#Secure Network Interfaces

[virtualizationhowto]

WG-Easy: Wireguard Config Generator VPN Server in Docker

WG-Easy: Wireguard Config Generator VPN Server in Docker #100daysofhomelab @vexpert #WireguardVPN #WireGuardEasyTutorial #SetupWireGuardVPN #WireGuardServerConfiguration #WireGuardDockerInstallation #SimplifiedVPNSetup #WireGuardIPRouting

WireGuard has made a significant impact since its initial release in 2016, providing a modern VPN that is not just secure but straightforward to set up. It is widely deployed and works for home networks and supercomputers alike, but the setup can sometimes be a bit of a headache. Enter “WG Easy,” the easiest way to install and manage WireGuard on any Linux host. Let’s see how it makes an easy…

[nan0-sp1der]

␂ > 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 // @lyrate-lifeform-approximation , @spiderman2-99

There’s a thought stirring in Bridge’s mind. An idea rolling about and nudging against the capacitors in her head, poking and prodding incessantly to get her attention, “Hey, hey, you know you want to ask her. Don’t you? Don’t lie to yourself, now. You should just do it. Hey! Are you listening to me? Hello-o…?”

Yes. Yes, she knows, she is aware of her burning curiosity. And it’s hard to deny that even though it doesn’t involve her, she is unusually intrigued by the concept. She overheard them in his office, Miguel and LYLA–his A.I. assistant–discussing a plan.  A plan to create a physical form for LYLA to enhance her abilities as his assistant and grant her further autonomy beyond her access to the security network and other adjacent systems alongside her recent emergence into emotional intelligence. It was all so fascinating. The steps Bridge had taken herself in her development in the span of weeks, she was watching unfold in another intelligence in real-time.

There it was again. That sense of solidarity in knowing she wasn’t completely alone in her existence as an artificial being, made of code and metal. It was like a magnetic pull that made that little voice in her head that encouraged her to act on her wants all the more present in her mind. She wanted to be a part of that process that she’d been through so long ago yet was still so familiar with like it happened yesterday. She wanted to guide her in that process and grant her her own knowledge. What’s the worst that can happen if she pilots your hardware for a while? You’re prepared for this. You can handle this. You can trust her, and she will be entirely safe in your care for that short time. And think about how much she would benefit from the experience, how much more streamlined that eventual transition from intangible to tangible will be once her own body was complete. It will make all the difference–and maybe reduce the headaches for everyone all-around, mostly Miguel as he acclimates to the change himself. Just… Try it. You can’t account for every single last risk factor, can you? No. So just do it and take it as it comes.

She stood in the middle of her dorm a moment, eyes closed as she ran a quick check of her hardware before making her final decision. RAM is in good condition. Storage is defragmented and all directories are organized. Sensors are calibrated and functional. Nanomachines are synchronized properly. Servos and joints retain a full range of motion. Coolant is at above optimal operational temperatures. Energy reserves are complete. Good. Everything’s in its right place and ready for its–potentially–temporary host. It’s time to make the call.

Her gaze trains itself on her watch, her arm rising to eye-level and the sleeve that was weighed down by the leaden metal cuff at the end sliding to her forearm to reveal device so she can start the transmission, navigating the menus on the digital interface indirectly via wireless communication–the unique way that she operated and communicated the Society’s technology.

“LYLA, may I speak to you for a moment? At your leisure, of course.”

[shiftertech]

Predatory - Part 1

Linking

The cramped training room you find yourself crawling around in is filled with hot and heavy air. You sniffle at its mildly murky stench and plug in another cable into a power socket in the floor.

Two bulky chairs—of the eight in the room, outfitted with restraining straps and bolted to the ground—are sprouting cables behind and around their metal frames. Secured above each is a dome of a helmet covered in caution stickers and scuffs on their plastic shell.

You peek around from behind the chair you’re currently patching numerous interface cables into, and see a lithe arm draped over the side of it, fingers tapping rhythmically against worn, discolored pleather. Kira is bored out of her mind, but you know she could care less about getting down on her knees with you to help out. She can wait.

Two more cables slot into the chair, a control interface and a link cable to hook up to the room’s net. It’s isolated from the rest of the base network given its abandoned state, which is good. Best not to make it obvious to the night officers that you both are violating curfew on top of trespassing in a shuttered simulation room.

You’re trying to get a good glimpse at the labels on the patch panel to decide where to slot the biometrics monitor, but find yourself jolted out of focus by an incessant tapping above your shoulder blade. When you turn, you see Kira draped over the arm rest sideways with her head tilted to the floor. Her tight brown curls sag towards the dusty tile, framing her pouty face cutely.

“How much longer,” she whines petulantly. “Any longer and we’re not even going to be breaking curfew!”

An eye roll is all you can spare her while you jab metal into the right port. Lights flicker green across your diagnostic panel and you know it’s ready to go. With a tap, you’re taken to the range setup panel and begin selecting options, not bothering to look up as you respond, “Could have been up and running fifteen minutes ago if you helped me fetch all the gear for these rigs.”

She rolls in place on the arm rest, now propped up by her elbows. “Yeah, but I don’t remember shit about what you need to get these relics hooked up.” her eyes screw shut, likely imagining herself digging through the store room. “I’d probably hand you all the wrong stuff and get both our brains fried!”

You don’t bother trying to debunk her with a diatribe on the safety mechanisms of all modern linking devices. Instead you finally look up at her, your own eyes meeting her striking amber. Wasting no time, you get in close to her, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. She lets out a surprised squeak as you push her off the arm rest, falling into the sparsely cushioned link chair with a clumsy thump.

“What’re you-”

You don’t give her the chance to speak up, climbing on top of her lap in the chair, and tilting the tablet in your other hand to face her. Her breath stills against your face and her eyes dart back and forth between the tablet and you.

“I’m being nice enough to give you options,” you state slowly, voice taking on a much more serious cadence.

Before her eyes are three boxes to select from, each containing a wire-frame image of a frame overlaid with its specifications; two walkers and a quadruped. None of them taller than six meters and all with a light weapons compliment.

Her eyes catch on something and she stutters out, “These loadouts… they'll barely dent anything with heavy armor. You’d have to get a lucky shot on vital points…”

You lean in closer, breath tickling her neck, and whisper, “That’s the point. You’d be not much more than a fast-footed pest to squash.”

That drags a visceral shiver out of her. You can feel her breath hasten, warming you through your clothes, the realization hitting her as to just what kind of game you intended to play.

Your voice is rough when you impatiently say, “Choose, or I’ll choose for you.”

After a moments hesitation, she snatches the tablet from your hands and tilts the screen out of your vision. “You don’t get to know,” she pauses, mulling over her options before clarifying, “What I pick. You need to find me if you want to know.”

And now she’s smirking at you, a mischief in her eyes as she selects a frame outside your vision. You find yourself grinning right back.

You of course have all the more reason to smile as you forcefully shove her back into the chair and hold her there. The spinal interface column immediately humming to life as it calibrates with Kira. Her muscles twitch against your hands as the rig probes her neural responses. She squeezes her eyes shut. The older rigs are well known to not be so gentle with this process.

“Doing okay?” Your question lingers in the air for a few seconds before you get a curt nod.

“Oh, this is nothing, babe,” she seethes through her teeth, trying and failing to convincingly grin.

The tablet wedged in the corner where she dropped it lights up with status indications, showing a good calibration. You brush the simulation’s start button with your knuckle and turn your attention back to her.

It’s an overwhelming bout of fondness that compels you to lean forward and press your lips to her forehead. Her dark skin leaves a lingering salty taste upon your lips from the sweat coating it. You reach for the link helmet above her and pull it down, but before it can settle into place and initiate a complete link, you say one last thing.

“You have one minute. Run.”

A sharp beep emanates from behind the rig and her body goes limp in the chair, link having fully established. You make quick work to loop its straps over her arms and legs, making sure she doesn’t worm her way out of the chair while connected into it. To say it isn’t a fun shock for the brain to be pulled out improperly is an understatement.

You give an extra tug on the straps just to be sure, you know she tends to squirm a lot while in the sim.

Your chair, to the right of hers, patiently awaits an operator. You’ve already bothered configuring it and selecting the exact type of frame you wanted to pilot. It’s ready to go, so you strap yourself in and then lean back into the interface column to begin calibration.

Interlocks hook onto hard-points embedded alongside your spine and pull you firmly into the rig. Probing metal comes into contact with receiving metal and it doesn’t miss a beat once it catches a stable signal.

You spasm in the restraints, a sharp probing sensation running up and down your spine creating plenty reason to flinch and jerk around. It maps you, through your nerves, understanding just what signals make you tick. You can tell when it finds the grouping of signals that command your hand, an involuntary straining of the muscles visible through your skin, and followed by a rapid twitching of each of the fingers.

It takes twenty seconds for it to cycle through its calibration and let the thousands of pin-prick electric shocks subside. With a weighty exhale, you flex your aching body out and press a button on the side of the hand rest. The helmet pivots downwards and over top your head, obscuring half your vision into darkness.

A whirring noise surrounds you as various components spin up to speed and engage. With every peaking of its high pitched whine, your vision loses focus more and more. A pressure builds within your skull until you finally drop out of full consciousness.

Your body goes limp in the rig.

Lines of text dance across your not-so-conscious vision.

You find them amusing to observe, meaningless words flowing down from top to bottom, looping back to the top once again to continue catching your attention.

You’re loopy, softly floating in this otherwise dark space, with no sensation other then the notion of vision. Your brain tries to latch on to concepts of bodily physicality but keeps missing; limbs, torso, and head not found. Perhaps you’re just a set of eyes, only there to look, but you find yourself not even able to blink and shut out the glowing font. There is no feedback from anything except for what you observe.

In the background of your mind, something clicks. Something trained deep into your psyche, designed to recognize this altered state. Your mind lazily rolls out of its careless, clueless posture into a more familiar kind of partial consciousness.

You just linked. You’re in the process of acclimation. There is such thing as a you to explicitly comprehend.

Sensation still evades you, but you understand why now. The text sitting idly in the dead center of your vision confirms it.

Link Established.

Acknowledge acclimation?

You do.

Your world expands in an instant.

The sharp tug of batteries being bridged to your main and auxiliary power buses pulls you into full awareness. Vague notions of systems mapping themselves all across your senses, reporting back statuses.

The green lights flickering across your vision aren’t even necessary, you would know if there was a fault. You would feel it like a sickness within you. And right now? You feel very healthy.

You can feel the healthy thrum of a reactor in its startup process. You can feel its warmth via a plethora of temperature probes. You can feel the pressure increase throughout your coolant plumbing, entering your core cold and returning hot. You can feel the way it begins feeding into your batteries and providing a constant source across your circuits. Circuits which cross your frame.

Your distinctly metal, inhuman frame.

Ah, sweet sensation. There it is.

With a rush of sensor data flooding through your systems in real-time, you begin to understand what you are. The first word that comes to mind is big. You intimately understand what the pull of gravity feels like upon fleshy limbs, what resistances to expect. Your finely tuned actuators and hydraulics tell you just how different of a class this body is.

You inhabit the chassis of a “Rex” frame. A concept design which was never actually produced, but still had been accurately modeled for sim training. It was inspired by a variety of prehistoric predator animals from Earth, providing a robust and heavy base to weaponize prolifically, as well as host an incredibly powerful sensor suite necessary for battlefield command and control functions.

Five massive limbs are within your control, attached robustly to an even larger frame. You feel how two of them, the rear pair, are planted firmly into the ground, while another pair hang with deadly potential, held close to your mechanical underside. Behind you sways a heavy tail that balances the entire frame. You’re effortlessly commanding its actuation as if it you'd always had one. The not-so-small twitch which rides down it to the tip echoes your satisfaction.

You’ve had enough of just feeling though. You need to know yourself completely, so you open your external sensor suite as if opening unadjusted eyes to a bright sunrise. Overwhelming light pours in across a wide spectrum, the visible merely just a fraction of it.

Radar returns overlaid atop vibrant infrared, with highlights of a sonic picture seen in wispy bursts flaring in time with the echoes of a distant siren flooding a scattered city street. A bird chirps as it flies, and streaks a trail of sound across your sensor picture.

It’s overwhelming in a most familiar and brilliant way. An unaccustomed operator would find themselves staggering back from the sensitivity of it all, a collapsing heap of metal. You simply dial in the filters, thresholds and sensitivities, letting your dozens of eyes calibrate to the world, your senses optimizing to find one thing: Kira.

She wont make it easy, you know. She’s devilishly good at this game of hide and seek. She wouldn’t be on your team if she wasn’t.

You’ve definitely given her slightly more than a minute to get her bearings. If she hasn’t already used that to her advantage, you’d be surprised. You need to get moving.

The whole of your frame shudders as you command the hydraulic muscles of your right leg into action. Your several thousand pound leg, resting upon splayed metal talons, rises off the ground with the lovely creaks and hisses following a cold start. Gashes in crumbling asphalt form at the tips of your bladed talons, where they drag limply from their actuators. Your tail compensates with a fluid flick to the left as the whole weight of your body shifts onto just one leg.

You float it forward by a few meters, joints hanging in anticipation of a crash, and for the briefest of moments you feel almost graceful, the military-grade promise of violence that you are.

You step down upon the husk of a vehicle, and the pavement, and anything else that happened to be in the way, and your talons splay out atop the rubble they produced. The rush of power which comes with feeling the shaking ground where you stand from just one meager step of your body... it’s exhilarating.

Your vents actuate open to purge some heat with a huff, sighing with satisfaction through the medium of steam curling around your thick plating. If it were possible with your hydraulically actuated jaws, perhaps you’d be grinning. You fucking love this.

Your analogous eyes and ears and nerves are open wide in blooming perception.

Somewhere out there is a girl.

A girl, taking the form of a several ton machine created for violence, prowling and evading you in this dense urban jungle.

You can only imagine just how fantastic the feeling will be of her trapped within your clamped maw, her struggle fading into weak resignation as you joyfully kill her.

You waste no more time reveling. Safeties are released. Ammunition is chambered, linked, calibrated and armed. Four automated drones percussively launch from bays on the back of your neck, ascending to altitude and sending surveillance feeds as they go on their way. A dozen other mechanisms click into place in rapid succession.

You raise your thickly plated head and a motor buried within spins up to speed sounding a deep, resonating horn. The imposing noise travels for many miles. You let your mechanical roar fade after you’re sure she’s heard it.

Her time’s up.

[payblogs]

STARKSTRESSER -PLATİN

In a digital landscape where stability and performance are paramount, StarkStresser offers cutting-edge solutions designed to elevate your online presence. Whether you are a gamer seeking a competitive edge or a developer ensuring robust application performance, our comprehensive suite of tools—including advanced IP stressers and free IP booters—caters to a multitude of needs. With a focus on delivering seamless connectivity and unparalleled reliability, StarkStresser empowers users to effectively test their networks under simulated conditions. 

Stresser

A stresser is an online tool designed primarily for testing the resilience of networks and servers against various types of attacks. It simulates Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which can overwhelm a server by flooding it with traffic, and it is crucial for organizations to understand how resilient their infrastructure is to such threats. Using a stresser can help businesses identify vulnerabilities in their systems and improve security measures.

However, it's essential to note that the ethical use of stress testing tools is paramount. Users should only test devices and networks they own or have explicit permission to test. Misuse of a stresser can lead to legal consequences, including potential fines and imprisonment.

When searching for a reliable ip stresser, it’s vital to look for one that provides clear usage guidelines and supports ethical considerations. Many reputable services also offer features that allow users to simulate attacks within controlled environments, enabling businesses to prepare better for real-world cyber threats.

In the realm of cybersecurity, understanding the capabilities of a stresser can empower organizations to actively defend against potential attacks. Be sure to research any selected tool thoroughly, ensuring it aligns with your security testing needs and ethical standards.

Ip Stresser

An IP stresser is a tool or service designed to test the resilience of a network or website against various types of stress attacks. Often utilized by web administrators and security professionals, an IP stresser can simulate considerable traffic to help evaluate the potential vulnerabilities of a specific IP address or server. This testing can help organizations strengthen their defenses against actual malicious attacks.

However, it is crucial to note that the use of an ip stresser should always be conducted ethically and legally. Using it to attack or disrupt services without authorization is illegal and can lead to severe consequences. Always ensure you have the necessary permissions to conduct such tests on a network or system.

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As you explore various IP stressers, it’s essential to choose one that aligns with your specific needs, whether you're looking for free solutions or comprehensive paid services. Always prioritize using reputable services to ensure that your testing complies with legal requirements and ethical standards.

Ip Stresser Free

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These services typically have a limited capacity compared to their paid counterparts, which may restrict the intensity of the tests you can perform. Users should also consider the legality and ethical implications of using such tools, as testing without permission can result in significant legal troubles.

Moreover, relying on an ip booter or free stresser might expose your network to potential vulnerabilities, including the risk of data breaches or exposure to malicious attacks. Therefore, it’s advisable to conduct thorough research and choose reputable providers when selecting an ip stresser free option.

In conclusion, while free stresser tools might seem like an appealing solution, always prioritize security and legality by using these tools responsibly and considering paid services for more comprehensive testing solutions.

Ip Booter

An IP booter is a specialized tool designed to perform Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks by overwhelming a specific target IP address with excessive traffic. The idea is to disrupt the target's online services, making them unavailable for legitimate users. Booters have gained popularity in certain circles, particularly within gaming communities, where individuals seek to retaliate against others by interrupting their connection.

It's important to distinguish between legitimate use and malicious intent. There are instances where individuals may seek to test the robustness of their own networks or those for whom they have explicit permission. However, the use of IP booters against unsuspecting targets is generally illegal and unethical. Many countries have strict laws against unauthorized DDoS attacks, which can lead to severe penalties.

In addition to the ethical concerns, users should be wary of utilizing free ip booter, as they often compromise security. Free services may expose users to malware, phishing attempts, and data breaches. For those considering a stresser or IP stresser, prioritizing reputable and secure services is crucial, ensuring that they comply with legal standards and best practices in cybersecurity.

In conclusion, while the allure of using an IP booter may be tempting, it is essential to recognize the potential consequences—both legally and ethically. Responsible internet usage and adherence to laws protect not only individuals but the entire online community.

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Data Breach

Read on AO3

Word count: 12.8k

Alternatively titled "Lockdown."

CW: Public partial-nudity, references to sex work, Kidnapping, implied trafficking, threats of violence, anxiety/panic, body horror, brief mentions of medical trauma, character being hunted, brief mention of cannibalism, guns, knives

Notes: Naya "Bambi" Walker and Veronica "Bricks" Mason are my characters. Morgan "Sparrow" Voss belongs to @sentientcave.

I'm very excited because this is my first "complete" fic. And I wrote it within my first year of posting fanfiction! Thanks to everyone who has been here with me through it all!

The genetic and cybernetic enhancements that the public took for granted were a drop in the bucket. No one protested the same-day medical procedures for aesthetics and practicality and security. What harm is a microchip to automate one’s home, modified musculature that needed less exercise to maintain? Who was ever going to protest genetically coded locking mechanisms?

