Night shift and bad news

Chapter: Unveiling Secrets (Rough Draft v2)

As he left for work he planted a kiss on Felicia's forehead.

Almost to work AISYS pipes up "I've found some peculiarities in her DNA that may be cause for concern, but I need to run further diagnostics to confirm,"

Fearing the worst like some terminal illness Josh responds as he reaches work, "Go a head let me know what you find." and lets AISYS transform them both into the battle mode they use as their Ariea Identity. Face bones, height, and curves and changing along with the outfit. The streamlined battle dress rustles as he moves to an open terminal to start his work day.

Ariea couldn't shake the disquiet that enveloped him as he signed into his hero account. The screen flashed with all the expected alerts and updates. He clicked on the "RED ALERTS" first as they were the most important.

"Voltara escaped? That's odd, for a low-level villain like her to do that, let alone be classed as a red alert." Ariea muttered, his brows furrowing as he tried to open up the related files but they came up 'restricted'. A second later he revived a priority message.

*You are ordered not to pursue Voltara, the PR fallout from a repeat of your last take down is not even allowed to be a possibility, other Heroes will handle it. You are on Admin assistant duty until she is captured, report to your assigned Admin office to receive your tasks for the day.*

"AISYS crack this for me, I need to know what's going on, mask our steps." AISYS complied, effortlessly bypassing the firewalls.

"Something is amiss here, AISYS," he said, scanning through the scrambled data and bizarre timelines of Voltara's escape. "No automated security triggered, It goes from 'One superhuman present' with her power break down listed to 'no superhuman activity registered' one second to the next, then while the heroes are in there her signature flashing back on and off randomly?—what kind of magic trick is this?"

"It defies logical explanation based on the given data, look at these camera shots outside the room, there is no one coming or going until the medical security team rush in and find nothing." AISYS' soft voice responded in his mind. "But we should proceed cautiously; we're already crossing boundaries by accessing this information."

"Okay we will be careful, please pull up the in-room camera footage from Voltara's confinement. I want to see the exact moment the sensors stopped detecting her superhuman abilities," Josh commanded, leaning closer to the screen.

A pause filled the air, and Josh could almost feel AISYS sifting through data. "I'm unable to comply with that request," she finally said

Josh's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, unable to comply? Since when has that been an issue?"

"It's not a technical issue, Josh," AISYS clarified. "There are no in-room cameras in Voltara's medical holding. It's due to a policy regarding superhuman medical privacy rights."

Josh sighed, a mix of frustration and curiosity bubbling up. "Why are there no cameras? That seems like a glaring security issue."

AISYS paused as if gathering her thoughts, or in her case, data points. "Years ago, a villain framed a hero to get him into medical custody. At that time, in-room cameras were the norm. The villain exploited these circumstances to unmask the hero and attacked his family while he was incapacitated. The incident led to a massive policy shift. Now, cameras are prohibited in the rooms of unconvicted superhumans to protect their identity and privacy."

"That is incredibly frustrating, but if we spend anymore time on this we might get caught." Ariea sighed, a weight pulling him back to the reality of his administrative role today. Despite the incongruous alert and puzzling details, confronting Voltara wasn't an option—not if he wanted to avoid making the public relations situation any worse.

He spent the rest of his shift sifting through paperwork, reviewing minor cases, and signing off on community service initiatives, all while the question of Voltara's mysterious escape nagged at the back of his mind.

"Time to go home," AISYS reminded him, the clock hitting the end of his shift. He felt the material that formed his "elegant but dangerous gothic queen" hero attire transform back into the 'kawaii goth' clothes that jumped out at him while he was picking outfits out today."I've found a clue on the Voltara case. Maybe."

"Forward it to the team working on it."

"I can't really do that, we aren't supposed to have these files in the first place."

"Alright what do you have."

"Well its mostly just an oddity but its lead to a theroy, based on data BioWar was working on during my creation. You know those mods she boasted about making to her tech to subvert that one hero's anti-tech power?"

"You mean right before I got blasted through a wall?"

"Yeppers! Well after the heroes left and the orderlies came to clean up, they moved out a cart that could easily fit a person, and when ever the cart was on screen there was a particular interference pattern that would normally be dismissed a video artifacting. BioWar discovered, during one of her experiments on superhumans, that certain rare psychic powers can cause that exact pattern on recording devices, and that those powers when used at incredibly low levels can effect technology just like Short-out does. However For everyone but him, it was such a smaller range of anti-tech as to go unnoticed outside of a lab, even if their normal power expression was more powerful than his. Meaning This is likely either Voltara, or an accomplice, using psychic powers to keep her unnoticed, with a much lower risk of also having an anti-tech field. Before you ask I checked every know superhuman with those abilities is accounted for, I mean after BioWar's experiments there are only three known left alive, out of jail, or out of the hospital."

"So we have either an unknown superhuman with an unknown psychic powers and possibly an anti-tech field running around OR we Voltara has more tricks up her sleeves than her file shows, great...........AISYS your tech, can they effect you?"

"No I was outfitted with the defense against that, I was to be BioWar's new main battle suit after all."

"Right, that's good to know. We will have to figure out a way to either investigate this ourselves or get this info to the brass without it getting back to us. We'll figure that out later though, I am bushed, this is the first all nighter I've pulled in years and I need to get onto a proper sleep schedule for night shift. By the way speaking of problems to figure out, Have you completed the analysis on Felicia?" he asked as he stepped outside, the evening air carrying a hint of uncertainty.

"Yes", AISYS piped up, "I've completed the secondary analysis on Felicia. Her DNA reveals a rare genetic marker associated with latent superhuman genes. It's uncertain how this may manifest if at all or whether it's connected to her recent fatigue, but the really interesting part is that she shares multiple genetic markers with the 'samples' I took from Voltara. I think she maybe family, I'll have to run another test to see how close as I was checking for Illnesses or power related concerns. Luckily you gave me plenty of Felicia DNA to work with and sadly I have alot of Voltara DNA data I used to save you."

Back at his apartment, Josh felt the walls close in as he juggled his concerns about Felicia and his curiosity about Voltara's escape. He sighed and flopped onto his couch, pondering the day's revelations. "Please run it and let me know..."

Edit: Fixed major Grammar errors. There are probably more,lol

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