Questioning a Legacy

[Isabella Batten]

Batten Tower vault sublevel

She had been in the vault sublevel since she returned from the party last night, only stopping into the penthouse to change from the skirt and corset top into a black sweater and blue jeans. Why did this man have so many vaults!?

And what was in them was a little strange, too. In one of them, what looked like a half-melted glass box. In another, a collection of files having to do with some shelter down in the Dockside district and a bunch of different old myths from all over the world: Greece, West Africa, Iceland, Ireland, Polynesia, Canada. A cursory look through them revealed that the myths all appeared to be about the same person.

Another vault held what looked like a restraint table and biorythm monitors, as well as a device suspended above it that seemed to be all needles and tubes leading towards a single, man-sized black cylinder at the very back of the room. A sign placard above it read, in crimson lettering: "CONTENTS INDESTRUCTIBLE AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. DO NOT OPEN, EVER."

She knew Ed well enough to know that warning was serious, and she sealed the door, making a note not to go in there again.

She found what she was looking for in the next vault: boxes of hard copy files. Each had labels printed neatly in her father's hand writing. Vindicator. Sister Network. Nezgarcurgis. SCHISM. A little ways into the stacks she found one labeled Manticore. Another, labeled Shadow, rested nearby.

Nothing about any unknown AI here that she found, but clearly these were grouped together for a reason. She scooped both boxes into her arms and moved towards the front of the vault finding a clear enough space to set both down and began spreading things out to read through them on the floor.

an hour later

Not only had she spread the contents of the first two boxes on the floor, she had actually shoved the shelves the boxes were on to make room to add the rest of the files, as well. Papers spread out to cover every available inch of floor, as well as plastered to the walls and even hung from the ceiling by string. A conspiracy theorist would have been envious of the way it was all laid out so she could read from everything.

There was so much data here. Her father had compiled all of this with the single-minded dedication that only someone in love and completely obsessed with his subject could. The proof was all around her, catalogued with absolute clarity and attention to details that she wondered if even the person it was about had seen.

Renna. She knew the name, of course. Her father didn't talk about her, but she knew all the same. You could be living under a literal rock in RhyDin and know about the affair those two had. It had driven a wedge between him and just about everyone, but that hadn't mattered, because he loved her.

Looking at everything spread out around her, she understood the obsession, though she didn't share it. What Renna had created had terrible potential, but it was a thing of beauty, and that same power that made it terrible also held within it the promise of good.

No wonder he had cried when he heard about her death. She hadn't even known he was capable of tears.

It was interesting, all of this. Oh, she knew Ed had feelings, of course - he was, despite the alterations to his physiology, still human - but they seemed a distant thing. It hadn't taken her long to see past the surface mask he wore for everyone else to see a deeply troubled man beneath.

What most people didn't know about him was that Edward Batten's whole 'Playboy' persona was a carefully crafted, mathematically modeled act. It made him likable to a general public that would have been disturbed to find a constantly calculating genius of such a degree that, were he to be himself, people would find him to, at best, coldly arrogant, and at worst chillingly precise to the point of being sinister. He didn't mean it that way, of course - his mandate was to preserve life and help it evolve.

In another world, that intellect had led him along an appalling course of darkness and corruption. There had been no one there for him to find a kindred spirit, to relate to, to find within himself a degree of compassion.

She looked up and away from the files laid out around her, closing her eyes a moment. Her mouth was open and the first syllable almost out of her mouth before she remembered there was no more Diana for her to call on, either. She could feel her eyes burn for a moment as the tears came to them.

She breathed out a loud sigh, pushing away the upwelling of emotion after a moment. Pitying herself was useless. Instead, she put the facts as she knew them together.

Renna is dead. Reports suggest she was devoured by an abyss and has been completely destroyed.

Renna had clones made of herself in the event she was destroyed, but reports suggest she was unable to inhabit any of them before being devoured by the abyss.

There appears to be at least one clone of Renna still active, but based on behavioral markers it appears this is a completely autonomous unit.

Files show there is a network that exists between clones of Renna and herself when she was still alive. If more than one clone still exists, or there are others able to access it, the network may also still exist.

Threat probability based on analysis: Unknown.

Recommend caution and observation until situation is further developed.

She looked around her at the vault, surveying the mess. She didn't really feel like putting everything back into boxes. And, really, this was a much more convenient way to have everything displayed. She had a feeling she would need to come back in here to find...something.

She stood and turned to exit the vault, sealing the door behind her. No one else came down here, but that was no reason to let security measures slip. She took the elevator back to the penthouse after turning off the lights.

[Isabella Batten]

Batten Tower - Performance & Testing Sublevel

She exited the elevator, dressed casually in jeans and a sleeveless shirt, carrying a case that looked almost as long as she was tall. She took a moment to flash her ID at the security guard standing watch at the entrance to 'the range,' the largest of the cavernous rooms down here built for testing designs that had the potential for destruction. "Hiya, Jan. Rig the range for red for me?"