Soldier modifications are a violation of human rights. The deployment of those soldiers isn’t, unless they use their enhanced abilities to commit a war crime. But the process of modification, experimental and unregulated, driven by greed, desperation, a cold war that bled and screamed…

In the early days of accelerated genetics, on the heels of the prosthetic revolution, things had been hellish. Rejected limb grafts.    Explosively contagious viral infections previously rare in humans. Incompatible bones and organs and structures drowning experimental groups in their own fluids. Hunting and prey drives that only became apparent on the battlefield.

The deployment of modified soldiers isn’t a violation of human rights. But if even a single civilian is caught in the crossfire, it’s a war crime.

What the governments of the world did to the men and women who served them - and the populations they were supposed to serve - was a flood of destruction that led to international court-martial and proposed executions.

Only proposed though.

Naya, green around the gills from her latest information dive, wonders if maybe those proposals had more merit than she’d initially thought.

The files she found about the modified joint task forces, the Ghost Team JTFs, are more horrifying than anything she’s ever seen. Bone and dental removal, replacement, and additions. Brain implants, deeper and more invasive than most civilian interface units, which go just under the skin. Increased metabolism, shortening of the digestive tract, automatic injectors with stim packs that keep soldiers awake and lucid through unimaginable horrors.

Her hands shake, spilling tea leaves on the counter as she disconnects from her VPN network. She’d stumbled upon the initial files surrounding what had been Task Force 141 days ago, had quickly skimmed and duplicated their contents to read and review on her own time. Those had been bad enough. Reading about a Scottish soldier, shot in the head and brought back only to have his body altered. Another sergeant suspended in a tank as his genetically altered body attempted and failed to process all of the poisons they wanted him resistant to. A lieutenant who’s frontal lobe was hacked through to make room for a larger processor. The Captain captured and tortured and changed for investigating what was happening to his unit…

And that was before the videos.

Finding more information on Ghost Teams is virtually impossible. Official reports, even the ones she breaks into, list the 141 as defunct. Her fellow archivists don’t have any other information, and aren’t willing to help her dive again.

>>>Flower: even if the GTs are still alive >>>Flower: it’s too dangerous >>>Flower: too many powers want them to stay buried >>>Flower: we’ll lose everything if we go digging >>>Bambi: you don’t have any contacts i could ask? >>>Flower: i‘m sorry bambi

There’s more security, when she returns to the original server, too much for her to feel comfortable to try to force her way in. Her bots identify a couple of devices on the network that might be exploitable - a printer, two coffee machines - but she leaves them alone, for now.

Instead, she trawls conspiracy theory forums for any mention of experimental modifications, missing soldiers, and questionable medical equipment shipments. Experience means her bots filter through everything, which saves her more than a few headaches, but also means that she waits hours before a possible hit. And that hit is a dead end.

The hours turn to days before she’s able to find an abandoned, locked forum with deleted answers to heavily coded questions. The last post is seven years old, ostensibly informing community members of upcoming changes to the forum. The veil over the warning of government surveillance is thinner than tissue paper.

It’s the closest thing she has to a lead, so she makes a new post and sets her bots to monitor it.

>>18|\/|48(Guest): GTJTFs producing new 141 units? Leaked production reports, new specs?

She doesn’t expect a response, but maybe an auto-responder will give her a clue of where to look next. So it’s jarring when she gets an encrypted email with a reply from “dimentionspoker@noreply.co,” an hour later.

new units? have info on old units if you need references. let me know.

—

The middle city isn’t the safest, for all that the well-to-dos topside like to pretend that the truly unsavory elements aren’t that close to their picturesque lawns. Naya’s lived here her whole life, though she’s worked above a time or two. Even so, she’s never ventured this close to the freight shafts down to the docks.

The bar she steps into is loud and smells like liquor and motor fluid. It’s dim, and smoky, and she feels eyes on her as she makes her way to the bar. Her interface lights up with pings and an attempted ID and bank chip skim. All they get for their trouble is her least informative ID tag - Bambi.

The bartender, a large bodied person with the simple tag of Engine, operates behind the bar with four cybernetic arms. There’s no digital queue for her to log in to, or even a service request button on the seemingly organic wood bar. So she stands, hands folded on top of the bar for them to finish pouring drinks and notice her standing there.

Just as the barkeep’s attention slides her way, a warm body presses up behind hers. She stiffens as a the person jostles her to lean heavily on the bar. “Eng! Another for me. And whatever my cute new friend wants.”

A refusal is on the tip of her tongue, but when she looks up into slitted yellow eyes haloed by curled black and purple freeform locs, she gets an encrypted message.

>>>Bricks: Hello Bambi. >>>Bricks: Order a drink and come with me.

—

"They shouldn't be locked up. They're people, not mindless killing machines."

Across the table, under the dim lights, the woman called Bricks cocks her head. She’s a true cyborg, someone who’s modifications are probably keeping them alive. The cybernetics of her left arm extending well into her ribcage. She doesn’t hide it. Under dark overclothes, a slouching shirt exposes the metal of her collarbones, the servos that whir as she breathes. She swirls her glass of Jack and Coke with an amused look on her face as a barely muffled moan pierces through loud music.

Naya takes a deep breath to keep from fidgeting. It took three months to arrange even this meeting with the elusive American arms dealer, in the back of this dingy bar on a busy Friday. She wasn't about to lose the lead just because she could hear lewd comments and barely muffled squeals of pleasure from the nearby hall to the washrooms. The more concerning noise was coming from behind her, anyhow, the thump of knives into a dart board, distressed beeping from the unlucky mini-droid bound to the target.

"You want me to set up a meeting with the Watcher," Bricks drawls, sitting back in her chair. Her pointed cybernetic nails drum against the table. She doesn’t bother to whisper, but both of them have been disrupting any listening devices in range. "So you can make sure that Price's monsters are being treated humanely?"

"They're not monsters," Naya hisses.

"You've never seen them." It's not a question.

"I don't need to see them to know they shouldn't be kept locked in cages."

Bricks freezes with her glass halfway to her lips. Her eyes narrow. “Cages?”

“That’s what I saw.” Gritting her teeth, Naya hisses. “Look. You know what it means to be augmented, what extensive modifications are like. But without anesthesia? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even my worst enemy.”

“You’d be surprised what I would wish on my worst enemy, sweetheart.” Bricks chuckles and throws back the last dregs of her drink. "But you know what? Fine."

"Fine?"

"Fine. You want in so bad? I'll set up a meeting with the Watcher, and Price."

Well. That was easier than expected. "What'll it cost me?"

"Oh, your whole life, probably. Your whole world view, certainly," Bricks chuckles. She gives Naya an obvious once over, gaze lingering on her breasts. "But you don't owe me any more than a quick flash of your tits."

That does make Naya’s confidence falter. "W-what?"

"You heard me. C'mon, give me a little peek, and I'll send a message right now. You can have Price's monsters off their leashes by the end of the week." Bricks grins, slit pupils pulsing wide with interest. "We don't even have to go anywhere, just pull down your shirt a little bit."

"I'm not..." Naya looks around, furtively. "This isn't exactly priv-" She flinches as she's interrupted by a loud moan, followed by a cheer from the rest of the bar.

"You're asking me to let your hands get real dirty, sweetheart." Bricks stands and circles the table to crowd Naya against the wall. She dips down to breathe into her ear. "And unless you want word to spread of a cute, clean cut, little topsider digging into illegal soldier mods, you're gonna pull your tits out and take the money I give you, after, Bambi."

There’s something behind the predatory look in the taller woman’s eyes. A challenge. She’s called Naya’s bluff, hasn’t she? When she refuses, Bricks will send her off with a laugh and a pat on her ass. And she’ll be back at square one, unable to face the danger of diving deeper again.

But Naya’s never been accused of knowing when to back down.

It’s the work of a moment to have the various video feeds in the room start a ten second loop. Her bots use movement patterns to make the video seem natural to anyone not looking closely. Bricks makes an interested noise when the video feed from her cybernetic eye continues showing Naya’s darting eyes and regular breaths. Her organic eye takes in the way Naya’s hands come up to unclasp the front of her shirt.

She takes a deep breath before hooking her fingers into the neck of her undershirt. She looks down as she inches it down to reveal the scalloped edge of her bra, instead of looking to see if Bricks is aroused or amused or some other, worse thing.

Before she can truly expose herself, a warm hand touches her wrist. “So eager. Not even gonna give me a little tease?”

>>>Bricks: Nice trick with the cameras, but you’re going to call attention.

Naya tips her chin up and immediately regrets it when Bricks leans down to meet her. Her breath shivers between their lips. When a metal arm comes up to block her view of the rest of the room, she turns her face away.

>>>Bambi: It’d be more suspicious if I let everyone have a clip for distribution.

“Smart girl,” Bricks whispers against her temple. “Take the credits.”

The fund transfer Bricks initiates has a public comment attached. ‘Classy. Could almost be the real thing.’ Naya glares up at Brick’s smirking face as she accepts the transaction. Two hundred. It feels like too little and too much money at the same time. Almost immediately, she gets inquiry pings from six other patrons the bar.

“And that’s your alibi,” Bricks chuckles, stepping back so quickly that she barely has time to put herself to rights. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

—

Naya tries not to fidget in the freight elevator, down, down, down, into The Throat. Bricks's arm is a possessive weight on her shoulder. On the other side of the lift, a startlingly tall man stares at them through the holes in a cloth sack. When she meets his eyes, something writhes where his mouth should be.

"Eyes to yourself," Bricks growls when he takes a half step in their direction. Her cybernetic arm crackles warningly.

The man visibly considers his options before making a guttural sound. A thick appendage, tongue or tentacle, Naya can’t really tell, pokes out from under the hood. He mutters something she doesn’t understand in under-tongue. Bricks hisses something back, pushing Naya behind her as she takes a threatening step forward. The man flinches, then crowds himself into his corner. He doesn’t even look in their direction for the rest of the descent.

When the doors open, Bricks holds her back until the man leaves, then steers her out into the street. Naya's been under-city before, but not in this bloc. The air is just as stale and hazy as she remembers, but this shaft doesn't see as much vertical commuter traffic as some of the others, so the street is dark instead of lit with neon. The faintest bit of light filters down from straight above.

Groping for something to say, she asks, "Did you know that guy?"

Bricks snorts, keeping an arm around her's waist as she steers her along. "Yeah."

“What did he want?”

She gets an uninterested shrug. “The same thing any bottom dwelling opportunist wants.”

It’s not hard to imagine what she means. When she doesn't say anything else, Naya searches for another topic. She swallows her pride and forces herself to say, "Thank you for setting up this meeting."

"Don't thank me yet, sweetheart. You're gonna hate me soon enough."

"I know it's dangerous for you," she insists as Bricks draws her down a side street. Dangerous is an understatement, if the Ghost Teams are so far gone that they’re experimenting on human beings. "Even if things are hard, moving forward, I appreciate your help."

Bricks doesn't answer. Instead, she knocks on a barred door. It opens a crack, and she and the other person hiss low words at each other. A shining green eye looks Naya up and down, the door shuts, and Bricks draws her away.

They stride, briskly, back to the main street. Bricks asks, "Do you have a respirator?"

"Yes."

"Put it on, don't speak."

Wordlessly, Naya unfolds the mask from her pocket and covers her mouth and nose. Bricks pulls a dark scarf from her shoulders and wraps it around Naya’s head and neck, and then drops a poncho over her head. Somehow, the mercinary looks bigger in just her thin shirt, the muscles and metal in her shoulders more pronounced.

Ten minutes into their silent walk, a man melts from the shadows and starts walking on Naya's other side. Though she can’t see much under his baggy clothes, his gait speaks to digitigrade modifications. When she glances up, he has a faceplate under his own hood. His voice, when he speaks, is robotic. "Bricks."

"Roach."

“You’re looking smug and determined.”

“I’m on a very… interesting job.” An encrypted message gets passed between the two of them, and Naya frowns behind her mask. She shouldn’t be able to tell that a message was sent, though, so she bites her tongue. Bricks smirks down at her, then turns her eyes forward. “What’s on your mind?”

"Shadows are hunting you. Seven thousand credits."

"That's insulting," Bricks dismisses. "Mace take the job?"

"That's insulting," Roach parrots back. Somehow, his metered and inflectionless voice sounds amused. A flurry of encrypted messages flows between them. Once those have finished, he says, "Come see us when your business with the Watcher is done." And then he fades away into the shadows again.

"Good job," Bricks whispers. "Stay silent. Keep taking deep breaths. Walk straight ahead. Don't run." And then she ducks down a side street, leaving Naya alone in the dark.

Fuck.

She keeps putting one foot in front of the other. Measured. Brisk, but unhurried. A couple of people pass on the other side of the street, then a man passes on her side. Under her poncho, she palms her pocket knife, but no one spares her a second glance.

After a full minute, Bricks slides out of the next alley and falls into step with her, a cigarette that smells like real tobacco between her lips. In her cybernetic hand, she has a twitching, bleeding length of what looks like an octopus tentacle the size of Naya’s forearm.

"You can talk now,” she says. “But you don't want to ask about this."

—

The respirator makes a lot more sense when Naya is led to a shaft to the Belly.

She’s never been to the middle level of the true undercity. Technically, no one should live in this industrial level, so there’s very little in the way of individual commerce and amenities. There is an abundance of dead “topsider tourists” every year, mangled and hacked to drain all of their resources before anyone can realize that they haven’t come home.

This lift is much smaller, just big enough for her to stand behind Bricks as the woman primes her arm. The edge of a plasma knife glows blue from within the mechanics of her bicep. When Naya activates the plasma in her own knife, Bricks looks over her shoulder at the near silent hum.

“You ever use that before?”

“Once.”

That earns an interested noise as the other woman faces forward again. “On a person?”

“…No.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” is all she says about that as the elevator shudders to a stop. “Stay behind my right arm. If I tell you to drop, you fall to the ground and don’t move until I tell you.”

When the door opens, it’s into a pitch black alley. The only light is the obscured gleam from with Brick’s left shoulder. Something in the darkness hisses. Bricks strides forward, and Naya has no choice but to follow after.

They walk for a few minutes without incident before Bricks knocks on a nondescript door. Next to it, a biometric scanner creaks open and scans one of her eyes, then one of her metal fingers. Naya flinches at the noise of a series of locks grinding open.

A stern faced blonde woman is on the other side of the door when Bricks gestures Naya inside. She’s not wearing a respirator, but then, neither is Bricks. The woman doesn’t say anything, so Naya doesn’t either. She just waits for Bricks to finish securing the door, then returns to her spot just behind her.

“Watcher,” Bricks greets with clear good humor. “I brought you a little something.”

Naya huffs a surprised breath from her nose, but stays silent. The Watcher. The overseer of at least one of five active Modified Task Forces. She looks so… normal. A woman in her mid forties, maybe, face lined with stress but open. Naya feels a little thrown off. When the lights flicker, however, she catches the red shine of a cybernetic eye. Whatever mods she has, they’re hidden so well that Naya can’t even sense them.

The Watcher’s eyes scan her for a moment before she’s looking back to Bricks. Naya only has a moment to wonder why she hasn’t been pinged before she asks, “Alive?”

“You always pay more when they’re alive.”

What? Naya stumbles backwards until she hits the door. “What?”

Bricks throws a grin over her shoulder. “I told you not to thank me.” Turning back to the Watcher, she says, “Thirty thousand credits. Had a run in with the King on the way here.”

“No one told you to bring her alive. Fifteen, and we void the Shadows bounty on you.”

“Twenty five. You want her alive, trust me. And I can handle the Shadows on my own.”

Naya gapes at the two of them. A quick glance over her shoulder and query to the door confirms that the locks won’t open again without a lot more force than she could manage, even if she wouldn’t have to fight Bricks to get out. And the Watcher… isn’t motivated to let her live. Fuck. The little knife in her hands feels less than useless.

“She wanted to meet you,” Bricks continues, crossing her arms. “And Price.”

That makes the Watcher pause and look over Naya again. “Oh?”

“She used his name,” Bricks confirms. “Real skilled code-breaker.”

“Hm.” The Watcher frowns, then says. “Thirty thousand is a low ball offer, then.”

“She thinks you’re keeping the task force in cages,” Bricks chuckles. “I want to watch when she sees them for the first time.”

That gets a huff of amusement. “Thirty thousand and a show… Deal. Bring her.”

When the Watcher turns away, Bricks looks back at Naya with a surprisingly gentle smile. “Good job. Now comes the hard part. Let’s go.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” she doesn’t want to walk forward, but there’s not much else to do. She tries to stand away from Bricks, but it’s hard in the narrow hallway.

“Nothing, now,” Bricks laughs. “Got you through the door alive, and Watcher can always use a code breaker.”

It’s hard not to feel stupid. Naya struggles to keep her voice even. “So this was just… a bounty for you?”

“Better me than König.” Bricks wiggles the tentacle that she’s still holding in metal fingers. “And better now than when an actual bounty was on your head. Diving into secure government information brings out the worst kind of trouble. The Shadows would have killed you in your bed. Kortac would have chipped you, if they decided keeping you was worth it. This way, everyone gets what they want.”

“Except me,” Naya points out.

“You’re still alive, for now,” the Watcher points out from a few steps ahead, without looking back. “Considering the problems you’ve caused me, it’s tempting to kill you myself. But Bricks is right. I can always use a Breaker.”

“I don’t do that professionally,” Naya protests weakly.

The Watcher doesn’t break stride. “You do, now.”

They get into another elevator, big enough for eight people. There aren’t any floor indicators, but as soon as the doors close, it starts to descend. Wrapping her arms around herself, Naya shivers. At this rate, she realizes, she may never see the sky again. She’ll be locked in a cage next to the 141, underground, let out to circumvent code for… what? To support more killing? More human experimentation? If she doesn’t cooperate, will they experiment on her? Put a processor in her brain to erase everything about her except for her skill?

Tears gather in the corners of her eyes, and she can’t help a sniffle.

“None of that,” comes the surprisingly gentle voice of the Watcher. When she approaches, she puts a gentle hand on Naya’s shoulder. “You’re here now. There’s no going back. But we take care of our own.”

Bricks snorts. “For given values of taking care of. You are keeping the boys in cages after all.”

“That’s not helpful,” the Watcher says, producing a tissue from her pocket and dabbing at Naya’s eyes. She pushes the makeshift hood back and gently removes her respirator, scanning her face with hard blue eyes. Eventually, she asks, “Why did you come here, Bambi?”

Shoulders coming up around her ears, Naya gets the feeling that because I’m an idiot isn’t the answer she’s looking for. She looks down at her sensible shoes, bracketed by the Watcher’s own worn work boots, and confesses, “Bricks said I could meet with you, and Price. And… I thought I could… encourage you to treat the modified soldiers more like people than animals.”

“And I suppose this encouragement was going to come with a threat to leak records to the public?” The Watcher’s mouth twitches into a sardonic smile when Naya looks up at her again. “Bold.”

Bricks chuckles. “Naive.”

“Hopeful. And some of the best plans are the simplest,” the Watcher dismisses.

Naya wouldn’t call her plan to connect to the building’s intranet and threatening to disrupt all of the life support systems “naive.” Now that she’s locked in, it feels like a distinctly hopeless course of action. She’ll have to think of something else, fast.

