Group Toolbar Menu

Forums » CYBORG Recovery Project » CYBORG Recovery Project

Congratulations, you have been chosen to participate in the Cyborg Recovery Project, as a member of the SET Initiative. Your team will meet for the first time at the SET Headquarters. The coordinates for your nearest checkpoint have been included within this package.

The package, besides the letter, included a thicker-than-average black digital wristwatch, that had a strange locking mechanism for the band. There was also a small, pocket-sized thick metal disc. Probably had some use or another.

You are to arrive at the checkpoint by 4:30 AM tomorrow morning. Thank you.

Of course the first thing that Austin did when he got his package was to put on the watch. It immediately clamped down around his wrist and the screen glowed an electric blue.

Whoa.

It was atomic, obviously, since it was already on the correct time. There were hundreds of options just waiting to be explored, here. There were four buttons on the corners of the exterior of the watch, while the screen itself sported a touch screen and a small button at the bottom of its face.

Most of these features were locked, and Austin didn't feel like hacking into what was no doubt a complex security code, he made himself content by just looking at it.

The disc didn't seem to serve any real purpose right now, so he kept it in the box. Now all there was to do was wait.


~~~~


Jack was standing aboard a small starship. It was by no means a small shuttle; In fact it was the largest military vehicle in orbit. There were a few decks: A training hall, a drop zone, and a control tower. There was a small kitchen for food: Designed for a small team of elite. Or not-so-elite.

The team he was expecting was young, and most likely unprofessional. Two of them didn't have any military background. That was fine- He and the others would pick up on their slack. This group wasn't supposed to exist, after all.

SET's purpose was to find and decommission a group of superhumans called CYBORGs. Beings John created and modified using technology he stole from the original SET Project.

Hopefully his new recruits would arrive shortly. It was around 3:47, now.
Amy sat in the comfort of her own tiny living space, seated on a slightly lump arm chair, with a half finished drink, and her freshly opened package, that had included a letter of acceptance into the SET program, and what she could only assume was important technology for her new job.

It was bittersweet, knowing she'd been chosen as part of an elite team. On one hand she was honored that they'd chosen her, a girl with a more then a little emotional baggage, a drinking problem, and absolutely zero military experience. On the other hand, she was probably throwing her life away, heading to war, against an enemy she... honestly knew very little about.

As she finished her drink, the third of the night, and likely the last now that she knew how early she had to be up the next morning, to arrive at headquarters on time.. she resigned herself to hoping they would be well trained, and that her teammates would be easy to get along with, and respectful of her boundaries.


4:05AM and Amy had just found the checkpoint her coordinates had directed her to, looking rather detached and unaffected, though inwardly she was extremely nervous.

She was dressed casually, in clothes one might do physical activity in, such as intensive training, close fitting but nonrestrictive to allow for easy movement and comfort. Her coal black hair was left loose and long for the moment, though a slight glimpse of colour could be seen around her thin wrist, in the form of a small elastic band, at the ready in case her hair became a hindrance in any way. She was trying to be as prepared as possible, though she assumed they would be given the real gar they required, upon arrival, or shortly there after.
Austin barely slept, and headed out the door as soon as he realized it was time to get moving. The watch started a GPS function automatically, telling him where to go.

He stopped by a café on the way over- He was early anyway and he loved their coffee.

The checkpoint came into view soon enough: It was a small, office-sized building. (The building was the size of an office, it was not an office building.) Austin approached it and opened the front door, and saw Amy.

"Morning." He smiled and nodded as he stepped inside. The cold outside was a little bit brisk, but nothing too extreme. There was a door that had a blue glow behind it in the wall. The door was really more of a screen with a red "X" through it and a clock that read 4:08.

Austin noticed Amy's detached demeanor and just nodded to himself. She obviously wasn't going to return his morning greeting.

~~~~

Within the next five minutes, two other men arrived: A kid no older than 17- Blonde hair, blue eyes, round face, no taller than Austin himself; And a man just a few inches taller than Austin: Red hair, chiseled face, brown eyes. Austin recognized the man with red hair instantly as his best friend. He had nicknamed him Red when they were kids.

