Infinity Inc/Safety Drill
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Unlike the previous Infinity Inc facility, this one permitted certain leeway to the Hybrid Delta Series minions -- a reward for pleasing progress and behavior, a nudge toward rivalry or status awareness, very obviously. In some corridors, the computer-controlled lighting shaped its area and intensity according to the status of the individual it illuminated: and a sufficiently well-regarded Delta could choose to dim that light, or have the computer ignore the Delta's presence entirely. Newcomers thought that brighter lights, meaning higher status, indicated greater privilege.
Newcomers had yet to learn that focused attention was something generally to be abhorred.
The Killing Dance, Infinity Inc's current showpiece, bore enough of his creator's admiration to demand that his light circle be very faint, though not murky enough for him to vanish into the shadows of the plain grey hall. The musician among his peers, Grigaere, had demonstrated the controls to him; his circle's diameter was noticeably smaller than the Killing Dance's, but he could extinguish his illumination completely in the Hybrid areas if he chose. Spotlight diameter, Grigaere confided, was set by the Corporation's employees according to some never-explained criteria from their performance in the training chambers.
Abruptly light spilled out of a side room. A crimson-coated man stepped hurriedly into view. Dark red for Observers, Killing Dance reminded himself as he came to an equally abrupt halt.
The employee looked Killing Dance up and down analytically. "You're a Delta," he told the figure clad in black leather, as if this could be new information. "Are you control-equipped?"
That had to be the arrogant version of asking whether he had been taught the rigorous sound-and-gesture command series designed into the Alphas. "Yes," Killing Dance answered simply, and did not add the obvious question: aren't you?
"Good. Come with me." The man in the red lab coat hurried back into his side room.
When the Killing Dance entered this new space, a sallow light blinked briefly in warning. The employee slapped away an alarm switch hastily, then pointed to three small monitors hanging near the ceiling. "We're looking at one of the exercise rooms in the training area. The left monitor shows an overhead view of the entry, which is kept locked from outside during a drill. The center monitor is an angled overhead view of the fifth staging area. Normally we keep that monitor focused on the primary talent in the room, wherever he or she goes. The right monitor is supposed to rotate between camera views of either the remaining participants, or the current obstacles, depending on the exercise in question. It went haywire about five minutes into the exercise. That isn't our current problem."
The dancer thought about his borrowed sword, utterly inadequate in comparison to the finely-crafted blade shaped to his left hand, and squashed a faintly disparaging thought about this entire place's maintenance of its equipment. He watched the Observer manipulate dials and sliders until a particular frozen moment appeared on the central monitor.
"The exercise is a team strategy drill for three participants, requiring a certain amount of tandem action in locations where they cannot keep line of sight to each other. The Hybrid Delta is Sutra-Dhara, the Stage-Mistress. She is supposed to manage two of the Hybrid Alphas, who are to do most of the physical work of the puzzle. One of them is," and here the Observer ran a hand through his hair in clear frustration, "frankly dumber than a damp sack of cement. Something went wrong in his original creation. The template wasn't all that bright either, but when we stabilized the cheetah genome in place, and woke him up … it's a good day when he doesn't walk into a closed door. He cannot learn his name. He seems to have a short term memory on the order of twenty minutes. His originating facility spent extra time implanting responses and routines via psychic surgery, and he is generally biddable enough, but he requires a ridiculous amount of direct supervision for any task not implanted into his subconscious."
That sarcastic little thought about the facility's quality of equipment tried to restore itself in Killing Dance's mind.
