A dark blue ambience accompanied by a comfortable cozy chill filled this small room to the brim building a potential to a very comfortable sleep. A light amber glow broke into the room from under the bathroom door beneath which a steady splash of water might have even enhanced the comfort within the room. The carpeted floor was tidy and clean and so were all the rest of the surfaces of the room. Everything packed neatly inside drawers and cupboards except for one set of clothes that were laying over the top rail of a chair close to the bed and next to the bed on the nightstand in bright red letters was the time. It was five twenty-four.
Rupert lay under the sheets on his half of the bed with his hand invading the pillow on the vacated other half of the bed. Breaking the steady white noise from the bathroom, the shower was turned off and a few seconds later, letting the amber shade of light grow to a shade of peach and invade the room, the bathroom door was opened and from within Ashley stepped outside wearing a towel.
Walking over to the bed, choosing the closer edge to sit down on, she sat next to Rupert and undoing the second towel wrapped around her head she started to dry her hair. This is when Rupert decided maybe it's time to wake up.
'Good morning,' Rupert stretched and retreated back closer to the headboard sitting against it.
'Good morning,' Ashley greeted.
'Where are you going so early?'
'We have new recruits coming in today, got the public forum,' Ashley replied. 'And also, we may have a friend coming in today, I need to get there early. You too have to get to the Vanguard warehouse, right?'
'It's still five thirty,' Rupert looked at the time. 'And I doubt they need me there to get started.'
'Either way,' Ashley commented, getting up from the bed and heading back to the bathroom. 'Just stop sitting on your ass and get up already.'
'Where else am I supposed to sit?' Rupert retaliated. As Ashley made her way back into the bathroom Rupert decided to climb out of bed. After reaching for his pants lying over the top rail of the chair, he put them on but still shirtless he sat back down on the bed and picked up his phone from the nightstand.
'Jill, any new messages for me?' Rupert inquired.
'Yes,' the phone replied. 'Two new messages across six connected servers.'
'Oh, pull them up,' Rupert commanded and as per the command two new messages popped up on screen.
One of the two read,
'What's new – 14 Feb 2131
Three more recoveries this week getting the total up to a twelve for the month
Start saving up for a new phone now! - Lexender QFF reopens for production
Catch up on the latest local news at Wired Raven at FD3A::::1:'
From a 'Wired Raven' and the next went,
'Hey, swing by today. Wanna talk,' from one 'Jaime Turner'.
By the time Rupert went through his messages Ashely managed to return with now fully dried hair, with only one towel on her. She slid the door to her wardrobe open and from within the neatly packed shelves she picked up the clothes she planned on wearing and rested them all on the bed.
'Seems they are opening Lexender sites back up,' Rupert announced. 'I'm gonna get a new phone.'
'I don't think they'll open up to the public,' Ashley said. She went invisible and her towel followed suit soon after, before it fell onto the floor and once again became fully visible. One by one the clothes that lay on the bed disappeared. Every article of clothing was first tugged away and the corner of it from which it was being pulled away disappeared first, but sooner later the rest would disappear in midair. A few seconds later there were no more clothes on the bed and floating in mid-air were the front flaps of an unzipped denim jacket. 'Bertol told me about it yesterday. They are gonna be mostly focusing on fabrication for medical instruments and stuff. You know we lost four surgery robots in the last year.'
Looking at his wife, who chose to go invisible before changing into her clothes, Rupert let out a snide smirk. 'I'm offended that you do that.'
'Then cry me a river,' Ashely became visible once more as she threw her hair back. She walked over to the nightstand with a witty smile and picked up her phone planting a kiss on her husband's lips. 'See if I care.'
Ashley stuffed the phone into her pant pocket and walked to the door. She opened the door to leave, but she just couldn't, for she felt something missing. She turned back into the room.
'There she is,' Rupert dismissively pointed to a corner of the room. I was a precision energy sniper with so many custom modifications that it had become a relic on itself.
Ashley smiled before she fell back into the room to retrieve her sniper and once it was in her hands and its strap around her neck, she went on her merry way.
