Getting back to the Flex Tech headquarters was surprisingly easy. They were expecting Eddy, or at least a version of Eddy. The agents had been lying low with our police activity scam but were happy to assist once Eddy used the contact protocols and convinced them that the bonding had been mostly successful. Allen and Venus could stay in contact with us due to Allen’s new skills. We were on a timeline, too. We had not taken into account the fact that Allen needed to be enhanced. Otherwise, he would not survive when the nanites he had been exposed to started replicating.
We were driven quickly through Brisbane's quiet streets and exited the underground carpark below the office tower. Security met us, and we were taken straight to the science levels. No one spoke to us, and we were treated with awe and fear. A test subject. The security teams were armed and cautious at our approach.
Eddy: The systems here are very primitive, and I can start to gain access if you think we should. Allen has given me his passwords and access.
Hold off on that until we talk to Venus. She seems to have a handle on the networks here and might have better luck using you as a proxy.
Eddy: Ok. I will just have a look around.
The science lab I was taken to was one of the few I had not been into, and I could see the stasis chamber where the other symbionts were stored. Using my new senses, I could detect the faint energy signatures they emitted. Each was a potential Prism slave, an insurgent or a potential free being. There were thousands of symbionts.
Eddy: This is concerning. The enhancement kits you stole were originally stolen from the Legion by Prism agents. They are Empire enhancements and were slated to be hacked by our scientists to connect to Prism. They were Tier 2 and 3. Those were for the leaders of each zone. The nanites may have been modified.
What does that mean for Luke?
Eddy: Your brother will be enhanced to Tier 2 or 3 and be connected to the opponent's AI system. Well, I can’t call them enemies anymore. It may cause conflict. They will not trust us.
We’ll deal with that when we see Luke. He will trust me. We need to concentrate on getting these into volunteers.
We played the part well, and it was pretty easy because there were no records of the behaviours of a newly minted symbiont slave. Eddy knew some of what was expected. Other than some testing, some of which were refused, we were left to our own devices within the lab. We saw Noah briefly, and I laughed when Eddy told me he was a Tier 1, Level 3 Administrator. He would not gain experience or levels until he had access to a Prism organisation he could administer. Flex Tech was not yet a Prism-recognised entity.
Eddy and I suffered through some testing. We were prodded, had blood tests done, did some exercises and then told to rest. They fed us some pretty bland food while Eddy and I used the time to work through some issues, personal boundaries, how to share and utilise each other's memories and most importantly, how to access skills from each other without directly overriding our personalities.
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At first, like Eddy and Amy, we had loose boundaries around my consciousness, controlling the biological and physical stats and abilities. At the same time, Eddy would hold and guide the more metaphysical, spiritual, and karmic side of things. It would take time, but it was a compromise that we could work on. We also agreed to ask permission before looking at each other’s thoughts.
During our almost honeymoon, there was a brief attempt to test us further, after which we threatened violence. We felt this was befitting the war slave we were imitating, insisting that it was unnecessary; all the documentation was available through Prism, and we convinced the scientists and an unhappy Noah that no one on Earth was authorised to know the Prism secrets. We learned that the scientists and even Noah were intentionally not being told the whole truth about the integration from the Karassians. No surprise there. Knowledge is power, and the Karass, pushing the integration, wanted to keep everyone in the dark about the war slave thing.
Noah had complained and was rebuked during his brief contact with the alien ambassador, Sarnah. With Eddy’s Prism knowledge and my understanding of political and social power structures from my studies and time in business, I knew that Noah was screwed in this deal. I think he understood it, too, which would explain his temper and attempts to force this bonding early.
"Just stay out of everyone's way; don’t do anything stupid," Noah growled at us when he realised that there was not much to learn. Luckily, we were the only successful Prisim Symbiont integration so far.
After the slight disappointment of the scientists, we were left to our devices in the lab, sitting or wandering, keeping out of everyone's way. I still had a small room to call my own as part of the lock-in. As long as we had the security trailing us, we seemed to be left nearly forgotten about. Eddy still took a little while to get a solid, untraceable backdoor into the systems. Venus data mined while Allen soon used his new skills to replicate some of what had happened with Eddy into the other symbionts in stasis, removing the drive to connect to the Prism before they were inflicted on their victims.
Since there was no real Prism presence on Earth, Venus came up with the brilliant idea of creating our network for when the newly awakened symbionts came online. The only trouble was that it would take a lot of computational power and bandwidth and needed to be robust enough to survive post-integration. We required something to face both the Empire’s system and Prism.
Eddy, Venus and I soon had a vague plan that would work out if we could make the most of some of the current research that Flex Tech was investigating. As the science liaison officer, I knew most of the scientists working on the project. It was not hard for me to talk to Dr Alice Daves again. She was largely unaware of my new status so I could get a side project happening in one of the labs. Most of the scientists were pretty bored, so some new research was a bonus. Eddy dropped some subtle hints to push the investigation along.
It took a week for our project to be finalised.
It was a very stressful time, trying to avoid any management, avoid anyone who was in on the official Noah’s Ark 100 and keep the scientists from blowing our cover. I was stressed and scared but, at the same time, not alone anymore.
After a week, we had our first run of our counter Prism network.
ONLINE.
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