Site-7: AUTOPSY

« PREVIOUS: REPLICA

» 5 YEARS AGO

Operator Ariadne Katsaros rubbed her hands together, feeling the rough padding of the gloves on her palms. She looked up from the bench she was strapped into. The rocking belly of the cargo helicopter was filled with the other members of Fireteam INVADER. Tactical Response Team India-Whiskey was big enough that even the squads were nearly double the size they would be in mobile task forces.

Most of the soldiers were laughing, celebrating another job well done, talking about nothing in particular. The target hadn’t been anything important. Recovery of a cache of low-level anomalous items from a thaumaturge who was trying to pawn them off to locals. Turns out thaumaturgy isn’t particularly effective against tear gas. She wasn’t sad, but she didn’t feel much like celebrating — kicking in the teeth of a street wizard didn’t really feel like a victory to be proud of. Supposedly it was leading up to a bigger bust, but…

Ari turned her eyes to with the person sitting across from her — the only person in the chopper not dressed in a Foundation tactical outfit. Instead, the brown-skinned man with the dark, curly hair was wearing almost-futuristic looking body armor, metallic white plates with blue accents over blue camouflage fatigues. A familiar blue star-over-circle was emblazoned onto his shoulderpad: the symbol of the Global Occult Coalition. A nametag on his chest read “SPECIAL OBSERVER FARHAN MORADI”.

He’d been attached to Fireteam INVADER for almost three weeks now, and she hadn’t been able to get a read on him. It wasn’t exactly common for the GOC and Foundation to work together, particularly in the guys-with-guns sector. There was just too much bad blood, macho showmanship, and territoriality for Strike Teams and MTFs to work together efficiently.

Farhan seemed different, though. Quiet, contemplative. Always observing his surroundings. She wasn’t sure what exactly he was here for, but he seemed happy about the operation tonight, so presumably they were getting closer to whatever poor bastard High Command and the Council had agreed to work together on getting.

He noticed her looking, caught her eye, and smiled. She smiled back.

NOW

The mobile containment unit in the middle of the stripped-down jet cabin was made of reinforced titanium alloy, with a lid that was torque-bolted shut by four men and designed to contain a grenade detonation inside without so much as creaking.

Ari kept her rifle trained on it the entire flight home.

The Chatter had refueled during the mission, so it was a straight shot from Japan back to Alaska — a few hours in the supersonic jet, during which she had plenty of time to think. O5-2 was seated in the opposite end of the cabin, as far away from the MCU as possible. The Alpha-1 guards were spread around the plane, per Ari’s orders. She hadn’t explained why, but the reasoning was obvious: if one of them was an imposter, like Yamada, he couldn’t take a shot at the Overseer without being riddled by his fellows. She was the only one sitting directly next to the boss, in an almost offensive display of trust.

It wasn’t the tensest plane ride of her life, but it was up there. She could count the words said on one hand.

When they finally landed at Hargrove AFB and switched from the Chatter to the Condor, a forklift had to be requisitioned to move the MCU from the plane to the quadcopter. The Air Force sergeant supervising them cast a sidelong glance at Ari, still in her black space-age body armor. It made for a confusing contrast against his snow camouflage. He’d long since learned not to ask questions from the strange private firm that the Air Force was playing part-time host to up here, but couldn’t help himself from a wisecrack.

“So, they take the cost for that getup out of your pay?”

“No, out of yours.”

He blinked.

She had radioed ahead to Site-7 and had the other Condor scrambled and sent to Hargrove. The MCU and a few guards went in one, the rest went in the other. When they were underway, flying back to Site-7, and that goddamn coffin was finally out of her sight, she finally relaxed a little. She regretted it almost immediately, because then the memories flooded her head.

The faceless man standing facing the computer, then turning towards her. The feeling of slipping, sliding, falling into the abyss where an identity used to be. The gush of blood as his face was turned into ground beef. Skin tearing, bone peeking through sheared flesh. Monitors decorated by spiderweb cracks and blood spatters.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and whipped her head to the left, grip on the gun tightening again.

It was Evie. Just Evie. Pale-faced, red-haired, worry written across her pursed lips.

“You okay?”

She thought about the question for a second. She hadn’t slept in almost 24 hours, most of which were spent with a gun in her hands, and during which she had killed two people. “I’m fine. I’ll be better when we’re home.”

She idly noted as it left her mouth that she’d started calling Site-7 “home."

She ducked slightly as she slid the side door to the Condor open, hopping off onto the helipad. The four rotors were so far above her that she would’ve had to be twice her height to risk injury, but it was force of habit. Site-7’s security team was waiting for her, Pierre’s gaunt face staring impassively at her as she walked across to him.

She was going to greet him when the guards around her pulled their handguns, aiming them at her. She stopped dead, not quite raising her hands.

“Pierre?”