With a shade of bluish gray engulfing the skies, the sun was slowly on the rise. Small portable lamps that could be stuck into walls populated the inside walls of the warehouse. 'Vanguard Arm Depot,' as mentioned at the front gates of the facility, was busier than usual. Armed guards were roaming the place and snipers had positioned themselves cloaked in the fog on top of the buildings in the facility. A couple of dozens of drones assisted surveillance as well, some armed, but most simply too small to carry weapons.
There were men carrying crates from inside one of the large buildings. Half of that building was normal, but the remaining half of it was engulfed in a reality bending fog of mirrors. A couple of men, in hunter green uniforms, stood dangerously close to the shatter, setting up what seemed like speakers on top of stands of different heights, all facing the shatter that had invaded the inside of the warehouse. After adjusting their heights, they retreated to the back and moving past them a couple of drones traveled closer to the shatter carrying more of the contraptions that looked like speakers.
'All right men, get ready,' One of the men in the warehouse, who was more equipped and more armored than the rest of the soldiers said, holding up a very slim tablet computer that didn't seem to weigh anything. 'Fifty-centimeter pushback in three... two... one.'
Suddenly with a flash-bang, the shatter in front of the stationed 'speakers' retreated. Now on the floor, which was previously covered in shatter, there were four celadon-blue crates marked 'Ammunition'. The man with the tablet marked the number of crates on his tablet and commanded 'alright, move out and set up the next.'
'Jaime,' Rupert tapped the man with the tablet on the shoulder before resting his hand on the shoulder pad. 'How we doin' today?'
'So far we got thirty-eight crates of heavy: fifteen thirties, twelve forties and eleven fifties,' Jaime annotated the displayed text. 'Sixteen fission clips: ten Lead, four Indium and two Iridium.'
'Only ammo?' Rupert asked.
'Oh no, we got a couple of Vanguard ARs, ERs, Snipers,' Jaime said. 'But I think you should go through that catalog yourself.'
'Oh Bruisers, nice,' Rupert said, peeking over Jaime's shoulder.
'Hey Rupert,' Jaime put the tab away and turned to Rupert. 'You got my message right?'
'Yeah.'
'It's about Liz,' Jaime explained. 'She's uh... she's obsessed with joining the collection. She got an approved medical yesterday and she'd probably sign up today. I was wondering if you could talk to Ash about it?'
'Well, what do you want me to tell her?'
'I don't know,' Jaime replied. 'I'm gonna leave it up to Ash. Frankly I can't discourage her anymore; believe me I tried. She's dead set on joining the collection and, I was thinking, maybe either Ash could talk some sense into the girl or approve it for me.'
'Isn't your girl like fourteen?'
'Seventeen,' Jaime replied. 'And boy is she out of my control already.'
The rest of the soldiers, as this conversation progressed, were once again setting up the contraptions, now closer to the shatter than before.
'Look, she's good, so I don't wanna discourage her, but at the same time I'm worried about her safety.'
'Well, personally, I don't consider collections too risky now, Jaime' Rupert commented. 'Now we got radiant shields, flash recalls, jump kits. Things are a lot different now.'
'Yeah, I don't know,' Jaime replied. 'It's these super soldiers that keep popping up. I mean, they had all those techs back in the decimation wars, but people still got hurt.'
The soldiers and the bots were once again backing away and pushing forth respectively once again setting the apparatus in place.
'I'll talk to Ash,' Rupert reassured. 'We'll see what's what.'
'Thanks, man, appreciate it,' Jaime thankfully tapped Rupert on the shoulder before his tone completely switched as he pulled up the tab and issued his command. 'Ok people... three... two... one.'
Ashley, accompanied by Dr. Tyson, made their way into a rather large auditorium. It could easily provide seating for a thousand or two thousand guests, but of the two thousand seats only a few hundred at the front had been stretched open and only a couple of dozens of people had taken seats. There were few running around the auditorium, some followed by one eyed dronids and most carrying tab computers.
'I think we set up a little early,' Tyson said, staring into his watch. As if he just walked out his lab, he was wearing a long lab-coat over his casual wear. 'We got about half an hour left.'
