Tag Archives: Dr. Griffin

Mere Anarchy: Part 35

That at least was good news. The bad guys appeared to be contained. Speaking of which, Russell Hardwick, Ryan, Zola, Art, and the two Protection Force guards were still stuck too.

Plus, Dr. Griffin was off to the side of the room.

So we were all good except for the four, twenty-foot tall, grey mechs and they were less of a worry than you’d think. With Izzy being stronger than a locomotive, it only took one blow to knock the head off of the first mech in. The head bounced off the shoulder of the mech behind it and rolled off into the night. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 35

Mere Anarchy: Part 31

Almost as he hit the floor, I stepped on his cyborg arm, and not in the casual, “I’m holding it down and I’m not going you move it,” sense. I stepped on his arm more in a, “finishing move,” sense.

My booted foot hit with enough force to shatter concrete and armored forearms along with it. The armor around Rook’s forearm bent and cracked, revealing machinery, wires, circuit boards in reinforced protective cages, and below the forearm the barrel of Rook’s Abominator energy weapon with its batteries and tech that made my implant activate and all but scream for attention. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 31

Who Are The True?: Part 9

I shook my head. “We need to stay long enough for me to get a look inside the lab. We’re close right now and it would be a wasted opportunity even if it turns out to be something we can’t handle.”

Haley frowned. “I get it. I know you want to know what’s in there. I want to know too, but if we get out now, you might be able to move the bots into position and look inside tomorrow. You’ve already got bots that are close.”

Vaughn nodded. “That’s a pretty good idea.”

I thought about it. I didn’t want to argue, but, “It is, but I don’t think we’ll get to find out tomorrow. I’m betting that after tonight they’ll move anything can somewhere else and I have no idea where. They’re a billion dollar company. They can hide things all over.” Continue reading Who Are The True?: Part 9

Who Are The True?: Part 8

Walking down the hall toward the door but stopping before he reached the lobby, Hardwick peered out toward the parking lot. “I don’t see them. They might have left.” 

He reached out to the wall and turned up the light from almost nothing to a moderate brightness.

Turning back to Ryan, he asked, “Do you have a gun?”

Ryan shook his head. Continue reading Who Are The True?: Part 8

Truth and the True: Part 3

Then I worried if they’d notice that I was looking around or worse, that I was barely working. For a moment I felt like my heart was about to speed up, but it didn’t. My implant informed me that it was, “Quelling ‘fight or flight’ response,” and I began to feel normal.

While I hoped it wouldn’t do that when I was in a fight, I felt relieved to know that it worked.

Though I didn’t see either Art or Zola, I decided that I ought to get back to work. I could check through access to the library later.

Coding did distract me from the world for a while, but not forever. Midway through the afternoon, it struck me that if someone in the company had a Citizen’s Mark, finishing the helmet might be the best thing I could do. My implant’s hack into the birthing chamber platform only allowed me access to the library of creatures, but not total control. Continue reading Truth and the True: Part 3

Claws & Eyes: Part 6

Dr. Griffin laughed. “I’ve seen that look before. What were you thinking about?”

“I…” I considered lying, but decided to go with the truth because that might allow me to lie with credibility later. “I think I understand the basic system for how it works.”

“And what’s that?” She pulled a blank piece of paper out of a small printer in the corner. “Can you diagram it?”

“I can try.” I took the pen she passed me along with the paper and started, explaining as I went. Continue reading Claws & Eyes: Part 6

Claws & Eyes: Part 5

On the bright side, I was an intern. Interns are inexperienced and haven’t absorbed how things are done in the workplace. That meant that as long as I wasn’t too obnoxious about it, I could ask anything.

Provided I wasn’t too obvious about my prying, the worst that people would think was that I was naive.

“I’m not sure I heard this right,” I began, “but I thought you were coming next week.” Continue reading Claws & Eyes: Part 5

Claws & Eyes: Part 4

Vaughn and I took his car to Hardwick Industries downtown offices and the helipad after class. It felt a little showy to ride there in a Porsche, but it wasn’t my Porsche.

It had the additional advantage of not leaving my van where it could be inspected by Hardwick’s people. The van passed as a normal van, but if anyone started poking and prodding it, they’d discover that the material wasn’t quite metal. If someone who knew the model of van it was supposed to be measured it, they’d discover that the measurements weren’t quite right. Worse, they might figure out that most of what you could see underneath was a facade. Continue reading Claws & Eyes: Part 4

Stardock: Part 27

In moments like that, you can play it cool, or drop all pretenses, and say exactly what you’re thinking. Professional spies could likely have managed the former without effort.

I stopped, staring at the artificial wombs. Dr Griffin couldn’t have noticed the staring through the Rocket suit’s helmet, but she noticed that I stopped.

“I know,” she said. “It’s amazing. We don’t know where it came from. We got it along with a grant from the government, but they wouldn’t tell us where they got it. We’ve dated some residue within the tanks to roughly seven thousand years ago.”

“No kidding,” I said. Weren’t the Sumerians getting big around then? Continue reading Stardock: Part 27

Stardock: Part 26

Reminding myself that the Stapledon Program’s secrecy wasn’t really my problem, I decided to concentrate on what was my problem—Blue Sky Lab’s current projects.

Isaac Lim had asked me to find out what they were, and intentionally or not, Dr. Griffin hadn’t answered my question about that. I hadn’t asked as directly as I might. I could change that.

As I was about to ask, Jenny’s voice sounded inside my helmet. “Brooke’s sending the prisoners to their cells. Stand back.”

I turned my head toward where Izzy, Jaclyn, and Cassie stood over the prisoners. Jenny stood a short distance away, acting as Brooke’s eyes no doubt. I didn’t know what they planned to do about the prisoners’ powered armor, but that wasn’t my problem.

All the same, working armor would make it way too easy to escape, but no armor meant that communicable diseases could be passed along.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 26