Chapter 92: Source-Touched
‘The Nature of the Source’, file found within the VoidNet layer. Author unknown.
Everything exists in duality, in the finite stretches of life’s actions there is an infinite chasm of death as a reaction. I delved down here to find some hope of understanding ‘The Source’. I’d been touched by it, by… chance.
One of Neocore’s soldiers died on my doorstep when The Mother attacked, I was just a kid… and that Implant seemed so normal — and so Silver. I didn’t know it would let me breach into the paradox of time. NeoCore recruited me after that, put an eye on me and the Unique Feature I got as a result. Since then… I’ve discovered that likewise, there’s the existence of what are called Deviant Mutations.
The Founders don’t want us to know that they’re the same as the Titans.
They don’t want us to know the nature of their duality. Of their… symbiosis. That’s why NeoCore watches the Allseeing, why Yuzhou hunts down The Infinite, SynTec’s assaults The Mother, Imperium’s provoking of The Terror, Haithama’s interest in The Typhoon, it’s only Beauregard Mazhyr whose motives lay unclear…
Until now. The being beyond The Firewall spoke to me. I only remember three words.
Uncaged.
Sin.
Eclipse.
Each syllable it spoke rippled through me, as if The Future was only mere echoes of it’s thoughts. I understand now why NeoCore keeps it contained behind The Firewall… but that thing I saw… The Eclipse?
The Firewall, this great globe of flame will one day be cast in shadow. It doesn’t exist yet, but it should be here. In the VoidNet…
Duality, that’s the nature of these things. Somewhere in the intersection of day and night, a being will arise to free the Allseeing.
That is why I’ve decided to end my life as a human. The Future that thing seeks to create… I’d rather be on the winning side of things. My Compatibility is dropping, it’s funny… I never thought I’d want to be a MAL.
Whoever finds this, I pray you act wisely. And in time.
3:57 AM
August 30th
[Western Shandian Facility: Floor B3 (Upper Security Layer)]
Ripley
By the time the fighting was done, or perhaps it would be better phrased as by the time Shandian was done throwing bodies at R0N1N to wind him down, there must have been almost eighty corpses strewn across the room. I’d done my work, cycling through each limb at least two times, sealing over the steadily cracks burrowing within them.
“This Shardware of yours…” I found myself finally able to ask it. “Is it Hammersmith’s design?”
R0N1N took a knee to my side, he didn’t easily show it to everyone, but his methods of fighting were taxing. “Yes, it’s your grandfather’s work.”
So he knew as well? I grumbled a little as I leaned over to readjust his shoulder. “What’s he like?”
R0N1N stretched his arm out once I was finished. “Curious, adventurous, a challenging man. I’m set to go see him in the Imperium outskirts once I’m done with this mission. I can only use this Silver Shardware for extensive raids like this, otherwise I risk damaging it to the point of no repair.”
“To be prepared for the MALswarm? What’s your plan for it?” I scanned him once over with my eyes, roughly estimating… his structural integrity was down by a permanent 6% that I couldn’t fix over. Without my intervention, it would have been closer to 10%.
“Same as ever. To attack Yuzhou.” R0N1N picked himself up, the brief rest had given him enough recovery. He pulled both swords back into his scabbard, the second his non-electromagnetic blade sheathed in, it was like a harmony was silenced through the room.
“They’ll definitely be more vulnerable, but won’t it potentially cause more harm if they’re weakened and the MALswarm breaks through?” I spoke logically, Yuzhou had nearly 2 billion residents in the regions they controlled.
R0N1N didn’t respond to that, simply hopping above to a balcony and tearing off a door with his bare hands. “They’d sent around a quarter of their forces for this engagement, the remaining 75% will be significantly tougher… I’m surprised they didn’t engage a Silver.”
“You can handle a Silver, though?” I reeled myself up to him, he moved a little slower now. Steady but not groggy.
“I can handle one, yes. But multiple at a time may prove difficult, my blades — Tomurau and Ryoho — can cut through Bronze-Grade enforcement without me empowering them, however against Silver Grade and higher… Tendencies make things a bit more difficult.”
“Right, Tendencies. Diamante talked about them before that they only appear in Silver Grades and up, how they put a flavor on your Warp Energy. What’s… yours?”
Suddenly, the lights went out, and I sensed all of my access to the upper layers was blocked off, only the dull glow of red alarm lights bled into our view.