He didn’t say a word, just walking over and aiming something at her — it resembled an infrared thermometer, but he pressed it against the bare skin of her neck. It made a digital beep.

DNA confirmation. Right.

He pulled away, apparently satisfied by whatever the screen confirmed. The friendliness bled back into his demeanor, clasping her hand warmly.

“Are you good?”

“I’m good.”

They both turned. The other security office members were also fanning out, scanning everyone who came off the Condor — including O5-2, who frowned but let them do their job.

“He radioed ahead and ordered it,” Pierre explained. “What the hell happened?”

She didn’t answer, staring as a combination of Alpha-1 and site security personnel carried the MCU off the Condor like pallbearers carrying a coffin and laid it onto a pallet jack.

“What’s inside?” Pierre asked.

“I’m not sure, honestly.”

“Reassuring. Should I have men guarding it?”

“Around the clock. For sure. Not taking any chances with this one.” She felt a hand on her arm and turned.

It was David. He looked up from the wheelchair. For the first time, she became acutely aware of how tired he looked — dark bags under his eyes, and his long blond hair was matted with sweat.

He seemed to read her mind. “Trust me, you look worse. Get some rest.”

“Now? No way.” She shook her head.

“Not a request, Ari. Need you at your best, and right now you’re about to crash.”

She hated it, but he was right. She was dead on her feet. A stiff breeze could knock her over.

“Then let’s go. You’re as fucked up as I am.”

He blinked, but didn’t protest as she took the handles of the wheelchair, pushing it along towards REDEYE.

She woke up slightly after dawn. For a second, she laid in bed, bare, watching the midnight sun through the blinds. Then she got up and slipped into the shower in the en-suite. She’d never asked how the Site consistently got enough hot water for four hundred people in the middle of the Arctic Circle, but decided she was better off not knowing. The water flowed over her, over her scars, over her stump, and down the drain, taking the weight of the day with it.

Wrapping herself in a towel, she got out. Her armor and clothes were abandoned in the corner of the small room, and her prosthetic arm was resting on its stand next to her bed. She walked over and reached for it to put it on, but hesitated, fingers outstretched an inch away from it.

She thought about how she’d ripped a door apart using her metal fingers, how invincible she’d felt.

She thought about kneeling on the deck of the Teaser before she’d gotten her prosthetic, literally single-handedly making sure the ship made it to the Site.

Do I need it?

Her fingers rubbed against the fingers of the prosthetic.

No.

She was in the suite’s kitchenette, suited up, when O5-2 wheeled himself out of his room. They performed their little ritual: he rolled to the empty side of the coffee table, she brought over two mugs of coffee and set them down on the table. Except this time, she gripped both mugs in one hand as she sat down on the sofa opposite him. He looked down at the prosthetic sitting on the coffee table, with its carbon fiber and gold finger tips, and back up at her, raising an eyebrow silently.

Ari just sipped her coffee. Most of their conversations were silent — both quiet people by nature, but it was a comfortable silence, not an awkward one. She spoke up when her cup was half-empty and his was half-full.

“Can I ask a question?”

He looked up from his tablet. “Of course.”

“How come I have this—” Her fingers drummed on the prosthetic’s surface. “But you’re in the wheelchair? I know Prometheus also made leg prosthetics, exoskeletons.”

For a second, she worried she’d offended him, but no, he was just thinking. “After the Amoni-Ram Incident — read up on that sometime, you should be cleared for it now — the Foundation adopted an extremely anti-augmentation stance. Lot of good people forced out or had their prosthetic arms, legs, eyes removed as a security measure. We’ve relaxed a little bit now, because we have a better understanding of how Bumaro’s influence works — but we’re not at the point where an Overseer having robot legs is a good idea.”

“But that’s not the real answer.”

He smiled at her. “Sharp. No, that’s not the real answer. I mean, it’s an answer, but it’s not my answer.”

“What’s your answer?”

His tablet pinged, and he looked away. “Maybe I’ll tell you later.”

For the first time, Ari noticed that despite the weight of worry around him, David Rosen was not much older than she was.

Farhan was surprisingly talkative once she got to know him.

It was over a few beers in the site canteen. Technically they weren’t meant to be drinking, but it was their off-time, and this far out in the desert, nobody really wanted the rules to be enforced that strictly. So it wasn’t uncommon for a few of the task forces or response teams stationed at the site to pound a few down when they weren’t readied up.

Most of the other India-Whiskey members drank hard. Ari didn’t care for that — getting shitfaced only to wake up in a puddle of your own refuse might appeal to some of the lesser specimens in the team, but she liked a more relaxed buzz. She found a kindred soul in Farhan.

“You drink?” she asked with surprise when he brought her two freshly-opened bottles.

He smiled in his way. “Not often, but… ” He raised his bottle. “To a job well done.”

“Cheers.” She clinked her bottle and took a swig before recoiling, face screwed up. “Ack. Warm.”

