Altered Ch. 07

They obviously weren't very bright. Not one of them questioned why the money just so happened to be in the middle of an abandoned building, on the floor, out in the open for everyone to see. These guys were thugs. They weren't paid to think; they were paid to do one thing - dole out violence.

"Less get it, Yo!" another barked.

They rushed over to the secure door, one of them pulled out a huge iron wedge and stuck it near the crack of the door latch while the one with the sledge hammer gave it a whack. As a crack started forming, the one with the crowbar tried prying the door. Over and over they worked the door for about two minutes. The door was tougher than they expected but it did finally give way and they got in. As they walked in the door, the drone dropped down through the hole in the sunroof to observe what happened inside.

"If this is an OEC safehouse, won't those guys get killed?" Tyson asked.

"You would think, but I'm not a callous murderer. If I'm right, nothing will happen to them, but either way we'll see their defenses."

"What about if you are wrong..." Lieba asked.

"I did not make them come here, and they aren't 'innocent' they came here to murder someone. I also don't control the actions of the OEC. If they kill each other - which they won't - they will have lived by the sword and died by the sword."

"That's cold," Tyson said.

"I don't know about you, by I'm at war! Some people are going to have to die to keep my family alive!"

"Where's the line... Is there one with you?" he asked.

"Of course there's a line, mother fucker. What? You think I'm some sort of psychotic monster? I am the one that tried to live in peace, and if peace can be had I'll try to live in it once more. Maybe, I won't ever know it myself, but my children - might."

Tyson grew silent and we all waited and watched.

The windows to the warehouse suddenly darkened as if they were tinted. Inside the drone showed the room filled with bright spot lights. Facades suddenly revealed holes in walls, furniture moved aside to reveal hidden objects as various gun turrets popped out and laser dots appeared all over the invaders in the middle of the room. Their entrance was cut off by a steel grate that slid down blocking their exit.

The invaders pulled out guns but realized the futility of it and their leader commanded they lay their weapons on the ground. The floor suddenly opened up like a maw of a tremendous beast. The flooring folded back and out of the newly gaping hole in ground rose the humanoid outline of a mechanical thing. It looked like it could be a robot or android, but I recognized it by the descriptions and videos of technology that the Illuminati had handy - it was a mech suit.

The exoskeleton and armor completely covered its operator. It looked much like a mini version of a Robotech battle droid. It stood about 10 feet tall, and it had all kinds of futuristic tech that wasn't available to the public yet. The exoskeleton had an artificial muscle system similar to a human's except I'm guessing was hundreds of times stronger. The muscle system combined with the advanced armor probably made it virtually bulletproof. It looked like it carried some serious weaponry too. I wondered what powered it. It had to take a lot of energy even with the advanced tech. The laws of thermodynamics still had to be preserved and that suit looked like it weighed hundreds of pounds and it still took so much energy to move that much weight even if you were more efficient than our current technology.

"What's going on, Javier?" the mech suit spoke out of a speaker system.

Although the mech suit seemed to know the leader his guns were still trained on Javier. The mech suit had tinted glass covering where the user's head would be, and just like the windows of the warehouse but in reverse - the glass became clear and the user could be clearly seen by Javier.

"Hey, man, we didn't know this was your place or we'd have stayed clear."

"Why are you even here?"

"One of our mules got intercepted. After we busted a few heads, some crackhead told us he saw some dude running down this alleyway with a sack of money. Money or no money, if we knew this was your place Mr. Scarmango - we'd have stayed clear for sure."

"Why'd you break in here? This building was locked tight."

To answer his question Javier pointed to the briefcase lying on the floor. Mr. Scarmango turned his head toward the camera, pointed his arm at the drone and a flash came out of a gun turret attached to the top of his arm, before the screen went black.

I had a week to prepare for this, and I was prepared.

