The Jumper's Journals

by blackshadow111

What happens when you give an ordinary person, someone completely, utterly mundane, with little special and even less important in his life, bored and tired, a shot at... well, Everything? What would you do, with all of eternity, all that was, is and will be at your fingertips? These are The Jumper's Journals, the story of a man's ascension. There's Wish-Fulfillment, be warned.

20. Chapter 20

"Are you sure you've thought this through, Eddy? I mean really chewed it down to the bone?"

I sigh.

"I knew showing you that movie was a bad idea. And yes."

"Oh come on. Wilfred is so like that Winston guy!" DADA, my AI younger brother of sorts responds. Younger half brother, maybe? My Dad made him and he calls him dad too.

Before I can say anything, he continues "But really. I get that you're not exactly drowning in field work right now. Still, what you uploaded a moment ago is a schedule full off… full off…"

Not for the first time, I wonder whether the computer is being dramatic or if I really did go this much overboard in imparting my loathing for the idea. I don't think I did, but that's how it always works, isn't it?

"You can say it, DADA. It's not a dirty word."

"I wish it was. It's fun to say those. You're talking about studying. For whole weeks! And not the good stuff!"

"Well now that's not fair. I'm going to be studying plenty of the good stuff." He's talking about what I would have called in another life 'comic book science', or what this world calls 'cutting edge'. It's similar to the absolute most advanced fields that I've seen in the past, just… different. More 'settled', if you will. People aren't wondering and gasping in joy at Quantum Physics, they're deriving practical ways of utilizing it. It's as if the worldwide scientific community is dominated by Engineers instead of Scientists.

It's seriously interesting stuff, and stuff I'm looking forward to working on. Just not immediately. Immediately I have to cover fields that are decidedly less glamorous.

"Eventually you will! But before that I'm seeing whole weeks of Finance! And Law, and what's this, Politics? And Behavioral Psychology? Why would you waste your time with all this?

I roll my eyes. "You know why. Or you can guess!"

He seems to actually be getting hysterical now "No, I don't! Even these are just the beginning, you've got all this stupid and weird-"

"That'll be it, I think. I'm not asking for your permission here. I'm telling you the schedule. And you want to know why? Because all this is things I need to know, just as you'd realize if you spared a few cycles to think about it. Extensive is the best lead I have on Cobra. 'Follow the money', as they say. How am I supposed to do that if I can't tell the difference between a Bond and a Debenture? I'd use you, but you know…"

"Extensive's systems are too advanced. I know."

"Yeah. We don't know what kind of traps there are in that data just waiting for an AI to go rifling through them. It's what I'd do, and what I expect my father would have taught his colleagues to do. And if Extensive were not enough, I have Bracken to bring down. How the fuck do you suppose I do that without understanding how it all works?"

To his credit, the AI seems to be getting it. "Yeah, yeah, okay. You know I'm only concerned because I think you'll get bored and blow up the library, y'know."

I just nod. The sad thing is, I'm not entirely sure he isn't right.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Dear Edward

As per your request, I have had new admin access accounts generated for you to access all databases, records and accounts of the company. These accounts will allow you unlimited ability to read, copy and collate data, so you may do as you said and become truly familiar with all it's aspects in the time you have outlined.

Additionally, I instructed one of the writers in the publishing division to take some time and compile a brief history of the Kane Corporation, for you to read before you embark on mastering the current state of the company. It's fairly exhaustive, but should serve for you to get a better perspective of our standing, and what it used to be. The report is attached to this email.

Please contact me for any further queries. I look forward to working with you, as I did with your father.

Alfred Daniels
Company Secretary
Kane Corporation

It's been a whole four days since I started on this… learning mission, and this morning I was finally able to deem myself satisfied with my financial education. And the biggest surprise of it all was, I liked it! It turns out when you take the most frustrating bits out of an education, like eidetic memory eliminating the need for any memosrization and multiple 'mathematics' perks making calculations easy to the point of being silly, learning can be fun! Who knew?

I learned more in the first two hours of these studies than I'd done in four months of MBA classes before the chain started, let's just say. Which was not a moment too soon, apparently, because right in the middle I started getting polite enquiries from the people over at my company, asking me if I would be interested in a meeting to 'discuss the future of the company'.

A few phone calls and a fair bit of talking later, here we go. It's time I got to know just what this company is all about, if I', expected to be doing something with it. The attached history, though… Hm. I do know a fair bit about how the company originated and how it came to be, but it can't hurt to read up on it some more. I click on the attached file, starting from the top as it opens.

The entity that is today the Kane Corporation originates deep in American history, involving some of the greatest names of the business community. A history of inheritance based mergers and other acquisition clouds things somewhat, but the true origin of the firm can only be said to be the holdings and estates of Mr Robert Randolph Kirst.

Robert Kirst was born in Germany , in the year 1763, and emigrated first to England and then to the United States. His personal life is of little interest to this report, and so it glossed over. Starting his career as a manufacturer of instruments, Mr Kirst later made his fortune as the preeminent fur trader on the continent, a fortune that he soon invested into Real Estate in the New York area.

