“Here.”

Waking up without an alarm was weird. It was just so… smooth. Opening my eyes and my brain taking a minute to register that I wasn’t looking at an ad. Despite the humming engines of the AV, I still felt like my waking up was too quiet.

Without my neuralink, the flight became far more of a slog than I would’ve expected it to be. I had nothing to read, nothing to watch, and nothing to hear but the hum of the engines and the wind whipping wildly outside. There weren’t windows either, but at least the air was cool and well circulated.

Devoid of distractions, I reviewed my fight this morning to pass the time. It was part procedure, to look upon my actions more critically and consider what I could’ve done better. Unfortunately, I had no reference points to draw from. How would this have been done optimally? Where was I lacking?

After a few hours of this, I just gave up and tried to get some shut-eye… until Moreau’s voice woke me up.

“Catch.”

I noticed the flying object and scrambled, snatching it midair, but very nearly slapping it against a wall instead. It… was a piece of wood?

“Never throw things you’re not willing to lose.” Moreau pointed at the counter next to me, and I spotted a bulky metallic rectangle. “That’s yours.”

It was relatively flat, with a screen on one side, like a smaller tablet but thicker and a lot more… rudimentary. There were some cables sticking out, the battery held in place by physical screws, and tape keeping the screen and the box with the components together. “What’s this?”

“Your neuralink.” She replied, tapping the back of her head. “I plugged it up to a simple interface. You should be able to access everything that was in it.”

“I didn’t know that was… possible?”

“Definitely not with more modern models, but yours older than I am.” She waved her pen at it. “Just keep in mind it’s very restricted in what it can do.”

I pressed the power button. “Because you don’t want me telling anyone?”

“What? No, there’s no signal this far into the badlands.” She shook her head. “The problem is that it’s not in a metal case and not inside your skull. Neuralinks use part of your brain for its own functionality. Processing mostly, but also for encryption purposes.”

Moreau stared at me as I blinked blankly back at her. “And that means…?”

“It means that if it had wireless connectivity functions, even a child could hack into it. So it’s a glorified storage device with a screen.” She frowned, shaking her head. “Did they really not teach you anything about cyberware?”

“There were courses in the academy, but it was either that or-”

Scoffing, she waved me off. “Or good-boy soldier training, got it.” She pointed at one of the cabinets. “There’s food in there, and water on tap, lavatory is at the back.” Pulling out her tablet, she began to poke at it once more, face turned into a scowl.

I stared at her for a moment.

“Thank you for… this.” I gestured at the device, which I had to assume had been some sort of peace-offering. “Maybe during the next break I could… transform? Just not in a fight.” I also had to admit, I was slightly curious as to what that might look like from the outside.

The older woman glanced at me, then gave a slow nod, then a dejected sigh. “Unfortunately we’re too close to New Francisco, we’ve entered yellow warning territory, so we’ll be heading straight for the nearest entrance tunnel.”

Her words made me frown. “How long was I out?”

“Not much, we’re still a day away.” She noticed my troubled expression. “We’re about eight hundred kilometers away, but Bob’s taking us the very long way around the Sierra Nevada rather than risk some flying monster spotting us.”

“And we’re in a yellow zone,” I said. “The same yellow zone that’s barely a kilometer beyond Frontier City 02’s walls.”

There was a twinkle in her eyes. “So says the all mighty CYPHER.”

I kind of had to stop and blink, trying to process the implications of what she meant. On a logical level I knew this had to be true, monster presence was relative to the size of the human population, and New Francisco was the largest city in the North American continent. But it still felt daunting to consider we were hundreds of miles away and the monster density was already this high.

Yet a question popped up, one I couldn’t hold back from asking.

“Where do monsters come from?”

The lessons and teachers were never specific about it. They talked of monsters as if they could just spontaneously appear out of thin air, but that couldn’t be right… right? Surely it was just that the details were kept classified for the safety of the public. The speculation running around had at the very least amounted to that much, talking about alien invasions and mutagenic diseases.

