“Shit.” Commissioner Gregor was baring delivery girl’s teeth. The formerly innocent expression was now twisted into some caricature of anger. “Shit. Shit. What have you done, X-18?”
I laughed softly. “Honestly, Commissioner, I—”
“I don’t care.” He jerked his head away. “Keep him occupied, Aliya.”
The Operator’s eyes widened as she faced Gregor. “But—”
“I said keep him occupied.”
Ignoring Aliya’s reluctance, delivery girl, with Commissioner Gregor controlling her, stalked off. Mutton whined low as he went ignored. Poor little boy. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t the girl he had grown fond of in there anymore.
But I couldn’t. Not when my attention was arrested by the Operator’s multiple arms re-emerging from her back, all of which were pointed at me.
“Are you really going to go with this, Operator?” I asked. “Have you really given up on Underlevel?”
A part of me was focusing on what the Commissioner might be doing. I wanted to find out what contingencies he had. There was no point in throwing up a little obstacle here, in this sub, if he had an easy means of making sure things sailed smoothly. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Aliya. Not with her regret giving way to deadly resolve.
“Looks like the Commissioner underestimated you.” Aliya pressed her lips together for a moment, her expression hardening. “Underestimated just how good you really were.”
I shrugged with the only shoulder I still had. “Sure, but the question is, did he underestimate you too?”
The points of the multiple arms flared to life. Arclight burned on them with frightening intensity. Fatal intensity.
Old instincts burned to life within me. Didn’t matter how hopeless things looked, didn’t matter how unmatched I might be in my current condition. I had run out of a lot of my power and ammo over my many fights to get here, and I hadn’t had a single opportunity to resupply.
I was at a significant disadvantage. Even against a non-combatant like Operator Aliya, right now, I stood little chance of winning.
“At least you aren’t underestimating me, Xylen,” she said. “I’ll make sure to make this quick.”
The first jolts of compressed Arclight fired at me. Like I said, the old instincts were active. I moved. A quick dive sent the Arclight jolts crashing into the wall behind me. I rolled, getting back to my feet, rushing Aliya’s position.
Mutton was barking wildly, but he was also staying in position. I was on the case. If he tried to get mixed up, it would only complicate things.
“Why?” I shouted as I thrust my arm forward as soon as I got close.
Aliya was nimble, twisting away from my grasp. Two of her mech arms stabbed in with the speed of jackhammers.
Points of growing pain flashed to livid life along my waist and back, forcing me to stagger. My senses immediately went woozy. Smart. Sacrifice power to kill me, which she couldn’t have done easily anyway, and instead, focus on debilitating me.
I sank to my knee. “How will you feel, Operator, when all of this crumbles around you?” Even my voice started slurring. “How will you f-find what you really w-want? Unless… you d-don’t want anything at all.” I laughed. It was almost alarming how it was broken. “Unless y-you’re dead already, Aliya.”
There was the slightest of twitches on her face before the mechanical arms closed around me. The final jolt of pain ripped my very soul out of my body.
----------------------------------------
I floated in nothing. There was a time when I wasn’t aware of anything, where I existed in nothing. I couldn’t even feel anything. It was moments like these that reminded how much the ability to feel was connected to a physical body.
Not that I realized it then. Even though I had some strange sense of awareness, an acknowledgement of my own being, I couldn’t really think.
I could only experience a transition I hadn’t gone through in ages.
My consciousness dropped into water. Metaphorically speaking. If I hadn’t gone through the dead Cull’s head not that long ago, I would have been quite disoriented. Thanks to that, though, I was immediately aware of what was going on.
I began floating downstream. Strong pulls tried to tug me this way and that, new sensations and urges that were entirely alien and foreign to me. They were accompanied by bright images, flashes of memories and an injection of emotions that were simple, yet powerfully intense.
There was the urge to eat. An overpowering urge. A sensation that was already driving me a little wild, forcing to me to come up with ways I could next munch down on something delicious.
Less muted than that, but still what I’d call way too strong, were the urges to run. To leap, to bound, to jump and basically exercise all the energy stored within. To unleash the power I knew I held, not caring what was damaged and not heeding any caution. It was an urge to experience the freedom that an open space could provide. To smell, see, and absorb the world.
