Practically slung over Athena's shoulder, Delta was teleported into a large open corridor before being carried into a large testing lab.
Delta tried to get out of Athena's grip, but no matter how much he squirmed or resisted, his strength was nothing compared to hers. After a few more attempts, Delta had given up entirely, slumping over quietly and hoping nobody saw him the way he was.
'All my years of fighting to be manhandled by a grandma…'
They arrived in a lab with test tubes filled with different coloured liquids and corked gases decorating the room's interior. At the far end, a pink-haired woman chewing gum sat with her knees up and leaning on the desk's edge.
"No, no, no. That won't work either… Athena, you back already?"
By now, Athena had dropped Delta onto the floor, after which he had scrambled away as fast as he physically could. He looked over at the figure he assumed was Astutia, however quickly averted his eyes when he saw that she was nearly entirely nude.
"Oh? We have a guest? How interesting!"
Athena looked like a tired older sister as she said, "This is the boy we chipped, remember? And put some clothes on!" "I can think more clearly like this though!"
Athena gave her a look, and Astutia went and pulled on her lab coat and some underwear disappointedly.
"You're no fun.."
"..."
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Athena said, "Delta, get onto the bed there. I'm going to run some tests."Delta did so, staying as far from Athena as he could in case she tried anything funny again. She grabbed a device similar to a laptop from the table behind her, however rather than having to open it up, she placed her finger on a small sensor on the top, identifying herself before a holographic screen popped up in front of her. She took a wire and plugged it into the device's physical port, before heading back over to Delta's shoulder again. She sliced his now healed shoulder again, exposing the chip to light once more.
"Didn't think you'd be able to heal so fast. Hmm, I need to do more research."
Taking the other end of the wire, she plugged it carefully into a small port in the chip.
"Astutia, it's plugged in. Go ahead and run the diagnostics."
Astutia began tapping away at her keyboard incredibly quickly, going so fast Delta couldn't even see her fingers let alone what she was actually pressing.
"Erm, Athena? You sure you plugged it in correctly?"
"This is no time for jokes, Astutia."
"You might want to come and see this…"
Athena walked closer, and as soon as she saw what was written on the screen, she practically sprinted forwards.
"Are you sure this is all correct?"
"Absolutely positive."
"Open up the source code again."
Delta walked a little closer to see what was going on, and he managed to catch a glimpse of the screen before it changed to pages of code. There were 3 circles on the screen, each titled differently. The first said 'Absorption', the second 'Power' and the third 'Connectivity'.
Whilst he wasn't fully sure, he figured the 'Absorption' must be referring to how fast either he or the chip was absorbing magic, 'Power' the amount of energy inside the chip itself, and 'Connectivity' was either how well the chip was synced to either the computer or to him, however he was veering towards the latter. There were small zones on each of the circles: two red ones and a green one, which Delta could only assume represented if they were reaching the recommended or wanted parameters.
Strangely, however, the bar seemed to have reached the very end of the red zone on all of them, the numerical reading saying 'N/A'. Astutia and Athena both put on a pair of glasses that had been laying on a desk, and they began speed reading through the source code, their eyes flicking back and forth at incredible speeds as they absorbed all of the information they were reading.
About 10 minutes later, they had both read what had seemed to be millions of lines of code. Doing some mental math, Delta realised that, to have read as many lines as they had done, they'd have had to read over 800 lines per second.
"Just how high is their Intelligence…" Delta muttered.
"I don't see any problem with the code… try executing it onto the test device."
After navigating between a few screens, Astutia pressed the enter button, starting the process of running the code through the compiler in the test chip they had made as a backup. Once it had begun running, Athena plugged a second wire into it before plugging that into the second port.
"How are the readings?"
"All perfectly normal…"
"Shall we reset the chip that the boy's wearing then?"
"I'm on it now".
She switched back to the screen with Delta's ridiculous readings, quickly tapping in some commands, entering a series of passwords and doing some retina and fingerprint scans. Delta had even sensed her entering some of her Arcane magic into the computer as further identification.
After verifying herself in almost every way possible, she pressed the enter key and began resetting Delta's chip.
"Boy prepare yourself. This is going to hurt, a lot."
"..."
A loading screen appeared on the holographic monitor, loading up to about ¾ of the bar before heading right back to the beginning like a game of snake and ladders. For the first few times, Athena and Astutia didn't think much of it, but after it happened for the 5th time, they began running some background checks on the program and its chip. By the time it reached the 10th time, the pair had checked through every possible source of code, and had still not found anything useful. Not surprisingly, a large error symbol appeared on the screen, a small note underneath it saying 'Connection Unstable/Interrupted'.
"Athena I think somebody locked us out of the chip…"
"You figured?"
She turned around to Delta, a slightly irritated look in her eyes.
"How many people have you told about the chip?"
"Nobody. I may be in the body of a child, but I'm no fool."
Delta was starting to get sick and tired of being manhandled the way he had been so far today, and he was looking forward to being strong enough to return the favour.
"You better not be lying to me."
Delta didn't respond, but rather slumped back into the bed he had been given, pretending to be resting as his eyes rapidly scanned the room in search for a means of escape. Athena thought to herself for a moment, before saying, "Completely reset it. We can't lose control of this chip."
Astutia, hearing this, nearly fell off of her chair.
"You sure about that? We might lose control of the chip though?! How are you going to account for those risks?"
Delta had noticed that nearly everything she said was posed as a question, and it was seriously starting to annoy him.
"It's a risk we'll have to take."
"What if the boy loses his core? What then?"
A nerve in Athena's temple began bulging as she heard Astutia reveal such critical information to the listening Delta.
"I said it's a risk we'll have to take."
Delta, however, disagreed entirely.
'Nope. No way. You are not risking blowing me up to change a few numbers. Not happening. I've blown up enough between these two lives…'
He sprung from his seat and began sprinting for the door, moving fast enough to put professional athletes on Earth to shame, however no matter how fast he tried to move, Athena was still faster. She appeared in front of him, picking him up and throwing him into bed again before telling Astutia, "Do it."
Astutia tapped some buttons quickly, and Delta suddenly felt an overwhelming force oppressing him. He tried to resist it, but it seemed to evade his will with ease, heading straight for his core to absorb all of his magic and take control of his body. Feeling his power sucked away from him, Delta slowly lost control of his power, his limbs going cold and his blood running stale as he fell into a slumber. He heard a screech, as if a metal wall was being sliced apart, and the last thing he saw before his eyes closed was the appearance of a black figure.