Scott had been sick with worry since the initial exchange. He knew Melinda was deliberately keeping him out of the loop, but he had been watching the Glitch_HR org chart as a large number of people were added. Melinda had been putting them mostly in Genysis Construction which had Adriana as the largest shareholder. It also didn’t have any wall street money so she could spend money without having to explain it.
There were several detectives, some mercenaries and a field medic. Oddly enough, there was now a real estate agent on the payroll. Scott knew something was going down soon, but Melinda wasn’t sharing details claiming it was important for operational security. He also noticed a few more random security people for the mining company as well as a couple robotics technicians and a scuba diver. Having a diver for an undersea company made a lot of sense. Their robots could do a lot, but there were plenty of times something happened outside their programming and Matt’s team had needed days to patch the code.
He arrived in Merida, Yucatan along with his friends and their bodyguards. Even Barry was in no mood for joking around as they met with a couple drivers waiting for their group. Their SUVs were not waiting near the terminal, but instead parked a further away in the parking lot. Everyone was tense as they made the walk to their cars. As their luggage went into the back, they were handed bullet proof vests and ballistic helmets to wear for the ride. Scott noticed a drone circling overhead. This was not going to be a relaxing Spring break.
The drive to the house was tense. At one point, soldiers stopped them at a checkpoint. A couple men in one of the vehicles did the talking and handed some documents over. They were waved on, but the soldiers gave them a hard look as they went by. Arriving, the “house” was now a heavily fortified compound. The original concrete walls were now covered in dark metal plates. There were a couple guard towers. The next-door neighbor had a “Sold” sign in their front yard. The gates had also been replaced with a heavy metal door that had thick beams which dropped into the concrete when it closed. As they entered, the original house was mostly unchanged, but the metal shed had been enhanced with thick, sloped concrete walls and a vault-like door.
A tough looking older guy was waiting for them. Scott thought his name was Terrance - he remembered him from the org chart and was one of the guards they had brought in when they were here over the Winter.
“Come on in, kids, “Terrance said with a grin. “You guys look terrified!”
No one really knew what to say to that, so they exited their vehicles. Their bodyguards stayed out in the courtyard and looked to be heading to a small hut next to one of the guard towers. The rest entered the main house which hadn’t changed much since their last visit. Unlike last time, there were no servants offering them drinks. Melinda was on her computer typing away. She gave them a wave and went back to work. An Asian woman who looked to be in her 30s smiled and waved to Elsa.
“Nice to finally meet you,” she said. “I’m Dr. Nittaya Chaikhot.”
Elsa perked up a bit. “Oh hi. Sorry we are all so worried about our friend I didn’t see you there. I understand you’ve been helping Melinda test a lot of the projects I’ve been working on.”
“Yeah, I still can’t believe how ambitious you and Melinda are! I have to admit I thought she was making it all up at first.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling. Excuse me boys, Nittaya and I need to catch up on a few things we’ve been working on.” She took off her helmet and ballistic vest and headed out of the house with Dr. Chaikhot.
Barry and Matt traded glances.
“Um yeah, I need to go check in with Phillip and Rafeal and meet the new robotic technicians.” Matt said, heading for the door.
“I got a text from Professor Springer. He said he’s in one of the labs, so I’ll see you later Scott.”
Scott was sitting now alone except for Terrance who was grinning at him, and Melinda who wasn’t paying him any attention. Um yeah, I guess I’ll go do some programming or something because I’m totally useful like everyone else. Back-office software programming was apparently not a high priority when you were about to get in a shooting war with Russian special forces or whoever they were up against.
Scott’s phone rang. Melinda was calling him from the other room.
“...Hello dear. We need to get that arm of yours fixed.” He could hear her babbling for a few seconds in the other room before the app translated it. Still weird.
“Um, are Dr. Chaikhot or the new field medic we hired available?” Scott asked nervously.
“Oh, we don’t need to bother them with this. I have a research hospital set up in the bunker. This will be an easy fix.”