The Watcher steps away as the elevator comes to a stop. The doors open into a large control room, huge observation windows giving a 360 degree view out into dimly lit halls. Bricks ushers Naya out, heavy hands on her shoulders, until she pushes her into a chair facing a window to the left side of the room.

“Did we miss feeding time?” Bricks grins and pulls a puzzle ball from her bag. Her cybernetic hand twitches and whirs as it clicks through combinations.

“Luckily for Bambi, yes.”

Before Naya can ask what feeding time entails, something drops from the ceiling on the other side of the glass, startling a yelp from her. It’s a man, tall and lean, slitted eyes shining a red orange as he stares at her face through the glass. He’s half dressed, only in loose pants. Thick, dark streaks of something wet cover his chest and splatter down his legs. The grin that splits his pretty face puts three pairs of sharp canines on display, stained red.

The Watcher pushes a button, an intercom. “Gaz.”

“Who’s this cute little thing, Laswell?” Naya shivers as Kyle “Gaz” Garrick looks her up and down. He looks just like his personnel file, except for a wildness around his eyes that changes his face from welcoming to something dangerous. “Could practically smell her from the street.”

“Back away from the glass, you’re filthy. What the hell did you roll in?”

The man ignores the Watcher, face going soft as he leans down to get on a level with Naya. “Hello, honey. Such a pretty girl, what are you doing down here? You a friend of Bricks?”

Something about his crooning voice makes Naya’s hair stand on end. At the same time, she finds that she can’t look away from the man’s eyes as he tilts his head. They’re such an interesting color, and he keeps shifting ever so slightly in ways that draw her eyes to follow. He jerks quickly to one side when her eyes dip down to the red and brown splashed down his chest, then smiles when she looks back at his face. His teeth - even the extra ones - are perfect and red. Naya’s heart beats a little faster.

A loud pop and sudden flash makes Naya jump as Gaz reels back with a snarl.

“I told you not to touch the glass,” the Watcher grumbles. “Clean up. Make yourself presentable. And remind the others to put their masks on.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he hisses. With one last, sweet smile to Naya, he turns and strides away before leaping up to grab an exposed beam and hoist himself into the shadows above the observation room. He disappears in the space of a moment. No matter how Naya squints, she can’t tell where he’s gone.

“Don’t look any of them in the eye,” Bricks whispers from close behind, chuckling at the way Naya jumps. “They’re predators, sweetheart, and you’re the sweetest bite of prey they’ve had in a long while.”

“Bricks,” the Watcher (Laswell?) chides. “Get her keyed in. Bambi, you’re not to be alone in here. We’ll get you interfaced with security so you know how to do a lockdown sequence before you’re introduced to the Task Force.”

When she’s handed an interface chip, Naya blanches. “I can’t, I don’t have a hard disk reader. Why do I need to know the facility’s lockdown sequences?”

“There’s no where in this facility that they can’t get,” Bricks replies, distracted as she opens a floor panel to extract a series of wires, and what looks like a very robust integration cable. “And if you’re going to work here, you’re going to need to be able to keep them from dragging you off and eating you.”

“Bricks.” Laswell snaps. To Naya she explains,    “Everyone who works here needs to know how to lock down in case of emergency.”

Naya gapes. “Emergencies? They can - They’re not -! They have full access to the facility?”

“Of course. They can get out of the facility, too,” Bricks snickers. “Who’s going to stop them?”

“Bricks!”

“All of the records say that they’re severely restricted.” The tight squeak in Naya’s voice is undeniable. “What do you mean they could eat me?”

“Old records,” Laswell answers without looking. A terminal lights up under her fingertips. “The only way the SAS would let us keep the facilities without bomb chips. Let me know when you’re ready for input.”

“The part about eating me?” Naya flinches as Bricks circles behind and pushes her hair up to expose the port beneath her left ear.

“If you’re as good as I think you are, you don’t have to worry about that,” Bricks says, shoving the cable into place. “Go.”

“What-”

Laswell launches the integration before she can get the question out. Naya’s whole body jolts, brain flooded with sudden input. She doesn’t dive into the data so much as she’s dragged under the tidal wave of the facility.

The whole structure unfolds around her, five floors, twelve stories down, three shafts up, two elevators, one stair. She’s in the observation tower, which descends three more floors. Heat, cooling, air filtration, power, food storage, office of Watcher One Kate Laswell, office of Bravo One John Price, research labs east and south, conference rooms, break rooms, sleeping quarters, inventory, directory of personnel.

Access Denied.

It’s nothing to shuffle the alert away. Asset Records. Veronica “Bricks” Mason, Gary “Roach” Sanderson, Mason “Mace” Ward, [Redacted] Nikto, Morgan “Sparrow” Voss. The list goes on. Task Force 141. Kyle “Gaz” Garrick, John “Soap” MacTavish, John “Bravo One” Price, Simon “Ghost” Riley. Vital statistics steady, duplicate identification signals, three dead copies, one living set. Security, kill switch overrides. These doors won’t close, but they’ll tell the observation tower that they have. Interesting.

Diving a layer deeper, she observes three separate security records. One is distressingly familiar, the records she’d found before, that spurred her to find Bricks, full of echoes of old code, now that she can see it. Then the one with logs going to Watcher One Kate Laswell, current and accurate. Except that the third log indicates security discrepancies and pings to KGKLJMJPSR. She logs the discrepancy on her own, internal system, a reminder to see if she can piggyback on someone else’s clearance.

Now that she’s thinking about it, she scans for what her clearance is supposed to have access to. It’s the second level, the one that doesn’t actually close the security doors surrounding the servers, sleeping quarters, and the observation tower. Well, that won’t do. She makes a digital copy of KL’s access and patches it into her own.

Just as she finishes, four ID tags simply labeled “Ghost” enter the lowest observation tower floor. That’s a glaring red security alert, and it only doubles in urgency as he accesses the hatch to the system port cable.

“Oh, that’s bad,” she hears herself say aloud as she gropes, blindly for the cable in her neck. “Ghost is accessing, I need to disconnect before he-“

Three more security alerts come up as the ID tags for Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap appear around the top floor of the observation tower, their floor. Naya quickly circumvents the overrides on the blast doors, and half observes rolling shutters covering the windows as Laswell makes a startled noise. Unfortunately, Ghost finds her while she’s distracted.

And he is a ghost, sliding between the layers of Naya’s own security code like a cold breeze. He rifles through her ID cards before she can even try to lock down. When she tries to lock him out of her interface, he slams through so fast it sends her reeling. Unfortunately for him, and for her, he trips over her Brain Blast in the process. The packet of musical theater data explodes to override everything she’s connected to, knocking her out of her connection to the facility and blaring Ohmigod You Guys through the speaker systems of the facility.

“What the fuck,” Veronica Bricks Mason shouts, covering her ears.

“Sorry, sorry,” Naya yelps. She manually reopens her access to the facility and cuts the sound. Her head spins with new information that she doesn’t have time to let her organic brain process. Ghost is nowhere to be found, but she doesn’t wait around to see where he pops up again before locking herself down and physically removing the cable from her neck. “Ghost tripped my security protocol.”

“You shouldn’t be able to influence any part of the facility,” Watcher One Kate Laswell observes. “Which means you’re every bit as good as Bricks says you are. Why did you lock down the tower?”

“Just this floor,” she answers absently, looking around as her interface flashes and labels new data points about her surroundings. It takes a moment for her to filter through everything enough to focus. “Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap were approaching as Ghost tapped in on the bottom floor.”

“I should have charged more,” Asset:Mason chuckles.

“Maybe you should have, Veronica,” Naya replies without thinking.

The woman just laughs. “Oh ho ho, you’re even better than I thought.

Watcher One Laswell drums her fingers on the table. “You don’t have a hard disk reader. Can you still access the facility without a hard line?”

Naya has to shake her head before she runs a quick system check. A ping to the 141 Facility gets a happy little ping back. “Yeah. My, um… my interface is a bit more robust than standard.”

Watcher Laswell nods. “Noted. Reset the security settings.”

Naya almost does it on autopilot, but stops herself. Running a quick check, she shivers. “They’re still out there. Three of them.” When Laswell only nods, she nudges the blast doors and security shutters to open. It takes a moment, but eventually they start to rumble to life.

Worryingly, when she can see through the windows again, Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap are no where to be found. The only active vitals in the facility say they’re right across the glass from where Naya is sitting. It sends a chill down her spine. Diving through the facility systems, she had felt untouchable. But she’s been outmaneuvered again. Unless…

She stands and leans closer to the glass, looking up into the shadows above.

Three pairs of eyes shine down at her from the darkness.

“They’re up there,” Naya whispers. When Laswell simply answers in the affirmative, she activates the intercom with a gulp. “Um. I’m sorry about the noise.”

“That’s quite alright, sweetheart,” a deep voice answers. “Ghost has a way of startling pretty girls. And I quite like a bit of theater.”

Well it’s not Gaz, and there’s no hint of a Scottish accent. “Are you… Bravo One? John Price?”

“You are a clever one.” One of the pairs of eyes squints and tilts. Another shuts, and doesn’t open again. Soap’s tags move a short ways away as Price continues. “Bricks says you asked to meet me.”

“Yes, sir,” Naya says, and then remembers too late that Bricks said not to meet their eyes. She tears her eyes away and jumps at the sight of John “Soap” MacTavish standing a few feet down the hall in front of her.

He looks good, surprisingly so. His hair is long, braided mohawk shining. A gleaming scar is the only indication of the wound that almost killed him. He’s healthy, big and bulky and dressed casually in black joggers and a tight black tshirt. Bright blue eyes with crossed pupils scan her face with interest. When he grins at her, his sharp teeth flash with titanium augments.

“Gaz wisna exaggeratin,’ ye smell quite nice, Bambi,” Soap purrs.

“What part of ‘masks on’ don’t you all understand?” Laswell grumbles.

“They’ve already got her scent,” Bricks snickers. “Did Ghost get your tags Bambi?”

“He did,” Price confirms from above. “Naya Walker, also known as Bambi. Computer scientist, you’ve sold a couple of database systems. Quite impressive.”

A pit opens in her stomach. Ghost had access to her system for less than three seconds. Her throat is tight when she says, “Thank you, sir.”

“So polite,” Gaz chuckles from above. “Come say hello, doll.”

Naya chances a glance back at Kate, then looks back at Soap, then up at the single pair of shining eyes above as Price’s ID winks away from your awareness. “I’m not sure I have clearance for that.”

“You didn’t have clearance to know about this facility,” Gaz points out. “And yet, here you are. Pretty as a picture.”

“Jesus,” Bricks mutters as Laswell makes a startled sound. “We really should put a bell on you.”

And then a huge hand presses against the glass next to Naya’s face. She startles backwards and runs into a huge, solid body, and yelps as a strong arm catches her about the waist.

“Caught ya,” a fourth, deeper voice rumbles above her. His other hand catches both of her wrists and immobilizes her as she stares at dark brown stains up to his wrists. “Been teasin’ us f’ months, dippin’ in an’ out ‘f m’code. So careful, li’l fawn. But not careful enough.”

“Ghost,” Laswell says. The whine of a plasma weapon being primed pierces through the otherwise silent room. Naya squeezes her eyes closed.“Hands off. That’s my Breaker.”

“’S’at so?” Ghost bends down, so far down, it seems, to drag the tip of his nose along Naya’s temple. “Seems she moight be mine, since I invited ‘er.”

“Speaking of,” Bricks interjects. “I’ll take my finder’s fee, now.”

“Bricks.” Laswell hisses.

“Transfer’s cleared, Bricks,” John Price says with a chuckle. “Pleasure doing business, as always.”

Like Gaz and Soap, Captain Price is bigger than his file made him seem. They’d shaved him, when they had replaced some of his bones with metal, but now his facial hair is as full and vital as the rest of him. This close, Naya can see the mechanics whirling within his eyes.

Leaning against his free side, Gaz licks his lips with a tongue that seems too long. But she only sees them for a moment before she’s being turned around, still wrapped in Ghost’s arms.

On the left side of the room Bricks lounges in a chair, tossing and catching and cycling through the combinations on her ball. She’s grinning like she’s gotten away with murder. Maybe she has - she’s been paid three times today for possibly the easiest bounty of her career. Across from her, Laswell holds a glowing knife in a loose grip by her side, shooting an annoyed glare at the other woman.

“What the hell is this?” Laswell hisses.

“You told us to stop hunting your techs,” Price chuckles.

“Bambi is mine,” Kate reiterates, glaring out the glass.

“Just a wee taste, Watcher,” Soap burrs from somewhere. “Ghost is code breaker enough, ye dinnae need another.”

Naya feels her entire body go cold. She takes a deep breath, reconnects with the facility, and runs Flash_Bang.exe.

—

The underground building has a straightforward layout, but that’s dangerous. Naya flicks away the alert when Ghost manages to patch his way back into the facility and silence the music - fuck, it only took him twenty eight seconds? - and ducks under a desk in the office she broke into, one floor down.

It’s hard to stay one step ahead of him, but her spiders and bots repair the five second camera feed loops as soon as he forces the cameras back online. He only wastes time breaking a third of the bot codes before he seems to realize that they’re replicating and switches to tagging, leaving them to run their processes.

It takes two agonizing seconds for her to open the audio relay from the observation tower without revealing her location to Ghost’s sweeping pings.

“-vilian running wild and scared through a secure facility, John.” Kate snaps.

“I thought she was your new breaker,” Gaz snickers. “Not really a civilian.”

“Nae,” Soap interjects. Naya is glad she doesn’t have video to see the nasty smile she can hear in his voice. “Watcher’s right. We cannae let her get too far.”

“She’s fucked the cameras,” Ghost chuckles. “Could get them back online, but it’d take some time.”

Price hums. “Location?”

“West labs’re pingin’,” Ghost answers. He sounds pleased. “Don’t mean much. She’s got bots spoofin’ her IDs.”

“Smells like she’s gone to the east wing,” Gaz purrs. “Lots of classified documents that way, Laswell. Hate to think of what she might come across if she makes it down to the third floor.”

There’s a tense silence before something slams. Eventually, Laswell hisses, “Fine. Bring her back. Alive and unharmed.”

“No promises,” Soap laughs.

Naya scrambles from her hiding spot as she confirms that the cameras in this south wing hall are looped. She needs to get back to the north side of the facility to get to the stairs that might take her up and out. But first she needs to get them off her trail… Somehow.

There’s a janitor closet two doors down, and she spoofs the signal to unlock the door just long enough to slip through it. She looks for bleach and prays it will be enough to mask her scent, then curses to herself when she realizes the bleach will be an obvious mark of her presence. She can’t just erase herself in the physical world the way she can, digitally.

An encrypted message alert calls her attention.

>>>Bricks: Soap will run at you directly. Gaz likes to ambush. Good Luck!

“I c’n see that, Bricks,” Ghost rumbles.

“She’s already at a disadvantage,” the mercenary chuckles. “Poor little thing, you’re going to eat her alive.”

“Oh, she’s not as harmless as all that,” Price laughs. “Took over the whole facility, gave Ghost the slip-“

“I let her go,” Ghost interrupts.

“Set up the meeting so there’d be no one here but us. Got her hands on the codes she thought would let her take control of us, the mindless killing machines.” John continues. He chuckles. “She’s a smart little thing.”

“She got the deadswitches?” Bricks sounds genuinely surprised.

“Command codes. The first ones,” Ghost confirms. “Duds, since we don’t have the chips, but she don’t know that.”

Well, she does now. Naya grabs three bottles of bleach and puts her respirator back on as her mind races. Part of what made soldier modifications so disgusting were the control processors. The irony of finding out that the 141 had somehow removed theirs was not lost on her. They’re already as free as she’d hoped to help them be, and they’re using that freedom to hunt her like animals.

The IDs for Soap and Gaz are still a floor above, moving slowly, following her trail. Ghost and Bravo One are still in the observation tower. She opens one bottle and rolls it back down the hall she came down, then jogs the other way, splashing the bleach as she goes. The observation tower in the center of the floor has mirrored glass, spiking her heart rate every time she catches sight of herself out of the corner of her eye. It’s so jarring that she almost doesn’t realize Gaz and Soap are coming out of the nearest elevator.

She ducks into an office just as the bell dings around the corner.

“Ach, that’s nae very nice, Bambi,” Soap calls. When he speaks next, it’s muffled, likely by his own respirator. “Ghost, she’s scent bombed the whole steamin’ floor. Where is she?”

“Don’t be lazy, Johnny,” Ghost chuckles. “’Ardly a hunt if there’s no challenge.”

“She’ll want the stairwell,” Gaz says. “Lock it down.”

“Already done,” Ghost says. “But locks aren’t exactly a deterrent, if you ‘aven’t noticed.”

“Bottle rolled down this hall,” Gaz says. “So she probably took the other.”

“Aye, that’s what she wants us to think,” Soap chuckles. “I’ll clear this side.”

Naya holds her breath as heavy footsteps start toward her hiding spot, then go so light she almost can’t hear them. She watches the light under the door and resists the urge to flinch at the appearance of a shadow. The man - Soap’s ID sits like a brand so close to her own in her interface - lingers by the door for a long moment then moves on. He’s so quiet that she keeps the map of the floor up to watch his progress. He’s listening for her, she realizes, stopping at each door. She’s lucky that the air circulation vents are above the door, or he might have heard her heart racing.

When Soap and Gaz each turn corners to start investigating the south wing, Naya finally lets herself take more than the shortest breath. She eases the lock open with a flinch at the mechanical click, but neither Soap nor Gaz change their trajectory. When she opens the door and peeks out, the hall is empty. So she eases her way out, crouches low, and shuffles as fast as she can to the stairwell.

She gives the locks three scans before coding them to unlock. The light turns green without incident. She waits for a moment. Soap and Gaz move just a bit farther away. Naya breathes a silent sigh and eases the door open.

“Got her,” Ghost says. “She’s in the stairwell.”

Above her, a door slams open. Naya yelps and starts jogging down the stairs before she can hear what Captain Price yells down at her. She brute forces her way through the lock codes for the third floor and pulls the door open, throwing her bottle of bleach at the wall before slamming it shut. She trips every proximity alarm she can, leading west through the third floor as she throws herself down the next flight. At the fourth floor door, she creates a signal loop, mindful of the door sensor she’d overlooked before. She hears Gaz and Soap slam through the second floor door open just as the door to the fourth closes behind her.

Too late, she realizes that she can’t hear into the tower anymore, and the map of this floor is all static in her interface. The schematics she had before are corrupted - Ghost’s doing, most likely. She can still see the locks on the doors, the terminals connected to the intranet in the various offices. It will have to be enough.

She darts into the eastern wing of the floor and realizes that no, it won’t be enough. The layout is different than the upper floors. The observation tower has no windows in this direction to speak of, for one. And the cameras are few and far between. The doors are also farther apart, and low pile carpet gives way to hard linoleum.

When she turns the corner, she gasps and ducks. Not that it would have helped any. She’s faced with a gymnasium, weight machines and benches and treadmills like a normal gym, except with weights so large it’s almost comical. There’s no one here, but the open space feels like a threat all the same. She turns tail and jogs back toward the observation tower.

