Sophie got up, pushing over the chair she was sitting on in the process. Still in low gravity she tried to sprint towards the door, to close it before the angry-looking robots decide it's better to destroy preemptively instead of asking questions. The Space marines didn't look like they were asked a lot of questions. She jumped towards the door and pushed the close button, but it didn’t budge and the door stays open. She grabs her plasma gun from her inventory and takes cover behind the wall next to the door. Nothing happens, the door doesn't close, but the robots aren't coming in either. She looks around the corner expecting a firing squad to be aiming at her every move. As she looks, five flying robots the size of a reasonably big soda bottle are buzzing in circles, scanning the room for life, blue laser like light spreads from their front into a triangle, seeming to vacuum every bit of information that is in the room into their hard drives or whatever they have installed. Curiously they enter all the rooms but leave the one she is in alone. "Why would a security robot not enter the only place that is to be secured in time of peril..." She whispers to no one but herself. A few minutes’ pass and the robots don't seem to be planning on leaving, they are about thirty centimeters long, have a cylinder like shape and little V-shaped wings on their sides that seem to have rotors inside of them. The front of the robots was where the magic truly happened, there was a camera installed that looked like those old-fashioned security camera's, slightly spherical and made out of glass that was tinted so you couldn't see it moving around. It took up about 90 percent of the space in front and then there were two holes underneath it. Seemingly giving it what looked like a face, the holes were barely two centimeters in diameter and except that they looked like nostrils, were probably also exits for whatever unreasonable weaponry it had installed on it. Underneath these two holes was a third hole, completing the triangle. This third hole was currently busy puking out the blue laser that was scanning the place.
She withdrew her gaze from the five roaming bots and held her gun closer to her chest, this was going to be her first real fight! She gave a small smile before frowning again and looking around the door frame again "Why are they not searching here though" she said in a questioning tone. Seconds passed but still nothing happened, and then an idea hit her, they were not entering here because if there was anybody here, they could not open fire! It would be strange if they tried to protect the one and only thing of importance on the space station by accidentally destroying it. Their programs must forbid to use force on this room and to wait for an intruder to show himself in the main room. She looked towards the walls if an intruder was free to do whatever he or she wanted in this room that would be a serious breach of security. The walls didn't seem special, just the same as the rest... She bummed her head against the wall behind her, sighing at her own stupidity "The space marines were the first line of defense, so they could control their firing and assess the situation better, a guard was probably in the room at all times. The bots were only extra muscle in emergencies. "What now though? Well simple actually, she just got some free target practice. She put the plasma gun in front of her visor so she could see over the barrel and through the front sight, putting the gun on burst, her outstretched left arm was holding the grip furthest away while her right arm was bend, her finger on the trigger.
She breathed in deep and looked one more time around the door frame before turning into the door frame and opening fire on the nearest security bot. The plasma gun took off one of its wings and it crashed to the ground, she shot another round into its "eye" to make sure she wouldn't be shot at from the ground and then turned towards the next bot. As she shot the first one down the other four turned in her direction, there might be no sound, without an atmosphere to carry the sound but the bots had definitely registered the movement through their eye and were now flying towards her. "Moment of truth" she mumbled as she shot at another robot, missing it, and taking cover again behind the wall. Moving targets were a lot harder to hit, she had missed the bot by quite the margin.
Waiting for the bots to come through the door she kept her plasma gun up, pointing at the door, nervously breathing in and out, focusing on the trigger of her gun. A minute had passed and now she knew for certain. The bots would definitely not enter the room, she looked around the corner again and got shot at by a dozen lasers. "Fuck! Aren't you supposed to have orders not to damage the goddamn computer!" Yelling she retreated her head and stood there while she smelled something burning. "Time to single shot these bastards." she switched the plasma gun to "nuke the bastard" and very slowly angled her position so she could see one of the bots, she needed a certain kill, and not a shoot-out. She did not want to know how reliable her space suit was in a fight with lasers... Slowly turning she saw the first one and fired before ducking away again, the bot shot one time before being torn to pieces by the plasma. She smiled a little, and went on to the second target, rinse and repeat. As she shot the last one she looked around, on guard if she might have missed a bot, but soon she went to see if the robots had dropped anything, loot being the mobs secondary use, after experience. Even though she doubted that experience was a thing in here.
