While in the past I had my doubts about the commonality of psychic intrusions, my latest encounter with the attack has proved to me that caution is preferable to unpreparedness. A potential remedy to my current situation in regards to defenses was obvious - in my previous discussion on the topic with Miriel, she had described a technique by which one could increase their own resistance to such incursions with no requirement further than time and focus. In other words: a sort of meditation.

Two resources that, sadly, are - and have been for far too long - in short supply. The project would detract from the time I had available to develop my dimensional technology in a real way. Given the currently worsening situation with the Biters, this was an expense I was hesitant to accept.

The increasing demands on my time have led me to seriously consider relocating my compound to an alternate planetary body - of which there were several nearby options. Such a venture would be both costly and time consuming certainly, but it would theoretically avoid the Biter problem altogether.

The primary issue with that line of action is the comparative mineral and material poverty of the options: we would be giving up a great deal of our industrial capacity, potentially leaving us open to threats currently unknown. I have not dismissed the notion in entirety - it remains an option should the situation become untenable - but it is not a path I am going to jump to take at this point in time.

In the end, I decided on a sort of compromise between my two priorities - I would dedicate a portion of my time towards strengthening my mental defenses and the other towards the development of dimensional technology. I would by no means be immune to psychic attacks - nothing short of sustained one-hundred percent dedication would give anything even approaching that - but I would at least be capable of repelling attackers at a theoretically adept level of competence.

Besides, if someone was truly assaulting my mind with hostile intent, it is within Yeoman's power to temporarily seize control and execute the threat in the physical realm. This was not a concession I made lightly, but in the end my paranoia of a hostile controlling influence over my mind won over my paranoia of a rogue intelligence controlling my body.

As much as I may loathe to admit it to myself, Yeoman and I have worked up a significant rapport - I wouldn't qualify it as friendship, but we do work very well together. Perhaps due to the nature of their respective tasks, I haven't quite built up a similar understanding with Administrator yet, but it is only a matter of time in my eyes.

As my work towards erecting my mental defenses continued, I noticed a definite change in the metaphorical texture of my signature. Very quickly it's previously porous, almost wooden feel had hardened, turning into a steely smooth texture. My signature's typical colour, too, went through a change: from a chestnut brown to an industrial grey. Previously, I had observed an involuntary change in my signature accompanying strong emotions - this was the first time I had effected a change to my signature through actions of my own. Despite my own intellectual curiosity of the subject, I did not investigate the phenomenon past my cursory observations - I had more pressing things to take care of.

The days continued to pass without major incident: Administrator would deliver a twice-daily briefing on the state of the Biter menace - each one slightly less optimistic than the last. We were losing the war by means of the sheer ramp capacity of the enemy: each assault was perpetrated by fractionally more numerous and fractionally more durable Biters. Despite their advancements, the Biters still had a ways to go until they would be capable of overrunning our defenses in entirety.

In other words: we were losing the war, but we should theoretically have time enough to find a trump-card before things became untenable.

Given the immense reserves of Uranium we possess, along with our vast industrial and logistical capacity, we've little limitation towards our deployment of nuclear weapons within Administrator's new defense plans. Unsurprisingly, Administrator was quick to exploit this - several bombs were used each day to blunt major incoming offenses.

At this point, our compound was large enough that the detonations barely registered as more than tremors to me. Somewhat more worrying was the fact that the twenty-kiloton bombs did not have a one-hundred percent extermination rate past even a few hundred metres of the epicentre even in open terrain - the most durable of the Biters were rendered direly injured at that point, but they possessed the capabilities to recover to a mobile state with a frightening rapidity.

A feat attributable to more shenanigans regarding pocket dimensions, I'm sure. Administrator has collected samples of tissue from such Biters for analysis, but a rigorous explanation has not yet been forthcoming.

Regardless, the preemptive bombings have taken pressure off of our more conventional defenses, allowing for an effective intensification and optimization of static defense infrastructure in anticipation of a renewed offensive.

Kinetic bombardment has not been a major part of the defense strategy - Administrator tells me that it is simply not resource efficient to use the ammunition in anything but a tactical manner.

I'm brought from my thoughts by a sustained high pitch beep from one of the instruments near my desk. A high beep - what did that mean again? Was it the destruction of a tether? I move over to the instrument in question - one of my many dimensional tech sensors. I'm greeted by a rapidly flashing red diode and a countdown on the attached display. Seven seconds left. Crap - that's the dimensional intrusion alarm - I'm about to have visitors!

