Nobody really knows why Samurai suddenly started to attack brothels and doll houses, but in the span of a few weeks, most of them were either closed, wrecked or burnt to the ground. Later on, active management was put in place, meaning that running any kind of brothel had suddenly become a lot more lethal.

but rumour has it that that they took them all out becouse they were using samurai tech for the wrong reasons

excerpted out of the rise of Rights for sex workers by the Purple Truth 2051

I wake up from a loud noise. I sit up in my bed as my heart is beating in my chest. What was that? I wait, listening to see if there is any more noise, but it stays quiet. I look around my room, but everything seems to be where it should be, my posters of one of the older Samurai, Foxfire, hanging above my desk. The fox girl grins as she wields a sword that is about twice her size. She is so cool. On my desk sits my laptop, a bulky thing by today's standards, but it was made by my brother out of recycled parts, and is more than okay for what I need it for.

I am about to head back to bed when I hear shouting coming from the living room. I pause, but am still a bit too tired to properly make out what people are saying. I slowly get out of bed, wincing slightly at how cold the floor is. Maybe it is Mom. She has been working until late recently.

I slowly open the door and walk out, ready to surprise my mom. The first thing I noticed was the tang of copper in the air. That is strange. Maybe my brother was soldering some PCBs again. I cross the tiny hallway into our living room easily, and walk inside with a smile, ready to surprise my mom.

I stand on the threshold in confusion. There are a lot of people in our living room, all wearing black armour; Mom and Dad are lying on the floor, not moving. As soon as the people notice me, they point their guns at me. My brother steps in front of them, trying to protect me.

“I said that I was the one who stole the designs. Please leave my little sister out of this,” He says, tears rolling down his face.

I am confused. What is happening then? I see the puddle of red originating from my parents slowly seeping into the carpet. I feel my entire world drop away; They're gone, but why? How could this have happened? We just started to make decent credits again. This is not fair.

A sudden loud bang breaks me out of it as I see my brother fall to the floor. “Be quiet. We told you not to move.” One of the men shouts.

“Brother! Brother!” I shout as I see the hole in his leg where blood is spouting from. I crouch down next to him, desperate to stop the bleeding. My eyes start to prick from the tears.

“Oh, see what you have done now. You made the kid cry.” someone says in a shrill, high-pitched, female voice.

I look up, and there is another person standing in the room wearing a purple hoodie and a faceless white mask. Suddenly, the room explodes into the colour of red and purple as all the other people are cut to pieces. I scream, and the woman flicks the blood from her pitch-black sword. She slowly walks up to me. I try… want to run away, but my fear keeps me in place. She slowly kneels down and puts a hand to my face. It is cold, but I feel safe as she wipes a tear away.

“It is okay now. I will protect you from now on.” the woman says.

I gasp for air as I wake up. “Mom, Dad, Jacob,” I cry out.

Then I pause. I am no longer home. Instead, I am in what looks like a collapsed building. I pull my knees up to my chest and quietly sob. I miss them; I miss them so much. But they are gone now, and there is nothing I can do about it. I wipe away the tears, only for my hand to come back red. How, why, what is going on?

Evelin, calm down. You are panicking too much, and you don’t have much time.

A voice in my head: am I truly going crazy, or is this still a dream? No, I know this voice, but from where? it is so familiar. I slowly feel the heat rise back into my body as it starts making sense. It is Lyssa, my ai assistant. I am a Samurai; I can do this. Whatever this is.

“Lyssa, what is going on? And why does everything hurt so much?” I ask the totally reasonable question, totally not panicking at all.

The building you were in collapsed, and you fell into the undercity.

“I see. Is that why my head hurts so much?” I ask, still feeling a ringing pain just behind my eyes.

No, Lyssa thinks that is because you got shot. The bullet hit your eye first, then it penetrated your eye socket and went into your brain. Lyssa estimates that you still have about four hours before you die of the injury.

“Okay fuck, any plans or options?” I say, as I stand up and start pacing around inside of the tiny space

Lyssa has two; both have their own problems. The first option is to upgrade your digital brain and upload your consciousness to the cloud. Then your body might die, but your spirit will stay alive until you can buy or create a new body. The second option is to earn another token and buy class two combat stimulants.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I see. I understand getting a token might be a problem, but what is the downside of the digi-brain?”

Besides the fact that you don’t have enough points, Lyssa can’t get any connection or signal out of this hole you have found yourself in. So you might be stuck as a digital construct until someone finds your body, if the antithesis don’t find it first.

“I see. That sounds like a bad time; but what do you mean you can’t get a signal out?”

When you fell down the hole, you passed through some kind of barrier that blocked out all signals, no internet, phone, satellite or quantum tunnelling.

“Well fuck. So I am pretty much dead then?” I say as I sit back down.

Lyssa fears so. Would you like Lyssa to start on your will?

“Maybe. Can you record a message and send it when there is a signal again?”

Lyssa can do that. Who is this message supposed to be for?

