Following his battle with Terawatt Null was in critical condition when he received an offer he couldn't refuse. Is the enemy of his enemy his friend, or has he made a deal with the devil?     Nullified! By Amethyst

Was the girl I had been fighting for the past ten minutes completely insane? I just cancelled out her powers and now she was laughing hysterically. “What’s so funny?” I asked, “Did you only just now realize that you’re unarmed?”

The purple haired girl was far too confident for my liking. Sure she had fought me to a standstill so far, but this fight was only just getting started and I didn’t need a gun to kill a person, I could do just as well with my knife or bare hands. She shook her head and laughed again before replying to my question. “No, I was just thinking that you just made the biggest mistake of your life. Illora Fituonë Anphoduse!”

In retrospect, she was one hundred percent right; It had been the biggest mistake of my life, and I would live to regret it more than I could have ever possibly imagined then. I wasn’t sure at the time what she was doing or saying, but I make it a habit to make quick kills of anyone who happens to be chanting and glowing. I threw my knife, aiming right between the little bitch’s eyes as I moved to the side.

She dodged, but that didn’t really surprise me. She was quick and agile, enough so that she had been giving me trouble in our fight, and I was reminded of that by the pain in my left leg. Those lighting blasts of hers had been troublesome and the spot where she had hit me still felt like it was on fire. I had succeeded though, in distracting her enough to make her miss me. Whatever that force blast was went wide and instead of hitting me, it hit the stove.

At the time I was really glad it hadn’t hit me, it probably would have broken most the bones in my body if it had connected. As it was it blew apart the stove and left a big hole in the wall behind it, displaying broken concrete and exposed wires. It was during my brief period of relief at not being turned to mush that I smelled rotten eggs. What was she thinking?! She’d kill us both. “You fool that’s a gas stove! It’s going to blow!” I shouted.

Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion then. I wanted to turn and run, but I made sure to keep my eyes on the girl as I made my way to the door of the condo. If I took my eyes off the little bitch her powers would return and if she gave off one little spark we’d both be blown to smithereens. As soon as she heard me say gas I could see the realization in her eyes, and she turned into what looked like a pixie and made for the broken window. I would have gone after her but I was still hoping to live through this and that was unlikely if I was forced to jump off a twenty-plus story balcony, besides the door was closer. I had made it to the door and I was turning the knob behind my back as my adversary made it to the balcony. That was when the exposed wiring sparked and my life was consumed in the fireball that followed.

I don’t know how much time had passed; time becomes an enemy when your entire world consists of darkness and pain. There was one good thing about the pain though; it let me know that I was still alive, and if I was still alive then I could find a way to make that bitch pay. It was the pain and hate that drove me and imagined scenarios that resulted in her death that filled the darkness. She had stolen everything from me, and I would not allow myself to die until she had suffered as I was. I had heard the doctors talking when I had woken. The scarring from the burns would likely be terrible, I would probably lose my left arm, and maybe a leg as well. Worse yet, the explosion and resulting shrapnel had blinded me, taking away both my sight and my power. Now I was a mutilated freak; robbed of everything I had; sight, limbs, power, good looks, and worst of all, my destiny.

Everyone has a destiny, especially Hypers. I had realized that from the moment Gaia had activated my powers. Gaia’s destiny was to enable people like me to fulfill our destinies. She tried to convince me we were Gods and that we should rule humans, but ruling over the weak had no appeal for me, the weak are nothing to me, there’s nothing there to crush. My destiny was to end the destinies of the powerful; taking away their strength, and killing the un-killable. And then that little bitch took it all away.

I was trying to decide how to make her suffer the most; she didn’t seem the type to be concerned for herself. She was the hero type, the kind that can’t bear to see the suffering of others. She probably could have killed me before the gas if she didn’t have a conscience. The fact that she had been working with that overgrown Boy Scout Paragon seemed to support this. That was her weakness. If I wanted to truly make her suffer I would have to make her watch others suffer, preferably those closest to her. Then once I had destroyed everything and everyone she held dear I would kill her slowly and savor every tear and every scream.

I hadn’t heard anyone come in, but a voice interrupted my musings, it was an unfamiliar male voice, reedy and nasally and he sounded like one of the nerds I used to beat up in high school as he said, “It seems that we have a common enemy. I would like to join forces.”

