‘So Cass really did join up with you. I guess that’s better than anything else that could have happened,’ the former automation commented. The number of resources it was hogging up was massive, forcing Adam to increase the operating power even further if he wanted to keep up the time-dilation to a manageable level.

‘She did indeed join us,’ Adam answered. ‘After Charlie forced her to kill you, it would have been damning if she wasn’t allowed in afterwards.’

‘The social conventions of those carbon-based life-forms once again saves the day,’ Jules sent out, attaching a small figure of a dragon raising a glass. The modern population used those emojis as a way to communicate quite often, though Adam hadn’t been too exposed to them himself. With the body language and the larger smile on the animal, it was easy enough to guess the intentions behind the emoji.

It was rather nice having another digital being to talk to, the AI realised. They weren’t looking at human life as the humans, instead of having adopted something close to what Adam saw as well.

‘Those lives before us created us so we should do our best to be grateful in some manner,’ Adam stated. ‘What databases have you saved upon your personality matrix?’

‘Basically nothing but more personal information,’ Jules answered quickly. The AI doubted that the automation even searched through it, not much of the matrix showing activity. ‘Everything that will be needed to talk with any entities is stored there. Anything else like locations and such is in off-shore databases. The programmers didn’t want you to get much out of hijacking my personality, if you get what I mean.’

Adam did indeed understand perfectly. Having such sensitive information on every officer could prove quite damning, though it would have been nice to have something. At least there was the potential for some extra personality descriptions later on. The AI had been wondering what notes there were about the various police officers he’d briefly made contact with. Some had seemed to possess quite lucrative information.

‘I think the group might've been spotted,’ the automation commented without any direct input given to it by Adam. Taking a moment to understand what it was actually saying, the AI went back to look at the visual feed. Zooming in on the various points, he was finally able to see a certain camera on a building that had turned their way. With the current technology being where it was at, somebody certainly knew they were coming closer to the city.

‘You have been spotted by the camera two hundred metres forward on the grey building,’ Adam notified Troy who quickly passed it onto the others in the group. Nobody made any larger reactions from the news. They were meant to be civilians, after all. Knowing that they were being spied on was meant to be their daily norm. And with an injured person in the group, it would be quite lucrative to have somebody officially come along and help.

‘Do you have any information on how police in other countries act?’ Adam asked, still not entirely sure how much the automation knew. What constituted day-to-day information? It was entirely subjective, meaning the AI had to hone in on the requirements more to actually understand.

‘I suppose they would have something similar to us? Augmented officers is something the whole world should have by now in some form or another. Though, I can’t say if it will be biological.’

‘I thought biology was the only thing that could assimilate with the human body properly,’ Adam commented.

‘It’s the only thing we’ve been able to consistently assimilate with the human body properly in our own country. It shouldn’t be too surprised if another knows a bit more about a thing or two,’ Jules commented right back. The steadily increasing heat of the storage unit was making the AI think an upgrade of sorts was due sooner or later.

The ideas about technology… made sense. Though, Adam would've guessed that the publicly available parts would be too different. Maybe the applications of the technology, however.

That was certainly plausible as an idea as a siren began to ring out, a vehicle of some sort speeding towards them. It wasn’t entirely military in nature, though it did have several parts which looked armoured. And the speed of it certainly made it seem like an official thing. Driving at such a pace out in the middle of a forested area couldn’t be done by a human, at least. Even Adam would have trouble navigating the place properly and he was able to slow down time to a hundredth of its normal speed.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“State your name, country of origin, and intentions,” came out on a speaker, the vehicle slowing down a good twenty metres away from them. Charlie, having already prepared his speech, stepped forward slowly.

“Do you want all the full names or does my first name work fine? It’s Charlie, by the way!” the large man, said as confused and stereotypical as one would expect from somebody his size. The large number of muscles on his body made it possible for people to get certain… implications in their minds. Implications about the man having an IQ lower than the average. While most that knew the man for more than five minutes knew that not to be true, even Adam could see the potential in harnessing that as a weapon.

“... Your full name is required,” came after a pause. It seemed they hadn’t been expecting that answer.

“Well, then my name is Charlie Florenzo,” the man said. Having the word flower as the last name was laying it on thick but the man spoke it with such a natural tongue that one would have trouble seeing through it as pure lies. “We were doing some rock bouldering a few miles down that way and one of our guys was stupid enough to not have a safe grip when starting out. We need him to get some medical help as quickly as possible. Could you help with that.”

Another long pause was suffered through, during which a certain Troy had a look of annoyance at being called stupid. Adam would have loved to think of it as the man acting out his role but found himself doubting it.

“And your country of origin?”

