“Goooooood evening Augments! We have had quite the exciting little day off from point requirements, haven’t we? Now, first things first, I see some of you have already been heeding my advice and have been putting yourselves out there. We’ve registered an astounding 57 new squads today, vastly breaking the previous record of 10 in a single day. That’s some very, very good work! Before any of you ask, no, I’m not going to reward you all for following these simple instructions, because it’s really the friends you’ve made that’s reward enough. I also really don’t want to spoil you all too much, a few of you got some rather spectacular gifts from those F:Tier loot boxes I distributed and I think the earlier waves are going to be really jealous when the next Phase starts in earnest, although I personally hope it might start inspiring some of them to actually start pushing themselves.”

  “Perhaps I should have tried to envelope more of the Waves into the alterations I made for this year, but as you humans like to say, hindsight is 20/20 and I’m feeling rather confident I made the right choice to focus on those of you who I haven’t allowed to slip into bad habits. And if that does inspire some of those old dogs to learn a few new tricks as you all quickly begin to surpass them, then that’s certainly a win for me. With all that said, I don’t think there’s any more benefit to me wasting any more of our time tonight, especially since there’s no reason to punish any of you for failing to live up to my very, very reasonable standards. Besides, there’s still plenty of prep work to do for the next phase and there’s only 48 hours left to do it. As a reminder, the three Augments that gain the most Phase Points prior to the start of the next Phase will receive an A+:Tier loot box. I could spoil just who is currently in the running for this, but where’s the fun in that? Keep working and maybe it could be you that will get that extra boon going into Phase Two. Good luck Augments.”

  Hydramental scoffed and a lip rose slightly into a sneer before he turned his attention away from the small bank of televisions lining the wall of the store. They had all been playing their own various loops of videos, but as was tradition for him at this point, the moment the daily announcement started, the television nearest to Hydramental changed, at least within his vision. He wasn’t in his gear, instead having taken a bit of time to stop in at a store on his way home from visiting Giada and his nephew.

  After being knocked unconscious again by Loophole, something Hydramental was becoming increasingly annoyed by, he had woken up to find the base they had infiltrated completely abandoned and stripped bare. That wasn’t even hyperbole either, the room that had been filled with cabinets, lab equipment, non-Sapient vats, and NPCs was nothing more than a giant, empty concrete room when he opened his eyes.

  It wasn’t just the lab though. When he left the base and found his way back to Chelsea, every single one of the bikers that had been popping up and appearing throughout lower Manhattan had just up and vanished. Hydramental had been positive that Loophole had had something to do with that and had wanted to, at the very least, discover what the hell had happened, but the orange clad busy-body wasn’t answering his messages.

  Even more surprising than the bikers just vanishing was how quickly the charges had been dropped from Giada for obstruction and criminal activity in relation to them. The day following the assault on the assumed headquarters of the Vipers, she was simply released from holding, without even ever having to have a lawyer come in to advocate for her. Without anywhere to call home after the yacht she had been living in with her son disappeared, it had been Hydramental’s parents who had picked her up and taken her and little Ozzy in.

  Giada didn’t have questions for Hydramental, because as far as she was aware he was still just “Lil’ Marco” that used to follow Sal around, and she had no interest in sharing what “Sal” had been up to either. In fact, the past afternoon she had gotten so frustrated with him that she told him not to even come around to see Ozzy if all he was going to do was ask what Sal had been up to when it “wasn’t his business.”

  Although he had thrown himself into the “game” wholeheartedly when he had first woken up, Hydramental just hadn’t been pushing himself since the attack on the Viper base. He crossed the 10,000 point barrier but didn’t keep pushing himself after the well of Viper’s to publicly defeat dried up so completely. His fight earlier in the day against the Clockwork Scorpion had been one of the few times he had actively flexed his abilities in the last few days.

  Hydramental walked through the store with a basket in hand, moving from the televisions and down into an aisle. The store hadn’t been empty when he had first entered it, but the longer he had stayed in the store, the more noticeably empty the large department store seemed to get. Under normal circumstances, it certainly wouldn’t have been odd for him to see someone else looking along the shelves full of various chips and dips, but with the increasingly quiet atmosphere in the store, it was odd that two men in crisp black suits were standing directly in the middle of the aisle he had entered, blocking the path pretty much completely.

  “You assholes planning on movin’ or what?” Hydramental spat when the men didn’t even turn to acknowledge his approach. He was about to say something else when his vision highlighted them. While his P.A.I., a rather mellow guy named Jamie, normally would have read out the description, instead Hydramental was surprised to hear the monotone voice he only heard when he pulled open windows inside of The Common Ground.

  “Warning: Information on these Sapient NPCs has been blocked due to Registered Exceptions.”

  Hydramental looked up and toward the ceiling, looking around for cameras as he felt his grip on the basket tightening. He wasn’t quite sure why he wasn’t able to hear his P.A.I. but in the moment, that really didn’t matter to him too much.

  “Please Hydramental, we aren’t here to fight with you,” a soft, female voice said from behind and he whirled on his heel to face the newcomer. When Hydramental highlighted her, the system had the exact same automated response. The girl couldn’t have been older than nineteen and shouldn’t have felt as imposing as she did, but she had a stern look that made Hydramental hesitate.

