X had just arrived in downtown Detroit when his private commlink line chirped. "This is X," he said.
"X, it's Marlow. You should get back here to my place now, I've got something to show you."
"Can it wait?"
"No, I think you need to see this now. This is big." With 48 hours until untold destruction would rain down across the planet, X didn't have any time to spare. If he went back to Marlow's now and spent half an hour hearing the detective's findings, he could probably still get back to Detroit and get his next number clue before midnight.
"I'll be there shortly," X rasped. "This had better be important." In a flash of blue light, X disappeared as quickly as he'd come to the Motor City, leaving a nearby street gang member frightened and wondering if all those stories about vengeful angels from the sky his grandmother had gone on about were true.
Orbous's hands flew around to his controls in a wild panic, his wrist and finger pistons, joints and cables heating to high levels. Something had gone terribly wrong, terribly wrong indeed.
He was supposed to be Hephaestus's systems expert, capable of handling all aspects of surveillance and data systems. Yet only twenty minutes ago, half of his fleet of cam-drones had suddenly lost audio, and twelve lost video and control feeds.
Every system analysis he ran fed him the same error reports, none of which made sense. The coding on the tiny machines was obsolete, leaving him flailing about for makeshift solutions, none of which worked.
He would have a full cascade failure if he didn't stop the program errors in the next hour.
Orbous took a moment to roll away from his consoles, closing his optics for a minute. As Crystal Man, he'd been among the most intelligent of all of Wily's Robot Masters, either before or after his deployment. He alone had been able to fight Megaman based on previously reviewed video of the Blue Bomber.
He'd come close to killing Megaman, but Wily's archfoe had proven resilient and too fast for Crystal Man.
Orbous thought about form and function. His own new body had been fashioned on a humanoid-arachnid hybrid. Why? Logically, the web a spider wove could be monitored from any point on said web. The multi-faceted eyes could look in various directions for threats, allowing the spider to respond almost instantly to any situation.
The cam-drones, well, they were fashioned on flying insects, all the same kind, part of a collective hive. Hence, a hive mind. If one suffered an ailment, soon all of them did, unless the ties between them were severed. Spiders sometimes did the same thing to a damaged part of their webs, cutting them away and making new to avoid rot throughout the whole system.
Orbous opened his eyes and rolled back up to the console. Using a bit of old coding he had learned from Caretaker, who seemed to specialize in all things dead or lifeless, he systematically cut away all of the affected drones in the fleet, isolating them into their own cluster. As soon as he finalized this command, the remaining drones returned to normal activity.
"Excellent," he hissed, most pleased with himself. Now he turned his attention to the infected units, reviewing the command lines that had begun showing errors throughout. Seeking a common thread, he scrolled through their geographical data. Nothing synced up there, so he moved on to their components list. All were made of the same materials, but that was expected.
When searching through their transmissions, Orbous came upon a curious thing. The twenty-two total units malfunctioning had begun transmitting along the same wavelength. Shortly thereafter, their individual systems began experiencing base code errors.
Orbous took to the central drone command system and programmed in an exception to avoid using that wavelength to the rest of his fleet of drones. The command was accepted and folded into their collective programming.
"Problem solved," he said, remotely shutting down the infected units. He would have to note which drones were now offline and have them replaced.
Very soon now, the panic would return.
X had no right clue what he was looking at. "It looks like some kind of radar dish," he commented, tapping the semi-circular bit of metal, sending it spinning on its pole.
"It's quite similar, actually," Marlow said. His eyes had the cast of a fanatic who has just deciphered some ancient holy text, making a historic discovery for the religion to which he belonged. In this case, though, the religion was history itself. "It operates on a live transmission feed, just like television or internet webshows."
"So what's so important about this one," X asked, standing straight.
"It's broadcasting on an analog signal, X. UHF 21 to be exact." Marlow walked over to his computer station and waved X to his side, pulling up several archive sites. "Nobody's used analog signals since the early 21st century, and a few countries back then, including the United States, mandated that every broadcaster switch to digital."
"How do you mandate something like that," X asked, incredulous. "That's forcing people to do something they not only might not want to do, but that they don't actually have to."
