Update CC: Making the Future
JB CC: Making the Future

"I surrender," are the first words out of Donald's lips. "There's absolutely no need for violence."

But there's a nagging sense of deja vu filling him. A sense that everything is clicking together, that something that he's known this has been coming for a long time.

That pain-filled madness vision in the Spy's Demise, where his brain filled in images in a disassociated state - where his Genius was unrestrained by active consciousness. He's heard that during such times the human mind can perform terrible, transcendental feats of pattern matching and association. Both the Traditions and the Technocracy agree about this, though Traditionalists prefer terms like 'visions of the future' and 'messages from your Avatar'.

And what had happened there? Why, a pale woman with white hair despite her youth and Chinese features had found him. And here comes a pale woman with white hair despite her youth and Chinese features. It means something. Ever since he left the Demise he's been feeling that things are, inevitably, crawling towards the endgame. And that same oppressive weight of inevitability is pressing down on him so hard it feels like he can barely breathe and his heart is clenched in his chest like a hand is wrapped around it, crushing it. Hmm. Though that might just be the panic. Probably just the panic.

Now he'll be keeping his eyes open for the perky Damage Control operative who'll be coming for him. He has the sneaking suspicion it might be 'A'... but he doesn't want to make too many assumptions. His brain might have put the pieces together, but his conscious mind doesn't know how to make them all fit. Not yet.

But they will. Because he has the pieces. He's sure of it. He just needs to put them together - and find the corners and the edges of the puzzle. This way, he suspects, will be what he needs. Because if his vision holds true, the white-haired woman is someone he can use. If only he knows the right things to say. If only he can work out where to slip in the verbal knife.

Yes, he decides. It's nearly the endgame. And sometimes you have to sacrifice a bishop.

He just hopes he'll get his threesome out of it.

"I'll come with you, Operative Li," he says. "Though there's really no need to take the clone. It's expendable."

"The clone?"

"The jig's up," Donald tells Rose. "They'll notice as soon as they do a more detailed check." Tells 'Rose', really, as the cheap Progenitor peels away the thin layer of Rose's cells. "She's not here - but I am. So. What do you want to talk about?"

Somewhere far too close to his spine Donald hears the click of a slide being drawn back. It's not a necessary action with a modern Union handgun, but he strongly suspects that they'll probably keep that feature when everyone is using railguns. It's just so damn intimidating to hear from somewhere behind your right ear. He's very glad he went to the bathroom at the last station, because if he hadn't he's pretty sure his trousers would be considerably warmer in the Tokyo chill.

From what he can see of the body language of the hostiles, they're busy talking to each other by implanted comms. If he had to bet anything about what they were saying, it would probably be along the lines of 'What the hell?' and 'How did we miss that this wasn't Ashford?' and 'Crap crap crap there's an EXEMPLAR III that isn't where we thought she was, is she right behind us?'. From the whine of jammers that flick on, he's guessing they just threw up all kinds of anti-tracking noise - and it's thick enough that he wouldn't be able to remote-pilot this body if, you know, he'd been able to arrange this to not actually be him.

Worse luck. Nope, he's here in the flesh. In the flesh in a Japanese station, hearing the announcer's voice chiming out apologizing for the next train being delayed. A train he might have tried to use to escape on.

"You didn't need to do that," Operative Li says. "Ms Ashford would have been entirely safe with us."

He spreads his hands, making sure to keep them visible and not do anything threatening. "A man has to make sure his basic precautions are taken."

"Basic precautions like walking out in public with only a false Ashford who couldn't fight off a large dog?"

"She probably could," Donald says, as her face clicks. The colors don't match, but he recognizes her. She was one of the people they'd considered hiring back after that initial incident in Hong Kong, back... oh, god, was it only a year ago? It felt like far longer. Busy year. He hopes she's not bitter about the whole 'I'm sorry, but John Kessler is much more useful than you and also has abs about as thick as your waist' thing.

Well, maybe it means something. After all, it feels meaningful. There are hundreds of Operatives who could have been sent to bring him in, but they picked one he knew who's suddenly become snow-pale and white-haired in the meantime. It just doesn't feel like a coincidence. Someone is trying to tell him something.

"Oh. Yinzheng Li, right? It's been awhile. You're looking pale. Have you not been getting enough sun?"

She doesn't tense up or even move threateningly. He'd been hoping that he'd get some kind of response from her, but she's too much an Operative to let a minor jibe get to her. Well, too much a certain kind of Operative. Donald's had a certain success bantering with other Operatives in the past, often in the bar. Less often with a gun pointed at him, though that did happen a few times when he was on the other side.

"I went on holiday to the Bahamas," she says conversationally. "It was nice there, on the beach."

Donald has to briefly consider whether that's a coded reference to some augmentation facility there, or whether she's just making small talk. "Well, it's good," he says, deciding to take it at face value. "Though I don't envy the factor-100 sun cream you have to use."

She actually smiles back. "It is a pain. Now, come on. We have a car, and," she looks meaningfully at the platform, "we're blocking people."

"It would be bad if someone made a fuss," he says artlessly.

"Very bad," she agrees. "Of course, no one would remember it." She nods at a pretty young woman in a fawn-colored coat who's walking by. "How are things?" she asks in Japanese.

"Fine," the woman replies in English. "You really should go with her, Mr Sykes. It'll be easier for everyone."

So, either that was a plant or everyone in the station is working for Panopticon. Joy. Donald sighs. "Well, I'm late for my business meeting," he says.

"Yes, you are. Don't worry. We'll get you to the meeting on time."

He's hustled out of the station and down to a waiting car. It's snowing again outside, light white flakes drifting down from the sky. A cold front has been moving in for the past few days and now it's hit in full, carrying cold air directly from the North Pole.

"Ah, one thing," Yinzheng Li says. "Give me your teleporter-watch."

"Oh, come on," Donald says self-effacingly. "Do you think I could afford a teleporter-watch on my salary?"

"Yes," Operative Li says. She gestures at one of her subordinates with a curt movement. "Take his watch."

"It was a joke," Donald grumbles, surrendering it. "Honestly, why do so many New World Order types get so tetchy about money-based jokes?"

Operative Li doesn't rise to the bait. She's good. "Also take his tie, his cufflinks, his phone and his novelty laser pen."

"Now you're just being cruel."

"Financier Sykes, I am aware of your orders from Q Division." Another one of her men swipes a hand-wand over him, and all the hair on the back of his neck stands on end from static electricity. His nail-sized reserve phone tucked into his socks suddenly feels incredibly hot.

"Ow."

"You shouldn't keep personal electronics next to your skin unless they're insulated against friers," Operative Li says with a certain degree of quiet smugness.

"Don't those things make you sterile?"

"Believe me, Financier Sykes, there are things you should be much more worried about right now." One of her men opens the door for her. "Please, get in."

There's not really much else he can do. Settling his jaw, Donald gets in, sitting next to a man. He immediately feels a prick in his thigh, and can't even get out a protest before he stiffens up like a plank and his vision dims.

***​

Well, Donald thinks to himself from within the darkness.

It is a convenient thing that as a former Ecstatic, he's rather more resilient to drugs than his body weight and his general health would say. And as a Syndic, of course, he's been keeping his resilience training up. Yes, resilience training. That was what he called his various habits when claiming some of the costs back as expenses.

Now. This feels like something like chloronepenthe, from the bodily paralysis and the way his vision is a dim blur. He can hear better than he can see right now, so that's something. But from how he can barely move his tongue, he's not going to be running.

Still, this is very much in line with standard protocol. Something like this is routine, to stop the abducted person from moving or remembering the route they were taken. Just a little prick, and then they wake up in the facility they're taken to with no memory of what happens in the intervening period.

And if he'd had gene splicing or cybernetic implants for improving how he coped with drugs, Operative Li would have known about that and could have had countermeasures against it. But when his tolerance for pharmaceuticals comes from extensive experimentation - well, if he ever sees Director Belltower again and isn't a brainwashed husk of who he is, he'll make sure to gloat at how useful his drug habit has been.

It means his enemies think he's slightly less capable than he really is. And that's a very good kind of enemy.

And that means he has to fucking well keep up the illusion and give them no clue whatsoever that he's awake, thinking clearly, and merely paralyzed and unable to focus his eyes.

So. Immediate priority for him is to keep track of the movements of the car. He can feel the acceleration, and that lets him build up a mental map of where they're going, even if they drive around in circles. And while he's doing that, he gets to listen to what they talk about. He's sincerely hoping that there'll be some convenient expository section where Operative Li explains exactly what she's up to and why she's taken him, who she's working for, and where the self-destruct button to her secret base is, but - alas. The power of optimism has its limits.

"This is Operative Li to VICTOR CENTRA. Primary is secure. Secondary is still at large. Tertiary target unseen. Should I divert forces to capture the secondary?"

Donald can't tell who she's talking to. The voice is modulated and mechanical. "Proceed as planned to primary facility. The loss of the secondary is not mission-critical. Any forces currently available to you would have no chance at succeeding at a capture of the secondary, especially if she has linked up with the tertiary, after all."

"Understood." She plugs in directions to the GPS-probably some sort of code, Donald thinks-he can't see it too clearly, but it's not a full-fledged set of directions. "Driver, follow the directions. They'll give you new ones as you get close enough."

"Yes, ma'am." They drive in circles-probably literally-for a while, probably to lose any tails and to obfuscate their trail. He tries to memorize every bump and turn and their speed, tries to figure out where they're going. Probably somewhere in the city. And he's wishing they'd talk about something useful. Outside of Operative Li's mysterious silence, her other men and women in black are talking about jobs, about North Korea, about families. About anything but what they're here for, about anything but current events. They sound human, at least. Their statements about family and work are too natural to be some false-memory template, he thinks. So they're probably MiB 2.0s. Enhanced humans. With how they're primarily talking in Japanese, he thinks they're mostly part of Japan's intelligence agency, the Public Security Intelligence Agency. They certainly seem to know each other well enough. He wonders if there's some reluctance there to take orders from some young Chinese upstart. Something he might be able to exploit. He listens to them until something new and interesting happens.

"Tertiary is approaching the decoy car." A woman says. She sounds calm, the same trying-too-hard calm voice Donald knows from a million horror movies involving military protagonists. "I repeat. Tertiary is approaching the decoy. Taking evasive action. Tertiary is on a motorcycle, approaching quickly. Permission to return fire?"

"Return fire. Attempt to disable her vehicle." Yinzheng says. "Your safety is paramount."

"Roger. Returning fire. Tertiary's vehicle disabled. Tertiary is-tertiary has hit the ground running, sir. Tertiary is catching up to us on foot. Tertiary has just vaulted a car, estimated ground speed one-twenty. Tertiary is-" there's a loud bang sound "-tertiary is on the roof. Tertiary is on the roof and attempting entry." There's a cracking of the windows and a handful of gunshots and the sound of combat and it's all Donald can do to pretend to stay still when he just wants to react when he hears the unmistakeable sounds of what men sound like when they face off with things far beyond men.

"We have lost the decoy vehicle." Operative Li says. "The tertiary target will be coming for us. It seems that we have underestimated her combat capability significantly. Load incendiaries or explosive rounds. The tertiary is likely a high-end Progenitor combat construct of some form and will be immune to small arms. Incendiary or explosive munitions will have moderately more effect."

So. Donald thinks. If Rose is the secondary, the tertiary has to be A. And "A" is apparently some kind of badass Damage Control killer T-1000, the kind who hulk out and beat shapeshifters to death with their own arms. She's probably running on fumes now-but maybe not. Something like that might still have enough power to wreck a couple of smug nu-woo types even after chasing down a car on foot.

"Decoy vehicle is approaching us." Donald listens to the sounds of evasive driving, gunshots, and waits for a rescue which will never come. "Decoy vehicle is approaching to melee range."

"I'll take care of this." Operative Li says, and he's glad that she seems very very suicidal. "Keep driving until I signal for pickup." So now all he has to deal with are the MiBs. Maybe he can actually make an escape. He is very, very disappointed, and leaves his escape plans half-formed, when the car stops and he hears Operative Li speak again. "Tertiary target disabled. Changing route and proceeding."

***
"You look like hell." Serafina says, when she picks up Alicia in a converted ambulance. Her clothes are in tatters and her skin is covered in the telltale pink of rapid-regeneration. They must have severed all of her limbs to slow her down-and apparently her head too. There's a bloodied iron bar there which she was probably impaled on at some point. One of her arms is limp, acting in a literally boneless fashion. It wriggles as she stands up. "What kind of combat mods do you have?" Serafina asks, disbelieving. "I'm not sure how you're still alive."

"The wonders of exotic biotech." Alicia says. "So I'm basically an undifferentiated bag of dynamically shifting biomass and everything." Well, this one of her is. The rest of hers are the few Serafina clones she's found. This one is useful, though. Those other clones might be stealthier, but this one can pass for human while doing some very useful tricks. Not that being able to turn her hands into monomolecular claws helped her much against that Panopticon agent and her biotech.

"I thought they discontinued that tech outside of a few prototypes and combat homonculi."

"They did." Alicia answers truthfully. "But it saved my life. That Panopticon operative, Li. I think she was there. In the church. They moved in similar ways. But she got upgrades." The nice thing about inhabiting a body which was basically 100% high-end Progenitor bio-nanotech is that even grievously wounded, they work at 100%. She doesn't have any inconvenient pains. Won't inconveniently drop dead before revealing what she knows. Or after. Sure, they're maintenance hogs if you leave them outside of sterile labs for long enough and it's been difficult stealing the precursor materials to keep one of these maintained, shifting Progenitor-made products from Izanagi in amounts which wouldn't get attention-but they're the next best thing to immortal. "Whatever she isn't nu-woo. Not even like what you might see in the Progenitors, outside of some really expensive pet projects."

"Oh?" Serafina asks, concerned.

"Whatever she's made out of. It's EDE stuff. Very strong. Very tough. Projects forcefields. Stronger than I am. At least as fast. She was fresh and I wasn't but even so, I didn't stand much of a chance. What exactly is Gregor playing at?" Alice asks. "If this is the kind of stuff he's deploying. If that's the kind of stuff Panopticon is deploying. What kind of tech is EXEMPLAR IV going to have? I'm worried, Sera."

"I am too, 'licia. I am too. But we have to be strong. We're the only ones who can fight him."

***
Donald feels the car stop, and then one of the MiB 2.0s shoulders him and carries him down into a basement. It's surprisingly well-lit for some sort of probable horrible torture room. This is it, he thinks. He's going to spill all his secrets, and then die, or something. At least it's probably too late for that to do any damage. If Henriette is right-and the way they've been acting has given him hope Henriette is right-Ragnarok Command is going to move on them and it won't matter that they know he knows.

And in a way, he's okay with this. He's sacrificed so many other people. Sacrificed so much. If this is how it ends... so be it. They place him into a chair, and inject him with the antidote to the paralytic. His vision clears, and he can see the room clearly. The MiBs leave, and now there's only Yinzheng. They haven't secured him, either. Which doesn't mean anything. Even though she's smaller and slimmer than he is by far, he is under no illusion that she couldn't tie him into a pretzel with one hand. And it's not like he has his emergency teleporter, either.

He looks around the room for any help. No luck. There's a shower-clear, of course. A small bed. A TV. A computer, probably monitored to hell and back. Lights. A small kitchenette. Far from being an interrogation room it looks more like a hotel room. Except the locks. The locks lock the wrong way. "So." Donald says. "What's it going to be? Waterboarding? Electrical clamps? Maybe pulling out my fingernails?" He's surprised when Yinzheng laughs.

"Not unless you like that sort of thing. For now, you can enjoy the hospitality." Yinzheng says. "Shin will be here soon. He'll know what to do with you."

"You assured me I wouldn't be harmed." Donald says. But he didn't rely on that assurance much in the first place. Otherwise he'd probably be unhappy.

"You won't. But my mission is merely to bring you to this location and ensure you do not attempt to escape. As long as you do not do so-things can be fairly comfortable. If you do, rest assured that although I would prefer to not hurt you, I might have to to restrain you." She shrugs. "I have read your file, and I think you're a smart man. So we won't have any problems there, right?"

"Of course not." Donald says. "I know when to behave." If he hadn't been aware of that scuffle with the tertiary-who he's almost certain is "A"-he might have tried a Hail Mary play here. But no. Not against someone who can fight something like that and win. He's not sure if she's been hurt at all from it, either. And that scares him, because the nu-woo wouldn't dress up a superweapon in a suit and call them an Operative.

"Who are you working for?" Donald asks.

"You can ask Agent Shin when he comes here. I can't answer that question for you." Yinzheng says, automatically, reflexively. Like she doesn't know herself.

"You don't know, do you?" Her silence is telling. She might not understand what she's working for. Or-she might be hoping he'll think that, and try to tell her what he knows, in an effort to convince her. He's going to have to guess, and guess quickly. Because otherwise-whoever this Shin guy is probably will not be very helpful.
***
Henriette is released to bad news. Rose has gotten into contact with them-but Donald hasn't, because Donald has been captured and he expected it. And apparently their contact in Damage Control tried to get him back but couldn't. She's worried sick. And angry.

"We need to find him." Rose says, finishing her explanation of what happened. She's managed to catch some of it-Donald had wired himself. An operative, an albino with white hair and red eyes, and several Men in Black had found him and taken him off. Then they took his equipment and jammed all communications. They don't know where he's gone. And Rose wants to find him. "We owe him for-for everything." Rose says. "And I want him to be safe." She finishes, more quietly.

Henriette thinks for a moment. Remembers how much Rose has sacrificed. How little Rose has. Thinks of the time she's spent in the Spy's Demise, going up against that thing. And she makes her decision in a heartbeat. "Yes. So where do we start?"​


I've had some good write-ins for the call to arms post, so I'll probably do that next time. But right now I do want to see what's going to happen with Donald because that's going to happen before the attack can be fully assembled, and that's pretty important.

The Plot, Donald! What does the plot mean?
So. Donald has a choice. Well, a few choices. He can...
[ ] Try to get Yinzheng to talk about what's going on and why he's here.
[ ] Try to convince her that she's on the wrong side.
[ ] Just wait silently for Agent Shin. Whoever he is.
[ ] Write-In.

An Ill-Advised Rescue...
Henriette and Rose are trying to find Donald. They can probably borrow some equipment and go looking. It won't be great equipment, but it's like, six MiB 2.0s. They'll be fine. What's their plan?
[ ] Go back to where he was captured and retrace his steps.
[ ] Try to find out if he's managed to send some kind of distress signal. Somehow.
[ ] Try to inquire into Technocratic safehouses and see if any of them are mysteriously not responding to queries or have too many people in them.
[ ] Write-In.
 
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Update CC.5: Surgery
JB CC.5: Surgery

They've set Alexander Cross up in a former sympathizer's office. The man clearly liked his wealth and taste-the liquor collection is excellent, as is the furniture. It's something he can technically appreciate-as a high-end construct with a lot of remits, he was 'born' with a lot of knowledge, including a very thorough grounding in aesthetics. Something about traditional educations in the classics, he recalls. But he's not here to admire his borrowed desk. He's here because he's coordinating a multinational operation.

Japan has its own Ethical Compliance unit-as do most geographic areas-and although they're proud and independent, as EC commands tend to be, they know when they're outmatched. EC is made up of small teams. Elite, generally augmented, and versatile. But very, very small. Gregor Leon's rogue elements are much more radical. They don't care whether or not they can survive outside of laboratory environments for more than a few days. They don't care about human elements. They can outfight EC-Japan, and they could outfight EC-Europe as well. Even if he could somehow get EC-China to drop all their Pentex-related investigations and care about their political rival-which he couldn't-bringing even them in wouldn't give him good odds.

So he's reliant here on requisitioning Damage Control assets. He's not sure how reliable all of them are-he's certain enough of them have sympathies that leaking a message to Leon is inevitable. That means he can rule out a lot of the really heavy units. He suspects MUSCOVITE intervention just like in Moscow-so he can rule out anything which can't second-guess commands. That makes his list very, very narrow. He's going to have to make a lot of calls.

***​

Halfway around the globe, a woman receives the first of Cross's calls. Like many Damage Control operatives, she looks somewhere between her twenties and thirties, fit and athletic, attractive but not unduly so, unlike most Progenitors. She, like many of the others her actual age of 50, are the earliest of the new breed of Damage Control agents. More SWAT than superhero. Their augments are a lot more utilitarian. Individualized EDE plasmids had fallen out of favor then for more reliable, more practical standardized mods. She frowns at the Ethical Compliance agent when she answers the call and his image shows on her screen.

"Superintendent Sorenson." Cross says. "I apologize for the call. However, circumstances-"

"I am aware of the circumstances." Superintendent Sorenson says. She looks a little annoyed. Maybe at the rush. Maybe at taking orders from a construct chrono-young enough to be her grandson. Maybe at taking orders from a construct, period. Maybe at how Fort Detrick has been one of the most prestigious Damage Control postings-one of the few places where a DC constable might be able to get some real influence in the Progenitor system-and she's forced to take orders from an Ethical Compliance agent with a tenth of her experience. "Nevertheless, this is a rather inconvenient request you're making. Two companies, in full gear? As well as any surplus heavy equipment Detrick has?"

"I understand this comes at a bad time." Cross says again. "But again, reliable evidence, which has already been forwarded, demonstrates that Gregor Leon has been consorting with xenobiological threats and engaging in restricted research without proper authorizations. Via authorization from Professor Li, General Starborn, and Director Ragland of EC-Command, I have been given full command responsibility for the task force with the consent of Senior Constable Matsuda of EC-Japan. As such, I am authorized to share the evidence and conclusions with you." He sends her the files, which she opens on a different screen, reading out the corner of her eye.

"You understand we have these assets for defensive purposes, not for waging a war against our own scientists, right?" Sorenson sighs. "Shouldn't you be using Japanese Damage Control assets?"

"We are. But there are problems with that." Cross admits. "I can't be assured of the loyalty of a significant number of their heavy assets. I can't be assured of the loyalty of their constructs either, if the evidence is accurate."

That gets her attention. The files she's seeing-the accusations, backed by EC-Central itself and endorsed by RAGCOM as well-cinch it. She might be annoyed at being ordered around by a construct, but she's still loyal to the Union. "All right." She concedes. "I'll get you your men and your gear." She opens another holographic window by thought, the desk's hidden projectors reacting to her mental command. "I have symbiont armors, LAVs, CBRN weaponry. I can't get you anything heavy, but I can find out what sympathizers I can activate. You're going to prefer naturals for this, right?" She says it with some level of self-satisfaction.

It hurts for Cross to admit it, but it's true. "Yes. Mass-produced constructs are a subversion risk."

"Of course. I understand." Sorenson says smugly. "I suppose that's the problem about programming rather than teaching, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't know." Cross says. "I suspect it has more to do with how the programming was done than the use of it." The AARs from Moscow are telling. Although mass-produced constructs were subverted in large numbers, their penetration into the cyborg population was rather lower, and the few bespoke constructs there had basically all resisted the siren call of MUSCOVITE subversion. "Thank you for your generous offer of support."

Even if it was for a political end and offered in anticipation of increased influence and prestige. Cross sighs. It might be up to them to prevent the end of the world, again, and people are playing politics.
***
Finding air support is harder. X-PROG-311s and their -B versions exist, but they're not particularly common, unlike ARCs. And RAGCOM has told him that he's basically on his own scrounging up heavy equipment past what they'd provide to their sympathizer forces. Iteration X might be a source of alternatives, but he's already using what markers he can with them to get enhanced vehicles for his conventional forces. He has to go construct-by construct for these. Make promises with an increasingly stretched budget of goodwill and favors. But he needs them.​

These orders are perfunctory. He sends out his request, with the command-level authorizations, and they respond to him. His estimates of available assets tick up as they do. There's a handful of hardened paramilitary types from the Pripyat containment team. He'll have to make sure they spare heavy equipment for them. Some units from various European constructs, bringing high-end gear and itching for a fight. Mundane equipment he can requisition via the Technocracy's contacts, black ops types who know just enough to keep their mouth shut and not to ask questions. He might not be able to use them for a frontal assault, but having legitimate military units to block streets and contain incidents is never useless. Combat homonculi from stations which have more firepower than they need. He's assembling a level of force that the Progenitors have never had to use since World War 2.

He knows he'll need all of it.
***​

In mythology, Orion was a giant who once threatened to kill every beast on earth in his hunts. The supersoldiers of Project ORION all think it's a fairly fitting legend for them. After all, they're giants who have pretty much killed everything on earth-and many things which haven't been. People tend to give them a wide berth. People who know what they're capable of tend to give them an even wider one. Their mental state is managed by personalized drug cocktails, ones intended to bring their aggression somewhere within reasonable bounds most of the time. In combat, they still have a tendency to get carried away. It tends to be the "take reckless risks" sort of carried away, at least. Out of combat, they tend to be... rowdy.

