Never Fade Away: We Lost Everything (ch. 2) (Patreon)

I opened my eyes to a familiar ceiling, yet it wasn't one that sat above my dorm. It was the ceiling belonging to the physical labor room. One of them, at least. In my time, I've seen three of them. "Good morning, boys," I heard the familiar voice of Dr. D announce, and without fail, he woke us up with that phrase. I'm not entirely sure what it meant and he never explained, even when we asked. Said that we wouldn't get it.

"Good morning, Dr. D," I intoned, a well-trained response and I heard my voice echoing out with several others. Over twenty voices, all of them ranging in pitch. I recognized every voice and my stomach sank like a stone as I realized what was happening.

Some of us were going to die today.

Sitting up in my bed -- the one I had been rolled in on top of -- I saw that I was in a workroom with every current L and R. Directly across from me was R-15 from my bracket, and he met my gaze with eyes filled with sorrow. He recognized the same exact thing as I did. Because today we were working in test groups.

The reason was never given, but there was one behind our designations. There was a reason why I was an L instead of a Q or S or T. All of the Ls in the room had something in common, but I had no idea what it could be. There were plenty of theories tossed around and the most common one was that we shared a genetic trait, but what that trait was was unknown to us too. Some thought it was tolerance to certain things like drugs or mods -- Vs did pretty well with bioware because they were almost always singled out by Biotechnica, but so did Ts.

Today, the eight Ls stood across from the nine Rs. The room wasn’t dissimilar from a dorm in terms of size, but at one end, there were three doors that each led to different rooms. Those, I thought, were the physical and mental labor rooms. However, that didn’t make a lot of sense. The rooms weren’t that big. Not enough to house everyone when we went to work, forcing me to assume that there were other rooms. And I had just never seen them.

"Today," Dr. D continued, striding between the two groups, "We will be testing Arasaka's neural suits. Underneath your beds, you will find them. Put them on and stand at the end of your bed with your back facing me," he instructed. I looked at the man even as I complied with the order, my body well trained in doing whatever the doctors said. Dr. D was a handsome man -- dark hair, cleanly shaven, but as far as I could tell, his skin was synthetic. He wore a white lab coat like Dr. K did, and even as a pleasant smile tugged at his lips, it didn't match his eyes.

Dr. D was almost always bad news. He talked like he was a pleasant man, but it had taken a number of dead friends for me to realize that just because he seemed nice, it didn't mean that he was. His smile wouldn't change if no one died in an experiment or if everyone did. All the same, I did as ordered and grabbed the neural suit under my bed. It was rubbery to the touch and colored black. I could see clear points of entry where it was meant to interface with our mods.

Stripping off my clothing and putting the suit on, I found that it was skin tight, but not exactly uncomfortable. As I expected, the suit lined up with the ports -- one behind my jaw, near the back of my ear, and with the ports in the middle of my back along my spine. I still had flesh and bone in my back, which was how I knew it wasn't a Netrunner kit, but that was the only thing that I could disqualify. There was no telling what I had inside of my body. I had no way to check. Even if I could, so many things went in and out that there was no way to keep up with it.

What I did know was that they had something to knock us out and wake us up. We always woke up in the workrooms on our beds. No matter how hard we tried, no one had ever managed to stay up all night to catch when they took us. Likewise, without fail, they could wake us all up at the same time. Something to stimulate the brain. Or inject something. There was no telling without access to my OS that all the mods I had in me, and the only people that would have access to our OS would be the doctors.

Dr. D started at our end, taking a cart that was filled with small chips that radiated a whitish-blue hue. He took a moment to connect the suit to my neural link, and he seemed satisfied with the connection. "Brace," he warned me before he slotted the chip into the ports on my back, and bracing didn't exactly help. A grunt escaped me, my hands curling into firsts that trembled at the pain. It felt like two red hot pins were shoved into my spine.

