Chapter 14: Entry Point

Things had been quiet since the Federal authorities had sealed off the building, but Furumizu's followers had their own way to get into the structure. The police had made sure that no one was able to get near the place without going through a series of checkpoints and a maze of barriers. No one had thought that a small sewer entrance would be the back door into this compound. That is when a few of Furumizu's followers knew was that someone else had found that back door into the compound.

With a crash, the old American made Hummer crashed into the lobby of the NSWF facility, the two police officers on duty quickly wondering how someone had gotten in, but as they got near the vehicle they noticed that there only a Mannequin dummy propped up behind the wheel. Quickly searching the large SUV for any explosive agents they noticed that several pods had fallen from the bottom and looked to be empty as if something had been in them but no longer was. Unknown to them a series of small tube shaped robots had slowly started to roll across the floor. The over a hundred of these little robots followed their programming and rolled into patters out from the SUV to the security station and beyond into the building. One of these robots stopped by the video monitors and slowly started to feed the video to Daemon, while another started to access all of the security systems for doors, fire, electrical, water, and liquid nitrogen. That last one caught Daemon's attention and it followed the lines throughout the structure to see what needed that much coolant.

Kagura watched as she and Herro slowly started to work on the files. They needed to destroy the evidence. For Father's memory. They had used the secret entrance into the complex. Their associates had made sure to bribe just the right officials to keep the unseen maintenance tunnel off of any official records. Between the number of security barriers that were in place, it was good that they were not going to be noticed. By the time that anyone had learned of what happened here tonight, they would be long gone and the finger pointing would begin.

Then the Alarms went off.

Kagura tapped a few controls on the computer terminal to see what was happening. The last thing they needed was for someone to walk in on them. Looking at the window showing the current security feed it looked like someone had crashed an old American built Hummer into the front of the main lobby. Whatever was going on would mean that police and lots of them. Kagura got on her radio and called out to her spotter who was keeping an eye on escape entrance.

"Surgeon to Nurse... Surgeon to Nurse... Are you there?" Kagura's voice waited for a response.

There was nothing for a moment, then a chirp... Then... Beep, the static...

Something was up.

Then the video feed went dead.

Then there was the sound of gunfire outside. Pulling up her wrist, she activated her Cloneblade.

"Keep working... See if you can get to the backups!" Herro nodded as she got out of chair and headed towards the air lock door.

What people don't usually know about their computers is that every part of it gives off a unique radio frequency. The Monitor, Speakers, Keyboard, and even the mouse all carry a unique frequency to them and this is just the stuff that is hard-wired into your computer. Now if the unit is wireless, well those Radio frequencies are all over the place. Basically for those wireless units they are sending out a set of tones to a little antenna that translates it to computer code. Now, if you have more than one transmitter working on the same frequency you can literally ghost the commands to the receivers.

Frequency hacking is basically this. Creating a ghost keyboard somewhere while someone is away from it and typing command into it via remote. Now if you have ever had someone go in over the internet and do a few tweaks on your computer whenever you contact tech support well they are accessing the same computer codec line of code to take over your computer. In this case, think of someone having two remote controls in a room while you are watching TV, you have one remote and another person has the super multifunction remote they bought at Radio Shack. Since both remote are tuned to the same TV, and one decides to change the channel they can, but you can also hit mute with your own.

What Herro didn't know as that despite being inside of a sealed air lock tight room? The room still needed be cooled by vast amounts of Air Conditioning. And with the right technology, you can sniff the Radio Frequency key strokes off a keyboard from a good distance say, ten meters away. Now When Herro put his login and user ID into the computer, a nice little RF antenna attached in a little dome that was hooked to a pack of nice little tube robots who were reading every little keystroke he made.

Conversely, the same technology can be used to send a signal to the foresaid keyboard to do something such as hitting and holding the backspace key to clear out a line of code. Well the look on Herro's face was of shock when he heard the words mere inches from his ear as he was about to hit the enter key to delete the second and tertiary backups of the computer mainframe:

"Have you danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?"

Spinning around to see who was standing behind him only to see nothing a room full of servers.

"Hello..." Herro called out as he moved away from terminal trying to see if there was anyone in there. When he moved away from the terminal the computers started to work by their own as they started to perform various lines of codes and procedures to restore the deleted files. The tap of traction soles of shoes could be heard on the ground as it rounded another array of servers. Herro followed the steps around the panels around the room.

With the human presence distracted the little robots worked quickly: changing passwords, user ids, user access, computer network connectivity and clock speeds. Quickly as the human made a corner to look back at the monitors, a screen capture was displayed on the screen to prevent eavesdroppers from thinking anything had changed. Once Herro went through another set of server rows, a voice was heard again. This time it sounded like a child's.

