Chapter 34

Communications

(Misha)

Misha could feel it, the indescribable pulse and function that stood out in her mind. As the communications channel was activated, dormant parts of her mind and coding suddenly spun around, going from being in a junk-like dormant state, into a fully activated state.

Tingling.

There was an odd tingling sensation that began vibrating gently in her mind. It was odd, and yet enjoyable at the same time. For a moment, it felt like the first time she awakened her abilities as a Psycher. The first time she mentally connected her mind to a dormant piece of machinery, not a computer assisted piece of machinery, as that was simple. No, this was the ability to reach out and interact with dormant machines, machines that wanted to move, were designed to move but had never been told to move on their own before, until she came.

That is the closest thing that could relate to this sudden awakening within her mind. For the longest time she had stared at the coding, assuming that it was either missing, incomplete, or that she needed to evolve further to awaken the coding.

Now that she had been part of a beaconing response from the hive mind, the jumbled coding made sense. The coding itself was correct, it was just missing packets and chunks of data that were instrumental for complete functionality.

Then as she was thinking about it, the organo-tech processes within her mind began to fire and light up, pulling energy from various storehouses within her body. Using the entire body, and fat reserves to make these initial communications.

Awakening Baseline Neural Response.

With that awakening, there were strings and lines of text that flowed through her mind, that she barely managed to focus on and understand. Most of the coding was meant to be hidden, but there were a few immediate functions that she noted.

Reward System Activated.

Kill System Activated.

Upgrade System Activated.

And so the lines of coding went.

Focusing intently on the Kill System portion of coding, Misha found as one might expect, the coding was designed as a way to neutralize her by effectively flooding her body with the same baseline chemicals that would spark a reward or upgrade, but at a dosage level that would be toxic to her body.

This was good to note, as rewards and upgrades were apparently toxic to the body and required time between advancements.

With the section of coding already present, Misha first tried to get rid of the Kill System, but seeing as it was hard coded into her organo-tech system, she realized that it would be better to lower the dosages of neural enhancements received to a less toxic level.

A human smirk crested her lips, as she imagined an angry superior finding her and issuing the Kill Command, only to be shocked when the command just made her stronger instead.

With the most pressing matter taken care of, she began scanning through the other lines of newly awakened coding that was being activated within her body.

There were even coding options that made it so she would automatically gain more power every week or month. This seemed like a great option, but then she realized there was no way to account for toxicity ratings and levels with that rate of rapid advancement. Realizing the double-edged sword that such benefits offer, it would be easy to see most striving to improve too quickly, only to be struck down by their own hubris. In the end she opted to avoid making any other changes, until she could see the effects of over saturation within her body.

Misha was so focused on changing the coding that would outright kill her, that she failed to notice that as time went on and her initial coding was completed, she began bristling with more power. Well, that isn’t entirely true, she did notice a slight pull and tug of energy, but at the time she figured that staving off instant death by toxins was more important. Particularly as she didn’t know if this coding would be made available to her in this format again.

That said, inattention can prove to be costly. In this case doubly so, as only now did she realize that she had missed the bigger picture. Or at least the final awakening code that could ultimately be worse than being issued kill orders.

Trembling.

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Her entire body thrummed as neural receptors and electrons flowed in ways that Misha had never felt before. In a moment her body went from just mildly pulsing within her mind, to her entire body slowly awakening and coming online with new power, as she realized her body was now being turned into an intergalactic transceiver of sorts.

WHOOM!

For a moment, Misha could only stand still as she tried to understand what had just happened. Only after analyzing everything in totality did she realize that her body had effectively sent a burst of energy up to be received.

Silence.

There was a moment of silence, as Misha wondered if it was as bad as she thought. Maybe it would take longer to receive her packets? Or hopefully, better still, the packets might be misaligned and sent to a completely void section of space.

These thoughts and more poured through her mind as she waited in her room, suddenly looking at the ceiling to see if there were any burn marks from her sudden release of power. Fortunately for her, she was in the attic and her ceiling was twelve feet tall, at least in the portion of the attic that she now stood in. Meaning that any bursts missed causing irreparable damage to the ceiling by inches at most.

Relief.

Just as Misha let out a sigh or relief, feeling that she had dodged a bullet, she felt a sudden wave of energy flash over her. Well, not just her, but the entire planet.

Flicker.

The lights in the room died, every form of electronics was momentarily disabled as a burst of energy coated the Earth and traveled into and through the planet, before disappearing on the other side. The impact of the blast was so intense that Misha found herself inadvertently collapsing to her knees as she could not withstand the immense pressure bearing down on her.

Then to make matters worse, she saw the message that sent shivers down her spine.

Beginning Registration Process.

That message was one that caused fear to register in her mind.

Pulse.

Misha first felt a build up of energy in her body but was too disoriented to disable the return beam before it left her body.

