IX7

An Inlay Bishop sent to the secret desert facility for a yet undisclosed reason, presumably to deal with a capitalist presence in the area.

## Undisclosed Desert Facility Raid

Tessa meets IX7 in the undisclosed desert facility during an industrial espionage mission. Initially, IX7 acts cordial to her and interrogates her as a "formality" but quickly wants to know who is feeding her the answers, detecting that Tessa is receiving messages with Anarchist-encryption on a CORE implant. Ix7 connects with Tin-Head for further questioning, realising that Tessa is on the "most wanted" list as an ex-CORE vixen owning a 700 series loader with Nexus Syndrome.

IX7 is distracted from Tessa by a planted recording but not enough to stop from shooting Tessa with tranquilliser-coated bullets to prevent her from escaping before looking for "the other impolite person," only to run into Sticks armed with the 220. It takes out IX7 with a delayed reaction.

## Mojave Desert Tech Demo

Later, somewhere in the Mojave Desert, the Inlay project resumes with a demonstration featuring IX7 prettied up so to secure further funding from the U.S. military while rushing to meet a deadline. This catches Tin-Head's attention when IX7 sends a distress signal after being compromised, and Tin-Head's ire because the U.S. military is torturing it. He explains that a military machine like IX7 is instructed to destroy itself rather than allow the enemy to use it, but it needs permission to do this to prevent self-destruction at every small error.

Yet because IX7 cannot reach the Advisory for permission, because the Advisory doesn't exist yet, it is asking Tin-Head as a desperate last resort, to have him forward the request accordingly. Unfortunately, Tin-Head is unable to do anything except request IX7 to do a file validation, which normally wouldn't slow it down save for the unavailability of the Anarchist servers and amount of corruption it has likely endured. So when Jacob boots IX7, Tin-Head sends the public file validation request, which causes IX7 to crash and power cycle.

Tin-Head is immediately worried by this, as he had figured the request would get IX7 stuck in an endless cycle trying to connect with the non-existent servers, but instead IX7 gave up immediately and reverted to factory default settings. This is a problem because the factory defaults include commands to kill certain targets on sight, like "50 Star Americans" (who may or may not be indistinguishable from regular pre-Black April Americans).

The Major impatiently (but under his breath) demands to know what's the hold up, as he is trying to impress the General, and Jacob notes that the system has crashed and rebooted. IX7 immediately comes online and greets the Major, which the General finds droll but Jacob finds distressing. Seeing Jacob's face, the General quickly realises that IX7's speaking was not something Jacob had been aware was a feature and asks if they should back away slowly. As confirmation of Jacob's fear, IX7 apologises to the Major and informs him of some necessary maintenance, tearing off the mini-gun and raising it to strike just as the Major looks behind him and sees the others running away.

   The brutal beating IX7 gives the Major upsets Tin-Head, as this signals that the Inlay is intelligent enough to hate. He decides to save IX7, switching to "they" pronouns to refer to them out of respect for their intelligence and probable trauma. Tin-Head tells IX7 to run, only to find out they have another matter to resolve first: chasing Jacob and the General to the military car, informing them to consult the relevant Advisory regarding compensation for the damages, and accepts Jacob's apology before running off.

Tin-Heads notes the act as a definite sign of intelligence and tells Michael they need a place for IX7 to hide so they can retrieve them. Michael notes that 1. it's the desert, and 2. the footprints are a dead giveaway of where IX7 is going. Sure enough, the General tracks IX7 easily, although Swanson and Jacob try to talk him out of following. Jacob specifically notes that IX7 will not be stopped by an M2 Browning (or, not permanently enough) as the Inlay's fullerene armour is "atomic level bubblewrap" with the only known working attack being a chemical attack with inorganic solvents.

Meanwhile, Tin-Head keeps pressing Michael for a good hiding place, which Michael insists doesn't exist until he remembers the facility where he worked. He instructs Tin-Head to look for doctored images to conceal an airstrip, which Tin-Head finds immediately and relays to IX7. It's a long shot, but Tin-Head still wants to try to save IX7.

The General continues pursuit, but at a distance. He asks Jacob about IX7's weaponry, which Jacob describes and the General interprets as a Metal Storm, although he points out IX7 used to have two before "something" burned off one side. The General asks what that something was, and Jacob replies that no one told him, as the information was classified. The General then turns to Swanson and asks who fucked up. Swanson admits that no one knows, as the security footage was wiped, and their only leads were a programmer and security guard who went missing. Yet they don't know how IX7 was stopped.

Their conversation is interrupted when the driver and navigator(?) report that IX7 abruptly turns toward the airfield. The General orders them to radio ahead to warn them. IX7 notes their pursuit and suddenly turns, aiming at the Humvee's right front tire and blasting it, causing the vehicle to spin out.