“They warned us things would be different out here, but I must admit I wasn’t prepared for this level of... decadence.”

There are a lot of things in Winters House I could see plausibly described as decadent, but up until now, the shower wasn’t on that list. It’s a perfectly nice shower, of course, but the showerhead isn’t exactly gilded. What Survivor is referring to, however, is the water itself. Vanaheim doesn’t exactly have a surplus of the stuff, so every last drop has to be carefully preserved. But here, we’ll pour gallons of the stuff down the drain just to get ourselves clean.

“You’ll get used to it, I’m sure.”

In fact, I’m counting on it. The survival drive is one thing, but this is really her first chance to truly live. The highly-disciplined society of Vanaheim has no room for basic luxuries, when survival isn’t a guarantee. Earth is by no means perfect, but it’s not a terrible place to live for the most part. If she spends long enough here, the prospect of going back permanently will begin to seem unbearable.

“Perhaps, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to take it for granted as you do.”

Survivor is wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants, courtesy of Zero. I offered to house her in my manor for the time being, but swiftly realized I had no clothes suitable for a woman on-hand, and sourced them from Sandra on short notice. Informal as they are, they don’t do much to diminish the chimera’s presence. Even with her hair still damp from the shower, I can’t help but find her rather transfixing. The faint sheen of moisture on her milky-white skin almost makes her glow.

“In any case, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.”

The presence of a woman in my home is somewhat strange. It’s hardly the first time, of course, but when Zero and Adamant are here, it’s strictly within the context of business. Besides them, there have been a few flings, but none that I ever took particularly seriously. Father possessed a great deal of disdain for anyone he considered an intellectual inferior, and even after I escaped his programming, it took time to identify and excise the more odious aspects of his personality that I inherited. I can’t help but envy the connection Kellan seems to have with his fiancee Olivia.

I place a bookmark between the pages I was reading, and place the heavy tome down on my coffee table. Survivor sits down on the couch, leaving a little space between us, and stretches languidly. There’s a sort of feline quality to her- deceptively lazy, yet more than willing to eat you alive if necessary. We haven’t spoken a terrible amount since yesterday, after her friends returned home. Her exact role within the Council is to be determined, though that meeting isn’t for a few days. Right now, she’s just here to acclimate, and it’s my job to help with that as much as I can.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” I begin, and she looks over to me curiously. “Do you have a name? Beyond your designation, I mean? I’d be more than willing to study your language in order to learn the correct pronunciation, if that’s an issue.”

Judging by her expression, she hasn’t even considered the question before. She doesn’t frown or make puppy-dog eyes, just thinks about it for a moment.

“No, I do not.”

I don’t get the sense that she’s discomfited by this line of questioning. It just never occurred to her that she could be known by something other than her function.

“Would you like one? It’s not necessary by any means, but if I were in your place, I wouldn’t want to be defined by someone else’s intentions for me.”

A little hypocritical of me, considering I still carry Father’s name, but that’s different. I’ve made the family name my own.

“You had something in mind before you even asked, didn’t you?”

Her tone isn’t accusatory so much as amused. It’s true, of course. On one hand, it seemed self-evident that she deserved an opportunity to choose a name of her own, but my more calculating side also noted that giving her a new name would strengthen her connection to us, and weaken her ties to Vanaheim. Whether she’s grasped that aspect or not, she doesn’t seem bothered.

“Perhaps,” I answer with a chuckle. “How do you feel about the name Ishtar? Goddess of beauty, war, sex and power?”

She smirks, seemingly unbothered by the implications of my suggestion.

“That’s not one of the deities you people still actually worship, is it?”

“Please, give me a little more credit than that. She hasn’t been worshiped in thousands of years.”

“Well, we’ll have to see about changing that,” she replies idly. “Ishtar… yes, I think that’s fitting.”

There’s a short stretch of silence, which I don’t see any point in filling with a bland pleasantry like ‘good’ or ‘I’m glad.’ It’s a powerful thing, to name someone, and I do feel good about the fact that she accepted my suggestion, but it doesn’t imply any sort of ownership over her either.