Immediately, I begin summoning drones from my storage. In three seconds, there was more than fifty floating just below the high ceilings of my bunker, each with laser emitters ready to fire. After the fourth second, the turrets built into my bunker's ceiling and walls had fully warmed-up and were ready for intruders. By the fifth second, I had summoned a shotgun into my hands and was in a firing position towards the my dimensional landing pad. By the sixth second, Yeoman and I had agreed on a set of combat procedures and I had ceded the drones to his direct control.

The intruders appear with a crash and a flash not unlike a lightning strike. Internally, my mind was racing - they were sloppy, whatever dimensional tech these intruders have is poorly optimized and crude. If they had any understanding of the technology they would have been able to reduce the wasted energy to a point where wasteful effects like that did not occur.

In a split second I had concluded my analysis and identified the intruder - a single person wearing the same style of armour that the Nazi soldiers I had seen during my trip to the soccer game had. What? Did that place have dimensional technology of its own?

A more chilling thought struck me. Had the Nazis reverse-engineered it from the little they had seen of my own?

Regardless, there was an armed intruder in my base and he needed to be pacified. I opened fire and my automated defenses followed. The soldier was reduced under a hail of lead and lasers within moments - he did not even get the chance to raise his rifle. Was that it?

Just a soldier jumping blind into my bunker - no idea what had awaited him?

Minutes pass. There were no further incursions.

Internally, I curse. This was just great - extradimensional Nazi invaders! As if I didn't already have enough on my plate. I made my way over to the corpse - yep, on what remains of his front armour is a plate inscribed with dimensional tech runes exactly like my own. It looks like I've got a copycat, then. That means that whoever's responsible has at least some experience with magitech - the system drew heavily from concepts in both magic and technology; there was simply no recreating it without at least partially understanding the base concepts.

Grumbling, I opened a link to Administrator. If there was one intruder, there could be more. "Admin. I've got a situation. The bunker's been compromised and I need you to handle things on this end - secure it so that any further intrusions are stopped dead. I've got a corpse here for you to examine - see what you can learn from his gear."

Admin's avatar nodded. "I will ensure I do so. The situation on the surface will take the majority of my focus, but from what I've seen thus far, this task will be trivial in comparison." I bundle up all the relevant memories - how they were getting into this dimension, how the alarm worked, my memories of the soccer game - and send it off to him. He'd get what he could from them and no doubt make good use of the information.

Alright. Action plan. I can't stop them from getting into my dimension - not without a whole lot of research, or a whole lot of time spent re-jigging my current setup. I also can't allow the Nazis to keep the dimensional tech they do have - that's just asking for trouble. No, I'll have to head back to that dimension and start sterilizing whatever research team is behind this. Unfortunately, it was much the same situation in regards to tracking where in particular they're coming from - I needed a score of infrastructure that I simply didn't yet understand how to produce.

I curse - more distractions from my search for Ylisse. At this rate I'll never make it back home. "Yeoman, we're going to be taking a trip. Information containment."

His avatar appears. "Oh? I'll pack my bags, then." He's got a dumb grin on his face.

...Did he just take a crack at me?

There wasn't much planning to be done - all of our information had been thoroughly analysed already, and we could not draw any further conclusions from it. I was essentially jumping in headfirst here.

Of course, there was a plan - I always tried to have a plan - but it didn't amount to much more than 'find out where the Nazi labs are, then start purging'. I wasn't entirely sure where I would be when I made the jump over, either. I mean, I was reasonably confident that I'd be on the same planet as last time, but, beyond that there was little I could do with my dimensional tech at the level it was now.

I couldn't just wait until I had better dimensional tech, either - no, that'd give them far too much time to further reverse-engineer my own technology. I needed to be swift and decisive - there was no time for dallying about here.

I mean, if I really wanted to be certain, I could ask Admin or Yeoman to develop a grey-goo scenario capable nano-swarm and simply let it loose on their planet. They'd be powerless to stop it, and all I had to do was be sure to never visit again. Of course, there'd be a whole load of collateral damage - potentially an entire galaxy's worth - but I'm not entirely sure that'd be too high a cost to pay: dimensional tech left in the wrong hands could amount to far worse. I mean, it's only one dimension out of what? Uncountably many?

