It was hard to fathom just how quickly the Commissioner had come in to take over my mental space. I was forcefully reminded of the pace of my own transition into Aliya’s body, of how quickly I had adjusted myself into her seat of control.
How? How did the Commissioner—who was a civilian, if an obscenely rich one—have the same experience as an experienced combat mind-hacker like me?
“Practiced the takeover a lot on your test dummy, did you?” I asked.
At least I still had the ability to communicate. My ability to control and sense anything through my current body had been ripped away from me. I was powerless. Utterly helpless. But the fragments of my consciousness still remaining within Aliya’s broke-down form were enough to express myself.
I was surprised I could talk, though. Commissioner Gregor’s presence filled up everything, uprooting me from all I had come to acclimatize to inside Aliya. I was lost.
“Oh, I’ve had this practice down for almost a year now, X-18,” the Commissioner said.
There was a strange emphasis on the year part in his reply too. I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say. Before I could dig deeper verbally, Commissioner Gregor took away the last of my control.
“You’ve been a much bigger thorn than I had anticipated, X-18,” he said. “But enough is enough. It’s time for your sunset. I’m sure you won’t die so easily. You must have some other trick up your sleeve, and I’m even curious how you were not only alive in the sub, but you took over Aliya’s body to boot. But there’s no time for any of that. They’re coming.”
I couldn’t see anything outside in the real world. There was no way for me to tell who exactly was coming. But I could make a solid guess.
More importantly, the last remaining anchor inside this body was fading. Going away. I was bereft and without support, and soon enough, my consciousness would fade completely.
I didn’t actually have other tricks up my sleeve. Mutton had been only my life drive. They were expensive, and I didn’t think I’d ever need more than one. Although, now that I had used up the one in Mutton, I would need to establish a new one.
Point was, I couldn’t lose here. If I let him, Commissioner Gregor could indeed kill me. Not on my watch. He wouldn’t just be killing me, after all.
It meant the destruction of Underlevel and most of Silver City to boot.
So, I needed an alternative. Some way to salvage what looked like certain loss.
“Where are you going now?”
Some sliver of Aliya’s own consciousness still remained within her body, despite the suffocating, overwhelming presence of the Commissioner. I wondered if she had a secondary life drive backed up somewhere as well.
“I’m going to stop this,” I said.
Aliya didn’t reply to that. She was already gone.
I couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t let the emotions affect me. Though, there was something weird going on with that as well. I couldn’t feel the way I should have. It was getting difficult to think as well.
Ah, right. My presence, like Aliya’s, was fading. Losing its connections to the physiological parts of the body that allowed one to experience thoughts and feelings.
I had to act. Fast.
Even now, the Commissioner was underestimating me. I had a decade of experience backing me up. The moment my enemy had attacked, the moment my soul had been ripped free from its foundation within Aliya, I had known what I would need to do.
It was no difficult a matter to execute either. I shot through the lines of connections, through the seemingly unfamiliar mindscape. Through crimson clouds, through lightning blacker than midnight, I located the thin, pulsing line that I was looking for. The Commissioner couldn’t stop me. He wasn’t even aware, probably thinking I was gone like Aliya.
Well, I was gone. Gone from the body Aliya had lent me.
Gone into delivery girl’s body.
Commissioner Gregor had focused so much on thrusting himself into my mindscape, into taking over control from me, he hadn’t really shored up his own defences. Oh yes, there were the basics that I had to contend against.
The confusing series of memories that were a mix of two different people’s that tried to distract me, the overlapping lines of thought that led in multiple different directions. Basic. Things I had seen when counter-conquering someone else’s mind after it had already been taken over by a second party.
It took no time at all before I was at delivery girl’s seat of control. Hers was represented as a ruined pyramid, riddled with cracks and supported by fractured columns.
At the top of which was where the real test lay before me.
“I should have known,” Commissioner Gregor said. “I’m dealing with the shitting Juggernaut of Korkorrain. Of course you would turn yourself into a virus just so you could eke out another moment of your worthless life.”
I tutted. “Technically, I turned my consciousness into a viral vector, not a virus.”
Gregor looked a lot more normal, compared to that titanic apparition that had taken over Aliya’s body. But there were still features I recognized from his monstrous form.
A narrow head with a widow’s peak on top. The diamond-crusted lapel on his coat that looked like it was made of pure gold. That glinting sharpness in evening-blue eyes. And of course, the scathing expression that brooked no disagreement from reality that his will would be reality.
