2 Chapter 2- Living Machine
July 13, 2023
The rain beat down hard on the hood of her jacket, she could feel each drop silently combust as it collided with the cloth. Her breaths formed dense clouds in front of her face as she walked, the crunching of snow a bit calming to her ears. As she passed by a record store, she spotted her reflection out of the corner of her eye. One eye was a calming Jade Green, while the other was a glowing red light. Her eyebrows furrowed as her robotic features glistened in the night. The cold rain on the remaining parts of her skin reminded her of the day she turned into this thing, the day her entire life came to an end.
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June 18, 2007
"Genevieve, where the hell are you?" The thirteen year old quickly walked down the stairs upon hearing her mother call her name. "Mom, I told you to call me Jen." Her mother handed Jen a coat as she finished her sentence, trying her best to ignore Jen rolling her eyes. "Fine, Jen, come on we're going to be late." Jen quickly grabbed a square object wrapped in grey cloth, it was her invention. The invention that would change the world forever, and today was the day she got to reveal it. Jen had already made many revolutionary inventions, such as Cybercoin, an ultra secure crypto currency that has surpassed the popularity of the Euro and Pound. Her eyes wandered to her degree in Computer Engineering she received from MIT, she was but 10 years old when she graduated from college. Rather aggressively, Jen's Mother pulled her out of the house and into the car, muttering some profanities as she buckled her in. The car was a black SUV with a brown leather interior, it wasn't fancy but it definitely wasn't a bad car. The engine shook the car as it groaned, the windshield wipers starting to wipe frost off of the windshield. Jens father entered on the passenger side car as the car started, she didn't really acknowledge him. As she looked out of the fogged window, she spotted a group of crows staring down at her. A pit grew in her stomach as she stared at the group of birds, what the hell were they looking at?
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July 13, 2023
Jen typically stayed inside of her apartment at night, in fact she barely left her apartment at all. She really only went outside to get groceries, and she only got groceries twice every month. But something about tonight felt different. She wore a gray hoodie and oversized denim jeans in order to hide her robotic body parts. As she turned a corner, Jen spotted a group of teenagers huddled together, drinking from a bottle covered with a paper bag. She quickly scanned the bottle with her optical sensor and learned that it was a bottle of Gin and Tonic. "Not too bad..." Jen thought to herself as she walked past the group. The teenagers turned their attention to Jen as she walked past, mischievous grins forming on their faces as they watched her. She started to pick up her pace as she noticed their movements grow increasingly more erratic, this wasn't going to be good. The teenagers made their silent approach, like panthers stalking a wandering deer. Jen muttered profanities to herself as she started to speed up, she should've known better than to leave her house for no reason. The silent tension was broken by one of the teenagers yelling, their words slurred. "Heyyyy, you! Where you going? Minddd if we come along?" She stopped dead in her tracks, but it wasn't voluntary. Something was messing with her movement...with her system. It had to have been some sort of advanced EMP, or an even more advanced virus. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't caused by the teenagers. Her anti-intrusion systems worked at lightning fast speeds to fix whatever was plaguing her body, but it couldn't find anything. Jen heard the voices behind her grow louder as their footsteps seed to fill the night sky. "Goddammit, what the hell is going on!?" The thoughts in her head were becoming drowned out by the sound of system errors multiplied. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder and the smell of alcohol filled her nose. "I said....where do you think you're going?" This time it was a whisper, meant to strike fear into her heart. "Prepare Complete System Override." She muttered to herself, gasping as she felt a hand grasp her hip. "What did you say?" Then, with the suddenness of a frog shooting it's prey out of the sky, her elbow shot back and nailed the teen in the nose, the cartilage buckling under the pressure. He stumbled back, grasping his nose, as he fell onto his back. The group looked on in shock as their leader cried in pain, whilst Jen simply looked on at them all. She had entered overdrive, her systems were working at 200%; which overpowered whatever was interfering with her. The teenagers balled their fists and ran at her all at once, a smirk forming on Jen's face. "This is gonna be fun."
