AN: Some parts of this fanfiction were written by Beriothien Nenharma as thanks for my participation in writing a chapter of his story- "Afterwards". It's at the ending parts of the chapter, and you'll easily recognize it if it seems to go into the realm of techno babble.

The equation to calculate the power of the Ghostly Wail unlocked during Ascended form (this power being a replacement the "Final Toll" power to balance it out) is P= 2(x+2)^x , where P= Power and x=Seconds the Ghostly Wail is in effect.

The equation to calculate the power drain from the Ghostly Wail is D= 5(x+3)4x - 3, where D is the amount of power drain, x = seconds the Ghostly Wail is in effect, and D is less than or equal to 3,000 and greater than 0. X cannot equal -3.

If the equations above don't make any sense, it was probably my rabbit's fault.

Code: Ascension Chapter 12- Skin on our Teeth
[Northern] London, Britain
December 31, 2020
18:42

"Assist in the rescue" Michelle imitated Commander Anthrax, sarcastically rolling her eyes and lightly punching John in the shoulder. "Well John, since you are my copilot for today, you are going to have a crash course in flying a Boeing 777- literally!"
"Am I going to survive?"
"Of course! I always take care of my passengers- after all; a good landing makes people happy!" Michelle chirped happily, looking through the multi-layered glass windshield at the ragged survivors heading toward the plane below.

Most of the survivors themselves were probably the paranoid ones- the people that had barricaded themselves in reinforced steel bunkers underground and had been proclaiming the end of the world for several years. There, they felt sure that they were safe from any attacks, including biological warfare and nuclear doom. After the second day of war, after learning about the possibility of polymorphic specters slipping within their ranks in order to kill the surviving colonies from the inside out, they had turned on each other, slashing at their friends and family with knives just to see if they would bleed.

In addition, they had then closed their safe houses and refused to admit new survivors into their group, no matter how badly wounded the said survivor was. Their paranoia had eroded their being into husks of their former self, convinced that the living survivors outside were contaminated by the deadly pathogens being transmitted through the air, the water, and through other living creatures. However, it was only their dwindling supplies since the fourth month of war that convinced them to seek outside help, mainly assistance from the military in supplies and emergency evacuation.

Being that Michelle was one of the only pilots with experience flying planes other than fighter jets, Commander Anthrax had put her on the list of pilots assigned to do rescue missions. Michelle, on the other hand, suspected it was because he was almost blown to bits during Christmas and she never exactly gave a damn whether her bombs hit the target or not. Either way, all pilots assigned to rescue missions were crammed into planes undamaged from the bombing raids on airports to fly typically ungrateful survivors- they usually bemoaned the separation from their personal feelings and desires instead of focusing on the fact that there were people who risked their lives to ensure the safety of their asses.

Usually, Boeings and Airbuses equipped with defense mechanisms were used, as they were able to transport hundreds of people at a time. In addition, there were approximately seven or eight fighter jets that accompanied the plane- a convoy system instituted to both ward away potential attacks and to engage all threats that posed a safety risk. The pilots that would fly the said commercial plane would ride along in a two-seater fighter jet, before switching to the commercial plane to fly it.

Surprisingly, they had not encountered any resistance when they received approximately a hundred and ten survivors from Germany. They had however, encountered a few patrolling Hornets while they were flying towards London to pick up another hundred survivors from London. The escorts had quickly dispatched the pests, and were now circling in a defensive pattern while the big jet and it's cargo sat on the ground to take on passengers and fuel. Since London was the last leg of the mission, and a quick hop away from the 45th Regiment base, refueling the plane wouldn't take long. However, embarking the survivors and their belongings onto the plane would. Once they finally got to the base, the airplane would have the remainder of its fuel siphoned to power other jets and would be taken apart to build another fighter jet.

