Undisclosed Location

Time Until First Wave: 2 Years, 6 Months, 8 Days

"Hello? You alive down there?"

Cassie descended the staircase down and into Christopher's basement for the first time in at least a month. Given that the job she actually got paid to do had an unexpectedly busy quarter, she had been hounded and left her friend mostly to his own devices.

After the device had actually managed to spring to life without short circuiting, the cycling set of symbols had been beyond fascinating to Cassie and she helped catalog each one of them that they saw as the screens changed through a myriad of different windows. Every so often, the device would seem to start powering up even further, the lights growing blindingly light before dimming to reveal entirely new sets of symbols and the process would seemingly happen all over again.

Cassie sat with Christopher for several days, watching each set of symbols as they changed and while there were occasionally symbols that were strikingly similar to previous ones, there were never any repeats. They started to notice that every single pass of symbols, even though they were never the same, always lasted exactly 53 minutes. The very last screen was always on the screen the longest and, after Christopher attempted to reconnect it several times, had symbols appear on screen the moment he tried to type on his connected keyboard.

While Cassie was intrigued by it, unsure if it was some sort of weird prank or if it was something… well alien. She briefly suggested that maybe they should report the thing to someone, but Christopher was… well Christopher had become rather obsessed with trying to decode whatever the device was all on his own and he knew if he did report it, it was unlikely he'd ever get to figure out the mystery. Since it didn't exactly seem like it was about to try and blow up the world, Cassie couldn't really find a good argument against him other than the obvious that Christopher was willingly choosing to ignore.

So while Cassie returned to work, popping over to see how her friend was doing ever so often since programming and computers really were way out of her area of expertise, Christopher threw himself completely into the project. Cassie did try to make her visits at least a weekly thing, but life wasn't always controllable.

She ended up getting far busier than she normally was used to, and before she knew it an entire month had passed without her ever hearing a peep. The very last thing she had heard from him was that he had thought he was about to have a breakthrough, but Cassie had been positive he would have demanded her attendance if he had actually managed to succeed.

It was because of that that her question, though it could have been taken as a joke as she entered the basement, was actually entirely sincere. Part of her expected some sort of smell, like the sort of stereotypical thing you would see after someone was stranded on their own for months, but she wasn't even sure why she expected that. There was still the steady sound of whirring that had filled the room ever since the device turned on, though the singular screen that Christopher had been using had gained quite a few new friends.

"Why do you have… one, two, three… six screens? Why would you ever need six… wait seven… screens…"

Christopher quite literally jumped out of his chair as Cassie walked up behind him and he looked at her with a half mad smile. While he didn't smell bad, he definitely looked like he hadn't slept well in days. But even with massive bags under his eyes, Christopher didn't look in any way dejected.

"Hey! Where've yah been?" he asked curiously, ignoring the question.

"Um… my job… you know… the one that pays me? I figured you'd text me if you figured something out," she explained.

"Didn't I call you last week and tell you I had a breakthrough?"

"That was… That was over a month ago," Cassie said, stopping in her tracks as she stared at him. "You do know that was a month ago right?"

"Huh… guess I hadn't realized so many days had passed…" Christopher said reaching up and scratching at the back of the head. A moment later, he perked up and a smile cut across his face. "Oh! You've gotta see this, I cracked it."

Christopher waved Cassie forward, urging her to approach the array of screens. As she did, she noticed that while there were still more than a few random symbols that she couldn't recognize, there were actual English words on more than a few of them.

"Does that say… Super Power Catalog?" she asked, her eyes focused on the largest of the seven screens.

"Yup! I took all of the drives out of the old equipment and got it hooked up into this one. I figured I'd be able to get them formatted once the system booted all the way up. I don't think it actually had any in it, not that I was able to trace at least, so I'm pretty sure those symbols were just the boot system trying to tell us that over and over again," Christopher explained, practically bouncing on his toes.

"And that just… worked? It booted up back to the old operating system you had on it?" Cassie asked, falling into his still open desk chair.

"Nope! The drives got fried when we tried booting up the old server, I had tested them before and they basically had all shown corrupted data. Like I said, I had figured if I'd let the system, whatever it is, format them so they would actually work with whatever the hell the main chassis is."

