ic Where Do We Go? (IC)

[Electra]

"Understood, we'll bring him in now." Miss A ended the holocall and shunted her robot shell into autopilot with instructions to bring itself to the lab. Sliding effortlessly into the familiar network of ArcheTech HQ, her consciousness was in 3-A in a heartbeat, cameras turning to focus like eyes, equipment humming to life for hands and feet. An Emerson hibernating in the corner woke and stretched its spindly neck to look around. It was the work of a moment to disable the security shields designed to foil teleports and to unlock the lab's safety doors so that nobody would smack a literal or metaphorical nose while trying to enter the room.

 

"Please set Agent Irons on the center table," Miss A instructed Voltage, her voice calm and even from the wall intercom. "There is a set of impervium-edged surgical shears on the equipment table, they should be able to cut through the uniform. Please make a vertical cut down from the neck of the uniform to expose the chest." The doors slid open to admit the rest of the scientists, mere seconds after they'd left the conference room. The robot would be slower, and was likely to wait for the elevator, so for now Miss A was bodiless. "Eira, please go to the helipad and greet the director and his team when they arrive. Scarab, would you go with her and help to secure the tech they're bringing in?"

[Thunder King]

Voltage followed the instructions to the best of his ability, but he was clearly awaiting assistance. He had fixed, repaired and worked on a great deal of technology, but he had never tried to save a life before. He wondered if pieces of his own suit could be used to help the man. He wondered a lot about what he could do to help. 

[Avenger Assembled]

The scene was a difficult one. 

 

Agent Irons had the build of a muscular man in his late forties, his AEGIS uniform stained with a red-dyed blood substitute that didn't look quite right to skeptical eyes. His skin was cold to the touch and his body was heavy, enough that Voltage had had to exert himself to bring him here on time in the first place. The most obvious thing wrong with Irons was a bullet hole in the face, a small entryway over the left eye matched by a big, gaping hole in the back of his head. This wasn't simply a mechanical injury; processors crackled and sparked inside the head, and though power was clearly still running through the system, this was a badly damaged robot. Silvery metal was visible underneath the robot's torn skin, a color that almost precisely matched that of Eira's silvery coating when she wasn't passing for human. 

 

Agent Irons didn't arrive alone - there was another robot with them, a golden-haired, glowing-eyed model with multiple bullet holes in its torso and head, with signs of heavy damage from other causes. This robot had no internal power active at all; its face frozen in a look of what might have been pain. The AEGIS agents introduced themselves Director Bonham (a muscular, dark-skinned, balding man in his late fifties), Agent Barry Sadler (who looked more like a gentle-eyed accountant than an agent), Agent Zoe Gonzalez, an Afro-Latina who looked to be the youngest of the group - all of them looking highly under stress at the moment. 

 

"There's...more gear back in the car," said Gonzalez, retreating from the room where the scientists were working, "I should go get it; it's our stockpile from the scene." 

 

"We were in the process of taking down what used to be a Foundry facility when we were attacked without warning," said Bonham by way of explanation. "Agent Irons secured the target, but there was an - altercation. We were fortunate no one else was injured before the target was finally subdued," he said with a nod towards the other robot. "What-what can you do for him?" 

[Fox]

Dragonfly dispersed her wings before entering the laboratory, the plates on her heavy gauntlets already flexing open to deploy a set of small, articulated tools. She wasted no time or apology in using these to gently poke and expose Agent Irons' gunshot - though she was careful not to touch anything that still had power running through it. In her head, she pulled the robot open, a dismantled blueprint with fuzzy spaces where she couldn't immediately see. could be worse "Memory's intact, bullet hit...processing? Should probably isolate it before bullet extraction, repairs; limit risk of damage."

 

She paused, sparing a glance at Keres - there was something there that bothered her, and she took a moment to lean over and eye the ex-Foundry robot's own damage. caliber - penetration relative to differences in armor and material - correlation? "....altercation," she repeated, turning her helmet toward Bonham. "Friendly fire?"

