Silhouette

Decanov and James stood in silence for a moment after their distinguished guests left. Ultimately, it was the scientist who spoke first and ended the quietude.

"Do you think-"

"They'll try and listen in? I am unsure. They have the means and a reason to, but they have also proven trustworthy. So far."

"You trust them?"

"Not fully, but enough to allow them on this tour. At this point, I'm inclined to believe that they won't betray us. They'll likely try to influence and control us indirectly, but I'd rather deal with that than another open conflict."

"They might spy on us to have additional material to use, or they might purposefully let us keep our privacy to give us an illusion of power and ease our worries. That's your reasoning, right?"

"Correct. Though, given their resources, any means of spying available to them will be nigh impossible for us to detect."

"Magically, perhaps. They haven't seen our security system."

"Indeed. The need for a permanent magical expert on our team grows daily."

"What of that demonist?"

"Mesker is an ally, undeniably, but he cares too much about his independence to give it up. I'm afraid he'll have to stay a consultant for now."

"A shame. He seemed competent enough."

A few seconds passed as the two men kept on staring at the door.

"I just got confirmation from the Infused that they left the street."

"Good. Should we go on then?"

"Lead the way, Doctor. This is your kingdom, after all."

The robot's lab coat whipped the air as he turned dramatically, a content grunt leaving his mouth. James held back a chuckle as he slid after him.

"When first designing this new factory, the matter of transformation was a core topic. There were two main possibilities available: have a single machine solely do the transformation or include it in every individual production chain. While the first one requires only some additional isolated machinery, the other necessitates implementations in every other device."

"When you put it this way, I understand your remark on it being at the core of the factory."

"Those two different design philosophies each have their pros and cons. Restricting it to a single specialized piece of equipment would make it to keep the secret from untrusted visitors like just now and would allow us to be more trusting when it comes to the management of the rest of the machinery. If upgrades or maintenance needs to be done, it would be much easier if regular employees could do it, not just your mindless guards or myself."

"Yes, but it also gives us a glaring weak point."

"Yes. Restricting infusion to a single device, no matter how large and efficient, drastically shrinks the number of completed items we can produce. It also means if any problem happens, the entire facility is frozen. There's the risk of sabotage and theft. While a single more heavily guarded machine lessens the chances of corporate espionage, it makes what can be stolen or copied that much more important and easy for them to replicate. It's easier to build a new plagiarized machine than to alter their existing ones to accommodate a brand new system."

"What of the alternative?"

"It's more efficient and less cumbersome, not to mention we have none of those dependency problems a singular device brings. It also means you can't hide the truth from employees as easily and that spies can learn a lot more from peeking at just one machine. And to reiterate, you'd need engineers in the know to handle maintenance."

"Since everything is already ready to work, I suppose you made your choice. I'm surprised you didn't bring it up to me."

The Draskian scoffed.

"You said you trusted me with making this place work, it's what I did."

"I wasn't being accusatory, doctor. While I would have appreciated you approaching me considering this conundrum from the start, ultimately I do trust you to make the right choice. You know better than me when it comes to this field."

The annoyed look that had begun to form on the robot's face faded away, though the scientist's neutral expression still looked quite stern and unamused.

"To answer your question, I chose to go wide. I know your worries, but I found the good outweighed the bad in this situation. If you want to turn a profit, you need to stop restricting yourself. Having industrial means is useless if you're unwilling to use them efficiently and limit yourself to the level of a teen tinkerer selling gizmos from their garage. Not to mention, selling transformed items alone will give away that something special is happening, you won't be able to hide it for long."

The robot stopped next to a specific conveyor belt, the machine still operating like the rest as the doctor never stopped his testing for the tour. With a pull of a lever and the press of a button, the system paused before restarting, this time with various components appearing at every step. Over a few minutes, James watched as pieces of various materials were bent and assembled, occasionally fused by the passage of a small dark laser emanating from crystals attached to minuscule arms that had stayed hidden earlier. When all was said and done, a brand new electrogun rolled toward them before being blasted one last time by a crystal larger than the rest, giving the small weapon its perfect black luster right as it stopped before them.

The Draskian picked it up and tested holding it in various ways, testing both its balance and durability before firing it at a small canister set up on a crate further away, likely placed specifically for this purpose knowing the robot. The small piece of junk bolted into the air before falling back down, lightly charred where it was hit but otherwise not overly damaged.

"And here we have it. I still have to finish adjusting the input, it's within legal margins but still a little too powerful for my liking. Otherwise, everything else is working satisfactorily so far. The main question now is whether or not this item still feels like it's connected to you, something I cannot verify myself."

James nodded as he began to focus on what he called his soul space. The white void he reached when meditating where the various connections between him and infused items were made physical by black threads had changed quite a bit since his first ventures. The core of this spiritual place made of those threads had now grown in both size and density, to the point there were no more holes in its composition. James' avatar in this realm, a figure quite similar to Silhouette attached to the core by his tail like a genie and its lamp, had grown more real too, though that was less of a visual change and more so a feeling.

The center of this universe wasn't the star of the show, though. James's perception did a quick sweep to verify that yes, among those points from which dark strings formed and those sutured scars that had been left behind by the demon Sydakors was a new item. One that stood out from the rest now that he studied closer.