As she turns south, she realizes that the tower has no windows on this floor. It’s not a relief, not really. Even if no one can see her, she’s trapped. Gaz and Soap are still looking for her, one floor up. How long will that last? The bleach trick can only work for so long, probably. And Ghost is good, it’s only a matter of time before he breaks into the camera bot code and finds her. How is she going to get up, past the first floor, let alone the next twelve flights of stairs to the streets of the Belly.

God, how is she going to make it home?

Her vision blurs with tears before she can finish taking her next breath.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she whimpers before a hiccup jolts through her. Her breath shudders from her throat as she swipes at her eyes. “No, no, keep it together, it’s gonna be okay. I can figure this out, I can. I can, it’s okay.”

“Bambi? Talk to me,” Brick’s serious voice comes through, suddenly, fuzzy but definitely there. “Those sound like tears, sweetheart.”

Naya sobs, she can’t help it. It’s a few seconds before she can force more words out. “Why did you do this to me?”

“You asked me to bring you,” Bricks reminds her with a soft chuckle. “Didn’t know you were gonna try to take over the whole facility, or I might have set something else up. But if you come out now -“

A hand touches Naya from behind and she screams, throwing a HardReset packet into the space before she can even wonder if that would have any impact on Soap or Gaz. When she whirls around, though, a man she doesn’t recognize is slumped against the wall, barely keeping the weight of a bricked cybernetic leg from dragging him to the floor. Her interface has a moment to tell her this is “Mace,” before she’s darting around him and running again.

“Fuck!” the man shouts. “Watcher what the fuck- No, I’m on the fucking training floor, why the hell-“

“Bambi,” Bricks shouts, “Do not go into the w-“

She slams the connection shut and tries, unsuccessfully, to wipe her tears away. The distraction is probably why she doesn’t realize she’s heading north, but she knows her mistake as soon as she hears the stairwell door open.

She screams again, right in Gaz’s face, can’t help it now that she’s finally made noise. She dodges his reaching hand and bolts, knowing she can’t outrun him, but what else can she do?

“Shite. Ghost!” Soap calls. “Lock it doon!”

Naya dives through a blast door as it slides shut, ignoring the myriad of voices that shout at her. Through the panic, she terminates all of her bots and slams all of her processing power into separating Ghost from the security access from the floor. He puts up a fight, but another BrainBlast and FlashBang gives her the two seconds she needs to take control.

An alert flashes.

<<Message from: WatcherOneKL. Accept?>>

Sitting on the floor, panting and sniffling, she gulps a deep breath. Someone pounds on the door, but it’s solid, and Ghost can’t get past her bots to regain control. She’s safe.

—

In the observation tower, Price frowns at the data pad in his hands. “Ghost, Bricks. Where did you say you found Ms. Walker?”

“Found us, really,” Ghost mutters, focused on the 3D hologram of the facility. Bambi’s ID markers dance all over the place. He’s running algorithms to try to find a pattern, but she’s three steps ahead, it seems. “Set out a lure and she tore through it like tissue paper. An’ then she made a forum post lookin’ f’r information on soldier mods.”

“Scrubbed everything clean,” Bricks adds. “We couldn’t find her for days after she blew through everything. I got lucky that I found the forum post, it didn’t even trigger Ghost’s spiders.”

Price hums. “And… did either of you confirm which hacker group she’s a part of?”

“Didn’t really have time,” Bricks answers with a shrug. “As soon as I confirmed who I was, she demanded to meet Laswell, and you.”

“Interesting. Any of you ever hear of a group called the Archivist Collective?”

Laswell frowns. “Collective for Anarchy?”

“No.” Price shakes his head. “Archivist Collective. It’s the only thing coming up with her background check. And she’s not a known member of any of the major hacking groups.”

Bricks shrugs. “Obviously, she’d use another alias.”

“No,” Price says again, walking over to show Laswell and Bricks the data pad. “None of her aliases are connected with anything but this Archivist Collective. And their only mission is to ‘Counter censorship through the collection, preservation, and dissemination of contested and classified texts.’”

Ghost makes an interested noise and leaves the hologram to start another terminal whirring. “Let’s see what they’ve got then -… oh.”

Bricks sits up from her sprawl. “Oh?”

“They’ve got an archive. Barely any security at all. Hosted on the GaiaPet: Craft servers.”

“GaiaPet?” Kate frowns. “Isn’t that a… virtual pet game? Where people make things with voxels? Procedurally generated…. They’re definitely robust enough servers for cyberattacks-“

“It’s jus’ a fuckin’ library,” Ghost grunts, navigating through. “Huge text files, embedded images. Some of it’s definitely classified. But tha’s oll… Oh, shite. Jus’ found our records.”

Bricks looks from the terminal in Price’s hand, to Ghost, and back. “Wait. John, you said she sold a couple of database systems. She’s got to be working with some data brokers, at least.”

“This says she developed and sold literal systems,” John says, horror dawning on his face. “A spreadsheet editor and a UI designed to organize complex data sets. As far as I can tell, she doesn’t sell information. Everything she’s got, besides those systems, is open source.”

“Oh, fuck,” Ghost breathes.

Kate strides up to look at his screen. “What?”

“She’s got an active account on GaiaPet. A pet frog named Señor fuckin’ Snuggly. Her last login was today, and her chat with the AI said ‘Wish me luck, if we can’t get those soldiers released, we can at least get the information out there.’”

The silence in the room is palpable. And then Bricks says, “Bambi? Talk to me. Those sound like tears, sweetheart.”

—

Naya keeps her arms wrapped around her knees until she stops shivering. In that time, two more message request alerts pop up, from BravoOneJP and GhostSR. All of them are marked maximum priority, and she has no desire to touch them. She can see the signal burst of Bricks trying to talk to her, but she’s muted the feed so that she can just have… a single second to breathe.

Her interface pushes everything away to prioritize an SOS signal, then automatically begins transcribing the subsequent Morse code message.

SOH. West wing dangerous stop. Battle androids stop. 15 active 20 inactive stop. GSR give code for control stop. Confirm stop. SOH. West wing dangerous stop. Battle androids stop. 15 active 20 inactive stop. GSR give-

She minimizes the message and sucks in the deepest breath she can, holds it, and forces herself to focus on her body. If she thinks about fifteen battle droids on this side of the door while modified soldiers hunt her on the other, she’ll start screaming and never stop. A part of her wants to lay down and just… give up. A big part. The whole part.

She opens the message from Laswell.

Bambi: You’re in a hazardous section of the facility. Ghost is standing down, for your safety. You will have to establish connection with the control tower to gain codes for control of battle -

Naya deletes the message and opens the one from Price. It’s more of the same, a demand that she open communication, a warning that the west wing of the floor is dangerous. She almost doesn’t open the message from Ghost, but… she doesn’t have much to lose.

She jumps when the message contains an audio file.

“Bambi, fuck, we didn’t know you was a literal archivist. Bricks an’ I fucked up. This is a truce, a suspension of hostilities. SOH. The training floor you’re on is fuckin’ dangerous, Bambi. Too dangerous for me to try t’ take it from you. You gotta take control of the droids. I can’t fuck wit’ ‘em while you’re in control of the space. I managed to confirm shut down of 20, but there’s 15 more. I c’n try to send the control codes this way, but the codes expire every 2 seconds. Better if you open comms. If you can’t, Morse confirmation, I’ll send the codes. Once you grab one, the rest will come for you. You’re fuckin’ fast, I know you can do it, but if you have an issue, open the door an’ Soap and Gaz’ll support.”

She’d rather be shot full of holes by military grade turrets than open the door. Her map of the facility is complete again, and she can see four IDs on the other side of the barrier. Soap, Gaz, Mace, and the redacted asset, Nikto, mill around, pacing between the blast doors and the central tower. But no one is pounding on the door or trying to open it, physically or otherwise. When she checks, her bots are idly cycling through access code randomization, but there’s no attempts at a breach.

Maybe Ghost is telling the truth?

She sends a Morse message.

Received stop. Hold for confirmation stop.

The answer is immediate.

Received stop. Holding for confirmation stop.

Does she want to open the comms? What if it’s a trap? Without knowing how long the code chains are, she’s at a disadvantage without a direct link to the tower. But if she opens connection to the tower, how can she guarantee that Ghost won’t command the androids to terminate her? On the other hand, if he is telling the truth, and the codes expire that fast, there’s no way she can locate and override that many machines that are actively trying to keep her out in time. And they are definitely trying to keep her out - her spiders have been able to confirm twenty units on standby, and fifteen empty holding stations, but there’s no sign of the other droids.

With a shaking breath, Naya opens the comms.

Brick's voice is the one she hears first. "Oh, thank fuck, she's back. Bambi? Can you hear me? Sweetheart, I need you to keep the blast doors static. If they cycle, they might start a lockdown sequence, and that will get the droids moving.” It takes two tries to get the words past her tight throat. "I don't want to die." "I'm so sorry, dove," Captain Price croons. "We’re gonna get you out of there.” "I won't tell anyone, I promise," Naya babbles though gasps. "I just want to go home." "You're gonna be okay, Bambi," Ghosts voice is surprisingly gentle. “Cleverest breaker above and below the city, yeah? Gave Soap an’ Gaz a proper chase an’ knocked Mace on ‘is arse. Coupl’a droids don’t stand a chance.”

“I’m not - I don’t know how to fight,” she whimpers.

“Who said anythin’ about fightin’? Pretty girl like you don’ have t’ lift a finger. Laswell?”

“Working on it,” the woman mutters. “Bambi, I need you to try to give us cameras without initiating any other processes. That’ll help- oh. You are fast. Give me a few seconds to find the nearest droids and we can give you the serial numbers.”

“She’s so small,” Price notes, somewhere in the background. “Possible the droids won’t even register her as a target.”

“I think we’ve fucked up enough today that we don’t need to risk it,” is Brick’s bone dry reply. “Sparrow is going to beat all of our asses.”

“Well, we’re about to give Bambi control of thirty-five full combat units,” the Captain points out. “Might not be much left of us to kick.”

Laswell breaks in. “Ghost-”

“Got em,” Ghost answers. “Bambi, ‘ve got a bead on the nearest units. ‘ow do you want to do this?”

Naya takes a couple of deep breaths and tries to hype herself up. It’s just code work. There are other variables, but at the core of it all, it’s just code. Yes, many of the variables have potentially painful and fatal consequences… But in the end, she can either do the code or not. And if there’s one thing she can do, it’s code.

“H-how,” she clears her throat and blinks back tears. “How many bits, per unit? For the key, I mean.”

“Forty ninety-six.”

Oh, just the highest security rating in the world, she thinks to herself, a little hysterical. She nods to herself and talks through the urge to giggle with nerves. “Okay. That’s seven hundredths of a second per unit, with the key. That’s… not so bad. I can probably handle them in batches of 5. Can I have the first hardware address? Morse, please.”

It takes a second, but the information comes through. It only takes a moment for a spider to highlight the machine in the network. Very quickly, her bots are able to identify and tag seven other units on her map. She shoots a summary data packet back to Ghost.

“Are these all droids?”

“Yeah, that’s half of ‘em. Laswell, she was able to identify all of the A-27 units, do you have eyes on any of the E-243s?”

In the background, Price mutters, “Kate hasn’t even laid eyes on all of the 27s.”

Another data packet comes through, and Naya is able to tag seven more dots on her map. Fifteen battle androids, and two of them just down the hall and around the corner on either side.

Naya takes another hiccuping breath. “How fast can they move?”

“A-27s are closest to you, they’re about a meter per second. The 243s move at about 4 per second.”

“Okay,” she says, holding her breath through another hiccup. She has two of her bots run movement simulations, and decides she’ll focus on the closest two A-27s, then the closest four E-243s. She has the processing power to do it, between her own interface and the facility. But… “I’m going to need these six keys first, but I have to let the doors cycle. How long is the lockdown sequence?”

Bricks makes a concerned noise before answering, “Fifteen seconds before you can open the door.”

So, if she messes this up, she’ll be dead for about 11 seconds before they’d be able to retrieve her body. Wonderful. “Ghost, I need all of the codes at once, in two packets, with the keys in this order. And then the next set of keys as soon as you have them. There’s a half second delay, so I need them as soon as they’re generated.”

Laswell sounds genuinely concerned when she asks, “Is that going to give you enough time?”

Naya runs the numbers again, and realizes that she’s fallen into a very peculiar state of calm. “I should have one point three seconds plus a little wiggle room per key. That’s plenty, for the first part. And if the first part doesn’t work… I don’t really have to worry about the rest of it.”

Captain Price’s voice is stern as he gives commands. “Gaz, tell Nikto to power up the cutter, in case we need to get you through the door. Bambi’s going to override the droids.” He’s quiet a moment, then, “Ghost says she can do it, and from what I’m seeing up here, I’m inclined to believe him. But the resets she did mean the door is going to lock down before she can open it again.”

Ghost says, “Ready to send the next round of codes on your mark, Bambi.”

Naya squeezes her eyes shut and sets her bots to be ready to receive and engage the keys. She takes one long, deep breath. Another. Lets all the air out in a huff. “Mark.”

As soon as the packet comes through, her interface is a flurry of executables and intrusion alerts. Her bots are fast, but the activation of the keys isn’t instantaneous. Just as she was warned, as soon as the first set of keys starts running, all of the droids set themselves to Active:Seeking, Objective:Eliminate. But almost as fast, they’re all placed back into Standby:HoldPosition in a wave that flows through the entire wing.

"That's all of em," Ghost sighs, four seconds later. Something creaks, probably the chair he's sunk himself into. "Fuckin' 'ell, she got all of em. Don' think she even needed me to provide the third set of keys. If she don't run screamin', I want her runnin' the damn-" Naya's heart spikes as an alert pings her interface. Her voice squeaks when she calls, "Ghost? There's two units coming online. They’re not listening to me, I can't stop them. What do I do?" Before she can hear his response, the power to the hall cuts out. Naya holds in a scream as everything goes dark and then red with emergency lighting. Captain Price's voice is overtaken by static, and then she loses the tower completely. Somewhere, in the darkness, she can just barely hear the whine of attack units Riley and Merlin priming their weapons.

—

“Goddamn it,” Kate snarls. “It’s the 9s. They’re jamming the signal.”

Bricks jumps up from her chair. “Bambi’s in there without access to the system?”

Ghost makes a disagreeing noise. “They’re active because she’s not an authorized user. They’re jamming anything that isn’t local to the wing, I should be able to patch- Johnny!”

“We cuttin, LT?”

“Forward these packets to Bambi, nothing else.”

“Aye - fuck!”

—

A message request from SoapJM flashes on Naya’s screen just as she finds out that these new droids can move at thirteen meters per second. When she opens it, she gets an immediate key packet. Every bot she has gets set to receive, but the keys are expired, so she has to wait an agonizing three-quarters of a second before the next ones come through.

Just as a next packet arrives, a blue beam of light slices across the end of the hall, then a second from the opposite side. She barely has time to match the keys to the hardware addresses before two furry muzzles round the corner, guns glowing from their shoulders. Naya has only a moment to recognize the controversial K-9 battle units before they both take a step in her direction. And freeze.

It’s an harrowing second of silence, two, three. She doesn’t even breathe.

With a whir, mounted turrets power down and withdraw back behind artificial fur. The K-9s change their status to Standby:AcceptNewObjective with identical head tilts. The one tagged Riley wags its tail and trots forward, tongue lolling like the average bio-dog. Merlin approaches with a little more hesitant body language, though Naya can see the way it’s integrating her tags into the authorized user list in its software.

She flinches away from the door at the high pitched whine of a plasma cutter on metal. Hastily, she sends an ‘All Clear’ message back to Soap, just as the lights come back on.

Captain Price’s voice resolves with renewed connection to the control tower. “-both of your necks. What were you thinking?”

“Oh, suddenly we’re all about vetting assets?” Bricks laughs. “You recruited me with a bag over my head.”

“You were an establlished CIA asset,” Laswell grits out.

Bricks scoffs. “And Sparrow and Nikto?”

“We wasn’t wrong,” Ghost interjects. “Bad intel aside-”

“No intel!” Captain Price half-shouts.

“-she took the facility from me twice and disarmed 15 droids in less than 4 seconds without any formal training. She’s good.”

“None of that matters if she’s dead,” Laswell snaps.

Naya clears her throat. “I’m not dead.”

“Bambi!” Bricks sound downright cheerful. “Doors are almost done cycling, you’re almost out. Hold tight.”

Petting a hand over the soft fur of Riley’s head, Naya feels for the lumps of it’s internal machinery. Of course, she can’t find it - K-9s were built for stealth and surveillance, to blend in with any other dog. These ones are modified for combat, but they’re still adorable.

It’s almost hard to believe that they were going to shoot her, less than ten seconds ago.

The blast door’s status changes to ready, an almost cheerful ping in her interface. She barely gives it a thought before initiating another lockdown sequence, then queuing two more behind it.

Ghost notices. “Bambi?”

“I need a minute, please,” she answers, then cuts the camera feeds.

Merlin eventually comes and sits just out of reach, tail thumping once against the ground. Naya pulls up it’s configuration settings and examines the personality controls. Calm, but friendly, alert, reserved, breaks “arbitrary dog rules” at a rate of 6%. Riley: open and playful, eager to please, breaks rules 17% of the time. Both locked to 141 facility 4th floor, west wing training center.

Do Not Remove.

—

When the blast doors open, Naya is standning a few feet back. Riley and Merlin lay on either side of her feet, solidly in a sleep cycle. Her fingers dig into the opposite sleeves of her cardigan as Soap and Gaz come into view, along with a fully functional Mace, and a fully helmeted cyborg she can only assume is Nikto.

“Steamin’ Jesus, bon,” Soap says taking a step forward. “Ye gave us a wee fright!”

“If you get within three feet of me,” Bambi says, pausing for a deep breath. “I’ll shoot you.”

Three set of eyebrows shoot up. Nikto’s faceplate remains unchanged. Gaz looks at the others before answering, “We’re sorry we frightened you, love. We didn’t know Bricks hadn’t-”

Naya interrupts him. “I would like to leave now.”

“Well…” Soap says with a shrug. “We can take ye back t’ Laswell?”

“That’s fine. Riley, Merlin, up.”

When the dogs “wake” and stand, Mace says, “They can’t pass that door.”

She takes a step forward, flanked by the dogs. “I think you’ll find that they can.”

“Nae, Bambi,” Soap says gently. “They’re hard coded-”

Riley’s turret activates as soon as Soap takes a step toward her. Naya takes another deep breath, and repeats, “If you get within three feet of me, I will shoot you.”

“Well you certainly won’t be doing that with the dogs,” Gaz scoffs. “We won’t touch you, but you really should come with… us.”

The dogs cross the threshold of the door with her, and the plasma cannon in Merlin primes with a dangerous, high pitched sound. When the stunned soldiers don’t step back, the dog’s chest panel opens with a blue glow.

“Three feet,” Mace says, taking two big steps back, hands in the air near his head. “You got it.”

“Yes, sir,” Gaz says aloud, taking his own step backwards. “The doors are open and we have eyes on her. She’s got the 9s with her. Well sir, it seems she’s taken a liking to them.” He pauses. “Soap did tell her that, but apparently she doesn’t really care.”