[Electra]

The Emerson, a blocky little robot that bore a passing resemblance to Wall-E, rolled over to the body and extended its camera eye high enough to get a look over the edge of the table. "The head looks like it's going to be a total write-off, it'll be easier to fabricate a new one than to put this back together in any way that looks at all natural," Miss A's voice came through the speaker. "If you think the memory processor is intact, we should try to get a backup while the system still has some power. Somebody should get a look at Keres over there too, make sure that he's not going to wake up when we're not looking."

[EternalPhoenix]

Terrifica stepped back and let the others work. It bothered her. She juggled her tools absentmindedly as her mind raced. The story being told here. It didn’t fit. Keres was a front man and an assassin. Why would he care about a decommissioned facility. The easy answer was that it wasn’t as decommissioned as AEGIS thought. But Keres could look like anyone he pleased. It didn’t make sense. “Director Bonham…with respect, can you explain the altercation please? It isn’t that I don’t believe you. The Director of AEGIS should know Keres’s capabilities as well as I do, if not better.” Leaving unspoken that he should be just as paranoid about them as she was if not moreso. Because it was entirely possible that Keres wasn’t Keres and he was posing as one of the AEGIS agents.

[Avenger Assembled]

Angelic joined Voltage upstairs with Agent Gonzalez, though she maintained an active radio link to Miss Americana's consciousness in the building. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her hands shoved firmly in her pockets when she wasn't needed to carry something. She looked every inch the teen intern rattled by the difficult events of the day. Upstairs she looked around at the wrecked gear - the fragments of Charibdrones, the burnt-out remnants of an automatic helicopter, and even as she powered up her internal workings to assist in loading what couldn't be teleported into freight carts, she sent Miss Americana a message. This is routine Foundry gear. AEGIS should know this. 

 

For her part, Agent Gonzalez looked vaguely sick as she helped Voltage sort through the super-tech upstairs, though she firmly rejected any questions about it. "No, no I'm a professional, and I have a job to do. Agent Irons - wouldn't have wanted it any other way." She scrubbed a hand across her face, then went back to work. 

 

- 

 

It looked for a moment like Agent Sadler was going to speak, but then Bonham spoke, "Yes, of course. We found what was supposed to be a small Foundry holdout on an offshore oil rig. It turned out to be a substantial facility, guarded by one of the most powerful synthetic criminals in the world." 

 

"...Keres deserved what he got," said Sadler, turning and staring at the fallen form of the Foundry's shapeshifting robot. "You're not - not just going to repair the thing, are you? It's a monster." 

"Agent Irons is one of our few meta-agents and a specialist in the Foundry, so he engaged Keres while the rest of us engaged the Charibdrones." Bonham looked away at the form of his fallen ally, then said, "I'm not a computer expert, but our remote consultant recommended a full wipe. There may be...corruption of the software as a result of Keres' nanotech. Agent Irons uses a backup memory that's stored off-site. I can have him brought there for uploading if you can repair his hardware." 

 

"Agent Irons is one of our best people," said Sadler, his voice tight. "It would be...awful to see him like that. For all we know that may _be_ Keres," he indicated with a stab of the finger at the form of the robotic agent. 

[Electra]

Dragonfly's helmet radio made a soft chiming noise as an outside connection tried to establish itself. It was not hard to recognize Miss Americana, who had contacted her via technopathy before. "Something isn't right," and this was Gina's voice, flat and unhappy. "Eira says that the only tech they've got up there is standard Foundry gear, nothing that should have them antsy. And these guys... " The Emerson next to Dragonfly swiveled its camera all the way around to take in the whole field, even as it withdrew the offered connector cord. "I know these guys wouldn't tell you the weather without a little subterfuge in front of it, but this is different. They're hiding something big, and I don't want any part of it in my computers."

