Kingfisher Chronicles- Chapter One.

OK, this is a little something I posted on my other soc-net site I'm on. I'm putting it on here for added content and for feed back. Hope ya like and maybe I'll put more on.

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In the year 2098 there was a small nuclear exchange between two warring countries. This exchange ended the lives of millions on each side of the warring countries, but the consequences of this went beyond these two nations. In fact it held consequences for not only the world, but the surrounding multi-verse.

The ensuing flood of life energies that was unleashed from this incident acted like a lit match being thrown into a tank of gasoline, only the tank was the world’s magical grid. As the pathways for magic energy (also known as ley-lines) roared back to life, they caused cataclysmic events around the world. These events caused millions of deaths, and the life energy freed from the deaths of these millions added to the flows of magic and caused more disasters, killing even more people. Soon the runaway reaction that was the reawakening of magic was shaking the multi-verse that was connected to the planet. This was the Apocalypse!

Those that survived the initial convulsions of their world being reshaped, banded together to survive as hordes of demons and alien refugees came to their world through tears in time, space and even reality. The reawakening of the ley-lines, as well as magic, in the world wrought their own changes. Three hundred years later the survivors have clawed their way back from the Abyss. Using what technologies they could find from the ruins of the past, as well as using magic and other new resources, human civilization is slowly but surely reclaiming its hold on the world.

* * *

Darkness and solitude, these were her constant companions for as long as she could remember. Occasionally she would awaken for a short time and look out at the world outside of the spherical, fluid filled womb that was her world. Many of her memories of these times were hazy and brief. Others outside her world that would monitor her, or work on the various machines in the room. Then there was the time she was awoken by her world shaking, even if it was only slightly. The men in the white coats moved around frantically and there was much commotion.

She only woke up twice after that. The first time the room outside was dark, except for some dim red lights. No scientists went about their work. She was alone, save for the quiet voice that accompanied her every time she awoke. A voice that told her to sleep, and which lulled her back into her slumber. It was this voice that woke her this second time. Slowly, she came back to wakefulness, opening her eyes she saw the same dark lab.

It was different this time though. The fog that clouded her senses was gone. She started to look around and move. That's when the voice spoke to her again.

"Stay calm. I am starting the sequence that will allow you to leave your incubation chamber."

She had no time to wonder at the voice's meaning before the fluid she was suspended in began to drain out. Once the fluid drained half way out of the incubation chamber, the respirator that was attached to her was dislodged. At this she panicked a bit as she'd never had to breathe on her own before. No sooner then she started to breathe, the wall of the chamber just below her opened up, and she was flushed out of the bottom along with the rest of the fluid. The light impact with the floor and the cold air caused her to gasp, taking in her first burning breath.

After a coughing for several seconds, she began to pick herself up. As she looked around she saw the world outside her incubation chamber with an entirely new clarity, although she couldn't make out fine details she could still see where everything in the lab was.

"Sorry about the rough landing, though the important thing is that you're here and active now." said the voice from before, causing her to spin around in surprise. Standing before her was a hologram of a small boy composed of red light.

"Wh…Who am I?" she said, her voice somewhat faulty from having just now been used. "What is this place?" she adds more forcefully.

The hologram looks up at her briefly. "You are a product of a line of human enhancement experiments. I am afraid the scientists that created you never gave you a name. As for where we are, suffice it to say that we are in an underground lab in western South Dakota." the hologram looked over the slightly shivering girl.

"We should start moving. There are things that we must do, and our window of opportunity is limited. Besides, even if you are an enhanced human, it still isn't good for you to be in the air while naked and damp." the hologram seemed to smirk slightly as the girl looked down at herself.

"On the other side of this room is another one of the projects this lab was working on. It should do to keep you covered, and will assist you in other ways as well. There is also a headset that will keep me in contact with you. I suggest you hurry as we don't have much time." After saying this, the hologram disappeared.

"OK, that didn't help much." the girl said to thin air before she started walking over to the other side of the lab.

On a table there sat a black bodysuit with a pair of silver wrist braces and a headset that would fit onto one ear, as she slipped into the bodysuit, it formed itself to fit her body so it wouldn't restrict her movement, but would still be comfortable as well. When she clasped the braces onto her wrists the suit reacted with tingling electricity that went through her body. While it only lasted all of several milliseconds, it was still an unusual sensation. Then she took the headset and the electricity returned into her fingers and a grid of light played over it before it disappeared, then reappeared in place on her ear with an additional lens over her left eye.

