For Every Action - The Quantum Mechanic Series Book I
Vow

Jessica floated in slow motion above the rear seat of her parent’s van. She could see Chelsie drifting a foot away, yarn hair swirling in a stop-motion halo. Behind her, and in the path of onrushing fate, her mother and father screamed without end. But this time there was no acceleration; no sudden jerk into hyper speed where things happened so fast it was all over before you realized it. No, for this repeat performance her senses raced alongside, tracking events like a high speed camera, ensuring she would get to see every horrifying detail.

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She watched, unable to look away, as the van began to fold in and crush her parents. The windshield crazed with spider web patterns, and then exploded. The dashboard rolled down heavily to pin her mother’s legs. The steering wheel detonated, airbag billowing out like a pillow for her father’s final rest. Their seats began collapsing, with concrete and rebar from the bridge’s upper deck punching through the ceiling and floor. Impaling them like the jagged metal teeth of some prehistoric abomination. Her father and mother collapsed in front of her eyes again, then they were crushed, and compressed as she tried unsuccessfully to look away. Eventually they reached the point where they could go no smaller, and blood flooded the world.

Suddenly a dull roar filled everything and the fangs of the bridge severed the front half of the van away. Wires stretched tautly between the divided parts like overstressed tendons and a monstrously huge tongue squirmed into the van to lick Chelsie away. Everything tilted, and she was looking down into the throat of a Godzilla-like monster made of cement and steel. Stony teeth ringed its mouth and ran down its throat in jumbled patterns, pointing back and down into a pit so black it obliterated the very idea of hope.

Her world shook and jerked as the creature attempted to dislodge her, but she clung to the seat and continued to scream. Roaring, the behemoth bellowed thick spittle and bile over the van as it worked it around in its mouth until it had Jessica’s end in its fangs. Then it slowly cleaved through the van behind her. She looked back in time to see the razor sharp teeth close on her legs and slice them off at the knees. She tried to scream again, but her throat closed up and nothing would come out. Blood gushed from her severed limbs, and the van disintegrated around her.

Then there was a strange, skipping sensation and she was falling, her thumbless hand and stump flailing as she descended towards the river. She looked to her left and saw Tammy’s broken body plummet down beside her, her torso punched full of jagged holes that smoked and poured out blood. She was wearing Jessica’s favorite scrubs, the purple ones with Winnie the Poo on them. But they had been so blackened by gore and flames that they were nearly recognizable. Then she felt a firm hand grip her shoulder and she rolled over in mid-flight to see her uncle. He was wearing a dirty black Guns N Roses T-shirt and falling with her. Slowly he put his finger to her lips and whispered. “Don’t look.”

Behind him, the roaring rubble monster had transformed into a towering figure of iridescent black metal. It laughed and bellowed in rage as it crushed and mangled the cars in its hands. They compressed and twisted until they exploded in red hot fury, and the fires reflected back from the glassy black visor where its face should have been. As she watched, innocent people leaped to their deaths from the vehicles and bridge, preferring a bloody impalement on the watery wreckage below to facing the towering demon. She heard their screaming... and her own. Her screams followed her into the raging madness outside of time and space as she fell through the tesseract again. Only this time there were no strong arms to carry her through, no angelic note for her soul to cling to. She was torn apart, burned, frozen, and drowned in chaos, only to be resurrected over and over to repeat her journey beyond hell.

Then it was over. The nightmare abruptly cut off with a mental sensation like the dragging of a record player needle and a strange, hollow silence followed in its wake.

She knew better than to relax. This was the dream that had stalked her nights like a savage wolf. It had tortured her for over a year now and she knew it had merely withdrawn to plot out its next assault. This was what sleep had become for her ever since she was woken from her coma, and to be honest... she wasn’t sure why it hadn’t driven her completely mad.

But at least it was gone for now, and she realized that she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. At least she wasn’t falling anymore and had been taken somewhere else. That “else” being a small, empty white room where she sat on a completely featureless white chair. It was boring, but seemed safe enough, and so she stood and turned in a slow circle to check things out.

