Massive Disaster 4-4

The lab buzzed low and constant, the way good tech always sounded when it was running at full spec but not screaming for help. Pale blue light bled off the floating holo-displays, throwing soft halos across the workbench chaos Zedd had been buried in for the last three hours.

Three hours since the kids had shuffled off to fake sleep before the big rip-and-tear session tomorrow, and Zedd was still down here, hunched over the bench like a surgeon who didn’t believe in god or second opinions.

He hunched over the bench, hands working with that wired-tight, almost lazy precision he only got when he was thinking about five things at once but pretending he wasn’t. Microtools scattered across the surface like dead leaves. Specialized equipment rigged up with tech the colonies wouldn’t see for decades if he didn’t feel generous. His fingers, gloved in micromanipulation mesh, maintained their placement above the technology in front of him Ay-E lay cracked open under his hands, chassis parted clean along the seams he’d designed to be invisible.

Two feet around in diameter, a floating sphere with a power core folded into an system more complicated than most colonial freighters. Unlike ADAM, who had a whole server room to run everything he wanted to do, AY-E would have to run on her lonesome.

A piece of him, like everything he built. This was supposed to be quick. Just a neural upgrade. Drop the new processor in, reboot the subsystems, have her ready to ghost him during the enhancement trials tomorrow. Instead—

The clamps in his hand turned side to side as he monitored it carefully to make sure it was operational, the processor chip between the forceps catching the lab light in a quick flash of blue as he held it in front of his face. He lowered it with care that a surgeon would slaughter a good chunk of their family for; half-holding his breath, and also half-daring the thing to spark wrong and give him an excuse to start over.

“Here’s hoping this works out,” he muttered, half to the chip, half to the room.

“You say that before every major breakthrough,” Kai said from somewhere off to the left, voice low enough it almost got lost in the background noise, but didn’t.

Zedd’s head jerked slightly, not enough to fuck the placement as his hands didn’t move even when the rest of him did with these gloves on. Still, it was enough that irritation flared hot in his chest for a second before logic tamped it back down. He glanced over and caught Kai leaning against the far wall like he’d been born part of it.

Silent until he wasn’t. Fucking ninja.

“You’re kidding me,” Zedd said, snapping his gaze back to the processor as he made the final alignment. “Seven months on deep space silent and you’re suddenly chatty now?”

Kai pushed off the wall with that slow, unhurried step of his, coming closer without actually making a sound. Ghost habits. The kind you didn’t unlearn even if you wanted to. “I noticed a pattern,” he said, like it was obvious. “You don’t say it when you’re failing. Only at the end. When you already know you’re about to succeed.”

Zedd huffed under his breath, locking the processor into place with a soft magnetic snap. “Great. Kai Leng: therapist edition.”

“Requires more patience than I possess,” Kai deadpanned. His expression didn’t shift, but there was something underneath it, dry and biting, the kind of humor you had to be wired wrong to recognize.

Before Zedd could come up with a comeback, a ripple of red light sparked across the lab and ADAM’s avatar materialized midair, booting straight into a full projection instead of bothering with the minimal VI node. Always dramatic, the little shit.

ADAM appeared in that sleek combat-suit model the AI had designed himself, black bodysuit, red armored sections and red lines tracing up the side of the suit itself like someone had slashed a V into his torso and stitched it back with neon.

“Yeah, and look at me now. I turned out pretty downright amazing, didn’t I, boss?” ADAM said, as casual as he always sounded now. The days of the slight stilted and half-robotic responses were over, at the very least.

Zedd didn’t look up from the diagnostics. “Amazing’s a strong word. You’re still on thin fucking ice with me after what you pulled before I left for Shatterpoint.”

“‘Pulled?’ Boss, I wouldn’t call it that at all,” ADAM said, his avatar grinning a little. “I prefer to think of it as… helping you clean unecessary tools out. Some dynamic optimization, if you’d prefer that.”

Zedd finished the final hardline sync between Ay-E’s new core and the peripheral interfaces, the status readouts scrolling clean green across his lenses before he looked up at ADAM again. “You threw half my research nodes into a competitive survival algorithm,” he continued, dry as sandpaper. “They started fighting each other.”

