Avenger Assembled Posted March 2, 2011 Author Posted March 2, 2011 "I'll be right back," promised Sharl. Sending himself through phone lines was scary, maybe scarier than he'd admitted even to Gina or Miss A, but he couldn't just leave his best friend when she was in a crisis. Giving him the ability to email himself had been something of an accident, really. Gina had been compiling his program down for shipment back to Tronik when he somewhat unexpectedly had walked right out of the computer and into her lab again. They'd learned how to refine the process together, letting it work over somewhat longer distances, and now...and now...He took a deep breath. Kneeling down by the telephone, he took his mobile emitter, plugged it into the jack, and concentrated. And a moment later, he was- There was no sense of passage on Sharl's end. As he vanished in a pop of energy on Miss Americana's end, his magnetic bubble bursting, he snapped to life in Gina's house. She'd set up a projector for him there, and so he appeared there. Even as much of an emergency as it was, he couldn't resist the urge to glance out the window. The city outside was ominously still, with sirens in the air but no one rushing to do anything about them. "Gina!?" He jumped down the stairs, practically clipping through the banister, and landed in the basement. Once there he flipped the power switch immediately, trusting Miss Americana's words, but a second later went to look for Gina. She was easy to find; she was sitting in her chair in her computer circle in the middle of the basement, can of Mountain Dew in hand as she stared off at nothing. Computers were shutting down all around him, and it looked like Gina had shut down too. "Gina!? Gina, say something!" He shook her lightly, but got no response. "Oh, Gina..." He closed his eyes and put his head against hers, magnetic hologram against human skin. A tear ran down his cheek and fell onto hers, vanishing in a puff of light as it left his immediate vicinity. "Oh, Gina. We'll get you out of this. I promise." He decided to make her comfortable, and tucked her in under a blanket. He headed back upstairs, picking up one of her phones outside, slipping it into his pocket so he could call Miss A with a report before coming back. When he went upstairs, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a knock on the door. "Uh-oh..." BOOM BOOM BOOM! Sharl peered through Gina's peephole and found himself staring at a half-familiar face. What, Gina's delivery guy? "Hello?" Outside, the guy was pounding on the door harder. "Come out, Evans! Come out!" It was a human voice, and yet, somehow, it wasn't! The man pounded again, his face blank of all expression, and Sharl suddenly stepped right out the door, opening and closing it quickly, to greet him. He couldn't let Gina be caught by this guy! Outside, the sirens were louder and the air strangely cold. The Peapod guy looked at Sharl with a blank face, only his eyes moving. "My sister's gone! I'm the only one here. If you want me, come get me!" Sharl remembered to turn solid at the last second, and gasped as the Peapod guy grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against the door. Can't let him know I'm a hologram; he's got to believe I'm real! "You are not Evans. But you will be Conquered." Reaching into his bag, the deliveryman produced a red, wriggling starfish shape and slammed it against Sharl's face. It wriggled, found purchase, shoved tentacles in his mouth, and frankly that was just too gross for Sharl to deal with. "Oh my God, that's awful!" Gagging, Sharl went insubstantial again, the thing falling through his body and down onto the ground. He thought fast. Got to distract them! He STOMPED on the wriggling starfish thing, earning a hiss from the zombie-man just as he'd hoped. "You want me so bad! You'd better catch me! Woo-hoo!" He dived right through the Peapod guy and ran like Hell, getting as far as the truck outside before he realized he was right at the limit of Gina's home projectors. "Oh God, Oh God..." He slammed one door shut, then realized he couldn't reach the other; his hand disappearing even as he went for it. "Oh, craaap..." He grabbed the phone out of his pocket and reached out, hooking it against the doorknob and pulling it shut right in the Peapod guy's face. He gulped, managing to hit the lock just as the van began rocking. There were people outside now, coming out of the houses, coming right for the locked van, and he was trapped in the passenger seat...On the other hand, at least they're not interested in Gina anymore! He thought desperately, then pulled out Gina's cell. "Time to make some calls..." "Miss Americana?" Outside, Miss A could hear voices chanting as one. "CONQUER THE SPAWNSLAYER! CONQUER THE SPAWNSLAYER, and the sound of cracking metal and glass. "I...uh, I locked the basement down! But then I got stuck outside, and the people are very angry!" He filled her in as fast as he could.