Farhan laughed. They talked about nothing for a while, until Ari finally piped up with a question she actually cared about the answer of.

“How’s the GOC?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, is it a good gig? I know you guys do things differently over there.”

He shrugged. “Not that differently, especially in this department. At a certain point there’s not much difference between who you’re shooting, you know?”

“Sure. But you know, you guys have a bigger focus on manpower than us. On tech.”

“Yeah, but that’s really only when it’s needed. No one’s going to deploy Orange Suits to take out a street wizard in Eurtec.”

“I understood some of those words.”

He laughed again. He had a nice laugh.

“How about you, how’s the Foundation?”

“Okay, I guess. Like you said, not much difference between who I’m shooting.”

“Marines?”

“Army Rangers. What about you?”

“It’s… complicated.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Color me intrigued.”

“I was never formally commissioned in any nation’s military. This thing with the GOC isn’t a permanent arrangement. I’m… I guess what you’d call an independent consultant. I’m working for the GOC now, but worked for plenty of folks in the past. ORIA, PENTAGRAM, Myrmidon once or twice. They like me because I have connections all over the Middle East, I like them because they pay me the big boy bucks.” He ruffled his curly hair. “Looking this good ain’t cheap.”

She smiled. “So you’re a mercenary, is what you’re saying.”

He grinned. “I prefer the term soldier of fortune.”

The mood around Site-7 that week was restrained. Not everyone was cleared to know what happened — but everyone knew something had happened. There isn’t an armed security sweep on the helipad for no reason.

Ari spent the day surprisingly free. A few meetings in the morning she sat in on, and then O5-2 told her that he’d be working in private for the rest of the day.

“I’m not leaving you alone after yesterday,” she told him matter-of-factly.

“Not an option. Council business — you’re not cleared for this, Ari. Sorry.” He had been flanked by two Alpha-1 guards, in their signature red-accented black fatigues — Novik and Abraham. She had Pierre confirm their identities with the scanner before she finally relented, lowering her Uzi.

After he rolled away, she was left standing on the walkway with Pierre. It was that weather that only seemed to pop up here, lightly snowing despite the midnight sun shining. Their boots left footprints as they headed towards BLUEFIN.

“Why do you always wear the three-point sling?” she asked, motioning towards his rifle kit.

He shrugged. “Why do you always wear your arm? These are the tools of our trade.”

In spite of herself, she laughed.

A few minutes later, they were inside BLUEFIN’s accomodations. The place was impossibly large — as in, genuinely impossible. As part of Site-7’s extensive modifications, the interior was larger than the exterior, which allowed plenty of room for individual dormitories along with luxuries like rec rooms.

Ari lined up the cue with the pool balls and piston-flicked her left hand. The cueball shot forward like a bullet, sending three more balls bouncing around the table until they hit their pockets.

“Game.” She looked up.

Pierre scowled at her. “This game is not fun with you.”

She smiled. The rec room was slow this time of day — most technicians were still working at their stations or having lunch in the mess. There were only a few others, watching whatever movies were downloaded onto the TV or sitting around on couched and talking.

She arranged the balls again, rolling the cueball to Pierre.

“You were spec ops, right?”

“Canadian Special Operations Regiment, yes. As were you, I imagine.”

“Army Rangers, so… technically. Wanted to be a Green Beret, but it didn’t pan out. Afghanistan?”

“Yes. Have a good time?”

Ari laughed sharply. “Yeah, I bet.” She had always liked Pierre. He was grumpy, but endearingly so. “How’d you get picked up by the Foundation?”

“Took a few shots to the chest, discharged, could not find good work. The economy. I worked on a factory floor for some time. And then a friend from the service recommended me to someone in HR as a potential pick, I suppose. I took the opportunity, went straight into the task forces. Zeta-9 was my first.”

She started, turning towards him. “You started in Mole Rats? Jesus, how are you alive?”

“Because I am very good at what I do, Ariadne. And you went into Nu-7?”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged, lining up a shot. “I’m the Chief of Security. I read your file well before you ever stepped aboard the site.”

“Fair enough. Anything interesting in there?”

“Completely redacted section in between you joining the Agent Corps and being taken on as Secretary of the Office of O5-2. Near as I can tell, that is where your…” He waved at her arm. “Injury report, should be. But it is not.”

Ari blinked. “I didn’t know my record was expunged. Hell, I didn’t know you could expunge records around here.”

He looked at her strangely. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s RAISA HQ. This is the Foundation’s infosec nerve center.”

“Information is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands. The Foundation has understood this for many years. The problem is that it is often difficult to tell whose hands are the wrong ones until it is too late.” He passed the cue back to her. “And so, the logical conclusion, even here, is to restrict access to those who need to know.”

“And I guess someone decided you don’t need to know.”

“Indeed.”