"Well, however they did it, it worked, because even pirate stations went digital within thirty years. X, nobody uses UHF wavelengths anymore, but this thing was doing just that."
"Okay," X said, feeling a tremble of anticipation. "So what does this mean?"
"It means I can track the signal back to where it's been transmitting to," said Marlow with a wolf's smile. "You don't have to hunt down anymore clues."
X almost hit the ceiling in his jubilant whoop of triumph.
It was all going wrong again, and this time, Orbous knew he wouldn't be able to fix the problem. He would have to tell the master.
The green arachnid mechanoid stood outside of the observation tower's upper platform door, hesitating. What would he say to Hephaestus exactly? How would he defend his inability to stop what had happened? He didn't know, couldn't know. He could only hope for the best.
He turned the doorknob and stepped out into the cooling evening light, spotting the master standing over by the north rail, staring out over the ocean. It was a tremendous view out here, Orbous had to admit. He should have come more often.
"Uh, master," he began, slowly approaching. Hephaestus turned his head slightly to the side, acknowledging Orbous. "There is a problem, sir. With the cam-drones."
"Do tell, Orbous," the bigger bot said, waving him forward. The arachnid bot shuffled up, leaning forward on the rail like his master was, looking out at the churning waters. "Magnificent view, isn't it?"
"It is," Orbus replied. "Sire, the signals have been discovered. Twenty minutes ago. Someone used a tracer, followed the signal here." Orbous kept all of his lines of vision fixed squarely ahead, unwilling to look at Hephaestus's reaction when it came. But from the master, there issued no sound, no sense of movement at all.
When finally he spoke, Hephaestus sounded tired, deflated. "So, he'll be coming ahead of time after all, eh? Well played, X, well played. So, Orbous, what now?"
"Um, sire?"
"I'll tell you what now. Keep the remaining drones running, and stream their feeds into my throne room monitors. Then inform Caretaker and Paladin that X is on his way, that they are to take their places. Then, Orbous, get yourself into position."
Orbous turned to face the master, who had spoken yet not moved even an inch from his spot on the railing. His body seemed to sag in place.
Orbous offered Hephaestus a bow, then headed back into the Manor. Hephaestus dropped open a narrow storage slot on his chest plate, and pulled out the object tucked within. "It looks like it's time to cut away the illusions, old friend. Yes, cut them away," he said, sliding one finger lovingly along the weapon.
X locked the coordinates into his optical memory drive, his core memory, and his backup memory. He would take no chances here; he would beat this deadline Hephaestus had set.
Using the global mapping system in the Hunter HQ's tactical planning command room, X zoned in on the coordinates. He was not surprised to find that the entire one-hundred mile radius around the location appeared fuzzy, a distortion field of some kind. There were several around the globe; if he'd been thinking about it before, he could have simply deployed recon drones of his own to those distortion zones.
Of course, he never would have saved the newly-made cyborgs, then. He also wouldn't have convinced detective Marlow to work with the mechanic X had been using to create a 'sniffer', a gadget that would be able to locate cam-drones using the UHF signals associated with Hephaestus.
The human policeman had been enlivened with the prospect, and X found himself pleased to have offered the clearly over-qualified cop something meaningful to do with the remainder of the vacation time he'd taken. X had secured complete clearance with the Hunter's Organization and Central City's government, allowing Marlow the access to sweep the entire city for more of the spying drones.
As for X himself, there was time enough to arrange a video conference between himself, Zero and Axl, the acting commanders of the Hunters' Organization. The conversation had been recorded, and a copy of the meeting would go out to every station commander within the next twenty-four hours.
Everybody was to report via commlink to Zero or Axl. Commander X would be out of operations for an undisclosed amount of time. Captain Swing Gollit, now promoted to major, would fill in the third command seat until X's return. All contact with X was to be withdrawn until further notice. In the event of major catastrophe, commander Zero would return from Moon Base 2.
It was simple enough, and left no room for questions. There would be no further explanations, and any inquiries into the matter would be quashed. Nobody was to speak to human press or military about the arrangement.
X still had twenty-six hours remaining until Hephaestus's deadline. X would take the next three of those to float through the network, and speak with his predecessor. After all, it might be his last chance to do so.
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