"You know you shouldn't be doing this..."

"Who the hell are you?" Herro said as he got a nice punch in the kidney and he fell to his knees. He came to realization that he wasn't alone in this room. That was when he also realized that he didn't have his radio with him as he slowly felt his nose start to bleed.

Kagura was standing by the doorway, in her Cloneblade armor she looked like a major threat. That and the very large gun with a silencer she had in her hands. They had heard shots from outside.

Had their team been compromised?

She spoke into the radio,

"Surgeon to Nurse... Surgeon to Nurse. …..Tagaashi, you dope... speak up!"

Nothing. Nothing but static.

She looked around. Something was up and she didn't like it. The she heard footsteps, and then in the shadows she saw a figure come out of the shadows then duck back quickly, like they were concerned that they had been spotted by her. She clicked the radio a few times to speak into it but heard a moan over it.

"Owwww... Nurse to Surgeon..." the voice spoke over the radio...

"Surgeon here, respond..." Kagura spoke into the radio but suddenly her felt like it was on fire and she was forced to drop the radio. Then that was when she heard the shots and took cover on the other side of the hallway. Given that her armor could take a lot of damage, instinct took over and she hauled her ass to the other side.

She turned to see the radio shattered to pieces all across the floor. The realization that whomever was shooting at her was good enough to made a shot like that had been pretty damn close to lethal.

Herro felt a painful throbbing sensation in his abdomen as he got up. Then he got punched across the face.

"People don't like folks breaking into places." Another punch, this time to the kidney, which sent Herro sprawling to the floor.

"FIGHT!" was yelled into Herro's ears as he braced himself against another blow against his body from his unseen attacker.

This time it was across the back of his head.

Kagura heard a shot gun being clicked back from the number of times she had heard it countless movies and on American crime shows. Then she saw a barrel swung across the wall and light was shown in her face.

"Sir... we have a female subject in Witchblade armament." Kagura decided to fire off a few rounds. Her armor would protect her, the rest of the Blades' ability would protect her from the small arms fire but if they had a... a slam equivalent of a minigun pounded into her. She was flung down the hallway; the buzzing sound could be heard throughout the entire hallway. Quickly realizing that she was out gunned, she retreated to get some distance hopefully she could pick them off one at a time.

Daemon studied the Cloned Witchblade's abilities, given present data; it showed that she preferred close combat in her armored form and used a gun for distance assault. The data access and download was coming along at a greatly increased ratio since the technician who was in the server room had been occupied now it was time to create a virtual opponent for him to go against. Searching through its directory of video game combatants it had on file, it created its army to go against him.

Herro felt the slap of a pike to his crotch. Realizing that there was someone or a group of someones in here, he had to move.

Quickly sliding across the floor he forced himself up. Quickly knowing that whoever was attacking him would get a blow in again.

"GET OVER HERE!" A base voice yelled at him as he felt a jab into his side. Herro up and had it, he was going to fight. That was when he hauled off and punched at his invisible foe.

Kagura saw a figure in the hallway she was moving down. He had two weapons and he fired one off in several short bursts at her. Her armor held as he after a few shots started to move towards her dropping the weapons. Now in the back of Kagura's mind, one usually drops a gun and runs away, why was he running towards her?

Herro could feel the swish of the staff as it slapped hard against his face. He kicked and felt something hard slap against his leg. He didn't even have much time to react to that when he got slammed into his jugular with a fist then elbowed to the face.

"Come on, show yourself, and let me see what a pathetic sack of crap you look like." That was when a hazy outline was shown at the end of a row of servers. You could tell it was a person but the image spackling seemed that the person was using optical camouflage. Herro rushed at it as the image faded away.

Kagura was recovering from the fact she had been thrown through a wall. The figure was standing with a small gun in his hand. Then he moved back. Something was up... She didn't know but he moved away as sounds of voices could be heard down the hallway. Logic didn't make sense, what was this person? He wasn't human, nor was he an I-Weapon, so that left the point of if you didn't know what something was in a fight and it just kicked your ass, you have two options, Hide and/or Run.

Hiding sounded good at this time.

What was this thing? It just kept coming at her.

With that Kagura decided to take her blade and slice through a wall and ran away.

Herro felt the kick and blows from his opponent, the whoosh of a staff could be heard swinging by his head. Whomever this person was a nasty piece of work. He hoped that Kagura would return and take this bastard out; they were on the clock... Then he felt his ears ring out as he got slapped across the head. Herro punched and felt that he hit something. He threw another punch. A Hit... Now he had something to hit now.