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June 18, 2007
Jen looked out of the car window and down the cliff of the mountain they were driving on. The night made it seem like there was an infinite abyss below the cliff. Her mother and father talked about how much money their daughters invention would make them; that's all they ever really cared about. Ever since she was six, when she first started showing her prowess in computer engineering and programming, her parents sought to exploit her expertise at every turn. Before that point, her parents genuinely loved her, but money changes even the best of people. "Mom...is it okay if I go to the park with Raya and her friends tomorrow?" There was an awkward silence between them, before her mother's voice tore it to shreds. "Jen, I told you that tomorrow you were meeting with the Secretary Of State. You won't have time to meet with friends for a couple of months." Jen's face turned visibly red with anger, she was tired of going to meeting after meeting with no time for fun or enjoyment. At 11 she was supposed to be having fun with her friends and hanging on to the last bit of innocence she had, but instead she lived the life of a 50 year old CEO. "That's not fair! I already agreed to go to this stupid fucking presentation, the least I deserve is a single day off!" Jen's mom turned around, a mix of shock and anger turned her face into a horrifying countenance. "Genevieve Taylor Lilac! I know for a fact you didn't just swear at me!" Her father was more concerned with his wife not keeping her eye on the road, lightly pulling her arm and muttering for her to look forward, but she was lost in anger. Jen wasn't ready to back down though, the hormones raging through her body only acted as fuel to the flame of rebellion. "You know the fuck I did bitch. Now listen to me very carefully. I'm. Not. FUCKING. Going." Jen's father frantically reached for the wheel as his wife started to lose all sense of her surroundings. "You little bitch...I raised you. And this is how you pay me back!? I should've a-" "MYRA! TURN LEFT !TURN LEFT!" Jen's father shouted, Jen and her mother looked out of the front windshield to see that they were heading straight off of the cliff. Myra tried to take control of the vehicle at the last second, but to no avail. As she frantically turned the car left, it instead flipped over the guardrail and down the mountain. Jen felt herself float as the car flipped through the air, they were at the mercy of Mother Nature. There was no sound, no thought, nothing to see but infinite darkness and the occasional tree branch or rock. The silence was broken as the car landed on its hood, she watched as it was shredded by a boulder. Her father's head hit the dashboard, leaving a puddle of blood and gore in its wake. The car bounced up again, crimson blood splattering onto her face as they floated through the air once again. The car then landed on its roof, blades of steel and rock digging into the side of her neck as the roof crumpled under its own weight. Jen couldn't breathe....she couldn't speak. All she could taste was blood, all she could feel was fear. The last thing she saw before the world faded to black was the car heading for a large oak tree.
