"Do you taste pink?" I asked.
I was in a small, circular room. The mirror on one wall was certainly a glass window on the other side, and my hands were handcuffed to the circular table. Miss Militia was sitting across from me. Never did like the flag thing. I wasn't particularly patriotic, didn't see any particular reason to consider America better than any other country. We weren't a beacon of civilization. We weren't a center of innovation. The only claim to fame we really had was the perfection of propaganda.
Maybe I should turn my respect back on. Trouble is, I'd need my phone to do that, and all my external tinkertech had been taken away from me, except for my mask. Guess they were still making a pretense of the unwritten rules.
"I'm sorry, what?" Miss Militia asked.
My handcuffs clinked as I waved her off.
"I have a very complex, delicate neural chip implanted into my brain, and I was just tazed." I licked my lips. "Tazed in the face." I told her, dryly, easy to do when your mouth feels like it's filled with sand. I worked my toes slowly. Spinal implant was working fine. Left foot was hurt quite badly. Probably tore a few tendons. I kept my pain dulled to about fifty percent as a standard precaution, but as soon as I got the chance I was going to alter it to completely block large spikes of pain, like I did fear.
"Do you need medical attention?" Miss Militia asked, concern apparent in her voice.
I waved that off as well.
"Literally the only other person who would know how to fix this sort of thing is my sister, so no. I'm alive, so my insulation must have held. Might get some strange syntenasia from the mask for a while though. I think the wireless connection got a little borked."
I put my head in my hands, and worked the mask off slowly. The mask was working better than I claimed, but I was low on options, and being underestimated would help significantly. I laid the mask on the table, and worked it around, feeling the electronics with my fingers. I knew it perfectly. Weeks of work, getting the components, even making my own, in some cases. I'd soldered every piece of it together.
Part of me wanted to upload everything from the last few hours to the internet, let the PRT deal with the media shitstorm. My mask did record it all. Unfortunately I didn't have a way to connect to the internet. I could have put a wifi receiver into the mask, I had that blueprint, but I hadn't bothered to actually make it, I needed the space for other things. I could have linked it to the internet through the phone I made, but they'd taken that.
"Look, H+…"
"Call me Mayhem." I interrupted. I didn't want the old name attached to a villain persona. I'd take it back later, once I was ready. Or not. It had been a vain hope anyway.
Miss Militia paused. I couldn't see her face, but I could imagine it. She probably looked sad.
Well boo hoo.
"Are you sure? It's a rather…"
"Villainous change? Probably, but it wasn't like I was operating under H+ for long. Minutes, really. It's still early enough to re-brand, I think. Name sounded kind of stupid when Piggot actually used it."
"…Mayhem then," Miss Militia said, voice heavy with resignation. "I'm sorry that you've gone through this. It isn't fair, and I'll admit, we wouldn't normally arrest you for simple hacking. You have to realize, you're a bio-tinker, and there is a certain… stigma to your abilities. That doesn't mean you can't use them in ways that help others."
"If I join the PRT it does." I said sullenly.
"How do you know that? Have you tried? I'm sure that there's a wealth of technology you can give us. I know that I'd be very happy not to have to rely on Panacea for healing."
I chuckled wryly.
"That's what I'd be I guess. A glorified doctor. I'm capable of a lot more than just maintaining the status quo of a human body." I told her.
"Would you mind telling me about what you can do? What sort of designs would you like to implement." Miss Militia asked.
It was tempting, so tempting. Getting a tinker to talk about their work is very easy.
"No. Thank you."
"It must have been very difficult for you, performing surgery on your own brain. What pushed you to do that?"
I snorted.
"Oh please. You've read my history, you know very well."
"But cutting into your own mind? Armsmaster says you've been deadening your emotions. Is that really safe?"
"It gave me what I needed."
It gave me calm. It gave me sight. It gave me the Mayhem Protocol, which I'd probably have to activate now.
Damn it. I was going to hurt so much tomorrow.
"You could have come to us. We could have kept you safe."
That actually made me laugh. Humor was the closest thing I allowed myself to hysteria.
"Safe? Safe? One of the last things I ever saw was the Slaughterhouse fighting the Protectorate. You were a disorganized mess! They tore through you like toddlers!" I practically snarled.
"That was a small town, isolated, cut off by Shatterbird's power. It was a tragedy, what happened there, but it isn't going to happen to you again Adam, and you don't have to take these risks to prepare for it." Miss Militia reassured me.
