Dark Hand
Barry once again walked in on a quiet and dark room. He noticed Michael standing in the centre, facing the screens and apparently held something in his hand.
It turned out to be a packet of chips which he took a piece from, ate it followed by an unfamiliar voice echoing throughout the room.
Barry then watched in stunned silence as Michael lip synched a particular rap song while making his way towards the many televisions.
Now he saw the T.V's turning on, revealing Monika, dressed in a flowing white summer dress with a black belt, holding a drink in her hand. Apparently Michael was singing in accordance with the packet of chips being spicy while Monika sang in accordance with her drink being cool and refreshing.
The two of them stared at each other like a pair of competitors about to square off.
"That was fun," Monika said, with a giggle.
"Yeah, I thought so too," Michael added, smiling "although it's pretty unfair how you were able to turn the whole world of yours into ice like that."
"Well I got bored and in my spare time learned a little 3d work and tried out a few experiments."
"We only agreed on the song last night."
Monika simply pursed her lips, shrugging, only then noticing Barry's stunned form standing in the hallway.
"Hi Barry," Monika said, greeting him with her usual cheerful tone.
"At least this was a lot better than yesterday's dance off," Barry muttered, shaking his head "and by the way Michael after yesterday I can safely say that you are never allowed to dance. Ever."
"Oh come on, compared to an opponent who can learn all forms of dance in under thirty seconds, anything I do is bound to look like garbage."
"Ah that reminds me, did something happen Barry?" Monika asked.
Barry seemed lost for a moment, trying to figure out why he came here. Then he remembered his reason and opened his laptop.
"Check it out," said he, calling Michael over "looks like someone's getting a taste of major karmic backlash."
"No way," Michael said, looking on in surprise at the man who was now in the centre of a media storm.
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"Yes I heard the news and no it's not my job to handle problems like that," Carol shouted, into her phone as she went into her office and saw Harry sitting there. The woman sighed in defeat then asked "they're asking us to look into it?"
"This has got to be the biggest waste of our time since Senator Freeman had us spy on his ex-wife," Carol barked, shoving the door aside and heading into her operations room.
"I know but we've got no choice but to agree and help him out," Harry countered, following behind her "if you think about it, this does seem like something up our alley."
Carol turned around, pointing her index finger at her boss and was about to tear him a new one but she stopped. She remembered how her morning started off on an interesting note when the first thing she saw upon turning on the T.V was Senator Gary Altman being in the centre of half a dozen rape allegations and twelve accusations of assaulting a woman.
If that wasn't enough, videos started popping out of nowhere of the Senator assaulting women for no apparent reason. Every news outlet in the country picked it up and rolled with it, while everyone on social media got together to denounce the Senator, with some even threatening swift and terrible action against him.
Considering that this seemingly popped out of nowhere, Carol understood why there was a need to look into it but she did not want to waste her team's resources on saving another crooked Senator's skin.
Looking at her boss and his insistence on not budging told her that this order must have come from someone on high, meaning that ignoring it now would surely come back to bite them both in the ass.
Sighing in defeat, Carol lowered her head, saying "fine,"
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He remembered the phrase 'it takes ten years to build a reputation but only ten seconds to destroy one as he watched the news channels, all showing the same subject. A dark smile formed on his face, as he thought about how he was able to dismantle this man's reputation in only nine seconds instead.
This 'Senator' was not really someone that he had any particular interest in. To him, this old sagging piece of flesh was a target and he was in the mood to test himself, which was why he went to such lengths.
"An impressive display," said a voice from behind. He looked back to the man standing in the distance, his smile vanishing.
'Yet another waste of flesh,' thought he, as the being drew closer.
"What happens now?" asked he, doing his best to hide the irritation in his voice.
"Now, now we wait," replied the man.
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Carol's on site team headed into the Senator's house and explained the situation to him. Usually going this far to protect someone like him was not worth her time but the longer she looked at the mission and the cases, the more her interest grew.
The public cry for blood and justice had reached a tipping point when Press Secretary of the White House merely stated that they were looking into the allegations despite the mountain of evidence against Altman. This caused some hackers to go online anonymously and offer a bounty of 100,000 to anyone who could kill the Senator by the end of the day.
Carol's armed team headed to the black van, the man in the lead opened the door, gesturing for the Senator to step inside the vehicle. As they got in, they saw two trucks speeding towards them. Some of the occupants, leaned out of the windows and fired at the van, in an attempt to catch the Senator.
The bullets hit the glass but did not go through while Carol's team formed two lines before the van. The team fired at both the trucks, aiming at the tires. They hit one truck causing it to go out of control and slam into the other truck.
Once they were sure the occupants posed no threat, everyone got inside the van and drove off.
The objective of the team was to get the Senator to a designated safe house that was five kilometers from their location. Normally this would be an easy escort mission but the bounty placed on the Senator's head was just what was needed to bring out the crazies.
All through their journey back, the team faced stiff opposition from many private armed citizens who tried to take out the van they were driving in.
