The head of the ‘Troubleshooting’ Division, Mary Sencan, was having a bad day. She walked through the labyrinth of tunnels that surrounded the nexus, passing by any manner of creatures. From stout Gremlins being puppeted by some low level technician soul to high level company administrators piloting their preferred species of sentient creature, they all stood at attention for her. She was wearing her favorite black formal dress with blue accents running up and down her thighs, but even that was not enough to lift her spirits.

‘Of course,’ she thought to herself, ‘Of course I get an assignment where I travel out into Swarm territory as soon as I plan a date with my cute boyfriend. I swear Johnny’s just jealous!’

She marched out into the Nexus itself and continued walking without so much as a glance at the beautiful architecture and art that lined the walls. Everyone, from the human-bodied scientists to the patrolling raptors to the packs of shuffling grunts peeled off from the center of the path to avoid drawing her ire. She clicked her tongue and carried onward, continuously climbing further and further upward.

‘Argh… If someone hadn’t already strangled the braindead moron that designed this place, I would have,’ she grumbled in her mind, ‘Seriously, ‘It will teach you to appreciate time,’ he says. As if we don’t have other, much more important fires to put out instead of sitting on our asses and thinking about time!’

With that thought, she became even more annoyed, and continued stomping her way up the nexus. As she entered the floor below the lobby, she heard a pompous voice call out to her from the side, “Ah, Ms. Sencan! It is wonderful to see you here,” the voice said, “In spite of my appreciation of your company, might I ask why you are still here, within Dubai, and not off to complete your extremely important mission, hmm?”

Taking a deep breath she turned her head to the side to see Mathew Dutch walking towards her. Every person and creature between them shied away from him, like their peers did with her, but instead of ducking out of her way as if she were a charging bull they shrunk from his gaze as if he were a hawk. “Hello Mathew,” she said, the venom in her words making the air between them thick with tension, “If you must know, I was just about to leave on my mission to ensure that the Swarm does not devour you or your family. Now, if you are done, I must be off,” she said, falling into a brisk walk.

Before she could get far, however, Mathew called out from behind her, “I would never interrupt such important business without due cause, but have you finished the work I asked you to complete?” he asked, smugness coating every word and dripping from his smile as she turned back to him.

“No. No I did not,” she stated in a matter-of-fact way.

Mathew seemed slightly caught off guard by her confidence. Slightly. “Is that so? Then I believe that it would be more pertinent for you to complete the important work before you go harrying off on some brutish adventure,” he suggested, the guise of civility slipping away by the end of his sentence. Instead of responding, Mary laughed in his face. Her laugh was so strong due to her custom-tuned body that the walls shook and she was sure she heard at least one biomachine stasis pod shatter. The smug mask Mathew wore fell away, bit by bit, as she laughed, showing the man with a face full of insecurity. “What’s so funny?” he asked, grating every word out as if it was sandpaper.

The only reply his question elicited was a resurgence in Mary’s thunderous laughter. Eventually, her laugh turned to a chuckle and the other employees and biomachines peaked out from behind whatever cover they could find and looked at her.

“Well,” she began, speaking between fits of chuckling, “This assignment is not a diplomatic mission. This is a formal offer of military aid to an allied nation. Therefore, it cannot wait for your incessant ‘public relations’ projects. Bottom line, Mat: I don’t have to listen to your shit,” she stated loud enough for the other employees to hear. With her piece said, she walked off to the stairwell that led to the floor above. Even as she walked through the room that housed the incompetently designed staircase she could hear the loud curses and profanities that Mathew was spewing. Alongside some spittle, probably.

She sighed. ‘How did he even get that position? For that matter, what does he even do? All I see is a dead weight dragging down the productivity of the company with his petty office politics and incessant whining. Hell, he’s even a waste of resources, mostly due to his little biomachine fancy he disguises as ‘PR events,’ the creep,’ she thought. ‘Ugh, I already know how he’s here and I know it. He’s only here because Zach can’t help but want to help his baby brother. Worst part is that Zach is an actually integral member of the company, so we can’t just kick his brother out. Dammit! Weren’t we supposed to run this show based on merit and contribution to the company’s common goal? No one else sees it that way! Not even Johnny! He still thinks that I voted for him as a political favor, the bastard! He better hope that the pigheaded Mathew’s sole accomplishment of scouting Marshal doesn’t come to pass, cause she’s getting my vote on her first day,’ she ranted to her mind.

In the time she was immersed in her thoughts, she had walked through the streets of the City of Dubai still in her lizardman-human hybrid form. She looked around and saw most trying to go about her business, but stealing poorly-hidden glances at her noseless face and scaly skin. Sighing, she swapped her body’s genetic code for her improved ‘human genome MK. XV.’

