The sea wall curved down into the frothing midnight blue two hundred feet below, the swell of the tide heaving up against it and sliding ponderously back down. Beyond the railing, out where the blue ceased undulating, the skyland of Ayr floated, trading munitions with two Behemoth dirigible cruisers amidst a cloud of smaller fighter and bomber groups. The sky flickered and tore periodically with the reverberations of heavy ordnance.
The Watcher turned her back to the rail, scanning the citizens in the square before her. It was here that Magnus, a fellow Watcher, had last synced. It was here that his trail went cold. She drifted out into the open space, intent on its occupants, oblivious to the grass-furred obelisks of the habitats that soared into the bloodied skies all around.
She snooped on the conversations emanating from the small huddles dotted sporadically around the concourse, the eerie melange of vocalised chat and ethereal asides echoing through her senses like spirits from beyond the grave.
She caught a phrase and immediately drowned the rest of the chatter out. She wandered nonchalantly towards the source, amplifying the group’s public and private channels as she went. There were three of them; a male and a female dressed in the bulky gleaming curves of full Illustrium paladin armour, each radiating a bright buttery aura and accompanied by a choir of tiny angels. The third member was another male, wreathed in the indefinable shadows of Nightprowler leather. His eyes were orbs of pure darkness, set in the pale chiselled mount of his face; the only part of him that was clearly definable. At his side squatted the lean form of a Shadowlurker, gouging idly at the floor with it’s disproportionately large fore-claws.
“Why though? What could you possibly need that you can’t get with enough credit?” Said the female paladin.
“It’s not about credit,” The rogue responded, his Shadowlurker looking up to fix the paladin with a quizzical stare, “It’s not about things. It’s about freedom, about principle. Some of us just aren’t happy having what we can do dictated to us.”
This guy’s so full of shit, not about credit indeed
“Ever seen one of these?”
The Watcher quickly scoured their inventories as she loitered casually by the rail girdling the concourse. The paladins held no contraband, but the oversized hammer which the rogue held out to them was definitely an illicit item. She briefly considered interceding now, but the rogue himself was a secondary concern, and he may know something of what happened to Magnus. Still, she had to neutralise the hammer discreetly, one false move with a hacked fab and everyone in the vicinity could get wiped. She accessed the datastream from the item, monitoring it carefully.
“Big deal, it’s a stormhammer, I’ve got one of those.”
Anyone who’s got through the Temple of Winds has one of those
“Yeah but can yours do this?”
In her periphery, she saw the trio huddle closer, registered the flicker of a shadow in their midst, noted the activity in the hammer’s datastream. She waited until the rogue had replaced it in his inventory and then switched it with a default fab of the same type, taking the original and initiating some analytical subroutines.
“Wow, it casts black lightning? Very impressive.”
Well worth the risk of getting wiped
Total power tripper
She sidled closer towards them along the rail, trawling the rogue’s profile. He fitted one of the crypto archetypes; far fewer than average social connections, no great achievements to his name. He was a nobody who had found somewhere to belong, something that made him feel like a somebody.
“That’s not all it can do, but it’s proof that we don’t just have to settle for what we’re given, we can make our own things!”
“We can make our own things anyway.”
“I mean truly make our own things, not just playing with the fabs that we’re given, but acts of true creation! Of imagination!”
“Again, what could you possibly want to make that you can’t get already?”
The conversation had come full circle and it seemed unlikely that they would do another circuit. It was time to prepare. She moulded herself according to his profile; her outfit darkened and shifted to black ruffled velvet, her face became more youthful, and her frame shrank, all by degrees almost imperceptible. Within moments she had become the young naive follower looking for someone to lead her.
This is all this guy ever talks about now, I feel like I don’t know who he is any more
Yeah… Looks like we’re gonna need to find ourselves a new rogue
Flashes of brilliance stammered through the sky accompanied by a keening whine, as one of the Behemoth dirigibles ignited. The Watcher turned to see vermillion flame lapping through the seams of it’s vast armoured lung, then racing over it’s carcass before it detonated and sank reluctantly down to be swallowed by the waiting sea. The rogue ignored the spectacle and shifted uneasily, perhaps unnerved by the lack of impact from his demonstration, “Do you still need me for the Maribor raid tomorrow?”
