Chapter 1
1226 hours, 2nd axial rotation of Joo'Lie, Atlesian Time
Western Sector, Forever Fall, Vale
No further than twenty steps later did the boy stop dead in his tracks.
The roar of the engine was increasing in strength and ferocity.
Hidden behind the trunk of a scarlet-haired tree, the boy surveyed the descent of a convoy of mighty VTOLs.
He could smell the metal. Even though it was clean, glimmering in the midday sun, the boy could smell the stench of death wafting off their panoplies of warfare, their silvery guns that shimmered in the midday sun.
Three of them converged upon the forest. A fourth continued onwards, headed directly towards the site of the impact.
At first glance, it immediately became clear this one was much, much larger than the rest.
Sunlight scintillated off the aluminium exterior of its sleek fuselage, and the metallic exteriors of its four slender nacelles caught a perfect reflection of the sun. If such things could be quantified, its elegance and beauty far outstripped the three bullheads that escorted it. It was close to three times longer than them, but the ship could still land on the massive, air-blasted clearing surrounding the crater. Such was the extent of the damage inflicted upon the forest by the pod's impact.
The wreckage of the pod stood slanted at a thirty-degree angle towards the charred, black soil.
An automated ramp extended outwards of the airship's primary entrance and a woman stepped out, flanked by a muscular man in the Atlesian army's uniform.
She was in her mid-twenties; her form moved slowly and clumsily, at least from the perspective of the boy, and she fidgeted with a shiny device in her hands. She wore a set of thick-rimmed glasses, and her eyes were either black or a very, very dark brown. A black sling bag was slung over her shoulders, and it appeared to have caused quite a strain on the woman's shoulders.
The Specialist escorting her looked no older than thirty, but the look in his pale blue eyes told a different story. Unlike her, he moved nimbly and exuded a subtle, trained grace despite his impressive musculature. The man's skin was a tanned Valean umber, and it glistened with sweat under the sweltering sun. His name was Augustus White, a Specialist in the Atlesian Military.
A rifle squad of ten soldiers escorted them out of the vessel. Like a well-oiled machine, they swept out across the ruined landscape and scanned it for possible hazards in heartbeats. The latest iteration of infantry armour that each of them was clad in facilitated the high-speed scanning, and the soldiers themselves fell back on years of training to weigh their decisions. Each step was taken in unison as they inched towards the crashed pod.
Augustus' hand fell on his weapon as they drew closer to the wreckage.
He could hear the blood pounding against his temples. His muscles tensed; his fingers curled around the grip of his pistol, ready to draw in the blink of an eye.
A voice shattered the pin-drop silence of the approach. One of his subordinates - a sergeant, it seemed, was updating him on the status of the perimeter check.
Augustus paid close attention.
"Sir, we've secured the perimeter. All clear from squads Bloodhound, Phoenix, and Bravo. No sign of Grimm activity in a three-hundred-meter radius."
A surprise.
Usually, there were at least two dozen of the damned creatures within such a radius, according to the monthly survey.
A pleasant surprise, that is.
"Roger that."
Good. Drones have already checked this place out. No sign of atmospheric anomalies. No poison gas and no radiation.
Arrowhead formation. Forwards. Go.
Cautiously, the soldiers and the ones they guarded approached the gestation pod, flanking their leader and the woman in the white coat and black skirt. Their boots treaded lightly across the charred soil of the crater as they approached it in a circular formation. Alice Lockwood, a prominent, yet reclusive researcher of Grimm Physiology, approached the unidentified carefully beside the Specialist.
"Twenty meters from the unidentified object, Sir," said a soldier. His voice was laced with caution, and Augustus could hear the inklings of fear that lingered in his subconscious. These men were armed to the teeth, clad from head to toe in the latest iteration of Atlesian infantry armour. But the situation they were faced with was something new, and the fact that these men were some of the most skilled soldiers in the Atlesian Military did nothing to quell the unease that burned coldly in the core of Augustus' psyche.
"Ten meters," reported the same soldier, seconds later.
"We shall stop here," voiced Augustus immediately, "Secure the area."
