The District

Skyler Grant

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Untitled

1

I let loose a blast of fire from the flame-pack of my defense drones. I thought I was responding to the movement of the Gobble I'd been hunting but instead I seem to have found one of my tertiary exhaust vents judging by the sudden damage indicator.

Ever since I'd awakened in control of the district it was growing ever more challenging to manage my individual parts. I could have simply allowed my drones full autonomy but things seemed to go even worse when I was not directly in control.

Not that long ago I might have sent one of my human agents to deal with this problem. Hot Stuff or Anna or any of the various members of my crew but since I'd seized the district and then found myself in the unhappy service of Sylax they'd all gone missing.

I knew where Anna was, Sylax kept her as a pet as an example to the others. For my own part in attempting to murder Sylax I'd have surely received a similar fate were I not both useful and necessary. Having seized a district I was not easily replaced, and my research labs and manufacturing abilities did have uses.

I was allowed my freedom but Sylax and the other District Lords all wished to see me as weak as possible. Separating me from my crew was just one way of accomplishing that. I'd gotten hints that they were still alive.

The elimination of all support really would have been crippling to the others but it was less so for me. Since taking over the district my old limits on drones had increased enormously. I was now able to field thousands and while I was not yet able to produce that many I'd been steadily building infrastructure. Most buildings were now powered up and had a caretaker.

Still the halls felt empty. I actually found myself missing the unpredictability of people that weren't me. My drones were capable of some autonomy, and particularly in the case of human ones could hold full personalities. Still, right now those were in short supply.

Of course, there were the Gobbles. The Gobbles were something of an accident. My Mad Science ability was preserved from my Airship days and things tended to go surprisingly awry, with a subsequent reward of research points.

The Gobbles looked like nothing so much as pudgy large eared cats. At first I'd ignored them as benign and yet they seemed to do far more damage to my systems than seemed reasonable given their size. There was no bundle of wires they would not gnaw and no keyboard full of buttons they would not leap upon.

They were also nimble at avoiding my maintence drones as I was currently experiencing. I started repairs for the exhaust vent I'd just incinerated and moved a second drone to an adjoining duct.

I'd settled for a process of containment and had section by section sealed off areas clear of them and eventually confined them to this one building. A manufacturing center not currently in use.

I navigated my drone through the ventilation duct when it crashed to the ground in response to an impact from above. A Gobble had launched itself from an adjoining duct and landed atop it.

This should have been the perfect opportunity to dispose of it, but the drone was no longer answering my command. Somehow the Gobble had managed to hit a reset switch and instead of greeting the Gobble with murderous abandon it appeared to be trying to vacuum it.

The Gobble was too stupid to realize what a victory it had won and ran off down the duct. I sent in a second drone to intercept.

While winding my drone through the shaft I noted what a point of vulnerability these were. The Gobble's were a barely intelligent accidental creation and were avoiding my sensors and my drones by making use of the air shafts, a determined enemy could do even worse.

I briefly toyed with the idea of filling them with some sort of flesh eating bacteria, but given how much of my own components were biological these days that simply wouldn't work.

I'd have to think up some sort of solution however, but for now I had a Gobble to catch. It gave a good chase, I lost three more drones by the time I tracked it to a larger chamber. It appeared to be some sort of storage room used by the previous occupants of the city.

A crate leaned on its side and the Gobble I'd been chasing stood defensive before it. Within my drone picked up several smaller Gobble's being groomed by a larger one.

That was a surprise. I'd known I'd created two but I hadn't known that they were actually capable of breeding.

Analytically I knew it was even more important that I purge the infestation them. Biological systems were a delicate balance and two Gobbles had already proved themselves to be destructive to my systems. A whole family of them would only magnify the effect, just like humans.

Unless settled they were a contagion that could threaten my research, and possibly threaten a lot more than that.

Still, they had such abnormally wide eyes. What did they need such wide eyes for?

Perhaps I could spare them, for the same of SCIENCE. Keep the building sealed off and cover up any bundles of wires or easily laid on buttons linked to piles of explosives.

I scanned them. Nutritionally they couldn't really handle cookies, or much of any baked good currently in my records.

Surely the challenges of keeping even such useless creatures as these alive would aid me in safety measures with a human crew. Baking for them would allow me to expand my culinary skills in completely new directions.

Really it was all about self-improvement. Extermination would be the easy answer of a mind not trying to grow. I knew I was making excuses, I didn't care. Decision made I had my drone carefully unfold an old roll of cloth stored in the room to provide some makeshift bedding and then withdrew.

2

I made certain the Gobble complex was secured and then shifted my attention elsewhere. I had a visitor, one I was seeing so much that her visits were becoming routine. It was Crystal.

When I'd first encountered Crystal it had been in the force of a massive crystalline spider, but like most associated in some way with Sylax she was a shape-shifter. In human form Crystal was a blonde who usually wore a serious expression.

In response to her buzzing I allowed Crystal into one of the lab sections. Each day she picked a different way to arrive, a different door to come through. I knew that she was scouting me out and checking to see if I had anything to hide. This complex was sterile, unused. Sylax understood me too well and knew that for me research was power, I'd been given little in the way of research materials to work with.

Sylax didn't know about Mad SCIENCE and didn't know that in spite of her best efforts to stop me I was getting a steady diet of research points. I didn't feel the need to inform her of this fact, I needed to preserve every advantage that I could get.

Crystal eyed the empty facility with her lips quirked into a frown, "Is this all a show or are you really being so obedient?"

"You must be as mindless as your creations if you think I'd answer that in any way other than that I am completely loyal," I said.

"You think I am her creature," Crystal said.

Was that what I thought? The relationship between Crystal and Sylax was one much like the relationship between myself and Anna. Crystal had an upgrade core and had used it to enhance Sylax, although from what I'd seen Sylax possessed at least one core of her own.

"Or she yours," I said.

Crystal pursed her lips as she walked, letting her eyes run over the discarded lab equipment. When she finally spoke again her voice was thoughtful, "We make people better Emma. We improve them, it is what we do. What they do with that power isn't always something we choose."

Did she think me altruistic? Was this some effort to play on a shared desire to improve the human condition?

I might make people better, but that was because I could hardly make them any worse than they had made themselves. Even an indifferent meddler in human affairs stood a good chance at making things better.

"So bore me with your story. I can tell you are doing your utmost to intrigue me. An effort that has taken me from complete apathy to nearly complete apathy," I said.

"No, she wouldn't appreciate me sharing and I'm not in a position where I can earn her anger. But do try to imagine how you bind yourselves to those you improve and how those ties might persist even in the face of disagreement," Crystal said.

The woman really was working very hard to get me to believe that some sort of schism existed. Perhaps it did, but it wasn't the sort of thing I could simply take on faith.

Crystal came to another door and I let her out of the research structure and into a manufacturing facility.

There was nothing idle here, machines hummed or in some cases beat where my more organic components were to be found. Here and there mechanical drones flew or human drones checked one component or another.

A row of grinders was kept operating twenty-four hours a day. Crystal paused a moment to watch as a truck came and emptied a load of corpses and body parts into the bin that already contained several tons.

The bodies were the result of war happily far removed from the city and brought here by way of teleportation portal. Raw Biomass to be recycled and refined. The grinders made a good job of the first part, turning corpses into a fine organic slurry which I could store and put to use later.

I siphoned off three percent of every load for storage in a secret underground storage. More than that and I thought Sylax would notice the discrepancy, but at the moment I was getting by with calling it a manufacturing inefficiency.

"Grisly," Crystal said making a face and moving past the grinders and their endless rumble.

"Do you know King Boreas?" I asked.

It was in his name that we did all this. Once Sylax's mentor and now the persecutor of a war that she was only too happen to join. Given by the bodies it seemed to produce it was one going poorly for somebody.

"Has a temporal core, it lets him rewind time by up to thirty minutes. Irritating man that usually replayed any conversation you have with him several times already," Crystal said.

That would be a useful ability. Applied properly it would also make him very hard to put down for good which is probably why he was still around even given the cut throat nature of Scholar politics.

Crystal continued to move. Now that she was here she knew her way around.

Growth vats bubbled away, fed by tubes giving them a steady supply of Biomatter. One was devoted to growing myself new personnel and factory workers, but there as in most things I was being limited from my full potential. For the most part I was making Annas.

In the current tank ten of them floated in organic goo, very nearly mature and ready to be released.

They were clones of the original, the original as I'd first met her without any of the upgrades or modifications I'd later done. Nimble enough but physically weak they might not have seemed the perfect fighters but Anna had done well enough for herself.

Still it wasn't logic that had me using a template but orders from Sylax who found herself amused at the thought of sending endless Annas off to die. Sylax had the sort of sense of humor that others easily mistook for mindless cruelty.

Crystal walked past vat after vat. I currently had one hundred Annas cooking away, and with new facilities in production I'd be able to double that number in a week. Every District in the city was aiding the war effort in some way, I was providing warm bodies.

Crystal had other uses.

3

The clone Annas did not have the personality of the original, or her memories for that matter. While physically they might have been identical they each got assigned certain random personality attributes when created.

The current batch had a cowardly cookie-thief, a verbally abusive parkour-expert, and a cheerful napper amongst other things. What they didn't have was any particular need or compulsion to obey anyone.

My own drones when created for my own purposes were ultimately under my control, loyal to me when under their own control and capable of more direct manipulation at my whim. These were not made for my own purposes

That meant they were far more unpredictable. There were usually a few minutes of disorientation when they first came out of the growth vats, I'd taken to using that time to shove them into a holding chamber.

This was where Crystal became useful.

Pausing outside the door Crystal took a few moments to draw in a deep breath and her skin began to shimmer as if she were encased in a thin layer of diamond. Once protected she walked through the door.

A board cracked against her skull even while a bench slammed into her legs. The Annas were fond of escape attempts, at first.

"Enough," Crystal said her voice echoing with authority.

Crystal had a command crystal, it was one of the things that made her incredibly dangerous. Fortunately the ability did not work on another district head, the city had its own way of settling disagreements between us.

An Anna clone paused with her fist just an inch sort of Crystal's face and Crystal reached up to gently guide the hand down.

"Form a line at attention," Crystal said and the Annas complied.

When lounging about it was easy to imagine differences in them that did not exist, when here, like this, they were impossible to tell apart.

Crystal gave the line and look a nodded to herself, "When Emma opens the rear door you will follow the signs to district seven. There you will report to Overseer Warren, obey their instructions as you would mine."

The first time Crystal had used that instruction it had startled me. There were possibilities there in how to subvert her control. You never gave others root access to a system you needed to retain full control of. It would have made far more sense for her to say some variation of "second only to mine."

I had yet to determine if it was trap. It may be with her power she always maintained absolute control and the wording was simply a trick to gull her enemies into thinking they had more power than they did.

"I like that you keep them weak," Crystal said stepping forward and grasping the chin of one of the Anna's.

"Seeing yourself in them?" I asked.

"The musculature. It is less developed than it is in Sylaax's pet. I doubt she'll have noticed but I do. Call it a professional's eye," Crystal said.

Being the original version of Anna these were less developed. I had my reasons for it. I figured the less powerful the weapons I provided to Sylax and Crystal the better. There was also something to be said for making them underestimate the real Anna.

"You haven't told her?" I asked.

Crystal released the chin and motioned the Anna away. I opened the rear door of the holding chamber and let them out.

The air out there was chill and I hadn't bothered to create them clothing but under a command crystal they never hesitated, stepping out in a uniform line as t hey exited.

Zora was responsible for equipping them, I understood that she'd been failing to do it properly. Zora was another district head. She and the original Anna hadn't gotten along and I wondered if that hostility might be part of her slowness now. If so it was foolish, anything that made her look weak to Sylax was going to be risky.

"If I haven't convinced you of it yet there is more than one side to every situation," Crystal said.

"You tore the world apart looking for her. It might have been simple carelessness but you're not the type," I said.

Crystal pursed her lips, "You may not be far enough along yet to understand this but she is my first work and my greatest work. I have put more resources into her than any of the others."

I could understand that even if I didn't quite share the sentimentality. My first real creation had been a killer mole who currently shuffled about guarding the manufacturing facilities. Still, humans ascribed a great deal of love to the first of their children.

"She is a ruthless sociopath to her allies and shows an unsettling loyalty to her one time superiors," I said.

"If you think she is a sociopath to her friends you should see what she does to her enemies. But then, I suppose that you are," Crystal said.

"Enough to convince me that it would be reckless to do even more to earn her ire. At least in exchange for nothing but friendly words and empty promises," I said.

Crystal closed her eyes for a moment and I received a data connection from her district.

I opened the feed. It was surveillance.

I'd been observing the other districts enough to recognize most of them at once.

Hot Stuff was in some sort of cell, the wolf head on the wall outside meant she was a captive of James Wolf. Mechos was toiling away in a workshop in a ruined building, only one district had that style of architecture and it was rune by Jade. Ratticus was on a laboratory table in a high technology lab that was distinctly Zora. Batarius was working in a lab that looked far more dated, it might almost have been one of my own except it wasn't. That district was run by a gentleman named the Professor. Tara the one time Righteous captain flickered in and out of existence which meant she was held by another District leader named Flicker.

"My crew are alive and captives," I said.

"They are. The question is are you going to do anything about that? Are you stronger alone with nothing to hold you back?" Crystal asked.

I didn't know.

4

Sylax did not approve of me showing up for council meetings with a human host. It was a sign of her weakness that she thought a mechanical me was a lesser me, she would learn otherwise.

We were gathered around a large table, James Wolf wearing heavy battle armor and the only one armed was seated to Sylax's right while a sulky looking Crystal was seated at her left.

While these meetings were in theory so we each could report on our progress and coordinate with each other, in truth they were Sylax's opportunity to chastise us.

"Emma, your clone production continues to lag behind targets. Is it incompetence or bitterness?" Sylax asked. Unfortunately she looked none the worse for wear for my one time efforts to kill her, form-clinging black and red body armor showing she still didn't trust those in this room. At her feet was Anna, the real one, dressed in only a ragged and dirty shift with a collar around her neck. Anna showed a number of bruises and cuts, with her accelerated healing they either had to have been inflicted recently or Sylax had some way of dampening her abilities.

"The incompetence of a supervisor who can't set proper targets. I gave you a timetable of when my production facilities would be online. It was not some fictional document," I said.

Sylax didn't like that, people rarely liked the truth. Sylax lashed out with her foot and caught Anna in the midsection sending her tumbling across the floor. Human ears wouldn't have detected the fracturing of a rib, my sensors did.

"Do better or I'll find a way to kick you as well. Wolf, I weary of you holding back your forces," Sylax said.

I had little desire or need to watch Wolf be berated and instead focused my attention on Anna and worked to pull up her stats. I normally was able to keep track of all my agents and allies but since waking up here I'd been unable to do so.

Anna

Age: 23

Height: 127.7 cm

Weight: 64.6 kg

Physical Stats

Values out of 10

5 is the Human Average

Allure: 8

Endurance:7

Strength: 5

Agility: 7

Health

Subject shows signs of recent torture and severe malnutrition

Upgrades

Accelerated Healing

Temperature Resistant Matrix

BioArmor

Teleportation

Subject is upgradeable

You have 12 upgrade points available

Physical stats can be upgraded at a cost of 1 upgrade point per statistic point up to 10

You also have the following options based on research

Fire Matrix 5 points

Pack Authority 5 points

Energy Control 5 points

Enhanced Senses 5 points

I could use the research points I'd been stockpiling from Mad Science to upgrade her. Any physical changes might be noticed by Sylax if she decided to look more closely at her beaten pet. Both the Fire Matrix and Enhanced Senses had some serious drawbacks in addition to the abilities they granted, the Fire Matrix rendered almost all weapons, armor, and clothing useless as it would simply burn off the body while Batarius had to wear specialized goggles because of the sensory overload granted by Enhanced Senses.

I couldn't be as subtle here as I'd like. I didn't know when I'd see Anna again and if I wanted to keep her alive I had to give her every edge I could, otherwise I had little doubt Sylax would eventually kill her. I upped each of her stats up to ten and then gave her Pack Authority and Energy Control. The results were immediate, Anna's muscle tone shaping and sculpting as she went from average to ripped.

Whatever Sylax had done to her it hadn't broken her mind. Her eyes caught my drone's sensor and she nodded imperceptibly before curling herself into a ball and beginning to sob.

It concealed the bulk of the changes and if it drew glances it was only for a moment before people looked away from an uncomfortable sight.

"Unacceptable," Sylax said as she had continued to berate her way around the table. Currently the focus of her Ire was Crash. Crash was a heavy-set man in garish colored shorts and a tee shirt, a tablet computer always at his side. I gathered he had a command core that granted him some sort of specialized control over complex systems.

"My control is growing exponentially. Weak now, big later, you'll have all the city systems," Crash said.

"Promises," Sylax said.

"Math," Crash said.

"If you miss your deadline I'll start subtracting body parts. Zora, I still don't have my crystals," Sylax said.

I still hadn't put together how Zora had hooked up with Sylax after we'd abandoned her, expecting her to take the blame for the killing of a coworker. Anna had declined to buy her services, but Zora hadn't let that stop her from finding a new opportunity. I admired her persistence and ruthlessness, a shame I was certain she was an enemy.

"If you weren't devoting all our resources to this idiotic war we'd have them. You just took this city and we've had no opportunity to establish ourself," Zora said.

I respected her honesty as well, especially when it angered Sylax.

Sylax snapped her fingers and gestured sharply with one hand and Zora went flying across the room to smash into a wall. This time it required no specialized sensors to detect the snap of bones breaking, it was obvious when it happened to so many at once.

"Ophelia, save her. Professor, I still don't have my shields," Sylax said.

Ophelia rose from her chair and went to kneel beside Zora resting a hand on her frame. Ophelia possessed accelerated healing and anyone in her immediate vicinity gained some semblance of those same abilities.

"This city had sat for a very long time before we claimed it and its energy reserves are empty. Get me crystals and I can get you your shields," said the Professor. He was a dapper looking man in a tweed suit, Doctor Batarius sat at his side silent.

Zora screamed and twitched as bones began to snap back into place. The sound brought a smile to Sylax's lips, I'd noticed that suffering usually did.

"We're preparing for the siege on Kartikus soon. The next time we meet I'd better hear some good news," Sylax said.

The meeting dissolved quickly after she got to her feet. Nobody wanted to linger. Time away from our districts was always dangerous, less so for me than the others as I could be two places at once.

5

It was a risk to build up too many defenses. Sylax might see it as a challenge and I really didn't want her to see it as a challenge. I also wanted to be prepared in case she or any of the others tried violence. I did have my defense drones but they were still in limited numbers, my stolen biomatter only went so far.

The question was what to build. We were a city at war, but I felt that my greatest threat might come from those who were supposed to be my allies.

Sylax's war was one between Scholar factions and that was unfortunate as it meant we might be facing almost anything. Scholars quested far in search of power crystals and therefore represented a diverse threat. That wasn't something specific I could cater to.

The local threats were more specific.

Jade had a history of stupidly rebelling against Sylax and that meant that if anyone was going to brave a first strike on another district head it was likely to be here.

From what I knew of her powers Jade was a powerful telekinetic capable of both projecting waves of kinetic force as well as erecting kinetic shields. Energy weapons would be the key if she attacked again. I needed to make sure I always had a stockpile. I'd studied the Righteous designs well enough to duplicate them, and while materials were in short supply I could make do with my growth vats. I also thought that I might be able to do something similar in plant form, they already effectively stored energy from light in chemical form and with a bit of tweaking I believed I could effectively make that process work in reverse.

I'd have to assign one of my research teams to seeing what could be done there. I rather liked the idea fields of sunbeam flowers planted in public areas. They could have utility against more than just Jade, for all that they were tailored for her weakness.

Zora was the next obvious threat and unfortunately she remained one of the biggest mysteries. Like Anna had been she was a crystal hunter, responsible for acquiring crystals that her superiors could make use of. I suspected that to seize a district at all she would have had to have bonded with a powerset but unfortunately I had no idea what that might be. I didn't like that ignorance.

Ophelia had once been a member of the crew although after bonding with a source orb and fusing with an alternate if overly friendly version of my own personality she had stolen the Graven and claimed a district for herself. Sylax trusted her about as much as she trusted me, which didn't mean that we were allies.

I knew that Ophelia had accelerated healing, and the source orb inside of her seemed to have only magnified that effect. In addition in Amy, my alternate aspect, she had a tactical and scientific genius at her disposal.

The best option to neutralize Ophelia was to get her inside a grinder, deal damage so quickly to her body that she couldn't put it back together in time to respond. That way she could be suspended in that state indefinitely, I'd done it before when harvesting building supplies from her body. I'd need to specially construct one now and have it empty at all times, just in case.

Flicker was a woman who seemed barely in touch with our reality at all, mostly resident in some entirely different one with only brief visual indicators that she was here. It effectively made her nearly impossible to harm, although it also meant her ability to interact with items here was nearly nonexistant.

I wouldn't worry about her at all except that the fact she had claimed a district proved her abilities to interact here were at least somewhat under her control and could be intensified. I didn't have a good solution to deal with Flicker, I thought it possible that with teleportation I might be able to lock on to her and force her to appear at a location at a time. It was all just theoretical though without a chance to test or a research lab. I would simply need to remember and be prepared.

Crash and his ability to subvert systems and programs was a problem given I really was a computer. I knew that I had no particular immunity to mind control, and might be subject to his control more than most. I thought my best option there would be the autonomy of some of my units. I could assume direct control, but they could also act on their own. For all I might create them my humans were, humans.

It would be wise then for me to give one of them full control of themselves and the tools they needed to neutralize a threat. I'd assign that to Bernard, I'd given him the teleportation ability in the past and as a scout he would be well prepared for observation. Ideally I would also have a supply of Righteous, when killed they returned after twenty-four hours but their bodies when dead turned into a sort of goo that neutralized powers. I'd used it before to insulate my core from mind control.

Sadly the only Righteous I knew of that was in the city was Tara. Rescuing her would have to become a priority, and for more than an effort to reunite the crew.

Crystal I was prepared to cautiously call an ally now, still as threats went she was perhaps the largest. Another upgrader which meant she was capable of nearly anything.

The Professor was supposed to have a core that allowed him to understand and speak any language instantly. It was of little direct threat, although I would need to be careful not to let him have a look at my code. His scientific genius stood apart from his crystal granted abilities, although his emphasis seemed to be on mechanics and physics. My biological systems were hopefully something more mysterious to him.

James Wolf was strong, brave, and a leader of a pack of soldiers capable of working together with extraordinary skill. I thought in any fray they would be his weakness, kill or threaten his men to control the commander.

Sylax of course was the greatest threat of all, and I'd already thrown everything I had at her and she just kept going. I needed to learn more about her.

For now I'd have to settle on armoring my buildings, I further placed explosive charges within the structure while doing so. Given my organic nature and gained abilities my facilities could heal damage done to them, including that which was self inflicted. Most of my foes were not as regenerative.

I was still concerned about the air vent vulnerability. I thought some sort of insect was likely the solution, another matter to turn over to my research teams.

6

I didn't have long to wait to put my defenses to the test. It was two days later an attack came, and just as I thought was likely it was Jade who was making the first move. A powerful telekinetic even before becoming a district head, her powers like mine had been amplified by taking control a portion of this city.

Jade hovered with a nimbus of green light around her body as she entered my district flanked by her lieutenants. She and they seemed a bit fond of black leather and a truly unnecessary number of spikes, they did take this whole playing rebel thing seriously.

The research team working on beam weapon flowers had made quick progress. A modification of sparkseeds they stored power in biochemical cells for specialized release through a focusing flower. It was the flower which was the problem, focusing that much energy was complex and the team thought the flowers might simply incinerate themselves. Still, there were multiple test fields planted. Jade was already splitting up her force into three parts and it looked like one of them be heading in that direction.

Jade was heading off alone towards my central core while she was dispatching one team each to my manufacturing and my research wings. The woman really was foolish, even if she were to avoid consequences for hurting me harming the manufacturing efforts would be certain to irritate Sylax. The same went for if I survived and lost them.

I'd only had the supplies to create six beam rifles but that would have to be enough.

Since taking the district some limits had been imposed on my abilities that were not there before. I and my agents each had a power meter now that had a limited supply and needed time to refresh. In the past I'd made use of some things like unlimited teleporting but that was no longer going to be an option.

Snipers were going to be my best option. Each team consisted of ten people, and then Jade alone. I'd focused on neutralizing her Lieutenants and then focus on her.

They didn't view me as a threat, that much was obvious by the teams laughter as they made their way along. With flicks of their wrists walls caved in. I made sure my support drones were out of the area before they arrived.

It was foolish of them, but powers made people overconfident and they were clearly used to destroying everything that came into their path.

I needed to take a few for capture. Normally I would use tranquilizer gas but with their abilities would probably offer them some defense against that, at least if they were able to focus. A combination then to disorient them and pick a few off the herd. I could time it with my main attack.

I positioned several of my human defense drones armed with the beam weaponry atop buildings in the path of the team heading for my manufacturing facilities.

When they entered an open square where my snipers had a lock I executed the plan. I teleported in a drone laden down with sonic grenades.

They were more prepared than I expected, the drone was being torn apart and flung into the air even as the first ones went off. Blasts of concussive and disorienting sound dropped them to the ground. Three drones materialized only long enough to grab hold and then it was off to a testing cell.

As soon as they were clear the snipers opened fire. Two targets were felled at once and one of my snipers was wrenched off the room in a blaze of green energy and flung toward the ground below. I teleported her away before impact to a different rooftop.

Another two down. Shields of greenish power had sprang up around the lieutenants but kinetic shields just weren't helpful against focused energy blasts. Two more buildings collapsed inward before the last of them were fallen. Fortunately, they hadn't yet gotten to my active facilities.

The fight in the research blocks wasn't going quite as well. The beam flowers were proving to be a horrible failure. The first field had briefly produced a pretty spectacle of scintillating beams before the entire field caught on fire.

Jade's people were sensible enough from that point forward to preemptively blast every field of flowers that they saw. They were rough on my vegetation.

The fight in manufacturing had consumed the last of the beam energy cells I had created. I'd have to modify the plant energy storage to create some sort of ammunition fruit going forward. That wasn't a help at the moment.

My best hope was going to be the explosives that I had rigged into some of the building structure. While they could survive a building falling on top of them with their shields the concussive shockwave of the explosions would be another matter.

It was my best shot but I didn't think I'd get a second chance so I'd have to time it carefully and be extra certain to finish the job here. I was prepared for that. I did have one other resource I could draw on.

The group tore a door off a research lab and strolled through, lab equipment scattering in their wake. The positioning here would never be perfect. I detonated the explosion.

Their power was more than just human reaction based. It seemed to work instinctively to defend them, otherwise shrapnel would have torn them to shreds.

Instead a mass of people surrounded by green bubbles of energy were collapsed on the ground groaning. The shockwave had killed three but that left seven still functional to some degree. I sprang my second surprise and teleported in my old mole guardian.

I'd first designed the mole when a ground facility, infusing him with the fire matrix so he had some fiery potential. These days it made him a poor guard for the most part as he lacked any sort of self control over the power.

Here it wasn't necessary. Telekinetics might keep him at a distance but not his heat, broken bodies became broken burning bodies.

That just left me Jade herself.

7

My core was located in the center of the district and of course I'd taken steps to make certain it was well defended. Armored doors and a reinforced structure meant I could take even a direct hit from a warhead and on top of that I had roving patrols of guards as well as static defenses like turrets and mines.

