Chapter 5: Humanity’s Resistance

A brief history of the world’s prime peacekeeping force from the NeoCore Netsite homepage.

The Collapse had shattered civilization. The Scorch had left no hope for recovery. The First Swarm had promised it’s doom.

Then, six Founders had descended from the heavens, and of them, Michelle Silva had pioneered the creation of NeoCore in the hopes of safeguarding humanity from the plight caused by the MAL-Swarm and its Titans.

With the support of fellow Founder Beauregard Mazhyr, she had established the first global peacekeeping force following the Second Swarm’s sudden appearance. In this primitive form known as the SilverGuard, she had produced enough results to reclaim the territory of what now comprises the Free Cities.

Together with Mazhyr, the very first Neuroframes were created and distributed without economic gain. A promise that stays true even today. Soon, the other four founders poured their resources into the SilverGuard where it henceforth became known as NeoCore in the year 2277.

Over the Last 220 years, we have reclaimed more than 34% of the MAL-Infected regions and continue to press our vanguard forward. We, NeoCore, remain steadfast in our duty of being humanity’s bastion. If you believe that your skills can help NeoCore in any way, consider contacting your local recruitment center or donating to our cause.

NeoCore: Humanity’s sword.

1:43 AM

June 2nd, 2497

Diana

My fingers trembled as they slammed the ammunition clip into the gun, a painful squeeze that required every bit of strength my hands had to offer. A Silver-Grade gun was meant for Adapters, even jamming a jailbreaker chip into its dock hadn’t done much besides let me use it’s most basic functions. My difficulty was purely mechanical.

The oscillation of the gun started low then heightened until it whistled right next to my ear. My NeuroFrame’s Standard Aim Protocol doing little compared to the training I had. The gun’s whistle pierced to its climax, my desperation forcing my arms into a form that my muscles begged to be freed from.

The distant form I sought to end was shrouded and irregular, but the clear visibility of illuminating sparks and twisting wiry flesh was where my aim went — it was no different than the deers I used to hunt. I told myself that as a bolt of plasma scorched the distance between us, except it twisted in a way no creature of this planet ever could, a mass of tendrils bending in obtuse angles to evade my assault.

I hurried for my next shot, the heat of the plasma coil making me nauseous and the whip of a seeking tendril striking dread through me. Blood flashed amidst the veil of gray and neon but I couldn’t tell anything apart other than the vile sparks radiating off my target, the second shot fired without any recoil just as all the others had.

I dropped the gun anyway. I knew I’d missed, but the eruption of heat and energy left me writhing in my own sweat and pain. My arms felt like they’d hauled a ton of steel around the entire district without rest.

A shrill scream slaughtered my hope, the rushing sound of flying debris and tearing limbs growing closer to me with every second. I didn’t want to close my eyes. At the very least, I wanted to know what death looked like. I wouldn’t get that chance again.

A spark flooded through me, an idea. A hope? It came too late as the MALignant burst through a wall of fallen stone to my side. The gun was dead weight, so with both arms… no, I couldn’t throw it. Doing that would make it stronger.

But maybe I could blow it up. If only I could. I had hesitated for too long and I didn’t know the first thing about setting a gun to self destruct. I scrambled for any last thoughts as the MAL burned its focus in my direction.

Yellow and black wires fell from it’s body like fur, electricity dripped from its body much like a hungry predator’s drool and finally, it had eyes. Too many eyes and they were all trapped in a prison of agony and torture, as though it’d taken them from its victims.

My eyes would soon join it; perfect silver eyes.

Its tentacles reached for me, and I’d all but resigned myself to the fate born of my investigation, but the stone beside us shattered as light pierced into the MAL. A spear of golden-blue metal, beautiful and arcane, was the only separation between my life and my death. I didn’t know whether to stare in awe or confusion. Then the spear moved without anyone gripping it, in a burst of movement it pulled back through the rubble with the MAlignant still attached.

It flew into the hands of an armored woman. And I instantly felt hope, real hope, not just brief flutterings of it being grabbed out of desperation from the darkness. That white armor which wrapped around my savior’s body like a second set of muscles was a sun beaming relief into my entire body.

She was a NeoCore Enforcer.

Mechanical wings of metal and light spun out from her back, as magnificent as they were functional. She lifted up the spear, carrying the MALignant with the effort she needed to blink. The Enforcer stabbed the MAL’s body into the roof, impaling it between stone and her — and from her gauntlets shot strings that entangled the MAL.