'Better too early than too late,' Ashley commented.
'Dr. Tyson? Mrs. Young?' A small teenage girl from the audience, followed by a dronid holding a tablet in her hand, walked from the back seats and greeted the two.
'Major Young,' Tyson said with a proud expression which faded away as soon as he looked at Ashley and saw her shaking her head in disapproval.
'Bella, right?' Ashely greeted back. 'I'm a big fan of your work, miss.'
The little girl's cheeks blushed as Ashely reached her hand out for a handshake, but with all her willpower she hid the rest of her awkward reactions to remain as professional as she could. 'Likewise, ma'am. Do you own a subscription?'
'Oh, uh... I don't,' Ashely replied with an awkward smile, and it made Bella figure out that she could hide her disappointment well. 'But that's because my husband has one and he reads me all the news.'
'Oh, that's ok... so, I was just wondering, ma'am, if I could have the speakers' consent to publish today's speech and interviews on Wired Raven?' Bella asked and now the dronid was staring down Ashely with the only eye it got.
'Of course, yes,' was Ashley's reply. 'The more public we can reach out to, the better.'
'Thank you, ma'am,' with a nod of appreciation, the little girl retreated to her seat.
Ashley and Tyson both walked to the center of the front of the auditorium and came to a halt not sure what needed to be done.
'So, everything seems set up,' Dr. Tyson said, looking around and then at Ashley. 'I guess we just wait for more people to show up and get started.'
'Yeah,' Ashely nodded, turning to Tyson and then at the audience. 'Got everything prepared, right?'
'What's there to prepare, dear?' Tyson smiled. 'We'll just speak what comes to our heart.'
The words made Ashley throw a concerned glance at Tyson who quickly followed, 'I have topic points to avoid right here,' tapping to his lab-coat pocket.
The remaining half an hour passed relatively quickly, with the audience attempting to stream content on their personal devices, most of which weren't available, most settling to watch whatever was available. The auditorium's empty open seats were almost entirely filled within that time span and once the time was for the authority to take stage, Tyson walked first to the podium to greet. There were only about two hundred people, hence the podium didn't need to be placed on top of the stage for the sake of visibility and audibility, and therefore was placed at the front of all the rows of seats.
'Good morning, all,' Tryson greeted with a smile. There was no speaker on the podium, but his voice echoed through the hall, well amplified. Tyson slowly rested a note on the podium and started his speech. 'So, this is one of our first press releases slash awareness programs; first of more to come that is. We are slowly working our way to restore all our systems and infrastructure, so we felt a level of transparency would help us all progress further. We are constantly in search of talent and professionals, so we intend to be more transparent for the sake of getting constructive feedback and the help we so desperately need. We managed to recover more than eight hundred over the span of last year and, I have to add that the support we've gotten getting people recovered was tremendous. We never ran out of manpower in any of the cases. This... is purely personal... but how everyone comes through for each other in a time of crisis shined greatly in the span of last year and I'm grateful I could play the part that I did.'
Tyson took a pause before he continued. 'So, getting to business at hand; since all the statistics about recoveries, our resources, provisions and the facilities and, of course, progress we've made with collections are public records we wouldn't be going over them today. So... uh... our itinerary for today is to start off with a general Q and A, about anything we can answer for you, and then move on to the 'awareness program' for new recruits for collection to finally wrap things up with a Q and A of the session. So... starting off with the general Q and A, do you have any questions?'
There were multiple raised hands, but the ones who raised their hands were polite enough to not scream the questions they had. Going for what felt was the safest option, Dr. Tyson picked Bella.
'Allow me first to start off thanking our collection teams, RnD teams and medical teams for their hard work for the span of last year, their contribution hardly went unnoticed, but we barely had the opportunity to thank them, so on behalf of the community I'd like to thank all of them for their hard work,' A silent applause rose from the audience as Bella's amplified voice echoed loud and Tyson nodded in agreement. 'But for the last couple of months the majority of the effort of these teams had gone into building a military power. Recovering weapons, GDI facilities and getting troops enlisted for collection teams. Would you like to make any comments regarding that?'
