Another story I have been cooking up, a post incident review of the original AAR. I wanted to give more depth to the men and women that approved the project in the first place. As always, my discord is tokyo.spliff send me any questions / critique.
WEYLAND–YUTANI SPECIAL PROJECTS NODE
CLASSIFIED TRANSCRIPT ATTACHMENT
Ref: TERRA–IR/02941-FB
Classification: Ω / JOINT REVIEW
Participants:
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Senior Director Alistair Kade – Board Oversight, Ouroboros Funding Authority (Weyland-Yutani)
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Executive Assistant R. Cole (W-Y)
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Dr. H. Miller – Psi-L5, Scientific Division (USCM Biological R&D)
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Major General R. Halvorsen – [REDACTED] Base Command (USCM)
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Lt. Col. Ames (USCM Operations)
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Corporate Legal Attaché M. Ivers (Audio Only)
Recording AI: MNEMOSYNE-12
Timestamp: +168 hours following containment of SPL-03 (TERRA)
[BEGIN RECORD]
Feed initializes. Packet stabilization delay: 0.7 seconds.
Kade stands near the head of a long table, fingers laced behind her back.
Miller sits alone at the end of the table, opposite of Halvorsen. A desk lamp casts a hard line of light across scattered folders. He flips one closed, lights a cigarette, misses the ashtray the first time. He mutters under his breath as he swipes the ash off the table.
Halvorsen appears last. He lowers himself slowly into his chair. Several projector disks and printed stills are arranged in deliberate stacks in front of him. Lt. Col. Ames stands just behind his right shoulder, briefly checking a clipboard as his eyes focus on Miller.
Legal remains muted and does not speak throughout the recorded conversation.
HALVORSEN:
We confirmed 00857 was inside the ventilation exchange above Sub-Level Three.
[He slides a disk across the table.]
Left a gash on exposed sheet metal. Bled moving through it. We only found it because a tech spotted droplets replacing the door.
AMES:
Three drops. Missed during the first sweep.
[Kade shifts her weight slightly.]
KADE:
And you’re certain..
HALVORSEN:
Confirmed against your genetic archive.
[Pause.]
He sliced himself crawling through the vents-
[Miller exhales smoke through his nose. Watching it drift upward as he knocks ash into the tray.]
HALVORSEN:
Which brings us back to entry.
[He opens the manila folder in front of him, taking out a maintenance report from Weyland-Yutani.]
Camera grid blackout. Your AI went down for half an hour, and the camera’s along with it.
KADE:
A synchronization cascade.
AMES:
Across the entire internal grid?
KADE:
Yes.
HALVORSEN:
Convenient.
[Kade’s jaw tightens. She doesn’t answer.]
HALVORSEN:
We still don’t know how infiltration teams entered the structure.
No blast marks. No forced external breach. No vehicle signatures.
[He looks up, directly at Kade.]
They were inside before anyone knew they were inside.
[RECORDED SILENCE FOR TWENTY SECONDS.]
HALVORSEN:
And the residential sweep…
[He doesn’t look at his notes. Dropping the folder carelessly on the table.]
Gassed the lobby with VX. The Armory was their last stand and the residential area was utterly massacred. We managed to recover some footage, the cameras came on piecemeal.
[He slides multiple still images forward, the hallway outside Senior Director Lusha’s office.]
00857 enters, shoots Lusha, and again in the head, as she is shielding Miller’s child.
[Pause.]
Then turns to the child.
[Miller’s eyes lower briefly to the desk. His thumb presses into his temple.]
HALVORSEN:
The boy was shot twelve times.
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR SEVEN SECONDS.]
[Kade shifts, almost imperceptibly.]
HALVORSEN:
Doctor.
[Miller looks up.]
HALVORSEN:
Was that deliberate?
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR NINETEEN SECONDS.]
[Halvorsen waits for him to respond. Miller’s gaze drifts slightly off-camera. He blinks once. Coughing as he pulls the cigarette out of his lips.]
MILLER:
Yes.
HALVORSEN:
Why.
[Miller rolls the cigarette between his fingers. Ash drops onto the folder.]
MILLER:
If you want to prove you’re no longer property, you destroy something the owner values.
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR SIX SECONDS.]
[Ames shifts behind Halvorsen, leaning in to whisper into his ear.]
[Kade’s assistant looks down at his pad. Kade waits for Miller to continue, he does not.]
KADE:
That is speculation.
[Miller’s eyes slowly drift up toward the camera.]
MILLER:
No.
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR FOUR SECONDS.]
[Halvorsen studies him for several seconds.]
HALVORSEN:
You’re describing motive.
MILLER:
I’m describing revenge.. He wanted me to pay a price.
HALVORSEN:
Price for what.
[Miller’s eyes settle directly on Halvorsen’s image.]
MILLER:
Freedom. Cruelty. Sins.
