Seraph grimaced as she watched the simulation of the former slave using his immense strength to roll the lifepod across the field... and into the water. Thanks to its relatively low weight, and the way the top was pointed up as it went in, it would float an unknown distance before sinking... and the system could safely delete it from the sim after a while, once it was clear he wouldn't interact with it again.

She knew full well that the simulation was giving an accurate feedback of a broken leg. She didn't want to think about why it was doing so... because not ten meters away, when she first started doing this for them, they'd tortured a couple of escaped slaves in the scanner room... not for information, because torture rarely got them the sort of information they wanted... but simply to give her good scans of how different sorts of broken bones and torn muscles felt.

She could remember one of the interrogators explaining that if they asked for names under torture, the subject would give whatever names they thought were wanted.. with the actual import being completely meaningless. That unless they had something direct and easily verifiable to ask for, they might as well toss a dart at a wall for all the good it would do. Except... that they enjoyed the work.

Two men had suffered absolutely brutal torture just so she could program the simulation more accurately... and she'd gone on to use some of that data, with her boss's permission, to help her former employer in its feedback for its own sims. She and him both had just been signed on as 'Consultants' for that... as had the two security agents whose ruthless enthusiasm had delivered the actual breaks.

She really needed to stop drinking. She'd made so much money over the years, and what did she have to show for it? Did she actually like this job? Sure, she was good at it. And while she might disagree with the whole 'Augs and their children aren't people' thing, she wasn't stupid enough to sabotage her work... but...

...Maybe she shouldn't stop drinking. This kind of thinking could get her arrested.

She turned back to her console and watched as the next simulated entry arrived; an Overseer and his work crew, based on real people. Ideally, he'd figure out a way to avoid notice, and contact one of them. If not, she'd have to pull the 'they assume he's a missing worker' bit, which might look suspicious.

***

Victor heard the incoming work crew long before they arrived; the drones that watched over the crews made a very distinctive hum, and he took cover in an exceedingly difficult fashion; by using one of the fabric coveralls from the emergency kit to make a tube... and burying himself in the crater left by the lifepod. The ground was still very disturbed, and they'd use a machine to flatten it out before the planting, later... but an actual slave would look at it directly, first, to make sure whatever it was wouldn't damage an expensive machine.

And, of course, if the overseer for the crew was irate, he might make them dig it by hand. Of course... the overseer probably wouldn't be with the crew. He'd likely be sitting in an office, kilometers away, watching through the drone to make sure no-one escaped. That was normal.... and ideal.

As the drone passed by overhead, and the engine slowed to a stop nearby, he looked up through the tiny hole; shifting a rock and glancing up at the nearest crewman... who looked at him with shock for a moment.

He could've been Victor's cousin. Massive build. Hairless skull. Skin engineered to last for endless days of working in harsh sunlight and heat, with a very subtle, unnatural tone to it deliberately spliced in; it would always look just slightly grey in patches without makeup or surgery, and no-one would ever confuse a 'Labor Slave' for an actual person, here in the Alliance.

He'd seen numerous 'unnatural' skin-tones out in the wider universe. Folks with greenish skin that had photosynthetic elements to reduce calorie and oxygen needs. Bluish fur layers for better insulation. So many variants... but here, it was deliberate. An existing line of non-people modified to make sure they didn't look like people.

The biggest difference was, of course... the lack of a shock collar. The man looking down at Victor looked up at the drone... and then quietly pushed a rock in place to hide him. He couldn't hear the muttered conversation between the slaves... but he could hear shovels digging into dirt. Earth being moved. Talking.

Someone close to him was patting the ground. A barely audible voice. "...You Union?"

"...Yes."

"..Should we leave you here?"

Victor thought for a bit. This particular patch wasn't under constant observation. If he could avoid drones and cameras....

"Can you get a message to another plantation?"

"Maybe. Takes time. Days. Can you get one of us out if you do?"

A problem. The Anti-Slavery Union could get people out, sure. It either took time and planning or a brash up-front raid. If he could get word to his contact... an Overseer named Maxson on one of the plantations in the region who worked with the ASU... they could stage something minor. There were cells all around Alliance territory, and he knew one of the ones here. They had a small freighter, usually used for loading food for transport to one of the stations out-system... could hide maybe a dozen people in a food shipment like they had with him.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"...If you can get word to Maxson. On the Mckenzie plantation. Just do it quiet. I'll stay here. And if you can't.... I need something to destroy my implant."

"...You got an implant?" The slave seemed startled. The very idea of a laborer being given one.

"You can too.... if you get out of here. Almost everyone has one... out there."