Briefly glancing through the open cockpit door, Michelle nodded as the last of the survivors and their belongings were packed into the plane, the moveable stairway shifted away from the plane, and both the airplane and the cockpit doors were locked and secured for takeoff. While Colonel Sheppard skillfully adjusted the coordinates and the commercial plane's digital systems, Michelle momentarily hesitated before activating the PA system.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain, Commander Fell speaking. Will all of you lazy bums please take a moment to read the damn safety information in your seat belt pocket- I am not your mother, and therefore I cannot- what? …Fine, I'll be nice to them. This plane is equipped with standard defense mechanisms along with eight fighter jets provided by the 45th Regiment accompanying us for the flight. So will the ladies and gents please fasten their seat belts and prepare for the ride of your life!"

The plane along with a couple of its escorts slowly lumbered onto the emergency runway- the main runway had been cluttered with the remnants of planes long killed by XANA's missiles and was cratered with deep holes caused by falling bombs. The emergency runway was shorter than the main one by a few thousand feet, which would make takeoff trickier especially since they were flying a large plane, as emergency runways were obviously only meant for planes landing because of an unforeseen event occurring- a passenger having a heart attack and the plane having to divert to a nearby airport being an example. It was fortunate that it was nighttime now, since the most direct route towards the base from this location would be pointing towards the sun at one point of the flight during the day, which could obviously assist any potentially attacking monsters.

"Lone Wolf, this is Foxtrot Bravo Niner-Six-One preparing for takeoff, over" John spoke into the set, double checking the radio frequency.
"Foxtrot Bravo Niner-Six-One, you are cleared for takeoff, over" Commander Anthrax replied over the set. "Initiating flight tracker in three seconds"
"Copy that, over"
"Preparing take off momentarily… All systems go… Dimming cabin lights and turning all air packs on"* said Michelle.
"Are you ready?"
"Yeah"
"Let's do it!"

[Page Break]

19:10

The harsh artificial light bore down on the only two people in the room. One was grimly frowning and reviewing security feeds on the main security center's computers while the other was nervously looking over his shoulder at the information compiled onto the screens. On some of the screens were various security tapes taken around the hospital in various places while other screens displayed the electronic key cards along with their owners' names, time and point of entry and time and point of exit. Commander Matthew Anthrax frowned as he momentarily glanced away from the list of the key card codes to see that camera #24 had been recording nothing but a dark room- the same dark room in which multiple murders were committed.

"Who was the idiot that forgot to activate night vision for camera #24" Matthew snapped, swiveling the chair around to meet the petrified Sergeant Mark Towser with his fingers tented and his legs crossed.
"By my records, sir, the night vision mode was on before it had turned off somehow. Maybe one of the personnel working this station at the time had been negligent and had accidentally turned it-"
"Night vision mode isn't a button that is easily pressed" the Commander grunted angrily, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "You have to enter a specific code in order to turn it on or off. Only medical personnel have that access so that they can watch over their patients in case the medical instruments alerting them to their patients' statuses fail."

Turning back around to face the monitors, his frown deepened as his ears faintly detected the sounds of the attack, as well as the bloody gurgles of the victims doomed to die from the small speakers built in to the computer.

"Do we know if we have a motivation for the murders?" Matthew nonchalantly asked, raising an eyebrow as he prepared to hear the other man's explanation.
"Well... we believe it is either sabotage- like the specter taking out specific people that know intimate details about the base, or it could be a pure terror tactic."
"Sticking to your first suggestion, do we have any leads?" he asked, still not taking his eyes away from the security monitors.
"No sir, they have not yet detected any recognizable biometrics from the killer."
"Who's the idiot leading the investigation?"
"I believe you are, sir."
"Are you calling me a fool?" Matthew angrily snapped, rising out of his chair threateningly and turning towards the frightened officer.
"Y...You don't need me to look like a fool, s...sir" Sergeant Towser stuttered, shifting uncomfortably.
"You're darn right I don't need you to make me look like a-!" he stopped abruptly, realizing what he was about to say. "I am going to gut you like a Cornish game hen" he growled threateningly.
"I mean anything by it, I swear!" he squeaked as he held his arms defensibly in front of his head; Matthew stopped his approach just before he completely lost his temper and considered what the older officer had said.

Sighing resignedly, he gestured back to the data displaying the key cards number, specifically pointing to list of people that had entered the hospital on the day of the murders and up to three days before.