I heard R grunt as well before Dr. D continued down the line. The further he went down it, the younger the subjects became and the less resistant they were to pain. The room became filled with the sound of whimpering and choked sobbing because even the youngest of us knew that no matter how much they cried, it wouldn’t change anything. I controlled my breathing as my bed, along with the others, moved out of the way as they followed the programmed path to give us the room.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a hallway that seemed no different from the hallway between the rec room and the dorms. The only difference was that the hallway’s walls were straight. It lent credence to my theory that the workrooms lay beyond that bulkhead door, but I’ve never seen more than a glimpse. The door shut a few seconds later, leaving the room emptier. A metallic table dropped down from the wall now that the beds were gone. Magnetically stuck to them were… blocks?

“For this test, I want you to move the block without touching it,” Dr. D informed us, giving our task for today and, I had to admit, I didn’t expect that. I had thought that I had seen it all, but this was new for me. I narrowed my eyes at the black block resting upon the metallic gray table, holding out a hand towards it and trying to get it to move. I didn’t feel any disappointment when I failed. Not when everyone else did as well.

What exactly were we testing here? How did it connect to the neural suit and whatever was just shoved in us? The charges in the back of my mind ached to be used, spent on an answer, but I refrained. Whatever this was, it wasn't covered by what I knew of implants, meaning this was something either very new or specialized to the point it wasn't covered.

That being said, I thought they were testing some kind of psionic implant of some kind. It was the only thing that explained why we were trying to move things with our minds. Whatever was shoved in our backs probably enabled the ability but the suit itself likely facilitated it. In theory.

"Focus your mind on the block. It doesn't need to rise or fling away. A small nudge would do," Dr. D said after a very long silence that was only filled by the sounds of children trying not to cry.

"It hurts," I heard L-5 mutter, his voice quivering.

"Focus, L-5. Only on the task," Dr. D responded, a harsh edge to his tone that I knew all too well. Dr. D's temper was a subtle thing. He would never compromise an experiment by outright killing someone, but he did find ways to make them extremely uncomfortable. A few of my scars ached with phantom pain from where Dr. D had 'forgotten' to use any numbing agents.

L-5 whimpered, but said nothing in response and the others did their best to swallow the sounds of their discomfort. Some had more success than others and it was only the eldest of us that managed to do so entirely. The workroom fell as silent as it was going to get, the passage of time only marked by Dr. D speaking up.

The pain in my back was growing, like whatever was in me was spreading. Sweat built up upon my brow as I focused solely on moving the block to distract myself from it. The hand extended to the block trembled ever so slightly, but the block itself refused to budge. Either the suit or the plug-in wasn't working.

Or so I thought.

"Dr. D," I heard R speak up, drawing Dr. D to him. I looked over my shoulder, seeing Dr. D pop a connector cord out of his wrist before he put the input into the port behind R's ear. R was so wide that I couldn't see the block itself, though. However, Dr. D let us all know what had happened. Likely to inspire us so we knew it was possible. "R-15 shifted the block three centimeters to the left. Well done, subject R-15."

There was a point in time that I would have killed to hear those words directed at me. A kind word or gesture from either Dr. K or D meant everything. Their approval meant everything. It was only when one by one, everyone I had grown up with died to their complete and utter indifference that that changed. No matter how many kind words they might have said to them.

"Thank you, Dr. D," R responded, and I was the only one that could hear the disgust in his tone. Dr. D couldn't because he offered a smile and a pat on his shoulder before continuing on.

R proved it was possible, at least, meaning that there was something to it. With renewed focus, all of us tried to get the brick to move even a little bit. And, like dominos, some managed it. Another one in the R group. Then L-6 managed it and he jumped with joy, basking in the praise that Dr. D dolled out. Another one in R group that was followed by another two in R group, making it clear that whatever this was favored them. One by one, with intense focus, they managed to get the block to move.

I couldn't, I found. It wasn't clicking with me. The pain in my back was intense, and even those that managed to get the brick to move found no response from it. And while the pain radiating from those plug-ins was centered in my back, the rest of my body started to feel tingly. My nervous system was being affected by whatever was happening. Not that it mattered at the moment. I couldn't get the brick to move. L-6 was the only one in the L group that managed it.

Sweat dripped down my forehead, so focused on trying to get the brick to move and ignore the pain, I almost dismissed the thump behind me. I nearly did, and it was only the strangled gargling that alerted me that something was wrong. I whipped around to see that R had fallen to his knees, gasping for breath like he was hyperventilating, "S-something's wr-wr-wrong," R managed to rasp out, one half of his face starting to sag while the other conveyed the fear and confusion he felt.

