Digging fingers into his temples to remove as much of the building tension within his head could be managed, Isaac grumbled, squinting at another monitor through his glasses.

Isolated as Isaac was - his only companions the slurry bathes surrounding - time had become anomalous to him in the nano-farms. The delicate machines required such a single-minded focus while they were recalibrated to their new purpose that Isaac could barely spare a seconds thought to anything other than them.

Whether it be minutes, seconds, or possibly even an hour more; the hulking rectangular bays brimming with a drab shimmering mixture, had preoccupied every one of those moments since Isaac had entered their berths. The astringent scent of the sterile room caused his face to be locked in a rictus of soured discomfort. The dull thrum of the bathes, the gentle whirr of the rooms internal cooling system, and the drone of the lights overhead had coalesced to become an omnipresent tinnitus, drowning his thoughts in an infuriating buzz.

But the room’s incessant hum and noxious smell merely underlined Isaac’s growing tension.

Illuminated by the screen, the dizzying lines of calibration reports caused the light to undulate and flash across his face. Burning from their proximity to the monitor, Isaac’s eyes were thinned to lidded lines, his sight blurring and clouding over the longer he stared.

Isaac could feel his attention fading, every fibre from muscle to mind taut with overuse, his body screaming at him to rest. He was running himself ragged on the barest vestiges of a flagging determination, sprinting headfirst towards the very limits of what he was physically capable of. Isaac was locked in a losing battle with his limited anatomy, sleep darkening his vision, mind drifting as his consciousness waned.

Desperate to shake away the growing desire to rest, Isaac bit down on one of his pointer fingers. Finger wrapped in a vice of his own teeth, he grunted in pain, the stimulus banishing the digits of sleep that had so desperately tried to pull his eyes closed. Releasing his finger from the grip of his teeth - a cast of bruising divots marking where they had held tight against his skin - Isaac stood.

Making sure that while his focus had drifted nothing disastrous had occurred to the nanomachines, Isaac walked his eyes over the monitor, sighing in relief upon finding nothing but the standard progress alerts. He stretched, feeling older than he ever had as his body creaked and cracked.

Suddenly forcing him to slam his hands down onto the console he had been working over, Isaac’s stretch turned into a stumble, sending another jolt of pain lancing through him.

“I don’t think I can keep this up much longer,” Isaac mumbled through gritted teeth, the dull throb from his finger already beginning to fade behind another wave of exhaustion.

“How long has it been since I’ve gotten more than four hours of sleep or eaten a meal of more than coffee and chips?” Isaac wondered, rubbing at his face and throat with a hand, “A week? More? I don’t even remember anymore…” It was inevitable that he would feel this way after operating on the bare minimum of necessities for so long, however his self-neglect couldn’t have come to a head at a worse possible moment.

Isaac was stuck. Alone, he was unable to break himself away from his work at the risk of a cascade of errors occurring to put the entire project at risk while he was away. But, continuing as he was would likely lead to a similar outcome when his fatigue became unbearable.

Isaac looked to the top of the monitor’s screen, seeing the percent completion for calibration of the nanomachines hovering over the still streaming lines of data rolling beneath. Reporting at an eighty-eight percent completion, Isaac couldn’t help but release a sigh in despondency.

He needed help. Killian’s talk had given him an iota of hope that he wouldn’t be going at this on his own for long. However, given Theo’s silence since Isaac had begun work on the nanos, he had to assume the kind of help he was looking for would not be coming any time soon… if at all.

And he needed a hand now, not later.

Isaac let out a depreciating chuff, “What else could I really expect? That they would put all my lies behind them and work with me as though nothing had changed?” an equally mirthless laugh escaped his lips, “I know I sure as shit wouldn’t if I were them.”

A familiar face, one reeking in unconcealed scorn, flashed in to haunt the space behind Isaac’s eyes, “Oh…” his mind wilted under a realization steeped with an old instinctive fear, “I was just like them once; scared and uncertain, filled with anger and without a way out. Only now instead of being on the same side as them, I’m just like that… Fucking Monster.”

Isaac felt sick to his stomach at the idea of being anything like such a horrendous human being; but once the comparison had been made, the tendrils of doubt and disgust burrowing to entrench themselves fully within his thoughts. There was nothing else Isaac could think about, “I chose to withhold everything out of good intentions, but how the hell is that any different from him?!” Isaac’s hands curled tight, switching the pain of his finger to that of his nails digging harshly into the meat of his palms, “I chose to lie and manipulate everyone without even entertaining another way forward… I guess the ap-”

An alarm blared from the console’s speakers, the monitor flashing in time with the strident tone, “Shit,” Isaac swore, cursing his lapse in focus.

