Phylonoe (Patreon)

A destiny one shot! This one is based on old lore, but it's still fun! :D

“Hello? Are you awake? I’m sorry we really do not have time to do the whole welcome to the terrifying apocalyptic future thing like normal, so I need you to con-cen-trate. Got it?”

“Uhhh. What the fuuucskdrkeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.” I spoke, but the end of my sentence scrambled into an awful high pitched static.

“Whoa, you’re really busted up. Alright buddy, I’m going to need you to get up, like as soon as you can. Yesterday if possible, but you guardians can be as dense as shaxx’s fist sometimes so now is the best we’ll have to hope for okay?” The voice talking to me resolved into that of a pleasant young woman to my ears. An Irritated pleasant young woman's voice.

Somehow I managed to get my legs under me. I’d apparently been laying flat on my back. I put my arms forward to lever myself into a standing position… and immediately keeled over to my left. I felt the advanced alloy that made up my forehead grind against the ground with screeching protest. Why was my forehead made of metal? I tried to push myself off the ground and upright again, but my left arm refused to work. Using just my right arm, I got myself into a sitting position and looked down to my left. It was missing, just above the elbow. I could see twisted metal and severed wires everywhere at the stump.

I felt a flash of insight, a memory. Volunteering. I had volunteered to become this machine. Why? It was hazy. An enemy. An enemy that tore the organic mind asunder. To fight them we had shed our organic minds.

“Hey, spacer boy. Back on task clanky. You need to get up and get moving before you get shot.” Said the cute sassy voice.

“Who Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiiieerree you?” My voice once again failed as I spoke, the voice synthesiser must have taken a hit.

“I’m Sail, your ghost, now please, I’m begging you, get up. They’re coming.” Sail pleaded with me.

“Yeah. Getting uuuhuhhuhuhuhup.” Shit my malfunctioning voice was annoying.

I staggered to my feet and looked around for the source of the sass. There was no one but me. I stood in a sort of busted up hangar or staging base. Rubble was strewn everywhere, like someone had stuck it all up their nose and sneezed. Wrecked military machinery lay everywhere, old battle damage weathered over with age. Here and there mother nature had reclaimed parts of the vast room with wild jungle. Wisps of strange blue smoke rose from cracks in the floor and scattered around me were the remains of dozens of those like me. Machines with the uploaded mind of a human. Exo. The name for our kind lit up like a beacon in my mind. As small random memories came back, so did my ingrained training.

“Which way?” I asked the empty air.

“Over here. Follow the sound of my incredible voice.” Sail said in a sing song manner.

I twisted to follow the noise she made as she’d told me, and saw a strange little drone hovering a few meters away. The thing was comprised of a central orb of metal with a square digital eye in the middle looking at me. Around the outside was four wedges of metal that floated a few centimeters away from the orb.

“Well, I guess we can be thankful your eyes still work too.” She snarked.

As she spoke, the four wedges moved as though simulating expression and speech. Despite the crudeness of the device, it gave a passable representation of personality.

“Is that a droohohohohohone or someeething? Where are you really?” I asked her.

“No, this is me, I am a tiny floating machine. Just like you are a much larger lump of potential scrap metal. I’m your ghost. I’ll explain what that means when we don’t have 40 seconds to leave this room before it is crawling with the fallen. Follow me, now please.” She said.

She zipped off towards a side door, and I followed her as fast as my damaged frame could take me.

“Alright, now normally I’d be able to fix you right up with a bit of the old space magic, but as I was bringing you back from the dead, I got interrupted. Something cut the lights, so to speak. Or rather, the light. So we’re going to look for external creative solutions. That’s what we call it in the ghost weekly meetings. ECS. We don’t actually, but right now you don’t know anything about what's going on, so I can tell you all sorts of things that are complete garbage.” Sail babbled as she led me down the passageways of the base.

Right on what seemed like the 40 second mark, I heard a loud thud, followed by a crash. The dust that coated everything gave a little shiver.

“Ah, the party guests have arrived. They’re going to be disappointed. They love catching a newly born guardian like you. I think they make a sport out of crushing the newbies. Maybe they have a betting pool going. Lucky for you I’m good at my job, even with most of my mojo taken away.” Sail babbled.

