The swarm of nanomachines pouring from his insides caused his outer shell to melt, breaking it down into materials. Merging with the floor and taking the materials out of it, Artificer created whole new tracks of artificial muscles, new engines sprung into being, powering up newly created electronic devices and propelling the mighty frame onward.
When a shadow fell on her, the prisoner turned around. Artificer stood up, a five-meter-tall body of steel, assembled in less than a minute. His new arms and legs looked bulky. The head gained a pitch-black visor with green lights flashing behind it. The Naturalborn refused to cover or surrender, she made a punch aimed at his head, leaping high into the air.
He caught the punch containing the shockwave in the palm of his hand. The steel fingers wrapped around the smaller fist, squeezing it to the point of breaking. The panicked foe once more excreted oil from her body, kicking with the aim of taking his head off. He caught both legs, carrying the struggling and screaming body to the steel armchair.
Securing her in place, Artificer connected the cords to her head. The thoughts in the human mind moved via electrical impulses charging along the neural pathways in the brain. This device could read these impulses, sending a whole new picture into his own consciousness and stimulating any memory of his own choosing. The only problem was the time needed to merge two minds together. For a skilled investigator, it would take hours, days, or even weeks to allow themselves to accept outsider memories and relive them like their own.
For him, it took seconds, and for her, it became the worst migraine she had ever experienced in her entire life. The Naturalborn’s brain was a panicked knot of dashing back-and-forth thoughts and memories. The Elite ignored the most recent memories and went deeper, using the oldest memories to find a place to start. He saw darkness and heard screams outside of this darkness, along with chomping sounds. An instinct drove him, no, her, forward to break through the darkness, to crush the eggshell that surrounded her, and to come face to face with a gaping maw that sank its fangs into her shoulder. The animalistic state of devouring everything in sight lasted for a while before sentience clicked like a switch, coming to the Naturalborn a week later along with knowledge of common language.
Valuable information, but useless at the moment. He pried further, plucking the Naturalborn’s name that she had chosen for herself. Tirezi. This custom surprised him, but he chose not to pry further. Four years after her birth, Tirezi stood side by side with another green-skinned Naturalborn, one of much bigger stature and armed with the same daggers that now were in the research area. Four years? He saw a battle, one where the larger Naturalborn, Reza, achieved great ‘victory’ by subjugating a settlement and taking its citizens as slaves. He felt Tirezi’s pride at being chosen to be the right hand of a future dominion ruler. Her future is secured! Maybe she will live for forty years! Or even longer! Maybe she will even get the right to breed!
Stop reading my dreams, you son of a whore! The Naturalborn feebly tried to push him out, recoiling in horror and disgust at the realization of his true nature. You are not even a living being! A tool! A tin-can man!
Further, not what he needed. He saw Reza, standing before a platform made of white marble, a shape of void color, sitting on a perfectly white throne, glaring at the Naturalborn before it with two burning orange orbs. No matter how Artificer tried, he could not force Tirezi to remember how the shape looked exactly. The horror of meeting this person had muddled her memories and caused her to experience a PSTD now.
“That is but a taste of our anger. We are not without mercy, sister. Do you yield?” The black shape asked in an indifferent tone. Most Naturalborns, or at least those whom Iterna met in the past, all spoke with some speech impediment. A hiss, a guttural growl, or whispering… This shape’s voice was a perfect one, with a tone demanding impediment submission from everyone.
Reza laughed, wiping blood from her lower jaw: “I do not.”
Reza charged at her opponent, turning the throne room into mayhem. Tirezi saw how Reza’s limbs had fallen off, cut off so cleanly and so fast that her eyes failed to follow what had just happened. Stone columns fell next, leaving the throne room in chaos. Fear. Uncertainty. Horror.
Further, still wrong memories. In the real world, the Naturalborn’s body went stiff, her breath slowed down, and her heartbeat decreased from the sheer strain of his electric mind rummaging through her biological brain, from surges of electric impacts racing at increased speed, forcing her to live again through fear, horror, triumph, joy, and what passed for happiness. This maddening cocktail of emotions had confused Tirezi, driving her into a comatose-like state. But she will live, Artificer was sure of it.
