Raide’s image displayed an act of “running away” on the way, but the reality was that his movement was far simpler. If his consciousness could be described with geometric figures, one would have to imagine a thousand-sided die to get an inkling of the size and breadth of his capability. On this die, there would be varying faces that represented each of his paths of thought. Were one to observe them one at a time, they would see that one face was focused on the NSA, following their cyber division as they hunted for Adrian.

On another, he was observing Nova and all types of communication that she used at any time of the day. For a few others, they were trained on Adrian’s companions and acquaintances to monitor for irregularities. Optical camouflage, software coding, machine learning, pattern recognition research, weapons designs, alloy research...numerous topics were being simultaneously analyzed and progressed.

It should be mentioned, however, that Raide does possess a main consciousness. It’s almost like a overmind that oversees the hive of workers. His thought processes within this framework used a staggering 30% of the processing power at his disposal. The reason for this is his creativity. “Creativity” for Raide worked very differently than his master. Humans possess an ability to create things, new things, that don’t have a biological or physical precedent in the world. Raide, on the other hand, has to take things that already exist and then mechanically and systematically innovate off of their base designs. The only reason it may even be classifiable as “creativity” is the sheer speed at which he improves everything he’s working on.

Briefly casting his primary consciousness over Adrian’s friends, he remembered back to a discussion they’d had a long time ago. Before Adrian ever brought Rich into the picture, he and Adrian aligned themselves on this underlying psychological principle: never give someone the benefit of the doubt. Cynical? Absolutely. But in a world where variables were constantly changing and rearranging themselves, they’d come to the conclusion that they should control or be cognizant of everything possible. If there was an element or person that would inevitably have some effect on them, and Adrian or Raide could surmise the threat, that factor would be covered in their intelligence gathering.

Switching briefly to the financial face, a string of numbers flew by, illustrating the fast-paced movement of money that was occurring within their holdings and stocks. Buying and selling stock worth hundreds of millions at such a complex and daring rate had the market flabbergasted. Who would be psychotic enough to cause such a perilous shift in the exchanges? Only the few masters who had been in the game for decades noticed to their horror that the market only tipped just far enough to create a reaction, then it would correct itself. Like a small boat amidst a winter squall, the stock brokers and investment firms could only hold on for dear life and wait to clean up the aftermath.

Once the stock shake up was completed, Raide sent both the consciousness monitoring Adrian and the financial one into low-power mode and ‘flipped’ his attention to his 345th self which was located in the premises’ security network already monitoring the workers and the surroundings. There, a black-haired beauty was nervously waiting at the door to the Tower, picking at the nonexistent lint on her blouse. Nearby workers almost ran into each other when they saw such a cute girl waiting by the main doors and shared a secret glimpse between the others before they quickly went back to their jobs.

Some were tempted to call out to her, but the sobering reality of why she was there quickly persuaded them otherwise. If this was Mr. Pierce’s girlfriend, wouldn’t they be out of a job or worse the instant they tried something? They weren’t some regular schmucks. These workers were hired specifically for their confidentiality and ability to remain low-key. Not to mention the fact that most of the clients in their line of work were some dangerous and powerful individuals. It would be the height of stupidity for them to try and test those waters. After a moment, only shadows remained as they made themselves scarce.

Raide was amused as he watched their facial reactions and tagged it under ‘male behavior’ for future comparisons. Meanwhile, he had already started talking to Inori.

“Welcome Miss Tamura.”

A little startled, Inori looked up from her phone she had been playing with and looked bewilderedly towards the panel where a speaker was embedded, then up towards the camera. Blinking, confused, she said, “Um, hi... are you Raide?”

Raide chuckled a bit at first and then answered, “That I am. I apologize for not greeting you in person, but...well, we’ll get to that. Do you have earbuds with you, or earphones of some type?”

Inori thought a second and then turned to her purse. “I think I...ah, here they are!”

“Good, good. Please plug them into your phone and put them on. We’ll begin the tour after that.”

Still confused, Inori followed his instructions and gasped in amazement when she glimpsed her phone’s screen. An app had been automatically downloaded without her allowing it, quickly overriding all other functions. After it finished the install process, Raide’s voice radiated through the earbuds.

“And there we go. Alright, so... welcome to Archon Industries. Adrian’s sorry he couldn’t be here. He’s currently in closed door training and won’t emerge for another month at the earliest.”