“Well, you aren’t really a doctor. I’m fine with waiting a bit.” Scott was edging away towards the stairs to his room. Terrance moved very quickly for a man his size and injected something into Scott’s arm. Not again! Scott tried to escape, but instead decided to sit down on the stairs. He lost consciousness right as Terrance scooped him up in a princess carry.
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Scott woke up to some alarms. He was sitting in a hospital bed. There was a tube down his nose which was extremely disturbing. That witch had drugged him and performed surgery on him! He felt his arm. It was still pretty sore, but he could move it. Wait, was this really his arm? Scott noticed his forearm had more lean muscle. His other arm looked pretty good too, although it had an IV tube attached. It wasn’t as swollen as his left bicep - instead it looked lean and densely muscled, but not bulky like a weightlifter.
He tried to sit up and his abs were pure agony. More slowly he looked down. Why did he have a six-pack? Moving very slowly he confirmed that nearly every part hurt. He tried to stand up slowly, but his legs gave way and he fell on the floor. The door to his room opened.
A concerned looking Dr. Chaikhot entered.
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“Oh! I guess the alarms woke you up early. Hold on a second.” She injected something into the IV tube that was still connected to his arm. Not again!
“Please, don’t knock me out again!” Scott begged.
“Don’t worry, I’m just giving you some pain meds and a low dose muscle relaxant.” Dr. Chaikhot said apologetically. “Am I correct to assume you didn’t agree to this procedure?”
“Yeah, Melinda is a psycho!” Scott complained.
“Well, she does seem to have a very low regard for medical ethics, “Dr. Chaikhot agreed. She started removing the feeding tube which apparently went through his nose and into his stomach. It was an awful feeling.
“She had already done a minor surgery on your arm and started the muscle enhancement procedure before I saw what she was doing.”
Scott then looked down and noticed some tubes and bags attached to regions under his hospital gown. He almost fainted when he realized what that must be attached to. He pointed at the bags half full of substances he did not want to think about.
“Oh yeah, we’ll have to remove those a bit later.”
“I saw Carl earlier, but kind of assumed they had put him through boot camp or something. Did he get a similar procedure? I’m feeling pretty violated right now, but also kind of impressed. Um, what are the alarms for?”
“Yes, Carl was our first test subject. We actually did a lot more than just the muscle enhancement on him. As for the alarms, they woke us all up around 2AM. Everyone staying in the house was told to move to the bunker. Apparently, someone is attacking us, but I haven’t heard any explosions or gunfire.”
“Do we have a wheelchair or something? I’d really like to know what is going on.” Scott said. He was already feeling much better.
“Sure, hold on.” Dr. Chaikhot was eager to help. Obviously, she was not a heartless monster like Melinda. She returned fairly quickly with a foldable wheelchair and helped him get in. Now that the pain was reduced it was actually easy to move around, but everything felt extremely weird. Scott noticed he felt very hungry. He decided that eating was not as high a priority as finding out about an imminent attack.
Dr. Chaikhot wheeled him out into a hallway. The facility had been expanded quite a bit since the last time Scott was here. It still had the same roughly carved walls and a poured concrete floor, but there was a fairly long hall with several doors before reaching what looked like an elevator. There had only been stairs and about 5 rooms last time he was here. She rolled him to one of the doors closer to the elevator and opened the door.
Matt was there along with his robotics friends Rafael and Phillip. They all had screens and controllers set up like they were having a FPS gaming session. Barry was also in the room.
“Hey Scott! Looking swole!” Barry cheered.
“Ugh, did you guys know what Melinda was doing to me.” Scott asked, feeling like his friends had betrayed him.
“Uh, not really. We’ve been pretty busy, and she said you were working on a project. Didn’t find out she was turning you into a superhero until yesterday and by then it was already too late. You’ve been out for three days.” Barry said, feeling a bit guilty he had not worried about his friend.
