New Blood (multi-series fusion)

[Academia Nut]

Sparring with a vampiric abomination capable of casually ripping mecha apart with her bare hands was quite intense exercise. If Ellie had not already spent her formative years as an urban spelunker and pack mule she was fairly certain the experience would have caused her to collapse into a spluttering heap after the first minute rather than after the first two. Despite the fact that Seras was pulling every single punch to avoid killing her, she did not actually go easy on her. She was always just a little bit faster than Ellie, and hit just hard enough to make sure Ellie remembered the experience. She also let her monstrosity hang out as much as they dared so that Ellie got the full effect of the creeping shadows and multitude of eyes staring at her and judging her.

It would have been completely demoralizing after the first session if not for the fact that Ellie had personally seen Seras move faster than the trigger pull on a plasma cannon held against her head so that she could absorb the shot with her face, then proceed to peel the armour like an orange and crucify the pilot with the structural members. That sort of experience meant that simply not breaking down into a blubbering wreck within five seconds was a major accomplishment, and every time she managed to tag Seras anyway was like a shot of adrenaline to her ego. The fact that her magic spear actually let her tag Seras with a greater frequency than pure, blind luck was a fairly significant part in helping build up her self-esteem with regards to her fighting.

Although then again the spear was really weird to fight and train with because it seemed to have a mind of its own at times, attracted by invisible forces toward incoming attacks and targets. Both Seras and Mercer had reported the effect when they tried it out, but neither was capable of replicating the teleportation effect and Ellie could teleport the weapon out of their hands simply by willing it so. Also, she was fairly certain the guided effect was more pronounced for her than for either of them, even when factoring in their great strength, speed, and skill. She supposed the weapon was somehow bonded to her, which did fit with what the Shadow of Night had said about it.

Of course, she was also trying hard to not think about the name it had called the spear, and the vast array of terrifying implications involved. On the one hand, there was a part of her screaming that she was playing around with forces she did not understand and she should stop using the spear. On the other hand, there was a part of her that acknowledged the danger but since she was clearly already stuck with the spear and just getting rid of it held its own dangers, she should at least learn how to best utilize its mundane aspects, and possibly some its more esoteric ones in the process.

As it was, Ellie was getting just good enough that Seras was starting to really cheat, in that she could do things like launch an attack, get Ellie to start responding, and then cancel it and come in from a completely different angle, leaving Ellie off balance and desperately trying to correct against the massively faster woman. It was totally and utterly unfair, but in an odd way Ellie appreciated the respect inherent in stepping up to such methods. What Ellie wished she could do was be able to transfer between stances and positioning as fast as Seras.

Ellie felt that she was on the edge of an epiphany when Seras stopped and said, "Okay, that is enough of a session for today. You need to go cool off and stretch your muscles for a bit. Once you are done with that, practice your stances and forms for a while."

Ellie nodded when she found her throat too busy trying to get air into her lungs to have time for speech, dismissed her spear back to the ether, and went into the cool down routine that Alex and Seras had devised for her. As far as personal trainers went, having two extraordinarily veteran combat instructors working on her might not have been great for her ego, but it was certainly great for her physique.

Taking a light run in the miserable Scottish weather, Ellie rolled her own thoughts about in her head. She could practically feel the seams of her psyche starting to separate from each other, but she could also feel those same seams struggling to regenerate, like broken bone coming back denser and tougher than before. The books she read and the tutelage she received could hurt, but she also knew that they were arming her, making her stronger, making her better able to spit in the face of the things that considered her prey and get away with it.

As she jogged, Ellie closed her right eye while leaving her left open. She could see through the blind eye now, but not the physical world of the now. No, she could now see through the lens of memory, the memories of things not human that Nyarlathotep liked to show her in her dreams. The Outer God was taunting her, taunting her with wisdom beyond her years, showing her the patterns of life across the cosmos, showing her the ancient histories of those that walked the stars.

It was... depressing, to say the least. Suffering begat suffering, hatred begat hatred, and war begat war. Humanity was treading a well walked path followed by far too many before them, each iteration of life acting out a different version of a play that Nyarlathotep had first written shortly after the beginning of the current iteration of the universe some fourteen billion years ago. To know this was to psychologically dance with nihilism.

And yet despite hatred being just another of his tools, Ellie found her spirits buoyed by her own detestation of the taunting Outer God. Nihilism was his ultimate tool, the point of social entropy that he pushed all intelligence towards, and as such she rebelled against that. She had too few ties with humanity, her strongest ones now being post-human monsters, but she still had hope and compassion and all the ephemeral things that ultimately meant nothing in an uncaring universe, and when pushed she could still hope and care if only out of spite for the Crawling Chaos.