"There are not a lot of suspects we have here" Matthew mumbled under his breath before explaining. "The only people that had entered this hospital were either doctors, patients being admitted, or visitors that had successfully gained permission to see patients."
"Why not start with them?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow in amusement. "I mean, not all of the soldiers and officers outside our medical team and patients have been examined. Well..." Sergeant Towser paused, nervously scratching the back of his head. "That is not to say that we have given all medical personnel an inspection, but-"
"Then how do I know that you're not the invading human?" Matthew snapped.
"I could say the same thing for you" Mark muttered, hoping that the younger, burly man hadn't heard what he had just said.
"You're right!" the Commander declared loudly. "We don't know if we're even human, so we have to watch out for ourselves and make sure that nothing tries to force us to terminate any of our comrades, not even the morons in uniform!"

Triumphant, Matthew heartily slapped the Sergeant on the back before looking over the feeds once more. The list was then compacted into a display of the visiting troops and officers that had entered the hospital and what rooms they requested to enter. Commander Anthrax fingered his sidearm excitedly- once the blood of traitors had been first spilled, there was always the excitement to spill more and more each time.

"I think the records are usually kept by a Doctor Antauri Dixon or something like that." Mark suggested, shrugging his shoulders.
"Good idea!" Matthew announced, sprinting out of the door and leaving Mark to himself.

Sergeant Mark Towser watched as Commander Anthrax left the room with gusto before sighing in relief and plopping onto the over-stuffed chair wearily.

"I thought he wouldn't leave me alone"

[Page Break]

19:19

"What have we got here?" Commander Matthew R. Anthrax demanded, barging into the room and roughly slamming the white-painted steel door shut.
"Well sir, not much, but we'll be able to track him or her down soon enough" a medic replied nervously, fidgeting in his chair.
"I want it brought to justice now!" Matthew shouted, slamming his fist down onto a panel and causing several worried looks by the personnel stationed there to be shot in his direction. "Medic, we're fighting a war on two fronts here! Do not just sit here like an invalid and do nothing!" the Commander paused and thought over his words before continuing again, albeit in a softer tone. "Medic, we need every source of information that comes to us. If you are able to retrieve important Intel from the enemy, I suggest you do it quickly- we're not going to last very long here if we don't."
"Yes, sir, but you see, I'm only a-"

Matthew slammed his hands onto the table, startling the young man into nearly jumping a foot into the air.

"I don't care if you're just a medic! You doctors have access to potential resources we can use to kill off these things, like the night-vision enabled cameras for instance"
"Look, why don't you idiots at Headquarters just build a device that lets you see if people radiate body heat in comparison to the number of people present in a given area," the medic snapped angrily. "That way, you don't have to waste time looking for a needle in a haystack- you just have to find a body that doesn't have the same body temperature a normal human being has" the medic offered, unamused with the situation. "I mean, it's just that guys in power screw things up so badly, whereas hardworking doctors hardly get any recognition for the services that we are able to actually provide in the world, and yet we hardly have a say in things"
"That is a brilliant idea!" Matthew bellowed, tuning out the medic's miniature rant after the medic's suggestion.
"Glad you see things my way" the medic muttered.
"Medic!" a deep voiced male bellowed, pounding on the metal security door. "Medic! Doctor!"
"Oh, not again" Matthew grumbled, punching in the twelve-digit door code and letting the biometric scanners on the other side of the door do their work on the person requesting entrance.

The said human that squeezed through the door frame was a morbidly obese man in his thirties, chomping on a sandwich he had taken from a colleague's mini-fridge. Nobody except the record keepers actually knew his real name- when he tried to say it; the sandwiches he was usually eating got in the way and therefore garbled his words. As he was the heavy-weapons expert, he was nicknamed "The Heavy".

"Medic, we have big problem! Big!" Heavy roared in between bites of his food.
"What is it now?" the medical doctor sighed, taking off his glasses and massaging his temple.
"Come, come doctor!" the Heavy ordered, grunting in irritation as he had to go through the door frame again.

With that, the heavy set man lumbered down the hallway, shoving the unfortunate people that were in his path to the side.

