I set my warrior to manufacture. It took some time for it to sequence and step out of the manufacturing center. This mole was leaner and sleeker than the worker, ripples of fire coursing along its body. Yes, this would do nicely.
I set the mole to patrol the Testing Center. It was somewhere the humans really shouldn't be, and a good place to park this defender out of the way.
26
With my new facility put to good use and all the preparations made it was time to begin the next stage.
"You look like a complete badass, at first glance. Then you look like a child wearing their parent's armor," I said to Anna.
We had resized the armor of the Righteous to fit her, and I even had my warrior mole scorch it a bit to make her look as if she was fresh from a nasty fight with a pyrokinetic.
Anna hooked the rifle over her neck. Between it and a pistol at her hip she was at least well-armed. The pistol had been heavily modified. I didn't think she'd have any warning of an oncoming fight with any Powered, but just in case I'd had the Mechanites make her up some custom rounds. They could be loaded with goop from the back of the truck and should shatter inside a body, discharging their contents.
I'd seen first-hand in my tests what a dramatic reaction it caused in Hot Stuff. I wasn't sure what effect multiple rounds would have, but I suspected it might be fatal. I didn't want to risk my test subject to check.
"You're sure this will work?" Anna asked for at least the dozenth time.
"Again, not at all. We each want this prize though, and if this works we walk away with it. If not, at least you are relatively disposable," I said.
"You say the sweetest things," Anna said.
I bid Anna farewell and watched her drive off in the truck of the Righteous. One of the Mechanites went as well. He had less in the way of cybernetics than the others and I'd been able to cut the metal off him and replace it with flesh. Curiously, the flesh retained the same capabilities as the cybernetics I was replacing—there truly were possibilities in the odd hybridization of my abilities and those of Mechos.
The Mechanite would be spreading the word of a battle between the Righteous and Hot Stuff and her Flames, setting the stage to lure in our prey.
I expected this would take weeks. It almost left me at loose ends. There were any number of construction projects I might pursue now that I had upgraded my research facility to level three.
Bioreactor - Level 3
With this latest upgrade to your bioreactor you can install both growth routines and healing routines. Over time any traditional wiring in your facility will be replaced with organic conduits and the reactor capacity itself will slowly grow over time so long as there is access to water and biomatter. Damage to the reactor or the electrical systems of the facility will now automatically heal on a level scaling to the level of the facility Infirmary.
It wasn't really an option, I had to do this upgrade. Power would soon become a bottleneck otherwise. Still, I had my concerns about replacing my electrical wiring with something organic. I'd had good reasons for making the choices I did, but I suspected it made me more vulnerable in many ways to things like toxins, for all that it also offered some advantages.
I began the upgrade. It also meant there were a few others I needed to make sooner rather than later.
There was nothing about an increase in healing speed, but then the reactor core scaled off the level of the Infirmary itself. I began this upgrade as well.
There was one more important thing. With Hydroponics, I could produce biomass at will, which clearly was going to be a construction material for at least some of my resources going forward.
Hydroponics - Level 3
At the third level you have two options of how to proceed with your future growth.
Growth Cylinders
You can construct and grow vegetation on individual cylinders. This allows for more variety and specific environmental conditions. You'll be able to grow exotic plants sooner, although at a cost of more limited crop yields. With this your yields will remain constant for this level, but you will gain the ability to grow rare plants.
Growth Vats
You can also establish vast vats which allow for large scale growth operations. You will immediately gain the ability to feed up to sixteen people with any extra being deposited into your biomass stockpile. You can still grow uncommon plants with this setup although anything rarer will need to wait for future upgrades.
I did like the idea of being more specialized, which the growth cylinders would allow, but I'd just decided to do this upgrade because of wanting to make sure I had more biomass to support future growth.
Hydroponics provided a steady grain, and the random human wandering in from the surface could boost those yields—but they were hardly a reliable source.
Given I hadn't yet even collected any uncommon plants, much less rare ones, it didn't seem like that hard a choice. I could pass up an immediate, real gain for one that I might not see manifest for some time, or ever.
I began the construction of the Growth Vats.
While I was building things for the humans I might as well round it out.
Quarters - Level 3
You have two options for how to proceed.
Barracks
This is the most like what you have now. A large room containing sixteen bunks, storage lockers, and a communal bath. This setup fosters the most feeling of community, but can also prove to be an issue with conflicting personalities. It allows for a quick mustering of a force for either manual labor or military asks.
Cabins
This option will still house sixteen, but instead of one central room it divides up the space into eight cabins of two beds each which can be scattered around the facility with individual baths. This allows the best option for residents to pair off and allows workers or researchers to live closer to their primary duties.
The prompts didn't present it as such, but I also had to consider the virtues of a distributed system. With a single barracks, if a threat like Hot Stuff found herself inside, all the humans would die at once. Cabins were in many ways safer due to the distribution of resources. I chose that option.
I was distracted from my upgrades by an alert. Hot Stuff was behind in her test routine. I toggled my focus and found her lounging against a wall.
'Want to talk' had been burned into it.
27
"I wish I'd known finger-painting was your intellectual level, although your performance on my tests was giving me a pretty good idea," I said to Hot Stuff.
Hot Stuff raised her middle finger at my camera. "Fuck you."
"Your discourse is even worse. Why am I keeping you alive again?"
"Been asking myself that same question. Thought at first you just liked the view, but that isn't it. You hit me with that stuff, shot me in the legs, you could have killed me, but you didn't. Been asking myself why."
I didn't approve of my test subjects doing too much thinking for themselves.
"And what did you come up with?"
Hot Stuff shrugged. "You had me kill those people awhile back. Maybe you're keeping me safe just in case, like a bullet in the chamber."
It was a reasonable hypothesis based on the information she had.
"You are an impressive force of destruction," I said.
"And you're good at holding me prisoner. You've proved you can hurt me. Maybe kill me. What I want is to make a deal."
If she were anything other than a research subject I'd have been inclined to take her up on her offer. I admired what she could do when she put her mind to it. While I had come out ahead in our clashes, each time she'd done more than I'd thought she could.