The woman looked at the ID, then nodded as she moved towards a control panel set into the wall nearby, tapping her fingers on the glowing surface for a moment. "Rigged for red, ma'am." The case got a curious look. "What do you have there, a sniper rifle?"

By way of response, Isabella just smiled, patting the case. "Not exactly. I think you'll like it, though."

She turned and went to the door, waiting while the biometric scanners checked to make sure she was really who she said she was before it unlatched with a heavy click. She pushed through it and turned to the right, stepping towards a long, low table and setting the case on it.

The room around her looked much like an indoor gun range, except instead of paper targets, there were slabs of varying types of material, ranging from aggregate rock to the type of composite metal-ceramic-depleted uranium plating that was used to armor main battle tanks. The walls were all constructed with thick ablative coatings, and one section consisted of a type of explosive reactive substance that could stop a cruise missile in its tracks.

The red lighting she had asked for made it all look like it was coated in blood.

She waited for the door to close and the latch to engage before she flipped the clasps on the case and opened it. What lay inside, enfolded in the black velvet lining, was her own design, and just looking at it gave her a warm shiver of pride.

The limbs of the bow swept out and away from the riser in mathematically precise, beautiful curves the like of which da Vinci would have praised for their beauty, each slender in profile but nearly as wide across as her forearm. Interlacing struts along the length of them as well as the carved lines, the multiple strands of the bowstring, and the tensioners at the end of the upper limb gave it almost the appearance of a musical instrument rather than a weapon. Nestled in with it were several long, sleek shafts of arrows. All of it built of a crystalline metallic alloy that picked up the crimson glow of the lights and made it its own.

She reached into the case and lifted out the bow easily, turning it this way and that, admiring the way the material caught the light and seemed to amplify it. Wrapping her fingers around the nocking point, she gave the multistranded bowstring an experimental pull, nodding to herself that the tension was to her liking.

She noted, as well, the way the limbs and riser of the bow seemed to drink in the light as they flexed, the strands of the bowstring coming alive with a simmering blue glow that raced from the end loops to the nocking point. It was exactly as she imagined it.

She let up on the tension in the bowstring and it returned to its normal, resting state, gleaming mellowly in the red lighting as she let go and plucked an arrow from among its fellows. The shaft was revealed to be the same crystal/metallic composite as the bow itself, but without feathers or arrowhead - instead, it seemed almost carved in a single, slender piece, flared at one end where the feathers would be, the other flattened slightly and honed to a razor point.

Turning, she considered her targets carefully. Setting her sights on a large slab of corundum, she opened her mental links and established a connection to the room around her.

Of course, being one of her father's creations, it was intelligently designed with a full sensor suite and interface via neural link, as well as from the control panel outside. She took a moment to set up her parameters to watch for flight speed, penetration, and stopping power.

It took the space of an eyeblink, and then she turned, took her stance.

"Bow arm extended. Relax your grip...there."

The voice seemed to murmur in her ear, warm and encouraging, from another place and time. She remembered the warm shiver of delight as his breath tickled her ear.

Shaking it off, she nocked her arrow and lifted the bow into her stance. Slow breaths as she drew back on the bowstring.

As she drew back, the result was dramatic. The limbs of the bow once again seemed to darken and drink in the light around her, the multiple strands of the string flaring to life as they channeled their energy into the arrow, which lit up with energy all along its length, almost sizzling and sending off tiny arcs as she pulled back to her ear.

And released.

The arrow flew in a blinding streak of energy into the slab of corundum, which suddenly fragmented outwards, exploding like a bomb. The arrow, meanwhile, continued out the other side without stopping to vanish into the wall.

She threw up her arms, still clasping the bow, as chunks of stone flew at her, hitting her hard enough to knock her back off her feet.

"Julius fucking Caesar." She coughed as she brushed particles of rock and dust off of her, sitting up with the bow still in her grasp. Around her, the lighting flickered a moment, then flared from red to white as an alarm sounded outside the room and the door opened.

Jan came running up to her, concern all over her face as she offered a hand. "Good God, Ms. Batten, are you okay?"

She nodded and laughed a little as the security officer helped her back to her feet. "Yeah, I'm okay..." She looked back at where the slab of corundum had been. All that was left was a pile of pulverized rubble. "...but we may need a clean up crew down here."

She moved to set the bow back in its case. The bow, for its part, looked like none of this had ever happened, gleaming a silvery-white color now in the normal lighting. Then she walked around the other side of the target, examining the hole that had been left when the arrow plowed into the wall. It hadn't exploded like the target had, which meant that it had lost energy passing through the slab, but not enough to stop it from penetrating deep into the wall.

She stood and turned, surveying the destruction while she accessed the sensors in the room.

Speed of Projectile: 3,375 m/s
Penetration: 100%
Projectile Kinetic Energy: 602,791 Joules
Energy Transfer: 60.3 MN

She blew out a low whistle as she reviewed the figures. "Daaamn."

She'd almost forgotten about Jan, who walked over to her, surveying the wreckage. "I'll say, ma'am. What are you hunting with that thing? Tanks?"

She giggled as she walked back over to the case, settling the bow in the grooves and closing it up. "Yeah, something like that."