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Broken Fiction
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Chapter 1
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Disclaimer I own nothing. Worm, Eclipse phase, Mass effect, Bioshock, Dues ex, Cyberpunk, Borderlands, Fallout, Xcom and Metal gear all belong to their respective owners.
Ain't no rest for the wicked
Brockton bay August 19th 2010
You ever wake up to that feeling of not knowing where you are, even after recognising the environment around you. Yeah that feeling of I should know this place but I don't, it's a bit of a surreal experience to be honest.
Furthermore once I was able to put my thoughts together I realised something very important about my current situation, one I was in a hospital room, two I was missing my left arm from the elbow down and three this most definitely wasn't the world I was used to. How did I know, well the tv showing news of an actual supervillain named Hookwolf's rampage might have tipped me off. Unfortunately the only Hookwolf I knew of was from Worm a delightful little story about people with powers making horrible choices in order to save humanity, and that's just me giving the cliff notes. The actual story was actually quite long, like longer than the three lord of the rings books put together long.
Taking a few moments to try and review the memories of my new body I found I didn't have any, great guess I'm going to have to play the amnesia card. The door suddenly flies open as a nurse walks in, "good day" I call out, as her eyes widen with surprise.
"your awake" she asks as she rushes over to my bed side. The surprise was clear in her eyes, it seems this body was most likely in a coma, unable to wake up, great.
"yes and if you could answer a question for me ?" I asked.
"Yes what is it ?" the nurse responded looking perplexed at the fact I was awake and responding to her.
"who am I ?" I questioned her.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay August 20th 2010
Ok so it turns out my new name is Adrian Wayne, my parents and I were heading home after I got in a fight at school, I apparently punched one of my class mates, during the trip home Hookwolf ran into the car. Apparently he got into a fight with Oni lee and ran away with his tail between his legs when Lung got involved. My family was just a couple of innocent bystanders caught up on the whole situation.
I was thankfully left a sizable inheritance by my family but I didn't have any family left. So now I was a ward of the state, even had a case worker come in and everything. At least I will be until I apply for emancipation. Hopefully being nearly seventeen would help with that. My new birthday was around the start of November which was great, ment I didn't have to much of a change to get used to.
there was a sudden knock at the door of my hospital room. "Yes, hello" I called out thinking it was just one of the nurses. Entering into my room was a trio of teenages, one of whom I recognised as Victoria Dallon a.k.a Glory girl. Great what were the odds that the other teenagers were members the wards.
"So, the nurse gave us the low down, you really don't remember anything, do you" one of the teenagers a hispanic boy asked.
"nope nothing, not your names, not mine, not even the name of my parents" I said.
"Great, well we are some of your friends, my name's Carlos, this is Dennis and this is" he said gesturing to each of his fellows as he mentioned their names, or about to in the case of Vicky.
"Victoria Dallon, a.k.a Glory girl" I said, they looked surprised that I knew her name. The three of them looked surprised that I knew who she was.
"wait if you remember Vicky, does that mean you remember the five bucks you owe me ?" Dennis asked. Really he was going to try and pull that on me, I mean it is possible I did owe him five dollars but I mean come on, that's like the third or fourth oldest trick in the book for when dealing with someone with amnesia.
"she was on the tv, so I know a super hero, that's kinda cool" I explained. Part of me wondered how close I was to the wards, too close and they may get suspicious at my changes, hopefully I can milk the amnesia card for all it's worth. "So I know I was sent home from school due to a fight, so what actually happened" I asked.
"You punched Vicky's boyfriend Dean in the face, knocking him straight to the ground" Carlos said. I did what, I punched Dean, Gallant of the Wards. Dean, who brought his powers from Cauldron, is in a relationship with Alexandria-lite Vicky Dallon, who was standing not three feet from me. Great I can't tell if the previous inhabitant of this body was brave or an idiot, more then likely he was both to be honest. Whatever reason he had to start that fight had better have been a dam good one, or I will find someway of resurrecting him just so I can kill him for leaving me to deal with this problem.
"I am so sorry" I said looking at Vicky, wondering why she was here if I punched her boyfriend. To be fair it could have been a simple misunderstanding, or even that she felt a bit guilty, after all it was during the drive home after I had been suspended that this body had lost both his parents and arm.
"It's fine, to be fair you were defending me at the time" Vicky said. Great, fantastic the former Adrian was not only friends with members of the wards but also had a recent argument with one of their members. I needed to think up a solution to any potential situations, worst part was I didn't seem to have any powers, great.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay August 21th 2010
After Vicky, Carlos and Dennis left I had some time to think, no powers ment I would have to rely on my meta knowledge about the setting. Problem was I hadn't read worm in forever, I mostly just read fanfiction and I had little to no idea what was canon anymore.
