Issue 1 Downtime

Dressed unseasonably warm, Salma walked across the parking lot from her rental and into the front doors of the SysGen, Inc. office.

The secretary looked up and smiled at her. "Hello, Salma," she said, in American accented English. "Dr. Flag is just getting ready for your inspection, if you would like to have a seat. How have you been? Any problems?"

"Ah, hello," she replied, smiling and accepting the offer to sit, but not before removing her coat, the metal surrounding her neck now plainly visible.

"I've had no problems to speak of since the last visit. That 'click' sound that my leg was making has been all cleared up, I think."

"Good, they'll be glad to hear that. And... ah, good, Dr. Flag will see you now. Right through that door, you know the way."

The hallway led to a laboratory, which was half machine shop, half doctor's examination room. A familiar frame for her to step into, with a shaped recess to fit her body, stood waiting.

As usual, Salma stepped into the frame for the diagnostics testing.

The familiar voice of Dr. Flag came in over the speakers. "Ah, hello Salma," he said as the rack lay back and the probes inserted into her bionics to begin examining them. "So good to see you again, my dear. Has everything been all right this week? No more problems with overheating in your command centers?"

She shook her head in the negative, though very gently so as not to bend the probes. "None, Docteur Flag. Even running has become easier."

"Excellent, excellent. And it seems that all of your physical functions are running completely normally. I believe that, barring breakdowns, we can consider your rebuilding to be complete," the doctor said, sounding pleased as the probes retracted after spending a few minutes running diagnostics.

This time, instead of the rack turning up to let her up, though, another clamp slid into place to hold her head still.

"Umm.....what are you doing this time, Docteur?" Her eyes darted back and forth, already anxious.

"Now, Salma, we're going to check your software," the voice answered calmly.

Another probe extended, and Salma could feel it, disconcertingly, sliding into a discreet port in the back of her skull.

"Uhmm....uh...o-okay...."

Nerves, Salma. Just nerves. She closed her eyes to take a few deep breaths, but the insertion of the probe made her gasp.

"Very good," Dr. Flag's voice came again. "Now, just lie still while we check your coding."

It would take a while before an alert finally came into her head.

Code: Select all

External manipulation registered.
Attempting to purge external access
ERROR Unable to purge external access.
Autonomous functions compromised.  Cognative function preservation initiated.

"C-Cogna-..."

No. This is wrong.

As anxiety started turning into panic, the room would become noticeably colder.

There was a panicked commotion off to the side, as techs rushed in and started turning on countermeasures.

Code: Select all

External countermeasures negating mutation control
Motor functions compromised.  Initiating countermeas
ERRORERRORERRORERROR
Protocol 19 initiated.

Salma suddenly lay stiff and unmoving, her mouth open slightly. She could only barely move her eyes to look, yet she couldn't even make sense of what she saw.

The commotion seemed to increase drastically.

"...w did that activate through the lockdown?"
"Can't deactivate it. Should we reboot?"
"Might not be able to access again. And this one can fry us if we shut off the control systems to reboot. Keep the codebreaker going."

Damned right I can fry you. She closed her eyes, trying to somehow will herself into working again, but to no avail.

There was an even louder commotion happening in the halls. The scientists at the side of the room were trying to get something to work, and the dataflow was somehow becoming uncomfortable.

There was a loud crash as something she couldn't see fell off to the side of the room. Then, suddenly, she felt the probe in her head disengage, and she'd find that while her power hadn't reasserted itself yet, she could move her body again, enough that she could see the nondescript blonde-haired boy standing next to her rack, disengaging its systems. Where he'd come from? Who knew. This close, though, she could see the imperfect melding of skin on his face that indicated cyber-implants that had been covered in a hurry.

He only managed one word before he vanished from her line of sight. "Run!" he hissed, pointing to a door in the back of the room.

Salma staggered up onto her feet. She had barely regained her balance before the boy's words sank in and she started jogging, then running out of the room, back from where she had entered.

The boy, oddly, was nowhere to be seen, but she had the oddest sense of deja-vu involving him...

