“Right, sex toy it is. I shall refrain discovering how you use it.” the person responded amusedly.

[i]"For shame, I was just about to explain how you made the barbed tentacles come out..."[/i], he pondered with a smirk.

In fact, strictly speaking, it wasn't entirely untrue when he said that the device served little purpose beyond being an overcomplicated conversation piece. Apart from floating pointlessly in the air when activated, it really didn't serve any obvious functions beyond decoration. Certainly not the sort of things that would usually warrant the use of his talents. No, the real reason he made it was as a receptacle for some of his more valuable projects. Having anticipated the problems he would have at the station due to his suspicious luggage, he had elected to disassemble most of his important devices into their base components, then integrate them into seemingly innocuous ornamental trinkets. This one in particular contained a light speed computing cube, an experimental kinetic repulsion system he had been working on and a small sample of exotic matter. Even the shell, although less useful than it contents, was still rather valuable, being made out of a highly protective nanofiber alloy. Using his screwdriver, he was proceeding to carefully take it apart and retrieve any useful components it might have. Although it was no larger than the size of a baseball of moderate proportions, it was packed with a remarkably large amount of pieces, each densely interconnected with one another to give the illusion of serving an actual purpose.

After carefully removing the final pieces from the orb, he casually closed the casing then discarded it by throwing carelessly it over his shoulder. Before it could hit the floor, however, it was caught by a small, pseudo-spider like robotic drone, which skittered back into his duffel bag with it in the proper compartment. He manually stored the remainder inside a small metallic box which he then put into his backpack. He grinned and was about to say something to the boy who had approached him, but was interrupted by the sound of the room they were in finally finishing its ascent. It jolted downward lightly as though it was settling into an indent before being locked into place with a distinctive clanking sound. The monitors at the end of the room lit up with a bright red text in capital letters reading "REMAIN SEATED."

[i]"No "please" this time..."[/i], he noted absently. The doors opened, only to reveal a large number of soldiers in power armour carrying vicious looking rifles. Immediately, his face fell and his eyes widened as the harsh realisation of what this meant crashed upon him. Millions upon millions of electrical signals coursing through his brain every second. Thousands of calculations a minute, billions of subconscious observations, and yet he found himself completely frozen, a cold feeling of dread and despair welling up in his stomach. It was like the logical part of his brain had suddenly stopped working. His muscles tensed, and he was instinctively tempted to reach for his duffel bag for something, for anything. But he didn't. Most of his potentially useful tools were disassembled and the few defensive ones he [i]did[/i] have were mostly harmless, non-lethal ways of temporarily disabling non-protected foes. He didn't have the sort of equipment required to take down someone with a power armour with this level of sophistication, let alone a squadron of them.

[i]"No..."[/i], he thought his mind still reeling with sheer terror. Though on the outside he looked mostly composed, albeit slightly stiff and grim looking, on the inside he was a wreck. [i]"No... No... Not again... NO! No... Please not again... No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Non! Putain de fucking de merde! Not again! FUCK!"[/i]

Before a single one of them opened their mouth he already knew exactly what they were going to say. They marched with strict, mechanical, automatic, almost robot-like posture, and not in a good way. Each and every one of them moved together, with movements which screamed of harsh training and rigorous discipline. They stomped their right feet harshly on the concrete floor, and joined together into a formation, weapons held close to their bodies. From the door, their leader approached, less armoured but no less intimidating in stature.

"Students of Second Academy," she began abruptly. "I do not regret to inform you that this is not the educational facility you were expecting..."

-+-

Cormac had always known that someday, he would have that fatal lapse in attention which would cost him everything. He just never expected it to happen so quickly. For all his supposed genius, he had fallen right in their trap. Like a salmon gleefully jumping into the open maws of a grizzly bear. They got him. They got him good. And they weren't letting him go anytime near in the future.

"Well played...", he muttered bitterly to himself. "Well played indeed..."

They had obviously read his file through and through. They had shown him the blueprints. Knowing of his abilities, they had willingly shown him the blueprints, hammering in how supremely confident in their security they were. And then, there were the AIs. On a good day, if he was in a particularly good state of mind, he might be able to compete with an AI directly, maybe even outsmart it if he got particularly lucky. But not today. Not several. There was no weaseling his way out of this one. Although he had vast advantages in terms of adaptability, creativity and subversion, he simply didn't register on the same scale when it came to raw processing power. Not even close.

“That has gotta be the best welcoming ceremony I’ve ever attended,” the boy next to him sarcastically declared. “Best. Shit. Ever.”

Quite the understatement if he ever heard one. From his tone of voice and lack of surprise, Cormac assumed that they must have used a slightly less appealing and more direct way of recruiting him. Or maybe it was just him. Maybe he was just that stupid for not noticing it, for not paying attention sooner. Had they used an empath or telepath to coerce him into coming? Probably not, people with enhanced intellect tended to be more resilient towards suggestive powers than usual. Then again, however, they also tended not to fall in such obvious traps. He would have plenty of time to think about it in the next forty years.

His interlocutor beckoned the blond boy sitting on the same row to come join them. No point in not making allies, Cormac supposed.

“Name’s March. March Blakewood." he said. "Now since I’ve introduced myself, it wouldn’t be good manners if you guys didn’t.”

"My condolences..." Cormac responded sternly, extending his hand for a shake, a subtle sarcastic smirk on the corner of his mouth. "For what I can only assume must have been a particularly traumatic childhood... With a name like that..."

His humorous expression hinted that he wasn't being particularly serious, however.

"Cormac. Cormac Leclaire."