After the small planning-session with Sophia, I had left her to show Galatea where she had observed the Omega’s and what she knew about them and went into my workshop to make some surveillance equipment so she didn’t have to sit on roofs and in air-ducts to spy on them. Making them was quite easy, everything needed was old and proven technology, even if I made them slightly different by incorporating my energy crystals and some rather advanced memory-module to let them record for a long time and store it all internally, only sending out encrypted pulses when queried with the right signal. There would be no emissions detectable over the electromagnetic background-noise, unless we made the mistake of querying them the moment someone was scanning for bugs.

Those measures meant that discovering them with normal matters would be nearly impossible, giving me some confidence that they could not be used against us, feeding us misinformation.

I returned to the main-room and saw Galatea showing Sophia her current models, predicting the movements of people and assigning them priorities according to the data. Sophia looked awed by the amount of information we had and the fancy graphics Galatea had cooked up for us. I had to admit, they looked great, almost as if they were truly accurate.

It was something I would actively have to watch out for, the implicit idea behind all predictive models Galatea was working with, was that past behaviour allowed to make reasoned predictions for future behaviour. It was the basic of all scientific research, the idea that, if you had an accurate model, it would predict reality accurately, allowing us to use those predictions to further our understanding of reality. There was just a problem with it, just as it was impossible for us to accurately describe the velocity and position of subatomic particles, it was impossible to accurately describe the behaviour and motivations of individual humans.

While Galatea could partially understand emotions, at the core of her being, she was based on mathematical logic and cold reason, thus limiting her ability to accurately predict human behaviour. With mine, she did very well due to the long exposure she had to me, but predicting how others would act, especially people with a vastly different value-system, was difficult for her. So, while I would happily use the predictions made by her models, I would have to engrave in my mind that they could always be wrong.

“Do you want to place the first bugs tonight?” I asked Sophia, as it was rather late.

“Sure, why not. Guess vacation is over.” She said in a wistful voice.

“Don’t worry, I doubt that you will have to do all that much for now. Once the bugs are placed, we will have to harvest the data every few days. The data-collection and analysis part of our operation will take some time, especially if we want to get an accurate picture, something we can use to pull out the roots of the Omegas. Most of the work will be data-processing and analysis, only few parts require us to go out and do things.” I explained. Most of the analysis would have to be done by Galatea and me, so we would most likely do it during the nights and leave daytime for enjoyable excursions with Sophia.

“Ok, show me watcha’ got.” She said in a strange voice and making inexplicable hand gestures. Ignoring her antics, I showed her into the workshop, explaining and demonstrating the bugs to her, with emphasis on the conditions they needed to function and where the best placement would be. Part of me would have loved to use a laser-microphone mounted on a drone, but that was sadly not possible. Or at least close enough to impossible to matter.

Once I had made sure that she understood how the new gear worked, I moved into the room I started to refer to as armoury, the room that housed my suit and auxiliary gear and suited up. I heard a slightly startled gasp behind me when I quickly stripped off my clothes and realised that Sophia had followed me.

“I will go with you and stay in the vicinity, so you have backup in case something goes wrong.” I told her, without turning.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t get caught. I’ve done that shit a few times already.” she said, waving off my concerns.

“I know that you have done so before, but I would greatly worry.” I said, turning to her and moving close to her. “Do you really want me to sit here all night, worrying that something might have happened to you or will you humour me and let me watch your back?” I asked, softly placing a hand on her cheek and looking into her eyes. There was no way I would let her do something that stupid, especially not without backup. The Omega’s had demonstrated intelligence capabilities that I did not understand and combat capabilities powerful enough to take both of us on. Part of me even wanted to use some sort of drone to place the bugs, but sadly that would not work.

The combination of closeness, my state of dress, or rather undress, and the tone of my voice demonstrated that, even after a lot of tanning, her face was not dark enough to hide a blush.

“No, I don’t mind. But that probably means I should use my costume, right?” she squeaked out.

“Yes, you should. Don’t worry, I cleaned and maintained it after the troubles with the Scourge.” I calmly started to put on my body-stockings as Sophia fled the room, getting her own costume. Only then, I relaxed the strict control I had kept and felt a furious blush show on my face. Shaking it off, I quickly pulled on my gear, checking everything as I went.

All status-checks came back as green, even those linking to new gear, like the improved gloves and the repaired Plasma-Cannon. It would be the first armoured excursion for both of us, since the battle against the scourge.

Even with my head-start, Sophia was done before me, but that was no surprise, her equipment was a better set of clothes, compared to the complexity of my powered armour. Together, we left the bunker and emerged in the forest. Once again, we made a bit of a game out of the race down into the city-proper, skirting the illuminated areas and keeping to the shadows. And, once again, science lost to powered human. Even with the hover-field I was simply unable to keep up and remain hidden at the same time. It rankled a little, I wanted to be faster and I knew there were ways to be faster. But those had other problems, for example a set of cold-gas thrusters had potential, but would require some serious modification to the suit and the thrusters. A thought for another time.

Soon, we got to the area Galatea was carefully surveilling and dropped into stealth-mode. For me, that meant I moved into the best hiding space I could find and remained there, making sure that nobody could hear me. If Sophia needed help, or if either Galatea or I saw something on the drone-feed, I was only seconds away, without alerting everyone with a decent set of senses to our presence.

“Good luck.” I wished Sophia, when she moved off.

“Thanks, but I won’t need luck:” Came her cheery and cheeky reply over our coms, causing me to smile, but it was a worried smile. I was happy that she was so optimistic but I feared for the day that Murphy would no longer turn a blind eye to her.

Watching her move through the shadows showed me why her actions had worked before, she was truly stealthy. Even when knowing where she was, it was hard to make out her form, darting from shadow to shadow.

“Sophia, go to full emission-control. I don’t think they can trace our signals, but better safe than sorry.” I said, watching the signal disappear from my display. Now, I truly had to focus to make sure I did not lose her.

It was almost like watching a bunny, or a mouse, moving from cover to cover, always careful not to alert the hawk circling above. The first place she had chosen was an old, run-down apartment building, now mainly housing squatters, drug-addicts and hoodlums so amongst those undesiered, a group of gang-bangers did not stick out too much.

Sophia managed to directly crawl up the wall, using small ledges and cracks as hand and foot-holds. Just watching, I realised that there was no way I could have done what she did, at least not with my current gear. Within moments, she placed the first bug in a crack in the wall of one of the rooms customarily used by the Omegas, before moving on. It was almost like watching ballet, the graceful way she used to navigate the wall.

Part of me wanted her to continue for longer, but a larger part was incredibly happy when she was back on solid ground, without anyone raising alarm. Slipping into the shadows, she made her way towards the next target.