The doors led into a hall, which at the moment was deserted, though from the sound of things, that was about to change rather drastically and in great numbers from either side. And, indeed, even while she picked a direction to go, the first of the armed guards came into view.

A golden flash appeared behind Salma... and then there were three of them as Cal and Taliyah teleported in.

"Ha! He has superspeed and we still found her first. I've got this side," Cal said, opening fire at the closest hallway that seemed to be spilling armed guards out.

Taliyah glowed vibrant red, "Just what I needed."

Thrusting her hand out and taking a swing, a large red fist appeared out of nowhere and crashed into a small group of guards.

"Who are you?" She could do the math and see that he was on her side, but someone she didn't know suddenly blinking in and shooting down guards that were coming after her was still disconcerting.

Regardless, she made for what she thought would be the nearest exit.

"We're the help you called for!" Cal called over the gunfire.
HAL, we need an escape route.

Code: Select all

Acknowledged.  Access to local infonet indicates a tunnel system running below this level of the building.

"Perfect. T! I'll cover your side, can you smash us a hole in the floor?"

"Try and shoot me!" Taliyah yells happily, hammer throwing a comically large red axe towards a group of shoulders.

"Yeah, yeah," Taliyah says, clenching her fist as more light is pulled towards her, burning red as it comes near and collects around her hand, "I've got it."

With a loud yell she punches the floor, letting out a charge of hard light into the ground.

Cal, meanwhile, was covering both sides, one with each gun. "Perfect!" he called over the racket. "Down you go, I'm last!"

Indeed, below them, there was another room that the hole opened to. It looked like some kid of storage room.

"Wait, I am supposed to jump?! But it looks like a long fall!"

Cal frowned, then tossed his gun into the air long enough to extend the power staff and hand it to her. "Hold that while you do it then! Just trust me, it's better than getting shot!" he told her as he caught his gun again and started firing again.

"Will you idiots move!" Taliyah shouts, blocking bullets with what looks like a big red catcher's mitt.

Cal gave Salma a push, trusting the staff's antigrav routines (that he'd already activated) to get her down safely. "Go!" he shouted, covering Taliyah's retreat into the hole.

Taliyah jumps down into the hole with a laugh.

For a few seconds, all the girls would be able to see was a sudden explosion of arcing electricity above them. Then the building seemed to lose power as Cal jumped down the hole, landing in a crouch next to them while... something crashed down above. "All right, we've got at least five minutes before they can get the power back on, probably longer before they can get their communications up again," he said, his vision shifting to the invisible spectrums.

Salma winced as she fell over the edge...but what was pleasantly surprised when she landed easily.

“I’m glad that you have come to rescue me and everything, but what the hell is going on?” She grasped Cal’s shoulder in the dark to follow where he lead. With her power working, she could probably sense where the cooler walls and warmer air was, but since her power was only slowly coming back to her, she had to trust the strangers even more.

"Well, we found you in a hall, so I'm not sure what they were doing," he said as he started them down the hall. "But all three- well, the two of us and our friend that's been running around through the south half of the building to see if you're there, got a distress call from you about five to ten minutes ago. So here we are."

"Speak for yourself," Taliyah says, glowing red in the dark, "I'm just here to mess shit up."

"Don't worry, I'll keep your soft, sensitive side a secret, Red," Cal said, smirking as they picked their way down a hall. "I'm sending Eric the layout so he can meet back up with us. Something got turned on that's jamming my bodyslide system... we have to get out of range before we can jump out again." Which means they did their homework and expected this. Or planned for the possibility, really.

There was muffled crashing above as guards seemed to be scattered forcefully, before the chaos moved quickly from room to room to room.

Code: Select all

OverDriver: Where are you blokes? I swear, I've crossed this entire bloody building four times over!

Code: Select all

OverDriver: Too slow, lad.

One burst of air later, Eric was beside the trio.

"Smartass," Cal grumbled. "All right, that way," he said, leading them down the hall and away from where they'd broken in. "They shouldn't have been able to home in on that signal like you, but we're not taking chances."