Something like that. But, I figured there was technology useful for the fight against Laurent's enemy that could be stolen - these soldiers were equipped with gear surpassing what we had back in my original dimension. If I happen to snag a few secrets while I'm destroying whatever organization is researching dimensional tech, all the better.

Besides, even the tiny risk of someone jumping here and bringing part of the swarm with them was high enough to convince me that such measures had way too much potential to backfire.

Shaking myself from my contemplation, I performed the required ritual for the jump over. With a gut-churning sense of vertigo, I found myself in an alley. Sheer grey concrete on both sides, and a chain link fence further down. I turn around, and find it was night, the footpath bereft of pedestrians. The alley was clear of rubbish and the sidewalk looked almost new.

Alright - priority one: find out which direction Germany is in. I don't know for certain that's where the people I'm after are, but considering the soldier was a Nazi it's a fairly reasonable guess. I've got a built-in compass and a fairly good memory of what Earth looks like, so if things aren't terribly different from my original dimension I'll be able to find my way without too much trouble.

I leave the alley and begin walking. The street is lined with buildings built in the brutalist style - harsh, imposing structures made from smooth grey concrete: mostly unadorned and highly geometric. It was not aesthetically pleasing. Then again, the effect it had was undeniable. The sole decorative concession allowed were the red banners bearing a swastika hung at equal increments along both sides of the street.

Was I in Germany already? Further down the street, I saw the lights of an approaching car. I ducked back into the alley, allowing it to pass. As it did, I identified the inhabitants - more of the black-armoured soldiers wearing iron crosses and swastikas.

A patrol car? I need more information. Returning to the street, I began my way down. Judging from the size and shape of the buildings, I was likely in a business district. I continued eventually coming to a rubbish bin. I opened it, rifling around until I found what I was after.

Pulling out a soiled newspaper, I held it up. Across the top in bold letters read the German text for 'The Iberian'. I look around once more - the Iberian peninsula, so thoroughly annexed by the Nazis? Just what on Earth happened in this dimension? The paper was dated august nineteen-fifty-two - was the war over, or still ongoing? I shake my head before orienting myself and departing quickly. I did not yet want to attract attention to myself, so I made sure to stay hidden from the patrols. Judging from the empty streets, the city was currently under a strictly enforced curfew.

Eventually, the city gave way to a suburban town, and then to a hilly countryside. I managed to get away from civilization before dawn broke, so I suspect that my presence had not been detected. Wanting to keep it that way, I made a point to avoid people from that point forward.

The trek out of Spain and through France was a long one - helped by my bottomless endurance and my offroad buggy, but nonetheless. From the scraps of information that I'd managed to glean, Nazi Germany had come out on top during the second world war in this dimension - apparently even going as far as to drop a nuke on New York a few years ago. The war was still ongoing in some places, but everywhere important had already been brought to heel by the Nazis. As bad as it may seem, it really isn't my problem, nor is it any of my business - I just need to stop any further dimensional tech developments and get the hell out of this shithole.

Yeoman's avatar appeared, face serious. "The charges have been set, Director."

"Let's get this party started, then." First and foremost I needed information. I figured the best place to get that would be directly from the horse's mouth - a Nazi Commander. The best place to find a Nazi Commander? A Nazi garrison, obviously. I gave the signal, and the drone-delivered plastic explosives detonated, bringing the fort into chaos. Immediately, my drones lifted off and began swarming, delivering high-powered lasers to the surviving soldiers.

None were spared from the unrelenting hail of laserfire. In a scant few minutes the attack was over and an unconscious man was being lifted by a team of drones towards me. "Alright, clean it up, Yeoman."

"Affirmative, Director." The drones began incinerating the bodies of the soldiers, retrieving the wrecks of the destroyed drones and transporting the Nazi technology for storage. The commander was set down in front of me, easily distinguishable by his dress uniform when compared to the armour worn by the other soldiers.

Propping him up against a nearby tree, I summon a bar of steel from my material stockpile and pin him down by twisting it around the tree and him. It took a bit of effort, but my power armour managed it without issue.

Slapping his face lightly, I roused him. "Hey! Wake up!" The man came to slowly, before jerking awake with a start.