She floated and I hobbled down seemingly random passageways for what felt like forever. She was a never ending stream of words that made little sense to my addled mind, and I mostly toned her out in favour of taking stock of what I knew.

I knew I was a machine. I used to be flesh and blood, but now I was not. I looked down at myself. I was male, as far as robots went, and I think I had been when I was made of squishier stuff. It was a very long time since I was last conscious. I was estimating in the hundreds of years judging by the disrepair the base was in. There was some enemy in the base, Sail called them the “Fallen”, but that didn’t really help me. I needed solid information on their capabilities, tactics and weaponry. I doubted I was going to get it.

“So anyway, like I was saying, we need to find somewhere to repair your body, or find you a new one, at this point beggars can’t be choosers. We’re going to try and follow the- Oh hey, you should take that hand cannon there. You’ll almost definitely need a weapon. There’s a very small chance you won't need it, but better safe than sorry hey?”

It took me a second to realise she’d pointed out a weapon on the ground. The thing was a bit munted to be honest, bits of rust coated it and dust lay all over it. Before I could pick it up, Sail produced a laser from her little eye that fried all the rust and grime off it.

“Right, should be good as new. Ish. More like good enough. Anyway, lets go!” She said cheerily.

I picked the weapon up and inspected it as we continued on our journey. It was a pistol, of sorts. It was one of those pistols that was so large it was only a stock away from being a sawn off rifle. Guess that was why she called it a “Hand Cannon”. It seemed to be a revolver, the cylinder contained 8 firing chambers, so I had eight shots before reloading. Wait. Ammo.

“What about ammohohohoh?” I asked, ignoring the electronic stutter I had.

“Oh, here.” She said matter of factly.

Several moon-clips full of cartridges fell to the ground in front of me, appearing out of thin air in bright flashes of light. I slipped the hand cannon into my frayed belt and used my one functioning hand to scoop the clips up, placing them in a pouch on my chest. I fumbled one moon clip worth of bullets into the cylinder of the revolver and then snapped the thing shut. Having only one hand was going to be hell in a firefight, I needed to make each shot count.

We arrived at a small door, and Sail paused to look back at me, “Alright leadslinger, time to get to work. There’s going to be a lot of fallen in that room, and we need to clear it so I can get the tram working, got it?”

“What is a fallen?” I asked softly, trying not to alert the enemy.

“Four arms, two legs, grumpy as all hell and out to kill you. With guns. Don’t get shot please I only just found you.” She replied in a very much normal volume.

Time to move before the chatterbox gave me away. I carefully slipped the loaded gun out of my belt and held it up towards the door, bracing myself for the fight to come. Three, two, one. Smash. I kicked the door open and artificial adrenaline slowed time as I took in information. The room beyond was a large tram station, with several waiting areas of seats, as well as decrepit terminals and broken down trams on the tracks. I had just opened a door onto a catwalk one floor above the main one, and I had the perfect vantage to select targets. Huh. Maybe Sail wasn’t such a useless sassball after all.

The fallen were strange. Definitely aliens of some kind, there was small ones with only one pair of arms, slightly larger ones with two, and I saw one very tall one with a big cannon cradled in its arms four arms. They all wore bulbous armour of grey and blue. One of the medium sized fallen had seen me, and he held a rifle that looked like it could place a shot where he pointed the thing.

He died first. I sighted down the old gun and put one between the bastard’s eyes. His head exploded in a spray of gas and ichor as life support mixed with misting alien blood in the air. All hell broke loose after that. I took a step and vaulted over the railing to get to the cover below me. As soon as I landed shots, scattered across the entryway I had just vacated, and I hoped Sail wasn’t hit.. I rose from behind the row of chairs I had used as cover and blasted the big guy in the chest. He seemed to stagger, but an energy shield of some kind blocked any damage. Fuck. Okay new strategy, kill everything else, dodge that terrifying cannon and then figure out big boy once I had breathing room.

