Chapter 12: Little Requiem

Excerpt from ‘My month in Requiem’ a blog written by notorious and NeoCore-wanted mercenary Rebecca ‘Globetrotter’ Ingrid.

Oi matey, you ready to get down under and fight the good fight against our corporate overlords?! Then the Free City: Requiem is a fantastic place to visit! Sure, it ain’t got the same highrises as New California, the outstanding gene-sculpted beauties from the Trojan Gates or even the cyber-psychotic drugs produced in The Mobius Strip, but Requiem’s got grit! It feels real!

A little history lesson for you folks, Requiem exists in what the old people used to call ‘Australia’. Now these old guys weren’t the sages you keep on hearing about, they were real dumbasses too. So yeah, these guys from some old-old civilization called the British Empire decided to send all their criminals to Australia as some kind of massive country-sized prison… didn’t work out too well. And who would have thought that wouldn’t work again when The Founders showed up and took charge of everything.

Yeah, we’ve all heard the story. The Founders didn’t like this one Foundling kid named Emerald so they sent her off alone to Australia to rile up all the locals there under her command. Then she sparked a rebellion against them, one that promptly failed and left them all stranded for like a century. Anyways, Founder Beauregard Mazhyr shows up and is practically just raining down charity on them, printing all sorts of new tech they can use.

Her whole Free City shtick.

Then once ‘New Melbourne’ was set up… they promptly shot her in the head! Remember, they hate the Founders. Crazy, right! Now anyone with half a brain knows she ain’t dead, but let’s just say that when she got up and casually brushed off a sniper-rifle shot in the noggin… she wasn’t pleased. In fact, she blew the city up, and thus New Melbourne’s story ended.

In that rag-tag little crater, old Emerald came back up and pleaded to the other Founders with one of Mazhyr’s gifts. One of the first-gen Neuroframes! And they sucked that baby up in no time complete with hundreds of aid ships that the city…

Immediately seized.

Yeah, they’re badasses! Not to mention kind of fucked in the head, but aren’t we all? I mean, they even kept the crater from Mazhyr as a tourist attraction, and I’ve got to say that it’s really fucking massive mate. I love that word. Mate. M8.

God, Little Requiem in NC pales in comparison to the shit that happens here. The definitive no man’s land as a city. And best of all, the corps stay the fuck outta here.

9:48 PM

June 4th

Ripley

The paved streets gradually devolved into compacted gravel and steel towers dissolved into metal skeletons propped up by abandoned freight cranes and scaffolding. Little Requiem. What else could I say but that it was both a technological and organic playground.

They played with your corpse.

Twenty-something years ago, a MALware had erupted here. A Bronze, hidden deep underground within sewage tunnels used in the old days, an unremarkable little thing at the time. Until Los Diablos found it. And fed it.

Raised into a Marauder, the 4th Tier, it was vicious for the taste of human blood and cybernetic limbs, but its physical body wasn’t the issue. It was the mind.

They hooked it up to the city mainframe targeting a specific area. Above here was what used to be The Hanging Avenues, a series of interconnected floating parks and greenery for the city’s richest. In one day, they collapsed onto the ground level like a meteor, thousands of tons of concrete and metal infected by the Data-Devourer, flattening the earth below and killing thousands. And worse, the MAL budded, hundreds of Tier 1 MALware birthed into the city’s physical and digital landscape.

It was a goldmine engorged from death and destruction, everyone fought for the spoils of fresh Implants but only Los Diablos were prepared. The city failed to reclaim even a tenth of their loss, any attempt at reconstruction had been upended by criminal activity and as such they disconnected the region from any Net access.

The result was a deadzone with little to no police surveillance, home to thousands of criminals and mercenaries that fiercely fought against any law enforcement. The perfect open-air black market.

And I was tense even if I didn’t look it thanks to Psyche. My legs and my breathing were calm like an ocean’s breeze as the hanging arches of steel rib-cages stretched above me, wires tethering from them like veins to hold up precariously leaning towers of the former skyline. Their smeared glass and rusted steal jagged out as rotting teeth torn into by an infection of criminals. Bridges and rubble draped across the cityscape to clog up uneven holes, the streets bleeding with polluted rainwater that reflected the distorted glow of advertisements for illicit goods and services. They said that death bloomed life, it did.

That life just so happened to be the stain of society.

“You’ve got pretty flesh.” A strange one-eyed woman said to me, half her hair was burnt and the other was shaved while her eyes were glassy like mist lived in them. “I’d like to know if it’s all pretty.”

A Shard Op’, some metal-nosed guy with a crooked jaw whispered from afar but it still slithered into my ear. “That arm looks like it could use a touch up, why don’t you give it up to me, haha! It’ll fit right in with my collection!”

