I wrapped up my work in the sub grid by wiping any traces I’d left behind that I could access. I briefly wondered about the node user logging system but I’d just be a generic error instead of a documented user, very obviously not meant to be there but not actively identifiable. Not worth the effort of breaking the node system ICE to get access to the database to make the needed edits to hide my error trace.
This job was dropped on me short notice but was very easy to handle. No ICE to fight with, no issues with the team, no problem setting up my jack point and no set up needed. If every job was like this I wasn’t going to complain too much.
After I jacked out of the net I was back in the little cabin and I quickly deconstructed the flash trap I’d set up on the door. As I took it apart I considered it’s actual set up, just a steel trigger wire, some screw hooks and a normal flash bang grenade with the wire strung through the finger pull ring and a bit of spray glue to fix the grenade into place enough to resist the pull of the wire and force the pull ring to pull away and trigger the flash.
It could likely be better made. I could make something smaller than a grenade that wasn’t made to survive a throw and be carried out in the weather for weeks. Something less resilient but also smaller and less noticeable. I could also swap the mixture out for something more expensive but powerful than these mass produced models. That’d be a question for Noe.
The wire could be longer, maybe a few meters of spool and a trigger lock with a light trigger once the lock was off. Put the whole spool on a wound spring and have it recoil itself. Basically a little tape measure design with a reloadable flash bang cartridge on the side but keep it cheap enough to be left behind. Make it small and less noticeable with a lighter wire and a lighter trigger, as light as I can use safely. Maybe a talk with Noe’s mom would be best, she’s likely to have made something like this.
I finished up deconstructing my trap and pushed the pile of scrap out of the way until I could get the door open. Heading out into the yard I did a quick scan around the little compound and didn’t see anything different to when I’d went in. Checking the clock on my interface told me it was coming up to mid afternoon, a few hours of sitting still and a paycheck after twenty minute walk? I’ll take those jobs any day, even if Marchand dropped them on me.
As I was walking back through the quiet streets I stopped off at the gym but didn’t find either Ed or Layla around. I paid for a visit at the desk and wandered over to a boxing bot and set it up. Now might not be the best time but I wanted to see Sanctum’s new ability. It was it’s first custom work, it had to be pretty good.
The machine had a lot of settings but I just set it up on the shortest height, light punches workout mode. I wasn’t looking to test my body here, I was looking to test an ability.
As the bot squared up I looked it over as I got into stance against it, the white muscles were covered in a thin transparent membrane but apart from that they were likely not far off what most of my head looked like now under the real looking skin and mostly real looking hair. Just steel, ceramic and white aspirant pumped synthetic muscles.
The first punch unfolded and I instantly felt a difference, the time slow was so much smoother. It was the difference between being dropped into a change and sliding into one. The transition gave me so much more clarity with the new AAN ability. I felt my whole body shift into a subtly different weight ratio and I widened my stance to match the feeling it gave me as the small muscles adjusted automatically, leaving my manual control over the large muscles.
It was almost boring watching the punch that had already missed me glide harmlessly past my shoulder and then return, the other punch unfolding from it’s left as it pulled back it’s right.
As the new punch came in as an obvious hook, obvious in this slow world anyway as I’d likely miss the clues in the shoulder and elbow at normal speed, I stepped into the arc before it could adjust and used my right arm to force the bicep of the machine down and away. This caused the punch to lose most of it’s power and it’s ability to bring the arc into range to hit me.
As soon as I’d stepped in the machine had opened it’s other hand to push me away but I just stepped back as it tried to press on me and it followed my movement uselessly.
As the machine started to reorient itself into a fighting stance I stepped away from it’s range and let it notice I’d disengaged which caused it to halt and wait for input. I walked up to it and put it at whatever the hard setting meant, the machine was designed for use by actual boxers and fighters but there were more difficult settings than hard so I just selected the blanket option of the hard preset.
There was no point fighting something that couldn’t do anything to me and I wanted to see what the ability would do when I started to actually risk a solid hit, or even a genuinely dangerous blow.
I stepped back and got into stance, bringing my arms up but letting my head be a little more exposed than my torso. I had a steel head, I had flesh ribs. A nine millimeter point blank to the head would do little more than knock me out for a few seconds, a punch would just rattle me, even from a bot like this. I didn’t want to take a broken rib today though.
This time the bot got into a much tighter stance and lowered right down to my level with it’s arms covering it’s head evenly, I could even see the muscles in them squirm under the micro-movements of constant readiness. This was kind of scary.
Whoosh. The right straight punch came right out and even with time slowing down and my body angling itself away under me I only just managed to get enough force onto the incoming arm to push away the blow wrist to wrist. The the left hook came in as the frame of the machine creaked deeply in the slow world under the force of the sudden change in momentum the bot was putting it under.
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Swoosh. The hook was too short to hit me as I leaned back and then in after it swept past but then instead of finishing the swing as soon as I leaned back in, feeling my flesh struggle to keep up with my skeleton in the slow motion, the bot pulled it’s arm back and pushed it into a left straight as it fought against it’s own strength to launch the attack.
I felt a number of smaller muscles in my back tense hard and a tingle ran up my back as I listened to what my body was trying to do and bowed my torso to the left and out of the path of the punch.
