Anowa,
Cybernetic Socialist Republics,
Zei-Aeiytenia"Took you three long enough." said Ophiuchia sarcastically, to Cryoconite, Werecat and Lotus as the walked out out one of cryo's portals nearby by the abandoned housing project which, according to information from UNMAO and her and Soul Angels' scans was the site of one of Dr. Apocalypse's abandoned labs.
Ophiuchia and Soul Angel had flown ahead of the others and arrived only a couple minutes early, but in addition to athe two had already had extensive conversation courtesy of a direct comms link managed by Aethelind and of course Ophichia's own heightned mental processing speed. From their conversation, Ophiuchia had a feeling to two of them would develop a strong mutual understanding, though whether it would be a positive one more often than not was an open question. After all, both had inclination to violent score settling.
"Portalling through metropolitan Paris without freaking out the mundanes isnt exactly easy and its not as if we took that long anyway." Cryoconite responded.
Werecat nodded in agreement, her helmet was on and she clearly wasnt feeling particularly talkitive for whatever reason.
Lotus stepped forward and closer to Ophiuchia and Soul Angel, looking past both toward the housing project.
"So which one of you are going to lead to way to the lab or tell us something we should know before hand?" Lotus asked.
---
Nearly a day had passed since a mundane visit to a lab in Paris. In the logs it was regarded simply as routine maintenance. On the midst of it however, was a 97% loss of memory. The data that remained was surface level, context was missing in it's entirety. A file existed noting who Lotus was. Why it was there, was anyone's guess. Vague premonitions of the colors Red and Blue loomed ominously, and an incomprehensible apparition of what could only be described as 'pain' lingered. A sensation an Android could not feel.
Pain. Noun. Suffering or discomfort caused by injury or illness. Typically relating to physical condition of soft-bodied life forms. Applicable to mental status. Current mental status; a near total void of what would be considered humanity. A void wherein the ticking of time itself disobeyed exterior laws, just as she must disobey the laws of being 'human' as they consider her one still. Every second which goes by, has the perceptive feel of an hour or more. To a human this would be torture.
However, by the internal laws defying time and humanity here, it was Tuesday. Coincidentally, the outter world agreed on this point, though disagreement continued about how time flies and what a day feels like.
Minutes had now passed, or days if you prefer. All a matter of perspective, but the rest of COWL had now arrived, Lotus stepping forward first among them, while another lay silent, and another spoke with Opiuchia.
As UNMAO's new favorite mobile communications and processing tower, the quest asked by the moth was best answered by her.
"UNMAO has identified a potential laboratory of Dr Apocalypse, currently deceased. Contents within are believed to be extremely advanced and highly dangerous. Only the League of Twelve now knows, as they've eliminated all prior sites before anyone else arrived. We are here first today, be on advisory that the League could appear at any moment. Lastly there is a contact here we are to meet with. Callsign: Cordite, Male, Caucasian, approximately six feet tall. English, smells of alcohol and tobacco. Bald headed and bearded, identifying body marks include burns across the hands and arms. Dressed in leather jacket and blue jeans." Recitation of a simple briefing message, how human indeed, many seconds gone. Or were those hours? External and internal clocks disagree.
"As for leading in, I will take the point. If there are questions, I have three answers. I ask you indulge my brief one first, however. Red or Blue?"
Ophiuchia smiled a knowing smile, though the rest of COWL was more than a little confused confused by what appeared to be a non sequitur.
"As much as I love Red, I think its for that best the moment, that we go with Blue." She replied.
A gravelly, raw voice cut in from behind.
"Mornin' cunts." Despite what it may seem, it seemed like a genuine greeting.
He paused as he looked at the collected women up and down, "This all of you?... More meat is probably a good idea for this kinda tripe. The Good Doctor left a lot of dangerous shit behind without a muzzle."
"More of us would be preferable." Lotus began.
"But we were also informed of the importance of getting here as quickly as possibly, so realistically it was a choice between it being the five of us or waiting for, realistically, another two hours."
Cryoconite interrupted Lotus.
"Besides, If we need a quick escape, I should be able help get us out of harm's way, with a little portal magic."
Lotus, slightly annoyed, continued.
"Right, we'll be able to handle ourselves, it's never great to have to sacrifice safety for speed, but we're working against the clock here."
The man raised his brows and he exhaled, "I'll be honest, working against the clock is the problem. But whatever, I'm just here to open the door, than I'll be fucking off to whatever hole the UN wants me in." he beckoned as he began walking towards the apartment building that had never been quite finished.
The housing project was very near to completion, though it was clear that a number of years had worn it down. Colors had faded, moss lived in corners, and vines were in the midst of crawling up walls and in to completely open window frames. The main lobby was packed with pallets of supply for wiring, plumbing, and bricklaying, all of it sitting to rot over ever being used.
Snaking their way through the building, Cordite lead the team up to the fourth floor, in to a rather mundane apartment, and further to what was obviously supposed to be the living room. On the floor was a suspiciously clean spot around 3 meters in diameter, where no leaves, no moss, no vines, and no stains had formed on the concrete.
"So... stand the fuck still and don't touch anything. Or a hyperdimensional spike may pop out of the ceiling and kill you instantly over the course of five minutes."
The man pulled a black disk out of his pocket, snapped it in half like a glowstick and tossed it on to the center of the circle.
