Magistracy:Origins

[csyphrett]

Re: Magistracy:Origins

 

Jo got off the bus at the depot, started walking for anyplace that would be open late at night. She wanted a Internet cafe so she could check the news. Several half baked schemes sat in her mind daring her to attempt one of them.

 

Three of her fellow passengers had decided she was a good target of opportunity. They followed her in a casual stroll. The plan was to move in when she was close to somewhere that would afford privacy. An alley presented itself.

 

The biggest pulled the hood of his sweatshirt forward to hide his face. He charged, wrapping the tiny engineer in his gorilla arms. He carried her into the alley, one hand over her face. His two friends followed, an eye out for any alert passerby who might decide to call the police. They vanished into the narrow lane.

 

"We're going to have some fun." The biggest breathed alcohol fumes in Jo's face. "Do what I say and you won't get hurt."

 

Jo's control broke. Anger, fear, frustration, and everything else that went with losing your home to a bunch of faceless slime boiled up. The buzzing came with it. She lashed out, kicking and screaming, throwing her body around as much as she could.

 

"What the heck?" The three of them were familiar with the way victims moved, how fear worked. None of their other victims had started frothing at the mouth like a mad dog. "She's crazy."

 

Jo felt her skin harden, felt a crawling sensation the more she struggled. She slammed her head back as hard as she could. A crunch rewarded her efforts. Her feet hit the concrete and she turned. Her nails had turned into claws. They reflected the ambient light in the dark alley, standing out in the shadow.

 

"What did you do to my face?" The biggest put his hand up to his nose. He touched blood and painful cartilage. "You gonna die now, ho."

 

Jo threw herself forward, anger carrying her on a flood. The humming drowned out anything that might have stopped her charge. Her fingernails sank into flesh and raked like knives. The unlucky recipient of her attention screamed as blood flew through the air. His partners gawked at him crying on the ground.

 

"I can't believe this crap." He grabbed the air. "Help me. I'm tore up."

 

The other two ran. Maybe they could have saved his life if they had put up a fight. Maybe they would have been ripped up like their leader. They decided to leave him. After all they could make more friend if they were alive.

 

Jo watched them leave, calming down. She examined her hands. They were spotless and normal again. She needed to get to a lab. She needed more control than this. She looked down at the man she had ripped apart. She didn't feel any sympathy for him. It took her several moments of hard thought before she pulled his cell phone off his belt and called for an ambulance.

 

She didn't need to kill the poor slob.

 

She had just wanted to so bad her familiars had decided to help her the best way they knew how with the limited knowledge she had given them to operate in their dish.

 

Jo took his money before leaving the alley. If the ambulance got there before he died, that was good now that she was calm. She wasn't going to hold his guts for him while he bled to death. She turned and started walking.

 

Jo found a place that promised no problem with Internet connections. She went inside, paid for a chunk of time, and started surfing the net. She got some coffee as she printed out several pages about her former employers. Even the light digging she did pointed to hidden traces of corporate espionage.

 

They had probably bugged her house when she started to work for them. That would explain the search. They knew she had designed something, but not what. Someone had jumped the gun there. Otherwise they could have done their search while she was working on the tiny machines.

 

Then they would have them, and she would be dead.

 

Jo ignored sirens as she followed links across the information super highway. It looked like there was no legal way to get at them. The bombing had gotten them a paragraph where they stated their former employee had blown herself up. Implied incompetence as a cook as well as an engineer came across in the quote used.

 

So much for being employee of the month.

 

Jo looked through her information, sipped her coffee, ignored the growing excitement outside. She still needed to get some lab time but there was no way she could get into her old work shop now. All of the security codes were changed as soon as someone was kicked off the job. She had seen that twice.

 

She checked one of the names of her fellow fired workers. He had been caught in an avalanche and buried out west. They found the body months later after the spring thaw. What had he done to deserve that?