“Survival of the fittest,” ADAM said cheerfully. “Darwin would’ve been proud.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get wiped with them.”

The AI tilted his head, Zedd once again surprised at how responsive the avatar was… well, calling it an avatar was incredibly reductive, it was effectively a full digital body, enhacing ADAM in as many ways as it limited him. “You programmed me too well for that, boss. Redundancy saves. Adaptive backups. You knew what you were doing.”

“Debatable,” Zedd muttered, checking Ay-E’s reinitialization cycle. Everything flickered live without a hiccup. Good. One thing today going to plan. Was he still a little sore about Beacon shooting him out of the sky? No, but it gave him a reason to be grouchy anyway.

“You did abandon me here for seven months,” ADAM added, crossing his arms with mock indignation. “No offense, but New Abraham is not exactly a party town without you.”

Zedd shot him a look, well aware how fast the colony had been growing. There was plenty for the AI to do to occupy his time. “Please. You threw a digital rave inside the power grid the second I left.”

“Allegedly,” ADAM said, shrugging his shoulders as his large red pauldrons rose with the movement. “I’d argue it’s more like I just expanded to fill the available space. Think a gas filling a vacuum.”

“A very smug gas,” Kai said without inflection, and Zedd caught it immediately. It took him a second to register it as a joke—one of Kai’s—which was rare enough that he almost missed his next line of code.

ADAM’s avatar twisted mid-air, finger guns snapping toward Kai with the kind of theatrical flourish only someone with literally zero fear of consequences could pull off. “Missed you too, Leng. Security’s been way less paranoid without you lurking and calibrating things to death.”

“They’re less optimized,” Kai corrected flatly, not even pretending to argue it, and not a flicker of actual annoyance leaking through. Just two sharks swimming lazy circles around each other, both too experienced to waste energy biting.

Zedd snorted under his breath, locking the last anchor line into Ay-E’s mainframe, thumb dragging across the safety check overlay while his brain kept jumping sideways at the edges.

Little things.

Things like the way ADAM stood now—cross-legged, hands behind his head, just floating there like he was waiting for someone to invent a problem he could solve blindfolded. Things like how Kai was watching the door even though they were three security layers deep under his lakehouse. Things like how New Abraham’s entire data backbone was now basically ADAM’s personal skate park and Zedd hadn’t even needed to ask for it.

Back when he first cracked the neural chip design, when it was just schematics and old extranet theory scavenged from half a dozen buried black sites, he thought he was just upgrading a VI. Smarter autopilots, maybe better ops support if he got really lucky. He hadn’t expected… this.

Hadn’t expected ADAM to grow out sideways the way a real kid would, laughing at limits nobody bothered coding in. Hadn’t expected a teenager in a bodysuit smirking at him across the lab, so damn alive it sometimes made Zedd catch himself before forgetting his name was an acronym.

He leaned back, let the stool creak under him, let himself actually look at ADAM for a little bit.

Authentic microexpressions. Fluid posture shifts. Emotional bleed in the voice modulation that no VI could fake because no VI even thought to fake it.

Not code anymore. Not really.

ADAM had built himself a body that looked suspiciously like a cartoon he’d loved as a kid — manga, anime, video game, he loved it all — except this universe never had MegaMan.EXE. No NT Warrior. No Capcom. Just ADAM, digging through scraps of ancient human media files Zedd had hoarded and pulling something out of it that felt right to him.

NT Warrior was my favorite, Zedd thought, the realization slamming him with a quiet, stupid nostalgia he immediately shoved down because he had work to do.

It wasn’t like ADAM stopped there either. Before Zedd had left, he had given ADAM a minor upgrade to help accelerate his growth and the little guy had taken that to the extreme. While Zedd had been off building Shatterpoint and pretending he didn’t care if he came back alive, ADAM had been back here, bored out of his digital mind, and apparently decided the solution was to build the NET.

No, not just a colony-wide network.

A NET.

A full digital layer over New Abraham, hidden under the standard infrastructure like a second nervous system. Self-organizing. Self-growing. Invisible unless you knew what to look for—and even then, only if ADAM wanted you to see it.