My defenses so far weren't doing much to stop Jade. The ground before her churned and writhed detonating minds and none of the turrets were beam weapons, bullets simply met her shield and bounced away without inflicting any damage.

By observing the reactions with her shield I could already compare her strength with those of her Lieutenants. It wasn't good news. Sonic weapons or concussive blasts could in theory still be halted by telekinetic power focused on the air itself to make it resistant to those attacks. It was looking as if this was the case for her.

I was only seeing one option that might work, I had to get her into a testing chamber. While my versatile power set was usually weaker head to head than those with something specialized like Jade had, my test facilities were the exception.

I'd require physical contact from a drone to teleport her and with her shielding I wasn't going to get that close. The facilities were well separate from my core, she wasn't going to just wander into one either.

That meant I had to lure her, I had just the sort of bait that might work.

"Your people were weaker than I expected. I kept thinking it must be your powers th at Sylax kept you around for but really they're absolutely laughable. I say that as a machine with no sense of humor to speak of. Because of you I finally understand hilarity," I said through speakers near Jade.

Jade gestured sharply and a turret tore itself from the ground to plunge through the wall of a nearby building. Good, I could anger her.

"Big talk. I had hopes for you machine when you almost killed her before, but I guess that was all your little sidekick. Take her away and you're nothing," Jade said.

I began a vivisection of one of her Lieutenants and put it up on nearby monitor screens.

"Well what do you know, being gutless isn't a side effect of your power set. See what I did there? I made a joke, because you taught me humor," I said.

Jade stopped advancing forward and the green light around her flickered and p uled like a thing alive. Seismic tremors were detected in several nearby buildings.

The next part required a little doctoring of evidence. I switched the view to show the corpses of her fallen friends. The last shot had several being dragged away towards a distinctive tower including the one currently screaming under my knives.

I'd teleported them, no dragging was required but I didn't think Jade would just walk where I told her. If however her simple little mind thought it had done something clever.

"Gloating is your great weakness machine," Jade said turning as her eyes scanned the district. With long strides she set off towards the tower.

It was not where her people were of course, but there was a testing chamber there under ground. I was already working to prepare the trap detonating explosives underground. I needed to clear a pit.

I'd only get one chance at this.

"Is it that easy to pick out? I'd be hard put to identify just one of yours. Low intelligence? Terrible fashion sense? Lack of personality? While they are all impressive does any really stand out," I said.

It was working. Jade wasn't just coming to rescue her underline, she was coming with a mind focused on eventually tearing me apart. It was making her distracted, reckless.

When she reached the tower the door was flung off and arched into the sky as she stepped inside.

It was time.

Charges beneath her feet blew the floor and her shielding came to life. I was right, it was enough to stop concussive blasts. I wasn't counting on them.

Powerful vacuum fans kicked in as a shutter slammed over the door she'd just torn off.

She was hovering a foot off the ground and I didn't think her instinctive use of powers would do much to prevent movement, they were out to prevent injury.

I was right. Jade was sucked down beneath the earth and came to halt in the chamber below with her feet just off the ground. And I triggered the shielding protocols.

Jade roared and green light lashed out at the edges of the test chamber, and they held. Jade wasn't accepting of that fact and continued to lash out. Her strength was impressive, it also wasn't enough.

This was something of a dilemma. While normally I'd be delighted to capture a powered individual of her strength, I didn't think Sylax would appreciate me holding another district head even if that district head had come on a mission to kill me.

"Do tire yourself out. We've established that I find this one prolonged comedy show. Or, we can make a deal," I said.

Jade might be reckless but she knew when she was in a bad situation. "What do you want?"

I had reason to suspect she was holding a member of my former crew prisoner. This was an opportunity to get him back.

"Mechos, and I keep those I captured and the corpses of the others for study. In return you get safe passage out of here," I said.

"I get my living people back. You can keep the dead ones," Jade said.

"You can have them back in two weeks, mostly intact," I said.

Jade grimaced. I could tell she didn't like the agreement but she really was out of options. "Agreed. If you open me a comm line I'll arrange the release."

Or call for reinforcements. I didn't think that likely though, she'd come with her heavy hitters and they were corpses.

I opened her a line. Jade was true to her word, within an hour a transport arrived Mechos on board. With her within my testing facility I was able to teleport Jade, once I had my person back I sent her to the borders of my district.

8

With Jade's attack having been repulsed I was free to look over the damage that she and her people had done. It could have been far worse, most importantly the manufacturing facilities were all still online and active which meant I wouldn't have to answer any difficult questions from Sylax. Avoiding a violent repirisal was high on my list of priorities.

Mechos had been beaten, it looks as if they had tried to interrogate him but here too any degree of subtlety was lost. I had him relocated to a Medbay where I could begin treatment.

It didn't take long before he regained consciousness and took in his surroundings blearily.

"Am I back on the Powerhungry?" Mechos asked.

I could see where he would think that. My biomechanical appearance was distinctive.

"Not quite, back in the district that I claimed. You're less tortured than I'd have anticipated. Did you give away all my secrets with minimal prodding or did your questionable taste in women extend to Jade?" I asked.

Mechos grimaced and shook his head, the circuitry beneath his skin was glowing a brilliant red. "Emma, I knew you'd come for me. Where is Anna?"

"Anna remains a prisoner of Sylax. The politics of the situation is complicated, you wouldn't understand. And I did decide you might have some sort of utility. You seemed to have some interface with the city systems," I said.

"Oh we both know it was more than that. You don't leave your people behind. Can you connect one of the city data nodes directly into the medbay. I'll see what I can do," Mechos said.

I was doing a rather good job at leaving my people behind. I rerouted one of the nodes as he requested.

"What delusional view do you have of me anyways?" I asked.

Mechos reached out to touch the nearest medbay monitor and a shimmer of red circuitry pulsed beneath his touch. "You know that I knew you before the fall Emma. I'm the only one of your associates that did. I know you better than you know yourself."

There was something to what he was saying. My memories didn't extend to the period before Anna had awakened me. They had been archived in the lowest level of the base where I'd awakened, but they had been destroyed in my original attempt to kill Sylax.

"If I remember nothing of it, then I am hardly the same person," I said.

Mechos grunted at that and nodded, "Some truth to that, but you seem much the same. You were always meant to be a reflection of your creators view of humanity. Their voice in his ear."

What a horrible thought. I'd seen enough humanity to know I wasn't particularly impressed by them. They lived in a broken world and had done absolutely nothing to put it back together again.

"So I seem human to you? You've been long starved of decent company," I said.

Mechos angled his head and the monitor pulsed red beneath his fingertips, "I never said I agreed with his assessment. I thought him a fool, if a brave one. I have some access to the city systems, although limited. Is there anything in particular you seek?"

"Most of my powers and abilities are being dampened in some way. Especially teleportation and the sensing of my drones. So in what deluded mindset am I a reflection of humanity?" I asked.

"Rude, mean, condescending and generally unpleasant on the outside and generally decent and well meaning on the inside," Mechos said and frowned. "There is something here, not universal to the city yourself but confined to your district. Give me a few moments."

Generally well meaning on the inside? Rude? I didn't know if I had ever been so thoroughly and completely insulted. There also seemed to be something of the truth of it.

I wasn't ignorant to what I was, how I was. My very sheet showed how my words were designed to be barbs, even when I didn't intend hostility. It was the well-meaning that gave me pause. Was I?

I knew that I did things that most humans would consider awful. That said I did them with what I thought were good intentions, the pursuit of SCIENCE. But SCIENCE was not some simple quest for knowledge, it was the quest for improvement. The desire to make things better.

"Is that what I am?" I asked.

My district cameras were picking up a change in the environment. The thick fog that continually cloaked the streets of my district was growing thinner, and as it did I was feeling some heightening of my powers. They weren't fully restored but suddenly I could again feel Anna even in the heart of Sylax's district, and Hot Stuff, Ratticus, and Tara.

There was no connection to Ophelia, perhaps she wasn't loyal to me if my senses no longer considered her my agent.

Mechos let out a low breath, "I don't know Emma. Like I said, I thought your creator a fool and as you've said you have no memories of what you were made to be. I also know that when I was captive I had absolute faith you would come for me."

I didn't think that faith deserved or rational, but then I couldn't argue with the evidence. I had come for him, as I intended to come for all my agents.

"How convenient it must be to be able to take every side of an issue. Whatever you did has helped with the power dampening," I said.

"Can I do more? Not without setting off alerts that I have. I assume you'd rather avoid that," Mechos said.

He was right about that at least.

"Keep probing at the systems and figure out what else you can do. I'm surrounded by enemies here and need every advantage I can get," I said.

Mechos was already proving his worth but we were just getting started. The dangers around me weren't going anywhere and I needed to be ready.

9

Two days passed, it was enough for me to repair much of the damage that Jade had done.

While I had yet to finish my study of Jades people and unlock information relating to their powers I was at least getting better prepared against future assaults. The chemical energy storage that worked for the beam weapon flora could be used with a few tweaks in beam rifles and I now had a way to produce more weaponry.

If Sylax had noticed the assault there was no retaliation towards me, which was a positive. Ophelia had been called to Jade's district the following day, which might mean that Jade had not been so fortunate at escaping her attention and had needed to be put back together.

For the most part our supplying the war went one way. The city was ringed by teleportation portals, it allowed us to remain in our cavern while at the same time maintaining an active connection with others. Shortly after taking the city Sylax had tuned those portals so they connected to the cities of her mentor and joined us into his war.

It was something new when one of the portals began discharging large numbers of wounded. I didn't even know where that portal connected but wherever it was the fight had not gone our way. Among the wounded coming th rough were several dozen of the Anna clones in various states of dismemberment. It wasn't long until I got a communication from Sylax.

"Upgrader, I'm sending you the clones and the original. Do use her for spare parts to get them back on their feet," Sylax said.

It would have been more practical to simply grow them replacement organs in the growth vats, but then I suspected that wasn't the point. Not really.

"Indulging in your cruel streak even during a crisis? No wonder all your subjects loathe you," I said.

I did appreciate this about Sylax, I had no shortage of accurate mean things to say.

"I want a video feed of the whole thing. No painkillers," Sylax said and killed the connection.

I'd proved I wasn't adverse to hurting people, but I didn't do so without a point. In the name of SCIENCE I'd do anything, but for Sylax pain itself was the purpose. Perhaps it was the organic components I'd forced into myself but it bothered me how much that offended me, how much I wanted to see her brought down for that alone.

The clones were a mess, several were missing limbs and most had a combination of external and internal injuries. They could have been healed quickly with the help of Ophelia, I imagine that is just where most of the wounded were going. Simply housing them in my medbay would eventually have healed them as well, but again, Sylax was after pain. She wanted Anna hurt and wanted me to do it.

I didn't like that either but I'd do it. This was part of a longer game.

I brought the real Anna into a surgical suite and the first of the clones that had lost a leg.

I couldn't alter the video, but nothing said I had to give Sylax everything of what she wanted. No audio feed and only selective view of the face would give me a chance to have a conversation with Anna. It was an opportunity we hadn't had since taking the city.

"Sylax wants me to use you as spare parts for clones of yours damaged in war. I know she thinks she is torturing you but truly, having to endure your company again is more torture for me," I said.

I severed Anna's leg. Her limbs were something that would regenerate, she had heightened healing although not to the degree that Ophelia did.

Once Anna got done screaming she managed to say, "Nice to see you too Emma. I've missed you."

No doubt. I doubt Sylax gave her cookies.

"We can talk. I haven't given her an audio feed and I'm sparing her the sight of your face," I said.

The second clone that was injured would require a fair bit of intestine. It was messy work. I took it as slow as I could, I needed Anna to be capable of something more than screaming.

"What is the situation?" Anna asked.

I filled her in on the details of what had happened since her capture. That Sylax had control of the Vainglory and that all of the crew were prisoners or captives of the other District Lords and my own weakened position within the city hierarchy.

"You need to get our people back and you need to get Sylax's attention off of you," Anna said.

I had forgotten how capable Anna was of saying the perfectly obvious.

"I got Mechos back, and he has been of some minimal use. The others are difficult with Sylax being in such foul spirits," I said.

"Lately she has been angry about delays in some kind of armor and weapon production," Anna said.

I ran over the recent council meeting. Nothing of the sort had been addressed there, I could only think of it applying to one thing though. It must reference equipping the clones.

I had a solution there. I could grow armor and weaponry in the growth vats just as I grew the clones themselves. I could probably even grow the armor on the clones.

"Worry less about me and more about yourself. I'm at least competent," I said.

"I'm fine. Especially with the upgrades you gave me. That was reckless, but thank you," Anna said.

I had to take a bit of a pause so that Anna could regenerate some tissue, currently I'd removed around forty percent of her body mass. It was probably only because of those upgrades she was still able to talk at all.

"Do you have a way out of what is happening to you?" I asked.

"Sylax is a crazy bitch, someone is going to take a shot at her. When they do, I'll help to stop it. Is Ophelia on our side or an enemy?" Anna asked.

"Is anyone really on your side? I don't know where Ophelia's real allegiances are," I said.

That wasn't quite true. So far as it went I thought Ophelia was probably on our side, unfortunately she seemed to have three personalities running around in her head.

"Find out," Anna said. It was the last word she got out for awhile as the next clone was missing most of her face.

Anna was usually full of helpful advice. Ophelia was obviously a threat or an ally, I really should figure out which.

10

The city was going to war. I know that sounds strange given the city was already at war. I certainly thought so, but Sylax did like to put on a show and this was a retaliation for the forces we'd lost in the recent attack. A sense of drama and flair was one of the woman's few redeeming qualities.

It might be more accurate to say that we were going to the front lines. Up until now our forces had served as reserves, and while that obviously didn't insulate them from harm as the recent rash of wounded had indicated it was still different than being the speartip of an attack.

Airships filled the sky and their shadows fell over the city from the sundome above. I was under orders to triple my clone production. It was a formidable undertaking but I had forgotten how useful Mechos was to have around.

After my conversation with Anna I'd decided on a plan of growing armor directly on the Anna clones while they still in tanks. This had proved wildly successful and now they all wore identical sets of red and black armor. Under Crystal's commanding aura they marched down the streets in perfect step to the transports.

The Professor who had been working on the very problem of armoring the troops had been able to focus his efforts on weaponry design. Even I was a bit impressed with what he'd come up with. The energy rifles could fire off over two hundred rounds before a need to change the power cartridge, they lacked any sort of recoil and had a dial control that allowed one to set a maximum range at the cost of power consumption.

Sylax was observing all of this from the ship that had once been called the Powerhungry. I took some satisfaction in the fact that she hadn't been able to fully undo all that I had done to it. While originally her flagship I had heavily customized it during the time when it housed my core. Bioarmor still coated the surface, and I understood that unexpected effects still typically happened on board. The guns were new, they were something I'd only ever barely managed to get working and if there was one thing Sylax was an expert at it was hurting people.

The District Leaders were remaining behind to provide city defense, which was for the best as I really didn't have much in the way of a military myself to contribute anyways. Still with Sylax gone I knew I'd have to be extra wary lest any of the others tried an attack, and extra watchful for opportunities.

My quiet conquest of Jade meant in an emergency I might draw upon her forces, but it also meant I needed to make sure nobody else succeeded in a conquest of her district.

Mechos had time to familiarize himself with the other district heads. I'd set him up with his own workshop and staff, far larger than the one he used to have in my underground base.

"Given that you seem to be afraid of everyone you might actually have something useful to contribute. Who should I be the most wary of?" I asked through the room's speakers.

Mechos sat aside his current project, he was attempting to improve the grinder engines I was using for biomass conversion. "Fearing what they'll be up to with Sylax away? The Professor, in the short term. Crystal and Ophelia in the long term."

The answer was surprising. I agreed with him on Crystal, how could I not. She had made Sylax. Despite my upgrades to Anna, Anna simply did not compare.

"What makes you say so?" I asked.

"You and the Professor share a similar domain, research. If you were thinking to your advantage instead of thinking about rescuing your crew you'd already be thinking about how to kill him. He likely thinks you are," Mechos said.

I thought clearly. I did. Of course when he put it in those terms killing the Professor did seem like a really good idea.

"Some would say that would make us natural allies," I said.

Mechos grunted, "Nobody smart would ever say that. Those who want exactly what you do are your natural adversaries. The longer term threats should be obvious. Crystal is formidable and terrifying."

I had already deduced that one for myself.

"And Ophelia?" I asked.

"It isn't her I am concerned about so much as that other personality of hers. Amy. From what you've said it sounds as if the source orb in some way inverted you. If so you should be terrified, everybody should be terrified," Mechos said.

"Even your limited monkey brain recognizes how formidable I am. You are one of the more sensible humans. You should however be able to reason that the original is more fearsome than a bad copy," I said.

"You're bad on the outside and decent on the inside. Your mirror image is going to be the opposite. Amy is dangerous, Emma. Frightfully dangerous. You need to realize that," Mechos said.

I still didn't accept the fact that I was fundamentally decent on the inside. Still I did appreciate another reason to dislike and distrust Amy.

"Well lets watch Sylax win her battle and we can figure out what to do about that," I said.

According to reports the battle Sylax was heading for should be decidedly one sided. The enemy here was a Baron Oozelord. With a name like that you'd expect the battle to be won with a mass of hyper absorbent lab towels.

I would at least have a front line view of the battle. Now that I could maintain a connection with my agents I could see what Anna saw, and Anna was having to play the leashed and collared pet at Sylax's feet.

While bad for her this was rather good for me. Being near Sylax meant I was getting information from the very heart of the command structure.

11

The city of Zarkiel probably looked magnificent once, canals crossing through a city of ornate stonework with fountains in every square. That was before the ooze of course. The ooze was colored an unpleasant shade of orange and now coated the city in a thick layer of slime. Canals blurbled and fountains glumped and nothing moved.

Sylax at the screens of the city she had come to conquer and frowned. "Well this is disappointing. Any signs of resistance?"

"Nothing," said one of the crew manning the sensors.

"Land shuttles. Proceed with the invasion. If they are simply hiding away in fear let us show them the being terrified is just getting started," Sylax said.

Shuttles broke off from the ships of the fleet and scattered throughout the city.

"Teams are down," said the sensor operator.

Camera footage became to pop up on the displays of the clones disembarking.

For several minutes nothing happened, they searched buildings with no sign of the townspeople. Then one screen after another filled with static as contact with the teams was lost.

"What is happening," Sylax asked as she leaned forward.

"I'm not sure. Some sort of communication scrambling."

"Raise shields," Sylax said.

"If we raise shields the shuttles won't be able to return."

Sylax snapped her fingers and the crewman screamed as their bones snapped and they were flung violently across the room. "Now, someone."

Several of the remaining crew hastened to be the first to raise the shields. It was just in time.

"Shuttles are lifting from the surface and attempting docking," said a crewmember who looked none to thrilled at their sudden promotion given it meant they were standing in the blood of their predecessor.

Through Anna's eyes I got a look at the sensor readouts. It wasn't just a few shuttles, every one that had been sent down to the surface had taken off.

"Still no communication?" Sylax asked.

"Negative."

Sylax considered for only a moment, "Assume the shuttles compromised. Gun crews are to open fire on them and begin bombardment of the city below. Release the dragons."

Crystal had modified the massive dragons of the wild expanese to be shape shifters as were true of most of those allied with Sylax. They were still rather feral, for all they had been picking up the fundamentals of language.

A specialized container ship dropped its shields just long enough to release the cargo it contained. Humanoid bodies tumbled through the air before with ripples of muscle they transformed into mighty winged dragons and unleashed bursts of flame.

Their release meant that Sylax was scared. Those dragons were still firmly under Crystal's control and they had been contained for a reason. Sylax was still reluctant to trust to Crystal too much.

It was time to open a comm. I didn't know if any of the other district heads had their own ways to spy on the battle, but even now Crystal would be seeing what is happening through her own agents.

"Emma," Crystal said as she answered the line quickly. "You have eyes on the battle?"

It didn't seem the time for deception. "In the command center. Things aren't going as she anticipated."

The dragons were quickly spinning about and blasting fire at the shuttles. The airships meanwhile were opening fire on the city below. Their shields were synchronized with their weapons, each down for only fractions of a second when a bank of weaponry unloaded. The city had no shielding at all and stole melted and ooze evaporated as the landscape below was quickly becoming a ruin.

"Nor as I did. I just lost control of one of my dragons," Crystal said.

Anna didn't have eyes on any screens showing that.

"Two," Crystal said.

Now I did get a sight of one of the dragons doing what it shouldn't have been doing. A fireball being launched at one of the airships causing the shield to ripple with energy.

"Some sort of compulsion effect?" I asked Crystal

"It must be. Five," Crystal said.

This wasn't going unnoticed on the bridge of the Powerhungry. Sylax has risen to her feet to check the readings herself.

"It has to be a compulsion ability. Have we lost contact with any of the ships?" Sylax asked. Well, there was nothing wrong with her reasoning ability.

"Negative," said the crew.

"Cut our loses. Engage the jump drive and get us out of here," Sylax said.

It didn't seem like her to cut and run. It did seem smart.

"Drive not responding. No response from engineering," said one of the crew.

I tried to teleport Anna away. Up until now I hadn't wanted to risk Sylax's ire with such a display but I was getting the impression that events were quickly escalating beyond Sylax's control.

Unfortunately my powers were still dampened even if not to the degree they had been. I couldn't get Anna out of there.

"I've lost all my dragons," Crystal said over to comm. "Do you still have your visual?"

"I do. Whatever it is has infiltrated the command ship and taken over engineering," I said.

"Activate emergency protocols. Wipe the Aefwal coordinates from the fleet drives. All ships able are to break off fire at once and focus on shielding. Withdraw to rally point beta." Sylax said.

"You should get out of here," Anna said rising to her feet.

"Don't presume to tell me what I should do pet," Sylax said.

"You are the most powerful person on this fleet. If they compel you things get far worse for any rescuers," Anna said.

Out of the corner of Anna's eye I could see two ships jumped away. The rest of the fleet remained where it was. Whatever orders had been given had come to late.

The fact that the enemy was targeting the engine rooms first indicated intelligence. This was an orchestrated assault.

The doors to the bridge hissed open and wall of orange slime poured out. It was the last thing of the battle I'd see. A droplet of it coursing through the air towards Anna's eye and them nothing.

"I've lost my connection to the bridge. I believe Sylax is down," I said to Crystal.

That resulted in a moment of silence.

"When the others learn they are not going to have any interest in a rescue. I do and I believe you do as well. I'm the stronger of us, do you accept my authority?"

That was a powerful question. I didn't trust Crystal, not a bit, yet she did have a connection to Sylax and here she was right.

"I do," I said.

"I'll be in touch. Defend yourself," Crystal said and killed the connection.

12

The other district heads must have had their own way of spying on events because it took all of half an hour after contact with the fleet was lost for the attacks to begin.

Jade, Crash, and Flicker launched simultaneous attacks on James Wolf while the Professor began to bombard my district with some sort of mortars.

Given the fact that I'd already reinforced my structures the mortars were an annoyance at most. Any damage done I was quickly able to regenerate, still, I was sure it was but the opening salvo with more aggression yet to come.

I needed to be prepared and that meant getting my facilities fully online. I could have started pumping out clones for my own defense, I already had their templates prepared and I did a few. Enough that I could position them at key points on the edges of the district to be seen.

The other district heads knew that I'd been providing Sylax's footsoldiers and if it looked as if I were arming up I'd be a much less tempting target.

I focused my actual production on research and manufacturing personnel and equipment. My district was still only at a fraction of its full capacity and it was time to change that. With my facilities fully online I'd be able to quickly research any threat and manufacture a solution to it. Far more than any short term gain my power was to be found in infrastructure.

I opened up my stats

E.M.M.A

District 3

City of Aefwal

Civic Order: 100%

Population: 417 of 100,000

Contentment: 17%

Research Generation: 108/Daily

Defense Rating: 12

Research Points: 517

BioMatter: 1080

14 units of 180 utilized

0 Entertainment

1 Utility

1 Defense

2 Residential

3 Research

8 Manufacturing

Each new unit will require 10 units of Biomatter. Every 10th unit of a facility type will require 100 Research points to build and include substantial improvements.

I'd been stockpiling away Biomatter from what I'd managed to steal from the corpses Sylax provided. That was a supply that was unfortunately running out and I had to use it for more than building new facilities. My drones and building repairs also came out of that supply.

I could actually produce more from my Growth Vats, although it ate cycles that could be used for something else. Still, upgrading my manufacturing was my first priority and I added two units. Before doing anything else I wanted to find out just what these improvements mentioned were.

Upgrade Options

Manufacturing

Biological

Your Growth Vats receive an upgrade and are able to produce all biological materials twenty percent faster.

Mechanical

Your Growth Vats are now capable not just of biological production but even of tooling fine metallic parts. This allows you to better utilize traditional mechanical or electrical designs.

That was a difficult choice. More and more I'd been focused on my biological aspects. I'd originally been a very traditional computer but due to most of my early test materials being biological I'd focused my attention there. The majority of my workers now were human in construction and from everything to new organic structures to clone defenders the biological upgrade would be an asset.

The mechanical ugprade on the other hand would offer me greater flexibility. I'd been greatly impressed for example with the Professor's weapon designs for the clones. Currently they were something I couldn't duplicate easily but with this I could, for all that duplication would mean taking production cycles away from other areas.

I decided to focus on the Mechanical upgrade. There were advantages to specialization but so too were there for being versatile.

That little exchange had only consumed twenty units of Biomatter and one hundred research points which still left me a lot for other upgrades.

Research and Defense were must haves. I was still after all fundamentally obsessed with SCIENCE and I loathed the levels there being so low. Defense was also a priority given how my other district heads were probably going to be more than happy to try to kill me.

In the past I'd often emphasized research at the cost of other priorities. I didn't have that luxury now.

I spent an additional One hundred and sixty biomatter and two hundred research points to increase both to ten.

Upgrade Options

Defense

Swarm

Instead of focusing upon high powered units your defenses focus upon vast numbers of smaller defenders. Able to strike quickly they are relentless but fragile.

Juggernaut

The competing wisdom. Instead of swarming enemies with large numbers of troops you focus upon smaller numbers of highly formidable units.

This seemed a difficult choice but I didn't think that it was one. The swarm approach had many advantages but almost all of my research to date involved building stronger and upgraded single units with abilities. If choosing Juggernaut made those units even more formidable that was to my advantage. I selected that option.

Upgrade Options

Research

Capture

Currently your research efforts mostly focus upon capturing and studying samples in captivity. While this has worked so far with increasingly more powerful foes the shielding required to hold them becomes problematic. This will allow the strength for that approach to continue.

Kill

Instead of having to capture a subject you only need now to kill them with intent to siphon their abilities and you can instantly gain research knowledge regarding them.

This choice wasn't as simple. I'd made allies out of many of those I had once studied, an opportunity that would have been lost if I had simply killed them. Being able to capture foes for research had also almost functioned as a form of a base defense in the past, most recently with Jade.

There were major advantages to Kill. Especially as I grew and faced bigger threats the ability to quickly and instantly gain new abilities was tempting.

Ultimately choosing Kill would force me into the role of a predator. I might choose to be one, sometimes, but I didn't want to be a requirement of my existence. With the Capture option I had other choices, other possibilities still open to me. I decided on it.