"Then how…" Cassie murmured, unable to take her eyes off the constantly changing screens.

"When I turned it back on, it did the whole symbol thing for like, half a second before the whole screen started buzzing and I actually got a loading bar. About an hour after that, the symbols changed and it actually said 'Recovering.' It took the whole damn night to actually finish and when I came back down in the morning, it just… here let me show you," Christopher said, bouncing forward. Cassie expected him to reach for the keyboard but instead he stepped up next to an ancient looking microphone that he must have grabbed from his dad's old music equipment. "Show me a powerset that combines both Light and Shadow Manipulation. Any specialty is fine."

Cassie didn't speak up, instead watching as one of the screens started blinking before a new set of text appeared.

"Powerset Name: Twilight Cipher. A power combination that focuses on misdirection, battlefield control, and cloaking allies in shadow/light blends. A player with this powerset would be ideal for setup plays and protecting the squad, with a heavy focus on Defense and Support."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"How… did you already rebuild the algorithm?" Cassie asked, looking over at Christopher who was barely able to mask his overflowing giddiness.

"I didn't need to! Like I said, it took pretty much the entire night but I think it like, integrated? Maybe that's not the right word but it just… I can't even fully explain it," Christopher said, moving over to the mouse and keyboard. "All I know for sure is I went to bed feeling hopeful and woke up to find that he had everything categorized and set up already, I was basically able to roll right into my ideas for the powerset creation and this generation here is proof that it's working!"

"You woke up and everything was just… there? You didn't have to do anything? Chris… how is that possible?"

"I don't know! I think this is some crazy advanced tech or something, at least at its baseline," Christopher said, still very clearly buzzing with excitement. "It's been hell of a process. I'm still having to constantly dig through things and it's been a matter of working to get everything translated too. I think it figured out the language from the initial stuff I hooked up but it only covered like, part of the dictionary. Once I realized that's where the system had gotten its vocabulary from, I went and got an external that I loaded up with a bunch more stuff, hell I even found a pdf of a dictionary. That got integrated soooo much faster then when it was doing the recovery thing, and we've been making solid progress since then."

"You- this has been- what?!" Cassie said, stumbling over her words. She couldn't quite find the right ones though as she was left feeling slightly overloaded by what Christopher had just said. There was no doubt in her mind now that this was some sort of weird alien tech but that didn't exactly leave her with much to go off of. While she wanted to, once again, suggest that maybe they weren't exactly the right people to be messing with all of this, there had been something else Christopher had said that demanded a much more immediate answer. "What do you mean we've been making solid progress?"

"That's the coolest part!" Christopher said, gesturing toward the largest of the screens. As if responding to his gesture, several symbols and words on the monitor started flashing and moving. "Axio, say hi to Cassie."

Wildcard Assembly's Squad Base,

Multiple Locations

End of Phase Two: 26

D:00H:33M:21S

"Okay, everyone knows their jobs for tonight then?" Nate asked, standing at the head of the large table the group had taken to eating meals at. Jon watched him from his command room, still impressed by how naturally his friend was falling into the leadership role. After both groups managed to scoop up the final tokens of the day, BrainCraft's array actually working with the final test, the whole team minus Miss Mist and BrainCraft circled back to the base to go over everything they could think to go over.

There was still a chance that they would have to wait an extra day before the new round of attacks would happen, but no one was willing to take that risk. To say the group had a plan would be… disingenuous. But that was largely because the entire thing relied on Nate's recollection of things that only he and Angie could remember as well as that information all being interpreted based on hunches.

"Yeah yeah boss, we ain't need to go over it a fourth time," Freakenstein said, tossing a piece of popcorn up into the air and catching it in his mouth.

"Oh you're just upset you're not included," Pinky teased and Freakenstein let out a huff.

"Damn right I am. I mean, I know I'm the one who pointed it out, but I can still be upset that I'm not gonna be part of the fun. If Loopie's right and that thing does hatch or whatever the hell it's gonna do, well… lets just say Perry was cool and all, but I'd rather fight Godzilla instead of Mecha-Godzilla."

"I'd rather not fight a kaiju at all," Duskbreaker said.