[Page Break]

19:25

The body of Dr. Miller lay on the blue tiled floor, the blood pooling around his form staining his normally white and pristine medical scrub bright red. A butterfly knife embedded in his back was adjacent to the multiple stab wounds over the doctor's body. A soldier decked completely in desert camouflage that had been positioned as a sentry for the body was waving his shovel everywhere, almost conking his fellow coworkers on their heads a few times.

"Boys, we have a traitor" the soldier declared angrily, digging the pointed end of the shovel into the floor.
"Put that thing away before you hurt somebody" the medic snapped. "You are not helping matters by swinging that thing around and potentially beheading somebody that doesn't need a cranioectomy in this stupid war."
"This war is not stupid" the soldier declared angrily. "We are fighting this war to protect the lives of the citizens. In fact" the soldier added after a lengthy pause "If there is any chance of victory, then you must fight! Sun-Tsu said that-"
"Yes, yes" the medic waved impatiently, waving away the soldier's rant with a wave of his hand. "We have heard that story countless times before."
"It is not a story" the soldier grumbled, stomping out of the room angrily.

The medic sighed and muttered something about too many idiots around the workplace and not enough aspirin under his breath before he snapped on a fresh pair of gloves from the dispenser mounted on the wall. Seeing as the photographer had already taken the necessary pictures, he began the slow process of moving the body to the preservation chamber for later investigation by the Regiment's force. There used to be a saying stating that when the amount of paper work that had to be done almost equaled the physical work of taking care of patients, it would be safe to say that their job was done for the day. Unfortunately, that very saying was very true.

[Page Break]

19:43

"Ladies and gentlemen" Michelle spoke in between fits of hysterical laughter as the plane weaved through the sky to avoid additional laser damage from the aerial drones patrolling the skies. "This is your flight captain speaking. We have lost power in all engines and we're slowly going to drift towards the ground and probably die. Please remain calm and in your seats. Thank you for flying Jet BLU, where-" the PA eerily cut off suddenly with a loud blast of static.

The survivors looked at each other, shocked, before they began screaming loudly and clawing at the setback pockets, searching for writing tools to scribble their wills and last testaments on. Some of them had even unbuckled themselves and moved wildly about the cabin, struggling to open the emergency exit doors but finding it impossible due to the air pressure outside and due to the fact that the door was actually wider than the frame itself. Babies and young children wailed loudly, squirming in protest as their parents as well as several surrounding survivors tried their best to quiet them by bludgeoning and grabbing at their necks to strangle them. Their nerves were already frayed from the stresses of survival during a post-apocalyptic world, and screaming children never helped matters at all. For months, they had been shot at, stabbed, and sometimes even set on fire, all in the name of suffering now for their survival later.

The plane circled over the base, trailing lines of black smoke and doing its best to stay intact in the middle of a firefight. Weapon-fire that flew dangerously through the air was exchanged on both sides. Technically, while the energy shield that surrounded the base was actually just bursts of concentrated energy fired at specific items that attempted to pass through the protected area, it was the sensors that extended for miles on all sides that warned the base of intruders. The sensors usually took the appearance of an electrical dome that sometimes was faintly visible when certain conditions were met in order to create the appearance that the base was more fortified than it actually was, and that it had enough electrical energy to run the shield twenty-four hours a day.

"I think the landing gear is jammed" Michelle grunted, wrestling with the controls and suddenly banking twenty-five degrees to the right in order to avoid a collision with a distracted fighter.
"Can't planes land without their landing gears deployed?" John asked, hurriedly punching in commands from his side of the cockpit. "I mean, with a fighter jet, you can belly land them. The A-10 is an example of an aircraft that is made to do that. Belly landing in the water is harder or within the belly of another plane if it has internal weapons storage."
"You're absolutely right!" Michelle shouted, nearly leaping out of her seat to hug him had her seat belts not restrained her body. "You're a genius!"

