A bullet hit my shoulder and went right through my armor, sprinkling the melting ice with claret.
Blood?
Why not the ominous green haze?
Your neuromatrix has been stabilized
The brief system message didn’t make it clearer but, gleaming like a ray of hope, breathed renewed strength into me.
Charon came into my field of view. The Reapers seemed to be giving him a wide berth. Apparently, a xenomorph’s emotions weren’t to their liking! Charon had managed to break his club in his rage but he wasn’t giving up, going hand-to-hand with several serves at once.
I noticed a spear lying on the frozen ground, dropped by the rider who’d been gunned down by Foggs in the very first minutes of the melee. “Charon, cover me!”
This was some gizmo, I tell you! A complex energy-thirsty device, judging by the numerous power units embedded in its shaft and the microchips forming its tip.
The Reapers who’d attacked us in the wastelands hadn’t been a patch on these. With their humble weapons and the absence of portals, they’d been quite easy to defeat. These were definitely top level ones, arrogant and experienced.
Clasping my wound with one hand, I dodged an attack, picked up the strange weapon, swung round and buried it in my adversary’s chest.
The spear’s microchipped tip lit up with a deadly glow. It pierced the swordsman’s breastplate with ease, extracting a blood-curdling scream from his chest.
His bloodless wound coursed with pulses of emerald light. They surged toward me, snaking around the spear shaft. Microscopic charges of energy sank into my fingertips. A foreign memory woven of hundreds of mental fragments clouded my mind.
I’d never experienced anything that cold and dreary. Fragments of NPC’s visual memory are an endless sequence of repeating images. The ground underfoot, slimy with blood; severed limbs; bodies split open. The everyday life of a swordsman, if you wish.
My mind choked on these images, their pain and stench eating through my brain while trying to become part of it. The cables of emerald energies entwined my arms and shoulders, sinking into my neck and piercing my temples.
“Nooo!”
The riders busy attacking Jurgen turned to my hoarse screaming.
It all happened faster than words can tell. The portals were still open, their long shadows still glowing purple, staining the ice and blotting the snow. I couldn’t feel my legs. My fingers closed around the spear. My face distorted. The world froze in eternity.
The riders’ figures dripped with emerald auras. The mobs were calm as they awaited the outcome of the combat in the knowledge of their own absolute superiority. This was their territory and their rules. The location’s defense programs were helpless against them. All they did was freeze everything solid without causing any harm to the Reapers. After the very first rounds, our firearms had stopped working. Foggs had managed to wrestle a gun from one of the low-level mobs but the bullets now flew right through the creatures surrounding him, helplessly hitting the snow or screeching as they ricocheted off steel.
The spear!
The thought scorched my mind, pulsing within its mauled constraints. My convulsing fingers closed around the spear, pulling it out. Its microchipped tip crunched as it left the mob’s frozen flesh. The swordsman collapsed on his side. Neurograms gushed out of his wound, breaking down into flashes of pulsating light. Dozens of phantom silhouettes escaping their prison, unsure what to do with their freedom. They floated, circling in mid-air, until gradually losing all detail.
Some of the mobs rushed to trap the dissolving images. Frantic, they seemed to have forgotten everything; they left Foggs and Charon alone and squabbled among themselves trying to get hold of the precious neurograms.
I was shaking uncontrollably. The nightmare of the NPC’s memories had released my mind, bringing back the agonizing pain.
One of the riders attacking Jurgen must have sensed something. He turned round, then nudged his horse unhurriedly in my direction. I staggered to my feet. The flaking sheets of dull green haze began to fade. The clatter of hooves grew closer. An ominous blood-curdling figure in frosted armor loomed out of the ghostly fog.
His purple eyes shone in the slits of his visor.
“Neuro, you’re strong and stubborn,” his dull voice paralyzed my will. “Give it to me!” he reached out for the spear in my hand.