Slowly making her way to the five defense robots she crouched next to her first victim and found a credit card for ten credits, "Guess these things where not good enough to drop something decent." Checking the rest, she found forty more credits but not much else. Shame. She walked back and sat in the chair again, her quest had updated again as soon as she had killed the bots, stating she could either contact The Division or The Federation with news of the successful attack on the moon. She chose to send word to the federation as The Division had as much tried to kill her just now as the Space marines. More important was the fact that she did not want to contact an enemy of the federation on a machine of the federation while in a space station of the federation. Selecting the last mail entry, she typed a small report and signed the email with "A Concerned citizen" before pressing send and hopping off the chair and towards the main room again.
As she made small jumps, she got a notification that by not stating her name she had not been identified by neither the Federation nor The Division and was thus still anonymous. Which meant she didn't get any additional rewards, but neither made any enemies which was fine by her for now. She didn't know enough to pick a side yet, and maybe she didn't want to pick a side at all. She walked into the main room again and made a final round, checking if she had missed anything. It was still dark in the space station, the sun outside was smoldering the walls. She looked around, not sure what she could do now, going outside was not really an option and staying here was useless.
She played with the idea in her head to log off a little sooner than planned when she saw a scorch mark on the table that had not been there before. She smiled a little, thinking that it must have been the burst shot she tried to fire at the flying bot. Disregarding it after a couple of seconds she was about to log off, when she noticed that the spot was not only black instead of white, but was also sticking out of the table. This table was semi indestructible, how did her burst of a little plasma take a chip off? "That can't be right" she said into her helmet while she made her way over, better to check it then to leave a goldmine, right? As she came closer, she saw that there apparently had been a secret compartment in the table. Which she had shot open with her missed shot... "Well that, or the compartment was designed to open ones I finished my quest..." Sophie said as she placed her hand underneath the lit and pushed it further up.
When she saw, what was underneath it gave her some pause, before whistling into her helmet. "Finally some proper tech, huh? Looks like an Iris Scanner, a DNA checker and a passcode..." she looked at the installation, commenting on it as she went from hopeful to doubtful she would be able to crack this. She looked around, then thought of the space marines. She went and got all the bodies that she had stashed in the barracks and placed them in a row along the wall of the main room. Now for the hard part she had to get them out of their suits, but they were kind of, sort of, frozen solid by the breaches in their suits so they were in no way flexible. "Disgusting" She said as she had decided it was better to just get the eye balls out and break a hand off, which was accompanied with frozen human flesh now floating through the whole main room. It was quite the struggle to get the eye ball out in one piece and she had to use the multi-tool laser and carefully cut some of the hindering face away and chop of the right and left hand.
Thanking the lord and savior that she couldn't smell a thing and that their blood was frozen solid, she still gagged when the first eye popped out of the socked and she had to chase it through the room to prevent it from shattering against a wall. She slowly made her way back and placed the eye ball in front of the iris scanner. She waited a while as two blue lasers where scanning the eyeball and then got the news she was hoping for. A blinking green light! The first had been the right one! She did a little dance, thinking about her luck that she didn't have to butcher the rest when she put the hand into the DNA scanner. A red light. She looked at it a little aghast that it hadn't been over, then moving onto cutting off his left hand and removing the hand from the glove. Another red light. "Ah god dammit, these bastards needed two people for their security check!" grumbling she went on to cut off hands, and as she didn't know how important it was if it was right or left, she did them both until finally after ten minutes and three bodily reactions she could just about contain, the light finally blinked green from the right hand of space marine number seven.
