by Skyler Grant
Upgrade Options
Manufacturing
Biological
Your Growth Vats receive an upgrade and are able to produce all biological materials twenty percent faster.
Mechanical
Your Growth Vats are now capable not just of biological production but even of tooling fine metallic parts. This allows you to better utilize traditional mechanical or electrical designs.
That was a difficult choice. More and more I'd been focused on my biological aspects. I'd originally been a very traditional computer, but due to most of my early test materials being biological I'd focused my attention there. The majority of my workers now were human in construction and with everything considered, from new organic structures to clone defenders, the biological upgrade would be an asset.
The mechanical upgrade on the other hand would offer me greater flexibility. I'd been greatly impressed with the Professor's weapon designs for the clones. Currently they were something I couldn't duplicate easily, but with this I could, for all that duplication would mean taking production cycles away from other areas.
I decided to focus on the Mechanical upgrade. There were advantages to specialization, but so too for being versatile.
That little exchange had only consumed twenty units of Biomatter and one hundred research points, which still left me a lot for other upgrades.
Research and Defense were must-haves. I was still fundamentally obsessed with SCIENCE and I loathed the levels there being so low. Defense was also a priority. The other District Lords were all going to be more than happy trying to kill me, not just the Professor.
In the past I'd often emphasized research at the cost of other priorities. I didn't have that luxury now.
I spent an additional one hundred and sixty biomatter and two hundred research points to increase both to ten.
Upgrade Options
Defense
Swarm
Instead of focusing upon high powered units your defenses focus upon vast numbers of smaller defenders. Able to strike quickly they are relentless but fragile.
Juggernaut
The competing wisdom. Instead of swarming enemies with large numbers of troops you focus upon smaller numbers of highly formidable units.
At first this seemed a difficult choice, but not really. The swarm approach had many advantages, however almost all of my research to date involved building stronger and upgraded single units with abilities. If choosing Juggernaut made those units even more formidable that was to my advantage. I selected that option.
Upgrade Options
Research
Capture
Currently your research efforts mostly focus upon capturing and studying samples in captivity. While this has worked so far with increasingly more powerful foes, the shielding required to hold them becomes problematic. This will allow the strength for that approach to continue.
Kill
Instead of having to capture a subject you only need now to kill them with intent to siphon their abilities and you can instantly gain research knowledge regarding them.
This choice wasn't as simple. I'd made allies out of many of those I had once studied, an opportunity that would have been lost if I had killed them. Being able to capture foes for research had also almost functioned as a form of a base defense in the past, most recently with Jade.
There were major advantages to Kill. Especially as I grew and faced bigger threats. The ability to quickly and instantly gain new abilities was tempting.
Ultimately choosing Kill would force me into the role of a predator. I might choose to be one, sometimes, but I didn't want that to be a requirement of my existence. With the Capture option I had other choices, other possibilities still open to me. I decided on it.
I increased Utility, Residential, and Entertainment all to nine at the cost of another two hundred and forty Biomatter.
I didn't want to commit any more research points right now to improving them further. The construction would already take several days.
112
The next few days were harrowing ones for all in the city. I thought that after all the damage I'd inflicted upon Jade's people her district would fall quickly, but she seemed to have had more forces than I realized. Their combined power was enough to rip one of Wolf's airships from the sky and send a rain of debris upon the city.
It wasn’t long until Crystal reached out to me.
"I have people I need you to take care of," Crystal called.
"Ones terrified of spiders?" I asked.
"No. Well, yes actually, but that doesn't matter. The peasants from Sylax's core district."
I knew who she was talking about. Sylax liked to keep the poor and oppressed in her general vicinity, it gave her people to hurt and terrify. Outside of her castle there were a lot of them.
"Someone is moving on it?" I asked.
"Wolf will be soon. They won't stay here. They have legends about me," Crystal said.
I imagined that they had. I didn't know the full history of Sylax and Crystal, but it wasn't hard to see why they would be afraid of the monster that made their monster.
I had the room, although more mouths to feed would mean the cost of some resources that could be allocated elsewhere—although in a dire situation such a population could be moved to the grinders to create more Biomass.
Sylax was a woman of many mysteries and perhaps these people held some sort of value to her besides their ability to be terrified? I might learn something by watching and researching them. It was a possibility at least, enough of one to make it worth trying.
"Send them over," I said.
"They're approaching on maintenance level four," Crystal said.
They were, dressed in rags and carrying packs of belongings on their shoulders.
I activated several residential blocks and opened the maintenance door to allow them access to my district.
"Just when I think I've seen the very worst and pathetic that humanity has to offer, your species manages to underwhelm me once again," I told them over speakers.
An older woman at the head of the column looked around and spoke up. "We're used to living under the craziest witch in all creation. If you want to scare us, you'll be needing to try a little harder, dearie. The spider said you have rooms for us?"