With the flipping of a few switches and a cursory glance at the panel that displayed the current altitude, the pilots gently eased the plane towards the Regiment's landing strip, which was harder to do now that the landing gear was disabled and give that without the engines, there really wasn't any other opening to pull up safely in the case of a human judgmental error. Luckily, there was an alternate power unit that allowed the pilots to move the tail's rudders and elevators. What compounded the issue was that though airplanes could drift an average of eleven miles per thousand feet of altitude lost, there wasn't enough time for both of them to troubleshoot the landing gear problem.

"Here it goes!"

The plane flew over the desert wasteland and loomed over the Regiment's runway, blowing sand in all directions as the massive behemoth bore down towards the earth, easily passing through the electrical field with no trouble. Nervously gripping the controls, the pilots quickly made some last minute adjustments to ensure that the nose wouldn't immediately plow into the ground and cause massive collateral damage in terms of both lives and property. With a loud crunch, the plane's belly slammed onto the ground and skidded across the asphalt, sending enormous amounts of sparks flying. The Boeing spun around in circles wildly, causing the workers on the ground to scatter before they were run over by the out of control plane. Metal pieces from the smaller, dislocated parts of the plane such as the flaps covering the landing gear flew off in every direction.

With a loud screech, the plane halted just inches away from the control tower's concrete base, having used almost the entire 12,500 feet of runway to skid to a stop. Almost immediately, fire trucks rushed onto the area to douse the fire from the flaming engines. When they got there, however, they found out that it went out by itself and the firemen had nothing to do but shuffle around, flirt with some of the survivors of the opposite gender, and drink tepid coffee that tasted like ash.

"Well... this went a lot better than I thought" John stated, stretching and cracking his knuckles.
"Yeah, and it was because of you that we're probably still alive" Michelle agreed, unfastening the restraints and opening the cockpit door. "Once again!" she bellowed at the harassed, departing survivors. "Thank you for flying Jet BLU! We hope to never see you here again!"

[Page Break]

20:21

"Engineers!" Matthew shouted at the top of his lungs, poking his head through the open basement door to glare at the toiling men below. "I have a big problem!"
"Hey, buddy," one of the dirt-coated engineers casually said, resting his oil-soaked wrench on an equally oil-covered shoulder.
"Don't call me buddy" Commander Anthrax growled threateningly.
"Anyway" the engineer continued. "Just because we're engineers, and that means we solve problems- not problems like "what is the meaning of life", because that's philosophy, we're not at your every beck and call. But..." the engineer added, almost thoughtfully, "Since we solve practical problems, what can we do you for?"
"I need you to build this" Matthew replied, slamming a ruffled blueprint into his hand. "How fast can you build it?"

Frowning, the engineer gingerly unfolded the paper, letting his eyes skim through the rough sketches of the said invention and the mathematically incorrect solutions. Instead of simply building a scanner that displayed the heat signatures from people in comparison to the next-to-nonexistent heat emissions from polymorphic specters, Commander Anthrax had gotten a step further and demanded ambulatory sentries to guard the hospital.

"We can build it for you in several days" he said, running a gloved hand through his dirtied hair. "We need time to gather the necessary metal, wiring, motors, gears, weapons, and... correct the math destruction you have done" he added with utter disgust evident in his voice.
"Great!" Matthew exclaimed happily, nearly bursting with excitement to tell the General of the Army the news.

January 3, 2021
01:21

Captain William "Bill" Nenharma pushed open the heavy metal door and climbed through the access port onto the top of the tower. From here he could look out and see the end of the buffer zone, the barren, burned and pockmarked wasteland that surrounded the 45th regiment base, or he could see into the heart of the bleak encampment. Reaching down, he double checked that his radio was on the correct frequency, as missing an early warning alert could result in him being caught with the dual 20mm Gatling guns that made up the tower's armament as they opened up on whatever was deemed the best target, and that would not be good.

A look around the base from the elevated perspective of the 5 story tower failed to show all the tension that was building up amongst the people. Everyone was scared of the specter that was running around the base and it was turning into full out paranoia. Rumors of bots designed to hunt the specter by shooting anything with an abnormally low body temperature wasn't helping matters. First, many correctly feared being shot because they had a winter coat on, since that would indeed help hide their thermal signature. Secondly, many feared that the specter, if caught, would just hack the bots and turn them against the base's populace. This was dubious, as such an attempt would give away the specter, but otherwise not impossible.