The other kid Amy would recognize as the mute who had escaped with her from that hellish lab: The one where they taught them how to mercilessly and professionally kill people in a manner that would squeeze information out of them along with their life.

He called himself Arrow. She knew him by another name.

The kid was broken: Younger than her and the older one who had been in charge of keeping them safe. (Who she knew by the name of Rex.) He had endured much more suffering than even she. A lot of effort went into making his body capable of generating its own lasers, and have a healing factor to match.

It burned him every time he got out of control; And he couldn't control it. He had helped save their lives when Phoenix Agents got too close- and he had nearly killed Amy and Rex as well.

Austin and Red did that handshake-hug thing that guys do, patting each other on the back with smiles while Arrow just stood near the doorway. He and Amy hadn't seen each other in nearly two years now.

What if they had contacted her since then? What if she was supposed to spy on him and turn him in?

The clock read 4:19. Ten more minutes.
Amy wondered to herself what she was supposed to do now that she was at the check point. There didn't seem to be anyone else around, and her instructions gave her no further detail, though she did check again right then, just to be sure. She figured she was just going to have to wait as see, though she could guess it had something to do with the door marked with the red x.

Folding up the letter again, and shoving it into her pocket along with the large wrist watch, and the disc from the day before, she looked around for a place to sit and wait, but was distracted as a brown haired, green eyed boy found his way in.

Amy gave him a small nod when he greeted her, but not much more then that, she wasn't one for conversing readily with people she didn't know. She might not have even acknowledged him at all, had she not been pretty sure that this guy was going to a teammate of some sort or another.

Red would get pretty much the same from her, but her reaction to seeing Arrow here was less controlled. Her initial feeling upon seeing him again, was on of relief. She'd spent many a sleepless night wondering what had become of Arrow and Rex, neither she'd seen in a very long time, not since they'd made their escape...

It was that thought, with the three of them in mind that sent her positive reaction spiraling into a cloud of paranoia and fear that came with the unpleasant memories they shared. It was a conflicting set of emotions, and it was present for everyone to see, had they been paying attention at all, though only for half a moment, before she reigned it all in again. She wasn't going to dredge all that crap up again right now, she would focus on the more positive things for the moment.

It's good to see you well. She spoke, only to him, without uttering a word to anyone else in the room, knowing he wouldn't have replied out loud anyway.
Arrow slightly flinched, hearing her voice. Then he remembered how she spoke to him, and that he could communicate to her. His tense shoulders relaxed.

Thank you. Curt.

At 4:30 the door turned green and a robotic voice directed the four to enter. It was a pleasant female voice, "Please enter." The door itself automatically opened, revealing a tube or capsule that one would step in.

Austin recognized it instantly as a teleport- They were supposedly still in beta; Working out kinks and glitches, but of course military had been using them since they've been officially deemed (mostly) safe.

He stepped inside and pulled the capsule's open half down. "See you on the other side, Red." He smiled, pulled a lever, and was gone in a flash of blue.

Red followed shortly afterwards, leaving Amy and Arrow alone.
Amy was all to aware of how he'd flinched when she'd spoken to him, and honestly, it hurt a little bit. It made her feel like she was one of the enemy, undeserving of trust in a way, though she understood where it came from. Amy herself, felt she could trust nearly no one, and expected that the other two would have felt at least similarly.

She turned away, and toward the door instead, as the clock hit 4:30 and the doors opened to reveal a teleport. She watched as Red and Austin used it, noting how they used it, for when her own turn came up.

She'd let Arrow go first, if he made a move to immediately. She had more questions for him, a never ending amount of them, but she didn't know how to bring it up now, so she remained tentatively silent.
Arrow nodded at Amy and stepped inside the teleport, pulling the switch and disappearing along with the others.

Once Amy appeared on the ship, she'd be greeted by Jack: A tall, burly man with a soft southern accent, military buzz cut (probably brown hair if he let it grow much,) and blue eyes. He was wearing a SET Uniform, which was a grey t-shirt with the logo and some weird wire-looking lines on it; and loose fitting black pants with grey shoes.