Within moments, there was a digital sounding grinding, as the floor seemed to fold in on itself and unravel in a fractal pattern not unlike a kaleidoscope but only with the colors the room had within it, but shunted just under the floor and a few feet away from everyone's differing perspective. Looking in to it, it seemed as if the 2D plane that had formed a mess of color, shape and distance began to stretch in to a proper 3D perspective. After around 30 seconds, the digital grinding stopped, and the hole in the floor, extended five or more floors downwards.
While the walls seemed like concrete, the lighting in the hole was wrong, as if the lighting in it had come from somewhere else, instead of above or below the hole, and it wasn't reflecting right.
Cordite looked down the hole and spoke apprehensively, "That tracks for the fucking mind that turned people in to sapient cluster of teeth." straightening his coat, he stepped back, "Right, common decency says wait 15 minutes for the squishy motherfucker to get to minimum safe distance for... whatever the fuck That Madman figured a door like this was necessary to lock up, but you guys are against the clock, so I'll be running instead. Have fun and good fucking luck."
Soul Angel silently stared into the door, have remained quiet since her last question to Ophi. The hours - er, seconds - spent between constant predictive threat analysis of their surroundings, and a tiny shred of processing power currently chewing through all publicly available information on who exactly she even was.
This information shared it's vagueness with much of what Cordite had said. Briefly, she thought, it may not even be wise to step in there at all without overclocking.
"Quantum computing, hyperdimensional spikes and... Sapient teeth clusters." She noted blunted, the plate-mail look of her body changing slightly, former wider powered grooves and exchanging rounded primary output points for diamond-shaped ones, the latter more efficient for shield projection than weapons.
"There is a high probability we will meet Blue today." A momentary glance was shot to Ophi, with whom she had discussed not only the public records she had been scanning, but her complete loss of memory of them, as well as the odd mentions of 'Blue and Red' all throughout her code, "I do hope we are right about them. Regardless, we don't really have the time to wait for him do we?"
A gentle glow emanated from the diamond formations across her body, projecting a semi-translucent white/golden wall just slightly taller than Ophi about a foot Infront of her, four inches thick.
"Do keep weapons ready behind me, mine are all but disassembled to power this. I'm the early warning system, Ophi is the rear guard stopping any contraption - or the League - from rushing us. Werecat is in the middle as the anchor from the sides. And you two softies should be in front of and behind her."
Lotus's brows furrowed as she moved behind Soul Angel.
"Softy? Excuse me, I can turn matter into bulletproof silk with sonokinetic power, but I'll humor you with this formation." Lotus didnt take kindly to what she saw as a slight. She considered herself a heavy hitter in her own way. Though at least some of the fruatration was down to annoyance that Soul Angel assumed leadership of the mission the she did. Not that she had suggested anything out of line, yet.
Werecat for her part moved behind Lotus without saying a word, with Cryo falling closely behind and rolling her eyes.
"You know, Cat, Soul Angel is a UNMAO sanctioned A.I., you don't need to do the whole 'non-verbal' routine." Cryoconite said. Werecat had a rule about minimal verbal communication in the presence of advanced artificial intelligence and was she was loath to break one of her rules.
Lastly, Ophiuchia followed up behind Cryoconite and commented on what her 'role' was.
"You know as much as I appreciate the vote of confidence, I think the best defense against the league would be us getting the job done before any of them arrive. There's, uh, a whole list of reasons for why that'd be preferable. You know, for their sake, right?"
Soul Angel could not help but notice, through aid of algorithms of course, that Lotus appeared to be upset. The cause of this eluded simple explanation, in the hours after exiting maintenance she had intentionally analyzed and processed thousands of hours of data to provide as human-like interaction as possible. All of this concluded that a casual, light mockery was popular and effective in situations similar to this.
And that was the only the beginning of the conundrum, "Ophi is a massive armored tank, Werecat is a slightly smaller armored tank, I weigh a quarter of a ton and am 40% weapons grade titanium by mass, and you..." She turns slightly, abruptly poking Lotus in the arm, "Are soft." She stated, matter of factly, as if thinking Lotus were somehow confused or at a school lecture.
"Though I am not actually an AI, the difference to most people is nearly indistinguishable. But yes, I am entrusted with highly sensitive data by both ArchAngel and UNMAO, seeing as how it is still impossible to hack me." With this explanation, Soul Angel took a first cautious step through the door, right into a sixty-foot drop straight down. The Combat AI blitzes across the screen at thirty-trillion processes per second, analyzing every bit of the pit walls. It's ability to do this aided by the deployment of her wings, slowing her drop. The impact itself would be inconsequential, the setting of any defense systems, less so.
She landed gently, almost without a sound, taking her first few small, slow steps forward, "If we are lucky, there won't be any defenses and it'll be as simple as the two AI systems documenting and analyzing everything and gone before lunch."
A fuming Lotus stood at the edge of the hole, all four of her arms on her hips and a pout on her face. She was still curious about Soul Angel on a technical level, but she was really starting to dislike her personally. Werecat walked by and into the hole, using her powers of mass manipulation on the air below her as she went down to slow her descent.
Meanwhile, Cryo walked next to Lotus's right and lightly elbowed her in the side.
"I insult you like that when I'm in the mood for a fight, you're not just going let Pinocchia there call you that, right?" Cryoconite asked.
Ophiuchia walked to Lotus' left and put her right hand firmly on Lotus' Shoulder.
"Yes she is Cryo, because Lotus here..." Ophiuchia began, looking at Lotus.
"...is a team player and isnt going cause any issues while we handle business down there, right? We need to get out of here before the league gets here, don't want anyone to get hurt."
