NationStates

Central Ashekani Archipelago, Purnelaw, Somewhere Unimportant,
An Office.

---

An unremarkable man sat at at a desk surrounded by neutrally colored walls and floors, not unlike an office that others of his same species would be prone to do. He stared at a computer screen, again, nothing out of the ordinary for an ordinary person. However, what had his attention at the time was much different than the typical email or spreadsheet that a typical person would be looking at on such a standard workstation. Somehow, he had found a wanted poster from an otherworldy administration open on his computer. He skimmed over the text and decided to delete the message and return to his work, where upon which he hoped that his day would return to normal.
This was not the case.
A sharp knocking suddenly emanated from the doorway as a hand gloved in white rapped upon the wood of an already opened door. Two officers dressed in grey rounded the corner, standing expectantly outside of his office. One of the men smiled, "Good morning Henry, may we come in?"
Henry clasped his hands together -noted the fact that none of his things had his name on them- and nodded, "Of course, what can I do for you?"

The man on the left's face shifted for a second, while the other continued to smile, but his tone was flat, "We're here about the message you just deleted."
Left man held up a printout of the message Henry had received.

The smiling one pointed at the paper, "How did you get this?" He questioned.

Henry could only shrug, "I came over after break and it was just.. there?" he racked his mind for any other information he could give them, as if the bagel and cream cheese he ate a few minutes earlier could appease the two strange men.

Left man sighed and leaned down to look at Henry's desk. The smiling one's eyes flicked from Henry to his compatriot, his smile waned,
"Your computer isn't plugged in." Smiling said.

Henry blinked, and tried to speak before he was suddenly cut out of the conversation as Left man finally spoke. "That confirms it. Outside."

"Are you sure? It could just be an IOA ploy." The smile dropped completely from his face as whatever effort the man made towards keeping appearances reoriented itself to a new issue. "Anomalous phishing attacks against us aren't uncommon."

"Xil is outside." Left man stated. "Very."

No Longer Smiling frowned. "Why didn't I know this?"

"No need." Left man pointed towards Henry's computer, and the aforementioned lack of cables connecting the desktop to, well, anything. "All we came for."

No Longer Smiling rested his face in his hands for a second, "Alright.. make sure this office complex gets a Waskil unit and bump the layer up to a 9 or higher, tell whomever sent us here that we've found the source of the anomalous transmission, the Cult of Xil is looking for an extradimensional mad scientist and they want him alive or whatever, and we should look for him too because he can kill all of us. Or something."

Left man gave No Longer Smiling an odd look, pointing at the unplugged computer. "This is all we came for."

"Riiight." No Longer Smiling turned to Henry after a brief pause, "Are you going to remember any of this?"
Henry shook his head no, and his day returned to normal as the two men left him to reconnect his workstation.

This return to normalcy was not shared by everyone, however, as the metaphorical gears began to turn at Purnelaw's many secretive organizations. No official response to the Cult of Xil's message was sent, but no effort was made to conceal the fact that Purnelaw's attention was now on the rogue Doctor. Intelligence agencies, both conventional and anomalous quietly swept their Earth for any sign of the man, and others sought to acquire any information on the Doctor's past activities. If such a person concerned a group such as the Cult of Xil, the Commonwealth would undoubtedly share that concern.

[Albany, New York City, NY, United States of America, Purnelaw's Earth]


"Earlier this morning, five men were found dead in the alleys downtown. Do you have any idea why, Mister Barks?"

Mister Barks, a man aged finely into his thirties, sat at a metal chair. The detective in front of him spoke with a tone of cold apathy. He'd seen plenty of things in his lifetime, and organized criminal activity was one of the things that had proven quite effective at grinding way whatever semblance he may have once had in the way of disgust. Even still, Mister Barks was a special case.

Raised from his birth as a gangster, he had committed his first murder at the age of 15. His muscles were still toned and tattooed, his face still scarred. He was still in his game and had only been made more efficient as time had gone by. It should come as a surprise then that he was cooperating so well.

"I think I've got a good enough idea."

"And what idea would that be?"

"Bastards got whacked! It's obvious! The boss does this whenever someone crosses him. I've only seen something this bad once before, and that's saying something. Whoever did this, whatever they died for, it's fucked up. It's out of my league."

"Woah, calm down, okay?"

Mister Barks deflated his chest and his cheeks. It was all he could do, but it seemed to work.

"Do you have any idea why they were 'whacked', then?"

Mister Barks thought long and hard, rifling through the events he had heard beforehand. He seemed to have a solution, but it did not comfort him.

"I think they tried to steal something. Yeah. That was it."

"What?"

Mister Barks shifted his eyes from side to side, as though looking for someone - or something - listening in on this little interview.

"A poison capsule."

"A poison capsule? That's it? Why would your boss kill five people like this - sliced them to kingdom cone and skinned them alive, even - over a piece of poison?"

"I don't know. I only overhear things. All I can tell you is they took it north by boat."

Detective Timbirleigh paused for many moments, before pressing the button on the left side of the table and getting up, slowly, fighting through the ache and grind of his dusty old skeletal system. He waved at Mister Barks, and he repeated his action, escorted by two police officers.

"Interview's over. Schedule another in a few hours."

OOC: I apologize for any formatting issues, this was written on a phone.

[Central Ashekani Archipelago, Purnelaw,
Somewhere Unimportant,
A Hallway.]
Two men in grey uniforms walked down a neutrally colored hallway as they left a normal person to return to a normal routine. The sounds of their boots silenced by an offensively inoffensive grey carpet. This silence would be broken by a man who no longer smiled.
"Well, I certainly feel useful." He huffed.

"You are." Offered the man on his left.

"Was that a joke?" The other scoffed, "We just did the equivalent of requesitioning headlight fluid. I thought I would be doing something more exciting with my time here."

Left man cocked his head as they rounded another corner, "Boring is good."

"Yeah, but key word there: boring." A non-smiling man sighed.

A voice laughed from behind them, "Well if you consider threats to national security 'boring' then I don't want to see what you find exciting." They both turned to see a young woman stood in a grey uniform similar to their own, but a patch on her shoulder and a stack of folders in her hands designated her as an intelligence officer.
She pointed behind herself, "If you're trying to get back to Central, we moved the door over here."

"Why?" Asked both the men in unison.

"Closer to the cafeteria. They make these great gourmet bagels here -Oh, right!" She snapped her finger and pointed to the man on the left, "Speaking of here, dispatch wants you to coordinate the on site cleanup, where as you.." she pointed to the non smiling man.