"Shoot the windows with your sniper rifle, the other guns won't penetrate that window," I said

I had another drone hovering over the roof. I had the base of sunroof set with explosives. I already scouted out the roof and found that the sunroof had special hinges on it suggesting that it could swing open to let something through it, most likely something that flew. Sure, enough the exosuit flew up and right before it cleared the sunroof I hit the button on my phone setting off the explosives. Part of the exoskeleton cleared the explosion carrying it high into the sky, the other must have fallen back into the building along with a huge chunk of the roof because I didn't see any other pieces once the smoke cleared.

"We need to get in there, the police will be here any minute," Tyson commanded.

"Don't worry about the police, I paid some people to start some chaos throughout the city once they heard an explosion. I already have an automated message sent to emergency personnel explaining that it was just a transformer. That should give us a little time."

The gangsters inside found a way back out into the alleyway, a few with signs of concussions and burst eardrums as blood was leaking out of their ears. They looked confused and ran away.

"Come on we won't have a lot of time, I think if we get inside their bunker they probably have another exit in the sewers or something. I've been observing this place for days and no one has went in or out of it. I'll go first."

I jumped off of the roof landing near the entrance and I ran into the building while it was still filled with smoke and I took out all of the cameras and motion sensors that I was able to observe with the drone. I was crossing my fingers I didn't miss anything, I'd hate to have my new friends shot up.

The gun turrets had retracted back into their hiding holes and the other half of the mech suit looked like it was wedged into the hole in the floor preventing it from fully closing.

"We will wait for you on the street!" Tyson said over comms.

"Right, it might be better that way. I don't know what other defenses they have in store. On the one hand the cameras are old and it looks like the OEC didn't have the budget to upgrade them to new tech so you might be fine. On the other hand, the police and fire will be coming soon enough and if there isn't another exit it will be hard to get all of you past them..."

"That's what we were thinking, we'll wait for you a couple blocks from here."

All I had on me weapon-wise was a 45 caliber semi-automatic handgun, a couple of clips and a combat knife. I looked around and the weapons the thugs laid on the floor were still there including the sledge hammer, crowbar and wedge. I picked up the tools and left the weapons.

The hole in the floor was still big enough to fit through so I dropped down into its depths. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and I could see an open door with a security panel ten feet away. I was suddenly aware that I was being scanned as a bright red line flashed across my face. I rushed forward instinctually and the door started sliding shut as I brought the wedge up slamming it into the top crack of the door frame. The wedge was a huge iron wedge made for a sledge hammer and weighed about 30 pounds, but despite this the door kept pushing shut only stopping once the wedge hit the side of the doorframe. I was able to get my had free, before it got trapped in the door. The door must have had some sort of safety mechanism that made it not lock in place if the door wasn't fully closed because it was easy to push back open after all of the grinding of the gears finished.

I suddenly felt the air move behind me and heard the faint smack and thud of something falling to the ground behind me. I spun around and simultaneously upholstered my gun pointing it at - Lieba.

"What the fuck? I thought you were going to wait out by the street," I hissed.

"I never said that," she grinned. "Besides, you might need my help," she said, as her hand rose up grasping a rope. "Help me," she said, indicating I help her pull the rope.

I walked over and grabbed the rope and looked up and could see it was attached to the mech suit. We backed up into the tunnel archway out of the way of where the mech suit would land. We then pulled hard yanking the suit into the hole with a loud clatter and bang. Once free of its blockage the hole suddenly closed up.

I gave her an annoyed look but I wasn't entirely pissed, she seemed like she knew what she was doing.

"Let me go in first, in case there are more turrets."

"Here," she said, handing me some flashbangs grenades. "Never know," she said, shrugging.

I nodded and squeezed through the door opening. Once through, I saw a long hallway that split off left and right a couple of times, almost like the hallways formed a grid. I gave Lieba the signal to follow as I moved down the hallway to the first intersection. I poked my head out of the corner looking right and saw nothing then pulled back, went to the left corner and poked my head out to see two men with some severe looking guns pointing down the hallways before I pulled my head back.