 

Jo finally looked out the window. Police and the fire department were on the scene. Maybe her attacker would get fixed up after all. She went back to her research.

 

Time ran out as she checked on other labs in the area. Maybe she could bluff her way into one if the security was low enough. Her search yielded only college labs that might be open enough to let her try to work on her nanos without interruption.

 

Jo sighed. She bought some more coffee, put her printouts in her pocket, and left. She spared a glance at the cops trying to figure out what happened but kept walking. A couple of the schools were a train ride away. If she could use the labs, she might be able to talk to her nanos more directly.

 

She didn't know what that would do except to make sure she didn't turn into a monster. Maybe it would give her control. Maybe she could do something to change what they could do.

 

Turning her nails into claws had been useful. Maybe they could do something more.

 

Jo walked into the subway station. She checked the schedule, running her finger along the wall map. Her train should be coming along the tracks in a few minutes. She went to wait for it, glad to be alone on the platform.

 

Jo heard the train coming. She turned to face it, glad to be moving out of the area. She didn't need the police coming down in the subway, and latching on to her. Exposure seemed the worst thing to happen at the moment. The train slowed to a halt. People came out in ones and twos while she stepped onboard. The engineer sat down and waited for the transport to start up again.

 

Jo closed her eyes and thought about her situation, surveying the angles as much as she could. It didn't look good. The chances were likely she would get killed before she could get any of her answers.

 

She didn't know what would happen, and dreaded it.

[csyphrett]

Re: Magistracy:Origins

 

Jo walked across City College. Out of the candidates she had looked up on the Internet, the small university had the best equipment, least security, and stood the closest to the subway system. That made it perfect for her purposes.

 

Jo walked to the science department, checking a directory for the labs. The humming was in her head again, but she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Obviously the nanos wanted to do something but she had no idea what at the moment. That was why she needed the work area.

 

Jo found an empty computer lab. She commandeered some equipment from other rooms. She sat down with a knife and started Operation Communication by slicing open her finger tip. She dropped some of the blood in a clean dish. The tiny nick closed almost immediately.

 

Jo took the blood and put it under a microscope. Nanos swam in the blood, looking lost. She took a tweezers and picked one up as gently as she could. She placed it in a clean dish away from its fellows. It froze in confusion.

 

Jo found some wire with a plug to hook it to the computer at the corner of her temporary station. She looked around, gathered some tools to help her plug the connection into the lone nano. A few finger strokes and the nano told her its operating designation and design specs.

 

Jo smiled. This was exactly what she needed to make her plan work.

 

Jo spent the next hours racing daybreak as she programmed the lone critter to do the things she wanted. It was only capable of understanding part of the instructions at a time, but the engineer worked around that by programming it to combine with other nanos it came in contact with inside her. The more of them it touched, the more of the program it could carry out. She loaded the code with an eye on the clock above the door.

 

The last thing she needed was to be interrupted while she was simply waiting for the code to finish transferring files.

 

The computer beeped that it was done. Jo unplugged the nano, smiling as it hopped around. She put it in the dried blood in the original dish. Those nanos had stopped their movement, waiting for new orders. Her newly programmed messenger roused them. She could almost see the information being shared out between them.

 

The tiny machines used the dried blood to build more of their brethren. The new army resembled ants on the march. Jo hoped she wasn't making a mistake as she stuck her hand in the dish.

 

The nanos cloaked the index finger of her hand. Jo heard the humming in her head again, louder than any time before. She pulled her hand away from the dish. A stab in the pad of her last knuckle gave her hope her plan was working.

 

Jo felt weak. Realization set in. She had ordered the nanos to change programming, but they needed fuel. She hadn't given them anything to build with to help carry out what she wanted. That was easy to fix.

 

Jo walked as fast as she could to nearby vending machines holding drinks and snacks. She picked the highest calorie things in the two and bought several packages and bottles. She forced herself to eat and drink as fast as possible to help her nanos do their work.

