3rd Person POV
The corridor trembled—not with footsteps, but with presence.
Then he emerged.
Gerald stepped into the chamber without fanfare, his boots tracking a faint, dark trail behind him. Over one shoulder, he carried the limp, armored body of a hostile enemy—blood still dripping from a jagged exit wound below the ribs. The helmet had been shattered. The man's eyes stared, glassy and void.
No one spoke as he dropped the corpse onto the steel floor with a hollow clang.
Reynolds ask. "One alive?"
Gerald gave a curt nod, eyes flicking to a second figure behind him—dragged by the collar, still breathing, barely. The captive's armor was shredded in places, steam rising from melted plates. Psionic scorch marks. No visible weapons. Gerald had stripped him clean.
"I left twelve behind," he said. "Thirteenth was stubborn."
He dropped the man with a calculated thud. The enemy groaned, coughing up blood, his body twitching under stress. But he was alive—barely.
"Vitals?" Reynolds asked.
"Stable, for now," Gerald replied. "But he's leaking intel faster than he's bleeding. Didn't hard-wipe. Either green or desperate."
Reynolds knelt beside the operative, scanning the insignia—blacked out, untraceable. She tapped her comm. "Command, we have a live hostile. Black-gear, anti-psionic loadout, unknown unit. Recommend expedited extraction and sensory dive. Authorization: Reynolds Theta-Six."
"Acknowledged," came the voice on the other end. "Extraction en route. ETA five minutes."
Evalis watched from a distance.
Her eyes, though still and expressionless, flicked across the room like scanners behind glass.
Reynolds: A stabilizer. Command-grade. Trauma-conditioned. Left-handed, but trains ambidextrous. Dominant eye right. Breathing controlled, cadence tight—likely ex-military, upper-tier intelligence transfer. Has killed before, but selectively. Tactical, not personal.
→ Threat Level: Medium. Containable. Predictable.
Team: One analyst—nervous fingers, fast typing. Two support units—sidearms holstered but hands too close. Eyes flick to Gerald often. No psionic resistances. Fear present.
→ Threat Level: Low. Disposable. Expendable.
Then she turned her gaze on him.
Gerald Weston.
She permitted herself more time—calibrating every variable, cycling through every known model.
Golden hair—irregularly cut, not styled. Blue eyes—sharp, unfixed, with intermittent dilation patterns. Shoulders—symmetrical posture, no evident fatigue markers. His gait was quiet but not soft; motion economized, refined by repetition and recoil.
And yet—beneath the physical metrics, something refused definition.
Initial Scan:
→ Visual structure: Compatible.
→ Physical composition: Augmented? Possibly organic-dense.
→ Mass density: Anomalous.→ Vital aura: Non-classifiable.
→ Psionic resonance: Null-field bleed detected.
→ Cognitive probe: Rejected.
She narrowed her focus.
Strength: Immeasurable.
Not metaphorically. The system returned no upper limit. Input variables broke under stress-testing. Not unreadable—unquantifiable.
Evalis blinked.
That had never happened before.
Conclusion:
→ Gerald Weston is not a conventional entity.
→ He is not a soldier.
→ He is a singular vector. A break in pattern logic.
Her head tilted slightly. Reflexive. A tic, if she had allowed herself those.
She tried to apply an archetype. Weapon. Guardian. Predator.
None fit.
He turned to her—eyes meeting hers for the first time.
No hostility. No curiosity. But that same unreadable clarity. Like he was observing not her, but her parameters.
Evalis stepped back half a pace.
Instinct Override: Activated. Subconscious Bias: Defensive.
That, too, had never happened before.
Reynolds clocked the movement. "You okay?"
Evalis didn't break eye contact. Just nodded once. "Calculating."
Then Gerald moved.
No theatrics. No aggression. He stepped outside into the curtain of rain, methodically cleansing his gloves and sleeves. Blood diluted, spiraling away in rivulets down his forearms.
Then—without a word—he returned. Not hurried. Not slow. Purposeful.
He stopped beside Evalis.
Not facing her. Not squaring up. Just… present. Keeping her in his periphery, but never letting his posture suggest concern. Or threat.
Ambient temperature fluctuated. Static pressure increased.
Evalis noticed the way the others tensed—Reynolds shifted her stance, the analyst pretended not to stare.
Then Gerald spoke—low, casual. Like the aftermath of violence was nothing but weather.
"You scanned me."