The situation could be worse though, I had a roof over my head, food in my belly and apparently had friends to support me. Not really much more I could ask for, other than powers I mean.
My new home was a three bedroom townhouse, with an basement, it was kinda plain looking but that's fine I didn't need much. Carlos was kind enough to give me and my few megar possessions a ride from the hospital.
"Hello there" a male voice called out. "Yes you, behind you" a female one soon followed. Looking around I spotted a man and a woman, I recognised them both from a popular video game from home. Robert and Rosalind Lutece, the quantum ghosts of bioshock infinite, great.
"Of all the ROB's that could have sent me here it had to be you too" I said angrily. These two should have known better than to try and take people from there home universe, after the mess they made last time.
"We are not Random" Robert started, "nor are we omnipotent" Rosalind continued. "We are beings though" Robert said, Rosalind soon spoke up again, "yes I will
concede that we are beings".
"What do you even want?" I asked hoping that they would answer with a simple answer, my hopes were quickly dashed when Rosalind turned to speak.
"Simply to observe the changes, and impacts you will have on this timeline" she said. "I would like it to be added that we had nothing to do with you ending up in this universe" Robert said, something I found to be both highly likely. These two had some power but were never malicious enough to throw someone into a different universe, just because they could.
"So wait if you didn't send me here who'd did?" I asked, curious at who or what could have sent me to this death world.
"You fell through a tear in the fabric of space and time, a rather tragic accident if I do say so myself" Rosalind answered.
"We even came bearing gifts for you" Robert said as he reached out a hand and placed it on my head. My head burned with knowledge not of this world, a vast amount of information flooded my skull, and in a moment, I knew and understood technology and scientific principles well beyond what I once did.
"Did you just give me the tinker of fiction" I asked. The power was great, all the knowledge of how technology from other universe function, how to build it, how to use it.
"Well not exactly, see we could only give you about ten worlds worth of information, but the benefit was the information isn't going to despair at all, you will always know what you know" Robert said looking excited. "Yes, so welcome to being our peer" Rosalind said, I could tell why they described me as their peer. I now knew all of what they knew regarding quantum physics and more. "Now unfortunately we can't help you anymore, someone has walled off this section of the multiverse off, most likely to keep those pests from devouring everything" Robert said. wait what did he mean walled off a section of the multiverse, what did he mean by pests.
"What, What the fuck?" I exclaimed aloud, how could you Wally off a section of the multiverse. The multiverse is infinite, would be like trying to subtract infinity from infinity, impossible.
"Well, that's all good bye" Rosalind said as she grabbed Robert's arm pulling him away. They both disappear from sight within the blink of an eye, almost as if they were never here in the first place. The only evidence to the contrary was the knowledge in my head.
looking though the knowledge I now had I thought about what to do. I need protection, not just physical protection either, I need protection for my identity. Fortunately for me I had just the right piece of technology to get it and hey this would also make me immortal too, The cordial stack aloud for the transfer of a person's entire consciousness into a new body. I just needed a lot of material in order to get started, this was gonna take a while wasn't it.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay September the 16th 2010
after some time of experimenting and building several of the tools I needed for my new tech, I ran into a problem, a problem I should have seen coming, money. I only had so much of it and needed to budget for simple things like food and bills. I was fortunate enough that my now deceased parents actually own the house and that the mortgage had already been paid off. To solve my money problems I turned to a simple if elegant solution, an artificial intelligence. Many of the tech trees now filling my head had multiple different ways to create an A.I. some of them were simple little more than lines of code that could complete basic tasks, other incredibly complex, complex enough to pass the turing test.
In the end I settled for creating something a bit more simple, the program named B.A.N.K.E.R. or Banking, Artificial, Networked, Knowledge, Economic, Reporter and yes I know that I may have tried a bit to hard to make the acronym spell banker. B.A.N.K.E.R. wasn't anything too complex, only able to predict trends in the stock market, a skill that any good stock broker would have but the benefits of it being an A.I. were it could buy and sell stocks within a split second. B.A.N.K.E.R. would then deposit the funds into several overseas bank accounts and I would use the cards issued to them to slowly trickle the money into a number man account I had set up meant for dedicated cape work. The actual application for the account had been down through proxies so as to try and distance myself from my cape identity as much as I could. Although I had no idea how B.A.N.K.E.R. hadn't set off any alarms. I knew the government had a thinker think tank meant to find out when stuff like this was happening. Maybe I was just lucky but, I knew that kinda luck never holds out.
