"....SAY....MY....NAME!!!" The song blared at the highest volume available from the speakers in the room.
To be honest, it was one of his favorite songs as of late, but the fact that he was hearing it every morning...
"Uughh.... stupid cool ass song... Why must you still be a banger even though you wake me up..." Alexanders grumbled as he clapped his hands and the alarm stopped blaring his favorite song.
It was barely past eight in the morning, honestly, it was too early to be up, but good health habits and whatnot. Sapphire had started to bother him even more about living a healthy life after she had the test drive in the body.
They had advanced some more on that research, but it was still preliminary, neither him or Sapphire wanted to test it unless they could guarantee that Sapphire would be safe.
Even after the scare, Sapphire didn't want to leave a backup, and Alexanders would respect that. He would not like to wake up only to find another version of himself there. And he had seen the old man Alexanders thanks to the scrambler.
That was annoying enough as it was.
"Sapphire?" Alexanders said while yawning, "Any funny news?"
There was... suprisingly not much noise from the purple haired woman. Alexanders feared for his life in these moments, the apartment wasn't as cold and empty as before since the ash event. He hadn't really ever thought about it.
For Alexanders every morning was the same, wake up, check up on what was scheduled for the day, work a few hours. Dive into the web to mess with his friends on theory-crafting forums about the niche series he was invested in.
Perhaps bother one of the streamers that was setting up a new theory about the actual range of the Saintsworths Conglomerate. Eat in the afternoon, work a few hours more. Play around in his favorite MMORPG, perhaps stream a few hours to his three favorite viewers (He was not advertising his actual identity, so getting views was hard).
Nowadays? His morning consisted on waking up with the hologram of Sapphire in different states of undressing. The first time he had almost a heart attack thinking he had done the deed without thinking in a drunk state.
It didn't matter that he himself despised alcohol.
The image of the purple haired woman half naked on his bed was that surprising. He spent all day ignoring Sapphire, worth it.
Even though he couldn't interact with Sapphire physically, even though they could only talk, it was good. And the purple-haired woman did know how to speak and was quite good at keeping him centered and grounded.
His haters would have an aneurysm at Alexanders saying that he was centered and grounded.
But today? Today Sapphire hadn't made a show of face, even though he had woken up, even though he had changed into a casual outfit and taken out his pajamas.
The woman hadn't peeked, or showed her face while blushing at his figure. Instead what he found was an eerily calm and silent ambient.
"Sapphire?" Alexanders said as he walked into the living room, "CARDINAL, did something happen?"
Alexanders decided to call upon the secondary AI, the one that Sapphire was using more often than not as a messenger and assistant.
"[Lady Sapphire is currently making sure, please await a second. She has been pinged.]" The answer came in the way of that text message on the main monitor of the living room.
Alexanders nodded and sat in the sofa while one of the drones brought him his breakfast.
"Scrambled eggs and bacon... we are feeling patriotic today, huh..." Alexanders said with a smirk as he pointed to the monitor and fueled some electricity into the monitor, he was practicing one of the skills he gleamed from the old man Alexanders.
The one that allowed him interface with technology, this was... not the normal way his power should be used, but old man Alexanders could do this and more...
And even him had done something like that a couple times, not a single one willingly of course, both under great duress, but it was a proof that it was possible...
Besides, if he fried the monitor at worst he would need to wait twenty minutes for a replacement, so nothing of value would be lost.
This particular occasion, the monitor tuned to his favorite streamer's latest VOD, he had missed it because at that time he had been doing a deep search into the intricacies of getting the perfect boob that wouldn't sag.
Because Sapphire didn't want to sag after twenty years of having a physical body. The woman had priorities, and Alexanders would respect them... even if half his employees now thought he was either a pervert or a madman... again.
And while doing that, Sapphire finally materialized in front of him with a grimace on her face.
"Alexanders...." The girl started as the monitor stopped playing his video, the lights all around them turned on and his cellphone turned off.
"Sapphire?" Alexanders asked as he noticed the serious mood, "Something wrong?"
"...I... Don't know how to say this... I don't think its true, and probably the stupid bot confused something." Sapphire said pulling out a data cluster and showing it to Alexanders.
He of course couldn't read data like that, even if old man Alexanders seemed able to. But this only helped make Alexanders note that Sapphire was worried, she made this kind of weird mistakes whenever she was stressed, worried or in a rush.
