JB XCVIII: Burned Bridges
The LX-5 drives an erratic loop through the outer boroughs of New York. Sitting in the back in an immaculate suit, Jamelia reads the files they got from Hirsch's computer again and waits for her superiors in the New World Order to get back to her.
"Senior Operative Belltower," Bastion's immaculately coiffed secretary says, the set of his jacket suggesting that he's also a bodyguard. "Professor Bastion has made fifteen minutes for you. Preparing for secure link-up."
"Thank you very much," she says, checking that the lights are still all green on all her anti-snooping devices and that Donald hasn't warned her of a breach of the measures she told him to put in place. She takes the chance to put her phone on silent.
The q-link connects, and the head of the head of the NWO appears on the viewscreen. The window behind him shows the London Geofront, which means that it's almost certainly lies and he's somewhere else entirely.
"Belltower," Professor Bastion says curtly. "I hope this isn't a social call."
"Don't worry, sir, it isn't," Jamelia says smoothly. "Following my previous mission, I have been following up on other potentially usable and forgotten assets which might be able to be brought back into action, specifically to aid the Tyrants and more generally for the use of the Order. I have been obscuring this under the cover of trying to investigate what the lupine shapeshifters were planning at Hereford. I believe I have found another one."
Bastion shifts in his seat. "Explain," he says. "Who and what?"
Jamelia taps the screen in front of her, and her presentation starts to display on one of his monitors. "Developmental Neogenics Amalgated, an American biomedical research company," she begins, "and Dr Hirsch, officially still on the books as a Progenitor, chief scientist at DNA and
former chief scientist on Project White Tower. Noted for dual specializations in the biological and dimensional sciences - hence why I ended up running into his dossier while looking for an expert on the actions of the lupine shapeshifters."
"Valid," Bastion says. "Continue."
"The agent appears to have been retired - rather, taken voluntary retirement given that as far as I can tell, he has been blanked on Union information. However, he remains potentially useful. He is still actively manufacturing White Tower units. I have visual confirmation that White Tower units are in operation in their New York headquarters, and there is circumstantial evidence suggesting that they offer the services of the units to... undesirables."
"Hmm." Bastion's noise is precise. "White Tower? I recall the name... ah, yes, the Progenitor reclaimed postmortem agent project."
"Precisely, sir," Jamelia assures him. "A rival to the HITMark V in the 70s and early 80s, providing cheaper, more flexible but less resilient combat units. Phased out after the 1984 model of Mark Five resolved the initiative problems and many of the breakdown issues."
Bastion gives her a knowing look. "As I seem to recall, White Tower saw rather more use in backwaters. There were some operating in Tehran. Part of that HELMETSHRIKE outfit you later joined."
"I also seem to recall that," Jamelia says, not smiling. Yes, she certainly seems to recall that. But she can't trust her memories, can she? "Hirsch was in HELMETSHRIKE Squadron 6. Not my squadron, but White Tower units were one of our main sources of heavy elements." She clears her throat. "This would explain how DNA appears to be able to capture and carry out active research on lupine shapeshifters. I carried out a Digital Web intrusion on his airgapped secure personal computer with the aid of Iteration X members, and recovered the following data," she says, transmitting the raw data and her summary of it.
"From the evidence," Jamelia says, "I would hazard that he took retirement and White Tower was mothballed. In the post-1999 chaos, the existence of the mothballed operation was entirely forgotten, and it was lost into the military-industrial complex, without direct Union oversight."
Bastion flicks his eyes over it. Jamelia doesn't have any doubt that her superior is reading every single word. "Interesting," he says. "A good find, Belltower. And I notice that you have already maneuvered into a position where the Syndicate can attempt a takeover. Now, why did you feel it necessary to inform me of this in particular?"
"May I be blunt, sir?" she asks.
"I would rather you get to the point," he says.