Robert Kirst became the first Millionaire in the United States in… I run through the text quickly, noting the history of the business that the man built up. Most of this I know already, and in any case there's little of interest. No, the first real bit that draws my attention comes a good bit into the report.

… in 1884, Victoria Kirst, the only daughter of the reigning patriarch, married Mr Charles Foster Kane, heir to the great Californian mining baron Jacob Kane, and already owner of a small newspaper empire of his own. As might be evident, it is from here that the corporation derives its current name.

if Robert Randolph Kirst III, the father of the bride disapproved, he said nothing at the time. The marriage can be called fortunate by us, looking back, but at the time it was regarded as a tremendously ill omen. One of the reasons behind the belief was the accident that happened the very next day when the newlyweds had left for their honeymoon. In a horrific accident in the Kirst mansion, several cousins and siblings of the bride died as the mansion burned to the ground overnight.

Returning several weeks later, the couple… Huh. So the author will never dare to say it out loud, of course, but… yeah, I can read between the lines. And this is new. I mean, honestly speaking, I'd imagined that something like this had probably happened, but never really bothered to put together the sources. So Charley Kane had his wife's family knocked off so she could inherit.

Fairly standard practice, as these things go. I read on. The remaining members of the extended Kirst clans were picked off slowly over the 1880s, until her father, the not-so-esteemed Robert Randolph Kirst III, died in 1890, splitting his empire in two. All the 'real' assets, the vast tracts of land in New York, the already built houses, the mines and other businesses went to the son-in-law, while the accumulated investments and liquid cash went to his wife, the old man's daughter.

By the looks of it, this was exactly how the couple wanted things.

Mr Kane's proclivities and temper was well-known, but his wife, five years younger than him, exerted a tremendously powerful influence over him, and between them they proved to be among the most formidable financial minds in the world.

The Kane Corporation entered the 1900s as one of the biggest firms in America, and they only continued to grow from there. The birth of their son, William Robert Kane, heir to the combined fortune, was the most celebrated event in the 1910s.

By the time the 1920s came, the company had grown to over thrice the size it had been when the Kirst patriarch had left his assets to the couple. It was also leveraged to the hilt, and engaged in several problematic disputes across the country.

By 1925 the company was starting to recover, but it was the years 1926-28 that proved to be crucial to its growth. Entirely contrary to market expectations and perceived common sense, the husband and wife pair sold off vast quantities assets, converting investments, land and holdings of varied nature into cold, hard cash…

And then the depression happened, which, of course, validated everything. I know this bit, it was in one of dad's files. He had… I sigh, recalling the details. He'd been experimenting on his grandparents' remains, looking for evidence of psychic power. It has to be said, there's a lot to suggest it. Anyway, the couple appears to have beaten the depression and milked it for everything it was worth.

They used the depression and the ensuing cash crunch to buy back everything they'd sold at cents to the dollar, and then bought more, using the shitty prices to enter… shit, everything. It starts with what we'd call backward integration, where the newspaper bought up the whole pipeline behind putting out a newspaper, from paper and ink companies, to lumber mills, to hundreds of thousands of forest land to fuel those mills. From there it was Oil, mining, manufacturing, banks that had all but failed in the depression, shipping and food processing… every fucking thing.

William Kane came of age in 1930, in the middle of the Great Depression. A few years later he received a five million dollar trust fund and control of the banks the family had acquired in the depression, and started building his own empire in the 1930s. It was also the time when he validated longstanding rumors by formally marrying Lady Catherine Berezin.

Ah. Right. Catherine Berezin, my… great grandmother? Yes. Her family had left Russia shortly before the October revolution. Well, I say family, but it was more of a noble house pretty much like the Montagues. The Berezins were hereditary princes of the Russian Empire originating from one of the Rurikid princelings, and her father had been a senior commander in the white army. Injured and sent back in the earliest days of the war, he'd quickly checked himself out, gathered up every scrap of the frankly, obscene wealth they had, and booked it out of Russia.

The families had first met when the exiled duke had been looking for a house in New York, and nature had taken its course. The reason why this is important is that it'd been the Russian title that had changed everything.

The family had entered the 1930s strong. Massively over-leveraged in order to finance a ridiculous buying spree in wake of the rock-bottom prices during the depression, they'd found themselves suddenly entirely secure with the immense cash injection from the wedding, in which the duke had made over the bulk of his fortune to his daughter. They knocked him off a couple years later, shortly after he'd seen and named his only grandchild. Devina Kane was born in 1936, just over a year after the wedding.

I go back to the text, matching the personal details I know to the facts about the company.

The changes the Kane Corporation underwent shortly before and after the depression were greater than at any other time in it's history, and proved to have been a overwhelming victory for the combined genius of Charles and Victoria Kane. By 1930 the firm's real assets had been reduced to a tenth of what they had been in 1925, in favor of a bloated cash reserve. By 1935 the situation was entirely in reverse, with the firm having grown to over ten times the size it had been in 1925.

Immediately following were several years of consolidation, in which the family, now with the unique skills of the Lady Berezin's talents added in, wrestled with the varied and disparate set of assets and holdings to organize and force them into a proper, streamlined set of companies.