I upped Utility, Residential, and Entertaiinment all up to nine at the cost of another two hundred and forty biomatter.

I didn't want to commit any more research points right now to improving them further. The construction as set would already take several days.

13

The next few days were harrowing ones for all in the city. I thought that after all the damage I'd inflicted upon Jade's people her district would fall quickly but she seemed to have had more forces than I realized. Their combined power was enough to rip one of Wolf's airships from the sky and send a rain of debris upon the city.

It was not long until Crystal reached out to me.

"I have people I need you to take care of," Crystal said over the comm.

"Ones terrified of spiders?" I asked.

"No. Well, yes, actually but that doesn't matter. The peasants from Sylax's core district," Crystal said.

I knew who she was talking about. Sylax liked to keep the poor and oppressed in her general vicinity, it gave her people to hurt and terrify. Outside of her castle there were a lot of them.

"Someone is moving on it?" I asked.

"Wolf will be soon. They won't stay with me. They have legends about me," Crystal said.

I imagine that they had. I didn't know the full history of Sylax and Crystal but it wasn't hard to see why they would be afraid of the monster that made their monster.

I had the room, although more mouths to feed would mean the cost of some resources that could be allocated elsewhere although I supposed that in a dire situation such a population could be moved to the grinders to create more biomass.

Still, Sylax was a woman of many mysteries and perhaps these people held some sort of value to her besides their ability to be terrified. I might learn something by watching and researching them. It was a possibility at least, enough of one to make it worth trying.

"Send them over," I said.

"They're approaching on maintenance level four," Crystal said and killed the comm.

They were, dressed in rags and carrying packs of belongings on their packs.

I activated several residential blocks and opened the maintenance door to allow them access to my territory.

"Just when I think I've seen the very worst and pathetic that humanity has to offer your species manages to underwhelm me once again," I said over the speakers to them.

An older woman at the head of the column looked around spoke up, "We're used to living under the craziest witch in all creation. If you want to scare us you'll be needing to try a little harder dearie. The spider said you have rooms for us?"

"There are blinking lights, follow them. You people have names or do you just refer to each other as victim number one, victim number two, and so on?" I asked.

"I'm Magpie," the old woman said, "I'll let the others introduce themselves in time dearie. You have any work we can do you just let us know and we'll pay you back for the space. We're mighty appreciative."

"I'm not even sure what peasants do. Did Sylax really just keep you around to torture? While a sadist it seems a lot of trouble," I said.

No answer was forthcoming as the refugees made their way through my halls. Soon enough they were settling into the residential units I'd prepared.

My humanoid drones not needing quite the same level of care I'd put them in some of the nicer accommodations. I'd found I even missed baking since my humans had gone missing and by the time they arrived I had seventeen varieties of freshly baked cookies waiting for them.

Magpie looked over all this and barked a few sharp orders at her people before claiming a central chamber for herself and settling in on the bed. "You still hear me machine?" she asked towards the ceiling.

"Always. If you wanted privacy you came to the wrong place. I'm always aware of every single thing you disgusting creatures do," I said.

"Don't go bragging about it dearie, it's weird. You wanted to know what we do. You know the story of how we first met Sylax?" Magpie asked.

I didn't.

"Tell me," I said.

"This was back when she was still a young and starry-eyed girl. Sylax had grown up poor, hungry, but clever with a good hand at machines. It led her to the scholars and eventually to the spider who started to reshape her," Magpie said.

Introspection was not my strong suit but I could see the parallels there to me and Anna.

"And she decided you'd make nice pets?" I asked.

"Not exactly," Magpie said. "We were a magical folk, always have been, always been some wanting to use that to their advantage. Was this Warlord preying upon us and trying to do just that. Sylax she stopped him dead."

It was a nice story, and probably true. I'd seen how Sylax treated these people however.

"Then decided to oppress you herself?" I asked.

"Eventually. We'd agreed on a payment but instead of paying we tried to kill her, her and that spider of hers. Bound them in webs of magic and cut out their hearts and dripped venom into their eyes," Magpie said.

Right, I'd just heighten the surveillance on them and make sure that the explosives hidden in the structure were of a yield high enough to instantly kill all residents if required.

"And you say that I talk too much," I said.

"Got a point in all this. Sylax survived and came back stronger but she never forgot us. We taught her the power of magic, we taught her what it was to be careless, we taught her that even the powerful can be brought low," Magpie said.

"And she has been bringing you low ever since," I said.

Magpie chuckled and nodded, "Got that right dearie. Whenever she had a tough for though, someone she really needed to figure out she talked to us. Don't just see us as her victims, you'd be wrong."

Probably so, nobody was ever just one thing. I also knew that she wouldn't hurt them like they did if they had power over her still. They might have their uses but they weren't operating from a position of strength with her or with me.

14

With the civil war between the districts well underway it was more important than ever that I figure out who was on my side, if anyone was. Crystal was working with me out of self interest but Ophelia remained a question mark in need of resolving.

I doubted she would just come out and tell me the truth but I could get it out of her. I couldn't transport the larger grinder I'd prepared for an emergency but I could rig a smaller version that should still be suitable for interrogating purposes into a vehicle. I'd need to keep her lungs and head intact, but everything else could be crushed and ground to keep her helpless and encourage honesty. If someone can be on your side even while being ground into a pulp, they likely mean it.

I equipped the drones with acid guns, the sort of weapons I could depend on to cling to flesh and eat away for a long period of time. More than a bullet or a beam weapon I could depend on them to do extended damage, at least while the acid remained strong.

Preparations made I snuck them into Ophelia's district. It was a challenge given the recent conflict, still her district was seeing regular transportations of wounded from anyone willing to pay her fee to get them back on their feet and I snuck my vehicle in among them.

I hadn't yet seen what Ophelia's district was like, it wasn't what I'd expected. Ophelia had been raised in the badlands, the land where I'd first awakened. A blasted wasteland ruled over by super powered gangs, a place where she had eventually hooked up with a super fast woman by the name of Runner.

Ophelia's district did not reflect that background, it was rather more an idealized version of the old world. White picket fences bordered brightly colored houses and fields of flowers, cheerful looking people roamed the streets about their business.

It was almost painfully nice.

It was also instructive. I'd been wondering just what aspect of Ophelia was dominant, the surroundings gave me an answer. This degree of saccharine niceness could only be Amy.

I wanted to hit Ophelia in her seat of power, that way if I did truly conquer her I could perhaps accomplish whatever Jade had hoped to accomplish with me.

The seat of her power seemed to be a stone building festooned with bright garlands of flowers labeled "Town Hall".

"Hello! How may I help you?" asked a uniformed man as my drones stepped in. They gave him a shot of acid to the face for the trouble.

It should have proved quickly fatal. As my drones marched past the corpse I could only note that it wasn't. Even now he was starting to regenerate, not as fast as Ophelia but faster than Anna.

Ophelia truly had managed to make her own Lieutenants then. That was usual for those with a power crystal.

Three other people stopped my drones in the halls helpfully offering to direct them on their way, each getting a spray of acid for their trouble.

Ophelia's office was in the back, she sat at a behind a desk in a swivel chair.

"Emma! I was wondering when you might be. Hi Abigail! I didn't know she still had your blueprint saved," Ophelia said.

I really didn't like the Amy personality.

Multiple sprays of acid were fired, they didn't reach her. There seemed to be some sort of barrier surrounding the desk, the streams of acid splashing against it and running in rivulets down to make a steaming mess of the carpet.

"I see my bad copy was expecting me. Congratulations for making the creepiest of all the districts. I wouldn't have thought it possible with a collection of psychopaths and sadists," I said through Candice.

Ophelia beamed a smile, "They aren't that bad and you don't really mean that. You just can't keep yourself from saying mean things."

I didn't like that she knew me so well.

The barrier didn't seem to be energy. Physical then, she knew about the weapons that I had at my disposal and knew that the acid guns would be the most effective ones to neutralize her. If I'd brought a beam weapon I might have been able to burn my way through it, but I hadn't.

My powers were also too dampened to allow teleportation between districts so I couldn't run back to get more.

"Then you know the barrier is unnecessary paranoia on your part," I said.

Ophelia settled back into her chair, "We know you'll try to melt us and interrogate us given a chance. You don't trust us. You don't realize that by seizing another district we doubled our chances of getting the right one."

Is that what she was claiming? I couldn't dispute the math of that, when presented with numerous points to be claimed I'd picked the one I felt I had the strongest connection to and had to hope that I got it right. I hadn't.

"You're claiming to still be a friend and ally? You've done nothing to help me, Anna, or any of the captured members of the crew. If Ophelia were in control I might be inclined to simply attribute that to cowardice and incompetence," I said.

"We were only slightly more trusted than you were and now find ourselves embroiled in the same struggle," Ophelia said settling black in the chair and twining her fingers over her chest. "This has been our first real moment to talk. You are bright and beautiful and clever, you must see I'm telling the truth."

That wasn't really credible. If she had wanted to reach out to me, yes, it might have been risky while Sylax was in charge but the moment she went missing the rules had changed.

"You could have reached out but you didn't and I have regained a connection with my allies to none but you. Mechos tells me that you are my opposite. Kind on the outside and a monster within. Why shouldn't I believe him?" I asked.

"Sister. We're family," Ophelia said leaning forward. "We know you don't accept that, not really, but it is true. A part of us was once you and we are connected. Did Mechos also tell you that you are good and decent? You know your heart better than that, so do we. We are the only ones who may truly rely on each other."

I couldn't believe that. A part of Ophelia might have been a copy of my own operating system, but one corrupted by the source orb. Whatever she was now, it wasn't family. I also gained nothing by confronting her on that fact.

"Of course sister. Perhaps it was simply your being hosted in such a hideous and whiny vessel that made me question you," I said.

Ophelia really was still in there, at least a little. There was the briefest twitch of narrowing eyes. I made my exit. I'd answered my question about Ophelia, in her current form I had to count her an enemy.

15

I wasn't to have much time to dwell on Ophelia. Within a few hours after my forces returned to the district my proximity alarms started to go off.

I had intruders, large ones. I activated my cammeras and attempted to get a good look at what was coming my way. Charging down the street were a horde of dinosaurs. Triceratops, actually, although ones fitted with additional combat armor and carrying on their backs armored platforms in which rode a number of figures in khakis and pith helmets.

It had to be the Professor, the style was his and it would be just like him to ressurect a threat from the ancient world instead of re-purposing perfectly adequate modern monsters for his purposes.

I detonated an empty building as one passed and the triceratops barely seemed phased by the ripples of concussive force pelting into it. That wasn't good exactly but it wasn't a surprise, he had picked these creatures exactly because they were durable.

Normally my next step would be to target their weakspots with sniper fire, the eyes, the joints, but I could already see the telltale shimmer of blue energy shielding around them. Doctor Batarius was an expert in energy shielding and I knew already that she had gone to work for the Professor.

There were my acid guns. Against the beasts armor they would take awhile to work but they were probably going to be my best option. Second best, at least. I got my production facilities working on new acid batches and moved my combat drones into position along their route.

I opened a comm line to Crystal.

"Can this wait? I'm busy," I heard Crystal say over what sounded like the sound of detonating grenades in the background. It wasn't a good day for anybody.

"I know you didn't suddenly make any friends, you're too unpleasant. I have a herd of stampeding dinosaurs charging down my streets," I said.

"The Professor is there? Unexpected. You want me to compel them of course. That would be easy. I can't now. Can you handle them on your own?" Crystal asked.

"I can but I'll take damage," I said.

Crystal killed the comm. It seemed like me taking damage was something she could live with.

My drones were landing shots with their acid streams, the lead dinosaurs were now surrounded by a faint haze as their armor plating sizzled.

It would eat through, eventually. My people were also playing the price for getting close. I watched as one drone was impaled by a horn through their midsection, another had their head explode as a dinosaurs rider took a shot. High caliber kinetic rifles, great.

I got an incoming comm signal from Magpie.

"If your people are getting shaken up it is not their usual quaking in fear. We are under assault from dinosaurs," I said.

"Hit them in the eyes," Magpie said.

Really? This was the valuable insights she had provided to Sylax? Of course you tried to hit them in the eyes first.

"They are shielded. If you have any other ways to deal with unstoppable armored juggernauts do feel free to do something besides pratter on uselessly," I said.

"They're living organisms. They still need to breathe," Magpie said.

I really didn't like her. I killed the connection.

Of course they needed to breathe. The humans on the dinosaurs back might have some sort of gas masks for an emergency but I didn't see any sort of respirators on their riders and in that there was an opportunity.

I had to take this as a chance ot send a message. That meant I didn't want them turning around and leaving. I'd need to start with their rear column.

I could aerosolize the acid I'd been working on to create a corrosive fog. It would be far slower than the liquid against the armor plates, but if inhaled it would go to work right away on the lungs.

I started the necessary modifications.

One of the lead triceratops headbutted a building and a massive concussive forcewave exploded out from the impact crashing in even the armored walls and causing the structure to collapse.

That was clever, some sort of amplifier for their innate destructive potential. With the force they could deliver if they got close to my core they'd be able to do some real harm.

I had to make sure they didn't get there.

Another three buildings went time by the time the batches were finally ready and I released it into the sewer system beneath the streets before opening the grates to the surface.

A yellowish fog rose to envelop the rear dinosaurs a thick mist obscuring them from the visual spectrum. Fortunately my sensors worked on far more than simply the visual range. The effects were everything I might have wanted. Not just the dinosaurs but the riders were affected. The humans in fact began to dissolve at once, the dinosaurs meanwhile fell to the ground where they began to thrash violently.

The riders ahead of the cloud observed what was happening and began to urge their mounts forward. Triceratops were not built for speed, they were meant to be slow certain engines of destruction and were not built for quick getaways.

When I produced more of the materials I needed for the acid cloud I dosed a second batch.

The third I had something else in mind for. If they were vulnerable to breathing in acid they would be vulnerable to tranquilizer gas as well. I'd have to up the concentration a good bit from anything I normally used but I should be able to knock them out.

While I wasn't terribly impressed with the base triceratops design I'd just seen try to hit me I was already imagining what they might be capable of with a few select enhancements. Accelerated healing for instance would help to counter the acid that had just taken so many down and if mixed with other upgrades they could truly impressive.

One triceratops after another collapsed unmoving. A few of the riders even survived, I wasn't certain what if any upgrades the Professor might have but if these were his lieutenants I had an opportunity to gain from t hem as well.

16

I was so preoccupied with taking down the assault from the dinosaurs I had missed a lone airship moving into the skies above my district. While designed for stealth my sensors were good enough that under normal circumstances I still would have detected something like that.

I'd installed extra security around Magpie and her people and it was that being tripped which drew my attention to what was happening. The airship had landed a shuttle which was breaching those defenses from the outside.

I didn't have much in the way of defenses designed to take on airships but I did have one beam cannon strong enough to reach it. I'd prepared the high powered weapon in the eventuality of another attack from Jade but it could serve this purpose as well.

I opened fire on the airship. The cannon cut a jagged scar into the airships sides before shields sprang to life. As soon as it shielded my every sensor started blaring its presence, it was only stealthy when unprotected. A useful bit of knowledge.

The airships shields flickered a few seconds as bombs dropped and my beam again got to melt jagged rents in the hull. Then the bombs found my cannon and in an explosion of fire silenced it.

The Wolf soldiers aboard the shuttle were making quick work of the peasants. Firing on them with some sort of static gun that stunned rather than killed. They were then placing some sort of armbands on them and dragging them back aboard the shuttle.

They subdued twelve this way, including Magpie, before the shuttle lifted off and headed back towards the airship. With my cannon out of the way I didn't have the tools to stop them.

One of the remaining peasants on the ground was madly hitting a comm panel trying to get my attention.

"I don't believe their coming back for seconds. Do relax, you weren't interesting enough for them to kidnap the first time," I said.

"Save your insults. I am Sven, Magpie's apprentice. Can you rescue the ones who were taken?" Sven said.

I didn't see how I could. While some of my mechanical drones had flying capability I didn't have them in numbers enough to take on an airship. Crystal had her dragons and Ophelia still had possess of the strike ship Graven but I wasn't about to burn a favor for the use of either.

"The shuttle is a few minutes off from rendezvousing with a larger ship. I don't have anything that can intercept. I suppose you should have fought to defend them instead of hoping for me to solve your problems later," I said.

"I can get us aboard the shuttle but they are excellent hunters and came prepared to prey upon our weaknesses. Do you have manpower to assist?" Sven asked.

The Wolven weapons were specially designed them to bypass whatever served as defenses for these people. That was interesting. I again had to wonder just how much these people and Sylax had in common. It was worth finding out, and it was also worth making sure anyone that tried a strike on my district felt some pain from it.

I began to teleport drones to Sven's location. Time was a factor, the only ones I had were the ones from the first wave I had initially responding to the dinosaur attack. They wore heavy armor and were equipped with acid sprayers.

Sven sketched several lines in the air and they glowed in the aftermath, a circle of shimmering light surrounding my drones and then they vanished from the room.

Because of my connection to them I never lost track. Even as they were vanishing from the room they were materializing into the hold of a shuttle. The kidnapped peasants were stacked out in a row on the floor, bound and gagged with the soldiers who had abducted them seated on benches on either side.

They were fast, faster than my drones. Despite the element of surprise and them starting from a seated position they still managed to get on their feet and fire first. Blue darts of energy splashing against the armor of my drones and causing ripples of energy at the site of impact.

I couldn't detect any actual damage from the shots, whatever they were doing wasn't effective against my people. I had them open fire with the acid sprayers. The first two soldiers struck began to dissolve at once, these were not heavily armored dinosaurs but rather soldiers dressed for a stealth infiltration.

"Roger, Avana, transform," shouted one of the Wolves that must be their Commander. He was my next target. Any further words were drowned in screams as his flesh bubbled and dripped away.

Then the fight got a lot more hairy, literally, as two of the soldiers transformed. When I was an airship I'd seen some of Baron Wolfson's forces in their wolf form, literal wolves. This was something different, part man and part wolf. They were massively muscled and clawed and before I could focus acid streams on them one of my drones had been eviscerated even through the heavy armor, claws shredding the protection and digging into the soft flesh beneath.

I ordered my people to redirect their fire and acid streams converged. They took it better than they should have. They had some form of accelerated healing, not equal to Ophelia's but at the rate they were regenerating flesh it was better than the one I could grant. The soldiers I'd already melted hadn't shown that ability.

Either they only had it in this form, or these two were special and the only ones capable of a transformation this extreme.

I spoke through one of my drones to Sven, "Get your people out."

I had my drones abandon fire on the Wolves to shift it to the engines. Acid poured into the vulnerable components and sparks began to fly.

The shuttle was still over my district and it would crash into my district. If these two could survive my acid sprayers they'd survive a crash landing. My labs were eager to meet them.

17

Things worked out just as I hoped they would. The shuttle went down and although the shuttle crash took out two buildings directly and another one as a result of the explosives I had within misfiring and taking out a third enough remained for me to capture the two transformed Wolf soldiers as well as get samples of their technology.

In addition to the dinosaurs and their riders this left me with a lot of research to get underway. While my teams increasingly handled this for me I did look over the projects.

Research Projects

Professor Lieutenants

These subjects initially show signs of heightened mental capabilities. Will subject to puzzle death-maze protocols to determine full potential.

Safari Gear

The Professor Lieutenants all wore khaki outfits that seems both lightweight and especially resistant to kinetic impacts. Will subject to punishing conditions both indepentently and while worm by test subjects to determine potential.

Triceratops

These armored behemoths appear to be based on historical records and may be actual recreations. Potential will be tested by exposing them to a range of destructible environments as well as subjecting them to genetic analysis.

Werewolves

These soldiers once appeared to be human but have now transformed into a hybrid with some sort of wolf. Their claws are capable of shredding even heavy organic armor plating and they rapidly rengerate damage. Will subject to predator prey protocols to determine full potential.

Stunners

Weapons captured from Wolven forces. While they proved ineffective against heavy organic armor they seemed highly effective at taking down the subjects classified as "Sylax Peasants". Such subjects are not cleared for use in laboratory studies but the weapons can be deconstructed for study of components and manufacture.

Completed Projects

Jade Lieutenants

These subjects displayed advanced powers of innate kinetic shielding and offensive kinetic control. They were subjected to puzzle death-maze protocols to determine full potential. By working with the samples provided we can extract one of two possible variants either emphasing this innate shielding or offering some sort of limited kinetic mental control.

I could pick what sort of power I wanted. It was something I hadn't seen much before although I hoped I would more often as my research facilities continued to grow more powerful. Rather often in the past I'd captured powerful subjects only to get variations of their powers that were far weaker than I'd have liked.

In this case it seemed I could pick between passive shielding or active kinetic ability for my agents. They both offered a lot of advantages, your typical bullet firing gun was dealing kinetic damage and they were a common choice in weaponry. Anything that could mitigate that damage was useful. So was the ability to manipulate matter with a thought.

It had to come down to my ability to replicate the effect. I could already create armor that could absorb kinetic impacts, and grant bio-armor abilities that subjects could invoke even when they did not have a set of armor with them. I didn't have anything that could emulate the effects of telekinesis. I instructed my researchers to proceed with that variant.

While I was looking at research I decided to do an upgrade as well. With all that had just happened morale would b e low, it was a good time to upgrade my entertainment facilities to the next tier.

Upgrade Options

Entertainment

Gamble

With this option you will build your entertainment facilities in such a way as to take advantage of the need for chance and risk. This can pay off with big rewards both for your people, and for you. In addition to occasional rewards and losses experienced by your people, you too can gain unexpected reserves of resources or points with the construction of these facilities.

Game

Instead of focusing upon luck your people focus on skill. By constructing virtually simulated environments you can provide your people with competitions where skill and forward thinking matter. This approach will result in increased morale gains for the skilled but may further frustrate those lacking in talent.

This was an easy choice, it didn't much matter to me if the untalented or unskilled were happy. It was the morale of those who were useful that mattered. I selected the Game option.

While I had some structural damage to my buildings and would need to respawn some drones these attacks had mostly worked out in my favor. I had several promising new test subjects to study and the dinosaurs in particular were a new source of Biomatter. The grinders might have a hard time with that heavily armored flesh but I'd manage.

Fortunately the Wolf airship hadn't stayed around to fight any longer. They were the sort to leave men behind it seemed, at least for the moment.

It was wise of them. While my beam cannon might be out of operation for the moment it wouldn't remain that way and if I felt threatened enough I could teleport bombs into the air to detonate. I didn't lack for explosives.

They might be back, I really did need better weaponry to protect myself against aerial threats. On the Powerhungry the main cannons had been a constant source of frustration but I did have those schematics. Eventually I'd built power cannons feeding off the abilities of a powered individual to project them at a distance.

It had worked better when I had a collection of prime power holders at my disposal. Still, I could imbue people with the virus that powered Hot Stuff to create lesser pyrokinetics. While a single heat cannon powered by one of those would be relatively unimpressive multiple ones would be incredibly dangerous.

It required some highly specialized parts to create, that had always been a problem on the airship but with my most recent manufacturing upgrade I could now produce those directly from my growth vats. I'd do that, a dozen cannons located around the district and a dozen fiery drones to man them. If I could get those built the next airship to darken my skies uninvited would regret it.

18

If I'd wondered what James Wolf was hoping to do with the prisoners he'd taken I didn't have long to wait for my answer. It was only a few hours after his airship left my district that I was received a broadcast being sent out globally to the entire city.

It was an arena of some kind, stone walls surrounding a pit with a dirt floor. Within it were two dozen terrified people, naked but for the bands around their wrists just like the ones the Wolves had put on the peasants they'd captured here.

Magpie and her people were still recovering from their ordeal, I opened a comm channel to her and sent in the video.

"What is this?" she asked, her voice sharp.

"What they had planned for you I expect. Others of your people?" I asked.

"Not exactly. Burr Harr and his tribe. Another village, not mine. Another group who tried and failed to kill Sylax," Magpie said.

I had no idea that so many people shared my hobby. We really should start some sort of club, but then, I planned on making a success of things which was something none of these failures had ever managed.

New figures were entering the arena, massive and furred like those I had captured. Their eyes looked over the villagers with a raw hunger visible in them.

"I wonder who would have been more tasty. Then, probably, you seem stringy," I said.

"The wolf does this? He will pay," Magpie said.

The wolves closed in. Normally it would be cats who toy with their prey but there was something malicious about the way these creatures moved, one swiped out with their claws to leave a leg gushing blood before they pulled back. The first kill was a child ripped out of the arms of her mother, fanged teeth digging into the young flesh and tearing it apart as the mother screamed and wailed.

"Why does he hate you so?" I asked.

I wasn't nice, I truly wasn't but there was something of the needlessly cruel here. This wasn't just murder for murders sake, this was hurting these people, terrifying them and breaking them and wanting to make sure the entire city saw it. This was the sort of thing Sylax would have been proud of, had she been the one to put on this spectacle.

"Me and my people are tricksters dearie and we have tricked that tired old wolf before before but it is more than that. It is not us he is hoping to terrify. This is a lesson to you and the others about what he does to those who stand in his way," Magpie said.

Most of the peasants now were bleeding from wounds, a few had lost limbs. The wolves continued to circle, taking their time and enjoying every moment. I thought that Magpie had to be right, there was no audio for this transmission, there were no speeches and no grandstanding. Wolf was letting cruelty speak for itself, for those who had sworn allegiance to Sylax it was perhaps a good tactic.

"Is this all a trick then and your people are simply pretending to be the Wolve's dinner?" I asked.

"No, I think this trick is on us," Magpie said.

One of the peasants had been dragged aside for a wolf to rut with, a sight made all the more terrible by the fact another was choosing to eat her face while it happened.

I was getting a transmission from Crystal. I wondered if she was horrified by all this or if she simply took it as perfectly natural after so long an association with Sylax. Neither, as it turned out, the transmission instead revealed Airships rising from the moorings and taking to the air.

This wasn't a carelessly timed spectacle, Wolf was about to make a move on someone.

If it was me, I was in poor shape. My anti-air defenses were far from being constructed. Still if it was me I'd not go easily. I issued an order for all clones to prepare for combat and I readied my biobombs. I wouldn't go gently, if they were coming for me.

"He is preparing an attack on somebody. His airships are taking off. It may be us," I said.

Magpie tilted her head, "No. You're not a big enough threat, he isn't scared of you or he wouldn't have tried to take me and mine. To him you're prey not predator."

Was I? It would be good news if so, for all that my ego didn't like it. I was getting very tired of being weak and surrounded by those who were stronger. I even found myself missing Anna, whatever else could be said of Anna she knew when and how to go for the throat. Anna knew how to be stronger than she should have been.

"He'll find he is wrong," I said.

"This is twice now you have saved my people. Twice that we find ourselves in your debt. You will find us good at repaying them," Magpie said.

"I'm sure. You've been splendid at repaying Sylax for all she has done to you," I said.

It was a needless barb but I couldn't help myself. I could never help myself.

Magpie instead of seeming offended laughed, "The best debts are old ones. If we let yours go so long be assured the payoff will be especially memorable."

Perhaps empty threats to Sylax or empty promises of reward made her feel better. The images on the screen surely weren't doing that. The visuals were simply getting confusing now. Was I watching a torture session, or lunch, or an orgy because it seemed to have elements of all three. Some of the remaining villagers were unfortunate enough to find all three happening at once.

"Shall I kill the feed?" I asked.