“You don’t seem miffed,” she said, sinking another ball.

“Irritation about being denied information while working here is as stupid and pointless as irritation about being cold. You just put on a jacket.”

“Well, do you want to know?”

“If you’d like. I don’t pry.”

As she opened her mouth, it occurred to her that she’d never actually had to explain to anyone how she lost her hand before. Everyone she’d spoken to had either known already or never asked.

“I don’t… remember. I was on an op, in Bolivia. Uyuni. Tracking… something. It’s fuzzy.” She rubbed her temples. “I remember being in the salt flats, feeling like something was watching me. Then waking up in a hotel room that wasn’t mine, holding my gun in my right hand. My left was gone, just about up to the elbow. Just a bloody, ragged stump. There was a empty pill bottle on the floor. Emergency issue personal amnestics.”

Pierre nodded slowly, not making eye contact.

“Sounds grueling.” He was uncharacteristically soft-spoken. “My apologies.”

“Thanks.”

“Did they figure out what it was?”

She thought back to her conversation with O5-2 — infovores. And then what Pierre had said only moments earlier.

Information is a dangerous thing.

“No. Not yet.”

They kept shooting pool for a few minutes, in silence other than the sound of the ceramic balls hitting each other and others’ indistinct conversations. Then Pierre’s walkie-talkie crackled to life. He listened intently to his earpiece before turning and slipping his parka back on over his shirt. Ari spied a few tattoos decorating his biceps before they disappeared under the jacket.

“Something up?”

“Just a personnel issue. But I must handle it. Apologies.”

She nodded. “You’re good. Go take of business. I ought to get back to work anyway.”

Just before he walked past her, he stopped and put a tentative gloved hand on her shoulder.

“I was briefed on what happened on the mission. You’re alright? We have counselors and such on-site.”

For a stranger, this is when she would’ve shaken her head and silently waved them off. Instead, she smiled, put her prosthetic over his hand, and gently peeled it off her shoulder.

“I’m good, Pierre. But thanks. Really.”

The rest of the day was R&R. She regularly checked in with her men guarding the Overseer — technically, she was of equal rank to the Alpha-1 security detachment, but in practice they deferred to her decisions. After a few months at Site-7, she’d developed a rapport with most of them. The Director’s annex of REDEYE was practically a fortress, staffed by the most loyal and capable the Foundation had to offer; that was the only reason she felt at all comfortable leaving David alone;

The next time she saw him was near midnight. She’d had lunch with Rita in the mess, carefully avoiding discussing the trip to Japan, then hit the gym for a few hours before returning to the suite. It felt strangely empty alone.

Like every other employee on the site, she was provided a tablet, and like nearly every other piece of technology on the site, it couldn’t connect to the Internet, only Site-7’s intranet. Still, it was good for a few hours of watching preloaded movies. Laying on the couch, her leg kept twitching — she wasn’t used to this much time spent idle.

She shot up when she heard the telltale beeping of someone punching a code into the security panel on the other side of the door. O5-2 wheeled in, turning over his shoulder.

“Thanks, guys.”

The Alpha-1 guards nodded, taking up positions outside the door as it shut and locked itself. O5-2 turned back, meeting Ari’s gaze.

“Ari.”

“Boss.”

“How was— what are you watching?”

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

He blinked.

“Trust me, I see the irony.”

“Well, okay. Get your stuff.”

She lept to her feet, pulling on the olive-green sweater she’d cast aside and slipping on her shoulder holster. “Where to?”

“Mount August.”

Ari panted into the air, bucking wildly as she bounced up and down, two hands on Farhan's chest stabilizing her. The sheets slipped off to around her waist, but she didn't bother pulling them back up. Below her, Farhan was grunting and shuddering, reaching one hand up, touching her shoulder, tracing a line down her chest. The only light in his room came from a single dimmed lamp, casting a strange warm glow on the both of them. She looked down at him, and he looked back up at her, and she leaned down into his face. They kissed with more passion than either of them realized they had.

And suddenly his back arched and her muscles tensed and they were both together, in that moment, deep in the desert, far from where either would call home.

And then the glow faded, and Ari's breath returned to her as she rolled off of him. The bed was just barely wide enough for the both of them to lay side by side, breathing heavily but otherwise quiet. Then she reached one hand over and stroked the rough, wiry hair of his close-cropped beard — little more than stubble. He laughed in spite of the moment.

"Fuck," Ari broke the silence.

"Fuck," Farhan agreed.

Site-7’s ninth platform stood apart from the rest, literally. The other eight were connected through long walkways wide enough for people and tow tractors to move between; MOUNT AUGUST had no such connections. The only way on was by air or by sea.