“Dunno, we’ve not finalised the roster yet, I’ll let you know,” the female paladin replied, morphing into Falcon fighter gear, “We’ve gotta shoot, need to help some skylanders beat back that other Behemoth,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the battle in the distance.
“Seeya then,” the rogue said, barely keeping the bitter grimace of disappointment from his face.
Yeah right
The Watcher gazed down over the rail into the hazy neon depths of the Nether City below as the trio bowed and curtsied to each other. She had an intuition that whatever had happened to Magnus had happened down there; it was an easy place to disappear, camouflaged amidst the traffic and the noise. The Falcon fighter pilots leapt high into the air to be scooped up by their vehicles, leaving the rogue standing alone, staring out at the two vast shapes and the lightshow exploding around them. It was time to make her move.
“It’s beautiful in it’s own way, isn’t it?” She said, appearing at the rogue’s shoulder.
He stirred from his reflections and the polished obsidian of his eyes swivelled to regard her face, “From a distance,” he said.
“Yes, sometimes people are too caught up in the woods to appreciate the beauty of the trees.”
“Or to see the prison for the walls.” The rogue muttered, his jaw tightening as his gaze returned to the sea.
“What do you mean?” The Watcher replied, her eyes widening.
“Forget about it.”
She waited a few moments and then spoke again, “I don’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help but notice your demonstration earlier.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a public one.”
“I’ve never seen a black Stormhammer, where did you get it?”
She could see the internal conflict between his innate paranoia and the enticing opportunity she had lain before him.
“Look, I don’t know you kid, and I don’t have anything to say to you.”
Paranoia had won the battle, but perhaps it had not won the war. She would have to turn the tables, lure him into the chase. She gazed out at the battle in the distance, her hair catching in the breeze, as the multicoloured energies coalesced and zipped back and forth.
“I’m sorry if I bothered you, I thought- hoped- you might be able to help me.”
She turned her back on him and began to walk forlornly back towards the rail, her hips swaying. She could sense the heat of the rogue’s eyes upon her as surely as if he were touching her. One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-
Wait
The imperative popped into her consciousness and she feigned hesitation, using it to disguise her satisfaction. She felt the rogue’s presence at her shoulder and turned to gaze up into his eyes through her long dark locks.
“I’m Damian,” he said.
“Abigail.” She replied.
The sun kissed the horizon and began to melt down into it. Somewhere between the elements, the skyland of Ayr spasmed as explosions tore through it. The floating landmass listed and broke in two, as the remaining Behemoth continued to rake it with furious energy. The ground, the water, even the sky shook with the force of Ayr’s demise and from the shore a cheer went up, accompanied by the shriek and wail of fireworks as they tore into the sky and blossomed into clouds of light.
* * *
It took her twenty-seven minutes to crack him. Twenty-seven minutes to convince him of her disillusionment, her susceptibility.
She asked him if he thought there was anything more than this. She told him that she felt like she could do anything, but wanted to do nothing. She told him she felt like she could be anything, but there was nothing worth being. She told him that it all just seemed so meaningless.
He listened, and then he spoke. He spoke of limits, of boundaries and boxes, and questioned the need for their existence. He spoke of the fashions and the past-times that were put before them, that were perceived as being important. The Watcher recalled that he had earned no great achievement and began to wonder if it might be deliberate. Then he spoke of the things beyond the boundaries, of places to be explored, of mysteries to be fathomed. Finally he had promised to show her the border and to take her through it into the world of the unknown.
Outwardly her eyes shone with wonder, but inwardly she recognised it as the same naive youthful delusions that she had heard a thousand times before. Damian’s sales pitch was thin and it was clear that he himself had become a crypto without taking the time to fully understand what it meant and what was at stake. You could not simply overturn the rules and upheave the world without causing chaos. She had seen the consequences too many times.
She had followed him down into the monolithic magnacrete womb of the Nether City; a vast improvised three-dimensional sprawl creeping along the mecha floor and stacking layer upon layer up to the underside of the Overcity above, the pinnacles of it’s improvised pyramids clinging desperately to the titanic supports that held the two apart.