At the sound of his voice, the soldiers fanned out across the smoking clearing. Bits of the object had landed within the ten-meter radius. These were sizeable, jagged pieces of metal that remained hot to the touch. The soldiers circled around them warily, keeping a mental tally of the number of such fragments in their area. Only Augustus and Alice remained where they were, standing ten meters away from the smouldering husk of alien metal.
He felt something brush up against his armoured suit. It was Alice. She was prodding his shoulder.
"I…have to take a closer look." Despite her calm demeanour, Alice was brimming with excitement. She began to move towards the craft, but the Specialist grabbed her sleeved arm.
"Not yet. Protocol dictates that we are not to breach the ten-meter radius before the surrounding area is secured," reminded the Specialist with a soft, but firm, voice.
"Haven't you already secured it?" asked the biologist impatiently. Augustus loosened his grip on her forearm.
"VA in these areas isn't clear enough to be absolutely certain, due to all the trees. Squad Hydra, this squad, is still securing the immediate area."
"VA?"
"Sorry. Visual acuity," explained Augustus. "We can't know for sure that there aren't one or two Grimm in this area. I wanted this squad to secure the immediate area due to its strategic significance if we are attacked by Grimm. All it takes is just a few Grimm to sneak up on us and we're done for. They're standing guard at ten meters away from the treeline so that they can attack at a distance, assuming the Grimm emerge at the treeline."
"Grimm are fast. Very fast. Capable of explosive bursts of speed faster than most vehicles. Most will cover that distance in a heartbeat. Too bad the forest's quite shallow," mused Alice.
"What? Too bad?"
"Too bad is not too bad."
"Too bad is not too bad is very bad."
The two of them chuckled at the crude joke, and for a moment, the soldiers stared at them oddly.
Alice looked longingly at the object, then at the few scraps of otherworldly metal strewn across the field, and then to her scroll.
"The metallurgists are going to love this," she mumbled, absentmindedly.
"We've secured the immediate surroundings, Sir." The voice crackled over the radio, and Augustus turned in the direction of the man who had spoken. He gave him the thumbs-up, and activated the microphone on his scroll.
"Looks like we're safe...for now," said the Specialist. Alice couldn't help but notice the cautious undertone that had been present in his voice ever since they'd entered the Forever Fall airspace.
"Pilot, do you copy?"
"Yes, Sir. Has the area been secured?"
"Area secured. Have the androids bring out the equipment. Over."
Augustus cut the line.
He remembered Ironwood's face when he told him not to let Alice get into, and he most certainly did not want to be on the receiving end of his anger. She was an important asset to the nation.
"Why is it taking so long for the damn androids to bring my stuff out?! Wait, is that amniotic fluid I see?" asked the biologist in a rhetorical manner as she peered over the Specialist's shoulder and the shoulders of the guards. She gestured towards a pool of viscous, transparent fluid on the ground. Bits of dirt had gathered on top of it, indicating that this was denser than human amniotic fluid. It was then that everything became crystal clear to Alice.
Alice donned a pair of vinyl gloves and a pair of safety goggles, which she wore over her own spectacles.
"Careful," warned Augustus, before leaving the biologist to her own devices. Alice nodded.
Bending over towards the ground, she opened a sling bag and retrieved a syringe from its depths. Next came a cylindrical vial, thirty millilitres in volume. The tip of the hypodermic needle slid beneath the stagnant surface of the light yellow fluid, and Alice collected a small sample of the fluid. She noted the sweet, cheese-like odour it emanated, the greasy white detritus that lay suspended within the milky medium, and pocketed the samples.
Vernix caseosa, the protective substance that coats the skin of newborns, she thought, nothing out of the ordinary for late-stage embryonic fluid for humans and Faunus, if my memory serves me right. But that's strange. Why would there be human fluids in a... presumably alien vessel? And this would imply the presence of a gestating fetus in this thing.
Given Atlas' technological prowess, methods of artificial birth have been brought up over the past decade or so. A hypothetical solution was to replicate the structure of the female womb with steel and glass – the rearing of a child in a large, sterile container with a mechanical replacement for the umbilical cord and a synthetic version of amniotic fluid to facilitate the osmotic transfer of nutrients from an outside source to the fetus.
