Chapter 104: Breaking Past The Foundations [Part One]

May 12th 2485

Ripley?

Opening my eyes, I was intuitively aware that these were not in fact my eyes. They were Shenhe Tian-Lu’s eyes, and I was across the world in the great Yuzhou Capital of Xiao City, named after our Great Founder.

Standing in attendance at my academy, I heard Shenhe’s name get called out, and all that flooded me — this young girl with bright eyes — was a sense of pride. I had done it. I had saved my family… they could now move to the capital with me.

Or at least, that’s what I thought. I didn’t see them for the next four years of my life, instead, I was trained diligently under the tenets of Yuzhou philosophy.

To live is to die. To breathe air is the same as expelling it.

If one wishes to find purpose, it cannot be solely for life. You must die with a purpose too. That was what was repeated to me as they beat me into becoming a soldier, my Iron BUG gifted to me by the ripe age of 16. From then, I trained in the Eastern cities, moving from camp to camp in which I harbored my first love, my stillborn child, the death of my brother to drugs, and of course, my first MAL attack as one of The Typhoon’s spawn rose up the coast of Sakura City.

A Titanium behemoth that devastated the lives of thousands.

They weren’t supposed to be so active right now, but as The Swarm neared, they came out from their hibernation and sought to convene at the feet of their own masters. The Titans. For all my life, I’d been raised knowing there were two at our walls.

The Terror and The Typhoon.

Witnessing the horrors of both bringing ruin to my nation had been what drove me to succeed in my career as both a mechanic and a soldier. I was only 24 when I had been given the resources to take my power to the Silver Grade, in just eight years I’d done what few others could, I’d been exceptional from the start. I brought pride and wealth to my family, no longer were they suffering in the slums, now they enjoyed the life they deserved.

In just 10 years, I’d ascended through the half-point of Tier II, all of my training, all of my effort… had led to this. A deployment to this backwater city of New California, as a commander of my own squad. They depended on me, and they should have lived.

Dreadwire came in like a force of nature — a suit as dark as shadows glowing with golden accents that sedimented the authority given by his Implant. He was a Gold Adapter, comparable to the R0N1N. In ways, even more terrifying. He’d acted quick and methodical, a strategist combined with alien Shardware that deserved to be in the hands of a force for good. In seconds, the people I’d trained personally were mowed down under the fire of his arm, a retrofitted Shardgun that was smaller than any variant in our armory.

I had to hide my anger, my fear, I had to stay silent as I fought him. Under his mask, an emotionless visage of six angular streaks betrayed no forethought to his actions. It was clear how this unknown mercenary had survived our previous facility. His wit and guile were unparalleled, his immaculate usage of Shardware precisely configured to not leave a single wasted movement.

Fast enough to react to my railgun, strong enough to deflect strikes from my prized Tsuchigumo, only the strength of my suit kept my head on my body. But even that was devoured by him soon enough.

He used his own fragility to his advantage, willingly destroying himself in ways to give him the advantage. Blinded, I knew my training hadn’t prepared me for a mercenary capable of turning my own Shardware against me. What should have been confidential knowledge was moulded into a weapon against me. It had barely been a minute once he announced his retreat, a lie, that I discovered my own Shardware had been tampered with.

It had barely been a few seconds after that insidious explosion that his blade pierced my life. And in that moment, I found my reason to live, my reason to die. It was to warn the world of this monster, one who had come up even quicker than The R0N1N had.

One who embraced what it meant to be an Adapter.

———

Ripley

Waking up, I was surprised to feel myself standing, actually walking with a destination in mind. My pistol was hot, and I had a rifle slung over my shoulder that felt lighter than it should be.

“Oh! You’re awake!” Twilight chimed. “That was quick? I thought you’d be gone for at least another twenty minutes.”

“I thought you said it would be over in ten?” I rubbed my mask, wishing I could make sense of what I’d just seen. That went deeper than any memory I’d previously looked upon, it was like living another life. But strangely I… I remembered it. Too much of it.

