"Ms. Wheeler, what's your condition?"
Carolyn blinked at the light in her eyes. Portable suit torches brightened the immediate area as twelve TranStar Security Guards circled her. She stood in the elevator lobby of Sublevel Thirty of TranStar's Yakima Facility, Behind her, four of the soldiers stationed on this sublevel lay strewn about like a tornado had ripped through them.
Clenched in her hand, she held a neuromod that was actually the most impossible Typhon she'd ever encountered. A Typhon she'd evidently chosen to save.
"I'm fine. Look, fine. It's sorted. All this. No casualties even."
"Where's the Typhon, Ms. Wheeler?" the lead Security Officer said. He gestured to his team and eight of them peeled off to jog down the corridor, rifles at the ready.
"Dead. In its room. Told you, didn't I? I sorted it. I...what else could I do? Where's Mr. Yu?"
"Ma'am, look into my psychoscope. Open your eyes and stay very still." The Security Guard leaned one way, then another and finally bent close enough that his helmet almost touched her nose. "You're not Mindjacked at least. What happened here?"
The lies rolled off her lips, nestled in a grain of truth. "Mr. Yu called me down here. Wanted me to consult with...well, he didn't exactly say. His Admin, Ira I think her name was? She gave me directions and when I went, I saw Morgan. Morgan Yu, if you can imagine. We had a talk but when I tried to leave, your Security tried to kill us both. She...I've never seen someone move that fast."
"The Typhon didn't attack you?"
"No, she...I mean it, it was like Dr. Yu. I'd met Dr. Yu before and I didn't realize-"
"Christ, they can mimic people now?" said one of the other soldiers holding rifles.
"It was utterly convincing. Must have been the experiment Mr. Yu was talking about. I wouldn't have known except your soldiers attacked us and she struck back. Then she rampaged her way down the hall. She, the Typhon, it didn't kill them though. I don't know why."
"Found the Typhon," said one of the other soldiers at the side of the Security Officer. "In the experimental room."
"Right," Carolyn said, letting out a sigh of relief. So, confirmation that the Operator using a Mimic as an assassin wasn't part of the same plot as that email instructing those guards to kill Morgan. Or it meant the Technopath had learned to manipulate humans in a way that didn't seem possible. No. Maybe there were sensors in Morgan's flat that reacted to the Operator's destruction or to the Mimic that'd tried to kill her. Perhaps no cameras Security could access but enough to alert them to trouble and assume the worst.
Perhaps.
"You're saying this Typhon took out six of my best men and you got the drop on it? Mind telling me how, Ma'am?" The Security Officer sounded understandably skeptical behind his faceless TranStar Security Suit.
"She went back to her flat, to use her workstation I think. I kept asking her questions and I realized...well, she'd been shot a dozen times you see and I realized no one human could still be going after all that. So I shot it. From behind. In the head. And it turned back into a Mimic and I knew I'd done the right thing."
The Security Officer was expressionless under his psychoscope. Then he said, "Daniels, McAdams, get her to the Med Lab on Sublevel Five and get her checked out. Charleston, get some medics down here for our casualties. Everyone else, full sweep. Let's make sure there aren't any other surprises."
Carolyn didn't bother to restrain the sigh of relief that abruptly fled her lungs. It was still morning, still early, and already she felt exhausted. The rapid pace of revelation, almost dying several times over, had taken its toll. It was easy to let the shock of the situation and her fatigue out, especially as they helped cover any other tells she might have from nerves. After all, she wasn't a security expert and they might have a way to notice the Neuromod in her hand wasn't exactly a Neuromod…
But neither guard did. They were silent as the three of them entered the elevator and took it back up to Sublevel Twenty.
Passing the security checkpoint was thankfully expedited. Carolyn submitted to a thorough search, turned over the pistol she'd received from Morgan earlier and held onto the Neuromod. One of the checkpoint guards did ask "Ma'am, what's the neuromod for?" but his accomplice thankfully shushed him before she had to invent a lie to cover things up with. As it turned out, evidently anything from below Sublevel Twenty wasn't the kind of thing these TranStar Security Guards were in a position to know about.
That luck didn't quite last.
Within twenty minutes, they'd reached the main Yakima Facility elevator and sped on their way up to Sublevel Five. Carolyn still didn't speak, not trusting the steadiness of her voice nor needing to know anything from her escort anyway. Once they arrived, she was happy enough to follow in their wake as they took her past the conference rooms, dining area, rec and exercise rooms that provided work/life balance for the elite TranStar researchers originally intended to operate from this facility. Now, the rooms were crowded with refugees and survivors, with the families of soldiers and scientists evacuated here from various parts of the country. There wasn't enough room for everyone, not really. She expected to end up with a roommate within the next quarter, at this rate.
The actual Med Lab was a spacious affair, intended to serve the needs of hundreds of personnel. Given it had been tasked with handling the requirements of a thousand or more, most of the beds were full, office rooms closed and the staff in general looked decidedly overworked. The distinctive blue and black of the Security corporate uniform bumped her to the top of the queue, at least.
