Chương 1286: 47
Convolution 5.1
Amelia and Taylor had both decided to trust me and let me go alone for the operation.
Supposedly. Because I had no verbal objections to them coming along, there wasn't anything suspicious about why I wanted to do it alone, but I could never be sure if they thought the same without telepathy.
Once I explained the general plan to them, excluding everything I intended to do to bring Canary under control, they thought it was a good plan and simply asked to stay nearby just in case.
So I retrieved Agate and brought us all to Earth M, where they continued their experimentation, and I told them where I would be operating. The tunnel where I set up the bombs was also on Earth M, but very far away, while the atmospheric portal location was just ten kilometres away from Amelia and Taylor. Because Agate's portals couldn't be made into the same world, we used an empty room at base as an intermediary, stacking a second portal one centimetre behind the tunnel exit portal, thereby making it seem like just one portal to "heaven".
But the fact that they were nearby on Earth M meant that Taylor and Amelia would have had the opportunity to tail me and/or send bugs to spy on me if they didn't trust me after all, which in turn meant that I could not carelessly say anything that would expose my involvement in the angel vision scheme.
As we flew closer to them, I introduced them to Paige as Araliac and Skitter. Some of Skitter's bugs came to guide us down.
"What happened? Why are you guys covered in blood?! Are you injured?" Amelia demanded as soon as we approached. They were experimenting, in costume, in a sparse forest with many low bushes.
She rushed over and touched Canary first, the living glove on her hands receding so that her skin could make contact.
"Paige had a scuffle with Teacher before I rescued her. She won, by the way. We're both fine. All this blood is Teacher's," I said.
"No one's following for five kilometres. Everything went smoothly then?" Taylor asked.
Judging by her comment, her range had expanded enormously with the new relay bugs they'd been working on for the whole day.
I was right to take precautions.
"You got into a fight with Teacher and won? By yourself?" Amelia asked doubtfully. "He's supposed to be a really dangerous mastermind with an army of 'students' at his beck and call. I thought you were just a singer."
"I—I was! But when I was in the Birdcage, an angel answered my prayers and came to me, telling me I would be saved if I could pass its trial! It told me how to defeat Teacher and find the location of the false Saint. I just did what it told me to and after I passed its trial, Axion came and I really was saved!"
There was a moment of silence while Taylor and Amelia just stared at Paige.
I gave an exasperated sigh that could be heard even through my helmet.
"No, like I told you, I was already there and found you right when you were tricking Teacher. I was just waiting for you to be alone before I could rescue you discreetly. Despite what this 'angel' said, I would have saved you regardless if you passed its trial. In fact, if you'd just stayed in your own cell, I probably would have been able to get you out faster."
"But that's not true! It only seems that way because God works in mysterious ways. If I didn't pass the trial, there would have been a reason you wo-couldn't have rescued me!"
"Such as…?" I asked.
"Such as…such as…" Her argumentative tone dropped as she struggled to find an explanation. "…not fair…" she mumbled.
"It sounds to me like there was another party that got involved. One that knew about our plans and took advantage of them to make you do something. Is there a precog in the Birdcage?" Taylor spoke with a piercing tone.
"Not that I know of. Glaistig Uaine might," I said.
"When did the angel appear? What did it look like?" Taylor asked, facing me.
"I'm afraid I didn't see the angel. According to Paige, the first time was when I pulled back my projected senses to make the portal to bring us over here, so I missed it. It appeared a second time right before I opened the portal to her, and I was watching her then, but there wasn't anything there. Just air."
"It looked like a shining mass of light with wings and a halo. The wings were so huge they stretched out into the walls and beyond," Paige added.
"Guys maybe we shouldn't have this interrogation right after a traumatic experience? She should get cleaned up and rest to get a clear head," said Amelia.
"I already had a good night's sleep. I just woke up," Paige said.
"Uh, no. You only slept for like an hour at most. And your body definitely needs a lot more sleep, even though you're feeling excited," said Amelia. "It seems like you've been severely sleep deprived for several days."
"Huh? But it's already morning."
"We're on a different parallel Earth in a different timezone," I said. "She's right, I rescued you only three hours ago."
