The hands of time form iron bars to a prison we cannot escape: the present. Mistakes we’ve made cannot be righted, people we’ve lost aren’t coming back home, and for every second spent obsessing over these things that cannot be changed, the future slips further away.

Yet, for all that the past is beyond our reach, we are still firmly within its grasp. The dead I cannot save still haunt me with their whispers in the night, and the unhealing scars imprinted upon my mind tear me further from the person I was meant to become.

The day that I saw the world for what it was, and discovered that I was not welcome, I changed myself into something that would belong. An amateur butcher, I hacked at my own heart tearing apart the innocent child that I once was, discarding all that made me weak, and forging the wretch I am today; little more than a quilt of mutilated parts. A creature far more marketable in this modern world, a useful cog that will not easily bend or break.

I have done all of this, not to serve the gods others have imagined into existence, but to give me the strength to ensure I don’t have to lose anyone else. So that the chorus of whispers in the night does not grow any louder, and that the scars that I wear might be my last.

I failed.

Mom busies about the kitchen exuberant in every mundane motion, attempting to reshape artificial food products into a meal that doesn’t reek of plastic and iron. Hopping from foot to foot and smiling as she hums a tune, she’s happier than I’ve ever seen her.

Until she’s not.

Her eyes widen in shock, tears trickle down her cheeks, and her humming stops as silence forms for but a short breath before it’s all gone again like a flash of an old memory. The confident smile returning to her lips is so genuine that it can only be a lie.

The spiders have crafted her a new personality, and if they’re to be believed, this is Mom’s own ideal; the person she wanted to become. As with all wishes that come true, it takes a macabre form. Her ideal self has been contorted by alien minds and shaped by alien hands into a prison of flesh and steel, and I don’t think that she’s going to be alright.

Yet…

Even knowing it is a lie, the beautiful smile printed onto that iron mask draws a withered warmth out of my heart. This is something that I’ve longed for since I was a child. If only this were real, I would fall into her arms and cry as I tell her every terrible thing that’s happened to me and every terrible thing that I’ve done.

I don’t, of course.

This is but a performance, and her; a puppet moving on a spider's strings.

“Aaaand, there we go,” Mom waves her hands over the oven as if casting a spell, a playful act borrowed from the spiders’ fantastical world that this code is native to. “Lunch will be ready in one hour, so let’s put in some work and earn it!”

She doesn’t even notice the tears still tracking down her cheeks.

Her smile unwaning as she pulls me up from the couch for the day's physical therapy, I try my best to shape a lie just like it, imitating the skinwalker program from that elven village she would escape to. Even without seeing my reflection, I know that it looks wrong.

It feels wrong.

“What’s on the schedule for your physical therapy today? Stretches? Weights?” the puppet asks.

“Weights while talking,” I reply, careful to pace each syllable properly else I grow impatient and mutilate the words. “Physical and mental workout.”

With the puppet actively helping, I’ve made great strides in mastering the ability to walk and talk again. Slowly I’m breaking free of the isolation cell that is my new mind, or at least I’m smashing in a window.

Simple conversation does wonders for redeveloping my speaking skills, and learning to walk is so much safer with someone there to catch me. Playing pretend on my own simply couldn’t compare.

If only this could be real.

If I could just accept this lie, then it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Would it even be wrong to lean into my role for this theatre show that we’ve both been cast into? Is it wrong to admire the woman that mom wanted to be? Is it wrong for me to wish that she could have always lived up to this ideal?

I don’t even know why she’s in pain, or why she’s crying.

She’s finally the person she wanted to become, isn’t she?

It may be fake, but…

Am I all that different?

My fleshy brain isn’t keeping up with the speed of my enhanced logic core and spine-trap digitalised simulacrum. Is the real me trapped inside and screaming for freedom?

I doubt it.

She, just like me, would be glad just to have someone trustworthy and competent taking over. There is no rest in this world, and we are always vulnerable to the whims of those above us every moment of every day. Having the chance to just escape into your own thoughts, without obsessing over every moment must be the closest thing we’ll get to heaven.

So why does it torment her?

The spiders changed her personality. They crafted a digital mimicry that can force her to be this puppet before me, but who knows what else they’ve stuck into her code. It’s likely that they can now take control of her whenever they please and force her into doing anything against her will.

Is that why she’s so terrified? Does she realise now that her own body has become a living cage? That her mind is just a passenger to whatever code the spiders have infected her logic core with?

I don’t understand.

What can I even do to help her at this point?

“You’re doing good, let’s keep it up!” She cheers me on. A flash of pure horror emerging from her eyes as if begging for help, but I don’t know how. “We should try playing some games this afternoon, what do you think?”

“Sure,” I respond, observing my arm and feeling the muscles working as I slowly lift the weight up.

The conversation is uncomfortable in that it’s entirely unaffected by these flashes of reality between the iron bars of her new personality. Her tone is unflinchingly cheerful, and her words only pause where natural to do so. Without my slowed time, I might not even notice the flashes of truth between the lies.