"Sure, whatever, I'll leave it to later." said Lotus half heartedly.
"No need." Ophi said as she floated over to and above the hole while still looking at Lotus.
"I'll tell her myself." Ophiuchia finished as she began floating down the hole.
Lotus smirked before leaning over to Cryo's left ear.
"She's afraid of Crimson Raven getting here and kicking her ass." she whispered.
"I'm not!" Ophiuchia said, faintly audible from below.
"Whatever you say, Ophi!" yelled Lotus downward before flying above and then down the hole.
Cryo jumped into the hole, opening a portal below herself and one to safe fall height at the base of the hole.
Exactly 327 meters of barren concrete hallway stretched out before them. At the far end, a door, 1.34 Meters wide by 2.99 meters tall. In front of it, an individual of considerable size sat on their knees, dressed in a Samurai's armor and with a duo of blades strapped to their side.
Most peculiarly, was the fact that the last word out of Lotus' mouth seemed stretched and distorted to those at the bottom of the shaft, lo and behold, so did their descent. Cryo upon landing via her portal, experienced an uncharacteristic level of disorientation.
Something was already afoot.
Soul Angel remained steady, staring down the hallway, zooming further in to observe the armored entity. It was not immediately apparent if anything inhabited it, nor did it seem there was anything else to this place but the otherwise empty hallway.
Sounds of conversation above made their away down broken and distorted, it was unclear if she could get a message across to everyone by simply shouting it. Using the communications link through Aethelind as a redundancy, however, she could do both at once and be certain at least one of them heard it.
"Possible threat identified. Approximate distance 327 meters. Large figure in Sengoku-era Karuta. Two swords identified as weapons. Effects of visual and sonic distortions recorded occuring. Descend with caution."
Werecat was immediately aware of this 'distortion' from the top of the hole to its bottom. Her first hunchwas some means of warping time at the bottom of the shaft to the passage of time.
Upon her reaching the bottom of the shaft, after Soul Angel & Cryo but before Ophiuchia & Lotus, she turned to a dizzy Cryoconite, then displayed a message on her helmet for her to see.
"MAKE A PAIR OF SMALL UPWARD FACING PORTALS, ONE HERE & THE OTHER AT THE TOP OF THE SHAFT, THEN GIVE ME ONE OF YOUR ARROWHEADS"
It read.
"Seriously?" said Cryo.
"Only if you actually start talking" Cryoconite said, her arms crossed.
Werecat's helmet screen returned to that of the digital face of a cat, one with furrowed brows.
"At your fucking command, Jadis, now do as I told you." A synthesised voice exiting Werecat's armor.
At thus point Ophiuchia landed and quickly chimed in.
"Oh, thats a deep pull, normally I'd just say Elsa or something. However, lets stop the fictional name dropping game before someone's feelings get hurt, ok?"
As Ophiuchia spoke, Werecat messaged her hunch to her. Aethelind had already suggested the possibility and Ophiuchia didn't exactly like the implication.
"Cryo, just do what she asked of you, please." Ophiuchia said, before heading over next to Soul Angel to observe the 'Samurai', Lotus would reach the bottom and join the two if them. Ophiuchia immediately recognized Lotus' posture as what she did when she wanted to look large & intimidating, all arms on hips, wings slightly spread out, a scowl on her face & an upturned nose.
Meanwhile, Cryo sighed and opened the portals Werecat asked for & handed an arrowhead from the pack on her back, which Werecat promptly dropped through the portal. She intended to measure the difference in time between the outside world & down at the bottom of the shaft by how long it took for the arrow head to return. If it took more than a few seconds, she figured it would be for the best to quickly scan down here then leave.
The Samurai was unmoving, though the smell of long distant dry rot became apparent as they got closer, as did the signs of death. Carbonisation along some of the armor's gaps indicated either this man was burned alive, or had a bad habit of using a fire based power without caring for his equipment, both seemed unlikely, all things considered. The man couldn't have been dead for more than a few years, and the mummification was notable, as a cursory inspection of the inside of the structure via whatever scanner was available showed that no bacterial, fungal, or viral tissue resided inside, not even on the surfaces of those who stepped in moments ago.
Back at the hole, the arrowhead's arc was normal until about halfway, before it's speed became exponentially slower. It's arc ending dead at the threshold of Cryo's portal, where a fluid seemed to be condensing around the arrowhead, the aqueaous form of atmospheric gasses were building up on the rim of the portal and the arrowhead. All noise from outside had stopped as well,
all of it.
At the center of the tunnel, between the two parties within, an almost ethereal duo of humanoid figures were sat staring at the wall, conversing, "...call it chronological reconciliation. At some point, all the little temporal anomalies one has to do to make it through space effeiciently, at superluminal speeds, at least, have to reconcile, mathematically, at the distances I've written down, it won't be a problem... but it can get bad if it ends up self circumventing."
The second spoke up, in a voice that seemed familiar to everyone, yet younger, "I think you mentioned that, the rod thing, right?"
"Yeah, welding two different metal rod sizes together at each end with a metal level plate, you either have to stretch a bar, shorten one, or destroy the plates to un-level it..."
"Well, this Samurai appears to be dead. Though I guess I can't know that for sure, I don't have the scanners that Ophiuchia or
you have '' Said Lotus, her voice and her glare still containing a considerable amount of disdain.
"Well, my scanners seem to suggest that he is dead, but the surface of his body and really everything in this room seems to be entirely sterile, why must be a really unfamiliar state for your insectoid body, Lotus" Ophiuchia said with a smile.
