France was unusual for a European nation in the modern age, this is in part directly thanks to the Arasaka European Group. In the early 1990s the AEG established its headquarters in Paris, and spent much of its initial wealth supplying the french government with military supply, troops and vehicles, weapons and such. Due to this surplus of military aid early on, France was kept rather stable even during the height of the various corporate wars.
Countries collapsed during that time, but outside of a small economic drop France remained rather stable, and welcomed Japanese immigrants and companies with open arms. France of the modern day is exactly as it is because of its relative economic stability and corporate influence. Wealth and beauty are the heights of modern French culture, and are their highest virtues. The citizens of France use the latest in aesthetic bio-modification and delicately decorated chrome cybernetics, all in the pursuit of beauty.
Paris is a city of historical monuments that have been carefully penned off and preserved, surrounded by a forest of skyscrapers and advertisements for corporate luxury brands and celebrities. Things of historical relevance are cordoned off, and carefully watched over by an entire branch of their national military dedicated to preventing damage and killing any meatbag that thinks they can get away with littering on their grounds.
The skyscrapers that fill Paris are the dream for the artist, and a nightmare for the builder. All manner of shapes and designs that try to twist and climb their way higher and higher into the sky. There is very little in the way of mundane criminal activity in Paris proper, due to the experience and well-honed police forces that maintain a constant surveillance in the city.
No, the crime of Paris is also kept carefully penned off. The Catacombs below the city collapsed into criminal activity long ago, and so long as they do nothing to damage the structural integrity of the city itself, they are allowed to do this. The catacombs are technically no longer under the jurisdiction of the city, instead they were exempted from city planning and thus their crime rates were left out as well.
They call it the city of vermin, Cite de la Vermine, or something like that. A vast network of tunnels and underground construction that extends far past the city's aboveground limits. Filled to the brim with the poor, the insane, the criminal, and the ugly. Walls made of centuries-old corpses and pillars of stone foundations that extend far below the city proper, allowed to exist so long as the surface is left unblemished.
France, afterall, had laws against public ugliness. They called it something else, sure, but that's what it effectively was. Ugly or fat or disfigured, all of these were subject to fines if you displayed it openly. You were unwelcomed if you were unaesthetic, and not-so-subtly encouraged to head down into the sewers where other ugly things were kept.
Paris was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a title it enforced rigorously and harshly. France technically has an electoral system, but as the voter turnout has dropped to 0.3 percent in recent years, it remains a technicality.
"I'm like, totes 'cited to see the place, there's all kinds of pretty things there I bet. Whatcha think knighty?"
"Onee-san, stop harassing Oni-sama! Take your hands off him!"
"Oi Oi, be nice Rin, he'd say something if he was mad."
Adam tried his best to ignore the impulse to murder the three gynoids currently around him as they sat on the plane. Hinata to his side, grubby hands holding onto the handle on his shoulderplate, Rin to the other side of her, pulling her away, and Tsumugi on his other side, face resting on one hand and looking out the window.
Hanako was on the seat opposite to him, and her personal guard Oda was standing nearby. She was typing away at something. You bitch, get your fucking bots off of him, he wasn't allowed to murder them but he was getting really tempted regardless.
Sadly, she ignored his unspoken demands, and kept typing away.
Adam growled and leaned back all the way in his seat, letting his head roll back and face pointed at the ceiling of the luxury private plane they were on. He closed his eyes and started up the clip of his fight with the panzerbot again.
It made for good watching.
"Onee-san, look, you're clearly annoying him!"
"...oh…"
"Heya, big bastard, you made my darling imouto sad, what the fuck you going to do about it?"
"Onee! Language!"
Adam wondered if he could pull off the stealth part of that guy's trick himself. He was way heavier, but it might be possible. Then again, it might require power relative to his frame that he simply couldn't replicate. Panzerbot was way lighter than he was, so it might be impossible for him. He started running the numbers with Uriel. It was not looking optimistic.
Adam grunted, setting off another wave of talking that he didn't want to listen to. He tuned them out entirely.
Departing from the plane after twelve hellish hours was a somewhat welcome experience. As they got off they were greeted by the first sights of Paris.
In the distance, towers of glass and concrete undulate in unusual and expensive ways. A hint of the endless paved roads below shined golden under the streetlamps.
The landing strip they were on was smooth and perfectly black, broken up by perfectly geometric golden lines, all of it kept painstakingly clean by a veritable legion of sweep-bots he could see off to the far side, ready to deploy once people had left the area.
There to greet them was some corpo he didn't bother to remember the face of, surrounded by six perfectly spaced guards carrying rifles with polished wooden stocks. They were all the exact same height, and in the exact same garb. It looked like the lovechild of modern bodyarmor and one of the three musketeers. They had blue and golden cloaks that covered a good section of their torso, and full-face helmets that had a distinctly feather-like protrusion.
Adam admitted, it was far from the worst thing he had seen people wear.
