Chapter 15:

A brother has been slain! Not just one but a whole entire squad of brothers!

The understanding of such a revelation sent a shock down Yin Chen’s very being, a feeling that he shamefully must admit that he hasn’t felt since his ascension twelve years ago, but could he really blame himself one who was not within the brotherhood couldn’t understand the sheer magnitude of what such news is for them.

It is not because of pride nor arrogance but of pure theoretical and any probability of such a scenario happening is pure statistically almost near impossible. They know every single possibly weapon system that could faze them, they know the combat doctrines of the many special forces of varying nations in the world. They know it all they have seen it all thus they understood them and devised ways to counter them even these new bio-engineered weapon the B.O.Ws were of no immediate threat to them they’ve studied all manners of strengthens and weakness of those creatures.

That was how they waged war and Yin Chen knew the strength of his brothers of the entirety of the Ten-Thousand however, it was not without possibility within the calculations and predications of such an event being an actuality but such a feat happening within the last four years since they have rested here in the homeworld where they barley struggled was tremendous miscalculation to their original predications.

One fallen brother was already tremendous feat enough for anyone outside of the Ten-Thousand to even fell one of their own but a whole squad?!

Just who or even what could have even managed to perform such a feat? Multiple theories, scenarios and possible probabilities began swarming all at once within Yin Chen’s mind. Calculations and thesis rapidly formed and reformed with hard calculations in response to such an event within his head, as Yin Chen surfed through the multiple files of data files within their computer systems through his armor feeding him entire databanks of data surfing through his DNI putting together a list of possible working theories.

Special ops troopers, certain named personals files, probably combat techniques, weapon system platforms and their threat assessment level. An array of different holographic projections occurred in front of Yin Chen projected through his suits system and his DNI wave after wave of data swam inward as Yin Chen pulled file after file together.

Numbers? A projection of humanoid figures all swarms a projection of a brother fully armed but the brother swapped them aside after a couple precise sweeps. Another projection Distance? a projection of a different arrays of cannons and rifles appeared damage assessment to the body and armor via the weak points in the armor from a cannon or sniper. Target distance? Calculating it must be at least at least 3.2 miles away with an acute accurate time frame of nearly 200.345 seconds to pin point viable joints and force of nearly 2.0 kilwolts the power of a Beam Cannon to incapacitate a brother. Onward such projection was constructed, then deconstructed by his will simulation after simulation he still couldn’t come up with an answer.

What? The question bogeyed Yin Chen what was the possibly cause?

“Weda-!” Liang Lì’s voice boomed with the isolated room causing the screen to flicker for the slightest second. “Activated the S.W.O.R.D and S.H.I.E.L.D protocols bring me all recent data between the last three days starting around the twenty hundredth hour. Get me live feeds from the Observers stationed within the capital all of them!”

[Acknowledged] the A.I system known as Weda responded a female voice to be exacted why female no one knows nor care such a minor detail didn’t enter their minds and was not important to the Ten-Thousand.

Weda; a powerful super A.I. construct based on real developing technologies of quantum processing interlinked throughout all of Ten-Thousand’s computers linked to a central mainframe being the Battle Analysis Computer. The very same room to which the duo stands in now sometimes referred to as the BAC, and otherwise known as the Battle Assistance Coordinator, the super computer of the Ten-Thousand of the N.E.R.V M.A.N.T.I.S Blades an integrated computer system designed for them. One of Humanity's crowning achievements in the art of science and war.

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Its first protocol; S.H.I.E.L.D (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) with its complex internetwork systems Weda is technically a network system of many terminals of different size and importance, it possesses several large core terminals that are important to the network. Created as a means as a counter terrorism and intelligence program to located positional threats to world security.

While its subroutine protocol S.W.O.R.D (Sentient World Observation and Response Department) much like the first is also somewhat a counter terrorism and intelligence system but instead of gathering, provides tactical analysis, streamlined statistics, and suggestions based on live events taking place on the battlefield against ‘outside’ threats to world security.