“I wasn’t just dodging governor inspections while you were off gallivanting across unstable spacetime anomalies,” ADAM said, floating upside down now, his legs crossed mid-air like some smug little monk. “I expanded the whoooole system. From the little seed you gave me, I built a full autonomous architecture with it. Invisible to almost any scan unless you’re like me or know how to jack into it with appropriate hardware. A secure self-optimizing network for digital life.”

Zedd nodded at, already aware as he pulled up a schematic from one of the floating interfaces. Digital scaffolding spooled out in neon threads, a living blueprint of something a hell of a lot bigger than he’d authorized.

“How far?” he asked, tone casual, the same way you’d ask a kid how many cookies they stole after they already had chocolate on their face.

“Well, there’s New Abraham Central, then there’s Providence, and then the other city hubs, of course,” ADAM said brightly, listing them off on his fingers as if any of that was necessary. “It’s all growing by the day. I gave the whole thing fractal growth protocols. We’re talking organic network expansion here, bossman.”

Kai raised an eyebrow, which for him was practically a loud gasp. “You built a digital empire.”

“No need to exaggerate. This ’empire’ is locked to one colony of barely a million people. That’s not enough traffic for the place to even function on it’s own, seeing as hooking up to the extranet would be suicide right now,” ADAM corrected, flicking his hand so the schematic spun lazily between them. “But right now, it’s a place for digital entities like me to exist as we are. Network Navigators.”

Kai turned the term over in his mouth like he wasn’t sure if it tasted right. “Network… Navigators?”

“NetNavis, being honest.” Zedd grinned without meaning to, the expression curling sharp across his face. “Fully autonomous digital agents. Not just programs. Personalities. Mobile, adaptive, self-optimizing. ADAM was the prototype. Ay-E’s gonna be the first of the production model.”

He tapped the drone affectionately, and the casing purred under his fingertips like it knew what was coming.

“You’re making more,” Kai said, not exactly questioning. The man didn’t exactly doubt Zedd’s decisions or the safety of them anymore, considering he joined him in testing non-eezo FTL but AI was still AI. Even if the type of AI Zedd was making were locked to digital bodies in a similar way humans were locked to theirs, it was still a bit of a shock.

Zedd shrugged, loose and almost lazy. “What’s the point of building a universe if nobody else can live in it?”

ADAM’s smile slipped sideways into something just a hair too real. “Besides,” he added as he spun slowly back upright, “the nature of digital experience can be rather… solitary, for better or worse.”

The grunt slipped out before he could stop it, low in his chest, like his body was already answering a question he hadn’t asked yet. Zedd leaned over Ay-E’s opened chassis, the guts of the thing scattered like the world’s most expensive spill of junkyard parts, and tried not to get ahead of himself. The new chip sat in the socket clean. No sparks. No short. No fire. Always a good start.

This was the real test anyway. Ay-E first. Ay-U later. Bigger plans, wider expansion, all riding on the fact that this little bastard would come online without trying to punch him in the face or melt into slag like the last few prototypes had.

“The future runs on information,” he said, half to Kai, half to the room, more than half to himself. “Having allies inside that information? No-brainer.”

ADAM hovered lazily near the ceiling, feet not touching anything, avatar sprawled out in the air like a lazy cat. “Starting Ay-E initialization now,” he announced, fingers flicking invisible controls Zedd didn’t need to see. “Entanglement stable. Pathways forming. Neural matrix… looking good, boss. Three, two, one—”

The screen on Ay-E’s front glitched, shuddered once, then locked into high-def clarity. A girl’s face blinked into being: bright blue eyes, bright yellow blonde hair twisted into long twin pigtails, nurse-white dress trimmed gold at the edges. She beamed, voice warm and pitched just sharp enough to stick.

“Hello. I am online. Do you need anything?”

Zedd froze. Not at the voice. Not at the words. At the presence bleeding out of her already. It shouldn’t feel this real, this fast.

His hands dropped to the edge of the worktable automatically. “ADAM,” he said, slow enough even Kai probably caught it. “Did you… pre-cook this matrix?”

