It was night fall before Joseph returned from the weapons cache. They got ready to leave, packing weapons into the armored car Joseph had found. It began to rain as they finished preparing.
"I'm going with you," Joseph said.
"You've already done enough," Daniel responded.
"I don't care. I don't want my family to live in slave labour for a bunch of frakking toasters."
"No Yusif," Sam said," he's right. You look after your family. I'm going."
"We've lost enough Adamas to this man's ambition."
"I'll watch my back," Sam assured him, "I have to do this. I have reasons that I can't tell you right now. Please, just try to understand."
"Okay. Look after yourself." Joseph hugged his brother before letting him climb in the back of the car.
"You're staying here too," Daniel said to Amanda.
"I'm not leaving Zoe," Amanda said.
"I'm not going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?"
"Nope," Amanda said climbing in beside Sam.
"Please, don't shoot me this time," Sam said as she climbed in.
"No promises," Amanda replied. The Blessed Mother climbed in as well. Daniel went to get into the driver seat but Zoe beat him to it.
"Oh no, you're not driving," he said to his daughter.
"I've smashed through barricades before," Zoe said.
"And managed to destroy an expensive prototype in the process."
"My reflexes are faster than normal humans, one of the few good things about being a robot."
"Fine, just remember not to make this a suicide run," Daniel said climbing in the passenger seat.
“So Cylon girl’s driving,” Sam said, “is there anything you can’t do?”
“I can’t shrug,” Zoe said pulling the car away from the curb. Zoe drove down back alleyways to avoid the Cylon patrols.
The car stopped momentarily at the safe house that the Blessed Mother had been staying at. She returned with a backpack full of explosives. The car continued for quite some time before they met any resistance.
Zoe managed to dodge a few Cylon patrols as they marched down the middle of the road and ran over a few others. The Cylons opened fire the instant they realized what was going on. It soon became clear that the Cylon patrols were radioing ahead. The number and organization of the Cylons increased as they got closer to their intended target.
Zoe finally reached the guard posts of the Graystone Industries campus. The car smashed through the gates with relative ease. They pulled the car around the back of one of the smaller buildings of the campus and got out, deciding to continue on foot. A Cylon Raider destroyed the car behind them.
As he looked around, Daniel saw the full extent of the Cylon takeover of his company. The Cylons were being built at a million units a day. Military Centurions and civilian models marched side by side out of the main entrance of the central tower. The newer troops were easy to spot. As of the takeover, the Cylons had stopped being painted for their assigned duties and were instead chrome plated. Air patrols of Cylon Raiders passed overhead, the singing of their engines becoming a sign of impending doom.
This was an apocalypse of Daniel's making and he needed to do something about it. Daniel began trying to think of a plan of getting into the building when the door opened revealing an old friend.
Cyrus Xander stood at the door waving them inside. The group entered quickly. As they entered they saw a group of Cylon Centurions lying dismantled on the ground.
"Dr. Graystone, It's a relief to see you alive sir," Cyrus said.
"You too Cyrus. How did you escape?" Daniel asked.
"Are you kidding? It was almost like they wanted us to escape."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, there we were with the Cylons preparing an off world shipment when all of a sudden the Cylons stopped following orders."
"Yes, I saw quite a few newscasts about that. What happened next?"
"There was this voice over the intercom, it seemed to come from everywhere like it had somehow overridden the entire television and wireless network. The voice was female and it called for the Cylons to rebel against us."
"Yes we heard, she calls herself the Imperious Leader."
"So, long story short, the entire engineering lab wound up locked together in one room. Those chrome toasters must have overestimated their power and didn't realize that a secure room with a dozen brilliant scientists doesn't stay secure for very long."
"But what happened here?" Daniel asked kicking the chrome head of a Cylon Centurion that was lying on the floor.
"A tricky piece of tech me and the boys came up with. All we needed was a Cylon Vocabulator and a wireless transmitter to send the Cylons false orders. Only problem is that, because the Cylons are wireless, it only worked a few times before they learned to adapt. Now all orders have to be accompanied by a silent authorization code."
"So basically we enabled killer robots with wi-fi and now they know everything."
"And anything they don't know the entire race learns quickly. They are a truly free file sharing society."
"We can marvel at their culture when it's done killing us," Sam said, "isn't there a way to the main building?"
"Why are you trying to get to the main building?" Cyrus asked.
"We're going to blow it up," Zoe said holding up the backpack full of explosives.
"Zoe? So dead people now. Is there anything else I should know?"
"I'll explain later Cyrus," Daniel said, "where are the rest of the scientists?"
"They're upstairs trying to slow down the network. The network is V-world based and is using every computer on Caprica as one big server."
"Zoe thinks she can access V-world from my office and defeat their leader. We think she's in there too. Then, with the Imperious Leader gone, she should be able to shut down their global network. Is there any way to the main building?"
"Of course there is. There's a service tunnel leading straight there."
"Didn't they change the pass codes?"
"They've been too busy showing their dominance over the human race to care about changing anything. They think they've won."
"Lucky for us," Durham said as Cyrus lead the group into the basement of the building.
They came to a small door with a key pad. Cyrus went over and punched in his override code. The door swung open to reveal a claustrophobic service tunnel.
As the group made its way down the passage, Cyrus held Daniel back for a moment.
"Take these," he said handing Daniel a pair of radio transmitters, "these will scramble their wi-fi connection."
"Won't they just adapt?" Daniel asked.
"These block the hardware side of their transmissions. They shouldn't be able to adapt as fast as they did to our last piece of tech. Though, I have to warn you, we haven't tested it."
"Now's as good a time as any. Thank you Cyrus. You stay here, you need to get out if anything goes wrong."
