I did not care what he said. He was not going to be able to defeat me. We both knew that I was too strong. 12-001 charged at me as he went hostile. Once again, I used magic, punches and kicks. He got a few shots in, but not nearly enough to make me sweat. When he was on the verge of death, he tried to crawl away while crying. His body was covered in gray splotches where the nanites were burnt and crispy. That was from the holy fire. I just picked him back up over my shoulder and took him over to the Red Grind. I strapped him into the chair at the lab and hooked him in. I then looked at Mason and the others. "I want to know everything. We are going to find every secret in his head and then end this nonsense." Mason just nodded and got to work. "I... I won't let you!" 12-001 protested as he tried and failed to break free. I stayed behind to watch. It took 6 days to get past the constant resistance that he was throwing up in desperation. It was just delaying the inevitable. Mason extracted all the data piece by piece. It was time to decrypt it. 12-001 tried sending viruses our way.
As we were pretty much done with him, I sent Greta and Caleb to tell the librarians that we wanted to meet and trade with the clan 12-001 came from. I instructed them not to mention that we were hacking him. They came back a bit later very concerned and panicked. "We have to let him go! Right now!" Greta said as she began untying the bonds on him. "It's going to cause a civil war!" Caleb added. I did not understand what was going on. I told them to stop and explain it to me. They looked at each other for a second before Greta stood in front of me. Apparently, the head librarian was pissed off and slapped them around for a bit. The alien race that created them all were split into 3 separate factions. There were Conquerors, Researchers and Advocates. Conquerors wanted to take over the planet, capture our resources and enslave humanity. Researchers decided that humans and the planet were interesting. They wanted samples and to run experiments on all of us. Advocates just wanted to make peace with us and include us in an intergalactic league of big planets. I liked that idea.
Just as there were 13 types of X-frames, there were 13 transmission hubs across the continent. 8 of them were for the Conquerors. 2 were for the Researchers to use. I guessed those would be the most hostile to humans. The other 3 were for the Advocates. The one nearest to us was a hub for the Researchers. That was why they were totally fine with humans joining. We get to further their goals and they all get to closely monitor us using our own clanmates. It was an amusing case study for them. The one near the Volition Clan was probably a Conqueror hub based on their attitudes. Just because they were in the same faction did not mean they operated the same way the others did. The clan the sent the AEP units after us were genocidal. But how would you get slaves if you killed them all? Since the clan was so radically anti-human they would definitely start a conflict with us. One that would get all the Conqueror hubs on us and the other Researcher hub. That would not be good. While we were divided the government was united in its goal to kill and expel all of the cyborgs.