Looking at my surroundings, I remembered faintly walking down this hallway several times, where I used to take coffee breaks and where I had trained…

“Armory…” I said aloud, just knowing what was there had made me feel lighter. Not needing a map, I let my body run into a jog as my steps felt lighter, quicker and more powerful. It was like my Warp Energy didn’t just run along the circuitry of my legs but through every metal joint and plate it had.

I’d changed… something deep in me had changed through all of the step-by-step improvements I’d made across my Tier I development. The common belief I held was that my Shardware was mine, but now it had changed. My Shardware was me.

The air felt more invigorating, the walls more see-through, the sensations from the Warp Transporter beneath us were loud but not overbearing.

I was at Tier II. Modification.

I'd done it… I’d reached what few ever did… what took Irons a decade, I had done in a few months. Looking through the updates, I didn’t feel odd about seeing the new Shardweave Feature. It felt natural, an organic improvement in my understanding of the inorganic, even if I questioned what prompted them to combine and form a new Feature?

A combination of Technician and Energized, it brought synchronicity to the very nature of Warp Energy and its utilization in Shardware. I’d lost none of the previous developments I’d had in either Function, rather they were blended into one harmony.

And Database… I’d gained access to it permanently. Simply thinking about Shardware brought up entire visual catalogs of the various kinds I’d seen throughout my career — Datasets. Each vision in my lens reflected an actual memory of my tinkering including snapshots of what I had thought back then.

New Protocols. New Features. New… everything.

I wouldn’t master it today, it would probably take me weeks to even grasp the basics. But for now, I’d make due with this facsimile of understanding I had.

Some groups of soldiers stood in my way, guards who I now had an even deeper understanding of. Their training, their methods. Overcome rushed within me, and I wasted no time as I grabbed my pistol to pop right through their necks.

Finally, I’d made it to the armory. A quick input of Shenhe’s personal code caused the massive walls to shift and reveal a room dedicated to her personal store of items. She was a Shard Op’ as much as she was a soldier, so when I entered the hallway revealing various guns and other trinkets I made my way to her prized possession.

A Silver-Grade Shard Op’ Claw.

“Ripley… I know you like Shardware but-” Twilight was going to say we didn’t have time, I knew that already.

“Just a second.” I reached for the claw, and promptly broke it apart. Deep inside it was a Silver Shard she had left for her family to inherit in the event she passes, it alone was worth 500,000 Shardyne and enough to charge my energy stores over several times. The claw itself was nothing too special, its novelty was mostly in Function links so all I did was keep its neuroprocessor and wiring handy to save on costs.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The only other thing I came here for was another piece of External Shardware. A gauntlet she’d taken inspiration off from the Tsuchigumo’s architecture, I grabbed it and began my quest to reach Missy. Founder knows I’d left her waiting long enough.

Throughout my hasty running there, I’d broken enough of the gauntlet to make some repairs to my arms, reinforcing the joints and replacing some plating to make them impervious to low-strength Silver abuse. It mostly applied to new Claw Shells and a stronger punch, any deeper modification would-

I slowed my stride just a bit, feeling a hesitation in my operating. Deep within the modifications I’d made I felt a… resonance of sorts. Like my claws were trying to tell me that they had found something, or more likely, that a Protocol was working it’s magic.

Retrofit made the most sense… and so a snap of my Warp Energy sunk through the noise and gave it order. It was a feedback loop of me feeling through the metal and the material resounding whispers back to me, ah… I’d made a few mistakes in the plating. It was easy enough to rewire, but that only opened up more tiny errors to fix.

As I corrected them, a notification came up in my eyes.

Protocol: Retrofit has lowered Right Shard Op’ Claw Capacity by 1 Tier.

So that was what it meant to improve Shardware beyond it’s general limits… It was like I was peering into a perfect form and this Protocol was teasing me with rewards for getting closer to it, if I had the time, then maybe I could vastly improve all capabilities of my Shardware units.

In the next few minutes to spare, I only managed one additional change to my left Claw’s integrity, raising it by a tier before I reached a plateau in progress. Regardless, I’d just made my way to the next group of guards who were… running away from something?

“Oh shit!” One of them, a leader from the looks of it. “They’ve got us surrounded!”

