I was looking around everywhere kind of suspiciously, but it wasn’t long before Aliya announced that my vigilance wasn’t necessary. She had taken care of all the surveillance before coming here.
“I scrambled them,” she said, when I had asked how.
“Scrambled?” delivery girl asked. “Like eggs?”
“…kind of, yeah. Some I hacked into the network and disabled them that way. Others I just used Arclight to bust ‘em up on my way here. I say disabled but really, turning them off would just paint a big red flag, so instead, I sneakily rewound their timestream.”
“Uh…”
“Basically, they’re seeing the same things all the time.”
“If you say so.”
With Aliya in the lead, we went through deserted streets pretty quickly before we reached our destination. I was still cautious about being spotted. Not that I didn’t trust Aliya to know what she was doing, but it never hurt to be careful. Thankfully, we met nobody.
Though, I did hear sirens in the distance. Not good. I needed access to the central stations.
“Wait,” delivery girl said as she did her best to keep up with my and Aliya’s longer strides. “We’re heading back to a lake? Didn’t we just get out of one?”
“Long story,” Aliya said. “But we need a safe spot that won’t be found. Any old underground bunker won’t do against the Culls.”
“Culls?”
“The people who’re after our big, armless buddy here.”
I grunted. “Damn, I killed a Cull already? Maybe he was a weak one. Went down a little too easy.” I turned to delivery girl. “That’s the proper name of the big guns you mentioned.”
Delivery girl didn’t look happy to learn their proper names. Culls were supposed to be the elite of the elite that the Untouchables could send to do any task that required force. I fancied my chances against any of them on a good day. But still. The assassin I’d killed hadn’t been anything too difficult.
“You lost an arm,” Aliya pointed out.
“Fair point.”
When we reached the edge of the lake inside another park, we followed the same procedure as the last one. We had to jump straight into the water. At least this one was a little cleaner than the last one.
It was only once I was submerged that the “safe house” Aliya had prepared became visible.
She headed to the submarine and opened the hatch on the side after pressing her palm against its security panel, holding it open until both I and delivery girl were inside. Once the hatch closed, we had to wait about a minute until all the water was pumped out of the water lock and we were standing on wet, but solid ground, breathing air again.
“No shitting way you have an actual submarine under a lake.” Delivery girl blinked at us both with a wide eye. The ocular implant was impassive as ever. “I mean, how’d you even get it inside the lake? It doesn’t connect to any waterways. No way you used the tunnel. That’s way too small for something like this.”
With a wave, Aliya opened the main bay doors to lead us into the central room. “You’d be surprised how much persistence pays off.”
Delivery girl took a second to process that. “You mean you actually brought this whole thing through the tunnel in parts and built it entirely underwater?” She stared. “That’s… that’s insane.”
Unbelievable was what I would have said, but considering I’d been roped into the sub’s construction project a long time ago, I didn’t have much to say.
Aliya was careful. Anything simply underground would have some entrance that could be compromised. Detected by vibe-scans, countered by disabling any lines coming out of the place, and so on.
But few people would suspect the existence of a medium-sized submarine inside a lake in Underlevel. Better yet, the sub’s light-fractal coating would make sure no one would spot it, plus its stabilizer counteracted the vibration scanners as well. Aliya had tricked it up to make sure we’d be hidden as long as she willed it.
“You’re completely compromised now,” I said as the lights came on.
The interior was sparse. A central table surrounded by stools, not even any proper chairs. Various tools were holstered all along the walls. A door led to the bedroom on one side, while another opened up the small toilet. But everything was neat and tidy. Cared for.
Aliya took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. “Just don’t make me regret it, Xylen.”
“I’ll try my best, Operator.”
A loud yip bounced along the sub’s walls, before Mutton broke out of the bedroom.
“Oh, puppy!” delivery girl squealed.
Mutton rushed at us, skipped past me entirely, then slammed into the open arms of delivery girl. Aliya and delivery girl both laughed at the dog’ antics, though I just shook my head. Damn dog really had just dissed me.
“Looks like you’ve got your priorities straight, boy,” I said.
Mutton barked in agreement. Then finally came over and nudged my leg. I snorted, then patted his head.
I turned to delivery girl again, who was, once again, shivering. “Hand me the head, please. Then Aliya can help you warm up.”
“Yeah,” Aliya said. “Don’t worry, you’re safe here. I’ve even got some snacks in case you’re hungry.”
The mention of snacks had delivery girl thrusting the disembodied head of my would-be killer at me before she trudged off after Aliya. It also had Mutton yipping in delight and rushing after them like said snacks were actually meant for him. I shook my head with a little smile.
Then focused on my task ahead. Time to get to work.
The tools I needed were all here. I probably should have tried to get a new arm so that the whole process was easier, but I was eager to start hacking.