"I see you found the suit, I trust you have seen how it functions by now." the hologram's voice spoke from the earpiece. "Very good, now that you're ready we will begin our way towards the mainframe on the next level of the building. That is where our main goal is."

"OK, I'll do this." the girl sighs as she says so. "Though I'd like to know who you are and what you're getting out of this."

"I suppose that is a fair question, I am an Artificial Intelligence program named Halcyon-3, though if you must you can call me Hal. What I am getting out of this is of benefit to both of us. I need you to download my programming into the computer system of the suit you now wear." Hal replies. "I would tell you more, but the more time we stand here talking the lower the chances of this being done successfully. I do not know about you, but I have no wish to stay here in the ruins of this lab forever."

"Alright then. I suppose we should do this. Guide me to your mainframe then Hal." then she headed through the door that led out of the lab.

As she began to look around the hallway she just stepped into, the lens on her head piece came to life showing a HUD display, digital mapping and metric dimensional measurements of her surroundings. The sensor lens tracked this information in time with her looking around her surroundings. Needless to say she was impressed.

"Some interesting features for just a communicator Hal." she said quietly, mostly to herself. "I wonder if this is something to do with what happened when I picked it up. Hmmm..." she mused as she began.

"I am not completely certain about what happened to the communicator. It would appear the suit has modified it so that it would be more useful to you." Hal's voice said to her through the earbud. "Although, given the nature of the suit you are wearing, I suppose one must learn to expect many unusual things." Hal continued. "In 10 meters you will come to an obstruction, while you will not be able to move it in your current condition I do believe it will give the both of us ample opportunity to go over some of your physical capabilities."

As Hal was telling her this she came upon a section of the hallway that was blocked off by several fallen beams, girders and ducts from the level above. The eyepiece she wore began to plot the easiest course to get through the debris. The more she saw of this, the more she began to think it was defective.

"OK, just how in the Hell am I supposed to do all that?" she asked Hal, slightly annoyed.

"As I explained to you before, you were created as a human enhancement experiment. The project that created you was rather unique, this is in actuality a fairly simple task for you. You just need to realize your capabilities." Hal said, becoming more matter of fact as he spoke. The girl looked over what the eye lens was showing her again and sighed.

"OK, I'll do what you say for now, though if I fall and spill my brains onto the floor you'll just have to find another 'super chick' to help you get out of here.” she said, her tone a mixture or sarcastic and catty. She then took a couple steps back, and half ran toward the nearest of the hanging beams. As if on instinct she leapt upward after three steps and caught it, after she pulled herself up she looked around and chuckled.

"OK, guess this won't be so hard." she said quietly to herself and jumped over to the next part of her 'walkway'. From there she jumped to a similar beam that was a good twenty feet away, and performed a vaulting back-flip onto a section of concrete. When she felt it start to crumble she began leaping from place to place in earnest. She was surprised when she scraped against a broken off rod, but found she flayed herself open. Although at that moment she was more worried about getting past all this wreckage before it collapsed. She could even hear more of it starting to fall below her.

Then she bounced off of one last beam and found herself on the subfloor for the level above where she was. As she looked down she saw the last of the wreckage that was under her collapse. As she watched this, Hal's words about her origins rang in her head for a moment. Then she began the climb to where her NAV unit told her was the level she needed to be. As she reached the actual floor she stopped a moment and checked herself where she figured she was wounded, and was even more surprised about it when she found that not only was her suit undamaged, but she was pretty much uninjured aside from a scratch and an accompanying sting from it that was now fast fading.

"Just what in the hell am I?" she thought to herself, and then shook her head to clear it. "No time for that now, I need to get moving." She got to her feet and looked around, letting her NAV unit take it's readings. "OK Hal, which way from here?" she asked softly, and then a red arrow began to blink on the HUD display. "O..kay? Follow the arrows now huh?" she said as she began to do just that, wondering why Hal had become so quiet.

As she followed the hallways her NAV unit led her down the lights began to gradually brighten some, with the red arrow eventually giving way to a dot to show she was approaching the location. The hall she was traveling down was the only one lit by flood lights aside from the lab she was in. When she reached the destination indicated on her HUD she saw before her a large set of doors with the word Halcyon-3 Mainframe on them. After a minute she became impatient when nothing happened.

"OK, I'm here now Hal. Are you going to open the doors so we can do this?" she asked. In response the doors began to open, but stopped when they opened to half of what would be needed for her to squeeze through. She lets out an exasperated sigh. "OK, stop messing around! You're the one that wanted me here Hal!" she said loudly.

