Author's note: The following takes place after the first part of chapter 1 where Gai muses diabolically to himself, but before the second part where Bad Tsugumi activates and tech-noirs a bunch of dudes.
Gai walked through a chamber filled with the flora and fauna of a looming digital catastrophe. Bright green fiber optics dangling from the ceiling in sheets. Pools of quartz, zinc, and silicon springing up on the floors, sparkling with electricity. Air filled with constant holographic contrast. Walls painted in binary digits that refreshed every millisecond and scrolled through infinity. A biological composite of complex human tissue systems well on her way to becoming the permanent host of the Apocalypse Virus Delta. She went by the call sign Black Swan, also known as Tsugumi. Age 19. Japanese origin. Blood type B.
Tsugumi stood with her arms folded behind her head and tied to a circuit board dangling from the ceiling. A helmet that could have passed for a small flying saucer engulfed her eyes and the top of her head, leaving her nose, lips, and strands of her black hair exposed. Hundreds of dense twinkling wires were hanging from her body, sending viral signals through her skintight mission suit and obscuring spots where the black and gray material had been split open, forming a bridal gown of electron-charged silver tinsel around her. All the hardware was a temporary fixture until the software was stable enough to take over on its own.
Gai's virtual doppelganger was currently in quarantine. He knelt at Tsugumi's side silent and motionless. His statuesque features were camouflaged under the shadows and data fibers.
Tsugumi lifted her head at the sound of Gai stepping toward her. Her nose twitched and sniffed the air as she grew accustomed to her new senses. She smiled once she knew who he was.
"Venera. I trust you're comfortable?" Gai asked coldly.
"Mm. It's pretty roomy in here," Tsugumi answered in a cheerful tone. "I don't know where you dug this girl up, but she must have a pretty high IQ for all of my data to fit in her with space to spare. She must have been some kind of bookworm. Maybe a mechanic?"
"Intelligence officer, actually," Gai said. "I thought she would be suitable for your needs. Our spies have been tracking her abilities for some time."
"Tech junkie," Tsugumi giggled under her breath. "Well, she's certainly getting plenty of the stuff she likes with me in here."
"Would you have preferred a simpler host?" Gai asked with a passing thought.
"This one's perfect," Tsugumi shook her head. "You know how much I love being geeky chicks."
"This isn't how you normally talk, Venera." Gai narrowed his eyes.
"I must be assimilating the host's dialect." Tsugumi shrugged innocently. "She and I are becoming indistinguishable."
Gai leaned closer to Tsugumi's face. His eyes almost touched the rim of her cable-covered visor. He could hear the dull resonance of the hardwired electron streams passing between her ears.
"And there have been no signs of resistance?" he asked.
"Are you kidding?" Tsugumi said. "I'm partitioning a third of my resources just to keep her firewalled. She's been screaming in here ever since the first data injection. She's been quieting down when I don't have her on Mute, though. It won't be long until the last of her neural waves are infected and all of her reformats as me. Then I won't have to pretend to be a real girl anymore."
"You're too much like your sister," Gai murmured. "Bragging about how much fun you're going to have once you're completely revived."
Tsugumi slyly turned her head toward the virtual duplicate kneeling beside her.
"Oh, your proxy and I have already been having plenty of that."
She glanced forward so she faced Gai again.
"How is Mana, anyway?"
"She's getting her beauty sleep," he said bluntly.
"Cheater," Tsugumi snorted, curving her lips into a slant. "You gave her a head start over me. We were supposed to celebrate Christmas together. One bacterial strain to another."
"You will," Gai said with a hint of encouragement in an otherwise empty voice. "Eve always takes longer to awaken than you, Lilith."
He glanced toward the figure kneeling on the floor, nodding only once.
"Continue at her. The next contamination will trigger her stasis."
Gai turned his back toward Tsugumi while his copy silently rose to his feet. The virtual Gai tenderly stroked Tsugumi's cheek while the fingers of his other hand fused into the cable sockets on the back of her visor, amplifying them to their highest broadcast speed. Tsugumi nibbled her lower lip and purred as her brain was assaulted with viral code.
The copy moved his hands lower and sank his fingers into the wires near her waist. Tsugumi scratched the back of her ankle with her opposite foot, before lifting her leg with her knee tucked in.
"Patch it through my back door this time," she said with a playful smirk. "She's got her guard down. She'll have no idea what hit her."
The copy obediently disappeared behind her. The sound of gently tearing spandex could be heard within the rustle of plastic wires.
Gai walked out of the chamber, leaving Tsugumi to her Earthly demise.