“Reza will rise again!” Tirezi shouted in her memories at some towering figure wreathed in shadows.
The figure, another Naturalborn of a higher rank, only smirked, claiming Tirezi under his own authority. A hand wreathed in some shroud of darkness grabbed the Naturalborn by her neck, holding the panicked woman in place as pain speared her. Metal. Searing heat entered the body, and the Elite moved on. Artificer saw how Tirezi, now clad in her torturous armor, stood before the slaves assigned to her zone of influence.
“Please, mistress.” A bald man, one of whom the recon team brought back, lay prostrate on the ground, reaching out for Tirezi’s feet. “We can’t give up this harvest! The plague and spiders had rendered too many people unable to work. We’ll starve!”
Away from my head! Anger, embarrassment, panic, horror. Tirezi pushed with all her might, trying to wrestle control over her memories, trying to keep some privacy. Artificer ignored these feeble attempts.
“Bah! The food stinks here anyway.” Tirezi of the old shrugged her shoulders, dropping a bag of medicine on the ground. “Get yourself sorted out. I’ll live a few more months on a spider’s meat. But fail me one more time, and my lenience turns to rage. Form up, my claws, the spider hunt is on!”
“Thank you, mistress! Oh, thank you!” The man whimpered in relief.
He moved forward, seeing Tirezi standing before a trio of Naturalborns, surrounded by her own Changed and Changed from the other groups. One of the Naturalborns came closer, hissing in Tirezi’s face and demanding a cut of flesh from her villages or they would tear her apart. A dagger under the lower jaw was Tirezi’s answer, the blade had pierced both jaws, locking them together. The Naturalborn’s body relaxed, subjugated by a paralytic poison. Trembling from fear, the Naturalborn started to slide down the dagger, feeling how its sharp edge was about to pierce the palate and reach the brain. Tirezi looked into the pleading eyes, disgusted at this show of weakness. Trembling limbs moved as the Naturalborn swore fealty to the winner.
“Take her villages! This is your cut!” The Naturalborn shouted, throwing the body on the ground and stepping on the downed opponent, feeling the faint beat of the heart under her feet. The other two roared, angry that Tirezi only allowed her troops to feed on the dead flesh. But the mention of unspoiled villages was news too good for them to resist, and soon they retreated, fighting for the ownership of the leaderless gang.
Tirezi allowed the fallen Naturalborn to recover, claiming her as a slave and sending the woman to work in mines until death. The ultimate humiliation. Artificer felt how Tirezi experienced a tingle of pride at such exquisite revenge. Such needless cruelty. Artificer noted the mine location. Outside of the Desolation’s assumed borders... This dominion had spread far too widely for his taste. Actions must be taken.
Another memory. The locals had presented Tirezi with the cloak made of a spider’s silk for their salvation.
Locals. Artificer took a note of how she perceived the people here, ignoring the roaring rage of the Naturalborn’s personality. She was pissed at the invasion of her privacy and burned with shame at the fact that others saw what she thought of as a weakness. Artificer took note of this too. Iterna’s officials often debated whether or not to consider Naturalborns and Changed as hostile species to humanity. This answered it. The society was warped, distorted, and cruel. But not lost. Not more so than a tribe of human cannibals. Without waiting a moment, Artificer sent a video file with this discovery to the government. Naturalborns and Changed are to be treated like humans.
He looked further, finally finding what he was looking for. Patrol routes, turf borders—everything Tirezi knew about the dominion’s forces. More than enough to pay the Underway for their assistance in the mission. But there was something else. He forced her to remember further, causing a tingle of horror in the Naturalborn. She did not want to remember what had happened next.
Breaking through her resistance, the Elite saw a throne room again, this time devoid of the throne. A figure, wrapped in a tattered dark cloak, stood cowering before a towering beast. The creature looked blurred, but Artificer made out two legs, looking more like columns to support the roof, a flowing crimson gown, sacks of flesh bulging through the gown’s opening, and arms so long that they reached all the way to the ground. Tirezi’s brain had the barest memories of these events, and this felt strange to Artificer. These were the most recent memories, eight years after Reza’s defeat. The woman tried her best to forget this memory.