“Spark and Wind.” R0N1N’s electromagnetic blade — I wasn’t sure which of the names it owned — pulled up into his open palm as though it had been puppeteered by strings. “Tch, they’re biding their time, barricading themselves within the lower layers while they call in security to pincer us from above.”
“So which blade is that?” I tried to distract myself as we obviously walked deeper into whatever traps they had planned for us.
“Ryoho — remedy.” R0N1N threw the blade across the hallway, it curved and bent around the corner to the sound of a screaming man. I tensed up, before relaxing as soon as it became clear that R0N1N had already left my side.
I joined up with him, he was retrieving his blade out from one twitching corpse. Without waiting for him to ask, my Arachne limbs stretched below to fix up his achilles tendon, the biomechanical fibers had been worn down.
“You know, I could probably introduce some Livewire musculature into your body — it’s unlikely to tear even under your high speeds.” I casually remarked, but his head-turn actually made me realize he was considering it.
“I won’t pretend to be an expert in things Shardware.” R0N1N slid his blade — Ryoho — back in. “But I will take your word for it, assuming the weeks after this are merciful, I would not mind a sample modification on my Bronze Shardware pieces.”
Ripley wasn’t one to turn down a deal like this. “I don’t know, you’re spending already and Livewire is expeeensiii-“
“I have more resources than just Shards, Dreadwire.” R0N1N had to be smiling under his mask, I could feel it.
We’d finally made it over to the next path downwards, the second floor of the Security layer. We’d face potential Silvers down there, Tier III if we were unlucky. R0N1N actually took his time for once, making sure I could repair him to maximum capability.
“What’s the chance they have a Tier IV guarding here?” I felt like I was jinxing this by asking, but no one had even entertained that idea.
“The gap between Tiers gets ever larger the further you progress. Less than 1% of Tier III Adapters will make it to Tier IV.” R0N1N removed his second blade — Tomurau — glancing at the perfect reflection it showed of him. “A single Tier IV Adapter is equivalent to the highest powers working within Westbrook. The Puppeteers, the military leadership… I wouldn’t be able to beat one easily. They’re individually equivalent to the entire might of this Facility condensed into one body. And more likely than not, Gold.”
I remembered back to the only Tier IV I’d ever seen. Inquisitor Tusk, how easily he’d pummeled the Gold MAL that had gifted my potential down into the ground. Right, it was incredibly unlikely for anyone at that level of strength to be here.
I hoped.
It was strange how quiet everything had become as we made our way to the security checkpoint, chances are we were being monitored, and I wouldn’t have access to the locations of anyone below us until I jacked into the lower layer’s security hub. Still, an excitement crawled over me, once we would make it past all the guards I’d have free access to look through their experimental military grade Shardware. Civilian stuff was fine and all, but military? That shit was built for the MALswarm.
R0N1N sliced through the first door of the checkpoint, revealing a wide room with various bodily scanners shining sheets of visible light up and down. He was quick to cut them apart, then approached the elevator doors to tear them open and jump down the shaft.
[Western Shandian Facility: Floor B4 (Lower Security Layer)]
The lower floor was much the same, scanners and a heavy door that he had to strain himself to pry apart. Things were truly getting tougher here. Immediately, the walls and floors began to unravel with their seams, turrets alighting us with heavy gunfire that he deflected with Ryoho like a shield.
Taking cover behind the heavy door, I still felt the pounding vibrations of impacted bullets drill an ache up my spine. Waiting a handful of seconds, R0N1N dispatched the turrets, each cut at their base.
I eased my breath, a single shot from one of them would have torn me in half. Those were the kind of guns you’d see strapped onto a tank! Well, they were powerful machinery — makes perfect sense to snatch one of them up then… or at least, that was all I was planning on taking.
“A Shard-Gun?” I cooed to myself. That meant… digging deeper into the mechanism — oh fuck yeah! A magazine clip of Iron Shards! Literally turning money into firepower… I’d actually been wondering about buying one myself but the cost for a single Iron-Grade piece was nearly half a million.
“You’re not going to be dragging that with us, right?” R0N1N glanced over his shoulder.
“Uh, just give me like a minute.” I quickly put my six Shard Operating devices to work, Scrapyard working in the background as I scanned through the Shardware — visually dissecting its internal mechanisms to better tear it open. At Bronze-Grade Military level, it was incredibly difficult to properly expose.