"I would open them further, but most of my power is going toward preparing for the transference. To get in you must open the doors the rest of the way under your own power." Hal answered, sounding as close to tired as a computer could probably get.

"Why does that figure." she grumbled as she went to the doors and put her hands in. Then she began to pull them open, and with a good bit of straining she managed to get them open to arms length. Then she walked inside, looking none too happy. "OK, I'm in. What now Hal?" she asks.

"On the table to your right are a few items. If I am correct your suit will incorporate them into itself. Before we begin I would like you to allow it to do so." Hal answers.

When she looks onto the table she finds a small laptop, a datajack for linking to other computers and a suit of light armor that covers the shoulders, torso, thighs and forearms. When she handled each of these items the suit created the same grid of light over them as it did earlier with the communicator, then the item disappears. Although with the armor she is only able to assimilate each piece separately. When she's finished, the body suit has the same basic configuration accept it now appears to be thicker in the places where the armor would go and the braces are now full bracers that go from her wrists to the middle of her forearms and look heavier.

"Can you hear me?" Hal asks her. "These upgrades should be more helpful in aiding you once we get outside the lab."

"Yeah, I can." she says. "So, is there anything else you want me to do before we get on with this?" her irritation forgotten as she wonders about the things this suit can do.

"No, just think about the data jack you assimilated. When it appears, insert it into the USB port you see in the computer bank in front of you." Hal replies. She does so and out of her left bracer comes a silver data jack. She pulls it out and plugs it into the port mentioned by Hal.

"OK, it's done whenever you're ready to get started." she says. She gets no reply, though several lights on the computer begin blinking on and off rapidly, then the computer and her bracers begin to hum. For some reason she starts getting an uneasy feeling. That's when electricity starts sparking from the computer and up the data jack that connects her suit to it.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh Shit!" she says as she tries to do something, but just as she moves a large amount of electricity courses through her. The last thing she sees before her world goes white is the assimilation grid playing over the computer.

* * *

In another part of the lab a containment pod goes offline as its power supply is cut off. After several seconds the subject it is containing starts beating on the pod from the inside and after several strikes the seals on the pod burst, causing pressurized gas to shoot out in streams. Several seconds go by as the sealant gases drain out and leave a light mist in the lab, then a loud clang is heard and the hatch to the pod goes flying off and across the room, imbedding itself in the wall.

A pair of glowing red eyes looks out into the mist surrounding it's pod and a humanoid shaped silhouette can be seen stepping out into the mist. After looking about for a second or two it disappears in a blur of motion, a trail cut through the mist by the air it's sudden motion displaces. A few bumps of something moving through the ventilation ducts is all that is heard before the creature disappears completely from the scene.

* * *

She was looking in a mirror, taking in a face that she knew was hers, though she didn't remember seeing before. Shoulder length black hair framed a pale somewhat angular face with high cheekbones, a nose with somewhat wide nostrils and a slightly raised bridge and thin lips that set in a slight frown. This face was crowned by a pair of stormy blue-grey eyes which were slightly upturned, with thin arching eyebrows. As she looked into those eyes, she started to see a series of scenes go by.

There was what seemed to be the memory of her going through military and espionage training. Several missions played before her eyes in rapid succession followed by a flood of other memories that came to her too fast to be able to pick up more than a quick impression of. When the whole torrent stopped she was once again looking at herself in the mirror once again, this time as she looked a thought began to come to her. It formed into something about her, and after a second of working on it in her mind she realized it was a name, her name. Then the actual words flowed from her mind to her lips.

"Sara Kingfisher" she spoke aloud to the reflection that looked back at her in the mirror.

Then Sara opened her eyes again and saw she was lying on her back in a dark room. She felt like she'd been hit by a truck. As she sat up Sara looked around the room she was in, there was a large mainframe computer that looked as if some of it's components were missing as well as signs of damage from electrical malfunction. She thought briefly on how she knew this just by glancing over it, but filed it away for later scrutiny.

As she looked further she saw a wire connected into a USB port in the mainframe, which lead over to a silver bracer she wore on her left forearm. Then she remembered why she was here, though why she was naked except for these bracers still eluded her. As she thought about this, the suit reappeared along with the Nav unit and armor it created earlier. There were now a set of thin silver strips running along her arms that held a circuitry pattern.

"OK, what the hell happened here? Hal, are you there still?" Sara said as she went over to the computer and unplugged the datajack

"Yes, the transferral was complete. Though it would seem some of the data was transferred directly into your neural pathways. What do you remember?" Hal's voice said through the earpiece of her NAV unit.