It had yet to show her the other individuals who had taken up this philosophy, but undoubtedly they had existed in a cosmos impossibly vast beyond human reckoning, and undoubtedly some of them had given up in the end and embraced the nihilism that Nyarlathotep had pushed them towards. She had yet to live the lives of any of those creatures, but she had no illusions that such an event was coming.

A faint smile passed over her lips as she considered that she could take comfort in knowing that she would never see the life of any who might have succeeded unto death in not giving in to the Herald of the Outer Gods. Even if their paths were impossible for her to follow, just knowing they existed was to allow that hope within her, and thus she could also take hope from knowing that Nyarlathotep could never conclusively prove her hope false. On a purely rational basis it was rather poor logic, but poor logic had never stood in her way before.

Opening her good eye once more while she felt the knots in her muscles from trying to keep up with Seras or from where she took the equivalent of a love tap fade into the jog, Ellie considered that her dead eye was token enough of where poor logic could get her. From her growing knowledge of the occult and how that tied in with myth, she was also starting to understand what she was becoming as a result of her actions.

Taking some shelter in one of the burnt out ruins in the village while rain began to fall, Ellie started to go through a series of stretches to pass the time and keep her body from locking up later. As she did so she mused to herself, "After stabbing Gnarly in the face with a rusty fork, I guess I should track down Shubby and kill her, just so she can't intrude on my title space."

Ellie paused in her stretches for a moment and then asked the silence around her, "You're going to give me her sob story, aren't you? How she was the last of her kind, driven to near extinction by the rapacious natures of some other alien species and she cut a deal with one of you for ultimate fertility so that she could remake her people, but then she got carried away with revenge and Darwinian impulses or something like that and joined in one of those grand crusades across the stars that seems to wipe out most life every billion years or so."

The silence remained silent, so Ellie just flipped it off knowing that it would get the message one way or another. Knowing without a doubt that everything you did was observed by alien entities that existed outside time and space did not make for a 'healthy' human mind. The slightest brush of amusement against her mind let her know that the gesture was noted and appreciated for what it was, although by what exactly was not something she really wanted to know.

Once the brief but miserable spatter of rain finished off for the moment, Ellie exited the ruins and summoned her spear once more, going into the slow, smooth motions of the practice katas that Alex and Seras had given her to practice with. Between the two of them and those they had eaten, they knew essentially every martial art on the planet and how to best synthesize them. Her spear was a holistic weapon, and while the thrust was by far the most effective and efficient tool in her arsenal, there were other ways to use her spear that could compensate for the times when the straight path was insufficient.

"Tighten up your swing. If you have to move your spear in a circle, make it as small as possible so that you can get back to the business of stabbing as quickly as possible," Alex commented clinically from the shadows he had been lurking in.

"Logically what you are saying makes sense... but this spear seems to like a different style," Ellie noted.

"Then it will open you up to attack," Mercer pointed out.

"Yes, I know that, but..." Ellie trailed off with a frustrated sigh before she asked, "So are you just going to comment on my inability to master something as quickly as you, or do you have news?"

"If by news you mean progress on getting us into London, then yes," Alex noted while he detached himself from the shadows and started to walk with intent towards the run down house they had been sheltering in for the past few weeks. Glancing over his shoulder he said, "I have obtained low profile transport for the three of us."

Dismissing her spear once again, Ellie asked, "A car?"

A slight smirk cross Alex's lips in a way that was creepily almost human in how it lacked his usual predatory intent, and he said, "I considered it, but our needs are slightly different this time."

Allie ran this over in her mind before she burst out into a huge grin and asked excitedly, "Bikes? Did you get bikes?"

Jerking his head in the direction around back to indicate where she should look, Alex then leaned up against the old house in a self-satisfactory manner as Ellie rushed past in excitement. Finding a trio of freshly manufactured off-brand Hayabusa clones waiting there caused Ellie to break out into a distinctly fangirlish squee as she examined them all and found them up to Alex's standards of engineering and design.

"These will let us travel with you outside the arcology without rousing much suspicion while also giving you freedom of movement when you go in alone... plus I've heard you muttering about missing your bike," Alex explained.

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" Ellie cheered with the sort of giddy glee that had been shoved into the back of her for far too long. She even hugged the presenter of this gift, although the viral abomination was his usual prickly self.

Materializing out of shadow, Seras asked, "So... do you think you are ready?"

