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CHAPTER 17: REVELATIONS 1 – The A.I.
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After she scurried away from the crowds and into the calmer side streets, Aria escaped through alleyways and backstreets while zigzagging in her way towards the closest safe-house that she had set in the past which was hidden near the mid part of the low town area around Clover.
She would have liked to get farther away and reach the edge of the territory at least, but she knew that such wasn't wise. At the moment her condition wasn't the best. She was still somewhat hurt, tired, and a bunch of people had seen her; that meant that there would be someone on her trail soon if not some of the role holders themselves. For now the most convenient and rational action was to simply disappear as soon as possible and lay low until she had a plan or decided on a course of action.
So far, the experienced mercenary had managed to scurry away without being noticed, and had reached the district zone whose old town area wasn't very frequented because it wasn't near the commercial or modern residential zones, and whose lone, old brick buildings of 4 or 5 floors gave the place an air of coziness despite it being pretty empty of real residents. Maybe it wasn't the richest of zones but it definitely wasn't a slum either, and more importantly, it provided a lots of escape routes and a nice place for her to hide.
Behind an innocuously looking old bookstore she quietly entered the back alley and moved a loose brick to reveal the entrance of a passage that led to the stairs for her hidden sanctum in this zone.
She closed the entrance behind her and went inside the modest but nice one bedroom apartment-like complex, where she set up a detection perimeter. Even though the place was well hidden, sound proved and completely reinforced, there was always the slim chance of things going wrong, she knew that very well. Her well-developed paranoia reminded her that if something could go wrong it would, and she wasn't willing to be lenient with that chance no matter how slim it was; after all, her paranoia induced preparedness was the reason she was still alive today.
After all was set, Aria finally took off her backpack and leaned her back against a wall before sliding down towards the floor with a heavy and tired breath. She closed her eyes for a moment and then cracked her neck and stiff shoulders. She was tired and to her own surprise, still appalled by the ordeal caused by the mortician; but at this point it didn't matter. Nothing did. All was past water and she could only get ahead.
Cracking noises came from her knuckles as she recounted the botched experiment. Whether she had gone all the way to the end of that experiment and performed intercourse with Julius or used the trick to direct intent, aka 'fake love' and thus mana directly to Julius's clock, she had expected that he would not remember anything. What she didn't account for was Alice coming in at exactly that moment.
Her lips twisted while her brows furrowed. In a way, Alice's interruption had perhaps been for the better, because that had introduced the most extreme factor in the experiment. What was stronger? Alice's presence in their minds or her own physical presence? The results were clear. A lost memory meant nothing. Any and all memories of the mercenary were completely lost. Forever wiped from their minds and clocks.
She gritted her teeth and her firsts shook lightly while her chest moved up and down as her breathing rate intensified.
As long as Alice was around there would not be a single chance for Aria. Her hands turned into fists that hit the wall at her side.
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"A chance for what!?" - Her growl sounded more pained than angry and at the obvious options. - ("A chance to continue to be used as a mere henchmen? To be treated as a desirable but ultimately unimportant second rate objective for their game? A trophy they can brag about? A little diversion? An occasional fuck? A consolation prize after they couldn't catch Alice? Or perhaps something even worse?").
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The role holders didn't even see her value at performing all those white neck jobs. They never counted her value as a mercenary, or at her knowledge or even accounted all the possibilities and chances or changes she could have brought to this world. They never saw past the 'second foreigner'.
It wasn't that she felt used. She felt undermined. Wasted.
The mercenary tried forcing herself to breathe at an slower pace but failed to do so completely; instead she snorted, got up and stripped down of her clothes and armored suit, to put on just her small shorts and tank top. Rarely ever had she gotten so angry and worked up. Such was unnatural in her.
Barefooted she walked to the small table in the room and opened the box of useful items that she had set up in case she needed to remain hidden for a few days in this or any of her safe-dens. From it, she took out a cigarette package and a small ashtray.
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"Points up for my paranoia and crazy preparedness."
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Once again she praised her own forward thoughtfulness as much as she thanked Andrick Jeloudov, the Russian mercenary, old partner and former lover, for teaching her to identify advantageous places and how to set up safe-den's; which she had done in this world as soon as she got a glimpse of stability just in case they were needed. So far that had proven to be a good decision. The mercenary girl smiled without humor while lighting the fag and taking the first deep pull of the cigarette, before exhaling the thick gray smoke through her nostrils.
Walking towards the small and simple bunk bed, she sat on the floor with her back against the furniture's leg. Giving the cigarette another couple pulls she finally calmed down. She would have preferred big Habano cigars but she would do with whatever nicotine she had at the moment. It was time to think out and set priorities.
First of all. The problem wasn't Alice. The first foreigner was merely a factor, a set condition in the general situation. Another element of the board. But truth be told, Aria wasn't sure what the core of the problem was; unless she considered that she had explored and finished the game, and thus her presence here had become a waste of her time and life.
What was left for her here? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
A new influx of pollution in her lungs let her to consider how she had worked and helped on all territories, but that was over and done. Even if she had made a bunch of advancements and had contributed so much everywhere, this place was not her home. Not even her world. Much less her family.
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"Family, huh?"
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In her world family didn't mean people. It referred to her family of countries. The Latin family. The Latin-American union of nations.
Here in Wonderland that had changed and 'The lullaby', the faction that had adopted her as boss, came to her mind. However, she had lost them too. If holders, the main players of the game, didn't remember her then there was no chance that the faceless faction did.
At least she had the knowledge that back when she wasn't aware what going back to her world meant for a foreigner, she had set their organization so they could thrive without her.
Next thing in the list were friends.
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"Friends? Ha."
