Over the next two weeks, things with Sophia went from bad to worse. Apparently, one of her father’s new church-friends had seen us together and her father was incensed over her, as he called it, whorish ways, yelling at her for the sin of being a homosexual, taking away all electronic devices and forbidding her from leaving the house, other than going to the summer-job they had organised for her. I had thought about creating a position for her, at TitanTech, but there were a few problems with it. One was that she was a minor, so her parents had to co-sign any paperwork, another was that it would establish a direct connection between a suspicious company that was ultimately registered to Metis and Sophia’s real identity. At the end of the day, doing so could force Sophia to abandon her life and if we wanted to go there, she could simply leave.
I managed to meet with her at her job, but only for a few minutes, because she did not want to give her father more munition, until he cooled down a bit. I wanted to get angry, but there was no way I could react in a negative way to anything she said, I was afraid to do so, for fear of shattering her. She looked so utterly fragile when I saw her, it proved to me, that I truly had an emotional heart. I had to have, for I felt it breaking in that moment. So, I hid my anger, hid my sadness and tried my very best to cheer her up. I think it worked, but the question was, for how long.
To combat the feeling of helplessness, I threw myself into work with a vengeance. I spent time in my gym until my muscles burned before working on surveillance data until my mind was numb only to go back into the gym. It was a cycle, and not a healthy one, but it helped with the pain I was feeling. Even the growing pains I was feeling all over my body helped to distract me, so I was welcoming them.
Galatea had the helpful analysis that the genetic change I had initiated was changing my body-chemistry which caused my hormones to be out of balance and the disruption was increasing the emotional peaks I was feeling. According to her, it should balance out over time, but for now, every positive emotion would feel better but at the same time, negative emotions would feel worse. So, numbness it was.
From time to time, I would hop into the game I played with Joy, mostly so I had a human being to talk to, even if I had to hide a lot from her. But I told her a little about Sophia’s situation, just so I could talk to someone about it, other than Galatea that is. Talking to another human helped.
But there were gains during that time, one of them was a comprehensive picture of the daily routine of Detective Kendall and another was a horrible kludge I called the fishing reel.
With Sophia out of the picture, I had to come up with another safe and stealthy way to retrieve the data from the bugs she had planted or the data would become obsolete and useless. The kludge was offensive to my design-ethics but it had a single, saving grace. It worked.
I had taken one of the drones, strengthened the ducted fans that let it fly and added a spool of thin, synthetic rope to it. At the end of that rope, I placed the receiver that would take in the data from the transmissions. The spool would set down the receiver as close as possible, either on a roof or against a wall from up high, while two other drones added perspective for Galatea. It was inefficient, ugly and highly weather-dependant but it could do what it had to. Even if I wanted to shower, for feeling dirty, after committing such a sin against the deities of design.
In the evening, of the twenty-fifth day after Sophia and I had placed the bugs, one of the hidden contact-lines rang. As much as a digitally redirected line can ring, that is. It was the one I had given to Voltic in her hero-version.
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“Good Evening” I answered the phone with a cascade of high-level voice-scramblers enabled. At first, what I said was taken by Galatea and converted into text, to be put into a text-to-speech program before getting fed into a mechanical scrambler to be distorted. Once that was done, the result was fed into a synthesizer to sound roughly human again but nothing of my original voice remained.
“Good Evening. I was given this number by an… acquaintance and I was told that I could get information if I was willing to pay.” Voltic was lacking even the simplest scrambling, allowing me to identify her voice as Sandra.
“Yes, I know. So, what do you want to trade for the knowledge you are seeking, Voltic?”
“The acquaintance said there were things she wanted. Can you tell me what those things were?” she asked, still not using my name. Sensible precaution, just in case my code-name was on some sort of scanning-list.
“I believe we can come to an arrangement.” I said, before sending a direct message to her phone, with a location and the simple message ‘Bring all data on the street-gang known as Omega’. I even heard the ping of her phone receiving the message. “Be at this location, tomorrow night twenty-two hundred, alone. I will guarantee that you will not be attacked by any agents in my employ or forces I am affiliated with. I would advise you to tell a trusted friend about your plans, as a form of insurance. But if we are disturbed, I cannot guarantee an accurate assessment of the state of your powers.”
With that, I hung up, without waiting for confirmation. She would be there, I was certain of it. And telling her that there were agents in my employ would hopefully prevent double-crossing for fear of the personal repercussions I had warned her about.
The location I had given her was an empty warehouse, relatively close to the one TitanTech owned, close by the docks. During the night, I went in and made sure that there were some defenses hidden in the area. Mostly, enough smoke-bombs to envelop the area in a dense cloud, letting me slip away into my own warehouse and the hidden tunnel inside. In addition, I had placed tons of cameras in the area, all linked with directional transmitters to make sure that nobody could sneak up on me. I had even placed a few body-scanners, hidden on the approach-paths to check for hidden dangers. Those, she would most likely detect, but I doubted that she could do something about it. Not without tipping me off.
Inside the warehouse, I set up every scanner known to man, I wanted to collect as much data as I could under the guise of making sure that I was right about the safety of her power. All the scanners were running on their own power, shielded from stray electricity that may throw off the readings and equipped with nano-thermite charges, powerful enough to reduce the equipment to slag if needed.
Never leave anything behind that could be analyzed to gain information on one's capabilities was the cardinal rule to remain an unknown potential. And the fact that the potential I had at my command remained hidden, kept me safe.
The next day, my surveillance was running at full power, Galatea keeping an eye on everything going on, scanning every passerby into a database to make sure that they actually came and went, to prevent a group of people amassing as a strike-team, ready to breach the warehouse.
Hiding in the shadows, I waited for the appointed time. Once again, I felt a little strange, due to the different gear I had prepared for this occasion. I was wearing the business-suit like garb, as it provided excellent protection against electricity without major electric components to give myself away in her electromagnetic sense. In addition, if she somehow managed to short-out the servo-motors in my armour, I was slowed to a crawl. making the necessary quick getaway impossible. Weapons-wise, I had prepared a simple pistol fabricated out of non-conductive material, including bullets, just in case she had some sort of electromagnetic shield that I had never seen.
But, in the end, all the precautions seemed to be moot. Fifteen minutes before the appointed time, Sandra walked up. Not Voltic, garbed in her League-uniform, Sandra in civilian clothes, with nothing but a mobile-phone on her.
And ten minutes before the appointed time, I got a message. It was sent on the hidden line I had given Sandra and, it was addressed to both Joy and me, telling both of us about the meeting and that, if she did not check in every fifteen minutes, we should alert the League.
In a way, it was genius. Coming in civilian clothes made an attack on her a personal offence and using two friends of her Sandra-identity reinforced the point. My identity was most likely chosen to add the unknown behind Cat into the mix, as an additional arrow against Metis, if something happened. She just wanted to give Metis the maximum amount of trouble, if there was a betrayal.