Tyson smiled before replying. 'Damn I picked the wrong interviewer,' he thought to himself.
'It's true that for the past couple of months our efforts have been around recovering armories and there are a couple of reasons for that,' He progressed calmly. 'First is that the Vanguard warehouses are the closest resource facility to our defragmented regions and extracting whatever resources we can is a priority. We finally managed to recover a Lexender Quantum Fabrication Facility and that too is a testament to our priorities to recover whatever facilities we can.'
Couple of members of the audience noted down on their tablets whatever they felt would be necessary, but it terrified Tyson he had to turn to Ashley sitting at the front of the audience for her approval. Ashley nodded subtly with a slight smile.
'The second is that collection is also a priority for us,' Tyson continued. 'The more we collect, the more land we defragment and the more we defragment the more resources and manpower we'd have and the more resources slash manpower we recover the better our collections would go.'
Tyson stopped as he felt his explanation was enough but understanding his misjudgment by the look on the interviewer's face he decided to continue.
'Once we are done with the last Vanguard warehouse, our next big focus is reaching the Telamore state hospital, so it'll be the last time we are going for weapons for a long time,' Dr. Tyson concluded with a subtle and professional chuckle.
Another couple of hands raised into the air, but Bella wasn't one of them. Tyson chose to pick one at the front, one in a blue scrub and coat rolled up on his lab.
'I'm given to understand that there are resonant sieve stabilizers that can defragment the shatter, like the ones used for recovering the warehouses' His voice too was amplified within the hall. 'But, sir, I'm still not clear as to why we don't use that technology to keep defragmenting the shatter. I don't quite understand the play of shards in the process.'
'Well... uh... they are all in published papers, if you want to read up,' Tyson said, gesturing subtly to the scrub. 'But, simply put, the stabilizers push back the shatter, yes, but when the shatter pushes back from one end it pushes in from another end ultimately maintaining the defragmented volume at a constant. That's why we advise against settling too close to the bounds of shatter. Shards on the other hand can increase the total defragmented volume. It's like uh... playdough, you see? Uh... you can reshape it, but reshaping doesn't make the volume grow larger, only adding more playdough does.'
'How much do we really know about the shatter, Sir?' one more from the audience asked, but he didn't raise his hand nor he waited for his turn, hence his voice did not get the privilege of being amplified.
'Oh, we know absolutely nothing dear,' Tyson chuckled. 'All the progress we made so far has been through trial and error. Well... I mean, I guess at this point we know that... I mean we think that the shatter is simply particles at subatomic level shifting through possibilities rapidly. That theory had been backed up through many experiments, but even that could be completely wrong.'
That answer was not optimistic enough for the crowd, or so it felt to Dr. Tyson.
'But we are making progress,' Tyson replied. 'We know a lot more than we did last year and as the scientific community grows and as we recover more equipment it's only a matter of time before we unravel the secrets behind these phenomena.'
'Any more questions?'
'Major,' a faceless android in a uniform, interrupted Ashely and took her attention. 'Cpt. Whitechok requests your presence. He wanted me to tell you that the package has arrived.'
'Oh,' Ashley stood up and following the android she walked out the auditorium door.
Her absence barely hindered the forum as more and more hands were raised into the air with each answer seeming to pop up more questions than answers. Some queries were so scientific that only a few in the audience understood Dr. Tyson's explanations. By the end of the session, he had to answer the questions he previously mentioned as 'public record' covering everything from evolution of collection to canned food supplies for houses with no Edibles units.
The faceless android directed Ashely into a room and waited outside. Ashely walked in the room but before closing the door behind her Ashley commanded the android 'Keep everything out.'
She then hastened along a hallway until she walked into a dimly lit room that ever so slightly resembled the lighting in an average cinema before the movie starts. There were multiple men in the room already waiting for her lost in their own conversations. Whitechok was the first to notice Ash walk in and extend a greeting.
Whitechok; a bearded man with enough white hairs among the black and a belly large enough to say he's been alive a while. Accompanied by a thick beard and a mustache with hair curling back into his face and a balding spot that's expanding its territories he had the perfect appearance to be the tactical yet overly aggressive decision maker he was.
