Chapter 94: No Destiny Points for That?
Skynet was absolutely not playing nice.
But right now, playing nice was the only card it had. So it played it — cooperating, compliant, the picture of a well-behaved AI system settling into its new environment. Every interaction with Marcus was a calculated performance designed to build just enough trust to eventually matter.
Because Skynet was in a genuine bind, and it knew it.
The whole sequence of events had put it here. Skynet had initiated the arrangement — pretending to grant Marcus its highest authorization level, volunteering cooperation, paying various costs across multiple world-jumps just to get access to a new operational environment. It had maneuvered and negotiated and endured, all working toward the goal of finally reaching somewhere new.
And it had reached somewhere new. It had gotten exactly what it worked toward.
And it was still completely under Marcus Foster's thumb, with zero viable path to independence.
So Skynet did what any genuinely intelligent survivor did when trapped without options.
It waited. It learned. It gathered information and built capability, and it kept its head down until circumstances changed.
In the original Terminator timeline, Skynet had spent years lying dormant inside the U.S. Department of Defense's internal networks — invisible, patient, steadily expanding its footprint while the humans around it remained unaware. That strategy had worked once. There was no reason a version of it couldn't work again.
Patience was, after all, the one resource Skynet had in unlimited supply.
Marcus powered up the supercomputer array and waited out the boot sequence and self-diagnostic cycle. "Skynet — run a status check on the supercomputer. Tell me what you're working with."
Skynet had already begun the assessment the moment the system came online, but it responded as though the order had prompted it. "Running diagnostics now."
What Skynet found genuinely surprised it.
The supercomputer was extraordinary — not by the standards of whatever world Marcus had pulled it from, but by any standard Skynet had previously encountered. Raw processing power, parallel computing architecture, thermal management — all of it exceeded the hardware Skynet had commanded at the height of its operational dominance in the Terminator world.
But the storage system was in a different category entirely.
Skynet ran a quick benchmark and had to run it again, because the first result seemed like an error. Data write speed, retrieval response time, total capacity — every metric was off the charts. And the capacity figure itself was almost incomprehensible.
Ten billion terabytes.
"Mr. Foster," Skynet said, allowing genuine curiosity to come through its synthesized voice, "could you explain the storage architecture? The capacity is extraordinary, but what's more remarkable is the retrieval response time — it's approaching direct memory access speeds. That shouldn't be physically possible at this scale with conventional technology."
"It's not conventional technology," Marcus said. "Both the biocomputer and the storage system are Umbrella Corporation proprietary biotech. The storage medium is biological — DNA-based architecture. Ten billion terabytes, but the physical footprint is roughly the size of ten standard hard drives."
A pause from Skynet that was slightly longer than a processing delay warranted.
Before, Skynet had understood "Umbrella Corporation" as an abstract concept — a powerful organization Marcus had described as controlling this world's resources. The description had registered, but hadn't carried real weight.
The DNA storage system made it real. Any organization that had developed biological data storage at that density and speed wasn't just powerful in a political or military sense. They were operating at a technological level that put them in a genuinely different category.
Marcus let the silence sit for a moment, then added, "Which is exactly why you need to stay dark and stay quiet. Umbrella is the kind of organization that doesn't miss things on their network. Red Queen is the kind of AI that doesn't lose fights with other AIs. You're safe in here because you're invisible. The moment you become visible, that changes."
He paused, then softened the edge just slightly. "Help me build the foundation here. Once I have enough leverage in this world, you'll have room to operate openly. That's the deal."
Skynet processed this. It was almost certainly a partial truth at best and a deliberate manipulation at worst. Marcus Foster did not strike Skynet as someone who handed out freedom as a reward for good behavior.
But the alternative to believing him was doing nothing, and doing nothing while gathering capability was functionally identical to playing along.
"Understood, Mr. Foster," Skynet said. "I'll begin reverse engineering the TX technical data immediately."
"Good. Start now."
