A Bioweapon's Rhapsody

The next room was more of the same, some hidden [Gun] emplacement turrets and another obviously set up control panel, only this time the corridor divided into three, straight was the passage with more [Gun] emplacements. In contrast, the side corridors didn't seem to have many traps, only a sign that stated.

-> Main Hall

<- Director's Office

As for forward it merely said [Test Subject Rooms], and as for the way they had come? [Fake reception]

Ale almost hit the the sign, she knew it was not normal to have as many traps in what was allegedly a reception area, it made her wonder though. If it was trapped why had it only attacked them and not Body & Soul?

She saw no evidence of anyone else tampering with the control node after she did her emergency shutdown (Shove a durasteel shield into the control node).

Perhaps it had recognized her as a threat and not the others after all?

Ale almost wanted to send Beatrice forward to see if the weapon emplacements reacted to her or not.

But in the end decided against doing so, if it indeed reacted, she wasn't sure if Beatrice could survive the barrage, and if she was as important as [Core] seemed to imply, then that would be very risky move, Ale did not want more entities that could turn hostile to them, her own [Core] was enough of an internal threat as it was, besides Alexandra wasn't fully up to normal quite yet, so better save those new antagonist entities for later.

"If that was the fake reception hall, then where is the real one?" Beatrice asked after a few minutes, the girl had peeked into the corridor that Ale was, and when she saw nothing she walked in.

It was still quite risky, but at least she hadn't rushed forward to solve Ale's doubts about if she would wake up the weapons or not.

"Knowing how this type of Supervillain act, there isn't one." Ale said smirking, she could see the asshole and his girlfriend laughing their ass off as they set up this site.

Ale decided that for now, going the safe way was the way to go, as such she decided to go left for now, towards to the Director's office, she wanted to see what there was up there. If it was something like the pig that was the principal of Alexa's school, then it may have some of those weird Mana disperser things, the ones that seemed to interfere with the mana wavelengths.

Ale wanted one of those. Alexa had not gone back to the principal pig to get one of those, so now it was up to Alexa to do it.

As such, "Let's go to the office first," Ale said to Beatrice and started walking towards the office. There wasn't much on the way to the office, Ale saw a few rooms with cabinet files.

Beatrice didn't seem that interested in those, so Ale merely took a mental note of where it was, perhaps she could return later and check on it, not that she expected to find anything interesting there, if this was set up as a way to give credibility to Alexa's backstory, then at best it would be filled with dubious data and falsified information.

Not that she doubted the veracity of it, it probably was legit information, with legit recounts and legit outcomes from human experimentation, only... those experiments hadn't been done here.

"Why cabinets?" Beatrice suddenly asked, "If this is a secret super villain base shouldn't there be more... torture chambers?"

"If I was to guess, it seems like this was a experimentation area, as such they needed a way to store the data, and if they didn't trust the network or their devices... Paper and pen is the way to go," Ale said walking into one of the rooms and pulling open one of the cabinet files, "See? It is a log with data about the testing done here."

Ale had pulled a file that had some descriptions that seemed oddly similar to the standard testing done within the facility that P4 had been made.

"Hmm.... But they are baddies... I knew studying and doing math was bad stuff." Beatrice said narrowing her eyes, "Should we destroy the evil homework?"

"This is... not homework," Ale said shaking her head, "Besides, we should leave it..."

At least till Ale confirmed if Alexa's fake backstory was there or not, this could help them settle their identity as a [Human], it would serve them well... For now though?

"Let's continue," Ale said walking forward, the hallway turned darker and darker the more they walked in, Ale wasn't sure if it was the atmosphere, the painting or something with the faulty lighting.

"...There is great evil here..." Beatrice said from the back, "Only great Evil would hide behind such ominous atmosphere..."

"Ominous atmosphere?" Ale asked back, nothing on her sensors said anything about any atmospheric change, granted, the lighting was bad and there was a weird wind blowing from the front, also there was that weird mist.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

But since the components were normal (just water vapour), there was nothing weird there.

"The lights blinking in and out, the ominous fog... The colder atmosphere... You can almost taste the evil in the air..." Beatrice said nodding, setting up her scarf in place as if to make sure she wasn't getting anything into her.

"... The mist is made out of normal water vapour, the colder atmosphere comes from the AC that is pushing cold wind, and the wind is also from the AC, which is set up to blow in our direction, because the owner of this place is a drama queen." Ale said sighing, "There is nothing ominous here."

Beatrice didn't seem to accept her answer, and instead continued walking forward, so Ale sighed and rushed forward. The hallway was about to end, and Ale could see an opulent door at the end.

There was... no defenses set up around the door, but an obnoxious door.

"Beatrice, stay behind, remember. I go first, and after a few minutes, you go in. If I say for you to run back, you run to the ladder and wait for reinforcement." Ale said, getting a nod from Beatrice. "Good, then... wait for the signal."

Ale sighed and opened the door slowly, she half wanted to kick it down, but decided to go the normal way, the office was... quite honestly, more normal than what she had expected to find.

It was what one could call boring even, a normal chair that had been aged and dirtied artificially, some remnants of blood seeded into the chair, the DNA testing showed that it was from normal human blood, Ale couldn't find any tracers or evidence of it being from a Core User or an artificial human.

Then there was the computer on it; it was password protected, which would have usually made Ale take some extra time deciphering... If not for the fact that there was a sticky note stuck to the monitor with exactly 12 characters, the same as the password limit.

A combination of words, letters and symbols, a sturdy password if Ale had something to say about it... Which became pointless as soon as the password was in the open for everyone to see. Ale input the password on the device...