The biggest flaw with B.A.N.K.E.R. though was the fact that beyond economics it was useless , lacking any sort of programming or hardware required for it to grow beyond its simple parameters. That was fortunate as the programming would have taken more time than I would have liked and the hardware would have been too expensive.
Thankfully I still had time off from school, so I could keep working on my projects, but that wasn't going to last. I only had another week or so until I would have to head back to school. So rather than build a complex biological organism for a second body, like I planned to, I instead had to make something simpler, looks like I'm gonna be a pod person.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay September the 20th 2010
Four days, that's how long it took me to grow the required parts for my new body and set up a lab in the basement. The first day I was busy just making a power source, a simple fusion core generator. I was also busy making sure my different tech trees would play nice with each other. In the end I ended up growing the limbs and vital organs in a series of fish tanks I got for a good price, filled with a number of growth serums and other chemicals. I was mostly playing around with a mixture of fallout and eclipse phase tech. A small amount of Xcom tech was needed to help stabilise the neural network. The network was arguably one of the most complex things I could have built and one of the most expensive. I had basically spent all of my monthly tinkering budget I had set aside to build it and my pod person body.
But the network was a way for me to improve some of the tech I was working with. It basically created a bridge between both my main body, that I was currently inhabiting and any other bodies I built. Linking them together into a sort of hive mind. I wouldn't be able to control that many, maybe two or three bodies at most and I certainly couldn't hold multiple separate conversations, but the versatility this offered was too good to pass up.
Getting everything set up I connect all the parts of my pod body together, cybernetics preventing it from falling apart. Laying down on a mattress I had set up in the lab I closed one set of eyes and two open.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay September the 21st 2010
so here I am, lookin at myself. It's a weird experience from both of my perspectives, I am me and in front of me is also me. I do the classic motion of moving my arms in mirror sync with each other. "Hello" both of my bodies say simultaneously, great I need to figure out how not to do that.
The Pod body had a generic appearance, he looked similar to Adam Jensen from Deus ex. Most of the cybernetics were internal and were only used to keep the body from falling apart and rejecting its biological components, But I had planned to make a few upgrades, to make the body more combat capable. A pair of combat blades concealed in the arms, reinforced legs to allow for landings from a great height and even a stealth system to allow for optical camouflage a.k.a invisibility. The only obvious piece of cyberware was the eyes and HUD which looked exactly like Adam Jensen's from Deus ex. Looking at the time and noticing it was about three in the afternoon. Thinking about it I should probably head out for a test in my new body tonight.
XxXxXx
Getting ready to head out I went to sleep in my main body so I could focus on my pod body. My face was obscured by a simple mask, my costume if it could be called that was just a pair of black pants, a black shirt and a pair of steel toed boots, a black trench coat was thrown on as well to complete my appearance. I didn't look to bad to be honest, could've certainly looked worse.
Slipping out under the cover of night I made my way down the streets and made my way down to the docks. I knew the merchants had a number of locations out that way they use as drug labs.
Spotting a number of people loitering around one of corners of a street I made my way to them, between them were are a number of bottles of alcohol and littering the ground was several used drug needles. Great looks like I had some drug users, They could most likely point me in the direction of their suppliers and hopefully that would put me on the path to do some damage to the merchants.
It's telling that in a city filled with a gang of neo nazis and the shit show that was the asian bad boys, that I felt the merchants were the worst. They took advantage of the hopelessness of the people, got them addicted to their drugs and then used and abused them. Hell most of their members are probably only with the merchants in order to feed their addictions. They will be a fine first test of my new body.
The basic pod wasn't all that impressive by the standards of eclipse phase, but it was still a low tier super human. Pods were made to do grunt work, enhanced strength, enhanced endurance and with the cyberware holding together enhanced durability.
Approaching the druggies I picked out the one that looked the most sober. "You, where's your supplier?" I asked. It took him a whole three minutes to respond.
"The fuck you wanna know for" he responded. slowly head his way up to me till we where face to face.
"Look we can do this the easy way or the hard way?" I said giving him an ultimatum.
"Shit, this fucker thinks he's some kinda cape" the asshole in front of me said as he started to put out the blunt he had out on my chest. The blunt burnt a hole clean through the shirt, thankfully due to my pod body I didn't feel a thing.
"Wrong answer" I said as I grabbed his hand. I squeezed until I heard the bones in his hand brake.