"How much do you know about New York City?"

"Uhh.. it has a population of a bit over 18 million people, employs about 36,000 uniformed police officers to cover an area of 467 square miles, with 77 precincts and 9,624 patrol cars. Why are you asking me this?" He answered.

"It's where you're going next! Come, walk and talk." She turned and walked off as the man who hadn't smiled in some time obliged. The intelligence officer made good on the promise of both walking and talking,
"We've picked up some chatter coming from the NYPD, there was recently a grisly murder of five people. While that's not unusual over in the US, what they got murdered over is what piqued our interest." She handed him a manilla folder full of police records that he looked over as she continued, "Their witness claims it was over some kind of 'poison capsule', valuable enough to kill over, apparently."

"That would certainly hurt the current trend in NYC murder statistics. It's been pretty low- hold on, this doesn't seem much to go off of." He said as they came to a stop next to a door, exactly the same as all the others in the hallway.
However, as the intelligence officer pushed it open, it would reveal not an office, but rather a massive atrium. Intricate marble tiling and colorful murals on the walls along with scores of people from various
organizations that milled about stood in stark contrast to the dull and quiet environment the pair had left.
They were approached by two guards kitted in exoskeletons, who checked their ID cards, and proceeded to wish them a pleasant day as they walked off into one of the many hallways connecting to the Atrium.

It wasn't until they had escaped the cacophony that they could continue to discuss the topic at hand.
"You would be correct, which is why we're sending you over there, we have questions of our own, so if we move fast we can get in on the next round of questioning."

He questioned her nonchalance about infiltrating an American institution, "How exactly are we going to do that?"

She beckoned him into a room off to the side, full of expensive looking computer equipment, and then locked the door behind them.

"It's very simple, really. We just plug in some numbers here, run a small bit of code, and voila! A fresh FBI agent with a bulletproof background, ready to catch some bad guys."
She procured another folder and presented it to him with a dramatic flourish. "You've been in the force for a few years, live in a flat in New Jersey, and have been assigned to this case on short notice. How's that?"

The man flipped through the contents and scratched his head, "Could this FBI agent get a name?"

---

A man now known as FBI Special Agent Quinn Chandler stepped out into the cold New York air, adjusted his tie, and quickly stepped into the back seat of a black SUV that waited for him. He glanced around to the other passengers as the car pulled away from the curb.
The bearded man sitting across from him grinned, "Didn't think we'd be seeing you out in the field so soon, bud."

"Agent Hartford." Quinn responded a bit flatly, he hadn't expected to see that beard again so soon.

"That's the name, you do remember!" He laughed, "We've got Kennings at the wheel, and Lukas here stole shotgun before I could call dibs. Seat treachery aside, I'd say we're going to make one hell of a team."

"So how far away is the precinct?" Quinn asked, as he attemped to steer towards a more pertinent topic.

"Quite literally around this bend I'm taking riiight now." Kennings piped up from behind the wheel as the police station came into view. He steered into the visitor's parking garage as Lukas slid a parking sticker onto the windshield.
"You're gonna be our point man on this, Quinn." Hartford said, "I'm not up to the whole first impressions thing anymore."

"Fine, I can do that." He swung the door open as soon as Kennings put the SUV into park, snatching a black leather briefcase that lay in the back seat. He walked briskly into the lobby of the police station as the rest of the team formed up behind him, coming to a sharp stop in front of the receptionist.

"I'm Agent Chandler with the FBI-" he said as he brandished the requisite ID, "-and this is my team. We're here to speak with a certain Mister Barks?"

Hell, I just now realized I used the wrong name at the end of this post, make sure I never post at 1 AM ever again

[Albany, New York]

The atmosphere of the police station smelled of donuts and bagels and coffee and fresh paper and copier ink. It all mixed in to a heavy gas that would make First World War soldiers flee in panic from the sheer depressing rigidity of endless work and overwork and overtime and night-shifts that it entailed and had already seen a billion times before.

The receptionist looked at Agent Chandler with a pair of eyes that seemed to show confusion, though with a life of experience behind the desk made apparent by her speedy and precise fingers, she was quite proficient at hiding any such shortcomings. Her features were not that of a model's but her face was still quite fair, and some would say cute. Her nails were trimmed and her hair curled back into a ponytail.

"Er, yes, we have him in our custody. Do you need a background file on him, or...?"

The receptionist was caught on Agent Chandler's face. His face seemed a bit unstern, like he was new to the job. His familiarity with his cohorts, however, seemed to indicate otherwise. Great. More out-of-state investigators. That's helpful, she thought.

"Margia? Margia! We've got work from the chief!", said a sheriff, walking up beside the receptionist of the same name. "We've got some more data on the Barks case. We need you to make sure it reaches... the FBI..."

The man trailed off as he stared down Agent Chandler's entourage.

Margia broke the silence for him. Thank God for the women of this world. And thank Satan for soulless bureaucratic efficiency.

"I've got a personnel file on him right here, actually. You can have it."

---

Mister Barks sat alone in his jail cell, keeping himself entertained by the smell of an in-station cafeteria, chatter, and a television installed in an otherwise plain and featureless cell. The room was heated; that much could purchase comfort for him. He and comfort did not meet one another very often. In a way, he was rather glad to be in police custody.

Before he had raised his hands and ridden into this station in the back of a patrol car with his hands cuffed, he had been in a warehouse that seemed colder than the outside night air. He had spent the past two months working in that warehouse, and the work was always the same... until now, of course.

all kinds of substances made their way in and out of that warehouse. Speed. Heroine. Crack. Weed. Bath salts. 'Meds'. There were countless names and words for them, but they were poison all the same. He really didn't know why he was cooperating like he was. Perhaps he simply wanted to leave the underworld life, perhaps even if that meant leaving overworld life and meeting whatever horned bastard awaited him below. He wasn't high up on the Gambino ladder. He might be able to get out of this if he played his cards straight.

Perhaps he was cooperating simply to repent for his past sins. For the bottle he busted over his dad's head when he came home drunk. For the woman he mugged in the middle of the night, holding a child in her arms that fell to the ground and screamed as he ran away with the purse. For those two men he gunned down from the safety of a getaway car. For the cop he blackmailed with his wife's life.

He was sorry for it.

At last, he could admit that. This was the first step. Fuck the Mafia and fuck his past. Live or die, now was the time to prove there was a good person inside of him after all.