'Ok, you are here,' Whitechock walked over to a round table at the center of the room that had a disassembled drone in the middle, signaling Ashely to follow him there. Following suit, the rest of the men surrounded the table as well.
'So, what do we got?' Ashely inquired Whitechok.
'Oh boy, what haven't we got?' Whitechok picked up a tab from the table. 'We got everything from potential super soldiers in recovery to last accounted GDPs.'
'Did you log these?' Ashely asked.
'Yes, spent about an hour doing that,' Whitechok replied.
'Had help?'
'No, did it myself.'
Ashley nodded in approval. 'Ok, so get started.'
'Ok, so first off, we don't have good news,' Whitechok announced. 'From Azonieth we have an old Quanda unit in recovery now, could be a threat pretty soon.'
'A Quanda unit?' the round table broke into murmur.
'I think that'd be a problem for them more than it is for us,' Ashely added, standing still at the table with her arms folded.
'Well not this one apparently,' Whitechok gestured to the tab and suddenly an image popped up in mid-air above the broken remnants of the drone. The image was a stunningly beautiful woman in a tight full bodysuit that had attachments accompanying her bodysuit. She had a separation line running under her lips that looked as if her jaw could be removed from her face. But of all the characteristics of her appearance that were most noticeable were the five long blades and the seven small blades that surrounded her, floating in mid-air.
'Apparently this one was caught and repurposed with a noetic center of a-' Whitechok sunk into the text in his tab to verify what he was reading. 'A squirrel?'
'Makes sense,' Ashley chuckled in silence. 'GDI tried a lot back in the days.'
'Wait, sorry,' one of the men standing at the round table asked. 'Which one is Azonieth again?'
'Faide's world,' Ashely replied before Whitechok could.
'Oh ok, continue.'
'Then from Warlords, the one with the other Ashley Young,' Whitechok eyed the man who previously raised the question about 'Azonieth'. 'There's a Michael 'Hyde' Gastrow in recovery.'
'Michael Gastrow?' the soldier standing next to Ashley turned to her puzzled. 'As in Michael 'Faide' Gastrow?'
'Yeah, it's Faide's double,' Whitechok confirmed the suspicions.
'Do we know about his powers?' Ashley asked.
'Not yet, but it can't be good.'
'And from Insurgent,' the tab automatically transitioned to the next page. 'We got twins.'
'Twins?' Ashely unfolded her arms with the inquiry, not startled, but attempting to reposition for comfort. 'GDI?'
'No, they are still in training,' Whitechok replied. The hologram picked up on the conversation topic and showed the relevant images of the two twins standing next to each other, one to the right holding a rifle to his right and the one to the left holding a rifle to his left. 'The two have some kind of entanglement: they can teleport items between each other and even translocate people from one twin to the other. Both were acrobats, so they are excellent with movement, it's their aim that needs training. In about six months they're going to be a real pain in the ass.'
Ashely tucked her hair behind her right ear in frustration. 'So, by the next collection we are gonna have a Quanda unit and one more Faide to deal with?'
Whitechok nodded.
'Veer, do we have anything to work with?' Ashely turned to the man standing to the right of Whitechok.
'The training is going well, ma'am,' Veer replied. 'But these are super soldiers we are talking about, there's no one in training that good.'
'What's their armory situation?' Ashely turned to Whitechok once again.
Whitechok smiled uncomfortably to express not expecting good news. 'Apparently, we are the most peaceful reality. So far, we have defragmented one Vanguard facility and that's it.'
'Warlords have recovered three warehouses,' the holographic image started to transition between images or warehouses. 'Apparently, they have almost all the weapons left from the decimation war hoarded somewhere is Heston. Insurgent has weapons everywhere because unlike ours they didn't have a unified army after the cold conquest collapsed, and not to mention, Malio and Trisma were at war when the shatter hit. In Dystopian, even civilians have weapons and there's also a massive armory that used to belong to Blackout, and that's thanks to all their civil wars.'