Taking a deep breath, Ellie closed her eyes for a moment before she opened them and responded, "I'm ready to leave this place, at the very least."

"Good," Alex noted as he went to one of the bikes, he and Seras needing them only for the purposes of blending in with Ellie when around people. "Any music to mark this occasion?"

Ellie grinned as she picked up her own helmet and replied, "I think Ride of the Valkyries would be most fitting, for a start."

[Grimnosh]

it LIVES!

Now if only AN will keep updating it faster....

[LadyTevar]

HURRAH! You've started posting again!

[kilopi505]

Hurrah for the update!

HURRAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Academia Nut]

Boredom was a concept that tended to be restricted to certain classes of intelligent life, with only a rather limited grouping being capable of the state. Alex Mercer was technically not one of those beings, as he could play around with his own biochemistry and simply suppress the physiological causes, which came in handy when he needed to focus on something and not get distracted. Since he did not sleep, this was rather useful for his already tenuous grasp on being able to not just flip out and kill everything within reach.

All of that said, sometimes Alex would allow himself the indulgence of boredom and the strange human behaviours that one might engage in to relieve it. A particularly favoured way to pass the time was to hack into secure servers and rifle through the data within for no better reason than to satiate his own curiosity. His preferred targets were the Ashcroft Foundation research networks, simply because he enjoyed making edits to random bits of work in progress. He had eaten far too many scientists - the original Alex Mercer had been one in fact - to not want to make his own little contributions.

Also, in a non-boredom related aspect, it let him outsource a great deal of the testing and experimenting that he simply did not have the resources for. Sometimes it did not work, but he was fairly certain that most of the odder work orders that seemed to have no originating source were written off as requests from one of the more secretive branches of the company or the NEG. As it was, he was fairly confident that the fabrication and materials testing orders he had infiltrated into the system would be picked up and done within the next week, giving him the data he needed to move on to the next stage of his project.

Assuming that things worked the way the math said they would, the exceedingly well hidden account he had for accumulating a cut of the patents he helped generate would be bringing in quite a bit of money within the next few months, and the Migou would be wondering how the monkeys had come up with this latest bit of bullshit. Of course, whoever ended up facing off against the post-human monsters capable of carrying the miniaturized version would be calling straight up cheating. Also, come to think of it the Dagonites would have a particularly bad time with this invention as well.

"Colour variant ceramic metamaterials and ellipsoid polarization of electromagnetic radiation?" Ellie read sceptically from over Alex's shoulder, having come in from the main area of the factory warehouse turned cult safe house turned 'Hellsing Manor'. "I understand most of those words in isolation, and the first one worries me for obvious reasons..."

"It's about making lenses for highly specialized lasers," Alex noted dryly.

Sitting down hard in one of the near antique swivel chairs in the office where Alex was doing his hacking from, Ellie let out the sort of world weary sigh that should have come from someone significantly older than her. Looking at him with eyes that considered him to not even be on her threat horizon, Ellie asked, "So... the London Arcology."

"I have already made the necessary arrangements. Unless someone does a gene scan with a scanner that has your original identity loaded up, which will be a very small subset of the OIS and the OSS at this point, your cover identity will hold anywhere in the NEG. The London Arcology will probably be one of the few places where you might run into a situation like that, but so long as you keep your head down the sort of people who can catch you will quite simply not have the resources to notice you," Alex said as he idly flipped through another few windows on the monitor, bringing up the relevant information.

"Ummm... 'not having the resources' and 'the OIS and OSS' are not exactly synonyms," Ellie pointed out hesitantly.

Grinning with glee at his own prowess, Alex stated, "I have been involved one way or another in every last 'information security revolution' for the past seventy years. I can hack any computer system on the planet not tied directly to Migou orbital assets. The amount of automation necessary to do security in an arcology means that 'resources' in this instance includes the manpower to fight the machines telling you that you are in fact looking at one 'Elizabeth Don Heller'. For a passive search, no one has that many resources. So avoid drawing enough attention that someone decides to make it an active search."

Noticing the continued look of concern, Alex adds on, "Despite what bad fiction might tell you, false names are not a particularly good idea if you aren't a trained, professional liar. There is too much of a chance of slipping up. Plus, this gives you an extra layer of security. The overwhelming majority of Arc Sec staff looking for Elizabeth Doe Hellsing is most likely going to figure they have a false positive on his hands and wave you through if their equipment is telling them that you aren't the person they are looking for."

Leaning back in her chair and hugging one of her knees to her chest in a manner that told just how anxious about all of this was, and yet still willing to go through with it, Ellie asked, "So who is this other Elizabeth I will be being?"

