by Tao Wong
The Control member is usually harder to pick out since they don’t really have much need to showcase their abilities. Unless they’re purposely showy with elemental forms running around their body or tech all over them, they often look the most normal of the lot. In this case, I only knew of his gift due to office cooler gossip, rather than actual signs. And because I knew what he could do, I made sure to take him out well before he could ever show me his Power.
And yes, it’s true. I really do hate magicians.
I know the old saw about sufficiently advanced technology and magic. It doesn’t really count, when people can wave their hands and open up a dimensional portal to a new universe, one which is staffed by a bunch of human-flesh hungry demons. Or when they can blend themselves into shadows and then pop-out miles away. Or talk to ghosts and learn the secrets of the past. Magic just makes no sense, not according to any scientific principle that has been universally accepted. Now, there’s a billion hypotheses on how it interacts, but there’s a reason why they’re hypotheses and not theories.
Magic sucks and always makes a mess of things by being so unpredictable. So yeah, I hit the magician hard. Sue me.
Anyway, I was swinging around on the juggernaut’s shoulder, enjoying the view and recovering my wits. Took me long enough that they eventually tossed me into the holding cell.
Funny thing is, those cells were my own design. Or at least, the blocking technology that was used. It’s not the same kind that you guys use, mostly because the cost is much higher and thus a lot more effective.
Tribarium laced walls that were strong enough that they could take the initial hit by a Class I threat. Then the compressed formed carbon underlayer would take the energy and strengthen the entire structure even further, working with the tribarium lacing to increase durability. On top of that, low-level sonic waves were constantly pumped within the holding cells to mess with the prisoners’ sense of balance, coordination, and the ability to think. On the outside of the walls, magical glyphs were added by local magicians to seal off the dimensional walls and further suppress magical abilities. Layered on top of it all, the Amare Power suppression field.
The entire cell was built to hold Class I threats, the kind that Ultra fights. There’s one such cell in every secret research facility of Mordant’s and sometimes, more than one. They’re built to keep threats contained long enough for them to bring in their interrogators to extract whatever secrets they might want.
And since all this happened in their facility, no one would ever know the details if they didn’t want it to get out.
***
The first time they gave me my own team to lead, we created the Everclear contacts. God, what a rush. Mordant flew the entire team out to the Bahamas, wined and dined us like dignitaries and gave us bonuses that would have let me buy a mansion, even in Capital City. It was amazing.
Each time we came up with something new, something better, they feted us. Made us feel like conquering heroes, made us think we were the best in the world. I never worried about it, not even when we switched over to nanomachine work. Not even when they started asking me about pre-programming specs that looked all too familiar. Once we figured out the program for them to pre-program the nanites themselves, we never saw the personnel from that department again.
But then, the waves of assassinations and terror acts happened. So many knives and guns appeared in hands that shouldn’t have been able to access them. Heck, even the Secretary of State was killed, at his re-election rally.
When it came out that Mordant’s nanites were the cause of all that, public scrutiny increased. Of course, they blamed it all on corporate espionage as you remember. And, like everyone else, I believed them. We even took classes and seminars on new security protocols.
After that, we moved on to building nanites to break down organic matter. At first, it was figuring out the difference between decomposing and live matter. The first round of releases helped solve a growing waste problem, doubling the amount of good fertiliser that even the best organic waste recycling groups could make in half the time. And for the old waste piles, where the nanites burrowed into the overflowing landfills with repeated injections?
There was nothing like it.
Mordant was hailed as a deliverer of humanity, an environmental leader and my team got another huge bonus and three months vacation. Of course, we still had the next set of research goals awaiting us when we got back, so it wasn’t a complete holiday. They next wanted us to figure out how to breakdown live matter itself.
You can guess where this went. At least this time, the safeguards we had built into the nanites meant that they weren’t any mass murders. Could you imagine if the nanites could replicate unendingly and were dropped into a crowded city? Yeah. I can. I had nightmares for months on end, when we first started working on the nanites.
Of course, we realised the problem with replication soon after, and realised that grey goo nightmares were never going to happen.
Then, the first rumors started appearing. Next were the news articles of bodies bleached of all organic matter found in hotel rooms, houses and cars. The corporations and governments in the world had a new secret weapon, one that could be delivered in a variety of ways.