“The thought occurs that I might be the first of my kind in quite some time to have an actual name,” Ishtar says at last.

“Is that so?”

She nods. Her body language has been projecting an underlying level of tension since she came into the room, even though her outward demeanor is calm. I can sympathize better than almost anyone. My first day outside of the gestation tube was terrifying as well. No matter how well you’ve been prepared, actually entering a new and unfamiliar world is impossible to be ready for in advance. At least small children can adjust slowly, as their minds develop. Ishtar and I have no such luxury.

“Even our designations are not unique, for the most part. Vanaheim is a system, and for the past several centuries, the components of that system have remained fairly static. The Conductor unit helps facilitate the transfer of energy with nearly zero bleed. The Mirror unit can replace any other unit that becomes incapable of fulfilling its function. The Mentor unit supervises, coordinates, and develops enhancements. You saw fourth-generation iterations of each.”

On one hand, this is simply part of the information exchange we agreed upon, and I make mental notes about everything she’s saying. But Ishtar is clearly building up to a broader point as well. It’s a bit of a surprise how easily I slip into calling her by her new name- maybe because I was already doing so unconsciously before I even suggested it to her.

“The ones who accompanied me were not purpose-built for an excursion. To do so would be a waste of resources. Instead, they were selected from other roles. But they were deemed unsuitable for long-term residence on Earth. So they engineered a new unit-class. I’m the first-generation Survivor unit, and until I return home, I will be the only one of my kind.”

Interesting. I suppose they can’t build the next generation without detailed data on the performance of the previous one. Her explanation makes sense as well- with as thin margins of energy consumption as they have in Vanaheim, building four unique units for a single mission would be a huge waste. Easier to just take three that are generally suitable, and build a fourth to the necessary specifications.

“If you offered any of the others a name, they would refuse you. Their unit-class isn’t the only thing they retain between generations. Each new iteration is seeded with the collective memories of their predecessors. They emerge from gestation already aware of their role and how to execute it. Deviation from that role is almost impossible for them to conceive of.”

“Free will is hard to stamp out, but an artificial ancestral memory will go a long way. But you don’t have any ancestors, so your imperatives are weaker.”

Looking thankful that I’m already getting what she means, Ishtar nods.

“Precisely. Survival is still my first priority, but with all of the basic needs fulfilled… I find myself wanting to live, as well.”

The difference between living and surviving is a subtle but important one. Doing the latter is always more important than the former, but we don’t live in the Malthusian death-trap quite yet. That means there’s time for the development of individual personalities, the pursuit of the arts, and all other manner of wonderful things.

“I know what you mean.”

“Do you, now? Is it time for you to explain why you showed such interest in my friends and I?”

Well, that’s a good reminder that I’m not quite as opaque as I’d like to think. Psychic blockers don’t do anything about the more conventional ways of telling what somebody’s thinking.

“Call it a sense of kinship. The circumstances of my birth were similar to yours. Designed on the biological and psychological level to serve as the vessel for another man’s ambition. I was able to escape what he intended to be my destiny. My hope was that I could help you do the same.”

Ishtar doesn’t frown, but her gaze turns slightly judgmental.

“I don’t need to be saved, Mister Winters.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Self-actualization is the point, after all. But you’re in an unfamiliar world, and if this is where you intend to live, you’re going to need a guide. That’s all I’m offering.”

Putting this in explicit terms makes things somewhat different. Then again, she was the one to raise the subject. Something tells me it’ll be a long time before we discuss this so frankly again. Nevertheless, I don’t regret being honest about my motives and intentions. Leaving something like that unsaid would risk tainting the foundation of whatever relationship we might have going forward.

“I’ll consider it,” she says finally. Raising those emotional barriers back up, after a moment of vulnerability. “In the meantime, we have other things to discuss. I told you about my friends, now you tell me about yours.”

Somehow I doubt she’s asking after the small handful of people I talk with outside of ‘work.’ She wants to know about the Council, and I don’t blame her. We represent a significant X-factor in her understanding of the world. Explaining what the deal with every one of my coworkers is will take some time, though, and I’m no longer content to sit idle while doing so.