"The daughter of an Ashcroft Berlin middle manager whose estranged wife suffered from arcology claustrophobia, you have been kindly asked to move into the London arcology in the wake of the recent spike of cult activity in the British Isles and the unrelated death of your mother in a traffic accident. I do apologize if this is pressing on some sore spots, but again, the closer your cover story is to your real identity the fewer differences you will have to keep track of. Anyway, you are equally estranged from your father, which is why you aren't moving in with him, but he has the money from some low level IP management to get you a non-affiliated middle class apartment and enough of a allowance that you don't need to engage in work unless you want luxuries," Alex detailed out.

Scrunching up her face, Ellie considered this for a moment before she asked, "Wait, wouldn't a hotel make more sense than an apartment? We aren't expecting me to be in the arcology for very long."

"There are a couple of reasons we're doing it this way. First of all, apartments are cheap in arcologies, especially with NEG subsidies to get people to move into them, so most people in the middle class and above prefer to rent a small apartment if they are going to stay in one place for more than a week. Second, hotels mean travel which is an increasingly expensive and dangerous affair, so it is the realm of the rich, which draw more attention than the middle class - lower class don't travel so much. Third, relating to the second, is that the NEG likes to keep track of people that travel, so the hotels and districts for travellers are always crawling with Arc Sec doing random gene sweeps. Fourth, it is a lot harder to get a visitor visa for an arcology than it is to get an immigration visa, and infiltration is all about minimizing the chances of being noticed and inspected," Alex said, counting off the reasons on his right hand as he explained it all out.

Soaking all of that in, Ellie nodded and then asked, "Okay... so what did I do before this?"

"You have no official employment records, so as far as the NEG is concerned you are just another of the millions of rich, young dilettantes roaming around the world. That is technically something of a risk since that sort of behaviour gets labelled a cult risk, but even with the wars going on humanity has had more wealth than it knows what to do with for the past two generations and so it is the sort of issue that mostly gets ignored," Alex told her with a shrug.

"That's so weird," Ellie noted.

Thinking for a moment on how to best put it, Alex begins to explain, "Life in the arcologies is different from outside. I haven't ever been inside, but I have consumed enough people who have and otherwise paid attention that I can tell you a few things to expect. First, the economy you are used to is what is generally considered 'rural' and was nearly obsolete half a century ago. You have never been at risk of starving, but in general your economic paradigm has been based around the sale of general labour in exchange for essential goods and services. Inside the arcologies the value of both labour and essential goods and services drops to zero due to the ubiquity and closeness of fabrication machines, so the economy is based around the production of ideas. At the high level this is the generation of new patents and the like, but for the majority of the population this is more about entertainment and status. The rich do as much as possible through other people because machines are cheap and ubiquitous while you actually have to pay someone to do something for you, which indicates resources. Machines are also fast and efficient, so going through people means that you have the spare resources to waste time. The middle class also does this, but more through going to shops, boutiques, and restaurants with actual salespeople to get something custom made rather than printing it out at home, or worse going to a public fabrication terminal. All of these jobs servicing people richer than you make up about a half of the 'labour' economy. Another third is the aforementioned 'entertainment', which is everything from big media movies and games to more personal productions to, well, prostitution and pornography of various forms. Which I am now glad that I reminded you of."

Blushing faintly, Ellie said, "I know what a red light district is, and how to avoid one."

Shaking his head ruefully, Alex says, "Not in an arcology you don't. For one thing, while outside the threat of Deep One or Outsider contamination is such that the NEG maintains an official distinction between 'spa', 'bar', 'arcade', and 'brothel', they don't inside. Arcologies with their much tighter genetic controls they don't bother so long as all consent laws are being followed - and depending on the level of corruption those can vary in enforcement too - they don't care what people are getting up to. The only thing that gets an establishment to advertise itself as a brothel is if it maintains a full array of genders, ethnicities, and body types for their patrons to partake in, rather than just having a standard rate to get a quick round of oral sex with your beer. And that is just the official stuff. It is fairly common for people to go up to strangers and tell them that they have an orgy or a pornography shoot coming up and ask them if they would like in on it. If you look unique you are especially likely to get asked this, especially for pornography since having something unusual increases the chances of getting more traffic and thus advertising revenue."

"Wait... how do people not freak out that they are going to be assaulted?" Ellie asked incredulously.