And, curiously, there was an extreme need to mourn. There was a rising sadness that needed venting, like a volcanic eruption climbing higher and higher.
It was then that my life drive activated and pulled my consciousness into the right place. My life came back properly. I was once again aware of where I really was. Inside the sub. Where my original body was slumped and bleeding out, where it was far too close despite my seemingly literal out-of-body experience moments ago.
“He’s got a backup life drive somewhere.” Commissioner Gregor’s voice was warbled, like I was partially underwater. Surprisingly, I could hear regret in his words too. “I just hope he doesn’t follow up.”
“We have no time to go after him. If they’re coming here already…”
Loud steps walked away from my position. “I’ll see you later, Operator. Stay alive till the time comes. I need to act.”
The sounds of the water lock opening and letting in the lake water was muted the same way.
Operator Aliya stood before me, looking down at me. “Now, what am I going to do with you?”
“Woof,” I replied.
I had the ability to talk in Mutton’s body. But pretending I couldn’t was the least I could do to get some satisfaction after the way I had just been killed.
The real Mutton barked beside me in the mindscape. Right now, he was a mere presence, a ghostly blue shape of my dog. There was some obvious confusion and reluctance, but we were working through it. I understood I had more or less hijacked his body’s control away from him, and I couldn’t truly process the emotions he was experiencing for it.
That wasn’t to say I hadn’t tried to make it smooth. I had inserted and programmed the life drive in such a way that the transition from Mutton controlling his body to me doing it would be as seamless as possible.
Still. I intended to give control back to Mutton as soon as I could. As soon as I had another body I could call my own.
“Easy now.” Operator Aliya’s face was hard, uncompromising. “Just because your master’s dead doesn’t mean you have to follow suit. Stay calm, do as I say, and you won’t be hurt.”
I wondered if my new—and hopefully temporary—body was glaring and growling at her. Just to be sure, I mollified my expression as much as I could. It was oddly difficult to control a dog’s face.
Aliya took a moment to consider. She looked conflicted. It was almost illuminating to see how openly she let the emotions flow across her face now that there was no one to observe her. I could see the conflicts racing through her head, and I was a damn dog.
She didn’t want to be responsible for the death of a seemingly innocent pet. That was obvious. If she left Mutton here, the Culls who would be arriving soon were very likely to find and eradicate Mutton’s body, all to remove any trace of the existence of the Juggernaut of Korkorrain.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Or, they could also kidnap my current body, determined to hack into the canine brain and rip out every memory it possessed to unearth whatever truth they were seeking.
All in all, I’d be dying for real if Aliya decided to ignore me and move on by herself.
But she clearly didn’t want that. A part of me really wanted to find out just how much—if any—guilt she was feeling at having supposedly killed me. Although, considering the Commissioner’s warning about my life drive, she was probably certain I wasn’t really dead.
She just didn’t know I was still alive inside the sub.
Aliya sighed. “Alright, fine. You can come along, at least until we’re outside. Then you’re on your own, got that?”
I barked with eager agreement. Oh, hmm. Maybe I ought to be a bit sadder, considering my corpse was bleeding out right there. So, I looked to my right and added a loud whine too.
If that pulled on Aliya’s heartstrings, she didn’t show it. Her moral quandary was dealt with. Now, she was busy again. While I pretended to be sad at my own death, sniffing at the body and licking the cold face—classic tragic behaviour—I noted how Aliya flitted around inside the sub, gathering supplies and weapons, getting ready to head out fast.
There was no need to take the head anymore. It had served its purpose. Instead, she looked for ammunition and weapons. Aliya’s body wasn’t really built for combat. She had only managed to kill me because of my injured state, and it was likely she might need to fight.
The sub had some basic weaponry squirreled away here and there. Aliya’s small handgun wasn’t going to be that helpful, but she secured an Arclight blade and a shotgun. Much better.
When I noticed the latter was a Shrader, I grinned. It would be easy to disassemble and reassemble it in basically a few seconds, with its disassembled state easily hidden within her backpack with the half-dozen mechanical arms.
Aliya then replaced her Arclight drive with a new one to keep herself topped up. Lastly, she made sure to grab any ID she would need for the Morgue—not that she didn’t already have enough on her person, but I guessed it helped to be sure—plus some tools that her hands didn’t possess.