The larger danger was paranoia, what Bill decided he would call Salem syndrome from now on. People were on edge, demanding displays of blood at every chance as proof of being human. Two soldiers had been treated for infections of their hands as a result of several wounds sustained not by accident or combat, but by slicing into their palms to prove they were human. A group that was already underfed and under-equipped did not need to waste its dwindling medical supplies on such stupid incidents.

The radio squawked and Bill headed for the hatch, stopping when his knees were level with the tower roof, waiting for an all clear, or a second warning. He could hear the humming of the shield emitters being primed with power, made ready to project small segments of an energy barrier should they be needed. The gun mounts turned, adding a deep vibration to the electrical humming and causing Bill to move farther down the ladder. Only a few seconds later came the all clear, and Bill hauled himself back unto the tower's roof, turning in the direction of the guns and squinting in an effort to see what was coming before reaching down and pulling a set of binoculars out of a pocket.

Heavy combat vehicles, nothing more than military trucks with steel plates and whatever type of guns the soldiers who made them had available really, escorted a convey of four cargo vehicles. With a quick movement of his fingers, Bill zoomed in on the trucks and decided that they were carrying food, water and medicine. Hopefully, that will improve morale. He thought to himself. With a resigned sigh, he turned back towards the base and nearly jumped off the roof when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder.

"Hold it right there XANA!" A female in standard army fatigues snapped, holding a sharp, curved blade in position to slash across Bill's chest. "Or Katy will slice you to bits."

Bill held up his hands to defend himself before recognizing the woman holding the blade and relaxing somewhat. "You know I almost jumped off of this tower?" Bill replied seriously as his friend raised the sword she proudly carried.

"What are you doing up here?" She asked again, straining to hold back her laughter at his initial reaction.

"Getting out of the paranoia," Bill answered honestly, "And doing a favor for the tech that was supposed to be inspecting this tower since he's in the hospital. If you need proof that I'm really me..." He held out his hand and Michelle pushed it away.

"If you were a specter, you wouldn't be here staring out into space." She sheathed the blade into its worn scabbard and looked into Bill's brown eyes, frowning as she noticed that there was more to the story than her friend had just told her. "What aren't you saying?"

Bill sighed deeply and turned away from her, eyes focused on an alley outside the tech building. He held out his hands as if inspecting them, looking at the numerous pinpricks from each trip through a security checkpoint. "Guards pricked his finger and didn't get blood." Bill shook his head sadly, "too many attempts to draw blood from the same spot can lead to not being able to draw blood from there."

Michelle listened as her friend continued, but she already had a good idea of what had happened. Bill explained that the tech had offered another spot on his hand, and how the guards had taken him away for a more thorough check. Some of the soldiers hadn't been satisfied with that and beat the tech, ultimately breaking one of his legs before deciding that he was human. The event matched up pretty well with what she had expected and she gave a disgusted shake of her head. "Things are getting bad around here."

Bill huffed, "XANA would be proud, if it felt emotion, of the specter it snuck in here. What the program can't do from outside our walls, it'll convince us to do to ourselves."

Michelle nodded, but found herself without anything to really add. She turned to look at the sprawling air and ground complex, her eyes drawn to where the last of the large airliners from the rescue operation was being cut apart for the components and materials. Nearby were the tanker trucks that the man next to her had helped liberate from XANA while she was flying ungrateful survivors out of the city they had been trapped in. "It's sad to see such a marvel cut apart."

Bill turned to where Michelle was looking, "At least it'll fly again. Parts of it, anyway."

"Yeah." She turned to look over the giant guns that made up the top of the tower, "so what kind of work has to be done on these things?" She really didn't care much about the answer, but hoped that having Bill explain would ease him from the gloom he seemed to be experiencing.

"Check the LN lines and pumps; check the comm lasers, vacuum tunnel seals and pumps. Check the ammunition store and feed mechanism. Look over the fixed function supercomputer core and energy projection hardware."

