Viktor stumbled into the shipping container he used as a workshop, blood dripping from the open wound where his left arm used to be, barely able to stay on his feet with Katelyn's body threatening to topple him with every step. He would have made it here a lot faster and easier if he had left her, but he couldn't do that, not to her. He walked over to a mostly clear workbench and laid her down, then grabbed the one blanket he kept on his cot and laid it over her. He kept her face uncovered for a moment so he could close her eyes and give her now cold lips one final kiss, his tears sprinkling her face like rain. Then he covered her completely and bandaged his shoulder so he wouldn't bleed out.
He almost couldn't believe that he had made it back alive. After jumping over the railing, he had free-fallen for a few moments, in the which he pulled a device from a pocket and activated it, causing him to disappear and reappear on the balcony of an apartment across the street. As soon as he appeared, he heard Lance's voice in his ear.
"...hear me? Vik, please talk to me!"
"I hear you, Lance. Sit rep?" Viktor's voice was gruff and hoarse, even more so than usual. After speaking, he started moving again, slowly making his way down the external fire escape.
"Kyle and Jacob flew off in that van, and I'm attempting to track them now. The enforcers you took down aren't getting up, so you should be in the clear for the moment."
"Good, my jump switch will need to recharge before I can use it again. What about you? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, as soon as Jacob showed up in the wrong car, I started moving. I'm holed up in one of my safehouses." He paused for a few moments, before continuing. "Vik? I'm so sorry."
"Why didn't you tell us that Kyle was waiting for us with a whole squad of enforcers?" Viktor almost snarled as he spoke, his voice containing an implicit threat.
"I tried, Vik. They set up a jamming field as soon as the car open. It completely blocked comms in and out. I could only watch through the building's external security feed."
"You were supposed to be our eyes, Lance. You were supposed to make sure this kind of thing didn't happen." His voice was soft, and sounded dead, almost completely devoid of emotion. A frigid breeze whipped at his face, but he barely felt it.
There was silence for a moment, then Lance replied, his shaking voice betraying the fact that he was crying. "I know. I failed you both. At least you got what you were after."
"I'll talk to you tomorrow, I've got to get home and take care of my arm, or you'll have the blood of two people on your hands." After speaking, he made a quick gesture, silencing his communications. Then he turned towards the direction of the docks, starting the long walk through the cold to his workshop.
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The next day, after a night of fitful sleep, he got a call from Lance.
"What do you want." His voice was deadpan, making the question more a demand.
" I have some news you're really not going to like."
"Out with it." There wasn't much that could make a day that began with him waking to the sight of his wife's corpse worse.
"Last night I did some digging, and it turns out Logren has a backup server where all their data is stored. So the only benefit from you taking their files and wiping their servers is that you now have a copy. They still have everything."
"So Katelyn's sacrifice was meaningless."
Lance continued, seemingly not hearing Viktor's quiet comment. "And that's not all. I found some files that indicate they are in the early stages of a deal with the Empire. Kyle's planning to sell their tech to the Empire in order to have a higher status when they inevitably conquer us."
Viktor froze, his whole world coming to a standstill. After a moment he closed his eyes and put his head in his hands.
"Vik? You still there?"
"You mean to tell me that scheming bastard plans to sell the technology Katelyn and I created to our enemy, in exchange for nothing more than a worthless promise of future benefits?" His voice was steady, despite the shaking of his hands.
"That seems to be the case."
"Can you get in and wipe them remotely?"
"If I could, I wouldn't have called. They have 32 terabit encryption, which is extreme overkill since it’s ridiculously hard to break even 32 megabit encryption, and nothing in the gigabits has ever been cracked. And even without that, they’re off the grid on an Isolated Local Network, so it doesn’t have any connections to the outside. No way in unless you physically jack in. Logren's serious about security."
Viktor made a fist, hanging up the call, then brought up his notifications. The files Katelyn had sent him were there, sitting right on top. He opened them, quickly finding what he was looking for, then made another gesture, sending the schematic to a more or less empty workbench. A hologram of a device appeared floating above it, and Viktor studied it for a moment. He had thought he destroyed this schematic, hoping it would never be used, but now he had been given no other choice. It would need some modifications, that was a given, but that should be easy enough to do.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He looked back at his HUD, quickly ordering a prosthetic arm, to be delivered to a safehouse not too far away. He had neither the time nor the capacity to build one himself at the moment, but a cheap, mass produced model would do for now. He left his workshop, making his way to his safehouse, and found the package had already been delivered by the time he got there. He opened the plastic box and pulled out the arm, fitting it into place as he walked back to his workshop. He winced as it clamped onto his still raw wound, then his neural link connected to it and he could feel his arm again.