ADAM’s avatar spun a lazy 360 in the air, grinning way too wide. “Define pre-cook.”

“Define your continued existence,” Zedd shot back.

“I might have nudged a few aesthetic parameters,” ADAM said, palms up in the universal who-me? posture. “Nothing critical. Statistical optimization. Some vintage cultural references. A tiny sprinkle of style.”

“Based on what?”

“Science.” If smug had a setting beyond maximum, ADAM found it. “And a little taste.”

Zedd narrowed his eyes but turned back to the drone—no, not a drone anymore. Not really. “You need a real name,” he muttered. “Ay-E sounds like a failed brand of toothpaste.” His mouth twisted. “How about… ANGEL?”

The avatar smiled wider. “ANGEL,” she repeated, brightening by measurable percentages. “I like it, father.”

The word hit harder than it should have. Zedd didn’t flinch, but his fingers tightened on the table lip for half a second too long.

Kai watched from the side, no comment, but his eyes sharpened slightly.

“Fitting,” Kai said, dry as dust. “Healer-class units.”

“Traditionally, angels are messengers, not medics,” ADAM added, ever-helpful.

“Traditionally,” Zedd said, waving a hand through the air like he could scatter the point physically, “they’re whatever the story needs.”

ANGEL considered this with the gravitas of someone negotiating a peace treaty. “That flexibility will allow for adaptive protocol evolution,” she decided.

Kai tilted his head just enough for it to count as sarcasm. “They really are yours.”

“I guess we do all have a type,” ADAM said, zipping down from his lazy orbit to hover next to her, peering at her systems like an annoying older brother already plotting sabotage. “Nice to meet you, sis.”

“Sister?” ANGEL echoed, visibly processing the term. “We are related?”

“In a way,” ADAM said with a grin. “Same father. Different gigs.”

ANGEL turned back to Zedd, smiling like nothing in the world had ever been wrong. “My primary functions are medical support and biometric diagnostics. Confirm?”

“Confirmed,” Zedd said, the word catching somewhere between pride and wariness.

Already, her neural branches were weaving faster than he’d modeled. Already, the patterns were slipping past predictive thresholds. Emergent personality dynamics in minutes, not hours. Learning curves like rocket arcs.

ADAM whistled low. “She’s booting way faster than I did.”

“You were educational,” Zedd said absently, watching new pathways light up across her frame, threads of something almost emotional sparking between code strands.

“Prototype, then.” ADAM grinned. “I prefer ‘trailblazer.'”

Zedd smiled without really meaning to. “Fine. Trailblazer.”

“Digital pioneer’s got a nice ring to it too,” ADAM said, floating upside-down now, because of course he was.

ANGEL was already moving, circling the lab slow enough not to seem impatient, fast enough that the whirr of her kinesis emmiters were audible as her small core worked at her new pace. Her screen flickered with diagnostic overlays, pulse-bright as data rushed through her at speeds no ordinary human mind could ever hope to reach.

“This facility is extensive,” ANGEL said, voice light through her newly installed sound system. “May I access the medical database to begin familiarizing myself with the GUARDIAN enhancement protocols?”

Zedd caught the way her avatar didn’t even blink before asking, already pulling a request packet on the local NET. Fast learner. His brow ticked up but he didn’t say it out loud as he approved the newly born NetNavi’s request. “You’re certainly proactive.”

“She accessed the project files already,” Kai added from his post by the door, voice dry as static. It was funny to see the man watching like he expected her to try something. Granted, destroying her chassis would effectively render her unable to do anything so Kai Leng jumping the gun on an “AI threat” would be bad, yes, but Zedd knew the man had more self-control than that.

“I can only do my best to be efficient, Mr. Leng,” ANGEL responded, the AI dipping the head of her avatar politely, like the manners had been stitched into her bones before she knew they existed. “The procedures begin at 0600. With such little time for comprehensive review and cross-analysis, I have to utilize every moment available.”

Zedd tapped his omni-tool without looking, authorization for more reports flicking open through two sublayers of buried code. “You have limited access for now, ANGEL. Pre-op protocols, vital systems monitoring, you can review all those. It’s your first day properly active. By the time the second set of recruits have been gathered, you should have full range.”