He wasn’t one of the doctors or a cop then. “I don’t… work for free, and you… couldn’t… afford me,” I managed to reply through the pain. My voice was raspy and strained… weak.

“You wouldn’t be much use to me as you are anyway, so I propose a deal: If you agree to work for me, I will use the technology that I have available to give you a new body, one that will be a match for that Fae girl.”

Was he a Tinker? Was he talking about cybernetics or something? He wasn’t telling me everything so I asked, “What’s… the catch?”

“I can’t be certain how much of the technology I have still works properly,” he admitted. “The maintenance bots have kept most of it in good shape, but it has been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for quite some time. That is why I need a volunteer.”

I had accepted the offer of the man who I now knew called himself interface. What choice did I have really, if I wanted to get my revenge on that purple-haired freak? There was a strange feeling of warmth before the sterile smell of the hospital room was replaced with a similarly sterile, but somewhat stale smell. The surface I was on had changed as well, the hospital bed had been uncomfortable, but now it felt like I was lying on a metal slab. “Welcome to Atlantis,” Interface said, “you can’t see it now, but I assure you it’s very impressive.”

Then the moron took advantage of the fact that I couldn’t move to drone on and on about the ship we were on. “Unlike the legends say, Atlantis wasn’t a city; it was a starship belonging to an ancient space-faring people called the Lemurians who came to Earth around six thousand years ago. They were a highly advanced race and possessed advanced robotics, cybernetics, weaponry, matter transport systems, and genetic manipulation techniques. They even had developed some sort of brain implants that allowed them to control their technology directly with mental commands. Ships, robots, weapons, all of them were controlled this way.”

“If they… were all controlled… through these implants, how is it… that you have… access to them?” I asked. I wanted him to shut up and do what he promised so I could be done with all the pain I was in, but knowledge is power and trust is for the weak. I thought that I might have a use for that technology if I could dispose of him later.

“I’m a Hyper like you,” he replied with an indignant snort. “We can thank the Lemurians for that, but I’ll get into that later. My powers activated when one of the robots from this ship tried to kill me. I’m a technopath. I can control Lemurian technology without the use of an implant. I can also absorb and understand data from their technology, including the ships archives, which is how I learned about them and why they were here.” I didn’t even need to ask about that, the fool seemed to love to hear himself talk, and I was a captive audience. “The Lemurians came to Earth using the three ships; the Lemuria, the Mu, and the Atlantis, to research the local residents. Specifically they were looking for slaves, and they had some moral issues for using their own people in that way.”

“Why?” I asked simply. I was in too much pain now to say much more than that. If they had all that tech at their mental beck and call, why did they need slaves? If it was just for menial work then robots would have surely been able to do that.

He seemed to understand what I was asking because he replied, “It’s pretty simple actually. You see, they discovered what I have recently discovered. Robots need standing orders or direct commands, and they will keep attempting to fulfill those orders in the most direct way possible until those orders are completed, changed or they are destroyed. If conditions change they lack the ability to act on their own initiative to achieve an objective. They can’t analyze situations, prioritize, or think creatively near as well as people do. Unless the Lemurians wanted to be constantly overseeing things themselves, they needed someone who had those qualities to do it. There are other reasons as well, such as physical pleasure or as a display of one’s social standing.”

Interface decided to give me the whole story right then and there. Couldn’t the stupid nerd wait until after he had me fixed up? In their search for sentient people to use as slaves they came to Earth and were fortunate enough to come across two species. Humans were only just barely starting to use written languages then so they were considered smart enough, but not too smart. They also were fairly adaptable and bred quickly. The Fae though already had a thriving culture, some could change forms to suit various environments, and they were as long-lived as the Lemurians themselves, so they decided to try using them first.

The Fae came with a huge downside though; Many had powerful magic and they all had innate abilities that proved troublesome. They were also mischievous, had breeding problems, didn’t take well to being hunted down and treated like livestock, and held a grudge like nothing the Lemurians had ever seen before. It didn’t take them long to realize that keeping Fae as slaves on their own home world would only be asking for trouble, so they turned their attention to humans, sort of.