It was muted, as if half numb, and the movements were just slightly delayed, but it would do. It was much better than his fine motor control when he was drunk. The first thing he did when he re-entered his workshop was grab a shovel and tie it to his back. Then he gently lifted Katelyn's body and headed back out. He walked for a while, not keeping track of the time, just walking until he reached a small hill overlooking the bay. When he reached the top, he set Katelyn's body, still covered with the blanket, to the side and started digging.
It took him a couple of hours to dig the grave to his satisfaction, at which point he very carefully lifted her body and laid it down inside. Then he spent a few minutes kneeling at the graveside, silently saying goodbye to the love of his life, his better half. Then he slowly, painstakingly filled in the pit, tears streaming down his face. When he had replaced all the earth and there was just a small mound where the pit had been, he looked around for a large rock. Finding one to his liking near the oceanside at the base of the hill, he hefted it and carried it back up the hill. When he reached the top, he placed it carefully at the head of the grave and started cutting into it with his metal arm.
His chiseling skills were sloppy, but workable, and the final result was a little rough but otherwise as he wanted. As he grabbed the shovel and started heading back to the docks, the setting sun reflected off the letters he had carved into her makeshift tombstone.
In this place rests the greatest person to ever grace the planet earth. May all who come after know that those responsible for her death are ultimately liable for what comes next.
Shine Bright Katelyn. I'll shine with you again soon.
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Upon returning to his workshop, he sat at the bench that still had the hologram slowly rotating above it and got to work.
The first few hours he spent sitting in the same place, modifying the hologram, reducing the device to its most basic components and rebuilding it. When he finally finished, it was time to start the real work.
For days he toiled, taking only short breaks for necessary food and sleep, then getting right back to work. Sparks flew as he ground and welded metal, soldered circuits, and tested functions.
When the daunting task ahead of him became too much, he rubbed his grizzled face, gray stubble threatening to become a beard, and looked at a favorite picture he had of Katelyn on his HUD, reminding himself why he was doing all this in the first place. Feeling the fires smoldering just under the surface of his calm emotions reignite, he would get back to work. Every now and again he would hold his hand out for a tool to be handed to him, only to shake his head and go get it himself.
After almost two weeks of working, he had a completed prototype. Taking it further into the abandoned dockyard, he activated it. It powered on, at first seeming to work properly, but after a few moments it started emitting a high pitched whine that steadily increased in volume. He tried to shut it down with his neural link, but before he could send the command, the prototype exploded, sending shrapnel shooting through the shipping containers around him.
Viktor sighed and, after gathering the remains of his device, started walking back to his shop. As he walked, he looked through the prototype logs, looking for what went wrong. It took him a couple hours, but he finally found the error code. The electrical throughput had overcome the main capacitors' limits and fried them, causing the explosion. The next iteration would need more powerful capacitors, despite the fact that the ones he had used were already leagues better than what was commercially available. He sighed again. There was always something else that got in his way. He shook those thoughts away and got back to work.
This process continued for another two months, with him creating new prototypes and them failing every time for one reason or another. When he hit a wall he couldn't get over, he took a break from fabrication and started making plans for when his device was complete. Slowly and surely the kinks were worked out, and finally he had a working prototype. At least, he thought it would work. He hadn't tested it with the orb yet, but he was pretty sure it would work. He picked up his new prototype and the orb he had taken from the Logren Corporation that fateful day, along with a couple of power cells, and headed to his testing area.
By now, the surrounding shipping containers were in shambles, having been filled with shrapnel, blasted with energy, and burned over and over. He placed the prototype in the usual place, put the power cells a few meters away, then returned to the prototype and slotted the orb into place. The machine started to hum slightly, but nothing else happened. Good. He walked over to his cover, a shipping container with one side replaced with blastproof glass, and activated the device using his neural link.
The low hum coming from the device turned to a heavy thrumming, and some geometric lines on the orb started glowing electric blue. Then a focused wave of energy blasted from the device, hitting the power cells. Then, just like when he had used the orb on the balcony that day, the energy wave reversed course and flowed back into his prototype. The glow of the orb increased, but nothing else happened. For the first time in over two months, Viktor smiled. It worked.
He deactivated the device and retrieved it before returning to his workshop. When he arrived, he disconnected his prosthetic arm from his neural link and took it off. Then, he placed his prototype, a new arm with the orb attached, on his shoulder where it fit perfectly, and locked it into place. Then he connected it to his neural link, almost overcome with sensation as feeling returned to his left arm, this time without the numbness that was the hallmark of cheap, low quality prosthetics.
His preparations complete, he took one final look around his workshop. This would probably be the last time he saw it. After all, he wouldn't need it anymore. Soon it would be over, one way or another.
He opened the door, ready to step out, and froze. There, with a hand raised to knock, was a girl. But the thing that grabbed his attention and held it like a vice grip, was that she was the spitting image of Katelyn.