Somehow I must have managed to turn off the light because I woke up in the same darkness as before. I felt much better, and the headache was gone.

When I checked the time it was just before 4:00 in the morning. I had slept nearly 10 hours! I must have been at the end of my capabilities to sleep that long.

Well, at least I got the opportunity to rest. While I made myself breakfast I looked over the building plans. It was a large five-story building with an additional two-story basement. It had a large atrium with, surprisingly an Olympic-sized pool. Oh, and apparently it had some sort of glass roof that could be closed to make the atrium a winter garden, and the pool into an indoor pool.

It was made out of carbon-weave plascrete with a diamond coating, but it seems the coating has been neglected over the last few years. While eating I dug deeper into the plans.

The doors were all out of multilayer carbon composite and with a multilevel lock system. It would be easier to go through the walls, and these were as hard as 20 meters of old-fashioned prestressed reinforced concrete. Nope, one would need a bunker buster to get in here. I also found that the atrium cover was made of several layers of diamond-graphene composite with nanotube weave for extra strength. It filtered out UV radiation and could be turned opaque at any time.

It was still the weak point of the building, but it favorably compared to battleship armor.

Whoever designed this house wanted to be sure nothing could come in uninvited.

And that did not mention the weapon emplacements. My cursory inspection of the active defenses disclosed the true age of the building. Not one of the weapons was younger than 30 years old. So here we had a point we would have to work on. Quickly.

The main entrance was on the south side of the building and had what appeared to be a significant parking space. The southern wing had a reception area, and what seemed to be several offices. On the second floor, we had a large room, seemingly a conference room, but at this moment it was mostly empty. The offices got bigger the higher the floor number.

The west wing housed the garage, a few workshops, the storage area, and the armory, which was located on the inside corner of the south wing. The upper floors were as far as I could discern initially used as technological labs. Now it housed mostly a few cages and random junk.

The east wing was where the slavers placed their operation. The big lab on the ground floor where we were collared and that now housed Frankel and his friends, and the storage room they placed their freshly collared slaves. One floor up we had the group area, with a lounge, a game room, a large kitchen, and the mess hall. The other floors above had 10 rooms each with an ensuite bathroom.

My room and I guessed the rooms of the others, were directly above the group area. Most of the rooms still had the clutter of the former inhabitants. I discovered eight small prison-cell-like structures marked as slave quarters, and immediately a pang of guilt hit me. I would have to free the slaves, yesterday, if not sooner. Dang, so much to do.

The north wing was interesting. The bottom two floors were combined into big rooms. Above that, it contained several multi-room suites, with a private kitchen, a private living room, and a bigger bathroom each.

The two on the top floor had balconies, private studies and three bedrooms each. Clearly, they were intended for the bosses of whatever was housed in this building.

And it was completely unused. Just junk and clutter, but no sign of habitation.

The basement housed much of the technical areas. Wow, we had our own water treatment plant? With our own well? Strange. Our energy came from a host of solar panels. At least a trickle came from them, as it looked like they were degraded quite a bit, and a pair of Wilton GBx33 fusactors.

Wiltons had a relatively good reputation, but from the records I could see that they had not been serviced for 18 years. That was not really good. Also, they were over 30 years old. I send the cluster the order to look into replacement fusactors in the region. The computer room was a hodgepodge of obsolete, obsolescent, and nearly modern equipment. It would all have to be replaced. The other technical areas brought no surprises. We had further storage rooms, and below the north wing, we had a series of empty large rooms. I decided then and there that these would be where I would place my NADA. I was contemplating building a second one, but that had time.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I looked into my order for the bots and androids and found them still crated outside of the cargo dock. It seems nobody got the notification. Well, we could take care of it when the others were awake.

Then I began to reprogram the building systems. First, of course, the security system. I decided to leave my person as the top priority but excluded the others from any reaction unless my life was immediately endangered. I declared them secondary priority only behind my protection. Then I dialed it back to normal conditions. No more accidental shootings.

Then I started to investigate the history of the building, the territory, and the immediate area.

The building history was… interesting if you want to call it so. Thirty years ago this was the headquarters of Segden Inc. They were an innovative corporation specialized in AI systems and industrial bots, in their time.

