-The Descent-
All of it was coming together, and yet that only frightened K further. That morning, all of it had only been a hope, a distant waking dream taunting her from a horizon she was forbidden from seeing. But now, K was daring to think she could really do it. That she could actually pull the whole thing off.
And that reality was setting in further with every second.
What was she thinking? She didn't know how to look after herself! How was she going to find food? Clothes? Shelter? She didn't even have any idea where the Soup actually was; it could be anywhere! A mountain, or a desert, or the Arctic!
No, that last one was ridiculous. The northern ozone had a sharper UV rating and she'd have noticed it when she saw the beams of light.
When she saw the sun.
The feeling that K would never forget, never allow to escape her memory. A feeling she was determined to grasp again. The golden beams that had warmed her skin, burning away the falsehoods to reveal the truth beneath. She had to have it again, she needed it so badly that it made the air in her bunker feel heavy and suffocating. And she needed to show Gem and Gemma too, have them experience the golden warmth for themselves. Everything else, K could figure out on the outside.
The outside, where she could run around in the sun each day, where she could bask in its glory and her freedom. Where she could go wherever she wished, and do whatever she wanted. Where she would no longer have her entire existence defined by the exploitation of her brilliance.
A life of her own choosing.
No matter K's fear, getting out was now the most important goal in the entire world. And it was nearly complete.
Her fingertips danced across the keys, unfurling a fresh line of code that would cement her daring plan. The firewall needed to be airtight and ironclad. Not a single flaw within its surface for Venjix to exploit. Anything else, and her creation would bleed through the blemishes and escape into the world outside.
K couldn't help but note the irony. Her plan for freedom involved trapping another in exchange for her place as a prisoner. But it had to be done, Venjix was far too dangerous to ever risk seeing the light of day. If K felt there was any other method or another way of blinding security for the time she needed, she'd have thought of it. If anyone would have, it would have been her.
She had no other choice.
And with a final keystroke, K's prison was ready. All that was left was to summon Gem and Gemma, upload the firewall to the system mainframe, and then unleash the beast. No more excuses, no more delays. It was time.
With a deep breath of courage, she booted the Soup's operation program and ticketed a new request.
"Submit Request to subjects Gem and Gemma for additional operator series testing," she announced. "Location A, Sub-Sector Delta, Priority Code Black."
The wait was agonizing, the beats of her heart the only measurement of time to confirm it wasn't an eternity. There were nineteen.
"Request acknowledged," came the reply, cold and despondent. "Standby for acceptance."
Again, another wait, slow and painful, like carving marble with a nail trimmer. This was longer still, time slowing to make even the gap between heartbeats seem endless. But again the voice box crackled. "Request Accepted. Subjects to report to the location immediately."
Which meant now K was on a clock.
Closing the window, K moved over to the file system and began inputting the overrides. She'd need to be quick, all but the final layer unfolded when her companions arrived. When the firewall was up, they'd be ready to run. With the final code inputted, at last, K moved to retrieve the black box beneath the desk, to retrieve the confining case and be ready for the final phase.
And then her heart stopped dead.
No! It couldn't be! Maybe she'd put it somewhere else, a nervous placement as her mind was preoccupied. But as she retraced her path, re-treading the layers of security protocols, K staggered as she confirmed the truth.
She didn't make mistakes. Not like this, not with this program.
Project Venjix was gone.
-Forty-Five Minutes to Judgement Day-
The walk down the hall was as quiet as it was tense, their pace matching the Director's as his heels clanked the halls under the watchful eyes of all three guns. There was a heaviness to his step, a weight that echoed off the steel floors that felt more than some purposeful attempt to attract his guards. It was as if his body was carrying more than he let on.
The grip on his blaster tightening, Benson was suddenly very grateful that Jen and Carter were closer to him, that they'd willingly jump into the fray should a conflict erupt. Better yet, their blasters would likely shoot the Director down should he try anything first.
He just prayed to the Morphing Masters that it would be enough.