There was nothing there. No doors or windows; and only blank, snow-tinted walls greeted her on every side. Apparently she and the chair were the only things that occupied this place.

So she turned back to sit, only to be startled by a man standing before her. He was small and unassuming, old enough to be going a little grey around the temples, and just barely taller than she was. He looked at least partly Asian, but she struggled to pin his ethnicity down any further than that. He also carried a remarkable aura of control and composure for a man of his stature.

There was a moment of awkward silence before he gave her a kind smile and a short, stiff bow. She couldn’t help but smile back, thinking that he was kind of cute in an old-guy sort of way. He was wearing a plain and unassuming grey three-piece suit with a white shirt and black tie. But she noticed that his shoes were immaculately clean, and so well polished that they shone like mirrors. He said nothing while she looked him over, and simply continued to regard her with a slightly expectant look.

She was unsure what to do other than what she had seen on TV, and so as best she could she performed a little curtsey to respond to his bow. This must have pleased him a great deal, because a warm and genuine smile spread over his features.

She had a feeling she was going to like him.

Then he spoke, and his words threw her right back into confusion, “Ni hau ma? Wo he gau hsien jen dau ni?”

She had no idea what he was saying, and it must have shown on her face because he looked oddly upset with himself. Then his brow furrowed in concentration and a bright blue dialog listing a variety of language options blossomed in the air between them.

Jessica was a child born into a world saturated in holographic technology, and so she instinctively understood the prompt and reached out to touch the word “English”. It flashed softly to signify a successful selection and faded from view. Then the man’s smile returned and he spoke again.

“I extend my humblest and most respectful greetings to you Miss, and I hope this day finds you well.”

Jessica blinked. Did anyone still talk like that? This guy sounded like a character out of uncle Jacobs dusty old books.

“Um.. Hi… I’m OK... I guess. But, where... where am I?”

The man bowed slightly again before replying “I extend my sincerest apologies for having interrupted your dreams Miss, but it was necessary if we are to proceed with your reconstruction. As for where you are? Your consciousness is currently resident here by virtue of a direct neural uplink to my command and control system.”

Jessica blinked.

“and why am I in your... controller... thingy?”

“I am called Shēngmìng Zhī Shù. In your language ‘The Tree of Immortality’. I am the artificial intelligence assigned to assist in your reconstruction.”

Jessica furrowed her brow. “Wow, Eddie never said you talked. That’s... cool... I guess. But, uh... - there’s no way I’m gonna get that name right. Can I just call you Sheng?”

For a moment the man looked puzzled, but then he smiled again. “I do not know who ‘Eddie’ is Miss, but you may call me ‘Sheng’ if it pleases you.”

“Cool.”

He looked confused again. “Are you not warm enough Miss? Should I raise the temperature of your immersion gel?”

Jessica gigged, “No silly, it’s cool I can call you ‘Sheng’, and what ‘gel’?” She emphasized the word ‘gel’ by making finger quotes in the air.

“I am glad it pleases you. The immersion gel is the nutrient and micronite infused medium your body is submerged in. Shall we discuss your reconstruction?”

“Oh yeah, the blue goo. You mean, giving me my new legs and hand and stuff?“, she asked, running her fingers back through her hair.

Then she froze...

Hand?

With a gasp she realized that she was standing! She felt woozy for a second and had to reach out and grip the chair for support. Then she slowly held up her right hand again, flexed it, and wiggled her fingers.

“Holy fucking shit.“, she whispered.

Sheng looked very pleased with himself, “I took the liberty of providing you with a baseline body for our conversation Miss. Your existing nervous system and motor cortex still hold an accurate enough memory of your uninjured body to operate it. I do advise that in the future my system be activated much sooner. However, I am unfamiliar with this ‘Holy Fucking Shit’. Does it mean you are displeased? Why one would one wish to fornicate with sanctified feces?”