 

The shakes vanished as the food hit her stomach. She imagined her nanos sitting in her body and ripping the little chunks of moon pies apart to build machinery inside her. When did she get an imagination?

 

Jo went back to the lab, and wiped the computer clean of her work. She didn't need Daniels to backtrack her and find that. Several painful jolts arced through her limbs and spine, but she ignored them the best she could. She washed out the dish and microscope slide. No need to leave her blood around. She replaced the equipment roughly where they had been before she had grabbed them. Light of the early morning spilled through the blinds.

 

Time to get a big breakfast and see if her programming skills were up to snuff.

 

Jo walked across campus, riding out the sudden waves of pain with a gritting of teeth and pausing of steps. The humming was louder in her skull. It almost sounded like the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz. She saw a diner on the other side of the campus line. It looked like just what she needed to get fuel for herself and her new army.

 

Jo settled in her seat, counted what was left of her money, glanced at the menu, then ordered the most food she could afford with what she had. She ignored the waitress's look of amazement, and asked for coffee on top of everything else.

 

Jo tucked in as soon as the plates arrived. Ridges rushed under her skin and settled like waves. She hoped the waitress hadn't seen those. The nanos were going to do what she had told them to do. Machines followed exact instructions no matter what.

 

Jo sat back in her seat, and drank coffee loaded with sugar and cream until she was sick of it. At least the nanos made it where nothing was going to carry over into fat. She was eating for billions and they didn't mind reminding her.

 

The nanos indicated they were almost done with a small overlay on Jo's vision. She almost laughed, but held it in. Time to be happy later. A control panel blinked in the corner of the overlay. She blocked each button with her finger. The options were blank at the moment.

 

They wouldn't be for long.

 

Jo smiled as she handed over the last of the money. She needed a place to rest, and relax. Then she could talk to the nanos about filling the options in the control panel. It looked like having her house blown up had been the best thing to happen to her in a while.

 

It had at least gotten her to really work on her creations to stretch their application and keep her alive for a while.

 

She walked out in the street and wondered where she could go to let the minions finish their labor. She decided that riding the train would do for now since no one she knew even bothered. That should buy her some time.

[csyphrett]

Re: Magistracy:Origins

 

Jo woke from her brief sleep, staring at the passengers around her. She rubbed her face with both hands. The nanos had typed READY in blinking letters on the overlay. They were more ready to fight than she was.

 

Jo looked out the train window. They were in a tunnel heading toward downtown. If she wanted to deal with Daniels, she would have to switch trains at the main station. She hoped he could tell her why her bosses had decided to kill her.

 

The engineer placed her hands on the window. To anyone looking, she seemed to be playing an imaginary piano on the plastic. In reality, she was checking what the nanos had done with a virtual keyboard. Her machine army had done a fantastic job from every angle as far as she could tell.

 

What she needed was thought processing so that the nanos would respond to her commands as fast as she could think them. She would settle for voice commands until she could perfect the other. Typing was a good secondary relay system, but she needed to be able to activate what she had in mind a lot faster than a few switches.

 

Jo typed for minutes while the train hurried along. Finally it rolled into Central while she was waiting for the system to reload. She struggled to get off before the carriage pulled away and she would have to repeat the ride in a reverse loop. She paused against a concrete pillar, watching the numbers roll out.

 

Finally the nanos signaled everything was ready for the test run. Jo stepped in the ladies room, walked to a stall. She needed a small amount of privacy.

 

"Load armor program." Jo hoped she had it right. The nanos might kill her if she hadn't got the alternative energy builds just so. She closed her eyes, expecting to be ripped in half. Platelets emerged from her skin, covering it in a metal sheath. Metal clamped around her head in a faceless helmet.

 

Jo smiled. The overlay remained clear as day. Mode tags ran across the top of her vision. They were reminders of what the nanos could channel if she had programmed them right. She might be more of a hot shot than she thought.

 

Eat your heart out, Tony Stark.