He spent the next few minutes remembering exactly what had happened before his arrest. Before the murders. With his conscience a little bit clearer, the memories finally started trickling back into him, just as the clock struck 3 in the afternoon. He stood from his bed, awaiting the footsteps that came down the hallway with the keys to his cell and a pair of handcuffs.

Agent Chandler was somewhat taken aback by the almost fearful response he had gotten, but thankfully he concealed his surprise rather easily, as he already battled his own reaction to the miasma of stress, chemicals, and bagels. He tried to focus on the bagels. He appraised both the Sheriff and Margia with a calculating gaze.
"Yes, whatever you can give us would be helpful, but we'd prefer to be able to speak to him in person, if that's alright."

It wasn't likely that the station had any new information they hadn't already gleaned from the servers on their way over, but it was always polite to ask, especially if something had slipped through the net, Chandler thought. Hartford and Lukas took up either side of Chandler to suggest urgency, while Kennings stood in the back, his eyes drawn to something more important looking on his tablet.

Margia raised an eyebrow.

"Speak with him? Oh- I think we actually have him scheduled to speak with an investigator right now. I'll see if he's available."

Margia picked up the phone on her desk and dialed in a number from a set of notes she had written down on, featuring the numbers of personnel working in the station.

"Is this detective Timberleigh?"

"We have a bunch of FBI standing at the front door wanting to see Mr. Barks."

"Well, duh. They're the FBI. They always show up right when the fun starts so they can steal it. These guys look new."

"Oh, don't be so grouchy. Maybe they're one of those types who're really good at the job, and will solve the case sooner!"

Margia put down the phone, returning her attention to Agent Chandler.

"He's available. Go down the left wing of the station, he's sitting in cell 7 right now."

Chandler raised an eyebrow at Margia's comment, but elected not to say anything outside of a "Thank you." Instead, he gave a curt nod to Hartford shortly before he turned around sharply and strode off in search of his quarry.

In the meantime, Agent Hartford stepped up to the desk with a wide grin, "I'd love to take those files off your hands, if you don't mind, love."

He waved off the other two agents, in actuality only Lukas, as Kennings hadn't paid attention to anything that had happened for a while, who was then dragged outside towards their SUV by the former.

Further inside of the complex, the sharp strikes of dress shoe on tile grew ever louder, which would alert 'Mister Barks' to the approach of another visitor. The imprisoned man would not have to wonder the identity for long, as Agent Chandler's large strides brought him quickly into view as he centered himself in front of the cell door. He looked down at a file he pulled from his briefcase and then back to his quarry.

He cleared his throat, "Mister Barks, I presume?"

The rigid man looked Agent Chandler in the eyes.

"Yes? What's it to you?"

He bore the tone of a man who had been shaken by the events that surrounded him and his whole life. He approached the door, keen on the agent before him. He scanned his face, his posture, the direction of his eyes when he spoke. He'd learned their tricks himself.

For a moment, he felt playful. Mister Barks began expertly faking his body language to indicate extreme stress while mismatching it with a calm and relaxed voice.

Chandler cocked an eyebrow at the man, noting the visible scars and tattoos. He raised his eyes back to meet Barks' gaze, he let the silence simmer for a few seconds before cracking a smile.

"The better question would be, what's it to the FBI?" He said, holding up the folder. "Or to the five men found butchered? Nasty piece of work, that."

Chandler paused to set the briefcase down and off to the side, "What I, and my compatriots want to know is why. Granted, you have given us quite a bit already, but going to such lengths over some off-brand cyanide doesn't seem.. proportional, does it? Forensics teams are still finding new bits to pull out of the brickwork, you know. So whatever this is, it must be pretty important-"

He thumbed through the folder as he continued to talk, "-and from what we understand, you worked for the person gave the order. So all I want to know is where your boss is, and where he got this.. thing."

Mister Barks sighed and clasped his hands together in front of him. His eyebrows lowered as he focused only on the conversation to save his own energy.

"Look, buddy, I'm just your average crate-moving and -occassional- gun-shooting Level 1 Crook. I've got limits on what I know, and I don't see very much in the way of how my organization really ticks on the inside. But..."

He seemed to squint into Agent Chandler's eyes.

"Now that you mention it, I do know where my boss is. At least, 'probably usually' is. He moves around a lot. Doesn't like his head blown off, yadda yadda. You know that warehouse on Vaderson Street?"

"He's got a basement under there. I've seen the most important members of the family I can get my eyes on without getting a gun to the back of my head go in and out of there like clockwork. Some come back out with bruises, some come back out with a bunch of people way more important than the folks mentioned previously. That's your best bet in the direction of my boss."

"As for the poison-thing... well, again, I don't know much. Just some overheard things. Bits and bobs here and there. The most I know is that those five unlucky bastards tried to grab it out of the back of a black van with a Californian license plate and illegally-dark dark-violet-tinted windows before they got caught and dragged out into the alleyway to never come out again with a breath. Probably a drug-running vehicle whenever mob bosses don't want to secure a piece of poison."

Lukas and Kessinger sat in the SUV, watching a feed of Chandler's impromptu interrogation on a tablet they propped up against the windshield. Lukas put his feet up on the dashboard and dug into a paper bag on the floor.

"Huh, looks like Quinn's got something. Warehouse on Vaderson Street, sounds like a hub of this gang's activity. Could be our next lead?" Kessinger wondered aloud as he looked over at Lukas expectantly.

"Sounds like it." Lukas said as he fished out a ham and cheese bagel sandwich, handing it to Kessinger. "Did Hartford get anything useful out of those files?"

A voice crackled through the tinny tablet speakers, "I'm no analyst, but it looks like they know as much as we do at this point."

"Good to know Hart, looks like that warehouse is our next move." Kessinger reached over and pressed a button on the tablet. "Quinn, we've got what we need, let's wrap it up here before, ya'know, actual FBI show up?"

Inside the cell block, Chandler's attention was suddenly taken off Barks. He glanced at the entrance and picked up his briefcase before he gazed back over to the man. "I think that's all we needed, thank you." He smiled one last time as he walked off. "Lukas, how much do we know about the murder victims? Cali plates seem like they came a long way for this.."

The footsteps and voice trailed off as Chandler walked briskly, if he was lucky, that would be all of Chandler Barks would ever see.

A knock came from the driver side window of the SUV, Kessinger jumped and nearly dropped his bagel if not for a well-timed catch.
"We wanna hit the warehouse tonight? What kinda gear do we have?" Hartford said.