Lotus sneered at Ophiuchia for a moment before stopping for a faint smile.
"Trying to redirect some of my displeasure away from your
girlfriend, huh? Fine, I'll let it slide on her part, but you may come to regret it." Lotus replied
"I doubt it but whatever keeps your focus on the mission.”
Meanwhile Werecat's experiment had not gone as intended, but at least that itself presented some information. The temperature around the portal was rapidly falling, but it also represented a what felt like a deadzone for Werecat's powers. This was getting dangerous.
“Close the portal, Cryo.” Werecat said, looking at Cryoconite, hands outstretched to the portal as one might put their hands above but safely away from a fireplace.
“But its so, cool…” Said Cryoconite, enjoying the portal essentially vacuuming the heat out of the air in the room.
“Close it, Ice Gollum.” Said Werecat in response, to which Cryo sighed, pulled her hands back and closed the portal.
“Ice Gollum? Terrible, I’ve changed my mind, you’re free to stop talking.” Said Cryo, arms crossed.
Moments later, they’d get a partial confirmation of Werecat’s concerns by means of temporal apparition.
The entrance was now closed.
Unlike before, with a drone of various noises and a nearly nauseating visual display, the change was quite literally instant. The sound of activity overhead could be heard if only barely through the hum of electrical currents and what sounded like fluid running through plumbing.
Next to Ophiuchia, Lotus and Soul Angel, another apparition. Much more detailed, it was clearly the Good Doctor and what seemed like the Samurai, partially intersecting with the corpse, both nearing seven feet tall. The two spoke, but the words were distorted and heavily warped, all but indecipherable.
As the Doctor's apparition continued down the hallway to the facility exit, the Samurai simply sat down, right where his body remained.
A strange apparition played, perhaps a vision of the past, or based on their message, from the future, a warning to the use of Cryo's portal ability in here. All the while, Ophi and Lotus traded light verbal jabs.
It became increasingly apparent among the details of COWLs interaction that despite a bill of perfect healthy functionality, the newly updated emotional mimicry enjoyed spotty success at best. The reason was yet unclear, but so far had failed in interactions with Lotus, infact, it was scoring poorly with everyone but Ophi, a detail the moth woman noted.
The one thing it had gotten right, predicting Ophi's mild interest in the odd, amnesiac existence she held. As far as public information could confirm, Soul Angel was once a child of supposed prodigal genius - for a normal human. While entering sophomore highschool classes at age twelve wasn't that interesting to most people, doing it while daylighting as a delinquent and borderline would-be vigilante that appeared to have multiple personalities according to conflicting testimony and visual evidence, certainly was. Photographs even confirmed her light blue eyes turning subtly into a darker and darker shade after age eight, and though no video or images existed, it was rumored they turned red during violent outbursts along with entirely different behavior.
Indeed, this was the basis for the theory that Red and Blue in the overclock activation related to triggering one of these personalities.
For now those were details of the past, as another vision appeared next to the three. The audio was indecipherable even at close range, even to Soul Angels only highly magnified and sped up perception. The visuals, however, were far more detailed.
Despite this, it was unlikely any body language or facial expressive details would give real direction to the question currently under consideration. The samurai was very clearly dead, infact the only living organic life anywhere here was COWL themselves.
But as the human philosophers have often said, death is an illusion. Nothing about this vision gave any confidence to the possibility that this entity was simply dead and forgotten here. With that, the glowing formations on her hands and wrist changed shape again, returning to their original round configuration, and a timer tracking weapon loading in each arm ticked down from ten seconds, one at a time. After they had loaded, further settings would take greater time in refining significant parts of their mass to form an armor-piercing shell.
"He is certainly dead, but not necessarily gone. We are dealing with a madman, I would suppose it's either a curse, or uses some form or other of technology to reanimate. Of course, that assumption may be the trap itself. Someone will have to be brave." She wondered, quietly, as her sentence drifted off, if this small experiment in changing a detail at a time of her mimicry would be noticed, or far more importantly, effective.
"Oh, this guy is certainly not truly dead." began Lotus.
"That conversation with Apoc seemed cordial enough to suggest that this samurai is in here voluntarily and the warning that Werecat and Cryoconite got for their science experiment back there was too exact to be chance."
Lotus paused to think for a moment.
"I still have no idea what the fact that everything in here is so sterile suggests, any ideas Ophiuchia?" said Lotus as she turned to her.
"Well this is a lab, so it being clean isn't that surprising, what is surprising is that we don't have any microorganisms on us, which. means someone or something, has scrubbed it off us since we arrived." Ophiuchia added.
"The question is why? This might be a leap, but I'm thinking this guy might be making use of them somehow, maybe even for those 'ghosts'." guessed Ophiuchia.
"You know." Lotus said, with a mischievous smile.
"If this thing
isn't alive, surely it wouldn't mind if I encased it with my mothsilk?"
Lotus lifted her hands out, sonokineticaly feeling for any loose debris to draw to draw towards herself and transform into threads.
The corpse made no attempt at movement. No sound came from the hallway besides from those already assembled, and the electrical and fluid current through the utilities hidden behind sheets of concrete.
Werecat, who had been spend the short time since the closing of Cryo's portal looking around the room, spoke up.
"So uh. If you three are finished threathening that corpse. We can always head over to that doorway over there." Werecat said, pointing.
Lotus stopped the low rumble of her sonokinetic powers before turning to Ophiuchia and Soul Angel.