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July 13, 2023
The last standing teenager threw a wild kick towards Jen's diaphragm, such an obvious attack wasn't hard to counter. Catching his leg, she brought her elbow down onto his kneecap, the leg instantly snapping as she did. The boy let out a shrill scream, which was quickly cut off by Jen kicking him in the throat. The kid instantly stumbled back and fell onto the body of another unconscious group member. There she stood, triumphant, the once confident teens now knocked out around her. Her jacket was in tatters, the stainless steel of her metal arm glowed in the moonlight. The rain helped to wash the blood under her feet into the gutters below. "Impressive..." Jen turned her head to see where the voice came from, spotting a tall figure standing in a dark alley. His appearance was completely covered by the dark of night. "Listen, If you cant tell I'm having a really bad fucking day, and I really don't want to beat the shit out of anyone else." A low chuckle filled the air, sending a chill down Jen's mostly cybernetic spine. "A feisty one I see. Well I'm sure you'll be happy to know that I don't intend on fighting you, but do be warned I'm not one to mess with." The figure slowly moved towards Jen, the darkness following him like a plague. "Touché..." Jen's voice shook as the words escaped her throat, something about this thing terrified her. "Scared Genevieve? Strange...I always assumed cyborgs were fearless. Especially after what you've been through." Jen had had enough; swinging her fist towards the figure. But almost as soon as she did, a tendril of darkness wrapped around her arm and squeezed it. She watched as the metal of her arm compressed under the pressure. "That was foolish, I see you still retain the one trait that makes humans truly weak. Emotion." Jen aimed her robotic eye at the dark tendril, the red light causing he darkness to retract from her arm. "Alright, now I'm REALLY pissed off." Her fists balled and the springs in her accelerators were ready for take off. The darkness around the figure started to flow around it erratically, it seemed to be growing nervous. "I know that at my current state I can't beat you, but do be warned, when I am ready, all of you 'supers' will die by my hand. The plague of superpowers will end, and I will usher in a new era of humanity...an era like the days of old. Goodbye Genevieve, we will meet again." Before Jen could even react, the figure turned into a cloud of darkness and took off into the night sky. It's laugh filled her ears, it was...his. The laugh of DarkClaw, the being that destroyed the 'League Of Supers' and destroyed the city of Las Vegas. After that battle, the remaining superheroes went their separate ways. They knew that the public no longer thought of heroes as ultimate protectors, heroes could still fall into the cold hands of death. Jen was among the heroes that survived the attack, and there wasn't a day that went by where she didn't think of that day. If DarkClaw was really back, then the world was in real danger, and even worse...the age of heroes had passed. Most supers used their powers for their own benefit, instead of using them to help others. A sigh escaped Jen's mouth as she realized what she had to do, she had to unite the remaining heroes of the world. But how could she do something like that?
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June 18, 2007
Jen awoke on a frozen lake, rain lightly landing into her face. She felt a warm, sticky substance around her, but she couldn't move. Every breath that she took caused her excruciating pain. Her eyes wandered downwards to see the SUV wrapped around a large oak tree, flames and smoke filling the sky. Myra hung from a high branch on a tree, her chest impaled by a tree branch. Tears filled Jen's eyes, but she couldn't scream. The lower half of her father's body hung from a branch near Myra's body, but his lower half lay lifelessly beside Jen. His organs were scattered a long the path his upper half took when it flew from the car and onto the lake. Was this how she was going to die? Alone on a lake, with her parents dead bodies scattered around her? She hadn't gotten to do what most kids had enjoyed, not only had she missed out on her childhood, but now she was being cheated out of the rest of her life. The sound of something crawling to her broke Jen out of her trance of self pity, her eyes wandered down again to find her invention crawling towards her by one arm. A cybernetic endosuit that could keep humans alive, even if only their head remained. As the invention reached her, it immediately stabbed itself into her body, the pain was unbearable. She couldn't scream or curse, all she could do was cry. Tears fell down her face as she felt the machine rip its way through her body and eviscerate her bones. Her arm was ripped off during the process and replaced with a cybernetic one. Before long, the machine had finished the assimilation process. Jen sat up, finally letting out a long, agonizing scream. Her scream wasn't in pain, but for the life that had been robbed by the cruelty of mankind.
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July 13, 2023
Jen searched through the hero database stored in her mind, collecting the current whereabouts of the remaining heroes left after the Battle for Las Vegas. She was only able to find three: XStatic, Shu Biao, and MidKnight. XStatic was currently located in Mercy Hospital, Shu Biao was behind a Chinese restaurant called the "Lucky Dragon", and MidKnight was on top of a courthouse, probably patrolling for crime. MidKnight was one of the only heroes left who upheld the ideals of the age of heroes. In an instant, she used her connection to electronics to transmit a message to them. It was a message cryptic enough for normal people to be unable to understand it, but meaningful enough for the heroes to know who it was from. "Empire State Building, 12 AM." The Empire State Building was where the league always met to plan their missions, and 12 AM was the exact time DarkClaw was defeated. "Let's just hope they're still up for one more mission."