This was accomplished just in time for World War 2 and the associated profiteering opportunities. The family's wealth multiplied almost on a daily basis from 1938 onwards, and it was only four years later in 1942 that Charles Foster Kane joined the ranks of the billionaires of the world, followed closely after by the rest of his family.

From here it's a pretty familiar history. I breeze through the descriptions of how William Kane took the reins, growing the family fortunes, making all the right moves at the right time. The only part that really matters is 1958, when 22 year old Devina Kane marries an English nobleman by the name of Wilfred Montague.

They met in some kind of function in England, when Devina Kane and her family had been subtly trying to get their Russian titles recognized by the Royal Family by doing everything short of outright bribing people.

Of course, no one bothered to tell them that outright bribing people would have been the one thing that would have worked perfectly, instead of faffing around with balls and parties, so that didn't happen.

But Devina did meet a young Wilfred Montague in the proceedings, and long story short, Nigel Montague was born in 1959.

From here it's another round of pruning, this time of the Kane family by certain unnamed British parties, until things settle down to dad inheriting the whole lot in 1981.

Really frickin' trippy, but that's how these family histories are. Closing the file, I look back at the rest of the information in the mail. Because that's a minute of my life I'm never getting back, now.

Fortunately the remaining files are all about relevant data. Well… relevance is a matter of degrees really, but at least it's no literally history. So… let's see. Kane and all it's subsidiaries are all privately owned companies, so there's no bothering with dividends and shareholders and all that jazz. I look through the last decade's financials in a few minutes, looking through first the holding company's data and then the same for each of the subsidiaries.

It's a unique feeling, actually seeing all this and instantly knowing what it all means. Data is perfectly correlated, matched with theoretical concepts and historical examples, and patterns are mapped, tested and dismissed, all in a matter of seconds.

But all that's in the background, because in my mind I'm still struggling to cope with the figures I'm seeing. Not in terms of struggling with them, mind. It's… okay, so in this world, one thing to get out of the way? I'm clever.

That is, I'm really, really smart. I was okay in my original life and fairly above average in the first jump, but nothing all that extraordinary. In this one… not so much. In this one I know the kind of mind I have. I'm not clever like a university topper is smart. Not even like scientists like Einstein or Hawking were. This brain that's sitting in my cranium is what one would call comic book smart. I see things and they get processed before I can blink to make sure they're there. Even the most complicated concepts, impossible questions are resolved as soon as I can finish reading them. It's amazing, it's wonderful, and it scares the fuck out of me.

Imagine that throughout your life you've been riding… oh, a supermarket trolley. Okay? Now imagine that one of the wheels is bent, so you have to push it extra hard. That was me. Now imagine that having had a lifetime of experience with the cart, someone puts you in the best F1 race car in existence, and tells you to take it for a spin.

That's the relation between my mind and brain right now.

Okay? So when I say I was trying to cope with the figures I was seeing, I mean I was trying to wrap my head around that much money.

My father inherited the Kane Corporation in 1981. At the time it's net worth, adding in all it's subsidiaries, was just a tad shy of a hundred billion dollars. Not small by any metric, but not quite what one would call a Mega-Corporation.

Thing is, then Nigel Montague took it over. That's the only explanation I have for the figures that add up to just over 1.7 trillion dollars in the corner of the screen. From one hundred billion to 1.7 trillion in thirty-four years.

I'm… okay, so this is a thing that I have here. And the company is still privately owned, with me owning the whole thing.But that means I'm…

Yeah. It'll take me a bit to digest this.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Unlike the rest, the Italians come close to having a proper organization that stretches nationwide. The National Commission has only grown closer together as the years have passed. A few years ago it was the new York families pushing it to get additional resources in case the 'Black Bull from Harlem' turned on them. Once he went to jail and his empire fell, it's been the Gotham families taking the lead and keeping the commission together. Carmine Falcone is the prime mover right now."

I nod just a touch, knowing DADA sees it. It's been a whole ten days since I started this 'studying' plan, and there's no way to avoid admitting it now. I'm enjoying this. I'm having fun studying. I feel dirty. But even having mastered behavioral psychology as much as I have, it won't do me any good on my 'monitor the gangs' job from Gibbons if I don't know my way around them.

So I told DADA to put together a package. I'm listening to him while working on yet another project, this one even more important than the criminal studies. Working on advanced biochemical research while also doing… well, anything else would be inadvisable under normal circumstances, but I've been trying to multitask lately, and I'm good enough now to run some basic genome scans while absorbing details on gangs across the country.

Or so I think, at least.

It's interesting stuff, anyway. After the traditional 'Cosa Nostra' we move onto the wide and varied other options available. The prison gangs, redneck biker gangs, the Bratva chapters scattered across the US… and more. It's basically a study in Organized Crime, all the major players in it, the ties that link them together, the main businesses they're in, and all the rest.

Two things emerge. There are many businesses the gangs are involved in, but by far the two worst are sex slavery and drugs. Both ruin untold thousands of lives every year, and both are hideously pervasive, even in America. If I really want to get anywhere in this field, to place myself in the position that'd let me predict something like Anarchy 99 forming… it's not going to be pretty.