Aliya had a hub device that I could connect to the assassin’s head. The ports I’d normally have used were too damaged for a direct connection, but that was alright. I squeezed and shaped some wires, performing a little soldering where necessary, before I had everything hooked up.
Then I took one wire and jury-rigged it to the connector I needed to attach to the back of my head. A small hexagon popped open, allowing me to insert the connector.
Now, it was go-time.
The network opened up in my Interface. I lost track of what was going on inside the sub as I went into a deep dive via Aliya’s hub device. Devices like those essentially allowed anyone to immerse themselves fully into the network. It was no small a marvel of modern times.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
With the right inserts, you could become a part of the three-dimensional world of your favourite show or game, busy your mind with anything from visiting the other side of the planet to building your own virtual house even while sleeping. Doctors used these to contact people in comas and retrieve their consciousness back into their body.
Reality itself became Augmented.
Me? I just bulldozered my way into the comm network my would-be killer was a part of. Different people’s Interfaces visualized the network lines differently. I found it easiest to see them as a stream of rivers and tributaries. All I had to swim along the right lines, follow the correct channels, and then I arrived at my destination.
When hacking into someone’s mental cyberspace, you had to wade through a lot of bullshit. All the things that made a person, well, a person wasn’t what I wanted.
I didn’t care for the memories of the people he cared about, I had no idea why he was interested in modelling old-fashioned motorbikes, and I really didn’t want to know about the porn my would-be killer jerked off to.
Thankfully, I was experienced. It took only a minute before I was able to navigate to the repository where the assassin’s Interface connected to that of his colleagues’ comm lines.
I checked out the old logs his brain kept via his memory conduits. There were a lot of little chats and communications that I didn’t want to waste time on. But I eventually landed on a conversation that I judged to be at least somewhat helpful.
C-03: One’s enough at each Morgue, C-08.
C-08: And yet, we need three to hound this so-called Juggernaut?
C-03: You’ve got no idea who he is beside his name. Trust me, three is the bare minimum.
C-05: If it were up to me, I’d just nuke the entire place.
C-08: Isn’t that what he wants to do? Use the Morgues to destroy everything? Totally cracked in the head.
C-05: Well, we can let him nuke Underlevel and—
C-03: Enough.
There wasn’t much else to the conversation, but I had learned what I had come to. So that was the threat the Commissioner had used to rally the Untouchables and their Culls to come after me with such intensity. They were afraid of their precious power source going out.
But that wasn’t all. A nagging suspicion I’d held for a while was dawning into a certainty. I’d often wondered why the Commissioner needed me to get my targets’ bodies to the Morgue. Why he had me shooting them up with a specific number of Arclight-enhanced bullets. I’d wondered what the Commissioner’s end-game plan was.
Now, I felt I had figured it out.
Before I pulled out of the hub, I decided to plant some decoys. I concocted a coverup story about how the last altercation had led to my would-be killer getting captured, as well as promising I’d counter-captured the asshole—as in, me. Now, they all just had to meet up and relocate my sorry ass to wherever the Culls took their prisoners.
I was working under the assumption they even wanted to capture me instead of killing me outright. There was good reason for that. If I was supposed to be this big criminal target, then they’d want my head on a proverbial pike to wave around at everyone else.
After determining whether I was working alone or not.
It was strange. Weird that, even in this day and age where people changed bodies like outfits, some sort of physical proof was still necessary for propaganda reasons.
And then I was done. I couldn’t send off the fake messages just yet. If I tried to connect to the broader network, I’d send off an alert to every Cull in Underlevel about my exact location, and then we’d all be screwed. Instead, I need to exercise restraint and wait until an opportune moment to reactivate my would-be killer’s connection.
“All done?” Aliya asked as I emerged from the deep dive, disconnecting myself from the wires.
“How long have you been watching?” I asked. “Kind of creepy, you know that, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “Find anything useful?”
I gave her a small rundown of everything I’d discovered. But I made sure to end on my suspicion about the Commissioner’s plan. “What do you suspect he plans with the bodies, Operator?”
“You sound like you already know, Xylen,” she said.
“I have suspicions.” I pointedly glared at her. “But I can’t know as much as someone who’s a part of the whole plan.”
Aliya stared at me impassively for a while. “What’s he told you?”
“Told me I was the Culls’ target. That’s it.”
“Then I’m afraid that’s all you get to know. It’s not on me to reveal anything further.”
“Is that right?”
I didn’t wait for her answer. Instead, I called up the Commissioner on the comm line. There was no answer for a while.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Pick up.”
Aliya sighed. “You’re safe here, Xylen. We’ll be safe. We don’t need to worry about anything, so long as we stay here. The Culls will go away eventually, the Untouchables will give up and prop up some nobody as their successfully eliminated target.”