Though it was wholly unnecessary, James' avatar closed in on the newcomer to better ascertain what made it different from the rest. Whereas every other item was a singular origin from which a single thread formed, the electrogun Decanov fractured was instead a conglomerate. Multiple anchors close to one another weaved a tangled web that roughly funneled together into a single link, though even this part was deviant. Rather than reach for the core, this one made a detour, not unlike the threads James had twisted to fix the wounds caused by the demon. The link went to meet another strange sight.

Where the electrogun was a chaotic tangled web, this was a tapestry. Multiple anchors worked together to form a constellation of sorts, one that attracted the mess of the electrogun and wove it into a more refined thread that was then released toward the heart. James pulled at the strings. The constellation's work was stellar, but the rest was different. They were weaker than those formed by his direct transformations. Well, at a glance.

They were weaker individually, yes, but the way the tapestry of the machine's spiritual echo arranged them restored them to a proper state, one singular thread just as strong as those he made himself.

What made the situation curious was that he had never seen such a result from transformations via proxies. Anything that had been blasted by powered-up electroguns for instance or even the Techzooka felt just the same as if James had done the deed himself, so what was it that made Decanov's creation different? Was it how the transformation was done in small steps rather than a single large change? Was it how there technically were multiple sources rather than a single one?

"It's odd. I can feel the connection, but it is... Different. The machine became a spiritual construct of sorts, one that fixes the problems with its creations' threads before connecting them to me."

"And is that a good or a bad thing?"

"I am unsure. In a way, it is an additional layer of security between me and our customers, I suppose, but it is also a weakness others could take advantage of somehow. Weapons never made such a thing before."

"Could you elaborate on that last point?"

"When making use of their full potential, what they do feels no different than my own corruptive bolts."

"Interesting... You'll have to forgive the growing pains on that topic, Transformation is possibly the rarest Aspect to work with and despite my interest, I never had the chance to study it before now."

"I trust you to know best, Doctor. It doesn't help that you cannot sense what I do."

"Before the funny idea of using this stuff on me makes its way into your mind, know the answer is no."

"I would never use it on an unwilling employee. In fact, I only ever used it on people trying to kill me or consenting rats."

And George Froko, that scammer, but the infusion was only small enough to make a marking, not a complete of who the man was.

"Well, now you know. On that note, you should consider expanding this list."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play coy. Just take a stroll through the slums and you'll have an army begging you to improve them. I do not usually encourage human testing, but you've proven moral enough to warrant the practice on willing subjects."

"I'm afraid I must disagree. It would bring a lot of attention, for one, and it would also-"

"Cut the excuses. There's already plenty of attention on you. Besides, I never said you should make an army to take over the world or whatever nonsense you came up with. If anything, see it as a PR move: gather the downtrodden and the meek and give them a new chance at life. Your head rat, Polisson, grew an elemental arm to replace his missing limb. You could offer a similar service. Have you figured out a way to only partially transform?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then do that! Transform them enough to heal their broken bodies and no more. It could be a service of its own, an alternative to prosthetics courtesy of the Penumbral Palace. Offer the possibility to go through the procedure for free in exchange for a contract to become a loyal employee for those who have nothing. And voilà! An easy recruitment drive the public will approve of."

"Once they get over the Transformation part of it."

"You can always cover it for the masses. Somewhat. Say it's experimental, say it is highly dangerous and a life-altering decision. The truly dangerous people will know of this part of your portfolio either way soon enough given your rampant tendency to soak whatever place you deem a base in shadows. Truth be told, even civilians would be accepting of it if presented with the right light."

"You seem awfully confident for a man despised by most in his field."

"Yet they kept on hiring me anyway. And, loathe as I am to acknowledge them, I know I have my fans. Do consider my words, Silhouette. The more you involve yourself in the city, the more its people grow to like you, and the more you become part of its mythology, the harder it is to unroot you."

"I expect this sort of speech from Black, not from you."

"I may be rephrasing something similar that Adam told me in the past. Now that I am here, I cannot deny there is some wisdom in his young soul."

The way the Draskian looked away, James could tell he wasn't exactly proud to admit his moment of weakness. Such a prideful man acting so bashfully was amusing, for sure, but it was his words that James focused on for now. He had vowed to himself to be a little more daring when Blake appeared, did he not? And what the scientist proposed wasn't so bad.

It did remind him of the questionable experiments that used humans as research subjects. While some were simply normal people accepting experimental procedures, there were also a lot of homeless or needy folks being roped in to test new medications. He understood why those people did it as well as why it was necessary in the first place, you had to test medical stuff on living people sooner or later, but it was still somewhat morally dubious. At least nowadays most participants were aware and consenting, something that wasn't always the case in the not-so-distant past.

Well, in his case it wouldn't truly be testing, at least not usually. He knew how this part of his powers worked. It'd just be an excuse to help folks and recruit them while making himself look better. Yeah, he could work with that. It'd still feel off, but better than the whole child spy thing Guy had going on that James was now technically in charge of. Thinking about it, he probably should have taken advantage of Blake's presence to broach the topic.

"Fine. I'll see about refining some details with Blake and Mesker tomorrow and I'll get back to you on that, alright?"

"I appreciate your acceptance to improve your forces. While I greatly appreciate the silent compliance of the Infused, there is a risk they scare off customers. Keeping the brainwashed militia away from the people's view goes a long way for public image."

James nodded as he began to move away.

"Your wisdom is appreciated. If you'll excuse me, I have other important matters to attend."

The mechanical grunted before his eyes returned to the black weapon his work had made. He had a system to upgrade.