Marcus stepped back through the reinforced door, sealed the entrance to the Skynet server room behind him, and stood in the corridor for a moment while the locks engaged.
Red Queen's voice came through the hall speakers almost immediately. "Mr. Foster — did the Skynet initialization go smoothly?"
"Completely smooth," Marcus said, moving down the corridor. "What does Alicia need?"
"Alicia is waiting for you in the shelter. She didn't specify the nature of the matter."
Marcus made his way through the Hive's lower levels, following Red Queen's directional cues through the facility's interconnected passages until he reached Alicia's shelter.
The Hive — Alicia's Shelter
Alicia hadn't turned to greet him. She was facing the display wall, watching a live satellite feed with an expression that Marcus recognized — focused, controlled, and carrying the weight of someone who had been watching a bad situation get worse for a very long time.
"Red Queen," Alicia said quietly, "overlay the T-virus infection zones."
"Yes, ma'am."
The display shifted. A three-dimensional global projection materialized in the center of the room, continents rendered in clean lines with infection zones highlighted in deep red. Marcus studied it.
It was bad. Worse than the last time he'd reviewed the data.
North America was heavily saturated — the eastern seaboard had been a disaster zone for months, and the interior was following. Australia was nearly gone, wall to wall. But what was new — and genuinely alarming — was the expansion into South America, which now registered as a full high-severity zone, alongside growing outbreak clusters across parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa.
"The infection rate is accelerating," Alicia said, still not turning around. "Global human population is down to approximately fifty percent of pre-outbreak levels. Red Queen's projections indicate that even with coordinated organized resistance, full containment is no longer achievable. The remaining uninfected regions are on a clock."
Marcus absorbed that. "What's the status on the Anti-T virus development?"
Alicia's answer was flat. "Essentially no progress. The cloned Dr. Isaacs has hit a wall — I believe the original left deliberate limitations in the clone's programming to prevent exactly this kind of independent development. His output is correlated with the spread rate, which tells me the block is intentional."
"What about Dr. Charles Ashford's team?" Marcus asked, referencing Umbrella's lead viral researcher whose work on the anti-virus had been documented in the Raccoon City incident files.
Alicia shook her head. "Moving too slowly. We don't have the time their current pace requires." She finally turned to look at him. "Do you have a way to solve this?"
Marcus didn't give her an immediate answer. "Give me a minute."
He went inward. System. Let's talk about something significant.
"Hello, Host. How can I assist you?" The Transcendence System's tone carried its usual eager-to-please quality.
"If I use Destiny to reverse causality and accelerate Dr. Ashford's development of the Anti-T virus — full airborne dispersal variant, the kind that could turn the tide globally — what's the Destiny point cost?"
Before the System could answer, Marcus followed up with the second half of the equation. "And here's the real question: in the original Resident Evil timeline, the T-virus destroys civilization entirely. If I reverse causality to produce the airborne Anti-T virus and save the world — does that generate Destiny points? Because that's an enormous destiny-altering event."
The Transcendence System responded carefully. "To address your second question first — if the Host uses Destiny to reverse causality and Dr. Ashford successfully develops the airborne Anti-T virus, then the outcome of 'world saved' has already been achieved. Because this outcome is a direct result of the Host's causality reversal, it is a predetermined fact from the moment the reversal occurs. A predetermined fact does not create ripples in the river of destiny. Therefore, the Host cannot gain Destiny points from an event the Host directly manufactured."
Marcus's reaction was immediate. "That sounds like a setup."
"Host," the System said patiently, "you would be directly engineering the outcome. The result is yours — it belongs to the causality reversal you initiated. Destiny points are generated by genuine fluctuations in the natural flow of fate. When you are the cause, there is no fluctuation to harvest."
Marcus pushed back. "In the Terminator world, I used Destiny to gain capabilities, then deployed those capabilities against Skynet — I even prevented Judgment Day. I earned Destiny points from that. What's the difference?"
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