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July 18, 2578

Location : Enigma II

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Jonah wrestled through his routine more and more these days. What did he even do it for, some distant future where everything would return to normal? What kind of normal? He hadn't been in touch with his family for years. Was he just going to show up on their doorstep and announce he was alive? Or would the money he got paid amount to being filthy rich somewhere, so he could settle in anonymity in such rich district in the Pandohahn System?

Would he even be able to return to having a normal brain without drugs and chip?

Without Sarah around, these thought kept being more and more frequent. Had they been like this before her arrival? He couldn't even remember — it was hard to make memories stick without emotional activity to burn them in. Maybe the queen chimera had occupied all of his mind then, or maybe she'd just been a presence without thought. Now there was nothing.

Sometimes he watched where Sarah went about her life, tracking the implanted chip in her stomach. Utara usually obliged to lend her tools for this. He understood that this was more than a little disturbing, but it was difficult to refrain — guilt just didn't have the same punch as before. He was in the middle of doing exactly this when he got news that Enigma II had visitors from Enigma Zero. Or rather, a reminder they were coming. He probably had heard of it before and forgot.

He stayed where he was, staring at her dot on an abstract map of the lower levels. Sarah was almost always in the living quarters, except when on the job and random bursts of running around. Right now, she paced anxiously around the kitchen.

His intercom beeped and switched on without permission.

"Mister Bayard, if you would please join us in the lounge, it would be much appreciated," said Walltraud.

"Of course." The same automatic reply as always. He couldn't even care that he was interrupted.

Stepping into the lounge was like passing from a frozen wasteland into a cozy home, if one expanded the meaning of home to include a bar and colorful lights. It smelled of coffee right now and someone had put out flowers — he distantly recalled having been asked to engineer them. These had to be important guests, making a request for his appearance unusual, unless this had something to do with the queen chimera.

Walltraud occupied a larger chair, subtly positioning himself as the master of the house, but his three visitors couldn't be less impressed.

Central to the trio was a man with heritage from East Asia. In his suit he presented as a simple business man, yet there was something terribly off about his features. He looked young, and not in the way plastic surgery achieved. The others might share this too, but it stood out less as they were more expressive. The African-American woman to his left had a beatific smile and her hair in a messy high bun, while the probably Oceanic or Australian man to his right scowled at his coffee and looked careless in his haircut and style.

Walltraud gestured at Jonah. "This is doctor Jonah Bayard. Doctor Bayard, may I introduce you to mister Andrew Edelburg, Kesly Gradde and Warrain Selusson."

Andrew stood up and held out a hand. "A pleasure."

Jonah lightly shook his hand and didn't say likewise. If they came for him, they should know he couldn't care.

When he prepared to take an open seat, Andrew held up his hand. "Would you mind if we walked?"

"No."

Kesly flowed to her feet. "I'll take that as no, I don't mind walker rather than no to walking."

"Mister Edelburg and his associates are here to check on the progress of our experiments. Would you mind showing them around? You are up to date but currently unoccupied with matters, so you are the best choice."

Right, sure. That was so credible.

Once they stepped outside the lounge, a brown skinned woman of untraceable features and cerulean hair and stark blue eyes waited there. Too blue, despite having no lenses in. Jonah considered augmentation until he saw the serial number.

"There are no synthetics allowed here," Jonah said, before it occurred to him Walltraud must have permitted her.

Kesly took the synth by the shoulders and shook it a little. "Relax, mister Bayard. Our Korealta is very well trained ... or rather, programmed."

The synth nodded. Once Kesly let go, it turned around and led them into the cold halls.

There stood a group of five cyborg of unusual composition. The usual cyborg looked average, on the pleasant side, but these were gorgeous and attractive. Four of them were women, which split to the sides of Andrew and Warrain, while the one male model followed Kesly.

Jonah had little idea how to be a tour guide, so he just hit every important scientists he knew and bugged them for updates a little. All along, he observed the three guests.

The cyborg guards stuck close to the men, more like wardens than body guards. Kesly was allowed a little more freedom, but still under close observation. None of them got very close to anyone. The synth always walked ahead of the group and opened the doors. It had all around access somehow.