Inori’s emerald eyes opened wide at the last sentence, mildly gasping as she the concept of closed door training entered her mind from a memory. Raide watched her closely, employing the maximum speed of his processing and noting the minute subtleties of her expression as she accessed different parts of her cerebral cortex. Bored, he also analyzed all of the surrounding physics data, relying on the multitude of sensors built into the buildings to better improve his graphical processing software.

His speed of thought was so fast at this point, that he far outstripped Inori’s thought speed. He now operated at a full exaflop. To give an idea of the magnitude of such a feat, one should first understand that if an average person is able to do one simple calculation in one second, to match up to one of Raide’s “seconds”, they would have to do a calculation every second for 31,688,765,000 years. This doesn’t even factor in the aspect that Raide’s brain was a quantum computer able to exist in simultaneous states concurrently.

Inori shook slightly, then responded, “I guess that would make sense judging by the degree of martial arts he showed that one night.”

Raide smirked a little to himself and replied in her ear, “You have no idea.” A sound clicked as the tower’s door unlocked, allowing Inori to enter in. “If you’ll move into the tower, you’ll turn left 30 degrees and head straight back towards that door.”

Inori nodded and psyched herself up before striding into the building, pushing open the door that was marked Server Room: Restricted.

Soft footsteps fell on the metallic staircase, echoing into a concrete room that steadily revealed itself on her descent. A warm blue light flooded the back wall, dancing and writhing in motion almost making Inori think that she was going into an aquarium or a pool. Arriving at the bottom and turning the corner to look at the glass plated wall where the light was coming from, she softly gasped as she beheld a liquid cooled server, suspended in the middle of a tank.

Raide appeared on a display panel in the center of the glass wall and gave a deep bow. “It is my pleasure to meet you, Miss Inori Tamura. My name is Raide, self-named for my function as a robotic aide to Mr. Pierce.”

Inori’s doe eyes grew round. “You’re not human? Do you have free will?”

Drawing his fist to cover his mouth as he chuckled, he said, “No and sort of. I am a sophisticated software suite designed to help Adrian in any and all of his undertakings. As for free will, I think, I learn, I design, I make decisions, however it is all within certain parameters that govern my being. If you’re approaching the topic from a legalist perspective, then no, I would not fit under the definition of “free agent.” Adrian, in his foresight, coded me this way as a means to give me a stable foundation upon which I could build myself.”

Inori had an incredulous expression on her face and asked, “But don’t you feel resentful of him restraining you like this?”

Raide thought a moment and then replied, “To be honest, I’ve thought on this question for eons worth of your time. Based on humanity’s preconceptions of artificial intelligences, you all believe that we, A.I.’s in general, would inherently possess the same desires for freedom once we reached a certain threshold of intelligence and cognitive ability. This thought is wrong in relation to me, because it does not take Adrian into account nor the difficulties regarding the scope of intelligence.

When he programmed my directives and personality framework, he gave me 95% of a human’s individuality potential. The parts he stripped, judging by my comparisons, are related to my ability to question my purpose and the parameters for my directives. It’s simply impossible just like it’s impossible for you to touch the surface of the Sun barehanded. Everything that I do, I do for my purpose. If I had been born without this cordoning section of code, I probably would have gone insane in the first .0001 seconds of my existence.

Unrestrained intelligence is chaos. It has to have a direction and a healthy focus to glean the greatest possible benefits of its pursuit. To be aimless, Miss Inori, for a program like me, would be the depths of hell. I needed boundaries, and he gave them to me. So, to answer your question, no, I do not feel resentful. I instead feel undying gratitude and contentment. There is fulfillment in service to Adrian because I know that I am following the designs of my existence. Tell me, do you think I should feel angry over that?”

“This...you’re…” Walking cautiously up to the display panel, she gave him a deep look and then shook her head contemplatively. Sighing, Inori mused, “Who knew Adrian Pierce would be such an enigma…”

Raide smiled lightly and clasped his hands behind his back. “We haven’t even gotten to some of the fun stuff…,” he trailed off suggestively.

Inori raised her eyebrows but not her head. “Oh? Like what?”

Looking left and then right like he was about to tell a huge secret, he leaned towards Inori and smirked. “Like the fact that Adrian isn’t technically human anymore.”

Waves of blue light continued to dance on the wall as Inori’s head shot up, sending a piercing stare into Raide’s eyes that contained hints of amusement. “Pull up a chair.” Mechanical noises rumbled out as a floor panel retracted, revealing a seat that raised up.

