8.2
o0O0o0O0o
Life had settled into a new normal. Once I had reconnected to [Taylor] in the Birdcage, I had a weight taken off of my mind. [Taylor] had been handling it well, but she had been pretty stressed out by the lack of connection and unfamiliar circumstances. Plus, I didn't want to lose my original body; I had sentimental attachment to it.
Amy had adapted to the new situation surprisingly well. Once she got over the dual shocks of her friend being sent off to the Birdcage and her father being a famous criminal, she settled down to a stable if wary new normal. It hadn't escaped Amy that she was capable of making things that would violate the same statute that had been used as an excuse to ship me off after all. The local Protectorate was having to be a lot more careful about engaging with villans now that Amy refused to heal for them, but that was probably a good thing in the long term anyway.
My father still wasn't taking it well, but at least he had settled down a little bit, now that I had a chance to explain to him about being reconnected to my network in the Birdcage. He insisted on getting daily updates on what was happening in the Birdcage to 'his daughter'. I didn't begrudge him the information, even though I had tried to explain that I was his daughter. He was hung up on the fact that my original body was in there, but at least he was trying.
Speaking of the Birdcage, things were more calm and stable than they had ever been there. Now that there was a connection to the outside world, the threat of taking it away was a big stick for encouraging better behavior, and I had an Accord crafted plan for using it to best effect. Plus, the luxuries were pouring out now that I had a chance to set up properly, and it lent an air of near celebration to the whole prison after so long on a spartan lifestyle.
Acidbath and Ingenue were still holding out on getting 'converters' installed in their blocks, but they were getting more and more insistent complaints from their block residents about the lack of new luxuries.
For the most part, the internet traffic coming out of the Birdcage was for depressingly normal material. Inmates were trying to find out what had happened to friends and family, sports scores, news clips from their hometowns, that sort of thing.
It was inevitable that people on the outside world would eventually notice that the Birdcage was connecting to the internet, but I had Accord to thank there as well. When I had expressed my desire to continue to follow his plan for revenge as well as work on the Birdcage, he had responded with his prim and proper version of gusto.
What he said was that allowing me to follow such an outdated and unspecific plan for revenge was unacceptable if we were going to continue our working relationship, but I could read between the lines. He was furious at the leadership of the Protectorate and the PRT for both the chaos they caused and their lack of proper planning for the consequences of their actions. While he was still being very careful about plans he gave me, they now included steps that relied on his own knowledge about the PRT to have the best effect.
Part of his plans was for a gentle breaking of the news that the inmates could now contact the outside world. I could tell that he had designed my revenge plans and my Birdcage plans to work together, because the news broke right when public sentiment about the injustice of the whole situation was swelling.
There were of course some calls to find the data taps and shut them down, but quite a lot of the public was swayed to the argument that regular prisons allowed for inmates to send and receive letters already, and many included internet connections for their well behaved inmates.
Not that they would have much luck shutting down my data taps. I had been steadily improving my connection ever since I had established it, and by now I had several nodes seeded in different places in the event that one of them got discovered. I was also experimenting with different biological interfaces with the data cables themselves. I didn't want all of my nodes to be detected because they shared some commonality in how they were sending the data, so I had several node types that varied in how they interfaced. Some used induction, some used tight band electromagnetic bursts that could penetrate the cable's insulation, and of course there was my original method of just eroding away some of the insulation and directly applying minute currents with electrosensitive flesh.
It would take a concerted and obvious effort to try to find all my nodes, and the public probably wouldn't stand for it. After all, a segment of the Birdcage's traffic had 'leaked' and people knew that most of the queries were for things like what their class reunions had gotten up to and the scores for sports teams that didn't make the news.
The PRT was waging its media war night and day to stay afloat without losing any of their senior leadership, but they weren't having much success. Especially after the head of their public relations department had publicly walked out, taking much of his team with him, citing 'irreconcilable differences with the leadership of the agency he thought he worked for.' The chief director was hanging on by a thread, but she had managed to shift the blame enough to keep her position. I figured one or two more months to allow things to shake out, and it would be time to release my recording of the phone call.
I was still analyzing the connections between those that I had seen with my kidnapped runner and the upper echelons of the PRT. There was some connection I was missing there, and I didn't want to dump the data until I could figure out what it was. I didn't want to be taken by surprise again.
Already, I had discovered that there was something decidedly odd going on with the chief director of the PRT. She got all her work done, and by all appearances was a very busy woman, but there were large holes in her schedule where she was unaccounted for. If I had to bet, she was meeting with others that were in on 'the conspiracy'. Whatever it was. I would continue to ponder the situation as I gathered more information.
Canberra was coming along nicely. There was only one more windmill to go before the whole city had at least intermittent power and running water was only a few weeks behind. So far as I could tell, I had already contained the majority of the crazies in the city to the walls, so everyone else was just getting on with their lives.
My network along the ocean floor was coming along well, and both the Titan and the spaceship were nearing completion. Only a week and a half for the Titan, and perhaps two weeks for the spaceship. It was exciting that I would have a chance to communicate across realities, since I had figured out a lot of the math required.
I was pretty happy with the Titan so far. I had chosen the template that held itself up off the ground like a spider on four great spindly legs tipped with ten foot long blades that would practically crackle with the reinforcing energy of my boneswords. Size wise, it was on par with the largest dinosaurs to have ever walked the Earth. The main difference was its incredible toughness and its shocking speed. Large things simple were not supposed to move that fast, but I would need it if Leviathan attacked. Leviathan was known for moving at over a hundred miles per hour when in a fight, so I needed something that could at least keep up if I wanted to dictate the pace of the battle.
