1 Prologue: The Dark of Day
〔Conurbation Haven〕
〔The Hub | District Zero〕
=======================================
〔Jaeger Plaza Housing Complex, 405th floor〕
〔2/4/2306 18:03〕
In a sterile room, one could hear the ongoing conversation between two people. They could hardly drown out the whirring of the electric barrier that divided the room into two halves.
WWW-ZZZ!
"Doctor Shen, with all due respect. The day has come. My allies will not let you stave them off any longer. You will either activate it yourself now, or we will devise the necessary measures to make you do it…" a masculine voice said in an incensed tone.
The voice belonged to General Arthur McManus. He was dressed in an ornamented uniform. At first sight, he seemed inconspicuous, but on closer inspection, two cybernetic legs appeared under his floor-length coat. On his left hand, he wore a Fusion Gauntlet which he kept behind his back.
Opposite of him stood a woman in her twenties with a white lab coat and tousled obsidian hair. Her graceful features suffered from obvious fatigue. Her name was Shen Hualing.
With a quick hand gesture, Doctor Shen Hualing transferred her Intra-HUD to a holographic display next to her and pointed to the displayed data.
Network Uplink Beta v.0.5〘67% ...〙
Haptic Sensor Pack v.2.17.3〘installed〙
Advanced Perception v.1.2〘paused〙
Show all upgrades〘7654〙
''Waking him up now when not all applied mental upgrades have been processed entirely could cause irreparable damage to his Personality Engram" Shen Hualing responded, nervously walking up and down the room.
"Listen, my spies have alerted me that we are expecting unwanted guests soon... Activate this thing now and we'll see. If problems occur, we shut it down and stick a new Personality Engram into it."
The woman gave the man a shocked look, "General, replacing a Personality Engram would be mur…"
"Do I look like I gave a damn sh** about this?" he interrupted her quickly before she could finish her sentence. "Doctor, DWN-49 is the prototype of a new era. We cannot afford to take this long. After all, our enemies don't rest either."
Gunfire rang out from the lower floors. General McManus added "As you can hear.''
„I know General, but what if he develops bugs or experiences dropouts during a mission? I would not recommend impatience, Sir."
"You have exactly one hour to say goodbye to your little experiment and make him combat-ready. After that, it will be ours. The payment will be as agreed."
The double-secured metal door opened and a man entered the room. He wore a blood-stained black armor. The name Baker was engraved on his scratched chest plate. Instead of his right arm, a chromatic prosthesis was mounted onto his shoulder. After he took off his skull-shaped helmet his red multi-sensor lens appeared at the place of his left eye. He turned his angular scarred face to General McManus, "Arthur, two floors below they're about to shoot the sh** out of us."
"Where's your famous Archetype Commando now, Erik?" the General asked him sarcastically.
"Incoming, dumbass. But I don't think they'll get here in time."
"I could get you executed for that irreverence."
"Then I should have lost my head hundreds of times already. Let's bust their chops now. What are you waiting for?"
Thereupon General McManus resolutely put on his second Fusion Gauntlet and Sergeant Erik Baker reconfigured the fire mode of his Full Automatic Railgun SARRMAN FAR 6.8.
"Let's iron out a few mistakes!" General McManus shouted enthusiastically.
''It's almost like the old days!" Erik Baker agreed. Laughing, he slammed the massive steel door behind them.
BAMMM!
Dejected, Shen Hualing placed her fingers on the biometric sensor of the electrical barrier.
﹝Name › Ph.D. Shen Hualing﹞
﹝Department › Case Calibration Research﹞
﹝ Security Level › 15﹞
﹝ Required Level › 15﹞
﹝ Access granted..﹞
The electrical barrier became deactivated and the electric field dissipated. The whirring of the barrier stopped.
Behind it, a large glass cylinder appeared in which cables and hoses were running from all sides. They led to an unconscious male humanoid being who was fixed to the walls inside the cylinder reaching from the floor to the ceiling of the room.
His height and stature seemed ordinary but athletic. Part of his inner mechanics was covered with bulletproof elastic skin, which was a bionic product based on genetically modified spider silk. The skin was welded together at metallic seams. His joints were uncovered and servo-motors were visible.
His face would have been insignificant if several covers over his lower jaw and his chin had not been missing.
Shen Hualing looked at DWN-49 with compassion. „I wish I could release you into a better world than this one" she whispered incomprehensibly while shots and screams seemed to come closer.
She knew that in the event of failure, the Mercenary Corps could force DWN-49's immediate shutdown by deactivating the Personality Engram at the push of a button.
Three months ago Shen Hualing had received cerebral activity data from General McManus' delegate, along with instructions to upload it into a Personality Engram and integrate it into a non-biological military Case. It was her first assignment of this nature and she worked on it day and night.
Shen Hualing was recruited by the Mercenary Corps three years ago as the best doctoral student of her year at Haven's Engineering and Science University.