Moreau’s response was to sigh heavily, waving the tablet. “That, my very valuable magubo, is what I’m trying to find out.”

“You can’t be serious, there’s got to be information.”

“There is.” Turning the tablet towards me, she made the screen become visible, showing what I could only assume was a security feed of… a sewer? The video was in grayscale, low light conditions, a wide pipe with flowing water flanked by walkways. A red circle appeared, drawing my attention to one of the rodents.

After a few moments, the rat suddenly spasmed and keeled over, for no apparent reason. Then its body began to contort and bloat, violently shaking, maw open in what I could only assume was a screech as it grew thrice in size. I recognized what it’d become, it was a mouther monster, the same kind I’d splattered with my bare hands a couple days ago.

“Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Mouthers aren’t a contagion type.”

“You catch on quick.” Moreau nodded. “Here’s the kicker. The rat came from an Aeon-tech laboratory. It was one of hundreds that escaped after it got attacked. Low end stuff, but I spent a pretty penny hunting down the others.” She poked at the screen. “Only this one turned.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“How can you be sure?”

“Monster slaying reports in the area throughout the following days.”

My eyes glued on the rat, watching it turn over and over and over as the video looped. I frowned at it, until I spoke the question that began to burn inside. “You think it’s related to what happened to me?”

The doctor pulled the tablet away.

“I’m sure I’m not a monster,” I said firmly.

“Axel, lean over.” Her gaze hardened as she reached into her pocket, I did as she asked, and yelped and leapt back a moment later as she poked my shoulder with the quill. “That’s how I knew you’re not a monster.”

Feeling a mix of vindication and betrayal, I rubbed at my shoulder where a pinprick of blood stained my shirt. “Never heard of this sort of test.”

“Monsters have many different behaviors, I’ve even seen a few that pretend to be injured or play dead.” She pointed the quill at me. “But every monster, without exception, will become more violent if they’re harmed.”

“That’s because they’re desperate to survive.” The words had come out of me without me having even thought them out. I blinked in surprise, realizing that they felt right in the same way that the pop-up could present intent. Yet the more I thought about it, the truer it felt.

Every monster fought with the ferocity of a cornered creature. As if humans’ very existence was a threat.

Charisma -2 -> 0

“I… huh.” I blinked at the text for a moment. “I don’t-”

“Don’t dwell on it.” Moreau cut me off sharply.

“Bu-”

“The last person to say something to that effect ended up joining a monster worshiping cult.” She waved the quill menacingly. “There’s dangerous, and then there’s dangerously stupid. I’ll have you locked up if you ever start blathering some doomsday nonsense.”

“I… that’s fair, monster-cultists are insane anyway.” I quickly agreed. “Do I look different to you?”

“What?”

“My charisma stat rose by two points all of a sudden.” I paused, then frowned a little. “Though now that I think about it, that stat's kind of different to the others.” For one, it didn’t have a submenu, and there was also an odd… feel I got when looking at it. As if it was far less solid.

“You. Have a stat. For charisma.” Moreau laughed. “Looking for some ladies?”

I flustered with indignation, hurrying to explain. “It’s just this stat that the system threw in when I was complaining. It was in the negatives, now it bumped it to zero.”

Her eye twitched, biting her lip, but still holding back the laughter. “I…”

“You really want to say something, don’t you.” I accused her.

“My continued interaction with you is severely skewing results.” She coughed, regaining her composure, but not losing the amusement. “I will say this: If I were in your shoes, I’d ask myself why it’s ‘different’.” Moreau quickly made a dismissive gesture. “Now get some food into your body and go bother Bob before I bust a rib.”

Grumbling inwardly, I opened the cabinet and… paused, glaring at the logo with a swirl of multi-colored meat.

“Why do you have so many Bacon-nado™ wraps?”

----------------------------------------

Stepping into the AV’s cockpit, I was left with a sense of suppressed disappointment for how empty it looked. Bob was occupying one of two seats, hands shifting over invisible air as he looked this way and that. But there was nothing there for me to see, the whole room was a smooth gray metal box. No windows, no controls, no buttons, nor panels.