“Sure,” I reply, pushing myself up off the couch. “I’m going down to the lab to finish up an ongoing project. I’ll explain while I work.”

We passed through the lab briefly when we arrived yesterday- it’s where I installed my translocation hub, and Ishtar had her implant put in after the rest of the Vanaheim crew left. I locked it down after she went upstairs, just in case she got any ideas about digging through my things while I was asleep. She follows silently as I head through the dining room and to the library, where the hidden entrance to the lab is located.

The top half of my globe flips open after I press a series of hidden buttons corresponding to various capitals, revealing an advanced biometric scanner. It reads my retinas, fingerprints, DNA, and then takes a voiceprint sample as I carefully enunciate the passphrase, “Great souls endure in silence.” Once every method of verification is accepted, the globe snaps shut, and a nearby bookshelf sinks into the floor, revealing the staircase hidden behind. Ishtar says nothing about the entire affair, but I get the sense that she thinks that it’s somewhat quaint.

Halfway down the stairs, as the artificial torches flicker on to illuminate our path, I decide to begin the explanations I promised. Naturally, the most important member of our cabal has to come first.

“I’ll start with Network. You’ve seen him already, though you may not have realized it. He was the one who drove the trucks transporting the fuel cells your people took home with them.”

Obviously there were different bodies behind the wheel of each truck, but Ishtar doesn’t interrupt to point out the seeming contradiction in what I said.

“We didn’t always understand exactly how his power worked, but the best way to understand it is this: he’s a sentient virus that can selectively transmit itself through physical contact. The virus overwrites an individual’s personality with his own. It also links all of the carriers together mentally, so each of them shares experiences with all the rest. Not quite a hive mind, so much as a collective of individuals with identical personalities.”

The exact mechanics behind Network’s power bothered me for a long time. The original body copying its personality into others made sense, because he was a metahuman, but none of the other bodies scanned as having powers, even though they could all copy themselves over as well. Then I realized that Network’s ‘power’ was more along the lines of someone like Adamant, in the sense that it relates to a physical transformation. The moment his powers manifested, Network’s consciousness wasn’t housed in his brain, but in a virus his body produced. That virus propagates itself by overwriting the personalities of its carriers, making them all a part of his network.

“Through him, we control virtually every major institution on the planet. I’m sure you can imagine how. As a general rule, if you see somebody you don’t recognize inside one of our facilities, it’s him. And don’t worry about physical contact with him- the process is selective, not automatic. Otherwise we’d all be wearing hazmat suits everywhere.”

My experiments in trying to make Network’s personality-virus airborne for use as an aerosol weapon have been unsuccessful thus far, but I refuse to give up. The possibilities are simply too vast not to explore. The necessity of getting one of his bodies into proximity with a target is one of the only things holding Thorn back, and being able to just spray some of him in somebody’s face would eliminate it almost completely. Of course, removing that weakness would also be extremely dangerous, which is why I’m quietly developing a ‘vaccine’ for him, both to inoculate myself and my allies against him, and potentially to release to the general public, to neuter Thorn should he ever go rogue. Kellan approved both projects, but insisted on telling the others about them, in the interest of fostering a more open and honest culture within the group.

By the time my explanation of Network is finished, we’re down in the lab itself. Originally built by my grandfather as a fallout shelter during the height of the Cold War, it was repurposed by Father as his laboratory and secret lair. He took great pains to keep its existence secret, even though he refused to use an alias to obscure his identity, meaning the house was raided dozens of times by the authorities. He also had another base for his crew, the Terrors, which I stripped of everything useful several years ago. In the time since I inherited Winters House, I remodeled everything to varying degrees, but nowhere more extensively than the lab.

The stairs end on the upper floor of the lab, which is really more of a catwalk stretching around the perimeter of the lab. There are various doors on this upper level, behind which are a number of more sensitive projects. Most of them are specially shielded or projected in one way or another, including lead lining to prevent radiation leakage. In the center of the room, connected to the catwalk on multiple sides, is an elevator. It might seem a little excessive to Ishtar, considering the ‘ground floor’ of the lab is clearly visible just fifteen feet or so beneath us, but it also connects to the sub-levels underneath, though I won’t be giving her the tour of those quite yet.