"Shit man let me go, I don't know anything" he said. All of his friends started to scurry away, trying to escape me.
"Tell me where I can find your supplier and I might let you go?" I demanded. The guy looked ready to piss his pants, he was that scared.
"East Street, Down by the docks, ask for crooked Jimmy" he said, finally giving up his supplier. Without a word I released him and he ran off cradling his now broken hand. East Street great I now had a starting point.
XxXxXx
Heading down to East Street took more than a few minutes. But once I got to the street I noticed quite a few members of the merchants all along the street and they were armed. Shit the druggie I interrogated must have told them I was coming and they thought to ambush me. Great knew I should have knocked him unconscious. well nothing ventured, nothing gained. But this would take some planning, some strategy, but most importantly some stealth. Looking around I found a cardboard box, about the right size for me to hide underneath. No way, there was no way I was actually considering this.
This was the dumbest idea I have ever had. I mean like really, really dumb. But for some reason it was working the merchants just ignored the box as I slowly crawled into an alley way. Waiting until a member of the merchants moved off onto his own and into the ally I made my move. I sprang from the box and quickly put him into a choke hold, arms around his neck I waited until he went unconscious to lay him down on the ground as gently as I could. This particular merchant was equipped with a hand gun and two spare magazines. I stashed my new firearm in my pocket and made sure to take the extra ammo.
Poking my head out of the alley I noticed most of the merchant goons standing around one particular werehouse.All in all there were five guards, six if you count the one I knocked out, standing out the front and who knew how many inside.
I knew that of I wanted to stand a better chance of taking down five opponents on my own I needed to use some skills from the Batman school of hard knocks. Stealth and surprise were great but intimidation was the key. Finding a nice quiet spot near enough to the guards I started to hatch my plan. First I switched the colour of my eyes to a red and set them to glow. Was it good for stealth no, But it would help with the intimidation factor.
Slowly and with purpose I made my way towards the guards. Each step bringing me closer and closer towards them. There was a look in their eyes as if they didn't believe somebody, anybody would so brazenly and openly approach, even if they were a cape. They got over their shock pretty quickly and soon enough all five of them were pointing a gun of some kind at me. I counted two smgs, two pistols and a shotgun, all of which were aimed in my direction.
"Now we can do this the easy way" I said taking a moment to look each of them in the eyes. "Or we can do this the fun way" I finished cracking my neck as I did so. I don't know how long we where there in that stand off, but eventually one of them lost their nerve and pulled the trigger. The low calibre bullet struck centre mass and deflated on my chest. Still hurt like a bitch, but my cyberware ment that anything this low a calibre wouldn't go through. Not sure about the shotgun or smgs though.
"Fun way it is" I said taking the moment of their collective surprise to get in close. First I grabbed the shotgun and elbowed it owner in the throat, there that takes out the biggest threat. Next I smashed the shotgun now in my hands over the head of one of the smg users. Menacingly I turned to the other three "So who's next" I said. They all dropped their guns and ran like hell was behind them.
Stepping inside the building I looked around and saw a few of the merchants drug chemist hard at work, mixing the latest batch. I whistled to get all of their attention, "Ok listen up, all of you are going to leave this building, am I understood" I yelled out. All of the chemists looked at me like I had grown a second head. "I said am I understood" I yelled out once more this time I made clear my point by firing off the shotgun I still had in my hands.
Once the chemists started to flee like headless chickens I got to work. Normally I would have love to grab as much of the equipment here as I could, but unfortunately I knew that the merchants would soon be back with renforcements. The only thing I could do quickly enough was deny them use of this place for later use. Finding a lighter and jerry can full of petrol I got started. Once I had poured the petrol over their lab stations and the product they had already made I made a trail going out of the werehouse.
Once outside I noticed that one of the merchants I had knocked unconscious was watching me. "You know who the fuck we are, we're the merchants, you think Skidmark is just gonna take this lying down, your dead mother fucker, your dead" he screamed out, alerting the whole area to what I was about to do.
"I know who you guys are, I just don't give a fuck" I said tossing the lighter, now lit onto the trail of petrol. I grabbed the still unconscious merchant guard and dragged him away from the blaze as the one who had been ranting at me looked on in horror as the lab we t up in flames. Fishing through the pockets of the merchant I had just dragged away I found his cell phone, once I had it I dialled in 911.
"nine one one what's your emergency?" the voice on the other side asked.
"Yea this is an new independent cape, just letting you guys know that I just burnt down a merchant drug lab on East Street, bye" I said tossing the phone to the ground once I had finished. Once a few moments had past I could hear the sounds of emergency sirens. Making my way I went away from East Street and made my way back home, as the sun began to rise.
