The Liash Conflict Prelude pt. 1: Out of the Frying Pan
It started with the Antonov Case.
Hana and Sakura, the Fiore Twins, had asked me to try to locate a man who once worked under their mother, Dr. Allegra Fiore--a man who had helped create the two synth-life girls, but had been separated from them and forced to flee their country's stringent anti-synth laws. Â Their first request was that I try to locate the man's spirit and speak with it, but I decided to try to see if I could find him alive, first. Â And thus began my manhunt for Dimitri Antonov.
If I hadn't been lucky enough to have connections in the Infinite Alliance, this case would have been completely impossible. Â But thankfully, my brother works directly under Vector of Cycorp. Â Yomi's daily commute to work involves a watch that literally will open portals into parallel universes for you. Â Yomi got an upgraded one a little while ago, so guess who inherited the original? Â This cat.
My first lead turned out to be a bust. Â IÂ had met a Reploid--a similar synthetic life form to what Hana and Sakura are--of another world, but after speaking with him, he told me that the name Dimitri Antonov rang absolutely no bells. Â So instead of meeting up with X to pick his positronic brain further, me and my trusty reality-bending Cycorp watch set off into the Multiverse to try to track down Antonov.
Even with asking the girls' help, it took me a while to locate their world at all--and almost immediately upon my arrival there, began running into roadblocks.  Thankfully, the first thing that I found out was that Antonov was alive; a little polite possession of a computer at a public records office showed no death certificate, and that the man had used his name at various hotels all over Europe.  But beyond knowing for certain that Antonov was still breathing, finding out anything further quickly proved to be one hell of a headache.  Antonov's name only popped up sporadically; there was no pattern at all to his movements.  Records of him spread out through the years and across hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles.
As if that wasn't frustrating enough, when I went back to the public records office to scout him out again after getting a dead end on my first lead...the records had been changed. Â Several hits on Antonov's whereabouts had been erased since my accessing the information. Â Wiped out completely, as if they'd never happened.
That only happens when someone is going through enormous trouble to cover their tracks.
Hana and Sakura told me that the creation of synth-life had been--and according to what I'd found, still was--wildly illegal in their home country of Neo-Italia.  Given that their mother and Antonov were all running for their lives the last time the girls saw him, it made an amount of sense that Antonov would want to hide--to conceal himself from the government.  But after he got out of Neo-Italia, that shouldn't have been a problem.  There were Reploid-friendly nations that would never dream of extraditing him; Hana and Sakura lived in one.  And Antonov had to know that the girls had been looking for him...If he was savvy enough with computers--or rich enough to hire someone who was--to alter public and private records in order to cover his tracks, he certainly could find out that the girls had hired me, at the very least--and had probably conducted searches of their own, too.  Hell, he could have easily taken refuge in Abel City, same as Hana and Sakura did.  He could have at the very least realized that they were trying to reach out to him, and set up a meeting with them somewhere safe.
But he didn't.  He wasn't just avoiding the government of Neo-Italia.  He was avoiding everyone.  Including the two girls who he'd helped create--the girls who considered him family. Â
Why? Â That quickly became the only question that mattered. Â Why was Dimitri Antonov taking such extreme measures to make it look as if he didn't exist?
The more time I spent in the Fiore Twins' world trying to track down Antonov, the more it became clear that he knew someone was on to him.  His efforts to disappear became much more aggressive, until his very existence left less of an impression on the world than a ghost--and I'd know all about that.  I took a little time to make sure that my own tracks were covered; whoever or whatever Antonov was running from, I didn't want to be on the wrong side of his fear.  Cornered animals have a propensity to lash out in violent rage, so I made sure that I couldn't be connected to Antonov in any way, and stepped away from that world.
The only lead I had left at that point was my original lead: Â X Light. Â He didn't know anything about Antonov, but that was only off the top of his head, I later realized: Â he was also a Brigadier General, and probably had top-level security clearance on a wide array of information. Â So I set up a meeting with him, in his world.
That was when everything went to hell.
| Part 2:  Into the Fire (X) | Part 3:  Murphy's Law (Sissel) | Part 4:  Speak of the Devil (X) |