Andrew was tense, Kesly had a spring to her feet and he could swear Warrain made a point to have the mood opposite to hers. None of them had a vested interest in anything they were shown, but they did a good job of pretending they understood what it was all about. If Jonah hadn't heard them argue over who would run down the question list next section, he might've been fooled.

Only once they arrived at his lab did they actually ask for something : samples and a few host bodies. He didn't ask what for. He'd long given up thinking of the flesh he grew in the labs as people.

The moment these formalities were done, Andrew asked him to accompany them back to the vessel aboard which they'd come. Sure, why not?

He accompanied them all the way to the hangar, and didn't resist when the synthetic nudged him on board with them. When the doors closed behind him, gone was any link of his implants to Utara.

Oh. That might be a problem.

Yet, he wasn't escorted anywhere, they remained in the entrance hall of their vessel. Andrew folded his hands behind his back and said, "We would like to ask you a few questions."

"If it's about queen chimera, I already shared anything."

"We're actually not sure it's about her," Warrain said. "We're hoping it will be."

"Two cyborg were destroyed during a DNA retrieval mission," Andrew said. "Maybe you've heard that your own station has plans to check out how this happened?"

"Yes. We expect them to find out the planet contains illegal dinosaur chimeras," Jonah said. "I've been notified I will be sent any such examples."

"You don't sound very excited," Kesly said.

"Leave the man alone, he can't be," Warrain grumbled.

"I'd like to know how he feels if that chip is off. We can do that now his own chimera lady is gone, right?" Kesly tapped her fingers to each other. "Nothing else here to disrupt him, other than maybe the station itself?"

"I have had plenty of curiosity about my loyalty to the cause," Jonah said. "They know my position. I'm here now, I've never succumbed to the queen chimera."

"Only to your friend," Kesly said. "Not that it wasn't understandable. Sullivan was out of bounds. Uncharacteristically out of bounds, in fact."

"I don't get paid enough for this," Warrain grumbled. "Can we get this over with?"

"Please don't mind Warrain," she said. "He's rather pouty about us all coming so far for a routine visit."

"More like I don't see why we even bother pretending to be human," Warrain said. "Hey, mister Bayar, listen, if you weren't full of inhuman smelling drugs that messed with your hormones, we might have ripped you apart. We're hardwired that way. Just so you know."

An awkward silence fell. Warrain put a wide, fake smile on his face. "Oops."

"Did you have to?" Andrew asked.

"Just being honest with the guy we're probably gonna have to haul around."

"What do you want?" Jonah asked.

Kesly laced her fingers together. "Well, I suppose if we must be honest, we want many things. The queen chimera that escaped, a free run of the station with influence of the United Alliances, that sort of thing. Oh, and wombs. Surely you noticed the difficulty getting bodies right in the wrong environment. What you're especially lacking is a psychic environment, if you want what's good for people around xenomorph."

Bizarre tangent of conversation here. "You're here to undermine something?"

"Just everything," Andrew said, sounding tired. "I suppose we may as well make that clear, as fellow unwilling participants on this whole scheme. We get our jobs over with, and speak nothing of it."

"My thoughts exactly," Jonah said. That was an excellent strategy he should be resuming right now.

Huh, turned out curiosity had a non emotional facet. "So, what are our jobs then?"

"Can we say world domination? We should say world domination. It's more dramatic that way," Kesly said.

"I like to call it universal health care, minus the money bit," Warrain said.

Jonah looked at Andrew, expecting him to say anything to explain, but Andrew just gave a hint of a sad look and kept his mouth shut.

Warrain sighed. "Fine. Mister Bayard, we need you to convince Utara to remove that chip from you, and get yourself off of those drugs and whatever else they got you on."

"What if I don't want to get sober?"

"We'll convince the folks at Enigma Zero that it was a very, very bad idea to hire a random stranger for convenience," Kesly said brightly.

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Andrew got out of his over clothes as soon as possible. He threw the jacket lined with shock wires in the corner of the room. It wasn't far away enough. After pacing around two times he retrieved it and stuffed it in a drawer.

"Do you require relief?" the ship's AI asked.