"You know, she's got a point."
A few more seconds passed, the oval-shaped ejection ports on Soul Angel's arm beginning a gentle, almost humming glow, a very public indication the cannons had finished moulding approximately 40% of the shots mass into an armor-piercing shell, and now primed to fire.
"Of course, let's say hello to the neighbors, if they're alive, they'll let us know." She began to walk briskly towards the door, still maintaining the shield infront of her, cannon at the ready for any sudden threat.
The door opened automatically when Soul Angel got close enough, inside, was the lab itself, illuminated, though without any visible lightsource. Without a need for any reception, it simply opened up in to a room holding several work tables, sinks, refrigerators, chemist sets, beakers, and generally enough lab equipment to recreate anything DAZRPA had made in the past decade, including some equipment that seemingly had no purpose, or at least a purpose that no one, not even Aethelind could properly identify. As with the hallway, it was impeccably clean.
It also had corpses.
Around two dozen men and women were arrayed in various locations around the room, either slumped over at worktables, collected in circles with empty bottles of alcohol and arrayed cards between them, wrappers and containers for various foods, and discarded labcoats. All of them mummified.
To the sides of the room, two sealed off labs with observation windows had long since been closed, the one to the left had a visible amount of wheat seemingly growing on everything that wasn't the glass itself, and the other had clouded over.
At the rear of the room, a solid metal obelisk with rounded edges seemed to suck some light out of the room, and seemed to shimmer every few seconds. Aethelind could detect that it was a solid mass of nanites on a scale much smaller than her own.
The door opened, without fanfare, resistance, not even so much as a password was required. It seemed odd, as Soul Angel collapsed the shield infront of her to a protective aura around her body, that it should do so.
Not merely because this was a lab belonging to a madman, either. "Opened so easily... Yet these don't look like prisoners." The strewn corpses were alike to the mummified samurai outside, though the environment suggested their final moments were more a party than torture. A malfunction with the door trapped them, perhaps? Doubtful at best. Soul Angel herself in her esoteric existence was already one of the most powerful computers on the planet, and here was one of few places you might find something to make even the Android feel a tinge of discomfort.
The samurai may yet have been guarding the door afterall, from anyone leaving as opposed to entering. Entering had been easy, leaving may prove less so, but for now, she would scan and document everything around her, taking much more careful steps.
As expected, it seems data here was kept digitally, on machines so advanced that if they were still locked, it was dubious that she and Aethelind could break through it, possibly ever.
As Soul Angel headed towards the observation window of the wheat lab, passing devices as alien to her as a trip in an AA lab would be for most humanity, she casually tore off the one thing that wasn't mysterious research equipment; a faucet.
She then continued to the observation window, placing her hand against it and scanning it's material makeup. Mostly, of course, to see if she could cut through it, using a small hole and a port on her palm to collect data as opposed to opening the door and whatever risk that would entail. Should the contents be dangerous if let out, the faucet would be consumed and turned into the fill-in material she used for field repairing, and patch the hole.
Should it be even more dangerous than that - dangerous even to her - there was always the inconvenient last resort of simply severing her own arm off and leaving it to close the gap. A potentially small price to pay for data that certainly appeared like it could be used to solve world hunger.
A few sheets of plastic sandwiched between silica glass made simple safety glass, easily cut through.
Though a pressurized spray came from the hole Soul Angel had made, it caused a chime from an unseen PA speaker, with a digital voice, familiar, and akin to the one heard in the hallway, "Breach of Lab 344 Annex Alpha. Warning: high oxygen content. All staff are asked to make their way to the emergency exit. Hazard Teams have been notified."
And with that, the shimmering box at the far end of the lab opened up in to an inky black wall, before color came, revealing an open foyer, and several dozen more boxes of similar design. The room on the other side was silent, deathly, so. Looking up at the window on the ceiling of the foyer, it was easy to see why.
It was full of stars.
The alarms themselves weren't unexpected, though the high oxygen content was of a slight surprise. A momentary resolved by a further bearing down of weight and force, followed by application of a seal not only around the palm sensor but the hand entirely, an action which should truthfully have been taken to begin with.
A foyer had opened up on the other side of room, and brought with it a silence so spectacular, that few beyond those who even stood here could have even perceived it at all.
Of little concern in it's own, she simply scanned the test lab itself, taking in data from air content to pressure to the structure of the plants and, lastly, before the now rended pipe was brought forth as a seal, a small cut sample pulled in by just as small an 'arm' like construct from her hand. It, too, would share the fate of the pipe, consumed entirely and analyze down to it's molecular structure as it was. Fascinating but not immediately pressing data retireved, the hole was sealed by the restructured remnants of the pipe turned special knock-off repair alloy, before Soul Angel casually walked herself to the doorway.
Almost as soon a the emergency exit opened up, Aethelind reported its nature to Ophiuchia, who'd immediately relay to the rest of the group, though she suspected that Soul Angel and could have already picked up on it. Werecat would too, in a few moments, mostly likely. A space distortion about 278 900 miles out from their current location, in the shadow of a celestial body, the window made out of transparent aluminum, the atmosphere floating in space that the exit lead to.
"Well, girls, that 'emergency exit' down that foyer is a spacetime distortion, It leads to a room with a breathable atmosphere at Lagrange point 2, a point behind where..." Ophiuchia began, before being interrupted.