[EternalPhoenix]

Terrifica folded her arms under her chest and looked at the two agents. One rank and file, more or less. The other the literal director of the agency. She said nothing. She said it a lot. The kind of silent stare (though she did blink behind the cowl) that spoke volumes about how she knew they were lying through their teeth. But like all things good and bad, the silence came to an end. “Director, would you care to elaborate and/or rephrase?” Yes, the witch was in town. Some ice sliding into that tone, yes indeed. “I understand that you’re the leader of a security and spy agency and thus must keep some secrets. I also understand that you’ve had a long, hard, and stressful day. But, with respect to Miss Americana, this isn’t the ‘Agent Irons’ repair shop.” With that little bit of emphasis showing that yeah, she knew that wasn’t his real name. “Our line of work is not robot and android repair. It is professional superheroics. While we’re happy to help with your agent, we are neither blind nor idiots. I would ask that you do not treat us like we are either. I find it disrespectful.” She clawed the ice out of her voice. Nicer Terrifica, yes. Difficult when people annoyed her, but worth it. Or so virtually everyone said. Terrifica herself still had lingering doubts. “So please. Take off the names and file off the serial numbers if you must, but tell us what really happened.”

[Tiffany Korta]

Scarab III

Whilst the other went about their various actions Kamala stayed out of the way and began to puzzle things out on her own. She wanted obviously wanted to help but around the foremost cyberneticists in the City, if now world, and felt she would only get in the way. But she had dabbled in various fields and she put that knowledge to use right now.

 

A quick look at Irons at least showed that he used a buffer to store visual and audio images for analysis before being turned into signals the brain could understand, it was a good bet that Keres was as well. With induction technology she had to had she quickly figures out a way to use her field projectors to create a quick and dirty hologram of just what happened  The code was a little sloppy but she was working in a very short time period.

 

“Will this help us any?”

 

She projected an image of the event, ready to playthings back as needed.

[Avenger Assembled]

It was, of course, a first-person perspective - Irons standing over Keres and pulling a cord out of his own arm which he then attached to the other robot's head. There was sounds of gunfire and small explosions not far away, but the dominant sound was the sound of a voice. Keres' voice. "Aren't you tired of this, Simmons? The same struggles year after year after year, and for what? A nation that thinks all cops are bastards, a greatest generation in its grave, superheroes who think you betrayed them, and an agency that put you in that decrepit old body because they fear what you could actually do." Irons hesitates just before fitting another cord to the other side of Keres' head, and it becomes clear his internal audio hasn't survived. 

 

What Keres says next is "Of course. I didn't send them, you know. It doesn't have to be like this. If you let me go, I can make the drones stand down and protect the AEGIS team - and we can leave here together, just as-." 

 

Suddenly an abrupt blam;  the visual input gone crazy, a figure approaching, then darkness over the sound of multiple other gunshots, fast and close. 

 

"...was that really necessary?" asked Bonham, annoyed. "We don't even...know the provenance of that recording, given Keres' capacity to alter existing computer systems. To answer your question, Terrifica, Agent Irons had been tracking Keres personally; there was an old grudge between them, going back to the early 2000s. He wanted to handle the arrest personally, but I insisted on coming along as backup. Agents Gonzalez and Sadler were the only agents free for deployment on short notice." 

 

"It was...awful," admitted Sadler, not quite looking away. "I've seen some difficult things lately, but those damn machines, I..." He sighed. "Agent Irons is one of our top people. The idea of him being taken down by one of their assassin droids...it was awful. If Gonzalez hadn't been watching my back, I'd be the man down." 

[Fox]

Dragonfly took a peek at Scarab's technical work, making an approving noise as the video played out. "Could be faked," she admitted, though she didn't sound convinced - not by the hologram, and not by the agents. "In-buffer data manipulation, under duress? Didn't think Keres was good enough at that. Can pretty easily analyze the record later, check for tampering."

 

Don't like it, she sent back over Gina's radio channel. Concerned it must be bad if professional liars are lying badly. What spooks spooks?

 

The armored heroine's tools had set about their work under her careful direction, gently opening Irons' head up for better inspection; she wasn't going to start any operations proper without general consensus, but she could at least start isolating those sparking circuits before they threw electrons somewhere deeply unhelpful. "Assassin droids would help Keres' case, not harm it, anyway. Looks like the same damage to both of them - same kind of damage, anyway. More precise on Irons, Keres took...more hits. Durability difference, maybe. Really should get Irons a better body."

