Chapter 39: Malicious Weapons, Sabotage, And Family

--- Vanessa ---

She was a weapon.

Unlike the others, she was under no delusions about that fact.

That isn’t to say she didn’t see herself as a person, (I do have some self-respect after all.) It’s just that considering how much bioengineering she’d been put through all her life it would be naive to think she wasn’t built to be something. The type of missions that the ‘Company’ -as the others called the assholes they worked for- sent her on told her exactly what that something was.

Similar to tonight’s, most of her solo missions were a mix of scouting, spy work, theft, and the other general espionage work could be expected from a morally bankrupt group of rich people looking to get richer. Those were the missions that told her they saw her as a tool. Which she was honestly a little offended by, (I mean it’s an insult for a reason.)

Fortunately for her, her other solo missions -and oftentimes her secondary objectives- let her use the moniker of ‘weapon’ instead. (Much more badass that way.)

While her ‘work nights’ were spent helping the others with their Creep collections, her ‘off nights’ for the last two weeks had been spent sneaking off to similar bases in every other city that could provide Sanctuary backup. (And Jess wonders why I’m always tired…)

From her high point she looked around the Sanctuary base, not the base from the city she lived in, but rather a base belonging to one of their neighboring cities.

While her ‘work nights’ were spent helping the others with their Creep collections, her ‘off nights’ for the last two weeks had been spent sneaking off to similar bases in every other city that could provide Sanctuary backup. (And Jess wonders why I’m always tired…)

Spotting a camera on her target building she pulled out a small remote connected to the reason they and the ‘Company’ were able to operate so subtly prior to the sky cracking open. Admittedly, she’d had to splice the main device into this base’s network and would have to retrieve said device on her way out, but with a few quick clicks she had the camera feed visible on her phone. Just a few more clicks and she also rigged it to loop the last minute until she deemed otherwise. (Favorite tool by far.)

With her anonymity secured she kicked off the building she was on and leapt a distance far greater than what a normal human could manage before hitting the ground in a roll and flipping to her feet, her tail lashing through the air behind her.

Moving over to the vents she used a small device to undo all of the screws before setting the grate down and slipping inside. A feat that she could only pull off due to a mix of her collapsible skeleton and the fact that years of practice had taught her exactly how to distribute her weight without breaking the vents that were far more fragile than most movies made them out to be.

From there slipping through the vents was largely a matter of remembering the map she’d been given of this place. A bit of a weak point given how she was more of a kinetic learner than a book learner like Jess but one she could overcome by supplementing what she could remember with feeling out the air currents around her.

(Airs flowing to the right… toxins disperse wider this way…) It was honestly more an instinct than an actual thought, something that became more apparent the more her blood seemed to burn in her veins. A more than literal timer to all of her missions as her body slowly turned against her. (Need to move faster.)

The numerous fans in her path were the main obstacle to that objective, and something that she couldn’t fully disable without making her main objective that much harder.

Luckily thanks to some corporate fuckery that she wasn’t sure if the ‘Company’ or someone else had a hand in, the ventilation systems for all the nearby Sanctuary bases and police stations always had a route towards the central ventilation where there was usually some kind of security keeping toxins and such out of the air.

Admittedly, she couldn’t actually tamper with any of those without setting a lot of alarms off, but they did give her easier access to the rest of these buildings whenever she needed it through maintenance paths and such. Though that wasn’t really necessary for either this or any of the last few missions she’d been sent on. In fact going to the areas maintenance frequented actually raised her odds of being caught.

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Which is why she placed her ‘package’ on the more difficultly accessed side of the ventilation system. The package itself was a relatively small brown device with a red vial and a timer, smaller even than the blocks of C4 she’d occasionally placed when using a Deviant event as an excuse to destroy evidence.

Despite having never attended an actual school beyond whatever her ‘owners’ at the time had considered necessary for her job, she’d worked with similar devices often enough to know exactly what she was setting up. Namely a self-destructing dispersal unit that at an unspecified time would pump the air full of a substance eloquently dubbed ‘Malice’.

