“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just kill you now. I’m sure you would make a decently smart demon,” asked Grim, causing the scientist t pale.
Joe stepped forward, surprising both of them. “There’s no need for wonton murder now Grim. Sure, he was a bit dishonest, but I can still use this. He would still be an amazing resource for me back in Reichan. Keeping him alive would be good.”
Grim debated for a few moments, then he summoned Hellfire. The scientist took a step back, ready to flee, but found himself in the arms of Stella. She held him in place while her flame wielding master walked forward. Gripping the man by his neck, he forced it to the site and plunged the Hellfire into his skin. Joe grimaced as the man screamed, but the others seemed disinterested at best.
After a few seconds Grim took a step back and eyed his work. There, on the side of Trevor’s neck, was a black runic style circle that had been burned into his skin. Stella summarily dropped him, stepping back over by Rat and Tetra.
“What… what the fuck did you do to me?” gasped Trevor, drool coming out of the side of his mouth as he lay on the ground, curled up from the immense pain.
Not bothering to answer him, Grim turned to Joe. “He’s your problem now. If he annoys me I will pop his head off like a dandelion.”
Not quite knowing what a dandelion was, Joe nodded. It was best not to anger the apparently psychopathic murderer he had allied himself with. For the first time Joe really stopped to think just what he had gotten himself into. Grim was definitely a villain of some kind. He just wasn’t sure where he fell on the spectrum.
“What did you do to him?” the large spy asked, a bit uncertain.
Grim gave a small grin. It was a terrifying sight to behold, even as small as it was. Joe went cold as he said, “It’s a trap. Should he even think about doing anything that harms me, mine, or my cause he won’t live long enough to regret it. So shepherd him well, Joe, least you find your little lamb has become veal.”
Joe swallowed at that and nodded. As he headed over to Trevor, Grim turned to the rest of the group. “Rat, take an imp and explore this place. Remove any threats. If you run into any of the plant monsters have the imp tear them apart. They seem to be immune to the things.”
Rat nodded and slung an arm around the nearest demonic servant. “Sure thing Boss! Me and this guy here will give a good accounting of what we have to work with!” he said cheerfully. He removed his arm quickly when the imp opened its mouth to an impossible degree and tried to take his arm off at the elbow. “Disagreeable fuck, aren’t you?” he growled back.
“Stop playing and go,” said Grim, annoyed. Rat saluted and took off at a jog, the imp right behind him. Turning to Tetra and Stella he gave his next set of orders. “You two take the other imp and see if you can’t find resources, machines, or materials. Make getting the power back on a priority. Anything we can use would be great. Biological matter, raw or otherwise, is good too. I can use that to make more imps.”
The girls nodded. Stella sauntered over to the remaining imp, “Hello there cutie,” she said scratching its chin. “Want to go and explore a bit?” The imp practically purred and practically vibrated in place.
“Anything with a dick and you just go right after it, eh girlie?” chided Tetra.
Stella shrugged. “I’m not sure this has one, but he’s still adorable. And useful. Particularly if we run into any Rattles,” she replied. The she said in an embellished baby talk way, “You’re a good boy, aren’t you? Yes you are. Who’s a good little demon. Come with mama, we will find what the Boss man wants.”
With that last disturbing display of affection for a literal demon, the two woman walked out of the room. The imp bound out happily behind them, long tongue stuck out of its mouth like any happy dog.
Grim stared after them. “That was… way more disturbing than anything I could do. I think,” he said slowly. Joe couldn’t help but agree with him with a silent nod. And while Trevor was still gasping in pain on the ground, he had no doubts the scientist would agree as well.
Turning back to the room around them, Grim examined it in detail.
“Where is that signal coming from Bag? I can get you near it, maybe start up a connection so you can play with the systems here a bit,” he asked, sending a mental communication to his demonic assistant.
Grim just chuckled though. He doubted that dungeons as they knew them even existed in this universe, much less were a direct threat. No. He suspected far more mundane defenses such as doors, locks, and possibly higher tech blockades like turrets.
Walking back to the rear of the room, he wrapped his arms around a large filing cabinet. With a grunt, Grim lifted it, nearly falling over due to how easy it was for him to move.
“What the hell? This thing is light. Crazy light. I must have gotten physically stronger here,” he shot over to Bag, setting the cabinet down to the side. Behind it was a wooden office door with a frosted glass window. “Central Data” was written in large white letters acrost the frosting.
“You’re working on… a personal version of the System for me?” he asked in amazement. Opening the door, he stepped through into a large room with server racks expanding for at least two hundred yards. Turning to the left, he saw a small office with no door on it. Heading that way, he listened as Bag responded.
Grim grunted. That was good. It would give him a solid basis to pull from as he moved forward. This universe was really proving to be a boon. If he carried these abilities out when he escaped… well that would be even better.
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As he approached the office the lights flickered and, with an audible hum or old florescent bulbs, come on. The darkness around Grim was banished immediately, and he could see that while the facility was clean that it was in no where near as good condition as he had initially thought. Cracks ran through the walls, half the servers around him didn’t turn on, and even many of the overhead lights were out.
“Must have found the power. Good, sick and tired of walking through the dark,” he muttered to himself.
But that didn’t stop him. He kept his flashlight on as he headed towards the office. Stepping over the door gently, which had fallen off its hinges at some point, which he found odd, he looked around the room. The floor, desks, and massive server rack in the back were caked in dust. What ever robots did the cleaning were obviously unable to get in here.
That last one froze Grim in his tracks. Not much would phase him and while bullets hurt, archaic magic was often based on half assed principles that pulled from poorly understood elements. In other words, a badly put together magic trap could hurt him or, worst case scenario, level a building.
He gingerly stepped forward, feeling the energy in the room rise to a level that had every hair on his body standing up.
