16-14 The Body-Garden (III) (Patreon)

+Rab. Got an update for you. I haven’t gotten eyes on your new consang yet, but there’s this new Fallwalker that’s appeared out of nowhere. Name’s Dice. She’s been working her way through the districts, hunting down former members of the Three-Fingers Syndicate. Crushing the gangs spinning off from them too.

From the mem-data I managed to cobble together, she entered the city near the end of last month. Got brought in by a Fallwalker calling himself Crowtongue. Dagger-Pattern Frame. Sphere II. Barely more than a lightweight among the Ensouled. Seeing how he was selling his services to the Guilds and making all that noise trying to market himself, I got a guess that he wasn’t doing so great out in the Sunderwilds. Was probably on the verge of getting run off by the Scaarthians is my guess, judging from how much shit he flung at Stormtree.

It also predictably got his ass snuffed. Damn fool didn’t have proper Necro with him. Also picked up a run from an “unverified” middler. Stupid half-strand got himself and his crew nulled and killed in an ambush. No details about which gang, squire, or Syndicate pulled that hit, and the Bazaar’s been silent about that too, so I think we can chalk this up to a “Frame-Repossession” job by a certain Guild.

Now this is where we get back to this Dice girl. Seems she’s barely a day over fifteen cycles old. Kosgan ancestry. Some gangers sold her to the Three Fingers after they picked up her trying to steal the aratnid they were cooking. Syndicate thought using her as part of their organ-farm before she blinded one of their enforcers during an escape.

After that, she earned herself a first-class ticket to the Crucible in the gutters.

The trail gets all kinds of fucky here though. Crucible got hit by someone and the stream went dead. All the participating Syndicate personnel pulled a vanishing act too. Not a trace of them. Paladins and Exorcists are combing the scene as we speak. Couple of my contacts tell me they got nothing, which, you know, screams “Guild interference” to me.

Or something else.

This new consang of yours… if he can do what you claimed, then we just might be looking at one of your ontological siblings. It’s just a guess right now, but I’d appreciate a mem-lock on this girl if you got the time. If I get to shadowing her, I might just get a glimpse at your mysterious benefactor too.

I gotta say, I expected this to be one of those boring gigs I do for the imps. Figured you were just pulling my leg–trying to keep an old lady entertained.

Glad I was wrong. This getting my blood all worked up. I can feel something static in this one–there’s gonna be a shitstorm at the end of this. And I’m going to love making my way to its heart.+

-[Redacted]

16-14

The Body-Garden (III)

It took half a day of careful monitoring on the part of Chambers and Draus before they locked in on an active gate.

The voidstar had cycled back over to midday when they departed, necessary resources and equipment all stored within the Manta’s adaptive confines. Much like the George Washington itself–or any voidship for that matter–the Manta was a self-adjusting vessel, and Avo came to understand it more as a field of sophisticated technology than a solid piece of matter.

Without an obvious docking bay or a bulkhead to access its inner confines, the ship itself parted like flowing water, bathing each of its passengers in a protective shroud while linking itself to their cognitive systems via quick-fabbed nanotech. From there, the gulf between the individual and the vessel itself all but vanished in the face of neural synchronization.

A deluge of interfaces, icons, indicators, controls, gauges, and other information flooded Avo’s mind as they whistled along the side of a megablock in near silence. With Avo’s Incog acting as a shroud against the Nether and the ship’s stealth functions rendering it entirely transparent and undetectable by even coldtech scanners, the cadre took their time scouting the city below, magnifying their vision and switching between optical functions to peer deeper past the surface of the Warrens.

Heat signatures revealed just how many people were hiding. Bodies lined allies and corners, the heat of society gathered in protective pockets, with only stray squads of street squires or other hardened killers daring to walk the rougher districts in the light.

Avo remembered the milk run that saw him freed from Conflux’s grasp. The one planned by Chambers, and poorly at that.

How exposed he had been. How vulnerable.

As a scream sounded over the horizon, a cluster of missiles burst free from a passing drone, descending to pummel unseen targets fleeing down distant streets.

{Shit, Avo. We were lucky the Scalpers didn’t send their aerial assets after us back in Burner’s Way, huh? That would’ve been a pain in the ass to deal with without your ‘jack and a weaker Heaven.}

Avo shot a single thought over to the Manta and the smart-fluid interior of the ship split and formed a tunnel between him and Chambers, allowing him to glare at the other Godclad in the flesh. “They did. Sent the Galeslither after me. It’s where I got it from.”

Chambers went stiff, and even with the helmet encasing his features, Avo could envision the awkwardness in the half-strand’s expression. ‘Well. Good for you, huh?”

“Yeah,” Avo breathed, filling his words with biting sarcasm. “Very good. Also glad you were there to stay and be my exfil.”

A pained squeak came from under Chambers’ breath. “I mean… come on, consang. I didn’t expect shit to get that bad, that fast. It was like… unforeseeable.”