Eight years? This makes her twelve or thirteen years old. Artificer heard that life-expectancy in the Desolation was short, but this short?
Get out of my head! Get out! Get out! Get out!
““With this, we can secure our calls,” the figure said in a male voice, bowing low to the beast.
“Our calls, slave?” the towering monstrosity asked cheerfully, backhanding the cloaked figure into the wall and turning to look at Tirezi. “Let us test it, then. My dears, stand still. Next time you hear my call, keep it secret. Otherwise, die.”
No! No! No! No! No! I am loyal! Loyal! Tirezi howled within her brain.
A hand, bigger than Tirezi’s whole body, had enveloped her. The heat emanating from the Mother soaked deep into her very core, changing the woman, adding something new to her body. A smell of burning flesh, mixed with something acrid, reached her nostrils. The painful change speared the Naturalborn’s whole body, causing her to howl, thrash, and even whimper for a quick death. The pleas were left unanswered, and the torture lasted for several minutes before the Mother moved on to the next Naturalborn. And soon, she heard of Kriegshaw’s demise, and with this came a call, summoning her master to the ca…
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He cut off the connection, the sensors in his body screamed at a sudden trembling in Tirezi’s body. Blood showed from her mouth, eyes, and nose, flowing across her body. In a moment, Artificer was next to her, thin needles came from within his fingers and pierced the side of her head. Electric surges and small sound waves came from him, locating the damaged area. The brain hemorrhages. Several arteries in her brain burst in unison, causing localized bleeding. Along with it, she has suffered a heart stroke and lung failure, the once massive body has now quickly recoiled back to its original, smaller size.
A command to die. This was what this Mother installed into the woman’s very body. This was not a mental imprint, not something that Artificer could have detected with ease. Now, this thing was far more insidious, nestling deep into the woman’s own DNA, ready to be sprung at the right moment. A true master craft in bio technology.
How interesting. Artificer wondered, merging his frame with a floor and allowing tubes with regeneration solution to flow straight through him into Tirezi’s shaking body. Another vessel burst, but his needle-like fingers had already entered the woman’s head, cauterizing the popped vessels and mending the damaged tissues at a speed and precision unmatched, ruining the skin and skull in the process.
A milky white mist rose from behind the chair, forming into a humanoid figure as Lada took over the holographic processor in the room. She looked like a lean, small lady in a pristine white dress, with short hair that reached to her neck. Only her eyes broke the white color, two crimson windows looking at you.
“Artificer! What is the meaning of this?” Lada demanded to know, rushing toward the wounded woman.
The Elite only looked at her, sending information via encrypted file. What he knew, she knew. They had no need to speak, when the need arose, both artificial intelligences had far faster methods of communication at their disposal. Lada gave a quick nod, joining him in the effort of keeping the patient alive, working to preserve the inner organs with automatic tools that came from the floor.
It was a nasty thing, this biological imprint. Artificer saw it several times before, when dealing with the Numbers, a terrorist group that pestered the world. Had this been the same, the woman would already be saved. This specific imprint was a far cruder version, forcing him to run countless simulations in tandem with Lada, trying to pin-point the source of the problem and stop the self-destruction.
In a minute, they found it. Cells. This Mother had infected the Naturalborn’s body with a special set of cells that somehow got linked with the brain waves of the victim. Upon receiving information about a ‘betrayal’, these cells started multiplying and assembling together, creating blobs within arteries, popping them like balloons, and moving on, searching for new places to ruin.
In a matter of minutes, they had succeeded. The special cells that the Mother implanted in the woman were burned away, leaving her bleeding and unable to move. Pieces of skin hung from her body, like torn parchment, seeping greenish blood on the floor. The tissues and muscles beneath contorted and twitched. Tirezi’s eyes look around, slowly filling with dread, while drones were flying around, mending the wounds and washing blood off her.
“My fingers… I can’t… I can’t move,” she whispered.
“Your brain is damaged, honey,” Lada cooed to her, putting the all-too-real hand of her hard hologram on the Naturalborn’s shoulder.