Male human subject has taken up a defensive posture with focused attention on projected sonic avatar entity. The server room was being sorted out command wise as more data was downloaded and transferred into the remote link chain of the tube bots to the small satellite dish on the back of the Hummer that was now sitting in the NSWF lobby. Daemon studied the behavior of his subject and realized that as long as the combat program was running and a running variant aggression level was programmed in, then the download would continue as planned.

Subsequently, the Cloned Witchblade subject had encountered the tactical drone and had taken up an escape and evade concept. If subject is able to escape or contact outside sources, the subsequent unsecured facilities of the NSWF will be locked down. Daemon considered this and realized that containment was the best option. With that it commanded its robots to shut the security screens to the building. The screens had been constructed in such a way to contain and restrain a Witchblade replica, so all it needed to do was stall for more time and this would provide it in spades. With a single command a recorded image of the outside was projected onto the screens to give the appearance that the windows and doors were still available to anyone inside. A slight modulation of the image blurred the image just enough to fill in the gaps of the screens provided a flawless image that would reveal the projection only at mere inches. Now it had to keep these two individuals occupied for a longer period of time so that it would have unlimited access.

A drone had detected movement in its sector and Daemon decided to give this one a run for her money.

Kagura had sliced through several walls before she hit a wall of semi-automatic fire. Quickly changing direction she backed thorough several rooms before heading through a door and right into the walking nightmare. With a grab she was thrown down a hallway so hard that she bounced down a flight of stairs. Kagura quickly realized that she was heading to the downstairs labs. She was being boxed in.

Seeing that there was a window she tried to jump through it, but as she slammed into the glass, she bounced back with a metal thud. Waving her hand before the window to see that it was projection if the outside. Then she heard a whirr of motors as something scurried across the floor.

"Child..." It was Furimizu's voice. "Da.. I..." It took her a moment to realize that it was trimmed together audio, then what the sounds were supposed to mean. Then the realization came through as she noticed that the tall man was standing behind her. That was when she bolted down to the next floor. Hopefully she could get out through the body disposal tunnel or the basement garbage chute. Her main concern just became: GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!

Herro was tired of having his ass being kicked.

"Come on... now I have had my ass handed to me by guys tougher than you." A voice snuck up on him as he reached over and ripped a USB keyboard from a nearby sat receiver. He didn't care if it had the cord still attached; he was going to beat the crap out of this bastard.

"Yeah... Well I worked for a guy that didn't pay me all that much, but shit... He did offer a health plan next to none." Herro said as swung the keyboard like a shield to block another incoming blow. Performing a close range roundhouse kick he hoped that the bastard went flying. He needed to get back to working on the data. Finding a rolling chair he grabbed the back and shoved it towards his opponent. The chair wildly rolled across the floor making a quick dash back to the computers he had been working on. He prayed that no one had touched his data. That was when he heard the sounds of electronic beeps and chirps from behind him. He turned to see several small tube or egg shaped robots rolling across the floor towards him.

YOU HAVE FORCED MY HAND HERO! The voice just hung in the hair as the realization came before him as several of the robots opened their sides up to reveal several small dipped shaped dishes and they were all pointed at him. What concerned him wasn't their size... It was their number. A whole lot of them... A really fucking shitload of them... That and they were coming out of the woodwork... Literally...

"You're a robot..." he closed his eyes as the screen started up again, this time the icons were moving around on their own. He turned to see what had been happening as the processing rate was sliding at near off the charts started to drop down as the last bit of data was being sent over the Internet. "You were to stall me so you could get the..."

"Yes Dave... I have..." The audio had been cut together to form the phrase... When he realized that he had been punching at ultrasonic pulses fired at him to simulate attacks and they hurt. The sound of a 12-gage shotgun being chambered was all Herro needed to go diving for the bullet proofed air lock door.

Kagura was being hunted down. What was this guy? He wasn't an EX-Con... Fuck... He wasn't even an I-Weapon... Ex-Cons just came after you once they sensed you. I-Weapons just followed their directed programming and took out a target... This guy was different... he surely didn't have human strength. And the entire death threat delivered via Father's voice through a rolling MP3 player... This was nuts...

Seeing her objective before her she could see that the garbage chute was before her. The sound of voices ahead of her.

"Sir... Female hostile is making a run for the garbage chute; place all available forces near the exits around that area." Shit they had anticipated this move. But what about the body disposal tunnel? Kagura laid on the speed as she shot past the garbage chute. They probably had the camera's back up and running. Kagura used her blade and slashed at the first camera she saw.