Act as if Alexanders could do the same things that old man Alexanders could. And a few he was sure old man Alexanders wasn't able to do.
"Start from the beginning then." Alexanders said putting his food to the side, the drone would take it later if he didn't touch it for more than ten minutes, "What happened? Where did it happen? And can we fix it?"
"Ah right...sorry about that handsome," Sapphire turned around and threw the data cluster into the monitor, afterwards she killed her hologram and remade it to look as if she had sat down.
That was... worrying, Sapphire enjoyed acting as if she was actually moving, even if that was only for Alexanders to see, as she wasn't actually interacting with the real world.
That was one of his pet projects actually, digitalizing the city and making a virtual enviroment that Sapphire could interact.
"The first report came last night at 10." Sapphire started speaking as a data file showed on the monitor, it was the description of the mission that Vulcanus and Superforce had wanted to do.
The one where they would go after the Mind Core girl that he had attempted to get into a secure facility. His original intention with the girl was destroying her Core and throwing her into an orphanage.
The girl had euthanized her parents' minds; there was no coming back from that. But the girl apparently had escaped at some point, Alexanders... should probably be more worried about that, but he was too busy dealing with Sapphire's body project.
So he left that to the side, not like it would hurt him anyway, the actual defenses of the important bits and facilities weren't left to organic defenses anyway.
"A couple hours afterwards, we got confirmation from Vulcanus that everything was in order." Sapphire continued, this time showing a text log where Vulcanus had reported that. Not the human, but the AI within the human of course.
"Nothing wrong about that... oh Alexa went into the mission, interesting..." Alexanders said as he noticed the name of his little sister in there, Rhapsody.
That could work to his favour, if the girl managed to dispose of the mind core user then maybe he could get his hands in a blueprint to attempt to reproduce that type of Core. It would help him when moving Sapphire into a physical body in a more permanent way.
"Then we got a data dump from a subprogram of his," Sapphire then showed a new data log, this time one that reported how Alexa had encountered the black site they made to act as the facility.
"That's hilarious," Alexanders said, laughing, "Alexa ended there? Test Subject MS2 must have an awful luck..."
Sapphire did not laugh with him, so perhaps, something had happened?
"Then a few hours afterward... we got this." Sapphire then showed a new data dump, this time... it had more worrying details.
"The log is... around five minutes ago?" Alexanders said as he read the timelog on the document, "... Alexa was found... with no vital signs?"
"I'm so sorry..." Sapphire said with a sad face, "I... I honestly... I don't know how this could happen... Alexa... Alexa should not be able to even die... Do you know how many times I tried to..."
"Ah," Alexanders said now understanding, "Your cousin made a mistake, that's why you are ."
Sapphire seemed confused at his statement.
"It's fine, your cousin is kind of dumb," Alexanders said standing up from the sofa, "So, do you want to go to make sure?"
"Love... Alexanders..." Sapphire said also standing up, "This... the data does not lie, he made a full body scan, there were no vital signs on the body, Alexa... she is dead."
"Hah!" Alexanders barked a laugh as he walked towards the far end of the apartment, a spot where his newest hobby was set up, the place where he put his body armor.
The body armor of 'The Delivery Guy'.
"That is probably a wrong read," Alexanders said as he started setting up the armor for wearing, preparing and recharging all the needed batteries, even if his Core Power could allow him to charge them directly, it was more power efficient to just use normal electricity.
It would allow him to give an extra oomph if needed after all.
"I... I also don't know how this can be, but... the data... we checked within the information dimension to confirm," Sapphire said, turning to Alexanders, "The body is that of a young woman, and she is dead beyond any doubt."
"Young woman?" Alexanders turned with a smirk on his face, "The data truly said that?"
Sapphire nodded and pulled a blue screen into the space between them, there was the scan results that Vulcanus had taken.
"Around nineteen year old, weights 65 kilograms... around 1,65 meter tall... Three sizes..." Alexanders read, the data, sure enough there was some notes about the vital signs of the scanned woman, or well, the absence of the vital signs in question.
The data was interesting, Alexanders had started delving more into the biological aspect, even if his mastery was more to the programming and energy side of things. But while he wasn't an expert, he could see a few things.
