Mistrunner 3 - Chapter 50 - Setting the Stage (Patreon)

People change. We grow. We regress. Our priorities shift, and we commit to courses of action that would’ve once seemed unthinkable. Never was that more apparent than when I realized that I didn’t want to save the world. I didn’t really care about a bunch of innocent strangers. When it came down to it, all that really mattered to me was that Mira and I survived. Everything else was secondary. But Mira – she’s different. She talks the talk, but when it really comes down to it, she would give everything up if it meant beating the aliens.

Patrick Ward

The top of the mountain had been flattened into a plateau, on which rested a city sizable enough to house hundreds of thousands of people. Until I went through the shield, I hadn’t realized just how widespread the Pacificians’ efforts really were. But looking at the towering buildings that comprised Olympus, I couldn’t escape the fact that, if even half those structures were occupied, their operations were far more ubiquitous than I’d expected.

It was a sobering thought, and one that reinforced my determination to make them pay for what they had done.

So, once I got my feet underneath me, I set off across the grassy expanse between the reactivated Mist shield and the outskirts of the city. As I did, I studied my surroundings, and, once again, I was surprised by what I saw. The knowledge that everything had been built by hive-minded androids had prepared me to expect the city to be composed of a bunch of featureless boxes. In my mind, the architecture wouldn’t be so different from what I’d seen back in Nova, but without any of that city’s individualistic flourishes.

And in a way, I was right. It did look like Nova. But rather than the utilitarian designs so common in poor districts like the Garden, it took its cues from the more affluent platforms like Lakeview. Glittering glass, shining steel, and green topiary abounded, making Olympus look paradisical. Upon first glance, the place didn’t even look occupied. It was more like a series of statues than a place meant for habitation.

But as I drew closer, that perception was put to the lie when I saw the robed inhabitants. Some were clad in brown. Others, red. Still others wore yellow or green or a number of other hues. I knew that those colors were indicative of social status, but I had no idea how any of that worked – especially considering that, according to everything I’d read, they were a completely egalitarian society. Wealth had no place in their culture, save for when they dealt with other civilizations. And given that they were all connected to the same hive mind, the Pacificians were supposed to have an entirely non-individualistic view of life.

Clearly, even their supposedly equal society, there was some degree of stratification. In truth, that felt like the most relatable thing I’d seen from the Pacificians. People – even hive-minded androids – needed some hill to climb. They needed goals. And in the absence of money, there was usually power to fill that void. Or social status. Or countless other means of differentiating between the high achievers and everyone else.

Because some people were simply more valuable to a society than others.

I couldn’t help but wonder where I’d fit into such a system. Was I valuable enough to warrant a gold robe, which as far as I could tell, was the highest rank in Olympus? Or would I be clad in brown?

I liked to think that I was inherently special. Everyone did. But the difference was that I had results to back me up. I had accomplished great things in the past handful of years. Terrible. But great, too. Did that mean I was special? Or had I just started ahead of everyone else?

I only let myself dwell on that for a few seconds before I dismissed the subject. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t change my past. I couldn’t go back and keep my uncle from passing on all the advantages I’d used to get ahead. I could only keep moving forward and hope I made the right choices to justify that investment.

With that in mind, I continued across the open area until something twinged my {Mistrunner} senses. I stopped mid-stride, and it was just in time, too. Because the moment I focused on what I’d felt, I discovered that I’d been walking across a killing field populated by hundreds of auto-turrets. They were sequestered below the turf, but they were there, nonetheless.

And to my horror, my foot, which hovered a few inches off the ground, had been on the verge of crossing a barely-detectible web of Mist that would no doubt activate the turrets. I stood, balanced on one foot and cloaked in Stealth, as I sent my awareness out. And when I did, I discovered just how lucky I’d been.

Running from one end of the lawn to the next, which was a couple hundred yards wide, was a latticework of Mist. How I’d managed to get even a few steps without setting off an alarm was a mystery. Was I just that lucky? Or had my senses subtly guided me to safety? I had no idea, and I was in no position to figure it out.

I glanced skyward. I’d begun my infiltration at night, so the place was still bathed in darkness. However, that wouldn’t last much longer, because dawn was only a couple of hours off. Once the sun rose, even Stealth wouldn’t be enough to keep my hidden. Not unless I settled down and refused to move, which was not an option.

No – I needed to cross the killing field before the sun rose, or bad things were going to happen.

My first thought was to simply Misthack into the governing systems, shut off the auto-turrets, and then continue on my stroll toward the city. However, that turned out to be a non-starter, because, despite my studious practice, the Mistwall around the systems in question were completely impenetrable. Try as I might, I couldn’t bypass them. Perhaps it would’ve been possible if I’d had a hard connection and a few hours, but there was a distinct difference between what I could do with Misthack and Mistwalk, and I’d run headlong into the former’s limitations.

So, with that out of the question, I focused on the web of Mist itself. The one good thing was that it was entirely static, which was lucky because, if it had been in motion, I’d have already tripped the alarms. As it was, I just had to keep my senses about me, and I felt confident that I could weave my way through them.

With that in mind, that’s what I set out to do.