"You have lived your life in the cracks of surveillance, where you can disappear into places where you are the only person watching. Surveillance and tracking is ubiquitous in arcologies, to the point where the culture has become blasé about the consequences. People assume that the NEG is watching, and thus assume that they will be safe. The fact that the NEG covers up slips in security to keep the populace calm reinforces this, along with the fact that statistically being caught up in the sort of criminal or cult activity that could physically rather than financially hurt you is quite low," Alex explained.

"That's... that's just creepy and weird," Ellie notes, drawing her other leg into the self hug she had going on. "I mean, I've been watching porn since I realized that men's muscles were a thing to be enjoyed, but I never really clued into how it got made."

Frowning slightly as he went over a few memories, Alex pointed out, "Uh... as a note, the 'naive country girl' genre is a thing." Ellie blanched at the thought and then Alex added on, "Also, expressing discomfort at the surveillance state within the arcologies is a great way to get a flag added to your profile for extra monitoring, so I recommend against any commentary along those lines and to try to control your expressions."

"How can the culture inside and outside the arcologies be so different?" Ellie asked incredulously.

"The NEG wants people in places it can control, so it is deliberately keeping the 'suburbs' and 'countryside' in a less economically developed state, causing a massive dissonance between the cultures. It can become something of a youth trap as young adults, particularly young males, are lured in with promises of a world of readily available sex and drugs - technically true - and then discover that they don't have the resources to leave. And yes, there are policy meetings where things even more sinister get discussed," Alex explains.

Ellie pauses for a moment before she asks, "What is the final sixth of the labour economy in the arcologies?"

"Security," Alex states. "Even with tracking programs and LAIs and robotics, there is still an enormous demand for actual people to sort through and find the anomalies that the machines skip over for one reason or another. Also guards and police and so on. It is a huge and continually growing sector, taking up a bigger slice of the pie each year."

Ellie absorbs this information and then nods grimly before she gets up and states dully, "I'm going to go practice with my spear."

Nodding in acknowledgement, Alex considers things before he dismisses his links to Ashcroft and goes over his work in the various NEG databases one more time.

[Academia Nut]

Stepping off the transport with a large and heavy cylinder in his hands, Agent Jackson immediately thrust the black box into the arms of Group Director Zeny and then threw a crisp salute to Project Director Kamina. After a moment he said, "Sir, permission to punch someone of authority, sir!"

Taking off his glasses, Kamina folded them and placed them in the left breast pocket of his suit jacket before he said, "Permission for one strike to my face granted."

Chandler's fist lashed out with no further prompting and Kamina's head spun almost precisely forty-five degrees with the blow before he stopped and there was a loud series of organic cracks and pops. Pulling his hand away and shaking it out a few times, Chandler then returned to parade ground attention.

Returning his wire rimmed glasses to his face, Director Kamina said, "I take it that the inspection of Project LOGOS went well then."

Twelve hours earlier

"The fact that I am about to ask this question disturbs me, but why does it smell like 19th Century Russian literature in here? And why is my question that specific?" Chandler asked a moment after he stepped into the office of Agent Douglas Jefferson, project safety engineer.

Removing what was very clearly a pipe for smoking crack and/or meth from his mouth, the man sitting behind the desk with the "Agent Jefferson" nameplate, replied, "Oh sorry, I was just doing the initial review of the latest proposals and needed something relaxing to help me get through it."

"Your response raises disturbing implications but does not actually answer my question," Chandler pointed out.

"Oh," the somewhat stoned man notes before he considers the pipe in his hand and replies, "I was just freebasing some Tolstoy."

Chandler remained very still and kept his expression as serious as he possibly could before he calmly pointed out, "Keep in mind that my briefing excluded a great deal of information for security reasons."

"Right, right. Well, this is a spinoff of one of our projects here at LOGOS, the by-product of initial Q&A for one of our procedures really. Smokable literature. Well, technically it is more like memories in a drug deliverable form, it is just that this version can form an inhalable version when made basic. Gives a great, sedate high," Agent Jefferson explains.

Chandler kept a low, steady, calm voice as he asked, "Dare I ask how this came about?"

Taking a long hit on his pipe as he shuddered slightly from the memory, the safety engineer eventually said, "Paradoxically the only thing that could have got me through the proposal without requiring a rebuilt liver is this stuff. I would say that you don't want to know, but it is your job to know."

Setting his drug paraphernalia aside, Agent Jefferson said, "You can find out more by talking to the Director, but I assume that you came to me first because you wanted to know what is going on from the guy whose job it is to figure out the worst case scenarios and defuse them before they happen for a more, ahem, unfiltered explanation. So... the nightmare that is my job at LOGOS. How did I come to be smoking Anna Karenina like crack? The truth is that none of this started so bad, but success via unusual means has a way of snowballing on itself."

