Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (11/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hello everyone here's the work in progress for Chapter 11! I hope you guys enjoy! :D 

A flood of emotions overwhelmed me as I began going through the rest of the containers. Every single one of them was accounted for: the spare parts, the ammunition, the pre-purified foodstuffs, the special armor add-ons and mods, and the drones. What remained distinctly unaccounted for out of everything was perhaps one of the devices I most desperately needed at this hour.

The Exoreality Communications Suite, or ECS for short.

I suddenly felt as if an unspoken tether had been severed upon this realization. For all of my life, and the life of any other human within the commsphere, instantaneous and reliable communication was a fundamental cornerstone of life. In fact, it was declared a UN universal right, up there with the rights to food, water, shelter, education, and so on. No human in living memory within the commsphere had ever been truly disconnected for longer than a few hours perhaps for maintenance, and even then they still had local communication with whatever planet, moon, or space station they belonged to.

I knew that this mission wasn’t going to allow for an extranet connection back home, I knew that the moment I signed on. Heck, the training even involved me preparing for this extensively with weeks and months on end without access to the world outside the facility. But that was different. At least with that training I still had my superiors, my training officers, the scientists, and the admin staff to talk to, and all of them had basically become the closest thing to family for me for the months I’d spent with them. In fact, that’s what I’d more or less rationalized in my headspace. That despite being disconnected from the greater human commsphere, I’d still be able to communicate with those back at the IAS. Even if it was just small packets of data. Even a hello or a reminder that there was someone out there listening and tuning in was good enough for me.

To have that last tether ripped away caused me to falter, as I felt a deep sense of dread reminiscent of the time I was ripped from my old home, suddenly washing over me. I struggled to find my footing as the suit was quite literally the only thing keeping me from losing my balance. I felt a sense of vertigo spread throughout my form from head to toe, as I closed my eyes and tried my best to remain calm, to regain my footing.

Instead of the slow, gradual journey into regaining my bearings however, I felt a warmth flooding over me similar to the one I felt back in the Grand Hall. It started on my shoulder, with a familiar soft and slightly ticklish touch that sent a wave of warmth radiating through my whole body. After being cut off from the outside world for a full 7 hours, and experiencing the first taste of my life stuck behind a wall of synthetic fibers, steel, composites, and glass, a reassuring touch was the last thing I’d expected. But it was one I needed, as I turned around to face this would-be perpetrator and forced out a smile underneath my helmet.

“Emma, you have been standing staring at your… boxes for a considerable amount of time now. Are you feeling quite alright?” The princess asked with genuine concern.

To which I responded with a confident nod, as a renewed sense of purpose and invigoration flooded over me. “Yeah.”

Now wasn’t the time for panic, it was a time for action. So as soon as I regained my bearings so too did my list of priorities become clear to me. The source of all panic could always be tied to a lack of intel, and perhaps that’s what the Academy was banking on for newrealmers like me. I was convinced now that this entire trial was conducted in such a way that all ‘candidates’ that entered through the portal would be harried, harassed, and consistently put on edge. By overt or subtle means, they would break down these volunteers, until they were more pliable to whatever sick and twisted ambitions the Nexus had in store for them. That would explain why they’d given us scarcely any intel to work with prior to arrival. This would also explain the gaslighting and the constant confusing practices.

I knew however that I was operating solely on anger and frustration at this point in time, as all I had to go on was baseless speculation and anecdotal evidence.

Yet despite this I had all the tools necessary I needed to gather the intel I would need to find evidence to back up my theories. Indeed, I had the tools at my disposal to determine just what became of that missing ECS container.

If the Academy was going to play this game, then they’d find themselves woefully outmatched and underprepared. We were playing two fundamentally different games, and I knew they had no countermeasures for the moves I could make.

Intel was the name of the game here, and it was intel that would normally spell the doom for any newrealmer stuck in the same situation as myself. So whilst the Academy continued playing by their own rules, I’d just open up a new game and ignore the rulesets they were working with.

Step one on my priority list, was reviewing every last bit of footage the cameras on the containers were able to capture.

Accessing CARGO DATALOGS… Standing by…

Please Specify Query

It would take hours for me to review all the footage in real time. Which was where the EVI would come in…

“EVI, what’s your status?” I spoke within my helmet, making sure all audio was severed from the world outside.

“Nominal, Emma Booker. What are your orders?”

“I want you to review all of the footage and sensor scans within the Cargo Datalogs, and I want you to screen for any discrepancies that might include any potential tampering or removal of any one container from the rest of the container group, by a factor of 10 feet.” I spoke, as a firm beep from the suit was all that was needed to confirm that the program was now running and operational.

I would soon have my answers, and I would see just where this game was headed.