"Eastern Europe sent him to us," the Observer finished, "and we have not managed very much better with him. One of the lead behaviorists thought it might help to assign him to Sutra-Dhara, who can physically move him the way he ought to respond to a command: maybe he'll finally start to learn. That has all gone straight to hell. Eighteen minutes into the exercise, the cheetah stops all work on his task. He wanders around the room until he finds the other Alpha, a leopard named Fehral. They have some sort of exchange, she clearly becomes aggressive in trying to drive him back to his task, and the cheetah reacts violently. Normally, Fehral reacts to a fight she's not winning by backing away, or by changing her tactics, but for some reason she won't abandon her position. She has some errors in her own behavioral programming; one of those could easily be cropping up right now. We would know if the third monitor were recording. By the time Sutra-Dhara got over there to separate them, the fight had escalated past Sutra-Dhara's ability to handle on her own. Whenever she gets adequate control of one Alpha's body, the other one presses their attack."
The Observer's overall irritation showed in his fingers if not in his voice. "You're going to go in there, help separate the two Alphas physically, and focus on whichever one Sutra-Dhara does not currently have in her grasp. The two of you will administer enough punishment to redirect the Alphas' behavior. Moderate pain may be sufficient, but if they resist more than a token amount, you are authorized to continue up to just shy of unconsciousness. I want them aware enough to understand the final outcome of the failed drill. Try not to undermine Sutra-Dhara's control, however much of it she has. Any questions?"
"No." Killing Dance turned around to head swiftly out the Observation Room door; he would need to access the target area properly, through the exercise room's primary entrance.
"Room Seven," the Observer called after him as the Delta vanished.
The room smelled of well-oiled hydraulics, cedar shavings, and lemon-scented varnish. Underneath was the faint, omnipresent tang of old adrenaline, embedded into the walls by many subjects' fear, blood, and fury. This exercise room had been configured to mimic an outdoor area in some respects, so the overall space probably took up five or six stories before lighting tricks made the ceiling vanish, giving the illusion of an open space. Some of the modular structures that made up the exercise platform itself were vaguely reminiscent of trees, others of pseudo-military elevated watch towers and gun emplacements. Two, probably final targets, were enclosed huts on stilts, security protections still very visibly active.
The stilts supporting each structure, and the artificial trees, each showed old water marks as if they had been repeatedly flooded.
Some areas of the open floor had patches of fiber-optic "grass", not quite knee-high to the leather-clad dancer, but not enough of it was spread around to interfere with his movements. Killing Dance moved rapidly past a large chunk of the layout, bearing leftward and slightly "uphill", until he could see a corner that matched what the Observer's screens had displayed. Near one of the high-built watch towers, a thin, dark-haired woman in tight-fitting garnet stood in trampled grass. She kept one hand out, palm flat toward the growling cat-thing on her left, but had clearly just turned her attention mostly toward the larger man trying to shoulder his way past the Delta from her right.
"No," the woman bellowed as firmly as she could. She sounded tired, and even that one syllable had an accent. In the wake of her word, a black oval of energy spiraled out from her right hand to slap itself against the hostile man, knocking him back two steps before it lifted him off the ground. "You sit and," and whatever further instruction she meant to give, it did not come out in English or anything remotely related.
Not that the cheetah seemed remotely interested in any of the instruction, including the first part: he snarled and struggled, claws reaching futilely toward the other cat coiled near the generator controls. She, in turn, lashed her tail furiously against the environment, head lowered and muscles tensed to pounce.
Killing Dance moved swiftly, smoothly, wordlessly. He inserted himself in the center of the scene, turning as he arrived to put his back against the other Delta's shoulder blades, turning her in the process so she would face directly toward the suspended cheetah. He felt a very slight release of tension in her back as Sutra-Dhara adapted to the new circumstances.
Between his natural height and breadth, and her low position, the leopard's view of her hostility's target was completely disrupted. She pulled in her shoulders slightly, hunching into a more compressed position, as her gaze resettled on the dark grey eyes in the center of a black-swathed face. Killing Dance had seen wild animals analyze a new discovery before, trying to decide whether the threat was strong enough to surrender prey or ground, whether the prize was worth any available risk; that was exactly what the Alpha was doing to him, analytically, utterly inhumanly.