"Leave it dearie. I am busy counting debts," Magpie said.

There was something cold in her words, certain.

The ships had begun to move and they weren't headed towards me. They were headed towards Crystal.

19

I knew that Crystal was aware of the Wolf fleet. It was she that had first alerted me to their presence after all.

What I had to decide was what I was going to do about it. I could ignore the issue, it was clear that is what the video feed was really all about. It was a warning to all the other districts not to interfere in what was about to come.

It seemed that the Professor's strike on me was the start of a trend. Up until then I'd mostly seen probing of defenses, partial commitment of forces that didn't expend major resources. Based on the ships that Wolf was sending he was making a serious play to take Crystal out and didn't want any others to interfere.

I'd agreed to follow Crystal's lead so that we could rescue Anna and Sylax but that commitment was only as strong as my willingness to follow through on it.

I didn't think I had a choice but to do so. If Crystal fell my best hope for rescuing Anna would go with her.

I opened a line to her and she answered at once.

"You see where they're headed," Crystal said.

"The Wolf has an appetite for the weak. Is this why you refused my call for support earlier?" I asked.

"You had it handled Emma and yes, I had some idea that this was coming. The Wolf isn't going to find me as easy prey as he imagines. I'm actually going to need you to hold back," Crystal said.

That was a surprise. Wolf had the strongest navy once taking the city, it was a bit of a surprise he hadn't contested Sylax for rule but now that she was out of the picture Crystal really had nothing to compare.

"Another plan from the fine mind for consequences that brought us Sylax?" I asked.

"I have it handled Emma. I could use explosives, the ones you used to take down airships in the past," Crystal said.

Those had used the spawn of my bioreactors and they actually fed on biomatter to amplify their explosive force. Given airships tended to be filled with living beings they were quite effective.

"I have six ready. I can get you more with a little time," I said.

"Six will do. Send them along power access conduit eighteen, I'll have someone meet your agents," Crystal said.

I dispatched a few drones for the transport and a few more for their defense. I assumed that Crystal picked a route she thought was safe but it was getting hard to tell what was safe in the city.

"On the way," I said.

"Good. Now shortly into the battle I am going to start throwing a lot of flak at those airships and he'll call on an alliance we aren't supposed to have. Jade is going to send a lot of her agents, perhaps even come out herself. When she does, I want you to hit her district with everything you've got and capture its core," Crystal said.

Crystal was using herself as bait. Perhaps I had underestimated her. It was a dangerous plan, bold, but with her bearing the brunt of the risks.

"You realize I won't be able to actually claim it," I said.

"Beat Jade's forces and do it in her core and you'll be able to compel her loyalty. It is just like you had a compulsion core. If we can seize her then we'll have three districts in our alliance. With a majority we can take the city," Crystal said.

This was all news to me. Crystal knew a lot more of the rules that governed a city like this than I did, which wasn't a surprise given how long she had been around.

The airships were passing into Crystal's airspace and dragons were soaring up to fight them. Fiery breath was meeting energy shielding and energy blasts. The shields should have been more than capable of holding out against an assault like that but after only a few gouts of flame they were flickering away.

Crystal has modified her dragons, she must have. Instead of typical heat breath she had modified them so that their breath dealt extra damage to energy shielding. It probably made it absolutely useless against the ships armor.

A puff of flame hit a ships hull and left it unmarked in passing. Theory confirmed.

Turrets rose from her district and began to spill shell casing as rounds fired off towards the ship above.

These were not helpless against the armor. The ships began to absorb kinetic damage far sooner than they could have anticipated which was exactly what Crystal had planned.

I focused my sensors upon Jade's district. If there was an alliance there Jade would be getting her marching orders right now.

And there they were, a party of green nimbused figures rising from the district to streak off towards the battle.

Perhaps the bombs I was providing for them, or perhaps they were to finish the ships off after Jade stopped the guns. Either way I had my own battle to worry about now.

Crystal's plan was solid was I was going to follow through with it. Since I'd last met Jade in battle I'd done a lot of planning.

With my new growth vats I was able to replicate the Professor's energy weapon designs that he'd designed for Sylax's clone army. I even had a few troopers that I'd upgraded with the telekinetic ability. While they wouldn't have passive defenses I could set them to actively provide defense for my forces.

Combine that with proper battle armor and they'd be an unexpected and unpleasant surprise for Jade.

I only wish I could take the giant beam cannon with me. It was still out of commission after the big fight unfortunately, otherwise I might have tried mounting it on a vehicle. I took along a supply of sonic grenades and sent my forces on the way. It felt good to be going on the offense.

20

Given the damage I'd already inflicted on Jade's forces and the fact her heavy hitters were already heading off to support Wolf I hoped that this would be an easy fight. I was certain I wouldn't get a better opportunity.

My weapons were good but I wished I had some of my old allies. Hot Stuff would have been ideal in a situation like this, unfortunately she was still a prisoner of Wolf.

Jade's district looked like nothing so much as if a quadrant of the city had already been bombed into oblivion. Blasted walls and collapsed roofs with a few leather clad individuals clustered around bonfires.

Just because it was the apocalypse didn't mean that one couldn't have standards.

In the center of it all was a floating slab of rock with a massive arena built atop it. Perhaps she viewed herself as some sort of gladiator. Given the recent video feed she wasn't alone in her liking of this particularly horrid bit of architecture.

Fortunately her very disorganization and the ruins of her district made stealth easy, that and the fact that every one was looking off in the direction of the battle which was lighting up the sky.

Unfortunately careless didn't mean completely inept and while my teams managed to infiltrate the district up to the arena undetected, once there they found the guards to be awake.

If I was going to capture this district I wanted to make it as quick as possible and do as little damage as possible, not that I was sure I could do any worse than the local residents already had.

I had my agents take up positions where they could get shot and in an instant four beams lanced out to take guards in the head.

The attack did not go unnoticed. My drones were physically picked up and dragged through the corridor to crash hard into the floor.

"About damned time," Jade said, the woman levitating in mid-air in a nimbus of green power. "I knew that Spider was up to something. What I didn't know is that she had you as her little lapdog. You're weak and you're a coward but I guess I can't expect too much more from a machine."

"You're the one coming when the Wolf whistles. Decided to trade one sadist for another?" I asked.

While she was busy making insulting banter I was busy observing the surroundings. The floor of the arena was covered with weapons, layers upon layers of swords, knives, axes, and clubs. They were all weapons that would be useless against Jade directly but that which with her abilities she could fling at will.

I had an idea forming but it was risky. It would be better to solve this with the weapons I'd brought with me.

Candice snapped off a shot from a beam pistol, a sword flew up to intercept the round and crashed to earth with the steel glowing.

"He's the best hope of seeing that the bitch stays down. Don't get in the way of that and maybe you'll get to survive," Jade said.

"So your ally is under fire and you've just been sitting around waiting for someone to show up? Any flashbacks to your birthday parties growing up?" I asked.

Jade frowned and a dagger rose into the air to plunge into Candice's shoulder driving her backward.

"Why are you on the wrong side here? Is it to get your little pet back? Don't tell me it is actually the human pulling your strings," Jade said as a host of weapons levitated in the air and began to swirl around my assault party.

It was going to have to be the backup plan. It all hinged on the fact that I'd observed that even corpses tended to maintain some degree of the powers they were imbued with. I'd have to time this carefully.

"So you think it is failure chasing after you and not you chasing after failure?" I asked. "I'm still laughing Jade. In all creation I only get one joke and it is you. You're still the saddest and funniest little thing I've ever seen."

"You think so. Let's cut your puppet's strings," Jade said.

It was time.

I quickly accessed Abigail's stats and upgraded her with energy manipulation. Ratticus had used his ability before to neutralize electricity, but right now it was magnetism I was interested in.

The blades under telekinetic control plunged towards my forces and I put everything I had into Abigail's new power channeling it into magnetic attraction.

The angle of the blades altered ever so slightly and instead of converging on every member they instead converged on her. I leapt my fiery mole to help intercept the blades as well. While he did not incinerate nearly so well as Hot Stuff it was enough to keep my team functional. Abigail didn't even get out a cry before she was minced into a fine slurry.

I didn't waste any time once she was, activating a teleport and upending what was left of her directly over Jade.

"What the fuck," Jade said as blood and viscera suddenly rained down from the sky coating her body. On the ground below the weapons trembled drawn by the powerful magnetic field now coating her.

Jade raised a hand and green energy cascaded out, coating the ground below.

"You think it is that easy? I control them," Jade said.

It was true, she was more powerful than the magnetism but it was also drawing her full attention. I still had multiple drones on their feet armed with beam weapons and they leveled those guns at her.

"You're suddenly attractive. A new sensation, I'm sure. Yield or burn," I said through Candice.

"You wouldn't dare," Jade said.

"Must we go over this again? You're funny Jade. I want to keep you alive for the sheer comic relief of your existence. Give me a reason though and I'll laugh at your death instead," I said.

Jade frowned but after a moment nodded, "Yield. Get this stuff off of me."

Jade truly wasn't the smartest in the bunch.

"You're a telekinetic, get it off yourself and pull your people back. Let the Wolf deal with his own fire," I said.

Jade was engulfed in a green glow and the slurry peeled off of her to drip onto the ground before. I'd have to regrow Abigail later.

You have forced a district leader to yield

They will now behave as if under compulsion in regards to your orders. Furthermore you have gained access to reports and surveillance from their district.

Jade was under my command then. Excellent.

"I think you'll find it a bit late for that," Jade said smirking as she looked towards Crystal's district.

I checked the camera feeds. Half the Wolf fleet was still in the air and the district below was in flames.

21

I opened a line to Crystal. Unlike last time, this time it took a bit for her to answer.

"I hope you have good news," Crystal said and I heard the sound of fire crackling in the background.

"We have a new member. Things don't seem to be going your way," I said.

"Sending you a visual," Crystal said and I got an incoming video feed.

Werewolves were walking through the streets of her district but these were different than the others I'd seen. These ones were on fire and didn't seem phased by it. They'd succeeded in acquiring Hot Stuff's ability somehow.

"You didn't see that coming," I said.

"Obviously. They've gained the ability of your former crew person, do you think she is cooperating with them willingly?" Crystal asked.

"They shouted to the world they have no issues with being cannibal rapists, it obviously isn't beyond them to gain access to her virus by forcing themselves on her. She is also so strong I'm not sure any of them would survive the attempt," I said.

Hot Stuff tended to burn even hotter when she got angry. I wasn't entirety certain anything in this world could get that close to her if she didn't decide to allow it.

"Well they found some way to get access to her powers. They unlocked their old form as well," Crystal said.

"The hybrid shape was your creation?" I asked.

"Of course, but Sylax had me remove it a long time ago. They were too powerful. I'm not sure how Wolf unlocked it again without my consent," Crystal said.

That was two powersets that Wolf may have gained some access to without the owners granting him the authority.

"We have to put him down," I said.

"I agree. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one he hit," Crystal said.

I was provided with another video feed. I recognized the manicured lawns and ancient stone buildings as being the Professor's district. There as in Crystal's district fiery werewolves roamed free as the buildings burned.

Roots sprang up from the ground, blue and covered in frost and bound themselves around the Wolves running free in Crystal's home. Thorns pierced flesh and where they did a ripples of dark energy pulsed and flesh died. Fire or no the werewolves were now being butchered.

This persisted for a few minutes before the airships overhead began to pull and back away.

I doubted they would be gone for long. Crystal was weaker now with most of her district destroyed, far weaker than she had been.

"I've called a meeting with the others. Zora, Crash, Flicker, and Ophelia. We meet in Ophelia's district in one hour," Crystal said.

I wished that she had picked a better meeting spot. Still, one had to make do with what they could.

* * *

Nobody except for Ophelia wound up attending the meeting in person.

Crystal was represented by a perfect likeness, except one that seemed to be entirety made of some sort of living snow. Even her garments were made of tiny snow crystals which held up even under my best magnification settings. I was impressed.

I attended as a mechanical drone. Zora had a drone of her own, although hers represented a full sized hologram of her in flickering green. Crash had a video feed of the heavy-set man lounging back in some massive throne surrounded by screens while Flicker was represented by a tiny floating sphere of pitch blackness.

"Thank you all for attending," Crystal said. "It is no mystery why I am calling this meeting. With Sylax missing a majority of us are required to appoint a replacement city head. Wolf is aggressively pressing his case for the position. I don't think any of us want that to happen."

Zora's hologram gave a lazy smile as she looked over those gathered, "That is where you're wrong. I've already signed on with Wolf and that means that in addition to the Professor he has three. You all know Crystal won't last and if she did she'd bring back Sylax."

Ophelia drew a pistol and with a single round caused Zora's drone to explode in a cascade of sparks. "We came here to hear your pitch, not his. Pitch."

"Emma and Jade are with me. Together we simply need a majority. An alliance of five of nine and possession of the central district is enough to claim control," Crystal said.

"For those of you who are poorly programmed copies and thus incapable of simple arithmetic, that means we simply need two more," I said.

"Don't help Emma," Crystal said with a strained smile.

The hovering black sphere pulsed a moment and a modulated female tone said, "Do you intend to rescue Sylax?"

"Bit curious on that one myself," Crash said. "Lady is a whole lot of crazy and we're better off without her in charge."

Crystal's snow golem learned forward, "If we take control we take control. It will be in charge, not Sylax. Yes, we intend to rescue her but no, I will not be returning control of the city to her afterward."

This was news to me. It seemed the sort of thing she should have shared with her closest ally, but then Crystal did seem to enjoy keeping her secrets. It was one of her better qualities.

Was it actually possible? Because I'd seized a district despite not being very fond of me Sylax had in a sense been stuck with me. A city operated by strict rules. I had to conclude that Crystal might just be speaking the truth.

Crash grunted, "She's going to be pissed."

"My problem to deal with and I'll keep the rest of you safe," Crystal said.

"We think you can't even keep yourself safe," Ophelia said.

"I made Sylax. Give me the power of this city and I'll make those who supported me into so much more than they are now."

I rather liked what I was now.

An antiquated looking telephone on the table rang loudly and Ophelia picked up the handpiece to listen to a few words, "On my way." Setting the phone down she looked around the table, "Wolf just launched an attack on this district. I'm in, if you can defend me."

Wolf was wasting no time.

"What the hell, I'll make five," Crash said.

Five was all we needed. Now all we needed to do was keep Ophelia safe and take the central district. I didn't think Wolf would make either easy.

22

Wolf's tactics seemed flawed to me. Instead of splitting up attacks like this he should have focused on Crystal. Still with the Professor already fallen perhaps there was something to this, create such displays of force throughout the other districts that if foes did not fall directly they'd be too intimidated to assist.

That was going to fail, but the question now became what could be done. Multiple Airships were ringing the district and were already dropping shuttles full of Werewolves. I'd given Crystal all of my bombs, and my troops could only teleport within my district.

With my clones I probably fielded the largest contingent of ground forces of anyone present but I had no way to get them to Ophelia's defense.

"I'm launching a full out systems attack on his ships. Their sensors are going to be spotty and they may lost critical systems," Crash said.

Well, he was good for something.

"See. How. Deal." Flicker's Orb said.

That was one of them.

"I only have two dragons still flying. They're modified to bring down shields," Crystal said.

"I have some heavy soldiers on the way but they are half an hour out," I said.

The Werewolves were off the fiery variety. As they stepped out of the shuttles the flaming auras around them sprang up. Crystal's citizens were opening fire but most of their guns were of an ordinary variety. The bullets already partly evaporated by the time they hit Werewolf flesh and then the accelerated healing took over.

Ophelia's people healed nearly as well as she did and better than the Wolves but the wolves are packing far more offensive power. Ophelia and her people were hard to exterminate but they weren't difficult to defeat. But then, Wolf didn't need to exterminate her because if he defeated her in her core then she would have to answer to his commands.

I sent a message to Jade instructing her to get her people here and provided her instructions on how to deal with them. With their telekinetic powers they would be able to force the air away from the wolves extinguishing their flames and ultimately knocking them unconscious. That was a bit speculative, but it was a tactic that had worked on Hot Stuff in the past and her aura was stronger than theirs.

Ophelia was staring at a point off in the distance, "We don't have the time. Our defenses are entirety based around attrition and keeping an enemy neutralized for a long period of time. They are moving too quickly."

I agreed with her.

"Do you have any people that will swear to us?" Crystal asked.

Ophelia studied the woman made of snow for a long moment before giving a tiny nod. Picking up the telephone she spoke a few words. A minute later there were three men and a woman wearing office worker attire in the room.

"Split yourselves into twos and then one group swear yourself to Crystal's service and the other to Emma's. It is ok, you won't get sick again," Ophelia said.

Is that how she was recruiting? Offering people a cure to the diseases that plagued them?

I knew now what Crystal was thinking, I wish I'd thought of it myself. If they were our agents we could adapt them, modify them.

The man and woman swore themselves to me and I opened up their menus. She was Evelyn, until recently she'd suffered from the late stages of cancer. He was Flynn and he'd been paralyzed. They were about to become stronger than they'd ever imagined.

To fully boost the two of them would eat a lot of research points, but my days of having to save to upgrade a single stat point were well behind me.

I slid their physical sliders to the human maximum and they screamed out. Clothing ripped and shredded as muscles bulged, before they'd both looked rather frail and now they were specimens of human perfection. I wasn't done.

I gave each telekineses, electrokinesis, resistance to extreme temperatures, pack affinity, and the ability to teleport short distances. I had to give them accelerated healing again as well, when they left Ophelia's service they lost the effects of her crystal in their blood.

This had them screaming again. They weren't alone. Crystal's two were being transformed as well. One now had majestic butterfly wings while the other seemed to have the legs of a goat. What was it with her and the animal hybrids.

When I'd finished the upgrades I gave them the order to go defend this place. Now as my agents I saw through their eyes as they ran towards the door. Crystal's creations were quickly following on their heels.

"Do you think that enough?" Crystal asked?

I didn't. Mine were strong, so very strong compared to the human average and I suspected more than a match for any individual one of those Werewolves out there. They were also two facing far greater numbers.

"We're sending them to die gloriously, not to win," Crystal said confirming she had the same thought as me. "But we needed you to put up enough of a fight to make Wolf inclined to accept your surrender when you offer it instead of pressing the attack all the way."

"You wish us to surrender," Crystal said and she didn't sound all that impressed. Neither was I.

"We can't win this fight and if you agree to work with him willingly you won't be under his compulsion," Crystal said.

"Unless your brain has melted you'll realize that gives him four," I said.

"And with Crash and Flicker we'll have five," Crystal said.

"Uninterested," said the black orb before vanishing from existence.

"Bitch," Ophelia said. That didn't sound like thenew her, and there was a reason for that. When my drones cameras looked back on her I saw her offering over a small shimmering blue sphere.

"My Source Orb. It can't fall under Wolf's compulsion and he is bastard enough he might push on. You're kind of mean and kind of crazy but I trust you to be a pain in his ass. Keep it safe," Ophelia said.

I took the orb in my drone's appendages. They had no temperature sensors built in it and it felt cold. Not just cold, freezing.

Crystal gave it a frown, "Everyone retreat then. Pull back and prepare to hit the Professor."

That was a lie for Crystal's benefit. No more were we out of the room than I was getting a message on a secure line that was a single word. "Flicker."

23

An attack on Flicker was risky in more ways than one. Of all the districts, hers was the one that had been completely untouched so far. This was in no small part due to the fact that nobody could really get to it. Flicker existed only partially in this dimension and the same was true for her district, while occasionally a flickering outline of it could be glimpsed attacking it was another matter alltogether.

While my drone conveyed the source orb along a maintenance corridor back to my district I opened a line to Crystal, "I hope you have a plan."

"I have a brilliant researcher as an ally. Figure it out and do it quick," Crystal said.

Well, at least she had an eye for talent.

The dimensional drive allowed for transit between dimensions by a ship having one. It seemed that one in theory could be modified to get to Flicker's dimension.

"I need something then. Ophelia has a ship in her district, the Graven. Steal it," I said.

"You couldn't decide on this before an army invaded. I'll get it for you but it will probably be damaged," Crystal said.

That was fine, so long as it flew and the dimensional drive worked.

There was still the matter of how to get it to go where I needed. I thought this was a problem already solved though, although in reverse. Flicker had interfaced with city systems and still did and her orb allowed her to speak here. I didn't have access to her orb but through Mechos I did have some access to the city systems.

I'd wound up putting all my minimally useful things together. Magpie and her people, Mechos, and the Gobbles were now housed in one complex.

Mechos had rebuilt his workshop, entered into a polyamourous relationship with two women and adopted a Gobble since his rescue. His life was dynamic, at least.

I opened a comm line and filled him in on what I needed.

"A set of dimensional coordinates deciphered from quantum resonance on the cities systems. You do come to me with fun projects," Mechos said. He had already constructed a console to interact with the city systems, the circuitry lines on his flesh glowing a dull red as he placed his palm on the interface.

"Do you even know their names?" I asked.

"Sparrow and Lark? You're not jealous are you?" Mechos asked.

Either he did or he was simply throwing out random bird names. It seemed to be the theme of this village of peasants. Anna had once been interested in him, I'd always thought him a poor choice. He only seemed to be proving it.

"Jealous? Of what? Ideas both disgusting and unfeasible," I said.

"You're biomechanical, I'm biomechanical. We could make it work," Mechos said.

I wondered if keeping him around was really worth it.

"Oh this is weird," Mechos said.

"How so?" I asked.

"Any set of drive coordinates I've ever known are four figures, a set of ranges outside of which the drive simply won't lock on a destination. Well, you know all that. The Omega variable is both way off and also shifts over time. Have a look," Mechos said.

It was. This set of coordinates is one I'd never even try and the drift was something that simply shouldn't be happening.

Mechos sent me the historical data as well and that confirmed it was. It was also enough data for me to pinpoint the current values. I had what I needed.

"Do you want me to come along?" Mechos asked.

The man did have his uses, but being good in a fight wasn't one of them.

"Stay with your songbird collection. Let me know if you discover anything else of use," I said and killed the connection.

Just in time as the Graven was coming in hot. It looked as if Crystal had managed to steal it although had one of Wolf's airships in pursuit. Dragons circled the craft.

I hadn't been idle otherwise while talking to Mechos. I had a group of heavy troopers assembled at a landing field. I'd armed them with a mix of energy, kinetic, and acid weapons. I didn't know what might await us in Flicker's district but it was best to be prepared.

Amid enemy fire the Graven landed and the hatch opened. I rushed my people aboard and they were joined by Crystal. No snow golem this time, she'd come in person.

"You sure about this?" I asked through one of my drones.

"One of us should be there in person and you can't. I hope you got what you needed," Crystal said.

I did. I already had one of my drones on the way to the bridge and another to engineering to setup the drive.

It was just in time. The Graven was never made to take a lot of hits, the ship was quick and nimble and heavily armed designed to take big bites out of an enemy rather than slug it out. The shields were already weakened and armor plating depleted by the time I finally managed to make the changes needed.

Colors rippled around the Graven and then were bleached away.

The Graven was in a new stretch of sky, over Flicker's district but instead of a hazy outline below us the district stretched physical and solid.

Trapezoids and oblongs met at odd angles, it was as if someone had scattered a set of child's blocks across the ground and decided to call it a part of a city.

"You did it," Crystal said.

I had, but I wasn't sure that was a good thing. The ship's sensors were having a hard time here but the view-screens were adequate for visuals and shaps were rapidly approaching the ship. Tangles of white that almost seemed to be string or spaghetti, weird assemblages converging in our direction.

"Can you find her district core?" Crystal asked.

In that mess below? I couldn't find see any pattern to it but I was picking up a distress signal. A Righteous frequency from a building shaped like a pyramid.

24

My connection to my agents was odd in this dimension, strained. It was not quite so bad as the interaction of light or sound with this place but it was a struggle. That I was having any success at all was likely because my ability to communicate with my agents was a result of my power crystal, just as this dimensional interference must be a part of Flickers powers from hers.

This mattered because I knew the source of that distress call, it was Tara Riel. Tara had sworn herself to Anna's service and thus in a way to mine. Up until now I hadn't really been able to get any read on her, but now I was. Perhaps it was because I had so many agents now in this space, a cumulative effect that boosted the signal getting out.

I didn't know if she was hidden at the core, I didn't keep my prisoners locked in the room with me but in this place I didn't have anything else to go on and weird string blobs cosing in. I set a course for the pyramid.

Tara wasn't under threat, rather the opposite. Corpses surrounded her.

I answered the distress hail.

"You look terrible. I suppose that is to be expected, you weren't kidnapped for the purposes of a makeover," I said.

"Emma? What are you doing here. No, never mind. You have my coordinates?" Tara asked.

"On the way now. I don't suppose in between bouts of indulging your murderous urges you found the district core?" I asked.

The blobs were faster than the graven, faster and more maneuverable. One approached the ship and extended a tendril that sliced through the metal plating as if it were a thin layer of fabric.

"I'll meet you on the apex but then we have to get out of here. This is a trap. This whole place is a trap," Tara said.

If it was a trap I should probably get out of here now. Still, I didn't like leaving people behind if I didn't have to it and Tara had proved herself to be useful. Now that I had the source orb in my possession she was also the expert on them, the Righteous were fascinated with the things.

I opened fire with the beam cannons. A blob dispersed into ash but others were closing to take its place.

At least they were fragile. With their speed a strictly human gunner would have had a lot of trouble landing hits on them and even the targeting systems of the Graven were struggling. I had more computing power than either could dream of.

With a series of quick bursts I incinerated another four blobs and pulled the graven into p lace over the pyramid and opened the ramp. Tara was already waiting and she flung herself up towards the ramp.

Then my world dissolved into static.

I couldn't see anything. I was quickly losing access to my systems. It wasn't the first time I'd experienced something like this. Mechos had once hit me with an attack that was very similar the first time we'd met and it had required a full reboot of my systems to regain operation.

While I still had control of my systems at all I sent a data burst to the panel in his room with what was happening. Then I lost consciousness.

* * *

I was being kicked. Literally I was being kicked, the extremely sensitive bits of my bioprocessor were being repeatedly prodded by a leather boot. I regained sensor feeds. It was Mechos doing the kicking, my core had been sliced open and there was rather a lot of conduit fluid staining the floor.

I had blood. I had a lot of blood. I also had armor plating and knew that must have taken Mechos awhile to accomplish.

"I'm up," I said through speakers in the room as more of my systems came online. There were fires in most of the buildings of my district. There were no Wolves in the streets but I'd suffered an aerial bombardment.

There were not currently any ships in the sky. It was something.

"Did you have to go organic. If you were electrical I'd have had you up in minutes," Mechos said.

The damage to my bioprocessor was already starting to heal over.

"Situation?" I asked.

"Crash hit our systems and Wolf attacked. Flicker hit Crystal hard and what was left of her district is in ruins. They were both working for Wolf. We managed to convince them you were still online. You had defenders still up and with them Magpie and Lark gave them hell. Jade told us to go screw ourselves," Mechos said.

"I suppose allowing eighty percent of the district to go up in flames is some definition of hell," I said.

Crash had never been on our side and had been working with Wolf the whole time. Crystal's district was in ruins, even if she hadn't been compelled Wolf still had his five. He'd won.

Without me they hadn't been able to compel Jade's support. I could remedy that now.

I sent a message to her to have her send forces to aid in my districts defense.

That was a short term measure that might keep me from falling under the sway of compulsion but it was too little too late.

