I opened my eyes and frowned at my bright surroundings, I couldn't recall falling asleep and I certainly don't remember leaving the living room the night before.
Good afternoon. You are scheduled to spend the day in the lab, Mister Stark is awaiting your arrival. I frowned as I sat up, I was still wearing yesterdays clothes which I was rather pleased about, it meant no one had undressed me at any point. I focused on hacking back into Starks systems, it was taking a little longer than it had before,
I must warn you not to proceed with your actions, Mister Stark has installed protocol that will have the team subduing you if you are found to have entered my system. It is also rather rude. I rolled my eyes but stopped anyway, I would have to find another way to learn who put me in here.
I took my time getting to the lab, taking an extremely long shower, for the last part of which I was just standing under the water with my arms folded until the water stopped and wouldn't turn back on, no doubt JARVIS had intervened. I had then spent a fair bit of time choosing whether I would wear black or blue jeans, making an ordeal of pulling on the black ones and faffing around with the zip and button. Then dragging out putting on the black shirt and my footwear.
The only way I could have got to the lab slower was if I had crawled. I had been surprised that no one had been sent to escort me, then was made aware I was being watched by JARVIS when he helpfully mentioned that the rooms I was opening and pretending I thought were the lab on my route were not my destination and started to guide me to the lab in a sarcastic tone.
Finally entering the lab Stark turned from the hologram he was looking at,
"Finally, I was beginning to think JARVIS had got you lost" I stopped just inside the doorway, arms folded, casting a quick glance around. Not including JARVIS and, I believe it is butterfingers, it was just the two of us. He pointed to a stall in the centre of the room surrounded by equipment,
"Sit over there and we can get started" I huffed as I followed his directions, kicking the stall away from its location and standing in its place. He rose an eyebrow at my actions, grabbed some cuffs and walked over to me. He wrapped them round both arms and my head, passed me one to wrap around my waist as when he had gone to do it I had let out a warning growl from my throat. He double checked their positioning before going and tapping at some of the screens of the equipment,
"Stay still for the next twenty minutes, they need to calibrate to your resting readings"
"What are they reading?" one of the machines made a loud beeping noise and he rushed to it to push buttons,
"Don't do that, not yet anyway. I'm going to find out how the technology is fused with your organic systems, and then how the magic interacts with it"
"And you couldn't ask because..?" the machine beeped again and he pushed more buttons,
"You don't seem like you would willingly give me the information, and this way I have the data on record and I know it's accurate" I scowled at him, "now stop talking, mind messaging, whatever you call it, and stay still, no other magic either".
During the twenty minutes I glared as he moved from screen to screen pushing things and typing, his eyebrows furrowing at certain things he saw before he gave me a curiously fascinated glance then carried on with his actions.
It felt much longer than twenty minutes when he finally stepped away from the equipment and stared at me expectantly,
"Do something" I gave him a sardonic look, "JARVIS allow Kayleigh basic access to the camera systems"
It is done,
"Good, now use your technology, thingies" I rolled my eyes then patched into the camera system, I looked at the lab from all the angles, then started searching through the system until I found the camera for my room. I made a minimal attempt to look through past footage from the room to find that didn't fall under basic access, I started working on the system to access the past 24 hours of footage,
Sir, she is attempting to gain further access to the system. Shall I remove her from them? Stark was watching one of the monitors intently, I noticed he hadn't replied so I put in slightly more effort,
"Shut her out" I felt myself get thrown out and it sent a jolt of pain through my head, I clutched at my skull until the pain subsided. I felt the hand on my shoulder as I started to register he was talking,
"Are you okay?" I shoved him away from me and sneered,
"I'm fine" the other machine started to beep again,
"Are you sure?" he paid no attention to it, I focused on the machine emitting the irritating beeps, the noise suddenly increasing in speed before it slowly started to peter out. He went over to it and cursed,
"Really! Why did you do that, and secondly how?" he kicked the now useless machine, "that took ages to design and calibrate, not to mention it took a lot of bribery to get Loki to be my test subject to check it worked," I bristled at the casual mention of my father by him, "now I'll have to fix it, after I find out what you did to it" he took a breather, "unless of course you want to tell me" I walked over to it and grabbed at one of the access panels, pulling it off, ignoring that it had screws. The insides which should have been a mix of wires and circuit boards and the like were now just a large melted and charred mess. I dropped the panel on the floor with a sense of great satisfaction at the look of indignation on his face which changed to a look of impress,
"I had a suspicion you were more talented than Loki said you were," I felt the a small rush of joy at the compliment but caught myself before I gave a gleeful smirk, instead choosing to glower,
"Don't underestimate me Stark. There are many things people do not know about me" he shrugged,
"Care to share any of that knowledge?" I stood up,
"What did you manage to observe from that little exercise?"
"You've got Loki's strength," he gave a sigh of frustration, "nothing of any use. The moment you entered the system I couldn't get a clear reading, it couldn't separate your normal brain function from that of your chips readings. It had had problems separating them at rest, mixing them every now and again, it's as though they're not completely separate," I smirked slightly, he stopped and frowned, before throwing his hands up exasperatedly, "They're not separate, so you mean this was completely useless. A little bit of information as to the chips technology would mean I could do this accurately" I shrugged,
"You never asked"
"I'm asking now" he waited expectantly,
"It's not that simple anyway, I would need to remove a chip and give it to you. Meaning I need to make another one first to replace it" I rubbed the back of my neck, "and considering the reason you require it, you're going to need the one attached at the top of my spine"
"Why can't I just use the one you make?"
"It would be a useless piece of circuitry with an unused biometric system in place, it would do you no more help than you already had"
"So why does it need to be that particular chip, why not one from your wrist?"
"It is the one all information and commands to and from the other chips travel through, in essence it is the brain of the system. Therefore it is also the most complicated one to recreate correctly, near impossible without my original blueprints"
"And they would be where exactly?" I thought for a second then my face screwed up in irritation, "Where are they?"
"With the person who initially had me make them, but last I saw him, he was dying. So you best hope he left them with someone he trusted".