 

"Systems check." Jo watched the different sections of her armor light up in the overlay as reports of all green came up in neat type in the corner of her eye. She nodded, marveling at the smoothness of the armor moving with her.

 

"Normal stand by." Jo watched as the armor retreated from her skin, and the typing screen came back on line. "I'm going to have to talk to a colleague. You might need to activate at a moment's notice. Until then, I need to do a little more work on you babies."

 

Jo walked out of the bathroom, heading for the stairs leading to the exit. She used one hand on the rail while typing with the other. Eventually she got a shielded wi-fi connection after stepping out on the street. She headed down the sidewalk, showing her nanos build specs for dozens of machines they could build into the armor.

 

She noticed they concentrated a lot of attention on the jet pack before giving their okay. She could almost imagine the conversation in that case. The crazy all mother wants to fly. If she wants to crash and burn, let her. We're indestructible. The engineer kept walking, and typing. She needed to talk to Daniels. He was going to be less than pleased to see her alive.

 

She asked the nanos what they thought of everything. A flood of electronic chatter listed punch lists for all the things she had them look at through the internet connection. She answered each concern as best she could from real world examples. That quieted them down for a bit.

 

Jo made sure to install a trap on the internet connection before shutting it down. She didn't want to be hacked while trying to hack someone else. That would be giving control of her creatures to someone not worthy of them.

 

"Another mile or two, and we're going hot." Jo looked around the neighborhood, comparing it to the get togethers the staff had attended at Daniels's place. "Status?"

 

All green typed the message across the bottom of her vision. Modifications ready.

 

"Good job." Jo smiled. Her babies were faster than she thought. Working in conjunction had improved their ability to operate exponentially. They might not need her to get by now.

 

Jo spotted Daniels's building. She wondered if the company had bugged all their homes, looking for something they could steal. How many others would be killed because they were trying to keep things to themselves instead of handing it over.

 

Jo frowned, pushing the anger away. She didn't need to know that. She just had to prove they had tried to kill her.

 

Jo spotted the door man and headed around the back of the apartment building. She paused at the back entrance, asking for a door opener. The nanos filed into the lock, turning it for her. She stepped inside the lobby, heading for the elevator.

 

Jo pressed the button for Daniels's floor, wishing she had thought of a hat to cover her face. She should have thought of that before breaking in. She stepped out in the hall, asking for the armor as she walked down the hall. She rang the doorbell, listening to the hound dog barks for chimes that sounded inside.

 

The expression on Daniels's face was a mix of fascination and horror. Then it was pain because Jo had kicked him in the shin with the boot part of her armor.

 

"I want to talk to you about blowing up Jo Paulski's house yesterday." Jo's voice sounded filtered enough to be unrecognizable to her ears. "What can you tell me?"

 

"Record." Jo watched the video icon start as she pushed Daniels into his living room.

 

"I don't know what you're talking about." Daniels scrambled back, looking for an escape.

 

"How long do you think it will take the police to realize they served a warrant on a place that blew up?" Jo pressed forward. "Eventually someone will make that connection. What will you tell them?"

 

"I was never at Jo Paulski's house." Daniels hit his chair, hands curved into his carpet. "No one was there at her place at any time."

 

"How do you explain it blowing up?"

 

"She must have done it herself."

[Mr. R]

Re: Magistracy:Origins

 

Repped. This is AWESOME.

 

More please.

[csyphrett]

Re: Magistracy:Origins

 

Repped. This is AWESOME.

 

More please.

 

Thanks. I thought I would be done but this turning out longer than I had thought it would.

CES

[csyphrett]

Re: Magistracy:Origins

 

Jo wanted to punch Daniels in the face. She decided not to for the pragmatic reason that it was being recorded. She needed to shake him up. How could she do that?

 

"I need recording devices placed here in the apartment." Jo made sure to mute the command so her former boss wouldn't know what she planned to do. "Stealthy as can be made."