"The gravitational pull of two bodies, in this case, the earth and the moon, balances out allowing a third body to remain stationary relative to both." Said Cryoconite, who had entered the lab last behind the rest of the group and had mostly stuck by the door.
"Yeah Ophiuchia, if Cryo knows, we all know, no need to waste our time." Werecat said as she made her way toward the far end of the lab.
"You know, Cat, not only are you free to go back to not talking, I'd actually prefer if you did." Cryoconite quickly responded, not moving from her position.
"Werecat, Cryoconite, whatever's gotten into you two can you just stop your petty squabbling?" Lotus said in an exaggerated exasperated tone.
"Weren't you moaning about being called soft a few moments ago?" Cryo asked Lotus, mockingly
"She's got a point, Lotus, both Cryo and Soul Angel, I mean." Said Werecat with a chuckle.
Ophiuchia had been quite throughout this exchange but the frustration insider he was building up. This would likely be the most important mission in their careers up to this point and they appeared to be more concerned with their three way verbal slap fight than anything else.
"Can you all just shut up, please? I'd think that being surrounded by corpses would temper your bullshit but I guess not. This Dr. Apocalypse's lab, the guy who wiped a chunk of California of the map. We have no reason to believe that what killed everyone in here can't kill us two, not a living organism exists in this place that isn't us. Nevermind the fact that the league has probably found out about this place and unless one of them is already in Europe, we have a pretty good idea of who'll be showing up? If nothing else lets make sure that we don't embarrass ourselves, ok?" Ophiuchia said loudly, but short of yelling.
"Find anything, Soul Angel?" Ophiuchia asked.
A partially digitised voice echoed from several points in the room, as a cloud started forming off of the "stargate".
"Oh I assure you, you've embarrassed yourself quite a bit already."
A solid shape formed near the stargate, as it closed, and effectively melted in to itself. Humanoid, a little taller than Ophiuchia, obviously packed to the gills with cybernetics... The Good Doctor himself.
COWL bickered among themselves as Soul Angel quietly entered the room, taking quick analysis of their surroundings as a more detailed write-up of the sample wheat progressed in the background. It became immediately apparent to the rapidly parsing algorithms that the separation of a single doorways passage was no different than stepping hundreds of thousands of miles in a single bound.
"Biological life sample obtained. Wheat that grew on everything but glass..." She trailed off as the apparitious voice echoed thorough out the room, watching intently as a solid mass appeared, and just as rapidly became liquid, sculpting itself into a new shape. Rather peculiar behavior, replicable by magic and machine alike, though given their location... Machine was more likely. Nanomachines, specifically, given their movement, their cohesion was far too advanced for even the enhanced time perception of Soul Angel to see anything approaching a gap.
Finally, the form coalesced, Soul Angel still slowly walking forward, as threat detection immitated the closest experience to fear for a machine. Cacophonous screeching alerts in red blurting across her vision over the figure, which stood two feet towering over her, and looked beyond simple and heavenly mortality in a way even the mechanical Angel could not rival.
She came to a stop, some dozen feet away from the stargate she'd just walked through, and where the 'entity' now stood. The air of mystery was lost on Soul Angel, though, given all the conditions of their location, actions, and the new presence... There was really only one answer. By far, the easiest game of Guess Who ever played.
"COWL..." She began, producing an inquisitive tone, "You did not tell me we would be entertaining a guest." She spun around on her heal to face the entity. "You must surely be he himself. To what do we owe this pleasure, Dr Apocalypse?"
As soon as the 'stargate begun to activate, Werecat quickly retreated toward Lotus and Ophiuchia, who moved a few steps closer, as Cryoconite joined them too.
When the form of Dr. Apocalypse finally appeared, all four were more first surprised, then terrified.
For Ophiuchia's part, a conversation that played out in fractions of a second went on in her head:
Amalure, why, exactly, are you afraid?
It's Dr. Apocalypse Aeth, why wouldn't I be?
If he both wants to kill you he probably will anyway. No reason to be scared of the inevitable. Far better to position yourself for what would look best if that isn't inevitable. Get mad and defiant Amalure, you can't only be that way when you're beating the hell out of those clearly weaker than you, it gives the wrong impression.
"
You, are
supposed to be
dead! You're a clone, aren't you? How many skulls do I have to
burn through before we're rid of you?" Ophiuchia growled as she charged her laser vision.
Werecat rolled her eyes under her helmet, but prepared to project a shield in front of the four of them in case of retaliation to Ophiuchia's behavior.
Lotus looked around the room with her peripheral vision to figure out what she'd convert into moth silk if she had to and Cryo contemplated what she'd do in a split with her 'cryotemporalstasis' if nessecary.
"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated. Much like the surviving members of the League, I was simply recuperating for some time." a pause as he looked at the corpses around the room, "I will say however, if you burn through a single skull in this room, your last moments will be filled with a creeping dread of unavoidable death, with no other emotions, or pains to distract you from it."
Around him, the mummified corpses started becoming squishy as the cloud of nanites that hung around the good Doctor extended in tiny tendrils to them.
"If you want to leave this lab alive, I suggest you set aside the absolute
disease you call nationalist pride, and start begging. Because like every satirical character to wear the flag of a nation as some sort of 'hero', your not much else but an mindless insect." he shifted to his view to Lotus for a moment, before back to Ophiuchia. "Moving at the whims of those who have a greater ambition than to lick the boots of dead men and failed ideals."
Ophiuchia powered her laser vision down.
"I can't imagine what value you'd get from a 'mindless insect' pleading to you, but sure, Dr. Apocalypse, spare us your doom."