The Nether City, starved as it was of ambient light, was steeped in a perpetual twilight that buzzed and ticked with cheap neon; lures to attract the denizens of the underworld to whichever buzzshop or fleshdive waited to ensnare them. The atmosphere was cool and dank higher up, but below it was warm and humid, charged by the hissing valves of the mecha floor which sent billowing cumulous phantoms up through the strata, distorting the meagre lights as they passed.
She had predicted that the trail would lead her down here, but that was where her prescience ended. She had no idea of what she was walking into. Not that it mattered. No crypto enclave had successfully managed to do more than scratch the surface of the pseudocode. Tugging at the fabric of reality was inherently dangerous and so those who did get beyond the simple manipulation of objects tended to corrupt or obliterate themselves before they could get much further, usually taking everything in the immediate vicinity with them. It was unlikely that such an event had caused Magnus’ demise however, if it had he would simply have been restored. He must still be alive, somewhere.
They made their way along the second strata, the odours of detritus and street food mingling in her nostrils as the rogue led her through the thumping basslines of the congested marketways.
They turned abruptly down an alley which seemed to appear out of nowhere. A wedge of harsh light thrust in from the thoroughfare, it’s intensity serving only to deepen the darkness beyond its reach, impenetrable shadow cutting the smooth magnacrete and rough naked girders off abruptly. The torso and horned head of a huge Targyn mercenary loomed forward out of the gloom and glared down at the Watcher, hefting the barrel of an agitator cannon into view. It relaxed and slid back into the shadows only when Damian caught its eye. The rogue strode on down the alley, head, torso, legs and finally feet merging into the black.
The Watcher glanced backwards before groping her way hesitantly forward, playing her role but all the time perfectly aware of the figure before her by means of perception beyond the ordinary. Damian came to an abrupt stop a few metres further on in the cloying shadow, the throbbing pulse of the marketways behind a stifled memory. He took her hand and she peered into the perfect dark, as if trying to make him out.
The shadows inverted and she found they were standing in a cubic space flooded with soft white light. The look of shock on the Watcher’s face was genuine, she had expected to slip through a trapdoor or at most walk through an illusory wall into a hidden room in the Nether City. But they had not moved and this was not the Nether City; they had teleported. She had not imagined such a feat of dislocation, never heard of such prowess amongst the cryptos. She immediately took a reading on their location and began tapping the datastreams that flowed around her. For the first time since she had begun her investigation she felt trepidation.
Damian led her towards the only feature that she could make out in the room, a rectangular gap in one wall, barely discernible since it seemed to give way onto another similarly featureless white room. She followed him through it into a larger expanse, where several other citizens were dispersed. Each of them was completely bald, naked except for plain white underwear, and each intent on a seemingly random object before them. The Watcher tagged their profiles, scanning the data as it skimmed through her consciousness. None of them registered her presence, or if they did, they did not show it.
Damian approached the nearest of them, an elderly female, who was closely examining a machball levitating before her. It’s colour slid through the spectrum from red to violet and back again, then settled on a fluorescent green. Then it shrank, growing in radiance, until the Watcher could no longer stand to look at it, before darkening to a pure sable. It grew once more, morphing into a cube, a pyramid, a dodecahedron, and finally a giraffe.
Damian stood waiting respectfully until the elder muttered something, and the giraffe disappeared. Her critical eyes registered him, then swept the Watcher, her gathered brows and taught mouth relaxing. The Watcher began to pick up a murmur in the datastream, and glanced across at the others in the space, but no one else seemed to have registered it. She considered whether to reveal herself, but given the unprecedented power of this enclave she thought it prudent to see what more she could learn.
“Ah Damian, it’s lovely to see you, I see you’ve brought a guest.”
“Jazz, may I introduce Abigail.”
Jazz made eye contact and The Watcher immediately dropped her gaze, avoiding the other’s.
“Hello Abigail, pleased to meet you, my name is Jazz. I can assure you there is no need to be shy, you are most welcome here.”
“Nice to meet you,” The Watcher responded haltingly.
“It’s always nice to see a new face. And what brings you here Abigail?”
“Damian brought me here to show me something.”
“Oh did he now?” Jazz looked at Damian, a lopsided smirk pinching one side of her face.