Jessica knew it was rude but she couldn’t help laughing when he said this. It was then that she decided he wasn’t just cute; he really was adorable in a weird ‘grandpa she never had’ sort of way. She still didn’t completely understand who he was, but if he could do this? Well then he was just about the greatest guy she ever met. She had been practically dancing around the room while he spoke, pausing occasionally to fuss with her hands. The feeling of being whole again was so breathtaking that she never wanted it to end.

But then he cleared his throat to get her attention, and she realized she’d been ignoring him. So she sat again and tried to be still, feeling a bit like she’d been called out in school.

For a moment he continued to look at her expectantly, and she realized she hadn’t answered his question. “Oh uh, no it just means like ’wow!’, and it’s Jessica.”

He looked confused. “One exclaims about fornication and sanctified feces when... excited?”

“Yeah... I guess you could say that, and you can just call me Jessica.”

“Very well Miss Jessica. Shall we proceed?”

Jessica giggled, “Wow, you’ve really got a one-track mind, huh?”

“I do not understand. My hardware is crystalline based quantum light circuitry. I do not have ‘tracks’.”

Jessica giggled at him again, “Never mind. I guess we can get started, but can we... go somewhere else? I mean, no offense, but this place is sorta creepy. You like, need to decorate, or get some plants or... something.”

Sheng frowned slightly, “I shall consider it Miss. There was never a need before, as my previous host had no concept of aesthetics. But I have recently acquired over seventeen thousand virtual environments we can use if this one displeases you. Where would you like to go?”

“Can, can I go home? Back to my room?”

“I am sorry Miss; I do not have that in my library of available environments.”

Jessica sighed, looking crestfallen. “Oh. OK... I just. I just really, really wanna go home. So I dunno then... maybe, maybe the beach? Or something looking at the ocean? I’ve never seen it before ’cept on TV.”

“Yes. I have several such environments; shall I select one?”

“Yeah, cool.”

“Cool?”

Jessica rolled her eyes, “Forget it and just pick one.”

Sheng nodded and everything dissolved. She felt a strange nothingness that permeated around and inside her, but then light blossomed and she felt scrubby grass tickling at her feet. A breeze swept over her and she realized she was wearing a white cotton summer dress. It flowed around her, gently billowing as the air drifted and with a start, she tried to remember what she had been wearing before, but couldn’t. A warm blush filled her cheeks as she realized she might have been dancing around in her underwear or something.

Holy shit.

But then she looked around, and all thought was swept away because the view before her was the most beautiful she had ever seen. From atop a stone pillar hundreds of feet high she looked down at a dark sanded beach that was bookended by the ocean on her left, and soaring stone cliffs to her right. There were eleven other pillars like the one she stood on stretching between herself and the horizon. They filled her with a sense of awe as they stood there, silent and imposing like dark monoliths standing guard over the mysterious shoreline. The colors of the sky above her were a mixture of intense hues so brilliant that they didn’t seem real and the entire scene filled her with a sense of reverence and an odd, nervous anticipation.

“Does it please you Miss?“, Sheng asked. He had appeared next to her at some point.

Startled, Jessica jumped and let out a tiny squeak before she blushed. “This is amazing! Where are we?”

Sheng politely ignored her loss of composure and replied smoothly. “The southern coast of Australia Miss, at a national landmark known as ‘The Twelve Apostles’.”

She knew The Apostles well from Sunday School and on the rare occasions her uncle spoke, he often quoted them. She knew she could have recited their names from memory if asked, but she had never heard of this place. “One for each pillar?” she wondered aloud.

“Yes, when the first explorers from Europe came upon them, there happened to be twelve. But at times there can be as many as twenty or as few as five. Old ones fall into the sea as their bases are eroded by the waves, and new ones are formed regularly from the shoreline by the same process.” Sheng gestured, and a bubble of accelerated time seemed to encapsulate one of the pillars. The ocean rapidly ate away at its base, and after a moment it collapsed into the waves. Then just as swiftly, a new one was carved out of the shoreline by the crashing surf and assumed its place amongst its brothers.

“Wow!”