Their own positions were similar. Hanako was in the center-front of their group, flanked by Rin and Hinata. Directly behind her was Oda and Tsumugi, suits on and blades on hip and back respectively. Bringing up the rear was himself, towering over everyone in the area, clad in black plate and carrying a club as tall as the average man on his back.
It wasn't his job to pay attention to whatever they were saying, so he didn't bother to. Hanako and the corpo exchanged words, the corpo eyed up their party (lingering on him a bit longer, why? Are you planning something?) before turning and escorting them away from the landing strip. As they walked away, the legion of smooth and decorated cleaning bots washed over the area they were just in, eager to begin removing filth from the area.
How much did that cost? That was such a waste of money.
Wait a minute, he wasn't responsible for this shit, he didn't care how much money they wasted.
Adam focused on their path forwards again. They were probably being taken to some sort of hotel or private apartments for the duration of this trip. A person couldn't attend pretentious rich people parties every hour of the day, after all.
It was at this point in which Uriel noticed something. The cameras that lined every single pathway they were being led on were turning to follow them.
No, not them.
Him.
Adam narrowed his eyes, and glared at the cameras while keeping his head straight forwards. Fuckers knew that he was the most dangerous thing in the city, but he was here on contract right now. They should know full well that he wasn't about to rampage on a guard job. This was downright insulting.
Hell, maybe it wasn't that at all, maybe the meatbags were looking at him because they thought he was ugly. He wouldn't put it past the fuckers. Yeah, get a good look meatbags, you're lucky he wasn't going to be here when he got off work, otherwise he'd kill all of you.
He growled quietly. Fucking guard jobs, all the irritation in the world and no way to relive his frustration unless some meatbag thought they were lucky. He found himself sincerely hoping someone did, in fact, think that they were lucky during this trip.
—
Soon enough, the packages and whatnot were brought to the spacious set of rooms they were assigned, and Adam spent his time waiting by the entrance. Everything on the floor was within range of his sandevistan boosted travel, so he didn't need to stand in the center this time.
Soon enough, they were ready to visit the first day of the 'party'. Hanako was in some sort of one-piece white dress with gold highlights, and the gynoids were in the same wear they started with. Oda was in a suit, humorously enough, looking as professional as he could outside of his standard wear.
…Man, Oda had some really stupid hair. Half of it shaved but the other half partially covering his vision? That's only going to hold you back in a fight you dumbass, why did you think it was a good idea? It made sense that he was assigned to Hanako, she never left the compound usually so he never had to get into a fight without legions of backup.
Fucking hell, why hadn't Goro said something to him yet? Adam found it hard to believe that he would look at his student with anything but irritation for his fashion choice. Maybe he did and Oda didn't listen, that would certainly make sense.
Oda used mantis blades in combat. Some of the stupidest fucking weapons he could be using and he decided to put glowing lights on them. Yes Oda, those are going to be incredibly helpful against anything wearing any kind of armor, yes you should put neon red lights on them too. No, don't get anything else like thickened myomers or hardened joints or emp shielding, just knives in your arms.
What a useful fucker he had as backup right now. Neon red mantis blades as his first and second line of defense. A submachine gun as his third, and a substandard amount of chrome. He didn't even have a sandevistan, the kids could probably kill him. In fact, Uriel, simulate that fight for him, see how long it took for the kids to kill him. Then do that a couple more times and save the vids for later.
'On it.' Uriel confirmed.
Needless to say, while Adam had a decent amount of respect for Goro, he had absolutely none for Oda. Goro was an actual asset in a fight, Oda was just there. Adam was glad he wasn't obliged to protect the meatbag, because his continued survival was downright insulting.
They departed from the rooms, and began to make their way to the 'party' chambers. Every now and again they would pass by some corpo all but jogging to and from the direction they were heading.
It was unusual, it was rare for corpos to be so 'undignified'.
They entered into a vast chamber, beautiful and golden and shining as everything else in Paris was. Adam began to look at the various partygoers, and slowly realized that this might be a bigger deal than he was initially thinking it would be. He recognized a party of individuals from nearly every major corporation on the planet. Sovoil, Militech, Petrochem, Biotechnica…
The list went on and on. All of them were chatting and socializing as usual, but there was a nervous tension in the room. All of them had at least one bodyguard within reach, often they had multiple. He then noticed that individual nations also had representatives here, each with their own set of bodyguards.
What the fuck had Netwatch called them here for?
There were some of the last people to arrive, but not the very last.
Hanako led them around, talking to various individuals and greeting them with the usual forced-politeness that corpos defaulted to. It seemed like no one was quite sure what was going on, but that the message Netwatch had sent to bring them here was definitely concerning. Adam didn't know what it was, but Netwatch rarely calls upon every major power in the globe like this, probably never has before actually.
Uriel stepped out of Adam's body to look around a bit, and noticed something alarming.
A firewall had been erected around the entire building. Every outwards line of communication via electronic means had been cut off. It was a clearly defensive and info-gapping structure, so this was to prevent whatever Netwatch was going to say from leaking. Uriel stepped back into Adam's body.