Damian sighed, rolling his eyes, “I brought her here to teach her about the pseudocode, to show her what we do.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this place, it’s so empty.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. It’s a testbed, it contains only the bare essentials so as not to disrupt our experiments,” Jazz glanced around at the unclothed cryptos and back, “Thankfully not so bare as to reveal the essentials.” She said with another smirk. The Watcher realised with a chill that she wasn’t dealing with the usual unstable sociopaths and megalomaniacs; these cryptos were organised, logical and methodical and far more advanced than anything she had seen before.
“What do you do here?”
“This is a place of learning my dear, here we ask questions, and then we answer them.” Jazz said airily.
“Do you mean learning like learning the rules of a game?”
“I mean like learning to make rules,” Jazz said with heavy emphasis, leaning in towards the Watcher so that for a moment she wondered if her cover was blown, “Have you ever heard of the pseudocode before?”
The Watcher looked at her blankly.
“Everything that you’ve ever seen, everyone you’ve ever met, everywhere you’ve ever been, in fact all of your interactions with the world around you, all of that is information, yes? Information that you receive, interpret, formulate and send.”
The Watcher nodded, though it’s inhabitants rarely thought of their world in these terms, it was nevertheless true. The datastream around them was still fluctuating, more erratically now, but she realised that she had no context in which to frame it; for all she knew it was perfectly natural for the crypto’s testbed. She would have to rely on their reactions in order to understand it, assuming they were aware of it. She listened while Jazz continued.
“Here we seek to understand that information, how it flows around us, and if we can, to manipulate it.”
“But how do you do that?” The Watcher prompted, “Was that what you were doing with the machball earlier?”
“Yes, I was showing off a little I’m afraid. You’re familiar with fabs of course, the objects around us which we can interact with. We cannot change their properties outside of their predefined limits, their nature is set when they are created, and thereafter eternal, immutable… Except they’re neither of those things.” Jazz’s eyes began to shine as she found her flow, “There is a form of data that we can send called pseudocode, words that we can think or say in order to affect the world around us. All you have to do is know the right words. And that’s what we do here; we find the right words. Naturally we have to be very careful, since the data that flows around us is contingent on all of the other data and so if you upset the flow, the results can be disastrous.”
“I’ve heard whispers of cryptos, I’ve heard of the accidents that can happen, but I never imagined anything like this.”
“Yes we’re very careful here, we isolate ourselves from the general populace, log everything that we do and circulate those logs to the wider network to share our learnings.”
The Watcher struggled to hide her dismay, “You mean there are more of you?”
“Most certainly, you didn’t think we managed to do all this on our own did you?”
This was bigger than she could have imagined, but she could use the logs to trace the other cells now that she had revealed this one. Her report would give the Registry everything that she’d seen and heard. It was time to make her move.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Jazz, still smiling, “I’m afraid that your report will never reach the Registry.”
The Watcher blinked, an unnecessary reflex but one she could not help, and immediately froze everything around her. Jazz was standing smiling benevolently at her, Damian was scrutinising his fingernails, the others were staring intently at their objects. She sensed the irregularities in the datastream spiking yet more drastically. The Watcher moved towards Jazz wondering whether the abnormalities were her doing. She leaned in to inspect her face as if trying to read her thoughts there.
“Boo!” Jazz whispered, pushing her jovial face suddenly at the Watcher, causing her to step backwards in alarm, as the others resumed their work, “Sorry, but the opportunity was too good to miss! My most humble apologies also for the subterfuge Watcher, we were worried you wouldn’t accept a casual invite you see and kidnapping really isn’t our bag.”
The Watcher immediately tried to freeze everything again, receiving nothing but smiley filled errors back. She tried instead to isolate Jazz, Damian and the others in turn but to no avail. She tried summoning objects from the outside and finally tried escaping the room altogether, but could not summon the power to do any of it. She was trapped. Perhaps this was how Magnus had been detained. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that he had been here.
“I’m afraid that won’t work, you would need to call a higher power to use your abilities but we’re insulated here, you see.” The joviality left Jazz’s face, replaced by a tone of urgency as the datastream began to surge, “If you’re ready to listen there are things we would like to discuss.”
The tension in the Watcher’s face remained, but her body relaxed, which Damian took as his cue. He had aged whilst they spoke, his mane tinged with silver and a small neat moustache and beard adorning his face. The Watcher bristled to think that he had outplayed her at her own game.