I had six shots left. It was enough to deal with all the lackeys if I continued my one shot one kill policy. Management hadn’t filed any new policy changes, so I decided to keep it up. Making tracks to an old advertisement screen, I took a shot and hit one of the small ones dead in the chest. Thankfully the little guy went down in a flail of alien limbs and blood. I hadn’t moved a moment too soon, as the chairs erupted in a sticky petrol like explosion, liquid fire spraying into the air. Five shots left, five backup singers to kill. A lazy line of light appeared with a crackle next to my head, and I realised one of the medium sized ones had just taken a shot at me. Whipping my head up to follow the dissipating line of energy, I spied the enterprising fallen standing on top of an old tram car. He went down with a hole drilled in his forehead, and whatever passed for brains in these creatures was violently ejected out the back of it’s skull. Four down, Four to go.

A minute later and it was just me and the tall one left, and he was piiiissed. He was roaring in his alien language and charging me now, having run out of shots in his big cannon, instead using it as a club to try and smash me into scrap. His tactics were effective in that I couldn’t get the time to reload my gun with only one hand. I was relegated to running in circles while I desperately thought of a plan. The large fallen rushed me again and swung, I barely dodged the blow and staggered back, my leg unable to fully follow through on the commands my electronic brain sent to it.

He saw my vulnerability and pressed the attack, swinging again. I dove to the side in a last ditch to get out of the arc that the cannon took. I was just fast enough, and the swing missed and hit a pillar. I was on the ground now though, and he noted this with chittering glee. Stalking towards me, he began to line up the swing that would finish me, when I noticed the pillar he’d hit begin to tilt. It was excruciatingly slow to watch as the thing gained speed in it’s descent. Just as my attacker bagan a swing to bring me to an end, the pillar fell and punched him to the ground, his shield failing in the process. My electronic eyes widened at the opportunity, and I fumbled a clip into the cylinder of my hand cannon as fast as I could. He was just pushing the large concrete pillar off himself when I brought the barrel of my gun up. I saw his eyes widen a moment before I put him down with two bullets through his head. Double tap.

<====================>

It had taken Sail almost an hour to get one of the trams into functioning condition, with my help as complaining grunt labor. The whole time I was nervously checking over my shoulder for more of those fallen guys, but it seemed they were elsewhere in the facility. When I shifted the accelerator lever forward and we slowly started forward, I sighed in relief that we’d managed to get it done.

The ride was not all that smooth. Several times we had to stop the tram and clear the tracks of debris. By we I meant me, Sail just snarked and watched. She was also pretty good at advice, but I’m not feeling charitable currently so we’re striking that trait out of the books.

When at last we landed at our destination, I couldn’t help but cheer. Then I realised my mistake and ducked behind the tram control panel. No shots came, and I breathed easy.

“Okey dokey artichokey. We’re here now. This facility made exos like you, so hopefully we can find some replacement parts in here.” Sail told me jovially.

“Why couldn’t we just use my old busted up friends back where I woke up?” I asked curiously.

“Because time did a number on them, that’s why. It did a number on you too, but I used space magic to put you back together. Kind of. Like I said, I was interrupted. Now follow me while I figure out where to go.”

I followed her, and continued to ask questions.

“So what does it mean that you’re my ghost? Like, are you a boo ghost?” I asked.

“No I am not a boo ghost. Jeez. A ghost like myself, is a fragment of the traveller, or some such nonsense. I grant you special abilities and powers. So long as I’m not as broken as you are at the time, I can even bring you back from the dead and heal your wounds. Sadly, just as I was in the process of fixing you, I felt my connection to the light of the traveller get cut. Currently I am a fancy door opener and ammo synthesiser.” She stopped then to send a beam of light at a door panel.

I heard the lock click and the door slide part way open before jamming. I opened my mouth to ask another question when she continued speaking.

“A ghost and her guardian have a bond. I can’t be anyones ghost, I’m your ghost. I’ve spent way too much of my life trying to find you. I’m kicking myself for all those years I spent on Mars,” she turned to look at me then, “I’m surprised you’re doing so well, guardians are basically a clean slate in the memory department when we bring you back. That usually makes things difficult.”

“I’m actually getting flashes of my life beforehand. Not much. I remember volunteering for the exo project. I remember parts of my training, stuff like that. It’s pretty hazy.”

“Oh good, you’re one of those exos!” She exclaimed happily.

“Those exos? What does that mean?” I asked suspiciously.

