The Mech Touch

Time continued to pass until the workday was almost over. Ves left his office and descended to the underground lab.

He walked up to Gloriana and exchanged a kiss.

"Are you done with William now?"

She nodded. "I've collected a sufficient amount of data. You can pick him up and do whatever you want with him. I have one request."

"And that is?"

"Can I come with you? From what I've studied, his fears are deeply rooted in his mind. The Rim Guardians haven't been able to remedy this problem, so I'm very curious to see how you plan on treating William's condition."

"Don't you remember my specialty?" Ves turned towards Gloriana and tapped his head. "While I mostly work with mechs, I've also worked on people. It's just…"

"What's the problem, Ves?"

"The treatment plan I came up with isn't exactly proper. It's not as if I can medically-sound study as a mech designer. What I plan to do is not for the squeamish."

She looked a bit concerned, but quickly resumed her smile.

"I insist on accompanying you. If we want to increase our synergy, I need to see what you are capable of. I promise I won't object to anything you do no matter how ugly it gets. I can already guess that whatever you intend to do to William won't exactly be pretty."

Ves thought about it for a moment. "Okay. I'll allow you to witness my operation as long as Melody and your bodyguards keep their distance."

He waved towards the people he mentioned. Ever since Gloriana started working here, her hounds were never too far away.

To be honest, Ves detested their presence in his sanctum. Their presence constrained his impulses. He always felt he was being observed while he was performing his work. Activating local jammers could only do so much to mitigate the feeling of being stared at while he was doing something related to his specialty.

Gloriana mulled over his suggestion.

"Ordinarily, it will be difficult for me to keep Melody and my guards out of sight, but I think I can convince them to back off this time. This entire floor is highly isolated. No one is here except us, our cats and our guards."

When Gloriana approached Melody to issue her request, the two women held a brief argument before the assistant reluctantly acquiesced.

"It worked, Ves!" She returned and embraced him for a moment. "Will you show me what you can do now?"

"I will." He replied with a smile before turning to his bodyguard. "Nitaa, please bring William to one of the enclosed chambers."

Nitaa wordlessly nodded and dragged William to the isolated testing chamber. Ves originally had it built in order to perform dangerous experiments.

Though initially meant to contain dangerous explosions and the like, the enclosed chambers could also be used to contain recalcitrant test subjects.

Both the testing chamber and accompanying observation room were fully isolated and enclosed from the main lab hall.

This meant that William's screams and convulsions shouldn't reach the guards standing outside.

As Ves closed up the chamber and observation room, Nitaa stood right outside to make sure that neither Melody nor the Glory Battalion would barge in without warning.

"You seem to trust your bodyguard a lot." Gloriana remarked as she helped Ves activate the right observation equipment.

Gloriana hadn't let off this section when she replaced his old equipment with her own!

"She's a Kinner, after all. They're more trustworthy than any guards I can hire from the Republic."

It took some time for them to get the right setup. Their cats huddled together on top of a tall machine and looked down on their owners.

Once Ves was finally pleased, he looked out at the transparent wall where William helplessly banged against the surface.

"Let me out!" William screamed as soon as Ves opened up a communication channel. "What are you doing to me?! Not even the Rim Guardians treated me so roughly! I want to leave! I want to go home!"

"You want to leave? You want to go home?" Ves grinned as his eyes twinkled at his test subject. "I'll only let you go when you grow a spine and advance to expert candidate! Until then, you'll stay under my thumb!"

Ves cut off the comm channel and pressed a button.

A partition formed at the other side of the chamber. A floating platform carrying a very large object entered before the gap disappeared.

Nothing else happened as Ves did not activate any other commands.

A single minute passed without anything taking place. The cats started to yawn and lick each other while Gloriana puzzlingly looked into the test chamber.

Eventually, she couldn't hold in her curiosity. "Isn't that the dangerous Ancient Sarcophagus you've showed me back then? Why did you bring it into the chamber all of a sudden? Is that part of your treatment plan?"

"Not exactly." Ves tentatively admitted. "My real treatment won't begin yet. This is just a separate experiment to satisfy my curiosity. I want to see how a scaredy-cat like William reacts to an object that is capable of inducing fear from a distance."

Ordinarily, it took some time for the spiritual entity trapped in the red coffin to worm its way into the mind of someone else. Ves hoped that Nyxie would hurry up this time seeing as how he brought its coffin very close to a human.

Even though he didn't do much aside from checking the instruments every now and then, he constantly kept his spiritual vision peeled.

He wanted to see whether Nyxie was capable of influencing William without direct spiritual contact.

As twenty minutes passed, William gradually began to grow more and more panicked. The mech pilot kept banging at the surface of the transparent wall while screaming to be let out.

Ves already reactivated the comm channel but kept its volume low.

"This crystal thing is creeping me out, Mr. Larkinson!"

"W-Wait, is there a body inside? Glk!"

"Please let me out! I can't take it anymore!"

"Ahhh! This coffin! This coffin! This coffin!"

While Ves keenly observed William's spiritual potential for any changes, Gloriana began to frown more and more.