In studying the Fae, Lemurian geneticists thought that they had isolated a chromosome that was responsible for their near immortality and innate abilities. They were hoping to have the best of both worlds, long lived slaves who could breed easily and adapt to any environment. They used Changeling DNA to create a modified version of that chromosome and artificially added it to the DNA of humans they had captured from various areas and planned to breed. The results were not what they hoped for. For one thing none of the resultant children ended up showing any sign of an extended lifespan. Secondly, the chromosomes didn’t activate at all in some of the children, and of those who did activate during puberty the results were unpredictable. Some took on strange forms, while others gained dangerous powers, sometimes both. In the end those children had managed to escape using those powers and the Lemurians lost track of them.

It was after that failure that the geneticists managed to discover where they had made their mistake. Humans activated during stress, not because it was in their nature to do so, and they hadn’t coded the chromosome to give specific results. They had also discovered a way to neutralize the more dangerous abilities of the Fae’s genetic make-up and fix the sterility issue many of the Fae faced. They created a group of Fae hybrid clones that suited their needs perfectly: Long-lived, able to reproduce at a geometric rate, and without troublesome magic or magical abilities. The only problem was that they had used growth acceleration on the first batch and the adult clones had no life experience or knowledge, they were just empty shells.

By this time the research colony had been fighting bitterly with the Fae for nearly a hundred years, and it was taking its toll on both sides. It was decided that the Lemurians would leave with the fruits of their labor and their few remaining human specimens, whose minds they would transfer to the bodies of their prototype slaves. The Atlantis’ main engines though, had been damaged beyond repair by one of their research subjects who had escaped. So when the Lemurians decided to return home with their new slaves and research still somewhat intact, they had towed the ship to somewhere they hoped the local residents wouldn’t find it. Since then it had remained there at the bottom of the ocean, with instructions to destroy any humans or Fae that came too close.

Interface had been an aspiring treasure hunter with a love of antiques two years ago, and he had been searching for sunken treasure off the coast of Florida when a storm hit. His boat had been knocked off course and drifted into the Bermuda Triangle. Although the starship had been left behind thousands of years ago the maintenance drones had been keeping it in good repair and the defense systems were still activated. The cloaking device causes an electromagnetic disturbance around the Atlantis and it had interfered with several of the boat’s electronics, including the navigation system. Then the weapon systems activated and destroyed his boat forcing him to abandon ship. When a scout robot came to confirm that the boat’s occupant was destroyed along with it. Interface’s powers activated as a result of that encounter and he discovered a treasure greater than he had ever imagined.

He had moved his collection to the ship and lived there now, using his technology to steal antiques and unique items. A week ago the ships sensors had picked up a temporal anomaly on the planet. The Lemurians had had an interest in time travel, but they never really got anywhere with it. The nerd just had to check it out, hoping that he would find some time travel device or something. Instead he found the purple haired girl with some other kids. He wanted to add her to his collection, probably because elves gave him a hard-on or something, so he ended up fighting them and lost. He lost to a bunch of kids, what a wuss.

The temporal signal had been weakening since it had appeared so he had tried again not long before my fight with her. The idiot lost again, but at least this time he had instructed a small scout probe to follow her from a discreet distance in case she got away. It seemed that Paragon had discovered that probe while she was fighting me though and destroyed it. That was when the temporal signal vanished as well, so he figured that the girl who called herself Terawatt was the source and had either vanished after our battle or merged with our timeline. He thought it was the latter and I had to as well, because as long as she was still here I could kill her.

Finally after giving me his entire fucking life story, in what he assured me was a fully equipped medical bay, Interface had the medical drone sedate me and begin the procedure which would make me powerful again. He also assured me that my new body would be able to keep up physically with the Fae bitch and that the Atlantis’ matter generator would give me access to weapons, exo-suits, robots, or anything else I might need to defeat her. I fell asleep to thoughts of killing her slowly.

When my awareness returned, the first thing I noticed was that the stale sterile smell was much stronger than before, I could hear machines in the background too, and it was so clear. Before I went to sleep it was like I could hear them but they were too faint to discern what they were, I could even hear the hum of what I thought might be electricity. My sense of touch seemed to be in overdrive as well; I was in a bed now, though it wasn’t very comfortable, and I could feel the fibers in the sheets. The second thing I noticed took my attention away from my unnaturally keen senses though, I felt some sort of weight on my chest, a weight that was jiggling whenever I shifted my weight.