“Selene,” I said. “Come out.”
The Commissioner jerked in his spot. “Stay back. You know the agreement we came to. Don’t interfere where you don’t belong, girl.”
Delivery girl appeared not far from me, standing at the base of the pillar. Her form looked much like her actual appearance, ocular implant and jacket and everything. She looked back at me in surprise.
“You know my name, Mister?” she asked.
I smiled. Could she even see it? I had no idea what I looked like to her. “Just peeked at it when I had to rifle through your memories on my way here.” I turned back to the Commissioner at the top of the crumbly pyramid. “Now, I think we’ve got an unwanted guest to deal with.”
Gregor cursed, then presented us with an even more severely scornful look. “You two truly think you’re enough to stop me? A weak-willed little girl and a broken-down soldier who doesn’t even have his own body? Pathetic.”
“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “Sure, I alone might not be able to do what’s needed. But together, we can kick his ass.”
“Remember your dreams, girl,” Gregor said. “Tell us, why don’t you, about what you really wanted. Go on, tell X-18. He thinks he knows, but he barely does.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Shut up, X-18. Tell him, Selene! Tell him that you want the same thing. Of course you want a better life, you want the opportunity to make something of yourself. You want what’s reserved for only the higher-ups. What you can only get in the lands of opportunity. But you don’t want that just for yourself, now do you? You want that for everyone.”
“I…” Delivery girl—Selene—blinked hard. “Yes, I do want that. I alone don’t deserve good things. Everyone should get the same chance!”
“And this—” Commissioner Gregor spread his arms wide. “This is the way we’re evening the playing field! This is how we’re going to stop this divide, how we’re going to end the prejudice against Underlevel. This is how we’ll make sure the world is right again!”
“By destroying everything?” I said. “By killing people in Underlevel? By throwing everything into chaos?”
“A phoenix rises from the ashes, X-18. Men need to die so that others can take their place and tell their tales.”
I turned back to delivery girl. “Hear that, Selene? Is that what you really want? To destroy the people you’re trying to lift up? To get yourself killed?”
Conflict flashed across her face. Oh no. She didn’t want that. Selene didn’t want that at all. And yet, she was still hesitating. What in the world did the Commissioner have on her?
“It doesn’t matter,” Gregor said. “Just like you said, X-18. You can’t stop me. Even the two of you together. I am doing what is needed, and I will accomplish it. I will—” His form flickered. “What? No!”
I didn’t fully understand what was happening to him. But I did get one thing. This was the interference we needed. The opportunity we had to seize.
“It’s now or never, Selene. Let’s go.”
I didn’t see if she was coming or not. I didn’t have time to do so. Right now, I needed to put my faith in her and do my part.
The pyramid loomed before me, but I didn’t hesitate and began climbing as fast as I could. It was a strange sensation. Motion in mindscapes was governed by will. I couldn’t just teleport to where I wanted, not even with a supreme force of will, but I could flash up every surface I encountered fast as a blink.
In no time, I was before the Commissioner’s form. He looked ready to fight. Like if he was here in person, we would have descended into fisticuffs like braindead people from several centuries ago.
But I had no intention of acting directly against him. That was already being taken care of. I needed to take care of my side of things.
I displaced him from the centre of control.
He protested, tried to block me, but it wasn’t working. His form flickered too much. Even every curse he tried to throw at me came out stuttering and interrupted.
When his form solidified for a brief second, and he attempted to stop me, I had someone backing me up.
Selene stood between me and the Commissioner. “Do what you need to do, Mister. Can you stop it?”
“I’m going to try.”
“Don’t you dare, X-18—”
Like before, the Commissioner’s voice once more cut out as his form flickered. I grinned. Then took over control.
I didn’t establish myself as the driver in delivery girl’s body. That wasn’t what I needed. Instead, I took over Commissioner Gregor’s driver of control.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
As in, I took his place in his life drive inserted into Selene.
Gregor was apoplectic at my brazen actions, but I wasn’t done. From the life drive, I dispersed myself in the exact same fashion, using the same connections, spreading myself into a titanic form that took over the mindscape of what remained of Aliya’s centre of control.
Where Aliya herself was fending off the Commissioner. The vista had changed. Instead of a cloudy, stormy area, it was once again that field of white wheat. A field where the Commissioner had reduced dramatically in size, flickering in and out with Aliya’s form.
I didn’t know how Aliya had returned. But she had. She was giving me precious time. Time I couldn’t waste.