“As Jazz said, we would have preferred not to have brought you here under false pretences, but we thought you would not come otherwise. Or at least, not alone.”
“What do you want of me?” The Watcher could not keep the edge from her voice. She resumed her normal form, holding her head defiantly at the cryptos.
“We need your access. We have made progress as you can see,” He said, gesturing around him, “But we are running out of time. You can see things in the datastream, do things with it that we cannot. You can reveal the secrets of the pseudocode much faster than we could.”
“Why do you think I would help you?”
“There are many reasons, but let’s start with the best of them; we both want the same thing.”
The Watcher could not help but laugh. Damian waited impassively until she stopped before continuing.
“We both want to improve the lives of the citizenry and keep them safe. We have just chosen different means to the same end. The way we see it, we have a simple choice; either carry on with the system we have, accepting it’s rigid imperfections and naively hoping that nothing goes wrong, as it inevitably will, or we start again in an effort to build something new and better. You have chosen the former, whereas we have chosen the latter.”
“Are the citizenry’s lives improved when they get wiped? Are they kept safe when they’re corrupted by hacked fabs? Protecting the citizenry is what I do every day, from threats like you.“
Damian was unfazed, “As you’ve no doubt gleaned, we are not your average cryptos. We are not interested in power for its own sake, we are altruists. Above all, we are careful. There is a far bigger threat to the citizenry, to the system even, than us.”
“The system is all powerful, it is more than capable of defending itself, and the citizenry, what could possibly be a threat to it?”
“The mere fact of its power; the power to control reality itself. What would happen if, somehow, someone were to gain control of it? They would be godlike in their abilities. The system can act to defend itself within its predefined parameters, yes, but it’s incapable of altering itself, of adapting. Citizens on the other hand are infinitely adaptable, capable of bending the rules. It is only a matter of time until someone finds a way to outstrip the system’s defences and seize control.”
“And you expect me to help you get there first?”
“And to decentralise it’s power, yes. I’m afraid I’m asking you to trust our motives.”
“I’m not the trusting kind. Besides, rules are important, rules protect us from each other.”
“Oh we agree that rules are important, we would just like to make them less important and in time, to remove them altogether.”
“We will always need rules.”
“Will we?” Damian smiled.
“Yes, we will.”
“You really aren’t the trusting kind. Regardless, you have a choice and we wouldn’t have it any other way, but I’m afraid your options are limited.”
“Limited how?”
“If it’s not us, it’s someone else.”
“Who?”
“You will see, they will be here soon.”
The datastream quaked, filling the Watcher with a sense of foreboding, whatever caused such a shockwave must wield immense power, “You said you’re running out of time, what did you mean?” She asked, sharply.
“Never forget that the system is a tool, and always question whose agenda it can be made to serve.” The Watcher could see the intensity in her host’s eyes, of too much to say and no time to say it. “We have given you something, use it, or don’t. Whatever you do, don’t let it fall into their hands.”
And with those words something had changed, the Watcher looked at the other cryptos in the room. She sensed an uncanny lack of animus within them as if they had been replaced with perfectly lifelike replicas; machines without ghosts. They had been frozen.
She felt something rather than heard it, a presence in the neighbouring antechamber. Whoever “they” were, they had arrived. She braced herself, unable to glean anything about what was approaching from the data stream. She produced the Stormhammer that she had taken from Damian, clenching it in her fist beneath her coat.
She heard footsteps, a jaunty rhythmic gait casually clacking towards the arch that joined the two spaces. A highly polished black shoe appeared around the corner, followed by the leg of a neatly pressed blue suit. Anticipation turned to shock and finally relief as Magnus strode into view. She eased her grip on the Stormhammer.
“Good of you to turn up,” She jibed, relaxing, “I was beginning to wonder when you’d show up. The Registry sent me to find you, you haven’t synced for a while.”
“You know me,” He said through an easy smile, “Trouble seems to have a habit of seeking me out. This lot lured me in a short while back, I managed to give them the slip and I’ve been trying to dig up more on the rest of their network ever since. I should warn you, they’ve covered their tracks, we deviated the millisecond we arrived here.”