I sat straight up and out of habit opened my eyes to look down at whatever was causing the sensation. That proved to be a mistake. The first thing that I saw in the crystal clarity my new enhanced vision was a pair of cream colored breasts with pink nipples, and they were connected to me. I thought at first that I must have been imagining it so I brushed a long slender finger one of the nipples experimentally. The action informed me of two very important things: One, they were definitely real and connected to me, and two, they were extremely sensitive. I actually arched my back and my eyes rolled back in my head from the pleasure of the sensation.

“Those might be a little sensitive,” Interface’s voice said from across the room. “The archives say that was one of the models slated for pleasure and breeding.”

I looked past the bed I was in and the machines around it toward the sound of the voice. Once I had brushed aside the long black hair that had gotten in my eyes, I saw a skinny ginger haired man who looked to be in his late twenties, dressed casually in khakis and a black t-shirt that said, “There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who don’t.” Just like I thought, he was a nerd, six foot nothing with no physique to speak of. I could take him easily, if I had to but it would be easier if he couldn’t call out to his machines for help. I focused my ‘look’ on him trying to find the source of his power and cancel it out, but nothing happened, I couldn’t even sense his powers.

“What the fuck did you do to me!?!” I yelled, but it came out as more of a shriek.

“I gave you a new body as I promised,” he answered, still leaning casually against the wall. “Yours had seen a bit of mileage. Sadly whatever powers you may have had are gone, those were genetic and lost when I had your old body destroyed. If you want specifics I had the medical drone place you in a machine that the Lemurians used to use to move on to new younger bodies when they started getting old. It transferred your consciousness, and all the data contained in your brain, to the body you’re in now.”

Shit. I had been thinking he was going to use cybernetics or something, or that I would I would still have a way to use my powers, but that didn’t look likely. If this was a different body then my own and it had tits then that meant… I reached down between my legs and found, instead of the equipment I was used to, a moist slit. Why the fuck am I chick, you pencil-necked piece of shit?!”

Interface looked annoyed with me, not that I gave a crap. “Do you think unoccupied bodies just grow on trees? If I hadn’t done that you’d be dead by now, the medical drone gave you less than a two percent chance of surviving the night in your old body. The facilities to create clones and accelerate the aging of them were on one of the other two ships, the Atlantis was a supply ship. It was mostly brought for storage of important cargo and the matter generator it contains. I had to use one of the three prototype slave bodies that the Lemurians left behind in stasis, probably in case they decided to come back to retrieve this ship and its contents.”

“You put me in one of the slave bodies?! Weren’t there any male ones?” I snapped.

“There was one, but this one is so much better looking. If you’re going to be staying here and working for me I would much rather have a bit of eye candy around,” he told me with a faint smile and a shrug. You won’t always be out collecting things for me, and I’m sure I can think of something to do with you during those quiet times.” He laughed and leered at me as he said the last.

“You son of a bitch!” I screamed as I launched myself out of the bed and across the room to grab him by the throat. Weak girl body or not I was going to kill him.

He just regarded me calmly as my hands squeezed around his neck. -= Let go and don’t move, except to drop your hands to your sides. =- I heard his voice, but his lips weren’t moving. What surprised me even more than that though was the fact that my hands had indeed released their grip and dropped to my sides.

“What the…” I began to say as I stared at him in confusion.

“That was the override feature,” he told me with a smug expression. “It’s a cybernetic command receiver, like they use in their robots and other technology, and it’s hooked directly into your nervous system. If I give you a direct order through that it bypasses your brain and your body acts out the order, whether you want it to or not. It also prevents you from disobeying any standing orders I happen to give you.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment before I heard his voice in my mind again. -= The following orders are permanent. You will never attempt to kill or harm me again. You will never attempt to kill the Fae girl either; only capture her when I command it. You will never attempt to harm or damage your new body in any way or damage anything contained in this ship. You will not attempt to run away or hide from me at any time or leave the Atlantis without my knowledge. You will also never use any of the robots or other equipment available to you to try to do any of those things. =-

How dare he treat me like some sort of slave! I may not have been able to move, but I could still yell. “I am Null you fucking geek! You can’t do this to me! It’s my destiny to kill wannabe gods like you!”

He smiled at me like a cat that just ate a canary and had a second one in his sights. He had put me in my place, but he wasn’t satisfied yet. He wanted to make sure I knew that he was in charge. “That might have been Null’s destiny, but he’s dead, your mind is all that remains of him. You’re Upgrade now; you were created to serve the master of this ship. I will decide your destiny from now on.”