“I’d rather risk him than that monster!” They raised their gun at me, but my left arm whipped a blade across their necks as soon as I’d seen them, Hypermind Prime reacting so my Necrotium edge bubbled their flesh into bursting goo.

A monster? Missy?

I knew she was strong, she was in NeoCore after all, but for them to actually be running away… what had she done?

I finally reached the research layer, broken turrets and guard drones being a familiar sight, and made my way to where I heard gunfire.

And tearing bodies.

Finally, I came to understand what they meant. Missy was coated head to toe in an Exosuit of her own, except hers was tattered which only lended it’s organic look an even fleshier appearance. It’s held translucent weaves of muscle that pulsed rhythmically amidst white plates of steel that carved over her body to give her the appearance of a white angel of death — and she held a smooth battleax of the same material in her grip.

She weaved between bullet fire, a blurring echo — or veil — surrounding her as she thrust her battleaxe into one guard, igniting it’s edge to explode it’s momentum so that he launched into another guard.

Then she… caused the wound on his body to fester with shadows…

No, not shadows… smoke. Ash. A deadly foul powder flowed deep into his comrade’s lungs and festered a coughing fit of blood out from him. That was… an Esper ability?

“You’re a Dual Adapter?” I questioned aloud, Missy’s knight-like mask reflecting my own back at me in surprise.

“Not exactly a secret. Thought you knew.” She hoisted the battleaxe onto her back, where it folded apart to join her armor so seamlessly you couldn’t even tell there had been a weapon at all. What other weapons were hiding as a part of her suit?

Then, a Silver glint caught my eye. Then another one, and scouring the floor, I saw two more scattered in piles of bodies. Implants. BUGs and SIMs.

She’d taken down four Silvers by herself. I thought The R0N1N was terrifying, but then…

No… now it made sense. Quickshot was stationed up above the facility for their breakout, Topaz was to infiltrate and find information on Goliath. While Missy was to… take everything down here by herself?

That definitely put her on R0N1N level, maybe above him.

“You did all of this by yourself.” I hummed in understanding… just when I thought I was getting stronger.

“Yeah. I hid in a corner.” Topaz startled me from the side, his disappearing antics never changing. He rummaged through for something, then pulled out a BUG from within his pockets and tossed it over to me.

“Just read the memory off that and you’ll find Goliath.” He said all too casually.

I froze, looking at him with… this feeling was different. It wasn’t hate, nor distrust, not even malice. But maybe something much deeper and more complex than either of that. No one but Diamante, Mirage and — very recently — R0N1N knew about that.

“Read the…” Missy trailed on, her voice empty in her next few words. “You can read Implant-Coded Data?”

Twilight sounded hollow as well. “You can read minds, Ripley?”

So Mirage hadn’t told her Personas? That was a good sign from my girlfriend but as for Topaz…? “How did you know that?” My finger was heavy on my stowed gun…

“Oh, did they not know?” Topaz rubbed his head like he was embarrassed. “Whoops. Just heard you and Di talking about it once, cus… you know, you guys don’t realize I’m there half the time.”

I wasn’t sure to believe that, any of that. Still, there was a time and place for us to solve this issue. I returned my mind to the BUG, it’s call was sweet and tempting, but also inviting.

Another new Protocol of mine reached out, Consciousness Link from Database. My Warp Energy fastened into the BUG, it’s Bronze cadence infected with my Gold. And with my Energy… my mind flowed.

Memories scattered across years swam and twisted in my head. My daughter's birthday, a divorce, a new flame, an invitation to an auction with MALtitan parts on sale, a swarm of buzzing metal insects sold by a man with red-and-white eyes. They claimed to have sourced it from Muramasa, but Amaterasu informed me that was likely a lie.

There. I latched onto that memory, peeling away even more images. I calculated the composition of a special serum, I tested lab result after lab result against the desired output, the nanomachines stirred within…

Nanomachines. The vial they were in had a name.

Goliath.

We continued to run tests, the self-replication potential of the nanites were astounding. Not only was the Warp Material extremely valuable at Silver Grade, it had remarkable properties to convert organic carbon-based tissues into a non-organic Warp-modified allotrope of the same kind — less dense than Yttrium Steel yet more durable.