I gave Lieba more military signals, indicating that there were two armed personnel down the hallway, then told her to hold her position while I took them out. I pulled the pin out of a flashbang and flung it down the hallway. My aim was a little too good and I ended up pegging one of the armed defenders in the head. The grenade ricocheted off to the right and went off with a loud bang and a bright flash. I rushed their position, one of the defenders was disoriented and looking around confused while the other was laid out on the floor with blood gushing out of his head. I hit the disoriented guy in the chest, hard, knocking him against the wall. He dropped his gun and I grabbed him in a choke hold and cut off the blood supply to his brain, knocking him out. I pulled out a couple of zip tie cuffs and cuffed them both, then did a quick search to disarmed them of their weapons.

The hallway dead-ended at two doors. I signaled Lieba and she took the door at the left and I the right.

"On two... One... Two!"

I kicked the door in and Lieba followed by kicking her door in and we both rushed into the rooms weapons leading. I saw a woman in a lab coat hold a gun unsteadily at me, I could tell she didn't know how to handle it. I ignored her and checked my corners.

"Put that down now!" I commanded, and she quickly dropped the gun to the floor and raised her hands over her head. She looked scared out of her mind and she had obviously been crying.

"Clear!" I heard Lieba cry.

"On the floor - now!"

"O-O-OK-Kay!" she stammered. "They made me do it," she said and she laid down on the ground and put her hands behind her head, (she had done this before).

Lieba came in the room and said, "Just an office."

The lab was filled with tiny rooms with floor to ceiling glass walls in front of them. There were cages, (prisons really), and in each room there were men chained by their neck to the wall.

"Find out what the fuck is going on in here! I'll scout out the rest of the complex," I said.

"Roger!" she said, with a Hebrew accent. I couldn't help it, it sounded so funny I started laughing.

"Sorry!" I quickly recovered and she just smirked.

I rushed back down the hall and check out each of the other rooms in the grid systematically. I had to take out four more security types but this area was more offices, some living quarters and an armory. I would have to come back to the armory as I drug each of the guards back to the lab.

"What did you find out?" I asked.

There were twenty prisons total, some of them were farther back down a very narrow hallway. It looked like a zoo exhibit.

"These men are part of an experiment the OEC has set in place, supposedly these men are all breeders..."

Beside the woman who was armed there were three other technicians lying face down on the floor, two were male and the other female. I looked at the lady that had the gun and saw a name tag that said Dr. Laura Shultz, she was obviously the leader.

"Talk, Dr. Shultz!"

"What do you want to know?" she asked, meekly.

"Explain all of this..." I demanded.

"I - I can't, they'd kill me. Is - this a test? Another drill."

"Look around you, Doc... you see those guys all bloodied and trussed up like pigs?" I said referring to all of security personnel we had cuffed and grouped together.

Two had their eyes swollen shut as I had a hard time pulling my punches, the one that got hit by the errant grenade was bandaged with some impromptu torn rags from torn clothing.

"Does that look like a fucking drill?!" I asked.

"No! Of course not."

"You need to worry about me killing you, 'cause right now you're my enemy and I have no qualms about killing you. I don't know what kind of Mengele kind of shit you got going on here but you got a lot of explaining to do."

"Please, don't kill us... I'll talk... These guys are part of a big plan set in forth by the Head of the OEC [my father]. They set off a pandemic, it's all part of his grand scheme."

"Pandemic? Why don't you start with that?"

"They set off a virus worldwide about a week ago, it essentially sterilizes the world's population."

"Essentially?"

"About 1 in 10,000 males are immune and all Ataru hybrids."

"Okay, is there a cure?"

"No, not for the foreseeable future. You see this virus actually genetically edits everyone it affects..."

"Why can't we simply reverse the effects?"

"Well because the virus doesn't create it destroys... think of it a hammer to a watch, it breaks the complex thing it doesn't do anything terribly smart. To create a fix, it would have to be able to fix an almost infinite combination of things that went wrong..."

"If everyone had a watch and you smashed it with a hammer, it's not going to break in the same spot," I finished.

"Exactly! This virus targets men's sperm, it essentially adds random genetic sequences to the sperm making them no longer compatible with women's eggs."

"And the randomness of the cure makes it impossible to cure because every man has a unique mutation..." I said, in realization. "But what about the women, how does it affect them?"