“As you say,” I obediently lowered my head. “Here you are!”
I aimed the spear upwards, piercing his throat. His horse reared up. Taught by experience, I released my fingers and recoiled just in time.
His deadly wound surged with light. His freezing scream deafened me with debuffs. I was thrown back a good thirty feet: I was lucky not to have broken my neck. My vision darkened: a darkness that squirmed with agonizing tentacles, its emerald gloom replaced by crimson, followed by an almighty explosion which shattered every pane of glass in the nearby buildings.
I could still hear the tinkling crystal of the crumbling windows. The darkness had been burned out.
The rider was gone. Dozens of phantom figures circled the deep crater where he’d just been. Unlike the swordsman’s neurograms, fragmented and unstable, these coagulated identities used to belong to dead human beings.
They were doomed. Still, in these last moments of freedom, they craved revenge.
The Reapers recoiled, scattering. Too late. Flames enveloped them. Smoking, their frozen flesh hissed. Their armor melted. The portals collapsed.
Flashes of blinding energy hit them all one by one. Their frightened horses bolted and disappeared into the distance.
* * *
You’ve received a new level!
Warning! The skill and ability calculator is temporarily unavailable. The XP points you receive will keep accumulating and will be available for distribution once the interface is fully functional.
Recommendation: in order to prevent the levels you received earlier from being blocked, you need to leave the incompatible cyberspace ASAP.
“Zander? You okay? Help me, somebody!”
Someone lifted my head and wiped my face with a handful of melting snow.
Foggs. Arbido.
I sat up and looked around me. I didn’t recognize the location. A cloud of thick fog hovered over the lake. The buildings gaped with broken blackened windows. The sky beyond the cliffs’ ragged outline shimmered with ghostly aurorae.
“How’s Jurgen? Where’s Charon?”
“They’re all right,” Foggs helped me back to my feet.
I noticed Jurgen at a distance busy collecting something, trawling through the damp steamy sand. From the direction of the buildings, I heard the rending of a door being forced, accompanied by Charon’s impatient growling.
Arbido offered me a water flask.
Good idea. I was parched. “Thanks. How long have I been out?”
“Dunno,” Foggs answered. “I’ve only just come round myself. That was one hell of a blast!”
“Ask Charon if there’s anything in those buildings we can use. Better still, go and look for yourself. I’ll go speak to Jurgen.”
“What do you want me to do?” Arbido asked.
“You can check out the area for any loot,” I gave him his flask back and hobbled toward the lake.
At the sound of my footsteps, Jurgen swung round. There was the stamp of madness upon his face. He was clutching another one of those weird weapons.
“May I? Where did you get it from?” I tried to sound calm as if nothing had happened. We had very little time. Yes, I knew he was scared. The Reapers had very nearly ripped his soul out. Those monsters seemed to crave one’s deepest and most secret experiences, leaving their numerous retinue to feast, vulture-like, on the carrion of basic human emotions and ordinary memories.
Having had a taste of the disembodied swordsman’s mental imagery, I still felt like I’d been covered with blood. “Keep your chin up, man.”
Jurgen blinked a few times. His eyes were tearful. His
fingers shook. “Here,” he offered me one of his discoveries.
A Short Sword of a Reaper
Class: service artifact
Power units had been built into the item’s hilt. A line of neurochips had been welded into the blade along the blood groove, each of them carrying the signs of the Founders’ language.
I focused on the sword, trying to access its properties.
Wish I still had my mind expander! If only I could activate my technology scanner and access a couple of databases...
This wasn’t just any old sword. I closed my hand around the hilt. Immediately it sprouted long threads of a metal which began to intertwine, some forming a lacy guard while others hugged my wrist and my clenched fingers.
I focused on them. Slowly a prompt came into view:
Servoids
The word said nothing to me.
The double-edged blade began to shimmer with intense light.
Plasma?
