2 Weeks Later. Saturday. 09:15 Outdoor Practice Range

Andern was running through a test plan in his prototype suit of power armor. John had programmed it into the HUD to help him through the plan. Kevin was looking very chilly as he sat down at the outdoor terminal.

“Little bit nipply out this morning,” Nathan said, “Why are we outside again?”

“There’s a joint live-fire exercise with our senior class and the Marine Academy’s seniors. Our options were to wait or deal with the miserable weather,” John said, “Clearly patience, as you all know, is not one of my virtues.

Thomas started to laugh, “The girls are clearly smarter than us.”

“Yeah, why are we here?” Brian chimed in.

“Emotional support?” Kevin suggested.

“He seems to be having a good time thus far,” John said pointing at Andern, “Though I’m still not convinced this is going to do anything.”

“But we made it react to everyone,” Kevin sounded hopeful, “And it did to everyone here.”

“Yeah, but I’m not convinced that it will be able to harness enough energy to be of us. This test will at least give us firm answers instead of educated assumptions.”

Thirty minutes later Andern lumbered over to the group. He took off the helmet, spat, and reached for his thermos. He looked exhausted and exceptionally thirsty. He guzzled the water down.

“Holy shit, that was way more work than I thought,” Andern exclaimed.

“I had Kevin tone down the servo assist, I needed you exhausted,” John said nonchalantly as he had unplugged the amplifier.

“That was a dick move,” Nathan said laughing.

“Yup it was. Kevin, please lock the servos. If this does work, I don’t want him to hurt himself or us for that matter.”

“Done and done,” Kevin said.

Andern was effectively locked in place. He wasn’t overly happy to have his arms locked out. John plugged in the amplifier in the central module slot on the back. The light-powered on, though it was fairly dim.

“Kevin, did the power output increase any?”

“Yes, less than a percent though.”

“Dial it up to the max.”

Kevin paused and swiveled to look at them, “Are you sure?”

John simply nodded. Everyone else took a step back. John pulled the helmet out of Andern’s hands and put it on his head.

Kevin then shouted over, “Power output has increased by ten percent.”

“Check his vitals,” John said, “How are you feeling?”

“Uncomfortable, my skin is tingling in a weird and uncomfortable way.”

“I don’t like what I’m seeing,” Kevin said, “We need to dial it back.”

“Shut it down,” John commanded as he banged on the helmet, “Andern, dude, command the amplifier to be ejected.”

Andern was feeling lightheaded and generally felt like he was waking up from a day-long bender. His eyesight was coming back into focus. He nodded in compliance and decoupled the amplifier module from his armor.

“Good work, head into the armory to change into civvies.”

“We’re not going to run any more tests?” Andern asked.

“Nah we’re done,” John said as he was looking at the readouts.

Andern jogged away but he was somewhat dejected that the tests were all done. The others crowded around the terminal to get more answers. John was shaking his head when he saw the readouts.

“That was kind of direct, why shut it down?” Brian asked.

“It’s not on Andern. His constitution couldn’t handle that load,” Kevin said.

“Constitution wasn’t the issue,” John said turning around, “To be blunt the Homo Sapiens species aren’t robust enough to handle the amplifier. I’m not sure pluses are either.”

“What did you see?” Nathan asked, “Because both of you looked worried.”

“Andern was experiencing damage similar to what the big dumbass over there did to himself.”

John grunted, “Only the start of it. No permanent damage was done. And yes, I’ll chat with him why we shut it down eventually, so he doesn’t feel like a failure.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that, but how long did he have until he passed out?” Thomas asked.

“He could run at that setting for several minutes, but he’d be out cold in ten to twelve minutes,” Kevin said as he looked disappointed.

“The damage was beginning immediately. For a baseline human telepath, they have that energy in excess so they could, in theory, run that amp without much cause for concern.”

“I was technically right, the amplifier could work on people and we did notice an improvement,” Kevin said as he logged out of the terminal, “Course it kills you quickly as it works so I’d probably chalk this up as a failure.”