"Let's go then," Alexanders said as he started putting on the under armor, it was a skin tight underarmor that would help him synch better and channel his Core Power more efficiently into the exosuit. "Let's see if this is truly Alexa or not."
"But..." Sapphire said looking at the data, "It's too late... She is..."
"Dead," Alexanders finished the words for Sapphire, the girl was... weird, she was never like that whenever they spoke of test subjects or victims of some tragedy that had been influenced or caused by their conglomerate. Was she being considerate to him? "The data states that this young woman of my age is dead."
"...How are we getting there?" Sapphire decided to ask instead, "It is quite far, even with your new bike we will take minutes to get there, and Vulcanus seems to be going on a quite particulary destructive tangent, I don't think there will be much of this districts by the moment he is done, we should start sending out the cleaning crew... Or the exterminators."
"That my lovely purple Goddess..." Alexanders said, smiling and buckling up the last parts of his body armor, putting on the helmet, and making sure every readout was stable, "We will be using your information dimension."
"...Love... Handsome..." Sapphire said shaking her head, "You know your Core can't traverse that place safely yet."
"I did it once though." Alexanders pointed out, "During the D-Day, I briefly touched upon it, it is the only logical explanation to how I managed to turn into plasma and arrive into the Saintsworths Tower that fast."
"True," Sapphire said nodding, "But even like that, you used a medium. And... You haven't been able to interface again have you?"
"No, not really." Alexanders said accepting defeat in that aspect, "But we have technology... We are gonna use this thing."
Alexanders had moved one of their data receptacles that was linked to CARDINAL, the AI subroutine dedicated to analyzing and categorizing the information that the Saintsworths Conglomerate received.
"You are going to use the... Noosphere reader?" Sapphire asked surprised, "That was designed to interpret mana into data for less advanced systems to understand. It's originally meant to only be used in short bursts. You will fry your own brain."
"I don't need long," Alexanders said pulling a cable from his wrist and connecting it to the device, "I need less than a second, I will set up my Core Power to react to the data stream and let my reflexes do the rest. My body already knows how to do this, all I need is an anchor... and your cousin already did the heavy lift for me."
"...You are going to use the same data exit point he used to move himself..." Sapphire said nodding, "Well...worst case scenario you end up unable to move for a week, month or year... so I get to play with your body... May even give me enough reason to put on one of the new sleeves that finished gestating... What do you think about a cute girl taking care of you?"
"Down girl," Alexanders said shaking his head, "Just don't stop the development of the biological age again, I will not have to explain to Kellet why we have clone bodies of teenagers in the frozen archive."
"I already told you those weren't for me!" Sapphire blushed as she said her defense.
"Because we have other Sapient and sentient AI around that may want to use a body... Even if those bodies had black hair you can't deceive me..." Alexanders shook his head, he didn't thought Sapphire was going to use those bodies of course, but messing with her was fun, "Ah...got a lock on...man does this feel weird, my brain is all tingly..."
"Handsome I don't think you-" Sapphire started saying something, but before Alexanders could process, he felt insticts embedded within his Core flare to life and the world turned into static around him.
------------------------------- Official source ıs n͟o͟v͟e͟l͟f͟i͟r͟e͟.net
"---Wake up Edwards!" Only to find himself in a big testing chamber, a machine man fighting against an annoying edgelord at the back.
"[Master!]" And sure enough, the machine quickly kneeled when the form of Alexanders finished materializing.
His body right now was closer to lightning than flesh, and while it was quite exhilarating, Alexanders took reason above all and started to focus on getting it back to normal.
Having Lighting for hair and arms was cool, but not touching things again would be a hassle and a half.
"And that worked," Alexanders smirked under his mask, "Hello! I have a priority delivery, is one of you Edwards Black?"
Alexanders said in a cheery tone as he walked towards the body on the ground.
Even from his landing spot, it was quite the sight, the body of an adult blonde woman covered in purple crystal growing from the flesh... if one could call it flesh.
Then there was the face, the woman was smiling. It was... Alexanders couldn't understand it, not really. She was dead, why was she happy? All had ended, there was no second chances...
Alexanders would find out why the hell Sapphire and Vulcanus seemed so sure that this woman was Alexa. She looked like what Alexa would look when growing up (Probably) but she wasn't Alexa.
Alexanders knew that for sure, his Core told him as much.