Cindy
*sigh* ud know this if u read the silmarillion...
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2018
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- Nebulae
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Co-written by @Erkor, with the concept inspired by lore discussions with our friends Mird and Sinclair.
1633 HOURS, COMBINE CENTRALIZED TIME
SECTOR 17, SUBSECTOR 1, GRID 0 BY 0
CITY 17 CITADEL RUINS
⠀⠀⠀⠀A radio-blip.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“DAGGER-1; DAGGER-1-00674. Zone is clear. Ingress clear. Proceed.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀The radio cut off abruptly. 00674 remained where he was, huddled by the remains of a dropship’s carapace. Four other soldiers rushed over the outcrop he came from, their gear rattling crudely as they slid down the dirt mound to join their colleague in cover. He, much like the others, was single-minded to his goal: Enter the ruins. He looked up. His visual uplink distorted slightly, the cortex-link unable to handle the bursts of radiation coming from the great hellscape around them and, more importantly, above them. The Superportal brought forward winds like a hurricane, and bathed the city’s remains in radiation. Weren’t it for their ferropolymer armor and specially treated bodysuits, they’d be dead already.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“DAGGER-1-00302. Ingress clear. Hailstorm is out. Way open. Over.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀674 acknowledged this. He raised his left hand, making a snappy movement: A finger swirling in a circle — stick together — and a sharp point forward with his entire hand — move quickly. He waited for acknowledgement, which only took a moment, before he led his detachment towards the bridge. They stepped through the burnt-out remnants of a gunship, the brilliant white underbelly now only a crusted over black and brown, and stepped onto the bridge. They didn’t stop to test its resilience and ran across quickly. There wasn’t time to waste as the portal raged above them. A portal storm was due in approximately fifteen minutes.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Broaching the ingress, the OVERWATCH squad found itself in the lowest underbelly of the Citadel — the last part that remained, really. One of them — 00772 — stepped forward, reaching into a satchel to pluck out a clunky, ruggedized tablet. He punched in some information, and soon the Combine technology fused into the entire DAGGER team’s heads sprung to life: A brilliant blue arrow pointing them directly towards their destination.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Overwatch intel hub marked. All security down. Overwatch presence in citadel estimated at null. Portal storm E-T-A is… Twelve minutes.” 772 was to the point.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Understood,” 00674 responded. He took some steps across the hall, constructed wholly out of thick sheets of a special Combine variant of heavy grade steel. The cold entrance gave way to a contrastingly hot sight: Flames burned across the entire bowels of the monolithic tower. All the pods, be it prisoner- or soldier-holding, were either empty, scorched, or carrying the dismembered and stale remains of their inhabitants. Many more were gathered somewhere in the depths of the kilometer-deep pit separating the pod racks from the walkway they stood on. The team, designated DAGGER-1, carefully navigated the walkways, much like worker ants, in a single-file line as hell raged around them. Perhaps they acknowledged it, perhaps not — 00674 did, but his mind was wired up to ignore it, to ignore everything that happens around him if it wasn’t pertinent to his task. This was how the Data Recovery Bureau functioned: It was not a matter of killing enemies to squash the spread of information — it was a matter of claiming, reclaiming, and studying all intelligence one could find.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Stop,” DAGGER-00772 said all of a sudden, and in lockstep, they all did. “Change of plans. Portal storm E-T-A now six minutes. Quantum fluctuations. Code three.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Acknowledged,” the other members echoed, and 674 began to move again — quickly now, however. A portal storm could cause the citadel’s last legs to fall apart or, in a worse case, teleport alien entities in (or the DAGGER team away).