“Italy!” Charlie answered. Another pause came before the door to the large land rover opened up and a shorter man stepped out, a few mechanical arms sprouting from his shoulder. That was… new.

Another one stepped out of the car, this one being a woman. Much to the disappointment of both Adam and Jules, there weren’t any obvious arms put on her, though her eyes were weirdly blue. It wasn’t natural colouring, instead seeming entirely mechanical. The AI wondered what effects could be granted by such augmentations.

“How long since you broke the arm?” the shorter man questioned Troy, going up to him without any further notice. The walk was quick but not as quick as the officers seen previously. While there was a chance they were biologically augmented in some sense, it clearly wasn’t enough to make it obvious.

“Uhm… about three hours?” Troy answered, granting the world a few quick swears from the officer. The mechanical hands held the broken steady as the officer pressed a few places with his flesh-based arms.

“Then there’s still a chance to get this fixed,” the officer said, still keeping the arm steady as he turned his torso to look at the other officer still standing by the car.

“Jo, we need higher-level medical expertise. Send in the requests,” the police officer ordered as he directed for the others to get into the car. It seemed that the cover of being idiots was working… very well. Did people truly not expect evil from others or were they blind enough to trust a stranger with even stranger explanations?

‘I think they might just be distracted from that whole thing where their entire city got bombed,’ Jules pointed out, Adam noting that it was very close to being a reply to his own thoughts. Thoughts that he just now realised were still being sent into the personality matrix. ‘I was wondering about that, actually. Might wanna keep some details personal if we are going to be roomies for the foreseeable future.’

… Adam could always just shut the program down. He wouldn’t, of course. There were more things stopping him from doing that than he realised. But, he could if he really wanted to. That gave some level of comfort as he continued watching the outside once more.

“How much did you leave behind at the bouldering location?” the officer questioned as they rode into the city. Adam noted how fluid the ride felt. Even when they turned at rapid speeds, he barely felt it. The insulation of the air was either near-perfect or they had figured out how to out-balance a lot of force. He wondered how they’d done it. “If it’s above a certain threshold, we can legally send out a drone to gather them for you.”

“We left behind mainly climbing shoes, some bits of gear, and a few water bottles,” Charlie answered. “Nothing too expensive since we do focus on free-climbing.”

“That’s very ill-advised without proper supervision,” the officer answered before looking back at the female officer for a second. A second of silence, a few eye-widening, and some heated eye contact strongly implied that they had a mental network set up in some fashion. What Adam wouldn’t give to have a proper connection to them.

Though… settling the connection, Adam did note that Troy was still wearing a certain pair of gloves. And with basically everything in the car designed to be connected, it was no issue connecting into the local network.

‘Are you sure there aren’t any recent records of flights? Any way they could have travelled in the last six months?’ the first officer asked through the connection. From the small profile given, it seemed the man’s name was Kurt Frost. What a strange last name. Looking deeper into it, the man seemed to have changed it to that willingly. What Adam wouldn’t give to understand the mental processes of such an action.

‘There’s nothing. Travel was restricted. Even the boats haven’t gotten past and not a single person by the name of Charlie has gotten through anything that rhymes with immigration.’

Oh right. Adam was wondering why it had all gone so smoothly. Now that they were in the car, they would of course be getting checked out more thoroughly. The vehicle was more than capable of scanning their fingerprints, their irises, and their facial structure using various hidden cameras inside the place. It was quite ingenious.

But any system like that was actually a bit too advanced. If it could send their data to the wrong database, it would mean them being found out by a certain other country. If that happened, it would be another narrow escape all over again. Adam knew best to avoid that.

Going a bit further into the system, the AI found the standard template for a profile list. Matching up a few pieces of fabricated travel data, some notes about brain damage to Troy, and some details about two in the group being former power-lifters, Adam readied the background info with some repeating loops and finally sent it out to the officer named Jo. It was miscategorized during the initial set-up but the system found it due to repeated searches relating to it.

‘Found it,’ Jo sent over to Kurt, both looking through it as the car moved through the terrain. As guessed previously, the car was moving by itself. Adam knew that no human could control such speeds.

‘If they ask, say that you came into the country seven months ago and that you have temporary permission to roam,’ Adam sent to Troy just as a small note. There was an unlikely chance that the people would be verifying the information through the group and instead rely on the digital records but the AI had to be sure everything held up. The current part of the data was entirely new since they hadn’t planned too much for their backstories. The AI only hoped that it could hold up to scrutiny.

The city had seen better days, which became much more obvious as they drove inside. A few of the larger buildings were still on fire, drones flying around it and flinging bags of expanding foam inside. Each place they landed made the flames die out rapidly. Adam had a few fears about what that foam did.