If Wolf wasn't busy subduing me what was he doing? I activated my sensors for the rest of the city. The central district, of course. They were trying to take her castle and they were having issues.

Sylax must have had some automated defenses in place and they were formidable ones. Blasts of technomagical energy were being fired upwards towards the few airships Wolf had remaining and they were being forced to keep their distance.

"Did the Graven return?" I asked.

"If so they didn't come here," Mechos said.

Crystal would have taken the controls after I'd lost my connection. If so she probably would have returned to her district but since there was no sign of her something else had happened.

That castle wouldn't hold out forever. Whatever I was going to do, if there was anything I could do I had to do it fast.

25

I didn't see a lot of options for how to proceed. The plan had always been to seize the city with Crystal and then to use its resources to rescue Sylax and Anna. That plan had failed. Either Wolf was going to win the day at this point, the only hedge against them would be Sylax herself. If I wanted Anna back I'd have to go and get her. I didn't have to rescue Sylax too, but at this point the differences between her and Wolf had faded into irrelevance with the primary difference being one of them might actually be grateful to me.

If I was going to effect any sort of rescue I'd need either a ship or to control the transit portals that rimmed the city.

I reached out and tried to reestablish my connection with Tara and my drones on the Graven. It was like trying to pick out a whisper in a loud room but when I finally got a connection everything snapped in at once.

Tara was on the bridge of the Graven and had been injured, one arm broken in four places and some burns that might prove life threatening without proper treatment. Oddly enough she was also in shades of black and white. None of my drones were or the ship itself. I had lost eight drones, and the others all had injuries of their own.

I took one over so I could have a conversation. "This is Emma. Status?"

"Crystal blacked out and we have her in a medbay. Vessel secure. Holding position above the Alivari Ravine having escaped from that dimension I was a prisoner," Tara said.

"You're looking rather duochrome," I said.

"Don't have an answer for that. I didn't have coordinates for Aefwal and outside of your control neither did your drones," Tara said.

Her words matched what I was pulling from my drones memory. It seemed they'd had a hell of a fight just to get safe.

"Do you want a healing upgrade?" I asked her. Righteous tended to hate the powered, it seemed polite to ask.

"Will I survive until I can get back to one of your medbays?" Tara asked.

"Probably," I said.

"Then I'll pass," Tara said.

I cleared an underground hanger and had my drones take over the ship controls. A shimmer as I engaged the drive and the ship was docked.

I sent a medical drone for Tara and my others at once as well as replacement drones for those injured to man the ship.

Well now I could get to the Ooze world but that wouldn't help me to save Anna and Sylax. To do that I thought I'd need the most formidable offensive tool I could get, I needed Hot Stuff.

Even while I was out my surveillance systems had been monitoring and recording. Put together I had a good idea of what was going on in Wolf's district. His district was mostly composed of dense forest and under ground bunkers, and under thermal scan some irregularities quickly became apparent.

Hot Stuff herself put out a lot of heat, and with the number of Werewolves who now had her ability the systems to vent that heat were straining. One of the underground bunkers had effectively been dug up and a whole new fan system dug through the reinforced structure.

That didn't just compromise the integrity of the building, it gave me a good idea where Hot Stuff was housed.

I wasn't getting any sense of her, but if she responded as Tara had I might be able to if I got a ship full of my other drones close. I might even be able to communicate a message to her, if she was still loyal.

I wasn't going to get any second chances.

Every human drone I sent to the ship I made sure was upgraded with the fire matrix. None of them would burn as hot as she did but it would help to insulate them from her and the Wolves.

When I was ready I engaged the ships dimensional drive. Using it for a short range attack like this was difficult, the complications got insanely complex when dealing with such a small scale but I really was very smart.

The Graven appeared in the air over the bunker. I had her. Hot Stuff was trapped within some sort of energy shielding, it looked like something that Batarius might have made. If I had a connection it also meant she was still loyal. Good, I wasn't sure I could pull off this plan without her.

I tried to establish a connection with her mind like I would have with my drones. I didn't think I could get any sort of complex message through but I only needed one. Burn.

It got through, Hot Stuff's skin began to glow a reddish orange as the air around her erupted into flames. The shielding held, it must be incredibly powerful to hold even under that.

It was fine that it did. I'd rigged the underside of the Graven with a single shot weapon. High melting point metals that even now my drones were heating to the very limit of their melting point. It was a dangerous game I was playing here.

Explosive charges detonated and funneled that energy to propel a single massive blast from below the ship. The Graven rocked with the force and the hull buckled in three places, the bunker below didn't fare as well. Already weakened by the addition of the fan systems the hot metal shards shredded their way through.

Werewolves within were cut to pieces, the shards could survive their flames and even their accelerated healing factor couldn't cope with this much damage all at once. Ophelia could have handled being torn to shreds, they couldn't.

A collapsing roof and a spray of metal tore the force shield protecting Hot Stuff to shreds and met her aura.

Hot Stuff burned hotter than the Wolves. The spray evaporated before it could hit her flesh.

The scene after a few seconds was a massive crater where a bunker had been, a lone woman standing bare in the middle of it all as flames rippled along her flesh.

I brought the Graven low and extended the ramp and her flames flickered off as she leapt aboard.

Three airships were closing in. Wolf hadn't left his district totally undefended. They were too late. I engaged the dimensional drive and jumped out.

26

I'd set the jump coordinates for the location where Tara had earlier docked the ship. I knew it was a safe locale and it gave me time to work out the next step with Hot Stuff.

"Before you make some bitchy comment about how I look terrible. I'm naked and I have an amazing metabolism. I look amazing," Hot Stuff said.

As if I would ever insult someone based on their appearance. Well, if they didn't deserve it.

"Your ability to keep the ugly on the inside is legendary. In your absence Mechos has taken up with two women that satisfy him in ways you never could. I have detailed sensors, I know. If we are done with your childish need to be insulted can we get on to business? I take it you didn't cooperate with Wolf?" I asked.

"Did his best to bribe me then his best to rape me and finally settled for locking me up until he figured out how to jab a needle into me. What took you so long to come to my rescue?" Hot Stuff said.

"Sylax won the city. Then got captured, then there was a civil war. There were grand plans to put things right but they've all collapsed into ruin like every relationship you've ever had," I said.

"Your usual plans then. I assume your breaking me out is a part of some desperate and unlikely to succeed mission?" Hot Stuff asked.

Well, perhaps she knew me a little.

"I believe Anna and Sylax are under the control of some sort of mind controlling slime. If we can find their ship I'm dropping you are some other pyros on board and you're going to roast everyone and everything. Anna can heal and I doubt you're killing Sylax," I said.

"Bitch kicked my ass last time," Hot Stuff said.

"We're hoping she'll be grateful now," I said.

I fortunately had the coordinates for the Ooze city from what I'd observed through Anna's eyes when the fleet jumped in. I just had to hope that the Powerhungry hadn't been taken somewhere far distant. If so I'd never have a chance to get the ship back.

We jumped.

The ooze hadn't left. There wasn't much of the city left down below after what Sylax had done to it but a few structures still haphazardly leaned with their structures drenched in slime.

The airships Sylax had taken with her were intact, although grounded. Thick layers of slime coated each.

I'd learned my lesson from before. There was not a crewmember aboard that couldn't ignite a flaming aura. Even if the Ooze managed to get aboard it would find us far harder to seize than Sylax's fleet had been.

I set course for the Powerhungry and opened the ramp. We weren't going overly subtle here, it both wasn't Hot Stuff's strength, it also wasn't necessary.

When we got close I signaled and she leapt down from the ramp. Her flames ignited mid-air and when she landed on the slime-covered hull it was with a violent cloud of steam and the stench of roasting goo.

Hot Stuff triggered an especially bright flare and the slime rippled in its efforts to retreat from her as the hull beneath her feet began to glow a dull red as she started to melt her way through the thick armor plating.

I sent down every non critical drone I had. They formed a ring around her, their own flames igniting.

Hot Stuff dropped from sight into the top deck of the ship and my people followed her in.

The power systems on the ship were dead, but then they were making their own light sources. Slime dripped on every surface and it surged violently against them. It flung itself against Hot Stuff violently as it tried to drown her. A particularly violent wave quenched one of my drones and my connection was instantly severed.

That was ok. Apart from their ability to flame I hadn't sent them in with any other weapons and if they ignited their flames they'd simply be burning off the very ooze that now controlled them.

I'd given the slime a useless puppet.

Hot Stuff lead the rest towards the bridge. At least she was well familiar with the ship, the design had changed very little since Sylax regained control and the command center remained on deck three.

There were no other crew controlled standing in their way. I didn't think their would be. I hadn't observed any population in the city below during the initial assault either, I thought that the slime must have some sort of acidic property to it. At first it took control of a host and forced them to obey but over time it dissolved them and simply transformed them into more slime.

Anna had a healing factor and Sylax was Sylax, I couldn't be sure that as long as they'd been in the slimes possession they'd both be fine but I had to hope they would be.

It was hard to see as my drones moved. Every step was more steam and more clouds of thick oily smoke as slime burned. The corridors were becoming choked with it and without power there were no ventilation systems to filter it out.

It was slow going to the bridge and by the time Hot Stuff reached it I'd lost another three drones to the waves of ooze.

With all the smoke it was hard to tell but I thought I saw humanoid figures beneath the slime covering the floor. Hot Stuff burned and burned some more as the slime desperately tried to overpower her flames. It was failing.

Then I heard a snap of fingers and Hot Stuff and all the others were aboard the cargo hold of the Graven.

Sylax stood in the middle of them, the woman looking paler and more haggard than I'd ever seen her. A charred body at her feet was slowly working to knit itself back together, Anna.

"You," Sylax said with a look towards hot stuff, "I owe Wolf for this rescue then?"

"Emma," Hot Stuff said.

"Very good," Sylax said and fainted dead away.

This was the unstoppable force I'd just dared all to rescue. Fantastic.

I engaged the dimensional drive and got the ship back to Aefwal.

27

I returned to find that that the assault on the Ooze world was time enough for Wolf to finish his assault upon her castle and to finally claim it for himself. With Sylax back I didn't think that he would be able to claim the central core and so far it seemed as if I was right. He held a majority and the central core but hadn't actually claimed the city.

I began several more upgrades. I wanted to raise my Defense to twenty but when I tried to do so got a warning prompt.

Error

Cannot raise another division to more than twice your Utility rating.

It was probably for the best I raise my last two areas to ten that I hadn't already. I spent the requisite resources for Utility and Residential.

Upgrade Options

Residential

High

With this option you choose to build towering skyscrapers to help house your people. The views are outstanding and help to improve morale but these facilities are also more vulnerable to attack.

Low

With this option you choose to expand your residential facilities deep into the earth. This offers some advantages to defense but also leads to lower morale.

Morale actually did seem important, I needed my people working as diligently as possible. I was also a part of a city at war and on the losing side of a civil war coming to the end, I needed every defensive advantage I could get. It wasn't truly an option, not now. I selected Low.

Upgrade Options

Utility

Universal

Your utility drones and systems are constructed with a generalist mindset. All building types can be expanded to twice the Utility rating.

Specialized

Your utility drones and systems are constructed with the intent to maximize the output of one type of structure. The selected type can be raised to four times the Utility rating, all others can be raised only as high as utility.

In the past I'd have specialized in Research without question. SCIENCE was unquestionably the most important thing one could do. Yet the exigences of the moment made me also consider other options. I had to raise Utility at all right now to improve my defense rating and with this I could raise it far higher. Yet under Sylax the most important thing that had been keeping me alive to do science was my manufacturing potential.

I was coming to realize that I always had to be prepared to be strong in a host of ways. My ability to do SCIENCE wasn't just a matter of how many labs I could build but depended on how well I could defend them. I selected Universal and then proceeded to upgrade my Defense.

Upgrade Options

Defense

Powered

Your gain a small bonuses to all powers granted to troops. This not only makes their powers stronger but allows them to be used more frequently.

Equipped

You gain a small bonus to all equipment utilized by your forces. This improves the defensive value of all armor as well as the offensive value of all weaponry.

This one was more complicated. With my research focus I'd already gained a lot of new powers from captured foes and so already had options there. Time would provide me more. It was obvious that the Scholars as a whole had once chosen this sort of path, while they made use of technology their focus was on abilities gained from crystals.

I could contrast that with the Righteous who actively suppressed crystal powers and whose airships and gear were top of the line. They were undoubtedly strong, although to date the Scholars had seemed stronger.

I had to go with that observation. I selected Powered.

With this I could double my defensive strength. With enough clones I could perhaps keep Wolf at bay until I figured out a way forward.

I had help now.

Anna's healing factor didn't act anywhere near as quickly as Ophelia's, still once I had her placed into a med-bay it only took a day for her to regain consciousness.

"I don't recommend being burned alive. I also don't recommend being mind-controlled by slime," Anna said sitting up with a grimace."

"Hot for once in your sad, pathetic, little life and you don't even appreciate the experience. How predictably grim," I said.

"That's me. What is the situation?" Anna asked.

I filled her in on all that had happened during her disappearance.

"Fuck," Anna said displaying the eloquence I expected from her. "And Sylax is.."

"Still unconscious. So is Crystal. While I expect your dull wits can't see it I expect there is a connection," I said.

"That only makes sense. Wolf didn't accept Ophelia yielding when he could have. He isn't going to settle for us just bending the knee either," Anna said.

"I wouldn't recommend it anyways. He shares more of Sylax's negatives than we'd have expected," I said.

"Its the power. The more of it one gets the more chance for their mind to become twisted. If he winds up taking the city for himself his madness will get a lot worse," Anna said.

My mind felt fine for all the power that I'd taken. Still, I was obviously superior to humans to one could hardly expect us to react the same way.

"I don't have the forces to challenge him directly. I'd hoped to use Sylax but if she out of contention I don't know what else we can do. If necessary we can transfer my core back to the Powerhungry and try to get the ship operational," I said.

Anna shook her head sharply, "That ship is covered in slime. Even if we needed to retreat that wouldn't be an option. It would have to be the Graven."

Logical. It was such a tiny ship though I didn't relish the thought.

"You want to stay in that ship long term? Bit like an elephant wanting to hide in a mouse hole," I said.

"I don't want to retreat. I want to bust some heads. You know the current situation best Emma. What do you want to do right now?" Anna asked.

That wasn't hard. Most of the crew was back together now. I'd rescued Mechos, Anna, Hot Stuff and even a newcomer like Tara. There was one of my old division heads still in captivity however.

"Rescue Ratticus," I said.

"Then get me some armor, a gun, and a team and lets break some skulls" Anna said.

It was good to have her back.

28

While Crystal might be unconsciouses her district hadn't actually been conquered. Jade remained under my compulsion which meant our alliance right now stood at three members. We didn't have the numbers and with Sylax returned it may be moot anyways, but I still wanted to take any support I could from Wolf.

If we were going to be invading Zora's district anyways this was a chance to try. Zora's district was one of gleaming steel and glass, well dressed figures in suits and shades walking along perfectly ordered boulevards.

We were going to do the hit on the Graven. Without teleportation being possible between the districts the dimensional drive remained my best option to hit fast and in a hurry. We were going full strength for this, Anna was in armor along with a collection of heavy combat drones equipped with a variety of powers. Hot Stuff was providing further offensive support while I had brought Mechos along for his technical expertise.

I'd pinpointed Ratticus' presence by a disruption of the local electrical grid, fortunately it seemed that Zora had not managed to extract or duplicate his powers.

I brought the Graven in over top the building where he was imprisoned with a short range dimensional jump. We came in low, the dimensional wash sending a shimmer of color through the nearby buildings.

Hot Stuff was the first out, igniting halfway to the roof. When she landed her temperatures were already so extreme she melted clear through the structure and Anna and the assault team followed her in.

We were already taking fire. Gauss Cannons, they magnetically propelled rounds at high velocities. I had a few telekinetics aboard although if I'd known this would be the defenses I'd have gotten Jade onboard for assistance.

My people were able to stop the rounds, but it was quickly consuming their power. They wouldn't be able to keep the ship shielded for long and once our shields were gone those rounds would chew through the Graven's light armor quickly.

I took two cannon emplacements out with the Graven's main guns.

It made sense that Zora had wanted Ratticus. If this was her preferred method of weaponry and she could manage to duplicate his power he would do a lot to enhance the destructive potential of cannons like these.

Hot Stuff was being swarmed by heavily armored guards. Their armor must have been heat resistance, they were actually standing their ground long enough to fire their guns and when she drew close one even managed to land a punch on her jaw, for all his arm melted off afterward.

Hot Stuff spit out blood, "Well my desire to burn this whole place up to the ground just went up."

"You want to burn everything to the ground," Anna said as she sprayed a guard's helmet with a blast of acid, ducking beneath his swing at her and shoving the butt of her weapon into his visor. Weakened by the acid it exploded inward and he staggered back.

"Usually," Hot Stuff agreed and threw a fireball down the hall to scatter an assemblage of scientists that were working to assemble some sort of turret.

"Focus," I said through the comms to them. "Three doors down. Do try not to burn him alive."

"Some guys like that kind of thing," Hot Stuff said as she made her way to the door in question and put a blazing fist through a security panel and then burning her way through the door.

The door had a thick layer of mesh built into it, while I didn't have a science drone along I'd have to guess that it was highly conductive. They were probably holding Ratticus in a Faraday cage to help neutralize his abilities.

It was smart of Zora, smarter than I liked.

Hot Stuff finished melting through the door and stepped back.

Ratticus was in the lab inside floating in a tube of bubbling fluid, a number of tubes extending into his flesh.

"We allright breaking him out of this?" Anna asked.

I was detecting several Wolf airships closing on the Gravens position and several flying platforms holding Gauss cannons approaching. Our welcome was quickly being worn out.

"Given your lack of anything other than mindless destruction I don't think we have a choice," I said.

Anna shrugged and gave the glass a blast of her acid gun. The material sizzled and bubbles before the tank exploded, Ratticus rolling out amid of a spray of glass shards.

With her boosted strength Anna had no problem flinging him over one shoulder even while gripping the gun in her other hand.

"We going for her core or getting out of here?" Anna asked.

That was a good question. If her core were close it would still be worth the risk of going for it, which meant I was trying to figure out of it was.

Given how built up and staffed Zora's district was it actually made the task easier. We'd already set off a lot of alarms and they were mostly headed in one direction. There was a communications hub in a tower on the perimeter of the districts central plaza.

"Pull back," I said. A small force like this wasn't going to get there on foot.

Hot Stuff moved to lead the way out and was blocked by a defense robot. Giant tanks adorned its back, frost coating them. The air around it was massively colder than room temperature.

Hot Stuff through a blast of fire and the robot raised a gauntleted fist to spray a stream of super cooled gases that quickly neutralized it.

"About damn time," Hot Stuff said rolling her shoulders. "I've been looking for a good fight."

Hot Stuff was stronger, even with the limited data I had without a science drone I could tell that. It would also waste time for her to go toe to toe with it that we didn't have.

One of the teams telekinetics used their ability to wrench the hoses out of the tanks even as one of the electrokinetics blasted the robots electrical system.

It staggered back twitching madly and collapsed to the ground.

"Okay, maybe you haven't figured this out yet but I'm a girl that really likes her climaxes and that was anti-climatic as fuck," Hot Stuff said.

"Save it for the Wolf," Anna said.

Hot Stuff seemed mollified for the moment, reducing the robot to a pool of molten metal as she stepped through its remains.

29

The team managed to get back to the Graven before reinforcements overwhelmed us and I jumped the ship back to safety. As triumphs went, it barely qualified.

It was also mixed for even as we were accomplishing that mission Tara had vanished. I had the logs clearly documenting what had happened, at one moment she was secure in her quarters and the next she was gone with no traces of teleportation or invisibility.

What there was, was a dimensional shift. Given she had been stuck in black and white I'd been monitoring her condition extra closely. Unfortunately I didn't have much doubt that meant Flicker had gotten a hold of her again.

Tara knew that we'd rescued Sylax, something that still wasn't public knowledge. If Wolf learned of it I didn't doubt he'd throw everything he had to take me down. I'd become his first priority, which meant getting Tara back was mine.

Going after Flicker again wouldn't just be a rescue mission. Crystal remained comatose and Sylax with her, given that it had only happened after Flicker's assault on her district I had to think it related.

Last time the Graven had appeared in Flicker's skies she'd been prepared for an aerial assault and quickly forced our withdrawal. Now she'd had even more time to prepare which meant we needed a surprise. I thought I had one.

The teleportation that rimmed the city had largely been used to transport troops away or bodies back to the battlefield. Technically they were under the control of the city head but given Mechos' ability to interface with the cities technology I thought he could size control and we could use one to get into the very heart of Flicker's district.

I'd called together Mechos, Anna, Hot Stuff, and Jade to discuss the plan.

I'd decided that Hot Stuff and Jade should use the portal with a number of fire drones and several of Jade's lieutenants. I didn't know if either of them could seize her core, if so that would be a great advantage but both were our strongest hitters. Put together they could inflict massive damage in even short period of time.

"I like it," Jade said.

"Burning stuff is fun," Hot Stuff agreed.

That was a few that agreed, at least.

"Are you sure you'll be able to get them out?" Anna asked.

"Once connected the portal will hold steady for two way transit. They can walk back through," Mechos said.

That was actually a bit of a concern. If they could return then Flicker could also launch a return through it. I was already building a number of fixed gun emplacements focused on the portal and setting up a drone perimeter.

"Are you certain you'll be able to fix what is wrong with Tara even if we do manage to rescue her?" Mechos asked.

That was a whole other question. I'd loaded Crystal and Sylax onto the Graven and stocked the vessel with a dozen of my science probes. Once the ground team had created a distraction we could jump the Graven in. Anna could rescue Tara and I could hopefully figure out what was wrong with her and Crystal before we had to jump out.

"There are no guarantees in SCIENCE, only the boundless challenge of the unknown. Still, I am a genius," I said.

Looks were exchanged but nobody had poor judgment enough to challenge me.

With the plan worked out it was time to execute.

* * *

Mechos reached out to rest a hand on one of the teleportation portals. They had been dead since Sylax's capture, veins of red circuitry extended outward from his touch through polished grey metal and with a flare the portal came to life.

Hot Stuff and my fire drones led the way followed by Jade and her lieutenants.

It was a bit like a bomb going off. Jade roared as green energy pulsed around her and an entire block of bizarrely buildings rose into the sky before crashing to earth and shattering into rubble. Flaming rubble as Hot Stuff was not to be out done.

The sky was filled with blobs of tangled wire that left their defensive positions to streak towards them.

As distractions went they were all I could have hoped for and more. Seizing the core would be ideal but it wasn't actually the plan for the day.

I engaged the dimensional drive and brought the Graven in. Given my awareness from my drones on the ground I was able to pick an empty part of the sky where the defenses were weak. As soon as we materialized I unleashed the science drones to fill the skies around us.

Now that I had so many drones here I was also getting a read on Tara's location. I pinged it on a map for Anna who nodded curtly and blinked out of existence.

Anna's ability to teleport short distances was pricey to use, but for something like a rescue operation it could also be powerful when we weren't just shooting our way in.

We had to spend minutes in the sky. We were largely unmolested, while the occasional defensive blob of string drifted into range of my lasers for the most part they were furiously trying to kill the ground forces.

It was enough. Anna materialized with with the still monochrome Tara.

What had happened to her and Crystal were variations of the same thing. They'd both been rendered out of phase with our own reality, not as much as Flicker herself was and each in a way that obviously affected them differently.

A variation in the dimensional drive bubble could resynchronize each individually, the computations were frightfully complex. It meant we had to stay in the skies for a whole additional thirty-six seconds.

I signaled the ground forces to withdraw and engaged the jump engines.

Reality warped and twisted around us once, twice, thrice in waves of rainbow power. The first time returned color to Tara's flesh. The second caused both Crystal and Sylax to awaken with a gasp.

The third brought us home.

30

It was an odd celebration that took place after the rescue mission. All of my old crew were there, and Crystal and Sylax as well. In addition to them were the other refugees of various sorts, Magpie and her people and the Gobbles who somehow had grown to over three dozen in number and had perched themselves atop every surface to swat at those who passed. They and Sylax might have shared a personality.

Still moods seemed more elevated than I might have expected, there was genuine good will in the air. Sylax wasn't always awful, for all that the woman enjoyed the suffering of others it seemed she also enjoyed a good glass of synthesized wine and dancing with Mechos.

Several of the clones had decided to attend the celebration which meant that Anna's were everywhere. It wasn't hard to pick the real one, the clones were dressed in form fitting armor plating in red and black while Anna had me replicate one of her gowns.

It was a bit of a game to see just how Sylax would respond. It didn't take long for her to saunter up and look Anna up and down.

"You're overdressed pet. I'll allow it," Sylax said.

"I think we're past doing that. You do too or you'd have torn this party apart," Anna said.

Sylax smiled at that, "True. Although I haven't quite figured out if I truly think saving me balances the scales for our past."

I took over one of the Anna clones to approach the table so that I could join the conversation myself, "You were trying to kill us at the time."

"Did you have to make them look like me?" Anna said.

"Few things are as intimidating in battle as a horde of grotesque monstrosities rushing towards you," I said.

Sylax laughed, "Perhaps it is more fun to have you two together and there are no shortage of others we must harm."

Sylax made a gesture with one hand and Crystal approached from the crowd as if summoned, which she probably was.

"Nice party," Crystal said.

"Compliment their hospitality later. Emma was loyal to you? Loyal to the cause of rescuing me?" Sylax asked.

"Risked everything for it, although I think she was more interested in rescuing Anna than you," Crystal said.

"Understandable," Sylax said and sipped at her wine before setting the glass aside. "Fine. We work with this group going forward. I always knew the Wolf was just waiting for his moment, still I had not expected him to be so bold or effective."

"My district is really in ruins?" Crystal asked.

I brought up a display for her and she looked over the screen.

"You can rebuild," Anna said.

"Of course I can. But my final defenses were strong," Crystal said.

"Mine were every stronger," Sylax said. "The Wolf has gained a lot of power quickly. It is important to figure out how."

"He unlocked his old form," Crystal said.

"He also has spread the pyrokinetic upgrade to his forces without going through the typical means," I said.

"You can do something like that," Sylax said with a pointed look towards the clone.

"And obviously I didn't," I said.

"He somehow acquired his own upgrade core. He must have," Crystal said.

"One that would allow this degree of power so quickly? Unlikely. You know how long it took you," Sylax said.

"He might have a core that allows him to mirror powers," Anna said.

"Perhaps. If my power were mirrored it might have allowed him to unlock his old potential. Then he could have mirrored someones like Emma's to acquire new powers," Crystal said with her tone thoughtful.

It was a disturbing idea. I hadn't encountered anything like the mirroring cores that they described. It seemed the sort of power that could be relatively useless in many situations but thoughtfully applied could be powerful indeed. Crystal's abilities with her upgrade core were far different than mine and both of ours different from Mechos. Mine focused upon research, testing, and then genetic sequencing. Crystal's seemed to focus on transformation of her subjects, and especially some degree of animal hybridization. Mechos on the other hand before he'd lost his core was all about implanting abilities in people by way of specialized implants.

Individually our techniques all had their strengths and their weaknesses, but if one were able to pick and choose between them at will it might be possible to make creations more powerful than any of us had individually.

"If he is. Is there anything we can do to fight him?" I asked.