⠀⠀⠀⠀The arrow grew a little larger as they came closer and closer, although their journey came to a quick stop. The Combine greatly favored glass in their interior constructions for some reason or another, but glass was far less durable than the steel frames they usually were lodged in. One such example to prove that point was ahead of them: Nothing — or rather, what used to be a glass walkway connecting the OVERWATCH intelligence hub with the rest of the citadel. Stalkers and soldiers would be taking this route, if it existed.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“302, I need an alternative crossing here,” DAGGER-00674 uttered. 302 already was on the way, handing over a clunky pistol-like device with a spear tip attached to it. He raised it up at maybe forty-five degrees and fired it. The gun — a grappling hook shooter — fired out its projectile, and as it was about to reach the wall, a second discharge was heard. A pulse round weakened the impact hole a heartbeat before impact, letting the hook jam deep into the surface and grab hold. The rope that connected it to the gun spooled out with the shot, and as it became long enough, pulled some excess out for security before cutting the rope and handing the gun back to 302. A minute passed as they ferried themselves across with the hookshot’s rope as a rappelling rope.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Portal storm E-T-A now… five minutes. Four, fifty-eight. Seven. Six.” 772 emphasized how they were on the clock.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“302, secure an egress. 772, on me. 837, provide overwatch.” 674 delegated the orders quickly as he and 772 moved to a large, segmented door unsafely placed in such a way that you’d have your back to the endless pit that once housed a razor train rail. As 772 went to work on forcing the lock to disengage, 674 took a look around the citadel’s remains. He wasn’t sightseeing, of course, but seeing if there were any people of ill will around. Some primitive part of his brain doubted the ordeal, but the mechanized part urged him to check either way. Soon, the door let out a hydraulic hiss before the electronic motors began to whine as the door segmented itself open. 674 and 772 moved inside, although both stopped only a few steps into the hall. They expected a large interfacing terminal but found instead that the OVERWATCH intelligence system — a large host of biomechanical knowledge, almost like a brain, lay there before them, torn from its glass. The pulsating mass was pale and jaundiced-looking, with olive veins pulsating all over it as though there was some heart somewhere that transferred synthblood through this pseudo-lifeform.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Ordinarily, the basic information could be removed from a terminal and uploaded to a drive. It would contain records of the city’s residents and personnel, transgressions, identities, and, most importantly, a genetic sequence that could be synthesized to perpetuate the Overwatch system. Of course, this was the means of proliferation for the Combine — constant genetic cloning and synthetic creation. Synths were made this way. Overwatch soldiers would have been made this way. It seemed only natural that the intelligence they all ran on would be, too.
⠀⠀⠀⠀All that was irrelevant, though: There was no suitable terminal. Even if there was, the cogitator responsible for overwatch was lying at their feet like a bleeding corpse. A few seconds passed. Neither 674 nor 772 were too sure whether they should continue.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The refresh hit them like a truck. An automatic timer went off in 674’s backpack — a mental refresher designed to ensure overwatch soldiers, particularly of their responsibility, were always completely duty-minded. 674 gestured with a hand to 772 and the overwatch lifeform.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“772. Interlock with the cogitator. Prepare neuro-upload for the necessities. City records. Defense information. Telemetry. Proliferant.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Understood,” 772 said. He squatted to a knee, pulling forward a clunky, ruggedized laptop, and reached for his mask’s plate to remove the jet-black visor assemblage. Underneath were the guts of his armor — a skull-like protective assembly lined with inputs in the eye-sockets and miniscule buttons a finger could barely press. Disconnected a cabled connector, 772 inserted it into the side of his mask — although, more aptly, the side of his head. “Ready,” he said to 674, who was required to help him with the uploading process.
⠀⠀⠀⠀674 reached down to take the other connector, fittingly on the right side of the laptop, and stuck it into a port on the upper side of the overwatch cogitator’s body. A few rough taps on the thick laptop’s keyboard later, and a stream of information flooded the powershell terminal 772 had opened. Countless gigabytes of data streamed from the overmind into the soldier, who slurred out murmurs of the scraps of intelligence he downloaded.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Citizen… rec’rd… Doug…Jon-...mh… DEFEND…SEVEN…KING-... Ron…” His voice trailed off as the mind link reached its end and the required data was downloaded. The connectors were removed rapidly, and 772 stood up to put his visor back on. He keyed his radio to inform the others.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Overwatch cogitator incapacitated. Neuralink download required. Last refresh: twenty-nine seconds ago. Thirty. Thirty-one. Portal storm E-T-A, four minutes. Three, fifty-nine. Eight. seven.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀The way back out wasn’t nearly as treacherous as the way in, considering they had mapped their route extensively. The rush they had now was for more than one reason — the portal storm could jeopardize their mission, yes, but the lack of a mental refresh meant that the treacherous nature of the rejecting organic mind would become an increasingly more apparent obstacle. A refresh couldn’t be made with data in transit — the mental wipe could corrupt the data stored within the prefrontal cortex and leave them with nothing. As they broached the main entrance hall again, lightning rolled across the skies. The superportal was entering the stages of a portal storm ejection. The DAGGER-1 team began their sprint across the bridge whilst arcs of bright blue lightning conjured forward distraught alien creatures that — for now — ignored them. Some fell into the pit, being summoned in thin air, while others clawed onto the bridge behind them and scrambled into the citadel in terror after their bereavement from home. The city was nothing more than a ruin, now. City 17’s main streets were all but pulverized ever since the citadel’s destruction, although some basements remained. The portal storm grew more active again. Pulses of energy were detected by 674’s visor. QUANTUM MASS ERUPTION IMMINENT, it read.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Basement,” 674 yelled, taking an abrupt right to bash open the remains of a door that once was an apartment building. His team followed. They ran down the stairs in a rapid stutter-step, hiding by a support pillar. Mere heartbeats passed before 837 reached the cellar and the city was subject to a violent rumble emanating from above the citadel: The portal storm rippled through the city surface, tearing apart loose fortifications and summoning yet another army of extraterrestrial monstrosities.