But what unnerved Benson the most was the man's demeanor, his cool indifference toward the weapons pointed at his back. Here they were, forcefully invading his operations, threatening him with violence to take them to the central vault, and he didn't seem to care at all. From the cautious looks that Jen and Carter kept shooting each other, it was a concern they clearly shared.
"Don't think of trying anything smart," Benson warned as the man led them down another corridor.
"I wouldn't dream of it, Doctor Benson," the man smiled. "There are few who could claim to outsmart you without revealing themselves as fools."
Benson noted that the Director hadn't stated whether considered himself one of those few, but another question grabbed him just as quickly.
"I never told you who I am," he realized, his grip almost instinctively tightening on the pistol.
"Ah, but I do know you, nonetheless" the Director admitted. "First in your class for Software Engineering at Princeton, you completed your Doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before being swept up by the military for some of their more… classified projects."
The man's eyes were dead ahead, and yet it was as if they were staring straight at him, baring into his soul. Benson had only been on the base for a few hours, and most of the time they were skulking around in the dark. They couldn't have possibly figured out who he was that quickly unless…
"You were part of Project Digitizer," Benson realized. "You were in the section the Soup had running beside us; the Black Room."
But the Director simply chuckled. "Dear Doctor Benson; you have so many degrees, and yet you still understand so little."
"Don't listen to him, Benson," Jen sneered. "He's trying to get into your head."
"That's where you're wrong, Agent Scotts," the Director. "I don't need to enter into his head, I'm already there. I always have been. You see, I'm the very reason that he's here at all."
With a casting look, Benson watched Jen's eyes narrow with fresh fury at the mention of her name. He knew well she could be right; with the level of government security the Soup was hiding behind, the Director could easily have near-instant access to the most specific, buried pieces of information. The utterance of her name was no doubt another attempt to shake them, a revelation of the power he held with information at his fingertips.
And yet, there was a niggling Benson couldn't shake, a suspicion of the truth hiding behind the Director's smug smirking. Because he'd already seen it when he went through the computer.
"So, you read the files on Digitizer," Benson supposed. "Well done, you've got high clearance."
"And it doesn't make you curious?" the Director asked. "To wonder why I had the interest in the first place?"
"We shared a base," Benson said coldly. "You had the chance to obtain some intel. And if people like me were burrowing into your systems out of sheer curiosity, then it's an easy bet that you were doing the same."
"Ah," the man mused. "But that, Doctor Benson, is where your assumptions lead you astray. For you see, there was no burrowing required. We walked right in; we were invited with open arms."
They reached a blank stretch of the wall, identical to all the others save for a panel at chest height. As the Director approached, the panel slid away, revealing a keypad and screen, along with a pair of eyepieces just above.
"Director Override," he announced, and Benson watched as codes unfurled across the screen in response. "Sub-Level Nine. Priority Alpha."
Then he leaned into the eyepiece, a bright flash scanning the irises before the wall slid away to reveal a dark elevator on the otherwise.
"Access Granted," announced a dispassionate female voice. "Welcome, Director."
"Shall we?" he asked in a tone that was far too inviting.
Jen simply motioned with her blaster. "You first,"
"As you wish."
The Director stepped in first, followed one at a time by Jen, then Benson, and finally Carter. As the Red Rescue Ranger stepped inside, the wall slid shut behind him, and the elevator shook as their gravity shifted.
"That doesn't make any sense," Benson insisted. "Why would they just allow you to access our files when we were separate programs? We shared a base, but that was it."
"Are you so sure?' the Director asked with a gleeful snicker between his words. "Did you think it strange that two highly classified research programs were being conducted in the same location? It seems like an awful security risk to me. Surely the United States Armed Forces would only have consented to such a logistic if the benefits vastly outweighed the problems."