Ain't no rest for the wicked
Brockton bay August 19th 2010
You ever wake up to that feeling of not knowing where you are, even after recognising the environment around you. Yeah that feeling of I should know this place but I don't, it's a bit of a surreal experience to be honest.
Furthermore once I was able to put my thoughts together I realised something very important about my current situation, one I was in a hospital room, two I was missing my left arm from the elbow down and three this most definitely wasn't the world I was used to. How did I know, well the tv showing news of an actual supervillain named Hookwolf's rampage might have tipped me off. Unfortunately the only Hookwolf I knew of was from Worm a delightful little story about people with powers making horrible choices in order to save humanity, and that's just me giving the cliff notes. The actual story was actually quite long, like longer than the three lord of the rings books put together long.
Taking a few moments to try and review the memories of my new body I found I didn't have any, great guess I'm going to have to play the amnesia card. The door suddenly flies open as a nurse walks in, "good day" I call out, as her eyes widen with surprise.
"your awake" she asks as she rushes over to my bed side. The surprise was clear in her eyes, it seems this body was most likely in a coma, unable to wake up, great.
"yes and if you could answer a question for me ?" I asked.
"Yes what is it ?" the nurse responded looking perplexed at the fact I was awake and responding to her.
"who am I ?" I questioned her.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay August 20th 2010
Ok so it turns out my new name is Adrian Wayne, my parents and I were heading home after I got in a fight at school, I apparently punched one of my class mates, during the trip home Hookwolf ran into the car. Apparently he got into a fight with Oni lee and ran away with his tail between his legs when Lung got involved. My family was just a couple of innocent bystanders caught up on the whole situation.
I was thankfully left a sizable inheritance by my family but I didn't have any family left. So now I was a ward of the state, even had a case worker come in and everything. At least I will be until I apply for emancipation. Hopefully being nearly seventeen would help with that. My new birthday was around the start of November which was great, ment I didn't have to much of a change to get used to.
there was a sudden knock at the door of my hospital room. "Yes, hello" I called out thinking it was just one of the nurses. Entering into my room was a trio of teenages, one of whom I recognised as Victoria Dallon a.k.a Glory girl. Great what were the odds that the other teenagers were members the wards.
"So, the nurse gave us the low down, you really don't remember anything, do you" one of the teenagers a hispanic boy asked.
"nope nothing, not your names, not mine, not even the name of my parents" I said.
"Great, well we are some of your friends, my name's Carlos, this is Dennis and this is" he said gesturing to each of his fellows as he mentioned their names, or about to in the case of Vicky.
"Victoria Dallon, a.k.a Glory girl" I said, they looked surprised that I knew her name. The three of them looked surprised that I knew who she was.
"wait if you remember Vicky, does that mean you remember the five bucks you owe me ?" Dennis asked. Really he was going to try and pull that on me, I mean it is possible I did owe him five dollars but I mean come on, that's like the third or fourth oldest trick in the book for when dealing with someone with amnesia.
"she was on the tv, so I know a super hero, that's kinda cool" I explained. Part of me wondered how close I was to the wards, too close and they may get suspicious at my changes, hopefully I can milk the amnesia card for all it's worth. "So I know I was sent home from school due to a fight, so what actually happened" I asked.
"You punched Vicky's boyfriend Dean in the face, knocking him straight to the ground" Carlos said. I did what, I punched Dean, Gallant of the Wards. Dean, who brought his powers from Cauldron, is in a relationship with Alexandria-lite Vicky Dallon, who was standing not three feet from me. Great I can't tell if the previous inhabitant of this body was brave or an idiot, more then likely he was both to be honest. Whatever reason he had to start that fight had better have been a dam good one, or I will find someway of resurrecting him just so I can kill him for leaving me to deal with this problem.
"I am so sorry" I said looking at Vicky, wondering why she was here if I punched her boyfriend. To be fair it could have been a simple misunderstanding, or even that she felt a bit guilty, after all it was during the drive home after I had been suspended that this body had lost both his parents and arm.
"It's fine, to be fair you were defending me at the time" Vicky said. Great, fantastic the former Adrian was not only friends with members of the wards but also had a recent argument with one of their members. I needed to think up a solution to any potential situations, worst part was I didn't seem to have any powers, great.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay August 21th 2010
After Vicky, Carlos and Dennis left I had some time to think, no powers ment I would have to rely on my meta knowledge about the setting. Problem was I hadn't read worm in forever, I mostly just read fanfiction and I had little to no idea what was canon anymore.