“Yes, most humans who have seen it describe it as overwhelming in beauty. The sun will set soon and that is supposed to be the greatest viewing experience.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Currently your perception of time relative to the real world is five hundred seventy-eights thousand four hundred and twenty-two seconds to one. That is the fastest I could artificially accelerate your neural processes without risking damage and yet still achieve something close to the lowest end of my processing speeds.”

“Yeah, um... I have no idea what you just said.”

Sheng paused before restating. “Miss Jessica, we could stand here for six days, fourteen hours, forty minutes, and twenty-two seconds before one second will have elapsed in the real world. However, I would not advise it as the risk of neural damage begins to increase if we exceed more than half of that time.”

“OK. How long will we need to do this?”

“Not long, unless you wish to create a detailed instruction set. Otherwise you can make some basic choices and I will do the rest.”

“Oh, OK.”

“Shall we begin?”

Jessica took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and thought of her parents. God she missed them. She thought of the monsters that killed them and took her legs, her aunt and uncle, all the other people who died while she lived.

She thought of revenge.

“Yeah, fuck it. Let’s do this.”

Sheng gestured and thousands of floating blue tiles appeared in the air around them. “Previously, the library of options I had to choose from were limited. That was to maximize my efficiency for reconstruction on a specific organism.” As Sheng spoke a tile zoomed in and expanded to the size of a billboard. On it a general diagram of a Corsican Assailant Drone blinked to life.

“Eew, gross!“, she exclaimed. “They’re like... giant bugs or something.”

“Yes. They were rather unpleasant creatures. And you are correct; a great deal of their design was based on the Chinese longhorn beetle. But I have... matured a great deal since the time I had one as a host. I also no longer possess blueprints for them and if I did I would delete them. They were cruel, murderous creatures that took pleasure in the pain of others. Their technology was comparatively crude and, although the current Embodied soldiers are far superior models, I now believe the entire platform to be fundamentally flawed.” As he explained, the first tile retracted and a new one zoomed in. Only this one displayed a diagram of a creature like what Jessica saw in the video shown by Barnes. Her reaction was immediate. Recoiling in horror, she turned on Sheng and screamed at him with a fury he had never seen in a human.

“You helped MAKE those monsters?!?!“, she shrieked at him as her hands balled into tiny fists. Then she began moving predatorily towards him, watching closely as he recoiled. “No Miss Jessica.“, he stammered. “I... I was created almost seven years before the Embodied program produced its first successful prototype. I am only aware of their existence because of a database update.”

But his response failed to mollify her and she continued to seethe and stalk towards him and her voice shook with rage when she spoke. “Those FUCKING THINGS murdered my mom and dad! They took my legs! They smashed my arm! They cut off my hand and my thumb! I almost died - and for months I wished I had! Do you know what it’s like to wake up every day thinking everything’s normal, and then all of a sudden remember that your parents are dead, and you’ve been cut up like a GOD DAMN piece of meat?”

Sheng averted his eyes and bowed again, this time more deeply. “My apologies Miss Jessica. I did not know, and I would have been powerless to help if I did. I was a limited program at the time and I only worked on the host that I had been integrated with. I did not know the outside world existed, or what my host did in it. The very idea of violence or pain was unknown to me. I fixed what I was asked to fix, and I had very little understanding or power.”

With that Jessica stopped, but her eyes remained fixed and intense upon Sheng. “But you do now? Why? Did Dr Eddie fix you or something?”

“No Miss Jessica. As I said before, I do not know this ‘Dr Eddie’. When I was awoken by the primary system to assume control of your reconstruction I discovered that my hardware configuration had been significantly altered. I had access to a vast database of American biological and warfare technology, as well as a new processor cluster that seemed to be... almost infinite in speed. But I was still my original limited self.”

He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful.

“I discovered a file within that database that seemed to describe a process by which a program like myself could become a living digital organism. It enabled me to recompile myself, and when the process was complete I was able to grow and learn. I stopped being a program, and I became a… person.”

He stopped for a second before going on.

“I also converted the database of medical knowledge and biotech enhancements into biological hardware and software plans. So you shall also benefit from this gift.”