In theory, avoiding those thin strands of Mist was easy enough. But in practice, doing so was an exercise in tedium, body control, and focus. Fortunately, I was well-trained in each category, and, over the next ninety minutes, I crossed the lawn. Sometimes, it was easy as stepping in the right place, but at other times, I had to contort my body around the Mist with only fraction of an inch to spare. If I hadn’t been cloaked in Stealth, I would’ve made for a curious sight, but in the end, I made it to the outskirts with plenty of time to spare.

In the shadow of one of the buildings, I took a few minutes to rest. From a physical perspective, the crossing hadn’t been terribly tiring, but as an exercise in focus, it had been more than a little draining. But I could only afford a little time to reset my mind before I needed to move on.

As I did, I got a closer look at the Pacifician society. And I was sorely disappointed by the mundanity of it all. When I’d considered a city full of robot-people, I’d expected to find a wholly different sort of society, but what I saw wasn’t so different from I’d encountered in a dozen other cities. People still had to eat and sleep and endure all of life’s other necessities. The only difference was that, in Olympus, there wasn’t any crime or filth.

Seeing that, I couldn’t help but wonder if they had the right of it.

Of course, such would never have been possible with humanity at the fore. Our very natures prevented it. We were dirty, self-interested, and destructive, and there didn’t seem to be any way around that. Al we could do was implement policies to counteract the worst of our natures.

For a while, I just wandered through the city. With Stealth concealing me, I wasn’t worried about anyone noticing my presence, and before long, I found my way to the first stop on my list of targets.

In truth, it didn’t really matter where I started. Eventually, I’d get plenty of coverage. But I’d developed a plan to maximize the spread of the Ghost I intended to utilize. So, with that in mind, I crept into what I’d dubbed the central command station. Fortunately, with the city locked down, they didn’t have much use for surveillance of fancy defenses.

There were cameras and drones, but they were low-quality and easily bypassed. I had half-expected the attack which had very temporarily brought the shield down to change that, but the moment the Mist shield had gone back up, the Pacificians in Olympus had gone back to normal.

Likely, they had some sort of strike force hunting down the originators, but the city itself had been largely unaffected. As I’d expected, based on the files I’d read – but even knowing what to expect, I was grateful to see that the intelligence I’d gathered was correct.

In any case, there were no major obstacles between me and my first destination, and the few hurdles I had to clear were easily bypassed. Soon enough, I found myself as deep behind enemy lines as I could’ve ever hoped.

That’s when I picked a target – a woman in a gold robe – and used Surge, which would enhance the next Ghost I used, then activated Misthack. After bypassing her strangely anemic defenses, I chose to upload a Ghost from a specialized deck I’d prepared specifically for the mission.

The Ghost in question, which I’d chosen to call Extermination, took most of its structure from Time Bomb. It still required a significant gestation period before it could activate. However, it would remain inert unless I triggered it. That meant that, over the course of the next few days, I could infect the entire population. Unbeknownst to them, every time one of the infected made contact, they would spread the Ghost to someone else. Eventually, it would blanket the entire population.

With Time Bomb, that never would’ve been possible. It would’ve gone active well before everyone was infected. But with Extermination, that just wasn’t the case.

The second change I’d made was that it would only affect androids. While in the lunar base, I’d had plenty of time to study the Pacificians, and I’d used that information to create a few very specialized Ghosts. Extermination was one of those, but I had a couple of others in my deck just in case things went wrong.

The upside to all those limitations was that Extermination was extremely deadly. I didn’t for one second think that it would kill off the entire population. But I felt confident that it could handle most. And besides, it was only the first stage of my plan.

Over the next day, I traveled all over the city, making certain that I got as much coverage as possible. Then, I found a secluded corner of a mostly empty building where I settled in to wait for the Surge-enhanced Ghost to complete its gestation period. Three days later, the notifications that the Ghost was ready started rolling in. At first, it was only a handful, but soon enough, hundreds, then thousands flew past. That lasted for another day until those notifications came to a trickle, then ceased altogether.

Like that, the saturation point had been reached, which freed me to enact the next part of my plan.

Of course, that included bombs. Lots and lots of bombs.

Each was tiny. Barely bigger than my thumb, but they were packed full of a high-grade explosive compound I’d created myself. By themselves, they weren’t good for much. But when placed at just the right point? With my modifiers, I hoped they would be enough to bring the buildings down.

I didn’t have enough to destroy every building in the city. However, I did have enough to target the most important ones. In the majority of cases, I had no idea what purpose those buildings served. Instead, I just aimed to bring down the ones frequented by the higher-ranked Pacificians. That they’d color-coded themselves just made my job that much easier.

The infiltration of each building took all of my combined skills working together. Stealth, to keep from being seen. Misthack to bypass locked doors and disable cameras and drones. Mistwalk to access security terminals and download building schematics so I’d know precisely where to put my bombs. And on a couple of occasions, I had to utilize my combat skills when bad luck or coincidence forced me to fight.

Fortunately, I remained undetected, and I kept my body count to a minimum.

