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July 19, 2578

Enigma II

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"I really didn't know." Jonah shifted in his seat again. "Should't you be able to discern that by now?"

Kesly's bright smile was blinding in the sharp light. She kept smiling all along to the point it was unsettling even to him, who stood in the dark behind the one way mirror.

The interrogation had been going on for two hours, exposed to varying degrees of social pressure and comfort to coax him into talking. No avail. Kesly had fallen into repetitions by now, she had to be bored. Andrew himself was on the edge of calling it off.

The one reason he didn't was that he expected Waltraud to show up, as the man had emphasized his interest in the proceeding. Andrew did not want to call it quits at first to appear like he was dedicated to this, but the more time passed the more he suspected Waltraud tested him. It wouldn't be unusual.

According to Korealta, Waltraud had once conducted a test on Sarah Driscoll on the suspicion she was telepathic. A fine little detail that hadn't been passed on to Enigma Zero.

Waltraud acted entirely on behalf of the Interstellar Alliances, complete with a direct line to them. He had the authority to command Utara to do anything; Utara's secrecy was the only thing protecting her from this command. Why exactly Utara continued with Sullivan's experiments wasn't safe to bet on; if Hel had been around no data prior to contact was truly reliable.

That left Andrew in a situation he didn't really know what shape the enemy took. He was intimately aware just how much power one lacked when deprived of vital information.

Finally the door clicked open.

Waltraud came to stand next to Andrew, hands behind his back and an easy smile on his face. "Well then, how is this side of hell doing?"

"Dull. He might be subconsciously influenced," Andrew said. "We have found no signs that he offered any conscious support."

As good as their haphazard guessing was. Their psychic powers worked best between members of their own kind, and Jonah very much was not that. The emotion blocking and telepathy laming applications didn't help. Even with the chip off, the after effects were there. He didn't think in the same routes as a human. If anything, his thoughts whirred about in the peculiar abstract ways of whatever that chimera had thought like, but stripped of instinct and caught up in countless human considerations. It was more difficult to make sense of than a typical human.

Waltraud didn't look at Jonah at all. "You are not very good at telepathy, are you?"

"How would you be able to tell? You're not one of us." Andrew wasn't even surprised anymore. Coming here was only likely to reveal this or that unsavory reality.

"I may not be, but I know what to look for. For example, we knew that miss Driscoll was growing telepathic abilities. We tested her for mutations and found none. You've been at this for hours without catching on to this. Or, you did catch on to it and refuse to share this information. Regardless, we're getting paid and I learn, so I do not mind much what frivolous displays we put up."

Andrew didn't know what to make of that. Did Waltraud know Korealta could gain access to Utara's private files, or did he just randomly throw out that tidbit about Sarah Driscoll? Did that mean the IA had outright authorized the leeway on Sarah? Naseim wouldn't like this information, so why tell them?

The painful awareness that he wasn't cut out for reading into schemes like this pushed to the forefront. He scrambled for the right thing to say and forced it into mostly not sputtering sentences.

"So, how come we did not hear of this? Doctor Rajaei is the very head of the Enigma stations, one would think she ought to know."

Waltraud shrugged. "She does not pay me, nor do I work for her."

Of course, he worked for the Interstellar Alliances. There had to be something better he could say, without resorting to using psychic powers to intimidate. Those might push the man back a little, but would mean nothing once they went their separate ways. Waltraud was rapidly figured that limit out, apparently.

"Surely there is a better reason. One person to another. Sarah Driscoll's mutations are in line with the kind of xeno upgrades we can only dream of to control. She appears to have no troublesome instincts and gained psychic powers. You could have known this months ago, yet you didn't investigate?"

"She didn't have these physical traits at the time. We simply presumed she was a case of latent psychic powers."

That sounded awfully innocuous for someone who had a applied for this job with relentless vigor, but maybe he really just was curious about telepathy.

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Lemura hadn't been here before, but she knew the way because Sarah did. Mostly. Sarah wasn't sure what the best places to hide were, because she never had had to think about being a small body in need of hiding.

Lemura would ask for ideas, but Sarah was in a strange kind of sleep again. It made it difficult for her to do more than just remember and dream without direction. The bad people who had taken her were at fault for this. Jay was awake though, albeit a clutter of anxiety who still didn't like talking to her. He had never been a small body hiding here either, anyway.