Lukas shrugged, "We've got a pistol in the glovebox and whatever Quinn's got in his case. We didn't exactly want to be caught with PGF gear in the trunk."

"Can you call up Central and see if we can get an armed task group on station? They're probably well equipped if the operation's that large." Hartford peered around the car, "Did Quin swing by perchance?"

"He's on his way out, I think. I can pull up what we have so far on the warehouse in the meantime." Kessinger replied.

Somewhere above the warehouse, a Purnelewian made UAS-10 'Dragon' UAV hovered, which despite its fearsome name, was the size of a small hummingbird. A FLIR camera mounted on the front gave Chandler and his cohort -who sat in their car two blocks away in an abandoned parking garage- an excellent viewpoint on their target. The tablet, again propped upon the windshield displayed the camera's output, various gangsters and cars glowed bright white, as the sensor picked up their heat signature.

"I don't think we're going to be able to FBI our way into this one, lads." Hartford commented, "What kind of gear are they letting us bring?"

"Anything small enough to fit through one of our Slips -so obviously no tanks or heavy UGVs- But we're still fixing to bring about twenty to twenty four operatives." Kessenger replied between bites of yet another bagel sandwich.

Hartfored stared at Kessinger, "With heavy kit, I hope. ..Jesus man, how many carbs have you eaten today?"

He shrugged, "It's not my fault Lukas keeps enabling me."

Lukas smirked from the shotgun seat while he steered the drone with the military equivalent of a gamepad, "Well if it's any indication, they've been moving a Terrapin suit piece by piece."

"What's next, a platoon of UAS-30s?" Chandler piped up as he threw a balled up paper wrapper -which once contained one of Kessinger's many bagels- and hit the culprit of such trash in the back of the head. "The cops are gonna freak that a 8 foot tall robot suit just showed up and started blasting, you know."

"It's a contingency. From what we can see from the outside they really only have small arms. A crack team of our country's finest can probably handle some gangbangers, yeah?" Kessinger said as he returned fire with another recently emptied wrapper. "And yes, we're bringing some Elephants over. Not to mention enough EW kit to take out half of New York's telecommunications."

A radio shoved between the back seats crackled to life, "Agent Hartford, are you there? This is Task Group callsign 'Doorbell', we've secured our transports, times two pickup trucks, times two 9-passenger vans. We're en route to the rendezvous."

Hartford, upon hearing his name, fished the radio out of the black leather. "Good copy Doorbell. Can you give me an ETA?"

A honk was heard behind them.

A column of vehicles sat behind their SUV. Two trucks with tarps concealing the contents of the bed, and two panel vans full of well armed soldiers, as promised. The door on the front most vehicle flew open as a man dressed in baggy clothing stepped out, concealing a 'Skink' special purpose exoskeleton, which was designed to be worn underneath typical dress, the only giveaway being the aforementioned bulk, and specially fitted boots and gloves to conceal the support frame.
Chandler and the others stepped out to meet the new arrival, the man grinned.

"Hartford, Lukas, Kess. Oh, look who's out in the field!" He laughed and closed the gap before Chandler could react, and was bear hugged viscously. "Glad to have you back, bud."

"Likewise, Gary-" Chandler wheezed in reply, Gary laughed once more as he released the embrace.

"So." Chandler coughed, "Let's get down to brass tacks, how are we gonna tackle this?"

---

Following a few hours of deliberation, night fell upon the city as the agents gathered around for a briefing headed by Hartford, who began promply.

"So here's the deal, we're gonna leave Kessinger here with the EW gear and set up a perimeter around the target building. Four six man fireteams will take each cardinal direction, once he presses the big red button, all the lights on the block are going to go out, as well as jam any cellphones in the vicinity. Should give us enough time to close the gap before they get the word out, and some breathing room if somebody tries to call the cops on us.

Remember, ROE prohibits us from engaging US government personnel, so just take the hits and retreat if it comes to that. Anyway, lights go out, we move in from all sides, the UAS-30s are going to provide cover fire as we approach, from then on it's a pretty standard smash-and-grab. Take what intel we can, and try to find the boss. The Terrapin is on standby if things go south, but unless they have a stockpile of RPGs, we should be able to push right through. Any questions?"

One man raised his hand, "What about exfil?"

"Oh, right." Hartford grumbled, "Well, once we've secured our HVT, we're gonna find a suitable door and get it set for a Slip so we can jump right back to Central before we get surrounded by cops, any gear we can't bring with us is gonna be scuttled. Kessinger will stay behind with the EW gear and monitor the aftermath for anything else that might pop up. This is going to be a pretty loud fight, even with suppressors, so time is of the essence. Mount up, let's hit 'em while we've still got the dark on our side."

And with that, the teams split apart to their respective vehicles and filed out of the garage one by one, each finding a dark alleyway nearby the target building to conceal themselves, taking care to try not to attract too much attention to themselves, a few fake company logos slapped upon the sides of the cars hopefully obfuscating their true intentions.

Kessinger sat in the SUV, surrounded by all sorts of electronical equipment as he monitored a dozen different screens from additional UAS-10 drones they had deployed, which created a small areal surveillance system.

Chandler -being the closest to a plain outfit- peered around the corner, watching the building carefully from his hiding spot, as he waited to give the go ahead.

"Uhhh... boss?"

Tonie Vance approached his boss cautiously. He was on edge. The smoke from his last six cigars still hung in the air, stinking it up to high hell like he always did. At this point, most of his men were used to it. Some, though they wouldn't admit to it for fear of the bullet, secretly felt bad for the old man. Stage III lung cancer will do that to a man, especially in his late 70's.

His boss answered back in a gruff accent, racked with phlegm that he had to constantly clear out whenever he spoke.

"What? Aren't you s'posed to be putting up our new shipment? What's the big deal? Why are you bothering me so fucking soon?"

"Well, we've been seeing some funny shit outside for the past few hours. Some of the watchboys have seen some kind of 'drone' over the warehouse up top."

"Ugh. Get the camera feed."

Tonie walked over to a drawer on the other end of the secluded bunker jackhammered into the concrete of the warehouse. He pulled out a Samsung tablet, swiped it, and handed it to the Boss.

Within moments, the Boss had keyed in his password, and was greeted with several camera feeds linked to the CCTV's stationed in hidden locations outside the warehouse. His eyes, sharpened by his time in Vietnam, were able to pick out a line of rather suspicious vehicles some ways outside.