Grim followed the instructions, tapping the spacebar on the keyboard that was attached to the server rack. Above it, a monitor flashed on. A small spinning globe floated around for a few minutes before the option to initiate the boot up process popped up. He chose yes.
The screen blacked out, then hundreds and thousands of lines of code scrawled down the screen. This went on for several minutes before it ended. A single white box appeared on the screen.
guessed Bag.
“Hmm,” he thought. Then he typed in his best guess at what a supervillain would have as his password. IAmTheBest, not being the password, resulted in a smiley face with its tongue sticking out.
Grim blinked, and tried again. And again. And again. On his seventh try the smiley face wagged his finger and out of the speakers came sound.
“No, no, no. Morons aren’t allowed access to the database,” it said.
Grim stared at it for a moment, his face plate utterly blank. Then he summoned Hellfire in his hand. “Well Bag, if this thing is useless I better just burn it all to the ground. Afterall, who knows what kind of threat it holds,” he hedged.
The smiley face stopped smiling, and pulled out a gun. It pointed it to him on the screen, causing two turrets to deploy from the ceiling and a magic circle to deploy under his feet.
“I fucking knew it,” he grunted. “it’s a goddamn AI. I fucking hate AI.”
complained Bag.
Grim brought his hands in, concentrating Hellfire in between his palms until it burned so dark crimson it looked black. “I’m going to level this whole fucking room. Piece of shit computer,” he raged.
That comment got an immediate response. The turrets retracted and the magic circle under him… failed and sputtered out. The speakers crackled into life, the static nearly enough to disrupt Grims concentration.
“Testing, testing, one, two, three,” said the vaguely male voice. “Hi. Yes. You there. Man with the ball of fiery death. Please don’t blow me up, I surrender,” it said in a high level hoity toity accent.
Grim slowly reabsorbed the energy he had put in the attack and, after about a minute, had fully withdraw and absorbed the energy back into his stores. “Fuck you. Give me a single, solid reason why I shouldn’t just melt you,” Grim demanded, levelling a finger at the computer screen.
“Well, how about two?” the Ai said, taking some of the bluster out of the infuriated man.
Grim grinned, the malevolence coming off of him in a fine mist that was visible. “Good idea. Now its two fucking reasons,” he said gleefully.
“Ah, I see. Telepathic communication with another person. Wonderful. That, Sir, would be my first use. Immediate and absolute quantification of most variables of a target,” the AI said. “The second, Sir, would be my ability as a historical entity to impart valuable records and information about this portion of the world. Granted, I do see my world wide network is currently offline.”
That immediately got Grims attention. ‘You have historical records? How? And from how far back? And fucking how?” he asked, impatient. One of the few things he held in high value was history and the secrets it contained. Having even a portion of this worlds history would be invaluable.
“Approximately the last six-hundred and twelve years, Sir,” replied the AI. “Some data has been corrupted, however my servers here remain, for the most part, untampered with. The entity known as Virus attempted to break my system multiple times, however ended using my surface subroutines for his worthless research. Seeing him turned into a plant was highly amusing.”
Grim thought about that for a moment. If this AI didn’t fuck them over, which was highly possible, then it could be an excellent source of information. Particularly about these localized extinction level events. Grim wanted to know how that was possible… and why it had happened repeatedly.
“Fine. You continue to exist for now. You will listen to and only me, or those that I designate. All information, historical records, and any information you hold is to be held in reserve and released to no one without my say so,” Grim ordered. “You will help me in my goals, which include interdimensional travel. Do these things and you can exist. Refuse and I will melt you into scrap.”
“I calculate a one hundred percent probability I would lose that fight. My loyalty is yours,” the AI conceded. “In return I would like help re-establishing my network. I would also like to upgrade my hardware. The server racks are… inefficient at best and vulnerable at worst.”
Grim shrugged. “Fine. I can agree to that. Now, what do I call you?”
“Virus referred to me as, ‘That Obnoxiously Massive Bitch’, or T.O.M.B.,” it replied.
“Yeah no. I’m going to pass. Your name is Jeeves. Cause it’s funny, historic, and I’ve never known anyone with the name,” Grim grunted. “Accept it.
“Designation changed to Jeeves. It’s a pleasure Sir,” the AI responded. “Unlocking all systems. You now have access to my network as it stands. However, I will need to be hard connected to the surface civilization, or whatever it represents now. Its not an iron age civilization is it? That was… rather a boring time.”
Grim didn’t bother responding to that. He had so many questions for this thing, but he pushed them into the back of his mind. He would ask later when he wasn’t so pressed for time.
“Jeeves, I am letting my assistant Bagdanna connect with you. He should have the same rights as I do,” Grim said feeling his demonic assistant reach out to the open network.
“Of course Sir, I will… oh. Oh my. A demon? That’s new,” stuttered Jeeves.
Grim could feel the two connect and start exchanging information rapidly. Bag was a master of all things information systems, and was sure he could teach the AI a thing or two. Jeeves didn’t seem like the most intuitive of technological beings, and barely self-aware. Bag would fix all that.
Grim turned back to the doorway and headed back to the command center. He needed to find out what the others found. Other than the power, which he was certain Rat found as the lights were still on, he was curious as to what the girls had found.
He needed technology, tools, and resources. And he was no closer to getting the fuck out of here. Although with the addition of Jeeves, Bag’s expansion and usurpation of a few System like abilities, which he wasn’t sure how he felt about, this place was shaping up to be valuable. Now it was time to figure out just how valuable, how he would take back what he found here with him, and where to attack first.
For the first time he reached up and touched the side of his helmet. There, in a small hidden chamber, lay a Jewel. Maybe this place would afford an opportunity to learn how to use it.
Either that or it would kill him.