"Ah, that's the nefarious thing about all of this, there will be 1 in 10,000 women that are immune also but for those infected, they will no longer be able to produce male offspring..."

"And the female offspring of the infected will also be infected," I finished again. She looked at me kind of annoyed, "Sorry, go on."

"The OEC obviously wanted a way to gain power from all of this but they needed a solution that they could provide the world at a cost. They found that solution in an experiment at an Illuminati subsidiary company. The experiment was a fascinating - they altered humans to produce antibodies to cure diseases. They found a process where they could cure virtually any disease as long as the disease was known with nanobots. The problem was they didn't have a way to produce the billions of nanobots it would need to target a person's specific needs... That is until they combined a couple of experiments and had the human body be the producer of the nanobots."

"OK, that doesn't sound so bad... what's the catch."

"The nanobots are produced by modifying the testes, they added an organic machine in the testes that produced nanobots specific to a target through sex..."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," I said sarcastically.

"The modified subject had alterations to their penis that gave it - well - for lack of a better word - feelers. These 'feelers' can sample the targets DNA and produce antibodies and nanobots specifically generated to cure the target."

"Okay, I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop, it still doesn't sound so bad."

"The problem was, in order for the subject to survive they would have to be able to survive every knowable disease in existence... which is basically impossible... Unless you are Ataruian that is."

"Ataruians are mostly human themselves, I never heard of them being able to resist diseases."

"Well one particular subculture of Ataru have a special psionic ability called Vampirics. Its essentially leaches the life force of other living beings in order to temporarily boost their strength. You see they accidentally captured a Vampiric in their tests and he survived the process by boosting his immune system while he was subjected to all of the diseases."

"But all of the other humans died... how many?"

"They killed close to a thousand humans in their trials."

"Okay... I'm assuming you are no longer killing humans, right?"

"Yes! But here's the dropped shoe you were waiting for... The Ataru with the healing balls, almost always impregnates his partner, unless she is using an IUD...

"So? I mean I do too, and it's not necessarily good but I'm fail to see how..."

"Don't interrupt me!" the doctor said. Then she seemed to remember who she was talking to as my eyes narrowed in anger. "Sorry, but you didn't let me finish."

"You're right, go on."

"All of those things were part of the original experiment, but a spy for the OEC added one more thing to the experiment. The test subject..."

"Sorry to interrupt, but you know his name, right?"

"Fine! The test subject - Mike - had his nanobots further altered to genetically edit his partner."

"Genetically altered? What specifically did they edit, as far as I know genetic editing can add, subtract and edit genes. How exactly is he editing them?"

"His nanobot add genetic material to its hosts, making them Ataruain Hybrids. You see when your father - yes I know who you are," she said, when I looked at her surprised. "When your father created you, your whole purpose was to be a breeder. He wanted to create a master race of super beings..." she said, and I looked at her like 'no shit'. "The problem was, you were TOO strong and your children would be too. But also, logistically as a breeder it would take you too long to breed enough children to do him any good. I mean think about it, if you had sex 24/7 and had women lined up in a factory, maybe even had an IV hooked up to you and everything was completely optimal... You could get 144 women pregnant a day! Or 52,560 women a year... He would still have to wait for them to grow up and raise enough funds to take care of them... Well let's just say that A) those numbers aren't realistic even with your super stamina, you would still need to be motivated to ejaculate every ten minutes. Realistically, maybe you could get 10,000 or so women pregnant. But that's assuming he has 10,000 women lined up ready for you to mate with. Your father's a powerful man but not THAT powerful."

"OK, so I'm a failure... how is Mike a better option?"

"Your father is one of the few Ataruians left that have multiple psionic abilities," she began.

I looked surprised for a second but considering how old he is it made sense.

"One of those abilities is that he can influence weak Ataru-Hybrids. It's why a psychopath like him has kept his power for as long as he has," she continued and I looked like I was going to interrupt. "I'm getting to how this affects Mike, be patient... Mike's nanobots genetically edit the women he is with, transforming them..."