“Exos are usually a bit of an exception when it comes to memories from their previous life. You lot will sometimes retain memories, depending on how damaged the storage was when you are brought back. It’s a very useful little feature. Some exos have remembered important information, or the location of powerful weapons. Or they just mope about their old son.” She said the last sentence in a grump.

“Okay, good to know. If I remember where any crazy weapons are, I’ll let you know.” I told her.

We moved deeper and deeper into this new facility, but we began to run into a problem. A problem that had my little snarkbot worried. A lot of doors were refusing to open, and this latest one was covered in strange black and orange filth.

“This is not good. We can’t leave til you’re in one piece, but I think this may be too much for us.” She said without her usual sass.

“What is it?” I asked with trepidation.

“The hive, they’ve set up shop here. They’re bad news, and they have a very high guardian kill count. Let’s keep going, and stay quiet now please.” She actually lowered her speech volume. Wow.

After that door, we crept through the facility with our combined three eyes alert for danger. As usual, it was not very long before we found it.

We came to a Y intersection, and I peered down one hallway. Straight into the face of a hideous creature. The thing looked like a dessicated human corpse that had calcified, its simultaneously leathery and chitinous skin pulled tight over it’s bones. Its face held a wide mouth full of sharp, cruel teeth, and the ends of its fingers sported matching claws. It screamed in rage, arching its back and howling at the ceiling. Several more of the creatures scuttled out of hiding places within the hallway, and turned as one to stare. Shit.

“Thralls! Run!” Yelled Sail into my ear.

I didn’t acknowledge her as I whipped my pistol up and blasted the screaming thrall right in the face at point blank range. Its head pulped, bits of chitin and disgusting green goop flying through the air to splatter over the others. I drilled another and then bolted down the other hallway of the intersection. I heard their screams as they gave furious chase, and I also heard a different sort of scream. This one was distant, high and almost melodic in the terror it induced. I put on as much speed as my damaged body could muster.

When I flew through the door at the end of the long hallway, Sail shouted, “Hold them off, I’ll lock the door! It'll buy us time!”

I nodded to her as she began to work on the door panel. Barrelling down the corridor was my new group of friends in all their horror vid glory. I began firing, but I could already see there were far more of them than I had bullets.

“That door had better close before I run out of bullets or things are going to get mighty rough in here soon!” I yelled.

No sooner had the words left my voice synthesiser when she got the door closed, it slammed shut and the indicator light on the panel turned red.

“Never fear my trusty sidekick, I’ve got this under control!” She said in triumph, “Now, lets go.”

She hesitated, staring at the options we had available. 2 more hallways led off into different directions. One had a sign saying “White Arms Development”, while the other read “Organic Body Testing”. I chose for her. Running down “Organic Body Testing”.

“This way seems like more of what we need than that way.” I said as I moved.

When we made it to the end of the hallway, we found a moderately sized room. The outside of which was covered in desks, computers and strange equipment. The central area of the room was of interest. Four large cylindrical vats were connected to a floor to ceiling pillar and around the vats was a wide array of medical monitoring equipment and displays. The vat closest to us was full of a disgusting green sludge that had spilled out of a crack halfway up the class front. The other two I could see were completely empty save for dessicated corpses still hanging within their cradles. The bodies were strange, instead of normal bone they had mechanical skeletons, and other mechanical parts could still be made out underneath the mummified flesh.

I spotted strange artificial woven thread that appeared to be muscle in a few places. The muscle seemed to augment strength in key areas as opposed to outright replacing it all. What appeared to be a heart made of the same artificial muscle was seated in the chest cavity. Not everything appeared to have an upgraded replacement, I could spot the decaying remains of most of the muscle and organ structure. It appeared that only crucial components of the human body had been replaced. The skull though, that was interesting. It was entirely made of some sort of alloy, and I could see circuitry implanted in places around the skull. They had obviously come close to producing human-exo hybrids in this room.

“I think we can use some of these as replacements for your parts. Not everything, but you won't feel like you’re held together by string and wishes anymore,” said Sail as she scanned one of the bodies with a cone of light, “Even the skulls seem to be compatible with exo circuitry.”