Even as I unbowed and resettled my footing the follow up right jab was already coming in and I was forced to dusk and drive my left arm under it’s wrist to force the punch over and above me but doing that meant my poor arm took a good bit of the force and I felt the plastic coated synth muscle grind against my skinny arm mercilessly. I wasn’t out yet though.
Sanctum. Push it harder. This isn’t enough, this isn’t even life and death and it’s not enough. Force it if you have to.
[Abilities are meant to be usable safely and often for short periods or shorter burst at opportune moments. The current AAN ability is designed around roughly eight minutes of continuous use without side effects as a core pillar of it’s design. Raising it’s effects could have serious health effects for the User in the short and long term.]
Boost it. Not to dumb levels, just another twenty percent. It feels so close to giving me enough information, to slowing time just enough to have all the time to make the choices with that information. But I’m just behind a curve I can feel but can’t see.
[That performance could be highly detrimental to the User, is the User sure that they wish to increase the amount of neurotransmitters stimulated in the secondary release? The functions and applications will still be managed but the receptors will need time to heal between uses.]
Just like mom’s burn out. I won’t let it get like that Sanctum. I just need a boost mode for fighting ahead of the opponent instead of with them. I can’t afford to fight with opponents when they are so much stronger and bigger then me, I need to be ahead and on top of them.
[Implementing changes to AAN Ability limits. Sub-ability AAN Boost created. AAN Boost can be active for twenty five seconds before forced halting of boosting effects, further use of the boosting effects can be forced but may lead to temporary failure of the AAN ability and then User brain damage.]
Twenty five seconds of slow time or real time?
[Twenty five seconds of real time. Approximately four minutes of slowed time depending on the level of speed the User is able to endure in the moment.]
More than enough.
The entire exchange happened even as I was still raising myself up from the squat I’d put myself into to a avoid it’s right punch. Just thoughts and interface windows. As it’s left punch swung out to catch me before I could get my feet under my properly I could feel a shifting throughout my body as it was trying to rotate my around to catch the blow straight on with my arms instead of letting the left hook hit my ribs.
Instead I kept raising myself up but mentally reached for the boost function of the AAN ability. There wasn’t an interface button, it was just there in my senses like knowing your touching something out of sight behind you but without touching it.
The gym around me went from slow thrumming and bass filled rumbles of quiet conversation and people working out to a deeper and even quieter noise, like an engine almost. The noises of the machine in front of me went from deeper mechanical clicks and steel stretching to tunnel echoes and pure bass notes.
I could barely move myself. I couldn’t raise myself any faster than I was raising myself now. I could rotate my eyes as fast as I liked to look around and I could process what was going on even as the bot’s left arm barely moved in the air towards me, just creeping long on it’s path, I couldn’t actually move my body out of the way. I could just look at it approach. I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to move my body in this slowest world. My eyes could move because they were cybereyes and just followed orders from my brain as fast as it needed in real time, they’d rotate at whatever input they were getting. I could hear noises and things because my sensory suite was managing it. But my body was flesh and couldn’t operate here. My muscles were doing their best and were moving at my request but they were moving too slow to be useful.
Push harder. I just needed to make my muscles push harder through the slowness of time. It wasn’t until a few more seconds of straining had passed that I realized how stupid I was being. My little muscles were small, weak and flesh. They couldn’t pull my bones hard enough to generate the force needed to move me at a speed that would be more usable here. It didn’t matter how hard you pressed the throttle if your engine was topped out.
Still in the slow time I sighed.
Then I realized that my head and face was actually moving at a decent speed, there was a bit of a drag to it but I could make facial expressions and rock around on my neck a little in this slow time. The synth muscles were strong enough to generate the force needed while not shattering my bones. They likely wouldn’t last long if I used them like this but they could be repaired relatively easily by the clinic.
[Your cyberware can be repaired by Sanctum as long as the damage is kept a micro scale. Tearing synthetic muscle fibers is well within Sanctum’s scale of repair. This is similar to how Sanctum can alter your cyberware to match your size as you grow to an adult as it involves micro scale changes over years of time. Depending on the damage done to the synthetic muscles the damage done can be repaired in minutes or hours.]
Perfect then.
I refocused on the boxing bot and considered my options for a moment. Then I rolled my head to the left a little before swinging my head as hard and fast as I could into the approaching left hook of the bot.
As my head met the fist of the bot it seemed my head won the hardness test and the entire fist deformed around my scalp as then the bot’s wrist snapped behind it. It seemed that my spur of the moment thinking wasn’t as good as it needed to be though as the little neck flick didn’t steal enough of the punch’s momentum and I was sent sprawling across the gym floor, rolling a few times to a stop on my back.
I looked up quickly to see the bot had frozen when it’s arm had become damaged and was just stationary with it’s arm raised. A small red notice was flashing on the screen of the machine saying out of order and it was likely sending out maintenance pings even now.
Touching my neck a few times to make sure I hadn’t accidentally broken it. I found that enough of the muscles and spine in there was cyberware to protect it from taking a bot punch to the top of my head which was good. My throat felt a little weird lower down but that was likely just a little flesh whiplash where it bumped into the cyberware parts, nothing some time won’t solve.
“Are you alright kid?! Damn! I saw that from across the room. You need a ripper or something? Can you move?” A ganger guy in shorts ran up to me and got down on a knee to check me over.