⠀⠀⠀⠀As 674 reached the surface again, he looked around. The way out now required care, but until they reached the city limits, they should remain free from armed combat — aliens notwithstanding. He turned back to his forensics team, and directed them to follow him up.
⠀⠀⠀⠀And the journey out of the city, and into the distant wilderness of the Bulgarian countryside, was considerable in length. Upon arrival to the rendezvous just beyond the portal storm's reach, 302 transmitted a confirmation signal, and a dropship met them shortly thereafter to be brought in.
⠀⠀⠀⠀674's team landed in a small town that had been since occupied by a sizable garrison of transhumans, striders and even some few Civil Protection who had yet to be subsumed. Half-ruined and abandoned buildings had been retrofitted into barracks, control centers and, at the center of it all, a barn that had been lifted and moved from its original location. Of all the structures in the town, the barn was allocated with the most amount of security with the white, cycloptic elites positioned around the building's perimeter. As the Data Recovery Bloc approached the building, the elites parted, and allowed them to enter within.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The barn’s fractured roof provided most of the natural lighting, shafts of sunlight gleaming down onto the numerous, haphazardly installed stasis pods affixed onto the walls. In the center, another synthetic, colorless gray mass of flesh not unlike the OVERWATCH intelligence host in the citadel, hung suspended by an entanglement of wires stabbing in and through it, interlinked with the various apparatuses around the barn interior.
⠀⠀⠀⠀And around the mass drifted several Shu’ulathoi— Advisors, who each seemed preoccupied in weaving different parts of its biomass into intricate circuit patterns and integrating its lattices into smaller devices grafted across its surface. One of them wedged its optical organ toward the arriving team, its prosthesis still handling the biomass with considerable care. Without any warning, a question and the subsequent answer to the question flooded between each of the soldier’s minds and the psychic host; a torrent of intrusive thoughts changing hands. 674 could discern it was reviewing the material they had brought, thoroughly analyzing it for degradations and imperfections. And there was a nebulous sense of disappointment he could eschew from the Advisor as well, not as a result of some failure to perform on the team’s part but as though it had underestimated how much damage had been sustained to it prior to extraction.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Still, it was enough. It retreated from their minds in unison, like a subtle breeze leaving the room, and fixed its gaze towards one of the other advisors. Wordlessly, the other host suspended its current task, and approached, descending slowly toward the team.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Again, the advisor did not express its command audibly, instead opting to infiltrate the minds of the data couriers directly to convey its intentions. 772, 674, 302 and 837 each began to take off their helmets, and four sets of blackened eyes embedded within discolored skin tones stood in formation before the host. At the back of their heads, a far more complex interface was exposed that was entirely unique to their designation, designed and sculpted into their skulls to house and protect their most precious cargo.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The advisor’s thin prosthetic arms extended toward 772, almost caressingly wrapping its ‘fingers’ around the soldier’s head. As if on cue, several locks disengaged in the back of 772’s head, and the entire compartment that held the soldier’s excessively modified synth-brain was disconnected and lifted up. 772's body immediately collapsed to the ground as his brain was extracted, rendered comatose the second it was removed. The Advisor appeared to be physically examining it, not entirely unlike how a curious shopper might look into a snow globe at a gift shop.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Seemingly satisfied with its inspection, it passed the cargo along to the next host beside it, who opened the compartment entirely and removed its contents, and contributed it to its construction of the biomass, interfacing the addition carefully. It was not soon after that the familiar, coaxing voice of OVERWATCH returned to the remaining soldier's ears, but in a way that could not be entirely articulated, it felt... off. It differed greatly from its City 17 counterpart that it had been grown from; the newly spawned intelligence far more distant, perhaps even colder, than before.
