They bind in an unexpected way

The Phase Binder disappeared.

For an instant--just an instant--you panicked. It wasn't as if you especially needed the device. It would be unfortunate, but if it were merely destroyed, you'd accept its loss. What you were really concerned about was that it had ended up somewhere that wasn't you and that you couldn't detect.

It wasn't, after another moment's thought, just an accessory permanently affixed to you, as you'd thought might happen. Physically, you looked no different.

Then you felt it.

Every single nanite racing through you was being remade.

Even those nanites you'd left elsewhere, hiding in key computer networks, were being altered.

Every single one, you suddenly realized, had become a fully-functional Phase Binder, powered not by the small battery to which Yabusa's engineers had been limited, but by the effectively limitless energy supply with which you could provide them.

You definitely had not anticipated that.

Not that you were complaining, of course. This was far better than having it be something like a wrist mount. It was undetectable. Nobody would suspect that it was something you could do. Even a being designed fully to Project Inside Out's exact specifications, focused on a human mind as creative and intelligent as Emily Lockard's had been, could not possibly be your equal. A single nanite infiltrating it could use the reversal functions of the Phase Binder to undo the fusion. Whether any parts would subsequently survive was another matter, however.

You immediately took the opportunity to fuse yourself with the computer systems you'd hidden in. If it was possible, though unlikely, that you could have been detected and removed before this, now you quite literally were those systems. Entirely new ones would have to be built and the old ones destroyed to remove your influence, if you were even detected. You weren't quite omnipresent within those networks yet, as some were linked only by power cables instead of network connections, over which you couldn't transmit yourself, but the degree of control you could effortlessly exert over critical corporate and military infrastructure was frightening and unprecedented.

Even so, there were still other matters to which to attend. You weren't much worried about Hideki's Ascend technology. You certainly planned to steal the prototype, maybe even merge it with yourself as well. You weren't sure if it would let you do anything you couldn't already, but it couldn't hurt.

Emilia King's **** **** to examine her collection led you to conclude that to neutralize further potential threats, your next target had to be the military base you'd uncovered. You didn't have access to any records regarding potential research being done there.

Sneaking out of Yabusa's headquarters as undetectably as you'd entered, you took a moment to fuse the bike you'd taken from Hideki with yourself. It perhaps wasn't, strictly speaking, necessary, as the trip between the two buildings had proven that you could withstand the pressures of the high acceleration it offered, but integrating it fully into yourself, you thought, would allow you to replicate the same functions without the added bulk.

You could, but soon shifted back to the bike, albeit in a form where it looked upon close inspection like it was an outgrowth of your legs. Feeling it underneath you still gave you a pleasant sensation that you thoroughly enjoyed.

With your massive energy reserves powering its acceleration far beyond its intended design limits, you found yourself at the inconspicuous entrance to the base within an hour, though you'd traveled along backcountry dirt roads to avoid encountering anyone else along the way.

You didn't get too close on first approach. While you had no information on the internal operations of the base, you suspected that security would be extremely tight and on high alert around the clock. You were confident that none of the military's conventional weaponry could so much as leave a stain on you, and even a tactical nuke probably wouldn't make a dent, but you had no idea if they might have reverse-engineered the alien technology. If they had, and if the guards had shoot-on-sight, ask-questions-never orders, you might well find yourself in quite a lot of trouble.

Using the same trick you had while in space, you made yourself invisible. You didn't even give off any other forms of radiation and any internal sound was perfectly muffled, and your exosuit's sensors told you the best places to step to make as minimal a disruption there as possible.

There were guards on constant patrol, but their weaponry looked to be merely standard-issue automatic projectile firearms. Certainly more powerful than was issued at Colonel McCabe's base, but nothing you felt you needed to worry about. You circled the entire base multiple times, sending out nanite after nanite, making sure you'd gotten every single guard under your control before proceeding to attempt to infiltrate the base itself.

The security of the base itself was primitive, but all the more impenetrable for being so. A dome fully enclosed the entire area. There were no electronic locks on the doors to get into and out of the base. There was not even a set schedule for those working at the base. According to the guards' memories, duty shifts were determined at random, no more than half a day in advance, and only communicated verbally or handwritten on paper. The exterior doors only opened at the selected times, with patrollers required to be at the gate to be let back in or they would have to serve another shift, finding out from the new guards when they were supposed to go in. Anyone approaching the gate at any other time, or who wasn't recognized by the guards, would be shot on sight. Special, secret legislation authorized the use of deadly **** without even any sort of warning in order to protect the secrecy of the installation. A list of authorized messengers had been given to the guards, but even they could only enter or leave whenever a change of shift was set to occur.

The gates themselves weren't even operated electronically from the inside. Made of thick, solid reinforced steel, they were opened and closed exclusively by hand. The entire setup posed a substantial safety risk to anyone assigned to the base, but it had been deemed acceptable given the nature of what was contained therein.

In all, you ended up waiting around half an hour. You knew that the guards' weapons were indeed standard-issue, thankfully. The wait was excruciatingly boring.

You could have sent nanites up the wall to infect the snipers' weapons, and from there the gunners themselves. But you decided not to take the risk. You'd be inside soon enough, and if you controlled people already inside the base, one wrong twitch could send the entire place into a hard lockdown, which would only serve to further delay you. Better to get inside undetected, infiltrate the internal network, and determine whether they had managed to put any off-planet technology to practical use.