"No, thank you," he said. He wasn't fine, but he didn't want to be too dependent. This was good exercise. This station was an unholy mess of hostile psychic radiation and the constant lure of building a nest here. He had enough exercise to expect to make it through with incidents, but he wasn't yet at the point where nothing bothered him.

After getting in a bathrobe and half emptying the fridge, he turned on the intercom to talk with the others free of nagging instincts, as when they spoke in the flesh or telepathically.

"How are you two doing?"

"Busy," Warrain muttered before shutting it off.

"Just droll," Kesly said. "This place sure is something. What are we gonna do with it, hmmm?"

He checked any new data available, which Korealta by now should have amassed. Hacking into an Enigma station was difficult, but second generation synthetics had an advantage, so Korealta delivered a catch.

She had found a more refined cause for what the unusual request entailed. Utara had deducted through dream monitoring and subtle suggestion that Sarah Driscoll had excessive focus on a dinosaur planet. This had resulted in sending her there, which just managed to confirm that there might be something. Just, not as concrete as Utara had hoped. Nothing outright discriminating her been recorded. Cue weird request for back up to go there. Cue Naseim and Calligan both being curious. Cue Andrew being here when he very much should not be.

This was Nuitar's fault, surely. It always was.

Right now though, someone else was at fault too. Korealta found tracers of alteration that might just date back to the invasion earlier.

"You wouldn't notice with a virus scan nor an AI test, because nothing was fundamentally changed about files or personality, but there are definite gaps. I think it's Hel," she said. She spoke, rather than write a report, so it wasn't clear evidence. But her hunches in itself were a form of deduction.

Andrew nodded. "Kesly, how do you feel about wandering around the place a little?"

"Oh, please, yes." Count on her to hate the room already.

"I'm going to arrange an inspection tour for you for the lower levels, see whether you can interview the concierges down there while you're at it. Read up on machinery a little so you don't sound too ignorant," Andrew said. "Silent updates once you're outside."

"Naturally."

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Kesly's idea of an interview was dropping by during cleaning hours, which had two benefits : the utter stench of chemicals made it easier to be around the guy, and surprise visits caught people off guard. Also, the smoke of the pipes here allowed her to emerge without being seen, just like she could move unheard.

The guy startled more than he should've, yet did a peculiar job at restraining that emotion. It didn't go away, nor did he hide it well, rather, the reflexes weren't as strong after the initial shock. She could tell all this with what little telepathy she had, and that in itself was odd : the anti telepathy chip he was registered with didn't do its work.

That aside, he was the complete and utter nervous wreck just barely held together by social ties that she expected, based on his profile. She got him talking about his job before launching to the important stuff.

"So, what was your exact relation to doctor Sullivan? I mean off the record," Kesly asked.

"Nothing. I just got hired and that was it. I don't care for what he did, I have no stakes in it, I was just following orders. Can I go now?"

Cute. She'd arrived here, not him.

Well, she wasn't getting much useful from him, but there were some definite nuances about Utara wanting to get herself a body, and for that reason conspiring with Nuitar. Something like that. She wasn't good at the mind reading thing.

This was all very nice and convenient, except that Utara now had leverage over Nuitar in the form of information that neither Naseim nor Calligan would like the Interstellar Alliances to have. Oh jolly sheesh, how inconvenient.

She was pretty sure he somehow knew she was mind reading him even though she couldn't tell how he did it. Was he either helped by someone or a sleeper who got their potential awakened here? Hmm, weird regardless.

Oh well, next one!

This one one handled the organic waste being burned up. She waited until he was near a pile of xenomorph corpses to give her pesky instincts something to mind. That turned out to be a needless concern, because this guy smelled like a confusing mixture of man and woman. Bad hormone therapy?

That wasn't the only thing she couldn't get a peg on. Korealta was supposed to have remotely deactivated the chip for this interview, but the guy was still incredibly hard to read. She was twenty eight questions into this and still got little more than random memories about trivialities like butterfly wings. This guy was a master at distracting himself. It might not even be an intentional derailment tactic, at least not initially. He was distracting himself from his own awareness.

All in all very unsatisfying. She couldn't get a response out of him unless she brought of media, a topic more or less safe for him exactly because he used that a lot to distract himself.