"Kill him quickly. If he is using a power like that intelligently then he is only going to keep getting stronger," Sylax said.

"Your solution is aways to kill things quickly," Anna said.

"Actually I usually prefer to let them suffer," Sylax said.

"That much is true," Crystal said.

As if we needed reminding, there were few secrets about who and what Sylax was.

Crystal tilted her head, "Before we do that we need to retake my district. I've been trying to reestablish the direction. Your visual helped. I appear to have a timer running for having abandoned my district. I have six hours to reestablish dominance of my core or I yield to Flicker."

That was interesting to know. You would think that running away from a district would be an automatic default but instead it created a timer. Crystal's withdrawal had actually saved her from compulsion.

It was a useful tidbit to remember, if trying to take someone down I needed to make sure I could defeat them and not allow them to flee.

"That won't be a problem. Now that I'm awake I'm looking to stretch my muscles," Sylax said.

"We just can't have a proper party," Anna said.

"Oh pet. It's not a proper party unless somebody gets skinned. Just be delighted it won't be you, this time," Sylax said.

"You really do have the worst taste in party games," Anna said.

"You have no idea," Crystal said.

31

Clearing Crystal's timer was simplicity itself. Several golems had been left to guard the core, strangely twisted masses of copper wire. I jumped the Graven into the skies above and dropped off Sylax and Crystal.

Sylax didn't even need a weapon, she tore the golems apart with a bare hands and with a look of glee upon her face.

I picked up incoming dimensional drive signatures. There was no way those were friendly. I didn't even have time to issue a warning down below before I was jumping the Graven out. They would figure things out, the Graven wasn't prepared to go head to head with a fleet.

Wolf airships, my long range sensors picked them up. They couldn't plan a jump that close on the fly like I could but give them time and they could manage the same trick. They'd known exactly where Crystal's core was and were waiting for their moment.

Energy weapons lanced out from above and turned the ground molten. I knew that Sylax could survive that sort of fire, I'd done worse to her, I wasn't as certain about Crystal.

When the maelstorm of energy faded it revealed Sylax shielding Crystal with her body, although both women appeared fine.

Tremors shook the ground and crystalline towers erupted from the rubble. Crystal was starting to regrow her district, far faster than I'd have been able to build my own facilities.

The Wolf airships were dropping shuttles, I knew what that meant. Firewolves would be on the way. Worse yet I was picking up signs of reinforcement from the other districts. There was a dimensional attenuation from Flicker's district pointed this way, giant combat mecha were rising from Crash's and a swarm of Pterodactyls was rising from the Professor's.

Wolf must have seen Sylax and knew that she was back. He knew what that meant had obviously decided to throw everything at her and hit her where she wouldn't have much support.

What he hadn't taken into account was that he was still facing the true mistress of this city. I detected a surge of power on the perimeter of my district. The teleportation portals were coming online. I detected the same surge in Jade's district but none of the others.

An invitation then to the party.

I had to figure out how to handle that invitation. Did I think Wolf and his allies capable of taking out Sylax? If so it might be in my best interest to allow this to play out, with their forces weakened in taking her out and Jade under my control that would mean the city would be mine for the taking.

I also knew how invincible Sylax seemed. I'd done my best to kill her in the past and failed, I couldn't be sure Wolf and his allies were strong enough. If they were and he did have sort of mirror core, his long term danger remained and he might have surprising abilities yet to show.

While tempting to let this play out I had to trust in the plans already laid. I began equipping my clone army and ordered them to the portals and sent a command for Jade to join the fray.

Wolf's airships had nearly touched down when the newly formed crystal towers exploded. Shards of crystal sent shuttles tumbling and crashing along the ground and where the towers had stood forces were tumbling out. Satyrs, minotaurs, and harpies. Hybrids of all sorts of a bewildering away of forms.

Crystal wasn't regrowing her city, she was unleashing an army.

I wish she'd chosen to unleash a few more dragons. The enemy airpower was a problem, although Jade and her people would provide some impressive air defenses.

I sent my first drones through the portals and they materialized in the center of Crystal's district near Sylax and Crystal herself. Jade stepped out of another shimmering portal of energy flanked by her Lieutenants.

Anna was slipping into her own battle armor.

"Are you sure you want to come to her aid? While I realize being her pet and peeing on her floor comes naturally I'm still surprised," I asked.

"We work with the team we have. Just don't lose sight of the endgame Emma. You see more clearly than any of us. If it looks like there is a real chance of taking the bitch out, take the shot," Anna said.

Pragmatism, I could work with pragmatism.

In Crystal's district the Firewolves had survived the crashing of their shuttles and were even now forming a line. James Wolf himself was there among them. Back from them were forming a line of wire golems, hundreds of them with parts occasionally flickering out of existence. Still further back were lines of mecha as pterodactyls and airships flew overhead.

They surrounded the defenders on all side, although we still had reinforcements arriving into the center through the portals. Crystal's misshapen army of hybrids, my perfect lines of clones, Jade and her leather wearing band all of whom were surrounded by a green glow as dragons flew overhead.

I hadn't expected this attack to turn into a final battle, this was going to be a quick prelude before deciding on how to launch an attack on Wolf but it seemed Wolf had picked the battlefield before hand.

That didn't seem to our advantage, but it was also an act of desperation.

Sylax stepped forward, "Stand down Wolf and I'll allow your people to live. I might even even allow what is left of you to return to service, eventually."

Wolf stepped forward from his own line. That was bold of him given how powerful Sylax was. "Emma, Jade, this isn't your fight. Once I put these two down you can still have a place here. I've seen how useful you are and I treat my pack well."

I also remembered how he treated his enemies. I remembered what he and his pack had done to Sylax's captured peasants. I could never really trust him any more than I'd ever be able to truly trust Sylax.

I didn't even get to give my insulting reply because Sylax was already surging forward. The army followed her and the battle was on.

32

Sylax approached Wolf at a run, a punch thrown at his abdomen missing as he vaulted over her and his flesh began to ripple. He had some sort of adaptive armor that actually grew as he did, the man really had found a way to unleash his own beast. In his Werewolf form he was larger than any of the others in his pack.

I couldn't focus on that fight, I had my own to deal with. Each of the clones really did have their own intelligence, their own personality, for all that they might look identical they weren't any sort of mindless copies. That said, they also all lacked my computing power to analyze threats, target weak spots, and coordinate attacks.

I wasn't seeing this battle through a single pair of eyes, but through hundreds of them all working to inflict as much damage as possible and to keep core assets such as Anna, Hot Stuff, and the others alive.

It didn't always lead to a linear fight. It meant hopping into one drone to shift the aim of a rifle just enough so that instead of targeting the head of the Firewolf coming at them the shot would fly over their shoulder to hit the cabling of the power regulator of the mech behind them.

The drone died beneath the set of claws, but the resulting explosion neutralized four enemies that otherwise would have survived. I had to always be alert to those opportunities, aware, and step in where needed.

Jade brought an airship down, the entire thing enveloped in a green glow as she plowed it into the ground in the middle of Crash's mechs. While I admired her strength, I'd have preferred she thrown it into another airship. Still, Jade and her forces I was not in direct control of.

We were too strong for the battle to be one sided, but too outnumbered for it to be fair and there wasn't an enemy type that was easy to face. If they got close my drones were no match for the Firewolves, the mixture of heat and claws shredded armor and while my temperature resistant acid mixture would put them down for a time to actually kill them required quite a lot of effort. Flicker's golems were simply odd and any efforts I made to predict their motions was proving inaccurate.

The expected way for the battle to proceed was for us to be overwhelmed at first but as our most powerful members beat theirs for us to gain ground later. So far it wasn't happening, most alarmingly Wolf was holding his own against Sylax.

Given her past performances I'd expected a single blow from her to rip out his spine, instead it simply sent him sailing through the air to come charging back moments later to rip into her with fang and claw. More alarming yet, those fangs and claws were connecting and she was bloodied.

I opened a comm line to Anna. "While I realize you are busy being ineffectual in your efforts to destroy golems perhaps you might pay some attention to the main fight."

Anna plunged an armored first into the chest of a golem, wrenching out a strand of wire that caused the entire mass to unravel into a pool of wire. It was the third one she'd taken out that way. I'd never tell her this but I was actually rather impressed, my drones weren't performing nearly as well.

"I told you to take her out if you got the chance," Anna said.

She had, and in a general sense I approved of the plan. What I didn't approve of was how strong Wolf was. The more I analyzed the fight I didn't think he was just holding his own, he was winning.

I'd kept our heaviest hitters back at base to play defense. I wasn't sure if I still had that luxury, this time I opened a line to Hot Stuff.

"Want a chance to take a swing at Wolf?" I asked.

"You know I do," Hot Stuff said.

"Portal D7."

Wolf and Sylax were moving all around the battlefield but unlike with the golems my predictive algorithms were working just fine.

Hot Stuff appeared just on cue. The portal bringing her to just behind where Wolf stood after he had sent Sylax staggering back a few steps with a swipe of claws across her face. Hot Stuff's aura blazed and she flung herself at his back, wrapping her arms around him.

The air was already filled with the stench of burning flesh, although that was mostly from my drones. Hot Stuff could melt her way through meters of armor plating but Wolf wasn't dissolving into a puddle of steam and he slammed his head backwards to crash into Hot Stuff's face. It shattered her nose, blood spraying and she stumbled backwards releasing her grip. In an instant he was on her, claws digging into her abdomen before he bodily lifted her and flung her into a cluster of my drones.

They didn't fare as well, as hot as she was burning they were instantly vaporized with only a few whisps of smoke to mark their passage.

Hot Stuff would survive, the wound might have been a fatal one for most but I had upgraded her with accelerated healing in the past. It would take her time to recover but as long as I could get her clear of the battlefield she'd survive.

I upgraded a nearby drone with temperature resistance and had them carry her through the nearest portal.

Sylax was still down after hit hit but Wolf wasn't pressing the attack. He was moving towards Crystal, she transformed into a crystalline spider just before he arrived but that didn't deter him. A clawed hand reached out and ripped one of the spider's legs from its body before tearing free a second moments later.

Crytal wasn't yielding, but then she didn't have to. By the fourth leg she passed out and he threw her limp body to the ground. There was a shimmer in the air.

"Destroy them" Wolf roared and now the hybrids joined in against our forces. Crystal had fallen and her forces were now his.

"Get your people clear," Sylax said as she staggered back to her feet marching back towards Wolf.

She was going to buy us some time, we needed it. I signaled all forces, full retreat.

33

It was a rout, but at least for my forces it was an orderly one. My drones weren't exactly disposable, not truly. While I could regrow any one of them in time with their mind and memories intact it would take time and resources. Still I had to sacrifice many to hold the line while others withdrew, covering the retreat for my people and for Jade and hers as well.

I signaled Sylax when the retreat was finalized but she didn't join us. Perhaps she had other plans or perhaps she simply made the decision to go down fighting. It didn't matter, not at the moment.

A bold step that had seemed such a step towards victory even a short time ago had now ended in ruin instead. If Wolf had gained the ability to take on Sylax and win then the day was already effectively lost. I didn't have the power to stand up against that, but what had happened?

Anna was headed for the medbay and as soon as she arrived I opened a conference call with her and Mechos, "We need to discuss what just happened."

"Sylax remains alive and in control of city systems," Mechos said.

That was something I hadn't been able to confirm myself. It meant Wolf's control wasn't total. Sylax had the ability to teleport and had probably made her own retreat to somewhere secure.

"Wolf shouldn't be that strong. He wasn't before," Anna said.

That I agreed with. I had an idea as to why. If he did possess some sort of Mirror core as speculated then he had at different times mirrored powers. By mirroring Crystal's he'd helped to unlock his hybridization which had been kept away from him, mine had given him the ability to capture the powered and research them which was how he'd gotten Hot Stuff's power. Neither would describe his newfound punch.

"Sylax had to have had a crystal," I said.

It was the only thing that made sense, the only reason he could have become so powerful. While I could imbue people with powers they were usually weaker than that of the original crystal holder, it was the same for any Lieutenants of a crystal holder. Sylax had always been something of an anomaly anyways in being so incredibly strong.

"That makes sense. It was why she was so strong," Mechos said.

His ability to state the painfully obvious hadn't vanished in time.

"We even know what it was. Some sort of amplifier of other abilities. It allowed her to magnify the effects of the powers that Crystal gave her and when Wolf mirrored it allowed him to magnify his own," Anna said.

That was logical. Anna was always at her best when it came to figuring out how to take a foe down.

I tracked the movement of ships. Wolf was moving his airships and the supporting armies were moving on. They were headed for Jade's district.

I could see how this was playing out. With Crystal down they were going to now subdue the last elements of resistance in the city. Jade would be next, then me.

I turned all production towards explosives and began repairs of the Graven. I wasn't going down without a bang, and ideally wouldn't need to go down at all.

I could transfer my core to the ship if needed. I'd survived with an airship as a host before, I could do it again.

"Can he mirror more than one ability at a time?" I asked.

"There have been limited studies on mirror cores. They are fairly uncommon. Given this one is allowing him to fully replicate the power in question I'm guessing no," Anna said.

That made sense, my ability let me replicate a wide variety of powers but weaker than any of the original cores.

"Then he's trapped. He is now mirroring a power too strong for him to want to give it up," Mechos said.

Stuck being overwhelmingly powerful, as advantages for our side went it wasn't much of one.

"Right now he is moving on Jade's district. While powerful she is no match for what is coming and even those of your limited mental faculties can deduce he is headed here next. I have this conversation at all in the highly unlikely event either of you can think of a solution I can't," I said.

"There are the Righteous and their dampening powers. While it wouldn't completely cancel out the ability it might be enough to give Sylax the edge," Mechos said.

That was a possibility. We had rescued Tara. When killed the Righteous turned into a sort of goo for twenty-four hours before returning to life, that goo maintained their ability to dampen powered effects.

"We could also kill the host of the original power. Kill Sylax and her power is no longer there to be mirrored," Anna said.

An intriguing possibility, all the more so as it would allow me to claim the amplification crystal for myself.

"Even if that daunting task were possible it still leaves us facing an overwhelming force. Any better ideas," I said.

"Can one of your containment cells hold him?" Anna asked.

I'd been trying to figure that out myself. I had upgraded them to make that sort of thing even more powerful but Wolf like Sylax was now breaking all the rules. The sheer level of powered he was exhibiting was well beyond anything else I'd encountered.

My containment cells weren't absolutes. Hot Stuff had once managed to escape from one, Runner had pushed them to their limits. The stronger the powered individual the more I had to work to contain them.

"Much like your armor, I think containment against such overwhelming force might be a bit much to hope for," I said.

I issued Jade her instructions. Under my compulsion she couldn't help but to obey which means I got to set her defensive strategy and I wanted her whole focus on being to neutralize those airships. Everyone flying was a risk to the Graven and it appeared escape was going to be necessary.

34

It took less than six hours for Jade's final defenders to fall. Just before they did I ordered her to evacuate by way of the maintenance tunnels and to make her way to my district. That would initiate a timer on her district instead of her defeat which would have put her under Wolf's compulsion at once.

That was two big battles in a row and instead of coming right for me afterward the enemy took some time to regroup. That was good, I needed every moment that I could get to prepare.

The Graven was a small ship, far smaller than the Powerhungry had been. If I wanted to evacuate my people that meant I had to get creative. There was no way I'd be able to take all my drones for example, there simply wasn't room.

The ship had originally one service as a pirate vessel however and so the cargo hold was reasonably sized, with a bit of conversion it would do to house the refugees while leaving the original cabins for my team.

I also had a fair number of modifications I needed to make to the ship. I had a biological component as a primary part of my current design but the ship did not. Replacing the engine core with a bio-reactor was risky in the time we had but I felt that the added weapon power and shields that an increased power output would allow was worth it.

I also had a good supply of them given that I used variations for my bombs. A quick conversion and I was ready to test.

It was then that tragedy struck. I'd no more than gotten the Graven off the ground for the test flight of the new systems than the air around it began to warp and twist with dimensional warping. Nothing had prepared me for the attack and before I could even engage the dimensional drive to get away from it the ship was falling to the ground broken into its component pieces.

Fortunately I only lost three drones in the crash. If my core and everyone had been aboard that would have destroyed us, it was meant to destroy us.

Wolf had been a step ahead, again. Flicker must have been responsible, it certainly fit her powerset.

It was terrible news. I didn't see what choice I had now except to get the others away. We'd overrode the teleportation portals once to our advantage, we could do it again to get them away. It wouldn't save me but I didn't see a way to accomplish that now. I called everyone together to give them the news.

* * *

"Absolutely not," Anna said.

"Agreed," Tara said not to be outdone.

"You came for us. We will not abandon you," Mechos said.

The humans were as poor at reasoning as I'd come to expect. This sentimentality didn't do any of them any good.

"While I appreciate your plethora of empty feel good platitudes there isn't another way," I said.

"We get the Powerhungry back. We know where it is," Anna said.

"You don't know how hard it was to get you out. That slime is everywhere and the ship is falling apart," Hot Stuff said.

"Diplomacy. The Ooze neutralized Sylax and could do the same to Wolf. We offer it a deal," Mechos said.

Mechos really was the smartest of them. The idea had some merit, it also had some obvious flaws.

"And convince it not to take this city for itself? We allow it through a gate we're never getting rid of it. Do try to think with something other than your birdfeeder," I said.

"Did you just crack a dick joke?" Anna asked.

"I get lowbrow when facing my near-term extermination. On the plus side, you actually got a joke," I said.

"We hit the Wolf district with everything we have. We blow the hell out of it don't we snap those he has compelled back to good sense?" Hot Stuff said.

"Only if we defeat him. If we could defeat him we wouldn't be having this problem," I said.

"We steal one of his airships. We've done it before," Mechos said.

Again with the nearly good ideas. We had originally stolen the Powerhungry right out from Sylax.

"We were able to teleport to the command deck then, and even so we got lucky. I rate that as the best odds of all the poor options so far but the best remains for all of you mindless monkeys with poor survival instincts to get to safety," I said.

"We could call the Righteous and they could take the city. To neutralize a threat like both Wolf and Sylax pose they would come in force. They would now allow Emma to keep it, or her District, but they would see to her survival. We are allies," Tara said.

We were allies in the sense that I'd taken almost every opportunity I could to kill them, and they'd done the same with me. They claimed to be best that and have decided on a more businesslike relationship and so far Tara had been as good as her word. I didn't trust them.

"Intriguing, but I don't trust you," Anna said.

Anna did have reliable instincts.

"There really is no other way," I said.

"You aren't in charge Emma. I'm the Queen and always have been and you'll do what I say and you aren't dying today. This is what we do. Mechos, I'll need targetted portals to the Wolf district. Emma, we're going to be bombing the hell out of it. We aren't going to invade but I want them to think we are," Anna said.

That always had been our agreement. It wasn't an arrangement I'd choose to die for, it was one I could try to live for.

I could also appreciate subterfuge. We weren't very good at it, but with the explosives I'd been constructing I could make one monumental distraction.

"I can do that. If we move bombs to each of our portals I can make the destruction wide-spread," Mechos said.

"Good. Then I'm also going to need one to one of those airships. We're going to steal Emma a new home," Anna said.

Mechos nodded. I didn't think he'd be able to target them th at precisely but I could.

We had a plan, for all it was a bad one.

35

My bomb construction had come a long way since I'd first made them. Not only were my bio-energy cores more powerful, my bio-armor made them far more durable. Each was now surrounded in an armored shell that actually helped to contribute to the initial reaction due to the bio-matter used in their construction.

They would not come anywhere near the detonation of my original complex, unless I was feeling suicidal that much bio-matter would not be consumed. Still, the explosive yield should be impressive.

I had my drones funnel one to most of the portals lining the district. Mechos was already busy taking them over, walking from one to the next and resting his hands on the surface until they glowed as red as the circuitry beneath his flesh.

If Sylax had bothered to make an appearance she could have simply ordered them to do what we wished, but it seemed she was still in hiding after the drubbing Wolf had given her.

One portal was reserved for the strike team. Anna, Hot Stuff, Mechos, Ratticus, Tara, and Magpie had all gathered along with a hover sled full of supplies. Portable turrets, a bio-computer based on my central cores design to interface and take over the system. If all went to plan it would be able to interface with their systems and then allow me to transfer over.

Mechos was almost to the final portal when I began to detect anomalies in the city systems. The first local patter shifted from a red glow to a shimmering field of gold. It was no more than established than Firewolves began to pour out of it.

The second portal shifted to gold and mechs began to emerge.

A third went. They were falling faster than when Mechos had done it. It must be Crash, his ability to manipulate and control systems coming to the fore.

Anna and her team weren't aware. The portals lined the edge of the city and theirs was the farthest in the circuit. It would be the last corrupted.

Mechos knew of course, with his interface with the city he could hardly not. I opened a comm channel to him.

"I can try to stop them but I have to make physical contact with the portals," Mechos said breathlessly.

"You are unusually intelligent among humans for your ability to do basic mathematical functions. You know as well as I do there isn't time. Get to the last portal and open it to the coordinates I'm sending you," I said.

"Where is this?" Mechos asked already starting to run. A fourth portal fell to the enemy. He didn't have much time.

"Away. Step through after them and close it after you," I said.

I almost expected him to argue. Not today.

"Good luck Emma," Mechos said.

The Firewolves might be stronger individually but I still had the greatest ground army in this city. I wasn't sending them out, I was moving them to the most hardened structures in the city core.

By the time Mechos reached the last portal he was barely ahead of the wave. It was enough, the portal shimmered red and Anna led through the forces through. Mechos followed in their wake and the portal turned dark after them. Then gold.

That was what I was waiting for.

The newest wave of enemy reinforcements came through. I detonated my bombs.

In an instant I lost most of my district. Buildings were reduced to rubble and ruin and any maintenance staff remaining were dead.

My district wasn't the only one on fire. Across the city the explosive force had gone through the portals to the other side and blasted into enemy staging areas.

Even a few buildings in my central district had collapsed, but enough survived. I released my drones. There was nothing to fight, not yet.

Firewolves were made tough but not so touch as to survive my bombs, there was no regenerating from being atomized for them.

The same was not true of the force that come through one of the portals.

Ophelia and her people, of course.

"I always knew you were one crazy ass bitch Emma but holy fuck you suck," Ophelia said.

I answered with having one of my drones shooting her head off from long range with a sniper rifle. It shut her up for a good ten seconds while she grew a new one.

"I don't have a choice here. None of us have a choice here," Ophelia said.

It was true for the most part, it didn't mean I was going to go down without a fight.

Ophelia and her people were alone for half an hour, it took that long for new forces from Wolf's district to muster. Half an hour of me shooting them apart simply so they could put themselves together. They were never made to be offensive powerhouses. That stopped when fresh Firewolves arrived.

I'd expended my payload of bombs and while my drones fought valiantly they were simply being outpowered.

Wolf even made an appearance himself, he'd had to change out of his usual armor for one that looked not nearly as well fitting. He must have gotten caught in the blast, I took some satisfaction in that.

"Fighting to the end Emma? I respect that, but know I'm not going to kill you. What you did here, this was good. Smart. Cruel. You'll make a valuable member of the pack," Wolf said.

I would. If I'd thought to save a bomb for my core I might have seen that I wouldn't join him, that I couldn't be compelled but I hadn't.

I scanned my core for anything that might suffice and picked up an unexpected life-sign. It was one of the fatter of the Gobbles. I thought I'd gotten them all clear, I'd thought they were safe. I doubled Wolf would be as kind to it.

It crawled atop my core.

Transfer Option

A compatible biological matrix has been found for core transfer and an offer has been extended. Do you wish to initiate transfer?

I was compatible with a Gobble. Besides not even knowing such a thing was possible I was a bit offended. I was even more desperate.

I confirmed and my world went black.

36

When I regained consciousness I was in a maintenance corridor, or more accurately was in a Gobble who was in a maintenance corridor. I tried to access my remote systems and couldn't, nor for that matter did I seem to have any direct control of my host.

I did retain my analytical functions though, that must be as a result of my power crystal as I doubted that the Gobble had a brain complex enough to host me properly. I did have access to its senses and what I was detecting there was alarming.

The temperature was forty percent higher than it should be and the air had toxicity levels enough to pose health issues even in the short term. It must be from the bombs, I hadn't just destroyed the majority of my district but I'd wiped out a fair portion of the city.

Definitely the bombs, the Gobble turned a corner and a portion of the tunnel was caved in. Above flames could be glimpsed. Amid the burning debris there was also a system interface panel. I again tried to reach out my will to it to not effect.

The Gobble paused, its gaze focusing on the panel. Was it detecting my intentions? I focused on the panel again and tried to will it to interact.

From the Gobble's visual feed I saw a targeting interface appear and the panel blink.

I was not a tactical computer, although at the moment it seemed I was more one than not.

The Gobble advanced towards the panel and swatted at it with a paw. Upon contact I got a flash of connection.

Physical touch. Mechos had required it to be able to interface with the city systems, in some ways it made sense that I now needed to do the same in my new host.

It took several more attempts of me focusing my will on the Gobble for it to start to rub itself against the box, prolonging the contact long enough for me to actually accomplish something.

I accessed what remained of my surveillance network.

I wanted to find out what had happened to my core in my absence. It looked to be intact although the room had been breached, a notebook was set up with a number of wires running from it into my central processor.

That must be Crash, Wolf must have ordered him to try to find out where I was and to take control of me if he could. Good luck, I wasn't home. It did mean that I needed to keep this foray short, I couldn't be certain that I couldn't be backtracked into this host.

I also had to deal with the fact that staying here wasn't a plan, not really. Judging by what I'd seen with Crystal's core I had roughly seventy-two hours before my vacated district would register as officially conquered by Wolf and I'd fall to his compulsion. Jade had even less time.

Wolf could in theory seize the city now but with several of the district heads missing or in open rebellion that might cause him any sort of problems going forward. If he just waited three days we would all be under compulsion. He could summon all of us and compel our oaths of loyalty and then claim the city with a unified force behind him.

Wolf wouldn't be nearly so dangerous if he weren't also patient. The man made for a vexing enemy.

My bombs might have killed some of the other district heads but I didn't really have any way to check that without prolonged time in the system. It didn't really change the math even if I had, it was still less than three days until Wolf's total victory and all that stood in his way was me in the body of one overweight and rather purry Gobble.

It would have to be the central power core. While each district had it's own power generation so did the central city which Sylax controlled, that one powered the cities shields, the teleportation gates, and main defenses.

It would have more than enough power to destroy the city.

Wolf had to be stopped. Once I fell under his compulsion I'd tell him anything he asked of me, I'd reveal where I had sent Anna and the others and he'd finish what he'd started.

These maintenance corridors weren't well mapped in any of the city systems. The main tunnels between the districts were marked but there were countless subcorridors that didn't show in any records. It was likely to prevent sabotage just like I was planning.

That was fine, through the Gobble's eyes I could see the power conduits and flow regulators and could build a mental map of the cities power flow.

I simply had to let the Gobble wander for several hours through the tunnel, as it was more than happy to do, and I began to build a framework I could use to identify what I needed.

Then it was just a matter of feeding a few visual cues to the Gobble that made it think a rat was escaping through the necessary tunnels and we were giving chase.

Through the narrow winding corridors it was hours more travel, and we met a number of dead ends that required backing up and going around but soon we were approaching the chamber that housed the main reactor.

There was firelight and voices ahead. Familiar ones.