But what could you really expect from someone spliced up with the genetics of a EDE-hybrid superpredator, then spliced again with the genetics of a hereditary v-addict? Both shapeshifters and hereditary v-addicts weren't known for their self-control and tactical thinking. In fact, both of them tended to fly into rages at the drop of a hat. The success of ORION was not integrating these features into a human. It was finding methods-training, drugs, and physiological modification-to keep these killing machines controllable. Controllable enough that Cross thinks they can be useful. He needs pointmen, and when it comes to hard assaults in Progenitor-friendly environments, there's few better.

"Senior Constable Coffman." Cross says. "A pleasure to talk to you." The man he's talking to is a mountain of hard muscle, easily 220 centimeters high. Cross is aware that among ORION-upgrades, that size is considered small. The largest of them easily reaches 280cm tall, larger and more massive than a bear-shapeshifter's warform. He's worked with them in a few instances and found that yes, the biggest and strongest of them can match one of those in raw brute force. Unlike most Progenitors, the man he's talking to is unattractive-overly muscled, covered in hair-thin surgical scars. The places where the artificial organs were implanted, or the surgery was done to fuse Primium to their bones, or where their ribcage was modified into an armored shell and their abdomen covered in a double layer of armor-grade biopolymers while their skin was infused with ballistic arachnoweave. In a way, they're the prototypes to a lot of high-end Progenitor combatants. Cross is aware that a lot of his components were derivatives of ORION's design. He wonders if they're jealous about that.

"Senior Constable. A pleasure." He sounds quite personable, which belies how much of that mood is artificially managed via drugs and synthetic organs. "How is Japan treating you?"

"Fine. I'll get to the point because I understand you appreciate that. We need your assistance, in Japan, to assault a heavily fortified base. The expected enemies are likely to be dangerous in close quarters combat, and there will be barriers and other obstacles which you will be suited to counter." A bit of an understatement. ORIONs were strong, and when the adrenaline started pumping, they were even stronger. Far stronger than he is, certainly. There's a reason most of the time they didn't use any weapons besides fists and feet.

"I'm going to guess by your request you're attacking a construct. Probably Progenitor, otherwise EC wouldn't be in charge and I'd be hearing from either ODIN or a Damage Control unit." This is also why he wanted them. As aggressive as they are, they're not dumb muscle. They can work independently and adapt to circumstances just like any other DC operative, something he needs in this situation. Someone like Gregor Leon might underestimate them, because they're big thugs who eschew tools. Cross doesn't think it's a high probability, but it won't hurt. "This have something to do with the rumors of traitors in Moscow?"

"You'll be briefed on that when it comes." Cross says. "I can't tell you any specifics until you've reached us. I've arranged hypersonic transport for your team."

"How many of us?"

"As many as you can spare."

"Hell yeah." Coffman says. "Most of us are deployed somewhere else-but I'll get every single operational ORION I can spare if you can get the deployment authorization and transport. You know us. We're always itching for a good fight."

"Already done." Cross says. "I have blanket authorization from Command and EC-Central to requisition assets for your transport already. We'll have you moved by supersonic VTOL."

"Excellent." Coffman's grin is wide, authentic, and very, very malicious.


***
Constable Akita looks at the alert which has just come in on her smartphone and interrupted her lunch. She's annoyed at how the impending war with North Korea has been eating up her free time. Getting a few hours to go outside was a luxury, and now someone's cut that short. She sighs and goes to pay her bill. She hopes that it doesn't mean war is on. She doesn't care if the North Korean government falls-but she's well aware that a lot of people are going to die either way.

When she gets back to the construct, she's glad for the familiarization lessons. The Bobs have started breaking out the equipment they haven't used once-the military-grade equipment that the Progenitor leadership has started distributing more widely into the lower echelons of Damage Control, rather than just the tip-of-the-spear paramilitaries. She's familiar with it-they've been running through drills again-but she's never used it in anger. Japan isn't a dangerous flashpoint. She's fired shots from her standard sidearm once in her entire year with Damage Control, and that was a stickyfoam round. It's what most DC officers in Japan do. The kind of biowarfare threats in Japan of all places aren't that severe. Their targets generally are academics who need to be informed of the dangers of what they've developed and brought into the fold, rather than unstoppable killing machines. She's not even sure why they have this equipment here, as this isn't New York or Florida.

Her orders are to suit up and report to a staging area-and not in the standard Damage Control anti-specimen armor, but in full symbiont, with heavy weapons. She's not sure what's happening, but it doesn't sound good. She suspects it has something to do with North Korea. She's surprised when she learns the actual target.​

***​

He has more or less everything he needs. There's going to be two companies of ex-military DC sympathizers in heavy gear joining them. A few of them are exceptional citizens-more talented than the norm, more dangerous but inflexibly trained. Symbiont armor is good equipment, and the weapons they'll be coming in with will give even radical upgrades pause. He'll have 50 ORION units backing them up, and gunships-both modified masses-built military gear and X-311s-to use.

And so he's left with one last thing to do. One last favor to ask. All the analysis had made it clear his forces weren't sufficient. His intuition told him that he needed an ace to pull out, something hyperstat projections had confirmed with their predictions of heavy losses in the operation. And there was one ace card he could count on, even if he would die before admitting it to anyone else; but drawing on that card was always a trial.

Cross selects a 30 year old scotch and tumbler from the sympathizer's cabinet. Alcohol doesn't exactly help deal with Piero, or help with anything for that matter-if ethanol affected someone designed to fight in a dirty battlefield they'd have some serious problems-but at least it makes him feel a little better. He's in charge now. He has to make decisions. He places the tumbler back down on the desk and puts up the scotch. Leaving a construct waiting was one way Union personnel exercised petty authority. He was very familiar with it. Only a fool would leave Piero waiting. Even over a teleconference a few thousand kilometers away.

The portable telescreen had been set up in the corner. Alexander leaned against his desk, deliberately nonchalant, as it activates. The feed connected to a high-security Construct outside Stanford University. The white room on the other end was a stark contrast to the dark wood paneling and lush furnishings of his temporary office. Piero was standing there, impatient, his long blonde hair swaying as he tilted his head at Doctor Chryse beside him.

"Piero," Cross began casually. "I hear you're finally getting those anger management courses."

Damn it. Why did he have to taunt the man? He just couldn't help it.

Piero scowls. His features contract in a way that would have signaled apocalyptic fury in a normal human being. For Piero, this was mild annoyance. "Laugh if you will, Alexander. You would not do so if the Pacific did not separate us."

Cross shrugs. "I have an ultra-high security Construct staffed by radical transhumanists and filled with unknown but extremely dangerous experimental subjects. So I'm willing to make a gift to you of this assault." He shifts his gaze over to Piero's handler. "Assuming we aren't going to have a repeat of Moscow."

"Piero has undergone extensive modifications to his Conditioning as well as hyperpsych counseling by NWO specialists." Chryse looks like she's sucking on a lemon. "The modifications include mnemonic aides for target recognition and initiative-based IFF lockdown procedures. Professor Li has decided that he needed to be able to exercise greater personal initiative in order to avoid a further Moscow situation." Cross has always wondered about their relationship. He suspects they're well, close. Well, sleeping with each other. In VR anyhow. Most naturals refer to him like a weapon, either via his callsign or via his serial number. Trying to keep a safe emotional distance from him, probably because keeping a safe physical distance from him is much harder when he can outrun a cheetah on a dead sprint. While smashing his way through concrete walls.

"I see. Continue." Cross says. Piero having personal initiative is a daunting prospect, even if in the abstract Cross favors high individual unit autonomy for combat constructs. Chryse either wants to be polite, or just doesn't notice his concern.

"The NWO mnemonic techniques require conscious effort to make use of. That may make them more resilient than program downloads directly into Piero's wetware. Conditioning him to under no circumstances autonomously fire on recognized friendly units was a simple manner of rewiring his instincts package. He will have to make a conscious effort to release the memetic locks, which is incompatible with his inability to control himself in a rage-state. And of course Piero has been programmed not to open fire on loyal Union assets."

"That still leaves room for Piero to determine who is and is not a loyal Union asset," Cross observed.

"IFF signals and orders from a designated commander still take priority. Piero is to exercise that initiative only in the event of a telemetry failure while on a mission of Alpha level priority or while directly under hostile fire. He is programmed to stand down and return to base as his first reaction if command contact is lost under any other circumstances. This was not my preferred option to address the shortcomings revealed in Moscow, but…"

"Yes, yes," Piero snarls. "We will see if you can make me retreat from the rush of battle like a whipped dog. But you need fear no repeat of Moscow will happen. The terrors of my rage are at my command and subject to my will."

"NWO hyperpsych specialists made use of techniques adapted from hemophage sources and certain obscure Reality Deviant manuals to teach Piero to direct his rage. Allegedly." Chryse huffs. "They have also encouraged us to allow him greater personal autonomy and time out of Virtual Reality. It has not been a disaster, yet."

Though her tone makes it clear she thinks it's only a matter of time. Cross fights down the impulse to concur. Another impulse won out.

"What are you even doing outside of virtual Valhalla, Piero? If you have any interests except for disemboweling people and seducing anything that moves, it's news to me."

Piero snorts. "Ask Maria about my other interests. And I have a hobby. The NuWoo counselor introduced me to painting. Landscapes are… relaxing."

Cross' mind almost goes into shutdown. He finally grunts out a response after nearly a second of silence. "You. Painting?"

"Counselor McKinnon introduced Subject Dominici to The Joy of Painting. It seems to be very effective therapy for his mood management."

"I see." Cross fights down the impulse to laugh maniacally. The image of Piero trying to work on a canvas guided by the soothing tone of Bob Ross was almost too much to contain.

"There is another measure we've taken. In addition to reinforced conditioning for Subject Dominici's mental state, the project authorized an updated personal suit of power armor. This one includes a solid Primium helmet containing reinforced, multiple redundant telemetry and communication channels on top of the other improvements. We also incorporated the most up-to-date IterationX firewall programs and have assigned a pair of specialist hackers for the command site to manage network security."

"The helmet has a plume," Piero complained. "If I find out whoever decided to mold it in the fashion of a Corinthian helmet…"

"The Void Engineers," Chryse said, shrugging. "The Primium came out of the salvage from Moscow. I presume Admiral Ivanova or one of her subordinates thought it was a fitting joke."

"I think under the circumstances," which were extreme, Cross didn't add, "I can justify Piero's use here."

"Will there be Dragons?"

"Excuse me?" Alexander raised his eyebrow at Piero's sudden interruption.

"Will there be Dragons at this assault?" Piero repeated himself slowly, enunciating carefully as if to a small child. "I desire to slay more wyrms. Someone has exceeded me as a dragonslayer. I know it in my very bones. I must run up my score."

"It is possible," Cross offers carefully. Izanagi Construct could certainly store EDE samples or bioengineered abominations bred from draconic EDEs. Whether they'll get deployed is anyone's game. He doesn't know what Dr. Leon will use.

"Then count me in. This is a worthy challenge."

Cross nodded. "Good. We'll deploy an ORION platoon to support…"

"Excellent!" Piero smiled.

It was a toothy, impossibly white smile. Piero's face shines like some divine being. Even among the Exemplars he was inhumanly handsome and Cross's thoughts drifted back to that night after their first field operation, when they had fallen in bed together.

"The ORIONs understand how I operate," Piero continued on. "I will accept your gift, Alexander. And woe betide all who fall within my reach. I haven't killed anything worthwhile in a long time. I look forward to decking the halls of this place with the entrails of my foes."

And that is also vintage Piero. Cross sighs.

"I'll speak with Doctor Chryse about your deployment details, then."

***'
The headquarters of the Loyalists is small, cramped, and hidden in one of Izanagi's feeder labs. The entire conspiracy is hidden within the forgotten places of Technocratic facilities - server rooms, cleaning closets, Serafina is proud of the name. It's carefully designed so it automatically defines their opponents as traitors, constantly reminding the members of the conspiracy that they're just doing their duty to the Union.

Finishing her email to one of the many waverers, she reads it out loud to herself and silently thanks that she thought to subvert… sorry, sway the Iterators seconded to the Progenitors first. They're just infosec code-monkeys, but places like this need IT to operate - and the Loyalists have the advantage that the non-Progenitor staff seconded to these places don't buy into the ideology of the Progenitors.

It's one of the great vices of her Convention. They always believed that they can step aside from the world, concerning themselves only with their academic disputes and their research. There is too much of the old aristocracy in the Progenitors, she's come to sadly conclude. She didn't understand that until she saw it from the bottom up, how in Mexico City she had it rubbed in her face that the bioroids were basically treated as feudal servants.

Things won't ever be the same. Even if some religious figure came down and smote Control and wiped it from the universe, things won't continue as they were before for Serafina Rosario. She can't waste her time flitting around like she used to. She's a war criminal who dropped a nuclear weapon on a city. She's a hero who saved the world from alien invasions twice so far. She has to live with both of these facts.

"Uh, Dr Rosario?" It's Dr Harasami, one of the first people she swayed to her cause. She's middle-aged, divorced, and has a daughter. She's not enlightened - just an extraordinary citizen who's a specialist in data analysis. Serafina knows all these things because she's a people person and has an excellent memory for people and the little things.

It weighs on her. She knows that this woman has been risking her life sanitizing data of things other members of the conspiracy have been doing. If she'd been caught, what they would have done to her would have been entirely on Serafina's head. But now she accepts it. Women like this who want to do the right thing need her to be the leader who'll do everything in her power to make sure any sacrifices they make won't be in vain.

"What is it, Hyouka?" she asks, showing no sign of her suppressed inner conflict.

"The Iterators say that the q-comms are nearly ready," Dr Harasami says. "We have a thirty minute window where the use of the system will be missed in the security cycling."

Serafina inclines her head. "Thank you very much," she says warmly. She smiles. "Well, here's for luck."

Dr Harasami clutches her hand. "I believe you can do it," she says. "I knew things were off here, but I just hadn't put things together. And I knew the people in Izanagi were… extremists, but if I'd known…"

"It's not your fault," Serafina says, and means it. "What matters is that you're doing the right thing now." And she doesn't feel guilty that each of her words are chosen to reinforce that certainty. She doesn't want this woman to die, but what they're doing is the right thing.

Serafina makes her way to the secure communications room. This area of this security is entirely under their control, and that means she can be open. She greets people, remembers names, flags wavering morale and reinforces certainty.

And then it's down into the darkness of the blackcomms area, as her loyal Iterators set up the link. She adjusts her hair, making sure all the little imperfections and signs that she's been working far too hard are there.

[Link Secure]

"Professor Jiang Li," Serafina says. "Thank you for agreeing to this."

The man at the other end of the link stares at her for a moment, raising his eyebrows. "When my schedule includes a conversation with Dr Rosario, it usually indicates another flaming row with your mother," he says dryly. "I presume she is aware of this deception?"

"She is. It is necessary for us to talk in person, so I arranged it."

"Really. The elusive Serafina Rosario, who apparently vanished in early December and every single appearance of you since then has been a clone of you in some form. Which does raise some questions. Like, say, is this really you, or another one of the assortment of clones you apparently have running around?"

"This is me, professor," Serafina says. "Though I can say little to demonstrate that convincingly, considering how good Leon Gregor is at making fakes of me. I suppose he didn't consider the fact his autocide meme failed to be reason to give up on the plan of replacing me. Suffice to say, I am in Japan and I am aware of most of the details of the planned operation against Izanagi - indeed, I am the one who ensured much of the information on his illicit EXEMPLAR IV program got into your hands."

"I see. All this for revenge?"

"All this for the Union," Serafina says. She pauses. "And, yes, a good measure of revenge to top that off."

"What are you up to?"

"What am I up to?" Serafina says, expression calm. "I'm ensuring that when the renegades in Izanagi try to broadcast their story, they won't find sympathetic ears. They'll try to depict Ethical Compliance going after them as you trying to smash a bastion of academic freedom - and they'll probably insinuate that you're removing a rival to Chinese dominance in Asia by crushing one of Japan's leading facilities. I'm going to make sure that people instead hear the story of a rogue sect of radical augumentics launched an internal coup in Izanagi when they heard that Ethical Compliance were investigating and how they don't even have their support facilities backing them."

Professor Li pauses. Narrows his eyes. "Continue," he says.

"I'm getting the counter-coup in first. Quite a few people in these facilities have sympathies towards the Izanagi renegades, but they're only sympathies. They're amenable to persuasion. I've been very nice to them and made sure that they understand that if they declare against Izanagi immediately, no one reasonable could blame them for any minor complicity. After all, why would they question what such a classified facility would be doing with the materials they sourced from it?"

"How many do you have on side?" Blunt and to the point.

"Approximately forty percent of the Tokyo Progenitors outside of Izanagi are solidly in. They should declare for us when I give the word. The renegades would be relying on a confused chain of command to stop them objecting," Serafina says promptly. "Another thirty percent are up in the air, and thirty are solidly pro-Izanagi. Most of the waverers should fall in line when forty percent immediately call Izanagi a crypto-Etherite subversive transhumanist sect, and that should cow some of the less extreme people who naturally lean towards Gregor. But he's got enough hardcore supporters that this is going to be bloody. I've got a list of people who are going to have to die before they can declare for the renegades."

Li leans forwards towards the camera. "So you're admitting to planning to murder other Progenitors?" he asks, voice soft.

"Of course not," she says, with a straight face. "If there are deaths of would-be traitors, that's a tragedy - but I will not let this contagion spread throughout Japan. There's enough nationalist sentiment tied up in this that even some of the reasonable moderates I've tied to are worried that you're systematically favouring the Chinese and are considering if they'd be better off on their own. So I'm going to smother his narrative in the crib and make sure other Japanese Technocrats only hear about Ethical Compliance promptly dealing with a bunch of crypto-Etherite entryists."

"That's a lot of risk you're taking on for a political enemy," the man says, running his hands through his dark hair.

"While it's true we may have had our disagreements in the past…"

"You called me an 'unethical warmonger more fascinated with guns than the root principles of our sacred trust as Progenitors.' In two separate articles, and the letters page of Biologia."

"... our major disagreements in the past," Serafina says shamelessly, "I have adjusted some of my previously held opinions. In the aftermath of Moscow - and now Mexico City and this - I find myself more inclined to some of your positions with regards to the liberal levels of free reign given to many Progenitor facilities. Especially, I might add, the longer-established ones."

"Oh?" Professor Li's eyebrows flute upwards. "Well, it's easy to incline to positions. It's rather harder to do things - especially with so many vested interests opposing any reform."

Serafina spreads her hands. "With this current situation, it's clear that extensive auditing will be required to ensure that more widespread ethics violations - like Gregor Leon's - are not passing below the radar. We must be careful to not sacrifice the proud traditions of academic freedom and blue-skies research among the Progenitors, but we have to also ensure such things are not abused."

"I've been saying this for twenty years," the man says.

"Yes, you have. I don't necessarily agree with all your positions, but here I do." She crosses her legs. "It is both the moral and the pragmatic thing to do. We find ourselves at a crossroads and if we don't stop rogue elements of the Progenitors from abusing their academic freedom, we will sadly open ourselves up to unwanted New World Order regulation. Something neither of us want."

"That's something I've long been concerned by," Professor Li agrees. "We have to stand apart from the endless squabbles of the Order and the Syndicate. In the end, we don't want to be captured by either the hand of the market or the hand of the state."

Behind all the coded language, it's clear what she's offering. Serafina is offering her public support for Li's attempts to weaken the old, powerful hold-outs of the research directors. It's a tempting offer. She's valuable. Not only is she a bona fide Hero of the Technocracy, but perhaps even more viably she's a child of privilege; one of the old elite Progenitor families. Moderates and waverers will be far more willing to believe that it's a genuine attempt to prevent another rogue like Gregor Leon if she's there. Which, of course, means that Li will be able to snatch more authority from the entrenched Research Directors.

She knows he knows that she's trading herself here. He won't get everything he wants and knows that she'll block some things that he'd like with her on side - but with her on side, he'll get more than if she wasn't there. It's how politics works. Of course, it's quite possible she's going to go anger her parents again, just after they'd finally opened up with that tearful confession in Mexico City. They're going to lose out with what she's offering. But then again she's spent nearly forty years disappointing her parents. Why change now?

Jiang Li seems to have come to a decision. "That's an interesting about-face," he says. "We will need to talk further later. Assuming, of course, you survive these current events."

"I intend to. But I didn't just get in contact to talk pleasantries," Serafina says. "I'm in contact with a man inside Izanagi. He's having… second doubts about some of the things they're doing there."

"Oh? Who?"

"Dr Hayate Oufuji. He's with the Pharm-"

"I know who he is." Professor Li leans forwards. His eyes look far too old for his youthful face. "He's not someone I would expect to break from Leon Gregor's agenda. You've called me an amoral bastard in the past…"

"Not in those precise words," Serafina protests mildly. "And I retract such implications now."

"That's kind of you," he says drily, "but this man is most certainly one. 'Clinical manipulation of states of consciousness and cognitive processes by applied chemistry,' that's his piece d'resistance. That and his close cooperation with Iteration X on high end combat cybernetics and their integration and anti-rejection treatment. It makes him useful and means he has plenty of contacts."

"I know. I've read his papers. He has a certain flair with words," she says. She does remember it - and how the charming, witty style masks the dry horror of the implications of some of his research. "But he is apparently balking at some of the things he's seeing Leon Gregor do, and his own contacts have met some of mine. He wants contact with you as a proof of… ah, my bona fides."

"What does he want?"

"Immunity to sanction," she says, distastefully. "In addition, he wants promotion to Research Director. In return, he is willing to turn over everything he has and cooperate fully with any Ethical Compliance investigation."

"Do you trust him?"

"Of course not," Serafina says, surprised at the comment. "He's a weasel and a sociopath out to preserve his own skin so he can get back to his research on altering consciousness and his collaboration with the Iterators on combat cyborgs. If it wasn't for the force that's probably being arrayed against Izanagi at this very moment, I think he'd have been perfectly fine with whatever's happening down there. I think he'll reliably turn on Leon Gregor if it gets him what he wants, though."

Professor Li actually laughs. "So you've met him before," he says.

"Not before the current events."

"You're good at snap judgements, then. This is a lucky break, then. I've been keeping informed of the situation in Japan, and my advisors from Damage Control are concerned about both our own and civilian casualties here, as am I. There's a BSL-4 lab in RIKEN, which is guarded-but it's guarded by JSDF and Tokyo police. I do not want humanity being exposed to the very horrors we have been working to eradicate."

Serafina is fully aware of the implications. She winces at the thought of what Progenitors augmented for combat would do to them. She's seen it again and again. Chad, 1999. New York, 2008-although that was secondhand as research into some morphic biology elements for EXEMPLAR III. Brighton, 2015. "I see." She manages.

"So. Do you think you can do that, Dr. Rosario?"

"I'll try my best."

"Very good." Professor Li says. And Serafina knows, beyond a doubt, this is genuine concern.​



I just wanted to lay out and more strictly canonize a bunch of the write-ins, and get some context in as to how big this operation is. The previous vote is still in effect.
 
Update CCI: Triage
JB CCI: Triage

Well, Donald considers, he's been in worse places when he's been captured. Of course, he's also been in better places when captured.

He should probably look towards being captured less frequently. It's probably a character flaw of some kind. He's getting a little sick of being the designated damsel in distress. Clearly it's just his gentlemanly nature which lets him spare... uh, his enemies from the mistake of kidnapping Director Belltower or Rose.

He's fully aware that this is just internal bravado. Of course it is. He's in a really bad place, and even if Operative Li wasn't a massively augmented killing machine with heavy support he probably couldn't beat her in a hand to hand fight unless she was looking the other way. And she is the aforementioned killing machine and she's also coincidentally looking straight at him. So he only briefly contemplates how amazing it would be if he could judo-chop her in the side of the neck and she'd just pass out, then he could jump out the window and--

Operative Li shifts slightly in a way which reminds him that he'd have better odds when locked in a small room with a tiger on crystal meth. And he's never going anywhere near big cats on hard drugs ever again, not after last time. Sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time and he had been somewhat startled by the cyber war-leopard, but it had not been a good idea. Not at all.

He swallows. Time to make a wild leap and some assumptions. He doesn't think she's acting directly for Leon Gregor right now, for one simple reason - if she was, he'd already be in a Progenitor lab and have needles stuck into his brain. Now, of course, it's possible this is already happening, but if you live your life like you're stuck in the Matrix things just get dumb. Or Virtual Adept-ish. Or some kinds of Akashic. Or you might be an Iterator who actually does just live in the Digital Web.

The point is, she's the white woman from his hallucination and that means she's playing her own game - or at least not playing for anyone who's on the board right now. He hopes. He really hopes.

"So, Ms Li," he says, voice low, soft and - he hopes - entirely at ease. "Humor me with a little speculation, if you will."

"You could just wait for Agent Shin," she suggests.

He smiles. "But where's the fun in that?" he says, impersonating Mark Hamil on a whim. There's a flicker of mild confusion in her eyes, though her well-trained face doesn't show it. "You don't work primarily for Gregor Leon - though you may not be entirely aware of that at all times. You just have your orders, but sometimes your orders don't always come from the same people. You were placed with him to ensure that..." he pauses deliberately, "an eye was kept on him."

