Chapter 47

SECRETS UNEARTHED

Talia pulled on the director’s consciousness. It was easy compared to what it had taken to do the same to Flashpoint or the Ice Queen even for a few moments. But it was harder than stealing a recent memory, as she’d done to the officer at the police precinct.

She pushed away the facets of her personality, isolating her thoughts and core self to reduce the strain. The usual scene melted away, replaced by a small windowless room with a single chair at its center. In it, she placed the director.

Standing in front of him, she gazed into his eyes. “Let’s start with something simple,” she said, considering her options. “What is your greatest fear?”

A memory surfaced. She allowed it to flow out of his mind, overtaking the spartan room and replacing it with something very different.

The director was back in Europe, inside a Santiago Systems black-site. It unfolded around her: a circular chamber with shielded, layered walls. At its center, a man was strapped into a monstrous contraption with tubes running into his nose and mouth. A device clamped around his head blinded and deafened him. His body pulsed faintly, light rolling off him like a star with a heartbeat.

On the other side of the observation window, a briefing was being delivered to a dozen directors.

“He’s a living reactor,” one of them whispered. “If he detonates, it would be equivalent to a hundred Hiroshimas.”

The room murmured. A woman asked why they didn’t simply kill him.

“We tried. Nothing works. Anything harmful that touches his skin is obliterated. Poisons burn out of him. We’ve tried starving him. We tried to drown him, too, and the water boiled until the entire facility was at risk.”

Someone else asked about collapsing the facility on him.

“Not a viable option. If it fails, he'll be free.”

Another voice, sharp with nerves. “Why not get Star Titan to help? His powers are plasma-based.”

Silence. Then, the leader of the gathering answered. “If Star Titan ever learns this man exists, we are all dead. They’re brothers.”

“Then shoot him into space!” another shouted.

“We tried. His chamber requires so much cooling that we’re boiling part of the ocean every year, which means we can’t move him on a transport. So we had a teleporter attempt it, but as you know, many superpowers have automatic defenses. The teleporter was incinerated the moment he tried it. He was standing roughly where you are right now.”

The room grew quiet again, dread and discomfort mixing.

Talia felt the memory dissolve. Stepping out of her Mind Palace, the director groaned from his place on the floor. Drool pooled beneath him. She noted the strain on herself, glancing up to find Alexander had shifted several servers away.

Time had passed outside, even though it felt suspended inside. Even though it usually was.

Bringing another into the Mind Palace fully lost me the benefit of time, then.

Talia pulled the director back into the dark room.

He met her eyes this time, his own wide with panic. “Please don’t do this. Just let me go. I’ll leave. I’ll make sure the others leave too!”

“Not until you’ve given me what we need,” Talia said, focusing on his thoughts. “Now, what are the greatest secrets you keep?”

Two memories rose from the depths of his mind. She parsed them both at the same time.

The first was even older than the previous memory, taking place in a fancy boardroom. At the head of the table was someone Talia recognized: Gabriel Santiago.

“The First is growing stronger,” a scientist reported.

Gabriel waved a dismissive hand. “She’s mastering her powers. It’s a good thing.”

The scientist shook his head. “No, sir, you misunderstand. Her baseline was stable for months. After killing the vampire villain, her baseline increased by roughly seven percent. Not just physical strength, either. There are significant increases in her durability and her ability to process information.”

“Why does this matter?” Gabriel asked, curious.

One director spoke up. “Because it aligns with insider intelligence at Zeigler and Co. They’ve started developing implants to track superhuman development, showing that they’re seeing similar anomalies.”

Gabriel’s gaze sharpened. “What about the big G?”

“Our insiders there say they’ve been working on similar projects for the past two months.”

Gabriel slammed a fist on the table. “And nobody thought that was important?!” he shouted, then took a deep breath. “You have a blank check. Find out what’s going on and how we can get ahead of it. I will not come last in this race!”

The scene shifted. Another meeting, faces drawn tight with exhaustion and stress.

“It’s not just superhumans,” a scientist said. “We implanted normals, cybernetically enhanced humans, and superhumans. Superhuman growth is speeding up. Augments are growing on a similar, if delayed, curve. And we identified a single, mundane human who exhibited an unexplainable spike in durability.”

One director rubbed his eyes. “The tests definitively ruled out the serum, implants, and all cybernetics as the cause.”

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“Then who is behind it?” Gabriel demanded.

“Our think tanks narrowed it down to two equally ridiculous possibilities. Alien interference… or a superpowered, sentient AI.”

The other directors scoffed at the ideas. “Impossible. The Galactic Council would glass the planet before letting someone build a true AI.”

“Not to mention the joke that it might have superpowers. How’d they accomplish that? Pour serum onto a graphics card?”

Laughter around the table echoed and faded as the memory cracked apart.

Talia split her focus, processing what she’d uncovered from the first of the two parallel memories, while skimming over the second and picking out what was important.

The director’s reassignment had been a cover. His true responsibility was to conceal the financial burden of a black-site outside Argentum by inflating this facility’s own costs.

He’d never been told the site’s location. All he knew was that it lay deep underground and that the only way to access it was through a monthly gateway activation. Reports were exchanged for supplies and other necessary resources, with the connection immediately cut afterwards. The personnel stationed there had chosen their fate, signing contracts that promised their families generational wealth for what amounted to lifelong servitude.

Though the facility was in Argentum, the gateway itself was in Europe.