It left Lemura almost as alone as she'd been when in Jonah's aquarium. It wasn't as damp and confined here, but just as dark and sterile. Engines, water recycling, a stabilizer force to deal with radiation from the nearby star. A lot of fuel. Energy cores she couldn't reach, even as she sensed them. Dozens of miles left behind her, she still hadn't seen everything. Maybe she would before the things chasing her caught up. Those weren't very fast because they didn't know what to look for. Sometimes they smelled her, sometimes their minds brushed, but they didn't really think she could think. She was better than them at figuring their thoughts.

While wandering here, she passed by him. The one who drifted below here, always here, trying to get better. He'd been more anxious lately.

Usually he crawled through the wide airshafts, tailored to hide him. One time though, he passed over the floor, likely to short curt.

Since he wasn't going down to the lower levels, Lemura followed him then. If she would agree to go down below he would turn there at once, but now she denied that, he didn't. She wanted to get a better look at what he was.

What little muscle spun below his thick skin wasn't enough. He struggled to move over his thin legs. Watching him was like watching a picture story more than a real person, because he was something that shouldn't be. A little more of a doll, even had the strings.

After a while she realized that the things chasing her stayed at a distance now she was near him, so she gathered up the courage to ask, "~ What kind of monster are you? ~"

He took a few more steps to pass out of the light. Staying in a dark part of the hall, he leaned against the wall, straining the fleshy strands that kept him upright. With some effort, he looked around. "~ The kind that wants out, but not out of humankind. ~"

That sounded like something that made a lot of sense around here, but without Sarah she couldn't figure out what it meant or why that made the other things back away.

The blob on the ceiling was a writhing mass of flesh and tendrils, latching onto frost blasters, transport rails and probably some kind of suction facet. It left a trail of holes where ever it went. That thing was as much part of him as the more humanoid body before her. Maybe that's what it meant, it wanted to be all of the humanoid.

"~ Why call it humanoid, child? There are many species bipedal. That's not what I mean. Humanity. ~"

"~ Mind or body? ~"

"~ Mind. ~"

Oh, that she could relate to. She didn't like the xenomorph part of her instincts much. It made her want to hurt people who shouldn't be hurt. That was really stupid of it.

"~ Can I help? Maybe I can help. We do a lot of things with minds. ~"

"~ I know ... you could tell me where your mother is. ~"

She froze up for a moment, then shook her head. Sarah had been very, very clear that she wasn't supposed to talk about any plans.

"~ She is on Kiyasumeni, right? ~"

Lemura turned away, back from where she'd come. It was the only road she remembered, and the only thing she could safely think about right now.

He didn't look back, but she felt he never lost sight of her.

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July 20, 2578

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Andrew was an amateur. When he came with the suggestion that his troupe provide extra soldiers for the trip to Kiyasumeni for safety, Waltraud dismissed it off hand. The cyborg would be fine. If they weren't for whatever reason Andrew didn't share, he would have a perfectly valid reason to request by the rule back up from the Direction. Andrew suggested bypassing protocol, having misunderstood Waltraud's inclination for such : it only happened if his own grander research was served.

"How about we display the abilities of our soldiers, before you dismiss them off hand?"

Waltraud sighed. "I know this one. People who say such either are about to phenomenally embarrass themselves, or to embarrass me. So how about we play something else : who pays for it?"

"Our commissioner will," Andrew said, trying to sound confident. Futile. Waltraud knew Naseim would likely work her way out of this and it'd all come back on his head.

"This includes any fall out we get from the sarsathrizmat owners of the planet, I presume? Really, we don't like the idea of provoking allies of humankind, especially not the telepathic kind." After summoning some relevant information, Waltraud shoved a tablet over to him. "You might want to read up on what awaits if you must."

"You expect the sarsathrizmat to be vacationing there?"

"Of course not, we expect them to be the reason there are mutated dinosaurs," Waltraud said. "Or the immediate reason the cyborg were taken down with our lovely disloyal Sarah Driscoll covering for them, in which case we prefer a minor skirmish as opposed to whatever you are planning."

With one finger Andrew pulled the tablet closer and read over it. It would be full of lingo the poor sod might not fully grasp, which ultimately said very little beyond what was already out : don't mess up the economy with touchy political moves.