He was right. There was no way that military intelligence wouldn't have tried to compartmentalize their projects. Benson's hacking into the Black Room alone proved why, and Gideon's attack on Digitizer did so only further. A risk from one would become a risk to the other. The fact that the two projects were together could only mean…
"They wanted them together," he realized. "Digitizer and Alphabet Soup were always linked…"
"Benson," Jen warned. "Be careful."
"You can worry all you want, Agent Scotts," the Director smiled. "I am not telling him anything he couldn't discover for himself. If his connections were enough to discover us here, then anything else I'm certain he could determine with enough digging."
"You keep saying my name," Jen snarled. "But I was never part of your super-secret chess club."
"I know quite a lot about all of you," the Director replied. "Take Captain Greyson here; highly decorated member of the Mariner Bay Fire Service, founding member of Lightspeed Rescue, currently engaged to Doctor Dana Mitchel of the same operation. You see, I actually know a lot about all of you. Who you are, where you're from. And when."
There was an added coldness to final his sentence, and Benson watched Jen twitch as if lanced by an icy barb. To know about him was one thing, to know about the operative from the future was something else entirely. Benson's grip on his pistol tightened, his shrinking breaths growing cold as a frightening realization occurred to him. The Director may have been at the mercy of their blasters, but he was still in complete control.
And he wanted them to know it.
"You see," the Director continued. " Dr. Benson here is incapable of letting go of the illusion of his organization's autonomy. So, allow me to dispel it for the rest of you. We at Alphabet Soup were not simply linked to Project Digitizer; we were Project Digitizer. Everything you did, your very reason for being, all of it was because of us. We were your thoughts, your minds; your unconscious being."
Benson'd had it backward the entire time, always assuming the Digitizer was a secret military project. Maybe that was still the case, only with a different employer.
"Well, if it was all you," Benson sneered, "then you should have done a better job at background checks. Maybe then Gideon wouldn't have burned everything to the ground."
"I don't know why you'd think that, Doctor," the Director replied. "You managed to salvage all of the relevant data and technology, what makes you think that we hadn't either? In fact, I'm surprised you assume that we had not foreseen such an outcome and prepared accordingly."
Every snide statement grated at Benson like nails on a chalkboard, an insufferably knowing curl of superiority behind every syllable. Through gritted teeth, Benson kept up his march, every new statement swirling around his mind, sick of being on the backfoot of information. Time to throw out the old assumptions and start taking a few stabs.
"You didn't just know what he was going to do," he said curtly. "I'll be you wanted him to."
"Ahh, and at last he catches up," the Director snickered. "Finally realizing his place as a tiny cog in a grand machine. Irrelevant save for his turns."
But why bother? Why go to all that effort just to have Gideon destroy it all? Why would that be the plan from the start? But the answer hit him barely a second after the question crossed his mind.
"You wanted to destroy the evidence," Benson realized. "You bastards wanted to cover your tracks, so you unleashed a psychopath who'd destroy everything in his path."
The Director merely looked back at him, his mouth a sickening smirk while the walls around them continued running upward as the elevator rumbled in descent.
"What I don't get is why you bothered," said Benson. "With everything you've got, why set up a second operation when you could just arrange the research under your own banner?"
"It's perfectly simple, Dr. Benson," the Director replied. "We were on a clock. We knew the technology was possible, we just needed to find the minds capable of constructing it. Having it organized by our partners in the military was a much more efficient way of handling it. From there, it was simply a matter of the cleanup."
"Clean up?" Benson spat. "He tried to take over the world!"
"Hardly a concern of ours, in the long term," the Director said lazily. "We never foresaw Gideon becoming a threat, our designs were far greater again, and would swiftly eclipse his own when we were finished."
Every word stoked Benson's rage, his finger twitching on the trigger with every slithering syllable. As he stood there, listening to the Director's sickening claims, Benson became more and more sure that if they didn't have a job to do, then by now he'd have fired his blaster through the man's chest without losing a single wink of sleep. But they still needed him, and the Director knew it.
All the terror Gideon inflicted, all the destruction, all caused by the people of Alphabet Soup. And for what? A coverup?