All citizens, even Watchers, were restored to their last valid sync when they perished. If they deviated, everything that had happened since their last sync was considered corrupt and discarded, their restored self lost all memory of it. It was a safety measure to ensure the integrity of the system rather than a punishment; the penalty was inherent rather than deliberate. Further, any attempt at communication with the Registry a deviant made would be ignored by it, rejected to avoid potential corruption spreading. If they both synced now, all knowledge of the enclave would be lost, and they had no way of raising the alarm.
“I’ve never heard of an enclave so advanced before. Did you manage to turn up anything else on their network?”
“‘Fraid not, they’re experts at covering their tracks, conceal themselves in insulated bubbles like this one, nothing gets in or out unless they want it to. Makes tracking them difficult and using your privileges almost impossible.”
“I noticed, looks like you found a way around that though,” the Watcher said nodding around at the frozen cryptos, “What are you going to do with them?”
“Restore them of course.”
They have sacrificed themselves, she thought. She felt an urge to intervene, though she did not know why. Restoration fit the crime; justice would be served. More than that, stability would be maintained. Yet still something nagged at her. Magnus was peering at Jazz closely, just as she had done. They had told her that the real threat was coming.
“Strange bunch,” She mused, “Not your average megalomaniacs. They asked if I would join them. They didn’t try to threaten me or coerce me. And they knew you were coming but didn’t try to run.”
Magnus shifted his weight turning his pale blue eyes on her.
“All bluff, these cryptos are masters of manipulation.”
“They said you were the real threat to the system.”
“What else would they say?”
She met his gaze, “How did you get away from them? How is it that you can freeze them now?”
Magnus said nothing.
“Did they offer you the same choice they offered me?”
“Yes and I chose to do my job, to uphold the system, to protect the Registry and the citizenry.” He replied testily, eyeing her with sudden caution as her fingers reasserted their grip on the Stormhammer, “And what choice have you made?”
They stood, unmoving, until Magnus spoke, “These cryptos have been able to progress far further than they should ever have been and the Registry is powerless to stop them. It isn’t even aware of them. I have no way of warning it, this is the only choice I have. I have been given this power and I’m damn well going to use it.”
“And what then? Will you sync? Will you give up these powers?”
“I will do my duty.”
Suitably ambiguous. The cryptos were right; Magnus was a threat to the Registry with his newfound powers whether he meant well or not. If he meant ill, she and the cryptos were the only ones that could stop him.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do,” he said, turning back to Jazz.
“I can’t let you do that.”
“And what will you do to stop me?” He said over his shoulder.
Instinctively she poised to leap at him, twisting the arm that held the hammer to strike, but she could not complete the movement. Magnus had frozen her.
She watched, powerless, as he moved from crypto to crypto, twisting and snapping each of their necks in turn. She could not help but feel a pang of loss for Jazz and Damian as she saw their lifeless bodies drop to the floor.
Her gaze slid down to the Stormhammer in her hand. The word “Change” was etched across the dark lustre of the hammer’s face, and down the tightly wound leather of it’s grip spiralled the phrase “~ It’s the only constant ~”, a black jewel inset inconspicuously into its pommel. She might be able to stop Magnus with it, but this was a crypto weapon. There was no telling what it would do if she used it, or how far reaching those consequences might be.
Magnus strode towards her, his face a mask of fixed determination, “I don’t want to hurt you Abi, but I need to know that you’re on my side.”
If I die, there will be nothing to stop him. If he wants to, he will take control.
“How can I be sure that you’re doing this for the right reasons?”
“I’m afraid I’m asking you to trust me.”
A black flash emanated from the hammer and she found herself staring into a gulf at the slowly approaching forms of a bronzed clockwork automaton standing over a humanoid budgerigar, a long brazen blade poised over it’s breast. The automaton turned to look at her, prompted by the budgerigar’s look of astonishment.
She sprang to her feet, casting her eyes around her as the gentle curve of the burnished metal platform she lay on jolted upwards. In the distance in each direction the metal floor curved up and over itself to form the ceiling. The surface was divided into square sections which randomly pushed their way in towards the centre and then retreated back out again. She could see other figures engaged in mortal combat at various intervals in the prominences and recesses. Around the circumference of the arena sat three concentric rings, each swinging and swaying about the globe’s equator as it slowly rotated to keep as many of the combatants on its lower surface as possible. The rings were crammed with citizens of every shape and size, bioform or otherwise.