13:00 Co-Ed Dorm

John was reviewing the latest batch of documents that General Mizrahi had sent him. True to form, none of it made any sense. He leaned back in his chair and sighed. On the plus side, the number of false orders had slowed down. That was of little comfort to John though, unless they found some hard evidence the false orders would start up again in the near future.

Something did catch John’s eye though. There was a trend in the false orders. The same phraseology was being used, and they were all sent at the same time. Those were calling cards of virtual intelligence, one that was good enough to slip by the Navy and Marine’s defense but not programmed to randomize the words it used or when it sent the orders.

John used his Intelligence credentials to review the Navy’s supply orders. Sure enough, he discovered similarly worded orders. He compared them to orders the names associated with them and found discrepancies at every turn.

“Got you finally, but how do I shut this shit down?” John said from his chair.

He began searching for where the orders were being sent to. That led him down a rabbit hole with no end. Whoever programmed the VI was smart enough to make it bounce the orders from hundreds of servers and locations prior to them hitting the final server. That frustrated John as tracing it back would now be all but impossible.

John noticed that the final server that the order came through was limited to three servers. They were all located in a data center on the southwest side of the city. He locked his workstation and grabbed his gun and coat. He called a cab and headed out of his dorm room, he needed to physically inspect the servers.

14:20 Naval Datacenter 12B – Room 3Z

Datacenters were both cold and loud as hell. The quantum processing cores weren’t themselves loud, but their cooling needs were a bit ridiculous in John’s opinion. His opinion was wrong and tempered primarily by him feeling chilly and looking around at the server.

From the exterior nothing stood out about the three servers in question. John was hoping for the easy route, but clearly, that wasn’t the case. Diagnostics were being run on the first server and logs were locked, so if the VI was stored on the server it wouldn’t be able to delete itself. The diagnostic came back clean, no rogue VIs or unexpected software had been installed onto it.

“Fuck, no dice on this one.”

“With all due respect, that was to be expected Agent Lief,” the ensign that was assigned to chaperon John, “The VI would likely be stored externally.”

“I thought that too, but those orders couldn’t be authenticated if they originated outside of these servers,” John paused looking around the room, “Every last order has to be authenticated in this building, if not this room.”

“Could you lock down the logs and drives and run diagnostics on all of the machines here at once?”

“Assuming I want to get drummed out of the service, yes. But my answer is a technical and firm no to your request.”

John rolled his eyes at the ensign, “Work with me, if there is a rogue VI installed here and it can bounce between servers, we need to be able to track it back to a specific server.”

“Locking the drives is a hard no, but…” the ensign’s voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“Locking down the logs just means they can’t be deleted or edited, only new records can be created.”

“That means we could compare the new logs to the locked logs to see if anything was purged.”

The ensign was nodding her head, “Yes, suppose it would also let you offline the server and roll it back. A VI is just bits, it could delete itself but if were to roll back it should still be on it.”

“Let’s do that, then I’m going to run full diagnostics on the other two. I presume you have a program to scan the logs?”

“I can probably dig something up.”

“Please do.”

The next hour was a chilly slog. But it bore fruit, there was a rogue VI in the data center. They were able to isolate it and permanently delete it. A new server was brought in to replace the one they pulled. They were walking out of the server room and heading to one of the IT rooms on the floor.

Thankfully the IT room wasn’t nearly as noisy or cold as the server room. The server was rolled back and after a bit of finagling, they were able to isolate the rogue VI. The server was scheduled to be wiped and for its hardware to be recycled into a non-secure server.

John was sitting at a terminal sifting through the VI’s code. He had sent a copy of it to Intelligence before he began reviewing it. The disappointing thing about the code was it lacked the intelligence and depth he presumed it would have. Instead, it was a crudely coded and rather blunt object. John grunted with an ironic acceptance to something that could be used to describe him.

“Did you have everything that you need?”