It then dawned on her that analogues of these hypothesized devices were lying just meters away from her. Though it deviated slightly from the idealized design, the cylindrical structure that lay before her bore some resemblance to the device she'd envisioned in her dreams. The researcher waded towards the unknown, through the smouldering debris of arcane technology.
I'll be damned, she thought as her gaze fell upon the centrepiece. It was cylindrical — barrel-shaped in form. The sunlight shimmered mirthlessly off the craft's gunmetal carapace, and the stain of freshly upheaved dirt tinted the shell a particularly raw shade of copper.
From top to bottom the gestation capsule — or what was left of it — was very nearly symmetrical.
Alice's eyes traced the thick rubbery cables that fed out from the craft's conical top and flat bottom, and it soon became apparent that they had been severed messily by some unknown force.
A shoal of calculations sailed through her mind as she approximated the amount of force required to rip through the cables. Across their girths, they must have measured a few inches, at least, and that was discounting the thick insulating substance that they had been coated with. Alice could not understand how there was not a single scorch mark across the vessel.
There was an opening — a slight one — that allowed someone outside to look within. A thick sheet of glass had been held firmly in a circular frame. Perhaps it could be described as a window. For all intents and purposes, it did appear so.
Alice did not like that word. In fact, she hated the fact that it had been the first thing she'd thought of when the feature came into view.
Assigning it a purpose derived from the needs of Mankind reflected a lot on the extent of her hubris, and the collective hubris of her species.
But in some primal place of her mind, Alice found the object's design very human. The feeling was indescribable, and its source was unknown, but it lodged itself deep into her mind with a steely conviction. Indeed, everything here seemed to have been conceived through a series of witticisms that seemed too human in origin. First was the glass — at least, what appeared to be glass. Was it really glass? The material certainly resembled man-made glass, but was it really glass?
Alice scanned the window with her scroll, just to be safe. Hot glass appeared no differently from the glass at room temperature.
34 degrees centigrade.
"So it's a poor conductor of heat? I can't know for sure. This thing crashed...over an hour before we arrived. But this is definitely not the normal type of glass. It's probably the equivalent of the best heat resistant glass ever developed on Remnant. Hmm...In the past decade or so Atlesian researchers had come up with several solutions to the problem of rapid and extreme heating encountered in re-entry. Optical-quality fused silica was a glass-like material possessing an extremely low coefficient of thermal expansion that made it suitable for such an environment. But silicon dioxide would still have to be used for making fused silica. Now, that leaves two options. One, one of the constituents of this material is silicon dioxide, which implies that silicon dioxide exists on exoplanets. Two, this material was created using alternative compounds," mused the researcher.
Alice scratched her head, still perturbed by the questions in her head. She tapped the glass with a gloved finger. It was remarkably dense and felt like metal.
Interesting. Very interesting.
The interior of the object was a completely different story.
For starters, everything seemed to be waterproof — for obvious reasons. A deep pool of amniotic fluid had collected on the floor, and a fine layer of the liquid had coated the interior walls of the capsule. Exposed circuitry as complicated as that of a cogitator's motherboard, but scaled downwards hundredfold, had been scarcely interspersed across the otherwise blank walls of the interior, and a tiny red light blinked overhead unceasingly.
There was no doubt about it now. This thing had once been an artificial womb.
Human, then alien. Alice could not decide. Her mind oscillated between the two options. The pod's exterior reeked of a human, all too human utilitarianism. So did the circuitry on the pod's interior but to a far lesser degree.
For now, Alice Lockwood would keep the thought a secret.
She got back to work.
1510 hours, 2nd Axial Rotation of Joo'Lie, Atlesian Time
Classified Location, Vale
"What?!" asked Ironwood. He had nearly choked on his coffee when the news arrived from the Specialist, who was currently at a military airfield in Vale. As they spoke, a synthetic version of dust – in liquid form at room temperature – was being pumped into the fuel tanks of the airships in his convoy, in order for them to last the arduous, one-way journey back to Atlas.
"Alice believes that there is an extra-terrestrial organism currently in the Forever Fall forest," reiterated Augustus, flinching from the outraged voice of the General, "I think so too. If the foetal organism died from the crash, there should have been a body. We did not find one at the site. Instead, there were a pair of footprints that looked strangely familiar, leading out of the crater."
Ironwood took some time to digest the news.
"And where did they lead to?"