Another section of the inner hull peeled around above them and Draus snorted. “The hells it was. You’re supposed to get all the details down. Run overwatch on the situation. You don’t just throw a body at a problme expect shit to work out. That’s Greatling tactics for you, and you ain’t a Greatling.” A bitter laugh followed. “Shit, even the Greatlings didn’t have enough material to fight like Greatlings in the end.”

[Thanks, mom,] Abrel grumbled. [I love watching my family get compared to a ghoul’s pet idiot.]

[Hey!] template Chambers shouted. [I’m not a pet. I’m his right hand. His second mind. I do the jack on people he don’t want to burn. I jack ‘em good and fast and deep because I’m the one he trusts.]

[Yeah. Like a nu-dog.]

[Isn't your ass is still in the void somewhere waiting for the Paladins to put you in front of the city so they can stream the details of your fuck-up. You didn’t need mommy to help you screw that up.]

A cold rage ignited within Abrel. [Fuck you, half-strand. Do you hear me? Fuck. You.]

Template-Chambers leaned in. [I’d let you.]

A chorus of weary sighs swept through the other minds simulated within Avo’s consciousness as all the rage with Abrel turned to disgust in an instant.

[Walked right into that one, Guilder,] Lip chuckled. [Piece of shit’s a pervert. What’d you expect him to say?]

[Never talk to me again,] Abrel spat.

Back within the Manta, a low sigh escaped Draus as she dropped down next to Avo. “And to think I was talkin’ about how we should just walk through some glass. You have any idea how advanced this thing is? How much it can see? How far it can hit?”

“Got a feeling Highflame’s arsenal isn’t at first place for you anymore,” Avo replied.

“Yeah. Reckon you could say that everyone’s not fightin’ for second.” Looking around at the pleasantly lit porcelain white material, Draus called out for the EGI. “Calvino? You hear us?”

“Every word,”  the artificial mind responded. Considering that it was connected to the Manta via his Neurodeck, he wondered how many other things it was capable of. “But please, continue with your accolades. It’s good to be praised.”

“Cute,” Draus responded. “How far does this thing see, really? I managed to zoom past some ugly fucker’s pores. Then the screen got all weird and I started seein’ these little shapes and stuff. What’s that? Some kind of micro-micro vision mode?”

“Oh, that’s cellular imagining. We used to be able to get even more detailed, but that’s been disrupted due to ‘metaphysical issues.’ The same thing with the ship itself, really. Nanotech is actually pretty old technology, but our molecular assemblers are quite unstable these days, so you’ll have to excuse us for giving you outdated resources.”

Draus scoffed, but Avo had the impression she was smiling beneath her manifested helmet. “You’re a smug bastard, machine-god, you know that?”

“So you say.”

“Listen,” Draus continued. “The Guilds. Our coldtech… Why’d you bother trading it over to the Guilds if you’re against what we are?”

“Because it helps us influence the decision-making of your elites. And that saves a lot more lives. This dependency is part of how we keep pulling you all back from the brink.”

“Doesn’t always work, though, does it?”

“No.” Calvino paused and laughed. “It’s hard to be a god. A true god. One that knows better. One that has seen the paths you’ve walked echo with our own history, but be helpless to stop your atrocities. You are such problematic children. Driven feral by the harshness of your cradle, and empowered beyond the limits of your wisdom by the bounty we left you. Turning away is no different than letting one of your Guilds bring about their utopia. The only two choices are the annihilation of this reality or its preservation.”

“You don’t want to put it back together?” Avo asked. “Make things return to the way it was. Before Godclads. Before Gods. Before your ultimate mistake.”

Silence dragged while Calvino composed its thoughts. “Is a replica of what was built from the matter of your memory truly the same as that which came before?”

Another beat followed.

“What?” Chambers said. “What the fuck does that mean? If it basically works the same… what’s the difference?”

“Belief,” Calvino whispered. “That’s the difference. That’s the danger at the heart of the structure. That’s the risk performed to us by every last Godclad. The world that was existed unto itself. Faith was a soft thing. Faith could not affect the laws of physics, the speed of light, of covalent bonds and certain decay. But if the soft is allowed to shape the hard, then where does the truth begin? Where does genuine sanctuary lie?”

“Okay, this shit’s getting too confusing. Can we get back to talking about how much of a half-strand I was for screwing up that run?” Chambers looked between Draus and Avo, but the other two were lost in their own thoughts.

“The war to control existence,” Avo said. “You’re afraid it will start again?”

“It will, if there is an opportunity. There will come disagreements between the polities. Even between minds like me and my kind. Still between the clades we shepherd. Previously, we warred and debated until one won, but none were killed. Now, however… who can stay their hand from certain utopia? No. If there is to be an end to this, then the last dream will have to be one that unmakes all dreams. The world will need to be returned to the material–a second apocalypse to cleanse the first.”

Avo considered the EGI’s words and found them repellant to him. For all Calvino and Voidwatch had offered, for all the glories of technology and knowledge they possessed, there was a power they couldn’t give him, an imbuement of privilege that was absolute.

There were few pleasures more sublime than being a Godclad. To be liberated from death. To be a master over sections of reality.

He mattered. With the Liminal Frame he was important–he could determine his own fate; had claimed his Conflagration. None could dispute that.