 

The factory under her skin loaded single purpose machines into the cells of her armor. They flopped through the air, taking refuge everywhere in the room. Signal checks went back to central command in an instant.

 

"Jo Pauleski is alive, Daniels." Jo smiled at the reaction that statement brought. This could be the key she needed to turn. "She's willing to testify that you tried to kill her for an invention she hadn't invented yet. I'm not the police. I suspect that if you told them everything they will give you protection from your superiors. Otherwise I will make sure that Jo shows up to tell her side of the story."

 

"You're crazy." Daniels regained his smooth exterior. "There's nothing to this."

 

"If you want to keep thinking that, go ahead." Jo knew she had hooked him. "She'll be at the central police station tomorrow at nine in the morning. By lunchtime, your office will be full of police and FBI agents looking for holes to put things into, if you know what I mean."

 

"There's nothing that Jo can say that will cause me the least bit of trouble." Daniels folded his arms. "You can even tell her that."

 

"I will, Daniels." Jo smiled under her faceless mask. "Matter of fact, I'm going to hand over records for her to take in with her. If you get ahead of this and turn yourself in, I'll tell her to stay dead."

 

"I don't have anything to hide." Daniels pointed at the door. "Leave."

 

"I will be back." Jo smiled even wider. "Don't leave town."

 

"Leave!"

 

Jo turned and went to the door. She stepped out in the hall, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rip the wood apart. That was petty, but it felt good at the same time. She went down the hall, letting her spies do their job without any more interference.

 

She waited in the stairwell. Daniels called someone right away, but not about the door. He concentrated more on the fact they had failed to kill her when they blew her house up. The metal armor received some mention. What interested her the most was the apparent decision to have a sniper take care of the problem in the morning.

 

That was almost perfect. All she needed was the attempt to start unraveling this pocket conspiracy. It was time to consult with her experts and work out a solution. She wondered how much of the company could she take apart over this.

 

Maybe she could take everything apart. First she had something to do before the next morning came around with her appointment with death. She hoped security got in her way.

 

Jo headed for the roof. She bypassed the door alarm and stepped out on the gravel. She had to get across town in a hurry, so this would be a perfect time to try out the nanos' ability to make other machinery. She hoped she didn't crash in the attempt.

 

"Flight mode." Wings extended from the armor's back. Vents opened to allow force to be shunted from her back like a jet. A few seconds later, and the gray suit streaked across the sky.

 

Jo enjoyed the flying, aiming for the glass monolith she used to work at as an engineer. She needed to get into the offices and she could think of three ways to do that. One was violent and cathartic at the same time. She decided for the easiest approach.

 

Jo hovered outside a window. Two seconds later, she was inside, putting the glass back with the help of her henchmen. She went to the computer on the desk. Most were loaded with software important to whatever job was being done, and a system net for communication. Supposedly no one could hack it from the outside, and should hit firewalls everywhere on the inside.

 

Jo sat in front of the computer. Her nanos entered the system's hardware, checking it over. In a few seconds, files played on the overlay as the tiny machines read the disks and went through the data as quickly as possible. So far they hadn't turned up anything suspicious on the machine, so she asked them to start hacking the network with their combined brainpower. She gave them some idea what to look for and then turned them loose.

 

Information drifted back to her overlay with flags marking the parameters she had set. Her babies compiled everything in a separate medium she could carry without giving her own system up.

 

She couldn't wait until morning.

[csyphrett]

Re: Magistracy:Origins

 

Jo Pauleski smiled as she headed toward the round building at Parker Center. She carried an empty manilla envelope under her arm. All she had to do now was get shot in front of all these policemen.

 

She wondered if Daniels knew he had set himself in the trap. All the information she had gathered pointed right at him as a murderer, and idea thief. If she should happen to go down, everything was ready to go everywhere at the signal.

 

Of course she had prepared things in case the assassin really did strike instead of following her around. She had hoped Daniels would step up to save his own hide. Her scan of his building in the morning came up empty. His cell phone also refused her calls.