I kept walking around the pillar to get a look at the last vat and when the glass plate came into view I stopped in my tracks. Resting in the cradle, submerged in a clear gel, was an intact body. It was female, a bit above average height for a biological woman. She had facial features that spoke of ethnic background, but pointed to none in particular, angled eyes, sharp facial structure and brown hair. A true mix. Her frame was one that could be sculpted into whatever shape was desired with the right workout. Currently she was lean and fit, real and artificial muscle shifting slightly under the skin as the machines stimulated the nerves every now and then. You could see the difference between the two types, the artificial muscle looked slightly darker under the skin.

“Sail…” I said with rising excitement.

“What, did you find a part you want?” She asked in a slightly snappish tone.

“Better than that Sail.” I grinned.

“What?” I’d gotten her attention.

She floated around and slowly coasted to a stop in the air beside me. I looked over at her.

“B1, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked, referencing a truly ancient video series.

“What?” She asked in confusion.

“Don’t worry, you’re still young, maybe I’ll tell you the reference one day,” I said with a cheeky grin sliding onto my mechanical face.

She ignored my teasing, “We can use this. Put you in there. If she’s anything like the… broken ones, she’s powerful.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.” I said with a shrug.

“You don’t mind going into a female body?” She asked quizzically.

“I mind staying in a busted up one.” I said.

“Okay, let’s get this show rolling before the beauty pageant arrives. See that machine there? I need you to place your head in that cradle and lock the restraint in place.” She told me.

“Alright,” I said as I did what she asked.

“Now wha-” That was all I got out before Sail zapped the machine and mechanical arm shot forward towards my face. Everything went blank and I was left with just my thoughts. The space I was in wasn’t black, white or anything. I wasn’t even in a space. All I had was me. I began to panic as my mind rebelled against the sudden lack of any sensory feedback at all. I tried everything, but it was clear what had happened. My robot brain had just been yanked unceremoniously from my skull.

Just as I was formulating a really good diatribe to give her if she managed to do her job properly, sensation exploded into my mind. I felt warm. My body seemed to be encased in some fluid. Oh. I was in the vat, in that body. Thank whatever deity still ruled in this hellscape, the sassball had actually done it. As the vat drained of the gel, I took stock of the sensations I felt. It was a long time since I knew what being in a flesh body felt like, but it felt wonderful. Real tactile sensation coursed through me as the cradle took my full weight. This body also felt alive in a way I had not just moments before. I opened my eyes and gazed out of the vat. Sail floated in the air directly before me and zipped around, the little floating dickhead equivalent of pacing.

I felt the muscles of my face all shift and move in unison as they brought it into a smile. When the front of the vat opened and the cradle lowered me gently to the ground I expected to feel weak, like a newborn. I did not. Instead I felt powerful. I could feel the potential in this body, and I strode confidently from the womb that had sustained this body for hundreds of years. They built shit to last in my time, I thought with pride.

“How does it feel?” I heard Sail ask apprehensively.

“Really fucking good. This body is perfect for killing some asshole freak boys.” I said with a feral grin.

“Good, now remember we still have to get moving. I believe there is a jumpsuit for that body in one of the lockers in front of you. Let’s get going before we have company.” She said hurriedly.

What she said was a jumpsuit, turned out to be some sort of high tech form fitting armour. It clung to my new body everywhere up to my neck. There was a helmet, but I didn’t bother with it. The silly thing restricted my vision. I guess everything couldn’t be designed perfectly.

Once I was in the suit, I remembered to retrieve my hand cannon before we raced out the door. When we reached the intersection, Sail went straight for the way we’d come, but I spoke up to halt her.

“Wait, I want to check out if they had any weapons we can use. “Arms” usually means weapons right?”

She turned and tilted her body to the side in thought, “Wow that’s a good idea, there might be a way out as well. You know, I really hope you know that we are probably going to be hunted down and torn apart by some hive ogre. We’ve really pissed them off.”

I could hear she was right, the screams and growls of rage seemed closer as they echoed through the air vents and hallways of the building.

“Right, hopefully I can pull off a miracle with this gun and whatever other weapons we find.” I said.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” she said doubtfully, a little fear hiding underneath her tone.

“So full of optimism casper, don’t let it stop you from opening doors!” I smiled.