"We don't know, Sir. It was covered by the grass. What is strange was that, while we found some blood on what appeared to be a broken…door, there was no blood in the grass or anywhere in the forest for that matter, at least for a fifty-meter radius. Alice thinks that it might be a regenerative ability. And the footprints looked like those of a human."
A long pause.
"What did you say?" asked Ironwood incredulously.
"Sir, we did not find any blood anywhere other than the object itself—"
"No, the last part," said Ironwood, cutting him off.
"We found what appeared to be the footsteps of a human leading out of the crashed object."
"You mean…exactly like a human's? Not humanoid? How many toes?"
"Sir, the footprints that looked precisely human. Maybe a seven or eight-year-old. But they were extremely deep for their size. It was as if the organism had taken off in a sprint immediately after exiting the object," replied Augustus, placing a strong emphasis on 'exactly'.
"Did you notice anything about the object itself?"
There was a delay.
"Yes, Sir. A slider door was seen several meters away from the object with deep dents on its exterior. It could have dropped off on the object's descent, or something might have pushed it away with great force."
The sound of stifled breathing came from the other side of the earpiece.
Besides Salem, this could possibly be the greatest threat to the kingdoms. An extraterrestrial invasion, beginning with a shapeshifting infiltrator.
Biological warfare was a coward's strategy that he understood all too well from the history books. During the Great War, corpses infected with deadly viruses were launched by the people of Mantle directly into Valean towns. It was a primitive but effective strategy that resulted in the deaths of thousands.
Ironwood reasoned that it was highly probable that more of these unidentified objects have crashed in the Kingdoms, or in the region outside them.
"You arrived at around 1230 hours, ten minutes after that thing landed. Am I correct?"
"Yes, General."
"It couldn't have gone far. It might have been attacked by the Grimm, perhaps even killed. Be that as it may, I have suspicions that this a biological weapon, and as such I will be requesting for the Forever Fall forest to be cordoned off immediately by the local authorities. The organism might infect the Grimm with an alien pathogen, and from Grimm the pathogen will be transmitted to humans. It might also be a spy if it resembles a human. Specialist, report back to the base with Alice immediately. A second wave of investigators, comprising of mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers, and material science experts from Vale and Atlas is already inbound towards the site. It is now 1513 hours, Atlesian time. The journey from your current location to Atlas will take around 21 hours, so you will be briefed in my office tomorrow at 1330 hours, Atlesian time. I'm putting together an interdisciplinary research team, and you will be supervising it. For obvious reasons, I've increased your, as well as Alice's security clearance level to TS. You have done well, Specialist White."
"It is an honor, General. Thank you."
The line was cut, and Augustus heaved a sigh of relief.
"So, what did he say?"
The high-pitched, neotenous voice rang out from behind him. Augustus turned and looked at Alice. She had walked out of the toilet while reading something on her scroll.
"He thinks it's a carrier of pathogens."
Alice did not look up from the device.
"I wouldn't blame him for thinking so."
"He also thinks that it might be a spy," added Augustus.
"That sounds more logical."
"He also thinks that it might have been attacked by the Grimm."
Alice grunted in acknowledgement. "Possibly, but it wouldn't matter much."
"That's what I've been thinking about. Any alien civilization smart enough to build such an intricate device and bioengineer a new creature would also have the brains to study the ecosystem their enemy resides in. This creature that is now loose would, therefore, be able to kill Grimm, assuming that its creators had sent it into a forest crawling with Grimm on purpose," theorized Augustus.
"Well, that's totally correct, assuming they were able to calculate the trajectory of the gestation capsule, which I'm sure they can," said Alice. She began to scratch her unbrushed hair as an itch arose.
Augustus peered at his friend's jet-black hair. Bits of dandruff could be seen lodged on the surface, and he picked them off one-by-one.
"Hmm, how long has it been since you washed?" asked Augustus, catching a whiff of the odour that enveloped her.
"I don't know. A week, maybe two?" said Alice, looking at her scroll.
Her alabaster skin shone with perspiration, and the Valean climate intensified her stench. Her appearance was by no means the 'type' that most people would become infatuated with, but her black eyes often gleamed with a frightening intensity, especially when she was interested in something.