"I am a member of the New World Order," she says in response.

Damn. Touché. "Yes," he says, "but that goes quite beyond the normal. Your enhancements are extremely atypical and are more representative of a high end Void Engineer chimeric or advanced Progenitor enhancile. However, they're not the kind of enhancements that Dr. Leon uses. They're not even in line with the EXEMPLAR series."

She inclines her head. "You have an..." and she also pauses, "eye for detail," she says.

He's pretty sure she's doing that just to lead him down a garden path, deliberately mocking his own insinuations. He decides ignoring it is for the best. "Mmm. Well, I'm a man of the world. I've seen a lot of things."

She seems to momentarily focus on him in a way which suggests she's staring right through him. "And you have wetware contacts layered on your sclera," she says, a hint of pique in her voice. "Things are always easier when you're getting that kind of sensor feed. And wetware like that of course would escape the em-frier. Constable Ashford's work, I presume?"

... wait, what? As far as he's aware, he doesn't. Who did that? Was it Rose? Is it something that's been bugging him all along? Did Serafina install them in some prior check-up? Or is she just playing games with him? He tries to shrug it off, to continue with his sell. His desperate attempt to get her confused enough to ask a question that might tell him more about what's going on, or maybe even try to go out on her own. "Anyways, you were placed to keep an eye on Gregor Leon. Probably because he has been doing something extremely off-the-books and possibly illegal."

"If you have accusations of Progenitor malfeasance, you should probably tell Ethical Compliance. I think they even have a tip line for that." Yinzheng responds breezily. "That is an interesting theory, though. I wonder if it explains those implants. It seems rather odd that you'd be going around with wetware, doesn't it?" She muses. "I wonder if they were installed around the same time you had your arm replaced" Donald doesn't ask how she knows this. She answers anyways. "I can see the remnants there of cybernetic bonding studs in your arm. You had it replaced with an Iteration X prosthetic at some point. You've replaced the prosthetic with flesh but mmm... that's a field-expedient replacement. You might want to get that looked at in a week or two. I've heard that they get cancerous fast."

"You're very well read." Donald manages. "But can I continue?"

"Thank you." She says. Donald realizes for a moment that she sounds quite sincere there. "And certainly. After all, you're our guest."

So. They probably aren't planning on dumping him in a shallow grave somewhere. Which isn't as reassuring as it should have been-there's plenty of terrible things they can do to him that will leave him still rather alive at the end of it-but it's something. "Anyways. I don't think you answer to him, do you?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. You're going to have to try a little better to probe for information. But who do you think I work for, if not for Dr. Leon?"

Donald wonders if he should go with his dream answer or his educated guess. He goes with neither. "I think you work for some sort of internal security. Maybe Panopticon. And you want me for questioning."

"I'm sorry. You know too much. Goodbye, Donald." Yinzheng says. Her hand moves slowly towards her suit jacket.

Donald closes his eyes and wonders what he should say for his last word before he is interrupted by laughter. She was just fucking with him. Sigh. "I thought I was your guest." He manages.

"I thought you liked practical jokes." Yinzheng replies. She's still laughing. "I can't answer any of that. Agent Shin can when he shows up."

"I think whoever you work for is concerned with the same things we are." Donald continues. "We know Dr. Leon is running Izanagi Lab. We know he's been developing some sort of high-end bioengineered weapon there. We suspect it's based on something incredibly illegal, which is why he tried to have Serafina Rosario replaced by a clone-and possibly killed-and tried to get us killed." This is something they probably know already. They should know, if they're on the ball. He feels perfectly safe saying it. "I don't think the attack on our construct was a coincidence."

"If he just wanted her research notes, that's a rather extreme step, wouldn't you say?" Yinzheng asks. "There's plenty of easier and less treasonous things to do. Like hiring Virtual Adepts to steal someone else's research. This is a rather interesting narrative you're suggesting though." She gives him a patronizing smile. "Do continue."

"I think he wants to go rogue, or he's gotten a deal with the MUSCOVITES, or something. Maybe they managed to suborn more than just robots in Moscow."

"Maybe." Yinzheng says, her tone clearly doubtful. "Or maybe you're just taking a bunch of coincidences and weaving them into a conspiracy theory."

"I stopped believing in conspiracy theories once I found out there was, in fact, a conspiracy secretly manipulating the world. Which, by the way, both of us are a part of." Donald says. "There's only conspiracy fact and conspiracy fiction now. And isn't it interesting how after an attack on the construct she's a part of, Serafina Rosario vanishes, replaced by a surrogate that has fooled everyone, including her parents-when there's so few people capable of discreetly creating a construct capable of emulating her capabilities? How many people can do that? Meanwhile, what we've found out is that Dr. Leon is using her research to create... something. EXEMPLAR IV, maybe." He feels safe telling her this. If she does work for Dr. Leon, they'd have realized this long ago, or they'd be idiots. "Something that is definitely not what he's supposed to be doing, because otherwise he'd be parading it to the public rather than keeping everything this hard to find, while finding high-end transhumans like you or Major Jane Clarent or the Izanagi Damage Control squad to guard it."

"Plausible. But many things are." Yinzheng says-but maybe a little less dismissively than before. Donald thinks he's getting somewhere.

"Look, this is a logical conclusion to draw from all the facts on the ground. Fact. Izanagi is receiving military-grade biotech precursors. Fact. This includes Iteration X/Progenitor militarized nanomedical systems. Fact. They've also had access to Serafina Rosario's notes. Fact. EXEMPLAR II and III were the only recent, major projects which used all these ingredients. So they're making something based off of it. The only question is, why. Why EXEMPLAR?"

"That is a good question, isn't it?" Yinzheng asks. "Assuming you're right. Why EXEMPLAR? What do you think they're making here, exactly why would they go for EXEMPLAR instead of a much less... questionable project? Izanagi has quite a bit of prestige. They could go for something like VERMILLION-after all, what with Miss Langley saving the world with its predecessor projects, there's quite a lot more pressure to build those. Or maybe they could stick with combat homonculi. Something that's relevant and above-board."

He takes the longshot. It might break her facade. And hopefully it'll distract her from trying to figure out what his reaction to her mention of Henriette was. "I think they're doing exactly what EXEMPLAR III tried to do. Heroes of the Technocratic Union. Wouldn't that be worth every sacrifice they made? If they could return Control to the Technocracy-a lot of the old warhorses in Iteration X and the NWO and the Progenitors would love them to be back. There's even Syndicate bigwigs who would love to have Control telling them what to do again. If he fixes this problem, everything would be forgiven. I don't see why he might not be willing to take a couple of shortcuts to go for it."

"An interesting theory. An unbelievable one, but interesting nonetheless. Agent Shin is here. You can tell him as well."

Agent Shin, Donald thinks, looks very not-Japanese. And not-NWO. He might be tall and muscular and handsome, his race mixed enough that he could probably pass for a wide variety of ethnicities with the right makeup and attitude, but his features are a little too exceptional for NWO preferences. His suit is a lot too expensive, and his equipment is definitely not standard issue. Donald recognizes a reasonable amount of it from Q Division catalogues. The ones they use to entice Syndicate personnel to blow their savings on funding their own R&D. "And I assume you're the Agent Shin she's told me so much about."

He notices how she looks at him slightly blankly. Like she didn't expect the man. Like she doesn't know the man-and then suddenly some enlightenment comes to her face.

"She hasn't." Shin says confidently. "You, on the other hand. You've told us quite a lot. Quite a lot of it interesting. So sit, and let's talk some more. Don't worry. We'll be gone by the time your friends come here. You, on the other hand, will be here. Waiting for them."

***
"Okay." Henriette props her head on her hands and tries to think. "Let me just clear my head." She looks up at Rose. "You - go grab some food from the vending machine, and coffee for me. Make sure you eat, though."

Away from Rose, the hard facts are laid before Henriette. Going AWOL right now will be terrible for both of them. She really doesn't want to do that - it'll look super-suspicious in light of everything going on now. It might even delay the attack on the Progenitor facility. Donald wouldn't want that.

But they can't just leave him in the hands of their enemies. He knows way too much - and Henriette hates herself for that kind of NWO thinking, but it's true. No wonder Jamelia made sure none of them knew how to find her right now, but... but Donald knows about Moscow and at least enough about the IBM that if he breaks, his captors could put together everything about him.

But what if Rose might tip the edge against Leon Gregor? Rose can't be controlled by Control any more - and Rose knows things about EXEMPLAR because she is one and she's much more of a scientist than Chief Constable Cross is meant to be.

"Urgh," Henriette mutters, gently bashing her head into the desk. She shunts a little more of her processing to her ADEI, and then multi-processes thinking of a solution, prioritising various things. By the time Rose comes back, nervous and tense and with a bit of chocolate smeared around her mouth, she thinks she has something. She accepts her coffee, and wraps her hands around it.

"Okay, Rose. This is what we're going to do," Henriette says. "Chief Constable Cross is in charge of--"

"Alex is here?" Rose asks, a sudden expression of hope flashing onto her features.

"Yes. What you're going to do is you're going to get neat, calm down, and report on a possible MUSCOVITE-linked cell using MiB 2.0s and led by an albino operating in the Tokyo area. Make sure that Cross is reminded of how things went in Moscow and that Panopticon cell there - but don't make it look too obvious that you're reminding him of it." Henriette takes a breath. "And volunteer for the raid on Gregor's facility."

"But..." Rose begins.

"I know, I know," Henriette says, massaging her temples. "But hear me out before rejecting it, please."

Rose settles down, but she doesn't seem happy.

"I can't guarantee that it'll work," Henriette says, gritting her teeth. She lets down her BLO, so Rose can see that this isn't easy for her. "But if it's Gregor's people or Panopticon or someone who grabbed Donald, it means they're running people outside the facility. They look like NWO sorts, right? Well, if we run their IDs against Major Clarent's knowledge of the facility staff, we can ID them. We can use Major Clarent to find out where they might be based. And - listen Rose, please - Alexander Cross is close to you, isn't he?"

Rose nods. "Yes," she says, clearly not sure where she's going with this.

"Well, he's not going to want to put you in the front line assault. He's going to want you for your support services, though? Your knowledge about EXEMPLAR, right?"

"Probably."

"You don't need to be on site for that. So while you're willing to help him and enthusiastic to do so, he's fully aware that Leon Gregor has Progenitor override codes, so he won't want you in the front line, right?"

Rose smiles. "You mean..."

Henriette nods. "I hope so. But if there are NWO units allied to Gregor Leon operating in Tokyo, outside the facility... well, isn't that something that you could track down on your own, with only a few support units? And he's not basing his plans about you being present, so you're the perfect one to spare for cleanup? And since you're in the loop, he can contact you for... like, analysis and stuff?" She rummages in her bag. "Now, just download your memories of the encounter to here," she says, offering a pen drive. "Use the .cog file type. I'll get these to Major Clarent and we can see about IDing them and a possible list of their operational bases."

***
It takes them several hours of looking before Henriette and Rose find Donald again. He's in a low-priority construct-well, not really a full construct but a temporary field base, one of the many hidden NWO safehouses that was on the map of Japan that nobody has reason to use before the

Rose is through the door, knife in one hand, handgun in the other, and sees nothing but Donald. She drops her weapons immediately and grabs him as he turns slowly towards her, face buried in the crook of his neck. "Don't- don't do that to me again. I thought- I thought something bad would happen again." She manages. It's an excuse for DNA sampling. To make sure it's not a doppleganger. Yes. "You don't need to be the hero again and again. That's what I'm for." But is it? She wonders. Does she have to do only what she's built for? And even if she does, is this exactly what she was built for?

"We all have sacrifices to make. And a lot of the ones you have to-" Donald manages, gasping for breath under Rose's hug. "-the ones you have to- nobody else can. You don't need to shoulder the entire world's burden."

"But still! You keep getting hurt and-you're not made for it. Let me do it. Let me suffer in your place." Rose pleads. "You-you do enough doing what you do to make us happy and doing all the important analysis work I can't and-"

"Sometimes we need to take risks. All of us." Donald cuts her off. "You were more important. You know more about this than I do. I needed you in play."

There's something odd about his brain patterns, Rose notes. Something off about his smell. Well hidden, but she's an expert in this. They couldn't hide it from him. They did something to him-but she can't tell what. "What did they do to you?"

"Nothing." Donald manages. "They just asked me a lot of questions. I answered the ones which wouldn't hurt you. I think they were satisfied enough. I don't think they work for Gregor Leon. Not 100%, anyways. And when Agent Shin-"

"Who's Agent Shin?"​

***
They've driven him back to the naval base in Yokohama. There's a lot of soldiers here, and most of them aren't Technocrats. He wonders how many of them know the real stakes of what they're going to be going into-unless a last minute deal is reached, which Donald is finding ever-more unlikely, a lot of these men and women are going home in body bags. They've given him a room like the one Yinzheng took him to-another interrogation room. They can't be sure he's not compromised.

"I ran a database sketch of the person you described." Henriette manages slowly. "This is who I got." She holds a tablet in front of Donald's face. He reads the information. The first one is a ex-NWO Operative gone private into the Syndicate, Jason Bin. He was using one of his known aliases, Enforcer Shin Ito. That makes sense-a Chinese-American NWO Operative would probably want to use something less likely to create racial animus, and with linguasofts and braintapes would be able to pass for Japanese perfectly. Henriette continues. "But then I felt something was off there. So I called in a favor with... well, I called in a favor with some people who owe me. So I started looking for people with similar facial structure and mannerisms as you described them using a borrowed clearance. And guess what I got?" Henriette asks. "I think I got really lucky."

"Robert Yi. Born San Francisco, California 1946. Died 1969. Former SFPD officer and Reality Deviant. Confirmed KIA in Eureka, California, by HELMETSHRIKE Operation ARGENT PAPERCLIP. Classified ORCON/VIGILANCE. Officer in Charge: Director Julius Butcher. What was the error rate on your analysis?" Donald asks. "Could just be a coincidence."

"It could be." Henriette says. "Maybe."

"But I don't think so." Donald says. "I think maybe someone was trying to send us a message. Someone suspected we'd look into someone like this, and deeply. Someone wanted to send me a message." He knows it, deep down.

"Also..." Henriette says. "Serafina has gotten into contact with us. She says she's been helping in Japan, and she's ready to show up in public before the assault. They're planning to make the announcement soon. He needs all the help he can get. Major Clarent says she'll join him once she's out of decontamination, and there's some more volunteers here."

Well. Donald thinks. Maybe she can yell at him for almost being seduced by her mother, letting Rose get into this state, and losing an arm, then being shot several times. She owes him that. A lot of that.


WARNING. By committing to this action you will initiate the endgame. All sidequests and secondary missions will be canceled.

Interrogation, Part 2:
Donald knows he has to be part of the assault. At a distance, anyways. He will manage to get there by...
[ ] Convincing Rose that he needs to be able to help, and just because he's gotten hurt again and again is no reason to keep him from helping this time.
[ ] Convincing Cross that he's undermanned and underequipped and needs all the help he can get.
[ ] Wildcard Write In Option: Win Piero's respect? Talk to General Starborn? Who knows? Well, you do.

Reunion:
Serafina is coming back. How is she going to react to Rose? To Donald? To everything that's happened that they can tell her? Discuss.
[ ] Discuss.​
 
Update CCII: Aleph-Null
JB CCII: Aleph-Null

Donald Sykes, agent of a global conspiracy of the Man and of Western hegemony, traitor to the cause of free thought, plutocrat and corrupt businessman is standing on a chair. The curtains are closed, but outside it's late afternoon in Tokyo. He can barely hear the traffic noise over the soundproofing. He is, once again, a captive. Well, technically he's in voluntary confinement, but it was only voluntary because if he hadn't volunteered, someone - not naming any names here, but it would probably rhyme with 'Lame-riette' - looked like she was thinking of sedating him. And he has to be awake for what's about to happen.

And that means he has to stand on the chair.

"Sykes," Henriette's weary and more than a little arrogant voice comes over the internal speakers. "What are you doing on that chair? Get off the furniture."

"Look, I need a smoke," he replies.

"And you're standing on the chair because?"

"... I have to take the battery out of the smoke detector or else it'll go off when I light up."

There is a very contemptuous sigh. "Those things kill you, you know? Even if you can afford the treatments, you're still willingly inhaling poison. Urgh! How stupid do you have to be to willingly smoke? Urgh. Just urgh. I've got half a mind to spray you with the sprinklers just to punish you for being so stupid."

"I'm going to do it," he says. "I need a smoke, and you're not letting me outside."

"Protocol says..."

"I know what it says! But I need a smoke! You don't understand!"

"It's bad for you," Rose chips in, a lecturing note in her voice. "You'd be better off learning to abstain."

He gets the battery loose. "Don't care," he says, jumping down off the chair. He rebelliously sticks the cigarette in his mouth, and tosses the battery up, catching it. "Smoking now.

"Do you know how many carcinogens..."

"Yep! Don't care!"

"If you burn to death, it's your own stupid fault," Henriette mutters. "I'm not going to put out any fires you start because you're intent on poisoning yourself."

"She doesn't mean that," Rose quickly adds.

"Actually, I do. And I'm watching you, Sykes. If you do any kind of McGuyver shit with that battery, I'm gassing you so hard you'll think you stepped into the Shock Corps locker room after a workout session when they're spraying deodorant around."

Donald sits down, and lights up. Sucking in a breath, he exhales a cloud of blue smoke. Oh, young people, Donald thinks to himself. So self-righteous about not smoking. When he was a kid, everyone was all cool and counter-culture and smoked and looked good doing it. Now whiny modern young people don't smoke, barely drink, and... it's enough to make you vomit at how domesticated and... and boring the modern generation is. At some point, him and Serafina will need to get together and complain about young people and their excessive sobriety. It's like they get all their kicks from giant robot fighting. It's not like sensible older people, like him, or Serafina, or Direct-... like him or Serafina who know how to blow off steam.

Cupping his hands around his cigarette, he inhales deeply until he feels like his lungs will burst. He can feel the smoke burning his insides. He exhales when it starts to cool, and then inhales again, even more deeply. Black stars dance before his eyes. He feels like he's going to faint. He keeps on going, though. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. It's like a super-fucked up form of meditation, and his head is swimming and he feels sick. There's a red tinge around his vision.

And then he stubs out his cigarette on the back of his hand, and lets the spike of pain force the smoke from his lungs in a gasp.

His mind is clear. The burn on the back of his hand doesn't hurt. The smoke, full of blacking-out woozy pain, sinks into the plug socket in front of him. It suffuses the electronics, confusing it, drugging it, mucking it up.

"Sorry, Langley," he whispers, as he coughs into his hand. "Not quite good enough." The air is thick with blue smoke. Donald pulls out a fresh cigarette and lights it, this time savoring it. He hasn't done something like that in a very long time. He's a very bad boy. A very naughty Technocrat. Naughty Donald. Bad boy. Give him a spanking. And he's thinking this ironically, not seriously. He sighs. Shit. One point for Janice. Something about his time in the Demise must have burned out some of the mental blocks the Union had snuck into him. He's a bit impressed at how they managed it. He didn't notice it at all.

But, shit, he can't even find it in himself to be mad. You've got to keep people all pointed in the same direction, after all. And there's literally no difference between some aversive therapy against Ecstatic stuff and the visceral hatred of any kind of technomagic from some of the old-school crazies he saw when he was on the other side. After all, you've got to keep people all pointed in the same direction.

He taps off some ash.

Last time he did something like this was just before he made a call to his enemies, offering to join them, because he thought there was a greater good that was worth sacrificing himself on. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha.

How history fucking repeats itself.

He pulls out the space phone hidden in the desk that Henriette had missed, punches in the US international code, then dials 202 358-0001. Waiting while it rings, he glances up at the ceiling, wondering if Henriette would bother to angrily demand what the hell he thought he was doing, or whether she'd just gas him straight off. Then he is onto the automated systems and he punches in a random series of keys, hoping to confuse the systems so they'd just get him through to an operator.

He's in luck.

"Hi, this is-"

"Is that NASA?" he asks. "I have a question for you."

"Hi. So, questions should be directed via our website. All you need to do is-"

"Do you know if Threat Null is Control, Autopolitans are Iteration X, Transhumans are Progenitors, the New World Order is the Agency, the Residents are the Syndicate, the Subjugation Corps are the Void Engineers, and-"

The line cuts out. "Who the heck is this?" A voice - youngish, female, distinct Philadelphia accent.

"Hi," Donald says. "So, I got your attention, right? I want to talk to a Void Engineer."

"You're talking to one. I'm Specialist Courtain, NSC, and you're Donald Sykes, with the Financiers." She sounds pissed. "You have around thirty seconds to explain yourself."

"Thirty seconds while you try to backtrace me, you mean," he says. He can't resist it.

"Twenty five seconds."

"Dr Leon Gregor has gone rogue and is in contact with Control. He's making EXEMPLAR-grade bodies for them to possess, because they're now EDEs." He leans forwards. "Damage Control is going in to purge him and take him down, but they think they're going after powerful MUSCOVITE leaders. They won't be going for the serpent's head, just to take down Gregor and his constructs. Bring me in and let me talk to someone important, and I'll cooperate fully in alpha-striking those EDE motherfuckers in the near-dimensional spaces when they show themselves."

There's silence at the other end of the line.

"Did I go over my time limit?" he asks.

"Financier Sykes." A synthetically modulated voice answers. "The Void Engineers are likely debating what they are going to do with you. There is a non-zero chance this debate will lead to a deep-level neural trawl. That would become... inconvenient." Donald strains to figure out who the voice might be from its tone and its word choice. "For all of us."

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Who I am is not relevant at this point. What is relevant is what I know, and what you know. You know that a Damage Control assault team is currently planning to attack the Izanagi Biological Research Facility. I know that you suspect something more is going on than what Damage Control has told you. You are of the belief that your enemy is capable of masquerading as Control and is an existential threat to the Technocratic Union. Such an existential threat must be eliminated-and the cancer which has created it must be removed at the root."

"Humor me for a second or two." He thinks the voice is telling the truth. But of course couldn't it lie? "How do I know you're actually telling the truth? You could be trying to lure me into a trap."

"I could." The voice concedes. "But sometimes, one must take a leap of faith. Is that not what you did a few hours ago? Financier Sykes. Donald Sykes bani Ecstatic. You are at a crossroads few people have a chance to see. You-and your amalgam-your chantry-your friends and allies and lovers and ex-lovers-have been caught in a destiny which was not yours to choose, but is yours nonetheless."

"I let go of that mystic stuff a long time ago." Donald lies. Well, half-lies. He did give it up. He's just picked up a little more of it again. Because it's useful.

"Not entirely. And this is useful. Can be useful. Someone who is loyal yet an outsider is rare and valuable. Someone loyal, with an outsider's knowledge and contacts, yet possessing an insider's understanding, is rarer and more valuable still. You are a very valuable asset, Financier. And more importantly-you are an asset which we need to leverage against the enemy. Your compatriots still do not quite understand what they're facing for all they have seen things. You do, because you are aware of what exhumans can do. What EDEs are. And you know what Control is in a way that they do not. They have only academic knowledge. Your knowledge is significantly more."

"So what are you offering? That I become... some sort of superspy? Something like that?" Donald asks, incredulous. "That's not who I am. I'm going to be realistic about this. Everyone fantasizes about being James Bond but I've seen enough of what it does to people that I don't want in."

"Not all of us are spies, Mr. Sykes. The time I have is short. No doubt your compatriots are monitoring communications and I cannot spoof them indefinitely. Make your choice. Years ago, you came to us because of a choice much like this one. I wonder if you have the strength to make it again."

When they educated him in the ways of hypermathematics and hypereconomics, they taught him about patterns. The world tends to work in patterns. Chaotic ones, underneath the surface of human perception. There are ways to relate seemingly unrelated facts, to train the brain's pattern-matching ability to comprehend events-and predict future ones-in ways that normal people can't. Understanding these patterns. His old friends would call it fate, or destiny, or archetypes doing what they do. Archetypes. Donald Sykes laughs. He's caught up in a pattern. He's acting out an archetype. He's going toward his fate. And he knows how this will end. He strides towards the door with the confidence of a man who has nothing to lose.

***
Wearing a hoodie pulled down low to hide his face, Donald Sykes walks through Tokyo, following the proddings of the phone he's borrowed. The phone is his mysterious benefactor's-a dead drop. It's thicker and chunkier than the ultra-sleek standard, militarized and rugged. If he had to guess, he'd say Shock Corps, 1990s vintage or so. The kind of phone you'd trust to survive years or decades without being touched. He wonders if it'll raise eyebrows when it does a firmware update-and guesses that if his benefactor cared enough, they'd block it. They probably have some backups. He really wants to be able to check out the news right now-and he could do it through internal Technocratic networks, but he doesn't dare logon through this phone.