In the end, I managed to just about break it into four neat pieces that my Arachne limbs could hold onto and dissect further as we idly walked further into the facility.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Then, we noticed a strange occurrence, effectively all personel had vanished. Instead, our only obstacles were more autonomous defense drones and turrets. Bipedal androids with guns for heads, floating carriers with zipping harpoons of electricity, annoying finger-sized fireflies that tried to cling and disable our Shardware and even wolf-like machines that could explode powerful sonic bursts from their jaws.
While R0N1N got busy taking them all out, a tiresome slog as they seemed to appear out of nowhere, I busied myself repairing him up and collecting various trinkets from the automatons. The wolf’s sonic pulse didn’t use Shriekstone like that Sonic Carbine I’d collected from Nathaniel, the homeless man being controlled by Dogwhistler, but instead had incredibly powerful Warp-based speakers I’d never seen before. Using their premise to adjust my leg’s sonic bursts, I’d made them more precise and even a tad bit stronger.
I also took a chance to install an upgrade into Webcrawler from the carrier drones, making its aerial mode approximately 30% faster and more energy efficient. Also installing a unique frequency in it to leave it undetectable to the drones. As for the disabling fireflies, their parts made good additions to my left arm which was serving very well as my Jailbreaking/Dataweaving based limb. There was nothing inherently unique about them, except for their Datacleavers, but they were just very efficient at transmitting Warpcode via touch.
Around thirty minutes in, we had found the central hub for this floor, allowing us access to find out the locations of the rest of the guards at the expense of completely burning out Twilight’s DataCleaver.
True to our expectations, they were located around the checkpoints leading deeper into the RnD layer. Though, the biggest concentration happened to be in an area that was unmapped according to the schemes me and Mirage had stolen.
“A secret room they didn’t record down?” I felt a curious spark of relief and excitement. “Think that’s where they’ll have Goli-“
“No.” R0N1N froze, his voice harrowed. “They’re disappearing.”
“Disappearing?” I laughed, looking deeper into that central mass of dots in the darkness, noticing how the congregation in the center had just… vanished. “Are they disconnecting from the system?”
“Worse. We have to hurry!” R0N1N left as the door exploded, blurring out of the room and wrenching the facility apart — leaving only visual markers in the walls and floor as he passed through the labyrinthine hallways like a speedy ghost of sharpness.
I tracked his destination down… he was heading to the most direct path down. Guarded by two Silver Tier IIIs and nearly a dozen Bronze Tier IIs. Shit. Shit!
Hurrying, I decided to make the most of the Shard-gun pieces I’d collected over time — fitting the mechanism over my right arm. It was crude, but it would work.
External Link Establish-
I had no time to focus on it, as bullets sprayed ahead of me and brought my Perseverance Matrix to scrape my Arachne limbs back to keep me from running into it. R0N1N was battling both Tier IIIs at the same time, one Mutant and another was… an Esper in a weaker Iron-Grade Exosuit.
The mutant was fast and had four arms, each bulky and wielding Sharded Gauntlets that sent resounding pulses of sound that had me tumbling, needing my Arachne to stabilize myself. The Esper, on the other hand, manipulated a whip that shot out of their armor — curving it like a living serpent with thin wires of blood winding through the metal while they dodged the slashes of R0N1N by disappearing into grey mist.
“R0N1N!” I yelled as I scanned the fight, trying to break through the thunderous combat that shook the foundations of the building. “The gauntlets, they’re using the same things in those wolf drones! Concentrating vibrations!”
“The hell?!” The mutant cannoned down at the shadows of R0N1N, the Gold Grade mercenary’s own strikes were pushed away by calculated shimmers of condensed air that pushed him back — only for him to disappear before the blood-metal whip crashed down.
Switching over to Insight, I witnessed the fields of Warp Energy alter and change as they maneuvered to corner me. Gritting myself, I activated my Thought Multiplier.
‘Firing Range’ X ‘Shandian Security’
The two thoughts merged together as I slotted in one of the Iron-Shard magazine clips into the rough contraption I’d installed on it.
External Shardware: RipTech Scrap-Gun Bracer [Prototype]
Integrity: Bronze I
Energy: Bronze II
Capacity: Bronze I
Grade: Bronze I
The mechanism of a Shard-Gun relied on two things, the physical constituent of the Shard itself and the force released from its Warp Energy through a carefully adjusted kinetic-converter. Now, reducing a gun by half its size had drawbacks, especially with how hastily I’d made it… so I wasn’t going to get full use out of the potential.
In this case, its converters were admittedly kind of shit with how I’d made them. But I had one advantage, the Gold-to-Bronze circuitry within my body burned bright, powering up the bracer.
