Nanotroopers Episode 4: ANAD

Johnny Winger escapes from Lions Rock and travels back to Table Top, where he is debriefed by Intel (Q2). Kraft wants Winger to go to Northgate University and meet Dr. Irwin Frost, to work with Frost on enhancing ANAD’s capabilities. Winger does this and learns how ANAD came to be born. While at Northgate, Winger and Frost come under assault from unknown swarm assailants and Doc Frost is injured, but will recover. The evidence points back to Red Hammer. What’s worse, in follow-on tests with ANAD, the nanobot seems to be compromised and functioning poorly. Winger believes there is a spy/saboteur within the Lab, possibly one of Frost’s assistants. How to ferret out the culprit? Winger has an idea: plant ANAD spybots on known suspects. It’s legally questionable but the Lab director okays it. The tactic works and Winger commands the bots on the real culprit (an assistant in the Lab) to MOB the perp and immobilize him. He’s a Carpathian intern named Milan Stovacs, a Red Hammer agent. Stovacs is taken into custody and faces a memory trace session. Meanwhile, Winger helps Frost to repair ANAD and regain its capabilities. It’s here that Frost proposes a symbiotic embedding of ANAD inside the bodies of Quantum Corps troopers, as a future capability. Winger is intrigued and volunteers for the first test of the procedure. But the procedure isn’t proven and something goes wrong. Winger starts to flatline…the embedded ANAD is having unanticipated effects. Will Johnny Winger survive the test? Fourth episode in the Quantum Troopers serial.