Chapter 59: On the Wings of Angels.
Seven sat on a stool watching both Timothy and Shauna working on the device that had caused the changes to Passa who was still sitting in the medical lab for observation as he wanted to make sure that the nanites that had invaded his body had no further surprises in store for them.
"How the fuck could the Enclave have something this fucking powerful in their possession and not have it under lock and key or I don't know if one of their major labs?" Seven asked and Timothy shrugged.
"Not sure but my best guess is they had absolutely no idea what it is they had, all the major powers have tech scav teams operating all over looting old private and government labs for useful tech but the general rule of thumb for these teams is if it looks intact simply grab it, if it's not useful or is broken it'll then get dumped or scrapped for parts, you wouldn't believe the sheer amount of prewar tech that scribes like me have to sift through and for every one hundred items we might find five useful things, trust me when I say there is a backlog, there are only so many scribes to go around and catalogue every broken plasma canister or electromagnet that gets brought in so it's really fucking easy to overlook something actually important simply because it's buried in the backlog unless we go into a place specifically targeting a piece of tech in which case that goes right to the front of the list" Timothy explained.
"So you are saying they didn't know they had it?" Seven said and Timothy nodded.
"Pretty much yeah, I mean think about it, I didn't see either a name or a fucking manual with the thing did you?" Timothy said and Seven shook his head as he knew that Timothy was right, there had been no markings on the case to even indicate what was inside the thing and other than the case itself there was no real indication that it was in any way important let alone powerful.
"Ok, so that's the why now onto the how, how the hell did the Ghouls get their hands on this thing?" Seven asked turning this time to Faith who had spent all morning chatting to her people back at Underworld via their hardline comms to find out what had happened.
"Ok so from what I was able to gather a scav team hit an Enclave cashe about a week ago, they'd been watching them for a while and they'd seen them hitting labs all over the area and bringing out gear, so they decided to hit them just as the team went out on another run so there would be minimum resistance but they only had minimal space to carry things so they went for weapons and anything else they could snag that was man-portable, that thing was among them as it was just a case, they had no idea what was inside it so they just grabbed it and ran, but they had no idea what they had, so it was just listed for our scientists to get to I didn't know about you but I haven't seen that many Ghoul scientists or engineers have you?" Faith said and Seven nodded in understanding.
"So you guys had no idea either huh?" he said and she shook her head.
"You think it would have just been laid here on a shelf if we did? That thing would have been so far locked away that Satan himself would have had to go through ten fucking checkpoints to fucking reach it, shit to know we had a tool capable of rewriting Claw genetic code in our possession our scientists would have been creaming their pants I mean think about the potential for that, its a tool capable of either undoing or adapting what the fucking FEV does to its victims, hell it might even be possible to have used it to undo what has been done to Ghouls and something like that is fucking priceless to us" she said and Seven nodded again.
"So the question remains here, how exactly did it do that to Passma I mean surely rewriting a living being's genetic code should outright fucking kill it surely?" he said and Shauna glanced up from her powerful electron microscope.
"Well, I'm not a hundred per cent sure yet but my best theory is because of the way the nanomachines work, while some of them are adopting the genetic coding another set are repairing the damage caused by the process while also creating the body parts that the new code is trying to create, granted this is all just theory at the moment as nanotech has always been a pretty unstable tech, hell I can count on one hand how many times I've heard of it being applied successfully," she said and Timothy nodded.
"I'll second that, the Brotherhood are always ultra-cautious when they come across nanotech and usually it gets destroyed though mostly because of the fear of the grey goo doomsday scenario," Timothy said and Seven cocked his head curiously.
"Grey good scenario?" he asked.
"It's the scenario where nanomachines essentially just run amok and they just replicate over and over-consuming everything they come into contact with and reducing it all to a grey goo made of base components" Timothy explained making both Seven and Passa shiver and the big white claw looked at his hand.
"Those things are inside me right now?" he said sounding forlorn and Timothy gave him a sympathetic look and nodded.
"Though I don't believe they mean you any harm as they would have done it already if they did," he said.