“Yes, thanks, ensign. I’ll lock the door when I’m done typing up my report.”

The ensign began leaving the room. John switched his attention to her as she walked out of the room and the door shut behind her. The VI did have a rather extensive logging mechanism built within it, but recovering older logs may prove to be impossible. Despite losing who and where it was initially installed, he knew where the orders were routed from. They finally had clear evidence that someone outside of the military had forged official orders.

19:30 Lounge

The group was relaxing and arguing about who would win the next football game. The Vikings were playing the Packers in the playoffs. The general consensus was that the Vikings were the better team, but that they would choke. John hated being a Vikings fan because they routinely let the fan base down. Or at least had for the first century of their existence and the last century. The middle century was quite good for them, but they had fallen far short of expectations for so many years.

“How’s that thing going that you can’t officially talk about?” Jessica asked.

“Unofficially it’s been awful, but maybe it’ll be less awful tomorrow,” John looked at Alice, “Speaking of which, I’m heading out early tomorrow morning.”

“Try to not wake me up,” Alice smirked.

“You hear anything more for the summer deployment?” Thomas asked.

“We’ll be in a squad of three ships. One corvette and a pair of patrol craft. Overall wing commander will be in the corvette. No summer school, so there’s that. Though that’s because we won’t be on an official ship schedule.”

“Does that mean we’re going to have a fucked-up sleep schedule?” Nathan asked.

“Yes, yes it does.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but are we going to talk about this morning at all? I was looking forward to it, but instead, you made me do endurance training. And then you turned that thing on, and I felt like I lost a few days of my life,” Andern said.

“Woah, you didn’t say it would be like that,” Kristin said angrily.

“To be fair, we didn’t know what to expect,” Kevin answered, “And John suggested dialing it up to the max.”

“Dick…” John said shaking his head.

“What did it actually feel like?” Theresa asked.

“It felt like my skin was tingling with electricity. Like I was being shocked all over. I was also getting nauseous as fuck too. Muscles were also feeling really warm. After they shut it off I ended up with a wicked headache for an hour or two.”

“What about for you John?” Brian asked.

“On Manchester?”

“Yeah”

“Felt like I was on fire; as if my skin and muscles were burning away. Blood felt like poison burning my arteries and veins. Breathing was labored.”

“Hold on for a second,” Jessica said, “So when you ran out of the room you felt like that?”

“Yup,” John said as he took a drink.

“How long was it on at that setting?” Thomas asked.

“Hundred minutes, give or take a few.”

Kevin grunted, “We predicted unconsciousness in no more than fifteen minutes for Andern. Your pain tolerance is beyond fucked up my friend.”

“What would’ve your amplifier have done to me at full power?” Andern asked.

“At max power, you’d be a burnt-out husk inside a minute.”

“Good lord, you went through all that and you lost that much?” Theresa said.

John shrugged, “It is what it is.”

“She’s right, you threw away all that power just to kill some bad guy. Feels like such a waste.” Jessica said.

“Yeah, you didn’t exactly win out on that exchange, plus there’s one more left,” Nathan said.

John just smirked, “It’ll be alright. Just means the next one will be a little more difficult to kill. May have to get a little creative.”

“Speaking of her, how long will it be until she’s healed and ready to fight again?” Alice asked.

“Physically she ought to be back in shape by now. Though that’s assuming she wasn’t catatonic or comatose for an extended period of time. Honest to god I’m not sure how long she’d be out after feeling that psychic connection ripped apart.”

“The closer bonded people are the more intense the stimuli they feel from one another, right?” Kristin jumped forward on her seat and asked.

“He was just over twenty feet, give or take, from her. I could hear a shriek, presuming that was made by her but I’m not for sure on that.”

“Was it worth it? Honestly here, giving up all those abilities and powers?” Andern asked.

“Probably not. But it’s not like I can’t be a captain of a ship without those powers. Or kill, creep, maim others. People don’t need those powers to survive, but it just makes everything easier to do everything.”