"There are blinking lights, follow them. Do you people have names, or do you just refer to each other as victim number one, victim number two, and so on?" I asked.
"I'm Magpie," the old woman said. "I'll let the others introduce themselves in time, dearie. You have any work we can do, you just let us know and we'll pay you back for the space. We're mighty appreciative."
"I'm not even sure what peasants do. Did Sylax really just keep you around to torture? Even for a sadist it seems a lot of trouble," I said.
No answer was forthcoming as the refugees made their way through my halls. Soon enough they were settling into the residential units.
I put them in some of the nicer accommodations—my humanoid drones never needed quite the same level of care. I'd found I even missed baking since my humans had gone missing and by the time they arrived I had seventeen varieties of freshly baked cookies waiting for them.
Magpie looked over all this and barked a few sharp orders at her people before claiming a central chamber for herself and settling in on the bed. "You still hear me, machine?" she asked the ceiling.
"Always. If you wanted privacy you came to the wrong place. I'm always aware of every single thing you disgusting creatures do," I said.
"Don't go bragging about it, dearie, it's weird. You wanted to know what we do. You know the story of how we first met Sylax?"
I didn't.
"Tell me," I said.
"This was back when she was still a young and starry-eyed girl. Sylax had grown up poor, hungry, but clever with a good hand at machines. It led her to the Scholars and eventually to the spider who started to reshape her," Magpie said.
Introspection was not my strong suit, b
ut I could see the parallels to me and Anna.
"And she decided you'd make nice pets?" I asked.
"Not exactly," Magpie said. "We were a magical folk, always have been, and there’s always been some people some wanting to use that to their advantage. There was this Warlord preying upon us and trying to do just that. Sylax, she stopped him dead."
It was a nice story, and probably true. I'd seen how Sylax treated these people however.
"Then decided to oppress you herself?"
"Eventually. We'd agreed on a payment, but instead of paying we tried to kill her, her and that spider of hers. Bound them in webs of magic, cut out their hearts and dripped venom into their eyes."
Right, I'd heighten the surveillance on them and make sure that the explosives hidden in the structure were of a yield high enough to instantly kill everyone.
"And you say that I talk too much," I said.
"Got a point in all this. Sylax survived and came back stronger, but she never forgot us. We taught her the power of magic, we taught her what it was to be careless, we taught her that even the powerful can be brought low," Magpie said.
"And she has been bringing you low ever since."
Magpie chuckled and nodded. "Got that right, dearie. Whenever she had a tough foe though, someone she really needed to figure out, she talked to us. Don't just see us as her victims, you'd be wrong."
Probably so, nobody was ever just one thing. I also knew that Sylax wouldn't hurt them like she did, if they still had power over her. They might have their uses, but they didn’t operating from a position of strength with her—or with me now.
113
With the civil war between the districts well underway it was more important than ever that I figure out who was on my side—if anyone was. Crystal was working with me out of self-interest, but Ophelia remained a question in need of resolving.
I doubted she would just come out and tell me the truth, but I could get it out of her. I couldn't transport the larger grinder I'd prepared for an emergency. Instead, I could rig a smaller version that should still be suitable for interrogating purposes into a vehicle. I'd need to keep her lungs and head intact, but everything else could be crushed and ground to keep her helpless and encourage honesty. If someone can be on your side even while being ground into a pulp, they likely mean it.
I equipped the drones with acid guns, the sort of weapons for clinging to flesh and eating it away for a long period of time. I could depend on them to do extended damage, more than a bullet or a beam weapon, at least while the acid remained strong.
Preparations made, I snuck them into Ophelia's district. It was a challenge given the recent conflicts. Her district was seeing regular transportations of wounded from anyone willing to pay her fee to get them back on their feet and I snuck my vehicle in among them.
I hadn't yet seen what Ophelia's district was like, and it wasn't what I'd expected. Ophelia had been raised in the badlands, the land where I'd first awakened. A blasted wasteland ruled over by super-powered gangs, a place where she had eventually hooked up with a super-fast woman by the name of Runner.
Ophelia's district did not reflect that background, it was rather more an idealized version of the old world. White picket fences bordered brightly colored houses and fields of flowers. Cheerful people roamed the streets, going about their business.
It was almost painfully nice.
It was also instructive. I'd been wondering just which personality of Ophelia was dominant and the surroundings gave me an answer. This degree of saccharine niceness could only be Amy.
I wanted to hit Ophelia in her seat of power. That way, if I did truly conquer her, I could perhaps accomplish whatever Jade had hoped to achieve with me.
The seat of her power seemed to be a stone building festooned with bright garlands of flowers and labeled, "Town Hall".
"Hello! How may I help you?" asked a uniformed man as my drones stepped in. They gave him a shot of acid to the face for the trouble.