“Come on, Mutton,” Aliya called. “It’s time we got going. Remember, no funny business.”
That was my cue. I pad-clanked to her, trying to hold onto a reasonable mixture of eagerness and reluctance. It was harder than I had expected. Same went for actually walking in this body. This… was going to need some getting used to.
She walked over to the water lock door. I had no idea if I could get through the lake properly in Mutton’s body. Just walking had been troubling, I had no idea if I could keep up with the swimming too. Ah, well. If I started drowning, I at least had a not-completely-morally-bankrupt Augmented human to save me.
“What…?” Aliya was tapping on the security panel that would normally have opened the water lock. “No. No. Ah, shit.”
I tried to take a proper look, which was a little difficult from my current perspective. The panel was glitching out, displaying weird numbers and static. Aliya couldn’t access it and open the water lock normally. She could have tried brute-forcing my way out, but her body didn’t possess the same kind of power that my old body would have.
Basically, we were trapped inside a submarine with enemies closing in fast. Ah, shit was an understatement.
“He did this!” Aliya said. She thumped her hand against the security panel in frustration. “That—that asshole. He trapped us. He screwed me over.”
I laughed. It came out as a series of short barks in complete rhythm that was no doubt extremely weird to hear from a dog. I just couldn’t help it.
Aliya was staring down at me like she was regretting her decision to take me along. “Did you just laugh, mutt?”
“Don’t call him a mutt just cause you got tricked by your boss,” I said.
Aliya leaped back, eyes widening. I couldn’t fault her for her reaction. Dogs weren’t supposed to talk.
Honestly, the only reason I had ever installed a speech Augment into Mutton was for this exact scenario. I had, of course, made sure it could only be activated via the life drive. Seriously, I didn’t need to hear Mutton yelling out “munchies!” all day long.
“Xylen?” Aliya’s eyes were goggling a little. “How—oh, no way. You had your life drive in your dog?”
I was about to sarcastically reply that no, I was still Mutton, I just hadn’t bothered speaking until right this moment. But unfortunately, me having fun at Aliya’s expense was coming to an end. We had no more time to lose.
“How does it feel to be betrayed?” I asked. My voice was staticky, created from a recording and played through an emitter. This wasn’t the work of a real larynx.
Aliya had the grace to look somewhat apologetic, maybe even a little ashamed, but her anger was taking priority. “He really thought I was a loose end too?”
“The Commissioner has made his choices clear,” I said. “Time to make up your own mind, Operator. Are you still with him?”
“And what’s my other option? Go along with the cobber I killed—who’s now a dog, by the way—and stop my boss, only for said dog-man to take revenge on me when we’re all done?”
“Please. You couldn’t kill me even if I was sleeping.”
“That’s what you took away from all that?”
“There’s no time, Operator. Make your decision. Are you with me, or are you—”
The sub shook violently. All the lights flickered as Aliya staggered in place, my little body shaking along with everything. Booms crashed against the sub’s side, water starting to leak in as red alarms flared to life with blaring calls. Oh, yes. Ah, shit was really an understatement now.
“Company’s already here, Operator,” I said. I stared her down, forcing her rising panic to focus on me. “Choose. Now. The Commissioner left you for dead, just like me. You still want to die for him?”
“No.” She shook her head violently. “No. I’ve got no intention of dying.”
“Then give me a body.”
“What?”
“You know you can’t fight against the Culls.” As if to prove my point, another shot landed against the sub’s walls. More alarms blared, more leaks popping up to flood the interior with lake water. “You won’t survive alone. I won’t survive alone. But together, we stand a chance.”
“You want me to let you inside my body?”
“There’s no other option that’ll give us both the best chance to survive. You know I’m right.”
Aliya bit down on her lip and closed her eyes, looking like she wanted to be anywhere but here. Within my mental space, Mutton whimpered. I tried to shush him. Not long now.
“Operator…” I said.
Aliya slipped out a curse. “Fine. Fine.” Her voice broke a little. “We’ve got no other choice. Shit.”
The sub shook so hard at the next blow, Aliya tumbled to the floor. I lost control of my body momentarily too, but I righted myself and sidled up next to her.
“You’ll need to plug in the connectors,” I said.
The warning red lights made Aliya’s face look all the more panicked. At her questioning look, I showed her what I meant.