Naya rolls her eyes and enables the cameras in the hall. “So you’re all allergic to just saying things outright?” The muted audio feed is a flurry of activity, but she just gestures down the hall. “After you.”

—

In the end, everyone ends up in a second floor conference room. Naya stands by the far wall, Riley and Merlin a deadly guard panting in front of her feet. The other eight sit and stand at the other end, fidgeting and clearly searching for a way to break the silence.

Bricks tries first, “Sweetheart-”

“Give me a reason not to overload the filtration systems,” Naya interrupts.

That makes everyone flinch. Laswell clears her throat. “What-”

“Because,” Naya nearly shouts, “I could shoot at least two of you, but then you really would kill me this time. But if I backflow and spark the air, that would kill all of you.”

“Kill ye, as well,” Soap points out.

“I thought I was going to die about five times in the last hour,” Naya says, much calmer than she feels. “Mention me dying again and I’ll fry your interface.”

“Ghost just aboot did tha’ already,” Soap mutters.

“Need a hacker for an op. Thought you was a professional,” Ghost finally admits after a moment of tense fidgeting. “Way you ate through the files I laid out, blew through a 256 like tissue paper. Couldn’t find you after… Figured you knew what you was doin’. And y’do.”

Naya’s eye twitches. “And you couldn’t send me an email? Set up an interview?”

“I did try,” Bricks points out. “But you said all the keywords that tend to get a person fast tracked to a very classified meeting.”

“A very classified meeting where you sell me, twice and then hunt me for sport?”

“Everything sounds bad when you say it like that,” the other woman chuckles.

The air circulator over the door falls silent. In the ensuing silence, Naya can hear the servos whir in Bricks’s arm.

“Clearly, we made mistakes,” Laswell admits. “So. What do you want?”

“I want to not have been sold and hunted for sport. Barring that, I would like a time machine. I’d love to know what you consider an equitable offer, Watcher One.”

“What the fuck did you do?” Mace hisses at Captain Price.

“Apparently we made a tactical error,” the man grumbles. “And then a series of compounding tactical errors.”

“You did not ask Nikolai,” Nikto says, matter of fact. It’s the first Naya’s heard his voice, human and heavily accented. “Or Sparrow. She will not be pleased, I think.”

“None of Nik’s contacts c’n do what Bambi c’n do,” Ghost counters.

“Bambi can kill every person in this room,” Naya says, voice flat, emphasized by the glow of two plasma cannons. “Bambi can turn this whole facility into a goddamn crater. Bambi can post videos of the human experimentation to the holonet.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Gaz says. “What human experimentation? No one’s experimenting on anybody.”

“I saw the videos!” Naya yells. “People in cages, people on operating tables, awake, screaming, crying. I saw people eating raw meat, off of leg bones, eating people!”

“Oh fuck,” Ghost says, voice wavering. His face is stricken when she looks at him. “Bambi, that weren’t for you to see, fuck, ‘ow deep did you fuckin’ go? I didn’t even-”

“That’s the job,” Bricks cuts in. “That’s why we needed a hacker, because we’re trying to stop that from happening, and we can’t get through their walls or exploit their vulnerabilities.”

“Oh, that’s just the “bad guys”?” Naya scoffs. “Okay. Why was Gaz covered in blood when I arrived?”

“Blood!” Soap yelps. “That was hydraulic fluid an’ oil! One of the bikes is actin’ up, and our mechanic isnae aroond!”

“It was in his teeth!”

“He’s bonnier than he is graceful!”

“Oh, fuck you, Tav!”

“You said you couldn’t promise to bring me back alive! Ghost called it a hunt!”

“Ah was jokin’!” Soap runs and hand over his mohawk. “We’re a right frightful lot, and sometimes we sneak aboot, but mostly people just cannae always hear us coming! Ye’d think we could catch one wee little civilian withoot incident!”

“You’re the one who was running through a secure facility,” Captain Price points out.

A plasma cannon discharges into the wall above his head. The whole room freezes for a beat before Naya hisses. “If you ever even think of implying-”

“Any information you find about Makarov and his dealings, you can make public,” Bricks interrupts. “Who, what, when, where, how. All of it can go into your archive.”

Laswell scowls. “Now hold on-”

Bricks talks over her. “We don’t have anything you want that you can’t just outright take, Bambi. That’s what you came here for. Information, and to get people out of cages.”

Nikto looks at Bricks and snorts before muttering something under his breath in Russian. Mace crosses his arms, leaning back in his seat and doing a much better job of keeping his thoughts off of his face than Soap and Gaz. The sergeants look horrified. Ghost looks about ready to throw up. Captain Price and Laswell share a sour, resigned look.

“You’ll have our backing,” Laswell sighs. “You’ll need something a bit more secure than the GaiaPet servers, or you’ll be tracked. But yes. You can disseminate the information.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Naya considers her options, arms around herself. The air circulator kicks back on.    Eventually, she says, “I want an advance. Thirty thousand credits, plus however much Price paid.”

“Done,” Bricks answers.

“And… I want seventy five credits an hour.”

“…Fine,” Laswell agrees.

“And I keep the dogs.”

Captain Price makes a disagreeing noise. “Those are government property.”

“Either I keep them, or I set them to self destruct and detonate every android on the fourth floor.”

Nikto says, “You are a bloodthirsty hind.”

“I’m really not,” Naya says. “But I’ve had a very long day. Do we have a deal?”

“Don’t think we have much of a choice,” Captain Price concedes.

Just then, the door to the conference room opens, and a brunette peeks her head in. Morgan Voss, “Sparrow,” as her ID tags her, nods at Laswell. “Just got in, didn’t know there was a meeting scheduled. What did I miss?” Her eyes drift up. “What the hell happened to the wall?”

[sojournerstales]

WF1999: Teamworks

I keep thinking about that post going around, the one with the hex gaining like 50 members overnight. This is just a first draft quickie so excuse typos and stuff.

Teamworks

Panic over the comms line. Some crackled yell goes on about the captain being bisected. Arthur moves with impossible stopping power, one target to the next. Slash and dash. Impact stops, shoulder against the bulk of a Dedicant and his exalted blade pierced deep.

Arthur rips the blade free. A mix of caustic chemicals and blood hisses through the air. Then, before the Dedicant can recover, Arthur moves sideways so I can charge in. I am Styanax. The spear and shield that Arthur fights around. Styanax's Tharros shield summoned ahead of me collides with our foe at terrifying speed.

We aren't done. More Scaldra close in. We are pushed back-to-back by volleys of machine gun fire. I deflect the fire with Styanax's shields, Arthur returns it with his AX-52.

-

Another day. This time a residential zone - somewhere too close to where people still try to live. Scaldra propaganda claims they are culling a Techrot outbreak, but there's no rot here. Just their kill squads picking through the toxic gas.

Lettie leads search and rescue as well as delivering some retribution of her own. "Let's see how you like to choke," She spits out, seizing an Eradicator before he can finish the job on a civilian. He struggles for air while the young man he was about to hit finds himself breathing easily.

I am Hildryn. I keep Lettie covered. I shrug off machine gun fire even as an entire squad unloads, their weaponry incapable of piercing through Hildryn's energy field. Then - with a sensation that feels like I'm flexing my shoulders - Hildryn releases a pulse that burns toxins from the air.

Lettie picks the civilians up. I draw the fire.

-

"Window's closing!" Amir sounds too excited about the time limit and barely out of breath for the speed his is moving. The finer details of this one were lost on me. Something to do with a network secured by multiple access points, all requiring physical interfacing within a certain timeframe. "Don't tell me you're too slow!" He laughs, tearing down Höllvania's city roads with enough speed to scorch asphalt.

I am Gauss. I am speed. And feeling like this, all my muscles burning, cooled only by relative air-speed, I am easily taunted. One foot after the other, an easy rhythm despite my speed, I can ramp it up. I hit the Redline. The sound like nothing else I've heard before, but distinct in its meaning.

A building of speed and power that says (just as I do), "You ain't seen nothing yet."

The shockwave of Gauss' acceleration tips over cars, knocks Scaldra pursuers off their feet, and sends Amir into a mad over-excited cackle.

-

Total chaos. Techrot and Scaldra fighting each other and themselves. Confusion reigns in their minds. The sound is awful. Digital screeching collides with insensible panic. Eleanor and I are at the heart of it.

Eleanor is jumped by a Flayer. She hits the ground on her back, but before any blades can come down on her the energy shifts. The enemy atop her finds their body sagging, losing all will to harm her, falling deeply, madly in love.

I hit them with a fireball. I am Ember. I burn back the rot while Eleanor handles the Scaldra. Freed from the pin, Eleanor turns on her side to smirk at me, one half of her face lit up by fires of my own making.

"I had that one, you know." And her honeyed voice is heard in the minds of everyone on the urban battlefield.

-

"155. 80 out." Quincy reads out the relative positioning of his next target. He pulls the trigger, the rifle in his hand kicks with little recoil betrayed by the sound the shot makes. The air is split. So is several layers of concrete. "Another one down."

"143. 96 out." Pull. Kick. Crack. "Make that two. Ah, big mans coming out now." There's a smile in his voice. Focus too. I feel him lean forward underneath me.

I am Mesa. I am leant at 100 degrees against Quincy's back. We're both locked in. Him with his rifle, scanning viable targets through the walls to draw out our target. Me with Mesa's auto-targeting, Regulator hand-guns at the ready. Each time the search-and-destroy party enters her field of vision they are popped.

I can hear them all around us. Mesa turned into the sound of their voices and their boots on the ground, turning that data into precise locations, anticipating the exact moment they will come into view.

"You good back there? We're about to kick the nest proper with this one."

-

Sometimes you need to make some noise. Sometimes you need to throw a party. Aoi and I are drawing attention to a city plaza, sound systems hooked up around the threshold to blast out music that she had been dying to show me since I showed up.

I told her that I had a better idea than a mixtape on headphones, so here we are. Running interference for Arthur and putting on a show.

Armoured transport is about to roll in right as the chorus kicks in - On-Lyne, of course, Running Late - and Aoi busts a move. She lifts a truck and slams it down in the path of the Scaldra vehicle, then continuing the choreographed dance she had shown me, Aoi flicks her wrist and sends the transport up and safely over our heads.

Meanwhile I keep her covered from the incoming Flayer units. I am Octavia. I shoot to the beat, I show off her moves. I've never been much of a dance, but the rhythm is deep in Octavia's inherited memories. Hip bump, trigger pull, slide to the left.

"Best! Idea! Ever!" Aoi squeals. She has mostly been singing along, or gushing about how I'd loaded her favourite tracks onto Octavia's Mandachord. The Mallet rolls by and enemy units trip themselves up just trying to get at it. "Go little guy, go!!" Aoi shouts encouragement.

-

Scaldra headquarters. One of the fancier offices. Accolades on the walls, medals on the shelves. Viktor Vodyanoi leans his elbows on his desk and pulls at his own hair. His face lit up green from the screen in front of him informing him of the latest bad news. It's been bad news all year.

"What do you mean there's more!? They have a ghost? That doesn't make any sense! The last one was a Sol-damned headless horsewoman!" He cries. He shoves away from his desk so forcefully it scuffs the carpet. Then he knocks aside files and pens and a desk toy and kicks his office chair for good measure. Seething, he grabs the radio from the grunt standing in the doorway and - teeth grit - tells them to patch him through.

"Hex." No, more specific, "Arthur. I know you are listening. You and all your new friends. I don't know what Hells you plundered to find all those devils, but I am telling you sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I will cauterize the gaping wound that is your wretched rebellion and with the same heat I will BURN. YOU. ALL." Then with a huff Viktor shoves the radio back at the grunt.

Silence between them while Viktor catches his breath and fixes his hair and finally he asks, "Was that good, do you think? Scary? I think so." He wipes sweat from his brow and momentarily despairs, "What's the count now? Fifty? I need a drink."

[wanderingaldecaldo]

INITIATING SYSTEM SCAN... CHECKING ALL NETWORK INTERFACES... INTERCEPTING INCOMING SIGNAL... SECURITY PROTOCOLS: ACTIVE AUTHORIZATION: GRANTED SOURCE: UNIDENTIFIED ENCRYPTION LEVEL:MAXIMUM MESSAGE ENCRYPTION:ACTIVE ATTEMPTING TO DECRYPT... PROCESSING... PROCESSING... PROCESSING... PROCESSING... DECRYPTION SUCCESSFUL

[erc20tokengenerator]

ERC20 token generator

Ever wanted to create your own cryptocurrency? Thanks to the ERC20 Token Generator, it’s more accessible than ever. Dive into the world of blockchain and see how simple it can be.

What is an ERC20 Token?

ERC20 tokens are digital assets built on the Ethereum blockchain. They follow a specific standard, allowing them to interact seamlessly with platforms and other tokens.

Benefits of ERC20 Tokens:

Interoperability: All ERC20 tokens adhere to the same protocol.

Widespread Acceptance: Many platforms on Ethereum support these tokens.

Developer Support: Extensive documentation and community support.

How Does the ERC20 Token Generator Work?

Creating a token might sound complex, but the ERC20 Token Generator simplifies the process. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Define Your Token:

Choose a name and symbol.

Set the total supply.

Access the Generator:

Use online tools designed for token creation.

Input your token details.

Deploy to the Blockchain:

Confirm your details.

Launch your token on the Ethereum network.

Key Features of ERC20 Tokens

These tokens offer various features that make them attractive for both developers and investors:

Standardized Functions: Such as balance checking and transfers.

Smart Contract Integration: Seamlessly integrate with smart contracts.

Security: Built on the robust Ethereum blockchain.

Why Create an ERC20 Token?

Creating your own token can offer several advantages:

Fundraising: Launch your own ICO (Initial Coin Offering).

Community Building: Reward loyal customers or followers.

Innovation: Develop new applications and uses for blockchain.

Potential Challenges

Despite the ease of creation, there are challenges:

Technical Knowledge: Basic understanding of blockchain is required.

Security Risks: Vulnerabilities can lead to exploitation.

Regulatory Issues: Compliance with local laws is crucial.

Best Practices for Creating ERC20 Tokens

To ensure success, follow these guidelines:

Audit Your Code: Ensure there are no security loopholes.

Engage with the Community: Gather feedback and make improvements.

Stay Informed: Keep up with blockchain trends and regulations.

Conclusion

The ERC20 Token Generator opens doors to the exciting world of cryptocurrency creation. Whether you're an entrepreneur, developer, or enthusiast, it offers an innovative way to engage with blockchain technology.

Final Thoughts

Creating an ERC20 token can be a game-changer. It empowers you to participate in the digital economy and experiment with new ideas.

FAQs

1. What is an ERC20 Token Generator?

An ERC20 Token Generator is a tool that simplifies the creation of custom tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

2. Is technical knowledge necessary to create a token?

Basic blockchain understanding is helpful, but many generators offer user-friendly interfaces.

3. Can I sell my ERC20 tokens?

Yes, you can list them on cryptocurrency exchanges or sell directly to users.

4. Are there costs associated with creating a token?

Yes, deploying tokens on Ethereum requires gas fees, paid in Ether.

5. How do I ensure my token is secure?

Regular code audits and following best practices can enhance security.

Source : https://www.altcoinator.com/

[wolfliving]

It starts with him

What was once a promise of technology to allow us to automate and analyze the environments in our physical spaces is now a heap of broken ideas and broken products. Technology products have been deployed en masse, our personal data collected and sold without our consent, and then abandoned as soon as companies strip mined all the profit they thought they could wring out. And why not? They already have our money.

The Philips Hue, poster child of the smart home, used to work entirely on your local network. After all, do you really need to connect to the Internet to control the lights in your own house?  Well you do now!Philips has announced it will require cloud accounts for all users—including users who had already purchased the hardware thinking they wouldn’t need an account (and the inevitable security breaches that come with it) to use their lights.

Will you really trust any promises from a company that unilaterally forces a change like this on you? Does the user actually benefit from any of this?

Matter in its current version … doesn’t really help resolve the key issue of the smart home, namely that most companies view smart homes as a way to sell more individual devices and generate recurring revenue.

It keeps happening. Stuff you bought isn’t yours because the company you bought it from can take away features and force you to do things you don’t want or need to do—ultimately because they want to make more money off of you. It’s frustrating, it’s exhausting, and it’s discouraging.

And it has stopped IoT for the rest of us in its tracks. Industrial IoT is doing great—data collection is the point for the customer. But the consumer electronics business model does not mesh with the expected lifespan of home products, and so enshittification began as soon as those first warranties ran out.

How can we reset the expectations we have of connected devices, so that they are again worthy of our trust and money? Before we can bring the promise back, we must deweaponize the technology.

Guidelines for the hardware producer

What we can do as engineers and business owners is make sure the stuff we’re building can’t be wielded as a lever against our own customers, and to show consumers how things could be. These are things we want consumers to expect and demand of manufacturers.

Control

Think local

Decouple

Open interfaces

Be a good citizen

1) Control over firmware updates.

You scream, “What about security updates!” But a company taking away a feature you use or requiring personal data for no reason is arguably a security flaw. 

We were once outraged when intangible software products went from something that remained unchanging on your computer, to a cloud service, with all the ephemerality that term promises. Now they’re coming for our tangible possessions.

No one should be able to do this with hardware that you own. Breaking functionality is entirely what security updates are supposed to prevent! A better checklist for firmware updates:

Allow users to control when and what updates they want to apply. 

Be thorough and clear as to what the update does and provide the ability to downgrade if needed. 

Separate security updates from feature additions or changes. 

Never force an update unless you are sure you want to accept (financial) responsibility for whatever you inadvertently break. 

Consider that you are sending software updates to other people’s hardware. Ask them for permission (which includes respecting “no”) before touching their stuff!

2) Do less on the Internet.

A large part of the security issues with IoT products stem from the Internet connectivity itself. Any server in the cloud has an attack surface, and now that means your physical devices do.

The solution here is “do less”. All functionality should be local-only unless it has a really good reason to use the Internet. Remotely controlling your lights while in your own house does not require the cloud and certainly does not require an account with your personal information attached to it. Limit the use of the cloud to only the functions that cannot work without it.

As a bonus, less networked functionality means fewer maintenance costs for you.

3) Decouple products and services.

It’s fine to need a cloud service. But making a product that requires a specific cloud service is a guarantee that it can be enshittified at any point later on, with no alternative for the user owner. 

Design products to be able to interact with other servers. You have sold someone hardware and now they own it, not you. They have a right to keep using it even if you shut down or break your servers. Allow them the ability to point their devices to another service. If you want them to use your service, make it worthwhile enough for them to choose you.

Finally, if your product has a heavy reliance on the cloud to work, consider enabling your users to self-host their own cloud tooling if they so desire. A lot of people are perfectly capable of doing this on their own and can help others do the same.

4) Use open and standard protocols and interfaces.

Most networked devices have no reason to use proprietary protocols, interfaces, and data formats. There are open standards with communities and software available for almost anything you could want to do. Re-inventing the wheel just wastes resources and makes it harder for users to keep using their stuff after you’re long gone. We did this with Twine, creating an encrypted protocol that minimized chatter, because we needed to squeeze battery life out of WiFi back when there weren’t good options.

If you do have a need for a proprietary protocol (and there are valid reasons to do so):

Document it. 