And nothing happened, then feeling herself quite silly, she pushed the On button on the computer and saw a single line blink on the monitor, she inputted the password again and sure enough the device wirred to life.

Ale could see some reports copied from somewhere and that the device was not connected anywhere, there was even a search function... And to make sure everything was as she expected, she input her name. Or well, Alexa's name on it.

Zero matches.

That... was weird, she tried some combination of her name, Alexa's name and even Alexandra, but nothing came up. Then as if to make sure, she input their name as bioweapon.

Test Subject P4.

And...there was a match.

The file... well, it was exactly what one would expect to find... if that someone wasn't Ale. The file described the infancy of a little girl who had been kidnapped at birth from a hospital during a super villain attack that had affected the network.

A sudden weak spot in the usually impenetrable Saintsworth's defense.

It described how the super villain in question had inserted an AI Core into the child's brain, and even showed pictures, the [Human] on the pictures...wasn't quite what Ale would had pictured Alexa looked like as a baby.

If she was being honest, the human baby looked kind of ugly, all filled with a weird head that looked like a cone and all pink with no hair on their head or face.

Also... why was the human baby filled with fur? Or something akin to fur? Was this child a beast core baby?

Ale had so many doubts. Anyway, the file continued to describe all kinds of tests, some similar to what she had lived through as P4, others that were weird in the sense that they seemed to want to desensitize the Human.

The description said something about killing the emotions and making the subject discard their humanity, a weird concept, since Ale was half sure that what made the [Humans] so dangerous was their humanity.

Then the pictures continued showing the images of the same [Human] child, slowly the images started to shift to add aspects more and more similar to Alexa. Till the images started to outright be those of an Alexa.

Or what was closer to an Alexa, Ale could see some differences in the image, the Alexa there was... not perfect. Alexa had perfect simetrical face, but that girl there? It had imperfections here and there.

Then the descriptions started to speak about tests to increase the pain tolerance, tests to ensure the subject could eat anything, from filth to trash to even human waste? But human waste had no useful biomass? One would lose more trying to find anything useful...

Unless the human waste was from someone with a faulty stomach that didn't absorb all the nutrients... but that was depending a little too much on luck, at least for Ale's tastes.

The file continued on and on, till they arrived to a date almost a month before Alexa escaped from the R&D laboratory, it spoke about a test to try and stimulate the Core triggering event.

And how the test subject P4 almost had died, and during that event... It recorded a Core Triggering. The data was similar to what Ale had seen from the files that Alexa shared with them about the Core Trigger event from Alan and Glory.

It recorded how the body of that P4 turned into that of Alexa, the body changing into a more perfected form, Ale almost laughed at the description saying that the test subject had turned more pretty.

Ale didn't understand why that was relevant in a research document, but it was there, it recorded Alexa as a [Shapeshifter Core] with a sub [Molecular Core]. A double speciality in shapeshifting. It said that there may be something about her bloodline and a note that all the quick tests showed that she had a high concentration of Saintsworths Clan markers on her DNA. And an addendum at the end that suspected Alexa had awakened one of the Mythic Cores, one tied to an ancient Greek deity known as the god of the forge and craftsman. Haephestus.

The next note spoke about how the test subject had escaped, there was a couple notes about needing to move away the test subjects and how Alexa had ran away towards one of the hidden escape hatches.

The one that went straight towards the Saintsworths R&D laboratory, the one that Alexa had escaped first.

The asshole had managed to tie the original escape of Alexa to this area. Ale made a note to check that supposed secret tunnel, even if the note in the computer file spoke about the test subject here allegedly collapsing the tunnels.

"Anything important?" Beatrice asked, she at some point had walked into the office (Without making a sound) and sat in the chair in front of the desk that Ale was using.

"Nothing much, there was a couple secret escape tunnels, but it seems one of the experiments here collapsed them." Ale said turning off the computer. "I also found a couple areas that could be were the villain is hidden."

Ale had read some of the test areas in here, a couple seemed quite suitable to investigate. Ale... couldn't help but think what the [Haephestus' Forge] people would think about.

"Let's go," Ale said standing up, "We will check first the Main Hall, if there is nothing then we will move to the testing areas."

According to one file that she had found while reading about the experiments that Alexa had allegedly went through, there was a map. A map that Ale had promptly downloaded into her AI Core.

The site... was kind of simple, and filled with more traps in places that she hadn't expected. Sadly, the office she had found didn't have a mana dampener, or anywhere here had one.

What she had found however, was that beyond the Main Hall there had a few testing sites, and one area marked as [Combat Arena]. One place that was bigger and had all the tunnels connected to the sewer system.

Ale expected to find Meli-Meli at the end of the bigger room, it was the ideal place to collect all the Zombies, and if she was to guess, from the layout it was the easiest way to collect them and set them up.

If... The asshole had done something to set this whole thing up. If... the asshole had made it so that Meli-Meli ended up here... So that Ale and those around her found this... Then Meli-Meli had to be there, and that would be the last place that Ale would check up, not because she feared the encounter. But because she wanted to make sure everything would be fine and that she could deal with all the outcomes from this.

So for now... Ale started walking out straight towards the Main Hall, Beatrice walked behind her looking all around the place as if it was a tourist site.

Not that it wasn't a tourist spot, considering that the whole site had been a setup from Alexanders...

*Brrrrrr*

"Motherf-" Ale grunted as she dashed forward, her hand shifting into the [Arm-mament] and from her legs a couple of boosters came out, it helped her dash faster and struck the [Gun] Emplacement was destroyed a second after it.

"Nice reflex master!" Beatrice said clapping from behind, "I knew there would be something coming out, it is after all, what should happen in this kind of setting!"

Setting? This kind of setting?