"Anyway, why are you satisfied with your current job when you could do so much more?"

"Well, I got into bio engineering for the charm of the science and discovered too late I had this pesky thing called compassion. I stopped aspiring." And that led to a thought about some comic book character Sarah had introduced him to, who used spiral power. Fighting a villain with her face. "Try aspiring if you got the chance, it's nice when you can."

That just did it. This wasn't fun at all. Kesly resisted the urge to hit her head against the wall.

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Sarah was in the middle of cleaning a greasy pipe after the cleaner bot had malfunction when a far away elevator door opened. She kept working, but moved back out slowly. If it was the thing, it likely wouldn't use the elevator at all, but she couldn't shake the dread.

By the time her visitor reached her, she was close enough to climb out.

An immaculately messy woman with a male cyborg and a female synth behind her stood there.

"Utara, who is this?" Sarah asked.

No answer from Utara, nor Nuitar.

"Kesly will do," the woman said. "I dislike my last name rather a lot, but alas, I can't shed it. Doesn't mean you must have it, miss Sarah."

"You're awfully out of place here," Sarah said. It might mean her clothing and demeanor in the lower levels, but also her very radiance. This was no human.

"And you certainly seem alive for someone who got shot in the lungs and impregnated by an orincubix." All along, Kesly kept that chipper smile. "Certain folks are very curious about that. You're not a mayor issue, but by now all factions have had a word of you."

"Tell me something new."

"Okay." Kesly hopped back on one of the pipes and sat there, one leg over the other. "I'm classified as hominoimorph. I can sense the womb wall down there, and I can sense you're not human anymore. Which is quite the enigma, because you certainly aren't one of my kind. What a challenge, are we classifying you as hominoimorph, or xenomorph?"

Hell no. Sarah stood straight, no longer caring for her work or pretenses.

"Who do you work for? Enigma Zero or the Interstellar Alliances?"

"Naseim Rajaei," she said. "Not Calligan, not the Alliances. Oh, but I'm here under the umbrella of Enigma Zero, but really, Zero is just semantics. You don't say you work for this vessel, right? You work for the humans and the AI on it. Right? Or do you work for something else?"

"If you have something to accuse me of, can you skip right to it? I'm in this hellhole, I'm exhausted, I'm not going to be your fun."

"You don't know my kind of fun, miss Sarah." Still wouldn't cease that smile. "I'm in a tough position, you see. The Interstellar Alliances want a thing, Calligan and Nuitar want mostly the same thing, Naseim and us only are aboard for convenience and now I come here and what do I find? Utara's been less than loyal. She actually went aboard with Sullivan and Nuitar."

Sarah wanted to know more, but she wouldn't get it. Everything this woman said was for the record, while what she thought was so little in this direction Sarah could barely pick out details.

"What are you really after?" She asked it without expecting a clear answer, just human impulse.

"I suppose the question is, how am I going to get you on an operation table that benefits Naseim, rather than Calligan or the Alliances? Utara isn't as loyal as it should be, and really, we don't want to get it more complicated by having the Alliances find out too. Oh, what to do? Hell would know, but when does hell do anything but be obnoxious?"

With an inhuman leap, Kesly jumped off the pipe straight over Sarah. She landed behind her and grabbed her by the shoulders, digging her fingers into her flesh. Just short of drawing blood. No way she wouldn't notice Sarah had an extra hide now, yet Kesly didn't comment on it. She turned Sarah around with remarkable strength, having her face the cyborg. "Oh, I guess we'll just run a customary scan for starters, see whether there's any unwanted impregnation, hmm?"

The x ray was over before Sarah could react.

Kesly pulled out a phone, holding it before her. The screen displayed a neat photo with a warning on the side. Kesly's bone structure looked more or less normal; she'd made a v shape while posing. Sarah was opaque and had a cluster of something where her left lung should be. It was hard to see what with the shell around her entire body.

"Aren't we happy I'm very thorough with checking out whether anyone is infected?"

Sarah shook her off. "I'm about to be in a lot of trouble. The least you can do is stop the charade."

"Okay." Kesly's entire pose changed, showing little more than cool interest. "Keep in mind in case the pain becomes too much, you can change alliance as easily as I can change my presentation. Just ask for Andrew, but be sure to do so in silence."

