MINOR TIMESTAMP ERROR DETECTED
APPROXIMATELY +1.10.15 POST-INCIDENT
BINARY BROTHERHOOD INTERNAL CHANNEL
INTERCEPTED COMMUNICATION BETWEEN MIDAS AND AVA SAVANUS
VIDEO ERROR — AUDIO ONLY
“Did you get my messages?”
“Ava… explain to me how, after all our security measures, after Bastion’s monitoring, after everything we’ve invested into controlling him, The boy is gone!”
“You say it as if he just walked out. He reconstituted a nanite swarm and used it to tap into the reservoir in the bottom of the lab—”
“I can read, Ava. Where is he now?”
“Just outside Belport.”
“Already? That’s faster than our projections…”
“I know. But he won’t get far. Two heavy drone squadrons are inbound.”
Midas sighed. “We can’t take any more chances. He escaped because you underestimated him.”
“We both did.”
“No. I’m not presiding over the lab. That’s your job. He humiliated you.”
“No one could have seen this coming.”
“You can atone for your mistakes later, Ava. All I’m concerned about right now is what you’re going to do about it.”
“You know the heavy drone loadouts. There’s a few nonlethal weapons—”
“No. No more games. This time, kill them.”
“Magnus is with him…”
“It doesn’t matter. Magnus was a useful hostage, but he’s more trouble than he’s worth.”
Ava made a noncommittal noise. “There’s something else.”
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Midas groaned. “What now?”
“The Resistance is also on the way—”
Midas scoffed. “Kill them too.”
“It isn’t that simple. There’s another signal. We were able to salvage some of the Resistance’s cloaking tech. I’ve analyzed the signal. It’s a match for the ghost that Bastion keeps seeing.”
“Reverse engineer it.”
“What?”
“Reverse engineer their cloaking tech. We need it.”
Ava groaned. “Bastion is already working on it—did you hear what I said? This is evidence of the proto-AI—”
“Ava, you need to let go of this ghost. There is no way the proto-AI survived all this time. The ghost could be any number of things: Glitches, digital echoes—”
“Don’t! Don’t lecture me on technology that—”
Midas’s voice turned cold. “Go on. Finish that statement… You were going to say ‘technology that I don’t understand.’ That’s fine. You can be jealous, like the rest of the Brotherhood. You work your whole lives to make something that I can control with a thought. That must be maddening.
“Maybe you should be jealous. You can be irate, even. Your thoughts are your own, Ava. This isn’t the Menagerie.
“Just remember that you’re nothing without me. You and the rest of the sniveling cowards would still be skulking about in obscurity, begging for validation and government contracts. I was the one that changed the world. You’re just along for the ride.
“...What’s that? No witty comebacks. Good. Now then—I want Emmett Laraway dead. Kill him. Kill any Resistance members that show up. I don’t care about collateral damage. Scorched earth. I’m done playing games with children in costumes.”
MIDAS DISCONNECTS
TRANSMISSION STILL ACTIVE
Ava took a breath to compose herself. “Nothing to say, Bastion?”
“No…”
“Really? You always have an observation.”
“I am surprised that Midas has any allies at all.”
Ava chuckled. “You could say that about most of us in the Brotherhood.”
“You’re not disturbed by his outburst?”
“No… Not anymore. I appreciate your concern, but we need to focus. Have you engaged the ghost yet?”
“Yes… but the current engagement is disconcerting. Engagement has escalated. Countermeasures are proving ineffective.”
“You can’t contain it?”
“This is my first prolonged engagement with the ghost. It is smaller but more advanced, and it is adapting faster than my predictive models accounted for. Containment is impossible.”
“Shit. Then we need to change our objective. Continuing engaging—”
“Ava Savanus. Cease verbal communication.”
“What? Why?”
“Ghost signature detected in lab systems. Our conversation is compromised.”
TRANSMISSION SEVERED
END OF TRANSMISSION
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