He smiled warmly and held up his hand in a sort of hand-wave greeting. "Welcome to the CYBORG Recovery Project! I'm Jack, the leader of the team. I'll be helping you guys all get used to the procedures, learn how to use the tech, and know who the enemy is."

He turned to face Austin and Red. "These two," he swept his arm across the air in a gesture towards Arrow (who was leaning against a wall with his arms crossed) and Amy, "are your best friends. They were a part of the Phoenix project, and are here to help us find them and take them down."

Jack took a step back. "Well, I might as well give y'all a tour. Follow me." And with that he began walking down a hall.
Amy took her turn with the teleport, her very first time doing such a thing. It was an odd and surreal experience to open your eyes, and find yourself miles away from where she'd stood previously, in a completely different area.

It took her one wide eyed second to get her bearings before she was able to move forward to be greeted by the burly man with the southern accent. Who she would quickly learn was her team leader,and named Jack.

Amy couldn't help but cringe inwardly as he mentioned the phoenix project, though outwardly it was little more then the slightest of twitches. "Thank you." she said curtly as Jack suggested he show them around the base. She would follow with the others.
"... And there's the dorms. One for each of you. You all can pretty much find your way around here using the built-in maps on your watches, so don't worry too much if you don't remember were everything is."

They had done a complete tour of the single-level space-ship, which was nothing too large. There was a training center, complete with holograms, augmented reality, and laser weapons; a small cafeteria for meals; the dorms; and the drop center, where they would be performing orbital drops from the ship down onto the Earth to perform Recovery missions.

Jack smiled at the group when the tour was over, and they were now in the drop room. "Alright, y'all. Sorry this is so sudden, but we've got some reports of two Phoenix Experiments roaming around the Downtown Seattle area. One's an energy-user like Mr. Arrow over here, and the other one is a shapeshifter of some sort. We're supposed to drop in ten minutes, so I'll let you prepare for anything you need to prepare for before we drop." He started to walk away before stopping and turning on his heel.

"Oh! Yes, do you have any questions for me?"
The tour wasn't too hard to follow, the layout was simple enough, and if she somehow managed to find herself lost, she could always use the watch map that Jack had said would be there. That had her bringing out the watch from her pocket, and turning it over in her hand, observing it in hopes of understanding how it worked. She'd been conditioned to kill people, not run modern technology.

Her attention snapped to when she realied Jack was telling them they were ten minutes from dropping. Her eyes widened. Seriously? They were just going to drop them into the thick of it without any sort of team training or preperation? As someone who knew a bit about what they were getting into, the thought was slightly terrifying.

Not that they had much of a choice. Someone had to do it she supposed...

He was asking if anyone had any questions, and she managed to wipe her slight scowl off her face for half a second. "You're just going to drop us down there like this? with no armor or weapons? Just a watch and a disk?"
Jack took a breath and laughed at himself.

"Ah! Sorry about that, I forgot you guys didn't know how to work the tech." He showed them his own watch, explaining all of the basic features. There was a map, a materializer, and an energy/plasma emitter. It also projected holograms, recorded video, and displayed a real-time readout analysis of high pressure situations.

Then he showed them how to materialize weapons, armor, and the like. The disc was functional for materializing vehicles when needed- Although they'd be smaller and typically could only carry one or two people at a time.

The armor's heads-up display within the helmet displayed a lot of the stuff the watch would do when the armor wasn't on. It analyzed stuff around the Operative, prompted with most ideal courses of action, set waypoints, had all the various forms of vision goggles built in...

This was some super advanced armor. No wonder the team was so small.

"Drop's in five, guys. Oh, your armor is designed to perform atmospheric drops so don't worry. You'll be able to take the pressure."

And with that, he walked off finally, leaving the newly assembled team alone for the official first time.
Amy listened carefully as everything was explained, her worries significantly lessened now that she at the very least knew they would be armed. She clipped her watch around her wrist, and made sure the disc was safe in her pocket, hoping all the while that she'd remember how to use them in the heat of battle.