Then… I recognized her. Archangel. One of NeoCore’s star recruits, a former Imperium actress by the name of Alisha Noori.

Even her voice was angelic, a calm and serene voice that sounded like a songbird’s chirp even amidst this orchestra of destruction. “Reporting to Inquisitor Tusk: Confirmation of a Gold-Grade MALignant, Hunter; Tier 3. Appears to be a CyberGene carrier; definitely a Gear Glutton, either a Carrion or Warlock on the mutagen side.”

The MAL screamed in its confinement, gripping the blue web with what were now clearly hands and claws formed of its tendrils. With ease, the Holo-wires disappeared into its body, the energy absorbed in seconds.

“Correction,” Archangel responded to her comms, her gauntlets shining as they shifted from one purpose to another. “A Warlock.”

The web burst apart, the electricity it indulged on wrapping around the MALignant like an oversized scarf. I couldn’t count just how many tentacles lashed out all at once. What I did know was that Archangel was not the least bit scared, her arms wreathed silver light into sharp angular blades that precisely slashed any threat in her way.

Gooey tendrils rained down one after the other as the Enforcer dismantled the MALignant’s aggression with elegant twirls and sweeps using her wings and blades. She reached out with her arm, the spear — still impaling the MALignant — pulling back towards her as though she reeled it in with a line.

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As it flew into her hands, she spun the momentum downwards before twisting in an arc and slicing the MALignant apart. Three sections crashed into the floor, but only two dissolved into molten flesh and golden shards.

“Core’s in it’s head.” Archangel called out to no one in particular. She ran her hand along the shaft of her spear, a warm wisp of light trailing up in a spiral that shifted the mechanical plates of the weapon, reorganizing and healing what was damaged. “It’s absorbed a part of my spear’s casing. Might have some form of electromagnetism.”

Her wings whirred, boosting her down towards the recovering MALignant like she was an envoy of silver death. The MALignant roared, a sphere of voltage growing around it that melted into the floor. Then it burst back up, lifting shrapnel into the air… shrapnel that obeyed the MAL’s commanding shriek as it shredded into the descending Enforcer.

She flew through it, barely a nick on her armor, and impaled the MALignant once more. This time she didn’t give it the chance to steal from her weapon, throwing it aside and just as quickly slashing into it again.

I hoped, really hoped that this was going to be the end of it. But I’d always known that as soon as things got too good, something else would go wrong. This was no exception. A small tremble on Archangel’s side flicked her gaze, the metallic components of several Adapters’ Shardware twitching, tearing off into finger-length shards.

The inch-long slivers flew towards the fight, a storm of metal chips digging into the Enforcer who tried to ignore them as she ripped the MALignant apart, bits of fleshy metal flying in a spray. Then her arm froze, her attention forced towards the miasmic Golden veins running up her armor as those Shards bit into her protective aegis.

Her chilled voice sent a quake through my spine. “Inquisitor, I think this MALignant might be above my paygrade. It’s… modifying my armor.”

She leapt away, light burning through her visage to fight off the infection in her suit. The MALignant didn’t wait to heal in order to pounce, it lashed forward with claws of flesh and metal into a prismatic barrier that started as one hexagon before spreading around as a sphere.

Tentacles wrapped around the sphere, grating its protection away into sparks of energy that fed it. With each spark, its body grew larger, it was now clear that somehow the MALignant was healing using electricity. And this barrier was the ultimate feeding ground for it.

Whatever was going to happen, I wasn’t going to stick around and find out. Grabbing the rifle tightly, I leaped over the scattered stone and metal, praying that the MALignant was too focused on the NeoCore Enforcer to notice me. I didn’t look down, if I did, I would see all the bodies that… I’d caused to die.

No, this wasn’t the time. I focused all of my remaining adrenaline on running, on fleeing. I saw the entrance, shrouded in rubble but a quick jump would get me out of here.

“Diana…?” A weak voice called out for me, and I paused. I shouldn’t be stopping. I heard a crunch beside me and a violent snap of lightning caused a part of the already decrepit club to crumble — he was the last of my concerns. But I’d promised myself to be better, to save others like how Yvette had saved me.