Midas’s Steel. That’s what we named the material. Never before had there been a Warp Material capable of producing itself without a fabricator. These robots were David and the world was their Goliath. Unleash even a single vial of these out into the wild and they could cultivate entire mines worth of Steel in days. Send them into a person and you could melt their heart from the inside, more on that, tests on the blood of Mutants and Espers has revealed that the resulting metal is slightly different — carrying properties of the SIM Adapter with the potential to create entirely new Warp Materials.

A Warp Material capable of creating more Warp Materials…

What a terrifying little bug.

What a beautiful machine.

The images moved quicker, my hands growing colder against the BUG’s cracking surface.

Damn those mercenaries! Who were they to stop our advances in science? Did they truly understand what we were coming to build? No, of course they didn’t. And here I am standing on a Warp Transporter, letting it’s gold bathe me. To think we had such machines functional for a century, what other secrets do The Founders have…?

We secured the asset. Goliath is in our hands, we’re safely hidden deep underground now, even the R0N1N can’t find us here. Though, dammit, who left that computer running? Why is it downloading files? Don’t they know we should be more careful since we have Goliath-

The memory cut off, silenced by death.

I stared at the cracked BUG, its gleam torn away by the web of my Gold aching through it. I crushed in between my fingers, letting the dust fall to the floor.

“Goliath’s hidden away in the RnD Layer, sealed behind a lock that can only be accessed by a Bioshard Scanner and code input. I know the code.”

“Well, I’ll try and break past it’s scanner but it’ll take a few minutes to-“

“You don’t need to do that. Twilight.” I still felt the resounding pulse of the BUG’s memories run through me, reaching into it’s frequency was easy with the well-named Frequency Sync Protocol of Data Mimicry. “I’ve got it covered. Though, maybe someone knows that already.”

Topaz raised his eyebrows, then his arms, up at me. “I’m not omniscient! Jackass! It’s not my fault I’m genetically adapted to eavesdrop!”

I sighed, hurrying them all down the stairs and into the RnD layer, there were a few more guard patrols concentrated here, but with Twilight free to now devour the control of turrets and other drones that the nuked sub-Net had lost access to, we easily took them by surprise.

Not that Missy needed any help, she was graceful no matter what weapon she wielded, accurate and menacing as she wielded the dark ash to corrupt and kill whoever stood in our way. Though, it was clear she didn’t have it easy.

She took a knee, breathing heavily through her suit. “Don’t worry about me, just… keep going.”

She forced herself back up, an uneasiness growing in me.

“So did you figure out what Goliath is, Ripley?” Twilight asked through our close-range comms.

“A swarm of nano-machines capable of self-replication… the Warp Material used to make them can infect organic matter and produce more of itself. From what I… saw… it’s tough and conductive, like carbonfiber but… more metallic. The perfect material for mass-produced Shardware, but I saw the conversion rates. It’s blood money. It could eat an entire family and only make enough for one arm, but… there’s a lot more to it.” The research went deep, and I couldn’t understand exactly why my memory reading this attempt was more superficial compared to Shenhe’s instinctual memory… was it because I wasn’t using Database? I did get a Protocol out of it.

“So you really can read memories off BUGs…” Missy commented. “When were you planning on telling us that?”

“The next time I had to bargain for my life.” I managed a smile, but deep down, I didn’t like this.

“Clever… smart move…” Missy chuckled back. “You’re heavily Source-touched. I’ll explain what that means when we’re done.”

We ended up near the console I had seen in the memories, and I hooked myself up to it.

Identity confirmed: Jason Clipp

“How did you…?” Missy cut herself off, smirking. “That Data Mimicry of yours sure is something.”

I didn’t respond, only inputting the code to open up a hidden door on the far side of this floor. My heart raced, we were so close, so fucking close to having won it all.

And as we came to a stop inside of the hidden room, we all took sight of the simple box that was built into the wall. And just my luck, it was a Pandora. Like the Silver-Graded one I saw so long ago. Back at the Toxin Club, last time it contained a MALignant Seed… and now I faced Gold once more.

The Pandora itself radiated the same quality of Energy as my own.