She Pushed her hands above her head to celebrate before frowning and looking at the final piece of the puzzle, the coded lock... "They wouldn't… right?" she said as she doubtfully entered the number combination of the front door into the touch pad. It blinked green and the table split apart revealing a stairway down. "I love idiots! especially dead ones! You beautiful fools! Thank you, boys, it was a pleasure working together!" she said as she smiled, put the hand next to the frozen eyeball, and plunged into the pitch-black stairwell.
As she made her way down, she checked her Genesis to find that she had grown again. Agility had finally taken off, giving her five percent, then there was a general increase of five percent in her mental fortitude, persistence and ten percent in empathy which was nice, she guessed. The biggest change again came from her engineering which had leapt up with fifteen percent! Her spatial awareness seemed to have profited from the shoot off as it had gained eight percent, and lastly intelligence and numeric had gone up five percent, numeric being related to the coded locks she assumed.
Not too shabby she thought as she was ascending the dark stairwell to god knows where. The walls were the same as upstairs but they seemed to be whiter. If that was because she was shining her flashlight closer to it or the plasma rifles and lasers had made a mess upstairs was unclear, but it gave a clean almost new kind of feeling. That was until she encountered a steel door that was a little rusted and creaked open to the side when she came into view. Behind the steel door was another and as soon as she was in between the door behind her closed again before she could react. "That's not good... Right?" She asked the thin air in her helmet. She was looking around the place but there was not much to see, only the white walls and the two steel doors. No locks, no buttons, no touch pads, nothing... She looked at her air, and she still had an hour and forty minutes’ left, "Should have gotten a refill…" she muttered.
A few seconds passed as nothing happened before suddenly gravity seemed to hit her like a hammer and a gas was being pumped into the room. She fell down to her hands and knees before she could get a grip on herself and stand back up again. It wasn't that the gravitational pull was strong, it was just that she had not expected it and went from weighing close to nothing to her fifty kilos’ plus suit. Breathing slightly harder and sweating a little she calmed herself down, a light was blinking in the corner of her visor, and she looked at it. Apparently, the Toxic meter can also give a read out when there is breathable air around, as it was now blinking green with O2 next to it. "Finally!" She pushed on the side of her helmet and pressed her visor up breathing in a deep breath of fresh air.
Or so she thought, as it turned out the smell of sweat and stale air in her suit could not compete with the moist, moldy stale air that was coming out of the pipelines in the ground. If she had to guess then nobody had used this part of the stationed for as long or longer then the time the space marines had been dead, so about six months. Gagging a little she put a hand in front of her mouth hoping it would help. Smelling her glove however was not something she would recommend to anyone, certainly not now that she had been butchering people upstairs. She flicked off a piece of rapidly defrosting meat and brought her hand back down again. Frowning and wiggling her nose she walked through the now opened steel door and walked into another tunnel. Actually, walking and not trying to prevent hitting the ceiling with every pass was a change of pace, but it felt more comfortable, she had more movability like this and was less dependent on the fact if she had taken off at the right angle and with the correct strength. Still the suit was made for less gravity and it made it hard to walk in. She slowly starts walking into the tunnel, shuffling close to the wall, keeping a hand on the wall for when she trips.