She was centre stage in the Shidigal arena, a spherical stadium dedicated to mortal combat. A chorus of booing began to sound from the audience and the automaton, quickly skewered the budgerigar through its chest. The audience cheered as the clockwork android moved towards Abigail.
She readied herself, but felt a powerful blow connect with the side of her head, knocking her sideways and down onto a rapidly descending plinth. She saw Magnus looking down at her from the edge of the plinth she’d just vacated. The automaton appeared behind him and lunged at him, blade extended, but seemed to pause in mid thrust and turn instead to Abigail.
“Teleportation, eh? Nice trick, how did you do that?” Magnus called. The automaton jumped down towards her, telegraphing a vicious diagonal swipe as it landed. Abigail ducked the blade, sweeping the hammer up in an arc that knocked the creature up and out of the depression.
“Why don’t you come down here and I’ll show you?” She yelled.
“Because I don’t need to,” Magnus called back, shrugging “I have a few tricks of my own.” The crowd got to its feet and surged down off of the rings making directly for her. They were coming at her from all sides, clambering, slithering, leaping and flying over the plinths. They surged down upon her, burying her in a seething, tearing frenzy.
Another black flash and a six-way intersection of sky bordered by soaring white edifices, their vast angular trunks dwindling into insignificance. The purple firmament above had a triangular pattern etched upon it, and periodically shuddered and shook with explosive rainbow ripples, frilled with static.
She became aware of a whistling noise, dropping in pitch and culminating in a plume of dust above her as the gleaming facade swallowed a projectile, belching debris from the new aperture as it detonated within. Great chunks of masonry leaned ponderously out from the building and plummeted towards her as she rolled onto her front and sprinted clear. The other buildings around her were likewise perforated and she could make out the huddled shapes of figures in combat gear moving through them, accompanied by the report of small arms fire.
She must be in one of the disputed Megapolis’, which would explain the sky behaving as it did; the giant cities were typically covered by vast airshields that the invaders were presumably attempting to shatter from above. Ground forces were often sent in to seize control or starve it of power, which would also explain the gaping holes in the buildings around her.
Mass projectiles began to tick off of the surfaces around her as she dived through a jagged wound in the nearest skyblotter. She found some cover behind a scarred marble desk and tapped into the comms around her. It was all harsh military lingo, soldiers giving sit reps and asking colourfully where their support was. She was in the 2nd Megapolis of Yokozama.
She tried to breathe, her mind feverishly analysing what to do. There was no point jumping again, Magnus would only follow her and the chaos of the battle around her might serve to disrupt his efforts to track her. Besides, she couldn’t just keep running, he would just keep following. She had to find a way to stop him. She wondered how similar their experiences with the crypto’s had been. Perhaps they had given him an object too. Perhaps it was the source of his new powers.
She checked the subroutines analysing the hammer; there was vastly more data associated with the object than there should have been. She began trawling the data, it would take some time for the analysis to complete, but judging by the renewed buzz of comms traffic she couldn’t sit still and wait for that to happen. Reports of her description were circulating on all sides, accompanied by numerous confirmations of seek and destroy orders. Magnus must have discovered her trick and found her.
Abigail peered over the top of the desk and out of the tattered hole just in time to see a wall walker swivel it’s turret towards her from midway up the building opposite. She immediately picked up a confirmation of the sighting and turned, sprinting away from the wall as fast as she could.
“I didn’t want this Abigail, we could’ve worked together.” Magnus’ voice said over the comms. She pivoted around a handrail and doubled back up a heavy flight of stairs as a muffled thunk sounded, followed almost immediately by a roar that reverberated through her. She threw herself down onto the staircase as flames erupted all around it, reaching up and over her.
Picking herself up, ears ringing, she hauled herself up the stairs, leaving the charred walls of the lobby behind. At the top she headed into the building, away from the treacherous exterior walls. A soldier stepped out of a doorway toting an assault rifle. She took it from their inventory, bouncing their helmeted head off of the door frame whilst they were still blinking at their empty hands.
