Family Reunion...

[Sharza]

Meryl looked at the comm screen in disbelief, and read it over for the third time.

"Hullo Sis!

Betcha didn't know you had a little bro! The nice man that handed me a paper told me to call you. He said you were the closest relative I had, and you'd take care of me. He even gave me your last name! Wasn't that nice of him?

Oh, I'm kinda lost in a big city, could you come get me?

--Murphy"

The fourth and fifth readings didn't make any more sense to her either.

She thought, "Well, let's start from the beginning." Turning to her desk terminal, she linked up with the company's comm net and began tracing the message. Since it was an unencrypted message, sent over an open channel, the trace only took 1.349 seconds. Which the terminal happily told her before displaying the trace.

"Silly AI" Meryl mumbled and began to read. The message originated from a public comm panel in the Rompa Bar. The sender was Murphy Stryfe, commonly known as 'Thunderslap.'

"This has to be a joke" she thought. A quick check of the R.U.R. employees list showed no comms activity at the time the message was sent. "So, whoever it is has really pulled out the stops for this one" she said to the terminal. For once, it didn't respond.

A Bureaucrat by trade, Meryl rapidly thought through a myriad of ways to ferret out more information from the vast array of R.U.R. and OT databases she had access to. Then stopped.

She announced to the terminal, "Hold my calls. If this is a joke, someone expects me to waste a day chasing false leads. I think I'll just play this one straight up. I'm going to Rompa's." Then she slipped a fresh clip into each pistol and had her NCU build a fresh droid shell.

"Better safe than sorry" she thought, "that gas leak in the women's toilet might have spread."

[Sharza]

Rompa's looked the same as it always did. The only thing that that was out of place was a medium sized Atrox dancing on a table in the corner. Meryl laughed to herself and said aloud, "Buffy have mercy! The Baboon's crowd must be lost!" surpising herself. She made a mental note to refrain from mentioning her religion in public. But no one seemed to have heard.

A quick scan of the people in the bar brought a frown to her face. "Someone's really trying to get under my skin, if not I really should have stayed in bed today."

The name her occular implant superimposed over the Atrox was "Thunderslap." A targeted scan was even more disturbing, showing the Atrox's full name to be "Murphy Stryfe," who was trained as martial artist.

Rubbing the design on her brow, and biting her lip, she walked towards the Atrox just as he finished an uncoordinated dance move. Before she could speak, the Atrox jumped off the table and ran up to her.

"Big Sis! You came! I knew you would!" Murphy shouted, getting strange looks from the other patrons. Meryl deftly sidestepped the Atrox's attempt to hug her.

"I have no idea why you think I'm your sister," she paused, and added "I don't have any relatives on Rubi-ka."
The Atrox broke into a big grin, the way only Atroxes can. "I know you are, the man said so!"
"What man?"
"The nice man that gave me the paper, silly!"
Meryl's training took over, "What paper? and do you have a copy?"
"I dunno, maybe this?" The Atrox fumbled around in a pocket for a few seconds and proudly handed over a crumpled slip of paper.
"This is the employee copy of a standard Omni-Tek employment application. All this proves is that you signed up with the company..."

The Atrox still grinning held out small crystal. Meryl took it from the huge hand, and inserted it into her comm link.

"Now we're getting somewhere. This is your proof of genetic makeup and name assignment form," she said.
"Weeeee!" the Atrox shouted, and began dancing some more.

[Sharza]

The next few days were a blur for Meryl, as she rounded up the basic supplies that Murphy needed to survive in the wilds (and some cities) of Rubi-ka. She noticed that he was no longer "the Atrox" to her. He constantly referred to her as "big Sis," and she had taken to calling him "'lil Bro" in return.

As he was outfitted with new equipment and nano programs, Murphy was evolving into a terrifying force of flying fists. The next order of business was to find him a place in R.U.R. When Meryl would ask about his interests, Murphy's singular response was "I like to punch things." It seemed that he was destined for the security force. But it was not to be.