A thirty-second elevator ride later, we step out onto the main floor of the lab. Originally cold concrete, I carpeted the whole thing over a long weekend. The north wall is dominated by a massive computer monitor, connected to a desk a few feet away, with a keyboard and control panel. The server banks are in their own climate-controlled room two floors down, to ensure optimal performance. I didn’t come down here to surf the web, though. Instead, I head for the workbench, where my tools are arranged neatly by function and size. In the center of the bench is my current project- a sleek, black baseball bat.

When I glance back at Ishtar, I find that her skin and hair has switched back to black, presumably because we’re once again underground. She doesn’t seem bothered by the lack of access to sunlight, and I decide not to comment on the change for now. We’ll have to talk about the extent of her powers at some point, but right now it’s my turn to act in the expository role.

“You met Hawkshaw already, of course. He’s our current chairperson. The two of us worked together to get rid of the Council’s old leadership a few years ago. His ability is rapid information absorption and retention- essentially, he learns much faster and remembers for much longer. Doesn’t seem to have an upper limit of how much he can learn, either.”

I don’t see much point in going through the details of Kellan’s past, or what he does outside of his work with the Council. She’ll pick that up on her own, either through context clues or by reading the database. While I’m speaking, I get to work opening the bat up. The ‘business end’ isn’t completely hollow, like metal bats usually are, but there’s a compartment inside that I expose, as the core I designed to go inside is finally ready.

“Evrimci was the other member of our little greeting party. He’s like you, in the sense that he’s a representative of a sovereign power. Specifically Arcadia, which didn’t exist when your ancestors went into your time-bubble. Long story short, it’s a metahuman ethnostate. The ruler used to be a part of the Council, but she’s currently unavailable, so Evrimci is her stand-in. His ability is adaptive shape-shifting, which means he’ll change to suit the situation.”

Though Ishtar’s eyes are on me, she doesn’t seem to be especially interested in what I’m actually doing. Maybe if she knew about baseball, she’d be curious why I’m building a bat, but without that context it just looks like a strangely-shaped club.

“That explains how he recovered from my seizure sword so quickly,” she remarks. Somehow, the fact that she and Tahir fought had slipped my mind completely during my explanation.

“Exactly. The metal woman is called Adamant. While in that form she’s virtually indestructible, super-strong, fast, and smart. Her internals are mechanical as well, so your psychokinesis won’t do much to her. Computers don’t have seizures.”

I’m actually not a hundred percent certain about that. Maybe her psychic weaponry is powerful enough to scramble even an artificial brain. But considering Ishtar is a chimera, her powers probably aren’t quite that potent. Versatility rather than raw power.

As I talk, I grab a device from my rack of tools. It resembles a pair of laboratory tongs, at least superficially, but with a key difference. The grabbing-end isn’t just bland metal, it’s a pair of discs with a green pad in the center. When I flip the switch on the handle, those pads light up, glowing faintly. Then I head over to another part of the room, where the bat’s core is sitting inside of the ‘forge’ I used to make it. On the surface, it just looks like a metal rod, maybe six inches long, but I couldn’t lift it with my bare hands if I tried. It’s superdense, meaning even Adamant would struggle to move it. That’s why I need the tongs- the green pads are gravity-manipulators, meaning when I clamp them around the rod, I can lift it as if it’s weightless. Still, I have to be careful transporting it back over to the bat, considering if I dropped it on my foot, it would probably break half a dozen bones.

Concentrating, I fall silent, and insert the core into the bat’s interior. Once it’s slotted into place, I turn the tongs off and put them back on the rack, before sealing the bat once again. Then I run a test to make sure all of the internals are functioning properly. The objective measurement registers the bat as being ridiculously heavy, mostly due to the superdense core, though being made of solid titanium doesn’t help either. The subjective scale, however, indicates that it weighs about as much as if it was made of ordinary aluminum. I got the idea from observing a metahuman whose power manifests as a sword that only he can lift. Replicating that function wasn’t easy, but I managed to figure out a way to make the bat behave differently based on who’s holding it. Keyed to my biometric signature, it’ll be virtually immovable to anybody but me, while in my hands, I can swing it around easily. And thanks to the core I just put inside, it’ll hit hundreds of times harder than a normal bat, too.