"Subject R-15 is suffering a stroke," Dr. D informed, sounding as if he were in no rush even as he arrived at R's side.

"It hu-hur-hurtsh," R rasped out, his shoulder hitting the side, blood dripping out of his ear. I froze when it hit the ground, a pool of crimson spreading slowly as a thin river continuously spilled from his ear canal. His gaze met mine, everyone else in the room freezing at the sight.

R was going to die, I realized. The thought raced through me, making every nerve-ending tingle and the pain in my back was completely forgotten. His eyes were optics, so they had no blood vessels, but tears of blood began to drop from the corners of his eyes. Dr. D was talking but I could barely hear a word that he said beyond something about brain hemorrhaging.

"I Don't want to die. I… I-I want to Keep Going," R slurred the words, his breathing heavy and stilted. However, even as he spoke, his finger tapped. Don't. Keep Going.

I had only realized I was directly behind Dr. D just then, my expression twisting to one of murderous intent. He had his jack in R's socket, reading his vitals in real-time. Making no effort to save him. It'd be a simple thing to pop the jack cord out of my own wrist and shove it into the port behind Dr. D's ear.

"I… don't… want to be… like the… Others," R whispered, gargling in his own blood, his finger tapping a final time. Others.

I covered my face with my hands, letting the loss wash over me. This one was different, I reflected. Every loss before this one… it was inevitable. There wasn't anything to be done. All of us accepted that death could come for us anytime we opened our eyes. We internalized it.

But we were so close to getting out. Three more weeks. Three more weeks and… this… R would still be alive. He died right before we got out. That all of us got out.

"L-15," Dr. D spoke up, making me lower my hands as I looked at the corpse of my dead friend for a moment. Searing the image into my brain. My gaze flickered to Dr. D, who seemed indifferent to R's death. "Return to position."

…Damn it all.

I'm so sorry, R.

I didn't give any verbal or physical hint of what I was about to do. My expression didn't twitch. My body language screamed compliance. My mind, however, for the briefest of seconds, achieved a level of focus that outstripped anything that I had ever managed to achieve before, leaving my mind eerily quiet as I followed through on motions that I had practiced in my mind millions of times.

My form was perfect when I lashed out with a kick, my heel slamming into Dr. D's knee hard enough that it bent inward, tipping his balance towards me as I popped out my connection jack. In a single fluid motion, I caught his head and fed the jack into his neural port while keeping him in a headlock to cut off his breathing.

An OS appeared before my eyes -- the doctors had a connection to our OSs. It was how they activated and deactivated our implants and monitored the tests they ran on us. We couldn't even access our own implants or bring up our OS. Meaning that the doctors -- this place -- had a connection to us that we couldn't tap into. A connection that we would never think to look for because we weren't supposed to know that it existed in the first place.

"L- good- gurkh," Dr. D started, prompting me to squeeze tighter on his neck as I typed out a piece of code. A code that I had been crafting in my head for weeks. A code that I had refined to the closest thing I could get to perfection. A silver bullet designed to take advantage of this moment that would never come again.

I estimated that I had at most ten seconds to write up the code.

I got it done in six. Inputting the code, I breached through Dr. D's ICE, using the already established connection between our systems to bypass a lot of his safety restrictions. The window that he used to look into my systems just became a door and I stepped through it. In a second, I ripped out his cyber key to the door and credentials.

Dr. Daniel Yusstoff. Why did his name have so many letters?

"This is for R," I told Dr. D, downloading what I could from his systems before I tightened my grip on his neck and heard a loud pop when I broke it.

"What did you just do?" I heard one of the other kids breathe, watching me in awe with wide eyes and slacked jaws.

Something stupid, I realized, flipping Dr. D's body over before scrambling to my feet. My OS was processing the information and with a single eye, I kept watch on most of it. The alert didn't go off, but it was only a matter of time. My gaze went to the corners of the room, realizing that there were cameras hidden in the false corners of the walls, hidden behind one way glass. Someone was going to notice soon.