Evalis didn't answer at first.
She was still trying to process the data—and reconcile the lack of it.
When she finally spoke, her voice had lost all pretense of poise. It was raw curiosity, unfiltered.
"Why is your strength unquantifiable?"
Gerald didn't look at her.
Instead, he replied with a question of his own.
"Why is yours predictable?"
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was loaded—dense with implication, like the space between two storms that haven't decided whether to collide.
Reynolds' voice cut through it, sharp and professional.
"Enough. Both of you. Command wants Evalis in containment until Black Vault Beta's ready to initiate interface."
Evalis turned to her, then back to Gerald. For a second, she looked like she might say something else. A theory. A warning.
Evalis didn't speak.
She simply stared.
Still. Calm. Inhumanly still.
She studied Gerald Weston as if he were an unfolding anomaly in real time—one that ignored the boundaries of logic.
Then, without pause or affectation, Gerald broke the silence.
"I can summon multiple Dicks at the same time."
Reynolds flinched mid-turn. A technician looked up in confusion.
Evalis blinked.
Once.
Incoming Input→ Statement: "I can summon multiple Dicks at the same time."
→ Source: Weston, Gerald.
→ Tone: Neutral. Informative.
→ Contextual understanding:
- "Dicks" = Unfamiliar term. Unknown if plural identifier, codename, or biological reference. - No hostility detected.
→ Lexical hypothesis: "Dick" = Personal designation. Possibly autonomous construct or field agent.
→ Likely definition: Duplicated Independent Combat Kinetics.
→ Cross-reference result: No official unit exists under designation "Dick."
→ Conclusion: Informal naming convention of summoned allied units.
Evalis tilted her head, voice soft and neutral.
"Are 'Dicks' a modular weapons platform?"
Gerald shook his head. "Independent bodies. Fully mobile. I generate them with shared combat protocols."
"Biological or synthetic?"
"Synthetic shells. Organic mimicry optional. Mostly disposable."
She nodded slowly, filing every syllable with eerie precision.
Update:
→ Subject is capable of manifesting multiple autonomous constructs.
→ Shared design. Single control source. Possibly neural-linked.
→ Designation: "Dick."
→ Unorthodox naming protocol. No embedded humor detected.
→ Emotional tone during explanation: Zero deviance.
→ Conclusion: Gerald Weston utilizes informal but consistent naming system for deployed extensions.
Evalis glanced briefly toward Reynolds.
"I will need to update my lexicon. I did not know 'Dick' could be a unit designation."
Reynolds stared at her blankly, mouth opening—then closing.
"No," she muttered under her breath. "Not today. Not explaining this today."
Just then, the VTOL descended into view—powerful downwash scattering rain across the scorched asphalt. The rear bay opened with a hiss of hydraulics and the hum of magnetic stabilizers.
Gerald stepped forward first, boots tracking wet steel. He didn't look back.
Evalis followed. Still running calculations. Still quiet.
She sat opposite him in the bay, eyes occasionally flicking toward him as she constructed mental models for what kind of operational logic would result in the term "Dick" being applied without irony.
Cognitive Note:
→ There is no deception in his voice.
→ He is serious.
→ The "Dicks" are real.
→ The "Dicks" are many.
She opened her mouth as if to ask something—but closed it again.
Instead, she turned her gaze to the VTOL's window, watching the black vault coordinates blur into the horizon.
And for the first time since her activation, she found herself uncertain not of threat levels… but of vocabulary.
Gerald rested an arm against the frame and muttered:
"Lost one once. Got stuck in an Arctic sub-station for three days."
Evalis, quietly:
"...Did the unit survive?"
Gerald gave a small nod. "He adapted. Now he hates cold weather."
There was no inflection. Just fact.
Evalis recorded it.
→ Input: Gerald's Units possess post-manifestation behavioral variation.
→ Emotional imprinting: Confirmed.
→ Autonomy level: Increasing.
→ Emergent personality traits: Negative cold bias.
In the rear of the VTOL, one of Reynolds' strike troopers muttered under his breath. Another clutched his helmet a little tighter. A third simply glared, his knuckles whitening around a secured grip rail.
They didn't understand what Gerald was. Only that Reynolds treated him like an asset and Evalis treated him like a phenomenon.
And deep down—under layers of training and discipline—every last one of them had the same shared, irrational desire:
To crash this goddamn VTOL into the mountainside and take their chances with the wreckage.