human and can make up via raw reaction speed and precision what a human needs years of training to do. She pretends not to notice how his hands linger a little too long on hers and how he sits closer than strictly necessary. It's in the happy afterglow of that accomplishment that he drops the bombshell of the question.
"I heard that we're working under Jamelia Belltower." Sanjeet says quietly.
Yinzheng nods. This base is hers, now, after all those inconveniences in Los Angeles.
"I was doing some research about her and her subordinates." the young man continues. "Do you know what happened to Henriette? Henriette Langley? She was working with Director Belltower just a half-year ago."
"Henriette Langley... is no longer with us." Yinzheng says. She says it because it's the truth. She knows what happened there. It's not something she wants to share, especially if there was a friendship or something more.
"I know." Sanjeet says. "I was told what happened to her. Killed by an EDE and replaced." He sounds uncharacteristically angry. "I just want you to tell me what you know about her."
"I don't know much. We never really met." Yinzheng says. "She seemed like a nice person when I met her. A bit high-strung, but that might have just been because of her situation." Knowing how much of her augmentation she's lost, if Sanjeet is an example of how she was modified before-it would be very easy to overcompensate.
"Anything else you can tell me? I know your security clearance is higher than mine." Sanjeet says. "Because I can't even access anything in your bio past early 2015."
"That might be because that's all need-to-know." Yinzheng retorts mildly. But it's true. Her security clearance has risen at roughly the same meteoric rate as her career prospects have. She's been considering taking a JB name already-she could ask for almost any one and probably get it, what with who she's killed. But maybe not yet. She can still be Yinzheng Li for a while longer."
"What's in a name?" The white-suited faceless man asks. "A trite question ever since Shakespeare brought it up in a foolish romantic tragedy, but still a valid one. Names are a way of proclaiming our individuality, our existence, to the cosmos. They are a way of forging meaning from chaos. Do you know why the New World Order requests its recruits change their names to a J.B.?"
Yinzheng shakes her head. "It has to do with cutting ties to our family, right? With society and the people who raised us? This way Reality Terrorists can't hunt down our families."
"All of that is true." The man says. "But that is not the entire meaning of the ritual. It is a protection of sorts for your family and your old life. But there is also something more to the sacrifice which taking a JB name means. Do you think you will be ready for that sacrifice? And you must understand-a JB name is no award, even if we act like it. It means that you have lost something, whether it's ignorance or peace or innocence, to protect the greater whole. You have given up part of your own existence to safeguard others. Are you ready?"
Yinzheng doesn't answer.
"When you are ready, you will know."
That time, the hallucination merely took a fraction of a second. Better integration, she thinks. It's probably just a side effect of augmentation. She's heard of Progenitor and Iterator cyborgs who could be incredibly... flaky when they weren't in combat. She hopes it'll get better for her, but it's not as if she's senile or anything, just... she sometimes remembers things that never happened. "But really, there's only the clinical details. Henriette became a hero in Moscow, which lead the MUSCOVITE entity to hold a permanent grudge against her. It created a doppleganger and eliminated her-given the capabilities of its bodies, this would have been trivial. You must remember that the Void Engineers," and Sanjeet looks visibly angry when that name comes up, "stripped her of most of the augmentations which would have let her survive such an ambush." Yinzheng lets Sanjeet calm down before finishing her story. "The doppleganger probably misled the rest of the construct into space via trickery or other means-which means most of Director Belltower's former staff may have been subverted. This is, of course, not something you can repeat to everyone." She's cleared to tell anyone she thinks needs to know that much of the story, and she thinks he needs to know. "I'm sorry. For what it's worth... she was a hero. She saved the world. Saved us all."
Sanjeet nods slowly, eyes full of sadness and more than a little bit of rage. "And she died for it. Damn it." He says. "I thought I was going to die-I thought I did die to save her, back in 2014. And then she dies on Earth before I can meet her again. Replaced by some sort of alien doll." He slams his hands onto the piano, creating an ear-splitting shriek. "Fuck my life." That's something that worries her about this new Sanjeet. He's moodier than his original psych profiles suggested, prone to fits of anger, odd ones given his history. Fits of irrational anger against Reality Deviants, against the Void Engineers, against the Technocracy. It means that Yinzheng is spending time trying to keep him stable. It's not an official mission, but if he's going to be working with Panopticon, they need him stable enough. There is no room for random violence in the Technocracy. Actions of cruelty or spite may sometimes be necessary, but should only be engaged in to prevent greater harm, to as small a degree as possible. Restraint is key. And so she has become his restraint over these days. She's told him kind words when he's become frustrated with physical therapy or endless tests, complimented his efforts when he was willing to give up, been patient with him when he refused to be patient with himself.
Which, she realizes, is probably giving him a belief that she's attracted to him. Well, yes, but only physically. And now that her mind is attached to an alien god-machine which is merely shaped to be an athletic young woman and a lot of her biological reactions are emulated via Iteration X software, that could be fixed in a single heartbeat. She doesn't, because it's useful to reciprocate his attraction in some limited way. And it makes her feel almost bad that she's not being fully honest with him. Almost.
But in the end, it's for the good of the Union. And maybe if he gets some real closure, when he recovers, he'll feel the same way. He'll understand that this was just... projection. Yinzheng holds his hand until he calms down, a process which takes a while. At the very least he doesn't try to trash the room while he's at it-and it's designed to resist accidents from clumsy combat cyborgs.
He's calmed down when Yinzheng's phone buzzes with new mission orders. She's set it to play a bit from a popular Mandopop song when that happens, which makes Sanjeet laugh a little. "Seriously?" Sanjeet says. "That song?"
"Is there a problem?" Yinzheng says primly.
"No, I just expected something from Mission Impossible or the Bond movies or the Bourne ones I guess." Sanjeet says. "For a shady emotionless cyborg superspy you're a rather normal person."
"You're not supposed to advertise that openly." Yinzheng says properly. "And besides, it makes people underestimate me."
"Is that an actual reason or is that an excuse?" Sanjeet asks.
"Both." Yinzheng says. She gets up to look at her phone. Her new mission is... interesting. Perhaps not exactly what she wanted to do, but nonetheless it's something she can handle. She could have handled it easily without the margin of safety her augmentation provides. With it, it should be fairly trivial.
So all in all, we're hitting the closing of Yinzheng Interlude. The very important revelation has been revealed, the implications of which should be very very dangerous to you. There is also one more thing which is important, and thus it goes up to a vote. If you had been more in-depth in the second write-in, I'd probably have provided more Sanjeet background (or rather, more fluff), but since I got basically a handful of perfunctory answers, I just decided to fast forward. Of course, gay piano was required.
Anyways. One last Yinzheng vote. The most important Yinzheng vote. Then I'll give you a look at what Donald and Rose have begged IBM to give them and their initial update!
The Message:
So what exactly was Yinzheng assigned to?
[ ] "We have spotted DIDO in Europe. You are to assist Iterator Villaret in finding and eliminating the threat."
[ ] "The crashing of the Spy's Demise has led to certain... inconveniences for the Union. You are to eliminate certain targets because they may possess compromising knowledge."
[ ] "Doctor Leon wishes that you assist him in security and oversight of a project. You will be going to Tokyo to provide protection and assist in containing any breaches."
[ ] "Our plans in Los Angeles require additional attention to ensure that they are not disrupted. You will protect Dr. Rosario and Financier Sykes from any potential kill-and-replace attempts or other hostile activity."
[ ] "Continue current operations. We need Pilot Langara stable and combat-capable."