Not even the CEO of Santiago Systems knew the location, a precaution against mind readers. The coordinates were kept in a single location: the servers surrounding her now. The password to that file existed only in the director’s memory. And he had come down here intending to erase the information, following security protocols, when Grimnir arrived.

Before she released her Mind Palace, she asked one more thing. Something that might help answer another important question.

Then she released her Mind Palace with a sigh. Hair stuck to her temples and forehead; the exhaustion wasn’t extreme, but it was ill-timed given what was coming next.

“I have something, Alex,” she said, then slammed the director’s head into the floor and knocked him out.

Alexander drowned in data.

When he’d first slipped his consciousness into one server, the task had seemed simple; locate critical information on Santiago Systems operations, the sort they’d never allow to see the light of day.

The machines had been all too happy to assist, delivering anything he requested. However, unlike security panels or drones, computers didn’t have a limited suite of functions. When he demanded information… they complied.

Hundreds of files washed over his mind, followed by thousands, then tens of thousands. When his commands reached the mainframe, millions more vied for his attention. Consciousness fled before the onslaught, while his unconscious mind tried to filter out what they didn’t need.

It was too much.

Then, a crack, followed by a distant stinging sensation.

Pain is good for the soul…

Alexander’s mind chased it, desperate to escape. Returning to consciousness, he staggered back from the server until the room filled his vision. He gasped for air, struggling to remember how his body worked.

“Are you alright?” Talia asked, leaning down and grabbing his face.

He squeezed his eyes shut and forced his racing mind to slow. “I made a mistake,” he muttered. “They tried so hard to answer my demand, but it was too much all at once. The machines had no way of knowing what I was really seeking, so they gave me everything.”

Talia stood up and pulled him to his feet. “Your eyes were rolled back into your head, and they sparked with electricity.”

Alexander grinned. “At least it was a cool, dumb moment. Let’s agree never to tell Annie, alright?”

She raised an eyebrow, one corner of her mouth turning up. “I don’t know, Alex… I was very worried. It might be best if the others know, so they can watch your back next time you go server surfing.”

“I know what happened to Annie’s last strawberry pudding.”

Talia flinched. “Let’s never speak of this moment ever again.”

“Knew you’d see it my way,” Alexander said. “Did you get anything at least?”

She glanced at the unconscious director. “More than I expected, but less than I wanted… Alex, they’re not behind the stats, and it doesn’t seem like anyone really knows who’s doing it. They’ve known about it since the beginning, and their best theories are superpowered AI or aliens.”

Alexander frowned.

“It’s speeding up, too. They’ve even detected changes in normal people with no cybernetics or implants.”

He ran his fingers through his hair with a sigh. “That’s a dead end then. Anything we can use?”

“Yes, grab the files from a directory called ‘DEO-FIN-REPORTS’,” she said. “Everything else here is legitimate cybernetics R&D.”

Alexander stepped over to the nearest server. He hesitated a moment, then firmed his resolve. Slipping his senses back into the server, he went searching for files again. First, he created a concise set of search parameters, targeting technical documents and schematics for their cybernetics and power systems. Santiago Systems didn’t know it yet, but they were going to provide the foundations for some big projects of his own.

Then he went looking for the directory Talia had provided. The mainframe obliged, pointing him several hops across the network until he found a highly encrypted drive. With a thought, he instructed the server to copy the files from his first search to the same drive, commanded it to play a string of beep codes, then slipped back out of the system.

They followed the sound to one corner of the server room. Alexander ripped the cover off with a thought, disconnected the drive and pocketed it.

“There was one more thing,” Talia said when he was done. “The corporations and governments redact information about dangerous powers. That’s what led to the Redacted classification.”

He nodded as they walked, wondering where she was going with it.

“Your powers aren’t unique, outside of how your Technopathy works. So I asked him what he knew about that,” she said, grabbing his arm and bringing them to a stop. “There are two types of redaction, Alex. The first hides information from people about what a power can do, how to train it, and even how it can be intentionally unlocked with the serum.”

Talia stared into his eyes with an intensity he hadn’t seen before. “The other occurs during the awakening process, right when the serum is injected, and it hides information even from the corporation handling it. It’s incredibly rare, and they’re not behind it. They think it’s whoever is causing everything else to change.”

Alexander considered it for a moment. “The aliens? Or a superpowered AI?”

“That’s what they think,” she said with a shrug.

He sighed. The information was useful in that it at least provided insight into what had happened to him, but it raised more questions than it answered. It seemed obvious to him that his Technopathy was the cause, being the primary power of the synergistic trio. And while he loved the powers he had, he just couldn’t see a way that Technopathy could be enough of a threat to warrant such a response.

Could it really be a superpowered AI? If so, maybe it’s afraid that I can command it like every other machine…

“Thanks, Talia,” he said, shaking his head to clear his thoughts and heading for the door.

“What now?” Talia asked, following him to the exit.

Alexander paused in the doorway, glancing back at the rows of servers. “What’s here might not be of any further use to us… but that doesn’t mean we can’t hurt them with it.”

He swept the room with Technopathy. With methodical patience, he shut down firewalls, antivirus, and disabled reporting to intrusion detection and prevention systems. Then he reached out to the mainframe and turned off the protocols ensuring it maintained an air gap from the rest of the building’s network.

Immediately, he detected automated intrusion attempts attacking the undefended systems. With a grin, he left it with one last command.

Accept all handshake requests.

“Now their R&D belongs to whoever wants it,” Alexander said. “Let’s get everything ready while we wait for the others to join us.”