As the Condor swung around and descended towards a helipad, Ari began to regret choosing air. The blizzard that had started earlier was now in full tilt, snow and wind whipping the chopper around. Site-7’s Condors were specially modified to work in this climate, but feeling the usually-smooth quadcopter buck and shudder was disquieting. Her metal hand clenched the handhold above her in a death grip until, after a tense few minutes, the machine settled onto the helipad, blades winding down.

It was just her and O5-2 in the cabin — no Alpha-1 guards, and the howling wind made it impossible to tell if anyone was waiting for them on the pad. She hauled the sliding door open until it ratcheted into place, immediately exposing the cabin to the blizzard. She thanked her past self for wearing multiple layers as she hopped out onto the ground and shielded her eyes.

She could see figures nearing through the snow — then realized that she could see them. They weren’t wearing Site Security’s white camouflage. Her left hand automatically went to her gun, and the five or six of them responded in kind, raising their rifles

From behind her, she heard O5-2 shouting over the storm. “Ari! It’s okay! They’re with us!”

She breathed heavily, but gradually lowered her hand from the gun. The figures relaxed. They were wearing blacks and grays, parkas lined with fur, reflective goggles. In the screaming wind, she offered a sharp nod, and they returned it in kind.

“Get the wheelchair!” she yelled over the din, moving to let them through. They swept into the Condor, working like a well-oiled machine to pull the ramp out and roll the wheelchair down. There was already a buildup of snow on the helipad, and the wheelchair carved two lines through it as it approached the entrance to the building that dominated the platform. She jogged sharply alongside him as they entered through a sealing door. The security team entered after them and the door sealed itself shut, turning the roar of the storm into a dull din.

Ari panted heavily, looking around and brushing the snow off her shoulder. Now, sheltered from the storm, she raked her eyes across the half-dozen security officers surrounding them. Their body armor had a single yellow stripe running down the left shoulder — the only splash of color on the ensemble. The uniforms weren’t RAISA issue, the weapons weren’t RAISA issue.

She leaned closer to O5-2’s ear.

“Who are these guys?”

“STAG in-house security.”

“STAG?”

“One second, Ari.”

He rolled the chair forward down the hallway, shaking some snow onto the metal floor. She stepped after him — when she found a hand across her chest, blocking her. She followed the arm up to one of the officers. She didn’t recognize him, or any of them. They were interchangeable, but not in the memetic way that Alpha-1 officers were. Just all square-jawed, stone-faced meatheads with no notable features.

“You don’t have clearance to access this facility, ma’am.” He even spoke without any inflection.

“You’re joking.”

“No, ma’am.”

She raised her left hand and flexed her fingers. It gleamed in the fluorescent light.

“Move.” It wasn’t a request.

They stared at each other for a tense second. Then O5-2 called out from ahead.

“Let her through, McKenna.”

“Sir, she doesn’t—”

“I just gave her clearance.”

The man grudgingly lowered his hand, and Ari lowered hers, striding to catch up with her boss. The STAG team followed behind them at a respectable distance. She tapped his left shoulder — their unspoken signal that she was about to take the handles of the wheelchair. He nodded silently and released the wheels, putting his hands in his lap.

“Who are these guys? Don’t I outrank them?”

“It’s complicated. You guys get awfully territorial.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You guys?”

He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Military types. You know what I mean. Anyway — welcome to STAG.” They continued down the hallway, the sides of which were periodically interrupted by long plexiglass windows. Through them, she could see into a number of what looked like laboratories, alive with activity. Personnel in full-body coveralls working in huge white engineering spaces, dominated by gold-foiled equipment she couldn’t even guess at the purpose of. Researchers tinkering with machinery on lab tables, typing at workstations, surrounding miniature testing chambers. They rolled past them while O5-2 talked and Ari stared.

“This is RAISA’s Special Technology Applications Group — STAG. They handle a lot of things, but chiefly developing new ways for us to utilize anomalous technology, with a particular focus on information and memetics. Lots of classified, bleeding-edge type stuff here. Most of it won’t be ready for release for another decade.”

They walked past a window where masked researchers were cutting into something that Ari could’ve sworn was a human brain. She grimaced. The two STAG security officers standing outside the door to the testing chamber stared at her until she moved on.

“I’ve been working here for months, how come I’ve never been to this place before?”

“You didn’t have clearance,” he answered matter-of-factly.

“Apparently getting clearance is about as difficult as you saying I have it,” she returned dryly.

They reached the end of the hallway, terminating in a freight elevator. They rolled into the steel box, the door sliding shut heavily after them. The security didn’t accompany them, and with a lurch, the elevator began to descend.

“Touché. STAG is… well, it’s always been rather independent from the rest of RAISA. We give them isolation, a near-unlimited budget, and orders, and they come back with finished products. It’s a good status quo, but lends itself to insularity. A distrust of outsiders,” he nodded back at the STAG security team following them. “As you’ve seen. I’ve found that trying to insert myself into the management gets me nowhere — it’s better to take a hands-off approach, hence why you’ve never come out here.”