The situation could be worse though, I had a roof over my head, food in my belly and apparently had friends to support me. Not really much more I could ask for, other than powers I mean.
My new home was a three bedroom townhouse, with an basement, it was kinda plain looking but that's fine I didn't need much. Carlos was kind enough to give me and my few megar possessions a ride from the hospital.
"Hello there" a male voice called out. "Yes you, behind you" a female one soon followed. Looking around I spotted a man and a woman, I recognised them both from a popular video game from home. Robert and Rosalind Lutece, the quantum ghosts of bioshock infinite, great.
"Of all the ROB's that could have sent me here it had to be you too" I said angrily. These two should have known better than to try and take people from there home universe, after the mess they made last time.
"We are not Random" Robert started, "nor are we omnipotent" Rosalind continued. "We are beings though" Robert said, Rosalind soon spoke up again, "yes I will
concede that we are beings".
"What do you even want?" I asked hoping that they would answer with a simple answer, my hopes were quickly dashed when Rosalind turned to speak.
"Simply to observe the changes, and impacts you will have on this timeline" she said. "I would like it to be added that we had nothing to do with you ending up in this universe" Robert said, something I found to be both highly likely. These two had some power but were never malicious enough to throw someone into a different universe, just because they could.
"So wait if you didn't send me here who'd did?" I asked, curious at who or what could have sent me to this death world.
"You fell through a tear in the fabric of space and time, a rather tragic accident if I do say so myself" Rosalind answered.
"We even came bearing gifts for you" Robert said as he reached out a hand and placed it on my head. My head burned with knowledge not of this world, a vast amount of information flooded my skull, and in a moment, I knew and understood technology and scientific principles well beyond what I once did.
"Did you just give me the tinker of fiction" I asked. The power was great, all the knowledge of how technology from other universe function, how to build it, how to use it.
"Well not exactly, see we could only give you about ten worlds worth of information, but the benefit was the information isn't going to despair at all, you will always know what you know" Robert said looking excited. "Yes, so welcome to being our peer" Rosalind said, I could tell why they described me as their peer. I now knew all of what they knew regarding quantum physics and more. "Now unfortunately we can't help you anymore, someone has walled off this section of the multiverse off, most likely to keep those pests from devouring everything" Robert said. wait what did he mean walled off a section of the multiverse, what did he mean by pests.
"What, What the fuck?" I exclaimed aloud, how could you Wally off a section of the multiverse. The multiverse is infinite, would be like trying to subtract infinity from infinity, impossible.
"Well, that's all good bye" Rosalind said as she grabbed Robert's arm pulling him away. They both disappear from sight within the blink of an eye, almost as if they were never here in the first place. The only evidence to the contrary was the knowledge in my head.
looking though the knowledge I now had I thought about what to do. I need protection, not just physical protection either, I need protection for my identity. Fortunately for me I had just the right piece of technology to get it and hey this would also make me immortal too, The cordial stack aloud for the transfer of a person's entire consciousness into a new body. I just needed a lot of material in order to get started, this was gonna take a while wasn't it.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay September the 16th 2010
after some time of experimenting and building several of the tools I needed for my new tech, I ran into a problem, a problem I should have seen coming, money. I only had so much of it and needed to budget for simple things like food and bills. I was fortunate enough that my now deceased parents actually own the house and that the mortgage had already been paid off. To solve my money problems I turned to a simple if elegant solution, an artificial intelligence. Many of the tech trees now filling my head had multiple different ways to create an A.I. some of them were simple little more than lines of code that could complete basic tasks, other incredibly complex, complex enough to pass the turing test.
In the end I settled for creating something a bit more simple, the program named B.A.N.K.E.R. or Banking, Artificial, Networked, Knowledge, Economic, Reporter and yes I know that I may have tried a bit to hard to make the acronym spell banker. B.A.N.K.E.R. wasn't anything too complex, only able to predict trends in the stock market, a skill that any good stock broker would have but the benefits of it being an A.I. were it could buy and sell stocks within a split second. B.A.N.K.E.R. would then deposit the funds into several overseas bank accounts and I would use the cards issued to them to slowly trickle the money into a number man account I had set up meant for dedicated cape work. The actual application for the account had been down through proxies so as to try and distance myself from my cape identity as much as I could. Although I had no idea how B.A.N.K.E.R. hadn't set off any alarms. I knew the government had a thinker think tank meant to find out when stuff like this was happening. Maybe I was just lucky but, I knew that kinda luck never holds out.