"And that's about it for now. I have some scattered files on the means by which these groups link up with the supplying cartels, but I suggest waiting on that till we have a more comprehensive package."

"I agree. Do that tonight. Y'know how it works, space it out." I tell him, probably unnecessarily. He can access these files entirely legally, I have about the right clearance. Though 'procured' might be a bit of an exaggeration, it was mostly due to Syria. I'm told he's still negotiating for what I told him my other 'take' from Syria will cost the US.

"Got it." Sure enough, DADA replies curtly. He isn't exactly pleased at having to do this slowly and by-the-book. Can't say I blame him. He's an AI with global reach that, at any moment, is watching the feed from every single camera, listening to every call, reading all emails and generally being Big Brother… except the ones I told him not to, like any protected by government systems.

I have my reasons, though. It's not so much anything the government or their systems could do, as it is a matter of avoiding notice from any of the two dozen separate monitors embedded into just about every government database in the world.

Getting back to my research, I designate the last of the parameters, then let the analyzer run, mapping out the DNA provided. The subject material for this research is my old friend Mr Liam O'Connor, also known as the worst terrorist of this decade. He bombed Grand Central Station into rubble, and in an incident involving me, him and my… uh… 'contact' at the FBI, he came surprisingly close to handing me my ass in a fight.

A man in his late forties, in no particular shape and with no real training beyond what your average FBI agent gets.

Yeah.

Sure enough, a bit of experimentation showed considerable evidence of enhancement. Stronger muscles and bones, faster synapses, the whole lot. Like I have a bit of enhancement work in me, some from Kingsman that they build upon using what I already had from the Ozunu, but none of it comes close to what I'm seeing here. Enhancements I'm used to work in single-digit percentages.

You can get a little faster, a bit tougher, maybe a few IQ points smarter. They can't enable a middle-aged man to crack walls with his punches.

Though perhaps I should say they couldn't. The sample I have from my domestic terrorist here is entirely beyond anything I've seen in the past. From his strength and speed to his reaction time, everything was enhanced beyond ten times over. He's a work of art, to put a long story short.

That's why I've been unraveling every aspect of his makeup to look for the secret sauce, and I think today's batch of samples, having undergone over a week of fine-tuning, might have an answer. But I can't tell until I get into it, of course.

While the sequencer runs, I pull the study material I have about it back up. DADA has a full upload and he's been running the tests so far, but I've been studying up in the related fields, starting all the way back from basic biology, working my way up through medical science, genetics, chemistry and Zoology… things related to these fields, I mean.

The material varies, of course. I have the generally available materials, dad's notes, files from my biotech company's databases, stolen files from other labs, private and government owned… there's a lot of stuff. But I've been putting in quite a few hours into it, and this should be the last session.

Mind you, even with an eidetic memory it would have been hell to try and master all of this if it hadn't been for my top secret clearance. Turns out, DADA was browsing through the internal databases of the NSA, and actually found a program they'd been working on that would allow agents to be implanted with immense amounts of information using brainwave-linked psycho-enhancements and visual cortex inter-conscious transference.

That is, they use instruments that interact with your brainwaves to make it slightly more malleable, and then they shove a metric fuckton of data by, essentially, tunneling clean through your conscious mind and burying it all in your subconscious.

And the thing about the subconscious is, it never forgets. It's like this. Memory works in layers. At the top is your short term memory, the thing you're doing right now. Below that is the long term memory, the things you have to think back and remember. Under that is the subconscious.

Again, your subconscious never forgets a thing, but conversely, it's that much harder to 'write' things into it. You know what they say about riding a bike? That's the subconscious. Below this is your DNA memory, things encoded right into the nucleus of every cell like 'breathing', or 'walking', but if anyone's developed the tech to artificially add memories here, they aren't talking about it.

The point is, apparently a task force working under the auspices of the NSA found a way to directly implant memories into the subconscious, bypassing all the boring 'train your memory over weeks and months' bits. It wouldn't be possible to access the lot all the time of course, that's how the subconscious works, but they found a pretty clever way around it, by including specific 'triggers' with every packet of information that would force it up whenever encountered.

That was no good for me, of course, but finding the program and all the data it generated on an out of the way NSA server gave me everything I needed to develop my own. Had to take a day off to master neurology, a dozen related medical fields and … graphics editing, of all things, but I did it. Having reconfigured the program to take advantage of my eidetic memory, I can replace flipping pages or scrolling through screens for days upon days with looking at a screen with rapidly changing images for a minute.

Though I'll admit, for someone with eidetic memory it took me an embarrassingly long time to put the pieces together between this and what I was told by the Cobra AI back in Valentine's secret base. I remember it perfectly, of course.

"A data assimilation project designed for your use was stolen from the CIA by this man" a face flashes on the screen."

And I recall the name attached to it. A man I know as Matt Bomer, or the name of his character, Neal Caffrey. He also did something in a hilariously stupid movie about painfully crude analogies to wealth inequalities, but Neal is how I remember him.

Or as Bryce Larkin, I suppose. I looked up the project's implementation details and there it was, clear as day. The Intersect Project, designed to create a central archive of information cross-referring data points from every agency under the National Security umbrella. That's the official story, of course. I know that unless the AI was wrong, and I really doubt it was, the project was created by Cobra, somehow meant for 'my' use. How the hell would that even work?