But as Benson stewed in his rage, Jen's gaze narrowed as she locked in something further. "Foresee…," she repeated. "What do you mean 'you didn't foresee'?"
"I'm certain you're familiar with the turn of phrase Agent Scotts-"
"That's not what you meant, and we both know it!" Now it was Jen's turn to push the questions, her eyes turning steely as she pressed the barrel of the blaster deeper into the man's back.
"I'm sure you've put it all together yourself, Agent Scotts," the Director replied. "Dr. Benson here knowns of our activities during our joint venture, you have seen for yourself the activities currently engaged by the Soup. Why, the mere fact that I'm throwing your name around so casually should clue you into what grander designs are at play."
Until now, Benson hadn't wanted to think it, a possibility too horrifying to even consider. But the more this man talked, the more he spoke of the reach of Alphabet Soup, the more it loomed above him like an enveloping shadow. Too likely a possibility to deny any longer.
"The future," he realized. "You're talking about the future."
"You don't just know of it," Jen agreed. "You're manipulating it. You're trying to change history!"
"And at last, we come to the crux of your situation," the Director smirked. "Everything is proceeding as we have foreseen it. Even your presence here is an outcome we were prepared for. All in service of our final goal."
"Your final goal is going to destroy the world!" Bensons yelled. "It's going wipe out all of humanity! How can you see the future and not see that?"
But the Director's reply was only silence, continuing to stand with an eerie stillness and his unwavering smile. A reticence that betrayed more than a thousand words ever could, clasping at the breath in his throat as an icy chill ran down Benson's spine.
And then, Carter, who until now held his composure with an air of stony silence, gasped in revelating horror. "He doesn't want to stop that future from happening. He's trying to cause it!"
"And there we fall back on another misunderstanding," the Director purred. "Albeit this very much of our design. I am not the mastermind behind our operations, although I do claim credit behind some of the brilliance in its function, if I may."
"That doesn't make any sense," Jen snarled. "How can you be the Director if you're not the one in charge?"
"A public front," the Director replied. "A face to our operations when it should be required."
"Who is it then?" Benson demanded. "Who' the hell's behind all of this?"
As if the elevator itself had been listening, it jilted to a stop, rumbling as the chains yanked back and heavy bulkheads in front of them groaned open. A long dark gantry greeted them, nothing but the shadows as it stretched across an empty, cavernous void and the Director stepped to follow it.
"This way, please," he said, tone almost inviting as he exited the elevator and his feet began clanking on the walkway.
Cautiously, the fireteam skulked along behind him, all three blasters trained carefully while their wielders watched for sudden movements. Then they came to a turn, a sharp shift further into the darkness.
"You wanted to know who ordained these grand designs?" the Director sneered. "Then come meet him."
He stepped around the corner, smirk vanishing into the shadow as he shifted rapidly and the trio marched in careful pursuit. But they didn't need to go far at all, the Director was waiting for them around the bend, chuckling as he watched their desperation to maintain the tenuous grip on their only lead. As the three skidded to a stop, blasters rising to keep their prisoner, Benson's jaw dropped, gasping as he finally realized just how out of their depth they were.
The machine behind the Director towered above them, screens and wires littering its surface like an inexplicable, mechanical shrine. Tubes wound around it, feeding up into the darkness while their other ends snaked to a singular central point. Attached, was a large golden figure, armored plating battered and scorched. Its neck protruded outwards, two long prongs above its head like a bizarre antenna.
Benson's heart stopped. He knew this body, this shape. He'd seen it, reeling through hundreds of hours of archives in his research of history's Ranger teams. But before the reality of the revelation could be cemented, the being's eyes snapped open, crazed orbs of glowing red as it spoke with a despondent voice that was buzzing and mechanical.
"Greetings-Time-Force," it whirred.
Beside him, Jen staggered back in horror, clasping her hand to her mouth as she gasped in recognition.
"Frax…!"