***

She paused the simulation again. This might be where she left it. If Victor knew this was a simulation, this could be a false flag, to get an Overseer he hated into hot water. If not, if this were legit, then this could be someone responsible for helping free slaves, a genuine ASU cell member. She glanced at the time. She still had two hours left on her shift... that she didn't really need to be here for... and she didn't even need to have Victor's case handled til... next tuesday or wednesday. They expected her to take a few days for each of these. Sometimes, rarely, it did. Or even more.

Most of the time, though... it was much, much faster.

She glanced at the stack. Neat disks, each a standardized 3 inches thick with a six-inch radius, containing a condensed version of a human brain, after the long, drawn-out process of converting it from biology to circuitry. With one exception, all of them were augs. To be sold or destroyed, once she was done. Victor... was one that would be destroyed. No piloting skills, or anything else worthy of keeping him around for sale, and actively hostile to the Alliance. If she didn't resume that sim, the final moment of his existence as a thinking being would likely be him offering reassurance to someone he'd just met. She.... didn't want to post the results and send him to the disposal, just yet.

She selected one of the disks on the stack that she knew wouldn't be destroyed when she was done, skipping by the Janice and Terry files she already had preliminaries on, to collect... Felicity. The disk looked identical to the others, but was essentially marked 'if you had time', and had some political issues tied into it; she was taken when her powered-armor suit was hit, and was suspected of actually being a United Worlds marine still; she'd definitely been one before, but the question was whether she was ordered to come here, or whether her file was true, and she'd just retired from active duty... and run off to join the ASU.

Of course... there were reasons this one was minimal priority. They were almost dead certain that the marine would be able to tell it was a sim, and they had only recovered about seven percent of her body; they couldn't give her a good scan at all. So aside from the seventeen seconds of video footage, she had no data to construct her body for the sim.

The original had tattoos. Which... were only partially visible in the recordings. No way to know what the parts under her shirt looked like. They could recreate her original body based on her genetics, but would need a plausible reason for the tats to be gone.... which amounted to a whole-body reconstruction. And the Alliance had Seraph and her bosses create this department because they knew both the Empire and the United Worlds had exactly such a department, so she'd know that this might.... huh.

It was a longshot. But if her earlier subject, Jacob, had found this disk, still embedded in the power-armored figure who wore it, what would he do? Especially if he had the parts to make an interface, hook it into a drone... even if it was one like Ben... Bryce... whichever... used? He'd bring it back. And maybe, just maybe, she could learn something useful from the conversations. Use the two subjects against each other.

After sending a message to her boss about the idea, alongside a request to hold on to Jacob's stack a bit longer, she sent out a request for any other data on how 'Felicity' was recovered. She thought about it for a moment... and sent a request up to borrow a few combat drones to stick into the scanner; intact or broken, didn't matter; alongside an explanation of why she wanted the data.

Alliance combat drones weren't that much better than what you could get on the independent market; but detailed scans of them weren't available online, just deliberately wrong ones for online wargaming. And, well. If she used those, someone who'd actually blown them up in combat might notice.

She smiled. She didn't need to do any of this today... but she was well ahead. She could just laze about til wednesday without doing anything if she wanted now... but maybe she could go further. Get enough of these done that she could take a week off. Just relax... with her new cat. She was so looking forward to that.

It was just about time now. She sent a message to the spooks; they could start following her route home, do their usual paranoid due diligence.

***

Buried three meters below the apartment building, a vacuum-suited figure grimaced. The smell was horrific.. and adjusting his mask had led to just a tiny bit getting through. There was no open flow of sewage, just masses of pipes, pumps, facilities; but there had been leaks, in the past, and the smell seemed to be eternal.

He had been down here since the day before, watching; he had a fiber-optic cable run through the storm drain, with no active emissions above the sewers themselves, letting him watch the street... and was working on his method of entry.

They girl went from a heavily secured facility, through observed public, to her private residence, almost every day. He hated it, but if he wanted a moment alone with an intel specialist, he'd need to break into the building. He'd scouted another few intel specialists, but every damned one of them was either the same or worse; some of them he couldn't even find where they lived, they always took random routes.

It would be nice if evil meant incompetent. But... he watched, as the girl approached the building. Followed by... a man in uniform. An actual Operative? Whoever he was, he was scanning everything, looking everywhere... he even looked suspiciously at the storm drain, though the cable was so thin as to be invisible at that distance. Wait. Was this her monthly audit?

This... was perfect. They'd do the gene-scan. Completely verify her ID and check her security. And if he could slip into her apartment without being detected, and apply his own unique brand of leverage... she'd have a month to get him the data he wanted... or enough to be worth getting out alive. He wouldn't even have to threaten to come back for her... he could make her own government her enemy with a quick injection and a little patience.

He brought up the floor plan. No ventilation big enough to fit a person... but thats what drones were for. He could get it set as soon as these people were gone... and then just walk right in the front door.