My consciousness seated back into place. I could once again see the real world.
And shit, wasn’t it a sight.
The Arclight was going haywire. Smoke rose in columns everywhere from Underlevel as the Arclight blitzed through it all. A rain of flaming debris plummeted in from above, crashing down as the rest of Silver City suffered the same as Underlevel.
More pressing was the sheer forces that the Untouchables had sent to tame the source of the mayhem.
Armadas of battleships had floated down from higher levels, each accompanied by squads of Mechdromoi. Needless to say, they were still firing upon my exact location. Like me, the Commissioner had set up a shield of pulsing Arclight, though his was larger and more concentrated to deal with the incredible firepower raining down upon us.
The constant shots were accompanied by siren warnings from our enemy to stop, to surrender, before everything was destroyed.
For a second, my drive was stymied. So much destruction. Just one moment of lapse, and Commissioner Gregor had almost destroyed everything.
I steeled myself. No. Giving. Up.
It took some effort, and I was constantly worried that either Aliya or Selene would fail, but I did my best to focus. It took a great deal of concentration to draw back the Arclight that Gregor had sent surging through the power lines.
After about a minute, my efforts started paying dividends. The destruction was slowing down. I was honestly surprised. Even the constant fire from the enemy was stopping. But I couldn’t hold onto the building Arclight for long. I didn’t have Aliya to helpfully tell me how much I held, but considering how my body was breaking apart, I had to deal with it.
So, I unleashed all the raging, overpowering Arclight in the only direction I could.
Straight at the battleships and Mechdromoi.
Beams and blasts erupted out of my body. The mechs fell. Their accompanying battleships followed. The exploding crashes made the air itself vibrate.
I didn’t care about the survivors’ retaliation. What I had to focus on was doing my best to hold together my body and the arms I had left to channel the Arclight in the direction I wanted.
“I won’t be able to hold it for long,” I said. I felt like my voice echoed through both Selene’s mindscape, and through Aliya’s too, because I was controlling it even if I was anchored in the former. “Selene, I’m almost done for. You’ll need to be ready to let go when I give the signal.”
“What about you, Mister?” she asked.
It was almost touching that she could sound concerned while she was contending against the Commissioner. Or maybe that asshole was being kept busy by Aliya.
“Don’t worry about me,” I insisted. “You don’t deserve to die in this madness. Watch out for the signal. You’ll need to retake full control of yourself as soon as I say so. Get ready.”
She protested. Something about me sacrificing myself and whatever righteous drivel only the youth can ever have since you need way too much hope for that. But then, who was I kidding. Wasn’t I stopping all this because I had some shred of hope? If not for myself, at least for the world I had lived as a part of?
“Sorry Aliya,” I said.
I wasn’t saying sorry for her arm. She barely had any left anyway. No, this time, I was sincerely sorry, because my last move destroyed my new body—Aliya’s original body—entirely.
Even if I didn’t have her helpfully yelling at me about the building Arclight, I had a good enough sense to know that I’d let it gather up far too much. Now or never. I had to deal it with it all in one final blow.
“You’ll kill us all, X-18,” Commissioner Gregor shouted. I didn’t know from where. Maybe from the spot where he was tussling with Aliya’s consciousness, maybe from where he fought against Selene, maybe through all his connections that I’d taken over. His life drive that I had rooted myself into. “You’ll be the end of everything I ever tried. Like you always were!”
I wanted to ignore him. The real world called to me. All the Arclight was bursting free, forming arcs more vicious than lightning bolts raining down from a storm. Energy had concentrated to such a degree, the superheated air was twisting in a cyclone as Arclight sparked and ignited around me.
But the Commissioner’s words, screw them, were worming into me in a way I couldn’t ignore.
“Always?” I said. “Always? I was the one who let you get this far. I’m the one who helped you make all this. If not me, who else is supposed to end this?”
The Commissioner laughed. There was such mania in it, so much hysteria, it was almost like the mindscapes of both Aliya and Selene seemed to pause. Like their struggles against Gregor had come to such an abrupt halt, they were momentarily confused.
“You have no idea how right you are, Xylen Sears,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re right. You are one hundred percent correct. It all started with you. You are responsible for me, for all of us, coming this far.”
“What—”
“The Untouchable you almost touched? The man whom you nearly killed in your revolutionary quest? The—”
For a moment, I forgot about the outside world. “No.”
“—life you nearly ended?”
“No.”
