extract_7563_messagelog-hardcache112958
networkIdent:[ACCESS DENIED]
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Update?
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Confirmed. Our assets on site have made contact with the subject. She's joined the academy, believe it or not.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Repeat that?
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – They've inducted her into academy. Board vote 12-8.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Shit. How much do they know?
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Impossible to say, but we have placed an agent close at hand to follow her progress.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Good. Keep agent involvement as reportage only. No leaks and no interference at this stage. We can't afford to spook her.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Acknowledged.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Alright, keep me updated.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – There's more.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – More?
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – We have reports of more attacks in the city. Wraith attacks.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – That's impossible! Tell me our fucking assets are accounted for?
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Negative. Armoury reports 3 empty bays – assets MIA. No signs of forced entry; no incidents reported by guards on site.
SenderID || [ACCESS DENIED] – Send the Armoury Officer to my office, right now. I'm going to fire that useless bastard face to face. Then deploy all measures to find those god-damn assets before someone else gets killed!
extract_terminated
*
Two days had passed since that clandestine meeting in the bowels of AmpCore, and Piper felt more exhausted than ever. But at least she was starting to get a better understanding of exactly what she needed to do.
The introductions, the theory, it was all fine if you didn't have a big damned clock ticking right above your head. Odiye and the others skipped over all that. She got to watch, and feel the changes in the air as they operated their amplifiers right beside her.
Holly lifted half the furniture in the room and sent it dancing around them in a circle. Toran reduced one chair to a heap of molten slag, generating enough heat to send sweat running down her face. Odiye actually conjured a thin layer of mist inside the room, enough to make her hair frizz.
She wanted to try it for herself. She could feel it in those ... implants, that she could do it. Whenever someone else screwed around with the natural order of things, her bones tingled, the AmpCore grafts straining to be unleashed. Piper still had no idea how the hell she'd ended up with the damned things, but there was no sense worrying about it now. She had to use the tools she had.
Which is how she found herself skulking around outside the AmpCore tech wing in the middle of the night, alone and expecting an instructor to come and drag her back to her dorm any second.
But when soft footsteps finally did echo in her ears, she turned to find Arrow walking down the hallway towards her, their slim frame illuminated by the scrolling corp ads on either side. They glanced left and right, checking the connecting passages, but the motion was lazy and carefree, as though they were just going through the motions.
Holly assured them that tonight the security feeds would be otherwise engaged for a little while.
"Hello," Arrow said softly as they reached her.
"Hello yourself," Piper said, smiling thinly. "Odiye says you've got a present for me?"
"You could say that," they replied, mischief dancing in their eyes. "Theory is one thing, but if you're going to defend yourself in the real world, you're going to need a real weapon."
Her eyes brightened. "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"So a little wand of my very own?"
Arrow frowned. "They're called amplifiers, and they are very intricate, and very dangerous pieces of technology."
"I'm just joking."
They raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Piper, I told Odiye I would help you, but you need to take this seriously. What we're going to do tonight is not a joke."
"God, alright, alright." She spread her hands in apology. "So how does this work?"
"We're going to skip a few steps in the curriculum, and by the end of tonight, you'll have an amplifier of your own."
"So ... what, we're raiding some kind of armoury?"
"It's not that simple." Arrow stepped past her, slipping their amplifier free from their jacket. "What I do... what we do here is an art form, Piper."
They drifted the wand over the control panel at the side of the door. It had a keycard slot for any normal people, but students of AmpCore didn't require such a pedestrian means of access. The tip of Arrow's amplifier shimmered briefly and Piper heard the clunk of disengaging locks.
"Let's go."
There was something reverent about the way Arrow viewed this section of the academy that stifled Piper's natural impulse to fire off sarcastic remarks. She swallowed down those thoughts, and instead fell into step, crossing into this sacred place.
The stream of corporate logos persisted even here, but they were thinner than they were in other parts of the academy. The walls had a darker tinge to them, and bulky white letters on either side of her read FORGEYARD 35. No extra frills or codes like any other designation, and surprisingly, no one taking ownership.