Since she can remember, it has been common practice for many inhabitants of Haven's higher districts to improve their bodies with all conceivable enhancements. However, after a while, the field of body optimization developed through innovation by OpTech into another field of research, the so-called Case-Engineering.
A Case is an artificially created body, constructed according to the customer's requirements.
When Shen Hualing first started studying Case-Engineering, she wanted to work at OpTech. But what became part of her research at the Mercenary Corps cast a shadow on everything else, so she altered her plans.
Until then, Artificial Intelligence or simple algorithms were implemented in Cases. For a long time, Cases were only used by androids, whether they were utilized as construction workers or in Haven's red-light district. But with the rediscovery of mind uploading, which was only utilized during the Last War, the possibility arose to load the consciousness from a human brain by measuring the cerebral activity onto a Personality Engram, which is then integrated into the control center of the Case.
A practice about which nothing is reported publicly and about which OpTech would take a crack at even the slightest mention.
From now on Shen Hualing had only one hour to bring DWN-49 to life.
Shen Hualing summed up in her log: "May 4th, 2306. Operation DWN-49 is nearing completion. Installation of mental upgrades not completed. Risks are unknown."
She then had the screening system perform a final Case Check.
" - - - Case Check initiated - - - "
Several drones surrounded the Case scanning all internal connections, the molecular composition and stability of it. The whole procedure was finished within a couple of minutes.
" - - - Case check completed - - - "
" - - - - - - - - - Results - - - - - - - "
|> Owner: DWN-49
|> Type: HMD Infantry Modular Multi Enhancement Combat Case 1.0
|> Class: Basic
|> Warning(s): 1 Error identified!
|> No processing unit connected
|> Show all statistics […]
Shen Hualing did not know exactly how long it took to wake DWN-49 up, so she tried to hurry. She carefully removed an Engram Chip out of a small metal capsule with a pair of tweezers to avoid touching the circuitry thereon. This was the missing component of the Case, the processing unit in which the consciousness of DWN-49 was stored. The Engram Chip had the shape of a tetrahedron. Three sides were covered with circuits and one side with an inductive surface, which was used to transmit data and simultaneously control the power supply.
Her hand began to tremble slightly. " No mistake about it, or I'll be in trouble. Huge trouble."
Shen Hualing opened the glass door of the large cylinder containing the Case. She climbed onto a platform, which lifted her to the height of DWN-49's head. There she opened a flap at the back of it.
CLICK!
The flap was covered by a titanium coating to protect the Personality Engram sufficiently.
In general, the design of the Case was not yet focused on aesthetics but primarily on functionality. The primary focus was placed on creating a soldier that was perfect in every respect, combining indestructibility and the insensitivity to pain of a machine with the decision-making of a human being. Shen Hualing had not received any information about who exactly DWN-49 was in his previous life, as it would not have affected her work. She was unable to learn any details about him from the Personality Engram data, as it only simulated brain waves that she did not know how to decipher.
She hoped that this project, if successful, would finally bring her lifelong prestige. All the more she was now worried about General McManus' demand since it only unnecessarily put the game at stake.
She examined the restraints on DWN-49's extremities. Then she directed the Personality Engram to the opening flap. Her hands were sweating in agitation and her breath stopped.
An artificial voice interrupted her "Incoming Call from Sergeant Baker. Priority Level 20."
"Block it, that's not the right timing."
Carefully she inserted the tetrahedron device into the back of his head, induction surface first. When she noticed it was attached, she released it and locked the flap.
" - - - Launch process initiated - - -"
Case Activity〘5%...〙
As if out of nowhere, the warning lights in the room suddenly began to glow a threatening red. The shrill sound of an alarm broke the tense silence.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
" - - - Launch process completed - - -"
Case Activity 〘100%〙
"Incoming Call from General McManus. Priority Level 40."
"Block it again!"
"Calls of Priority Level 40 cannot be blocked. Automatically accepted in 5...4..."
"Alright, pick it up."
On the holo-display, Sergeant Baker appeared behind a cover looking at a display that was implemented in his arm prosthesis.
Shen Hualing was visibly confused "Where is General McManus? He is not dead, is he?"
"Of course not, we are just having some fun out here and I nicked his Com. Now get your academic ass outta there, they are coming through the windows."
"These are the best-armored windows in the whole...oh damnit!."
BOOOM!
A missile smashed through the window shattering it into pieces. It exploded and enveloped the laboratory in a sea of flames.
Sergeant Baker shouted in panic "Shen Hualing come in! Hualing! Respond! Hualing?"
On Sergeant Baker's holographic display, Shen Hualing was replaced by another image. The unstable transmission showed the glass cylinder being blasted open. Amid the devastation, he could see DWN-49 in low resolution.
Spellbound Sergeant Baker witnessed DWN-49 slowly and agonizingly opening his synthetic eyes...