She smiles at her boss' joke. "Thank you, sir. Yes. If the standard protocols for regaining control of lost assets were followed and it handled as a standard Syndicate buyout, the Progenitors would certainly attempt to assert first claim upon DNA. It might be better to have Q-Division handle this. Quite apart from the fact that White Tower would be a useful project to cross-apply to our own MIB enhancement programs, I believe it would be politically inadvisable to allow the Progenitors and Professor Li to have primary access to this asset."
Professor Bastion's eyebrows flute upwards. "Oh?" he says mildly. "I cannot see what would be so inadvisable about letting the Progenitors handle the reintegration of such a Union offshoot."
Jamelia picks her words with extreme caution. This is a minefield, and both she and him know it. "I do not doubt their technical capacity to make use of the research and reintegrate the group," she says. "I merely have certain doubts over the use they would make of it - and from both directions. The Union is suffering wide-enough scarcities that optimum use of resources is advisable. The Progenitors have had plenty of chance to revive White Tower, and have not done so - Professor Li favors combat constructs who can have their psychology built from scratch, while the very best White Tower units fully integrated the psychology and personal ethics of their source material."
"Hmm. So you are saying that White Tower units are more human?" Bastion says neutrally, making an note.
"Yes, sir, in certain ways at least. And from the other direction, the current dominant ideological praxis in the Progenitors is non-conducive to expediency and pragmatism, which is fine and even admirable." She pauses. "In moderation."
"Well, we are all fans of moderation, but it might be argued that moral certainty has its place," the man says, making another note.
"Oh, indeed, indeed," Jamelia agrees. She does quite enjoy her conversations with Bastion. They're a challenge. "It is merely that moral certainty might be better applied to the clear and present danger of the Camarilla and Pentex. As the old saying goes, the enemy of my enemy..."
"... dies next," Bastion completes for her. "Or were you going for 'is my friend'? I am
so sorry for interrupting."
"Considering the current goals of the Syndicate leadership with regards to the moderate wing of shapeshifter society," she observes, "the latter might be preferable. Though I would not complain about the former. Regardless, it has certainly been observed that the moral certainty of the current leadership of the Progenitors is so bright that it is clear for all to see."
Blindingly bright, in fact. She doesn't even need to say it.
"Well, those points are certainly something to think about, Belltower," he says. "Was there anything else?"
"Yes, sir." She pauses. "If we do not plan to bring DNA back into the fold, whether under Q-Division, the Progenitors, or even feeding them to the Void Engineers to sate their endless requests for assets, I would advise that plans for its neutralisation be considered," she says clinically. "They are willing to consider a takeover bid from someone apparently unconnected to the Union. That means that the company is at risk of being bought out by groups hostile to us. I believe it would be... inadvisable to let either Pentex or the Camarilla get their hands on White Tower, and since DNA appears to be renting out the services of White Tower units, we cannot guarantee that they will not discover the existence of the programme."
Bastion nods. "We wouldn't want that," he says. "I'm not committing to any specific path."
"I was merely presenting you with certain options," she says, folding her hands on her lap.
"However," he says, "if some of our economists with the Ivory Tower were to meet with Financier Sykes and perhaps exchange some information, would he be willing to find a slot where he would be free?"
Jamelia smiles. "I'm sure he'll make time in his diary," she says.
"Excellent," Bastion says. "Good work, Belltower." His lips twitch, as if he's about to say something else, but he clearly changes his mind. "Inform me if you find any other potential assets which might have political complications if acquired conventionally. I detest unexpected messes."
"I understand, sir," she says. His meaning is quite clear. It's a warning, just as much as it's advice.
"Bastion out."
Jamelia sits back, and sighs, pouring herself a glass of water. She takes a sip. No guarantees, but he'll at least take it into consideration. Donald will likely wind up preoccupied for a while, though. The Ivory Tower's economists are rather more cautious than Syndicate ones, and more conservative. She suspects he can sell them on it - and no doubt make himself a handy commission or come out with a valuable non-voting share - but she suspects it will be a matter of weeks for the whole arrangement rather than days.
