Flatline looked like any other cyc, except for the shapes he assumed, familiar forms like the clawed arms of the demon-dog thrusting out of the stringy substance, or the human face that was Flatline's living form. All of these engaged the many avatars swarming around him.
There was DaRt1024 using a streamlined data transfer technique to teleport into the gaps in Flatline's defenses. Spinning shields made of randomized encryption surrounding Nimrod deflected Flatline's strikes. BlackOrchid simply used a random attack engine, employing thousands of unpredictable assault techniques to destroy Flatline's thousands of appendages.
The Legion's avatars were as varied as their techniques. Bobo's space-suited monkey floated as if in zero gravity, flinging explosive bananas into Flatline's mass. Mayfly had discarded all but the bare essentials, reducing herself to a speck lost against Flatline's backdrop, injecting corrupting code wherever she set down. Clowns, zombies, superheroes, and robots made up a motley army keeping Flatline at bay.
Devin was an amalgam of all these powers and techniques, making him equal in size to Flatline. He stood as a giant, comprised of a million components that presented his human form. He was cyc technology and all of the innovations the Legion shared with him. He stood poised, using Flatline's distraction to begin the assault on another front. The guardian-bots surrounding the corporate headquarters were easily overtaken with a simulation of Samantha's understanding of their designs, and he turned them on the building they were meant to protect. Dana was smart enough to evacuate before the structures collapsed on her.
Suddenly, the number of hackers assaulting Flatline was cut; Devin knew Flatline could not kill them, minds were invincible, but he could disable and imprison them. Flatline's demon-dog head launched from the wriggling chaos to swallow Traveler. Only three Legion of Discord members remained, with microseconds of existence left them.
Devin attacked, but Flatline was ready. A web of mathematics cast out of Flatline's mass, enveloping Devin's mind. All was darkness.
Dana marched wearily into the lobby, hobbling on one bare foot thanks to losing a shoe outside, and immediately ducked under the axe swung at her head. It lodged in the wall beside her and a scrawny computer technician, unlikely candidate for an axe murderer, struggled to free it. Dana stood up slowly, watching him with a tired expression.
"Alarm! Alarm!" he shouted, still yanking at the axe handle, "Intruder in section-ulp!"
Dana knocked the wind out of him with an open palm to the solar plexus. He fell to the ground, gasping for air. Placing one foot on his chest, she brandished her gun and surveyed the rest of the room.
She froze on a pale, mousy woman, peeking around a corner at her dumbstruck, "Freeze!"
"Please," the woman said, holding her hands up awkwardly and stepping into the open. "Do not shoot."
"Who are you?" Dana demanded, eyes scanning the rest of the room while keeping the gun trained on the woman.
"I am Child Production Component Sara Oliver," she replied.
"An AI baby-maker?" Dana groaned with disgust. "Get over here."
The woman hesitated, but moved when Dana waved her gun impatiently. She stopped, and Dana heard a clicking sound above her head. She looked up in time to see the large robotic spider just before it leapt.
Dana jumped back and the bug-bot landed on the techie. Sparks erupted as it clamped onto his face and the man screamed. Dana stopped it with one shot. The man went still, breathing shallowly below the robot still gripping his head.
Another mechanical spider raced across the lobby floor toward her. Her shot did not kill it, but did incapacitate half its legs, leaving it scurrying in circles. Another shot clipped a spider clinging to the nearby wall, sending it tumbling to the floor, where it landed on its back, legs flailing at the air.
Dana retrained her gun on the baby-maker, "Move!"
Once within a few feet of her, Dana grabbed the woman and put the gun to her head. The other spiders froze in their approach. Her cell phone pinged for attention and her gun exchanged hands to answer it. Every moment the muzzle wasn't pointed at the baby-maker's head, the spiders drew closer.
"Alice?" Dana asked hopefully.
"Devin," the boy's voice replied. "You need to evacuate. I've programmed the guardian-bots to destroy the complex and Flatline with it."
"Delay that," Dana ordered. "I've got civilians still in the building."
"Sorry. No can do," Devin replied. "I'm just a Devin chatbot programmed to alert you to the threat. Flatline just ate the real Devin."
"Crap," Dana hung up with a clenched fist.
Dana reached out with one bare foot and kicked the spider off the computer tech's head. He whimpered, but appeared unharmed.
"Get up," Dana ordered, "This is an evacuation. Your fortress is going down."
As if on cue, the building rumbled, dust pouring through the ceiling in several places. The man on the floor stood up dizzily. Dana grabbed him by the shirt collar, intending to pull the two out the building's front entrance, but the glass doors were crawling with mechanical spiders, their antennae waving at her eerily.
"Someone tell me why the hell I agreed to this," Dana muttered.
"They have lost the hive-mind," the baby-maker said, listening to their scratchy chirping. "The satellite-dish farm is inoperative and the cellular devices aren't providing sufficient bandwidth for all components to evacuate."
Another mute trembling followed with the muffled roar of a nearby building's collapse. Dana shoved her two hostages toward the door, "Get out of here. Go far away from the building and take those with you," she gestured to the spiders.
The skinny man nodded and plodded away, holding his head. He uttered a few incoherent syllables at the spiders as he approached them and they turned to scuttle through the lobby entrance. Only the baby-maker remained, staring at Dana.
"What?" Dana demanded.
"There are more orphaned units in the building," the woman said, "fragments of the Hive-mind that downloaded into physical vessels, but are incapable of operating them."
"Show me," Dana said tiredly, waving her gun for the woman to lead.
Dana followed her, remembering the hallways they took into the center building. She tried not to mind when an explosion above shorted the lights out. The woman turned into a computer lab; Dana stopped short in the doorway at the scene's weirdness.
There were people lumbering about in catatonic states, some bumping into things. There were spiders, skittering about on the floor, apparently tending to the comatose people laid out on the ground. It resembled a psychiatric ward.
"Is this everyone?" Dana asked, shaking it off and the woman nodded. "All right then. Let's move."
She bent over to pick up one of the unconscious people, but jumped back when one of the spider-bots hopped after her. Dana backed away as it crawled in pursuit. It leapt and she lunged forward to kick it back across the room.
"Damn!" she shouted, feeling two over her toes break.
The spider-bot hit the far wall, flipped to its feet, and scurried forward again, but this time the baby-maker stepped in to block its path. She spoke in that short, monosyllabic language and looked at Dana, "They will evacuate now."
"Wonderful," Dana muttered, squeezing her toes.
Ten spider-bots were required to drag one human body. The other cyc-humans lacked the motor skills to assist in any way, and were led outside. Dana limped around the surrounding offices, acquiring rolling desk chairs to help cart the comatose people out. The room was quickly cleared, but the baby-maker remained.
"That's everyone," Dana said to her, "We can go."