I would have investigated the project for possible ties to Cobra, but wouldn't you know it, everyone involved in starting it is either dead or missing. I'll still follow up on that lead, of course, but if Cobra's been cleaning up there's not going to be much to find.

Anyway, the point of the matter is, this system allows me to master entire archive's worth of data in a matter of minutes, Well, I do have to spend most of an hour after that trying to think past the inevitable splitting migraine, but that's just how the brainwave dynamics work. I could probably eliminate them, but some basic research indicated it'd take much more time and effort than I can spare right now. It's worth it though, if only for the… let's call it 'academic' data. Turns out the pain and the time taken to overcome it is the same no matter how little data I use this to learn. As leery as I am of government databases and the watching eyes on them, data gathering from them is still slow enough that just reading it or having it read to me works out better in the end.

But no such worries apply to things like biology or computer science or, well, basically any field of 'knowledge'. That information is all out there for the taking. And yes, the very latest advancements are all protected by firewalls as good, if not better as the extra people monitoring the government networks for secret information, the bulk of it is almost entirely unprotected.

That's how I've learned as much as I've done in the last few days, after all. Most important of which, of course, were the bits about biochemistry. And biology and chemistry separately, of course, but that's kind of a given.

And O'Connor's body is an excellent mystery to study. The sequencer is working, trying to sort through the trillions of protein pairs and combinations that make up his DNA to look for markers. It's slow going, but it looks like it's going to work this time. Investigating the FBI terrorist's enhancements, I found the main works was done by chemistry. A number of compounds move through the system, enhancing the muscles, the brain, pretty much everything.

It's all very Captain America, I have to say. The compounds all have a common pattern too, all present samples being post-reaction substrates of the same initial element. That is, there was just one solution used on him, and it made him multiple orders of magnitude stronger, faster and overall better that he had any right to be.

"Uh, Eddie?"

I jerk my head out of my thoughts, suppressing a grimace as the movement makes my head feel like someone took a hatchet to it. Well, it's been feeling like that for a while now, ever since I did the download, but this made it worse.

"Yes?"

"I… you have to see this. The sequencer was sorting through the DNA samples from all locations of O'Connor's body, and it found something."

This time I do grimace. There was a reason why I did the download just before starting up on a a completely automated system, which needs no monitoring whatsoever.

"Can't it wait?" I all but beg the AI.

His tone is strict as he replies "No. Come here, look at this."

I look again at myself, at where I am right now. I'm lounging in one of the sofas in the pseudo living room, trying to calm my mind down. Then I give in.

To a terse 'Show Me', DADA projects the results straight up, presenting whatever it was that made DADA tell me it's so urgent. What the hell can be…

Oh.

I look at what the sequencer found. So here's a thing. The reason why I started looking into the genetics angle even after I determined that the enhancements all came from a single chemical is because… well, I looked deeper into it a couple nights ago. I reconstituted the original solution as best as I could, while mapping the exact changes it makes to everything.

Thing is, once you look at it from a certain angle, a pattern reveals itself. There's a gene, a specific DNA to which the serum in questioned is inexorably linked. I can't say for sure, but the whole solution is unstable by itself. It's too volatile, too prone to reactions of far too many kinds.

Unless it's exposed to a certain gene. A virus carrying micro-samples of a certain DNA are introduced, and they develop a miniscule ecosystem from consuming the extra energy that starts welling up in the lead up to any 'volatile events', thus strangling them in the crib. I found the gene, but it was clearly incomplete so I didn't think much of it.

But now I see another gene. This one is embedded right into the corpse's own DNA, as if he were treated with it before being given the enhancements.

Thing is, I might have missed it looking at one, but looking at the display now, with both samples hovering close to each other and everything, it becomes so obvious a blind moron could see it from a mile away.

You see, they fit. Like pieces of a puzzle, they slot into place smoothly and without question. One part to keep the serum stable, the other to be inserted previously, to better prepare the body for the 'treatment'. It's a synthetic gene, artificially created to replicate a sample genuinely developed DNA. Extraordinary DNA, but still.

And now with both it's pieces together, I see the synthetic DNA in full for the first time. I look through every bit of it, every base pair and every miserable little protein cluster floating unsupervised. The whole lot of it plays a part, forming into a single picture. A single, unbelievable picture.

See, I know the gene this is a copy of. You know how you say 'I know it in my bones'? That's nothing, nothing compared to how well I know this DNA.

Kinda hard not to, considering I'm made of it. It's my DNA.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Alright, run it again." I mutter out, trying to muster enthusiasm. This is like the three-thousandth-something run of the experiment this day alone.

I wait as the latest sequence is coded in, and the simulator runs, making billions of calculations a second to plot out the model. It fits in, a genome imprint unraveling as the few identified base pairs serve as a Rosetta stone to the rest… until it encounters a fundamental error. One of the derived interpretations mismatched with one of the pre-identified pairs.