Which gives her time to shore up her cover story. She'll look at other potentially 'forgotten' assets, like Cybersolutions, like groups which might have disappeared in the chaos following the Virtual Adept defection-assets she can make use of, possibly. Assets that she needs to either use herself, or if necessary, deny to the enemy.
Because if they weren't in the Union proper-how would they know that Control disappeared? How would they know that the orders they were getting were not legitimate? Maybe they'd be bitter about their abandonment-but in the end, would bitterness overcome instinctual trust and conditioning? She doubts it.
*********************************************************************************************************************
Jamelia's not surprised that Cybersolutions does most of its work at a research campus near Massachusetts. From what she's heard, the US Army is one of its largest clients, and their research campus is nicely close to Natick, home of the Army Soldier Systems Center. Which officially does not run any sort of programs involving augmented combatants.
Officially. Everyone at high levels is aware of the cutting-edge technologies available to classified black operations units, technology that is often useful in allowing governments to fight Reality Deviants under the guise of 'organized crime' or 'terrorism.'
The research campus looks like just about any other, although there's a outdoor jogging track that she sees patients on. She has no doubts that these patients are the PR-friendly face of Cybersolutions, the "letting blind people see and crippled people walk" part, the components that although helpful are not where the actual, serious Cybersolutions technological advancements are represented in. If you can mate a myomer-powered cyberlimb strong enough to shatter steel to a human, reinforcing their skeleton with supertensile plastic lacing and retroviral boosts so they don't break something whenever they use that power, and interfacing it to a human mind to the point where their sense of touch is completely unaltered, merely fixing someone up so that they can perform to their previous ability is trivial.
At Jamelia's side is Kessler, dressed in loose-fitting clothes to conceal a small arsenal of weapons. In the event that Pentex or some other hostile power has taken over Cybersolutions, she knows that he can take out Cybersolutions combatants with little difficulty, and it never hurts to bring some muscle. "Looks like a lot of augs are here." He says, scanning the perimeter. "Seems like the kind of technology I'm familiar with. This is more like what the Sleepers
should have."
Jamelia mentally corrects that to "generations out of date," as Iteration X has left Cybersolutions behind a long time ago. But certainly there's something in her sympathetic about ruined people being made whole. Isn't that what she was given? And so many others in the Union. Damaged people being made whole enough to be functional in a war of ideas. Sheer self-interest, but that didn't change that she had benefited from something very similar, just in mind rather than body.
Or did she, that nagging voice keeps asking her. Is she really the same person? Now's not her time for introspection, though, as she enters the main building of the research campus, with a receptionist, several elevators leading to various labs, and a waiting room for people on tours, new hires, and people awaiting prosthetic integration.
The receptionist is handsome, polite, and very, very synthetic. It's the subtle details that give him away-how he doesn't seem at all uncomfortable, how his expressions take subtly longer to form than human ones, how he doesn't ever seem to be even slightly frustrated by the visitors asking stupid questions-heartrate and respiration staying constant throughout-Jamelia suspects a HITMark, probably there in case someone disagrees with their agenda. It's not uncommon-Reality Deviants have attacked CyberSolutions recently, and fairly often. Shapeshifters or superstitionists, and other stranger things.
She's here as an interested applicant straight out of medical school. Her medical skills are more practical than theoretical-in the wilderness of Africa or Asia or South America there were very rarely the tools even Sleeper doctors in those days could make use of-just what she could carry and whatever she could improvise from the environment. Nevertheless, it has enough grounding that she can fake it. Just standard recontact protocols. An innocent visit.
"Miss Salma. Please go to meeting room 502 and wait for your tour guide." the receptionist says.
Jamelia nods, takes the elevator up to the 5th floor, Kessler waiting in the lobby. She's sure the shock trooper could shoot his way through all of CyberSolutions's security. She's also sure that doing so is a terrible idea, and she won't force anything unless it's absolutely necessary.