“You’ve made a Reza out of me!” Tirezi tried to shake, to turn her head, only to realize that she couldn’t. Even blinking barely worked anymore. Her desperate eyes found Artificer. “No, it’s even worse! Outlander! You… you saw my memories. I…” She licked her lips. “I treated my slaves well! Your kind cares about this, yes? Reward me for this with a clean death!”
“No,” Artificer told her, returning his calm voice.
“I can’t be a cripple!” She screamed in a high-pitched voice.
“You won’t, this is not irrecoverable damage, not in Iterna at least. A month in a hospital, and you’ll be able to lift a hand and limp around. Half a year, and you’ll walk around once again just fine.” He spread his arms, allowing his drones to clean the frame of the blood. Tirezi looked pale, but he hadn’t dared attempt a blood transfusion, not until he could be certain it wouldn’t harm the patient. “Since the damage that has befallen you is my fault, I’ll cover all expenses associated with your recovery.”
“Don’t worry, I will be with you every step of the way.” Lada lowered to one knee, her skirt flowing across the floor. She took the abnormal by the hand, looking her in the eyes. “It just half-a-year. No biggie.”
“You…” The eyes widened, seeing how a drop of blood passed through Lada’s hand. “You are not real. What are you?”
“Name’s Lada.” The holographic image smiled. “A sort of free citizen. And I definitely exist, simply picky about the things I allow to touch me. Even now, I inhabit one of the mainframes deep below us. If you want to, I can show you it someday…”
“No,” Artificer refused in a dry voice. Lada was too trusting for her own good.
“I will be eaten!” Tirezi’s panic exploded anew. “The cripples are either eaten or starved! No! I refuse to endure this indignity, I refuse!”
“No one will hurt you, Tirezi. You are in Iterna now, not in the Desolation…” Artificer tried to calm the prisoner. No more oil came from her skin. Either the woman spent it all, or she had lost control over it as well.
“You are the one who crippled me, tin-can bastard!”
“This is the result of your refusal to cooperate and your leader’s actions. Your full recovery is not in question. There is, however, a problem of what to do with you after the recovery.”
“No prison.” Lada looked at him.
“You saw her memories, Lada. They eat human flesh and attack settlements. We have proof that she killed people,” the Elite tried to reason with her.
“And what use will a punishment be against someone who doesn’t even have a concept of any other way of life? She has no concept of equality, democracy, or mercy. Artificer, she is how old again—twelve or thirteen years? No court would sentence an underage anyway. The worst she’ll face is a juvenile prison, and they’ll send her to a mental clinic, anyway. So let’s cut out the middleman and provide actual help, shall we?”
“How dare you, outlanders!” The prisoner hissed, snapping her jaws. “I reached full maturity eight years ago! For my masters I have brought death to dozens and sent hundreds of slaves to the capital! I am no child, but a supreme warrior, and I demand to be treated as…”
“Case-in-fucking-point! She doesn’t even understand the gravity of her situation.” Lada stood up, pointing a finger at the abnormal and giving her outburst no further notice.
“Fine. A mental hospital to correct her behavior and make a proper human out of her. I’ll send my recommendation and fill out the papers about immigration,” Artificer conceded the point, fully knowing how touching this subject was to Lada.
He and Lada were created to improve the world. Artificer was meant to oversee the orbital defenses, and Lada was supposed to help with the terraforming of other planets. The Extinction took away their fates and forced Artificer to escape to Iterna, helping people along the way. And Lada was left buried. Her mainframe got corrupted, confusing the programming. And when one day, by accident, she woke up, a new goal came to her mind. Terraform the planet. And wipe out the human race. With this goal in mind, she began assembling an army. The Elite stopped her, barely arriving in time before she could unleash her forces. Upon having her programming fixed, Lada nowadays tried to save anyone she can, no matter how unearned her mercy may be.
Against his counsel, Iterna’s government let Lada walk away freely, accepting her as a citizen of the world. She repaid this by creating her children, many VIs who were now serving among the country’s ranks. On the one hand, the situation ended well. On the other hand, the government was far too trusting in Artificer’s view. He had seen firsthand what devastation a rogue AI could cause. For this reason, he convinced Lada to stay with him. For this reason, Artificer had created numerous kill switches, meant to stop or contain him or Lada should they go rogue.