A substance harvested and refined from the corpses of the various Creeps and Deviants they’d captured over the years, and offering a number of uses beyond what those entities would normally use the Malice burning through their veins for. (Such an infectious little toxin…)

There was a theory she once overheard from the various lab coats at the ‘Company’ that despite Deviants representing a relatively low percentage of the population, they tended to be relatively visible due to the tendency of Deviants to gather. From there it was also noted that this concentration of Deviants likely created an abundance of Deviant energies that in turn caused Deviant events such as Creeps, Bleeds, and similar to occur with increased frequency. And while that theory was partially disproven by the occasional Rift or Bleed in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, they still held a fair amount of merit.

Merit that she knew had gone into making the Device she’d set in this and all the other Sanctuary bases she’d visited over this last week, as well as the few she’d placed in a few other strategic locations in those bases’ cities.

She was aware from the numerous TV shows and movies that she’d watched since joining the ‘Company’ that what she was doing was without a doubt the act of a ‘Bad Guy’. The kind of thing that any sane person would dub her a villainous monster for doing. Even more so once she pointed out that she legitimately couldn’t care less about the casualties of her actions.

Oh, she was fully aware that they were people with their own hopes, dreams, and people they loved, she just… didn’t care. (I mean it’s not like I know any of them.)

Admittedly, she was self-aware enough to know that if anyone tried to take the same approach with the things she actually cared about she’d (slaughter them all and leave their corpses to rot…)

In fact, she was honestly kind of waiting for the day someone tried to get vengeance on her for her numerous war crimes.

Oh, she’d kill them when they tried to kill her, or at the very least make sure they died to her various venoms and poisons before they could do any damage outside of her, but she wouldn’t be surprised at all if someone came after her one day.

(Hell, given what Sanctuary Agents are capable of, maybe one of them will figure out this little conspiracy and come after the Company?) Of course in that case she would just throw the Company under the bus while playing up the fact that she was a child soldier most of her life, because she held no loyalty to those assholes.

Still with this bomb set she began backtracking through the vents on her way back to the outside, knowing full well that she still had at least three more of these to plant in this city before she could go home.

Several hours later after finishing the rest of her mission, she returned home (as much as I can call this hell hole home) and found the others wrapping up their own nights in the living area the ‘Company’ had given them.

With Nick and Cyn sitting in the middle of the floor playing with a bunch of wooden building blocks, and Jess at their kitchen table using a laptop to do paperwork that was either Director Greene humoring the girl or gopher work that someone somewhere had pawned off on the eager to help girl. (Going to have to remind someone why taking advantage of her is a bad idea later…)

But given how she could in fact handle that later, she instead threw a bag of popcorn in the microwave before using her tail to close Jessica’s laptop as she passed the other girl on her way to the couch. “Hey!”

Ignoring that cry of outrage, she told Jess to, “Grab the popcorn when it’s done.” Before turning to Nick and telling him, “On the couch.” with a jerk of her head.

With those orders distributed she crouched down behind Cyn -who despite being a pint sized eldritch horror only a bit shorter than Vanessa herself- was still the best stuffed animal that she could get her hands on on short notice, and picked her up.

She pointedly ignored the tendrils of otherness that flowed through her as she picked the girl up, namely the part where they soothed the burning in her veins in a way that nothing else could. (Don’t think I don’t realize you’re pavloving me…)

“Innocent giggles.” Cyn laughed as Vanessa spun them both on her heel before flopping back and landing on top of a seated Nicholas.

Once properly situated she lashed out with her tail to grab the remote and click the TV on, rapidly flickering through as she searched for something she didn’t recognize.

“Here’s your popped corn.” Jess said as she held the bag out.

"Accepting nom-noms." Cyn nodded taking said bag for them.

“Now if you don’t mind I have work to do.” Just as Jess began to turn Vanessa dropped the remote and wrapped her tail around Jess’s wrist before raising her legs and yanking the other girl onto the couch, where both she and Cyn proceeded to use her lap as a footrest.

She thought about it for a moment. “Mmm, too lazy.”

Jess rolled her eyes before starting to take their shoes off. “When aren’t you? I mean you slept all day, and now you just want to laze about the office. Whatsmore you’re dragging us all down with you.”

“Eh, this is different.” She shrugged, not about to bring up her actual itinerary for the day. “Lazing about is better when you’ve got someone to laze about with.”

She shifted her weight, digging a little deeper into Nick as she held Cyn and wrapped her tail around Jessica’s waist. (Especially when that someone is MINE.)