The Interstellar Commerce Commission had been little more than a shadow of the past right up until other alien nations started trading routes with humans. One didn't want to tell a potentially hostile species with culture clash that there was no legitimacy in a institution. Especially not the sarsathrizmat, who had the peculiar cultural trait of collecting things and bartering them. Their entire biology had come from a parasitic species, it was in their nature as much as humans liked to move places and claim land for a home. One didn't want them to say, get the idea to dismantle humankind and barter them away.

They were of interest to Waltraud about as much as any telepathic species, but unfortunately untouchable. He didn't exactly mind Andrew messing with them, especially if it turned up something interest, as long as he didn't take the fall. Anyone else would do. Andrew. Utara. Nuitar.

"Of course ... if it's minded entities you plan to send, I might be interested in seeing how they respond to the locals. Perhaps even get sample?" He had zero interests in samples, he just wanted a reaction from whatever Andrew's kind was. Stoke conflict a little. He might not have the full grasp of the picture, but that's what kindling the fire was for. "Under one condition : the payment comes from you. I don't care where the money comes from. Make it look like a pet project, rather than a military escort. Formally be ... dishonest ... about who you're sending along. Understood?"

"Of course," Andrew said, failing to sound as airy as he meant to.

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With Jonah apprehended after his former 'friend' was found to be not quite human anymore, suspicion was on everything he'd done. As an emmisary of Naseim Rajaei, Andrew confiscated all his products.

Jonah had about 180 potential human hosts in storage. They were in the kind of miserable state one expected from vial grown entities, but it was good enough for what Andrew needed them for, if not Jonah's pride. Assuming he could still experience pride in this messed up brain. Maybe he'd ask during next interrogation.

A measly assistant who seemed happy to be rid of Jonah showed him the products.

"Can you keep them asleep?" Andrew asked.

"They're never really conscious. Their brains had no stimulation during their entire growth," the assistant said. "You are certain doctor Bayard will not cause a problem if he ends up released?"

"Doctor Bayard has already agreed and will personally avow his approval once his procedure is over, which should be in a few hours. We have little reason to hold him longer, so he will be through a quick rehab before he returns. We merely suspect Sarah might before tampered with a variety of things, so we clean up."

He gave the assistant a few more pointers before escorting all the tubes to the hangar, where their ship hummed in preparation for the event. A lot of energy was going to act weird soon.

Half the hosts would be unused, but he wasn't about to get into fine details why they only needed those with a womb. With about 60% failure, they'd get about 54. Under strict direction, that should be enough to retrieve the queen chimera. Probably, assuming Utara was right about that and not suffering after effects of Hel.

He wasn't really sure what to expect at all. An Auton base, surely. That the creatures who owned the planet might be involved, though? Waltraud certainly seemed to suggest that. That could be a problem, since there was a time limit on the little army they would be breeding.

Warrain met him as soon as he entered their ship. "Kesly's off the ship and we got her scent off everything. I'm ready. You?"

"I'll go with Kesly," Andrew said. "I think I can handle it. You're really fine with all these xenomorph around?"

"Got no idea why this place has a reputation, I haven't even had a nightmare."

"Neither have I, but that might just mean they work less obviously."

"Yeah, whatever. We'll be out here soon enough."

Warrain shrugged it all off, as usual.

Maybe that reputation had only been due to Amy 2. It'd been quiet since she'd left, according to the scientists here, but that could just be some reverse placebo effect. Jonah Bayard hadn't relaxed at all when he should be the one most relieved from her absence.

What do do about him anyway?

Jonah was by all means an unaffiliated man. He'd come into the role and did the one thing he could to survive : join the enemy. Andrew could imagine the way he had thought early on; he'd been there himself, after all.

That might mean Jonah was loyal only to himself, complacent only because he was high on mind altering materials. If they gave him somewhere to run, hes loyalty be swayed. How best to convince them not to kill him? Play up his fascination with science, leverage his connection to the chimera?

That was the original idea for scooping around below some more, but it had turned up something extra. Utara had a side door personality, apparently. Korealta hadn't been able to access that yet, but they had a pretty good idea what that secret, real personality of Utara kept hidden after they followed the telepathic resonance of a few poorly concealed clones.

Well, it was mostly a sense of hostility, but the effect was the same.

