I found one of them and cornered her. "Look at my clan, Sixteenth Notes. They are in the required parameters to warrant the special X-frame upgrades. Give it to them." I said firmly. She scoffed and said "And let those shoddily crafted units achieve the greatest glory that the transmission hub has ever assigned? Never!" she hissed at me quietly. I leaned in closely and said "You will. Or I will talk. I have Hunter Diploti, cousin to a big gang fixer in my clan. You can't touch him, but with a single phone call, everything will be exposed for the highest bidder." Her eyes went wide. "You wouldn't da-" was all she said before I said "Try me bitch! Run the calculations. You know I don't have any problems fighting PEP units in the open street." Her eyes narrowed as she ran those calculations. "Fine. Follow me." she said. I was made to wait at their front desk. An hour and a half later, I had a single upgrade. I asked for more and she glared at me. "There were only supposed to be 26. The transmission hub made an exception and allowed you to grant the 27th to one member. That's it." she snapped. I left.
Quitting while you were ahead was a very important skill. I took it and fabricated the upgrade in the PEP lab. The others were still doing their self-selection before being given the go ahead to design their own X-frames. It gave me the time to make enough for the whole clan by the time that the newest members came back with theirs. "I saw them gathering materials for new X-frames. I wonder who will be using them. It looked like they were both 09 models." I guess that was the region we were in. It did not matter to us. Claudette said. Jessica nodded and added "They did not want us anywhere near it." It made sense. We filled them in on the "Next Stage." I gave both of them the new upgrades. Thankfully, they were unisex. Even if the best of the best were chosen, it was really first come, first served when it came to the Foundry. They all were able to install them and were pretty happy with themselves. There were now 26 cyborgs that were part of the Sixteenth Notes Clan. That brought up the total to 8 of the XF-07Fx model and 5 of the XF-11F. The other 13 were of the XF-05M model. Amazing.
More than amazing. There were only supposed to be 26 PEPs on the whole continent getting the pure blooded, special X-frame born AEP units. We had our own 26. We were a force that could not be denied now. They would be hybrids with technically lesser stats, but it would still be great for an independent faction. Those 13 pairs would then go on to make their own main clans. Each of the 13 would then take control of the region's transmission hub. From there, I was not sure what was going to happen next. I was sure that the information was purposefully being kept away from the humans in the clan. Hunter, Paul, Brett and I were being kept out of the loop. Too bad we were all officers. Hunter was made the Chief Cyber Security Officer. He was in charge of making sure the systems we used in the clan building and music studio were unhackable. If we were not officers, I was sure that they would just boss us around like grunts without telling us anything. We happened to be in the perfect position. Half of the X-frames were male. The other half were females. They could pair off perfectly here.