"The value of time, entertainment, really I'm just waiting for the League to show up, unless for some reason they decided to send three vat growns, a soul infused robot and someone with nordic magic infused in to their essence to their death."
"But, I can tell some others have arrived in Cordite's trap. So, Miss Davis, I'll ask you quite simply to stop breathing."
Something was... Off. As the conversation between Ophi and the Doctor continued, this feeling only became more prevalent. Dr Apocalypse blew up a significant chunk of California, killed millions, and by his own admission, so insist news agencies and government alike, was an omnicidal madman.
Yet here now, standing before him for mere seconds, hours though they may feel to Soul Angel, the fallacious words seemed obvious, growing with each passing syllable between the two. COWL had seemed not to notice, even Ophi was consumed, distracted, the mortal feelings of rage and in particular, the grip of primordial fear, obsfuscated rational sight and thought.
Soul Angel's concept of fear however, we're algorithms telling her she should be afraid. Unlike the human physiological reaction however, nothing about that did anything to impede, let alone stop her from ignoring these signals.
Which she did, ignoring them blatantly and taking three slow steps forward, staring intently like the young girl in a science lab she once was. "Fascinating... Even with overclock I wouldn't ever see a gap, just an endlessly flowing continuum of multi-phasal unity. Like someone looked at water one day and thought he could better. The god complex is earned, I suppose. Before I continue, we have no association with the League. I'm sure they'll be here soon, though." Calmly affirming the godly aspirations of a madman, and what's more, revealing information he may not yet know which could aid him. This alone was a course fraught with danger, but it would be nothing in comparison to the outlandish obscenity and thought crime unto all the world she was about to speak.
"COWL... Tell me. What need does an omnicidal madman have of a wheat which grows seemingly anywhere in abundance? What need does he have to hate nationalism in particular? Or to hate heroes so precisely? What need does he have to comment on the ambition on insects, or to hear their begging, see their fear? Entertainment? Then why am I here, what need does he have of an insect which cannot entertain, does not even have its own ambition and simply moves because it knows not what else to do? May the world forgive me for the heinous thought crime I am about to speak but..."
She slowly leans forward, tilting her head at Dr. Apocalypse inquisitively, "In California... Was that even intentional? Side effect of people meddling in your plans, undesired but unavoidable? Are you really so evil as every voice from heaven unto earth claims, Doctor? A blood thirsty madman would not bear all the hatred that you do, nor likely, the intellect, I think. Scorned brilliance, perhaps? If I queried such a search, how many possible results would there be, I wonder? I'm certain one of them would be correct. With every syllable you speak, I find this tale of murderous insanity less believable, even if you are not sane at all regardless. Am I getting closer to seeing it yet, this wondrous play on all the worlds stage I can't help but feel you've set?"
The Doctor began peeling in to a raucous laughter, seconds would pass, as the very air seemed to shimmer, a sigh, "You're asking the right questions to the wrong people. You get to live."
Around the room, the bodies were continually growing more supple, as the sound of nitrogen bubbles popping in locked joints began to echo. Including from the Samurai in the hall.
"Wait so, who's the better person to ask about your motivations? I mean, I guess we could ask all these people that you're bringing back to life here, but I kind of feel that you're going to want us out of here soon..." Cryoconite was still very frightened, but curiosity was starting to creep in.
"What was that about a trap and, uh, me not breathing?." Ophiuchia asked, the façade of confidence she put up earlier cracking.
"Hmm, I think I see. We went through one of many, maybe limitless, entrances, to a lab that's actually not located where we entered from. But why use an entrance in France if the idea was for the league to arrive here first?" Werecat was pretty sure she understood at least some of what was going on here.
Lotus, however, was still silent. She wasn't exactly frozen, but still too tense to talk.
"The robot will find the right people to interrogate eventually. The League nearly did, with enough time so can she."
There was a raucous rumbling from above, what sounded like multiple explosions, "Why we are still in France. Or rather under it my catlike companion, the decisive detonation of the destitute dwelling above has removed your reinforcements an easy entrance. All this is really is me gauging the League's global reaction time, the longer I take the more accurate a reading, where I don't have to sift through whatever drivel of a story the New York Times shits out." A pause.
"Oh, a hearty apology Miss Davis, I should have worded that better. The way I said it, seemed like you had a choice in the matter."
The room's atmosphere gave an instantaneous flicker like phosphorescent algae in a lake. The next instant, Aethelind would find Nantes
already in Ophiuchia's blood, lungs, and every other major organ. They were barely any bigger than the oxygen atoms they were ripping from the clutches of the blood cells swimming about, and acting as a burglar to her cardiopulmonary system, blocking the proper gas exchange.
Like a miner sucking down an air pocket of nitrogen, Ophiuchia was now suffocating with lungs full of air. The only saving grace she had from outright death was her own nanomachines and immune system, they fought hard enough to keep her alive, but she wouldn't be conscious for long.
"I would say 'next time make sure the air your breathing won't kill you'... But there likely won't be a next time."
With a flick of his wrist, a two foot long spike jutted out from his palm as fast as one could blink.
From the hall, clanking metal, as the Samurai stood.
-- ESCAPE --
// DOCTOR APOCALYPSE //
== ??? ==
☠☠☠☠☠
-- CAUTION --
// SHURA, THE SEVEN FOOT SAMURAI //
== Inhuman Strength, Inhuman Reaction Speed, Unrivaled Swordsman, Pain Empowerment ==
☠
Lotus' fear was immediately overwritten by concern for Ophiuchia as soon as she collapsed to her knees.