  A moment later, two more men stepped up behind her and he set his jaw in determination. Regardless of what Loophole might have thought of him, Hydramental wasn’t interested in just killing people to kill. He wanted to protect people, but he knew he had to protect himself in order to do that. As long as there wouldn’t be footage of it, he could activate his gear and force whoever these people were out of his way if he needed to.

  “And who the fuck are we,” he said, activating his gear in a flash. The black long sleeve shirt he was wearing erupted into color, splitting into three even segments of red, gold, and blue. His multicolored mask flared to life across his eyes.

  “My name is Geraldine,” the young woman said, completely unphased by the sudden appearance of Hydramental’s costume. “I am the Assistant to Dr. Merens of the Strategic Headquarters for Augment Development and Evaluation and I believe we can be of some assistance to you.”

  A devilish grin split across Hydramental’s face as two bundles of light split off of his body and in only a second, there were three of him all in different colored shirts. The version of him in red had a small ball of fire erupt over his hand.

  “You’re the assholes who took my brother, aren’t you.” All three of the Hydramental’s spoke in unison. The two men behind Geraldine started to step forward but she held up a hand and they both stopped in unison.

  “Took is an inappropriate way to describe it,” Geraldine said as her hand lowered. “We recovered him after his passing, which we truly do believe is a tragic-”

  Hydramental struck, throwing the fireball forward right toward the young lady, immediately following the blaze of fire, his blue form jabbed forward in two rapid strikes, sending sharp icicles shards flying right behind them. The sudden attack should have been a perfect strike, had it not been for the rapid response of the two men that had been standing behind Geraldine.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The blaze of fire extinguished as if it had been smothered only a foot away from her and the shards of ice were redirected from their collision course in a wide circle, stopping to hover over the hand of the man on her left. Hydramental looked between the only two he hadn’t highlighted and found that they didn’t come with the same blocked message. He started with the man that dissolved the icicles with a wave of his hand.

  “Icebox Ian. Level 16 (Elite) S.H.A.D.E. Defender. This is a non-Sapient Augmented NPC.”

  “Hot Air Hank. Level 18 (Elite) S.H.A.D.E. Defender. This is a non-Sapient Augmented NPC.”

  “I told you Hydramental, we aren’t here to fight you,” Geraldine said in an even tone.

  “Funny way of showing it,” Hydramental said, looking from the two men and back to the young girl. There were two bursts of light as his forms melted and merged back into his main body. He was only level 10 and was far from being so prideful that he would throw himself at an impossible fight. “What the fuck did you do with Sal.”

  “As I said, we simply recovered him after his untimely passing Hydramental,” Geraldina repeated. “Our organization is dedicated to the research on Augments and organization of resistance against the Artificial Intelligence at the core of the game you all have been subjected to.”

  “Uh huh, I’m sure that a company with the acronym S.H.A.D.E is totally above board,” Hydramental scoffed. “What sort of dense fucker do you take me for?”

  To his surprise, Geraldine’s stoic attitude broke and she actually laughed. “That is an understandable concern that I think somebody should have pointed out, but I assure you it’s only a reference to the fact that we must work in the shadows so that the powers at be don’t step in to stop us.”

  Hydramental stared at her, trying to read any tell on her face as the laugh slowly turned back to the stoic, evaluating gaze that the young woman seemed to near perfectly maintain. Geraldine held out a hand behind her and the man labeled as Hot Air Hank handed her a tablet that she took without looking.

  “We have been working against Axio since the Augmentation Array first appeared, up until this year, we thought we had understood the general ways he worked, but something different happened with the new wave of Augments that appeared this year. Snake- er… Salvatore, your brother that is, had been marked as missing for years, but we had been confident he had been one of the Augments that Axio had chosen to do more of his inhumane experiments on.”

  Although Hydramental wanted to scoff and repeat his doubts at her sincerity, he hadn’t exactly trusted Axio from the start either.

  “Why the fuck are you telling me this and why the fuck are you ambushing me when I’m shopping,” he snapped, crossing his arms and briefly looking over his shoulder at the two men that seemingly hadn’t even turned at the commotion behind them.

  “I do apologize for the inconvenient timing, but you have to understand that much of what we do is impromptu,” Geraldine explained. “We had been looking for an opportune time to both approach you and test our Localized Array Null Zone, so this just happened to be fortuitous timing more than an attempt to, as you say, ambush you.”

  “Okay fine, you got my attention,” Hydramental said, his tone settling down though his posture refused to relax. “You said you recovered my brother, where is he? He deserves to be buried with our family.”

  “Something we will be more than happy to accommodate,” Geraldine nodded. “We can have him brought to the funeral home of your choice by tomorrow morning.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t quite believe that you wouldn’t just send some cloned doppelganger in his place. Especially with those two puppet bodyguards behind you,” Hydramental said, pointing toward the men. Something felt off about Geraldine to him but he just couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

  “Would you prefer to accompany us back to where we have him so that you can utilize your system to ensure he is who we say he is?” She asked. There was no sound of annoyance or even exacerbation in her tone, though she didn’t sound monotone either.