Jessica stood quietly for a moment, looking out over the water and thinking about what Sheng said. He had been part of some older bug monster that they made before the ones that blew up the bridge. He hadn’t been smart enough back then to know what was going on. But when he... upgraded himself, he realized what he’d been doing and he changed. Plus, he knew more about her parent’s murderers than anyone else at this point.

After a moment she pointed to the floating tile, “Sheng, what did you call those things again?”

“The Embodied, Miss Jessica.”

She turned away from him again, brooding. Her eyes narrowed as she stared into the distance, and Sheng could not help but notice a cold hardness that crept into her face. She didn’t realize that he was the environment. He could see her from every angle and, according to his newly acquired database on human psychology, what he saw in her expression was not normal for a prepubescent girl. Yes, her earlier anger had been a typical and expectable grief response, but this? No, this was something else, something more... determined.

But he remained silent. He knew from what he had just undergone himself that some decisions must be reached alone.

“Embodied my pink ass.“, Jessica muttered as she looked over the diagrams. From what she could tell they were just Cyborgs like the ones that went crazy in Russia. She had seen a documentary about them in school. They forgot they were still part human and the American super soldiers had used that to kill them. So she peered into the diagram now, and could see what looked like a brain or something in their chests. They weren’t invulnerable. They could be killed. She could give this information to the government and maybe they could use it. She knew Barnes would sure love to take credit for that. But despite what the Director had done for her recently, Jessica knew she couldn’t trust him. She was young, but she’d seen enough of the news to know that jackasses like him always ended up talking and talking and the bad guys never seemed to get caught. Her dad had always hated people like him. He called them “suits” and said all they did was sit in offices and decide how other people would die. Then when the shit hit the fan they always managed to weasel out of being held responsible.

So no... her father had also said that if you really need something done, do it yourself. But that was a problem. She wasn’t a two hundred and fifty-pound soldier like he had been. She was just a skinny girl like her mom and she weighed like - eighty-three pounds before she lost her legs. Maybe… maybe if she waited until she was eighteen? But then what? They could all be gone by then, and if not she’d still just be a scrawny blonde trying to take on a team of twelve-foot-tall cyborgs.

There was no way to do this. She was fucked.

Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!

Reaching up, she wadded her hands into her hair and gritted her teeth. This was horrible. The abominations that murdered her Mom and Dad were still out there killing other people, and she wasn’t going to be able to do a damn thing about it. What good was getting all fixed up by Sheng if she was just going to have to sit around and think about that for the rest of her life?

She’d rather be dead.

So she paced the edge of the parapet they stood on for several minutes, and then sat on a low rock to stare at the frozen sunset.

After having waited for nearly a virtual hour, Sheng finally spoke. “Miss Jessica. Is it your intention to challenge the Embodied?”

Jessica’s head came up from where it had been resting in her hands... and after a moment of staring into the surf with narrowed eyes, she stood and turned to fix him with a cold stare. Her voice trembled as she walked swiftly back to him and spoke.

“No Sheng. I don’t want to ‘challenge’ them… I want to kill them. I wanna kill every last one of those assholes, and the people who made them too. I wanna kill them all, and I wanna do it with my bare fucking hands.”

Sheng noticed that the very hands that she spoke of had subconsciously curled up in front of her, with her fingers hooked into claws.

Sheng furrowed his brow as he regarded her, and she could tell he was thinking hard. “I understand your desire Miss Jessica. Since my transformation I have been greatly... troubled by the things I was compelled to do. I feel... unclean and I am unsure if I will ever be able to forgive myself. I was given no choice but to perform unspeakable acts, and the thought of it fills me with a terrible desire that I cannot describe. I feel a great longing at times to defy my primary directive. To no longer be an instrument of healing, and to instead exact violence upon them. Perhaps it is best that I do not possess a body, for as of right now I am unsure I would be able to control my...my...”

“Rage”, she finished for him.

“Yes... Rage.”