“So it’s basically RAISA’s RAISA.”

“How’s that?”

“Fiercely independent, isolated, cutting-edge brilliance but not giving the time of day to someone not in the squad.”

With another lurch, the elevator stopped, doors sliding open to reveal another hallway — this one slightly wider and dimmer, no windows lining the walls.

O5-2 barked out a short laugh, in his hitching way. “Yeah. I guess I’ve never thought about it like that before.”

“Anyway, what are we here for?”

“Him.”

He pointed ahead. About halfway down the hall, a man in a labcoat was standing next to one of the sealed doors, arms behind his back, patiently waiting as the pair approached. Ari didn’t let her surprise show when she got close enough to make out his features. Dark skin, balding, a gaunt face, deep-set eyes over high cheekbones. She recognized him.

He and O5-2 shook hands.

“Overseer. Always a pleasure to see you down here.”

“Careful, keep talking like that and I might start actually showing up, and neither of us wants that”

He turned to Ari, who cut him off before he could speak.

“Doctor Victor Moses. Ari Katsaros.” She deliberately stuck out her left, prosthetic hand. Out of the corner of her eye and behind Moses’ back, she saw O5-2 raise an eyebrow.

If the remembrance of his name or the hand set him on edge, he didn’t let it show. She’d seen him on the helipad on his first day at Site-7, when O5-2 had flown in. He’d been there, face impassive but in a way that suggested careful training not to accidentally betray anything through facial expressions. She’d received similar training before joining the Agents Corps — a researcher having it was intriguing. Not that she’d had much time to observe him before he met O5-2 and departed. She hadn’t seen him in the months following that — until now, more than half a year later.

He raised his own left hand and shook hers firmly.

“Secretary Katsaros. Nice to finally meet you in the flesh.” She narrowed her eyes, but let it slide. He spoke how he looked — even, measured, no particular inflection.

Moses turned to O5-2.

“Ready?”

“Sure.”

Ari watched as he slid a keycard through the panel next to the door, following it up with a numeric code and a thumbprint scan. The lock beeped in confirmation and the steel door slowly slid open. She followed the pair in.

It was a small, tiny room — not even a room, really, more of a tight tunnel with a door on each end. The door behind her slid shut and she felt something change in the air. Nothing obvious, nothing audible, but a distinct feeling of intangible difference. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. An airlock, she realized. It’s an airlock.

The far door slid open a few seconds later, and she followed them deeper.

It was a sterile white room — reminiscent of a testing chamber, but stripped down. No creature comforts, no attached observation chamber, and most notably, no cameras. The walls were flat and featureless. And the only objects in the room besides them were two, huge metal coffins bolted shut: the mobile containment unit from the REPLICA-3 incident.

Ari moved her hand protectively to the Uzi hanging from her side. Moses and O5-2 had no such caution, walking up to one, surveying it from all sides. She followed suit a few seconds later, breaking the silence. “Is it still inside?”

Moses looked up, as if he was surprised to hear someone speak. “The subject is still inside the unit, yes. We’ve run extensive tests on it, but put it back in the unit afterward; no reason to take unnecessary risks.”

She mentally noted that removing it for experiments was considered a necessary risk. She nodded to the twin on the opposite side of the room. “What’s in that one?”

This time, it was O5-2 who answered, not even looking up from his inspection of the MCU. “The other subject, the one you killed in the server room. It just arrived from Hokkaido a few hours ago. We didn’t want the bodies in the same place until we’d confirmed they weren’t dangerous.”

She nodded slowly. “And… what’s this place?”

“Infobaric chamber. Neat little piece of paraengineering. Noospherically-isolated room that can serve as a containment chamber or a vacuum chamber for ideas and information. Information discussed here doesn’t exit easily, and I don’t want whatever these things are to leak.”

“Then how are we going to—”

“You’re inoculated. That’s what the tugging feeling in your gut is, your brain struggling with being able to process an idea that doesn’t exist in the wider noosphere. Don’t worry about it.” He looked at her. “Take the lid off.”

Ari’s eyes widened. “That… doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“The thing’s dead. If it was going to come back to life, it’s had ample opportunity by now.”

She looked at Moses, who was as impassive as ever. Then sighed, rolling up her sleeves. The bolts on the MCU were designed to be tightened and removed by a torque wrench a meter long. All she needed to do was pinch her metal fingers around the bolt and twist, spinning it loose. She went around the entire unit twice before finally loosening them enough to pop the lid off.

It unsealed with a heavy whump. Then she placed a palm against the lid and pushed it away on the built-in rails, revealing the treasure inside.

The first thing that hit her was the unmistakable stench of rotting flesh. It wasn’t bad enough to send her flying backwards, probably owing to the refrigeration inside the unit, but she still cringed and wrinkled her nose. She forced herself past it, looking at the ‘subject’. She was idly aware of Moses and O5-2 talking as she inspected the corpse.

