Our forces slowly dwindling, whittled down by a nonstop onslaught, but pushing inward, our target creeping closer and closer.
The innocuous red icons waiting for me to unleash their atmosphere-rending screams.
Shit. We’re not going to make it through with just the drones.
“Wind, Slend. Gonna backdoor. Wind, you’re on the Shredders.”
I transfer control of all but one of my Shredders to Wind, leaving her to juggle them with her four remaining Ravens, keeping them darting around our flanks. Slend continues to press forward with the Hercs, a solid nucleus. I commit fully to the one Shredder I kept for myself, feeling the metal close in around me, through me, becoming me, and split off at a tangent, arrowing away from the others.
My senses expand, sharpen, the taste of the battle raw on my tongue, like the copper bite of fresh blood, streams of energy rippling across electromagnetic spectrums. My limbs flicker like clockwork, driving me forward in bounding surges, scuttling across conduit pipes and through alleyways. Polymer flesh settles around my metal bones, my union with the drone once again driving away all awareness of my biological shell back in the hapsphere.
A riot drone appears around a corner, wargear festooning its spindly limbs. I flick my wrist and its control module separates into four equal pieces, gutted insides sparking, chunky body toppling like a felled tree. I push my pace higher.
“Massive concentration between us and the target, Ash. No way to avoid. Contact in fifty.”
Fifty seconds to make the impossible possible, my desperate throw of the dice. If this doesn’t work, I’ll have no choice but to engage with my last two options. No choice but to usher in Armageddon.
No fucking pressure. Thanks, Sawyer.
Another two riot drones appear, a Herc behind them. I cartwheel to the side, predicting the first HV round. It slashes past, obliterating the lower floor of a megaspire, contrails corkscrewing in its passing, vacuum pressure trying to drag me back. The riot drones fire, chattering bursts of puncturing lead, seeking my body. I dance the stuttering steps of death, never predictable, never still, closing in until my legs kick out and eviscerate their innards.
Something slams into my side, an explosive round from the Herc’s close-defense system. One of my limbs disintegrates, fluid leaking from the jagged stump, but three limbs are plenty to deal with a Herc. I engulf it in my whirlwind, and wreckage trails the wake. I push my pace higher.
“Contact in forty-five.”
I crash through a ground-floor glass window, wireframe schematics unfolding in my mind, my destination within reach. Pry the lift-bank doors open with a squealing wrench, delicately balanced on one leg, and scuttle up the shaft, floor numbers whizzing past.
“Forty.”
Carve open the doors on floor twenty-three, catapulting myself into the corridor beyond. APPHO INDUSTRIES blazes above a set of double doors. Glowing metal trails my entrance.
“Thirty-five.”
Dart down a lushly carpeted hallway, abstract paintings dotting its walls. Left. Right. Right again. Left. Reduce another door to scrap.
“Thirty.”
The ambient temperature drops significantly, cooling units keeping server clusters at peak efficiency. An interface socket extends from my body, and I mate with the appropriate server jack.
“Jase, you’re up.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Uh, okay. Going.”
I pull out of the Shredder with an almost painful effort, shifting my attention back to command view, watching our forces close in on a lurid red mass of enemies. The two deadly icons glow seductively, beckoning. I take a breath, ready to resume controls of the Shredders from Wind, when my vision wavers, then explodes. Rank upon rank of jagged barricades appear, an impossible obstacle of firewalls, flensing protocols ready to neuter any intruder.
Dammit, I’m still linked to the Shredder somehow. Fucking Sawy—
“Twenty.”
“Hah! Idiots didn’t update their credentials yet!”
The barriers pop like soap bubbles and data shudders into solid existence around me, a supernova of information, overwhelming in its intensity. Helpless, I watch my viewpoint twist and turn through the infinite depths, flicking from point to point almost faster than thought. Logic structures loom overhead in convoluted Escherian knots, subdirectories draw me toward them with a singularity’s irresistible pull, partitions paint the multidimensional space in colors that defy description, but still I’m dragged onward, delving through what seems to be the very fabric of the world.
“Fifteen.”
“Gimme a sec… okay, we’re in. Grabbing admin.”
My view distorts, shifting out, the blinding information cloud falling away until it’s a single star in an entire galaxy. Twinkling jewels lie below me, a goddess’s view of a digital firmament, and suddenly I’m plummeting back in, uncontrollably descending toward another mote.
“Ten.”
“Looking, looking…”
The supernova engulfs me again, this one a darker flavor, deeper, vaster. Entire civilizations’ worth of data flow past, corp archives dating back to before the Split, before the Dubs, before the rising seas and choking winds and murderous storms pinwheeled across the world like razorblade tops.
“Five.”
“Almost there…”
Names, faces, dates, words, projects, numbers. They slam into me, a firehose of data gushing its contents across my brain, and I feel like I should be screaming. Maybe I am.
“Three.”
“Almost…”
The endless ocean narrows into a discrete point, a single drop, infinitesimal. It might as well not even exist.
“Two.”
“Got it! I’ve got it! I’m out!”
My mind returns to me, command view reestablishing its normality over the fever dream in which I lay trapped. The orbital icon is close enough to touch, a whisper away from activation.
“One.”
Speaking feels like too much, entirely too much, but I am Ashura the Terrible, Ashura, Ash, Ashley, and it is either speak, or let the world die.
“Fall back,” I croak. “Max speed. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Our forces bleed away from the red, Wind and Slend hopping between drones to cover the retreat, and it takes everything I have not to puke, hot bile stinging my throat.
18
[Just Another Encounter]
The lights are too bright. The darkness is overwhelming. My clothes are a second skin, fire racing through my nerve endings. My skin is an alien artifact, draped across pretender’s bones, a usurper squatting atop a throne. The air is suffocating hot heavy damp can’t breathe thinning out now crystal shards slicing lungs with its absence of where did the sound go no deafening roars of force smash—
“Ash!”
The world snaps back into focus, like a low-res pic that finally finishes buffering. I realize I’m sprawled out on my back, arms and legs gently twitching. Wind stares down at me, haphood peeled back, concern etched across her dark features, techs hurrying around her to service the spheres. Slend stumbles up next to her, wiping a hand across her mouth.
“Boss?”
It takes a second. To remember. Who I am.
“…Yeah. Just another encounter. That’s all.”
I push myself to my feet, ignoring throbbing actuators. The pain will pass.
“C’mon, let’s clean up. See what Jase managed to grab.”
Neither of them asks any further questions, and I’m grateful. I don’t want to think about anything right now. We shamble off to the locker room in undead lurches, unsteady feet dragging us across the treacherous floor. Maybe some hot water will make me feel human again.