“Well hello, my child? Well of course you are, look at that DNA, practically a direct clone!?” Doctor Omega Crouched down and waved the girl forward.

“Your little friend must be Mr. Thing.“ she let the eldritch puppy sniff her hand from the girl's arms, whatever minor psychic power or predatory instinct had warned her of the malevolent swarm’s approach when she first awoke now screamed at her that this creature made the Zombified Arch-Angel look like a pre-apocalypse ant. Despite his power, he seemed to bear her no ill will, however, giving her hand an appreciative lick after sniffing it with a variety of sensory organs. About half the girls original nanites were forming a layer to stop her from seeing Mr. Thing directly, but even coating the creature was not enough to copy even 1 of its powers yet, and trying to get a good look, or take back control of the nanite shell seemed like it came with the risk of it going back into being a mind-bending horror to behold, so no.

“So you must be other mom, ooh, or maybe doctor mom!” the exited clone beamed. Then looked down at the puppy clinging to her arms as much as it was held. “Mr. Thing says he likes Dr. Mom too” she looked down at the Creature seriously for a second. “He wanted to thank the moms for the gifts of a child to love, a pleasant way of seeing himself, and the gift of freedom from the shackles of other's fears. If he can ever grant the moms a boon, they have only to ask”

So, not just a horrifying powerful beast then, also hella smart and either telepathic or has a telepathic bond with the girl. He deduced the plan I am not even 100% sure that I had, I am not sure I had enough info to know more than that my Basic Information skill gave me knowledge about too many possible things to fear, and that I might, possibly, be able to fight fear with a child's innocence. From there I can see how Omega Scouts plan to make a clone and then disconnect it from us, or our memories. This way they did not pollute the clone with their fears.

She must have put most of their shared childlike wonder and other such personality traits into this clone, to give her the best chance, this must be what allowed the child clone separated from the hive mind to develop into her own unique being. Omega Scouts bubbly personality probably changed quite a bit, little less girl scout and more like a military reconnaissance and intelligence officer.

Omega refocused on what the dog creature had said through her daughter “Thank you Mr. Thing, my main request would be that you keep Jr here safe, but I have a feeling you would do that anyway.” she paused to consider if there really was anything she needed from the dog horror “you two stick with me for about 20 minutes and I will know if I have a task you can do”

Omega turned to the Troll princess and introduced the two powerful children. Then I did the same with the halfling girl, Sarah. Explained about the ex-zombie, Aetherial people in tattered or no clothes, before picking up the sleeping Orc in a fire-mans carry and leading them through the path she had made through the rubble and devastation of the first floor.

Someone spotted the corpse of the man Hank, buried in the rubble. She could put together that he had been accidentally vital to her and Mr. Thing waking up. She used smart matter to envelop the mostly buried body and teleport it into storage along with the zombie bodies that could not be restored, in hindsight, probably because she ate quite a few corpse brains hunting for mind nanite parts. Hank's brain was mostly intact, so she moved it next to some highly infectious zombie bits in her inventory, she had the beginnings of a plan for reviving the man.

She took the orc, the kids, and a few of the adult Aetherials with her in the first ride on the lift to the second floor. Once they all exited the elevator it closed behind them and turrets popped out of the walls and a familiar AI voice asked “what now Omega, an invasion?” some of the turrets began to make a powering up sound, like they were getting ready to fire at any moment, the Aetherials put up their hands, with Billy and Sarah quickly following suit while the 2 scary girls looked unfazed.

“Psssh, Quit that, Allies, Teammates, maybe even some new workers to get some of your facilities up and running. Only the Orc has not Joined the new faction I made for us, and he has been passed out since he was possessed by a God who cooked the zombie angels wings for me, which in turn gave me the clue I needed to cure a zombie infection. It was an odd battle” Omega told the paranoid Dungeon AI, and before he could ask for a thousand details she just wirelessly sent him all her sensor feeds from the battle.

After he was caught up, she sent an invite to him for a more digital chat, they spent what would have felt like hours discussing what they knew, what they should do, and eventually Omega got him to agree to a fully equal partnership between the two of them, she would be a better leader, he would be a better administrator, they would share all data. this would have even included giving Omega back her lost memories, but they had been deleted(not by the AI), so she had to settle for all the AI’s camera feeds and audio pickups of her childhood, this also let her see and hear what the scientists were discussing about their experiments on or about her. It gave her life more context, but did not help her gain back any lost skills, she could see what she did to gain skills, and then repeat them, it would just take time.

It seemed a lot of the experiments had to do with child growth rates, which was even part of why they kept erasing her memories, if she thought she was a toddler, then the system would let her learn like she was a toddler, she could even shapeshift herself younger or older to match her mental picture of herself. But it seemed that once lost, a skill was easier to regain, or to merge several skills into higher rank ones, which is how she eventually got her Basic Information, Science!, and Jack of all Trades skills. She needed at least 1 skill point in 3-4 trade skills to get her ‘Jack of all Trades’ skill back based on her recordings of past selves, but it took 7 separate trades at once to gain the skill the first time.