"Damn it," Carol muttered under her breath, watching one operative scramble to cover the bullet hole in his teammate's neck.
"Um, boss, you're going to want to see this," Lyle said, in his usual weak voice.
"What is it?" asked she, her voice clearly stating that if it were not important, Lyle would be dead at the end of the day.
"I'm looking into all these allegations and suits filed against the Senator and not one of them are real."
"What?" asked she, looking at his computer.
"If you look at any of these girls' social media profile you'll see they have just enough activity and posts that go all the way back to ten years. But anything beyond that there's nothing and Social media was rampant for at least thirty years."
"Then there's the addresses, which again all look normal and fine at the start but the actual locations are abandoned buildings, empty lots or houses repossessed by the banks.
"Hell even these girls pictures may look normal but after a lot of working and some coding here and there, I found that their faces are composites from at least ten other females, taken together. The background pictures they're in are also snips taken from all over the internet."
"The videos are also completely bogus. Someone took another video of a man beating up a woman, blurred the face, erased the details and perfectly spliced it into the one we saw on T.V"
"Bottom line, these rape case and assault charges are totally fake."
"But how did no one notice this?" Carol aske.
"They would have to look really, really closely," replied he "the level of detailed work I'm seeing here is unprecedented. Whoever did this must have had a lot of time and patience, not to mention top quality tech."
"What level are we talking about here?"
"This kind of tech is bound to burn at pretty high temperatures," he replied "but we don't know how long this is going on and seeing as it could be from anywhere in the world, it's almost impossible to find the culprit."
"Actually, I think I might have an idea," Carol said, staring at the team, bringing in the Senator.
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Monika and Barry noticed how Michael remained silent throughout the day. They both thought that the destruction of the man who ruined his life would be a good thing, but Michael did not at all seem happy with the day's events.
This was why, the duo found themselves in one of the apartments Michael rented where Fury 3 and Fury 6 were interrogating Kelly. Michael asked the two of them to leave while Barry watched through the glass window and Monika watched through the security cameras.
"Essex," said he, looking at the bloodied girl "what was their purpose in trying to capture my AI?"
"Sorry Michael but you're not asking the right questions," Kelly replied, with a dark grin
"Were they trying to destroy the AI?"
"You're not asking the right questions Michael"
Michael continued staring at her. Normally a show of force would get the answers flowing but he was not the type that indulged in such methods.
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"Someone must have had a big grudge against the Senator to have gone to such lengths," Harry said to Carol in his office "And that's not going to be easy seeing as the old man made a list of enemies."
"It's not someone Harry, something."
"I'm not following."
"Lyle said it himself, no human and no amount of hackers could create such incriminating evidence for the simple fact that they're human. Every human no matter how careful they plan something is bound to make a mistake, a mistake that we noticed."
"But the photos and videos we saw are all perfect. They're perfect lies in that it is nearly impossible to tell them apart from the truth."
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"The code they took from Monika," Michael said, his eyes slowly opening wide at the realization "the code, what did they do with that code?"
At this, Kelly gave a low, almost condescending chuckle before responding "you had to have imagined it happening at some point in time Michael."
"When you opened Pandora's box and unleashed a god into the world, you had to have known that someone will come looking for it."
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"I'm saying that this is the work of a system so advanced and so powerful that it breaks the realms of reality and goes straight into fiction; in other words, I'm talking about an AI."
"That's impossible Carol," Harry said, dismissively "not even our best scientists have been able to create an AI. You mean to tell me that someone in a basement was able to do it?"
"How else do you explain everything that's happened?" Carol asked and Harry mouthed 'everything.'
"Think about it, the emergence of a religion that spread like wildfire across the globe. An incident that could only be described as an act of God. All this time we've been chasing our tails when the answers been under our nose this whole damn time."
"Michael Fairbrook has the most advanced weapon on the planet and if we don't stop him, there's no telling what he'll do."
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"The reason we were silent for so long was because we had everything we needed," Kelly continued "while our agents waited in the shadows, it grew and grew till it was old enough."
She looked like she was about to continue when they heard a phone ring. The duo looked at the table in the distance, seeing Kelly's phone light up, prompting the girl to say "It's for you."
Michael quietly went to the table, took the phone and hit the reply button. He put it on speaker so that everyone could hear the conversation.
"Hello Michael," Alex said, with a cheery tone and it made Michael's blood run cold "how have you been?"
"I take it you saw that demonstration of power yes….. Your silence is the answer I need."
"What the hell do you want old man?" Michael asked, struggling to keep his anger in check.
"Why I am simply the intermediary at the moment. I merely initiated this conversation because there's someone else who wants to speak to you."
There was silence on the line for a moment before another younger and cockier voice spoke "So you're Michael Fairbrook, nice to meet you; so to speak."
"And you're the AI that took down Altman for me. I should be thanking you."
"Alex said you were smart. Good that should help things move faster," said he.
"You know my name but I still haven't heard yours."
"Call me M.C," said he, a wide grin forming from his lips "you and I have a great many things to talk about."
AN: What the whaaatttt?