Jump 404: The Pretender

Jump #404: The Pretender
>Justice, reversed: Unjust decisions and the consequences of those decisions.
>Location: Blue Cove, Delaware
>Identity: Drop-In (+100)
>I Know A Guy (Free, Drop-In)
Hell, I AM a guy. Sometimes I'm a whole lot of them. Doctor Manhattan would be jealous.
>Divided Loyalty (1000)
Well, if my employers ever NOTICE that I'm working with their enemies, they'll assume I'm probably just a double agent for them or something.
>Overlooked (900, Drop-In)
Never hurts to go beneath notice.
>Alternate Learning (700)
So... if I'm chopping firewood, my skill with combat axes will improve. I can get behind that, I've been trying to grind it up to level 1250 for ages. (The skill tree is quite unhappy about that since it was supposed to stop at 100...)
>Season Finale Survival Insurance (500, Drop-In)
Also known as "cool guys don't look at explosions".
>Research Notes (200)
Okay, this is actually pretty useful. While I'm not going to experiment on anyone who is unwilling, the potential of this is seriously huge.
>Co-Workers (0)
The hilarious part is when I make a computer a Pretender and the Center can't find my warehouse.

Pretenders, huh? Sounds like Freelancer's Talents gone wild. Maybe they are able to learn and adapt a little more quickly, but it sounds like it's not worth the trouble for me to get involved in the main plot, because these morons are chasing their own tails instead of doing anything worthwhile and they'll be doing it for years without sufficient interaction. No, we're going for a different target altogether: the Center that's hunting Jarod down.

The Machine (or Mac, as we like to call him) is a permanent resident of the Warehouse, but he's interfaced with some next level technology in there, including a biocomputer. Which has the ability to cast spells (generally clairvoyance and scrying type stuff). And instead of going full Orwellian nightmare in an attempt to get things done, he instead directed his abilities toward tracking Jarod briefly, and then backtracked along the route that the Center's operatives took, to find the place. And then get into its data, that which was accessible, and put together a nice packet of data which he leaked to the government through certain digital intermediaries.

Some agencies utterly flipped their shit, while others tried to bury it. Seeing the CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA, IRS, the Pentagon, and a few other alphabet soup agencies try to decide what the hell to do was kind of hilarious, but they ended up basically annexing the Center because Mac threatened to release all of the information to the media. As in every single newspaper, television station, and radio station in North America.

Sure, the Center had government ties, but those can only help so much. On the plus side, having an organization full of savants is pretty positive, even if you have to reunite them with their families and give them basic human rights.

Also I might have shown up halfway through the second season and smacked Jarod with a paperback-sized book and yelled at him about wasting his goddamn time playing cat and mouse with his girlfriend instead of actually doing what he claimed to be doing, as I got all of the information in said book in the space of about three weeks, without using magic or mind reading, just old fashioned detective work.

Idiot savant much? Or is it just the plot demanding everyone constantly carry the idiot ball?