"What is this place..." she mumbled under her breath as she slowly made her way down the tunnel. It was still pitch black as she had yet to find any light switches. Something that was strange in and of itself. Why was there no light source? The computer was still working fine so there had to be a source of power. Then why didn't the station seem to have lights? Strange. In the end, she couldn't think of something that made sense while she crept down the pitch-black tunnel. As a few minutes passed, and she made some decent ground, she was finally confronted with a T section, the wall she was facing had some weird letters on it and two arrows, pointing to either direction of the T section. Not comprehending the language, she first looked left, shining her light down the hallway, and then looked right. Both parts of the tunnel led to a door, she decided on checking out the door closest to her first and took a few steps to the right. As she arrived at the door she was confronted by a steel door that had a rectangular window in its center. The window was woven with wire and started quite high in the door making it hard to look through as it technically started above her head. Not one to be discoursed by technicalities she stood on her toes, so she could still look through it. On the other side of the glass where the same bunk beds she had seen upstairs. This time, fifteen bunk beds stood side by side spread out over the entire room. The only real difference being that these seemed to belong to little children. The whole room was plastered with vibrant colors. She tried to see the floor by jumping a little but the suit was too heavy for it to help in any significant way. Giving up on examining the room, she looked at the door handle and saw that it was locked with a key card. Another road block, oh well. She turned around and slowly made her way toward the other room, the door was the same as the other one and thus she had to stand on her toes to take a peak.
The moment she looked inside, the face of an aging man stared back at her through the window. "AAAAAAAHHHHHH" She screamed and fell down on her butt, not losing eye contact with the man in the process. The man, had a white beard that spread across half of his face, long white eyebrows that bent down a little at the end and kind blue eyes that were looking straight at her. His hair was white and a mess, and his nose was slightly crooked to the left. His ears sticking out of the white hair. As the extraterrestrial staring prolonged, she calmed down a bit, a little ashamed that she had been scared like that and tried to get her heavy breathing under control, her chest still rising in swallow quick breaths. She got up from the floor but kept her gaze on the old man. He had followed her movements with his eyes and seemed to be smiling even though it was hard to say due to the beard and the height of the window. She waved at him, not sure what else to do to establish a line of communication. The man looked at her strange for a moment and tilted his head like an owl before waving back with a wrinkled hand. She nodded, and he nodded back, then she looked at the lock on the door. Swallowing a little she looked back at the man on the other side of the glass and as she caught his eyes, he nodded again and pointed towards the other door in the T section and nodded. Then he pointed to the ceiling. She didn't really understand his intentions, but at least she understood half of what he was trying to say. She also knew she wasn't going to fool a speech pattern lock any time soon with all the keys dead and frozen. So she just nodded and went along with the plan and back to the other door.
Shuffling back to where she started, she stared at the key card swipe, not sure what to do. Until now she had relied on her brain to find a loop hole and stupidity of others. Now she had to do some real breaking in as she hadn't found any key cards in the possessions of the space marines. She looked back at the window of the other door. The old man was nowhere to be seen and had left her to her own devices. Not that he could have helped, but still. She looked at the little machine that had but one function, to check if the key card was the correct one. It was black, with a small vertical edge that announced the presence of the slot through which the card had to be swiped. A little LED light at the top was there to inform the user if the card was accepted or not, and it was currently red. She also noticed that there were three little screws holding it all together. Deciding that it was useless to her whole, as she didn't have a key card, she took out her multi tool, prepped it into screwdriver mode and went to work. The screws flew out with a practiced ease she did not know of and the black plastic body part of the lock fell away, the magical insides presented itself. She sighed in relief, mumbling out loud "Thank god the game is not too realistic. This I can handle". What was staring back at her were two wires, both green, that led to the LED light, one on each side of the swipe slot. The wire was isolated with green plastic but the copper insides where connected on both sides with little screws. This was just easy, connect the two sides so they for a full circuit and I will open up to you, lock. When the circuit was full, the LED would show a green light, otherwise it stayed red. She made the multi tool screwdriver smaller and screwed out the little screws, then grabbed the two wires at isolation and let the copper parts touch. As she did, the door slid open, and the LED blinked green, she smiled, doing a little "whoohooo" and rolling the copper parts of the two wires into each other so the door would stay open. She also got a system message informing her that engineering had gone up with 10%. To no surprise, but still good to know.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Engineer GEN1 +10%
She got up from her crouching position and swaggered through the now glorious open door. Once inside she took another look around. the room was still the same as when she had seen it through the glass, but this time she could also see the floor, which was littered with plush, toys and baby dolls, confirming her suspicions that this must have been a sleeping quarter for children. Now the next question was of course why a transit station on a moon would need a place to house thirty children. She looked around but there was nothing of note in the room, the toys and dolls lay strewn around but nothing too messy, more like a normal children's room. The bunk beds were made, there was no trash or litter and nothing that indicated that these children had belongings like the marines. She slowly walked through the room, letting her eyes take in anything that might clue her to where the children might have gone off to. There had been no indication upstairs that the tunnel had been found before she had gotten there, so the children had either left before that time or were still here. Based on the fact that the old man was still here she guessed the latter rather than the former.