Then, as he squinted in closer, mumbling, the device died. The lights zapped out above them.

"What in the fuck!"

There was a great commotion outside. The crews unloading crates from various assorted suspicious-and-illegally-modified vehicles shouted and scurried around while Tonie flipped his lighter in the already smoky and musty space.

"Tonie! What the flying fuck did you do this time?"

"I ain't got no idea, alright! It could just be the electric compa--"

He was silenced by the sound of heavy boots. And gunshots.

---

The crews working above drew their firearms and took what cover they could in the dark space, lit only by lighters and flares. A machine gun team popped open behind their usual cover spots to face the incoming attackers. Tonie stepped out to the surface, and as he rose above the staircase, it seemed he was just in time for the action to really kick in. He was lucky - he got to take cover.

Tonie was truly lucky. A fact punctuated as the two UGA-30s rolled out into the street, and opened up with belt fed machine guns that filled the air with a hailstorm of superheated metal. Walls, windows, and rooftops received a plentiful dose of fire from the drones. Dust and debris would fall as chunks of brick and concrete were blown out of the building's exterior, an opaque haze slowly formed that choked visibility.

Chandler keyed his radio, "All Doorbell callsigns, green light!"

The reaction was instant, men in grey tactical gear rushed at the building from all sides, concealed in the dark haze that engulfed the streets. All those inside lucky enough to keep their heads intact after they peeked outside could only see bulky silhouettes that moved towards them steadily. The operatives trained their weapons on the windows of the building, and fired at anyone brave enough to look down the street. The sharp staccato of suppressed rifle fire would add to the incentive of staying inside.

A good while away, Kessinger watched intently from his eyes in the sky as he commanded the UGA-30s, and gave each team updates on possible enemy positions. His eyes widened as he saw a group set up a belt fed MG. He shouted into his radio, "Doorbell east, contact on the building, get to cover!"

His warning came too late. The fire wasn't accurate by any means, but with enough bullets, you can hit anything. Red tracers lanced out, striking several of the team members as they scrambled to cover, sparks flew as high caliber rounds impacted armored plate. By the time the MG team expended their ammunition and began to reload, the team was scattered. One laid in the street, unmoving.

Injury reports came in shortly thereafter, their tones professional, but strained.
"This is Doorbell east, we have four injured, we cannot assess Agent Lukas' status. Assuming KIA."

Kessinger cursed, his hands flew across the controls for the UGA-30. The small drone whipped around the perimeter, its turret quickly trained on the thermal signature of the MG team, the bright white of their machine gun glowed like a beacon. He pressed a single button, and they disappeared into a fiery explosion. Smoke trailed from the barrel of the drone's coaxial grenade launcher.
"Treat cleared. Hang back and treat your wounded, east."

---

Hartford cursed as his back slammed against the pockmarked brick of the target building, followed quickly by the rest of his team. A flurry of hand signals directed the operatives to stack on the door in preparation for the next phase of the assault.

"Doorbell south in position, waiting on the go signal." Gary's voice sounded through Hartford's headset, followed by Chandler, who gave a similar report.

Hartford keyed his radio, "We're going to breach without you, east. Keep watch on your exits, don't let anyone through."

His men eyed him as they jittered with anticipation, he drew a flashbang from a pouch on his vest.

The team cracked open the door.

"All doorbell callsigns. Ring."

Hartford pulled the pin and tossed it deep inside the room. The resultant blinding flash of magnesium disoriented anyone unlucky enough to be caught without hearing or eye protection, albeit for a short time. Time enough for the Purnelewian team to breach, columns of heavily armed and armored operatives rushed inside, headed by one wielding a large ballistic shield.

If those inside didn't react quickly or surrender, they would soon meet their end from the barrel of a gun.

Tonie hid in a corner, still wiping his eyes of the blinding flash that had pierced the room before. His boss wasn't as fazed as him, it seemed, as he hid behind his strong metal desk flipped on its end to cover his whole body. He had seen all manner of horror in his time in the jungle, and he had told him; people crucified on punji sticks; decapitated and fed to rats; skinned and beaten and skewered in Satan's own underground tunnel system; burned alive with a flamethrower. Even in his old age, the things that clouded his sleep at night still chipped away at his sanity. Some said his tobacco was all that held him together.

The agents that now breached the inner layers of his small complex could smell it already, even behind the three layers of rooms leading down to Boss's inner sanctum all the way at the bottom, built so deep it reached into the dirt and had to be supported by wooden beams. It hung hot and vile. Boss himself said that it was his own personal calling card of sorts - you knew you were going to meet him if you smelt it, and if not, he was just there. It was enough to frighten his enemies and his disloyal. It was, in fact, the same last smell that the smuggler crew that had recently found out what happens to those who cross him ever smelled in their life.

He and Tonie could hear the poor bastards he employed in the upper three rooms go down one by one. They were caught outside. They were slaughtered. They took cover behind metal furniture and collapsible riot gear. They were slaughtered. They pulled out armor-piercing weapons behind strong emplacements. They didn't even get to use it on more than one victim - they were blinded again, and gunned down all the same.

Boss's door was strong and fortified, built to survive RPG rounds to the face with no difficulty. some might call him paranoid, but the truth is, he had always meant for it to be more of an imposing sight than a true defense. He had never expected it to actually have to meet the kinds of firepower that was being fielded outside to reach and capture him after his 40-plus-years of service to the Family. It was just for show - a ward against his foes, and a reminder to his friends on just who they were friends with, and the consequences of displeasing him.

But now, it was being torn open. The bulk of the layered titanium-infused steel-and-tungsten alloy proved quite all too destructible, as he could discern in the quiet lighter-light.

His empire. Gone in an instant. He thought long and hard about how it could have happened, what loose ends he could have left untied. That fucker, that Mr. Barks. He was useless, sniveling, cowardly trouble since he was born, into his childhood and teenage years, even as he met with him in this very room all those years ago. He never liked him. He should have just silenced him after he shot Galliope.

There was just one last trick the old man had up his sleeve, though. Very far up his sleeve, since all of these years. More accurately, it was in his desk, and now in his hands since he pulled it out a few moments ago while peeping over cover to see his door being cut open in a blaze of sparks, but it was unexpected and powerful enough to hold the figure of speech true. The four-armed bastard told him it would turn the tide of a fight he couldn't win. He didn't believe him. But he was not about to let his empire crumble without going down with it.