“Hey kid, if you’re looking for some fun…” A less-than-modest woman hung down from one of the ribs of the avenue, leathery wings draping her exposed skin and her feet transformed into hooks of fur and keratin that clung onto the steel. “The Hellfire Club awaits…”

Twilight cooed in my ear. “Oooh, the Hellfire Club is fun! Think of it like the Toxin Club except everyone’s gorgeous and mutated to look… exotic. And with better worker’s rights! There was a guy performing there with a snake that was attached to him, if you get what I mean. He sure could charm it. And the customers.”

“A guy with a mutated dick charmed you?”

“Oh no, I’ve got better taste than that. It was this girl who mutated herself to look like a vampire. She was hot.”

“Uh huh…” I stared at the… certainly exotic scenes around me. A guy in a wheelchair even though he had three legs that were all… amputated? Cult followers hanging out fliers while declaring that we were to be doomed to something called ‘The Eternal Swirl’? A series of men and women gagged and leashed, happily barking and rubbing up against anyone who got close.

I stayed really, really far from any of the sorts.

Twilight, remarkably, could sound uncomfortable at some of the sights. “The Strays, yeah they’re weird even for me. Uploaded a shit ton of animal videos from the Old_Net as some sort of regression to a happier state, now they do tricks for sheds.”

I was beyond confused and exasperated. “Why is no one normal here?”

Twilight echoed in my head with a teasing charm. “Says the guy walking around with a fifty-million sheddy brain.”

She was right, so I shut up. I walked, quickening my pace anytime I saw someone openly carrying iron even though it would be more sensible to just remain at pace. But the more I walked, the more I noticed flashes of gun barrels, muzzles, blades sticking out of people’s arms or permanently transformed claws and fangs from disproportionate organs.

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Scrappers, those bastards who preyed on anyone with Shardware worth taking freely exchanged blood-soaked spines for a penance of Shards thrown out by a merchant. Genefreaks got their next high, twitching in corners and alleyways as their Mutations bubbled through their skin with one stimulant or the other, some were barely human.

But any of them could kill me.

I had nothing except my one metallic arm and a barely walkable leg. So as I passed by a crowd where they were too busy applauding at some six-armed man spinning hoops of fire, I readied it with a pulse of my inner light.

I realized too late that I might as well have shown a spotlight onto myself.

This time it wasn’t imagined when I looked around, the curves of gazes onto me and the faint pressure their observation exerted onto me. The greed in their eyes was palpable, a crushing weight upon which I felt like an ant.

“Was that wrong?” I asked Twilight, it seemed that even Psyche couldn’t drain the anxiety I felt from the cascade of steps I knew were definitely following me.

“Depends how you deal with what’s next, turn into the alleyway, the one to your left. Now.” Her speech burned with urgency, and I felt my hair prick up behind my neck as I absolutely became aware of someone making a jerked movement a few steps in my rear.

I careened my body into the alleyway, and the shing of a blade grazed my ear before I decided to book it, stumbling due to my worser left leg. My heart exploded into chaos, a rumbling of blood-flow drenching me in sound and heat, I took two steps back into the alleyway as three pairs of eyes followed.

“You saw that, guys?! He’s different… I know it! Something you got for me, boy! Something in that ugly heart of yours?!” A man with a crooked arm said, crooked because wet bones jutted out from his elbow down past his hands.

“Look at him! He’s ‘bouta piss his pants cuh’! Little homie’s wanderin’ LR for a tour! Why don’t we show him his first attraction!” A wider man pounded his steel fists together, embers sparked off their impact.

Another brandished a revolver, a thick piece of metal that looked like it had been glued together. He was scrawnier than the rest, but I felt the most afraid of him as the iron sights locked onto me. He was also missing his jaw which explained the silence.

Bone-arm’s grin was predatory as he spoke. “Who’s that behind you?”

I flicked my gaze to my backaside for just a second before Twilight screamed at me. “No, you dumbass!”

The floor clacked from his steps as he slashed one of his bone blades towards me and I hurriedly raised my metal arm, freely expressing the energy within. Veins of golden energy surged from within and I whacked forward, my metallic bones slamming against an actual bone.

His organic one cracked, but it didn’t break. That only seemed to delight him. “Oh, looks like bitchass’ steel ain’t half bad? It’ll make a pretty sheddy.”

I tried to force more Energy into my arm to push him away, to do anything, but the flow was still clogged. Incomplete.

Shardware Linkage 70%…

Twilight screamed in my ear. “Fuck it, Ripley. Give me permission over your body, now!”

“Permission granted!” I screamed in my head.

You have given complete access to Neuroframe Software: Twilight Protocol

A body flashed in movement, my own, even though I couldn’t think of an action. The world tilted sideways like I’d been spun on an axis, and effortlessly repositioned myself so that Bone-Arm was between me and Revolver-kid. Steel-hands watched in delight.