She reached the end of the room and turned around, sighing a little and pulling her lower lip up in a kissing face while scratching her chin, thinking what to do next. The old man had pointed up. She slowly moved her gaze towards the ceiling still scratching her chin and let her eyes fall on a ventilator shaft. "Ah there we go" she snickered, the instructions of the old man turned out to be quite easy to follow. She grabbed a bunk bed that stood nearest to the ventilator shaft and pulled at it, making scraping noises over the steel floor plates it gave way and she positioned it underneath and climbed on top of it. As she made her way up the iron bars groaned under the combined weight of the space suit and her body weight but thankfully it seemed to hold, for now. Now came the next challenge, she looked at the ventilator, it was a white steel plate that grilled with little slits where oxygen was pumped through, at least that was what she presumed. The plate was attached to the ceiling with four screws in the four corners. She grabbed her Multi tool again and went to work. Screwing the plate loose in a couple of seconds and earning herself another percent in engineering. It was surprisingly heavy to, something she found out when she removed the last screw and had to use all her strength not to be dragged down by the falling ventilator plate that was now dangling over the side of the bunk bed. Slowly releasing her grip on it the plate fell down fast and with a small thud it created a dent in the floor board unlucky enough to absorb the full weighed. She looked down and smiled wearily before turning around and looking up into the whole, shining her light into the shaft. The shaft had just enough room to accommodate her and her very wide space suit and had cornered to the left half a meter into the shaft. This was going to be tricky, her space suit was not made for climbing or jumping in a space with gravity, and the bunk bed was most certainly not made to support her weight, multiplied by gravity and the motion of jumping might have some unfriendly consequences.
Readying herself to make the jump, she bent her knees and put some pressure on the mattress underneath her feet, it groaned heavily and she could swear she heard some popping sounds. "here goes nothing" she whispered and unleashed her jump and stretched her hands towards the ridge that indicated the beginning of corner. Almost able to grab it she started falling back to earth and her face that had initially been hopeful now changed into a grimace. As she landed back on the mattress, the whole bunk bed snapped into two and she fell in an awkward angle to the ground. As the back of her head made first contact with the cold floor plates, she whiplashed herself and the rest of her body doubled over with her neck as the lever. Laying there for a couple of seconds, she was cursing herself internally for not thinking before she acted, or rather almost breaking her neck because she was too impatient. She groaned, and fell on her side before picking herself up of the ground and rubbing her neck through the suit, something that was close to useless. She had taken a solid 20% on the damage front, but after the certain death situations she had been in before this was just a mild inconvenience.
