Summus Proelium

The first of the secret labs that Pittman had sent us to was located in an old hobby game shop, one that had been closed for a long time. Since before Pittman had even gone to prison, really. The sign above the door was still there, but faded to the point that it was almost illegible. There were bars across the windows and doors, along with several signs making it clear that the place was permanently shut down. They were the sort of signs an angry landlord put up to illustrate their passive aggressive annoyance with not being paid properly. Which, according to the explanatory notes we had forced Pittman to write, was intentional. Fewer people wanted to rent from an irritable landlord who might just take that irritation out on you. Especially when there were other, better locations nearby.

Obviously, we didn't bother going in the front. That was pretty secure with all the bars and such, and also fairly public. This wasn't exactly a busy part of town, but still. There was no point in exposing ourselves, or what we were doing, too much. Instead, we made our way to the roof of the building next door. This was all in one long stripmall, located near a discount grocery store. This building, like the one that was our target, was empty, though in its case, the place had only closed down within the past couple months. Either way, the biggest benefit it had for us was the lack of pressure sensors.

Yeah, that was another thing our informant had told us about. The roof of the shop we were trying to get into had sensors all over, just waiting for some idiot to step on it. Obviously, they couldn't risk accidentally drawing attention to the building by having it immediately start attacking anyone who landed on that roof. There was too great of a chance that some Touched could just stop there on the way to some other location. God knew I used random roofs often enough. If the defenses immediately turned hostile the second someone stepped there, they probably would’ve been found out.

No, instead the sensors simply alerted the security to be ready. And sent an alert to every other lab, putting them on alert as well. If it detected anything else, any attempted entry or whatever, it would move to the next steps. One of which involved wiping out everything in all the shops to make sure their data couldn’t be taken. Obviously, that was something we really wanted to avoid. So we were going to have to take this slowly, step by step. We had made Pittman write out exactly how to get past the security in these places not just once, but three times. The first time in just a normal straightforward way, the second time backwards (writing the last step first and working back to the beginning), and the last time we listed the things we were going to do to get through the security, but intentionally included mistakes with each step and made him write out the corrections. It wasn’t perfect, but at least that was about as close to it as we could get, given the time constraints we were working under.

Well, okay, we probably could have taken longer. But with the quarantine, the fact that we didn’t know for sure how long it would take before Amanda was out of reach, and stuff like that, we really needed to pick up the pace. If we were going to fix this before things ended up getting much worse, we couldn’t sit around forever. Especially when we were already dealing with distractions like Cuélebre’s people trying to kill the only woman who could fix this Sleeptalk shit.

And yeah, okay, maybe a big part of it was that I was desperate to help my parents. After all, I had thought that simply grabbing Pittman himself would do that. The fact that we had to go through all this other stuff instead was… annoying. It made me want to go find a corner and start screaming into a paper bag until I was hoarse. But that wouldn’t be helpful. It wouldn’t solve anything. So I just had to keep trying. Just because taking Pittman had turned out to be another step instead of the last step didn’t mean I had the luxury of falling apart. And hey, at least I’d been able to hit people, thanks to Cuélebre and his troops deciding to attack right then.

Sure, the fact that I’d done so in order to save Amanda Fucking Sanvers kind of tainted the whole thing. But still, it was something.

And now we just had to do this step. Maybe we’d get lucky and this first lab we checked would have the proof we were looking for. Even if the very thought of that, at this point, made me want to start laughing so hard my friends might think I’d lost my mind.

Maybe I had. Maybe I was already losing it, and this was just pushing me over the edge.

But I pushed those thoughts aside and focused. We could do this. We could still pull it off. First things first, those sensors. According to Pittman, they could be disabled by playing specific musical bits from certain songs in order. Which might’ve been a problem given none of us were musically inclined. But apparently recordings would work. We just had to play it near enough to the other building for the sensors to pick them up. First, about five seconds from Michael Jackson’s ‘Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough,’ then ten seconds from Thin Izzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back In Town,’ and finally five seconds from Alice Cooper’s ‘School’s Out.’ Not just any portions of those songs either, it had to be specific parts played for those specific lengths of time one right after the other. That way it was vanishingly unlikely that anyone would accidentally do that.

Once those twenty seconds of songs were played, the sensors would shut down. The signal that they had done so was supposed to be five seconds of AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ played through hidden speakers on the roof.

We listened intently after Roald played the recorded bits on the phone he’d brought along. Sure enough, we could hear that little bit coming from an air conditioning vent nearby. Which was supposed to mean we were safe to step on the roof now. Still, we waited a second. I looked to the others while we all seemed to hesitate. Then I shrugged and used a bit of blue paint to jump across the gap. Landing easily on that roof, I braced myself for some sort of alarm, or attack, or… anything. But nothing happened. At least, as far as I could tell. For all I knew, the system was sending an alert to the rest of the labs to be ready to wipe all evidence the second I made another move.