Eventually the lights dimmed a tad, and everyone went silent.
Up on a stage on the far end of the room was a massive projector screen. A slightly portly man walked up to the presentation podium. He had cybernetics abound that looked to be entirely function over form, and was wearing a suit where he could. He pulled a wire from his neck and plugged it into a port in the podium itself, bringing up several sub-screens on the projector.
The man began to speak.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome and thank you all for coming. While I would like to say that this is a strictly social event, it is not. We here at Netwatch have arranged this meeting to inform the powers that be of a potential problem in the Net."
"This meeting was arranged in person for the specific need to prevent this news from leaking to public awareness. As some of you have already realized, this entire building has been cut off from the outside Net to prevent data-breaches. We are sorry to avoid telling you this ahead of time, but security needs being what they are, it was not a decision made lightly."
"At approximately thirteen-hundred hours, twelve and a half days ago, Netwatch noticed an irregularity in the Blackwall. After investigating this irregularity, we were unable to determine the cause and after the standard twelve hours of investigation, we forwarded this information to our chairman. Our chairman promptly made the decision to host this meeting and here we are."
"The irregularity has persisted throughout the entirety of that duration, and seven total percent of Netwatch's resources have been dedicated to preventing awareness of the irregularity from spreading to the public. It is our hope that the combined resources of the various powers and interests represented in this room can assist us in determining the cause and solving this irregularity."
The man paused and took a drink of water. The tension in the room was palpable.
"We have recorded a sample of the irregularity occurring in the Blackwall, and have prepared it to display here. I will now play the recording."
A screen highlighted on the projector, and an audio intensity graph-thing appeared. It was silent for a moment, then a horrible noise issued from the projectors.
It was a robotic roar, drowning and filled to the brim with static. It was partially on several frequencies that normal humans couldn't detect. It was incredibly painful to listen to. Uriel convulsed.
The recording stopped suddenly, and the portly man continued. His voice was filled with the undercurrent of tension and hesitation that now filled the room.
"At thirteen-hundred hours, twelve days ago, the Blackwall started screaming, and we don't know why."
It was somewhat difficult to describe the immediate reaction in the room after that announcement. It mostly involved shouted questions that no one had answers to.
—
Pierce Warwick walked into the monitor room where his fellow Netwatch agents were. They were all on edge, and had been ever since the scream had started. That wasn't their job right now though, they'd leave that for the other departments.
They were looking at footage of something else, namely, Adam Smasher and his new pet AI.
"So, what's it looking like, boys?" He asked, taking a long drink of his coffee. If Adam Smasher did have an unbound AI, then they could press charges against Arasaka. Nothing would probably come of it, but the extra funding from the hush money might be helpful for alleviating the sudden resource drain that was putting everyone on overtime for the scream.
"Well, we got good news and bad news." That was never good.
"What's the good news?" He asked first, It was good to have something to brace them for the shit about to hit their cooling fans.
"Well, we were right, Adam has what is effectively an AI in his head right now."
…What is 'effectively'?
"Elaborate."
"Legally, it's not something that can be considered an AI. It's closer in nature to an Engram."
Goddamnit, what?
"You're telling me that they put some other fucker in Adam's head to play AI for him?"
"No, look at the Engrammic model and compare it to the surface scans we got of his brain."
Warwick looked at the two, the 3D model they got off the scan from earlier of the apparent engram and the second one they got off his actual physical brain.
They were… identical. He took a drink of his coffee.
"The potential benefits of having a physical mind take care of physical actions while a data-mind takes care of net-based actions is something we've theorized for quite some time now. Adam Smasher having a working example of this has only increased our estimation for what we can do with the tech. But the problem is in synchronization."
"We've tried putting AI in people's cyberware brains before in the past, but the differences between the two thought-patterns have always led to conflict and eventual insanity."
"They cannot synchronize, and thus they undergo psychosis."
He nodded.
"We thought it might be because of the differences between AI and standard human thought patterns, and then tried it with engrams. That didn't work either, because two different people sharing a brain also always leads to insanity. We tried using an engram of the same person, but the inferior copy also leads to insanity."
Warwick knew what they were going for here.
"So they somehow got an engram scan of his own brain and then plugged it back in. Makes sense, like a binary star system. So that's the bad news?"
"No."
It was always something with this shit, huh?
"So what is the bad news?"
"Engrams are kinda shitty unless you go for destructive-level scans, they always produce inferior copies of the original mind. That's not good enough for the synchronization required to maintain sanity, boss. To get a deep enough scan you need to layer the mind with heavy metals and whatnot, which always results in brain death."
…wait a minute.
"But Adam Smasher still has his brain."
"Yessir, you know what that means right?"
Warwick took the last drink of his coffee, trying to wash out the sudden bitter taste in his mouth and sick feeling in his stomach.
"They can make accurate enough Engrams to synchronize with a living person… without destroying the brain."
Which means that Saburo Arasaka undoubtedly had one of his own.
"It's always one fucking thing or another, huh?"