 

She made a noise like a frown, snaking a tool in to stop one of the last wires from being angry at her. "So, supposedly, you chase Keres to a facility he doesn't control, where you all get attacked by drones, and you want us to save Irons but not...save Irons. Not in favor of reactivating Keres, but very curious what his perspective on that conversation is."

[Thunder King]

Voltage popped back in with the equipment, and Eira. He had given just a quick explanation of what was going to happen, and the two arrived with the electronics. He went back, gently explained what was going to happen, and brought Gonzalez back with him.]

 

"Sorry for the abruptness. I figured you'd rather be fast and startled, than slow. I have the equipment."

 

He looked at the patient. "Do we have the facilities to fabricate a new body for him? I can create a data partition to copy his mind into if needed. What's the situation. How can I help?"

[Electra]

The door to the lab slid open again as Miss Americana walked leisurely in. "About time," the little Emerson muttered in her voice, "did the damn thing ride all the way to the ground floor and back?" A second later Miss A stopped and blinked, then began walking with much more purpose to the large wall console. "Voltage, if you'll hop on that keyboard over there, you can help me set up a couple of secure partitions. We'll need at least two." 

 

She turned her attention to the agents. "Was it actually an assassin droid?" she asked even as she began entering in commands at phenomenal speed. "We're preserving forensic evidence as we go along here, it's all standard operating procedure whenever ArcheTech assists with a possible crime. That video shows Agent Irons visibly hesitating while Keres is trying to flip him. If one of you shot him and that's why you want to restore him from old backups, it would be helpful for us to know that now before we do all this work on uploading brains and matching bullets." 

[Thunder King]

Voltage sat down and began to do exactly that, creating two distinct data partitions. He made sure that neither were accessible from within the system, and vice versa. Nothing uploaded would be able to affect anything else on the system. He was actually a bit rusty working with his own hands. He was used to using his powers to do so.

 

"Won't take more than a few minutes." He said. He could have gotten it done in seconds with his powers, but the old fashioned way was a bit slower.

[EternalPhoenix]

Behind her cowl, Terrifica’s eyes narrowed. “I would like to know what they both have to say about it. Agent Simmons and Keres both. That is how Keres referred to him, isn’t it? The only Simmons relative to AEGIS and important enough to merit all this attention would be Jack Simmons, the Patriot. But he’s dead. Died long ago. Cancer. Sad.” She looked at “Agent Irons”. “We should verify that recording’s provenance as soon as possible. Goodness, he looks just like him, aside from the robotics. It’s spooky.” She nodded at Miss A. “That is, indeed, the question. Was it an assassin droid, or was it one of the AEGIS agents at the scene. I mean, it’s perfectly understandable. If that recording is accurate, then Agent Irons-who I will remind you has the face of a legend and apparently impersonation programming good enough to fool Keres over a long period of time-when asked to betray everything he was programmed to hold dear…hesitated. As if he wanted to do it.” She looked at each agent in turn as she spoke. “Director. Sadler. Gonzalez. You have access to the top programming talent in the nation. That doesn’t make sense. Unless, of course…but no. That’s ridiculous. He couldn’t be the original man. Oh, the technology exists to download a mind, but that’s just too fantastic a notion, even for AEGIS. You’re right, the Foundry has probably corrupted Agent Irons’s programming. Well, I suppose we’ll find out in a few minutes, won’t we? In fact, let me help.” She unfolded her arms, fetched a visor from her belt to over her eyes, and started looking at Keres with tools in hand. “Voltage, do let me know when the partitions are ready. I’m going to prepare Keres’s memory data for transfer.”

[Avenger Assembled]

"He did not flip him," said Sadler, sounding genuinely incensed. "He is-" He pointed to Irons, caught a look from Bonham, and said, "This man is one of the greatest heroes in the world, and the greatest hero in the history of AEGIS. He wouldn't be turned because Keres pushed a few buttons in his head. It must have been something mechanical." 