Electra Posted March 2, 2011 Posted March 2, 2011 "Jesus, as if one of those wasn't bad enough, now we're dealing with both?" Miss Americana paled, an effect that had taken many hours of experimentation and that was totally lost in audio communication. "Affirmative, Protectron, continue looking through the satellite and tell us anything you find. If you can secure more samples safely, do so. Dragonfly, my suggestion right now is that we get back to the Lab right away with that sample. The Goodman Building isn't going to avail us anything right now, since any vaccine they have on hand won't be for this new strain. I can get into their databases remotely, so we'll have all the information available, and it's the most secure location... hold on one moment." She switched her communications to the cell phone buzzing in her ear, and listened to Sharl's report. "Okay, calm down," she encouraged the boy. "You're going to be okay. What you've got hold of is my cordless phone, not a cell phone. You should be able to use the same technique you used to get from here to the house to send yourself back inside to the phone base. Once you're inside, press the red button next to the front door, and everything will be locked down. All right?"
Avenger Assembled Posted March 3, 2011 Author Posted March 3, 2011 "Okay," said Sharl, "I'll do that right-" His voice stopped, but the line didn't go dead. Instead Miss A heard the crashing and calling out intensify, a particularly loud noise, and then a sudden, eerie silence on the other end. Long minutes went by while she visualized Sharl reappearing in the house, locking down the security systems that she'd been meaning to upgrade, heading back to the phone, and then heading out. Just in time, Sharl's mobile emitter lit up, and he stepped away from the wall, forming with a pop of magnetism that briefly made static on the phone lines. He was unhurt, of course, but the teenager looked shaken. "Holy cow," said Sharl, running his hands through his hair. "That, that whole neighborhood," he said, tagging his commlink on, "they were all infected. One of them tried to stick some kind of alien starfish thing in my mouth, but that, well, that didn't work. I crushed the thing, and then all the people in the neighborhood swarmed me." He shuddered. "That was just awful." Toggling off the mike, he said to Miss A, "By the way, uh, I think our friend is OK. She's...she's actually fine. She looked unconscious, not like everyone else." "I think she's coming around," murmured the medical tech across the room, looking up from the unconscious woman he'd been working on. "I've got her hydrated," he said, indicating the field IV he'd set up, "but she can't be moved far, unless it's to a hospital." - The inside of the satellite was largely free of evidence, the sort of thing that would have frustrated a human. Protectron did find evidence of what might have brought Skyhook down, however; the unmanned probe had taken what looked like a direct micro-meteor hit through the body, leaving puncture marks through and through. Not only would such an accident have likely brought the Legion and Grue samples directly into contact, the destruction of the shield around the craft by the hit would have flooded the whole interior compartment with cosmic rays. - The alien starfish didn't like its confinement one bit, pressing against the side of the container with a wet sucking noise, seeming to gaze right into Dragonfly's soul.
Fox Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 Dragonfly scowled, but looked around for a moment for something better than a heavy piece of bricked electronics to secure the crate with - she settled on some heavy duct tape, and set about getting the thing as secured as she possibly could. And trying not to look at its...eye? Eyes? Gaze. Its horrible, horrible gaze. As soon as the package was as secure as she was likely to get it, she folded it away into her dimensional pocket and stood up, dusting off her hands...and paused. "....Americana," she asked over the commlink, more than a little wryly, "have suggestions for getting to Hanover safely? If Freedom City is infected, transportation through densely-populated areas is....problematic. Cannot fly. Motorcycle offers little protection. Suppose I could take one of the vehicles we arrived in...."
Electra Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 "I'll fly you back, Dragonfly," Miss Americana assured her colleague. "We're on our way now. We can leave the support team and the civilians here, it's as safe a place as any, though that isn't saying too much." She picked up Sharl's projector and tucked it into her pocket, then passed him the baby. "Make sure to stay close to me," she reminded Sharl as she picked up the injured woman and let the medtech climb onto her back. "We'll stay low, and it's not a long flight." She led the way, heading back towards the staging area with all deliberate speed.