The effects were almost immediate. Her skin cracked, flaked, folded in on itself, and became beautiful medium-dark skin. Her hair grew from non-existent to flowing headdress of rose-gold. Her face contorted, swirled, and snapped in place as her face remolded itself to look like the ‘Perfect Woman™’ and the ‘Perfect Man™’ had an even more perfect daughter. As her transformation finished he chuckled as all of the tourists stealing glances were staring horrified. With that, she continued to walk down the street as if nothing ever happened and to the soundtrack of hurried and hushed whispers.

While she wanted to get to the airport as quickly as possible, she had to sharpen her mind as much as possible; she had been pushing papers and signing letters for the past few months, so she didn’t want to go into a hostile warzone with the mundane apathy that dominated the offices of the Dubai Corporation. To do that, she took in every detail around her that she could see or couldn’t. Every stray gust of wind. Every drop of void. Every unique human, elf, dwarf, goblin, lizardman, or other being that walked down the street. Everything from the smallest ant to the gargants and grabbers hidden underground. She could feel it all. Refocusing on her body, she continued on her way without further delay

*=====*

The airport was the one thing in all of the City of Dubai that Mary was always in awe of.

‘Old man Stockingwells may have been a terrible bio-void scientist, he was one hell of an architect,’ Mary thought as she walked through the bustling airport. The airport was even busier than usual, which was a difficult thing to imagine for Mary. The airport was always nearing maximum capacity no matter how many extensions were built, so she questioned how it could even accommodate more.

The answer was, simply, more ‘Wyverns.’ The airport was shaped like a massive tower of E’s were placed on top of each other, turned into a single story building, and built like a scar of voidstone and Grunt chitin. She passed innumerable branches of the airport where a few clerks would try to keep up with the sheer volume of paperwork that went into creating a biomachine airport.

Eventually, the crowds became sparse and she knew she had reached the military section of the airport. Finally reaching her dock, she walked up to the clerk.

“Hi, I have a flight going out in about…” She looked at the large clock hanging behind her on the opposite wall. “Now… May I board?” she asked.

The clerk looked at her for a moment, clearly not recognizing her, and began to fiddle with the computer. After a few seconds, the clerk shot up, standing at attention. “Y-Yes ma’am! Your f-flight is ready a-and waiting,” she stuttered, “Is there a-anything you n-need to bring with you?”

Mary giggled. She always found it entertaining when the interns of the ground level stared at her, terrified, when they learned who she really was. That exact situation was what led her to finding her current boyfriend, after all. “Thank you,” she replied, smiling. With that, she took her leave and walked down to the far end of the branch and walked onto the tarmac.

In front of her was a massive, 30 foot long, Class C-2 ‘Wyvern’ Biomachine resting on the ground. On its back was a large leather saddle with everything she would need for her trip, which was not much. In the small pack on the wyvern’s back was s new outfit for her to wear, a void-based beacon, and enough rations to feed a man for a year. In front of the wyvern was not just the pilot, but also Johnathan Regat, the current CEO of the Dubai Corporation. His face was nothing to write home about besides his angular jaw and neither was his body. Mary wondered for a second why the man chose to have such an average body when he could just slip into one of her biomachines she created for the purpose of beauty. Before her train of thought could go any further, the man spoke to her, “Do you have everything ready?” he asked

She gave a sad smile, “What does it look like?”

“Very well then,” he said, turning away. “And Mary.”

“Hmm?”

“Make sure you take care of the problem. Entirely. We don’t want another repeat of the Himilstache incident, do we?” he asked, emphasizing his words.

Mary cringed a bit. While the report said that the incident was a total success, she had not cleaned up the assassination groups well enough, as they tried a second, much less successful attempt a few months later. They were quickly eliminated, but relations with the AI were on thin ice for a month or two after that. “I get it. You want every queen, broodbirther, and mitosis bug stomped and killed, right?”

He nodded. “And beyond that, come back alive. You are the only one who doesn’t have their soul safely put away, so you're at the greatest risk.”

“Aww… you do care!” she teased. “Anyway, Johnny, I’ll see you once I’m done with this assassination spree. And when I get back, you’re paying for every date I missed with my boyfriend, got it!?”

He smiled. “Of course. Now get going, in the time we’ve been talking, another broodbirther could have been born.”

She waved as she climbed aboard the massive beast and she waved once more when the pilot made the beast fly upwards and out of the city and into the desert. On her way out, she saw most of the other wyverns floating in the air with large metal baskets hung from their undersides. She decided to tune out the noise of the wyvern’s wings, the noise of the wind on the sand, and the breathing of the pilot, and decided to listen to her own heartbeat. It thudded with power and void-enriched blood. It beat and beat as she flew further and further. Then, the Earth began to shake. She heard the ground tear itself apart. And the world disappeared in a flash of blue.