“That you are so calm over losing what we assume to be godlike powers and abilities is just odd. I’m not sure I’d handle that kind of loss so easily,” Brian said.

Nathan nodded in agreement, “So true, I’d be a wreck.”

“On the flip side though, I can’t hear anyone’s internal voices anymore. I can’t hear their lies or their deepest and darkest secrets. The silence is amazing.”

The table sat in quiet contemplation. Everyone was still shocked at the loss John had. They hadn’t considered the other side to the equation and what John had gained from the loss of his powers. The group quickly broke into conversation after pondering the conversation.

Sunday. 09:30 Textron Munitions

John was waiting in the lounge, though it wasn’t a patient wait. It had been forty-five minutes, and no one had come to get him. After looking at his watch again to confirm the time he walked up to the secretary. She was ignoring him as he waited there.

John reached over and pressed a button on her phone to disconnect the call, “I’ve waited patiently for forty-five minutes. I’m now more than a bit upset. You will have someone to help me in the next five minutes.”

“Look, you don’t get to dictate to me how things are done here,” the secretary said in a very bitch tone.

John gritted his teeth, “Five minutes and no more.”

He turned around and walked back to the seats and sat down. John could not tell whether or not she was doing anything or not. Her behavior, aside from looking at him fairly often, hadn’t changed much. John for his part sat with one leg crossed and resting on the other leg’s knee. His eyes were focused on his watch and the secretary.

Four minutes and thirty-six seconds a diminutive man appeared to walk down the hall. He stopped at the secretary’s desk for a minute. John stood up and approached the pair.

“Are you the escort?” John asked briskly.

“I’m sorry I’m not sure…”

“Take me to this room on the third floor. Lead the way.”

“I’m not sure we can do that sir. Non-employees are not allowed to access our workstations.”

“I’m done dealing with this bullshit. This was already arranged, and your attempts to delay me any longer aren’t going to work. You can either lead me there, or I can just walk there myself.”

“We aren’t ready for you to review that workstation.”

“I don’t care that your efforts to wipe or replace the workstation didn’t work,” John smirked as he showed the two his tablet, “I’ve already made it a point to lock it down.”

The man looked nervous but appeared to be resigned to his fate. He motioned for John to follow him. When they got to the room there were three people cursing at the workstation. They couldn’t shut it off since it was locked somehow. The case was electronically locked so they couldn’t physically pull any hardware.

John smiled at his handiwork. He also appreciated the corporation’s obsessive nature over its hardware and how secure they made it from their employees. In this unique case, it prevented them from swapping out the hardware prior to his arrival.

“Gentlemen, you are to leave the room. My chaperon here is permitted to stay here,” John said smugly.

The men looked back at the unfamiliar voice. They were about to speak up when they saw their coworker shrug from behind him. Reluctantly they complied with the stranger’s orders and left the room.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“Stuff,” John said dismissively.

The small man sat down in a chair and watched John work. How John was able to access the computer's files and the system was a mystery to the man. He didn’t think an outsider would or even could access their systems. But he did so with uncanny ease.

Twenty minutes elapsed as John inspected the computer's logs and reviewed its contents. Someone had accessed the VI, the question now on his mind was who. He was also concerned with how accurate the answer to that question would be. It would be simple to place a delay on any orders.

“I’ll need video and logs of everyone that’s used this workstation in the last year.”

The man stood up and looked confused, “That information exists, but it’ll take some time to pull.”

“Good, get those IT guys that were here to work on that. I need that information in thirty minutes. Also, copies of your logs will also be required.”

“Please stay in this room and I will get them started on your request,” the poor man sighed as he left the room.

“Alright, where are the juicy details I’m looking for,” John said to himself.

Thirty-five minutes later John had a spare image made for the workstation. He was reviewing the logs and was fairly certain nothing was deleted or altered. There were no signs that any of the users had created any macros or executable files to be run at a later time. With any luck, John thought he’d know who was placing some of the false orders and he’d be on the way to interview them.