No. No, we had to believe we’d gotten the right answers out of Pittman. We went over it and over it, every way any of us could come up with to make sure we weren’t missing anything. We even took care to make sure the system wouldn’t freak out about there being more than one or two of us, just in case.

This was how we were supposed to get in the building. We were shutting down the defenses, and we were going to find what we needed. If not here, then in one of the others.

Of course, it occurred to us that Amanda almost certainly had set up her own protections. Which added another layer of problems. But we just had to take that as it came. Even if the idea of walking into a Tech-Touched’s lab seemed completely suicidal. Especially when that Tech-Touched was someone like Amanda Sanvers. Between her homicidal tendencies and just how much she would want to keep this stuff away from anyone’s sight, this… could end up being pretty bad. Besides, Pittman had apparently made it clear to her that he wanted to be able to get in the lab himself (or send some of his people) when the time came, so maybe she hadn’t gone too nuts on changing things in the labs they were supposed to be sharing.

We were just going to have to be careful.

Alloy, Calvin, and Hobbes jumped across to join me a moment later, and as soon as I was as sure as I could be that they weren't about to set anything off, I walked in a slow circle around the roof. Sure enough, my special extra sense managed to pick up not only the sensors themselves built into the roof, but six speakers in hidden locations that would almost certainly have given off signals to take control of Paige and Sierra. I could almost hear some sort of practically silent tone as it was, right at the edge of what my ears could pick up. Something told me it wouldn’t have gone well for those two.

But, one by one, I carefully disabled those speakers. They weren't very big, basically just the size of quarters set in hidden spots. All I had to do was give them a little bit of pink paint and break them out one by one. After making sure they weren't connected to the sensors themselves, of course. Then I did one more pass just to make sure I hadn't missed any.

With that done, we moved to the next step. Which did not involve going anywhere near the very obvious trapdoor in the roof. The trap part of that term was very apt, according to the notes we’d gotten. There was no way to go through that entrance without making the lab burn itself down. Instead, we moved to the opposite corner. Usually I would have just pink-painted an entrance. But those sensors were still there, even if they were allowing us to stand on them. Making a hole through the roof wouldn’t exactly make the sensors very happy. And unhappy sensors tended to start fires in places we really didn’t want them to be.

The hidden hatch we were looking for was two feet from the south-west corner. It just looked like a normal part of the roof. But I could feel the ladder underneath it. A ladder leading down into the building below. Even then, we couldn’t just use pink paint to break through that spot. Anxious as I was to get this over with, now was not the right time to start getting impatient and bungling things.

Instead, I nodded to Murphy. She produced her own phone and held it close to that part of the roof, pressing play on a recording. This one, instead of being a series of bits from different songs, was a recording of Martin Luther King giving the first couple lines of his Dream speech. Which seemed really wrong to include in something like this, to be honest. But there we were. It was another thing that was unlikely for someone to accidentally stumble across, especially since they’d have to do it after playing those specific parts of those specific songs first.

Once that part of the speech was over, there was a soft beat before five small buttons emerged from the roof. Obviously, the immediate thought would be that you had to press them in the right order or something. But no, that was a trap as well. Instead, Peyton reached out and very carefully hooked her fingers around the first button in line. With a grunt, she pulled it up an inch or two, until it clicked audibly into place. She did the same thing with the middle button, and then the one on the end. Instead of pushing any of them, she simply pulled out every other one.

We waited another moment after that, but it didn't take long before those buttons simply descended back into the roof, followed by three different ones sliding into place. These were slightly larger. And again, there was a trick to them. Not the same one as before. Instead, I reached out to the middle one and pressed it. I let it come back up, then pressed it again, repeating that a total of ten times in rapid succession.

That was enough. On the tenth press of that same button, after completely ignoring the other two, there was another confirmation beep. And finally the hidden door there slid open to reveal the ladder. Step one down, we had access.

Turning to look over at the roof in the distance where Paige and Sierra were anxiously waiting, I waved to let them know everything was working so far. Then, one by one, the four of us began to descend the ladder. Something told me those two over there weren’t exactly going to calm down anytime soon as they watched us descend out of sight.

Still, we kept going. On the way down what turned out to be a fairly narrow shaft, I destroyed no less than five more hidden speakers. Yeah, this definitely wouldn't have gone well for any Biolem who tried to enter without permission. It was almost like Pittman had told Amanda to be very careful on that point.

Finally, we descended into what looked like an empty supply closet through a hidden hatch, then stepped out into the shop proper. It just looked like a normal hobby shop full of mostly empty shelves, with a cash register and stool up front behind a counter, and scattered garbage. Anyone peering in from the outside wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss.