Could be. What else would you need these heavy-duty power units for? A blade like this could slice through any kind of armor with ease. Still, the presence of an artificial neuronet betrayed its true purpose: neurogram harvesting. Was it an AI sword? Hardly. Most likely, it contained an exchange buffer which trapped fragments of the victim’s identity and forwarded them to the owner of the weapon.
I shared my thoughts with Jurgen.
He nodded moodily. “I’m going to alter a couple of things,” he said. “Then we might be able to use it against the Reapers. You disembodied one of them by realizing you had to let go of the spear. A blow with a weapon like this disrupts the structure of a person’s identity matrix. I need a bit of time, okay?”
I glanced at the collection of items he’d already amassed. “All these things contain the Founders’ neurochips. Now where could mobs have gotten hold of them?”
“The neurocyber labs are not far from here. You might find all your answers there.”
“Okay. Keep going,” I released my fingers. Immediately the servoids slid back into the hilt. “We’ll check the area while you’re at it.”
* * *
We didn’t find anything useful inside the buildings. There was nothing left of them but their gutted frames.
Oh well. We walked back to the lake shore where Jurgen had already laid out his collection of weapons on a couple of scorched beach chairs. “Help yourselves.”
Arbido wasn’t in a hurry to touch them. “You sure they’re safe?”
“I’ve disconnected the neurochips from the handles. Once full, the exchange buffer will simply release the harvested neurograms.”
“Which will go where?” Foggs asked.
“Which will become part of cyberspace, I suppose,” Jurgen pointed at the dull green mist enveloping the wastelands, filled with whispers both bitter and unintelligible.
I focused on a two-handed sword but received no immediate response. My interface was still zoned out, with question marks instead of levels.
As I kept staring, a pale inscription formed above the sword,
A Two-Handed Sword of a Neuro
Class: a service artifact
“I’ll take it,” I said.
Servoids snaked out of its hilt, sheathing my fingers. Arbido gasped, his eyes filled with instinctive fear. That was it, then. He wasn’t going to touch any of these weapons, this little was clear.
Unhesitantly Charon picked up a poleax. Jurgen chose a partizan: a spear with a wide tip and two bladed guards at its base. Foggs studied the collection for a while, then took two short swords.
“Put the rest in your inventories,” I ordered.
Arbido shook his head. “Sorry, Zander. I’ll give it a miss.”
“Whatever. It’s up to you. Jurgen? Where do you want us to go now?”
He pointed at where the road tracing the lake disappeared into the whispering mist.
“Oh well. Let’s go, then.”
My armor was caked with blood. Even though I didn’t feel the pain, the wound kept reminding me of itself, turning my arm numb and stiff. Had I had received a blow with the microchipped sword, I might not have gotten away so easily. Jurgen was still a terrible sight. He seemed to have aged ten years at least.
We walked in silence. The road began to climb uphill, then ended abruptly.
Arbido stared at Jurgen, uncomprehending. “Where’s the junction?”
Jurgen didn’t answer. He stood there gritting his teeth: his face spent, his skin a ghostly gray. Instead of the mountain locations he’d promised, we were facing the flat slope of a gigantic crater, its cracked surface still breathing fire.
Foggs cussed, dumbfounded. A wide fissure snaked just below, exuding heat. A few little hillocks looked like solidified magma bubbles. The hot wind carried disturbing odors.
“It can’t be! You can’t destroy all the testing grounds’ equipment and its database!” Jurgen wheezed once he’d overcome his initial stupor.
There were no signs of sentient activity here. Everywhere you looked, the dull green mist mingled with the crimson glow.
Arbido’s face fell. “We need to go back,” he sighed. “It was a good idea. Still it doesn’t look as if we can do it.”
“No,” Jurgen snapped. “We need to keep going!”
“Where can you go in this disaster zone?” Arbido demanded. “Can’t you see? Your locations are gone! What do you want us to find? A cable hanging from the sky?”