So mundane, regular news it is. While he follows the GPS directions he keeps up with what's happening. There's been a massive firefight between North Korean special forces infiltrators and Japanese police in the city. The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces are being mobilized around critical infrastructure, including-ah yes, including RIKEN. After all, there's a BSL-4 lab there. Donald has no doubts that these JGSDF soldiers will be walking into the middle of an information void, where they'll be told to resist outside attack. Outside attack meaning "the Technocracy rolling right over them." He feels for them. When Henriette and Rose were frog-marching him off somewhere where he couldn't make trouble because of "possible enemy subversion" or something-he's taken a decent look at the kinds of firepower Damage Control is rolling in with. A 'modern', 21st century tank versus Iteration X hardware and Progenitor upgrade packages? It's going to be a massacre.

It also means that the Second Korean War is an actuality. The United States has given North Korea a final ultimatum to disarm and surrender. China has formally rebuked it and suggested strongly to go along with the disarmament ultimatum. The chances of North Korea obeying are about zero. But he's already made his peace with this inevitability. Ever since that manipulation of Sleeper intelligence has led to Moscow being tied to Korean-built nuclear weapons, it was almost certain that things would go to shit there. There's too many people who want to crush that last holdout of Traditionalist hardliners once and for all. He just hopes it won't restart the Ascension War. His guess is that it probably won't. Old habits die hard, and the modern Traditions, as opposed to the Rogue Council, are a lot more willing to fight this war with words and ideas than with fire and sword. The Rogue Council will keep fighting-but that's what they are.

So his main worry is that the war not end up allowing Control to run free because all the forces they needed were sent to Seoul to fight back the North Korean invasion across the DMZ or something while Tokyo and a half-dozen other major Asian cities are all on fire. At least that would fix his problems, Donald thinks, if the North Korean leadership manage to summon some kind of greater dragon in Tokyo and blow everything up, including RIKEN and Izanagi. But he doesn't want that kind of solution. If he has to sacrifice a little to prevent it, to benefit the greater good, he will.

With those happy thoughts in mind, he finishes his journey to nobody-knows-where, taking an empty subway train to a station that doesn't exist on any of the maps. He steps out into the glare of fluorescent lighting and old-style Technocracy equipment. There's none of the ubiquitous electronics which would permeate a modern Technocracy base here-it's dumber than even what the Masses are using. The only high-tech equipment there is the defensive arrangement-someone has stationed a very modern combat robot as a sentry, a spidery thing of carbon blades and composite armor hanging off the ceiling. It glares at him with sensor eyes for a moment, then lets him pass unmolested.

He walks his way through racks of vacuum tube computers-all unplugged. They would have been top of the line in the 1920s or 1930s, but nowadays even the sleepers could have more computing power packed in a tablet. The construct seems abandoned, more or less. The defensive systems have been unplugged as well-probably sensible, given that automated machine-gun turrets and buzzsaw blades might be dangerous to someone like him, but not so much to anything Gregor Leon could throw at them. He follows the phone's instructions and the faint sound of equipment maintenance as he heads into the non-Enlightened armory. Of course, it's only being used for its space.

None of the equipment here is particularly useful. They've piled most of it along a corner of the room. There's no need for 1930s-era Technocratic rifles and out of date cermet plate styled along old-school Samurai armor. There's only four soldiers there, all of them looking very anachronistic in the room. He recognizes one of them. He's ditched his James Bond suit for a nanotube-weave trenchcoat and a small arsenal of tactical-looking firearms in front of him, as well as a wrapped package which reminds him of a sword of some sort.

"Agent Shin." Donald says. "I should have guessed you would be behind this."

"Just Shin. The 'agent' in front is here to make it sound less like a codename. And you did, remember?" The man says. "But I'm here to return the favor. I'm going to tell you what exactly you've missed, and what you've helped us fill in the blanks on. Hopefully when you're done we'll have a understanding about what we're doing. So we can talk... business."

"Who is 'us,' exactly?"

"You haven't guessed? Welcome to Panopticon, Financier Sykes."
***
The man now known as Gimel watches the camera feed from the abandoned Japanese construct. Watches Donald react to Shin's telling of what the Abjad know. "You seem to have doubts about him. You'd think that at some point one of the candidates would meet with something other than reluctance. He has information that could be useful. And he has the skills we need." He knows what the briefing will be about. He's written most of it, after all.

"Why wouldn't I?" Bet asks. "He actively avoids the strength we need. He prefers to self-medicate via drugs and empty sex and a list of vices as long as my arm. He had the tools to piece together the truth, but didn't do so for too long."

"Of course, the same could be said for us. And this is a man who was willing to risk his everything which made him a man for what he saw as the greater good. Surely someone like that has value. Someone with the right attitude for this sort of work."
"Men like that are common in the Awakened. If that was all a candidate needed, we would have far more people. Can he do the job we do? Can he do it without hating himself? There are so many people who learn what we do-and then turn out to be inadequate. Every time that happens, we need to do another deep-level memory reconstruction." Bet says. "It's not a particularly easy process."

"Risking death is a different scale than risking the lurid propaganda the Traditions put out. People of strong convictions-most of the Awakened-would prefer the former to the corruption of the latter. Yet Mr. Sykes was willing to choose to do exactly that in an effort to do what's right. It takes a strong man to choose to turn his back on an ideology simply because the greater good is served by doing so."

"And what happens if he betrays us for the same convictions?"

"That's only a problem insofar as we might fail to convince him that we believe the same things." Gimel says. "I don't think that will be a problem."

"We'll see." Bet says. "How plausible do you think our explanation will be?"

"That's up to him." Gimel says. "Learning that Control has been stripped of their mortality-and their morality-of the Avatar Storm is going to be a hard sell, no matter what evidence we have. And having him trust us-Panopticon-about what we know. That's admittedly going to be a bit difficult. But the evidence is clear." Ibrahim al-Saud, dead in a church in Mexico and very, very inhuman. Al-Saud's agents. The Spy's Demise. The attack on Director Belltower's construct. The Moscow EDE. All these pieces of a puzzle, one which has taken shape long before, but they wanted to deny for so long. For people who have been doing the Order of Reason-and then the Technocracy's long, bloody work, people whose loyalty to the system sustained them even as they existed out of it-it is akin to blasphemy. They have become apostates.

All things that will be said in the briefing, if not in so many words. He will be told about Panopticon's reactivation by weak signals from Control. The materiel arriving from extrasolar facilities, all with valid Technocracy serial codes. The initial operations. All legitimate, all familiar, all reassuring. Goals which started becoming more esoteric, more complex, more actively antagonistic. The suspicions of the Void Engineers-never anything particularly actionable, but Moscow was not the first time Void Engineers and Panopticon clashed. They were never particularly identifiable, but the Void Engineers always had suspicions. Rightful ones. Suspicions leading them to work alongside the Syndicate, once-hated foes now allies of convenience.

The misgivings that even the head of Panopticon had-but never quite actionable. Until now. The first incident was Moscow. Siddarth Rajesh was approved for Panopticon by someone other than General Aleph. Control, it seems, had predicted those same misgivings, and been working on finding ways to work around the increasingly inconvenient head of Panopticon and of the Abjad. And of course, whatever summoning had happened in Moscow-a summoning of weapons that were too Technocratic to be anything but theirs. It was the excuse the Void Engineers needed to reject any authority from Panopticon. Suspicion had blossomed into full out cold war.

Even more misgivings as Control took more of the reins-but nobody in Panopticon was willing to question it. They have too often seen what the results of insubordination could be. But then-evidence. Ibrahim al-Saud. Inner circle. On the shortlist to become one of the Syndicate representatives on Control. A major player with unspeakable wealth. And he dies on Earth in a church, as a corrupter-wyrm, bleeding black-gold ambrosia into the Earth. Ensconced in a web of obligations and deceits.

One which Financier Sykes has played a major role in.


***
"Well." Donald says. "So you work for Panopticon, except you don't know who to trust because you think I'm right and Control is leading Threat Null. Now those are words I never expected to hear, any time, in my entire life. And I'm still not sure I even believe that I'm hearing them. This is just..." he gestures wildly. "I don't even fucking know. How did this even happen?"

"I told you." Shin says quietly. "When Control had recontacted us covertly, we were happy. Their orders were initially harmless. Take out this hardline group here. This scientist might be defecting with important knowledge, stop that from happening by any means necessary. Orders, equipment-Panopticon had almost nothing when it was reactivated. The assets which had been earmarked for us were mostly used by the other Conventions. We were grateful for it."

"How does that explain the people flashing around codes from Control in Hong Kong? If this was 'covert' anyhow."

"I'm not sure. Maybe whoever was doing it believed that you would be responsive. Maybe they were doing it to provoke your construct. Lieutenant Rajesh defected after that incident, didn't he?" Shin asks. "Perhaps that was what they were doing. You must remember-what we're dealing with might be insane, but it is still brilliant. If it wasn't, this would be easier. But now... I've already admitted that our resources are questionable. We do not know who is loyal to the ideals of the Technocracy-the humanist ideals-and who is loyal to Control."

"Humanist?" Donald asks. "Those are some big words from the Technocratic secret police."

"Compared to Moscow? It's accurate." Shin says. "They were exploiting Nephandi-aligned hemophages in a human sacrifice ritual. This is our enemy. And we need your help."

"Why?" Donald asks.

"We don't know who is or isn't compromised. We believe that significant amounts of the organization are answering directly or indirectly to Control, and when push comes to shove, we're going to need to weed them out. And we need all the help we can get. So this is why we want you in on this."

"On what?"

"You know that Damage Control is about to raid Izanagi Construct. What you probably suspect is that most of the people there will be under terminal sanction. What I need you to help us do is to make sure we recover the information we need from there. We need every Enlightened agent we can get, because our job here is to eliminate whatever aspect of Control has manifested in Izanagi and capture Dr. Gregor Leon. Alive and neurologically intact."

"Dr. Leon? Alive?" Donald asks.

"We believe he has had contact with major parts of the conspiracy. We believe that he might be able to shed some light on who we can rely on before they act."

"And if I say no?"

"If you say no, we'll wipe your memories, put you back where we found you, and let the Void Engineers do what they want with you. The clock is ticking."



Secret Agent Man:
Does Donald choose to assist the Abjad in their operation?
[ ] Yes.
[ ] No.​
 
Update CCIII: Fragile Alliance
JB CCIII: Fragile Alliance

Donald stares blankly at Shin for long moments, until the agent opens his mouth to say something. Then Donald laughs. It's a deep, full-throated thing that tears out of him and doesn't stop, until he's all but doubled him over and supporting himself against the wall. Shin looks by turns perplexed, frustrated, and ever so slightly disturbed (although that last has got to be an affectation), and no wonder, because wow that laughter sounds a bit more hysterical than he'd expected, when was the last time he'd had a break? Maybe he should listen to Rose a bit more.

"Financier Sykes." It's a flat statement, but he can hear the disappointment through it. "You're choosing now, of all times, to have a mental breakdown?"

"I'm sorry, sorry, it's just, this whole situation, the timing, it's hilarious. If you'd made this offer before Moscow, hell, even in the immediate aftermath, I'd have sprinted into your arms. But now? It doesn't work. We've made too much progress of our own, made too many arrangements with too many very cagey people."

"I see. Tell me how it matters." Shin says.

"Look, you know we've been at this for a while. We've made some pretty good progress; some victories, some alliances. We picked up some Iterators a while back who have been positively shitting out pre-Anomaly gear, we've made some Void Engineer contacts that are bearing fruit. Hell," don't let your voice hitch, don't let your voice hitch, "it wasn't that long ago I was organizing the defense of the Spy's Demise against a Threat Null assault asset." He doesn't mention who he worked with. He wants that plausible deniability for as long as he can.

"That incident. I was wondering what exactly caused an Incarna like that to attack that place." There's something about how Shin talks which Donald notices. The way he switches between Traditions and Technocratic lingo, the way he seems never really comfortable with either of them. He files that as something important to remember.

"It's a shame," Donald continues, in his best musing affectation, "that there wasn't any chance to bind that one like a spirit too, when it worked so well on the one in London."

"You encountered an Ex-Technocratic EDE in London? When was this? Why weren't we informed?" The slight surprise in the agent's voice made that foolishness almost worth it.

"We wrote it off as a shapeshifter attack. These things happen some of the time." There's no need to tell his inquisitor that they had accidentally lost their boss. Or that the medical facility containing her had just coincidentally been attacked by Reality Terrorists when it had conveniently been in a vulnerable situation. Bad luck, he had thought at that time. Until he knew what he now knows. Of the spider webs woven by those things who were once Syndicate executive board members. Those greedy grasping wyrms in the void.

Shin nods. "That would explain things. Before or after that operation you were co-chairing?"

Donald avoids being sidetracked. He might have to lay most of his cards on the table, but he's not here to lay all of them down. Especially when he's sure on how much he can trust these men and women and the answer is 'on most things, tread carefully.' "It's been a trip, is what I'm saying. I'd have liked to have shunted it up the chain to somebody like you a long time ago, but we were pretty certain you were working for them," and something about that felt a little weird. Something to ask the Director about, maybe. "And if as much of your organization needs weeding out as you say, we weren't far wrong. It sounds like we might have more points of contact than you in this fight, with attendant assets."

"You're repeating yourself. Get on with it."

"Some very personal points of contact, I should point out. The VEs still pretty much file Panopticon under 'shoot on sight if you can get away with it', those Iterators work with my colleagues, and the Demise survivors dealt with enough Autopolitan subversion attempts that they get twitchy if they think somebody's loyalties shifted a bit. None of these people are idiots, Shin, nor do any of them have so little firepower they can be ignored. I don't credit my chances of fooling them, and if I accept your offer, it's going to close a lot of doors I think are better held open."

Also, he doesn't say, if Rose thinks I've been compromised, I'll be lucky if she dunks me in a biogel vat to pick through my brain. Sera might not want to put it back together afterwards. It was a shame, though. He was still a Syndic, even without the fancy office, he knew how to weigh a business proposition, and joining this group? Oh, he could definitely see the upsides. But that didn't mean he had to accept - at least, not yet.

"So, here's what I want. Let's table the recruitment pitch until this crisis is, if not resolved, then at least stabilized. In the meantime, come and work with us. I think we could both use the help, under the circumstances."

"I was asking you to help us complete this mission. You want us to let you call the shots? Why? What do you gain?"

"First. You're underestimating Dr. Leon. I'm pretty sure I'm underestimating Dr. Leon. Before you had me captured I was doing some light reading on him."

"Progenitor neuroscientist. Minimal empathy. Social Darwinist tendencies." Shin starts.

"Narcissistic. Weak moral compass. Pragmatic. Manipulative. Probably in the top ten smartest Progenitors alive right now, and everyone else in that list is at least twice his age."

"I am very well aware of his psychological profile, thank you very much."

"Look. I don't know what you're trying to do here. Maybe you think he's got some deadman switch to erase what he knows if he dies. Maybe you want to paperclip him. But here's what I do know. He's smarter than us. Way smarter. Scary smart. I have no doubt he's already making plans, and backup plans, and they're going to be good plans. Plans beyond our puny evolved monkey-minds."

"So has Control." Shin still seems slightly reluctant to say that. "And your record against them is pretty good." He concedes. "Why don't you think we can deal with him given he's a lot less dangerous?" There's a note of challenge. Donald avoids it.

"I'm sure if you had been in the same place," Donald says diplomatically, "that you'd have done around as well. Maybe a little better. Maybe a little worse. We got lucky a lot of times. But you know as well as I do that EDEs aren't the same as people. We were outsmarting fools with quadruple digit IQs. They might have been smart but oftentimes that meant they were smart at being stupid. Now, Gregor Leon isn't immune to that either. But I don't want to risk him getting away again if he's a conspiracy bigwig. He might have voices in his ear. Tech. Tools. Things he can sell to the wrong people and get them on his side. You said Nephandic hemophages were responsible for Moscow-and for that reason, are responsible for the North Korea thing?"

Shin nods.

"See? Even without the Technocracy they'd be dangerous. What if they summon another one of those things here? One major capitol city getting hit by an evil cyborg god is enough for the whole of human history. So this is why I want to call the shots. Because my plan to deal with him involves having him shot, and nobody I've met so far in the Technocracy can outsmart a-" he remembers Harlan, corrects himself. "It's a lot more difficult to outsmart a bullet."

Shin nods fractionally. It's a minute movement, but enough to give Donald some hope. "You have a decent point. I'll discuss it with the others. Assuming it happens, why are you here? Why are you doing this?" Shin asks. "You have every reason not to trust us. But as far as I can tell, you've been at most lying by omission and even then it's been minor."

"Well," Donald says. "First, because I figured you would tell if I ever lied. But second, because I'm desperate. And probably too loyal for my own good. Because you're the best chance I have of getting what I want."

"And what do you think that is?"

"Simple. I think Panopticon has to die."

"Is that a threat?"

"You aren't Panopticon, are you?" Donald asks. "You don't sound like it. You don't act like it. You're not some sort of pro-Control fanatic. Or even a recovering one. But you know as well as I do I'm right here. From what you said, you were the guys who watched for Reasonites who got too caught up in their beliefs. You were the valve that vented pressure, that were... were basically the loyal opposition of Reasonites who were also Traditionalists."

He spreads his hands. "And watching for where the Order was going wrong became watching Technocrats for any disloyalty to Control. Because of course, being disloyal to Control was going wrong, wasn't it? It had to be that. It couldn't ever be that Control was going wrong, because you were answering to Control." He slams his fist into the table before him. "Boy, you fucked up. Slowly, a little bit year on year, but you forgot what you were there for."

Shin stands impassively. "Yes," he says. "Each time we took on a new face, Control brought us more in line."

"So that's what I want." Donald says. "Stop being the secret police. Start being the watchers again. I can do that for you! If we win this, we'll need people to look for tumors like the SPD. We'll need people who'll look for Professor Bastion having a 'very clever' idea and setting up a black ops division of psychics. Shit, where the fuck were you when the Syndicate got too clever by half about borrowing primal energy from the future using sub-prime mortgages? That's the too-caught-up-in-your-own-view-of-the-world stuff you should be watching for! The things you can't see from within the system, but you can see when you're standing on the edge! The people who ask 'why are you doing this?'"

"Well. Certainly." Shin says. "Is that all?"

"It's not much. Just a demand for a whole housecleaning," Donald says.

"Mmm." Shin smiles again. "You know, Mr Sykes, something tells me that the Traditions said you had a Primordial Avatar when you were one of them."

"They did."

The other man smiles. "I could tell. That personality archetype is all about cutting organizations back to their roots, purifying them and restoring their original purpose."

Donald leans forwards. "We're all busy men here, so if you're going to say no and keep on being the secret police, just go and fucking tell me then go mind wipe me and send me on my way. I need to go explain things to the Void Engineers and tell them not to stick electrodes in my brain."

"That would take time, and even we have our limits. And like you said, we can talk about this later. Right now, everyone here is in agreement that the most important thing is to make sure there is a Technocracy so we can talk later, right?" Shin says.

Donald nods. "Well yes. But this is also important. You made a mistake. You went from the loyal opposition to the hatchet-men. Guess that changed, didn't it?"

"It did." Shin acknowledges. "I can't guarantee anything."

"If you could, I'd know you were lying." Donald said. "But think about it for a moment. Consider that the assets you had-the power you had-what has it accomplished, really? What has it accomplished that you couldn't have done yourself? I'm sure you've heard all the stuff people say about personal excellence, self-reliance, and knowing how to use the tools you have efficiently."

"The Traditions also say that because they can't call down an orbital strike when they need to."

"Well yes. But when all you have are nuclear weapons, every problem starts looking like a radioactive crater. Speaking of..."

"I see your point." Shin concedes.

"So. What do you want?" Donald asks. "You've been spoon-feeding it to me and I'd like to be able to make an actual, informed decision."

"What do we want right now? We need what Dr. Leon knows. We want him alive, because he's more useful that way. We want the Void Engineers to start sharing intelligence so our contacts can know what they know. And we want the Void Engineers to avoid doing something rash. They're going to demand to call the shots the moment they hear of what's going on. And that can't happen. The balance of power in the Technocracy is already fragile-we don't want the Void Engineers being unquestionably dominant. We want Damage Control leading the charge. We want them to see what's going on with their own eyes."

"I'm still not comfortable with Leon breathing for even 1 second more than he has to." Donald says. "The man is dangerous. Unbelievably dangerous. He's smarter than most of us combined and if you don't think he'll be able to manipulate us-"

"He's also not a fanatic. He's a man with no moral compass trying to choose the winning side. If the choice is between guaranteed death and mostly likely death, he'll choose the latter."

"But what if he goes along with us simply to not die, but still believes Control is the winning side? From what I've heard, the one thing he isn't is impatient. Well, except with people. If he's working with them there's plenty of reason to think he might play the long game. He's good at it. If he wasn't, we wouldn't be here."

"We believe there are ways to solve that problem. We can downgrade his intelligence modifications. Shackle him via implanted modifications."

"That's at least a start." Donald says reluctantly. "But I'm going to keep insisting on this. The only safe place to put someone like Leon is six feet under."

"I'm going to forward your recommendation for discussion. Until then, Mr. Sykes, I'm going to keep working under the assumption that we need him alive, because if that changes we can just capture him, then shoot him in the back of the head."

"Fair enough." Donald suspects he's going to have to make this argument again soon. He thinks they're still of the belief that they can contain Dr. Leon. They might not even be wrong. But the risks of being wrong are too high. Far too high. So he's going to be planning on talking them out of it when he has time. At least then they'll have had to see the man in person, and Gregor Leon's normal facial expressions might be enough to annoy even some secret conspiracy man into shooting him out of spite. "Just to be clear. If you do this and everything goes wrong, I am going to call you up and say 'I told you so' moments before everyone on Earth dies."

"It's not going to come to that."

"It better not."

The rest of it is business. Being reminded that what he knows is not something he can tell anyone else. That for all everyone else knows, Donald Sykes was never here. That they-the Abjad-want the Void Engineers in as partners, rather than calling the shots. Being reminded just how important his role in this is. Donald thinks they're inclined to do at least some of what he's asking. Normally, asking people to give up power and assets is like pulling teeth. He's heard the war stories of Syndicate colleagues who specialize in moving assets from oversupplied constructs to ones which need them. But when you've been burned this badly-that's the kind of shock which lets drastic change happen. It's the kind of shock which can lead to collapse-or to finding new strength. Donald Sykes knows that sort of shock well.
***​
If only his subsequent negotiations were that easy, Donald thinks. He'd scarcely parked his rental car at the Japanese aerospace facility than a platoon of space marines had surrounded him with various menacing-looking guns. It's the sort of thing which sets a tone. As is being led, in cuffs, through secret passage after secret passage until they can chain him to a chair somewhere. It's not the kind of being chained up that he likes, Donald concludes. Not at all.

"I'm here to talk." Donald protests. "I don't mean any harm. I have important information and an even more important proposal."

"That's not my concern." The leader of the grunts says. He's clearly unEnlightened-as are all his subordinates. And unenlightened as well, Donald thinks. This is just a charade. If he was some sort of Threat Null spy, he thinks. He supposes the space cadets are a decent tripwire, if nothing else. The real firepower is probably not here, probably waiting for him to trip up. "My concern is that they told me you're dangerous, and I'm treating you like you're dangerous. So shut up." They frog-march him into a hardened, sealed interrogation room and let him stew for half an hour before anyone comes along. When someone does finally come along, he's almost relieved.

They ask him about Control, about what he knows. He answers them vaguely. Never specific enough to allow for a lie detector software to ping, not vague enough that they might realize what he's doing. Argues that he just put it together relatively recently. Which is true. Before he had suspicions. Now he has actionable intelligence. It's too late to pretend that he's doing anything other than desperately seeking out help, though. They ask about his escape, again and again. He doesn't characterize it as an escape. He just fails to mention anything about the house arrest. The best way to lie against an Enlightened interrogator is to never give them any facts which they can start playing with. To always keep them on a different topic without letting them realize they're being led around. He's gotten... not good at it, but quite adequate at doing exactly that.

When he asks about why he made the call from an apartment rather than from a Union base, he talks about how his experience is that the Technocracy might be infiltrated. Moscow involved the secret police after all, and Panopticon could be reading his emails. Their biases help here. When they ask why he vanished for several hours, he points out that he could have been followed. He was just taking precautions-reasonable ones-against being tracked. He talks about how he went from place to place to make sure he wasn't seen, talks about how he avoided surveillance in detail. Ties it in to what he saw in Moscow, the Spy's Demise, and what happened to LA.

They don't buy it. They think he's hiding something. So he falls back on the second story. He admits he was talking to Reality Deviants. He needed a favor from them. He doesn't trust them entirely, but he had nowhere else to turn. When bullshit fails, fall back on the literal truth. That, at least, gets them off his back. Or he thinks. The interrogator and guards leave, and he hasn't been shot, gassed, or otherwise "neutralized." Donald counts that as a win.