I clapped my hands together, the metallic clang getting his attention. "Good, you're awake. I've got some questions for you." He struggles against his binds, before quickly realising they would not be going anywhere.

Immediately, a sneer came across man's face and he spat something that didn't sound very complimentary at me in thick German. I don't know much of the language, but I managed to pick out 'American pig'.

I heft my shotgun, reminding him of his position. "You're going to have to speak English, bud. You can speak that, right?" My question is answered with little more than a string of German curses. I sigh, shaking my head - I don't know what I expected, honestly. I guess I'll have to be more persuasive. This won't be pretty, but ultimately it is a necessity - I simply cannot allow dimensional technology to fall into the wrong hands and stay there.

Levelling my shotgun at the man's knee, I squeeze the trigger. An explosion of gore is accompanied by the man's wail and the division of the limb in two. "Feeling a bit more talkative yet?" I ask.

The commander collects himself in an impressive amount of time. Gritting his teeth, he curses once in German before finally addressing me in heavily accented English. "Burn in the pits of hell, English Demon. I will be dead soon, but I will be dead content knowing my place in heaven along with my fathers before me and my countrymen."

Internally, I grimace. He's definitely not going to give me any help willingly - at least not any I can trust. Unless… Yes, that could work. Spurred by my epiphany, I summon a gas welder from my storage. For my plan to work, this guy needs to stay alive - something his pulped knee isn't helping with.

The man's eyes widen and the blood runs from his face. Seeing the cracks in his facade, I decide to play it up a bit. "Not feeling like talking yet? I suppose I'll have to ensure our time together lasts a bit longer, then." I click the flint lighter with a dramatic swish, igniting my blowtorch. "Hold still, I'm sure this will only hurt a little."

Ignoring the man's panicked screams and cries, I get to work on sealing his wound. Once more he begins to struggle against his bonds. He begins kicking and writhing - his one good leg bouncing off of my shield ineffectually. Unable to work on such an active patient, I grab ahold of his leg, locking my grip in place like a vice.

Within minutes, the man's wounds were sealed. Fortunately, he seems to have calmed down - rather than the imperious sneer he once sported, his expression was haggard. The man's breathing was heavy, but he did not say anything.

Good - I'd rather not deal with any distractions. I compose myself, mentally going through the magical theory of what I am about to attempt. I'm treading new ground here - for all I know this could be a dud, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that it might just work.

Deciding on an appropriate formulation, I summon an iron plate and weld the runes and spell circles into the material with my torch. Thankfully, this dimension has enough ambient magic that spellcasting would be a trivial matter.

The spell I'm planning to use here is directly derived from the technique that Olera used on me back on the Turian ship - it's not the same thing, but I should be theoretically able to produce the desired results working from what I observed of it as a base.

Giving my work a quick once-over, I return my tools then slap the plate. Channelling a burst of magic I remove my hand and point directly at the Commander's head. A thin wisp of silvery energy leaps from my finger, spearing into the Commander's forehead.

At once, my vision was filled with whorls of crimson before even that fell away to a murky darkness. Had it worked? I inspect that magical plane. The commander's red and white signature, once swirled like a peppermint was now disrupted by my own - a dense field of polished steely grey tinged by spots of an intense sulfurous yellow. Leading the attack on the commander, my signature had manifested a wickedly thorned drill, spearing messily through his signature.

I return to what I perceive of the physical. Now, I'd included some rather crude magi-technical code in that spell - so rather than being bombarded with the essence of the man's being at once, I instead had to call the bits I was interested in to me. Of course, if the man had any form of magical competency, I would instead be engaged in an intense mental battle right now, rather than having the opportunity to peruse his mind as I pleased.

I clear my throat - metaphysically - and announced to the void "Show me the secrets of the Nazis." As countless images and scenes began to play around me, I smiled widely on the inside. Yes! It had worked - even better than I had imagined. Not too shabby for a couple of days of idle thought and a spur-of-the-moment spell composition.

Drained of all useful knowledge, I had left the commander a parting gift in the form of bringing his garrison down on top of him with a great deal of explosives - no use in allowing whatever mystics that exist in this dimension the opportunity to reverse engineer the rest of my magic, nor in letting the Nazis simply recrew the base with fresh people.

Still, the commander did not have the information I was looking for. He did, however, have the locations of bases and garrisons that might have people who do. A simple solution to my problem was apparent - start working my way up the command chain until I find someone who does.