Heh. Oh, the poor fool. She sounded like she actually believed that.
I sighed, put my head in my hands again. There was already a port open in the back of my head, which the mask plugged into, but I felt around for the ring around that port, and twisted it loose, then lifted the hinged hatch. There was a mesh around my brain itself, to prevent infection and contamination, plus a few chemicals to make it a bit more robust, help it heal from the modifications. I lifted a hinged section off my skull, and grinned as I heard a small gasp. It was only a maintenance hatch, so to speak. Better access to the modifications I'd made.
"Do you have a paperclip?" I asked Miss Militia.
I held out my hands. Probably wouldn't get one, but it was worth a try. If I didn't get the chance to turn my pain off now I'd be very, very sore tomorrow. I'd been like that before, too sore to move, and with hands shaking too much to properly cross the right wires. Not a good way to be.
"What do you need it for?" Miss Militia asked.
"I want to turn off my pain. My ankle hurts rather significantly," I told her.
She muttered something. I didn't hear a reply. Probably some sort of tinkertech earpiece from Armsmaster.
A small piece of wire found its way into my hands, and I started fiddling with the ports at the back of my head. It wasn't that hard, doing this by feel. I'd done it before, just needed to re-route the suppression program slightly. I used to do all my emotion suppression with this port, before I started to work wireless. There was a split second of agony as the program cut out entirely, and then my whole body became numb. Not a good idea to spend too long like this, it was far too easy to do myself serious injury, but it was a good stopgap, and Mayhem was going to mess me up anyway. Pain or no pain.
"Thank you," I told Miss Militia, giving her the paperclip back, closing the hinged flap, putting the larger plug back into my skull, and then putting the mask back on.
Much better, and I was grateful. I'd even wait a while, see if she'd go away before I tried to make my escape.
"Adam, I want to help you. I don't want to get in your way, or stop you from defending yourself, or from saving your sister, or anything that you feel you need to do. I do what to keep you safe though, and what you're doing, it isn't safe." Miss Militia said. The mask let me see her face. It had a deeper effect, when I saw her face. Her eyes really did seem caring.
"Just go." I told her.
Miss Militia sighed, and stood up.
"Oh. And congratulate Piggot. She's made another villain." I drawled as she opened the door.
Her spine straightened, but she didn't look back. Guess she wouldn't. This had probably happened before.
They left me alone for a while, and eventually two armed PRT officers entered the room. One kept a containment foam sprayer on me, and the other unlocked my cuffs.
I smiled.
Mayhem Protocol was my attempt at giving myself a combat thinker power. I couldn't do it directly, I had no idea how to interface my neural enhancements with the sections of my brain responsible for my power, and that was one of the few things I didn't have a blueprint for, but I could still overclock things.
Have you ever heard that myth that you only every use ten percent of your brain? That's bogus, obviously. You use all of your brain, just not all at once. When your brain does light up all at once, that's called a seizure. Or, in my case, it's called turning my mind into a bio-computer.
You see, I didn't have the processing power in my neural chip for the stuff I wanted, combat prediction software, kinetic analysis, martial arts programming, that sort of thing. No matter how small I made the computer, I just couldn't build one with the processing power I needed for those sorts of calculations.
So I didn't. Why would I? I already had something better.
It made things easier. My brain already held all the information I had available, it was already good at calculating distances, thinking of how to move, already knew how to maneuver this body. Mayhem protocol just turned my higher thought processes into extra processing power, then hit my brain with the chemicals and energy to light up like a Christmas tree. It was, of course, much more complicated than that. Both my neural and spinal implants played a huge role in keeping my mind that of a well tuned machine, capable of calmly and, (theoretically,) logically carrying out the steps to a given objective, and capable of adaptively calculating those steps at extreme speed.
...well, almost like a well tuned machine. I called it Mayhem for a reason.
There were a few downsides. Primarily not getting to sit in the driver's seat. I gave my implants an objective, they used my gray matter to achieve it, but if I had too much say in how then that reduced the program's efficiency considerably. Secondly, the computer used the spinal implant to push my body hard. Zero safety margins. I could probably design some in, but part of what made Mayhem so dangerous was that there weren't any. Besides, I'd designed it with fighting the Slaughterhouse in mind, safety margins against them were stupid.
The PRT officer re-cuffed my hands in front of me, and moved behind me as I went out the door of the interrogation room.
How long to activate it for? That was a big question. Too long, and my brain would destroy itself. Anything under ten minutes was safe-ish. Anything longer was a huge risk. Too short though, and I'd wake up in the middle of a fight with no idea how I got there.