⠀⠀⠀⠀"Data Recovery Bloc, prepare for sanitization. Post-operation refresh initialized and ready for installation."
.
1633 HOURS, COMBINE CENTRALIZED TIME
SECTOR 17, SUBSECTOR 1, GRID 0 BY 0
CITY 17 CITADEL RUINS
⠀⠀⠀⠀A radio-blip.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“DAGGER-1; DAGGER-1-00674. Zone is clear. Ingress clear. Proceed.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀The radio cut off abruptly. 00674 remained where he was, huddled by the remains of a dropship’s carapace. Four other soldiers rushed over the outcrop he came from, their gear rattling crudely as they slid down the dirt mound to join their colleague in cover. He, much like the others, was single-minded to his goal: Enter the ruins. He looked up. His visual uplink distorted slightly, the cortex-link unable to handle the bursts of radiation coming from the great hellscape around them and, more importantly, above them. The Superportal brought forward winds like a hurricane, and bathed the city’s remains in radiation. Weren’t it for their ferropolymer armor and specially treated bodysuits, they’d be dead already.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“DAGGER-1-00302. Ingress clear. Hailstorm is out. Way open. Over.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀674 acknowledged this. He raised his left hand, making a snappy movement: A finger swirling in a circle — stick together — and a sharp point forward with his entire hand — move quickly. He waited for acknowledgement, which only took a moment, before he led his detachment towards the bridge. They stepped through the burnt-out remnants of a gunship, the brilliant white underbelly now only a crusted over black and brown, and stepped onto the bridge. They didn’t stop to test its resilience and ran across quickly. There wasn’t time to waste as the portal raged above them. A portal storm was due in approximately fifteen minutes.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Broaching the ingress, the OVERWATCH squad found itself in the lowest underbelly of the Citadel — the last part that remained, really. One of them — 00772 — stepped forward, reaching into a satchel to pluck out a clunky, ruggedized tablet. He punched in some information, and soon the Combine technology fused into the entire DAGGER team’s heads sprung to life: A brilliant blue arrow pointing them directly towards their destination.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Overwatch intel hub marked. All security down. Overwatch presence in citadel estimated at null. Portal storm E-T-A is… Twelve minutes.” 772 was to the point.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Understood,” 00674 responded. He took some steps across the hall, constructed wholly out of thick sheets of a special Combine variant of heavy grade steel. The cold entrance gave way to a contrastingly hot sight: Flames burned across the entire bowels of the monolithic tower. All the pods, be it prisoner- or soldier-holding, were either empty, scorched, or carrying the dismembered and stale remains of their inhabitants. Many more were gathered somewhere in the depths of the kilometer-deep pit separating the pod racks from the walkway they stood on. The team, designated DAGGER-1, carefully navigated the walkways, much like worker ants, in a single-file line as hell raged around them. Perhaps they acknowledged it, perhaps not — 00674 did, but his mind was wired up to ignore it, to ignore everything that happens around him if it wasn’t pertinent to his task. This was how the Data Recovery Bureau functioned: It was not a matter of killing enemies to squash the spread of information — it was a matter of claiming, reclaiming, and studying all intelligence one could find.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Stop,” DAGGER-00772 said all of a sudden, and in lockstep, they all did. “Change of plans. Portal storm E-T-A now six minutes. Quantum fluctuations. Code three.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Acknowledged,” the other members echoed, and 674 began to move again — quickly now, however. A portal storm could cause the citadel’s last legs to fall apart or, in a worse case, teleport alien entities in (or the DAGGER team away).