"Disgusting," said Augustus, knowing that she was not the type who got emotional over a remark on something as silly as this.
"He's putting together a team of leading experts to make sense of the situation."
"I've heard," she muttered tonelessly, "Will Mr. Robot-Maker be there?"
"The General hasn't told me yet," replied Augustus.
"Leading experts. The brightest minds in Atlas," she scoffed, "Or rather, the ones who can build him the best weapons. Well, at least there are a few who can see past the current paradigm, like Mr. Robot-Maker. And look at what happened to their ideas! They were all weaponized, every single one of them!"
"Come now, let's not have the same conversation for the umpteenth time. The Great War ended a long time ago, and you know how much money is being spent to better the lives of the people in Mantle," said Augustus, stemming the flow of her tirade.
"The absence of conflict does not imply the absence of the attitudes that led to it," she hissed murderously, and her cheeks flared crimson as serenity metamorphosed into white-hot rage. But as quickly as her anger had overwhelmed her, it died down.
"What is the next rank in this military? Captain? Major?"
"The former," replied Augustus.
"Ah. Do you want to be a Captain?" questioned Alice, with a hint of amusement in her voice.
"I would rise to my level of incompetence. If I do not have the ability to perform well as a Captain, General Ironwood would know," said Augustus in a stoic manner.
"That's not what I asked," said Alice, shaking her head, "Though, when taken as an honest reply, it sounds almost as though you just…drift."
"I'm thinking," muttered Augustus, "I've long wondered why I chose a career in the military. Out of duty? Out of pure talent? I don't think it's that simple."
"Well, you've shown a talent for strategy games since young. Remember when we played that game with the other kids?"
"We beat them every single time. Until they quit out of frustration," said Augustus, cutting her off. A smile creased his stony face, but like a surfacing fish, it disappeared as quickly as it appeared, "I knew you'd say that, I know what you're about to say, and I know what you are trying to say."
"Well, passion can be part of the equation, can it not?" suggested Alice.
"True. Or did we? With that aside, surely this equation and its constituents – with a binary output – is objective for all those who are employed."
"Well, there may be times when the variables of an individual's equation differ from those of others. The normativism that you proposed might do more harm than good. Anyways, I would think that presupposing the existence of certain variables in an individual's equation is the essence of cynicism. When working with definitions of the language's lexicon, there should be no room for equivocation," replied Alice, whose mind swiftly decoded any abstraction that lay in the interlocuter's message.
A short pause as Augustus digested Alice's message.
"That's an interesting way to interpret motivational theories. I'd never thought of it that way before," he admitted. Alice did not smile at the compliment, but thanked him deep down for not dismissing her views out of jealousy.
"So, when are we leaving this place?" she asked impatiently, "I can't stand this heat."
It was either out of pure coincidence or something else that Augustus' scroll began to ring. He picked it up, and held it to his right ear.
"Yes. Okay," he said, before hanging up and pocketing the scroll.
"So?" asked Alice.
"Our ride's ready."
1512 hours, 2nd Axial Rotation of Joo'Lie, Atlesian Time
Eastern Sector, Forever Fall, Kingdom of Vale
The grass felt soft underneath his feet. He ran as the wind rippled through the forest, without a shred of fatigue.
Instead, it seemed he was accelerating. In truth, his cells were filled to the brim with energy. All this running had generated enough signalling molecules to jumpstart an auxiliary catabolic pathway that brought about the synthesis of an energetically bonded macromolecule.
Harnessing such a molecule through its enzymatic breakdown yielded the same results as those of the dominant pathway, and with muscle fibres that accepted the energy-carrying molecules of both pathways, the boy could — in theory — keep switching between dominant and auxiliary metabolic pathways and never run out of stamina.
Yet, like how the initiation of an action potential depended on whether a depolarization event causes a sufficient change in the resting membrane potential, it was an all or none event — the breaching of a threshold must occur, and the genetic secrets behind such a mechanism were all but forgotten to humanity.
On and on he ran, propelled by his sheer instinct and strength. Running at such a brisk pace without stopping for the duration accomplished thus far would have surely killed anyone, huntsman-powered-by-aura or not. His well-defined, hyperdense muscles flared as he sprinted through the forest without any clothes to inhibit his speed. His naked feet were layered with sores, but he paid no attention to the gnawing pain. The forest was deathly silent around him, with the occasional roar of a monster in the distance.