With my thoughts blurring into one cohesive nature, the images of the shooting range merged into the Shandian Security forces. I also swapped over to a different module, my first time openly using it.
Overcome.
Black Dragon Long was sitting on a goldmine in other ways than being a Dual Adapter. His Functions, Sustain and Database had produced quite the effective combination.
Update Summary:-
* Database Protocol: Combat Recall can be directly mimicked, the Adapter can use their own memories of combat scenarios to predict further actions.
* Database Protocol: Stratagem Deduction cannot be directly mimicked, instead the Adapter has an innate sense of an enemy’s thought process during combat.
* Sustain Protocol: Programmed Mobility cannot be directly mimicked, instead the Adapter has a slightly improved coordination of their own mobility
* Sustain Protocol: Defensive Maneuver cannot be directly mimicked, instead the Adapter is better at manipulating their body to protect themselves.
Everything washed over me just right! I shifted out into the open, their bullet fire hesitant to choose between me and the R0N1N. I greedily exploited that, my right arm exploding with heat as the thick bracer lodged energy into the flat barrel extending above my hand.
An explosive stream of iron launched out, a river of ruin shattering across the guards who’d just decided to focus their aim on me. My armgun lacked accuracy, spraying wilder each second of sustained fire as the recoil ached up into my shoulder and organic chest muscles.
As soon as the return fire decisively turned to me, my Arachne hooked me up to the ceiling, reeling and crawling me around the streaming fireflies of death. R0N1N took advantage of my distraction, using it to slip between both Silvers as he sent a blade at each. Ryoho flew and slammed into the Esper’s whip while R0N1N met the overbearing Mutant with a blurring flurry of strikes directly at the gauntlets crashing down on him.
One gauntlet exploded into an echoing boom of sound, sending shrapnel through my mask and into my cheek. Tears welled up my eyes, the pain sharp and fiery as blood pooled into my mouth.
The guards in my path took advantage of that, a direct blast of multiple guns converging on me only for a blue blade to strike each bullet clear of harming me. How on earth was R0N1N even able to do that?
With only four more guards left, my eyes saw through them using Overcome. The combined effect of my Thought Multiplier’s merging my memories of Shandian Security with the Firing Range pulled out all of the ins and outs I’d seen and revised of what they could manage. Mass-produced, there were few differences in them other than the fact that they were stronger-than-average.
I saw them click their guns as I skirted behind cover, already knowing what that meant. They’d switched on ricochet fire for their weapons, reducing the penetrative power of their weapons in exchange for bouncing the bullets across their surroundings. So, I let them believe I was hiding behind cover up on this balcony.
I activated my stealth suit, calling in my Arachne arms as the Wield module enhanced the refractive invisibility it lended. Predictably, bullets slammed into the wall next to where I’d taken cover, reflecting exactly across the angles to eviscerate my former position. Although, a stray bullet bounced and curved into my leg — disrupting the refractive field over me.
Quickly, I wielded the enhanced connection of my External Links through both my pistol and Scrap-gun bracer. Gold fled into my left arm, Bronze through my right — a twin stream of bullets struck from me as invisibility faded of my form. Three of them died before they could retaliate, the last one hidden behind cover.
Before I could even think about it, the guard in cover shot at the wall opposite them. A pellet stream of bullets sparked into my leg and set me upon my knee. Cursing, I forced my Arachne to propel me before the bullet fire returned to end me. Landing on my better leg, I was face to face with the guard who flinched their weapon up to me.
My Arachne speared through the gun and into their chest. Blood fell from the gap between their helmet and neck, all resistance fading as they succumbed to death.
Relaxing for a moment, I took sight of the fight R0N1N was lodged in. Both Silvers executed their combined assault flawlessly even with their wounds, their armaments had made them resistant to falling to the R0N1N in one strike, but it was clear they were the more winded of the battle.
The Esper’s whip had spread into multiple careful threads of slashing blood that froze what it touched, trying to freeze R0N1N or get him to slip, while the thunder-gauntlet Mutant with three arms was pounding tens of strikes a second with exact precision. The R0N1N didn’t look tired, but he was clearly conserving his strength to break down the protection of the Silvers.
Switching over to Insight, I saw it the same moment that R0N1N did — their fault. One of the Mutant’s gauntlets had a long crack running through it, while the Esper’s wire thin whips were beginning to twist back together. They were both vulnerable.
