Journey To Transhuman: Chp 11(Interlude) (Patreon)

She was ten minutes late.

Contessa’s gaze locked onto the grotesque mass of tinkertech ahead—a writhing, expanding horror of metal and flesh. Left unchecked, it would overrun North America, a self-replicating flood of nanomachines, unstoppable and mindless in its hunger.

As she moved, she let the questions rise. Could the monstrosity be useful to Cauldron? Could she justify letting it consume the United States?

The Path offered her answers.

The tinkertech, labeled “Machine Army” by its creator, would become stronger, possibly one of the most powerful S-Class threats on record. Comparable to the Endbringers. Second only to Scion. It would grow in mass and complexity, absorbing knowledge, adapting, learning, and eventually devouring parahumans across the continent.

But the cost was too high. The collapse of the United States. The fall of the Protectorate. A cascade of global instability. All of it would cost Cauldron too many resources and add too many steps to the Path.

The choice was obvious now. Containment.

The neophyte S-Class would be sealed and boxed in for study. Perhaps a future trigger could repurpose them against Scion. It would kill more over the years, even if trapped. But every weapon was needed against the Entity, no matter how revolting.

A massive metal tentacle slammed into the ground where she’d stood. She pivoted left, three swift steps forward. A shift of weight. She slipped between two half-collapsed houses thrown her way. A snapping metal maw missed her by inches as she ducked low and passed beneath it.

From her coat, she drew the failsafe—a device taken from the nanomachine tinker’s personal vault. She didn’t understand it. But her fingers moved on instinct, disabling command locks and authentication protocols as naturally as breathing.

She crouched and angled her head back thirty degrees.

A lamp post screamed past, torn from its moorings, and embedded itself in a rooftop.

Suboptimal.

This entire affair had set her back by thousands—no, hundreds of thousands—of steps.

The Path had already reconfigured, and she could already foresee the consequences. Her failure to contain the Machine Army in its early stages would ripple outwards. Its grotesque evolution would become a symbol—a nightmare that would echo in the minds of leaders worldwide. Without intervention, fearmongering and discrimination towards tinkers would escalate in the coming months and years.

She would have to mitigate such fears, in the coming days or weeks, step by painstaking step.

Irritating.

Losing the nanomachine tinker to a new trigger on top of that was just one more bitter complication. The Path had outlined a clean projection—early recruitment would’ve stymied his growth. Left to his own devices, he would’ve developed powerful tinkertech and become a key member of the Protectorate within six months.

Precautions had already been in place. Parahumans were subtly redirected away from Eagleton. Suspicious purchases were quietly covered up. Local authorities had been misled into keeping him undisturbed.

But a single trigger event was all it took. A single moment turned a potential key Cauldron asset into a catastrophe. All that future potential—gone. Now, all that remained was a monster.

And yet... not a total loss.

Parahumans whose powers slipped beyond the Path’s gaze were rare. True blind spots she could not foresee were rarer still. The appearance of a new, previously unnoticed blind spot was, at the very least, a small consolation prize.

She didn’t have much humanity left. But she still felt a flicker of fear and unease at another unknown she could not path. It was almost… refreshing. A reminder that she was more than just a puppet of the Path.

She let herself feel it for a second.

Then she crushed those emotions as the Path took place once more.

She flipped forward, twisting mid-air as twin maws of metal snapped shut just behind her heels. A single finger pressed down against the failsafe’s interface. A click sounded—confirmation. The tinkertech accepted her credentials.

Tentacles lashed out in a fan of steel. There was no room to maneuver, no space to duck or leap.

So she didn’t.

She rotated her body with precise control, aligning her movement to the sliver of space left untouched. The storm of blades passed her by, grazing nothing, missing her by micrometers.

It was enough.

Her feet hit the ground in a final step. The failsafe lit green in her palm. Without hesitation, she placed it gently onto the open jaws of the Machine Army.

The response was immediate. A scream erupted from the spire of metal and flesh—a war cry turned into a wail—as the failsafe’s restrictions activated. A forced limitation, encoded into every nanomachine, halting its exponential replication.

She knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Had she deployed the failsafe earlier, before this latest evolutionary burst, its effects would have been far more potent. But she had been delayed. Now the restriction was much more incomplete. Still, it would suffice.

The PRT could handle the rest of the quarantine as long as the Machine Army could not produce exponentially.

Her task here was finished.

“Door.”

A portal shimmered open behind her.

She gave the machine army one final glance, then stepped forward, disappearing into the sterile light of the Cauldron compound.

——

“You’ve returned?” Doctor Mother said.

She gave the woman a nod and seated herself with the precision needed to maximize comfort. The position she chose would allow her to recover—eat, drink, rest—for exactly one hour before her body reached its peak condition again. Without comment, she placed a sealed container of food onto Doctor Mother’s desk.

Quietly, she began arranging her cutlery, napkins, snacks, and drinks to ensure she gained the maximum enjoyment and recovery from her meal.

The act was casual on the surface, but intentional. A subtle disarming gesture. One designed to prevent Doctor Mother from slipping into panic or alarm later.

Doctor Mother barely raised an eyebrow at the display, unsurprised. She was long accustomed to the often strange steps Contessa followed under the guidance of the Path.

Silence stretched between them.

She opened the container and began eating her chicken curry over rice. The Path had chosen the meal for its precise balance of fats, vitamins, and nutrients. It also happened to taste excellent. She gave it a moment, letting the silence settle, letting Doctor Mother’s thoughts move into the desired mindset.

Then she spoke.

“I’ve failed.”

Doctor Mother paused, surprise flickering across her face. She set her papers aside. “How?”