The nanites were so small, you could sprinkle it among food like seasoning, eject them into the air as a sneeze or leave them in water for someone to drink. Too small to see, too easy to bring into contact with the human body. And, with the delayed production settings that we built in, you could add little amounts of the nanites constantly until an optimal level was reached within the body.
Reached, and exceeded.
Once turned on, within minutes you would have a slurry of organic matter, rebuilt into dissolving nanites that could be programmed to create or form as a million different things. Break down every part of a human body and turn into more nanites before any excess waste made it into an unrecognisable goop.
Best part was, since the nanites were relatively unstable, they never lasted very long. You could make gloop, you could make oxygen and methane and nitrogen waste and a slurry of unrecognisable goop, and let it all just lie there, the actual weapon broken down. Untraceable.
Eventually, people figured out ways to safeguard against that. Minor electromagnetic pulses, a simple wave of a wand over food and clothing. Air filtration systems. Even self-defence oriented nanites that tracked down unwanted intruders and got rid of them before a critical mass was reached.
And the critical mass levels were relatively high. Because Mordant was so focused on large scale nanite developments that they missed the small scale use of organic nanites. A tiny dose was all you needed to tear open a vein, an artery in the right location. Create a heart attack or an aneurysm. Clog-up a vessel, making an individual even more prone to a medical accident.
It would have been simple to create a real secret weapon.
But Mordant has always gone for the big bucks, the spectacular showcases of their technology rather than the most efficient route.
Lucky for me.
***
The first person to make an appearance was the internal security chief for the building. I won’t describe what happened, I’m sure you can pick up the details from the recordings that they made. Torture, even as brutally and slapdash as he conducted it, is never fun. I probably didn’t help my cause either, the way I kept laughing at him throughout the entire process.
Why was I laughing?
Well, you try not to when you know something that they don’t, something that they desperately want to know. Also, I might have turned off the majority of my pain sensors at that point. Mordant’s internal nerve array chip, part of the neural link software scheme that they’d subsidized for all of us had been as easy to hack as to install.. At least, if you’re me. The fact that I’d hacked it on the first day they put it in me might be considered the start of my rebellion.
Look, back then, I figured it was just what Technopaths did. Put tech near us, we make
use of it. We make it our own.
Now, I’m wondering if past-subconscious me knew better.
It took just about fourteen hours to figure out that I was delaying them. By that point, the nanites I’d swallowed in the lab had replicated themselves sufficiently; pissed, bled and spat out from my body and were ready for business. They’d burrowed their way through the floor, replacing material as they dug deep within until they hit the support structures all around me. And then, they really started replicating, taking from the supports to make more of themselves.
I wasn’t a bad guy though.
I’m not a bad guy.
I had the nanites set off the fire alarm to evacuate everyone as part of their programing. Even if it made them realize they might not be as much in control as they thought, I did it. I tried to give everyone as much time as possible.
What happened next was Mordan’ts fault. They should have realized the flaw in their plans a long time ago. I could get all the off-site backups because they were all hooked into the system itself. But I couldn’t touch the off-site, off-line physical backups of my research material. The only way to get the on-site backups was to find them physically and destroy them. And unfortunately, the way that they managed and kept these backups, there was no way for me to locate them easily.
Now, theoretically, I could have found each of the backups and destroyed them without loss of life. But I just didn’t have the time. The nanites could only replicate endlessly while they were within my own Power field. And because I was in a suppression field the entire time they were torturing me, I couldn’t control the nanites once they were set loose. They just followed the programming I’d created for them while woozy, half-unconscious and staring at the juggernaut’s ass and tail.
Anyway, I’m sure you’re not that interested in the particular details of how close I came to failing in my breakout attempt. Just for the record – one iteration. It was only one iteration away before the nanites I’d consumed would have stopped working, stopped replicating themselves.
You want to know why I took out the city blocks?
That really was a matter of failure of education and knowledge.
I may be a scientist, but I specialized in cold, material sciences and now nanites. I never studied civil engineering. I didn’t really understand the full requirements in terms of load-bearing walls, foundation stability, and their interaction with my nanites.
I thought I had done a good job of programming the nanites, but. Well, you know.
Mistakes were made.
When I programmed the nanites to take out the underground cellblock I was being held in as well as the facility itself, I knew everyone who’d hidden away in Mordant’s underground security bunkers would be safe. They’d been rated to take a hit from a Class II Blaster. A small building or two dropping on them was small potatoes.