 

"That's enough, Barry!" said Bonham firmly, making a cutting motion in the air. "We did exchange fire with an assassin droid carrying a heavy handcannon. As for your reconstruction work, Keres is a shapeshifter with more blood on his hands than I can measure. I hope you know what you're doing before you bring a thing like that back to life and start taking its word over law enforcement We'll wait outside," he said to Sadler and Gonzalez as much as the others, pulling them away from the scene and letting the heroes work. 

 

When the agents were out of the room, Eira finally spoke, her eyes having gone wide the moment she'd taken in the scene. "Did they shoot him?" she whispered, sounding disgusted - and a little afraid - in a way that went beyond her usual teen reserve. "They would not have shot an organic agent who they thought would turn his coat. They were trying to murder him." 

[Fox]

"Yes they would." Dragonfly didn't even look up from her work, though with the helmet obscuring her gaze who could know for sure. She seemed neither enthusiastic nor uncertain about her take on the topic at hand. "They would absolutely shoot an organic agent that they thought would turn. They would maybe hesitate slightly longer."

 

With Irons' head no longer sparking or smoking, she snaked her tools back into her gauntlets and snapped them closed with satisfying mechanical precision. She did not, however, reassemble his head - she assumed they'd need the access later. Or sooner. "Would probably have run the numbers on killing all of us for asking questions, if most of us couldn't wage a one-person war they wouldn't win," she dryly added. "Might have done so anyway. Don't get to where they are without putting mission ahead of...everything. Deeply unhealthy. Recommendation: don't work for governments."

[Electra]

"Awfully self-righteous considering they came in lying to me in my own lab," Miss A muttered as she joined Dragonfly at the robot's side. "I'm just going to have a word with security not to let them go poking around. Principle of the thing and all." She sighed at Eira's question, and at Dragonfly's response. "She's right, they probably would've been willing to kill an agent they thought was going to flip. AEGIS doesn't manage to field a team of mostly humans trying to police metahuman activity by waffling around."

 

She looked to Voltage to make sure he'd finished the work on the secured partitions, then once again picked up the cord that would allow access to Irons' consciousness. "As to whether he was going to or whether they actually shot him, I don't know," she admitted. "All I know is that they've been lying since they got here, or using very selectively edited truths, and it's a goddamned personal insult that they think they can fool me with that." She maneuvered the cord carefully around Dragonfly's repair work and plugged it in. "Go ahead and start the download," she told Voltage, "just watch it carefully so we're sure nothing is leaking anywhere."

[Thunder King]

Voltage began the download and monitored it carefully. One advantage to having such a computer like brain was that he could monitor data quickly enough to make sure nothing happened. "Transfer is happening exactly as intended." He said. 

 

He sat back and monitored it. He realized that the situation had become very precarious. What, precisely, was going on? His social skills were even rustier than before his isolation, and he wasn't exactly on the ball before that. Perhaps he should study up on social interaction, get a better grasp of it. Ah well, nothing he can do now.

 

 

[Tiffany Korta]

Scarab III

“Not that I’m sure they care but as far as I can tell all the checksums work out, if it’s faked then its a very good work.” she didn’t have a doubt that her work wasn’t anything but perfect.

 

She looked at the deactivated robot for a moments, examining the frame to see if she could match up the damage with what the image had told them the sequence of events. She mused that Iman’s still debated if humanoid robots were against the Koran, Kamala figured that it was or God wouldn’t allow them to be created though she had to admit she hadn’t give her AI a physical shell just in case.

 

“Do we really trust them to just let us do our job? Or do they have something else in mind do we thing?”

[Electra]

"If they really wanted this all to disappear, they wouldn't have come here at all," Miss A pointed out, leaning in close to the robot's ruined head to assess the damage. "Junk both robots down a deep dark hole and nobody ever has to know anything about what happened. Instead they came here and risked their very secret agent's identity being made by a bunch of scientists." She glanced up at Terrifica. "And it's actually him, at least according to what they've told me and everything I could find out. Direct mental upload before physical death. This would've been even before I started doing it, so it's rough in places and of course the robot body was a disaster, but he thinks he's the real Patriot and so does AEGIS."