For his next job, Andrew joined Kesly ... at a sufficient distance and drowning in cologne.

With Sarah Driscoll found to be some kind of mutant, it was only natural someone had a talk with the janitors. They weren't official suspects, because Utara had concealed that they had degrees. For all everyone up there knew, they were random people barely qualified, only here for menial work. Both were installed by the late Sullivan.

Rather a lot of equipment had vanished on upper levels despite not being all that broken. He suspected they'd find it down there, so Kesly had wandered around trying to catch something suspicious. She had succeeded on more than one count.

Two of their cyborg had gone ahead and apprehended the couple, bringing them to the door of a number of incubation rooms where they ought to be nothing but fuel storage.

Andrew and Kesly separate inside the small rooms and looked around on their own. He had little idea on what was important to note, so most of that was just him holding things for Korealta.

The largest room was a cryogenic storage unit with an absurd amount of shelves in the wall, filled with cryogenic tubes. Seemed like a nice, spacey place for interrogation. The cyborg moved the captives there, while Andrew and Kesly took distant positions from each other.

Masayu Bintan and Jay Ranganathan were both technically scientists, but struck a very different look than those above. Casual clothes, shrinking postures and open fear.

"Well then," Kesly said. "I think it's time for talking. Is this where you engineered Sarah to be so odd?"

"No!" Jay said. "We had nothing to do with that! Well, okay so we helped her along, but we don't experiment on friends!"

Korealta had some report on Sarah being treated for a broken spine, but little else. Records here were shifty and simplistic, dependent on human input from unconnected machines. That, or Nuitar had the framework information.

"Well, let's presume for a moment that's true, then surely there's a perfectly sensible reason for why this cute little secret laboratory is a thing?"

Kesly sounded way too much like she had fun. Andrew decided a little more practical tone was needed. "Calligan funds the Enigma stations. Naseim orchestrates them, the Interstellar Alliances provide the equipment and personal. Who is your affiliation?"

Jay looked away, Masayu kept staring at the floor.

"And people like Walltraud exist to dodge the ethics committee," Kesly said, gesturing at the wall with the cryogenic tubes. "We all love the ethics committee, right, guys? Would you like to talk to them about this here to them? Or can we talk here, just between us?"

"Uh ... here. We can talk here. What do you know of the genetic memory of the xenomorph?" Jay muttered.

"Nothing," Kesly said. "I'm sure you're about to enlighten me."

Jay and Bison exchanged a looked and seemed to give up.

"It doesn't make sense. The xenomorph, I mean. Lamarckian inheritance in a species where the majority of members will never breed, nor employ the memories of its host, yet we can get functional chimeras and xenomorph by cloning hosts," Jay sputtered. "That's what we researched here, the way to employ that kind of genetic memory. It seems like junk DNA, right? Once we know what it should do, we could control it."

"Oh?" Kesly said. "That sounds rather innocuous. Why would Sullivan not do so in the upper levels, with proper equipment rather than this collection of run down rejects?"

"Look, we're not entirely sure what Sullivan and Utara were doing, but it's Nuitar who controls this area," Jay said. "Ask him."

"Yes, see, that's the problem. If Utara ran it itself, the Interstellar Alliances would already know there's something wrong. All those pesky strict measures on artificial intelligence. Nuitar isn't talking to us. But you can, so keep talking, will you?" Kesly wandered behind Bison. "Especially you. What exactly did Sullivan want to do with this information that's so, so secret?"

Bison took a difficult breath and shook on his feet. "The running theory is that xenomorph were designed for hosts that could be transformed into drones. Silicon lifeforms, presumably. Androids engineered or infected with orincubix sometimes turn out to be functional chimeras too. Drones ... either as beasts or masquerading. It's all information. Sullivan became obsessed with that idea, so he invited things to help develop a way. He had this idea of gaining immortality by blue printing personalities."

"Aaah, now it smells like truth. Utara wanted to encode itself onto it, I bet. That still does not answer what's so special about this place. Enigma III already works on something similar."

"It's Nuitar. They put him here to suppress Regina Insolita," Bison said. "Nuitar wants things too."

By now Jay looked rather confused. According to Korealta's files, this man arrived at a later date than Masayu. He might not be as informed.