"How bad is it now?" Chandler demanded.

"We don't break any laws we don't have a waiver for, which is a terrifyingly long list, and I and the ethics committee actually keep a relatively tight leash on what goes on. Nothing the researchers in LOGOS do is unjustified or... well, I hesitate to use the word 'unreasonable' because that implies the existence of 'reason' in a conventional sense, but there is certainly purpose," Agent Jefferson explained before he puts his elbows on his desk and leans his forehead into his hands in defeat. "The problem isn't the project in of itself... the problem is that we keep succeeding, and the oversight committee keeps granting us the permission and legal waivers we need to go to do increasingly extreme things."

"Like?" Chandler inquired.

Chuckling darkly, Douglas replied, "The original preliminary results from Group Carroll gave us a good idea how we could encode memory and learning into drugs, but the methods would be so extreme that we all figured that we would never be allowed to go through with even initial experiments, let alone the stage we're at of working on how to scale up production. And yet here we are."

"Where are we?" Chandler demanded.

Ten minutes later Chandler was standing in a large room lined with bubbling tanks and gaped in awe at the monstrosity he found before him. The only thing he could say was, "There exists no universe where this is legal."

The tanks and their contents, namely disembodied brains with attached eyes connected to various wires and tubes, were bad enough, but the prominently displayed warning signs on the tanks that stated that the tanks contained active Colour sources and parapsychic neural material elevated the entire scene from 'medical atrocity' to 'abomination against man and nature'. One could only watch in rapt disgust as mechanisms within the tank structures changed in and out plates in between the floating eyes and projectors in heavily armoured casings.

"You are correct, this is not legal, but we have permission to do it anyway," a crisp female voice that had so much inherent authority to it that it practically had reverb announced from behind Chandler.

Turning about, Chandler found himself looking at an older woman of disturbingly similar bearing to Director Kamina, in that she appeared to have stepped out of a photograph from more than a century ago, although she was far more British. Suppressing a grimace even as he took her hand, Chandler said, "Director Amanda Browning, I presume."

"You presume correctly, Agent Jackson. I am mildly impressed by your ability to not rouse attention with your arrival. I will be reviewing security protocol on that one," Director Browning noted.

"I was considering just telling you how I did it, but now I am not feeling so charitable," Chandler noted sourly.

A prim smile with all the pleasantness of a lace sleeve concealing a stiletto was given in return and Director Browning noted, "Well, I take it that Agent Jefferson has yet to fill you in on the specifics of how we get this to work."

"Uh... no, we just got here," the man in question answered.

The smile twisting just a fraction of a degree, enough to let Chandler know that his incognito entrance had been allowed by the person in charge, Director Browning said, "Ah, well, then you have not been able to tell him that we developed nothing but the configuration of equipment and treatment protocols, correct?"

Chandler's eyes went wide as the head of safety nodded and said sheepishly, "I would have got to that point eventually, yes."

"Of course you would have," the Director noted pleasantly before she said, "We here at LOGOS have a bit of a unfair reputation. While our objectives and results can be a touch unconventional, our methodology is by far the most stringent of all OSS Projects. Most of what we use was originally developed by other Projects. It makes all of our jobs so much easier."

Glancing about at the abominations all around him and he asked, "Where...?"

"Most of this technology is based off of work pioneered by Herkunft, Engel, CHORUS, and your own OSIRIS. There is actually quite a lot of communication on these sorts of things between the various Projects, once we have properly mature technology to share of course," Director Browning explained.

Drifting over to one of the tanks, she ran a finger over the glass as she said, "We were doing research into Aeon War Syndrome initially, seeking to better understand the intersection of psychology and biochemical physiology, when there was an accident involving brain serum from a victim of Colour exposure. Proper contamination and quarantine protocols were observed, but one of the employees - now safely retired for security reasons - was exposed, and reported experiencing memories that could only come from a dead man. Our work on AWS continues, but Group Carroll has had enormous success in pursuing practical applications from that original moment of serendipity."

"And that justifies any of this how?" Chandler asked incredulously.

Director Browning let her left eyebrow raise up slightly and she said with a smirk, "Well, since you just barged in here, you would not know that these are all cloned brains and have never achieved sentience or sapience. They are gross matter, arranged in patterns similar to those of a human brain, but there is less awareness in them than a child in the womb. Less than in sedated rats that are routinely euthanized in 'proper' drug development."