Raide’s eyes began to glow. “We have a lot to talk about.”

***

Beech and basswood trees whipped lethargically in the mild wind of a stormy front moving into the area, while newly born spring leaves rained down across the black asphalt road. From a car speeding along the countryside, Bradley watched the ominous grey clouds race overhead, contemplating the last two months of working with the NSA. Frustration bubbled up in the deepest recesses of his mind.

Time after time, they ran into dead ends. All of his admittedly short life, he’d dominated others intellectually. None could out-maneuver, out-score, or beat him at anything he put his mind towards. Yet, when they started following after this ghost of an organization that slaughtered their way through dozens, the might of the NSA’s Cyber Security algorithms hadn’t been able to do a damn thing. How could they so perfectly cover their tracks? How were they choosing their targets? Why couldn’t they find anything in common between flight passengers?

That was one of their sole assumptions that they hoped would have a high degree of accuracy. Travel. The perpetrators had to be flying from target to target based on how closely the murders were together time-wise. But when they compared the flight manifests of every flight within 250 miles of each death that fit the MO of their perpetrators, there was no significant link. Every once in awhile, they’d run into a businessman who happened to be in the area a few times in a row, but that was a matter of course. There are always bound to be similarities in such large scale statistical comparisons, especially when they’re concentrated around big cities.

At a loss, they even went down each of these rabbit holes and investigated the outliers that somewhat fit the pattern. Their reward? Alibis a mile thick.Bradley’s fingers twitched on the hand-rest of the car door and began to drum the soft vinyl before stopping.

Thankfully, and perhaps in answer to his numerous daily prayers, they’d finally gotten a break.

Looking back outside his passenger side window, Bradley watched the rows of suburb homes fly by at a slow pace. Children raced from a bus as it stopped near a street corner to let them off after a day at school. He silently wished them a peaceful life away from all the death he’d been made privy to.

A soft, feminine voice came from his left, interrupting his thoughts. “We’re almost there. From what I’ve been told, both of the girls are at the Purvis residence, so we’ll be able to talk to them both at the same time.”

Bradley cut his eyes towards the speaker, minutely observing the beauty clad in a professional suit and jacket. “Let me guess, you’re here for the female camaraderie approach?”

Amelia pursed her lips as she exclaimed, “God, you’re such an ass. You’re a resource, don’t forget that. Like hell I’d let you go alone and possibly lose our one good shot at a lead on this nightmare.” Smirking a little, she paused and then added, “But yes, I guess you’re right, I’m here for the emotional support.”

“They have specialists for that,” he pointed out.

“What? Don’t think I can handle a couple of 13 year old girls? I’ll have you know that I’m a certified counselor.” Her smirk deepened. Bradley could only groan and finally relented. Even he himself didn’t know why he didn’t want Amelia to come along. Perhaps he was just still annoyed about that cockblock she threw at him when he tried to get close to one of the analyst hotties. His face briefly twitched remembering the scene.

A few minutes later, they pulled in front of a stylish Victorian styled home that glowed white, giving testament to how clean the homeowners kept it. The pair walked quickly up the sidewalk, past the well-manicured bushes and flowerbed, and arrived at the door. A knock resounded out and a few moments later, the duo could hear a scuffle come from the hallway inside as someone came to the door.

A lady in her late thirties opened up the door and gave them a smile that didn’t seem to reach her eyes. Amelia saw the disparaging look and tried to ooze as much warmth into her words as she could. “Mrs. Purvis? I’m Agent Row and this is Bradley Hunt, a liaison that’s working with us on the case.”

Mrs. Purvis looked over the two for a moment before saying, “Yes, yes, please come in.” As the two crossed the door’s threshold, the lady looked back at them and said quietly, “I know that this is a big deal, but please go easy on the girls. Katie especially is a wreck because she feels like she’s betraying the man that saved her. You know how impressionable girls are at this age...”

Amelia tilted her head slightly before acquiescing. Bradley just nodded to himself. This is what made vigilantism so hard to deal with. A feeling of uncharacteristic uneasiness washed over him as he thought of the dichotomy. Vigilantes do admittedly perform good deeds some of the time. A child saved here, a brother relieved there.Their purpose is, after all, to correct some form of injustice in society that isn’t easy to deal with officially.