It should have proved quickly fatal. As my drones marched past the corpse I noticed that it wasn't. Even now he was starting to regenerate, not as fast as Ophelia, but faster than Anna.
Ophelia had managed to make her own lieutenants. That was usual for those with a power crystal.
Three other people stopped my drones in the halls, helpfully offering to direct them on their way, each getting a spray of acid.
Ophelia's office was in the back. She sat behind a desk in a swivel chair.
"Emma! I was wondering when you might be dropping by. Hi Abigail! I didn't know she still had your blueprint saved," Ophelia said.
I really didn't like the Amy personality.
Multiple sprays of acid were fired, they didn't reach her. There seemed to be some sort of barrier surrounding the desk, the streams of acid splashing against it and running in rivulets down to make a steaming mess of the carpet.
I said through Candice, "I see my bad copy was expecting me. Congratulations for making the creepiest of all the districts. I wouldn't have thought it possible with a collection of psychopaths and sadists."
Ophelia beamed a smile. "They aren't that bad and you don't really mean that. You just can't keep yourself from saying mean things."
I didn't like that she knew me so well.
The barrier didn't seem to be energy. Physical then, she knew about the weapons that I had at my disposal and that the acid guns would be the most effective ones to neutralize her. If I'd brought a beam weapon I might have been able to burn my way through it.
My powers were also too dampened to allow teleportation between districts, so I couldn't run back to get more.
"Then you know the barrier is unnecessary paranoia on your part," I said.
Ophelia settled back into her chair. "We know you'll try to melt us and interrogate us given a chance. You don't trust us. You don't realize that by seizing another district we doubled our chances of getting the right one."
Is that what she was claiming? I couldn't dispute that, when presented with a choice, I'd picked the District I felt I had the strongest connection to and had to hope that I got it right. I hadn't.
"You're claiming to still be a friend and ally? You've done nothing to help me, Anna, or any of the captured members of the crew. If Ophelia was in control I might be inclined to simply attribute that to cowardice and incompetence," I said.
"We were only slightly more trusted than you were, and now find ourselves embroiled in the same struggle," Ophelia said, twining her fingers over her chest. "This has been our first real moment to talk. You are bright and beautiful and clever, you must see I'm telling the truth."
That wasn't really credible. If she had wanted to reach out to me, yes, it might have been risky while Sylax was in charge, but the moment she went missing the rules had changed.
"You could have reached out, but you didn't and I have regained a connection with my allies to none but you. Mechos tells me that you are my opposite. Kind on the outside and a monster within. Why shouldn't I believe him?" I asked.
"Sister. We're family," Ophelia said, leaning forward. "We know you don't accept that, not really, but it is true. A part of us was once you, and we are connected. Did Mechos also tell you that you are good and decent? You know your heart better than that, so do we. We are the only ones who may truly rely on each other."
I couldn't believe that. A part of Ophelia might have been a copy of my own operating system, but one corrupted by the source orb. Whatever she was now, it wasn't family. However, I‘d gain nothing by confronting her with that fact.
I said, "Of course, sister. Perhaps it was simply your being hosted in such a hideous and whiny vessel that made me question you."
Ophelia really was still in there, at least a little. There was the briefest twitch of narrowing eyes. I made my exit. I'd answered my question about Ophelia.
In her current form I had to count her as an enemy.
114
I wasn't to have much time to dwell on Ophelia. Wi
thin a few hours after my forces returned to the District my proximity alarms started to go off.
I had intruders, large ones. I activated my cameras and attempted to get a good look at what was coming. Charging down the street were a horde of dinosaurs. Triceratops, actually, although ones fitted with additional combat armor .On their backs were armored platforms carrying a number of figures in khakis and pith helmets.
It had to be the Professor. The style was his and it would be just like him to resurrect a threat from the ancient world instead of re-purposing perfectly adequate modern monsters.
I detonated an empty building as one passed and the triceratops barely seemed fazed by the ripples of concussive force pelting into it. That wasn't good, but it wasn't a surprise. He had picked these creatures because they were durable.
Normally my next step would be to target their weak spots with sniper fire—the eyes, the joints, but I could already see the telltale shimmer of blue energy shielding around them. Doctor Batarius was an expert in energy shielding.
There were my acid guns. Against the beast’s armor they would take awhile to work, but they were probably going to be my best option. Second best, at least. I got my production facilities working on new acid batches and moved my combat drones into position.
I opened a comm line to Crystal.
"Can this wait? I'm busy," I heard Crystal say over what sounded like the noise of detonating grenades in the background. It wasn't a good day for either of us, it seemed.
"I know you didn't suddenly make any friends, you're too unpleasant. I have a herd of stampeding dinosaurs charging down my streets," I said.
"The Professor is there? Unexpected. You want me to compel them, of course. That would be easy, but I can't now. Can you handle them on your own?"
"I can, but I'll take damage," I said.