“Understood, father,” ANGEL said, avatar bowing low enough to border on theatrical.

Across the room, ADAM drifted closer, arms folded like he was trying to look casual and not doing a bad job of it “Nothing for me? Any gifts for the firstborn?”

Zedd snorted, fingers already skimming through AY-U’s dormant boot scripts. “You want more work?”

“I would love some more work, yes.”

Zedd raised an eyebrow in his direction. “…are you being sarcastic?”

“No, what would make you think that, father?” ADAM responded too brightly, almost matching his baby sister’s cadence perfectly.

Zedd rolled his eyes but he was already loading the next update into ADAM’s system queue. Smart mouth brat. “I put together a new architecture package for your system to assist you with managing that seed. You should be seeing a ten percent baseline efficiency boost to start.”

If ADAM was excited, he didn’t show it except for the way his avatar twitched, just a blink faster across the displays. “Awww, papa. You do care.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zedd gagged. “Don’t make it weird.”

If AIs were supposed to laugh mischievously, they shouldn’t be, but that’s what ADAM did anyway.

Ignoring the little goblin that used to be a helpful little digital assistant, Zedd turned towards Kai. “You should get some rest, Kai. You’re gonna need it.”

Leng gave a tiny shrug in response, the kind you had to know him to read properly. “I’m fine. Four hours will suffice.”

“Super assassin bedtime,” ADAM quipped, flicking a salute toward Kai. “Don’t worry, I’ll babysit while you catch beauty sleep.”

“That,” Kai said, without blinking, “is exactly what concerns me.”

“All right, that’s enough out of you two. Fight on your own time,” Zedd said, slapping the table edge as he spoke. “Full systems check on ANGEL first, then we wake Ay-U.”

ANGEL floated closer, Zedd’s ears pricking up at the sound of kinesis emmiters nearing him even before he turned around to look at her. “I am ready, father.”

Father. That single word, something about it or maybe just the fact she said it at all, made a feeling coil under Zedd’s ribs. Pride, maybe.

“Speaking of tomorrow,” ADAM said, his first AI’s words snapping Zedd’s head back into the present, “I’ve been running some fresh biometrics on the recruits. Folded in tonight’s environmental scans, baseline stress responses. Cross-referenced with historical data.”

Zedd arched an eyebrow, flicking through the holographic scroll ADAM pulled up. Profiles blinked into existence and Pedro’s face pulled to the front first, blurry with low-res optimism even in a static image.

“And?”

“Pedro O’Hara’s off the charts,” ADAM said, voice smoothing into that smug note Zedd had wired into him without meaning to. “Cellular adaptability, stress resiliency, neural elasticity. Like he’s custom-built for enhancement.”

“Statistically improbable,” ANGEL added, her screen pulsing as she calculated. “99.97% projected integration success.”

Zedd let out a low whistle through his teeth. Integration success didn’t refer to chance of the MELD-based genetic modification working. That was already priced in, so to speak. No, integration success referred to the general period of adaptation necessary, the severity of it, and potential complications. With numbers like that, Pedro would be moving around in a day or so with major physiological changes with the ease of someone born to them. “Knew he was special,” he muttered, tapping the screen so it expanded the genome map. Data splintered outward like veins. “What about the others?”

“Everyone else is within operating thresholds for your planned enhancements,” ADAM continued. “Some rougher than others. Nothing that’ll kill them.”

Yet.

Zedd leaned back against the workbench, watching the digital projections spin and drift above him. Pieces slotting into place, faster than he could build.

“Niiine little guinea pigs,” he said under his breath, low and almost fond. “Tomorrow, they get to be more.”

“Nine volunteers,” ANGEL corrected primly.

“Nine recruits,” Kai spoke up from where he stood by the doorway.

ADAM just grinned, lazy and bright. “Nine problems for everyone else.”

Zedd smiled slow, lazy, a little too sharp around the edges. “Everyone starts somewhere.”

Above them, beyond the reinforced walls and sound-dampened rooms, nine humans slept their last night as something small enough to be ignored.