Taken aback somewhat by the actual ethical oversight, Chandler asked, "And what of the people whose genetics were used to create these brains?"

"OSS employees who gave written, informed consent. And to circumvent your next objection, the growth and containment of parapsychically active neural material was pioneered by CHORUS. The technology is as old and mature as this field can get, and we have a safety record that exceeds most arcanotech research labs," Director Browning explained in a chiding tone.

Now off foot, Chandler asked the only question he had left, "To what end?"

"While the odd by-product generated in QA testing gets passed around the office as a recreational drug, the true applications are only just starting to reach fruition. Imagine if university involved getting an injection and suddenly you have all the skills of a bachelor program at your fingertips. We are rapidly approaching that point. There are also other applications that are technically ready now but require additional safety testing before we get full approval," Director Browning explained as she started to walk out of the ghoulish production facility.

Following along, Chandler watched as the Director went to a closet and pulled out a small vial labelled with all the tiny print one would expect of a dose of experimental medicine. Checking over it carefully, she cracked the seal on the top and then carefully wafted the vapours over to her nose with her hand. Satisfied she said, "This is a harmless variant of the process, nick named 'Summer Rain'. It is nearly indistinguishable from a scented vapour or aerosol."

Handing it over, Chandler held it out suspiciously before he carefully sniffed the air and had memories of a pleasant rain conjured up in his mind from the smell, although he supposed that if he was understanding things right the smell was also a memory. Handing it back warily, he said, "So it is an air freshener with a more horrible production method. I fail to see the point."

Sighing wearily, Agent Jefferson said, "I will go inform the cleanup crew," before he wandered off down a side corridor.

"Come follow me," Director Browning replied smugly as she went down a different direction, leading into a darkened concrete bunker like structure divided up into numerous cells sealed by heavy metal doors and armoured windows, with the lighting indicating that the windows were one-way mirrors. Browning began typing away at a computer monitor mounted next to the window.

Peering inside, Chandler saw a young boy, about twelve years old perhaps, and he asked coldly, "Who is this?"

"Blank infiltrator. They make good test subjects for some of our work, but unfortunately they are not always compatible with what we do. That, fortunately, leads to this," Director Browning replied as she dropped the vial into an airlock and sealed it up.

The boy responded with confusion when the airlock on his side opened up, and he went to inspect it. Browning commented, "Good, it can take forever to diffuse if they don't come to examine what is going on."

The boy did not pick up the vial, but within a moment he had slumped over, his face pressing up against the glass and leaving a smear of blood from his mouth, nose, and eyes. He soon went into convulsions, blood smeared foam flecking his lips, and within about thirty seconds was dead. The Director clinically stated, "Blank implants treat the chemicals as a hostile foreign influence and trigger emergency self destruct mechanisms. Death from exposure is assured."

The violent death of what looked for all the world like an innocent young boy by something that seemed so harmless was only blunted by the fact that Chandler had been chief interrogator of Blanks before and thus this failed to make his top ten most horrible deaths list. What did hit him was the implications of what this chemical meant. Dispersal in population centres... even in high security environments if production could not be scaled that much, this implied the ability to easily weed out infiltration by the Migou, something the OIS had struggled with since Blanks first appeared.

"Director, I do hope you recorded that," an aggressively masculine voice announced, heralding the arrival of an aggressively overbuilt Nazzadi man in a lab coat.

"Dr. Isza, of course I did. Agent Jackson, Dr. Isza, head researcher of Group Chez," Director Browning said in introduction. When the two men met to shake hands, Isza immediately went for the standard meathead tactic of trying to crush all the bones in Chandler's hand, but unfortunately for him Chandler's muscle was built from combat and combat training, not excessive hours at the gym, and he wasn't in the mood to tolerate that sort of thing. Unfortunately despite the strain on his face, Isza was not backing down.

"Doctor, I know that you think you are entitled to behave like an ass because you think you are infected, but please drop the macho bullshit before I give Agent Jackson permission to beat some of the hubris out of you," Director Browning replied icily, her crass diction implying that she had to deal with this sort of thing with sufficient frequency that she felt her normal methods were insufficient.

Dropping the handshake like Chandler's hand was suddenly made from molten metal, Dr. Isza frowned and replied in a childishly hurt tone, "That would severely compromise my theories."

Rolling her eyes, Director Browning turned to Chandler and said, "The good doctor here believes that he has contracted a meme virus-"

"Anima-neural meme virus," Isza interrupted.

"- eloquently titled 'Justified Hubris'. By the good doctor I might add," Director Browning finished off.