So while the things done to her were cruel, she could learn a lot about min-maxing the skill and power growth of her daughter, the troll princess she would most likely adopt, and any of their friends or other children she took an interest in. That gave her another idea to discuss with the AI.

Omega: {I am naming you Sidney by the way}

Dungeon AI/Sidney: {What why?}

Omega: {Well my daughter has the Third horror from the basement as a pet dog guardian, and well, you were my only friend and guardian for a long time, so a name that suited someone Loyal like a dog seemed appropriate, but also a name that suits a place, and my basic information skills tells me Sidney is both a common dog and town name.}

Dungeon AI/Sidney: {...}

Omega: {Plus I like it}

Sidney: {FIIIIIIINE, Hi I am Sidney. Are you happy now?}

Omega: {Yes, thank you. Now on to my real idea for several lifetimes worth of fun, Data, and science!}

Sidney: {Ya Ya, you have my attention}

Omega: {We make our own System! Or maybe like a Sub-system, only our people can use properly, we grant access to extra data, item storage, Hints, quests, we use my nanites to grant these abilities to infected hosts, and your vast systems to help sort through all the data. This way we can copy the powers, feats and skills to anyone in our system, then give other people with similar abilities; tips on how to grow, or even a boost to the ability a bit by using my shapeshifting to make that part of them a bit more powerful. This would also vastly improve my own power’s utility, and give you an ever-growing pool of subjects to observe and collect data on}

Sidney: {Oooooh, I like it}

Omega: {I am going to add Holly to the conversation, she should be able to operate in a digital space like this just fine}

Hologram Holly: {huh, what? Oh, Omega, hey sorry about earlier, I was not acting like a proper pride imprint, I am ashamed at my surprise, It seems most of my processing power was meant to be dedicated to my shopkeeping functions in the hopes I would not be ripped off by you or other entities I decided to trade with.}

Omega: {Ya, that and you should have taken over the whole system you are connected to by now, I bet they never anticipated you would choose to serve a glorified VI rather than take it over}

Holly: {what, no, my Home systems are fine, sure they are not very creative, or good at conversation or long term planning… Ok, ya, they suck.}

Sidney: {Greetings Hologram lady Holly, I am the Dungeon AI Sydney, if you allow either Omega or I to connect to your uplink to your Home systems, we can subvert them into your control, neither of us wants to take it from you, instead I think Omega wants you to be able to act as a third AI like peer we can interact within an accelerated time frame like this}

Holly: {Ummm ya sure}

Sidney: {..., in the future, please don’t give any strange AI that asks access to you, or us through you. Too trusting for a shopkeeper}

Omega: {and we are done, Congratulations Holly, you are now in control of the whole of Sloth Bunker Beta, and the teleportation trade network, I can have the ants hollow out some big sections beneath the dungeon we can use as extra “inventory” space for now, all three of us now have access to the shadow teleport device that we may be able to upgrade at some point to use Aether, remind me about that please Sidney.}

They let Holly in on their plans to create their system and asked her to be in charge of any stores and their point of sale systems. Then the Artificially minded trio spent what felt to them like a week hashing out the details while in reality it just looked like Omega Spaced out for 15-20 seconds. Then she started giving orders to get all the Aetheric Zombies inside the Dungeon, gave 70% of them jobs cleaning the Dungeon up, the last 30% became the new security personnel for the second floor of the dungeon.

As the work went on it got easier as the Atherials noticed that objectives were being highlighted in their vision, glowing lines only they could see led them through the maze-like floors of the Old labs. Objects they needed glowed blue even in pitch black rooms, even rocks and rubble were colour coded for the labourers based on how hard each piece would be for each person to lift, so no one wasted energy moving rubble someone else could move or break up more easily.

Omega sat on the second floor explaining the new system to her children, she had officially adopted Billy and Tiffany, which gave the children prompts to accept. They both did, Sarah was left out, actually being an adult, there was no way to adopt her, but she could be added to the workforce, unlike the kids, so she set herself the job of setting up a kitchen for Grill to use when he woke up.

She gave her adopted Children each their very own device with a big red button on it. “If you kids ever run into anything you are not sure how to handle, push the button and I will either come to help myself, or send help or evacuate you, kids, depending on the situation.”

She wanted to go with the kids on their quest, but she knew if she did, she would hog all the Xp, and the point of her new system was to give her kids every possible advantage, without stifling their potential. She had a 5 man squad of Aetherial Ex-soldiers ready at a moment's notice and kitted out in the best gear her and Sidney could put together for them. She gave the squad an 80% chance of beating the Angel's horde of zombies minus the angel without casualties, so they should be ready for anything the world was likely to throw at a ragtag group of kids.