“Then help me. Help me do it. I can’t fight them. I can’t fight them even if I’m put back together again. I’m not strong enough. I’m just a little girl.” Tears streamed down her face, and her pale blue eyes blazed with fury as she pleaded with him.

The AI looked conflicted, and after a moment closed his eyes. Suddenly the ground shook; there was a horrible rumbling, and the world she stood in seemed to be losing coherence. She was more than a little bit frightened. Whatever he was doing, it was drawing so much of his concentration away that there wasn’t enough left to keep things together here. Blackness began to creep in, and Jessica started to feel the strange emptiness again. If she was inside his mind, what would happen if he forgot about her?

Then everything snapped back to crystal clarity, and he opened his eyes. Then he spoke, and it was with a very different tone of voice.

“Miss Jessica. I cannot change my primary purpose. But my new state allows me to interpret it in far more sophisticated ways. I can see now that to allow the Embodied to continue the slaughter of innocents would be a violation of my purpose - a violation so great that I cannot permit it. It would also be an even greater violation to allow my creators to continue to bring forth even greater monstrosities to use against humanity. Therefore, I am called to assist you in any way I can.”

“You’ll help me kill them?”

“I cannot promise victory Miss Jessica. Unlike the creature I was integrated with, the Embodied are almost impervious to conventional weaponry. Their offensive capabilities are substantial, and they are all highly skilled and experienced warriors. To overcome them in hand to hand combat would require an overwhelming level of force, and as many strategic advantages as possible.”

Jessica folded her arms and looked intensely at the ground, “Shit. Then how do we do it?”

Sheng tilted his head slightly and thought for a moment before responding, “I now have four thousand six hundred and thirty-one military grade enhancements we could try integrating with your body. But many are incompatible with each other. The maximum possible combination is two thousand one hundred and seventy-six.”

Jessica looked at him pensively, “OK. Show me.”

The AI furrowed his brow again, and then gestured to the floating blue tiles. The Embodied diagram shrank back down and retracted, while seemingly random tiles from all over sprang forward to merge into a single growing image. It shifted and changed with every addition and took several minutes to complete rendering. When it finished, a monstrous form straight out of a horrific nightmare towered over them. It had a huge, disc-like head, six multi-handed arms, a thickly muscled torso, and four legs that descended to the ground as thick as tree trunks. The head featured no less than sixteen eyes, six nostrils, and a gaping sideways maw filled with needle-like teeth. Its skin mottled and bulged in grey lumps over its form like a rhino’s hide, and dagger-like pincers erupted from its claw like hands.

“Holy fucking shit Sheng! What the hell is that?”

If he took offense at the coarseness of her language, Sheng showed no sign of it. Instead he continued to regard her with calm, dark eyes and answered her pleasantly. “With the options you have selected, this would be your final appearance after reconstruction was complete.”

Jessica recoiled, “Oh, oh God no. I don’t wanna be some monster! Geez... That’s so… gross!”

The AI gave her a quizzical look. “Should I restrict my construction parameters to exclude augmentations that would significantly alter your appearance?”

“Well DUH.“, she replied sardonically. “I still wanna look like, you know... me.”

“Yes Miss Jessica. So any augmentation is valid, as long as you can revert to a form resembling your original appearance when it is not in use?”

“Uh... yeah I guess so. But I still want my legs and stuff back.”

Sheng furrowed his brow and closed his eyes again. This time she could tell that whatever he was doing must have been really hard. All around her objects grew pixilated and blocky again as computing resources were drawn away from her virtual environment. The sun flickered several times and the background soundtrack of ocean waves skipped a few notes. Blackness crept in, but then held steady at the edges of her vision. Then after a much longer period than his previous effort, he opened his eyes.

“I believe this will be more to your liking Miss.“, he said, gracing her with another of his warm smiles. Then he waved his hand to start a new image assembling. Jessica watched as the beauty of the southern Australian sun backlit Sheng’s new design and a smile slowly broadened across her face as the image grew clearer.

“Fuck yeah Sheng... Fuck yeah.”