“Yes. You reached me. You got to me. You killed me. That Untouchable, that was me, X-18. That was me.”
My mind reeled a little. It wasn’t just the revelation. Shocking as that was, it alone wasn’t affecting my ability to focus.
I was losing myself in those memories again. Those harsh, horrid nights where I had been a revolutionary, where I’d shed the blood of many to shake Silver City to its core. Where I had made the formerly complacent Untouchables fear for their very lives, forcing them to become defensive and regard everyone and everything that wasn’t them as potential enemies.
That moment that had worsened the already terrible balance between the higher levels and Underlevel. That single incident that had unleashed pogroms into innocent slums and hostels to uproot any and all rebellious sentiment, destabilizing and ruining the lives of thousands.
A single moment, at the peak of which I stood, that had led to so many—so, so many—being consigned to death, in one form or another.
Death.
Dead.
All because of me. Because of my failure. Because of my attempt to do just what Commissioner Gregor was attempting to do now.
“I may have been one of the Untouchables,” Gregor said. “One of the richest and most powerful men in all of Silver City. But I wasn’t unkind. I wasn’t out of touch. I knew of the gap between us and the downtrodden. I knew we had to do something before things came to a head. I was even trying, setting pieces into motion, making little progress here and there.”
I laughed. It rang all too hollow. “Little progresses? You really believed you had any idea what the people in Underlevel suffered? What those you considered beneath you went through on a daily basis?”
“Of course I couldn’t! I wasn’t one of them. But intellectually, I knew there was suffering. I tried helping where I could. Look at Selene. This delivery girl. I pulled her up. I made sure she will have a future out of this shithole. And there are others like her I’ve uplifted through the years. But of course, for revolutionaries like you, for radicals, it’s never enough.”
I didn’t know where we were even conversing. Were we inside either of the bodies that didn’t really belong to either of us? Or were we trapped in Gregor’s life drive? It was ironic, to think that we’d been shunted to only spot we really deserved.
“Minor little victories that only fed your ego was never going to help,” I said. “They’d never make a real difference.”
The Commissioner laughed again, manic and hysterical again. “Yes. Yes, they weren’t. So now, here we are. When I intend to make a real difference.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Fuck what you meant. When you nearly killed me, I understood. When you murdered the only one of the Untouchables who could have helped you in your overarching goals, I understood. This world is completely fucked. Top to bottom. Ninety percent of the people who had the misfortune of being born on this planet are the reason why it’s all going to shit.”
“So what, you’re going to kill us all?”
“Yes. Yes. Nothing will be fixed till you’re all dead. Till we get to restart. Wipe the slate clean, because the current rendition of humanity has sunk so far, there’s no hope of coming out into the light again. You’re all dead in truth. Just because you’ve had the freedom to act alive doesn’t mean I can’t make sure you truly die. And then, when you’re all gone, you’ll be history. You’ll be a cautionary tale for everyone to learn from. Good fucking riddance.”
“Enough.”
“You—”
“I said enough. This time, I’m taking control. I have learned my lesson. And if I have to teach you the same thing, Commissioner, then so be it.”
I refocused on where I was supposed to be. This was nothing more than a distraction. Commissioner Gregor yelled at me, cursing me on and on, but I was back in the driver’s seat of Selene’s body. I was back in full awareness of the world. Where everything was going to shit.
Good thing time was weird in mental spaces. I still had time to act. So, I acted.
The Arclight started concentrating with the force of an intercontinental detonator. I had already said sorry to Aliya. Only thing left was giving the signal.
“Now,” I yelled out to Selene. To delivery girl, who had been tricked into all this, who deserved so much better, who had an actual future to look forward to. “Now, Selene. Get out!”
I let go of my mental hold on Selene’s control centre. I lost all connection to Aliya’s body, though Selene was kind enough to allow me access to her vision for the time being.
The Operator’s body slumped, but I didn’t see much of it. I had no idea where Gregor was, but I couldn’t worry about it. My part was done. The Arclight concentrated into a column that grew thicker and thicker in seconds. Delivery girl was rushing away as fast as she could, but was she going to make it under cover soon enough?
“I hope you know what the future holds now, X-18,” Gregor said, his words staticky and fading.
I didn’t know where his voice was coming from. Shit, I couldn’t make neither head nor tails of my current situation. Where was I really located?
The last things I saw were Selene diving underneath a familiar plate of thick metal, and the column of Arclight rising higher and higher into the sky, lighting up all of Silver City. I almost laughed. The city really was silver for once.