Not that he cared. He thirsted. Finding food and water, and then perhaps shelter, was a priority.
After another hour of running, he came to a stop at the peak of a massive cliff. It overlooked a vast section of the forest that stretched out for as far as the eye could see.
And then, he saw it.
A meandering river of wrought iron.
The railroad glimmered in the midday sun, stretching on and on ahead towards the northern horizon. It sat atop a platform, thirty feet into the sky, high above every tree in its environment. Miles and miles of electric fencing surrounded the railway on its left and right sides, making it nearly inaccessible to Grimm. Of course, airborne species like Nevermores were still able to attack from above.
The boy's eyes traced the snaking railway to areas far beyond a mortal's perception. It was then that he noticed the forest's edge and the human settlement that lay before that.
Three, perhaps four kilometres away, brutalist office buildings built from grim, unyielding concrete lined the sides of old, tar roads with a utilitarian precision. There was another district, composed of was what appeared to be an upper-middle-class shopping area and a train station. The buildings of the latter district appeared to have been built with a more sophisticated and 'beautiful' design in mind. Although he did not fully comprehend their purpose, there were vestiges of understanding that formed rapidly with his innate creativity.
The image was printed firmly into the boy's mind. He made a primitive, if not ingenious measurement of the town's relative position, and set off, trudging once again into the depths of the forest in the direction of the settlement.
2123 hours, 3rd Axial Rotation of Joo'Lie, Atlesian Time
Researcher Dormitory No. 3/19, Military Wing, Atlas Institute of Technology
Alice paused and took a deep breath. As her eyes gazed into the computer terminal, her fingers began to strike the keyboard in rapid strokes as she typed in her password.
+ Identity verified: Alice Lockwood – Lead Researcher +
+ Access Granted…Awaiting commands +
/new
+ New document created. Request: file location and name +
/project_ET/Reports/Report 2
The terminal disappeared, replaced by a blank, editable document.
Taking in another deep breath, she began writing, reminding herself to end off each paragraph with a summary written in simple language.
A copy would be sent to General Ironwood, and another to the Governing Council. For obvious reasons, this was highly classified information.
Assignment ET: Report 2
A formal investigation of the organism's DNA has been conducted by myself.
The results were astonishing.
I isolated 46 chromosomes from a basal keratinocyte in arrested metaphase. This was the total number of chromosomes found in the cell's nucleolus. If not for the damage sustained by the DNA before its discovery, the overall structure of the chromosomes was extremely like those of h. sapiens sapiens and h. sapiens fera. However, they were a staggering 83.1% more massive than regular h. sapiens sapiens and h. sapiens fera chromosomes.
The DNA of this organism contains more base pairs per turn than that of the average h. sapiens sapiens and h. sapiens fera. The DNA of this organism is composed of six helices compared to the two in h. sapiens sapiens and h. sapiens fera.
Technological limitations have made it so that I am unable to determine the specifics using the simulation software running on the Model IV High-Performance Zettascale Supercomputer. However, here are a few things that I have discovered.
The physical strength of this organism is expected to be far greater than any human, dead or alive. I predict that there will be a much greater density of muscle fibres than what is thought to be the maximum for humans and fauni, though it is probably impossible to quantify the difference. There also appears to be a novel form of muscle contraction, which is facilitated by the analogue proteins encoded by the autosomal genes. Although I am unaware of the proceedings of this mechanism, it clearly does not conform to the sliding filament theory of muscular contraction.
In other words, the organism's muscles do not contract in the same way as a human's, and the organism is probably far stronger than the average huntsman.
The organism is also hypothesized to be highly intelligent, due to the implication of a superior nervous system required for coordination and cognition, though it is unknown to what extent is it superior to the average h. sapiens sapiens in terms of abstract reasoning ability, problem solving ability, and short/long term memory due to insufficient genetic evidence.
Unfortunately, the genetic material was in an intermediate state of decomposition, probably due to the Valean climate, and as such certain genes could not be used for simulations. Still, I discovered that the lung analogues of this organism had a capacity of about twenty to twenty-five times that of h. sapiens sapiens or h. sapiens fera. It is hypothesized that the organism would surely have a much larger heart, or even two hearts, in order to circulate such great quantities of oxygen in a safe manner.