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She snorted the smoke and coughed. In this world she had stumbled upon her best fucking friend ever. But the red head wasn't even in this country and he would have surely forgotten about her too. So it was as if their friendship had never occurred, and thus friendship was a hollow and meaningless concept.
With another angry pull to the cigarette she gulped down the rage again and shook her head, trying to find a single reason to stay in either Hearts or Clover but she couldn't think of anything. However she couldn't go back to her world either or she would be dead amidst the center of a nuclear detonation, in matter of seconds at best and minutes at worst.
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"Not that I mind dying."
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Shefinished the cigarette before dropping the remain and the ash tray and lighting a new one. All these incidents were now nothing but circumstances that she could ponder later on. There were more urgent things to think about.
Letting the cigarette hanging from her hand and burning out,she reminded herself that her main priority was exactly 'herself'. In her current status she was still hurt and awfully tired… so tired… of everything. But now that she was calm and collected she wondered why she had reacted so harshly in the towers.
Could it be that her little trick of directing mana on a holder's clock had some backlash on her and she hadn't noticed until now? That was a possibility. How else could she explain the light tugging sensation in her chest when Julius had thrown her harshly to the floor? Her eyes closed for a moment. That was one trick less for her to use unless it was truly necessary.
There was also the country of Spades. She still wasn't all sure about everything that had occurred there either; her memories were hazy, but so was her knowledge of it. Just like when she had destroyed the memories of before she was declared KIA during a diplomatic mission in her world and going into hiding before she became a mercenary, her memories about Spades were barely even there.
She needed to recount what happened in that place, but she was too tired or too lazy at the moment to even get up and take a look at the records stored in the devises she carried in her suit that at the moment was a pile of plaques at the other side of the room. She huffed and decided to set the AI of her suit under voice commands to examine her log, and present an organized chronicle of activities for her to analyze.
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"Auch!"
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The cigarette had burned out all the way to her skin and she dropped it onto the floor right over her own shadow.
Her thoughts were cut short when, to her surprise, her shadow moved on its own, rising from the floor in a small blob-like mass of darkness that engulfed the cigarette to crush it against the floor and completely extinguish it's fire and smoke.
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"What the heck!?"
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Aria's mouth was agape as she activated her eye's optic lenses spectrum capacities. Infrared showed nothing, untra-violet showed little, so she changed between all the modes til electric fields to see the various spectrum's until the combination of analyzed layers showed that the glow of the shadow's spectrum was extending directly from herself and all the way across the shadows of the room to her suit. Not only that, but the metallic connective lines embed in her flesh showed to be vibrating with energy! This was new and strange, and she couldn't not recall anything of it.
The complete silence of the room was so dire that she heard herself gulp down.
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"How…"(How it happened? It… It must had happened in Spades or … in the nightmare realm?)
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After some uncertain seconds she tried using a small electric shock to stimulate and maybe recreate the phenomenon. To her renewed amazement, her shadow seemed to solidify a bit, enough for her to actually poke it. It was tangible. She tried it again with a slightly higher current but in a more prolonged wave and it adopted a more liquid texture.
Her voice trembled when she spoke in the direction of her suit.- "Activating natural speech recognition and response. Apply. Log access."
Her shadow moved on its own again and scurried towards the discarded suit, despite the female being stiff as a board. Like a blanket, the shadows covered the armor and melted it into nothingness before the now thicker shadow went back to her and raised from the floor reforming its shape to resemble a small ocelot sized feline made out of darkness and the materials of her armored suit as much as the technological devices her suit had carried. Around its neck in a sort of collar way were a couple dog-tags that lightly tingled when it sat on its hind legs while the tail swagged to the side. The creature turned its small head up towards her, and it's screen eyes lit with a digital olive green shade that matched Aria's own.
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"EEK!"- She shrieked and pressed her back against the leg of the bed while shakily pointing her index finger directly to the critter.
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The thing tilted it's head and a deep male voice with a slight Russian accent came from it.- "Sound pattern recognized. Natural Speech response and recognition activated. A.I. code name to be used 'Aegis'."- The feline creaure stood up and approached enough to lick the tip of her shaky finger -"User's code name currently defined as 'Aria Hadron Scherzi', recognized. Command 'Access to Log' recognized."- It sat again and looked intently at her. -"Please define your questions."
Aria's eyes were wide while she stuttered incomprehensibly for a little while the creature remained still save for the moving tip of its tail. Finally she managed to gulp down and gather her words. –"What are you?"
It's mechanical feline head tilted again.- "I'm the artificial intelligence stored into the memory chips of the prototype connective suit 'Aegis' and the attached devises in range, whose software and actuators can spread to all nearby devises to aid my user in secondary operations, processing and calculations. My objective is to assist and protect my assigned user in the fulfillment of the user's objectives."
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"Yo…you're my suit's AI!?"- O_o Her eyes lit for a second with a digital white tone when she sent a wireless ping signal to her suit's system.
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The critter's eyes lit in an equal equivalent way in response to the ping and it nodded. -"Affirmative."
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Meanwhile, a certain knight had finally found his way to the clock tower, and after not finding the mortician in his office or any trace of the mercenary, he climbed the stairs to the top of the tower.
At the top balcony and reeking somber gloom, he found Julius alone in a somewhat slumped posture with his hands clutching the rail at the edge of the balcony and his head looking down to the floor far, far below.
"Hey, Julius! I'm back" - Ace had the feeling that he was not about to like whatever came next. - "Where's Ari?"
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Surprise, surprise (not). Her paranoia fueled actions did come in handy. And Aint the emotional part starting? Julius can't possible be well. I don't think Ace will like at all watver Julius will say, and Aria isn't exactly on mentally stable state either.
I know I mentioned some stuff that was related to the Aria's original story 'Wonderful Wonderful Science' , so feel free to ask me or mentin if something needs to be clarified more.
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