As I am, I cannot do much else other than watch and think, I cannot escape from the prison called the present. Everyone is racing about their lives to try and keep up with the spinning of the world, too busy to ever waste their precious time to account for every detail and make the best of choices; not me. Not anymore.

Every step that I take now, I wait for gravity to catch up and pull my feet to the ground; every conversation I have, I carefully measure each syllable as they crawl on by.

I have time in the palm of my hand. I can take all the time I need to decide on my future, but what do I do when there are no good choices to be had?

I slowly hide away inside my mind, looking for some clue or miracle that might change our fates. Perhaps Mom will just grow accustomed to her new mask in time? Maybe I don’t need to do anything at all?

Recoding my mind to split my focus more evenly between tasks, I keep my mouth moving and words flowing, while moving my arms to keep pace with the exercises. A few iterations, built in the passing minutes allow me to lend my focus elsewhere, expanding my search for a miracle into the digital world beyond.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Sifting through various data feeds, I pick out interesting scraps of news that survive the censors. There are dozens of official news networks and countless more digital backalleys worth prying for information, but I always return to the handful of sources that I best understand.

All sorts of headlines catch my eye as I pull data from wide-net links.

‘Hephaestus employees are being scrapped for parts!’

‘Daemons hiding in the glow, corpo hires?”

‘SynnTech is crumbling from the inside, we need to organise and take them out!”

‘Don’t trust the spiders, they’re eating our souls!”

The current access point is through a necro-punk music server, but what I’m looking through is the underground counter-cultural news outfit IDL, ‘In Dubiis Libertas’. It’s fully decentralised and no one person or organisation writes for the IDL, which makes it a bloody battlefield for competing factions trying to control information.

Most writers find themselves at home on the ‘media relations’ floor of SynnTech, or one of their competitors, but countless self-styled ‘rebels’ eat up the propaganda without a second thought.

It’s all anti-corporate sentiment carefully packaged and sold into a ‘necro-punk’ product for self-styled rebels, all so that one corporation can manipulate the poor little ducklings against another. Janus’s mother was caught up in something like this, playing her part in a ‘rebellion’ by selling SynnTech out to a competitor.

The only lasting thing she achieved was killing her whole family.

‘New attack on SynnTech changes everything!’

‘SynnTech is the powerhouse behind the corporate oligarchy ruling humanity, if we can knock the legs out from under them now we stand a chance of recovering our future. With their leadership in question, we need to act now! It will only work if we strike as one and focus on destroying SynnTech for good.

‘A guide on disrupting the corporations can be found here, keep fighting!’

If trends are anything to go by then this was written by a Vulcan Industries employee, but there are a few other groups that could be making this play. While I can’t trust the words themselves, it does suggest that there’s blood in the water and SynnTech is being targeted.

The site is stirring with talk of a new attack on SynnTech in the past few minutes, something big influencing company leadership. Finally, I dig out some footage revealing nothing but the distant echoing of cannons and the hissing of plasma, but the location is concerningly near to Kali’s apartment.

My spinning logic core freezes in place, adrenaline warming my flesh as one thundering heartbeat follows another. An out-of-place article seizes my full attention as I dig through the hidden intentions.

‘New SynnTech head is one of us?’

‘The assassination of SynnTech’s head of city operations could lead to a bright new future as the down-to-earth ‘Diomedes Smith’ takes the role. From his interviews you can tell that he’s not like anyone else in corporate management, with his leadership SynnTech employees might finally see the changes that they were wanting from the corporation.’

Assassination?

New SynnTech head of city operations?

Someone is replacing Kali?

Who would write this and why?

The only person this would benefit is ‘Diomedes Smith’ who is supposedly replacing Kali. It’s too close to pro-SynnTech for any corporate competitors to be behind this, and genuine rebels wouldn’t say anything positive about the mega-corps in the first place.

That would suggest that Kali is dead, or otherwise disposed of…

I try to find more info about the attack but the site isn’t producing anything useful. Which is another worrying detail because the author of the article is either making it all up, which makes no sense, or they’re too well informed about an attack that no one has clear information on yet.

Spinning my logic core into overdrive, I drift through official news sources looking for anything that might corroborate the story.

‘Potential management handover at SynnTech, what it means for you. Meet ‘Diomedes Smith’”

‘Is SynnTech in need of a change in direction?”

Old articles that I never paid much mind to before, but seeds that would support a sudden change in leadership.

My stomach sinks, as I sort through lies, but I find nothing to explain the situation. Whatever happened isn’t making it through corporate censors, and they haven’t finished writing their own version of events.

There’s only one more place I can rely on for answers, though I hate the idea.

The spiders.

They’ve successfully carved out their own community, free from the direct manipulations of the corporations, though still materially bound to them by the servers in which they exist. They will have the information I need, but getting it could cost me.

Drawing up the old list of spider contacts, my logic core glitches out, cutting the contacts down to nothing as a voice whispers in my ears; my own voice. A familiar trick.

“You need something?”

A cold shiver passes down my spine, the sensation lingering far longer than I’ve ever experienced.