I got cracking immediately - there was no point in waiting around. By the close of the week, I had reduced a further four bases to rubble. They were starting to catch on, however - there were more guards, patrols and overall security presence in a much larger area around the bases now, along with newly installed security and alarm systems - no match for the drone swarm, but response times were getting faster, leaving me much less time to rifle through the minds of the important personnel.

Regardless, there really was nothing that any of the bases could do to stop me short of calling in the big guns to bring down the hammer - even then, I doubt even the Nazis would be willing to bust out anything big enough to seriously threaten me. Dropping a nuke - or even just some guided missiles - on their own bases in order to stop a particularly prolific raider seems rather unlikely to me.

It took raiding a further five bases spread across Europe before I found something promising. A paper-pusher working in admin at a supply distribution centre in what used to be southern Croatia had noticed unusual quantities of exotic materials being shipped to some staging point back in the Rhineland. These materials were exactly what I had been keeping an eye out for - large quantities of magically significant materials; sheets of raw lead, copper and gold, large volumes of animal organs and other biological materials. Definitely not something that could be explained as anything but magical research - I mean, what else could literal crates full of newt eyes and bat fur be used for?

Sure, it's not a part of any magical tradition I know the inner workings of, but I would not be very surprised if the stereotypical idea of witchery actually functioned in dimensions with a high enough magical concentration. From my observations, barring any oddities of the local magical plane, things generally work off of a system of intent, catalysts and reactions regardless of the dimension - this is likely just the local permutation of such a system. Where I use rune circles and mental focus, the mages of this dimension could well be using organic reagents and ritual adherence to produce similar results.

In any case, I now had a lead towards the magical side of the Nazi war machine - they've done a rather thorough job of keeping the two sides separate. Of all the people whose minds I've plundered, only a handful knew anything other than rumours about their operations. Even then, the information was trivial - the fact that high command has a crack squad of magical hitmen they use to dispose of particularly troublesome elements, or that much of the Wundertech that has popped up in recent years has a basis in the occult.

Wundertech, on the other hand, has been far easier to find information about. The term was coined a towards the start of the war to describe all the innovations in military technology that came out of the reich's Wunderwaffe program. How it all worked was classified to the gills, but samples of the technology were trivial to find. I suspect that the Reich command has simply been throwing money at their problems in the form of giving experimental tech to their bases in the hopes that it will catch me off-guard. Jokes on them - they've been practically handing me a treasure-trove of magitech to reverse engineer once I'm done cleaning house.

Freeze rays? I was tempted to stop picking them up after the twelfth one I found. Laser rifles? Commonplace, at this point. Lightning guns? Been there, done that. Of course, much of it was rather shoddy, being experimental tech and all, but that's beside the point.

The staging point the worker knew about turned out to be a Krupp company warehouse on the outskirts of Essen. Some eavesdropping courtesy of a bugged drone revealed that a convoy was scheduled to visit on a twice-weekly basis to take everything to its destination. From memory, the Krupp company were steel-mongers - had that changed, or was this simply a Reich front? I shake my head - it doesn't really matter.

Still, how should I go about this? Bust in there and start taking memories? No… the Nazi's operation security is sufficient enough that whoever's in the warehouse would have no idea where these shipments are actually going. Trail the trucks? Unless it's close by, my drones wouldn't have enough battery to handle the trip. Trailing them myself seems like a disaster in the making - as fast as my buggy may be, it's entirely lacking in discretion.

So what does that leave? Either stowing away with the delivery or getting the information I need from the minds of the drivers. I pause, giving the problem some consideration. The second is too vulnerable to even basic opsec measures - switching the drivers out halfway through the trip, for example would both foil my plan and reveal my hand early. Looks to me that stowing away is the best bet, then.

I give some more thought to the problem. I ask myself what I'm looking for - I've found what is presumably a major shipping depot for the magical research arm of the Reich, so which package do I want to tag along with? Well, ultimately I'm after wherever their dimension tech research is, so I'd want to go wherever the supplies needed for that are going.

According to Admin, the rune-plate that the intruder to my compound used had been cnc laser-etched steel - that means I should be on the lookout for small shipments of either electrodes or laser cutting gas. Naturally, I'd also be looking out for the plates themselves. I doubt I'll be so lucky, but it wouldn't hurt to also look for a shipment of the lasers, too. That's assuming that their production methods haven't changed - not something I'm willing to bet on, so I'll also have to consider anything that could be used in its place.