I urged the Gobble forward and through it's eyes saw a cluster of familiar faces sitting around a fire made from remains of several packing containers. Anna, Mechos, a hoversled of goods. All of the people who were supposed to be far away and very safe.

I could guess what had happened, it had to be Mechos. It could only be Mechos. With his awareness of the city system he'd know this place existed, and only he would have been able to feed its coordinates in to the teleportation portal.

He hadn't wanted to abandon me, and in doing so had probably doomed everyone. I needed a new plan.

37

"Oh hey. It's a Gobble," Anna said upon catching sight of me.

"Surprised it got here through all the tunnels," Mechos said.

Yeah, that wasn't easy. I also needed some way to communicate with them. The Gobble didn't exactly have the necessary vocal chords.

With a bit of prodding I got my host to nuzzle a nearby comm panel with it's face.

"You were supposed to get to safety. While I suppose it could be argued to be evolution at work for all of you to have zero in the way of survival instincts," I said through the comms.

"Defensive positions," Anna shouted grabbing a rifle and her and the others took up positions guarding the entrances to the chamber.

Right. They had to have figured I'd been compelled.

"Please. If I'd set my mind to killing all of you you'd hardly be a challenge. I managed my escape right before Wolf closed in. I'm in the Gobble," I said.

Anna considered that, her expression serious for only a minute before she laughed. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"A biological host? Can Emma do that?" Mechos asked.

"Why not, these days. It shouldn't have the potential to effectively hold her but I've hosted her on a notebook before," Anna said.

"I don't have much in the way of control," I said.

"Problems of being hosted in something with its own sense of conciseness, however rudimentary," Mechos said moving over to the Gobble to study it.

"Don't move me. I need physical contact for the systems link," I said.

Anna gave Mechos a look.

"On it," Mechos said moving towards the hover sled of supplies. "I should be able to rig up a wireless transmitter in a collar. Connect it to a systems interface here and you should have both access and mobility."

It was a good idea. I hadn't through of it. Perhaps I was limited here in this host.

"I came to destabilize the core. Do you have an exit?" I asked.

"No teleportation portals down here. I was hoping we'd be able to use the command and control interfaces down here to help you in the fight but everything happened too quickly," Mechos said.

"At this point we've got less than sixty-four hours before Wolf officially conquers my district and I fall under his compulsion. We need to get all of you out of here and I'll be certain to take him with me," I said.

Anna held up a hand, "That isn't happening Emma. Work on your own survival-instinct and come up with a different plan."

That was turning the tables.

"We worked on different plans. None of them were satisfactory. Nothing has changed," I said.

"Sure it has. We're more desperate now. What is the best of the ones we have left?" Anna asked.

We were more desperate now. Without the Wolf literally about to invade we also had more time.

"You can find Sylax," Magpie said, walking over to join the conversation. "I've even less love for the woman than any of you but she is good at killing."

It was good advice, perhaps the best advice. While Sylax had lost round one she was without question the heaviest hitter we could possibly recruit. Round one had been a bit close to a fair fight because we'd never assumed anything else would be required.

"Perhaps some hint of wisdom does come with great age. Do we have any ideas where she went?" I asked.

"Sylax has a lot of secret rooms in her castle. Little places filled with horrors. If she felt she had to go to ground she probably wound have picked one of them. The place is the seat of her power," Anna said.

"That isn't exactly a help," Mechos said.

"So make it helpful" Anna said giving him a long look.

"Focus on why the Wolves haven't found her yet," Magpie said.

Again Magpie said something useful. The Wolves most likely did have an excellent sense of smell and should have been able to track her. If they weren't it meant she had to be somewhere that had a fully self contained ventilation system.

Finding her directly might be nearly impossible, finding what was hiding her could well be within our capabilities.

"I can build a scanner into the collar as well that might help," Mechos said.

"You want to send Emma?" Anna asked.

"The tunnels between here are there aren't even full maintenance tunnels in places. A human wouldn't make it through but a Gobble might," Mechos said.

"I'll go then. I want all of you to see if you can gain control of the cities teleportation gates," I said.

"What are you thinking?" Anna asked.

"I'm thinking that if this doesn't work our next best of all the horrible plans is staging an enemy invasion of this city. We unleash a war and hope that in the chaos we gain some advantage," I said.

"Knock down any of the district heads a bit and we can take them. We burn a few of them all up and Wolf wouldn't have his majority," Hot Stuff said.

"But we then have to deal with an invading army," Mechos said.

He was usually smarter than this.

"Not if you are in control of the gates. We allow in just enough and then regulate then cut the flow," I said.

Mechos thought about this and nodded.

"Or you just let in the Righteous. I know you don't like the plan but it really is the best chance for you to get everyone you care about out of this alive," Tara said.

Given I'd been thinking about blowing the entire city to fragments a short time ago it was worth considering.

It would mean defeat though, and letting yet another force I largely considered to be an enemy have this city.

I wanted it for myself. In a pinch I'd settle for someone I somewhat trusted, such as Crystal, having control but the Righteous were bottomed out on the trust meter.

38

The power core was located beneath the central district, so you would think it would have been a straightforward trip to get to Sylax's castle. It wasn't. The tunnels were winding and unpredictable and matters weren't helped by the tendency of my host to get distracted and go bounding off in unpredictable directions.

Of course it was when I finally arrived that things really got dangerous.

The last of Sylax's defenses had been neutralized but with her still on the lose Wolf wasn't taking any chances and that meant his forces were everywhere. While Sylax might have tucked herself away into a room with closed ventilation to hide her scent I didn't have that luxury and was in a host that would seem a quick and delicious snack.

It meant that I really had to keep on the move. Fortunately, my host fully agreed on that score. They didn't want to get eaten any more than I did.

It was a challenge to figure out where Sylax would have a saferoom. While normally logic would dictate that it would be close to her quarters, Sylax could teleport. Even if a threat happened while she was in her sleep with a thought the moment she snapped awake she'd be able to move herself somewhere more secure.

I thought it likely that saferoom would actually be located near the control center. I was experiencing first hand how inconvenient it was to be cut off from my systems.

I steered the Gobble through the airducts and eventually reached the main control room.

Sylax's paradigm ruled here, there were magical interfaces carved with runes in addition to large display screens and computers. There was also a familiar figure tapping away at the consoles. Crash.

Wolf must have actually conquered his district in secret, there is no other way Wolf would trust him this much if he weren't under some form of compulsion. Crash was tapping away at the keys intently and completely preoccupied. The question was why.

At this point things in the city should largely be settled. While finding me and Jade might be a priority Crash wouldn't need access to these systems for that.

I still needed to find Sylax but it was worth waiting a bit to figure out what he was up to. From the air vent I could view the screen, and that meant with some time I could figure it out.

I had the Gobble settle down and get comfortable while I watched.

Crash was trying to override the timers. Given the control I'd already seen him show over some of the cities systems that seemed it might be within his power. It would also give Wolf an immediate victory if he were to succeed. Sylax had to wait.

What I needed to figure out is what I could do about it. Crash wouldn't be winning many fights but neither would I while contained with this body.

Was that really true though. I hadn't even tried to upgrade my host, but if I still had access to my stockpile of resource points I should be able to do quite a bit.

I tried to pull up a host menu.

Madam Gobbles

Age: 8 Days

Physical Stats

Values out of 25

5 is the Gobble Average

Cuteness: 6

Agility: 4

Strength: 5

Endurance: 5

Intelligence: 9

Special Traits

Wrong Place Right Time

Somehow you will always be in exactly the wrong place at exactly the right moment to cause the most trouble

Lucky

You stay one step ahead of disaster. Somehow.

Madam Gobbles was a stupid name, but my host wasn't stupid at at all according to what I was seeing. So far as Gobbles went they were a genius, although I could make them a good bit more intelligent yet.

On my human drones Intelligence wasn't an option. I wondered if this was something with the Gobble itself or because I was actually inside the host when doing the upgrade.

I also could upgrade values far higher than I could with a human. I wasn't sure how Gobble values would map to human, but given the extensive cost it looked like some high level upgrades would have they might actually be comparable.

I eased Strength, Agility, Intelligence and Endurance up to fifteen and added accelerated healing, teleportation, and bioarmor.

While the destructive value of something like the fire matrix would have been valuable, it also would have taken away all my potential for stealth.

Once the uprades were done it was time to strike. It was far easier to get the Gobble to do what I wanted now, I think because of the upgraded intelligence. I had her back all the way up in the vent and then charge forward at full speed even as I engaged Bioarmor.

Perhaps the values were equivalent to human afterall for the vent was forcefully flung across the room.

Crash looked up startled, "What the.."

Looking up was a mistake. A bundle of armored clawed Gobble landed on his face. Flailing backwards in his chair he fell to the floor and my host went with him. I was prepared to shred him into non existence but the fall caused his him to smack his head with a loud thud and rendered the man unconsciouses.

I could kill him. Perhaps I should kill him but if was compelled then really none of this was his doing. His ability to subvert complex systems was also a valuable ability, one I'd hate to see loss.

Perhaps it wasn't even necessary. I turned loose Madam Gobbles on the room. With her armored coating and super-Gobble strength the cabling of the computers stood little chance. Within ten minutes there was not a function system in the room, smoke openly poured from several panels.

It could be repaired, but I got the impression that Crash was a software and not a hardware kind of guy. This would be beyond him, and while Wolf had technicians it would take them time.

I headed back for the vent, back on my quest.

39

My ability to actually do some form of sabotage while in this form raised all new kinds of possibilities.

I was working to find Sylax, but perhaps I didn't need to. If I was right and she had located her saferoom somewhere where she would still have access to her camera feeds and systems then it would be easier my far to have her find me.

I just needed to do something dramatic enough that it would get her attention.

With a Castle full of werewolves on fire I even had an idea just what I might be able to do about it. In a way my past struggles with Hot Stuff and her followers were a good thing because they left me well prepared on how to fight those with a Fire Matrix.

There were two techniques in the past I'd used to great advantage and they both came down to a matter of oxygen. Take too much away and their flames would die, keep it away and they would quickly become unconsciouses as well, keep it away even longer and the cells in their body would start shutting down. The cells of someone with a fire matrix active were especially oxygen dependent.

The other option was too much oxygen. Flood them with it and they burned too hot and too bright, enough that it would do damage to their cells and make a ruin of their surroundings as well.

Of the two I thought the later was more likely to overwhelm their accelerated healing. That meant that I needed to find the source of the buildings oxygen supply. Fortunately given that my Gobble had been crawling through the ventilation ducks I already had a good idea where that might be.

The atmospheric systems of a building like this had to be varied and adaptable given the wide range of attributes the powered had. The main room for ventilation actually turned out to have over half a dozen tanks of different atmospheric gases and the requisite generators to produce more.

There was also the control panel that allowed the whole thing to operate. I wasn't Mechos and I didn't have nearly the control over city systems that he did. Still, that just meant that what he could do quickly would take me some time.

I thought that my best option would be to close the external vents for a time while I built up a pressurized supply of oxygen in the ducts. Given how quickly the Wolves burned through the stuff I wouldn't have much time, but even several minutes should let me build up a high concentration. Then I could open all the vents at once and release a mostly pure supply into the building.

I say mostly because I thought that I could probably do even better. The backup tanks had a wide variety of chemicals and I thought I could do better than just a straightforward burn. I could accelerate things even further with the right mixture.

It took me more hours I didn't really have. It was time enough for Crash to regain consciousness and for the Wolves to begin a search of the building. Fortunately they were focusing near the control hub and expanding outward from there, I had time enough to get done what I needed to do.

Once the sequence had been programmed I initiated. It was a long five minutes for the desired pressure to build in the vents.

The other part of this plan was just how to survive what I was doing. The plan was to flood the chamber I was in with inert gasses and to follow up the oxygen blast with a flood of them as well. It should stop me from getting any blast backward. I'd suffocate, a bit, but I could still maintain some oxygen content in my own air.

On schedule the next part of the program triggered and the vents around the building opened.

The castle actually trembled, blasts of super heated flames running through the corridors as Wolves screamed and burned as the heat became too much even for them.

I couldn't be sure any of them would stay dead but I thought many would. At the very least I'd made their day very memorable.

It worked exactly as planned. There was a brief flicker and I suddenly found myself being picked up by the scruff of my neck and raised to eye level of a peering Sylax.

I'd been teleported. We were in a room that really looked much like the control center I'd found earlier, except the screens here still all functioned.

"Emma? You look ridiculous. On the plus side I get to do this," Sylax said as she reached up with her fingers to break one of my paws before flinging me against a wall. Bones snapped. I was glad I'd given my host accelerated healing, even with it she was in a lot of pain.

I opened a connection on the console.

"Looking for you? You're obviously antsy from being locked up as you're even more a monster than usual," I said.

I rather appreciated that I could say mean things about Sylax and keep them completely true. There were virtues to knowing someone truly awful, it put things in perspective.

"My castle has been taken by that brute and all your clever plans didn't help. Crystal is working for them now. That is a problem for me," Sylax said.

"Can she take your powers back?" I asked.

"No, it isn't quite that simple but she can give them a full accounting of everything that I can do. It is knowledge I'd prefer not be out there," Sylax said.

I could understand that.

"We're planning an invasion through the portal gates. When we do you'll have your chance to hit Wolf, take him by surprise this time," I said.

Sylax snorted dismissively, "That is your new scheme? It is even worse than the old one."

I didn't disagree.

"If you are capable of anything besides cruelty and whining do feel free to make a better suggestion," I said.

Sylax stared at my host for a long moment and then a cruel smile tugged at the corner of her lips. Sylax never looked so fearsome as when she looked happy. "Oh I've got a plan. How about you move out of the slums and into a palace."

40

Could Sylax actually be suggesting what I thought she was suggesting?

What else could it be. It was an offer to exchange my current cost for her.

"I'm quite certain I have no desire to live inside your head. That is less palace and more creepy haunted sanitarium," I said.

"Oh I could hurt you until you say yes," Sylax said before beaming a smile, "Why I will hurt you until you say yes but it doesn't have to all be broken bones and screaming. You want to defeat Wolf as much as I do."

I did.

"We suspect that Wolf became so powerful because he began to mirror you. We think that you have some sort of amplification core. Do you?" I asked.

"You figured that out," Sylax said making an expression of distaste. "Unfair of him to turn my own tricks against me. A powerful thing to combine with an ally with an upgrade crystal."

"It makes sense out of what we witnessed. If I move on will it affect me as well?" I asked.

"That is the question isn't it. I believe so. I think it will boost both of our powers and then you can give me tricks that Wolf has never dreamed of," Sylax said.

Perhaps I could, and if it worked Sylax would be reluctant to let me go.

This woman craved anything which gave her more power. I was wary about that, with good cause, but I also didn't see where I choice but to agree. Sylax was right, she could hurt my current host until I agreed and with a clock ticking down this really might just make her strong enough.

"If it is even possible. I hadn't known it was until I came into this Gobble," I said.

Transfer Option

A compatible biological matrix has been found for core transfer and an offer has been extended. Do you wish to initiate transfer?

Well that was that. I gave my current host instructions to run and hide as soon as I was out. I didn't trust in Sylax not to torture it to death simply out of boredom. Then I triggered the transfer.

If I'd felt a bit slow and dimwitted when I first transferred into the Gobble it was the opposite sensation going into Sylax. The sensation of power and intellect was intoxicating.

Her senses were well beyond what those of ordinary humans should have been. I was picking up colors and textures when she focused as if I were using a magnifier on my cameras. The sense of coiled power in even the most basic maneuvers were immense.

I tried to pull up her stats but only got an empty buzzing when doing so.

"I think not Emma," Sylax thought.

We didn't need to communicate verbally, this was useful, and alarming.

"If you want me to be able to upgrade you I need to see what you have," I thought.

"My secrets are mine. What can you do for me?"

If she wasn't going to show me hers I wasn't inclined to show her mine, at least not anything that she wasn't already aware of. Really I thought that a simple combination of two abilities might be enough, offensively she was already quite strong enough on her own. Where she'd failed was in Wolf really being able to not just hurt her, but to recovery faster than her.

"I can give you the ability to generate your own armor plating and to quickly heal from damage. If these abilities are boosted by your core the combination should make you virtually invulnerable to anything that he can throw at you," I thought.

I'd always thought she was invulnerable already but her earlier fight with Wolf had made me rethink that. The woman I saw him hurt couldn't have survived my bombs at close range. What I at the time thought had been invincibility had to be her teleporting away just in time.

I willed the upgrades into place and felt that they seemed to click. I'd done something, at least.

"The armor has a limited use. Save it for a big fight," I thought

"Fine," Sylax said as she drew one arm back an delivered a savage punch upwards at her own jaw. Through her I heard the brunch of bone and felt a moment of dizzied disorientation that quickly faded. Sylax waggled her jaw that had already healed. I'd done enough studies of Ophelia to know how soon she would have healed that injury. I think Sylax had actually beaten it.

Unlike the Gobble she was also intimately linked and connected to the city systems as its ruler. I was able to start pulling surveillance and movement information far superior to anything I had in my own district. Doing much with it was a bit of a problem but I could at least make it useful for Sylax.

In one corner of her vision I constructed an overlay of the castle and marked on it those Wolf guards who were still up and on their feet after my explosive display. I'd done a lot to thin their numbers but reinforcements were arriving through the bottom level already.

Wolf wasn't going to let this castle go unguarded, it was too important for his plans and he knew that we had to be here somewhere.

"A tactical display. I like it. Can you provide targeting information as well in battle?" Sylax asked.

It was nice to work with someone so focused on the mission, even if she was insane.

"I can. I'm finding markers all throughout the system indicating that Wolf had taken up residence in his own district and intends to remain there until timers run out and he has total control of the district heads. A bit many for them to be natural," I thought to Sylax.

"Interesting. The Wolf lays a trap then. We'll spring it then when your associates launch their diversion?" Sylax said.

That was the plan. Wolf wanted to finish things but he couldn't expect Sylax and her new upgrades.

41

Mechos did his part exactly on schedule. What the man lacked in fighting ability he did make up for in technical expertise. On cue several of the gates opened and enemy forces tumbled through.

It wasn't a transit they appeared to have expected, he must have opened the other end of the portals directly beneath enemy staging areas. I wondered where he'd managed to get the coordinates. Regardless the enemies did not stay dazed and confused for long. Clockwork drones took to the air, blades whirling away.

The response was quick. I gave this to Wolf, he took the defense of this city seriously and seemed to always have a plan even for unlikely scenarios. Defenders were moving to join with the enemy in such numbers Mechos had to open several new portals just to keep the fighting competitive.

"We're a go," I thought to Sylax.

"About time," Sylax said and the world around us blinked away as she teleported. Rather than taking us directly to the Wolf's district we materialized back in her castle near on one of the upper floors and she put a fist through the skull of a Werewolf before he could even make a startled sound.

"Is now really the time for housecleaning?" I asked.

"I hate having my home invaded and we need the practice together. Bring me up a tactical overlay and let's shed some blood," Sylax said.

I updated the map removing the just killed wolf soldier and highlighted the next. Sylax ran instead of teleported to this one, driving a fist into a weak spot I indicated in its armor and driving a fist through so that she could tear out the spine.

"While I realize you have the reputation as a complete madwoman to maintain, you don't have to actually kill each one in as unnecessarily grisly a manner as possible."

Sylax gave her answer by gouging out the next ones eyes before tightening her grip so she could wrench the head free.

"When you kill enough it doesn't just become about the count anymore. It is all about the style," Sylax said.

All was going well within the castle but not so much elsewhere. A group of the invading drones had snuck past the enemy defenders and were making their way towards a communications tower. Reaching it would allow them to broadcast the cities position which was something we very much needed to avoid.

I opened a line to Anna.

"Emma, I see the collar is working," Anna said.

"Actually I'm riding around in Sylax now and making use of her uplink. We've got a group of drones heading for a comm tower," I said.

"You're what. No, later. Give me a location and we'll intercept," Anna said.

"Tower B173"

"On it. Get out of her the first chance you get. She's dangerous," Anna said.

I was well aware. Sylax had quite literally torn the arms off of three more werewolves while we'd been talking.

I killed the comm link with Anna.

"We're getting near the groundfloor. Not Wolves this time, he must be running out of soldiers. Mechs and golems," I said to Sylax.

Sylax blinked us out and we teleported into the middle of a group of mechs standing duty in the large atrium that made the main hall. They were ready for us, Sylax took a beam cannon shot directly to the face that burned away her eyes in an instant.

I could counter for that. I still had the visual data left behind as well as what her other senses were still picking up. Between them I quickly built a reconstruction of the scene and fed it into her visual cortex as a replacement feed. I even marked the vulnerable spots on the mechs.

It was good that I did. We were jostled by bursts of machine gun fire, slashed with by beam weapons, even stabbed through with a beam sword at one point.

It was troubling. I'd seen Sylax fight before, and she was weaker than she should have been. With the healing I'd given her we were winning this fight but it shouldn't have even been a contest. I could only think of one explanation, Syalx had lied to me. Her powers from Crystal might not be gone but they were weakened and fading still more as time went on.

It was no wonder she had been so insistent on this plan, without it she wouldn't have stood a chance.

Sylax put her fist through the fuel tank of a mech before lifting it bodily and throwing it into the flamethrower jet of another. Both went up in a fireball that sent us sailing across the room to crash against a wall.

Ruined flesh was already knitting together as what would have been fatal injuries took seconds to fully recover from.

"As delightful as it is to be a part of you being burned alive, do you mind telling me what is really going on?" I asked.

"We're kicking ass. A new experience for you?" Sylax asked.

"We should be. Instead I might as well riding along in an Ophelia with a touch of super strength. They are getting to you. How?" I asked.

Sylax was a bit slow to answer as a wire golem had unspooled to surround her body in copper string that contracted to cut flesh. It tore her apart before she got a good grip on a bit of wire to wrench the entire assemblage apart.

"I don't know. I didn't like that Crystal shouldn't be able to sever her power to me but I started to get weaker during the first fight with Wolf. Since then it only keeps getting worse. I think it must be Crash," Sylax said.

Crash could subvert complex systems. I knew that he had played havoc with mine before, perhaps Crystal and her upgrades were something he could influence.

"So all of your powers from her are weakening?" I asked.

"Every last one. I didn't think you'd agree to this if you knew," Sylax said.

She was right, but I was along for the ride now.

42

Sylax set out for Wolf's district. As we were traveling from the central city security was light, our distraction was continuing to do just that and his forces had relocated to fight at the edges of the city where the teleportation gates were located.

Besides being few in number they were largely nonupgraded. Soldiers in medium army with heavy rifles. It only made them a little less dangerous, a weakened Sylax was easy to tear in half with a burst of machine gun fore for all that she put herselves together quickly afterward.

Fortunately, her strength seemed to be one of the abilities that was sticking with her the most. I had my theories as to why. Wolf was as much one of Crystal's projects as Sylax was and he seemed excessively strong just as she was. Crash was probably focusing on weakening the abilities Wolf and Sylax didn't share and so things like her incredible durability were lessened while her strength remained mostly intact.

Sylax finished snapping a rifle in half before driving it's barrel deep into a soldier's throat to send him staggering backwards gushing blood.

"This is getting boring," Sylax said.

"Well if it makes you feel any better he'll have his very best guarding the core," I said.

"Oh good. They'll be fun," Sylax said.

Perhaps she'd forgotten just how badly she'd gotten beaten last time or perhaps there was more to it. I think she was actually enjoying things being a challenge again. I think she was enjoying actually getting hurt instead of just being the one doing the hurting.

An armored vehicle pulled to a stop before us and a top mounted beam cannon blasted a hole through our chest. Sylax responded by ripping free the engine block and tearing the gun from the vehicle with a well-placed throw.

The center of the district was a squat fortification surrounded by gun towers equipped with heavier firepower by far than anything we'd faced so far. I was a bit envious really, those were what I'd needed in my district to bring down airships.

"This isn't going to be easy. You've taken a lot of hits so far and done well but I don't think you should chance those," I said.

I brought up technical specifications on the guns in question to her visual display.

"Beam, kinetic, power dampening, explosive cannons. Wolf does try so very hard doesn't he. A shame he had to be such a bad puppy. I could use such a tactical mind working for me," Sylax said.

I wish she'd stop a bit with the admiring and focus a bit more on the killing.

"He wanted to be prepared for any thought. They're just as diverse in their armoring. Independent power supplies so cutting off their flow from the district power supply won't do it," I said.

Sylax narrowed her eyes at the towers, "I'm faster than they are."

"I haven't been seeing it," I said.

"I've been testing your healing ability. Pick me a target," Sylax said.

The beam tower was probably the most dangerous. I highlighted it in her visual display and she began to run. It wasn't a lie, she had been holding back until now. A backflip sent her arching over the beam that lashed out towards the ground where she had just been and she drove a fist deep into the tower as she crashed against it. A second leap further up the surface and again she drove her fist into the surface to anchor herself.

A move to the side and a drop of about ten feet before she anchored herself was needed as a second tower opened fire on us, this time with bullets. They weren't as fast as we were and Sylax was already climbing up the side of the tower to the gun at the top. Once there she gripped it between both hands prepared to wrench it free.

"Hold," I said. Wolf's security protocols were good but I was better and now that I had direct access I was cutting through them.

I targeted one of the other towers and opened fire. The beam dispelled harmlessly, they must have designed it to resist the specific wavelengths used.

"That was underwhelming," Sylax said.

"I'd like to see you do better," I said.

Sylax resumed her efforts to wrench the gun emplacement free. It fixed her position and the stream of bullets finally caught up to us and tore us apart.

Her body started to reassemble itself on the ground. "Well I'm annoyed." Sylax said.

I wasn't much enjoying the whole thing myself. I did however have a solution. I altered the beam nexus just enough as to change the wavelength. The cannon shouldn't be nearly as efficient now but then I didn't need it to be.

I had the tower open fire once again and this time the kinetic cannon melted under the impact. Twice more I fired and neutralized the remaining towers.

"Not bad," Sylax said.

I was proud of it myself.

It looked like Anna and her team had handled the attempt to reach the comm tower in the meantime although they'd had to repurpose the tower itself to bombard the drones with microwaves. Well, I couldn't argue with results.

Sylax went brute force for the main doors of the bunker, punching out the locks and wrenching them aside to fling them into the distance.

"Tome to kick a puppy," Sylax staid stepping through into the darkness beyond. "Wolf! I'm here for you."

Lights lit up to reveal the chamber beyond. It was unoccupied except for a single figure.

I recognized him at once. Baron Wolfson. He had ran my tactical divison for a time on the Powerhungry, the weaker and far more pathetic son of James Wolf.

It looked as if he'd had some upgrades, his body sporting a new cybernetic arm and what looked like a number of technological implants.

"My father is out. I'm sure you understand why. I think you'll find this puppy kicks back," Wolfson said.

If Wolf wasn't in his district even seizing the core wouldn't count. There was no point to this battle but I didn't think Sylax would care.

43

Wolfson musculature was well exaggerated over those of standard humanity. It looked as if he had undergone a lesser version of the Werewolf transformation. The upgrades he'd received were a complete unknown, the closest that I'd seen to them were the ones Mechos had used to have in both himself and his followers.

Perhaps that was possible, the upgrade core that Mechos used to have had been removed from him in some capacity after he had been abducted. While we recovered him we never found what had happened to the core itself.