His next visitor takes about two hours to arrive. A petite Arabic woman in a black suit and a purple headscarf. But, Donald thinks, it makes sense given what she's been doing-trying to get in contact with the Void Engineers, through Elsa and Harlan Aristide's old contacts, and get them to not put them in a shallow grave. The fact that Jamelia Belltower is here to figuratively or literally bail him out means that things are going well, he guesses. Well enough that she's here and not stuck in a Void Engineer black site somewhere in orbit, anyways. "Hi boss." He manages weakly. "Are you working for the Void Engineers now?"

"First off, no, I'm not working for them. I'm working with them on a matter of significant importance, which you have interrupted." Jamelia Belltower says archly. "Your... interruption is a little inconvenient, when I had just finished assuring our friends here that we would keep things secret. I trusted you," she says, sounding disappointed, "to find Dr. Rosario. Not blow the lid off of the events in a way which might lead to drastic escalation by declaring you know the Void Engineers' secrets on an open channel. Did you make any progress on that at least?" She gesticulates angrily-in a way that's not characteristic of her normal disappointment. Donald knows what she means. The room is being monitored. Stay vague. Talk about sensitive information later. Not that he needs the reminder. In a way, he feels slightly insulted. Just because he's done something risky doesn't mean he's stupid. But that's being a Technocrat, Donald concludes. Believing that you're the only competent person on Earth. Or not just a Technocrat. Everyone in the Ascension War does it.

"We're in contact." Donald says. "And I was put in charge. I made a call-a call because things are getting to the point where this secret can't stay contained. One of Serafina's coworkers is working on the other side, and whatever he's doing is big. We worked it out. Told Ragnarok Command. Didn't have much of a choice. Didn't know what you were doing. Disadvantage of secrets." Donald grins. "If we had known you were making progress with them..."

"A little." Jamelia concedes. "Not much. But we've been making progress."

"Well, if we had known, we might have been able to do this more quietly."

"This doesn't explain," Jamelia says, voice tired, "exactly why you went to RAGCOM. Or why you decided to then go call NASA and yell about things you shouldn't know. Or talking to Reality Deviants about it."

"We were running out of options. Henriette met someone who she knew working for the enemy. She had her own concerns, and they tried to take her down. Underestimated both of them. We went along with her to RagCom. They punted the whole thing to Damage Control. Internal affairs issue, I think. Not the kind of thing Ragnarok Command's set up to sort out without stepping on too many toes. But I don't think they've got enough gear to be safe. I don't think just leaving them in charge without any other input is safe. And I don't want any chance that the people responsible are going to get away with their crimes." To the point, Donald thinks, that he's been talking back to people who could kill or mindfuck him just to get that point across. "They're too smart, too clever, and too dangerous."

"You haven't answered my last question."

"I was desperate! I needed all the help I could get avoiding surveillance and gathering intelligence, and I didn't know who to trust. At least with our enemy we know where we both stand, and how each other benefits from the deal." Donald insists. "And what were they going to do? Publish it? If they had, it'd actually work in our favor. Make the whole idea seem like absurd Reality Deviant propaganda. Buy us some more time. So it wasn't as risky as you think it was."

"I see." Jamelia says. Donald can't figure out if that's an "I approve" or "that was so incredibly stupid that I'm at a loss for words." Jamelia takes a breath and continues. "I'm sure they're listening and watching your brainwaves while this is going on, so they'll know you're consistent if nothing else. When they finish evaluating you as a threat, which should take very little time, they should stop treating you like some sort of prisoner of war. Which is good, because I have an appointment in Europe and I need to be there soon. Personal reasons." Jamelia says uncharacteristically. "So I'll tell them that I trust you to hash out these concerns with them when you're cleared. Clearly your intelligence is more up to date than ours. And maybe someone with unconventional tactics might be... helpful."

'Personal reasons.' Donald thinks. That's probably a euphemism for 'some wet works operation she's assigned herself.' Donald might need to start reading French obituaries to see if anyone mysterious expires during the next few weeks. "Good luck on that. Are they going to trust me?"

"No. Of course not. But they'll trust you marginally more than a NWO spook." Jamelia says bluntly. "And we've already laid most of the groundwork. In fact, I suppose this is good timing. Normally a negotiation is about building rapport but there's only so much I can do there. Now that you've blundered into this, I can trust you to un-blunder it. Isn't that right?"

"Of course, ma'am." Donald replies. "I am very good at unfucking my own mistakes. Comes from experience. And a lot of drug usage."

Jamelia sighs. "This is no laughing matter."

"No, of course it isn't, but you wanted me to say something like that." Donald needles. "I'll take care of it."

"See that you do. I expect a full debriefing when you're done." With, Donald knows, the information she can't ask in front of the Void Engineers.​

The votes for 'yes, but' and 'no, and...' were close enough that I was like "wait a minute, these are asking something similar enough. Maybe I can do something with this." And yes, I always planned to confirm at some point that Jamelia was in fact in contact with the Void Engineers.​
Quid:
Is Donald going to advocate for taking Dr. Leon alive?
[ ] (2.0x) No. He's too dangerous, the Abjad seem to at least recognize that on some level, and given what everyone suspects about what he's doing, well, fuck that guy. Personally.
[ ] (1.5x) Yes, but he should go to the Void Engineers. That way he'll be in a situation which will probably keep him out of the public.
[ ] (1.5x) Yes, but he should go to trial. And probably end up being Mindwiped. Dr. Leon might be dangerous as a martyr. He's less dangerous after a trial as a Bob-equivalent.
[ ] Yes. The intelligence he can provide is an absolute goldmine which can be incredibly useful.

Pro:
So. How are you going to approach the Void Engineers with this issue? Discuss. The choices here are more suggestions than actual detailed policy.
[ ] Empathizing with the Void Engineers. It's obvious why they wanted to keep this secret, and for good reason. But things have gotten much more difficult
[ ] Noting that the Void Engineers, by being so secretive and the secret being one that leads to people being killed, have created the result that the anti-Threat-Null faction is uncoordinated as fuck.
[ ] Keeping things focused on the current situation. We can maybe discuss the problems of being a secret conspiracy inside a secret conspiracy later.
[ ] Pointing out that the secretiveness is basically collapsing. After Moscow, after Los Angeles, it's becoming increasingly unsustainable to keep this secret, and the Void Engineers better figure out a plan for managing it coming out without leading to civil war.
[ ] Write In.

Quo:
So. By pledging your souls to the secret heretics of the Technocracy making a compelling argument to the Abjad they can provide you with some benefits. Choose 1 if you're voting No for the first question. 2 if you're voting Yes. They can only do so much without exposing themselves-and they really want to be in position to Not-Lose at the inevitable backstabbing contest.
[ ] There are many hidden places in any place controlled by the Technocracy for time. Former Order of Reason facilities-and the connections they have. They won't be large-or well-maintained, but they can give you a way of inserting a small strike force into Izanagi. The majority of your troops will have to go through the normal way, but you might be able to pull off a commando raid this way.
[ ] The Abjad have codes. Codes and men and weapons. They can find ways to to deal with the JSDF presence. Out of all the defenses, they're probably the least effective-men with ceramic body armor and assault rifles and tanks against the Technocracy's finest isn't a fight, it's a massacre. You can suggest that the Abjad lean on the right people to get them out of there. That might not be particularly combat effective but it'll save a lot of lives.
[ ] You have the tools which were used in an age long ago to kill the gods. The Abjad know how to awaken them into more than lumps of magical metal. All you need is wielders-which might or might not be a problem depending on who you can find or how you can lie. The tools of the Usurpers who slew those old primordial gods might have some power over a new god.
[ ] The Abjad have been hidden in Panopticon for years. And so they have Panopticon's access. They can start directly interfering with the Convention itself-ensuring that whatever goes down in Izanagi will be undisturbed, unlike what happened in Moscow.
[ ] The Abjad are old, and have a lot of institutional knowledge. They're aware of the history of the Union's killers, and what they've done for centuries. They can grant these books-and by studying this one might learn something about the enemy today. This effectively allows you to read the enemy battle plan for as long as this knowledge, designed to be forgotten, stays in memory (i.e. one operation). The only issue is that there are a very small handful of people who the Abjad might trust with this understanding. One of them is Serafina. The other is Donald. This might make tactical planning difficult.
[ ] The Abjad can act directly. There are undoubtedly a number of pro-Leon sympathizers outside who might create political issues. The Abjad can... take care of this problem.
[ ] Write-In (within reason)​
 
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Update CCIV: Expediency
JB CCIV: Expediency

Quid pro quo. The Abjad promise him something, he promises them something. It's how the world works. They promised to teach him about the weapons they've basically been used for decoration in their home base-weapons, the Abjad said, which were once used to commit a crime so great, words could not contain it. Sadly, Donald recalls, they also said that a lot of that magic had faded. But something unexpected might throw Control for a loop. And he hopes they'll come through with the other thing they promised. They promised to delay the JSDF. Get them reassigned. Move them out of the way of Damage Control's assault on Izanagi. If that happens-it's not particularly practical in the short-term, but Donald doesn't want an incident that could make things even worse. And the point of making these decisions-of sacrificing-was to save the people who didn't need to know about the monsters lurking underneath the beds. Maybe it's just a feel-good action that has little relevance.

But he hopes it's not. Hope. Hope was what Pandora did not release from the box, Donald thinks bitterly. Nietzsche argued that hope was the most evil of Zeus' curses, because it prolonged man's torment by letting him grasp for the possibility that he might escape it. Does the box preserve elpsis for men, or keep elpsis away from men - and should we bemoan this fate, or be thankful for it? Well, that's a question Donald can't answer for now, because at the moment he plans to use hope to both ensnare a potential ally and trap a foe in a web of their own making.

Fact. The Void Engineers' secrecy isn't viable in the long run. But this isn't the long run. For the Void Engineers to be persuaded that they should take Gregor Leon alive, they have to just believe that they can keep him quiet - and that killing him will make more trouble for them. Director Belltower can focus on the higher level stuff with the Void Engineers. Here and now in the present, Donald can deal with facts on the ground.

Fact. Leon Gregor's psychological profile indicates he values his own skin very, very highly - but doesn't care so much whether that skin is attached to a clone. He's also more cocky than an Ecstatic who just tried size-enhancement magic on his junk for the first time and came down with a nasty paradox. If he thinks he has a way out, he won't fight to the last - not when he's convinced that he can talk his way out of anything and that he's too clever for the Union to risk losing. He likes to gloat. He likes having an avenue to brag. Leon Gregor wants an audience. The idea of him getting an avenue to show off is perfect bait.

Hope will be how he bends both of them into his plan. He pulls out a plain cigarette, and rolls it through his fingers, as he looks at the Void Engineer in the room.

"Look, I'll be blunt," he says. "If Gregor Leon knows that the orders aren't to kill him - and the man's a superhuman genius with an ego bigger than most planets, so he'll be able to deduce it - then he'll act differently than if he works out we want him dead."

"He's a threat," the Void Engineer commodore sitting across the table from him says. Commodore Preserved-by-God Alecson - Pressy to his friends, who Donald isn't - is a burly Nigerian whose synthetic skin barely conceals the life support machinery that keeps him alive in 1g environments.

"Yes. Yes, he is," Donald replies, arms spread wide in an easy gesture. "If he wasn't a threat, we wouldn't be in this whole mess. And he's a threat because he can't be killed by bullets. He'll just activate in another body."

"There are ways of making sure a man stays dead."

Those words chill Donald to the bone. "I hope you are not suggesting you're considering the use of a neutron bomb," he says thinly. "Jesus. You can't drop shit like that in the middle of metropolitan Tokyo."

"Neutron bombs have their uses," Commodore Alecson says. He's running something that means Donald can't read any further meaning from that - and that means that yes, that's probably on their list of options. "Just as the nuclear weapon in Moscow had its use."

"And look where that got us," Donald says. "We're about to be bogged down in a full on war with North Korea - and I suspect Our Enemy leaked that information that pinned the blame on North Korea. Another victory like Moscow, and we may not survive." He twirls an unlit cigarette through his fingers. "And you're glossing over one thing. Moscow was a fusion bomb used against a nice, big, obvious trio of giant stompy robots. Six-sevenths of Command won't be so understanding about something like that being used in the middle of Tokyo unless some giant biohorror is rampaging - and if Godzilla shows up, we're fucked up."

He raises his hands. "I'm not saying that it isn't a valid tactical option - at times," he says. "But it's not a valid tactical option just to kill, specifically, Leon Gregor. But, hey, I'm a PR man, right? I'm a fat cat Syndic. So..."

"No, you're not, Mr Sykes," the Void Engineer says, chair creaking under him as he shifts. "I can see your game. You're mono-focused on the threat of a civil war. Not the disaster ahead of us right now. A civil war is survivable. If what you say is true, and Dr. Leon isn't stopped-nothing is survivable. This has the potential to make Moscow look bad."

Donald's face wears the expression of a man who's carefully showing no expression at all. Popping open his carton of cigarettes, he puts the unlit one back in. "Look. We have to avoid a civil war at almost all costs. Not all costs, but almost all costs. We can't split because that's what the bastards out in space want us to do. And that means that options that'd start a civil war are off the table. That means no neutron bombs unless a fucking Ragnarok gets called. Not even if it would make everyone's lives easier if Leon Gregor was an expanding cloud of superheated gas."

The commodore harrumphs, but is still listening.

"So that's what we'll have to do," Donald concludes. "Even though I hate the bastard. He made a meme to make a close friend of mine kill themselves, and it nearly worked. But I want that bastard neutralized more than I want him dead. We make sure orders are to take Gregor alive. He'll know people want him alive for a day in court, so he won't go up setting off a nuke or any mad thing like that. The Progenitors want him on trial, so back them up - and in return for playing nice with them, you'll be able to get concessions like making sure you have Void Engineer specialists to keep watch over him while he's in cryostasis so EDEs can't contact him. And hey, if there was an accident with the cryostasis that happened to take chunks out of his memories and wreck all those implants that make him a threat..."

"I am sure the Progenitors wouldn't be happy," Alecson says, voice soft.

"Oh, they'd be very displeased. They might send you a gift basket filled with nougat and those really nasty violet-flavored candies. Of course, if you'd made sure to talk things over with Li and get some of his specialists to check the cryocontainment..."

"A well-made point. That would just be a freezer accident."

"Accidents happen," Donald says effusively.

Donald's discussion with the Void Engineers goes on. He justifies, explains, prevaricates and implies. All in a day's work - except he isn't being paid at the moment. He's probably going to have to take this time in lieu, he thinks morosely.

And after half an hour of talking, he's managed to just about get the conversation around to where he wants it to be for his next point.

"So," he says, gesturing with his packet of cigarettes, "one other thing is, I think-"

"Look, either stop playing with those cigarettes or just smoke," Alecson says irately. "I don't care. I'll just turn off my sense of smell."

Donald lights up, inhaling with a sigh of relief. "Thank you very much," he says.

"I'm not doing it to be nice. You're just fiddling with them and it's getting on my nerves."

It feels good, Donald thinks, leaning on the table. His tie was discarded long ago, and his shirt sleeves are rolled up. "Do you want one?" he asks.

"No."

"Fair enough. It's a horrible habit." He exhales a cloud of smoke. "So," he says, cupping his right elbow in his left hand, "the thing that's worrying me right now is how many people out there have been able to follow the same chain as I have."

Commodore Alecson glowers at him. "You mean like your boss?" he asks.

"Exactly! Nasty, suspicious little minds like her. And there certainly are lots of nasty suspicious minds like her out there, although she is nastier and more suspicious than most. It's very trying to be managed by a Nu-Wo workaholic like her, you know." He's establishing common ground, making it seem like as a Syndic he's no fan of the NWO. "But Moscow was a big clue. I'm betting no small number of people who never trusted the Computer will be thinking about Skynet scenarios, given what happened there. And Nu-Wo analysts are paid to think about this sort of thing and consider 'what would we do if X went rogue?'."

"Is that a threat, Mr. Sykes?" His eyes narrow.

"No, for goodness sake, not everything is a veiled threat. I'm talking about how I'd bet good money that the Nu-Wo is starting to suspect the Computer. Shit, my boss still insists on printing out sensitive materials because she doesn't like keeping things on hardware. That's the institutional culture of those spooks. Sometimes I get the feeling their perfect world would have everyone using social media that they can spy on, while they stay in their offices using faxes."

The other man smiles, showing white teeth. "I get the same feeling sometimes, too. This is something we are... concerned about." He looks Donald in the face. "The New World Order always were Control's loyal dogs. They were kept on a tighter chain than the others. You never saw this, but I did. If they start taking orders from Control again..."

"Let me tell you a story," Donald says, gesturing with his cigarette. "You probably haven't heard it before. It's called the Boy Who Didn't Cry Wolf. So, long ago, in... probably Ancient Greece, right, there's this boy in this little farming village. And his job is to watch over the sheep. Keeping them safe from wolves. But one day, one of the lambs goes missing. He just thinks it's wandered off, and goes looking for it. He can't find it. But the next day, another one goes missing - and the next day, another one. And by now he's getting worried. Now, on the fourth day, he sees a pack of stray dogs that used to belong to the village, and finds a bit of dead lamb. And he's like 'Oh shit, they got three lambs and if I tell people, they'll blame me for it because they'll say I should have told them earlier'. So he decides he has to fight the feral dogs all alone. And he's doing pretty well. But then one of the dogs gets past him, and then... well, you know, 'a dingo et mah baby!'. And then things go far, far worse for him because they all blame him for not telling them that there were dogs in the area."

"..." Alecson stares at him. "That's an awful story."

"I know, right? I had this cunning idea to try to veil it in allusion and allegory, but it just didn't work and I realized it half way through my story, but had to just keep going." Inside Donald is grinning. A badly told, unsubtle story like that means the Void Engineers will underestimate him. "I'll put it to you straight, then. I think in the long run, Moscow - and from rumors, Mexico City - are going to mean there's going to be more people who are going to put things together. I don't think I'll be the first. You can't rely on everyone being as wary as me. Right now? Right now, what's going down in Tokyo is seriously bad shit, so we need to focus on it. But if it's really the 'MUSCOVITEs' behind this, there'll be more clues left behind. More clues that analysts and nasty little suspicious people can pick up on - and if you're too overt about covering things up, the blame will get turned on you because they'll blame you for a dingo eating their baby - or a neutron bomb being set off in Tokyo which can be blamed on a US weapons malfunction, causing a massive international incident which will destroy US-Japanese relations. You dig?"

"I... dig," the commodore says wearily.

"So I'd put some thoughts towards preemptively compromising elements of the Progenitors so they know what they're looking for and know not to blab to... certain people who shouldn't know," Donald says, cigarette in his teeth. "You and the Progs have always got on well, right? Find some people who you suspect already have some pieces of the puzzle, and bring them into things. It'll make cleanup and containment much easier."

And that's the power of hope, Donald thinks. That's the power of feeling like you're in control. Reframe a problem - so it's not you 'having to come clean', it's you 'compromising people so they're on your side' - and it suddenly feels much more soluble.

"Let me guess. You're volunteering for the role?" the other man asks, quirking an eyebrow.

"It's something I could do," he says, with a shrug. "Though I'm not the only one. You might not trust me enough for it. I probably wouldn't trust me in your place. But you've got to stop a civil war being started against you. The space-assholes know that's the best way to cripple you, and you're our best and only hope," he says, slathering on the butter. "And you won't be able to keep them away if you're distracted by a full on war. I'm a PR man. I know all about this kind of thing."

"That's... true." The commodore says. "Look. You're right. We need to deal with this first, and you're right that we can't do it if we're also in a shooting war with the other conventions. So I'm going to ask you right now-who do you need us to brief?"

Donald thinks. There's a lot of choices. Obviously he can vouch for his own amalgam. Everyone there has encountered the Void Engineers' worst nightmare, and is loyal to the Technocracy, not Threat Null. He could do that under any truth serum or neural scan. But who else could he recommend? Who else could he bring in on this?

There's Cross, of course-the ostensible leader of the operation, but potentially vulnerable to subversion. He's much more independent than Rose is, but that's never a guarantee when dealing with something like this. And if there's anyone who can hack a construct's mind with Control's authorization, it's Gregor Leon. But on the other hand, if he knows-wouldn't that help him devise some countermeasures? The more important flipside, Donald thinks, is that Cross is compromised in a different way. He's likely to tell other people, unless he's given a very good reason to stay quiet. He's a construct and constructs don't always think the same way humans do about secrets and skullduggery. There's the risk that he might say something that could tip the enemy off. What would they do if they knew?

It would certainly complicate things. Maybe start a civil war inside Panopticon, without loyalists ready to move. Create a rogue Convention. On the flipside-the Technocracy's survived rogue conventions before. The Etherites, then the Adepts. And having Panopticon destroy itself via going rogue might not be the worst of options. It certainly wouldn't please the Abjad, but he cares about humanity, not some cabal of secret heretics. And he's gotten pretty used to making powerful enemies. Of course, none of this was a guarantee either. Sell it to Cross correctly, tell him that the secret absolutely needs to be kept, vet the people who know-and he could be a reliable asset.

Or, if that wasn't enough, he could go upwards. He doesn't know Director Ragland. But Ethical Compliance itself is very elite, very independent, and exists to deal with this exact sort of subversion threat. If Ragland was compromised, they'd be fucked already. Him knowing that they know, if he was compromised, would create very little harm. It's pretty much going to be an open secret that EC is moving on a Japan construct at this point, what with the forces being massed under EC authority. He has no doubt the enemy is already aware what's going on. What they don't know is the specific plans, and Ragland being told wouldn't change that. If he wasn't compromised, there are even more resources that could be thrown at this. Right now the threat is a 'rogue Amalgam with WMDs,' not 'an existential threat.'

But then again, if he was doing that, why not go all the way up the chain and just tell Professor Li? For all his problems with being an inflexible jerk, the man had principles. Principles that presumably included "don't sell humanity out to a bunch of crazy, delusional EDEs." The sort of principle which was useful today. That would bring an actual member of Command into the conspiracy, into working with the Void Engineers. And that, PR-wise and utility-wise, would be significant. Professor Li has been sympathetic to the VEs as well, dutifully increasing production of combat constructs to ensure that the VEs' forces in space are supplied, not asking questions when the VEs have been unwilling to provide more than the most cursory answers. So there's a good relationship there already. Of course, what exactly could he do? Even if he was loyal his organization would be shot through with compromises and sympathizers. Or not even sympathizers-political opportunists, perfectly willing to whitewash what Gregor Leon was doing as to turn this assault into a politically motivated witch-hunt. Certainly, Professor Li would be a prize, but doing so might get him to do something foolish that loses them the war of public opinion. And that's not a war Donald wants to lose.

So who else can he turn to outside of the Progenitors? There's obviously Ragnarok Command. But reading between the lines, Ragnarok Command doesn't want to send anything more than it already has. Maybe it's because Ragnarok Command thinks this is just a rogue incident-nothing to worry too much about, unless the WMDs get broken out at which point it'd be their small-d small-c damage control teams assisting the Progenitors in keeping Japan ebola-free. Or maybe it's because Ragnarok Command's leadership suspects what's going on and doesn't want to know. There's certainly been... activity in Ragnarok Command that suggests the latter. Does that mean the Void Engineers could talk to General Starborn and get a quiet understanding of exactly what's happening? And if so, would it be immediately helpful or just a setup for a longer political game?

Ironically, Donald thinks, for all their distrust of the NWO, the NWO is important here. Professor Bastion knows already, or so-close-to-knows that it's really irrelevant. And of course they'd be very helpful. He suspects that Threat Null has dealt with them using a relatively light hand-infiltrating an organization of spies would be fiendishly difficult, even if their Dimensional Science oversight capability has been degraded-but on the other hand, that's because they didn't need to. The NWO's natural paranoia has made it the Void Engineers' worst enemy. The Void Engineers have been acting... exactly like a Convention waiting to break away or try to take over the Union via military force.

No, Donald thinks. That's not true. That was... something else. The Void Engineers have been acting in a questionable fashion, but never quite enough to justify being considered all-but rogue. Nevertheless, it's been enough to trigger NWO paranoia. The problem with getting them to trust Professor Bastion is simply that they would have to trust the NWO. But maybe they could work through other, lesser channels. There would be obvious ones-Harlan Aristide, for one. Guys coming back into the fold, relative outsiders-and people who for that reason might be valuable to the Technocracy.



Well that took a while. Sorry guys! But I think we might be back on track.