Aliya flinched as several connectors emerged from Mutton’s mouth like parasites looking for a new host. I had to wonder if the same kind of mental image was horrifying the Operator. At least she complied, grabbing the wires and stuck them to the back of her neck, where a few hexes had disappeared to reveal tiny sockets. Just like with the head of the dead Cull.
“I can’t establish a secure connection this fast,” Aliya said. “You’ll have to get through the defences.”
I cursed. Was there even time for that? There was a sharp tug on my consciousness, and I allowed myself to be pulled away.
A second alter, I was lost in the ocean that made Aliya.
Colours bursts like a kaleidoscope. Images moved by at the speed of light. Sounds rang over and against each other so that every single syllable was unintelligible.
It was all her first line of defence. There were layers to a still-living person’s Augmented brain hack barriers. Just like there was for my home security, I realized wryly. But I was experienced in this. This was the first, automated response that Aliya’s brain was throwing out. For me, it was like swimming through water.
The trick was not to struggle against or try to make sense of it. First, I had to focus, hone my consciousness into a shape to get through it all. None of this was what I wanted. None of it mattered. I had to get past it all.
It took a little bit of time to find the first cracks. The first slivers in the overwhelming avalanche of sensations that the defences were trying to drown me in.
But for an expert consciousness-swimmer such as myself, all I had to do was anchor myself to what I wanted. And that was getting through this barrage of information. Parting the veil until I stood before the stream that ran through the mental space that defined Aliya.
I made it. Now things made sense. There was, again, so much to look at. There was so much that made up a person. Memories and experiences of every second, stored up in their brain, all accessible with the least amount of effort from that point on. That was, until the next defence appeared.
Said defence being the eradication of her own self.
Aliya wasn’t doing this on purpose. This was a built-in response. I had to wonder if a part of her was even now trying to stop it, considering she wouldn’t want her mindscape eradicated.
I looked around, noted how everything was disappearing. All her memories. All the streams and tributaries forming the delta that defined her. All of it, going, going, go—
No. I put a stop to it. Within a consciousness, one’s projection could be basically anything. It just needed to be something that fitted the purpose, and it had to be something that wouldn’t take up too much processing time. I could make myself become some kind of fantastical monster, but that would require me to use up valuable time to acclimatize myself.
Instead, I became me. Whole and real and with Arclight burning in my legs.
I knew which lines to travel. I knew which streams to connect to arrive at her control centre.
It was one of the last things any self-destruct sequence could destroy. That meant it gave me ample time to get in and secure myself in place.
I needed a moment to acclimatize to the representation of Aliya’s control. A field of what looked like wheat but was white as snow was not at all what I had in mind for someone so… scientific as a Morgue Operator.
“How are you so fast?” Aliya asked as she arrived too, her ghostly blue presence flickering behind me. “Doesn’t matter. You have to—”
“I think I know,” I said.
Before she could express her surprise, I conjured a long scythe. Then I sliced through the wheat.
The way Aliya jerked, the absurdity of her control centre’s representation, it all combined to make me laugh. As I laughed, I made sure to carve up the field with careful, precise strikes, partly experimenting and partly ascertaining my assumptions.
I was right. Cutting down the right patches were key to gaining control.
“I’m not dead, Operator,” I said. “Lucky for you, neither are you.”
A patch of white wheat seemed to shimmer. I slammed down the scythe.
----------------------------------------
I blinked. A groan emerged from my mouth as I slowly pushed myself to ungainly, unfamiliar feet. Wow. That had actually worked.
Mutton yipped loudly. I turned to my trusty companion with a bright smile. I’d have to make it up to him for hosting me. Later, though. First, we had to—
The sub shook violently once more. All the lights flickered as I staggered in place, Mutton barking loudly in protest. The booms were accompanied by more water leaking in.
“Sorry about earlier, Mutton,” I said. “Go, hide. Now.”
My voice brooked no argument. With a parting whine, Mutton quickly pad-clanked into the bedroom.
“This isn’t good, Xylen…” Aliya said from inside my head.
I was starting to feel some of her panic, which was exacerbated because I was nowhere near acclimatized to this body’s fight-or-flight response as I had been with my original one.
And then the ceiling broke, letting in a flood of water and a large cyborg. My next would-be killer was here.