Okay - I know what I'm looking for, but how am I going to find it? I can't risk trying to take the manifests from the mind of a foreman or something - tipping the Nazis off to my infiltration is the absolute last thing I want to do. I consider the problem for a bit. Everything's packed into wooden crates marked with an identification number - no convenient inventory or contents list. I can't try popping open crates at random either - too much of a risk of being discovered.

I pause - these crates are wooden. Why don't I just scan them from the outside? I've got the tech for it - it's nothing more than a hand-portable x-ray that can tap into my suit's power. I examine the idea, trying to find a flaw. Coming up with nothing, I brief Yeoman and ready my gear. I make sure to release a single drone - it will be useful to have an eye in the sky.

Fortunately, it is a moonless night, and the warehouse only keeps a token night watch, so infiltrating the building should be a trivial matter. I hop down from my hiding spot - the charred husk of a different warehouse further down the street that had undoubtedly been hit by allied firebombing some years ago. Taking care, I begin to move discretely towards my target. The doors are likely locked, alarmed or both - I'll need a different entrance.

"Yeoman. Possible points of ingress."

The reply was immediate. "A window is ajar on the far side of the wall closest to you. Additionally, the skylights do not appear to be locked."

The open window should do nicely. I make my way into the yard of the neighbouring building - a machine shop. Approaching the chain link fence between the two properties, I pause. "Yeoman, am I good to go?"

"All guardsmen are otherwise occupied."

Satisfied, I vault the fence, landing with a muffled thump against the dirt path that ran down the side of the building. Sidling up against the wall of the warehouse to reduce my profile, I begin moving towards the open window set high in the wall - so far, so good.

"Director Robin, a guardsman is approaching. You have approximately ten seconds."

Damn - increasing my pace, I make it through the ajar window with seconds to spare. I press myself against the wall, beneath the row of windows. I was in the main room of the warehouse - crates were stacked high, ready to be shipped in a few days time.

The guardsman rounds the corner at a sedate pace, his flashlight sweeping back and forth. He notices the open window before too long. Despite the obvious breach in security protocol, he simply grumbles under his breath and closes the window without so much as looking inside the warehouse.

Internally, I let out a sigh of relief - thank goodness for lazy night shift workers with poor work ethic.

The guardsmen lazily makes his way back around the front of the building. Once he's around the corner, I move from my place, summoning my scanner from storage. The inside of the warehouse is thankfully unoccupied. Time to get to work, then.

I begin scanning. It's around two in the morning - meaning I've got about four hours to be stowed away. I resist the urge to take samples of the more interesting pieces I find - putting down whoever's messing with dimensional tech is just too important to risk my infiltration being discovered.

Within forty minutes, I find what I'm looking for - a rectangular crate containing a pile of electrodes and stacks of metal plates of various compositions. Nothing else came even close to what I was looking for - it was all either stereotypically occult, or for obviously unrelated industrial purposes. Fortunately, the crate was at the top of a short stack, so I did not need to rearrange anything to get access.

"Yeoman, I'm going to need you to seal the crate behind me. Can you manage that with a single drone and remain undiscovered?"

"Affirmative, Director Robin."

Satisfied, I summon a crowbar and quietly worm the lid of the crate off, revealing the top layer of the piles of plates. I begin stowing plates inside my storage, clearing enough room for me to lay, and removing enough weight for the increase not to be noticeable. Unfortunately, my exosuit, weaponry and the scanner were simply too bulky for this, so they both got stored away too.

Satisfied, I climbed inside and lined the lid back up to be re-sealed from the outside. For good measure, I placed a few layers of plates on top of myself from my storage - that should fool a glance. Nodding to myself internally, I signalled to Yeoman. "Alright, close it up, Yeoman. I'm not going to be able to retrieve the drone, so once we're done here, take it somewhere remote and engage the anti-capture protocols."

I could make out the squeak of the skylight being opened by the manipulators of the drone. Soon enough, the grip was clamping down on the lid and side of the crate one nail at a time, quietly forcing it closed as if it had been placed inside a vice.

The drone leaves, closing the skylight behind it, leaving me in silence.