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR FIVE SECONDS.]
AMES:
Freedom from what? As far as the project went, none of these… things, should have any disloyalty or deviation. You promised soldiers that saw the military as their only way of life, and that they wouldn’t even be able to begin to conceptualize life outside of serving a good cause.
[Miller shrugs faintly.]
MILLER:
From us.
[Kade exhales sharply through her nose.]
KADE:
They were not enslaved… although testing conditions inside the facility were brutal, but necessary, there is no way they, as you said, Colonel, begin to conceptualize anything outside of their immediate duties.
[Miller opens his mouth briefly to speak, but closes it, his eyes darting up at her.]
HALVORSEN:
Do you believe, Doctor, 00857 is still directing activity?
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR TWELVE SECONDS.]
[Miller leans back slightly in his chair. It creaks. Brushing a hand through his hair]
MILLER:
Yes, I do.
HALVORSEN:
Based on what. He has his freedom. He will be hunted for the rest of his life, but he has what he wanted, no?
MILLER:
The coordination, General.
[Pause.]
As you said. VX deployment. The suicide squads to buy time. Genetic archive penetration, not to mention the theft of artificial womb calibration. They even had the equipment to lock me out of my own system.
That’s not spontaneous escalation. It was planned… the whole goddamn thing was planned.
HALVORSEN:
You trained them for combat.
MILLER:
Under supervision.
HALVORSEN:
And now, what, these things suddenly gained the ability to plan complex infiltration attacks? The knowledge and expertise to create a self propagating virus? The foresight to compromise the electrical grid for the turrets and anti-air?
It is our belief that, somehow, someway, you, and Yutani, have failed. They were compromised, most likely through CLF sleeper agents.
[Miller rubs his temple again, slower this time. He chuckles.]
MILLER:
Does that need answering? You’ve seen what they’ve done, what kind of complex missions they can achieve. I did my mission, General, I made you both a soldier that doesn’t fear self-sacrifice and never stops, as I was asked.
Now someone else is supervising them, I’m sure of it, they require someone above them to coordinate, or else they perform poorly, cohesion breaks down and they scatter to the winds. Not to mention the fact an unmarked aircraft picked them up, outside help is all but guaranteed.
[Miller stops speaking, mumbling under his breath as he takes another drag of his cigarette.]
HALVORSEN:
857.
[Miller’s eyes focus back to Halvorsen, he doesn’t nod. Exhaling away from Kade as he puts the cigarette ash in the tray.]
MILLER:
He displayed atypical cognition early on.
[Kade glances at him sharply.]
KADE:
This is the first I’m hearing-
MILLER:
It was within variance. We thought it was within acceptable limits.
[Pause.]
He solved spatial sequencing problems faster than baseline. Pattern retention was abnormal. We, of course, considered random mutation, or minor cranial trauma during early growth… There was a hairline anomaly in the parietal plate at week eleven, Savant Syndrome, maybe.
[Halvorsen’s eyes narrow.]
HALVORSEN:
And you did nothing.
[Miller shrugs faintly.]
MILLER:
He was only… brighter.
[Pause.]
I thought little of it. We all did. Do you know how many bodies we churned through? We treated them like lab rats, made them jump on grenades, shoot each other, study tactics and fight against combat synthetics… I can see why he hates us.
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR TEN SECONDS.]
HALVORSEN:
You think he’s coming back.
[It’s not phrased as a question. Miller stares at the smoke curling upward again.]
MILLER:
Yes.
HALVORSEN:
To retrieve something else?
MILLER:
Or to demonstrate something. Probably kill all of us, he gunned straight for my office, before he realized I wasn’t there.
HALVORSEN:
Demonstrate what..?
[Miller’s eyes shift back to the screen. Displaying the still image of the inside of Lusha’s office.]
MILLER:
Their hatred of us.
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR THREE SECONDS.]
HALVORSEN:
And if he doesn’t?
[Miller tilts his head slightly.]
MILLER:
Then others will act under his direction, General. They’re soldiers after all.
[Ames looks unsettled, he begins to review the papers on his clipboard.]
HALVORSEN:
You’re certain of that.
MILLER:
Yes.
[Pause.]
The structure is already there. Heh- you’ve seen their coordination. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already begun producing more of themselves somehow… maybe the UPP got their hands on them. No other reason to steal genetic line dat-
KADE:
We are not acknowledging organized external cells.
[Halvorsen ignores her entirely, he keeps his eyes on Miller.]
HALVORSEN:
Does this end with this… massacre?
MILLER:
No. He will come for me first, and if he can’t get me, he’ll go for the next one, on and on. They were taught never to stop until the mission was completed.
[SILENCE RECORDED FOR NINETY-TWO SECONDS.]
[RECORDING TERMINATED. BACKUP LOG AVAILABLE AT REQUEST]
[END RECORD]