It was an odd thing, the little gun. It didn't look like any submachinegun he had dealt with when he got back home to sell surplus material from his war. It was far too blocky and... advanced for his liking. He'd never fired it before, and didn't know what to expect. But it was really the only thing that might be able to do some kind of damage against donut-eating arrest monkeys this well armed.

They were almost done cutting. Tonie pulled out his shotgun, what good it would do him he had no earthly idea, but he seemed to feel the same way his Boss did. Boss raised the shiny trinket over the table, and cut their little demolition project short.

"THIS IS FOR YOU, PAPA!"

The weapon's self-contained fusion generator kicked to life. An inch-miniaturized design whose operating principles could not be guessed at by the smartest researchers and engineers in the world sent forth a miniaturized H-bomb's worth of ionizing radiation in a neat, concentrated laser that punched holes through the heavyset blast door like it was cheesecloth, losing less than a tenth of its total energy and boring straight through the unlucky sods on the other end before the door could fall down by their handiwork. The streams of radioactive particles punched through several dozen feet of dirt and concrete before they so much as slowed, all the way on the other end of the room.

The weapon's barrel pivoted around on its stock, its atom-miniaturized computers and full-spectrum cameras picking out the forms of the men on the other side through a suite of sensors that made the best kit the Marines had even in modern times look like it came from the 1920's. The shots belted out at more than twenty a second, all aimed at center mass towards what they could see, some of them firing through the walls and coming out the other side to meet whoever thought they were safe behind a meter of solid tungsten-reinforced concrete... at almost full power.

They had swept through the building quickly, those inside stood little chance against such a surgical strike. No more than one or two shots were fired per target. A testament of the skill of the team, who had been plucked from Purnelaw's finest special forces to serve in this task force. It was all going so well. The agents closed in on the final door, a reinforced blast door fit for the finest holdout positions.

They quietly stacked against it, Gary himself setting the thermite upon the door. He chuckled as he ignited the thermite, whomever was inside had created a very expensive coffin.

Unfortunately for Gary, it wouldn't be Tonie's.

Beams of light flashed out from the wall, it lanced through each agent hitting near perfect center mass, their layers of composite armor doing little to prevent the laser from burrowing straight through them. Within seconds the entire breaching team was dead or dying. Chandler would find himself in the latter category, while he was missing most of his intestines now, the wound had thankfully been cauterized by the high heat. He used the last few precious seconds of consciousness to raise his underbarrel grenade launcher to one of the holes bored through by the Boss' weapon.

He pressed the trigger, and a strange device careened into the interior of the bunker. As the light from his eyes grew dim, he pulled a canister from his back, and sprayed the orange, foamy contents inside of his new body cavity before the blackness finally took him.

Tonie would briefly wonder what they fired at him before he completely forgot what he was doing. He was surrounded by strange shapes and colors, and acrid fumes that choked him. There was a strange lumpy object to Tonie's side. He began to question many things that no longer made sense.

The answer to his first question, was a Purnelewian made SCRAMBLE device, an anomalous weapon made to shred the thought processes of those who found themselves in it's radius. The effects of such a small variant meant the effects were only temporary, but it would allow for what would follow.

A massive fist punched open the blast door, and grasped the doorframe as it leveraged the bulky form of a Terrapin exosuit into the panic room. The titanic, fully enclosed walking tank quickly closed the gap as Tonie and the boss slowly grew more aware of his surroundings. But by the time he realized that the thing in his hands was a weapon meant to protect him from enemies, the enemy was already upon him.

A skull painted upon an armored visor, and a gigantic metal fist that ripped the weapon from his hands would all the boss would would see before it pinned him face down upon the cold concrete of his bunker.

The crushing weight of the exosuit threatened to crush Boss's skull. This was how it ended, then? His empire gone. His work erased. His face down in the filth, humiliated and broken like some scrap of unusably worn leather. His name wouldn't even be remembered.

Tonie put his shotgun to the back of the mech from the corner of the room, blasting it repeatedly into the joints - but to his horror, it did him no avail. The metal beast smacked him across the jaw with Boss's secret wunderwaffe, sending him careening into the corner with a bloody gash for a mouth, choking on his teeth and struggling to see the world.

The scene persisted for a few extra humiliating seconds, but just when Tonie's senses recovered enough through the agony of his broken jaw to hear the boots of the survivors outside hobble up, he could hear some strange whirring in the weapon the exosuit held in its iron grip. It was struggling.

The gun was struggling?

It was struggling. Trying to move its pivoting barrel around even as it was gripped. The suits operator tried to grip harder, but to no avail - whatever the weapon pivoted about on was so strong it trumped even the strength of the big metal fists of the high-tech suit of death and war that held it. Soon enough, it flopped free, and clacked down to the floor, flopping like some kind of fish for a mere few moments before halting in its movements.

Some of the men from outside stumbled through in time to see the scene before them, right before the barrel of the weapon moved itself to face them and fire at them without anyone holding down the trigger.

One of the surviving men outside had his head vaporized in an instant as his cauterized, headless torso was sent flying back from whence he came. The exosuit operator tried to stomp on the weapon to disable it, and as he did so, it actually seemed to work - the weight of the suit was just enough to restrain the barrel.

But fire on it did. The material of the suit's feet was melted and blasted off just as a restraint could be obtained, and many more dozen shots fired themselves through the operator's leg, across the walls and ceiling, into the ground, back at the destroyed wall of the panic room, and everywhere else. Tonie struggled to his feet and dashed behind the occupied exosuit operator with what faculties he had left, only to trip over Agent Chandler's legs on the way.

The weapon was free, but inexplicably, it tried to maneuver itself towards Boss. Instead of focusing on his enemies, it pointed its deadly manifold towards him, and connected, blowing his wrinkled old head into a puff of ash and smoke. His secrets died with him, and whatever afterlife awaited him beyond, he was there for eternity.

The exosuit operator struggled ever harder to control the impossible work of technology beneath him. But, just as the Boss met his end, it worked - the weapon seemed to die beneath his foot. It fell limp, suddenly, not doing anything.

Until it threw the operator onto his back.

The shining space-gun detonated its internal fusion reactor, releasing all of the energy it had with it in one devastating explosion that shook the dirt and dust out of the roof, threatening a cave-in for some moments before the structure settled. And then, in the darkness, the cigar smoke and spent gunpowder still hanging in the air, everything was silent for a few moments.

Tonie would rest for a second as the horrors finally fell silent. He would blink away the concrete dust that stung his eyes as it settled on the bodies and debris that surrounded him. Everything he ever knew was suddenly gone, torn away by things he would never hope to understand.