What I didn’t realize was that in destroying the supports and foundations of the underground facility, it would take out the rest of the neighborhood as well.
By the time I came out of my cell, my Power returned to me, things had progressed too far. I’d emerged like a dusty gopher, nanite formed facemask over my face to deal with the dust in the air, filtering oxygen for me to keep me alive, you guys were here. Guns drawn, bright lights pointed at me.
Maybe I did overreact a bit, after that.
But you have to admit, you did greet me with repulsor blasts the moment I poked my head out. After getting tortured for hours, could you really blame me for lashing out a little? Especially when you’re screaming at me about all the blood on my body. As if I didn’t know I was covered in blood, most of it mine. You know, you could have asked about the snot, the burnt hair before shooting.
Still, I have to admit, the fight was kind of fun.
So yeah, maybe it really is nature. That no matter how much you try, no matter how much you want to be good and you try to follow all the right rules, maybe there’s a part of us that naturally wants to be bad. Wants to be a Mask. A supervillain.
But I still don’t think I’m the villain here. After all, the government was never going to listen to me, give me a proper chance and listen to my side of the story. And Mordant had killed, would kill, even more with my research.
I thought I was doing the right thing, taking away the nanites.
But now, we’re here. And you’re looking at me accusingly, as if I did something wrong.
I’ve told you my story, and why I did it. What are you going to do about it?
That’s what I figured.
You want to say that you’ll investigate Mordant. That you’ll do it the right way. Go through the courts, fight their legal departments, investigate them properly. But it won’t matter, because they’re good at lying. And everything you’ll find will show that the research projects were purely scientific. No actual practical applications beyond civilian use.
And you’ll close the books.
And if there’s a niggle of worry, of doubt. You’ll have to push it aside, if you want to stay on the ‘right’ side of the law.
I know how it is. I mean, I believed them too.
So yeah, I took things into my own hands. I have enough blood on them already, anyway. I should have stopped working for Mordant ages ago. I should have fought in the insurrection. So, what if I killed a few dozen civilians?
Fine. A hundred and three.
People died because I made a few mistakes. And I’m sorry they died. And I’m sorry people are hurt. But it’s a whole lot less than there would have been if I’d let Mordant keep doing what they did.
And if that makes me a Mask? A villain?
So be it.
As they said, maybe it’s in my nature to do what’s right, no matter the cost.
To me.
Or anyone else.
***
That enough of a confession for you? I hope so. Because I won’t be giving this again. I’ll serve my time in whatever facility you send me to, because I did make a mistake with my calculations. I did bring the block down, and I did kill them.
I didn’t mean to, but I did it.
I’ll serve my time.
Peacefully.
Quietly.
…
…
One last thing.
I know you’re listening. I know you acquired this confession. The Mordant Board of Directors. You fried-circuit, calcium covered, burnt silicone wraiths of men in suits. You got this confession, thinking that you’re safe, that all your choices are bloodless and without cost.
To you, at least.
You’re less human than the nanites I work with, the technology I manipulate. All you see are just numbers on a financial chart.
Well, I’ll serve my time here, but don’t think that you’ve escaped my notice.
I’m coming for you, and if you send someone after me, trust me. You won’t like the results.
Then again, I don’t think you’re going to like the results either way.
So, toodles.
For now.
###
End of the Technopath’s Confession
As per normal operating procedure, a clean team was sent to deal with the Technopath. They failed, resulting in her escape.
The current whereabouts of the Technopath is not known.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading my superhero novelette about the Mask, the Technopath. I thoroughly enjoyed writing about her and the universe she inhabited. Look forward to more novelletes in the Powers, Masks & Capes universe.
In addition, please check out my other series, the Adventures on Brad (a slice-of-life fantasy LitRPG), the System Apocalypse (a post-apocalyptic LitRPG) and A Thousand Li (a cultivation xanxia series), and Hidden Wishes (an urban fantasy Gamelit). Book one of each series is named:
A Healer’s Gift (Book 1 of the Adventures on Brad)
Life in the North (Book 1 of the System Apocalypse)
A Thousand Li: The First Step (Book 1 of the A Thousand Li series)
A Gamer’s Wish (Book 1 of the Hidden Wishes series)
Subscribers to my mailing list will receive exclusive access to short stories in the Thousand Li and System Apocalypse universes: https://www.subscribepage.com/taowong
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