There were several more speakers and other security measures in there, including a couple cameras. I took care of them as soon as I did my walk through. Then we moved to the back room. There was another hidden trapdoor with a similar setup to the one on the roof. This one required audio from John F Kennedy talking about going to the moon. And then a different set of buttons appeared that had to be carefully manipulated. Six buttons, half of which had to be pried out and the other half had to be pushed.

That opened the hidden hatch there, and we finally descended into the actual lab. And boy what a lab it was. The whole place was circular, about a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, with tile floor, metal walls and ceiling, and a whole bunch of equipment all over the place. This seemed to be the norm for Tech-Touched, judging from everything I’d seen so far. There were dozens of tables all around, with tools and random bits of equipment all over them, along with various refrigerators, bunsen burners, vials of who knew what that had been there for who knew how long, random books and journals, computers, and more.

We didn’t exactly stand around gawking for long. Instead, I did my thing, walking through, disabling every camera and speaker I could find. Meanwhile, the other three followed Pittman’s instructions by going to a tall grandfather clock in the corner, opening it up, and moving the hands. First they set it to noon, then nine o’clock, then three, and finally to seven. Once they did all that, the clock gave three loud gongs that made all of us flinch. But then it went completely silent. A good sign, supposedly.

We were in. The defenses were shut down, and we had made it without triggering anything, as far as we knew. Still, while the others started to look around, I took another trip all the way around the lab, and back up through the entire shop. I checked everywhere I could find for any more sensors or anything else. I disabled all the speakers and hidden cameras one by one. Then I did the same thing yet again, carefully walking through the whole place to check every inch of it. I wasn't going to take any chances. Not with something like this.

Only once I was as completely positive as I could be that everything was safe did I call Paige to let her know they could come over. They didn’t waste any time doing so, arriving in the shop within seconds before I led them back down the second ladder to the lab itself. The others had been looking around, but hadn’t found anything useful yet. Mostly because they really didn’t want to touch anything until these two were here to check it out first.

Now that Paige and Sierra were here, they immediately checked out the computers, making sure there were no more hidden tricks before Paige plugged into them. It took a few minutes to break through the security, but soon she was scrolling through every available file. Sierra, meanwhile, started checking out a table with some tools left out on it that the others pointed her to. Leaving them to that, I opened one of the refrigerators before immediately closing it with an audible gag. Gross. I wasn't sure what was in there, but it had expired a very long time ago. I was just glad that the fridge was apparently sealed well enough to keep the smell in.

Abruptly, Paige called us all over. We went there, crowding around as she brought up something on the computer screen. It was a video of this very lab, with Amanda herself standing there facing the camera. There were two tables set up behind her, with what looked like ordinary people strapped down to them. They had gas masks on, but were still struggling a bit.

“Well hey there, boss!” Amanda chirped. “You said you wanted to see how it was going, so pay attention.” She turned to a nearby tank and turned the knob on it. There was a hissing sound, and both of the people who were strapped down jerked a bit as the gas inside was apparently pumped right into them. They spasmed, then fell down. A few seconds passed, before Amanda turned off the gas and carefully removed the masks. “And a one… and a two… and a three.”

Right on cue, the men began to jerk against their straps. One began mumbling aloud, something about being part of the circus. The other took a few seconds longer before beginning to have what sounded like a one-sided conversation with Abraham Lincoln. They were both clearly unconscious, and clearly affected by--

“Sleeptalk. That’s Sleeptalk,” Murphy blurted. “We’ve got it, we’ve got the evidence that--”

She stopped then, as the Amanda on-screen started talking once more. Or rather, groaning. She murmured in what sounded an awful lot like pleasure, half-doubling over as she put both hands out to catch herself against the counter. “Oooh, that’s good. Oh, wow. That’s some great stuff. So many thoughts.” Straightening up, she gave the camera a sly wink. “Sure, it’s not gonna be quite as… direct as doing it the normal way, especially once I set it up to affect a lot more people. But in this case, I think quantity over quality counts. I can only use my power on one person at a time, but with this stuff…. ooooh. With this stuff, I just get a slow trickle of ideas constantly. Spread that over as many people as we can infect and…” She laughed, an almost infectious giggle. “See, I told you I could work it out. And pretty soon with a little help from all our little guinea pigs, I’ll be able to build absolutely fucking anything.”

That was when I realized what was going on. Sleeptalk wasn’t just putting people into a coma. It was built off Amanda’s own power, the one she used by asking people ridiculous questions. And somehow… some-fucking-how it was linked to her. All the people who were affected by it, all those infected victims, were giving her constant Touched-Tech ideas, fleshing out blueprints, giving her a boost in knowing how to build or improve things. All this time, from the moment the attack first happened, she had secretly been absorbing more and more ideas, getting a boost to her abilities far beyond what she normally got just by using her power on one person at a time..

So… if that was true, if that was what was really going on… just how powerful of a Tech-Touched was she by now?