  It was hard to say what it was about her that had left Hydramental feeling so wary but even with the alien feeling that she exuded, his gut wasn’t telling him to strike again.He hadn’t trusted his gut when it told him not to work with Loophole and look where that had gotten him, so even though Geraldine’s body language felt so off, he decided to push forward.

  “Okay, let’s say I believe you and you’re gonna do exactly what you say you’re gonna do,” Hydramental started, shifting on his feet as he turned to look at the various undisturbed bags of chips on the shelves next to him. “Why? Are you trying to say your department or company or whoever the fuck you are cares that much about making sure the remains of Augments are properly taken care of?”

  “I am not saying that,” Geraldine shook her head. “It would be disingenuous for us to attempt to convince you of that. In truth Hydramental, you may not have been our first choice of Augment to approach. You have noticeable anger issues and your powers, while impressive, have not brought you to the pinnacle of this recent wave of new Augments.”

  “Fuck you, I’ve seen enough at this point. I’m just refusing to play some asshole A.I.’s twisted experiment disguised as a game. I’ve done my job, I’ve kept people safe unlike some of the Augment’s that decide to go looking for fame or fortune.”

  “I’m not sure who you’re trying to lie to Hydramental but I assure you we’ve been paying attention. You were certainly trying more than hard enough up until the night we recovered your brother’s body,” Geraldine said. This made Hydramental tense up, his head slowly turning to look at her. “What… Did you think we had recovered his body years ago and were only just now telling you about it? I thought you said you weren’t that dense?”

  Hydramental’s form briefly shimmered and one of his duplicates began to materialize before he took in a deep breath, pulling the energy back into himself. While he hadn’t tried to think about it too much, he had convinced himself that Axio was leading both himself and Loophole on some wild goose chase, using the ghost of his brother as a sick sort of joke. When they had found the room full of non-Sapient vats, Hydramental had sworn he was done with all of it, but had he been wrong?

  “What the fuck happened to my brother?”

  “I’m sure you’re aware of the temporary injections that some of the non-Sapient creations were using, correct?” She asked and Hydramental nodded. “We have reason to believe that Axio had circumvented his programming and was trying to use your brother to create a way to duplicate specific powersets.”

  “Couldn’t he just do that already?”

  “No, he couldn’t. Our organization has been around and following this since the Augmentation Array appeared, Axio has always been bound by the rules that the original developers of this system set into place. There was something that changed this year specifically that has allowed him to-”

  “The extra Augment,” Hydramental interrupted. “Axio said there was an extra Augment in one of his first little megalomaniac rants. But wait…. If he did that, why would he bring it up?”

  “Because he knows who is listening, it’s plausible deniability,” Geraldine explained before she looked down at the tablet she had been holding idly in her hands. She quickly typed something into it before looking back up toward Hydramental. “You were wondering why we were approaching you specifically? Well it’s because we believe it’s what your brother was doing. We think he had found a way to break free from Axio’s control and that he had been attempting to lead you to him, perhaps even to break him out of his confinement.”

  “What? How would he have been doing that?”

  “With the non-Sapients. Again, there are certain things that we’ve been able to confirm are hardwired into the system. Non-Sapients must be controlled by someone that the game categorizes as a Miscreant. We believe your brother figured out a way to obfuscate his intentions from Axio and had attempted to give you a way to find him, only for Axio to learn of this and send his own countermeasure.”

  “Are you sayin’ that fucker Loophole is just Axio’s fucking puppet?!” Hydramental growled. Every odd feeling the orange Guardian had given him seemed like it fell into place for him as he took a cautious step toward Geraldine. The two men behind her didn’t step to intercept him, almost as if they knew he wasn’t about to try to attack her.

  “Perhaps unknowingly, but yes, that’s the assumption we are currently working on. When we recovered your brother, we discovered the room he was being kept in had ongoing video surveillance,” Geraldine tapped a finger on the tablet before turning the screen to face Hydramental. “I apologize that it doesn’t have audio, but this should give you at least some explanation.”

  Hydramental’s jaw set as he saw what he barely could recognize as his brother. The video wasn’t grainy, it was more than clear who the two people in the room were, but the older brother he had once looked up to looked as if he was nothing more than skin and bone. There were tears running down his brother’s face… right up until Loophole lifted a gun, and shot him in the chest.

  “I’m going to fucking kill him,” Hydramental growled. He could feel his anger rising, his desire to set the store around him on fire was hard to quell but he knew it wasn’t the right outlet for his rage. Geraldine shook her head, still maintaining a perfectly calm demeanor as she handed the tablet back to one of her bodyguards, retrieving a small injector in its place.

  “I don’t believe it would be wise for you to attempt that right now and it’s not what we were hoping you would do by showing you that video,” Geraldine explained before holding the injector up to him. “This is a product we have developed, it will immediately grant you five levels. In exchange for returning your brother’s remains to you and this item, we’d like you to do a job for us. And before you ask, yes… it involves Loophole.”

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