Chapter 198

198 Ice Queen, Pt Miko watched as the shopkeep wiped down the exact same spot on his counter with unerring precision. His hands and arms moved to the exact millimeter as he cleaned it. And once he had performed exactly three revolutions, he moved exactly 20 centimeters to one side and began again.

It was the same thing with the person who scraped up ice. His arms moved to the exact millimeter each and every time. And everytime he moved up the street, it was in the exact same increments.

Miko found their robotic nature curious, puzzling, and troubling all at once. She wanted to equate these people to drones, but even those had a semblance of chaotic movement in them. At least they were programmed to have variance in their behavior. This made them simply appear more natural.

To her, it seemed like all these people were stripped of their original programming, and replaced with something far inferior.

She made her way back down to the warehouse district quickly. Earlier, she had realized that there were many colonists at work, and decided to continue her observations there.

What she saw made her even more curious, puzzled, and troubled.

Outside one of the busier warehouses, dozens of containers one cubic meter large were stacked up on each other. A dozen workers in aging exosuits carried them one by one into the warehouse itself.

And each of those who carried the crates moved with equal precision to each other. In fact, they even seemed to be in lock-step with each other as they walked to and fro.

Just outside the warehouse were a couple of stoic guards in C-ranked Medium Ballistic Armor, both of whom were armed with C-ranked FTG Standard Duty Rifles. And when Miko glanced around, noticed that every warehouse entrance held two such guards.

.....

Not that any of them even noticed or acknowledged Miko’s presence. Not even the regular workers did either.

She walked right up to a guard, but received no response in return. She even waved right in his face, but... nothing.

It reminded her of the Queen’s Guard in England, of their stoicism and their dedication to their duty. But these were vastly different.

Miko then walked into the warehouse completely unimpeded. She followed one of the regular workers inside, where she watched him drop off his crate among a bunch of others. And as he put down his crate, he did so as orderly and robotically as he could.

It wasn’t just his movements, but where he placed the crate itself. Spaces between stacks were even, and each crate was perfectly squared off with the others around it.

Another team of a dozen workers transported these crates into storage bins deeper in the warehouse itself. Also by hand. Miko followed them for a few minutes as well.

She discovered yet a third team of workers. They pulled crates off the shelves and transported them to the open doors on the other side of the warehouse.

Miko was utterly astounded by what she saw. In fact, every step she took led to more ridiculous sights. Outside, dozens and dozens of colonists in their aging exosuits transported dozens and dozens of crates across the multiple warehouses across the district.

Each and every one of them moved with robotic precision, like a vast machine. While not everyone was in lock-step with each other, each member in any given team was certainly moving synchronously with each other.

Utterly confused by what she was seeing, Miko decided to follow each and every team out there. And she discovered that they went all over the place. Mostly, they went between each of the warehouses with their crates.

Some went back up to the commercial district, where their crates’ contents were distributed among the shops. Those crates came back with various sundries as well.

Simply, everything was being shuffled around, all over the place. Anyone who glanced at what was going on would simply shrug it off as normal. That they were going through the motions of a busy settlement.

But anyone who looked closer could easily see that this was some kind of machine. As to what kind of machine – that was up for grabs.

Miko was unable to figure out what the purpose of it all was. Nothing was being created, nothing was being gained.

The only thing that seemed to exist here was simply... busywork.

It’s like these people are buggy NPCs, Miko thought to herself. Doing the same repetitive, pointless motion constantly. The only thing missing is seeing them in T-poses.

She went back inside the first warehouse and went up to one of the working colonists. Close up, she could see that he had a similar size and build as the others working. She noticed that his muscles were practically bursting out of his suit as well.

She walked alongside him, even as he carried his crate.

“Hello, I am Raijin,” she said.

“Hello Raijin,” replied the colonist. “It sure is pleasant this cycle, huh?”

Miko couldn’t help but glance outside. Although the icy rain had relented a great deal, and much of the wind had quieted down, it was still miserable out there.

“Why are you carrying that crate?” she asked him.

He looked at her quizzically for a moment before he smiled and gave an answer. And despite that smile, his tone and demeanor never changed. Like the others, he too was robotic.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “if you’ve got any business in town, I suggest you talk to the mayor. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

Miko stopped walking as a thought struck her – if these people were being mentally conditioned, then why not their bodies, too? It suddenly all fell into place for her. All of this was made to make these people physically strong.