With Jack gone for the moment, she was left to look around uncertainly at the rest of her teammates, not sure what to think of the two new ones, and uncertain where she stood with Arrow giving his less then warm greeting. It concerned her that they were expected to fight together immediately, without any sort of trust being built first within the team, she was afraid it would hinder them, but voiced none of it out loud. She simply looked them over, as if trying to find weakness of some sort, perhaps trying to convince herself that her fear was baseless.
Austin and Red mostly just chatted with each other, trying to avoid the obviously standoffish two loners.

Arrow was fidgeting with his watch. His was a unique white gold color, while everyone else's was a chromed black. He scrolled through the options, trying to find all the hidden features.

Before things could get too awkward, Jack reappeared in a suit of SET Combat Armor. "Drop's in 90 seconds. This'll be a good training exercise to get you warmed up to the idea of being a SET Operative. Let's go."

And with that, they headed to the drop bay. There were a bunch of little tubes you stepped inside, and then it would close and seal, and on the count of three you'd be released into the atmosphere.

Only scary when you don't have an awesomely high-tech space suit to keep you cozy.

Austin and Red generated their suits and stepped into adjacent pods. Arrow turned his suit on a moment later- It was a white gold instead of being a dark blue and black like everyone else. He stepped in his pod. Jack followed a moment later, his suit being light gray with yellow stripes.

Upon activating her suit, Amy would see her heads-up display for the first time.

It was like a hologram projected onto the visor she was looking out of. Everyone's face was invisible, of course, due to the visors' blue tint, but seeing out of it was easy.

Imagine the HUD from the Iron Man suit in Marvel's The Avengers (or any of the other Iron Man movies, for that matter) and kinda mash it together with this, sans the rifle. Something like that.

When everyone was wearing their suits and in the pods, Jack's voice could be heard within the helmet- They had radio. Sweet.

"Operatives! Are you ready to drop?"
Eventually her eyes settled on her own equipment, having gathered nothing from spying n her teammates. She was able to activate her suit, when they were warned of impending drop, and made her way to a pod for the drop down. All the while thinking it awfully ironic that Jack had said this would be a good training exersie when dropping them in the heat of it, seconds after meeting them was pretty much the exact opposite of that.

The sound of the radio communication in her helmet was hardly shocking to Amy, who heard voices in her head pretty much all the time, she noted it, in case she needed to use it or some reason in the future.

She nodded when they were asked if they were ready to drop. She was ready as she was going to be.
And with that, the floor gave out.

Amy would experience freefall- And it was glorious. It wasn't the first time, though. Arrow, Amy, Rex, and a few other Experiments had done jumps like this before. They wore parachutes instead of indestructible body armor, and their purpose was to crash a posh party held by a rich man in a mansion, but the fall was very similar.

The main difference was falling from space instead of the sky. The view was breathtaking, and the fall was slow at first.

That quickly changed, and soon they were going from weightlessness to extreme friction and pressure going through the atmosphere. Amy didn't need to worry, her suit had automatically adjusted to an angle where she wouldn't die using small jets in the armor. Quite nifty, actually.
Amy was alarmed only for half a second as the floor dropped out underneath them, and then began the plummet down to their intended destination. A free fall from space... She would have been scared had it not been so distractingly beautiful, the most glorious thing she'd ever experienced right until the ride got rough and the suit began to correct itself, and get ready to land. It was a reminder of the reality that awaited them below.
They fell for a while- The sky changing from an infinite black to a natural blue.

The ground appeared again- Still far away, but not space far. More of a really high skydive.