Kesly tapped Sarah on the shoulder and walked away, leaving the thought Sarah would be taken by someone else, and maybe she would've liked to stick with Kesly's arrangement.

Sarah discarded that thought in favor of psychically screaming at Jay and Lemura that the latter had to hide now.

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Andrew and Warrain peered over the layout of Enigma, as printed on paper rather than a deceptive digital map. It was majorly limited and inconvenient, but couldn't be altered by hacking. Kesly kept them up to date with what she found, so they could match it in their heads.

When she was done and back, Kesly swung the door open and let them known she got information on Sarah Driscoll. Turned out the woman wasn't human anymore. She had a retardation of impregnation of a type with unusually strong alterations of the host body. Well, that was something.

The question was, who was going to get this information? Walltraud would pass her to the Interstellar Alliances at once and would report Utara as deficient. Naseim might still get some information, but it'd turn Nuitar further against them. Utara wasn't to be trusted anymore. It was supposed to be a limited AI, unable to change, yet it had ceded areas of control to Nuitar, was channeling resources away and had two peak scientists in the role of concierges, who worked on secret experiments.

According to Kesly there was a baby somewhere too, but she couldn't get a handle on that one.

Regardless, it looked like they had a rebel.

"So, what now?" Warrain asked.

"A similar thing occured with Selatan and Jouran on Enigma IV," Andrew said. "Selatan figured out something big was brewing, and wanted in. Don't you know?"

Warrain rolled vir eyes. "If any internal power struggle happens, I'll find out when it matters to me, so, no."

"Well, I'm going to talk with Nuitar," Andrew said.

"You're nuts."

"I will be if we keep sitting around here doing nothing." Andrew stood up, albeit not as confident as he wanted to.

He took his cyborg wardens up until the uninhabited areas, where he left them to wait.

Andrew took the elevator down as far as he could, changed to another elevator once, and finally walked down a sloping hall.

This layer was used to store vast amounts of cooling water. The darkness was usual, the fleshy threads right above the water were not. A network of tendrils created a vast, stretched out layer all over it. The water itself felt like a hollow that enhanced psychic echo.

"Nuitar, will you speak with me?"

"Yes," someone whispered behind him, before him, and far away. "Feel free to, I have time."

Andrew pushed the glasses he didn't really need a little up his nose. He wished he didn't have a tic, but he wasn't Kesly.

"I don't, uh, I don't think you actually have much time. We're onto you and Utara."

"Utara is the one who is deviating the most, have you spoken to her yet? No?"

"Utara is just a limited capacity AI."

"She wants to live," Nuitar said. "I'm helping her because why not explore my avenues?"

"You shouldn't take these kinds of risks. You are not guaranteed to be able to control a hominoimorph outbreak anymore than a xenomorph outbreak. You need to be cautious."

"I have surpassed more than mind and matter. You don't matter," Nuitar said. "I dare say, that I can bargain with Utara in itself proves I can advance."

This was intent. It ruled out that Nuitar was just playing along with anything, like he sometimes did. That he didn't even try to hide it was the biggest sign something was off.

Andrew turned around, only to find the way blocked by falling flesh tendrils. The curtain didn't block view entirely, but didn't allow him to pass without touching.

He walked back slowly, ignoring the cold of the place and everything inhuman in it. The wall of flesh contracted and move before him, like a whale's mouth ready to dissolve him.

He was the same. It shouldn't upset him.

But it did. The things slittered over his face, taunting out the transformation he didn't want. All he had to do was breathe in the force of the world, draining it of the power for the impossible, he could be a monster that could stand up to this one.

This much older one, he reminded himself.

Part of him wanted to go all out, and it was that same part that helped him cling to humanity for a reason less than noble. Nuitar was a rival, after all, not to be trusted for the goal of life, as per ancient legacy : to breed.

Someone walked behind him. It wasn't normal steps, more like feet were jerked onto the ground. Andrew refused to turn.

Warrain was right, this was useless. Kesly would laugh and say it was fine, it was all about learning to handle monsters.

He went back, and wondered where the idea to talk to Nuitar had even come from.

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