She activated her drones and had them scan a bunch of colonists around her. They obediently flew off and did as she asked. They ran their biometric scanning fields across a number of colonists, and sent back data as soon as they were completed with each one.

Miko walked absentmindedly as she reviewed each of the scans through her DI. On it, their medical readouts matched with her theory.

Their lifesigns were steady and strong. What alarmed her though was that their brain activity and neural connections were dampened significantly, and that their musculature was clearly overworked. Though their metabolic readings reported them as stable, it was obvious that they suffered a lack of certain nutrients.

Stressed to their physical limit, their muscles were swollen and no doubt painfully so. Not that they showed it, of course. Their faces were all fixed with those grim and dour expressions.

Perhaps they were too fatigued to have any other expression but that.

As she dug further into the data, she found that each of them had been at this for multiple cycles in a row. Some had been at it for nearly five cycles straight.

Lifting, carrying, walking. Over and over and over.

She waved her baton at their exosuits and pulled down their statistics and programming. Since these were industrial mechanisms and had no security intelligences installed, she was able to break through the code with ease.

In it, she found that the exosuits didn’t help the colonists lift the crates – not exactly. It only kicked in to assist colonists if it detected that their bodies were on the verge of collapse or failure.

Otherwise, it was all on the colonist to bear the full load of each and every crate.

Even more troublesome was the significant amount of cybernetic augmentations that each one had been installed with. And everyone she scanned had the exact same augments.

They were installed all along the spinal column, including the neck and brain stem. They were wired into their nervous systems directly, and almost literally replaced it.

That truly shook Miko.

From what she had observed thus far of cybernetic augmentations, they were made for reasons of beauty and longevity. For the most part, they were tools for the vain, and only rarely did they have some true utilitarian purpose.

What was in front of her had a more monstrous purpose. These were installed in order to give someone else direct control over these people.

They appeared to depress the owner’s brain signals, and supplanted them with someone else’s programming. Their inferior programming.

And as her drones scanned more and more people inside the warehouse, she realized that the entire town had been reduced to mindless slaves.

One last, most puzzling thing she came across was the fact that each and every colonist was missing a portion of their blood. Exactly 13%, to be exact. And not just their blood – Miko also noticed that they were missing 13% of their bone marrow, brain matter, and skin tissue.

What had been removed was simply regrafted with mechanical replacements. They didn’t do much more than keep the holes plugged and the gouges patched.

Truly disturbed by all she had seen, she recalled her drones and headed back into town. As she passed through the commercial district, she went into a small eatery and looked at everyone around her.

The cook in the back kitchen, waitress behind the counter, family eating at a booth – all of them scanned the exact same as the ones in the warehouse. Overworked, exhausted, and on the verge of “healthy death”.

She walked up to the family that was eating and saw that one of them was a boy about her age. Anger coursed through her as she observed and watched him – he was as dead-eyed as everyone else. And when her drone’s bio scan of him came back, she noted that all of his wisdom teeth had been removed along with the 13% everyone else was missing.

His mouth was literally still bleeding even as he ate.

Her heart tumbled around in her chest as she looked at him. She believed that no-one deserved to be treated like that. Then and there, she resolved to take down whoever it was that did this to these people.

She waved her baton at the boy and immediately penetrated his cybernetics’ operating intelligences. But she didn’t get very far. It had an incredibly robust security intelligence, which booted her out nearly the moment she got in.

Miko blinked in utter surprise and disbelief.

Then she dug in her heels and attempted to penetrate its defenses yet again. This time she was ready for the security intelligence, and fired numerous sparks in every direction.

While the intelligence’s security hounds chased them down and put them out, she scattered her various worms into the code. But they too were quickly eradicated by security intelligence.

Without any recourse, Miko hopped out before she could be found out. Whatever system that was, it was clearly far more robust than anything she had encountered before.

Afterwards, she packaged up all the data she found into a digital booklet and sent it over to Amal. Except she got some kind of connection error and couldn’t get through, much less send the packet. It was the same with Claire and Max – not a single message went through.

With a grimace, she realized that the mansion’s comms had been blocked, and that they were all possibly in grave danger.

Then she walked out to the street, looked up at the mansion high above, and began to run towards it.