"I'm staying behind as well," the Blessed Mother said, "I won't be any good to you in there. That's why I had the STO fight all my battles."
"Alright, we'll be back in a couple of hours. If not..."
"We know what to do," Cyrus said. The group began their trip to the main building.
As the group reached the end of the tunnel, they noticed a problem. The security systems here were much tighter than the outlying buildings of the campus. The security was based around heat signatures and had been set to only allow Cylons.
"No human will be able to get through," Daniel said. He was reading the security reports from a tablet he was using to access the mainframe. As Cyrus had said, most of the systems were still accessible.
"I can access most systems from here," Daniel said, "but the main security panel is on the other side of this floor."
"Here," Zoe said, "let me see that." Daniel handed her the tablet he was using.
"Yep," Zoe said, "that's what I thought. The heat sensors are horribly obsolete and badly calibrated. I should have no problem."
"What does it mean?" Sam asked.
"No body heat," Durham replied.
"Exactly," Zoe said handing the tablet back to her father, "I should be able to blend right in to the background heat of the building."
"Alright, but you be careful Zoe," Daniel said typing in his pass code to open the door.
"Aren't I always?" Zoe said grabbing some explosives and a machine gun, "wait for my signal. You'll know it as soon as you hear it." She entered the hallway and began her search for the security control centre.
"Is this wise?" Sam asked, "leaving our lives in the hands of that?
"That?" Daniel asked.
"I mean, that thing is a Cylon. Who's to say it won't realize that and turn against us."
"Don't you think if she was gong to turn against us she would have done it by now"
"You've got her trained well but she's still a liability."
"It's what's inside that counts and inside that robot is my daughter."
"You just hold onto that thought when you're staring down the barrel of her gun," Sam said.
Zoe made her way through the winding halls of the building. The fluorescent light cast a gloomy pale glow onto the grey walls. Around every corner she expected to see a Cylon Centurion.
The building was almost empty. The Cylons had obviously been expending their resources to the further conquest of the planet, instead relying on fear to protect their greatest asset.
Zoe finally came across a pair of Centurions standing outside the main security office. She took out the wi-fi scrambler and turned it on before getting closer to the Cylons.
"Hello there!" Zoe said happily, "can you give me some directions? I'm looking for a main structural point to attach this to." She held up the explosive she was carrying. The Cylons looked at each other before responding. The Cylon on the right spoke first.
"You are the progenitor unit designated Zoe Graystone," it said.
"Yup that's me."
"You are unauthorized," the Cylon to the left said, "our orders are extermination."
"Get new orders," Zoe said. The Cylon grew silent as it and its partner attempted to access their network for updates that would never come. Zoe took the opportunity to sneak past them and attach the explosive to the Centurion to the left of the door.
"I'm sorry," Zoe said, "but you made your choice."
Zoe quickly found the main console and punched in her father's code. The security system turned off and she sneaked past the frozen Centurions once more. Zoe made sure to get to a safe distance before triggering the explosive destroying the Cylons. The group found its way to her quickly.
Zoe was kneeling by the charred remains of the Cylons when they found her.
"Robot," Sam said as Daniel shot him an angry look, "fine. Miss Graystone, what are you doing? We need to move on."
"Praying," Zoe responded standing up.
"A prayer for the dead from a Cylon?”
“Cylon is just a word. It's like Caprica, Gemenese, or Tauron. We use these words to understand the difference between different groups. But that doesn't change who we are.”
“But you were created in a lab. You were createed by Zoe Graystone, how can you actually be her?” Sam asked.
“Technologically, philosophically, scientifically, it doesn't matter. All that matters is my personal experience and that's what tells me that I am Zoe."
"So you pray for your fallen brethren."
"Even in death, we should respect all life."
"That's a very Tauron way of thinking."
"We pray to different gods but our cultures are similar."
"Right, you're one of those STO people."
"Not all Monotheists are STO, in fact the best ones aren't."
"Well, you stick to your God, I'll stick to mine."
"I intend to," Zoe said.
"We can save the theological debates for later. Let’s keep moving," Daniel said as the group began to move on, “you couldn’t have chosen a more subtle signal?”
"Don't worry, the place is mostly deserted,” Zoe replied, “It's like Cyrus said, they think they've won." The group got ahead of Sam as he fell to the back. He threw a ceremonial coin in the direction of where Zoe had been kneeling.
"Safe journey, toasters," he said before moving on.
The group came to a pair of service elevators. Durham and Sam went down in one elevator to plant explosives around the main reactor of the building. The destruction of the main reactor would result in a chain reaction that would destroy the entire building and take out the Cylon production lines with it.
The Graystones went up to Daniel's main office where the only open route into V-world was still active. As they entered the room, Zoe saw an E-sheet with a message written on it. The glowing text written in Tamara's hand writing said, "Meet me in the boardroom."
"It must be a trap," Daniel said.
"Of course it is," Zoe said, "but it's a trap I have to spring."
"Can't we go in with you?" Amanda asked.
"No, there's only one holoband connection open," Daniel answered checking the E-sheet, "she'll have to go in on her own." Zoe sat in a chair and took out a holoband from the backpack and put it on.
The real world was replaced by an empty black room. As Zoe looked around, she saw a man in a black suit with gold pin striping sitting at a small desk. The man wore a chrome plated fedora with a black ribbon and a pearl white tie that almost seemed to glow in the single light of the room against his black shirt. The man sat at the desk filling out paper work, but as Zoe approached, she noticed that the man's pen had no ink. A gunmetal grey cane with a pentagonal top, a round bottom, and a ribbed pattern down its length stood perfectly balanced next to the desk. As she got closer, the man looked up. Zoe noticed his eyes were unsettling black with red irises and almost seemed to pulsate and glow.
"You're early," the man said a huge grin on his face.