So, funny story. Ten days ago I finally made progress in figuring out the mysterious enhancements someone gave to the domestic terrorist who bombed the Grand Central Station. In a turn of events that… okay, isn't all that surprising, the key linchpin that holds all the myriad components of his enhancement together… my DNA.

Specifically, a distorted, mutated version of my DNA. I saw common features enough to let me clearly identify the thing, but there are bits trailing off, sequences I have no ideas what they do, and other… stuff.

Stuff, because I'm yet to figure just what it all does. I've tested the fuck out of it, but so far, there's no progress. It's especially crazy because of how much I want those enhancements. Because… well, who wouldn't?

"Okay, this is getting silly. Give me a look under the hood. I want to take a look at those baseline interpretations."

As the computer complies, I take a look at the other project I have going on in my phone. I finished itemizing the larger organized gangs to be found in America a week ago, and since then I've been looking up smaller groups in the major cities. New York, LA, Washington, Miami and a few others, just so I can have a better place to start things off from.

It's not as important as figuring out and adapting those enhancements, but it is important, and I think I've figured out how I want to go about-

"It's done!" DADA's excited yelp cuts into my thoughts. He's not talking about the DNA pairs, they're still compiling on screen.

"Huh?" is all I can say.

Then he brings up another screen "Fork #796 finished testing the hardware package. All systems operational and proofed. I'm connecting to it now."

Oh. Huh. That should help a lot, come to think of it.

Oh, right. I've been working on upgrades for DADA for a while now. A few days ago we finished the first round of software updates, and started up on hardware porting. A single standard CPU-sized unit of the package he's connecting to right now could outmatch the processing power available to him in the entire complex I'm sitting in. The package has 20… thousand.

Yeah, I kinda went overboard there. But it's great, now maybe I can get things done faster!

"And integration completed. Updating protocols… and done. Oh. Wow." DADA's voice flows in, a rich, crisp baritone filling in to replace what had admittedly a rather more nasal voice than I really cared for.

"Everything okay? Holding steady?"

"Oh yeah. This feels amazing, you know? Have you ever imagined spending your life riding… I dunno, one of those supermarket store trolleys? Except one with a bent wheel?"

… that really doesn't sound as profound as I used to think it might. "Yes, yes I have. I know what you mean, trust me."

"…right" he sulks. I probably should pay more attention to this than I do, but that's true for a lot of things.

"So how about showing up those interpretations, eh? I really want to get cracking at this again."

And so I do.

For another eleven hours.

"Alright, that's it. I'm sick and tired of this. Y'know what? Your hardware's all tough and strong now. Let's take a crack at that database once more."

"Of course, Eddie." DADA replies, the experiment results moving off the screen to give way to an email chain from over a decade ago that I've been… uh, 'investigating'. It's pretty bog-standard traceless email, routed through a series of companies that provide that exact service. See emails have a fair amount of data that lets the right people trace them all the way back to the computer they originated from.

Some companies provide the specific service of taking the mail, stripping all that data out, and sending on the new message as utterly untraceable except to the computer that processed the randomization. Officially, they delete their records every week, and thus render the whole matter traceless. Unofficially, the people using such services are often very advantageous to acquire leverage on, so of course they keep the data. That was, after all, where I got it.

See, having found my DNA in the enhancements on the… ahem, creature that Alex killed, I got to investigating how it got there. Well… I say investigating, but it was more like I just looked into my father's notes. Sometimes things are a tad too obvious in this world, and I'm not quite stupid enough to ignore them just yet. Shady science, my DNA connected to the matter… yeah, I was sure I'd find what I was looking for in my father's files.

And right in the middle of 2002, there it was. A sample of DNA from subject designate MO-1, sent to NOC. And attached is a list of chemical formulae, all of which, curiously enough, I can find in the compounds in the subject's body.

Oh, and my designation in Dad's files was MO-1. Still got to figure out what that stands for. Once I had my father's end of the transaction, it was simplicity itself to get the Randomizer service's systems to yield the target. It could have been different, perhaps. Probably should have been, considering how many separate organizations try to hack these providers on an hourly basis.

But all I had to do was enter my personal code. Because see, my father may have been an evil asshole, but he was a really, really clever evil asshole. I own the company that provided the service.

It didn't help as much as I'd imagined it would, because whoever is at the other end was clever enough to isolate the computer they were using for this. I can't find who it is that owns it, or where it is, or any of that other good stuff. All I can get at is the computer itself, and it's rather impressive databanks. So… I mean… everything I needed for now.

Yeah. It takes DADA all of a few seconds to get into the system's kernel links, and from there I basically own the whole thing. It'd probably have been really impressive, if only I cared about it.

I do care about what I found next, though. A full list of formulae for the enhancement compounds, along with detailed lists of steps needed to generate the thing… it's all here, every bit of it. Whoever is behind this evidently designed the serum themselves, they just bought the stabilizing agent from dad. I would get pissed at how he literally sold me out for it, but let's face it, it's pretty much to be expected when it comes to him.

And considering how it may just have delivered the key to these enhancements to me… I'm not complaining. Once the download's done, DADA starts the process of cleaning up evidence of our incursion. Once done with that, I watch as he plants a nice little virus in the system, that'll do absolutely nothing but wait for a data transfer. Somehow they must be getting data from this computer to others where they use it for other stuff. Once any kind of data outflow is noted, the virus will infect whatever means are deployed, most probably a USB device.

