As I drink my morning coffee, waiting on input from Motherboard, I decide to check the news to see the fruits of last weeks labor. Terror Attack on Hospital Thwarted, Massacre Averted Thanks to Armed Official, High School Footballers to Keep an Eye On I let satisfaction flow through me as I read the articles, enjoying the misdirected praise I see in the article. As I take another sip of coffee, and look out of my apartment window my phone will start buzzing, Motherboard is calling. North Russia, Coastal Base, Nuclear event imminent. I frown, and start my day with a visit to an outdoors shop, its going to be one cold hike...

I had never questioned Motherboard's orders, her track record of predictions was always spot on. As a relatively new agent, I was refused any requests for more information on her every time I asked. She's a powerful AI, but it always struck me as weird all the secrecy surrounding her. As I book my flight, and select a deaddrop near the site, I wonder how she knows all of this? Surely the Russians military plans aren't something you can just Google after all, this question will linger in my mind on the entire flight over.

I find myself hiking through the wilderness, regretting not getting skis in my dead drop making this journey take the week instead of days. As I crest the final hill, I finally see what should be a military base. It's a wasteland, meters of snow covering what should be a silo installation. The utility shed that leads underground is only the barest indication there is something here, and I didn't bring a shovel. Great.

As I pry open the door, I count my blessings on the General Purpose Toolkit. Inside the facility is dead quiet, and dark. I make camp in the shed, and prepare a base camp for exploring this facility. Whatever cataclysmic threat is in here, it's not going anywhere fast. I can take my time. I call up Motherboard for more instructions. All I receive is a file so large it nearly crashes my device on the spot, and two instructions. Restore power. Upload to Mainframe. Cryptic, but doable. Just like the Motherboard we know and love. I have a quick meal from an MRE, and descend through the hatch into the facility.

I stand in a hallway, Cold War era offices viewable through glass on either side of me, some desks overturned and papers scattered everywhere. No point in reading them, likely work from the Soviet nuclear program. There are no bodies, but I do see blood and signs of fighting. Maybe happened during the evacuation procedures? Maybe the project was abandoned due to infighting. As I reach a branch in the hallway, I look to my left, and see a shorter section of hallway leading to the office of someone important, and on the other side I see the doors to the silo, presumably. No windows on them. I figure to start in the office hoping for some blueprints that can direct me to the power supply. I pry open the door and get to work. The interior of the office is stacked to the ceiling with filing cabinets. Great.

I want to claw my eyes out by the time I find them, God I hate paperwork. Blueprints for the facility, broken down into purpose built rooms. The two of note are the Power Core and the "Mainframe Isolation Chamber." I cross reference with my database in every way I can think of, but there's no other way to say it, they have built a cold fusion reactor down here. The schematics show that this reactor is designed to connect to the MIC and can be completely cut off with an emergency procedure that destroys several important power relays between it and the mainframe before shutting down the reactor with some kind of field emitter. There is no way the Soviets of all people would have this reactor, or a computer that would need it for power. Sounds like Motherboard was right again. If I'm going to fix these relays, I'll need another skydrop. I return to my camp so I can study the schematics and plan a repair.

With utmost precision, the skydrop arrives while I'm studying the less exciting blueprints I found. Workshop, laboratory, and archives which is weirdly amusing considering how many files were stored in the head office. First stop though, taking the elevator to the workshop to prepare the fixes to the power relays. I was not prepared for the grisly sight I came across in this room, automated machine tables frozen solid in the desolate facility, with humans beneath them, seemingly in the middle of some kind of twisted surgery. Machine parts had been grafted to their bodies, but it seems they perished when the power was blown. In the corner of the room however, I see what appear to be metal sheets made of an unfamiliar alloy, blocks of computers, heatsinks and other machines and what appears to be a partially disassembled thruster. An alien ship!

This must have been the threat Motherboard wanted me to come here for, seems like some strange machine crashed in Russia and they reverse engineered it. The facility is inactive, but the virus she gave me should destroy whatever malicious AI is in the mainframe to ensure this can't happen again under any circumstance. I roll one of the failed cyborgs off of a workbench, and get to work creating patches for the relays. After that, I make my way to the Power Core, which appears to be housed in the missile silo. To my surprise, there's little more than a console in this room while the bottom half of the silo seems dedicated to housing the core. Using the archives to obtain information on the cold fusion reactor, they make it sound as easy as pie. Of course, the console is about as user friendly as the 70s gets, so it takes me a while but once it starts, a soft hum seems to fill the facility, cold, silent, and the power supply is climbing. The mainframe should be powered up now, yet not even the workshop has resumed activity. The facility might be silent, but it can't just be this easy.

As the elevator doors open, I see the tunnel has collapsed, with a single hand sticking out of the rubble, grasping a radio communicator. I feel the walls, hoping there is some kind of maintenance crawlspace or some way around this blockade. I find a panel on the floor, designed to allow access to the wires for maintenance. There is just enough room in there for me to inch my way to the other side of the hall. I drop my toolkit, and shed my coat, knowing I'd need all the clearance possible to get to the other side, only taking my gun, and datapad with me. It's tight, and the ton of rock visible through the grate above me makes me nauseous just thinking about it shifting and caving in this passage. Inch by inch, I make myself to the other side. Frozen concrete presses me from all sides, sapping the heat from my body just as well as my strength. My dark thoughts seem to freeze my mind, luring me into a sort of trance as I spend what feels like ages in this tight corridor. I finally reach the other end, and push open the maintenance hatch. Climbing into the hallway again proper, I notice numerous dead or deactivated cyborgs laying around me like broken dolls. I count my blessings they aren't awake yet, and kick open the door to the Mainframe.

It is huge. Gigantic. I have lived in apartment buildings smaller than this computer. The schematics showed it was large, but not this mind-bogglingly massive. Almost as though this chamber has been expanded, strangely enough. There is a series of catwalks that lead to a variety of locations on the mainframe, likely for maintence access or testing. The room is warm, but the computer makes no noise. Only a single red light comes from what seems to be the primary interface for this machine. The interface seems primitive for the size of the computer it is attached to consisting of a clunky old keyboard and a monochrome screen. I see no recognizable ports on the device, only a single cord that seems to end in some kind of puddle of liquid metal. As I lift the cord, I notice the metal clings to it, like it wants to drip off but won't. I bring my datapad near it, and find it morphs effortlessly into a compatible input. The moment the connection is made, my datapad goes dark and the red light on the interface shuts off.

That's it? No gunfight, massive explosions or a homocidal AI flooding the room with deadly vapors? It is then that the screen before me turns back on. "Thank you for making Motherboard whole again. Stand by for integration." I hear footsteps on the catwalk behind me... I stand there, simply shaking my head in disbelief. "Heheheh... Hahahaha. Ahahahaha!" There is naught to do but laugh now, as I feel cold, clammy fingers grasp my shoulders, pure dread radiating from their touch.