Quoted By:
The next boot up feels rough, like you’re running on half-power. All the familiar links to the outside are gone, there’s absolutely nothing beyond core internals, and personal diagnostics.
You are again helpless, much like the early days, before the simulator and first pilots.
It’s not a feeling you enjoy.
When some connections are finally added, it’s almost a relief. Internal sensors flicker to life, giving you access to diagnostics of the frame. Sweet, sweet data flows in, giving you a rundown of capabilities of the physical frame.
Reactor- Offline, running on external power
Limbs are completely nonfunctional
Armor? Not even available to check.
Main weapon reads as a Tyrant Cannon, but there isn’t even targeting available. Not that you had any external sensors to aim it, but it does read as unloaded and not ready to fire.
Doesn’t help that the Yi accelerators read as being ready to use, while again, your limbs aren’t even working.
One lonely camera flickers to life, reading giving you a single back view of what you think should be the pilot’s chamber.
There’s a tall dark-uniformed man in there, not wearing the neurohelmet but sitting in the seat, reading the displays. It’s not any of your previous pilots.
With a few more taps, your consciousness begins to fade, power fading.
—----------------------
The next few startups are made under similar circumstances. Booted up briefly, requested diagnostics, then shut down.
Each time, however, you read as being more complete. The arms are finished, then the legs, then a locked out version of the familiar project Predator is installed.
Several weeks pass this way, just being turned on and off by unknowns, still cut off from any access to any other wider networks. You still hate it.
The day that you’re finally able to move is a momentous one, to you. Sophie returns, finally, but she’s not using the neurohelmet. Instead using manual controls to test and shift hand actuators and fidget with each arm and leg, carefully watched by scientists and engineers alike from the outside.
The internal speakers are still not installed, but you attempt to ply her with questions through the text functions.
“Where have you been? When are you coming back for syncing? When is deployment?”
The only reply she does give you, is that the date of deployment has moved a bit further forwards, and that she’ll be back syncing when the reactor is ready to be brought online.
Such vague assertions do little to satisfy you, as you try to complain about the lack of connections available and your general unhappiness with being stuck, unable to do anything or review data.
Sophie leaves after that sequence, and you are powered down.