The screens around them flickered and changed the projections maps, geography points and cartography of the world appeared the duo. The room that which Yin Chen and Liang Lì was the main core terminal of the Blade’s systems known as the BAC like much of the Blades other tech possess an operating system that's interlinked with Weda for support in tactical adaptation while in combat. In terms of other capabilities: The A.I. system is linked to the world's net, capable of absorbing a vast amount of data within the vase data banks Weda even has classified government information. This allows Weda to act as the eyes and ears of the Blade for their home world planet Earth which routinely searches the world and actively monitors the world for sources of information that they would need. It is also one of the ways how they discreetly recruit new possibly candidates around the globe to join their ranks.

Multiple Hololite screens rapidly projected around Liang Lì’s form different scenery images feeds, satellite projections etc. The scenery images feeds shifted in a manner that doesn’t correlate with the motions of a machine security camera, but with the movements of human beings looking from their POV (Point of View). The reason for this comes from the very source of the view point coming from a moving target. Throughout the world there were multiple ‘people’ with matching identical faces though some varied just slightly from the others but still the similarities were visible.

Each one whether they be walking down a crowd street, working in an office job etc. each one was actively transmitting information and data back to the main core terminal being Weda. These humanoid beings are the Observers or Dolls as the Blade like to call them these are artificially created bio-terminals in human form genetically spliced through gene manipulation and nanomachines from a set of genetic templates gathered from various human donors. Created by the great minds who also had a hand in creating the Blades being engineered bio-terminals that can telepathically connect with Weda through use of a phenomenon known as quantum brainwaves, linked together through this ability like a hive mind.

These Observers or Dolls are commonly sent out to different kinds of missions and assigned different tasks throughout the world actively completing the tasks their masters sent them to do. These range from integrating in human society in order to monitor and understand humanity or if those that remain within Quan Zhou as operators like the ones outside within the Strategium. Though they are outwardly similar to normal humans, they possess greater reflexes and coordination than normal humans because of their altered bodies.

It is due to this duo combination system of both hacking capabilities and retrieving live information from these observers is how Weda is so effective.

“Hm?” despite the surge of rapidly incoming being transmitted to him Liang Lì’s enhanced mind was instantly able to pick up among the influx of information that he seeks. “The Observers within The Vermillion Forbidden City’s Citadel are unresponsive and I can’t raise their signals either.

“What?” Yin Chen also confirmed this fact himself surfing through the data flow but also couldn’t find the details that he was looking for as well. This raised further alarms to this situation it was common for an Observer to go missing being in the outside world, losing one or two wasn’t an inconvenience for them but to lose so many within a single location that was not possible.

Unless they were all specify targeted……. but the question now to that would be how did ‘they’ whoever did the deed know what they were.

“Just what is going on?” Yin Chen’s mind kept devising and mending new simulations, theorizing and speculating with available information of such an event. Once again not an impossible situation but to be so precise and such events happening in such quick succession overlapping one another was not a coincident. This was all preplanned someone had intel on their surveillance system.

“Praetorian has there any signs of our systems being hacked into?” Yin Chen questioned his brother though he whole heartly knew the answer.

“Negative there hasn’t been any anomalies within Weda and I haven’t seen any possible breaches I would have known.” Liang Lì reaffirmed that key fact of course like always as its how they are not out pride or arrogance but out of surety.

Although Weda is an all-powerful A.I. construct, it's still just an advanced operating system. Like all software, it can be altered or controlled Weda even has a highly encrypted 7-layer firewall system for such a situation. Even then as a backup fail safe system Weda has some form of internal resistance to being controlled by others even when after its 7 layers of firewalls are breached. This being an encrypted sequence code that is made up of a minimum of what can be described as a million individual codes it can also conceal some of its activities from its 'new owners', the code then tracks the signal source to track the breach however nothing is perfect.

“Double check all systems again then send me the logs afterward when you complete your checks.” Yin Chen turned to walk away without waiting for a confirmation from his kin.

“As you command Captain-General might I ask where are you going brother?”

Without pausing in his steps Yin Chen answered “To find some answers and I reckon that Brothers Chen Shu, Alex, Matthew and Johnathan has them.”