"Not alot. I remember everything from when you woke me up to when I came here. Then something must have shorted out and I was dreaming. Most of this was memories of me, or at least someone that looked like me. The name Sara Kingfisher came up, like it was supposed to be my name. You know anything about her Hal?" Sara replied.

"I am unsure of why there was a short, though it could explain why that information was transferred to you. Are there any other effects of that you may have noticed? As for Sara Kingfisher, she was one of the operatives that was created from the line of experiments that created you." Hal stated.

"So, you mean me and this Sara person are the same person?" Sara asked incredulously as she started surveying the room. She went out into the hall after and started navigating as if she knew exactly where she was going without needing the NAV unit.

"Not precisely," Hal replied as she started walking. "While you were cloned from her DNA, you were given some early "enhancements" that the original Sara Kingfisher did not receive. The origin of these enhancements were related to those of the suit you wear now and the components of the mainframe that were assimilated into the suit." Hal paused to let her take this in.

"I see... So what are the origins of this suit then?" Sara asked as she turned down a corridor. She stopped at one of the doors and started to enter a key code combination to gain entry. As she started doing so, the information on how the security system for the door, as well as how it operates and it's current condition came to her mind. She didn't seem to notice the faint glow coming from the circuit strips on her suit.

"Sara? Can you hear me?" Hal's voice interrupted the stream of technical data that was passing before her mind's eye, causing the glow to stop.

"I'm sorry, what were you saying Hal?" she replied as she shook her head clear.

"I was saying that the suit you now wear is extraterrestrial in origin, as were the items related to it that were incorporated into you and my old mainframe. Are you sure you are alright?" Hal said, a modicum of what could almost be concern tinting his voice.

"Yeah... I'm pretty sure I am. Though it may take some time to get used to handling machines." Sara said, her voice somewhat low. "It's like I can read them. How they work, their layout, even their current operating status. It's... well, it's strange to be honest.", as she said this Sara found a steel bar in the hallway and brought it back to the door.

"Interesting, it seems you have inherited the same abilities as your predecessor." Hal replied. "I wonder how your enhancement will affect this. Though before that, I must ask why are you trying to get into the supply room?"

"I noticed my suit disappeared, and I think I know how to make it do so again. If I'm right I'd like to have some clothes to wear when it's not there. I'm thinking some weapons and equipment would also be good to have.", Sara answered as she wedged the bar into the door jam, driving it in and starting to pry it open. She managed to get enough of an opening that she could get a grip on the door and force it the rest of the way open.

Inside the room there were several racks with various firearms, as well as ammunition, as well as E-clips for the energy weapons. First though, she went into another part of the room and found spare clothing for the security troops and operatives that used to be stationed here. She collected a pair of black cargo BDU's, combat boots, a black tank top and a black button down uniform shirt. Then she looked down at the armored body suit that she was currently wearing.

"OK, if I'm right about my hunch this suit will go somewhere if I want it to. You have anything you want to add to that Hal?" Sara asked her onboard AI companion.

"It would seem to be worth a try. I am unsure of many of this suit's capabilities I fear." Hal answered.

"It's alright Hal, it seems we're both going to be learning about this then." Sara said before she visualized in her mind's eye the suit becoming just the braces as it had while she was unconscious.

When it disappeared Sara took a look at herself in a mirror. Her face was the same face she saw in the memories from when she was unconscious. She looked over the rest of her body and saw lean, toned and well defined muscle. Her figure was still feminine, but it was also filled out. After looking at herself a moment longer she dressed, then started to gather other supplies.

She took a vibro knife that she strapped to her thigh, an ion pistol she carried in a shoulder holster and a JA-17 laser rifle as well as several e-clips for each and several dozen normal rounds for the rifle as well. She found a backpack to put that in, as well as some food a canteen and other supplies and a spare survival knife.

When she was ready, she set down the backpack and the rifle, she then called back her bodysuit. When it appeared it did so, though the knife and pistol stayed in place, though the holster, sheath and harnessing changed to blend in to the suit. The pocket where she kept the rifle rounds became a series of clip like ammo dispensers. On the other leg were several holding compartments that held her spare E-clips.

"OK, I'm really starting to like this suit.", Sara chuckled as she said this. "OK Hal, I'm ready. I think we should get out of here now. I have what I need for the moment." she finished before switching to her normal clothes and noticing the modifications the suit had made stayed with her. She shook her head and smiled as she chuckled slightly, then changed back into the suit once more then headed out of the room to begin navigating her way out of the lab.

End Chapter 1