They were a tad too innovative it seems, as several of their competition managed to have the laws changed so that their products were made illegal to sell roughly 23 years ago. The laws were so specific that they targeted explicitly Segden products. That prompted Segden to simply move to the CSA, selling this building 20% under value. Interestingly from what I could find out, they were still going strong. The buyer was a front for the boss of the local Tong. They moved their headquarters into this fortress and would still be here if they had not made a grave error five years later.

They challenged the neighboring Irish Mafia in a territorial takeover and lost sight of the shifting alliances. The Irish managed to bring the other two neighbors of the Tong into the fray, and in an ambush killed nearly 90% of them. Then they divided the territory among themselves.

The Fortress, formerly near the center of a territory was now at the border region. So not really an interesting place for a territorial HQ anymore. As a result, it stood empty for eight years, before Frankel moved in. When I looked over it in the land registry I found out it was officially owned by the Ellis Entertainment Provider ltd.

The sole stockholder of EEP ltd. was one Francis Ellis. I took the time to set up a transfer of ownership from Mr. Ellis to Ms. Sinclair and make the thumbprint. Sure I had to move to the lab and bend one of his thumbs a bit, but that was no hardship.

The territory was that of the Irish Mafia, and the Benefactor here was a Mr. Benjamin Walker. He could pose a problem, from what I was reading. He seemed a bit of a misogynist, had a strong traditional viewpoint, and was known as being rather hard in his dealings. It was he that suckered the Tong into the war they could not win, so I would guess he was fairly intelligent, and through and through ruthless.

I would cross that bridge when I came to it. The immediate area on the other hand was a positive surprise. Sure it was a long way from the better places in Seattle. But it was relatively modern, it had enough food and medical support, and it seemed that the schooling system here worked for a change.

It was of course not Brooklyn, where the corporations had moved to when Manhattan was reduced to still glowing rubble in the war, nor was it the revived Bronx, where the more affluent inhabitants of NY city had their home.

But it was working somehow.

The clock showed it was just after 7:00 in the morning now, and I decided to get the bots working. A crowbar was quickly at hand, and I opened the loading dock.

The crates were bigger than I thought, but that was no hindrance for me. I looked through the packing slip until I found the big industrial unit I ordered. Of course, it was the biggest crate. I immediately set out to open it, just to fail big time. The workmanship on the crate was better than I expected.

I hung at the crate for nearly an hour, trying to break it open, before one of the others found me.

It was of course Mark, who found me red-faced with sweat-soaked clothes. I was literally hanging on the crowbar, using booth feet as an anchor and exerting all my might, without any effect on the crate.

“Is that a new type of sport?” His question startled me, and I quickly found myself on my behind looking up at him. “What?” He was obviously amused at my predicament.

“That looked not really comfortable. So what are you doing? And what is in these crates?”

With a sigh I scrambled to my feet.

“These are a few bots and androids I ordered yesterday. And I tried to get the goddanged crates open.” I gave the big one a kick, only to stub my toe. “Argh… and they …” It could not be helped.

“I simply can’t get them open.” He took the crowbar still wedged into the crate, heaved and popped the side open. “Did not seem so hard to me.”

“Hrmph. Yeah, rub it in.”

“Hey, I thought Pures were superhuman strong. That should be easy for you.”

I could feel the heat in my face, and murmured an answer, that he could not understand.

“What? Sorry, I did not get that.”

“I am a runt! Are you happy now?” I screamed it out and then stormed away. The nerve of this jerk. I did not get far before he caught me and gripped my shoulder. Again.

“WHAT? Not enough fun yet?” Surprisingly he did not look smug.

“I wanted to apologize. I did not want to insult you or whatever I did.” That took the wind out of my anger. It came to me that he would not, could not know what a sore spot this topic was for me.

I took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes.

“Ok, I am sorry too. My lack of strength is a… very sore spot for me. It has nothing to do with you.”

He let go of my shoulder and nodded. “As I said, I did not want to rile you up. But you should tell the others about this, so they don’t make innocent comments that hurt you.” Then he crossed his arms.

“Now, what were your plans with the bots?” I shook my head a bit to get it clear again.

“It is ok. I wanted to launch the industrial one to have it unpack and activate the others. But the dang crate… “I stopped myself. “Let’s just activate the big one. Then we have to have a group talk.”

Fifteen minutes later the bots were happily activating each other and we moved back into the group area.