Once you finally got in behind a guard going off-shift--having to skip nimbly out of the way of the guard leaving at the same time, as the doors only opened wide enough for one person to pass through, and that uncomfortably--you lingered against the interior wall, being cautious, letting your consciousness permeate the base's computers, taking surreptitious control of them in order to override these security measures if necessary.

You smiled to yourself as your mind processed the data received. Had Project Inside Out been the only bold action anyone had taken? Yes, there was a huge trove of extraterrestrial technology deep underground beneath the base. If you had to guess, you'd say it was an entire fleet, potentially comprised of advanced warships, terraforming vessels, and research stations. You wondered how it got there. But, wary of setting anything off unexpectedly, the scientists assigned to the project had done only the most preliminary work on identifying what was there. They hadn't even tried to breach any of the ships, according to the records.

The entire process had taken little enough time that the guard, Private Jones, you'd followed in was walking through a more shaded area of the courtyard around the main building, where he was heading in order to report to his superior that nothing had been detected. Overriding his basic mental functions, just as you had with Captain Lancer, you **** him harmlessly into unconsciousness.

Unlike Captain Lancer, however, you opened yourself up and stashed his body inside. You couldn't have someone with his appearance be found, not while you made yourself into a flawless doppelganger.

Pretending like you'd tripped and fallen on your way, and acting embarrassed about it, you entered the main headquarters and turned into the guard commander's office.

"Sir!" you said, saluting smartly as you faced your supposed CO. The project was considered so important that even something like patrol guard duty had a flag officer assigned to command it, one Major General Dexter. He returned the salute.

"At ease, Private," he said. "Anything to report?"

"No, Sir," you said, mimicking the unfortunate guard perfectly. "No unusual events, no intruders detected. Standard patrol with no complications, Sir."

"Excellent, Private." You **** down a chuckle as the man pulled out physical dice and rolled them to determine when the Private's next shift would start. "You have seven hours and twenty-three minutes of time off duty, starting from when your patrol ended," he informed you. "Get something to eat and get some rest." He looked down briefly to make a note of the time. You knew a page would shortly be around to take the note to the gate operators. He looked you up and down. "And get that scrape looked at. Can't be losing one of my best guards due to an infected knee."

"Yes, Sir."

"Dismissed, Private."

You came to attention and saluted again, the General returned the courtesy, and you left the small office.

It would, of course, look strange were you to abandon Private Jones immediately. He would come to in an unusual place, not quite knowing how he got there, even if he knew everything the General had told you. That would arouse unnecessary suspicion.

So instead you made your way to the mess hall. Given that seven hours was longer than average for time off-duty, you knew it would be strange not to linger and chat with the other enlisted soldiers for a little while, even with orders to seek medical attention for the scrape the Private had suffered when you made him fall and that you'd faked.

The Private's memories told you that the doctor who should be on duty at this hour had a reputation for being brusque, and it was certainly well-earned. After only a quick examination, she dispensed a topical cream to aid healing and a preventative course of antibiotics, as well as orders regarding an alteration to your mandated diet to deal with side effects of the ****. You were in and out within five minutes.

Jones shared his barracks with three other soldiers, but two were on patrol. When you walked in, only Private Connor was there, and he was just waking up.

"How's the mess?" he asked.

"Same as ever," you said.

"That bad."

You nodded.

"How long until you're back out there?"

You checked your watch. "I think I've got time for six hours of shuteye."

"Lucky SOB. I haven't had that long in a month."

"You also haven't been out there for as long as I have."

"True," Connor said, chuckling.

"Here's to another quiet day," you said. Connor left.

Finally having some privacy, you opened yourself up again and laid the man you'd kidnapped in his bed, sound asleep. He remembered everything you'd done as if he'd done it himself. He was going to wake up at exactly the right time, he would use the medication as ordered and eat the foods he had to. Even so, you couldn't help feeling a little sorry for what you'd done. It was just chance that he'd been the person you hijacked, but it was hardly his responsibility that the higher-ups had decided to put him here. He'd suffer no consequences on account of your actions, you were quite sure, especially now that you were inside the base and had been steadily taking over more and more of its personnel, as fast as your nanite-slime could get to them, but he was still, fundamentally, an innocent victim in what was ultimately your own vanity project.

Vanity project or no, though, it was still important to you, so you shifted back to your usual appearance and turned invisible again. It wasn't quite as necessary as before, now that you had control over both the electronic security systems and most of the personnel on the base, so you could ensure they didn't see you even if they were looking right at you--and besides, if one of the few you'd yet to control came within eyesight of you, it would only be a matter of moments before you could control them and excise the memory, certainly faster than they could raise an alarm, for all the good it would do them--there was still no point in taking even the slightest unnecessary chance.

Doors opened as you neared them, the unusual activity going unrecorded in the logs and unnoticed by guards and other personnel, all of them being subordinated to your consciousness. The doors to the gigantic impromptu hangar holding the fleet--you still had no idea how they got there--were, as the exterior doors had been, primitive, but with your prize so near, with everyone on the base under your firm control, even those stationed within the room, as your nanite-slime could slip through even the slightest seam, you no longer had anything to worry about. You simply wrenched the doors open with the sort of raw brute **** only you could exert, sent everyone within to sleep, and took in your prize.

An entire fleet chock-full of alien technology. All of it at your disposal, just as soon as you could figure out how to integrate it.