The biggest flaw with B.A.N.K.E.R. though was the fact that beyond economics it was useless , lacking any sort of programming or hardware required for it to grow beyond its simple parameters. That was fortunate as the programming would have taken more time than I would have liked and the hardware would have been too expensive.
Thankfully I still had time off from school, so I could keep working on my projects, but that wasn't going to last. I only had another week or so until I would have to head back to school. So rather than build a complex biological organism for a second body, like I planned to, I instead had to make something simpler, looks like I'm gonna be a pod person.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay September the 20th 2010
Four days, that's how long it took me to grow the required parts for my new body and set up a lab in the basement. The first day I was busy just making a power source, a simple fusion core generator. I was also busy making sure my different tech trees would play nice with each other. In the end I ended up growing the limbs and vital organs in a series of fish tanks I got for a good price, filled with a number of growth serums and other chemicals. I was mostly playing around with a mixture of fallout and eclipse phase tech. A small amount of Xcom tech was needed to help stabilise the neural network. The network was arguably one of the most complex things I could have built and one of the most expensive. I had basically spent all of my monthly tinkering budget I had set aside to build it and my pod person body.
But the network was a way for me to improve some of the tech I was working with. It basically created a bridge between both my main body, that I was currently inhabiting and any other bodies I built. Linking them together into a sort of hive mind. I wouldn't be able to control that many, maybe two or three bodies at most and I certainly couldn't hold multiple separate conversations, but the versatility this offered was too good to pass up.
Getting everything set up I connect all the parts of my pod body together, cybernetics preventing it from falling apart. Laying down on a mattress I had set up in the lab I closed one set of eyes and two open.
XxXxXx
Brockton bay September the 21st 2010
so here I am, lookin at myself. It's a weird experience from both of my perspectives, I am me and in front of me is also me. I do the classic motion of moving my arms in mirror sync with each other. "Hello" both of my bodies say simultaneously, great I need to figure out how not to do that.
The Pod body had a generic appearance, he looked similar to Adam Jensen from Deus ex. Most of the cybernetics were internal and were only used to keep the body from falling apart and rejecting its biological components, But I had planned to make a few upgrades, to make the body more combat capable. A pair of combat blades concealed in the arms, reinforced legs to allow for landings from a great height and even a stealth system to allow for optical camouflage a.k.a invisibility. The only obvious piece of cyberware was the eyes and HUD which looked exactly like Adam Jensen's from Deus ex. Looking at the time and noticing it was about three in the afternoon. Thinking about it I should probably head out for a test in my new body tonight.
XxXxXx
Getting ready to head out I went to sleep in my main body so I could focus on my pod body. My face was obscured by a simple mask, my costume if it could be called that was just a pair of black pants, a black shirt and a pair of steel toed boots, a black trench coat was thrown on as well to complete my appearance. I didn't look to bad to be honest, could've certainly looked worse.
Slipping out under the cover of night I made my way down the streets and made my way down to the docks. I knew the merchants had a number of locations out that way they use as drug labs.
Spotting a number of people loitering around one of corners of a street I made my way to them, between them were are a number of bottles of alcohol and littering the ground was several used drug needles. Great looks like I had some drug users, They could most likely point me in the direction of their suppliers and hopefully that would put me on the path to do some damage to the merchants.
It's telling that in a city filled with a gang of neo nazis and the shit show that was the asian bad boys, that I felt the merchants were the worst. They took advantage of the hopelessness of the people, got them addicted to their drugs and then used and abused them. Hell most of their members are probably only with the merchants in order to feed their addictions. They will be a fine first test of my new body.
The basic pod wasn't all that impressive by the standards of eclipse phase, but it was still a low tier super human. Pods were made to do grunt work, enhanced strength, enhanced endurance and with the cyberware holding together enhanced durability.
Approaching the druggies I picked out the one that looked the most sober. "You, where's your supplier?" I asked. It took him a whole three minutes to respond.
"The fuck you wanna know for" he responded. slowly head his way up to me till we where face to face.
"Look we can do this the easy way or the hard way?" I said giving him an ultimatum.
"Shit, this fucker thinks he's some kinda cape" the asshole in front of me said as he started to put out the blunt he had out on my chest. The blunt burnt a hole clean through the shirt, thankfully due to my pod body I didn't feel a thing.
"Wrong answer" I said as I grabbed his hand. I squeezed until I heard the bones in his hand brake.
"Shit man let me go, I don't know anything" he said. All of his friends started to scurry away, trying to escape me.