Compromises and Convenient Allies:
So. Who's Donald going to truthfully talk about and get the Void Engineers to go for? And how? Again, discuss the approach you're going to be taking.
[ ] The Progenitors.​
[ ] Go all the way to the top and entreat with Professor Li.​
[ ] Make it more selective and just get Cross informed of what he's facing.​
[ ] The NWO.​
[ ] Go all the way to the top. Convince the Void Engineers (somehow) that Bastion is in play.​
[ ] Go for the outsiders. Aristide & Co. have probably worked with the VEs before, and they're more trustworthy.​
[ ] Ragnarok Command. They might not be able to take any immediate action but giving the VEs more backing with the guys with the heavy ordinance and strong Iteration X ties is going to be really helpful.
[ ] Write-In. Suggest someone. Make your case. They might be useful!​
 
Update CCV: Trust Some One
JB CCV: Trust Some One

There are so many options Donald thinks could be suggested. So many paths. But not all of them are of the same effectiveness, and fewer still are those which he can practically argue a skeptical Void Engineer into choosing. If he had a guarantee they'd listen-he'd choose Professor Bastion. Thoughtful, deceitful Professor Bastion. A man who you could trust to put his own interests first-but also could trust to have what he believed were the interests of the Union at heart. It's tempting to tell them just how much they know already, just how much this war is leaking out of the shadows as it escalates Earthside.

But the Void Engineers wouldn't accept that, tempting as it is. They were too familiar with the NWO as Control's right hand. Too jealous of their relatively privileged position, while the Void Engineers had to scrape and salvage from whatever they could to keep their fleets going. They knew how they had been hurt-and couldn't see the different but no less damaging methods everyone else had suffered.

No. The New World Order might be the right answer-but the right answer to the wrong question. He needed the answer to the right question. And it was in front of him. "Professor Li." Donald says to Commodore Alecson. "Professor Li is a smart man. Loyal. Fanatical."

"You're giving a lot of reasons why he's dangerous." Alecson says. "Smart, loyal, fanatical people might be useful. They might also choose the wrong side in this war."

"And don't you see?" Donald raises his voice slightly. "He's been abandoned by the Progenitor leadership for so long he's seen what they've created and he isn't happy with it. He wants to be strong-not just mentally but physically as well. He's been advancing Damage Control in ways which the Administration had resisted. He's loyal-but he's the kind of guy who you could give the right push and could bring that loyalty on your side. He's a fanatic-but he's a humanist fanatic. You coach his first encounter with Threat Null-give him the impression you need to-and he'll be their enemy for life. I know the type of person. Brilliant, charismatic, and nearly incapable of reasoning themselves out of the position they initially reasoned themselves into. Which is all the more reason you need to approach him. He could be your best friend or your worst enemy-and right now you're in a good position to make him the former."

"Why do you believe that?" Alecson asks. "What you ask us to do-to explain that we've been keeping him in the dark for a decade of constant war-"

"You were doing your job." Donald retorts. "He trusted you enough not to ask too many questions. Now you're repaying that trust, by telling him what he needs to know, to save his Convention from something cold and cruel come from the void. I'm sure you have video evidence of exactly what Threat Null does in the void. I'm sure it's sufficiently horrible to associate them with the Nephandi. I'm sure there are other things you can talk to him about. The man's a dedicated public servant, not a butcher. I don't think he appreciates Moscow or Mexico City very much. No sane man would-and for all Li's faults he's not insane."

Alecson keeps asking questions in this vein-but he finally relents. "Mr. Sykes. We will return you to your amalgam. I will inform the relevant parties about your recommendation."

Donald wants to complain-but he thinks through the situation. He tries to look and see if he did anything wrong. And he realizes that in the end, decisions like this were always out of his hands. He only has the control he does. He's done what he can. Made the deals he can-pleaded with those who might be convinced. The lesson from the Spy's Demise, he realizes, wasn't just about distinguishing between reality and fantasy. It was about trust. What he did-the actions he took recently-were not those of a trusting man.

And that paranoia could eat through him, could break him. It almost broke the Void Engineers. But at some point-the circle cannot be completed. Someone has to walk a different path.

And he sighs. It's the first one he's going to do.

***
Darkside Base
VOIDCOM


Admiral Ivanova made a habit to know the captains of all her ships, or the former captains. Commodore Preserved-By-God Alecson was one of them. He didn't have much of a sense of humor, and could be cold to people he didn't consider his friends-but he was a good judge of character. So when Commodore Pressy sends her a message saying that someone-Financier Donald Sykes-just came to him and suggested, to his face, that the jig was about to be up-

Admiral Anastasia Ivanova faces the message like a firing squad. She-the Admiralty entire-knew that they couldn't fool everyone indefinitely. They were hoping to have long enough to win before then-win decisively enough to sweep things under the rug. For a decade they've fought. Seeking a magic bullet which has never come. But every new revelation of the true scale of the Enemy has worn down their optimism. Their enemy is the enemy of all Creation. Their enemy is a vengeful god, one which has destroyed so much, made so many enemies-yet survived even that. Judge a man by his enemies, Ivanova mouths. The enemies of Threat Null are powerful indeed. Many of them had once been worshipped as gods. In a way, Pressy's statement frees her. His statement, combined with Jamelia Belltower and Harlan Aristide's entreaties-and their suspicious activity in the Void-leads her to one conclusion.

Pressy himself was never a fan of laying it out in the open. With his support-and with the Void Engineers running themselves as a military force rather than an explorer's club, she could do so and not lose any respect. The soldiers and officers like Professor Li as well. They know how much the Progenitors' militarization has helped them, how much combat-rated biotech has let them take on the Transhumans and Mantons and Autopolitans on a more even basis, has given them the chance to reverse-engineer and understand their enemy. He's not like the Syndicate or New World Order. Not dangerously obsessed with a flawed ideal like Iteration X's adherents. His only weakness is that he might not understand those she needs to cooperate with. Which is in the end, such a small, trivial problem compared to everything else she faces. He doesn't need to know the rest of her allies. Not yet. They'll have plenty of time to discuss that.

Yet, if this is the right thing to do, she asks herself? Why does it feel so much like a betrayal for what she stands for? Why does it feel so much like weakness, to reach out and to do what she knows to be right?

In the end, Threat Null's greatest weakness was also its greatest strength. They did not doubt. They did not comprehend the concept of doubt. They just were. The awful industrialized force of inevitability, a juggernaut made of things which were once men but now infinitely greater and infinitely lesser stripped of all ability to feel self-doubt or remorse or pity or fear. But she, in the end, was still human. Humanity, though, meant overcoming weakness, aspiring to more. Being capable of change, of reconsidering flawed plans, of doing what she's doing right now.

"Admiral Ivanova." Professor Li says. His heartbreakingly handsome face is guardedly polite, with a half-smile that could mean anything or nothing. "Is there a problem?" It would have been foolish to expect any empty pleasantries when she placed a high-priority direct call to a member of Command in military dress uniform.

"We need to talk." Admiral Ivanova says. "About Japan. Right now. There are some facts you need to be informed of before any action can be taken."


Admiral On Deck...
As Admiral Ivanova, you have made a priority hypercom call to Professor Li to discuss the events in Japan.
[ ] Choose your words carefully.

Right. So. Since I got an approach, but there was enough disagreement on it that putting words in the mouth of the Void Engineers might not lead to everyone being satisfied. Furthermore, I was stuck on this post for a while before realizing that the problem was that I was thinking of Donald as the mouthpiece when he really wouldn't make a good one, sense-wise. An advisor, maybe. Giving them the idea, certainly. But the actual talk? That's something which is both too important to leave offscreen and too important to just not vote on. One of the neat things I think the good Call of Duty games did was have you take the perspective of a side character for brief moments. It lets you get a certain perspective on things that isn't natural to the main characters. That's part of why the interludes existed.

But here we're doing this for the main story, and probably for exactly one update. Even towards the end of Panopticon, we're still going to be experimenting with styles and narrative beats. Let's see if it works.
 
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Update CCVI: Paradigm Shift
JB CCVI: Paradigm Shift

The encryption kicks in, and Admiral Ivanova watches the walls and people around her melt away into blackness. She's left at the edge of a spotlight that comes from no source, two smooth obsidian monoliths floating behind her. As members of Command they're both fitted for this ultra-secure level of hypercom communications. It wouldn't do for Command-level discussions to be overheard. Especially not these discussions. Not a discussion which might, if heard by the wrong person at the wrong time, damn the entirety of this world and everyone on it.

Before her eyes, Professor Li appears and another spotlight illuminates. He only has one monolith behind him, but then again, that makes sense. The Progenitors are only the heirs to one of the Order of Reason's groups; the Void Engineers are both the Celestial Masters and the Void Seekers.

"Be quick about this," Li says, voice brusque. "I'm very busy at the moment."

"Yes, I understand," she says. "But this information is mission-critical for what's going on in Tokyo. It relates to information gathered from Moscow and Mexico City."

Li stiffens, then relaxes. There's no characteristic pause, because he probably was paying personal attention to this. It was mandated by protocol-but people bent that one all the time to get a little more time out of their busy schedules. His handsome face is wary. "You have my full attention," he says.

"Thank you." She pauses, taking a deep breath. Everything in her stomach churns with what she's about to do. She may be dooming everything. All she has to rely on is the knowledge that the Progenitors could have destroyed the Void Engineers already if they were working for the enemy. She'd prefer something a little more solid. But the choice is to either take this leap of faith now, or let someone else-maybe Gregor Leon-break the news to him. No. The first impression cannot be left to chance. And with all the containment breaks now-she has to face it. This facade had to crack sometime. "This information must not leave this room - not without in depth discussion. It is a fundamental threat to the integrity of the Union."

"I don't think matters are that serious," Professor Li says. "The Tokyo rogue elements are isolated and are going to be-"

"The pro-social psychological conditioning elements of the Union are fundamentally compromised. All of them. The Order's sleeper commands and social cues, the highest clearance override codes from Iteration X, the Syndicate's market induction protocols, your own bioroid protocols and behavioral inducements. Even our own loyalty training."

Li sags. "... what?"

"They're all built off standards designed by Control, and those standards are no longer secure. The MUSCOVITEs have access to them and they have access to everything derived from the standards. We've known about the MUSCOVITEs for years - we call them Threat Null. Until Moscow, though, we didn't realize that they could access Earth."

The man is more than just a pretty face. "The way the threat DSS-alike units went straight for the communications hub, like that was their primary objective..."

Ivanova nods. "Dr Rosario's choice to use the nuclear weapon at that point probably saved the world by ruining Moscow's infrastructure. If they'd had that they'd have been able to punch through the Order's media blackout like it had never been there."

"Gregor Leon," Li hisses. "How long has he been bleeding information to them?"

The admiral blinks. He's wrong-footed her there.

"Gregor Leon is compromised by the MUSCOVITEs - by Threat Null," Li explains, each word simmering with anger. "He's perhaps the foremost specialist in the field left after 1999. He was one of the old Administration's black books research men and I know he's worked extensively on psychological conditioning - he spent a decade locked away with an Ivory Tower research group in the late 80s and early 90s researching the origins of genius and how it can be controlled. He must have used information he had access to because of that to break the standards and hand them to aliens."

"I wish that was the case," Admiral Ivanova says. "I really do. No, the rot goes deeper than that. It's not Gregor Leon's doing-although he might have contributed. Kept them updated. No. They've had the ability to do so during their inception. I have an admission to make. We know exactly what happened to all of the Union's extrasolar assets. Chieron. Autochthonia. The Pyramid. The Cop. A whole bunch of off-world colonies. And we kept it from you. I'm sorry, but it was the only way we believed that the Union could be kept safe."

Professor Li looks angry for a moment, reflexively as any human would after being lied to. But he's too smart and too clever by half to stay angry once he realizes what this statement suggests. "Threat Null is making use of these assets."

"No. Worse. Threat Null was created when these assets were lost. They are the exhuman remnants of the Technocracy." She can't lie to him or let him discover half-truths. Ivanova knows that she needs, absolutely needs, to make he is clear of the scope and scale of Threat Null-and that whatever was created might have come from the Union-but is a Union that nobody can accept. "When the Dimensional Anomaly swept through extrasolar space, it cut everyone off. People turned to desperate measures to get back home. Your Convention, and Iteration X-they tried to brute-force the problem, went along with radical posthuman augmentation, the kinds of dangerous experimental technology that had never been tested. The NWO and Syndicate started infiltrating places they shouldn't, making deals that might have been ill-advised out of desperation. And we-we had a lot of crews out there, some of whom managed to keep their wits about them and make it back, but others who had different ideas and effective isolation from central command."

"Let me guess." Li says drolly. "It didn't work. None of it did."

"Correct. Those who play with the Devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield His sword. They became the enemy. I don't think it was ever their intent-but time and space itself was unstable at that time. They had to find ways to survive in environments where the very laws of physics would drive normal people mad, and each solution, each patch they made, took them further and further away from being human. Without some baseline connection to Earth, they might not have even noticed it. And over the course of a few years, they had long lost everything which makes the Technocracy human. Iteration X gave itself over to their Computer, uploaded themselves into networked biomechanical bodies inspired by the fauna of Autochthonia, and have been trying to assimilate or destroy the entire galaxy. They don't even recognize us as friendly anymore. The Progenitors have become a hegemonizing hive-minded swarm intelligence. They're 'friendly' but only as long as you don't resist them, and they inevitably will want you to assimilate into them. The NWO have become EDEs themselves, ones which act like stereotypical G-Men. And the Syndicate have made deals with the things out there-dragons and demons and other creatures of the abyss. They've lost any moral compass they might have had." And as a Void Engineer and a Russian, Ivanova is of the opinion that they never had much of a moral compass in the first place.

"I assume," Li says, "you are planning to send me some confirmation of this?"

"I will. I will have a few combat veterans Mat-Trans over and confirm what I'm saying. They've volunteered to accept invasive mind-scans for the cause." A few of them, carefully selected so that they weren't participants in the more controversial operations. The ones involving the Euthanatoi, or the Hermetics, or the Etherites. "I'll also send you file dossiers. Feel free to review both for inconsistencies. I wouldn't lie to you, Professor." Which doesn't mean I'll tell you everything, Ivanova thinks. Li is a hardliner, and making him accept that the Void Engineers have been working closely with many of the more militant Traditions would be a bridge too far right now.

She ends the call. She'll give him time to evaluate what she sent. Draw his own conclusions. She doesn't want to feed him everything, but rather wants him to come to some conclusions on his own. She wants him to realize that this is what the former members of Control have not only wrought, but condoned. When he contacts her again, his expression suggests that she was right. What he's planning to do... it's necessary. It's also dangerous.

***
Alexander Cross doesn't react to being suddenly awakened like a normal human being. A little splice of dolphin genetics into his brain structure, and he remains somewhat aware of his surroundings even when asleep. A nanomod integrated into his ears means that even when his eyes are closed, he can sense his surroundings via ambient sound, and he can see backscatter radiation and EMI right through his eyelids. When Director Ragland calls him with an update and wakes him from sleep, the differences are telling.

"Director. I hope this call is about good news?" He asks. But the man's face didn't bode well for that hope.

"I wish." Ragland says. "We just got new intelligence from Professor Li himself. Pretty serious intelligence." Cross notes that his DNI has downloaded a fairly large encrypted file, with a BASILISK rating that he's never seen before. Even trying to concentrate on the file's name gives him a headache-a warning sign that delving any deeper is likely to cause permanent and irreversible brain death.

"I've never even encountered something with a BASILISK classification this high." Cross says.

"I've never seen one of these either. This is top-level, way beyond anything I've ever seen. We're not even allowed to pass the keys through real-time comms here. I've dispatched a courier via hypersonic transport to bring you the decryption key. Long story short, Professor Li has come into possession of some very high-level intelligence through sources he's not naming about what's going on in Izanagi, and he woke me up yesterday at 3 AM to get me to run through the information. I asked him for explicit permission to pass it down to field command, and he's authorized it. So please, for all our sakes, don't fuck this up."

It takes only an hour for the package to get there, which means, Cross concludes, that he literally called the moment the orders were put in. And when Cross reads it, he goes pale. He had planned for the enemy to be able to compromise communications-they weren't Iteration X or Virtual Adept level good, but you get enough supergeniuses in a room with enough disciplines-some of whom who literally could learn by eating-assuming they couldn't hack encrypted comms was a sucker's bet. So he had been planning with the assumption that false orders might be thrown in, that he'd need command staff in the field. Risky, and contraindicated by most modern Damage Control manuals, but necessary. He had assumed that they couldn't rely on constructs, which had led to a lot of grumbling as the Progenitors who had been born and recruited into Sleeper society had to be reassigned to the kinds of high-risk jobs combat constructs typically took.

But his orders went further than that. His orders were to assume that Conditioning itself, all the pro-social benefits, all the tactical advantages knowing that you could trust the man at your side or behind you, was fundamentally a liability. And he needed to make a plan for this fast. Which was a problem, because for more than a few of his crew, it was hardcoded. But he had expected something like that. Subversion virals, targeted memetic weapons used against the backdoors found in standard construct psyche templates. It was why his force was a bunch of Japanese Damage Control constables who had come from outside the Progenitors-military or police-and autonomous kill weapons like ORION... or Piero. And Piero did have that C3 helmet...
"Are we really that desperate?" He asks himself out loud, knowing the answer. Yes. They are. And technically, Piero did have the tactical implants for squad level command. They had wanted to make him a leader of men. One of the reasons they didn't much like each other, since Cross's leadership role worked out and Piero's... hadn't. They had installed the battlefield tactical augmentation before they realized that the psyche they had recreated was a berserker, but the ORIONs were familiar with that sort of combat tactic. Built for it. They heal, they've got reinforced bodies and Primium-plated skeletons. They can keep up with a walking weapon of mass destruction like his erstwhile brother.

It goes against everything he knows, all his common sense and his notable dislike of Piero. But he knows, his tactical training and intellect and refined combat reflex all honing in on this option as the best of all. He's not going to win this fight if he plays it by the book, and the warning he received makes him even more sure of it. This was why he chose these assets-old air combat units, Damage Control operatives used to working alongside Vanessas and other combat constructs rather than freeborn, the brute hammer of ORION, and Piero himself. He could have taken assets more suited for assaulting a base, but from the start, he had ruled out that option.

Now he understands why.


So it's only been what, 5 months since the last update? I AM VERY GOOD AT SCHEDULING TRUST ME.

Tactical Options Available, Part 1

Professor Li has received the Void Engineer intel, and in conjunction with @EarthScorpion's prior Serafina write-in, it fills in a lot of holes and puts a lot of things into stark relief for him. And here, at the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, he is going to preempt this goddamn apocalypse. No matter what it costs. This means he's putting his personal blessing on this project, and he's gotten something out of it. This something is...
[ ] Void Engineer counterintelligence operations and electronic warfare
[ ] Partially refurbished Yuri Gargarin-class assault carrier (currently only capable of atmospheric flight, but stealth systems function normally)
[ ] Captured Subjugation Corps assault landers plus auxiliary forces
[ ] Nothing. This is a Progenitor operation.
Tactical Options Available, Part 2
All that delay reminds me that we have a war to fight, and you've chosen your aces in the hole and your forces. Now the question is how you're going to do the operation itself.
[ ] The Enemy's Gate Is Down: Run a brief diversionary move with aircraft and armor-your X-PROG-311s, the Damage Control operatives you think will, then send Piero, Cross, Rose, and ORION through the underground tunnels to rip some faces off.
[ ] Breaching the Gates of Troy: Izanagi has a mat-trans, and you have a traitor inside. You can try to get a mat-trans assault in, bypassing most of the defenses. Of course, this may mean that you'll need to do a desperate rush towards the surface to ensure that the BSL-4 lab in RIKEN isn't compromised and half of Japan doesn't catch like, airborne super-Ebola.
[ ] Drive Me Closer, I Want To Hit Them With My Sword: You have hybrid transport/assault helicopters and a ton of soldiers. Just do a standard issue armored assault, especially since you've cleared the JSDF defenses from RIKEN.
[ ] Would You Like To Know More? Borrow some Void Engineer dropships to do a rapid air assault. (Requires an option in Part 1 which grants access to VE dropships).
[ ] Write-In
 
Update CCVII: Myrmidons
JB CCVII: Myrmidons

A knock comes at Alexander Cross' door as he scrutinizes his upcoming operation. A razor-sharp insertion, yes, behind their lines and into the heart of their facility. In one move, he can contain and isolate this rogue faction - and remove Leon Gregor. Perhaps he might have preferred other options, but from what Professor Li said he rejected Void Engineer assistance. The Void Engineers are better off preparing for the inevitable counter-strike, Li said. In Moscow, this 'Threat Null' lost because they couldn't bring in enough reinforcements to crush the resistance. In Mexico City, Threat Null lost because they couldn't bring in enough reinforcements to crush the resistance. Never expect an enemy to make the same mistake three times, Li stated, and so he told the Void Engineers to remain a potential force, one that isn't committed yet but which can react in full to whatever their enemy pulls out of their hat that one of them can see coming.

Alexander Cross desperately hopes it isn't his boss's pride speaking. Because his words make sense - but Li is a proud man. He wants this to remain a Progenitor-only operation. He doesn't want to bow and scrape to the Void Engineers.

Oh well. That's a decision for people more important than him. As it stands, it just means that he has to plan this operation with what he has available to him right now. It's an outside constraint. And in some ways it's even useful. He doesn't have to worry about integrating an outside force of Void Engineers into his teams; people they don't necessarily trust, people who haven't trained with them and don't know all their protocols and drills.

Of course, he thinks wryly, that might just be his mind trying to self-justify how he's really better off not getting a force of 500 power armored Void Engineer marines.

He builds up another page of contingencies and answers three phone calls before a knock comes at his door. He sighs at that, checking the multispectral video feeds.

It is Rose - and behind her, the wound-tight form of Piero, each motion giving the distinct impression that he is - barely - restraining himself from smashing the door down.

"What is it?" he asks, answering the door.

Rose looks Cross levelly in the eye. "Piero wants to talk to you. We've spoken, and I think he's right. Let us in and seal the door."

Rose has changed, he notes. There's a black note of confidence in her. But-

"Does it relate to the mission?"

"Yes."

He lets them in after carrying the necessary checks. The room is suddenly much more cramped, but then again Piero makes wide open conference halls feel cramped. It's something to do with how his personal space extends about five hundred meters from his body.

"You think you have a backdoor in," Piero says, without preamble. "You are planning a high-precision and finesse strike - one designed to in one move cut the heart out of the infestation of traitors. It is efficient, clean, precise." He leans forwards. "Am I right?"

Cross glances at Rose.

"I said nothing," Rose says. "He approached me with this analysis."

"Then yes."

"It will fail." Piero squares himself up against Cross. "Do not do it. No."

"No?" Cross is surprised at that.

"You have a type, Cross. You're obsessed with your own cleverness. You like the neat solution, the unexpected blow, the arrow from afar. These are all on file. I did not say this because I know what you are planning; I say this because I know you. Someone like Leon Gregor," the name comes out as a hateful rumble, "will know that. You're predictable."

"I'm not predictable!"

"You are predictable in the forms your unpredictability takes." Piero's nostrils flare. "This is not a time for neat solutions."

"I would listen to him," Rose contributes, eyes looking old. "I've seen too much of our enemy and what they do to neat solutions."

Cross resists the urge to square his shoulders and glare at Piero. That will just escalate things further. "Say it, then," he says. "Go on. You want something."

Piero snorts. "Give me command of the operational planning for the true operation. He will not see that coming. He will think me a mad dog, someone to be pointed at a foe. He thinks anger is the same as insanity. And I am as good a commander as you. The most unpredictable thing you could do would be to do... nothing."

"It's not that sim..."

"It is."

"But," Rose intervenes, "Alex, yes, you do have a type. And we can use that here. I know what Damage Control says about you. Everyone knows that you're who Professor Li would send on something like this. They'll be prepared to face you." She smiles, baring fangs. "So we can play with them."

Piero's teeth are less pointy when he smiles, but just as intimidating. "Ha! Yes, a funny game!" A finger that could break a man's spine jabs down on the table, splintering wood and scattering papers. "Plan your predictable op. Let any spies he has report that you're doing what you always do. Let him think he knows what's going on. I will have our real plan ready and we will let him gloat that the Trojan War is playing out again."

Cross blinks. "Excuse me?"

Thick brows furrow, and Piero's face momentarily softens. "Maria talks to me. She studies cyclic history theory, because she is a slave to it; everywhere she goes, she starts wars. History repeats itself around her. We are chained by it too, though more loosely. But if we set ourselves into those patterns, you will kill me and then you will die."

"Cyclic history theory is New World Order rubbish," Alexander says dismissively.

"Maria doesn't think so. So I don't think so. You are not Odysseus. Cowardice will not work out for you." His aura of rage redoubles. "They set me against us in Moscow. Do not play into his hands - or believe that he cannot find ways to do the same to you."

Cross takes time to think through the statement, his adaptive physiology adjusting his hormone mix-emphasizing calm and clarity of thought, removing unfortunate emotional attachments. Seeing the world through an Iteration X emoneut's eyes for a moment. Piero is thinking more clearly, true, and they went through all the same training. He remembers that Piero has long considered him his main rival and trained to beat him in every field of human endeavor. And though it stings his pride a little bit, he has to accept that he does like clean, precise solutions - and that massively narrows down the phase space of options he would prefer, since most plans are neither clean nor elegant. Even if he is blathering on about old obsolete NWO psychohistory quackery. So it can be true. He might be predicted. But Gregor Leon-he's not a strategist. He might make tactical mistakes. Of course, if Leon values his life over his pride-and his psych profile suggests exactly that-he might be willing to give up command to someone nearly as intelligent and far more qualified. There's more than a few Damage Control operatives who might have thrown in with Leon-seduced by fellow radical transhumanists. Or he might install pDNA and know modern special forces strategy immediately.