Scrambling back to the console, Isaac’s eyes raced across the screen taking in all of the error reports. The problems were many. However, much to his luck, they were only enough to temporarily stall the calibration process and not cause a complete systems failure. Isaac internally sighed in relief, glad to see that his mistake hadn’t led to an unrecoverable loss; and began working away at answering as many of the errors as he could at the console.

Isaac worked quickly, knowing full well that the longer the problems remained the greater the chance for the whole of the system to crash, hands dancing across the keyboard.

Minutes passed as Isaac single-mindedly resolved error after error at the console, until the only ones remaining required him to leave the confines of the bathes’ monitoring booth and enter into the nanomachine farm proper. He replenished the slurries, completed the updated handshake protocols between the bathes and the console control, and went over each of the machines individually to make sure that no damage had occurred while he was… otherwise occupied.

Isaac watched his wrist pad closely as it finished its diagnostics of the last of the nanomachine basins. He had gotten lucky many times over, having found nothing wrong with any of the bathes prior, and hoped that his luck would continue through to this one. Left with nothing but his thoughts while the scan was underway, Isaac couldn’t help but feel frustrated at himself, “I’m a lot of things after everything that’s happened. But I am nothing like him. He wouldn’t have admitted fault, He wouldn’t have regretted what he’d done or who he had hurt. And the fact that I did and do feel that way, is more than enough to show me that I am not even close to being like that asshole.”

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A small chime sounded from his wrist pad to announce the scans’ completion, and any thoughts left Isaac as he waited with bated breath for the diagnostics to be displayed. A second chime was sung as data scrolled down the face of the small device and - with a quick read - Isaac was glad to find no problems were reported.

With the last of his evaluations completed, Isaac stood from where he was kneeling beside the machine and began to walk. Navigating the miniature maze back to the console booth, he slid a hand across some of the bathes as he went, feeling the cold of the metal and vibration of the machines’ innerworkings coil up his arm. The panicked energy that had drove him was beginning to die down and what little stimulus his touch granted him did nothing to mute the whispers of sleep, calling like sirens to drown him in their embrace.

Isaac pushed past his fatigue, silencing the murmurs of lethargy, to head back to the console booth and pick up where he had left off.

Entering into the booth, Isaac’s eyes locked onto the main monitor, hoping to see the calibration continuing once again. The screen was alight with data, a flow of text rolling across the screen… completely devoid of any errors damming its movement.

Isaac’s body slumped, the tension that had kept him in motion withdrawing like shadows under a flashlight. He felt a glint of ease fill the space that his stress had fled, the lack of any continued problems heartening after his mad scramble to fix what he had almost broken. But, sitting down in a chair that had now conformed to his shape after all the time he had spent fused to its confines, Issac felt a deep-seated weariness burrow into his marrow.

“How much longer am I going to be watching this screen?” Isaac wondered, seeing the nanomachines’ calibration progress now at a ninety percent, “And how much longer am I going to be able to keep myself together after… for everything else?”

Isaac leaned back in his seat, hearing the creak of the chair under him, to look towards the ceiling, “Doesn’t matter if I can or can’t. I have no other choice but to do the work until it’s done,” he grunted into a morbid chuckle, “or I am.”

Isaac settled back into work at the console, fighting a battle to retain his focus all the while, making small adjustments as the calibration slowly progressed.

Nearly an hour passed - Isaac’s entire being glued to watching the advance of those small percentage numbers - when a speaker crackled to life beside him. He leapt in his own skin, his heart tangling in his throat with threads of veins, Theo’s voice ringing through the booth.

“Sir? I hope I haven’t caught you at an inopportune moment?” Theo inquired.

“Nope, all good Theo,” Isaac replied, pulse hammering in his ears from more than just the speaker’s scare, “Are you calling for what I think you are?”

“Somewhat,” came a hesitant answer, Theo’s voice audibly apprehensive, “A group has asked for your whereabouts, less so to come to you and more so… ask for you to come to them.”

Isaac could understand Theo’s worries, the request indicating less than amicable intentions, but Isaac knew he was in no position to refuse their demand, “So be it. Inform them I’ll be on my way once my work in the nano-farms is done.”

“Yes, Sir.” Theo answered, the speaker following with the hollow tone of a closed connection, leaving Isaac alone once again.

Isaac sighed aloud to the room, watching as the monotonous reams of data scrolled by just as they always had, “If they want me, they can damn well wait until I’m done with this to have me…”

―――――――――

Isaac found himself approaching the entrance into the PFTU for the second time today… only this time, he was not alone.