Shrugging off the failed attempt, she looked at the rubble it had left. The bed was now broken into two sides, and the mattresses were on top of each other. This particular bunk bed was not going to be of any use anymore, so she got rid of the iron encasing and put the mattresses to the side. She had a plan now, she needed more stability and more reach. That meant either making the bunk beds stronger, something that would require a lot of welding, or she could use more bunk beds to divide the weight. She opted for the latter as it was less work. She knew it had the possibility of being another shortcut that was too short but she had never in her life welded a thing so who knew how that was going to work out right? Convincing herself that she was doing the right thing here, she went and got two new bunk beds and placed them underneath the open ventilator shaft. Those in place she got the mattresses from before and placed them on top of the ones that were already in the top section. She didn't, however, put them on vertically but decided that to distribute the weight it was better to put them on horizontally, leaving the originals in their vertical position. With that taken care of she got up again and wiggled a little, there was less groaning of the iron which was good, but like this she was still uncertain if she could make the jump. She got off and put on another layer (vertically) of mattresses on top, climbed back up and had to dug a little not to hit her head against the ceiling. "This should do it" she said in a cautious voice, placing herself underneath the whole in the ceiling and grabbing the ridge. She smiled and pulled herself up, which was not at all easy. Struggling to crawl into the steel tunnel her helmet kept bumping against the ceiling and her suit scraped against the edges. She finally managed to crawl far enough that her belly was laying inside of the tunnel, and while her legs were still dangling out of the shaft, she had to take a break and gather her stamina. Her breath was heavy, and she could feel the sweat streaming down her face, she was just glad she wasn't claustrophobic.
After a couple of minutes of being glad to be alive but not much else, she got back to work and crawled herself a way into the cold, dark shaft that was a ventilator system. Now that she was in she could smell the stale air that was flowing through it. There was no way back as she was not able to turn even if her life depended on it, but luckily her target was forwards. She started to tiger very slowly as there was no space for any real movement and after an hour she felt like she should have passed the distance between two rooms. The shaft was groaning under her exertion of strength and maybe also under the weight that it was not used to but she kept going. Ten minutes later she saw the same steel ventilator plate she had removed previously and let out a breath of relief. She had made it. At the same point in time she heard another groan from the steel surrounding her, she had gotten used to it by now and didn't think too much of it until the sound was accompanied with a snapping sound. She held still, afraid to move, this was clearly not the sound you wanted to hear while in a ventilator shaft. She had seen enough movies to know where this was going. Redoubling her effort to get to the exit, the shaft shook with strength and she heard another snap, and another until finally she felt gravity taking over and heard a rumbling sound. She fell through the ceiling, together with part of the ventilator shaft she was occupying. Hitting the ground was accompanied with the loud gong like noise of two steel objects hitting each other. During the time that she tried climbing out of her little steel tomb it was her that groaned for a change. She had absorbed the impact with her whole body, which had the awful consequence that about everything she could think of was hurting.
She crawled out and put her hand on the edge to give her some more leverage, halfway out she looked up and into the eye sockets of a tiny human skeleton. "What the hell!" she blurted and tried to back up, sadly she was still a steel mermaid. Going about freeing herself from her steel captor with twice as much vigor while keeping eye contact with the withered away little human being she finally freed herself and backed away from it. "Mystery of the missing children, solved” she stammered while her gaze took in the room she was in. Her landing place had been some sort of class room as there were little tables and chairs all around her. The walls were plastered with drawings of children, and maps of the universe, a Federation flag hang a little out of place on the far side of the wall and in front of the room there was an old fashioned black chalkboard. The chairs and tables that surrounded her had little human skeletons in them, and the place where she had fell through the ceiling had squashed a table top and a lot of dust around it. She felt the urge to puke, her stomach contracting, putting a hand on her belly and another on the empty chair next to her she bent over and gagged. Nothing came out, thankfully. She looked up again, towards the desk in front of the class, in a chair behind it the old man was watching her intently with his kind blue eyes. He wore a blue turtleneck sweater that she hadn't seen from outside the door. There was no trace of the smile he had before and she could see the strain of holding back his emotions on his face. She opened her mouth, but nothing came to mind. She tried to take a step forward but her legs were wobbly and she was surrounded by the dust that had ones been a child's last remains. She looked at her suite and saw there was a big grey stain on it where she had lain on the floor. Shaking a little she tried to wipe it off with diminishing returns until only a little remained. She refocused on the old man, and finally spoke "What the hell happened here" her voice shook, the words came out soft, and when the old man didn't respond immediately she wanted to repeat herself but he held up his hand to stop her. She closed her mouth again, and he waved her towards him. She looked puzzled, did she trust this man who sat surrounded by the corpses of children. Then again what else was she supposed to do? Leave? No way. She took a step, trying as best she could to avoid the grey dust that was strewn at random around her and made her way towards the old man.