"Rose?" he asks. She's kept out of things - whether through wanting to be a neutral party, or a refusal to declare for either side, he's not sure. "Do you think Piero can do this?"

She is silent for a long moment, head tilted mechanically. "On his own? Not to the same standard as you," she says, words calm and measured. "But if you agree to his proposition, I volunteer to provide neurological assistance. And with that, I believe it will work." She smiles a quiet, measured smile. "And Piero is certainly right. The tactics he uses will be very much unlike yours. Now isn't the time for clean precision. Now is time for blood all over the walls."

"Permission granted." Alexander sighs. "I want results, not empty boasting. So don't make me regret this."

"You'll see." Piero says, ominously. "I don't boast."

Cross reluctantly admits that it's true. When Piero says that he's going to rip you out of your cockpit and beat your giant robot to death with the corpse, he means it.

***​

Rose sits in the common room with Piero, rests her chin on her hands, and thinks. The room is empty. Largely because anyone with any sense-and most people who don't-know to avoid her brother. It's the sense of menace he gives off-even people who don't know him or understand what he's capable of can realize just how powerful, just how dangerous, he is.

Rose thinks she knows Leon Gregor. Not personally. She's never met him before in her life. But she knows men like him. Men who've augmented and tweaked and progressively improved parts of their brain, until their neurology is less similar to an average human than an average human is to a chimp. Men who believe that makes them better than everyone else. Towering arrogance and superiority coming from the conviction that they're the smartest person in the room. And they all think alike. There's something about high end Progenitor institutes which normalizes certain modes of thought. Can't have too much empathy for a test subject, after all. People like that treat the normal Progenitor research assistants like they're dumb constructs - and treat constructs like they're utterly predictable machines.

Her toes scrunch up, but none of her thoughts show on her face.

"Relatively speaking, I think you're angrier about this than yonder ball of rage and steroids," Thorn observes from the surface of Rose's cup of coffee. It's hard to tell, but she appears to be wearing a plastic-y Wonder Woman outfit and holding a wooden sword. "You can tell because you're angry, while Piero hasn't even broken a pen in a good five minutes or so."

He just holds them too hard, Rose thinks at her. And you look like a stripper.

Thorn shrugs. "Look, this was my most Greek thing in my props cupboard."

Rose is tempted for a moment to ask how her hallucinations can have a prop cupboard, but decides not to. Thorn likes her tacky insincere costumes. It's probably some attempt at profundity or commentary about the cynicism of the modern world. Or she thinks it's funny. Probably all three.

Shaking her head, she downs her coffee and deprives her subconscious of a reflective surface.

Yes. She knows men like Leon Gregor. And they made sure that Major Clarent flipped sides, so he won't have his Head of Security around. Her intel will be a starting point, but Gregor will have modified it - and based that on the way Progenitors think.

So she sits down, familiarizes herself with his personality profile, adjusts her internal hormone balance and subjective perception of time, and pretends to be him. Her pencil starts scratching immediately.

Four minutes and thirty nine seconds pass in the external world by the time Rose has had enough. It felt much longer. She sheds those thought patterns with a relieved shudder, and synthesises herself some Empathin to take the edge off the sharpness of that mind. She has a headache, but that doesn't matter. Her body is already repairing the heat stress she inflicted on her brain from that level of radical self-change. The memories are fading, as the temporary brain structures are torn apart, leaving only blurred recollections and feelings and none of those toxic thoughts.

It is a mercy.

She feels a little sorry for Leon Gregor now. To live like this must be a dreadful thing. He doesn't realize what he's lost, of course - but she does.

Looking down, she looks at what she wrote in that altered state of consciousness. And swallows. How fast must her hand have been moving? The graphite in her pencil is smoking. And Piero is looking at her, eyes narrowed and teeth bared.

Most people would take that as a sign of hostility, but Rose just knows her big brother has resting homicidal aggression face.

"Here," she says, putting the sheets of paper before him. "Psych profile on Gregor Leon."

"Hmmph," Piero says. "Rose, that was dangerous. You are sweating."

"I'm fine, really. What's a little heat?" She smiles at him, coaxing him not to worry. It's bad for him. "The two of us don't worry too much about being set on fire. A little waste heat is nothing compared to that. And you need the help more. I just ran his implants in emulation for a bit so you know some of his likely reactions." Getting up, she heads out the door. "And before you ask, yes, I'm just going to get some water. I'm not ill."

Outside, she manages to get far enough away that her slumping down shouldn't be heard.

"That was stupid," Thorn points out. "Also, that personality? Total bitch. And I should know, given that's my vocation."

"Shut it," Rose whispers, trying to ignore the pounding in her head.

"If you'd not tried to cram it into five minutes and had instead done it in half an hour, you'd be feeling much better. You're about to black out from burning through all your blood sugar."

"I don't need your sympathy. I can take it." Wincing, Rose makes her way to the nearest vending machine. "He must eat cyborg food to get enough energy to run his brain like that."

"Rose?" Donald says, as she steps out. "You're going to need to look at this."

He points at his phone, which is currently displaying Serafina-her mother-...denouncing Professor Li and supporting Gregor Leon?

"That's not her." Rose hisses. "This would be absurd if it was her."

"Well obviously."

"She has a plan." For a moment, it's Rose from the Digital Web again, Rose playing at being Reina, but perhaps a little more than playing. "Otherwise this wouldn't have happened." It's not the plaintive hoping of a child, but the confident statement of someone who understands the situation well. "This is exactly what Gregor Leon would have done-and both of us will know it."

***
In the Izanagi feeder lab, Serafina Rosario looks at her false doppleganger declaring in support of Dr. Gregor. Professor Li hasn't called her angrily yet, which means he has actually trusted her that she's predicted what he's going to do, and is giving her some trust. At least, Serafina thinks, if she fucks this up, she's going to be dead, and therefore won't have to deal with Professor Li's blame.

"Are you sure about this?" Pia asks. "You've never liked Professor Li and now-" she sounds perfectly calm and convincing and loving, but Serafina is well aware that she's not happy with the decision.

"Mama, trust me. I thought this through. He's not... wrong, in a lot of ways. Just extreme. And if this works out, all these favors and this positioning..."

"I know what you said. He'll need someone to help him mend the Progenitors after this, and he'll spend enough political capital on this action that he won't be able to do everything he wants. But- I'm worried you're underestimating him."

"I am too." Serafina says honestly. "But you saw what happened in Mexico City. If Porthos Fitz-Empress himself told me he would help me with Leon Gregor, I'd be willing to hear him out."

"Don't say that." Pia replies, but there's no heat to it. "If you're so sure... then I trust you too. Good luck. Bye, Sera."

"Bye, mama." Serafina says. At least she's resolved that problem. Funnily, facing the imminent end of the world, she feels best about that one bit of this whole affair. She gets up, out of her room where the small-scale QEC is set up, and goes to meet the rest of her co-conspirators.

"Ma'am... shouldn't we do something?"

"At least he's reliable." Serafina says. "Give it time. I just need him to put enough rope around the neck so when I pull the lever, he gets a good long drop."

And in a way, that's going to be by far the most satisfying part of this journey, Serafina thinks. She's normally not a vengeful person. But she can make an exception for Dr. Leon. She understands him, and pities him. Pities all he's lost in the single-minded pursuit of perfection. Men like him-there's too many of them in the Progenitors. If they survive this affair, she's going to have to think about a way of helping people realize that ethics isn't just an inconvenient checkbox, and empathy isn't just a limiting trait when it comes to research and development. She has plenty of time to think about that, after all. Right now, her plan is already set up. Her part in this has already completed, and it's too late to change it. She's just waiting for the results.
***
The Gatling was technically a 'minigun,' in that it was not vehicle-mounted. It was, however, not something a normal person would be using as a man-portable artillery piece, as it weighed an even 100 kilograms unloaded. Master Sergeant Steven Armstrong was using it as a barbell, idly pumping out curls as he ran over the team readiness for their next mission. He'd always been a gym rat when he was idle. Or as idle as he ever got. He'd enlisted in the US Army at 18 after a violent childhood. Gone straight into Airborne, then Green Berets, then Delta Force. Always deploying, always in the thick of the fight. It was like a drug. When a too-close encounter with an RPG in some beyond-black-deniable operation in some mosquito-haunted Central American hellhole had left him paralyzed and dying, the offer by some MiB-looking G-Man of healing and getting back into an even greater fight had been easy to accept.

Now he was nearly 3 meters and 400kg of muscle, cyber-enhancement, and hypertech drug systems that made him strong enough to bare-knuckle fight a shapeshifting killing machine, or, as he was doing now, casually manhandle weapons that would have been crew-served vehicle-mounts in Sleeper units. That he was also a constantly simmering ball of berserker fury kept calm and sane by regular doses of heavy drugs was a small price to pay for being a walking combat monster that could literally rip apart an APC with just his hands. Now his life was nothing but one intense combat action after another, with occasional interludes like this of preparing for another one. They'd been ordered to assemble in Tokyo, the largest deployment of ORIONs they'd had in years. In less than 24 hours, they would be fighting through hell.

Sure, it was possible that they'd surrender, but all the hyperbrains who did mission planning and all the Ethical Compliance agents who were advising had given the chance of that as "I'd bet on a snowball's chance in hell before betting on a surrender." Whatever they had done, everyone on both sides was well aware. This wasn't going to end in a clean political compromise.

"All right. We've got 24 hours before go time. It's going to be a night raid." To Armstrong, it still felt safer to do this at night. But he wasn't in the US Army anymore, and his enemies weren't leftist partisans in South America or terrorists in the Middle East or Russians in Europe. His enemies would have laughed at them. He's knife-fought shapeshifters fast enough to dodge bullets, he's fought Reality Deviants who SWAT or Rangers or Delta emptied entire magazines at and hit nothing but air. Night and day don't matter much to their enemy. The night raid is entirely to keep the US Navy or JSDF from seeing them and launching a few missiles that way. That would be inconvenient. Not dangerous, or even concerning. Just inconvenient. Which is part of why he's glad that the JSDF detachment isn't there. Fighting enemies? Even if they weren't bad people, he didn't feel bad. But just a bunch of guys in kevlar and cammies with rifles against a Damage Control hard assault team? That was just a one-sided slaughter.

"It would be hilarious if it did end in peace, though, wouldn't it?" Dietrich, another ORION squad leader said. But everyone knows how laughable that statement is. If peace was possible, they'd be somewhere else. You didn't call in ORION when you expected that there might be peace. Armstrong had learned that. You didn't ship planeload and planeload or Mat-Trans shipment after Mat-Trans shipment of Damage Control military equipment and tell constables to familiarize themselves with symbiont armor and hyper-toxic biochemical warloads if you expected peace.

"It would not." A new voice booms in the makeshift gym. Armstrong whirled in place, trying to bring the Gatling up into a firing position in a hurry... an act of futility, as the new voice was Piero Dominici. With one hand, the EXEMPLAR grabs the barrels of the Gatling, smiling like a shark. "So big, but so slow. I could have slain you a dozen times already. But your instincts are decent."

The other ORIONs in the gym-slash-ready room they were hanging out in slowly lowered the varied weapons they'd snatched up when Piero just strolled in. In a room filled with barely-leashed berserkers with more cumulative combat time than most regiments, Piero just stood there without fear-something the posthuman did not feel, did not even comprehend. This was where he was home at, a literal exemplar of what they were. A lot of them only knew him by reputation. In person, he was at least physically less impressive. Tall and well-muscled, sure, but his physique wasn't blatantly inhuman. But even despite his build being more lithe than bulky, his face being sculpted to an almost androgynous beauty, everyone knew that he was the most dangerous thing in the room.

They knew him by reputation. They knew that he had taken on a Rogue Council warmachine five times taller than him, ripped its limbs off, and wielded the machine's own sword-a several-ton hunk of sharpened metal-against it. They knew that he had been used for single-man assaults on shapeshifter caerns as field tests. And more importantly, he had been used in taking down several SPD Constructs, carefully monitored and with selective dampening of external stimuli, but still. He had been used as a sledgehammer. And if they didn't know him by reputation, they would know him by how he carried himself. His posture and poise made it clear that he was a killing machine, was proud of it, and was very, very good at it.

"My name is Piero Dominici. Painter, Damage Control Officer, EXEMPLAR II, and supreme warrior. I am here to lead you into battle." He smiled, a flash of teeth that had the clash of swords and the snarl of a wolf in it. "I have not had opportunity to display my power in bloody combat in too long. This fight will provide the chance to kill mighty beasts and stubborn foes. Perhaps a dragon, I have been promised. And above all, immortality."

"Immortality?" Armstrong numbly echos.

"Immortality. This will be our hour of glory. The deeds we do here-these deeds may never be revealed to the public, but they will be remembered. By us. By onlookers. And most importantly, they will not be remembered by our enemies." Piero grins. "Because they will be far too dead to do any of that. And we will become immortal through these deeds. Can you sense it?"

Armstrong knows what he means, at a level which is almost gut instinct.

"This is one of those critical points in history. What we do, whether we succeed or fail, will shape the fate of the world. So we will not fail. We will succeed, and we will etch our stories forever on the fabric of history. When the future takes the course it does, it will be because of our actions. Because of our choices. Because of us. So do you choose to fight?!"

***
FLASH TRANSMISSION
QEC ENCRYPTED EYES ONLY
FROM: [ERROR INVALID SENDER ADDRESS]
TO: YL7902.OP.NWO.TU
CONTROL LEVEL PRIORITY


XQT SPEC OP​
DR GREGOR LEON IS HVT
CAPTURE/KILL HVT BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
ALLIES OF DR GREGOR LEON ARE HOSTILE
AVOID IF POSSIBLE ELIMINATE IF NECESSARY
PROGENITOR ETHICAL COMPLIANCE TASK FORCE IS NEUTRAL
AVOID CONTACT

FLASH TRANSMISSION
QEC ENCRYPTED EYES ONLY
FROM: [ERROR INVALID SENDER ADDRESS]
TO: YL7902.OP.NWO.TU
CONTROL LEVEL PRIORITY


TECHNOCRATIC UNION RENEGADES HAVE STARTED A COUP
CONTROL IS UNDER THREAT
RAGNAROK PROTOCOLS ACTIVE
UNLIMITED REQUISITIONS ON NEED-TO-USE BASIS
-ACCEPTABLE PERSONNEL LOSSES: 100%
-ACCEPTABLE MATERIEL LOSSES: 100%
-ACCEPTABLE CIVILIAN COLLATERAL DAMAGE: 100%
OBJECTIVES:
1. ELIMINATE ENEMY COMMANDER
2. REPEL ASSAULT
3. CONTROL MUST SURVIVE

Bring The Pain
Piero is leading:
[ ] an armored assault with air support.
[ ] a fast air attack.
[ ] a light infantry infiltration.

Checkmate:
Dr. Leon has fucked up here. How has he fucked up?
[ ] His fake Serafina clone is actually possessed by Alicia, and is going to say some incredibly damning things on air.
[ ] You have Major Clarent ready to point out that they have clear evidence of Leon's... unauthorized cloning experiments and dereliction of duty, and the Shock Corps has always had a lot of parties in the posthumanist fence-sitters who respect them.
[ ] Serafina is selectively sending her message to the possible fence-sitters and has already discussed this problem with Cross, who has talked to EC-Japan. The transmission is bait to localize them, thanks to her subversion of the IT people. It helps that their official commander has been telling them to help sabotage this whole thing.
[ ] Write-in. She has a different sort of plan.

Yinzheng's Dilemma
Yinzheng has to choose one set of orders to follow. That will be:
[ ] the first set.
[ ] the second set.
[ ] Write-in (either): How does she plan to perform her orders?​
 
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Update CCVIII: Absolution
JB CCVIII: Absolution

Rose finds Henriette in the vehicle pool, preparing for the assault which will come soon. The vehicle pool is not Rose's natural territory. The air smells of fuel and ozone, and there's a faint coating of grime and oil over every surface despite the best efforts of the cleaning droids. The entire area exists in a state of organized chaos, people dashing here and there and barely missing one another as dumb robots cart around reload cylinders and augmented Kamrads oversee the replacement of the barrel of a tank. Everywhere, preparations are taking place for the siege on Izanagi. Here, the machines of war are being armed and readied. A much more clean, mechanical preparation than the pre-operation rituals and fears of the soldiers taking part in this assault, in the living quarters of the base. It reminds her of an ant nest, more than anything else. A cold, inhuman ant nest where everything is metal and plastic. Intellectually she understands that this isn't like an insect nest, because insects don't have central coordination - but she can't shake the feeling, especially when she's passing through the spiderbot maintenance area.

Henriette is embedded deep in this enclave of Iteration X in a Progenitor operation, and has been for the past few days. She's overseeing the fitting of a new arm to some kind of mech unit when Rose arrives.

"Get this done," she orders the Kamrad when she sees Rose arrive. "The testing slot for this is at 09:20. Make sure it's ready; we don't have slack in the timetable. Rose!"

"You requested my presence, Lt Langley?" Rose says formally. Too formally; Henriette's eyebrows raise.

"Is something up?" she asks, leading Rose back into one of the cramped box offices in the walls of the hangar. "Don't worry, it's not a problem. I just have something for you. Equipment issue. Just something I threw together in my spare time, no big deal, you might find it helpful..." she whirls, presenting Rose with a sleek black ItX equipment case. "Here."

Delicately, Rose opens it. A blade floats up, suspended on magnetic fields. It's a sleek bit of modern hardware, with an ergonomic grip, stored in an Iteration X Shock Corps rapid deploy sheath. Rose lays the case down, and takes it in her hands, feeling how the grip has been perfectly molded for her hands. Her fingers find the fast deploy catch, and she nods. She slides it out just a fraction, admiring the sleek primium blade which seems to glow a killing blue.

She has only one question.

"Did you really just throw this together in your spare time?" Rose asks.

***​

Nine hours ago

Henriette glares at the nonsensical stupid-advanced molecular diagram of the material structure of this... this wretched sword. It's five hundred years old! It's got the appropriate level of battle wear and damage, and the radio-isotope readings are consistent with that age.

How the flying fuck did a bunch of Renaissance-era pseudoscientific alchemists manage to get this kind of sophisticated molecular lattice structure? It's fucking perfect. It's an alloy akin to primium, but it's been doped with mercury. It's disgusting. It's legitimately beyond her. She couldn't make this, even with access to a full ItX material workshop. She simply doesn't know enough. She started poking around with it to see if she could upgrade it so Rose could use it, but... she can't upgrade it.

Mari probably could, she thinks with only a hint of bitterness. Henriette isn't even sure how she accidentally made that '4-4-adamant' super-diamond, but she did. But the extreme comms security they have set up here to prevent word of the attack getting out means there's no way she'll get away with contacting a mysterious Russian ItX facility to ask her to explain what the hell is going on with this.

She doesn't have time to do this properly. Henriette looks around out of habitual wariness, and no, Director Belltower is not standing over her shoulder watching her. Okay. Okay. Well, mercury-doped primium is a known alloy of primium. And even if it was made using dubious means, there's nothing about it now that is inherently reality deviant. After all, Henriette thinks to herself, as per regulations it's not necessarily RD to make use of certain listed kinds of Virtual Adept or Etherite tech in the field. When it comes down to it, all it is is a very sharp blade, after all. Really, it's not any different from the primium knives Rose uses.

So maybe if she just replaces its worn and damaged handle with a modern superior combat grip, fits some directed LEDs to the guard so it illuminates the blade in blue, and gives it a stock fast-draw sheath... oh, and maybe adds a Progenitor dart-launcher that Rose can make use of and maybe... hmm.

***​

"Of course I did!" Henriette insists, hands on her hips.

"You did?"

"I've given it a designation as HINO-X323 experimental monomol sword, for your information. And assigned it to you for field testing."

Rose frowns. "It's just it looks a lot like..."

Henriette shushes her. "It's made of a mercury-doped primium alloy," she says loudly, "and yes, certain elements of the primium were salvaged from material that RDs stole from us, but that's just sourced material."

"Ah," Rose says. "I see."

Henriette coughs into her hand. "Now, I was going to get you a watermelon to test it on, but I couldn't find anywhere on base that sold them. Also, I didn't want to get watermelon all over my office because I'm only borrowing it and… well, yes. So instead..." she reaches behind her desk, lifting something up in both hands, "I got you a watermelon-sized lump of green foam. It's a tradition of the Shock Corps, see."

She tosses it up in the air, and Rose's eyes automatically track the movement. Adrenaline rising, she feels time slow to a crawl. Her fingers tighten on the blade and the sheath, and she flicks the fast deploy. And now the electromagnets are launching the blade out and she's drawing into a rising slash, then its mirror image.

Rose resheaths the blade. Four green-painted lumps of metal hit the floor with a loud clash and clatter. "... you said that was foam," she says, softly.

Henriette grins, and deactivates the strength boost of her servo-overalls. "I wanted to make a… demonstration," she said. "It felt like cutting through foam, didn't it?"

"Yes…"

"Yes. It does. That was just basically a green-painted cannonball. Your primium knives aren't going to cut it against some of the things they say the enemy has. So, I went and fou-made you something better."

Rose blushes, feeling suddenly much more cheery. "Thank you," she says, warmly, wrapping Henriette up in a hug. "I know you can't have had much spare time to just throw this together in. It's amazing how you managed it. But you're just so amazing."

"Rose. Laying it on a little thick. But yes, I am amazing. And so are you. Got it? Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise," Henriette says into Rose's shoulder. "D-don't you dare get yourself killed. Or... or I'll never talk to you again!"

Rose tilts her head. "What if they manage to salvage my brain and fix me up?"

"... well, obviously that doesn't count, idiot! I was trying to make a joke to alleviate the tension!"

"Oh."

"Because if you were permanently dead, I'd never talk to you again because... oh, forget it. You ruined everything by making me explain the joke. It was meant to be just a light-hearted comment. Urgh."

"I'm sorry," Rose said meekly.

Henriette takes a deep, shuddering breath, and Rose realises she's got her body language augment turned off. She makes her decision, and moves in, warming up her body through forced metabolic activity. Henriette sinks into the hug. "But I mean it. Don't get yourself killed. Not unless it's a genuine save-the-world moment. There's no need to try to b-be as awesome as me." Rose can feel her tremble as she adds, "You're going to make it back. We're all going to make it back. You and me and Sera and Donald, we're going to do it. Sera and me, we made it through Moscow and you two did your thing in the Spy's Demise and… and we can't die. Not now. Not after all this."

"We can always die," Rose says, softly. She can recognize this denial for what it is.

"I know." Henriette slumps down, until Rose is supporting most of her weight. She's put on weight since she first met her, a year ago, but she's still too thin. "I'm… I'm just scared my luck is going to run out."

"Your luck?" Rose props her up on her desk.

"I should've died many times over," Henriette says, blue-eyes watery. "You too. I… some of the things I've been doing, I've just been letting my ADEI run things and I've been having meatbag thoughts. About how many times I could've died." It's rare for her to use ItX jargon like that. "About how everyone else on Autochthonia did die. About how being the best you can be sometimes isn't enough and you're just overmatched. Do you ever feel this?"

Rose considers. "No," she says. No, that's an alien chain of thought to her. The Transhuman machine in London could have killed her, and might have, if Donald hadn't hacked her. "You're in the air support wave. You're not going to be in the frontlines."

"And that's the problem," Henriette says softly. "That's why I… why I got you this sword. You're going in there, into the very heart of this nest, and it's not all up to me this time. It's not Moscow. It's not… what I did in space. I… I don't want this to be Autochthonia again. I don't want everyone but me to die."

Sympathetically, Rose nods, and scoots up onto the desk. "You don't want to be alone again," she says, sword on her lap.

"That makes it sound so selfish," Henriette mutters.

"It's true. And it's not selfish. Humans are social animals. We don't take being alone well." Rose breathes out. "I'm a social animal," she says gently. "It's not your fault."

"I wish I was going in there with you, All the way, to the end. But I'm a pilot," Henriette says, staring at the wall. "There just isn't space in the tight quarters around the final objective. I hate feeling useless and… I feel useless."

"You're not useless. You got me this sword," Rose says, hugging it. "I think it's the best present that anyone who isn't Sera has ever got me." She thinks. "Maybe Donald too."

"Huh. So it's about as good as a day at Disneyland," Henriette says, with a sniffle and a forced smile.

Rose affects a mock serious expression. "Now you're going too far!"

They both break out into giggles. It's silly and it's not that funny, but it's relieving the stress in the room.

