[Teaser] Convergence

[Conduit]

Conduit is beyond bored. She'd distracted herself for a while spying on London through her newly found access to the CCTV network but it turns out that's mostly just a bunch of boring people doing boring stuff, driving boring cars to boring places. There's probably a bunch of blackmail to be dug up, strings to pull, but that's not the kind of clever Conduit is, even if she could be bothered to search through it all. It is a government system and she managed to leapfrog her way around. Video file downloaded as evidence and passed to the police, malware package injected by yours truly. Scotland Yard from there, Westminster and there she'd run into the first real security barriers. Especially while poking around from all the way back in this stupid flat through remote backdoors and Will-based tunneling. Bah.

[Narrator]

Meanwhile, at MI6...

Cyber-intrusion alarms go off and make their way up the chain, are intercepted by the acquaintance of one Lady Hewitt and soon the two government officials once again find themselves in a conference room having an increasingly heated discussion.

"Okay, yes, admittedly this isn't great."

"I may not be officially on the hook for this but all it takes is somebody getting nervous or worse, that little monster actually manages to breach into somewhere important and traces it back to me somehow." Lady Hewitt hisses.

"Relax. They said she's still where she's supposed to be. This kind of rattling the cage is to be expected even if it's... closer than I'd like."

"I'm just saying I'm not going down for this by myself if it comes to it."

Lord Calvert threatens to break into a sneer for a moment. "Fair I suppose. But listen, it's fine, I have some good news to even you out a little. I've talked to five other people who aren't happy with this situation either and one of them already looked into something that might just sweep our issues under the rug. If they even occur. And even better, no matter what, their plan is messy. We'll look downright sensible in comparison. They've been talking to the Americans."

[Madison West]

A couple days ago, across the pond...

After running his own test-algorithm - multiple times - Dr. West had finally been satisfied enough to deign the constant stream of uniformed officers worth his time. And so they'd all been herded into the downright ancient nuclear test observation bunker. Purely for show; what's two meters of reinforced concrete against the might of science. Bigger explosions and better precision. That's all their embarrassingly mediocre minds could conceive of. Satellites, drones, electronic warfare cruisers, all in the service of preventing or enabling various detonations or projectiles. And that's why they thought an eighty year-old bunker is an appropriate setting. Morons. His daughter had the right of it, minimizing her contact with these people and only being where she needs to be when she has to. He can appreciate that precision, even if it’s born from petulance.


Madison is sitting on top of the partially buried bunker, leaning back and braced against one arm, the other one resting on her propped up knee. In the distance she sees the slowly rising scaffolding holding her father's work. She might as well be sitting on it's shoulder, the empty stretch of desert lets her power reach unhindered. People impeded it somehow. Living people, that is. Kept the space around them from bending and twisting like they're nails driven into the canvas of the world. People as a whole were in the way. But here, like in the sky behind the controls of a plane, nothing stops her. Two point one kilometers out and the distance is as insignificant as a grain of sand.

She's always the failsafe, the one reliable thing in this disaster of a family. After France, after L. After Rob shook his yoke and Heather pranced off into the sunset. She'd stayed loyal or close enough to it to be entrusted with this demonstration. Beneath her the shutters of the bunker close with a rumble that reverberates through the concrete and Madison jumps to her feet. Go time. Space folds around her like origami and with a single step she's gone.

In the distance the Sentinel Unit W/001 sags as the pneumatic bolts securing it to the scaffold retract with the loud hissing of released pressure.

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S-Coil Engine active
Field Delineation at 100%... 99%

It’s “only” 40 feet tall but its first step still sends sand billowing. Purple and pink. Who made those decisions? Probably some committee somewhere. Distinct and heavily contrasted against most areas but no common ‘alarm’ colors as to not spook the civilians. Madison appears on the sentinel’s shoulder, shielded from most view-points by the large protrusions on the machine’s shoulders. Her father had explained their purpose once in excruciating detail but all she took away from it was that they contain important sensors and emitters towards the ‘head’ and heavy plating and shielding outwards

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All systems functional
Control Uplink Engaged
Field Delineation stabilized at 84%
Weapon Systems Online

The Sentinel lifts it's head and it's eyes glow softly under the scorching sun. A second step clears it of the scaffolding. A third tears through the one-story house that is still modelled with 50s design sensibilities. For tradition, presumably. Madison blips away and into the air about a hundred feet away, facing the Sentinel. She extends her arm, palm facing the machine. Space and gravity deform in a growing cluster held in her hand, chaotic warping of forces that don’t care how hard or dense something is. She fires it past the Sentinel and into the scaffolding, the metal bending and twisting violently with an eerie silence. Until the ripped and crunched up ball of girders falls to the desert floor with a thud.

Always good to remind folks of what people like her are capable of. Under the guise of demonstration, of course, but they'll know. She takes aim again, this time at the sentinel. The gravimetric blast slams through it with enough force to pull up the sand and crush it into a dense coating of rock around the sentinel’s torso. The sentinel moves and the sand-coating cracks and falls away to reveal it’s pristine armor plating underneath.

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Reflexive Armor holding.
No structural damage.
Field capacitors charged.
Ersatz-System engaged to fire.

The Sentinel lifts it's arm and Madison blips away. Moments later a similar gravimetric blast tears through the small model city but in a zig-zagging line. Anything not in it's immediate path is unaffected, down to the dressed up dummies barely showing as much as a ruffle of clothes. But the buildings and areas (and dummies) that had been marked with a red X are crushed. Space crashes in on itself in the blasts path, bricks, concrete, the air itself collapse inwards and a heartbeat after the attack passes a massive implosion rips through and leaves behind nothing but rubble. This does knock over nearby dummies and shatter windows but minimal and acceptable collateral compared to the clean swath of destruction.