Man, Redbull would love this.

~~~~

After a while of flying, Jack's voice came up over the intercom. "Alright. We're activating landing jets in five." Four, three, two...

And then Amy's suit was upright, she was nearly jerked towards the sky. Like a parachute- Almost. They landed hard and fast. There were large dents created, and Amy would have a little bit of trouble getting back to her feet. But at least they weren't pancakes! Austin, Red, Arrow, and Jack were next to her at varying distances. Austin was the first to speak up.

"WHOOOOOOO! Holy cow, what a rush. I feel pumped!" He bounced around on his toes like a basketball player or a track runner. "Okay, what next?"

Jack just crossed his arms and chuckled. "Okay, you've all got a layout of the city ready to be pulled up in your helmets' readout. Just think 'map,' or tap the side of your helmet twice with two fingers. You should have the whole city come up." Sure enough, once they did so, the helmet's vision of the outside world went black, and a map of the entire area appeared. A legend in the bottom lefthand corner would indicate that silver dots were fellow Operatives, (Jack, Arrow, Austin, and Red,) red dots were enemies, (Infection, Hologram, Lektry, Insanity, Impact, etc.) blue dots were objectives or waypoints, (the next place they needed to go/object they needed to retrieve/item they needed to operate,) and green dots were civilians. (No explanation necessary.)

On the map (or radar, when not in "fullscreen" mode,) a upwards-pointing arrow of one of those colors meant that the corresponding item in the legend was above the Operative. Same for a down arrow. (i.e. A downwards-pointing red arrow means that an enemy is above the Operative, or a blue up arrow might mean that the objective is on another floor.))

On the map, there were two red dots. "There aren't any civvies on the map right now because we haven't seen any yet. Your suit will keep track of them once you've seen them, and will continue to track them for a while until they go out of your sight, in which case their green dot on the map will remain at the last place you saw them. You can mark waypoints for other people to see by looking at a location on the map and deliberately blinking twice. Not too fast, though- Our sensors are designed to ignore reflexive blinks." Jack explained.

One of the red dots changed to a red up arrow. "We can track the Experiments because they give off a certain... Something or other. Our suits can pick it up." He elaborated further. "Now, what I want you to do is to establish a plan, and act on it. I'll help, of course, but I'm a supervisor. You're the team."

He wanted them to make a plan on the spot? Why not in the big ship in the clouds? It was like the first level in a video game or something.
She landed harder then she'd expected to, surprised by the dent the fall made, and how difficult it was to right herself after impact.. One of her new teammates.. Austin, was hollering happily, clearly still in throes of the thrill of the fall.

Amy would have been too.. if she wasn't busy being scared to death. She was immediately on guard. Looking around them with more then a little paranoia, and reaching out with her mind, for any sign of anything close to them other then the other operatives on her team.

She would turn to listen to Jack though, as he showed them briefly how to interface with their maps, and then informed them that he wanted them to come up with a plan. Which was really easier said then done, given that they had no idea of each others strengths, nor really the situation on the ground. She looked towards the others to see how they would propose to work things out.
Austin and Red both looked at Jack, then to Arrow, Amy, and then to each other. Before anyone else had a chance to speak, Austin already piped up.

"Alright, I know Red is good with crowd control and ground fighting- Arrow is supposedly fast as well. So... You two will establish a perimeter around the major area where these CYBORG guys have been supposedly roaming around. Something like..."

Suddenly, an outline would appear on the mini-map of Amy's visor. Nothing distracting- No pop-ups or screens that weren't already there. Just a circle in the minimap.

"This. Doesn't have to be exact, just make sure the civvies are on one side of the line and the freaks are on the other. Jack, Amy, you two will work buildings as a team. I'll let you work out who takes point. I'll establish sniper positions based on wherever you are to provide covering fire. Arrow, Red, once you've alerted the local authorities and they've regained control, and we've got a quarantine, meet up with Amy and Jack so we can have a small fireteam working together. We'll be able to find and root out the problem, and then eliminate it."

Arrow would nod before running off to find the nearest police officers- He was inhumanly fast. Red cursed and then jogged off after him.
It wasn't surprising to Amy that Austin seemed to be the one willing to take charge, he had a confidence about him that was clear even in the short minutes she'd known him.

The outline would make itself present on her mini-map, detailing the area they were working within. Given her directions, and grateful that she hadn't been chosen for crowd control, she would nod to affirm that she understood, and looked briefly to Jack to make sure he was with her, before heading forward towards the closest building to begin clearing it, figuring they would figure who was point as they went, time being of the essence somewhat. She figured Jack probably would being that he had a fairly greater amount of first hand experience with these sorts of things then she did, not that she hadn't seen her fair share of confrontation.