Reaching out, Rose squeezes Henriette's forearm. Green eyes meet red-rimmed blue. "Autochthonia wasn't your fault, Henriette," she says, her voice pitched perfectly, every word considered. "And it's not the same. Back then, you were blind. Walking into something you had no idea about. Now we know what we're doing. We're ready. And I've got my big brothers with me."

Wide eyed, Henriette swallows. She seems about to say something, anything, but simply nods.

"Good. Trust me on this," Rose says. "We're all going to make it out of this. Me and you and Sera and Donald. We're going to have a big party and there's going to be cake and ice cream in every flavor that exists and we're going to have pretty dresses and everything. You're going to do your best, I know you are. You're not going to let these old fears hold you back and stop you from doing the right thing. Because you're not a silly young pilot anymore! You're the Hero of Moscow!"

"I… yes." Henriette settles her shoulders, and her expression resumes its normal slightly critical expression as the BLO reactivates. She runs her hands through her short bright orange hair. "Come on then. We will do our best. And it's going to be the best. They won't know what'll hit them."

"That's right!" Rose says encouragingly.

"I'll crash your HUD if you tell anyone I got like this," Henriette mutters, wiping her eyes on her sleeves. "There won't be any evidence. Not a trace, I promise."

"There's nothing to be afraid of. We're all human."

"It'll ruin my reputation if people find out I cried before a battle," Henriette retorts.

"No one will find out," Rose promises her. She rises, hugging her new sword. "And I love the weapon! I'll give you a full report afterwards!"

***​

Thorn watches her in the metal of the vehicle pool. Her bright green eyes are an enigma.

"What?" Rose whispers.

"I'm judging you," Thorn says.

"Why? All I did was help her."

"No, you misunderstand." Thorn doesn't smile, but neither does she frown. "I'm judging you now. That's neither condemning nor condoning that. But you chose to slide into her mind and make those tweaks."

"We just had a talk," Rose says, staring for a moment at the mirror-bright casing of a laser weapon.

"That's the excuse Technocrats like to make for things they do. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Maybe it was the wrong thing. But it was a thing to do, and there may be consequences to it. She won't be thinking so much of Autochthonia. It might stop her freezing up or panicking. But it might also make her rash."

"I thought it was best for her," Rose whispers. "She gave me a sword to keep her safe. And… and Gregor Leon will know she was on Autochthonia. He nearly killed Sera by playing on her guilt. What could he do to Henriette?"

Thorn nods. "We'll know, soon enough. Open your mind, Rose. Can you not feel the future ahead of you? Of course you can."

Her mind is filled with transgenic vampire material. She can. And it's telling her that the future is filled with blood and death. She lied when she told Henriette there was no doubt they'd make it out of it alive.

Rose's hand tightens on the sword, and for a moment she feels traces of Reina Lior's mind pushing up against hers. This blade will be drowning in blood by the end. The enemy, she knows, will not be some random hemophage Neonate or Reality Terrorist. She must be ready, because the enemy she faces will be like her. Products of the most advanced biotechnologies that the Union could create, survivable, adaptable, and lethal.

***​

Yinzheng Li reels under the strain of two conflicting Control-level commands. If they were of any lower authority, she would be able to think through them, perhaps realize the oddity of both orders. Instead, she simply mechanically processes them as they come in. She was ordered to capture or kill Dr. Gregor Leon first. But then she was given an order to repel an assault on Izanagi. Which would involve working with Gregor Leon and his allies. The second one obviously contradicts the first. So she follows the latter. But not easily. The first Control-level order still holds some power. She feels overwhelming guilt at having to prioritize, having to ignore one order for another.

But nevertheless, she has to carry out her orders to the best of her ability. She knows that she's not at 100 percent-but she's still capable of planning, capable of working with the defenses. And Izanagi Construct is woefully short of people with military command experience. So she has to play this role. Through the migraine and overwhelming guilt, she considers the personnel she has access to. Lots of powerful, independent combatants, but little coordination. A clear problem, since she knew that the enemy would be coming at them as a well-oiled machine, with NCOs and officers they could trust, a clear goal, and the fanaticism of the deluded. They were going against Control. That took, Yinzheng knew, an incredible amount of mental fortitude. And they had been sabotaged repeatedly. The defection of Major Clarent meant that they had significant holes in their cybersecurity and information warfare, and the vagaries of government maneuvering meant that the additional JSDF units which could have acted as a delaying force had been redeployed somewhere else.

So what did she have access to? Constructs. Monsters. Things which were once men, but no longer could be considered so. The security forces of Izanagi had become full of exhuman sympathizers, and that gave her individual assets with phenomenal individual prowess. And of course, she had Control on her side. So she couldn't lose. Control wouldn't permit it. Which was why Control, in its infinite wisdom, had assigned a high-end multiped tank and two high-end pilots to back up the god-monsters which Izanagi had specialized in making. She considers the full scope of her forces-exhuman Damage Control agents. Constructs-a few units of security constructs and the lab assistants and Bobs one would expect from a base like this. Vehicles-various Masses-tech ones upgraded with Iteration X remote pilot systems, a handful of armored vehicles to contest a full scale assault, the god-monsters this base could build-one fully operational, another series of half-built designs which could be used as traps or spare parts or other tools. And of course, herself. She notes that Gregor Leon and his bodyguards, as well as Serafina's own bodyguards, could work.

She has many issues she needs to deal with and prioritize. She has that false Serafina Rosario spreading propaganda about them. She has the traitors on Command who have authorized Damage Control's rogue operation-it has to be rogue because it's going against Control's will and Control's will is the Technocracy's will-but Dr. Li is hardly someone she could attempt an assassination on. Even if she had the ability to just Mat-Trans wherever he was and beat the high-end bodyguards he'd have-hardly guaranteed-he has backups and there's no chance to target him with a Mindwipe.

And Damage Control is moving. She doesn't have any good spies in their basing. Ragnarok Command has been polite, but has put her requests through the normal bureaucracy rather than priority channels, citing the potential threat of a war with North Korea as an excuse. So she has no real-time intelligence. But she has access to spy sats and other equipment of Panopticon's, and that's more than enough to watch preparations that can't be hidden. Damage Control does a good job at trying, of course, hiding its own operations alongside the Shock Corps and Ragnarok Command's preparations for a standoff with North Korea. But she can see through those.

There's a lot of armor they're bringing up. Almost all of it is NWO-design, Rolands and the heavier, treaded Gawains, although there are some Iteration X ARCs and IFVs in the mix and several X-PROG-311s. She is aware of their capabilities intimately. Gawains are tank-tough and recon-vehicle fast, armed with repeating railguns and smart missiles. Rolands are a combination of cost and effectiveness that even Ragnarok Command and the new Shock Corps makes use of them. ARCs are nearly plane-fast hybrid transport-assault helicopters, flying IFVs in the most literal sense, with the firepower and protection of the 70-ton heavy tanks of the Masses. X-PROG-311s are... interesting. Psionically-capable self-aware attack creatures that pretend to be helicopters, mostly. Crew that are more like handlers than pilots. Tough, heavily armed, but ironically more unstable than ARC Is.

If she had been operating at peak potential, she might have considered the possibility of the armored assault being the main thrust, instead of a feint. But with her mind in the state it was, torn between conflicting Control-level orders, incentivizing her to think quickly, hastily, not consider every possibility-she relies on Alexander Cross's dossier. She assumes that the attack will be done by normal constables and constructs, the passenger compartments of the Rolands and ARCs and other vehicles will be filled with relatively lightly equipped soldiers who are there to give her the false impression while Ashford, Cross, and Dominici and whatever other heavy assets find a way to infiltrate the base and decapitate it from within.

A pity that she has so few resources to allocate. The... false? Traitorous? Serafina Rosario had seen to that, along with her parents. So possibly traitorous. Because Control's word was law. And Control's word was that this project of Izanagi's would be completed. And moreover, she had seen this coming. Ethical Compliance might have been a scalpel, not a sledgehammer, but that was all they needed when they knew who would and wouldn't have reacted to their own, their real Serafina Rosario's proclamations about Professor Li. None of them expected that it would sway many people-but the enemy had moved to counter it, preempting them with clever back-channel communications and then with Ethical Compliance operatives-or in some cases, Reality Deviants who had to have been tipped off by Union sources. "Reality Deviant attack" was a very, very convenient way to ensure internal security's targets could be whisked away to some high-security black site-"for their own protection" and kept there for as long as you needed them there, "to ensure no repeat assassination attempts." And for some of them, they would "unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the trauma teams, succumb to fatal injury."

She could have taken to the field-but she had to prepare for the endgame. Yes. Prepare for the endgame. It was all that she could do. And... she's not sure it would be so good to add further bloodshed. They're just misled, not Nephandi or traitors. The information she's heard is that Professor Li is centralizing power for his own gain, using the turmoil and the chaos of recent events to eliminate people opposed to him, and his agenda of a more militarized, more... practical focus to the Progenitors. For all that the Progenitors and Iteration X have had a close alliance with each other, the Progenitor academia hardly wants to become marginalized by Damage Control the same way the civilians in Iteration X often played second fiddle to the Shock Corps. And he's used his hand-picked leaders of Ethical Compliance-people picked for their impeccable integrity, undeniable merit, and loyalties which would easily let them ignore Li's own corruption and political stance and justify the ends by the means he's using-to accomplish this, finally excising those who might resist him. How much of Ethical Compliance was deployed in Japan? They hardly advertised themselves, preferring to blend in with Damage Control or ethics review boards, but-they can't be that large. They're clearly deployed here en masse.

At least some of her allies had made it out. Posthumans and exhumans and their constructs and whatever they could take that wasn't nailed down. The lucky ones. She's glad of her augmentation, thanks to VPO al-Saud. It means they respect her, rather than thinking of her as some near-baseline upstart. It means they listen when she tells them what to do, which is something even orders from ostensible superiors don't help with. The posthuman superiority complex for them is a feature, not a bug.

"Senior Operative Li." Security Chief Akari says. They look like a pretty Japanese civilian, perhaps a little taller than average, but so would a shapeshifter. And she can see the excitement of the exhuman. Hidden underneath the skin-deep, Progenitor-approved facade of her model-quality looks is a thing with far too many teeth and scythe-limbs and rending claws. Yinzheng can occasionally see flashes of armored chitin or mono-edged, sawlike blades protruding through false skin and fat when their disguise tears or smears, as it does a little too often now. They're stressed, anticipating combat, and it's wearing at their human facade. "We're moving our automated anti-vehicular defenses belowground as ordered. They should be sufficient to eliminate even Damage Control's posthuman operatives-the ORIONs and EXEMPLARs. The survivors from Tonegawa are here as well. Three Enlightened posthumans, five combat homonculi, one squad of Vanessas, and about two dozen test subjects."

For the last few days she has been busy trying to get any loyalists out that she could. They're valuable assets, even if she finds them... distasteful. And she needs every bit of equipment, firepower, and personnel she can get if Damage Control is planning to burn down Izanagi on Li's behalf. Which it is. She considers the situation, confers with Akari, and gives additional orders. She's going to turn every approach into a killing ground.

***
The Damage Control variant Rolands approach Izanagi whisper-quiet, their personnel waiting in anticipation. Their routes have been carefully chosen to minimize exposure-and the people who see them have seen nighttime troop movements again and again, unaware that this time they're dealing with something else entirely. Overwatching them are ARCs and X-311 Progenitor gunships, their engines tuned for whisper-silence.

The men and women in them don't know everything about why they're assaulting Izanagi Construct, but they know enough. They know that Izanagi has gone rogue, that Command itself has authorized this operation, as required when you're effectively cutting the heart out of a rogue organization in the midst of your own. They know the stakes. This is akin to-almost as dangerous as-the Special Projects Division purge. Some of the Ethical Compliance personnel have compared it to that, but they're not talking about it.

They know what precipitated this action. Professor Li had just accused Dr. Gregor Leon of High Treason against the Technocracy by attempting to subvert its leadership and assassinate one of their own. Those accusations didn't get made lightly. They especially didn't get made lightly when combined with midnight raids by Ethical Compliance, a methodical, clinical excision of Li's own faction. Almost all of them went quietly, and would be allowed to quietly leave this unmentioned, exchanging a few demerits on their permanent record with no explanatory text. Perhaps in a few decades, their little indiscretion would be forgotten. A quiet, reluctant assent by Li to let these men and women survive their mistakes. Others... well, they had tried to fight. And attempting to resist arrest and interrogation when facing High Treason charges only always ended one way. A few had managed to successfully fight off the snatch teams-the most talented and paranoid-and they would be hunted to the ends of the Earth.
And none of it would matter if Dr. Leon was allowed to survive and get away. And they knew that Dr. Leon had the tools and weapons to subvert neural programming. Which was why vehicles which normally would have carried biosuited Vanessas carried a diverse crew of normal, womb-born humans with a variety of careers and genetic augmentations. Many of them were Japanese SFG or SAT, but you had a who's who of personnel from medical organizations, PMCs, and counterterrorism specialists. Taking down something like Riken, doing so with an accusation of High Treason-that was something you wouldn't trust a single region's forces to do. Most of them have been working with Ethical Compliance, running raids on recalcitrant Leon supporters, those not convinced by the quiet words of the senior Doctors Rosario or Serafina's accusations-backed with evidence-of Dr. Leon being the mastermind behind her disappearance, attempted assassination, and cloning. Of those, some of them are itching for payback. Fighting posthumans as near-baselines, even with high-end Damage Control weapons and armor, was never easy or casualty-free.

Piero, Rose, and the Orion supersoldiers are in front, packed into the passenger compartments of the combat vehicles. Their position is deliberately chosen, for Technocratic defense grids, especially defense grids of high-importance constructs, are armed with Technocratic weapons designed to repel heavy armor. And Rolands, although armored better than anything fielded by the Masses of their size and with incredible road and off-road speeds, are not designed to resist direct fire from those sorts of weapons. They're NWO designs, cheap, effective, and armored well enough against RPGs and anti-tank missiles which might be used by a Traditions consor. The heavier Turpins might be even better armored and only somewhat slower-but they're still NWO vehicles, not Iteration X ones, designed to fight off Masses threats rather than to assault hardened chantries or fight aliens armed with exotic weapons. Mixed in with them are a handful armed remote drones, with additional jamming equipment to hopefully draw fire from the Rolands.

Piero and Rose and the Orions know they're leading the assault and in the first wave because they have the greatest chance of being combat-capable even if their vehicle is catastrophically killed. And they expect a lot of vehicle losses in the initial wave. When attacking a strongpoint in the Ascension War-whether construct or chantry-the forlorn hope still exists.

"Tactical update for Brevet-Commander Dominici." Major Clarent's voice is clear on the comms network. Cross's face grimaces at the recognition that he's not in command. Piero grins instead, the sort of smile which made "sharklike" feel inadequate.

"This is Piero. Hit me."

"LOKI has diverted a Hawkeye for our use at this time. I will be providing surveillance and sniper overwatch." Shouldering an antimateriel railgun designed to penetrate the armor of a tank and kill the crew inside in one of the ARCs, she'll be effective if they have personnel with anti-tank weapons scattered. Piero knows this, because he has the same tactical implants that command-level EXEMPLARs were intended to receive. He's designed to work as a mobile C3 node, one who could laugh off tank shells. But he's been more useful as a berserker-until now. "We're observing multiple weak signatures in defensive positions, and have identified them as heavy vehicles with thermoptic camouflage, plus multiple additional armored vehicles-likely their UGV complement. No sign of their personnel-but they're probably camouflaged to avoid detection from us and spread across the nearby buildings. We'll continue scanning and refining our data to model their potential locations."

Of course, Piero thinks. His VR simulations weren't all-or even mostly-reenactments of the Trojan War. Quite a few of them were realistic tactical simulations. He's had simulated lifetimes killing everything that moves under the sun (and quite a few things, like hemophages, which don't move under the sun) and has gotten very, very good at knowing their strengths and weaknesses. The enemy would use the subtlety of biotech versus cybernetics to their advantage. They'd have the knowledge to hide their soldiers from satellite threat detection, concealing their inhuman metabolisms and features. And in a thin-skinned armored vehicle like a NWO Roland, a Victor with a Masses-tech anti-tank missile launcher would do just fine disabling one. And Izanagi had the fabricators and industrial capacity to just hand those out in the dozens.

He considers that risk inevitable, which is why the first vehicles in are all carrying ORIONs and HITMarks and the handful of Damage Control shock troops who were augmented to Shock Corps standards and insisted the drivers all be cross-trained in infantry combat and equipped with heavy symbiont armor. He expects near-100% losses of his lead elements. The ORIONs and others are there in front because they're likely to survive and contest the battlefield even after their vehicles are rendered burning wrecks, so that the rest of his forces, who aren't likely to survive a tandem-charge anti-tank missile detonating inside the infantry compartment, can be useful. It also means that the air support, like Major Clarent, will have targets marked out for them.

"Acknowledged." He states. "Any knowledge about the heavy vehicles?"

"Most of them should be Spektr UGVs. Basic optical camouflage systems, 125mm railguns, 23mm autocannon secondary, composite armor and PD. One of them is likely a Model 1998 Multiped Tank. Iteration X Shock Corps vintage." Clarent states, voice flat as she recites technical specifications from memory. "Armed to take on armored vehicles, hardened personnel, and masses targets. Main armament is a heavy railgun, but even its secondary armament-two light vehicular plasma cannon, two rotary cannons firing hypervelocity AP ammo, and 40mm anti-tank micromissiles-will be effective on a Roland or Turpin. They don't have enough top armor to stop multiple 40mms, and the frontal armor will have its anti-DEW properties are compromised by repeat plasma hits. It also brings semi-AI remotes, although those are much more lightly armed and will only be effective at close range against rear armor. If you're dismounted, note that its remotes carry flamethrowers."

"An adequate foe." Piero grunts. He's aware why they're still considered "anti-infantry plasma cannon despite their ability to threaten vehicles with tank-like durability." There are plenty of infantry units that are almost as tough as a tank. And technically, he counts as infantry despite the fact that they tested his body against things the Masses used to destroy tanks, and literally shrugged them off. "Does this spider-tank have any weaknesses we can exploit?" The Spektrs he cares a lot less about. They're not high-end Iteration X combat vehicles. Things which aren't high-end Iteration X combat vehicles, or the equivalent, like Etherite combat mecha, he has his ways of dealing with. But a high-end multiped tank is something he wishes to understand before the battle. It isn't quite a dragon, but it will do for now.

"Probably minimal malfunction risk in this environment. It has point defense systems and electrostatic discharge armor, but you should be able to withstand the charge long enough to deal damage to external systems without fatal injury. The weapons and sensors are armored, but less heavily than the main chassis, which is high-end nanocomposite with compressed matter layers and a Primium bathtub. It will likely be running some form of structural integrity field and self-repair system. Alternatively, repeated, continuous hits from heavy weaponry may cause structural integrity failure. Otherwise, it's a large, heavy vehicle which will likely have restricted mobility should you get inside Izanagi. If necessary, you can mitigate most of its threat by entering the construct, where it should mostly be restricted to the motor pool and the lower large-scale experiment levels."

Piero doesn't like that possibility. Not because of any particular care for his men-although he does not wish to demonstrate ineptitude as a commander by unnecessarily wasting large numbers of men and extensive amounts of materiel-but because it means he cannot defeat the vehicle despite having extensive support from his sister, his rival and brother, and some of the Progenitors' finest shock troops. Also, the large-scale experiment levels might contain threats to the Union, such as cloned, cybernetically controlled dracoforms. It would be unfortunate if one of them was to escape and become a potential asset to traitors, and it would be almost as unfortunate if such things existed in Izanagi and he did not have a chance to slay them and show off his martial prowess.

"That will be adequate, Major. Thank you." He considers the situation, confers with his section leaders, and gives his orders. He's going to push through this killing ground.


I PRODUCE TIMELY WORK PRODUCT FOR QUESTS AND HAVE NEVER HAD ANY INEXPLICABLE DELAYS.

Anyways, you've already decided on the attack being a giant armored fist which will run into Ling (and Sanjeet SPOILERS) and the exhumans plus their other security assets. So the question is, what things are Yinzheng and her exhuman friends unleashing on your giant fist of armored superiority?

Piero's assault is a lot of armored vehicles backed up by a combination of X-PROG-311s, DIBBUKS, and ARC Is as well as drone-modified Masses military tech. His ground armored vehicles include a lot of JSDF and US military tanks and IFVs modified with Iteration X semi-autonomous drone systems, Rolands, and the aformentioned Turpins, which are basically the NWO's answer to the BMPT Terminator-no passenger capacity, but heavy armor protection and a gigantic pile of urban combat weapons-twin 35mm railguns (the same ones as the ones on the Roland), multirole missile launchers, grenade launchers, and multiple antipersonnel clusters with a variety of deadly weapons to murder dudes. Turpins also have excellent sensors and point defense systems because they're intended to murder ambushing Reality Deviant consors who have like, stealth charms and rocket launchers. A Turpin is probably at a moderate disadvantage against an enemy Spektr. The Spektr has better anti-tank weapons and active camouflage but is a lot more vulnerable to dudes and has worse protection over the sides and rear. However, if you can get their missiles (or a Roland's missiles) through point defense, they will die. The real worry is the Multiped tank (and the SPOILERS).

Most of his vehicles are just Masses-tech armor, which is quite cheap, and he plans to expend them accordingly (i.e. Piero has already had the Iterators supporting them set them up with Wild Weasel systems so they read as enemy Rolands and Turpins and will therefore eat missiles or hypervelocity railgun hits so actually expensive war materiel doesn't). There are going to be a lot of burning husks after this is done, but Piero doesn't really see much of a choice and Professor Li is willing to drive the NWO into paroxyms explaining how this was a 'planned military exercise' and the burning husks were merely drone target vehicles.

Fortunately, it sort of is, given that you had the Abjad use their connections to get the JSDF people out and also the Progenitors have been trying to move civilians out of the immediate area. If that goes as planned, you should largely be able to cut loose and sufficient amounts of Matter magic and/or judicious Mind magic and/or hush money will be able to deal with the problem. Hopefully.

The rogue Technocrats in Izanagi unleash the following on the Damage Control assault in addition to its fixed, hardtech defenses (choose 4):
[X] Hell (mandatory choice)
[ ] Invisible Men with stealth missile launchers. Fucking invisible ninjas with cloaked missile launchers.
[ ] Militarized Wildlife. It turns out that one of the Izanagi defenses Major Clarent wasn't in charge of (but Akari was) is the fact that they have done certain things to the wildlife there. Swarm-intelligence fast-flying bees with high-power neurotoxin stingers. Fungal growths which create animal-infecting cordyceps variants to turn them into acid bombs. Giant underground tentacles with monomolecular bone spikes.
[ ] A very, very large number of test subjects who were formerly Bobs or Victors or Lauras or failed constructs and subjected to experimental transgenic enhancement. This doesn't sound dangerous until you realize that these "experimental transgenic enhancements" include things like "can transform into optimized warform with anti-tank scything claws and hardened chitin armor proof against some light artillery pieces" and "suicide bomb variant whose organs and muscles are optimized to create a large explosion and spread monofilament shrapnel everywhere." Of course, others are things like Project LUCARD or other chaff-tier experiments who will get annihilated by Damage Control coming in heavy.
[ ] Yinzheng knows that if something works, don't change it. Which means that she's loaded every single construct in the base with tactical programming, armed them with fabber-produced weapons and armor, and told them to turn every bit of the base and its surroundings into a horrifying killzone, then used some help from Oversight to disguise it.
[ ] "Ah." Piero says happily as the enemy's secret weapon reveals itself. "They have a dragon. This will do." It's more dinosaur than fantasy dragon, wingless and covered in primium scales, staring at him with a quartet of reptilian slit-eyes. But it's more than enough.
[ ] Gregor Leon has been making modifications and tweaks to the remaining crew of the Khmer Rouge. The Subjugation Corps approves, because it just loves unethical experiments. A lot of Mantons and Greys and reptilian infiltrators and Samurai Power Armor might not be enough to stop the angry armored fist of Damage Control (and Piero), but in conjunction with the exhumans and their own defenses it'll be a major threat.
[ ] Maybe Serafina should have been considering Iteration X a bit more rather than focusing mostly on cutting off Dr. Leon from the Progenitors, because they have a heavy cyborg team on-site in power armor and with heavy weapons.
[ ] If something works, it works, even if it's distasteful. And this is why the evacuation has not actually proceeded as planned and there are still quite a few civilians around. Enjoy having to worry about vulgar-with-witnesses and the clusterfuck of trying to explain this away.
[ ] In a completely non-suspicious coincidence that was not planned out or arranged by any of the Residents or the Agency (actually it probably wasn't because this was probably going to happen anyways), North Korean infiltrators make multiple, simultaneous attacks on Union and Masses targets right as Damage Control has been concentrating its military forces to deal with Dr. Leon going rogue, and Piero is going to need to rapidly figure out what forces he can spare and what forces he can't (counts as 2 choices.)
[ ] Write-In.
 
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