I didn’t let their argument blow up out of proportion. “We need to keep going.”
I’d already spotted a strange jagged outline far ahead to our right. It looked like the ruins of a building. If Jurgen was to be believed, the access point to the Earth’s cyberspace could turn out to be anything. It was too early to admit defeat. We hadn’t risked all simply to turn round and go back!
“Zander, are you sure-“ Foggs tried to object.
Charon interrupted him. “There’s something moving!” he growled.
Arbido craned his neck. “Where?”
Charon pointed at the ruins.
Foggs tensed up. “Is it a Reaper?”
“Nowr! It’s a human! Not tall, blond hair!” the Haash replied in his curt manner. “I can see some equipment...” he crouched and clawed a recognizable teardrop shape in the sand.
Jurgen glanced at the drawing and frowned, confused. “That’s an in-mode!”
“Charon, haven’t you already seen this human before?” I asked. “In the tunnel, remember?”
The Haash gave an energetic nod. A chill ran down my spine. This was too much of a coincidence. Then again, the probability of this sort of encounter was dangerously close to zero. “I’ll go there on my own,” I said.
“Why? What do you need to do that for?” Foggs demanded.
“I think I know who Charon’s talking about.”
Chapter Six
The Infosystems Corporation testing grounds
She perched on the edge of an open in-mode capsule. Hot wind tousled her long hair. Her gray eyes betrayed fatigue.
The battered 3D Optos hung around her neck. Her bloodied fingers clutched a rusty piece of construction steel. The rocky ground around the capsule was covered in fresh scratches leading right up to the cliff’s edge. The dull green mist rose from the abyss, the wind tearing at it, swirling it into unclear silhouettes and taking it away.
“Kimberly?” I stepped closer.
She didn’t even startle. She just looked up at me. “How do you know me?”
Gusts of wind plucked at the tattered remains of her clothes. We were enveloped in waves of heat and still she was trying to wrap herself into her rags.
“Liori told me about you.”
Kimberly sat up. “Is she alive?”
“You could say so... I suppose.”
Her stare hardened in reply to my hesitation. Her fingers closed over her makeshift weapon. I had a sneaky suspicion this wasn’t just any old piece of steel.
Who are you, girl? A Neuro? A Reaper? Or something else?
Madness glowed in Kimberly’s gaze. This in-mode capsule which had fused with the cracked ground; the rusty piece of steel; the ancient optical device: were they her strongest memories that cemented her identity matrix? Or were they a primitive trap for my own mind?
The servoids clung tighter to my fingers, winding themselves around my wrist like living beings, helping me to grip the sword tighter.
She couldn’t have survived, the dull green mist whispered at me. All this is but your imagination. You shouldn’t believe it. You shouldn’t give in.
I knew it. Our gut reactions are not always right. Still, without following them we stop being human.
“Kim? What happened here?” I perched next to her on the edge of the open in-mode like an old friend that she could trust.
With a hiss, the servoids retracted back into the hilt. The plasma edges of my sword stopped glowing.
“You were with the first twenty neuroimplant testers, weren’t you?” I said. “That’s what Liori told me. She was looking for you. Then she thought you must have died.”
“I did,” she whispered. “I did, Zander,” she had no problem reading my name tag. “My identity matrix survived though,” she added, staring into the green mist. “The first twenty were special cases. The neurograms of each of us were stored on a separate server. Would you like to know what happened back on Earth?” she asked with an uncomely grin, avoiding eye contact. “It was a digital apocalypse. Some corporate cretin had decided he was God Almighty. He probably thought he could add a bit of diversity to gaming worlds. Or he didn’t think at all.”
Kim was shaking with cold, trying to wrap the tatters of her clothes tighter around herself. Her answer hadn’t explained much. We already knew about the latest update which had apparently breathed “life” into NPCs.
Pointless keeping things secret from her. I just hoped she wasn’t our enemy.
Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) Page 12