Flanked to either side of the hulking door were two security personnel. Bedecked in custom Kevlar/carbon-nanotube composite thread suits, white button-up dress shirts with a slightly concealed IIIA rated body armour, black cap lace-up oxfords, and a crisp slim tie; Babylon’s Revival spared no expense in outfitting their security with the best equipment money could buy.

And that didn’t stop at just what they wore.

Attached to a three-point sling on either guard was a, less than subtle, Heckler & Koch MP5SD. The definitively non-civilian submachine gun was as intimidating a sight in the hands of his personnel, as it was a nightmare to compile all the correct documentation to purchase for them. Chambered in 9 x 19mm parabellum with an integrated suppressor system – and a handful of custom additions – the SD variation of the MP5 platform was a nonstandard choice for protective services, it being developed for and most commonly employed besides special operations members.

But, considering Isaac expressly hired from a pool of former spec-ops and government agents, the weapons provided a familiarity that Killian had conveyed would greatly assist in the performance of their jobs as Babylon’s security.

Isaac wasn’t one to doubt a professional’s words. Especially Killian’s.

The guards also carried personal sidearms, so long as they were chambered in either the same 9 x 19 as their MP’s or .45 ACP, allowing for the security personnel to round out their kit in the manner they desired… within reason.

Their holsters were similarly allowed to be placed by preference, the guards ahead of him providing perfect examples. The woman to Isaac’s left had her holster at her waist - just noticeable through the gap in her suit - and the man to his right had just the slightest lump under his suit jacket, pointing to a shoulder holster.

Isaac’s pace slowed, continued observations and musings falling to the wayside as they were replaced with the dawning realization of the shitstorm he was about to walk into. He was willingly entering into a room filled with who knew how many… all of whom feeling betrayed, angry, and scared enough, to be more than willing to take their emotions out on the man that made them feel those ways. Isaac could feel his anxiety growing, picturing it digging its teeth into his lungs to suck the breath from them and leave him gasping, unable to make so much as a single sound.

However, it had lost the power it once had behind its bite, desensitized as Isaac was becoming to the degree of stress he had been buried under since this dreadful day had come underway. He found his nerves nipped at him more like a swarm of mosquitos than some vicious beast rending him end from end, the pain being a mere reminder of its former severity. That did not mean it was any less draining. Compounding with Isaac’s growing frustrations and fatigue, the constant stress was depleting his energy at a precipitous rate… and leaving him nursing a simmering temper in its place.

Yet another item of worry to add to the growing pile. With one of Isaac’s greatest concerns of the whole heap just in front of him.

“Mr. Giovanni,” the female guard snapped out, her words sounding with as clean and straight a tone as her posture, with Isaac covering the last few feet to the door, “Those that wished to have come down and are preparing for you inside, Sir.”

Isaac watched as she waved her arm over the keypad to her side, a small metal wristband showing as her sleeve pulled back with the move, eliciting a positive hum from the computer. The door began its ponderous opening while Isaac stood unmoving beside the similarly still sentinels.

“Any ideas on what I should be expecting inside?” Isaac asked over the door’s internal mechanisms.

“Nothin’ welcomin’.” The male guard answered, a deep Southern drawl belying the appearance his crisp suit gave him, “Sir.” he added belatedly.

Isaac snorted harshly - feeling that the guard’s statement was the understatement of the century - and shifted in place with nervous anticipation as the door finally opened fully.

He wasted no time in passing through the door, leaving the two guards behind, and received a smack to the face by a wall of sound the moment he had a foot in the room. Isaac looked around from where he stood at the entrance, watching the undulating mass of persons scurrying chaotically about the place like a swarm of rats. Isaac had to admit to himself that he had prepared for a… different reception than being disregarded for whatever chaos so had their attentions.

Tempted as he was to stay and watch the work of the madnesses of engineers and absurdities of scientists, Isaac’s attention was drawn to the bay of computers overlooking the prototype foundry. Where the rest of the room was a buzzing hive of frenetic energy, the space before the foundry’s windows was occupied by a calm pocket of individuals huddled together. There were more than a few faces he recognized within the grouping and Isaac swallowed roughly at having to put himself at their mercies.

But he wasn’t going to run away again… even if it was incredibly tempting to do so.

Isaac had only taken a single step towards the group when he heard a voice erupt over the cacophony of noise already present.

“Isaac!” the voice roared, silence following in its wake, all movement in the room coming to a sudden halt.

Isaac gulped, “and so it begins…” he thought and braced himself for whatever came next.