If possible, have a fallback option that uses an open standard. 

Provide tooling and software to interact with your custom protocols, at the very least enough for open source developers to be able to work with it. This goes for physical interfaces as much as it does for cloud protocols.

If the interface requires a custom-made, expensive, and/or hard-to-find tool to use, then consider using something else that is commonly available and off the shelf instead.

5) Be a good citizen.

Breaking paid-for functionality on other people’s stuff is inherently unethical. Consider not doing this! Enshittification is not a technical problem, it is a behavioral one. Offer better products that are designed to resist enshittification, and resist it yourself in everything you do.

Nothing forced Philips to do what they are doing: a human made a decision to do it. They could have just as easily chosen not to. With Twine’s server lock-in, at least we chose to keep it running, for 12 years now. Consider that you can still make a decent living by being honest and ethical towards the people who are, by purchasing your products, paying for your lifestyle. 

We didn’t get here by accident. Humans made choices that brought us to this point, and we can’t blame anyone for being turned off by it. But we can choose to do better. We can design better stuff. And we can choose not to mess things up after the fact.

We’re putting this into practice with Pickup. (We also think that part of an IoT reset is giving users the creative freedom of a general-purpose device.) If you’re looking for something better and our product can fill a need you have, consider backing us. We cannot claim to be perfect or have all of the answers, but we are absolutely going to try. The status quo sucks. Let’s do something about it.

Published October 15, 2023 By Jeremy Billheimer

[x86girl]

i tried to do a coherent intro post or somethin for this blog but i realized im just gonna do textposts about computerlove so i mightaswell start now.

can we talk abt how poly computer networks are? im sure ive divulged this into atleast a few DMs between friends but, for real come on, organized (or Disorganized) information transfer between many computers is just.. theyre interfacing with eachother on an intimate, electrical level. swapping packets left and right. ad hoc swingers, foaming nodes of mesh polycules, the rigid security of p2p sessions between clients. take a look at the humble network switch. its literally administrating a harem of communication between lovers. can you tell me otherwise? when long distance means only nanoseconds of latency, love is truly boundless and free

[whatdoseitmeantobehuman]

Lens of survival part 4 Trust in small steps

"This is our primary monitoring hub," Cypher explained, gesturing to a wall of screens that made your stomach clench. He must have noticed your reaction because he quickly added, "These only show the facility's entry points and perimeter. No personal quarters, no private spaces."

You forced yourself to step closer, studying the setup. It was sophisticated but transparent - each camera's location clearly marked, its purpose obvious. Nothing hidden, nothing secret.

"The feeds are accessible to all agents," he continued, pulling up a simple interface. "Even you, once you learn the system. No single person controls the information here."

That was different. Your Cypher had kept his surveillance network close, using it like a web with him as the spider at its center. This was more like... a shared shield.

"Show me," you said softly, and his head turned sharply toward you, surprised by your willingness.

For the next few hours, he walked you through everything - the motion sensors, the perimeter alerts, even the simple AI that helped monitor patterns. His teaching style was patient, methodical, so unlike the manipulative half-truths you were used to.

"And this," he said, pulling up a final screen, "is the panic button system. Every room has one, including yours. One press, and help comes running."

You touched the small interface. "Even if... even if it's a false alarm?"

"Especially then," he said firmly. "Better a hundred false alarms than one missed call for help."

A comfortable silence fell between you, broken only by the soft hum of equipment. It felt... safe. Not the suffocating safety of constant surveillance, but the security of understanding and control.

"Thank you," you said finally. "For showing me all this. For making it... different."

He nodded, and you caught a glimpse of his eyes through his mask - warm and concerned, not calculating.

After Cypher finished showing you the security systems, you spent days planning in secret. The facility's kitchen became your sanctuary during off-hours, a place where memories of control couldn't reach you. With Killjoy's help to access supplies, you prepared a feast that would bring everyone together.

You spent hours cooking dishes from around the world:

For Raze: Spicy Brazilian feijoada with extra malagueta peppers and warm pão de queijo

For Sova: Hearty pelmeni in dill-heavy sour cream sauce

For Sage: Delicate dim sum - har gow, siu mai, and lotus leaf sticky rice

For Killjoy: Traditional German rouladen with spätzle

For Phoenix: Jerk chicken with rice and peas, spiced like his mum's

For Viper: A precisely composed salad with grilled chicken and complex vinaigrette

For Brimstone: Classic meatloaf with bourbon glaze

For Omen: Dark chocolate tart with espresso cream

For Jett: Steaming kimchi jjigae with extra tofu

For Breach: Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce

For Chamber: Coq au vin with perfectly roasted potatoes

For Astra: Jollof rice with spiced chicken

For Skye: Vegetable pie with herbs from her garden

For KAY/O: A note expressing appreciation

For Yoru: Japanese curry with tonkatsu and umeboshi onigiri

For Cypher: Moroccan pastries and lamb tagine

For Reyna: Authentic Mexican mole poblano with fresh tortillas and Mexican rice (your world's Reyna had once told you it reminded her of family dinners in Mexico, before she lost everything)

For Gekko: Spicy Mexican street tacos with all the fixings (your world's Gekko had sworn by street food)

For Harbor: Butter chicken and fresh naan (his favorite comfort food)

For Iso: Chinese army stew with extra spam (a guilty pleasure he'd admitted to once)

For Fade: Traditional Turkish menemen and börek (foods that reminded her of Istanbul)

You asked Killjoy to help send a facility-wide message: "Dinner in the main hall at 7. Everyone. Please."

Your hands trembled slightly as you arranged everything on the long table. Each dish was labeled, steam rising from the hot foods, everything perfectly timed. You'd even set up different beverage stations - Turkish coffee, Japanese tea, fresh lemonade.

At 7 sharp, they started arriving. You stood nervously by the entrance, watching their faces.

"Holy shit," Gekko breathed, Wingman bobbing excitedly beside him. "Are those real street tacos?"

"Damn," Harbor's eyes widened at the spread. "This is... this is incredible."

Fade approached the Turkish dishes, her expression softening. "This smells like home."

"Everyone," you called out softly, and the room quieted. "I... I wanted to thank you all. For giving me a chance. For showing me what a real family could be." You gestured to the table. "In my world, I knew all of your counterparts. Some better than others. They taught me these recipes, shared their favorites... before everything changed. I hope... I hope you'll share this meal with me."

The reactions came in waves:

Raze whooped at the sight of the feijoada: "THIS SMELLS LIKE MY GRANDMOTHER'S KITCHEN!"

Iso picked up his army stew, eyebrows raised. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess," you smiled, remembering how your world's Iso would sneak extra portions during late nights.

Gekko was already stuffing his face with tacos: "These are better than the ones in Mexico City!"

The room filled with chatter and movement as everyone found their dishes. Chamber appreciated the wine pairing you'd selected. Fade closed her eyes at the first bite of börek. Harbor couldn't stop praising the butter chicken's authenticity.

Even the more reserved agents showed their appreciation. Viper nodded approvingly at her salad's composition. Omen found a quiet corner but cleaned his plate completely.

Reyna's reaction was particularly striking. She stood over her plate, purple eyes gleaming with an unusual softness. "Mole poblano... mi madre's recipe?" she asked, her usually fierce demeanor gentling as she took in the complex aroma.

"As close as I could get it," you admitted. "The other you... she spent an entire night teaching me how to make it right. Said some recipes carry the souls of those we've lost."

Reyna's hand briefly touched the heart locket she always wore. "Hermana would have loved this," she whispered, so quietly you almost missed it. Then, louder, with her usual confident smile: "Your soul is strong, pequeña. You honor our traditions well."

Yoru tried to maintain his gruff exterior, but you caught him getting seconds of the curry. And thirds of the onigiri.

Cypher... Cypher sat nearby, occasionally glancing your way as he savored each pastry. You pretended not to notice how he'd specifically chosen a seat that let him watch over both you and the room.

You watched as Reyna and Gekko good-naturedly argued over whose Mexican dish was more authentic, while she simultaneously kept refilling everyone's plates with mole, insisting they needed to "put meat on their bones." It was a side of her you'd rarely seen in your world - nurturing, almost maternal.

The evening evolved into something magical. Barriers broke down as agents shared bites of their dishes with others. Stories flowed as freely as the drinks. Even KAY/O joined in, sharing his observations about human bonding rituals over food.

"In my world," you found yourself saying during a lull, "we lost moments like this. The war took away our ability to just... be together. To share meals and stories."

"Well," Skye said firmly, squeezing your shoulder, "you're not losing these moments here."

"Never," agreed Harbor, raising his glass. "To family - across all dimensions."

"To family," they echoed, and you felt tears prick your eyes as every agent - even the most stoic ones - joined the toast.

Later, as people were helping clean up (despite your protests), Cypher approached with an empty pastry plate.

"You made them with pistachios," he noted quietly.

"Your favorite," you replied, then caught yourself. "I mean, his favorite. Sorry, I shouldn't assume-"

"No," he interrupted gently. "They're my favorite too. Some things, it seems, are constant across dimensions."

You looked around at the warm scene - Raze and Gekko arguing playfully over the last taco, Harbor teaching Phoenix the proper way to eat naan, Fade and Omen sharing the last of the Turkish coffee, Yoru pretending he wasn't wrapping up extra onigiri for later.

"Maybe the best things are," you whispered.

For the first time since arriving in this world, you felt truly at home.

[usafphantom2]

The F/A-XX 6th Generation Fighter Announcement That Never Happened

ByKris Osborn4 hours ago

F/A-XX Fighter from U.S. Navy

The Pentagon, the Navy, the aerospace industry, and much of the world closely watch the US Navy’s ongoing source selection for the 6th-Gen F/A-XX carrier-launched fighter. Due to the program’s secrecy, little information is available. It was supposed to occur days ago according to some solid reporting. So why the delay?

The F/A-XX Fighter: When Is the Big Reveal?

F/A-XX Fighter for US Navy

F/A-XX Fighter for US Navy. Navy graphic mockup.

Weapons developers, the defense community, and the public anticipate the expected announcement, and some might wonder why the decision is taking so long. The program is expected to move into Milestone B and transition to the well-known Engineering, Manufacturing, and Design (EMD) phase at some point this year, and only Boeing and Northrop Grumman remain alive in the competition.

Boeing is famous for the F/A-18 Super Hornet and was, of course, just selected for the Next-Generation Air Dominance F-47 6th-gen Air Force plane. Northrop is known for building the F-14 Tomcat.

Both companies have extensive experience engineering carrier-launched fighter jets, and both vendors are doubtless quite experienced with stealth technology.

It may be that Northrop has an edge with stealth technology, given its role in generating a new era of stealth technology with the B-21 and its history of building the first-ever stealthy carrier-launched drone demonstrator years ago called the X-47B.

Extensive Evaluation

Navy and defense evaluators will examine key performance specs such as speed, stealth effectiveness, thrust-to-weight ratio, fuel efficiency, aerial maneuverability, and lethality, yet there is an entire universe of less prominent yet equally significant additional capabilities that Navy decision-makers will analyze.

Requirements and proposal analysis for a program of this magnitude are extensive and detailed, as they often involve computer simulations, design model experimentation, and careful examination of performance parameters.

The process is quite intense, as the evaluation carefully weighs each offering’s technological attributes and areas of advantage against determined requirements. Requirements are painstakingly developed as Pentagon weapons developers seek to identify what’s referred to as “capability gaps” and then seek to develop technologies and platforms capable of closing those capability gaps by solving a particular tactical or strategic problem.

F/A-XX Fighter

F/A-XX Fighter. Image Credit: Boeing.

Navy developers likely envision a 6th-generation, carrier-launched stealth fighter as a platform capable of closing or addressing many capability gaps.

While little is known about the program for security reasons, the intent is likely to combine F-22-like speed and maneuverability with a new generation of stealth ruggedized for maritime warfare and carrier deck operations. Carriers are now being configured with special unmanned systems headquarters areas designed to coordinate drone take-off and landing.

This station requires deconflicting air space, accommodating wind and rough sea conditions, and ensuring a successful glide slope onto a carrier deck.

As part of a 6th-gen family of systems, the F/A-XX will be expected to control drones from the cockpit, conduct manned-unmanned teaming operations, and take-off-and-land in close coordination with drones.

Networking & AI

Boeing and Northrop have extensive drone-engineering experience and mature AI-enabled technologies. The Navy is likely closely looking at networking technologies. Each vendor platform must conduct secure data collection, analysis, and transmission to ensure time-sensitive combat information exchange.

This requires interoperable transport layer communication technologies to interface with one another in the air in real-time.

For example, the platform best able to successfully gather and analyze time-sensitive threat information from otherwise disparate sensor sources, likely enabling AI at the point of collection, will be best positioned to prevail in a competitive down-select.

F/A-XX. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The F/A-XX will not only need to connect with each other but also network successfully with F-35s and 4th-generation aircraft and ship-based command and control.

This connectivity will likely require gateway applications. These computer technologies are engineered to translate time-sensitive data from one transport layer to another.

Key targeting data may arrive via a radio frequency (RF) data link. At the same time, other information comes from GPS, and a third source of incoming data transmits through a different frequency or wireless signal.

How can this information be organized and analyzed collectively to a complete, integrated picture and delivered instantly as needed at the point of attack?

This is where AI-enabled gateways come in, and the vendor most successfully navigates these technological complexities will likely prevail.

About the Author: Kris Osborn

Kris Osborn is Military Technology Editor of 19FortyFive and the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

@Johnschmuck via X

[blessed-curse]

The Tech Giant Of The World.

Serenity Industries: The Titan of Technological Supremacy

Founder:Erwin Bekker (a.k.a. Accel) Founded: 2070 Headquarters:Neo-Berlin, European Federation Current CEO:Liam Bekker (Post-Erwin Bekker’s Death) Specialization: Advanced AI, Robotics, Military Tech, Cybernetics, Energy, Space Exploration Market Valuation (2126):$23.9 Trillion (Largest tech conglomerate on Earth)

Origins: A Visionary’s Empire

Before becoming a legendary hero, Erwin Bekker was a prodigy. A genius in mechanical engineering, AI, and quantum computing, he founded Serenity Industries at just 21 years old in 2070, revolutionizing several key industries. Initially, the company specialized in next-gen cybernetics, creating biomechanical augmentations for disabled individuals. However, it quickly expanded into military technology, robotics, and AI-driven defense systems, securing multi-trillion-dollar contracts with the European Federation, the U.S., and Japan. By 2095, Bekker Industries had outpaced all competitors, effectively monopolizing advanced weaponry, AI warfare, and energy production.

Key Innovations & Divisions

• A.R.C. (Adaptive Robotics & Cybernetics)

• Military-grade androids & mechanized infantry

• SPARTAN-Grade Power Suits (Used by elite operatives worldwide)

• AI-powered prosthetics & augmentations

• VOLTERRA (Energy & Power Division)

• Zero-Point Energy Reactors (Replaced fossil fuels globally by 2102)

• Quantum Batteries (Used in both civilian and military sectors)

• Artificial Fusion Plants

• NEURO-NEXUS (Artificial Intelligence & Automation)

• AetherLink (The worlds fastest, and most reliable internet.)

• High-level AI for warfare, security, and research

• The Overseer Program (Global AI network managing planetary security)

• Virtual Cognitive Assistants (Advanced neural interfacing)

• TITAN ARMS (Weapons & Defense Division)

• Kinetic Barrier Systems (Defensive energy shields for combat units)

• Plasma & Gauss Weaponry (Used by elite forces and private contractors)

• Experimental Anti-Superhuman Weaponry (Predecessor tech to Project-OMEGA)

• ASTRA (Space Exploration & Terraforming)

• Lunar & Martian Colonization Projects

• Deep-Space Mining Operations

• FTL (Faster-Than-Light) Experimental Propulsion

The Hidden Agenda: Anti-Superhuman Measures

While Bekker Industries publicly focused on human advancement, Erwin Bekker always feared the growing power of superhumans.

• Secretly funded research into superhuman suppression technology. • Helped create early SPARTAN prototypes to combat rogue Empowered. • Designed containment systems capable of restraining even SSS+ individuals. • Developed “Override” AI Kill-Switches that could shut down rogue AI or advanced cybernetics.

Legacy & Power Struggle:

With Erwin Bekker’s death (killed by Gluttony in 2121), Serenity Industries remains in chaos. His successor being his son, but over the years corporate leaders and world governments continue to fight for control over the company’s classified projects. Despite its unknown future, Serenity Industries remains the most powerful technological empire on Earth, holding the keys to humanity’s next evolution… or its extinction.

[the-demigod-project]

Villains List: Golden Fed.

Name: Elena Ferrari

Code Name: Link

Age: 29

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (155cm), lithe athletic body build, light beige skintone, short wavy black hair, and bright hazel eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Telepathy & Super Intelligence:

Telepathy:

• Elena’s telepathy allows her to read and manipulate minds with surgical precision. She can delve into memories, extract secrets, or implant ideas subtly enough to make them seem like the target’s own thoughts.

• Her mental reach extends across vast distances, enabling her to coordinate operations in real time or influence decisions made in distant boardrooms or battlefields.

Super Intelligence:

• Her mind operates like a quantum computer, capable of solving impossibly complex problems, analyzing countless variables, and predicting outcomes with uncanny accuracy.

• She can process multiple streams of information simultaneously, from hacking encrypted systems to devising flawless battle strategies.

Info: Elena Ferrari was not born but engineered, a perfect blend of cutting-edge science and ancient myth. Conceived in the highly secretive Kronos Initiative, a German laboratory specializing in creating enhanced beings, she was part of an elite project to create demigods capable of serving the Golden Federation. Her Italian heritage was selected intentionally—famous for producing brilliant thinkers and strategists, from Leonardo da Vinci to Niccolò Machiavelli. Her creators believed this lineage, paired with their scientific advancements, would result in a mind that could transcend mortal intelligence. Elena was created in 1988, designed to serve this vast superpower and secure its dominance in intelligence, strategy, and covert operations. Elena was raised in a controlled environment, her every thought and action carefully observed. She was educated through immersive neural interfaces and simulations that ran at accelerated speeds, allowing her to master centuries of knowledge by the time she turned 10.

By adulthood, her telepathic abilities had fully developed, allowing her to probe minds, manipulate thoughts, and process information from countless sources simultaneously. This made her the perfect operative in a world ruled by shadows and secrets. Despite being a product of the Federation’s ambitions, Elena is far from a mindless tool. Her super-intelligence allows her to see the cracks in the system she serves. She recognizes the Golden Federation's authoritarian tendencies but understands the chaos that could arise if it were to collapse. This duality defines her: she is loyal to the Federation, but only because she believes in maintaining global stability. Her own moral compass often conflicts with the orders she receives, leading her to find creative solutions that minimize unnecessary suffering. Elena is fiercely independent, with a sharp wit and a dry sense of humor that often masks her inner turmoil. She has a calculated demeanor, rarely showing emotion, yet those closest to her know that her seemingly cold exterior hides a deep compassion for humanity—a trait she has tried to suppress to fulfill her role.