Andrew had the wall eject the most recent row of clones. Their shapes were varied, but they all had similar features when humanoid at all. They were Sarah Driscoll, if one did clumsy clones of her after she was infected by a xenomorph.

"So, what is all this blondness?" Kesly asked. "For an experiment that's over due to dead head scientists, you sure seem to be adding new things."

"What?" Jay said. "Bison, what's going on?"

"We'd like to know that too," Andrew said.

"Why did you do that?" Jay sputtered. "Sarah's not—we're not supposed to do this to friends! We don't clone each other, right? We agreed on that! It should be obvious we don't do that to Sarah."

"I cloned Sarah because Calligan is still sourcing money here, through Nuitar. I didn't want them to decide to replace us," he whispered. "I don't know who's running this, not really. The best I can do is make sure we're alive."

Kesly clapped twice. "Very sweet. Now let's get back to the topic : all of this is going to be wrapped up one way or another. Either we do it, or Waltraud does it. See, this here?"

She pulled out one of the tubes with a particularly malformed clone. It had no eyes and elongated head.

"This here makes it pretty clear something impregnated miss Driscoll with an orincubix, and yet, she's never really died of chestbursting. So much questions. Who's going to punish you the least for spilling the details? Utara? Naseim? Calligan? Or the Interstellar Alliances?"

Bison took a few seconds to answer. "Probably Naseim."

Kesly gave a curt nod and dropped her exaggerated smile. "Good. Andrew, a word with you."

They left the room and had Korealta lock it. Nuitar wasn't around right now, so they could allow themselves a second of isolation.

Staying at opposite ends of the hall, they spoke; they'd have no trouble hearing each other.

"So Utara wants a body," Andrew whispered. "Pretty sure she's evolved too. What do we do now?"

"We just inform miss Rajaei, then we laugh at the predictable," Kesly said. "~ And I will speak to Jouran about what exactly Selatan did. ~"

It seemed much more prudent to look into why all these artificial beings were so fixated onto getting themselves biomechanical bodies.

"~ We need to figure out somehow what made Utara change. Selatan didn't do anything to this extent, ~" Andrew said, sticking with telepathy just to be safe now.

"~ Someone else can handle that. We can just harvest what we need, starting with that mobile clone they've got running around here, ending with that queen chimera. What else would we need to know anything for about Enigma II? We don't get paid for more, after all? ~"

Sometimes he envied her, that she could live life as a matter of entertainment or its lack. Andrew might not be getting paid, but he still had the same goal as he once did. Take down Jormungandr in any possible. There was nothing fun about trying the near impossible.

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There were too much people down below now. A whole lot of them, reading files and finding things. They might see things Utara or Nuitar had recorded.

Lemura climbed higher on the levels for the first time ever. There were less spaces to hide in here, but the air shafts were just as spacious as almost everywhere. They lent road to every section of the station.

Through these, she made it to the docks. She only knew those from Sarah's limited memories, when they were hazy and all too human still. It would be a new place for her to see, but it wasn't very different from the rest of the station.

The one thing that stood out was the docked ship. Half hazed, Sarah kept telling her to flee the station, they had to get out, but that didn't make sense. She couldn't mean to go aboard that ship there. It was a den of monsters, she could feel it pull in the force of growth and the minds inside.

Carefuly, she reached out her own mind, trying to find any humans there. Just in case she was wrong, and she could leave with the ship. Maybe make them listen, like Kirindi could do with humans.

It wasn't easy, but she got glimpses.

Not that she would really want to leave without Sarah, but ... maybe ram a ship ... diversion ... anything?

There were unblocked people there. A few stood out as more thoughtful, so easier to link to. One was almost like her, a curious kid. Unsure. Not so listening to the greater caller.

She became aware of a cargo hall on a ship that vibrated with the same space defying field that surrounded growing xenomorph. This hall was filled with children looking about 10, maybe. All without clothing, some covered in slime. She could see in colors and other senses, but not all.

They looked back now.

As one body, at her. Or rather, in the direction of the defective one.

The door opened and a man with deep brown skin and curly yellow hair stepped in. He stared at this one too, then shook his head. "Tssk."

As one body, the other children poured onto the defective one and ripped him apart. Over and over again, because he kept regrowing.

Lemura tried to detach and succeeded, but only mostly. She could just hope that man hadn't seen her.

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