"Nobody can own this part of AmpCore," Arrow said as they walked, seeing her examining the halls. "The technology for the amplifiers, for the grafts – it was a collaboration. One of the only things the corporations have worked together to achieve for a long time."
"Sounds like you don't like them very much," Piper ventured.
"I think they are capable of a lot," they replied. "I just think it is hard to get them to do it. Ardenne have been good to me, but not everyone is as ... forward thinking."
"Like Toran?"
Arrow sighed. "He's got a Skiltron hook in his mouth, for sure."
"Is he always like that? With you, I mean."
"It comes and goes." They shrugged. "I'm not sure how much he actually cares, but he tows the line. Does what Skiltron want him to. Says what they expect him to say."
"He seems like a complete ass to me."
"That's one way of putting it," Arrow chuckled. "But I can handle him. There are worse people here than Toran Knox."
Those last words hung ominously in the air and Piper decided not to press for details. For one, she wasn't sure she wanted to know. More than that, she didn't really know Arrow. For all their friendly overtures, they were still neck deep in everything that she hated about Hadrian.
A silence settled over them, but thankfully it didn't last long enough to be awkward. The short passageway deposited them out into a huge, long rectangle of a room, and all along the far wall sat a series of circular bays. Each one was plastered with corporate safety and liability notices, and on the bay entrances the words CORE-FORGE FERRUS M.XXII were printed in functional, blocky letters.
Arrow approached one of the dormant bays, pressing their palm against a scanner on the outer wall. A pulse of blue light rippled across the exterior wall and Piper heard the whirr of mechanisms coming to life.
"Come on," Arrow said gently, beckoning her.
Lips pressed tightly together, Piper stepped into the little alcove and looked around. To the left a three-sided cylinder stood, its interior covered in holographic screens, progress bars and sensor strips. To her right a large, curved console filled almost half the space, boasting a bank of three wafer-thin screens. Directly ahead of her was a black cube, its lower section disappearing into the floor of the forge.
"So... how does this work?" Piper asked quietly.
Arrow sat down at the console, fingers of their right hand gliding with practised ease over the interface. "First, I need you to step into the scanner. Stand on the indicators and stay still. I need to build up your physical profile first."
"You know, if some of the corps are trying to slow me down," Piper said eyeing up the scanner dubiously. "Won't you get in trouble for doing this?"
"A slap on the wrist," they answered, waving a dismissive hand. "Just don't start flailing it around in your beginner classes until we've had a chance to teach you how to use it. Otherwise we'll all be in a lot of trouble." Arrow swivelled around in the chair and pointed. "In."
Piper pulled a sour face and shoved her fear to the back of her mind. Squaring her shoulders, she took two quick breaths then stepped inside. Her world became a maelstrom of shining displays and she could feel them all around her, the data crackling back and forth as through she stood in a lighting storm.
She squeezed her eyes shut, shuffling uneasily from foot to foot, fingers drumming against her thighs.
"Every amplifier is unique, just like every person brought here is unique," Arrow explained as Piper stepped into the scanner, planting her feet on the indicators. "Every implant interfaces with every body in a different way. It becomes a part of your DNA – yours and yours alone."
"Means a lot to you this stuff, doesn't it?" Piper said quietly.
"It's important to find things that matter." Arrow's hands continued to dance over the holographic interface. "Because you're unique, your amplifier will only work with you."
"What happens if the wrong person uses it?"
"It would probably kill them." They fired Piper a sidelong glance. "Stay still."
"Sorry."
With an effort she forced herself to be rigid within the scanner. Seconds crawled by, and she felt the invasive fingers of the machine stabbing into her. Her muscles tensed as she fought to stay still.
"Wow," Arrow breathed.
Piper's eyes snapped open. "What?"
"I've just never seen anything like this. The architecture of your implants, it's deeper and more intricate than anyone I've worked with."
"Is that bad?"
"Honestly, I'm not sure yet."
"Oh, great."
Arrow glanced back over their shoulder apologetically. "Sorry. I just want to make sure I get this right. You said that Carstairs thought you were born with these implants?"
"That's what he said." She wanted to shrug, but suppressed the impulse. "I didn't think that was possible."