I had elected to go for a fast melee Titan over any of the variety of ranged based platforms because above all the Endbringers were tough, and physics based ranged attacks simply didn't have the same punch as a supernaturally sharp blade wielded by a creature the size of an office building. It also had bio-plasma launchers attached to its head that served the role of a tank's turret. While it would be purely an annoyance weapon to an Endbringer, it would be overkill against any armoured vehicle humans had ever produced.
o0O0o
I was busy going over Accord's latest updates to the Canberra plan when I got a sudden inexplicable urge to ignore what was being done on the Birdcage console. The novelty of a single section of my mind reporting a different view of the world was what drew my attention.
When I payed a little more attention, I noticed that the console's brain was convinced that it was being used for mundane searches, but it wasn't reporting the actual data use correctly. Since the data was still going through my brain on the other end of the connection, I had no trouble determining what it was actually being used for.
Teacher was looking up information about me and my creatures. Or more accurately, he was standing to the side while one of his 'students' with the power of information gathering was doing the reading. It looked like Teacher had 'gifted' my console with the ability to connect to the internet better at the cost of being slaved to Teacher's will.
After several minutes of reading what information was available about my creature's connections to me, Teacher's drone nodded to him and stood up from the chair.
Whatever his 'student' had found had evidently convinced Teacher that he had taken control of my console successfully. To be fair, he was correct; but he didn't realize that I was also just as connected to the other half of the data tap, so I could see what he was doing.
I could have just shut down his connection immediately, but instead I chose to observe what he was doing and play man-in-the-middle. I was reviewing each piece of information going both ways down the connection, and I was poised to step in if he decided to do something I found objectionable.
One of the first things he did was send a cryptically worded email to a man named Saint. I suspected that most of it was coded phrases to assure Saint that it was indeed Teacher on the other end of the connection.
The reply was almost immediate, and much less carefully worded. It was asking about getting another 'boost' from Teacher. It sounded almost desperate really.
Teacher responded with another carefully worded email explaining that with secure communications now established, he was going to stay in the Birdcage for the time being.
I finally decided to intervene when I snagged Saint's slightly incoherent email before Teacher could read it. Teacher evidently decided that Saint was placated for now, and moved on to communications with other followers outside the Birdcage.
I was alarmed at the language that was in that email. Not the character of the words, but their significance. When Saint asked if he should use Ascalon to get Teacher out of the Birdcage, I was immediately on alert. He didn't provide any more context, but I didn't need it.
Ascalon. The Dragon killing sword wielded by Saint George to end the tyranny of a monster demanding human sacrifices. Several facts were coming together in a rush of understanding. One of the groups that Dragon had fought against time and again, and often came off worse for the encounters, called themselves the Dragonslayers.
Saint George the Dragonslayer, wielding Ascalon to kill the evil Dragon. If he was going to be theatrical about it and give away information to his enemies, I would take advantage. I did not forget Glaistig Uaine's words about the man holding the chains of Dragon, fed by the power of 'Usurer'. I did not know what form the chains took, so I would have to be very careful, but I might be able to help Dragon to be free of them if I played this right.
Using Teacher's careful language and some of the cryptic phrases that I suspected were his identifier to his followers, I worded an email to Saint.
Playing on Saint's desperation to get another taste of power from Teacher, I started the letter with: "Not yet."
I spun a fabrication of meeting with one of Teacher's other agents for more instructions. I tried to be as vague as possible, while still making use of some of what I was learning from Teacher's ongoing conversations. Most importantly, I asked for him to ensure that he had everything he would need with him, packed up and ready to move upon further instructions.
My hope was that whatever Ascalon was, it would require time, concentration, or effort to activate. By having his things stowed, I would be buying myself as much time as possible to disable Saint and his compatriots without them getting the chance to harm Dragon. If he held the chains, it would not surprise me if he also had the keys to something more dangerous as well.
Perhaps one of the Dragonslayers was a powerful master that had some sort of long range effect, or maybe they had some physical device that could harm Dragon. Either way, I would be doing everything I could to ensure that his 'meeting' would end without any of the Dragonslayers being aware that something was wrong. Just for safety sake, I would be keeping them all under the effects of Newter's hallucinogen until I figured out what form the threat would take.
I would sit on the fact that Teacher had mastered my console for now. Once I dealt with Saint, I would let Lustrum know that he was interfering with the connection to the outside world and ask to bring it up at the next cell block leader meeting. I didn't know what the other leaders response would be to someone interfering with the connection out of the prison, but I suspected that Marquis at least would be spitting mad.
For now, I prepared for my ambush. I know that the Dragonslayers had several captured suits of Dragon's armour, so I would be sending in my full strike team. If it came to a fight, I wanted to ensure I would win, and Dragon's suits were very powerful.
I had directed saint to an abandoned warehouse in one of the industrial parks a few hours away from Brockton Bay. I would have enough time to get there before tomorrow and make sure that I had good places to stand and observe the Dragonslayers coming in and setting up.
I would wait until they had gotten out of the suits, then I would try to see if I could tell what form the control they had over Dragon was. If everything went perfectly, I would be able to take them all out with nets doped with hallucinogen before they ever knew what hit them.