Avenger Assembled Posted March 4, 2011 Author Posted March 4, 2011 The flight was easy enough, the semi-conscious woman, baby, and medtech giving no trouble to Miss Americana and Sharl besides weight as they made their way back to the lakeside. Still cradling the baby, rocking him back and forth in what turned out to be an instinctive gesture across humanoid species, Sharl bent down over the baby's battered mother. "Hey there," he said, "we've got your baby, and he's-" "My baby!" her eyes snapped open and fixed on the electronic teenager, and Sharl almost jumped out of his skin. "Is he okay?" The woman, whose name Miss A had noted was Celia while going through her suitcase, looked around wildly. "Where's my baby?" "Uh, right here," said Sharl, bending down while the medtech tended quickly to Celia before she could hurt herself. "He's okay. Superheros have come to rescue you!" "Oh, thank God...I knew someone would come..." She was settling back down, having evidently satisfied herself, though still obviously hurt and semi-delirious. "I couldn't leave him. I just couldn't leave him..."
Dr Archeville Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 "I feel I have found something of value," Protectron flatly announce over the comms. "After careful examination of damage to exterior and interior of the station, and exclusion of damage caused by the atmospheric re-entry and the crash into the lake, I have detected several breaches along the exterior and interior indicating Skyhook-3 sustained several micrometeorite impacts. Damage by projectiles breached the station's outer and inner shielding, exposing the interior to Cosmic Rays. Furthermore, my calculations of their trajectories indicate that the projectiles ruptured both biological containment units, which allowed the LV-13 and Grue biomaterial samples to interact with one another." The robot did another quick sweep of the labs, "no other samples located." Observation: Accidental cross-contamination is a marginally better background, as it means they staff of Skyhook-3 were not purposefully mixing Legion and Grue biosamples. Or, at least, had not gotten the opportunity to do so, even if they had planned on doing so. "Proceeding to Command & Control in search of useful computer files." The strange robot continued on into the station's C&C, and, amongst the burned and waterlogged wreckage, found the station's 'black box' backup. "Backup drive located. Returning to base camp."
Fox Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 Dragonfly snorted a bit, sitting on an overturned box and watching the group come back together. "Mmh. So, didn't intentionally hybridize them, then. In Harrison's favor, at least. Freak accident...odds unlikely. Not that probability stops anything in this city. Have to wonder what other potential hazards are in orbit, however. Unsettling." She shook her head, getting to her feet as the woman was reunited with her child. "Creature is safely contained. Or as safely as I could manage. Should start carrying duct tape with me. Useful."
Electra Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 "All right then, let's get going," Miss A said, looking around the base camp to make sure everything was as secure as it was going to get. "All of you here! Stay in your suits until we come back and tell you otherwise, and don't go anywhere! If anybody starts acting strange, restrain them, and under no circumstances allow them to breach your suits! Somebody find a suit for the civilian, and see if you can rig up something for the baby." She focused on Dragonfly, who seemed perfectly calm despite the flecks of blood on her forcefield and the bloody knife nearby. There was no sign whatsoever of the actual specimen. "Dragonfly," she asked cautiously, "what did you do with the specimen?"
Fox Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 Dragonfly held out her hands, the container and its face-hungry starfish folding back into normal space to be held between her gauntlets. "Seemed a safe place to store it. Isolated from the rest of my 'pocket', possible risk of contamination but only if I put other items or people in that....'compartment'. Mmh. Terms don't really translate. Regardless. Carrying it seemed like a risk, given the...improvised vessel and likely danger during transport." She frowned, peering down at the thing. "....and it was staring at me. Disconcerting."
Electra Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 Miss Americana blinked at the sudden appearance of the container, but looked relieved to see that everything was in order. "All right, that was good thinking, but we're probably safe enough just to travel straight out with it to the Lab. The less chance we have of lingering contamination in any extradimensional space, the happier I'll be. Just having it on Prime is quite bad enough." She held out her hands to take the specimen, grimacing at it. "Nasty little thing. Let's get going. Sharl, you take the black box, Protectron, you carry Dragonfly. We'll go the most direct route to the Lab." She lifted off, circling once to wait for the others before speeding off.