"Supercomputer core?" Michelle asked, looking down at the tower with a bit of trepidation. She had always thought the towers were big guns without computers.

"Yeah, you need a quantum supercomputer to form energy into solid segments of shield wall, and to monitor the local sensor grid for threats. It's too inefficient to project a shield segment from the central spire to ground level so the towers are responsible for putting out a shield from the ground up to 100 meters or so." Bill continued, "towers are linked to the base by superconducting power cables, cables that need to be submerged in liquid nitrogen to retain that property, which is why the tower has LN pumps."

Without noticing the vacant expression on Michelle's face, or that she was slowly moving towards the hatch, Bill finished up with the final bit of information he had on the subject. "The towers have data links with the central spire and both neighbors through mirror lined vacuum tunnels and lasers. The vacuum gives the fastest possible speed of light while also making the system very tamper resistant. The supercomputer integrated into each tower keeps the others informed of the sensor and shield status as well as the gun status and any targets it has. It can also coordinate the shields of the spire and the neighboring towers as well as report on what types of shield projections are most effective based on feedback from the projection system."

Michelle stopped her retreat, "Very tamper resistant is not tamper proof. Could XANA have hacked one of the towers to let a specter through?"

Bill shook his head, "Not unless he had someone sitting at the tower computer's physical interface and had someone back at HQ holding down the switch to power that interface. The computer is shielded and isolated from external interference and I doubt a specter could overcome the power flow to get data to the computer via the projection. It's a one way system after all."

Michelle looked confused and after a moment voiced her issue. "I may be stupid, but I'm not dumb. You just said that there's a way for the system to record how effective the shield was during an engagement."

"Well yeah," Bill answered without letting Michelle continue her thought, "there's a feedback mechanism that stores the..." He struggled for a moment to find the right words, "the back-pressure, the energy draw of the shield and what the sensors record. How it reacted to what it was hit with, in other words."

"So there is a way to get data back into the computer from the outside." Michelle answered in an irritated voice.

"Well yes, of course. But it's not stored in any memory that the CPU can execute, it's just a data file..."

"What is it? You sound like you just had an idea."

Bill didn't answer, lunging forward and hugging Michelle and pecking her forehead before hurrying to the ladder. "You're a genius!" He called out as he headed down the ladder, leaving the bewildered and only slightly irritated woman behind.

Michelle shrugged and sat down, her legs dangling off the edge of the building as she tried to figure out what had gotten into her friend's head. She could see him running from the tower's base, headed in the direction of the tech building with whatever speed he could muster.

"Everyone, me included, was so stupid." Bill muttered as he approached the tech building and struggled to stop before he crashed into the security checkpoint. His run had alerted the overly jumpy guards and his heaving chest wasn't enough to convince them that he was human as they poked the muzzle of their rifles into the captain's chest. A third guard jammed a tazer into the small of the officer's back and let him have a long jolt, sending Bill to the ground with a choked scream. They let him lay on the ground, recovering from the violent spasms for a moment then sliced a short cut into his arm, watching it bleed for almost 30 seconds before dragging him to his feet, checking and verifying his identity papers, and sending him on his way.

Clutching at the cut on his arm and ignoring the looks of the few people he passed in the halls; Bill headed to his office and used the first aid kit there to bandage his new wound. Then it was to his workstation to check the shield data archives. Any other time he'd have likely made a trip to the CO of the facility to report the guards, but right now it was forgotten in the rush to prove or disprove his theory. Specters needed powerful computer hardware to function and without a XANA operated quantum supercomputer nearby, the invading specter needed to be hosted on the base.

The main research computer was probably not infected, considering that that would be pretty obvious given the memory and CPU time necessary to sustain an AI like a specter coupled with the fact that the system was used for research and development on a daily basis. But the shield control computers were believed to be isolated and thus weren't regularly monitored for system utilization or other signs of infection. So if XANA were to direct a continuous wave energy weapon at the base, the shield system would block it and record the signal characteristics for fine tuning the shield and for later analysis in case someone wanted to duplicate the weapon. But thinking of the laser communications system between the defense towers suggested that directed energy could carry something worse than heat.