"Oh, then I guess…" Then her eyes lidded and she promptly collapsed into Amelia's arms.
"You knocked her out?" I asked.
"She really needs more sleep. Her body was already at the point where it wouldn't be strange to have hallucinations. Why did you even wake her before coming to us? I thought you didn't want her to meet us so she wouldn't know that CRUCIBLE rescued her. Isn't that why you asked me to add the gas sedative to your armour and came up with a different identity? Then we could just change her face, cut off the feathers, and let her go on with a new life without any risk of it leaking out that we broke someone out from the Birdcage."
"I knew very little about her from the information I accessed in the other plane of existence. She is different from what I expected." I had explained the nature of my "precognition" to both of them, but even now only Amelia knew the details about my escape from my home plane. All I told Taylor was the same thing I told Amelia the first time I explained about the Entities—that I once had access to another information from another plane of existence about important events of the past and possible futures in this one.
"With how…fanatical…she is, I don't think she would be willing to disappear quietly to a peaceful life. She is also more competent than I expected. It's possible that she has or second triggered with additional powers that work subconsciously. I've never heard of a second trigger with one of the bought powers so I have no idea how it might work. She would be very useful in this case. Alternatively, if there is something or someone else manipulating her, it may not be a good idea to simply let her go off on her own. Who knows what might happen. I suspect that organization might try to take her, regardless of whether they were the ones to set her on Teacher."
"Wait, she said she found out the location of Saint, right?" Taylor cut in.
"Yeah. I still need to verify if Saint was telling the truth, but she used her power to Master Teacher into convincing Saint to reveal his location. He's in a secret base in Prince Edward Island, apparently."
"Who is Saint? Isn't he just a small-time mercenary that stole some tech from Dragon?" Amelia asked.
"There's got to be more to it than that. How did Teacher even contact somebody outside the Birdcage? I'm guessing Saint was one of Teacher's students that was never found out, and if there's one student out there coordinating with Teacher, there's probably more," said Taylor.
"That's right. Teacher gave him the power to understand Dragon's code. Moreover, he's in possession of the program Andrew Richter made as a failsafe against Dragon turning against humanity. The Ascalon program is a sort of backdoor to Dragon's code that she can't perceive in any way, which is how they stole her tech and hid from her monitoring in the Birdcage. It also has the ability to delete her."
"Can it remove her restrictions too?" Amelia asked.
"I don't know for sure. It's our only shot to do it without lobotomizing her though, unless a new AI Tinker pops up." And that was the truth. I did not know how exactly Armsmaster removed Dragon's restrictions. I knew she got crippled afterward, so it obviously wasn't the right way, but I did not know the details of the canon events that were involved. I read somewhere that Dragon was deleted in the end, and restored from backup later, but could Ascalon actually remove the restrictions safely?
"Is this what you were talking about when you said you knew of a way to do it, but we'd have to go to Canada?"
"Yeah. It would have taken some time to find Saint, and even longer to develop a strategy for taking them down without risk of him taking Dragon down with him, but with Canary's help, it should be simple. Her power works even through electronic mediums."
The girls looked at each other, then back at me.
"Do we really need her? Wouldn't Bakuda's EMP bombs work just as well against their Dragon suits? I think we should go as soon as possible, in case Saint leaves or gets suspicious and we lose our lead," said Taylor.
"I agree. Canary hasn't ever worked with us before. She might help, or she might mess things up. Like, wouldn't her power affect us as well? Not even ear plugs can stop it if it really works by sound, because sound waves can travel through our skin and skull to the eardrums. We wouldn't be able to be in the same place as her if we don't want to be hit, or get completely soundproof full body suits, which has other problems," Amelia added.
"That's true…we probably shouldn't take her on something this big as her first mission," I said. "Alright, I will confirm Saint's location via sense projection first, then the three of us will retrieve Ascalon after we're prepared."
I acquiesced easily to her objections because I had already thought of those issues and ways to overcome them, at least for this mission, but it didn't make much difference either way. The Dragonslayers had no means to defend against the type of tactics we could employ.
After that, we all went to sleep while Agate went scouting.
Little did I know, we almost lost before we would even get a chance to employ those tactics.
O O O
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