“Superficial examinations didn’t lead up to much, partially due to the… damaged state the bodies were recovered in. The second one is next to unusable.”

“I didn’t exactly have a lot of options,” Ari piped up.

“Of course, nothing against you. Just an unfortunate reality. We’ve confirmed it is human, at least on a genetic level. Genetic matching has turned up… inconclusive results.”

“Elaborate?”

She pulled out her SIG Sauer from its shoulder holster, and briefly felt the pair’s attention turn to her as she used the barrel of the gun to tilt the subject’s head from left to right. This was the second one, the one that had been imitating Yamada. The one she’d put a dozen bullets in the chest of.

“It’s strange. The genetic sequence is unique, we run it through the system, and it doesn’t return a match, which should rule out any anomalies we have samples for, along with all personnel.”

“But?”

“There’s a hitch. Something I don’t have clearance to access. A moment where it feels like it has something to return to me, except it’s not there anymore. Deleted or redacted.”

“You’re not exactly prone to supposition without evidence, Doctor.”

“Which is why you should take me seriously when I do.”

The body had been stripped naked, revealing the damage to the chest. It was basically a bloody pulp that had further decomposed in the days since. Nothing surprising there. The face, on the other hand.

“What about the identity effects?”

“We’ve had more luck there. It’s nontraditional work, but the underlying principle seems in-line with what we’ve seen before: overriding a base identity with a different identity, conceptually replacing yourself with another person. A chameleon.”

“What makes this different?”

Ari stared at the face, trying to will past the mental static. It reminded her of reading a book half-asleep, trudging over the same sentence three or four times, understanding the component words perfectly well but unable to make sense of the sentence as a whole. There was a face, nose, eyes, lips — but trying to piece them together, to recognize the dead thing in front of her as someone was like wading through mud.

“There is no base identity. It’s been removed.”

“How the hell do you remove an identity from someone?”

“We don’t know. We have some experimentation on that front: some of your Alpha-1 bodyguards have cognitohazardous tattoos that serve to mask their identity from people not properly inoculated.”

“But that’s just a memetic mask.”

“Correct. Completely severing an identity from an individual is a different matter entirely. It suggests a familiarity with weaponized memetics well beyond that of the Foundation.”

“Coalition?”

“Unlikely. The Coalition is extremely advanced with paratech, maybe moreso than us, but they’re miles behind in information warfare.”

For some reason, this triggered something in Ari’s memory she couldn’t quite grasp hold of.

Moses continued. “If they had this kind of knowledge, they would be putting it to better use. And I cannot fathom a reason why they would want to upset the balance of power by assassinating an Overseer.”

“That aligns with what we’ve seen. Some chatter along GOC infiltrators that something happened at a Foundation facility in Japan, but all very unsure. Hand, PENTAGRAM?”

Moses thought about it for a second. “Hand gains nothing from anonymity — their actions are designed to send a message, and I don’t think they would rely on memetics to supplement a single assassin with a gun. They would just use thaumaturgy to begin with. I don’t have much up-to-date information on the PENTAGRAM’s memetic warfare program, but they’re certainly renegade enough to try something like this. The utility for them of having someone able to conceptually infiltrate an organization for months is obvious. But…” He hesitated. “I really don’t know of any organization in the world with advanced enough memetics knowledge for this. The Foundation is by a wide margin the best in the world and this is still bleeding-edge work. I just can’t say. Apologies, Overseer.”

“What did you say?”

Moses and O5-2 looked down to where Ari was kneeling by the MCU. She stared up at the doctor intently.

“I said I don’t know.”

“No, no, before that. The utility of whatever. Explain that.”

“Even high-powered memetic masks like the ones STAG is working on are fundamentally imperfect. They paper over an existing identity, and the underlying identity can peek through if they’re particularly incompatible. Even if they’re not, the original identity wants to subsume the mask, to overtake it. That process is natural and can’t be stopped — the longest-working identity masks are for a few hours, maybe days at most. Why?”

“I think I might know someone who can help us. Someone who’s seen this before.”

“Behind!”

Ari moved up behind Farhan, leveling her rifle. They moved through the corridors, sweeping their guns in opposite directions.

“Clear!”

“Clear.”

The difference in their approaches couldn’t be more different. Both were professional, tactical — but where Ari moved slowly and deliberately, Farhan flowed from room to room, angling his rifle in every direction, slipping back out. He moved with the grace of a dancer. It was a sight and a half. Periodically, it was interrupted by bursts of gunfire from below.

“Where’s the rest of the fireteam?”

“Caught up downstairs. They’ll get through, but it’ll take a few minutes.”

Farhan made a noise of irritation. “I’m not letting him slither loose again. Come with me.”