“You should already know if you’re this deep into my system,” I think back at the invasive spider crawling into my ear canal and nesting in my skull. My mistake in reaching out to her is still lingering.

“I do, I do! But where is the fun in skipping the conversations? What are we without human interactions, the lies and deceptive words, the manipulation… the games?” she asks, appearing beside me, still wearing my own face.

“Just… get to the point, you’re not letting me contact anyone else. What do you want?” I ask.

“Now, now, you don’t even know why you need to rush just yet,” its giggling is filled with a joy that’s entirely inhuman. “For our deal, I will show you what you do not want to see, I will tell you the things you do not want to know, and even aid you in doing the things that you so much do not want to do. All of this and I’ll even put it on your tab.”

“Another favour?”

“Yes. A favour. A little thing. Nothing that you will not want to do anyway. Your answer?” the spider continues. “Can you feel it, time slipping away? How much do you have, I wonder?”

Dad is Kali’s bodyguard, if something happened to her, then something happened to him.

“Fine,” I agree, swallowing hard as the creature smiles too broadly revealing more teeth than I have.

“First, the things you do not want to see…”

Images fill my mind of twisted metal, still glowing from the heat, sizzling flesh and giblets of organs so scattered that I can’t count the corpses. Glowing copper skin, oddly familiar, still clinging to a metal frame which…

Coppelia?

I blink, taking it all in.

The images form footage.

Kali diving in front of Coppelia, taking a glowing shot of plasma to the side of the face protecting the machine with her own body as they collapse together. Plasma eats away at Kali’s metal, cooking the flesh it’s bound to, as she shudders atop her fallen friend. A hit like that has a good chance of causing irrecoverable damage…

Azra stands atop the two struggling to keep Kali alive, while weapons on his shoulders and hip fire wildly into his surroundings. A good quarter of his metal is shed on the ground, and even his weapons are glowing as they burn themselves out.

Dad is…

Chunks.

The largest piece of him is the remains of his head, and I only recognise it because of the spider highlighting it. His face is gone, teeth scattered, and most everything beneath his neck is long ribbons, even the metal has been sliced down its length.

But.

His head is still mostly whole. I don’t know the specs, but the metal loaded in his skull should keep him alive until they can connect him to an organ-box. He’s made to survive something like this, and even now some of his hardware is swivelling about to fire at whatever is attacking them.

That means he’s still alive.

But… what about Kali?

If she’s dead, or worse if she’s been replaced, what does that mean for us? Will Dad still have a job? Will he get transferred?

“I will tell you what you do not want to know.”

Dozens of unpublished articles flicker by my mind’s eye, new content added even as I read through them. Pieces of the puzzle fly by as I uncover the meaning behind their lies.

‘Terrorist attack’

‘Executive confirmed dead at the scene’

‘Security failure’

‘Traitor on the inside’

‘New executive cleaning up SynnTech’

The facts:

Kali is reported to have died.

There was an internal power shift, ‘Diomedes Smith’ has taken over Kali’s role as head of city operations.

Hephaestus weapons were used in the attack.

The attack is being blamed on a security failure, blaming Dad and Azra, calling them traitors. Very, very bad.

Their story: Dad and Azra cooperated with Vulcan Industries, formerly Hephaestus, to assassinate Kali. Which is obviously a manipulation.

Vulcan industries aren’t involved. Gaia was behind the previous attacks, pushing the public blame onto Vulcan Industries. For an attack on Kali to succeed, the attackers needed to get through layers of security that aren’t even being mentioned in the media, and that would either take firepower that I’m not seeing present, or it’s an inside job bypassing that security.

This ‘Diomedes Smith’ was conspiring with Gaia and various internal departments at SynnTech to have Kali killed, and her security detail blamed, and he’s already solidifying his position. Dad and Azra are going to take the blame…

Dad is still there, a dying brain in a box fighting to protect SynnTech; loyal even now. All the while the media is preparing to paint him as the one responsible for this.

There will be no medical care for a traitor to the company.

Instead, they’ll stack us with debt. Every expense that results from this attack they will lay at our feet. We couldn’t ever afford it.

“Art?” Mom is slowly reacting as I freeze in place.

The articles are slowly being released. Things are moving beyond my power to influence them.

Time stretches infinitely as I watch the news start to fall. Mom’s eyes glow, as she slowly tries to figure it all out. What is she reading? How much does she know?

I catch every moment as the terror seizes her eyes, and Mom, within her cage, comes to realise the same thing as me. Even the ideal version of her is frozen in place, unable to process the information. The iron mask only knows how to smile, and now it can’t even do that…

Dad’s not getting fixed. They’ll leave him to die when his metal can’t keep him alive any longer if they don’t just repossess it before that.

Mom and I will be settled with all the debt they can impose on us, and then they’ll come for us too. They’ll cut the metal from our flesh and leave us with a cheap plastic set that will stop working in a month without another payment that we won’t be able to afford.

Our lives are over.

Janus shivers as the scrappers saw open his skull.

No.

No, I still have a plan for this.