As he shakily rose to his feet, the body he tripped over would shudder to life. The mass of orange foam slowly melted and gave way to new flesh, the agent's head would slowly turn to face the mobster. Agent Chandler would lock eyes with the man, and staggered to his feet.

Tonie took a step backward. Chandler lunged, fueled by a cocktail of stimulants and pure rage.

---

Aboveground, Kessinger was having one hell of a day.

"Central, be advised, Ripcord. All stations, Ripcord." He kept his voice and tone professional, but it was clear the panic was beginning to set in. Doorbell, with the exception of east, was almost completely wiped out. His fingers danced along various touchscreens and keypads. They had a perimeter formed with the UGA-30s and what remained of Doorbell. But he sorely lacked information on what happened on the inside, except for the constant tone of vital monitor alarms.

With most of the helmet mounted cameras rendered useless -either by camera angle or melted away- all he could do was wait and hope response teams from Central would arrive in time.

Tonie had practices martial arts extensively before he became Boss's right-hand man, but in this dazed state in the dim and dank darkness, the sheer stimulated rancor of the human bull in front of him was too fast for him to counter. A grab to his hips sent him to the floor with Agent Chandler on top, pumelling his fists into his air, his sides, his throat, everywhere it hurt. Tonie was strong and tough, but this was something else he had on his hands. He could barely get any punches on this freak cop. He wasn't even trying to dodge his own return blows; he was just that jacked up, it seemed.

With one final hit, Tonie was knocked out cold. But still further the barrage of knuckles bore down on his form without any end to stamina or condition showing itself on Chandler's face or body. Tonie was almost too far gone...

But then, hobbling forth on a broken leg, a busted foot, a singed arm and a shooken cranium, the Terrapin soldier climbed out of the vice of death to stop Agent Chandler from outright killing Tonie.

He had valuable information in him.

He could die later.

Agent Chandler heard a new commotion from above, and knew it was his own people. The ordeal was over. There was nothing left to do but pick up the pieces and try to fit them together to get to the bottom of this.

All of this, over a measly capsule of poison.

---

Two pairs of black, thin, insect-like arms tapped away at the controls of some kind of keyboard with a pace that defied what should have been possible for human skill, at least, not without many hundreds of years of practice. Above them lay a great collage of camera feeds that relayed the recordings from innumerable hidden cameras, in equally myriad locations.

A pair of red irises stared back behind nanoengineered glasses that augmented the information they could collect by a factor of three. They jumped back and forth from display to display, soaking in their contents at an instant and moving to the next scene as soon as they had stayed on the last. They stared unblinking and unflinching in their survey, invested into what they saw. One by one, the cameras in one particular warehouse had begun malfunctioning. Going dead without explanation. In his usual business, the owner of those arms and eyes would be occupied only with their research and the deals he could make with the beings many hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from him. But this... this could not be left be.

He had swung himself through the low gravity over to the command station, alerted by the auxiliary notification system in his very eyewear, as soon as the first gunshots had been picked up by the sensors. To his dismay, the camera feeds all died shortly after. All but one.

The quantum entanglement and photonic systems on the little toy he had given his contact were as good as he could make them without handing over enough of his capabilities to these primates to let them find out where he was, let alone fight him. Still, the feed he collected from its eye were enough for him.

Curses. His contact had been discovered. They would be overwhelmed.

He couldn't have any loose ends, lest he be discovered. Without the slightest hesitation or second thought, he ordered the weapon's AI to kill his contact and self-destruct to keep his technology safe from prying eyes. His singular coverage was reduced to nothing, leaving him staring at nothing but blank screens with no connections to see. He sat idly at the situation before him, his mind lost in rumination.

After some seconds of idleness, he moved again with speed and readiness. A few presses on his interface brought him face-to-face with another of his contacts. The scene before him changed after some seconds of relativistic lag to the interior of a fabulous home, with a beautiful human woman front and center.

"D...Doctor?"

His furred visage gave no reply. It emitted the same unsettling, clinical, dehydrated and ice-cold stare he was famous for. He put his black, four-fingered arms together.

"Miss Vonica. We have a problem."

Chandler rose to his feet, he wheezed as the wave of adrenaline drained from his body, and sat down against the basement wall. He fought against another wave of black that rolled across his vision as he keyed his radio. He managed to force out a situation report before he lost feeling in his arm. It dropped limp against the concrete.

"Doorbell, compound secure. HVT is KIA. One suspect-- detained. Mass casualties."

"Good copy, Doorbell." Chandler twitched, the voice hadn't come from his radio. Rather from a man on his left. He twisted his neck to stare at the new arrival, who stood in front of a door that he never noticed during the firefight. The man stepped out of the doorway, as a crowd of men in white jumpsuits pushed past him. "Fairplay doctrine has been revoked, we're authorizing the full range of Esoterics on this case."

Chandler cocked an eyebrow, "Full sentences?"

The man on his left laughed. "How the tables turn. Speaking of-" He gestured at the carnage, which was being meticulously picked over by the new arrivals. High intensity flashlight beams cut through the darkened haze. "-what happened?"

"Our HVT had some kind of energy weapon. Smart tracking and being able to be remotely piloted, it seems. Blew the old man's head right off before it fried my suit." The Terrapin suit operator piped up as an additional throng of people in white jumpsuits emerged from the door, and pulled him onto a stretcher.

"A way to dissuade enemies, and tie up loose ends. Perhaps our supplier was keeping tabs on his customers?"

"Seems that way-- wait, what are you doing? We're having a conversation here- hello?!" The agents pushed the stretcher back through the door, the man's protests fell on deaf ears as his voice trailed off.

Left man shook his head. The clean up crews certainly spared little time. In the few seconds he had his attention elsewhere, the bodies of Doorbell were already loaded into body bags and on their way back home, and Chandler's most recent punching bag, Tonie, was loaded onto a stretcher with extra restraints. Forensics analysts with cameras and other detection equipment flooded the rest of the warehouse, they scoured every inch of the warehouse with remarkable precision.

The extensive surveillance camera network was dismantled, and very nearly every electronic device within the building quickly found itself sealed in a plastic bag, dropped into a faraday cage equipped ruggedized box, and sent through the door. The Terrapin suit -or rather what was left of it- was pieced apart and removed from the bunker in short order as well.