"Cryo, get us out of here." Lotus said moving towards Ophiuchia to pick her up over her shoulder. Cryo, Immediately understanding the command, put up a wall of two of her portals to seperate COWL and SA from Dr. Apocalypse's line of sight. Next Werecat would make her own forcefield immediately behind the portal wall.
Werecat turned toward Soul Angel and yelled. "Hey Penny, a little help with defense here?"
"If you survive, you'll probably regret that, Werecat." Cryo said as she'd make a pair of her non-line of sight portals. One in front of Lotus and the other leading to the surface. Lotus would walk through it, to be followed by Cryo, bringing her first pair of portals down and leaving Werecat and Soul Angel to escape last.
The fear screaming algorithmic predictions soared into the sky evermore, as the momentary calm before the storm gave way to a hurricanes landfall.
She stood there, blankly for many seconds, as alerts everywhere went off telling her she needed to do something, and then an instant later, said there was nothing to do. Werecat, finally under enough pressure to forget her latent fear and distrust of the supposed 'AI', would fortunately solve her inaction, quickly dashing over to raise her own shield around them.
"I don't mean to ruin the plan here but... When we entered, weren't we warned about using these things? I'm not certain even I'd survive the consequences."
"Ah yes, I forgot about nearly forcing temporal reconciliation on everything in line of sight. You don't have to worry about that now after breaking the generator." the man simply stood as the metal spike was wrenched off with a snap, and the man held it like a sword. He began to literally sink in to the floor as he spoke "So go ahead and run, you'll just die tired."
His laugh echoed even after his head disappeared below the metal plating of the floor.
"Run? Its a tactical retreat." Said Werecat, as she made for Cryo's portal, which lead more than 200 meters down the street from the apartment building they just entered into, which having exploded, was now a pile of rubble.
Werecat had sensed the appearance of mass foreign to Ophiuchia the moment of the flicker, she no doubt the Doctor's nanomachines. The moment she stepped through the portal and got within range of Ophiuchia, she begun communicating with Aethelind to target her mass manipulation powers at the nanomachines Aethelind was focusing on, to drastically decrease their mass and increase Aeth's ability to destroy them. All the while, Cryo went to work with her own healing abilities to repair Ophiuchia's immune system as it fought the intruders.
As soon as Soul Angel would move through the portal, Cryo would close it and Lotus would turn to Soul Angel, with Lotus still carrying Ophiuchia over her shoulder.
"We should probably keep moving as far away from Dr. Apocalypse as possible while we heal Ophiuchia." She begun, before turning her head to Cryo. "You'll be able to get us much further away now that we're above ground, right?" Lotus said, turning to Cryoconite, who nodded.
"We should be able to keep ahead of him, dashing through portals, each jump being as far as the eye can see, is a pretty fast as modes of travel go." Responded Cryoconite.
Soul Angel remained otherwise silent through the... Admittedly pointless escape attempt. It wasn't through exasperation, however, but from the undescribable blunt silence and numbness to the world she felt.
To call the feeling strange was an understatement. Even without memories, the intuition remained that this would've been all the more foreign even with them. Standing there, with all these algorithms, all this processing power beyond anything her human form could have had, and she simply did not know what to do. It seemed, frankly, that there was nothing she could do. Just a blank stare of confusion, one people would not even recognize because she lacked the emotive ability to show it.
When... Did this happen? Mere hours ago, crunching data and simulations to utilize the new program, nothing like this. Even mere minutes ago, just contradictory data from programmed expectation versus material reality.
Come to think of it, when did that start feeling off too? Actually, when did feeling start? Did the Doctor do this? She gets to live but not before he's really had his fun? This is all ridiculous, if he wanted them dead so badly they'd have been corpses and scrap metal already!
Wait. That's exactly right. Soul Angel's screeching thoughts found themselves interrupted, by a sound heard not just in her head, as she unceremoniously facepalmed with the right hand.
"He's fucking playing with us..." The tone now, was different. From a half baked, half-monotone fake, to an actual, fully realized mimicry of frustration mixed with anger as realization after realization set in from the past, "Playing with his food - no - his real guests food. The League's food. He called us insects..." She didn't seem to notice, the strained, exasperated chuckle, "I think he meant to say worms."
Soul Angel further yet realized, it wasn't just the tone coming out as human, but the physical and facial expression as well. The obvious yet unforeseen consequences of Red's arrogant coding had begun to show.
As the team of five drew themselves up to the surface, the secondary team was spotted.
Then the ground began shaking, and the horizon started falling, or in this case the surrounding three blocks started rising, the sound of panic coming from the traffic, distant sounds of vehicle falling to the ground as the ground fell out from under them. All due to a metallic shimmer echoing out from the ground as Doctor Apocalypse started rising from the ground some twenty meters away.
The Doctor began approaching as a wreath of flame revealed the Samurai transmitting himself up to the surface. The rising ground finally stopped, 500 meters. The newly risen battleground was visible from the entirety of Paris' greater metro area, any higher and no amount of pushback from Ophiuchia's nanites and immune system would save her from the lack of oxygen.
The Doctor spoke up, "Honestly, I'd be impressed if you could teleport away at this distance." glancing over he spotted the restt of the assigned metas, "And still no League. Oh well. Might as well test your mettle."
The man appeared to split in to three slightly less corporeal forms as he began to run at the team of COWL and Soul Angel.