Then I punched, the enhanced response from Gold Energy took my opponent by surprise as Twilight piloted my fist into his ribs. He snarled, slashing forward but by then I’d already slid back.

I was frozen, as in my mind was frozen, I wasn’t thinking of any of this. My next punch followed with a kick, my metallic leg’s inhuman architecture hooking behind Bone-Arm’s own leg and dragging him off balance before he used some mutated strength to wrestle off the ground and lunge.

I didn’t flinch, I heard bone crack as my eyes stuttered to look at my hand holding his organic blade in a vice-grip. The other two goons weren’t laughing now as Twilight forced my hands into snapping his bone blade in half, before punching him hard enough that flesh and chunks of white splattered from his jaw.

My human arm grabbed his throat, and the revolver kid shot in a hurry as my body twisted the wounded bone-armed man between us. Blood splattered onto me; warm, fresh flowing blood with a thick iron-scent. I would have puked. I would have puked. But Twilight didn’t, her voice sizzled in my head. “Personality Matrix, Ripley! Use it! Fear and Empathy reduction!”

I just did as I was told, reaching into the metaphysical space of my nervous system’s interface with a rough splash of Warpcode. I mentally latched onto the neural-wiring and pulsed a wave of gold that remained a servant to my whims.

No fear! No empathy!

A classic dominatrix setting clicked into place. My body whirred like a machine clothed in flesh, I’d all but forgotten about the warm blood staining my clothes. I’d reached the revolver kid with three hasty steps as he reloaded while their other friend charged, a quick duck and push from my legs slipping me under steel-fist.

Revolver-kid shot again, but Twilight seemed to almost know where the bullet would go as she puppeteered a side-step past the streak of iron. I grabbed the gun, wrangling it away in a second with superior strength.

Then the barrel rested under his chin for a single terrified breath from him.

The sound of the gunshot vibrated up my arm, the metallic ringing aching my ears. I pushed the corpse aside, and swung the barrel for steel-fist, my aim was barely enough to hit a can from five-feet away, but Twilight weaved motion past my flaws.

His leg split into two directions as another shot echoed through the alley. He collapsed as a satisfying snap resounded across the puddles of murky red, it reminded me of how my leg had once looked. Only he didn’t have an Iron-Grade AdStim to relieve the pain.

I only realized I was back in control of my body when my metal claw swung down like a pendulum. Had I— had Twilight done all of that with my body? It was over so quickly?

My body could do that?

Steel-fist wailed in pain, each syllable slamming through to my conscience. “Fuck! Fuck man, my leg! I- I’m sorry, I didn’t know! I didn’t know! We thought you were new! You get it, right?!”

This bastard and his friends tried to kill me, and he was sorry? I was surprised by how easily I found myself lifting the gun back up. The revolver’s barrel moved until it was firmly sighted for his head. I didn’t give myself time to think before I squeezed the trigger. I had expected the recoil, but I didn’t expect how firm my metallic arm would be.

The bullet nicked his cheek, a crimson streak dribbled down. And I saw the look in his eyes, wide and trembling in my direction. Fear addressed towards me…

And I liked it.

I loved it.

But I had aimed to kill. I guess I really was just a bad shot.

So instead I looked for the sputtering breaths of Bone-arm, blood coughing from his mouth as he crawled on the floor from his last wound.

This time, the gun hit its mark.

I didn’t even feel a vibration this time. Silence overcame me, the silence of victory. Of persevering through the carnage life throws to make you stumble, the silence when you’re the only one left standing.

“Their Implants.” Twilight said, her voice sharp. “Take them.”

I slid forward as a bulging mound of flesh ripped open from Bone-arm’s body, a crawling maggot colored a dull-gray slathered in red curled into a tiny sphere. A SIM, his SIM. It fit into my pockets nicely, but my fingers were too numb to feel its wetness.

Then I looked at Steel-Fist, he hadn’t dared move as I approached him, the revolver heavy in my left hand. He couldn’t move, but I could. The three fingers of my claw rested nicely against his Neuroframe as though they belonged there, and this time only a light splash of Gold fired them up.

They dug deep, and then deeper until steel was painted with blood. He cried, he begged but all I could sense was the viscera on my hand and the hardness of of his spine… I’d never felt physical sensation like this through my metal. Fine scalpels dissected the four branching arms of a Haithama Neuroframe, then they pried the arms off the flesh.

An Iron-leech came dangling off along with the block of metal, thin wires still reaching into his neck, the tightening of them around his spinal cord must have been the reason why he suddenly dropped down and unconscious. I fit in the BUG with its SIM partner. Satisfaction burned through me, threatening to consume me whole. My legs turned back to the streets of Little Requiem; a gun clasped in my claw dripping with blood. That same scarlet soaked my face and clothes, and people stared, the slight smirk on their faces told me everything about what they felt.

Respect.