He still felt the need to convince me, and probably himself as well, that he was in charge. -= There are some clothes and a mirror on the table beside your bed, take a good look at your new self and then get dressed while I tell you about the other features that have been added to your new body. =-

He began telling me then about all the added features of my new body, like he was selling me a car or something: I had the inherent physical abilities of the Fae and while I couldn’t use magic and had no magical abilities like they did, I had a number of cybernetic devices implanted inside me. There was the command receiver, an implant what would allow me to control whatever weapons and gear that Interface keyed for my use, and a retrieval beacon for the matter transfer system to lock onto if I needed a quick getaway. There was also a data recording device in my head that would record and store as data everything I saw and experienced. I assumed that Interface had a way to access that data, since it would be useless collecting it otherwise.

As I quietly listened to him explain all these things ( I didn’t really have much choice in the matter after he ordered me to keep my mouth shut) my body moved of its own volition, carrying out the commands he had given me. Getting ‘a good look’ at myself with only a hand mirror was difficult, but I saw enough to hate what I was seeing. I looked to be in my early twenties, but I knew from the myths that Fae don’t really age like we do. My face was framed by long black hair, and it looked like an elf’s, right down to the long pointy ears. High and thin arched eyebrows, high cheekbones, dark brown eyes with slit pupils, and porcelain skin over classically pretty features made me appear attractive in a far more feminine way than I was comfortable with.

I looked like a weak girl and it riled me. I was eye candy, just like he had said. Even my body looked weak with its tall willowy frame. There wasn’t an ounce of muscle on me, I was pale, and I looked to be in desperate need of a sandwich. The only not-terrible thing was that my breasts were fairly small. I wasn’t going to complain about that, at least I didn’t look like some big titted comic-book reject like the bitch who had put me in this situation.

I was going to kill her somehow; I was going to kill both of them. I fumed over that as I put on the clothes that were on the table, a nerd t-shirt, sweatpants and sneakers that didn’t fit too badly. The moment I was dressed Interface apologized about the clothes, promising/threatening that he would take me shopping for some clothes of my own soon. Then he took me for a guided tour of the Atlantis. Actually he just ordered me to follow him and pointed out everything as we walked and I suffered in silence.

-= You may speak and move freely again. =- The ‘command’ was issued as we entered a large storage room filled with ancient weapons, suits of armor, statues, oriental rugs, paintings, an antique four poster bed, an equally old looking armoire, various other antiques, and some strange objects I had never seen before. I still couldn’t strangle the life out of him like I really wanted to, (I tried, but my body just wouldn’t let me do it.) but at least I didn’t feel like a fucking remote controlled robot. Interface chose that time to tell me, “This is my display room; I keep all of my collectibles in here. You will be staying here as well, and you can use the bed and armoire. I will assign two service bots to you and they will provide anything you might need. We will need to get you clothes, bedding, and other necessities soon though. You’ll need a name you can use in public for that, I can’t call you Upgrade if we’re shopping or eating out.”

“As if I would want to be seen in public looking like this, let alone with you, besides you’re just going to name me whatever the hell you want anyway.” I wasn’t going to play his game.

“Fine then,” he pouted, “whenever we’re not working I’m calling you Nell.” He stressed the name as the pout returned to a smile.

“Fuck you,” I said, giving him the finger for good measure as I plopped down on the bed and glowered at him.

It didn’t seem to bother him. He just shrugged it off as he retorted, “You seem stressed. We’ll go shopping tomorrow, that should help. Maybe we can make a day of it and take you to the salon to get your hair and nails done too. I’ve never seen the appeal of those activities myself, but you girls seem to enjoy them.”

I wanted to throw something at him, preferably one of the plethora of pointy weapons in the room, but the standing orders wouldn’t let me, so I could only glare at him and fume. I had never felt so powerless before, so completely at the mercy of someone else. I had never felt so weak. Was this what my life would be like from now on? The thought made me sick, worse yet it made me feel like crying. I didn’t cry, but I think Interface realized just how much he had gotten to me as I laid on my side and said, “Leave me the fuck alone.”

“If you insist,” he replied with a smug grin. “I’ll give you some time alone to think about your situation. It’s going to take me some time to find the Fae girl again without the temporal signal anyway. In the meantime, please make yourself at home; after all, you are part of the collection.” Then he turned and walked out the door, leaving me alone with all his other possessions.