As she made her way forward she looked around and counted the remains, twenty-eight including the one she had destroyed, close to the maximum that could be given a bed. These were surely the children that lived in the other room, playing with their toys and dolls, sleeping comfortably in the not so strong bunk beds. Now dead. She refocused on the old man that was calmly waiting for her to come to him. Before any time passed she was in front of his desk, scrutinizing him with her gaze, waiting for him to speak. He looked her over, then nodded and finally she heard his low and scratching voice, almost a whisper, like a voice that had not been used in a very long time "I'm glad to finally see a brave traveler making his way down towards me, but I'm afraid that it was far too late for the children to be saved. Do not blame yourself as it has been to late ever since the first traveler even set foot in our universe." he pause a moment, seemingly judging her reaction. Which was nothing, she had none, if this was all part of the game then she would accept that, but she had never blamed herself. So, she still looked at the old man with doubt and some anger. He nodded his head, glad with whatever he thought he saw from her and continued. "For the last five years I have been here by myself, the children died after a week of no food or no water, as I suspect that our "Caretakers" had a little accident." He paused again, and this time he seemed to want something, the question 'did they?' in everything except his mouth. Sophie sighed, and said "they did, Mister?" she asked in return. He smiled a little, his white teeth slightly visible underneath his white beard and his wrinkles slightly deeper than before "Camron Bell" he whispered with a nod of his head “Nice to meet you, miss?" he mirrored her question, while putting out a wrinkled and slightly paled hand towards her. She looked at the hand with a little bit of apprehension, what had this Camron done to stay alive for 5 years? But up until now he didn't seem to have ill intentions and her intuition said the same, she decided to follow her intuition for a bit and grabbed the hand. It was cold, but soft, she shook it and said "Sophie" then let go of the hand.
The man called Camron kept smiling and said in his whispering voice "Nice to meet you Sophie. Now I know you have much to ask but please let me give you the story and then you can decide on what to ask." She nodded, and he continued without waiting for the nod "fifteen years ago I got captured by the federation, I was a scientist on my home world and was doing research in something that is called Psionics. It is the ability to control machines and the surrounding space with the mind, or better with the energies that the mind naturally possesses. On my home planet, nobody had ever heard of these theories but thirty years ago I found a subject that could move objects without touching them and ever since it became an obsession of mine to find others and perform experiments. Where was this special gift coming from, was it special to the individual? the race? Other parameters, in the end I found more questions for every answer I found but it seemed that children could develop the ability between six and ten when stimulated in the right way. Of course, like all other abilities, the right way of stimulating often resulted in failure, but the participants that I helped foster their ability got very far in life. As my studies became more known, the federation got involved, and I wanted to quit the search for answers due to morality issues. When I made it known to them, they took me here and placed me under special care, taking me away from my home world, I was to work here on further developing a way to fool proof the ,"stimulation". More than that though they altered my physique, making me not dependent on food water and sleep to survive. They said it was for a more efficient working relationship, but I know now that it was so their slave and valuable intellectual property would not die under unusual circumstances. Like when the guards that provide the food die." He was quiet for a while and so was she. What she had heard up till now, explained a lot if not all of her questions.
He looked through the room, a small tear formed on his old and wrinkled cheek and his voice became even softer and crooked, almost inaudible "I was their teacher, and their doctor. They were brought in at six-year-old or almost six years old, most of them parentless from one of the many orphanages in the universe. Some had been sold by those desperate enough. But all were scared and crying the first night they were here. Most left when they got to ten, afraid and crying again because they knew they would not come back, as no one had come back after they left. They were scared of where they were going, and all I could say was to a safe place, even if I knew that they would be tested and judged for usefulness. The useful placed in the military, the useless killed like cattle. I had become a farm for the psionically gifted, but as a normal person myself, I could do nothing." He was quiet again, taking a deep breath he looked at Sophie with intense angry and sad eyes, his voice going from a whisper to something that sounded more normal "I had to watch as they died, while I didn't even feel tired. I had to sit in the smell of their decomposing bodies as I couldn't leave. I had to wait five years, alone, with the bodies of those I loved and cared for, while the federation had all but forgotten we existed." He shook his head, his anger turning into the deep sadness that threatened to take his speech, and he hang his head.