In seconds, the leopard adjusted her position yet again. She was not willing to force her way toward the leather-clad man, past him, to get at the cheetah, despite the anger that vibrated through her body with every sound the cheetah made.
Yet -- oddly -- she also refused to give any ground, to back off or calm down, to surrender an inch of the space next to the generator to this new potential aggressor. Nothing physically tied or tangled her in place; she simply, hostilely, resentfully perhaps, refused to concede anything more.
Killing Dance did not take very long to sort out this puzzle, he did not have leisure for it even if it had been worth his time. He adjusted his own body language to take up more space, to loom slightly, casting more of a shadow over the crouched leopard. Since he did not want to interfere with Sutra-Dhara's work on the cheetah, he restricted his communication to the hand-gesture part of the control system: a sharp motion near his breastbone to focus attention, a one-handed gesture away, not exactly pointing since he used all four fingers to indicate bars. The command was called "return", it meant "go to the cage right away", and it really should not have resulted in a renewed growl that slid gradually toward a roar.
Easily interpreted, that response was a "no" if he had ever heard one. Killing Dance drew his swords, making the motion deliberate and final. The leopard's claws on one hand dug more firmly into the matted floor, the other curled up near her shoulder in preparation to swipe at whatever came close. He heard her tail thump again on the edge of the generator housing.
The cheetah screamed, a very surprised noise despite its pain. Something the other Delta did cut that noise off abruptly, to be followed by a very clear, bewildered, "ow!" in an almost human-sounding voice. At least Killing Dance knew that Sutra-Dhara had her half of the problem well under control, finally.
If the enemy was threatening to swing at him so obviously, he would take advantage of it. Killing Dance stepped forward just enough to feed that impulse. When her paw moved, lightning-fast and deceptively strong, he already had the flat of one blade slamming down to hit her arm. Her blow passed safely under his jumping feet, slapping into the ground instead. Killing Dance's second sword came around, down, and up, hooking under her destabilized torso to knock her head over tail in a somersault away, forcing her to give up that ground she had claimed.
She wailed in pain, the breath not quite knocked out of her, as she rolled to a stop. Her focus was entirely on scrambling back toward the place she had lost...
... no, actually, she halted at the corner of the generator, and stopped to shove at something hidden behind it. Very faintly, Killing Dance heard a grunt and the shift of cotton against leather. Someone else was over there. Fehral watched the tips of Killing Dance's blades warily, far more focused on those than the more sensible danger of his torso's proximity, as she crept back to a spot halfway between him and that corner -- and preventing whatever was stuffed into that space from being able to move out.
She had a prisoner.
Great!
Killing Dance halted to examine the situation all over again. "Stay calm," he told the unknown party, "I will have you free in a moment." There had to be some way to use the environment to his advantage, or to get a better angle of view that the leopard could not block, or to drive her away without further endangering her prisoner.
Halfway through his rapid study, he realized the leopard's hands were moving. Even if he had been watching, he might have missed part of it -- she kept herself crouched in a tight knot with her belly nearly on the floor, no doubt trying to make herself harder to knock away again. There was something about a light or a camera, the gestures were too similar for the amount of motion she obscured; at one point she used three fingers to tap random spots on her left arm, a fur pattern gesture that might mean "cheetah" or anything else with a dappled appearance. She was angry and accusatory, whatever she was trying to communicate, likely on a rant more than trying to be helpful or informative.
She did not want the white-coat to be moved.
Turning his head so that his voice would project to that overhead camera without forcing his eyes off the aberrant Alpha, Killing Dance said, "Unauthorized party in the room. Hostage situation. Resolving now."