“A blind spot intervened,” she said, without looking up from her meal. “During the containment operation of the Machine Army, I was attacked.”

Doctor Mother’s expression shifted—concern, calculation, unease—cycling rapidly. Blind spots were rare. Of the four known, two were Endbringers. The third was Scion. A new blind spot did not usually bode good news.

“You’re alive, so I assume it wasn’t an Endbringer?”

She shook her head, her posture intentionally relaxed. “No. Appeared to be a young adult male. He had a prosthetic tinkertech arm which he used to manipulate light.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“Little. The priority was disabling the Machine Army. I couldn’t afford to deviate. When I encountered him, I withheld any information he might exploit and provoked him to gather what I could within the timeframe. Afterward, I instructed Clairvoyant to sweep Eagleton and the surrounding state.”

Doctor Mother’s frown deepened.

“Nothing?” she asked.

She nodded once. “Nothing.”

“A power that affects perception or sense-based abilities, perhaps?” Doctor Mother said, brow furrowed. “It’s happened before.”

“Possibly,” Contessa nodded. “But from what little I gathered during our interaction, his personality doesn’t match the profile of any standard thinker or stranger power.”

She paused briefly, letting the implication settle.

“Still, irrelevant how it works. You’ll need to begin forming contingencies.”

Doctor Mother grimaced again. Path to Victory was one of Cauldron’s greatest assets—any blind spot was a fundamental threat. A crack in their strongest foundation. The Endbringers and Scion were undeniably dangerous, but they followed patterns that could be worked around. Eidolon, for his part, would follow their instructions, so even if she couldn’t Path him directly, the impact was minimal. But a new, chaotic blind spot—one that might also possess teleportation and remained entirely unknown—was a potential major threat to the Path.

“I’ll have Alexandria comb through PRT records,” the Doctor said, voice clipped. “And tell her to alert Watchdog to start their own investigation.”

“Good.” Contessa leaned back in her chair.

Doctor Mother glanced up. “What will you do now?”

“Take a nap.” Her eyes closed without further preamble. “Then I’ll visit the Ministry of Defense and prevent the administration from putting every active tinker in camps...”

——

Her leg bounced against the dirt floor, tapping unconsciously. Eyes scanned the resistance camp without focus, watching, waiting. It had been two days since the twins left on what should have been a simple errand.

Too long.

“You good, boss?”

Anemone twitched slightly, turning to find Jackass sprawled out on the floor of her tent. The acrid scent of gunpowder lingered on her, singed streaks marking the ends of her already wild grey hair. She’d clearly just come back from playing with her explosives again.

“Fine,” Anemone replied, clipped. “Still no contact from the twins?”

“Nada.” Jackass with a flippant tone. That caused her eyebrows to twitch with anger

“If you’re that worried,” Jackass continued, “you could send a team out to look for them.”

She shook her head. “You know I can’t do that. Everyone here’s stretched thin.”

“Or,” Jackass said with a pointed look, “you mean no one would actually bother searching.”

Anemone frowned. “They wouldn’t ignore a direct order from me.”

“Oh, sure.” Jackass rolled her eyes. “They’d ‘search’—walk around, maybe wave a scanner or two—and report back after a few hours with nothing but excuses.”

Anemone didn’t respond immediately.

“You know how the camp treats them,” Jackass added. “Aside from you and me, no one gives a damn about the twins.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. She couldn’t really argue that.

“So I should do nothing, then?”

“I think,” Jackass said, voice sharp, “you should’ve not sent them out to the bumfuck nowhere, disciplined the idiot trader, and just let them pay in the normal way.”

She didn’t stop there.

“Instead of pulling off some convoluted-ass plan to ‘help’ the twins that might’ve gotten them fucking killed.”

Anemone let out a slow breath. “Are you done?”

“Yep.” Jackass grinned, clearly not sorry.

“Do you have any actual advice,” Anemone said, voice flat, “or are you just here to keep ripping into me?”

Jackass gave a lazy wave. “Little of column A, little of column B.”

Anemone’s eye twitched. She grabbed the nearest cup and lobbed it at the idiot's head.

She probably took a little too much satisfaction from the way Jackass yelped and fell flat on her ass.

Jackass rubbed the back of her head, scowling. She raised the cup like a weapon.

“Really?” Anemone deadpanned. “You gonna hit a superior officer?”

For all that she might’ve deserved the earlier dressing down, she wasn’t going to let Jackass get the last word in without some pushback.

Jackass scoffed, tossed the cup aside, and stood. “Anyway.”

She brushed herself off, then jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “The real issue is that ninety-nine percent of the camp isn’t gonna lift a finger to find the twins.”

Her tone shifted, just slightly. “So. Simple solution: ask someone who doesn’t know them.”

She lifted the flap of the command tent and pointed into the distance.

It didn’t take long to see what she meant. The stark black uniforms and white hair of the YoRHa androids stood out like paint on rusted metal. Against the resistance’s patchwork gear, they looked almost ceremonial. Anemone still thought those skirt-like uniforms were insane for combat, but practicality aside, the idea had merit.

“You know they’re not part of my chain of command,” Anemone said.

Jackass just gave her that infuriatingly casual shrug.

Anemone’s hand drifted toward another cup.

She tried to be subtle, but the gremlin was already ducking out of the tent, cackling.

She snorted, shaking her head, and turned her gaze toward the YoRHa androids. One of them was already in quiet conversation with a resistance member.

She frowned, weighing how to frame it—probably as a scouting op, something vague enough to avoid suspicion but solid enough to justify the ask as a favor.

Hopefully, the twins hadn’t gotten themselves into too much trouble.