"Ok, so what about what happened to Passa, to begin with? How did this happen to him and from what he said the ball relayed to him that his DNA had been damaged by radiation but I thought Claws are immune to it?" Seven said and Shauna shook her head.
"No creature is fully immune to the effects of radiation, not even Ghouls, they just have a much higher resistance to it's effects than most but how ever slow the damage effect it's still there and you are forgetting the point that it might not mean that the damage was done to Passa himself, it could be the damaged genes were actually passed to him through breeding, it could be almost anything like making a once dominant gene a ressesive causing a mutation now whether that'sa positive or a negative is a question for time really as evelution is a series of mutations to DNA over time, now this could do somthing as inocus as changing the colour of his eyes right through to somthing more damaging like giving him a hole in his heart, all of these things are genetic and radiation has a habit of simply speeding the process up or totally fucking it up cauing things like tumors or cancer by damaging cells and DNA" Shauna explained in very much laymans terms for the benifits of the none scientists which made up nearly one hundred percent of her audiance.
"So when the device said it repaired twenty per cent of his genome it might not have meant the giving him wings thing? It might have just detected degradation of his DNA potentially causing him or future generations of his line to develop a genetic disease or condition?" Seven said and Shauna smiled nodded and clicked her fingers.
"Exactly! Unfortunately, we don't know what genes it modified or what it did to really know and even if I take a sample from him now I still won't know I have to do a series of tests on his mother and siblings to try and isolate the changes and I simply don't have the tools to do that here, we'd need a full-on genetics lab for that kind of thing" she said.
"Ok then so where did the wings come from and what was that he reported about inserting mammalian DNA into the mix? What was that about?" Seven asked and Shauna shrugged.
"Not sure though all I can think of is it detected potentially dangerous sequences that if left unchecked would cause his descendant's major problems down the line, but why it decided to spice in mammalian DNA is a mystery I have only theories, perhaps it figured that it could repair the damage by swapping these genes with compatible ones from other species in order to try and correct these problems, or maybe it was programmed to make him into what he was meant to be all along, there has been many speculated theories about what the Claws were meant to be when they were originally made using the FEV, but without a pure sample of Claw DNA it extrapolated what it thinks it should be, or it could even be damaged and it simply operated on what code it had worked, there are just so many theories here that I really can't nail one down, not yet, I need more information," she said.
"Yeah, me too I can't find any obvious evidence of damage or flaws here but I still need either the original documentation that came with it or studies were done on it and I might know where we can lay our hands on such things but they will be a major pain in the ass to get," Timothy said and Seven looked at him and groaned.
"Let me guess, the brotherhood archives?" he said and Timothy nodded.
"Yup the place where I originally remember reading about this thing and it is going to be a royal cunt to get into," Timothy said.
"Well it's a good thing we have an invisible Nightstalker girl and a cloud girl who can pass through any gap and break into any machine then isn't it?" Seven said with a grin.
"So let me get this straight you want us to break into the Brotherhood? I thought we were going after the Enclave and the labs?" Wisp exclaimed glancing between Timothy and Seven In amazement.
"We are but we're going to need to split our forces here, so while the main team will be heading to the lab to hit it, you two will be heading to the Brotherhood to break in and find any details you can on this project Unity that did this to Passa, but we cannot afford to wait on hitting the lab so we got no choice here," Seven said.
"Jussst the two of usss?" Riss asked and Seven nodded.
"Yeah you two are the only ones who could slip into the place unnoticed and given that we aren't trying to start an all-out war with the Brotherhood unless we really have to this is our best and realistic option, I'd rather not bust in there and fuck up the place if it can be avoided, I'm saving that shit for those who truly deserve it in the form of the Enclave but don't get me wrong if it does turn out to be needed then we will do it, but for now stealth is our best option," Seven said.
Riss nodded and looked at her husband who was standing at her side and reached out to stroke his face, "Do not worry my love, they will never ssssee me coming or going" she said with a warm smile as he stepped in and hugged her.
"I's not doubts it for single second," he said into her chest his voice sounding slightly muffled.
"Well, I guess I'm leaving my new body here then huh?" Wisp said and Seven nodded.