Whitechok paused a while before delivering the rest of the bad news. 'And the worst of all, Azonieth has started recovering the GDI headquarters in Therma islands.'
Everyone at the table was taken aback as silent murmurs broke out and the hologram turned off. The murmurs continued for a while until the man to the right of Ashley decided to present even more issues to the board.
'Two out of the three surgery robots we had are not functional anymore and we don't really have the equipment required to repair them,' he added. 'At least in six months we have to make it to the Telamore state hospitals, or we aren't going to be able to do any sort of surgeries.'
Veer raised his voice next. 'Well, the last couple of collections didn't go too well either. So... that might be a tight deadline.'
Ashely for the duration of the conversation stood silent. Even in the cold temperature of the room she had started to sweat from her temple.
'Maybe we should focus on the super soldier we already have,' Whitechok glared at Ashley. 'Instead of trying to find new weapons and soldiers.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' Ashely asked.
'You were a class E troop back in old GDI days, right? Maybe try to go for class D? God knows we could use one.'
Ashely, annoyed by the comment, leaned forward on the desk and rested her fists on the table staring Whitechok in his eyes. 'Maybe you should pick up a rifle, drop a couple of pounds and start wall-running.'
'No need to get snappy, I was making a genuine suggestion,' Whitechok added. 'We could get you whatever you need to train and focus on that.'
'That wouldn't work,' Ashely backed off. 'I'm a Thand division soldier, I'm not built for warfare. I'm built for infiltrations or assassinations.'
'Infighting isn't gonna help,' one of the men at the table added. 'Maybe we could build super soldiers, like they did with Nova.'
'We don't have anything like those kits now,' Whitechok commented. 'Vanguard warehouse didn't even have energy rifles.'
'The QFF's up, wouldn't we be able to build anything new?'
'Oh sure, we could barrage them with low quality cell phones.'
After another couple of moments in silence, lost in thought, Ashely turned away from the table walking to the door.
'Where are you going?' Whitechok inquired.
'Give me the cliff notes, later,' Ashely answered heading out the door. 'I'm headed to the recruit's program, the only thing that could get us out of this mess.'
Just one more.
Ashely lost in thought, walked out the room and headed to the auditorium. The faceless android in uniform at the door greeted her good day, but she didn't notice. If not for Tyson intercepting Ashely and speaking to her, she would have kept heading straight in the direction she was heading with no destination in mind.
'Hey,' Tyson addressed Ashley. 'The recruits are here, wanna get started?'
'Yeah,' having returned to reality Ashley nodded and followed Tyson to the podium.
Ashley, for the duration of her segment, was on autopilot, but she did a good job hiding it. Behind the podium she had varying expressions, gesturing to the presentation and at the audience. She was lively, an image of a true leader up on stage, but not for a single moment did she stop sweating from her temple. She engaged in her autopilot, spoke about duties and responsibilities of a collection team, what was expected of them and the weight they'd have to carry after enlisting and properly getting trained.
Somewhere at the middle of the speech Whitechok walked into the auditorium and took a seat at the front row, but Ashely was too preoccupied to even notice the changes happening in the audience.
The audience drowned in a silence once Ashely concluded her speech. 'Any questions?'
The stunned faces of the audience did no help easing Ashely's anxiety. The faces, even though she had never seen them before, felt as if they were the same fifty faces that sat down at the auditorium every month.
Just one more soldier, that's all we need.
Suddenly the door to the auditorium room swung open.
'So sorry I'm late,' a young girl walked into the room to notice everyone now staring at her, partially still processing the presentation and partially judging her for barging in like she did. The girl stood frozen with about a hundred eyes on her.
She was in a pair of denim pants, a white shirt and a pink crochet sweater. A couple of pink and white streaks decorated her black hair that extended to her shoulder stopping short in the front at her bangs.
Ashley immediately recognized the girl. Having seen her friend, Jaime, accompany this girl on multiple occasions, she extended a friendly smile to the girl.
Standing still looking up at the audience and then at Ashely alternatively, she grinned heartily and greeted all. 'Hi!'
'Hi Liz!'