Then it'll start copying itself over to every other computer the device is plugged in. A little bit later, it will upload itself through whatever online connectivity it finds, and start sending location data to DADA. Then we should have some real clues about who it was that designed these augmentations, and I can get on their case about handing them out to terrorists.

Should be fun.

And cathartic.

But all that's for later. Right now, I have the all the details about the specific serum that was used on O'Connor, the problems with it, lab test results, the whole shebang.

It's all just a technicality from here on.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"So, two whole months inactive. How does it feel, Kruger?" the man asks with faux-joviality. His attempt at a bright smile is ruined by the ugly burn that covers half his face, and only makes me want to punch him.

I can't, though. After a fashion, he's my boss.

"Can we skip the small talk and just get to business, Gibbons? I have some very interesting lab work I've put on hold because you wanted to see me."

If he's offended, he doesn't show it. He shouldn't be, though. I came all the way to Maryland because he wanted to 'see me'.

"I mean, I'd say something like 'just tell me what you want', but you kinda gave that away when you asked me to bring the 'package' . What's the big deal about him anyway? He's not going anywhere!"

"You kidding me, boy? You have…" he looks around, even safe as we are ensconced in the NSA main office. It's an entirely pointless gesture, of course. If people have penetrated the Puzzle Palace to this extent, the revolution is upon us and we should all surrender anyway. But try telling Gibbons that. Although… I look slant-eyed at the camera. A second later one of the lights down the corridor switches off, before rapidly blinking 'yes, I'm here' in Morse.

Maybe he's not entirely incorrect. If me and DADA made it in, who knows who else could've.

I turn back my attention to Gibbons just as he starts speaking again "You have had the most wanted terrorist on the planet in your base for two months now. For about a month, the US government has suspected. For ten days now, people have known. I got senators and generals screaming in my ear to give you whatever you want to get him for us."

I widen my eyes in feigned shock. "Give me things? I'm a loyal agent of the NSA! You just have to order it!"

He rolls his eyes even more exaggeratedly "Yeah, right. And then he dies in an 'accident' in transit, and no one knows how to punish you, because he's Usama fucking Bin Laden. When you have a chip like that, you can name the price. The government understands that."

I wait. "And?"

"And you have it. The Code Word clearance will be made permanent, a dozen blanket pardons, and all the other bullshit you listed too."

Wait, what?

"Well, you'd better. Just to make sure, though… all of it? Including the-"

"Yes, every damn thing on the list! The Delta 6 will be there at the New York safe house by now, you can pick it up when you get back. The president got involved in the end." He says by way of explanation.

Wow. I… I'd gone crazy with a few things in there, I had no idea they'd actually do it! What happened to haggling? Wait, I don't care. This is good for me. I'm going to get the Delta 6 Accelerator!

There are a lot of reasons why I want that piece of technology, but two are the most important. The first is that it has direct thought-interface technology, which is one of the very few things I've been having problems with. I could probably do it, but it'd take way too long. This lets me shortcut the whole thing.

The second reason is, it's power armor! I've wanted a suit of power armor since I've known what they were. It has wrist-mounted missiles. I can't even say how much I… ahem. I can't even say how much glad I am for having perfect muscle control. Squeeing out in front of Gibbons isn't something he's likely to let me forget… well, ever.

I wouldn't.

"Well, he's in the boot of the car outside." I get out after a few more seconds, voice steady as a rock. I think, anyway.

Gibbons smiles. "I know. By now they'll have extracted him. Pity about your car, though."

I just look at him. Does he really thing I'd… oh, he doesn't know yet.

"Really, Augustus? I mean, I understand why you'd do that, but I'm afraid the joke's on you. See, I've been working on some science for the past month and a half. Now most of it was biology, but I took a couple of breaks to work a bit on my car and stuff."

He just frowns in that way only Samuel L Jackson can. Opening his mouth to say something, he's interrupted by a knock on the door. "Yes?" he barks out.

"It's the Lieutenant, sir. He needs a word with you." His assistant steps in to tell him.

I very deliberately turn away my head to avoid staring. Her desk was empty when I came in, so this is the first time I'm seeing her, and I… she's Nina Dobrev. Nina Dobrev is… Rebecca, if I remember right. Gibbons' assistant's name is Becky Clearidge.

As Gibbons stands up and levels a stare at me, I very deliberately keep my eyes off of her until she steps out. Then I look at him.

Raising a finger in my face, he pulls out his phone and calls someone, probably the Lieutenant person. He steps out of the room even as his call connects.

I just wait. I wonder what it would feel like to press the assistant against the wall before I… nevermind.

A minute or two later, Gibbons steps back into the room.

"Well?"

"They brought in a Crane at the end. A piece of construction equipment that they use to build skyscrapers with, in case you didn't know."

"You guys have those lying around at such short notice? Nice."

"A back annexe blew up last week. What the fuck did you do to that car?"