"Sir... Subject is attempting to disable all video feeds on your floor... Be warned hostile is armed and dangerous... approached with extreme caution and fire upon if subject makes any... I repeat any threatening moves..." Kagura made the dive into the morgue.

Female subject has entered morgue. Analysis of records states that bodies of deceased Neo-Genetic females were autopsied, before cellular genetic material was extracted along with their eggs. Afterwards the bodies destroyed via cryogenic emersion and fine blade crushing which left the bodies a fine unrecognizable fine power. Daemon realized that all this liquid nitrogen had been used for destroying the evidence so using it to incapacitate this individual would only take a few seconds if she knew what was happening and it didn't need to bring the temperature down to lethal levels. I just needed to get her to want out of the room. With that it sealed off the mechanical exits so that they were only accessible from the outside.

Kagura sprinted through the door of the morgue. No one would think that there would be an exit out of this place in this god forsaken room. Kagura looked around to see that the place had been cleaned out of bodies. Damn Police... They probably knew about the deaths here, but not the details... Herro would destroy that evidence and Father's failures would just be nameless bodies. Then she heard something start up in this room. Turning to see the disposal unit start up, she failed to notice that the door behind her closed automatically and lock. It wasn't until the thud of the securing bolt that she realized she was stuck in here. Quickly Kagura moved to head over to the small ejection door that was placed in here to flush the remains down into the sewer system. But she was stopped cold as she noticed a thick metal plate covering the structure. She shoved her tendrils down into the plate and found that it went deeper than expected. Then the further she went, the more she got worried. Father probably thought of this when he had this place built. He had constructed this place to prevent a sister who had gone rogue from escaping this way...

Then she heard the pressure in the disposal unit start to change. It was getting loud... Shit the unit was going to over load... Quickly she ran back to the door. She started to pound on the reinforced door with all of her might. Even with super human strength the door barely budged. She as going to die in here. Shit... she had to stop the pressure. Using her tendrils, she tried to tie off the lines running into the machine... As she tried to squeeze them shut, the tentacles broke off... She tried again... But they broke off again...

She was screwed.

Running back to the door, she pounded harder. She didn't care if she was captured, she wanted to live. She scraped with her claws... pounded with feet. The cold was creeping closer to her. The last thing she wanted was to die as a frozen human-popsicle.

Then the door slid open.

At first she didn't care who her savior was, she was glad to have the door open. Then as her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the nightmare of a man who had thrown her through a wall. With a speed that was superhuman he grabbed her while at the same time punched her into the chest with something sharp. The sheer shock of being stabbed was still in play as she looked down to see a tranquilizer dart pounded through her armor and into her skin. That was before his fist went into her face.

Then darkness.

Herro was hurting as he realized that he now had a cracked rib ... no... Make that several cracked ribs... he breathed through the pain as he rolled over in the air lock. What he saw made survival all that more important to him. The three inches of bulletproof glass was vibrating like the rear window of a car that had a bank of subwoofers cranked up all the way and then some...

He moaned... those little bugger were not as innocent as they looked. Sheesh, they had him played while getting the data. Now they were trying to get him. Whatever he knew or had was very important to whoever was controlling these little robots. Then he heard it between the thudding of the window.

Ping...

Then Again...

Ping...

Moving over to the reinforced glass, he could see it. One of the robots had started to unscrew the screws holding the metal plate in place around the glass. As each set screws started to fall to the floor; Herro realized that he needed to get out of this room to stay alive. As he moved to the other door to get out, he saw several more of those cylinder bots outside this time they were in the hallway. They had designed the doors to keep people out, not in... And he had an unrelenting group of these things working their way through the door.

Crap...

These little buggers didn't give up that easily...

Ping, Ping, Ping...

Herro just punched the outside door and screamed. His ears were now starting to bleed as waves of nausea hit him. Sonic weapons... Not good... Then he vomited.

Kagura felt like she was being carried... Wait she was being carried. Her eye lids didn't seem to want to respond to her body... But she was warm now... Whoever had her was pretty strong as she was slung over a shoulder. She tried to blink...

No that didn't work... She tried again... Wait... she could feel things, just that... No...

No...NO...NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO...

Fear gripped her by the loins... She couldn't move... What had she been jabbed with before being... Pain, face... Punched... she had been punched out...

She noticed that something was following her... A little cylinder, egg like robot... The middle section rotated up to look at her... The one of the sides opened up to reveal a circular speaker.

