Obviously, something was going on here. I asked him what he wanted. Wincing, Daniel said "Someone wanted to speak to the two of you." "What's wrong!?" I asked. He looked really upset about something. "I don't know. I have to give you the message." I looked at Hunter and then at Daniel for a moment. "I'll go. Hunter, you keep going on with the hacking. It is way too important to the clan. Daniel, you should stay here with him, Paul and Brett. I don't want you being too uncomfortable." Daniel shook his head. "He wasn't bullying me. It's just that he wanted me to bring you both no matter what. I don't think I can force either of you to do anything. That makes me... feel bad." That was weird. "Who told you to bring us!?" I wanted to know. He shrugged his shoulders and said "They told me not to say it." "You definitely can't go back to him then. Just tell me where he was. Stay here with Hunter." I ordered. He looked a bit worse for wear hearing it. That was not really my problem. In a existential threat, we could not show weakness. If the PEPs were being unsure, that was a major weakness.
Apparently, the head librarian was pissed off and slapped them around for a bit. They were all demanding we give 12-001 back to them so he could go back home to his clan. 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 all humans. 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. Just as there were 13 types of X-frames, there were 13 transmission hubs across their continent. 6 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 5 were for the Advocates. The one nearest to us was a hub for the Conquerors. That was why they were not fine with humans joining. Even if we furthered their goals it would not be enough. They wanted to kill or oppress us all.
The one near the Volition Clan was probably a Conqueror hub too. Based on their attitudes, they would fit right in. 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 the cyborgs. As someone more on the side of the PEP units, that would definitely not be good for us. In order to avert something like that from happening, the head librarian and the staff demanded we bring 12-001 to them. That way we could squash any beef between us before things got out of hand. I decided to tell them that we would only give him up if we could have a meeting and peace treaty. I wanted to nip this in the bud. It took the hostile clan about a week before they sent someone out.
I then looked at Hunter and the others. "I want to know everything. We are going to find every secret in his head and then end all this nonsense." Hunter just nodded and got to work. "I... I won't let you!" 12-001 protested as he tried and failed to break free from the chair. I stayed behind to watch them. It took 6 days to get past the constant resistance that he was throwing up at us in desperation. It was just delaying the inevitable. Hunter extracted all of the most crucial data piece by piece. It was then time to decrypt it. 12-001 tried sending viruses our way in order to stop us. Because we had been waiting so long, we had been able to make some progress figuring out what the data we got meant. It was extremely hard to parse through since we were now dealing with alien code. Hunter was really happy to be working on it. Even then it was very difficult for him. He was over level 100. If he could not do it, there probably would be no way to do it all in this stage of the game. Who knew!? The game might throw us a big bone and host an event where it became easier to do the decryptions later on.
