Tekkna (Hero)
Code-name: Tekkna
Full Name: Erika Mitros
Faction: none
Beneath a purpose-built university building in Greece, Erika Mitros blew on her coffee cup to cool it down as she sat waiting outside a climate-controlled vault full of antiquities. The professor was late. The professor was always late. Professor Adam Stamos was handsome, charming and brilliant, but time-keeping was not one of his strengths. Still, she could tolerate that in the name of being his lead researcher.
Minutes passed, many minutes. When Erika realized she had been waiting for almost an hour she prepared to leave. As she stood, Erika heard a commotion from the corridor leading to the vault. She saw Adam and a security guard running toward her. Shots rang out and Adam stumbled as the guard fell to the floor. Adam ran on, clearly injured. Blood seeped through his jacket and shirt as he clutched a hand to his wound.
“Erika! We must escape!” he panted, as she saw two armed men approach, both dressed in dark suits.
Adam frantically pressed the code for the vault, leaving bloody fingerprints on the keypad. A hiss followed and he and Erika tumbled through the door. She glanced over her shoulder as the two men advanced. Suddenly the gunmen realized what was happening as the vault door began to close but they were too late to stop it.
Inside, Erika and Adam sat on the floor. Already her boss was looking wan and pale. He looked up at her as she pressed her hand against his wound.
“Erika, you must listen, we don’t have much time,” he said, words catching in his throat from the pain.
“We need to get you out of here,” she said, ignoring his plea, before continuing, “Who were those men?”
“Cultists. True believers. Men who sold their souls in the service of an ancient power. Agents of the Forgotten.”
As she listened his words made no sense. She wondered if Adam was already delirious from injury and blood loss.
“We have little time,” he continued, coughing as blood specked his lips, “I don’t have much time. Here, take this.”
Adam pressed a circular metal item into Erika’s palm. On it were etched various sigils and Greek characters. Erika gasped as she realized that there were several wheels on the disc’s surface that rotated with her touch.
“The gift is within you,” coughed Adam, “That I have always known. Use this and decode the Scroll of Daedelus, the one that seemed like gibberish when we examined it. It was written in code, and that device is one half of the cipher. You are the missing half of the cipher.”
Adam weakly motioned to a scroll held in a transparent hermetically sealed box, suspended by metal wires from the vault’s ceiling. Erika stood, dazed, and wandered over to the encased parchment. As she approached, holding the disc, its array of characters changed as wheels moved into position. At last she heard a faint click as movement ceased and the circles locked into place. The strange device then shimmered with its own light. Automatically she raised it and spoke aloud the words it translated on the scroll.
The sigils on the scroll flashed through Erika’s mind’s eye. Knowledge dormant within her blood-line was unlocked in a single moment, lost scientific concepts and tekkno-sorcerous formulae tumbling through her thoughts. In that instant she understood it all. She was heir to Daedalus’ Cult Mekkana, foes of Phalanx and Hellsmith, and ultimately the Forgotten. A vision played out of their evil rising once more, and she knew that she had to fight to stop it.
Erika looked down at her hands which glowed with energy. She was transformed, her skin taking on a strange hue and marked by tracery of tekkno-circuits. Her garments had changed into something more fitting to her needs. Erika Mitros was gone, transformed into Tekkna, daughter of the Cult of Mekkana.
She turned then to Adam, but his last breath had been drawn. Her mentor was gone. Raged coursed through her, and Erika reached out with her mind to those of the killers beyond the vault door, each collapsing to the floor from the assault of her ancient curse. With a thought she vanished from the vault, reappearing beside the unconscious assassins. Moving quickly she connected her mind to the personal digital assistant one carried. Effortlessly she sundered its encryption, freeing its secrets. The men had been dispatched by the heads of the Forgotten to claim the scroll, no doubt to usurp her power. The PDA revealed that the agents had travelled from Pulp City. That was her destination. She could do nothing to help Adam now, but would devote every waking moment to the downfall of those responsible for his death. The Forgotten had gained a new enemy this day.