“People would normally be more impressed.”

I handed over the traitorous Bacon-nado and sat down on the copilot’s chair. “People would probably see all the readings and doodahs.”

“Ah, right, you aren’t plugged in.” He nodded along.

“I don’t see the sense of it.” I grumbled, munching down on my own meal. I shook my head. “No, I guess I do. It’s cheaper to project something through an optical aug than installing screens everywhere. Less moving parts. It’s just…”

“I get where you’re coming from.” Bob nodded, leaning back into his chair. “There’s a bunch of stuff we take for granted until we no longer have it.”

The comment made me perk up a little. “You lost your neuralink at some point?”

Bob tapped his knees. “These aren’t the original set.” He chuckled. “Spent two years struggling with stairs, then the doctor showed up one day.”

My curiosity peaked. “How did you two meet?”

“Middle of bumfuck, she needed a pilot that wouldn’t ask questions, and I fulfilled the requirements.” Bob shrugged nonchalantly. “After about a week on the gig, she told me it would be ‘sub-optimal’ if I kept going around on wheels. I wasn’t one for tech-aughs, and thought that’d be that, but she twisted a few arms to get me some decent bioware.” He glanced at the door leading back to the AV. “Don’t let her know I said that, though. She’ll start going on a tirade about how much of a pain corpos can be.”

His hearty laughter was a little contagious, I found it easier to relax, even if I was still inside a very ugly mostly-featureless metal box.

Not wanting to distract him more than I already had, I pulled out the kinda-tablet Moreau had cobbled together and began poking around. Everything took forever to load, but there were no ads, which I had to guess had been an intentional decision on the doctor’s part.

Just as she’d said, there were no signal capabilities, and the messaging apps had a cut-off point about ten minutes before I entered the lab. Most of what I’d gotten had been either spam or spam adjacent (like the building manager insisting I had to cough-up to help pay for the broken camera). There’d also been a nervously worded question from my shift manager asking if the VIP was doing alright. But my focus went straight to Kali, her messages were still there, laughing at my very cringe-worthy clip practicing a speech in an empty room.

I… probably shouldn’t have left the city as abruptly as I had. But I still couldn’t fathom what I would’ve told Kali. Bring up that I now knew she’d been a meguca for years? Ask why she’d been running that tiny store? Tell her I’d been that “monster”? Or just pretend like everything was as it should?

“You should be able to plug that thing into the port on your chair.” Bob called out, gesturing at the tablet and bringing my thoughts to a stuttering halt. “Not going to be able to do much, but it should give you view-access to the external cameras.”

“Oh, thanks.” I answered distractedly.

Seeing how I wouldn’t be able to even contact Kali, at least until we got to New Francisco, I put the questions aside for now. Pulling up the port-cable, I slotted it into the only available hole on the gizmo. Instantly, the screen changed to an aerial view of the ground below.

There were some readings littering the image, one of them pointing out that we were flying roughly a kilometer off the ground. The terrain underneath was desolate, dusty, and cracked. There were very few trees here and there, some bushes, but it was mostly just brown and more browns.

Switching around the various feeds, I found a large gray and brown box jutting out of the terrain. “What’s that?”

“Remote operation.” Bob didn’t even glance, probably having direct access and control over whatever I was looking at. “They’re spread all over the place. Fully automated, since having humans on-site could risk drawing in monsters. This one has a mining facility, I think. They double as observation posts, keeping an eye out for anything particularly dangerous.”

“Huh.”

“You should have a filtering option, poke around until you start seeing squares.”

Curious, I did just that. After a little fiddling around, I began seeing green, yellow, and orange squares popping all over the feed. Hundreds of them. Each and every one was moving in a roughly westward direction at varying speeds.

“How do you zoom?”

“Press with your fingers together and drag them apart.”

As I did, the image’s granularity began to grow fast, but even then I could recognize the tell-tale shadows of movement.

These were monsters.

And they were all moving in the same direction, towards New Francisco.