We followed the hallway down to “White arms development”, and Sail did her job on the door, grumbling about “ungrateful guardians who just wanted to break things”.

Inside the door we found a fairly normal sized room, a few desks with equipment that vaguely resembled weaponry in various states of completion. There was no exit.

“Well great, everything is half built. Great job sidekick. Now I’m going to be turned into a ghost pancake and you’re going to be eaten by thrall. Well, at least they'll kill me first, which means I won't have to watch them devour you. Upsides I guess.” Sail grouched with the ghost equivalent of a shrug.

I ignored her. My eyes had latched on to something. Sitting there neatly in a rack, was a gorgeous compound bow. It was all darkened metal and carbon, its string was wound around the two wheels that would be attached at the ends. The nameplate on the rack said it was called “Phylonoe Mk 2”. I liked that name.

“Hey Sail. I can’t remember my own name, so I’m going to take this bow, share its name, and kill every single gross alien asshole that gets between us and safety.” I said, my voice vibrating with purpose.

“Whoa. Okay. Someone’s found some confidence. I hope you’re as good as you think you are, because they are getting very close. Oh wait, you have a name now? What is it?” She asked, her voice going from eyerolling to curious.

“Phylonoe.” I stated.

“Phylonoe. Fill-own-e. That is some whacky spelling there sidekick.” She laughed.

“Phylonoe was a spartan princess who was made immortal by artemis. Seems fitting don’t you think?” I asked with a grin.

“Damn, that is a good name for you, princess.” She said with a teasing tone to her voice.

“Yeah alright there door handle, let's get moving.” I said, grabbing the quiver of arrows and strapping it to my hip.

We exited the room and I strode down towards the junction. Before we got even half way, there was a crash, and we watched as several of the creepy things that Sail had called thrall, piled into the hallway in front of me. Time to see what this baby would do. I drew back on an arrow, and noticed absently that the head at the end was oddly shaped. Past the usual spike was a little device. Strange. I didn’t let the oddity slow me down however, and I released. My training was once again spot on as the arrow planted itself into the head of a thrall and it toppled to the ground.

Then something unexpected happened. The arrow exploded. The thrall were wrapped in a swirl of ribbons made of a glowing purple energy. All the thrall caught in the blast were diced like so much meat by the sharp energy, and I watched in awe at what the bow and matching arrows could do. I looked at Sail, ignoring the lone thrall that had survived.

“Holy shit.” I said in a deadpan.

“Suddenly I have a lot of faith in you princess.” She stated back.

I pulled the hand cannon from my thigh and casually blasted the advancing thrall back to whatever hell it had spawned in.

A hellish scream followed my execution of the thrall, and a muddy floating bed sheet flew around the corner. Well it wasn’t just a bed sheet. It was a vaguely feminine figure wearing a ragged robe, with a head that losely resembled a wedge shaped medieval helmet. The creature flourished it’s hand and suddenly an area in front of me was roiling in dark smoke.

I was cautiously moving forward when a volley of energy blasts streamed through the disturbance before me. I was only barely fast enough to roll forward and under the hail of deadly blue projectiles. They hummed with power and I could smell the distinctive odor of ozone in the air disturbed by their passage.

I couldn’t see the thing, and I need to be able to see it. I dashed forward and entered the dark fog. I felt it begin to burn me straight away. It wasn’t much, but it hurt. I threw myself into a roll, drawing an arrow as I did so. When I rolled to a crouch on the other side, I brought the bow to bear on the evil thing before me. Release. The arrow sped towards my target, but it ducked back into the passage it’d just come from. I put on a burst of speed and once again drew my gun. When I swung around the corner, she was within ten feet down the hall. I sent a bullet downrange, and it impacted her with a wet thump. She gave another piercing scream that caused my teeth to vibrate uncomfortably in my mouth. She tried to get away again, but she had no cover in that hallway. I holstered my hand cannon and brought another arrow to the nock. I drew back and released. The arrow buried itself in my enemy and detonated, once again tearing at everything around it with razor sharp ribbons of violet light, and just like that it was dead.

Celebration would have to wait I realised, as more thrall came pouring around the end of the hallway. I lifted my namesake with a smile and marched forward along the cold concrete floor. Time to escape this place, and kill every alien scum along the way.