The man who had been standing on the left side of Chandler -who had been carted away by the clean up team, so he technically was no longer standing to the left of Chandler- checked his watch.
Additional agents poured from the doorway, their arrival marked the final stage of the clean up. They lugged bags full of spray paint and civilian grade firearms. Promptly covering the floors and walls with slogans filled with obscenities -of both english and spanish varieties- as well as the logo of the 'Los Zetas' cartel. Shell casings and various broken rifles were carefully scattered along the floor to make it appear the attack was a sloppy reprisal, rather than a sloppy special forces raid.

The alarm on Left man's watch went off, it was time to leave.

---

Outside the perimeter, Kessinger powered off the last of the UAS-10 drones, he put them back within the foam lined case. He pondered for a second before he closed the lid and latched it tight. Never in all of years had a raid gone this badly for him, sure, there had been operations with higher fatality rates, but at least they had expected it. He walked over to a door in the middle of the parking garage, he wheeled the drone case inside. Kessinger dusted himself off, it was just a matter of removing the plates on the SUV and getting it back to the motor pool.
That was, of course, before he peered inside the car.

He cursed loudly.

His gluttony doomed him once more.

---

Tonie would return to the realm of conscious thought in a room, while not unusual, as he did that every day, the room itself certainly was. Walls and floors a stark white, cleaned to perfection. A table and chairs arranged with meticulous accuracy in the middle, and a bed he found himself in pushed into the far corner. He couldn't see any doors, nor feel any pain. In fact, as he felt his jaw, it seemed like nothing had ever happened. Well, apart from the fact he found himself in a strange place, where the air felt.. too clean.

A section of the wall receded, and then slid away without a sound. A man stood where the wall once was. Tonie would recognize him immediately.

Agent Chandler adjusted his tie, and gestured towards the seats at the table. "Let's talk."

Tonie obliged his former enemy, still touching all over his jaw and wondering at how it was perfectly fine after what had happened to it. He sat down as Agent Chandler sat to face him on the other end. This was going to suck.

Tonie had been tortured before. He recalled the night it had happened. He was a lowly street thug of his, driving shotgun in a getaway car while the rest of his crew never came back out outside of a pair of bodybags. They shot his tires out and dragged him out to have his fingernails ripped out, five of his teeth busted out, his skin covered in bruises and burned in some places. He was drugged and kept in there for four whole days until he found his way out, using the corpses of his captors as shields. Boss found him again some time after, his will scratched but unbroken, and promoted him immediately. Everyone who knew him feared him - even the dreaded Mister Barks.

But, his torturers were a shoddily-assembled gang of crooks with lead pipes, screwdrivers, pliers and cheap grill lighters with some rope and duct tape and broken, run-down concrete floors. The people who had him now didn't look American, and they didn't look nearly as primitive.

But then, he remembered. His boss was either dead or not a mob boss anymore. He had no allegiance anymore, and nothing else to lose.

He smiled.

"I like how you decorated the place. Looks like a fine place to go waterboarding."

"Waterboarding is so last century." Chandler laughed, he strolled over and sat down at the table, he pulled a briefcase from somewhere Tonie hadn't noticed before, and began to lay out the contents, various files and documents soon filled Chandler's side of the desk, neatly arranged in a grid pattern.

"Let's cut to the chase," He tapped one of the files on the desk, "Your organization dealt with a lot of illicit cargo, obviously some important enough to kill over. Like those five men we found butchered in an alleyway." He cleared his throat, "Also, important enough to give you boss a.. laser cannon, for the lack of a better term. A laser cannon that also blew your boss' head off when we got close."

"My question, then, is who did he get it from?"

---

Kessinger lounged in an office chair, he watched a myriad of lab technicians scouring various hard drives, cell phones, and tablets for any useful tidbits of information on any unusual clients the gang might've had. He himself had a dissected CCTV camera on his desk, while most of it was not entirely unusual for camera standards, he had found a chip embedded within the device that piqued his interest.

"Agent Kessinger, you called?" A woman wearing grey BDUs stood in the doorway to the lab.

"Yes, yes I did. Come take a look at this." He said as she walked over and peered over his shoulder, "I don't think I've ever seen one of these in a CCTV system."

The officer squinted, "Seems to me like a digital signal converter."

"Yeah, but I've never seen one so complex before! You could probably receive a feed from halfway across the planet without any sort of relay."

She shrugged, "So somebody else was watching us?"

Tonie recalled the day his boss started acting weird. It was a few days before the murders. His boss hadn't come out of the panic room for almost the whole day. He was real touchy about anyone getting to see or hear what he was doing in there normally, but for this occasion, he had made sure to clear the whole bottom level of his management complex. Like everyone, he never caught a glimpse of of what went on that day.

But its effects were apparent. The next day, a shipment of weird-looking black square-things and something in a briefcase - probably a weapon - came in from the blue, and Boss was adamant at using and placing them in specific ways. Every camera in the warehouse was taken apart, and Boss had a bunch of techies put the little things inside of them with guns to their backs. Said techies now formed a permanent component of the concrete foundation for the new bank on the other side of Albany.

He never acted in a familiar way after that. Locking him away in his panic room became commonplace. But as time wore on, he was able to inch closer and closer, just shy of his boss noticing him. He started being able to hear, ever-so-faintly, a muffled conversation he was having on the other side of the blast door. He started seeing things written on paper in the panic room, when the Boss wasn't there, that most likely would have gotten him a very stern talking to if his Boss ever caught him.

In truth, he had no idea who was really in touch with Boss. But there was one name, scribbled on the papers and very faintly discernibly whispered beyond the blast door, that always kept showing up.

"I do not exactly know who he was in touch with, I'm sad to say. The case had strange written all over it. I'm honestly itching to learn what happened as much as you..."

Tonie cracked his knuckles and stretched. Space-age treatments he had no knowledge of or no, the past events were tiring. He'd love to get a good night's rest right about now.

"... All I have is a name that kept cropping up around him."

"And what would that be?"

"Komari."

---

On closer examination, the device in question did not look to be electronic at all. In fact, it was made using many diamondoid components. It had many components attached to it whose only purpose seemed to be translating electronic signals... into light emissions?

This technology had been seen before. Elsewhere, scientists had made inroads into constructing computers and other systems using fiber-optics and diamondoid structures to manipulate light. The speed and heat-efficiency advantages could theoretically let computers orders of magnitude more powerful than the most advanced equipment Purnelaw could produce.

"Looks like it. Hey, you think it would make good earrings? I'm diggin' the black crystal style of this thing."