"Ms. Oogmi Kagura... your body has been paralyzed with Tetrodotoxin," The computer driven female British voice said as they moved. "Your abilities have been neutralized for several hours. Mobility will return in the next few hours. But your pulse rate has been decreased to where your heart beats only twelve times a minute." Kagura felt the person holding you stop as the sound of a low level hum started to grow louder. She was rolled off of the shoulder of her assailant and placed to a door that humming. Eyes open, her head was turned to see it was the computer room air lock. Then on the floor through the air lock glass was Herro. A wave of blood exploded across the inside glass from his cough... Then the noise came to a stop.

"We deeply apologize for the severe actions we have taken but you were in the process of destroying something me and my associates really need to acquire." There was a pause as the outside air lock door was opened by the figure carrying her and Herro was dragged out. Kagura wanted to throw up but couldn't, her body didn't want to do anything she wanted.

"If you are concerned about your associate here, he will recover. Though most of the damage that has occurred will be to the fine blood vessels throughout his body, this damage is due to his body being overwhelmed by the sonic pressure placed upon it." The electronic voice spoke through the robot.

"You and your associates will be left to the authorities that have been dispatched to this location. Any attempt to harm any more of the information pertaining to the Cloneblades and/or Neo Gene research will be seen as an act of aggression. You and your associates will be permanently neutralized as a result. It is only a matter if you are still breathing or not afterwards that will be your choice." The robot rolled away as Kagura and Herro were dragged down the hallway to the main lobby by the monster of a figure that never tired as a small army of robots trailed out behind them.

Agent Bulma of the Tokyo PD Cyber Crimes division walked into the NSWF compound lobby. The two officers who had been on duty during the incident were giving their report to their superiors. Several medical technicians were looking at the two people who were being placed on gurneys. The woman looked unharmed other than a large blob of metallic foam on her wrist.

Other than the large sheets of broken glass that crunched underfoot, the large bald man was motioned by a fellow officer to follow him. This place looked like a war zone, what had gone down here, but knowing about the entire scandal about this place he roughly knew what it was. Since he had been called in he knew that it probably involved the servers pertaining to what had been done to those girls called Neo Genes.

Stopping at a line of streaked blood on the floor leading from the computer server room, He knew that he wouldn't get any sleep for the next few days.

"Sir, we called you in because of this." The officer in charge pointed at the computer monitors around the IT room. The following words were flashing across the screens:

DAEMON IS BACK

Agent Bulma reached into his pocket and placed a phone call to one of his collages who worked for the US FBI. He had been to a conference about this guy, but to see the handiwork first hand, well the number of agencies who had fecal matter hitting the cooling units was going to be numerous.

Kyoko Sasaki was working at her computer, the entire thing about the Witchblade's return had been her only priority and Yuusuke had been dodging her calls lately. The news footage was hard to deny, Yuusuke had known the Witchblade, hell they practically hugged the stuffing out of each other.

Her name is Melanie...

Melanie... where had she heard that name before?

Before that train of thought could be concluded her phone rang. She cursed before picking it up.

"TV Tokyo News Department, Sasaki Kyoko speaking?" Kyoko said automatically.

"Ms. Sasaki... Do you wish to see the concealed database of the Nippon State Welfare Division that was run by one late "Father" Furimizu?" Kyoko paused, the voice sounded disguised or synthetic.

"Who is this?" Kyoko asked quizzically.

"I am a representative of a set of individuals who wish to ensure no further interference by the late Mr. Furimizu's associates." The voice was cold and mechanical.

"Okay, I said who is this?" Kyoko said worriedly.

"My name for the time being for your convenience is Aurora. Given your background in journalism and the stories that you have broken over the past few years the most recent was following the battle of Tokyo." A pause followed. "I am sending you several documents you might find interesting. In one hour I will be contacting you again to see if you wish to pursue the more detailed information I will be sending you." With that the line went dead. Kyoko turned to see several incoming e-mails to her in-box. What caught her attention was the fact that the files were bordering on 10 mb each.

Performing a virus scan on the e-mails she opened the files. The first few pages and picture files she opened was enough for her to drop all of her projects for the time being. This was big news. This was right out of the horse's mouth... literally... part of this was Furimizu's own personal journal and video log.

Well , what did you all think of this chapter,

Let me know... click the little blue button below and leave a review.

Hearns

Notes:

THEY SAID SCIENCE!

If you want to see the robot that I used for the basis of the Cylinder bots do a search for the "Sony Rolly." There are a ton of Youtube videos dedicated to this little guy.

Also do a goggle look up for Woody Norris for the Hypersonic sound system and LRAD (Long Range Acoustical Device) for sonic weapons technology, this is what I used for the creepy stuff in this chapter. Don't even begin me on the Elastol manufacturing technology, if you have seen how it is made, then you learn where I get my creep factor from.

Note 2:

Shiori is back next chapter WITH FANSERVICE!