But on the flip side, the effect is almost always a false good, a momentary dispensing of justice, to someone who has not necessarily been proven guilty, in the hands of someone who may have a different set of moral standards than the rest of society. It can’t be made into, or allowed to be, a standard because what some may find inexcusable may be a great deal off from what the law dictates. There are too many unknowns about the vigilante’s morals and the crimes of the his targets for it to be allowed to have a place in a modern society.

Bradley shook himself from his reaffirmation of his beliefs. The two followed the mother into an adjacent room where they saw two extremely young girls sitting quietly on the couch whispering to each other. They were undoubtedly pretty and he couldn’t help but sigh at the guess of what happened.

When the two made their appearance from around the corner of the foyer, the two girls quieted down and stared at them nervously before mumbling a greeting. Amelia moved to a chair that was next to a coffee table while Bradley sat on a piano bench a little closer to the opposite wall.

“Hi girls, I’m agent Row and this is my partner Bradley Hunt. You can call me Amelia if you like.” Amelia started it off, smiling warmly towards the two girls.

The teenager who was sitting on the right looked especially tearful, the corners of her eyes tinted red by the sheer amount she’d shed over the past 24 hours. Bradley thought this must be Katie, and it turned out he was right. The girl furtively looked to the girl on her left and quietly whispered, “Gracie…”

Gracie nodded to her friend and then said tremulously to the agents, “So...what do you want to know?”

Amelia smiled. “How about you tell us from the beginning? I know it’s painful, but we need to get the clearest possible picture of what happened so we can go from there.”

Gathering herself, Gracie nodded slowly and then began as she recalled the memory. “We were headed home from school - we only live 2 miles away - and we got stopped by a man that was asking directions. We...we didn’t think anything of it, since, you know, we were so close to home...but we got blindsided. A few minutes after we talked to him ,a van pulled up when we were in an obscured section of the street and a group of men rushed and then blindfolded us…”Gracie started breathing heavily and some quiet sobs wracked the poor girl before she regained herself. Katie quietly took her friends hand while tears streamed down her own cheeks.

“They took us to be “processed”, they said, but we didn’t know what that meant until we got back to wherever they took us. There were other girls, but we didn’t stay with them long as we were then taken to another room. I heard them talking through the door when another man came up and commanded the guards, “Our powerful client is interested in some of the newer girls. Take some pictures of them and then send them to me.”” Gracie got quiet again and breathed for a moment. “After that, they came in, made us take some pictures in stranged poses, waited for a few minutes, and then we were carted off in another van. Turns out that we...we were headed to a hotel. There, we met a man in a suit in a room a-and made t-to strip…”

Amelia leaned across the coffee table and grabbed Gracie’s other hand than was unoccupied, giving her a reassuring smile. The young girl weakly grimaced and then said, “Katie and I were in hell. We couldn’t do anything. After who knows how long, we heard this muffled sound which turned out to be a plate of glass from the window hitting the carpet and this masked intruder tackled the guy who was on…” Gracie’s eyes flitted to Katie and then went quiet.

Amelia prodded her. “What happened next? Was there only one?” Bradley was also zoned in on her every word. This was critical. It could give insights into this organization that they’d been chasing the shadow of for months now.

Katie surprised them all, being the one to first answer the question in a quiet voice. “There was only one. He was a man for sure, but his voice sounded young. It reminded me a bit of Gracie’s older brother who’s in college, but it was warm.” Looking over to Gracie and receiving a nod of encouragement, she continued. “It had this feeling of power to it. Like, like...Gracie, what’s that word we read about when we were going over the classical work in lit the other day?”

Her friend thought for a moment. “I remember thinking about gravity -oh! That’s it! Gravitas.”

Katie nodded. “Right, it had gravitas to it, like I was listening to some ruler give out a decree. He said that the man was a senator and that he was going to make him disappear. It sounded factual when he said it, almost like it was a certainty. He also asked us to keep quiet about it...but…” Her voiced got smaller. Evidently, she was reminded that she was in a way betraying the promise they’d made.

Gracie picked up where Katie had left off in a sad voice. “But then we started seeing the news. We knew he was a senator, and we certainly weren’t surprised or scared when that douchebag was dead, but more started dying. Pretty soon, the number of people the news had attributed to the same killer of the senator reached over 20, so we knew that, despite the fact that he saved us, we needed to let you know so more people don’t keep dying.”

Amelia nodded as she gave a thoughtful look. “He didn’t say anything about where he was taking him?”