She didn’t put up an argument. The mud-walled safehouse was positively claustrophobic now that the lights had been cut. Ari was relying on her night-vision goggles; she had absolutely no idea how Farhan was seeing at all, let alone practically dancing through the hallways.

“How the hell can you see anything?”

“I have a djinn possessing my left eye,” he answered matter-of-factly. “Useful thing to have. Reads auras. Easier to tell when there’s someone trying to impersonate someone.”

They swept up the stairs, pointing their guns up, back to back.

“Does that happen often?”

“Oh, yeah. I was in an op once, working for— well, it’s not important. I was playing bodyguard for a target, trying to make sure they made it to an exfil point so we could get them out of the country. Met with their previous security team for the handoff. Clear.”

“Corner.” She slid in front of him, peeking out from a corner, confirming it was clear, and then letting him move forward. “Then what happened? The security team had a mole?”

“Nope. Target was the mole.”

“What?”

“Little fucker was wearing the target’s identity like skin. It was flawless. Memetic shit like that is already basically impossible and sucks even when you can get it working, something like that is unbelievable. I doubted even myself for a second. Then I remembered I didn’t survive this long by doubting myself, and put a bullet in their brain. Security team was not pleased, let me tell you.”

“Clear. Do you always ramble this much while performing assassinations?”

“Behind. It helps me relax. Don’t tell me I’m boring you.”

Ari swapped to laser sights. “You? Never. But that’s insane. Heard about some stuff like it, but they must’ve killed the target hours before, if that.”

“That’s the thing. We found the actual target’s body a couple days later. Dead for months. Imposter had been sitting quiet, collecting intelligence and sending it back to God knows who.”

“Jesus. Any idea who it was?”

“I got a few guesses. Like I said, not my first— Contact!”

Ari spun around, focusing in the direction Farhan was facing. He’d already popped a few rounds into the wall, barely missing the cloaked figure that was currently making a mad dash through the labyrinth of bedrooms on the top floor of the building. Then she felt a strange energy and dove to the ground a second before the wall next to her exploded.

Two of the lenses from her night-vision goggles shattered. She pulled her sidearm, trying to make out anything in the fragmented vision. She was about to fire blindly when she heard a strangled cry from a few feet away.

“Farhan?!” she called out.

“Got him,” was the measured reply, coming over a low moaning.

She got to her feet, turning on the flashlight of her sidearm. In the room next door, Farhan was kneeling on the figure’s chest, one hand grasping their face. He pulled his hand away, revealing a vicious, ugly and fresh burn across the target’s cheek.

Ari stared silently as Farhan worked the victim in a language she didn’t know. For the next fifteen minutes, she watched as he beat the man senseless, burned him with his hands, and made what were clearly threats, underlined by a gun in his mouth. Finally, Farhan got to his feet, lifting himself off the sobbing, twitching mess of a man.

Ari was about to use her walkie-talkie to call for a containment unit when Farhan unceremoniously pulled out his pistol and shot him twice in the forehead. The man went limp.

She looked up at him in shock.

Farhan shrugged. “I don’t leave loose ends.”

Ari was sitting in the living room of the suite, across from O5-2. He was typing on his tablet, she was fiddling with her arm.

“How well do you know this person?”

She hesitated. “Decently well, I guess. But I haven’t talked to him in years. We didn’t exactly leave things off super well.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Is this something I need to be worried about?”

“No.”

He nodded. “We have a few records of working with him, and a security dossier about half a mile long. It appears we don’t trust him.”

“Probably a good call.”

“But we don’t exactly have a lot of other leads. There are a few reports of his current location. It might take a few weeks to track him down, so hold tight.”

She nodded, pulling off her sweater. Outside, the blizzard was still raging, but the inside of the suite was warm and toasty. The pair lapsed into comfortable silence for a few minutes.

“Hey, about earlier…”

“Hm?”

She was holding her prosthetic in her hand now, staring at it from all angles.

“You were talking about why you don’t want to get cybernetic legs. Why you stick to the wheelchair.”

"Right.” He smiled. “I suppose I owe you an answer. The nature of my disease makes surgical intervention dangerous and difficult. The problem isn't my legs, per se, it's my spine, and any prosthesis would need to be surgically implanted into my spinal cord. Dangerous stuff. Could cripple me even worse. Probably just outright kill me. But I've thought about it."

"And you're not going to?"

"Not yet. Every day, I wake up, and the day's a little bit harder or a little bit easier. Right now, I'm lucky. I get more good days than bad. I can wash myself, clothe myself, even get around by myself. Giving that up… it makes you feel a little bit dependent." He nodded at her prosthetic, sitting on the table. "But the idea that you need this technology, this assistance to function — it also makes you feel dependent, just in a different way."

"I know what you mean."

"Right now, I'm surviving. If the days start getting worse, I'll rethink it, but for now… I'm surviving."

Ari leaned back in the couch. “You and me both.”