Shrugging in a face-punchingly smug sort of way, Isza replied, "You can't argue with success, and my performance has been up since I contracted it."

"Since the hypothesized date of contraction," Browning corrected in irritation.

"Uh... excuse me for just one moment before old arguments get warmed up again, but wouldn't something like that be indistinguishable from simply being a genius asshole?" Chandler pointed out.

Somehow growing more smug, Isza replied, "Well, in only one of those scenarios am I right, and if I am right then the anima-neural meme virus can be isolated, and if it can be isolated it can be controlled and tailored. Imagine if every researcher had the ability and performance boosting effects of the virus?"

"You mean if everyone could see the backs of their own teeth like you?" Chandler asked acidly.

"Precisely," Isza beamed, in a manner that suggested that he got the implications just fine but did not give a damn.

Sucking on his teeth for a moment to avoid rearranging Isza's, Chandler eventually asked, "Okay, backing up a step, why have I not heard of 'Summer Rain' yet?"

"It requires further quality testing," Director Browning replied evenly.

"The bigwigs think it is dangerous," Isza answered near simultaneously but with significantly more contempt.

Glaring at Isza but shifting his gaze over to Director Browning, Chandler got her to admit, "There are some who think that the Blank implants self destruct not to prevent external influences, but as a failsafe against Budapest Syndrome."

"Which is nonsense, none of the incidents have come from Group Carroll," Isza stated dismissively.

"Well we still need to do the proper science to show that there is no danger," Director Browning pointed out.

"Excuse me, but did I hear mention of the extremely dangerous phenomenon of fucking Budapest Syndrome?" Chandler asked with incredulous rage.

"It happens far more often with CHORUS or Herkunft, and it's always in a sealed environment. Honestly, the anima is so poorly known because of people refusing to allow research that it is inevitable these things happen because we are fumbling around blind," Isza groused in intellectual irritation.

Before Chandler could begin punching, Agent Jefferson returned and said, "Ah, Director, Specimen 47-A9 has shown S-pattern anomalies. The technicians have already shut down exposure and are in the process of removal."

Brightening up somewhat, Director Browning said to Chandler, "How fortuitous. You will have an opportunity for some hands on experience with how Project LOGOS handles anomalies in our projects. One of our cloned brains has started to 'wake up' if you will."

Frowning in a tired manner, Chandler said flatly, "I take it you terminate the specimen."

Smiling in a most sincerely insincere fashion, Director Browning replied, "Oh, of course not. Once a cloned brain starts to show signs of self awareness it is accorded some rights. Unfortunately the procedures performed render the brains incapable of being given the sort of treatment that might get them their own body, and they are a illegal, a hazard and security risk in any case so they cannot leave the purview of the OSS. So we give them to you. Or more specifically, OSIRIS."

Later

"I take it the rest of the inspection went well?" Director Kamina asked as he oversaw the unloading of cargo from India while Chandler explained things.

"Well, if you count getting a tour of their lunacy and finding out that despite the mind boggling illegality of everything, most of which hurts the head to try to figure out how it got approval, that they are doing everything within the letter and spirit of their waivers and instructions as 'well', then yes. Half the stuff they showed me made no sense in why anyone would approve the research, let alone the go ahead to break the law in the process," Chandler stated grouchily while a medic reset the bones in his hand.

Peering into the modified Engel cage and the faintly glowing emerald eyes within, the Director asked, "And you learned the paths which lead LOGOS to where it is now?"

"Again, unfortunately, yes," Chandler noted.

"Then you know now a little better what the cost of victory is," Director Kamina reported as he waved the cage to be taken away to the bunker-like habitat they had set up for the occupant.

"Again, unfortunately, yes."

[LadyTevar]

... Do I want to know what Budapest Syndrome is?
And why do I now PITY the Engel-minds?

[Crayz9000]

Strangely enough, the only other place I've seen Budapest Syndrome referenced is in EarthScorpion's ANE and AEE stories.

Presumably it has nothing at all to do with the Urban Dictionary definition. Or it has everything to do with it. In the CthulhuTech setting, I'm not sure which option I find more frightening.

[Academia Nut]

While our collaborative efforts have waned over the past few years, back during the original writing period we were playing original flavour Lovecraft collaboration, which is to say we would name drop certain things from the work of the other just to make cheeky little references and also to sort of make things feel like they come from a greater universe.

This at one point lead to snickering jokes about a possible Derleth figure, followed by a Lumley figure that elicited a few "Ia! Ia!"s from us.