⠀⠀⠀⠀The arrow grew a little larger as they came closer and closer, although their journey came to a quick stop. The Combine greatly favored glass in their interior constructions for some reason or another, but glass was far less durable than the steel frames they usually were lodged in. One such example to prove that point was ahead of them: Nothing — or rather, what used to be a glass walkway connecting the OVERWATCH intelligence hub with the rest of the citadel. Stalkers and soldiers would be taking this route, if it existed.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“302, I need an alternative crossing here,” DAGGER-00674 uttered. 302 already was on the way, handing over a clunky pistol-like device with a spear tip attached to it. He raised it up at maybe forty-five degrees and fired it. The gun — a grappling hook shooter — fired out its projectile, and as it was about to reach the wall, a second discharge was heard. A pulse round weakened the impact hole a heartbeat before impact, letting the hook jam deep into the surface and grab hold. The rope that connected it to the gun spooled out with the shot, and as it became long enough, pulled some excess out for security before cutting the rope and handing the gun back to 302. A minute passed as they ferried themselves across with the hookshot’s rope as a rappelling rope.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Portal storm E-T-A now… five minutes. Four, fifty-eight. Seven. Six.” 772 emphasized how they were on the clock.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“302, secure an egress. 772, on me. 837, provide overwatch.” 674 delegated the orders quickly as he and 772 moved to a large, segmented door unsafely placed in such a way that you’d have your back to the endless pit that once housed a razor train rail. As 772 went to work on forcing the lock to disengage, 674 took a look around the citadel’s remains. He wasn’t sightseeing, of course, but seeing if there were any people of ill will around. Some primitive part of his brain doubted the ordeal, but the mechanized part urged him to check either way. Soon, the door let out a hydraulic hiss before the electronic motors began to whine as the door segmented itself open. 674 and 772 moved inside, although both stopped only a few steps into the hall. They expected a large interfacing terminal but found instead that the OVERWATCH intelligence system — a large host of biomechanical knowledge, almost like a brain, lay there before them, torn from its glass. The pulsating mass was pale and jaundiced-looking, with olive veins pulsating all over it as though there was some heart somewhere that transferred synthblood through this pseudo-lifeform.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Ordinarily, the basic information could be removed from a terminal and uploaded to a drive. It would contain records of the city’s residents and personnel, transgressions, identities, and, most importantly, a genetic sequence that could be synthesized to perpetuate the Overwatch system. Of course, this was the means of proliferation for the Combine — constant genetic cloning and synthetic creation. Synths were made this way. Overwatch soldiers would have been made this way. It seemed only natural that the intelligence they all ran on would be, too.
⠀⠀⠀⠀All that was irrelevant, though: There was no suitable terminal. Even if there was, the cogitator responsible for overwatch was lying at their feet like a bleeding corpse. A few seconds passed. Neither 674 nor 772 were too sure whether they should continue.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The refresh hit them like a truck. An automatic timer went off in 674’s backpack — a mental refresher designed to ensure overwatch soldiers, particularly of their responsibility, were always completely duty-minded. 674 gestured with a hand to 772 and the overwatch lifeform.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“772. Interlock with the cogitator. Prepare neuro-upload for the necessities. City records. Defense information. Telemetry. Proliferant.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Understood,” 772 said. He squatted to a knee, pulling forward a clunky, ruggedized laptop, and reached for his mask’s plate to remove the jet-black visor assemblage. Underneath were the guts of his armor — a skull-like protective assembly lined with inputs in the eye-sockets and miniscule buttons a finger could barely press. Disconnected a cabled connector, 772 inserted it into the side of his mask — although, more aptly, the side of his head. “Ready,” he said to 674, who was required to help him with the uploading process.
⠀⠀⠀⠀674 reached down to take the other connector, fittingly on the right side of the laptop, and stuck it into a port on the upper side of the overwatch cogitator’s body. A few rough taps on the thick laptop’s keyboard later, and a stream of information flooded the powershell terminal 772 had opened. Countless gigabytes of data streamed from the overmind into the soldier, who slurred out murmurs of the scraps of intelligence he downloaded.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Citizen… rec’rd… Doug…Jon-...mh… DEFEND…SEVEN…KING-... Ron…” His voice trailed off as the mind link reached its end and the required data was downloaded. The connectors were removed rapidly, and 772 stood up to put his visor back on. He keyed his radio to inform the others.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Overwatch cogitator incapacitated. Neuralink download required. Last refresh: twenty-nine seconds ago. Thirty. Thirty-one. Portal storm E-T-A, four minutes. Three, fifty-nine. Eight. seven.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀The way back out wasn’t nearly as treacherous as the way in, considering they had mapped their route extensively. The rush they had now was for more than one reason — the portal storm could jeopardize their mission, yes, but the lack of a mental refresh meant that the treacherous nature of the rejecting organic mind would become an increasingly more apparent obstacle. A refresh couldn’t be made with data in transit — the mental wipe could corrupt the data stored within the prefrontal cortex and leave them with nothing. As they broached the main entrance hall again, lightning rolled across the skies. The superportal was entering the stages of a portal storm ejection. The DAGGER-1 team began their sprint across the bridge whilst arcs of bright blue lightning conjured forward distraught alien creatures that — for now — ignored them. Some fell into the pit, being summoned in thin air, while others clawed onto the bridge behind them and scrambled into the citadel in terror after their bereavement from home. The city was nothing more than a ruin, now. City 17’s main streets were all but pulverized ever since the citadel’s destruction, although some basements remained. The portal storm grew more active again. Pulses of energy were detected by 674’s visor. QUANTUM MASS ERUPTION IMMINENT, it read.
