[Teaser] New and Growing Endeavours

[Narrator]

Somewhere in the Nevada desert

A helicopter flies low across the sand, whipping it into a cloud behind it. The woman flying it tilts her head to the side as much as her seat allows and her voice cuts in through the intercom. "Approaching site now. Eta 5 minutes."

There's no response from the passengers in the back other than a curt nod. Miranda West sits strapped into the seat of the military vessel with the same kind of ironclad poise as she does in a boardroom. Across her husband hunches over a too-large tablet. She knows without checking that the headphones over his ears are turned off but she sees no reason to inform him of their imminent arrival. Why distract him from his work for something he'll take note of when it becomes relevant, the only thing that'll really pull him out of whatever he's doing anyway. Whatever, as long as he makes sure everything is ready and functioning for the demonstration next week she can deal and he has no real interest in how that will go anyway beyond the pride in his work.

Dr. West's hard-set face is focused on the numbers and diagrams on the device in his lap. Despite his wife's assumption he is dimly aware of her attention, he's just not sparing it any mind. He can take a well-enough guess at what's going through her mind anyway and he cannot bring himself to care. Military funding is enough to be relevant even to them but it comes with expectations - no, those he can deal with, they're simple enough to appease - but an assumption of being privy to details, a self-importance that only comes from dealing with dim-witted sub-ordinates that are trained to jump at every command. Dr. Richard Aleisteir West despises them the same way he despises the board of directors he lets his wife deal with. A deluded assumption about their own self-importance when faced with things they know nothing, nothing about. And asking them for money only encourages their small-minded idiocy to think they have a say in his work. No matter! He'll build them what they ask for and they'll be too stupid to realize that his creation will jump at their command only as long as he deems it worth the continued charade.

They land and pass through a number of security checkpoints before an elevator takes them several stories down, the view of a looming shadow enclosed in scaffolding is intermittently cut by crossbeams of the elevator shaft, only the floor of the room fully illuminated where countless technicians, scientists and soldiers go about their job. Massive cable throngs snake down the central scaffolding and to a separate building within the large space. It's where Dr. West is headed while his wife and daughter peel off to do whatever it is they do to enable his work.

"Condition of main control rod is stable." one of the scientists in the room informs him as he enters. He's long since gotten them to do away with paltry greetings and other such pointless endeavors. "What of the spike this morning?" he demands. "Under control. Cause still unknown. Activation sequence is still halted below threshold." He scoffs and lifts his eyes from his own pad for the first time, placing it on the main control console, prompting the technician sitting there to vacate her spot for him. A brusk gesture across the main touchscreen sweeps most of the monitoring data aside and reveals the schematic of a humanoid figure underneath, different segments of it highlighted as Dr. West pulls up detailed information on each of them. Cross-sections of steel-blue plating and pale purple armor pieces fill the screen along with countless annotations.

"Increase tension on segments eight through nineteen and shut down amniotic pressure."

Dr. West... comes the objection.

"Just do it. I need a full, unimpeded readout. You can reengage suppression measures once you have it." he cuts the scientist off who simply nods and goes to work along with the rest of the room. "If you're going to be ready I have to make sure no one has tampered with you." he mutters to himself as he lifts his head from the console to look out the window at the scaffolding and the floodlights that chunk to life one story at a time until they finally illuminate the head of the thing held in place by the restrictive scaffolding.