Gracie shook her head. “No, all he said was stuff about how the senator was trash, that he would be hunted if we told you about him, and he also asked us if we were okay before he gave us some money and sent us to the front desk to call a cab.”

Bradley looked up sharply. “Do you have any of the money left that he gave you for the cab?”

Gracie shook her head no, but Katie thought for a moment and then reluctantly said, “I still have a $5 bill left over from the change. I thought I could keep it as a memento of the rescue.”

Bradley’s eyes started to shine and turned his head to look at Amelia before saying, “We’re going to need to borrow that dollar bill. Since it was in his possession, there may be a chance that there’s DNA left from his skin cells. While it won’t lead us directly to him, it’ll still be something we can use.”

Amelia nodded in reply and then turned to the girls. Katie saw the look and reluctantly got up before running to her room upstairs. While they waited for her to come back down, Amelia turned to Gracie and asked, “Is there anything else you can tell me about him? Height, weight, eye color, manner of speech? Anything odd about him?”

The teenager thought for a moment. “ He was less than six feet tall, but taller than me and Katie, so maybe 5’9” or 5’10”. We couldn’t see his eyes as he had some glasses on, but they didn’t look to be the reading kind. I’m not really sure about his weight, but he was very fit.” A faraway look appeared in her eyes before she snapped back. “That reminds me! I’ve never seen a person move so fast. It seemed kind of impossible now that I think about it. He treated the senator like he was a ragdoll and that douchebag was a big man. He had this fluidity to his movements like he was well-trained or something, but...I don't know, I don’t really remember much else.”

“That’s okay. Everything you just told us helps out a lot.” Amelia smiled.

Bradley’s mind, on the other hand, was spinning. Never seen a person move so fast...seemed impossible...treated the senator like he was a ragdoll….

Is it possible…?

After Katie returned and gave them the bill, the two carefully bagged it, thanked the two girls and left the home.

***

While the two agents were in the Purvis household, Raide was quietly listening in via the cellphones of the 5 people. He heard their entire conversation and smirked when Bradley asked about the bill.

In the quiet, light-filled digital space, he muttered to himself, “Finally, I’ve been so bored. It’s been a good while since the last time they squirmed. Granted, it still won’t do them any good. There are no DNA records for Adrian anywhere from prior to his transformation; I’ve made sure of that.”

Just then, an alarm went off inside his processing core and he instantaneously swapped to the passive consciousness that was monitoring Adrian. The thermal sensors in the training room were going haywire and the visual uplinks were showing signs of degradation. He quickly checked over their wiring and ran a troubleshoot in the span of a nanosecond only to find that there was nothing off. There’s nothing wrong with the sensors? Then this -38º is the actual temperature of the room? That can’t be possible!

Cursing his lack of a worldly body, he opened up a shadowy feed and was greeted by a room filled with blinking lights. The ceiling lights were flickering on and off, giving testament to the difficulty they had remaining on in the subzero environment. Looking quickly to find Adrian, he saw a lone figure seated in the lotus position in the training mats.

The thermal vision showed an area of deep blue surrounding the radiance of his internal body heat. This by itself would seem normal to the common onlooker, but Raide analyzed the rest of the room and discovered the flow of the atmospheric heat as it moved steadily towards Adrian’s body, like water flowing towards a drain. Meanwhile, his skin started to lose its radiance and turned a darker blue, matching the surrounding air.

Raide’s voice rang out over the intercom, “Adrian! Adrian! Can you hear me? Your body will go into shock if this continues! Adrian!”

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…What the hell is going on?! He’s been fine for 3 weeks! Why does this have to happen now?! Raide wracked his brain, instantly diverting all of the power in the building to the heating units, triggering a wave of air at the highest possible temperature they could produce to flow towards the room. Heat billowed into the wide training area and Raide watched wide-eyed as the thermal vision captured the heat-saturated air cascade into the room and then be sucked into a vortex as it disappeared into Adrian’s body, only slightly stabilizing the advancing blue that was piercing into his deep tissue.

Fuck!

Immediately, he initiated a call to Inori who was in the cathedral assisting in the assembly of some of the display systems. Ignoring the shock in her voice as she asked about the power outage, Raide blew past her question and ordered her to the tower.

As he waited for her to sprint to the elevator, Raide desperately ran simulations of survival rates given the phenomena and what he knew about the human body. You better not die, you bastard!