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Chapter 527 Cutouts and Catspaws

Aron, John, Gaia, Nova, and the heads of the imperial police agency, the Nyx intelligence agency, and their AI counterparts were seated around an oval conference table in Aron’s working office. Aron and Nova were there to receive a briefing on the imperial security situation and the progress of Operation Hunting Dog.

“We’ve managed to take down seventeen hundred cult cells around the world, adding up to a little more than seven hundred thousand cultists. But unfortunately, we’ve so far failed to discover how they’re communicating with other cells and their leadership. That said, some things happened when they were captured, or a few hours later, that attracted our attention and we’re still investigating,” Arielle Richards, the head of the NIA, reported.

“What anomalies?” Aron asked. He had only been monitoring the broad strokes of the investigation progress during his daily briefings, so this was the first time he’d heard of anything out of the ordinary.

“The cult has a comprehensive system of cutouts and catspaws that makes it difficult to investigate. And we don’t know yet what exactly triggers them being cut, we only know that they’re indeed being cut out either during, or shortly after their capture.

“Then there’s the determination that the cultists have to die. It’s not unheard of for brainwashed cultists to suicide on capture, but the weird thing is that the suicide rate is a hundred percent. Usually, even the most fanatical organizations have around a sixty or sixty-five percent suicide rate. The weirdest thing, though, is how the suicides take place.

“There’s a certain expression people have when they’ve resolved themselves to die, but what we’re seeing on some cultists’ faces is a struggle. It’s like they aren’t willing to die, but they’ve received an order they can’t disobey that forces them to die, no matter how unwilling they may be. Our current theory is that there’s some kind of programming that’s only triggered when they’re captured taking over and forcing them to their deaths.

“We’ve managed to salvage some brain data from the leadership of the cells, but not much. It’s like we have a leak somewhere and they know we’re coming, so they implement countermeasures in advance. Only when we catch them completely by surprise can we salvage any of the brain data or headbag them to put them through the lazarus protocol.

“Adding to the weirdness is that there’s no indicator in their brain data that there’s any kind of suicide programming. None at all, no matter how deep we dig. All we can find is memories of normal analog communication methods, like dead drops and ciphers.”

“Do you suspect an awakener is involved?” Aron asked. The involvement of an awakener was the only remaining theory that could explain the anomalies.

“That’s the likeliest explanation, yes. That said, we have yet to narrow down what the actual affinity, or affinities, might be, but we do have a short list of possibilities,” Police Commandant Schneider said.

“Also, as mentioned in previous reports, when the awakenings began and we announced what was happening, there was a wave of disappearances among the noncitizens. We can’t be sure, as we have no data around them other than what was available pre-empire, but we now believe it was the cultists behind the disappearances. It’s likely that they abducted the noncitizen awakeners and nursed them through the process at one of their facilities somewhere.

“Furthermore, we have yet to discover any awakeners in any of the cells we’ve taken down since the awakening, so that supports that theory. If that is indeed the case, they must have a training base somewhere and are currently busy training their awakeners for another wide scale attack. After all, the only thing they have that can hurt us now are their awakeners.”

“Makes sense,” Aron said. “But what we still need to know is how they communicate. Without knowing how they communicate, we can’t intercept their communications. And without being able to intercept their communications, we’ll be forced to the back foot and only able to react, but not act. Any ideas, Nyx?”

[We can only continue developing our detection abilities. Until we can get a more granular view of the mana involved, we’ll have to remain in a passive stance and can only continue Operation Hunting Dog as we’ve been doing. Of course, we can also take more draconian measures—]

“Absolutely out of the question,” Aron interrupted. “I will not be responsible for massacring a significant portion of the human species.”

[That’s not what I meant by draconian. We can simply move noncitizens to internment camps so they can be supervised. And during the move, we can force them to use the simulation to register as noncitizens, so we’ll have a brain data dump on them and can monitor the cultist agents among them.]

“This is not a fascist empire. Moving to the fortress cities will naturally separate the noncitizens from the populace, and that’s already in the works. There’s been too many instances of internment that hasn’t worked out for the governments involved, and we can’t afford that kind of backlash now. The empire is too young and our foundation is still settling,” Aron sighed.

“So all we know is that they’re planning something with awakeners, and we can’t even be sure of that?” Aron rubbed his temples. The tension of knowing that something was coming, but not what it was, had had him on edge over the past months. Not only that, he was irritated that he had so far failed to deal with the progenitor cult despite it being almost a year since the attacks had taken place.

He had made a promise to his people and was so far failing to deliver on it.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them and asked, “You said there’s a list of suspected affinities, right?

What’re those?”

[Anything having to do with communication and control. If nothing else, the abnormally high suicide rate of captured cultists helped us rule out pretty much everything else. So it has to be something that can make someone do things they wouldn’t normally do of their own free will, whether it’s like a hidden program or not. If we can figure out whether it can be implanted or if it requires assuming direct control, we can narrow it down even further.

[Right now, I’m leaning toward a combination of the two. Being able to assume direct control of a cultist means they can also bury control programming in that cultist’s subconscious mind, which explains why there’s nothing in their brain data,] Nyx answered.

“That’s... less than good,” Aron mused, pondering what someone could do if they had those abilities, and how much harm they could inflict if they had sufficient planning time.

The moment that thought passed through his mind, possibility after possibility arose in his thoughts. His advantage in this area was on full display; he had the full set of applicable knowledges, unlike others, who only received bits and pieces of the knowledge he possessed.

All it would take was a bit of time, and he would know which affinity, or affinities, were being used, and the specifics of their usage.

“I’ll need to deal with this personally. No one will be safe until I do,” he said with a determined gleam in his eye.

Unbeknownst to Rick, his fate had just been sealed.