“Come,” I toss over my shoulder, lifting the bat with one hand, and marveling slightly at the disparity between how much the scale says it weighs, and how much it feels like it weighs in my hand. “I’ve got to test this thing out.”

A baseball bat is a slightly strange choice for a weapon, though my design is somewhat optimized compared to the usual model. Obviously a sword was right out, because there’s no space in the blade for a superdense core. I prototyped a few hammers as well, but they proved to be too unwieldy, not to mention exceedingly conspicuous. With translocation at my disposal, getting past airport security isn’t much of a concern, but I do travel by normal means upon occasion, and it’s much easier to pass a bat off as being harmless than a warhammer. Not to mention, it felt more aesthetically fitting. A sword or hammer or other anachronistic weapon would have been Father’s first choice, but I’m under no obligation to adhere to his preferences.

“Anyway, that’s everybody you’ve already seen, so I’ll go with the one you’re most likely to meet next. Zero is our computer expert. Totally brilliant, as you’d expect. She uses hard-light constructs in combat, meaning she can modify her armor and weaponry on the fly as well. More dangerous behind a keyboard than on the field, though.”

The term ‘hacktivist’ would mean nothing to Ishtar, so I keep that explanation brief, and continue over to the testing facility. It’s located in a room off of the main lab, with a number of training dummies, a firing range with targets full of bullet holes and scorch marks, and a number of large concrete blocks of varying weights. Those are the ones I’m after. Before beginning, I grab a face-mask, to prevent any chunks of stone from blinding me. Recognizing the danger of proximity, Ishtar stays back a few feet, watching more closely now.

Before me is a solid concrete cube weighing in at about fifty pounds. It’s on the smaller side compared to some of the others in the room, but I generally prefer to start from the bottom and work my way up. It takes a moment to find the correct stance, and then I lift the bat over my head, and slam it down. The only accurate word for what follows is explosion, as the concrete block shatters violently. A few larger chunks strike me, but either break against the mask, or my uniform, which I make a habit of wearing under my casual clothes at all times. The rest of the debris scatters around the room, leaving only the jagged bottom of the block intact. Aside from a coating of dust, the bat itself is unharmed- not even a chip in the paint.

“Astro is our extraterrestrial expert,” I continue as nonchalantly as possible, tapping the bat against the ground a few times to shake off the dust. “He’s bonded to a sentient alien weapon that he picked up off-planet. Also probably the member you’re least likely to meet in the foreseeable future, as he’s on a long-term reconnaissance mission for us at the moment.”

I consider using that as a lead-in to explaining the whole Andromedan invasion thing, but ultimately decide against it. That we’ve figured out proper spaceflight is probably enough of a shock, without also throwing in the fact that we made first contact with a hostile alien species over a decade ago.

Swinging the bat around a few more times, I try to get a better sense of the physics of the thing. The reduced weight is helpful, because it would be impossible to carry otherwise, but also deceptive in other ways. Normally, swinging something heavy around involves a lot of momentum, making it harder to pull back after you’ve committed to a strike, but adding a certain degree of additional force in exchange. With the bat, I can be more surgical in my strikes, but I also have to put a decent amount of force into the blow, instead of just relying on the weapon itself.

“That’s not a conventional weapon among your people, is it?”

Ishtar’s phrasing makes me feel a little bit like I’m some sort of backwater tribesman being observed by a colonial pioneer. Admittedly, I am smashing rocks with a stick at the moment, but it’s still a little unfair.

“Hardly. We’ve got far more compact bludgeoning instruments, but this one’s size was more suitable for my purposes. Not all of us can manifest weapons straight out of our brains, you know.”