“Claire and Cierra, I want to tell them how much…”

Before I can finish the messages, the sound of shifting debris can be heard all around me. I look around, trying to find the source. Pieces of debris start to move and shift as the other side of this little room opens up. As the last piece of rock falls away, it reveals the big ugly face of what I think is a model 6. But this one has model 4 tentacles coming out of its sides and has the spikes of a model 5 on its back and legs. Its skin looks brown and sickly, but you can still see the impressive muscles the creature has.

‘Lyssa, What the hell is going on?’ I subvocalise, as my body starts to freeze up in fear.

Mutated antithesis, be careful. Lyssa does not know exactly what it would be capable of.

I look around the small little cave and see some kind of weird reddish tech-sword lying on the ground. I pick it up, trying to take a ready stance. A few of the tentacles come inside. I try to chop them, but somehow, I miss them. Was wielding a sword always this hard?

Then the tentacles are upon me, hitting me every which way before wrapping around my middle and dragging me out of the hole. I try to focus on the big cedar before me, but it is hard. A literal horde of Xenos surrounds me. They crawl over the remains of what once was… I don’t really know, a factory of some kind, perhaps?

Maniac, focus! Lyssa snaps at me, and I feel my mind go all woozy.

“Maniac?” I say, a bit confused.

Focus on the right side of your face.

I try to do as Lyssa says, trying my best not to focus on the pain I am feeling from the bog monster trying to crush me to death. Huh, there is something on my face. A piece of something, but I can see through it. How is that possible? Wait, a mask, my mask. Suddenly, I feel like all the warmth leaves my body as an icy chill sets in.

“Took you long enough, kid; guess who is back, baby!” I hear someone say in the depths of my mind.

I roll my neck, then set the sword to full blast and laugh in delight as the tentacle burns away. I drop to the ground, trying to ignore the stinging of my skin on the right side of my body. I quickly switch the sword to my left hand as I pick up a piece of rebar with my right hand and launch it at the head of this ugly excuse for a three. Electricity sparks as its head explodes.

I use my left hand to slash an eight-legged Model 3 in half. Then, I jump out of the way from a barrage of needle-like spines that are shot at me. I smile widely as I turn on the heat to its maximum setting, making an actual flame appear on my sword. I run forward, jumping over a confused model 3, landing next to the model 5 that shot at me. It still looks somewhat like a porcupine, if a porcupine had bull horns and a club for a tail. I swing my sword, beheading it. As the sword leaves, its body catches on fire.

I start to run, and keep running, never stopping. If I stop, they can swarm me; as long as I keep moving, they can’t pin me down, and I have a greater chance of survival. I jump against a wall, using it to make a ninety-degree turn as I cut some of the models that were hanging on the ceiling apart. Who thought combining antithesis was a good idea? Now I have model fours hanging on the roof with the stealth capability of a nine and the range of a five.

“Lyssa, run a calculation for me, please.” I ask as I land on the ground again.

I punch a model there with my left hand, the concussive force turning it into bits that spray the rest of the rose garden. I use my right to block an incoming Model 11 swooping in from the sky, its ugly prehistoric beak trying to bite my face off.

What kind of calculations would you like Lyssa to run?

I jump, dodging a charging Model 6 that has a set of bull horns on its head. Yeah, I guess they were going for cow meat.

“What are the chances of a hive being nearby?” I ask.

I run into a building, cutting two more model 3s apart before I run out the other side.

Lyssa would estimate the probability to be high and will update your map to show the most likely direction. Why is that important?

I activate my right arm as I jump on the floor, the magnets interacting with the metal floor rocketing me forward and out of range of a projectile shot by a model 15 from somewhere. I was going to have some words with the idiot who thought giving that thing stealth was a good idea.

“I need a token to save my life, right? So let's take out a hive and get me that fucking token,” I say as I turn, kicking off a particularly malformed model 3’s head. Then I turn and start following the arrow.

That is unsafe. You are in no condition to take on a hive.

I dive underneath a particularly fat model five and cut open his belly. I quickly jump up and dive behind a wall for cover. My new sensor suite is working overtime as I try to dodge all the attacks the garden can throw at me.

“Well, if you have a better plan, I’d love to hear it. In the meantime, I’ll keep killing plants, trying my best to cling to whatever chance of survival I have.”

I keep following the arrow, slashing away at the mutated Xenos. You would almost feel bad for them if it was not for the fact that they were actively trying to kill me. I jump into a hole down a floor in this maze-like location to get more cover. I don’t particularly enjoy getting shot at by that amount of needles.

That does, however, not mean that these hallways are any less full of plants. I slash some model 3s in half and leave their burning corpses on the ground, creating a small firewall behind me, hopefully slowing down anything that wants to follow me. The hallway suddenly opens up into a cavernous room, a giant root of some kind in the middle of it, all kinds of vines connected to it, with these sacks of aliens. Or fruits, I guess. So this is what a hive looks like.