 

Taking out a set of small tools, Miss A began poking through the opened cranium, delicately avoiding the worst damage and the fragile repairs. "When I worked on Irons years ago, there was a stack of nondisclosure agreements an inch thick before they even let me touch him. They take the secrecy seriously. I know Director Bonham has strong feelings of loyalty to the Patriot, but like we just told Angelic, the mission comes first with these guys. Whatever they're doing, it's not so dark and shady that they weren't willing to take the risk of us finding out."

 

She shook her head and stood up. "Total loss there. Let's finish the download and then start taking the head off so we can get it into the 3-D scanner. A whole replacement body would be better, but we'll do just the head if we have to. Angelic, I'm gonna need the big toolbox and the scanning cart from the main MedSci lab, please. And if any of you all haven't had a look at Foundry tech before, it sounds like they brought a bunch of it in. Scarab, are we ready for transfer over there?"

[EternalPhoenix]

“I know, Miss Americana. I was trying something, and it partially worked.” Terrifica worked, multithreading. Keres had taken severe damage, but his basic mental functions should still function. Not particularly well, but they’d function. “I said nothing about taking the word of a murderous robot over that of law enforcement, and I only said that Patriot may have wanted to turn his coat. Wanting to do something and actually doing it are two separate things.” Memory was obviously corrupted in places, but a little science magic and ah, here we go. She did not reactivate him. That would have been moronic. She wasn’t a better coder than Scarab, but she was a faster one. Her mental speed had its advantages. “I think I’m finished over here. Truthfully I’m with Miss Americana. It’s as I said. They came here, asking for help and then have the audacity to lie to our faces? When what happened might contain necessary information to one, complete the repairs and two, perhaps prevent them occurring again in the future? It’s an insult to our collective intelligence.” Yes, Terrifica was annoyed. For once, she had very good reason. “We’re professional superheroes, not agents under his command.” She sighed. “But you’re right. The mission always comes first with them. Operational security is everything. Killing the opposition isn’t Plan A, B, or C…but they are for the most part only human. And without the levels of martial skill that can overcome that. So they do what they have to, not what they want to.”

[Tiffany Korta]

Scarab III

Kamala did a quick check over what had been set up, it didn’t matter how much she trusted anyone she still needed to make sure she was happy with a setup. She suspected it was a common thing among those gathered here.

 

“God willing everything should work perfectly, though we’re dealing with old code here so I can’t even imagine how messy it all looks in there!”

 

She guessed it wasn’t the time to suggest improvements, maybe once they’d transferred the intellect they could look at better integration. One step at a time though.

[Avenger Assembled]

Angelic looked uneasy for a moment; but the voices of Miss Americana and Dragonfly were like the voices of God and Her angels to the cyberteen, and so she went about her work, heading out of the room so she could access the tools Miss Americana needed. As for the accessing the Patriot's stored consciousness - or the programs that passed for it, depending on who you asked, proved simple and straightforward enough. Just as Miss Americana had seen during her last visit, this system had obviously been designed for ease of access. One thing they could all find was that there was no sign of outside tampering in the matrix; whatever was in here belonged to the original Patriot. It would take some time to download everything, though; this was not a fast system. An idea of what exactly they were looking for would help. 

 

Keres' system was if anything easier to access, which made sense: there weren't that many heroic technopaths to protect himself from. His files were slippery and multicoded, the kind of language that machines used when talking to each other rather than language humans wrote to talk to them. As easy as it had been to log in, his files were hard to access to from the sheer complexity of what lay inside. An idea of what exactly they were looking for would help. 

 

It was easiest to find recent audio first; audio so thick it was hard to tell who exactly was speaking. 

 

'if you can shut it down, shut it down now. we can talk later about-' 

bang

'no, i - you - you bastard! what did you do to him?' 

'well well well agent, what would your superiors say if they knew what you just-' 

'go to hell you son of a bitch' and then bang bang bang, high-caliber ammunition tearing through Keres' frame, shutting down his consciousness. 

But robots do not sleep; and their ears keep working even when their brains are powering down. 

 

'dammit what did you do?' 

'he flipped him! he flipped the Patriot!' 

'my god...if they could do that to him, then...' and then the signal finally powered itself down.