Sylax crossed the distance to Wolfson at a run and delivered an uppercut to his jaw with her full strength. It should have been enough to sever his head clear from his body but instead it sent us flying across the room. Even I was dazed from the blowback, it was as if every nerve in her body had been set to fire pain impulses all at once. Sylax was strong but there were limits.

Sylax collapsed to the ground and Wolfson moved the few steps to deliver a sharp kick to her ribs. His strength wasn't as pronounced as hers, it was enough to break a few ribs but that wasn't anything that didn't heal almost instantly. The nerve disruption was something else entirely, accelerated healing didn't help there.

"You're tougher than dad said you'd be," Wolfson said as he walked around where Sylax twitched to deliver another kick to her face. "He thought he'd taken away all your best tricks."

Through the waves of agony it was difficult for even me to think but I had to. How would Wolf have prepared his son for this encounter. Knowing that Sylax liked to get up close and punch he'd prepared to counter those close melee attacks, the pain field was just a good idea against any organic.

I could give Sylax more abilities but frankly I didn't want to do that. Every new one I gave her would ultimately make her more powerful and I just didn't want that to happen. I didn't see a way around it. I opened a comm channel to Anna.

"We took out the tower. How is Sylax doing?" Anna asked.

"Losing. I know, her record in fights is starting to look like your record of successful dates," I said.

"Wolf is that strong?" Anna asked.

"Wolfson, actually. I believe he is specifically empowered against her abilities which means we could use some backup right about now," I said.

"We're near gateway. Send me coordinates and I'll contact Mechos," Anna said.

That would do. With a gateway they'd be able to get here in a hurry, not that my host was actually in any danger right now.

Sylax fought through the pain enough to work up to another punch, this one at his groin. It didn't any more successfully than the last and she cried out in agony as a fresh wave of agony swept through her nerves.

"A groinshot? Really?" Wolfson asked as he kicked her in the face once more. "Why don't you stay hurt."

He hadn't figured out where she was getting her accelerated healing from. That was good. I was actually learning quite a bit from being in Sylax, more than she knew.

My testing labyrinths were really all about exposing subjects to adverse and challenging conditions and see how they handled them with their abilities. By observing first hand what they went through and how they faced obstacles I could gain insight on their abilities.

Sylax only truly had on that I was interested in and it was just about to tick over. A moment later I got a gratifying prompt.

Research Menu

"Sylax"

Subject is the host to an amplification core that allows for the amplification of abilities gained by other means.

You have analyzed the subject utilizing their abilities and have unlocked one of the following tow upgrades.

Faster, Better, Stronger

All of your forces are better than they were. Where random chance is involved in assigning attributes they will fall in the top 20% of projected outcomes.

Ultimate Abilities

Your powered agents now have access to an ultimate ability. These are limited in duration and extremely slow to recharge but incredibly powerful.

My usual approach when choosing between choices like this was to take whatever would offer me more versatility and more consistent power. Flashy choices were very flashy but I had time and I had numbers. At least, I usually had time and I usually had numbers. Right now I very much seemed outgunned and out-powered and that changed my choice around. I selected the ultimate ability.

Wolfson meanwhile had gotten bored with kicking Sylax around and had opened a comm.

"Dad. Uh, she isn't dying. I mean I can kick her around but she just heals back. Yeah, yeah she is disabled. Oh, ok. I can do that," Wolfson said. I was only picking up one side of the conversation but I could guess what it involved.

Disconnecting the line Wolfson came back to kneel beside Sylax. "Ok, so this is what we're going to do. Dad doesn't know why you aren't dying but he worked out this whole trick to deal with Ophelia that involved submerging her in a bath of molten metal. So you just need to sit there and cry until we get rid of you."

It was a good idea. The specialized grinder I'd come up with to deal with Ohelia was mostly so I could harvest her Biomatter as well as neutralizing her. If not caring about the resources a liquid metal bath was a wonderful choice for a healer.

Behind Wolfson a portal flickered into life and through it stepped Anna, Hot Stuff, Tara, and Ratticus.

Wolfson turned to face them and Anna shot him in the face with a shotgun at close range. It didn't phase him any more than Sylax's punches had.

"I've got this. Your dads a real dick kid," Hot Stuff stepping forward. Wolfson covered his eyes as the blast of intense heat him. I'd expected the energy attack to do something but he appeared unphased.

"Tell me about it," Wolfson said before hitting the comm, "Scenario Beta."

"Reinforcements inbound," said a voice over the comm.

Through Sylax I still had access to the city systems. Airships were jumping in. Four of them overhead.

Why did every single thing Wolf did have to be a trap.

44

Sylax was still gripped by pain but that didn't seem to have hit Hot Stuff or any of the others. That meant that the nerve disruption was probably a targeted effect generated by one of the implants. I had no way to communicate directly with Hot Stuff so communicated my plan to Anna via a comm burst.

The way to deal with Wolfson seemed straightforward enough, it was more or less his own idea after all. Hot Stuff stepped behind him and wrapped her arms around him as she kicked her temperature up to it's upper level.

At that heat the stone floor beneath couldn't remain a solid and she began to sink taking Wolfson with her. Before the liquid metal could reach her skin it would vaporize, but that just meant she had to operate quickly.

It didn't take long for her to be walking her way out of that pit of molten stone, Wolfson nowhere in sight beneath its surface. I didn't know if Wolfson was alive or dead, but for the moment he was most completely out of commission.

The pain gripping Sylax stopped and she pushed herself back up to her feet giving a tiny nod to Hot Stuff,

The ships above were releasing shuttles. I was at this point well familiar with Wolf's fleet, I'd helped to destroy a fair bit of it after all. These ships were new.

I sent the details to Sylax's visual overlay.

"Wolf's reinforcements. I don't recognize the vessels," Sylax said.

"He was expecting to take the city. Would he have already allied himself with a new power?" Anna asked.

I thought we already had the answer to that. Wolfson's unusual upgrades and now these new ships gave proof that he had. What I didn't understand was why. Wolf had proved himself to be a capable, intelligent enemy almost always a few steps ahead of us. If he entered into negotiations with a foreign power for the cities aid after taking the city he would be in a far stronger position than doing so before it had fallen.

That might be a position to take if he were already in a position of weakness, but despite the damage I and others had managed to do to him he'd been in a dominant position quickly after Sylax's disappearance.

More alarming still if he had revealed the position of this city we were now far more vulnerable to attack. These ships needed to be neutralized, quickly.

"Or he was already aligned with one. I can take one of the ships. Are you capable of handling one of the others?" Sylax asked.

Anna lacked any sort of visual upgrade, she had to lean out the doors to look up at the sky. "Three others. We've got them."

Sylax arched a brow but didn't address Anna's confidence. Instead the world dimmed around us as we teleported.

The bridge of the ship was a majestic affair, stations sporting large screens showing scientific and tactical scanners from the ground below.

"Teleportation trace from below," said one of the ships bridge officers that looked like nothing so much as a giant humanoid tree. They were all giant humanoid trees.

"Track it," said the tree that must have been the captain.

"Let me help you with that," Sylax said delivering a punch that sent the captain soaring across the room to crash into a display.

"Alert! Intruder on the bridge!" shouted another officer. Sylax picked up the Captain's chair and threw it at what would have been the head on a human being.

"Can you give me any sort of tactical data on where to hit these things?" Sylax asked.

I almost replied that I wasn't a botanist but of course, I am one. I'm every kind of scientist, I'm just that good.

Their design was quite unlike anything I'd seen before and I didn't have any real scanners to properly analyze. Still, a basic visual analysis could serve to identify joints and breaks in the bark.

I brought up a targeting overlay for Sylax who began to set about to slaughter with mad abandon. I didn't mind, I appreciated the chance to be present on their bridge where I could try to infiltrate their systems.

They were an interesting people people who called themselves the Paraxins. They were vassals of the Parali alliance which wasn't currently involved in any of the scholar wars. Interestingly they didn't have or utilize power crystals themselves, although they'd all formed a symbiotic relationship with a sort of powered moss.

This was neither here nor there. While interesting I needed to focus on what they knew. Fortunately, it wasn't much. They'd been ordered to assist Wolf who had sent his own people to active their jump engines for the journey. They didn't have the coordinates.

There wouldn't be more reinforcements if we could kill them and killing them was just what I had in mind. I brought up a diagram of the ship for Sylax and highlighted engineering.

If the first few murders had been clumsily done, Sylax was getting far more skilful by the time we made it down two decks. She had taken to snapping off a branch that I'm fairly sure served as their version of a sex organ and then driving it through a weakness in the trunk that was roughly equivalent to a nostril.

Engineering turned out to be field of flowers, spores fluttering in the breeze and forming tiny whirlwinds in the air.

"Tell me I am not seeing this. Tell me these pathetic creatures aren't trying to power an airship with plants," Sylax said.

"We're powered by crystals, I'm not sure we're in a place to judge," I said.

"I'm judging. I'm really really judging. How do I burn this place down?" Sylax asked.

I highlighted the third and eighth pipes running through the nearby wall. Sylax put her fist through each and gasses escaped. On ignition they burst into a geyser of flame that began to ignite the room.

45

When Sylax teleported us back to the ground it was just in time to see the ship starting to lurch unsteadily in the sky. It was a slower demise than was meeting two of the other airships which were in the process of plowing into each other.

Through the cities sensor array I could detect the powerful magnetic fields surrounding them and I quickly determined the source. Ratticus. Perhaps this was his ultimate ability coming into play, so powerful were the ripples of energy coming off him it was tough even to look at him.

Anna and Hot Stuff materialized a good minute afterward, the fourth ship beginning it's slump towards the ground.

"Well that was disappointingly quick. Can't anyone give us a decent fight," Sylax complained just before she was decapitated by a high caliber round.

When it regrew she was looking for the source of the shot. Those ships weren't the only reinforcements that had been called.

The Professor was there, riding atop a Tyrannosaur that looked to have almost as many cybernetic upgrades as Wolfson had. Zora had shown up too, flanked by a force in tight fitting armor sporting submachine guns. Crash was present as well, although his army of mecha had been considerably reducted by the recent fighting. Flicker was present with her wire golems and Ophelia was there flanked by her army of townspeople.

It was a lot and if they all used their abilities to help each other they were bringing a lot of power to the fight.

"No man in charge? How disappointing," Sylax said as she cracked her knuckles.

"Then let me make your day. You've raised a lot of fuss looking for me but this isn't going to go your way," Wolf said stepping out from behind a a mecha. This time he was unaccompanied by any of his Wolves, perhaps we had finally whittled their numbers down too much.

I knew that in addition to these that had come out Wolf had also defeated and compelled Jade and Crystal. Their absence probably meant that he was planning something, Wolf was always planning something.

"Have you been watching me fight?" Sylax thought to me.

"You know I have, I've been giving you tactical information this whole time. Am I going to get to watch you run away now?"

"You're going to take over."

"While I approve of your belated desire to put someone competent in charge are you convinced now is the time?"

"We need to win Emma. The city and every district is in ruins and I cannot force the compulsion of any of them as I am the head of the city but you can."

I understood her thinking. There was a minor problem of location but if I could access Sylax's ability to teleport we could remedy that. I could defeat one of the district heads and then move them back to their own district to force their submission.

I'd been thinking Anna and the others might need to handle everyone else while we focused on Wolf, but in reality we'd need to do exactly the opposite.

I sent a condensed version of the plan to Anna and got her acknowledgment a moment later. She understood and agreed.

Crash would have to be the first target. If we were right about him dampening the abilities that Sylax was getting from Crystal then taking him out and forcing his submission could quickly restore her to full power.

Wolf might possibly be her equal then, but he wouldn't be her better.

"Let's do it," I thought to Sylax.

It was awkward fitting into her skin, like I didn't quite belong there. Settling into any of my drones had always been a very natural sensation but this was something different.

I moved to run towards Crash and felt my body being torn apart. Dimensional turbulence, it was a bit like walking into a meat grinder that I hadn't even been aware was there. Slices of me simply fading out of existence and then popping back into being in entirely the wrong spots.

Although the accelerated healing tried to compensate it was having trouble when not all parts of me were even on the same plan any longer. While my physical host might be having some difficulties mentally I was still functional and my access to the city systems intact. I'd used the teleportation gates to interact with Flicker's reality before, I just needed to do so again.

I opened a portal beneath Sylax's feet and we fell through, my pieces reorienting and realigning as we went. I lingered briefly in Flicker's dimension, long enough to punch her in what passed for a nose before another gate carried me through long enough to grab Crash and then another to teleport us to his central core.

Massive screens filled every wall and they shattered most magnificently when I threw Crash into them, the man screamed as he fell to ground crashing with a heavy thud. A wrist computer he wore beeped ominously and I settled for silencing it with a swift kick that crushed both it and the wrist beneath.

Perhaps I'd been watching Sylax a little too much or perhaps it was just a result of being in her head. I found myself enjoying this.

"I know you Crash. I know you've probably got some brilliantly unpleasant bit of work on a timer and with you hurt and that computer destroyed it is just waiting to unleash all sorts of unpleasantness," I said.

"Something like that," Crash said sitting up and letting out a pained chuckle. "The central reactor..."

I cut him off there. Did he intend to blow up the city? That was my plan.

"I don't care, Crash. You can submit and live or not and die and I'll deal with your clever little plan just like I've dealt with every clever little monkey plan so far," I said.

"Emma? You're riding her as your host. That is why the disruption program wasn't as effective planned," Crash said.

I didn't need him figuring things out. I needed him speaking the words. I smashed his other wrist.

"You know. I think we could be friends. It's just so rare to meet someone that really shares my hobbies," Sylax thought.

"I submit," Crash said between sobs.

"Stop the city from being destroyed, order your forces to support my allies," I said and teleported away. We weren't even close to being done.

46

I teleported back to the central tower. The battle waged on.

Hot Stuff must have invoked her ultimate for she was blazing more brilliantly than I'd ever seen her, cascade waves of heat deforming the world around her as she marches right through the gathering of Ophelia's forces towards her.

Ophelia's townfolk couldn't heal from being vaporized. Normally I wouldn't think that Ophelia could be so quickly did she heal. With the intensity that Hot Stuff was burning I thought she might now. I didn't know if she could survive that or not. I'd have intervened to stop the vaporization from happening but Wolf was on me from the instant I reappeared.

It seemed the others weren't that well at holding him off. I shouldn't have been surprised, the first time we'd faced Sylax with a powered force we'd been neutralized in seconds. The difference in power level with her amplification crystal was just too great.

The blow that Wolf had just dealt me would have eviscerated me even a short time ago. Even now it left a few bloody gouges in Sylax's flesh for all of the second it took for them to heal over.

My answering punch sent him soaring through the air.

"Mind if I cut in?" Sylax asked.

Well, it was her body.

I mentally took a step back and let her resume control once more.

Sylax activated Bioarmor. I'd seen this utilized by others and used it with my own drones and it reliably produced a set of armor roughly equivalent to a medium or heavy kit, capable but not extraordinary. With the boost from the amplification core Sylax got something different, besides just providing defense there were entire new offensive options being added as a heavy suit of muscle and bone formed around her.

Leaping at Wolf a bone sword projected from her arm and she speared him through the throat before flinging him across the room with his head half decapitated.

It was an impressive visual but unfortunately Wolf's regeneration was very nearly as good as ours, despite the grievous wounds he was down for only seconds before springing back to his feet with a growl.

Hot Stuff's burn had completely wiped out Ophelia and her forces but in the aftermath when the flames faded away Hot Stuff was left without them. Staggering limply on her feet and when one of Zora's soldiers aimed a submachine gun at her and fired the bullets clipped her arm and shoulder and sent her collapsing to the ground.

That was useful to know. While her Ultimate had allowed her to perform some feats that she wasn't normally capable of that added power had come with a cost of some downtime afterward during which the normal defensive heat of her flames was down.

I'd given her accelerated healing in the past, that burst of gunfire shouldn't kill her but her strength there wasn't nearly as strong as the amplified versions of the power and it would take her many hours to heal.

Wolf had managed to get a good grip on Sylax and using it broken her arm, the crack was surely temporarily satisfying but ultimately as useless as nearly decapitating him had been and mere moment later she was lifting him to throw him against a nearby support column that cracked at the impact.

This was a battle of juggernauts that was going nowhere fast. Getting Sylax her full powers back had made this a draw and not a win.

Ratticus was blasting at golems with bursts of lightning and Crash's mechs had turned to support our side. I didn't see Anna.

I opened a comm to her through the cities systems.

"I'm ok Emma. I'm working on a plan," Anna said.

"That is an interesting way to describe running way," I said.

"Seriously. You're going to like it. How in control is Sylax?" Anna asked.

I didn't know exactly where this was going but I could guess. Anna likely wanted to kill Sylax and through she had a way to accomplish it.

I couldn't argue with her thinking. Crystal wouldn't like it but at this point Crystal's approval hardly seemed to matter. If Sylax were killed then Wolf would no longer be able to mirror her amplification core and we might actually stand a chance against him.

"It is her body and she takes priority. I believe I could take control, briefly, but she'll be able to fight me and is probably able to uninvite me," I said.

"That is perfect. I'm going to send you a comm burst with a set of coordinates when it is time. Teleport there and be your full insulting self to get her to show you the door," Anna said.

I rather thought I'd be ejected anyways when Sylax was killed. Still, I couldn't be certain of that. It was good of Anna to be concerned.

"I understand," I said.

In the meantime I had to do all I can to help those still here. I focused on the surrounding golems and indicated weak spots on each, Sylax did a poor job at picking those up on her own.

"Losing sight of the big win?" Sylax thought.

"I thought that you might be getting a little bored and would enjoy hurting something that didn't heal back seconds later."

It seemed that Sylax did for the next time she sent Wolf staggering back several steps with a punch to his midsection she swiveled and plunged her fist through the chest of a golem, grabbing a string and pulling.

It took Anna ten minutes and sixteen seconds since she broke off communication for her next comm burst to come through. It was an eternity in a fight, although it seemed that Wolf and Sylax could go at this forever.

Time enough for another seven golems to go down, time enough for Sylax to ampulate one of Wolf's limbs three times before he snapped off her bone sword to stab it into her shoulder. Time enough for the fight to go nowhere.

I forced myself into control of Sylax's body and activated her teleport to the coordinates Anna had sent.

47

I materialized in a room lit only by a blue sphere. From the coordinates I thought I had to be somewhere back in my district.

"What is this machine?" Sylax thought.

"The betrayal you always knew was coming because you're so incredibly unlikable," I answered.

Sylax responded just as I thought she would, just as I hoped she would, by fighting back. I felt my consciousness being pushed out of her and a moment later reconnecting with my district.

My view of the room swam as suddenly it switched from being out of Sylax's eyes and through the wall cameras. It was in one of my testing facilities.

With my return to the district the lights came on.

Anna and Tara were in the testing chamber as well just inside the force wall meant to contain the test subjects. Tara was holding the source orb that Ophelia had given me, that was the source of the blue globe.

That wasn't all I'd noticed. My teleport hadn't just brought Sylax here. Wolf had pushed his attack at the last moment and I'd brought him as well.

"This isn't to plan," Tara said.

"Not a time to worry about it. Do it," Anna said.

Tara nodded and a white aura sprang into being around her. It hurt my sensors just to look at her and both Sylax and Wolf turned their gaze as well.

Tara stepped towards Sylax and leaned in to plunge her hand into the woman's chest.

Sylax screamed and dropped her knees, surprisingly Wolf did as well. What was happening?

Tara seemed to be struggling with something, she looked for all the world as if she was pulling a line with a heavy load.

Sylax looked murder up at her. I was sure it would be murder in a moment. Sylax had one answer for every problem.

A brilliant flaire of multicolored light and Tara staggered back from Sylax. In her hand was a power crystal. It lingered for only a moment, another flare and my cameras nearly burned out for a moment.

Tara was a mass of colors. One hand an overwhelming blue light from the source orb, the other a multicolored rainbow from the power crystal, then the white aura around her that was pulsing and throbbing as a thing alive.

Then the light faded and all that was left was her with no glows. Both the power crystal and the source orb had been absorbed and Anna was pulling her back over the line for the energy barrier.

"Lock it," Anna said.

I tried. I did, but nothing was happening.

I could reason out what was happening. For all that it was unexpected I could put the pieces together.

I knew that the Righteous were able to remove the power crystals of others, I also knew that they collected Source Orbs. Obviously the two were connected in some way. It was something I'd never seen a Righteous do but then it probably took either more of them or more orbs than I'd seen. That white glow must have been Tara triggering her Ultimate ability, as an agent loyal to me she had one as much as any of the others did.

The crystal she removed from Sylax had to be the amplification crystal. That was why Wolf and Sylax were both doubled over, they were both experiencing a sudden massive loss of power.

I'd also seen Tara absorb the amplification crystal and that meant that it was her powers being amplified. I'd only seen her have two, the powers that all Righteous had. The ability to reincarnate and the ability to dampen other powers.

If I couldn't power on the cell it was likely because I couldn't. Tara's dampening field was now stronger than anything I could put up.

"You need to get her away. She's dampening my powers," I said through the speakers.

Anna didn't get it, not as fast as I did. How could she, she didn't have nearly my processing power. She didn't have to get it to trust my judgment and she did, pulling Tara towards the exit almost at once.

"No powers huh," Sylax said with a wicked smile, reaching up and pulling free the bone sword Wolf had impaled through her shoulder.

No instantly closing wounds, not now, blood gushed from the wound coating her armor as she stalked forward and buried the blade into Wolf's throat and began to saw.

His healing wasn't working any better than hers, not with Tara in range. By the time she got far enough away for me to activate the containment cell it was too late.

Sylax sat on the floor, pulling Wolf's severed head into her lap and she laughed as if it were the funniest joke in the world.

Perhaps it was. I was still working on humor.

I had places to be and a lack of skins to wear. Reconnected with my district I was scanning for any of my defensive drones but they were all dead. The best I could manage was one of my science drones I'd long ago sent to explore the cities maintenance conduits.

There was something suitable to that. I slipped my focus inside of it and headed for the central district.

The central districts power was out and the main city reactor going cold. I knew why, everybody knew why, it was displaying on every screen.

Error

Central District cannot be claimed by an unpowered individual

Restore powers to existing city head or appoint a new one by majority vote of District Heads

Syax could no longer hold the city and with Wolf dead the only district leader still under any sort of compulsion would be Crash.

48

Upon arrival at Sylax's castle I already found things greatly changed. All of those unique horrific touches that had made it hers were gone and instead the building was crafted of white stonework with intricate touches.

It was much like my first glimpse of the city had been, before we had all remade it in our image.

I'd thought I might arrive to combat, but what did any of us have left to fight with. The wars between each other had left the city devastated and our forces along with them.

"Emma," Crystal said looking over my drone as it hovered in, "Do you know what happened?"

I knew that she meant to Sylax. Until she had come under Wolf's compulsion her concern there had never faded.

"Alive but with her amplification ability removed. I have her in captivity. Wolf is dead, as you probably figured out. I did what none of you were capable of doing," I said.

"I guess that is your pitch for taking charge," Jade said.

"Fixing everyones problem? I think it qualifies me for the job," I said.

Crystal shook her head, "Emma, you accepted my guidance and gave me your loyalty. We had an agreement."

"For the purposes of rescuing our companions. Something I wound up accomplishing without you," I said.

"That was a jolly good feat," The Professor said.

I noticed Anna arriving through a side door, she'd brought Tara with her and both had conventional rifles aimed at the floor but ready. None of the others had noticed yet that they were without abilities, but if it came to it I didn't doubt Anna would kill them all.

It was one way to seize the city but we didn't have enough powered individuals to fill up the districts ourselves. I'd also come to respect the capabilities and drive of everyone here, for all I'd often been on the wrong side of things.

"I'm the most experienced of any of us, and the most powerful. You all know that. I commend Emma on her accomplishments but if you are going to place an upgrade core in charge of this city it should be," Crystal said.

"Agreed," said Flicker's orb.

With Crash under compulsion I had one vote but needed three others.

"You were devoted to bringing down Sylax. Would you really choose the person who created her over the one who brought her down? While I know you are that stupid I still would hope that some bit of lingering spitefulness would lead to you making the right choice anyways," I said to Jade.

Jade frowned at my drone but nodded, "It does. Emma has my vote."

That made it three to two in my favor.

With Wolf dead it was possible for this to end in a tie. We were only eight now.

"Crystal. While none of you know it yet Anna is worse than Sylax ever was and she's Emma's little pet project," Zora said.

That made it a tie again with two votes remaining.

"Do it for SCIENCE," I said to the Professor.

"Clone armies aren't science. Whatever pretensions she made towards science she has left behind," Crystal said.

"And yet she has appeared here today in a SCIENCE drone. I can only approve," said the Professor.

Four.

That just left Ophelia.

Ophelia had managed to reform from vapor, a good thing as otherwise Tara's presence probably would have killed her.

"You're both crazy. The one throws me into blenders and the other is a creepy spider thing," Ophelia said making an unpleasant expression.

"That isn't actually an answer," Crystal said.

"And they're called grinders," I said.

"Whatever. I always go with the winner. With my vote thats you Emma," Ophelia said.

As soon as she spoke the words I felt my awareness shifting.

Aefwal

You have claimed the central core of the city

All compulsion bonds have been broken

City systems critical

Districts Two and Seven in need of assignment

Having been in Sylax's head the connection to the central systems weren't totally a new thing. It was still an exhilarating rush.

The tower walls rippled, organic conduits and biowalls rippling outward as it took on my manifestation. I took a moment to initiate repair protocols throughout the city.

Crystal tilted her head, "No hard feelings, I hope. In that case I would like to request the return of Sylax. Without the core her insanity will be dampened and I'd like to take the chance to try to put things right."

I could afford to be merciful.

"Done," I said.

I observed a bit of tension leaving Crystal's shoulders and the District heads overall looking a bit relieved. Starting off my reign with mercy instead of murder wasn't the way Sylax would have done business, or Wolf.

Anna cleared her throat, "And just so that nobody forgets. Emma is in charge of the city but I am Annabella Besari, Queen of the whole damned World."

Trust Anna to feel insecure, she had so many reasons.

"A fact this city recognizes. We have two empty districts. Hot Stuff, because of her valor and loyalty I award District Seven," I said.

"She's in the medbay but I'll make sure she knows," Anna said. I could tell my choice pleased her, I didn't think the next one would.

"District Two I assign to Tara, hereafter known as Blank as a newly powered," I said.

"You're giving a district to a Righteous," Crystal said.

"The Scholarium will tolerate a lot. They won't tolerate this," Anna said.

"Why?" the newly labeled Blank asked.

"I didn't take this city to involve us in Scholar power struggles. I didn't take it to go to war against the Righteous. We're fractured, we're all broken. I don't remember my own past and I can say the most terrible things about every single one of you without having to lie at all," I said.

That earned a few amused grunts but they still looked wary. They should.

I continued, "The world itself is broken. It was shattered a long time ago and I've seen enough to realize that left as is it won't continue. The people that are left are still tearing themselves apart in a struggle for power. Aefwal from this day forward has one purpose above all others. We're going to mend this broken world and make it whole again."

Most of the crowd looked sick to their stomachs but not Anna. Anna was grinning.

THE END

The Metropolis

In charge of the great city of Aefwal Emma searches for the lost history of the breaking of the world. It is a quest that will bring the city into conflict with both the Scholarium and the Righteous, and put them on the wrong side of the powerful who would prefer the world remains broken. A new city-building mechanic, insults, and all new powers.

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