With a static burst, my connection was lost. My consciousness ended abruptly.
----------------------------------------
I woke up as a dog again. By now, I was familiar with the sensation. The point of view, the unending urge to eat, to go on walks, to bounce and bound around without a care in the world. After what I’d gone through, the feelings were way too intense.
It didn’t help that I was confused as shit as to what I was doing inside Mutton again.
“Oh, you’re finally conscious,” Aliya said. “I was starting to get afraid I’d need to resort to more drastic measures to make you wake up.”
“I—”
My words slurred a bit. I cleared my throat, though I didn’t really have one in Mutton’s mental cyberspace. But I could imagine it. I could imagine coughing and clearing my throat and getting my bearings back.
“What in the world is going on, Operator?” I asked.
Aliya laughed. Her ghostly presence inside Mutton’s mindscape knelt beside the dog himself, who woofed at me in greeting. “There’s not a lot to explain. There’s actually a lot more for us to decide.”
“I’m… confused still.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Remember that moment you had those connectors from Mutton attached to me? I slipped in my life drive into Mutton at that moment.”
I stared at her for a second, then laughed. “No way.”
“Yes way. You converted your consciousness into a viral vector to join my body, and I got the same idea. I converted my life drive into a viral vector and sneaked it into Mutton as a backup.” She smirked. “It was funny to see you didn’t even notice.”
I had to shake my head. “That explains you. How am I here, though? I already burned up my life drive after you killed me the fist time. I shouldn’t be able to use it again.”
“That’s the fun part. We didn’t use your life drive. That’s done for, as you said. Instead, we used the Commissioner’s life drive that was inserted into Selene.”
“Oh.”
I was starting to understand now. In that chaotic fray against the Commissioner, I had used my viral vector to infect myself into Gregor’s life drive. Somehow, they had managed to pull that life drive out of Selene and insert it into Mutton, which had somehow activated it enough to bring me back to life inside my beloved little fur-metal pet.
It sounded kind of wild, enough that I wanted to ask Aliya if I was dreaming or not, but I kept my mouth shut about that. I was grateful to be alive still. Instead, I tried to access Mutton’s vision to look outside.
“Woah,” I said.
I was looking outside through a window high up in some building. There was a pretty clear view of what I took to be the centre of Underlevel, the area that had formerly housed the central Morgue. The same Morgue that Aliya had Operated.
Well, there was no Morgue there anymore. Just fires and smoke. And a lot of Arclight, much of it still cannoning into a spiralling column that lit up the entire sky and everything underneath.
“Woah, indeed,” Selene said.
I looked up at her. “Thanks for… well, everything. This your apartment?”
“Not my real one. Just a safehouse that, uh, he had.”
He. Commissioner Gregor. A part of me squirmed inside, remembering his last words. Remembering the fact that the Commissioner wasn’t dead.
“It’s not over,” Aliya said. Somehow, she had access to the Augmented vocalizer I had installed in Mutton. It was so weird to hear her speak in my voice. “The Arclight will keep surging for a while. I… don’t know what effect that’s going to have on people, but the higher ups can’t be pleased. Especially not with so many of their lapdogs dead and with all their power cut.”
“Yeah… things aren’t going to settle down any time soon,” I said.
Unlike me or Aliya, though, Selene looked a lot more resolved. “It’s a new beginning, I think. An opportunity for something different. Maybe not necessarily better, not yet at least, but something we can work towards.”
I remembered the last words I had exchanged with the Commissioner again. Those revelations, those mentions of learning lessons, of death.
And that was it, wasn’t it?
I really wasn’t dead. In the end, I had survived. Like I always did. Sure, the degree of survival was debatable, considering I was trapped in a dog’s body with someone else.
But I was alive. My story was alive.
I laughed. “Well, I hadn’t envisioned a new beginning as a dog.”
Selene giggled. Inside my head, Aliya laughed too, and Mutton joined in with joyful little yips.
“Well, first thing’s first,” Aliya said. “We have to find bodies. And then…”
“And then we’ll tackle this new world as it needs us,” I said. “That’ll be enough.”
I stared at the relentless column of Arclight. A column that stretched from Underlevel, that passed through all the levels of Silver City, to spear into the sky. Commissioner Gregor had achieved his goal to some extent. Things were going to change now.
And that was where I came in. I had survived. Now, I had to make sure, that Underlevel continued to survive too.