"Jack into each other," I commanded the other kids, grabbing the closest one to me and jacking into his port.

"What are you doing?" L-13, the oldest L left besides me, asked as the kids did as they were told. He couldn't look away from the bodies of R and Dr. D.

"Disabling their method of subduing us," I answered, spreading the code down the line through the chain of personal links. They had an implant in our heads that stimulated the brainstem, so with a flick, they could put us to sleep or wake us up. "We're getting out here. All of you, follow me," I instructed, turning towards the door and knowing that I couldn't look at R's body again because it would make me hesitate.

He told me to stop. With his dying breath, he asked me to stop. To wait until we were ready. I couldn't. I just couldn't. Not when we were so close. So damn close. It was a good thing too because I knew exactly where Dr. Katherine Whalters was.

I strode to the hallway and for the first time, the doors slid open of their own will. It was a Level 3 cyber key, granting me access to everything above level 3, but according to what I lifted off of Dr. D, this place had up to five levels. That wasn't a concern to me right now. Right now, I had to multitask.

"Woah," I heard L-13 mutter as I stepped into a whole new world for the first time. The hallway was straight, like I thought it would be, but down the hall, it curved at a sharp angle. I barely had time to register that I was seeing something other than the same walls I've grown up with, knowing that time was of the essence. The cyber key would be revoked soon enough, the moment that this place realized that we were escaping. I couldn't do anything about that, but I could think of a program that would let me breach the systems on the door to force them open.

"Come on," I exclaimed, dragging the kids behind me as I marched through the hallways. I didn't have access to the security cameras -- just the lab testing and dormitories, but it felt like someone was watching me. I expected a team of people to be waiting around the corner, as if this was some great big trap, but instead we found an empty hallway that we sprinted down. Rounding another corner, I saw the door that belonged to one of the other workrooms.

The door slid open and my gut clenched at what I saw. It was a similar line up that our work room had been -- two test groups. Only out of the twenty people in the room, there were only eight left standing. The rest collapsed where they were, either dead or dying.

"Wh-" Dr. K started, looking over her shoulder at me just in time to see a flying high knee smash into her nose, snapping her head back. As she went down, I slammed the side of her head into the ground, stunning her before jacking into her OS and breaching her systems.

"L?" I heard A rasp as those that still lived looked at me with wide eyes. A was collapsed on the ground, his nose pumping out blood, and blood vessels popped in his organic eye. "It's too early," he voiced as M staggered to his feet.

"I know," I admitted. "R's dead," I told them, my voice blunt as I killed Dr. K's security before I grabbed her by the throat and squeezed.

"Shit," A muttered, his voice unchanged despite his poor condition. M helped him to his feet, but he swayed dangerously. "This was a bad round, L. Militech killed most of us."

"You're a good boy, L-15," Dr. K spoke and there was alarm in her eyes when she saw that I didn't immediately drop dead.

"Disabled your safety measures," I snarled at her, grabbing her by the head and slamming her head down on the sterile floor. And again. And another time. The first time drew blood, but by the third time I heard a crack and the blood stain beneath her head was growing. "It's earlier than any of us want, but it's our chance. We have to get out," I told the others, seeing that they finished disabling the implants they had in us.

M nodded, "We have to do this now then. I'll get the kids-" as he spoke, one of the R kids dropped to a knee. Half of his face sagged down and my heart clenched at the sight before blood started to trickle out of his ear. A moment later, he fell to the ground, seizing with bloody foam escaping his mouth.

He had managed to move the block, I recalled, taking the briefest of moments to mourn his loss before focusing on the task at hand. “M, get the kids. Here’s a copy of the key.” I told him, flicking the cyberkey to him as I started going through Dr. K’s pockets, finding a small scalpel.

A charge has been spent

Improvised Explosives: Rank 1

Taking the scalpel, I cut into Dr. K to harvest the wiring to her implants, ripping at the skin and blood flowed underneath my hands. Ripping one out, I quickly began to dismantle it to jury rig an EMP charge, my hands knowing what to do. A charge had to have been spent and I didn’t have many anyway.