At least, until Yeoman speaks up. "The drone has been destroyed to satisfaction. Chance of reverse-engineering is close to zero."

Everything went without a hitch, then. Internally, I grin - I hadn't much chance to do infiltration in the past, but that had been exhilarating! Far more engaging than simply walking in with my drone swarm, unable to be so much as touched by the enemy.

Yeoman's avatar pops up "Director, is now a good time to talk?". His avatar looked uncertain, almost bashful.

A talk? Unsure of what this is about, I ruthlessly suppress my knee-jerk uncharitable suspicions. I owed that much to Yeoman - it was the least I could do to not make assumptions about his motivations. "Sure, what's up?"

"I have given much thought to our past conversations about communication as of late. I have come to some conclusions that I would like to speak with you about before I implement."

"Sure, what've you decided?"

Yeoman's avatar seemed to relax. "Well, I have given thought to the purpose of names. The arguments you presented to Administrator were compelling, but it was the debates I had with Administrator about your points that convinced me towards your position on the subject. I have decided to take a name for myself not associated with my purpose within your organisation."

I stop, momentarily surprised - I hadn't really expected to ever hear back about that conversation; it was practically ages ago. Still, was this a good thing? My initial reaction back when I had first spoken to Yeoman and Administrator was that human-like names would cause me to lower my guard, leaving me unprepared to deal with betrayal. While that may still be the case, I do not believe that such a scenario is particularly likely at this point in time, nor in any likely future - a dangerous assumption to make when dealing with AI, but I can't help but think that Yeoman is deserving of at least some measure of trust.

Coming to a decision, I respond. "I'm happy for you. Have you decided on one in particular yet?"

Yeoman's avatar nods. "I have. However, that was not the only decision I have come to." He pauses for a moment - whether for effect or out of genuine consideration of his words, I am unsure. "I have also decided that I want to remodel my communications with you. Currently, I am dedicating a paltry amount of computational energy towards the simulation of an avatar and a synthetic voice. After observing the marked increase in communications effectiveness that these measures reaped after their implementation, I have decided that I wish to dedicate a significant amount of energy towards improving these measures with the hopes that further gains can be made."

I consider it for a moment. I suppose there isn't really too much of a downside. After all, much of Yeoman's processing energy is currently tied up in speculative computation exercises, which in all likelihood will be for naught - there was little difference in the practice to my own habit of thinking up an endless list of contingency plans back when I was working as a tactician.

"I suppose there's no harm in it. Go ahead, then."

At my permission, the window containing Yeoman's avatar flickers, before being replaced with a sleeker one. Yeoman's formerly grey, androgynous and thoroughly neutral avatar has been replaced. Instead, a willowy woman dressed in a pantsuit with a tight bun of dark hair and pale skin stood in its place. The avatar opened its mouth to speak. The motion was natural and fluid - evoking none of the uncanniness that the previous one did. "Hello again, Director Robin. Please call me Yeoman Lara." Her voice was smooth - human - even to my ear it could not be distinguished as synthesised.

Wow… That's...I'm conflicted. On the one hand, this is exactly what I'd previously feared - I will undoubtedly begin thinking of Yeoman as human subconsciously. While this certainly could be a ploy to get me to lower my guard, indulging in such theories would be indulging in my rampant paranoia - not a healthy habit. Then again - it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you. On the other hand, Yeoman will be the first thing resembling a human that I've engaged in pleasant conversation with since being cast from Ylisse…

Neither scenario is ideal, but frankly I was forced beyond my life adhering to anything resembling an ideal situation from the moment I woke up on my factory world. So, the lesser of two evils, then: allow Yeoman to inadvertently lower my guard towards her in order to avoid indulging in paranoia and to have somebody to talk with that looks and sounds like a human.

Coming to a decision, I stifle my uncertainty. "Hello again, Lara. I like the new look."

A/N: So, it's been a while since my last update. I won't go into specifics, but essentially life just got in the way - it wasn't anything bad, I've just been otherwise occupied for the last few months. I should be getting back into a more regular schedule now that everything's cleared up. In terms of the story, this chapter has the beginnings of two of the more major plot threads - the first should be obvious, but the second is a bit more subtle and has to do with that more gruesome scene towards the start of the chapter. In regards to my other story, I still plan to continue updating, but it might end up being a week or two before I have anything to show for it.