Avenger Assembled Posted March 5, 2011 Author Posted March 5, 2011 The heroes could see something was wrong almost as soon as they were in the air: the highways leading into Freedom City were all clogged with traffic, some of it just with honking horns and police barricades, but further in the blockage was silent and still. The skies over Freedom City were quiet, with no heroes or airplanes in the sky, an ominous site given the nature of the city before them. Even birds were absent, and as they watched a flock of geese flew by beneath only to suddenly make a rapid, though not uncontrolled, descent into the leaves just beyond a line around the city. As soon as they were over that line, Dragonfly and Protectron both heard something. Not from their radios, not from their communicators, but rather a voice inside their heads. "-must-the-. You-obey-Mind. -Mind-all. -are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-." It was not the inviolable command it was evidently intended to be, rather, it was more like an annoying radio station they couldn't quite turn off. As they flew further towards the city, it sounded again, no louder, but all the more insistent.
Fox Posted March 5, 2011 Posted March 5, 2011 As soon as the voice started Dragonfly's mood darkened, and she could be heard muttering, extending her vocabulary into a litany of exceedingly impolite Russian and Japanese, apparently switching back and forth to whatever language had the foulest swear of the moment. "Psychic influence," she finally observed, looking around the city as it passed beneath them. "Hate that. Explains a lot. Going to have an awful headache later...doing okay, Americana?"
Electra Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 "I'm fine," Miss A said, sounding surprised and a little concerned as she looked back at Dragonfly. "Are you feeling some sort of psychic influence?" Of any of them, Dragonfly was certainly the most likely to be affected by the adapted Legion virus. She was the most organic of any of them, and therefore the most susceptible. "Is anyone else feeling anything strange?" she asked Protectron and Sharl. "Speak up right away if you do, any information we get on how this virus operates and proliferates can be invaluable."
Dr Archeville Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 "I am receiving something, Friend-Americana," Protectron said in its typical flat tone, "though I do not know how, as my internal communications are still nonfunctional. The message is as follows:" -must-the-. You-obey-Mind. -Mind-all. -are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-. -must-the-. You-obey-Mind. -Mind-all. -are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-. -must-the-. You-obey-Mind. -Mind-all. -are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-. Query: How am I able to receive this message? "I feel no compulsions to act one way or another aside from those which my own directives impose, but that is the message I am receiving."
Avenger Assembled Posted March 6, 2011 Author Posted March 6, 2011 Sharl shook his head, listening for an imaginary voice, then listening to the garbled-sounding message Protectron was reciting. "I don't hear anything. I'm not getting any kind of message." He looked at Miss A and said, "Is it going out just, uh, telepathically, or is there a radio message too for Protectron to hear?" Sharl knew very little about telepathy, but as someone who lacked an organic brain, he wasn't surprised that it wasn't a problem for him. So why was it an issue for the synthezoid? "It would explain how everyone was acting together in groups down below when they were, er, swarming me, and what they were chanting, but what are those little Grue mind-things for, then?"
Fox Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 Dragonfly frowned at Miss Americana for a moment, mental gears turning...but whatever she was thinking about she kept to herself, deciding instead to go back to scowling about the static-filled voice in her head. "Protectron hears it...interesting. But glad it isn't only me. Can do without suspicions that I'm infected or crazy. Crazier. Depending on personal opinions." She shook her head. keep it together - need to not confuse the issue by letting psychic influences indirectly cause emotional imbalances "What I hear too, however. Message is clearly coming through...unclear. Static."