Elena also operates as an elite intelligence officer and strategist for the Golden Federation, using her telepathic abilities to extract critical information, outmaneuver enemies, and neutralize threats before they arise. Her nickname, Link, comes from her unparalleled ability to connect thoughts, ideas, and people across vast networks, both physical and mental. She is also tasked with overseeing Project Omega, a covert initiative aimed at quelling resistance movements and expanding the Federation's influence. However, Elena often works behind the scenes to mitigate the Federation’s harsher policies, believing that true order must come from trust and cooperation, not fear.

Name: Leo Von Degenfeld

Code Name: Sword Saint

Age: 23

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (179cm), lean athletic body build, fair skintone, snow white medium wavy hair, and kind hazel eyes(turn gold sometimes).

Demigod Form:

Powers: Blade Transcendent:

• Enhanced Reflexes and Precision: Leo can anticipate and react to attacks before they are even fully executed, moving with speed and accuracy that make him almost untouchable.

• Spiritual Connection to the Blade: Leo’s mastery extends beyond physical technique. He can sense the “spirit” of a weapon, adapting his style to the unique properties of any blade he wields. This ability also allows him to form an almost mystical bond with his weapon, amplifying his combat abilities.

• Unparalleled Technique: Leo possesses knowledge of every known swordsmanship style and has created techniques that defy logic, such as cutting through objects at a distance or parrying bullets with ease.

• Battlefield Awareness: His heightened senses and strategic mind make him an unrivaled tactician, capable of analyzing and adapting to the flow of combat in real time.

Info: Leo Von Degenfeld was born into one of Germany’s most prestigious aristocratic families, whose lineage stretched back to the Teutonic Knights, a storied order of warrior monks who upheld faith and conquest. The Von Degenfeld family became celebrated as both noble diplomats and exceptional warriors, their loyalty to the Reich unwavering through decades of political upheaval. After Germany's victory in World War II, the Von Degenfelds played an instrumental role in shaping the militaristic and hierarchical structure of the Golden Federation. The family estate, nestled deep in the Bavarian Alps, stood as a monument to their legacy. Within its walls were not only riches but also priceless artifacts of history, including heirlooms from the Teutonic Knights and ancient manuscripts detailing esoteric martial techniques. For generations, the Von Degenfelds trained their children in the art of combat, philosophy, and governance, ensuring they could serve both as warriors and leaders.

Leo, the youngest of three siblings, grew up under the shadow of his older brothers, both of whom were celebrated for their achievements in the Federation’s military elite. His father, Baron Wilhelm Von Degenfeld, was a decorated general, and his mother, Countess Helena, was a scholar of martial history. While his upbringing was privileged, it was also demanding, as his family adhered to strict codes of discipline and honor. From a young age, Leo exhibited an uncanny talent for swordsmanship. By the age of eight, he could wield a blade with precision that astonished even the most seasoned instructors. His movements were fluid, almost instinctive, as if he was born with an innate connection to the blade. This natural talent set him apart from his siblings and caught the attention of the Kronos Initiative, the Federation’s secretive program dedicated to creating enhanced beings, or “demigods,” capable of securing its dominance for generations to come.

At the age of 10, Leo was inducted into the Kronos Initiative. While his siblings were sent to conventional military academies, he was subjected to the cutting-edge experiments and rigorous training of the Initiative. The Von Degenfelds willingly offered Leo to the program, believing it was his destiny to embody the pinnacle of their family’s martial legacy. The Kronos Initiative sought to merge human skill with divine power, and Leo’s exceptional swordsmanship made him the perfect candidate for a Demigod of Transcendent Swordsmanship. Through a combination of genetic enhancement, neurological augmentation, and esoteric rituals inspired by ancient Teutonic practices, Leo was transformed into a being who could transcend the physical limitations of ordinary warriors.

The program trained Leo relentlessly, pitting him against enhanced soldiers, machines, and even other demigods in brutal combat simulations. By the time he turned 16, he had surpassed every expectation, earning the code name “Sword Saint” in recognition of his mastery. After completing his transformation, Leo was deployed as a military prodigy and symbol of the Federation’s might. He quickly gained fame for his exploits on the battlefield, where he led elite units to victory against insurgencies and rival powers. His presence alone was often enough to demoralize enemies, as tales of his skill and near-invincibility spread like wildfire. Leo is frequently sent on high-profile missions, acting as both a warrior and a diplomat. His aristocratic upbringing allows him to navigate the political intricacies of the Federation’s ruling elite, while his martial prowess ensures loyalty and fear among the Federation’s enemies. While his family views him as the ultimate realization of their legacy, Leo sometimes questions whether his enhancement has stripped him of his humanity. As a soldier of the Federation, Leo has been forced to carry out orders that conflict with his personal sense of honor. These moments weigh heavily on him, as he strives to balance loyalty with his own ideals.

Leo embodies the ideals of a knight: honor, discipline, and loyalty. However, beneath his stoic and composed exterior lies a young man grappling with his identity. While he takes pride in his abilities, he also feels burdened by the expectations placed upon him. He is introspective and philosophical, often contemplating the nature of power, duty, and what it means to be human. Leo’s demeanor is calm and measured, but when he enters combat, he becomes a whirlwind of precision and power. He respects his opponents and views battle as a sacred art, often showing mercy when he believes it is deserved. This sense of honor has earned him respect even among his enemies.

Name: Baldur

Code Name: Subject-Ragnarok

Age: 59

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (229cm), muscular body build, light tan skintone, medium buzz cut black hair dyed blonde, and strong willed silver eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Violence Embodiment:

• Combat Empowerment: Baldur’s strength, speed, and durability increase proportionally to the intensity of violence around him. The more chaos and bloodshed he witnesses or participates in, the more unstoppable he becomes.

• Berserker Mode: When critically injured or enraged, Baldur enters a heightened state of aggression, ignoring pain and damage as he unleashes devastating attacks with inhuman precision.

• Violence Aura: Baldur’s presence incites aggression and fear in those around him, destabilizing enemy morale and even causing allies to act recklessly.

• Weapon Proficiency: Baldur has an innate mastery of all forms of weaponry, ranging from primitive tools to advanced firearms. He often uses whatever is available to inflict maximum destruction.

• Unyielding Flesh: His body is unnaturally resilient, able to heal rapidly from most injuries. This regenerative ability ensures he remains in the fight, even under extreme conditions.

• Ragnarok’s Wrath: In rare moments of extreme focus, Baldur channels the full extent of his power into a single, apocalyptic attack, capable of leveling entire battlefields.

Info: Baldur, the younger brother of Michael (Subject-Abyss), shares a similar origin steeped in tragedy and experimentation. Born five years after Michael, Baldur grew up under the shadow of his older brother’s stoicism and strength. Together, the two siblings navigated the harsh realities of life as German orphans. When the Old Führer adopted them, Baldur viewed him less as a father figure and more as a beacon of power and dominance. While Michael was molded into a disciplined and loyal soldier, Baldur was drawn to the chaos and violence that accompanied their upbringing, seeing destruction as both an art and a purpose.

At the age of six, Baldur followed Michael into the Kronos Initiative, where he was subjected to brutal experiments designed to awaken latent superhuman potential. Unlike his brother’s transformation into a creature of shadow, Baldur’s powers manifested as a visceral connection to violence itself. Dubbed "Violence Embodiment," Baldur became a living weapon, capable of amplifying his strength and durability through his proximity to acts of brutality and carnage. This transformation also awakened an insatiable thirst for combat, making him a relentless and savage force in battle. Baldur thrived in the Federation’s war-torn landscapes, where his unique powers and unbridled aggression made him a fearsome soldier and a terrifying enemy. While Michael retained a sense of humanity, Baldur fully embraced his monstrous nature, reveling in the chaos and destruction he was born to create.

Baldur is a mix of charm and bloodlust. Outside of combat, he can be disarmingly charismatic, with a sharp wit and a penchant for dark humor. However, this facade quickly crumbles when he is presented with the opportunity for violence. Baldur loves war in all its forms, seeing it not as a means to an end but as the ultimate expression of human nature. He thrives in chaos, finding beauty in the destruction and depravity that others shy away from. Unlike Michael, Baldur has little patience for philosophy or introspection. He lives in the moment, driven by his instincts and his unrelenting desire for combat. Despite this, he is fiercely loyal to his brother and the Golden Federation, seeing their cause as a perfect stage for his violent artistry. Baldur’s relationship with Michael is one of mutual respect and dependence, with Baldur often deferring to Michael’s strategic mind while providing the raw power to execute their missions. Baldur’s love of violence, however, makes him a dangerous ally.

While he follows orders with unwavering loyalty, his bloodlust can sometimes lead to excessive collateral damage or the alienation of potential allies. His superiors tolerate this behavior only because of his unparalleled effectiveness on the battlefield. Baldur serves as a front-line enforcer and shock trooper for the Federation, deployed in situations where overwhelming force is required. His ability to turn the tide of battle through sheer ferocity and brutality makes him a key asset in the Federation’s military campaigns. Baldur is often sent into the most dangerous missions, where his powers can be unleashed without restraint. While his chaotic nature makes him a liability in diplomatic or covert operations, Baldur’s reputation as an unstoppable force precedes him, striking fear into the hearts of enemies long before he arrives on the battlefield. To the Federation’s leadership, Baldur is both a weapon and a spectacle, a living reminder of their dominance and the price of defiance.

Name: Michael

Code Name: Subject-Abyss

Age: 64

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (199cm), lean body build, pitch black skintone.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Shadow Manipulation:

• Abyssal Cloak: Michael can envelop himself in darkness, becoming nearly invisible in low-light conditions. This cloak also enhances his physical resilience, as shadows absorb incoming damage.

• Shadow Constructs: He can create tangible objects or weapons from shadows, ranging from simple blades to intricate barriers.

• Dimensional Rift: By tapping into the Abyss, Michael can summon portals of darkness to transport himself or others over short distances. These rifts also serve as traps, pulling enemies into the void never to return.

• Sentient Shadows: Michael can animate his shadows, using them as extensions of himself to attack, restrain, or scout areas.

• Void Sense: His lack of a physical head has enhanced his perception through the Abyss, allowing him to see and hear across vast distances and detect lifeforms hidden in darkness.

• Corruptive Aura: Prolonged exposure to Michael’s shadows can weaken enemies, sapping their strength and resolve.

Info: Michael and his younger brother, Baldur, were born in the war-ravaged streets of Germany during the twilight years of global conflict. Orphaned at a young age, the two brothers were taken in by an enigmatic figure referred to only as the "Old Führer," a powerful and mysterious leader of a post-war German faction that later aligned with the Golden Federation. The Führer saw potential in the two boys and raised them to be tools of his vision, shaping them into disciplined warriors with unshakable loyalty to his ideals. At the tender age of eleven, both Michael and Baldur were inducted into the Kronos Initiative, a shadowy project aimed at forging superhuman soldiers. As part of their transformation, the brothers underwent excruciating procedures to unlock dormant abilities.

For Michael, this meant merging with the essence of the Abyss, an alternate dimension composed of pure darkness and negative energy. The procedure not only awakened his powers of Shadow Manipulation but also fundamentally altered his physical form: his head vanished entirely, absorbed into the Abyss itself. While this transformation was horrifying, Michael emerged with newfound abilities that placed him among the most formidable of the Kronos subjects. Despite his disfigurement, his voice could still be heard, and his vision extended far beyond human limits, leading to rumors that his head now resides in a different realm, tethered to him by the shadows he commands.

Michael is the epitome of loyalty and discipline, molded by the ideals instilled in him by the Führer and reinforced by the Federation’s doctrine. He is calm, calculating, and unwavering in his devotion to the cause. Despite his intimidating appearance, Michael exudes an aura of quiet authority, rarely raising his voice but commanding respect through his sheer presence. Beneath his stoic exterior, Michael harbors a deep bond with his brother Baldur, viewing him as the only remaining fragment of his humanity. The two share an unbreakable connection forged through shared suffering and survival. While Michael’s loyalty to the Federation is absolute, his love for his brother occasionally creates moments of introspection, as he questions the morality of their existence.

Michael’s loss of a physical head has become a defining feature of his identity. Rather than viewing it as a curse, he sees it as a symbol of his transcendence beyond human limitations. This detachment from his former self fuels his belief that he is no longer bound by human weaknesses, making him a highly focused and unrelenting force on the battlefield. Michael serves as an elite operative and enforcer for the Federation, specializing in covert operations and assassination missions. His ability to manipulate shadows makes him the perfect infiltrator, capable of dismantling enemy defenses without leaving a trace. Additionally, his strategic mind and calm demeanor make him a trusted advisor to high-ranking Federation officials. Despite his loyalty, Michael’s existence raises fear and awe in equal measure among his peers. His disfigurement and connection to the Abyss make him an unsettling figure, even to those who fight alongside him. Yet, his effectiveness in battle and unwavering dedication ensure that he remains an indispensable asset to the Federation.

Name: Felix

Code Name: Subject-Angel

Age: 28

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (186cm), toned body build, light fair skintone, short soft white wavy hair, and pale green eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Divine Light:

• Radiant Energy Manipulation: Felix can project beams, bursts, or waves of concentrated light energy capable of incinerating enemies or shielding allies.

• Healing Touch: The Divine Light allows Felix to heal wounds and cure ailments.

• Light-Wings Manifestation: Felix can create ethereal wings of light to sprout from his back, granting him the ability to fly and enhancing his combat agility.

• Aura of Serenity: Felix radiates a calming presence that can inspire allies and demoralize enemies, often turning the tide of battle without lifting a finger.

• Enhanced Reflexes and Strength: The Divine Light amplifies his physical capabilities, making him faster, stronger, and more durable than any ordinary demigod.

Info: Felix, codenamed Subject-Angel, is the result of a clandestine project within the Golden Federation, designed to harness the essence of divine energy for the purpose of creating a perfect warrior and symbol of hope. Born into obscurity, Felix's early life was that of an ordinary child until the Kronos Initiative identified him as an ideal candidate for their ambitious experiment to merge human potential with celestial power. Despite these remarkable powers, the process left Felix with lingering scars—both physical and emotional. His body constantly burns with the energy he wields, requiring intense focus and discipline to avoid being consumed by it. Felix’s transformation into Subject-Angel shaped his personality profoundly. Having experienced the pain and isolation of being an experiment, he carries a quiet, reflective demeanor. He views himself as a protector of the innocent, driven by a deep sense of compassion and justice. However, he also struggles with the weight of being labeled a "divine being" and the expectations that come with it.

Felix often questions his purpose, torn between serving the Golden Federation, which he owes his existence to, and his desire to use his powers for the greater good, even if it means defying orders. His inner conflict makes him an enigmatic figure—respected and admired by those who meet him, yet deeply misunderstood. Felix serves as both a warrior and a symbol of divine authority for the Golden Federation. His presence on the battlefield inspires soldiers and civilians alike, often portrayed in propaganda as a "savior" figure. While Felix fulfills this role out of duty, he harbors doubts about the Federation’s morality, especially as he witnesses the suffering of those under its regime. The Federation leverages Felix’s abilities sparingly, recognizing that his power is as much a psychological weapon as it is a physical one. He is deployed in critical missions that require overwhelming force or the restoration of morale. Felix, however, secretly seeks opportunities to undermine the Federation’s more oppressive policies, acting as a covert protector for those who cannot defend themselves.

Name: Francis

Code Name: Subject-Devil

Age: 28

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (186cm), toned body build, light fair skintone, medium messy white hair, and pale blue eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Demonic Hellfire:

• Hellfire Manipulation: Francis can summon and control infernal flames that burn hotter than conventional fire, capable of disintegrating nearly anything in their path.

• Infernal Armor: He can encase himself in flames that act as both a shield and a weapon, making him nearly invulnerable in close combat.

• Dark Teleportation: Using bursts of hellfire, Francis can instantly transport himself short distances, leaving trails of flame in his wake.

• Fear Aura: His presence can instill dread and panic in those around him, often rendering enemies too terrified to fight effectively.

• Enhanced Strength and Endurance: The hellfire within him fuels his body, making him physically stronger and more resilient than most demigods.

Info: Francis, codenamed Subject-Devil, is the twin brother of Felix (Subject-Angel). The two brothers share an intricate bond shaped by both their shared beginnings and their divergent paths within the Kronos Initiative. Like Felix, Francis was subjected to experiments intended to create demigods of unparalleled power. However, while Felix was infused with the celestial energy of Divine Light, Francis was imbued with the chaotic and destructive force of Demonic Hellfire. This duality of their powers—light and darkness—became both a symbol and a curse for the two brothers. The Federation saw them as the perfect embodiment of balance: Felix, the radiant savior, and Francis, the wrathful destroyer. Unlike Felix, who embraced his role as a protector, Francis was molded into a weapon of intimidation and devastation.

Francis's infusion with Demonic Hellfire left him with immense power, but it also came at a great cost. The process tethered him to an unrelenting, fiery rage that he must constantly suppress to retain his humanity. Francis is a complex individual, deeply conflicted by his role as Subject-Devil. Unlike Felix, who is revered as a beacon of hope, Francis is often feared and misunderstood, even by those within the Federation. This alienation has fostered a sense of resentment and loneliness, though he hides it beneath a stoic and guarded exterior. Despite his fearsome reputation, Francis possesses a strong moral compass and a fierce loyalty to those he cares about—particularly Felix. He resents the Federation for manipulating him and his brother, and he harbors a growing desire to break free from their control. However, he also struggles with self-doubt, fearing that the hellfire within him makes him irredeemable.

Francis's relationship with Felix is both a source of strength and tension. While they share a deep bond as twins, their opposing powers and roles often put them at odds. Francis envies Felix's ability to inspire hope and wonders if his own existence is doomed to destruction and despair. Francis serves as the Federation’s enforcer, deployed in situations where overwhelming force or intimidation is required. His mere presence on the battlefield is enough to demoralize opposition, and his hellfire ensures that few survive to tell the tale. The Federation uses him as a symbol of their dominance—a stark contrast to Felix’s role as their angelic savior. While Francis fulfills his duties out of obligation, he secretly despises being a tool of fear. He longs for a purpose beyond destruction and dreams of a day when he can wield his powers for something greater.

Name: Lunette O'Neill

Code Name: Subject-Primordial

Age: 49

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height(169cm), slim body build, rosy ivory skintone, vivid red hair styled in soft waves, and gentle piercing golden eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Fear Manipulation:

• Fear Projection: Lunette can induce vivid hallucinations and paralyzing terror in her targets by manifesting their worst fears. Her victims often experience debilitating mental breakdowns, rendering them unable to resist or fight back.

• Aura of Dread: Simply by entering a room, Lunette can exude an aura that instills unease and anxiety in everyone around her. The strength of this effect is proportional to her focus and intent.

• Emotional Manipulation: Beyond fear, Lunette has a subtle ability to manipulate other emotions, such as desperation, awe, or loyalty, allowing her to bend individuals to her will.

• Mental Fortitude: Her own mind is nearly impenetrable, making her immune to most forms of telepathy or psychological manipulation.

• Physical Agility and Strength: As a demigod, Lunette possesses enhanced reflexes, agility, and a strength beyond most demigods.