Without it, what would he be?

Dead.

Nonexistent.

A victim in the gutters still, or a nameless ghoul lost to the ecstasy of the flesh, never rising beyond its instincts to think of what it could become.

“Unstable Nether approaching. We are almost there. Avo, do you require more time to prepare yourself?”

A metaphysical crown pulsed out from Avo, shrouding the environment around him in a layer of nonsensical integers and code lines. Reality and virtuality bled over into each other, and gibberish-data detonated a pocket of space around him.

Calvino sighed. “You know those numbers are mostly random, right? It’s only doing–”

“What is believed,” Avo replied. “Kae told me.”

“...I, personally, wouldn’t mind if Omnitech was glassed once or twice before the end.”

“Shit,” Draus grunted a soft laugh. “Sounds like influence ain’t a one-way street.”

***

The gateway they sought was a shadow cast by one of the few remaining support beams holding up a long-abandoned G-tube station. The dim glow of Layer One’s holographic dawn bathed the streets in an oppressive light, and as the Manta came to a halt above one of the buildings, its sensors marked a nest of ghouls hiding within the crevice of an abandoned tenement block not four hundred meters away.

“Gonna be a godsdamned pain adjusting to these new measurements,” Draus said as she slipped out from the watery exterior of the stealth ship.

They were parked on a bifurcated block, its upper levels severed and missing, leaving the interior of its twelfth floor exposed to the elements. Overturned barrels filled with ash and tatters of dirty clothing told of squatters. Missing chunks of plascrete indicative of gunfire and a dried smear of blood hinted at the rest of the story.

As Avo left the vessel, he bathed the rest of his cadre with his new canon. Lines of information unfurled out from him for a hundred feet, and the edge of his influence, he cast the tip of his Conflagration out to test the stability of the Nether.

The flames of his consciousness vanished in a sputter of embers, taking a dozen ghosts along with it.

“Draus,” Avo said, speaking to the Columner. “Do me a favor. Go outside the Crown for now. Want to see how unstable things are.”

She did as he asked, jumping over the edge of the building and vanishing like a blur. Looking out at her surroundings from her Meldskin’s visual feed, he studied how her accretion quivered slightly at the instability present around her, and how she could still manifest a phantom from her Meta–unstable though its structure might be.

On his end, the Crown edges washed over into the world as a field of static, while the Nether itself washed back, both sides alternating between waves and shores.

[It makes sense you would be more vulnerable,]  Benhata theorized. [Your ego is nothing but thoughtstuff. It’s wearing your body, but it can detach and move on its own. It takes you clinging to a body as it dies to pass on with it. Sheathes are just material anchors to you. Any disruption would be like getting shot in the head. Good thing you have the Crown now.]

His Conflagration burned as a rising simmer of erroneous data and glitching code in the virtual boundary spilling out from him. His ghosts were anomalies in this environment too, simulated but not understood by the pseudo-system generated by his Heaven.

The Heaven of Signals had no true shape to speak of. At full manifestation, it was just bursting echoes of random data that rang when it was heard. The presence was more auditory than physical, but coldtech screens displayed a many-tendriled creature made up of crawling data–a digital leviathan of some sort.

With a flick of his wrist, he moved pieces of his environment aside, placing them as cubes in other areas, the inorganic world around him becoming nothing but shapes to be shifted around. Shaping the side of the block into data-coated steps, he descended the building and left the Manta behind him–still hidden from wandering eyes.

Extending a tendril of blood, he found himself unable to reshape the environment using his Woundshaper while the Crown of Virtuality was active. Despite this, he could still feel the matter around him in the grasp of his Sanguinity.

“There is something blocking my touch from the patterns, master,” the Woundshaper said. “I can still feel the world around us, but this new upstart–this faceless bundle of ropes seeks to insult me. How disquieting.”

The Galeslither eyed the streams of data compromising Datacaster, the Heaven of Signals. “I pray you never awaken. One suffers enough in her presence.”

By the time he reached the plasteel pillar, Draus was already back–and with a ghoul clenched in the net of her utility fog no less.

“Makes it damn easy to snatch things. Ain’t no need to chase ‘em down either.” She chuckled.

Though the creature bit and struggled against the nanomechanical fog holding it in place, its effort remained in vain. There was nothing for it to push against, nothing for it to strike. The impotence of a ghoul was exposed evermore with each day.

Avo thought to the one Jack and Jane had infected now. The one they set free to walk the darkness of the gutters. He wondered how long it would take before these mistakes that he called brothers were banished from this city, and something of his own molding took its place.

As particulates of his own fog spread out and mingled with Draus’, he plucked the ghoul from her custody and brought it with him before the darkness.

As he had done those days before, he speared his mind into his brother’s and felt its savagery, its madness dissolving into him as a flash of mem-data updated across his cog-feed.

HELIX ACTIVE

INFUSE SACRIFICE? [Y/N]

Accepting the offer, the ghoul within his grasp disintegrated into the darkness, its Essence swallowed by shadows, but its ghost–now joined to Avo’s by a shared fire–pulled him across the threshold, into the fathomless black.