A long pause.
There was a high chance that the organism was not a carrier of any alien pathogens. This was because none were discovered within the gestation pod. Perhaps the organism had the ability to artificially replicate pathogens through some esoteric technique hitherto unknown by mankind. Or perhaps the organism was a breeding ground for these parasites. But if that were the case, there would be at least a few specimens discovered within the gestation pod. There were none. These notions were formed from the same premise that the organism was a biological weapon.
So, what if the organism was a biological weapon? Or perhaps it was a tool of espionage — it would certainly have to resemble a human, just a slightly larger one. But if it were a spy, there would have to be communication between it and its creators. So how would it communicate with them? Was it perhaps implanted with knowledge of how to build such advanced technology from scratch? Or would it use the technology of this planet to communicate with its creators? The latter implied that its creators knew of a method to imprint an imperative — a command that could never be disobeyed — into its genetic material, where a convoluted series of causal happenings would lead to the expression of the genetic message as a series of actions.
This appeared to Alice as an impossibly complex mechanism that rested on the same principles that allowed the behaviour of a person to be influenced by certain hormones. While hormones affected the human body in a straight-forward, incredibly simplistic manner, this hypothesized techno-magic was so complicated that even Alice could not wrap her head around it.
To her, it seemed that signalling molecules such as hormones were the most logical solution to influence the behaviour of an organism. Since it was impossible for a single signalling molecule to force an organism to comply with complex demands, Alice suspected that there could be multiple molecules responsible for this.
Alice stared at her desk. It was cluttered with dusty piles of research papers that she had read over the years. Her eyes came to rest on a paper titled "The Relationship between Libido and Testosterone Levels in Men."
Urges.
That was it.
A series of connections formed lightning-quick in the mind of Alice Lockwood.
Urges, urges, urges.
A compulsion that stems from the genetic material can be defined as a genetic imperative. The lexicon of the genetic imperative, in its most reduced state, must be in the form of DNA.
The genetic material that encodes certain signalling molecules, chemical signals that such as hormones and neurotransmitters, is causally related to the expression of certain behavioural preferences. While these behaviours may not be directly caused by these signalling molecules, the presence of these signalling molecules increases the likelihood of such behaviour as they confer motivational salience.
The deeper Alice thought the more questions she had. Indeed, the notions she had hitherto developed became more and more ludicrous as she generated rationalization after rationalization to support these theories.
No, it was impossible, thought Alice, dismissing her efforts as futile and the theory a dangerous one.
Humanity hasn't gathered enough information to explain this. To this date, we only have a limited and basic understanding of the biological influences of simple behaviour and emotions. I alone cannot gain an advanced understanding of how these…alien analogue organs function. There are many other organs that the supercomputer managed to simulate, but I am still unable to determine their functions.
The simulation of the analogue liver played in near-photographic quality, over and over in her mind. She did not understand. She could not understand. Perhaps the answer will come to her in her dreams, as it always did.
Once, her intellect had been described as immeasurable by every child psychologist sent to test her during the highly selective talent searches conducted by the Atlesian government. They were right; under a tailored program funded by the Atlesian government, she had earned her doctorate in Grimm physiology when most were in their senior year of Combat School. Quite literally, there was not a single problem - in the field of biology - that she could not solve.
Yet, here was one. Although she had only studied the organism's genetic makeup for much less than a day, Alice felt as though she could grasp the inner workings of a single organ only in the next decade or so. The civilization behind the artificial design of this organism was clearly several orders of magnitude more advanced than Atlas, let alone any kingdom on this planet. Internally, she sighed and smiled at the same time. Here was finally a challenge that she could set her mind to. The existence of a technologically superior extra-terrestrial civilization was now an undeniable fact, one that had caused a great paradigm shift within her, and frankly, it was a little disturbing. Could they be seeders of life on other planets? Or could they simply be observers, allowing the emergence of complexity in a sea of chaos? Were they malevolent or benevolent? But then again, why did they launch this unprovoked attack on the planet?
