With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

7th February
05:31 GMT

There's… Barely enough space down in the computer core room for me to phase in. My heavy armour adds a great deal to my volume, and while I could have built dedicated stealth armour I decided that a more generalist suit was better for when the people trying to kill me have anti-phasing weapons and decent sens-.

I phase out again as a technician wanders back through the space I'm standing in. Oh, this is annoying. Don't IT people usually work from their own stations rather than hanging around the server?

The technician stops next to me and crouches, carefully removing a panel on the computer core's exterior and waving a probe-tool into its interior. Fine, he's going to be there for a little while. Keeping my stealth system active I phase back in and reach out my left arm towards the core. My gauntlet doesn't quite touch it, and.. in this position I don't think I can make it. But the gap is a few centimetres, my filaments are near-invisible and I can phase out before anything can react to me being here.

My filaments reach out… And that's the core. Load everything.

Compliance.

Personnel records… Yes, Onisia Van worked here, and allegedly left because the project was complete. Her appraisals are actually rather complimentary. Nothing about her death. Xalitan Xor's record… Huh, that is his original name. I suppose there wouldn't be much point renaming him, the mental programming would ensure that who he was before wouldn't be that important to him. And yes, they do dispose of the bodies as medical waste.

Hygienic.

Over five hundred thousand War Hounds currently in service, which seems a little on the large-. Ah! Because their fleet's weapons attenuate horribly when fired through an atmosphere, meaning that they can't reliably bombard ground targets. They have to land troops to destroy ground targets. And there isn't much in this region of space that could actually stop them. Even if the defending party shot their drop pod, they'd have a better than average change of surviving the terminal velocity fall and walking it off.

Records of the other transformation candidates, psychological evaluations of their own staff… Yes, even the Nazis had trouble with their soldiers having breakdowns so I can see why it might become a problem here. As would being too hostile to the children who will shortly gain the ability to smash you into mush.

A whole lot of basic information, more data to add to my map… Yes, there isn't anything in this facility that threatens me. If I didn’t mind killing everyone I wouldn't even need the Ophidian's help. Still, no reason to get careless. I withdraw my filaments and phase, heading towards the system responsible for the mental imprints.

Corridor, corridor, large room which appears to be… Physical therapy for the recent conversions. Then another-.

There's a piercing beeping sound, and the soldiers on duty suddenly look more alert, preparing their guns. The War Hounds-in-training mostly look around in confusion or fall over in surprise. An alert of some sort. That… Shouldn't have been my fault. They don't have any way to detect me directly, and if me accessing the computer tipped them off then it would have sounded immediately. A drill then? Or have Xor and Guy started and this base is going active because of that?

Not an immediate concern. If anything, the fact that they're distracted will make accessing the programming system easier. I resume my journey. Part of a kitchen, a guard station with a squad leader querying what's going on over his personal communicator…

And here we… Are.

Oh. That's where they got the technology.

Technicians are entering what appears to be test data on the system. A system that bears a remarkable resemblance to the Citadelian laboratory I saw on Hny'xx. Ex-Citadelian..? No. No, they don't sell that sort of technology, and wouldn't be able to adapt it to a new species even if they did. A psion did this. They wouldn't see anything wrong with cutting out brains, reprogramming them and sticking them in new bodies. They also wouldn't be interested in doing the work themselves once they had the system up and running. Nothing in the files I acquired about a psion, or… This could be psions, and official effort of the government of Wombworld rather than the efforts of a few specialists hiring themselves out.

But they're not still here. They wouldn't let aliens fiddle with their equipment unsupervised if they were. And there's nothing about members of another species in the database. Psions have different diets to the locals, radically different behaviours and they're physically very dissimilar. They also take brutal revenge when someone does something stupid like killing their people at the end of the contract so that hasn't happened.

I guess-. No. This happened long before I went to Vega for the first time. But… I might have enabled the psions to do more things like this in other places. But again, they're hardly the only high tech arms traders in the galaxy. Don't know.

There are a batch of disembodied brains sitting submerged in techno-organic cradles as the device does its work. In another part of the room technicians wheel away the last of the debrained… Bodies, while the automatic cleaning systems get to work cleansing the stains left by the chirurgery. But, that means that the area is now clear for me. I fly there and then phase in and wait.

The alarm has stopped and none of the soldiers in here look particularly worried. I suppose that it would.. make sense to have this section on a separate system. Brains are sensitive things, and I doubt that they would want a great many additional variables from the children.

No, no one's reacting to me. I extend filaments from my foot into the room's floor, gradually working them towards the cabling below. Now, there wasn't anyone on the staff who was at anything like Onisia's level when it comes to this sort of programming. That seems a little short-sighted to me, but if the programming allows those subjected to it to be adaptable enough but not too adaptable… I mean, it's not as if their brains are going to redesign themselves and necessitate a programming update.

Connection established.

And that's the program. That's how you compel people to be honourable. Or at least how you do it by so totally shaping their schema that they can't think in other ways. And in my ring is the patch that will alter it to something a little different.

Now that I've seen this place, is that still how I want to respond? How much harder would the societal reform process become if I simply erased this facility? Answer: quite a lot, as national security is a very popular rally flag. Something that looks like an external attack will result in people affirming their loyalty to the state and its government. And Xor doesn't actually have a problem with the generality of what happens here. If the government had kept up its end of the deal he'd probably be trying to stop me. And Onigar was pretty clear about wanting to shut this place down once the current government is suitably reformed.

Upload complete.

I remove my filaments and repair the hole in the floor.

Yeah.

I look at the brains again, whose concept of honour will now include an inclination to gradually come to disparage a leader who demonstrates a lack of the qualities they hold dear. I certainly wouldn't create this, but… I'm not going to tear it down in this situation. The psion link on the other hand, that I do need to follow up on. Nothing on the main server, nothing on the system here. I don't.. think that the Guardians have ever tried to impose a galactic ban on dealing with the psions, if only because that would involve telling people who've never heard of them who they are, where they are and what they can do, but it would certainly give Guy more ammunition when the Guardians ask about this later if I can get hard evidence.

The facility's offices aren't far from here. The commander might have a separate system for ultra-secure records, though of course it's quite possible that there aren't any records here.

Ring, message to Lantern Gardner. 'Please attempt to secure records relating to contact between Alignment government and the psions.'

Message sent.

I watch as a new batch of technicians wheel in a tank containing a War Hound body, tubes from the monitoring system connected through the gaping hole in the top of the skull directly to the brainstem.

I phase out once more and head for the offices.