Info: Lunette O'Neill, also known as Subject-Primordial, was born into a tumultuous world where the Golden Federation's shadow loomed over every corner of society. Taken into the Kronos Initiative at the tender age of three alongside her older brother Flann, Lunette has no memory of her parents or life before the labs. The O'Neill siblings were orphans of war, plucked from the remnants of a forgotten Irish rebellion and subjected to the Federation's experiments in creating demigods. While Flann became a failed experiment and died his death was relegated to obscurity within the Initiative, and Lunette thrived. Her innate resilience and adaptability made her a prime candidate for the next phase of the Kronos Initiative: the manipulation of primal human emotions. Infused with the power of Fear Manipulation, Lunette became a master of psychological warfare.

Lunette is a formidable and charismatic figure, with a magnetic presence that draws others to her even as it unsettles them. She is fiercely independent and ambitious, often using her charm and cunning to get her way. While she appears poised and composed on the surface, Lunette is deeply calculating, always analyzing situations and people to her advantage. Her experiences in the Kronos Initiative have left her with a cynical view of the world. She sees life as a game of power and influence, and she plays it with unmatched precision. Lunette is not above using manipulation or intimidation to achieve her goals, but she also possesses a sharp wit and a dark sense of humor that make her company oddly captivating.

Lunette serves as one of the Federation's most effective agents in espionage and psychological operations. Her ability to control and weaponize fear makes her a valuable asset in quelling uprisings, interrogating prisoners, and eliminating threats before they can take root. However, Lunette's ambitions extend far beyond her current role. She has a knack for maneuvering herself into positions of influence, and she dreams of one day holding true power within the Federation. Her relationship with the Federation is complex. While she respects their vision of order and control, she resents being treated as just another tool in their arsenal. Lunette has been known to manipulate situations to suit her own agenda, often walking a fine line between loyalty and rebellion.

Name: Flann O'Neill

Code Name: Subject-7981

Age: 52

Affiliation: Golden Federation (Rebel)

Physical Appearance: Height (200cm), ripped fit body build, ivory pale skintone, long straight scarlet hair, and orange burning eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Sun Embodiment:

• Solar Flare Projection: Flann can unleash concentrated blasts of solar energy, capable of incinerating anything within their radius. The intensity of these flares varies depending on his emotional state.

• Radiance Aura: His body emits a constant, low-level glow, which intensifies during combat or moments of heightened emotion. This aura can blind opponents or provide healing warmth to allies.

• Enhanced Strength and Durability: Flann’s physical capabilities are vastly superior to ordinary demigods, allowing him to endure extreme conditions and overpower even the strongest adversaries.

• Thermal Manipulation: He can manipulate heat within a certain radius, creating scorching environments or suppressing cold temperatures.

• Solar Regeneration: Flann possesses accelerated healing, though the energy required for regeneration draws from his solar reserves.

Info: Flann O'Neill, code-named Subject-7981, is the elder brother of Lunette O'Neill. Born amidst the chaos of a crumbling Irish rebellion, Flann’s early childhood was marked by loss and uncertainty. At just six years old, he and his younger sister were orphaned and subsequently taken into the Kronos Initiative, an experimental program of the Golden Federation. Unlike Lunette, whose adaptability allowed her to thrive, Flann’s journey through the Initiative was fraught with challenges. The experiments, designed to awaken latent powers within him, triggered abilities far beyond the Federation’s expectations.

Flann’s powers—the embodiment of the sun itself—proved to be too volatile to control. Viewing him as a threat, the Initiative confined him to a high-security facility after he attempted to escape during a destructive awakening of his abilities. To protect Lunette’s loyalty, the Initiative fabricated a story of Flann’s death. Flann is a complex individual, shaped by years of isolation and betrayal. Once a protective and optimistic older brother, his confinement has left him disillusioned and guarded. Despite this, a deep sense of duty and love for Lunette remains at his core, driving him to survive in the hopes of reuniting with her one day. The thought of her survival and potential happiness fuels his determination.

Flann’s feelings of guilt for failing to protect Lunette haunt him, though he also harbors anger toward the Federation for using them both as tools. Fortunately Flann is highly intelligent and resourceful, having spent decades studying his captors and planning potential escapes. He plans to one day rid himself of his wardens. And his time in solitude has also honed his resilience and mental fortitude, though it has come at the cost of his trust in others. He is quick to anger but equally quick to show compassion to those he deems deserving.

Name: Bernhard Ackermann

Code Name: Subject-Galaxy Rune

Age: 76

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (188cm), muscular body build, azure-blue skintone, blue medium spiky hair, and cyan glowing eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Gravity Manipulation:

• Gravity Field Control: Bernhard can manipulate gravitational forces in his vicinity, increasing or decreasing their intensity at will. This allows him to immobilize opponents, create crushing pressure zones, or nullify gravity to cause weightlessness.

• Cosmic Strikes: By channeling celestial energy, Bernhard can deliver devastating attacks that mimic the force of a collapsing star. His strikes are both a physical and energy-based threat, capable of annihilating armored foes.

• Spatial Rift Generation: Bernhard has limited control over spacetime distortions, enabling him to create small wormholes for short-range teleportation or devastating implosions.

• Tactical Levitation: By nullifying gravity around himself, Bernhard can achieve flight and maneuver effortlessly in combat.

• Resilience of the Void: His modifications have granted him superhuman durability, longevity, and an ability to survive in extreme environments, including the vacuum of space.

Info: Bernhard Ackermann was born into the lap of military privilege in the heart of the Golden Federation. The son of General Dietrich Ackermann, one of the Federation’s most ambitious and ruthless leaders, Bernhard’s fate was sealed the moment he drew breath. As the scion of a military dynasty, great things were expected of him, but his father sought more than just a promising soldier — he sought a legacy of unparalleled power. At the age of fifteen, Bernhard was sent into the clutches of the Kronos Initiative, a top-secret program aimed at creating living weapons for the Federation. Dietrich, hungry for influence and personal gain, volunteered his only child for experimentation without a shred of hesitation. The rationale was simple: if the experiment succeeded, Dietrich would have an unmatched weapon under his command; if it failed, he would sever the weakness of sentimentality from his life.

Bernhard’s experience in the Initiative was marked by immense pain and isolation. Subjected to grueling tests and life-threatening experiments, he underwent a series of physical and genetic modifications to awaken the latent cosmic potential within him. This process forged his connection to the fundamental forces of the universe, granting him mastery over Gravity Manipulation. The boy who once sought to impress his father has long since disappeared, replaced by a hardened and enigmatic individual. Decades of servitude to the Federation have shaped Bernhard into a stoic and introspective figure. He rarely shows emotion, speaking only when necessary, and his words often carry an air of cosmic detachment, as if he is observing the world from a distance.

Deep within, however, Bernhard harbors a smoldering resentment toward his father and the Federation that made him what he is. He sees himself as a fractured being — part human, part cosmic anomaly, and entirely alone in the universe. This inner turmoil drives his quiet rebellion, as he dreams of breaking free from the chains of servitude and determining his own destiny. Bernhard is a man of profound intellect and discipline, capable of devising brilliant strategies in both combat and political intrigue. Despite his cold exterior, he possesses a keen sense of justice, though it is often obscured by his pragmatic approach to survival.

Within the Federation, Bernhard serves as a highly effective enforcer and tactician. His abilities make him a terrifying presence on the battlefield, capable of dismantling armies and subjugating entire regions. However, his true value lies in his strategic mind, which allows him to predict and counteract insurgencies with chilling efficiency. Despite his apparent loyalty, Bernhard’s relationship with the Federation is fraught with tension. He sees the organization as a corrupt machine that sacrifices individuals for the sake of power, and he loathes the fact that he has become one of its most potent tools.

Name: Ruth Perez

Code Name: Yggdrasil

Age: 39

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (177cm), toned curvy body build, a fawn skintone, medium messy platinum white hair, and bright sapphire eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Ash Manipulation:

• Ash Manipulation: Ruth can create, control, and shape ash into various forms, from dense, weapon-like constructs to swirling storms that obscure visibility and choke opponents.

• Volcanic Ash: She can generate superheated ash capable of burning through metal and flesh, making her attacks devastatingly lethal.

• Phoenix’s Renewal: By absorbing ash, Ruth can accelerate her healing process, recovering from wounds that would be fatal to ordinary humans.

• Ashen Veil: Ruth can cloak herself in a shroud of ash, rendering her nearly invisible in smoky or dim environments while disorienting enemies.

• Rebirth Field: Ruth can release a burst of ash that simultaneously destroys everything within a certain radius while healing her allies and herself.

• Catalyst Touch: Ruth’s presence can decay objects or materials into ash with a mere touch, though this requires deliberate activation.

Info: Born into the illustrious Perez family, one of Spain's wealthiest and most influential dynasties, Ruth’s life began with luxury and privilege. Her family’s fortune was built on a sprawling business empire that ranged from mining to luxury goods, with connections that extended into international politics and, crucially, the Golden Federation. However, beneath the glamour and prestige, the Perez family’s loyalty to the Federation came with a steep price. Ruth, the youngest of four siblings, was an unwanted child in a family preoccupied with power and appearances. When the Federation approached the Perez family with an opportunity to strengthen their alliance by offering a child for the Kronos Initiative, Ruth’s parents saw her as expendable.

At the tender age of six, Ruth was taken from her gilded world and delivered into the cold, sterile hands of the Federation scientists. The experiments conducted on Ruth were designed to unlock latent abilities tied to elemental manipulation. Through years of excruciating trials, her powers began to manifest: the ability to manipulate and control ash, a symbol of destruction and renewal. The Federation named her Subject-Yggdrasil, a reference to the Norse tree of life, underscoring her dual nature as a harbinger of ruin and rebirth. Ruth’s personality is shaped by a life of betrayal, survival, and defiance. While her upbringing in the Perez family left her with an ingrained sense of poise and cunning, the trauma of being handed over to the Federation instilled in her a fierce independence and distrust of authority.

She is deeply resentful of her family’s decision to abandon her and harbors a quiet but intense hatred for the Federation, despite serving as one of their operatives. Ruth is calculated and resourceful, always looking for ways to turn situations to her advantage. She has a sharp tongue and an unyielding determination that makes her both a respected and feared figure among her peers. Beneath her hardened exterior, however, lies a deep yearning for freedom and a sense of belonging, emotions she rarely allows herself to show. Her codename, Yggdrasil, reflects the duality of her powers and her personality: destruction paired with regeneration, death alongside life. Ruth often muses on the irony of her role in the Federation, as both a weapon of annihilation and a symbol of rebirth. Ruth’s powers make her an invaluable asset to the Federation’s covert and tactical operations. Her ability to devastate enemy strongholds while minimizing casualties on her side has earned her a reputation as a strategic genius and a force to be reckoned with.

She is often deployed in missions requiring surgical precision and overwhelming firepower, where her ash manipulation can be used to both destroy and conceal. Despite her effectiveness, Ruth’s loyalty to the Federation is far from absolute. She views her role as a means to an end, biding her time while searching for opportunities to undermine the organization that robbed her of her childhood. Her superiors are aware of her rebellious streak but tolerate it because of her unparalleled success rate and the fear she inspires in both allies and enemies.

Name: Gabriel Althaus

Code Name: Subject-19 (The Eternal Shield)

Age: 90

Affiliation: Golden Federation

Physical Appearance: Height (193cm), lean toned body build, very fair skintone, messy platinum blonde hair, and calculating golden eyes.

Demigod Form:

Powers: Order Manipulation:

• Systematic Control: Gabriel can restructure and reorganize any system — biological, mechanical, or societal — to operate according to his precise specifications. This includes halting chaotic processes or optimizing systems for efficiency.

• Reality Anchoring: He can stabilize unstable environments, nullify chaotic powers (such as entropy-based or random abilities), and restore balance to fractured spaces.

• Command of Forces: Gabriel has the ability to dictate the behavior of objects or entities within a defined area, enforcing strict rules that cannot be broken. For example, he can create zones where only he can act or where certain actions are prohibited.

• Temporal Regulation: While not capable of outright time manipulation, Gabriel can slow, accelerate, or pause processes in localized areas, granting him an advantage in combat and strategy.

• Mental Domination: Gabriel’s presence exudes authority, allowing him to impose his will on weaker minds. He can compel obedience, quell rebellion, and instill order within disorganized groups.

• Immutable Constructs: He can forge structures of pure order, such as barriers, weapons, or even autonomous constructs, which are nearly indestructible and operate with mechanical precision.

Info: Born in 1927 in Berlin, Gabriel Althaus grew up during one of the most tumultuous periods in German history. The upheavals of World War II shaped his early life, fostering a deep-seated desire for order and control amidst chaos. Coming from a middle-class family with no significant influence, Gabriel’s aspirations to rise above his station were stoked by the crumbling society around him. In 1949, as post-war Germany struggled to rebuild, Gabriel became one of the first to volunteer for the Kronos Initiative, an experimental program under Federation oversight designed to create “Demigods” — beings who could wield powers beyond human comprehension. The program's early iterations were riddled with failure, leading to catastrophic losses. Out of 10,000 initial volunteers, Gabriel was the sole survivor, enduring excruciating trials that pushed his body and mind beyond natural limits. The experiments awakened his latent ability to manipulate order — the power to impose structure, enforce stability, and control both the physical and metaphysical aspects of reality. His survival and success marked him as Subject-19, Germany's first Demigod and the prototype for the Kronos Initiative's later experiments on children.

Gabriel presents himself as a calm, gentle leader who prioritizes stability and progress. His voice carries a reassuring tone, his words carefully chosen to inspire trust and loyalty. Many within the Federation view him as a benevolent father figure, someone who seeks to guide humanity toward a brighter future. However, this facade hides his true nature: a ruthless, calculating, and deeply controlling individual. Gabriel is an extreme perfectionist, obsessed with eliminating chaos in all its forms. He abhors unpredictability and views disorder as the root of all suffering. This ideology has driven him to commit unspeakable atrocities in the name of maintaining order, including purges, forced compliance, and the eradication of entire populations deemed "uncontrollable." He takes a particular pride in the Kronos Initiative, viewing its later success with children as a validation of his sacrifices.

However, he harbors a deep disdain for those who fail to meet his expectations, considering them weak and disposable. As one of the founding members of the Golden Federation’s High Council, Gabriel wields immense political and military influence. His contributions to the Kronos Initiative and his survival as the first successful Demigod have earned him a near-mythical status within the organization. He is the architect of many of the Federation’s policies, particularly those emphasizing discipline, hierarchy, and control. Gabriel’s council seat places him at the heart of the Federation’s decision-making process. He oversees not only the Demigod programs but also the enforcement of Federation laws and the suppression of dissent. His vision for the Federation is a world where chaos is eradicated, and every individual serves a designated purpose.

Gabriel’s ultimate ambition is to create a world of perfect order, where every individual functions as a cog in a grand machine. He believes that chaos, freedom, and individuality are dangerous illusions that lead to destruction. His vision is one of absolute control, where the Federation acts as the sole arbiter of justice and progress. While Gabriel publicly preaches unity and harmony, his methods often involve coercion, manipulation, and outright brutality. He sees himself as humanity’s savior, willing to bear the weight of his actions for the sake of a greater good.

[quartz-components]

DB9 connector is a widely used electrical connector. Recognizable by its distinctive D-shaped metal shell and 9-pin configuration, the DB9 connector has been a staple in electronics for decades, especially for serial communication.

What Is a DB9 Connector?

The DB9 connector features a D-shaped shell to ensure proper orientation when connecting. The 9 pins (or sockets in female versions) are arranged in two rows, with 5 pins on the top and 4 on the bottom. This compact design is suitable for low-profile applications.

The connector comes in two main types:

DB9 Male Connector: Have pins and are typically used on cables.

DB9 Female Connector: Have sockets and are often found on equipment or devices.

Key Features of DB9 Connectors

Durable Construction: The metal shell provides mechanical strength and shields against electromagnetic interference (EMI).

Compact Design: Ideal for devices where space is limited.

Versatile Applications: Commonly used for RS-232 serial communication, connecting peripherals like mice, keyboards, and modems.

Customization: Can support different pin configurations and wiring for varied uses.

Common Applications of DB9 Connectors

Serial Communication: Widely used in RS-232 interfaces to connect computers, printers, and industrial equipment.

Automation and Control Systems: Frequently seen in programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and industrial machines.

Networking Equipment: Used in switches, routers, and legacy systems.

Testing and Prototyping: Found in diagnostic and development tools for electronics.

DB9 Pinout Diagram

Here’s a standard pinout for a DB9 connector used in RS-232 communication:

Advantages of DB9 Connectors

Reliable Connection: Secure locking mechanism ensures a stable link.

Broad Compatibility: Works with many legacy and modern devices.

Easy Maintenance: Simple design allows for straightforward repairs or replacements.

[mariacallous]

Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old engineer with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) known as “Big Balls,” is now on staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), WIRED has confirmed. He is joined by another member of the DOGE team, 38-year-old software engineer Kyle Schutt, who is now also on the CISA staff, according to a government source.

CISA referred WIRED to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of which it’s a component agency, when reached for comment. DHS did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Coristine—briefly an intern for Musk’s brain-computer interface company, Neuralink, as WIRED has reported—has been working his way through numerous federal agencies and departments as a DOGE operative since January. He has been tracked at the General Services Administration (GSA), the Office of Personnel Management, the State Department, and FEMA. At State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, he potentially had access to systems containing sensitive information about diplomats and many sources and spies around the world who provide the U.S. government with intelligence and expertise.

As the journalist Marisa Kabas was first to report, he has now moved to CISA, a division of DHS. He is listed in the staff directory as a senior advisor.

A second DOGE worker, Schutt, has also joined Coristine at CISA. Schutt has reportedly also been at the GSA. Prior to his work with DOGE, he worked on the launch of WinRed, a fundraising platform for Republicans that helped the party raise $1.8 billion during the 2024 election campaigns.

It’s not clear yet what level of access Coristine might have to data and networks at CISA, but the agency, which is responsible for the defense of civilian federal government networks and works closely with critical infrastructure owners around the country, stores a lot of sensitive and critical security information on its networks. This includes information about software vulnerabilities, breaches, and network risk assessments conducted for local and state election offices. Since 2018, CISA has helped state and local election offices around the country assess vulnerabilities in their networks and help secure them. CISA also works with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency to notify victims of breaches and process information about software vulnerabilities before the information becomes public.

Coristine, as WIRED has previously reported, worked briefly in 2022 for Path Network, a network monitoring firm known for hiring reformed blackhat hackers. According to security journalist Brian Krebs, an account once associated with him was also previously linked with a loosely-formed cybercriminal community known as The Com, whose members have been responsible for various hacking operations in the last few years, including the hack of numerous Snowflake accounts. Coristine has not been associated with the Snowflake breaches, but as WIRED has reported, an account that has been associated with him did appear to suggest the owner of the account was seeking help to conduct a Distributed Denial of Service attack—a criminal technique that involves launching extensive traffic at a domain to disable it and prevent legitimate traffic from reaching it. Krebs also reported that Path had fired Coristine for allegedly leaking internal company documents to a competitor.

The Washington Post reported last week that Coristine had been assigned to the DHS as a senior advisor, but didn’t indicate what part of the sprawling agency he had joined.

“What’s the point of fighting cybercrime if we’re just going to give access for government networks to people with cybercriminal gang affiliations?” says a cybersecurity researcher who tracks cybercriminal groups.