It took several hours of searching, a few calls for help and many extra eyes, but now Bill was staring at the monster. A complex program that occupied a few hundred terabytes of space was masquerading as a recording of an energy weapon used in several battles that had occurred near the base. The specter's original coding laid bare for all to see, if one was used to computer code that is. To the engineers that looked over the recording originally, it was just a giant waveform intended to destroy stuff and with a random modulation meant to pierce the shield or at least prevent an efficient counter. But there was a larger question: How did a waveform in data storage become an executable file uploaded to the shield control core?

"That's easy." Jeremie answered, causing Captain Bill to jerk his head up, unaware that he had even spoken. "A glitch probably allowed the information to overflow data memory and get stored in the code space."

Bill frowned, his dark expression one of disappointed surprise. "A buffer overrun allowed in the shield core?"

"Data and program memory aren't on separate hardware in the towers," Jeremie answered. "There was no hardware barrier to prevent it like there is on the central shield computer; there just wasn't enough space to have two super cooled crystal memory arrays in the towers so..."

Bill face palmed, unable to come up with any other means to express the dismay this revelation caused: A cost cutting measure was responsible for all of this."So now how do we fix this? If we take the shields offline, XANA will know because his agent here will fall silent. If we don't, it's likely we won't be able get rid of the infection and therefore the specter."

Jeremie looked down at the ground, lost in thought. "We can't even trace the emitter power usage to determine where the specter is with its code infecting the system."

"Why doesn't it just turn off our defenses and leave us open to a massive attack?" One of the other techs asked, "If XANA got this far, why not just finish us?"

"It can't," Bill answered. "It still needs physical access to the tower computer system to disable the guns and sensors, but the towers have too much EMP shielding for a specter to be coherent inside of. It also can't deactivate or interfere with the sensor mesh because the other towers would signal an alarm when they got conflicting information or if the connections were interrupted."

"And we can manually control the guns and even the shields if it came to that by triggering the explosive disconnects and using the fixed functions without the memory core." Jeremie added, "so if XANA did try to disable our defenses we would have early warning of his attack and a means of countering it even without the computer assisted systems."

"That still leaves us very vulnerable considering the difference in human and machine reaction times. Besides, it could just disable our automated defenses during the attack if that was the plan, even with a back-up plan we'd be terribly vulnerable as people scrambled to implement the back-up plan in the middle of a battle." Bill argued. "So why didn't it?" He mused.

"Who cares? Just blow it up." One of the engineers working on Sergeant Towser's robots answered. "Shoot the shit out of it and no more problems."

"You haven't been on a battle field, have you?"

"No," The engineer answered Bill, "but a big enough bullet kills everything, that's a fact."

"Specters have no real mass, nor a regular body. If you're lucky, an impact will disrupt the projection and freeze it for a moment or two, but otherwise they are bullet proof. And before you ask, I know this because I've tried shooting specters. Tried using C4 on them too but it didn't even slow the thing down."

"The specter can't just disable our defenses; they have too many safeguards in the physical hardware for any sort of software to be able to bring them down." Jeremie answered, hoping to get back onto the main topic.

"So back to wiping the computer and restoring it from a back-up." One of the assembled techs answered.

Jeremie shook his head, "it's not that simple. Doing that would require us to activate all our overrides and the second that happens the specter could destroy the core with a power surge since the safeties that prevent such an event would be disabled."

Bill's mouth simply hung open in shock as he considered how that scenario would play out. "So the specter can't interfere with the defense systems because of the safeties and we can't interfere with the specter because of those same safeties. But it was allowed to invade because we couldn't afford to put all the safeties into the towers!" Bill turned away from the group and walked away with a deep scowl.

*I know this is obviously not how real pilots talk while in the cockpit but I've never actually heard any dialogue between the pilots and the control tower operators. I didn't find any interest in listening to it during plane flights (but yes, they really do say "Roger", and "All systems go")

See the TF2 references? They're scripted to be only one-shot characters though, and probably won't be mentioned later on [The game Team Fortress 2, as well as all rights and trademarks belong to the Valve Corporation].