And R0N1N made sure that split-second wasn’t wasted, he threw Ryoho into the cracked gauntlet, a sonic crunch bellowing out that he swept through with Tomurau.
The Mutant was torn in half and the Esper lost their head as echoing reverberations ceased. R0N1N settled both blades back into their scabbards as he awaited the Silver SIMs to dig out of their bodies, pocketing them for the takings. I did the same from up here, scrapping apart some of the guns haphazardly and taking in any Bronze BUGs or SIMs that had crawled out.
“Dreadwire.” R0N1N appeared beside me in a blink. “You didn’t need to intervene.”
“Well I did, and I helped… Now let me look through your Shardware.” I stood up, my Arachne arms stretching as I inspected his various limbs.
The strength of a Silver III couldn’t be less underestimated. It took nearly a hundred other guards to wear R0N1N down by 6%, the damage he’d accrued now put him at 19% of permanent damage I couldn’t change. Still, he was virtually unharmed except for what he’d done to himself.
My leg couldn’t say the same, I’d repaired what I could from the parts I dismantled out of these Bronze guards, but it didn’t do me any favors.
“I’m serious, Dreadwire, you acted above my expectations, but understand that I would be much worse without you here.” R0N1N looked at me sternly.
“Opportunity cost.” I explained myself. “Every Tier II is around 0.5% of damage done to you, every Tier I maybe 0.1% and a Tier III is roughly 5% — I can only heal around 40% of the damage done to you. But assuming I take down a few Tier IIs, I’m letting you focus more heavily on the Tier IIIs and saving you from damaging yourself even more. You’ve seen me hold my own, if you really thought I would die you would’ve jumped here to save me.”
I sealed some of the minor damage in his arm as I finished speaking. “From what we can see, there’s one more Tier III here. I’d wager their strongest one, and nearly forty more Tier IIs left from wherever they’ve disappeared to. Now, I’m not saying I can take them all down, but if I can take the attention of a fourth of the Tier IIs, then I can save you around 5% of damage — that way you’d still be under 30% damage.”
He stared at me blankly as I patted his arm okay. Had I… confused him with all the numbers? He sighed, tapping the back of his head. “Mimic my Feature.”
“Huh?” I looked at him blankly. “Now?”
“Yes. Get used to it.” He tapped his frame again… and I obliged, drawing my left hand over it as I began to dig into my Data Mimicry.
A Gold at Tier III… everything inside his head was massive and dense, it was like gazing through the eye of the hurricane. Every time I thought I’d found some semblance of order it was replaced by the thunderous flip in flow.
Even with his permission, it took a solid few minutes for me to even glimpse through.
Adapter: The R0N1N
Grade: Gold VIII
Tier: Metamorphosis [Tier III]
Features: Energized V.5.12; Sustain V.5.22; Integration V.5.19; OverMind V.5.27
OverMind: Allows the Adapter to massively increase their own mental processing speed, greatly accelerating their perception of the world around them.
…Error: Unable to Mimic Feature: OverMind…
“Oh.” Well that was shitty. “Looks like I can’t mimic a unique-“
…OverMind has been identified as a… Error: Unauthorized-
…
…
Confirming Source-Touched Status-
Error- Frequency is unable to resonate with Unique Feature: OverMind
Error- Discrepency between Feature origins
Error- Source-Shard Fragment detected by Implant.
…
…
Source-Touched Feature: Data Mimicry is reacting to the presence of Source-Touched Feature: OverMind
…
Data Mimicry V.2.11 has updated to V.2.18
Effects:
* Data Mimicry updates are more numerous when in contact with Source-Touched Warpcode.
* Ability to detect other Source-Touched Adapters.
* Ability to perform in-depth scans on other Source-Touched Features or Implants.
* Increased Ability to read live Warpcode.
* Permissive access to Warpcode now allows much quicker access.
* Protocol: Rewrite is able to attempt modifications of Implants based on information read off Source-Touched Features.
* Protocol: Focused Consumption can now absorb- Error
My head practically imploded under the weight of Silver Warpcode that had just shrunk into my Data Mimicry Feature. “What the hell?”
Unable to Mimic Source-Touched Feature: OverMind… would the User attempt to modify an existing Module based on OverMind’s capabilities? This may result in the destruction of Low-Grade Implants…
Uhh… “R0N1N, something weird happened.”
“I can… tell.” He said slowly, before turning around to me with eyes laced in something I’d never expect to see from him — stupefaction. “You just decreased my Compatibility by 1%.”