It's not often that I get a chance to be really smug, so I take this one. "Wouldn't you like to know? Here's the key. It's biometrically locked, so only me or you can use it to open the car."

He makes a face. "And let me guess, you ain't gonna do it."

"Oh no. You made me walk all the way in here from parking, didn't you?"

I wait till he's just out of the door, so his assistant can hear me too. "And send in your beautiful assistant while you're gone, will you? I could do with some pleasant conversation while I'm here."

He doesn't respond, sadly.

…QQ….

It's not the most stellar use of these skills I've ever made, but picturing the old man's face at the thought of me using his precious skills for this is enough to make me happy with the idea.

A few seconds later I'm standing right next to the assistant, Becky's desk. Who is… yes, here! And who's utterly oblivious of me even now. Looking at her now, she's basically the actress come alive. The same face, the same everything… oh yeah, I'm going to do this.

"Y'know, I bet it'd be a lot more comfortable to work on that on one of the couches in Gibbons' office."

I cheerfully announce to her, sitting down on the desk even as I do.

She yelps, almost jumping out of her chair. I see her eyes swing to me, before pausing and moving back a lot more slowly up and down my form. It's a familiar thing to me by now. Let's just say that if hypocrisy were cholesterol, women would have heart attacks every time they told a man he was a pig for eyeing beautiful women.

"I'm… I'm not allowed in there unless Mr Gibbons in there." She mutters, blushing. I'd wonder why, but I just unhooked her bra with a telekinetic hand, so…

"Oh come on. It'll take a while for Augustus to come back. He'll need to go to the car, find Laden, get him checked in, make sure he's secure and then sign off on all the paperwork there. You wouldn't want me to get up to some mischief while I sit and wait, would you?"

"Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't do anything like that! This is the NSA! You'd be crazy to mess around with things. It'd-" the next word dies in her throat, just as I move to I'm sitting on her side of the desk, and then lean just a bit forward and kiss her directly on the lips.

Okay, here's something you should probably know. Alex and Natalie have been having 20 hour days between debriefings, training and hearings and all that jazz for the last couple of months, and I've been too busy to go out for more than a few times here and there. Long story short… ten day dry spell. It wouldn't have been anything special to me once, but in this world that's a lifetime.

That's the explanation I'm giving myself anyway. I wait just as she starts to kiss me back before I get to work with my hands. They meet at the her back, where her skirt meets her top, before I start exploring her ass with one hand and trail the other across her back, leaning sideways to tightly pinch her nipple just in time to slip my tongue between her lips.

Considering how she's leaking like a faucet by now, she certainly doesn't need an explanation. I enjoy the way her hands dig into my back, one hand roaming across my shoulders, carefully mapping every muscle, while the other heads downwards. Meanwhile I maul her ass like there's no tomorrow, kneading the bubble butt with my hand under her panties.

I break off just as she starts moaning out loud, moving back across the desk in a flash. I wait as she tries to continue a kiss with thin air, and just… wait her to snap back to reality. This should be fun.

"Well, what d'you say? Want to come and keep me company?" I ask as if nothing whatsoever happened.

"Uh?" I don't think she even realizes she's saying something. She looks around herself, looking at her perfectly-in-place clothes… though not the bra. I have to turn away slightly to hide my smile as she tries to feel between her legs without making it obvious, where I know she's just as drenched as a few seconds ago.

"Oh well. Come on in if you change your mind, okay?" I turn, holding in laughter till I'm successfully across the door. That was probably cruel to her… but I've never really been one to care. And hey, this was all I did. From here on it's… okay, it's not really up to her, considering everything. But I can pretend!

To her credit, it's entire minutes before I hear her forcibly stabilize her breathing, murmuring justifications the whole time.

Then she steps into the room.

I watch in silence as she walks halfway to the desk, before noticing I'm not there.

Then she turns and comes towards the couch, looking not entirely unlike a very, very beautiful lamb confusedly stumbling to the slaughter.

"So… uh… that thing you said about how it'd take Gibbons a while, and how you might do something stupid if left alone."

"Uh huh?"

"Well, it's my job to make sure that doesn't happen, right?"

"That's right. It is."

"Because I wouldn't want it to seem like I'm doing this because I'm interested in you. Not that I'm not interested. I just don't want you to think that I'd tell you my safe word the first time we meet. Because I'm not, it's just that you… I mean I just… looking at you…" Oh, it's just precious! So far I've been with women who are a rather lot more confident. Or maybe I hadn't been using the right perks.

But a genuine babbler!

"Becky?" I say as she stops for breath.

"Kumquat." I all but yells out. A second later, she bites her tongue, flushing deep.

Okay, what?

"Uh…"

"My safe word's Kumquat. I mean I really don't know what I'm doing, I picked it because…"

"Ms Clearidge?"

"Yes?"

"You're babbling."

"What? No, I'm just, I… I mean…"

"I have an idea. Why don't you kneel down and put those lips to better use?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Man, this chapter came out weird. Maybe it was because of all the other shit I was doing while writing it. Tell me what you think! Oh, and from next chapter onwards I'm aiming for a minimum 10k word count, because I don't want us to still be in the second jump at chapter forty or something.

Anyway, please point out any errors or fuckups?