“What do you put our odds?” A questioned, leaning against the wall. My heart was pounding, my bloodstained fingers twisting wires and connecting parts, my hands flying as if I had done it before a thousand times. Twisting wires, connecting them to a power source for a sharp release that would create a magnetic field that would at the very least mess with unshielded electronics.

“Honestly, A?” I said, my heart clenching when another kid in R group dropped, seizing until he died. There was absolutely nothing we could do for him. That was three. Proof enough that it wasn’t just R. The older kids were going first, so it was likely a conflict. A small breath escaped me, the EMP charge done. “I’m not feeling too confident. We’re a cycle too early.”

“Yeah, sounds about right,” A admitted before something appeared before my eyes. A map. “Found that in the info,” he told me. The map… the…. The map…

“No…” I whispered as I saw just how big the world really was in a small window before my eyes. My stomach started to do flips in my gut, ice forming in my veins as my throat closed up, refusing to let any air in my lungs after the information felt like a gut punch that knocked it all out. I’m not sure what I expected to see.

However, four other rec rooms wasn’t on the list.

“W-... We’ll come back for them,” I heard myself say, standing up and idly realizing that my neural suit was drenched with Dr. K’s blood. I had a layout for where we were going. The layout had the rec rooms and the dorms around them stacked on top of one another with a floor separating them. I had no idea how many kids could be in there, but… there were at least a thousand.

And I had no clue how I could get them out. I had to focus on getting those that I could out. So, I focused on what I could do.

“Yeah… we’ll come back, L,” A said as I walked to him, both of us glancing at another kid in R group dropping. “Looks like you guys got a delayed reaction. Killed most of us the moment they put the implants in,” A muttered to me as I threw his arm over my shoulder, hauling him to his feet.

I didn’t respond, but I didn’t like the sound of that. What were they testing on us this time? There had been bad days before. When I was in bracket 7, there had been a total loss of everyone in bracket Q. A complete wipeout. Thirteen people gone in a single workday.

From the looks of it, we lost most of A and M, along with a chunk of R. This was the worst workday I’ve ever seen and, based on the black blocks resting on the table in the workroom, they were testing similar products on us.

“We can figure out what they were doing once we get out, A. Maybe we can ask Arasaka and Militech, huh?” I said, half dragging A to the door. His legs were weak and he leaned heavily on me, managing to only grunt in response as we headed for the door. It slid open and L-13 helped me carry A through it.

“So, that's what that looks like,” A muttered, his voice sounding distant, drinking in the sight of the hallway. “If… we go left, there should be an elevator. Should… take us all the way to the top. Then we’re out.” A continued, and I nodded, already heading that way.

This wasn’t ideal, but we could work. This would work. It had to.

As if the world was disagreeing with me, I got a message from M. ‘We have a problem, L’.

I didn’t have to ask what.

The alarm started blaring.

...

Here is Never Fade Away. For those that missed the announcement, I recommend you go check it out, but the TLDR is that Gone Native will be on pause for a few weeks before resuming as a biweekly story. What does that mean?

Basically, every Monday that Gone Native doesn't update, Never Fade Away will. When Gone Native returns to normal weekly updates, Never Fade Away will either be given its own day to update or it'll take over Thursday when From the Ashes when it reaches a stopping point.

Now, onto another important question - the Inspired Inventor has undergone some alterations for this story. Here is a Link to the original for reference. The rules in question are pretty simple all things considered.

A charge is gained every 2 chapters written and every two weeks that pass in story. The cap on skills or tech has no theoretical limit, but past 10 sees diminishing returns. For reference -- 1-3 would be considered a hobbyist/prototype, 4-6 is skilled/standard to high-end, 7-9 is expert/top of the line, 10 and beyond is a foremost expert/bleeding edge. Additionally, L has no control over what tech or skill is picked. That's me from behind the DM screen, essentially. That change is mostly to prevent metagaming on L's behalf -- he doesn't know of other settings, and he can't just pick post-scarcity tech for an instant steamroll. How it would work in practice is L will go 'damn, I wish I had some FTL technology' and I would spend a charge on an FTL that seemed interesting like Concentrated Dark Matter Fuel from Rick and Morty.

And that's it. I hope you all enjoy!