At a dead run, it would probably take me about a minute to get out of this building. There were obstacles, and I'd probably have to make sure the PRT didn't just hop in a van and run me down…
"Mayhem. Objectives: survival, escape, evade pursuit. Eight minutes. Activate." I muttered.
"You say something?" One of the PRT troupers asked me.
There was a flash of pain as my neural chip reset itself, then I blanked out.
***
"The human brain is a wonderful thing." I muttered to myself through cracked and bloody lips.
I wasn't fully conscious as I looked around. My body still felt numb, so I'd need to do a visual inspection, and that was going to be tricky considering my mask had been hit hard at some point. I smelled blue, and I tasted loud.
My pain blocking included the horrible headache that Mayhem typically caused, so that was fine. I'd need to sleep soon though, let my brain start to heal itself.
I put my hand on a nearby wall for leverage and stumbled to my feet, ignoring the way my ankle turned on me unnaturally as I did so.
My mask was still on, and still partially working. I took it off long enough to see the damaged transmitter, and discovered that if I applied pressure to it correctly the fractures closed and it transmitted properly. Mostly. The hard drive was damaged as well, slashed. Great, just great. Mayhem had apparently taken an edged weapon to the face at some point.
Let's see. I was in an alley. I was alone. I also had one of Armsmaster's halberd, which was… nice. He had to have at dozen trackers in the thing, so I'd have to ditch it, but I held onto it for now. I'd get rid of it once I was moving. Mayhem must have held onto it for a reason. There was probably still pursuit, eight minutes wasn't long, and Mayhem was hardly capable of taking on the entire Protectorate at once. In fact I seriously doubted that he could take on Armsmaster, not without some decent tinkertech of his own. Which begged the question of how I got the halberd. Probably caught him by surprise somehow. Or stole it or something.
The mask should have footage of what exactly had happened, but that was stored in the hard drive. I'd have to check it later, see if I could recover anything. Not now though. I needed allies. A place to recuperate.
I emerged from the alley, and found a young couple sitting on at a bus stop together. As I stumbled closer the man stepped in front of the girl, and I realized I was covered in blood.
Hopefully it was mine. I could mix up some cell growth formula, coagulant, fix my own wounds pretty easily. If I'd butchered my way out that was harder to fix. Mayhem protocol was another of those things I hadn't really tested. Damn the PRT for making me use it on them.
My arms trembled as I held the halberd threateningly. I wonder what these grip shifts actually did? Looked like a control mechanism based on crush strength. There was a patch of damage near the base of the halberd where the magnetic retrieval mechanism had been smashed, if I lifted a few panels there I could probably get a good look at the launch mechanism…
No. Not the time.
"Your phone." I grated out, shoving the halberd in the face of the man. He put his hands into his pocket carefully, and took it out with two fingers.
I snatched it from him, and backed up, letting them both run as I dialed a number from memory.
It rang, and rang. I limped back into the alley, and started inspecting my body. One pretty deep scalp wound, some sort of hole straight through my left hand… I licked the back of my forearm. O negative, my own blood. Good, I'd just wiped my forehead. I sucked my knuckles. Mostly mine, someone else's in there as well, but not a lot of it. Didn't necessary mean I'd killed someone. I also had a couple of broken ribs, but they weren't bleeding internally. My muscles were doing the equivalent of melting in their own lactic acid, and I'd pulled tendons in nearly all my joints. Manageable, but I was going to need to tinker myself up some medical equipment if I wanted to be able to move tomorrow.
Glad as hell I turned my pain off.
The phone rang out, and I quirked my head. I knew this was the right number. If Coil had some sort of day job…
I rang again. This time the phone rang only once, then stopped. He ended the call.
The bastard.
I sat in the alley, considering what to do next. My home was compromised, my carefully assembled lab was probably already gone. I had a whole host of physical problems, which would need to either be fixed with tinkertech chemicals or a month or so of rehab, and I had… I took out my wallet, and considered my bank account.
Well, if the PRT hadn't frozen my accounts yet, I had a grand total of four dollars to my name.
My head lolled against the alley wall, and I stared across the halberd. Maybe I could sell it?
A gang tag caught my eye. Looked like I was in E88 territory.
Wonder if Piggot had been right about them.
Guess I'd find out.
Time to get strong-armed into the Wards, go to juvie, or figure out a way to have Coil break you out...!
".......A~and now I need more therapy."