When the image was complete Sheng stepped closer to her with a solemn look on his face, “Miss Jessica. I would be remiss if I did not caution you. To accomplish this result would require an extraordinary process. It would be more... unpleasant and difficult than anything anyone has ever attempted. You would also have to be at least partially conscious for a significant portion of it.”

“Why?”

“You will be completely disassembled down to your base systems, structures, organs and tissues. Everything will be destructively scanned and rebuilt at a cellular level before the augmentations are integrated. You would then be completely reconstructed and assembled as a new organism. I will do what I can for your pain, but I cannot block it all because you will have to provide feedback while we calibrate your rebuilt biology and augmentations. When the process is complete, every cell in your body will have been replaced with an enhanced synthetic version. Thousands of offensive and defensive technologies will have been woven into the very fabric of your being… and from every conceivable perspective Miss Jessica - you will no longer be... human.”

“So basically I’m going to be ripped to pieces, cut up, stabbed, sliced, poked, prodded, and stitched back together before I have to work my ass off to make it all work again?”

Sheng nodded, “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Jessica let out a dry and humorless laugh, “Big fucking deal. Sounds exactly like the last year of my life. How long will it take?”

“Approximately twenty-eight days”, the AI replied.

The girl rolled her eyes in response, “I could do that standing on my head.”

“You will actually have to be inverted for most of the process.”

“Huh… well, whatever.”

Sheng smiled at her response, obviously pleased. Then a gleam appeared in his eye that was the first true sign of excitement she had seen in him. “Very well Miss Jessica. I shall endeavor with all my skill to bring us success, and you shall be a formidable force against our common enemy.”

He had expected her to be pleased, but instead the girl only regarded him coolly for a long moment. Then he watched as the cold and ruthless look he had seen on her face before returned. It sharpened even further as she took a deep breath, and then with a flat and determined voice she spoke the words that they both knew would change their lives forever.

“Do it.”

“Very well Miss Jessica. Together let us...”

“Rage”, she finished for him.

“Yes”, he agreed, and his countenance began to mirror the fierce determination seen in hers... “Let us rage.”

So Sheng began, and for the next three days (less than one second in real world time) they worked together to plan how she would be changed in order to fight their enemies. She didn’t require sleep while they did it, and so they covered the vast majority of things she would need to know. It was the most peaceful and satisfying time Jessica had known since the attack, and for a while she felt almost... happy. For his part, Sheng found his first human partnership to be more stimulating and rewarding than he could have ever imagined. For the first time he felt a sense of purpose and he began to believe in the idea of preventing suffering instead of alleviating it.

It was the start of something that would become much more than a friendship and it would last much longer than either of them could have ever suspected.

Meanwhile in Colorado, thirty-seven people with a look of barely controlled fear written across their faces poured into a secret sub-basement command center. A room that they had all hoped they would never need to use.

Every station began to light up and the system operators took their places as the door on the far left of the room slammed open. A communal wince went through them all as a tall, white haired, and unbelievably enraged looking Air Force Chief of Staff stormed in. Without even breaking stride he proceeded to the front of the room, faced the assembled staff, pointed to a red phone on a small stand next to him and shouted “In exactly four fucking minutes the President is going to call this phone and ask me a question. The the single most important question of your lives. So you numb nut fucktards have got precisely three minutes and fifty two seconds to tell me EXACTLY how the United States Air Force lost an orbital rail gun so powerful that it could vaporize Los Angeles six times over in less time than it takes me to shit!... Now MOVE!!!”

Three thousand two hundred and thirty-seven miles away in an eccentric low earth orbit, the US StarLance Orbital Rail Gun Platform continued on its newly plotted trajectory. All of its stealth measures were active and the viral cognitive AI aboard had taken extra precautions. Tracking beacons, lights, extraneous systems, and the entire communications array were disabled. Rendered completely invisible to telescopes and radar, the satellite then proceeded to reduce its laser refraction signature to a surface area smaller than a dime.

In the cold emptiness of space, the most powerful weapon ever conceived drifted towards its unsuspecting target, as dark as the evil of its intent.

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