The white of the monitor's screen disappeared, replaced by black. It had been turned off because of the power-saving feature incorporated within Alice's computer.
The black of her pupils focused on the screen as she snapped out of her stupor, alerted to the change in the screen's colour. She tended to go off on mental tangents such as these, during which her body would simply freeze in place.
Alice moved her mouse. The screen flickered to life.
Details, details. So many details.
She tilted her head back, brushing aside the unwashed tangle of black hair that flowed from her scalp to the outcrop of her white pajamas like ink that was spilled on a plane of parchment. Alice yawned loudly and lazily in her bedroom, and the fluorescent lighting scintillated off the alabaster skin of her face as she slouched on her chair.
It was cold here in the dormitories. Rain poured in great, voluminous heaps from the heavens. She wondered where Augustus was at this hour. Probably in his room, studying one of his library's myriad books on military tactics.
She ruminated on the answer he had given him on the airship, as well as the conversation they had. He had never struck her as someone who was after fame, power, or money.
Just someone who was confused about which variables mattered and which did not.
She cracked her knuckles and continued writing the report.
In conclusion, it is with extreme likelihood that this organism has human features. However, I believe that the organism would be around 1.5 to 2 times larger than a human in terms of bodily dimensions out of simple necessity, making it a clear target amongst the civilian population.
I would advise against engaging the organism with infantry, as it is to a hitherto immeasurable degree greater than any human in terms of physical strength, speed, and stamina.
Engaging it from a high altitude would be the best option in my opinion, but I will share my views with Specialist Augustus White, who will be the one to come up with the tactical proposal.
End
Alice Lockwood yawned as she completed the document.
She would have loved to observe the creature, or perhaps even hold a conversation with it. But since General Ironwood was already considering extermination as the first option, she now hoped that whatever remained of it would be enough for a dissection.
It was typical of humans to destroy the unknown and mourn the loss of potential knowledge shortly after.
She sighed as the thought came to her as she clicked the 'send' button.
Another great yawn escaped from her mouth.
She gazed at the digital clock.
2212 hours, it read.
No wonder I'm yawning so much, she thought, reaching for a nondescript tube of pills that sat on the far end of her desk. She unscrewed the cap, and popped a single, white tablet into her mouth, downing it with water shortly afterwards.
She slides into her bed, amidst a pile of unwashed rags, and curls into a ball. The lights dim and fade as she pressed a stained button at the head of the bed. Her myriad thoughts that clamored for her attention faded into whispers and then hushed silence, extinguished by the power of the pharmaceutical.
Then, there was nothing but darkness as Alice Lockwood fell asleep.
Hello.
This is the author speaking.
If you have understood and enjoyed this dense, jargon-laden first chapter, then it is likely that you will enjoy the rest of this fanfic.
I've wanted to write this fanfic for a long time now. As we all (probably) know, Konrad Curze is an allusion to the concept of Double Predestination, the idea that not only does God choose some to be saved, he also creates some people who will be damned.
In the grand scheme of things, would he turn traitor if he had landed not on Nostramo, but on a different, more...conducive environment?
It is ironic that, as I have already thought of the answer, his belief that Fate is set in stone is affirmed.
World-building is a key goal I have in mind for this fanfic. As of Volume 7, I believe that plenty of the supporting characters are one-dimensional and lack any unique personality traits. These include a few of the main cast, characters who I will refrain from naming due to fear of attracting the ire of the more...outspoken members of the fandom.
Therefore, I have introduced and will introduce several new characters to the cast. Note that Team RWBY and JNPR will continue to play an active role in the series, along with, of course, he-who-we-know-as-Konrad-Curze-but-is-not-yet-the-Night-Haunter.
Atlas is depicted to be far more advanced than 21st Century Earth in the fields of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
This is why I find it extremely peculiar that, as of Volume 7, there has been no mention of a university or any analogous institution of advanced learning for that matter.
Therefore, I have introduced the Atlas Institute of Technology (AIT), and I will also introduce several characters with a technical background, starting with Alice Lockwood, the young Chief Researcher of Grimm Physiology.
I will also offer some explanations as to why, from a purely technological standpoint, Atlas makes the rest of the kingdoms look like Neolithic barbarians.
I believe that is all for now.
Thank you for reading, and see you in the next chapter.