"What is the point of this experiment, Ves?" Gloriana sternly asked. "All I'm seeing is needless suffering. Our instruments aren't picking up anything meaningful aside from increasing levels of stress and panic in the poor fellow you've trapped inside the chamber."

Ves briefly turned around to face his girlfriend. "You promised not to interrupt me. Right now, I'm in charge of this session. Everything I'm doing is for a reason."

His unusual intensity took Gloriana aback. She had rarely seen him react so sternly towards her. Usually, he was much more accommodating to her!

Of course, she quickly realized that many mech designers were like this when they engaged in something related to their specialties.

"I'm sorry, Ves. You can continue. I won't interrupt you again."

As Ves turned back to directing his spiritual vision towards William's head, Gloriana continued to frown at Ves and the testing chamber.

No wonder her boyfriend didn't want her to bring in any of her guards. What Ves was doing right now clearly crossed a lot of boundaries!

Yet.. Gloriana couldn't bring herself to feel repulsed. She knew that Ves was following his passion.

While Gloriana dreamily gazed at him, Ves kept his attention on William.

At this point, his panic approached the limit of what he was able to bear. If this simple experiment kept going on, then William would soon scare himself to death!

"I guess this is enough." Ves clinically judged.

He pressed a couple of buttons that caused the Ancient Sarcophagus to float through a partition in the wall.

As the Ancient Sarcophagus kept floating further and further away, William gradually subsided from his panic.

"Mr. Larkinson! Please.. no more.. I can't take it anymore!" Willliam blubbered as tears streamed down his face.

Ves smirked. "You're doing fine so far, William, but the best is yet to come! Your treatment begins now!"

"W-Wait? W-What do you mean by that?!"

Ves concentrated his mind and turned his attention inward. He pulled out the mote of spirituality he cut out of Nyxie's spiritual fragment.

Compared to the real Nyxie, the mote looked a little more diminished. Ves had cut out numerous undesirable portions to purify it a bit, but it still shared a very close resemblance to the source.

The mote was just as domineering, tyrannical and arrogant as Nyxie himself. The only difference was that Ves cut out the majority of attributes that screamed alien.

"I hope this will do." He softly whispered. "Let the contamination begin."

Ves controlled the mote by controlling the spiritual barrier that surrounded it.. The mote floated across the observation room and passed through the thick transparent wall as if it didn't exist.

The mote continued to float forward until it silently slipped into William's head.

The Urbesh clansman suddenly jerked and froze as he felt a very peculiar sensation.

Something that felt much like the red coffin that previously terrorized him had returned! What was worse was that it felt a lot closer to him now than before!

"AHHHHHHH!" William clutched his head and fell to his knees.

Ves was worried that William would bang his head against the wall or something, so he activated another command that caused gravitic fields to force William to lie down on the ground and keep him in place.

"Keep still and don't hurt yourself! Don't resist! Embrace the change!"

Even though Nyxie's mote was just floating inside William's head, Ves could see that the mech pilot's spirituality could clearly sense the new presence!

A lot of turbulence took place as William's spirituality reacted with extreme fear, so much so that Ves sensed that the spiritual attributes related to fear started to expand!

"Goddammit! That's not what I want!" Ves cursed.

He quickly activated some commands that caused the testing chamber to inject some sedatives in William's body.

Though the test subject's body calmed down, Ves could quickly observe from his spiritual vision that the sedatives had done little to William's mental distress!

The presence of that tiny but powerful mote inspired a fear that was far more primal and acute than anything that William had ever sensed before!

What annoyed Ves was that the contamination that he was hoping for hadn't taken place.

"Do I need to increase his exposure?" He mused. "I might as well."

Ves reduced the strength of the barrier blocking some of the mote's influence.

"AAAHHHHH! GHERHEHRRHLELK!"

William began to shout gibberish for some reason as soon as Ves allowed Nyxie's mote to exert more influence.

"Interesting." Ves smiled and observed closely.

Though William's fright quickly approached a breaking point, Ves finally observed a tiny change.

A tiny portion of William's spirituality had shifted in attributes!

Ves had to observe very closely to notice this minor change, but once he did, he smiled. "It's happening!"

The contamination started agonizingly slow. Ves had to inject heavier sedatives into William's bloodstream in order to prevent his heart from beating too hard!

Fortunately, William's body enjoyed plenty of augmentations that massively improved his toughness and physical condition.

If William possessed a baseline human body, then his heart would have already exploded from the ordeals that Ves had subjected him to. There was only so much fear a human could handle!

"Are you succeeding, Ves?" Gloriana curiously asked.

"I am!" He grinned and waved his hand at the convulsing body of his test subject. "He is being transformed in front of our eyes! When we finally pull him out of this testing chamber, he'll probably come out as a different man!"

The contamination began to spread once Nyxie's mote established a beachhead in the mech pilot's spirituality.

Since William did not possess that much spiritual energy in the first place, the contamination rapidly began to overtake the attributes that used to belong to him. Every attribute related to fear started to melt and transform into attributes that fell more in line with Nyxie!

However, Ves quickly stopped grinning when he realized a very serious problem.

The contamination also started to affect William's spiritual imprint! The mech pilot started to lose ownership of his own spiritual potential!

The alien was starting to take over!