I saw Ripley, trapped under the rubble. His leg mangled and his face drained of blood. He was a dead man in this state. I should run. I should’ve run. But instead I’m pushing apart chunks of stone that my already tired arms struggle to move.

He groaned in pain as his leg was relieved of pressure, greeting me with a sudden squirt of blood. Somehow, I managed to free him from the prison, pulling his arm around my shoulder and keeping his weight on his good leg.

The door was right there, just a little stone and-

The barrier broke behind me, there’s no doubt. The sickening crack and body being thrown… the groans aching into my ear were not the MALignant’s. I couldn’t help but look back for a second, Archangel’s wings were shattered and the MALignant was a hulking beast of pure electricity and tentacles.

Yellow forks of lightning spewed out of its body in a fountain of energy, stray sparks shattering stone. It reached upwards, a tentacle reaching for the office we had once been in, two bodies were yanked into its grasp. The two Shandian corporates.

Two Silver-Grades.

Archangel sputtered into action despite her torn body, slashing with blades of energy appearing from her wrists… but every weapon she could use other than the spear only fed the MALignant. I choked back my tears as the two corporates dissolved into an amalgam of blood and steel, rearranging into what was clearly a spear identical to Archangel’s.

I couldn’t look anymore and hurried out, climbing over the stone blocking my exit when it suddenly pushed against me. I tried to pull Ripley away but my footing slipped as the obstacles of earth tumbled apart.

And a man walked through it.

Tall and built with muscle that made him look like a mountain had become a human. Bronze skin, buzz cut hair and a cigar in his mouth. There was no mistaking it, this was NeoCore Inquisitor Tusk. I’d seen his picture in enough ads around the city to not question it.

A Gold-Grade like the MALignant itself.

Finally, I tore my gaze towards the MALignant that had speared through Archangel’s abdomen, prying out a piece of armor that it feasted on with delight.

Tusk clicked his tongue, as though dissatisfied. Then he threw something at the balcony above the entrance, it exploded and sent a rain of stone and metal down right above us.

I leaped with every bit of energy left in me, just narrowly avoiding a chunk of it from slamming into my head. “Wha-what the hell!” I glared at the Inquisitor, and his Golden glare silenced me back. It was somehow even more frightening than the MALignant itself.

Tusk’s voice was a low rumble like an inevitable earthquake, striking more deeply into myself than even my Lietenant’s mutated voice had. “I’m not letting it out, and I’m not letting Vultures in. The Implants are mine. Be a good girl and hide, then you might survive.”

Tusk cracked his knuckles, changing them as an unworldly shift in the atmosphere catalyzed. His body grew larger, already taking his impressive physique and making him a literal mammoth. There was a reason he was named Tusk.

Ivory-like outgrowths spiraled out of his entire body, curving into armor and weapon-alike until his body was a goliath of living stone, and under them was an additional layer of thick white ropes that seemed to be muscles.

A single step shook the entire building.

The MALignant roared with it’s wiry tentacles fraying apart, sensing the warping atmosphere at Tusk’s transformation. Then it pounced, striking its crude spear at the Inquisitor. The spear had easily pierced the Enforcer’s armor, on Tusk’s skin — it snapped.

Tusk punched it to the ground faster than a bullet, sending the entire building shaking and even more stone falling. The lightning spewing of it didn’t so much as tickle Tusk, and the next set of pummels made it impossible for me to stand as the vibrations resounded through me.

A Gold Mutant. Tusk. He slammed an explosive into it’s body, the shockwave throwing me back but not even making Tusk flinch who was point-blank from the detonation. He punched, tore, slammed, ripped and pummeled until the MALignant was barely a fifth of its impressive size.

But strangely, there was no electricity sparking off it now. No attempt at regeneration, the neon lights flickered and a low hum quieted through the room as my silver hair began to float up with the static charge… The MAL’s limbs had pierced through the ground.

And I knew where it had connected, the city’s electrical grid.

First, the neon blew out like each light had been shot, then I saw the monolith skyscrapers outside the club go dark as though a curtain of shadows fell over them. Then I saw nothing but light, an overwhelming discharge of it that burned my vision.

The ground gave way beneath me as pure lightning struck up from the MALignant, like a god in the sky had called for thunder to pull out from the ground into its hands, launching Tusk up and through the roof.

I fell as the floor crumbled, and so did Ripley. Into the abyss where we would be alone with the MALignant.