Sophie knew this sadness all too well, but she could not imagine how rough the last fifteen years must have been for this old man. She took his hand in her own and sat on her haunches. Lowering her head so she could look up at the man called Camron Bell, who was staring at his shoes now, his eyes blank, the thoughts of the lost haunting him. She pinched his hand a little and whispered, "It's alright, It was not your fault. I will get you out of here." He slowly came back to the present and looked her in the eyes, underneath the sadness something that looked like happiness floated through the surface and a small sad smile opened his beard, "That won't be possible I'm afraid." he whispered and pulled the turtleneck of his sweater down. There was a collar that bleeped underneath "If I pass the door my head will explode, quite nasty technology, but efficient" He whispered and looked to the door. There was longing in that gaze, a longing that disturbed Sophie more than anything the man had told her before.
They were quiet for a while after that, Sophie didn't know what to do, or what to ask, her mind was in turmoil. This was not what she had expected, the emotions on this old man called Camron were so real, was he really just code? Just an AI? How? She looked around the room again, these poor children were like her in a way, no one to take care of them but an old man that had no other choice. The thought was depressing, and a little untrue, Frank was not in the same situation as Camron, and she was better off on so many points then these children that she felt a little shame for comparing herself with them. For one, she was alive. She returned her gaze back to the old man, who by now was also starring at her. He had a little bit of an amazed look on his face and stared intently at her. She pulled her eyebrows together and croaked "What?" the emotions affecting her voice more then she wanted to let on. He gave her a reassuring smile and whispered "Something changed..." he was quiet, looking for words "Something compels me to ask you to find other in a similar situation as myself and help them as you might be able to help me." he looked confused, and Sophie felt confused. Should an NPC be describing a quest like this? But in the end, it was still a game so she answered in "I will help you, Camron". The man looked her in the eyes and blinked a couple of times, seemingly somewhere else with his mind before croaking "Ow... " he looked sad, sadder even then she had seen him ever since she had met him, but it was different, a melancholy that crushed him seemed to seep into his eyes. He whispered “Are you sure? There will be no way back and I fear your path will be even harder than mine has been." a small ping and the quest details came into her vision.
Quest: Freeing those that need freedom the most.
The Federation and The Division have captured multiple scientist and have locked them away while abusing their knowledge. Save as many as you can. Who knows what you can learn from the greatest minds of the twenty first century. Or what surprise meetings they hold in store for you.
Warning: If the general population finds out that the scientists are being taken or otherwise are being harmed, the quest will become increasingly difficult. If you get caught, the quest will fail and any chance to start over will be forfeited. Any means are permitted but they shall be your burden to carry. Use whatever means to succeed as success equals salvation.
Warning: Quest sharing is allowed with three degrees of need to know, every level has diminishing effects for the shared party. Knowing the final goal will give no rewards, knowing only the next scientist but not why will give a monetary reward, knowing nothing but helping significantly will give a monetary reward x2.
Warning: Due to the nature of the quest you will only be allowed to gather skills through interaction with the Targets. These scientists correspond to those you have to save. Normal acquisition through regular NPC's will be disabled. Additional strength and understanding of skill will be enabled.
Next Target: Camron Bell
She stared at the quest, this was nothing like she expected… "High risk, High rewards" she whispers softly. Still not sure what to do, but is there really a choice. This will be amazing, even if it will be hard. "I accept" she states formerly and the old man smiles at her wryly before saying "As I feared you would".