 

Maybe he had decided to take it on the run until things were over and done.

 

Maybe he was dead. That would suit her more than anything.

 

Jo saw one of the special agents she had met after her break in at her former company. He had his hand to his ear. Radio traffic drifted around her as she headed up the stairs. They had identified a sniper thanks to the fact that Jo had been able to calculate angle of trajectory as she came up the sidewalk the night before. The company shouldn't have put him there. They might have been able to deny everything up to the point the police took him out with their own sniper.

 

The special agent waved her into the building for her own safety. It would be bad to lose your only witness after taking out one killer. She jogged up the steps, content that was she safe except against the most massive of attacks.

 

Her nanos had been programmed against anything that could hurt her body, as well as defensive measures against physical attacks that might spring up from surprise. She might be the safest person on the planet now thanks to her house exploding around her.

 

That was ironic in itself.

 

Jo stepped through the glass door. Special Agent Hendrix waved her away from the entrance as he listened to his earpiece.

 

"I admit I didn't believe you but it looks like we netted a fish we can try to flip." Hendrix divided his attention between the report and Jo. "They're bringing him down now."

 

"I need to lie down." Jo lied. If anything, she felt like jumping up and down in jubilation. "Do I have to look at him?"

 

"If he works at your company, it might be best if we have a positive identification right away." Hendrix gestured for two more agents to act as her shields. "We'll make sure he never sees you. Take her up to the line up room. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can put this perp away."

 

Jo walked with the men to the elevator. They took it up to the homicide squad floor. A short walk took them to a room with a window in it. On the other side of the glass, another room had a wall with lines to mark height on it. They waited silently until Hendrix and several other officials arrived.

 

"The detectives will bring him in a second." Hendrix made sure the lights were off behind the glass. "He won't be able to see you through the glass."

 

Walter Daniels walked in the line up room. He had a bruise on his cheek. Apparently someone had kicked him in the face during his arrest. The detective stood at his side, holding him by his manacled arms.

 

"That's my former boss." Jo stepped back from the window. "That's the man on the tape."

 

"Take Mr. Daniels to Interview Room One and make sure his rights have been read to him." Hendrix spoke into a keyed mike in front of the mirror. "I want him to stay with us for a long time."

 

The detective nodded, pulling Daniels along by his arm. They left the room. Daniels seemed to be crying.

 

Jo wondered how long he would last before he died in lock up. She doubted he would be allowed to testify against his masters. He might take everything on his own shoulders just to escape death for a few more years.

 

Jo suppressed a twinge of satisfaction. Getting caught red handed had let Daniels prove to the authorities that the evidence she had uncovered owed its existence to company policies and not to the hacking of a disgruntled ex-employee.

 

She hoped that would be enough to crush the company without a long drawn out trial. She had done her duty but she didn't want men following her everywhere while she worked on other things. They would ruin any attempt to go back to her own life.

 

And Jo expected to go back to her quiet life as soon as possible.

 

"We're going to sequester you somewhere safe until we can round up everyone involved." Hendrix waved at his two men. "I want you to keep away from windows, and keep your door locked at all times. As soon as we make our case, we'll need you to testify to what was given to us."

 

"How long will that take?" Jo looked down at her hands.

 

"I don't know." Hendrix shrugged. "It depends on what else we can dig up when we go to work on Daniels. The longest investigation of this type has been five years."

 

"Five years?" Jo stood up. "Let me know when you go to court. I'll be there."

 

"If you leave, we can't guarantee your safety." Hendrix crossed his arms.

 

"Don't worry about me." Jo made her way to the door. "I can look after myself. I'll be in touch, Agent Hendrix."

 

She stepped out in the hall, caught the elevator down to the ground floor, and vanished into the masses of New York City.

[csyphrett]

Re: Magistracy:Origins

 

This is the end of the story part. I have one more character sheet to post on the other thread but this is a wrap.

CES