⠀⠀⠀⠀“Basement,” 674 yelled, taking an abrupt right to bash open the remains of a door that once was an apartment building. His team followed. They ran down the stairs in a rapid stutter-step, hiding by a support pillar. Mere heartbeats passed before 837 reached the cellar and the city was subject to a violent rumble emanating from above the citadel: The portal storm rippled through the city surface, tearing apart loose fortifications and summoning yet another army of extraterrestrial monstrosities.
⠀⠀⠀⠀As 674 reached the surface again, he looked around. The way out now required care, but until they reached the city limits, they should remain free from armed combat — aliens notwithstanding. He turned back to his forensics team, and directed them to follow him up.
⠀⠀⠀⠀And the journey out of the city, and into the distant wilderness of the Bulgarian countryside, was considerable in length. Upon arrival to the rendezvous just beyond the portal storm's reach, 302 transmitted a confirmation signal, and a dropship met them shortly thereafter to be brought in.
. . .
⠀⠀⠀⠀674's team landed in a small town that had been since occupied by a sizable garrison of transhumans, striders and even some few Civil Protection who had yet to be subsumed. Half-ruined and abandoned buildings had been retrofitted into barracks, control centers and, at the center of it all, a barn that had been lifted and moved from its original location. Of all the structures in the town, the barn was allocated with the most amount of security with the white, cycloptic elites positioned around the building's perimeter. As the Data Recovery Bloc approached the building, the elites parted, and allowed them to enter within.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The barn’s fractured roof provided most of the natural lighting, shafts of sunlight gleaming down onto the numerous, haphazardly installed stasis pods affixed onto the walls. In the center, another synthetic, colorless gray mass of flesh not unlike the OVERWATCH intelligence host in the citadel, hung suspended by an entanglement of wires stabbing in and through it, interlinked with the various apparatuses around the barn interior.
⠀⠀⠀⠀And around the mass drifted several Shu’ulathoi— Advisors, who each seemed preoccupied in weaving different parts of its biomass into intricate circuit patterns and integrating its lattices into smaller devices grafted across its surface. One of them wedged its optical organ toward the arriving team, its prosthesis still handling the biomass with considerable care. Without any warning, a question and the subsequent answer to the question flooded between each of the soldier’s minds and the psychic host; a torrent of intrusive thoughts changing hands. 674 could discern it was reviewing the material they had brought, thoroughly analyzing it for degradations and imperfections. And there was a nebulous sense of disappointment he could eschew from the Advisor as well, not as a result of some failure to perform on the team’s part but as though it had underestimated how much damage had been sustained to it prior to extraction.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Still, it was enough. It retreated from their minds in unison, like a subtle breeze leaving the room, and fixed its gaze towards one of the other advisors. Wordlessly, the other host suspended its current task, and approached, descending slowly toward the team.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Again, the advisor did not express its command audibly, instead opting to infiltrate the minds of the data couriers directly to convey its intentions. 772, 674, 302 and 837 each began to take off their helmets, and four sets of blackened eyes embedded within discolored skin tones stood in formation before the host. At the back of their heads, a far more complex interface was exposed that was entirely unique to their designation, designed and sculpted into their skulls to house and protect their most precious cargo.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The advisor’s thin prosthetic arms extended toward 772, almost caressingly wrapping its ‘fingers’ around the soldier’s head. As if on cue, several locks disengaged in the back of 772’s head, and the entire compartment that held the soldier’s excessively modified synth-brain was disconnected and lifted up. 772's body immediately collapsed to the ground as his brain was extracted, rendered comatose the second it was removed. The Advisor appeared to be physically examining it, not entirely unlike how a curious shopper might look into a snow globe at a gift shop.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Seemingly satisfied with its inspection, it passed the cargo along to the next host beside it, who opened the compartment entirely and removed its contents, and contributed it to its construction of the biomass, interfacing the addition carefully. It was not soon after that the familiar, coaxing voice of OVERWATCH returned to the remaining soldier's ears, but in a way that could not be entirely articulated, it felt... off. It differed greatly from its City 17 counterpart that it had been grown from; the newly spawned intelligence far more distant, perhaps even colder, than before.
⠀⠀⠀⠀"Data Recovery Bloc, prepare for sanitization. Post-operation refresh initialized and ready for installation."
.
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