Avenger Assembled Posted March 6, 2011 Author Posted March 6, 2011 Despite all the talk of an evil telepathic hivemind taking over the city, no mind-controlled friends or ground-to-air missiles loomed up at them as they flew over a still and silent Freedom City. Even the animals were quiet, and there were people visible down below who looked (one could hope, anyway) as if they'd just fallen asleep on the streets. It was a warm day, they'd had time to settle down. If they were quite lucky, maybe nobody had even died. The Lab, though, was an exception. The people on the streets were up on their feet and moving: but not _towards_ the fortress of science that it represented. As the heroes made their landing, the crowd of shuffling, mumbling people beneath was heading directly away from them.
Electra Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 Miss Americana watched the crowd, pursing her lips. "We need to find where they're going," she decided. "Protectron, can you follow them and report back, see where they seem to be congregating? Dragonfly, if you're still feeling all right, we need to double down on investigating this thing. If you can run the bioscans, I'm going to dig out the information in the League files about the Legion virus and Grue physiology. Sharl, you check the Lab and see if there's anyone still here, infected or otherwise. From what you said, the infected seem to have some sense of where uninfected people might be. We need to make sure nobody's going to surprise us while we're working."
Fox Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 Readjusting her hazard suit after the long flight, Dragonfly glanced down at the crowd and frowned, bringing her force field back up...just in case. She didn't much like the idea of infected people possibly lurking in one of the few buildings she felt safe in. "Mmh," she agreed, taking the sample and trying not to look at the thing. "Think there's a decent biolab on 25. Not much of a biologist, but will let you know what I find." She took one last glance at the city before heading back toward the stairs. better avoid elevators - asking for trouble - better to be able to flee if needed
Dr Archeville Posted March 7, 2011 Posted March 7, 2011 Protectron had handed over Skyhook-3's black box to Sharl as Miss Americana had instructed. While it carried Dragonfly to The Lab, many thoughts went through its strange mind. Reviewing commands... Primary Goal: Preserve lives of Lab-Friends. Secondary Goal: Preserve as much organic life as possible. Analysis: Grue/LV-13 hybrid is organic life, albeit of a type unseen before. Query: Do these new organics being pose threat to existence of other organic beings? Analysis: Grue/LV-13 hybrid appears to subvert will of host organisms, joining them into some manner of hive-mind, suppressing identity. Observation: Reduction of quality of life is as detrimental to sapient beings as reduction of quantity of life. Conclusion: I must work to stop the spread of these Grue/LV-13 hybrids. Miss Americana's request for surveillance of the affected/infected was met with Protectron's usual flat "Affirmative." It took off and followed the crowd.
Avenger Assembled Posted March 8, 2011 Author Posted March 8, 2011 Dragonfly made her way through the fire stairs and down to Level 25, the eerie silence of the building around like a tomb. The Lab had been mostly deserted with everyone away and a technical crew mostly occupied with following them to the lake, but surely someone would be there. Strangely enough, though, there was no sign of anyone inside the building, neither mind-controlled goons or shambling scientists. The entire building was empty. Once inside the biolab, despite her warnings to Miss Americana, getting set up turned out to be easy enough, despite what turned out to be all the noise being made by the most active things left in the building: something had riled the experimental animals, riled them up but good. It wasn't hard for her to do the scans, despite the fact that this was by no means her area of expertise. What she was looking at from the captured entity was nothing less than a merger of Grue and Legion cells; it looked like she'd have expected a Grue intelligence infected with the Legion virus to look. But on closer inspection, this was something more, something deeper, as if the two had been merged together. Perhaps the only comforting discovery was that there was no mind inside this thing, the wriggling starfish had no more intelligence, though perhaps more mobility than a real Earthly starfish. But it had a brain all the same, a brain that was wired to listen rather than think! - Taking to the air, Protectron was able to get a good view of the world beneath his feet. It wasn't a pretty sight, even for an emotionless robot. The crowd on the street was heading away from the Lab, and in fact making a very deliberate effort to do so: the shambling, mind-controlled civilians were heading away from the Lab like microbes fleeing a drop of penicillin left in a Petri dish overnight. At the very edge of his vision, he could see other people in the sky near the distant shape of the Lonely Point Naval Base at the edge of the city, but so far those indefinable figures were the first superheroes he'd seen. - For his part, Sharl found no one in the Lab either, even when he plugged his mobile emitter into the Lab's systems so he could flit through the floors and ceiling like a ghost from the machine. It was quite spooky for the electronic teenager, particularly since all this was still new to him. "I hope Gina's okay," he said aloud, flitting through an empty janitor's closet in the subbasement. "I wonder she she wasn't moving..." - It was easy to access the League's computers, too easy. Someone had left the 'backdoor' open, the sort of thing you'd do with a system you were expecting to fail, or perhaps that you were trying to leave open for computers elsewhere. The League's files on the Grue and Legion were extensive, of course, but Miss Americana quickly found what she was looking for inside them, perhaps because there were files that lay between the two: there'd been significant discussion between the League and a naval commander named Harrison about a possible joint defense project against the Grue: an intelligence capable of overwriting the commands of the Grue Metamind, a telepathic agent that could seize control of an entire Grue force in a moment!