There really was no contest, once he engaged seriously in the work of driving the smaller fighter away and subduing her. His borrowed blade might not be a proper extension of his arm, but it worked serviceably enough to extend his reach. He created a cage by the dance of his swords, its moving walls corralling and impelling his antagonist away from the generator, across a few feet of floor, exactly to the spot he had chosen for her real punishment to begin. The leopard managed one sturdy smack against his elbow, protecting her throat, before he had her down on the joint between the floor and the solid wall of the exercise room. There she had no place to dodge, no room to avoid his precisely-aimed blows. Howls of distress came from her quickly, her breath shortened in response to true pain shortly afterward. Killing Dance had barely enough time to start feeling the exertion himself before the leopard's attempts to escape melted completely away.
He stood straight, controlling the pace of his breathing before it could show, and looked back toward the white-coated employee crammed down into the space between artificial tree, room wall, and generator housing. A slightly bloodied man, disheveled, bruised, stared back at him through pain-narrowed eyes. Killing Dance kept the flat of one blade pressed firmly in a straight line, tip toward the ground, where the tension would remind the defeated Alpha to remain perfectly still. He sheathed the other blade so he could gesture the employee forward.
Sutra-Dhara made an impressed, astonished sound as she watched the rumpled technician appear seemingly out of nowhere. Her right hand curled absent-mindedly around the back of the unconscious cheetah's neck, holding him up more like a stuffed doll than like a potentially dangerous minion. "You bring play toys?" she asked.
The white-coated technician scowled at her nervously. "No, he did not bring me here," he said impatiently. "I've been here for half an hour, maybe more! I was trying to fix the camera and your leopard shoved me into the alcove all of a sudden."
Sutra-Dhara made a dismissive noise, losing interest. "Not my leopard," she denied. "No one wants that one. It lacks presence."
Killing Dance raised an eyebrow at that statement.
"Whatever." The technician dabbed carefully at his scalp. "All my tools got scattered. I need this drill halted, the lights brought up, better working conditions in general. Are you two done?"
Even Sutra-Dhara did not think this was worthy of a direct response. She adjusted her grip on the slowly-awakening cheetah as she restored her attention to her peer. "You jump well," she said cordially, and when could she have possibly seen that? "You should have lights to stream behind you. Hide wires."
"Wires are for amateurs," he retorted. "I do all of my own stunts."
The Stage-Mistress tilted her head up, and ever so slightly sideways, for a more intimate study of her peer's face. "Did you train on silk ribbons?" Further questions came out in the unrecognizable language she had used before, and in no small quantity.
In the distance, air pressure changed as the main door opened. Medical personnel, or at least someone to take longer-term custody of the misbehaving Alphas, turned the overhead lighting up to nearly the maximum levels as they entered the exercise room. Some of the fixtures began to detach and fold themselves out of the room, returning to storage like the stage backdrops they essentially were.
The technician glared around at the various Hybrids, his gaze lingering nervously every time it hit the cheetah in the Stage Mistress's hand or the weakly moaning leopard pinned behind the dancer's sword. Killing Dance waited tolerantly for Sutra-Dhara's torrent of enthusiastic words to return to a language he could understand -- not that he could answer her questions, if they continued in the same vein; his muscle memory recalled his training before the Corporation, naturally, but his instructors' labels for methodology and sometimes even their faces had vanished into smeared blanks.
She seems adequate, he decided, if the task is not too great. She handled the aggressive Alpha well enough when she was not having to split her focus. He would not lump her in with his dubious opinion of this facility's other resource inadequacies, at least, not yet. Without paying much attention to the deed, Sutra-Dhara relinquished physical control of the cheetah to the first black-coated employee to arrive on the scene; she started moving toward the exit, still chattering enthusiastically, her hands making a gesture that evoked pulleys and harnesses unfurled from an imaginary rafter. "It is to perform better," she finished, "but the performer must balance well at all times."
Balance had never been his problem. He followed her out with a last brief scan of the exercise room. The Benefactor had strongly implied that the Killing Dance would reside at this facility for only a short time; he hoped fervently that his final assignment would be at a place far more competently equipped ... or, equally to be desired, far less so; a very weak facility would have greater opportunities for unauthorized work. After I get a proper replacement for my lost sword, he grimly amended.