“Just like they did last time, huh?”
“Yes. Just like last time.”
I turned away, resisting the urge to slam my fist into something, only to realize that I was missing the arm I normally would have preferred to do it with.
“X-18,” Commissioner Gregor said. “I’m glad you’ve survived so far.”
I froze. That wasn’t from my call. The Commissioner’s voice had come out loud. Real. With widening eyes, I turned back towards Aliya. But it wasn’t the Operator who had magically turned into my boss.
Delivery girl emerged from behind Aliya. “Your suspicions are correct, X-18. The Morgue—all the Morgues, in fact—are going to be destroyed. And in the process, the tyranny that Silver City rests on will be destroyed as well.”
I wasn’t normally surprised. Going through a war and a revolution, seeing the heights of humanity and the lowest of lows, doesn’t leave much room for surprise.
But for once, in a long while, I was left a little speechless.
Mutton had pad-clanked in behind them too, but he was wisely staying back for now. Little guy had a knack for sensing tension.
“Aliya is right, however,” delivery girl said. No, Commissioner Gregor said. “This place will remain safe. Even as Underlevel dies and takes the Culls and all that the Untouchables hold dear within it, we—”
The mention of Underlevel dying finally snapped me out of my daze. “You’re not satisfied with taking out the Morgues? You’re destroying all of Underlevel too?”
“It’s an unfortunate side effect, but it’s necessary.”
Necessary… That basically ensured what I’d suspected. Commissioner Gregor wasn’t happy with just shutting down the Morgues and the power they supplied. That wouldn’t be enough anyway. The higher levels had backup power they could rely on till the Morgues were functional again.
Oh no, the Commissioner had planned for something grander. He wasn’t simply shutting down the Morgues, he was making them burst. Forcing their Arclight to carry through the power lines and devastate everything they were connected to. Including all the structures in Underlevel.
I tried to clear my head. It was so odd hearing the Commissioner’s voice emerge from delivery girl. But that was another point that had me worried.
“I want to ask you a lot of things, Commissioner,” I said, trying to organize my mind into some semblance of order. “But first of all, tell me this. Is delivery girl going to be okay? Is this even… did she agree to this?”
“Yes, she agreed to host one of my life drives from the very beginning. Don’t worry, I’m not taking over some girl’s body. This is only a temporary means in case I needed to act more directly.”
I couldn’t really decipher that. He wanted to bring down all the higher levels, plunge them into a state of powerlessness. And in the process, he would destroy Underlevel too. Yet, here he was, in the midst of that potential destruction.
Although, he did state that this exact spot was supposed to be safe. Like it mattered.
“Calm down, X-18,” Gregor said. “It’s not like you to become upset over necessary costs. You of all people know the price of war. You know the sacrifices needed to enact true change. Why are you letting it get to you?”
Why was I letting it all get to me? Me, a person who had just blown the top of a building off without caring to see if anyone was inside. Me, a person who had ridden on the backs of the sacrifice of his comrades, in wars and revolutions, to come out alive at any cost.
What right did someone like me have to care about the destruction of an entire city? What right did I have to care about the lives lost in the process?
What right did the dead have to care for the living?
“It’s not the cost that’s bothering me,” I said, realizing it myself as I spoke the words. “Not on its own, at least.” I turned back around, facing delivery girl. “What’s making me angry is the fact that you consider everyone here, everyone in Underlevel, dead.”
I didn’t need to look at Aliya to see the way she had started. She had said much the same thing back at the Morgue, hadn’t she?
Mutton whined. He looked like he wanted to come over and comfort me. Good boy. But I jerked my head and he stayed back. He stayed safe.
“I do not—”
“You do,” I insisted. “You think I’m dead too, Commissioner. That’s what you told me, right? Dead men tell the best tales? You think we’re all dead, so you’re writing our story for us. Well, this dead guy doesn’t think so.”
“Enough, X-18. This is not unprecedented. You knew the cost. When you took your fight to the higher levels, when you struck at the Untouchables themselves, were you so naïve to think they wouldn’t strike back at the very people you were fighting for?”
I focused on Aliya. “And you’re okay with this? I remember what you said, back at the Morgue, but really? Destroying Underlevel?”
Before she could answer, the Commissioner stepped forward. “Don’t tell me you didn’t expect this, X-18.”
I didn’t answer. All I could do was offer a scathing look, before turning back and grabbing the head on the table.
“Where are you going?” Aliya asked.
“Me?” I threw the two of them a short grin. “I’m making my choice.”
They protested, of course. Aliya tried to stop me and Commissioner Gregor even went so far as to order me to halt. But I was on nobody’s payroll now. I connected the head to the hub device, turned it on, and then broadcasted a message to everyone.
Letting the Culls know just where we all were.