In her mind’s eye, she knew that her system data was being sent to the command fleet. Where they could no doubt see her statistics and monitor her progress.

For a moment, Misha felt like her entire body was suddenly betraying her, that it was providing information about herself to the enemy against her will. In her mind she wondered if this was how captured enemies felt while under the intense gaze of the Tellers, those Psychers who specialized in mental manipulations and getting people to divulge their deepest secrets.

Here, Misha felt much the same as she imagined those strapped down against the massive controls of a Teller would feel. Her body weakened as it ultimately was used to betray itself. Suddenly Misha realized how it was that Bakshee always evaded such detections, as their entire bodies were meant to share the information, not the minds. The concept was brilliant, and so elegantly done, in a way, Misha couldn’t help but praise her hated enemies for such devious constructs. It was as if they knew of every strength that the universe had, including those wielded by the Psychers, and developed counters against them.

Only now did Misha realize the true extent of the enemy she faced. An enemy that she had suddenly found herself assimilated to. No, not just assimilated into, but forced to give out her own information against her will.

Yes, Misha could likely go into her coding and make it, so the information provided was either disabled, or modified in a way to protect Misha in the future, but the cat was already out of the bag as they say, here. Right now, Misha was actively giving up her vital information to the enemy.

Then again if she truly wanted to pull off this role as a double agent, then she needed to fully immerse herself in this role. She needed to remain hidden in plain sight. At least that was what she told herself as she weighed the consequences of suddenly killing off the part of her coding and orano-tech materials that allowed her to respond to the enemy command fleet.

In her mind, she also realized that if she could communicate with the command fleet via this pattern then one of two things were present. Either there were planetary listening devices present around the world that would amplify the signals she was transmitting and send them directly to the fleet at faster than light intervals, or some other form of hyper-relay.

What was important to note was that if Misha could use her body to send and receive messages from the enemy fleet, then maybe, just maybe, she might be able to modify her message to be picked up by Psycher command as well.

That thought, no, that hope was something that Misha held onto. While she had grown seemingly complacent in her role here, she did miss joining her mind to the hive, to be able to reach out and communicate with other Psychers freely.

Suddenly, Misha felt very aware of just how lonely she ultimately was.

For a moment, the weight of everything was too much. The loss of being able to communicate freely with her Psycher comrades who she spent millennia with. The loss of her agency of moving around without being noted by the enemy. And finally, the most crushing feat of all, the fact that her body’s mortal grandmother died and never got a chance to experience the joy of a Psycher rebirth.

Originally, she had thought of making it so that her grandfather would be remade into a Lykanthrope, at least to prolong his lifespan. Now she suddenly found herself wondering if he would be willing to join her in her quest as a Psycher?

He did seem more than open to the idea of powers and abilities, almost seeming excited for witnessing the way Misha had managed to expand her own capabilities after millions of years of intense focus and evolution. Yet, there was a difference between being open and accepting of the idea that the supernatural exist, and another thing entirely to walk the path of a Psycher. The process would definitely be tough, and would likely mean the death of Phil, even if he succeeded in his trainings.

Tears.

Just the thought of losing Phil too suddenly filled Misha with a strange emotion that she had not felt in a long time, that of loss.

Before Misha could get too lost in her own thoughts, she received a message that shook her to her core.

Secondary Reaper Unit Identified and Assimilated Perfectly. Reassigning order of ranks.

ReaperOne, you are now ReaperTwo.

Newly Identified Reaper, you are now hereby identified as ReaperOne.

Mission Assigned: Meet ReaperTwo before next scheduled uplink.

Time Remaining until next scheduled uplink, 9 Full Solar Cycles, 364 planetary rotations…

Reward: One Full Upgrade, 1.0 Body upgrades.

With that the connection ended, but for a moment, she saw the person she was supposed to meet, and for a second her heart stopped, as the face seemed familiar, but also foreign to her as well.

Then another thought hit her, why ten years? Unless this was how long the Bakshee normally used as intervals to see how a planet was advancing? The more she thought about this, the more she became impressed with how long the Bakshee were willing to wait for their resources to ripen and mature, before fully assimilating them into the fleet.

This was good, as it meant that Misha now had a glimpse of just how long she had to operate before the Bakshee overlords would come down to spot her. It also gave her ten years to identify just who this mysterious ReaperTwo was.

Again, the face was familiar, but someone that likely blended into the background of her consciousness given how similar most human faces were, and given that there were over eight billion of these faces to sift through.

A quick glance showed that the features of the face were feminine in nature, younger looking, attractive, and Misha was certain that she could see signs of the wielder taking benefits like Allure, and other cosmetic changes, but was not able to identify anything else about the person.

For the moment, Misha opted to stop focusing on who the stranger was that she was supposed to meet up with, as she did have ten years to complete such a task.

Instead, she decided to focus on the more immediate tasks, like the alien emotion that felt somehow so right within her mind, that of revenge for Nanna.