Scott looked at the screen Matt was viewing. It looked like a view of someone walking through a jungle except there were a few houses not far away.
“Is that near here?”
“Yeah,” Matt replied. “We heard there was a convoy of guys heading our way. They attacked a police checkpoint. Several armored APCs, some SUVs and a few pick-up trucks with mounted high caliber guns.”
“So, a small army is heading our way?” Scott asked. It didn’t seem real given the gaming controllers.
“Yeah, we’re having a contest to see who can take out more of the vehicles,” Matt explained. “I’m at a huge disadvantage because I’ve been stuck at school while Raf and Phillip have been here with the robot lab. Also, they are semi-professional at robot fighting.”
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short. You built your robot after looking at our designs so I’m sure you were able to copy something useful, “Phillip teased.
Scott watched Rafael’s screen. The view was from a spot in the jungle looking down a road. He saw some headlights approaching. Glancing at Phillip’s screen was a similar view, but from a different angle. It looked like they were waiting on opposite sides of the road. Matt’s view seemed to be from up in a tree looking down.
Scott went back to Rafael’s screen. The convoy was moving pretty quickly. In the lead was an Armored Personnel Carrier, sort of a cross between a bus and a tank. The view lurched as the robot apparently leaped out in front of the vehicle. The vehicle didn’t slow down as it crashed into the robot. Scott could see a couple arms sticking into the armor plating, and another that looked like some kind of chainsaw throwing up sparks as it tried to cut its way into the vehicle.
Glancing over to Phillips' screen he got a view of moving swiftly alongside a truck. The men in the back were swiveling a large machine gun around when the whole truck was spun around with a powerful explosion coming from the engine block. The truck rolled and Scott winced thinking about how messed up the people riding in the back would be if they even survived.
“I’m taking fire.” Phillip said. Scott was having trouble keeping up.
“Got it,” Matt replied. Scott glanced over and saw Matt’s robot looking down at the convoy. There was a robot running on four legs nearly keeping up with the convoy. It had another arm with some kind of gun. The convoy had slowed down as the lead vehicle seemed to be swerving around with a lot of sparks flying up from the front. 12 small missiles shot out hitting the remaining vehicles. Four SUVs and a couple pickup trucks stopped or crashed into the surrounding jungle. A second APC launched a shell at the four-legged robot, but the aim was off as 3 of the missiles slammed into it.
The first APC had now crashed, and Scott watched Matt’s screen as a robot with a big central wheel and 8 arms backed out of the wreckage. Half the arms were sharply pointed, and the others had various cutting tools. The wheel spun and it smashed into the side of the second APC which had swerved around to the lead position.
“Hey, that one’s mine!” Phillip complained. The four-legged robot pointed its gun arm at the back of the APC and an explosion shook it from the inside as smoke poured out of a hole in the back.
“Watch the friendly fire,” Rafeal complained. “Your railgun just broke one of my arms!”
“I’m seeing some gunmen on foot; most are running away. A couple are taking potshots.” Matt declared.
“See if you can scare them off.” Phillip ordered. “I don’t really want to see Rafael turn them into meat paste.”
Matt’s robot appeared to jump off the tree branch and crashed into one of the gunmen who had stayed and was currently unloading shots into Phillips’ robot. The impact knocked him about six feet sideways where he stopped moving.
“Oops, I just gave him a little tap. He’ll probably survive.” Matt said.
Rafael had moved right up to another shooter who was rather stupidly trying to unload his pistol into the heavily armored robot. He swept the man’s legs with one of the pointy arms - obviously trying really hard not to kill him. It looked like the guy was not going to be walking any time soon.
“Well, that was kind of easy.” Matt said. This setup seemed so much like a video game that it wasn’t hitting him yet that they probably killed some of these people.
“Oh crap.” Scott said, looking around at the screens. “I think some of those people are really badly injured or dead.”
Then a large explosion shook the ground and the power in the bunker went out.