She doesn't expect Catherine Dyne to be there waiting for her, with an annoyed expression on her face. She's older than Jamelia remembers. The old Dyne looked like a HITMark, a cold porcelain beauty whose features concealed militarized cyberware. Now she's more human. Her age isn't quite visible-she could be anywhere from her late 20s to mid-30s, but she's definitely not been under a full anagathics regimen. Probably homemade, Jamelia thinks. She looks like she's out of favor-but her combat augmentations are most definitely
not out of maintenance, even if they are outdated. "Jazmin.
So nice to see you again. After everything you've done, you'd think they'd have sent someone else." Her voice is bitterly sarcastic. "Come to laugh at me after you managed to dodge your little mistake but kept all of us in the blast?"
"No-" Jamelia starts. She suspected that they never got along. Their contacts were... professional from what she can remember, but nothing more than that. There was always this tension from the few memories she has, that they mutually agreed to be allies on the battlefield but wanted nothing to do with the other whenever possible. She wonders if they had just started off on the wrong foot, or if there was some deeper impetus.
"Because you have some nerve walking up to me after your little stunt in the 80s like nothing's happened. After you fucked us all."
What can she say? How can she tell Dyne that she's not the same person? How can she say that she legitimately doesn't remember the catalyst of this all? That she doesn't remember anything about Vigilance and she
needs to know because there's something out there which will take her apart if she doesn't know where she's vulnerable? She only remembers fragments. Bits and pieces, things that are partially there. She doesn't even know
why she still has these memories. She recalls asking for them to be completely erased. Death of the self. A new start.
"Nicaragua was
your fault, and somehow you're the only one in the unit to make it out scott-free after
you fucked up for a
second time. No wait, even better than scott-free. Everyone else went into the reject bin, but you? You got a second chance, and clearly you made pretty good use of it, Little Miss Self-Righteous. Some of us have been mothballed for decades, waiting to be called back. Some of us had promising careers and futures until
you ruined them because of your own personal goddamn failings. Some of us have had nothing to do but busywork that we normally delegate to Damien washouts and unwitting dupes for the last 30 years because they can't be trusted. Because one member of the unit went Nephandic, and another went rogue."
Why did she get to keep her memories? Jamelia thinks. Ah yes. She remembers seeing Dyne's dossier in Iran. She was deployed there with the Iteration X backup strike teams. One of those Biomechanics who straddled the line between scientist and soldier, an all-too-common type of person in Iteration X. Multiple neural firewalls-she'd be safe from coercion, and she probably has some way of blanking sensitive information if captured anyways. Jamelia wonders if she'd have ended up the same way if she didn't choose to forget and they managed to piece Jazmin together despite that. A bitter old woman, sidelined, never quite trusted.
Dyne is going to take a bit of work. Someone who had the mental flexibility to end up in Vigilance despite being in Iteration X-she's not your usual Iterator. She'll be willing to second-guess, to be passive-aggressive, to do outright sabotage, and Jamelia suspects Dyne would be more than willing to rat her out if it might put her back into the Union's good graces. Unfortunate, seeing that the enemy Jamelia is fighting can promise her much.
And if she makes waves-they might realize Dyne exists and that Cybersolutions could be useful. And if that happens-it might just be better to cut that line of questioning short right now. After Moscow, she definitely has enough goodwill to pull this off, if she does it right and leaves the right kind of evidence around.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How To Deal With Dyne:
[ ] (0.6x) Tell her the truth about your memory gap and let her make a biased rant. (Requires suppressing
Chameleon)
[ ] (0.8x) Be firm but gentle about how Jazmin died the death of personality after INVISIBLE BEAR (Requires suppressing
Chameleon)
[ ] Bluff her.
[ ] Just walk away.
[ ] She's dangerous. Fortunately you have Kessler here, and his augmentations are in much better shape than hers.
[ ] Write-In