A minute later, she was subject to several scans by other Pyramid-class Operators. Carolyn couldn't repress a shiver of revulsion as the machines floated near her, given one had tried to kill her so recently. The medical technician that followed up was a human being at least. One who asked a number of uncomfortable questions.
"Did you come into contact with this experimental Typhon?"
"I-" Carolyn searched her memory, couldn't think of an immediate example only to realize that, of course, she still held the Typhon in question in her pocket. "Skin to skin contact. It looked like a human, though. Same skin. Or at least I thought it was."
"It doesn't look like it did anything to you mentally. Your MRI's come up clean. I think we can clear you."
"Alex Yu," Carolyn said suddenly, just as the thought occurred to her. "Where is he?"
"I'm not privy to his schedule details, Ms. Wheeler, but I believe he isn't on base today." The earnest young man frowned slightly. "I understand there was a technical issue with your transcribe. Did you need me to pass a message along?"
"Would you? He'd want to know what happened here."
"I'll see what I can do." The medical technician turned to a tray holding her personal effects before fetching the Neuromod and holding it up. "You came in with this on you. What's in it?"
"I'm not a researcher, I'm afraid."
"What's loaded in it?" the technician said, without missing a beat. Not a man easily mislead then.
"Something confidential," Carolyn said, not missing a beat either. "If you'd kindly?"
"Ms. Wheeler, you should be well aware that every Neuromod has to be accounted for, their locations tracked and utilization monitored."
His face was expressionless. Though he didn't look to be much older than his mid-twenties, there were men who'd go through their entire lives and not manage that degree of self-composure. Carolyn had a hunch that Alex Yu in the same situation would get exactly the same tone and the same message.
"Right. Well, I have it courtesy of Mr. Yu's office so if you'd like to check with him?"
"It's TranStar corporate policy that Neuromods not slated for installation be secured in our vaults, Ms. Wheeler. If Mr. Yu issues a written exception that's duly authorized by Neuromod Research, you can have it back. I don't see such an authorization on file, however."
Right. This had gone on long enough. Morgan seemed quiescent for the moment but then there wasn't much a Neuromod could do either, without blowing her cover. And why should she have to? The Typhon had saved Carolyn several times in the brief time they'd known each other. But Morgan didn't have the monopoly on competence either.
Carolyn had only marginal combat training but this was corporate policy. This was people work. And in her field, there was no one better.
"I have no doubt that the Medical Center has a mandate to ensure an accurate inventory of any Neuromods that are sent to you for installation. However, this one wasn't. It only belongs to Neuromod Research if they can show a manifest for it, and I doubt they can produce it. Either way, you're not Neuromod Research and that means you can sod off, can't you."
She slid off the examination table she'd been on and let her heels ring against the floor upon landing. The technician backed up since his only other alternative was to be knocked back by her sudden rise. Instead, he produced his transcribe and swiftly keyed a message into it.
"Go right ahead," she said as she walked to the door. "I'll probably be in my quarters if you'd like to send Neuromod Research by. Cheers!"
Naturally, Carolyn didn't go back to her quarters. Instead, she made for the central elevator and gave a polite nod to the TranStar Security who promptly checked her out. Once more, the Neuromod in her hand drew their attention. Their psychoscopes picked up something, anyway. But when they asked her to turn over her hand, and she revealed the Neuromod, they only frowned and backed up a little.
Apparently not that unusual for TranStar employees to be walking around with Neuromods outside of laboratory controlled conditions after all.
Carolyn bore the ride upstairs silently. She emerged out of a sliding section of concrete-brick wall whitewashed like all the walls were. The floor was more concrete, albeit smooth, glossy and sealed with a coat of something protective. With high vaulted ceilings that rose in a gentle pyramid shape, hanging searingly bright lights from the exposed metal bracing, it made the whole place look unnaturally white. At least the doors in the interior were red, which provided a smidgeon of color contrast.
Her hand tingled. A moment later, Morgan walked beside her. Carolyn wasn't too proud to admit she almost leaped right out of her skin.
"Thank you," the Typhon Yu said, and it...she sounded grateful.
"I believe appreciation or congratulation of any kind is a touch premature, given we're still in a high-security military facility."
"But not in a part we're expected. At least, I'm not." Morgan frowned. "I need to know who targeted me."
"And me," Carolyn added.
"The Operator went for me first. Their directives don't make mistakes; I was the target." Morgan sighed. "And you were a witness. Or, perhaps, an opportunity."
"Or just an accident, I suppose."
Carolyn turned her head when she realized the lovely Typhon had come to a stop. Dressed in a corporate uniform, this Morgan Yu's professional look did little to diminish an appealing face or that familiar fire in her eyes. The Typhon may not have the original's memories but somehow she had something of the real Morgan's essence, a certain zeal and energy Carolyn had seen before.