Meryl approached the company's president, Dabblez, about Murphy joining the security force. She quickly vetoed the idea, when hearing about Murphy's interest. "I think he'd be perfect dealing with some of out creditors!" she had said. With that he was assigned to the accounts payable department. Meryl didn't argue, and decided to see what would come of his posting.

With the details settled, and Murphy thriving in his new job, Meryl had time to dig deeper into the information on the data crystal Murphy had given her on their first meeting.

Murphy's genetic proof sheet contained mostly contained routine information, but a few things grabbed Meryl's attention. The Atrox DNA sequencing had begun on October 5th, 29479, at the rogue laboratory now known as "Biomare." The culture was grown from a sample collected that same day.

"Strange," she thought, "that was around the time Dr. Lincoln recruited me for his investigation of that place." Thinking back on that fateful trip, she recounted the disgusting sewer creatures, the collection of mutant parts, hacking the lab computers, and finally the failed assasination attempt of the lab director. She winced remembering how his protection devices had bypassed her armor and sent their burning beams deep into her flesh. The memory of completing the assignment the next day, and killing the director with his own gun, lifted her mood somewhat.

"No, it couldn't be!" she said aloud to the empty room. But the idea made too much sense. The lab director was a maniac, and nothing was beneath him. Digging around in her desk, Meryl found her security clearance for the lab, and sent a mental "thank you" to Dr. Lincoln. She also still had the hacking device she used on lab computers.

"Looks like I've got some more digging to do," she thought as she headed back to Biomare.

-----

The trip into Biomare was relatively uneventful. Meryl had no interest in in confronting any of the residents of that horrible place. With a few properly timed nano programs, she was able to walk past the guards that didn't recognise her security clearance.

It took several attempts to get the infomation she wanted. But the computers finally coughed up the classified information. Luckily an emergency exit was handy, and she was back at her desk within ten minutes.

The printout confirmed what she had suspected. It also explained why Omni-Tek had given Murphy her family name. She called Murphy and the few R.U.R. employees that were working late to her office.

"It seems the lab director was more desperate than we thought," she announced to the small crowd. "With the investigations into that place, he was desparate to obtain new bio-material to continue his experiments."

She continued, "The protection devices that he now uses are also DNA samplers. Those little buggers managed to harvest enough of mine to let the director continue his experiments for a bit longer."

Meryl paused and let out a deep breath, and the group sat in stunned silence. Murphy unwrapped a leet pie, and swallowed it in one bite. Then he burped, breaking the tension.

"You see where I'm going with this?" Meryl asked. A few heads nodded. "Murphy truly is my brother, because my DNA was used as the basis for his! That's why OT assumed we were related, and dropped him at Rompa's to call me. The guards found him wondering outside." She turned her attention to her brother, "Murphy, what do you remember?"

"I dunno big Sis, not much," he said as he licked the pie off his fingers. "I was in a big water tank, then a mean man in a white coat put a thingy on my head a said it was going to teach me stuff."

"That sounds like a standard Atrox cloning tank, and profession programming session to me." The announcement came from Minage, one of the company's senior engineers. "I didn't mean to interrupt, finish your story, Murphy."

"After that, there was a bunch of shooting, and the man's white coat turned red." A big grin spread across Murphy's face, "So I punched him in the face and ran! I followed some nice people outside and a guard found me and called the nice man that gave me the papers."

Meryl couldn't help but smile at her brother's telling of the story. "And we know the rest. But that does answer some questions we all had," she said. After a few more questions, the small group drifted out of her office. She turned to Murphy a gave him a big hug, her arms barely fitting around the front of his massive frame. "Welcome to the family!" she told him, a small tear forming in corner of her eye.

Later, alone in her office, Meryl pulled up a off-world comm link. When the connection was stable, she looked into the two faces on the screen.

"Mom, Dad, guess what..."

[Tussa]

[Wheee! More story writing! ]