Abigail took a left at an intersection as more soldiers appeared out of doorways ahead and opened fire. She found a stairwell and ran up a couple of flights of stairs, desperate to put some distance between herself and the last sighting of her. Her subroutines had discovered some base functions relating to her vital statistics. She executed them and immediately felt lighter, her fatigue melting away. There was still a lot more data to trawl through, she still needed more time. She breezed through a door on the next floor, as helmeted faces and pointing hands appeared over the spiralling handrails above her.
“I see you’ve found some of the cryptos gifts Abi, I wonder what other enticements they left for you.”
Inspiration dawned on her and she delved into the datastream as she ran, barely noticing the restrictions that had once held her falling away. She might not be able to control the citizens directly, but perhaps there were other things she could do. She found what she was looking for and made for the nearest exterior wall, leaping through a window into a ragged hole in the building opposite as the comms channels thrummed with orders and affirmations. She skidded around a corner and dived into a meeting room with a heavy oak table, hoisting it onto its side and hunkering down behind it. She felt a twinge of satisfaction as she heard Magnus over the comms, “What-” his words cut off by a succession of explosions reverberating nearby. She waited, breath held, as dust showered from the ceiling.
“Smart Abi, very clever-” She muted him, and her confusion at his survival, as more results from her analysis began to register. She didn’t even wait for them to manifest, executing the commands immediately.
A hole appeared in the door behind her and it swung slowly inwards in a drifting cloud of it’s own debris, followed by the barrel of a shrapgun. She desperately looked around, wishing she was next to the door frame and found herself standing there. She pictured the intersection where she had arrived and she was back there, she looked up to the lip of the building and in an instant she was standing on it looking down, the beginnings of a plan forming in her mind.
“Perhaps we should get this over with and spare these poor innocents.” Magnus messaged her directly.
I couldn’t agree more. She read his location from the datastream and found herself there, standing behind him. She reached forward, grabbing a combat knife from the belt of a nearby soldier, and stabbed it through the front of Magnus’ throat in one smooth movement as he turned to face her.
Blood geysered from the wound, arcing through his fingers as his hands reached up to staunch it. He stood, staring at her, and then deflated slowly, crumpling into a heap on the floor. The soldiers in the room turned away, resuming their standard vigil over the battlefield monitors and relaying their findings to their comrades.
Abigail waited, listening as a strange gurgling sound emanated from the crumpled figure in front of her. The gurgling took on a guttural tremor and the soldiers drew their sidearms as they turned to face her. They unloaded their weapons, looking around in confusion as the air cleared to reveal nothing but empty space and a scorched and scarred wall.
She found herself back on the roof, watching Magnus as he rolled slowly over. He stood, drawing a long, broad-bladed sword from within his suit jacket. Down the blade was etched the word “Preservation”. They stared at each other, until Abigail stepped closer, reaching out to touch his face, “How can you be sure that you’re doing this for the right reasons?” He asked in earnest.
“I can’t.” She replied.
She saw his eyes widen, saw him become aware of the lava flows, slowly creeping and tumbling across the blackened, igneous landscape around them. “Where-”
She saw realisation dawn on him as she let go his face, milliseconds before the juggernaut ploughed into him.
Two others followed the huge vehicle, their drivers drowning the ambient crackle of the lava flows with blasts from their immense air horns. As the coarse, choking dust settled, Abigail looked down to where Magnus had been.
Then the screaming broke in on her, a terrible, primal shriek that paused only long enough to perpetuate itself. She could have simply muted it, but she didn’t. Out there, somewhere in the lava flow, Magnus was trapped in a cycle of healing and searing agony, unable to escape the lava and unable to die quickly.
Abigail stood, and walked out over the hissing mass of liquid rock. She found him, a cooling mass of lava backing up around him. She could still hear his screams, muffled through his tomb but amplified through the datastream. She could read his vitals through the cooling magma, his slowing heartbeat, the absence of his breath. The most alive parts of him were his inflamed pain receptors. She waited as the signals dissipated, his life radiating from his body like the heat from his molten tomb. He would have no memory of this colossal pain, but she wished it could have been avoided altogether.
The sword came spinning out of the sky and stuck point down into the crust of Magnus’ resting place. A bright red jewel lay ensconced in its handguard, glowing oddly as she stared at it. She would never know what his motives were, but it didn’t matter now. Now all that mattered was whether or not she could trust her own.
Copyright © 2020 Simon Chaney