"Nice to know I'm not the only one," Nate replied and Jon couldn't help but roll his eyes.

"All that power is wasted on you Loophole if you think you couldn't use it to punch Godzilla in the face," he called out before tapping at a clock he had mirrored on both sides of the glass wall. While Jon wanted to rib on his friend a bit more, he also knew just how easily this entire group got distracted. "Clocks ticking guys. Dusk, you and Swan should start portalling over."

The two stood up from the table, preparing to head for the door before Swansong stopped, leaned over and kissed Nate's cheek. She whispered something into his ear before turning and moving quickly to follow after Dusk. Both Pinky and Freak let out jeers and cheers as she did so and Nate was left blushing in her wake. Even the simplest forms of PDA were enough to apparently make him embarrassed, though Jon knew that had always been the case with him.

"We should uh… we should probably go get into position too. Brain just shot me the location," Nate said, pushing up from the chair.

"What, you don't wanna tell us what Swan said to you Mr. Tomato?" Pinky said with a giggle as she stood up. Jon would have sworn Nate grew even more red as he shook his head.

"Nope, nope, nope," Nate said quickly walking for the hallway that would lead to the California exit. Jon couldn't help but laugh as he heard them continue talking, Pinky trying to weasel information out of him all the way until their voices vanished and the screen with Nate's POV sprang to life.

Jon ignored it for the time being, cracking his knuckles as he turned his attention back to his systems. All things considered, with the plan for the night being largely just "go out there and beat things up" both Jon and Freakenstein had the easiest jobs for the night. Miss Mist was still out and about hunting through the various Forge locations they had. She had been giving minor reports throughout the day but Freakenstein was supposed to head out to meet up with her just in case Hydramental or the droids did make a move of their own.

While Jon would have to be on hand to keep track of the attacks, he knew he'd have more than enough time to continue doing his own side projects. He moved the windows around on the glass, bringing one with several web browsers opened to the forefront. He was just about to start reading through another discussion chain when he noticed Freakenstein had approached the barrier, his large body slightly blocking out the light from the room behind him.

"What's up?"

"Eh, just figured I'd kill a few minutes before I ran out. Miss Mist messaged me to meet her up in Harlem and I can get there in like, 3 or 4 minutes," he said with a shrug, looking around before his eyes focused on the opaque back of one of Jon's many windows. "What are you up to anyway? That can't all be for tonight's bullshit, is it?"

"Nah," Jon said, shaking his head. It wasn't like he was keeping his project a secret necessarily, though he had really only explained it to BrainCraft thus far. Everyone else seemed like they were just a bit too busy to really focus on a project that was largely… well not unimportant… but less important until Jon actually had something to go off of. "This is mostly just a side project… trying to track the last few First Wave Augments down. I've got some questions I want to ask and they're really the only ones I can think of that would have the answers. The problem is, I can't really find any concrete numbers on how many of them are left and the only ones I can think of that are for sure First Wave members are… well The First's team, and that group is probably impossible to get ahold of."

"Huh… Calypso is one of his old teammates, right?" Freakenstein asked curiously and Jon nodded.

"Yeah, pretty sure she was like, his right hand man essentially," Jon said, "She's over in Africa as far as I can tell. She got wrapped up in a fight with Pharoah Faucet right before Phase Two started but I can't find any news on it past her taking him down. Not quite like she vanished off the face of the Earth, but still no paparazzi pics or any random crimes she stopped either."

"Huh… well I haven't been over there in the last few days but back when I used to hang out at The Common Ground after midnight I would see her showing up there like, almost every night," Freakenstein said, tapping at his chin. "I've been meaning to find a reason to talk to her. My lil cousin is a stupidly big fan and I wanted to grab an autograph for her. If things go smoothly tonight, I bet I could convince the group, or at least Pinky to go for a stake out later if you want."

"Well shit…" Jon said, a few ideas coming to mind with this bit of news. Maybe it was stupid of him not to ask the others, but with everything going on he really did think this search was a secondary concern at best. That wasn't to say he wouldn't try to take advantage of the chance if Freakenstein was right. "If you did happen to bump into her, think you could pass on a message for me?"

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