Electra Posted March 8, 2011 Posted March 8, 2011 Gina, for all she didn't dare leave the safety of her robotic shell, spent several long seconds cursing enthusiastically at the absolute stupidity displayed on all sides here. It was obvious that Daedelus hadn't been informed of the full extent of the military's plans for the materials he'd provided, but even so, he should've known better. She knew full well that the League had files on planets where superheroic hubris had made massive disasters out of minor ones, or come up with cures far worse than the diseases they were intended to fight. They kept those files locked up, ostensibly to prevent public panic or loss of faith in superheroes, but apparently they were locked away so thoroughly that even the people who had access didn't learn from them. She'd have to think about that later, and whether the files really served the public good where they were. Right now she was busy, though. She downloaded everything the database contained about the Legion mind virus and the Grue, including all known ways of detecting and defeating them. As she worked in her private lab, Miss A bounced and fidgeted in her seat, trying to ease discomfort that would not go away. Even when inhabiting the robot, Gina was aware of her body, she simply wasn't in control of it. She'd left her body behind at dawn, with insufficient sleep and a breakfast of Pop Tarts and Mountain Dew to tide her over. Normally, she'd simply have stepped aside for a few moments over the course of the morning to deal with her body's needs, but now that was impossible. Leaving the cybernetic neural network that was keeping her safe would mean leaving her mind vulnerable to the psychic virus. Some things she couldn't control at all, but Emerson had good programming and a mop. She wouldn't starve, in the time that was available. But she would need sleep eventually. And in this case, sleep was tantamount to living death. Gina redoubled her focus, gathering up the information and taking it to the biolab while she contacted Sharl and Protectron for updates.
Fox Posted March 8, 2011 Posted March 8, 2011 Dragonfly held up a hand as soon as Miss Americana entered the lab, waving her back as she tossed a dark scavenged cloth over the captured sample and left it sitting, covered, inside a hazardous samples lab as she sealed the door behind her. "We have a problem," she dryly observed, out loud and with her comm ope, only once the room was shut behind her. She gestured at one of the nearby monitors. "Starfish parasite...thing, need a name...does not think. Receives. Assuming it transmits, as well, for now," she added, gesturing at the covered and hopefully relatively sound-isolated container in the room behind her, "but isn't independent. Grue influence, likely...but indicates a central, controlling intelligence. With long-distance psychic abilities."
Dr Archeville Posted March 9, 2011 Posted March 9, 2011 -must-the-. You-obey-Mind. -Mind-all. -are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-. -must-the-. You-obey-Mind. -Mind-all. -are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-. -must-the-. You-obey-Mind.-Mind-all. -are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-. -must-the-. You-obey-Mind. -Mind-all.-are-Mind. -with-Voice-the-. SYSTEM ALERT: Cyberkinetic Interface partially restored. Current maximum range: 304.8 meters. SYSTEM ALERT: Broadband radio communications partially restored. Current maximum range: 1,609.34 meters. Too far for his restored communications to reach, Protectron continued to rely on The Lab-issued communicator it had been using all along to contact the team. "Lab-Friends, the infected do not appear to be headed in any particular direction, other than away from The Lab. However, I have spotted something else of interest: there appear to be people floating in the skies above the Lonely Point Naval Base."
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