"Were you?" Morgan asked.
"Was I what?"
"An accident."
It was Carolyn's turn to frown. "I imagine so. I was only there for, what, an hour? Less? And I wasn't scheduled for this. Alex contacted me earlier this morning, in fact. Unless you think-"
"No." Morgan shook her head, then inclined it towards a door marked 'Facility Inventory'. "My brother wouldn't. And he wouldn't have bothered with all the pageantry, with an Operator carrying a Mimic."
"Unless he was the real target."
A look of shock spread across those smooth features, followed by a tinge of grief around the eyes. Remarkable, how a Typhon could emulate a human so closely, to render such nuanced expressions so expertly. More remarkable, perhaps, was that this Morgan evidently felt the underlying emotions, or perhaps understood them well enough to know when they should be deployed.
Either possibility frightened Carolyn.
"Let's find out," Morgan said as she sliced into the codewall protecting the door's electronic keypass system. Seconds later, it opened.
Their luck had run hot so far. No one had been in the halls. No one was in the stuffy room, cluttered with old manuals, ample cabinets and drawers likely holding more old paperwork and the accouterments of a station closed off from the world. Memories of Talos 1 drifted back, of cramped, confining workstations tucked away in corners and tiny offices. Space on a space station was at a premium, of course. But it didn't mean people liked being stuffed away, and this facility had less of an excuse.
While Morgan sat down and hacked her way into someone's workstation, Carolyn leaned back against the wall and watched the Typhon with a measuring look. She'd been around the original Morgan a fair amount, in their time on Talos. Watching this Morgan was like watching her. The mannerisms were the same, the way the eyebrows drew together in concentration or the sudden sharpness in body language when emotionally worked up.
Could a Typhon have emotions? Really? Carolyn remembered some of the prevailing theories tossed around in Psychotronic's Lab B. Rory Manion and Demian Linn had never envisioned a Typhon actually copying a person that well. Experiments with Mimics complex enough to master the human shape showed they could indeed copy the form of a person. But never their substance.
She shuddered, remembering the sight of a rigid, statue-like copy of herself unbalancing and toppling to the floor.
Manion and his technician, Kristine Lloyd, had eventually moved away from atomic replication to stranger theories involving adjacent dimensions or even illusionary fields. But as Carolyn watched Morgan brush a lock of dark hair out of her face and bite her lower lip, the first made more sense. In humans, had Mimics found something they couldn't outright copy?
Was there more to being human than this mere arrangement of atoms?
"Morgan?"
"Hmmm?" The Typhon glanced her way.
"Have you ever met the real Morgan?"
The Typhon frowned, her eyes tilted downwards and then she slowly shook her head. "No."
"How do you have her shape?"
"I don't understand the question." If facial expressions could be believed, Morgan meant it. She'd been focused on the terminal to this point but now she swiveled in her chair, knees and feet facing Carolyn, chin up, eyes intent.
"Not to put too fine a point on it but you're, well, a Mimic aren't you."
"I was."
"You're not now?"
The Typhon smirked. "The only meaningful identity I have is Morgan."
"What I mean to say, Morgan, is Mimics copy. They copy what's closest, usually, though they can hold a shape a lot longer. If you never met Morgan, how is it you have her shape?"
Consternation crossed the Chinese-German features of Morgan Yu, followed by a brief but powerful curiosity. Then the expression yielded to another recognizable emotion; impatience. Even before the Typhon opened her mouth, Carolyn knew what to expect.
"I have several hypotheses. It could be that Morgan's connectomere's impression on me left me with the shape of those memories, that having the mind of Morgan Yu means having her shape. I was also injected with cell lines from her genetic material, likely including neurological tissue. Those Incorporated human genes could have temporarily, or permanently, changed my natural composition. Perhaps my original shape is no longer my natural one."
"Unfortunately," Morgan said, "I don't have time to test these hypotheses. Someone tried to kill us both. Someone who had access to TranStar email systems, the ability to co-opt an Operator, obtain a Mimic and slip it through security. Someone who managed to kill your transcribe and who could issue orders to security to wipe us both out and cover all of this up."
"Assuming it's just a someone," Carolyn countered. She leaned over the display panel of the terminal and peered at myriad strings of data. It might as well have been another language to her. "It could be something, an organization. A rival corporation perhaps? They still exist."
"I hope you'll fill me in on the state of things, when we have time." The Typhon tapped the screen to draw attention to more incomprehensible text strings as if it explained everything. "What I can say is that it looks like this was all done by one person."
"Who?"
Morgan pursed her lips before turning away from the screen to gaze impassively at Carolyn. Typhon or not, the other woman had a controlled presence that nonetheless left the air feeling faintly charged with electricity. There was a force of personality there, a kind of charisma that Carolyn was adept at spotting. For all that this Morgan had no real memories, she had all of the original's poise and presence.
Which made her next words profoundly unsettling.
"Morgan Yu."