That earns me a chuckle, and I move on to the next target, a one-ton concrete block. Less likely to shatter so completely, but I still keep the protective mask on. I’ve avoided acquiring any major disfigurements in the field thus far. It would be embarrassing to pick one up in my own home. The block is on a raised pedestal, so I could try to hit it like I was swinging at an actual baseball, but even with the superior strength of the bat, it probably wouldn’t have much effect. It takes more force than I can bring to bear to send a solid block of concrete flying. And I don’t need to hit a home run to do some serious damage. Instead, I slam the bat down on the block from above, as before. Instead of exploding, the block splits in half, a faultline opening up from the point of impact, which left a sizeable crater on the block’s surface. Both halves fall off the pedestal, and crack open further when they hit the ground.

“Our last member is Ulysses. He’s the numbers guy. The man’s brain is a quantum supercomputer, so he handles our financials. He can use his brain as a prediction machine, too. Analyzes shifts in the market to forecast political and economic events before they happen. Works the same way in a fight, too- if he observes you long enough, he can construct a model that will let him predict your next move before you even know you’re going to make it.”

Ishtar makes a disapproving sound, and I turn around to face her, lifting up the mask to meet her eyes.

“We experimented with quantum brains in Vanaheim. It went poorly.”

A social taboo, then. Interesting. I lean back against the pedestal, bracing myself with one arm, using the bat like a cane.

“How so?”

“They aren’t people, they’re algorithms. No interiority whatsoever. Any sort of personality this ‘Ulysses’ seems to have is just a complex program it’s running to fool you. It thinks at the speed of light, so you’re never going to catch it in a lie. When we tried to probe ours telepathically, it rearranged its own brain in order to kill the telepath. Not even maliciously- it was automatic.”

If that was the case with Ulysses, I have a feeling I’d like him more. The arrogant genius that I know doesn’t exactly fit the bill of a perfect social manipulator. Then again, maybe that’s what he wants us to think.

“What’s the danger? We’ve all got psychic shielding, so nobody could poke around in his brain even if they wanted to.”

She frowns. Probably because the taboo is strong enough that she never spent much time thinking about the ‘why.’ Or she’s just annoyed that I don’t seem to be taking this as seriously as her.

“The danger is insidious. If they breed, they pass the Q-brain onto their children, one hundred percent of the time. And they’re more likely to do so than the average person, because they’re capable of being perfectly charismatic when necessary. Less of a problem for us, because we don’t breed the way you people do, but it was still deemed necessary to liquidate the test subjects and destroy the relevant research. Yours doesn’t have any children, does it?”

The shape of the problem is slowly becoming clear. If Ulysses is a philosophical zombie, acting out the role of a human without actually being one, that’s relatively harmless. But if he creates more like him, they’ll eventually replace regular humans by sheer attrition. The last real person won’t even know when it happens. And once they’re dead, it’ll be an entire planet of neural networks bouncing off of each other, performing for an audience that no longer exists.

“Not so far as I know. But he could have some that we’re not aware of.”

“At the very least, you should sterilize it immediately,” Ishtar says, seeming somewhat comforted by the fact that I’m taking her warning more seriously now. “If yours was a random mutation, rather than a product of bioengineering, it may not be full-spectrum yet. But if it gets the opportunity to breed, it’ll eventually produce full Q-brains, and once that happens, it’s all over.”

Ulysses isn’t the type to take kindly to the suggestion that he should get sterilized. And even if he isn’t quite at the level of thinking at the speed of light, he’s clever, so trying to dose him with enough radiation to render him infertile probably wouldn’t work, not without him noticing.

“Well, this certainly sounds like an extinction-level threat, which means you came to the right place. And that brings me to something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. Are you interested in joining Extinction Group?”

It takes a second before she remembers what exactly I’m talking about. That’s not unreasonable, seeing as I’ve been throwing a lot of new concepts at her recently.

“This Ulysses isn’t a part of it, is he?”

“No. It’s Zero, Adamant, and myself.”

She considers it for a moment, presumably casting her mind back to the descriptions I offered of those two. Then she nods.

“If this place is going to be my home for the foreseeable future, I suppose I have a vested interest in keeping it safe. And I don’t know enough about your society to be of much use to the other group you mentioned.”

“Good point. I can’t think of a better fit for a task force dedicated to preventing extinction events than someone who’s literally hardwired for survival.”

Ishtar smirks.

“Quite right. Now, why don’t we get to work?”