"It shouldn't be." They shook their head. "But wherever they came from, this is definitely not AmpCore work. It's a lot deeper; stronger."
"Stronger?"
"Generally speaking, the deeper the implant grafts, the more powerful the user. No-one in AmpCore even comes close to the depth of yours."
"So I'm what, supercharged?"
"You could say that." Arrow smiled thinly. "You're going to need something a bit more robust than I usually make."
Nodding, they returned their attention to the blizzard of data spilling across the monitors. "Okay, the core print is done. I just need to map out a material template that will fit the structure of your implants. Just stay still a little longer."
"Got all the time in the world." Piper closed her eyes again, focusing on not letting her heart batter clean through her chest, listening as her companion chattered to themselves.
"Alright... Skiltron battery core should serve as the foundation," Arrow murmured. "Titan Pattern conduit modules, silversteel rib structure, copper interfacing..." They ran down a list of ingredients like reeling off a recipe. Piper could hear the console bleeping as Arrow created the specification for a new amplifier. "Tungsten filament reinforcement along secondary and tertiary conduits and... here we go." A brief pause. "Okay, Piper, you can move now."
Her eyes snapped open and she sprang gratefully out of the light-filled scanner. Her heart was thumping in her chest and she heaved in a deep breath, smoothing down her hair just to have something to do with her hands. Arrow was still hunched over the console, examining the screens.
The left hand display showed the amplifier spec – most of which didn't mean much to Piper, but the black cube had started to do something, thin lines of light burning on its surface. She could smell the scorch of molten metal.
"Not long now." Arrow stood, turning to her. "You alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." Piper managed a smile. "Just a lot to take in."
"For all of us." They walked over to the cube, bending down to examine a small display on the upper panel. Piper could feel the mechanisms underfoot, things moving, burning, grinding and grafting as the fearsomely efficient machinery came to life.
They stood there for a few minutes, waiting as the cube did its work – some technological magic that Piper could only guess at. Then it cracked open. The top section unfolded like square flower petals and a small platform rose from within, wreathed in smoke.
On it sat a freshly forged amplifier wand.
"Toran might be an ass," Arrow told her as they reached forward, pinching the ends of the wand between finger and thumb to lift it from its cradle. "But I have to admit, Skiltron make tech like nobody else." Turning, they held out the amplifier reverently. "Here."
It shone in the glare of the forgeyard, ten inches from end to end and maybe a centimetre thick. Its main structure was matte black, with a grip inlaid with dense coils of copper, and along the black rod there were four thin strips of bronze and silver. Sleek; elegant.
Deadly in the right hands.
Piper hesitated. Part of her didn't want to touch it; didn't even want to be near it. Accepting that little piece of metal meant accepting everything else. It meant telling the corporations that she would play the game.
But she couldn't deny the stronger voice inside her that wanted it.
Trembling, she reached out and gently curled the fingers of her right hand around the grip. A tingle went up her arm and she froze.
"It's alright," Arrow told her quietly. "Just take your time."
Piper exhaled long and slow, and lifted the amplifier out of their hands. Her grip shifted, settling the copper coils against her palm, and she squeezed.
A jolt of power raced through her bones. She felt it boil through her ribs, run down her spine and spill into her arms and legs. Her body shook but she gritted her teeth, chasing down that feeling, hunting it. Slowly she gathered the threads, like re-stuffing a sleeping bag, packing those tendrils of force into a single place.
The amplifier started to glow. Its tip shimmered in a kaleidoscope of purples, blues and greens before settling into a gentle turquoise.
Breathing slow, Piper pivoted back and forth, feeling the heft of the amplifier, feeling how it connected to the world around her. Things felt clearer, as though she'd been finally given a pair of glasses that perfected her vision.
"Good," Arrow said softly. "Now just push it down. Gently. Control it."
Piper did it. Instinctively she knew what they meant. Turning her eyes skyward, she forced all that churning pent up energy back into her bones, jamming the genie back in the bottle. The glow of her amplifier gradually faded and she gasped. Her whole body trembled for a moment.
"Woah..." she whispered.
"Now you're ready." Arrow smiled. "Let's see what you're made of."
||