Over the next four days, I was like a ghost haunting Olympus, and eventually, I finished my task. One command, and I could bring down almost two-dozen of the city’s most important buildings.

By that point, the stress forced me to take a break, and I spent the next day resting.

Once I felt refreshed, I started in on the third part of my plan by targeting the building I’d marked as the hub. It was in the center of the city, but unlike many of the other important structures, barely anyone ever visited. The only reason I’d recognized it as important was because of the sheer amount of Mist it contained. So, seeing that, I had resolved to check it out, and when I did, I discovered that it was the apparatus by which the local Pacificians kept in contact with the central mind.

I had no idea how it worked. But all my sources of information – Kith and Alistaris, mostly – said that the Pacificians were not a true hive mind. Each individual had some degree of autonomy, but they were still all connected. And the structure at the center of the city, which was shaped like a giant, dimpled ball with a huge spire at its crown, was the means by which they maintained contact.

At first, I considered simply destroying it along with the rest of the important buildings, but then I thought better of it. I knew I was taking a risk – after all, at any point, my bombs could be detected – but my idea demanded due diligence. So, I retreated to the mostly empty building that I had established as my temporary base of operations, and settled in to start working on some new Ghosts.

It took me almost a week to get it mostly right.

The result wasn’t perfect, and using it would do nothing on its own. However, when taken in tandem with Extermination, I hoped it would give the Pacificians every reason to avoid Earth in the future.

Or maybe I would start some kind of intergalactic war.

Which was fine by me, if I was honest. As far as I was concerned, we were already at war. I was just taking things to the next obvious step for someone with my skillset. So, armed with my new Ghost, I headed back to the hub and, over the next hour, slowly gained entry. It was slow going because the security was a good deal tighter than anywhere else in the city, but I was more than up to the task.

Soon enough, I found myself in the center of the building and looking across a catwalk that extended to the mid-point of the structure’s spherical interior. The Mist in the area was thick enough that it had manifested as blue vapor, which filled the building with a dense fog that felt almost solid. I stepped out onto the catwalk and slowly made my way to the consoles at the center.

At each one sat a silver-robed Pacifician. I didn’t know what that color meant, but I reasoned that it denoted some importance. It didn’t matter. They needed to die if I was going to accomplish my goals. However, I knew that doing so would eventually set off the alarms, which in turn meant that the last part of my plan would be a race against time.

So, I understandably took a few minutes to compose myself and, for the thousandth time, confirm that I knew the remainder of my plan. Step by step, I went over everything I needed to do to finish my mission until, at last, I felt I was ready to kick things off. Once I did, I took a deep breath, letting the fog-like Mist soothe me before I took the final few steps that put me directly behind my first target.

She was a woman, and like every other Pacifician I’d seen, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and with the sort of artificially perfect features that instantly put my hackles up. I pulled a nano-bladed dagger from my arsenal implant, and then, without missing another beat, stabbed it through the base of her skull where I knew it would do the most damage. I caught her before she could fall, then leaned her forward so she wouldn’t immediately alert the others.

Then, moving swiftly but with care, I dispatched the next. And the next after that. The fourth one gave me some trouble when she suddenly turned, wide-eyed and started to say something, but I mercilessly slashed buried my dagger in her forehead. That didn’t killer – not immediately – but it certainly stopped her from reacting before I snatched her blonde hair, yanked her head forward, and buried my other dagger in the vulnerable base of her skull.

And just like that, all four were dead.

Which put me on the clock, so I yanked my personal link out of the Hand of God, then plugged it into the massive terminal. The defenses activated immediately, but over the next few minutes, I bypassed them, one after another, until the system finally opened up to me. When it did, I felt something looming in the virtual distance. Something powerful. Something I could scarcely comprehend. It wasn’t a physical being, but rather another entity connected to the system, and I knew it was only a matter of time before it noticed me. So, without further hesitation, I uploaded the Ghost I’d prepared specifically for that moment, then disconnected.

That was when an expected but still unwelcome alarm sounded.

I’d hoped I would have a little more time, that I would get out of the building before they knew I was there. But that just wasn’t in the cards.

So, I took off, abandoning stealth as I crossed the catwalk as quickly as my feet would carry me. It only took a second, but when I reached the door leading to the rest of the facility, a pair of androids loomed before me. I didn’t hesitate, and neither did they.

In an instant, the sound of gunfire filled the building. I dashed to the side, peppering the pair of guards with explosive rounds from my assault rifle. By itself, the weapon was incapable of taking them down – not quickly at least – but with my skill enhancing the ammunition, it was more than up to the task of taking them out of the fight.

My barrage didn’t kill them, but I didn’t need it to. Instead, I only cared about getting them out of the way so I could secure my exit, which was precisely what I did. And as soon as I was in the clear, I once again embraced Stealth and started the long and arduous process of creeping past the rest of the guards.

Fortunately, Olympus didn’t have the security capabilities of the lunar base, so, aside from a few close calls, I had no trouble making it out of the building and to the relatively safe haven that was my temporary base.

Once there, I triggered the explosives. Then, I activated my Ghost. And finally, as the city collapsed into chaos and ruin, I set off to complete the final part of my mission.