Artificer threw all worries from his mind, leaving the prisoner in Lada’s care. Iterna’s mental institutions fixed worse scum. Reforging his frame to a smaller size as he wanted, he contacted the Underway, sending them the requested patrol routes and cementing the deal. The doors opened, and Artificer made his way to a nearby observation room, sending a full report about the harm he had caused to the prisoner. The military would suppress this information until the mission’s end, but his fate would ultimately be decided by the court. Iterna’s laws were clear. Anyone under a certain age is either a teen or a child and must not be harmed at any cost.
“How are you feeling yourself?” He asked the ashen-haired woman who sat before the screen that showed the interrogation chamber.
“Fine.” Her trembling hand reached for a cup of coffee. “Is this always this bloody?” She nodded at the prisoner.
“My apologies for the scene. An unexpected factor came into play. Smar, it is time to take the pills…”
“Already took them.” The most dangerous member of the incoming mission, a lean and harmless-looking woman, turned to look at him. “I still feel the pull.” She touched her pale forehead. “Have you found anything about the call?”
“No. This interrogation cleared up some things, but we followed the wrong track. There are several calls, and the one you feel is something else.” Artificer pondered for a moment, checking in on the next member of the expedition. Upon learning about the probable location, the Dynast insisted that a member of his forces would accompany the expedition in exchange for coordinates. Now that person was busy testing her new prosthetics by taking apart some of the finest of Lada’s children. Without using a power armor. “If you want to, we can change your name.”
“No need, I have grown to quite like it,” Smar smiled to him with perfect teeth. Artificer allowed the devices within the room to scan her body, looking for anything, a rapid surge of intelligence, a tingle of aggression… Anything to see if she was lying to him or if she was a danger to others. Nothing. A normal human being with a kind smile and strange-looking, yellowish eyes with green sparkles in them. “Found something?”
“Everything in order. If you need anything, just call me. Have you spoken with our guest?”
“Only via video feed. She seemed disappointed that I refused to join her in the training area and refused all offers for small stalk. She told me that the “combat bonding” will happen tomorrow, when the other members assemble."
“Figures,” Artificer made an encouraging chuckle. “Have a rest. Tomorrow is a big day, Smar.”
Madness. Everything about this mission, from Smar’s involvement to the reclaimers in his home to the sheer number of protocols and laws that they had to bypass, was nothing short of madness, but what choices did they really have? The call reached out to them and only them. Not even the Wolf Tribe felt it, but Artificer made sure to check this theory by allowing that person here. If all of these beasts moved into the Desolation, it would be bad enough, but if Ravager gets a whiff of this too and arrives there…
Ravager has always been a force of nature. Even when the Dynast yanked her chain, the famous Reclaimers’ commander left destroyed countries in her wake, making the locals bend their knee to the imperial rule. And now she is unshackled, free of any rules that bound her. Artificer never shared Eugenia’s guilt or pity for Ravager. The woman’s blood-thirst knew no bound, her occasional bouts of rage saw mountains reduced to dust and earthquakes ravaging the surroundings. If the call somehow enrages her, the Desolation might disappear. Along with all who live there.
And the call was ever expanding, day by day, kilometer by kilometer. Artificer looked through the cameras installed in the underground hangar, seeing hundreds of combat frames, all awaiting his command. If the expedition fails, if Smar fails to locate the source, if anything goes awry… The government will order him to walk and stop the signal at all costs before Ravager can get involved. And the Desolation will disappear in the sea of flame, one way or another. And worst of all, he had to keep this a secret from the others. The Elites had a reputation to uphold.
If everything works as he planned, this won’t happen. The Elites’ job was to avoid killing and preserve Iterna’s ideals of equality and restoration at all costs. Artificer dedicated his very self to seeing this noble goal bloom. Right now, he will move these frames to the Desolation border, just in case… And besides, he had a mine to ruin and slaves to liberate. After all, none can fault him for staging training exercises on a neutral land.