I agreed with him and left it at that. He left a little bit later. I went back to checking the bots. I wanted to try a few new variations on bots. Plus, I probably had time to work on the implants.

I grabbed the keys to storage rooms from the safe in the lab and left to grab the implant fabricator. I avoided touching the boxes full of recipe cards and three-ring binders that Grandpa had left with secrets, plans, and activation code words for weapons. If I needed it, I had material to blackmail specific individuals, destroy superhero teams, and overthrow the odd government.

I’d once told Chris that if I ever took those recipe cards or binders out, I’d be planning to burn the world (metaphorically).

While none of them were on the level of what the Xiniti had handed me (though a couple were Xiniti-related), they’d be earthshaking if I ever chose to use them. We were closer to the point where I’d consider using them than I wanted.

Keys in hand, I stopped at the door of storage room three and unlocked it. Noting the shelves full of Abominator artifacts, some of which we’d added today, along with the blue-green foam on the walls that supposedly stopped emanations from the devices from being noticed, I looked for the egg and found it.

Ignoring the one-person Abominator birthing chamber near it, I picked up the egg. My implant officially named it as an “Abominator implant constructor.”

The glowing, gray/blue box on one of the upper shelves continued to hum as it always had, but as I picked up the egg, I noticed that it was louder than I remembered and had been since I’d opened the door. In an accent that wouldn’t have gotten a look anywhere in the American Midwest, it said, “Danger. Artificer.”

I asked, “What? Could you explain that?”

It didn’t say anything. I wanted some clarification, “Are you saying that there is an artificer so I’m in danger or are you calling me an artificer and informing me that there is danger?”

It continued humming.

“Alright,” I said, “if you want to communicate, I’m going to need more words to understand what you want.”

It still didn’t respond. I queried my implant to see if it could identify it. The implant responded, “Unknown. Similar objects have been found in Artificer technology caches.”

“That’s everything?” I thought at the implant.

It replied, “The rest are in storage. None have been opened. None have attempted to communicate until now.”

I concentrated on calling up “Artificer vision” and remembered how hard I’d concentrated on the flight back. Concentrating felt like trying to sprint after running a marathon. It took longer than usual to get into the right mental space, but I got there, seeing faint glows on devices throughout the storage room, but not on the box.

I couldn’t see any hint that the box existed until I let go of my concentration.

“Last chance,” I said, “I’m going to close the door now. If you want me to understand what you were talking about, you’ll want to say something before I shut the door.”

It didn’t say anything and after a minute or two, I shut the door behind myself, locked it, and wondered what that was all about.

I considered asking Kee, but decided to wait until the soreness in my head went away. Thinking logically about the situation, it was either detecting me but wasn’t smart enough not to warn me against my presence, or it was detecting something else that it thought I should be warned about. The latter seemed most likely. Off the top of my head, it could easily be detecting the Galaxy Core device. That seemed to be the most obvious threat to an Artificer. The other possibility was that it detected another Artificer or a threat to Artificers.

I decided that the last possibility was extremely unlikely on account of how the world still existed. Plus, I didn’t feel any hint of that when I looked at the box.

The upshot? Asking Kee could probably wait until tomorrow.

I walked back to the lab with the egg, noticing that while the egg appeared to be light green in the storage room, it shimmered with iridescent colors in the brighter light of HQ’s main room.

I wasn’t sure whether that was functional or represented the Abominators’ decorative taste. My implant volunteered a massive infodump on Abominator aesthetics and I did not take the offer up. There’s such a thing as too much information.

Bringing the egg into the lab and placing it on the counter next to my computer, I asked the implant for the next step in reprogramming it.

As if it had come from my mind, I knew that all I had to do was think about doing it, and a small white ball the size of a marble would appear in my mouth. If I spit it into my hand and touched the ball to the egg, the ball would be absorbed inside and start the process.

Since there was no time like the present, I followed directions and watched as the ball sank in, leaving no trace on the egg’s surface.

Waiting for a success message, failure, or an explosion, I took the time to note that my implant could manufacture objects inside of me. I’d already known that to a degree since it had volunteered to add cybernetic components to my body. Still, this was the first time it had used me as a factory—that I knew.

I had barely any time to consider that when updates from the implant sounded in my mind.

First, “The infiltration unit has found the implant constructor’s primary control system. It is integrating itself into the system and preparing to take control.”

Then, “Integration successful. Infiltration of control systems has begun.”

A few minutes went by and then half an hour. I had begun to wonder if I shouldn’t consider plans for destroying the egg when my implant said, “Infiltration successful. We have control. We will now replace the standard Abominator implant functionality with that of implants for local auxiliaries to Xiniti forces. We will keep the information contained in the original system. Restricted information will be available with your permission.”

This was expected. I knew I couldn’t make the rest of the League full citizens, but local auxiliary would allow us to act as a unit.

I hoped there wouldn’t be any hidden gotchas that would make me regret this later.