"Tell me where I can find your supplier and I might let you go?" I demanded. The guy looked ready to piss his pants, he was that scared.
"East Street, Down by the docks, ask for crooked Jimmy" he said, finally giving up his supplier. Without a word I released him and he ran off cradling his now broken hand. East Street great I now had a starting point.
XxXxXx
Heading down to East Street took more than a few minutes. But once I got to the street I noticed quite a few members of the merchants all along the street and they were armed. Shit the druggie I interrogated must have told them I was coming and they thought to ambush me. Great knew I should have knocked him unconscious. well nothing ventured, nothing gained. But this would take some planning, some strategy, but most importantly some stealth. Looking around I found a cardboard box, about the right size for me to hide underneath. No way, there was no way I was actually considering this.
This was the dumbest idea I have ever had. I mean like really, really dumb. But for some reason it was working the merchants just ignored the box as I slowly crawled into an alley way. Waiting until a member of the merchants moved off onto his own and into the ally I made my move. I sprang from the box and quickly put him into a choke hold, arms around his neck I waited until he went unconscious to lay him down on the ground as gently as I could. This particular merchant was equipped with a hand gun and two spare magazines. I stashed my new firearm in my pocket and made sure to take the extra ammo.
Poking my head out of the alley I noticed most of the merchant goons standing around one particular werehouse.All in all there were five guards, six if you count the one I knocked out, standing out the front and who knew how many inside.
I knew that of I wanted to stand a better chance of taking down five opponents on my own I needed to use some skills from the Batman school of hard knocks. Stealth and surprise were great but intimidation was the key. Finding a nice quiet spot near enough to the guards I started to hatch my plan. First I switched the colour of my eyes to a red and set them to glow. Was it good for stealth no, But it would help with the intimidation factor.
Slowly and with purpose I made my way towards the guards. Each step bringing me closer and closer towards them. There was a look in their eyes as if they didn't believe somebody, anybody would so brazenly and openly approach, even if they were a cape. They got over their shock pretty quickly and soon enough all five of them were pointing a gun of some kind at me. I counted two smgs, two pistols and a shotgun, all of which were aimed in my direction.
"Now we can do this the easy way" I said taking a moment to look each of them in the eyes. "Or we can do this the fun way" I finished cracking my neck as I did so. I don't know how long we where there in that stand off, but eventually one of them lost their nerve and pulled the trigger. The low calibre bullet struck centre mass and deflated on my chest. Still hurt like a bitch, but my cyberware ment that anything this low a calibre wouldn't go through. Not sure about the shotgun or smgs though.
"Fun way it is" I said taking the moment of their collective surprise to get in close. First I grabbed the shotgun and elbowed it owner in the throat, there that takes out the biggest threat. Next I smashed the shotgun now in my hands over the head of one of the smg users. Menacingly I turned to the other three "So who's next" I said. They all dropped their guns and ran like hell was behind them.
Stepping inside the building I looked around and saw a few of the merchants drug chemist hard at work, mixing the latest batch. I whistled to get all of their attention, "Ok listen up, all of you are going to leave this building, am I understood" I yelled out. All of the chemists looked at me like I had grown a second head. "I said am I understood" I yelled out once more this time I made clear my point by firing off the shotgun I still had in my hands.
Once the chemists started to flee like headless chickens I got to work. Normally I would have love to grab as much of the equipment here as I could, but unfortunately I knew that the merchants would soon be back with renforcements. The only thing I could do quickly enough was deny them use of this place for later use. Finding a lighter and jerry can full of petrol I got started. Once I had poured the petrol over their lab stations and the product they had already made I made a trail going out of the werehouse.
Once outside I noticed that one of the merchants I had knocked unconscious was watching me. "You know who the fuck we are, we're the merchants, you think Skidmark is just gonna take this lying down, your dead mother fucker, your dead" he screamed out, alerting the whole area to what I was about to do.
"I know who you guys are, I just don't give a fuck" I said tossing the lighter, now lit onto the trail of petrol. I grabbed the still unconscious merchant guard and dragged him away from the blaze as the one who had been ranting at me looked on in horror as the lab we t up in flames. Fishing through the pockets of the merchant I had just dragged away I found his cell phone, once I had it I dialled in 911.
"nine one one what's your emergency?" the voice on the other side asked.
"Yea this is an new independent cape, just letting you guys know that I just burnt down a merchant drug lab on East Street, bye" I said tossing the phone to the ground once I had finished. Once a few moments had past I could hear the sounds of emergency sirens. Making my way I went away from East Street and made my way back home, as the sun began to rise.